Schaeffer and Trinity

 In He is There and He Is Not Silent, Schaeffer makes the remark:

Every once in a while in my discussions someone asks how I can believe in the Trinity. My answer is always the same. I would still be an agnostic if there was no Trinity, because there would be no answers. Without the high order of personal unity and diversity as given in the Trinity,  there are no answers. (p. 288 Crossway compilation)

I have puzzled over this. Why would there be no answers?

I asked a friend who knew Schaeffer well, who answered:

You are not the first to scratch your head about this claim, and I myself find it quite strange and do not claim to be able to interpret it for you, or to believe it myself.

     I have asked him to explain it and heard others do the same. I think the main thing in his mind was that he saw in the trinity that neither unity nor diversity, neither the One or the Many, was ultimate and so would obliterate the other. They were both anchored in the transcendent God. He saw secular philosophy as unable to resist getting pulled into one or the other of these dead ends -- of only unity (Parmenides) or only particularity (Heraclitus). I certainly see his point here because neither of these dead ends allows any serious understanding of the complexity and wonder of the human condition. But I can't help wondering if there was no trinity, whether I might be more likely to be a Jewish theist than an agnostic, but that question would be in practicality, so highly subjective as a counter-factual puzzle.

     It all seems a tricky question to say what part of Xn truth, if removed, would make me abandon my faith, maybe not always helpful  -- although Paul said it about the resurrection of Jesus. I heard Schaeffer also say that he could not be a Christian if God had not himself shut the door finally on the ark at the start of the flood. He felt that to ask Noah to do it would have been too cruel and inappropriate, given what would happen to everyone else who was not in the ark. On the other hand I asked him once if he were to ever have macro-evolution demonstrated to have been true beyond any doubt, would he leave his faith as a result? He said, "No, but I would have to rethink a great deal."

     To get back to the trinity, but leave Schaeffer's discussion, I found Tim Keller's insight intriguing when he said that only if God is trinity can love be part of his character, i.e. who he is intrinsically. If God was only One, there would have been no one for him to love unless it was someone whom God had created. If God was only One, his main attribute of character would have been power -- who might have chosen to do loving things, but they would be arbitrary and not grounded in his being and he might have easily done the opposite.

There are few useful thoughts here, and I think he's spotted the nub of it: Who God Is is immovably basic to what is independently (and self-existentially) that is, necessarily, real.

 

What then is the Triune God?

• He is demonstrably personal
• He communicates: the three persons of the trinity are in constant communication for the other: communication and relationship are basic. It is also real, significant and true.
  
• There is inherent diversity and unity, inescapably, as per my friend's observation.
• God's acts flow directly from who he is, with no other reference.

 Solo gods, Monist gods and Monist non-gods have none of this, and leave man's 'mannishness' ungrounded, arbitrary and finally insignificant.

What about Yahweh in the OT? Is he not a 'solo-god'? After all, he says he is one and there is no other.

 

I think not for a couple of reasons.

 

He interacts with the creation, in relationship: Genesis 3:8, for example; Genesis 1 itself hints at Trinity: God who speaks, the Word which (who?) creates, the Spirit who 'hovers'. Even if I am wrong, this doesn't seem like a 'solo-god'.

The theophanies throughout the OT suggest God in some form, often human, in his creation. Again, not triune per se, but not 'solo' in our terms here either.

What the Trinity does bring is grounding of communication, of community, of fellowship, of love, in what is basically so. Everything, including our existential questions and dilemmas is resolved, finally, in this.

So our echo of these acts of love and fellowship as beings in his image are real, and join us to him in sharing this reality. Our love is significant and not derivative: of 'nature', of material, of an arbitrary and not essential act of God. Our decisions, communications, community are real and a basic part of us. The only real questions as to our 'meaning' our significance and the moment of our communication have answers. What is life about? It is about love in fellowship with our Creator. But it is also about doing real things in the real creation which itself has substance as the field of our fellowship with God.

And our creator does not 'need' us, because he had these characteristics  prior to creation and did not need a creation to exhibit, generate or reify them.

Monists (whether impersonal spiritists, materialists or solo-god-ists) have none of this, because, everything finally is the same. There is no real connection or movement of mind. There is no final significance possible and any personal solo-god depends on the creation for realization of anything inter-personal (that is, if person-hood in this landscape is really real). Against this, our creator God is utterly independent of creation; it was made not for him, existentially, but for our Lord in which we are to enjoy him forever.

The real three-in-one God is not thus bound.

By the way, my link to Schaeffer's book, is not a blanket endorsement of the Gospel Coalition. I reject a number of points of their theology.

Another article on Schaeffer's philosophy.

 

I believe in science

From time to time you may meet a non-believer who stoically claims to not be 'religious' because they 'believe in science'!

(This is often punctuated with the triumphant superiority of an exclamation mark!)

And, this is just what we want to hear.

Here's the pattern of your response, something along the lines of:

Oh, and is that claim itself a scientific statement? Can you prove that you believe in 'science' when most scientists over history have been mostly wrong?

You can also explore why they believe in science, when they have to trust in the ability of human reason to provide a valid means of reliable inquiry into the world outside of the person inquiring.

That is, what is the basis for confidence in a chance assembly of molecules having any reliability in assessing the nature of other chance assemblies of molecules, both of which have no external source of person-hood: it must be merely an epiphenomenon of matter?

It is very bold to make such a claim that your brain, the result of chance constrained only by reproductive success is useful for anything more than reproductive success.

See:

Reasonable Faith's article

Bethinking's article

Craig at Biola's blog

Doyle's article.

Now, on the other hand, we Christians have complete confidence in the rational accessibility of the natural world. The creation account in Genesis 1, and it's NT follow-up in John 1:1-3, 10 provide the basis for such confidence.

Chris Tomlin Wrecks Christian Theology

 Now that's a title to attract clicks!

The lyrics in question are (from Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone) ):

The earth shall soon dissolve like snow
The sun forbear to shine
But God, who called me here below
Will be forever mine, will be forever mine
You are forever mine

They aren't Christian!

Well, maybe I'm reading too much into them, but they strike me as having a definite neoplatonic flavour (neoplatonic eschatology is not a Good Thing!).

The earth shall not 'soon dissolve like snow' and the sun forebear to shine.

And the following lines seem to envisage a disembodied 'heaven'.

No, not Christian.

God promises a New Heaven and a New Earth! We will be embodied with 'spiritual bodies'.

Revelation 21.

The story of the Bible is the re-creation of the world where we his people are finally conformed to his image and Christ's triumph over sin is consummated.

 

The New Jerusalem comes down from heaven to earth as the great marker of renewal!

We will be forever his!

Perhaps we should sing;

The earth shall soon dissolve like snow

as God makes all anew

and we shall live before his face

and always know his joy

and always know his joy.

Science and Christian faith?

Common detractions from Christian faith in relation to science is that faith prevents science.

Not so.

John Lennox has a great video on this.

In brief, because the cosmos has its source in intelligent cause: the agent being the Creator, of course, we are confident it is purposeful and efficient: in short, designed.

Thus exploration of it will bear fruit in real knowledge and we are confident to embark on exploration of anything and everything knowing that we will gain objective, true knowledge of the structure, operation and purpose of that thing.

Our faith in (natural) science arises because of our confidence in an external creator of a uniformity of natural causes in an open system (Schaeffer's term in his trilogy).

Other religions: let's be practical!

All religions are basically the same?

Bob Ackroyd at Brunsfield Evangelical Church explores the practicalities of this and I've discussed an approach a little while ago.

All religions are the same in that they all ask four basic questions:

1. How does your belief inform where you come from (the origin of man)
2. Where you are going (post death?)
3. Why you are here (existential definition)?
4. What's right, what's wrong? Why (meta-ethical epistemology)?
   

A great basis for a conversation: you listen to them, maybe they will ask you your views. See where it goes.

