Eternal Perspectives

Answers: (1) I don’t think it’s orthodox, although I’d stop short of calling it heretical. (2) The quote is from Gregory A. Boyd, founder and senior pastor of Woodland Hills Church in St. Paul, MN, and an open theist (the latter doesn’t make him wrong about everything, of course, but it does flavor his view of things). It appears in The Myth of a Christian Nation, pp 67-69.

Question: Do the following statements (not necessarily the author of the statements) pass muster¹ with regard to orthodoxy? Why or why not?

According to the biblical narrative and church tradition, at some point in the primordial past, Satan managed to deceive humanity and co-opt us into his rebellion against God, seizing the world and making humanity his slaves. Jesus came into this world not only to take it back and free earth’s inhabitants but also to put an end to the war altogether. . . .

Now, through his death and resurrection, Jesus accomplished the task for which he came. He defeated the kingdom of darkness and set humanity free. In principle, therefore, the world has already been reconciled to God (2 Cor 5.14-21; Col 1.15-20). In principle, the wall of sin that separates humanity along ethnic, cultural, socioeconomic, and tribal lines has been destroyed. In principle, all have already died in Adam and been made alive in Christ (1 Cor 15.22; 2 Cor 5.14). In principle, we are already one new humanity in Christ (Eph 2.14-15). In principle. Yet Scripture as well as our own experience make it painfully clear that what is true in principle has not yet been manifested as accomplished fact (see, for example, Heb 2.8). . . .²

The author then explains that Jesus Christ is “the first fruit of the new humanity (Rom 8.29, Col 1.18)” and that we are also first fruits.² He continues

To be these first fruits, we must allow the kingdom to grow in us and through us. When we genuinely repent (turn from) our idolatrous allegiances to the world and submit to God’s loving rule, the kingdom gets planted in our innermost being . . . We learn how to walk in freedom from violence, self-centeredness, materialism, nationalism, racism, and all other false ways of getting life. . . .

As we grow in Christlikeness, we grow as conduits of the kingdom, increasingly manifesting the fact that we are ‘first fruits.’ Through our Christlike love, others are brought under the influence of the kingdom until, in time, it is planted in them and the process taking place in us begins to take place in them.

Bonus Question: Who is the author and in what work do these quotes appear?

As I think about these days in which we live, about the voices that hold sway over Christendom from the pulpit, and the captivating reasonings in well-constructed books, as well as in the reams of words written here online - as I reflect on these matters, I am reminded of Tolkien’s words in The Lord of the Rings, Book III, a chapter entitled “The Voice of Saruman.”

The Riders of the Mark have accompanied King Théoden of Rohan and Éomer his nephew, Gandalf and Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli to the stairs of Orthanc, the stronghold-turned-prison of Saruman, now the Wizard of Many Colors. The Riders eavesdrop on the speech of Saruman to their king.

Suddenly another voice spoke, low and melodious, its very sound an enchantment. Those who listened unwarily to that voice could seldom report the words that they heard; and if they did, they wondered, for little power remained in them. Mostly they remembered only that it was a delight to hear the voice speaking, all that it said seemed wise and reasonable, and desire awoke in them by swift agreement to seem wise themselves. When others spoke they seemed harsh and uncouth by contrast; and if they gainsaid the voice, anger was kindled in the hearts of those under the spell. . . .

“The Riders stirred at first, murmuring with approval of the words of Saruman; and then they too were silent, as men spell-bound. It seemed to them that Gandalf had never spoken so fair and fittingly to their lord. Rough and proud now seemed all his dealings with Théoden. And over their hearts crept a shadow, the fear of a great danger: the end of the Mark in a darkness to which Gandalf was driving them, while Saruman stood beside a door of escape, holding it half open so that a ray of light came through.”

Those who would mesmerize us with words and ear-soothing tones may still be found among us, drawing us under their spell with their seductive speeches and attractive demeanor. They are strong, powerful, and popular; by agreeing with them, we reason, we will share in those qualities. Those who speak roughly or without the allurement of rhetorical skills are dismissed as unfaithful, ignorant rabble. We will give them no hearing and will hearken instead to velvet-tongued orators whose voices we find comforting.

