Sacred World; Sacred History
Materialists like to portray Christians as living in an unreal, make believe world. It's a small step from there to paint Christians as ignorant simpletons. Uneducated rubes.
Another (related) slur is that Christians are anti-science because they do not value the world of matter. They are so "heavenly minded" they are of no worldly good.
Of course these slurs are just that. They betray a profound ignorance of that which materialists presume to criticise.
Showing posts with label Neoplatonism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Neoplatonism. Show all posts
Friday, 11 May 2012
Tuesday, 7 February 2012
Douglas Wilson's Letter From America
Solid Joys and Lasting Pleasure
Dualism Is Bad JuJu
Written by Douglas Wilson
Tuesday, 31 January 2012
The world is charged with the grandeur of God, as the poet put it, and it will flame out like shook foil. The world is only a set of blinders for the blind. In all other respects, the world is front-loaded with God's glory. And in order for us to see that glory, really see it, the world has to get thicker -- not thinner.
C.S. Lewis, in his wonderful way, shows us this in the second half of The Last Battle, and throughout The Great Divorce. The world really is "transparent," and it is such through being really solid. The world is that which enables us to see God's glory, and those who try to help this process along by treating the world as ephemeral and wispy are making a great mistake. The world does not need to be diluted to help God's glory shine through. Do you glorify the jeweller by smashing the diamonds?
Dualism Is Bad JuJu
Written by Douglas Wilson
Tuesday, 31 January 2012
The world is charged with the grandeur of God, as the poet put it, and it will flame out like shook foil. The world is only a set of blinders for the blind. In all other respects, the world is front-loaded with God's glory. And in order for us to see that glory, really see it, the world has to get thicker -- not thinner.
C.S. Lewis, in his wonderful way, shows us this in the second half of The Last Battle, and throughout The Great Divorce. The world really is "transparent," and it is such through being really solid. The world is that which enables us to see God's glory, and those who try to help this process along by treating the world as ephemeral and wispy are making a great mistake. The world does not need to be diluted to help God's glory shine through. Do you glorify the jeweller by smashing the diamonds?
Saturday, 13 August 2011
Heavenly Good of Earthly Work, Part V
A Kingdom of Blood, Sweat and Tears
The apostles, infallibly inspired by the Holy Spirit, took up common Greek concepts of their day but changed their meaning so as to carry the Truth and testify to God. A prime example is the word "logos". The word "logos" in the classical and Hellenistic worlds had a pedigree. The Apostle John took up the word, emptied it of its Hellenistic content, reference, and connotations, and used it to reveal glorious truth about our Lord.
The same can be said for "spirit" and "spiritual"--which was a widely used concept in the Hellenistic world--but with this difference: "spirit" also had an Old Testament pedigree. To rid the modern church of pagan notions of spirituality we must submit to the Bible's denotation and connotation of these terms. And as we said in our previous post, those who are not aware of the issues and what is at stake has probably imbibed the pagan concepts of "spirit" and "spiritual" not biblical truth.
The apostles, infallibly inspired by the Holy Spirit, took up common Greek concepts of their day but changed their meaning so as to carry the Truth and testify to God. A prime example is the word "logos". The word "logos" in the classical and Hellenistic worlds had a pedigree. The Apostle John took up the word, emptied it of its Hellenistic content, reference, and connotations, and used it to reveal glorious truth about our Lord.
The same can be said for "spirit" and "spiritual"--which was a widely used concept in the Hellenistic world--but with this difference: "spirit" also had an Old Testament pedigree. To rid the modern church of pagan notions of spirituality we must submit to the Bible's denotation and connotation of these terms. And as we said in our previous post, those who are not aware of the issues and what is at stake has probably imbibed the pagan concepts of "spirit" and "spiritual" not biblical truth.
Wednesday, 10 August 2011
Heavenly Good of Earthly Work, Part IV
Losing the Duel with Dualism
In his book, The Heavenly Good of Earthly Work, Darrell Cosden, who lectures in Theology and Ethics at the International Christian College of Glasgow, is searching for a theology of work that "works". He has rejected (in principle) a destructive dualism long present in evangelicalism which divides creation into two storeys: an upper storey and a lower storey.
The lower storey in this dualism is all that has to do with physical matter, and with the world of time and space in which we live and move and have our existence. It is the world of blood, sweat and tears. It is the world of marrying, bearing children and raising them. It is the world of work.
In his book, The Heavenly Good of Earthly Work, Darrell Cosden, who lectures in Theology and Ethics at the International Christian College of Glasgow, is searching for a theology of work that "works". He has rejected (in principle) a destructive dualism long present in evangelicalism which divides creation into two storeys: an upper storey and a lower storey.
The lower storey in this dualism is all that has to do with physical matter, and with the world of time and space in which we live and move and have our existence. It is the world of blood, sweat and tears. It is the world of marrying, bearing children and raising them. It is the world of work.
Saturday, 6 August 2011
Heavenly Good of Earthly Work, Part III
The Glory of Shiraz in the Kingdom
A persistent driver of the dualism which has weakened the Church ever since its re-birth under the New Covenant is eschatology. Our understanding of the future has critically shaped our understanding of the present. It is always this way. It is unavoidable. It is necessary.
We believe we will not manage to break down and throw out the pagan idea of spirit versus matter, which--as our previous posts have demonstrated--ends up constructing a hierarchy of things that are seen as really important to God, and things which are not. The really important things--the godly things, the spiritual things--are those that last. That is, the really important things are those which continue on into eternity. If matter and material reality is thought not to last for eternity, it will always be degraded in our eyes.
Evangelicalism is racked with this pernicious dichotomy.
A persistent driver of the dualism which has weakened the Church ever since its re-birth under the New Covenant is eschatology. Our understanding of the future has critically shaped our understanding of the present. It is always this way. It is unavoidable. It is necessary.
We believe we will not manage to break down and throw out the pagan idea of spirit versus matter, which--as our previous posts have demonstrated--ends up constructing a hierarchy of things that are seen as really important to God, and things which are not. The really important things--the godly things, the spiritual things--are those that last. That is, the really important things are those which continue on into eternity. If matter and material reality is thought not to last for eternity, it will always be degraded in our eyes.
Evangelicalism is racked with this pernicious dichotomy.
Wednesday, 3 August 2011
Heavenly Good of Earthly Work, Part II
Luther Restates the Dualism
The Western Church has long been afflicted by an enervating dualism that placed a priority upon heaven at the expense of earth. Heaven had to do with God, spiritual realities, eternity; earth had to do with physical and material reality, the body, and atoms. It was temporal. It would pass away. The realm of matter, and service in it, was only a means to an eternal end. Therefore, it was relatively unimportant in the big scheme of things.
There are many problems with this perspective--which is essentially a re-presentation of Greek pagan thought. Not the least is that most Christians spend the majority of their time, energy, and attention on work, on activity and labour in the material world. In the end, it is all going to come to nothing.
The Western Church has long been afflicted by an enervating dualism that placed a priority upon heaven at the expense of earth. Heaven had to do with God, spiritual realities, eternity; earth had to do with physical and material reality, the body, and atoms. It was temporal. It would pass away. The realm of matter, and service in it, was only a means to an eternal end. Therefore, it was relatively unimportant in the big scheme of things.
There are many problems with this perspective--which is essentially a re-presentation of Greek pagan thought. Not the least is that most Christians spend the majority of their time, energy, and attention on work, on activity and labour in the material world. In the end, it is all going to come to nothing.
Tuesday, 2 August 2011
Heavenly Good of Earthly Work, Part I
It's All Going to Burn
For over one thousand years the Western Church has been undermined by an unbiblical dualism. The evangelical stream flowing out of the Reformation was unable to shake off its shackles, largely because of the influence of Luther. Now, however--and not before time, serious efforts are underway to attack this unbiblical nostrum head on, with the Scriptures. The critical issue turns around the place and value of work.
We are going to publish a short series of posts on this issue. They will interact with a helpful introduction to these matters in a book by Darrell Cosden, entitled, The Heavenly Good of Earthly Work (Milton Keynes, Buck: Paternoster Press, 2006).
