Adam was Framed

Normally, breaking the fourth wall is inappropriate. Most of the time, in order for art to function as it is supposed to, the frame must be respected. Typically we want to abandon ourselves to the illusion of art, not be reminded that it is an illusion. One of the reasons why breaking the frame can be effective is because of its unexpectedness. If it happened all the time, the novelty would quickly wear off. 

Now, it's not just film that has a frame, but all works of art. Art always involves some kind of boundary separating it from the world, such as a literal frame around a painting. Without the frame, we wouldn't know what to look at.  

In the case of the Incarnation, what's the frame? Off the top of my head, it seems there are multiple frames, from the literal to the psychological to the cosmic and more. I've been watching a series on the Daily Wire in which Jordan Peterson and a diverse group of eight co-panelists analyze and discuss the gospels, interpreting them from a multitude of hermeneutical standpoints.

At the very least, there are the traditional four senses of scripture, the literal, allegorical, tropological, and anagogical. Peterson often comes at it from a Jungian/archetypal perspective, while others do so from the standpoint of philosophy, cognitive science, Judaism, and more. 

But God shatters all our forms, hence the Resurrection, which must be the last word in breaking the frame. Didn't see that one coming! It reminds me of Eliot's description of how "Words strain, / Crack and sometimes break, under the burden" -- the burden or describing what is beyond words, or even the very source of words, AKA the Word.  

Back to the frame of the Incarnation. In the most obvious and literal sense, the frame is a particular man named Jesus. However, this man is embedded in a particular tribe, but also within a narrative that goes back to the creation of man and even to creation itself. 

But as we said a few posts back, we're not just talking about a new creation within the old, but the transformation of the old one into something entirely new, such that the comic frame itself is transformed. Which is a little difficult to wrap our minds around.

Now, no one has to reinvent the telephone or computer every time we use them, but that's not the way it is with regard to art or scripture, which necessitate a personal engagement on our part. There is a passive element, as in suspending disbelief, but also an active one, as per all the hermeneutical frameworks referenced above.

In the case of both art and scripture, the purpose of the frame is to convey something that is beyond the frame, just as, on a more mundane level, we use words to convey a meaning not reducible to the words themselves. Which is why a literal interpretation of scripture defeats its purpose, for it reverses the vector flow of meaning -- like focusing on the finger instead of that to which the finger is pointing. 

Now, if man is created, this implies that he is analogous to a work of art with multiple levels of meaning. But he will ultimately point to his creator, just as Macbeth points to Shakespeare or the Mona Lisa to Rembrandt. 

Bob, this post is all over the place. What are you trying to say?

Well, first of all, that man as such breaks the frame of the cosmos, and cannot be contained by it. Or, we have one foot in the cosmos and one foot out. We are existentially amphibious, which is to say, material and spiritual. On the sixth day God says "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness," so the image is reflected in matter. 

But matter cannot literally contain the soul, rather, vice versa: the soul -- again, literally -- contains the body, which means that it transcends the material. It is only in this transcendent "space" where  (↑) meets  (↓) -- where intelligence meets intelligibility, where mind encounters truth, where the soul perceives beauty, and where revelation makes sense. 

This is another way of saying that this is an open cosmos, open to its transcendent source. And that we in turn are uniquely open at our end, in that the very principle of being is reflected in us. Conversely,

If man is the sole image of man, an inane reciprocity is born from that principle, like the mutual reflection of two empty mirrors. 

In that case the cosmos is indeed enclosed within itself, and man cannot be "about" anything transcending himself. He can be about "selfish genes," or neural activity, or class warfare, or a blind will to power, but these reduce to the empty mirrors referenced above. Then, 

Man is an animal that imagines itself to be Man.

This being the case because if man has no essential -- i.e., created -- nature, then we can never know ourselves, because doing so "presupposes that there is such a thing as a universal human nature" (Kreeft).

The ultimate frame for our drama is the one set out in Genesis, in which we are in open communion with the source of our being. The story about the temptation and fall of man is ultimately about rejecting this frame in favor of our own, in which case we are well and truly framed by the serpent, AKA Satan.

When the authentic mystery is eclipsed, man becomes drunk on imbecilic mysteries.

I love science, but left to its own resources,

Science can do no more than draw up the inventory of our prison. 

Thus,

Man often believes he is exchanging a fable for a truth when he is merely exchanging one fable for another. 

Kreeft describes the consequences: "Thus, we have wild and mad philosophies of man that are much wilder and madder than any of the many philosophies of God."

Some say that man is a god with amnesia. Some say that man is the inventor of illusions like mind or thought or spirit; the thinker that thinks up myths like the reality of thinkers and thinking.... Some say man is simply the cleverest animal, with a brain that is "a computer made of meat." Some say that man is simply a complex machine or a chemical equation.... Some say man is a cosmic evolutionary accident. Some say that man is whatever he wants to be, dreams of being, or thinks he is.

All a consequence of a bad philosophical anthropology that follows Adam being framed in the likeness of his own image (those two empty mirrors referenced above). The result is an empty man in a hollow cosmos. Or a man who is so full of himself that there's no room for God.

Which reminds me of C.S. Lewis's crack about hell -- that it's really just God saying to man, Thy will be done. We can't break out because God can't break in. Until he does, big time.