The Reason for Heterosexuality in the Creator/creature Divide

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.

For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.

And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them. (Romans 1:18-32)

 The unkillable debate regarding the appropriateness of what is called homosexual marriage tends to try to go on in a non-theological strain, with occasional debates amongst Christians about what the Bible says about it. But the What the Bible says question tends to just be about whether the Bible condones or prohibits homosexual relationships. This post is an attempt to circumvent historical studies suggesting that this passages does not mean that the Bible prohibits homoexual behavior, and then to elucidate what the reasoning behind that prohibition seems to be.

The prohibition is in verses 26-27 "For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error." So, to circumvent the questionable historical studies, read: "For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another" and assume whatever you like about how such relations went at the time. What does Paul actually appear concerned with here? It is set up as a switch, not from one style of relating to another, but from heterosexual partners to homosexual partners. They gave up A and adopted B and the only difference Paul notes between the two is homo/heterosexuality.

So, then, what is the logic? The preceding two verses, 24-25 "Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen." That is, because they switched from worshiping the Creator to the creature, God gave them up to switch from heterosexuality to homosexuality. How does that work?

Among theologians, there is what is called the Creator/creature divide, based on passages like this one. The point made by it is that God is a completely different sort of being from us. Creatures are contingent, and have their existence in a completely different way from a necessary being, i.e., God, the Creator.

In God's relationship with  his people, of in Christ's relationship with the Church, there is a relation between two fundamentally different kinds of beings. There is the Creator in relationship with the creature. And marriage images this. On that basis, I think we can understand what happens here. When we give up the recognition that our lives are lived in relation to an utterly other being, we will tend to give up the idea that marriage should be between fundamentally different sorts of human beings.

I think we can see this happen in other places, too. As we become more inclusive, and more willing to say that people can get to God through a variety of means, we should expect polygamy, because it makes God out to be a polygamist.

Now, one might argue that this connection is silly, because most people do not explicitly draw any connection between their views on God and their relationship to him, and marriage. What I am suggesting is that we do not need to be explicit about this connection for it to do its work. We are designed so that our views about our relationship to God and our views of marriage will affect each other. This may be part of why it is so easy for romance songs to go too far and sound like worship of the beloved.

If we conceive of the greatest, most important relationship possible along certain lines, we will be inclined to seek to develop our greatest, most important earthly relationship along similar lines. It will necessarily provide the template for what that kind of relationship is like.

Ockham's Razor and Reductionism

Here is a decently common argument for Naturalism or Physicalism:
1. Ockham's Razor: the simplest explanation of the phenomena is the best
2. Anything beyond the physical is more complicated and unnecessary
Ergo: 3. We should use the physical to explain everything.

1 is fine, 2 is the one I want to poke.

Here is my thesis: the complexity of an explanation cannot be determined by merely counting the number of kinds of things it involves. That is, while if the only difference between two theories was that one included non-physical stuff and one stopped with the physical, then the former would be the more complicated. However, if the former also explains the phenomena in a more straightforward way, bringing in fewer additional principles or new laws of physics, etc., then the question becomes more complicated.

In this particular case, for instance, is it really simpler to assume that only physical things exist (matter/energy) and that certain configurations of matter/energy give rise to conscious experience, or is it simpler to assume that some kind of non-physical stuff is required for consciousness? It does not seem, to me, that it is particularly straightforward. It may be that supposing a new sort of thing that by fiat can handle consciousness is no better than supposing that certain configurations of old stuff can handle it--neither really explains why the configuration or stuff should give rise to consciousness. On the other hand, some think that it is absurd to suppose that the non-conscious can give rise to the conscious, and so it is less complicated to explain the conscious by hypothesizing a conscious sort of stuff than to try to explain how non-conscious stuff can give rise to conscious stuff, or why we should not treat our couches as conscious. Thus, a new kind of stuff may create fewer additional problems than stopping with matter/energy, and in that sense be simpler.

However, why shouldn't we just hypothesize a new kind of thing every time we encounter a problem? We could almost always argue that it would entail fewer new problems. My answer to this is to note that I do not disagree that adding new kinds of things increases the complexity of any theory it is added to. There is a balance to be had, and weighing these is probably not a straightforward task.

What we are dealing with in this task is a cost-benefit-analysis-type situation. Some of these costs are the cost of adding a new kind of thing, or a new principle of how things work. We also have to deal with benefits that a theory brings if it is successful. There are also costs in the realm of everyday life, although these rarely come up. An example is that, with quantum mechanics, we needed to find a way of talking about quantum effects that left us able to retain such presuppositions as the principle of non-contradiction. Leaving the world in a state where we can live in it according to our theories is an additional desideratum for any theory, then. The cost associated with losing our ability to integrate our scientific outlook with our everyday outlook without contradiction, so that scientists believe themselves to be contradicting their scientific beliefs by walking across the street, for example, is, I believe, an insuperable cost. Any account of consciousness and choice must recon with these, whether it is scientific in the usual sense, or philosophical.

