Author: jetbrane

I am a Pastor of a small Church in Mid-Michigan who delights in my family, my congregation and my calling. I am postmillennial in my eschatology. Paedo-Calvinist Covenantal in my Christianity Reformed in my Soteriology Presuppositional in my apologetics Familialist in my family theology Agrarian in my regional community social order belief Christianity creates culture and so Christendom in my national social order belief Mythic-Poetic / Grammatical Historical in my Hermeneutic Pre-modern, Medieval, & Feudal before Enlightenment, modernity, & postmodern Reconstructionist / Theonomic in my Worldview One part paleo-conservative / one part micro Libertarian in my politics Systematic and Biblical theology need one another but Systematics has pride of place Some of my favorite authors, Augustine, Turretin, Calvin, Tolkien, Chesterton, Nock, Tozer, Dabney, Bavinck, Wodehouse, Rushdoony, Bahnsen, Schaeffer, C. Van Til, H. Van Til, G. H. Clark, C. Dawson, H. Berman, R. Nash, C. G. Singer, R. Kipling, G. North, J. Edwards, S. Foote, F. Hayek, O. Guiness, J. Witte, M. Rothbard, Clyde Wilson, Mencken, Lasch, Postman, Gatto, T. Boston, Thomas Brooks, Terry Brooks, C. Hodge, J. Calhoun, Llyod-Jones, T. Sowell, A. McClaren, M. Muggeridge, C. F. H. Henry, F. Swarz, M. Henry, G. Marten, P. Schaff, T. S. Elliott, K. Van Hoozer, K. Gentry, etc. My passion is to write in such a way that the Lord Christ might be pleased. It is my hope that people will be challenged to reconsider what are considered the givens of the current culture. Your biggest help to me dear reader will be to often remind me that God is Sovereign and that all that is, is because it pleases him.

Dominion As Functional Image

Typically when the discussion regarding man as the Image of God begins the emphasis almost immediately falls on ontological categories. The Westminster Larger Catechism, when speaking about the Image of God begins with the ontological categories,

Question 17: How did God create man?

Answer: After God had made all other creatures, he created man male and female; formed the body of the man of the dust of the ground, and the woman of the rib of the man, endued them with living, reasonable, and immortal souls; made them after his own image, in knowledge, righteousness,and holiness; having the law of God written in their hearts, and power to fulfill it, and dominion over the creatures; yet subject to fall.

However we want to note here that the WLC not only lists the ontological realities of man as the Image of God, but it also lists one of the functional realities. Man revealed himself as God’s Image by what he did. Man revealed himself as God’s Image bearer by having dominion over the Creatures.

The Scripture teases out this functional dynamic of man as Image bearer by saying,

Genesis 1:26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

The emphasis here, regarding man as the bearer of God’s Image, falls on functionality more then ontological correspondence. This is not to say that the ontological aspects of man as the Image bearer of God are not true. It is merely to say that the emphasis in Scripture (as we shall see) is on the functional aspects.

Adam and Eve were charged with reflecting God’s Image by “ruling” over the creation. In doing so they would be imaging God as the Sovereign Ruler over all. The rule of Adam and Eve, there in the Garden, was to be an ectypal shadow of which God’s rule was the archetypal reality. Just as God, in creation, subdued the chaos, exercised regency, and filled the earth, so Adam and Eve were to Image God, upon God’s command, by subduing, ruling, and filling the earth by being fruitful and multiplying.

Genesis 2:15 hits this theme again,

15 And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.

The idea of dressing and keeping the garden would include the idea of serving and protecting it. The Garden thus becomes a kind of Temple Sanctuary in which Adam as a High Priest and Eve, as his help-meet, were placed in order to Image God in the pleasurable duties that were laid upon them as Image Bearers. That the Garden is a Temple Sanctuary is seen by God presence in the Garden and His communion with Adam and Eve.

