Building Our Own Towers

So here’s my heretical statement of the day: we need to think less about heaven.

Toni Morrison won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993. At the Nobel Prize Award Ceremony, Morrison told the story of a blind, but wise old woman, who teaches a group of children that using stories to understand other people is the greatest ambition of language. I highly suggest reading the entire speech, for it is magnificent: http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1993/morrison-lecture.html

Despite its beauty, most of this speech will not apply to this post. One section, however, considers the story of the Tower of Babel, from Genesis 11:1-9

1 Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. 2 And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. 3 And they said to one another, Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. 4 Then they said, Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth. 5 And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built. 6 And the Lord said, Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another's speech. 8 So the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. 9 Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth. And from there the Lord dispersed them over the face of all the earth (ESV).

This has been a standard of biblical teaching in my life for as long as I can remember. It’s a really easy story for kids to understand: the people tried to build a tower to heaven, and God didn’t like it. Why? It’s often seen as an arrogant defiance against God, humanity seeing itself as worthy of living beside Him regardless of His wishes.

Another way that I’ve liked to look at it is that the people wish to “make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.” This is their way of rejecting God’s plan for them to spread and grow. This was their attempt to stand still and be gods in their own eyes.

Either way, God confused the builder’s languages so they couldn’t communicate. And it’s just about impossible to build anything unless you can communicate. This was their punishment for trying to reach heaven before their time, for trying too hard to live higher than man was meant to live.

And I thought this way for twenty-three years, until I found Toni Morrison’s speech in a textbook I was teaching from. She threw a new light on the traditional interpretation, through this section, a part of the blind old woman’s speech to the children:

“The conventional wisdom of the Tower of Babel story is that the collapse was a misfortune. That it was the distraction, or the weight of many languages that precipitated the tower's failed architecture. That one monolithic language would have expedited the building and heaven would have been reached. Whose heaven, she wonders? And what kind? Perhaps the achievement of Paradise was premature, a little hasty if no one could take the time to understand other languages, other views, other narratives period. Had they, the heaven they imagined might have been found at their feet. Complicated, demanding, yes, but a view of heaven as life; not heaven as post-life.”

Beautiful.

The story is really complicated by verse six, the reason God gives for why their languages should be muddled: “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.”

This section troubles me, while at the same time filling me with optimism. It first makes me wonder why God would want to stifle humanity’s growth so substantially. Were humans so immature that God had to set them back thousands of years? Then this verse makes me wonder about our world today—a world I see on the cusp of rejuvenating that one language. The spread of global language through the internet, what our society can accomplish when we are able to achieve one language, boggles my mind.

But Morrison made me think that the confusion of the languages wasn’t God punishing mankind. Confusing our languages was His way of making us grow, of teaching us to love each other. It was a parent making His children go to school, to learn, to turn into human beings rather than letting them experience joy when they were young.

If God is love, then this was His way of teaching us to love each other.

It reminds me of Jesus’ words in Luke, when the Pharisees began harassing him about heaven and God’s plan:

Luke 17:20-21—"20 Being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, he answered them, The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed, 21 nor will they say, "Look, here it is!" or "There!" for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you (ESL)."

Of course, at the time Jesus was in the midst of them (while they did their best to ignore what He was really trying to say). But His message was clear—concentrate more on the people around you, on the Kingdom of God around you, than on the heaven that is to come.

Every time we concentrate on achieving a personal heaven rather than helping and loving our fellow man, we are building another tower.

Is this heresy?

Satan Moved

This study delves into the nature of Satan. As Milton showed, Satan’s actions and motivations are intriguing and complex, so this will necessitate the use of several subheadings.

1. Movement

The “Unmoved Mover” is an Aristotelian concept of all motion in the universe. In his Physics, Book VIII, Aristotle examines change and motion, attempting to show that the concept of time, of there being a “before” and an “after,” requires a catalyst, an agent of change. That agent of change he calls the “first principle.” The later cosmological theory arose that God is that agent of change, the first principle who began all movement in the universe, because otherwise it would have no reason to move.

I've heard this argument (though oversimplified) to counter the theory of a Godless Big Bang—if there was an infinity dense form of matter in the center of the universe, why would it spontaneously decide to explode? There must be a catalyst.

 (Aristotle’s ideas were picked up in the 13th Century by St. Thomas Aquinas [my personal favorite church figure]. Pertaining to this study, Aquinas wrote the Quinque viæ [Five Ways], five arguments considering the nature of God, and De Substantiis Separatis [Treatise on Separate Substances], a study of the angels. He’s much more readable and concise than many of the other authors and his theories are easier to apply to modern theology.)

