The Relevance of God

What do humans need? What is Scripture about? What is our message?

I believe these three question have a single answer: God.

We need God. We are dependent on him for life. He made us and sustains us. In him we live and move and have our being. We need Jesus Christ, in whom we now live, and who has conquered sin and death for us when we were enslaved to both. To live, we had to be given life in Jesus Christ. It is not about us, but God. Insofar as our lives are about us, about fulfilling our needs, we will fail to meet our single biggest, most important need: our need to be saved from our sins. For that, we need God. Christ must be our Lord, the one in charge of our lives, the central being in our lives.

Scripture is about God. It begins with God, and traces his dealings with people: first with Adam and Eve, then Cain and Abel, and forward through Noah, the people at the tower of Babel, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and the twelve tribes of Israel. Scripture climaxes in God's coming to earth as a human being--the incarnation--and dying for the sins of his people, those whom he has called. It continues with that people spreading the news of what he, Jesus, did, and ends with God's final conquest over all that is, all that has rebelled.

Our message is God. We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles. We make disciples of the triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We speak of the Word made Flesh, the perfect image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, who came and saved us. We speak of him. Our message is not that we have been saved, but that Jesus Christ, God's own Son, came to earth and died to set us free from sin and death. It is not about us, as if we earned it or as if God picked us because of anything about us, but rather, it is about God who did it, who accomplished it all.

Therefore, to be relevant, to be Biblical, to be Gospel oriented, we must speak of God. God must be the centerpoint of our faith, the one on whom it all rests. Otherwise, we will have missed the point.

Preaching is Dependent on the Word

The charge of the pastor is to feed the people of God. This means that he must feed them what people of God need for sustenance, and this is the word of God. Likewise, it is the word of God which is powerful, living and active. This is what God's people, the church, hungers for. Therefore, it is the pastor's responsibility to teach the word of God to the people of God.

The charge of the pastor comes from God. This means that the pastor speaks for God, and thus it is his responsibility to bring the word of God, and not his own word, to the people of God. This means that he is to be under the authority of God in all that he says. He is not to rely on his own understanding, but on the word of God.

Preaching from the Scriptures, then, requires sitting under the authority of God. No preaching is truly the preaching of God's word unless it is restrained by the bounds of Scripture. No preacher, indeed, no one at all, has authority to go beyond the word of God, and this means that no preacher has authority to go beyond what is in the Scriptures when he preaches to the people of God.

This means that the preaching must be from the word of God. It must be from the word of God because that is the only source of nourishment for the people of God, and it must be from the word of God because that is the only source of authority on which the preacher can legitimately stand when he speaks as preacher to the people of God. This means that the preaching must not be from some alien source, that is, it may not come from outside the word of God. This means that the preacher must approach the Scriptures themselves to discover what aim he is to have in each sermon. Any alien motive is denied, because any alien motive is illegitimate. Insofar as an aim or an outline or a message for a sermon does not come from the Scriptures themselves it is like dirt which muddies the living water meant for God's people.

This is not to deny that good historical, linguistic, philosophical, theological or other scholarship is useless to the preacher, but that it is subordinate to the word of God in preaching. But it is to affirm that all scripture is sufficient for life and godliness. It is to deny that what comes to us from outside of Scripture can be used to impose on Scripture a structure which is alien to Scripture. It is to deny preaching on the basis of what is not said in the Scriptures, but is merely hypothesized. We must be careful with God's word, respecting it as God's. We must not be careless, but examine the words of God carefully, to see what he has given us to say. We rely not on human reason or experience or tradition, but on divine revelation, given to us in Scripture. What we preach is not of human ingenuity, but of God's wisdom.

Cheap vs. Costly Grace

Cheap grace does not demand anything from us. Costly grace demands everything from us. "Cheap grace," Bonhoeffer writes, "is the grace we bestow on ourselves." (The Cost of Discipleship, 44). Cheap grace remains very common--it is the one error which is common to all the churches I have visited in the town I am currently in. It is a grace which does not save from sin. Bonhoeffer:

Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. (ibid., 45)

 Cheap grace is not always accompanied by an attitude which allows everything to remain as it was, though Bonhoeffer seems to focus on that sort. It is sometimes accompanied, instead, by leaving the removal of sin up to the sinner, rather than up to grace.

