post to a forum on perspective

I just have this feeling that we see it all the wrong way round: consciousness I mean. Our perspective is so self-centred - at least initially, and probably mostly after that too - even for the most saintly of people. I think the New Testament speaks to us a little like medieval paintings do: with no sense of 'perspective' in that other sense (the post renaissance artistic meaning). It wasn't that they (artists in the middle ages) couldn't conceive of perspective;(they could see trees were smaller when you got further away from them: this wasn't the renaissance 'discovery' that art historians often claim) they just didn't think it was important. In fact they might have thought of it as wrong: a distortion somehow.

And the irony is that the post-renaissance obsession with 'perspective' actually takes us further and further away from the way in which I used the word 'perspective' to start with, because post-renaissance 'perspective' puts the individual (i.e ME) at the very centre of the picture, with everything moving away from ME.

In other words, the post-renaissance sense of perspective MAKES us self-centred or, to be fair, recognises that we ARE self-centred, in a way that medieval painting does not.

  There is a problem here though because the New Testament is a deeply Greek influenced document written for (and by) people living in a Roman Empire.(I'm taking the Jewishness for granted here). This was a culture that had already had their 'renaissance' and understood perspective very well (in the artistic sense). The New Testament perspective comes into this 'post-renaissance' world and turns it upside down because it offers a completely different 'perspective': i.e what we presently regard as the more 'primitive' medieval one. The Christian view overturns the Roman [renaissance] one, which is why Byzantine and 'dark'-age art loses its interest in the Roman love of 'perspective' and concentrates again on the purely 'spiritual' nature of art.

The Christian lives then in a different 'dimension' in the sense that he perceives the whole world in a quite different way. His sense of 'God' re-focuses everything. You could say his sense of God is like the difference between a 2D picture and a 3D one. Everything is thrown into a different 'perspective' entirely, and especially his own life.

 There is another irony here because, at the very moment when Western culture was rediscovering this Roman artistic 'perspective' and putting the ME at the centre of his art, Galileo, Copernicus et al were discovering that MAN in the philosophical sense was definitely NOT at the centre of this new spatial (scientific) material universe - [in the post-renaissance sense].

To oversimplify, the more we place 'spatial dimension' at the centre of things (with everything moving towards or away from ME) the less we understand what we could call (to be symmetrical) the 'God dimension' [but what the Christian would call God.] 

  You might ask how this relates to what E...... was saying but I think it does. Just as the 'spatial' dimension has gradually superceded the 'God' dimension: first artistically, and, when art was outstripped by 'science', scientifically, so it is with our sense of TIME.

 As we know through Einstein et al there is a synergic relationship between space and time which is still, I suppose, where present day science mostly hovers (trying to grasp the meaning and implications of this).

 The great problem for us today is that we live in an unbelievably complex world where we are educated in a post-renaissance world-view (which unintentionally puts ME at the spatial [and therefore 'spiritual'] centre, [because the post-renaissance scientific man does not recognise the essential difference here, unless instinctively]. This instinctive understanding of the problem comes with the Christian (and Moslem) perception of the world as having a 'God dimension' which is at odds with his own scientific (and artistic) post-renaissance education. (This is noticeably less of a problem in Moslem countries where education is very much more 'God-centred'.)

 When we talk about the after-life we tend to do so in modern 'scientifically aware' terms as being 'something that happens after death' in the physical sense. In other words "not today, but later".

 The first problem with this is that it is not admitting a real understanding of the essential concept that, for God, there IS no tomorrow, but only today. In other words we talk about things to do with God in a way which He might not recognise. ('Do you think that my thoughts are your thoughts?' He says. And again. 'My ways are not your ways'. And again, 'Do you think that I am like you?'.) Well yes I'm sorry Lord but we mostly do and I think its here that complexity can begin to defeat us.

 When we talk (or write) we do so in the understanding that the other person lives in the same three-dimensional universe that we do and the reason why the internet creates such incredible tension between peoples and points of view is because this is a fallacy. We simply do not. We use English words which have different meanings according to our own perspective, and one reason for this forum I suppose (or any forum come to think of it) is to discover people for whom words DO mean the same things.

 What am I driving at with all this?

Perhaps, all of this has been generated by discussions with A..... - who I suppose is a 'typical' scientifically trained modern young guy who has an instinctive desire for God which he cannot place into his world-view with any integrity. For him though this was made more painful because his own spiritual needs crossed with emotional ones [which I recognised all too well.]

 A..... is just the tip of a colossal iceberg. For Americans this is somehow less of a problem although I haven't understood why. For us in Europe it is fast becoming a crisis. My country of England cries out for reconciliation with God and at times this cry is a scream which is almost audible. But this is a cry which only the Christian can hear and gradually it is possible to discern that this scream is turning into one of anger directed against the Christian himself; against Christ Himself – Christ the scapegoat?

I feel strongly that we failed A..... and that we are failing many young people who are well-educated and scientific in their outlook. Erudite and well-intentioned people like Richard Dawkins and Stephen Fry speak more convincingly than any theologian I have heard recently and this is really disturbing.

The first thing we have to do is to recognise that we live in a post-renaissance world where perspective starts from ME. The reality of this is clearly undeniable and we have to bear that in mind when we speak.