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The Language of Creation: Cosmic Symbolism in Genesis
The Language of Creation is a commentary on the primeval stories from the book of Genesis. It is often difficult to recognize the spiritual wisdom contained in these narratives because the current scientific worldview is deeply rooted in materialism. Therefore, instead of looking at these stories through the lens of modern academic disciplines, such as sociology, psychology, or the physical sciences, this commentary attempts to interpret the Bible from its own cosmological perspective. By contemplating the ancient biblical model of the universe, The Language of Creation demonstrates why these stories are foundational to western science and civilization. It rediscovers the archaic cosmic patterns of heaven, earth, time, and space, and sees them repeated at different levels of reality. These fractal-like structures are first encountered in the narrative of creation and then in the stories of the Garden of Eden, Cain and Abel, and the flood. The same patterns are also revealed in the visions of Ezekiel, the book of Daniel, and the miracles of Moses. The final result of this contemplation is a vision of the cosmos centered on the role of human consciousness in creation.
354 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 29, 2018
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February 4, 2020
The problem we face today (and the problem that nearly all my reading, thinking and writing is centred on) is how to be the Church in the face of modernism. This was a really important book for me and I hope this essay goes some way to explaining why. I will say at the outset that I am simplifying here: pre-modern conceptions of the universe have persisted in the West, but nevertheless, the general trend has been towards abandoning such perspectives, and I am concerned with the overall downward trend, not exceptions. The general problem can be called scientism, that is, that matter is all there is, and thus the scientific method defines all there is to know. This is our basic outlook, and it manifests itself in many different ways, from ideologies as a concept, to consumerism and popular culture. In this way, all metaphysics, religion, spirituality and morality are seen as not based in material reality, and therefore not real, but rather imagined: they are social constructs, completely arbitrary as far as obligation is concerned (as Kant put it, you cannot derive an ought from an is, a premise that traditional religion denies). This has resulted in, for instance, ridiculous approaches to art. Freudian, Darwinian and Marxist theories on art all have this in common: that the artist in not acting out of their intention to communicate a truth, but rather suppressed sexual desires, or advertise their sexual fitness, or driven by economic laws, as Marilyn Robinson argues in her book "Absence of Mind". In other words, all our pretty speeches about what art is are pure delusion: there is no meaning, only mindless deterministic processes at work. Meaning is an opiate, a delusion we need to keep on going, something the film 'Hail Cesar' touches on.
Under such stultifying and machine-minded 'thinking', people may be driven mad, as in the case of Communism and Naziism, or else their spiritual insights are suppressed. This is what Nietzsche was so famous for describing, and Freud and Jung discovered: when traditional religion is abandoned because people can no longer believe in the supernatural, those feelings do not disappear. Rather, they are forgotten and descend into what Jung called the "subconscious". The effect of this is to reduce meaning to materialistic things, which is seen in consumerism, and ultimately, by seeing that such things as art have power over human beings, to regard art cynically as a means of control, as post-modernism. The derision and yet ubiquity of 'self-help' therapy is related: it is despised because it is seen as people deluding themselves to overcome difficulty because they aren't strong enough to determine the course of their lives, and widely used because people really aren't made to 'do it alone.' The problem with modern psychological methods is that they flatten the psychological and the spiritual into one thing, as CS Lewis points out it Mere Christianity. Ultimately, material things and explanations are seen as inadequate and deprive people of meaning in their lives, resulting in what some call the meaning crisis. Jordan Peterson and Bret Weinstein are popular today because they focus on where meaning comes from, and draw it directly from ancient mythological narrative. They have gained traction because they support for their assertions with evolutionary biology: they link Jungian mythological analysis directly to biological hard-wiring to explain why people should behave in ways that generally match common sense and traditional morality.
The materialistic mindset has unfortunately born fruit in the Church. Two main outcomes are 1) literalism and 2) liberalism, both of which largely deny traditional spiritual meanings of the text, due to the sweeping abandonment of traditional modes of religious expression in the years since the Enlightenment. Traditional modes presuppose a metaphysical approach to reality, one that sees the spiritual penetrating the material in every aspect of reality as we encounter it. This basic premise was swept away for one reason: CS Lewis points out that magic and science were in competition in the early modern period (contrary to popular belief, witch trials were not in their heyday in the medieval period, but later, when the scientific method was being developed), but science won because it generated spectacular results. Traditional religion was then regarded as being in the same basket as magic, a lot of mumbo jumbo that appeared not to match up with how reality seemed to work, and it could not match the dazzling output of science. In response, Christianity bifurcated into intellectualism (e.g. Calvinism) and emotionalism (such as the religious revivals of the 1800s). The former corresponds to the high regard for reason (the term has degenerated into 'intelligence' today) at the time, the latter to emotive experience, which can be felt and is therefore hard to deny.
Literalism limits itself to the literal, historical and metaphorical meaning of the text. This is why conspiracy theories and strange ideas of spirits emerge, especially in Baptist and Pentecostal/charismatic churches: they can see the Bible talks about spirituality, but have a culturally limited vocabulary, restricted to the materialistic. Jonathan Pageau points out that this is the method of conspiracy theory: using materialistic language to try to express spiritual reality, which fails. The latter problem, liberalism, generally ignores or regards as irrelevant literal and historical meaning, in addition to the traditional spiritual interpretations of the Church. Because they rely on historical-critical methods of textual interpretation, they treat the Scriptures with contempt. They do not have a way for the supernatural to interact with people, so they discard what does not fit their preconceived conceptions of morality. Instead, they perceive the scriptures as an imperfect expression of ultimate moral principles, with perhaps the exception of the gospels.
This raises the biggest unresolved problem for materialists, and that is morality. Materialists have successfully eliminated the spiritual from the modern consciousness. They have not managed to achieve the same with morality, mainly for pragmatic reasons: although there is no empirically backed theory for morality, it is a fact that moral behaviour is necessary for society to function as we know it, although it creates the problem of how to decide what moral system to accept. Now, this is an odd way to look at the world, because morality has traditionally has been seen to arise from two things 1) who human beings are and by implication, their ultimate goal and 2) the nature of reality in general. If you answer these two questions, the desirable pattern of behaviour tends to arise naturally. Thus, to ask the question of what moral system to accept is odd, because you are actually asking what the nature of reality is. After all, you don't want to go against human nature or reality, because that ultimately won't get you very far.
Secularists draw their morality primarily from one principle: that of the universal dignity of the individual. They do this for two reasons 1) because man is the only measure of things available to them, apart from material reality from which they have been unable to derive moral principles, and 2) they have successfully removed the traditional context of family, tribe, nation or tradition from our conception of ourselves, through such work as that of Rousseau and Locke, introducing the idea of social contract and human rights, which extract the individual from every social bond, obligation and responsibility. Thus, they do not think of 'the human' but of 'the individual', and regard the wishes of the individual as supreme, so long as other individuals are not affected.
