Ben Shapiro Puts On His Theology Hat ~ #TrumpBible

After “The Donald” is asked about a favorite verse of the Bible, Ben Shapiro takes a quick tour on the meaning of an “eye-for-an-eye.” Included at the end is the John Kasich’s faux-pas in a library surrounded by Hasidic Jews.

For more clear and humorous exchanges like this, go to: http://www.am870theanswer.com/pages/the-morning-answer

God’s Gender ~ Theology

Just to temper the first point of the three via the above video, I wanted to add these explanations of Biblical patriarchy and the male/female relationship by Nora Hale:

  • God does not have a gender. He is neither male nor female. Gender is a biological characteristic, and God is not a biological being. God is Spirit (John 4:24), and spirit does not have flesh and blood (Luke 24:39). However, in the Bible God is always referred to in the masculine. This is most probably because of how God “the Father” relates to Jesus, who is the Son of God. He was born a male, and in the Biblical culture the male is the one who represents his descendants (1 Cor. 15:22) and has the authority in the family (Gen. 27:1-29, 48:13-14). When Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden, Eve sinned first, but sin entered the world through Adam (Romans 5:12). This means it was the man Adam who possessed representative authority, not Eve. This phenomena is called Federal Headship…. (CARM)

Christianity Today explains well the main idea with this topic. While they have an excellent article as a whole, this doctrine of offices withing the Trinity and how we should revere these distinctions in the Godhead are what made the Jewish survival possible. Most ancient Near-East views of creation and of their sustenance were through fertility goddesses:

Not an Invention

Feminine images are used throughout Scripture to describe God’s compassionate and loving nature. Examples include the frequent images of God protecting and comforting his children (Isa. 66:12–13; Hos. 11:1–4). But it’s important to note that God is never addressed as Mother. This phenomenon is unique compared with the cultures surrounding the original biblical writers. Most ancient Near Eastern societies had a goddess as the main cult figure or at least to complement a male god—Asherah in Canaan, Isis in Egypt, Tiamat in Babylon. If patriarchy is responsible for cultures portraying God as male, then we would expect goddess worship to reflect a matriarchal society—one in which women are given superior status or at least are equal to men. But this is not the case. Even today, many societies devoted to goddess worship remain oppressive toward women. Devotion to the goddess Kali in Hinduism, for instance, has never resulted in better treatment of women, even among Kali devotees.

We could even say that Israel succumbed to an idea of God that was rather against her natural disposition. Left to themselves, the Israelites would have ended up worshiping the Baals and Asherahs—Canaanite fertility gods and goddesses. Israel’s prophets singled out idolatry for fierce denunciation because its people were constantly tempted to do just that. But Israel’s idea of God’s fatherhood bucked a common trend in the ancient world. Hence, it could not have been an Israelite invention, but rather the result of a long history of living under the revelation of God. It is the church’s continuity with this narrative of Israel that would lead eventually to the uniquely Christian doctrine of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

In the New Testament, God’s fatherhood conveys two distinct ideas. First, it refers primarily to the internal relationship within the Trinity. This is how the first article of the Apostles’ Creed puts it: “I believe in God, the Father Almighty, the Maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.” Even as early as Paul’s writings, the phrase “God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” had become commonplace. God is first and foremost the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. This is not an invention of later church leaders, but comes directly from Christ, who refers to God as “Father.” In doing so, Jesus reveals a unique relationship between the Father and Son that constitutes the beginning of the Trinitarian doctrine.

Jesus taught his disciples to call God “our heavenly Father.” Therefore, the loving relationship he has with the Father from eternity now extends to those adopted into God’s family (Rom. 8:15). The father-son relationship is the most intimate personal relationship, one marked by reciprocal love and respect, and it is God’s supremely personal and loving nature that the term father is meant to underscore.

To claim, as many feminist theologians do, that the very presence of masculine metaphors for God excludes women simply does not square with the way Scripture uses them. Masculine images of God do not always convey exclusively “masculine” qualities. For example, Isaiah 54:5–7 refers to God as the Husband who with “deep compassion” (a stereotypically “feminine” quality) called estranged Israel back to himself (see also Isa. 49:13). The term father, then, excludes not feminine qualities, but rather the idea of a distant and impersonal deity, which is precisely the picture of the supreme being still seen in many primal religions.

Second, the father metaphor points to God as the Creator (e.g., Isa. 64:8; Mal. 2:10) “from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name” (Eph. 3:15). Father captures in one word two seemingly contrasting characteristics: God’s love for his creatures and his lordship over all creation. Here again, we see the difference between Israel and ancient Near Eastern cultures. In the Judeo-Christian faith, God the Father created the world as something separate from himself, whereas in Near Eastern societies, the mother metaphor pictures the mother-goddess giving birth to the world (which makes it an extension of the deity’s body). Calling God Mother undermines the Christian doctrine of creation by implying that God and the world are made of the same stuff and virtually indistinguishable. So, we need Father in order to get to the right doctrine of creation….

(read it all)

Apologetic Press (AP) goes on to quote CS Lewis’ excellent understanding of the larger idea at stake here. AP then quotes Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli book…. which I will include the entire section of after this quote:

But must we refer to God via masculine terms? The question has nothing to do with what we would like to do, but rather with what God tells us to do. C.S. Lewis addressed this point in his book, God in the Dock:

Goddesses have, of course, been worshipped: many religions have had priestesses. But they are religions quite different in character from Christianity…. Since God is in fact not a biological being and has no sex, what can it matter whether we say He orShe, Father or Mother, Son or Daughter?

Christians think that God Himself has taught us how to speak of Him. To say that it does not matter is to say either that all the masculine imagery is not inspired, is merely human in origin, or else that, though inspired, it is quite arbitrary and unessential. And this is surely intolerable (1970, p. 237, emp. in orig.).

Scripture makes it clear: “O Jehovah, thou art our Father; we are the clay, and thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand…. Shall the potter be esteemed as clay; that the thing made should say of him that made it, ‘He made me not’; or the thing formed say of him that formed it, ‘He hath no understanding’?” (Isaiah 64:8; 29:16). Since when does the clay have the right to dictate to the potter or override his decisions? As a believer in God and His inspired Word, and yet as one speaking from an inherently masculine viewpoint, Lewis went on to say:

We have no authority to take the living and semitive figures which God has painted on the canvas of our nature and shift them about as if they were mere geometrical figures…. It is painful, being a man, to have to assert the privilege which Christianity lays upon my own sex. I am crushingly aware how inadequate most of us are, in our actual and historical individualities, to fill the place prepared for us. But it is an old saying in the army that you salute the uniform not the wearer…. A given man may make a very bad husband; you cannot mend matters by trying to reverse the roles… (1970, pp. 237-238, emp. added).

It is not man’s (or woman’s!) place to question God’s sovereign authority or divine will; neither falls under mankind’s jurisdiction.

Here is the fuller quote via Kreeft & Tacelli:

Is God a “He”?

The hottest controversy today about God concerns the traditional exclusive use of the pronoun he. Nearly all Christians admit that (1) God is not literally male, since he has no biological body, and (2) women are not essentially inferior to men. Those are red herrings.

There are, however, two reasons for defending the exclusive use of mas­culine pronouns and imagery for God. One issue is whether we have the authority to change the names of God used by Christ, the Bible and the church. The traditional defense of masculine imagery for God rests on the premise that the Bible is divine revelation, not culturally relative, negotiable and changeable. As C. S. Lewis put it, “Christians believe God himself has told us how to speak of him.”

The other reason for calling God “he” is historical. Except for Judaism, all other known ancient religions had goddesses as well as gods. The Jewish revelation was distinctive in its exclusively masculine pronoun because it was distinctive in its theology of the divine transcendence. That seems to be the main point of the masculine imagery. As a man comes into a woman from without to make her pregnant, so God creates the universe from without rather than birthing it from within and impregnates our souls with grace or supernatural life from without. As a woman cannot impregnate herself, so the universe cannot create itself, nor can the soul redeem itself.

Surely there is an inherent connection between these two radically dis­tinctive features of the three biblical or Abramic religions (Judaism, Chris­tianity and Islam): their unique view of a transcendent God creating nature out of nothing and their refusal to call God “she” despite the fact that Scripture ascribes to him feminine attributes like compassionate nursing (Is 49:15), motherly comfort (Is 66:13) and carrying an infant (Is 46:3). The masculine pronoun safeguards (1) the transcendence of God against the illusion that nature is born from God as a mother rather than created and (2) the grace of God against the illusion that we can somehow save our-selves—two illusions ubiquitous and inevitable in the history of religion.

Peter Kreeft and Ronald K. Tacelli, Handbook of Christian Apologetics (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 1994), 97-98.

Below will be a couple theological expansions of this thinking on a level of the seminarian. Enjoy the input as I have:

  • Michael F. Bird, Evangelical Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2013), 137-138.

2.3.2 DOES GOD HAVE A GENDER?

Does the fact that God is depicted as male in the Scriptures create an androcentric conception of God that is oppressive to women? Is God really male in his essence? Are men more in the image of God than women because they are male? Does describing God as male provide religious sanction to patriarchal oppression and cul­tural imperialism? These are the questions about God and gender raised by feminist theologians. A few thoughts to consider here.

We can readily admit the sociolinguistic link between language and power. We can also recognize the injustices and inequalities in society perpetuated by gender discrimination. Yet retaining the maleness of God language as given in Scripture is not an automatic validation of an oppressive and abusive patriarchalism. The God who reveals himself as Father is the loving Father of all men and women. Those who receive Jesus Christ as Savior become “sons of God” (Rom 8:14, 19; Gal 3:26; 4:6 NIV [1984]) but also more generally “children of God” (John 1:12; Rom 8:16-17, 21; Phil 2:15; 1 John 3:10; 5:2). God will always remain a “he,” since God is a personal being, and the substitution of the noun “God” for the personal pronoun inevitably makes him impersonal in his speech and actions. The fact that God is described as “he” does not mean that God is intrinsically male, but he relates to us primarily in the masculine mode, as Father, Son, and Lord.”

It is notable that it is maleness and femaleness that constitutes the image of God according to Genesis 1:26-27. It is humanity created as male and female that marks the image and likeness of God. That means that God’s being cannot be confined to masculine qualities. Our humanity has a divine character expressed in the union of male and female. God is the sum of both genders because humanity as male and female are equally rooted in God’s divine being.

What is more, God is also described with maternal language and feminine imag­ery at several points in Scripture. Moses indicts the Hebrews for their rebellion in the wilderness: “You deserted the Rock, who fathered you; you forgot the God who gave you birth” (Deut 32:18). God is depicted like a nurse or mother in his care for his people (Ps 131:2). The love of God is compared to the love of a mother for her child (Isa 49:15; 66:13). God’s wisdom is considered one of the primary per­sonifications of his work in the world (e.g., Prov 8:1-12; Jer 10:12; 51:15), and it is expressed in words that are grammatically feminine in both Hebrew (hokmâ) and Greek (sophia). Jesus could even depict himself like a mother hen protecting her chicks from a barnyard fire (Matt 23:37).

In the biblical witness, God’s fatherhood is not an oppressive or authoritarian per­sona that he adopts to force his will on others. Instead, we are to see the imagery of a father’s deep love for his children. Jesus taught his disciples to pray to the Father with the intimate term of abba (Matt 6:9; Mark 14:36; Rom 8:15; Gal 4:6). Jesus declared that God’s fatherhood is why he is so eager to answer prayer (Matt 7:9-11), for God’s love is like a father’s love for his children. And this is why the image of being “children of God” is so powerful. The God from whom we were formerly estranged on account of our sin has adopted us into his own family (John 1:12-13; Rom 8:13-17; Gal 3:26). If there is something good about a human father’s love for his children, then there is something infinitely good about the heavenly Father’s love for his children too.

I think it worth pointing out as well that all theological language is analogical since the finiteness of human language cannot contain the entirety of God in all his infinite being. Human language for God brings us only partial and incomplete analogies, parables, similes, and images of what God is like. All God language, including that freighted with connotations of human gender, male or female, and sonship, is only analogous to God’s being and not an absolute description of his person. Shirley Guthrie writes:

With respect to the doctrine of the Trinity … when we speak about God as “Father,” when we speak about the eternal “Son” who comes to us in the man Jesus (who taught us to call his Father “our Father”), and when he speaks about the “Spirit” who is the Spirit of the Father and of the Son, we are not talking about the gender of God (for God is neither male nor female). We are using analogical language from human experience to talk about the kind of relationship that exists between the members of the Trinity and between the triune God and us human beings—a relationship that is like the intimate relationship between parents and their children.

  • William G. T. Shedd, edited by Alan W. Gomes, Dogmatic Theology, 3rd Edition (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, 2003), 253-257.

Deity of God the Father

The deity of God the Father is undisputed, and hence there is less need of presenting the proof of it. Divine names, attributes, works, and adorableness are ascribed to him.

The term father denotes an immanent and eternal relation of the first trinitarian person. God in himself and irrespective of any reference to the created universe is a father: the Father of the Son. Were God pri­marily the Father because of his relation to men and angels and not because of his relation to the second person in the Godhead, his father­hood would begin in time and might consequently end in time. If there was once a time when God was not the Father of the Son, there may be a time when he will cease to be so. “It is the greatest impiety,” says Cyril of Jerusalem (Catecheses 11.8), “to say that after deliberation held in time God became a Father. For God was not at first without a Son and afterward in time became a Father.”

The hypostatic or trinitarian paternity of God the Father as related to the Son must not be confounded with the providential paternity of God the Trinity as related to the creation. Only one of the divine per­sons is the trinitarian Father; but the three persons in one essence con­stitute the providential and universal Father. The triune God is gener­ally the Father of men and angels by creation and specially of the elect by redemption. Hence, the term father applied to God has two significations. It may denote divine essence in all three modes or in only one mode. The first clause in the Lord’s prayer is an example of the former. When men say, “Our Father who is in heaven,” they do not address the first person of the Godhead to the exclusion of the second and third. They address, not the untriune God of deism and natural religion, but the God of revelation, who is triune and as such the providential Father of all men and the redemptive Father of believers. If a man deliberately and consciously intends in his supplication to exclude from his worship the Son and the Holy Spirit, his petition is not acceptable: “He that hon­ors not the Son honors not the Father” (John 5:23). A man may not have the three persons distinctly and formally in his mind when he utters this petition, and in this case he does not intentionally exclude any trinitar-ian person or persons; but the petition, nevertheless, ascends to the divine three, not to a single person exclusively; and the answer returns to him from the triune God, not from any solitary person exclusively. Says Witsius (Lord’s Prayer, diss. 7):

It is a doctrine firmly maintained by all orthodox divines, that the Father cannot be invoked in a proper manner, without at the same time invok­ing the Son and Holy Spirit, because they are one in nature and in honor. Nor can it, I think, be denied that, laying out of view the distinction of per­sons and looking only at what is common to all three persons in the God­head, God may be denominated our Father. Yet I cheerfully concur with those interpreters who maintain that the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is particularly addressed in the first petition.

Says Augustine (On the Trinity 5.2), “That which is written, ‘Hear, 0 Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord,’ ought not to be understood as if the Son were excepted or the Holy Spirit were excepted. This one Lord our God, we rightly call, also, our Father.” (See supplement 3.4.10.)

The term father denotes the Trinity in John 4:21, 23-24: “The hour comes when you shall neither in this mountain nor yet at Jerusalem worship the Father. The true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth.” Here the term father is synonymous with “God” who “is a Spirit,” the true object of worship. But Christ, in mentioning the object of worship, had in his mind the God of revelation, not of deism—trinal as he is in Scripture, not single as he is in natural religion—the very same God in whose trinal name and being he commanded all men to believe and be baptized. Christ’s idea of God as the universal Father was trinitarian, not deistic. In intuition and theology, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are one God and the heavenly Father of angels and men:

The appellation father, descriptive of the connection between God and his creatures, is true of every one of the divine persons and of the three divine persons, one God. The [paternal] relation to the creatures is as true of the Son and Holy Spirit as of the Father in respect to divine nature; for all these persons are respectively, and in union, the Father of the universe; the Father in creation, in government, and in protection. The Son as Mes­siah is foretold in his protecting kindness and mercy as “a Father to the fatherless” (Ps. 68:5-6; Isa. 9:6). (Kidd, Eternal Sonship, chap. 13)

A believer in the Trinity, in using the first petition of the Lord’s prayer, may have the first person particularly in his mind and may address him; but this does not make his prayer antitrinitarian. He addresses that per­son as the representative of the Trinity. And the same is true whenever he particularly addresses the Son or the Spirit. If he addresses God the Son, God the Son implies God the Father. Each divine person supposes and suggests the others. Each represents the others. Consequently, to pray to any one of the divine three is by implication and virtually to pray to all three. No man can honor the Son without honoring the Father also. Says Christ, “He that has seen me has seen the Father also” (John 14:9). In like manner, he that prays to the Son prays to the Father also. Says Turretin (3.25.27):

The mind of the worshiper will not be distracted by the consideration that there are three divine persons, if he remembers that the whole divine essence is in each of the persons, so that if he worships one he worships all. With Gregory of Nazianzus, he may say: “I cannot think of the one Supreme Being without being encompassed with the glory of the three persons; and I cannot discern the three persons without recurring to the unity of the essence.”

The hypostatic or trinitarian paternity of God, in distinction from the providential, is mentioned in John 17:5: “Now, 0 Father, glorify me with your own self.” Here, Christ addresses the Father alone, the first person of the Godhead exclusively. He did not address the Trinity, for he died not address himself or the Holy Spirit. Respecting this trinitarian father­hood, the Son says “my Father,” not “our Father” (14:27; 15:1, 8; and other passages).

The baptismal formula and the doxologies indisputably prove that paternity is an immanent and eternal relation of God. The rite that ini­tiates into the kingdom of God would not be administered in three names denoting only certain temporal and assumed attitudes of the Supreme Being. Neither would a divine blessing be invoked through three titles signifying only these. Baptism and invocation are acts of worship, and worship relates to the essential and eternal being of God.

The hypostatic or trinitarian character of the first person is that he possesses the essence “originally,” in the sense that it is not communi­cated to him by one of the other persons. Augustine (On the Trinity 2.1) thus speaks of the “original” or unbegotten possession of the essence by the Father: “We call the Son, God of God; but the Father, God only, not of God. Whence it is plain that the Son has another of whom he is and to whom he is Son; but the Father has not a Son of whom he is, but only to whom he is Father. For every son is what he is, of his father, and is son to his father; but no father is what he is, of his son, but is father to his son.” A common term applied to God in the patristic age to denote this peculiarity was “unbegotten”: “Next to God, we worship and love the Word, who is from the unbegotten and ineffable God”; “we have the unbegotten and ineffable God”; “we have dedicated ourselves to the unbegotten and impassible God”; “he is the firstborn of the unbegotten God” (Justin Martyr, Apology 1.25, 53; 2.12-13); “there are also some dissertations concerning the unbegotten God” (Rufinus, Preface to the Clementine Recognitions). In the writings of Athanasius, the Father is denominated agennētos”‘ (ingenerate or unbegotten) and the Son gennētos (generate or begotten). (See supplement 3.4.11.)

The phrase unbegotten God implies and suggests the phrase begotten God. This denotes no more than the phrase God the Son, the latter containing the substantive, the former the adjective. Clement of Alexandria (Miscellaneous Writings 5.12) remarks that “John the apostle says no man has seen God at any time. The only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, he has declared him.” Irenaeus (Against Heresies 4.20.11) quotes this text in the same form: “The only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, he has declared him.” This patristic employment of the phrase begotten God strongly supports the reading monogenēs theos in John 1:18, which has the support of א, B, C, L, Peshitta, Coptic, and Ethiopic and respecting which Tischendorf (8th ed.) says, “Without a doubt [this reading] carries the weight of the testimonies.” Westcott and Hort adopt this reading.

In the controversy between the English trinitarians and Arians, con­ducted by Waterland and Samuel Clarke in the beginning of the eigh­teenth century, a distinction made by the former between “necessary existence” and “self-existence” is liable to misconception and requires notice. The Father, says Waterland, is both necessarily existent and self-existent; the Son is necessarily existent, but not self-existent. In this use of terms, which is uncommon, the term self-existent was employed not with reference to the essence, as is usually the case, but to the person only. In this sense, self-existence denotes what the Nicene trinitarians meant by “unbegotten” or “ingenerate.” The Father is self-existent in Waterland’s sense because divine essence is not communicated to or with him; he has it of himself. The Son is not self-existent in Waterland’s sense because divine essence is communicated; he has it not from him­self but from the Father. But the Son is necessarily existent, says Water-land, because he possesses an essence that is necessarily existent. The fact that the essence is communicated by eternal generation does not make it any the less an infinite, eternal, and unchangeable essence. In brief, according to Waterland, the Son is necessarily existent because the divine essence is his essence; but he is not self-existent, because his personal characteristic of filiation, his peculiar “self,” is not from him­self but from another person.

If no distinction be made between necessary existence and self-exis­tence, as is the case in the Nicene statements, Waterland would attrib­ute both necessary existence and self-existence to the Son. He would concede self-existence in the sense in which it is attributed to the Son in John 5:26: “As the Father has life in himself, so has he given to the Son to have life in himself.” Here, “life in himself” denotes the self-existence of divine essence, which is also necessary existence. The Father has this uncommunicated. The Son has it communicated or “given” from the Father, by eternal generation.

The Father was sometimes denominated pēgētēs theotētos or rhiza pases theotētos. This phraseology is used with qualification by accu­rate trinitarians. Some orthodox writers employ the phrase fons trinitatis’ to denote the hypostatic character of the Father, which is better than fons deitatis. Says Howe (Trinity, lect. 14):

If we do suppose the Son and the Holy Spirit to be from the Father by a necessity of nature, an eternal necessity of nature, and not by a depend­ence upon his will, they will not be creatures, because nothing is creature but what depends upon the will and pleasure of the Creator. And if they be not creatures, what are they then? Then, they must be God, and yet both of them from the Father, too; for all that do assert the Trinity do acknowledge the Father to be fonts trinitatis, the fountain of the Trinity: and if from this fountain the Son be in one way, and the Holy Spirit be in another way, both from the Father; that is, the Son from the Father imme­diately, and the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son, and this not by choice, but by an eternal necessity of nature, here is this doctrine as easily conceivable as any that I know of whatsoever, the lies not within the compass of our manifest demonstration.

Turretin (3.30.1) says that the Father is fons deitatis “if the mode of subsisting is in view.”‘ Owen (Saints’ Communion, 3) remarks that “the Father is the fountain of the deity.” Hooker (Polity 5.54) quotes Augus­tine as saying that “the Father is the source [fountain] of the Godhead.”” In these cases, deitas is loosely put for trinitas. Strictly speaking, how­ever, deity denotes the divine essence; and the first person is not the Father of the essence. But Trinity denotes the essence personalized by trinalizing. In this reference, the first person is the father and fountain. “We teach,” says Calvin (1.13.23, 25), “according to the Scriptures, that there is essentially but one God; and therefore that the essence of both the Son and the Spirit is unbegotten. But since the Father is first in order and has himself begotten his Wisdom, therefore… he is justly esteemed the original and fountain of the whole divinity [Trinity].”

Reasoning of Revelation ~ Thomas C. Oden

  • Thomas C. Oden, Systematic Theology: Volume One: The Living God (Peabody, MS: Hendrickson Publishers, 2006), 375-404. (Abbreviations at the bottom)
  • One should include my “What is Faith” post with this reading.

The Reasoning of Revelation

Does revelation elicit and require its own kind of reasoning? To what extent can the study of God expect to be reasonable? Does faith risk something essential to itself when it tries to be reasonable in the world’s terms?

No study of God is complete without dealing with the limits and resources of human reasoning in God’s presence. Four issues in par­ticular need to be investigated: (1) At what points can or must the inquiry into God appeal to reason? (2) What is meant by reason, and why is radical skepticism finally untenable? (3) Could any disclosure of God occur without reason altogether? (4) Does faith reason in its own unique way?

Must the Study of God Appeal to Reason?

