Gems From Jonathan Edwards: The World By Wisdom Knew Not God

Idolatry and Ignorance Are Conjoined--And Ever Will Be

Jonathan Edwards
The History of Redemption

One of the longest dispensations of Divine grace was the period of Moses through to David.  This was a period when all the nations of the world, apart from the newly established nation-state of Israel, were left to the practice of idolatry.  Why might this be?

Jonathan Edwards gives us some insight into the wider, deeper issues at play.

[The Gentile nations] were concluded so long a time in unbelief that they might be a thorough proof of the necessity of a Saviour; that is might evidently appear by so long a trial, that mankind were utterly insufficient to deliver themselves from that gross darkness and misery, and subjection to the devil, which they had fallen under.

That is might appear that all the wisdom of the philosophers, and the sages that the heathen had among them, could not deliver them from their darkness, for the greater glory of Jesus Christ, who when he came enlightened and delivered them by his glorious gospel.  Herein the wonderful wisdom of God appeared, in thus preparing the way for Christ's redemption.  Thus the scripture teaches us; "For after that, in the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe, " [I Corinthians 1: 21].  [Jonathan Edwards, The History of Redemption, Comprising A Summary of the History of the Jews Up To the Destruction of Jerusalem (London: The Religious Tract Society,1836),  p.76f.]

It is ironic that the flowering of Greek philosophy and research into the structure and operations of the natural order turned out to be precisely the time when idolatry reached its most intensive and extensive influence.  Hence Paul, when at Athens, found himself grieved to the depths of his heart over the profusion of superstitious idolatries on every street corner.  [Acts 17:16]  Likewise, although the Romans were some of the most sophisticated and clever engineers of their times, their superstitious bent was beyond credulity.

For over a thousand years the grip of universal idolatry over the Gentile world did not just hold tight, it increased in both intensity and extent.  That lesson is as vital today, as it was then.  We are to learn that the preaching of the Gospel of Christ is the only remedy for fallen humankind.

1066 And All That

Creatures of the Past, For Good or Ill

Myths and legends shape contemporary cultures.  It seems that it is inevitable.  Most countries and ethnic groups seem to have them.  The most enduring myths have to do with triumphs of right over wrong, good over evil, and order over chaos.  Legends are more or less grounded in historical fact.  Whilst they all need to be taken with a grain of salt, they are not worthless.  On the contrary they can be effective platforms for conveying truth and principle.  They can also (less helpfully) be misused to become slogans to rally the troops or justify ideological war.

In his chapter on the Norman Conquest of England, under William the Conqueror, Robert Tombs gives a brief recitation on enduring myths from the Conquest which have influenced England down through the centuries:

Roots and Origins

The Power and the Glory

The questions, Who are we, and where did we come from? are always pertinent.  The most potent cultures are those which have a long lineage faithfully recorded, analysed, critiqued, and learned.  In this sense the most potent is the Christian culture because of the length of our lineage and the rigour with which it has been recorded, passed down, and reflected upon.  Not that there is no room for improvement in this regard, but the reality abides that the Christian faith is a historical religion, steeped in history, genealogies, kingdoms, and records--which Christians are expected to know and meditate upon perpetually.

We refer, of course, not just to the post-Ascension era, but to human history from the Creation and Fall onwards up to the present.  In this sense the Christian faith is unique.  We regard Noah and Abraham as our forbears, our fathers.  Moses is our great redeemer, a faithful forerunner of the incarnate Divine redeemer.  David is our king, a lesser messiah before his greater Son.  We are citizens of the restored Davidic Kingdom (as Christ is David's greatest son, and the kingdom has been given to Him, Revelation 22:16).  These references are not mere images or metaphors.  They are historical, literal, and prophetic realities.

The modern secularist culture knows little of these realities.

No Fatal Wounds Possible

The Beginning of the End

When Rommel was finally defeated in North Africa, Winston Churchill uttered his memorable sentiment to the effect that  this was not the end.  Nor was it the beginning of the end.  It was perhaps the end of the beginning.

Christians operate in a similar, yet different frame of mind.  Human history is a war between two human races: those called the "seed of the woman", and those called the "seed of the serpent".  What divides these two seeds (or human races) is not their respective goodness, for "all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God." (Romans 3:23)  The "seed of the woman" are those who have repented of sin and have believed in Christ as their Saviour and Lord.

