“Every culture and society exudes a certain convictional glue, an undergirding outlook on life and reality that preserves its cohesiveness. When that adhesive bond deteriorates, the sense of shared community tends to come apart at the seams. Recent modern thinkers define this bond of conceptualities or value-constellations as myth, that is, man’s representation of the transcendent or divine in human or earthly terms.”

Carl F. H. Henry
God, Revelation, and Authority
Vol. I, pg. 44

And herein is found the lie of multi-culturalism if by multi-culturalism one believes that one contiguous society can be sustained by a plethora of competing outlooks on life and reality which preserves its cohesiveness. The great lie of the push of all things multi-cultural is that in point of fact multi-culturalism is an attempt to create a mono-culture with all the attendant adhesive bonds and convictional glue that all shared communities share. The current multiculutural project in the West is every bit as homogeneous as the shared Muslim culture of Saudi Arabia or the shared Shinto culture of Japan. There is no more tolerance in the mono-culture of multi-culturalism then there is in the mono-culture of say Pakistan or India.

This reality explains why clear expressions of Christianity are so hated by the multi-culturalists. Epistemologically self-conscious Christians (herein after referred to as Es-cC)are a threat to moderns who desire a mono-culture built upon the myths of multi-culturalism. Es-cC attack the convictional glue that holds together the multi-cultural project identifying and labeling it as the idolatry that it is. The great problem with the Church in the West today is that it doesn’t understand that it is defining its Christianity within the pagan paradigm and by the unbelieving parameters of multi-culturalism. This is not the first time that this type of thing has happened in the history of the Church. B. B. Warfield commenting on the first century Church and its penchant for the superstitious noted,

“The fundamental fact which should be borne in mind is that Christianity, in coming into the world, came into a heathen world. It found itself, as it made its way ever more deeply into the world, ever more deeply immersed in a heathen atmosphere which was heavy with miracle. This heathen atmosphere, of course, penetrated it at every pore, and affected its interpretation of existence in all the happenings of daily life. It was not merely, however, that Christians could not be immune from the infection of the heathen modes of thought prevalent about them. It was that the Church was itself recruited from the heathen community. Christians were themselves but baptized heathen, and brought their heathen conceptions into the church with them little changed in all that was not obviously at variance with their Christian confession. He that was unrighteous, by the grace of God did not do unrighteousness still; nor did he that was filthy remain filthy still. But he that was superstitious remained superstitious still; and he who lived in a world of marvels looked for and found marvels happening about him still. In this sense the conquering church was conquered by the world which it conquered.”

The point of contact between Warfield’s observations about first century Christianity and its culture of superstition and the observation about 21st century Christianity in the West and its embracing of the ethos of multi-culturalism is that in both cases the Church was guilty then and is guilty now of re-enforcing, instead of challenging, the prevailing idolatry du jour. A genuinely muscular Church would in no way countenance official faith pluralism, or political polytheism as the means by which the mono-culture of multi-culturalism is built and sustained in the West. Those who are Es-cC will sense that they are pilgrims and strangers in this current culture and will struggle in finding a cultural harmony with those (‘Christian’ or otherwise) who have embraced the adhesive bond and convictional glue that binds the adherents of the multi-cultural cult together.

When considering the mono-culture of multiculturalism we should ask what are the adhesive bonds and convictional glue that holds this culture together. Phrasing it another way, per the quote of Henry, we are asking what is the guiding myth that provides cohesion for multi-culturalism. There might be several ways to answer that question but this is what I see as the elements of stickiness in the convictional glue that hold the multi-culturalism of the West together.

1.) All gods are welcome and indeed beckoned as long as they know and keep their place. Any gods (save the god of multi-culturalism) who intends to create a culture that is consistent with his tenets and precepts is a god that must be banned as intolerant.

2.) Because all gods are equal, therefore all individuals are equal and because all individuals are equal therefore all ethnicities are equal and because all ethnicities are equal therefore all cultures are equal. In the multi-cultural myth there is no better or worse. No shade of differences in ethnic or cultural or individual inherent talent or ability. All are inherently equally smart, inherently equally athletic, inherently equally verbal, etc.

3.) Because order must be maintained all the gods must have a God who define the limits of how far the gods can go. This god of the Gods is the State in whom we live and move and have our being.

4.) People do not belong to a place or time but are interchangeable parts who can be shifted around on the global chessboard without consequence or damage to them or the place or time where they are transplanted. Nationality or ethnicity is not a reality but is only an idea that can be changed like eye-shadow.

5.) The ultimate destination is a world-community utopia where people are all of one tongue and one lip.

6.)Freedom and democracy are the ultimate values but it is a freedom and a democracy defined in a multi-cultural pagan paradigm. This leaves us a freedom to serve our gods as long as we don’t take them seriously and a democracy that is defined as voting for the kind of freedom just defined.

All of this needs to be kept in mind by Americans who are Christians. We believers need to realize that when we mindlessly support American domestic and international policy we are very likely supporting the advance of a culture that is in anti-thesis to the culture that would be normally created by a stoutly informed Biblical Christian faith.

Philosopher and Evangelical Dr. J. P. Moreland goes on is his recent paper to answer the question as to ‘Why are Contemporary Evangelicals Over-committed to the Bible.’