Reason (dialegomai, ratio), as classical Christianity understood it, includes all the capacities of the soul to behold and receive truth (Augustine, Letters CXXXVII, NPNF 1 I, pp. 473-80; cf. Letters 120.1, FC). These include intellectual, emotive, and volitional (thinking, feel­ing, and willing) aspects of the self, insofar as all these faculties enter into the discernment and interpretation of the truth (Augustine, Con f. IV.1 ff., NPNF 1 I, pp. 89 ff.).

The Participative Premise: Reasoning out of a Community

Christian study of God requires a risk-taking effort to enter into and explore that context in which the relevant data are found. The data of the religious communities cannot be effectively evaluated or even heard if we do not enter into the sphere of that community’s life

its prayer, its confessional memory, and its acts of self-giving love. Those who elect to stand aloof from that worshiping community will have lost the chance to understand it from within. As one cannot undergo psychoanalysis merely by reading books, but only through analysis—so too, theology.

The study of God is not well grasped as an individualistic inquiry apart from a community that seeks to embody and celebrate it. In studying any discipline, one must enter into its language, artifacts, instruments, data bases, symbols, graphs, and diagrams—whatever that particular discipline requires—and live with those resources for a while, taking them seriously. Likewise, a participative element is required in Christian theology (Pss. 95:2; 34:8; Matt. 19:15-22; Acts 11:5; Teresa of Avila, Life I, pp. 17-20; cf. Calvin, Inst. 1.1-3; Bucer, De Regno Christi III, LCC XIX, pp. 200-207; Wesley, WJW V, pp. 185-201; XI, pp. 237-59).

Christian reflection well expounded should be reasonably intelligi­ble to an educated person who is not a Christian (Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, ANF I, pp. 194 ff.; Athenagoras, A Plea for the Chr., ANF II, pp. 123-49). But its evidences may not be completely plausible, persuasive, or even meaningful to one who has not made any participative effort, or to one who has not at the very least atten­tively listened to someone else who has made that integrative effort and lived it out in his or her own daily behavior (Clare of Assisi, Rule, CWS, pp. 209-25; Calvin, Inst. 4.15). It is a psychological axiom that our behavior authenticates our belief system so radically that we trust people’s behavior far more than what they say they believe (James 1:23, 24; Clement, First Epis. IX ff., ANF I, pp. 7 ff.).

Theological reasoning involves at least a tentative sympathy with the data to be understood. That does not suggest an uncritical, naive, gullible acceptance, but rather an attitude of receptive, imaginative open-mindedness that examines facts without hardened, preconceived cynicism. Though Christian teaching does not expect a prior radical commitment to everything the church tradition has said, it does re­quire some capacity for at least tentative openness to Holy Writ and holy tradition, in order to give it a chance to speak its own word, to declare its distinctive self-understanding (Augustine, The Catechising of the Uninstructed, chaps. 5-9, NPNF 1 III, pp. 288-92). Within this framework, the hearer is challenged to approach Christian teaching with a kind of risk-taking willingness, to be dissatisfied with cheap solutions, and to probe the deeper dimensions of internal consistency in the community that lives out of mystery, while seeking to reason as well as possible out of the mystery revealed (Augustine, The Usefulness of Belief, X.23-XVIII.36, LCC VI, pp. 310-18).

Christian teaching seeks to correlate a wide range of data, and therefore overlaps with companion disciplines (Augustine, The Teacher, LCC VI, pp. 69 ff.). It is something like sociology in that it requires complex data gathering and the interpreting of socially shared symbols and experiences. Sociology has methods, insights, and problems that overlap with those of anthropology, history, economics, and political thought (C. Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination; cf. Tho. Aq., The Division and Methods of the Sciences, Q5, pp. 3-50). One cannot bracket out a small area of data and say: This is the absolute matter, subject, or text of sociology into which no other discipline can enter. The study of God is like this. It searches for proper balance in an extremely wide range of historical, psychological, moral, and religious input (Clement of Alex., Strom. II, ANF II, pp. 347-79). It is a broad-ranging intellec­tual exercise, yet a specific discipline with a single center—God’s address through Jesus Christ and through Israel, as that word is made relevant to the whole range of other modes of human knowing, feeling, and acting.

Theology is a joyful intellectual task because the source of its task is the source of profoundest joy (Tho. Aq., ST I-II Q2-5). At the moment at which one feels one’s theological endeavors becoming tedi­ous and heavy, one may have forgotten that the center of the effort is the joy of God’s presence—the ground of true happiness, the end of human despair. The God-inquiry furnishes the mind with its most radical challenge: God. It offers an unparalleled opportunity to think consistently, constructively, and fittingly about the One who gives life: this extraordinary, unduplicable being, God, who ultimately enjoys the penultimate goodness of creatures (Gen. 1:18-31).

Empathic Listening for Consistency

How may we weave our way through the fine distinctions that affirm reason as useful gift, yet with appropriate self-limits in the presence of the holiness and power of God?

Systematic theology is a critical discipline devoted to discovering, clarifying, understanding, defending, and extending the truth that is implied in the experience of the Christian community, the truth of God’s self-disclosure as remembered in Scripture and tradition. Re­sponsible discourse about God addresses the thoughtful, self-critical mind as it seeks clarity in understanding God. This inquiry wants to avoid obscurantism or evasion under the guise of piety, yet take seriously the energies of piety’s own modes of reasoning (Anse1m, Concerning Truth, TFE, pp. 91 ff.; cf. Proslog., preface, pp. 103-5).

Christian theology necessarily requires the rational exercise of thinking, because it is by definition reasoned discourse about God, modestly framed in terms of the immeasurability of its Subject (Gre­gory Nazianzen, Orat. XXVII, First Theol. Or., NPNF 2 VII, pp. 285-88). Seen from the viewpoint of the university or the encyclopedia, theol­ogy is a discipline. As such it requires self-critical reasoning about the word of God delivered through Scripture, liturgy, proclamation, and counsel.

Theology has long been suspected of being slightly too simple and far too difficult, a reputation well-earned on both counts. It is only part of the modern quandary concerning theology that much of the language of Christian confession is delivered through premodern cos­mologies, prescientific views of the world (Bultmann, Jesus Christ and Mythology, pp. 5 ff.). The conflict of cosmologies is not as deep as the conflict between faith and unfaith in the hearer. Even when clothed in the latest language and symbols of modernity, Christianity with its “Word made flesh” cannot remain completely nonoffensive (Kierke-gaard, Training in Christianity, pp. 79 ff.). Since classical Christianity is a tradition of exegesis, it has from the second and third centuries faced the awkwardness of having had its eternal Word spoken and echoed through various views of the world—dated understandings and misunderstandings of nature, psychology, and society that in turn differ widely from current conceptions of causality, physics, and real­ity. Christianity’s problem with what we call modernity is one that Christianity has faced many times before with many other “moderni­ties.” Bultmann wrongly imagined that the gulf between modern and premodern consciousness was larger than other gulfs the traditions of exegesis have managed to bridge (EPT I, II, passim). Our contempo­rary problems of cross-cultural communication do not pile higher than those faced by Athanasius, Augustine, John of Damascus, Thomas Aquinas, or Luther. Each had to struggle with making archaic lan­guage and symbol systems accessible to their own “modern” hearers of the fourth, seventh, thirteenth, or sixteenth centuries (cf. Athanasius, whose Festal Letters were mostly written amid massive persecu­tion; Augustine, whose City of God was written amid the collapse of Rome; Gregory the Great, whose Pastoral Care was written amid con­tinuing attacks upon Rome from both the north and the east; John of Damascus, whose Orthodox Faith was written in the then-new Muslim world, etc.).

A major obstacle to the modern hearing of classical Christian rea­soning is an inveterate modern chauvinism that assumes that modern consciousness is intrinsically superior to all premodern modes of thinking; conversely, all premodern thinking is assumed to be intrins­ically inferior to modern consciousness. That premise is deeply in­grained in the pride of modernity. In order to begin to hear the distinctive reasoning of the classical Christian consensus, that recal­citrant cultural egocentricity must be circumvented. How? The student of God must learn how to enter with historical empathy into archaic, seemingly outmoded, premodern frames of reference, accurately trying to hear what a text or a person is trying to shout as from a distant hill. The fact of distance does not mean that the message is in error.

It remains a problem of reason and will (being willing to reason, and reasonably willing) to learn how to employ empathic imagination to get into another frame of reference, to understand somebody else who thinks with different categories and out of different language frames—chiefly Hebrew, Greek, and Latin but also at various periods Aramaic, Coptic, Arabic, German, French. Classical Christian writers have preached and taught in all these symbol systems and more. They have often transcended their own thought world and embraced other symbol systems in the service of the truth (among the best exemplars: Paul, Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and Raymond Lull).

In listening for the internal consistency of the deep nuances of classical Christian reasoning, we face complex problems of cross-cul­tural translation of meanings readily available in one period but almost inaccessible to another. An intellectual effort is required by the serious student of God’s revelation who must take in a wide range of data, listen to strange voices, place text in context, and pray for the guidance of the Spirit (Augustine, On Chr. Doctrine III, NPNF 1 II, pp. 556-73). The task requires rigorous understanding not only of Scripture but also of the tradition that remembers Scripture; in addition it requires the gift of putting all into a personally meaningful, internally cohesive formulation that corresponds to one’s own experiencing process (Au­gustine, Con f. VI, NPNF 1 I, pp. 89-101; Gregory the Great, Pastoral Care, ACW, passim). All of that requires thinking; Christian faith cannot simply appeal to mystery or refer itself uncritically back to immeasurable divine wisdom.

Scriptural Teaching Concerning Reason

The biblical writers welcomed reason that is open to the evidences of faith. Isaiah appealed to his hearers: “Come now, let us reason together” (1:18, KJV). Prophets such as Amos denounced idolatry and greed for its unreasonable stupidity (Amos 3:14-4:3). It is the fool, not the wise one, who says in his heart, “There is no God” (Ps. 14:1; cf. Pss. 53:1; 92:6).

Paul spoke to his Corinthian audience as persons “of good sense” (1 Cor. 10:15, “of discernment,” TCNT). He protested against the opponents of faith as those who were “unreasonable” or “wrong­headed” (2 Thess. 3:2, KJV, NEB). The writer of the letter to Colossians prayed that they might receive from God “all wisdom and spiritual understanding for full insight into his will” (Col. 1:9, 10). Jesus him­self reasoned by analogy through parables, and often reasoned from pragmatic evidence.

Biblical faith has been poorly described as contrary to reason or inaccessible to any kind of rational analysis or critical judgment. This has encouraged obscurantism to parade as faith, and fidism to refuse to give or seek any reasons for faith. This stands contrary to the apostolic counsel that believers be prepared at the proper moment to give reasons for the hope that is in them. “Be always ready with your defence whenever you are called to account for the hope that is in you, but make that defence with modesty and respect” (1 Peter 3:15).

The early Christian writers followed the biblical assumption that reason was to be utilized positively within appropriate bounds in the discussion of revelation. Athenagoras declared that “natural reason is chiefly and primarily adapted . . . to delight unceasingly in the con­templation of Him who is” (Resurrection of the Dead XXV, ANF II, p. 162). Clement of Alexandria (Strom. VI.12, ANF II, p. 503a) and Origen (Ag. Celsus 1.13, ANF IV, p. 402) argued for the inner affinity of faith and reason. Augustine formulated the relation with precision and wide influence: “If thou hast not understood, said I, believe. For understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore do not seek to under­stand in order to believe, but believe that thou mayest understand; since ‘except ye believe, ye shall not understand”‘ (Augustine, On Gospel of John, tractate XXIX, NPNF 1 VII, p. 184, quoting Isa. 7:9; cf. Hooker, Laws of Eccl. Polity 111.8).

Classical Christian exegetes sought to communicate both the im­portance and the limits of reason. They tried to avoid the rationalist exaggeration that reason is omnicompetent, thereby leaving no role for revelation (Tertullian, Apol. XLVI, XLVII, ANF III, pp. 50-52). They also resisted the opposite exaggeration, that reason is completely un­done and incompetent in the presence of the mysteries of religion (Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho II, ANF I, p. 195). A balanced, discriminating statement of the proper function of reason in theology requires firm grounding in Scripture and tradition (Clement of Alex., Strom. V.12-14, ANF II, pp. 462-76).

Feelings, passions, and emotive flow cannot substitute for analysis, observation, logical consistency, and historical awareness. Uncritical emotion may mislead, as Amos recognized in the irony of those who without reason “feel secure on the mountains of Samaria” (Amos 6:1, italics added). Modern psychological consciousness often finds it eas­ier to talk about inner feelings than to provide a reasonable analysis of the motives of emotive life. One need not deny the importance of the emotive life in order to affirm the need for reason (Catherine of Genoa, Spiritual Dialogue, CWS, pp. 91 ff.; J. Edwards, On Religious Affections).

The plague of personalistic pietism has been the unconstrained notion that what is really important about God is only “what I feel about it right now.” As a result, what one must finally trust comes down to little more than “gut feelings” and changeable, often self-assertive, emotive states—not the manifestation of God, not Scripture, not the historical experience of a community. Feeling disclosure is a primary objective in the intensive group experience. However useful, that in itself is incomplete; one’s feelings may emerge out of cruelty, deception, or inordinate anxiety, for example. Classical Christian teaching asked for more than feeling-disclosure. It asked for rigorous, critical reflection, within the bounds of humble contrition, concerning the self-disclosure of God and its relevance for everything human.

Classical Christian teaching sought to nurture and assist this ca­pacity for careful analytical reflection to avoid Christians becoming “slaves to passions and pleasures” (Titus 3:3; John Chrysostom, Hom. on Titus V, NPNF 1 XIII, pp. 535-40). Without the constraint of sound moral reasoning, the passions are prone to become “licentious” (2 Pet. 2:18), “ungodly” (Jude 18), “worldly” (Titus 2:12), or “dishonorable” (Rom. 1:26). Even the law, which is good, is prone to awaken “sinful passions,” as Paul knew: “While we lived on the level of our lower nature, the sinful passions evoked by the law worked in our bodies, to bear fruit for death” (Rom. 7:5; cf. Maximus the Confessor, Four Centuries of Charity 111.50-64, ACW 21, pp. 182-85).

Those who have been emotively grasped by the power of the Spirit to recognize the love of the Father through the Son do not merely feel without thinking. They owe it to themselves to seek whatever clarity is possible concerning the consequences of that experience (Tho. Aq., ST I Q78 ff., I, pp. 404 ff.). They may or may not reflect critically upon what inward religious experiences mean and require in such a way as to “conduct themselves wisely toward outsiders” (Col. 4:5, RSV), but those who do engage in such reflection tend to extend and deepen the meaning of the experience itself (Augustine, Conf. XIII, NPNF 1 I, pp. 192 ff.), even though reason seems always prone to overextend itself (111.6, NPNF 1 I, p. 63).

Reason and Certitude

Doubt and the Hunger for Certainty

It is understandable that a finite human being, troubled with the vicissitudes of life, should hunger for certainty in knowledge, or at least for high reliability, to whatever degree is possible. But how does one know? How is it possible to be sure that we know what we think we know? These are perennial questions of epistemology, but in cer­tain crucial times, especially amid sorrow, illness, and death, our usual rational explanations become stretched to their limit. As every pastor knows, these are the very times when theological questions are profoundly asked. These crucial moments make it exceptionally diffi­cult to answer the question, How do we know what we seem to know, or what we seem to know in part? Life constantly undoes our theories of knowing (Luther, Letters of Spiritual Counsel I, II, LCC XVIII, pp. 26-82; for much of what follows, I am indebted to Soren Kierkegaard, Concl. Unsci. Post., Reinhold Niebuhr, NDM, and L. Harold DeWolfe, TLC).

The act of pardon in the Christian service of worship announces, “You are forgiven.” But how does one know one is forgiven? Is there any relative certainty? Classical Christian teaching speaks of a circle of knowing: through the inner assurance of the Holy Spirit and the reliability of Scripture, the divine self-disclosure is knowable. But to what degree is certainty capable of being achieved in such statements? And if so, is it an empirical, or moral, certainty?

Multiple Levels of Reasoning

Christian teaching has long been aware of the difficulty of attaining rational certainty of any sort. All human reason, not theological reason alone, functions under the stubborn limitations of finitude and poten­tial self-deception.

Reason may be defined in a preliminary way as the capacity for internal consistency of argument based on evidence. Both deductive and inductive processes are combined in this definition. Reason can too narrowly be defined in either an abstract, rationalistic, nonexper-iential way or an excessively empirical, experiential way.

Rationalistic Method: Deductive Reasoning

Some rationalistic methods define reason in excessively nonexper-iential, nonsensory, and abstract ways. Descartes wanted to reason by cutting off all sense experiencing, by locking himself up in a stove, blocking all sensory input, so that exclusively on the basis of his own internal reason he could see if he could come to any reliable knowledge (Descartes, Meditations; W. Temple, Nature, Man, and God). Descartes is a prototype of one who wanted to block out the experiential and sensory side of the dialectic of knowing. When he realized that he was doubting, he reasoned: If he could doubt, then he must be thinking, and if he was thinking, then he surely must be. Therefore he came to what he regarded as reliable knowledge (that he existed) on a purely nonsensory basis. In time, that tradition of rationalism (as represented by Descartes, Spinoza, Wolff, and others) easily became overextended, and its claims unqualified and overweening.

Classical Christian reasoning, by contrast, has not characteristically proceeded by discarding sense experience. It wants to use its deduc­tive rational capacity, but only while utilizing to the fullest extent possible the inputs of sense experience, though admittedly there are finite limits to sense experience also. Reason depends, as Thomas Aquinas knew, upon sense perception, even though the senses may err. Thomas’s arguments for the existence of God all began with sense experience, by looking around at the orderly processes of nature, causality, contingency, and language.

No one is consistently able to exact the rigorous tests of sense perception in order to gain knowledge that is familiar to much ordi­nary daily experiencing. Suppose we are considering the notion of the number 1000 squared. We can in our minds instantly calculate a million in order to find that exact number accurately. But we do not have to stop to count those one million units. If we did we would take the demands for sensory validation too far. We take for granted a reliable structure of interpretation, a (rational) mathematical formula, 1000 x 1000, and trust the reasoning by which we square a number.

Thus in a sense we take it on the authority of those who have worked with mathematics for a long time (and perhaps have even counted those numbers), even though counting may seem absurd if we already know the formula. We often work confidently on the basis of such nonsensory rational ideas without feeling any need to “count” (to validate our reasoning empirically).

Scientific Method: Inductive Reasoning

The experimental method that we find in modern natural and behav­ioral sciences is based upon careful observation of change under con­trolled conditions on the basis of sense experience. Vast scientific and historical accomplishments have resulted from this experimental method. Yet this method has been alleged by some modern advocates (e.g., B. F. Skinner, Ivan Pavlov, Karl Popper, A. J. Ayer) to be the only way to know anything. There is little doubt that Christianity can make admirable use of empirical data gathering and scientific experimenta­tion, but they are of limited value when we are talking about the central concerns of Christian teaching: the meaning of history, sin, grace, atonement, and sacramental life. The experimental method is useful when quantifiable objects are measured and changes observed, but God is not a quantifiable object. Christian teaching does not dismiss or deride experimental psychology, sociology, biology, or phys­ics. It has learned much and can learn more from the data of the experimental sciences, natural and behavioral, and does not object to those methodologies per se, where quantifiable objects are being investigated.

These sciences ordinarily seek to isolate a single variable and try to account through some kind of quantifiable data-gathering process for a demonstrable change in that single variable that is repeatable and that can be experimentally reproduced and validated in a laboratory. But can one utilize that method effectively when attempting to speak significantly to the question of the meaning of suffering, the forgive­ness of sin, or the overarching purpose of the historical process? The empirical method has limited usefulness in approaching poetry, liter­ary analysis, religious experience, or love, all of which are grasped intuitively by a Gestalt or pattern of looking at personal knowledge that is seldom subject to exhaustive empirical analysis. Christian teaching in particular is looking for a pattern at work in all human history, to grasp the meaning of history (Augustine, CG XVIII, NPNF 1 II, pp. 361 ff.), so empirical method can take one only incompletely toward this understanding.

Hence both these methods that are available to us have positive but limited value: a rationalistic method and an empirical method. Both are needed; both are insufficient to the subject matter of the study of God.

Pragmatic Reasoning

There is another type of reasoning, prevalent primarily in the American tradition, sometimes called pragmatic reasoning, which es­sentially judges the truth of a thing in terms of its results, practical application, or impact (William James, Pragmatism; Essays on Faith and Morals; C. S. Peirce, Collected Papers, vol. VI, par. 465 ff.). This method of reasoning also has been useful to a certain degree in Christian teaching about God, salvation, and community. For Christian truth hopes also to “work,” to turn into practical acts, to be applied. But what pragmatism tends to neglect is the level of the truth question that lies prior to its practical application. Pragmatism is not so much interested in asking whether a proposition or affirmation is true or false as in asking only whether it has a practical or useful effect of some kind (J. B. Pratt, What Is Pragmatism?). That is not as deep as Christian teaching seeks to go.

Convergence of Plausibility

The method of comprehensive coherence is yet another, more complex, type of classical pastoral reasoning. The search for comprehensive coherence is the attempt to grasp or see as most probably true that proposed solution to a problem which is on the whole supported by the greatest net weight of evidence from all quarters—deductive and inductive reasoning, logic and scientific method, historical reasoning, Scripture, and tradition. It is a centered intuitive act of drawing to­gether of insights or data from widely varied resources and searching for their interrelated implicit meaning or convergence of plausibility (Clementina, Horn. II, ANF VIII, pp. 229, 230).

The knowing of God is at times something like a detective story, but one in which the answer is crying out to be revealed, the clues lying about everywhere. Some of the evidence is circumstantial, some requires careful data gathering; other steps need clear reasoning, faith­fulness to credible sources, or sharp intuition. Comprehensive coher­ence is that kind of reasoning which says that the most adequate explanation of something is the one that brings into focus the most widely varied inputs into a single, cohesive, tentatively meaningful frame of reference. Intuitive reasoning based on facts seeks to ascer­tain whether the overall evidence is reasonable or not. It differs from strict laboratory or experimental conditions in its breadth, variety, and imaginativeness. Scientific experimentation tries to bracket out these broader intuitions and insights and focus upon a single, manipulata­ble, objective variable (cf. Anatolius, Fragments from the Books on Arith­metic, ANF VI, pp. 152, 153; Reinhold Niebuhr, NDM I, pp. 18-24, 104 ff.). But the single-variable approach can box the inquirer into a vision that is highly constricted.

The study of God, ironically, is distinguished from empirical sci­ence in that it seeks to account for the greatest possible number of variables, rather than a single variable. For this unique study asks about the meaning of history. This is one way of describing the central task of theology: to give a credible account for the meaning of history, creation to consummation, viewed as God’s story (Luke 1:3; cf. 1 Chron. 11:11; 2 Chron. 13:22; Ps. 81:10). To deny a hearing to any kind of data by a prior and arbitrary limitation of method risks losing that part of the truth. Historically, theology has been relatively more willing to investigate speculative hypotheses, eschatology, psycholog­ical intuition, paranormal phenomena, and moral conscience than have the behavioral sciences, which have often ruled out such hypotheses.

In pleading for an attitude of openness to evidence, Augustine remarked that “every good and true Christian should understand that wherever he may find truth, it is his Lord’s” (On Chr. Doctrine 11.18, LLA, p. 54). If God is the deepest truth (even though not fully fath­omed), wherever the truth appears, there is some evidence of God’s presence (Clement of Alex., Strom. 1.13, ANF II, p. 313). Truth has self-evidencing power (Clementina, Hom. 111.36, ANF VIII, p. 123). So theology can look for evidence anywhere.

However open to any truth one may be, any evidence may be distorted by human egocentricity and finitude, for all our perceptions are finite. We see the world from a very limited perspective. We ourselves have not lived for more than a few decades, yet human beings have lived in cities for at least twelve thousand years. Homo erectus is said to date back three or four million years, and the earth’s history perhaps four and a half billion years. Our sufferings for one another are placed by the historical reasoning of the New Testament in the context of the “purpose of God hidden for ages” (Eph. 3:9; cf. vv. 10-13; Col. 1:26).