The scientific outlook is premised on the idea that we can live in the world, and that we can live better in the world by better understanding the world we live in. If a theory throws that presupposition out the window, then we find ourselves in fundamental conflict with the world around us. From a Christian perspective, this is not permissible because we believe in a good creator God. From any other perspective, however, it is prima facie possible that our pre-scientific awareness of the world, and our pre-scientific lived assumptions about the world, are in conflict with how things actually are in such a manner that our default, instinctive, basic manner of dealing with the world may be irrational according to how the world is. It may, for example, actually be irrational to talk of moral oughts, rationality, choice, beauty, or altruism. Without a presupposition in place that says that this is unacceptable, we cannot rule out the possibility that our discoveries are all totally false, that the external world is an illusion, or that our scientific program will lead to Lovecraftian physics textbooks, the reading of which would drive people insane.

Schismatics

"I'm a Christian but I'm not..." so goes most of my generation that claims Christianity.

Most recently, this has appeared in Buzzfeed's video. Read this, it addresses a lot of good commentary, which I do not intend to repeat. It also has a transcript.

This phrase, this meme--it is that viral--serves to distinguish the one saying it from the Church. "I'm a Christian, but don't bundle me with all those other Christians." Are we so content to separate from our brothers and sisters? Are we not supposed to seek unity in the body of Christ?

Is this what Paul meant by "stir one another up to love and good works"? Is this what it is to love the body of Christ? Can we respond to 1 John 4: 20 "If anyone says, 'I love God,' and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen." by honestly saying that we have loved our brothers?

There is a virus in our culture. We love to hate. Everyone hates Americans, even Americans ("I'm an American, but I'm not culturally insensitive"), and this is the same language, the same attitude, but it is Christians hating Christians. We try to make ourselves look cool by mocking our own group with those we want to look cool to. It is ugly. These are the schismatics of our day, who would divide the body of Christ for the sake of human glory, who refuse the hard work of "...discern[ing] what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect." (Romans 12:2). Let us rather by transformed as a holy people.

I've written articles on most of the issues being raised (if flippantly) in these "I'm a Christian, but I'm not..."s, and I haven't seen anything to suggest my arguments are wrong. I've seen arguments that go contrary to my own, but been unconvinced by them. "To go against conscience is neither right nor safe," (Luther) particularly conscience informed by Scripture and observed by reason in submission to Scripture.

They will know we are Christians by our love (John 13:35), but "I'm a Christian but I'm not like the stereotypical Christian" does not sound like love. Even if it were right to not be those things that people are saying they are not, we are not saved by what we are not. We are not saved by being educated, pro-gay-(")marriage("), feminist, or any of the other things the recent video. Neither are we saved by being the opposite. We are saved by the grace of God for us when we were sinners, and we have been justified by his grace, so that we are no longer merely "not perfect" but also perfect before God because we are clothed with the perfection of Christ. We may not end with "I'm not perfect" but must also recognize that this is a problem we cannot handle, and which must be handled.

Our love is a transformational love, for Christ's love has transformed us. It is a sacrificial love, for Christ suffered and died for us. It is an offensive love, for Christ did not die for being inoffensive.

"For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written,

'I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.'

Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men." 1 Corinthians 1:18-25

This text follows the part where Paul appeals to the Corinthians to be united. We must be content with this, which appears as foolishness to the world, or we will be divided, and we will dilute the gospel. We must present the gospel in all of the offensiveness which it has, "...lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power" 1 Corinthians 1:17

Nahum 3:8-13

“Are you better than Thebes that sat by the Nile…?” This section is a comparison of Nineveh to Thebes, which was destroyed by the Assyrians already by this point. This question is the lens through which the rest of the passage is to be viewed. Thebes was great too, you know, but she was destroyed, why do you think you will fare any better?

“Are you better than Thebes that sat by the Nile, with waters around her, her rampart a sea and water her wall? Cush was her strength; Egypt too, and that without limit; Put and the Libyans were her helpers.” Nahum says that this is what Thebes was like, and is implicitly saying that Nineveh is quite similar. I do not understand how Thebes had waters around her, her rampart a sea and water her wall, but evidently there is a way of looking at Thebes which rightly makes her appear that way. And Nahum looks at Thebes, and sees her defenses, and her fall, and then he looks at his present situation, and looks at Nineveh, and he sees that, since the first fell, so, too, might the latter, and, as a prophet, the LORD reveals to him that the latter will, in fact, fall.

“Yet she became an exile; she went into captivity;” so we have, then, Thebes was well protected too, and she had strong allies too, but in the end none of that saved her. “her infants were dashed in pieces at the head of every street; for her honored men lots were cast, and all her great men were bound in chains.” Thebes was publicly humiliated. Those who should have been safest, the infants, were dashed in pieces, and not on the highways, but at the head of every street. In the city itself, in the open, the were dashed to pieces. Thebes was shown to be impotent in this way: she could not even protect her infants. Well, one might say, infants can be hard to protect: they cannot defend themselves, after all. And so Nahum turns to the other end of the spectrum: her honored men, her great men, those who should have been able to defend themselves. Thebes was utterly humiliated on both ends: she could not protect those she would have most known to protect, nor those she should have been able to most easily protect. Her defenses did not defend, she was exposed to the invaders, in spite of all her power and allies.

