The Cross, Considered as Revelation

It seems to be a common idea that Christianity is something added on top of nature.  Perhaps it could be best explained by saying that Natural Man can understand some things and that Christian Man can understand more.  The Christian then is Natural Man Plus.  It is thought that we naturally know some things about God and that the Gospel increases that knowledge; it is supplemental.  This idea is key to most Christian Theology and is absolute bull.

What is the first thing that pops into your mind when you hear the word, "Godlike"?  Godlike Power? Godlike Knowledge?  These are the first things that enter my mind and they are what humanity thinks principal for understanding God.  

Q. 4. What is God?

A. God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.  -Westminster Shorter Catechism

This is the definition of the Westminster Divines and may fairly be said to be illustrative of the best strain of Christianity.   I want to ask a different question to begin though.  What is the first thing that pops into your mind when you hear the word, "Christlike"?  The answer to that question is difficult to put into words, just as you would find it more difficult to describe yourself or your spouse than you would to describe a historical person, say George Washington.  The reason for the difficulty, in both cases, is that we have made the subject of the question personal.  What God or George Washington are like is largely an academic question, which is why almost all theology savors of  academia and Scholasticism.  But what Christ or my wife is like is not at a distance from me.  It matters to me.  It affects me, and it changes who I am.

The second thing that I want to observe about this question is that the answers, even considered impersonally, are very different than the answers to the first question.  What is Christlike?  Well Christ is a man.  Is being a Spirit and being a man mutually exclusive?  I don't really know but it is certainly possible.  Is being a man and being infinite mutually exclusive?  I doubt that there is any such thing as a man who is infinite, in any sense.  Can one who is unchangeable in his being and wisdom "grow in wisdom and stature"?  Apparently His wisdom at least is not unchangeable.  Did the fetus in Mary's womb and a full grown man have exactly the same power?  These questions seem to be nonsense, which I think reveals that when we defined God we really didn't have any idea what we were talking about.  

The theologically inclined among you are probably wanting to object at this point that I am confusing the human nature and divine nature of Christ.  My answer is that Scripture never presents us with a divine Christ and a human Christ.  Just as the God IS the Man, the Man IS the God.  Whatever He is is what He is.  And if He is God, not in some Arianizing sense but in truth, then anything which is true of God ought to be true of Him.  As soon as you "flesh out" the God, the definition becomes dubious in the extreme.  Certainly no place on which to hang your faith or base your whole future on.

This was the problem, I think, that confronted Martin Luther.  We could never know with enough certainty to base our lives on what God is like in Heaven.  This "theology of glory", essentially philosophy about what God is like in His glory, Luther rejected almost totally and sought to replace it with a theology based on what is certain about God, that is what is revealed in Christ, known as "theology of the Cross".  In other words, we have tried to add Christ to our prebuilt system of theology, but theology of the Cross seeks to begin with Christ as the definition, express image, of God.

But the point in saying that God is hidden is to lead us to recognize that this is exactly the way God intends it to be. He does not want to be known as he is "in heaven," in his mere "almightiness" or even merely as "the God of predestination." He wants to be known as the God in the manger or at his mother's breasts, the God who suffered and died and rose again. His almightiness, his unchangeability, the threat of predestination-all these things are "masks" which God wears, so to speak, to drive us to look elsewhere, to look away from heaven and down to earth, to the manger and the cross, to preaching and the sacraments. For the point is that God simply does not want to be known and will not be known on any other level. He hides himself behind a mask which is intended to drive man away in fear to a place where he, as revealed God, wants to be known.

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Apart from his revelation in Christ, God is hidden. We have, ultimately, no means for penetrating that hiddenness. We don't really even have a basis for making an absolute separation between evil and good. Many things we think are good turn out to be evil in the end and vice versa. But this confusion of good and evil, this impenetrable hiddenness drives us to that one place where the hiddenness is broken through: the cross. Because of the cross we can say, "I believe in a good God, creator of a good earth." There God has come down to earth and revealed his will for us.     -Gerhard Forde Where God Meets Man

 In Reformed Theology, as in Medieval Theology, the essence of God, that is what makes Him Him, is completely unknowable.  But the Patristic Theology offers us an interesting possibility.

For although it be impossible to comprehend what God is, yet it is possible to say what He is not.  -Athanasius of Alexandria First Letter to Monks

This negative definition of the essence of God then must begin with the consideration that anything which Christ "emptied" Himself of when He became a man, or at any other time, cannot be essential to God.  What was it then that could never be taken from Christ?  What did He hold onto when He let go of all other things?  I think a study of the Cross with the goal of answering this question will be very enlightening for us, but for now I will content myself with looking at the strangest thing that He held onto-His Faith in God.


