Category Archives: Apologetics
Building Museums or Kingdoms
Museums can be a lot of fun to visit. They contain relics and artifacts from which we can learn a lot about our past. They are monuments and testimonies to where we have been as a culture and from where God has brought us as a civilization. They serve a very important role in our culture as they help us to appreciate the sacrifices and successes of those who have gone before us in the hopes that we do not become proud and arrogant as a culture and they provide useful instruction in terms of the mistakes of the past in the hopes that we do not repeat them. There are many kinds of museums, but they all have one thing in common…they do not contain any life.
Sadly, churches can also fall into the trap of becoming museums instead of being the living, breathing marks of the Kingdom of God that we are meant to be. This does not mean we oughtn’t look back and celebrate the blessings of God that have been brought in the past and not learn from our errors as well, but if we spend all of our time dwelling in the past—dwelling in the museum of antiquities—the life that we are meant to have will be sapped from us and we will decline into a testimony of what once was, and not to what is. Remember, God is a God of the living, not of the dead (Luke 20:37-38; 24:5).
Instead of a museum, we are called to build a kingdom (Matthew 6:33; Mark 1:15; 2 Thessalonians 1:5-12). Our great commission (Matthew 28:19-20) is to make disciples of all of the nations—that begins here at home. Our call within our church is to be at the task of disciple-making. Those who are not believers need to have the Gospel proclaimed to them and those who are believers need to be built up in the faith. We should learn from and celebrate the past, but we must never be tempted to dwell there. Like that favorite hymn by Sabine Baring-Gould:
Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war,
With the cross of Jesus going on before.
Christ, the royal Master, leads against the foe;
Forward into battle see His banners go!
Like an army, we are to march forward, and for that to take place, though kingdoms rise and fall around us, we must always keep our eyes fixed upon our great and glorious captain, Jesus Christ, who leads us on. Let us never lose sight of the goal that the church is to march onward, breaking down the strongholds of hell in this world around us.
Also, let us count Jesus’ own words to one individual as a warning against dwelling in the past:
“And he said to them, ‘Leave the dead to bury their own dead;
but you, go and preach the Kingdom of God.’”
(Luke 9:60)
The Conversation
“Some weather we’ve been having, isn’t it?” “Did you see the game last night?” “Did you read the paper this morning, with crime going up and unemployment going up, what is this world coming to?” “Did you hear what those democrats did?”
Conversations, we all have them every day and usually they are had around some fairly mundane subjects—weather, sports, news, politics, etc. Most of the time, we strike up these conversations without much thought and they are over almost as quickly as they begin. Most of the time these conversations are had with complete strangers with no expectation of ever seeing them again. So, of what value are they? Do they serve a purpose other than that of trying not to look unsociable and filling up dead air with useless chatter? I am not convinced that they do.
But what if even those short conversations were ones that could become significant? What if they could become eternally significant? Would we have the conversation if it contained meaning and not just noise? What if we opened our conversations with, “where do you go to church?” instead of “what do your think of the weather?
God has given us language so that we can exchange ideas with one another in community—that is what the very word, “conversation,” means—“to exchange ideas.” In addition, ideas have consequences because the ideas you offer will in turn spark ideas in the mind and hearts of those who hear them. The question is whether or not you are exchanging ideas of consequence or whether you are merely beating the air. The weightier the idea the more significant the consequence.
One of the things that concerns me, though, is that as a society we have become rather superficial not only in our conversations but in our ideas. It is almost as if we are afraid of the consequences of significant conversation so we opt to avoid it altogether. Yet significant conversations are essential for building significant relationships and significant relationships are essential for effecting change in peoples’ lives.
So, what do your conversations look like? Are they significant or do you play it safe, seeking to stay in the shallow end of the relationship pool. If we are going to effect change in our community, shallow will not cut it. We need to enter into the deepest end of the pool and speak of the resurrection of the very Son of God who came into this world, lived amongst men, died a horrible death to atone for the sins of his people, and rose again on the third day. There is no conversation more significant that that and there is no conversation that this world needs to hear more than that one. Will you be the one to have that conversation with those you meet, though?
Evidence for the Historical Jesus
Recently, I watched a debate where a critic of Christianity made the statement that there was no historical evidence to support the Jesus of the Bible that existed in Jewish literature. The Christian in the debate made a tolerable answer, but I felt that he had missed a major point of the argument. In this essay, I would like to do two things. First, I would like to pose the question as to just what does constitute historical evidence and second, what historical evidence is there in the world?
To begin with, we need to ask what constitutes “historical evidence” before we can honestly set evidence on the table for discussion. The Historical Method, which is the method used by historians to relate the history of peoples, events, and cultures can be summarized by a series of principles[1]:
- Archaeological Relics are the most reliable witnesses to an event because they were actually present at the time the event took place.
- Primary source material is the most reliable witness, followed by secondary sources and then tertiary sources, etc…
- The more independent sources testify to an account, the more credible the account becomes.
- When looking at source data, one must take into account the sympathies, biases, and agenda of the author.
- The less biased a witness is, the more credible the witness.
These are the criteria of those who practice what is called the “Historical Critical” method, which is dominant in historical evaluation today.
In light of the above criteria, I would begin by suggesting that the Biblical text itself satisfies all of the above requirements to be considered reliable primary source data of the most credible degree. Manuscript evidence of the Bible dates back to the first century AD, during the lifetime of some of the original 12 Apostles. It is primary source data in that it records first-hand accounts of the life, the works, the teachings, the miracles, the death, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. These early witnesses are also testified to by first and second century manuscripts, themselves constituting either primary or secondary witnesses. Given the large amount of independent sources that corroborate the Biblical account, the biases can be recognized as minimal. In additional, since all of the Biblical writers, save perhaps Luke, were Jewish, even the New Testament counts as primary Jewish source evidence. Those who reject the Bible because of its religious nature have allowed their own biases to cause them to be inconsistent in their methodology. Yet, in addition to the primary source material contained in the Bible, we additionally have references like the following to support the life and ministry of Jesus Christ:
- Josephus (a Jewish historian in the Roman court) in Antiquities, Book 18, Chapter 3 mentions Jesus as “a wise man” and a doer of “wonderful works.” Though this text is debated, here Josephus also attributes Jesus as a teacher and Christ who was executed.
- In Book 20, Chapter 9 of Antiquities, Josephus also mentions James as the brother of Jesus “who was called Christ.”
- Tacitus (a late 1st century Roman Historian) in his Annals 15.44 mentions “Christus” as the namesake of the Christians and that this Christus was executed in Judea during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of Pontius Pilate.
- Thallus (a Roman historian writing in the mid first century) records an unusual eclipse as well as an earthquake during the time of Passover in Judea. The eclipse was unusual because Passover was held at the time of the full moon where eclipses do not take place naturally.
- The Babylonian Talmud (Hebraic tradition and commentary) records that on the eve of Passover “Jeshu” was hanged. Jeshu is a Jewish name for Jesus.
- Mara Bar-Sarapion (a Stoic Philosopher in the mid to late 1st century AD from Syria wrote the following in a letter to his son: “What advantage did the Athenians gain from putting Socrates to death? Famine and plague came upon them as a judgment for their crime. What advantage did the men of Samos gain from burning Pythagoras? In a moment their land was covered with sand. What advantage did the Jews gain from executing their wise king? It was just after that that their kingdom was abolished. God justly avenged these three wise men: the Athenians died of hunger; the Samians were overwhelmed by the sea; the Jews, ruined and driven from their land, live in complete dispersion. But Socrates did not die for good; he lived on in the teaching of Plato. Pythagoras did not die for good; he lived on in the statue of Hera. Nor did the wise king die for good; he lived on in the teaching which he had given”
It should be noted that this list contains only a small sampling of the extra-Biblical evidence to the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. We have not begun to talk about some of the archaeological evidence like the “James Ossuary.” We also have deliberately kept Christian writers out of the discussion, though there are many. The bottom line is that there is an abundance of evidence to support the existence of the Historical Jesus—even in the Jewish writings. If we were to include Christian writings, layers upon layers of textual evidence would be added. Ultimately, to deny the historicity of Christ is like trying articulate a new scientific law without ever having taken the time to test it in the lab; it is intellectually dishonest. Those who deny the Bible as Historical evidence are not being honest with their methodology and the evidence that is available.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_method — footnote 1: Thurén, Torsten. (1997). Källkritik. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell.
Does Your Location Affect Your Religion?
Recently, I heard a challenge to Christianity that was worded like this: “The only reason you identify yourself as Christian is because you were born in America; if you had been born in Iraq, you would be Muslim and if you had been born in northern India, you would be Hindu—religion is nothing more than a cultural expression of morality.” The person making the challenge was Richard Dawkins, a popular atheist in our culture today. Though I had not heard that objection worded in the same basic way, I have heard this objection of Christianity before, and thought that I would like to pose a response from two perspectives.
The first perspective is purely a practical one, for I know that there are many nominal Christian parents that are essentially banking on this principle, hoping that their children will remain Christian (at least in name), while never truly training their children up in the faith. They think that of course, America is a Christian nation, so of course, my children will remain Christians all of their life. This not only exposes a faulty understanding of Christianity (as I will mention below), but it is a dangerous assumption, for America is becoming more and more of a secular, atheistic nation, and not a Christian one. Thus, some are estimating that as many as 80% of teenagers leave the church when they hit their college years, often without returning. Don’t get me wrong, many of them still think of themselves as Christian, but their Christianity has no bearing on the way they live their lives and for all practical purposes, they are secular humanists in practice and thought.
Furthermore, many of these children will openly reject Christianity because they see how self-serving, jaded, lazy, and corrupt so many churches have become. Many embrace the atheism of their college professors, but others are embracing false religions like Islam because they are attracted to the self-discipline and rigid lifestyle that such religions offer. We should not need to be reminded that one of the reasons that the Byzantine empire fell so easily to the Muslim expansion was due to the corruption and self-seeking nature of the church—people saw its weaknesses and rejected it as diseased and dying. Such an observation has been made of much of the church in America. Thus, it is not enough that we are actively pursuing the Christian faith, it is essential for us to recognize that our children must be actively pursuing the Christian faith as well.
That is the purely practical perspective, now for the theological one… While many religions may very well be simply cultural expressions of morality, Christianity, by definition, is different. For in Christ, we are called “new creations” (2 Corinthians 5:17)—in other words, we are changed from the outside in. Christianity is not a mere self-help program, it is a total change of lifestyle that can only be accomplished if one is supernaturally changed by God—we refer to this as being “born again” (John 3:3). This change is impossible to do for oneself, but God must effectively draw us to Christ as well (John 6:44). God draws us from the world, God gives us new life, and God makes us a new creation. This is more than mere morality, it is transformation. And, it is a transformation that takes place all over the world, even in countries where you can be put to death for claiming Christ as Lord and Savior.
The sad thing is that too many Christians simply treat Christianity as a self-help program, and when that happens, they do not live like new creations and Christianity becomes nothing more than a social norm—a norm that is quickly being redefined in America.
Exmass and Krissmass
An Additional Chapter from Herodotus
(a tribute to C.S. Lewis)
Once upon a time in the village of Acirema, a strange tradition resided with the people, though, perhaps the word tradition is not the best word to describe the antics that were found to take place amongst the people. You see, the people did not think of Exmass as a tradition, they saw it as a grand celebration—one of the High Days of the whole year that people looked forward to with great anticipation. Yet, despite the anticipation and despite the fact that people called it a “celebration,” there was little about this time of year that one would describe as celebratory. Perhaps I should explain.
Every year the people of Acirema “celebrate” what they refer to as the High Day of Exmass, yet the activities of preparation for this high day begin a full month prior to the official day of celebration. Indeed, there are some who begin their preparation months or even a full year prior, but these people are considered rebellions and are resented by the bulk of the Aciremanians, thus for now, we shall simply focus on the official tradition as is mandated in the unofficial law of the land—known as the Manual of Etiquette, written by the village matriarch, Deer Abigail.
Officially, then the High Day of Exmass begins with a lesser celebration to “kick off” the preparations. This lesser celebration is referred to as Saint Guineafowl Day. On this day, families gather together for the ritual slaughter and consumption of a large fowl. On occasions, some families will choose another animal, often from the swine family, but fowl is the proper sacrifice according to the manual. The rule is that family members are required to consume as much of the fowl as physically possible in one sitting and to accomplish this, sometimes extended family members will gather to join in together with the feasting. None of the bird must go to waste. If there is any left over, it must be saved and reheated for meals on the following days until it is all consumed. Even the bones are to be boiled down in a dish called “broth” so that even the essence of the fowl is fully removed and consumed by the family—again, nothing may go to waste.