The most perplexing problems of epistemology are rooted more fundamentally in the basic dilemma of human existence—human fin­itude, with freedom to imagine. The fundamental paradox of being a human being is the fact that we live in nature, and are restricted by nature, yet we are capable of self-transcendence, of life in the spirit. We are not explainable to ourselves merely in terms of naturalistic reductionisms, yet we are not transnatural or superpersonal angels or unembodied intelligences. Human existence is by definition a combi­nation of the natural and transnatural, rooted in nature and the causal order, yet with capacity for self-determination and self-transcendence.

This is symbolized in the Christian community by shorthand lan­guage: body and soul, or soma and psyche. There is no body/soul dualism, because in Scripture the psycho-somatic interface is kept so taut—the psyche is constantly affected by the body, and the body is nothing (except a corpse) without its living reality, the psyche. The soul is never in history unembodied (not even in the Resurrection!), and the body that lacks soul lacks life. The person (psycho-somatically, paradoxically conceived) is wrapped in causal chains, yet exists as free—finite, yet capable of transcending finitude. Human life is “a sort of connecting link between the visible and invisible natures” (John of Damascus, OF 11.12, NPNF 2 IX, pp. 30, 31).

This boundary location of the perceiver makes perception all the more difficult to fathom. Even though one knows one is perceiving something, one does not always know the depths or limits of the perception. Every human being has the task of holding both sides of that composite together in a meaningful way (Kierkegaard, Sickness unto Death, I.1, pp. 146 ff.).

Epistemology is that troubled inquiry that seeks to understand how we can possibly know anything. It reflects the tension of the larger human problem: finite freedom. Empiricism has inordinately focused upon data gathered by sensory experience. Rationalism has inordi­nately focused upon the reason that transcends the natural, that which gives order to this natural vitality. The history of philosophy reveals both tendencies in various combinations in various periods (Reinhold Niebuhr, NDM I, pp. 1 ff.). Empiricism may become exaggerated, in the form of a radical skepticism, so as to overemphasize the compe­tency of sense experience. Exaggeration of the power of reasoning may lead into a soft, fuzzy trap of abstract idealism, such as in Hegel. Regardless of which side comes to the fore, the problems of episte­mology remain rooted in the fundamental dilemma of being a human being.

Problems and Limits of Radical Skepticism

Dependence of Reason on Experience

This brings us full circle, surprisingly, back to the limits of radical skepticism. Our data are not infallible. This is true even in the natural sphere—for example, when you put a stick in the water and it appears to bend. To account for this, you have to discount the bent appearance of the stick. Our sensory apparatus is always having to make these kinds of adjustments and to apply checks to itself. We are the victims of optical illusions, mirages in the desert, delusions, and dreams. Even when our sensory powers are working under the most favorable conditions, we still see the world from quite a limited perspective.

From critics like Hume we hear doubt cast upon causality itself. We had assumed that we could always rely on the fact that effects are produced by causes, but Hume argued that this is merely a habit of mind—assuming that certain causes are going to elicit certain ef-fects—but that one cannot necessarily infer thereby that what now appear to be ironbound causal laws might not later be viewed with different eyes. Although overstated by Hume, this critique bids us be humble about the competency both of our capacity to reason and our capacity to rely upon sensory input (Hume, Dialogues Concerning Nat­ural Religion, Phil. Works II, pp. 411 ff.).

Moreover, if all claims to have received a revelation from God were to be automatically accepted, fanaticism would be welcomed, and the easy credit would lead to constant bankruptcy. Reason functions to sort out the legitimacy of claims of alleged revelation in the light of whatever one has already learned about God through comprehensive coherence (1 Thess. 5:21; cf. 2 Cor. 11:1-21).

Data received must often be corrected on the basis of subsequent experiences, and those experiences in turn await being corrected by later experiences, only to find that later experiences then have to be again corrected by earlier experiences, and so on (Jer. 5:3). The di­lemma deepens: How can we be assured that there are not yet-to-be-discovered important data that will challenge or contradict our cur­rently assumed reliable and constructive knowledge?

The Dependence of Reason on Unproved Postulates

We not only have practical difficulties with establishing sensory evidence in every discrete case, but our reasoning also depends upon assumptions and postulates to which no data-gathering process can appeal, and that no data-gathering process can establish and that no reasoning process can prove without assuming these postulates pre­cisely while the proofs are being attempted (Origen, De Princip., pre­face, ANF IV, pp. 239-41). Two examples are the intelligibility of nature and the principle of consistency.

One example is the elementary principle of the intelligibility of nature: Any attempt to communicate through language involves the assumption that we are living in an intelligible order. Yet how can one prove that assumption? It remains an axiom, an assumption that lies quietly behind our reasoning (Augustine, Soliloquies II, LCC VI, pp. 41-63).

Another assumption is the principle of consistency: If genuinely contradictory ideas can be true at the same time, then no argument for or against any conclusion has any force. Yet there is no way to establish that principle empirically, and no way to demonstrate it rationally without first depending on it (Anselm, Concerning Truth IX ff., TFE, pp. 107 ff.).

The Impossibility of Radical Skepticism

This takes us to the hypothesis of complete skepticism about know­ing anything. The ancient skeptic Carneades asserted that it is impos­sible to know anything at all. He thought that we must base any truth on premises that we already hold, and that if we attempt to prove the premises, we can only move back toward other premises upon which we base our proof (N. MacColl, The Greek Skeptics, cf. Augustine, On the Profit of Believing, NPNF 1 III, pp. 347 ff.). Thus we are pressed toward a total skepticism.

This is really the humorous conclusion of this chapter’s trajectory thus far: The reason no philosophy has been able to teach or embrace a complete skepticism is that it is impossible to do it. To believe that nothing can be known is to believe that even the meaning of that belief cannot be known. If you believe that you can know nothing, you have to be skeptical also of that belief (Tho. Aq., ST II—II Q60, I, pp. 1448, 1449). So even the most radical skepticism stumbles back with an internal contradiction. Even if you should try to teach the notion that nothing can be known, you are involved in an absurdity, because to teach it would be to assert that you know something. Skepticism is the yielding of the mind to a conviction of the impossibility of certainty, accom­panied by a complacency about such a condition. Since skepticism believes that there is no truth, it must itself be classified as a faith in the reliability of ignorance (Pope, Compend. I, p. 48; DeWolfe, TLC, I). This insight helps theology to move through and beyond the morass of skepticism.

Though absolute certainty is not deductively or inductively attain­able, complete skepticism is even more logically absurd, and cannot be maintained in practice. It is unreasonable to lay a radical demand upon ourselves, as we proceed theologically, to prove everything empirically, as some scientific and philosophical critics of religion ex­pect. But that is no excuse for not taking as seriously as possible the evidentiary process so as to try to bring into our consciousness as many factors as we possibly can that will appeal to a comprehensively cohesive form of reasoning.

Historical Reasoning

This is why the predominant form of reasoning in Christian the­ology has been a somewhat different form of reasoning, namely, his­torical reasoning. The Old Testament view of reasoning about God is historical in scope and method. Yahweh repeatedly refers to himself in distinctively historical terms: “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” (Exod. 3:15, 16; Mark 12:26) and often rehearses to the Israelites the mighty deed he has done in history (Joshua 24:2-13; Ps. 136).

God meets us not just in our inner thoughts but in history, dem­onstrating the divine presence and power through events (Deut. 11:1-4; cf. 1 Cor. 2:4). “The Lord is righteous in his acts; he brings justice to all who have been wronged. He taught Moses to know his way and showed the Israelites what he could do. The Lord is compassionate and gracious, long-suffering and forever constant” (Ps. 103:6-8). That the Lord is compassionate and gracious is known by recollecting God’s historical activity (Irenaeus, Ag. Her. V.21, 22, ANF I, pp. 548-51; Cyril of Jerusalem, Catech. Lect. VI, NPNF 2 VII, pp. 33-43).

One who wishes to get in touch with God’s demonstration of his justice and mercy in history must look candidly at universal history and learn to reason about all of history from the vantage point of a special history—Israel’s. To know Yahweh at all one must look partic­ularly toward the distinctive ways in which Yahweh has become self-revealed in history. The Hebraic way of reasoning is to tell a story. History telling or narrative is the distinctively Hebraic way of reasoning—a highly complex mode of theo-historical reasoning (Ezra 1:1-4; Neh. 1:1-4; Amos 1:1-5).

Hegel employed a different kind of historical reasoning. He theo­rized that reason is manifesting itself in historical processes, so that what is going on in history he called Absolute Reason unfolding itself. This historical reason, he argued, displays a recognizable logic that can be seen in every discrete historical unfolding. His effort centered upon seeking to understand the logic of history. The pattern he rec­ognized recurrently was that of a force followed by a counterforce, and then a synthesis made possible by the conflict of those two energies. The same form of reasoning is found in Hegel’s psychology and polit­ical thought, epistemology and metaphysics. Everywhere Hegel looked he saw this kind of reasoning in history working itself out in thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. Scripture does not argue for this sort of predictable logic, yet Hegel’s fundamental idea (however unbiblically rationalized) is derived from Hebraic historical consciousness. It is a unique type of reasoning—reasoning derived from history, especially the history of God’s mighty deeds (Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel VII, I, pp. 321 ff.; Augustine, CG XVI, NPNF 1 II, pp. 309 ff.; cf. Hegel, Reason in History; Kierkegaard, Concl. Unsci. Post.).

Ordinarily the final meaning of a person’s or nation’s history is only knowable at the end of the story. One cannot write a definitive biography of Gandhi until his life is over. A living person or nation could always take a new turn, and make subsequent choices that would bear upon the meaning of the whole. Suppose the meaning of human history is to become knowable only at its end, as virtually all late-Judaic apocalyptic writers assumed (the Books of Enoch, the Apocalypse of Baruch, and War of the Sons of Light against the Sons of Darkness), for apokalypsis refers to the final uncovering of meaning that had been hidden.

Jesus was born into a community saturated with expectations that the end of a grossly distorted history would eventually reveal its meaning, however disastrous the present may be (cf. Daniel, 2 Esdrus, and the Assumption of Moses). Suppose, however, that an event oc­curs in history that reveals the meaning of the end before the end. This is what happened in Jesus Christ—his incarnation, crucifixion, and res­urrection, the one mighty deed of God that bestows significance upon all human deeds (Lactantius, Div. Inst. IV.25-30, ANF VII, pp. 126-34).

Supposing that such a revealing event had occurred in history, would it not be necessary that it be followed by a remembering com­munity, one that sought to preserve the meaning of the whole histor­ical process revealed in that event? Would it not be understandable if a community of celebration followed that event that remembered it, shared in it, and proclaimed its meaning to all who would hear? (Methodius, Three Fragments, Hom. on the Cross and Passion of Christ, ANF VI, pp. 399-401).

Such a community has emerged in Christian history, reasoning out of this event, seeking to make it understandable in each new cultural-historical context. Through a gradual process of canonization, the documents witnessing to this event became received as Holy Writ, attested by the Spirit as a reliable point of contact with the originative event through which the meaning of history—God’s Word to humanity—became clarified. Something like this process occurred in the historical Christian community. Each phase of history has required astute historical reasoning (e.g., Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho LXXXII—CXLII, ANF I, pp. 240-70). Each new situation of the church has demanded a modestly revised form of historical reasoning—the recollection of revelatory events amid these particular new historical conditions. Hence, theological reasoning is historical reasoning.

What Purpose Does Reason Serve in the Study of God?

There are five classical explanations of why reason is required in any revelation: Reason is needed to receive the truth, distinguish truth from falsehood, reveal reason’s own limitations by pointing beyond itself, interpret the truth, and transmit it to new generations.

TO RECEIVE REVELATION

A revelation can be made only to a potentially rational being. Stones do not receive revelation. Without reason even the most obvious revelation could not be apprehended or grasped. If God wished to reveal the truth to a stone, it would first be necessary to create in a stone some capacity to understand, or the capacity to reason, in order for it to receive the revelation (Tho. Aq., ST II—II Q2, II, pp. 1179-88; Gamertsfelder, Syst. Theol., p. 126). One must assume in any revela­tion both the capacity to apprehend truth and the active openness of the mind to the truth offered. Reason helps faith to understand the content of what is to be believed (Augustine, WAS, p. 59).

TO DECIDE WHETHER OR WHEN REVELATION HAS OCCURRED

All alleged revelations cannot be taken seriously. Some are patently spurious, fraudulent, or manipulative claims (Hippolytus, Refutation of all Heresies, VII, ANF V, pp. 100 ff.; Kierkegaard, Authority and Revela­tion: The Book on Adler). The community has to sort out which self-proclaimed revelations are true and which are not. When a murderer claims that he acted by divine revelation, faith must utilize its rational-analytical capacity to sort out what is alleged to be true through divine revelation, though falsely, as distinguished radically from that which, by a larger process of comprehensive coherence, can be consensually received and understood as truly God’s own revelation (Tho. Aq., SCG 1.3, I, pp. 63 ff.).

Reason is required in order to judge the evidences of religious claims to revelation (Clement of Alex., Strom. VI.7-11, ANF II, pp. 492-502; Wesley, WJW VI, pp. 350-61; Hodge, Syst. Theol. 1.3, pp. 58, 59). The evidence must be fitting to the truth purported. Truth con­veyed through history requires historical evidence plausibly set forth. Truths of nature require natural, empirical, scientific evidence. Truths of the moral sphere require moral evidence. The “things of the Spirit” (Rom. 8:5) require the self-evidencing assurance of the Spirit (The Pastor of Hermas, II, comm. 10, 11, ANF II, pp. 26-28). In this way sound reasoning and faith’s response to revelation do not contradict but complement each other.

TO SHOW THE REASONABLENESS OF THAT WHICH REASON ITSELF CANNOT ATTAIN

Augustine wrote:

God forbid that He should hate in us that faculty by which He made us superior to all other living beings. Therefore, we must refuse to believe as not to receive or seek a reason for our belief, since we could not believe at all if we did not have rational souls. So, then, in some points that bear on the doctrine of salvation, which we are not yet able to grasp by reason—but we shall be able to sometimes—let faith precede reason, and let the heart be cleansed by faith so as to receive and bear the great light of reason; this is indeed reasonable. (Letters 120:1, FC)

It is through reason that we may see that reason points beyond itself. It is reasonable that right reason know its own limits. Reason serves faith by pointing both beyond itself and to its own limits (Augustine, Sermons on New Testament Lessons LXXVI, NPNF 1 VI, pp. 481 f.; cf. LXVII, p. 465).

TO INTERPRET AND APPLY REVEALED TRUTH

Even if a community had received divinely revealed truth, and recognized it as such, it must still use reason to discover the implica­tions of this truth amid its historical context, expressed in its own language. Even after we have learned that God is revealed as just and requires justice, we still must ask what that justice means for us and how it is to apply to our particular situation. This requires reason (Tho. Aq., SCG III. 121-22, pp. 141-47; Wakefield, CSCT, pp. 20-22; Gamertsfelder, Syst. Theol., p. 128; DeWolfe, Theol. of a Living Church). It is by reason that the believer learns to utilize analogies in the service of the truth, to make observations from nature and history, and to remove doubts by setting forth reasonable arguments. The teachings of faith are exhibited, clarified, and made rhetorically persuasive by good reasoning (Augustine, Con f. XI.25-31, NPNF 1 II, pp. 172-75).

Reason helps remove objections to belief (Augustine, Letters CII.38, NPNF 11, p. 425).

TO TRANSMIT THE MEANING OF REVELATION

To transmit truth to another, one must employ reasoning. To com­municate from one rational mind to another, one must presuppose the rational capacity of both speaker and hearer. Reason is needed if one seeks either to understand or to make understandable the truth of Christian faith. No preaching, teaching, or apologetics can occur with­out some rational capacity. By reason, faith’s wisdom is correlated with the insights of philosophy, history, political ethics, psychology, and other sciences (Clement of Alex., Strom. IV.18, ANF II, pp. 518-20).

Hence, reason is needed to receive revelation, to distinguish be­tween true and false revelation, to help us to believe what we cannot see, to interpret the truth of revelation in the present, and to transmit revelation to emergent historical situations.

Authorized Prerogatives of Reason

No one can be required to believe absurdities. The mind is God-given and has a responsibility to reject falsity. If a claim of religion requires that which negates or contradicts a previous, duly authenti­cated revelation of God, it is to be rejected as false religion, and inconsistent with faith’s reasoning. Paul went to great lengths with the Galatians to urge consistency of teaching with the original apos­tolic teaching: “But if anyone, if we ourselves or an angel from heaven, should preach a gospel at variance with the gospel we preached to you, he shall be held outcast” (Gal. 1:8).

God would be inconsistent as just and good if, holding human freedom responsible for its moral conduct, God provided neither suffi­cient means for human beings to recognize the moral good nor any evidence of the divine will. If human beings are to be held responsible for themselves, they must have some capacity to know the good, and to recognize their own failure to do good. “How could they invoke one in whom they had no faith?” asked Paul. “And how could they have faith in one they had never heard of?” (Rom. 10:14). Yet unbelief does not arise out of ignorance alone. It arises willfully because “men preferred darkness to light because their deeds were evil” (John 3:19).

The earliest Christians were warned against naiveté: “Do not trust any and every spirit, my friends; test the spirits, to see whether they are from God, for among those who have gone out into the world there are many prophets falsely inspired” (1 John 4:1). Furthermore, a standard of judgment is given: “This is how we may recognize the Spirit of God: every spirit which acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God” (1 John 4:2).

Christian faith concedes to reason what is rightfully its due. God does not reveal himself to irrational, but rational, creatures, capable of distinguishing between true and false evidence. Revelation does not imply faith in the absurd or impossible, or faith based on ignorance. Christian faith opposes anti-intellectual obscurantism as much as it does extreme skepticism. Faith resists a blind fidism that believes without examining the evidence; and a defensive skepticism that believes only its doubt of the credibility of all evidence (Tho. Aq., SCG 1.4-7, pp. 66-75; Wesley, WJW VI, 350 ff.; Hodge, 1.3, pp. 54, 55).

The Tendency of Reason Toward Egocentric Distortion

Although reason is intended to be put to good use, it is prone to distortion. The intended uses of reason have been divided into three categories: First, reason functions as an organic part of faith’s reflection upon itself, as in the right use of logic, grammar, rhetoric, induction, and deduction. It is necessary to use reason, for example, to translate Scripture into various languages (Augustine, On Chr. Doctrine; Justin Martyr, First Apol., ANF I, pp. 159-87). Second, reason has crucial apologetic functions, assisting faith in stating reasons for its conclusions where doubts about it have arisen (Justin Martyr, Hortatory Address to the Greeks, ANF I, pp. 273-90). And third, reason has a polemical use in the correction of error by argument (Hippolytus, Refutation of All Her., ANF V; cf. Gerhard, Loci I, p. 76; cf. DT, pp. 36, 37). None of these functions would be possible without the use and application of rational criticism.

Yet reason since the fall has been blind, proud, vain, wrapped in error and self-deceit (Rom. 1:21; 1 Cor. 3:1; Gal. 4:8; Eph. 4:17, 18). Fallen reason is not able, without grace, to lift itself up to a recognition of the divine mysteries (Matt. 11:27; 1 Cor. 2:14-16). Hence reason may become harnessed for evil as well as good. Reason may be uti­lized by egocentricity to more profoundly oppose revelation, faith, hope, and love (Rom. 8:6; 1 Cor. 2:11 ff.; 3:18-20; cf. R. Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society). Fallen reason stands in need of repentance, cleansing, and conversion, so that it too might become captive to the obedience of Christ (2 Cor. 10:4, 5). Hence, because of its self-decep­tions, natural reason unaided by grace is not to be viewed as an adequate rule for judging faith or revelation (Gerhard, Loci II, pp. 362 ff.; cf. DT, p. 34).

The rational capacity of Adam and Eve (symbolic of all humanity) is twisted by pride, anxiety, guilt, and self-assertion. Thus our re­markable rational capacity has become, to some degree, an instrument of sin, guilt, and death. We use reason to promote wrongdoing and to do evil. The biblical notion of distorted, alienated, self-assertive reason has increased the realism of the Christian understanding of humanity. Nonetheless, the right use of reason is thought by most classical exegetes to be useful and necessary—not as a rule of faith, and never as absolute judge of faith, but as an aid to faith’s reflection upon its source and ground. “Theology does not condemn the use of Reason, but its abuse and its affectation of directorship, or its magis­terial use, as normative and decisive in divine things” (Quenstedt, TDP I, p. 43, in DT, p. 35).

Whether Faith Has Reasons That Reason Does Not Know Faith

The term faith (pistis) is utilized in the New Testament with several levels of meaning. Faith is

  • the recognition through the active life of the Spirit of, “the evidence of things not seen” (Heb. 11:1 Kjv)
  • an active trust or confidence, as when one asks “in faith, nothing doubting” (en pistei, meden diakrinomenos, James 1:6)
  • a belief, trust, and assurance in God’s righteousness in Christ that is active by love and yields the fruit of good works
  • the act of believing; for example, when one says, “I believe” (Apos­tles’ Creed) one is saying “I have faith that . . . “
  • a body of truth confessed as necessary for salvation, as in “the faith once delivered to the saints” (Jude 3, Kjv), or the Christian religion for which the believer contends (1 Tim. 6:12)
  • reliability, or constancy in fulfilling one’s promises, as when Paul speaks of the “faithfulness of God” (Rom. 3:3)
  • trust in the intelligibility of the cosmos that premises scientific inquiry (Ps. 89:1-8)
  • obedience, or the obedience of faith, which stands ready to be guided by duly constituted authority (Rom. 16:26)

All these varied shades of meaning cohere, interflow, and coalesce in Christian teaching concerning faith (cf. Ambrose, Of the Chr. Faith, prologue, 1.4; II.Intro.; II.11, 15, NPNF 2 X, pp. 201, 206, 225, 236, 240; Augustine, On Psalms LI, NPNF 1 VIII, p. 195; Luther, Freedom of a Chr., ML, pp. 56-61; TDNT; TDOT). Faith includes the capacity to discern by grace the things of the Spirit, and to trust in the reliability of the divine Word (Cyril of Jerusalem, Catech. Lect. V, NPNF 2 VII, pp. 29-32). Faith embraces the complementary meanings of the trust­ing frame of mind that has confidence in Another and the trustwor­thiness that can be relied upon (Tho. Aq., ST I—II Q1-13, I, pp. 1169-1233; Calvin, Inst. 3.2).

Faith does not occur without grace: “Yes, it was grace [chariti] that saved you, with faith [pisteos] for its instrument” (Eph. 2:8, Knox). When grace enlivens reason, reason is not subverted but empowered. Human reasoning, by grace, appropriates divine truth without ceasing to be human reasoning. When reason discerns the truth God speaks, it does not do so without God’s grace. God cannot be comprehensively grasped by any human reason, but some aspect of God can be grasped by faith’s reasoning which leads not to a false God or an illusion of God, but truly to God insofar as God becomes accessible to human knowing (Basil, Letters, To Amphilochius, CCXXXV, CCXXXVI, NPNF 2 VIII, pp. 274-79).

Since faith is the discernment of spiritual truth, faith is not sepa­rable from reasoning, rightly understood. Rather, faith is a way of reasoning out of God’s self-disclosure, assisted by grace. In faith the reasoning is directed to the things of the spirit, rather than to empir­ical data. Hence it is impossible to have faith without reasoning, or belief without any form of thinking, although our thinking is always inadequate to its infinite Subject. Since faith enlarges human vision, the logic of faith is an enlarged, not a diminished, logic (Tho. Aq., SCG 1.1-9, I, pp. 59-78).

The struggle of Christian teaching against various exaggerated rationalisms is not a struggle against reason but against the misappli­cation of reason—such as when reason is made the sole judge of revelation, or when reason completely refuses to credit true revelation. There can also be an overdependence upon speculative reasoning, or a distorted technical reason that functions without moral constraints. Hence excessive rationalisms pervert the function of reason and thereby undermine the appropriate service of reason to the study of God. Rationalism can turn into a tight and uncritical dogmatism just as religion can.

Classical Christian writers have sought to show that faith does not conflict with right reason, that there is harmony between revelation’s historical way of reasoning and reason’s respect for all the evidence, and that human reasoning is made more plausible and whole when the premise of historical revelation is received. But Christian reasoning cannot proceed without the assistance of grace and the premise of revelation.

