Obama and the Golden Rule

Posted on May 11, 2012 by Don Johnson

Here are a couple of good posts by Denny Burk and Francis Beckwith on President Obama’s use of scripture in his defense of gay marriage.

Posted in Current Affairs, Homosexuality, The Bible, Theology | Leave a comment

Don’t Dream Away the Hand that Saved You

Posted on May 10, 2012 by Don Johnson

The clip is taken from the August 29, 2011 episode of Australian X Factor. If you don’t want to take time to watch the whole thing, here is a quick summary:Emmanuel Kelly, a young man with obvious limb deficiencies, receives polite applause as he limps to the microphone to face the judges. Then a shocked silence falls over the crowd when Ronan Keating asks the singer how old he is:

“I, um, well, actually I am not exactly sure. When I was originally found in Iraq in an orphanage – my mom found me – I was found with no birth certificate, no passport, nothing. ” Emmanuel, as the audience then learns via a recorded video clip, was born in a war zone and his deformities were caused by chemical weapons. He and his brother were found abandoned in a shoebox in a park and taken to an orphanage. There they were discovered by humanitarian Moira Kelly and flown them to Australia for surgery. “She was like an angel walking through the door,” Emmanuel reported. Moira then “fell in love” with the boys and adopted them, raising them in what certainly appeared on television to be a very loving and happy family. “My hero would have to be my Mom,” said Emmanuel.

The introductory video clip ends with most of the audience members and judges already on the verge of tears. Then they are pushed completely over the edge when Emmanuel begins to sing. His song choice for the event:  John Lennon’s Imagine:

Imagine there’s no heaven,It’s easy if you try, No hell below us, Above us only sky, Imagine all the people, Living for today

Imagine there’s no countries, It isn’t hard to do, Nothing to kill or die for, And no religion too, Imagine all the people, Living life in peace

You may say I’m a dreamer, But I’m not the only one, I hope someday you’ll join us, And the world will be as one

If the studio audience and over 11 million views on YouTube are any indication, it was a very moving performance. Personally, I found it mostly ironic. As much as I enjoyed Emmauel’s singing, the ridiculous juxtaposition of a boy who had been rescued by nuns of Mother Theresa’s Missionaries of Charity and then adopted and raised by the founder of the Children’s First Foundation, a woman whose  “Catholic faith has been her driving force to [help children in need] in New York’s Bronx, Calcutta, the Kalahari, Western Australia and all around the world,” singing about how belief in heaven and hell is the cause of great pain and suffering was simply too much for me. I don’t know if Emmanuel actually believes that getting rid of the Christian doctrines regarding the afterlife would be beneficial to the world, but I know that his own life is evidence that points in exactly the opposite direction. The fact that some people were convinced of the reality of heaven and hell was  a major cause of all the blessings in Emmanuel’s life, not his suffering.

Unfortunately, Lennon’s thesis is quite widely accepted among skeptics so it is important to recognize it and be able to correct this false view. They charge that people who seek after Heaven and try to avoid hell are too focused on the afterlife to bother making this world a better place. This is simply not the case. Biblical religion is not opposed to the betterment of the world. Indeed, Christianity has been the premier means by which the conditions of this planet have become better, a point very ably argued by such thinkers as Thomas Woods (How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization), Rodney Stark (The Victory of Reason), and Vishal Mangalwadi (The Book that Made Your World). C.S. Lewis adds:

If you read history, you will find that Christians who did most for the present world were those who thought the most about the next. The Apostles themselves, who set on foot the conversion of the Roman Empire, the great men who built up the Middle Ages, the English Evangelicals who abolished the Slave Trade, all left their marks on Earth, precisely because their minds were occupied with Heaven. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they become ineffective in this. Aim at heaven and you will get earth ‘thrown in’: aim at earth and you will get neither.

One of the major reasons for this fact is biblical religion’s distinctive eschatological view of time. Most worldviews view time pessimistically. Eastern religions (and Western paganism) view history as either a vicious cycle or a march away from an idyllic moment in the past. As such, the goal of these worldviews is to escape the cycle and the degradation. Western materialism’s view is that time is ultimately meaningless, a position elucidated beautifully by Shakespeare’s Macbeth:

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,

To the last syllable of recorded time;

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.

For Biblical religion, however, time is charged with meaning and is purposefully moving towards a positive goal in that God is actively working to redeem all of creation. Those with a Christian worldview are looking forward to the new creation as the culmination and fulfillment of God’s ongoing work. Christians don’t look to escape time or return to the Garden of Eden; instead, like Abraham, they are looking forward to the “city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God” (Heb. 11:10).

The practical result of this eschatological view of time is not that Christians sit around and wait for the New Jerusalem to arrive. Rather, we actively work to see it accomplished.

The Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et Spes) presents this truth clearly:

The form of this world, distorted by sin, is passing away and we are taught that God is preparing a new dwelling and a new earth in which righteousness dwells… [and] we have been warned that it profits man nothing if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself. Far from diminishing our concern to develop this earth, the expectancy of a new earth should spur us on, for it is here that the body of a new human family grows, foreshadowing in some way the age which is to come.

The same document notes: “In their pilgrimage to the heavenly city Christians are to seek and relish the things that are above: this involves not a lesser, but a greater commitment to working with all men towards the establishment of a world that is more human. Indeed, the mystery of the Christian faith provides them with an outstanding incentive and encouragement to fulfill their role more eagerly… .”

As Peter Kreeft says:

People think that heaven is escapist because they fear that thinking about heaven will distract us from living well here and now. It is exactly the opposite, and the lives of the saints and our Lord himself prove it. Those who truly love heaven will do the most for earth. It’s easy to see why. Those who love the homeland best work the hardest in the colonies to make them resemble the homeland. “Thy kingdom come…on earth as it is in heaven.”

The pregnant woman who plans a live birth cares for her unborn baby; the woman who plans for an abortion does not. Highways that lead to somewhere are well maintained; dead ends are not. So if we see life as a road to heaven, some of heaven’s own glory will reflect back on that road, if only by anticipation: the world is charged with the grandeur of God and every event smells of eternity. But if it all goes down the drain in death, then this life is just swirls of dirty water, and however comfortable we make our wallowing in it, it remains vanity of vanities.

Posted in Happiness, Television, Thoughts on the Church | Leave a comment

Exodus Holy Land Tour 2012

Posted on January 18, 2012 by Don Johnson

Join me this November on an amazing journey through Egypt, Jordan, and Israel. Find out more at theexodustour.com.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Why Christianity Lost America

Posted on December 11, 2011 by Don Johnson

Great article by Vishal Mangalwadi.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Some Things Atheists Need to Know About Heaven and Hell

Posted on October 21, 2011 by Don Johnson

Atheists often object to the notion of hell because they think it is unjust. Here is how one guy I talked to recently framed the problem:

It doesn’t seem fair that God would torture a person for eternity just for not believing in him. I mean what would you think of me if I threatened to lock up my wife or children in a room and torture them forever for something silly like burning the toast or not getting their homework done or whatever. It is arbitrary and unfair.

Couple of quick points in response to this.

First, although there certainly is a punitive aspect to hell, it is not an arbitrary punishment but rather the natural consequence of refusing to love God.

Here is what I asked the guy who called me: “What would you think of your wife for saying that she would leave you if you ever cheated on her? Would that be unfair and arbitrary on her part”

“No,” he replied, “That would be a reasonable and natural response to my adultery.”

“Exactly. Let me ask you this, then. Even if she didn’t leave you, would everything be fine with your relationship if you cheated on her? Of course not. Even if she didn’t find out, there is going to be a break in your relationship. There is going to be pain and suffering due to the separation that results.”

That is what hell is – it is the natural consequence of us cheating on God. It is the pain that results from being separated from our beloved Father and Husband.

Second, about the forever part.

Here is the objection: Eternity in heaven or hell isn’t a fair consequence for even 80 or 90 years of sinning or being righteous. At most, we should get equal time: 90 years in hell for 90 years of sinning and 75 in Heaven if we were righteous for 75, etc. We should get equal objective units of measure, if you will.

There are many responses for this objection, many of which focus on the infinite holiness of God requiring an infinite reward or punishment. I won’t get into those here, although I think many of them are valid.

What I do want to mention is that this objection fails take into account how people experience time. The fact is, our  experience of time doesn’t have much to do with how many actual objective units of time have passed. It has much more to do with the quality of the experience we are having. If we consider time as the passing of moments, there is a great deal of variety in how we experience the passing of moments depending on whether or not we are enjoying what we are doing. In other words, there isn’t much of a correspondence between how many objective units of time have passed and how much time we feel has passed.

For example, sometimes it feels like time passes very quickly. Think about that first date with your special someone. You started talking and before you knew it four hours had gone by. But it felt like only a few minutes.

On the other hand, now think about the most boring lecture you ever had to sit through. The clock just seemed to stop, right?

So in one instance the time seems to pass very quickly, and on the other, it just drags. Each minute of the date was like a split second, but each minute of the lecture was like an hour. Moments are light and fleeting in the date, but heavy and slow in the lecture.

Now, think about these events after they are finished. Something very interesting happens. The date which passed so quickly and seemed such a small thing now takes on a solidity, a weight in your mind. Each moment is solid and almost visible; you can remember how the evening played out step by step. You can almost smell the food and hear his or her voice; you can enjoy taking in all the details again and again because they are right there for you all the time. The event has a continual reality, it has become eternal in a sense.

On the other hand, that lecture is now like it never even happened. You can’t remember one thing that was said and frankly, that doesn’t bother you because you never gave that class another thought. It’s like a wisp, something you can’t really grasp even if you wanted to, (and you don’t.) The event that seemed so solid and heavy as you experienced it is now nothing; it has no weight, no substance.

I think our experience of time in this life gives us some insight into Heaven and Hell. To focus on how many moments we will exist in either place is to miss the point. The number of moments won’t matter in Heaven and Hell, what will matter is our experience. In Heaven our experience will be of such a high quality that we’ll never think about time passing because we will be enjoying ourselves too much. And this experience won’t be fleeting; it will have weight and importance. All of our moments will have the solidity of eternity.

On the other hand, the experience of Hell will be of such a low quality that, again, the number of moments won’t actually matter because each moment will seem to take forever. On top of that, these moments won’t have any solidity to them. A person in Hell won’t be able to grab on to anything.  Life will be wispy, unreal.

Heaven and Hell will both be eternal, but that has little to do with how long anyone be in either state of existence.

