Category: Theology

Ask the Pastor — What of John Donne’s Divine Ravishing?

Dear Pastor,

I wonder what you think of John Donne’s Holy Sonnet 14, “Batter My Heart.” ? It ends with a rape of the soul. But he links it to chastity. The paradox is present.

 
Jayson Grieser
 
 
Jayson,
 
Donne’s couplet in question,
 
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
 
I think one has to understand the points of perspective in order to dissolve the paradox. We, as humans, will always be ravished either by God or by the devil. As such, it is never a matter of being “ravished” or “not being ravished,” it is always only a matter of “ravished by whom.”

I think what Donne is getting at is akin to Luther’s prose in his, “On the Bondage of the Will,”

 
“Man is like a horse. Does God leap into the saddle? The horse is obedient and accommodates itself to every movement of the rider and goes whither he wills it. Does God throw down the reins? Then Satan leaps upon the back of the animal, which bends, goes and submits to the spurs and caprices of its new rider.”
 
So, man is always a ravished being, just as man is always a rode being. If we are ravished by the devil it is a ravishing unto corruption. If we are ravished by God it is a ravishing unto chasteness and purity. Man, having no free will, will thus only be a ravished being. Either we will be ravished unto purity by God or we will be ravished unto impurity by the Dragon.
 
Donne uses the “ravished” language but in my estimation he is using the language from Lucifer’s perspective when he uses that language. If he were to speak from God’s perspective he would have written instead something like,
 
Except you possess me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you keep me.
 
But that doesn’t make for as good poetry. I hope that helps.
 
Thank you for stopping by Jayson and thanks for a thoughtful question.

 

The Centrality of the Cross

The words “flesh” and “blood” used here in John 6 of course point to the cross, where Jesus’ flesh will be broken and his blood will be spilled, Jesus associates the separation of his flesh and blood in his violent death on the cross as the moment when He will totally give his whole self for the life of the world.

Texts like this remind us that the center of the Christian faith is the death and resurrection of Christ. Christ is our Great High Priest who as our King is a warrior Priest. Our whole existence and being means nothing apart from the death of Christ for sinners such as us.

Apart from the death of Christ the only way to deal with sin is to deny it and the only way to deal with guilt is to pawn it off on every poor unsuspecting soul we come across.

Apart from the death of Christ, right and wrong are, at best, merely agreed upon subjective conventions. However with the death of Christ God’s law is vindicated and so God’s definition of right and wrong are honored and are anchored as the Universal standard of right and wrong for all men.

Apart from the death of Christ good and bad are determined by those who have the most and biggest guns. With the death of Christ good and bad have meaning that transcend men’s ability to have their way by force. With the death of Christ justice, as found in and defined by God’s good, is one day guaranteed, even if that day is the last day.

The death of Christ is the anchor of the universe and were it to ever go into eclipse — a certain impossibility — men would become the psychotic animals too many of them already are due to their defiance against God and His Christ. It is only the death, resurrection and ascension of Christ that provides for the flowering of a human flourishing that is resolved on finding joy and meaning in bringing glory to God.

The death and resurrection of Christ is and always shall remain the truth that vindicates God and insures the manishness of man.

Scripture and Light

In the Genesis record, God said, “Let their be light” (Gen 1:3) and that light appears overcoming the darkness, saturating the creation realm with God’s authority.  In Isaiah the Servant of the Lord was promised to be a light both to Israel and to the Nations who were not yet covenanted with God as Israel was,

“I am the Lord, I have called You in righteousness,
I will also hold You by the hand and watch over You,
And I will appoint You as a covenant to the people,
As a light to the nations.” Isaiah 42:6

He says, “It is too small a thing that You should be My Servant
To raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the preserved ones of Israel;
I will also make You a light of the nations
So that My salvation may reach to the end of the earth.” Isaiah 49:6