The Data Base of Faith’s Reasoning

If authority of Scripture and tradition are objective criteria of the­ology, then faith and reason must be considered as subjective criteria, but in different ways. For as Scripture is definitive for tradition, so does faith set the context and bounds in which faith’s historical rea­soning operates.

Unless we cling to the absurdity of rejecting the benefit of any experience of any others, our reasoning must depend upon some external authority. This is true of scientific reasoning, which is de­pendent upon the consensually shared authority of induction, obser­vation, hypothecation, and deduction.

In theology, the inductive data base of experiences and observations is mediated to us from many others—countless examples of faith, suffering, martyrdom, and witness stretching over many centuries, relayed to us through unwritten and written sources. It is the lan­guage of this community’s experience with which theology has pri­marily to deal. Among the written sources are those consensually designated by the community as canonical Scripture, as authoritative witness to the revelation of God. The Holy Spirit guides the preser­vation and guarantees the trustworthiness of scriptural witness. Scrip­ture rightly interpreted remains the reliable guide to revelation upon which faith is based. Reason cannot proceed without the testimony of Scripture. Reason has its data base in Scripture as tested through tradition and experience.

However great may be the differences between philosophy and theology, as different as are reason and revelation, these two spheres are not locked in endless antagonism. One thinks in the light of natural intellect, the other in the light of God’s self-disclosure in history. Both think either toward or from the truth.

It is from a surprising quarter, seventeenth-century Lutheran Scho­lasticism, that the faith/reason relationship is most beautifully stated: “Anyone who would deny those things which are visible in a greater light because he had not seen them in the smaller, would fail to appreciate the design and benefit of the smaller, so also he who denies or impugns the mysteries of faith revealed in the light of grace, on the ground that they are incongruous with Reason and the light of nature, fails, at the same time, to make a proper use of the office and benefits of Reason and the light of nature” (Johann Gerhard, Loci II, p. 372, in DT, p. 33).

Faith’s Presentation of Evidences to Reason

The revelation given by God is addressed primarily to faith, and only in a secondary sense to reason. Faith receives the self-evidencing divine disclosure in the special certitude constituted by trust and by assurance through the Spirit. However, this same faith is then charged with the task of gaining the assent of unbelieving hearers in the world (Athenagoras, A Plea for the Chr., ANF II, pp. 123-48; Tatian, Address to the Greeks, ANF II, pp. 59-84). As faith receives revelation, so faith then seeks to pass on the evidences of revelation to others, utilizing reason where appropriate to state, clarify, and present these evidences (Augustine, Ag. the Epis. of Manichaeus I—V, NPNF 1 IV, pp. 129-31).

In addressing faith primarily, revelation addresses a human faculty seated in the human constitution, the faculty of believing. This faculty is at work, accepting the truth on sufficient evidence, wherever human knowing occurs, and especially spiritual knowing (1 Cor. 2:11-16; Heb. 7:14-25; 11:1 ff.).

Believing is that faculty that “makes us certain of realities we do not see” (Heb. 11:1). It enables the heart to recognize “the truth as it is in Jesus” (Eph. 4:21). No other human faculty is sufficiently com­petent to recognize this truth. For faith is to the unseen world what the senses are to the visible world (Maximus, Four Centuries on Charity 111.92-99, ACW 21, pp. 190-92). Faith is the eye that sees what the senses cannot see, the ear that hears what the senses do not hear. One who lacks this eye and ear “refuses what belongs to the Spirit of God; it is folly to him; he cannot grasp it, because it needs to be judged in the light of the Spirit” (1 Cor. 2:14; Gregory Nazianzen, Or. XXVIII, NPNF 2 VII, pp. 290-91).

Faith in God is not alien to the human condition, because “the Spirit of God himself is in man, and the breath of the Almighty gives him understanding” (Job 32:8). This Spirit already at work within us discerns the truth, receives its evidence, and celebrates its veracity (Augustine, On Trin. IV.22-32, NPNF 1 III, pp. 85, 95). The coming of Jesus is like the coming of a light that is offered to “enlighten every one,” even though some prefer darkness (John 1:9-12). The Revealer “knew men so well, all of them, that he needed not evidence from others about a man, for he himself could tell what was in a man” (John 2:25). Since God empathized with our limitations, he radically adapted the evidence of revelation to the human condition, so that even amid our self-assertive deceptions we might be able to recognize the truth incarnate and the Spirit of truth (John 1:14; 16:13).

One who prejudicially resists this evidence has “a distorted mind and stands self-condemned” (Titus 3:11). Such persons “defy the truth; they have lost the power to reason, and they cannot pass the tests of faith” (2 Tim. 3:8).

Faith Is a Way of Reasoning

In this way the Scriptures viewed faith as sound reason. Hence faith and reason are deeply bound and melded together in inextricable spiritual kinship. The same Spirit who has called forth faith also awakens reason to receive “the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the saints” (Col. 1:26), a mystery reason of itself cannot fathom. The evidences of God’s self-disclosure that faith recognizes, faith now calls upon reason to rec­ognize and credit. In this way the judgment of the mind is given the honor of examining the evidences of faith. While faith is raised up to receive and embrace revelation, reason is bowed low to behold its self-giving love. Faith does not despise reason, but presents those evi­dences for revelation in history that are understandable to reason (Wesley, WJW VI, pp. 351 ff.).

But what are these evidences that faith presents to reason? They are Scripture’s recollections of the divine self-disclosure in history. Through the presentation of these evidences, the believer is taught to “be always ready with your defence [pros apologian, ready to provide reasons] whenever you are called to account for the hope that is in you” (1 Pet. 3:15). Luke wrote his Gospel as “a connected narrative” (diegesin) for Theophilus, “so as to give you authentic knowledge” (epignos, Luke 1:4) of the coming of the Saviour (Luke 2:11). So every believer, and especially everyone in public ministry, needs to be sup­plied with such “authentic knowledge” to provide credible reasons concerning the reliability (asphaleian, certainty) of that in which they have been instructed (Luke 1:4). It was just such “an outline of the sound teaching which you heard from me” (2 Tim. 1:13) that Timothy was instructed to keep before him, so that the reasons for faith might be readily available to him.

The Clementine Recognitions (mid fourth century) commended the process of asking hard questions of faith, requiring faith to reason about itself:

Do not think that we say that these things are only to be received by faith.

but also that they are to be asserted by reason. It is not safe to commit these things to bare faith without reason, since assuredly truth cannot be without reason. And therefore he who has received these things fortified by reason can never lose them; whereas he who receives them without demonstrations, by an assent to a simple statement of them, can neither keep them safely, nor is certain if they are true. . . . And therefore, according as any one is more anxious in demanding a reason, by so much will he be the firmer in preserving his faith. (Recognitions 11.69, ANF VIII, p. 116)

The Trustworthiness to Which Trust Responds

Faith is not merely intellectual assent to propositions about God. Faith (pistis, fiducia) is an entrusting of oneself to someone or something that is regarded as trustable (John of Damascus, OF IV.10, NPNF 2 IX, p. 79). One can think of this by analogy by asking oneself: Who do I trust and why? To answer that question autobiographically is to reflect profoundly upon one’s relationships with others.

We learn to trust certain people because they make themselves known as trustworthy. I may live through a history together with another in which I know that whatever that person tells me will be dependable. I would never know that, hence never trust that person, unless there were a concrete history (including names, dates, and pivotal events) of trustworthiness that revealed that person’s reliability.

So it is in the Christian community, that one’s trust in time is placed in that Source and End of all things—God—as that eternal One who has become known through a historical process as unfail­ingly trustworthy. That is the story the Bible tells. The events are remembered as revealing the trustworthiness of God to Israel. The Bible witnesses to that history, to elicit that kind of trust (Ps. 40:1-4; Augustine, On the Psalms XL, NPNF 1 VIII, pp. 119-28). Such trust is not based upon abstract propositions, nor is it based upon psycholog­ical feelings about ourselves.

Christian faith is not a faith in faith. The central predicament of introverted pietism is faith based on faith itself, moving, like a dog chasing its tail, in a frustrating circle. Sound faith is based upon that which calls forth faith—a history of trustworthy relationships through which the other (human partner) or Other (divine partner) becomes somehow known as trustable. Words in themselves cannot engender that trust. It takes a history. Such a faith is not based upon projections of need or rhetoric or conceptualities, however good, but upon a history in which God has made himself known as caring partner and has shared his existence with us faithfully (Athanasius, Ag. the Arians 11.14.6-11, NPNF 2 IV, pp. 351-54; John Cassian, Conferences XIII.7-12, NPNF 2 XI, pp. 425-30).

Reasonable Acceptance of Legitimate Authority

The classical ecumenical writers argued that the acceptance of le­gitimate and reasonable authority is itself an eminently reasonable act, for both scientific and religious knowledge. When the believer trusts the church’s authority to discern and canonize Scripture, distill from it the creed, and propose a rule of faith as a guide to scriptural truth, that is viewed as a reasonable act. “It behooves us to flee to the Church, and be brought up in her bosom, and be nourished with the Lord’s Scriptures” (Irenaeus, Ag. Her. V.20.2, ANF I, p. 548).

Amid the horrors of persecution, Cyprian observed that whoever is able to call God Father, must first call the church Mother (Epistles LXXIII.7, ANF V, p. 388). If reasons appear that make it clear that the church’s judgment has become untrustworthy, or its consensual judg­ment misguided, then the believer has a duty to question that author­ity. Such a predisposition toward ecclesial trust does not imply an abandonment of reason; rather, it assumes that the community is merely providing the believer with evidence for consideration, reflec­tion, and testing against other forms of knowing. This predisposition to ecclesial trust is the very thing most lacking in the Protestant psyche; the whole basis for the Reformation being a “hermeneutic of suspicion” toward the Roman church (cf. Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy, pp. 20 ff.).

Children conditionally accept the word of their parents and teach­ers who are seeking to present them with evidence that they then can duly examine, test, and draw their own conclusions about. Educators do not normally regard that act of conditional acceptance as irrational but rather as a reasonable openness to evidence under competent guidance. It is far less reasonable to suppose that the child must begin with a consistent attitude of radical distrust, as in a “hermeneutic of suspicion,” toward those who are seeking to permit the child to ex­amine evidence.

Similarly, the knowledge received through Scripture and church tradition remains subject to further exploration, experiential confir­mation, and amendment by subsequent evidence. To depend upon Holy Writ and holy church for supplying the very evidence with which faith deals does not imply sacrifice of intellect, however, but a reason­able act of openness to evidence.

The Possibility of Faith

How is faith possible? We do not attain faith by simply saying we ought to have it; we do not logically derive it from deductive premises. Rather, faith comes by trusting in God by the power of the Spirit (Ps. 26:1). It is by faith that Abel’s sacrifice was greater than Cain’s, that Enoch was carried to another life, that Noah built the ark, that Abra­ham left Ur to go where he had never been, that Sarah conceived, that Isaac received the promises, that Moses left Egypt (Heb. 11). Faith walks by trusting and not always by seeing (cf. 2 Cor. 5:7). “Commit your life to the Lord; trust in him and he will act” (Ps. 37:5). As we learn to trust others by taking risks, so we learn to trust God, step-by-step, by risking trust. Those who will not risk small steps of trust will find the larger vision of God’s trustability implausible (Luther, Freedom of a Chr., ML, pp. 56-61).

Faith is not simply poured down our throats without any choice of our own. It is at times a risk-laden choice amid hunger, fire, war, and death. But we do not get very far reasoning about God until we somehow enter into that sphere in which faith in God’s historical revelation is taken seriously—hence the world of Scripture, of the celebrating community, of preaching and sacrament. There again and again we meet others who have taken risks in relation to that trust­worthy One, and again and again, according to their witness, God makes himself known as trustable (Cyprian, Treatises III, On the Lapsed, ANF V, pp. 437 ff.).

All this remains subject to critical reflection. A broad historical data base, imagination, and critical reason all have been richly em­ployed by historical Christianity. As we test out the trustability of God, trust is given a chance to grow. Such is the testimony of Jewish and Christian communities. It is only in the process of risking trust that God’s trustworthiness becomes credible.

Faith is indeed possible, because we know that in this community God has been trusted. Nonetheless, since faith remains a risk-laden decision, no one can do it for any one else. Just as nobody can die for anybody else, nobody can believe for another (Luther, Eight Sermons, WML II, p. 391; cf. Freedom of a Chr., ML, pp. 66, 67).

In any event, life demonstrates that faith of some kind is necessary (Theophilus, To Autolycus 1.8, ANF II, p. 91). We in fact do not live as free self-determining persons without trusting something, without casting our reliance upon something that renders our existence worth­while, plausible, and meaningful (H. R. Niebuhr, RMWC, pp. 124 ff.).

For we cannot be human beings without making choices. The very essence of choosing involves risk, and where risk is, there is some form of trust, even if misguided (Kierkegaard, Either/Or II; Judge for Yourselves!).

People admittedly can have faith in what is unreliable, or untrue, or incompletely true, or untrustworthy. It is reasonable that our faith be attached to that which is more rather than less trustworthy, that is based upon a larger rather than a smaller range of comprehensive coherence. Such a rational duty would apply to every person who has the capacity to reason. For God did not give us the capacity for reason in order that reason be abused, but used (Clement of Alex., Strom., VII.6 ff., ANF II, pp. 531 ff.).


Abbreviations


ACW Ancient Christian Writers: The Works of the Fathers in Translation. Edited by J. Quasten, J. C. Plumpe, and W. Burghardt. 44 vols. New York: Paulist Press, 1946-1985.

AF The Apostolic Fathers. Edited by J. N. Sparks. New York: Thomas Nelson, 1978.

AFT Agenda for Theology. Thomas C. Oden. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1979.

Ag. Against

Alex.  Alexandria

ANF Ante-Nicene Fathers. Edited by A. Roberts and J. Donaldson. 10 vols. 1885-1896. Reprinted ed., Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1979. Book (in Roman numerals) and chapter or section number (usually in Arabic numerals), followed by volume and page number.

Angl. Anglicanism, The Thought and Practice of the Church of England, Illustrated from the Religious Literature of the Seventeenth Century. Edited by P. E. More and F. L. Cross. London: S.P.C.K., 1935.

Apol. Apology

Apost. Const. Apostolic Constitutions. Or Constitutions of the Holy Apostles. ANF, vol. 7.

Arndt A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature. W. F. Arndt and F. W. Gingrich. (Translation of W. Bauer, 1953.) Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957.

BC The Book of Concord, (1580). Edited by T. G. Tappert. Philadelphia: Muhl-enberg Press, 1959.

BCP Book of Common Prayer (1662). Royal Breviar’s edition. London: S.P.C.K., n. d.

BPR Book of Pastoral Rule. Gregory the Great. NPNF 2 X.

BQT Basic Questions in Theology. 3 vols. W. Pannenberg. Philadelphia: West­minster Press, 1970-1973.

Brief Expl. Brief Explanation of the Ten Commandments, Creed, and Lord’s Prayer. Martin Luther„ in WML, vol. 2, pp. 351-286.

BW St. Anselm: Basic Writings. Translated by S. N. Deane. LaSalle, IL: Open Court, 1966.

BWA Basic Works of Aristotle. Edited by R. McKeon. New York: Random House, 1941.

Catech. Catechism or Catechetical

Catech. Lect. Catechetical Lectures. Cyril of Jerusalem. NPNF 2 VII. Or FC 61, 64.

CC Creeds of the Churches. Edited by John Leith. Richmond, VA: John Knox Press, 1979.

CCC Creeds, Councils, and Controversies. Edited by J. Stevenson. London: S. P. C . K. , 1966.

CD Church Dogmatics. Karl Barth. Edited by G. W. Bromiley, T. F. Torrance, et al. 4 vols. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1936-1969.

CDG The Christian Doctrine of God. William Newton Clarke. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1912.

CFS Cistercian Fathers Series. 44 vols. to date. Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Pub­lications, 1968—.

CG City of God. Augustine. NPNF 1 II.

CH Church History. Eusebius of Caesarea. NPNF 2 I. See also EH. Chr. Christian, Christians

CLRC Courtenay Library of Reformation Classics. 5 vols. Appleford, Abingdon, Berkshire, England: Sutton Courtenay Press, n.d.

COC Creeds of Christendom. Edited by P. Schaff. 3 vols. New York: Harper & Bros., 1919.

Comm. Commentary. Or Commonitory. Vincent of Lerins. NPNF 2 XI. Compend. Compendium. Or Compendium of Theology. Thomas Aquinas.

New York: Herder, 1947. Or Compendium of Christian Theology.

William Burt Pope. 3 vols. New York: Phillips and Hunt, n.d.

Concl. Unsci. Post. Concluding Unscientific Postscript. Soren Kierkegaard.

Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1944.

Conf. Confession. Or Confessions. Augustine. LCC VII. NPNF 1 I. FC 21. CPWSF Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. 24 vols. to date. London: Hogarth Press, 1953—.

Crit. Pract. Reason Critique of Practical Reason. Immanuel Kant. LLA.

CSCT A Complete System of Christian Theology. Samuel Wakefield. New York: Carlton and Porter, 1862.

CSK The Cell of Self-Knowledge. Seven Early English Mystical Treatises (including Divers Doctrines, Katherine of Seenes, and Treatise of Contemplation, Mar­gery Kempe). Edited by E. G. Gardner. New York: Duffield, 1910.

CSS Cistercian Studies Series. 68 vols. to date. Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Pub­lications, 1968—.

CTC Christianae Theologiae Compendium. Johnannes Wollebius. Edited by Ernst Bizer. Neukirchen: 1935. English translation by John Beardslee, in Reformed Dogmatics. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1977.

CUP Concluding Unscientific Postscript. Soren Kierkegaard. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1941.

CWMS Complete Writings of Menno Simons. Edited by John C. Wenger. Scott-dale, PA: Herald Press, 1956.

CWS Classics of Western Spirituality. Edited by Richard J. Payne et al. 30 vols. to date. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1978—.

CWST Complete Works of St. Teresa. Teresa of Avila. Edited by E. Allison Peers. 3 vols. London: Sheed and Ward, 1946.

DCC Documents of the Christian Church. Edited by H. Bettenson. New York: Oxford, 1956.

DG The Doctrine of God. Herman Bavinck. Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1977.

Div. Inst. Divine Institutes. Lactantius. ANF VII.

Div. Names Divine Names. Dionysius (Pseudo-Dionysius). Translated by C. E. Rolt. London: S.P.C.K., 1975.

Dogm. Dogmatic

DT Doctrinal Theology of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. Heinrich Schmid. 3d ed. Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg, 1899.

DTh Dogmatic Theology. Francis Hall. New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1907-1922.

Eccl. Ecclesiastical

ECF Early Christian Fathers. Edited by H. Bettenson. London: Oxford University Press, 1969.

ECW Early Christian Writers: The Apostolic Fathers. Translated by Maxwell Staniforth. London: Penguin Books, 1968.

EH Ecclesiastical History. Eusebius of Caesarea. FC 19, 29.

EL Everyman’s Library. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1910—.

Epis. Epistle

Elem. Theol. Dog. Elements theologiae dogmaticae. Francois Xavier Schouppe.

Brussels: H. Goemaere, 1863.

EPT Essays Philosophical and Theological. Rudolf Bultmann. New York: Macmillan, 1955.

ESS Exercitationes sacrae in symbolum. Sacred Dissertations. Hermann Witsius. Translated by D. Fraser. Utrecht: 1694. Edinburgh: A. Fullerton, 1823.

ETA Examen Theologicum Acroamaticum (1707). David Hollaz (or Hollatz). Leipzig: B. C. Brietkopf, 1763.

Exhort. Exhortation

Expos. Exposition

FC The Fathers of the Church: A New Translation. Edited by R. J. Deferrari. 69 vols. to date. Washington, DC: Catholic University Press, 1947—.

FEF The Faith of the Early Fathers. 3 vols. to date. Edited by William A. Jurgens. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1970—.

FER The Fathers for English Readers. 15 vols. London: S.P.C.K., 1878-1890.

FGG From Glory to Glory, Texts from Gregory of Nyssa’s Mystical Writings. Translated by H. Musurillo. New York: Scribner’s, 1961.

Mystical Writings. Translated by H. Musurillo. New York: Scribner’s, 1961.

GC Of God and His Creatures. Thomas Aquinas (abbreviated translation of Summa Contra Gentiles). Translated by Joseph Ricaby. Westminster, MD: Carroll Press, 1950.

Her. Heresies

Hex. Hexaemeron

Hist. History

Hom. Homilies or Homily

HPC A Harmony of Protestant Confessions. Edited by Peter Hall. London: J. F. Shaw, 1842.

Inst. Institutes of the Christian Religion. John Calvin. LCC, vols. 20, 21. References by book and chapter number.

Inst. Instruction, or The Instructor. Clement of Alexandria. ANF II.

1W The Inspired Word. Luis Alanso Schoekel. New York: Herder and Herder, 1965.

JJW Journal of John Wesley. Edited by N. Curnock. 8 vols. London: Epworth, 1938.

KC Kerygma and Counseling. Thomas C. Oden. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1978.

KJV King James Version, 1611

LACT Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology. 99 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1841-1863.

LCC The Library of Christian Classics. Edited by J. Baillie, J. T. McNiell, and H. P. Van Dusen. 26 vols. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1953-1961.

LCF The Later Christian Fathers. Edited by H. Bettenson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970.

LF A Library of Fathers of the Holy Catholic Church. Edited by E. B. Pusey, J.

Kebel, J. H. Newman, and C. Marriott. 46 vols. Oxford: J. Parker, 1838-1875.

Literal Interp. of Gen. Literal Interpretation of Genesis. Augustine. CWS.

LLA Library of Liberal Arts. Edited by Oskar Piest. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs Merrill, 1951—.

Loeb Loeb Classical Library. Edited by T. E. Page, et al. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1912—.

LPT Library of Protestant Thought. Edited by John Dillenberger. 13 vols. New York: Oxford University Press, 1964-1972.

LT Loci Theologicorum. Martin Chemnitz (1591). 3 vols. Frankfurt: N. Hoffmann, 1606.

LW Luther’s Works. Edited by J. Pelikan and H. T. Lehmann. 54 vols. to date. St. Louis, MO: Concordia, 1953—.

LXX Septuagint (Greek Old Testament)

Metaphy. Metaphysics

ML Martin Luther: Selections From His Writings. Edited by John Dillenberger. New York: Doubleday, 1961.

MPG Patrologia Graeca. Edited by J. B. Migne. 162 vols. Paris: Migne, 1857-1876.

MPL Patrologia Latina. Edited by J. B. Migne. 221 vols. Paris: Migne, 1841-1865. General Index, Paris, 1912.

MTEC Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church. Vladimir Losskii. London: J. Clarke, 1957.

MWS Ministry of Word and Sacrament: An Enchiridion. Martin Chemnitz (1595). St. Louis, MO: Concordia, 1981.

Myst. Mystical, or mystery

NBD The New Bible Dictionary. Edited by J. D. Douglas et al. London: Intervarsity, 1962.

NDM Nature and Destiny of Man. Reinhold Niebuhr. 2 vols. New York: Scribner’s, 1941, 1943.

NE A New Eusebius: Documents Illustrative of the History of the Church to A.D. 337. Edited by J. Stevenson, (based on B. J. Kidd). London: S.P.C.K., 1957.

NEB New English Bible

NIV New International Version

NPNF A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church. 1st Series, 14 vols. 2nd series, 14 vols. Edited by H. Wace and P. Schaff. References by title and book or chapter, and subsection, and NPNF series no., volume and page number. New York: Christian, 1887-1900.

OBP On Becoming a Person. Carl R. Rogers. Boston: Houghton and Mifflin, 1961.

ODCC The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. Edited by F. L. Cross. Revised by F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974.

OUED Oxford Universal English Dictionary. 10 vols. Edited by C. T. Onions. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1937.

OF On the Orthodox Faith. John of Damascus. NPNF 2 IX. FC 37.

Or. or Orat. Oration or orations

Phi. J. B. Phillips. The New Testament in Modern English.

Phil. Philosophy

Phil. Frag. Philosophical Fragments. Soren Kierkegaard. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1962.

Prescript. Prescription.