Posted in Life, Theology | 3 Comments

Beloved Sons: What Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph tell us about Jesus and what it Means to be Children of God

Posted on October 5, 2011 by Don Johnson

[You can hear the sermon on which this blog post is based here]

As I have written elsewhere, God is love and love produces family. God’s goal in creation, then, is family. He wants this family together in one place, working productively, joyfully reproducing generation after generation. That was the plan for Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden. In the beginning we see a unified family living together in one place and peacefully working the ground.

The fall brought the curse that destroyed that idyllic situation. Now the land was filled with thorns and thistles and the family is characterized by pain and separation. The natural consequence of sin (which is adultery against God, again, see here for more) is the destruction of God’s family. Separation is the result, and from Genesis 3 through 11 we see mankind move father and farther apart from each other. The curse of Babel extends that disunity to its farthest point yet. Mankind is spread all over the globe.

In Gen. 12 God makes a covenant with a man named Abram. The promise to Abraham is that God will bring about the opposite of that curse. God promises Abraham a loving family living together in one place.

In this post, we will look at the first three generations of Abraham’s descendents to see what we can learn about how God goes about fulfilling this promise. In particular, we will look at the lives of Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph.

The Story of Isaac, Jacob and Joseph

First Generation: Isaac

Abram was married to Sarai but she had been unable to bear him any children, so Sarai offered her servant Hagar to Abram as a surrogate mother (Gen. 16:1-2.) That produced Ishmael.

In Gen. 17 God reaffirmed his covenant with Abraham (giving him a new name in the process) and then in Gen. 18 promised him a son. A year later Isaac was born (Gen. 21).

This produced severe conflict between Sarai and Hagar and between the boys, so Ishmael and his mother were sent away. (Gen. 21, conflict seen in v. 8)

Then God asked Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac (Gen. 22). Jewish midrash and textual clues suggest Isaac went willingly. (For example, he is old and strong enough to carry the wood himself yet there is no mention of a struggle or of him refusing to be sacrificed.) Note here that in verses 12 and 16 God calls Isaac Abraham’s only son even though Ishamel was his offspring as well. We will discuss that more later.

In Gen. 24 Abraham sent his servant to get a wife for Isaac, and he returned with the lovely Rebekah.

Second Generation: Jacob

Gen. 25:19-28 tells us that Rebekah was barren but Isaac prayed and she became pregnant with Jacob and Esau. Esau was born first, meaning he was entitled to the inheritance as the first born. However, God had foretold that the older would serve the younger and we see that prophesy start to be fulfilled when Esau traded his birthright to Jacob for a bowl of soup.

The next phase in that saga is recorded in Chapter 27. Jacob tricked his father into giving him the blessing that was intended for Esau. On finding out about the ruse, Esau vowed to kill Isaac (27:41). In order to protect her son Rebekah got Isaac to send Jacob to his uncle Laban’s to get a wife. Isaac sent Jacob off with essentially the same blessing that God gave Abraham (28:3-4).

While Jacob was on his way to Paddam Aram (at what is now called Bethel) God confirmed that covenant. (28:13-15).

When he arrives at his destination, Jacob met Rachel, Laban’s daughter. He knew she was the one for him. So he worked out a deal with Laban. Jacob vowed to work for 7 years for Laban in order to receive Rachel as his wife. However, after 7 years Laban tricked him and gave him Rachel’s sister, Leah. Then the two agreed that Jacob would work for another 7 years if he could have Rachel as well, which is what happened.

Leah had several children by Jacob while Rachel was having none. Finally, in a move reminiscent of Sarai, frustrated Rachel gave her servant to Jacob as a surrogate (Gen. 30:3) and a couple of sons were produced. By this time Leah thought she could no longer have kids, so she gave her servant to Jacob to have a couple. However, later she did give birth to two more sons and a daughter herself.

After all this we read that God remembered Rachel and “opened her womb” (Gen. 30:22) and she had a son named Joseph.

By this time Jacob was gaining power and making enemies, so God told him that it was time to go home (31:13).

On the way he met Esau and wrestled with God, who changed his name to Israel.

Later, Rachel has another son, Benjamin. That’s how we arrive at the total of 12 sons (later tribes) of Israel. The oldest son was Reuben, but Jacob’s favorite son was Joseph, his firstborn of Rachel.

Third Generation: Joseph

Joseph was hated for being the favorite. Then he had a dream about how the rest of his family was going to bow down to him and that made the brothers hate him even more. (37:4-5)

 

One day Jacob sent Joseph to check on his brothers. They took the opportunity to throw him in a cistern and then sell him into slavery, telling his father that he has been killed by an animal.

Joseph was taken to Egypt, where he was sold to Poitphar, a leader of the kingdom. Joseph found favor with Potiphar and was put in charge of the household. Unfortunately, Potiphar’s wife also found Joseph favorable and tried to seduce him, but failed. Angry at Joseph’s righteousness, she accused him of trying to rape her and he was sent to jail.

Some time later (Chapter 40), the Pharaoh’s cupbearer and baker were sent to jail as well and had some dreams. Joseph interpreted the dreams correctly, explaining that the cupbearer would be restored to his position and the baker would be killed. These interpretations both come true, but Joseph was left in jail.

Two years later, Pharaoh himself had a dream and the cupbearer finally remembered Joseph, who was brought in to interpret. Joseph explained the dream, telling Pharaoh that there would be 7 prosperous years followed by 7 years of famine.  Pharaoh put Joseph in charge of Egypt and he prepared for the famine brilliantly, storing up food for the people.

Chapter 42, then, tells us about how Jacob sent his brothers to go get food from Egypt during the famine. Joseph met them but pretended that he didn’t know them. He then framed them for theft so that he could force them to bring Benjamin back to Egypt.

Jacob initially refused to send Benjamin, but eventually relented. After Joseph met Benjamin, and finally revealed himself to his brothers. Jacob and the entire family then came down to Egypt to live (chapter 46) and that is how the Israelites ended up in Egypt before the Exodus.

Similarities between the lives of Isaac, Jacob and Joseph:

There are some very strong themes that run through the Genesis narrative and some very clear similarities within the accounts of the first three generations of Abraham. Let’s look at a few:

1. None of the three boys on which we are focusing was the first born son in the family. That is to say, none of them was the born first biologically. Biological preeminence was considered then, and still is, in most cases, the way a family naturally grows. The power and authority (money and blessing) of the father would pass to the firstborn.

However, we saw that:

  • Isaac gained preeminence over Ishmael
  • Jacob gained priority over Esau
  • Joseph gained priority over Reuben and the rest of the brothers, who, in the end are bowing down to him, begging for food and mercy.

So the older ended up serving the younger; the greatest by natural worldly standards became the lesser in this narrative. I am going to suggest this is the way things work in the economy of God. God does not follow the pattern of the world (the “natural” pattern). David, the shepherd boy who became king, is another example of this principle which comes quickly to mind.

2. All three of these sons were supernaturally born to previously barren women

  • Isaac was born to Sarah when she was past the child-bearing age (21:1-2) (that is why she had tried to use a surrogate).
  • Isaac’s wife Rebekah was barren until she became pregnant with Jacob and Esau after Isaac prayed (25:21).
  • Jacob’s wife Rachel was also barren before God “opened her womb” and gave her Joseph (29:31) (she also had used a surrogate).

Again, there is a natural, worldly means of having children, but in all these cases, God circumvented that and intervened supernaturally to build his family.

3. All of these sons were beloved sons; they were favored above the other siblings. All three ultimately achieved preeminence in their father’s mind over the natural born brothers.

  • Isaac was obviously favored at first by his mother over Ishmael, but also, ultimately, by Abraham. God tells Abraham, take your son, your only son, who you love…” (22:2)
  • Jacob was his mother’s favorite (and not his father’s) in the beginning, but in the end he received a better blessing from his father, showing his preeminence.
  • Joseph was explicitly his father’s favorite (37:3), and the robe may have been a symbol that he was going to get the inheritance.

So they are not just special in the way they were conceived, but were considered especially beloved by their parents

4. All these sons lived in conflict with his siblings, the older and natural born sons.

  • Isaac and Ishmael: Ishmael had issues with Isaac (21:8).
  • Jacob and Esau: Esau vows to kill Jacob for stealing everything from him (27:41).
  • Joseph and his brothers: The brothers hate him for being the favorite and for his visions (37:4).

5. All three of these sons are sent on a mission by their father; they were “given over” to a task

  • Isaac is taken to be sacrificed, but there is also a sense in which he is sent to be sacrificed. According to tradition as well as textual clues he goes willingly. He wasn’t fighting his father over the situation – he has to give himself up as a sacrifice.
  • Jacob is sent by his father to get a wife.
  • Joseph is sent by his father to check on the brothers.

6. All three went through a separation from their father; an exile; a symbolic death that involved humiliation. They went from being the heir to the fortune to a much lower status.

  • Isaac was essentially dead to his father as he raised the knife. The son of inheritance is tied to an altar.
  • Jacob was gone for more than 14 years, working as a hired hand away from the place in which he would gain his inheritance.
  • Joseph sold into slavery in Egypt and his father thought he was dead. He went from wearing the coat of many colors to Egyptian prison rags.

7. All three had to remain faithful through trials and temptations

  • Isaac had to allow himself to be tied with ropes and placed on the altar. He was a living sacrifice but there is nothing said about a struggle.
  • Jacob had to keep working for fourteen years. He  certainly was a bit shady in some of his dealings, but when it came to sticking to his end of the bargain to secure his wife, he did it.
  • Joseph had to remain faithful especially when tempted by Potiphor’s wife.

8. All three, after remaining faithful through humiliation and hardship, were reunited with their fathers with increased blessing (more power and authority then they would have received naturally). They were humbled and then exalted. The family line was saved through them, but not just that,  the family increased in power and scope because of them.

  • Because of his willingness to sacrifice Isaac, God renewed and extended his promise to Abraham (22:15-18), making Isaac the centerpiece of that covenant.
  • Jacob left Laban with great wealth, and the last verses in the account of Jacob (35:27-29) tell of him coming home to his father as a very important man.
  • Joseph is reunited with his father as the ruler of Egypt, basically with all the authority and power of the king. Their lives are in his hands and if it wasn’t for him, the family would have died out.

So there are incredible similarities between these stories. Is that a coincidence? Just something interesting without any broader meaning? I don’t think so.

So what does it mean?

