Mailbag: What Can God Do?

Editor's Note: Thanks to Dr. Michael Jones for answering this mailbag question. If you have a question that you would like answered, contact us on Facebook or at moralapologetics@gmail.com. 

Hello! I'm desperately searching for an answer to a question that my Mormon friend posed to me earlier this week. He asked me if God has freedom given that He cannot choose evil. I replied by telling him that God could choose any number of good things, not just evil. The inability to choose A, B, & C doesn't mean God can't choose D, E, and F, but he stopped me there. "God can't just choose all that is good, He must choose the most perfect choice since He is perfectly good Himself. Thus, God can only do one thing. He does not have free will." I really have no idea how to answer this, do you? If not, could you direct me towards someone who would? Thanks!

Patrick

Greetings. This is an interesting question. It’s also a familiar one, to me: one or another of my students raises this question almost every year. Perhaps it comes up so regularly because there’s some truth behind it. And that’s actually a good thing: if your goal is to win the confidence of your friend (I get the impression that it is) then I think it would be helpful for you to begin by acknowledging those points about which you agree.

For example, you’d probably grant that there are some things that God cannot choose to do, wouldn’t you? We’re often tempted to think that if God is omnipotent (all powerful) then he can do anything that we can imagine – and perhaps even things that are beyond our imagination. But that’s neither biblical nor very logical. The Bible indicates several things that God cannot do. For example, he cannot lie (Titus 1:2) and he cannot be tempted (James 1:13). God can’t do these things because they go against his own nature. Similarly he can’t cease being God, he can’t become finite in his knowledge, power, or goodness, and he cannot cease to exist, any more than you or I could do things that go against our nature, like sprout wings and fly or be in all places at once.

Likewise there are things that God cannot do because they are truly impossible, and therefore no one could do them. It’s impossible to make a square triangle, to make two plus two equal five, and things like that. Not being able to do these things is not a shortcoming on God’s part: no god, no matter how powerful, could do these things, for they are truly impossible.

There are choices that God cannot make because making them would go against his nature, and there are choices that God cannot make because they involve something that is simply impossible. These closely parallel what was said above. This is not a shortcoming on God’s part: it’s just the nature of things. Your friend may simply be pointing this out, and if that’s all he’s trying to say, then you may want to thank him and be done with it.

From what you wrote, however, it seems like your friend is saying that God isn’t free at all. I would disagree with that. Your friend seems to be making the argument that God’s perfect knowledge of all the options and their results combines with his perfect goodness to prevent him from choosing anything but one option in every situation. There’s a lot that could be discussed here, including Molinism, Open Theism, metaphysical views of time, history, God’s relationship to time, etc. Since I can’t address all of these, I’ll focus on just one: the presupposition that in any given situation there is always one option that is superior to all of the others.

It may be true that in some or perhaps in many situations there is one option that is decisively better than all of the others. I think that your friend is right that in those situations God’s nature constrains him to choose that option that is best. (I must add, though, that here we’re talking as if God experiences time and choosing just like we mortals do, which may be too anthropomorphic. We’ll leave that issue aside, though.) But that should not be viewed as a shortcoming, any more than God’s inability to sin, lie, or create square circles is a shortcoming (which it’s not, in my opinion). Furthermore, some theologians believe that there’s a sense in which this is still a form of free choice on God’s part, for in such a situation God’s choice is not constrained by anything outside of himself. God chooses in harmony with what God is and what he knows about reality. He can’t choose otherwise because doing so would contradict his nature and the nature of reality. Perhaps that’s not a problem at all, though. The alternative would seem to be to say that God can make choices that are not consistent with who he is, as an omniscient and omnibenevolent being. I’m not sure that you should want to affirm that.

All of that is predicated on the assumption that in any given situation there is always a single best option. However, that’s a pretty big assumption. In fact, there may be many situations wherein there are many very good options none of which is clearly better than the others. The other day my wife asked me what I wanted for breakfast and then proceeded to list a number of very tasty options. Each had its advantages, to be sure, but to me any of them would have been great. Something similar may happen to God quite often: he may know that choosing option A will have 10 beneficial consequences and 3 detrimental ones, that B would have 12 benefits but one hugely detrimental consequence, that option C would have 9 beneficial results but also 9 fairly minor negative results, etc. Knowing exactly how each option balances good and bad, he would know if and when there are options that, all things considered, are equally preferable. In those situations there is no one best option. That being the case, it makes sense that God would be free to choose between those options, don’t you think?

It’s great to think deeply about the nature of God. It can be inspiring! But let’s keep in mind that there are many ways in which the nature of the infinite, perfect God transcends finite human understanding. We should marvel at his greatness but not be discouraged if he’s hard for us to wrap our minds around.

May God bless you as you seek to follow him,

MSJ

Image: "Mail" by Bogdan Suditu. CC License. 

Dwelling in God’s Temple

Then someone starts asserting that a single concern or virtue is of the most value or importance, we usually brace ourselves for someone who is narrow and shallow at the same time.  But when the God’s faithful servant King David speaks of limiting himself to “one thing” he desires from the Lord, it’s worth listening to:

“One thing I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple” (Ps. 27: 4, ESV).

 There are three experiences referred to here: (1) an intense desire to be in God’s Presence, (2) the reward of seeing the Lord’s Beauty, and (3) the reward of learning His Truth.   The intense desire conditions the writer to receive and be blessed by the emanations of Beauty and Truth from God’s Presence (“the house of the Lord”).  For David, of course, the “temple” would have been the Tabernacle, and by extension the Temple that his son Solomon built as the divinely designated fulfillment of the design of the Tabernacle.  By even further extension, the house of the Lord is the Church and the heart of the individual believer, inhabited by the Holy Spirit; and ultimately, it is the New Jerusalem, the final home created by God so that His people of all generations and all Covenants could be eternally in His Presence.

In a couple of other places in the Psalms, David expresses even more poignantly his intense desire to dwell in God’s Presence :

How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord Almighty! My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God. (Ps 84:1-2 NIV)

As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God.   My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.  When shall I come and appear before God? (Ps 42:1-2 ESV)

Here is more than mere curiosity or formal piety.  Here is the cry of one who has felt the Presence of God palpably, and from David’s history we know that he experienced it in times of great need.  But his desire is that of a lover for the deep embrace of One who has already shown that He wants to envelop His beloved in the arms of transcendent Love.  So when David states that he has settled on that “one thing” that outweighs all other imaginable benefits, he conceives it as the unlimited perpetuation of what he has already experienced in limited measure.  He didn’t have a clear idea of an afterlife of being with God, but he knew that there was nothing sweeter than dwelling in the Presence of a God who has no limits on His radiation of Beauty and Truth.

Certainly we under the New Covenant have a much clearer picture of the eternal potential of our earthly experience of God’s Presence, but we have in common with David the opportunity of emotional and intellectual intimacy with God.  We are told that the pure in heart (those who long single-mindedly for God) will see Him, and that those who hunger and thirst after righteousness (knowing and doing the will of God) will be filled.

David more than once associated being in the Presence of God with seeing His beauty.  In addition to the loveliness of the Lord’s dwelling place referred to in Ps. 42:1, the hymn of praise in Ps. 96 urges the singers to acknowledge that “Honor and majesty are before Him; Strength and Beauty are in His sanctuary . . . .  Oh worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness!  Tremble before Him, all the earth” (Ps. 96:6,9 NKJV).  The somewhat paradoxical juxtaposition of beauty and holiness indicates that David realized his “gazing on the beauty of the Lord” was not merely earthly aesthetic appreciation, but a direct experience of holy Beauty that reached back into earthly experience to sanctify all physical beauty as generated by God.

The pairing of gazing on God’s Beauty with inquiring into His Truth may seem a strange match at first, since the first is an emotional experience and the second is a rational exercise.  However, I believe that these two are actually complementary to each other and feed one another, reflecting the fact that being in God’s Presence brings together the unified satisfaction of all of humankind’s deepest longings.  The war within us between reason and emotion leads people to emphasize one at the expense of the other.  We tend either to distrust emotion as being unstable, or to view reason as cold, calculating, and calloused.  Yet God gave us the ability and the inclination to look at things and identify them as good, even as God did concerning His creation.  We are blessed by the ability to look beyond the flaws in a fallen world and to see (irrationally, some might say) God’s beauty.  We are also blessed by the ability to use our minds to seek out Truth, thereby finding a way to perceive and describe the moral and physical order that God has put in place.

My perception is that we in the evangelical community are often more comfortable with “inquiring in the temple” than with “gazing on the Lord’s beauty.”    But we need to let them both work on us, and we do so by intensely desiring to come into the Presence of God, where we will experience both the intimacy of His Beauty and the thrill of understanding His Truth.

Image: By http://www.rjews.net/gazeta/Photo/hram.php3?id=3, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2353637

Summary of Chapter 4, “The Volitional Aspect of Divine Love,” of The Love of God: A Canonical Model by John Peckham

With the design of the argument established (a canonical model) and the preliminary linguistic work accomplished (successfully removing overly rigid distinctions between different biblical words for “love”), Peckham is well positioned in chapter 4 to begin his analysis of the different scripturally rooted attributes of God’s love for the world. The first of these is the volitional aspect of divine love. While the transcendent-voluntarist concludes that divine love is totally free, sovereign, and unmotivated (as witnessed in election), and the immanent-experientialist supposes that divine love is essential to God’s nature and therefore universal, sympathetic, and indeterministic, Peckham is going to advocate in this chapter for a foreconditional-reciprocal model of divine love that understands God’s love for the world as voluntary and yet not merely volitional.

God’s Volitional Love

As mentioned above, the transcendent-voluntarist model has happily endorsed the voluntary nature of God’s love; however, it is prone to delimit God’s love to mere volition. This comes as a result of an un-nuanced adherence to God’s impassibility, absolute sovereignty, and aseity. Inevitably, many (from Vanhoozer to Barth) conclude that God’s relationship with the world is not necessary. However, Kevin Hector’s interpretation of Barth affords an alternative position which states that humanity is contingently necessary to God inasmuch as God determined from eternity past to be God-with-us.