Many years ago we recall being told that there are only three things which are going to last for eternity: God, redeemed people, and the Word of God. Therefore, we were admonished, above all else devote your life to these three.
For over one thousand years the Western Church has been undermined by an unbiblical dualism. The evangelical stream flowing out of the Reformation was unable to shake off its shackles, largely because of the influence of Luther. Now, however--and not before time, serious efforts are underway to attack this unbiblical nostrum head on, with the Scriptures. The critical issue turns around the place and value of work.
We are going to publish a short series of posts on this issue. They will interact with a helpful introduction to these matters in a book by Darrell Cosden, entitled, The Heavenly Good of Earthly Work (Milton Keynes, Buck: Paternoster Press, 2006).
Many years ago we recall being told that there are only three things which are going to last for eternity: God, redeemed people, and the Word of God. Therefore, we were admonished, above all else devote your life to these three.
Thursday, 20 January 2011
Meditation on the Text of the Week
New Covenant Worship
One of the great problems facing the Church in our generation is the need to reform our public worship until it conforms more closely to biblical revelation and instruction. As with all sanctification, the Church needs to "put off" and "put on". There are plenty of accretions which must be discarded because they do not conform with Scriptural teaching. But much has been lost from the Scriptures with respect to worship which must be recovered. This is no idle matter for public worship is the most important activity and duty of the Church.
In Revelation 7: 11,12 we have an picture of the Church in worship. This is worship in the heavenly throne room--but, lest any think that because it is the heavenly church's liturgical practice which is here described it does not concern us who are yet serving upon the earth, let us remember that when we gather for worship here upon earth, in actuality we are taken up to the heavenly congregation. We participate in their worship; they do not participate in ours.
As it says in Hebrews 12: 22f we actually come to "Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to myriads of angels, to the general assembly and church of the first-born who are enrolled in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of righteous men made perfect, and to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant . . . ." The contrast with Mount Sinai could not be more sharp. When Israel fled Egypt then gathered to the mountain to worship, God came down to them. Now, we go up to God, because our Head has already gone up, ascended to God and He dwells there now. He is our mediator and High Priest. Therefore, when we worship we must first have Him standing at our head before God, even as the ancient Levitical high priest stood before the people at the entrance of the Holy of holies--which means that we must ascend to Him.
Now if any would demur, pointing out that our Lord said that when even two or three are gathered together in His Name, He would be in the midst of them (Matthew 18:20) they would be right. But why does our Lord come into our midst? What does He do? He comes to us, as the risen and ascended One, to lift us up that we might be where He is, in heaven (John 14: 2-3). His Spirit lifts us up into the heavenlies, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. He brings us into the presence of God the Father. (Note that the "coming again" that Jesus refers to repeatedly in His final discourse to the apostles before His passion in John chapters 14 through 16 is not a reference to His final Advent, as many assume, but to the coming of His Spirit at Pentecost, as the context clearly shows. The Spirit comes to raise us up to the Father. In the Spirit Christ comes to us to lift us up to be with Christ in the Father's house.) That is why Paul commands us to set our hearts and minds on the things above. "If you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things which are on earth." (Colossians 3: 1,2) Public worship, by taking us up into heaven to participate in the heavenly worship, helps us set our minds "on the things above".
Herein lies one of the great divergences and differences between the Old Covenant and the New. In the Old Covenant the Church worshipped upon the earth, looking for God to come down and establish His Name somewhere, at a certain place. Israel had to repair there to appear before God. Now, in the New Covenant God has been able to establish His Name and place of worship in the heavens where He dwells, since the Redeemer has risen, ascended, and taken us all captive as His people into God's presence. We are now holy enough to be there; we are welcomed with great joy because we are clothed with the Lamb's righteousness.
This could not be done before under the Old Covenant, not just because atonement for sin had not yet been made, but because no perfect atoning Man as High Priest had been able to ascend into God's presence to represent us, intercede for us, and gather us together into the very presence of God and present us there to God, perfect and holy.
Our worship upon earth now needs to be set in the light of our appearance thereby in heaven. Naturally, what we do here upon earth in public worship must be evocative of and patterned after the heavenly liturgy. We participate in their liturgy and worship, not the reverse. In this regard, David Chilton's words are salutary in his exposition of Revelation 7: 11,12:
And all the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures; and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshipped God, saying, "Amen, blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honour and might, be to our God forever and ever. Amen." Revelation 7: 11,12
One of the great problems facing the Church in our generation is the need to reform our public worship until it conforms more closely to biblical revelation and instruction. As with all sanctification, the Church needs to "put off" and "put on". There are plenty of accretions which must be discarded because they do not conform with Scriptural teaching. But much has been lost from the Scriptures with respect to worship which must be recovered. This is no idle matter for public worship is the most important activity and duty of the Church.
In Revelation 7: 11,12 we have an picture of the Church in worship. This is worship in the heavenly throne room--but, lest any think that because it is the heavenly church's liturgical practice which is here described it does not concern us who are yet serving upon the earth, let us remember that when we gather for worship here upon earth, in actuality we are taken up to the heavenly congregation. We participate in their worship; they do not participate in ours.
As it says in Hebrews 12: 22f we actually come to "Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to myriads of angels, to the general assembly and church of the first-born who are enrolled in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of righteous men made perfect, and to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant . . . ." The contrast with Mount Sinai could not be more sharp. When Israel fled Egypt then gathered to the mountain to worship, God came down to them. Now, we go up to God, because our Head has already gone up, ascended to God and He dwells there now. He is our mediator and High Priest. Therefore, when we worship we must first have Him standing at our head before God, even as the ancient Levitical high priest stood before the people at the entrance of the Holy of holies--which means that we must ascend to Him.
Now if any would demur, pointing out that our Lord said that when even two or three are gathered together in His Name, He would be in the midst of them (Matthew 18:20) they would be right. But why does our Lord come into our midst? What does He do? He comes to us, as the risen and ascended One, to lift us up that we might be where He is, in heaven (John 14: 2-3). His Spirit lifts us up into the heavenlies, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. He brings us into the presence of God the Father. (Note that the "coming again" that Jesus refers to repeatedly in His final discourse to the apostles before His passion in John chapters 14 through 16 is not a reference to His final Advent, as many assume, but to the coming of His Spirit at Pentecost, as the context clearly shows. The Spirit comes to raise us up to the Father. In the Spirit Christ comes to us to lift us up to be with Christ in the Father's house.) That is why Paul commands us to set our hearts and minds on the things above. "If you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things which are on earth." (Colossians 3: 1,2) Public worship, by taking us up into heaven to participate in the heavenly worship, helps us set our minds "on the things above".
Herein lies one of the great divergences and differences between the Old Covenant and the New. In the Old Covenant the Church worshipped upon the earth, looking for God to come down and establish His Name somewhere, at a certain place. Israel had to repair there to appear before God. Now, in the New Covenant God has been able to establish His Name and place of worship in the heavens where He dwells, since the Redeemer has risen, ascended, and taken us all captive as His people into God's presence. We are now holy enough to be there; we are welcomed with great joy because we are clothed with the Lamb's righteousness.
This could not be done before under the Old Covenant, not just because atonement for sin had not yet been made, but because no perfect atoning Man as High Priest had been able to ascend into God's presence to represent us, intercede for us, and gather us together into the very presence of God and present us there to God, perfect and holy.
Our worship upon earth now needs to be set in the light of our appearance thereby in heaven. Naturally, what we do here upon earth in public worship must be evocative of and patterned after the heavenly liturgy. We participate in their liturgy and worship, not the reverse. In this regard, David Chilton's words are salutary in his exposition of Revelation 7: 11,12:
As in many other Biblical descriptions of worship. the position of the worshipers (in heaven) is noted here: They fell on their faces before the Throne. Official, public worship in Scripture never shows the participants sitting at prayer; public prayer is always performed in the reverential positions of standing or bowing down. The modern, nominalistic platonist, thinking himself to be fore spiritually-minded than Biblical characters (even angels!), would respond that the bodily position (in worship) is irrelevant, so long as the proper attitude is filling the heart. But this overlooks the fact that Scripture connects the attitude of the heart with the attitude of the body. In public worship, at the very least, our churches should follow the Biblical pattern of physical reverence in prayer.