And so, Nahum goes on to tell Nineveh, you cannot expect any of those defenses to save you either. As he says, “You also will be drunken; you will go into hiding; you will seek a refuge from the enemy.” This comparison, to make it more relatable, perhaps, is as if one were to respond to someone who was winning a tournament, who said “No one can beat me!” “Ah, you quote the last champion, who you are now beating! Why should I believe you, when he appears to have been wrong?” Look around, reader, what do you hear from the rich and powerful? Are they happy? Are they satisfied? Does it go well with them, or do they seem to have their lives under control? Do we not hear, again and again, of those who, through mistakes or misfortunes, fall from power? They had wealth, and friends in high places. They had successful careers and promising futures. Yet how many of them have fallen? How many have been publicly ridiculed? Do you trust in those things which you have seen fail others? Why should it be any different with you? Why should it not also go poorly with you? But trust in the LORD, not wealth, not fame, not friends, not your own power, but the LORD, and he will preserve you. I do not guarantee that he will give you wealth or fame or friends or power, but he will be to you wealth and fame—for being watched by the LORD is better than being watched by the whole world—and the greatest of friends, and the most powerful one. By drunk with the Spirit, hide your life in Christ, seek refuge in God.

But if you do not trust in the LORD, then what is said of Nineveh will, whether in this age or the one to come, be true of you, “All your fortresses”—all those things in which you trusted rather than trusting in the LORD—“All your fortresses,” Nahum says, “are like fig trees with first-ripe figs—if shaken they fall into the mouth of the eater.” Those fortresses? They are ready to topple. What kind of fortresses are these, that fall as easily as ripe figs? We are not accustomed to picking figs, but the same may be said of apples: when you shake an apple tree with ripe apples on it—or even, sometimes, when you brush such a branch gently—the apple does not wait to picked, but falls to the ground. These fortresses will be as easily taken as that.

“Behold, your troops are women in your midst. The gates of your land are wide open to your enemies; fire has devoured your bars.” Your troops are as good as troops, and your gates are as good as gates, as your fortresses are good as fortresses, which is to say: you may as well not have any of it. Your army is worthless, your gates may as well be wide open, and your fortresses will fall as easily as first-ripe figs.

“Your troops are as women in your midst.” The women, I take it, were not trained as warriors, or were not expected to be very good at fighting anyways. Your troops are untrained, and may well have never thought of fighting—or that is how good they are. Your defenses against this world are weak, you go out to fight with dull blades. Your bullets are confetti, your artillery is jammed. You think you keep the LORD away with these? They are as nothing to him. He will do as he wills, and nothing can stop him.

“The gates of your land are wide open to your enemies; fire has devoured your bars.” You may as well give the burglar the keys to your safe, if the LORD has chosen to have your safe burgled. His will is decisive—not that we ought not properly safeguard what the LORD has entrusted to us, but in the end, it is the LORD who decides what will happen to us and our things. We cannot keep him out of our lives. If we reject him, he will invade to destroy us. If we welcome him, he will enliven us. If he has determined to enliven us, we cannot stop him.

Your wealth is no safer now than it was just prior to the collapse of the housing bubble. Your job is no safer now than it was just prior to the Great Depression. Your home is not so safe that it might not be burgled or burn to the ground. Your health could deteriorate at any moment, you could be hit by a car today, or get cancer. Your friends could desert you. I do not seek to make you afraid, except if that should make you place your trust in the LORD who is sovereign over all these things rather than in created things. Your fortresses are really crummy fortresses, but “The LORD is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble” (1:7). Your fortresses will not save you, you cannot fight for yourself,  you cannot save yourself, and you cannot keep God out of your life. Your only hope must be that the LORD will be your fortress, that Christ Jesus will fight for you, and that the Spirit will enter into your life to restore you to newness of life.

This is good news. Your fundamental insecurity in yourself is good news. We do not usually hear it as good news, we usually hear our insecurity as bad news and try to do something about it. Just the other day I saw an advertisement or infomercial for generators which had several testimonies of how people had lost food in their fridges, or their basements had flooded when the power went out, and how they used to worry when they left their house for fear that the power would go out and that would happen again, but who now feel safe because of this generator. Now, it may well be reasonable to buy a generator, but this advertisement appealed to our fears, our worries, our desire for earthly security. There are ads telling us to stock up on food, to take self-defense classes, to learn first-aid and CPR, so that we or our friends and family won’t die when bad things happen. Thousands of advertisements appeal to our desire for security, telling us that if we buy this product or take that course we will be able to better ensure our own or our family’s safety. Now, protecting our safety and the safety of others is good, but it is not ultimate, and, ultimately, we cannot ensure it. Why is this good news? It is good news in the same way that it is good news to hear that you and I are sinners, that we can do nothing to save ourselves. If we cannot make ourselves secure, if we cannot save ourselves, then we do not need to worry about saving ourselves. If we cannot save ourselves, then our failure thus far to save ourselves makes sense. If we are sinners, if we are fundamentally insecure in ourselves, then we have no reason to be concerned with making ourselves more secure in ourselves. If we recognize that, as far as what the LORD can do to us, our generators have dead batteries, our sump pumps are as hoses turned full blast, our refrigerators are as boxes of moldy bread, in short all our works are rubbish, then we will have no reason to be concerned with our lack of generators, sump pumps, refrigerators, or good works, insofar as none of these can save us from the wrath of God. We are all wretched sinners, separated from God and meriting his just condemnation.