 2. Angels

 Now let’s consider the nature of the angels. The popular Christian belief is that they serve as messengers and servants for God, such as the angels who greeted the women in Jesus’ empty tomb, or the angel who told Mary she would be with child. But these angels are also God’s creations, made before men. A good way of looking at their creation is through the words of St. Augustine, an incredibly important 5th Century father of the church. In Book XI of his work The City of God, Augustine argues that “the angels already existed when the skies were made. The latter, however, were created on the fourth day. Do we therefore say that the angels were created on the third day? No. For it is well known what was made on that day: the earth was separated from the waters. Perhaps on the second day? Indeed not, for the firmament was made then...No wonder, therefore, if the very angels pertain to these works of God, just as that light which receives the name of day.”

 Therefore, according to Augustine, angels are associated with heaven, created when it is in Genesis 1:1: “In the beginning God created heaven and earth.” Angels were around before, or while, God created the rest of existence.

 Another church father, St. Jerome, in the 4th Century, says this while commenting on the Epistle to Titus: “Six thousand years of our time are not yet completed and how many eternities, how many times, how many origins of ages are we to think first existed in which the Angels, Thrones, and Dominations and the other orders served God without the succession and measurement of time and did God’s bidding.”

 3. Time

 My previous blog entries have dealt with the idea of time (see God Pressed Play and A Timeless Heaven). In a nutshell, time doesn't work for God as it works for us, such as in Jerome’s notion that the angels served God without the measurement of time. Just as humans will enter a timeless Heaven, thus losing our earthly concepts of “before” and “after,” the angels in Heaven live in a constant, unmoving state.

But there was a change. The Bible shows us examples of angels bringing messages, revealing future events, interacting in the timeline of humans. The angel in the tomb said, “He is not here, for he has risen, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay.” What changed the angels from unmoving being? What caused time to begin for the angels? Who or what was the catalyst to begin the wheel turning?

Next point—the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve were created by God out of dirt and ribs, respectively, and placed in the Garden of Eden. While there they named animals, ran around naked, and overall had a great time being sinless and living in God’s perfect world. Then the snake came around, tempted Eve, who tempted Adam, and everything got messed up.

The point of all of this? Time didn’t exist for Adam or Eve until the snake tempted Eve. He was the catalyst, the agent of change, the one who ended their perfection. After that point, everything suddenly became very real, very deadly, and very time-conscious:

Genesis 3:22-23—Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—” therefore the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken (ESV). 

Genesis 3:18-19— “cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life;… you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

Underlined are the sections which really get across the idea of change, or time. Before they were expelled from the Garden, there was no death or time. There is no evidence that Adam or Eve aged, got sick, or got closer to death in any way. There’s also no way of telling how long they were in the garden before the snake showed up and ruined everything because, just like with the angels, there was no measurement of time.

4. Satan

 The history of Satan is quite complicated and is made no easier by popular retellings involving fire and brimstone, pitchforks and red horns, and strangely enough—goatees.

Less-hilarious traditions state that Satan was once the greatest, or brightest of all the angels in heaven, until he rebelled against God and was cast down from heaven, along with those angels who sided with him. Biblical basis for this story is Luke 10:17-19—

The seventy-two returned with joy, saying, “Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name!” And he said to them, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall hurt you” (ESV).

 And Revelations 12:7-11, which is generally assumed to be the story of Satan’s fall from grace—Now war arose in heaven, Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon. And the dragon and his angels fought back, but he was defeated, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him. And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, “Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers who accuses them day and night before our God. And                       they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death (ESV).

5. Satan Moved

Now to connect the dots. We know this:
• God is the Unmoved Mover
• The Angels and Heaven are outside of time, while Earth and humans are within it.
• Satan rebelled against God and was cast down to Earth.
• Satan caused Adam and Eve to sin against God and they were cast out of Eden.
• Time causes death (yeah, I know, but I have to say it)

Therefore, Satan’s true sin was not only disobeying God’s will, but introducing the very concept of time into the universe. God is the Unmoving Mover. As existence stood, it was just God and His angels. Then Satan changed; Satan moved. And with movement comes time.

With Satan’s rebellion, time was created—the “before” and “after.” God created Earth, separating it from Heaven like the land from the waters, because time existed, to have a place to throw Satan.

Then the Spirit of God hovered “over the face of the waters,” over the Earth that was dark, without form, and void. And God said, “Let there be light.” He created another timeless paradise on Earth, another attempt at Heaven, on an Earthly plane. His creations, this time, were humans. But Satan appeared and moved again. Eve would not have acted if not tempted; Adam would not have sinned unless Eve handed him the fruit. And the Garden was abandoned.

Death and time would not exist in the world if those events had not occurred.

As Aristotle said, there has to be a “First Principle.” God began it all, but never intended there to be time, which leads to death. Satan’s sin was that in rebelling, he forced time to occur. When Satan moved, he flung himself into the timeline, separating himself from the timeless Heaven and a timeless God.