That is what we mean by cheap grace, the grace which amounts to the justification of sin without the justification of the repentant sinner who departs from sin and from whom sin departs. Cheap grace is not the kind of forgiveness of sin which frees us from the toils of sin. Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. (ibid., 44)

This is what happens when we leave by grace alone at the entryway into the Christian life, and do not bring it through the whole of life in Christ.

Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? Did you suffer so many things in vain—if indeed it was in vain? Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith— just as Abraham “believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”? (Galatians 3:2-6)

Here we see that we not only enter into Christ, but continue in him by faith. Thus, we are not only justified by faith, but also sanctified by faith. Our good works, which we are called to walk in, are not works according to the law, but according to grace--we do them, now, through the Spirit of God and not by our own power. Thus our good works are not ours, but the result of our union with Christ by faith.

Cheap grace says that we are okay. Costly grace denies this, instead it recognizes that we are sinful and calls us, graciously, to change, and in so calling us God empowers us to change. Preaching cheap grace only recognizes that we have been saved from the guilt of sin, but leaves us to live as if we were still under the power of sin. Costly grace commands us to work out our salvation with fear and trembling, since it is no longer our power, but God's which acts in us to renew us into the image of his Son, whose image we truly bear.

Preaching of this kind reminds us who we are, that we are in Christ, and thus motivates us to good works--not by tricks of psychology, not by fear of earthly things, but from the love and fear of God almighty who saved us and is with us to purify us. Preaching of cheap grace leaves us where it found us: in the grip of sin. God's grace costs us our lives. Being a Christian involves the death of oneself. Preaching, therefore, cannot afford to leave us in the comfort of being in charge of our own sanctification, but must demand that God be granted authority--as he already truly has the authority--to work in us.

We like to work at our own sanctification, and we must work, but not as if it were up to us, and thus our failures are not our own. It is God who works in us, and it is therefore in him that we find the power to change. We do not change ourselves, but rather we are changed by gazing upon the lord our God. Our sanctification is accomplished by living before God. And this is not a work, but a joy, because we know that God is good.

Sanctification occurs because God is who he is. Salvation is the beginning of this, where we are made right in God's eyes by faith, that is, by trusting him. Sanctification is the continuation, or expansion of this trust, and the working out of this trust. When we preach as though we had to do good on our own, we deny the power of God, because we do not depend on God to work in us, "both to will and to work for his good pleasure" (Philippians 2:13). We therefore must go to God for sanctification, not only to know what we ought to do, but to be enabled, indeed, impelled, to do it.

My conviction is that our sins are due to a lack of trust in God. We do not trust him because we do not know how good he is. We do not know how good he is because we do not seek him in his word and by prayer. Scripture is beautiful because God is beautiful, and we therefore see the beauty of God in Scripture. We are then moved to praise him and worship in every way: by prayer and by singing, but also by doing his will. And when we know who God is, that he is holy and powerful and righteous and loving and merciful and that he is with us, then we will see that, if God is for us--as he is--then we have nothing to fear. We will then act in the will of God more and more as we trust him more and more to take care of us and our concerns.

So long as we preach a "grace" which does not free people from their sins, we preach Godless works. So long as we preach works without the power of God, we preach guilt, law, death. Can this grace save? Can we depend on Christ for salvation from hell and reject his lordship in this life? And yet this is what this cheap grace does! For it denies the lordship of Christ by trying to sanctify the sinner by the power of the sinner, rather than by dependence on Christ, and it denies the authority of Christ to save from sin by refusing to let him save from the power of sin, and it removes Christ from the life of the sinner, despite what Christ said, "behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age." (Matthew 28:20) by leaving him out of salvation, as if he were far off. But our salvation, and so our sanctification, is always dependent on Christ's power, acknowledging his authority to work in our lives, and done in the presence of Christ, as we follow him as his disciples. It is necessary to return to Christ, then, for those who have turned to this cheap grace, lest they be rejected at that day and be among those who say to Christ

