Psalm 34:10

All my bones shall say: Lord, who is like to thee? Who deliverest the poor from the hand of them that are stronger than he; the needy and the poor from them that strip him. (Psalm 34:10 DR)

A rather common fallacy that persists is what I like to call the God-too-small fallacy, which in essence compares the concept of God to other things, but merely in a superlative manner. This fallacy exists in non-religious critiques and in some non-Catholic critiques, albeit from different perspectives.

From the non-religious perspective, the argument is often made that the sheer scale of the universe negates the existence of God, or at the very least the conception of God as personal. The argument is usually framed as this: the universe is composed of millions of galaxies and trillions of stars, and humanity inhabits only an insignificant rock in that vast cosmos, and thus God doesn’t care what you do in terms of sex. The last clause I add for snark, but it is more often than not the reason for the critique.

The non-Catholic side will often frame it in different ways: The Rosary contains so many more prayers to Mary than to God, which either means that you think Mary is a goddess or you denigrate Jesus as God. Similarly, asking the saints for intercession takes away from Jesus as the One mediator between man and the Father.

Both critiques falter in viewing the divine nature as unique only in the sense of being greater than any other being, but not of a different order of being, so to speak. I liken it to the end bosses found in some video game RPGs. Sometimes the protagonist will encounter the end boss early on, and this end boss has an absurd amount of hit points which the character is not able to overcome in the initial encounter. The end boss is, in this conception, the most powerful being in the game’s universe. But as the player progresses and gains levels and skills and whatnot, eventually the end boss is encountered a final time and able to be overcome.

In viewing God as merely the greatest being that exists, we fall into the God-too-small fallacy, for we then end up inevitably projecting our limitations in both understanding and being upon the divine nature, which then runs into inevitable absurdities.

The resolution to these critiques is of course that God is not at all like any other being in the created universe; He is rather the source of all being itself and in that sense utterly unlike anything. For the non-religious critique, God does not have to split His attention between the things in the universe; He is as “present” to the smallest subatomic particle as to the largest galaxy at all moments and in all places. And for the non-Catholic critique, since the divine nature is unlike all created natures, there is the stark difference between latria and dulia, which is a difference in kind and not in degree. That to which things are predicated matters, not the things predicated absolutely; after all, to say that I love God is not the same as to say I love soda.

The Psalmist thus comes to his praise of the divine nature with a simple statement: Lord, who is like to Thee? And while the statement is in some respects rhetorical, it is sandwiched by a motive and a proof.

He prefaces this by saying “all my bones shall say,” which on the surface level seems to be a means of describing a deep and heartfelt intention. We often speak of intense feelings or desires by saying “I feel it in my bones.” This may be an anachronism, but the Psalmist is certainly speaking out of deep feeling. However, there is an even deeper level to this, for bones are the source of strength for the body, the frame that keeps us upright and allows us to move. In this sense the bones stand in for strength of spirit:

Clearly bones have neither feeling nor voice. As we have often stated, they must be interpreted as strength of spirit and constancy of mind. These are rightly compared with bones, for just as bones hold the body together, so these qualities strengthen pious intentions. So the bones, that is, firmness, not the flesh which is slackness, must utter this mystery, for only courage of mind can speak such praise. Who bears a negative sense, for none can be like to Him, since He is uniquely the holy Trinity. The creature differs greatly from the Creator; in short, the first is slave, the second Master. (Cassiodorus, Explanation of the Psalms, 34, 10, Ancient Christians Writers.)

St. Augustine reads the bones as referring to the righteous in the Body of Christ who persevere in righteousness:

O Body of Christ, Holy Church, let all your bones say, Lord, who is like you? And if the flesh under persecution has fallen away, let the bones say, Lord, who is like You? For of the righteous it is said, The Lord keeps all their bones; not one of them shall be broken. (St. Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, 34, 14.)

He notes a seeming discrepancy, for the Psalmist elsewhere speaks of the bones of the righteous not being broken, but the martyrologies are full of accounts of various saints having different bones broken. He also adduces the example of the thief on the cross who confessed Christ, yet was explicitly said to have had his bones broken. This is then contrasted with our Lord who dies before His bones would have been broken. It is because of this that St. Augustine reads this promise of the bones not being broken as referring to the faith and charity of those within the Body of Christ who remain steadfast in persecution and temptations:

Where then is that which was said, The Lord keepeth all his bones; not one of them shall be broken; except that in the Body of the Lord the name of bones is given to all the righteous, the firm in heart, the strong, to no persecutions, no temptations, yielding, so as to consent unto evil?

…But if in the Lord’s Body he be one of the bones, he repelleth all these words, and saith, Lord, who is like unto Thee? Give, if Thou wilt give, even in this life, what I ask; but if Thou wilt not, be Thou my Life, Whom I seek always. Shall I depart hence unto Thee with a clear face, if I worship another, and offend Thee? Tomorrow perhaps I shall die: with what face shall I see Thee? Great is His Mercy; and therefore hath He admonished us to live well, and hath hidden from us the last day of our life, lest we should promise ourselves aught from the future. Today I work and live: tomorrow I work not. What if tomorrow find thee not? Say then, among the bones of Christ, Lord, who is like unto Thee ? All my bones shall say, Lord, who is like unto Thee? (St. Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, 34, 14.)