Moreland’s answer is to briefly describe the shift in Western thinking in the 20th century by using the University illustratively. Moreland briefly traces the demise of the University in the 20th century to its abandonment of objective categories that informed all men about the nature of reality (i.e. — Natural Moral Law). Moreland insists that the Evangelical problem of over-commitment to the Bible stems from what he considers a wrong reaction to this shift in 20th century thinking. According to Moreland, Christians abandoned natural moral law theory because academia had putatively proven natural moral law theory wrong. Moreland then contends that the only place for Christians to maneuver to was a over-overcommitment to the Bible. Moreland thus makes his analysis of the over-overcommitment to the Bible to be historical and sociological, believing that Biblically and Theologically Christians had a grand legacy in natural moral law theory. In brief Moreland surmises that the shift to a over-commitment to the Bible by Christians must be accounted for by using other categories then theological or biblical opting to use historical and sociological considerations as lenses to explain the unfortunate overcommitment to the Bible that has arisen.

Before pressing on to more core concerns we must insist that Dr. Moreland’s methodology is questionable. By insisting that historical and sociological tools of analysis are superior tools to answer the question as to ‘Why Evangelicals are over-committed to the Bible’ then Theological tools Moreland is setting up the kind of over-specialization that he later bemoans in his paper. Moreland insists that the curse of the shift in University thinking in the 20th century is that because of the abandonment of the Christian God, who was the source of all truth because He is a single unified mind, the curriculum in Universities no longer had a single integration point and thus Universities became Multi-versities. This resulted in over-specialization where there was little or no relation between one discipline and another as taught at the same University. Now, what I hear Dr. Moreland saying here is that Theology is the Queen of the Sciences and we jettison sanity when we give up the Biblical God. I agree with that but if that is true then why does Dr. Moreland insist that Historical and sociological tools are better fitted to analyze the problem he is considering then Theological tools? If History and sociology are dependent upon Theology (and they are) then the best tool to analyze any sociological or historical problem is a Theological tool. Is Dr. Moreland’s appeal to Historical and Sociological tools as means of analysis over against Theological tools not indicative that he himself has fallen into the over-specialization that he so rightly abjures? Are not sociological shifts beholden to Theological shifts? Dr. Moreland should have given us the Theological reasons why Christians shifted away from a natural-moral law theory and thus became over-committed to the Bible. Dr. Moreland insists that Christians didn’t need to shift to over-commitment to the Bible since they had such a deep history of natural moral law theory to rest in and yet they became over-committed to the Bible. Dr. Moreland gave us the Historical-Sociological reasons for the shift but the question still remains, if we believe in a unified field theory of knowledge; ‘What were the Theological reasons for this shift that has been described historically and sociologically?’ If that question would have been answered then we might have been able to ascertain whether those Theological reasons were Biblical.

Another methodological problem that besets Dr. Moreland’s paper is his failure to realize that the Universities didn’t lose a unified field theory of knowledge. The shift that Dr. Moreland Chronicles in the University life is not a shift from a God who provides a coherent integration of knowledge to no god but rather it was a shift from a God who provides a coherent integration of knowledge to a god who provides a incoherent integration of knowledge. God is an inescapable category and the fleeing from the God of the Bible is not a fleeing into nothing but rather a fleeing into the arms of some other god or god concept. So whereas the God of the Bible provided coherence precisely because every academic discipline was beholden to His interpretation of reality the new god of the University system yielded incoherence precisely because it was the god of humanism where each discipline is beholden to the law word of the sovereign individual who has the most clout in any one of the Universities departments. This kind of campus god created chaos as potentially the Romanticists could own the literature department and the Marxists the economics department and the Transcendentalists the politics department and the Existentialists the philosophy department and the Augustinians the Theology department, etc. etc. etc. It may be seen as quibbling but the University retains a unified field theory of knowledge and that unified field theory is that only in chaos can we find a genuine unified field theory. This is embraced because the god the University has embraced is the author of confusion. The chief reason I make this observation is so as to insist that Theology remains the queen of the sciences at the University today — a very bad theology but theology still.

It is at this point that we should return to Natural moral law theory. Dr. Moreland contends that Natural moral law theory should have never been abandoned by Christians but this assertion doesn’t seem to take into account a Christian Natural moral law theory only makes sense inside of a Christian World view. For example, it might be argued that the logical positivists who pushed the fact vs. value distinction had a Natural moral law theory of their own. They held that it was self-evident (a key component of Natural moral law theory) that fact vs. value was true and that no religion (except their own) had cognitive features that needed to be taken seriously. What Dr. Moreland hasn’t seemed to discover is that Natural moral law theory really didn’t go away but rather what was seen as being taught by nature was that nature taught that all there is, is nature. The point is that in many respects we have not moved away from Natural moral law theory but rather have transitioned to a Natural moral law theory that is consistent with pagan beliefs and Theology. Dr. Moreland doesn’t seem to realize that Natural Moral law theory is only as good as the presuppositions with which it begins. If Natural moral Law theory begins with the presupposition that the God of the Bible is then the Natural moral Law theory that we end up with will be broadly Christian. Conversely, if the Natural moral law theory begins with the presupposition that God is a non-cognitive value then the Natural moral law theory that we end up with will be broadly pagan. At this point, even at the cost of being over-committed to the Bible, the only point of appeal is God’s Word.

Dr. Moreland ends this section by saying,

By and large, Evangelicals responded during this shift by withdrawing from the broader world of ideas, developing a view of faith that was detached from knowledge and reason, and limiting truth and belief about God, theology and morality to the inerrant Word of God, the Bible. If I am right about this, then Evangelical over-commitment to the Bible is a result of the influence of secularization on the church and not of biblical or theological reflection.