Though not explicitly stated in the text, Adam’s failure as High Priest over God’s Temple Garden is seen in his failure to serve and protect the Temple Garden. With Adam’s failure to keep the serpent out of the Garden Sanctuary Adam’s is unfaithful to the assignment to serve and protect the Temple Garden. The immediate consequence of Adam’s failure to Image God was the loss of the woman, who was given to Adam to Image Adam. Adam’s failure in Imaging God led to the failure of the Woman to Image Adam. The Serpent, having eluded God’s covenantal ordering by eluding Adam’s serving and protecting role, seeks to continue to upset God’s covenantal ordering, circumventing Adam’s authority by eliciting Eve into joining him in creating a New World Order. Adam has failed in the Imaging task of Dominion to which he was called and in his failure he Images the Serpent. (The Serpent gained traction by way of deception and soon enough Adam is practicing deception by hiding from God and by blaming the Woman God had given him.)

Adam, as God’s functional Image bearer, has failed with his attempt to seize God’s place. Subsequently, Adam will reap what he has sown as seen in Eve’s curse to be always grasping for Adam’s position instead of being content as Adam’s Image bearer. (“Your desire shall be for your husband [i.e. — for his position] and he shall rule over you.”) Because of this dominion, filling the earth by being fruitful and multiplying, and a reversal of the Serpent’s hold will have to be restored by another Adam who always is content to be the express image of His person.

Before pushing on here, let us note that this functional Image bearing of Adam was not divorced from his ontological Image bearing. Obviously Adam could not serve and protect the Temple Sanctuary, could not bear hegemony as God’s Steward King, could not be fruitful and multiply apart from true knowledge, righteousness and holiness, which characterized the ontological correspondence between Adam as the creature Image bearer and God as the uncreated Regent. Man cannot do (functionality) what he is not.

However, before the successful eschatological Adam arrives (that is, the Adam who is all that the failed 1st Adam was commanded to be) other Adam models arise and fail at being faithful functional Image bearers of God.

Observations

1.) Man is a Imaging being. Imaging is an inescapable concept. Man will either Image the God of the Bible and His Christ or he will Image some other false God (Idol). There is no neutrality.

2.) Failure in Adam’s Imaging God meant failure in Adam’s created Image (Eve) imaging Adam. Failure in the creature Creator relationship always means failure in the creature creature relationship.

3.) Lex Talionis (the punishment fits the crime).

Adam reaps with Eve (her constant desire for his position) what he sowed with God (a desire for His position).

Next Entry — Other failed Adam Image bearer models and the failure of Corporate Israel to be reflect God’s Image

R2K’er Advocates For Allowing Civil Rights Of Marriage To LGBT

After documenting how Europeans (particularly the French) can be pro on legalizing sodomite and lesbian approximation of marriage while at the same time opposing sodomite and lesbian couples raising children one young R2K’er offers this gem,

“Do the French point the way to a potential compromise? Increasingly most Americans are loath to restrict gays and lesbians from exercising the same rights associated with their relationships that married couples have. Yet the most persuasive public arguments against gay marriage continue to revolve around the interests of children. The evidence is solid (though minimized, due to the politicization of the debate) that children do best when raised by two biological parents – both the father and the mother. Of course, as far as adoption is concerned such an ideal is unattainable. Nevertheless, as much as possible it can be approximated.”

1.) Apart from presupposing the God of the Bible and His special revelation by what standard do we adjudicate “best” as in, “that children do best when raised by two biological parents.”

2.) Apart from presupposing the God of the Bible and His special revelation why should anyone care about children at all? Apart from the God of the Bible and His special revelation why even think that a family consists of a Dad, Mom and children? Why not three Moms, two Dads and children? Why not five Moms and one Dad and children?