In addition to the ritual slaughter and consumption on Saint Guineafowl Day, this day is accompanied by two additional traditions in Acirema. The first is the Saint Guineafowl Sycam Parade. Rowland Sycam was an entrepreneur in the early history of Acirema who was involved in the history of the helping people prepare for the High Day of Exmass, and thus, in his honor, his retail stores host a tremendous parade on Saint Guineafowl Day. In this parade, adults dress up as children in all forms of costumes and disguises and walk along a “Route” that extends for a mile or so. Some of the adults choose not to walk, thus add exotic decorations to their cars and trucks so that they can drive the distance of the Route—these decorated cars, they call “floats” for an undiscovered reason. In addition to adults, children are often dressed in adult dress uniforms, like that of soldiers, and given musical contraptions, being expected to then march in-step and play a song on their instrument at the same time.
One of the favorite elements of the parade is the appearance of the village’s famous singers. These famous singers will stand on the “floats” and pretend to sing along with a recording of their own songs. Those who come to watch the parade, called “Spectators” then pretend that the singers are actually singing and critique how well (or poorly) each singer “performs” their song. This performance also plays an important role in the preparations that lead to Exmass, for it is the songs that are chosen and thus performed that will be repeated at regular intervals on the radio in the initial portion of the preparation season. This, then, gives instruction to the people as to which musical arrangements to purchase and give to loved ones, but we get ahead of ourselves.
The final element of the parade is the construction of giant balloons, each depicting a local deity from the various mythological religions that people pretend not to practice. Citizens of Acirema are supposed to worship in one national religion, but in reality, they practice many, spending Sundays giving lip-service to the national religion in central buildings called “churches” and then spending the following Saturday morning in front of a contraption called a “Television” which broadcasts the legends and myths that shape the culture. It is these legends and myths that form the subject matter of these balloons, which float high in the air (in contrast to the “floats” which roll on the ground) and act as the spiritual guardians of the participants and spectators of the parade.
After the St. Guineafowl Sycam Day parade is through, and everyone congratulates themselves on how wonderful the decorations and floats were, treating such as the most important news of the day (certainly more important than wars or economic difficulties, for these things detract from the events in the season to come), then comes the final activity of St. Guineafowl Day—“football.” Football is the national athletic competition of Acirema and has little to do with either feet or balls, but I am told that if I were an Aciremanian, I would understand this colloquial reference. Anyhow, in this competition, two teams of men line up against each other with each teammate covered from head to toe in padding and other protective gear. Then there is an oval-shaped object called a “pig-skin” even though it is made out of cow-hide. Each team gets a turn holding on to the “pig-skin” and tries to run it or throw it past the other team and deliver it to the opposite end of the playing field, which is called a “grid-iron” though it is neither a grid nor made out of iron (again, I am told that were I an Aciremanian, I would understand this reference). While one team tries to get the pig-skin to the other side of the field, the other team seeks to clobber the person who happens to be holding the ball. Such is the nature of the game with both sides seeking to clobber each other and the team which gets the ball across the other team’s side (called a “goal-line”) wins the competition. The only reference to feet that I can come up with is that at times, the pig-skin is kicked from one side to the other either to change which team gets to be clobbered or to try and kick it through a giant set of prongs resembling a bent fork. And thus we end our description of the day, except for a final comment that nearly all Aciremanians both look forward to the day and regret the level to which they have participated in the eating of fowl. To express their regret, they chant in unison the words, “Oh, my stomach, I feel sick,” and then usually eat a little bit more to make sure that fellow Aciremanians do not think them lax in their celebration.
After the celebration of St. Guineafowl Day, comes the real preparations for Exmass, beginning with the celebration of a day called, “Black Friday.” The proper etiquette for Black Friday is to get up before dawn, pile into the car along with nearly every other Aciremanian, and to fill the streets with traffic. The initial objective is to have so many vehicles on the road that all movement is reduced to a near standstill, and then to yell at each other from behind closed and locked doors, often inventing names for the other drivers as they try and budge their vehicle in front of your own. The secondary objective for this day is the reason for its name (this name one needs not be an Aciremanian to understand). This traffic jam caused by all of the Black Friday celebrants is known to frustrate even the most seasoned law enforcement officer and hence the name was coined by those law enforcement officers who dreaded the coming of the day.
The second part of the Black Friday celebration takes place when the celebrants are actually able to arrive at the shopping centers. It is rumored that some people, hoping to avoid the celebration of the traffic jam, actually go out the day before, after they finish their St. Guineafowl Day celebrations, drive to the stores, and sleep in their cars. This rumor has not been substantiated personally, though it has been received from reliable sources. Regardless of when the celebrants arrive at the stores, the goal is to charge into the store as quickly as possible, elbowing and running other participants underfoot. In some ways, this seems to be a public replaying of the athletic event of “Football” from the day before, just without the pig-skin or goal lines. Prior to Black Friday, the stores have artificially elevated the prices on their products so that on Black Friday they can return their prices to normal and get the celebrants to think that they are getting a bargain. This aspect of the event is called a “sale.” Finally, celebrants gather up all of their “sale items,” and pay for them with little pieces of colored plastic (called a “credit card”—an invention which allows the owner to “buy” an item and then pay three-times the original price of the item across an extended period of time). Then, the participants jump back in their cars and celebrate the traffic jam one more time until they eventually arrive home once again that evening, just in time to eat more of the left-over food from St. Guineafowl Day, go to bed, and wake up the next morning to worship their culture’s ancient myths before the television.
The next several weeks between Black Friday and Exmass are filled with the important pastime of mailing what are called Exmass Cards. Exmass Cards are pieces of folded heavy paper with decorations on the front and a holiday greeting inside wishing the recipient well. The pictures on the cards are usually nostalgic and contain winter scenes even though in most parts of Acirema it never snows on Exmass. Nevertheless, such is what people expect and hope for each year. The ritual goes something like this: each Aciremanian purchases a stack of these cards adequate to send to each of their friends and acquaintances. Cards are signed and then put in the mail with each citizen keeping a careful list of who they sent the cards to.
A second list is then kept that records the cards that they in turn receive from acquaintances. Then the lists are compared. The ritual then gets rather confusing as individuals get their lists made. If one discovers, when one is comparing the lists of cards sent out and received, that someone not on the initial list has sent them a card, then the proper etiquette (again according to their local guru, D. Abigail) is to raise one fist and curse the heavens and to go back to the store to buy another Exmass Card to send to this offender. Similarly, after Exmass, the lists are compared and if more than two Exmass seasons go by without receiving an Exmass Card from someone on the list, their name is struck off—again with hand shaking and cursing. At times, this can get rather comical as people are always dropping off and adding people to their lists, always following the proper custom, which is designed to get them into the “Spirit of Exmass.”
When the day of Exmass finally comes, families celebrate with a routine of giving expensive gifts and trinkets, most of which will be broken (some intentionally and some unintentionally) within a few weeks. Again, the purpose of the gifts is to be in the “Spirit of Exmass” and oftentimes the parents in the family will pretend that a portion of the gifts come from a winter sprite whose name escapes me, but he is purportedly rather fat, flies around the world in an old sleigh pulled by Caribou which have the ability to fly. When he arrives at each home, he diminishes his size, sneaks into each house through a variety of openings, and then leaves the gifts. It is said, also, that if one wants this winter sprite to leave his gifts, the family must leave behind an offering of milk and cookies, lest lumps of coal be left in stockings in lieu of the gifts. The stockings are not real stockings, nor will they fit the feet of anyone in the family, but are single cloth and felt boots of varying sizes (not pairs, but one only) which are hung for the express purpose of being filled with candy and small gifts. Most of the children do not believe this fanciful tale, but they tend to go along with it, knowing that one day they too will be parents and expected to carry on the Exmass tradition as their parents did before them.
It should be noted that parents go to great extremes to get their children to believe in this winter sprite, even to the extent of hiring fat older men to sit in shopping centers dressed up as this snow sprite and to tell the children that he really is the one who will visit their home that Exmass Eve. Children who are too small or daft to know better are forced to sit on the knees of such men (oftentimes while screaming in protest) and tell them what they want the faux-sprite to bring them. Then pictures are taken which serve to do two things—first, they further traumatize the child (still part of getting into the “Exmass Spirit”) and second they serve to “commemorate” the experience so that parents will be able to show their friends and family just how faithful they have been to the “Exmass Traditions.”
Yet, we digress from the tradition of the gifts. The gifts are placed around a tree that is covered by tinsel, lights, and other random ornaments. The tree has been chopped down for this express purpose and will be disposed of after the season is through. Each gift is also covered with brightly colored paper called, “wrapping,” which is designed to keep the object hidden from spectators and to make them more interesting to open on Exmass morning. There is one difficulty with the tradition of the gifts, though, for just as with Exmass Cards, two separate lists must be kept, so too, lists are kept to keep track of Exmass gifts. For if you record that someone has given you a gift of a greater value than the gift you have given them, once again, you are expected to shake your hand to the heavens and curse, making proper notation in your records so that you are not so embarrassed in the following year. Similarly, if someone to whom you have not given a gift chooses to give you one, then you must not only note that while shaking your hand and cursing, but also you are obliged to immediately run out an purchase a similarly valued gift for the person in question. Lastly, when the gifts are fully catalogued, the children have a special task that is germane to their age-group. They must write a note saying, “thank you,” and how wonderful they thought the gift was (whether or not they thought the gift was wonderful). Such a practice is only performed by children because adults uniformly hate to write such notes (largely as they were forced to write such notes when they were children), but think that it is a good way to discipline their rambunctious children, so enforce this practice upon them with solemnity and zeal.
Finally, Exmass comes to a close with another feast, similar to that of St. Guineafowl Day, but this time with a wider variety of foods and no requirement that fowl be eaten. The gorging of food is followed by the watching of various athletic events, including more “Football” and is often accompanied by family favorite programs that teach “The Spirit of Exmass.” There is also a tradition of the “Exmass Wine,” which is a drink made from grapes and allowed to ferment. This, they drink in abundance either while they are eating or while they are watching the Exmass programs on television. The tradition is to drink enough that when one wakes up the next morning, ones head hurts as if it has been hit by a football player (perhaps this is an attempt at vicarious participation in their favorite sport). When one wakes up in such a manner, the proper etiquette is to curse again and avoid others until the feeling wears off. It is also said that some families read the story of the first Exmass, but this report is rather unsubstantiated.
On a final note, upon further study, it seems that there are some Aciremaians who are largely dissenters to this Exmass tradition. Apparently, they claim that Exmass has its origins in a religious holiday called Krissmass, or something very close to that (these dissenters are often mocked and scoffed amongst the rolls of the Aciremaians as being ones without the “Spirit of Exmass,” so they typically keep to themselves during this time and have been hard to study). What I have learned, though, has been quite interesting. They will often participate in some of the Exmass activities, though with a great deal more restraint. What my informants tell me, though, is that these Aciremaians believe that their God became human in a far away place on this day and then later would die in a horrible way to atone for their sins. This is interesting to speculate upon and perhaps demands further research, for they believe that the gift of Krissmas is God himself, not the things packaged in glossy paper. Indeed, something to investigate further…
–Win Groseclose
John Calvin: Apologist for the Reformation
(This took me a while to transcribe, but what follows is the content of my lecture at the International Calvin 500 Conference, held in Moscow, Russia, this past September)
I would like to begin simply by thanking you for the opportunity to speak this day. As I stand here and listen to some of the things that have been said and talked about thus far, I realize my own inability to stand before you.
Sometimes as we receive opportunities to speak we are truly humbled by those who have given us that opportunity. At the same time, as a Calvinist, I believe in God’s sovereignty, and as someone who believes in God’s sovereignty I believe that God has brought me here by his divine hand. If this is true then despite my weaknesses then I believe that God has a message to bring through me. This was mentioned yesterday as well, but I wanted to give this as a way of reminder. That as we meet on this anniversary of Calvin’s birth, we meet not to glorify the man, but we do so to glorify the God who raised up this man to serve his church. And I believe that we can honor that God by learning from the things that this man has taught us.
The second thing I would like to do by way of introduction is to introduce my agenda. It is a dangerous thing when the speaker actually tells you why he is speaking because all of us have motives behind what we want to talk about. Oftentimes those motives go unspoken, but in this case I want to set them on the table in front of us.
We live in a world that is more and more raising up and praising the supposed virtues of atheism. We live in a world where the Christian church is seen to be irrelevant and not essential to everyday life. Though I am new to Moscow, I have spent time in Ukraine and know the difficulties that the protestants face in dealing with the Orthodox Church. So part of my agenda in choosing the topics that I did was to help equip you to show the world that the church is not irrelevant. As pastors, part of our job is to teach the church how to stand for the truth and to live that truth relevant, living it out every day. We also have a responsibility to protect our church members from being wooed back to Orthodoxy or being lulled into atheism. And I do believe that Calvin is a great person to help us do both things. Thus, my goal this day, recognizing that we cannot exhaustively explore Calvin’s apologetics, my goal is to explore elements of Calvin’s apologetics with the aim of applying them both in the west and in the east.
