Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

Above Us Only Sky

Douglas Wilson

Blog&Mablog

Suppose with me for a moment. Suppose that about fifteen nano-seconds after the Big Bang all the trillion-plex trillions of atoms all joined hands together, forming their molecules, and then they all ran pell mell down the corridors of the space/time continuum, making history as they went. Some scientists think they all yelled whee! but I myself suspect it was something more like arghh! The question is hard to determine because apart from a few staff writers at National Geographic, nobody was there really.

What is not hard to determine is what this would entail, if true. It would entail John Lennon being a certified moonbeam. Go over his famous Imagine with a thoughtful eye and ear, and the only thing that makes any sense whatever would be the chord changes. But if, as he avers, the only thing above us is sky, then the chord changes making sense . . . doesn’t make sense.

Without transcendent reality, we don’t just lose transcendent reality. We lose everything down here as well.

Bearing God's Image

Transcending to Abuse

Christians believe in the dignity of Man.  They believe in the glory of Man.  Christians believe--as true truth--that man is the only creature on this planet made in the image of God Himself.  Christians believe this astounding truth not because they think it is a good idea, but because God has revealed it to be so.

Then God said, "let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.  [Genesis 1: 26-27]

There are many capabilities and abilities possessed by human beings that other creatures do not have.  All of them testify to our being in the image of God Himself.  Vern Poythress gives us one example:

Measuring God by Human Dimensions

4 Lessons from God’s Interrogation of Job

Republished from Justin Taylor's blog
Andy Naselli on Job 38:1—42:6, from his book From Typology to Doxology: Paul’s Use of Isaiah and Job in Romans 11:34-35:

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1. God is too small in Job’s eyes.
Prior to God’s interrogation of Job, Job’s perception of God is too soft, too tame, too domesticated. But God’s questions underscore his unshakable trustworthiness as uniquely and infinitely wise, sovereign, just, and good. God is not someone whom Job can drag into court so that he and God can argue their case before an impartial judge. The Almighty God is without peer. He himself is the judge, jury, executioner, and standard of justice.

2. Correspondingly, Job is too large in his own eyes.
God gives Job a theocentric view of the universe because Job cannot help viewing God’s world with himself at its center.

The Distinctiveness of Christianity

World as Gift

David Bentley Hart explains why God's transcendence over the creation and His immanence within it makes all the difference in the world.  This is one reason why the Christian religion is not one religion amongst a smorgasbord of  faiths, but the One True Faith before which all other religions are idolatrous perversions of the truth.

Christian thought taught that the world was entirely God's creature, called from nothingness, not out of any need on his part, but by grace; and that the God who is Trinity required nothing to add to his fellowship, bounty, or joy, but created out of love alone.

In a sense, God and world were both set free: God was now understood as fully transcendent of--and therefore immanent within--the created order, and the world was now understood entirely as gift.

On Holy Ground

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.

Without God, Without Creed, Part II

In Baal We Trust

We continue our series upon the causes of modern Unbelief in the West.  The redemptive context is that the first Christendom has fallen, being replaced by materialism, atheism, and secularism.  This represents a divine curse upon God's people.  The Bible makes it very clear: when God's people turn away from Him, He will bring the curses (and not the blessings) of the Covenant upon them (Deuteronomy 28).  Being given over to the hand of Unbelief is one of those curses. 

James Turner, in his important book, Without God, Without Creed: the Origins of Unbelief in America argues that Christendom began to apostasize and disobey (thus, preparing for the triumph of secular atheism in the twentieth century) at the end of the seventeenth century.  At the time it appeared to be a small matter.  But it provoked God to wrath and eventually tore down Christendom.  It had to do with beginning to assert the autonomy or independence of the creation from the Creator.  Turner writes: