Before creation...

My quote of the year so far:

"prior to creation...God the Father not only loved the Son but made a promise to him" (Francis Schaeffer, Genesis in Space and Time, referring Jn 17:24; Eph 1:4, 1 Pet 1:20; Titus 1:2)

If I were to do some evangelical-culture analysis I think we're rediscovering the first part of that sentence, but loosing the second. Perhaps we need a rediscovery of the Covenant of Redemption and promissory nature of God.

When bad news becomes good news

The Trinity is bad news...

• because it shows how intrinisic the 'outgoingness' of God is to his being. After all, your 'curved-in-on-yourselfness' seems fairly intrinsic to who you are.
• because we killed one of the divine family. After all, the Father's love for his Son is so God-sized his wrath will be unimaginable.

Jesus is bad news...

• because he sweated blood and went to the cross for a world that hated him. After all, how much do you do for those who love you, never mind your enemies?
• because we killed him. After all, he has been raised from the dead and is coming again to judge the world.

The Trinity is good news...

• because we're included in the divine life.
• because God is "our God" and for us.

Jesus is good news...

• because we're united in him and his resurrection.
• because when he died and rose again it was for us and our sins.

In short, talk about God, even 'the Trinity' or 'Jesus', is not good news until we hear the promise that we are (a) in God; or (b) God is for us. The same can be said about God as 'Almighty' or 'Creator' we hear that the Almighty Creator united himself with weak creatures and is for us. What makes 'God talk' good or bad news is not the name, but the promise.

The windowless room

A quick thought...have you heard the windowless room illustration?

It runs like this...Imagine you're kidnapped, blindfolded and the next thing you know you're in a featureless, windowless room with some other people. Nobody knows how they got there, or what is on the other side of the walls, but speculation is rife. However, we can find out once someone from outside enters in. That is a bit like us in the world and Jesus coming in the flesh.

While great at pointing to Jesus as the person who reveals the truth about God, the illustration has some serious problems.

1. It does not seem to have room for Psalm 19: "the heaven's are telling the glory of God". In the Bible it seems like the world is not a dungeon, but a greenhouse through which the glory of God shines clearly.
2. It makes the primary mission of Jesus seem like it is one of revelation and not salvation. Agnostics and atheists may think the main question is 'how can I know the truth about God?' But the Bible gives little attention to that question in comparison with 'how can I be saved?' So far as it does address the first question, it is through answering the first question.

Responding to atheist morality

Christian responses to things like Alain de Botton's 10 Commandments - for Atheists usually focus on questioning the source of the morality. For example:

• Authority: Who says? Without a god, on what objective basis can you say people must be moral? Ultimately, the Atheist's authority is only their word.
• Motivation: Why bother? Theist's motivation is love for their lover, gratitude to a giver or fear of a punisher. Ultimately, the atheist's motivation is all selfgenerated.
• Power: Who can? The Christian will point to the Holy Spirit's enabling through Christ and the church. Ultimately the atheist can only rely on him/herself.

There is a lot of value to questioning atheist morality at its source, but you can also focus on the telos of atheist law.

Whether atheist or religious, law only ends up in two places:

• Guilt for failing to live up to the standard. Not just felt guilt (which not everyone may feel keenly), but real guilt.
• Suffering due to failing to live up to the standard. All moral failure hurts someone, or something in this world.

Jesus can be found in both those places. He lived out Alain de Botton's commandments, Moses' and yours - better than you could imagine. But he is also in the place of guilt and suffering. Before we get up in the morning and tie our moral bootstraps to walk out the door into the world he is in that place, bearing the weight of both guilt and suffering. He's there bringing an end to both the guilt and the suffering, and the law itself, for us.

One way I think this forward orientation may help in engaging atheist moralists is that it follows the direction of travel. Rather than going against the grain and pulling the atheist back to the source, it is accepting of the truth in atheist morality but goes with it to the end.

Any thoughts?

Bible history

When we read the story of the Bible we can see:

1. Covenant history
2. Christ's history
3. the Christian's history

On Glen's blog recently it was argued that in Galatians 3-4 Paul was talking about Covenant history, not the personal history of a Christian in the journey from law to Gospel. This maybe true, but the antithesis between reading the Bible as Covenant history backed by biblical scholars and or as the individual Christian's history backed by pastor-teachers is a false one.

The Bible is primarily about Christ who took up Israel's covenant history and made it his life story. By his Spirit Christ makes his story, our story and we can suddenly see ourselves in the pages of a Scriptures of an ancient people. We don't have to choose between them, but Christ is the one that binds them all together.

All three journeys are a journey from Old Creation life slowly being put to death by God and then New Creation life being raised by his Spirit. But, that story is not straight forwardly linear and there are lots of mini-versions of the big story (e.g. Jesus' miracles). Different descriptions of that reality are used as well, e.g.: Darkness and light, slavery and adoption, cursed and blessed... anyway, I'm rambling now.