If any man ever had a reason to doubt the goodness of God, it was the innocent man who was delivered to condemnation and death by His Father's "determinant foreknowledge".  If God was going to be good to anyone surely it would be the "beloved Son in whom I am well pleased".  Does anyone dare say that the things Christ suffered are good?  That they are the gifts of a loving father to His darling Son?  Maybe you and I can't say that, but Christ did.  Despite being forsaken by God, He held onto His unshakable confidence in the goodness of God and His love for Him.  The man who was being condemned by His Father, appeals to the very same Father to forgive our sins.  And I will say that believing in the forgiveness of sins is the highest form of believing in the goodness of God.  In Faith's most incomprehensible act, Christ, deserted and sold out by His Father, trusts to the same Father everything He cares about.  For I do not understand the words, "Into thy hands I commit my spirit." to be a reference to His soul or to some afterlife otherworldly spirit but I take the words as if He said, "Into thy hands I commit my hopes and dreams, my desires, my Love.  You are the one I trust to carry on for me when I am gone.  I can no longer be the Guide and Shepherd of my Beloved, I trust you to send another in my place, another who is Yourself."  If anyone ever had a legitimate complaint against God it was Christ, but He doesn't complain.  If anyone had wronged Christ it was surely His Father, but Our Lord proves the righteousness of God by entrusting Him with His Bride.

And this is the sum of our faith, that if God was righteous doing that which seems the very zenith of unrighteousness, deserting and killing His innocent Son, then everything else He does is also righteous.  However strange and painful our lives may be our call is to agree with God.  To look on our lives with all of the sin and sickness and sadness and strangeness, and pronounce them good and worth living as He has done over all of Creation.

Before the Throne of God Above

Either/Or

No one will claim that understanding the Bible is simple.  This mysterious book was written by over 20 human authors and 1 divine Author over the course of about 1000 years.  It contains every genre of literature from Poetry to Philosophy, from songs to bizarre visions, from ethical teaching to parables that seem to contradict all ethics.  It teaches of our sin and its collision with a God of Holiness and Grace.  It is Law and Gospel, death and life.  To try and comprehend this vast diversity is a task that the greatest men of every discipline and culture and age have failed at utterly.

We are told that we should try and balance all of the seeming contradictions of Scripture in order to understand it, to combine opposites into some many sided, intricate synthesis.  Our theology is a giant structure built to the most exacting dimensions of the theologians and orthodoxy is protected with anathemas on all sides, such that it would be easier to balance on the highest pinnacle of the temple than to stand on this monstrosity that we have built.  Most important in all of this is defining the scope of Law and of Gospel and their particular spheres of operation.  What has been done for us, and what is demanded of us?  But what if in all of this we are doing nothing more than trying to combine light and darkness, trying to make Christ and the World agree when they never can?

The separation of Law and Gospel is often thought to have originated with Paul, or at best with Christ.  But because of my lack of training in the intricacies of theology, my overconfident hubris, and my general enjoyment of arguing, I am going to suggest that this distinction goes back much farther.

For I desire mercy and not sacrifice,

And the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings. Hosea 6:6

The book of Hosea is a massive parable acted out in one man's life.

Then the Lord said to me, “Go again, love a woman who is loved by a lover and is committing adultery, just like the love of the Lord for the children of Israel, who look to other gods and love the raisin cakes of the pagans.”

So I bought her for myself for fifteen shekels of silver, and one and one-half homers of barley. And I said to her, “You shall stay with me many days; you shall not play the harlot, nor shall you have a man—so, too,will I be toward you.”

For the children of Israel shall abide many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or sacred pillar, without ephod or teraphim. Afterward the children of Israel shall return and seek the Lord their God and David their king. They shall fear the Lord and His goodness in the latter days.  Hosea 4

 The entire work of this prophet is an extended comparison between following God alone, marital faithfulness, and following God plus someone or something else, whoring.  People who actually understand the Bible understand that this comparison is between following the Law, loving God with your whole heart, and breaking the Law.  But I am not one of those people, and I am dumb enough to believe that Christ and His Gospel are the key to the prophets.  And I will proceed to eisegete this comparison, and much of the other work of the prophets, in terms of Free Grace vs. Law, in terms of Sola Christos vs. Christ + Something Else.

In this paradigm, harlotry is legal obedience, what we imagine to be holiness.  And the faithfulness, which nowhere exists, is to trust in the finished work of Christ, and to anyone who says that Christ's work wasn't finished when Hosea wrote this I answer that the Lamb was slain from the foundation of the world.