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’ (Matthew 7:21-23)

Christ crucified means that Jesus Christ died to save us from our sins, and he did not do the job halfway, but when he died cried out, "it is finished!" That is, sin is killed. Not only are we freed from the guilt of sin as it was killed on the cross, but we are also freed from the power of sin, since it is dead and cannot, therefore, do anything. We are in Christ. Therefore, sin is dead to us, and we are dead to sin. This does not mean that we may continue in sin, but that, to us, it is as though sin were not there to be lived in--insofar as we do live in sin, we live in a past which is fading away. We are called out of darkness and into light because we are now children of the light: it is where we belong.

To preach a grace which addresses only the guilt of sin is therefore to deny that we are united into Christ's death. To try to be perfected "by the flesh" is foolish. We have the Spirit of God who is far more powerful, and is willing--even eager--to perfect us.

Turn, then, churches! Return to Christ and be freed!

Time: A vs B

The B-Theory holds that moments are ordered only by being before and after other moments in time. The A-Theory holds that moments also have temporal properties: pastness, presentness, and futurity. Note, then, that both A-Theory and B-Theory hold that moments are ordered identically, but A-Theory holds that there are temporal properties, i.e., that it makes a difference to the nature of a moment whether it is past, present, or future. Thus, a moment in time moves through time from being future, to being present, to being past. The problem is that for change to happen requires time. So, if A-Theory is true, then a moment in time changes from being future to being present. It does so in time, however, which it partly constitutes. This is a difficult topic to untangle, I think, due to A theorists being in a tangled theory.

Given the A-Theory, for a moment to be future, it must be future to us, now. The idea is that there is only one “now” which changes. It refers to the one moment which has the property of being present. That moment changes every moment, however. So, what happens when a moment loses the property of being future and gains that of being present? Well, just that. When does that happen? Just before that moment becomes now. When is that? What moment is that? There is no moment, except itself. This is the problem with the A-theory: it tries to allow for change in time itself. Time is the medium in which things change, however. This is related to the joke about time passing at the rate of 1 second/second. Time travel is inherently unit-less, since the units of time cancel out.

Okay, let’s back away from this for a moment and consider God. Some people believe that God was once outside of time, atemporal, and then became temporal. This means that he was once omni-present temporally, but no longer is. Thus, once he was at all times, but now he is not. How could this work? In what medium does this change take place? If it takes place in time, then God’s being in the future changes from being true to being false when he changes from being atemporal to being temporal. But he already was in the future. How can he change from being in the future to not being there? If we considered the future it as a location which someone could move in and out of, then it would be fine, but note that a person moves in and out of a room over time. There is nothing to distinguish the future where God is and the one where he is not: he once was in the future, but now is not. This might make sense if we had reached the future, but the premise is that it doesn’t matter when we are, God was still in the future once, but not anymore.

The same problem of change over time exists for moments as for God. When was the moment future? At any prior moment. When was it past? At any moment which comes after it. When was it present? At that very moment. Thus, from any moment, from its perspective it is present, which is what the B-theorist says, but the A-theorist says that moments change from having one temporal property to another. The problem is that moments, by their very nature, are the building blocks of time, and so a change to them is a change to time, or to the timeline. So, suppose there are four moments: A, B, C, and D. We begin at A. A is present, and the rest are future. Then we go on to B. A is now past, B is present, and C and D are both future. What changed? Did time change? Or did our position in time change? The B-theorist will claim the latter, but the A-theorist claims the former: that time changed. A change occurred to time. However, this change must occur timelessly. Since it is a change to time, it cannot also be a change which took place over the course of time. To refute this claim would be required to show that the A-theory is coherent. To prove this claim would prove that the A-theory is incoherent.

For time to change over time requires a time which time can change over. If time changes over a different time, then we will have to explain that time in the same way. If time changes over itself, on the other hand, then it faces the problem which an atemporal God becoming temporal faces: when was it what? That a moment was future, until itself, means that it either is always future--since that is the state of time--or never future--for the same reason. We could not notice a change in time over time, since the change would have to have occurred by that time. To note a change in time--that it is then then, and now now, and now was future then--is simply to notice that time exists, and is ordered in a certain way, completely consistent with the B-Theory--which is not to notice a change in anything.