When rationalistic Protestants abandoned the use of the kneeling rail in worship, the contributed to the outbreaks of individualistic pietism that have brought to much ruin to the Church. Man needs liturgy and symbolism. God created us that way. When the Church denies man this aspect of his God-given nature, he will seek to fulfill it by inadequate or sinful substitutes.
A return to Biblically based liturgy is not a cure-all; but it will prove to be a corrective to the shallow, frenetic, and misplaced "spirituality" that has been the legacy of centuries of liturgical poverty. David Chilton, The Days of Vengeance: An Exposition of the Book of Revelation (Fort Worth, Tx: Dominion Press, 1987), p.219
Monday, 30 August 2010
Towards a Recovery of Biblical Worship, Part I
Worship Acceptable to Man
One of the more vexing current issues faced by the Christian church is the demotion of public worship—and, therefore, of worship per se. It has become little more than an optional extra in the minds of many contemporary Christians.
There are a number of confluent currents causing this problem. The first is the general attitude of our culture. Egalitarianism does not encourage reverent and holy worship. Our age is pervasively informal. “Gidday, mate” is more than just a greeting—it is an icon of our culture. There has been a great loss of the Scriptural concept of superiors and inferiors, of culture reflecting a godly hierarchy. Even as we write these words we imagine bile rising in the throats of many at the mere mention of superiors and inferiors.
New Zealanders pride themselves on our culture of easy egalitarian informality. Many of our political leaders, for example, consciously cultivate “mateship” with the electorate, of being seen as a good bloke (or “blokesse”, as the case may be). This is certainly the case with the current incumbent Prime Minister who has artfully (and genuinely, one presumes) presented himself as a good guy who would be comfortable chatting over the backyard fence with anyone. New Zealanders like that. When political leaders are more removed and reserved they risk being quickly accused of arrogance and pomposity.
It is only on formal state occasions or before the courts, where we are confronted with notions such as contempt of court, that we are jolted with a gulf between superiors and inferiors.
In such a culture, the church has easily slid into a “mateship” towards God, so that many view the public worship of God as an occasion when we say, “Gidday” to God. Public worship for many has become informal, relaxed, laid-back, casual, entertaining, and comfortable. Unfortunately, because of the high value placed upon egalitarianism in our culture, many equate such a relaxed and informal approach to public worship with truth, genuineness, and glory. More formal, hierarchical, structured and liturgical worship is regarded as not genuine, cold, formal, and removed from God. Formal worship is regarded as antithetical to true worship from the heart.
Now this dichotomy comes straight out of our culture, not out of scripture. To that extent we may say that the modern church has become squeezed into the modern world's mould.
A second current undermining true, biblical worship is a persistent and incipient neo-platonising of the Christian faith. Here we are faced with the (false) notion that the material and the outward, tangible components or aspects of life are of secondary importance. It is easy to understand how this idea has crept into the Church. Clearly God is a pure Spirit, without body, parts, or material composition. Yet He is most real; actually, infinitely real. It has been easy, therefore, to slip into the trap of thinking that truth, purity, holiness, and the heavenly realities are that which are inward, mental, attitudinal, while the physical and material aspects of reality can be shuffled off like the chrysalis of a butterfly. In fact, many Christians have become so infected with these pagan neo-platonic notions that they think that it is not until the chrysalis of the flesh and of matter is shed that the true spiritual realities can emerge.
This has encouraged the idea that when it comes to worship, outward, tangible realities are relatively unimportant. How we conduct ourselves, or how worship is conducted is seen as immaterial: that matters is the heart and inward realities of the worshipper. After all, it is man who looks on the outward appearance, and God alone who looks on the heart. And it is the heart of a man where the action is.
Clearly, a moment's reflection will confirm that setting off the material aspects of humanity from what it truly means to be human and what it truly means to be one with God (that is, the more “out-of-body we are, the closer to God) is completely wrong. After all, to redeem man, Christ took on human flesh and the material aspects of humanity; He rose bodily and is enthroned as Lord of the heavens and the earth bodily and materially; He will return to dwell upon earth forever bodily and materially. Therefore, because we are united to Christ in a resurrection like His (Romans 6:5), we too will rise and live throughout eternity in bodily form. In other words, Christ redeems and restores in holy perfection all aspects of His creation—both the material and the immaterial aspects of humanity. Both alike were created by God. Both alike were declared to be very good by the Creator. When Christ redeems us, He redeems and restores all of us, not just part of us. As one theologian put it, grace restores nature; it does not bisect it and cut the material parts off.
Thus we are to live and worship in body, as well as in mind, soul, heart, intellect and emotions. Consequently, worship in this life (and in eternity) has both material and immaterial aspects—all are to be engaged and involved in worship. This is reinforced by extensive citations in the Scripture to bodily attitude and posture in worship: kneeling, standing, bowing, lifting eyes to heaven, and prostrating. Worship also requires the exercise of the vocal chords in confessing, reciting, reading aloud and singing. Public worship requires that these things be done together and in unison (II Chronicles 5: 12—13) so that there is one unified, harmonious sound (which of course requires hard work, practice, planning, organization, leadership, direction, etc.)
Thus, structure, planning, organization—leading to physical and material engagement with our bodies—is an essential and intrinsic part of public worship, so that the physical and material aspects are as spiritual as the mental and intellectual and emotional and volitional. Because human beings are not dualistic or tripartistic schizoid beings, all these aspects are to work together in harmonious unity by God's creation and command.
Neo-platonic, pagan thought has led many Christians to devalue or disregard entirely all these important aspects of true worship.We cannot move closer to biblical worship without dumping these pagan accretions.
One of the more vexing current issues faced by the Christian church is the demotion of public worship—and, therefore, of worship per se. It has become little more than an optional extra in the minds of many contemporary Christians.
There are a number of confluent currents causing this problem. The first is the general attitude of our culture. Egalitarianism does not encourage reverent and holy worship. Our age is pervasively informal. “Gidday, mate” is more than just a greeting—it is an icon of our culture. There has been a great loss of the Scriptural concept of superiors and inferiors, of culture reflecting a godly hierarchy. Even as we write these words we imagine bile rising in the throats of many at the mere mention of superiors and inferiors.
New Zealanders pride themselves on our culture of easy egalitarian informality. Many of our political leaders, for example, consciously cultivate “mateship” with the electorate, of being seen as a good bloke (or “blokesse”, as the case may be). This is certainly the case with the current incumbent Prime Minister who has artfully (and genuinely, one presumes) presented himself as a good guy who would be comfortable chatting over the backyard fence with anyone. New Zealanders like that. When political leaders are more removed and reserved they risk being quickly accused of arrogance and pomposity.
It is only on formal state occasions or before the courts, where we are confronted with notions such as contempt of court, that we are jolted with a gulf between superiors and inferiors.
In such a culture, the church has easily slid into a “mateship” towards God, so that many view the public worship of God as an occasion when we say, “Gidday” to God. Public worship for many has become informal, relaxed, laid-back, casual, entertaining, and comfortable. Unfortunately, because of the high value placed upon egalitarianism in our culture, many equate such a relaxed and informal approach to public worship with truth, genuineness, and glory. More formal, hierarchical, structured and liturgical worship is regarded as not genuine, cold, formal, and removed from God. Formal worship is regarded as antithetical to true worship from the heart.
Now this dichotomy comes straight out of our culture, not out of scripture. To that extent we may say that the modern church has become squeezed into the modern world's mould.
A second current undermining true, biblical worship is a persistent and incipient neo-platonising of the Christian faith. Here we are faced with the (false) notion that the material and the outward, tangible components or aspects of life are of secondary importance. It is easy to understand how this idea has crept into the Church. Clearly God is a pure Spirit, without body, parts, or material composition. Yet He is most real; actually, infinitely real. It has been easy, therefore, to slip into the trap of thinking that truth, purity, holiness, and the heavenly realities are that which are inward, mental, attitudinal, while the physical and material aspects of reality can be shuffled off like the chrysalis of a butterfly. In fact, many Christians have become so infected with these pagan neo-platonic notions that they think that it is not until the chrysalis of the flesh and of matter is shed that the true spiritual realities can emerge.
