The mind of Man was created in the image of the Mind of God with whom an eternal, intimate, personal communion was made possible. But communion was lost by the sin of Adam, and mankind faced eternal spiritual death, eternally devoid of communion with the Holy Spirit. It was by the love and grace of God the Father that mankind has been offered redemption with restoration of communion by the atoning sin sacrifice of Jesus Christ. It was by God’s incarnation in Jesus Christ that mankind has been offered rescue and eternal salvation.
There is recognition in the Christian church that the writing of the Bible was inspired by the Holy Spirit. Since 397 AD the church has considered the canon of the Bible to be complete, and the assumption of many is that the Holy Spirit ceased to communicate directly with people as occurred with the writers of Scripture. To the contrary, I present evidence in my second book, The Boundless Love of God: A Holy Spirit Story, that the Counselor and Helper sent by the glorified and living Jesus Christ continues to interact with the mind of Man through the human spirit. I explain the significance of the torn temple curtain described in Mark 15:38 at the death of Jesus Christ in the ninth hour. It signified the restoration of a direct personal interaction with the Holy Spirit offered as an indwelling to Man by God’s love and grace, and it began with the Apostles at Pentecost.
Alvin Plantinga states that special divine action is compatible with quantum mechanics because it doesn’t determine a specific outcome for a given set of initial conditions. Instead it assigns probabilities to the possible outcomes. Special divine action is not restrained and is therefore free to select via a proposed nonmaterial energy (acting by quantum tunneling in the case of synaptic transmission) certain outcomes according to what William Dembski terms as “small probabilities” with specificity.
From “The Hypothesis” in Nerve Endings of the Soul: Interaction Between the Mind of God and the Mind of Man Through Neural Synaptic Networks:
The Mind of the personal God interacts with the immaterial mind of Man by the atoning grace of God through the living Jesus Christ in our time. His Holy Spirit indwells a receptive, repentant human spirit with the power to interact with the chemical neural synaptic networks of the cerebral cortex, the predominate site for cognition.
I share a statement made by Dietrich Bonhoeffer from The Martyred Christian:
“This is what we mean when we speak of Christ dwelling in our hearts. His life on earth is not finished yet, for he continues to live in the lives of his followers. Indeed, it is wrong to speak of the Christian life: we should speak rather of Christ living in us. I live, and yet no longer I, but Christ liveth in me. (Gal. 2:20). Jesus Christ, incarnate, crucified and glorified, has entered my life and taken charge. To me to live is Christ (Phil. 1:21). And where Christ lives, there the Father also lives, and both Father and Son through the Holy Ghost.”
We have seen that neural codes are linguistic and must be “read” to have meaning and purpose. These codes are magnificent in their design and complexity, and their meaning cannot be reduced to the functional components of the physical brain. The cognitive capacity of an immaterial mind is required to interpret them, to visualize a meaningful scene. It is a progressive, cumulative learning process that is committed to memory, and it begins at birth.
The decoding of a spike train requires an interpolation between the spike train and the continuous stimulus waveforms (including those emanating from a cognitive mind) that induce the spike train through quantum tunneling. The immaterial “observer” of a spike train, the mind, must reconstruct the stimulus, taking the spikes as informational input within neural codes and interpreting the stimulus waveforms with meaning, a process of learning over time.
E. Stan Lennard, M.D., Sc.D.
We have seen in “Waves in Our Brains, Part Two” that wave patterns course through the brain in specific trajectories to bring about intentional as well as reflexive activities. Cognition itself has recently been associated with the generation of specific wave patterns that transmit specified information to and through neural synaptic networks. As advanced technology has been applied to the studies of neuroscientists more understanding has been obtained about these processes, and there is a reasonable likelihood that dualist interaction between the immaterial mind and the material networks of the human brain will be increasingly confirmed.
I now direct attention to the interaction between the Mind of God and the mind and soul of Man. It is a relationship I have addressed in my two books and blogs that shows concordance between Scripture and neuroscience in its interpretation. Evidence has been presented from Scripture, neuroscience, quantum mechanics and information theory for dualist interaction between the Holy Spirit and the soul of Man through the human spirit. There is a hunger for an intimate communion with the biblical God today, and it has been restored by God’s grace through the sin sacrifice of His Son, Jesus Christ. Upon the resurrection of Jesus His Holy Spirit was sent as Jesus promised just prior to His crucifixion to indwell people once again who are in repentance and are willing and obedient to follow the Authority and Counsel of the Holy Spirit.
Calvin Miller has taught that the plan of God has always been to have an intimate, personal, bidirectional communion with mankind. He stresses the importance of seeking union with the Holy Spirit in our inner being, our “center.” It is our option to listen in silence and prayer for His counsel so we can grow in righteousness and in obedience to His power, mentored by the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. But it is a plan that has not been fulfilled because of the pride of Man to live to self, beginning at the Fall of Adam. We are yet fallen in our time but are blessed to have had the indwelling by the Holy Spirit restored by the grace of God through Jesus in repentance. We are born again to new life in Jesus Christ to whom we belong. The indwelling Christ moves into us with a boundless love. God chooses to make his throne inside our mortal bodies. It is the soul of Man accessed through the human spirit that serves as the place of rendezvous, of intimate, personal interaction with the Holy Spirit.
Meaningful communion with the Holy Spirit is both a voice through prayer and an ear. Listening is the most valuable part of prayer, the key to blocking out inner and outer “noise” so we can commune with God and perceive the several ways He communes with us, through dreams, visions, words, intuition and discernment. By submitting to the authority of Jesus Christ in our lives the Holy Spirit becomes one with us through the human spirit. In Psalm 119, verses 34-35, it is said, “Give me understanding, and I will keep your law and obey it with all my heart. Direct me in the path of your commands, for there I find delight.” Miller states that all of life becomes communion. By His indwelling Holy Spirit God continuously accompanies us, pervading the world of our cognition. In John 14 Jesus said, “On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you.”
Prayer gives mankind the opportunity to focus on the inner presence of the Holy Spirit, the interactive communion between the Holy Spirit and the mind of Man. The more earnestly we pray, the more our prayers transcend mere words. When in prayer we may find ourselves overcome by wordlessness. He can best communicate with us when we are silent, ceasing to focus on self but on His presence. We move into Him, and this allows us to receive communion from Him. Praying continually consists of a “listening prayer,” according to Miller. It is an abiding in the presence of the Holy Spirit. When Jesus Christ enters our life, that is the moment when our eternal life begins. Miller states that “someday pulse or respiration may cease, but not us - we will already have taken the giant step into the pleasure of God!” We do not live to die. We die to live! From the findings of the neurosciences it is now conceivable that meaningful neural codes with purpose are generated by the power of the Holy Spirit in wave patterns of action potentials transmitted through neural synaptic networks with specific direction. We can receive and perceive the gentle whisper of the Holy Spirit by this means.
Jesus declared a new covenant, the law of the Spirit of life which sets repentant people free from the law of sin and death. The Kingdom of God is within us when in repentance. It is a foretaste of the eternal Kingdom to come when sin will be forever destroyed. Its complete fulfillment will occur with the second coming of Jesus Christ.
Since it is being increasingly shown that the cognitive mind of humans can generate wave patterns encoded with specified information that is transmitted through synaptic networks with meaning and purpose, is it not reasonable that the indwelling, personal Holy Spirit can and does also generate such wave patterns to give us counsel? Minds in communion describes how personal interaction between the Mind of God via His Holy Spirit and the mind of Man is made possible by the human spirit bestowed at the special creation of mankind. The plan of God has always been to have an intimate, personal, bidirectional communion with mankind. We are having it revealed to us how that occurs, at least in part. All thanks and praise to God!
John Polkinghorne has commented on divine action*. He acknowledges that contemporary science accepts a causally open view of nature and that top-down organizing causal principles must be at work to bring about the future. Active information brings about the formation of a structured pattern of future dynamical behavior. The notion of information input is necessary to resolve what actually occurs. It is the vehicle for top-down operating causality and a possibility to accommodate human and divine agency. He concludes that there should be a flow of information from God to the universe (and to mankind) by which God guides it providentially. As has also been stated by William Dembski in a previous blog the input of information involves no exchange of energy between God and the universe (and mankind) thus avoiding action that would violate the energy conservation laws. Polkinghorne sees it plausible that God’s providence acts within the open grain of nature, capable of receiving pattern-forming information (including linguistic neural codes which I have discussed). Polkinghorne is clear that God is not the active informational principle, and God is not information. God is the agent that generates active information and transfers it into the system He created. Polkinghorne gives no explanation for how this causality works and believes it imperative to continue the search for the causal joint where God’s action acts causally on nature’s (and on Man’s) actions, on how the divine and the creature interact. In my two books it has been the object of my research to inquire into this very question, to conduct this very search.
*Ignacio Silva, “John Polkinghorne on Divine Action: A Coherent Theological Evolution,” Science and Christian Belief, Vol 24, No. 1, 2012