Perhaps I will make another attempt later at making this comprehensible. As it stands, this post is hard for me to understand. The entire question of A-Theory vs. B-Theory, it seems to me, must rest on some kind of misunderstanding, but I do not know what that misunderstanding is.

Foreknowledge and Libertarian Freedom: The Self-Reference Problem

I have held a certain argument against the compatibility of libertarian free will and exhaustive divine foreknowledge which I thought I saw a way out of recently, but in writing this post discovered that the “way out” was susceptible to a modified version of the same argument.

The argument is as follows: if God has complete divine foreknowledge, then for God to do otherwise than he does would involve God causing his beliefs about the future to have been false (and thus, not knowledge). Thus, God could not choose to do otherwise than he does while retaining his complete foreknowledge. To put it another way: God’s complete foreknowledge includes foreknowledge of things which God does. Given that God knows what he will do, he must do that which he knows he will do, and so does not have libertarian free will.

The above argument works as is, however, only if God acts temporally. That is, if God’s actions follow each other in time, and are done in response to other temporal events, as is the case with our actions. If, on the other hand, God acts once, or all at one moment from his perspective, then it is possible for him to have libertarian free will with respect to his actions.

If God’s actions are temporal, then when God acts he already has the knowledge of what he is about to choose to do. He cannot, therefore, act otherwise. If God’s actions are done all at once, along with his knowing the future, then his actions may be libertarianly free. This requires more than just God’s acting in a moment, however. If God acts all in a moment, but foreknows in a prior moment, then the problem remains. If God acts without foreknowledge, then he effectively acts blindly. It is necessary, therefore, if we are to retain both God’s libertarian freedom and his foreknowledge, that God act in light of his foreknowledge of what will happen under certain circumstances. He then acts all in a moment choosing what he will do. Having done so, he may as well have complete divine foreknowledge, but it cannot affect what he does, since he has already acted. He may, in his actions, know what set of actions he is choosing and thus what the future will be, and may therefore perform each action in light of all the other actions which he is performing, and this, it seems to me, is as close to complete divine foreknowledge as we can get while retaining God’s libertarian free will—and is close enough for me (not that I endorse the position, given that I don’t actually believe that God has libertarian free will).

This counter, which I believe is a variety of Molinism, is supposed to allow for God having libertarian free will, but it is unclear as of yet whether it falls to the same argument as I started with if we modify the argument a little.

The problem is that Molinism requires God to have knowledge of what people will freely choose under certain conditions. If this includes God, then he has knowledge of what he will, in fact, do, and so is no longer libertarianly free. If it does not include God, then the question is why not? It cannot be due to the fact that his circumstances do not exist, or are unknown, since God, at least, could rigorously specify his circumstances which we have vaguely specified as choosing between various actions. If there is some fact as to what God will do in these circumstances, then, having complete foreknowledge of what would happen in various circumstances, i.e., knowledge about all facts about what will happen or be done under any possible circumstance, God will know what God will do under the circumstance at hand. Thus, even if God’s foreknowledge is limited to what will happen under various circumstances, God is still caught in his foreknowledge such that he cannot have libertarian freedom.

The point of arguing against God’s libertarian freedom is that if God does not have it, we do not need it in order to be morally responsible, or for any other purpose. If God is good and not libertarianly free, then moral agency does not require libertarian free will, else God would need it in order to be good. At this point, I believe I have shown that the options for belief regarding libertarian freedom are:

1. Open theist: deny divine foreknowledge, affirm libertarian freedom. 
2. Determinist: affirm divine foreknowledge, deny libertarian freedom.

The question is which we should choose. The choice is unproblematic for me, since I do not see libertarian freedom as logically possible. Likewise, do not think that the A-theory of time, which open theism relies on, is logically coherent either (more on that in a later post).

