Not identical to physics — but equally orderly, equally real, and equally open to investigation by someone willing to pay attention.
I want to begin with a question that has driven me for over two decades: what if the way the world of the Spirit works is just as logical and discoverable as the laws of physics? Not identical to physics — but equally orderly, equally real, and equally open to investigation by someone willing to pay attention.
Jesus rebuked Nicodemus in John 3, and His rebuke was not about a lack of piety or devotion. Nicodemus was a ruler of the Jews, a serious student of scripture. The rebuke was that he should have been able to understand how things worked in the Spirit, and he couldn't. That without doubt stung. If a teacher of Israel should have known, then surely we who have the full canon, the indwelling Holy Spirit, and two thousand years of the church's experience, should be able to see deeper than we do.
What follows is my best map of the territory I have been sailing for over four decades. The map is meant to help you find your way in, not to substitute for the crossing.
That is the starting point. Not arrogance, actually, the opposite. It is humility in the face of how much we have been given and how little we have understood. My initial starting point is the observation that we live a life so far short of what Jesus invites us into. A life of walking in the Spirit, of miracles in the natural, and living in intimate conversation with Him.
Before I get into any specific explorations, I want to lay out the four principles I treat as axioms for this investigation. I borrowed the axiom language from mathematics — just as Euclidean geometry builds outward from a small set of starting assumptions, I am working from four starting assumptions that I hold with roughly Clearly Taught certainty. Further exploration may refine or deepen these, just as Einstein's work refined Newton without discarding him. That is fine with me. These are working axioms, not dogma.
I want to register a caution about my own title before you go further. C.S. Lewis used legal language brilliantly in Mere Christianity to point toward God — but he was careful to note that once you arrive at God via the law, you discover you have not arrived at a lawful system. You have arrived at a Person who wants you as a child, not as a subject. The laws I am describing in these volumes are real and discoverable and operable — but they are the structural features of a love relationship, not a spiritual technology to be mastered. A person could learn all thirty-eight Foundational Laws in Volume 1, execute the training plan in Volume 2 with discipline and precision, and still have missed the entire point if they have pursued the laws rather than the Lawgiver. I keep this caveat close because I know my own tendency — the engineer's tendency — to love the system more than the source. The laws are meant to get you closer to Him, not to substitute for Him.
The spiritual world operates according to regular, predictable, lawful relationships — as orderly as the physical world, because the same God created both.
We will not see all of them, but we should be able to see more than we do today. The wind blows where it wishes — but we should be able to see more than just the sound of it passing.
— in my spirit, in my mind and emotions, and in my body and actions. If I have truly grasped a law of the Spirit, my doing will change. Otherwise, I have only memorized it, which is different. Said another way, if I am not changed by God's word, then I haven't yet heard God's word.
This is not merely an intellectual exercise. The goal is to live closer to the life Jesus modeled — where miracles are not the exception but the expected fruit of operating in alignment with how God's world actually works.
The core work is in five volumes, with a sixth providing the governance framework under which the work is stewarded, refined, and extended beyond my own participation.
This all looks organized and neat, but the development has been messy, to say the least. Different parts have been developed at different times and rates over the years, so there are gaps and inconsistencies, some of which I can't even see anymore.
Vol 1 is the basic development of laws or relationships I see in scripture, along with my personal assessment of certainty. This volume points to a draft Table of Periodic Elements (like the one for chemical elements) that offers an organizing principle for identifying gaps and predicting undiscovered (at least by me) additional laws. Vol 2 uses these laws to address the heart work that helps me internalize them. The progression of that internalization process is the work of the Holy Spirit in me, and the processes described are just ways to open myself up to that work. The Affective Taxonomy, which describes the observable component of that progress, is foundational to this volume. Vol 3 then goes deeper, proposing ways to translate relationships and laws into equations, seeking the clarity of formal dynamics to describe how spiritual forces actually operate. This step is, without a doubt, one of the most challenging in this discussion. I suggest an approach that I find interesting but needs testing by others more competent than I. Vol 4 proposes a way to test all this in real life. If the first three volumes change, then of course, the testing needs to adapt. This volume has grown considerably from its origins as a draft and now offers a structured testing scaffolding — including individual and small group protocols, assessment instruments, and a formal research program design. It remains explicitly dependent on Volumes 1–3 and should be revised if those volumes change significantly.
Volume 5 is one of the most important because it is a key to all the help and insight I have had along the way. It is an annotated reference list for anyone who wants to, in part, follow my trail of crumbs on my journey to this current version. These are important references, but by no means all the references I could invoke. As Newton said, "If I have seen further than others, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."
Volume 6 is new and different in character. Where Volumes 1–5 are my personal record of what I believe the Lord has shown me in my various explorations, Volume 6 is the governance framework under which this work is stewarded, extended, refined, and, where necessary, corrected by others. It contains the governance model itself, a contributor guide, a proposal template, a succession letter, the Council paper introducing the body that will steward the work, the claim registry that encodes every proposition in Volumes 1–4 with its confidence level and dependencies, and a dependency diagram showing how the claims relate. I wrote Volume 6 in a more institutional voice on purpose. It is meant to outlast me and serve people who will come to this work long after I am gone. The Council of Stewards, as it describes, is how this record stays honest once it is no longer just me keeping it honest.
Documents that I have developed, but not yet fully incorporated, are included as appendices or attachments. Each offers a future trail for deeper investigation.
Alongside the five volumes, six companion papers have grown up as part of the same exploration. I call them the Formation Documents. These are some of the research I have done, formalized as academic papers.
is the foundational one. It examines what scripture means by heart, spirit, soul, and mind, and argues that each is distinct and trainable. The three taxonomy papers that follow are built on its framework.
takes the Affective Taxonomy of Krathwohl, Bloom, and Masia — a five-level developmental framework from educational psychology that I'll refer to throughout these volumes — and maps it onto the Parable of the Sower, proposing trust in scripture as the right test case for measuring heart formation.
proposes five-stage developmental maps for both the soul and the spirit, parallel to the Affective Taxonomy on the heart side.
is the most comprehensive of the six. It integrates all three taxonomies with Old and New Testament formation theology and extends them to small groups and congregations.
proposes that the person who facilitates this formation in others is a synthesis role, drawing on four established Christian spiritual care traditions, with a three-level developmental progression and a capstone competency of real-time mode-switching.
explains how the core Affective Taxonomy can be applied and measured across scales — individual, small group, church, denomination, and finally the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church. This directly addresses the need for structure and accountability at each level.
Practically, these documents and the small groups that have been the test bed for development have all been under the spiritual authority of my local church and pastor. I really understand the need for being under authority and have made sure this was true about me personally, and any small group I was working with was also under authority.
There is a Master Law List of Explorations and resultant proposed laws as an appendix in Vol 3.
Not directly part of the IJH series of volumes is the draft pilot for creating a Fellowship of the Heart from scratch as a series of structured meetings and trainings, currently in development. I expect to post that alongside this IJH series and cross-link them both.
More of the Introduction9