Princip. De Principiis. Origen. ANF IV, pp. 239-384.

Proslog. Proslogium. Anselm. Translated by S. N. Deane. In BW.

Prov. Providence

PSG Philosophers Speak of God. Edited by Charles Hartshorne and William L. Reese. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953.

PW Practical Works. Richard Baxter. 23 vols. London: James Duncan, 1830.

RD Reformed Dogmatics. Heinrich Heppe. Translated by G. T. Thomson. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1950.

Ref. Dogm. Reformed Dogmatics. Edited by J. W. Beardslee. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1965.

Relig. Religion

RMWC Radical Monotheism and Western Culture. H. Richard Niebuhr. New York: Harper & Bros., 1960.

RPR Readings in the Philosophy of Religion. Edited by John Mourant. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1954.

RSV Revised Standard Version

Sacr. Sacrament

SCD Sources of Christian Dogma (Enchridion Symbolorum. Edited by Henry Denzinger). Translated by Roy Deferrari. New York: Herder, 1954.

SCG On the Truth of the Catholic Faith, Summa contra Gentiles. Thomas Aquinas. 4 vols. (with sub-volumes). Referenced by book, chapter, and page number. New York: Doubleday, 1955-1957.

SDF The Sayings of the Desert Fathers. Translated by Benedicta Ward. London: A. R. Mowbray and Co., 1975.

Dennis Prager Gets God Wrong

Video Description:

(SORRY, I wanted to discuss how the “euthyphro argument” being an issue for Mormonism and not applicable to Christianity and Judaism. Dropped the ball on that one.)

Over the years I have noticed that Dennis Prager has an unhealthy view that Mormonism and Christianity worship the same God. This is not true… at all. In a recent show Prager talks about a minimalist approach to see if people worship the same God. I am a huge fan of Dennis’s, BUT, in this case he isn’t even close to being correct on an issue one would think is important for him to get right.

At any rate, I couldn’t figure out how to get some of the fade issues to sync up better, plus I need to work on the audio (a little “tiny” sounding).

Even according to thee simple parameters, the LDS god is vastly different than the Judeo-Christian concept of God. In the video I recommend two books, I will add my chapter as a resource as well:

BOOKS

AND MY CHAPTER

Infinitely Finite – Mormon Materialism

Conversations with Lemmings: Did God “Create” Evil (Isaiah 45:7)

I won’t get into the long back-and-forth that preceded this exchange. As much as I am confident it shows my own close attention to giants of thinkers that p[receded me as well as the clarity of the theistic position and the inherent implausibility and self-refuting nature of atheism… you can go to the discussion yourself and decide (you would have to be on FaceBook and “like” the group this took place in for the link to work).

Here Daniel said the following:

God being all powerful could have just as easily not created evil and permitted us free will. I am not able to imagine that which is impossible yet I still possess free will. Evil could have just as easy been one of the things I can not comprehend. Your argument is incredibly flawed.

[….]

Notice how I put came to be in “”. It’s simply referring to him being perfect from the get go from the beginning to forever. Never changing perfectly complete in every aspect. Never in need of anything.

I’m talking perfection not your flimsy anthropomorphic idea.

To which I respond in part:

He didn’t create evil. And in a previous post elsewhere you mentioned God coming into existence. You really should study the classical view of God (from Grecian times to ours). Maybe something like (I am struggling for something basic for you, because you seem not to be lifting with your legs on what I put down), Philosophy for Dummies, by Tom Morris. And, Christianity For Dummies, by Richard Wagner and Kurt Warner. [I didn’t mention this in the conversation, but the best intro to the topic of basic Christian beliefs is a book by theologian Wayne Grudem tiled “Bible Doctrine: Essential Teachings of the Christian Faith“]

Because you say stuff that paints a giant straw-man and this interferes with your conclusion.

  • Mortimer J. Adler rightly points out that while many Christians are quick in responding to the conclusions in an argument often times the Christian is unaware that the point of departure is not in the conclusion, but in the starting premise, the foundational assumptions.

Norman L. Geisler & Peter Bocchino, Unshakeable Foundations: Contemporary Answers to Crucial Questions About the Christian Faith (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 2001), 20-21.

Daniel retorted with…

Again you are wrong. Hold on I’ll be back with the verse….Isaiah 45.7

  • I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.

This verse, ISAIAH 45:7 — for context — reads:

  • I form light and create darkness, I make well-being and create calamity, I am the Lord, who does all these things. (ESV)
  • I form light and create darkness, I make success and create disaster; I, Yahweh, do all these things. (HCSB)
  • The One forming light and creating darkness, Causing well-being and creating calamity; I am the Lord who does all these. (NASB)
  • I form light and create darkness, I make harmonies and create discords. I, God, do all these things. (The Message)

Here is the Hebrew:

Isaiah 45-7 -- interlinear 690

(Click to enlarge)

Note that Daniel used the KJV, whereas most versions since 1611 translate this word/thought (“and create evil“) better due to communication and modern access to many more manuscripts. Really, the context of the preceding verses should be included… you can read it here. I reference a previous discussion of this person [probably young man] coming at any ancient text with some parameters. He made it clear that his viewpoint is the only one that mattered (implicitly at least).

I responded

I will respond to the verse… it will offer you a great opportunity to be a literary criticbut first, here is a section from Philosophy for Dummies:

ROBOTS AND COSMIC PUPPETRY: THE SCIENTIFIC CHALLENGE TO FREEDOM

Since at least the time of Sir Isaac Newton, scientists and philosophers impressed by the march of science have offered a picture of human behavior that is not promising for a belief in freedom. All nature is viewed by them as one huge mechanism, with human beings serving as just parts of that giant machine. On this view, we live and think in accordance with the same laws and causes that move all other physical components of the universal mechanism.

According to these thinkers, everything that happens in nature has a cause. Suppose then that an event occurs, which, in context, is clearly a human action of the sort that we would normally call free. As an occurrence in this universe, it has a cause. But then that cause, in turn, has a cause. And that cause in turn has a cause, and so on, and so on [remember, reductionism].

  • “Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect as well as for the star. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible player” ~ Albert Einstein.

As a result of this scientific world view, we get the following picture:

  • Natural conditions outside our control
  • cause
  • Inner bodily and brain states,
  • which cause
  • mental and physical actions

But if this is true, then you are, ultimately, just a conduit or pipeline for chains of natural causation that reach far back into the past before your birth and continue far forward into the future after your death. You are not an originating cause of anything [this includes brain activity of all degrees, that is, love, pain, etc.). Nothing you ever do is due to your choices or thoughts alone. You are a puppet of nature. You are no more than a robot programmed by an unfeeling cosmos.

Psychologists talk about heredity and environment as responsible for everything you do. But then if they are, you aren’t. Does it follow that you can then do as you please, irresponsibly? Not at all. It only follows that you will do as nature and nurture please. But then, nature on this picture turns out to be just an illusory veil over a heartless, uncaring nature. You have what nature gives you. Nothing more, nothing less.

Where is human freedom in this picture? It doesn’t exist. It is one of our chief illusions. The natural belief in free will is just a monstrous falsehood. But we should not feel bad about holding on to this illusion until science corrects us. We can’t have helped it.

This reasoning is called The Challenge of Scientific Determinism. According to determinists, we are determined in every respect to do everything that we ever do.

This again is a serious challenge to human freedom. It is the reason that the early scientist Pierre Laplace (1749-1827) once said that if you could give a super-genius a total description of the universe at any given point in time, that being would be able to predict with certainty everything that would ever happen in the future relative to that moment, and retrodict with certainty anything that had ever happened in any moment before that described state. Nature, he believed, was that perfect machine. And we human beings were just cogs in the machine, deluded in our beliefs that we are free.

(Tom Morris, Philosophy for Dummies, 133-134)

Previously I noted his view of Consciousness was ill-placed:

What merit would attach to moral virtue if the acts that form such habitual tendencies and dispositions were not acts of free choice on the part of the individual who was in the process of acquiring moral virtue? Persons of vicious moral character would have their characters formed in a manner no different from the way in which the character of a morally virtuous person was formed—by acts entirely determined, and that could not have been otherwise by freedom of choice.

Mortimer J. Adler, Ten Philosophical Mistakes (New York, NY: Touchstone, 1985), 154.

At any rate, here is my response to Daniel’s verse he quoted most-probably from an atheist website:

A historian and critic of ancient literature would ask the following questions:

  • Who was the writer?
  • To whom were they writing?
  • Is the choice of words, wording, or word order significant in this particular passage?
  • What is the cultural, historical context?
  • What was the author’s original intended meaning?
  • How did the author’s contemporaries understand him?
  • Why did he say it that way?

By doing this one shows a maturity level past taking a verse out of context. And again, you would want to give the benefit of doubt to the document [Aristotle and our court system] with the following:

1) Rule of Definition: Define the term or words being considered and then adhere to the defined meanings.
2) Rule of Usage: Don’t add meaning to established words and terms. Ask what was the common usage in the culture at that time period.
3) Rule of Context: Avoid using words out of context. Context must define terms and how words are used.
4) Rule of Historical background: Don’t separate interpretation from historical investigation.
5) Rule of Logic: Be certain that words as interpreted agree with the overall premise.
6) Rule of Precedent: Use the known and commonly accepted meanings of words, not obscure meanings for which there is no precedent.
7) Rule of Unity: Even though many documents may be used there must be a general unity among them.
8) Rule of Inference: Base conclusions on what is already known and proven or can be reasonably implied from all known facts.

[I discuss the above more in-depth here.]

So, for example, I will post one thought on the matter by CARM:

  • “We can see that the Bible teaches that God is pure and does not approve of evil and that the word, rah (evil), in Hebrew can mean many things and that contextually the verse is speaking of calamity and distress. Therefore, God does not create evil in the moral sense but in the sense of disaster or calamity.”

And from Come Reason Ministries:

  • “Evil means natural, and not moral evil, or sin. Herderson says ‘affliction, adversity’; Calvin, ‘afflictions, wars, and other adverse occurrences.’ Whichever interpretation may be adopted, none of the above texts, nor any others when properly explained, sanction the revolting proposition that God is the author of sin.”

Take hurricanes as an example. Hurricanes cause havoc, mayhem, and many times death and suffering. Yet, our planet would be dead without them (see my post where similar to you, arguments made against God end up being proof for Him.

So are you being thorough in your studies, knowing that which you refute? or are you being like the masses of uneducated voters/thinkers and just “willy nilly” taking stuff for granted and thinking you have a good argument?

Honorable mentions of resources on this verse:

Did God Create Evil – Does the Bible Say So? (Evidence for God):

Isaiah 45:7 contrasts opposites. Darkness is the opposite of light. However, evil is not the opposite of peace. The Hebrew word translated “peace” is shâlôm,2 which has many meanings, mostly related to the well being of individuals. Râ‛âh,3 the Hebrew word translated “evil” in the KJV often refers to adversity or calamity. There are two forms of the word. Strong’s H7451a most often refers to moral evil, whereas Strong’s H7451b (the form used here) most often refers to calamity or distress. Obviously, “calamity” is a better antonym of “peace” than “evil.”

Why does Isaiah 45:7 say that God created evil? (Got Questions?):

The context of Isaiah 45:7 makes it clear that something other than “bringing moral evil into existence” is in mind.

Here are a few commentaries on the verse[s]:

6. Comfort from Cyrus, God’s Anointed (Chap. 45)

45:1–6 The LORD calls Cyrus His “anointed” (the same word as “messiah” in Hebrew) because the Persian monarch was a prototype of the Messiah who would give final deliverance to His people. Jehovah promises to give him victory over nations, principally Babylon, to remove all hindrances to his conquests, and to hand over to him tremendous amounts of hidden riches in secret places. Still addressing Cyrus, the LORD speaks of Himself as the only true God, who calls Cyrus by name, who surnames him as anointed and shepherd (44:28), and who equips him for his mission. God does all this for the sake of His people, and so that the whole world may know that He alone is the LORD.

45:7 Verse 7 does not mean that God creates moral “evil,” as some have claimed, based on the King James Version and other early translations.

Delitzsch points out that the early “Christian” heretic Marcion, and the heretical Valentinians and other Gnostic sects, abused this text to teach that the God of the OT was “a different being from the God of the New.”

Addressing the problem of evil (including calamity, no doubt), Delitzsch continues, “Undoubtedly, evil as an act is not the direct working of God, but the spontaneous work of a creature endowed with freedom.”

  • William MacDonald, Believer’s Bible Commentary: Old and New Testaments, ed. Arthur Farstad (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1995), 972.

45:5–7 The Lord’s Witness to Cyrus

In the first stanza (45:5–6a) and from this center-stage position, the Lord continues to address Cyrus with the word I am the LORD. Though Cyrus does not know the Lord (cf. 45:4), the Lord knows Cyrus and equips him. I am using the word equips to refer to all of the ways in which the Lord has strengthened Cyrus (45:1–4). The goal of that equipping was to set the Judean exiles free (45:13). The equipping of Cyrus takes place so that they may knowthat there is no one besides me (45:6). It is not clear who they might be. The NIV substitutes the word men, meaning people in general. But this is conjecture. The more likely antecedent for they would be Jacob-Israel (45:4). But why would the Lord’s equipping of Cyrus make it possible for Jacob-Israel to know that there is no one besides the Lord? The answer lies at the end of 45:1–13. Cyrus will permit Jerusalem to be rebuilt; Cyrus will set the Judean exiles free (45:13). Jacob-Israel will know that the Lord has delegated power to Cyrus but that it is the LORD’s power that needs to be reckoned with.

The phrase I am the LORD opened the first stanza and now it opens the second (45:6b–7). This is followed by parallel lines describing the Lord as

forming light and creating darkness,
making peace and creating distress. (45:7 AT)

These lines employ language from Genesis 1 and 2 (forming, creating, making). In the second line the Lord lays claim to making peace as well as creating distress (ra‘). The Hebrew noun ra‘ has a range of meanings (cf. evil, KJV; disaster, NIV; woe, NRSV; calamity, JB). It is a mistake to elaborate a theology of God as the creator of evil from this text (see “Creating Evil” in TLC below).

The main point in the witness to Cyrus in 45:5–7 is the Lord’s singularity (no one else) and his activity (doing all these things). God’s power may be seen in creation and in history. God’s sovereignty is over Cyrus; Cyrus does not control God.

  • Ivan D. Friesen, Isaiah, Believers Church Bible Commentary (Scottdale, PA; Waterloo, ON: Herald Press, 2009), 277.

45:5–7. Again the uniqueness of God is stressed. The fact that there is no other is stated in verses 5–6, 14, 18, 21–22 (also see 43:11; 44:6; 46:9). In Cyrus’ day the Lord was not universally acknowledged, but eventually He will be (cf. Phil. 2:10–11). People will realize that all that happens-light (life), darkness (death), prosperity, and disaster (not “evil” as in the KJV; cf. Amos 3:6)—comes from God. As the sovereign LORD of the universe He can do everything.

  • John A. Martin, “Isaiah,” in The Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures, ed. J. F. Walvoord and R. B. Zuck, vol. 1 (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1985), 1100.

CREATION OF THE UNIVERSE

Here is a remarkable statement relative to the creation of the universe before all time. God says:

I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil, I the LORD do all these things [Isa. 45:7].

Zoroastrianism began in Persia. It teaches that Mazda is the god of light. God says He creates light, and that it is no god. The Persians were getting very close to the truth. Many have wondered why they worshiped one god in the midst of idolatry. Well, you must remember that they came in contact with the nation Israel, and Israel was a witness to the world. In Zoroastrianism darkness was Ahriman, the god of evil. God takes responsibility for creating the darkness also.

“And create evil”—the word evil does not mean wickedness in this instance, but rather “sorrow, difficulties, or tragedies”—those things which are the fruit of evil, the fruit of sin. This is the Old Testament way of saying, “The wages of sin is death …” (Rom. 6:23). If you indulge in sin, there will be a payday for it!

By the way, let me introduce something else at this point, since we are living in a day when it is said that good and evil are relative terms, that whatever you think is good, is good. The argument is put forth: The Bible says “Thou shalt not kill” and “Thou shalt not steal” (Exod. 20:13, 15). But what is the Bible? Who should obey it? Or why should we listen to the God of the Bible?

The Lord has another very cogent argument. God says that if you indulge in sin, you will find that sin has its payday. It pays a full wage, by the way. This is what God is saying through Isaiah. God has so created the universe that when you break over the bounds that He has set, you don’t need a judge, a hangman’s noose, or an electric chair; God will take care of it.

He says, therefore, that He is the One who creates light and darkness. He is answering Zoroastrianism which worshiped the god of light. God says, “I want you to know that light is no god; I created it.

  • J. Vernon McGee, Thru the Bible Commentary: The Prophets (Isaiah 36-66), electronic ed., vol. 23 (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1991), 71–72.

ISAIAH 45:7—Is God the author of evil?

PROBLEM: According to this verse, God “creates good and evil” (KJV, cf. Jer. 18:11 and Lam. 3:38; Amos 3:6). But many other Scriptures inform us that God is not evil (1 John 1:5), cannot even look approvingly on evil (Hab. 1:13), and cannot even be tempted by evil (James 1:13).

SOLUTION: The Bible is clear that God is morally perfect (cf. Deut. 32:4; Matt. 5:48), and it is impossible for Him to sin (Heb. 6:18). At the same time, His absolute justice demands that He punish sin. This judgment takes both temporal and eternal forms (Matt. 25:41; Rev. 20:11–15). In its temporal form, the execution of God’s justice is sometimes called “evil” because it seems to be evil to those undergoing it (cf. Heb. 12:11). However, the Hebrew word for evil (rā) used here does not always mean moral evil. Indeed, the context indicates that it should be translated, as the NKJV and other modern translations do, as “calamity.” Thus, God is properly said to be the author of “evil” in this sense, but not in the moral sense—at least not directly.

Further, there is an indirect sense in which God is the author of moral evil. God created moral beings with free choice, and free choice is the origin of moral evil in the universe. So, ultimately God is responsible for making moral creatures who are responsible for moral evil. God made evil possible by creating free creatures, but the free creatures made evil actual. Of course, the possibility of evil (i.e., free choice) is itself a good thing. So, God created only good things, one of which was the power of free choice, and moral creatures produced the evil. However, God is the author of a moral universe and in this indirect and ultimate sense is the author of the possibility of evil. Of course, God only permitted evil, but does not promote it, and He will ultimately produce a greater good through it (cf. Gen. 50:20; Rev. 21–22).

The relation of God and evil can be summarized this way:

GOD IS NOT THE AUTHOR OF EVIL
In the sense of sin
Moral evil
Perversity
Directly
Actuality of evil
GOD IS THE AUTHOR OF EVIL
In the sense of calamity
Non-moral evil
Plagues
Indirectly
Possibility of evil
  • Norman L. Geisler and Thomas A. Howe, When Critics Ask: A Popular Handbook on Bible Difficulties (Wheaton, Ill.: Victor Books, 1992), 271–272.

Mark 11:20-25, “Moving Mountains: Faith in Faith” (My First Sermon)

(The was originally presented in front of some really great guys on 4-15-10, tax-day)

...Introduction to this Teaching

add_toon_info.phpWhy This Post? This post was inspired by my father’s passing, caused mainly by his understanding of theology and the Bible via the Word Faith movement (WOF). These set of verses (Mark 11:20-25) are some of the most misused/misinterpreted by the WOF folks in it’s application.

  • Was it a verse meant for us? Or was it Jesus explaining to the Jewish mind who He was? Thus clearly pointing out that He was God Almighty?

My father was heavily influenced by the Word Faith movement, and by choosing these set of commonly cited verses for my teaching, I hope to do yeoman’s work in getting people to study further their faith and to point people toward Jesus and not their own works: their faith.

Keep in mind that I envision this presentation being in the middle of a series dealing with a few of the main “proof texts” for the Word Faith movement. While this is not a traditional sermon, this would be fitting for a Saturday night series or adult class series. There would also be copious amounts of overhead use for the congregation to get the most bang for their attendance.

(I will add some media, audio links, and the like to this update… because, I can.)

I do wish to recommend a well written dealing with these issues, “Sickness and Suffering in Light of Christ.”

Enjoy.

This sermon is one I am ambivalent to preach, there are not any funny stories or happy endings, merely a call to preserve “the faith once and for all given to the saints.” Before we dive in however, since it is the day we give to Caesar what is Caesars, I figured a thought experiment would be fitting:

  1. On a dark street, a man draws a knife and demands my money for drugs.
  2. Instead of demanding my money for drugs, he demands it for the Church.
  3. Instead of being alone, he is with a bishop of the Church who acts as the bagman.
  4. Instead of drawing a knife, he produces a policeman who says I must do as he says.
  5. Instead of meeting me on the street, he mails me his demand as an official agent of the government.

If the first is theft, it is difficult to see why the other four are not also theft.

A jab at high taxes aside, contending for the faith can be a grueling job, considering all the variations offered to us.

  1. What is a proper definition of faith?
  2. How can it be applied to our lives?

A sound understanding of faith may take some patience and thoughtful understanding today as we tackle just a few of the many differences between a healthy faith and the kind that leads to a very troubled praxeology (<< click to jump to definition). We will take the time here to look at some of the key concepts of a healthy faith through a verse many times misapplied. How one interprets Mark 11:20-25 will tell you a lot about a person’s understanding of faith. Again, the verse we will be reading from is Mark 11:20-25, so if you are ready we will jump in.

Early in the morning, as they were passing by, they saw the fig tree withered from the roots up. Then Peter remembered and said to Him, “Rabbi, look! The fig tree that You cursed is withered.” Jesus replied to them, “Have faith in God. I assure you: If anyone says to this mountain, ‘Be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him. Therefore I tell you, all the things you pray and ask for—believe that you have received them, and you will have them. And whenever you stand praying, if you have anything against anyone, forgive him, so that your Father in heaven will also forgive you your wrongdoing.” 

This verse is often used to make the point that OUR FAITH IS BIG ENOUGH to remove any aliment that besets us. It is often combined with another verse from Isaiah 53:5 that reads in-part, “by Your stripes we are healed.” As you will find, however, context and historical setting are key to a proper understanding of working out these types of verses into our everyday lives and the impact they have on our personal faith. We will cover just a few topics in this presentation, they are:

  1. How these verses are misused by some, and subsequently faith;
  2. we will discuss some of the Jewish cultural context and history involved;
  3. and finally, we will look at an oft overlooked interpretation of these verses.

Starting with how faith is often misused by many of the faithful, we will consider what Pastor Bob DeWaay calls anthropogenic fundamentalism.

  • The term anthropogenic fundamentalism can simply be defined for our purposes as a “man-centered faith,” rather than “God-centered faith.”

Or, man trying to capture what God only provides and make it his own.

E.W. Kenyon, sometimes called the grandfather of the Word-Faith movement, wrote a book entitled, Two Kinds of Faith, in which we find Kenyon saying that “a spiritual law few of us have recognized is that our confessions rule us.”

Kenneth Hagin, who is known as the father of the Word-Faith movement, has taken bits-and-pieces from Kenyon and well-known faith healer William Branham and ordered them into a systematic word-faith doctrine/theology, culminating in the opening of Rhema Bible Institute in 1974. Mark 11:23 was one of Hagin’s favorite verses he used to justify his,

  • creating verbalized capsules of thinking by “laws of faith” that control one’s circumstances with “formulas.” (my own definition)

This was a big-deal to him, even coining the term “have faith in your faith.”

In contradistinction Calvin says that…

  • True faith “unites us to Christ and inserts us into His body creating the bond that enables us to receive, posses, and enjoy Christ Himself.” This is Calvin’s “union with Christ by Spirit worked faith.”

True faith is God centered, and aligns us — or tries to — with God’s will. Not the other way around. There are many examples of what faith should not be, but one James Montgomery Boice mentions that can replace true faith is optimism. Which he simply defines as a “mental attitude which is to cause the thing believed in to happen.”

In this “faith in your faith” aspect, you will never hear a person graduating from Rhema pray like Christ did in Matt 26:39:

  • “My Father! If it is possible, let this cup of suffering be taken away from me. Yet I want your will to be done, not mine.”

