{"id":32856,"date":"2015-02-27T10:11:36","date_gmt":"2015-02-27T15:11:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=32856"},"modified":"2015-02-27T10:12:51","modified_gmt":"2015-02-27T15:12:51","slug":"for-zion-part-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2015\/02\/for-zion-part-5\/","title":{"rendered":"For Zion – Part 5"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"For<\/a>From the pen of Ben Peters (see previous<\/a>\u00a0post):<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Chapter five in Joseph Spencer\u2019s For Zion<\/em><\/a> turns to what he calls \u201cthe space of hope.\u201d Here his discussion focuses on the space of \u201cwhat remains to be seen\u201d and to a similar effect as chapter four on the time of hope. The previous post noted how hope for an object seen in our mind is no hope at all, with the disappointment of unmet expectations on Christmas morning as an example. Joe takes pains to distinguish the visibility of everyday hope from the invisibilities of Christian hope infused with love and faith. While Paul speaks simply of \u201cwhat we don\u2019t see,\u201d Joe suggests a spatial or topological thought about how the object of Christian hope must always \u201cremain to be seen\u201d (50). (I’ll forego for now thoughts about how “the time of the now” and “the space of what remains to be seen” might be theorized together\u2014as one chapter, not two.)<\/p>\n

This middle way between what is seen and unseen, between the problems of failed expectations and future foolishness, affords the useful argument that \u201chope [is] oriented to the unseen but fully immanent anchor of the seen.\u201d The hopeful then need not gain \u201ca clear picture\u201d of her world because \u201cshe can never see directly through God\u2019s eyes\u201d but is instead \u201calways approximating and experimenting, listening to everything God says about the world\u2019s possibilities but never receiving\u2026[a] clear blueprint for utopian paradise\u201d (52).<\/p>\n

Permanently provisional in the space of \u201cwhat remains to be seen,” we can only plant the \u201cword\u201d and \u201cthen watch to see whether it grows (see Alma 32: 28-43)\u201d (53).<\/p>\n

Joe arrives at this helpful position about the experiment that is the present in a way that I think deserves slight clarification. In otherwise clear-minded exegesis of the philosophical acrobatics involved in the relationship of what we see, what we cannot see, and what remains to be seen, Joe makes what I take to be an unneeded detour in his claim that the category of the unseen is actually \u201cincluded in the seen through its exclusion from it; it is included as an exception\u201d (50).<\/p>\n

On the face of it, this contradiction\u2014that one thing be included in something else because it is excluded from it\u2014is a paradox almost worthy of the logician Bertrand Russell, and yet I understand why Joe seeks to connect what \u201cremains to be seen\u201d to the seen as \u201cthe invisible anchor of the visible\u201d (51): without this connection, what remains to be seen might fall back into simply been unseen; but with it (however questionable the connection may be), Joe roots hope, while invisible in content, in the present world.<\/p>\n

Let me suggest a different (and middle-school nerdy) way for showing how \u201cwhat remains to be seen\u201d may be a higher<\/em> order for expressing both what is seen and what is unseen\u2014and to do so without necessarily puzzling through the full set of Rumsfeldian (or alternatively, Zizekian) ruminations on seen seens<\/em>, seen unseens<\/em>, unseen seens<\/em>, and unseen unseens<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Instead lets imagine what Joe calls \u201cwhat is seen,\u201d \u201cwhat is unseen,\u201d and \u201cwhat remains to be seen\u201d are analog to the relationship between a known, an unknown, and a variable in algebra. Each element of the equation 3 x 4 = 12, for example, is a known; like Ralphie\u2019s image of the BB gun, each is fixed in our mind (although this passing claim saves for another day fascinating questions about embodiment and inscription in mathematics). The X in 3X = 12 is an unknown because, upon encountering it (like a present under a tree), we know the X contains one specific but currently unknown possibility. With work, what is unknown becomes what is known; with a little work, “X” above reveals the number four while a wrapped present reveals a new wool sweater.<\/p>\n

Adding a variable \u201cwhat remains to be seen\u201d introduces a new dimension to our algebraic analysis: for example, in the equation Y = 3X \u2013 12, X and Y are variables. Variables may look like unknowns but they are a world apart: variables contain infinitely many knowable sets of possibilities, not one unknown possibility. In the Christmas tree example, a variable is the general category of “a present”: it contains any one unknown thing. In Spencer\u2019s analysis, a variable is \u201cwhat remains to be seen\u201d: it contains infinite possibilities in the present, all of them unseen until specified. A variable, like hope, cannot be either only one thing or anything at all; it expresses a particular set of infinite possibilities. Thus the variable \u201cwhat remains to be seen\u201d exhibit a more general order of what is seen and unseen, known and unknown.<\/p>\n

The remainders in our lives\u2014hope, variables, etc.\u2014operate on strict relations: algebra and the covenants that build Zion determine both in infinite yet knowably many ways. \u201cWhat remains to be seen\u201d resolves to a higher order set of possible actions of what is \u201cseen\u201d and \u201cunseen,\u201d or in Joe\u2019s phrase, \u201cthe invisible anchor of the visible.\u201d Of course this analog, like all analogies, falls short. (It suggests detours all its own: how would a multivariable calculus of hope work, etc.?) To be clear, Joe is not<\/em> attempting to map out the general coordinates for the algebra of hope. That said, the analog of hope as an algebraic variable (\u201cprovisional but engaged\u201d) helps clarify for me personally\u2014without the aforementioned contradiction (51)\u2014just how an (LDS) theology of hope has long inhabited a broader spatial logic of what \u201cremains to be seen.\u201d<\/p>\n

In short, For Zion<\/em> stands ready to richly reward the attention of all those who seek to resolve the contradiction contained within the all-encompassing and at once with unspecified claims that both Christian hope and the law of consecration thrust upon our attempts to work out our complexly interwoven lives here and now. His epistemology neither excludes nor requires a supernatural or metaphysical beyond for Pauline hope to work here and now; in fact, in the fourth and fifth chapters at least, he frames time and space as the unfolding infrastructure within which to wield general principles about hope. I suspect these principles, like all those in science and religion, operate in life with more truth and subtlety than the blunt cudgels of narrow truth claims could ever muster.<\/p>\n

Our universe, the theology in For Zion <\/em>implies, avails itself more abundantly to all creatures willing to lead consecrated lives subject to continuing modification and that<\/em> strikes me, especially in the next post about rereading texts in chapters six and seven, as an argument deserving another glance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From the pen of Ben Peters (see previous\u00a0post): Chapter five in Joseph Spencer\u2019s For Zion turns to what he calls \u201cthe space of hope.\u201d Here his discussion focuses on the space of \u201cwhat remains to be seen\u201d and to a similar effect as chapter four on the time of hope.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":135,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-politics"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/135"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32856"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32856\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32860,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32856\/revisions\/32860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}