First, it would have been helpful if Dr. Moreland could have given some names of who those who withdrew from the broader world of ideas. Second, one wonders if Dr. Moreland considers any Christian who disavowed Natural moral law theory as one who developed a view of faith that was detached from knowledge and reason. Third, it seems that Dr. Moreland defines ‘knowledge and reason’ in keeping with a Thomistic model. Fourth, any theory of Natural moral law that is disconnected to the the question of presuppositions is defective and will never get off the ground. Fifth, Dr. Moreland doesn’t seem to take into account that Christians may have retreated from Natural moral law theory because they began to realize the implications of what it means for the unbeliever to suppress the truth in unrighteousness and they began to appreciate that a proper understanding of general revelation (that which Natural moral law theory is pinned to) is only as good as a right understanding of special revelation.

Criticism on Moreland’s Third and final point later.

Recently Evangelical Academic J.P. Moreland wrote and gave a paper before the Evangelical Theological Society entitled, “How Evangelicals Became Over-Committed to the Bible and What Can Be Done about It.” Now, normally, I wouldn’t pay any attention to this since I’ve come to regard Evangelicals the way I regard Liver and Onions but as this paper was appealed to in a positive way on a Christian Theology site that is often quite good I thought I would give this the once over.

So, I hope to examine this paper in the next several entries. If you want to read the paper in its entirety you may access it here,

http://www.kingdomtriangle.com/discussion/moreland_EvangOverCommBible.pdf

Dr. Moreland starts his paper by writing,

“… To be more specific, in the actual practices of the Evangelical community in North America, there is an over-commitment to Scripture in a way that is false, irrational, and harmful to the cause of Christ. And it has produced a mean-spiritedness among the over-committed that is a grotesque and often, ignorant distortion of discipleship unto the Lord Jesus.”

This criticism is starting to get wearisome from the academic community. First we heard this kind of thing from Dr. John Frame in his article, “Machen’s Warrior Children,” and now we get the same kind of from Dr. J. P. Moreland.

Before we go any further the reader should realize that I am probably one of those mean-spirited people whose over-commitment to Scripture in a false, and irrational way has left me a practitioner of a grotesque and often, ignorant distortion of discipleship. To the contrary it could be that Dr. Moreland, because of his under-commitment to Scripture, has become the kind of disciple that just makes up discipleship as he goes along and consequently he see’s the true disciples as ‘over-committed, and mean-spirited.’ The problem though with even suggesting that as a contrary option is that I probably just gave proof of my mean-spiritedness.

But I digress…

First, this kind of accusation demands something more then vague generalities. Just exactly who in the ‘Evangelical Community’ are exercising an over-commitment to Scripture and just exactly what does that over-commitment look like?

Second, given the where the Church is in the States today, is one of our major problems really that we have too many wrongly over-committed Christians? Just where is this problem creeping up in such a way that it is creating havoc in the Church?

Dr. Moreland writes,

1. American Evangelical Over-commitment to the Bible. The very idea that one could be over-committed to the Bible may strike one as irreligious. In a sense, this judgment is just. One could never be too committed to loving, obeying and promoting Holy Scripture. In another sense, however, such over-commitment is ubiquitous and harmful. The sense I have in mind is the idea that the Bible is the sole source of
knowledge of God, morality, and a host of related important items. Accordingly, the Bible is taken to be the sole source of authority for faith and practice. Applied to inerrancy, the notion is that the Bible is the sole source of such knowledge and authority. The Protestant principle of Sola Scriptura does not entail this claim. For example,
the Westminster Confession of Faith (1646) says “The Supreme Judge, by which all controversies of religion are to be determined, and all decrees of councils, opinions of ancient writers, doctrines of men, and private spirits, are to be examined, and in whose sentence we are to rest, can be no other but the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture.”3

Clearly, the idea that from within the Christian point of view, Scripture is the ultimate authority, the ultimate source of relevant knowledge, does not entail that it is the sole authority or source. But this fact has a severe public relations problem and, as I will
illustrate below, many in our community make this entailment, or at least accept the consequent. Right reason, experience, Creeds, tradition have all been recognized as subordinate sources of knowledge and authority within the Christian point of view subject to the supreme and final authority of Scripture. The idea that Scripture is the sole such authority is widespread among pastors, parachurch staff, and lay folk. And while Evangelical scholars may not admit to accepting the idea, far too often it informs their work. To cite one example of this egregious problem, in concluding his study of the social and political thought of Carl Henry, Abraham Kuyper, Francis Schaeffer and John Howard Yoder, J. Budziszewski observes that All four thinkers are ambivalent about the enduring structures of creation and about the reality of general revelation. Although Henry vigorously affirms general revelation, he undermines it just as vigorously. Although Kuyper unfolds his theory mainly from the order observable in creation, he insists on hiding this fact from himself, regarding his theory of creational spheres as a direct inference from Scripture. Although Schaeffer acknowledges the importance of general revelation, he makes little use of any part of it except the principle of non-contradiction. No sooner does Yoder affirm God’s good creation than he declares that we have no access to it.

Bret responds,

First, the reader should notice that Dr. Moreland really sees this problem of being wrongly over-committed to the Bible as a major issue in Evangelicalism. He even describes this problem as ubiquitous.

Second, we should notice that Dr. Moreland drives a distinction between the Scriptures being the ultimate authority and being the sole authority. Dr. Moreland willingly admits that Scripture is the ultimate authority but insists that it is not the sole authority. Dr. Moreland then appeals to other putatively lesser authorities naming them as ‘right reason, experience, Creeds, and tradition’ and insisting that these ‘have all been recognized as subordinate sources of knowledge and authority within the Christian point of view subject to the supreme and final authority of Scripture.’ This is all very good unless one suspects that what Dr. Moreland is trying to do is find a way where these lesser authorities can operate independently of the authority of Scripture. You see the problem with these lesser authorities is that as authorities they are only as good as their commitment to the Scriptures.