Biblical literalists do not draw their morality from this principle, because they do not accept man as the highest authority, but God. However, they approach the Bible 'scientifically' to derive morals; where principles are not stated explicitly, they line up proof texts that empirically suggest a principle. This leaves them in a strange spot when faced with commands, such as wearing head coverings. Either they must approach it legalistically (God said it, so we gotta do it, though we don't know why) or extract the underlying principle (wives are showing deference to husbands). Liberals, of course, because they regard the historical-critical method as a greater authority than God, reject the command as an antiquated cultural practice. Their interpretations are not driven by the text, but by a previously accepted moral framework that discards anything that doesn't fit.
I will elaborate a little more on literalism, since it pervades much popular interpretation of the Bible, and when it is dominant, causes much exegetical grief. This is not to say that there is no literal meaning (there is), or that it is unimportant (it isn't). Literal interpretation, when done correctly, has the positive effect of keeping us grounded in reality.
But when literalism ignores or treats with suspicion other meanings of the text, it becomes an incoherent and fragmented method of interpretation. However, it is more often coupled with a Platonic approach to church doctrine - that is, there is an unchanging and immaterial system of theology existing in a spiritual dimension only remotely accessible to us, that can and should be logically extracted from the Bible. Pursued in isolation, however, this is not a particularly Christian approach, and stands in opposition to most of Christian tradition. It is rather the direct product of a scientific approach to reality.
Science ignores the qualities of things, and only asks what principles govern the behaviour of matter. It ignores the question of what something means, riding roughshod over the 'raw material' of nature. When Scripture is treated only as raw material from which we extract the principles of doctrine, which must then reconfigured to fit our lives (or 'applied' as is often said), we are doing something that 1) dishonours the form of the Bible and 2) ultimately induces a Picassoesque contortion of the human frame.
Finally, materialism places the emphasis on content, not form, because it is looking down at matter and asks only how things work, not what they mean or refer up to or express. Metaphysics (when it is not gnostic) relies heavily on material form, the arrangement and medium the content is placed in. This is because metaphysics refers to invisible things, so to express them one must make use of material in a way that speaks to the unseen. When the unseen aspects of reality are denied, all forms are seen as arbitrary dressing. Thus, the Christian message is reduced to content, in particular, a legal statement that 1) all people are sinners and have violated God’s law, much which is seen as arbitrary, as it does not reflect reality as moderns see it and 2) Christ fixes the problem legally. This is all a bit impersonal, and functions at the ‘intellectual’ level. To fix that, the ‘relationship with God’ aspect is added as an emotional support. This cleans the Christian message of nearly all metaphysical language: ontological relationships are completely excised. Thus, this altering of the Christian message, which happened gradually following the Protestant Reformation, is not a response to the ‘traditions of men’ supposedly introduced by the Catholic Church, as is commonly supposed. It is rather a response to a paradigmatic shift in how the West perceived reality. It was making the gospel message ‘relevant‘ to a people who no longer understood the world metaphysically or symbolically. This is unfortunate, because a materialistic world with the legal+relationship gospel message is decidedly not the working cosmological model of the Scriptures.
To summarise: the effect of modernism on the Church's liturgy and interpretation of Scripture is to 1) split the expression of the liturgy into emotional or intellectual, or some combination of these, and 2) regard the Scriptures primarily as raw material, from which a lens of legality, morality and self-help may be derived with which to interact with a materialist world. At this point, things have reached a pretty pass. It creates all sorts of problems. For instance, because moderns have abandoned metaphysics altogether, it is very difficult for them to understand the logic of the Old Testament law, to draw much meaning from historical narrative, genealogies, descriptions of buildings etc, or to see how such things as the story of creations lays out the structure of reality. Even treating the Bible as a work of literature, which would save much of the traditional view, is abandoned in favour of systematic theology.
This is where this book comes in. Pageau points out that the Scriptures rely on a pre-modern conception of reality, one that relies on metaphysics, not materialism. Only if one recognises this does the Scriptures begin to make complete sense. The Bible is a story dense with symbolic meaning. It is deeply embedded in the material world, which it does not treat as inferior to some Platonic form of doctrine, but rather essential to our humanity. It assumes a reality penetrated on every level with spiritual reality.
I will outline a few of the basic symbolic structures in the book. The most immediate and obvious order of the universe we encounter, and one we need no science to grasp, is that heaven is up and earth is down. This perception is basic and central to all ancient (and modern) metaphysics. It is basic because it is scaled to the human, unlike scientific models.
The primary associations with heaven are meaning and order and authority (often personified as the gods), while the earth is thought of as substance and matter and power. Heaven is seen primarily in terms of form and ontology: that the things of earth are expressions of beings or forms in heaven. This structure is repeated in our bodies: ideas are in our heads, which has authority over the body, but little power, while our body has great power and very little in the way of ideas. It is the same in a nation, with a ruler with authority and a population with power. It is the same in a tree: roots support the trunk, while the leaves give food to the roots. This pattern repeats all over creation and it rarely goes the other way.
... review continued here: https://thefullcreation.blogspot.com/...
Under such stultifying and machine-minded 'thinking', people may be driven mad, as in the case of Communism and Naziism, or else their spiritual insights are suppressed. This is what Nietzsche was so famous for describing, and Freud and Jung discovered: when traditional religion is abandoned because people can no longer believe in the supernatural, those feelings do not disappear. Rather, they are forgotten and descend into what Jung called the "subconscious". The effect of this is to reduce meaning to materialistic things, which is seen in consumerism, and ultimately, by seeing that such things as art have power over human beings, to regard art cynically as a means of control, as post-modernism. The derision and yet ubiquity of 'self-help' therapy is related: it is despised because it is seen as people deluding themselves to overcome difficulty because they aren't strong enough to determine the course of their lives, and widely used because people really aren't made to 'do it alone.' The problem with modern psychological methods is that they flatten the psychological and the spiritual into one thing, as CS Lewis points out it Mere Christianity. Ultimately, material things and explanations are seen as inadequate and deprive people of meaning in their lives, resulting in what some call the meaning crisis. Jordan Peterson and Bret Weinstein are popular today because they focus on where meaning comes from, and draw it directly from ancient mythological narrative. They have gained traction because they support for their assertions with evolutionary biology: they link Jungian mythological analysis directly to biological hard-wiring to explain why people should behave in ways that generally match common sense and traditional morality.