Jesus as the Archetypal Beloved Son Of God

First, tells us something about Jesus. All three of these guys are types of Christ, the beloved son of God. Jesus fits into the pattern of the beloved son perfectly. He is very much like Isaac, Jacob and Joseph. Examining the parallels will tell us something about who he is and what he came to Earth to do:

1. He was supernaturally born to the Virgin Mary.

  • Jesus is part of a supernatural family line, not a natural one. (We will talk more about the difference between the family of promise and the natural worldly family below, but for now let’s note that there is a difference between the family of man (which is a result of natural earthly processes) and the family of God (which is a result of supernatural processes).

2. He is beloved of God – the special one.

  • Twice God speaks directly from Heaven about who Jesus is: at his baptism and the Transfiguration. Both times God says “this is my son, whom I love”   (Matt. 3:17 and 17:5). That is the same phrase used when God called Abraham to sacrifice his son, whom he loved.

3. He is sent on a mission by his father. We saw that Isaac was sent to offer himself as a sacrifice, Jacob was sent to woo a bride, and Joseph was sent to check on his brothers. Jesus does all three!

  • 1. One of the most obvious types of Christ in the Bible is Isaac. (And Jesus is not just Isaac in that story, of course, but also but the lamb who was sacrificed in his place.) Jesus is the son whom God the father presents as a sacrifice for the remission of sins. Just as Isaac carried the wood for the sacrifice on his back up to the top of Moriah, Jesus carried the wood that would be used to kill him up to the top of Moriah. The picture of Abraham offering his son is the picture of God offering his son for the sins of the world.
  • 2. However, that is not the only reason Jesus was sent, and not the only picture we have of Jesus’ mission. Like Jacob, Jesus is also sent to woo his bride, his church. He is the bridegroom inviting people to a wedding banquet. Just like Jacob worked in anticipation of that wedding day, the culmination of Jesus work is the bride presented to her husband
    • Rev. 19:7, 21:2, 22:17 tell us of the church dressed as a bride for her husband.
    • In 2 Cor. 11:2 Paul promises his readers “to one husband, Christ.”
    • In the parable of wedding banquet (Matt. 22) and the parable of the virgins (Matt. 25), Jesus talks about himself as the bridegroom, as he does in Matt. 9:15 and John 3:29.
  • 3. Jesus is sent to check on mankind.
    • This recalls the parable of the tenants in Matt. 21:33-45. After sending his servants (the prophets) to check on his renters (mankind), the landowner sends his son and the tenants kill him. Just like Joseph is sent to his brothers and rejected and killed, Jesus is sent and rejected. As John says “He came to that which was his own but his own did not receive him” (John 1:11).

4. Jesus went through a separation from his father that involved exile, humiliation, and death.

We pointed out how each of the three beloved sons of Abraham were separated from their fathers and humiliated. I want to focus on Joseph here, as he went through several levels of humiliation, both literally and figuratively. He went from being the favored son of powerful landowner to

  • being thrown into a pit,
  • then sent as a slave to Egypt,
  • then thrown in jail in Egypt.

This is a perfect picture of Jesus, who also went through several levels of humiliation.

Philippians 2:6-8: “Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death— even death on a cross!”

Notice all the levels that Jesus had to descend. He condescended to be a human, then to be arrested, tortured and killed. Then, as Jonah was in the belly of the whale (Matt 12:38), the Apostles Creed tells us that Jesus then descended into hell. Whatever that might mean, it is a far cry from the right hand of the father in Heaven. Jesus’ life to this point is very similar to Joseph’s trajectory down.

5. Jesus had to remain faithful to the mission, just like the other beloved sons.

Here we might think of the garden of Gethsemane, where he prays ‘Not my will but yours,” in submitting to his upcoming death.

Or we can look at the temptation in the wilderness. There Jesus was tempted with making stones into bread, with testing God as to his exalted status and with the political kingdoms of the world. In other words he faces the lust of the flesh, the lust of eyes and the pride of life, the same temptations that brought down Adam and Eve in the garden. He succeeds where they failed.

In that he is emulating Joseph, who, when faced with Potiphar’s wife, was also tempted with the same things: Physical pleasure, the offer to test his exalted status and political power. (To make a play on the ruler’s wife is to make a play for his position.) So, like Joseph, Jesus remained faithful and, having humbled himself in obedience, he is exalted, which leads us to the next similarity.

6. Jesus was exalted

Just as Joseph was made ruler over all, so was Jesus. The hymn we quoted from Philippians concludes: “Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (Phil. 2:9-11)

Paul echoes this theme in Ephesians:

That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way. (Eph. 1:20-23)

After suffering and humiliation, Jesus is exalted as far as exaltation can possibly go.

So we’ve see clear parallels between Jesus and Isaac, Jacob and Joseph.

Now, what about Jesus’ relationship with his “older” brothers? Does that fit in? We noted that Isaac, Jacob and Joseph were

  • the younger and the “non-natural” brother
  • and they ran into conflict with the older

How does that play our in Jesus’ life and ministry? Is there a parallel in that way as well? Yes.

The key is to understand that Jesus is the younger and “non-natural” brother in comparison to Adam.

Adam is, from a strictly human perspective, the first child of God. (That is what it means to be made in God’s image.) Out of the dust God made man. That is to say, God made a child physically. All human beings since are physical descendents of Adam. Jesus, in as much as he is fully human and comes later than Adam, is a younger brother, as Isaac is to Ishmael and Joseph is to his older brothers.

However, he is also not of exactly the same type, because he is supernaturally born.

You see, Jesus is the new Adam, the spiritual Adam, the ultimate child of promise. Jesus is the one that starts a new family of God. He begins a new type of humanity; a new line that is both physical and spiritual rather than just physical.

So now there are two families co-existing on the earth, and it is possible to move from one to the other. But to do so you must be re-born.

As such, there are two kinds of people in the world – those that are born only physically, (only once,) and those that are born physically and then spiritually. Only those who are born spiritually are part of God’s eternal family. All children in Jesus’ line are true children of Abraham – children of the promise. This is what God was teaching us with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph.

The natural son is no longer in line to get the blessing, the inheritance. Now it will be handed out to those in the live of the supernatural son, the son of promise.

Paul’s makes use of this theme in one of his earliest letters:

If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. 45 So it is written: “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. 46 The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. 47 The first man was of the dust of the earth, the second man from heaven. 48 As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the man from heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. 49 And just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall webear the likeness of the man from heaven. (1 Corinthians 15:44-49)

So the original Adam is like Ishmael and Esau and Reuben and the rest of the brothers who were naturally born. Everyone since Adam has been born into that line.

However, Jesus is the child of the promise. He is the new Adam, the head of the covenant family of God. He is like Isaac and Jacob and Joseph. He is the one with the inheritance. Those that are born of Jesus get that inheritence. Those that are simply physical descendents are not part of that line and do not get the inheritance.

Paul also uses this comparison heavily in Romans in discussing the relationship between the biological family of Abraham (physical descendents of the man; the Jews) and the spiritual family of Abraham, those that are children of faith, children of promise, the “true Israel.”

In Romans 9:7-8 he explains that “not all who are descended from Israel are Israel. Nor because they are his descendants are they all Abraham’s children. On the contrary, “It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned. In other words, it is not the natural children who are God’s children, but it is the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham’s offspring.”

Paul is comparing Isaac and Ishmael, saying that physical Jews who do not accept Jesus are still a part of Ishmael’s line, just like everyone else in the world. On the other hand, those who have faith in Christ are like Isaac and they become children of God.  Notice the difference in the word “descendents” and “children.” You may be a physical descendent of Abraham, but that does not mean that you are a child of Abraham, not a son. (Paul also uses this comparison in Galatians 4:21-5:1)

In fact, to be only a physical descendent of the first Adam is now to be a child of the devil! That is where Jesus took this theme (and it is what got him in so much trouble) with the Jewish religious leaders in John 8:31-47.

To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

They answered him, “We are Abraham’s descendants and have never been slaves of anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free?”

Jesus replied, “I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. I know you are Abraham’s descendants. Yet you are ready to kill me, because you have no room for my word. I am telling you what I have seen in the Father’s presence, and you do what you have heard from your father.”

“Abraham is our father,” they answered.

“If you were Abraham’s children,” said Jesus, “then you would do the things Abraham did. As it is, you are determined to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. Abraham did not do such things. You are doing the things your own father does.”

“We are not illegitimate children,” they protested. “The only Father we have is God himself.”

Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and now am here. I have not come on my own; but he sent me. Why is my language not clear to you? Because you are unable to hear what I say. You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desire. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies. Yet because I tell the truth, you do not believe me! Can any of you prove me guilty of sin? If I am telling the truth, why don’t you believe me? He who belongs to God hears what God says. The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God.”

Notice again the difference between Abraham’s descendents (seed, genetic family) (v. 37) and Abraham’s children (v.39). Jesus is telling the religious leaders that if they do not accept the truth and become children of God by faith in him, they will remain part of the fleshly line of Abraham only, instead of part of the spiritual line of Abraham. The “children” of Abraham are different than the descendents of Abraham. Genetic descendents of Abraham are in the same boat as all genetic descendents of Adam: under God’s judgment as children of the devil. (That is the point Paul is making in Romans 3 when he says all have sinned – Jews and Gentiles are the same when it comes to being under God’s judgment) To be saved even the religious Jewish leaders must become true children of Abraham by following Jesus.

This is why Jesus said to Nicodemus that you must be born again!

“How can a man be born when he is old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb to be born!” Jesus answered, “I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. (John 3:4-6)

Of course this led to conflict with the children of the world, with the “older” “fleshly” brothers. Just as Isaac, Jacob and Joseph were persecuted, so also was Jesus persecuted by man. As he explains in that same chapter of John: “This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. (John 3:19)

So the lives of the beloved sons of God in Genesis tell us something about Jesus and what he came to do. As the new Adam, the beloved son of God came to build the family of God.

What this Means to Us as Children of God

These lives also tell us something about our lives as children of God. You see, we are now the beloved sons of God (assuming we have given our lives to Jesus and are in Christ and Christ is in us). The Church is the beloved son of God.

Do we really think we can avoid this pattern? Do we think that these guys did it so we wouldn’t have to: “Isn’t it nice that they humbled themselves and were persecuted and worked for God at the expense of family and friends so that I wouldn’t have to?

No! This life is the pattern of life for all beloved, supernaturally born children of God, including us. These guys are so similar because this is what all of God’s children go through. This is how God raises children. This is how mature adults are made.

God supernaturally give us life and then calls us to face the same things that every other child of God has to face.

I sometimes get the impression that we think God’s will is for us to just slide into heaven without having to love sacrificially or work or suffer or face temptation. No, we have to do all those things!