This has encouraged the idea that when it comes to worship, outward, tangible realities are relatively unimportant. How we conduct ourselves, or how worship is conducted is seen as immaterial: that matters is the heart and inward realities of the worshipper. After all, it is man who looks on the outward appearance, and God alone who looks on the heart. And it is the heart of a man where the action is.
Clearly, a moment's reflection will confirm that setting off the material aspects of humanity from what it truly means to be human and what it truly means to be one with God (that is, the more “out-of-body we are, the closer to God) is completely wrong. After all, to redeem man, Christ took on human flesh and the material aspects of humanity; He rose bodily and is enthroned as Lord of the heavens and the earth bodily and materially; He will return to dwell upon earth forever bodily and materially. Therefore, because we are united to Christ in a resurrection like His (Romans 6:5), we too will rise and live throughout eternity in bodily form. In other words, Christ redeems and restores in holy perfection all aspects of His creation—both the material and the immaterial aspects of humanity. Both alike were created by God. Both alike were declared to be very good by the Creator. When Christ redeems us, He redeems and restores all of us, not just part of us. As one theologian put it, grace restores nature; it does not bisect it and cut the material parts off.
Thus we are to live and worship in body, as well as in mind, soul, heart, intellect and emotions. Consequently, worship in this life (and in eternity) has both material and immaterial aspects—all are to be engaged and involved in worship. This is reinforced by extensive citations in the Scripture to bodily attitude and posture in worship: kneeling, standing, bowing, lifting eyes to heaven, and prostrating. Worship also requires the exercise of the vocal chords in confessing, reciting, reading aloud and singing. Public worship requires that these things be done together and in unison (II Chronicles 5: 12—13) so that there is one unified, harmonious sound (which of course requires hard work, practice, planning, organization, leadership, direction, etc.)
Thus, structure, planning, organization—leading to physical and material engagement with our bodies—is an essential and intrinsic part of public worship, so that the physical and material aspects are as spiritual as the mental and intellectual and emotional and volitional. Because human beings are not dualistic or tripartistic schizoid beings, all these aspects are to work together in harmonious unity by God's creation and command.
Neo-platonic, pagan thought has led many Christians to devalue or disregard entirely all these important aspects of true worship.We cannot move closer to biblical worship without dumping these pagan accretions.
Friday, 4 June 2010
Douglas Wilson's Letter From America
Cutting Off the Buttons
Political Dualism - Dualism Is Bad JuJu
Written by Douglas Wilson
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
The world around us is an unfolding story. The world around us is not a plastic diorama behind the glass in a museum. The kind of objective truth that the faithful Christian insists upon is not to be found in plastic objects that never move, even if their immobility might be a catechetical aid to the bus tours of schoolchildren who come through.
To change the metaphor, conservatives tend to be Maginot Line defenders, always fighting the last war. Liberals and trendy evangelicals try to help us out of this jam by suggesting that we should busy ourselves with surrendering in the current war. Shouldn't there be more alternatives than this?
Objective truth, final truth, ultimate truth is a sword, but it is not a sword hanging on the wall. It is a sword in a faithful hand, and though it is as rigid and unyielding as the sword on the wall, being made out of the same kind of steel, it looks like it is a living creature -- because it moves in the story. A warrior fights with it in the story. It shines, it flickers, it strikes. How can objective, unchanging truth adapt to the challenges of these our post-modern times? I'll tell you -- by cutting a cool-looking Z on the vest of our post-modern times, and then cutting off all the buttons.
Jesus is king, not Descartes. Jesus is the truth, not Kant. Jesus is the meaning, not Derrida. Jesus is the way, not Darwin. Jesus is a living Lord and Savior, both now and forever. For our au courant brethren, this means that He is not post-anything.
Now in a story, the faithful characters are the ones who finish one episode, prepared for the next episode. They don't believe the concluding episode is the conclusion of the book. Overcoming one challenge is the best preparation for the next challenge.
The blowback against Washington insolence in the elections last night provides us with a good example. Almost everything about it made me happy, but what kind of happy? End of the chapter happy or end of the book happy? If every last incumbent in Washington went down in defeat this coming November, I would be a lot happier -- in the full recognition that two years from now we would still be dealing with the same basic problems.
This is a shock to activists everywhere, who always want to fix things now, and this surprise of theirs is a function, not only of not knowing that we are in a story, but also of having no real sense of how long the book is. If we think we are in a story at all, we think it is a short story, when we are actually in the longest novel ever written, with billions of characters. And we are only about halfway through it, if that.
To extend this metaphor, we should want our efforts, our labors, our plot lines to extend over many pages, and to contribute significantly to the final denouement. But to do this, we have to think on multiple levels, and not just in terms of the immediate battle. In this example, I mean that conservative Christians should be preparing to mount a faithful prophetic witness against the established powers after the progressives are routed (and good riddance, yay) and the conservatives win. If our thinking is, "What do you mean, after the conservatives win? Doesn't the millennium come then?" -- this illustrates our problem.
Ambrose Bierce once defined a conservative as one who is enamoured of the existing evils, as opposed to the liberal, who wishes to replace them with others. Each one of these parties can warn you against the "existing" or the "pending" evil, right? But that is because they are only defending their own turf. In our day, we would have to flip Bierce's observation around, because it is the liberals who are the insiders, who run the establishment, and the conservatives who are the outsiders. But the point remains the same. Statist idolaters like President Obamafail do need to be chased off the stage, no question. We can't afford him, for starters.
But what do we think we are actually accomplishing when we do this necessary thing? Without an eschatology to govern the direction of our efforts, our efforts are aimless. And secular eschatologies (of the right or the left) are either damnable or stupid or both. The teleology of all human history, and everything it contains, has to be Jesus Christ. How can we as Christians say that it could possibly be anything else? Now I know there are decent Christians engaged in our political life who don't know this, but they are decent Christians who are in the process of being suckered. And one of my assigned tasks in life is to talk Christians away from the pleasures of being suckered.
H.L. Mencken once trenchantly observed that trying to reform Washington by electing new guys was like trying to reform prostitution by staffing all the brothels with virgins. Now the only way out of this is to think in terms of the teleology of it. The brothel needs something other than new, fresh faces. The brothel needs to become something else. But that is a teleological question. That is eschatology. And no Christian can have any eschatology that leaves Jesus out of it. If Jesus is Lord of heaven and earth, then we can turn the brothel into something else. And not otherwise.
Party-line thinkers are always short-term thinkers. Ideologues care only about the moment. When Christians succumb to this kind of thinking, they are still Christians, and they still go to Heaven when they die. But they are playing their roles in this grand story as extras or bit players. The Author of all this can use them wisely and well, and they will rejoice in His wisdom forever and ever. But it would be far better for us to understand more of the story now. It glorifies His name, and it blesses our souls and hearts. And it advances the plot.
Political Dualism - Dualism Is Bad JuJu
Written by Douglas Wilson
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
The world around us is an unfolding story. The world around us is not a plastic diorama behind the glass in a museum. The kind of objective truth that the faithful Christian insists upon is not to be found in plastic objects that never move, even if their immobility might be a catechetical aid to the bus tours of schoolchildren who come through.
To change the metaphor, conservatives tend to be Maginot Line defenders, always fighting the last war. Liberals and trendy evangelicals try to help us out of this jam by suggesting that we should busy ourselves with surrendering in the current war. Shouldn't there be more alternatives than this?
Objective truth, final truth, ultimate truth is a sword, but it is not a sword hanging on the wall. It is a sword in a faithful hand, and though it is as rigid and unyielding as the sword on the wall, being made out of the same kind of steel, it looks like it is a living creature -- because it moves in the story. A warrior fights with it in the story. It shines, it flickers, it strikes. How can objective, unchanging truth adapt to the challenges of these our post-modern times? I'll tell you -- by cutting a cool-looking Z on the vest of our post-modern times, and then cutting off all the buttons.
Jesus is king, not Descartes. Jesus is the truth, not Kant. Jesus is the meaning, not Derrida. Jesus is the way, not Darwin. Jesus is a living Lord and Savior, both now and forever. For our au courant brethren, this means that He is not post-anything.