These and other  interpretations of divine love are accused by Peckham of making claims based on what God might have done rather than what Scripture clearly presents. This is why Peckham lays out, as promised, his canonical answer to the following question, “Does God love freely and, if so, what does that mean?” From the Scriptures, Peckham is able to demonstrate (with T. F. Torrance) that God did not have to create anything and, as a result (and in agreement with Richard Rice), the world owes its existence, both past and present, to God’s free choice. Applied to God’s love for humanity, it must be said that this too is freely bestowed by God in election.

To illustrate this phenomenon, the Bible uses images like marriage and adoption to reiterate that divine love is always instigated by God. Not only that, but the fact that love is shown in Scripture to be taken away (in some sense) demonstrates that divine love (in that specific sense) is inessential to God. These and other proofs both affirm the transcendent-voluntarist position and undermine the immanent-experientialist belief that God is somehow compelled to love because he is in some way dependent on the world.

However, Peckham departs from strict voluntarists when he suggests that God’s love is not merely volitional. Instead, he believes divine love is also evaluative, emotional, foreconditional, and ideally reciprocal. One example of this took place when God’s people rebelled by erecting a golden calf in the wilderness and, in response, God offered them a choice to either repent and enter back into his love or forfeit God’s mercy. In this episode, though God’s love is shown to be freely given to a people who do not deserve it, Peckham believes that it is not merely a product of his choice, but, in some ways, contingent on how his people respond and reciprocate. If they repent, they will experience God’s love in special ways; if they do not, they forfeit God’s free and sovereign offering.

Love and Election

A discussion very closely related to the volitional aspect of God’s love is the relationship between love and election. For those adhering to a strict transcendent-voluntarist model, election and love go hand-in-hand (see Leon Morris and Anders Nygren). In fact, some, as revealed in chapter 3, even equate Old Testament words for “love” with choice. This is not so with Peckham’s foreconditional-reciprocal model. Instead, Peckham suggests that while election is a manifestation of love, it is not equal to divine love. In fact, divine love is shown in the Canon to be so much more than mere election.

Scripture teaches that divine love is not only the basis for divine election (Deut. 4:37; 7:7-8; 10:15), it is unmerited, evaluative, conditional, and must be maintained by appropriate human response. In addition to passages that describe God’s sovereign freedom to bestow love as he pleases, a host of passages reveal God’s hatred toward humans that is prompted by their evil actions, thereby proving his love to have an evaluative component. Also, the pervasive covenant language in the Scriptures implicitly suggests certain underlining conditions associated with the benefits thereof and the love bestowed therein. Not only that, the elect are described throughout the Canon as those who, upon receiving a divine call, answer it appropriately by reciprocating the love bestowed in the context of a growing relationship.

Love and Bilateral Significant Freedom One final consideration Peckham includes in this presentation involves what he calls bilateral significant freedom, or the ability of both God and man to will to act otherwise than they do. According to Peckham, if this was not affirmed, especially when it pertains to God’s love relationship with the world, so many passages through the Canon would not make sense. The pervasive offerings of love from God and the many commands to love God both suggest that divine love, though freely bestowed, cannot be forced upon someone by sheer will. In other words, mankind is not casually determined to love God according to the Scriptures. Therefore, the love between God and man is, in some ways, a phenomenon that occurs when both God chooses to offer it and humans choose to respond appropriately. As Peckham concludes, the love relationship between God and man is neither unilaterally deterministic nor an ontological necessity. Instead, it is mutually (though not equally) volitional and contingent.

Ultimately, [similar to] the transcendent-voluntarists [in this respect], Peckham believes that the love of God [for the world] is volitional and free. Not only that, but he affirms that love [in relationship to the world] is neither essential to God’s being nor necessary to his existence. However, Peckham believes that reducing divine love to pure volition is too limited given how the God—man relationship is portrayed in the Scriptures. God’s love seems to be experienced most completely by those who respond to his offer appropriately in the context of a bilaterally free, volitional relationship—not as a result of a reductionist interpretation of God’s election alone.

Image:By the Providence Lithograph Company - http://thebiblerevival.com/clipart/1907/gen1.jpg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6946556

“Cherish one another.”

“Cherish one another.”  My wife reminded me the other day that I often give this aphoristic piece of advice to married couples, especially younger ones and those who are struggling to overcome marital conflict.   She was asking, if I may paraphrase, “Why do you consider those words a starting point in marital relations?”

As I thought about how to enlarge on “Cherish one another,” I considered the difference between that admonition and merely saying, “Love one another,” which is rather the more expectable wording of the idea, and one used often in the New Testament to apply to all human relationships (see, e.g., I John 4).  Since we are talking about marriage, we should refer to the passages in which the husbands are commanded to “love your wives, as Christ loved the church” (Eph. 5:25) and to “love their wives as their own bodies” (Eph. 5:28).  Although the word “love” in these passages (agape, the absolutely selfless love that Jesus shows to His bride, the church) is deeper and more comprehensive than “cherish,” I believe the latter word, just because it is more focused and precise in denotation and more warmly personal in connotation, conveys an idea of core value in marital relationships.

The word “cherish” comes from a root meaning “dear,” both in the sense of “held affectionately close” and “appreciated for its value.”  (In British English, the word “dear” is often used to mean “expensive,” as in “That’s too dear for me.”)  So the appellation “dear” when talking to one’s beloved can be seen as more than a casual term, carrying with it both the joy of companionship and an appreciation for the great value of the one to whom it is addressed.  The cherished one is perceived as a treasure, to be held close and protected.  And the spouse so regarded will be presented to others with all of her/his good qualities showcased, as one deserving to be cherished.

In practical terms, cherishing your wife means, first of all, listening to her intensely and consistently, with both your ears and your heart, in a way that shows you value knowing and understanding her more than anything else that calls for your attention.  Turn off the ball game, put down your newspaper or your tools, quit bending over the work you brought home from the office.  Wives, if you want your husband to feel cherished, understand and acknowledge what gives him joy.  If you don’t value it already, ask him to explain to you why it engages him, and participate in it with him if you can.  When the two of you engage in conversation, even if it becomes an argument, avoid put-downs or condescension or contempt at all costs.  Take for granted the value of hearing what the other one wants to say, and even if it irritates you, glean from it some building blocks of understanding.  The scriptural admonition not to go to bed angry is especially important in the aftermath of a heated disagreement.  Cherishing means offering forgiveness on a standing-order basis, for cherishing and anger can’t occupy the same bed.

Cherishing means giving gifts, especially when they’re not expected and the only thing they celebrate is affirming the value of your spouse.  Attach a note that ties the gift to some quality of your spouse that you really appreciate.  Of course, the affirming of your wife or husband can (and should) be a constant flow of “Thank you’s” and frequent acknowledgements of her/his good traits.  (Caution to husbands: make sure your pattern of showing attention doesn’t elicit the mental response, “Oh yeah, I know what he really wants!”  Make your cherishing much more often manifested than your appetites—keep her guessing!)  Wives, be appreciative of the qualities your husband actually has, not just the ones that fit the Procrustean bed of your wishes and expectations.  Many an effort at cherishing has foundered on the desire to create rather than find qualities to admire.

Mutual, consistent, intentional cherishing builds a relationship strong enough to withstand a lot of trouble.  Indeed, it’s in the midst of trouble that mutual cherishing can become even more entrenched.  And it’s that entrenched cherishing that makes a mature marriage rich and still capable of development.  The breeding soil of cherishing is thankfulness for God’s gifts, the chief of which, in a truly committed covenant marriage, is the gift of a spouse who is willing to participate in the exhilarating exercise of progressive cherishing.

While I was writing this article, I fortuitously saw a review of the latest of the Mitford novels by Jan Karon, Come Rain or Come Shine.  The reviewer quotes a comment by Father Tim, who is conducting a wedding, as he tries to answer a question from the bride, “How do we cherish someone?“  Father Tim answers, “A good marriage is a contest of generosities.  Our happiness is ensured when we seek the happiness of another.  The other person always has a choice.  It is our job to generously outdo, no matter what, and discover that the prize in this contest of generosity is more love.”  That reconfirms my conviction that the best succinct advice I can give to two people whom God has brought together in matrimony is, “Cherish one another.”

Image: "Love... just that" by Sippanont Samchai. CC License. 

John Peckham, summary of Chapter 3, “Agape Verses Eros?: The Biblical Semantics of Divine Love,” from The Love of God: A Canonical Model

Before setting out to delineate the love of God by means of its consistent and wide-ranging attributes as supported in the Canon, Peckham decides first to address the issues surrounding the polysemy and multivalency of the word “love” as it appears in the Scriptures. In so doing, Peckham confronts an exegetical fallacy that unfortunately pervades both popular and, in some cases, academic scholarship concerning theologically charged verbiage in general and “love” in particular. This fallacy is known by Grant Osborne as the lexical fallacy and/or the illegitimate totality transfer and identified by D. A. Carson in his discussion on problems surrounding synonyms and componential analysis. In both of these presentations and in that of Peckham’s, it is concluded that the entire semantic range of any word should not be read into every occurrence of the aforementioned term nor should a particular meaning/nuance in one context be thrust on all other contexts containing the same locution.

Proving this to be true of the word “love” in its many forms (agape, eros, phileo, etc.) is fruitful for Peckham’s broader argument for two reasons. First, if Peckham cannot demonstrate that there is at least some semantic overlap between different canonical terms for love, then he might be required to treat each individual term to its own robust study. Second, proving that there is at least some lexical and semantic parallelism between different terms for love from the beginning will allow Peckham to move more freely within the Canon toward an understanding of divine love without becoming too preoccupied with unnecessary and overly particular lexical exercises which, as mentioned above, have the potential of yielding fallacious conclusions.

The Theological Inflation of Agape over Eros

Perhaps the most popular distinction drawn in this discussion is between agape and eros in which those like Anders Nygren argue that agape pertains to a unilateral beneficence limited to the realm of God’s own volition while eros describes an emotional, acquisitive, and desirous love witnessed within the human race. However as Peckham reveals, agape is used in the Scriptures both positively and negatively to convey a host of meanings ranging from the holy love of God (connotations more in keeping with popular ideas about agape) to fleeting lusts (which is more in keeping with common considerations of eros). Therefore, what Peckham is able to demonstrate seems to undermine the conclusions of Nygren and others of his ilk.