Two questions I would either add or substitute are:

1. Who are we? (aiming to get to Schaeffer's point about the 'mannishness' of man: i.e., in God's image)
2. Why do we suffer? (On the premise that ALL religions are about the problem of man's suffering and pain.)
   

Look out for putative resolutions of these questions that deny obvious reality, the reality of the human dilemma: man is both great and cruel, has joy and suffers, or seek the resolution in man either individually or collectively, on a 'try harder' basis, or an 'it doesn't matter' basis...and how would either help when they are within the very system that is the product and source of the dilemma!

The resolution has to come from without and has to be final: it cannot be part of an infinite regress of causes.

It cannot be contained in the uniformity of natural causes in a closed system, but can only be in a system that is open to resolution from without, from not where the dilemma and its discontents arose and are hosted.

Indeed, as Schaeffer tells us: there are only two religions (and our discussion with the 'omni-religious' should have this back of mind}: paganism: the uniformity (or not) of natural causes in a closed system, and Christianity: the uniformity of natural causes in a fallen but open system: open to the creator, the eternal, self-existing, communicating person.

Beware the deist 'god'.

A recent comment on an NT Wright video on his new book The Heart of Romans:

NT talks in many lectures about us having 'platonized' our eschatology, and I guess he's on the money in some areas of church practice; I'm happy to say that I remember from my teenage years a vague belief in the new creation. I think the Apostles creed might have had a part to play in that.

 

But where we have as a church madly platonized is in the creation doctrine. When NT talked about the ease with which the deist caricature of God had headway, it occurs to me that the description of creation in Genesis 1 is from the get go the antidote to deism.

 

Tom talks about God's domain (heaven) and our domain (earth) coming together, but he seems to slip over the fact that the great initial conjunction of heaven and earth is in the creation. Not a platonic or figurative creation, but a real concrete creation. This itself underlines and honours God's creation of a material cosmos with earth in it. In fact, we seem to have an almost Gnostic fear of a concrete creation located in history in connection with our history by the work being done by the Word at a tempo marked by the days which mark our lives.

 

This is perhaps the first move of communion: God shows that he is present and active directly in the world he has made for his creature as the place of communion of they with him and in the concrete terms of the world that he made concretely for that very purpose (concrete as opposed to figurative or conceptual or idealist).

 

The glory of communion of creature and creator comes to its apogee and tragic nadir in Genesis 3:8: God seeking to join communion with his creatures in his image (and thus enabled to commune with propositional content) and finds the opportunity dashed by their rejection of the opportunity.

 

I think this approach to Genesis 1 is not fundamentalist, but the most exciting; spine tinglingly full of joy and the portent of much greater to come. It is consistent with the God who made the material creation to take joy in it and celebrate that by creating in the terms of the creation and by his direct word. Thus, while not fundamentalist, the creation should bear the marks of this creation...as against a deist 'creation' where 'god' is remote, or an evolutionary 'creation' where 'god' is merged into the creation, panentheistically and almost 'paneverytingistly' to use Schaeffer's aptly coined word.

 

Being in his image, we also create by word. Only, as material creatures we use our hands to deliver the idea we have: our word made material while God's word made flesh!

 

Thus the 'days' constitute the frame-of-reference for our concrete congress with God, and his direct (by Christ) participation in his creation. They contextualize all subsequent contact between God and man: the theophanies, the prophets, 'miracles' and the incarnation, in our world marked by a uniformity of natural causes in an **open** system, to again borrow Schaeffer's term.

Do you integrate?

The French philosopher Sartre is reputed to have claimed that with out an infinite reference point, man is doomed to absurdity, or words to similar effect.

Absurdity comes from both the grandeur and wretchedness of man being equally terminally inconsequential and without any final significance.

For Sartre, Camus and the rest of the existentialist cheer squad, even the 'integration' that might come from some decisive existential gesture was hollow, because one would never know if any particular act or experience would be that consummating event. Ironically, the individual, in this scheme, is left to 'faith' in the ultimate event being an obtainable experience to (self) actualize one's life. Futile!

Francis Schaeffer* resolves man's humanity in the word 'mannishness': his being god-like in a material cosmos as having personhood, of being able to communicate and come to personal encounter with another, with the ability to understand himself and his setting in rational propositional terms, at least to some degree.

The dilemma of man (not his absurdity), comes in his failure to live fully as a human, a person in the image of his maker, the creator God, but to have features of this in his grandeur: however marred, his creativity, his joy in others, his loves, compassion, and humility, disrupted at every point by the inversion of his humanity: his cruelty, selfishness, conceits of wisdom and understanding that alienate man from man and man from maker.

Why cannot we be our own 'integration' point? Is this not the mature, wise man at ease in his own being?

In a world conceived in purely material terms, no integration point is available, because all reality is finally materially determined and oblivious to personhood. It is contingent and reality and our place in it can only be framed as dependent on a prior cause...and prior causes go all the way to a meaningless  actual infinite chain of causes, with no identifiable actual cause, or to an explosion of what amounts to dust. All that sits beneath a stream of contingencies is more contingency; nothing that is necessary, or independently real.

A disintegration point that is illustrated in this conception in every man whose life is a brief tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing between two piles of worm dung (Shakespeare: Macbeth).

In a world conceived as an impersonal (spiritual) monist illusion, the infinite regress disappears into a nullifying absorption into the 'great' one of what amounts to a nothing machine.

So the soul can find no base, no connection with what is truly real in either.

As Sartre said, the integration point must be infinite, perhaps meaning self-existent or it is nothing but more of the same; it must also have a personal basis, or our personhood is reduced and Shakespeare again sees the pointlessness. In Othello: "it is a silliness to live when to live is torment; and then have we a prescription to die when death is our physician."

Our creator is our integration point, or rather we integrate properly in our human calling in Christ, enlivened by his in-dwelling Spirit to grow into life in companionship with our creator.

*Schaeffer, The Trilogy; The God Who is There, Escape from Reason, He is There and is not Silent.

Now, just who did make God?

In a video shown at church this morning, promoting children's camps, we saw one boy enthuse that he was able to ask interesting questions such as 'who made God'.

Firstly, it's good that he could ask that question in confidence of being taken seriously, perhaps not so good that maybe he didn't think he could ask it at his church.

When one is asked this question, the reflexive reply might be 'No one 'made' God, he has always existed.' or 'Only entities that had a beginning need a cause, God does not have a beginning'.

But a better way would be to ask questions. This demonstrates that you want to engage with the person, and gives you more information about their thinking behind their question.

On the surface the question seems to contain an assumption or two: that god is contingent, first off. That is, he depends upon something/one else for his being. This would imply that he is a denizen of the world, the cosmos, that we know. This is the mistake made by the Russian cosmonaut who reported that he didn't find God when in orbit around  Earth. The other possible assumption is that the very idea of 'god' is made-up, a human invention. This produces the typical unbeliever's view that we made God in our own image.

Now, the ancient Greeks and Romans certainly fell for that error; their gods are very human like. But the God who speaks is very much not so. Just check the demands in the beatitudes!

So our questions can explore the questioner's understanding of God.

Questions you might ask could be:

What would be able to make god?

When you say 'god' what do you mean?

How would you characterize 'god': i.e., what is 'god' like, in your estimation?

If someone made god, then who made that someone?

Why would you think that God needed to be 'made'?

The strategy is to find out if they think 'god' is an invention, a entirely contained by the  cosmos, that he is a type of creature...and is thus the result of an infinite regress, or an epiphenomenon of material.

For most people, consider that the questioner is, at least, an unconscious modern materialist, and probably evolutionist, or perhaps, again unconsciously, a 'paneverythingist' (as per Schaeffer in He is There and He is Not Silent). That is, with a vague belief that the universe is 'god', or 'god' is an undefined and probably impersonal spirit, such as would represent the 'karma' belief of Hindus.