To accomplish this goal, I would like to look at three elements of Calvin’s apologetic approach:
- I would like to look at his writings, with a primary focus on his Lausanne Discourses and his letter to Bishop Sadolet.
- I would like at the theology of Calvin’s Doctrine of Vocation.
- I would also like to look at his emphasis on a theologically educated laity.
I have a secondary goal as well: that is to encourage you, as pastors, to write for your congregations. Now, I recognize that many of Calvin’s writings were taken down by secretaries, but the principle is there in Calvin’s theology that his words were to be heard and applied to the lives of his people. At this point we must recognize the context that Calvin was writing in—he did not have a computer to type upon, but the writing was done with a quill pen or a stylus dipped in ink. Despite that, Calvin wrote more than many people will read in their lifetimes. Also Calvin understood the principle that a shepherd does not feed his sheep only once or twice a week. But a shepherd feeds his sheep everyday. Calvin had the luxury of having daily worship services in Geneva, but that is oftentimes not an option in our contexts. Yet, if you write daily Bible studies and theological things for your congregations to read, they will read them. And you will have a means to feed your flock on a daily basis.
There is another aspect of me wanting to encourage you to write. I have a vision for a change in the names of authors in Reformed literature. As you heard yesterday and this morning, you have an honorable Reformed heritage, but most of the most well-known names in Reformed Theology are western names. We have names like Boston, Owen, Calvin, Hodge, Lloyd-Jones—these are names that are dominant in Reformed literature, and while the translation of these texts from English into Russian is a valuable resource to you, I desire to see Russian names filling the bookshelves of our theologically Reformed seminaries. You heard the challenge to learn English so that you can read more of these resources; I long to see a time when people will be saying to people in the west, “Learn Russian!” so that you can read these new Reformed theological resources.
But for that to happen it needs to begin with someone like you—so there is my challenge to set before you as we begin—Write! And write for your people, for they will read it. It is a way that you will strengthen the church and it is a means by which Calvin did just that in Geneva.
I also want to make one other comment by way of introduction, and that is a note with respect to Calvin and his role as a man of the Church. Henry Beveridge, one of Calvin’s translators, wrote: “the whole of Calvin’s life shows that zeal for the interests of the church was his ruling passion.” Calvin did not set out to go through Geneva to be their pastor—his goal was Strasburg to be a scholar, yet God had other plans for Calvin and Calvin was willing to submit to God’s will. Many in our culture, especially in the west, have seen the failures of the church and have chosen as a result to reject the church altogether. Calvin saw the failure of the Roman Catholic church of his day, but he also recognized that the failure was in man’s failure as a fallen individual.
As a result, you do not simply let the church die or give up on her. But as pastors, you need to live for her and die for her, to pour yourself out for her and to suffer for her. If you do this you will honor not only John Calvin’s memory, but you will also honor our Lord’s memory—the one who died to lay his claim upon the church.
So let us begin and speak of Calvin’s apologetics. And I want to begin by raising the question, what is an Apologia. The word, Apologia simply means, “a reasoned defense.” It is a legal term used to refer to how one would defend a view or a client in a court case. Peter uses this and applies it to our Christian life. Peter writes, “In your hearts regard Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense—an Apologia—to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you.” Yet Peter continues, “do it with gentleness and respect, having a good conscience so that when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame.”
Too often, people who would defend the Christian faith in the world around us, do so with an arrogant and a haughty spirit. Sometimes, when you are right and you know that you are right, you find yourself in a dangerous position. I think that this is one of reasons that Calvin’s model is so valuable for us today. Because as you read Calvin’s writings against those who would challenge the Reformed faith, you do not see an arrogant man ranting and raving, but you see a man of humility speaking with grace.
Note too the reason that Peter emphasizes our apologia given with humility. He says that we are to do so that those who revile you may be put to shame. The implication that he is making here is that there are some that may be brought to Christ through our reasoned defense. But even in rebuking those that would attack the Christian faith, we do not chase them away or scare them away from the truth.
In October of 1536, about a month after Calvin had arrived in Geneva, having agreed to stay and help the city in its reforms, Farel and Viret to Calvin with them to Lausanne. Lausanne is a city about 60 Kilometers from Geneva on the other side of Lake Geneva. The purpose of this debate was to debate whether or not the Reformed teachings should be brought to Lausanne. Farel had invited representatives from the Roman Catholic Church to debate over 10 questions that Farel had drawn up.
These questions included the debate over justification, the role of Christ as sole mediator, the role of scripture as sole authority for the believer, and who would constitute the church. Calvin is there not to speak nor to debate, but simply as a witness. Yet there are two points during this discourse where Calvin found that he could not keep his peace. And at these points—October 5th and 7th, Calvin stood to speak.
On the 5th of October, they were discussing the 3rd of the 10 questions. The question was over the real presence of Christ in the elements of the Lord’s Supper. The Romanists would not only argue from the real presence, but would also accuse the Reformers of departing from the consistent teaching of the church through history.
At this point, Calvin stood and addressed the panel. He said, “I held myself absolved from speaking up until now and would have willingly abstained until the end seeing that my word is not very necessary of adding anything to the adequate replies which my brothers Farel and Viret give. And he went on the address the group of speakers. We don’t have time to explore the entirely the fullness of Calvin’s response, but let me outline some of the elements of Calvin’s defense.
Calvin begins by saying that any who would condemn the early church fathers are both arrogant and filled with contempt for God as God had raised those church fathers up to build his church. In other words, part of what he is doing is saying is that if he as the reformer is guilty of what the Romanists are accusing him of, he should be condemned.
He continues and assumes for the sake of argument that our primary obligation is to submit to scripture as those church fathers submitted to scripture. He says that this accusation that they are making is nothing more than their failure to understand the Reformation. He went on to say, in addition, if one would take time to examine the Church fathers, they would find that the Fathers would support the Reformation position and not the Roman Catholic position. One could even, by extension, take the argument to the next step that the church fathers did not support the Eastern Orthodox view of the real presence of Christ in the elements.
Calvin continued on to cite from memory passages from the church fathers. He cites Tertullian’s refutation of Marcion; Chrysostom’s unfinished commentary on Matthew; then he goes on to exhaustively cite Augustine and his writings. He cites from Augustine’s Epistle 23, from Against Adamantius the Manichee, Homily on the Gospel of John, and continues on from several other letters of Augustine.
Then he poses the question toward the Romanists, speaking to Dr. Blancherose, a leader of the Romanist position, and now you explain your position in light of the Scriptural teaching and of the Church fathers. Before he closes, Calvin goes on to defend the Protestant position of the spiritual presence of Christ in the elements. He does so by comparing Matthew and Mark’s recording of the Last Supper to Luke and Paul’s recording of the same. Where he sees in Matthew in Mark Jesus saying, “this is my blood”, Luke and Paul record Jesus as saying, “this is the new testament in my blood.” And then making the argument that even though Matthew and Mark are not recording it in the same way, that there is a clear understanding that this is to be symbolic, not a real presence in the Lord’s Supper.
Let’s make several observations from the way in which John Calvin refutes the Roman Catholic representatives. First is the gracious and humble nature with which Calvin approached the Roman criticism. The Romanists had been calling the reformers both apostate and ignorant of the Church Fathers. They were essentially saying that the Reformers had no idea what they were talking about and rather than getting upset and responding in anger, Calvin responds in grace and humility.
Calvin goes on to demonstrate not only his knowledge of scripture but also his knowledge of the church fathers. What he is essentially doing is taking the things that the Romanists are appealing to and using their own words to dismantle their arguments. Calvin was demonstrating that the church fathers were the allies of the Reformation and not of the Roman Catholic church.
That is something that is very important to recognize in our own ministries. Often our tendency is to read and study only those who agree with the positions we hold. But if we are going to make an effective apologetic for what we know to be true in the world around us, we need to be educated in the ideas and thoughts of those who will attack what we know to be true. At the same time, we need to do so from a position of having been educated on a foundation of truth.
Calvin demonstrates in his response that he is well read and well versed in the breadth of all of the teachings that are out there. And that is something that we need to do as pastors and as apologists for the church in this community. It is also worth noting that not only did Calvin impress those to whom he was addressing with his knowledge of the church fathers, but some of the bishops who had been accusing Calvin of not knowing the church fathers actually confessed that they had never read the church fathers in the first place, but their knowledge of the church fathers was only a secondhand knowledge taught to them by somebody else.
We will come back to this idea, but Calvin also expresses an apologetic that is grounded in solid and clear theology. One of the problems that we find in the west is that those who are our “apologists” are not necessary theologians. What Calvin is demonstrating is that to be an effective apologist, you must have a clear understanding of theology.
The second point in which Calvin stood up to speak (2 days later) is a much shorter response. Question number 8 in the discussion dealt with the power of the civil magistrate. But in the discussion the question of Hildebrand had come up. Oftentimes Hildebrand is giving credit for formalizing the doctrine of transubstantiation that the Roman Catholics hold. But if you look back at church history, one of the things you will find is that Hildebrand is one of the most corrupt and abusive Popes of history. Another element of Calvin’s apologetic comes out here in his response. Calvin poses the question as to whether one should trust a doctrine created by one who is personally morally corrupt. In other words, he is asking the question, “Do you separate the life of the man from his theology?” Calvin’s argument is, “no.” That as one looks at a man’s theology one must also be looking at their theology and if the lifestyle of the man is corrupt, his theology should be questioned.
How too that as pastors we need to demonstrate how we live our lives in our communities.
The second discourse I want to deal with is his letter with the Cardinal James Sadolet. In 1539, shortly after Calvin and Farel’s banishment from Geneva, the Roman Catholic Church sought to draw the church of Geneva back to Rome. The church itself did not quite know how to respond to Sadolet’s letter of invitation. Their first response was to send a letter to the churches in Bern to ask them to respond on their behalf. When Bern did not respond, Calvin was asked to write a letter of response.
I want to just highlight this for a moment because this is a man who has just been kicked out of his church and they are asking him to write a letter in their defense; I wonder how many pastors today would be willing to do just that. It is a demonstration not only of Calvin’s humble personality but also of his understanding of the role of the pastor. The pastor was pastor over his people even if he had been removed and exiled from his people and thus he chose to continue to serve those who had kicked him out of the city and he responded to Sadolet’s letter.
As we seek to understand the dialogue that goes back and forth, you have to understand part of Sadolet’s approach. He begins by using language of affection for the people of Geneva and setting forth the claim that Rome is the only source where they will find peace. Calvin sees through the ruse very quickly and points out that Sadolet had never had any interests in Geneva prior to this time. But Sadolet went on and accused Calvin and Farel of sedition and said that they were “assailing the authority of the church.”
This language of authority is the key concept in Sadolet’s letter. Essentially what Sadolet is arguing for is the authority of the church to interpret scripture and the authority of tradition to set forth truth in the lives of people. He even goes as far as to use reformational language, largely designed to disarm the Genevese senate. Sadolet speaks of having offered salvation through faith alone, but at the same time he speaks out of one side of his mouth sounding like a reformer, he speaks out of the other side of his mouth as well. He says that faith in Christ alone is essential for salvation, but why stop there, but faith is only a beginning and to be genuinely worthy of salvation, one must also have works.
There are numerous theologies today which try to do the same basic thing that Sadolet is suggesting, existing both in the east and in the west. They pay lip service on one side to salvation by faith alone in Jesus Christ but they try and sneak in human works by the back door. Yet the Apostle Paul wrote that God did not permit works so that no man may boast. And these theologies that deviate from salvation by faith alone is something that we need to guard ourselves and our churches against.
But Sadolet goes on and portrays the church as the anchor of Christian faith and thus for the Reformers to separate themselves of Rome is portrayed as a deep and dreadful sin of preposterous false religion. In the end, they are separated both from God and the Anchor of their faith which is considered to be the church, not Jesus Christ.
He goes on to appeal to the majority of the people in history (as he says), who have held to this Roman Catholic interpretation of scripture. And he says that if all of these people have understood it one way before, how do you know that you can trust this Calvin and the Reformers who understand it differently. Essentially what he is saying is that the Bible is too difficult for people to understand on their own, but to understand the Bible you need to be trained, equipped, and learned to understand it. This is the same basic principle that kept the Bible out of the hands of the layman for centuries on end.
One of the things that the Reformers understood was that when you read Scripture yourself, the lies of the Roman Catholic Church became clear. Sadolet even goes as far in his argument to suggest that the church cannot err in its interpretation of Scripture and if there might be errors, those errors must be in scripture and not in the church’s interpretation of scripture.
After he goes continues on this long discourse, making many slanderous comments about Calvin, though not by name, he closes by saying that he will agree to mediate between them and God if they will return to Rome. In other words, he is saying that the individuals themselves have no ability to come before God’s throne in light of their sins but we need Bishops and the church to do that on our behalf.
Yet, scripture is very clear that Christ and Christ alone is the only mediator between God and man.
