Radio Beloved

¶ For the kingdom of heaven is as a man travelling into a far country, who called his own servants, and delivered unto them his goods. ∙And unto one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one; to every man according to his several ability; and straightway took his journey.

Then he that had received the five talents went and traded with the same, and made them other five talents. ∙And likewise he that had received two, he also gained other two. ∙But he that had received one went and digged in the earth, and hid his lord’s money.

After a long time the lord of those servants cometh, and reckoneth with them. ∙And so he that had received five talents came and brought other five talents, saying, “Lord, thou deliveredst unto me five talents: behold, I have gained beside them five talents more.” ∙His lord said unto him, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord.”

He also that had received two talents came and said, “Lord, thou deliveredst unto me two talents: behold, I have gained two other talents beside them.” ∙His lord said unto him, “Well done, good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord.”

Then he which had received the one talent came and said, “Lord, I knew thee that thou art an hard man, reaping where thou hast not sown, and gathering where thou hast not strawed: ∙And I was afraid, and went and hid thy talent in the earth: lo, there thou hast that is thine.”

His lord answered and said unto him, “Thou wicked and slothful servant, thou knewest that I reap where I sowed not, and gather where I have not strawed: ∙Thou oughtest therefore to have put my money to the exchangers, and then at my coming I should have received mine own with usury. ∙Take therefore the talent from him, and give it unto him which hath ten talents.

“For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.”

–Matthew 25:14-29

This is a difficult and obscure parable, more so than the traditional interpretation would indicate. What I refer to as the traditional interpretation is the popular interpretation of this parable, the one you’ll hear without fail in Sunday School, based around the (nonbiblical) phrase: “Don’t bury your talents.” This has struck me as an accidental coincidence in the past, due to an identification of a talent of money with a talent as a skill.

The Oxford English Dictionary claims that the etymology of talent in modern English is heavily influenced by this identification of the historical meaning of the word as an amount of money with this parable in Matthew. Examples of usage in early uses in English include:

They be the talentes that god hath lent to man in this lyfe, of the whiche he wyll aske moost strayte accounte (The Pilgrimage of Perfection, 1526).

Hide not this talent, but teach it others, and giue thy selfe an example vnto them of well doing (La Primaudaye’s French academie, 1586).

The common usage is thus not merely an interpretation of the parable based on an equivocation, but a recognition of a long tradition in English of establishing the meanings of certain colloquialisms based on their Biblical precedents.

Another common citation from the parable current in LDS usage is the commendation of the lord to his servant, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant…,” often utilized in discussions of our (hopefully) happy reception by Christ after this life is over.

However, my view that this parable is more difficult than this is founded on several phrases of the lord on his return: “I reap where I sowed not, and gather where I have not strawed…” and “Take therefore the talent from him, and give it unto him which hath ten talents. For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.”

The first phrase is a direct response to the servant’s justification of his nonproductive actions, that the lord was “a hard man.” The servant shied away from his responsibility, although he should have been equal to the task set him: “according to his several ability.” As if his unwillingness to improve on his lot was rooted in his lord’s decision to entrust him! Yet this is so similar to our common complaint that God requires too much of us, a religion that requires the sacrifice of all things to produce faith, after Joseph Smith. Our complaint that changing or becoming is too difficult, and the burden of doing so should be placed on others that they may be more amenable to our tastes. And oftentimes we don’t recognize this complaint consciously, though it is reflected in our dogged perseverance in our ways.

Anyway, so the lord reaps where he sowed not. This seems an odd statement to us, if we interpret the speaker in the parable as Jesus; if we interpret it as a merely human lord, however, it may make more sense as a reference to the dispensation of grace. Do we not all reap where we sowed not? Promised so many times that we will reap what we sow, throughout the Old Testament, the grace of the higher law is apparent as Jesus Christ promises us that on conditions of contrition and brokenheartedness we, too, may reap that which we did not sow, the mercy we did not merit and the grace we cannot repay.  (Alternatively, again not equating the lord to Christ, he may simply be commenting on commerce.)

The fact that the lord gave unto the least-faithful servant the least sum is a reminder of God’s mercy. He will always place us in the situation that is most conducive to our salvation, the set of circumstances most likely to soften the stony soil of our hearts and allow the seed of faith to sprout. It would have redounded to the servant’s condemnation so much more had he been entrusted two or five talents; thus it was an act of mercy to impart to him something whereof he could better care. He did not, however, and thus bore the onus of his failure. Thus “from him that hath not [the will to improve, to shoulder responsibility] shall be taken away even that which he hath.”

The parable of the entrusted talents is a solemn reminder on Christ’s part to his disciples. He thereafter entered into a discourse on the last days and the difficulties with which it is fraught, difficulties which will not and cannot justify less than faithfulness with the talents the Lord has given us.