Such modern-day Sarumans hold open a door, and from the door emanates a warm, inviting, and seductive light. But the door is only half open, and thus we cannot see that the light streaming towards us is not generated by the glory of the Son but by the fires of hell.

Today is a typical day off for me, a time for relaxing and touching base with folks. The following email exchange with my friends is standard fare for such times.

It started with a slightly enhanced news story from FoxNews:

Sent: Friday, July 13, 2007 9:02 AM
To: 101 TNG
Subject: The times in which we live

Mother Says Baby’s Recurring ‘Bye Bye, Plane’
Comment Got Them Kicked Off Airplane

Thursday, July 12, 2007

ATLANTA — The mother of a 19-month-old boy says she and her son were kicked off a plane after she refused a stewardess’ request to medicate her son to keep him from talking.

Kate Penland, who lives in Gwinnett County in suburban Atlanta, said she and her son, Garren, had boarded the Continental Express plane last month after an 11-hour delay in Houston on an Atlanta-Oklahoma flight.

Garren kept saying, “Bye bye, plane,” Penland recalled. And she said the stewardess objected.

“At the end of her speech, she leaned over the gentleman beside me and said, ‘It’s not funny anymore. You need to shut your baby up,”‘ Penland told WSB-TV in Atlanta.

When Penland asked the woman if she was kidding, she said the stewardess replied, “You know, it’s called baby Benadryl.”

“And I said, ‘Well, I’m not going to drug my child so you have a pleasant flight,”‘ Penland told the TV station.

Penland said other passengers began speaking up on her behalf, and the flight attendant announced they were turning around and that Penland and Garren were going to be taken off the plane.

Members of the Atlanta Police Department bomb squad met the mother and her son inside the airport terminal following their removal from the Continental flight. Two APD officers, along with SWAT team members and representatives of Homeland Security, removed the boy from the resisting mother and took the child to an undisclosed location.

The boy was safely detonated a few hours later.

-30-

Dr Michael Russell
ΑΩ Counseling & Critical News Services

It then dawned upon me that there was more information to share.

Sent: Friday, July 13, 2007 9:44 AM
To: My Friends
Subject: IED and children

There’s actually a diagnosis for this in the mental health manual: Intermittent Explosive Disorder (IED); 312.34 in DSM-IV-TR. I am not making this up.

I don’t think it’s any accident that this disorder is referred to as “IED,” the very same as the favorite weapon of terrorists: improvised explosive device (IED).

If anyone mentions to you that their child has been diagnosed with “IED” or Intermittent Explosive Disorder, do not be decieved or naïve. We all need to be on the lookout for these dangerous children and report them to Homeland Security, DPS, local police, Oprah, or Jack Bauer - anyone with the authority to dispose of them safely.

Dr Michael Russell
ΑΩ Counseling & Bomb Disposal Services

Not surprisingly, someone wrote back:

Mike,

Is this similar to Intermittent Explosive Internal Combustion (IEIC)?

Mark

Which spawned the final email on the matter:

Sent: Friday, July 13, 2007 12:36 PM
To: TNT
Subject: RE: IED and children

Mark:

Thank you for your inquiry. I hope the following information will be useful to you.

This IED is actually a new and improved version of the spontaneous-combustion child (SCC), something we rarely see now in this age of personal computers, personal mp3 players, and personal fire alarms and extinguishers. Recent advancements in technology have made it possible to abandon the earlier, severely limited collateral-damage effects of SCCs and replace them with the explosive model now available in all but third-world countries.

The danger, of course, is in what may happen if/when terrorist organizations make additional enhancements. One such group, Al-Gorra, reportedly has a school for toddlers: students go from First Grade, Second Grade, Third Grade, and then Weapons-Grade Plutonium. It is feared that such devices will be used to make global warming a reality.

Al-Gorra’s philosophy is captured in some of their oft-repeated slogans: “It takes a village to raise a child to thermonuclear levels” and “No child’s behind left.”

This present dilemma only exists because America opposed “zero-growth” birth control in the 70s and 80s, refusing to spay and neuter all children in third-world countries (i.e., any that do not speak English as their native language).

But, as they say, hindsight is useless.

Your friend,

Dr Michael Russell
ΑΩ Counseling & World Domination Services

Someone on the mailing list then asked to be removed. Wonder what that was all about?