So it is to this letter that Calvin begins to respond. Some have argued that this response of Calvin was the greatest apologetic of the Reformation. In spite of personal criticism, Calvin maintains a humble approach to Sadolet. And he writes that it is the duty of the pastor to defend his flock even while in exile. He almost goes as far as to apologize for the letter he is about to write. Sadolet was a respected scholar of his day and Calvin understood that his response to Sadolet would demonstrate Sadolet’s own ignorance of the Reformation and would show that Sadolet neither understood scripture nor the church fathers.
Calvin writes that it is with great reluctance that I bring forward your name before the learned world and address to you the following postulation. He continues that though he apologizes for essentially defaming Sadolet, he refuses to apologize for the Reformation.
I think that it is important to stop here and make an observation. Too many people in the west are more concerned with their standing than with the truth. In turn they end up sacrificing a great deal of truth to preserve their unity and their fellowship. Calvin understood that when one sacrifices the truth one sacrifices and compromises the Gospel of Jesus Christ. That would also compromise his call as a pastor.
Thus, though he is very gracious in the way he addresses his letter back to Sadolet, he refuses to compromise the truth that he is about to write. Calvin also refuses to attack the character of Sadolet, only Sadolet’s ideas as being insidious. When you get into debates with people, the temptation is to attack the person and the person’s character—it is much more difficult to attack the person’s ideas. One of the things that Calvin demonstrates is not slandering but dealing with the ideas as they are printed on paper.
Calvin’s apologetic here essentially elevates Scripture as the authority over top of church tradition. What he ultimately says is that the Genevese movement away from the Roman Catholic church is simply a reflection of them having been faithfully taught the scriptures. Here he is giving credit not to himself but to Farel and those who led the way or paved the road for him in Geneva. It is also a reminder to us of how important Calvin viewed the role of preaching faithfully God’s word. There is a temptation that pastors faith—to want to be popular—to want to have people come and listen to them as they preach. And Calvin is saying that we need to forget this philosophy in our preaching because the only way to become a popular preacher is to seek not to offend. We cannot sacrifice faithfully preaching God’s word. At the same time, when we do not sacrifice the preaching of God’s word, change will come and God will bring reformation and revival in His own time. And this is what Calvin is looking back at as he looks at the city of Geneva as they have moved away from the Roman Catholic Church.
Calvin then works systematically through Sadolet’s letter and then illustrates the logical errors and inconsistencies in each of his arguments. It is interesting for us to note where Calvin begins because he begins with what we, in Presbyterian circles, call the Regulative Principle of Worship. In other words, scripture regulates everything that we do in worship.
I think that emphasizes some of the things that Calvin holds to be important to the life of the Church. Oftentimes Calvin is thought of as the theologian of the Reformation, and he indeed was, but he is a theologian of worship. He saw the role of worship of God’s people as essential an that if our theology does not lead us into worship and equip us to worship better, our theology is wrong.
He begins this section by posing the question—which is the true Church, the Roman Catholic Church or the Reformed church? As he looks at this Regulative principle of worship and at the marks of the true church, he concludes that it is the Reformed church that is the true church. And Calvin demonstrates that the Roman Catholic church has moved away from Scripture and the tradition of the church fathers. In other words, it is the Roman Catholic Church that has moved away from fellowship and the Reformers and the ones who are preserving the true faith.
Calvin also mentions how he mentions how he longs for a day of ecclesiastical unity, that the church may indeed may be once again be one body, but only under God’s word, and not under man made traditions that are followed by the church.
So Calvin demonstrates a lot about apologetics in the way he approaches his writings, but Calvin also does not end his apologetic method or approach with his writings themselves. Calvin also applies his apologetics to actions in life. We have already demonstrated how Calvin is a student of the early church fathers. And in his apologetic writings he is following in the tradition of those like Quadratus who wrote to Hadrian to end the persecution of the church. And also in the line of those like Tertullian who wrote that Christians are an asset to the empire and not a threat.
As I was listening to pastor Ten speak earlier this morning, I heard this language coming out; he is looking at the benefits that the Reformed people brought to Russia. He was lamenting the fact that we as the church are not given credit for that—in a sense giving a call to all of us and particularly to you as pastors to speak to those over you and to say to them that we are a benefit to you and to your communities.
One of the questions that I am constantly asking the Ruling Elders of my church is this: If the church closed its doors and disappeared tomorrow, would the community notice? All too often the answer that churches give is that the community would not notice their disappearance. My challenge to you is the same challenge I give to my Ruling Elders every time we meet as a session. Be intentional about way you live and the way you exist. Be a benefit to your community in such a way that they see you as relevant to what you are doing and even if they don’t agree with you or hold to the Christian faith, they should see your presence as beneficial to the community.
One of the churches that I preached in many years ago when I was in seminary was built by an unbeliever. Yet he had the honest belief that if his community that he was establishing would continue, it needed a Presbyterian church. My prayer is that your communities (even non-believers in your communities) would think the same way. Like these early church fathers, Calvin, too, said that Christians were an important part of their society.
And he went on to teach about how the church is to live faithfully within that society. This is what we sometimes call the doctrine of vocational calling. The Roman Catholics taught that the only ones who were called by God to serve were the priests. Calvin taught that regardless of your occupation and the work you do, you are called by God to do it. That if you are a farmer, God had called you to be that farmer. That if you were an officer in the church or in the city government, God had called you to that as well. That work in itself is good and it is given by God no matter how dignified nor how menial that calling. And if God has given you work to do, it is a holy calling to work out in our lives.
In a sense, part of this is not only to encourage us to work harder and to work to the glory of God, but part of this is also an apologetic in lifestyle. In the passage we read from in 1 Peter earlier this afternoon, Peter is talking about how we live out our lives in every context despite the persecution we may face and we are to live in a dignified and honorable way so that when we are reviled, others will be drawn to Christ. That they will look at is, with the hope that we have, despite our condition and they will scratch their heads and ask how that person can be happy despite what that person may be doing. Calvin understood that when Christians live out their faith in their work, that the communities around them will recognize the value of having Christians in their midst. And not only will they cease persecution but will also open up doors to practice faith more freely.
If you want to bring change in Russia, one of the ways that you will do so is by teaching your people to live out their holy callings in life. And if you teach them to live out their work to the Glory of God they will draw others to Christ and will open gateways for the church to grow and flourish. As Christians, we need to live to a higher standard because God is who we serve, not man. And that we are thankful and joyful at whatever provision that God gives us both for our provision and for our lives.
Think about it in the most basic of terms. What kind of people do you prefer to have around you during the day? Do you want cheerful people or grumpy ones? Cheerful people make work more pleasant no matter how dirty that work may be, and again the gospel is spread.
In the time I have left, I want to make one more observation about Calvin’s view on apologetics. That is the importance that Calvin placed on education. The Roman Catholic church kept theological education to a few, Calvin instead opened it up to the masses. The Roman Catholic church taught ritual whereas Calvin taught scripture. Calvin did so through his personal teachings on the Bible and through his writings.
In addition, in 1559, Calvin opened the Genevan Academy to train believers to do whatever they were called to do. This was a school not open only to those training for the ministry but to everyone in the city. By Calvin’s death, 5 years after the opening of the school, there were 1200 students in the college alone and an additional 300 were in the seminary training to be pastors. Of course, many of those pastors would go back to France to face the persecution that was taking place there. An interesting side note is that Thomas Jefferson, an early American president, actually tried to buy the college Calvin began and move it to America. Jefferson believed that such a university would benefit the new country called America.
And obviously the college was not moved, but a similarly designed college was established.
I am convinced that this is the kind of mindset that you want to nourish in your church. You do not want a congregation of people who will just come to speak to you every week. But you want a congregation like the Bereans, faithfully seeking out God’s word, digging into it to find out what is going on. You want a congregation that is hungry and eager to understand God’s word and learn God’s truth. Some pastors consider that a threat because as a pastor that means you need to be well versed and study yourself. But if you hold that mindset, shame on your…we need to be the teachers of God’s people and to nourish in them a spirit that wants to know God’s truth. And we want them asking difficult questions—that helps to teach us that they are drawing upon spiritual truth as well.
And you especially need to train up the men in your church. One of the weak parts of the church in America is that it is dominated by women. This is not to knock the faith or the prayers of the ladies who are in our churches, but we need men who are hungry for God’s word and theology who will lead and teach their families. And that will only happen if you teach and emphasized the teaching in terms of the lives of the men of your church.
There is a lot more that we could talk about in terms of Calvin’s Apologetics. We could talk about Calvin’s style of worship and how worship itself is an apologetic tool. But I set that into your lives and for your responsibility for further study; I simply want to set before you three basic goals:
1. Be prepared to defend your church as pastors; there are bears and their lions out there in the world that are seeking to devour and destroy.
2. As a shepherd of God’s fold you have a responsibility to protect them, but you have a responsibility to feed or teach them as well. Part of that is through educating them and through teaching them a lifestyle that will draw others to Christ and ease the persecution on the church.
3. We also have a responsibility to educate your people. Teach them from the pulpit every opportunity that you get. Teach them through your lifestyle every time they are looking at you. And write for them so that you will teach them when you are apart.
Is the Bible Inerrant?
One of the things we talk a lot about in church circles is the authority of scripture—that it is given by God and is designed to instruct us in every area of life. One of the terms that we use when we speak of why the scriptures are authoritative is the term “inerrant.” But I have found that while we often throw that term around, a lot of times, people aren’t entirely sure what the term means.
To be “inerrant” means far more than something has no errors in it. When I was in school, I regularly had “error-free” mathematics tests; when I was in seminary, many of my Hebrew vocabulary tests were found to be “error-free,” but none of these were inerrant. The word inerrant means not only that something has no errors, but that it is incapable of making an error. The Oxford American Dictionary defines “inerrant” as “incapable of being wrong.” One writer described the inerrancy of the scriptures in this way: “They are exempt from the liability to mistake.”
So why do we ascribe such a nature to the scriptures? To begin with, they are God’s word, and if God is incapable of making a mistake, then his word also must be incapable of making a mistake—remembering that those who wrote down God’s word were “moved along by the Spirit” as a ship is blown by the wind filling its sails (2 Peter 1:21). In the language of the Apostle Paul, scripture is exhaled by God (2 Timothy 3:16) and thus is the source of all training and guidance for the believer. These are God’s words and not man’s and thus we ought to expect them to carry the authority and attributes of God’s character and not man’s character.
It is granted that there are many these days that doubt the inerrancy of scripture. For some, it is a plain matter of unbelief. For others it is misinformation or not having studied the evidence. For others it is the fear that if one acknowledges these words to be the inerrant word of God then one must submit one’s life to scripture’s authority and demands, and such is true. Regardless of the reason that people doubt, Scripture has withstood every test and challenge that has been leveled at it.
There is one other thing that is worth noting about such a book as we have. Not only are the scriptures our only guide for faith and life, but they are the only book to guide us as we go to our deaths. The Bible shows us Jesus Christ, our need for him as a redeemer, and his promise that if we trust in him in life, confessing him with our lips and believing in him in our hearts, he will confess us before the Father and guarantee us eternal life in paradise. For the one who is facing death, this is the kind of knowledge that brings peace and enables them to leave this world with grace and not fear. It is no wonder that the Scriptures are what most people ask to have read to them on their deathbeds, and not Shakespeare or Coleridge. The Bible is the one book that transcends death because it was written by a God who died and rose again—promising that he would do the same for us.
Why Doesn’t God Just Obliterate the Devil and thus Get Rid of Evil?
Why doesn’t God just obliterate the Devil?
One of the projects that we engage in at Rocky Bayou Christian School is that of helping to train students how to defend their faith when it is challenged. One of the ways in which we do so is to pose questions to the student body that challenge the faith and then challenge them to write out a response for a prize. Each of these questions are drawn from atheistic websites, blogs, books, or movies to ensure that the questions we use are ones actually being presented by unbelievers.
This month’s question is, “Why doesn’t God just obliterate the Devil and thus get rid of evil—and if he can, what is he waiting for?” The question itself comes from the trailer for Bill Mayer’s new movie, “Religulous.” The movie is presented as a documentary—more a “mock-u-mentary,” designed to poke fun at religious people. In his interview on Larry King Live this past August, Mayer gives the motivation for asking this question. Mayer states that religion is “the ultimate hustle,” that Christian leaders “need” the Devil, “because if God got rid of the devil—and he could because he is all-powerful—then there is no fear, there is no reason to come to church, there is no reason to pass the plate, we are all out of a job…” This statement falls on the heels of the comment, “at some point, mankind is going to have to shed this skin (Religion) if he is going to move forward. I do have a serious intellectual problem with it, and on another level, it just ticks me off…”
It is worth making one more comment about the interview on an indirectly related note: when speaking about the afterlife and the Christian’s view that we know what will happen to us after we die, Mayer makes a wonderfully true comment. Mayer states, “unless a God told you personally what happens to you when you die, it all came from another person with no more mental powers than you.” And that is exactly the point. God did come and tell us what will happen to us when we die, and he tells us the way that leads to eternal life, which is through a relationship with Jesus Christ, and the way that leads to death, which is the way that Mayer seems to have chosen to pursue—to reject Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. And we have these words of God recorded for us in the Bible.