Faith is a force & James 4 is stupid:

A.H. Strong points out that God does “not change his mind when men pray, or when they believe… as [God] fulfills his purpose by inspiring true prayer, so he fulfills his purpose by giving faith.” Finishing his thought Strong quotes Augustine, “He chooses us, not because we believe, but that we may believe….”

Amen?

You see, we want a faith that unites us to Christ and His work, nothing of ourselves. In Reformational thinking, we are not even capable of generating this kind of faith. Take note that Ephesians 2:8 ends with “it is a gift of God.” John McArthur points out that faith is included as preceding this statement. By contrast, Kenneth Hagin makes his concept of faith clear when he enumerates his understanding of Mark 11:23:


  1. He believes in his heart,
  2. He believes in his words. Another way to say this is:
  1. He has faith in his own faith . . . Having faith in your words is having faith in your faith.”

Notice this Christ-centeredness in Galatians 2:16-17 fleshed out by the International Standard Version:

“…yet we know that a person is not justified by the works of the law but by the faithfulness of Jesus Christ. We, too, have believed in Christ Jesus so that we might be justified by the faith of Christ and not by the works of the law, for no human being will be justified by the works of the law.”

According to the text in the ISV, Christ’s faith — not ours — does the justifying. It is His focus of attention, not ours, that does the work. The “onus,” the, is put into proper perspective.

As an example from one of my favorite verses, Philippians 1:6:

“I am sure of this, that He who(a) started a good work in you will(b) carry it on to completion until(c) the day of Christ Jesus.”

To be clear:

  1. HE started the Good work [salvation];
  2. HE will carry it out;
  3. HE will complete it.

This “optimism” in one’s faith that Boice warned us of, rather than a God Centered faith is really an old heresy that started with the early influence of Gnosticism on the Desert FathersIf you do not know about these mysterious persons that are so influential on the emergent version of this Gnostic heresy, here is a quick introduction.

These early Desert Fathers were small isolated communities that separated themselves in order to follow God in solitude. They were the early monks, so-to-speak, and were based primarily in the area stretching along the Nile river in Egypt.

Originally refugees during the persecution of Christian’s at the hands of the Roman’s, later, they became outposts that attracted many Christian ascetics and hermits.

About this same time and place Gnostics were busy writing their texts, the biggest find of which was at Nag Hammadi, Egypt, also along the Nile. Something, I argue, influenced some of these desert hermits greatly. For example, paleo-theologian Thomas Oden, in his Systematic Theology mentions the following:

  • Amma Theodora, one of the fourth-century ascetic Desert Mothers, recognized the principle that when “one believes one is ill” the soul tends toward illness. She tells a story of a monk who was seized by cold and fever and horrible headaches every time he began to pray. … one day she said to herself, ‘I am ill, and near to death; so now I will get up before I die and pray,” yet simply by getting up, her fever abated. Merely by doing something positive – just getting up – she was taking a step of faith that tended toward her health. (adapted)

Apologist Robert Bowman documents in his book The Word Faith-Controversy Hagin’s view of “stepping out in faith”

  • Hagin claims that since 1933 he has never had a headache. This claim should probably be taken with a grain of salt (or perhaps an aspirin!) — since, Hagin has admitted that if he did have a headache he would never tell anyone he did. … he did admit once that his “head started hurting” but claims that by telling the devil, “In the name of Jesus I do not have a headache,” the pain went away. So when Hagin says he has not had a headache or been sick since 1933, he means he has never admitted to such ailments. (adapted)

[The headache theme will come up again.] So this Mind/body dichotomy found in Eastern thinking which infected the early church in some form via Gnosticism was seemingly addressed in-part early in Paul’s ministry as documented in Corinthians 15.

Now, As some may know, others here may not, my father was deeply involved in this understanding of faith. He would routinely claim financial success and good health as a matter of habit… neither of which he ever truly possessed. A few years back he was very-very sick.

He looked and felt awful.

However, he refused to go to the hospital, instead, he spoke health and healing to his body. When he finally acquiesced to the pain that C.S. Lewis says is our body verbalizing that something is wrong, he was diagnosed with advanced colon cancer.

  • In case you do not know, colon cancer is one of the most survivable cancers one could contract today.

Rejecting his doctors advice of immediate surgery, my father found renewed vigor that he wasn’t truly sick — even yelling at me in the doctor’s office:

  • “GET BEHIND ME SATAN!!” (pointing an accusing finger at me)

In surreal fashion and doggedly claiming that this sickness was curable via faith in his faith, his body no longer allowed him the option of denial and he gave way to his doctor’s advice. Even with surgery, he had waited too long.

On October 25th, 2008, I was reading Scripture to my dad who was recently sent home with me diagnosed with two-months to live when his breathing started getting worse than it already was. I stopped reading from the Word and started to fluff the pillows and blankets surrounding my father. He managed to gasp “help” and shortly thereafter was strong enough to cry a bit…

…as…

…did I…

…all the while telling him that I loved him while wiping the drool from his mouth and the sweat from his brow.

I could not dial 911 or call for help because my father was sent home with us for this reason… to pass as comfortable as possible.

All I could do is watch my father suffocate to death. He looked scared. I suspect for a few reasons, one is man’s tendency to not want to die.

Another reason is that if your faith is connected to your health and your health fails… failing faith in God’s finished work on the cross is not far behind.

He was coming to the stark reality that his theology was flawed and death is a one-for-one statistic.

While I know the work wrought on Calvary’s Cross was bigger than my dad’s praxeology, his view of faith led to a troubled walk that stifled his connecting with God and God’s people in a healthy well balanced manner. Even shortening his own life considerably.

Let me repeat that: his view of faith led to a troubled walk that stifled his connecting with God and God’s people.

Another example of faith gone awry is told by a fellow contributor to a group blog dealing with the Word-Faith heresy. This is the story of John Edwards and his struggle to come to terms with a cultic understanding of Biblical doctrine:

After John had graduated from Rhema Bible Institute — having his degree conferred to him by Kenneth Hagin — he founded and pastored over a church for some years all the while living and teaching this formulaic view of faith.

His children were steeped in this belief system. One day his daughter fell very ill, so John and his wife brought her to the emergency room. They were told that their daughter had inoperable brain cancer.

The doctors were at a loss.

Usually this illness showed some signs that would possibly have allowed them to save her life.

John and his wife, after talking to their daughter, were horrified to learn that she had in fact been getting horrible headaches for quite some time. Staying true to her accepted theology she would dutifully rebuke these headaches and go on with her ignoring of them in light of her optimism.

Needless to say John is no longer affiliated with the Word Faith movement.

Thankfully, he is still a Christian. Praise God! (His testimony is HERE)

John touches many lives for the better after he disbanded his church and wrote on his experiences. Many, however, walk away from the faith after their disillusionment is excised through the circumstances of life.

These two stark examples ~ my own and John’s ~ are the consequences of anthropomorphic fundamentalism: making oneself god in some sense of the word by guiding your own faith rather than allowing Godly faith in.

Another important aspect that seems to be missed by these Word Faith types is that the Bible incorporates parables, poetry, wisdom, prophecy, and history. Within these categories you will find metaphors, hyperbole, symbols, and elevated language.

For instance, in Psalm 91:4 we read, “He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge.”

Obviously God the Father being Spirit, known only by God the Son, does not have literal feathers. Reading on in the verse we find it is a metaphor for God protecting us like armor — just more comfortably… metaphorically speaking.

A quick break

In Christianity it is clear that God the Father is Spirit, and does not posses a body. John 4:24 reads:

  • God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.

However, In the Word Faith cult, they change this clear teaching.

God the Father is a man:

God the Father is from another planet:

(See, Got Questions?)

Likewise, we find commonly used in the Jewish texts of the day speech about “removing mountains” as metaphorical for an “infinitely long or virtually impossible task accomplished only by the most pious of rabbi’s.”

James Brooks in his commentary on Mark mentions that Mark 11:23 may be an “allusion… to the temple mount, in which case faith in God makes the temple system obsolete.” Jesus was speaking to, directly, the “Judaizers” of His day in this “sermon” pointing to the fulfillment of his soon to be culminated mission. You see, since we are considered “priests” or “rabbi’s” in God’s new and better covenant we do not rely on our own piousness, a Priest’s standing with God, or formulas ~ but Christ’s alone.

So the question, I think, becomes this: “as priests, what types of unmovable mountains would be in the context of our offering of prayer to the object of our faith?” In Matthew 5:23-24 we find this:

“Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift.”

Let’s compare this to the passage we are reading in Mark, starting a bit into verse 24:

“…whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins.”

True faith causes good works -SO- in this salvonic understanding:

forgiveness of our brother or our enemies is often times an insurmountable task and one that shows true regeneration.

Therefore, with faith based in what God has already done for us while we were yet sinners, forgiveness of others is what we are called to.

With that PapaG’ism in mind, do not forget that this verse is connected to Christ overturning tables for a second time on the Temple Mount and cursing the fig-tree as representative of Israel’s faithlessness, another seemingly insurmountable task.

As applicable and connective as I think these comments are, there is yet another often overlooked understanding which keeps Christ firmly in context, and not us.

Again, James Brooks mentions that Jesus may have been referencing “the Mount of Olives and the Dead Sea,” the “latter being seen from the summit of the former.”

William Lane expands on this in his commentary on Mark, mentioning likewise that the,

Dead Sea is visible from the Mount of Olives and it is appropriate to take the reference to “this mountain” quite literally. An allusion may be intended to Zech. 14:4. In the eschatological day described there the Mount of Olives is to be split in two, and when the Lord assumes his kingship “the whole land shall be turned into a plain” (Zech. 14:10). The prayer in question is then specifically a Passover prayer for God to establish his reign.

Evangelical scholar Walter Elwell likewise hits on this idea:

Jesus has acted out two parables of terrible impending judgment of unbelief—the withering of the fig tree and the cleansing of the temple; now, in response to Peter’s remark, he turns to the vital component in the eschatological drama that is inexorably coming to pass, namely, faith in God. This Israel does not have, but the disciples can and must have faith if they are to participate as victors in the coming destruction of the enemy-occupied land which will split at the Mount of Olives when the terrible day comes that precedes the kingly reign of the Lord over the whole earth (so Zech. 14:1–11). Jesus urges his disciples to pray with the faith expressed in Isaiah 65:24 and participate with him in the new exodus, and so avoid the coming destruction of Jerusalem and the faithless land. But they must humbly seek forgiveness and harbor no resentment (v. 25), as Israel has not done in the presence of Jesus the Son, if they are to stand in the Father’s righteousness through this cataclysmic time.

[See these and more commentaries in the Appendix]

So like the parable of the faithful and wise servant (Luke 12:35-48), we must watch over this great gift of faith and its awesome responsibility by prayer to the object of our faith… asking for these mountains of faithlessness, self-centeredness, and our unforgiving hearts to be cleared daily by God’s word and our union with Him… always saying like John did, “come Lord Jesus, come!”

Amen?

…Amen.

Bibliography

  • Boice, James Montgomery. Foundations of the Christian Faith. Downers Grove, Illinoise: Inter Varsity Press, 1986.
  • Bowman, Robert M. The Word-Faith Controversy: Understanding the Health and Wealth Gospel. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Books, 2001.
  • Budziszewski, J. The Revenge of Conscience: Politics and the Fall of Man. Dallas, Texas: Spence Publishing, 2004.
  • Dewaay,Bob. The Emerging Church: Undefining Christianity. Saint Louise Park, Minnesota: Bob Dewaay, 2009.
  • Geisler, Norman, Thomas Howe. When Critics Ask: A Popular Handbook On Bible Difficulties. Wheaton, Illinoise: Victor Books, 1992.
  • Hall, David W., Peter A. Lillback, ed. A Theological Guide to Calvin’s Institutes: Essays and Analysis. Phillipsburg, New Jersey: P & R Publishing, 2008.
  • Hanegraaff, Hank. Christianity In Crisis: 21st Century. Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson, 2009.
  • Keener, Craig S. The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament. Downers Grove, Illinoise: Inter Varsity Press, 1993.
  • Kelly, Douglas F. Systematic Theology: The God Who Is: The Holy Trinity. Vol. 1. Ross-Shire: Christian Focus Publications, 2008.
  • Kenyon, E.W. The Two Kinds of Faith: Faith’s Secret Revealed. Lynnwood, Washington: Kenyon’s Gospel Publishing Society, 1969.
  • Lane, William L. The Gospel According to Mark. Edited by F.F. Bruce. Vol. 2. Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdman’s Publishing, 1974.
  • Lewis, C.S. The Problem of Pain. New York, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996.
  • Lewis, Gordon R., Bruce A. Demarest. Integrative Theology. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 1996.
  • MacArthur, John. The MacArthur New Testament Commentary. Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2007.
  • McConnell, D.R. A Different Gospel: Biblical and Historical Insights Into the Word of Faith Movement. Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 1995.
  • Oden, Thomas C. Systematic Theology: The Living God. Vol. 1. Peabody, Massachusettes: Hendrickson Publishers, 2006.
  • Strong, A.H. Systematic Theology. New York, New York: A.C. Armstrong and Son, 1896.
  • Yungen, Ray. A Time of Departing. 2nd. ed. Silverton, Oregon: Lighthouse Trails Publishing, 2006.


Post Script


I wanted to point out just a couple of after thoughts. The first part of the verse we read from (v. 20), there is an interesting event that is mentioned.

Something I know the Jewish mind would have surely known considering how well the pharisees knew (at least memorized) Scripture. in verse 20 we read this:

  • “Now in the morning, as they passed by, they saw the fig tree dried up from the roots.

Now let’s read from Hosea 9:16, and then from Job 18:16, respectively.

Ephraim is stricken;
their root is dried up
;
they shall bear no fruit.
Even though they give birth,
I will put their beloved children to death.
His roots dry up beneath,
and his branches wither above.

This miracle of Jesus cursing the fig-tree can be seen as one of the many instances Jesus showed Israel He was their Messiah through fulfilling of Old Testament prophecy.

Another quick thing I wish to point out is that many Bibles separate verse 25 from verses 20-24.

This shouldn’t be.

I think you can completely drop verse 26 and not include that at all, however, verses 20-25 should be looked at as a cohesive pericope.


Definition of Praxeology


Just so the reader knows how I understand this term: “right” theology into “right” action. The “Word Faith movement/theology,” “Liberation theology,” as well as “Emergent theology” distorts this interpretation. Here is a more in-depth definition:

PRAXIS AND ORTHOPRAXIS. `Praxis’ essentially means ‘action’. Traditionally, the concept refers to the application of theory or socially innovative human behaviour. Its long history begins with Aristotle but the concept achieved contemporary prominence through Marx, who used it in various ways but, most commonly, to mean revolutionary action through which the world Was changed. In theology it has gained currency through liberation theology.” Theology usually emphasizes orthodoxy, i.e., right belief or conceptual reflection on truth. Political theology balances this with an emphasis on action (praxis) and right action (orthopraxis). Gutierrez typically complains that ‘the church has for centuries devoted her attention to formulating truth and meanwhile did almost nothing to better the world’. It not only advocates action but questions whether knowledge can be detached; and it insists that truth can only be known through action. Knowing and doing are dialectically related, and right action becomes the criterion for truth. The danger is, as Miguez Bonino has observed, that theology is reduced to ethics, the vertical dimension equated with the horizontal and the concept built on Marxism. Positively, however, it can claim biblical roots. God communicates with his world, not through a conceptual frame of reference, but in creative activity; in John’s gospel knowing truth is contingent on doing it (Jn. 3:21).

[return]

Sinclair B. Ferguson, David F. Wright, J.I. Packer, eds., New Dictionary of Theology (Downers Grove, IL: InterVasity Press, 1988), 527. 


APPENDIX

(Commentaries on Mark 11:20-25)


There is good Scriptural connection that makes Mark 11:23-24 an eschatological verse. Of course rabbinical use of “moving mountains” was a phrase referring to seemingly impossible difficulties:

…But it also shows that we cannot pray in faith for anything that we like. In this matter, Jesus was “thinking God’s thoughts after him” and willing his father’s will. That sort of prayer, if asked in faith, will always be answered, for it is praying that God’s will may be done (as Jesus prayed in Gethsemane). We can only move the mountains that God wants removed, not those that we want moved. “Moving mountains” was a phrase used by the rabbis to describe overcoming seemingly impossible difficulties; we must not of course take it in the literal sense. If we pray in this way, we can give thanks for the result before we see it, for the answer is sure in the will and purpose of God.

There is one other condition for effectual prayer: we must freely forgive others, as God forgives us (25). If we do not, how could we pray “in Jesus’ name,” that is, in the way in which he would and did? This verse may indicate that Mark knew the Lord’s Prayer, though he does not record it in his gospel.

D.A. Carson, R.T. France, J.A. Motyer, and G.J. Wenham, New Bible Commentary: 21st Century Edition (Downers Grove, IL: InterVasity Press, 1997), 968.

Matthew Henry speaks to the miracle of faith, which rightfully understood, truly is one of the most miraculous of all:

Now this is to be applied, [1] To that faith of miracles which the apostles and first preachers of the gospel were endued with, which did wonders in things natural, healing the sick, raising the dead, casting out devils; these were, in effect, the removing of mountains. The apostles speak of a faith which would do that, and yet might be found where holy love was not, 1 Co. 13:2. [2] It may be applied to that miracle of faith, which all true Christians are endued with, which doeth wonders in things spiritual. It justifies us (Rom. 5:1), and so removes the mountains of guilt, and casts them into the depths of the sea, never to rise up in judgment against us, Mic. 7:19. It purifies the heart (Acts 15:9), and so removes mountains of corruption, and makes them plains before the grace of God, Zec. 4:7. It is by faith that the world is conquered, Satan’s fiery darts are quenched, a soul is crucified with Christ, and yet lives; by faith we set the Lord always before us, and see him that is invisible, and have him present to our minds; and this is effectual to remove mountains, for at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the God of Jacob, the mountains were not only moved, but removed, Ps. 114:4-7.

Matthew Henry, Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible: Complete and Unabridged in One Volume (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1996), Mk 11:12.

Whenever I read Henry I have to say “Amen.” This faith is not only miraculously accomplished, but is imported to us through the work of the Holy Spirit, as Augustine rightly notes this continuous miracle:

Whether they are going to speak before a congregation or any other body, or to dictate something to be spoken before a congregation or read by others who are able and willing to do so, speakers must pray that God will place a good sermon on their lips. If Queen Esther, when about to plead before the king for the temporal salvation of her people, prayed that God would place a suitable speech on her lips [Esther 4:16], how much more important is it for those who work for people’s eternal salvation “by teaching God’s word” [1 Tim. 5:17] to pray to receive such a gift?

Douglas F. Kelley, Systematic Theology, Volume One: The God Who Is: The Holy Trinity (Ross-shire, Scotland: Christian Focus Publications, 2008), 54.

Many of these early thinkers referenced Isaiah 7:9 which basically says this: “If you don’t take your stand in faith, you won’t have a leg to stand on.” So here we are, mentioning some good interpretations of these verses, I believe that in context with the fig tree and some of Jesus’ other teachings, we can almost see that these verses tend to speak to the end-times, one of my favorite commentaries points this out:

The Dead Sea is visible from the Mount of Olives and it is appropriate to take the reference to “this mountain” quite literally. An allusion may be intended to Zech. 14:4. In the eschatological day described there the Mount of Olives is to be split in two, and when the Lord assumes his kingship “the whole land shall be turned into a plain” (Zech. 14:10). The prayer in question is then specifically a Passover prayer for God to establish his reign. What is affirmed is God’s absolute readiness to respond to the resolute faith that prays (cf. Isa. 65:24). What distin­guishes the faith for which Jesus calls from that self-intoxication which reduces a man and his work to a fiasco is the discipline of prayer through faith. When prayer is the source of faith’s power and the means of its strength, God’s sovereignty is its only restriction. The assertion in verse 24 reiterates this assurance in more comprehensive and general terms. The man who bows his head before the hidden glory of God in the fulness of faith does so in the certainty that God can deal with every situation and any difficulty and that with him nothing is impossible (10:27).

William L. Lane, The Gospel According to Mark (New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1974), 410.

Evangelical scholar Walter Elwell likewise hits on this idea:

Jesus has acted out two parables of terrible impending judgment of unbelief—the withering of the fig tree and the cleansing of the temple; now, in response to Peter’s remark, he turns to the vital component in the eschatological drama that is inexorably coming to pass, namely, faith in God. This Israel does not have, but the disciples can and must have faith if they are to participate as victors in the coming destruction of the enemy-occupied land which will split at the Mount of Olives when the terrible day comes that precedes the kingly reign of the Lord over the whole earth (so Zech. 14:1–11). Jesus urges his disciples to pray with the faith expressed in Isaiah 65:24 and participate with him in the new exodus, and so avoid the coming destruction of Jerusalem and the faithless land. But they must humbly seek forgiveness and harbor no resentment (v. 25), as Israel has not done in the presence of Jesus the Son, if they are to stand in the Father’s righteousness through this cataclysmic time.

Walter A. Elwell, Evangelical Commentary on the Bible (electronic ed.; Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1996), Mk 11:20.

Another commentator mentions this eschatological allusion:

…Jesus was speaking generally, but there may be some allusion to the Mount of Olives (11:1) and the Dead Sea. On a clear day the latter can be seen from the summit of the former. Alternately, the allusion may be to the temple mount, in which case faith in God makes the temple system obsolete (cf. John 4:19–24).

James A. Brooks, vol. 23, Mark (electronic ed.; Logos Library System; The New American Commentary Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2001), 183.

And this great working through the verses by a favored theologian of mine:

11:21 The Fig Tree Which You Cursed Has Withered

  • ADMONITION FOR THOSE PREPARING TO BE BAPTIZED. CYRIL OF JERUSALEM: You are now being joined with the holy vine.’ If, then, you abide in the vine, you grow into a fruitful branch, but if you do not so abide, you will be burnt in the fire. Let us therefore bring forth worthy fruit. For let it not come about that it should happen to us what happened to the barren fig tree in the Gospel.’ Let not Jesus come in these days and utter the same curse upon the fruitless. But instead may all of you say, “I am like a green olive tree in the house of God.”

11:23 Whoever Does Not Doubt in His Heart but Believes

  • THE POWER OF PRAYER. CHRYSOSTOM: Prayer is an all-efficient panoply, a treasure undiminished, a mine never exhausted, a sky unobstructed by clouds, a haven unruffled by storm. It is the root, the fountain, and the mother of a thousand blessings. It exceeds a monarch’s power…. I speak not of the prayer which is cold and feeble and devoid of zeal. I speak of that which proceeds from a mind outstretched, the child of a contrite spirit,’ the offspring of a soul converted—this is the prayer which mounts to heaven…. The power of prayer has subdued the strength of fire, bridled the rage of lions, silenced anarchy, extinguished wars, appeased the elements, expelled demons, burst the chains of death, enlarged the gates of heaven, relieved diseases, averted frauds, rescued cities from destruction, stayed the sun in its course, and arrested the progress of the thunderbolt. In sum prayer has power to destroy whatever is at enmity with the good. I speak not of the prayer of the lips, but of the prayer that ascends from the inmost recesses of the heart.

11:24 Believe That. You Will Receive It and You Will

  • FULL CONFIDENCE. JOHN CASSIAN: While we are praying, there should be no hesitation that would intervene or break down the confidence of our petition by any shadow of despair. We know that by pouring forth our prayer we are obtaining already what we are asking for. We have no doubt that our prayers have effectually reached God.’ For to that degree that one believes that he is regarded by God, and that God can grant it, just so far will one be heard and obtain an answer

11:23 It Will Be Done for Him

  • DIVINE GIVING AND HUMAN WILLING. AUGUSTINE: Note that Jesus said “for him,” not “for me,” and not “for the Father.” Yet it is certain that no human being does such a thing without God’s gift and workings. Mark well that even if no actual instances of perfect righteousness may be found among humans, that does not rule out perfect righteousness as if it were formally impossible. For it might have been realized if only sufficient responsive willing had been applied, enough to suffice for so great a deed.

Thomas C. Oden and Christopher A. Hall, eds., Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: New Testament II, Mark (Downers Grove, IL: InterVasity Press,1998), 162-163.