Now in a story, the faithful characters are the ones who finish one episode, prepared for the next episode. They don't believe the concluding episode is the conclusion of the book. Overcoming one challenge is the best preparation for the next challenge.
The blowback against Washington insolence in the elections last night provides us with a good example. Almost everything about it made me happy, but what kind of happy? End of the chapter happy or end of the book happy? If every last incumbent in Washington went down in defeat this coming November, I would be a lot happier -- in the full recognition that two years from now we would still be dealing with the same basic problems.
This is a shock to activists everywhere, who always want to fix things now, and this surprise of theirs is a function, not only of not knowing that we are in a story, but also of having no real sense of how long the book is. If we think we are in a story at all, we think it is a short story, when we are actually in the longest novel ever written, with billions of characters. And we are only about halfway through it, if that.
To extend this metaphor, we should want our efforts, our labors, our plot lines to extend over many pages, and to contribute significantly to the final denouement. But to do this, we have to think on multiple levels, and not just in terms of the immediate battle. In this example, I mean that conservative Christians should be preparing to mount a faithful prophetic witness against the established powers after the progressives are routed (and good riddance, yay) and the conservatives win. If our thinking is, "What do you mean, after the conservatives win? Doesn't the millennium come then?" -- this illustrates our problem.
Ambrose Bierce once defined a conservative as one who is enamoured of the existing evils, as opposed to the liberal, who wishes to replace them with others. Each one of these parties can warn you against the "existing" or the "pending" evil, right? But that is because they are only defending their own turf. In our day, we would have to flip Bierce's observation around, because it is the liberals who are the insiders, who run the establishment, and the conservatives who are the outsiders. But the point remains the same. Statist idolaters like President Obamafail do need to be chased off the stage, no question. We can't afford him, for starters.
But what do we think we are actually accomplishing when we do this necessary thing? Without an eschatology to govern the direction of our efforts, our efforts are aimless. And secular eschatologies (of the right or the left) are either damnable or stupid or both. The teleology of all human history, and everything it contains, has to be Jesus Christ. How can we as Christians say that it could possibly be anything else? Now I know there are decent Christians engaged in our political life who don't know this, but they are decent Christians who are in the process of being suckered. And one of my assigned tasks in life is to talk Christians away from the pleasures of being suckered.
H.L. Mencken once trenchantly observed that trying to reform Washington by electing new guys was like trying to reform prostitution by staffing all the brothels with virgins. Now the only way out of this is to think in terms of the teleology of it. The brothel needs something other than new, fresh faces. The brothel needs to become something else. But that is a teleological question. That is eschatology. And no Christian can have any eschatology that leaves Jesus out of it. If Jesus is Lord of heaven and earth, then we can turn the brothel into something else. And not otherwise.
Party-line thinkers are always short-term thinkers. Ideologues care only about the moment. When Christians succumb to this kind of thinking, they are still Christians, and they still go to Heaven when they die. But they are playing their roles in this grand story as extras or bit players. The Author of all this can use them wisely and well, and they will rejoice in His wisdom forever and ever. But it would be far better for us to understand more of the story now. It glorifies His name, and it blesses our souls and hearts. And it advances the plot.
Friday, 28 May 2010
Douglas Wilson's Letter From America
A Full Tank of Gas and Lots of Wyoming Ahead, Part II
Political Dualism - Dualism Is Bad JuJu
Written by Douglas Wilson
Sunday, May 16, 2010
In the gnostic order of things, the material world is always convicted, damned. It is the problem. In the Christian world tugged on by gnosticism, the material world is not condemned -- the orthodox faith forbids this because God made the world, and Jesus rose from the dead in it. But, when idolatry occurs, this doesn't keep the material world from always being rounded up as one of the usual suspects.
It is assumed that where creation is thick -- where the music is glorious, the beer stout, the women beautiful, the lawns rich, the architecture splendid, and so on -- it presents a greater temptation to idolatry than where someone has mixed the paint thinner of ascetic striving into the created order in order to avoid the idolatrous distractions. But this does not work.
The apostle Paul says that this maneuver is of no value in checking fleshly indulgence. "If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations— “Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch” (referring to things that all perish as they are used)—according to human precepts and teachings? These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh" (Col. 2:20-23, ESV). Paul grants an appearance of wisdom here, but he says that it doesn't work. A man can get the created order around him completely thinned out, and be as much in danger of idolatry as ever he was.
Read Augustine's Confessions (33/49-50) for a good example of this mistake concerning where the temptation to idolatry actually lies. And I hasten to add that, while pointing out this mistake of Augustine's, in a church with any decent standards I would not be qualified to be Augustine's boot boy.
A man can worship an ornate idol, decked with gold and silver, and he can worship a Euclidian stick figure. The divide is a moral one. The divide has to do with whether God has given the man eyes to see. If God has given eyes to see, it does not hurt him to see a lot.
Here is the word of the Lord to Israel:
"Moreover all these curses shall come upon thee . . . Because thou servedst not the LORD thy God with joyfulness, and with gladness of heart, for the abundance of all things (Dt. 28:45, 47).
Here is a poem I wrote about this once.
Rocks in the Drive
When strings are pulled taut, the cello is tuned,
The wood holds the wine that is seasoned and old.
Dark music poured out and emptied the cask,
And rolled in my goblet, rich, tawny and told
How holiness tastes, how righteousness laughs.
You shall be as God, the great dragon had said,
Philosophers argue their shapes in the fire
And each to his shadow tenaciously clings;
They miss that our great father Abram aspired
To a city of solids, celestial marble.
But our earthly solids are fleeting, like faerie,
Far closer to ether than what we conceive.
Our granite is balsa, our oceans are floating,
Our atoms are rootless, and we, not believing,
We miss that this world speaks a fortiori.
Stop thinking that heaven means standing on clouds.
Why falter when told that our God remains good?
Why think the Almighty exhausted in sadness
His strength on the Alps or the plains of Dakota?
Will He not speak solid and substantive gladness
And bid all His people emerge from the shadows?
The carpets of heaven are thicker than moss.
With paint on the walls that is glossy to stay.
Hard wood for the tables is grown on the hillsides,
And rocks in the drive are all sapphire gray.
The breezes move curtains that are facing the sea
Political Dualism - Dualism Is Bad JuJu
Written by Douglas Wilson
Sunday, May 16, 2010
In the gnostic order of things, the material world is always convicted, damned. It is the problem. In the Christian world tugged on by gnosticism, the material world is not condemned -- the orthodox faith forbids this because God made the world, and Jesus rose from the dead in it. But, when idolatry occurs, this doesn't keep the material world from always being rounded up as one of the usual suspects.
It is assumed that where creation is thick -- where the music is glorious, the beer stout, the women beautiful, the lawns rich, the architecture splendid, and so on -- it presents a greater temptation to idolatry than where someone has mixed the paint thinner of ascetic striving into the created order in order to avoid the idolatrous distractions. But this does not work.
The apostle Paul says that this maneuver is of no value in checking fleshly indulgence. "If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations— “Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch” (referring to things that all perish as they are used)—according to human precepts and teachings? These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh" (Col. 2:20-23, ESV). Paul grants an appearance of wisdom here, but he says that it doesn't work. A man can get the created order around him completely thinned out, and be as much in danger of idolatry as ever he was.
Read Augustine's Confessions (33/49-50) for a good example of this mistake concerning where the temptation to idolatry actually lies. And I hasten to add that, while pointing out this mistake of Augustine's, in a church with any decent standards I would not be qualified to be Augustine's boot boy.
A man can worship an ornate idol, decked with gold and silver, and he can worship a Euclidian stick figure. The divide is a moral one. The divide has to do with whether God has given the man eyes to see. If God has given eyes to see, it does not hurt him to see a lot.
Here is the word of the Lord to Israel:
"Moreover all these curses shall come upon thee . . . Because thou servedst not the LORD thy God with joyfulness, and with gladness of heart, for the abundance of all things (Dt. 28:45, 47).
Here is a poem I wrote about this once.
Rocks in the Drive
When strings are pulled taut, the cello is tuned,
The wood holds the wine that is seasoned and old.
Dark music poured out and emptied the cask,
And rolled in my goblet, rich, tawny and told
How holiness tastes, how righteousness laughs.