How do we know that the Bible is the Word of God and not the writings of men, as I would presume Mayer would assert? While my point here is not to present a full defense for the inspiration and inerrancy of the Holy Scriptures (as others have written excellent volumes on just that subject), let me set forth several basic points.
The first thing that we must present is that the Bible itself claims to be God’s word. Now, your initial response very well may be to assert that a statement like this is circular reasoning. And on some level, it is. But let us pose the question, what might be true about the Bible if this statement about it being God’s word is true? We would expect, were it written by God, that all of the facts that it contains are true. And indeed, while evolutionists would assert that the creation story is untrue, evolution is a theory based on a speculation of the order of events. The “mountains” of evidence that so many evolutionists point toward are illusory, and Creation Scientists can present interpretations of the evidence that are arguably more compelling than the evolutionary models, and which are consistent with Scripture. If you doubt this, try getting a college Biology professor to agree to debate with a Creation Scientist—you will find it to be a rather challenging task. The Creation Scientists are willing, but the evolutionists are not—basic logic should tell you that they are hiding something if they are unwilling to engage in such debates.
But let us look at events that are clearly documented in history. What we find when we examine the archaeological evidence is that there is nothing to contradict the historical Biblical account. In addition, when we compare Biblical records of historical events with extra-Biblical documents of the same age, we find once again that there are no contradictions. There are more textual accounts, for example, to the life of Jesus than there are for example to the life of Julius Caesar, but no-one doubts that Julius Caesar lived, nor do they doubt the historicity of his writings.
In addition, we might not only expect that the history that the Bible records is accurate, but we might also expect that the things that it foretells is also accurate. Now, certainly all of the things that the Bible foretells have not yet come to pass, but there are hundreds upon hundreds of prophesies that the Bible did foretell that did come to pass. For example, Isaiah prophesied that the man who would be used of God to return the exiles to Jerusalem would be named Cyrus (Isaiah 45:1), a prophesy that was given roughly 200 years before the event took place. There are numerous prophesies that are given about the coming Messiah as well—that he was to be born in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2), of a virgin (Isaiah 7:14), that a forerunner would be sent (Malachi 3:1), that he would be rejected by his people (Psalm 118:22-23), numbered with transgressors (Isaiah 53:12), that the soldiers would divide Jesus’ garments (Psalm 22:18), and that in his death his bones would not be broken, but his side pierced (Exodus 12:46, Zechariah 12:10). We could go on, as there are many more, but as a friend of mine who used to be in the meat packing industry regularly says, “If the sample is true and free from bacteria, the whole lot is likely true and free from bacteria.” In other words, to prove that a tree has roots you don’t need to dig up every tree, but only a representative sample. Time after time, it can be documented that Biblical prophesies have come to pass. By every scientific measure, then, one must accept the validity of the whole.
One might also suggest that if the Bible were written by God himself, it would be true and without contradictions. And indeed, that is exactly the case. It is granted that there are some people who would point out that the Bible does seem to contradict itself on occasion, but in each of these cases, the contradictions are only apparent ones noted from a surface reading of the text. Reasonable explanations can be given for each of these apparent contradictions. One thing that we have learned from the discipline of forensic science is that in crimes, oftentimes very unusual events take place. And while a crime may at first seem to have taken place in one way, when all of the evidence is examined, rational explanations can be given for why the initial assumptions were wrong. If one is going to seek to say that the Bible contradicts itself, all of the evidence, both internal and external, must be examined before any rational conclusions can be reached. I suggest that once that examination is made, the Scriptures will be recognized to be internally consistent.
Though I don’t mean to belabor the point, but I want to make several more practical observations about the Bible that only seek to affirm that it is God’s word. First of all, one of the things that separate the Bible from mythic and religious writings of the ancient times is that it gives accurate names as well as detailed historical as well as geographical information. Most ancient religious documents are rather vague when it comes to such details so that they cannot be refuted. The Bible presents this kind of information, and as noted above, it is not found in error when challenged. Secondly, the Bible has had a greater impact on the events of worldwide history in a way that no other book can claim. Nations have risen and fallen around the contents and teachings of this book. Philosophies have emerged with the contents of this book as their foundations. The bible is the most widely-read book in history and even non-believers have benefited from its insights and wisdom into human nature. In addition, people have been willing to die for the veracity of this book in a way that no other book can claim in history. And finally, on a very pastoral note, the Bible has the ability to bring peace to a dying person’s heart unlike any other book in human history. When folks are on their deathbeds, they typically do not ask for someone to read from Shakespeare’s sonnets, but regularly ask to have some of the Psalms read to them. This again is a sign that the words of this book transcend humanity and are found to be of divine origin. No other book, religious or secular, can claim the authority that the Bible claims for itself, and it is irrational to ask for a higher authority to attest to the divinity of the Bible than God himself because God himself is the highest authority—and He claims thousands of times in the scriptures that these words are his own. If you doubt that this book is truly God’s word, I challenge you to sit down and give the Bible an honest read from cover to cover, examining the evidence for and against, before you seek to challenge its authority.
Now, as to answering Mayer’s specific question about why God does not destroy the Devil and thus rid the world of evil? To answer this question well, there are several things we need to take into account. First of all, there is an important distinction that needs to be made between the Devil and evil in the sense that even if the Devil were to cease to exist tomorrow, there would still be evil in the world. The name “Devil” comes from the Greek term, dia/boloß (diabolos), which literally refers to one who engages in slander against another (certainly something that Mayer is guilty of when it comes to God). In the Greek translation of the Old Testament, dia/boloß (diabolos) is typically used to translate !j’f’ (Satan), which means, “accuser.” Satan is described as the accuser of the faithful (Zechariah 3:1-2; Job 1) and one who incites to sin (1 Chronicles 21:1). The Devil, in turn, is described as tempter (Matthew 4:1), enemy of God (Matthew 13:39), betrayer (John 6:70), murderer and Father of Lies (John 8:44), oppressor of God’s people (Acts 10:38), enemy of righteousness (Acts 13:10), the one who sets snares for God’s people (1 Timothy 3:7), and the father of those who make a practice of sinning (1 John 3:7-10). Ultimately it will be the devil and those who serve him who will be thrown into the lake of fire to be tormented eternally (Revelation 20:10,15). Thus, in a sense, part of Meyer’s answer is answered. God has promised that he will destroy the devil, but such will not take place until all of God’s elect have been brought to faith (arguably Christ’s return is keyed to the death of the last martyr [Revelation 7:11]).
Before I address the question of evil and it being taken out of the world, I want to address the follow-up question that Meyer posed—what is God waiting for? In other words, the question can be rephrased—why doesn’t God just get on with it? In a sense, the answer was given just above—God is waiting for the final predestined believer to come to faith/the last martyr to give his life for the Holy faith. To understand this better, it is important to look at how Peter addressed this very question in his second epistle. Peter was dealing with those who were scoffing and saying “nothing has changed since the old days—where is this God of yours?” It is almost as if Peter were writing to Mayer on this very issue—or perhaps Mayer isn’t overly creative in asking questions. Peter states that the reason God is taking what seems to us to be a long time is not because God is slow to act, but because God is patient, being willing to endure the mocking and scoffing of unbelievers until the very last member of his elect has been brought to faith (2 Peter 3:8-10). Thus, in God’s eternal decree before the foundation of the earth, when he chose his elect throughout history (Ephesians 1:4), God also determined to stay his hand of eternal judgment long enough for the very last believer would be brought to faith—he will not lose even one of those who he has so ordained to become his own (John 10:28).
Finally, we are left with the question of evil. The first thing to note is that while the concept of sin is related to the concept of evil, they are not synonymous. The Old Testament word for sin derives from the Hebrew verb aj’x’ (chata), which means to miss the mark or target that one is aiming at. Thus, sin is missing the mark of God’s righteous character or not being able to live up to his standard. In turn, the antonym of sin is righteousness. In contrast, the Hebrew word for evil is [r: (ra), and it is typically used as the antonym of bAT (tov), or “good.” Deuteronomy 30:15 presents this contrast quite clearly where Moses presents the people with the following statement: “See, I put before you this day the life and the good—the death and the evil.” In other words, that which is good and that which is evil are seen as the necessary results of obedience or disobedience respectively, or in the context of our discussion—good and evil are the results of a righteous lifestyle or a sinful lifestyle. One might take the concept one step farther, understanding the fall of mankind as described in Genesis 3 as the entrance of evil into the world, that good is ultimately reflected in what it was like to live in an unfallen world and evil is reflected in what it is like to live in a fallen world.
So why does God permit us to live in a world that is less than perfect and is often filled with evil rather than with good? Admittedly, such a time is only for a season, for there will come a time when Jesus will return and remake the heavens and the earth free from the effects of evil—restoring the world to an unfallen state, but with one catch—we will no longer be able to fall into sin. Yet, for now, we live in a fallen world and not only do we sin, but we are forced to endure not only evil people all around us, but also evil events that take place—events that are reflective of the fall of mankind. So why does a good God permit such evil? First of all, God permits such to go on in the world around us to remind us of the effects of our sinful actions and hopefully compel us to grieve over our own sin as well as the sins of others. Secondly, evil in the world around us stands as a constant testimony against the secular humanists and almost every other religious system. Most religions and the secular humanists believe that deep down mankind is good and that it will only truly become good when it “sheds the skin” of religion and moves forward apart from God. The Bible tells us quite the opposite. We are born in sin (Psalm 51:5) and we pursue sin (Romans 3:10-12) with all of our strength apart from a movement of the Holy Spirit in our lives. If mankind were good, then mankind would be perfecting itself and wars and political oppression and greed would come to an end. Yet we are sinners, and thus we stumble and fall into sin. Mankind is fallen and evil is a constant testimony to that fallenness. A final reason for God’s permission of evil in the world is that he uses evil to strengthen Christians in their faith. Facing evil, trials, and tribulations force us to draw closer to God and to rely on his strength and thus grow in our relationship to him.
In other words, for the Christian, while evil is something that we never desire to enter into our lives, when it does, such evil things are not necessarily bad. In fact, in many cases, the scriptures remind us that it is good to face evil things so long as we are relying upon God, for such cases will grow us to be stronger in our relationship with Jesus Christ. One final note—while the final destruction of the Devil will not take place before the second coming of our Lord, Jesus did once and for all time defeat the power of the devil upon the cross of Calvary. Yet, though Satan has been defeated, we must endure for a little while longer while God works out his plan in the world.
In a nutshell—God does has already destroyed the Devil and has promised to cast him in the lake of fire in the end times. Second, God is waiting for the last of the elect to come to faith and/or the last martyr to die. Third, even if the Devil were thrown into the pit tomorrow, we would still have evil in the world due to the fall of man and man’s sin—something that can only be remedied through a relationship with Jesus Christ. Fourth, evil is not always bad though it is always unpleasant. God often uses evil to bring about his work in this world as well as using it to sanctify and mature us in the faith.
Strengths and Weaknesses of Proofs for God’s Existence from General Revelation
This is just a small sampling of the many proposed “proofs” for God’s existence drawn from General Revelation; there are many more that we could spend our time reviewing. Yet, these six do a good job demonstrating the strengths and weaknesses of such proofs. The strength of the proof is that it demonstrates the truth of Romans 1 and Psalm 14 (as well as many other places) where the Bible states that even natural man is able to recognize that there is a God that is greater than him. And by definition, if there is one who is greater than you who has created you, you have an obligation to him. Thus, in refusing to worship the one true God, man knows that he is condemned in sin. Hence, human responsibility to live acceptable lives before this God is affirmed indirectly by these proofs.
The weakness of the proof is that it does not explain who this God is, it does not teach us how we may come into relationship with him, and it does not teach us what are obligations toward that God are or how our past failure to fulfill our obligations to him may be redressed. I daresay that another weakness of this argument, at least from a purely naturalistic or secularistic perspective, is that these arguments assume a God like whom the Bible describes. For a conclusion to be valid, the premise must be valid. We need scripture to affirm the premise of an infinite God who is the creator, designer, or first mover in a meaningful way. Anselm’s definition of that which is “greater” is a definition, for example, that assumes benevolence to be a necessary aspect. Yet, what of one who defines “greater” in terms of maliciousness? Even Anselm’s definition, then, is predicated on the Biblical idea of God. These proofs demonstrate why it is so essential to begin with the presuppositional stance of Biblical inspiration as defined earlier.