The gospel goes further, of course, it does not leave us all separated from God. It says not only that you cannot save yourself, but also that Jesus Christ, God become flesh, has died so that whoever believes in him will be saved. The sin which separates you from God has been dealt with in Christ Jesus if you have been joined to him in his death. You cannot save yourself—only God can. The gospel is both that you do not need to save yourself because Christ has already done it all, and also that you cannot save yourself, so that you must trust wholly on Jesus death and resurrection, hoping in his righteousness applied to your own account. And this enables us to let go of our own protections: if God saves us, if God is for us, then who can be against us? What can mortal man do to me? If God has numbered my days, then why should I be concerned about the time of my death? If God is God, then I do not need to fill that position, if I trust him. And the gospel is that if we do trust him to save us, then he will save us, and all things will work together for our good. In Christ we are preserved from the wrath of God, and we are no longer judged for our sins, but we are disciplined and pruned, for our heavenly Father is good to chastise us and teach us. So we do not now say, “I do not, really, need a generator, for it cannot save me,” but, since the question of whether it can save me or not is no longer here nor there, “I do not, really, need a generator, for if the LORD my God sees fit to deprive me of electricity, then it will be for my good, and if it would not be good for me to be deprived of electricity, then I will not be deprived of electricity” and we can be confident of this because we know that if God did not spare his own Son for us, but gave him up for us, how shall he not with him give us all good things? But I am not saying to be foolhardy with what the LORD has entrusted to us, generators are not bad. It is the worry that is bad, for it betrays a lack of trust in the LORD. A generator bought for the glory of God is not bad, but good, just as when the exiles returned they rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem for God’s glory. If the LORD would preserve your electricity through a generator, so be it, for he has similarly preserved your life through the preaching of men, by which you heard the gospel. Yet it is, in the final analysis, fully and only by grace that you have been saved. The preaching was given you by the will of the LORD, and your generator is only able to work because the LORD sustains it. If you buy a generator in worry, then it may well fail you in order that you might learn to trust the LORD. This would be good: to trust the LORD is better than anything else, it is better than food in the fridge, it is better than whatever is in your basement, it is better than light, and internet, and the reading of books. Read the Word of the LORD, meditate on it day and night, lean not on your own understanding, but in all your ways acknowledge him. Read it now, while it is still light, that when darkness comes you may remember it, and meditate on it, and so grow in the Word of the LORD, and thus grow in true wisdom and knowledge and understanding.

What of Nineveh? She is destroyed. She is flooded by her false protection, she is drunk. Is this good news? Yes. It is good because we must have Christ alone for our salvation. Nineveh rejected the only possible protection: the LORD. We must desire, then, that her fake protections be shown fake. We are glad to see that what we have said is true: that salvation belongs to the LORD, and to the LORD alone. Nineveh falls because she stood on her own defenses, her own works, and they must fail her, just as they will fail anyone who trusts in them. If our works could save us, then we would not need Christ, nor would we have to trust in him alone. If the enemies of God stood, then could we reasonably say that their trust was false? Could we say that one ought not trust in human devices, but only on God? If everything turned out just fine for everyone, then what advantage would there be in Christ Jesus? Nineveh must fall that Jerusalem might stand. And there must be a Nineveh, that we may see, that we may behold, that we might exalt in the wrath and justice of the LORD our God, that we may see that he is good to call us to trust in him alone, that we may see that apart from him we would die. This glorifies the LORD our God, and in that we rejoice.

Here is one more thing to notice: Nahum is concerned about Assyria conquering Judah, and he is able to look around at the nations and see that Egypt fell. He draws from this the conclusion that Assyria, too, may fall. Assyria was a wicked and powerful kingdom, she did not expect to fall. Nahum looks and sees that other nations have been just as strong, yet fell. What is the power of nations before God? He is the one who raises up rulers, and brings them low. Nahum knows that he need not fear Assyria because he can see the similarities between Nineveh and Thebes well enough to recognize that the LORD is powerful enough in Nineveh’s case, just as in Thebes’s, to send her into exile. Here is the point: we do not need to worry about what the kingdoms of this world will do to us. It doesn’t really matter, ultimately, whether we are ostracized or persecuted or anything, God is still in control, and he still has our best interests in mind. The Supreme Court of the USA is just the highest human court in the land, it is not that powerful. The LORD has their hearts like rivers in his hands, he directs how they shall go. And, as utterly unthinkable and unlikely as it is, America could fall tomorrow, just like Assyria fell. Rome fell, Alexander the Great’s empire fell, Hitler’s Germany fell, the English fell as a superpower. Or America could stand for eons, if the LORD wills. In either case, what is that to you? You, follow Christ. Christ who conquered sin and death by his death on the cross. There is the ultimate enemy of Christianity defeated. The devil’s head has been crushed. If God could destroy the devil by the death of his Son, Jesus Christ, then why not bring down the lies and iniquities of today by the troubles of his children, the Church? And would this not be a glorious opportunity? We would be imaging Christ! The servants are not greater than the master; we would rejoice to be counted worthy to suffer for Christ’s sake, however mediocre the suffering.

