Ontic Density
Ontic Density
It’s my hope that the words that follow will somehow pry us loose from a flat view of God and this world in which we live, and stir a hunger for those realms of God’s reality that we seldom visit. I would hope also that these words would move us away from a smug, ho-hum attitude toward the presence of God in gathered worship and enliven an anticipation for encountering heaven itself as we gather in God’s name.
Listen to this:
“We knew not whether we were in heaven or on earth. For on earth there is no such splendor or such beauty, and we are at a loss how to describe it. We know only that God dwells there among men... For we cannot forget that beauty.”
Those words were from a report to the pagan Prince Vladimir of Kiev in 987 from emissaries he had sent to various countries as he was looking into matters of faith for what would become Russia. They found that the Islam of Bulgaria was too unhappy, the Judaism of Khazar was powerless, and German Catholicism was plain and dour. But the phenomenon of Orthodox worship which they encountered in the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople captured them with unspeakable beauty and wonder. Vladimir gave up his paganism and his harem, and a nation was (at least at some level) converted to Christian faith.
John Stott said this:
“This quest for transcendence is a challenge to the quality of the church’s public worship. Does it offer what people are craving - the element of mystery, the ‘sense of the numinous’, in biblical language ‘the fear of God’... in modern language ‘transcendence’? My answer to my own question is ‘Not often’. The church is not always conspicuous for the profound reality of its worship. In particular, we who call ourselves “evangelical” do not know much how to worship. Evangelism is our specialty, not worship. We seem to have little sense of the greatness and glory of Almighty God. We do not bow down before him in awe and wonder. Our tendency is to be cocky, flippant and proud. We take little trouble to prepare our worship services. In consequence, they are sometimes slovenly, mechanical, perfunctory and dull. At other times they are frivolous, to the point of irrelevance. No wonder those seeking Reality often pass us by!”*
Early Christian Worship
There’s an interesting snapshot of the effects of early Christian worship in 1 Corinthians 14:24-25. It describes when an unbeliever comes in among the people of the presence:
...he is convicted by all, he is called to account by all, the secrets of his heart are disclosed, and so, falling on his face, he will worship God and declare that God is really among you.
What is it that astounds him? “God is really among you!” That’s what changed his life. Rather than adapting our gatherings to the visitor, we all (believers and visitors) would be better off adapting our meetings to God’s preeminence.
Did you know that if God regularly visits your church, the word will get out?
In those days ten men from all languages and nations will take firm hold of one Jew by the hem of his robe and say, ‘Let us go with you, because we have heard that God is with you. (Zechariah 8:23).
What we’re talking about is encountering the phenomenon of God’s glory where reality and meaning are thick! There is always a surge in the Christian population during times of revival, which are simply times of God visiting his people.
Does Glory have Weight?
In Worship and the Reality of God: An Evangelical Theology of Real Presence,** John Jefferson Davis uses the phrase “ontic density” to refer to the thickness of meaning and reality in the person of God. (Ontology has to do with being, existence, reality.)
“Neutron stars, stars that have collapsed catastrophically but that have not yet reached the black hole state, are said to have such a dense concentration of neutrons at their core that all the molecules in Mount Everest could be concentrated in a space the size of a teaspoon..." (Likewise, God is) “more intensely and densely real than anything in our ordinary human imagination and experience.”
According to Davis, Biblical ontology recognizes five tiers of reality. The highest and most dense is the Trinity - God himself. The second level of reality is the created spiritual world (including angels, a temple not made with hands, and a heavenly city), then humanity. Below humanity, you have the created world (including giraffes and oceans) and the creations of man (including skyscrapers and oratorios).
The intensity of God’s reality contrasts with the emptiness of life outside of his presence. Surely, “a day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere” (Psalm 84:10). And, “Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?” (Luke 24:32). Those kind of moments have greater ontic density. In the ’60’s, we would say, “Man, that’s heavy!”
Think about this: What do we really think is more real: the desk we’re sitting at or an angel or a demon? Don’t we normally think that what is tangible - what we see with our eyes and hear with our ears - is more real than the spiritual realm? An automobile, for instance, is real; the celestial city is imaginary, metaphorical. The earth is substantive; heaven is wispy.
Au contraire!