Limitations of General Revelation:
Thus, one can argue from General Revelation that God exists, which is consistent with what Paul teaches about General Revelation in Romans 1:20. What else may we discern from General Revelation? We can discern something of the orderly and moral nature of God from the orderly way the creation functions and behaves. We can also observe that we are created to be religious, as everywhere and in every culture, religion of one form or another arises. More will be said on this when we speak of Anthropology, but let it suffice to say that given the evidence around us, man is a moral and religious creature. Finally, we must confess that General Revelation is rather insufficient for any system of thought, either religious or otherwise. General Revelation is dependent upon our ability to interpret evidence, something that is limited first by our fallen and finite minds and second by our ability to observe the world around us. How many scientific principles have changed through the years when advances in technology allowed us to observe something that was previously unobservable. The electron microscope, for example, revolutionized the study of the cell and turned the scientific world on its head. Prior to this discovery, the cell was thought to be a simple organism, and in fact, the whole Darwinian theory of evolution was based on the premise that the cell was simple and not complex, easily able to be mutated and adapted into different things. This is clearly not the case, as electron microscopes have allowed us to look into the cell and discover that they are far more complex than even the most intricate factories or machines that humans have ever made. In fact, human machines pale in comparison to the complexity of what was once thought of as a “simple” cell. As a result, there is a move within the scientific establishment away from evolution back to the idea of Intelligent Design. Many Intelligent Design proponents are not willing to admit to the designer being the God of the Bible, but they at least recognize that we are created by design and not random chance. As a result of this one invention, more than 100 years of science has been shown to be faulty and scientists must begin again in making their arguments. Like science, psychology and philosophy are in a constant state of flux. Thus, if General Revelation is insufficient, then what must we have if we are to walk faithfully before God in this world?
Special Revelation
The answer to the limitation of General Revelation is Special Revelation, or, revelation that comes directly from God. We have already demonstrated, by the weakness of General Revelation, that Special Revelation is essential. Without Special Revelation, we would have no way to understand the fullness of God’s nature, the depravity of our sinful state, the means to which man may enter into a relationship with the creator God, or the means by which we may be redeemed from our wretched estate of sin. Without Special Revelation, we truly would have no meaningful way to understand the world, for Special Revelation provides us with a lens to look through that is not distorted by the effects of the fall. In fact, Special Revelation is the only undistorted lens by which we may see and understand even the things in the scientific world clearly and properly. Mankind did not need to invent the electron microscope to know that the cell was a complex entity and thus all things were made by a Grand Intelligence. God told us as much in Genesis 1 and 2.
Anselm’s Ontological Proof for the Existence of God based on General Revelation
Anselm’s Ontological Proof
In dealing with the question of naturalistic proofs for God’s existence, we must not fail to discuss Anselm and his Ontological argument. Anselm predated Aquinas by about 200 years, so clearly, Aquinas is responding to Anselm’s idea that the reality of God’s existence could be proven by looking at General Revelation. It is worth noting that through history there have been many, including people like Thomas Aquinas and Immanuel Kant who have felt they have undone Anselm’s argument, but in reality, these critiques fall short of refuting Anselm’s proof—hence it is still discussed today. Again, this is not designed to prove the God of the Bible, but simply that God, as an infinitely greater being, does exist. He was simply seeking to develop the language of Psalm 14:1, “The foolish one says in his heart that there is no God.”
- Anselm begins by presenting a definition of God. God, he says, is a being greater than which no greater being can be conceived. Again, this argument is not designed to prove the God of the Bible, but that there is a God who is infinite and above all else. One might take issue with Anselm’s definition, suggesting, as many today do, that we can have a plethora of Gods depending on culture and preference, yet, why would one bother worshipping one God of many, who is at best equal to others and likely less than some? This hardly seems like the definition of a god worthy of worship. The one worthy of worship and veneration is the one whom above which there is no other. Why accept a cheap counterfeit when you can have the genuine article?
- Given this definition, Anselm argues that there are only two possible candidates for “God.”
- This infinitely perfect being exists, but he only exists as an idea. Yet, what is greater than an infinitely perfect God who exists as an idea? It is an infinitely perfect God that exists in reality.
- Thus, the second candidate is an infinitely perfect being, greater than which none can be conceived, that does exist in reality: God.
Objections to Anselm:
The two most regularly cited objections to Anselm’s argument come from Gaunilo, a contemporary of Anselm and Kant, more than 700 years later. Briefly, their arguments were similar, but distinct. Gaunilo argued that he could think of many things greater than which no other could be conceived. He suggested, as an example, an island, arguing that he could conceive of the perfect island but just because he could conceive of it did not imply that it existed or that he should seek it out. Anselm replied that he had committed the logical fallacy of equivocation, in other words, using the same term in different ways to refute an argument. Gaunilo and Anselm were both speaking of that which was perfect, but were not using them in the same way, hence Gaunilo’s argument did not carry any weight. In the case of the island, Gaunilo was defining “perfection” in terms of the best representative of a given class of objects—namely islands. Anselm was not positing God as the best member of a class of beings, but as the being par excellence, who is not a member of a class, but a class unto himself.
Kant approaches the argument from a slightly different angle and criticizes Anselm for making the concept of “real existence” a primary quality of value. His suggestion is that the existence or non-existence of something does not make it qualitatively better or worse, but simply different. This can be approached from two angles. First, from a philosophical view, even if existence is not a primary qualitative attribute, it is still an attribute of something. If the idea of God is, as Anselm posited, a being which nothing greater can be conceived, the simple addition of the secondary attribute of existence is still an addition to the being and is, by definition, greater. Thus, Anselm’s argument still stands. The second approach is a practical one. The existence or non-existence of something is a qualitative attribute and cannot be refuted as such. Even Kant would have to concede that were he hungry, the existence or non-existence of food on his plate or in his cupboard is a qualitative difference of first priority. Let us assume one goes to a restaurant and orders an expensive meal, and let us assume that the waiter brings out an empty plate claiming that such is simply the non-existent form of the meal—the meal consisting as an idea in the patron’s mind—how do you think that even Kant would respond when the bill for the meal is brought? Surely we must concede, that the existence and non-existence of an object is a qualitative measure of primary importance, and thus, Anselm’s distinction between an infinitely perfect God that exists as an idea and an infinitely perfect God that exists as reality stands.
Aquinas’ Five Ways: Proofs for the Existence of God from General Revelation
St. Thomas Aquinas listed what he saw as five intellectual proofs of the existence of God—proofs that were dependent on reason and observation, not the revealed word of God.
Aquinas and the First Way:
Aquinas recognized that for motion to take place, there had to be something that interacts with it to cause it to move. For a ball to move, for example, it must be struck by another object, for example, the foot of a child kicking it. The ball has the potential to move, but that potential cannot reach its actuality until something else acts upon it. Aquinas argued then, that as the original object that was moved needed to have something act upon it to move, so too does the second object have something act upon it. The boy swings his leg, which moves his foot which in turn moves the ball. And the chain continues backwards from there. He also recognized that without a first mover, the chain of cause and effect must, by definition, go eternally back. Since that idea is absurd to the ordered mind and is not consistent with observable evidence, there must be a first mover upon which nothing is needed to act to cause him to move. This, in turn must be an infinite being outside of creation and hence is God.
While it is not my purpose to go into a detailed critique of these proofs, it is important to point out what Aquinas is doing. It is clear from the language that this is designed to be an intellectual argument for the existence of a god, but it does not point clearly to the existence of the Biblical God. This proof could just as easily be applied to Allah, Odin, or Jupiter. The point is simply to argue that it is impossible to rationally look at our world without seeing the reality of a creator God.
Aquinas and the Second Way:
The second approach that Aquinas mentioned is similar to the first, but focuses on cause and effect rather than on potential motion being converted into actual motion. Every effect must have a cause, if you eliminate the cause you eliminate the effect. Once again, since an infinite series of cause and effect is irrational, the principle posits that there must be an original cause that in itself does not need a cause: hence God. Again, this does not posit the God of the Bible, or even a good and benevolent God for that matter, it only posits that a God exists who is the cause of all things and who is the effect of nothing.
Aquinas and the Third Way:
The third approach deals with a question of being and not being. Aquinas argued that from observation, the things around him had the possibility of being (or existing) or not being. The chair that you are sitting on exists, but it has not always existed. There was a time when the chair was not. He went on to observe that for something to move from not being to being, that action had to be brought about by something that was being. In other words, for the chair we spoke of earlier to come into being, it had to be manufactured. To manufacture something you must “be.” Something that does not exist cannot make something come into existence, the idea of such is nonsensical. Thus, all things that exist must be brought about by that which exists. Just as in the question of causation, there must be a first being. Yet, if that first being exists, he must necessarily not have the possibility of not being. In other words, as non-existence cannot bring about existence, the first being necessarily has to have always existed. And this entity that necessarily exists and cannot not-exist, is God.
Aquinas and the Forth Way:
Aquinas points out that we recognize that there are degrees of things. Some things are better than others; some things are shorter or taller or colder or hotter, etc… than others. And thus we rate them as good, better, and best. Yet, for us to have the idea that one thing is better than another, we must have a standard by which all things are measured and that can never be exceeded. That standard, then, is God. Note that this is not the suggestion that we get the idea of goodness or hotness from God, but simply that there must always be something that is more good or more hot than that which we are viewing and since there is a gradation, there must always be a top to the gradation that can never be surpassed. Such a top or asymptote, by definition, requires an infinite being, hence it must be God.
Aquinas and the Fifth Way:
Fifthly, Aquinas points out that there are entities in creation that have no consciousness at all, yet still act in a regular fashion and in such a way that it is beneficial to their continued existence. Trees, for example, have no consciousness of their own to direct themselves, yet they will sink their roots deeply into the soil to collect water, they will spread their branches wide to collect light for their photo-synthetic leaves, and they will drop seeds by which they may propagate their kind. Aquinas observed that since they act with some sense of direction in terms of self-preservation, yet are unguided by their own consciousness, they must be guided by the consciousness of another. This, once again, is the role of God.
The Imago Dei, Evolutionary Dogma, and Human Dignity
“And God created man in his image;
In the image of God He created him;
Male and Female, he created them.”
Genesis 1:27
One of the delights that comes along with my position as Discipleship Director at Rocky Bayou Christian School is that I get to lead 3 chapels per week with different groups of elementary school students. The setting of our elementary chapels is smaller and more intimate than that of our Academy chapel services, and allows me a lot more one-on-one interactions; our time together is usually one of the highlights of my week.
About a month ago, I was doing a chapel reflecting on Psalm 128 and the fear of the Lord. I began by asking students some of the things that made them afraid for the purpose of contrasting worldly fear and the Fear of the Lord. For most students the responses were fairly typical: spiders, snakes, bats, monsters on TV, having to go to the principal’s office, etc… Yet, my heart broke when I got to mid-week and I was leading this discussion with the third group of elementary schoolers. One sixth-grader raised his hand when asked about what he was afraid of and said, “old people.” That one statement opened up what seemed like the floodgates of similar comments, like “the smell of the places where old people stay, etc…” My heart was crushed that students from Christian homes in a Christian school would make comments like that. It also made me aware of how our churches have allowed evolutionary teaching to degrade the teaching of the Imago Dei and thus to redefine, even in our church settings, where human dignity and worth finds its source. Needless to say we set aside the topic of fear and spent our time talking about the Image of God.
The Imago Dei:
The doctrine that man is created in the image of God finds its roots in Genesis 1:26-27. God, on the sixth day of creation (literal, 24-hour days, thank you), chose to make a creature that would reflect his being, made in his own image, and set into the world to take dominion of it—ruling over the creation as stewards or regents on God’s behalf. God made this decision within his Triune fullness, for he said, “let us make man in our own image…” Thus, at the onset, one of the things that we learn is that mankind is made in the image of the fullness of the Godhead—our image does not just represent God the Father, God the Son, or God the Holy Spirit, but in the image of the Triune God, we were made.
What, then, does it mean to be in the “image” of someone else? The Hebrew term that is used in Genesis 1:26-27 to describe God making mankind in his image is ~l,c, (tselem), which refers to that which is made to reflect the image of someone or something else. This can refer to anything from a statue or an idol to a painting or drawing of another. In other words, a ~l,c, (tselem) was something that reflected or represented something else. It is no the original “thing,” whatever that original may have been, and thus was understood to be derivative of the original. The image is not equal to the original in any way, the image owes its existence to the original, and the image gains any honor that it might have from the original, not from within itself. It is worth noting that in the Septuagint, the Greek term used to translate ~l,c, (tselem) is ejikw/n (eikon), the term from which we get the English word, “icon,” a word that carries with it many of the same connotations.