The materialistic mindset has unfortunately born fruit in the Church. Two main outcomes are 1) literalism and 2) liberalism, both of which largely deny traditional spiritual meanings of the text, due to the sweeping abandonment of traditional modes of religious expression in the years since the Enlightenment. Traditional modes presuppose a metaphysical approach to reality, one that sees the spiritual penetrating the material in every aspect of reality as we encounter it. This basic premise was swept away for one reason: CS Lewis points out that magic and science were in competition in the early modern period (contrary to popular belief, witch trials were not in their heyday in the medieval period, but later, when the scientific method was being developed), but science won because it generated spectacular results. Traditional religion was then regarded as being in the same basket as magic, a lot of mumbo jumbo that appeared not to match up with how reality seemed to work, and it could not match the dazzling output of science. In response, Christianity bifurcated into intellectualism (e.g. Calvinism) and emotionalism (such as the religious revivals of the 1800s). The former corresponds to the high regard for reason (the term has degenerated into 'intelligence' today) at the time, the latter to emotive experience, which can be felt and is therefore hard to deny.
Literalism limits itself to the literal, historical and metaphorical meaning of the text. This is why conspiracy theories and strange ideas of spirits emerge, especially in Baptist and Pentecostal/charismatic churches: they can see the Bible talks about spirituality, but have a culturally limited vocabulary, restricted to the materialistic. Jonathan Pageau points out that this is the method of conspiracy theory: using materialistic language to try to express spiritual reality, which fails. The latter problem, liberalism, generally ignores or regards as irrelevant literal and historical meaning, in addition to the traditional spiritual interpretations of the Church. Because they rely on historical-critical methods of textual interpretation, they treat the Scriptures with contempt. They do not have a way for the supernatural to interact with people, so they discard what does not fit their preconceived conceptions of morality. Instead, they perceive the scriptures as an imperfect expression of ultimate moral principles, with perhaps the exception of the gospels.
This raises the biggest unresolved problem for materialists, and that is morality. Materialists have successfully eliminated the spiritual from the modern consciousness. They have not managed to achieve the same with morality, mainly for pragmatic reasons: although there is no empirically backed theory for morality, it is a fact that moral behaviour is necessary for society to function as we know it, although it creates the problem of how to decide what moral system to accept. Now, this is an odd way to look at the world, because morality has traditionally has been seen to arise from two things 1) who human beings are and by implication, their ultimate goal and 2) the nature of reality in general. If you answer these two questions, the desirable pattern of behaviour tends to arise naturally. Thus, to ask the question of what moral system to accept is odd, because you are actually asking what the nature of reality is. After all, you don't want to go against human nature or reality, because that ultimately won't get you very far.
Secularists draw their morality primarily from one principle: that of the universal dignity of the individual. They do this for two reasons 1) because man is the only measure of things available to them, apart from material reality from which they have been unable to derive moral principles, and 2) they have successfully removed the traditional context of family, tribe, nation or tradition from our conception of ourselves, through such work as that of Rousseau and Locke, introducing the idea of social contract and human rights, which extract the individual from every social bond, obligation and responsibility. Thus, they do not think of 'the human' but of 'the individual', and regard the wishes of the individual as supreme, so long as other individuals are not affected.
Biblical literalists do not draw their morality from this principle, because they do not accept man as the highest authority, but God. However, they approach the Bible 'scientifically' to derive morals; where principles are not stated explicitly, they line up proof texts that empirically suggest a principle. This leaves them in a strange spot when faced with commands, such as wearing head coverings. Either they must approach it legalistically (God said it, so we gotta do it, though we don't know why) or extract the underlying principle (wives are showing deference to husbands). Liberals, of course, because they regard the historical-critical method as a greater authority than God, reject the command as an antiquated cultural practice. Their interpretations are not driven by the text, but by a previously accepted moral framework that discards anything that doesn't fit.
I will elaborate a little more on literalism, since it pervades much popular interpretation of the Bible, and when it is dominant, causes much exegetical grief. This is not to say that there is no literal meaning (there is), or that it is unimportant (it isn't). Literal interpretation, when done correctly, has the positive effect of keeping us grounded in reality.
But when literalism ignores or treats with suspicion other meanings of the text, it becomes an incoherent and fragmented method of interpretation. However, it is more often coupled with a Platonic approach to church doctrine - that is, there is an unchanging and immaterial system of theology existing in a spiritual dimension only remotely accessible to us, that can and should be logically extracted from the Bible. Pursued in isolation, however, this is not a particularly Christian approach, and stands in opposition to most of Christian tradition. It is rather the direct product of a scientific approach to reality.
Science ignores the qualities of things, and only asks what principles govern the behaviour of matter. It ignores the question of what something means, riding roughshod over the 'raw material' of nature. When Scripture is treated only as raw material from which we extract the principles of doctrine, which must then reconfigured to fit our lives (or 'applied' as is often said), we are doing something that 1) dishonours the form of the Bible and 2) ultimately induces a Picassoesque contortion of the human frame.
Finally, materialism places the emphasis on content, not form, because it is looking down at matter and asks only how things work, not what they mean or refer up to or express. Metaphysics (when it is not gnostic) relies heavily on material form, the arrangement and medium the content is placed in. This is because metaphysics refers to invisible things, so to express them one must make use of material in a way that speaks to the unseen. When the unseen aspects of reality are denied, all forms are seen as arbitrary dressing. Thus, the Christian message is reduced to content, in particular, a legal statement that 1) all people are sinners and have violated God’s law, much which is seen as arbitrary, as it does not reflect reality as moderns see it and 2) Christ fixes the problem legally. This is all a bit impersonal, and functions at the ‘intellectual’ level. To fix that, the ‘relationship with God’ aspect is added as an emotional support. This cleans the Christian message of nearly all metaphysical language: ontological relationships are completely excised. Thus, this altering of the Christian message, which happened gradually following the Protestant Reformation, is not a response to the ‘traditions of men’ supposedly introduced by the Catholic Church, as is commonly supposed. It is rather a response to a paradigmatic shift in how the West perceived reality. It was making the gospel message ‘relevant‘ to a people who no longer understood the world metaphysically or symbolically. This is unfortunate, because a materialistic world with the legal+relationship gospel message is decidedly not the working cosmological model of the Scriptures.
To summarise: the effect of modernism on the Church's liturgy and interpretation of Scripture is to 1) split the expression of the liturgy into emotional or intellectual, or some combination of these, and 2) regard the Scriptures primarily as raw material, from which a lens of legality, morality and self-help may be derived with which to interact with a materialist world. At this point, things have reached a pretty pass. It creates all sorts of problems. For instance, because moderns have abandoned metaphysics altogether, it is very difficult for them to understand the logic of the Old Testament law, to draw much meaning from historical narrative, genealogies, descriptions of buildings etc, or to see how such things as the story of creations lays out the structure of reality. Even treating the Bible as a work of literature, which would save much of the traditional view, is abandoned in favour of systematic theology.
