“This world… ever was, and is, and shall be, ever-living fire, in measures being kindled and in measures going out.”
— Heraclitus of Ephesus
Among ancient philosophers, Heraclitus is known as “The Obscure,” and the reason for this is one of the few things about him that is clear. Not only are his only surviving words found in scattered, disjointed fragments, but those words that are extant are full of paradox and poeticism — a heady combination of ingredients, to be sure. But, nonetheless, I think there’s a pleasure to be found in the potent dizziness symptomatic of Heraclitean verbal acrobatics. I don’t understand him, and so he is my favorite.
The English word “obscure,” via its Latin roots, connotes something that is difficult to see. The apostle Paul seemed to define knowledge itself as obscure at the end of 1 Corinthians 13, a strange conclusion to a chapter generally more noted for its contents on love. Love endures beyond knowledge, he says. Through the veil of ignorance that obscures our view, beyond our inherent limitations which block the world and the future from sight, lies a world above the firmament in which the faithful have hope to see fully. The lesser lights twinkle in the black night sky, and we know that the dark will be chased away by the sun in the morning. The obscurity of knowledge is alluring because we know heaven lies past its unfathomable depth.
Occultic practices seek to plumb that depth, seeking life, eternity, peace and escape at the bottom of all knowledge. A hallmark of such practices is the desire for some esoteric achievement of the intellect that functions as the key to go beyond the veil. It’s a characteristically human urge to believe that knowledge can deliver us. That’s why Solomon warns us against that urge specifically. That urge isn’t limited to the occult, either. Science, for many, has become a vessel of the same arrogance. The desire to end all disease, suffering, destruction and limitation, while somewhat accurate in its diagnosis of humanity’s fallen state, becomes horrifically misguided by the belief that human knowledge can in fact atone for sin, can remedy the ills of the curse.
Both occultism and scientism fail to respect the impenetrable obscurity of this world. Knowledge will indeed pass away. This is what draws me to the obscure philosopher. His paradox and poetry are mystical. They represent the world well because they address its mystical obscurity directly, even appropriating that obscurity fundamentally in their form. Heraclitus paints a night sky with the dark palette of the real thing, and in so doing calls greater attention to the measures of kindling blazing in the cosmos.
The world can be accurately described in paradox because paradox has the capacity to transcend the limited logic of this world and hint at the eternal logos of the next. Or something like that, anyway. After all, did not Christ Himself often speak Truth and Spirit in the form of paradoxes? And was Christ not known to be deliberately obscure from time to time?
One year ago today, I wrote the first entry on this site. Not long after, I wrote about the dialectic nature of all communication. Good stories, good poetry, good music, good art carries this same basic tension found in the nature of reality itself. The magic is in the mystery, the beauty is in the mystical. Heraclitus described the whole world as a tension, much like philosophers would in the East — light and dark, hot and cold, love and hate, order and chaos, life and death. We understand the world in binaries, in delineations, and yet there is always a defiant crux that evades the most strenuous human cogitation.
“Crux” is just the Latin for “cross,” as it were. G.K. Chesterton contrasted the cyclical nature of Eastern ways of thought to the definitive nature of the Gospel narrative. The Scripture makes clear that the delineations of the world were drawn by God, who separated the light from the dark, the good from the evil, the waters above from the waters below, and so on. This world emerges in those delineations, and the God who delineates is in the obscurity that eludes them. His Spirit hovers over the waters, He is everywhere and yet invisible. In the incarnation, the invisible God is made visible. On the cross, the crux of history, the tear in the veil, the knife edge between all delineations, the invisible God manifests the pinnacle of His character.
Taoism posited that the tension between all things was “the tao,” that is, “the way.” The way is necessarily obscure, as “The tao that can be spoken of is not the tao.” To describe the way of life and the cosmos as obscure is perhaps the most uncontroversial and intelligible thing I’ve said so far in this whole tangled mess of a thought. If there is anything that perhaps every human being has at least tacitly agreed upon, it is that there must be some way of life, if only we could know it. Early Christians called their faith “the way.” Jesus called Himself “the way.” The invisible, unspeakable tao that the ancient Chinese sought has made Himself known to us, even dimly, as in a mirror, just as He did to the Athenians who worshiped “the unknown god.”
But it is not mankind’s intelligence that pierces the obscurity of the way any more than it reached heaven at Babel, where the language, the word, the little “logos” of man was scattered. It was the logos of divinity that reached down through the dark sky to earth, born as a baby under a blazing star. The invisible, unspeakable way is Love, given the form of humanity to save humanity. It was divine Love that transcends all tensions, all binaries, all creation that revealed Himself as the Way and overcomes man’s blindness.
He burned within a bush, He burned as a column of flame, He stood in the flames of Nebuchadnezzar’s furnace, He consumed in fire the sacrifice of Elijah, He will one day burn away all the wickedness of the world, and His Spirit descended upon His people as a fire. His word is a lamp and a light, His eyes are like fire. Fire is the basic paradox, the fundamental metaphor of reality. In this regard, it is the arche or chief element — that is why I like the particular translation of the Heraclitus quote I’ve shared, because the double meaning of the phrase “being kindled” teases that something about kindling pertains to the nature of being itself. Fire illuminates and obscures with smoke, it destroys houses yet warms hearths, it makes food edible and inedible. It gives life and death alike, it is one thing but nothing and many things, a motion and an object and a substance. In the fire we see the impossible, incomprehensible mystery of the world, and so the fingerprint of the One who made it. In the middle of all these is a sign of the invisible God who, having appeared as a man, has given hope that we might see Him face to face.
I’m well aware that this entry may be a bit more abstract and poetic than much of what I’ve done before, which is just the pompous way of saying it’s probably nonsensical. If I’ve failed to be clear, I only hope it was in service of being obscure. I hope I’ve shown what would be too much to tell. In the end, the most worthwhile communication is in the play between clarity and obscurity, and a reflection of Truth is incomplete without both. There is a magic in the poetic that prose cannot grasp.
This is the essence of my hopes for Being Kindled, and I pray that our next year will be full of even more discussion and edification. Thank you for reading, and I hope you continue to find our writings of personal benefit to your mind and soul. God bless!
For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity. — 1 Corinthians 13:9-13 (KJV)
Being Kindled 
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