The revealed Word leading you to the hidden God

Luther says in a Table Talk:

"consideration must be given to the revealed God on the one hand and to knowledge of the unrevealed [hidden] will of God on the other. Of the latter nothing at all is known to us. We must confess that what is beyond our comprehension is nothing for us to bother about. [...God] says in effect: "Let me remain hidden. Otherwise you will fall into the abyss of hell, as it is written, 'He who inquires into the majesty of God shall be crushed by it.' [Prov26:27] In this place leave me untouched. Carnal wisdom shall here have its limit. Here I wish to remain unrevealed. I shall reveal your election in another way. From the unrevealed God I shall become the revealed God. I shall incarnate my Son and shall give you one who will enable you to see whether you are elected. do this: Give up your speculations which are apart from the Word of God, thoroughly root them out, and drive them to the devil in hell. ' This is my beloved Son. Hear ye him'.["...] Christ says, "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." [John 14:9] Christ will lead you to the hidden God."

(pp.132-133, Luther: Letters of Spiritual Counsel, Translated and edited by Theodore G. Tappert).

Further reading on the hidden and revealed will of God can be found in Calvin's Institutes in book 1 chapters 17 and 18 (especially in the first few sections of each chapter)

Helpfully this is when Calvin is dealing with God's providence which includes him being in some way behind evil acts, whilst his will is clearly for good acts. Predestination to salvation really follows from this less contested teaching.

Elisha's miracles

Elisha performs astonishing miracles and one of the highlights is when he raises the Shunammite's Son (2 Kings 4). But he doesn't always find miracle-working straight forward. He sends his staff to be laid on the dead son but it does not work. He then has to go to house, shuts out the crowd from the room, and lays on the child, 'putting his mouth on his mouth, his eyes on his eyes, and his hands on his hands'; but that only makes the child warm. He then has a short break and repeats the process before the child wakes up coughing and spluttering. Later in the same chapter Elisha also feeds a hundred men with 'twenty loaves of barley and fresh ears of grain in his sack'.

In Mark 5 Jesus also is brought to someone's home to raise their child from the dead. He also shuts the door behind him and a couple of others but simply holds the child by her hand and speaks words to her and she immediately is risen and able to walk around. In the next chapter Mark records how Jesus feeds five thousand people with five loaves and two fish.

Killing and making alive

The Lord kills and brings to life;
  he brings down to Sheol and raises up. (1 Sam 2:6)

Some religions, and indeed some versions of Christianity, sound to me like God kills those that are out and does not kill those who are in. That is not the path of Jesus though, and it is not the Christian's path either.

Law and Gospel again

Sometimes I don't like the way law and Gospel can sometimes be used to chop the bible up into bits where some are law and some are Gospel. A nasty temptation when that is done is to ignore the law and only talk about those parts containing the Gospel (c.f. Hummel, Horace D. "Are Law and Gospel a Valid Hermeneutical Principle?" [online]Concordia Theological Quarterly 46 (1982) no. 2-3:181-207). I have commented before (here and here) that the same passage can in some ways be both law and Gospel. Wengert gives an example below:

the brokenness of election in Lutheranism - as foolish as it appears to human wisdom - already contains great comfort. We can thereby announce this electing promise to anyone and everyone ("God chooses you") and watch as that declaration acts as law and gospel in justifying the sinner. As law, God's choice destroys and puts an end to all our choices. As gospel, we can finally relax and let God's grace carry the day.

(p.190, A Formula for Parish Practice: Using the Formula of Concord in Congregations, by Timothy J. Wengert)

...BTW I'm not sure that I agree with all of the quote.

Melanchthon on the Qur'an

Did you know that in 1543 Martin Luther had a significant role in the publication of a Latin edition of the Qur'an? He wrote the preface and Philip Melanchthon wrote a 'warning to the Christian Reader'. Melanchthon had a number of points to raise, one of which was to 'compare types of teachings' between religions. This is what he found:

• Mohammed 'says nothing in favor of the forgiveness of sins'.
• 'He spews forth blasphemies upon the Son of God'.
• 'He does not teach what sin is'.
• 'nor does he demonstrate the causes of human misfortune'
• 'He is incapable of saying anything about true prayer in faith'.
• 'Finally, he completely rejects that teaching which belongs to the Gospel'.