This is where this book comes in. Pageau points out that the Scriptures rely on a pre-modern conception of reality, one that relies on metaphysics, not materialism. Only if one recognises this does the Scriptures begin to make complete sense. The Bible is a story dense with symbolic meaning. It is deeply embedded in the material world, which it does not treat as inferior to some Platonic form of doctrine, but rather essential to our humanity. It assumes a reality penetrated on every level with spiritual reality.
I will outline a few of the basic symbolic structures in the book. The most immediate and obvious order of the universe we encounter, and one we need no science to grasp, is that heaven is up and earth is down. This perception is basic and central to all ancient (and modern) metaphysics. It is basic because it is scaled to the human, unlike scientific models.
The primary associations with heaven are meaning and order and authority (often personified as the gods), while the earth is thought of as substance and matter and power. Heaven is seen primarily in terms of form and ontology: that the things of earth are expressions of beings or forms in heaven. This structure is repeated in our bodies: ideas are in our heads, which has authority over the body, but little power, while our body has great power and very little in the way of ideas. It is the same in a nation, with a ruler with authority and a population with power. It is the same in a tree: roots support the trunk, while the leaves give food to the roots. This pattern repeats all over creation and it rarely goes the other way.
... review continued here: https://thefullcreation.blogspot.com/...
March 25, 2021
This is one of those books that you don't judge: it judges you. I read it two and a half years ago, at which time I was in an entirely different place regarding my understanding of Scripture and symbolism more generally. I mean, back then I was borderline agnostic. Suffice to say my reading experience was markedly different this time around and in fact, it seems that most of what I read the first time had simply flown over my head. I had also struggled to digest the diagrams and definitely saw them as "holding me back" in terms of finishing the book. This time the diagrams were a delight and much more helpful as tools to think and talk about symbolism in other things, not only in Scripture. I see the need for them, not only because of the nature of symbolism itself, but they also purposefully slow down the reader. This isn't like most books in that it just has some interesting points for the reader to consider on top of their existing fundamental worldview. Instead it really demands for the reader to uproot their most basic materialist, "Protestant" presuppositions. That's incredibly difficult to pull off. The diagrams, brevity of chapters, reiterations of the same examples, lack of citations - all of this is part of how Matthieu helps the reader to throw off the shackles of materialism to reconnect with the most basic categories of human existence we can directly access. Heaven, earth, man, woman, space, time, bread, wine...
Matthieu has a somewhat "mathematical" approach in how he communicates, unlike his brother who is more artistic/poetic (technically speaking). Matthieu states things simply, densely and as a matter of fact. There is minimal preamble or filler in this book. This style is what enabled such a systematic, dependable and timeless book/course to be written on a topic that's inherently contextual and narrative in nature. But it also has the risk of severely understating its own profundity. There were many times that I read over a sentence thinking it were nothing - And only after watching hundreds of hours of his brother's Youtube videos did it slowly dawn on me what Matthieu had meant with that sentence/diagram - leaving me shook and in awe at how all these things are truly connected under God. I wish more people would wrestle with this book. I will definitely keep it close at hand.
Matthieu has a somewhat "mathematical" approach in how he communicates, unlike his brother who is more artistic/poetic (technically speaking). Matthieu states things simply, densely and as a matter of fact. There is minimal preamble or filler in this book. This style is what enabled such a systematic, dependable and timeless book/course to be written on a topic that's inherently contextual and narrative in nature. But it also has the risk of severely understating its own profundity. There were many times that I read over a sentence thinking it were nothing - And only after watching hundreds of hours of his brother's Youtube videos did it slowly dawn on me what Matthieu had meant with that sentence/diagram - leaving me shook and in awe at how all these things are truly connected under God. I wish more people would wrestle with this book. I will definitely keep it close at hand.
May 30, 2021
At times it felt like Pageau was over extending the use of biblical symbolism, but after completing the book I have to say that it was my mind that was being stretched.
While reading it became increasingly clear to me that we don’t think with the same patterns of reference as our ancestors. Pageau points out time and time again that the 21st century has experienced a paradigm shift from story and symbols to fact and science and If we want to interpret the bible correctly, we must first understand their symbolic composition.
The book expounds upon this symbolism in four major categories; Heaven, Earth, Space and time. Heaven gives meaning, Earth supports meaning through matter. Space stabilizes and time cycles and confuses. Each of these dimensions have corresponding microcosms and macrocosms that include almost every aspect of the human experience not limited to the bible. What's more, these symbols aren't arbitrary, in fact I believe them to be elements of what could be called the “meta-story”, that is; the story from which all other stories are derived.
Ultimately, the book exposes a fundamental flaw in the way we approach the bible and offers a variety of corrective measures that seek to reveal the symbolic truths interwoven throughout its stories. I look forward to reading more of Pageau in the future.
While reading it became increasingly clear to me that we don’t think with the same patterns of reference as our ancestors. Pageau points out time and time again that the 21st century has experienced a paradigm shift from story and symbols to fact and science and If we want to interpret the bible correctly, we must first understand their symbolic composition.
The book expounds upon this symbolism in four major categories; Heaven, Earth, Space and time. Heaven gives meaning, Earth supports meaning through matter. Space stabilizes and time cycles and confuses. Each of these dimensions have corresponding microcosms and macrocosms that include almost every aspect of the human experience not limited to the bible. What's more, these symbols aren't arbitrary, in fact I believe them to be elements of what could be called the “meta-story”, that is; the story from which all other stories are derived.
Ultimately, the book exposes a fundamental flaw in the way we approach the bible and offers a variety of corrective measures that seek to reveal the symbolic truths interwoven throughout its stories. I look forward to reading more of Pageau in the future.
September 23, 2018
Refreshing
I found this book refreshing. I get so tired of the constant back and forth in my culture (Southern US) about whether or not events in the Bible actually happened. I always feel like a ping pong ball getting bounced around by two big idiots. Just stop! Of course the stories didn’t happen exactly as written, and of course the stories are too important to just shove to the side in the name of science. This book gives me a way to read them again with a sense of understanding and application that I didn’t have before. Thank you so much for writing it.
I found this book refreshing. I get so tired of the constant back and forth in my culture (Southern US) about whether or not events in the Bible actually happened. I always feel like a ping pong ball getting bounced around by two big idiots. Just stop! Of course the stories didn’t happen exactly as written, and of course the stories are too important to just shove to the side in the name of science. This book gives me a way to read them again with a sense of understanding and application that I didn’t have before. Thank you so much for writing it.
November 8, 2019
I liked this book, and the analysis seems plausible. However, the author did not source his assertions. This makes it quite difficult to check sources and confirm his analyses. For this reason, I cannot recommend this book (although I enjoyed it.)