You shall be as God, the great dragon had said,
Philosophers argue their shapes in the fire
And each to his shadow tenaciously clings;
They miss that our great father Abram aspired
To a city of solids, celestial marble.
But our earthly solids are fleeting, like faerie,
Far closer to ether than what we conceive.
Our granite is balsa, our oceans are floating,
Our atoms are rootless, and we, not believing,
We miss that this world speaks a fortiori.
Stop thinking that heaven means standing on clouds.
Why falter when told that our God remains good?
Why think the Almighty exhausted in sadness
His strength on the Alps or the plains of Dakota?
Will He not speak solid and substantive gladness
And bid all His people emerge from the shadows?
The carpets of heaven are thicker than moss.
With paint on the walls that is glossy to stay.
Hard wood for the tables is grown on the hillsides,
And rocks in the drive are all sapphire gray.
The breezes move curtains that are facing the sea
Friday, 21 May 2010
Douglas Wilson's Letter From America
A Full Tank of Gas and Lots of Wyoming Ahead, Part I
Political Dualism - Dualism Is Bad JuJu
Written by Douglas Wilson
Thursday, May 13, 2010
A week or so ago, I wrote about Piperian Hedonism 3.0. Following that, a friend helpfully pointed me to Chapter 11 of John Piper's book, When I Don't Desire God. That chapter is entitled "How to Wield the World in the Fight for Joy." And that chapter is filled, of course, with Piper's usual exegetical good sense, along with his careful framing of the question before the house. Having read it, and having agreed with a bunch of it, I still want to urge us to go further up and further in. Here are a few thoughts on that.
Piper leans on C.S. Lewis' argument in an essay called "Meditation in a Toolshed," which is found in God in the Dock. Piper does well in acknowledging that opting out of a bodily recognition of God and His gifts is not actually possible, and the only question is how we do it, not whether. He draws on the distinction that Lewis makes between looking at something (in this case, a sunbeam), and looking along the same beam, back to the sun.
In this chapter, Piper says:
And this brings us to the heart of the problem -- the relationship between Giver and gift. But before addressing this, I want to appear to change the subject for a minute.
I said in my previous post on this that we needed to work through this in an explicitly Trinitarian way. But this means more than just counting everything we see in groups of three. One of the essential Trinitarian doctrines that we need to apply to this is the doctrine of perichoresis, the truth that each member of the Trinity fully indwells each of the others. For example, Jesus talks about this in the gospel of John: "Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; that they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me" (John 17:20-21). Note that the Father indwells the Son completely, and the Son indwells the Father completely. Notice also that Jesus wants the same kind of thing for us, and so perichoretic indwelling must not be a prerogative of divinity. And so I want to argue that an understanding of perichoretic indwelling helps us to address the vexed question of relating the Giver and His gifts.
Given my finite limitations, I have to think about the gifts God gives to me a lot. I have to think about the fact that my feet are not cold anymore, that it is time for dinner, that one of my shoulder blades itches, and so on. To use Lewis' conceit from the toolshed, I have to spend a lot of time looking at the sunbeams, and a fraction of my time is set aside for direct worship of God, looking along the sunbeam. The temptation we have is that of treating all this as a zero-sum game, assuming that any time spent on the gifts is necessarily time away from the Giver. But though this sometimes happens, it does not need to happen. Rightly handled, a gift is never detached from the one who gave it. Wrongly handled, a gift can be the occasion of selfishness, which is a common problem. But it can also be the occasion of a higher form of selfishness, one which pretends to be above the whole tawdry field of "gifts in themselves."
Picture a particularly "pious" little child who was impossible to give gifts to, because he would always unwrap it, abandon it immediately, and run up to his parent and say, "But what really counts is my relationship with you!" A selfish child playing with a toy ungratefully is forgetting the giver. This pious form of selfishness is refusing to let the giver even be a giver.
We should not assume that in the resurrection, when we have finally learned how to look along that beam, in pure worship, that our bodies will then be superfluous. God will not have given us eternal and everlasting bodies because we finally got to such a point of spiritual maturity that we are able to ignore them. In the resurrection, we will have learned something we currently struggle with, which is how to live integrated lives. If God is the one in whom we live and move and have our being, it should not be necessary, in order to glorify God, to drop everything. We shouldn't have to keep these things in separate compartments.
Incidentally, this kind of integration will prevent dislocations from arising in families that are sold out to the glory of God. Integration will keep our neighbor (or wife, or husband, or kids) from feeling like a means to an end. There is a delicate balance here, but God is most glorified in me when I love what He has given to me, for its own sake. This is teleologically related to the macro-point of God's glory being over all, of course, but we still have to enjoy what He gives, flat out, period, stop. Otherwise, in the resurrection, God will be looking at all the billions of His resurrected saints, standing there contentedly, looking at Him, and He will say, "You know, you people are impossible to shop for." Which is, of course, absurd and impossible. In the resurrection, it will be possible for us to be absorbed by God's gifts in ways that are impossible to conceive of now.
How might perichoresis help us with this? In a perichoretic world, the gift need not displace the Giver, as though they were two billiards balls. In the material world, the space that one object occupies is space that another object cannot occupy. We carry our assumptions about this over into the spiritual world, and we consequently assume that if we are thinking about meat on the grill, bees in the honeysuckle, a sweet wife in bed, beer in a frosted glass, or a full tank of gas and lots of Wyoming ahead, then we cannot be thinking about God also, or be living in gratitude before Him. But I don't think this is the case at all.
When we think about the gifts in exclusion of the Giver, it is because we are being prideful, or selfish in some way. If we think about the Giver only, we are trying hard to be disembodied spirits -- which is not how the Giver made us, and if we were paying all that much attention to the Giver, we ought to have noticed that He didn't want to make us that way.
If I turn every gift that God gives over in my hands suspiciously, looking for the idol trap, then I am not rejoicing before Him the way I ought to be. There will likely be more on this.
Political Dualism - Dualism Is Bad JuJu
Written by Douglas Wilson
Thursday, May 13, 2010
A week or so ago, I wrote about Piperian Hedonism 3.0. Following that, a friend helpfully pointed me to Chapter 11 of John Piper's book, When I Don't Desire God. That chapter is entitled "How to Wield the World in the Fight for Joy." And that chapter is filled, of course, with Piper's usual exegetical good sense, along with his careful framing of the question before the house. Having read it, and having agreed with a bunch of it, I still want to urge us to go further up and further in. Here are a few thoughts on that.
Piper leans on C.S. Lewis' argument in an essay called "Meditation in a Toolshed," which is found in God in the Dock. Piper does well in acknowledging that opting out of a bodily recognition of God and His gifts is not actually possible, and the only question is how we do it, not whether. He draws on the distinction that Lewis makes between looking at something (in this case, a sunbeam), and looking along the same beam, back to the sun.
In this chapter, Piper says:
So the question must be faced: How do we use the created world around us, including our own bodies, to help us fight for joy in God? In God, I say! Not in nature. Not in music. Not in health. Not in food or drink. Not in natural beauty. How can all these good gifts serve joy in God, and not usurp the supreme affections of our hearts" (p. 178).
Gratitude is occasioned by a gift, but is directed to the giver (p. 186).
And this brings us to the heart of the problem -- the relationship between Giver and gift. But before addressing this, I want to appear to change the subject for a minute.
I said in my previous post on this that we needed to work through this in an explicitly Trinitarian way. But this means more than just counting everything we see in groups of three. One of the essential Trinitarian doctrines that we need to apply to this is the doctrine of perichoresis, the truth that each member of the Trinity fully indwells each of the others. For example, Jesus talks about this in the gospel of John: "Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; that they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me" (John 17:20-21). Note that the Father indwells the Son completely, and the Son indwells the Father completely. Notice also that Jesus wants the same kind of thing for us, and so perichoretic indwelling must not be a prerogative of divinity. And so I want to argue that an understanding of perichoretic indwelling helps us to address the vexed question of relating the Giver and His gifts.