I really need to get round to reading the Qur'an at some stage, but I suspect if I did I would come up with a different list. Nevertheless I think Melanchthon's list is better than one that I would write. I probably would never have thought of observing the lack of an explanation for 'causes of human misfortune' (how important is that for living life?) or teaching on 'true prayer in faith' (what a blessing that is!).

(Quotes from "Martin Luther, Philip Melanchthon, and the Publication of the Qur'an" by J Paul Rajashekar and Timothy J. Wengert, in Lutheran Quarterly Vol 26 (2002) pp. 221-228)

The other restoration of Peter

"go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you." (Mark 16:7)

"now Peter is singled out and included in the group who are commanded to follow to Galilee: it is not yet too late for them to become disciples once more. The message is thus not simply a command, but an assurance that the death and resurrection of Jesus bring forgiveness and the opportunity to begin again" (p.66, Not Ashamed of the Gospel: New Testament Interpretations of the Death of Christ by Morna D. Hooker)

Justification: one metaphor among many?

I've often been one of those people trotting out that phrase of the moment in criticism of some exegesis that it is 'importing law court language' into passages where it doesn't belong. Behind that oft heard criticism of exegesis of individual passages and peoples theology in general is the assumption that the law court (justification, righteous, acquittal etc) is just one metaphor among many for describing our relationship with God. I have had that challenged recently in reading Oswald Bayer. He argues in short that the law court is just a heightened and formalised version of something that is all encompassing:

We cannot reject the question that others put to us: Why have you done this? What were you talking about? Might you not have done something else? In the other's view of us, and also in our own view we always find ourselves to be the ones who are already being questioned and who have to answer [...] We are forced to justify ourselves, and as we do so, we usually want to be right. Before the court of law, what constitutes our whole life is disclosed with particular clarity. The world of the court is not a special world of its own, but just a particular instance - a very striking one - of what is being done always and everywhere.

(p.1, Living by Faith: Justification and Sanctification (Lutheran Quarterly Books) by Oswald Bayer, translated by Geoffrey W. Bromiley)

Distractions

I was challenged as a regular cinemagoer by Ray Ortland's recent post about entertainment. Although I am not sure I agree totally. He has followed this up today with an interesting quote from Francis Schaeffer.

"People today are afraid to be alone. This fear is a dominant mark of our society. Many now ceaselessly sit in the cinema or read novels about other people's lives or watch dramas. Why? Simply to avoid having to face their own existence. . . .

No one seems to want (and no one can find) a place of quiet -- because, when you are quiet, you have to face reality. But many in the present generation dare not do this because on their own basis reality leads them to meaninglessness; so they fill their lives with entertainment, even if it is only noise. . . .

The Christian is supposed to be very opposite: There is a place for proper entertainment, but we are not to be caught up in ceaseless motion which prevents us from ever being quiet. Rather we are to put everything second so we can be alive to the voice of God and allow it to speak to us and confront us."

(Francis Schaeffer, "Walking through the mud," in No Little People, pages 86-87; HT Ray Ortland)

The only thing I'm unsure of in that comment is that it is only something that has started happening 'today'. Carl Trueman relates how Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) wondered about the same issue.

He can understand, he says, why poor people might enjoy the odd dance to distract them from the miserable drudge of their daily lives, but why should a king, glorious, powerful, surrounded by proofs of his own greatness need trivial entertainment? The answer is that, left to himself with nothing to distract him, he will think about himself and the reality of the death that awaits him.

(cited in The Wages Of Spin: Critical Writings on Historical and Contemporary Evangelicalism, p. 177)

Passing judgment

Reflections on Romans 2

Romans 1:18-32 seems characterised by the words ‘they’, ‘their’ and ‘them’. ‘They are without excuse’, ‘they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images, ‘God gave them up’, ‘they were filled with every kind of wickedness’. God’s wrath seems to be ‘against those people over there’, but Paul is just setting us up for chapter 2.

Roman 2:1 begins with a big ‘therefore you’! Catching us while we are in the process of joining God in his judgment on ‘them’ he swings round the spotlight on us. We do ‘the very same things’ as them, so if we can judge them then we must judge ourselves the same.

God is kind to us now, but we cannot presume that will last when ‘God’s righteous judgment is revealed’. We cannot rely on past kindness because circumcision can become uncircumcision (2:25). God’s past kindness was not faithless but was meant to be lived out going forward in repentance (v.4). Not only was the past to be lived out going forward, but also the external was to be lived out internally in our heart (v.28). God's judgment is thorough and impartial. We cannot stand before the judgment of a God who judges the ‘secret thoughts of all’ and sees impenitent hearts.