On Being Special

                We currently live in a time when everyone thinks themselves, and wishes to prove themselves to be, special. Whether the particular individual desires to be smart, athletic, attractive, or whatever, the desire is to be unique in such a way that one is recognized as unique. We are no longer satisfied with quiet accomplishment, with local achievements. There was a day when being successful meant that one could take care of one’s family, but now that seems too little, too mundane. Being successful, now, is being above average or making a global—or historical—impact. This is not special. It is simply another kind of wanting to be God, one of many ways our idolatry has expressed itself and will express itself. The problem is twofold: on the one hand, we are wrong about what it is to be special, on the other hand, we value this form of specialness disproportionately highly.

                It is not that we are not each special, but that our sense of what it is to be special has been distorted. We believe that being special is behavioral. To be special, then, one must do something special, or behave specially. One’s life must appear special, or one is not special. And if being special is behavioral, then it is recognizable, and so we expect to be recognized. Fame, then, is a necessary concurrent to being special. If one is special, then one will become famous to the same degree. Some will seek more fame, then, because they believe themselves to be more special.

Some may acknowledge that they are not the kind of special that most recognize as special, but they will very often simply be seeking fame in a different group. One might seek to be a famous pop star, or a famous academic, or a famous public speaker, writer, technologist, physicist, or any of a number of different lifestyles and jobs. This desire to be special is not, therefore, limited to those who have particular talents in storytelling, public speaking, or music. It is, at least in theory, a realizable desire for anyone. Blogs, YouTube, Twitter, etc., make fame a possibility for anyone who is good enough at what they do. Every industry has their best people, who are famous within that industry.

For others, the desire to be special expresses itself as a desire to be merely different. To be special is to stand out, and those who are different stand out. Further, one can claim that one’s being different is a result of some other special quality—artistic sensitivity, genius, or what have you. This opens the possibility of specialness to anyone who is willing to break the norm. This is complemented by the generation’s general condescension towards along with the crowd, where it is assumed to always be a problematic instance of groupthink. This allows those who are different to claim superiority over those who are perceived as “same” rather than “other”.

One might be willing to let the term special simply change its meaning to match how it is being used in our generation. This is often how I am inclined to handle words, but I think it would be problematic here on account of the connotations that the word ‘special’ has retained. To say that something is special is to say that it is to be regarded in a certain way. If something is special, it is given a special place, on the mantle, in the center of the table—or a special person is given a special seat, near the head of the table, perhaps. If something is special, it is set apart. It is interesting to note that this is often how the term ‘holy’ is explained. To be holy is to be set apart for a particular calling. A holy cup is not to be used for just anything, but only for the service it has been set apart for (even if one does not think of cups being holy, this example gets at how the word works). To be special is equivalent to being holy, or sacred, then, but is available for secular use, that is, it is conceptually free from anything supernatural. This is why I am not inclined to simply give up the term ‘special’, because what is desired in desiring to be special is not merely fame or excelling at some activity. The desire is to be set apart from others.

That the desire for fame, or the desire to be proven special, is a desire arising out of our idolatry does not entail that fame is, in itself, bad. As with most forms of idolatry, the desire for fame, or the desire to excel in an industry or other area of life, are not bad desires. It is when those things are valued disproportionately to their worth that they become bad, and it is when the objects of those desires displace God that they become idols. The question of this section of this post is as to what is good and what is bad in striving for excellence and fame.

Fame is being known about and paid attention to by relatively many people. There is nothing bad about being famous—some people probably need to be, and Jesus was in his day. The problem is the desire for fame for fame’s sake. It would not necessarily be better to be fame averse than to seek fame. Fame can be used for the glory of God—human fame may be put to the task of spreading God’s fame. There is no need to hide from the media; however, we ought not seek to please the media either. Instead, our desire should be, first and foremost, to glorify God. When we seek fame over and against seeking the glory of God—when we seek our own fame over and against God’s fame—that is idolatry. It is God alone who deserves to be listened to, who deserves to be known, and who is worthy to be praised. We merely carry the message of the Gospel. When we are praised for whatever worldly greatness we have, we should remember that we serve a king who died on a cross, reviled and rejected by those who should have praised him. He was not great as the world counts greatness, people were excited about him because they thought he would save them from the Romans—and he did, in a way—but they did not realize that he was greater than they had ever imagined their messiah might be. Likewise, we are not to seek greatness as the world counts greatness, but we are to, instead, seek to serve others in humility and to spread the Gospel before the lost.

Excellence, likewise, is not an end in itself. Even good preaching, however it is measured, is a means to the glory of God. Excellence at any activity is good, but it is not good to seek excellence at the cost of seeking God. Rather, we should seek excellence in order to show the glory of God. We should do well at our tasks because we work as for the Lord. We should seek riches that they might be Christ’s riches, to spend as he would spend them, and we should accept poverty that we might better show our reliance on God’s provision. To be good at anything apart from God is worthless. We may stand out, but we will die. We should seek to be good at what we do because it is what we have been called to by our Lord, not because we hope to be praised by mere humans. What good is human praise if the God of creation rejects you?

It is all well and good to point out what is wrong with a way of thinking and living, but we must not leave the issue without asking what the Gospel has to do with it. Why do we live like this? How does the Gospel of Jesus Christ, how does Christ’s death, free us from this way of living? Let us begin by noting that this way of living is rooted in the desire to be separate, to be unique. Whether by means of excellence, or merely by being different, the end is to stand apart from the rest of the world. In Christ, we have already been made holy, and are called to be holy. This means that we have been set apart by Christ’s death to live set apart lives unto God. We are unworldly. We are, thus, the other to the world. Further, we are known in our uniqueness by God. We are known by name, that is, personally, as the unique person we are. God knows us as he made us. He recognizes our weakness, and so sent his son. He also recognizes our strengths—he gave them to us—and calls us to use them. Even if we do not recognize that God is calling us to use those strengths, we know that God knows our strengths better than we do—further, the very place where we are weak, God’s glory shines through all the more, and so our weakness is strength. We can, therefore, trust God to guide us into the good works which he set apart for us to do, and which we have been set apart to do. In the world’s eyes, we may waste ourselves, but the alternative is to waste ourselves in God’s eyes. In the world’s eyes we may appear dull, boring, invisible against the backdrop of those around us, or we may appear different in all the wrong ways, but that is the cost of fitting into the kingdom of God: we won’t fit into the kingdom of this present age, we will rub it the wrong way, we will be in pain simply because we see the evil in it—but one day we will see the kingdom of God in all its glory, and then all things will be made right, and then we will shout and sing and dance the glory and majesty and goodness of God.

On the Possibility of Determinist Arminians

Okay, I am not an Arminian. The point of this is to show that, even if everyone were to agree to determinism, it would not necessarily remove the arguments between Calvinists and Arminians, and thus things like the Wesleyan denomination would still have a reason to exist beyond adding to the total number of denominations.

I take the relevant difference in this debate to be, not that of whether or not we have free will, but that of who the active agent in salvation is. I also believe that this question an be separated from the free will debate. I am not planning on saying much else in this post.

A Calvinist will say that God is the active agent, causing us to have faith. An Arminian will say that God initiates, enabling us to have faith by prevenient grace, but that we must each finally choose to have faith in Christ.

The hard part is separating the agent question from the free will debate. Given determinism, God knows the future. He knows what will happen given any original state of the universe he might create, and, given his nature, what he will do in that universe and how that will affect things. Thus, God knows who will be saved and has a certain amount of control over who is saved. However, this is a different kind of control than the Calvinist ascribes to God. The Calvinist holds that God chooses each individual. What determinism entails is just that God can choose from a certain number of, likely restricted, sets of possible saved people, which set to actualize.

So, given determinism, an Arminian needs to hold that God chooses from a set of possible worlds, and in each possible world, a certain set of people are saved--which God knows even while choosing which world to actualize. God's choice is therefore limited by the nature of the individual persons. He may choose, again to a limited extent, which set of persons to actualize, but which of those persons comes to faith would then be reliant on the natures of those people and their circumstances.

I think this leaves a meaningful distinction between the God as active agent and the person as active agent in salvation. I also think that this is actually where the difference is problematic--even given determinism. I therefore also think that the free will debate is not really all that important to theology.