Let us take ‘right reason’ as an example. By what standard do we measure the ‘right’ in ‘right reason?’ Can ‘right reason’ be an authority over us if ‘right reason’ doesn’t presuppose the authority of Scripture and the God of the Bible? I quite agree that ‘right reason’ is an authority but I insist at the same time that this authority can never be right unless it is beholden first to the sole and ultimate authority of Scripture. How do we determine that ‘right reason’ is right unless we go to the Scriptures as our ultimate authority on the rightness of reason. Does such an appeal to Scripture in order to determine the rightness of ‘right reason’ constitute the sin of making Scripture the sole authority?

Similarly, with ‘Experience’ as a lesser authority we find it to be the case that ‘experience,’ in order to be a lesser authority has to be interpreted before it can be appealed to as an authority. The question that begs being asked is, ‘by whose standard will we interpret our experiences in order for them to become a valid lesser authority’? You see the ‘experience’ or the ‘right reason’ of a pagan is going to be a lesser authority that informs them in quite a different way then they inform a Biblical Christian. The same is true of the nominal or immature Christian or even a Philosopher of the Academy with the wrong presuppositions who appeals to ‘experience’ or ‘right reason’ as a lesser authority upon which to base belief or behavior. The point is that while lesser authorities do exist they are only as good as ultimate authority in which they are rooted.

What Dr. Moreland has done here is basically appealed to John Wesley’s quadrilateral hermeneutic but Moreland’s mistake is the same as Wesley’s. Lesser authorities not rooted and grounded in the ultimate authority will lead to wrong conclusions every time. ‘Right reason, experience, Creeds, and tradition’ may be lesser authorities to appeal to but these lesser authorities do not and can not operate autonomously from the ultimate authority that is God’s Holy Word. Lesser sources of authority and their validity are only as good as their ultimate authority. Again we must ask if insisting on this makes one guilty of turning Scripture into the Sole authority?

Now we turn briefly to Dr. Moreland’s observations regarding general revelation. Dr. Moreland seems to want to suggest that general revelation can be rightly understood and embraced quite apart from special revelation. Now, it is true that general revelation is understood but it is also the case for the unbeliever that He suppresses that understanding in unrighteousness. Indeed, the only way that any of us can get general revelation right is by understanding it in light of special revelation. Dr. Moreland’s problem here is one that we are going to be concentrating on more in later posts. Dr. Moreland seems to think that Christians ought to embrace some kind of Natural Law framework and this no thinking Christian can consistently do. In light of this observation it is interesting to notice that 3 of the 4 thinkers (Kuyper, Henry, Schaeffer) that Moreland uses by way of illustration were presuppositionalists of one sort or another. My spidey senses suggest that this is the root of Moreland’s real problem of to many over-committed Christians. Again, we all agree that Creation has enduring structures and that general revelation is true. What we don’t agree upon is the commitment or ability of fallen men to live in keeping with the enduring structures of a God given creation. What we don’t agree upon is the effect of men suppressing the truth of general revelation in unrighteousness and how that work of suppression severely affects the validity of the information gained from the lesser authorities of ‘Right reason, experience, Creeds, or tradition.” What we don’t agree upon is Christians appealing to lesser sources of authority that operate in a quasi-independent way from Scripture.

So we agree that Scripture is the ultimate authority. We agree that there are lesser authorities. But I wonder if we agree that Scripture is the sole authority for the lesser authorities. I wonder if we agree that the lesser authorities cannot be appealed to without considering from the presuppositions that inform the lesser authorities.

We will look more at Dr. Moreland’s paper later.

O God of Kirk and Clan
provide now in our want
Holy Worship in this land
And children for your font
Our sacraments are ashes
Our families are torn
And Christendom now crashes
In the justice of thy scorn

From all that ‘clever’ teaches,
From all the ‘truth’ so close,
Wrapped all in shallow speeches
That excite the shallow hosts,
From trust in the Molech god,
of circus, bread and sword,
who rules us with an iron rod,
Deliver us, Oh Lord

Breathe a Reformation
On Kirk, and King, and Clan
Awaken now a nation
One weapon in your hand
A single sword, all for thee
Your purpose as our end
Aglow with zeal, and free,
Your Kingdom to extend

huck·ster (hkstr) — (n.) One who uses aggressive, showy, and sometimes devious methods to promote or sell a product.

“Huckabee is on a roll, he has gotten an enormous amount of publicity and he is doing very well with conservatives, who at least for now appear to have found a candidate.”

John Zogby
Pollster

Captain Obvious here reporting that Mike Huckabee is no conservative. Huckabee is just another neo-conservative, big government, tax and spend, pro-immigration, pro-global warming, felon loving politician, who embarrassingly enough is an ex preacher who ‘loves Jesus.’

Huckabee is a piece of work who is to clever for his own good. First, he ‘innocently’ asks, ‘aren’t Mormons the ones who believe Jesus and Satan are brothers(?),’ thus sending a subtle message to all the Jesus people that they don’t want to vote for a Mormon stupid guy when they can vote for a Christian stupid guy. Following that number he runs a Television add where in 30 seconds he mentions Christ or God or Christmas four times while a cross is subtly displayed in the background, thus, once again shouting to people, “I’m the Jesus candidate, I’m the Jesus candidate.”

