THE DIALECTIC OF LIFE AND ITS ORIGIN
To some minds, origins are of little interest; facts are facts and let them be faced as
such. To others an attempt: at the explanation of the origin of things can alone satisfy
the heart and mind. They must not only know what thing does, but why and how it
does it. And in the things of the Spirit my own mind was not set at rest until, greatly
helped by some of the mighty seers and expositors of the ages, and always
endeavouring to keep within the confines of God’s Word, some satisfying conception
of origins was arrived at. It may well be controversial to some, difficult or unnecessary
to others, even presumptuous to yet others, searching beyond where we need to search
into the nature of “the eternal, immortal, invisible”; but it has helped me, and so,
writing I trust in a spirit of reverence, I pass on this brief outline in the form of an
appendix.32 The problem which immediately meets us at all times is the right understanding and
handling of the opposing forces in our daily life; for it is obvious at every turn and
corner alike, in things large and small, that we are faced with that which pulls in a
wrong direction, stirs in us wrong feelings, frustrates, depresses, raises impossible
barriers. The answer to such questions as how these things come to be, how they affect
us as they do, what their uses are, and what are to be our reactions, gives us the
absolutely necessary key to a continuous mastery over them; or, rather, to the proper
and creative redirection of them; indeed, to making us see enemies as friends; for when
all things and people, even oppositions and opposers, can be seen in a friendly light, the
secret is ours. 33 We must start at the beginning, although it may seem a long way back. We must start
with the elemental power of choice, which is stimulated to action by the constant
necessity of choosing between alternatives; then the fatefulness of choice, and the final
fixation of choice in character and destiny. For here is the very substructure of life.
We find on analysis that the fundamental instinct of all life is desire, attraction to itself.
In nature, the forces of gravity show this; in physics, the unceasing attraction of the
positive and negative particles of electricity, the protons and electrons which form the
atom; or, at the other end of the scale, the power which maintains the solar system in
equilibrium; all these have no different origin from the basic, all-governing instincts of
self-preservation, acquisition, achievement, propagation in man. All is desire. Desire is
the primal energy of life. Desire in its perfected form of love is the foundation of God’s
nature: “Thou hast created all things, and for Thy pleasure they are and were created”;
“the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in
Himself.”Examine desire further and we learn this. Attraction, by its activity, brings into being
its opposite, repulsion. Thus if I draw something towards me, although the nature of
my desire is to attract, grasp, hold-a tightening, a hardening, immobilising quality; yet
32 This is an extract from a loner pamphlet, a few copies of which have been duplicated for private
circulation and can be obtained, if still in stock, from the author.33 2 Cor. 12:10
The very fact of my drawing brings its opposite into activity, motion. Attraction causes a thing to move.
But mobility is the opposite to the tightening, hardening, grasping of attraction: the nature of mobility is to go out from itself in outflow, output. Thus desire is seen to have a dual manifestation: at its heart is a conflict of equal but opposing
forces, whose tension is the root of all manifested life. This is seen in the fact that all
life is the contrast, tension and interaction of opposites; thesis and antithesis which
make the working synthesis: male and female, light and darkness, spirit and matter, and
so on endlessly. Nothing shows this more clearly than the twentieth-century discovery
of the composition of the atom, once thought to be like a minute and indestructible
billiard ball, now known to consist of various numbers of electrons, negative particles
of electricity, revolving at immense speed around a nucleus consisting of positive
particles, protons. The quality of tension causes the rotation. The proton, the positive,
attracts towards itself; the electron, the negative, attracts towards itself in the opposite
direction: the tension between the two, being of equal force, resulting in the rotation of
the one around the other. Such is the vast power of their attraction that particles
knocked by collision out of the atom are known to travel at 45,000,000 miles an
hour.34 The one phenomenon of attraction, repulsion and rotation is shown to be the
structure of all visible things; every particle of matter, every chemical substance. And,
in the spiritual realm, these same threefold qualities form the nature of self-hood, the
structure of desire: to grasp, and its opposite, to give; to draw to oneself, and its
opposite, to go out to others; and the tension and interaction between these opposites
form what James calls, in a significant phrase, the whirling “wheel of nature”, 35 the
activity of all intelligent life. Now, it is at this point in self-conscious beings that choice
takes the dominant position. Man stands in between these warring opposites of “get”
and “give”. Shall it be a constant raging, whirling struggle, first one in control and then
the other? That is fallen nature with its endless restlessness and unsatisfied hunger. Or
shall it be the yielding of the “get” instinct to the “give”? That is the nature of God
reinstated in man by the Cross and the Spirit. For by that means the “get” nature is
harmonised with the “give” nature, finding its pleasure (its “get”-instinct satisfied) in
giving. That is the synthesis of the eternal nature. That is the Kingdom of heaven.
But it ought to be noted that this separation in the self, these warring opposites of our
nature, which can only be reconciled in Christ, were never meant to be known by us in
conflict. In God, the Three-in-One, they have been unified from all eternity and are
only seen in the glories and graces of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
But we must remember that what is a derived selfhood in man and a created condition
in matter has its origin in God. The idea that the world was created out of nothing is a
myth exploded by the Bible itself. Thus it says of matter that “the visible was made out
of the invisible”; 36 and of man that God created man in his own image and breathed
His own breath into Him. The truth is that, each in their own measure, all creation has
only one life in it, the life of God. All creatures are but God’s love compacted into
material form. That driving-wheel of desire seen in man and matter is first of all the
foundation of God’s own Being.
34 Alpha particles.
35 James 3:6 (margin)
36 Heb. 11:3 (Moffatt)
GOD IS SPIRIT - GOD All IN All