So, two human races.  Not distinguishable by race, ethnicity, intelligence, appearance, or in any other way, except that one race has sworn loyalty and devotion to Christ; the other has not, and in fact refused to do so, leaving their ultimate loyalty to man.

In the struggle between these two for the control of the world (for this is what is at stake) the seed of the woman, known as Christ-ones or Christians, often are in a minority, and face reverses on every side.  But the Head of the new redeemed human race is the Resurrected One, and out of death comes life.  It is His way.  But there is something else.  The decisive battle has already been won.  Christ faced Satan at Calvary and defeated him--once, and for all time.  The god of this world had been cast down and broken.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

Wife Beating and the Idea of Revelation

Douglas Wilson

Blog&Mablog

Revelation presupposes three things — a revealer, a recipient, and a message with an accompanying hermeneutic. There is one who speaks, there are the ones spoken to, and there is the message along with the medium that carries that message. That medium would include all the created world, with its atmosphere and sound waves, papyrus, paper, computer screens, ink, toner, ones and zeros, and . . . a hermeneutic. How many times did Jesus tell us that the one with ears should hear?

It is important to get the hermeneutic right. To illustrate how important this hermeneutic is (illustrated by two different versions of it, two distinct theologies of revelation) let us compare two very angular texts with regard to women. The first is from the Koran and the second from Exodus.

[Husbands] “are the protectors and maintainers of their [wives] because Allah has given the one more [strength] than the other, and because they support them from their means. Therefore the righteous women are devoutly obedient and guard in [the husband’s] absence what Allah would have them guard. As to the women on whose part you fear disloyalty and ill-conduct, admonish them first, refuse to share their beds, spank them, if they return to obedience, seek not against them means of [annoyance]: for Allah is Most High, Great” (Surah 4:34).

“And if a man sell his daughter to be a maidservant, she shall not go out as the menservants do. If she please not her master, who hath betrothed her to himself, then shall he let her be redeemed: to sell her unto a strange nation he shall have no power, seeing he hath dealt deceitfully with her” (Ex. 21:7–8).

The passage from the Koran instructs a husband on the process required in pious wife-beating. Begin with admonition, and then move on to a refusal to have sex with her. If that doesn’t work, then corporal punishment may be applied. And the modern world says eeeek, recoiling, and rightly so.

Deja Vu

History's Patterns

There is an eerie familiarity to what is playing out now in North Korea under the gentle beneficence of Kim Jong Un.  Kim has heard the divine call from himself to execute his former uncle and round up as many of his former relatives as he could find and either imprison them or execute them.

He shows all the symptoms of a tyro beating his chest, letting his country know who is boss.  This resonates with a time in Israel's history when the young Rehoboam succeeded his father, Solomon.  We take up the narrative in I Kings 12: 3ff:

Chrestomathy

Like a Mighty Flood

Not a little confusion exists today over the work of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament dispensation, contrasted with the New.  Below is B. B. Warfield's excellent summary of the matter:

The old dispensation was a preparatory one and must be strictly conceived as such.  what spiritual blessings came to it were by was of prelibation.  They were many and various.  The Spirited worked in providence no less universally then than now.  He abode in the Church not less really then than now.  He wrought in the hearts of God's people not less prevalently than now.

All the good that was in the world was then as now due to him.  All the hope of God's Church then as now depended on him.  Every grace of the godly life then as now was a fruit of his working.  But the object of the whole dispensation was only to prepare for the outpouring of the Spirit upon all flesh.  He kept the remnant safe and pure, but it was in order that the seed might be preserved. This was the end of his activity then.

The dispensation of the Spirit, properly so called, did not dawn, however, until the period of preparation was over and the day of outpouring had come.

The Complete Picture

George Marsden, History and the Lord of the Rings 

Justin Taylor
January 3, 2013

George Marsden, in the second edition of his magisterial work on Fundamentalism and American Culture (Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 259-260, comments on a Christian view of history:

The awareness that God acts in history in ways that we can only know in the context of our culturally determined experience should be central to a Christian understanding of history. Yet the Christian must not lose sight of the premise that, just as in the Incarnation Christ’s humanity does not compromise his divinity, so the reality of God’s other work in history, going well beyond what we might explain as natural phenomena, is not compromised by the fact that it is culturally defined.

The history of Christianity reveals a perplexing mixture of divine and human factors. As Richard Lovelace has said, this history, when viewed without a proper awareness of the spiritual factors involved, “is as confusing as a football game in which half the players are invisible.”