“I will not have mercy on her children,For they are the children of harlotry.
For their mother has played the harlot;
She who conceived them has behaved shamefully.
For she said, ‘I will go after my lovers,
Who give me my bread and my water,
My wool and my linen,
My oil and my drink.’ Hosea 2

We imagine that we are justified, saved, by the Gospel(represented by Hosea, the Lord, the Faithful Husband) and then that we are made complete(represented by receiving bread, water, wool, linen, oil, and drink), perfect, by Something Else.  Israel never abandoned the Lord, instead she added other gods to Him.

I will cut off every trace of Baal from this place,The names of the idolatrous priests with the pagan priests—
Those who worship the host of heaven on the housetops;
Those who worship and swear oaths by the Lord,
But who also swear by Milcom;
Those who have turned back from following the Lord,
And have not sought the Lord, nor inquired of Him.” Zephaniah 1

Israel was certain that it was the Lord who had delivered them from Egypt and established them, but she felt as if the worship of other gods would add something that was lacking.  If my point is not yet clear enough,

O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you that you should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed among you as crucified? This only I want to learn from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh? Have you suffered so many things in vain—if indeed it was in vain?Therefore He who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you, does He do it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?—just as Abraham “believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.” Therefore know that only those who are of faith are sons of Abraham. And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel to Abraham beforehand, saying,“In you all the nations shall be blessed.” So then those who are of faith are blessed with believing Abraham.Galatians 3 

I think that the parallels are unmistakable.  Could this be what the prophets are referring to when they speak over and again of the "jealousy" of God?  Is it not other gods that concern Him but the addition of a righteousness of works to a righteousness of grace?  There is only one thing to add.

And Elijah came to all the people, and said, “How long will you falter between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow Him; but if Baal, follow him.” But the people answered him not a word. 1 Kings 18

If righteousness comes by faith, then believe in the finished work of Christ; but if righteousness comes by something that you do, something that you add on top of the Gospel, then go back to Judaism.  You can't make a Both/And out of an Either/Or.

The words are not "obscure or ambiguous" here.(referring to Isaiah 40)  He saith, that their warfare was ended, by their iniquities being forgiven them: manifestly signifying, that the soldiers under the law, did not fulfill the law and could not fulfill it: and that they only carried on a warfare of sin, and were soldier-sinners.  As though God had said, I am compelled to forgive them their sins, if I would have My law fulfilled by them; nay, I must take away My law entirely when I forgive them; for I see they cannot but sin, and the more so the more they fight; that is, the more they strive to fulfill the law by their own powers.  Martin Luther The Bondage of the Will

Let him ,then, be anathema who shall say, "that those things which are of no force in their own places are made to be of force in Paul." Martin Luther The Bondage of the Will

The Only One

Death pt.2

As I thought about my last post, I realized that I had only said half of what I wanted to say.  I am not sure how to logically connect that post and this but they are connected in my mind.  I wrote then about my own self-destructive tendencies and about how the Church has treated people who can't seem to cope with this life.  And I think that encouraging the hurting, especially the ones who are the same as me, and reminding us all that we have made parochial and limited the Gospel that Christ made truly universal are the principal things that need to be done here, but examining why Christianity has wound up on such a wrong path is also worthwhile.

A good friend, and former pastor, of mine is fond of asking the question, "Would you want to go to Heaven if Jesus wasn't there?"  And I think that this question is a good place to begin examining our radical misunderstanding of Christianity.  I think that I would like to ask the same question in sort of an opposite way.  Would you want to go to the Cross, to rejection, to being betrayed by a friend, to Hell if Christ is there?  We have gone from the objective of Christianity being "Christ alone", from believing that He is everything we could ever want, to believing that Heaven, and happiness, and health, and mental health, and a hundred other things are things that can be, even should be, added to Christ.  We have made Heaven the destination of Christianity and I think that the objective should be almost the opposite of Heaven.  It should be the desolation and betrayal of the Cross.  We don't begin with the Man of Sorrows and move on to some happy, peaceful Christ.  The happiness and peace is contained in the loneliness and betrayal.  I have always made fun of those crosses covered in flowers, but I begin to think that there is a real truth shown there.  Joy and peace and all good things not only spring from the cross but they maintain its shape and character from start to finish.