In the Gospel accounts, that Servant of the Lord promised … the Lord Christ is the Redemptive light come to inaugurate a new age, a new realm, and a glorious new day as from the Father of lights (James 1:17). He is the light who enlightens every man (John 1:19) Christ is the new covenant age light that shines in the darkness (John 1:5). The Apostles saw He who was the radiance of the glory of God (Hebrews 1:1) as the glory of the One and only who came from the Father (John 1:1-4). As the age to come Light, the followers of the Lord Christ never walk in darkness (John 8:12). Christ as the Redemptive light of the age to come demonstrated and revealed itself with a white hot intensity at the transfiguration wherein even His clothing became dazzling white (Mark 9:1-4).  In the crucifixion He who is “the Light of the World” is snuffed out and as on cue, the light goes out for three hours Christ (Matthew 27:45). Light is picked up again in John’s Revelation wherein John the Revelator falls as dead as before a super nova God-man (Rev. 1:14-17). Finally, as the Scripture started with light, it forms an inclusio by ending with He who is the light, as it closes with the motif of Christ as the light which illuminates the new Jerusalem.  He who ever was very light of very light remains the light of the world (Rev. 22:4).

The Untenableness of Neo-Orthodox Theology Exposed

“The (neo-orthodox) theologians stand before the Bible in the expectation that through preaching the words of the Bible will become the word of God as the Bible’s audience encounters them in the written witness to Jesus Christ. Barth is famous for the syollogism, ‘The Word written: the Word preached: the Word revealed.’ In other words the written words of the Bible become the word of God to the Church through the preaching of Jesus Christ. As the Bible engenders faith in Jesus Christ, it becomes the Word of God. Surely it is important to combine Word and Spirit  to know God in Jesus Christ, but to restrict the revelation  of the word of God to the human encounter with God in that preaching locates the Bible’s authority in the Christian’s experience of revelation, not in the Bible’s  divine inspiration of that revelation. God’s Word is God’s Word whether or not it is recognized as such, just as a father and a mother are a child’s parents whether accepted or rejected by the child.

The neo-orthodox tend to distinguish between Jesus Christ as the Word of God and Scripture as a ‘witness’ to the Word of God. Barth grounded his dogmatic theology on an orthodox understanding of Jesus Christ as the embodiment of God and of God’s purpose for humankind, but regrettably not on the whole Bible, which he did not regard as inerrant. According to neo-orthodox theology, biblical statements that do not contribute to the witness to Jesus Christ are not necessarily true. This position is unstable because it exalts Christ by depreciating the text that bears witness to His exaltation. In other words according to the neo-orthodox, one hears the Word of God in the Bible as one hears music on a scratched record. In this way they tend to set up the canon of the message of Jesus Christ (i.e.– The music) as more valuable then the whole canon of Scripture (i.e. — the record); a canon within the canon. This dichotomy creates an unstable theology — evangelical and unorthodox regarding the authority of all of Scripture. A canon-within-a-canon theology ultimately places authority in the audience.”

Bruce Waltke 
An Old Testament Theology — pg. 75-76

A small beef with Waltke, in this otherwise fine quote, is his giving in to feminist theology as seen in his usage of “humankind,” as opposed to “mankind.”

Waltke’s Woolly Headed Thinking

The following quote is written by a Biblical theologian and it shows. Honestly, I think this is not well thought out.

“Biblical theologians differ from dogmaticians in three ways. First, Biblical theologians primarily think as exegetes. not as logicians.”

(So exegesis is done non logically?)

“Secondly, they derive their organizational principles from the Biblical blocks of writings themselves rather than factors external to the text.”

(This is the old “we just let the text speak for itself saw.”)

“Third, their thinking is diachronic — that is, they track the development of theological themes in various blocks of writings. Systematic theologians think more synchronically — that is, they invest their energies on the church’s doctrines, not on the development of religious ideas within the Bible.”

(“We’re more Biblical than you are .. nah nah nah nah nah.”)

Bruce K. Waltke
An OT Theology — pg. 64

I’m not sure many Biblical theologians realize how dependent they are on systematic categories before they even come to the text.

Biblical theologians would not seem to be able to be presuppositionalists. They seem to contend that they just observe the unfolding facts of redemptive history while then allowing a philosophy of fact to emerge. However, Van til was right when he offered that there is no fact without a philosophy of fact.  We need to reiterate again that “Biblical theology” still uses presuppositions and constructs to order their study just like systematic or dogmatic theologians.