Suddenly we who felt so complacent in judging others are fearful of the coming ‘righteous judgment of God’ which ‘will be revealed’. But then we remember that ‘the righteousness of God’ has already been revealed (1:17; 3:21-26). By faith we saw it at the cross where Jesus Christ was crucified. There our pride was put to death, and our ability to lord it over others in judgment. But three days later Jesus Christ was raised and was justified, and if we saw our death in his we also see our justification in his.

Universal justification - a definition

Phil Walker has just commented on an earlier post saying that one place that he would really not want to go with Lutheranism is 'universal justification'. As someone who is quite new to Lutheranism I was pleased for someone to give me a name for something that I had already detected as lying behind much of the discussion of baptism I have been reading. Phil probably should not get too concerned just yet, but a brief bit of internet surfing has brought up this helpful definition which I post here so I can refer to it later when I have time to properly think about it.

By "objective" or "universal" justification one means that God has declared the whole world to be righteous for Christ's sake and that righteousness has thus been procured for all people. It is objective because this was God's unilateral act prior to and in no way dependent upon man's response to it, and universal because all human beings are embraced by this verdict. God has acquired the forgiveness of sins for all people by declaring that the world for Christ's sake has been forgiven. The acquiring of forgiveness is the pronouncement of forgiveness. (Rom. 3:24; 4:25; 5:19; 2 Cor. 5:19-21; Ap IV, 40-41; SA II, i, 1-3; FC Ep V, 5; FC SD XI, 15)

(Theses on Justification, Part I, A Report of the Commission on Theology and Church Relations of the Lutheran Church--Missouri Synod, May 1983)

Sounds like universal salvation, but it's not. Put that in your theological pipe and smoke it.

I suspect selfish posting like this is what means I will never get very high in Technorati rankings, so it is a good thing I reconciled myself a long time ago to using this blog as a electronic notebook which other people can read if they wish.

The Threat of Grace

Tim Keller recalls recalls how he once met a women who found the promise of free grace 'scary'. When he asked her why she replied:

If I was saved by my good works, then there would be a limit to what God could ask of me or put me through. I would be like a taxpayer with "rights" - I would have done my duty and now I would deserve a certain quality of life. But if I am a sinner saved by sheer grace - then there's nothing he cannot ask of me.

(The Reason for God, p.183)

On not being able to return the favour

Honour your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.

I have recently been thinking about all the good gifts I receive from people I know, in particular my church and my family. This has been prompted by a recent splurge of gifts due to various sudden needs. I have found that grace is a difficult thing to accept as humans. If someone gives me something I feel compelled to return the favour. I find it really, really hard to accept gifts that are not part of a reciprocal relationship. I think we all do because we don't want to dependant people. That's part of why people commit suicide rather that 'be a burden', why British people are obsessed with rounds of drinks, and why we feel compelled to buy a birthday card for someone if they bought us one last year.

I see grace most often in my parents. Most of us have received a crazy amount from our parents who have given up so much for us. I find it almost crippling in my relationship with them to realise this. To realise I will never be out of their debt. I can never return the favour.

Kids often try and ignore the reality of their parent’s grace by claiming that it is a parent’s 'job' to do something, or that it is part of the circle of life because we will do the same to our children (and so on). These are pathetic attempts to avoid the reality of our debt. As adults we are more sophisticated. We accept that we have received much but draw a line over it at 18 (or whatever) and pretend that it never happened as we begin to live as equals giving in a strictly reciprocal way.

It is obvious to me that how we think and act towards our parents is usually mirrored in our relationship with our heavenly Father.

The weight of condemnation is weighing on me at the moment, but I don’t have to be burdened… the trouble is I perversely prefer to shift the burden around with me than accept that I need help.

Lord have mercy
Christ have mercy
Lord have mercy

Random facts about Calvin and Calvinism

I found them interesting. But then perhaps I ought to get our more.