That said, Peckham does concede that with divine agency, the agapao word group only refers to perfect, virtuous love, but not in a lexically limited way. Instead God’s agape love in many contexts involves conditions, evaluations, emotion, and reciprocity. Therefore, to delimit agape to the perfect and yet cold volition of God is to rob it of its nuance, biblically rooted connotations, and the subsequent implications thereof.

The Theological Inflation of Agape over Phileo

A similar phenomenon is witnessed in considerations of agape alongside phileo. Those wearing lexical blinders often conclude that while agape speaks of Christian love witnessed between God and man, phileo connotes a friendly and therefore inferior kind of love that is given and reciprocated between two equals in a relationship. Many in favor of this distinction point to the conversation recorded in John 21 between Jesus and Peter for support.

However, as Peckham points out, the meanings associated with these two terms in the New Testament overlap in nearly every respect as both describe the Father’s love for the Son, God’s love for his disciples, Jesus’ love for sinners, mankind’s love for Christ, human love for other humans, and love of one’s own life. Additionally, similar conditions are often involved in contexts containing both agape and phileo, as are emotions and reciprocity.

For the reasons described above, Peckham concurs with Carson in concluding that there is no biblically supported rule that ultimately or completely isolates agape love to the realm of God and limits his affection to volitional and emotionless beneficence. The best proof of this is witnessed in the obvious semantic overlap between agape, eros, and phileo.

The Wider Semantics of Love in the Scripture

The same can be said of words used for “love” in the Old Testament. For instance אָהֵב (the forerunner of agape) with divine agency always connotes perfect love. With this in mind, Eugene Merrill (as Nygren has done with agape) delimits אָהֵב to a unilaterally willed and unconditional kind of love—the kind demonstrated most succinctly in arbitrary election. However, Peckham argues that while love might serve as a basis for election, the two are not pure synonyms. In fact, according to Old Testament usage, אָהֵב is evaluative rather than the result of arbitrary choice. Elsewhere, God expects אָהֵב from human beings (albeit not symmetrically) for having bestowed אָהֵב on them.  Not only that, but Peckham shows that אָהֵב is decidedly emotional in certain contexts as well.

חסד ( “steadfast love and mercy”) is also understood by many to be relatively singular in meaning—denoting the relational love of God that allows for his loyalty and mercy. However, even this term is multifaceted. Occurring primarily in contexts dealing with God’s covenant with His people, חסד includes a voluntary (volitional) act toward another that is unmerited and yet not altogether unconditional (as it may be forfeited and withdrawn). חסד also naturally assumes responsiveness from those to whom it is bestowed (reciprocity).

Finally, רחמ (and New Testament counterparts pertaining to compassionate love) is also teaming with potential meanings and nuances. Though primarily רחמ is used in referring to intense emotional love, its reception is often described in the Old Testament as contingent on the maintenance of an ongoing divine-human relationship (foreconditional).

Implications

Peckham has thus been able to demonstrate that biblical words for love are not nearly as distinct as they are often presumed to be and that they share many of the same attributes (volition, evaluation, emotion, forecondition, and reciprocation)—especially in contexts dealing with God’s love for the world. This study is well positioned to develop its understanding of divine love on a canonical level without having to delimit itself to or preoccupy itself with overly reductionist lexical studies.

Image: By Joan de Joanes - http://www.museodelprado.es/uploads/tx_gbobras/P00846.jpg, Public Domain

John Peckham, summary of Chapter 2, “Toward Addressing the Conflict: A Canonical Approach,” of The Love of God: A Canonical Model

Having delineated the disjunction and subsequent impasse between the transcendent-voluntarist and immanent-experientialist models of divine love in chapter one, Peckham continues his work by describing the means by which he has arrived at his canonical alternative. Instead of presupposing a robust ontology and moving toward an understanding of love, the author instead presupposes a sophisticated view of Scripture and then considers what it elucidates about divine love in light of Scripture’s principal character—Christ.

As in any argument, the canonical approach employed for understanding divine love (as endorsed by Peckham) is well within its epistemic rights to select its starting point a priori. Taking advantage of what is allowed on epistemic grounds, the canonical approach in this work endorses the following foundation: (1) a robust view of revelation, (2) a dual-authorship understanding of the produced text, and (3) a primarily grammatical-historical hermeneutic (although Peckham’s iteration of this concept is sympathetic to how any one text fits into the entire Canon). These endorsements reveal that the canonical approach promulgated in this work desires to uncover what about divine love is depicted in the text. Additionally, what is sought is not what any one passage has to offer on the matter, but what the Canon reveals as a whole.

This decision is in keeping with what is encouraged by many hermeneutical scholars who believe that much of what is reached on an interpretive level depends on context. Reaching a responsible understanding of a passage/topic requires an investigation of the immediate context (i.e. the passages that surround the verse/idea in question) for anything that might offer aid in interpretation. Better, continue the analysis by observing how the verse/topic fits into the argument of the book in which it is placed. What is even better is exploring how a verse or passage comports with other passages in the Canon that deal with the same concept or contain similar language. Investigating a topic as broad as the love of God merits (and even demands) an approach that extends this kind of contextual analysis Canon-wide because it is only in the purview of the entire Scriptural account that something as pervasive and significant as God’s affections can be properly informed and elucidated.

Peckham’s canonical approach assumes that in spite of its plurality of authors and contexts, Scripture was written in a single vein that informed, guided, and even corrected the human participants in the writing process.  In other words, the Canon itself has a direction and objectivity to it that is greater than the sum of all of its parts.

Additionally, Peckham’s program is sympathetic to hermeneutical critical realism (i.e. that meaning exists before interpretation). However, his hermeneutic pushes exegesis beyond any specific text and toward an interpretation of the entire Canon. Such an approach is able to appreciate both the rich nuance of any text along with its meaningful relationship to the rest of Scripture and its history. Put another way, the canonical approach described above is characteristic of both phenomenological exegesis (considering interpretations which mean something on both a specific and canonical level) and hermeneutical exegesis (considering the philological and historical dimensions of the exegetical method).

These commitments keep Peckham from missing the forest for the trees and losing the trees among the forest. As much as possible, Peckham is trying to understand love by means of applicable texts (bottom up), while simultaneously analyzing these texts alongside each other given their relationship to canonical and historical considerations (top-down).

Although while interpreting data exegetes and theologians are encouraged to cancel out all previously inherited theories and/or presuppositions that could in some way color the text, the canonical approach delineated here is honest about its commitment to an orthodox view of revelation, authorship, and a singularly focused canonical framework that is only fully appreciated when both phenomenological and hermeneutical investigations are allowed to transpire. Peckham chooses to presuppose this over and above a sophisticated ontology. Instead of beginning in the realm of systematic theology and understanding Scripture in light of well-organized systems, he chooses to begin with the raw data, correctly interpreted, and then proceeds to build a canonically sound view of divine love.

One of the concessions that Peckham makes before proceeding is that this work is not prepared to report an exhaustive analysis of every passage on divine love along with its meaning and relationship to the entire Canon. Therefore, the analysis will be in large part feature a report of the trends discovered following a more exhaustive exercise conducted before this work was produced. One of the means by which the raw data was limited for the purposes of this project involved delimiting God’s love to his concern for the world. This naturally establishes Jesus Christ as a special subject worth careful consideration as he is the very incarnation of God in general and God’s love in particular.

For Peckham, it is not just the Canon, but the Christ of the Canon that reveals God primarily and his love especially. Therefore, with the Canon as the body of data and Christ as the example par excellence discovered therein, this canonical approach is able to yield an understanding of the love of God that is more sophisticated than both the transcendental-voluntarist model and the immanent-experientialist model.

In a preview of coming attractions, Peckham concludes this chapter by outlining several specific attributes of God’s love resulting from the canonical approach described in this chapter: (1) volition, (2) evaluation, (3) emotion, (4) forecondition, and (5) reciprocity. These will be delineated in future summaries.

Image: By Carl Bloch - http://www.carlbloch.org/The-Last-Supper.jpg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10115340

Believing and Hoping

A Twilight Musing

Two related contrasts came up in my devotional times this week:

1. the distinction between optimism and hope (particularly Christian hope); and
2. the profound difference between the popular saying, “Seeing is believing,” and the reverse of that, “Believing is seeing.”

The first of each pair is an expression of a secular, humanistic interpretation of reality, and latter of each pair embodies reality seen through the eyes of faith.  I would like to expound a bit on both pairs.

Optimism and Hope

Both optimism and hope go beyond the visible facts of the situation to which they are applied, but whereas optimism is a chosen attitude, hope is the embracing of confidence in what somebody has said.  Optimism can be merely the expression of a sunny disposition, or perhaps of a kind of naiveté; but hope is the conviction, based on a reliable source, that things are being engineered in a certain direction.  We can choose to be optimistic that the stock market will go up and the economy will prosper, but we can have hope for these developments only if we have inside information that we trust.  Optimism is subjective, whereas hope is grounded in the assurance that a promise will be fulfilled.

When the Bible speaks of hope, it is always connected with faith, and it is never merely a subjective choice to see things in the most positive light.  The Psalms are full of references to hope based on trusting God.  (All biblical passages are from the NIV.)

  Ps 33:20-21

 We wait in hope for the Lord ;

he is our help and our shield.

 In him our hearts rejoice,

for we trust in his holy name.

Isa 40:31

 but those who hope in the Lord

will renew their strength.

They will soar on wings like eagles;

they will run and not grow weary,

they will walk and not be faint.

Rom. 4: 18-22 shows the extreme of hope that perseveres because of belief in God’s faithfulness and the surety of His promise:

 Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him, "So shall your offspring be."  Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead — since he was about a hundred years old — and that Sarah's womb was also dead.  Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised.

Heb. 6:17-19 makes clear that our hope in God’s promises is anchored in the Absolute Truth of Yahweh Himself:

Because God wanted to make the unchanging nature of his purpose very clear to the heirs of what was promised, he confirmed it with an oath.  God did this so that, by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled to take hold of the hope offered to us may be greatly encouraged.   We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure.