3.) Here is a article that contends that studies reveal that children who grow up with sodomite and lesbian parents do not suffer, in the least, when compared to children who grow up with heterosexually normal parents. I choose to believe this study over the R2K’er studies. How is his appeal to Natural law going to defeat my appeal to Natural law?

http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/news/20051012/study-same-sex-parents-raise-well-adjusted-kids

4.) Is this R2K’er suggesting that people have rights to sin? Is this R2K’ers saying that God’s Natural Law teaches that sodomites and lesbians have the same rights to the civil rights of marriage as a heterosexual man and woman? Where do these rights for sodomite and lesbian civil rights marriage come from for this R2K’er? If God’s Natural law and His revealed law both teach the same thing, where does this R2K’er get off suggesting that sodomites and lesbians have a right to civil rights marriage as long as they don’t corrupt (in his opinion) children?

R2K’er

“The issue here is not a matter of religious morality. Christian teaching, like that of other major religions, is as condemning of heterosexual immorality (i.e., sex outside of marriage, unnecessary divorce) as it is of homosexuality. But the French remind us that this is not really what the political debate should be about. It should be about children and the vital social role of the family.”

1.) So, children and the vital social role of the family is not about religious morality? If this isn’t about religious morality then who cares about children and vital social role of the family? Is our R2K’er saying that the matter of children and the vital social role of the family is not a religiously moral issue? I presume that our R2K’er is saying that protecting children and the vital social role of the family is a good thing. How can we know what a good thing is apart from religious morality. Or maybe he is saying that it is a good thing that protecting children and the vital social role of the family isn’t determined by religious morality? But how would we know that that it is a good thing that protecting children and the vital social role of the family isn’t determined by religious morality without some religious morality?

2.) This R2K’er commits the common R2K fallacy that somehow political debates are not at their core religious or theological debates. Notice how he assumes that we don’t have to deal with religious morality when we are in a political realm that is cordoned and sequestered from the theological or religious realm.

R2K’er

“The fact is, if America is ever to become serious about rebuilding the social fabric of marriage and the family, government and the various institutions of civil society will have to be much more proactive in reestablishing the link between marriage and the procreation and raising of children. Yet there is no reason why this has to require the restriction of the legal or civil rights of gays and lesbians, let alone a focus on matters pertaining to homosexuality. In reality, rebuilding a culture of marriage and fidelity would step on the toes of far more heterosexuals than of gays and lesbians. The question is, are we willing to place the interests of children back at the center of our public discussions of sexuality, marriage, and the family?

Perhaps the heirs of the French Revolution have something to teach us after all.”

1.) Again … where does Natural Law teach that sodomites and lesbian have a right to normalize and legalize their sin?

2.) Some studies are being released that suggest that children being intimate with adults is a healthy thing. Why not promote the interests of the children is this way?

A Dutch study published in 1987 found that a sample of boys in paedophilic relationships felt positively about them. And a major if still controversial 1998-2000 meta-study suggests – as J Michael Bailey of Northwestern University, Chicago, says – that such relationships, entered into voluntarily, are “nearly uncorrelated with undesirable outcomes”.

Most people find that idea impossible. But writing last year in the peer-reviewed Archives of Sexual Behaviour, Bailey said that while he also found the notion “disturbing”, he was forced to recognise that “persuasive evidence for the harmfulness of paedophilic relationships does not yet exist”.

Obviously our R2K’er is allowing his religious bias to color his interpretation of Natural law.

Recapitulation In Matthew & Baptism Insights

The Gospel of Matthew gives us a great deal of recapitulation of the OT wherein Jesus is the Faithful Israel that answers to unfaithful OT Israel. One such example is the Baptism of our Lord Christ.

Just as Israel was led by Moses and had to go through the water at the Exodus to enter the the promised land, and just as the second generation had to do the same thing at the Jordan River under Joshua’s leadership, as a miniature second exodus, so again, now that Israel’s restoration is imminent, as led by one who is greater than both Moses and Joshua, true Israelites must again identify with the water and their anti-type prophetic leader in order to begin to experience true restoration and entry into the new creation.

