Heavenly Book
Symbolism of the Logos in Scripture
Scripture uses language connecting sacred books to the mouth. The Torah is never to depart from the mouth of Israel. The prophet Ezekiel chews and digests a scroll. The dietary code is predicated on the symbol of the clean beast chewing the cud- digesting and constantly turning over in his mind the holy words of God, His self-declaration, His Name. Wisdom comes from taking Torah down into oneself and letting it permeate one’s entire being. So likewise we read of the “Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil” which was “good to make one wise.”
What is all of this about? Writing material is made out of plants- usually trees- and animals. This is the concrete reality framing the symbolic association. A scroll contains a passage of text, the text reveals intelligible information which can be taken into the human mind and diffuse through the being. The same is true of the living thing from which the scroll is made. The beast has its intelligible signature as well, its logos, that particular set of interrelated qualities which make it what it is: the hand of God (the divine will) has written certain ideas from the Divine Mind’s infinite richness.
This is what occurs in the work of creation. The act of creation is intimately conjoined with the act of naming. As He sends forth His glory through the canvass of contingency, God endows each of His works with its unique name, that which denotes its particular essence and makes that essence manifest according to its interrelationship with all else. To give a thing a name is to relate it to all the other named creations. It is through their name-bearing that the created things can be taken into our minds and contemplated in conceptual and hypothetical ways. It is the act of naming which permits man, the image of God, to become God’s partner in continuing the work of the world’s creation.
It is this way of thinking that makes sense of the idea of the Heavenly Book. The place from which God acts is His throne-room. This is the created “Heavens” of Genesis 1:1 and the Holy of Holies in the Tabernacle. It must be distinguished from the starry Heavens and the Holy Place with its Menorah. A vision of the courtroom of God is a vision of the deliberative process by which God makes His ideas into new kinds of realities. We recognize from the whole voice of scripture that the divine purpose was and is to exalt us into that very same Throne-Room and grant us seats from which we would be God’s partners in shaping new kinds of created things. The Heavenly Book in the Throne-Room is a representation of the infinite plenitude of particular and rich perfections intrinsic to the mind of God. When this Book is liturgically sung and put to the heavenly orchestra, this is the creative word of God flowing through the world, breaking it apart and putting it together in new ways.
In the ark of the covenant, the Holy Scriptures were deposited: an expression of that Heavenly Book. This is all a fancy way of saying that Man is called to assimilate the underlying logoi of creation into his own mind. People ask why God does not speak to us more often. Part of the answer is that the entire purpose of our being here is to learn the divine language. The divine language is far richer than any human language. It encompasses the whole sensible cosmos and is expressed at every moment and in every thing. The innately symbolic qualities of all created things means that there is constantly divine speech being uttered in the conjunction of all created qualities in relation to each other.
With the Heavenly Book being taken deep into oneself, the person becomes an instrument of the divine presence. The prophet Ezekiel becomes a living chariot of the Glory of God. Yet one is not merely a vessel through which that presence is made known, one becomes joined to the One whose presence it is without the eradication or dilution of one’s personal existence. Hence while the acts one does are divine acts, their specific expression and purpose is freely chosen by the human creature. This is the essence of “play”- the making of free choices where the delight is in the constant choosing of one alternative over the other where both are paths to joy. The gifts of the Holy Spirit are operative in a co-operative manner. Both wills are fully active in the glorious reign of Christ in the Church by the Holy Spirit. There are different ways to express, biblically, the essential idea conveyed by the digestion of the Book. Consider Father Noah: his exaltation was signified by God’s gift of all beasts to him for food. Having submitted his will to God, Noah joins the whole living world to his body.