Seeing is believing/Believing is seeing

All of us have encountered, at some time or another, the practical skepticism of someone who says, “Well, seeing is believing” (or some expression of that sentiment).  Applied to some situations, such as hearing the promises of someone who has proven himself to be untrustworthy, this response is appropriate and understandable.  But for some people, it becomes the expression of a materialistic epistemology, based on the assumption that the only questions worth asking (or answering) are those subject to rational, scientific investigation.

For a person of active faith, this aphorism has to be inverted: “Believing is seeing.”   The contrast between the two statements is very instructive about what is involved in living a life of faith.  At the center of this contrast is the implicit assertion in the first that only seeing can validate and inform believing, while the inverted statement affirms that believing is the foundation for truly seeing.  Augustine articulated the contrast by saying, “I do not seek to understand in order that I may believe, but rather, I believe in order that I may understand.”  Later, Anselm reinforced this idea with his maxim, “Credo ut intelligam,” which is a reflection of the scriptural statement that “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge” (Prov. 1:7).  The core meaning of the biblical idea is that one must go beyond the narrow boundaries of what can be established merely by human observation and analysis and accept that the Source of all knowledge is the God Who gave us the power to think.  If we are to have a deep understanding of Truth, we must be grounded in a simple act of faith that accepts possibilities beyond what we can see.

As Paul says in Rom. 8:23-25, we “groan inwardly” in hope of “the redemption of our bodies.   For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has?   But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.”

Image: "Hope" by P. Herjolf. CC License. 

Summary of Chapter 1, “Conflicting Models of Divine Love,” of John Peckham’s The Love of God: A Canonical Model

While the concept of a loving God has been firmly established within the theistic community for centuries, delineating how God’s love is applied to mankind in general and the lost and saved in particular continues to generate discussion. Most recently, those joining this conversation on divine love have found themselves endorsing one of two general positions: a transcendent-voluntarist position (held by classical theism) and an immanent-experientialist model (representative of panentheism). In chapter 1 of The Love of God, Peckham provides a brief analysis of each position and a description of how they answer several significant questions. Ultimately, this first discussion will lay the groundwork for the discussions that will take place later in the work as it reveals an unfortunate dichotomy in need of a canonical rejoinder.

The strident differences between transcendent-voluntarism and immanent experientialism can be traced historically and understood as the result of an ever-evolving theology on the love of God. Peckham begins by tracing the evolution of transcendent-voluntarism.

Transcendent-Voluntarism

Augustine, perhaps the forefather of the classical theistic model of divine love, was the first to endorse something akin to the modern transcendent-voluntarist position. For Augustine (a pseudo-neoplatonist), God loves men as objects of use in a top-down program of unilateral beneficence. When man loves God in return, this is determined voluntarily by God who requires nothing (as he is already perfect) but wills everything (as he is totally sovereign). With Augustine, Thomas Aquinas conceded that God is, in fact, an immutable and passionless deity. However, Aquinas warmed the free will of God into a kind of divine friendship (again top down and requiring no reciprocity), believing that God chooses to befriend mankind in different ways for his own purposes. Martin Luther applied these foregoing concepts to his revitalization of the doctrine of grace and framed God’s love as actively and freely bestowed on men who are unable to truly love except as passive agents of divine love in them. It wasn’t until Anders Nygren that attention was given to different words for love (agape and eros especially). Though later his conclusions were largely refuted, Nygren believed that a strict dichotomy existed between eros and agape and only God was capable of agape love (sacrificial, sovereign, and gracious) while the love of men was predominately understood as eros (acquisitive, upward, contingent, and effort-based).

This brief survey highlights the major classical theistic players that eventually coalesced in the work of one recent figure—Carl Henry. Henry amalgamated many of these considerations and further nuanced them into what is understood as one the most robust delineations of the transcendental-voluntarist position. With Augustine, Henry believed that God lacks nothing and therefore requires nothing from his creation. With Aquinas, Henry asserted that God is totally free to show love in different ways to different people. With Luther, Henry recognized the gracious nature of divine love that exists solely for the benefit of the recipient. However, though like Augustine, Aquinas, and Luther, Henry confirmed God’s divine impassibility, and also affirmed God’s ability to feel—arguing that these feelings were, as all of God’s attributes, purely self-determined. Similarly, though Henry adopted his forefather’s confession of God’s transcendence above creation, he did not deny God’s pervasive immanence in creation as witnessed in his preserving it and working out his purposes in it.

Immanent-Experientialism

On the other side of the aisle, immanent-experientialism affirms that God, while dissimilar from the world, is essentially related to the world and thereby dependent on the world for his existence (see panentheism). This concept is largely constructed on the premise that the continual and temporal process of change is the basic form of reality. Therefore, all reality is indeterministic and interdependent—including the reality of God. Inasmuch as the world changes, as it is part of God, God changes with it. Hartshorne applies these concepts to love in the following ways. First, since God includes the world, he feels what the world feels and is therefore acutely sensitive to the world’s concerns. His subsequent love for the world and concern for it is therefore superior to the love of all others because he knows all that there is to know and feels all that there is to feel. However, though his love for the world is as perfect as it can be, it is incomplete as the world is in a constant state of flux.

Both of these positions hit an impasse when they confront several important questions in need of cogent answers.

Does God choose to fully love only some, or does he choose to love all, or is he essentially related to all such that he necessarily loves all?

For the classical transcendent-voluntary theist, God’s love originates in his divine decision to love all generally but only some unto salvation. However, Hartshorne and others believe that the determinism of the transcendent-voluntarist model is unacceptable because it denies meaningful creaturely freedom, thereby excluding true love. As an alternative, Hartshorne and others posit that God’s love is universal, sympathetic, and indetermininistic. However, Henry and other classical theists believe that this makes God’s love contingent, thereby diluting God’s magnificence.

Does God only bestow and/or create value, or might he also appraise, appreciate, and receive value?

Classical theists subscribing to transcendent-voluntarism believe that inasmuch as God is perfect and self-sufficient, he is only the benefactor and never the beneficiary in the exchange of love (he is unchanged by the world). Conversely, immanent-experientialism says that God feels everything and, as a result, benefits and suffers along with the world. Ultimately, while the former affirms God’s self-giving agape love (altruism), the latter believes that God loves in an effort to bring about his own fulfillment (egoism).

Does God’s love include affection and/or emotionality such that God is concerned for the world?

Henry and others who affirm the impassibility of God believe that while God has feelings, these feelings are self-determined (as is every one of God’s attributes). Hartshorne and others who affirm the passibility of God believe that God’s emotions are thrust upon him in a passive way as he sympathizes with what he observes in the world. While the former view is criticized for cheapening real emotions (as many argue that impassibility rules our genuine love in God), the latter avails itself of the idea of a needy and therefore deficient deity.

In what sense is divine love unconditional or conditional, ungrounded or grounded?

Both positions concede that divine love is unconditional; however, they affirm this in different ways. Henry argues that God does not need to love. Instead, he has determined himself to be a God of love and chooses to love as a result. Hartshorne, in contrast, believes that God’s love is unconditional because of his dependency on a world that manifests itself in sympathy for that world—sympathy that manifests in love that he cannot help but demonstrate. However, neither position seems to be able to explain instances in which conditions are assigned to love in things like covenant promises.

Can God and humans be involved in a reciprocal (and unequal) love relationship?

For the transcendental-voluntarist, only God can give love and does so in both general (common grace) and particular (salvific) ways. For the immanent-experientialist, God’s love is universal—i.e. given to all, not just a few, and at all times—and reciprocal. Henry and others wonder if this does not lead inexorably to a mutable being unworthy of worship. Still others along with Hartshorne decry Henry’s transcendent God, believing him to be cold and ultimately unrelated to humanity in any compelling way.

In lieu of these questions and others like them, many have begun to wonder if there is not an alternative to these mutually exclusive conceptions of divine love. Peckham believes that there is, and in the following chapters he will work toward a canonical rejoinder to these positions.

Find the other chapter summaries here as they come available.'

Image: "He loves you" by _mogi. CC License. 

Creation and Re-creation

A Twilight Musing

1:1-18 is justly regarded as one of the foundational passages in the New Testament, since it could be called a hymn of praise summarizing the awesome picture of the eternal, ineffable God interacting with His physical and temporal creation.  There is a beautiful rhythm in the language of this passage, which manifests the economy and evocative imagery of poetic diction.  It begins by identifying the Creative Force in Genesis 1 and 2 as “the Word,” and ends with that Word becoming a part of the physical (and now darkened) world that He has created.  Just as “In the beginning was the Word,” so also in the end is the Word: the Alpha is also the Omega.  When the Creator became a part of His own creation, He reintroduced the original Light of creation, which operates to return the fallen earth to its pristine beginnings.

As I considered this way of seeing the Prologue to John’s Gospel, I began to wonder what it might look like to “translate” the embedded poetry of the passage into overt poetic form.  I present to you below my attempt to do just that, hoping that it provides a fresh approach to the text, while reflecting faithfully the essence of the Holy Spirit’s profoundly succinct theological summary given us through the Apostle John.

“The Alpha/Omega Word”

Beginning Word

Spoke Light to Chaos;

Light pushed Life from sod,

And God through Word

Made forms to walk on sod,

And finally man to trod

On finished earth.

But darkness pierced

The perfect pearl of Paradise:

The Word no longer heard,

Nor known the fellowship with Light.

In darkness, tyrannous Time was lord,

But Time was also womb of Light renewed.

Word of Light

Re-entered world He made,

Took on a mortal mould

That showed the face of God,

Unshadowed by shade.

Heralded by John He came,

Following in flesh

But eternally before;

Jordan-witnessed Lamb of God,

Light to be extinguished

So that Light could shine once more.

Time redeemed

Became a womb again:

Spirit spawned

Brothers of the Son,

Children owing naught to fallen flesh,

But reborn through God-in-Flesh,

The Light of Life.

New Covenant of Life,

Bought with blood,

Became God’s family,

Receiving grace and truth

Transcending Law of Death.

New breath breathed in

Through timeless Word,

 Beginning and also end.

                    --Elton D. Higgs

                       Jan. 12, 2016

Image: "The Creation of Adam" by Jessica Branstetter. CC License. 

A Reluctance for New Wine

A Twilight Musing

The first few days of a new year invite us to review the recent past, to let go of our baggage, and to pursue self-improvement.  However, Jesus gave advice about the danger of trying to embrace the new while holding tenaciously onto the old:  “Neither do men pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skins will burst, the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved" (Matt. 9:17).

