The Study of Algebra and the Soul's Reception of Light

All things in this universe, as created by God, are bound to necessity. In the beginning was God and God alone, and so in the beginning was love and love alone. He created the structures necessary to create life from love, and in this way the obedience of the universe to his necessity was a manifestation of adoration for God's love. The study of algebra is the study of obedience to the necessary laws of his universe; the study of algebra is the study of love.

The study of algebra is not easy, despite the common belief that it can be reduced to procedure and memorization. During their studies, very few students realize that they are not studying numbers but rather structures necessitated by the laws of the universe. Students look at a number like 100, and they see the symbol but not the structure it represents. They do not see that the number itself represents the decimal system's grouping of 0 units of singular things, 0 units of ten things, and 1 unit of one hundred things. On the contrary, a student who learns algebra from the lens of necessity learns how to solve math problems in binary, ternary, and other positional systems. He learns that representation is contingent, but the laws of God's universe remain necessary. He learns that the love of God is necessary in this universe regardless of representation. This is why John described the λόγος as orientated towards God.

There is a beautiful light that seeps into the soul when a student studies necessity, even when reduced to procedure and memorization. Both the aware student and the unaware student ultimately study the essence of God's love, his laws that created life. Both scenarios require the development of attention, the ability to surrender the self to a problem that seems impossible, only to find it trivial when its structure reveals itself. This develops a stronger connection between the student and the mechanisms of reality, even if implicit. Both students in the study of God's grammar find themselves slightly changed, aware or not, as they understand the universe better. The remnants of God's light descend into the student's being; both the believer and the atheist study God's grammar.

Every virtue, which is to say wisdom, courage, justice, and temperance, is a manifestation of self-emptying love, or ἀγάπη. Wisdom the removal of the self for clear judgement; courage the removal of the self to remain steadfast in personally painful (and sometimes lethal) scenarios; justice the removal of the self to align action with fairness; temperance the removal of the self to remain in proportion between the body and the universe. In the beginning was love and love alone, and so God said in the beginning "let there be light", and his grammar was his love codified into structure. He emptied himself into pure love. God then withdrew from his universe, because the only way for God to love in the presence of creation is through absence. God's absence is his presence. It is through this that only those who have felt divine absence have felt the light of God within them.