Communion

The Lord's Supper is the most regular sacrament. Baptism being the other, and it only being celebrated when someone professes turning to Jesus Christ in faith for the forgiveness of sins. The Lord's Supper is a formational element of worship. In it, we proclaim Christ's death until he comes again (1 Corinthians 11:26).

In Communion, with whom do we commune? Do we really commune? "This is my body" "This is my blood" so Jesus said. I do not intend to debate regarding the meaning of the linking verb--doctrines should not be built on such by themselves. Look, rather, at what follows. The blood is the blood of the covenant. It is the blood by which we are brought into a covenantal relationship with God. The body of Christ, broken for us on the cross is that body to which we are joined by the Holy Spirit.

Let us try the idea that the Lord's Supper is merely a representation, that the cup merely signifies Christ's blood, and that the bread merely signifies his body. Okay, I'm a bit of a philosophy geek, so the question I am inclined to ask is, "what does it mean that A signifies B?" And plenty has been written about signifiers, but let me just point out two things:1. words are signs, they signify, as it were, meanings (and the Wittgensteinian in me requires that I put caution tape around that word, "meaning"--a word by itself means nothing, it only means things in contexts) 2. we eat our words when we want to take back what we mean. Conclusion? Signs basically are, or at least may be treated the same as, what they signify. If the cup signifies Jesus Christ's blood, poured out for the forgiveness of sins, then, when I drink of it, I am engaged in drinking the blood of Christ. I do not mean this in any metaphysically weird way, as in transubstantiation, nor is it necessary to invoke Christ's infinite spiritual body and blood, nor need we say that the Spirit spans the distance between us and heaven so that Christ's body and blood are present in that way. Simply because the bread and the cup signify Christ's body and blood, we are partaking of Christ's body and blood, receiving from his death. And since God has ordained this sacrament, so that the signification is, necessarily, true, that is, what we say by partaking of the elements is true, we will receive from his death either the benefits or the curse thereof. The benefit is communion with God, received by faith; the curse is judgement (1 Corinthians 11:29).

It is sometimes said that Christianity is not a religion, but a relationship. By that it is meant that in Christianity we have a person rather than rules. This seems like an odd dichotomy, for people give rules, after all. Growing up, was my being-raised a relationship or rules? Certainly the former, and the latter would have been worthless at best without the former, but both existed. I was raised in a relationship partially structured by rules. The Lord's Supper is something we are commanded to do, and it is one of those things which appears most religious about Christianity. It is also one of the focal points of the relationship of Christianity.

Finally, who should receive the Lord's Supper? From 1 Corinthians 11:28 we have: only the one who examines himself and from the nature of the act we know that only the one who professes faith ought to partake of it, lest we encourage lying. This latter entails that only the baptized should receive communion, for all those who have professed faith should be baptized. Lastly, we know that all of those who so qualify and are present should receive both the bread and the cup since Jesus says "Drink of it, all of you" Matthew 26:27, and since nowhere is a distinction made between those who receive the bread and those who receive the cup, but rather those who should desire to drink the cup are those who know that they need the blood shed for the forgiveness of sins, and those who should desire the bread are those who desire to remember Christ, and both are said to proclaim Christ's death until he comes again, by Paul. Therefore, as those who would proclaim Christ's death unto life to a dying world, we should desire to partake of communion often. We should feel denied our right as Christians if ever communion is served and we are retrained without good reason from partaking of it. We should care because we want to be those who proclaim Jesus's death to the world until he comes again.

Incomplete Reductio on Free Will

Let worlds be partial. A complete world is a set of all possibly true and possibly false propositions, together with their truth values. A partial world does not specify truth values for some of the propositions. In a partial world W, p is not either true or false, but either both possible true and possibly false, or either true or false. For every partial world, every possible (i.e., logically coherent) completion of it, whether complete or partial, is also a possible world. Thus, if in W = {p is F, q is T, r is both possibly T and possibly F} then {p is F, q is T, and r is T}  is a possible world, and {p is F, q is T, and r is F} are both also possible worlds. Any proposition which is specified in the same way in every possible completion is considered specified in that way in the original partial world.

Assume that there exists a possible (partial) world where the proposition ‘x is saved’ is unspecified for all x where x is a human, and that there are no propositions of the form “if p, then a is saved” (where a is some human) where p is unspecified (it cannot be true without specifying the truth of a is saved), and where there is no corresponding proposition “if not-p, then a is saved” (where a is some human). In that case, in some possible world, the proposition ‘x is saved’ would be false for all x where x is a human.

The original possible world, call it W, corresponds to a world where individuals have the capacity in themselves to determine, to some extent, their eternal destiny. The argument is not dependent on the actual unspecifiedness of truth values (and thus, granting God’s complete foreknowledge does not get one out of the conclusion). The unspecifiedness of the truth values of all ‘x is saved’ where x is human is intended to model LFW. So long as my salvation or damnation are not dependent on external forces, or at least so long as my damnation cannot be precluded by external forces, the argument should follow. Even assuming a Calmenian approach, where eternal security is granted with irresistible grace, the conclusion will follow, since each human has some choice over whether to enter into that state where they are stuck saved. The only way that the conclusion may be resisted is if propositions in the original partial world require that some people be saved, in which case the salvation of some will be based on external forces.