Most people, and I think, even some Christians, hold that (material) reality is characterized by a uniformity of natural causes in a closed system. However this fails to explain man, the universe and its form (and intelligibility). It fails as a basis for real knowledge of any kind.

Christian faith invites us to the world created by the creator: God who is love. Here we have the uniformity of natural causes in an open system in a limited time span.

The God who is there made the universe, with things together, in relationships. Indeed, the whole area of science turns upon the fact that He has made a world in which things are made to stand together, that there are relationships between things. So God made the external universe which makes true science possible, but he also made man and made him to live in that universe. He did not make man to live somewhere else. So we have three things coming together: God, the infinite-personal God, who made the  universe, and man, whom he made to live in that universe, and the Bible, which he has given us to tell us about that universe. There is a unity between them.

(Schaeffer, He is There and He is Not Silent, p, 329 in the Crossway compilation, vol. 1)

What's the greatest question in Christian 'Leadership'?

I was invited to answer this question by an e-mail from a Bible school I had attended.

Here is my answer:

My greatest 'leadership' question is why has the church followed the world in its obsession with 'leadership'?

The scripture calls us to SERVE. Our leader is the Holy Spirit!

We need to revive the notion of ministry and ministry as support of the discipleship of others, of each other! We have grown a flabby church with insufficient dedication to reading and understanding the scriptures in private devotion and study, insufficient emphasis on the service of all believers in their congregations to each other and insufficient application to our daily routines and behaviour.

The notion of 'leader' passivates the average Christian and offers a mantle that many rightly eschew. What we need is to train Christians for their ministry: be it teaching, preaching, evangelism, administration, etc. and to take responsibility for the application of those gifts.

For those who are younger or less mature, the title 'leader' is an invitation to pride, if not hubris. One has to ask, if one is a leader, who are the followers? Do the followers then defer to the leader for their own spiritual responsibilities?

What we must do as the church is train our brethren in their own growth in faith, in study of the scriptures, in application to reading of fruitful Christian literature (at the maximum level of their intellectual capability) and in serving each other in grace and humility (Phil. 2:3, 4). We must also train in communicating the gospel: Koukl's books Story of Reality, Tactics and Street Smarts are good resources (I add, even though I diverge from aspects of his theology).

BTW, for some background, I have served churches over the decades in administrative committees and as a full time administrator of a medium sized church in Sydney. In my prior professional life I have worked as a senior executive responsible for a budget in excess of $1b (billion). I have served both my employer(s) and my team(s) by building up people to develop their own capability and in taking responsibility for (the management triad): clarifying the mission, providing resources and developing capability: of the team and its individuals.

If anything, this 'triad' is perhaps the nub of taking a role of responsibility for the work of a (any) group!

 

That's the answer.

 

As an addendum I note that it has taken a scholar in management to put his finger on the problem. Henry Mintzberg, who may or may not be a believer, complained about the obsession with leadership rather than, as he puts it, 'communityship'.

Second addendum: in the church I worked for we  avoided the term 'leader'. We had 'convenors' for home study groups, 'coordinators' for various outreach ministries, 'organizers' for others. Some groups had ministry team members, helpers, facilitators, workers, arranger, moderator...and so on.

All religions are basically the same!

You may have often come across this claim, or indeed, even made it yourself.

Firstly, no they are not. But there's a more important point of departure: all religions seek to make sense of the world, or our human life in the world. In the terms of that 'making sense' they all seek to deal with the same thing. This they have in common.

What is this 'same thing'? It is what I (after Francis Schaeffer) call 'the dilemma of man'. In Schaeffer's terms this is the fact that mankind shows both grandeur and degradation. He is noble and cruel, selfish and selfless, proud and humble. A mix of opposites, one in denial of the other.

How so?

How so also man seeks community but lives in alienation, is material, but personal, is personal but finite, contingent, yet hopes for what is beyond the present.

How do religions seek to resolve these tensions, if not conflicts?

They do it through their concept of the independent ground of our being, or of reality: personal or impersonal, material or spiritual, contingent (and then, what truly constitutes the ground) or necessary (self existent), and how does this resolve the dilemma: confrontation, ignoring, neglect, negation, or dissolving, or a true resolution that takes the arms of the dilemma and brings them into a final cohesion?

Then, what is the locus, or domain, of the resolution? Is it within or beyond the life-world or the cosmos that is our denominating constraint? Does it conceive the 'system' that hosts the dilemma can also host its resolution, or does is see the resolution coming only from outside or beyond the system that hosts it?

These questions, give us a means of dimensioning the means of resolution that a religion proposes.

Does man contain the means of resolution; which on the face of it seems absurd as the illness cannot contain the cure (homeopathy aside), or must it come from outside man? And who or what is 'outside man, and the system which hosts, contains and embraces him at every existential point? Or is Sartre and crew right in their despair of resolution, leading to resolution only in the work of power over others, while there is no real power over self?

Finally: the results of any proposed religion need to be considered against its proposals. Do they work? do they seem to work? Can they work? 

Do they even deal with the real reality, or deny it, reduce it, or set it to one side?

All worthy points of discussion.

As Schaeffer in his famous trilogy argues: only the 'religion' of the incarnate creator: Yeshua the Nazarene, the Christ, brings this resolution.

It takes seriously the world, it structures the personal, it knows the dignity and  degradation of man and confronts it head on with the need for and gift of new life, Not a thing of us alone and by our own efforts, but be the gift of fellowship with God in Christ, his Spirit come within to grow us into new creatures to live in a renewed creation and so to enjoy him forever.

It comes from outside our Life-world, from the personal-infinite self-existent creator who knows us intimately and takes our significance, dignity and degeneration from being like him seriously.

See the Anglican Catechism or, for a much better statement of our purpose, the Westminster Catechism, in its beautiful opening: 

Q. 1. What is the chief end of man?

A. Man’s chief end is to glorify God, [a] and to enjoy him for ever. [b]

[a]. Ps. 86:9; Isa. 60:21; Rom. 11:36; 1 Cor. 6:20; 10:31; Rev.
4:11

[b]. Ps. 16:5-11; 144:15; Isa. 12:2; Luke 2:10; Phil. 4:4; Rev.
21:3-4

(apart from that I'd be wary of its Calvinism).

Other religions!

We are often asked about 'other religions' with respect to either 'salvation' (however this is conceived in made-up religions) or moral performance: being a 'good' person (notwithstanding that Yeshua has pointed out that no one is good but Yahweh). 

Our reflex is to attempt to discuss the exclusivity of Christ, but often without knowing to start with him being Creator (Colossians 1:13-17ff).

Another way to approach this question is to have a 'grid' by which to talk about the other religion in terms of its structure of reality.

This grid has 3 elements, or dimensions of consideration for any religion:

The centre or 'What/who is god?'

This is the religion's 'centre', generally it is expressed in its conception of deity: for instance is it personal, or localized in a person who might or might not exhaust the deity (thus, Jesus localizes deity, but does not exhaust it). Is the deity communicative: is the communication propositional and thus congruent with our propositional capacity? Is the deity non-propositional, or non-pesronal, such as would be typical of Eastern religions. or even non-existent, as in Buddhism?

The deity or 'Where is god?'

Flowing on from the centre of the religion is the characterization or the place of deity. Is god contained by our general ontological framing, or external to it? On the surface, a deity-concept that is 'contained' by the context that 'contains' or grounds us, is within the system that hosts the dilemma of man (man's' dignity and his corruption being the joint bounds of man's experience of life). On the face of it, not a very encouraging conception.

 

Or is the deity outside of our life-world, to borrow a term? That is, outside 'the world'. As an example, the typical ancient pagan gods are within the world and seem to be contingent, much like flawed super-men. Some pagan gods are identical with the world but manifest in 'spirits' of place and dynamics (e.g. weather gods). Where the god is is the foundation, along with the 'centre' for understanding the connection, if any, between god and man.