(Listening to Offspring’s “Why Don’t You Get a Job?” on the iPod.)

In response to a request or two, I am providing the Word documents that made up my doctoral dissertation, An Integration of Biblical Anthropology and Neuropsychology and Its Implications for Christian Education and Discipleship. You may read online or download them, if you like: please give me credit if the materials are used in presentations, lessons, books, articles, etc.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1 - Psychology and Theology

Chapter 2 - A Model of Human Nature

Chapter 3 -General Revelation and Christian Psychology

Chapter 4 - Bible- and Brain-Based Learning

Chapter 5 - Conclusion

The Soul - diagram

The Heart - diagram

The Mind - diagram

Bibliography

Most of my current and recent writing can be found at my other blog, The Lord of the Kingdom. Click the link: it might be worth the trip! And you can’t beat the price, especially given the cost of gasoline these days.

Parchment and Pen, a ministry of Reclaiming the Mind Ministries, is a very good blog offering solid theological and biblical insights from a group of writers sharing a similar dispensational background. C. Michael Patton is the owner of the blog and receives regular contributions from Dan Wallace of Dallas Theological Seminary and Ed Komoszewski.

The majority of the posts have little to do with dispensationalism, but there are exceptions. Having grown weary of the wrong-headed, dismissive attitudes of some ill-informed opponents, Komoszewski has begun an overview of the three principal schools of dispensational theology. You can find the first installment here: What Comes to Your Mind When You Hear the Word “Dispensationalism”? (Part 1).

Advocates and wannabe critics alike will profit from his survey.

A remote planet and a ponderous star conspired this morning to send my thoughts spiraling off into the nether regions of space - or, perhaps, the limited depths of my thoughts about God.

The distant planet was a post by Dan at TeamPyro in which he discussed what he calls “gutsy grace.”

(For Dan, “gutsy grace” stands in contrast to his pejorative “gutless grace.” I find it curious that, while admitting that he struggles to adequately define grace he nevertheless can label some manifestations as “gutsy” (his own, of course) and others as “gutless” (anyone who disagrees with him). But I digress.).

One of the things Dan endeavors to do is to define grace. This is no mean feat for, as he rightly notes, it is possible to offer definitions that are accurate but fail because they are not sufficiently comprehensive. I sympathize with him and any others who seek to define the term; that, however, will not stop me from trying.

My own attempt to define grace centers on the twin concepts of divine enabling and divine compelling, neither of which cease operation once salvation is initiated. The problem with my definition is the problem with all definitions: the terms I use have to be defined themselves.

Divine enabling should not be construed to mean that salvation or sanctification is a mutual or shared effort involving God and the elect sinner. Salvation is completely a work of God to which we are somehow responsible to yield. God’s enabling could be likened to that provided by an elevator that takes me to the top of a building: it is true that I must get on the elevator, but that is (a) made possible by God (cf. Jn 6.44) and (b) the sum total of my “contribution.”

Divine compelling makes change a passive imperative, i.e., a Christian will be changed. How much a believer changes is contingent on time, but all will be changed to some extent. I suspect, though, that the difference between the change of a stubborn, willful believer and that of a eager, compliant one is insignificant compared to the monumental change each will undergo when they behold Christ (1 Jn 3.2).

The giant star whose gravity altered my own journey this day was a chapter in Henry Cloud’s book Changes That Heal. Cloud speaks of the necessity of grace, truth, and time for believers to heal, change, and grow. He adds,

Change only takes place in ‘good time.’ Good time is time in which we and our experiences can be affected by grace and truth. If we have removed some aspect of ourselves from time, grace and truth cannot transform it . . . Grace and truth cannot affect the part of ourselves we won’t bring into experience.”

These words reminded me of a realization I had some years ago that people, including Christians, hide from others and God the very areas in which we most desperately need to be loved. It is only when we allow God, others, and God-through-others to love us in those most hideous areas that change can occur.

Love, it seems to me, is perhaps best defined as the marriage of grace and truth. Its perfect demonstration is found in Jesus Christ (Jn 1.17; cf. Ps 85.10) but it may also be gleaned on almost every page of Scripture. Love without grace is not love; love without truth is not love. It is only when grace is combined with truth and truth is joined with grace that the love of God is present. All else falls short.