C.S. Lewis, in The Great Divorce, described heaven as a place of things more solid than we’re used to. Blades of grass pricked the feet of those from Grey Town. An apple was as heavy as a bowling ball. Heaven’s people are solid; the non-citizens of heaven are ghost-like. Glory has weight. (One of Lewis’ most famous sermons was “The Weight of Glory.”)
Paul himself would also take issue with our current popular ontology. In 2 Corinthians 4, “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” Contrary to our thinking, the unseen has greater ontic density.
So, What?
You may be asking, Ontic density? What in the world does that have to do with anything?
There are at least two takeaways that I see:
Our lives become meaningful to the degree that we practice the presence of God. This has to do with the person of God, where reality and meaning are most dense.
Our thinking needs to make greater room for the reality of the unseen. This has to do with the heavenly realm of God, where reality and meaning are greater than what we know through our physical senses.
On the first takeaway, our generation is plagued with rampant suicide and depression. The French have a word for the underlying state of mind that drives all this, ennui. It refers to listlessness, dissatisfaction, boredom. I know this firsthand from my college years. My Sunday School faith didn’t stand up to the power of the world’s wisdom. From the writings of French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre (Being and Nothingness, No Exit), it entered my mind that life was absurd, fundamentally meaningless. Just get used to it; don’t expect anything else. Talk about a highway to depression! I got lost on that highway and truly wondered if I could ever get off it. My depression drove me to start reading Scripture. And, thanks be to God, I discovered a doorway into God’s Reality!
On the second takeaway regarding the unseen second tier of spiritual reality, Davis bemoans the influence that scientific materialism has had in the Post-Reformation church, and how this has largely excised our cultural imagination of this second level. He points to a comparison of the art before and after its influence to make his point, and says that we’re generally embarrassed to acknowledge unseen spiritual reality. (Scientific materialism, according to Davis, is the ontology of modernity, and contrasts with trinitarian supernaturalism, which he terms the ontology of eternity.)
There is a hindrance that many left-brained churches have. It’s the thinking that the presence of God is flat rather than dynamic. It goes like this: God’s presence is always the same, and if you’re a Christian you’re always in it. That is true in regard to God's omnipresence, but incomplete in regard to his manifest presence. Lo, I am with you always (Matthew 28:20) is about omnipresence, which means that God is everywhere at all times. But when Jacob said, regarding his encounter with God and angels at Bethel, Surely the LORD is in this place, and I was not aware of it, he was speaking of God’s manifest presence. That’s when God, who is everywhere at all times, reveals himself in a special way and in a specific place. Are there not special times you’ve had when God made himself known to you in a special way?
You Have Come
Now here’s where I want these words to take you:
But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. (Hebrews 12:22-24)
You have come - not shall come - you have come into a realm of phenomena that is more real than what our natural senses can perceive: an actual, yet invisible city built upon a real mountain in which saints and angels dwell whose uncompromised adoration focuses on the majestic Judge of the ages and his delightful Son whose blood still speaks. In other words, you have come to the very kingdom of God! Here, reality is more dense. This is unshakable!
Scientific materialism reduces this passage to a list of analogies and metaphors; faith and imagination embrace their reality. (C. S. Lewis said, “For me, reason is the natural organ of truth, and imagination is the organ of understanding.) If we were more attentive, could there not be more times in our lives, like those of the two disciples, when our hearts burn as Jesus explains the Scripture to us?
Maybe, if we approached corporate worship with a humble sense of wonder and awareness, our gatherings would be less like a one-dimensional Rotary meeting and more like visiting another country.
Worship leaders, make sure you have on those beautiful garments of praise before you lead others in worship. And learn to find those pathways into that place where God becomes our all in all, where God-consciousness overtakes self-consciousness.
Pastors, remind yourself that the people didn’t really come to hear you, but the living God. And to the people of God, practice the presence of God through the week in the ordinary activities of life. And then, before you gather with others in worship, imagine, as you walk into the sanctuary, that you have come into an invisible city where things are going on. Oh, and look there is a river... and angels... a Judge... and a Mediator!
O the Wonder of it all!
Footnotes:
* Stott, John, The Contemporary Christian. © 1992, Inter Varsity Press, Downers Grove, IL
** IVP Academic, 2010
Click here for a song to accompany this meditation.
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