Would anyone mind telling me how this guy gets counted as a conservative, never mind a ‘Christian?’ Ok, Ok … I can accept that he is a really immature Christian who doesn’t yet realize that biblically speaking the State has the unique role of providing Justice and not subsidizing the poor, releasing rapists, or stopping carbon emissions.

Quite beyond the problems of Mike Huckabee would anyone care to further explain why Christians get taken in by this pablum? Some guy rolls into town, proclaims he is a former Baptist minister, and suddenly his poll numbers spike because many of the local yahoos — I mean ministers — return back to their churches telling the pew sitters they should vote for the Jesus candidate. It’s all very depressing.

Finally, to top things off you have an organization like HSLDA who is supposed to know better come out and endorse the Huckster. I still can’t figure out why this organization would do that and makes me sad that I’ve paid good money to support this organization over the years. Don’t all home-schoolers teach that Big Government is bad? Don’t all home-schoolers teach that government isn’t the solution but rather government is the problem? Can’t HSLDA connect the dots between what might be best for them short term and might not be what is best for the country long term.

Please don’t vote for Huckabee because he is the Jesus candidate. Give Jesus a break and find some other nonsense reason to vote for the Huckster.

My soul magnifies the Lord,
And my Spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
For He has regarded the lowly state of His maidservant;
For behold, henceforth, all generations will call me blessed.

In Genesis it is Eve who is the main actor of the epochal event named the fall. In God’s recreation that is redemption the second Eve, Mary, is front and center. Mary, is the antithesis of Eve. Mary bows to God’s word (Lk. 1:38) where Eve questioned God’s word (Gen. 3:6). Eve bears sin into God’s garden temple, while Mary is the Christ bearer in God’s work to re-make His garden temple. Eve’s action leads to curse for all who belong to Adam while Mary’s actions leads to blessing for all who belong to the second Adam. The first Eve was taken out of the first Adam and was the source of life for all Adam’s seed. The second Adam is taken from the second Eve and is the source of life for all His people.

It is also interesting as we examine the Magnificat that Mary understands all that is happening as the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham (vs. 55). Hence we see that there is covenant continuity between Genesis 12, 15 & 17 and what is happening to and through Mary. Mary, like Zechariah, does not see discontinuity between old covenant promise and new covenant fulfillment.

Finally, a brief word regarding Mary herself. Protestants typically don’t do the saint thing and for good reason. Still, Mary should be esteemed no differently then any other saint in the Scripture. Certainly she is no co-redemptrix as some Roman Catholics believe and praying to Mary (or any other saint) would be sin but respecting and honoring Mary for her faith is perfectly fitting and proper.

** — An interesting ‘for whatever its worth’ observation.

Most scholars believe it very likely that Mary was very young (between 14-16) when all this happened. Obviously Elizabeth, John the Baptist’s Mother, was well advanced in years (Lk. 1:7). It must have been quite a study in contrast to see this young girl and this older matron both pregnant at the same time. God takes a child who has never known a man and a dried up prune who is past child bearing and takes the things that are not and makes them to bear the greatest prophet in the Old Covenant and the Messiah who gives life to the world.

It is interesting that Luke bookends a similar idea in his gospel. In Luke 2 Luke records Zechariah’s prophecy and in verse 70 Zechariah can say, in reference to the advent of the Messiah, ‘As He (God) spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets, who have been since the World began.’ Clearly Zechariah is teaching us here that the Scriptures of the Old Covenant spoke of and taught Jesus the Messiah, and that from the very beginning.

Luke makes this same observation again at the end of His gospel (24:27) when he records Jesus, following His resurrection, leading a bible study on the road to Emmaus with two disciples who had missed how the redemptive events were spoken of in the Old covenant Scriptures.

It is obvious that Luke is telling us that the old covenant Scriptures, were, in the phrase of the Puritans, ‘the cradle where one would find Christ.’ All the Scriptures, from Genesis 3:15f are first and foremost about Christ and tell God’s story of how He does all the work in redeeming a people of His own choosing to be their covenant faithful God. We do a great disservice to Scripture when we use it to cram God into our story instead of seeing that God uses Scripture to tell His story — a story that the redeemed are swept up into as so many leaves are swept up into a tornado. God’s story is objective but as men, in each generation, are placed into its storyline by the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit, that objective story continues to change everything in its path in each generation.

Zechariah was part of Redemptive History. His prophecy was part of God’s objective story of God’s raising up a horn of salvation for His people (2:69). His recognition that all of Scripture was teaching the story of Christ is our good news. BUT Zechariah also understands that this good news is done for a couple of purposes. The first purpose was so that God would be seen as faithful to His promises and covenant (vs. 72). The second purpose was that God’s people might serve Him without fear (vs. 74).

In God’s story when God provides salvation, one purpose of that provision is that God’s people might live in a covenantal faithfulness that echos back God’s covenantal faithfulness to His name and His people. When God’s elect are swept up into His story it is always with the consequence of having been freely saved they will now freely serve according to God’s standards.

Calvin can say at this point on this idea,

“Zechariah’s point was, that, being redeemed, they might dedicate and consecrate themselves entirely to the Author of their salvation. As the efficient cause of human salvation was the undeserved goodness of God, so its final cause is, that, by a godly and holy life, men may glorify his name.”

Calvin then goes on to talk about our responsibility to live a life of service to God, citing the abundant scripture that teaches this truth and ends by saying,

Scripture is full of declarations of this nature, which show that we “frustrate the grace” (Gal. 2:21) of Christ, if we do not follow this design.”