1. 'Archbishop William Whitgift whose distaste for Puritanism was legendary, remained a staunch Cavinist in his views on predestination, as the Lambeth Articles of 1595 amply demonstrate' (p.4).
2. 'Calvin regarded Zwingli as a second-rate theologian and ridiculed the esteem in which he was held at Zurich. though Calvin read and cited Zwingli's important treatise, the Commentary on True and False Religion, he confessed that he was put off by Zwingli's reliance on philosophy, he excessive use of paradox, and his confusion of the universal concerns of the gospel with the parochial interests of the Swiss' (p.173)
3. Calvin signed the Augsburg Confession while at the Regensburg Colloquy in 1541 (p. 172).
4. Relying 'only upon the index of the Corpus Reformatorum as a guide to Calvin's knowledge of the Fathers, one would conclude that Calvin referred in his commentaries on the new Testament to Chrysostom 105 times, to Augustine 101, to Jerome 38, to Ambrose 23, and to Ambrosiaster not at all' (p. 135).
5. 'Calvin does not use the Fathers in the way a medieval commentator used his ancient authorities. The Father's are not cited by Calvin in his exegesis of Romans 8 because he agrees with them and needs their authority their authority to strengthen his argument [...] in every case, explicit and anonymous, in which Calvin has referred to Patristic exegesis, he has quarreled with it. One ought not to make too much of this quarrel. After all, as we have already seen, there is a wide range of issues on which Calvin is in complete agreement with the Fathers. [...] Calvin, after all, is writing a commentary on Paul, not on Origen or chrysostom or Augustine or Ambrosiaster. Calvin keeps his pages as uncluttered as possible because it is Paul himself and not the commentators he wants to interpret' (p. 136)

All page references are to Calvin in Context by David Steinmetz.

The Dark Knight and Wall-E

Reviews of The Dark Knight to make you think:

• Peter Dray: are we 'able to keep to our own moral frameworks, particularly when placed under intense pressure'? and is vigilantism a moral response to evil?
• Chris Oldfield: action is absurd but everything, chance is fairness. The joker resembles Nietzsche's madman, who has seen the consequences of the death of God.
• Mark Kermode: one moral set piece too many, one character too many.

I'm still waiting for the similarly thoughtful reviews of Wall-E, so I'll try my hand at the film reviewing lark myself.... SPOILERS ALERT.. I'll assume readers have seen the film (because you should).

I love Pixar films and this one is exceptional. In contrast to The Dark Knight it was beautiful in it's simplicity, although it had plenty of ideas of it's own. Bizarrely it had both a very positive and very negative view of humanity. In the future humanity is lazy to the point that they never stand up and communicate with each other only through screens. They drift (literally) through life not creating but only consuming passively what the all dominant faceless corporation tells them to. However, everyone is very polite to each other and the robots, and once forced to question the direction of their lives they come up with the 'right answer' immediately, setting their faces to renewing the world they had abandoned as a garbage heap.

The morality behind the film is not hard to discern and some reviewers have found it to grate a little. Clearly, we should all care for the environment and our bodies. Who is going to disagree with that! However, most reviewers have stopped there and so had problems linking the first half of the film on Earth with the second in space. But to me the two halves are essential to the film as a whole. To have missed out the second half (as Mark Kermode would have liked) would have led to missing out the central theme of the film.

Wall-E after 700 years on earth has exceeded his programming and discovered what is most important. He values other things (as art), other people (or at least cockroaches) and he values himself (repairing himself while all his brothers died). He is really living, but longing to share his life with another. With Eve he finds the love that he has been longing for and doggedly pursues her because of this. This brings Wall-E and Eve together on the human ship where they show the humans how to be truly human. The humans enthusiastically embrace this new (or old) kind of life that they have forgotten and the charming titles at the end show them repeating the creative achievements of the last 2000 years.

By the end of Wall-E the relationships between humans and creation have been healed and humanity is (unconsciously) imaging our creative and caring God again. It is a beautiful, fantastical film. But it is fantastical. Wall-E depicts humans as having drifted out of the way they were made to live, but having now learnt their lesson.

I see much to love in the message of Wall-E. However, I know that our drifting into sin is not entirely unintentional, and our turning from it is not as easy. I also know that as long as our primary relationship to our Father is broken we cannot fix our relationships with each other or creation.

We can't rely on robots to save humanity and then show us the way to live. We need a more powerful saviour, a better example to follow and new heart to enable us to do it. We also need to experience that greater love, and greater relationship that we were made for; and until we do we will be like Wall-E watching old VHS videos but longing for the reality.