September 17, 2022
Supremely frustrating and disappointing. What started out as an intriguing look into Biblical symbolism descended into confused pseudo-intellectual projections and a borderline Manicheanistic view of reality. Pageau, in dubbing this a “commentary,” probably should’ve undergirded it with some actual exegesis rather than simply slapping his own intellectual framework on God’s Word and declaring it to be a rediscovered cosmology. His take on the book of Job (he describes Job as being “excessively righteous”) is what finally sent me over the edge, but the kick in the teeth is his little speech at the end where he cautions against literal interpretation of Scripture, saying that instead we should use his system of symbolic language as the key to unlocking what the Bible really means. Pretentious, badly written, theologically lacking.
April 3, 2023
“The most important aspect of the spiritual worldview is the ability to describe the universe as a series of embedded microcosms, where the same cosmic principles are expressed on different scales of reality.” -Matthieu Pageau
The Language of Creation broke ground for me in understanding symbolism by exploring the basic patterns found in Genesis. It gave me hope that one day I will make some sense of various obscure Bible books and passages.
I specifically appreciated the succinct style of the writing, the diagrams, and the short chapters which aided in comprehending the material. I will read this book again.
The Language of Creation broke ground for me in understanding symbolism by exploring the basic patterns found in Genesis. It gave me hope that one day I will make some sense of various obscure Bible books and passages.
I specifically appreciated the succinct style of the writing, the diagrams, and the short chapters which aided in comprehending the material. I will read this book again.
April 8, 2021
"It is especially useful to distinguish two levels of sin in relation to Adam's external and internal mediation. In the macrocosm, sin is a failure to mediate between Heaven and Earth correctly. It implies incorrectly supporting spirit with facts and informing meaning. In the microcosm, sin is a failure to mediate between one's own mind and body. In both cases, sin is the inability to correctly "raise matter" (from Earth) and "lower meaning" (from Heaven) for their union. "
-Mattieu Pageau
-Mattieu Pageau
January 14, 2022
This book is one of the most exhausting reads I've ever had. This is the kind of book which concepts will live in ones mind for a long time, possibly forever.
I assume that just one read through is not enough for a feeble man as myself to grasp its message, but if there is as the author claims, a way to bridge our scientific cosmology with the ancient it is worth the re-read.
For its sheer brilliance in its structure and simplicity its worth 5 stars, too often theological books use such a lofty language that one sometimes wonder if the words used are a mere boast of knowledge. This book gets straight to the point.
Anyone interested in the biblical stories should give this one a go.
I assume that just one read through is not enough for a feeble man as myself to grasp its message, but if there is as the author claims, a way to bridge our scientific cosmology with the ancient it is worth the re-read.
For its sheer brilliance in its structure and simplicity its worth 5 stars, too often theological books use such a lofty language that one sometimes wonder if the words used are a mere boast of knowledge. This book gets straight to the point.
Anyone interested in the biblical stories should give this one a go.
July 10, 2023
This is borderline a scientific textbook explanation of how to understand the creation allegory.
This can be unbelievably dry at times, but I don’t blame the book for that. There are so many books that are “too complicated”, but this is a book that can be simple to grasp because it’s “too simple.” Such a core set of principles that underline the genesis narrative then also touch the rest of the Bible and patterns of our world as a whole.
I recommend that you don’t read this unless you take up interest in Mattieu’s brother’s YouTube channel “The Symbolic World”. Jonathan is an Orthodox iconographer and makes videos using many of these principles and discussing how a lot of the patterns manifest itself in our society. From things as fun as dragons and Santa Clause to as serious as the brutal state of the church that we have in Germany.
I still hardly know how to explain these concepts let alone understand them myself. Anyone that has been in a bible study with me as a participant knows I tend to share something from this regardless of the relevance to the topic.
This can be unbelievably dry at times, but I don’t blame the book for that. There are so many books that are “too complicated”, but this is a book that can be simple to grasp because it’s “too simple.” Such a core set of principles that underline the genesis narrative then also touch the rest of the Bible and patterns of our world as a whole.
I recommend that you don’t read this unless you take up interest in Mattieu’s brother’s YouTube channel “The Symbolic World”. Jonathan is an Orthodox iconographer and makes videos using many of these principles and discussing how a lot of the patterns manifest itself in our society. From things as fun as dragons and Santa Clause to as serious as the brutal state of the church that we have in Germany.
I still hardly know how to explain these concepts let alone understand them myself. Anyone that has been in a bible study with me as a participant knows I tend to share something from this regardless of the relevance to the topic.
November 9, 2023
This is one very interesting thinker's take on cosmic symbolism in Genesis, but it cannot really be called a "commentary" on the Hebrew book of Genesis. I think it's worth taking the time to explain why I think this. I enjoyed the book, and checking reviews I found that most people consider it an almost five-star read. Again: where did it come from and what should you expect from it?
I do have a Bachelor's degree in Theology, but I never read theology anymore because...enough of that after three years of it in college. On the other hand, I still find new takes on theology interesting, especially if they manage to become popular on some level in this post-Christian era. This book was recommended by a friend who loved it, but does not generally read "religious" books.
I read the introduction and knew that I was going to love the book. What an important premise: of course we'll tend to be anachronistic in reading the Hebrew Bible. Of course there are viewpoints that are totally foreign to us at best, and totally lost to us at worst. I'm in.
Just a few pages of reading though and I was already seeing what I guess are "yellow flags?" I really liked the ideas, but there was no usage of biblical Hebrew at all to make or justify his assertions. Nothing was cited or documented...at all. Even the structure of the chapters struck me as very odd. I'd sum it up as the author repeatedly saying, "Here's what this is. Here's what this is. Here's what this is," over-and-over again with no displayed knowledge of source language, and no scholarly justification. I'm very surprised that no one seems to ask any questions of Pageau about this. Where does your knowledge come from exactly? Why should we believe these are accurate takes, even if we like them? Who vetted all of this before deeming it ready to publish?
A bad habit forms when any of us have to read too many books on any specific topic: pretty soon we can see the publisher's logo on the spine and know before reading what the slant will be. I flipped the book shut and looked at the spine: uh-oh. I looked in the front and back of the book: uh-oh again.
Uh-oh because this is a self-published book, not subject to any real scrutiny, or to the previous scholarship of hard-working people who were subjected to unbelievable requirements to justify what they were proffering as knowledge. Nobody bears any real risk or liability here. In fairness, working outside of those rigors can sometimes bring something really fresh and relevant to discuss. Maybe that's what's happening here?
At any rate, I did a very brief google of Pageau. I learned that he has been "studying Hebrew individually" since he was a teen, and that he studied mathematics and computer science at McGill.