In the eleventh century, the medieval monk St. Anselm introduced the analogia entis, the analogy of being or ontological argument, as an attempt to prove the existence of God a priori, in a vacuum, with no reference to the outside world, divine revelation, the Holy Ghost, or anything else. He presents it in chapters two through four of his Proslogion. It’s actually two closely related arguments. The core of his first argument runs as follows:

For, it is one thing for an object to be in the understanding, and another to understand that the object exists. When a painter first conceives of what he will afterwards perform, he has it in his understanding, but he does not yet understand it to be, because he has not yet performed it. But after he has made the painting, he both has it in his understanding, and he understands that it exists, because he has made it.

Hence … something exists in the understanding, at least, than which nothing greater can be conceived… . And whatever is understood, exists in the understanding. And assuredly that, than which nothing greater can be conceived, cannot exist in the understanding alone. For, suppose it exists in the understanding alone: then it can be conceived to exist in reality; which is greater.

Therefore, if that, than which nothing greater can be conceived, exists in the understanding alone, the very being, than which nothing greater can be conceived, is one, than which a greater can be conceived. But obviously this is impossible. Hence, there is no doubt that there exists a being, than which nothing greater can be conceived, and it exists both in the understanding and in reality.

Understandably, the ontological argument has fired centuries of controversy. I once remarked to a friend of mine (Jeff at The Pilgrim) that I found the analogia entis to be neither compelling nor damnable, but rather irrelevant; my current discussion of it shows that the last position, at least, has been revised. In part, my interest in Anselm’s analogia entis stems from a recent re-reading of the writings of Abraham in the Pearl of Great Price, as I am sure every LDS philosophy major ever coined has noticed. We find there written:

If two things exist, and there be one above the other, there shall be greater things above them….

Now, if there be two things, one above the other, and the moon be above the earth, then it may be that a planet or a star may exist above it; and there is nothing that the Lord thy God shall take in his heart to do but what he will do it.

Howbeit that he made the greater star; as, also, if there be two spirits, and one shall be more intelligent than the other, yet these two spirits, notwithstanding one is more intelligent than the other, have no beginning; they existed before, they shall have no end, they shall exist after, for they are gnolaum, or eternal.

And the Lord said unto me: These two facts do exist, that there are two spirits, one being more intelligent than the other; there shall be another more intelligent than they; I am the Lord thy God, I am more intelligent than they all.

–Abr. 3:16-19 [gnolaum is a Hebrew transliteration signifying eternal]

It’s almost as if God Himself were using the ontological argument—or something strikingly similar—to explain his existence. I’ll base my brief critique of Anselm on these premises, knowing that others have thought much longer and harder about the analogia entis than I have.

The logic in Anselm’s first argument runs roughly as follows:

1) Anything that really exists is greater than anything that possibly exists.

2) There is a greatest conceivable being.

3) The reality of this greatest conceivable being is greater therefore than the mere possibility; ergo He exists, and is God.

The logic presented by the Lord to Abraham condenses to:

1) “If two things exist, and there be one above the other, there shall be greater things above them.”

2) “I am the Lord thy God, I am more intelligent than they all.”

Statement 1 is assertive: a schema exists that if one thing is greater than another, there is a third thing greater than both. This becomes a synthetic rule by which to construct an understanding of the universe, at least for the purposes of the Abrahamic account of the Creation which ensues. The nested spheres of being one can imagine are reminiscent of Dante or the medieval astronomers.

Yet in the same breath, almost, as the canon is spoken, the Lord declares a capstone to the endless tower He just built—that He, being God, is the greatest.

Transcendental mathematics offers a way to understand the Lord’s seemingly contradictory statements. It is as if the Lord were ∞, infinity, and other beings the integers. Again, nothing earth-shattering here, but merely a reminder that God is separated from us by a mighty chasm. However, we’ve shifted gears to talking about two paradigms simultaneously: the simple set of counting numbers, where 1 and 2 exist and 3 exists above them, and infinity, where ∞ still equals ∞ + 1, and all other relations fade into insignificance. I suppose it’s only fair to point out that the idea of infinity in mathematics has probably stirred as much controversy as the ontological proof of God. (As an interesting aside, Kurt Gödel, of incompleteness theorem fame, formulated St. Anselm’s proof mathematically.)

It seems to me that the very manner in which the Lord uses his second statement above precludes any resort to the ontological argument by Latter-day Saints. ^* The seeming contradiction, that (∞ + 1) = ∞, stands in direct opposition to Anselm’s last claim that the greatest conceivable being (∞) has a greater, the reality of such a being (∞ + 1, or ∞ × ∞, or whatever one wishes to write; it still equals ∞^†). I interpret Anselm’s claim that such a being “exists both in the understanding and in reality” to mean that the conception of God and the reality are one and the same; after my recent reading of Kant I have to reject this claim as absurd. (We haven’t, of course, even addressed what is meant by “greatness”; there is fertile ground for discussion here.)

In a reading of the Reformed theologian Karl Barth’s work a few months ago, I wrote the following observation, the kernel of my inspiration: “It is a very different thing to know that God is the greatest of all and to suppose that he is God because there must be a greatest.” This seems to me to be kind of a survival of the metaphysically-fittest, cosmological fascism; while it is true that there is a greatest and He is God (as in Abraham), it is not a logical a priori deduction (as in Anselm), but an observation on the hierarchy (literally holy order) of the universe.