Discontent and its Resolution

What is the fulcrum by which the resolution of the dilemma of man: or, as some may like to put it the 'problem of evil' (although the 'problem' goes far deeper than the superficiality of its typical expression). Is it the content of man's actions or is it external to man's actions?

 

This may obviously be a question that springs from the Bible; a Judaeo-Christian question, but still worthwhile: does man 'save' himself?. Does the cosmos 'save' him - or bury him, as in popular atheism?. Does the deity who is still within the 'system' 'save' him, but then, how? Or is saving, or the means of resolution of the dilemma, from without the 'system'?If it is not external to the system, then it must explain how a profoundly corrupted whole system can in any way be the source of the dilemma that is created within and configured by that very system.

Man's connection with reality

How is man connected to the external reality in his full personhood: How does the religion connect man's inherent telos (we cannot but think of the future in some way, as the future is always there as the next thing to do and every next thing subsequently in pursuit of our ambitions) with his contingent state? This is about purpose and its ground. How does man's life revolve about what does not exist: the future and his ambitions for it.

And then, what is the character of man's dilemma the tragedy of his greatness and his foulness which dogs us all and is inescapable historically and existentially.

 

No final answer can come from within the creation, from a non-person, and without relationship, connection and a basis in the real. Denial of the real, which some religions use as their ontological escape hatch, is a vain option.

The world thus connected to

What is the world that we can make sense of it in some way, or us in the world who want to and seek to make sense of it: of our relationships, of our whole 'life-world' (a useful term without wanting to import all of Husserl's ideas and those he influenced)? 

Where does our interaction come from, what is it, and how do we think we can trust it?

The start of analysis of how other religions deal with the concrete facts of the dilemma and its existential tensions is set in this grid that seeks the structure of other religions on these three pivots.It provides a starting point for inquiry and perhaps creates a path for coming to grips with the nature of the 'program' of the religion under consideration.

 

Or in other words

In brief we might inquire into:

• What is God?
• Where is God?
• Who is man?
• Why is man?
• What is the problem?
• Why is the problem?
• What is the solution?
• Why would we care?

See another way of putting this.

Chance based on chance

I came across an old debate of WL Craig's on science and Christian faith.

In the debate Rosenberg completely misunderstands Christian faith, confusing it with animism at best, rather than giving the basis for a rational world view deriving from the direct rational source of creation in propositional information: God thinks of it, speaks it and it happens. What happens is directly related to the words spoken opening up the creation to propositional access.

As an intended creation, propositionally exposed to us, it is accessible to propositional inquiry: we can keep asking and exploring to find out what it is with no limits.

Schaeffer in The God Who Is There in the section on Musique Concrete reports an example of such:

"...The voice is first built up out of chance sounds, reflecting modern man's view that man who verbalizes arose by chance in a chance universe with only a future of chance ahead of him."

Chance here means irrationally, without reason, and so inexplorable and unfathomable. Finally without coherence and epistemologically void.

This is the world, finally ungrounded, the world that Rosenberg unwittingly seeks to build science upon. But his world, the world of mere material with random and informationless interactions, is only the basis for non-science, for the animism that he ironically thinks represents Christianity. Why would science want to explore anything...it's all chance; there is no rhyme or reason! 

But the Genesis creation account shows us that the creation, the cosmos is full of reason and knowledge..there to be found for man-in-God's-image. Not a stranger in the world, not an alien, but its vicegerent.

Incidentally, Rosenberg's dilemma lies at the heart of the fatal contradiction of theistic evolution: that the God who speaks, didn't in fact speak, but somehow worked into a non-speaking cosmos that denies on its own nature any system of information and 'just happens', undermining any basis for a rational epistemology.

The Bible as literature and history

A recent sermon was on the robust trustworthiness of the Bible.

Only so much (or so little!) can be said in the normal 20 minutes we compress sermons into these days, but the idea was good.

It might also be the basis of attracting non-church-goers who are interested in the Bible as a book. There are probably few, but there could be some, particularly contacts of church members.

Now, few non-church people would want to attend a church gathering (service), so any presentation and discussion would need to be a separate event: maybe a series of, say, three 2 hour sessions, including relevant refreshments (coffee and supper/morning coffee/afternoon tea).

The series would look at the structure, of the Bible, its historical books and general historical  flow, its view of man and history, the nature of its literature and text.

It could include relevant videos on archeology, manuscripts, historical connections, and the logic of the 'story of reality' presented by the Bible.

Even if no outsiders attended, it would be useful equipping for church-goers, many of whom, I'd be sure, have uncertain views of the Bible as literature, history, and overall thematic development.

Schaeffer's ontology and Genesis days

From  The God Who is There  - end of chapter 2

God has created a real, external world. It is not an extension of His (sic) essence. That real, external world exists. God has also created man as a real, personal being, and he possesses a "mannishness" from which he can never escape. On the basis of their own world-view often these experience-seekers are neither sure the external world is there, nor that man as man is there. But I have come to the conclusion that despite their intellectual doubts, many of them *have had* a true experience of the reality of the external world that exists, and/or the "mannishness" that exists. They can do this precisely because this is how God has made man, in His own image, able to experience the real world and man's "mannishness." Thus they have hit upon something which exists, and it is neither nothing, nor is it God. We might sum up this third alternative by saying that when they experience the "redness" of the rose, they are having the experience of the external world, as is the farmer who plows (sic) his field. They are both touching the world that is.

My comment

The days of Genesis 1 (which Schaeffer claims in his Genesis in Time and Space, are unimportant) underscore the external objective reality of the cosmos and our experience of it and within it.

God speaks and rationally related events follow that are congruent with the propositional word. Each event, and the events as a set are separate from God, but also real.

We can experience the reality as it is mediated in the 'days' -- the space-time -- of our normal experience of life in the objective world. The days of action overlap with our days of experience of the results of the communicative action by God and place our experience in the same domain as which God is active in creating.

Yet our experience is also subjectively but genuinely substantiated as we are real persons with objective existence in the objective created world separate from God: it is a world in which we can really know real things and represent them in meaningful propositions (created by word on God's part, understood by word on our part: this provides the basis for empirical inquiry of the created world).

We are linked to the external world and its objectivity by God's communication to us of 'imageness' which gives us genuine 'mannishness', to use Schaeffer's term, and real experience of the real external world. The link is grounded by the days of genesian action that place it objectively in the same days our history is denominated by, and separate it from God, while showing God is active, present and communicative in that domain by which his domain overlaps our domain he thus created by his word.

Political prayer

A friend (my son's godfather), asked for some thoughts on prayers he was rostered to make at his church's morning gathering.

They were to touch on:

1. the forthcoming Australian referendum regarding the formation of what would amount to a third house of parliament and a formal constitutionally significant consultative body for the executive government, and
2. the needs of refugees.

I offered the following thoughts: 

Referendum

We pray for the forthcoming referendum that whatever the outcome, opportunities for the gospel in remote places will arise and that our brothers and sisters who live in such places will be able to proclaim your word with effect and bring your salt and light to communities where people have no hope.

[I think anything more might be too political, and as a church I don't think we care much about politics except that the gospel is able to flourish and people hear it meaningfully and turn to Christ in repentance.]

Refugees

We pray for those fleeing persecution and war. Particularly for our brothers and sisters in Christ. We ask that your church in all places will be hospitable to those who are persecuted and that we might effectively make representations to the government on behalf of those fleeing persecution because of their Christian faith; that they may find succor in this land.

We also pray that the difficult task for refugees in coming to grips with the disparate cultures of their hosts will be eased by their faith in you, and those who have not turned to you in repentance and belief may hear your gospel and be obedient to it.