Given my finite limitations, I have to think about the gifts God gives to me a lot. I have to think about the fact that my feet are not cold anymore, that it is time for dinner, that one of my shoulder blades itches, and so on. To use Lewis' conceit from the toolshed, I have to spend a lot of time looking at the sunbeams, and a fraction of my time is set aside for direct worship of God, looking along the sunbeam. The temptation we have is that of treating all this as a zero-sum game, assuming that any time spent on the gifts is necessarily time away from the Giver. But though this sometimes happens, it does not need to happen. Rightly handled, a gift is never detached from the one who gave it. Wrongly handled, a gift can be the occasion of selfishness, which is a common problem. But it can also be the occasion of a higher form of selfishness, one which pretends to be above the whole tawdry field of "gifts in themselves."
Picture a particularly "pious" little child who was impossible to give gifts to, because he would always unwrap it, abandon it immediately, and run up to his parent and say, "But what really counts is my relationship with you!" A selfish child playing with a toy ungratefully is forgetting the giver. This pious form of selfishness is refusing to let the giver even be a giver.
We should not assume that in the resurrection, when we have finally learned how to look along that beam, in pure worship, that our bodies will then be superfluous. God will not have given us eternal and everlasting bodies because we finally got to such a point of spiritual maturity that we are able to ignore them. In the resurrection, we will have learned something we currently struggle with, which is how to live integrated lives. If God is the one in whom we live and move and have our being, it should not be necessary, in order to glorify God, to drop everything. We shouldn't have to keep these things in separate compartments.
Incidentally, this kind of integration will prevent dislocations from arising in families that are sold out to the glory of God. Integration will keep our neighbor (or wife, or husband, or kids) from feeling like a means to an end. There is a delicate balance here, but God is most glorified in me when I love what He has given to me, for its own sake. This is teleologically related to the macro-point of God's glory being over all, of course, but we still have to enjoy what He gives, flat out, period, stop. Otherwise, in the resurrection, God will be looking at all the billions of His resurrected saints, standing there contentedly, looking at Him, and He will say, "You know, you people are impossible to shop for." Which is, of course, absurd and impossible. In the resurrection, it will be possible for us to be absorbed by God's gifts in ways that are impossible to conceive of now.
How might perichoresis help us with this? In a perichoretic world, the gift need not displace the Giver, as though they were two billiards balls. In the material world, the space that one object occupies is space that another object cannot occupy. We carry our assumptions about this over into the spiritual world, and we consequently assume that if we are thinking about meat on the grill, bees in the honeysuckle, a sweet wife in bed, beer in a frosted glass, or a full tank of gas and lots of Wyoming ahead, then we cannot be thinking about God also, or be living in gratitude before Him. But I don't think this is the case at all.
When we think about the gifts in exclusion of the Giver, it is because we are being prideful, or selfish in some way. If we think about the Giver only, we are trying hard to be disembodied spirits -- which is not how the Giver made us, and if we were paying all that much attention to the Giver, we ought to have noticed that He didn't want to make us that way.
If I turn every gift that God gives over in my hands suspiciously, looking for the idol trap, then I am not rejoicing before Him the way I ought to be. There will likely be more on this.
Saturday, 13 March 2010
Douglas Wilson's Letter From America
A Tornado With Boots
Christian Dualism
Written by Douglas Wilson
Wednesday, March 03, 2010
The perennial temptation for modern Reformed Protestants, especially after they get college degrees, is to float toward the sky in wisps of gnostic vapor. Doctrinalism is one kind of gnosticism, and pietism another. Literary structuralism is yet another one. Note that I did not say doctrine, of which the apostle Paul approved, and I did not say piety, of which my mother approves. Nor did I say literature, which feeds the right kind of soul.
I have often quoted that glorious passage in Ambrose Bierce's Devil's Dictionary, where a junior officer in the War Between the States was being reprimanded by the general for his unit's reluctance to charge. "Sir," the hapless lieutenant replied, "I am convinced that any further demonstration of valor on the part of my troops will bring them into contact with the enemy."
The early Reformers were not like this at all. They were about the most un-gnostic bunch ever assembled in the history of Christendom.
They were the most Christ-loving, world-affirming, money-making, beer-drinking, sword-wielding, music-making, kingdom-overthrowing, love-making, poetry-writing bunch of Christians the world had ever seen up to that point. And they kept it up, by and large, for several centuries.
But then the drift set in. Many of their intellectual heirs have become wan and pale in the more recent centuries, despite the occasional nuisance of eruptions of people like Kuyper. People like that come into the story like a tornado with boots, and they have all the history and all the theology on their side. Nothing can be done about it, so the curators of the Reformed museum are discomfited for a time, and do a sort of twiddly thing with their toe in the carpet, and wait for this affliction to pass. In their patience, they possess their deracinated souls.
But here is the odd thing. At the time of the Reformation, if there had been a gnosticism susceptibility line on the blackboard, on a scale of 1-to-10, the papists would be hitting the eights and nines. The monks would be sweating out sexual temptations in their dreary cloisters while the Puritans with plumes in their hats and lawn tops on their boots were striding home to make love to their wives.
But in recent years, most of the intellectual heirs of the Reformation have decided to switch places on that line, ceding the fight against gnosticism to the conservative Roman Catholics. It makes me want to say things like, "Hey!" Historically embarrassing, that's what it is. And if any of us plunge into the fray, and get one of the horns on our helmet knocked off, we are likely to hear about it at presbytery. "Not very confessional."
Modern airy-fairy Reformed theology, whether the conservative or liberal kind, wants to float off like a helium balloon, and if you want to anchor it to Christ's love for this world, this earthy world, you will need more than stout beer and pipe tobacco to do it. That kind of thing teaches seminary students to feel very anti-gnostic because they can talk heady theology through wreaths of smoke -- but they still leave the heavy lifting of world-engagement and real gospel proclamation (to actual sinners) to the baptists. And they learn to watch with real dismay if any of their Reformed brethren start to show signs of wanting to make actual contact with the enemy. It is enough to make them suspicious. Wielding a sword is a form of works, is it not?
Christian Dualism
Written by Douglas Wilson
Wednesday, March 03, 2010
The perennial temptation for modern Reformed Protestants, especially after they get college degrees, is to float toward the sky in wisps of gnostic vapor. Doctrinalism is one kind of gnosticism, and pietism another. Literary structuralism is yet another one. Note that I did not say doctrine, of which the apostle Paul approved, and I did not say piety, of which my mother approves. Nor did I say literature, which feeds the right kind of soul.
I have often quoted that glorious passage in Ambrose Bierce's Devil's Dictionary, where a junior officer in the War Between the States was being reprimanded by the general for his unit's reluctance to charge. "Sir," the hapless lieutenant replied, "I am convinced that any further demonstration of valor on the part of my troops will bring them into contact with the enemy."
The early Reformers were not like this at all. They were about the most un-gnostic bunch ever assembled in the history of Christendom.
They were the most Christ-loving, world-affirming, money-making, beer-drinking, sword-wielding, music-making, kingdom-overthrowing, love-making, poetry-writing bunch of Christians the world had ever seen up to that point. And they kept it up, by and large, for several centuries.
But then the drift set in. Many of their intellectual heirs have become wan and pale in the more recent centuries, despite the occasional nuisance of eruptions of people like Kuyper. People like that come into the story like a tornado with boots, and they have all the history and all the theology on their side. Nothing can be done about it, so the curators of the Reformed museum are discomfited for a time, and do a sort of twiddly thing with their toe in the carpet, and wait for this affliction to pass. In their patience, they possess their deracinated souls.
But here is the odd thing. At the time of the Reformation, if there had been a gnosticism susceptibility line on the blackboard, on a scale of 1-to-10, the papists would be hitting the eights and nines. The monks would be sweating out sexual temptations in their dreary cloisters while the Puritans with plumes in their hats and lawn tops on their boots were striding home to make love to their wives.
But in recent years, most of the intellectual heirs of the Reformation have decided to switch places on that line, ceding the fight against gnosticism to the conservative Roman Catholics. It makes me want to say things like, "Hey!" Historically embarrassing, that's what it is. And if any of us plunge into the fray, and get one of the horns on our helmet knocked off, we are likely to hear about it at presbytery. "Not very confessional."