Thus far is the motive of this declaration that no one is like unto the Lord, but now the Psalmist moves into the proof. It is because of the deliverance of the poor from those stronger that God is shown to be in His might. This deliverance is not merely from other men but ultimately from the devil and therefore sin.

However, it should be noted that it is not simply because God is more powerful than the devil that this proof is furnished, for then God would simply be a more powerful being. It is a difference in kind because of this subjection to sin which cannot be remedied by any created means. Sin is a privation of being, but God as being itself can never be subject to privation. Thus, sin affects the created order since it is contingent being; that is, it is possible for it to not be, whereas for God it is impossible to not be. But since contingent being is dependent on God for its very essence and existence, its healing cannot come from within, as it were, but must come from God Himself. This is why the Incarnation as the means of healing and salvation is utterly unique, since it is God Himself entering into creation to heal and restore it. The conquest of sin can only be wrought by God, which the Psalmist foresees here:

When the devil held almost the entire human race in his hand, we know that it was freed by the incarnation of the Word from the power by which it was held in subjection. He further added: The needy and poor, so that the three gathered into one could show the condition of the human race afflicted by disasters. Man is called resourceless because he was made mortal, needy because he sought his bread by toil and sweat, poor because he was cast down from the wisdom and purity which he earlier had, and now possessed only an unsubstantial and faint shadow of reason.

…But how remarkable, how unique in every way is the fact that Christ by His incarnation freed such men as this! (Cassiodorus, Explanation of the Psalms, 34, 10, Ancient Christians Writers.)

It is Christ as the Strong-in-Hand—which was seen in the opening passage of this Psalm—Who thus takes upon Himself our flesh to free us from the bonds of sin as imaged in our subjection to the devil:

Who that deliverest, but He who is Strong in hand? Even that David shall deliver the poor from him that is too strong for him. For the devil was too strong for you, and held you, because he conquered you, when you consented unto him. But what has the Strong in hand done? No man enters into a strong man’s house, to spoil his goods, except he first bind the strong man. [Matthew 12:29] By His own Power, most Holy, most Magnificent, has He bound the devil by pouring forth the weapon to stop the way against him, that He may deliver the poor and needy, to whom there was no helper. For who is your helper but the Lord to whom you say, O Lord, My Strength, and My Redeemer. If you will presume of your own strength, thereby will you fall, whereof you have presumed: if of another’s, he would lord it over you, not succour you. He then alone is to be sought Who has redeemed them, and made them free, and has given His Blood to purchase them, and of His servants has made them His Brethren. (St. Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms, 34, 15.)

This deliverance from the bondage to sin and death—which only God can accomplish—thus furnishes the proof of His unlikeness to anything else, and thus the motive of praise which arises from all my bones consists of a heart and will that is steadfast in charity towards the Lord Who redeemed us. All the various grandeurs and splendors of this world in all its beauty and wonder pale in comparison to God, for in fact they cannot even be compared to Him, for “who is like to Thee?”

In our apprehension of the created world we can proceed from beautiful things like the things we make to higher things like the natural wonders of the mountains and trees to higher wonders like the Sun and Moon and stars to even deeper invisible wonders like the Angels, but in each successive rung of the ladder of created being we are still contemplating that which is made, rather than the One Who made them. The Psalmist thus reminds us to set our eyes beyond the created order, to something which cannot be seen with the eyes or even contemplated with a limited mind yet still perhaps sensed deep in our bones, as it were, the One Who is above all things to Whom alone it can be said: who is like to Thee?

There is something unutterably appalling in a Life eternally by itself, self-sufficing, its own glory, its own knowledge, its own magnificence, its own intense blessedness, its own silent, vast, unthrilling love. Surely to think of such a Life is to worship it. But It—it is not It—there were no things then — it is He our God and our Creator! Out of that Life we came, when the Life had spent an eternity without us. The Life needed us not, was none the happier because of us, ruled not over a wider empire through us, multiplied not in us the objects of omniscience. But the Life loved us, and therefore out of the Life we came, and from its glorious sun-bright fountains have we filled the tiny vases of our created lives. O how the sublimity of this faith at once nourishes our souls like food and recreates the mind like rest! Of how many illusions ought it not in its magnificent simplicity to disabuse us! The very idea of the Life of God before ever the worlds were made must of necessity give a tone and a colour, impart a meaning, and impress a character upon our own lives, which they would not otherwise have had. It furnishes us with a measure of the true magnitudes of things which teaches us how and what to hate and despise, and how and what to love and esteem. To put the thought into easier words, we cannot fully know what it is to be a creature, until we know as fully as we can what it is to have a Creator. (Fr. Faber, The Creator and the Creature, Book I, Chapter 3.)

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I found a great image of a floating astronaut and thought it’d make a great starting point for this. I isolated it in Photoshop and brought it into After Effects and added some slight animation on the Y axis of the Position.

I drew a simple triangle shape and used some masks on the astronaut to weave the triangle in and out of the limns for some depth and match the animation on the position and then offset for a bit of visual interest.

I used the Grid effect from the Generate Effects in After Effects to create the Grid and used Stretch on a background texture to get the animated background, also applying Pixel Sorting Studio to it for more of that sort of look. I added in a bunch of glows on the triangle to give it a neon look, and then matted some textures to some ellipses to create the little planetoids.

Enjoy.

View a higher quality version of this gif here: