johndbrey@gmail.com
© 2018 John D. Brey.
The
word "protoplasm" comes from the Greek protos for first,
and plasma for thing formed, and was originally used in religious
contexts.[39]
It was used in 1839 by J. E.
Purkinje for the material of the animal embryo.[12][40] Later, in
1846 Hugo von Mohl
redefined the term (also named as Primordialschlauch, "primordial
utricle") to refer to the "tough, slimy, granular, semi-fluid"
substance within plant cells, to distinguish this from the cell wall and the cell sap (Zellsaft)
within the vacuole.[13][41][42]Thomas Huxley
(1869) later referred to it as the "physical basis of life" and
considered that the property of life resulted from the distribution of
molecules within this substance.[43]
Wikipedia.
Definition of protoplasm:
Wikipedia.
Definition of protoplasm:
1 : the organized colloidal complex of organic and inorganic substances (such as proteins and water) that constitutes the living nucleus, cytoplasm, plastids, and mitochondria of the cell
Merriam Webster.
In most orthodox definitions of the hypostatic union of God and man in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, the same language is employed. God and man are a "colloid" where divine and human, organic and inorganic, are not mixed to form a union that distorts Jewish monotheistic reasoning, but are in fact only an entanglement whereby the two properties so unite that without mixture or loss of separate identities, without transfer or loss of properties or attributes, the two natures or entities create a union that is personal and eternal.
Since in theology God is the source of life, it's fitting that two elements not alive in themselves, must form a colloid for "life" to become an epiphenomenon, or property, of the union of the two formerly lifeless elements. God is not life apart from his unity with man such that this unity, far from being an afterthought of God, is in fact the germ-cell, the protoplasm, of God's very existence. If not for the hypostatic union of God and man, God would not have created the world, and thus God would not exist as an entity knowable outside of its own meontological non-existence.
Technically speaking, a colloid isn't a "true" (meaning complete) mixture of the material suspended in the medium. The suspension is definitely a "mixture." But what's unique about a colloid is that the suspended material doesn't lose it's separate identity as it might in a solution, or a true/complete mixing.
The imposition of the concept of a colloid into a theological discussion takes the discerning reader back to an essay, in a land and time far far away, when Moses was said to create a sacerdotal-elixir that was, get this, a colloid; a material representing God, gold, was suspended in an inorganic material (water) to create "living water," which was subsequently circumscribed by the cell-membrane (that is the Jewish body) creating a new life-form (a new protoplasmic cell) that combines god and man in a manner that doesn't infringe on the law against unlawful mixing (shatnez) since the "mixture" is such that the individual elements retain their complete independence so that the new hypostasis (the new spiritual species, 2 Cor. 5:17) is more of an "entanglement" of separate identities, attributes, essences, rather than a true and complete mixture.
In this sacerdotal-entanglement, there's no loss or mixture of independent identities even though the entanglement creates a new, real, epiphenomenon/hupostasis, based on the nature of the entanglement.
The gold represented a golden calf. The gold represented the living material that made up the golden calf, which, as a living beast, symbolized the organic. When Moses ground down the body of the golden calf, and suspended it in an inorganic material, water, he created the protoplasm of "El Chay," the living God, whose protoplasm was organic material, from a living deity (the living calf of gold) suspended in an inorganic solution.
In a general sense, organic vs. inorganic represents life versus non-life. The quintessential duality/polarity. Which, that duality/polarity, is of a kind with the polarity between God and man. But Jewish sensibilities deny the possibility of a God/man-unity signifying God's dissolving into man, or vise versa. Such that the orthodox statements concerning the God/man states that they exist as a unique hypostasis whereby the two elements, God, and man, exist in a unity whereby neither element loses, nor even mixes, or dissolve, its inherent attributes, or essence; and yet the union is real, personal, and eternal.
If God is "suspended" in man, or vice versa, as gold is "suspended" in water, in Exodus, then the unity can be permanent, as in a colloid, real (such that it produces epiphenomenal effects, such as causing light to refract in a manner that makes the colloid appear red) without either element, the gold, or the water, mixing with the other element in a manner that transgresses the law of shatnez, which is a law against unlawful mixing/dissolving.
It's unlawful for God and man to mix, for man to dissolve into God, or vise versa. But that doesn't mean God can't be suspended in man, or man in God, creating epiphenomenal effects, that are phenomenal to the extreme.
Sequencing these concepts was supposed to be a séance-like event where the shatnez-rescinding tzitzit is brought back to life as the unique linen "branch", or "sprout" (zizs) grafted onto the woolen tallith (with a permanent knot), such that the tzitzit thread died [sic] with colloidal-gold allows this linen sprout to be grafted onto a woolen tallit as a scion-cultivar seemingly transgressing the law against mixing unlike things?
The scientifically-minded reader wouldn't have so darkened his mind to theological concepts that a light wouldn't come on in his thinking when he realizes that the very elixir used to allow the linen sprout to be permanently attached to woolen tallit (seemingly transgressing the law of shatnez), i.e., colloidal gold (called "techelet"), is itself the unlawful mixing of God, gold, and the inorganic world, water, thereby almost screaming from the top of the mount (Horeb) for the discerning Jew to realize what these decrees decry to the circumcised and circumspect eye.