So Zechariah’s Benedictus (Luke 2:67-79) teaches us that God does all the saving but also that those who are saved serve God in every area that God has dominion over. We do disservice to this idea when we do one of three things,

1.) Forget that the Scriptures are first and foremost about God’s work of doing all the saving.

2.) Forget that Scripture do not end with souls saved but rather speak clearly of what the redeemed life looks like in every area of life.

3.) Invert the order so that we do not realize that #2 is always the consequence of #1 being rightly set forth and so speak as if #1 is dependent upon number 2.

“Plagued by anxiety, depression, vague discontents, a sense of inner emptiness, the ‘psychological man’ of the twentieth century seeks neither individual self-aggrandizement nor spiritual transcendence but peace of mind, under conditions that increasingly militate against it. Therapists not priests, or popular preachers of self-help or models of success like the captains of industry, become his principal allies in the struggle for composure; he turns to them in the hope of achieving the modern equivalent of salvation, ‘mental health.’ Therapy has establish itself as the successor both to rugged individualism and to religion; but this does not mean that the ‘triumph of the therapeutic’ has become a new religion in its own right. Therapy constitutes an anti-religion, not always to be sure because it adheres to rational explanation or scientific methods of healing, as its practitioners would have us believe, but because modern society ‘has no future’ and therefore gives no thought to anything beyond its immediate needs. Even when therapists speak f the need for ‘meaning’ and ‘love,’ they define love and meaning simply as the fulfillment of the patient’s emotional requirements. It hardly occurs to them — nor is there any reason why it should, given the nature of the therapeutic enterprise — to encourage the subject to subordinate his needs and interests to those of others, to someone or some cause or tradition outside himself. ‘Love’ as self-sacrifice or self-abasement, ‘meaning’ as submission to a higher loyalty — these sublimations strikes the therapeutic sensibility as intolerably oppressive, offensive to common sense and injurious to personal health and well being. To liberate humanity from such outmoded ideas of love and duty has become the mission of the post-Freudian therapies and particularly of their converts and popularizers, for whom mental health means the overthrow of inhibitions and the immediate gratification of every impulse.”

Christopher Lasch
The Culture Of Narcissism — pg. 13

Several things to note regarding this quote,

1.) Lasch’s point denying that the triumph of the Psychological, while replacing religion, is not a religion, is based upon the observation that Therapeutic man has no teleology. Whereas religions and ideologies speak of future conditions to which man is moving (be it Heaven, or Nirvana, or Utopia, etc.) therapeutic man embraces a substitute religion whose goal is not some future state, but rather, teleologically speaking, only has the modest goal of making its worshipers properly adjusted to the here and now. Now, Lasch is correct about Therapeutic man having no teleology, classically speaking, but He is wrong in suggesting that the absolutization of the Therapeutic is not a religion or is, in his words, an anti-religion. Lasch would have been more correct to note that ‘Psychologicalism’ is the anti-religion religion. Because it has no transcendent, its teleology is completely imminent with the results that man needs not to move towards a higher and better destination because this life is the higher and better destination. Teleology has not been removed from the religion of Psychologism, but rather it has been realized. Psychologism is the religion of modern man, it’s Priests, as Lasch notes, are the ubiquitous therapists, it’s Temples masquerading as local Schools, Universities, Corporate Headquarters, area Churches and Government buildings, it affords its sacraments in its confessional booth and in its personality tests, it provides catechism sessions to countless Freshman orientation classes across the country, as well as the employee meetings that corporate Human Resources organizes for its company employees, and its salvation — the same salvation that the serpent offered to Eve, is found in the ascendancy of the sovereign self.

2.) Lasch subtly suggests that Psychologism is not as rational nor as scientifically grounded as it holds itself to be. Indeed, Psychology is a faith discipline that originally, in its modern embodiment, was developed in order to provide insights into the individual quite apart from the reality of God. The denial of God is the presupposition that it was originally rooted in, and any rationality that it aspires to, is only the rationality of a system that defines the beginning of rationality as being apart from God. Except in a few rare cases, Psychology remains a anti-Christ discipline, to often propped up as legitimate in the Church by Christian practitioners who have not understood the anti-theistic basis of their chosen discipline. The real danger of Psychologism is that it is ever seen as being ‘scientific.’ It’s lifeblood of existence is its sundry personality tests which by their very design makes man, in his corporate expression, the measure of what is normal, which is a most curious thing for any Christian to accept. The Science of Psychologism amounts to taking subjective surveys and turning those subjective results into objective measuring standards by reifying the abstract numbers and pretending that they have concrete existence and that they mean something. In short, the tests and their results become the transcendent point of reference by which Psychologism measures people. This is nothing but finding truth by counting noses, and it is an embarrassment to God’s people that the church has so readily glommed on to this idolatrous humanistic methodology as seen by the introduction of Psychologism into the ordination process and the missionary candidate schools. Lasch was correct to hint that Psychologism is neither rational nor scientifically driven. It remains today as legitimate as it was when it started with phrenologists feeling the bumps on peoples heads in order to gain personality insights.

3.) It’s ascendancy, as Lasch hints at, is to create a culture of self-centered, childish, whiny and weak people whose greatest goal in life is to be seen as a victim. Out of its concern for personal health and well-being it has contributed to our culture of political correctness where the apex of propriety is to be sensitive and so not offend anybody by saying anything that anybody would find offensive for any reason. Those who will not play by its rules will discover that like all Worldviews it will destroy others in order to protect itself.