If this book provides good food for thought, great! But it can't be held equal to a rigorously researched commentary on the book of Genesis, or to other works that help us to understand the ancient Hebrew worldview to the best degree we can discern it, using archeological and textual sources. This book should not be used alone to provide the clearest understanding of the symbolism of the ancient worldview in the book of Genesis.
For me, the takeaway is probably that we are living in the most ambiguous age ever. Information of wildly varying quality is available to us with little to no firewall. I think that's exciting and dangerous. It requires more critical thinking than ever to know that sometimes you should hold something at arm's length even if you really like it.
I do have a Bachelor's degree in Theology, but I never read theology anymore because...enough of that after three years of it in college. On the other hand, I still find new takes on theology interesting, especially if they manage to become popular on some level in this post-Christian era. This book was recommended by a friend who loved it, but does not generally read "religious" books.
I read the introduction and knew that I was going to love the book. What an important premise: of course we'll tend to be anachronistic in reading the Hebrew Bible. Of course there are viewpoints that are totally foreign to us at best, and totally lost to us at worst. I'm in.
Just a few pages of reading though and I was already seeing what I guess are "yellow flags?" I really liked the ideas, but there was no usage of biblical Hebrew at all to make or justify his assertions. Nothing was cited or documented...at all. Even the structure of the chapters struck me as very odd. I'd sum it up as the author repeatedly saying, "Here's what this is. Here's what this is. Here's what this is," over-and-over again with no displayed knowledge of source language, and no scholarly justification. I'm very surprised that no one seems to ask any questions of Pageau about this. Where does your knowledge come from exactly? Why should we believe these are accurate takes, even if we like them? Who vetted all of this before deeming it ready to publish?
A bad habit forms when any of us have to read too many books on any specific topic: pretty soon we can see the publisher's logo on the spine and know before reading what the slant will be. I flipped the book shut and looked at the spine: uh-oh. I looked in the front and back of the book: uh-oh again.
Uh-oh because this is a self-published book, not subject to any real scrutiny, or to the previous scholarship of hard-working people who were subjected to unbelievable requirements to justify what they were proffering as knowledge. Nobody bears any real risk or liability here. In fairness, working outside of those rigors can sometimes bring something really fresh and relevant to discuss. Maybe that's what's happening here?
At any rate, I did a very brief google of Pageau. I learned that he has been "studying Hebrew individually" since he was a teen, and that he studied mathematics and computer science at McGill.
If this book provides good food for thought, great! But it can't be held equal to a rigorously researched commentary on the book of Genesis, or to other works that help us to understand the ancient Hebrew worldview to the best degree we can discern it, using archeological and textual sources. This book should not be used alone to provide the clearest understanding of the symbolism of the ancient worldview in the book of Genesis.
For me, the takeaway is probably that we are living in the most ambiguous age ever. Information of wildly varying quality is available to us with little to no firewall. I think that's exciting and dangerous. It requires more critical thinking than ever to know that sometimes you should hold something at arm's length even if you really like it.
December 21, 2021
Unlike anything I’ve read before it, yet somehow also a culmination of them. Pageau (Jonathan as well) encapsulates in a very simple way what a return to traditional cosmology in a post-Heideggerian world looks like. He beautifully examines a long-gone yet all-too-familiar frame of reference in an undeniable way, even to the most staunch materialist (as, unfortunately, we all are). One of the best books I read this year.
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July 3, 2023Pageau says every phenomenon is a combination of concrete and abstract (aka "matter and meaning" or "heaven and earth"). Modern cosmology only considers the matter, while pre-modern cultures also saw the meaning. Meaning is meta-physical and can't be proved from within the physical world.
He explains this with the example of written language: you could show a vertical line, a circle, two lines leaning out from a point, and a spiral to a person who has no conception of written language. You say the lines mean "love". The other person says they are only lines, and because you cannot prove that the lines have meaning, they decide not to believe you.
Similarly, every thing in the universe is a symbol, a word in a divine language. The meaning is not provable, but it is repeated and can be understood. Pageau focuses mostly on two pairs: in addition to the "heaven and earth" metasymbols, also "space and time".
Heaven is the spiritual part of the cosmos; earth is the physical. The "heaven and earth" pattern is found in the relationship between soul and body, head and body, leader and nation, husband and wife, the Law and Israel, etc. Mediators between heaven and earth are important: for example, Adam is in between God and the garden. Cain (earth) and Abel (heaven) are out of balance; Seth is the mediating balance.
"Space and time" in this cosmology are not the four dimensions, but more like "order and chaos". This pattern is found in the relationship between earth and water, revelation and mystery, work and rest, tools and musical instruments, wisdom and folly, civilization and nature, wakefulness and sleep, etc. Notably "good and evil" are not in this pattern; you need some balance of order and chaos, for example "six days of work and one day of rest", or "one third of the earth being land and two-thirds water".
I think Pageau is big-picture correct; I'm not sure about all his examples. I do believe in universal symbols (for example, "passing through water" as "new life": the Red Sea crossing, Christian baptism, Caesar crossing the Rubicon, James and the Giant Peach falling into the ocean...uh, birth...), but I'm not good as recognizing them. There are no footnotes; Pageau claims these concepts were understood by pre-moderns and you don't write down assumptions everyone shares. Maybe true, but worth questioning.
Alastair Roberts has a long and interesting review if you want a take from someone more qualified. One of his cautions is against oversimplification:
"If you are constantly returning to these fundamental templates and structures, you may lose the significance of the variations. I have argued that Scripture is musical, and part of the significance of musical patterns is that it is not just a fundamental template that is lying behind all these different expressions of a theme. It is not that you have to get to that underlying theme and sweep away the particularities as remainder; rather, the significance is found in the variations and the union."
I do recommend the book and I'm interested in hearing other opinions.
He explains this with the example of written language: you could show a vertical line, a circle, two lines leaning out from a point, and a spiral to a person who has no conception of written language. You say the lines mean "love". The other person says they are only lines, and because you cannot prove that the lines have meaning, they decide not to believe you.
Similarly, every thing in the universe is a symbol, a word in a divine language. The meaning is not provable, but it is repeated and can be understood. Pageau focuses mostly on two pairs: in addition to the "heaven and earth" metasymbols, also "space and time".
Heaven is the spiritual part of the cosmos; earth is the physical. The "heaven and earth" pattern is found in the relationship between soul and body, head and body, leader and nation, husband and wife, the Law and Israel, etc. Mediators between heaven and earth are important: for example, Adam is in between God and the garden. Cain (earth) and Abel (heaven) are out of balance; Seth is the mediating balance.
"Space and time" in this cosmology are not the four dimensions, but more like "order and chaos". This pattern is found in the relationship between earth and water, revelation and mystery, work and rest, tools and musical instruments, wisdom and folly, civilization and nature, wakefulness and sleep, etc. Notably "good and evil" are not in this pattern; you need some balance of order and chaos, for example "six days of work and one day of rest", or "one third of the earth being land and two-thirds water".