Keeping Our Christian Identity Through “Seders”

Walk With Me

This is a topic I taught on at church, and it is a simple way to preach the Gospel to yourself. There are 5 categories:

  1. We are Sinners;
  2. We are Judged for this sin;
  3. We are Forgiven;
  4. This forgiveness creates a Relational aspect with our God;
  5. Which brings Joy in every situation we face.

In our busy schedules choose a single verse from each section and on Monday study that single verse about our sinful nature. Use an online resource such as Blue Letter Bible to read a commentary on it or Bible Gateway to read a version you haven’t read of the verse. (Or one of your home resources… whatever the case may be.) On Tuesday take a verse on forgiveness (mine, or one that has hit a cord with you over the years). Etc.

By Friday, T.G.I.F. takes on a new meaning. The following week, do the same, but with a different verse. Habits.

WE ARE CALLED TO CHECK IN

A verse that calls us to “check in” so-to-speak, is 2 Corinthians 13:5 ~ I will read from a paraphrase of this verse, however, feel free to click on the link below to see the paraphrase next to my favorite versions:

2Corinthians 13:5’ish

Test yourselves to make sure you are solid in the faith. Don’t drift along taking everything for granted. Give yourselves regular checkups. You need firsthand evidence, not mere hearsay, that Jesus Christ is in you. Test it out. If you fail the test, do something about it. I hope the test won’t show that we have failed. But if it comes to that, we’d rather the test showed our failure than yours. We’re rooting for the truth to win out in you. We couldn’t possibly do otherwise.

We don’t just put up with our limitations; we celebrate them, and then go on to celebrate every strength, every triumph of the truth in you. We pray hard that it will all come together in your lives.

Even one of the greatest Repormers mentioned this “preaching the Gospel to ourselves” aspect of our faith: “We need to hear the Gospel every day, because we forget it every day” ~ Martin Luther.

ALL HAVE SINNED (#1)

  • Proverbs 21:2 ~ “Every way of a man is right in his own eyes, but the LORD weighs the heart.”
  • Proverbs 16:2 ~ “All a man’s ways seem right to him, but the LORD evaluates the motives.”
  • 1 Samuel 16:7 ~ “Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.”

2 things to glean from these:

1. Divine involvement in man’s heart is not limited to kings or priests;

2. A person may think nothing is wrong with his conduct, ahem, but God may.

Here we read a quick insight gleaned from Matthew Henry (Matthew 23:27-28)

The proud heart is very ingenious in putting a fair face upon a foul matter, and in making that appear right to itself which is far from being so, to stop the mouth of conscience. ~ Matthew Henry

How many righteous persons are there?

  • Romans 3:10 ~ “There is no one righteous, not even one.”

Bill Cosby teaches us about this malady we have from the earliest age (and he is a debased sinner as well, in need of a savior):

As an aside. Something that Bill Cosby said above struck a cord with me. He mentioned that the only time a child tells the truth is when they are in pain. So do we ~ often times ~ as adults. Here is the C.S. Lewis quote that came to me when I watched this:

We can rest contentedly in our sins and in our stupidities, and anyone who has watched gluttons shoveling down the most exquisite foods as if they did not know what they were eating, will admit that we can ignore even pleasure. But pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.

C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (NY, New York: Touchstone, 1996), 82-83.

Let us take a short historical theology break and read a few points from the 1689 London Baptist Confession:

4 The actual sins that men commit are the fruit of the corrupt nature transmitted to them by our first parents. By reason of this corruption, all men become wholly inclined to all evil; sin disables them. They are utterly indisposed to, and, indeed, rendered opposite to, all that is good. (Matt. 15:19; Rom. 8:7; Col. 1:21; Jas. 1:14.)

5 During this earthly life corrupt nature remains in those who are born of God, that is to say, regenerated. Through Christ it is pardoned and mortified, yet both the corruption itself, and all that issues from it, are truly and properly sin. (Eccles. 7:20; Rom. 7:18,23-25; Gal. 5:17; 1 John 1:8.)

Hank Hanegraaff explains WHAT sin is and is not:

R.C. Sproul, a theologian of report, helps us define what TOTAL and UTTER “depravity” means:

There is a distinction which I have found to be helpful: total depravity does not mean utter depravity. Utter depravity would mean that every human being is as wicked as it is possible to be, and we know that this is not the case. As much as we sin, we can always contemplate sinning more often, or more grievously than we presently do.

While some will not support my posting of this next video by Mark Driscoll… I understand. But he has done a lot of good explaining of core doctrine that assists us in understanding concepts, like, TOTAL DEPRAVITY:

  • Jeremiah 17:9 ~ “The heart is more deceitful than anything else, and incurable – who can understand it?”

Sproul has a wonderful ministry, and he [Sproul] has asked ~ rhetorically ~ how: anyone could be involved in believing in the value of human worth and at the same time believing in TOTAL depravity? He responds:

The very fact that Calvinists take sin so seriously is because they take the value of human beings so seriously. It is because man was made in the image of God, called to mirror and reflect God’s holiness, that we have the distinction of being the image-bearers of God.

But what does ‘total depravity’ mean? Total depravity means simply this: that sin affects every aspect of our human existence: our minds, our wills and our bodies are affected by sin. Every dimension of our personality suffers at some point from the weight of sin that has infected the human race.

“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it was necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”

― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

SENTENCED! (#2)

  • Leviticus 5:17 ~ “If someone sins and without knowing it violates any of the Lord’s commands concerning anything prohibited, he bears the consequences of his guilt.”

...GUILT

Modern persons think “guilt” is a matter of feelings;

The Bible treats guilt as a fact.

In the O.T. guilt has three aspects.

(1) There is an act which brings guilt;
(2) There is the condition of guilt which follows the act;
(3) There is punishment appropriate to the act.

In the N.T., guilt is a judicial concept. The Greek word/idea is drawn from the courts, and emphasize liability to punishment. The guilty person has been:

(1) accused;
(2) tried;
(3) and convicted.

Both Testaments view acts which bring guilt as the end result of offenses against God. (See: Heb. 9:11–28 for the legal answer to this predicament)

  • Romans 6:23(a) ~ “For the wages of sin is death….

This is the summary of the entire chapter. Paul painted the choice in black and white. The choice is ours—sin and death or free grace through Christ and eternal life. It is very similar to the “two ways” of OT wisdom literature (Ps. 1; Prov. 4; 10–19; Matt. 7:13–14).

And, we must always keep in mind that we are judged righteously by our Triune God:

Never put someone to death unless 2 or 3 witnesses:

“But never put a person to death on the testimony of only one witness. There must always be two or three witnesses” (Deuteronomy 17:6); “For anyone who refused to obey the law of Moses was put to death without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses” (Hebrews 10:28).

FORGIVEN (#3)

Galatians 2:16-17 (<< link to the HCSB version. Below is the ISV)

“…yet we know that a person is not justified by the works of the law but by the faithfulness of Jesus Christ. We, too, have believed in Christ Jesus so that we might be justified by the faith of Christ and not by the works of the law, for no human being will be justified by the works of the law.” (International Standard Version [ISV])

— According to the text in the ISV, Christ’s faith — not ours — does the justifying. It is His focus of attention, not ours, that does the work. (The “onus” then is put in proper perspective.) As an example from one of my favorite verses, Philippians 1:6:

“I am sure of this, that He who (a) started a good work in you will (b) carry it on to completion until the (c) day of Christ Jesus.”

To be clear:

(a) HE started the Good work [salvation];
(b) He will carry it out;

(c) He will complete it.

It is ALL a work of Christ!

In-other-words, we will join the 24-elders in Revelation in throwing our crowns at Jesus feet, for all the good “WE” did was in actually Him working through us by even creating these… good works in our heart, and the will and drive to do them for His glory:

“There will be no jarring note in Heaven, no whisper of human merit, no claim of a reward for good intentions—but every crown shall be cast at Jesus’ feet and every voice shall join in the ascription, ‘Not unto us, not unto us, but unto Your name be all the glory of the salvation which You have worked out for us from first to last.’” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

The Imperishable Crown (1 Cor 9:24-24) — The Crown of Rejoicing (1 Thess 2:19) — The Crown of Righteousness (2 Timothy 4:8) — The Crown of Glory (1 Peter 5:4) — The Crown of Life (Revelation 2:10)

  • Romans 6:23(b) — “but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

For those that do not know, I am a three-time convicted felon from many years ago. I like to say I am a retired felon. While in Jail I had to realign drastically the direction I had traveled. I didn’t realize it then, but I was preaching the Gospel to myself by studying Hosea. The Lord told the prophet — literally —

  • “Go, take to yourself a wife who will prove to be unfaithful.”

And if you think about it, we are all unfaithful to God in some way: “We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19). And we break our marriage contract with the Lord, it is the Lord who is faithful and bridges the gap we cannot:

“The LORD said to me, ‘Go, show your love to your wife again, though she is loved by another man and is an adulteress. Love her as the LORD loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods and love the sacred raisin cakes'” (Hosea 3:1).

[David offered raisin cakes to the starving (1 Sam 30:11-12); at the celebration of the return of the Ark of the Covenant (2 Sam 6:18-19); Abigail made for David’s troops (1 Sam 25:18). What was once good in the Lord’s eyes man will surely corrupt.]

  • Jeremiah 15:19(a,b) ~ “Therefore, this is what the LORD says: ‘If you return, I will restore you‘”

This implies we will fail, and He knew it, and yet chose us.

George Gilder enumerates a law that goes well with the Refiners Fire hymn. In an Interview with Dennis Prager Mr. Gilder enumerated a law of Information Theory*, and thus economics:

“A fundamental principle of information theory is that you can’t guarantee outcomes… in order for an experiment to yield knowledge, it has to be able to fail. If you have guaranteed experiments, you have zero knowledge”

*(the mathematical theory concerned with the content, transmission, storage, and retrieval of information, usually in the form of messages or data, and especially by means of computers)

Zechariah 13:9;
Job 23:10;
Isaiah 48:10;
1 Peter 1:7.

Notes on 1 Peter 1:7

a) Peter  was not backslidden or apathetic;
b) It was Paul’s general encouragement to fan the flame/keep the fire burning brightly

How?

  • 2 Corinthians 4:16 ~ Therefore we do not give up. Even though our outer person is being destroyed, our inner person is being renewed day by day.

“…renewed day by day.” Almost like a Jewish Seder which Paul would have been familiar with. Like the Passover Seder, for instance, that helped keep the identity of the Jewish nation for almost 3-millinea, we need habits that keep our identity as owned by Christ, daily. Are we equipped for the task?

“…but one of power, love, and sound judgment.” We have “to take some responsibility in that renewal. The continual brightening of the inner flame that God has given to us is related to God’s own equipment for us. God does not equip us with weakness, but with power. He does not equip us with hatred, but with love. He does not equip us with self-destruction, but with self-discipline.”

  • Romans 8:15 — “For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption, by whom we cry out, “Abba, Father!”

John Calvin, the great Reformer, says this of the above Romans thinking:

He now confirms the certainty of that confidence, in which he has already bidden the faithful to rest secure; and he does this by mentioning the special effect produced by the Spirit; for he has not been given for the purpose of harassing us with trembling or of tormenting us with anxiety; but on the contrary, for this end—that having calmed every perturbation [(pûr’tər-bā’shən) mental disquiet, disturbance, or agitation], and restoring our minds to a tranquil state, he may stir us up to call on God with confidence and freedom. He does not then pursue only the argument which he had before stated, but dwells more on another clause, which he had connected with it, even the paternal mercy of God, by which he forgives his people the infirmities of the flesh and the sins which still remain in them. He teaches us that our confidence in this respect is made certain by the Spirit of adoption, who could not inspire us with confidence in prayer without scaling to us a gratuitous pardon: and that he might make this more evident, he mentions a twofold spirit; he calls one the spirit of bondage, which we receive from the law; and the other, the spirit of adoption, which proceeds from the gospel. The first, he says, was given formerly to produce fear; the other is given now to afford assurance. By such a comparison of contrary things the certainty of our salvation, which he intended to confirm, is, as you see, made more evident. The same comparison is used by the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews [Hebrews 12:18], where he says, that we have not come to Mount Sinai, where all things were so terrible, that the people, being alarmed as it were by an immediate apprehension of death, implored that the word should be no more spoken to them, and Moses himself confessed that he was terrified; “but to [Z]ion, the mount of the Lord, and to his city, the heavenly Jerusalem, where Jesus is, the Mediator of the New Testament.”

MARTIN LUTHER tells us we have to preach this to ourselves constantly… because it is SUCH GREAT NEWS we seem to view it as unbelievable:

Grace in the Reformation

Luther’s Reformation message of salvation by grace alone could hardly have looked more different when compared with that old pre-Reformation teaching of his about salvation by grace. This is how he began to talk: “He is not righteous who does much, but he who, without work, believes much in Christ.”4 Here grace is not about God’s building on our righteous deeds or helping us to perform them. God, Luther began to see, was the one “who justifies the ungodly” (Rom. 4:5), not one who simply recognizes and rewards those who manage to make themselves godly. God is not one who must build on our foun­dations; he creates life out of nothing. It meant that, instead of looking to God for assistance and then ultimately relying on himself, Luther was turning to rely entirely on Christ, in whom all righteousness is achieved. “The law says, ‘do this,’ and it is never done. Grace says, ‘believe in this,’ and everything is already done.”

Here Luther found a message so good it almost seemed incredible to him. It was good news for the repeated failure, news of a God who comes not to call the righteous but sinners (Matt. 9:13). Not many today find themselves wearing hair shirts and enduring all-night prayer vigils in the freezing cold to earn God’s favor. Yet deep in our psyche is the assumption that we will be more loved when (and only when) we make ourselves more attractive—both to God and to others. Into that, Luther speaks words that cut through the gloom like a glorious and utterly unexpected sunbeam:

The love of God does not find, but creates, that which is pleasing to it…. Rather than seeking its own good, the love of God flows forth and bestows good. Therefore sinners are attractive because they are loved; they are not loved because they are attractive.

In Reformation thought, grace was no longer seen as being like a can of spiritual Red Bull. It was more like a marriage. In fact when Luther first sought to explain his Reformation dis­covery in detail to the world, it was the story of a wedding that framed what he said. Drawing on the romance of the lover and his beloved in Song of Solomon (especially 2:16, “My beloved is mine, and I am his”), he told the gospel as the story of the “rich and divine bridegroom Christ” who “marries this poor, wicked harlot, redeems her from all her evil, and adorns her with all his goodness.” At the wedding a wonderful exchange takes place whereby the king takes all the shame and debt of his bride, and the harlot receives all the wealth and royal status of her bridegroom. For Jesus and the soul that is united to him by faith, it works like this:

Christ is full of grace, life, and salvation. The soul is full of sins, death, and damnation. Now let faith come between them and sins, death, and damnation will be Christ’s, while grace, life, and salvation will be the soul’s; for if Christ is a bridegroom, he must take upon himself the things which are his bride’s and bestow upon her the things that are his. If he gives her his body and very self, how shall he not give her all that is his? And if he takes the body of the bride, how shall he not take all that is hers?

In the story the prostitute finds that she has been made a queen. That does not mean she always behaves as befits royalty but, however she behaves, her status is royal. She is now the queen. So it is with the believer: she remains a sinner and con­tinues to stumble and wander, but she has the righteous status of her perfect and royal bridegroom. She is—and until death will remain—at the same time both utterly righteous (in her status before God) and a sinner (in her behavior).

That means that it is simply wrong-headed for the believer to look to her behavior as an accurate yardstick of her righ­teousness before God. Her behavior and her status are distinct.

The prostitute will grow more queenly as she lives with the king and feels the security of his love, but she will never become more the queen. Just so, the believer will grow more Christlike over time, but never more righteous. Thus, because of Christ, and not because of her performance, the sinner can know a despair-crushing confidence.

Her sins cannot now destroy her, since they are laid upon Christ and swallowed up by him. And she has that righ­teousness in Christ, her husband, of which she may boast as of her own and which she can confidently display alongside her sins in the face of death and hell and say, “If I have sinned, yet my Christ, in whom I believe, has not sinned, and all his is mine and all mine is his.”

For the rest of his life Luther took this message as good news that needs continually to be reapplied to the heart of the believer. From his own experience he found that we are so in­stinctively self-dependent that while we happily subscribe to salvation by grace, our minds are like rocks, drawn down by the gravitational pull of sin away from belief in grace alone. So he counseled his friend as follows:

They try to do good of themselves in order that they might stand before God clothed in their own virtues and merits. But this is impossible. Among us you were one who held to this opinion, or rather, error. So was I, and I am still fighting against the error without having con­quered it as yet.

Therefore, my dear brother, learn Christ and him cruci­fied. Learn to pray to him and, despairing of yourself, say: “Thou, Lord Jesus, art my righteousness, but I am thy sin. Thou hast taken upon thyself what is mine and hast given to me what is thine. Thou hast taken upon thyself what thou wast not and hast given to me what I was not.”

  • Michael Reeves and Tim Chester, Why The Reformation Still Matters (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2016), 84-88.

RELATIONAL (#4)

Okay, what does “forgiven” mean? And, how does this change our position with God?

We have all heard the famous saying, “Mercy is not getting what you deserve. And grace is getting what you absolutely do not deserve.” This comes in part from Hebrews 4:16:

“Therefore let us approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us at the proper time.”

“At the proper time” is a colloquial saying of the day that means “just in the nick of time.” The Believer’s Bible Commentary says this of the Hebrews verse:

Now the gracious invitation is extended: draw near with confidence to the throne of grace. Our confidence is based on the knowledge that He died to save us and that He lives to keep us. We are assured of a hearty welcome because He has told us to come.

….We can go into His presence at any time of the day or night and obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. His mercy covers the things we should not have done, and His grace empowers us to do what we should do but do not have the power to do.

In Genesis 8 when Noah sacrificed clean animals to God, “the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma.” Christ is the last Adam, thee final sacrifice that ends all sacrificial offerings, and we see in 2 Corinthians 2:15 the “…we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing.” You see, we are covered in Christ’ offering and are thus pleasing to God.

…Segue

Step Into Supernatural Joy

How should we respond to this idea in Psalm 30:5?

For His anger lasts only a moment,
but His favor, a lifetime.
Weeping may spend the night,
but there is joy in the morning.

JOYFULNESS (#5)

Indeed, God is my salvation;

I will trust Him and not be afraid,

for Jehovah, the Lord,

is my strength and my song.

He has become my salvation.”

You will joyfully draw water

from the springs of salvation,

and on that day you will say:

Give thanks to Yahweh; proclaim His name!

Celebrate His works among the peoples.

Declare that His name is exalted.

Sing to Yahweh, for He has done glorious things.

(Isaiah 12:1-6)

The God of Glory

How blessed is God! And what a blessing he is! He’s the Father of our Master, Jesus Christ, and takes us to the high places of blessing in him. Long before he laid down earth’s foundations, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love, to be made whole and holy by his love. Long, long ago he decided to adopt us into his family through Jesus Christ. (What pleasure he took in planning this!) He wanted us to enter into the celebration of his lavish gift-giving by the hand of his beloved Son.

(Ephesians 1:3–6)

Even in failure and time of testing and trials we have a line to divine joy. Consider James 1:2-4:

Consider it a great joy, my brothers, whenever you experience various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. But endurance must do its complete work, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking nothing. (HCSB) Consider it a sheer gift, friends, when tests and challenges come at you from all sides. You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colors. So don’t try to get out of anything prematurely. Let it do its work so you become mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way. (The Message)

Of verse two my first owned (and still a favorite of mine) commentary says this:

The Christian life is filled with problems. They come uninvited and unexpected. Sometimes they come singly and sometimes in droves. They are inevitable. James does not say “if you fall into various trials” but when. We can never get away from them. The question is, “What are we going to do about them?”

There are several possible attitudes we can take toward these testings and trials of life. We can rebel against them (Heb. 12:5) by adopting a spirit of defiance, boasting that we will battle through to victory by our own power. On the other hand, we can lose heart or give up under pressure (Heb. 12:5). This is nothing but fatalism. It leads to questioning even the Lord’s care for us. Again, we can grumble and complain about our troubles. This is what Paul warns us against in 1 Corinthians 10:10. Another option—we can indulge in self-pity, thinking of no one but ourselves, and trying to get sympathy from others. Or better, we can be exercised by the difficulties and perplexities of life (Heb. 12:11). We can say, in effect, “God has allowed this trial to come to me. He has some good purpose in it for me. I don’t know what that purpose is, but I’ll try to find out. I want His purposes to be worked out in my life.” This is what James advocates: “My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials.” Don’t rebel! Don’t faint! Rejoice! These problems are not enemies, bent on destroying you. They are friends which have come to aid you to develop Christian character.

God is trying to produce Christlikeness in each of His children. This process necessarily involves suffering, frustration, and perplexity. The fruit of the Spirit cannot be produced when all is sunshine; there must be rain and dark clouds. Trials never seem pleasant; they seem very difficult and disagreeable. But afterwards they yield the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who are trained by them (Heb. 12:11). How often we hear a Christian say, after passing through some great crisis, “It wasn’t easy to take, but I wouldn’t give up the experience for anything.”

William MacDonald, Believer’s Bible Commentary: Old and New Testaments, ed. Arthur Farstad (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1995), 2218.

In another commentaries summing up of verse three, we see perseverance is key to our joy as well, but this takes time and is something not magically infused at the outset:

But James’s readers knew the good reason God allows such trials (v. 3). God intends for them to result in a mature and complete faith; perseverance is faith’s first product. But perseverance is not a minimal virtue. Rather, it is elemental to that fortitude of the soldier who braves all in his life-and-death struggle on the field of combat. Praised by Paul (1 Thess 1:3) and by the author of Revelation (cf. 14:12), perseverance characterizes the godly both before and after Christ. The gradual and painful acquisition of this virtue is also unmistakable. Perseverance, though essential to faith, is not infused immediately in a moment of conversion. Only through great ardor and the stumbling pursuit of the goal laid before it and only through sustained service in spite of opposition does perseverance come.

Kurt A. Richardson, James, vol. 36, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1997), 61–62.

Paul surely knew by heart this verse:

My lips will shout for joy
when I sing praise to You
because You have redeemed me.

(Psalm 71:23)

We should then have a definition of o-u-r-s-e-l-v-e-s… as Christians, that bring to bear the gift we should now be celebrating, here, Martin Luther in his Commentary on Galatians, offers a good definition of a Christian. In this definition we see the totality of the above study of Romans Road ~ exemplified:

“We therefore make this definition of a Christian: a Christian is not he who hath no sin, but he to whom God imputeth not his sin, through faith in Christ. That is why we so often repeat and beat into your minds, the forgiveness of sins and imputation of righteousness for Christ’s sake. Therefore when the law accuseth him and sin terrifieth him, he looketh up to Christ, and when he hath apprehended Him by faith, he hath present with him the conqueror of the law, sin, death, and the devil: and Christ reigneth and ruleth over them, so that they cannot hurt the Christian. So that he hath indeed a great and inestimable treasure, or as St. Paul saith: ‘the unspeakable gift’ (2 Cor. ix. 15), which cannot be magnified enough, for it maketh us the children and heirs of God. This gift may be said to be greater than heaven and earth, because Christ, who is this gift, is greater.”

A “summation” of the above:

Concepts: Life and Death Matters (Misdefining God’s Attributes)

Firstly, as I am want to point out, John Van Huizum often gets ideas, precepts, and others understanding of a subject woefully wrong. Take for instance this small portion of a recent article by him entitled “A Question of Life and Death” (click to enlarge). 

“These words” in John’s limited understanding ~ wrongly attributing to God ~ that no “clergy” themselves attribute to God are the crux of the issue. And I do not post the many excerpts to follow to prove John wrong. I post them in the hopes that John reads what most clergy themselves study. Enjoy this seminary level reaction to attributing to God one’s own ignorance of a topic:

God’s Love and Justice—A Point of Tension?

We have looked at many characteristics of God, without exhausting them by any means. But what of the interrelationships among them? Presumably, God is a unified, integrated being whose personality is a harmonious whole. There should be, then, no tension among any of these attributes. But is this really so?