Anyway … I have only finished the first few chapters of Lasch’s work, and already I would recommend it for those who desire insights into our current culture. I have read several of Lasch’s work, and I have not found him yet to be disappointing.

“In various forms, the fundamental argument advanced by the Christian apologist is that the Christian worldview is true because of the impossibility of the contrary. When the perspective of God’s revelation is rejected, then the unbeliever is left in foolish ignorance because his philosophy does not provide the preconditions of knowledge and meaningful experience. To put it another way: the proof that Christianity is true is that if it were not, we would not be able to prove anything.”

Dr. Gregg Bahnsen
Always Ready — pg. 122

Dear Freddy,

I hope to be able to wrap up answering your question regarding the problem of evil with this post. I have been laboring to show how Scripture sets forth God’s absolute sovereignty. Today I am going to try and show how God’s absolute sovereignty neither makes God the author of evil (though we admit He is the cause of evil) while at the same time making the case that God’s absolute sovereignty doesn’t take away human responsibility or human free agency.

Now we turn to the issue of the will. Libertarian ‘Freedom of the will’ (the ability to choose or not choose options based quite apart from any consideration of God’s predestining will)was introduced into Christian Theology in the attempt to rescue God from the charge of being ‘not nice’ or ‘not fair’ as well as to try and make room for human culpability. We have seen already that the problem with absolute human free will is that where humans have a freedom that is independent of God the result is that God’s Freedom is sacrificed with the further result that man is given a sovereignty over God’s sovereignty.

Some contend that it is better to craft a theology that denies what Scripture teaches on God’s omnipotence if the cost of following what Scripture teaches on God’s omnipotence is that men can not be held responsible for their evil actions. Those who reason this way, reason that it is better to degrade God to a finite level who, like Mick and the boys, ‘can’t always get what he wants’ then it is to have a theology that putatively undermines human responsibility.

So Freddy, how do Biblical Christians avoid the charge that the Biblical doctrine makes puppets out of men? Well first we contend that God’s work of predestination upon men is not physical in the way that that planets are predestined to follow their orbits. Biblical Christians do not believe in a kind of materialistic determinism. Biblical Christians do believe that the natural liberty of the will consists in freedom from this kind of physical necessity. Our wills and the choices arising from our wills is not determined as the planetary motions are. However, their are other kinds of determinism then materialistic determinism. We can speak of a psychological determinism that allows us to deny free will while at the same time speaking of a natural liberty. This observation frees us from any idea that Biblical Christians believe that men are stocks and stones who act by compulsion, though we are still able to embrace the idea that all that men do they do by necessity.

Let us discuss that distinction for a moment. Remember this is all in pursuance of embracing what the Scripture teaches concerning the absolute sovereignty of God while answering at the same time how this affirmation leaves men as free human agents (which is different than saying that men has free human wills).

We have said that Biblical Christians deny the idea that all things happen by compulsion while affirming that all things happen by necessity. What is the difference? Necessity is defined as that by which whatever comes to pass cannot but come to pass, and comes to pass in no other way than it does. The reason that we introduce this distinction between compulsion and necessity is so that we may see that predestination can be affirmed while at the same time affirming that men remain free human agents who are not puppets. To say that all things happen by the infallible certainty of a predestining necessity gives us both a high doctrine of God’s sovereignty while at the same time allowing that humans can be held responsible for their actions. Such a distinction allows us both to affirm that Judas acted voluntarily and without compulsion in betraying Jesus and yet remains the son of perdition who was predestined from eternity past to be the traitor that had to be present in order for prophetic Scripture to be fulfilled (John 17:12).

So, what we are seeking to do here is to make a distinction between free human agency and libertarian free will, the former which we embrace the latter which we reject as un-biblical since it teaches that there is no determining factor, including God, which operates on the human will. Free will means that either of two incompatible choices are equally possible while free human agency acknowledges that all choices are inevitable and yet the choices made are made by agents who themselves desire what they choose.

You see free agency teaches voluntary action and this every Biblical Christian believes. Every Biblical Christian believes that all men make choices wherein they consciously initiate and determine a further action. A choice is a deliberate and conscious volition on the part of the chooser even if the chooser could not have chosen differently. Biblical Christians believe that Judas acted voluntarily without the kind of compulsion by which a puppet acts, while at the same time believing that what Judas chose happened by necessity and was predestined from eternity past. Judas had a will. Judas used his will in a way to make a choice. Judas’ will however was not acting independently of God’s will, though it was acting contrary to God’s commands and as such Judas is responsible to God for his sin against God’s command because Judas was the sole author of his action — a action that in God’s sovereignty could not have been other than it was. Judas’ choice (like all human choices) was a deliberate volition on the part of the chooser, even if it could not have been different.

Now in protest some will object against the idea of necessity at this point claiming that they know that their will is absolutely free because they do not sense any necessity informing it. This is a short-sighted protest. There are many common things that influence our will without us being conscious of it. When we have been up 36 hours straight our wills are affected by exhaustion. The actions of our wills are different after going 4 days without food then they would be if we were making choices after a Thanksgiving feast. All education is predicated on the reality that the will is not absolutely free and can be trained and molded. Do we really believe that our wills are free from all outside influence? Do we really believe that we have enough knowledge of what outside influences are working on our wills in order to bend them in the direction that they are bent? If little matters like lack of sleep, or lack of food, or training, or external conditions can delimit the notion of libertarian free will then why are we so insulted at the notion that the sovereign God delimits our free will, when scripture clearly teaches that He does (Proverbs 21:1)?