There are a variety of ways to modify the original world so as to more closely model views of our actual initial position. One may specify that certain special individuals are predestined, but so long as there are not too many of them, the conclusion retains its force. One may specify that the damnation of some is specified in the original world on account of a lack of opportunity, but this does not change the conclusion. One may specify that there are propositions in W of the form “if p, then a is saved” (where a is some human) where p is unspecified, and where there is a corresponding proposition “if not-p, then a is saved” (where a is some human), but in this case the specification of p will either be up to God, in which case he will be choosing sets of humans, rather than individual humans, and a kind of determination is included (I have suggested this as a kind of deterministic Arminianism before), or p is up to humans (or chance). In the case where it is up to humans (because humans have LFW) or chance, human freedom over one’s own salvation is still not retained, although neither is particular election—which strikes me as a worst of both worlds option, although intriguing. There is a plausible exception to the loss of human freedom where p is determined by humans in very restricted cases where p is a moral decision by some human, such as seeking God, but it is difficult to imagine many cases where it would intuitively be of the sort desired here, where either p or not-p will result in someone’s salvation. One further modification is to specify that the world will not end until some minimum number of humans have been saved. This last modification results in some world never ending, and having a number of humans approaching infinity, while others will be front loaded with damned people. It does not, however, evade the conclusion.

Given the argument, then, we effectively have

Premise: humans have LFW

Conclusion: There is some possible world where no one is saved.

The above modifications either limit LFW or change no one to almost no one. In the latter case, the modification does not seem to be of the sort which would alter our consideration of the argument. The argument is intended as a reduction on LFW, and so the first kind of modification is the intended result of the argument. The remaining option is to acknowledge the argument, claim that both the premise and conclusion are true, albeit not in our world. In this last case God could not guarantee that he would save a people for himself. He could know that, as it happens, he would save a people for himself, however, which may be enough. There would be no guarantee that, if God created a world, any of the humans would be saved as opposed to damned. He could create the world knowing how it would turn out, however, but could not constrain the worlds at his disposal to create to include worlds with humans who would be saved as a people for himself. We would expect, in that case, that, had there been no worlds where anyone was saved, God would not have created. We might likewise suppose that of the worlds available to God, on account of LFW, this was the one with, say, the least evil and the most saved people.

We also result in an order of creation as follows:

1.       God exists, and imagines all possible worlds.

2.       God’s foreknowledge of these worlds includes how people would behave in each of these beginning worlds.

3.       God determines how he would interact with each of the possible worlds (and foreknows the humans’ free responses to any of his possible interactions with them, to which he determines his interactions, etc., knowing how each possible action on his part would affect the worlds).

4.       God selects a (best, according to some measure) world, together with the foreknown free actions of humans and of himself.

5.       God creates the world, lets it run, and interacts with it and the humans in it, as foreknown.

Effectively, this appears to be a variety of Molinism. Placing divine choice where the above order places it, that is, above/outside of time, avoids the issue of God being determined by having foreknowledge (which I have argued for before). If we eliminate divine foreknowledge, however, there is no guarantee that the world God creates ends up being one in which anyone at all is saved.

Nahum 3:1-7

“Woe to the bloody city, all full of lies and plunder—no end to the prey!” The previous chapter ended with the promise of the utter destruction of Nineveh. We might, having finished chapter 2, have thought Nahum was done, but no, with chapter 3 he continues to emphasize what the LORD said through him in the last verse of chapter 2, “Behold, I am against you, declares the LORD of hosts,” which is repeated in 3:5. There is a shift now, however, Nahum is now going on to detail the  Where we ended in chapter 2, with desolation and ruin, we now back up to see Nineveh’s present strength, and to see her evil for which she is being judged and her true weakness. In a way, we are travelling back over ground covered in chapter 1:12, “Though they are at full strength and many, they will be cut down and pass away,” but the emphasis has changed. There, the emphasis was that the enemies of God’s people would be cut down—that Judah would be safe, here the emphasis is more on the fact that Nineveh will be destroyed, that she will be judged. It is not only for the safety of Judah that the LORD judges Nineveh, but also because the LORD is just. This justice benefits Judah, and that benefit to Judah is not incidental, but it is also not the whole story. So we can also say that the LORD does not vanquish the devil merely for our sake, but also for his name’s sake. He is just, and cannot permit sin to go unpunished. We are benefitted by the LORD’s just destruction of evil if we are those whose enemy is thereby destroyed, that is, if we place our joy in the LORD, and know and recognize that he is good. If we make the enemies of the LORD our enemies, if we hate what the LORD hates and love what he loves, then his justice will be beautiful in our eyes.