It is precisely this manner of love to which believers are called and held accountable. It requires the enabling of God, certainly; the Spirit’s presence is relentlessly compelling. God takes us as He finds us - that is grace - but He does not leave us where we are - that is truth. But the grace present in God’s finding us is not separate from truth, and the truth of God’s changing us is not divorced from grace.

We may display one or the other - i.e., grace or truth - or one at the expense of the other, but God cannot. These two attributes of God - grace and truth - compose the essence of God, which is love. All that God does is characterized by love, the presence of grace and truth.

When we, enabled and compelled by God, embody such love then - and only then - do we abide in Him and He in us:

Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.” - 1 Jn 4.15-16

This post, or one very much like it, has been asking to be written for some time now. It is an explanation, though not an excuse or apology, for my lack of substantive blogging for however long it has been. The problem has not been one of lack of time to write but more a lack of desire.

Life events, of the negative variety, conspired to make serious inroads on my desire. It has been the presence or burgeoning of good things, however, that seem to have finally decimated my need to blog. This is not something to be grieved and not something about which I feel any sense of loss.

A few months ago I began teaching systematic theology to a Thursday night men’s group of which I am a member. There are usually twelve or so of us on any given evening, although the number of men involved is closer to fifteen or sixteen. We’ve been at it, as I said, a few months and are still in the Prolegomena, i.e., introductory matters. We spent a month covering covenant theology and will spend a similar amount of time on dispensational theology. It will take years to finish. There is no need for haste: we would rather relish than rush.

The contrast between real ministry and real relationships is remarkable and nothing short of miraculous. There is an additional Person (or Two or Three) present when we gather and He facilitates not only meaningful teaching and learning but wonderful fellowship, too. I can sometimes feel the Holy Spirit carrying me along as I read Scripture and teach truth; at the same time, I feel the Spirit minister to me through the men who challenge, disagree, and join with me to deepen our relationships with God.

This is totally lacking in blogging. I don’t think there’s much biblical basis for genuine fellowship through the internet, though certainly normal, uninspired connections can be made. We can benefit spiritually from reading Scripture on one another’s sites but it is not feasible for the Spirit in me to minister to those who might read my words, nor is it possible for an intangible reader’s spirit to be a vehicle of blessing to me. Sharing theologies and favorite verses is not fellowship; living life together is biblical fellowship.

But, someone might say, what about Paul’s letters and the blessings his original readers and subsequent readers have had from them? The answer is obvious, of course: the Bible was inspired by the Holy Spirit in its writing and continues to be inspired today as He gives life to it through His teaching and comforting ministries. Blogs are educational and entertaining but fall short of being inspired, illumined, and invigorated by the Spirit.

The contrast, as I mentioned earlier, is much like night and day. It is the presence of God in the men at Bible study versus the unanimated, lifeless words of a blog post. I still read and find some excellent thinking and points, but it is like getting a phone call from my wife when she is away versus kissing her when she is here. One quickens the imagination with longing, the other quickens it with desire. There is no comparison.

This is not to say that I will not continue to blog from time to time, but it is to say that it will likely be infrequent. Real life awaits and beckons and the detached pseudo-communion of blogging has, like the emperor’s new clothes, been exposed for what it is - and isn’t.

Perhaps this will fall on the deaf ears of some who stumble across this post or will cause a defensive reaction on the part of others. My hope is that anyone and everyone who spends too much time writing and reading blog posts will withdraw their energies from this artificial spirituality and find a real, loving, Spirit-indwelling fellowship of which they can be a contributing giver and a grateful receiver.

Again, the difference is that which exists between reading a menu of heavenly delights versus actually tasting a sample of what has been promised and will be provided. Don’t spend too much time merely reading the menu, collecting recipes, and studying ingredients. Enjoy a taste of heaven now: it will make you yearn for the full meal that awaits us one day.

For those of you interested in following along, this is the first post on the Spiritual Discipline of Silence Conference now underway.

Session I

Next: Session II

There is more over there.

I have a new post up at Lord of the Kingdom which I believe is worth reading (obviously, or I wouldn’t have written it!). Click the link above (or here) to be swept away.