Later I added:

Oh, and another theme to bring in: "Paul teaches us to persevere in times of our momentary light affliction. We pray that your indwelling Spirit equips your saints in difficult circumstances, whether here or abroad, to be faithful witnesses to your grace and power and to be encouraged despite their circumstances as he world sees them, to continue to grow in grace and in communicating your gospel."

 

Evidence for God

The primary evidence, to my mind, apart from the life, teaching and resurrection of Yeshua of Nazareth (which is THE primary evidence) is that God as creator prior to and external to the world (the entirety of the cosmos), his creation, is the only adequate and reasonable ground of our sense of transcendence -- expressed in our pursuit of relationship, beauty, joy, delight, even peace; none of which are finally meaningful in any way in a materialist conception of the cosmos. The obvious expression of transcendence in daily life is the mind and the fruitfulness of our awareness of and fellowship with other minds. Mind transcends material.

Our desire for God (or its inverse, often vehement in atheists, libertines, hedonists and Epicureans) expresses this ground - that we are not merely supervenient upon matter -- whatever that may be--but are truly connected to the source of mind, of life, and all significance which flies in the face of death, that comes from that connection.

Being the creator, Christ -- back to the true prime-- integrates our experience of the creation or sense of meaning and purpose and stands as the explication of the human dilemma and its resolution.

The human dilemma? Man cannot be his own integration point: it manifests in his discontents arising from alienation: the sense of disquiet, of separation (sin in the Bible). Man cannot be his own integration point because he is limited and contingent and must reach outside himself for resolution of his manifold disjuncts with reality. To casual observance transient (Ps. 103:14ff), or ephemeral, inexplicably ungrounded in a creator-less conception; or, on closer knowledge, navigating his own futility as all his being appears to collapse in death and be rendered nugatory -- yet, there is the paradoxical wonder of personhood and relationship.

The starting point of self-hood: I am not not myself, but distinct and individual, is content-less in isolation and forlorn in mere contingent human relationship. It can only be integrated in fellowship with the one who is, necessarily: resolution by our union with Christ for fellowship with our creator, Yahweh.

The Festival of Psalms

We held this festival recently at church: partly as worshipful encouragement, partly as godly entertainment and partly as education and outreach. It was designed to be 'visitor friendly'.

The choir took most of the running, along with congregational singing, and read segments and prayers.

The read segments included academic, devotional and exotic (!) components. The exotica was a North American Indian translation of Psalm 23.

But it was the academic segment that was most interesting.

The story of the Psalter

Widely respected scholars such as Brevard Childs, Gerald Wilson and James Mays have demonstrate that the canonical editors of the Psalter had clear intent. The Psalter, as we have received it, is organized into five books, with the 'seams' being marked b doxologies and psalms of theological significance. Royal psalms are placed with wisdom psalms at the seams, Typical of Hebrew literature, however, our modern demand for clinical and forensic certainty is not met.

There is a thematic development through the five books within the Psalter. The first book (Ps 1 -- 41) frequently shows David in trouble, crying out to god for vindication. The second book (Ps 42 -- 72  generally sows David comfortably on the throne but with hints of decline emerging. the third book (Ps 73 -- 89) show Israel in decline, her monarchy ineffectual and her people in dire circumstances. Psalm 89 puts this problem most sharply. God's covenant with David, with which the first three books of the psalms are primarily concerned, has apparently failed.

The fourth book (ps 90 -- 106) seems to be the editorial centre which poses the question, "What will happen now that the covenant is broken?" A response to this problem is developed throughout book four and in book five (Ps 107 -- 150). The response can be summarized:

• Yahweh is king
• He has been our 'refute' in the past, long before the monarchy existed
• He will continue to be our refuge now that the monarchy is gone
• Blessed are they that trust in him!
  

So the Psalter is a symphony in five parts, swelling towards triumphant songs of praise to God who reigns over his people, despite the swirling currents of chaos and opposition.

Remembrance of Things Past

Sorting through old papers over the last couple of days I came across my father's memorabilia. He died in 2006 and while those memories have faded, many returned as I looked through his and my mother's photographs.

Photos taken by him, and of him, we children, our mother and other relations.

I found my parents' wills, my father's funeral and executor's arrangements and, most poignant of all, a set of reminders I had made for the day of the funeral.

My father had been a musician when younger, and played the clarinet for pleasure, teaching, with local orchestras and bands and for his small church until his death. He asked that at his funeral we play the Going Home movement from Dvorak's Symphony from the New World (see here for a wonderful arrangement).

This is my reminder list:

-Tape of Dvorak

-Tape of Dad + Mum + Dv [or Dr...I forget what this referred to, but dad and mum had performed a number of items together, notably Schubert's Shepherd on the Rock--many an evening this put we kids to sleep as they performed together in the lounge room after we had gone to bed.]

-Polish Shoes [i.e. make them clean, not their nationality]

-Mount on plastic

-clean ribbon

[I have no idea what the last two were for]

-call Jeanette

-S----: dad's cashmere jumper + our gift

-call RSL 9625 5500

-Normie C. check speakers?

-Emma A - check work to perform [dad's clarinet student]

As I went through these things I pondered the brevity of life, its griefs, its joys. The joys we shared as a family, the wonderful life our parents provided and our wonderful wider family: cousins, aunts, uncles in abundance and grandparents alive through our childhoods.

But for all its ups and downs, life runs like sand through our fingers: impermanent, mainly unnoticed, and quickly forgotten by those who may come after us. The futility and horror of death sat with me. It is unremitting, and confronting. All the great things we have to remember others by remain only in images and scraps of notes on paper, memories of course, the odd recording.

I looked at my father's old harmony notebook, which grew into his notes about anything. Fragments of his rich and creative life were in my hands, but once it was his flesh and blood. His thoughts, his loves, his hopes and his ambitions.

The Psalmist came to mind (Ps 103:14-16):

As for man, his days are like grass;
As a flower of the field, so he flourishes

When the wind has passed over it, it is no more,
And its place acknowledges it no longer.

 But the lines preceding, full of such hope:

He has not dealt with us according to our sins,
Nor rewarded us according to our iniquities.
For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
So great is his lovingkindness toward those who fear Him.
As far as the east is from the west,
So far has he removed our transgressions from us.
Just as a father has compassion on his children,
So the Lord has compassion on those who fear him.
For he himself knows our frame;
He is mindful that we are but dust.

I then turned to my favourite passage; written perhaps centuries before the psalm, yet also full of transcendent hope and the power and love of God (Job 19:24-26):

As for me, I know that my Redeemer lives,
And at the last He will take His stand on the earth.
“Even after my skin is destroyed,
Yet from my flesh I shall see God;

Amen

Days? Really?

In a comment on a Stand to Reason blog:

@29:40, the '7 days of creation'? In fact, there are 6 days of creation. The 7th is God's rest: which he is now in, which the Sabbath pivoted on covenantly and which we join fully in the realized kingdom.

The issue about the days reminds me of the old joke: a man wheels a barrow of straw out of the mill each evening. The foreman carefully checks it, finds nothing stolen, and waves him on. At a retirement party some years later the foreman asks him why he took the barrow of straw home each evening. He replied, It wasn't the straw, but the barrows: I sold them down here at the pub.

He was stealing them right before the foreman's eyes yet the foreman hadn't seen for looking!

So it is with the days of creation: they stare us in the face, but we miss to easily their theological import. They must have one, because we know the creation that they describe is the basis of our worship of God as it is articulated through the scriptures; they are the crux of our worship of him (in his direct speech) in Exodus 31:12ff...a passage just after the passage about the skilled craftsmen, interestingly This worship continues re-configured on Christ: John 1:1-3, Romans 1:20, 1 Cor 8:6, Colossians 1:16, 17, Hebrews 1:2, 2:10 and 11:3.

 The sequence of days are the very act of God revealing his identity as creator. They are not trivial.

Our worship of God cannot hang on an analogical creation, a creation that is more Neoplatonist fantasy than concretely real or one that is a mere echo of pagan trash talk (I think of Enuma elish). It has to hang on what is objectively real.

The days do three obvious things:

The days, real days, show that the creator God is:
- placed personally in the creation: in our history, while not containing him in his creation
- powerfully and directly active in the creation (cf Psalms 8, 33), while not part of the creation, nor remote from it and
- lovingly relating to creatures in his image in the commonality of action in history, not subordinate to them, but holy, eternal and wise.  

These are not figurative attributions, but the direct implication of real days, and distinguish our Creator God from the distant god of deism (an uninvolved God who 'wound up the cosmos': somewhat where 'long age' views take us), the invisible god of theistic evolution, which attempts to adopt modern monist materialism, to merge god into the cosmos on the pretense that it made itself, and inviting the everything is god/god is everything impersonal god of pantheism, nor the non-god of modern 'I'm spiritual not religious'.

The personal God who is love and who speaks is none of these and makes the point immediately clear in the creation in terms of the tempo he has set for us to live and work in as the first act of loving fellowship, expressed conclusively in Genesis 3:8. God shares in the domain that he made for us to worship and enjoy him within by him first creating that domain in the very days which denominate our experience of life within it, and of him. The days join the creation events to the flow of history in which we live and experience God and make real the link between our world and God's acts.

The real days of real action provide the context for the theophanic events throughout the OT, and resoundingly for the Incarnation, where the God who was active in our history in creation is the God who comes into our history in Christ, in the form of a creature. The creator enters his creation in which he is not foreign! This to resolve the brokenness of the world through the Kingdom to be consummated in the New Creation (also made by the Creator).

An apologetic of meaning

Another sermon I've never heard in church, given by one Andrew Fellows (associated with L'Abri).

I was taken aback that his point of departure was Viktor Frankl. Admittedly, Frankl has written well on the topic and has a depth of thought on it in his book 'Man's Search for Meaning'...but?

Meaning comes from a meta-purpose, or a meta-significance with a spiritual basis. Finally it is found in life of faith, but those without faith also have meaningful lives; naturalism fails to explain this, but its there!

He rightly extends his thoughts to meaning being bedded in the creation, and the creation is God's representation of himself to us as creator...the creation as his gift to us. It is grounded in concrete historic events done by the triune creator who always exists. In his act of fellowship done in the very days that mark our our lives (thus making the 'one true story' in which we live) he shows his domain intersects at this point with ours: he is thus concretely and tangibly present and truly active in the domain of our existence, of our 'existential extension'. That is extension over time and in terms of communion with our creator.

Meaning has to be grounded in something real, concretely real, not abstractly or imaginatively fabricated. These latter two are mere puffs by contrast to the concreteness of creation explicitly described in 'our world' terms---because it is the creation of 'our world' as the place where we bear God's image and are thus able to be in communion with him.

[I like Fellow's 'quadrilateral' of meaning, although it is not an inherent figure, but really four elements or dimensions of 'meaning'. A true quadrilateral is a summarized two axis map of criteria interaction):

Coherence: making sense of it

Purpose: clarity on what it is for

Significance: why it matters, and

Belonging: how I participate]

When goodbye doesn't happen

A friend of mine recently left the job of church administrator. Not at my church, but another.

I'd spoken to him that morning in the hope of catching him before the farewell morning tea. He later assured me that there was not one. No farewell at all in formal terms from any of the ministers, let alone the senior minister, no offer of a time of prayer together, no card, no gold watch, no nuthin.

He said one of the committee members thanked him for his work and one of the ministers at the last moment asked him to turn up on Sunday for a formal farewell; but this should have been organised when he gave his notice a while back.

Sometimes churches just don't act like churches. I think in every organisation I've left I've enjoyed some sort of farewell unless I've avoided them, and even then colleagues have dropped into my office to chat and wish me well. But not at church!

If there are any updates to this, I'll write about them as I might learn more.

Karate do, or karate don't?

A local church recently broke with long tradition and adorned its facade with a banner to attract people to a class being held there.

Good?

Not good!

The class was karate.

I trained in karate when in high school. It was all physical then. Except! We were taught about 'ki' or 'chi'. This was the inner energy we were to seek to channel in all our moves. It came from the belly, the 'centre of our being'.

I later learnt that the older students were introduced to more esoteric spiritual practices. It became spooky.

These links might help inform you regarding mixing Christ and Eastern Pantheism.

Secrets behind martial arts

Karate - religion or just good exercise?

If you want to learn self-defense try boxing or krav maga.

Only if you are in the 'in' crowd?

Churches rightly talk much about pastoral care, particularly for the ill, infirm, disabled, shut-in (but probably not if you have suffered a pseudocoma) and the isolated. But what does that mean, particularly if one is not part of the 'in' crowd in the church?

These comments are based on personal and observed experience, along with long experience as a senior executive in human services.

The often asked question, particularly to one with a recent onset of an adverse circumstance is 'how can we/I help?' or 'what do you need?"

As one wit retorted: 'you could always pay the mortgage!' Of course, silly questions get silly answers.

I don't know what the average person in some undesired circumstances is supposed to make of that question, particularly from either a paid Christian or a pastoral volunteer. It's too broad, and has no parameters.

There are a number of domains of need that a person could have in mind.

On the professional level

1. Medical -- probably taken care of;

2. Medical support (that is to accompany to medical appointments and procedures, perhaps provide transport, and related home care) -- some of this is available through general services, others not, of course, but probably beyond the reach of untrained or un-skilled volunteers.

And, more generally:

1. Activities of daily living (ADLs) - personal care: requires training and/or skill for intimate care and, except for some assistance in dressing, and simple washing, not applicable.

2. Activities of daily living - domestic assistance. Most of these would be also out of reach for volunteer systems. This includes domestic duties: cooking, cleaning, laundry and simple home maintenance.

Most churches offer some sort of (very) short term meal support. If a person is infirm, this would be inadequate, and perhaps only a stop-gap while community services were engaged, although still useful. but just think of the volume: meals for three people (two infirm adults, a disabled daughter) over, say four days while community support was organized: 36 meals!

This would be a massive undertaking, and all available through delivery services (at amplified cost, I might add), but I'm sure most parishioners would prefer some church involvement as spiritual encouragement and companionship.

3. Social connection. Here the church community can really start to do its business. The problem is that for chronic conditions, the enthusiasm soon wanes and volunteers get tired, bored, uninterested in the service. One visit or phone call when the need is expressed in not on. Work out the 'pace'; perhaps weekly or fortnightly or anything from three to six weekly. For a person living alone, maybe a quick check-in daily by a pastoral volunteer or a clergy-person could be both prudent and kind in the early stages.

Social connection might involve a low-impact outing: local park or coffee shop, for example, or accompany a person shopping locally. It might be dropping in for a cup of tea, and some light home assistance.

People are often reluctant to ask for this sort of support, so it would be the duty of the ministerial team (paid and volunteer) to gently and politely 'probe' to see what is needed and/or accepted: a couple of unobtrusive calls to say hello and to gauge the scene (pastoral reconnaissance). Often the demands would end up being quite light and easily managed: maybe a weekly or fortnightly or even less frequent contact by a couple of volunteers in team. For volunteers it is important not to 'rush' the person and seek to do too much, but always to listen carefully for need expression from a shy person.

It is also important to avoid a demeaning 'poor dear' demeanor or tone of voice. Kind and careful, yes, but mature adult to mature adult, please. 

Open questions such as 'how are you doing?" or "how are things?" can be next to useless, as most people would give a brief answer as to OK, or if not OK, would not readily know where to start, not wanting to appear demanding or burdensome and so loose any support that may have been available. A skilled discursive conversation is far better to find where the relevant points of support might be.