The one point of potential tension usually singled out is the relation­ship between God’s love and his justice. On one hand, God’s justice seems so severe, requiring the death of those who sin. This is a fierce, harsh God. On the other hand, God is merciful, gracious, forgiving, long-suffering. Are not these two sets of traits in conflict with one an­other? Is there, then, internal tension in God’s nature?[10]

If we begin with the assumptions that God is an integrated being and the divine attributes are harmonious, we will define the attributes in the light of one another. Thus, justice is loving justice and love is just love. The idea that they conflict may have resulted from defining these at­tributes in isolation from one another. While the conception of love apart from justice, for example, may be derived from outside sources, it is not a biblical teaching.

What we are saying is that love is not fully understood unless seen as including justice. If love does not include justice, it is mere senti­mentality. The approach that would define love as merely granting what someone else desires is not biblical. It runs into two difficulties: (1) Giving someone what would make him or her comfortable for the moment may be nothing more than indulging that person’s whim—such action may not necessarily be right. (2) This is usually an emo­tional reaction to an individual or situation that is immediately at hand. But love is much wider in scope—it necessarily entails justice, a sense of right and wrong, and all humankind. As Joseph Fletcher has correctly shown, justice is simply love distributed.[11] It is love to all one’s neighbors, those immediately at hand and those removed in space and time. Justice means that love must always be shown, whether or not a situation of immediate need presents itself in pressing and vivid fashion. Love in the biblical sense, then, is not merely to in­dulge someone near at hand. Rather, it inherently involves justice as well. This means there will be a concern for the ultimate welfare of all humanity, a passion to do what is right, and enforcement of appropri­ate consequences for wrong action.

Actually, love and justice have worked together in God’s dealing with the human race. God’s justice requires that there be payment of the penalty for sin. God’s love, however, desires humans to be restored to fellowship with him. The offer of Jesus Christ as the atonement for sin means that both the justice and the love of God have been maintained.

And there really is no tension between the two. There is tension only if one’s view of love requires that God forgive sin without any payment being made. But that is to think of God as different from what he really is. Moreover, the offer of Christ as atonement shows a greater love on God’s part than would simply indulgently releasing people from the consequences of sin. To fulfill his just administration of the law, God’s love was so great that he gave his Son for us. Love and justice are not two separate attributes competing with one another. God is both righ­teous and loving, and has himself given what he demands.[12]

[10] Nels Ferre, The Christian Understanding of God (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1951), pp. 227-28.

[11] Joseph Fletcher, Situation Ethics: The New Morality (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1966), pp. 86-102.

[12] William G. T. Shedd, Dogmatic Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1971 re­print), vol. 1, pp. 377-78.

Millard J. Erickson, Christian Theology, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books/Academic, 1998), 323-325.

II. GOD THE REDEEMER OF SINNERS

While reiterating the teaching of nature as to the existence and character of the personal Creator and Lord of all, the Scriptures lay their stress upon the grace or the undeserved love of God, as exhibited in his dealings with his sinful and wrath-deserving creatures. So little, however, is the consummate divine attribute of love advanced, in the scriptural revelation, at the expense of the other moral attributes of God, that it is thrown into prominence only upon a background of the strongest assertion and fullest manifestation of its companion attributes, especially of the divine righteousness and holiness, and is exhibited as acting only along with and in entire harmony with them. God is not represented in the Scriptures as forgiving sin because he really cares very little about sin; nor yet because he is so exclusively or predominatingly the God of love, that all other attributes shrink into desuetude in the presence of his illimitable benevolence. He is rather represented as moved to deliver sinful man from his guilt and pollution because he pities the creatures of his hand, immeshed in sin, with an intensity which is born of the vehemence of his holy abhorrence of sin and his righteous determination to visit it with intolerable retribution; and by a mode which brings as complete satisfaction to his infinite justice and holiness as to his unbounded love itself. The biblical presentation of the God of grace includes thus the richest development of all his moral attributes, and the God of the Bible is consequently set forth, in the completeness of that idea, as above everything else the ethical God. And that is as much as to say that there is ascribed to him a moral sense so sensitive and true that it estimates with unfailing accuracy the exact moral character of every person or deed presented for its contemplation, and responds to it with the precisely appropriate degree of satisfaction or reprobation. The infinitude of his love is exhibited to us precisely in that while we were yet sinners he loved us, though with all the force of his infinite nature he reacted against our sin with illimitable abhorrence and indignation. The mystery of grace resides just in the impulse of a sin-hating God to show mercy to such guilty wretches; and the supreme revelation of God as the God of holy love is made in the disclosure of the mode of his procedure in redemption, by which alone he might remain just while justifying the ungodly. For in this procedure there was involved the mighty paradox of the infinitely just Judge himself becoming the sinner’s substitute before his own law and the infinitely blessed God receiving in his own person the penalty of sin.

B.B. Warfield, Selected Short Writings of Benjamin B. Warfield (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 1970), 71-72.

(5) The ‘water and the blood’ of Christ, who thereby Himself overcame the world, is our power of victory (1 John 5 :4-6) . This depends on a right doctrine of the cross. Christianity in integrity means the orthodox Christology of Nicea and Chalcedon and the vicarious satisfaction of divine justice at Calvary, i.e. propitiation of the divine wrath as well as expiation of the evil of sin. Nothing can set the conscience free from the accusation of conscience and consequent weakness at the emotional and ethical center unless the sinner, having been made aware of the debt of sin he owes to God, is also made aware the debt has been paid in full by the vicarious sacrifice of the God-man at Calvary. There is no Christian moral victory without conviction that ‘Jesus paid it all.’ (See previous comments on revelation at Calvary and discussion of reconciliation and propitiation.) Francis Pieper commenting on ‘Christianity as the Absolute Religion’ says, `[T]he Christian religion is absolutely perfect because it is not a moral code instructing men how to earn the forgiveness of sin themselves, but rather it is faith in that forgiveness which was gained through Christ’s vicarious fulfillment of the Law and his substitutionary suffering of our punishment.’[10] Luther spoke often of this. As Calvin also remarked, our assurance that ‘God remains kindly disposed and favorable to our works is not grounded in some nebulous belief in the loving character of God, but specifically the love of God manifested at Calvary.’

`God’s unconditional love’ may be an unfortunate expression. I think it is. Calvary proves God’s love is great, but not unconditional at all. ‘[Y]ou hate all evildoers’ (Ps. 5:5); ‘The LORD is in his holy temple… his soul hates the wicked and the one who loves violence’ (Ps. 11:4, 5). ‘There are six things that the LORD hates…’ (Prov. 6:16-19— including a false witness and ‘one who sows discord among brothers’). God does not love the reprobate, as such, at all and He loves no one unconditionally. Even the elect He loves conditional upon His grace, which for reasons known only to H Him has not been equally extended to everyone on earth, granted the gospel is addressed to all without distinction. Let the unconvinced read the passages in Scripture about the eternal state of the lost and God’s jealous anger over unrestrained and unpunished murderers, idolaters, fornicators, etc. See notes herein on ‘sin to high heaven’ in hamartiology.

10. Francis Pieper, Christian Dogmatics i (St Louis: Concordia Publ., 1950s), pp. 33-40.

Robert Duncan Culver, Systematic Theology: Biblical and Historical (Ross-shire, Scotland: Christian Focus Publications, 2005), 590-591. I highly suggest the section on “Universalism” on pp. 1088-1091.

GOD’S JEALOUSY AND PERFECTION

Two more of God’s moral attributes are jealousy and perfection. Admittedly, jealousy is a surprising attribute, yet it is one of only a few that the Bible declares is God’s “name,” a distinctive title of one of God’s essential characteristics. In fact, this raises the unique problem (discussed below) as to why what is a sin for creatures is a moral attribute of God.

THE DEFINITION OF GOD’S JEALOUSY

The root meanings of the basic Old Testament word for “jealous” (kan-naw) are “to be desirous of,” “to be zealous about,” “to be excited to anger over,” and “to execute judgment because of.”

The Bible speaks of man’s jealousy (“zealous envy,” “angry fury”) in many places. It talks of being jealous of one’s brother (Gen. 37:11); of having jealousy over a wife (Num. 5:14); of jealousy leading to rage (Prov. 6:34); of jealousy being as cruel as death (Song 8:6 Nagy); of jealousy and selfish ambition ( James 3:16); and of Paul’s jealous zeal for the church (2 Cor. 11:2—see below, under “An Objection to God’s Jealousy”).

As will be shown (in the texts cited below), jealousy is used of God in terms of His holy zeal and His angry wrath. God has holy zeal to protect His supremacy, and God has angry wrath on idolatry and other sins.

THE BIBLICAL BASIS FOR GOD’S JEALOUSY

God’s jealousy can be understood by looking at its nature, its subject, and its object.

The Nature of God’s Jealousy

God’s jealousy carries the connotation of anger, fury, and wrath. Anger (Deut. 29:20): “The LORD will never be willing to forgive him; his wrath and zeal will burn against that man. All the curses written in this book will fall upon him, and the LORD will blot out his name from under heaven.” Fury (Zech. 8:2): “This is what the LORD Almighty says: ‘I am very jealous for Zion; I am burning with jealousy for her.’ ” Wrath (Isa. 42:13): “The LORD will march out like a mighty man, like a warrior he will stir up his zeal; with a shout he will raise the battle cry and will triumph over his ene­mies.”

The Subject of God’s Jealousy

God’s jealousy is vented on images, idols, other gods, and other sins. Images (Ps. 78:58): “They angered him with their high places; they aroused his jealousy with their idols.” Idols (1 Cor. 10:19-22): “Do I mean then that a sacrifice offered to an idol is anything, or that an idol is anything? No, but the sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God. . . . Are we trying to arouse the Lord’s jealousy?” Other gods (Deut. 32:16): “They made him jealous with their foreign gods and angered him with their detestable idols.” Other sins (1 Kings 14:22): “Judah did evil in the eyes of the LORD. By the sins they committed they stirred up his jealous anger more than their fathers had done.”

The Object of God’s Jealousy

The object of God’s jealousy is first and foremost His own nature, then His name, His people (Israel), His land (the Holy Land), and His city ( Jerusalem). His own nature (Ex. 34:14): “Do not worship any other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.” His name (Ezek. 39:25): “Therefore this is what the Sovereign LORD says: I will now bring Jacob back from captivity and will have compassion on all the people of Israel, and I will be zealous for my holy name.” His people (Zech. 8:2): “This is what the LORD Almighty says: ‘I am very jealous for Zion; I am burning with jealousy for her.’ ” His land ( Joel 2:18): “Then the LORD will be jeal­ous for his land and take pity on his people.” His city (Zech. 1:14): “Pro­claim this word: This is what the LORD Almighty says: ‘I am very jealous for Jerusalem and Zion.’ “

THE THEOLOGICAL BASIS FOR GOD’S JEALOUSY

A combination of other attributes forms the basis for God’s jealousy. Foremost among these is God’s holiness; God is particularly jealous about preserving His own uniqueness. Of course, all of God’s attributes are unique and comprise the one infinite, absolutely perfect, and supreme God. The theological argument for God’s jealousy can be formulated as follows:

(1)     God is unique and supreme (see His metaphysical attributes—chap-ters 2-12).

(2)     God is holy, loving, and morally perfect (see His moral attributes—chapters 13-17).

(3)     Hence, God is uniquely and supremely holy, loving, and morally perfect.

(4)     Whatever is supremely holy, loving, and perfect is to be preserved with the utmost zeal.

(5)     God’s jealousy is His zeal to preserve His own holy supremacy.

(6)     Therefore, He is eminently justified in His jealousy. Indeed, it is essential to His very nature: His name is Jealous (Ex. 34:14).

THE HISTORICAL BASIS FOR GOD’S JEALOUSY

The Early Church Fathers on God’s Jealousy

Although not one of the more noted attributes of God, His jealousy did not go unnoticed by the early church Fathers. There are considerable ref­erences to God’s jealousy.

Justin Martyr

They sacrificed to demons whom they knew not; new gods that came newly up, whom their fathers knew not. Thou hast forsaken God that begat thee, and forgotten God that brought thee up. And the Lord saw, and was jealous, and was provoked to anger by reason of the rage of His sons and daughters. . . . They have moved Me to jealousy with that which is not God, they have provoked Me to anger with their idols; and I will move them to jealousy with that which is not a nation, I will provoke them to anger with a foolish people. For a fire is kindled from Mine anger, and it shall burn to Hades. (DJ, 119 in Roberts and Donaldson, ANF, I)

Irenaeus

It is therefore one and the same God the Father who has prepared good things with Himself for those who desire His fellowship, and who remain in subjection to Him; and who has the eternal fire for the ring­leader of the apostasy, the devil, and those who revolted with him, into which [fire] the Lord has declared those men shall be sent who have been set apart by themselves on His left hand. And this is what has been spoken by the prophet, “I am a jealous God, making peace, and creating evil things”; thus making peace and friendship with those who repent and turn to Him, and bringing [them to] unity, but preparing for the impenitent, those who shun the light, eternal fire and outer darkness, which are evils indeed to those persons who fall into them. (AH, 4.40.1 in ibid., I)

Tertullian

Even His severity then is good, because [it is] just: when the judge is good, that is just. Other qualities likewise are good, by means of which the good work of a good severity runs out its course, whether wrath, or jealousy, or sternness. For all these are as indispensable to severity as severity is to justice. The shamelessness of an age, which ought to have been reverent, had to be avenged. Accordingly, qualities which pertain to the judge, when they are actually free from blame, as the judge him­self is, will never be able to be charged upon him as a fault. (FBAM, 2.216 in ibid., III)

Cyprian

There is no ground, therefore, dearest brother, for thinking that we should give way to heretics so far as to contemplate the betrayal to them of that baptism, which is only granted to the one and only Church. It is a good soldier’s duty to defend the camp of his general against rebels and enemies. It is the duty of an illustrious leader to keep the standards entrusted to him. It is written, “The Lord thy God is a jealous God” (EC, 72.10 in ibid., 5.787, V).

The Medieval Fathers on God’s Jealousy

Augustine

For Him doth “the friend of the bridegroom” sigh, having now the first-fruits of the Spirit laid up with Him, yet still groaning within him­self, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of his body; to Him he sighs, for he is a member of the Bride; for Him is he jealous, for he is the friend of the Bridegroom; for Him is he jealous, not for himself; because in the voice of Thy “waterspouts,” not in his own voice, doth he call on that other deep, for whom being jealous he feareth, lest that, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety, so their minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in our Bridegroom, Thine only Son. (C, 13.13 in Schaff, NPAT, 1.1)

Ineffable is therefore that patience, as is His jealousy, as His wrath, and whatever there is like to these. For if we conceive of these as they be in us, in Him are there none. We, namely, cancel none of these without been set apart by themselves on His left hand. And this is what has been spoken by the prophet, “I am a jealous God, making peace, and creating evil things”; thus making peace and friendship with those who repent and turn to Him, and bringing [them to] unity, but preparing for the impenitent, those who shun the light, eternal fire and outer darkness, which are evils indeed to those persons who fall into them. (AH, 4.40.1 in ibid., I)

Tertullian

Even His severity then is good, because [it is] just: when the judge is good, that is just. Other qualities likewise are good, by means of which the good work of a good severity runs out its course, whether wrath, or jealousy, or sternness. For all these are as indispensable to severity as severity is to justice. The shamelessness of an age, which ought to have been reverent, had to be avenged. Accordingly, qualities which pertain to the judge, when they are actually free from blame, as the judge him­self is, will never be able to be charged upon him as a fault. (FBAM, 2.216 in ibid., III)

Cyprian

There is no ground, therefore, dearest brother, for thinking that we should give way to heretics so far as to contemplate the betrayal to them of that baptism, which is only granted to the one and only Church. It is a good soldier’s duty to defend the camp of his general against rebels and enemies. It is the duty of an illustrious leader to keep the standards entrusted to him. It is written, “The Lord thy God is a jealous God” (EC, 72.10 in ibid., 5.787, V).

The Medieval Fathers on God’s Jealousy

Augustine

For Him doth “the friend of the bridegroom” sigh, having now the first-fruits of the Spirit laid up with Him, yet still groaning within him­self, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of his body; to Him he sighs, for he is a member of the Bride; for Him is he jealous, for he is the friend of the Bridegroom; for Him is he jealous, not for himself; because in the voice of Thy “waterspouts,” not in his own voice, doth he call on that other deep, for whom being jealous he feareth, lest that, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety, so their minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in our Bridegroom, Thine only Son. (C, 13.13 in Schaff, NPNF, 1.1)

Ineffable is therefore that patience, as is His jealousy, as His wrath, and whatever there is like to these. For if we conceive of these as they be in us, in Him are there none. We, namely, cancel none of these without molestation: but be it far from us to surmise that the impassible nature of God is liable to any molestation. But like as He is jealous without any dark­ening of spirit, wroth without any perturbation, pitiful without any pain, repenteth Him without any wrongness in Him to be set right; so is He patient without aught of passion. (OP, 1 in ibid., 1.III)

Because “the Lord our God is a jealous God,” let us refuse, whenever we see anything of His with an alien, to allow him to consider it his own. For of a truth the jealous God Himself rebukes the woman who commits fornication against Him, as the type of an erring people, and says that she gave to her lovers what belonged to Him, and again received from them what was not theirs but His. In the hands of the adulterous woman and the adulterous lovers, God in His wrath, as a jealous God, recognizes His gifts; and do we say that baptism, consecrated in the words of the gospel, belongs to heretics? (BAD, 3.19.25 in ibid., 1.IV)

The Reformation Leaders on God’s Jealousy

Martin Luther

“For Him Who once drowned the whole world in the Flood and sank Sodom with fire, it is a simple thing to slay or to defeat so many thousands of peasants. He is an almighty and terrible God” (WL, 4.226).

God says: “I the Lord thy God am a jealous God.” Now, God is jeal­ous in two manners of ways; first, God is angry as one that is jealous of them that fall from him, and become false and treacherous, that prefer the creature before the Creator; that build upon the favors of the great; that depend upon their friends, upon their own power—riches, art, wis­dom, etc.; that forsake the righteousness of faith, and contemn it, and will be justified and saved by and through their own good works. God is also vehemently angry with those that boast and brag of their power and strength; as we see in Sennacherib, king of Assyria, who boasted of his great power, and thought utterly to destroy Jerusalem. . . .

Secondly, God is jealous for them that love him and highly esteem his word; such God loves again, defends and keeps as the apple of his eve, and resists their adversaries, beating them back that they are not able to perform what they intended. Therefore, this word jealous com­prehends both hatred and love, revenge and protection; for which cause it requires both fear and faith; fear, that we provoke not God to anger, or work his displeasure; faith, that in trouble we believe he will help, nourish, and defend us in this life, and will pardon and forgive us our sins, and for Christ’s sake preserve us to life everlasting. (TT, 135-36)

John Calvin

But though in every passage where the favour or anger of God is mentioned, the former comprehends eternity of life and the latter eternal destruction, the Law, at the same time, enumerates a long cata­logue of present blessings and curses (Lev. xxvi. 4; Deut. xxviii. 1). The threatenings attest the spotless purity of God, which cannot bear iniq­uity, while the promises attest at once his infinite love of righteousness (which he cannot leave unrewarded), and his wondrous kindness. Being bound to do him homage with all that we have, he is perfectly entitled to demand everything which he requires of us as a debt; and as a debt, the payment is unworthy of reward. He therefore foregoes his right, when he holds forth reward for services which are not offered sponta­neously, as if they were not due. (ICR, 1.8.4)

Jacob Arminius

Hatred is an affection of separation in God; whose primary object is injustice or unrighteousness; and the secondary, the misery of the crea­ture: The former is from “the love of complacency”; the latter, from “the love of friendship.” But since God properly loves himself and the good of justice, and by the same impulse holds iniquity in detestation; and since he secondarily loves the creature and his blessedness, and in that impulse hates the misery of the creature, that is, He wills it to be taken away from the creature; hence it comes to pass, that He hates the creature who perseveres in unrighteousness, and He loves his misery. (WJA, II.44)

The Post-Reformation Theologians on God’s Jealousy

Jonathan Edwards

Those who come to Christ need not be afraid of God’s wrath for their sins; for God’s honor will not suffer by their escaping punishment and being made happy. The wounded soul is sensible that he has affronted the majesty of God, and looks upon God as a vindicator of his honor; as a jealous God that will not be mocked, an infinitely great God that will not bear to be affronted, that will not suffer his authority and majesty to be trampled on, that will not bear that his kindness should be abused. (WJE, 376)

For we see that when men come to be under convictions, and to be made sensible that God is not as they have heretofore imagined, but that he is such a jealous, sin-hating God, and whose wrath against sin is so dreadful, they are much more apt to have sensible exercises of enmity against him than before. (ibid., 1021)

William G. T Shedd

There is a kind of wrath in the human soul that resembles the wrath of God, and constitutes its true analogue. It is the wrath of the human conscience, which is wholly different from that of the human heart. That kind of anger is commanded in the injunction “Be ye angry and sin not” (Eph. 4:26). Were this species of moral displacency more often considered, and the Divine anger illustrated by it, there would be less of the common and unthinking opposition to the doctrine of the Divine wrath. (DT, 176)

Stephen Charnock

God is a jealous God, very sensible of any disgrace, and will be as much incensed against an inward idolatry as an outward: that command which forbade corporeal images, would not indulge carnal imagina­tions; since the nature of God is as much wronged by unworthy images, erected in the fancy, as by statues carved out of stone or metals. (EAG, 1.198)

J. I. Packer

God’s jealousy is not a compound of frustration, envy and spite, as human jealousy so often is, but appears instead as a [literally] praisewor­thy zeal to preserve something supremely precious.

Zeal to protect a love relationship or to avenge it when broken [is a good sort of jealousy]. This jealousy also operates in the sphere of sex; there, however, it appears not as the blind reaction of wounded pride but as the fruit of marital affection. As Professor Taylor has written, mar­ried persons “who felt no jealousy at the intrusion of a lover or an adul­terer into their home would surely be lacking in moral perception; for the exclusiveness of marriage is the essence of marriage” [The Epistle of James, 106]. This sort of jealousy is a positive virtue, for it shows a grasp of the true meaning of the husband-wife relationship, together with a proper zeal to keep it intact. . . . God’s jealousy is of this kind; that is, as an aspect of his covenant love for his people. The Old Testament regards God’s covenant as his marriage with Israel, carrying with it a demand for unqualified love and loyalty.

From these passages we see plainly what God meant by telling Moses that his name was “Jealous.” He meant that he demands from those whom he has loved and redeemed utter and absolute loyalty, and he will vindicate his claim by stern action against them if they betray his love by unfaithfulness. (KG, 170-71)

AN OBJECTION TO GOD’S JEALOUSY

Objection One—Based on an Alleged Inconsistency

This objection points to an apparent inconsistency: Why is jealousy right for God but wrong for us? All other moral attributes of God we are asked to emulate: God is love, and we should be loving (1 John 4:19); God is holy, and we should be holy (Lev. 11:45). Why, then, if God is jealous, should we not also be jealous?

Response to Objection One

The answer to this objection is simple: There is no inconsistency; jeal­ousy can be right sometimes and wrong at other times. Wrong jealousy for us is about being jealous for what does not belong to us. God cannot ever be jealous of what does not belong to Him, since He owns everything. Psalm 24:1 declares: “The earth is the LORD’S, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it.” Deuteronomy 32:21 adds, “They made me jealous by what is no god and angered me with their worthless idols. I will make them envious by those who are not a people; I will make them angry by a nation that has no understanding.”

Everything belongs to God, even the things He has entrusted to the care of others; hence, it is not right for us to be jealous about what is not ours. Jealousy, as such, is not evil; what is evil is being jealous about what is not ours. Therefore, there is no inconsistency in it being right for God to be jealous for our affection (which belongs to Him) and it being wrong for us.

Note, however, that not all jealousy is wrong for human beings—godly jealousy is right. For example, Paul’s jealousy for the church was commend­able. He wrote, “I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy. I promised you to one husband, to Christ, so that I might present you as a pure virgin to him” (2 Cor. 11:2). Likewise, there is nothing wrong with a husband having appropriate jealousy over his wife (or vice versa), since she belongs to him (cf. Num. 5:14) and he to her.

Norman Geisler, Systematic Theology: Introduction: Bible, vol. I (Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House Publishers, 2002), 338-345.