So we have, here, “Woe to the city,” that is, woe to Nineveh. Why? Because she is “all full of lies and plunder—no end to the prey!” She lies, deceives nations, and plunders them. She conquers, not with justice, but with deception. Here the point is the evil that Nineveh has done, not merely the particular threat she is to Judah. It is because the LORD is just, as well as jealous, and here the justice is foregrounded. So we should see, here, that our good is bound up with the LORD’s justice. Our hope in heaven is bound together with a healthy fear of hell. You simply do not get salvation of the LORD’s people without the damnation of his enemies. “The crack of the whip, and rumble of the wheel, galloping horse and bounding chariot! Horsemen charging, flashing word and glittering spear,” again, we have the chariots which the LORD has promised to burn, this strength that Nineveh trusts in. “hosts of slain, heaps of corpses, dead bodies without end—they stumble over the bodies!” Indeed, as the first verse said, “no end to the prey!” Here, then, is what caused Judah to fear. Here is the strength of the enemy. We might compare this to the Church in places where she is obviously oppressed, and the masses of martyrs which are often produced when the Church is most visibly oppressed. There, too, we find “dead bodies without end” and there, too, our enemies stumbles over the bodies. Our deaths are an impediment to the spread of lies because whether we live or die we do so to the glory of God, and so our deaths pronounce the truth of the beauty of the glory of the LORD, and often makes people think, “who are these, that they die like this?” But we need not restrict these thoughts to where the Church is most visibly oppressed, for the Church is always more or less oppressed, and more or less visibly—sometimes greatly, yet invisibly, oppressed, sometimes mildly but quite visibly, often both visibly and greatly—and so always stands out and suffers for Christ’s sake. Indeed, the Church is always visibly persecuted from her point of view, whether others get it or not, because we can feel how poorly this world fits our new frame. We no longer fit the mold of this world, we are not of it, but we are in it, and so we suffer as those who were not made for our environs, and this suffering serves to magnify the fact that we find our highest pleasure and greatest happiness in the LORD. We are a holy, a unique, people, and that is often visible as we are persecuted.

And what lies behind the strength of Nineveh? What motivates these soldiers? “And all for the countless whorings of the prostitute, graceful and of deadly charms, who betrays nations with her whorings and peoples with her charms.” It is not the love of God, it is not a righteous motive. Why do the nations fall before Nineveh? She deceives them, tricks them. Her soldiers are hers by means of her grace and charms, and so, when those charms are gone, so too will all her strength. When the going gets tough, the soldiers will desert. There is nothing substantial to keep them on Nineveh’s side. Nineveh’ beauties are accidental to her, that is, there is no beauty to Nineveh, but she has adorned herself to appear beautiful when she is not. But we, the people of God, why do we stand? Is it for some fleeting pleasure? No, it is for the LORD, we stand as a holy nation because we have been called out by God. We do not cower and flee when trials come, because we know that the LORD intends them for good, as he intends all things for good. Our pleasure is in the LORD, who is unchangeable, unlike the nations which pass away. We cling to the LORD because we see his true and absolute beauty. The LORD’s beauty is not accidental to him, but a necessary attribute—God is beautiful, and always beautiful, and necessarily must be beautiful. That is what is seen in the deaths of the martyrs, and that is why the enemy stumbles over their bodies. If we are allied with the LORD, then his justice is for our good, but if we are not allied with the LORD, if we are instead allied with his enemies, then we will flee. As the allies of Nineveh fled when she fell, so the unbelievers will flee when the justice of the LORD comes down like rain.

This stark contrast is what makes us as Christians, and particularly the martyrs, stand out: those who live, as it were, in Nineveh, those who remain in Satan’s realm and love his rule, are there because they believe that that is the most pleasurable thing for them. So when they see us so obviously living for another ruler, seeking something different, not the fleeting pleasures of this life, but the eternal and full pleasures of joy in the LORD, our lives—our deaths—suggest that there is more pleasure in the LORD than anything this world can offer. We all live for what we believe will make us the most happy, and so when we live for the LORD above everything else, in spite of every trial we are faced with, even death, we show that we believe and find the LORD to be the greatest source of pleasure and happiness and joy there is.

Nineveh is a whore, Nahum says. In what way? Often, Israel and Judah are compared to a whore because they whore after other gods, departing from their appointed husband, the LORD. It is unclear whether or not the same meaning is meant here as there, that is, whether Nineveh’s whoredom is her idolatry. It may be that the whoredom refers merely to Nineveh’s trickery, that she seduces nations by her charms, and it is certainly meant in at least that way, as it says that she “betrays nations with her whorings and peoples with her charms.” But, of course, her trickery was a form of idolatry, for she trusted in her deceptions rather than in the LORD. This links Nineveh very strongly to the devil, who is called the father of lies.

So, then, we have, repeated again, “Behold, I am against you, declares the LORD of hosts,” And how is this worked out? “and will lift up your skirts over your face; and I will make nations to look at your nakedness and kingdom at your shame.” That is, the LORD will expose Nineveh’s powerlessness, and will expose her real weakness. “I will throw filth at you and treat you with contempt and make you a spectacle” all nations will see how foolish Nineveh has been in whoring, rather than in pursuing a true love in the LORD, and they will also see how foolish they have been in whoring with Nineveh. The LORD is not deceived, he watches and knows what Nineveh really is, and he responds to her as she is, and he will show us all who Nineveh really is. The LORD is not silently omniscient. He draws from his knowledge to work justice, and he shares his knowledge with his people, making us know how things truly are by revealing himself and truth thereby in his Word and finally as we see him in heaven.