I think Pageau is big-picture correct; I'm not sure about all his examples. I do believe in universal symbols (for example, "passing through water" as "new life": the Red Sea crossing, Christian baptism, Caesar crossing the Rubicon, James and the Giant Peach falling into the ocean...uh, birth...), but I'm not good as recognizing them. There are no footnotes; Pageau claims these concepts were understood by pre-moderns and you don't write down assumptions everyone shares. Maybe true, but worth questioning.
Alastair Roberts has a long and interesting review if you want a take from someone more qualified. One of his cautions is against oversimplification:
"If you are constantly returning to these fundamental templates and structures, you may lose the significance of the variations. I have argued that Scripture is musical, and part of the significance of musical patterns is that it is not just a fundamental template that is lying behind all these different expressions of a theme. It is not that you have to get to that underlying theme and sweep away the particularities as remainder; rather, the significance is found in the variations and the union."
I do recommend the book and I'm interested in hearing other opinions.
August 2, 2023
An interesting and unique look at ancient cosmology and symbology. Pageau provides a general toolkit of symbols that can be overlaid to explain not only traditional Biblical texts but the composition of reality itself. Goes well with other symbolic frameworks like yin/yang, McGilchrist’s right/left brain, and Peterson’s order/chaos. This is a commentary and lacks the in-depth sources and endnotes of a full scholarly work, but hopefully this inspires further study. One star off for the blunt, un-nuanced writing style and the overreaching at points trying to force all the Biblical text through this one interpretative schema.
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July 19, 2023A goldmine for diagram enthusiasts such as myself.
May 6, 2020
Surprisingly easy to read and clear, this book does a great job of explaining the cosmology behind the book of Genesis. It should be required reading for anyone interested in historical Judaism or Christianity.
September 1, 2022
A fascinating exercise in biblical symbolism. It's often over speculative but the thoughts in the book remain nevertheless in the boundaries of Orthodoxy (the common creeds professed by Protestantism, Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy.) It's definitely worth reading, but without bibliographical sources that play the crucial role of anchoring the ideas in biblical scholarship, the arguments of the book seem to lack strong roots to ground them in reality. The thoughts presented by the author do form a coherent framework of interpretation that results in a coherent story, but how much of them really correspond to reality? Hard to say without anchoring the arguments in scholarship. That's why false-pattern recognition seems to me the main danger of this book. John Walton, Michael Heiser or Ben Stanhope's approach seems to me much more credible and reliable, as they successfully (in my opinion) interpret the Old Testament in light of the Ancient Near East context in which their authors were immersed, by relying on a lot of serious scholarship, which is always quoted and alluded to in the footnotes. That's my main critique. But I really enjoyed it. Really insightful.
December 28, 2021
Há muito o que falar sobre este livro e eu não ouso tentar escrever tudo. Digamos que, salvando um print de cada parte que considerava genial, acabei printando quase o livro todo. Uma arma na superação da cegueira que o materialismo nos impôs; uma obra com potencial de reconstruir a própria raiz de interpretação daqueles que a leem.
February 7, 2022
Paradigm shifting book. Pageau argues for interpreting genesis (and the rest of the Bible) through the symbolic lens of the ancients. I especially enjoyed the section about the balance between order and chaos and how it relates to the sabbath. This book has certainly helped me to square Christianity and the Bible with my previous value system.
November 23, 2020
Mindblowing
This book will form a relationship between science and religion in your life. I deradicalized myself with it. I see other people and their roles in my life clearly. Every atheist should read this as a counter-argument to the usual "rElIGioN iS bAD" bs.
This book will form a relationship between science and religion in your life. I deradicalized myself with it. I see other people and their roles in my life clearly. Every atheist should read this as a counter-argument to the usual "rElIGioN iS bAD" bs.
June 15, 2022
This book will blow your tiny little pea sized mind right open
February 28, 2023
This is exactly my jam
August 14, 2021
I had no idea what kind of ride this book would be, but it was indeed a journey! The writing is supersimple, but combined with the relevant information and the illustrations on each chapter, it went by like a blast even on the more comples parts. It does contain a small amount of repetition in order to look back at earlier concepts, and some of the interpetations are a bit on shaky grounds(at least it feels like it) when some things seems to go unmentioned or some words are specially focused on. Anyways, Matthieu Pageau has done an amazing work that well get your thinking going while you read as you finds aspects with the world or your reading that you can connect to these cosmic symbols in the bible. I must say, it would be nice to see a second book focusing on more issues in the Old Testament, but also one that focuses on New Testament, as some things are mentioned briefly here (like bread and wine). It's an absolute must read in order to see the symbolism and thus read the Bible in a whole new light(depending of course on if this is new for you).
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June 10, 2023Glad I read this before tackling the Bible. I was definitely suffering from a materialistic outlook that made even older philosophy harder to understand.
I wish it gone more into the two different interpretations in current culture, and used more Biblical examples, instead of naming more and more of the symbolism for the same thing.
But I can't blame the author for sticking to the scope so it doesn't become too big.
I wish it gone more into the two different interpretations in current culture, and used more Biblical examples, instead of naming more and more of the symbolism for the same thing.
But I can't blame the author for sticking to the scope so it doesn't become too big.
July 8, 2021
A vision in religion that we have lost as moderns.
I recommend this book to anyone that wants to find wisdom in the bible.
Or if you want to learn a whole new language, a new way of communicating the patterns of reality.
Will read it again.
I recommend this book to anyone that wants to find wisdom in the bible.
Or if you want to learn a whole new language, a new way of communicating the patterns of reality.
Will read it again.
February 3, 2021
An excellent book outlining a long forgotten framework for conceptualising reality and phenomenon. Applicable at the personal, familial and communal level. Like getting a fresh set of glasses through which you can see the underlying patterns that consistently emerge across different, seemingly unrelated, areas of our life.
The basic view is that our conscious reality and phenomena are split up into four key concepts/categories: space, time, heaven, earth.
Space and time can be understood as akin to order and chaos of the Tao. Space is stability, hierarchy, work, productivity. Time is chaos, cyclicality, disruption, destruction, creativity.
Heaven and earth can be understood as ideas (heaven) vs. material reality (earth) or concepts vs. fact. By remembering how these words were understood before Descartes and the modern materialist cosmology became our frame of reference, helps to reveal the patterns being described in our oldest stories. An example of heaven and earth should make this more concrete:
- In this cosmology, the concept of a car is in heaven. The car I drive to work is on earth. The role of the human / consciousness (Adam in Genesis) is to connect heaven with earth through identifying the specific car as part of the category of car (i.e., Adam naming the beasts of the field).
