(Stock Photo – Canva)
By Dan Sherven
Matthieu Pageau is the author of The Language of Creation: Cosmic Symbolism in Genesis: A Commentary. The 2018 book reached 150th overall on Amazon, following Matthieu’s recent appearance on The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast. And the book is currently the Number 1 Bestseller in the category of Old Testament Reference. Taken from the back cover of the book:
“The Language of Creation is a commentary on the primeval stories from the book of Genesis. It is often difficult to recognize the spiritual wisdom contained in these narratives because the current scientific worldview is deeply rooted in materialism.” Materialism is the view that there is only matter, and spirit does not exist. Matthieu’s book looks at Genesis from a spiritual view.
Matthieu is the brother of Jonathan Pageau, an Orthodox icon-carver who hosts The Symbolic World podcast. The work of the Pageau brothers has an emphasis on the ancient conceptions of heaven, earth, time, and space. And how those words in the Bible do not mean what they mean in modern physics. More from The Language of Creation:
“The Language of Creation demonstrates why these stories are foundational to western science and civilization. It rediscovers the archaic cosmic patterns of heaven, earth, time, and space and sees them repeated at different levels of reality.” With that said, Matthieu did not want to define heaven: “It’s usually a bad idea because you have to use other words to explain something that’s more fundamental than the words you’re using.”
He says that when you try to define heaven, “you’re not really talking about concrete reality. I can do it: Something like a goal. The idea is that you have an idea that is extremely simple. And you don’t necessarily see that idea. You don’t perceive it. The reason you don’t perceive it is because you just hear it as something to look at. You hear it as something you have to analyze. But really, what you’re supposed to do is actually use that to interpret reality.”
Heaven is such a fundamental concept that rather than define it, it is to be used to see reality. “The easiest example to me is if you take a formula in physics,” Matthieu says. “If you just look at the formula itself, it’s kind of nothing. If you studied Newton’s formulas — let’s say force equals mass times acceleration. If I just tell you that and you just look at the formula itself, it’s nothing. What’s the point of that?”
“The people who study physics: They experiment, they see it in concreteness, they have many examples over time of this formula being applied to reality,” Matthieu says. “Then they start to see, in this example, something like what we could call heaven. They start to see the seed; the seed, or the idea, or the theory. But before that, if you just mention it casually, most people will just ignore it. So that’s an example of what heaven is. I said before ‘a goal,’ but it’s not really just that.”
Matthieu says heaven is more than a goal: “Your theory of life becomes a goal to you, but it’s more than that. It’s also what explains phenomena, what explains reality. But that becomes a goal in a way. You aim toward — if I think I have a plan of the universe, why wouldn’t I aim toward that plan? If, for example I have a plan for a house — the blueprint of a house is an example of heaven — you have that [and] it becomes the goal to accomplish: to build the house. It also becomes what explains the house.
“Even if you don’t want to build it, it’s the explanation of the house. So basically, [heaven is] the theory of what is and what we want to have. Like a seed. A seed is the best analogy for it; what heaven is. Jesus uses that analogy Himself.”
Matthieu continues: “People who study things like mathematics and physics are used to this. I could give you the axioms of (basically) group theory, which is like a foundation for arithmetic and a lot of things in mathematics. There’s like five axioms, and they’re extremely simple. ‘A’ equals ‘A’ — that’s the most basic truth. Something is equal to itself. And you’re like, ‘yeah well that’s so simple; why do you even mention it?’ Well, I mention it because it has a lot of implications. You might not see them right away. But if you’re trying to derive a theorem, then you see, ‘oh okay, this really simple truth contains massive, massive information.’”
There are different ways to symbolize the simple truth of heaven. “One way to symbolize that usually is the light,” Matthieu says. “You don’t see the light itself. You see what the light shines on. If you just look at the light, it’s invisible. Unless it’s getting right into your eye, but then you get blinded. That’s not really useful, either. You only see what the light shines on, and that’s what we can appreciate in terms of knowledge.”
“Just like if I give you a seed,” Matthieu says. “It’s like, ‘what is this? It looks like a grain of sand.’ But if you plant it then it grows. It’s like, ‘ah this is something; produces fruit; produces other plants.’ So that’s the best way to me to define what heaven is (that) it’s really simple information that is extremely compact and has a lot of implications. Unless you express them, plant the seed, express them concretely — all the implications they have — then it’s not worth much. A seed isn’t worth anything if you don’t plant it.”
Christ is a carpenter, in part, because He expresses the blueprint above (heaven) in the wood below (earth). In summary, Matthieu says: “This is something we don’t often talk [about] in Christianity and religion. The idea that heaven is the only thing that’s important — [that’s] kind of false. I mean Jesus doesn’t say that either. If it doesn’t produce fruit, it’s not much.”
Order The Language of Creation here.
Dan Sherven is the author of three books: Light and Dark, the #1 Amazon Bestseller Classified: Off the Beat ‘N Path, and Live to the Point of Tears. He holds a Bachelor’s of Philosophy, and a Bachelor’s of Journalism. Sherven currently writes for Word on Fire, The Symbolic World, the Homiletic and Pastoral Review, Luther College, and the Archdiocese of Regina. Here, you can find his work