And so, like Moses and Joshua, Jesus and His people are Baptized as on the cusp of entry into a new Kingdom.

Of course this has implications for the Church. Clearly Moses and Joshua and God’s people with them, were not immersed in their Baptism but rather they went through the water without going under the water. This would give strong circumstantial evidence that Jesus Himself was not immersed but as a true Israel passing through the Red Sea and later the Jordan was sprinkled. If this continuity holds this means that immersion is not Biblical as a mode of Baptism.

Another implication, if this observation about recapitulation is true, would be that Adult only Baptism (as practiced by Anabaptists) is also not Biblical. As infants and children were participants in those OT Baptisms of Moses and Joshua, together with all of God’s people, so this would mean that infants and children today should be identified with the Baptism of Christ just by virtue of belonging to covenant member parents.

Ephesians 2:10

10 “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.”

1.) The word “workmanship” is from the Greek word where we get our word “poetry.” We (the Church) are God’s poetry. We are His craftsmanship. We are his workmanship.

2.) The fact that we are created in Christ Jesus indicates to us that the workmanship (poetry) that we are is in relation to Redemption. As such the “created” that is being referred to here is not the created, as in being born, but the created as being re-born. The Church has been placed in the realm of the new creation. (Indeed, we are so part of the re-creation that St. Paul will soon say that God’s workmanship is already sharing in Christ’s ascension as we are now seated in the Heavenly places.) The thrust here is, because of God’s work in Christ, that the Church is now living in the already inaugurated “age to come.” That is the age of which we are now His workmanship.

3.) As now living in this “age to come” reality we now walk in a “age to come” fashion. The works that are produced in us and that we thus produce are consistent with the “age to come” we are living in.

4.) We were re-created for the end of good works. A Christian who has been re-created, who has been placed into the age to come, who has been seated in the heavenlies with Christ, can no more not produce good works then an apple orchard can not produce apples.

5.) Of course when St. Paul talks about our living in this current age of renewal he fixes Christ front and center. Christ, being the firstborn from among the dead, is the one in whom the age to come finds its existence. So, if we are in this age to come it is only because we are first in Christ Jesus, who is Himself the “age to come.” The King is tightly associated with His Land and His Rule.

6.) Note the tie between God’s eternal decrees (“Which God hath before ordained”), the completed work of Christ as being the instrument of the “new creation,, in which we now reside (“In Christ Jesus”), and our existential every day walk as Christians (“that we should walk in them”). There is a seamless web spun here by the inspired Apostle between Redemption planned, Redemption Accomplished, and Redemption applied.

All this to say that the idea of a Church that is conformed to this world is one of the greatest grotesqueries that could ever be conceived. Such a worldly church is the very opposite of what Paul is screaming at us in this passage. Having been united to Christ we are now living in a new age, with a new disposition and a new ethic. God ordained for us our Christ, our re-creation, and our walk.

Dabney on Fiction … McAtee Applying Dabney

Speaking of the dangers of an immoderate reading of fiction, R. L. Dabney wrote,

“But there is also an injury to the moral character as well as to the habits of mental industry, which is a necessary result of the fundamental laws of feeling. Exercise is the great instrument ordained by God to strengthen the active principles of the heart. On the other hand, all the passive susceptibilities are worn out and deadened by frequent impressions. Illustrations of these two truths are familiar to every one; but there is one well-known instance which offers us at once an example of the truth of both of them. It is that of the experienced and benevolent physician. The active principle of benevolence is strengthened by his daily occupations until it becomes a spontaneous and habitual thing in him to respond to every call of distress, regardless of personal fatigue, and to find happiness in doing so. But at the same time, his susceptibilities to the painful impressions of distressing scenes are so deadened that he can act with nerve and coolness in the midst of suffering, the sight of which would at first have unmanned him.