This idea of consciousness playing the role of categorization has been supported by the challenges identified in machine learning and AI. It turns out that it is not so obvious what a car is, and the challenge of the likes of Tesla trying to identify a car with computers e.g., with machine vision, really highlighted how much of a role a conscious actor with purpose brings to the categories we take as given. For a computer to successfully recognise a car, programmers had to define a purpose with clear failure and success and repeated experiments (training) before the AI was able to learn what a car was. Simply trying to pre-program the 'characteristics' of a car without giving the computer a goal / purpose (i.e., a test with success or failure) did not work. It turns out, that without a conscious actor or machine with a purpose, the world is simply a quantum field of infinite possibilities and only through our participation and action does heaven (the category) align with earth (the specific object).
That is to say, to my eternal surprise, I found that the stories in Genesis corresponded to some recent discoveries of modern science and technology.
Religious or not, I would recommend trying out this framework for understanding phenomenon and our role in assigning meaning to those phenomenon. Who knew those stupid stories told by my ignorant backward forefathers may have had some value after all.
The basic view is that our conscious reality and phenomena are split up into four key concepts/categories: space, time, heaven, earth.
Space and time can be understood as akin to order and chaos of the Tao. Space is stability, hierarchy, work, productivity. Time is chaos, cyclicality, disruption, destruction, creativity.
Heaven and earth can be understood as ideas (heaven) vs. material reality (earth) or concepts vs. fact. By remembering how these words were understood before Descartes and the modern materialist cosmology became our frame of reference, helps to reveal the patterns being described in our oldest stories. An example of heaven and earth should make this more concrete:
- In this cosmology, the concept of a car is in heaven. The car I drive to work is on earth. The role of the human / consciousness (Adam in Genesis) is to connect heaven with earth through identifying the specific car as part of the category of car (i.e., Adam naming the beasts of the field).
This idea of consciousness playing the role of categorization has been supported by the challenges identified in machine learning and AI. It turns out that it is not so obvious what a car is, and the challenge of the likes of Tesla trying to identify a car with computers e.g., with machine vision, really highlighted how much of a role a conscious actor with purpose brings to the categories we take as given. For a computer to successfully recognise a car, programmers had to define a purpose with clear failure and success and repeated experiments (training) before the AI was able to learn what a car was. Simply trying to pre-program the 'characteristics' of a car without giving the computer a goal / purpose (i.e., a test with success or failure) did not work. It turns out, that without a conscious actor or machine with a purpose, the world is simply a quantum field of infinite possibilities and only through our participation and action does heaven (the category) align with earth (the specific object).
That is to say, to my eternal surprise, I found that the stories in Genesis corresponded to some recent discoveries of modern science and technology.
Religious or not, I would recommend trying out this framework for understanding phenomenon and our role in assigning meaning to those phenomenon. Who knew those stupid stories told by my ignorant backward forefathers may have had some value after all.
October 27, 2022
What an excellent book. Very clear.
March 10, 2021
In the movie Minority Report, Tom Cruise gets eye replacement surgery so that he can sneak past retina scanning cameras. Pageau is the doctor who performs eye surgery. Instead of a Japanese man, he has swapped out my eyes for those of an ancient person. I've just healed enough to start taking the bandages off a little bit, but looking at the Bible, now, is like getting scanned and zapped by the laser-spiders from the movie. I see his patterns and symbols brilliantly everywhere I look.
Pageau presents two key concepts that are foundation-shifting. First, the primary dichotomy presented in the Bible (to represent creation) is heaven and earth. Pageau helpfully translates for the (post)modern reader. He talks about Earth consisting of materiality and heaven dispensing meaning into what is material. These first few chapters contextualize and frame the symbols presented in the rest of the book.
Secondly, Pageau presents the two primary forces of the cosmos as Time and Space. Now, without reading this book, you might roll your eyes or look at me oddly, but trust me when I say that if the Heaven-Earth dichotomy resonates with you, then read Pageau's pitch for thinking of time and space as oppositional forces. For Pageau, time is a rotational or overturning force, while "space" is a building, creating, and increasing force.
The patterns that Pageau outlines are like chords that the cosmos is written by. He strums a few chords that resonate throughout the whole of scriptures. I am excited to apply this in my studies and to consider it in relation to future reads. If you want to see what is really going on in much of scripture you need to learn the Language of Creation.
Pageau presents two key concepts that are foundation-shifting. First, the primary dichotomy presented in the Bible (to represent creation) is heaven and earth. Pageau helpfully translates for the (post)modern reader. He talks about Earth consisting of materiality and heaven dispensing meaning into what is material. These first few chapters contextualize and frame the symbols presented in the rest of the book.
Secondly, Pageau presents the two primary forces of the cosmos as Time and Space. Now, without reading this book, you might roll your eyes or look at me oddly, but trust me when I say that if the Heaven-Earth dichotomy resonates with you, then read Pageau's pitch for thinking of time and space as oppositional forces. For Pageau, time is a rotational or overturning force, while "space" is a building, creating, and increasing force.
The patterns that Pageau outlines are like chords that the cosmos is written by. He strums a few chords that resonate throughout the whole of scriptures. I am excited to apply this in my studies and to consider it in relation to future reads. If you want to see what is really going on in much of scripture you need to learn the Language of Creation.
August 23, 2023
Good commentary on the basic concept of "as above so below." Pageau demonstrates how the different scales of reality are basically one-in the same. He uses proof of Biblical symbolism to prove this point. All happenings and patterns exist on the single human scale, all the way up to the cosmic scale.
Civilization mirrors the individual human, and the human mirrors the civilization. The concept of time and space in regards to cosmology is very powerful and provides a new insight to the Biblical stories. Time is where the level of the scale is resorted to confusion, "flooding" and to the vicissitudes of unlimited time; where earth and the heavens are not aligned. Space is where the level of the scale is resorted to a hierarchy, order and perfect union between the earth (physical matter) & the heavens (higher principle)
Highly recommend and I look forward to Pageau's future works.
Civilization mirrors the individual human, and the human mirrors the civilization. The concept of time and space in regards to cosmology is very powerful and provides a new insight to the Biblical stories. Time is where the level of the scale is resorted to confusion, "flooding" and to the vicissitudes of unlimited time; where earth and the heavens are not aligned. Space is where the level of the scale is resorted to a hierarchy, order and perfect union between the earth (physical matter) & the heavens (higher principle)
Highly recommend and I look forward to Pageau's future works.
June 30, 2020
The Language of Creation shows missing pieces to the archaic worldview required to interpret the Bibles stories with proper symbolic understanding. When reading this book you will probably have many 'Aha' moments as the simplicity, and depth of the Biblical worldview is revealed to you. I have a feeling I will be coming back to this book as I start to read more into Christianity, and I hope there will be more books by Matthieu.
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