In many ancient cultures, kings would place a symbol or statue of themselves in a public place to represent their authority and their dominion over that particular town or territory. No human king could be in all places at once, and though the statue was not the king himself, the statue represented the king, reminded the people of the glory of the king, and established that the particular king had authority over the lives of those who lived in that realm. This very practice is a human example of what God did in creation. God not only created man and woman, but he did so for a purpose—so we might glorify him by taking dominion over the creation as his regents (Genesis 1:28-30) and then turn that work into obedient worship (Genesis 2:15-17). Adam and Eve were given authority over the earth even to the point of naming the creatures (Genesis 2:19-20), a privilege that only belongs to God. Thus, note, Adam and Eve did not carry with them their own authority, but they acted on behalf of God and in his authority. Indeed, their sin was an action taken in their own authority (Genesis 3:6-7), and we have paid the penalty for that action, generation after generation, throughout history, and we continue to pay that penalty in this world today.
Warped but Not Lost:
We must note, in recognizing mankind as fallen, that we have not lost the Image of God—had we lost that image, there would be nothing left to redeem. Instead, the Image of God in us has been bent, twisted, warped, and otherwise mangled. It is distorted, in some cases, almost beyond recognition. Not only that, I would suggest that many have sought to further warp and twist the Image of God within themselves through intentional immorality, drug use, and body modification (radical body piercings, tattoos, bodily mutilations, etc…). It is interesting, when you attend to the various Biblical accounts of demon possession, the primary thing that you see the demons doing is robbing the people of the things that reflect God’s Image—they rob the people of speech, of human contact, and they distort their bodies. The account of Legion is a typical example of this activity (Mark 5:1-20). Legion robbed the man he possessed of society and family as he was living in the tombs (Mark 5:3), robbed him of human dialogue as he spent his time howling like an animal (Mark 5:5), and robbed him of a normal physical human appearance as he was cutting himself to pieces with sharp rocks (Mark 5:5).
We see people in our own society doing these same things to themselves. We live in a culture where younger and older generations set themselves at odds with each other, breaking down the unity of the generations that is necessary for a healthy society. As a result, older generations are not passing down their accumulated wisdom to those who will follow them and younger generations are not seeking to learn from the wiser older generations. In our culture, we go as far as to glamorize youth, so we have middle-aged men and women who have become obsessed with vanity and pursue a variety of youthful activities (we usually call it a mid-life crisis), rejecting the wisdom of age and maturity for the folly of youth. We see people not developing their intellect, but instead sitting like zombies before electronic amusements (whether TV or computer games) for forty or more hours a week. We see youth engaging in drug use, which numbs the mind, and over time, does permanent damage to the intellect that is meant to reflect God’s intellect. A trend that has been growing in popularity is “cutting,” where people slice on themselves with razor blades, not deep enough to kill, but deep enough to damage their bodies. Tattoos have become the rage as a form of “personal expression” and some people have been going as far as to have tattoos on their face as well as on the rest of their bodies. Sexual-reassignment surgery has become more acceptable. We could go on endlessly, and my purpose is not to decry the ills of our culture, though they are many, but instead to point out that when we pursue these activities, we are doing to ourselves the kinds of things that demons have always sought to do to humanity in the past—in many ways, we are furthering the ends that Satan began at the fall.
The Perfect ~l,c,:
Assuming that the Devil’s goal is to mock God by further bending and warping the Imago Dei within man, then we should not be surprised that one of the works of the Holy Spirit is the restoration of the Imago Dei in those who have been called to God in faith. We call this process sanctification. Yet, we must ask what the goal of this sanctification—what the object of the restoration of the Imago Dei—looks like. For a goal to be a genuine goal, it must not be ambiguous, but must be definite. With this in mind, Paul reveals to us that Jesus Christ is the ejikw/n (eikon) of God who is unseen (Colossians 1:15). In other words, one of the aspects of Christ’s redemptive work was to demonstrate to us—in his person—what the goal of our sanctification looks like. Thus, when Paul speaks of our sanctification, he refers to it as our being made to “share the likeness”—su/mmorfoß (summorphos)—of the ejikw/n (eikon) of the Son (Romans 8:29). Thus, to set the contrast, all are born into this world after the image of Adam (Genesis 5:3) and after one becomes born again, one is slowly transformed into the image of Christ. Those who remain in the likeness of Adam stand before God bearing the sin and guilt of Adam; those who are found in the likeness of Christ stand before God bearing the righteousness of Christ. The image you bear makes all the difference in the world.
The Nature of the Imago Dei:
There is some discussion as to the extent to which the Imago Dei extends within man. Some would argue that the Imago Dei is limited only to the spiritual/intellectual aspects of a person and then there are others who would argue that the Image of God also extends to man’s physical attributes. The rationale for the first position submits that man did not come alive until God breathed into him “the breath of life” (Genesis 2:7) thus separating him from the rest of the creatures that God had made. In addition, this position argues that for mankind to be made into the image of an invisible God, it ought to go without saying that such an image is then contained within the mind and the spirit. Finally, this position would point to passages like Romans 12:2, where Paul speaks of our sanctification as being guided by the transformation (“metamorphosis”) of our minds, and 1 Peter 1:13, where Peter commends us to “gird up the loins” of our minds. The strength of this also lies in the diversity of the human race and form and in the fact that the Scriptures reveal almost nothing about the physical form of Jesus while revealing countless insights into his spiritual, moral, and intellectual state.
The theological ramifications of this first, and predominant, view are many. To begin with, this view leaves one open to a Greek dualistic division of mind and body. Also, it denies the unique created beauty of the human body. If the body is simply an incidental vessel used to house the eternal spirit, what motivation is there to treat the body with dignity so long as the mind is intact? Such a view has led to Christian asceticism as well as to gluttony amongst believers. C.S. Lewis develops this idea further in his Chronicles of Narnia and in his Space Trilogy. In each of these sets of stories, there are creatures of many forms and types, yet all bear the Image of God—in the language of the Space Trilogy, they are all hnau. Thus, in turn, Azlan can come in the form of a Lion to redeem peoples of various forms and types.
The great danger of this position lies in the fact that it posits being rational, and not being human, as the qualifier for being an Image Bearer, and this has sweeping social consequences. What about the person in a vegetative state, is this person no longer in the Image of God because of a lack of brain function? What of infants and even embryos, do they exhibit sufficient rationality to be declared image bearers? How do we decide what that mark of “sufficient” rationality is? Certainly Scripture does not inform us clearly on that matter unless we are to take Jude 10 to imply that as unbelievers act as “unthinking animals,” that only those who are born again believers should be considered Image Bearers. Does that mean that only believing humans have moral dignity that is intrinsic to their very being? What if the science-fiction writers are correct and there are races of aliens on different worlds? What about robots created to simulate human thought? What of certain animals—certainly some monkeys exhibit more “rationality” than some infants.
It seems far more theologically and morally consistent to affirm that the Imago Dei is contained within the physical as well as the spiritual/intellectual form of man—our totality being God’s representative upon this world. God designed our bodies in a particular way, and we look markedly different than any other species on the planet. God uses human terms to describe himself to us (hands, feet, etc…) and while any theologian worth his salt will point out that this is merely an anthropomorphism, God regularly chooses to use such language to convey meaning when it is not necessary to make his point. But more importantly, Christ took on flesh not simply to dwell with us in the flesh and to die in the flesh, but to redeem the flesh as well. And, as a result of that redemption, we will have new, glorified bodies as well in the resurrection (1 Corinthians 15). Were the Imago Dei contained only in the intellectual/spiritual aspects of man, what would be the purpose of redeeming the body as well as the spirit? Thus, for the purposes of this discussion, I suggest it be considered that the Imago Dei rests not only in the mind and spirit of man, but in the flesh as well.
The Rise of Darwinism and the Decline of the Imago Dei in Religious Thought:
We live in an age where doctrine is often considered to be irrelevant to Christian life—a consideration that reflects the woeful lack of understanding as to what doctrine really is and represents, but that is a debate for another day. More importantly, we live in a culture that is a product of Darwinian teaching in the classroom and that teaches a humanistic and not a Christian worldview. Sadly, this kind of teaching has a devastating effect on society as a whole, and has even infected Christian churches and Christian schools, as the experience that I shared in my introduction demonstrates. So, what has happened?
To understand this, the first thing that one must do is understand the philosophical ramifications that come along with a Darwinistic/naturalistic/humanistic worldview. To begin with, under an evolutionary model, mankind has risen to a place of prominence in this world simply through a series of genetic mutations brought about by cause and effect—the process that governs all of nature. It is also assumed that humans are still in the process of evolving, opening the door for a hierarchy within the human race, some people groups being “more evolved” than others. In the naturalistic model, there is no room for human freedom (libertarian or compatiblist), in fact, there is no will at all—the only thing that there is room for is naturalistic determinism. In addition, as neither reason nor presuppositions can be adequately explained in a causal world, what we perceive to be thought, willful choices, morality, and meaningful principles is merely an illusion—a figment of our imagination, but then again, imagination itself cannot be accounted for as a result of cause and effect. Furthermore, naturalism permits no transcendent God upon which ideas and norms find their meaning. Morality, then (even though it is an illusion), is nothing more than a set of social constraints imposed on the people by the ruling class.
With no creator to serve and to guide one’s life, the Darwinian worldview leaves one to determine one’s own meaning and purpose. Thus, if your life is to have meaning and worth, you must create that meaning and worth yourself. This is a stark contrast to the Christian model, which asserts that our meaning and significance is not self-generated or self-decided, but is given to us by God as bearers of his image. In other words, the very fact that we are created in the image of God means we have dignity and purpose in our lives. The answer to the age-old question, “What is the meaning of life?” is not left up to us, but is given to us by God, for the answer is that life is given to us so that we might glorify Him with the aim of enjoying Him forever.
So, where does that leave us? Given then, the naturalistic worldview that Darwinism demands, we live in a society where a great many (if not most) people understand the value of their life to be something that they earn by their accomplishments. What are the societal ramifications of this?
- Abortion is legal and even encouraged in certain segments of our culture. In addition, many doctors even counsel parents to have selective abortions for high risk pregnancies, multiples pregnancies, and pregnancies where the child has a probability of being born with severe physical or mental disorders.
- Partial-Birth Abortion, which is nothing short of infanticide concurrent with delivery, is promoted as an ethically viable action in certain segments of our society.
- Children with disabilities are often mainstreamed in school systems and do not receive the specialized attention that they need to master skills.
- The poor and homeless are considered second-class citizens and rarely receive the legal and societal support necessary to become self-supporting.
- Elderly are often placed in care homes where adequate care is not given. Elderly in such homes often go unvisited by family. Neglect and abuse of said patients is also commonplace.
- Euthanasia is considered a “humane” option for the elderly and severely disabled by some segments of our culture.
The list could go on, but the point is clear: if you don’t have a clear sense that your dignity comes from the fact that you bear God’s image, your view of human worth will be based on what the person produces, not upon whose image that they bear. Thus, when the value of life is based on production, abortion, infanticide, euthanasia, etc… all become reasonable options in society. At the same time, when you hold to a clear articulation of the doctrine of the Imago Dei, a person has dignity regardless of what they are capable of producing; hence the newest embryo and the most decrepit individual have dignity and worth, for they both bear the image of the divine creator.
Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed
This is a documentary movie that is soon to arrive in cinemas that is designed to expose the way that Darwinistic scientists have been black-listing scientists who would suggest that a designer guided the development of life on earth, not random chance mutations. The purpose of this movie is not to set forth an argument for Biblical creation nor is it designed to argue for the doctrine of the Imago Dei. Instead, its purpose is to expose the censorship that is taking place against those in what is called the “Intelligent Design” movement. To this end, one of the things that the movie brings out is the serious danger to social institutions and human worth that comes from a Darwinian naturalistic worldview. In particular, the genocides of the 20th century are brought out as a result of consistent naturalistic thought (one race is further developed than another). This line of reasoning does underline the importance of the doctrine of the Imago Dei, and for that, this movie promises to have great value. The Christian must be warned, though, that if he expects to see an argument for a Biblical model of creation in six-literal days, he will be sorely disappointed. Theologically, Intelligent Design is a contemporary version of Natural Theology from previous generations, and while Natural Theology can and does clearly point to the existence of a God, the best description of God that Natural Theology can arrive at is the description of the God of Deism. Without the Bible, you cannot know the God of the Bible, hence proponents of natural design hail from seemingly every religious background.
Final Thoughts:
We are left asking the question, “What does this doctrine of the Imago Dei mean for me?” What it means is that first, we must recognize the human dignity that is in others—regardless of their age, their development, their circumstances, or their accomplishments. We have dignity because we are created in God’s image—from the embryo to the grave (and even in the grave, in terms of the dignity with which we honor the dead). Secondly, we need to help others understand that they have dignity because they bear the image of God. Largely this is taught by the way we treat others, particularly those who have nothing in this world. When we treat the homeless beggar with dignity and respect, that will go a long way to teach him that he has some genuine value in this world. And thirdly, we who understand that humans bear the image of God, must work to protect the dignity of others. This third element should lead us to social actions that will abolish institutions and practices that rob people of the dignity that is theirs because they are created in God’s image.