I just don’t think the game is simple enough that mere logic will allow us to satisfy ourselves that God exists. It’s never been sufficient, but only a toy, like Pascal’s wager, when unaccompanied by the stringent requirements and revelations of spirituality, mysticism, and communion with the Divine. God requires faith, and there is no substitute for that Angst-ful sacrifice.

————-

* The Lectures on Faith (2:33), however, seem to follow a line of argument similar to the early portion of Anselm’s other argument, in that Sidney Rigdon claims that the idea of God was present to God’s children by direct testimony–or, in other words, that we contemplate the concept of God by virtue of His existence, a more compelling thought in my mind.

† Although there are provisions in transcendental mathematics for operations on infinity, ∞ or אₒ; those go beyond my discussion here. In any case, I doubt that we as humans are prepared to talk about whether the transition from possibility to reality is equivalent to ∞^∞ or anything else.

In any case, the ontological argument is complex enough that I have to read the whole post three times to pick up the train of my thought (and St. Anselm’s) again. It’s confusing enough, so I welcome criticisms of my deductions herein, as I try to refine my understanding of these complex arguments.

On hearing of the death of John the Baptist, possibly one of the men in the world who knew Jesus Christ best, the Savior sought the solitude of desert places. We know naught of what he was feeling, or whether he went to mourn or worship or commune. The record reads:

When Jesus heard of it, he departed thence by ship into a desert place apart: and when the people had heard thereof, they followed him on foot out of the cities.
And Jesus went forth, and saw a great multitude, and was moved with compassion toward them, and he healed their sick.
–Matthew 14:13-14

There was not, at this time, a quiet moment of meditation for Jesus. Rather, the pressing crowds, oblivious of their intrusion on his desired tranquility, demanded instant attention. Christ did not for a moment begrudge them this, but immediately, “moved with compassion”, turned to their ministry.

Recently, I was musing on frustration in life, and stress, and their geneses via our own unrealistic expectations. We stayed with the family of my wife’s sister, her husband, and their five children. There wasn’t much time to do anything remotely personal with all the hectic running about and attention that five kids require, and at the beginning of the week I found myself staring into the abyss. I wondered how I could ever shoulder the burdens of parenthood for the long years required, when I have so many things I still want to do and be.

I came to realize, however, that although the parents may not be doing all that they may have envisioned in their past, they were not unhappy, but very, very satisfied with their good family life. It struck me that I’ve been approaching life incorrectly. Life isn’t about meeting the peculiar urges and desires of this ego right now, but about becoming via study, prayer, meditation, and especially selfless service, begrudging no moment to another’s salvation when necessary (less [of ourselves] is more [like who we need to be]). And I’m referring to much more than just parenting, although that is a wonderful example.

Self-fulfillment is a relatively modern notion, but it finds little scriptural support. Life isn’t about becoming the armyman-doctor-fairyprincess-astronaut with a pony we may have dreamt of as children. It isn’t about becoming the MBA or black belt or bishop we may dream of now. Some of these may happen incidentally, as we choose righteous pursuits and use them to hone our spiritual development, but the divine expectation is not that we seek to meet our own needs now but that we change and grow into the sort of being who is happy in the service of God.

A changing definition of happiness is also needed. Instead of constant pleasure-seeking, we need to become happy with the things God allots to us and happy in the service he requests. It is not a sacrifice of happiness, but a recognition that in this subjective redefinition greater peace and happiness is possible than ever we suspected before. This is no idle leap of faith, either–turning your back on years of wishing and planning can be frightening, but it need not be a resignation to despair.

The prophet Alma exclaimed:

But behold, I am a man, and do sin in my wish [to do more than I have been called to do]; for I ought to be content with the things which the Lord hath allotted unto me.
I ought not to harrow up in my desires, the firm decree of a just God, for I know that he granteth unto men according to their desire, whether it be unto death or unto life; yea, I know that he allotteth unto men, yea, decreeth unto them decrees which are unalterable, according to their wills, whether they be unto salvation or unto destruction.
–Alma 29:3-4

In other words, we get what we want, though we don’t always suspect the terms of that fulfillment. Joseph F. Smith wrote of “educating our desires”–that “in nature we have our seedtime and harvest”. He also preached, “Our desires are the strongest motives which incite us to energy and which make us productive and creative in life” (Smith, Gospel Doctrine, pp. 297-98). This is a solemn reminder and rejoinder to continually engage in the deliberate practice of self-purification.

Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.
He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.
–John 12:24-25

Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die.
–1 Corinthians 15:36

We are now a hard kernel of wheat, dead but with infinite potential. Face to face with the breadth of charity, charity greater than love, we pause in trepidation. Yet there need be no fear in the consecration of ourselves to God, nor in the metamorphosis from a selfish creature to a child of God. Far less of our ego than we suspect is truly who we are, and far more of our potential.