Disclosure!

Christmas is a time of the unveiling of Celestial Beings. It is a season of epiphanies and manifestations. Some would call them "Extraterrestrials". Recently we shared some thoughts of John Wesley on the subject. Other notable Christians have also expressed their views:

Billy Graham:

“Some reputable scientists deny and others assert that UFOs do appear to people from time to time. Some scientists have reached the place where they think they can prove that these are possibly visitors from outer space. Some Christian writers have speculated that UFOs could very well be a part of God's angelic host who preside over the physical affairs of universal creation. While we cannot assert such a view with certainty, many people are now seeking some type of supernatural explanation for these phenomena. Nothing can hide the fact, however, that these unexplained events are occurring with greater frequency.” - Angels God's Secret Agents, p.21

Billy Graham ministered to many US Presidents notably President Richard Nixon. President Nixon reportedly confided to some, knowledge of ET life. One of these was Jackie Gleason http://www.openminds.tv/gleason-ets/. Had President Nixon confided to the evangelist too? We may never know but Billy Graham is correct saying "these unexplained events are occurring with greater frequency". Indeed, it is said these sightings have suddenly spiked since October 2010 and could increase into 2011. This week, New Zealand was the next in a series of countries to have declassified its UFO files http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=10695989. Yesterday Argentina announced the formation of a commission to investigate the UFO phenomenon http://www.examiner.com/exopolitics-in-seattle/breaking-news-argentine-air-force-announces-committee-to-study-ufo-phenomenon-1. Julian Assange of Wikileaks also indicated that among the US Diplomatic Cables now being posted. are references to UFOs http://www.examiner.com/ufo-in-canada/wikileaks-to-release-ufo-bomshell. Some are expecting more government disclosures soon.

CS Lewis:

"The dangers to be feared are not planetary but cosmic, or at least solar, and they are not temporal but eternal. More than this it would be unwise to say. ..... . . there would be indications enough in the narrative for the few readers - the very few - who at present were prepared to go further into the matter....What we need for the moment is not so much a body of belief as a body of people familiarized with certain ideas. If we could even effect in one per cent of our readers a change-over from the conception of Space to the conception of Heaven, we should have made a beginning." - Out of the Silent Planet

"The eldila are very different from any planetary creatures. Their physical organism, if organism it can be called, is quite unlike either the human or the Martian. They do not eat, breed, breathe, or suffer natural death, and to that extent resemble thinking minerals more than they resemble anything we should recognize as an animal. Though they appear on planets and may even seem to our senses to be sometimes resident in them, the precise spatial location of an eldil at any moment presents great problems. They themselves regard space (or “Deep Heaven”) as their true habitat, and the planets are to them not closed worlds but merely moving points - perhaps even interruptions - in what we know as the Solar System and they as the Field of Arbol." - Perelandra

Though Science Fiction, CS Lewis' Sci-Fi Trilogy, Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength, like his Chronicles of Narnia helps the Christian to wrestle with the theological implications of our new cosmologies and planetary life. Lewis' interest in astronomy and the "idea of other planets" began as a young boy. "The idea of other planets exercised upon me a peculiar, heady attraction, which was quite different from any other of my literary interests." (Surprised by Joy, II)

Conclusion
We live with the questions. Graham and Lewis helps us, living in the "Space Age",  to reflect on such matters. Whether there will be any official disclosures in the very near future remains to be seen. At this Christmas time, however, more startling, the most astonishing of all possible disclosures, is the epiphany of the Christ child two-thousand years ago. No headline could be more amazing than that heralded by a Star to Astrologers from the East or that of a host of Celestial Beings "leaked" to Shepherds in fields watching their flocks by night. Billy Graham was correct in rebuking his close friend, President Richard Nixon, once when Nixon described the Apollo 11 mission as the "greatest week in the history of the world since Creation." It wasn't:

Let earth and Heav’n combine, Angels and men agree,

To praise in songs divine, Th’ incarnate Deity,

Our God contracted to a span, Our God contracted to a span,

Incomprehensibly made Man.

He laid His glory by, He wrapped Him in our clay;

Unmarked by human eye, The latent Godhead lay;

Infant of days He here became, Infant of days He here became,

And bore the mild Immanuel’s Name.

See in that Infant’s face, The depths of deity,

And labor while ye gaze, To sound the mystery

In vain; ye angels gaze no more, In vain; ye angels gaze no more,

But fall, and silently adore.

Unsearchable the love, That hath the Saviour brought;

The grace is far above, Of men or angels’ thought:

Suffice for us that God, we know, Suffice for us that God, we know,

Our God, is manifest below.

He deigns in flesh t’appear, Widest extremes to join;

To bring our vileness near, And make us all divine:

And we the life of God shall know, And we the life of God shall know,

For God is manifest below.

Made perfect first in love, And sanctified by grace,

We shall from earth remove, And see His glorious face:

His love shall then be fully showed, His love shall then be fully showed,

And man shall all be lost in God

- Charles Wesley

Books:

Christianity and UFOs

http://www.amazon.com/Christianity-and-UFOs/lm/R1ETCGCGITF223

Walter Hooper, C.S.Lewis, A Companion & Guide













Billy Graham, Angels God's Secret Agents













©Colin G Garvie HomePage: http://www.garvies.co.za

Factorials: A Christmas Postscript

I had just posted my previous blog about Kevin's fascination with factorials when Kevin's wife asked about the origins of the Christmas Carol, "The Twelve Days of Christmas", on Facebook. That was quite serendipitous...