Now, all works of fiction are full of scenes of imaginary distress, which are constructed to impress the sensibilities. The fatal objection to the habitual contemplation of these scenes is this, that while they deaden the sensibilities, they afford no occasion or call for the exercise of active sympathies. Thus the feelings of the heart are cultivated into a monstrous, an unnatural, and unamiable disproportion. He who goes forth in the works of active benevolence among the real sufferings of his fellow creatures will have his sensibilities impressed, and at the same time will have opportunity to cultivate the principle of benevolence by its exercise. Thus the qualities of his heart will be nurtured in beautiful harmony, until they become an ornament to his character and a blessing to his race. This is God’s “school of morals.” This is God’s plan for developing and training the emotions and moral impulses. “Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and the widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.” And the adaptation of this plan of cultivation to the laws of man’s nature shows that the inventor is the same wise Being who created man. It is by practicing this precept of the gospel that man is truly humanized. But the beholder of these fictitious sorrows has his sympathies impressed, and therefore deadened, while those sympathies must necessarily remain inert and passive, because the whole scene is imaginary. And thus, by equal steps, he becomes at once sentimental and inhuman. While the Christian, whose heart has been trained in the school of duty, goes forth with cheerful and active sympathies in exercises of beneficence towards the real woes of his neighbor, the novel reader sits weeping over the sorrows of imaginary heroes and heroines, too selfish and lazy to lay down the fascinating volume and reach forth his hand to relieve an actual sufferer at his door.”

1.) This is not to throw out all reading of fiction. It is merely to note the effect of a constant diet of fiction upon the Christian mind. And since we are going to be saying something about the pulpit, this isn’t intended to communicate that the Sermon story has no place whatsoever.

2.) We need to keep in mind that whatever Dabney has to say here about the immoderate reading of fiction would apply to the immoderate viewing of films, plays, and television.

3.) I’ve spent a significant portion of time in my adult life reading sermons. I can tell you that over the last two to three hundred years sermons have changed a great deal. If you listen to sermons today as compared to a sermon from almost any of the Puritans you see the centrality of the sentimental in sermons and interestingly enough that happens quite often via the telling of the fiction story from the pulpit as part of (and often central to) the sermon. In the Preacher business this is called “narrative preaching.”

4.) Dabney’s point is that the saturation of the feelings, via the absorption of fiction, without some kind of corresponding action leaves one to rot, much like a sponge that soaks up water that is never squeezed out. If this is true and if it is true that the sermon has largely become a platform for story telling, then one is left to wonder if much of our modern sermonizing is resulting, not in building up the saints, but is working to leave them to rot.

5.) Story telling from the pulpit and fiction in general is like a drug for the person who is hooked. Once hooked the fiction and story telling must get better and better — more and more sentimental and sensational — in order to work within the listener or reader the desired effect. Pity the Preacher who doesn’t do the sappy and sentimental story because a generation raised on story telling and fiction is a generation that will not abide a Preacher who is didactic as opposed to sentimental and sensational.

6.) Dabney writes, “it is by practicing this precept of the gospel that man is truly humanized.” Based on this statement Dabney would be chastised by many Reformed people today since according to R2K it is not possible for the Gospel to be practiced by men since the Gospel, according to these definitions, is only what God does. Silly Dabney.

7.) I’m going to contend that this push towards the fiction in our culture but also in the Church is closely tied up with the feminization of the culture and the Church. Fiction fills the role of wooing the reader. Biblically speaking, it is women who have been wooed and men are active in the wooing. Fiction feminizes men because it casts men in the role of the one wooed.

For a two good books that go into this subject with greater depth see,

http://www.amazon.com/The-Feminization-American-Culture-Douglas/dp/0374525587/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1358201187&sr=8-1&keywords=ann+douglas

http://www.amazon.com/Church-Impotent-Leon-J-Podles/dp/1890626198/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1358201250&sr=1-2&keywords=the+feminization+of+the+church