Both of the poems below deal with how our desire for the “new wine” of positively altered behavior is hindered by either our reluctance to break through the comfort boundaries of the familiar, or our substitution of face-saving guilt feelings for humble reform.  Our Adversary has no preference for either of the two, since they are equally effective in preventing the painful process of growth.  Happy New Year, folks.

A Reluctance for New Wine

The fabric of threadbare hope

Stretches toward year's end.

Pieces of frayed ambition extend

To cover the old wineskins

That many disclaim

But few set aside.

Like children clutching tattered dolls,

We hug in vain security

The rags of the past,

Because in some degree

They are accommodated to our wills.

The outworn selves we cling to

Can be our own

The more as time goes by:

We patch and mend

In order to possess.

The New

Stirs something deep within—

But I would not willingly admit it.

                                                            --Elton D. Higgs (Dec. 31, 1977)

A Prayer for Exorcism

Lord, spare me from the ghosts

Of work undone;

The year has run its course,

And once again I find

Unfinished what I had designed.

No doubt You hoped for more as well;

But, truth to tell,

I doubt my sense of falling short

Arises from the faults You see.

I prefer those sins whose guilty shades

Are quite definable,

And limit my lament

To my own thwarted ends.

Your design transcends my pride;

I cannot hide beneath the guilt

That comes from You,

For it speaks of new beginnings,

And brooks no misty sentiment

For what I've failed to do.

                                 --Elton D. Higgs  (12/30/78)

Image: "Growing" by A Tipton. CC license. 

Post-Christmas Limbo

The week between Christmas and New Year’s Day is often a bit of a let-down, a limbo that has a diminished glow of the Christmas celebrations, but is not yet the full resumption of everyday duties that will begin in earnest after New Year’s.  This is more particularly true if we have had a deep spiritual experience in revisiting the meaning of the birth of Christ, or even a rich re-connection with our families.  The aftermath is an anti-climax.  

As I thought about this, I tried to imagine what it was like for the shepherds after the first flush of the Nativity Night, when they were chosen to be the first witnesses of the Incarnation.  The days immediately afterward must have been full of the telling of what had happened to them, but I can imagine that as time went on, they needed something more than the thrill of relating those spectacular events.  It’s that maturing of realization that I wanted to depict in the following poem.

After Immersion in Glory

First flush of Glory faded now,

How shall we return to our flocks?

Having eagerly reflected the Light received,

Having believed the angel’s words

And seen the unlikely Babe

Born in a barn,

How now to fit that flash

With tedious tasks resumed

In nights as dark as ever?

The word we heard

Burst in on reality,

A pregnant pause in vacuous vigils,

Now duller made

By memory of angels’ song.

And yet a remnant of light is left,

No more in arching, starry sky,

But seeded in ourselves.

How now to deal with Word

Not merely heard and told,

But planted?

Time suspended transmutes

To time extended;

Shadowed Glory puts out shoots

From roots of all that we have seen.

The fields about are still the same,

But we are fertile soil

To grow the Glory

That will not fade.

--Elton D. Higgs

  Dec. 29, 2015

Summary of Chapter Three of God and Morality: Four Views, edited by R. Keith Loftin.

Summary by Michael W. Austin [su_dropcap]I[/su_dropcap]n the third essay in God and Morality, theistic philosopher Keith Yandell engages in a discussion of a variety of topics in metaethics, including ethical relativism, divine command theory, and the Euthyphro dilemma. The breadth, concise nature, and complexity of the chapter make a comprehensive summary difficult. The view that Yandell seems to hold is moral essentialism. This will be the focus of my summary.

A moral essentialist believes that moral truths are necessarily true. A necessary truth is not merely true; it is also impossible for it to be false. To put it differently, a necessary truth is true across all possible worlds. In the non-moral realm, one example of a necessary truth is the claim that two logically contradictory statements cannot both be true. “X is y” and “X is not y” cannot both be true. Many philosophers argue that there are necessary moral truths. For example, if I claim “Torturing infants for fun is wrong” or “Humility is a virtue” I am making a claim involving a necessary moral truth. Yandell claims that it is the fundamental principles of ethics that are necessarily true, such as the claim that we ought to respect persons (unless they’ve forfeited that right).

Both theists and non-theists can hold to some type of moral essentialism. Both might adopt some form of Platonism, in which necessary moral truths are necessarily existing abstract objects of some sort. Platonism is not merely a view of moral truths, but also of other types of truths. On a non-theistic Platonic view,“2 + 2 = 4” is true whether or not there is a God. This necessary mathematical truth is simply a part of the furniture of the universe. Similarly, a necessary moral truth does not depend on God in some ontological sense, but rather it is true whether or not God exists. On such a view, “Torturing infants for fun is wrong” is also a part of the universe’s furniture, whether or not God exists.

Alternatively, a theist may conceive of such truths as “the propositional contents of thoughts that a necessarily existing Mind necessarily has” (p. 103). On this view, Yandell points out that “If ethical principles are made true by divine command or nature, and these principles are necessarily true, God must exist necessarily and necessarily command as God does” (p. 113).

Mark Linville’s reply to Yandell is helpful in further clarifying some of these issues. On Linville’s interpretation, Yandell holds that God is an exemplar of the good. God exists, as do the relevant abstracta, and God exemplifies those abstracta. For Linville, God is himself the good. That is, God’s character, his nature, are identical to the good. If Linville is right, and the good is in fact identical with God, then we have grounds for a distinct moral argument in support not only of God’s existence, but of the necessity of God’s existence. If such an argument is sound, it is difficult to imagine a more powerful case for the existence of God.

Time: from Regulator to Terminator

Marking the passage of time is such an ingrained part of modern Western society that we usually give little thought to why we are conditioned to do so.  Business and industry strive for the most efficient use of time to maximize the profitable productivity of their investment of material resources and human energy.  Contracts and agreements are drawn up and ratified with reference to the boundaries and limits of the time during which the agreement is to be carried out.  In social life, much is made of anniversaries and the celebration of what has been done or accomplished in the span of years leading up to the chronological milestone being observed.  All of these things are treated in a positive way:  “Happy Birthday,” “Happy Anniversary,” or “Happy New Year” we say.  But at the gut level, we all recognize that the passage of time leads eventually to the demise of the organization, or the nation, or the person whose milestone is being affirmed.  In other words, time, in our experience of it as fallen creatures, inexorably weaves the web that ensnares us in death.  Shakespeare’s Macbeth, at the end of his campaign to manipulate the world of time for his own benefit, expresses the despair that comes with realizing he has always been the victim of time, rather than the master of it.

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day

To the last syllable of recorded time,

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death.

(Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act 5, scene 5)

Time became our enemy when Adam and Eve rejected God’s order of things and thought to set up an alternative order, a substitute kingdom with themselves as rulers.  The way we experience time in our fallen state is at the core of our alienation from God, so how does our experience differ from the way God intended for time to function?   In His essence, God is completely unaffected by time, since time is perceived and measured only through some sort of change taking place, and God is immutable, without beginning or end, changeless.  However, His present creation does have a beginning and an end, and even in the Garden before the Fall, time was a defining element of order in both the act of creation and its ongoing operation. The Genesis account of creation calls its phases “days” even before the sun was created to define them, and the concept of the seven-day week, culminated by a God-honoring Seventh Day of rest, showed time as a natural thread integrated into a perfect creation;  but time in Eden carried with it no sense of limitation or decay. It was merely a regulator in the daily activities of Adam and Eve in caring for the garden.  But of course, sin changed all of that.  God’s regulator became humankind’s terminator.  

In the poem below, I have imagined Adam at the end of his first year of living with the consequences of his and Eve’s sin.  He shares something of Macbeth’s dark vision of the relentless advance of time, but unlike Macbeth, he also knows that God’s light and presence, though diminished, are still with him.

Adam's First New Year

Adam paced the field

Made rough by tilling,

Unwilling ground since God

Withdrew His Presence from it.

The sun itself, now cyclic,

Gave only partial beams

To warm the stubborn soil.

"No need in Eden's bounds

To think of ebb and flow,

Of patterned change

Which gives us markers

For the progress of decay;

But now each day reveals

That something more of what we were

Is lost,

And nights accumulate

Until the sun comes back

To mark the point where death began.

"That day, I made a world

Where beginnings add up to ends,

And cycles are incremental.

Can God be heard in such a place?

Can timeless Love be found

Where time feeds hateful death?

I only know that breath,

Though shortened now,

Is still from Him;

And though I sweat for bread,

He feeds me yet."

--Elton D. Higgs

 (Jan. 1, 1983)

Image: "Closing Time" by Kevin Dooley. CC License. 

The Master of Death Has Been Overthrown!

A Twilight Musing

Hebrews 2:14 states that Jesus “through death [destroyed] the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil,” thereby turning the Enemy’s chief weapon against himself and delivering from spiritual bondage “all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery” (v. 15).   In the context of the passage, this is the climax of Jesus being “made like his brothers in  every respect,” including experiencing the fear of death.  But Jesus’ fear of death was significantly different from the terror of death experienced by every other human being, for He alone of all mankind knew the full measure of not just physical death, but spiritual death as well.  The reason that Jesus sweated blood in the anguish preceding His crucifixion was not, I think,  just His anticipation of the excruciating physical pain that attended that mode of execution, but His knowing that he would experience the spiritual death that was the penalty assessed for sin, that is, complete separation from God.  By enduring that penalty in His innocence, as a voluntary sacrifice, He wrenched away from Satan his control of death, so that the Adversary could no longer threaten mankind with it, and thenceforth only through deceit could he make people believe that he was still master of death.  How wonderfully ironic that what Satan intended as defeat for the mission of the incarnate Son of God should become instead the very instrument by which death was overcome. 