Verse 12
On the twelfth day of Christmas,
My true love gave to me:
Twelve Drummers drumming,

Eleven pipers piping,

Ten lords-a-leaping,
Nine ladies dancing, Eight maids-a-milking,
Seven swans-a-swimming,
Six geese-a-laying,
FIVE GOLDEN RINGS!
Four calling birds,
Three french hens,
Two turtle doves
And a partridge in a pear tree.

Whether the carol was coded with Gnostic or Roman Catholic allusions didn't concern me that much. Instead the coincidence reminded me of the magic of Pascal's Triangle. (See http://dimacs.rutgers.edu/~judyann/LP/lessons/12.days.pascal.html.)

Pascal's Triangle

1

1 1

1 2 1

1 3 3 1

1 4 6 4 1

1 5 10 10 5 1

1 6 15 20 15 6 1

1 7 21 35 35 21 7 1

1 8 28 56 70 56 28 8 1

1 9 36 84 126 126 84 36 9 1

1 10 45 120 210 252 210 120 45 10 1

1 11 55 165 330 462 462 330 165 55 11 1

1 12 66 220 495 792 924 792 495 220 66 12 1

.

.

Pascal's Triangle is used for determining Probabilities, Combinations, and even Fibonacci Numbers. With the aid of Pascal's Triangle one can also: 

• find the number of new gifts given each day of "The 12 Days of Christmas.".
• the number gifts given on each consecutive day.
• the total number of gifts given by a particular day.

Embedded within the triangle of arithmetic data is useful information. Uncovering this detail evokes a sense of wonder, the same wonder scientists, poets, and exegetes experience when they "see" something more in the ordinary. Wonder is a moment of disclosure or revelation. We might call this process of discovery "mathematical deduction", "data processing", "the scientific method", "hermeneutics", or "exegesis" depending on the discipline we come from but the sense of satisfaction is the same. Contemplating Pascal's Triangle yields unexpected moments of surprise much as the thought that there's an oak within an acorn might.

With Twelve Drummers Drumming in my ears and Pascal's Triangle in my mind's eye, my Christmas thoughts turned to two fascinating Advent theological insights:

 The Logos

"And the Word (logos) was made flesh, and dwelt among us and we beheld His glory." (John 1:14) The Neo-Platonists and especially Philo used the word logos in a dual sense. For Plato and Philo the logos was the collective term for the Ideal World. The Divine Word contains within itself the archetypal forms of all things from which everything else is manifest, "made flesh", much as information leaps out at one from Pascal's Triangle. Philo spoke of the logos in a twofold sense (http://www.duke.edu/web/classics/grbs/FTexts/44/Kamesar.pdf):

i.  Logos endiathetos. This was the Transcendent Word, the Uncreated Template or Archetype.

ii. Logos prophorikos, the Manifest Word or created type.

"Some theologians distinguished between the logos endiathetos, or the Word latent in the Godhead from all eternity, and the logos prophorikos, uttered and becoming effective at the creation." (http://mb-soft.com/believe/text/logos.htm) In a symbolic way Pascal's Triangle (Logos endiathetos) embodies patterns that come to be manifest (Logos prophorikos), incarnated, or projected, and applied in the created world.

(Compare "Archetypes" and "Projection" in Jungian Psychology. For a helpful article on Philo and the distinction he made see http://www2.nd.edu/Departments/Maritain/etext/hhp49.htm. Also Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logos. And Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita 9.)

Recapitulation

"Recapitulation" is the doctrine originally expressed by Irenaeus that all things are "summed up" in Jesus Christ. John Paul II explained: "God's saving plan, "the mystery of his will" (cf. Eph 1: 9) for every creature, is described in the Letter to the Ephesians with a distinctive term: to "recapitulate" all things in heaven and on earth in Christ (Eph 1: 10)...Irenaeus extols the one Lord, Jesus Christ, who in the Incarnation sums up in himself the entire history of salvation, humanity and all creation: "He, as the eternal King, recapitulates all things in himself" (Adversus Haereses, III, 21, 9)."  Theologically Christ is the Alpha and Omega of all Cosmic space and time. Another theologian, Julie James, wrote: "Irenaeus describes Humanity and God as coming together in Christ, an eventual restoration of the separated Human into the original divine form. Since the dawn of mans' entrance into the world, God has had a dialogue with humanity through the prophets, through his Divine Word, through rules and guidance, drawing mankind ultimately to the final goal of divinity, the Omega point." Irenaeus anticipates the Christogenesis of Teilhard de Chardin. Christ is the summation of all there is.....by analogy, the Divine Logarithm, the Beginning and the End. He encapsulates and recapitulates all. He is the "capstone".

oOo

Long ago, Magi from the East looked up into the night sky and were amazed by an astonishing configuration of the planets and stars. Suddenly it was pregnant with meaning just as Pascal's Triangle came to be for me. They discerned patterns hitherto never recognised before. Suddenly the ordinary took on a radical new import, wonder, and significance for them. The Divine was swaddled in a manger as revelations are swaddled in Pascal's Triangle. Immanuel! It could be a "partridge in a pear tree". It is the smile on an infant's face...

Still the night, holy the night!

Son of God, O how bright

Love is smiling from Thy face!

Strikes for us now the hour of grace!

©Colin G Garvie Home Page: http://www.garvies.co.za/