Modern airy-fairy Reformed theology, whether the conservative or liberal kind, wants to float off like a helium balloon, and if you want to anchor it to Christ's love for this world, this earthy world, you will need more than stout beer and pipe tobacco to do it. That kind of thing teaches seminary students to feel very anti-gnostic because they can talk heady theology through wreaths of smoke -- but they still leave the heavy lifting of world-engagement and real gospel proclamation (to actual sinners) to the baptists. And they learn to watch with real dismay if any of their Reformed brethren start to show signs of wanting to make actual contact with the enemy. It is enough to make them suspicious. Wielding a sword is a form of works, is it not?
Tuesday, 2 February 2010
Banishing the Neo-Platonists, Part II
More From Sayers on the Holiness of Work
The official Church wastes time and energy, and moreover, commits sacrilege, in demanding that secular workers should neglect their proper vocation in order to do Christian work – by which She means ecclesiastical work. The only Christian work is good work well done. Let the Church see to it that the workers are Christian people and do their work well, as to God: then all the work will be Christian work, whether it is church embroidery, or sewage farming. As Jacques Maritain says: “If you want to produce Christian work, be a Christian, and try to make a work of beauty into which you have put your heart; do not adopt a Christian pose.” He is right. And let the Church remember that the beauty of the work will be judged by its own, and not by ecclesiastical standards.
Let me give you an illustration of what I mean. When my play The Zeal of Thy House was produced in London, a dear old pious lady was much struck by the beauty of the four great archangels who stood throughout the play in their heavy, gold robes, eleven feet high from wingtip to sandaltip. She asked with great innocence whether I selected the actors who played the angels “for the excellence of their moral character.”
I replied that the angels were selected to begin with, not by me but by the producer, who had the technical qualifications for selecting suitable actors – for that was part of his vocation. And that he selected, in the first place, young men who were six feet tall so that they would match properly together. Secondly, angels had to be of good physique, so as to be able to stand stiff on the stage for two and a half hours, carrying the weight of their wings and costumes, without wobbling, or fidgeting, or fainting. Thirdly, they had to be able to speak verse well, in an agreeable voice and audibly. Fourthly, they had to be reasonable good actors. When all these technical conditions had been fulfilled, we might come to the moral qualities, of which the first would be the ability to arrive on stage punctually and in a sober condition, since the curtain must go up on time, and a drunken angel would be indecorous.
After that, and only after that, one might take character into consideration, but that, provided his behavior was not so scandalous as to cause dissension among the company, the right kind of actor with no morals would give a far more reverent and seemly performance than a saintly actor with the wrong technical qualifications. The worst religious films I ever saw were produced by a company which chose its staff exclusively for their piety. Bad photography, bad acting, and bad dialogue produced a result so grotesquely irreverent that the pictures could not have been shown in churches without bringing Christianity into contempt.
God is not served by technical incompetence; and incompetence and untruth always result when the secular vocation is treated as a thing alien to religion….
And conversely: when you find a man who is a Christian praising God by the excellence of his work – do not distract him and take him away from his proper vocation to address religious meetings and open church bazaars. Let him serve God in the way to which God has called him. If you take him away from that, he will exhaust himself in an alien technique and lose his capacity to do his dedicated work.
It is your business, you churchmen, to get what good you can from observing his work – not to take him away from it, so that he may do ecclesiastical work for you. But, if you have any power, see that he is set free to do this own work as well as it may be done. He is not there to serve you; he is there to serve God by serving his work.
The official Church wastes time and energy, and moreover, commits sacrilege, in demanding that secular workers should neglect their proper vocation in order to do Christian work – by which She means ecclesiastical work. The only Christian work is good work well done. Let the Church see to it that the workers are Christian people and do their work well, as to God: then all the work will be Christian work, whether it is church embroidery, or sewage farming. As Jacques Maritain says: “If you want to produce Christian work, be a Christian, and try to make a work of beauty into which you have put your heart; do not adopt a Christian pose.” He is right. And let the Church remember that the beauty of the work will be judged by its own, and not by ecclesiastical standards.
Let me give you an illustration of what I mean. When my play The Zeal of Thy House was produced in London, a dear old pious lady was much struck by the beauty of the four great archangels who stood throughout the play in their heavy, gold robes, eleven feet high from wingtip to sandaltip. She asked with great innocence whether I selected the actors who played the angels “for the excellence of their moral character.”
I replied that the angels were selected to begin with, not by me but by the producer, who had the technical qualifications for selecting suitable actors – for that was part of his vocation. And that he selected, in the first place, young men who were six feet tall so that they would match properly together. Secondly, angels had to be of good physique, so as to be able to stand stiff on the stage for two and a half hours, carrying the weight of their wings and costumes, without wobbling, or fidgeting, or fainting. Thirdly, they had to be able to speak verse well, in an agreeable voice and audibly. Fourthly, they had to be reasonable good actors. When all these technical conditions had been fulfilled, we might come to the moral qualities, of which the first would be the ability to arrive on stage punctually and in a sober condition, since the curtain must go up on time, and a drunken angel would be indecorous.
After that, and only after that, one might take character into consideration, but that, provided his behavior was not so scandalous as to cause dissension among the company, the right kind of actor with no morals would give a far more reverent and seemly performance than a saintly actor with the wrong technical qualifications. The worst religious films I ever saw were produced by a company which chose its staff exclusively for their piety. Bad photography, bad acting, and bad dialogue produced a result so grotesquely irreverent that the pictures could not have been shown in churches without bringing Christianity into contempt.
God is not served by technical incompetence; and incompetence and untruth always result when the secular vocation is treated as a thing alien to religion….
And conversely: when you find a man who is a Christian praising God by the excellence of his work – do not distract him and take him away from his proper vocation to address religious meetings and open church bazaars. Let him serve God in the way to which God has called him. If you take him away from that, he will exhaust himself in an alien technique and lose his capacity to do his dedicated work.
It is your business, you churchmen, to get what good you can from observing his work – not to take him away from it, so that he may do ecclesiastical work for you. But, if you have any power, see that he is set free to do this own work as well as it may be done. He is not there to serve you; he is there to serve God by serving his work.
Thursday, 28 January 2010
Banishing the Neo-Platonists
Dorothy Sayers on Work
From Dorothy Sayers’s essay, “Why Work?” in Creed or Chaos (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1949):
The Church’s approach to an intelligent carpenter is usually confined to exhorting him not to be drunk and disorderly in his leisure hours, and to come to church on Sundays. What the Church should be telling him is this: that the very first demand that his religion makes upon him is that he should make good tables.
. . . Let the Church remember this: that every maker and worker is called to serve God in his profession or trade—not outside of it. The Apostles complained rightly when they said it was not meant they should leave the word of God and serve tables; their vocation was to preach the word. But the person whose vocation it is to prepare the meals beautifully might with equal justice protest: It is not meant for us to leave the service of our tables to preach the word.
The official Church wastes time and energy, and moreover, commits sacrilege, in demanding that secular workers should neglect their proper vocation in order to do Christian work—by which she means ecclesiastical work. The only Christian work is good work well done. Let the Church see to it that the workers are Christian people and do their work well, as to God: then all the work will be Christian work, whether it is Church embroidery or sewage-farming.
Hat Tip: Justin Taylor
From Dorothy Sayers’s essay, “Why Work?” in Creed or Chaos (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1949):
The Church’s approach to an intelligent carpenter is usually confined to exhorting him not to be drunk and disorderly in his leisure hours, and to come to church on Sundays. What the Church should be telling him is this: that the very first demand that his religion makes upon him is that he should make good tables.
. . . Let the Church remember this: that every maker and worker is called to serve God in his profession or trade—not outside of it. The Apostles complained rightly when they said it was not meant they should leave the word of God and serve tables; their vocation was to preach the word. But the person whose vocation it is to prepare the meals beautifully might with equal justice protest: It is not meant for us to leave the service of our tables to preach the word.
The official Church wastes time and energy, and moreover, commits sacrilege, in demanding that secular workers should neglect their proper vocation in order to do Christian work—by which she means ecclesiastical work. The only Christian work is good work well done. Let the Church see to it that the workers are Christian people and do their work well, as to God: then all the work will be Christian work, whether it is Church embroidery or sewage-farming.
Hat Tip: Justin Taylor
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