Well Mark, that meaning's implicit in my (rather poetical -- sorry!) reference to Abraham's Holy Rainbow, isn't it? The Holy Rainbow was the sign affirming the covenant between God and Abraham, made at God's behest, with Abraham's totally confirming response, a surrender in love to the glorious love of the Lord. Thus the history of direct divine-human relations and communications begins in human historical time.
Mark, this leads me to another issue I've been thinking about lately, and I wondered if you would share your thoughts with me. It's the kind of problem for which there is no easy answer.
Here's the question: Ought the Holy Scriptures to be read as divine information, or as divine poetry?
I think the question is legitimate. For consider how removed in sheer dimension and scale is the mind of God from the human mind. This suggests that if God wants to communicate with us (and obviously He does) then in a certain sense He speaks to us in symbols, not in rationalist language. Which is to say He speaks to us in the language of poetry.
It seems to me this need not be an "either/or" proposition. But as Alamo-Girl justly says, we must not confuse doctrine with personal witness.
Yet poetry is a form that naturally makes one a "witness," in the sense of felt, mutual participation with its author with subsequent reflection, in a way that rationalist language never does. I have in mind John 14 here.
And yet humans also need the information. Indeed, there is a critical need.
How do we find the balance?