We are to:

1. Sacrifice ourselves to the will of the Father and to others in love.

As Paul says in Ephesians 5:1-2: “Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

We are to “present our bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God” (Rom. 12:1)

Jesus and the rest didn’t sacrifice so we wouldn’t have to; he did it so that we could – so that we could die to self and live to Christ.

Jesus said “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” (Luke 9:23)

Paul claimed, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Gal. 2:20)

Bonheoffer said that when Jesus calls a man, he bids him come and die. That is exactly right. Why? Because that is what love is, something I’ve talked about in previous sermons.

2. We are going to face hardship and persecution.

If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first.  If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you.  Remember the words I spoke to you: ‘No servant is greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also. (John 15:18-20)

“For it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for him” (Phil. 1:29) But this suffering is to be accepted and frankly welcomed because we know that it produces maturity (James 1:2-4) and that it will lead to a reward, which leads us to another parallel.

4. The great thing is that when we remain faithful in our suffering, God will exalt us. The same prize that awaited the other sons of God awaits us.

Therefore, we can “Count it all joy when you face trials because you know that they produce perseverance and perseverance must finish its work so you can be mature and complete” (James 1:12). That is why Paul can say, “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.” (Phil 3:10-12)

Why does Paul welcome suffering and want to become like Jesus in his death? Because he knows it is the path to maturity and exaltation. This is the same guy who wrote Romans, after all.

Romans 8 is all about the ramifications of what we have been talking about today: living in the spirit; that is to say, living a life not as a natural born child of sinful Adam, but as a spiritually born child of God.

You see, we are the heirs – the children of promise who get the big prize at the end of the story!

The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.  Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory. I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. (Romans 8:17-19)

Now, let’s understand that this is not arbitrary – this is the way to maturation. As immature, sinful babes in Christ, the only way to grow is through trial. Holiness is union with God, so we need to see Heaven and Hell as the natural ends of a particular process.

5. So we must remain faithful and increase in holiness.

1 John 3:7-10

Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray. He who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous. He who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work. No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in him; he cannot go on sinning, because he has been born of God. This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God; nor is anyone who does not love his brother

In this we will make Jesus clear to the world around.

As the church we have a mission to be Jesus to the world. We, with our “unveiled faces” (2 Cor 3:18) show the world Jesus. That’s an interesting phrase; it reminds me of Joseph finally revealing himself to his brothers as well as Jesus revealing himself to the beloved disciples at the transfiguration. Well, we are Jesus to the world. We are to shine like stars to those around us. (Phil. 2:15)

Conclusion

We started by talking about the curse on all of creation because of the fall. Family was broken and split apart and arable land was made difficult to farm. What is the solution to that problem? Sometimes people talk as if God just forgives the curse – waves a wand over it and treats it as if it never happened. Others talk about God reversing the curse – going backwards to cure the land and bring the people back together; some kind of healing process.

I don’t think either is quite right. God doesn’t ignore what is broken or give it a new name or even just fix it. He starts again. He makes something new. Even as the natural, sinful order of things careens toward its final destruction, God creates a new family, a new order of things, and places it within the old order. One day those two orders will be irrevocably split and we’ll see the new heavens and a new earth for that new family to inhabit. Jesus is the first fruits of that new creation and we are his offspring. So now we are in an in-between time. We are still part of the old, fallen order, but we are also part of the new. We are like the beloved sons of scripture, awaiting our full inheritance while putting up with troublesome older brothers and in fact trying to save them. And we groan, waiting for the consummation of all things but taking heart in the fact that the story is not over yet.

Let’s close with two final passages:

Phil 3:13-21:

Join with others in following my example, brothers, and take note of those who live according to the pattern we gave you. For, as I have often told you before and now say again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.

1 John 3:1:

How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!

 

Posted in The Bible, Theology | Leave a comment

The Meaning of Life According to God

Posted on September 16, 2011 by Don Johnson

Vocal skeptics of Christianity tend to reject a “straw-man” version of the faith rather than the real thing. In other words, ardent unbelievers almost always have terrible theology. They rail against a version of religion that is unorthodox and found only in small segments of the religious population, if it can be found at all.

For example, when it comes to understanding God’s motivations for creating and directing life, many atheists see the God of the Bible as an egomaniac who enjoys asking people to jump through ridiculous hoops and then punishing them for no good reason when they fail to do so. They think God wants people to obey silly, arbitrary rules while telling him how great he is. In this view God is capricious, mean, petty, and unjust. He created the world, desires worship, and makes up rules because he lacks something within himself.

So what does the Church actually teach? God is not arbitrary and his motives for creating us, desiring worship, and giving us rules are essentially the same: He does it all for love.

To support and explain this assertion, let’s start by defining love.

Love is first and foremost a value response. It is a recognition and affirmation that someone is objectively valuable. At its most basic, to love is to say to someone “It is good that you exist!” (Joseph Pieper) It is to affirm that the beloved is of great worth. This is what loving relationships are based on, right? You see that girl across the room and think, Wow! I’ve found someone very special! Exactly. You don’t love someone you think is worthless.

Secondly, love is the giving of yourself sacrificially for the good of that other person. To love someone is not just to say that she is valuable, but it is to act sacrificially for her good. We don’t just love in word and thought, but in deed (1 John 3:18). It’s not love to just wish a person well and be on our way. Rather, to love is to do something for that person, to sacrifice some aspect of your time, energy, money, etc., for her good.

Thirdly, love is the desire for unity with another person. You want to be together, to spend time in each other’s company. Parents who say they love their kids but never want to be with them can’t really be said to truly love their children. (Unity is also the desire of romantic partners, but in that kind of love (eros), the desire is not just for unity or proximity, but for union; the lovers want to be one with each other.)

Much more could be said about the nature of love, but for now let’s pause and make a few points based on the characteristics already mentioned.

First, could this definition of love have been any different? No, because God is love and this definition is based on his nature.

God has eternally existed in a mutually self-giving relationship within the Trinity. The Trinity involves the three persons of the Godhead recognizing the infinite value of each other and giving of themselves to each other. Love is the essence of God’s existence. This means that love is the most basic “thing” in all of reality. As Jean Danielou writes, “Without a doubt the master-key to Christian theology… is contained in the statement that the Trinity of Persons constitutes the structure of being, and that love is therefore as primary as existence” In other words, love is foundational to everything; love is what reality is all about.

Creation is not an arbitrary act of a capricious God. Rather, it is the necessary result of a loving God. Creation is the natural consequence of love. New life and a larger family is what love produces. It is love’s nature. There is a sense in which God’s Trinitarian family could not be contained; it had to expand and grow. Love had to continue to encompass more and more people. Creation is simply the expansion of God’s family of love. As such, the “purpose” of creation is loving family. We are meant to be part of God’s Trinitarian life; we are intended to be children of God.

That is one aspect of what it means to be made in the image of God. Although this term encompasses attributes like rationality and sacredness and such, in the text it is primarily familial. For example, in Genesis 5:3 Adam fathered Seth “in his own likeness, after his image.” God gave us a different nature than the rest of creation in that we are his children, his offspring.

Second, we are made to love God and love each other. That is our ultimate purpose in life and it is the end for which God works. As Jesus said, all the commandments are summed up in two lines: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” and “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:37-38). Again, this is not arbitrary. Could the meaning of life have been any different? No, because God is love.

Third, love is closely related to worship and sacrifice.  To worship is to ascribe worth to something or someone and to sacrifice (give of yourself), to that thing or person. Love and worship and sacrifice go together in that you generally love what you worship and sacrifice is a part of both love and worship.

As such, it is proper to “worship” your spouse (meaning you ascribe great worth to her and are willing to do anything for her) because she is worthy of that action. On the other hand, it is improper to worship alcohol or money ahead of your wife because they are not worthy. A friend of mine gave up watching basketball because it was interfering with his relationship with his wife. That was the right call. To choose basketball over his bride would be to say to her “I love and worship basketball more than you.”

So, then, a major key to love is to only worship what is truly worthy, and then to only ascribe the proper amount of worth to that thing or person. We need to keep our love ordered correctly. Some aspects of creation are worth more than others. Animals are worth more than rocks and humans are worth more than animals. We should not sacrifice the good of our child for the sake of the dog, for example. Again, this is not arbitrary; it simply is the nature of reality. To ascribe more worth to a rock that to a person is to live contrary to the real world.

For example, if a man decided to sell his children into slavery for 30 pieces of gold, he would be doing the wrong thing not because of some arbitrary standard, but because his children are actually and objectively worth more than all the gold in the world.

Now, given that the purpose of life is love and to love is to intimately tied to sacrifice and worship, we can accurately say that we were created for worship and sacrifice, specifically, we were created to worship of God and sacrifice to him.

Is God egotistical for desiring love and worship and sacrifice? Not at all, because he is worthy of them. Would we say that a wife is being egotistical for wanting her husband to love her and the kids instead of gold and alcohol? Absolutely not. She just wants him to live in accordance with the truth. The truth is that his family is much more important than those other things. To live contrary to reality simply doesn’t work. It leads to nothing but trouble, like trying to run your gasoline powered car with nothing but water in the fuel tank.

This is how we need to understand God’s desire for love and sacrifice and worship. He did not create man in order to have his ego pumped up. He created man in order to have a reciprocal loving relationship with him. God is not an arbitrary egomaniac for desiring man to value him above all else. The simple fact is that God is worth more than anything else. To keep our relationship with him in tune with reality, we need to ascribe worth to him above all else. To not do so is to turn reality on its head, which always causes problems.

At its core, to sin is to live out of tune with reality. Sin is disordered love; it is a refusal to offer your worship and sacrifice to the proper being: God.

What happened in the garden? Adam and Eve saw that the apple was good for food, pleasing to the eye, and desirable for gaining wisdom and they decided that they wanted those things more than God. They would not sacrifice temporal, worldly benefit for eternal relationship with God. They decided to worship and serve (sacrifice to) the created thing rather than the creator, which is what we all do (Romans 1:23-25). Practically speaking, we value ourselves and our earthly pleasure above all and, as a result, are unwilling to give of ourselves for God or anyone else. A good picture of mankind’s base sin is the story of Esau, who sold his birthright for a bowl of food. We refuse to love who we are meant to love, the one who is truly worthy of our love, and therefore our proper inheritance within his family is squandered. That is our foundational problem.

The consequences of that problem are not arbitrary punishments, but simply the natural result of broken relationships.