Techelet isn't a "solution," per se; at least not in the scientific sense (since it's a colloid where the suspension isn't dissolved). Nevertheless it is a theological solution, The theological solution, par excellent.
The primary point in discussing a colloid in this context is the idea that two things which aren't technically mixed (as is a solute in a solution) might be capable of creating a new hypostasis. In other words, when a solute dissolves in a solution, the new solution is a new hypostasis since the two former hypostatic states have completely (or nearly so) mixed into the new state.
That (the latter) is the theological problem that results in Jewish meontology (which is really theological tautology).
God can't mix with man if it means losing his former hypostasis by dissolving into the God/man. Man can't mix with God if it means losing humanity by becoming God. But if there's a scientific entity that can suspend one hypostasis in another, so that rather than the two becoming one, the two actually become a third, without the former two losing, mixing, essence, attributes, then theology has a scientific answer to Jewish meontology and the theological tautologies that Jews are made to swallow to remain within the dictates of their laws and decrees.
In phallic sex, two different genders come together, using the penis as the medium for the union, and combine in the ovum to create a third entity. But the third entity is just thetwo that mix to become the third. The offspring of genital sex, Gentile sex, is either like his father, or his mother (male or female). He or she isn't a new, unique, hypostasis.
Genital sex, which is the original sin of unlawful mixing, passes the penalty for that sin, death, to every similar act of mixing, so that not only is the offspring of Gentile sex a facsimile of the mother or the father, but so too, the offspring of this form of unlawful mixing is conceived in sin, and born with a death sentence already hanging over the head.
The new birth is different.
In the new birth, water (baptism) takes the place of the penis as the medium for the union. God is suspended in the water so that he and the person being baptized share the same space in a colloid which doesn't mean that God dissolves into the person, or the person into God, and yet a new hypostasis arises from this quasi-sexual bonding.
What's conceived in this way isn't a facsimile of either God or mankind (as is the case in genital sex where the produce is either male or female). -----It's a "new man" which is a new entity unlike either of the elements, or essence, which combine in the colloid to allow this epiphenomenon to arise from the permanent entanglement of two hypostases that continue to exist in a quasi-sexual congress (the colloid) that gives rise to the epiphenomenon that is the new man in Christ Jesus.
The new man in Christ Jesus isn't technically God, or man, but something fundamentally new. Which isn't to say that the new man in Christ Jesus isn't a true entanglement of God in man, and man in God: he is. The offspring of phallic sex isn't new in the sense of a new species. He or she is just the genes of the father and mother mixing to create another bastard. But in Christ, the offspring of the colloidal union (divine-sex), as an epiphenomena of the unity, rather than a mixing of two former hypostases, is something new that has never existed before (2 Cor. 5:17).
The key to the relationship between the hypostasis of God and man, and, say, colloidal gold, is the possibility of epiphenomenal effects arising from the relationship between the gold and the water, even though the gold hasn't dissolved into the water, and the water hasn't received the gold as though it were a solute dissolving into the water.
In other words, even though the gold is still 100% gold, and the water is still 100% water, since gold is not a solute dissolving into the watery solution, nevertheless, the nature of the suspension of the gold, creating a colloid, allows the unity to produce real, unique, effects, ephiphenomena of the union, that are themselves real, and even permanent.
For instance, colloidal gold can create a dye, that, because of the nature of the colloid, allows the color of the colloid to infuse the keratin of say wool, in a manner that make the dye all but permanent. In other words there is nothing red about gold, or water, and yet, in a colloidal union (whereby the gold doesn't give up its goldness, and the water doesn't give up its translucent waterness), still, because of the union, the colloid can dye wool red, and do it more permanently, than almost any other known dye.
This is an epiphenomenal effect of a unique union whereby the gold is still gold, and the water is still water, and yet the wool is genuinely red.
God can form a union with man, like gold and water, a colloid of God and man, whereby God is still 100% God, and man is still 100% man, and yet, because of the nature of the unity, an ephiphenomenal effect, that's absolutely phenomenal, can be real, and permanent, without God dissolving or mixing with man, without man dissolving or mixing with God.
The "new man" isn't conceived through mixing of semen and ovum, whereby they dissolve or fuse into a new entity. The "new man" is conceived merely through proximity, rather than sexual union. God and man are in a unique, colloidal, proximity, that creates a new man from the proximity, even as red dyes the wool by reason of the proximity of gold and water in colloidal gold.
Proximity doesn't transgress shatnez, the law against unlawful mixing. A wool garment can be worn with a linen garment, they can be in proximity to one another, they just can't be mixed. God can indwell man, can be in such close proximity to a man that to all outside appearances they are the same thing. God can be in such close proximity to a man that secondary affects of the proximity can arise in a manner that makes the secondary effects, the epiphenomena of the proximity, real, in the sense of a new hypostasis, without the new hypostatic union (i.e., the epipnenomenon) in any way transgressing the law against mixing, even though the epiphenomenal effect is a direct, and pure, phenomena of the proximity. It's as if the epiphenomenon is a mixture of the two things that aren't technically mixed in a colloid.