Many scholars believe that the Book of Job was written as a theodicy, an answer to the so called Problem of Evil.  The Problem of Evil is that it doesn't seem that there should be anything that is not good in a universe absolutely ruled by a good God.  Evil is used as an objection either to God's goodness, His omnipotence, or even His existence.  But while Job certainly takes a hard look at the Problem of Evil it doesn't really offer or even suggest any answers.  Job can only accept that the God who made and rules the universe knows His own business and is above human questioning.  On the other hand, I would like to suggest a reason why Job suffers and why we suffer.

This answer usually involves blaming the pain of this life and the next on sin or views it as in some way corrective or sees suffering as a test of some type.  But both Job and our own experience invalidate these suggestions.  Testing explains Satan's motives in Job but offers no light whatsoever on God's motives.  Further, what would be the benefit of this testing to us or to an all-knowing God?  To us passing this test could only make us proud and more likely to fail the next test in some sort of loop that doesn't end until we fail.  God gains nothing from the testing unless He is ignorant, which we must reject.  That evil is sent to correct our faults is not credible firstly because in Job's case there is no evident fault that it is meant to correct, he is declared righteous at the beginning, and secondly because we see that suffering often makes men worse and not better.  If suffering is meant to correct our faults it fails at a rate that can hardly be divine.  That suffering is caused by sin sounds good and pious but it is really a non-answer.  It begs the question of why it is good for sinners to suffer.  To simply say that it is just leaves us with the questions, "Why is it just?", and "Why should sinners receive justice rather than something else, say grace?"

The explanation I intend to offer for suffering is simple, even simplistic.  I don't need any complex arguments and just one verse of Scripture.

A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master. It is enough for a disciple that he be like his teacher, and a servant like his master. Matthew 10:24

I would like to suggest that the reason Job suffered is as simple as the fact that Jesus suffered. If He suffered then it is enough for me to suffer. We usually like to imagine some sort of compensation for our hardships. We imagine that "Heaven will make it all worth it." or some bull like that. This thought is unworthy of God. He doesn't hurt us because He is too dumb or weak to prevent it and then try and make it right later. Our suffering is right all on its own. Because He suffered. I can accept death. Death is enough for me, because He died.

It is terrifying when God takes out the instruments for the surgery for which no human being has the strength: to take away a person’s human zest for life, to slay him – in order that he can live as one who has died to the world and to the flesh. It cannot be otherwise, for in no other way can a human being love God. He must be in such a state of agony that if he were an unbeliever he would at no time hesitate to commit suicide. But in this state he must – live. Only in this state can he love God. -S. Kierkegaard

Once and for All

Death pt. 1

I was about ten when my friend Daniel killed himself.  I had known him probably four years.  We went to school together, church together.  We weren't super close but his death has always stuck with me.  I knew he had a very troubled family life and one day he just couldn't take it anymore and hung himself.  Death is kind of the defining action of my generation.  We are the generation of suicides and school shootings.  Most of us feel out of place in this world and frequently choose to leave it...violently.

I don't remember when I started thinking about hurting myself.  But since sometime in my teen years, in times of stress or depression or loneliness I can't stop thinking about hurting or killing myself.  In those times, I feel like it is wrong for my body to be fine when my soul is in such pain.  And there is a certain amount of wanting someone else to understand how much I am hurting.

Christianity unflinchingly condemns all suicides.  The rejection of the Donatists and the publication of Augustine's City of God, and almost all subsequent Christian teaching indicates that suicides cannot be saved, they are beyond the grace of God.  The sin of suicide cannot be forgiven since it cannot be confessed and repented.  As a sin of this, suicides are denied Christian burial, all the comforts of religion.  I do not intend to disagree with this teaching.  But I would like to consider some curiosities about God's rejection.

Ephraim is oppressed and broken in judgment,

Because he willingly walked by human precept.

Therefore I will be to Ephraim like a moth,

And to the house of Judah like rottenness. Hosea 5

Hosea prophesies quite a bit about the rejection of the Northern Kingdom, known by the name of its chief tribe, Ephraim. 

When I would have healed Israel,

Then the iniquity of Ephraim was uncovered,

And the wickedness of Samaria.

For they have committed fraud;

A thief comes in;

A band of robbers takes spoil outside.

They do not consider in their hearts

That I remember all their wickedness;

Now their own deeds have surrounded them;

They are before My face.

They make a king glad with their wickedness,

And princes with their lies. Hosea 7

He doesn't spare them at all but accuses them of every kind of sin that there is. 

They shall not dwell in the Lord’s land,

But Ephraim shall return to Egypt,

And shall eat unclean things in Assyria.

They shall not offer wine offerings to the Lord,

Nor shall their sacrifices be pleasing to Him.

It shall be like bread of mourners to them;

All who eat it shall be defiled.