The Time is Coming Soon
One of the themes that you cannot get away from when you read the book of Revelation is the theme of the “soon-ness” of Christ’s glorious return. Yet, for many, this has been a stumbling block. They say that if John expected that Jesus’ return would be soon, and if Jesus himself said that his coming would be soon, how is it that nearly 2000 years have gone by? Were they wrong?
Some have sought to answer this by going to 2 Peter 3:9, to point out that God’s sense of time is different than our sense of time. This answer is not overly satisfying, though. In context, Peter is speaking of God’s patience in bringing the elect to himself, and reminding the readers that God will endure great spans of time to accomplish his plans. Peter quotes this statement from Psalm 90:4, where the psalmist (Moses in this case) speaks of God’s eternality.
So how should we understand this language of Jesus coming “soon.” Christians are to be a people of anticipation. Indeed, we look back at all that God has done to learn, but we also look forward with expectation to what God is going to do—namely that Jesus will return, bring sin into final judgment, and then remake heaven and earth in glorious perfection. We look forward to that day when we too will join with the saints in singing that “New Song” before Christ’s glorious presence (Revelation 5:9). We eagerly anticipate when we will experience that same bodily resurrection that Jesus experienced and will dwell eternally with our Lord, free from sickness, heart-ache, and the effects of sin.
As John writes this, he is seeking to keep this sense of anticipation before us. As believers, we are to live every day as if Christ were coming any moment. Think of the busy anticipation that you feel as you await the arrival of a special guest at your home. There is the business of rushing around putting everything in its place and finishing all of the preparations. Yet, there are also those excited looks out the window, wondering when that special guest will arrive. Friends, as believers, this is how we are to live our lives. Christ will come—we can be assured of that—we just don’t know the timing. We should be hard at work, making sure our spiritual houses are in order, yet always look to the sky, asking the question: “Could this day be the day when Christ returns?” The language of the “soon-ness” of the second coming is meant to help engender that sense of anticipation.
The Contagiousness of Worship
Worship, when it is filled with the Holy Spirit, is contagious. I expect that this is part of the reason that the scriptures emphasize that believers are to live within a covenant community. Not only can we support one another, but in our joined worship, we enable each other and lift each other up. I don’t expect that this principle could be displayed any more graphically than it is displayed at the end of Revelation, chapter 5. As soon as the twelve elders finish their song, they are joined by the four living creatures, the four cherubim, that are around the throne. Then they are joined by “myriads of myriads” of angels.
If you are interested in mathematics, a myriad is 10,000. Thus, a myriad of myriads, would be 10,000 times 10,000, or 100,000,000. And John describes “myriads of myriads,” both being plural. Thus, if we take this number literally, there are hundreds of millions of angels around the throne singing praise (this would require a choir loft that was 10 miles long and 10 miles deep!). Regardless of whether you take this number literally or figuratively as an uncountable number, it is one heck of a large chorus!
I had the blessing a number of years ago to participate in a evening worship service at a youth retreat where there were an estimated 90,000 youth and adults—all lifting their praises to heaven. It was a beautiful thing to behold. In Exodus 15, we are told that when the Israelites had crossed over the Red Sea safely, they sang praise to God—the men being led by Moses and the women by Miriam. We can safely assume that there were at least a million people present at this event. The sound of their voices must have shook the earth! Now multiply that and imagine for a moment hundreds of millions of angelic voices lifted up in perfect harmony to our Lord and God! What an amazing thing that must have been for John to witness!
And if that wasn’t enough, all of creation lifted its voice to join the heavenly song! True worship is contagious, oh believer, what joy you have to look forward to! This chapter closes appropriately, indeed. Once this amazing chorus finishes it’s last verse, the four cherubim around the throne, say, “Amen!” And the elders fall on their faces and worship. Loved ones, this is what God has planned for you. Don’t be too busy worrying about the individual blessings that are promised in scripture—in comparison to this—they are nickels and dimes.
O For a thousand tongues to sing
my great Redeemer’s praise,
the glories of my God and King,
the triumphs of his grace.
Hear him, ye deaf; his praise ye dumb,
your loosen’d tongues employ;
ye blind, behold your Savior come;
and leap, ye lame, for joy.
-Charles Wesley
He is Worthy!
Oh how important it is for us to worship Jesus! He is worthy of our praise and no one else is. Mohammed was not worthy, Buddha was not worthy, Krishna was not worthy, our governments are not worthy, humanistic teachers are not worthy—no one but Jesus is worthy of our praise and adoration.
Jesus is worthy first because of his perfect character. From the beginning of time, Jesus is and was infinitely perfect in all of his ways. He is God. And for that simple fact, he deserves our worship. Friends, not only is the unbelief of the non-Christian a sin, but the refusal to worship both of the non-believer and of the casual churchgoer is also a sin. Had Jesus never done any work of redemption, he still would have been infinitely worthy of our praise and honor.
Yet, in his work of redemption, how much more worthy is he! He condescended to take on flesh and walk with us. He came to us while we were still rebels against God, wallowing in our sin—and he called us to himself. He did the work of redemption that bridged the infinite gap between a Holy God and a sinful man. He did that for me. And if you are a born-again believer, he did that for you as well. Because he did for me what I could have never done for myself, how much more is he worthy of my praise!
Praise Him! praise Him! Jesus our blessed Redeemer!
Sing, O Earth, his wonderful love proclaim!
Hail him! hail him! highest archangels in glory;
strength and honor give to his holy name!
Like a shepherd, Jesus will guard his children,
in his arms he carries them all day long;
Praise him! praise him! tell of his excellent greatness;
praise him! praise him! ever in joyful song!
–Fanny Crosby
Reverence, the Image of God, and Politics
“revere all, love the brotherhood, fear God, revere the king.”
(1 Peter 2:17)
Reverence is a term that we hardly ever apply to life anymore, especially not toward others and even more especially not toward the king (or president and governors…). Reverence denotes placing a high value on someone’s head. For example, if someone shows you a priceless book, perhaps an original manuscript of Milton’s Paradise Lost that contains Milton’s own handwriting and notes, you would treat it with far more deference than you would a paperback science fiction novel. The reason that you treat it with reverence is because of the inherent value of the item.
Yet what Peter is telling us first in this verse is that other humans ought to be treated with reverence. Why? Because they are created by God and your attitude toward them is part of the way you witness Jesus Christ to them. It may be that it is your reverence toward your neighbor that guides him to salvation.
This has a great deal of ramifications in our lives today. First, it means that we must take other’s needs very seriously, even when they may seem silly or insignificant to us. For example, we might think it silly to wear gloves while handling a book. Yet, if that book is ancient, the oils on our hands can damage the manuscript. We might not understand the ways and reasons that our neighbor does what he or she does, but we need to treat those ways with dignity and respect.
This is very much the idea the Paul is getting at in 1 Corinthians where he is talking about food ways and stumbling blocks. If what you are doing would cause your brother to stumble, cease doing it. You cease not for your own sake, but for the sake of the other person’s faith. This is what it means to revere a person.
And if you take seriously the idea of revering a person simply on the basis of their being a human being, which God has made in His image, that puts abortion in a different perspective. No longer can you justify abortion on the basis of a mother’s “rights to her body,” but you must deny abortion out of reverence toward that little child. It puts euthanasia in a different light as well. It puts the care of the homeless, the disabled, the homebound, the elderly in nursing homes, and the nameless people you pass on the bus, at the grocery store, etc…, all of these people, in a different light. Each of these not only should be treated with dignity because they bear the image of God, but you who understand these things, now have an obligation to respect and to preserve their dignity. Indeed, you may even be given the opportunity to show someone that they do have dignity for the first time in their life. You may have the opportunity to restore that person’s sense of dignity after they have had it stripped violently from them. The Imago Dei brings a dignity to humans that has nothing to do with what they have produced or accomplished—it has nothing to do with their wealth or their bloodline—it has everything to do with whose image they bear.
Peter frames this verse with a second call to reverence. Not only must we show reverence toward all people, but we must show reverence toward our political leaders. It is easy to revere those politicians that we support, but what about those with whom we disagree? We tend to be quick to criticize and make personal attacks against those running for or within public office, but is that right? Was Peter only referring to those benevolent political leaders? The Caesar of Peter’s day was Nero. Nero went out of his way to execute Christians through horrible means. Nero would later take Peter’s life as well. This is hardly what I would call a beneficial leader. In fact, thinking of some of the worst leaders we have had, most pale in comparison to Nero.
Encapsulated within the bookends of reverence is a love for the brethren and a fear of God. This is the heart of the Christian life. But Peter reminds us that the flesh of the Christian life, that which the world can see and by which the world evaluates us and the God which we serve, is the reverence by which we deal with the world. This is the means by which we publicly live out our faith in the face of a watching world. Does not James say the same thing about pure and undefiled religion (James 1:27)?
Gethsemane
Oh how sober a garden that must have been. Here Jesus has come just prior to his arrest at the hands of the children of the Serpent; he has been betrayed by one of his twelve; he will soon be denied by Peter, the leader of the twelve; and abandoned, at least for a while, by all of the rest (John and the women make their way to the cross). Jesus is intentional. They have come into this garden so that he can retreat from the world and pray, seeking strength and an internally unified approach to the passion that was to come. Peter, James, and John, he has taken to the side to pray on his behalf as he seeks the Lord’s face.
There are many things that we can learn from this passage; a few are worth noting:
1) For the Christian, when preparing to face great trial, prayer must be our primary retreat. Here, even Jesus, the very Lord of Creation is seeking his father’s face. Oh, how we make a mess of this principle. Prayer so often is our last resort, when for the Christian it must be our first. Look here, dear Christian, if the Lord of the heavens needs to pray for strength before trials, then how much more do we, the frail and sinful, need that same prayer.
2) Jesus shows us the value of intercessory prayer. Here Jesus has taken three of his trusted apostles to the side. Jesus continues on to pray for a spell and leaves the three of them to wait. What, dear Christian, do you think that they were meant to be doing while Jesus prayed? If they were meant to be chatting about the day’s events in Jerusalem or swapping jokes, then why was Jesus so upset when they chose to take a catnap? No, these three were meant to be praying for Jesus that he would have strength to lift his prayers and burdens before his father. Brethren, do you want to know who your faithful friends are? It is those brothers and sisters who agonize with you in prayer before the father’s throne.
3) Times and trial and tribulation can cause us to have great internal struggles of faith, but disunity of spirit and body will cause us to stumble. Our Lord had two natures, a human one and a divine one. His petitions before the Lord were partly out of a desire to approach the coming suffering with the assurance of a unified witness. His human nature would not fail him, but would be faithful to the divine will. It is times when we are filled with indecision that we fail in our appointed task. As terribly important as Jesus’ next days were, not merely to his mighty work, but to the very future of mankind, Jesus was aligning his human and divine natures together for this task.
Yet what strikes me about this passage is how sad a place the garden must have been that night. There was a time that the Garden would have been a place for celebration and joy amongst the olive trees, but that night was quite different. Oh, the weight, not only of the task ahead, but of disappointment in his faithful apostles for their lack of faith even after all they had seen.
It must have taken Jesus back to another garden, Eden, recalling the disappointment that must have been felt at the time of the fall of our first parents. That garden as well was turned from a place of joy into a place of sadness. How often we do this with the gardens of blessing in our own lives. We take the gifts of God for granted and we bring sin into those gifts. We bring sin into our homes, or jobs, and our families. And we bring sin into our churches. Psalm 128 paints a picture of the blessing of work, family, and Church fellowship that God gives to those who fear him; we bring sin into all of these areas.
That same psalm describes our children as olive shoots. I want to be careful about how the analogy it draws, so as not to spiritualize the connection of olive shoots and the mature garden of Gethsemane, but it is worth noting the garden imagery. As with any garden, olive shoots need care and they need a strong fence to support them as they mature. If they do not have that fence to support and mold them, the shoots will creep across the ground and quickly become diseased, rotten, and die.
The sadness of Gethsemane came as a result of our sin. Adam and Eve sinned and fell, and Jesus, in this next garden, is preparing for the task of making right that which we made so wrong. As he leaves his time of prayer, he does so with a renewed determination. Notice that Jesus does not hide from the people coming to arrest him; he does not seek out just a few more minutes of prayer. He lays his prayer before his father three times and then, with renewed determination sets forward and presents himself to the children of darkness. It is as if he is saying, “let’s do it…” and entering into the belly of the beast—offering his life before them. And this he does on that lonely cross.
Loved ones, this was a path we could not walk; yet, Christ walked it so that we might not have to. This is the promise of the Gospel—we who deserve death are offered life and he who is the Lord of Life went to his death on our behalf. What wonder that this should raise in our heart, what amazement it should birth in our souls, yet how often we go through this time of the year thinking only of our own desires and wants. For you who are already trusting in Christ, let this Passion Week renew your adoration of and commitment to the Lord of your life; for those who are suffering in your own futile struggle against sin and guilt, know that Christ offers life—come to him and live!
The Preacher's Study 