The Meaning of the Cross and the Lord’s Prayer, part 2: Passing by Nehushtan

The Meaning of the Cross

If you read my previous article, When I Survey the Wondrous Nace, I demonstrated the obvious truth that the Cross is a symbol, and if that symbol is an ultimate one in Christian theology then the meaning of that symbol is supremely the miracle of the fulfilled oracles of the Messiah.

This is not an innocuous statement of mine. Our usual significations for the Cross are all over the place, almost as if it is a conscious effort to make sure that we are not threatened in our conceptions of faith by one that points exclusively toward one informational center far away from here.

If there is no identifiable vital center which is metaphysical but is instead something up for grabs in a conglomeration of various and sundry dependent ideas, we could not be held accountable by God for how we treat it. How much we were changed by it, what place we give it, how much we know it, how much our theology is informed by it. You know, like we correctly treat Christ himself, who is as singular and narrow in his person and identification.

The typical meaning of the Cross is taken for granted, and that typical idea is not true. It is because the typical idea is a meaning that begs the question of what information sits behind it instead of supplying it upfront. This is an egregious omission because it gives us the license to supply our own informational source, which is usually having something to do, biblically, with the bare actions of Jesus, with theological concepts and actions in transcendent realms, or, most problematic, with our own life experiences.

To be honest, you need a signification which combines an idea with the most extraordinary facts which prove the reality of the heavenly idea. Again, I think I have proven it to be the oracles of the Messiah which were fulfilled by Jesus on the Cross.

Messianic prophecy is an idea, a concept, but one that is self-authenticating by that which is not a symbol. Data, facts, knowledge is not a symbol, it’s derived from phenomena and is informational phenomena. Messianic prophecy is the ultimate phenomenal Christian meaning, in the same but the lesser way that my ultimate moral meaning before those who know me is not only “Bruce” or “blogger,” but everything I have done that represents my moral spirit that they are capable of knowing.

The common meanings for the Cross are things like “reconciliation,” “sacrificial service,” “a benediction,” such as “the sign of the Cross,” “the Tree of Life,” “a sign for gathering” and “a Ladder,” as in Jacob’s ladder to Heaven. It seems that “death” is the bromide that Protestants usually give to the signification of the Cross as a symbol. It’s not “Jesus prophesied death,” it’s “death,”  which is the meaning also put for the symbol of blood.

Not that these are not so, it’s just that they know full well that Jesus’ death means nothing without it having been promised by the Father. Otherwise, it would not have vindicated God’s righteousness and his name (Dan 9:26, Psalms 22, Isaiah 53:7-11, Zech 12:10, et. al.). If under these circumstances the Cross represents something as “sacrifice,” then the choice allows the possibility that the highest revelation possible into the meaning of the symbol of the Cross is accepted by us as just another symbol, an idea, meaning that the essence of good religion is about taking one step forward and one step down until we can sink no further into mere representations, instead of essences.

Let’s think about this

All of these assignations apply to Jesus, and they are also true significations for the Cross. But are not these things by themselves not only religious concepts, albeit true?

A concept is but another kind of symbol used exclusively in the processes of thought and of human construction. It’s not miraculous, it’s pragmatic, changeable, deleteable, for the display of miraculous knowledge.  If a symbol is determined by that which is only another idea, an artificiality, or knowledge which is not transcendent, then we have a problem with its competence to serve that transcendence.

The first problem is that of a symbol having meaning which is another symbol. A concept for a concept.

The insularity and the practical function of speech and thought in a normal workaday world allow for messiness because the mess you make is still contained within the canal noetic sink.

If every meaning is assumed to be found there, no problem taking “blood” with the meaning “death.” You can explain “death” later properly as a means of suggesting a certain stream of information that resolves “blood.” But, if your mind is still around the content of the immanent sink, is there anything compelling you to do so? No, you can continue to say “death” and never intend such a linkage, or even that such a linkage exists, and appear to have a normal thought and conversation.

But when we introduce into the kitchen another competing container of things, a divine one, think how much this tendency will be magnified, of using a symbol to represent another symbol, not for the miraculous knowledge demanded of which that metaphysical sink only contains?  Since ideas are artificial, and there is logic to keep a miraculous idea to stand for something which is also miraculous and factual, we will always be tempted to keep that meaning unmiraculous and within the artificial as well.

The tendency is to think about meaning which is immanent and to use symbols that do not aggressively point to non-immanent realities to make it easier. This is why even “Jesus” is becoming in pedestrian sensibilities only a figure for a man, a radical, a homosexual, a political activist, a fraud, a mere itinerant rabbi who as misunderstood. Sine “Jesus” is aggressively a metaphysical symbol, we want to change the symbol to something prosaic so that the implications don’t disturb carnal affections.

Since we are lazy minded and apathetic about non-pragmatic things, we go under the radar and use any spiritual, insular idea as a meaning for another spiritual, insular idea, “Cross” for “sacrifice.” You can keep heavenly ideas, but only because they are not forced from a miracle of phenomena.

We can’t’ stop what the street does with Truth. But we can for Christianity. What I describe is a huge problem for a talk about things far from Spatio-temporal reality because it is possible for us to speak in ways that seem set on the discovery and elucidation of other realms while avoiding any real knowledge about it which would wrench us away from where we want to be.

Now, where does meaning, knowledge of God, come from? With Christianity, since it posits a real relationship with objective Transcendence, it can only be from an appearance of God in some informational form. The artificial, spiritual symbol flags a very un-artificial, transcendent meaning in knowledge. This is what I call Transcendent phenomena.

The symbol for the Republican Party is the elephant, which invokes an idea about the party in our minds, but that idea does not have some independent power and existence apart from what “proves” it. The Republican Party is something real, with a history, with policy positions, with an office somewhere, with a convention and a candidate. The concept “Republican” appears and is necessitated by the objective existence and data that exits in that objective organization. The idea alone is powerless and has no real meaning until its informational substance is found in the actual organization.

In the same way, the party entity would not be able to exist in the mind (or have graphical representation for that matter) without the conceptual symbol. Otherwise, we would be saying that any particular idea that we have of “Republican Party” was founded and was prior to its existence and history and that whatever good or bad the Republican Party does, as a matter of fact, is true or false by the idea that we have about it as some moral entity. We also can’t take it as rational that a public organization would be created to do no work for the purpose of becoming known and making a good name for itself, i.e., that it requires and makes no public symbol of itself, in whatever form it takes.

Reality is one thing, feelings and ideas are another. Although they are both indispensables for the formation of our inner worlds and our understanding of the outer world, spiritual reality, not ideas and emotions, make and command the existence of their outer symbols. Only then can they come to assume their vital role of becoming the cursory signs that index all of what we know is true or false, and become representatives of what we are.

Post-modernism, its fallout being the time in which we now live, is essentially a suspicion of this axiom, believing that subjectivity forces and commands reality. Its failure is a failure to admit the existence of ultimate, absolute objectivity which extends far beyond humans and his inner realm.

But the theistic idea is that our presuppositions are forced by the necessity of God, which created the universe, which includes ourselves. This pattern is repeated in the human psyche, that all ideas are made a necessity and a reality by something that exists outside of man, and all changes that man can make to objective reality have severe limitations. The post-modern philosophy is about the autonomy of man, not that man is but a contingent idea to God that He realized. The post-modern Christian version of this is that our religious ideas, conclusions, assertions, and declarations make them true or of substance, and our feelings determine our moral disposition before God.

This is why our use of these very puerile assignations for “Cross” is not even theistic, much less honoring to Christ if Christ is a symbol for our spirits of what makes up his messianic and divine credentials. If Jesus was not prophesied to be the Messiah and fulfilled those prophecies, we would still have “Jesus,” but not a Messiah. We would have an unrealized “Messiah” that is powerless. Without “death” being “messiah’s prophesied death,” the efficacy of messianic blood is powerless. Without “atonement” being prophesied and realized by Jesus in prophecy, it never happened and is not real. Without “Jacob’s Ladder” a prophecy of the Messiah to come, it’s just a dream. Without the Tree of Life as a prophecy of the Messiah, it’s just a lovely, quaint notion.

In fact, there is no idea Christians can entertain that has any power unless the prophets foretold it and Christ fulfilled it. This is why faith in Christ without being motivated by the words of the Prophets, without knowledge of what he died to fulfill, without our continued sanctification by its teaching, we are living in the death cult fantasy of post-modern faith.

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