How then is this delivery from the fear of death to become effective in our lives as disciples of Christ?  Of course we have the sure hope of our bodily resurrection to eternal life, but we live out a life of bodily decay before we reach the threshold of that life, and in that process we are subject to the fleshly desires that the Adversary takes advantage of:  he induces inordinate concern with our mortal bodies, which leads back to the fear of death.  Here again is an irony: the more we hold on to maintaining life as we know it now (seeking to avoid facing physical death), the weaker becomes our ability to appreciate and be comforted by the deliverance from death that Christ accomplished for us.  In order to profit from Christ’s redemptive death, we must embrace not only His death, but our own physical death as wrapped up within it.  And thus, embracing the cessation of our present physical existence is the only avenue to experiencing the life that never ceases.  As Jesus Himself said, “…unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.  Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life” (John 12:23-25).

Here are the facts: Through the unique death of His Son, God has banished death as the inevitable penalty for sin.  The death of our mortal flesh, rightly regarded, has become an avenue to eternal life, rather than (literally) a dead-end street.  The Devil, the Death Enforcer, has been routed.  Against these divine facts, he now has only lies to use against us.  Kyrie eleison!  Christe eleison!

Image: "Bonnat01" by Léon Bonnat - http://www.histoire-image.com/site/oeuvre/analyse.php?liste_analyse=299. Licensed under Public Domain via Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bonnat01.jpg#/media/File:Bonnat01.jpg

Platonic Ethics and Classical and Christian Theism, Part 4

One of the reasons that I chose to investigate what Plato could tell us about morality is that he provides a great case study as to what can be discerned about God through general revelation. This thought goes back to the church fathers as this quote from St. Augustine demonstrates:

But we need not determine from what source [Plato] learned these things,—whether it was from the books of the ancients who preceded him, or, as is more likely, from the words of the apostle: “Because that which is known of God, has been manifested among them, for God hath manifested it to them. For His invisible things from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by those things which have been made, also His eternal power and Godhead.” From whatever source he may have derived this knowledge, then, I think I have made it sufficiently plain that I have not chosen the Platonic philosophers undeservedly as the parties with whom to discuss; because the question we have just taken up concerns the natural theology.[1]

In my previous post I looked at what Plato could tell us about moral motivation; in this one I’ll look at how this compares with Judeo-Christian thought on the subject.

Moral Motivation According to Plato

As discussed, Plato identified three levels of moral motivation:

The first and highest form of moral motivation is love of the Good. We should be motivated to be good because the Good is worthy of our love and our desire should be to be like it.

The second form of moral motivation is that the pursuit of and adherence to the Good leads to the very best life: the good life is obtained by acting in accordance with the Good.

The third (and lowest) form of moral motivation is based upon rewards and punishment. Those who do good will receive good things in this life (possibly) and after this life (certainly). Those who do evil will reap the consequences of those actions in this life and also after this life.

Just as his four requirements for a truly objective morality aligned well with the Judeo-Christian perspective, I believe his three levels of moral motivation align equally well.

Moral Motivation in Judeo-Christian Theism

The love of God as the primary motivating factor in Biblical ethics is fundamental in both the Old Testament (Tanach) and the New Testament. This centrality is seen in Deuteronomy 6:4-5, “Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” This centrality is reiterated in the NT by Jesus as the greatest commandment (Matthew 22:37-38). In the Judeo-Christian worldview, the love of God is to be the controlling factor that frames every other concept—especially moral ones. The primary form of moral motivation for the Jew and Christian should be the love of God. We should want to be good because we love God—the source of all good—and want to be like Him. This love of God should spur us to “walk in His ways,” as Moses and Joshua frequently reminded the people (Dt. 10:12; 11:22; 19:9; 30:16; Josh. 22:5). In the center of one of his extended passages on Christian ethics, Paul tells us we ought to imitate God in our actions just like a loving child imitates her father (Eph. 5:1). If we truly have a love for God, this will extend not only to imitating the goodness of God, but also to obeying His commands (1 Jn 5:3). So, as with Plato, the best and highest form of moral motivation in Judeo-Christian theism is love of God/the Good.

The secondary motivation for morality in the Judeo-Christian world is that the life aligned with God’s character—that of godly wisdom—will bring about wellbeing, and that the life set against this—the life of folly—will bring death. Nowhere is this better seen in the Old Testament than in the book of Proverbs.

In Proverbs, the way aligned to God’s character is personified as Wisdom. She calls out to all who will listen:

And now, O sons, listen to me: blessed are those who keep my ways.

Hear instruction and be wise, and do not neglect it.

Blessed is the one who listens to me, watching daily at my gates, waiting beside my doors.

For whoever finds me finds life and obtains favor from the Lord,

but he who fails to find me injures himself; all who hate me love death.[2]

On the other hand, the way of life not aligned with God’s character—personified in Proverbs as Folly—leads a person to personal disaster:

The woman Folly is loud; she is seductive and knows nothing.

She sits at the door of her house; she takes a seat on the highest places of the town,

calling to those who pass by, who are going straight on their way,

“Whoever is simple, let him turn in here!” And to him who lacks sense she says,

“Stolen water is sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant.”[3]

But he does not know that the dead are there, that her guests are in the depths of Sheol.

Following the wisdom teachings of the Old Testament, the New Testament also teaches that those who align themselves to God’s character will do well and those who do not will harm themselves. James, in his epistle, contrasts what is brought about through the two different lifestyles—the one driven by heavenly wisdom (godliness), the other by natural wisdom:

Who among you is wise and understanding? Let him show by his good behavior his deeds in the gentleness of wisdom. But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your heart, do not be arrogant and so lie against the truth. This wisdom is not that which comes down from above, but is earthly, natural, demonic. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there is disorder and every evil thing. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering, without hypocrisy. And the seed whose fruit is righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.[4]

In the Judeo-Christian world, godly living brings personal peace (even when outward circumstances are difficult), and ungodly behavior harms the soul (even if it is accompanied by all of the comforts of life).

As with Plato, the final form of moral motivation for Judeo-Christian theism is reward and punishment. This is clearly taught in both the Old and New Testaments. The Law of Moses is full of moral obligations and has specific punishments for those who do not follow them. And, even if reward tarries in this life, or if justice fails for the wicked, Daniel tells us everything will be made right in the next life:

At that time your people, everyone who is found written in the book, will be rescued. Many of those who sleep in the dust of the ground will awake, these to everlasting life, but the others to disgrace and everlasting contempt. Those who have insight will shine brightly like the brightness of the expanse of heaven, and those who lead the many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever.[5]

In the New Testament, Jesus confirms this eschatological teaching:

When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. And he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left. Then the King will say to those on his right, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.” Then the righteous will answer him, saying, “Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?” And the King will answer them, “Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.” Then he will say to those on his left, “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.” Then they also will answer, saying, “Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?” Then he will answer them, saying, “Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.” And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.[6]

Interestingly, for both Plato and the Biblical authors, while love for God/the Good is the highest form of moral motivation, they spend more words on the punishment and rewards aspect of moral motivation than on the love aspect. I believe this is because both Plato and the Biblical writers understood that most people would not attain to this level of motivation. Plato affirmed multiple times that only the true philosopher could reach this lofty goal and that there would be few who attain to this level. Jesus also stated that the road to life is narrow and that there are comparatively few who find it. This common problem, I believe, left both to focus disproportionately on the lowest form of motivation because (unfortunately) it is applicable to the greatest number of people. But the goal of each is to encourage as many people as possible to attain to the highest level.[7]

Conclusion

So once again, we see discoveries that Plato made which align nicely with the Judeo-Christian worldview, and this helps us, along with St. Augustine, to see some of the possibilities of general revelation. Plato not only discovered the characteristics of a truly objective morality, but also the optimal and pragmatic aspects of moral motivation.

Notes:

[1] St. Augustine, The City of God, Book VIII, Chapter 12.

[2] Proverbs 8:32-36.

[3] Proverbs 9:13-18.

[4] James 3:13–18.

[5] Daniel 12:1–3.

[6] Matthew 25:31–46.

[7] Another potential take on at least the Biblical emphasis on rewards and punishments is to construe the salient underlying truth along these lines: in a classically theistic world, there is a deep correspondence between happiness and holiness. Aligning ourselves with ultimate reality, God Himself, is the very way in which to experience our deepest joy; and to lose out on this ultimate fulfillment is to forfeit or lose something of infinite worth. This connection between virtue and joy, happiness and holiness, doesn’t render the moral life as mercenary, but rather makes morality fully rational, affirms that reality itself is committed to the Good, which is one of the evidential and explanatory advantages of classical theism over secular and naturalistic perspectives in which no such connection or correspondence is guaranteed, thereby rendering a commitment to morality less than fully rational. This is one piece of what this site often describes as the four-fold moral argument for God’s existence.

Image: "Wisdom 62/365" by Andy Rennie. CC License. 

Matt Flannagan and Paul Copan’s Did God Really Command Genocide? Summary of Chapter 23: “Turning the Other Cheek, Pacifism, and Just War.”

Did God Really Command Genocide? 

It might be worth asking whether we can say something more general about warfare, moving beyond divinely commanded fighting. Contrary to the claim that the Bible endorses pacifism, certain instances of violent means seem justified to fight injustice. N. T. Wright thinks one of the insights of the imprecatory psalms is that evil is real and that it needs to be actively battled. Yale professor Miroslav Volf affirms the compatibility of loving one’s neighbor and using force to protect the neighbor. Romans 13 affirms that God does not always carry out divine wrath directly but has partly delegated this task to human governments.

Biblical Considerations

               The Teaching of Jesus

Jesus died for the sin of the world and took the curse of our exile and alienation from God on himself. He stormed into the temple to cleanse it. Although many assume Jesus prohibited any use of force, F&C have their doubts.

Jesus tells us to turn the other cheek (Matt. 5:39). But this admonition is not the response to an attack of violence, but to a gross insult. Jesus is prohibiting returning insult for insult. He is exhorting his followers to break the vicious cycle of exchanging insults and to move toward reconciliation and peacemaking with our personal enemies—even with Roman soldiers who might commandeer Jewish citizens to carry their loads for them for a mile.

Jesus does not absolutize loving one’s enemies. He denounces his opponents in very harsh terms in Matthew 23. He exemplified a spirit of remarkable forgiveness on the cross, but for forgiveness to be complete, it presupposes the offender’s repentance. Even when Christ instructs his disciples to forgive extravagantly, he continues saying that those refusing to forgive will incur the wrath of their master and be handed over to the torturers.