The LORD who exposes Nineveh as a whore is the same LORD who exposes the deceitfulness of the devil. The LORD shows that what is truly beautiful is beautiful, and what is truly ugly is ugly. He exposes false hopes as false, and vindicates his righteousness in the end. He does this for his name’s sake, that he may be proven just. And so, too, with the liars of this age, those who say “you will not surely die, God doesn’t really love you,” they will be shown wrong, and the LORD will be shown to be the one true loving God. And this happens, often, through us. Through those mounting bodies of the martyrs for whom death is gain because to die is to go and be with the LORD, the lie that money or food or sex or anything in this world can fully satisfy apart from the LORD is destroyed because then we exhibit the truth that there is more pleasure in the LORD all by himself than there is in all the rest of creation.

The Assyrians were not wrong to seek their pleasure. They were wrong to seek it in vicious and deceitful conquest. Many of the things that we seek our happiness in are good, they make us happy to the extent they do because they are truly good, and we see the pleasure and think that these things are good—and we are not wrong! Where we go wrong is in thinking that these are ultimate pleasures. We see a bucket of pleasure and think it is the fullest pleasure in the world. We are wrong because we think that this piddling amount of pleasure is the greatest pleasure. We think these wading pools and puddles of pleasure are deep, but the LORD calls us to the ocean of his pleasure.

“And all who look on you will shrink from you and say, ‘Wasted is Nineveh; who will grieve for her?’ Where shall I seek comforters for you?” that is, Nineveh, who had so many allies by her treachery, will be left alone. Not only will she be destroyed, desolate, but she will not be missed. She was powerful, but all the nations are glad to see her go. Likewise, we will rejoice at the fall of the wicked, because it vindicates the LORD, because their fall shows that the LORD is great, that the LORD loves us, for his Word has kept us from that evil.

So, then, in summary, we have, first, Nineveh, the bloody city, with a great, but false, hope, and she knowingly extends false hopes to others. Then we have the LORD, who has promised to expose these falsehoods. In contrast to Nineveh’s false hope, finally, we have placed our true hope: the gospel of Jesus Christ.

But the end of Nineveh, “Wasted is Nineveh, who will grieve for her?” is not only the end of our enemies, but the end of those whom we love who are allied with Nineveh rather than Judah, and will fall with Nineveh rather than be protected with Judah. Do we rejoice when other human beings are cast into hell? On the one hand, we must not, for the LORD does not take pleasure in the death of anyone (Ezekiel 18:32). On the other hand, our text implies that no one will grieve for Nineveh. One could, perhaps, suggest that we, as Christians who are called to love our enemies, should answer the call of the prophet, “Where shall I seek comforters for you?” with “Over here!” but that seems to ignore the literary trajectory and point of this passage. I am inclined to suspect, instead, that this is a point of difference between the devil and his hosts and those humans who will be cast into hell, that no one will grieve when the devil is cast into hell, but perhaps, perhaps, there will be when the lost are. So we should not, I think, be pleased at their perishing—though there has been disagreement about that—but we should, certainly, be pleased that the LORD’s judgment is revealed. We will rejoice at the revelation and confirmation of the truth of God. We ought not, however, be pleased by the fact that some like us have not been saved. But why are they not saved? We might point to their rejection of the Christ, and this would be accurate, but we may also say that, behind that, the LORD has ordained that some will be lost that he might receive more glory in evidencing his just wrath (Romans 9:22). We may not answer the question “why them and not me?” except by pointing to the grace of God, that he appointed them to be in Nineveh and us in Judah. And this is good, for all that the LORD does is good. Why is it good that the LORD should reveal his wrath on some humans who reject him? Because, as we see in this text the LORD reveals Nineveh as a prostitute, so he reveals all kinds of ungodliness as ungodliness in their particular expressions, so that not only are all sins paid for, whether in Christ or in hell, but every sin is exposed as sin, proved to be detrimental to our spiritual welfare, by revelation of what it has brought various individuals to, according to the justice of the LORD. It is so that we might behold how great our salvation is, and how horrible our end would otherwise have been, that the LORD condemns some to experience his wrath in addition to saving some of us by sending his Son, Jesus Christ the righteous, to die in our place.

So, how should we respond to hell? We should rejoice that the LORD’s justice is consummated. We should rejoice that the devil and his hosts are defeated. We should mourn the loss of created beings whom God loves, because we realize that it is only because of God’s grace toward us that we are not among them, and we should thus be motivated to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ to all, before it is too late, for one day, when we stand before the judgment seat of the LORD, it will be too late, as Nahum concludes the book, speaking to Nineveh, “There is no easing your hurt; your wound is grievous,” so shall it be on that day for those who reject the LORD. We should rejoice in it as it exemplifies how great a salvation Jesus Christ bought for us by his death. And how will we respond, when some whom we have loved are cast into hell? We will unabashedly rejoice in and worship our good and loving God, who has preserved us from the evil one. And we will do this because our pleasure and happiness are in the LORD, not in those friends who may or may not have been saved. Our joy will be great as this world passes away, because then the kingdom of the Lord will come in all power and majesty. Heaven will be celebratory, even as the lost are finally lost, being cast into hell. Our joy, our hope, resides there, and that is what empowers us to endure whatever suffering may come to us.