In the end, humans assert libertarian free will, but it is an assertion quite beyond their ability to know. In order for men to know they have this kind of freedom of the will they would have to know and be conscious of every kind of influence in the entire universe and this would require omniscience. Their assertion of libertarian free will is really a manifestation of God’s determining will that they would believe that which is not possible.

Now, we move on to the issue of responsibility. Some would contend that free will is the basis of men being responsible to God but Scripture seems to teach otherwise. Romans 1 seems to indicate that one foundation of men being responsible before God is that they acted against a better knowledge,

“For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they(AN) became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools…”

But Freddy, Scripture also teaches that we are responsible to God for reasons beyond our actions and beyond the suppressing of what we know to be true and are yet held responsible for knowing. Scripture also teaches that quite beyond our choices (free or otherwise) men are held responsible before God because Adam’s sin has been imputed to them (reckoned to their account). Men are accountable to God because of Adam’s sin as Romans 5 (esp. vs. 19) teaches. Adam was our covenant head and when Adam acted we acted in Adam, and so when Adam sinned we sinned in Adam and became guilty with our Father Adam, so that it is just and proper for God to be displeased with us and hold us responsible if only because we are Adam’s seed. Now, typically, most Christians will insist that this is not any more fair of God than not giving men libertarian Free will but fortunately truth isn’t arrived at by counting noses.

So, we have seen a couple reasons why God’s predestining will is not inconsistent with human responsibility. Humans are still free agents even if they don’t have absolutely libertarian free will and consistent with that we have seen that the necessity of something happening is not the same as those necessary things happening by compulsion. Free human agents earnestly and genuinely pursue what God has willed and so remain the author of their evil decisions.

Let us press on to look at another reason why it remains just for God to judge those who have necessarily walked contrary to His divine commands. It is just of God to hold men responsible for their actions simply because God is God. Scripture teaches that God is just in all His ways (Psalm 145:17). Whatever God does is just, if only for the reason that He does it. Was it unjust of God to harden Pharaoh’s heart? Was it unjust of God to hate Esau before He was born? Was it unjust of God to plague Job? Was it unjust of God to carry Joseph to Egypt by way of slavery, bondage, and mistreatment? Was it unjust of God to ordain the cruel death of His Son? Why should we think that the sense of justice that belongs to fallen men has a right to condemn He who is by definition always just all the time? Scripture teaches us that God is just. How could we ever charge Him with injustice? Shall the clay say to the potter, ‘you’re not just because you made me this way?’ So, we are saying that it is just of God to hold men responsible for their actions of necessity because God says that all of His ways are righteous.

There is another thing we might say at this point Freddy that could help with our sense of outrage over the very real cruelties we see in this world. All of us at times struggle with evil. There have been times in the ministry where I have seen it face to face. The funeral of a infant killed by its parents. The death of a suicide victim. The long misery of an ugly cancer. The abuse of a child or woman by a man. I have seen, wept, and agonized over a great deal of the evil for which men rage at God, and the sum of what I have seen has not left me without scars nor has it left me unchanged. By God’s grace, however, I don’t rage at God and charge Him with fault, but trust in His goodness, for He has taught me, and I accept by Faith, that God has a morally sufficient reason for the evil that exists. Now, I don’t know what that reason is but I accept, because of the testimony of Scripture, that God is good and just in all of His ways and so I believe, by faith, that God has a morally sufficient reason for all the wickedness and evil that people can name. In the end Freddy, if, in order for God to be just, His sovereignty must be limited, why would I worship or trust such a divine being? If God isn’t absolutely sovereign than I would be better served by arming myself to the teeth and trusting myself since a non-sovereign God isn’t much help in a tight situation.

I hope we have said enough to show that God is not the author of sin while still remaining the cause of sin. What I mean by this Freddy is that since God is the cause of all that is (Romans 11:36) we affirm that God must be the cause of all evil. However, all because God is the cause of all evil, does not mean He is the author of all evil. We can say that because Scripture clearly teaches the idea of secondary causes. If I knock a cup of Tea off my desk and it spills into my computer thus destroying it I might hold gravity accountable (dumb gravity, if it didn’t exist the cup would not have fallen) or I might hold whoever placed the cup on my desk accountable (dumb person put that tea in a place it didn’t belong) or I might hold myself accountable (dumb me, I should have been more careful). All of these realities were causes but the most natural idea is to hold myself responsible as the author of my spillage. Similarly when we say that God is not the author of sin we mean that God is not directly responsible for the wicked actions of free human agents. Men themselves remain the immediate cause of their sins and so remain the author of their sin but all because men are the author of their sin doesn’t mean that there aren’t other causes and since God is the ultimate cause of everything and nothing could exist except that God caused it we must say that God is the cause of evil without being the author of evil.

Now, we have spent some time on this and perhaps I have given you more then you could have wanted. Still, in order to be direct let me turn to your questions one last time and give you a direct answer the brevity of which can be understood in light of all that has now been said.

You asked,

“If God created the heavens and earth why did he create sin?”

The answer is that God created the Devil who instigated sin because He determined that by creating such a being as the Devil He would gain more glory than by not creating a being such as the Devil.

You also asked,

“If He didn’t create sin then why did He allow the possibility of sin?”

The answer is that He not only allowed for the possibility of sin but He also determined that it would exist and He did so in order that men might marvel at His greatness.

Please forgive me if I have given you to much. If you have any further questions I would be pleased if you would ask them.

Pastor Bret