Seven: A Psalm for the Uncreated

 

The Plethora of Numbers (Fair Use)

Seven

A Psalm for the Uncreated

By Scout

I have to handle this topic gingerly.  Armstrongism has some odd ideas about numbers.  In particular, the numbers 7, 12, 19 and 40 can arouse glassy-eyed excitement.  I think it started, maybe, with Herbert W. Armstrong’s excursus into pyramidology long ago.  He “discovered” that the Egyptian pyramids were full of numerological significance.  Some of the measurements, he believed, created a timeline for this Age.   Or something like that. I did not research it and never will.  So, if you don’t have a ready Palantir in order to read the future, you can peer into the Great Pyramid. 

Numbers play a significant role in Armstrongist theology.  I have always found the idea that Armstrongists have about the numbers 2 and 3 to be puzzling.  The number 2 to them is an “open” number.  It is susceptible to expansion in some way.  There are 2 members of the God family but the number 2 permits there to be many more.  Whereas the number 3 is a “closed” number.  Then, Armstrongists deduce, the Trinitarian idea of three persons in the Godhead means that the God family cannot be expanded, and becoming God-as-God-is-God cannot happen.  This is meant to be anti-trinitarian and supportive of bitheism.  But 2 and 3 are just numbers.  Go figure. 

This odd religious arithmetic aside, I do believe there is something profound to be learned from numbers. I would like to view numbers from a theological angle in this small essay.  First, let me say that I know that some people are irritated by theology.  To them, theology is a senseless barnacle on the resolute hull of common sense. This view renders them ineducable, but we must try anyway.  Let me hasten to say that I am not a theologian or a philosopher.  I am just a guy with a laptop and some books, including several translations of the Bible. The disputability of my views is undeniable. I don’t teach others so much as learn with them. 

After that self-reflective prologue, I would like to proceed to examine a few theological ideas with some aplomb. These ideas cause a few people some heartburn.  In past articles, I have stated that God is “timeless” and “uncreated.”  For Armstrongists in particular, these are not commonly used terms.  You can search some of the online archives of Armstrongist literature and you will not find these terms.  This suggests that these terms might be illicit in some way.  To some Armstrongists out in Splinterland, these are terms that are bandied about by those blowing theological smoke.   But let me assure you that we all encounter these concepts all the time without mental collapse.  So, let me start this contemplation with the number 7.  It could be any number. 

The Uncreated Number 7

First, the idea of being uncreated.  I believe God is uncreated.  He has always existed.  Nobody made him. He is the uncaused, first cause.  I believe that because he creates reality (not just the Cosmos, a real object, but unqualified existential reality itself), he is absolute.  He himself is existence.  He “donates” existence to all that is created. And his existence is rational.  The term Logos means not only words but reasoned words.  And John tells us that the Logos created all things.  And the eternal Logos was not created (in spite of what the Arianists in the Millerite Movement assert).

One might conclude that being “uncreated” is an odd idea, but that is because we live in a realm where we never create; we only fabricate out of existing materials.  But the number 7 that is commonly and frequently used by all of us is uncreated.  I don’t mean your awareness of 7 is uncreated.  Nor do I mean that at one point there were seven countable objects in the Cosmos, so then the number seven came into existence.  Seven existed even without anything to count.  I mean the pure numerical concept of 7.  It exists without creation.  It had no beginning.  That brings us to timelessness. 

The Timeless Number 7

Further, the number 7 is timeless.  It had no beginning, and it will have no ending.  While it can exist in a succession of moments like we do, it is not contingent on a succession of moments. If the succession suddenly stops, 7 will continue. Verb tenses do not really fit the number 7 (or any number). You can’t say yesterday there was 7, but tomorrow there will be no 7.  While tensed grammar can be expressed, it doesn’t mean anything.  Tenses are superfluous because seven is eternal.  Past, present, and future, the number 7 is always there. 

Numbers and Beings

The term philosophers use to describe the uncreated, timeless features of 7 is “a priori.” It means that 7 exists as a matter of reason rather than creation.  It is not based on experience but is, rather, self-evident.  

Without a doubt, the difference between God, an infinite being, and 7, a simple number, is infinite.  But being uncreated and timeless are a couple of points of similarity between God and 7.  In another way, 7 is like us.  We are finite beings, and 7 has a finite value. 

This next point is harder to explain.  The idea that there is an uncreated great spirit being that created the Cosmos is difficult for the human mind to grasp.  How can God always have been?  Who made him?  The answer, of course, is that nobody made him.  He has always been.  And I admit that this begs the question.  It is just that we are talking outside our usual created-world boundaries.  

The concept of God is a part of the rational existential order just as the concept of the number 7 is.  Anyone who believes that there is an uncaused, first cause is comfortable with this idea.  On the other hand, when atheists argue against the existence of god, they almost always include the proposition that the Universe has always been. They accept the eternity of a non-being and deny eternity as it relates to God.   So, Dawkins and Hitchens use the same arithmetic of eternity that Theists use but the atheist version is less convincing because it pertains to things that we know can, unlike God, undergo entropy.  The rational existential order in which God and the number 7 are reflected makes them both seem intuitive to many people. 

The Last Analysis

Words like “timeless” and “uncreated” are not just pseudo-intellectual jargon.  They are descriptors for something that we use all the time, like the number 7.  The number 7 is timeless and uncreated yet feels natural.  We are comfortable with it.  It does not challenge our belief systems.   To many people, the existence of God feels natural.  This is a part of what some theologians call General Revelation.  I would hasten to add that a “feeling” is not a “proof.”  Providing an incontrovertible proof of his existence for us today does not seem to be God’s critical path.  But the number 7 or any number is a little aperture through which a glimmer of some great and glorious light now passes.