Atheists tend to object to the notion of hell because they think it is unfair. A skeptic asked me recently what I would think of a husband who locked up his wife in a room and had her tortured for no good reason. That is how he understood our relationship with God. I asked him what he would think if he cheated on his wife and she left him. Would that be unfair? He agreed that it would not. That is how I see our relationship with God, I replied.

God doesn’t threaten with arbitrary threats or set unfair rules. He lives according to reality, just like the rest of us. Thankfully for us, love is the foundation of that reality.

Posted in The Nature of Man, Theology | 4 Comments

Why the New Testament Story is Not Unhistorical Myth

Posted on September 6, 2011 by Don Johnson

In denying the historicity of the New Testament narrative, scholars such as Dr. Robert Price argue that the gospel writers never intended the stories to be taken literally. His thesis is that authors of the accounts (whoever they might be) were simply writing inspiration myth and would be shocked to discover that millions of people in the past two thousand years have completely missed their point and believed that an actual historical person performed miracles and rose from the dead. In evaluating this notion, let’s start by examining how we generally approach historical literature.

When it comes to historical stories, it seems to me there are at least four options in regards to authorial intent. We can distinguish each alternative by comparing what is intended by the author to be actually true about each one.

1. Entertainment

In this genre the author writes in order to provide enjoyment, titillation, etc. to the reader. There is nothing true or factual about such stories. They are made up for no greater purpose than to give somebody a way to kill some time. Most contemporary movies and mass market paperbacks would fall into this category.

2. Fable or Parable

In a fable or parable the people and events are made up (all the history in these tales is fiction), but the principle or morals (ethical lessons) are supposed to be true. Some of your more preachy, brow-beating movies and T.V. shows (Brokeback Mountain, innumerable anti-war movies, every segment of Sesame Street, etc) and Aesop’s fables are examples of this category.

3. Non-literal history

This genre is not used often today but was common in ancient times. Some specifics of the historical narrative may be wrong or incomplete but the main points of the story are intended to be taken as factual. In other words, the major historical event is accurate, but may not be explained in as detailed a way or with the exacting standards that we would like. A historical mini-series on T.V. might fit into this category. These authors are not claiming to operate as journalists or historians do today, but they are claiming to write factual history. The speeches of Thucydides in his account of the Peloponnesian War are an example.

4. Literal history

Everything about this account is intended to be true. This is how most modern histories are intended.

So how do you know into which category any particular writing fits? Well, you can start with basic questions like: What does the author say it is? For example, some “historical” movies put a disclaimer at the beginning explaining that this story is not factual and any similarities between the events or characters in the movie and actual people or events, living or dead, are purely coincidental. That is a pretty good hint that the author is not intending for you to take the story literally. On the other hand, some stories start with a direct claim that it is fact. Expressly claimed authorial intent is a good place to start in determining his or her intention.

Of course that isn’t the place to stop your examination. Other questions to ask include: Are there any appeals to specific dates, places, or people? What about appeals to outside sources for verification? These are stronger evidences that the story was intended to be understood as factual. Is the story clearly written as fantasy? Does it occur in an unspecified time and place? (“Once upon a time…;” “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…”) These are indications that the author was not intending the story to be actual history.

With just these criteria we can surmise that, for example, Star Wars seems to be intended as something in between Entertainment and Parable but was not meant to be understood as a literal or even non-literal historical account. On the other hand, the author of A History of the American People may have been writing literal or non-literal history, but clearly is not intending it as a fable or entertainment.

I contend that the Gospels and Acts were meant by their authors to be either literal or non-literal history, not fable or parable (although there certainly are a few parables and fables within the teachings of Jesus). We can come to this conclusion using just the criteria mentioned above. Luke explicitly claims to be writing actual history at the beginning of Luke/Acts, for example, and specific names, dates, and places are common throughout. However, even if we did not have these passages (or they were later additions to the text), there is other evidence that supports the conclusion that the gospels were not intended to be taken as fable, namely the main message of all the gospels.

That main message is that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah. The writers, regardless of their various audiences and theological emphasis, were unanimous is arguing that Jesus was the fulfillment of the Jewish hope for a savior. That is to say, the gospel authors all saw Jesus as the ultimate end to which all of Jewish history had been leading. As such, the writers could not have been intending for their readers to take the accounts of Jesus as non-historical.

The key here is Jesus’ Jewishness. It would make no sense for the gospel writers to intend a non-historical Messiah because that would be meaningless within the context of Jewish theology.

The “Jesus as Myth” folks argue that the Christ of the gospels does not have to be historical because he is just the personification of spiritual principles and sound worldly wisdom or some such thing. However, this idea is ridiculous if Jesus is indeed supposed to be the Jewish Messiah because the God of the Jews is not a God who speaks mystically and vaguely about principles for successful living. He is a God who breaks into history and acts in time and space.

Jews did not worship a set of ideals but a God who had called a specific person, Abraham, built him into an actual genetic, physical entity; a family of humans, brought that family out of Egypt from literal slavery at a specific point in time with great physical signs and wonders, defeated other nations in battles that spilled real human blood, and established a political kingdom on earth led by an actual, physical person named David.

These events were not viewed as parables or inspirational myths. They were understood as God’s hand in history and it was on the historicity of these events that the Jews placed their hope for the future. They were expecting God to act again because he had done so in the past. They were looking forward to a time when God would again break into history and redeem them from their current state of slavery. If those past events didn’t actually happen, the Jews had no god to worship and no hope for a Messiah. They put their faith in a person, not a set of ideals (read Psalms, for example.)

As such, to present a non-historical savior to the Jews, which is what these “Jesus as Myth” scholars say happened, would be ridiculous. A savior who didn’t act in time and space would be no savior at all.

Of course, it is clear that the New Testament writers did intend their readers to see Jesus as historical. For example, look at the sermons at the beginning of Acts: Peter and Stephen both concentrate their sermons about Jesus on the fact that God has worked in the past and has now worked in history again. They clearly did not see Jesus as a non-historical myth.

What about the mythical elements of the New Testament story? I’ll have more on that in subsequent blog posts.

Posted in Evidences for Christianity, Truth and Religion | Leave a comment

Does God Have Two Plans of Salvation?

Posted on September 1, 2011 by Don Johnson

Rejecting the Rejection/Replacement Theory

Did the Apostle Paul believe that God had two plans of salvation: one for Jews and another for gentiles? John Gager thinks so, as he explains in his book Reinventing Paul.  Gager argues that Paul did not believe the gospel of Jesus was for Jews but rather for gentiles only.

The key to Gager’s position is his opposition to the “rejection/replacement” theory. According to Gager, this view teaches that “Christianity is the antithesis of Judaism” (21); the gospel of Jesus stands in opposition to the Jewish law and Israel. Within this understanding, Gentiles have replaced Jews as the people of God and the law “was no longer, indeed never had been, the means of Israel’s justification or redemption” (27). Gager calls this the traditional view, and asserts that almost all theologians have agreed over the years that Paul “rejected the law and Judaism” (37) and “converted” to a new religion, Christianity.

Gager rejects the “rejection/replacement” theory. He argues that Paul never converted from Judaism and never rejected the law as a means of salvation for Jews. Instead, Gager suggests, Paul believed that salvation by grace through Jesus was only for Gentiles and was never meant for the Jews. According to Gager, Paul’s soteriology involved two distinct and separate ways of salvation: the law for Jews and Jesus for Gentiles. Gager understands Paul as an apostle to the Gentiles only, writing letters to the Gentiles defending the gospel meant for them against other apostles who were trying to force them to follow the Jewish law.

Gager supports his position by making several exegetical points from Paul’s letters to the Galatians and Romans, the two books he claims are most widely used to support the rejection/replacement view. One of the major claims in this section is that Paul does not explicitly argue against Judaism (45-46, 54-55, 80, 85). Indeed, in several verses Paul supports Israel and the law. (Gager lists some on page 7. They include Rom. 3:1; 3:31; 7:7; 7:12; 9:4; 11:26 and Gal. 3:21.) Of the several verses that seem to be anti-law, Gager suggests that these are addressed to Gentiles only. They are not to be understood as universally binding. For example, Gager interprets Galatians 3:11 to mean “no Gentile is justified before God by the law” rather than “no man is justified…” (84). Gager’s thesis is that Paul’s message was about the inclusion of the Gentiles into God’s plans, not the exclusion of the Jews. He argues that Paul did not want Jews to abandon the law; he simply wanted Gentiles to follow Jesus. Because God has two plans of salvation for two different groups of people, there is no need to reject or replace the plan he has for the Jews (130). Christianity is not opposed to Judaism. Rather, it peacefully coexists with it.

Analysis of Gager’s Position

There is plenty to criticize in Gager’s exegesis and his method of argument.[1] However, he is correct to refute the rejection/replacement position as he describes it. Whether or not this view has a long and deep tradition (and I wouldn’t concede the tradition is as expansive as he makes it out to be2), it is not the orthodox biblical view. Unfortunately, the “Two plans of salvation” theory he proposes in its place is false as well. The major problem with both views is the false presupposition they both share: the idea that Paul understood the gospel as different from true Judaism.

Both replacement/rejection theologians and Gager see Judaism as incompatible with Paul’s message regarding Jesus. They both, loosely, understand Judaism as offering a way of salvation based on keeping the law and Christianity as offering salvation based on following Jesus and therefore it is impossible to be good Jew and good Christian at the same time; one must be one or the other. I disagree with this notion and am convinced that Paul did too. Paul’s main point in these letters was not that the Church had replaced Israel (the “R/R” group) or that the Church was an alternative to Israel (Gager). His point was that the Church was Israel. Paul did not distinguish between Judaism and Christianity; he claimed that true Judaism was Christianity.

In his letters to the Romans and Galatians, Paul is not trying to convert his readers to a new religion; he is trying to convince them about the nature of true religion. He is making the argument that God’s plan of salvation has always been for all people and has always been by grace through faith. The law has played a part in this plan, but the law has never been a “way of salvation.” In making this argument, Paul was addressing an audience that had the same misconceptions about the nature of Judaism that are shared by Gager and “R/R” group: the idea that true Judaism is a religion of salvation by works of the law available only to Jews. It isn’t and never has been. I suspect that Paul would have the same heated discussion with Gager and the “R/R” group as he had with the Judaizers of his day; the very argument presented in Romans and Galatians. Unfortunately, Gager never realizes that the position of the “new Paul” he has created is the very misconception that the original Paul is battling in his letters.