When Christians call for the forgiveness of the likes of Osama bin Laden, we must ask: Is that our rightful place? Unlike the Son of God, how can we simply forgive the offenses of others? What about the victims of their assaults? Should we forgive terrorists while they are planning another attack?

What about not resisting the evil person? For one thing, Jesus himself is constantly resisting evil. Matt. 5:39 is better translated as not resisting “by evil means” rather than “the evil one/person.” This is how other NT writers interpret the words. And even if we take this passage in the traditional way, once again we do not have an absolute prohibition of resisting evil persons. Jesus is routinely driving out evil spirits. The God-ordained state is called to resist evildoers, etc.

While Jesus welcomes sinners and forgives them, he also threatens judgment on his opponents. Repeatedly, we see that Jesus himself doesn’t absolutize forgiving enemies.

Other Voices in the New Testament

Elsewhere in the NT we see the imprecatory psalms reenacted. Romans 12 and 13 illustrate the complementarity of the personal and the official. Romans 12 features Paul following Jesus’ commands to break the vicious cycle of personal animosity to work toward reconciled relationships. Rom. 13 features state officials whose role has been ordained of God to protect the innocent and preserve the peace and punish evildoers.

We also encounter general biblical principles that lend support to the idea of a just war. There is a time for war. Soldiers and centurions are treated quite favorably in the NT. Their status isn’t presented as inherently immoral. The scriptures exhibit a complementarity between being a disciple of Christ and involvement in the God-ordained state.

Historical Considerations: Constantinianism and Christian Soldiering

               Before Constantine

Bainton and Yoder have maintained that the church was uniformly nonmilitary from the second century until the rise of Constantine (AD 312). It’s the spirit of Constantinianism, so the argument goes, that has given rise to the church’s compromising entanglement with the state.

The evidence for this uniform pacifism is not all that tidy. NT is not nonmilitaristic. What about beyond the NT? After the NT and up to the mid-second century, we have silence on Christian soldiers. But after this time, we have clear evidence of Christian soldiers in the Roman army. Nonmilitaristic perspective of several church leaders does not necessarily represent a uniformly held, empire-wide Christian belief during this time. We see hints of just war in Tertullian and Origen, and beyond this, there are a number of complicating factors. Perhaps Christians saw some violence as inappropriate, or some causes unworthy of participating in, but that doesn’t mean all.

The Advent of Constantine

With the ascent of Constantine, the Christian outcast minority would become part of the “establishment.” Constantine is often depicted negatively, but surely his rule was a relief to a once persecuted minority. The church made some big mistakes with the temporal power, but Constantine brought about many positive moral reforms—banning gladiatorial games and the abandonment of children, segregated prison cells for men and women, charitable ministries, etc.

A Brief Discussion of Just War

After the rise of Constantine, thinkers like Ambrose and Augustine would advocate principles for a just war—a view that held sway until the twentieth century. Can there be a just war? Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. are examples of those who brought about change nonviolently. But perhaps it’s worth noting that their nonviolent resistance succeeded because the governments to which they appealed were fairly humanitarian and better informed by biblical values than the vast number of ruthless regimes that have existed over time.

Principles of Just War

The just war theorist attempts to deal realistically with unpreventable violent aggression against the vulnerable. Just war theory recognizes the justice of protecting innocent nations from thugs, bullies, and tyrants, recognizing that attempts at negotiation and peacemaking with ruthless tyrants will often be fruitless and that “trust” may be nothing more than gullibility.

Military historian Victor Davis Hanson reminds us that war or military strength has helped bring an end to chattel slavery in America, Nazism, Fascism, and Soviet Communism. Wars don’t always come about because of failure of communication or misunderstanding, or from poverty or inequality. They begin from malicious intent and the absence of deterrence. Often nations become accomplices to evil through inaction.

When it comes to articulating what just war involves, there are seven criteria, although the first three take priority:

1. Just Cause
2. Just Intent
3. Lawful Declaration
4. Last Resort
5. Immunity of Noncombatants
6. Limited Objectives

F&C elaborate by making several points. First, in the context of just war principles, which are universally applicable and rooted in God’s general revelation to all people, it may be helpful to distinguish between “force” and “violence.” Appropriate force is motivated by both justice and love of neighbor; it is aimed at restoring peace; it is carried out by a proper authority. Second, a nation or group of nations may engage in a truly just war, but the fact that missteps may be made does not undermine the overall justice of the war. Third, a war that is just should ultimately exhibit love for one’s neighbor, but we must not confuse what love requires. Love for the victim may require removing the source of harm, for example. Fourth, the pacifistic understanding of “turn the other cheek” raise questions about protecting the innocent from injustice when it’s in our power to do so. Finally, we should simultaneously support “just peacemaking” efforts to build bridges of understanding and partnership between nations and communities while not neglecting the appropriate use of force against thus and tyrants when necessary.

Image: "Carl Fredrik Reuterswärd (*1934): Non violence, 1995-1999, Bronze" by wwwuppertal. CC License. 

Suffering: from Punishment to Promise

A Twilight Musing

A significant contrast between the Old Testament and the New Testament is seen in differences in the divinely sanctioned relationship between what people do and what they should expect to experience as a result. In the Old Testament, God’s rewards and punishments were almost always temporal in nature and were the predicted result of obedience or disobedience to God.  Two exceptions to this pattern are instructive.  One is the book of Job, where the mismatch between actions and consequences is resolved only by acceptance of God’s sovereign right to violate the expected correspondence between what people deserve and what happens to them.   The second is in the climax of the “suffering servant” section of Isaiah in chapter 53, where we see the redeemer of God’s people suffering unjustly, but as a part of God’s great act of redemption in the future.  As in the case of Job, this picture of God’s afflicting His sinless servant runs counter to the normal expectations of people under the Old Covenant.

In contrast, what stands as an unexplained mystery in the Old Testament becomes in the New Testament a theological principle which is at the core of the message about Christ: the paradox that in this world of sin, doing the will of God finds its deepest fulfillment in patiently enduring undeserved suffering.  Jesus set the new paradigm for God’s dealings with His people.  As Peter expressed it, “This is a gracious thing, when, mindful of God, one endures sorrows while suffering unjustly. . . .  For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you. . . .  He committed no sin . . . , [yet] He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree. . . .  By his wounds you have been healed” (I Pet. 2:19-24, passim; these last words, of course, reflect the language of Isaiah 53.).

In the New Testament, suffering is presented not only as an expected result of doing the right thing, but even more profoundly is seen as a part of the process of our growing spiritually.   Jesus Himself introduced this idea in the Sermon on the Mount: “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 5:10).   Paul tells Timothy that “all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Tim 3:12).  James says, “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness” (James 1:2-3; see similar statements in Rom. 5:3-5 and   I Pet. 1:6-7).  Even of Jesus Himself it is said in Heb. 5:8-9, “Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered.”

What, then, are we to make of this radical new doctrine of redemptive suffering in the New Covenant?  It can be seen as God’s way of putting the spotlight on the Good News of salvation through the grace of God, in contrast to the Old Covenant, which depended on the willingness and ability of humans to live up to the standards set by a holy God.  It was a means to an end, but not God’s ultimate solution to heal the sinfulness of mankind.  It had some relative success in maintaining through ordered behavior the best society that could be achieved in a disordered, fallen world.  Its lasting benefit was to define a standard of holiness and perfect goodness against which the desperate needs of sinful humankind could be measured.  The book of Romans shows that the Law could not fully meet those needs, and the book of Hebrews demonstrates that the need of humanity to be freed from bondage to sin could be accomplished only by a final and archetypal High Priest who could also be the Perfect Sacrificial Lamb, and in that double role could willingly offer Himself to suffer in cancelling out the world’s debt of sin.  “God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do.  By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit” (Rom. 8:3-4).  Therefore, we to whom the Lamb’s redeeming blood is applied must “suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him” (Rom. 8:17).  In this experience, suffering is not merely punishment, but God’s way of bringing us into full fellowship with Him through identification with His Son.

In Paul’s discourse contrasting the Covenant of Law with the Good News of salvation through faith in Galatians 3, he describes the Law as a “tutor to bring us to Christ” (v. 24, NKJV).  This image aptly captures the wonder of God’s eternal providence in, first, teaching His people to fear God’s righteous judgment; and then building on that foundation to show, through the sacrifice of the Perfect Lamb of God, the mystery of going beyond temporal rewards and punishments to participate in the glorious mystery of redemptive suffering.

Image: "Brooklyn Museum - What Our Lord Saw from the Cross (Ce que voyait Notre-Seigneur sur la Croix) - James Tissot" by James Tissot - Online Collection of Brooklyn Museum; Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 2008, 00.159.299_PS2.jpg. Licensed under Public Domain via Commons

Flannagan and Copan’s Did God Really Command Genocide? Summary of Chapter 22: “Did Old Testament War Texts Inspire the Crusades?”

Did God Really Command Genocide?

One of the most common objections raised by critics of Christianity concerns the Crusades.  I often have heard statements of how the church massacred thousands of innocent Muslims in the holy land in order to obtain riches and retrieve lands for the purpose of establishing holy shrines.  Unfortunately many of these criticisms are based on misinformation about the purpose, nature, and historical events that make up this period of church history.  F &C turn to this topic in the 22nd chapter of their book and expose and address the myths that are often assumed to be true concerning the Crusades.  They divide the chapter into five common myths.

The first myth concerns the purpose of the crusades.  Many think they were “unjustified military campaigns against peaceable, tolerant Muslims.”  F&C point out that this is historically inaccurate.  Beginning with the first crusade in 1095, they show how each crusade was a response to Muslim aggression.  Using the just war language of Augustine, F&C show that the original intent of the crusades was to protect and rescue those Christians in Asia minor (and later Edessa in 1144 and Jerusalem in 1187) from Muslim attacks in those areas. They quote crusade scholar Thomas Madden, who states, “The crusades were in every way a defensive war.  They were the West’s belated response to the Muslim conquest of fully two-thirds of the Christian world.” This is not to say every action in the crusade was morally justified or that abuses did not occur, but the general purpose was to defend innocent Christians and not to pillage and rape innocent Muslims as is often claimed by critics such as Karen Armstrong.

