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Finding the Quiddity

Posted by Chris Case | October 18, 2007 .

Can the no-box and box people coexist? Do they do so in a way that is merged or mutually exclusive? John Piper wrote in Don’t Waste Your Life that he saw such a coexistence in C.S. Lewis:

He demonstrated for me and convinced me that rigorous, precise,penetrating logic is not opposed to deep, soul-stirring feeling and vivid, lively—even playful—imagination. He was a “romantic rationalist.” He combined things that almost everybody today assumes are mutually exclusive: rationalism and poetry, cool logic and warm feeling, disciplined prose and free imagination. In shattering these old stereotypes, he freed me to think hard and to write poetry, to argue for the resurrection and compose hymns to Christ, to smash an argument and hug a friend, to demand a definition and use a metaphor.

Lewis gave me an intense sense of the “realness” of things. The preciousness of this is hard to communicate. To wake up in the morning and be aware of the firmness of the mattress, the warmth of the sun’s rays, the sound of the clock ticking, the sheer being of things. He helped me become alive to life. He helped me see what is there in the world—things My Search for a Single Passion to Live By that, if we didn’t have, we would pay a million dollars to have, but having them, ignore. He made me more alive to beauty. He put my soul on notice that there are daily wonders that will waken worship if I open my eyes. He shook my dozing soul and threw the cold water of reality in my face, so that life and God and heaven and hell broke into my world with glory and horror.

The sheer ‘being of things’… the quiddity. The ‘this-ness’ of all things. At the end of the day, that is the truth we are ofter. What is the this-ness of God? The this-ness of man? What are we in objective reality? We do not define ourselves, but are defined by the objective reality of our Creator. “Who has made man’s mouth? Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the LORD?” (Ex 4.11) Until we start with the reality that we are defined by our Creator, we are defined by His word, our culture is defined by our Creator, our politics are defined by our Creator, then we can start seeing common ground, and seek unity in purpose, both emerging/emergent as well as Reformed.

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