Gager also never realizes that his alternative theology does not really advance his overarching goal, which is to fight anti-Semitism. Gager is clear about the motivation for his efforts: he wants to replace the “R/R” view because he thinks it leads to anti-Semitism (17). The idea that the “R/R” view leads to anti-Semitism has some historical and philosophical merit. However, Gager’s “2-path” solution does not seem an adequate fix. Gager still distinguishes between people groups on the basis of race, something that is necessary for racism to occur. (Though, of course, distinguishing between groups does not mean racism necessarily will occur).

On the other hand, the orthodox understanding of Paul’s teaching that I presented above takes care of the racism problem completely in that it does away with distinctions. According to Paul, there are no distinctions within the family of God. God is one, his plan is one, and his people are one (Eph. 4:4:5). “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28). This is the answer to anti-Semitism. Gager should have looked harder for it.

[1] For example, Gager completely skips Romans 8; a chapter that I think makes no sense within his view. (Within Gager’s interpretive structure, Paul would seem to be saying that only Gentiles have a sinful nature that made the law powerless and only Gentiles should live according the Spirit, garnering all of the benefits that the Spirit provides. This is ludicrous within the context of the rest of the New Testament.)

Posted in The Bible, Theology | 1 Comment

The Fulfillment of Natural Love in A Severe Mercy

Posted on August 25, 2011 by Don Johnson

What could be better than two people being in love? As Sheldon Vanauken found out, having that love transformed into something even better by God. As Vanauken explains in his book A Severe Mercy, he and his wife, Davy, had an amazing relationship by worldly standards. However, God got in the middle of it and took it to a whole new level, although not in the way you might expect. I write about the nature of Van and Davy’s love and how it was fulfilled by God in this paper.

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Why Resurrection Debates Should Start with a Worldview Discussion

Posted on August 23, 2011 by Don Johnson

There are certain problems associated with trying to debate whether or not an alleged historical event actually happened. In debating history, we are in an area of knowledge where different interpretations and opinions regarding the claim are easy to put forward. History is not something you can bottle and put in a lab to study. You may be able to try to recreate similar conditions and look at currently available evidence to figure out what happened, but the event itself is gone. It is impossible to recover. Time passes and that’s it.

As such, it is very common to have differing opinions about what actually happened (or if anything actually happened) almost immediately after an event. For example, consider 9/11 truthers and holocaust deniers. Truthers deny that the World Trade Center was brought down by Muslim Terrorists on September 11, 2001. They think somebody else pulled it off, probably the Jews and the U.S. government (Two common conspiracy theory stand-bys.) Holocaust deniers basically lay the blame in the same place, only for them the big lie is not that Muslims brought down the twin towers, but that the Nazis murdered 6 million Jews in World War II.

However, just because it is easy to advance many interpretations of what happened does not mean we must be completely skeptical about knowing history. We can still examine what evidence we have and try to arrive at the story which most adequately explains the facts. This is what happens in courtrooms every day. Jurors are asked to decide what is most reasonable to believe about what happened in the past. They are presented with evidence and competing theories to account for that evidence. The theory (story) that best accounts for the evidence is considered most likely to be true.

Now, I happen to think that the position of holocaust deniers and 9/11 truthers does not do as good a job of accounting for the evidence as the more commonly accepted views. Therefore, it is reasonable to believe that their explanation if what happened is false.

The goal of a debate about the resurrection, I submit, is to determine which side of the resurrection debate is the best explanation of the evidence. In other words, we want to know which view is more like the truthers and holocaust deniers (that is to say, wrong, albeit with perhaps some fine sounding debate points), and which side is more in line with the more credible and widely accepted views on these subjects.

The first thing to do in discussing the resurrection is to clarify the topic in a way that allows one to submit as broad a range of evidence and data as possible. One of the problems with historical debates is that they often get so fixated on one particular piece of data that the bigger picture gets lost, or at least is not taken into account.

For example, the truthers explanation of the data is that 9/11 was an inside job intended to start a war and steal oil. What data supports that theory? Well, the way the WTC towers fell looked very similar to a controlled implosion. Also, there is a striking similarity between this supposed event and a fiction novel by Joel Rosenberg that had been written before the event. Add to that an energy shortage in the U.S, put it all together, and voila!, the conspiracy is as plain as day. Some nefarious people clearly stole the plan from Rosenberg’s book and set up the whole thing to frame the Muslims and take their oil.

Well, if you restricted the debate to a discussion of the temperature at which steel melts, how buildings look when brought down by a professional demolition team, and the plot twists of contemporary novels, one might be tempted to see something in the truther’s explanation. However, if you stand back a bit and allow more data in, the evidence supporting other theories turns out to be much stronger. Even if you grant that the truthers have legitimate data that must be explained (for example, you grant that the WTC did fall in a manner consistent with controlled demolition), this data ultimately does not actually say anything conclusive about the event, as it can easily be accepted and explained by other theories as well. For example, a plane flying into a building would also cause steel to melt and the building to fall, and the fact that an author made up a story about a terrorist attack using jets does nothing to preclude an actual event of that type from happening.

When I say that we should allow in all the data, I include in that data pool the worldviews that are held by the proponents of each theory. We must be open to examining what each debater believes about the nature of reality as part of the debate because these worldview presuppositions play a major role in determining how we evaluate the rest of the data. We need to know whether or not it is reasonable to approach the topic from each person’s perspective, because these perspectives influence how they view the rest of the data.

So in a debate we need to start by backing up and examining the worldviews of each participant. What beliefs do we enter the discussion with about what is true in the big picture? What are our presuppositions about the nature of reality? And are these beliefs true. We must be able to support these worldview notions with evidence and reason.

Every truth claim that we hear is interpreted within the context of our particular worldview. What a person believes to be true about the world dictates how we evaluate and understand propositions that are presented to us. This is very important to understand because our pre-existing worldview guides the level of skepticism we have regarding, for example, historical claims. We will accept some claims more readily than others based on what we already think is true about reality.

For example, if I come into a discussion convinced that the American government is bad, Jews are bad, and Muslims are good, then I will be much more likely to find the claims of the 9/11 truthers credible. On the other hand, if I hold opposite convictions going in, I will be much more skeptical about the truthers’ claims. The pieces of data the truthers present as evidence of conspiracy are generally only convincing to those who hold to the particular worldview to begin with. Truthers and Holocaust deniers are eager to believe these conspiracy theories because they hate the government and hate Jews. They will latch onto any evidence that comes along that even remotely supports their story.

All this to say that, if you only debate steel girders with a 9/11 truther, you won’t get far. You need to be able to account for that data, certainly, but you also need to be able to discuss worldviews. By that I mean you need to be able to bring to the table all of the data that supports your theory about 9/11, including those pieces that speak to whether or not the government or the Jews are likely to be involved.

Applied to a debate about the Resurrection, we must start by establishing and debating the worldviews held by each side in the conversation so we can accurately assess what level of skepticism each person has going in. For example, a person who believes that matter is all there is and supernatural events don’t happen is not going to accept that the resurrection happened no matter what data is presented. On the other hand, someone who has supernatural experiences often and is convinced that Jesus is alive today will be far less skeptical regarding the data that points toward the historicity of the resurrection.

Now, it is true that the answer to the question of whether or not the resurrection actually happened should influence our worldview, as it is one piece of data that must be accounted for. However, if there is already plenty of other data to support the notion that we live in a supernatural universe, we can use that as well. The relationship between data and worldview beliefs is reciprocal; the data should help us decide our worldview, but we also need a worldview in place in order to start evaluating the data.

Just as a good investigator into 9/11 should have correct geo-political and religious beliefs about the world (He should know whether or not Al Qaeda exists and whether or not they want to destroy America, for example.), we should go into the study of the resurrection with correct beliefs about the world. We should have coherent and evidence based beliefs about whether or not supernatural events happen, whether or not there is a God, whether or not God ever acted in history apart from the supposed resurrection, etc. Only after establishing this framework will we be able to say how likely it is that the Christian story about what happened at Calvary is true.

Posted in Evidences for Christianity | 1 Comment

Jean Danielou on How to Do Theology and Know God

Posted on August 17, 2011 by Don Johnson

On this week’s show (the August 15 episode) I offered an interpretation of some passages in Genesis rooted in both the literal and spiritual sense of scripture. If you are interested in learning more about what that means, this paper on theologian Jean Danielou is one place to start. He was one of the twentieth centuries greatest advocates of a return to doing theology and biblical interpretation the way the church fathers did.

Posted in Church History, The Bible, Theology | Leave a comment

Hope Without Truth is Pointless

Posted on August 16, 2011 by Don Johnson

Nice quote from Doug Groothuis:

In the end, hope without truth is pointless. Illusions and delusions, no matter how comforting or grandiose, are the enemies of those who strive for integrity in their knowing and being. Statements such as “I like to think of the universe as having a purpose” or “The thought of an afterlife gives me peace” reflect mere wishes. These notions do not address the truth or falsity of there being purpose in the world or of our postmortem survival, because there is no genuine claim to knowledge: a warranted awareness of reality as it is. A hearty, sturdy and insatiable appetite for reality–whatever it might be–is the only engine for testing and discerning truth.

Posted in Happiness, Humanity's Spiritual Quest, Truth and Religion | Leave a comment

The Importance of an Eternal Perspective

Posted on August 15, 2011 by Don Johnson

More reflections on Kierkegaard’s Works of Love:

I live in Orange County, California and it seems like everyone I know has a busy life. My wife and I are like most of our friends in that we spend our days working jobs, homeschooling and caring for our kids, taking part in church functions, and trying to keep the house up, not to mention and a myriad of other duties. We get up early and go to bed late, often exhausted. As much as this situation is simply a byproduct of our current state in life (we have 4 kids under 10 years old, for example) and will pass as we have fewer diapers to change, etc., there are certain dangers associated with this busyness that, if not addressed now, can result in spiritual problems even after our children have grown and moved out.

One of the most serious of these hazards is the tendency to lose an eternal perspective on life. It is difficult to get one’s focus above the next few minutes or hours if you have ten needs that have to be addressed immediately. As such, I really enjoyed Kierkegaard’s discussion of the importance of eternity in the chapter “Love Hopes All Things and Yet Is Never Put to Shame” (231). I found his understanding of the difference between a worldly and Christian perspective regarding eternity and the necessity of maintaining and Christian vision profound and very inspiring.

Kierkegaard sets the context for his discussion by pointing out that, from a worldly perspective, human life is distinguished by certain “suffocating” characteristics. For instance, people work and work, reap and sow, reap and sow, without much justice in regards to those who seek truth and goodness gaining any more than those who do not. Indeed, it often seems like those who seek good are laboring in vain; beating the air (232).  In response, Kierkegaard notes that according to Christianity, earthly life is only for sowing, while eternity is for reaping. We are not to look for rewards here and now. Instead, we must keep our eyes on the big prize: eternal life in the presence of God.