The second myth also concerns the purpose of the crusades.  Some claim that the church’s real purpose was to accumulate great wealth by looting the Muslims.  F&C acknowledge there was a financial aspect to the crusades, but argue this was an incidental aspect behind their purpose. The crusades were very costly to the average crusader and they often had to raise four to five times their annual income in order to make the long journey to the Holy land and fight for the church.  Therefore some form of financial remuneration was expected as a part of being involved.  However, they point out that nobody got rich from the crusades and much more money flowed from the west to the east than the opposite.

The third myth concerns the often held belief that the church was trying to gain converts by force.  F&C point out that there is no evidence for this claim and that “the crusades simply did not have a view to force or pressure Muslims to change their faith” (293).  The purpose was protecting Christians and shrines from attacks by Muslim aggression.  This does not mean that some individuals did not reach out to Muslims, such as Saint Francis, but that was not part of the general purpose.

The fourth myth claims that “Muslims have held the crusades against Christians since the Middle Ages” (293).  F&C show that, while this has become a popular view (expressed in such films as Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven), this is actually a recent view that has become most popular in the last few years as Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism has arisen.  Cambridge scholar Jonathon Riley-Smith argues that “Muslims had pretty much forgotten about the crusades since they had won.”  The crusades were raised by some Muslims around the same time Israel’s nationhood came about.  It was not a long-standing grudge that Muslims have been holding for centuries.

The final myth goes to the heart of F&C’s project in this book, the relationship of the Old Testament conquests to the Crusades.  Some, such as Roland Bainton, have claimed that the “architects of the Christian crusade . . . drew their warrant from the books of the conquest and of the Maccabean revolt” (295).  F&C acknowledge that there are isolated incidents in which one finds those who used the conquest narratives to justify aggressive actions against others, such as some Puritans who came to America.  However, they marvel that more of this was not done, especially by the one group that one would think would use such texts to justify violence with others, namely, the Jews.  The largest problem with this claim by Bainton and others is that there is simply no evidence to support it.  It is merely an assertion.  We do not find any of the original supporters of the crusades appealing to the conquest narratives in the book of Joshua as scriptural support for the crusades.  In fact the most common scriptural passages appealed to come from the Gospels and the mouth of Jesus.  What is appealed to are passages where Jesus claims one needs to take up one’s cross and forsake all to help others.  So again, another myth is shown to be false concerning the motivation behind the crusades.

While the popular beliefs concerning the crusades continue to cling to the myths we have seen above, serious scholarship continues to reveal those myths to be false and without warrant.  F&C perform a vital service contributing to overcoming the overwhelming mythology promoted by misinformed critics.

Find the other chapter summaries here.

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Twilight Musings: Random Ruminations

• Sometimes a misreading can lead to a new insight, as when I once misread “Love is stronger than death” as “Love is stronger than desire.”  As I thought on the possible meaning of the misreading, I noted that although the first statement expresses a common proverbial sentiment, the second is even more profound.  In fact, It seems to me to be a key to understanding the difference between “love” that is a cover for selfish desire and seeks to satisfy itself even at the expense of the “beloved”; and true, self-sacrificing love that seeks the good of the beloved beyond the satisfaction of the lover’s desire.  One may ask whether God Himself could have shown supreme love had it not gone beyond His “desire” to remain intact in His Holiness.  In loving fallen humans He gave up His immunity to being affected by sin and sacrificed a part of Himself in allowing (indeed, commissioning) His Son to experience all human suffering and to be a sacrifice to redeem sinful mankind.  Since supreme love involves sacrifice, what was God to give that would be a real sacrifice for Him, since He is wholly sufficient within Himself?  He could only give a part of His own nature—His Son.  

• I cannot assess the world honestly without coming to believe in Evil; I cannot believe in Evil without believing in Good; and I cannot believe in Evil and Good without sensing behind their manifestations a metaphysical battle between them.  That leads me to a further understanding that this battle is not only in the world around me, but within myself as well.  By this process I come to realize that the Evil desires my destruction and has the power to bring it about by preying on my fallen nature.  Thus I am drawn toward the One through Whom the Good has been made supremely available to mankind.  

• Humans find it hard to believe that service to God can really involve pleasure.  People feel more virtuous if they “fulfill their duty” or “obey God’s commands,” for this gives one the feeling that he or she has done something meritorious.  The antidote for feeling guilt for legitimate pleasure is not some compensatory duty, but dedicating that pleasure to God.  That is not to say that we will always feel like doing what God wants us to, but at least we need not feel guilty when we enjoy it.

• I think the redeeming characteristic of the apostle Thomas was that he wanted to believe, even though he had doubts.  The reason many people have no doubts is that they have no desire or feeling of need to believe any more than they think they already comprehend.  A searching doubter may well be in a better state than a believer who is too complacent or too fearful to search.

• Sometimes we feel guilty, not because we don’t fulfill God’s image of what we should be doing, but because we don’t fulfill our own image, conceived in pride, of what we should be doing.  The “success” of human ambition, willpower, and energy does not necessarily accomplish God’s purposes.  There is a certain leisure in God’s busyness, and often a gross ineffectiveness in man’s industry.

Matt Flannagan and Paul Copan’s Did God Really Command Genocide? Summary of Chapter 21: “Are Yahweh Wars in the Old Testament Just Like Islamic Jihad?”

Karen Armstrong and Philip Jenkins, among others, have argued that there’s far more violence in the Bible than in the Koran. Jenkins refers to the Old Testament’s ethnic cleansing, institutionalization of segregation, and hate and fear of other races and religions. F&C review some of these themes they’ve already covered: In terms of ethnic cleansing, what we find in the OT instead is “moral cleansing,” and long-awaited judgment on a wicked people whose time had finally come. And God warns the Israelites will experience the same judgment if they commit the same sins. The OT represents a God whose salvation is intended to affect all the peoples of the world. In terms of segregation, Israel was to be distinct morally and spiritually, but they were repeatedly commanded to care for the alien and sojourner in their midst since they too had been aliens in the land of Egypt. In terms of other races and religions, the charge of hating and fearing other races is clearly false, though the Bible is opposed to idolatry, and God brings judgment on ancient Israel for engaging in idolatry and breaking covenant with him after promising to love, cling to, and obey him.

Biblical and Koranic Texts

We see many Koranic references to warfare, and this warfare is not simply defensive but offensive as well. F&C give copious examples; here’s just one: “And those who are slain in the way of God, He will not send their works astray…. And He will admit them to Paradise, that He has made known to them” (47:4, 6).

Clear differences obtain between the Bible and Koran. First, military events captured in a biblical canon are merely descriptive of a unique part of the unfolding of salvation history. Second, whereas the biblical texts offer descriptions of unique history, the Koranic texts by contrast appear to be issuing enduring commands. Islam has exhibited a militaristic aggressiveness from the beginning, and this aggressiveness has been fed by Koranic texts that many Muslims throughout history have taken as normative or binding, enduring throughout history, and worldwide in applicability. Third, the distinctions between divinely commanded wars in the OT and Islamic jihad are much more pronounced than their similarities.

In addition to being unique and unrepeatable events within scripture itself, these wars are restricted to a relatively small portion of land, and accompanied by widely witnessed miracles. By contrast, the “revelations” to Muhammad were private and not publicly available for scrutiny or reinforced by dramatic signs and wonders. What’s more, Israel was an instrument of divine judgment on wicked people, unlike Muhammad, who attacked and overtook even those who were “People of the Book” (Jews and Christians)—part of the global reach to which Muhammed and his followers aspired.

Muhammad’s Example

Consider now Muhammed himself, the supreme human example for Muslims to follow. His goal was “to fight all men until they say, ‘There is no God but Allah.’” He died in AD 632 with his own plans for attacking neighboring nations unfulfilled. In his career, he fought in an estimated eighty-six military campaigns. The first authoritative biography of him covers his battles in 75 percent of its 813 pages, and includes depictions of assassination, rape, and cruelty that met with Muhammed’s approval. In one instance he said, “Kill any Jew that falls into your power.” A number of instances recount his approval of violence. According to the Koran and the traditions about Muhammed (Hadith), he permitted his soldiers to have sex not only with their wives, but also with female captives and female slaves.

The Early History of Islam and Its Ongoing Encounters with the Non-Muslim World

Although the Koran affirms that there should be no compulsion in religion, this verse is contradicted by other passages within the Koran. It’s also contradicted by the example of Muhammed himself. In terms of the word “jihad,” the Koran has a place for an “internal” sense of spiritual struggling or exerting within oneself for Allah, which is called the “greater jihad,” but the Koran also clearly indicates military struggle and connects jihad to physical fighting (the “lesser jihad”). As David Cook indicates in his book Understanding Jihad, there is little support in the Koran and Hadith for the notion of jihad as internal struggle.

Not only did early Islamic history continue the militaristic spirit of its founder; Islam’s history reveals an oppressive stance toward non-Muslims under Islamic rule. F&C adduce several examples.

Conclusions

The claim that the Bible’s warfare texts are “just like” the Koran’s is incorrect. The Hebrew scriptures portray unique, unrepeatable events of Israelite warfare—unlike the ongoing and normative aspect of jihad in the Koran and under the leadership of Muhammed. Unlike the biblical text that stresses God’s judgment against specific people, the Koran and Muhammed placed no such limitations on jihad, as the opponents of Islam are non-Muslims remaining in the “abode of war” rather than the “abode of Islam.” And while the scriptures emphasize a limited geographical area of military engagement, the Koran and Muhammed placed no such limit.

Another point of contrast is the nature of God in the Koran and the Bible. The Koran portrayed a deity who loves only those who love him. Those who reject Islam are “the worst of creatures.” Here God’s love is conditional, depending on the response of human beings. The love of the biblical God is unconditional. He does not merely love those who love him. Rather, God loves all people and even his enemies (cf. Matt. 5:444-48; John 3:16; Rom. 5:6-10; 1 John 2:2). He seeks to make salvation available to all, including the very enemies of his people Israel (e.g., Gen. 12:1-13; Ps. 87:4-6; Isa. 19:23-25; Zech. 9:70).

The contrast between Yahweh war in the OT and Islamic jihad becomes clear when considered are issues of geography, historical length/limit, objects of warfare, objects of God’s love, the standard of morality (God’s loving nature versus Allah’s sheer will that commands indiscriminately), signs and wonders, and the normativity of war.

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