Pop Contemporaneity

A Prisoner in a Dark Place

There have been plenty of warnings about the dangers of ignorance of one's heritage and history.  George Santayana's aphorism is notorious ("those who do not learn from the past are condemned to repeat it").  In our recent experience tyrants have arisen deliberately attempting to remake the past exert greater control over a compliant population in the present (think Soviet and Eastern European Bloc communism).  We see it before our eyes as Islamic fundamentalists attempt to obliterate the cultural heritage of former civilisations in order to exert more extreme and complete control over their subject peoples.

The Scriptures are replete with injunctions, exhortations, and warnings not only not to forget the past, but also to reckon with it, and live in terms of it.  In the past, God's people see revealed His faithfulness to them; they also see the outcome when a generation arises which forgets what has gone before and what He and our forbears have respectively done.  It is our duty to observe, learn, and act appropriately.

Unfortunately and dangerously there are many modern Christian confessions which glory in a studied ignorance of the past.

Faith-Lines Versus Blood-Lines

Turbo-Charged Bloodlines

Bloodlines are very important.  Any Christian who doubts this should turn to the opening chapters of the Gospels of Luke and Matthew and read there the bloodlines of the Lord Jesus Christ, King of the world.  Who your ancestors were, your blood lines of descent are clearly material--both genetically and spiritually.  The Kingdom of God is constructed around bloodlines.

The Unbelieving world is deeply ambivalent about bloodlines.

The Promised Land, Part III

Getting Redemptive History Straight

We have argued that the modern nation state of Israel has nothing at all to do with biblical prophecy or with God's plans for the Jewish people.  It is just one more nation state, along with the 178 others.  It has no special claim to divine right or favour.  Like all other nations, if its inhabitants and citizens do not repent and believe it will eventually fall under the chastening and judgment of God.

But does the same apply to the Jewish people as a whole?  Here's where things get really interesting.

The Promised Land, Part II

Return to Sender--No Such Number, No Such Name

The modern state of Israel was carved out of the landscape of the Middle East in 1947.  Many Christians in the West saw this as a fulfilment of biblical prophecies.  They could not have been more mistaken.

Clearly the Bible speaks of a glorious future for Zion and for Israel.  But the Bible also speaks of how that glorious future has been fulfilled--and will be fulfilled in the future.  Is the modern day nation of Israel part of that fulfilment?  Let's lay out the Biblical teaching.

Studies in I Samuel

Not Where They Should Have Been

Expository - Book of Samuel
Written by Douglas Wilson
Saturday, July 02, 2011 8:21 am

INTRODUCTION:

God is sovereign and God is gracious, and this means that God takes you from where you are, and not from where you should have been. If we were standing around where we should have been, we wouldn’t need salvation. If we need salvation, we are not where we should have been. A godly response to this is always the same—cry out to the Lord. Trust in Him. Follow Him.

THE TEXT:

“And Samuel said unto all Israel, Behold, I have hearkened unto your voice in all that ye said unto me, and have made a king over you. And now, behold, the king walketh before you: and I am old and grayheaded; and, behold, my sons are with you: and I have walked before you from my childhood unto this day . . .” (1 Sam. 12:1-25).

SUMMARY OF THE TEXT:

The Promised Land, Part I

 Rough and Rocky Travelling

Here is an interesting idea--the Jewish Promised Land is actually the United States.  No, this is not some latter day British Israelite theory, wondering where "those feet in ancient times" might have walked.  The thesis, however, (that the US might actually be the Jewish Promised Land) raises some really interesting theological and historical issues which we hope to explore in a short series of posts.

But first, the argument.

Sober Warnings

Servants and Dumpsters

But Jehu was not careful to walk in the law of the Lord, the God of Israel with all his heart; he did not depart from the sins of Jeroboam, which he made Israel sin.  In those days the Lord began to cut off portions from Israel and Hazael defeated them throughout the territory of Israel.
II Kings 10: 31-32.

In the middle of the ninth century BC, God raised up Jehu to destroy the Baal worshipping Ahab and his wicked wife, Jezebel.  Both had set themselves to establish Baalism as the official religion of God's people, Israel.  Eventually, as Elijah had warned, God's judgment fell upon the house of Ahab as as result.  God raised up Jehu, a rebellious army officer, to exterminate everyone in Israel who was either descended from Ahab, or was allied with Baalism.  It was religious-cleansing on a national scale.  Jehu was successful: "Thus Jehu eradicated Baal out of Israel."  (II Kings 10: 28)

But Jehu was not a true servant of the Lord.