I know that in my own life I have had to return to this truth innumerable times as a harbinger against becoming downcast. I am a goal oriented person. As such, I don’t mind working hard as long as I see some fruits for my labor. However, sometimes those rewards don’t come, or at least they don’t arrive as quickly as I would like. Rather than a progression towards a particular good end, sometimes it seems like life is a treadmill. We just keep doing the same things day after day. When that feeling arises, I have taken particular solace and hope in the image of our life as a journey across the wilderness toward the Promised Land. As sojourners, we are not to expect all the benefits of home just yet, but they will certainly be there when we arrive. The temptation is to start thinking of this life as home and to start looking for those rewards and comforts right now. Kierkegaard reminded me that they are not available yet.

He continued along that theme in the next paragraphs, explaining that, from a worldly perspective, life can become like a whirlpool of “striving, winning, and losing and winning again, now at one point, now at another – but it seems that he who wills the good in truth is the only one who alone is a loser and loses everything” (232). Again, I can relate with this sentiment. In Orange County, success is defined largely by what kind of car you drive and how much fun you had this week. Hedonism is preeminent and winning is defined as having as much pleasure in your life as possible. However, as Kierkegaard rightly points out, the Christian vision is one in which victory comes in eternity. This life is one of tribulation and striving. Again I was reminded of the Israelites as they wandered across the desert. They faced hardships and war and were continually tempted to turn back. Indeed, many did not make it through. However, those that followed Joshua into Canaan were given victory. That future victory is what I must focus on.

That victory will mean more than just reaping comforts and victory. It will also involve the distribution of justice in regards to honor and shame (232). At long last those who are worthy will be rightly honored and those who are not will be shamed. The fact is, as Kierkegaard rightly points out, the world is a place in which praise and blame are handed out in a very cheap and petty fashion, often to those who do not deserve what they get. However, in eternity, everyone will receive the honor and shame they are properly due, in a fashion that befits the award (233). Understanding this, it seems to me, is the foundation for being able to follow Jesus commands to turn the other cheek when someone strikes you (Matt. 5:39) and love your enemy (Matt. 5:44). These are not commands to abandon justice (as it appears on the surface); they are commands to let God handle it. He will dispense to all men what is their due; we do not have to take that into our own hands. I find that keeping this eternal perspective is a huge stress reliever in that it takes the pressure off of us to try to right every wrong here on earth. We are able to forgive others and hand them over to God to deal with. Rather than fall into the back and forth squabbling and fighting that is unfortunately so characteristic of our everyday lives, we can rise above all that by remembering that life is eternal.

Kierkegaard then relates this eternal perspective to hope and love, explaining first that if we do not live with hope, the only alternative is despair (236). I think this clearly explains why so many people, even as they live with more earthly goods and a higher material standard of living than anyone in history, are not happy. They do not have an eternal perspective and are not living with hope.

In regards to love, Kierkegaard argues that love and hope and inexorably bound together. We cannot hope unless we love. This has ramifications for both us and others. In our own lives, hope is dependent on our love for God and our faith in him. We must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him (Heb. 11:6). Also, we must extend this hope to others; we must keep the possibility of good open for them (237). This seems to me to relate to the three-fold credit of love we are to bestow on others. In loving others, we give them a credit of faith, trusting that there is good even in the areas of their lives that we do not know about yet. The credit of hope offers them the benefit of the doubt by interpreting their behavior in a positive way until proven otherwise. The credit of solidarity means that, even when the beloved falters, we see it as a betrayal of their true selves and we mourn with them. All three of these credits are applied when we “hope all things” in loving a person. If we are unwilling to hope for the best for them, how can we rightly hope for it in ourselves? To do so would indicate an unfounded pride on our part, which is part of the reason I think Kierkegaard states that it is simply impossible to despair over another (think they are beyond hope) without actually despairing over ourselves (239).

Kierkegaard’s contrast of worldly and eternal perspectives is something I want to return to often. His words remind me to keep the proper perspective in the midst of my busy life and encourage me to keep hoping and praying for others, particularly those that I might be tempted to consider beyond hope.

Posted in Happiness, Humanity's Spiritual Quest | 1 Comment

Christian vs Worldly Definitions of Love

Posted on August 13, 2011 by Don Johnson

Some reflections on Kierkegaard’s Works of Love:

As a full-time evangelist, I spend much of my time interacting with atheists and other unbelievers, trying to convince them that Christianity is true and that they should follow Jesus. As a result, I am often charged with being “unloving.” People who make this claim usually base it on the idea that true love would never suggest that any aspect of another person’s life should change. They assert that to love is to “accept others as they are” and not want any part of their life to be any different. In this view, particularly its more extreme permutations, love not only demands that all people are accepted in their present state, but that every characteristic of the person is approved and even celebrated as good, including their worldview beliefs, personality traits, and habits.

A key element of this view of love is the preeminence given to pleasurable emotions. Pleasure is seen as one of the highest goods and we are to approve of people (“love them”) so as to not cause them displeasure by hurting their feelings. A relationship of love is understood to be one filled with affection and the pleasing emotional state of “happiness.” If unhappiness is present, love is not. As such, it is not loving to claim, as I do, that all people are sinners who need to repent and embrace God’s grace. Indeed, this is seen as hateful, as it very often does not produce the proper emotional state.

In light of my experience, I really appreciate the way Kierkegaard distinguishes between the Christian definition of love and love as the world defines and practices it, particularly in the section titled “Love as the Fulfilling of the Law” (III A.). Here he notes several ways that worldly wisdom contrasts the wisdom of divine revelation, including the fact that, contrary to what the world thinks, a relationship of love must include God, as God is the ultimate good of another person, not pleasure or anything else. “Worldly wisdom thinks that love is a relationship between man and man. Christianity teaches that love is a relationship between: man – God – man, that is, that God is the middle term” (112-113). He goes on to point out that “to help another human being to love God is to love another man; to be helped by another human being to love God is to be loved” (113).

Kierkegaard isn’t speaking here specifically of the blatantly “evangelistic” relationships between a missionary and potential convert that I am so familiar with (he is making a broader point about how all humans should relate to all other humans), but I think the principles in this section of the book apply to my situation very well.

Trying to help another being love God is not always a pleasurable experience, on either side of the relationship. In other words, it does not always play out practically in a way that the world views as loving. Indeed, if often looks very unloving from the world’s perspective. Making disciples is not the same as making friends. Many times the attempt to draw a person toward God will actually alienate the two people. As such, the Christian view of love clashes with the worldly view of love. One person thinks he is being loving, while the object of his actions interprets his act as one of hate.

Kierkegaard understands this, and offers Jesus as an example of this principle in action, explaining that his life was “a terrible collision with the merely human conception of what love is” (115). Jesus loved the world to the fullest extent of the term, but the world despised and rejected him (Isa. 53:3). One problem was that people did not recognize Jesus actions as loving. Instead, they held stubbornly to their conception of love, desiring temporal pleasure and the approval of men rather than the holiness and union with God that Jesus was offering.

Even Jesus’ disciples had the false view, at least before the resurrection. They believed that the love of the Messiah would show itself in the establishment of a political kingdom in which they would reign, with all the pleasure that would bring. They could not see how true love could involve the suffering and misery that characterized Jesus’ mission. For example, Peter had to be rebuked as the mouthpiece of Satan (Matt. 16:23, noted on page 115) for declaring that Jesus should not go and suffer the passion. Even as zealous a follower as Peter did not understand that true love could bring pain and not happiness. As Kierkegaard says, the fact is that Jesus “made himself and his own as unhappy as possible” yet “died with the claim that it nevertheless was for love” (116).

The disciples eventually learned this lesson, giving up everything to evangelize the world for Christ. Most died as martyrs, examples to the many saints of the Church that followed in their footsteps. They forsook even life itself in an act of love for God and their fellow man. As a reward for their love, these heroes of faith were hated. This hatred, Kierkegaard notes, is quite a common response to true love (119) and should be expected as simply part of the sacrifice we offer. He points out that a Christian is even called to voluntarily be rejected by (“to hate”) his or her own mother and father, sister, brother, and beloved (Luke 14:26, referenced on 114) on behalf of love.

Kierkegaard does a wonderful job of showing that true love can actually produce conflict between people. This notion is obviously very strange from a worldly perspective. The fallen human inclination is to see love as something that promotes unity, peace, and pleasure, not the division, strife, and pain that often accompanies the sacrifice of godly love.

Unfortunately, the worldly view of love is often held even by Christians, including clergy. In my experience, many preachers ignore certain points of the gospel so that listeners will not be offended. St. Paul may have seen the need to discourse on “righteousness, self control and the judgment to come” (Acts 24:25), but many contemporary Christian leaders wouldn’t touch these topics with a ten foot pole. They are more interested in making sure that the audience feels “loved” and by that they mean “affirmed in who they are right now.” Sin, hell, and the need for sacrifice don’t do that, so these essential doctrines are ignored. Also, while one motivation for this dereliction of duty is the desire that the audience feel loved, another is certainly the desire of the preacher to feel loved by the audience, or at least be held in high esteem for being such a loving person.

Unfortunately, both motivations start from a false view of love. Everyone involved may end with nice feelings, but this is not a relationship that leads to God and therefore is not love. Kierkegaard makes this very clear, explaining that even the most “blissful and joyful attachment” is not love if the relationship does not lead me to God (124). He also warns that one should “beware that it does not become more important for you that you are looked upon as loving then than that you love them” (132).

While I have applied these truths to the relationship between minister and those who are ministered to, they are applicable to all relationships, including, of course, a marriage union. I must be a husband who brings my wife to God and if I do not, I do not love her.

This is not an easy job, but the fact is that Christ calls us to love and love can be difficult and painful. As Kierkegaard rightly notes, if you want and easy and sociable life, flee Christianity! (127) On the other hand, if you want union with God, Jesus is the way. We must follow him, the one who disavowed the praise and adoration of the world (125), scorning its shame (Heb. 12:2), to give himself as a sacrifice. This is true love.