For their bread shall be for their own life;

It shall not come into the house of the Lord

They will be cast out not only of the Lord's favor but will have all of the comforts of religion taken from them.

 They became an abomination like the thing they loved.

As for Ephraim, their glory shall fly away like a bird—

No birth, no pregnancy, and no conception!

Though they bring up their children,

Yet I will bereave them to the last man.

Yes, woe to them when I depart from them!

Just as I saw Ephraim like Tyre, planted in a pleasant place,

So Ephraim will bring out his children to the murderer.”

Give them, O Lord—

What will You give?

Give them a miscarrying womb

And dry breasts!

“All their wickedness is in Gilgal,

For there I hated them.

Because of the evil of their deeds

I will drive them from My house;

I will love them no more.

All their princes are rebellious.

Ephraim is stricken,

Their root is dried up;

They shall bear no fruit.

Yes, were they to bear children,

I would kill the darlings of their womb.”

My God will cast them away,

Because they did not obey Him;

And they shall be wanderers among the nations. Hosea 9 

 In fact, even all human comfort is denied them.  The Lord despises them so much that he will hunt their children down, even in the womb.  God expressly declares that He hates them and will make them fugitives and wanderers in the earth, like Cain.

I taught Ephraim to walk,Taking them by their arms;
But they did not know that I healed them.
I drew them with gentle cords,
With bands of love,
And I was to them as those who take the yoke from their neck.
I stooped and fed them.

How can I give you up, Ephraim?
How can I hand you over, Israel?
How can I make you like Admah?
How can I set you like Zeboiim?
My heart churns within Me;
My sympathy is stirred.
I will not execute the fierceness of My anger;
I will not again destroy Ephraim.
For I am God, and not man,
The Holy One in your midst; And I will not come with terror Hosea 11

And yet, there is more to this story.  God has rejected them, but He can't forget that He made them at first.  He can't forget that He was the one who raised them, protected them, provided for them.    Even more than that, the last two lines quoted make it clear that there is something about destroying His own creations that is contrary to the divine nature.  It is His nature to be our comfort and hope in trouble.  To be our nightmare and our enemy is something that He refuses in the strongest terms to do.

The iniquity of Ephraim is bound up;
His sin is stored up.
The sorrows of a woman in childbirth shall come upon him.
He is an unwise son,
For he should not stay long where children are born.
“I will ransom them from the power of the grave;
I will redeem them from death.
O Death, I will be your plagues!
O Grave, I will be your destruction!
Pity is hidden from My eyes Hosea 13 

 “I will heal their backsliding, 

I will love them freely, 

For My anger has turned away from him. 

I will be like the dew to Israel; 

He shall grow like the lily, 

And lengthen his roots like Lebanon. 

His branches shall spread; 

His beauty shall be like an olive tree, 

And his fragrance like Lebanon. 

Those who dwell under his shadow shall return; 

They shall be revived like grain, 

And grow like a vine. 

Their scent shall be like the wine of Lebanon.

“Ephraim shall say, ‘What have I to do anymore with idols?’

I have heard and observed him.

I am like a green cypress tree;

Your fruit is found in Me.” Hosea 14

He has declared in no uncertain terms that He will punish their wickedness, but now He declares that He will redeem them from the very judgment He has inflicted.  Rather than being the enemy of them and their children as He promised, He will be the enemy of Death and Hell.  Ephraim does confess and he does repent, after the Lord has redeemed him, after Death has seen the pitiless eyes of Christ.  Why will God heal them and love them freely?  Not because they have done anything right, even the smallest thing, but because His "anger has turned away from him".  We can only ask, where then has His anger turned to?

But He was wounded for our transgressions,

He was bruised for our iniquities;

The chastisement for our peace was upon Him,

And by His stripes we are healed.

All we like sheep have gone astray;

We have turned, every one, to his own way;

And the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. Isaiah 53 

All of that judgment has landed squarely on Christ, there is no condemnation, no rejection left for anyone else.  God has rejected us, only so that rather than be a creditor coming to Him for payment, He can accept us freely as helpless, worthless objects of His pity.

But the Scripture has confined all under sin, that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. Galatians 3 

Maybe we will end our lives, maybe with unconfessed, unrepented sin.  In fact, I am sure that we will have sin that we haven't even recognized ourselves much less admitted to anyone else.  In fact, all sin is essentially suicidal.  Sin is always self-destructive.  We are always self-destructive.  God has already poured all of His judgment, disappointment, and rejection on His Son.  He drank the cup of God's wrath completely.  There is none left for you or me.

Dry Bones