If the person in question does come along to church gatherings, this is a good occasion for one of the 'team' to probe for service opportunities/needs. This can be a short conversation or to invite the person out for a coffee, or to drop in to the church centre (the eccleseum), or the minister's home, if that's how it works in your parish. Again, this is to both serve and do reconnaissance. Remember, the blunt 'what can we do for you?' is too big a question: undefined and intimidating and probably embarrassing.

In my professional work I came across a person who was asked this by my predecessor. Her answer was a lift so she could remain in her family home. $300,000 later, she was pleased, but when I took over the area, I most definitely was NOT.

If they do not attend regular church gatherings, I would think it is the duty of the minister to call and inquire as to if he/she could visit and spend some time with them.

4. Pastoral. By this I mean the full game. This is the key job of the minister or trained volunteer. It could include 'light touch' reading scripture together, the minster praying (but not expecting the visited to pray...they may be too upset or nervous, or not used to this), and even singing, or saying, a hymn together.

I am part of a church that uses liturgical forms (laughingly known by non-participants as 'traditional'), so if I was very infirm, I would expect the minister to read through morning prayer with me...even if an abbreviated version, or perhaps the Collect for the preceding Sunday could be read, along with the readings set down for that day. The minister might want to conversationally summarize the sermon he/she delivered, or what transpired in a recent study group. They might even read through and conduct holy communion together.

5. Referrals. People in distress are often unable to sort out the public services that are or might be available to them, how to obtain them, and how to sort out eligibility. Sometimes a GP can assist, or perhaps a social worker at a local hospital. The church might be able to help with a relevant contact to assist here, but this game is a complex one and a person with suitable expertise has to be involved.

Experience

Many years ago I was seriously ill with a stage 3 cancer, even worse because of extended radio-chemo therapy. My minister kindly visited every couple of weeks or so and we shared a coffee. He was gentle, un-rushed, and spent time. We just chatted for 30 minutes or so. He prayed, then left. This was fabulously encouraging, even though, while extremely sick (and very thin), I was quite cheerful. He didn't pry, but chatted as an adult to an adult. He didn't comment on my attire, my appearance, my home (which I could do no housework in, but had organized others) or anything but matters that found their way onto the 'agenda'.

More recently I saw one of the paid Christians at church ask an ill parishioner "What can we do for you, just let us know". What was he to answer? He could not know the options and so could not even start to answer. It would have been better to ask if he could be visited, and phone later to arrange a time (for pastoral 'reconnaissance').

Volunteers

Volunteers are, or should be, the life-blood of the local church. It is essential that all who are pastoral volunteers must be trained to understand pastoral care, pastoral conversations, and the special needs of those who are ill, particularly where the illness produces functional or cognitive deficits or is terminal. Based on what I've had reported to me, volunteers must be trained to have reserved (that is, non-judgmental) spiritual conversations, not to insist on spiritual acts such as prayer or reading the scripture or prayer book, and to be un-rushed. They must double check any rendezvous locations and times, and either take the fault for misunderstandings, or handle them neutrally. In dealing with trying conversational circumstances, some training in assertive pastoral conversations would help.

Volunteer driving is not the cinch it is often considered to be. Knowledge of locations and a careful driving style that considers the needs of the passenger is essential, as is good road sense and a clean driving record. An ability not to see the car as a conversation lounge is important. Your job is driving, not chatting.

As with any volunteering role, all volunteers must be trained to understand the general flow of the Bible, of Christian belief, pastoral practice and pastoral conversations and to handle the 5 basic questions. They are, after all, the public face of the church in this role.

Talk me through the Bible

One of the hardest things to do for most Christians is to talk to those who are not Christian about their faith or practice.

For example. Could you give a secular friend a quick statement (an 'elevator' statement) as to why you read the Bible, or think the Bible is important?

Moreover, could you do it in non-churchy language; language and terms that a secular person would understand and be familiar with?

I thought about this while watching a video where Jordan Peterson sets out what he sees as the importance of the Bible.

My quick thoughts about my own approach might be something like:

The Bible is a very subtle, cohesive collection of documents that exposes and then resolves the human condition. And that condition? Mankind's rebellion against the world in which he finds himself!

That is, we fight continually against the existential discontinuities of suffering, tyranny, frustration and death, and without hope.

We have a vain and forlorn desire for liberty, peace, love and joy. Yet the world embeds only fleeting glimpses of these, sparkling points of light in a fog of grey disquiet.

All religions seek to give humanity a credible location that does justice to their obvious personhood in an ostensibly mute cosmos. They have this quest, just as all philosophy quests for understanding our experience of the world, but all except Christianity make the quest within the world, either by nugatizing or floccinaucinihilipilificating it (claiming that the material is imaginary) or by accepting it and 'worshiping' it: paganism and modern materialism. Thus is their collective failure because they don't really deal with the dilemma of mankind and his despair or his nobility and grasp of inherent purpose.

The Bible does. It sets out the resolution through the creator resolving it himself. The resolution cannot come from disregarding the world (because you remain in it), or from within it (because that just feeds the problem). This cannot be from within the world that only produces death, but from the life-giver, from outside this world. It's creator!

A transcript of Peterson is linked.

Usher/welcomer

The usher or welcomer is the first person one meets at most church houses (ecclesea) before they join a gathering.

When I was young the welcomer at our church was an elderly man who handed out the hymn books and inserted the news bulletin. Sometimes a source of a witty remark, usually a friendly 'good morning' and a smile.

A straightforward job?

It might look so, but in my view it is far from it.

The ushers certainly do the above, but also handle new comers. They make a special note to chat to them later and offer refreshment if they stay on after the formal proceedings are concluded.

And there's more.

As the first point of contact, the usher needs to be able to give a ready answer to any of the five basic questions of church life.

They also need to be the 'first responder' and be able to handle everyday emergencies and provide a security function (in a good way). They need to be able to handle difficult people, people in distress and people needing emergency aid. They need to know basic emergency life support, how to use the fire-fighting apparatus on hand, and be the emergency wardens to manage evacuation, crowd control and calling emergency services in the case of fire or other life threatening event.

Our church is working towards this; so should yours.

T R A I N

Mostly we 'teach' people when we think we are 'discipling' them. And the teaching is often by the least effective form: lectures.

We need to understand that it is training we need to deliver. Training is different from teaching and a playlist is here.

In this video Wallace speaks about his training model adopted from his police career: TRAIN

T - test: find out what people don't know: use simulations (role plays) to test what people believe.

R - raise expectations: require more (not just turning up at church meetings)

A - arm people with content: make the case that God exists, is good and the only way to resolution of life's disconnections.

I - involve in the battlefield of ideas: at university, for instance, have novices raise discussions with the various groups touting their ideological wares: Muslims, Marxists, Animal 'rights', etc. (set 'involve' appointments about 6-8 weeks ahead to encourage preparation: learning, thinking, discussing.

N - nurture: continually support, encourage and coach the people around you: in fact, each other!

And, the bonus: you can use this model in any context, work, your club, at home!

When one falls ill

A member of our parish who is quite unwell spoke to me after the service. I remarked to her that a number of people has asked after her, including some 'worthies' in the church, those who'd taken on pastoral volunteering responsibilities.

She replied that odd they didn't seek her out to ask after her. She went on to mention that the local studies club she was involved with had made more effort of concern than her church. She'd received cards of sympathy from her secular group, and a phone inquiry from that group's 'welfare' officer. But the church women's group and other church volunteer groups she was involved with? Nada!

One has to wonder sometimes at the lack of diligence and actual exercised care for fellow parishioners that  churches have. If you are just one of the ordinary members...not so much; it just seems to be worldly: the conspicuous, the well known, the popular get the attention.

What to do with Kings?

This morning's sermon sprang from the passages 2 Kings 6:24-25 and 2 Kings 7:3-11, a passage with almost cinematic hilarity. The second passage was from Luke 4:38-44.

The sermon started, and largely comprised a recitation of what had been earlier read to us! That wasted 10 minutes of good time.