Posted in Church and Culture, Evangelism | Leave a comment

Europe’s Real Problem

Posted on August 13, 2011 by Don Johnson

From Mark Steyn’s great new book, After America:

[T]he self extinction of Europe is not just a matter of economics. Advanced social democracies don’t need a value added tax; they need a value added life…Europe’s economic crisis is a mere symptom of its economic crisis: What is life for? What gives it meaning? Post-Christian, post nationalist, post modern Europe has no answer to that question, and so it has 30-year-old students and 50-year-old retirees, and wonders why the small band of workers in between them can’t make the math add up. Yet it’s not about the arithmetic, but about instilling in people for whom life is a diversion a sense of purpose larger than themselves: What’s it all about, Alfie? Cradle-grave nanny state “protection”?

Posted in Current Affairs, Government and Religious Freedom | Leave a comment

The Influence of Voluntarism on Soteriology and Hermeneutics

Posted on August 11, 2011 by Don Johnson

In my radio discussion with Jason a couple of weeks ago (August 1, 2011), I argued that he had a voluntaristic view of God. Here is a paper I wrote that provides a bit more information about voluntarism and briefly explains how it influenced Christian theology and biblical interpretation around the time of the Reformation.

Posted in Church History, Theology | Leave a comment

Why Boring Preachers Must Be Fired

Posted on August 11, 2011 by Don Johnson

I spoke on this week’s podcast (the August 8, 2011 episode) about some of the problems with contemporary preaching. Carl Trueman offers some more interesting thoughts on the topic here.

Posted in Theology, Thoughts on the Church | Leave a comment

How to Talk to an Atheist Episode 2

Posted on August 9, 2011 by Don Johnson

Some tips on how to have productive conversations with unbelievers. In this episode, I suggest that the first part of the discussion should primarily involve listening and asking questions.

Posted in Atheism, Church and Culture, Evangelism, Evidences for Christianity, Truth and Religion | 1 Comment

How to Talk to an Atheist Episode 1

Posted on June 24, 2011 by Don Johnson

Some pointers on how to talk to an atheist. In this episode, titled “Selling, Yelling, and Telling,” I talk about establishing the proper framework for a discussion and having the right attitude towards those you are trying to reach.

Posted in Atheism, Church and Culture, Evangelism, Thoughts on the Church, Truth and Religion | 1 Comment

Out of Touch with Reality

Posted on June 6, 2011 by Don Johnson

According to G.K. Chesterton, the only sin is to call a green leaf gray. He was referring, at least in part, to the fact that the foundational problem with mankind is a refusal to submit to reality. More specifically, the base sin of humanity is to refuse to accept our status as a creature. We want to be the creator.

As such, we talk and act as if we have control over the very nature of things. This mindset (in a more reasonable age it would simply be referred to as the vice of pride) is on display in increasingly brazen and silly ways in our culture.

We are all familiar with it by now in regards to the area of marriage and sexual ethics: “I think we have to make our own rules” said Cameron Diaz last week when asked about her relationships. But the couple that refuses to tell anyone the gender of their child for fear that they will limit his or her “freedom and choice” in the matter sets a new standard for taking this idiotic notion to its logical ends.

Posted in Homosexuality, Sexuality, The Nature of Man | 2 Comments

“Scientific” Doomsday Cults

Posted on June 3, 2011 by Don Johnson

Harold Camping is the latest in a long line of Christian false prophets to incorrectly predict the end of the world, but as James Taranto and Dennis Prager point out, doomsday cults can be found among secular folks as well.

Posted in Science and Religion | 11 Comments

The Uniqueness of Israel

Posted on June 3, 2011 by Don Johnson

Couple of interesting articles on Israel: Dennis Prager defends the notion that the Jews are God’s chosen people, and Paul Johnson comments on the irrationality of anti-Semitism.

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Craig vs Harris

Posted on April 8, 2011 by Don Johnson

Eye on Apologetics has last night’s William Lane Craig / Sam Harris debate on the topic “Does Good Come From God?” At least that was supposed to be the topic – Harris spends the evening mostly talking about a bunch of other stuff.

Posted in Atheism | Leave a comment

Why We Always Want Something More

Posted on March 29, 2011 by Don Johnson

Posted in Humanity's Spiritual Quest, Life | Leave a comment

Is Homosexuality a Sin?

Posted on March 14, 2011 by Don Johnson

Here is an informative and well written post from Robert Kunda in response to a potential “Gay Awakening” in the church.

Posted in Homosexuality, Sexuality, The Nature of Man | Leave a comment

God and Science

Posted on February 25, 2011 by Don Johnson

The latest video from my friend James:

Posted in Science and Religion | Leave a comment

My New Book Now Available

Posted on December 13, 2010 by Don Johnson

Ever wondered why no one is ever fully content with life? According to evangelist and theologian Don Johnson, it is because we are a people in exile. We were created to live with God in Heaven, but find ourselves separated from him on fallen Earth. We do not belong here and therefore will never be completely satisfied.

Thankfully, God has provided a way back home. In this book, Johnson examines the nature of that journey and delves into the story of the Exodus to find scriptural principles for completing it successfully. In the process he also draws heavily on episodes from his own life as well as the rest of scripture. The result is a series of reflections that will educate you about God’s plan for the world and inspire you to conform your life to it.

Available in Paperback and Kindle.

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C.S. Lewis on Scripture

Posted on October 18, 2010 by Don Johnson

Although he died seven years before I was born, I consider C.S. Lewis to be one of the most influential people in my life. His books have educated and inspired me and I try to model my evangelism and apologetics efforts largely after his. For that reason Michael Christensen’s book C.S. Lewis on Scripture caught my eye. Having read much of Lewis’ work, I felt somewhat knowledgeable about his views on quite a few subjects, but I realized when I saw this title that I wouldn’t be able to articulate what Lewis believed about scripture. Christensen’s insightful work helped rectify that situation.

Here are some excerpts from my review of the book:

According to Christensen, Lewis believes that God reveals himself in history to different people at different times with differing degrees of clarity and fullness. For example, pagan mythology offers archetypal patterns and stories about a god who dies and comes to life again to bring life to men. These stories, combined with the general revelation we see in natural patterns of seasons and the cycle of life, provide us a dim foreshadowing of God’s nature and his redemptive plan. The history of Israel is a clearer picture of that plan, with its revelation of the moral demands of God and typological events that foreshadow the Messiah. As we discussed earlier, this history is also mythological according to Lewis, whether it actually happened or not. Finally, the Christ event, which certainly did happen, is the clearest and fullest revelation of God. The incarnation is “myth become fact” (75). In Jesus all the foreshadowing, whether in pagan myths, natural cycles, or the history of Israel finds its fulfillment. “The process of myth is actualized and complete.” (75)…

So Christensen’s answer to the question: “In what way is the Bible inspired according to Lewis?” is “mythically” (77). However, because most people do not understand that word in the way Lewis used it, Christensen suggests a different term: He thinks we can accurately say Lewis views scripture as “inspired literature” (77).

Here the author brings the material of the book together in a nice package. He has discussed Lewis’s view of literature, his view of myth and, albeit perhaps incompletely, his view of revelation. Now we see how this applies to Lewis’s view of the Bible in that Lewis sees the Bible as revelatory mythical literature.

Scripture performs all of the functions of myth and should be read accordingly. For example, we should understand the literary elements of the Bible as “embodiments of spiritual reality” (77) and approach them as a good reader, using intuitive perception to receive and experience that reality, which is divine.

One of the more helpful insights I have gained from Lewis over the years, and which Christensen rightly emphasizes in this book, is that approaching the Bible as myth does not mean the biblical stories are unhistorical, although they can still be considered inspired if they are. By that I mean we have the freedom to approach the entire text as revelatory myth while retaining the freedom to consider each as part of the genre in which it was written. I think the Creation story, the story of Job, and the accounts of Jesus’ miracles all have great mythical qualities. We do not have to treat them all as non-historical in order to retain those qualities, although if any of them are historical, we can also accept that and still treat them as myth. This point is widely missed by people who are skeptical of the historicity of the Bible as well as those who are not. In both cases, I believe it is a hindrance to receiving all that the Bible has to offer.

For example, I often interact with those who think that if a biblical story has mythical value, it must be non-historical. These folks recognize the mythical elements in the text, but assume that means the story must be historically false. I’ve actually heard many biblical scholars debate against the historicity of the resurrection of Christ by presenting as evidence all of the ways in which the New Testament fulfills the Old. At one recent presentation, the skeptic’s insight into the text was so remarkable that my friend took notes furiously in order to use the material in his sermons. Somehow the skeptic thought this mythical element of the text meant that the stories could not have happened. He couldn’t see the history for the myth.

On the other hand, some people can’t see the myth for the history. This group is intent on recognizing the text as historical, but believes that this rules out the possibility of finding any mythical quality in it. They are blind to the truths that are conveyed to a “baptized imagination.”

Another very helpful insight I gained from Lewis (and that was emphasized by Christensen) regards the use of metaphor in describing God. The Bible is full of them: Creator, Redeemer, Good Shepherd, Everlasting Father, the Door, the Way, etc. These images purport something to us; they say something to our “fear and hope and will and affections” (78). However, sometimes the abstract theological statements we come up with about God conflict with, or at least take away from, what these images purport. For example, for me, the idea of an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent Deity does not match up with the purport of the image of a Good Shepherd, taking care of the sheep and searching earnestly for a lost lamb. When this happens, Lewis tells us that we should go with the purport of the image every time (78).

As has been noted previously, ultimate reality is not reducible to abstract propositions and rational formulas. Myth is the best revealer of ultimate reality because it puts us in direct contact with it through images and story. Myth goes beyond rationality and abstract propositions. When applied to the Bible, this means that scripture reveals God directly to us through images and story and we should trust the purport of those images rather than abstract, rational propositions about God.  I do not think this means we should not attempt to discover rational propositions about God, but I find those propositions are often unhelpful and agree that they should be abandoned when they conflict with the purport of the clear images of scripture. We should take the images at face value, realizing that metaphors are imperfect but the best medium we have for communicating between finite and infinite realms.

This principle has really helped me in my approach to the Old Testament in particular. There God is described in ways that are very anthropomorphic. He gets angry and frustrated, he changes his mind, and he enters into a conditional covenant with his people. None of these actions is very consistent with the proposition that God is immutable, in my opinion, although I happen to believe that God is immutable. However, understanding that God cannot be fully described by my philosophical language and that the best means of divine communication is metaphor (as imperfect as that is) allows me to accept the purport of the images and leave room for some mystery in my philosophical speculations about God.

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On Love and Sacrifice

Posted on September 21, 2010 by Don Johnson

Some reflections on our journey to the Promised Land. (And a sneak peek at some material from my forthcoming book.)

Posted in Life, Theology | Leave a comment