Almost any talk on an OT topic invites connections being made with history: the history of Israel and the wider world at the time. Not long; not detailed, but informative.

For example for this passage we might have been show relevant maps of the ANE at the time of Elisha, and a time line of the history of the time.

Then would have been opportunity for some great comments on God working in history to bring the ends he wants. 

The remarks on the Luke passage, again God working in history in the Incarnation, this time, and Yeshua healing, but then stating he was preaching the gospel. So his healing echoing OT prophesies, and pointing back to his undoing of the fall, and his obvious power to so do. Cementing Yeshua's identity in the triune godhead.

Sermons I've never heard

Explaining to an atheist that God is not composed of matter and energy, or even energy particles. He is external to and creator of the cosmos.

God is not made in the image of man: what man is ever loving, merciful, and is three in one? The only gods made in the image of man are the fake Islamic god 'Allah' and every other god, including nature itself.

The incoherent Trinity?

In a recent Stand to Reason podcast the question came up as to the irrationality of Christian faith.

A summary of the response by Greg Koukl:

Reason is grounded in the mind of God

 

If the scriptures are considered unreasonable, then you probably don't understand them.

 

But the example of contradiction that is often brought up is the Trinity.

 

Which law of reason does it violate?

 

It is said that it violates the law of non-contradiction: one god and three gods.

 

And this clearly misunderstands the Trinity.

 

The scriptures do not hold out 'one god and three gods'. They show us one God who subsists in three consciousnesses; integrated yet distinct, each sharing the full nature of God in those separate consciousnesses.

 

A pale parallel is the family: one family with three members (mother, father, child). A business partnership is similar: one partnership, say, three partners, each severally and jointly liable for the obligations of the partnership. But the great difference is that God the Father, Saviour and HS are all fully Yahweh! Neither of my illustrations achieve this level of ontological integration. Its as though the 'community' of the Trinity is akin to an imaginary number floating out of the number plane: all we can see is the number plane. We can know the imaginary number coming out of it, but can't quite grasp it...or at all!

 

Best illustrated in the triquetra, below.

The three vertices represent the three 'centres of consciousness' or persons; although, when we think persons we automatically think of spatially extended and differentiated beings. This is not so for God, except in the incarnate Son in his incarnateness - I think. And the hypostatic union itself is yet another mind-boggling item in scripture.

 

The arcs connecting the vertices represent the eternal and exhaustive communion of the three members of the Trinity in will, purpose and love. Each directly and reciprocally communing with the other two, permanently and as part of their being.

When troubles come

"When troubles come, they come not as single spies but in battalions." (Claudius, Hamlet Act IV, Scene V)

 I wonder if  one of the functions of the story of Job is to enable us to place our own battalions in perspective. I think few would have it as badly as Job did.

A friend remarked to me in respect of some of my recent battalions with words to the effect of 'we wonder what God is doing in all this'.

Oddly, that is not how I wonder.

I'm nothing like Job, but I am well schooled in the corruption and decay that we are part of in this fallen and marred creation, established for us to enjoy God within, but brought to its futility by Adam and all his offspring.

I made the mistake many decades ago of not being able to deal with egregious trials with similar perspective. That mistake did bring some benefits, but at the same time derailed my Christian work for some following decades. Some gain, but much loss.

Now, I don't think such thoughts. With self and family experiencing debilitating health events, all I can think is, life is like this; it can be worse, much worse; and it can be better. But our call is not to this world but is the upward call of God in Christ (Phil 3:14) as he works all things together (as participating agent, not puppet-master) for our (final) good. In this he draws us to himself as we look toward the world made new and un-alloyed fellowship with our Saviour world without end.

Humanity stinks

At the denouement of one of the most emotionally searing Foyle's War: "Bad Blood" an old friend (DCS David Fielding) remarks to Foyle, as they reflect on the outcome of an investigation that included a murder and death from Anthrax poisoning:

Look around you Christopher, there's so much evil, so much bad blood; humanity stinks...

He speaks to Christopher, 'Christ bearer', about that which Christ dealt with as he reflects on the horrors of chemical and germ warfare and its effects on his comrades in the Great War and on a few civilians in the story.

With this in mind, and recent events of my experience, I see so well how sin weighs down on us, both as man and as mankind: each of us and all of us .

Sin...often regarded as isolated, if frequent, actions that are 'a sin', that 'break God's law'. If only we knew: Isaiah 64:6 tells the full story!

Sin is hamartia, 'missing the mark'.

We've all missed the mark. Not in individual acts, but in our un-God-like-ness. The sin that crushes us; squeezes out of us our intended humanity, scars us with the frustration of destruction and decay, our communion with our maker stifled as we reap its wages.

Christ took our sin, swallowed its crushing power over us on the cross; then showed in his resurrection that he has freed us from that power, he has crushed it, restoring us to the glorious state of eternal communion with God our Father.

As I was thinking this, Gerard Manley Hopkins' poem: God's Grandeur, came to mind:

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

    It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

    It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

    And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

    And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;

    There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went

    Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

    World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

 

 [words from https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44395/gods-grandeur]

 

Christ our Lord is risen

We are here to celebrate the greatest day in history from the moment God created heaven and earth until Christ returns. And that's a mighty big statement, isn't it?

 

How do I have the audacity to claim that? Because on the day of Jesus' resurrection he proved salvation was possible and so everything changes for everyone who has ever and will ever live.

 

It changed my life and it changed your life; and if you doubt that claim finding, it so hard to comprehend in this secular earthly existence I beg of you not just to walk the walk but to dig deep.

 

Even if you simply wish to reaffirm your belief today, after you've eaten your roast lamb, find a Bible and read 1 Corinthians 15. It contains Paul's logical succinct argument for belief in the resurrection backed up by eye witness accounts. The resurrection was not just a mythical event to them but a factual historical miracle.

 

Or if you relate to a more visual experience watch a fabulous  movie: The case for Christ, a true story about an investigative journalist who was an avid atheist. He embarked on a research campaign to disprove Jesus' resurrection, but at the end he falls to his knees in astonishment and complete acceptance that Jesus, fully God and fully man, walked with us on this earth, died by crucifixion and rose again in glory.

 

And if your heart is touched and changed then please work through how to respond to that new found truth.

 

Call to prayer at our Easter Morning Sung Holy Communion 9 April 2023

Is God fair?

 I came across a video on this point, dealing with a claim that 'God is unfair'. The answer was couched in purely judicial terms, reducing God's love and our faith in gratitude to mere forensic transactions.

Most comments saw the hollowness of the response.

This comment more so:

This type of crass moralism is not Christianity.

The problem we have is that we (everyone) are spiritually the walking dead. We have elevated ourselves to 'god' in our own (delusional) eyes and so refuse to turn to the living and speaking creator God, Yahweh, for life.

The point of Christ's work is to open up the way for re-connection, and that is by re-birth, being 'born again' spiritually. This is done by turning from our own futile and delusional god-ness and relying on Christ to give us new life. We cannot be in God's family/kingdom (as joint heirs with Christ) without new life; the living dead would be just dead in the kingdom of light. They would be aliens there, just as fish in fresh air.

In Christ, he being God, God's domain and our domain (the created cosmos) come together, and will be finally renewed. Where at last Rorty's hope for justice and beauty in a single vision would be realized, if only he could have grasped that (his essay Trotsky and the Wild Orchids).

It's not about 'crime and punishment' but about death and life. No matter how 'good' we think we are, we are 'dead in sin'. That is in 'being cut-off from God'. That needs to be repaired, and can only be done by Christ who defeated sin on the cross and proved it by his resurrection.

 

God is fair. The evidence is starkly before us all in Nagel's Edge (read his View from Nowhere), and he (our Father in heaven) gives us the free choice of rejecting death and receiving life...or not.

Source: Is God Fair?