The Method of Madness

Madness does not come by breaking out, but by giving in; by settling down in some dirty, self-repeating circle of ideas; by being tamed.

G. K. Chesterton, Manalive

Chesterton's thesis seems to be that by forgetting the self, we can become our true selves. Jesus said: "Whoever would find his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake finds it." Jesus also asserted: "unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." We have to stay children to stay sane.

The Problem with Biotechnology

The problem with biotechnology is that we are playing with God's power without having his knowledge.

Creation Days Controversy

This morning in Sunday School I heard a great summary of John C. Collins exegesis of the nature of the creation days. Collins believes in verbal, plenary (full) inspiration of Scripture, and in literal or authorial intent interpretation of the Bible. Collins also believes that the creation days of Genesis 1 are not 24 hour solar days but our 24 hour solar days are analogical to the days of creation.  Dr. Collins is a former prof of mine at Covenant seminary and I had heard his argument before but this crystallized it for me. The basic argument runs as follows:

1. The Hebrew word for day "yom" is not a technical term for a 24 hour solar day. Genesis 2:4 refers to the entire week of creation as a "yom."
   
2. We are still in the seventh day. The refrain "evening and morning" occurs at the end of each creation day and refers to the period of rest between the periods of work. This refrain does not occur on the seventh day, which shows that God is still at rest. Thus the seventh day is ongoing and not a 24 hour solar day. Hebrews 4:3-5 confirms this interpretation saying that "God rested on the seventh day from his all works" but disobedient Israel cannot enter his rest. Augustine, who was obviously not trying to make peace with Darwinism, pointed this out in his Confessions. He said that since God is still in his seventh day we can enter his rest by faith. 
3. God's creation days are analogical. They set the pattern for our 24 hour solar days. Since God rested the "evening and morning" of each day so should we. Since God rested on the seventh day so should we. Just like our creating is based on God's creating without being ex nihilo (out of nothing), so our days are like his without his necessarily being 24 hours long.
4. The best way to harmonize Genesis 1 and 2 is to assume the days of Genesis 1 are analogical. It is hard to imagine Adam getting lonely within the first day given all the work he had to do tending the garden and naming the animals.

Universalism

Some are so gullible they believe in all religions.

Will and Grace

Grace does not violate the will; it activates the will for Christ.

Comparative Religion

Jesus made comparative religion easy when he claimed to be God. No other religion claims that their founder claimed this. DeSouza has pointed out that this boils everything down to two kinds of religion: one says God descended to man because man cannot save himself, all others say man must ascend to God to save himself. The question isn't which religion is true, but whether Jesus is who he claimed to be. Peter Kreeft puts it well when he calls him the "cosmic touchstone."

Nature and Grace in the Public Space

Our Headmaster, Chris Baker, gave a lecture today and spoke about how modern secularism has separated nature and grace. He went on to enumerate the consequences in art, architecture, and music. My class and I saw the fragmentation that has resulted but also a kind of broken beauty that peaks through and resonates at times with the glorious ruin that we are. He also showed the stark contrast between modern art and that of the Renaissance, which still largely retained clear delineating lines, order, and realism.

This led me to think about the relationship between nature and grace. Since the fall we have been in dire need of special grace for salvation while a common grace, where God "sends rain on the just and the unjust," has continued to preserve us despite periods of terrible drought. There is also drought that cracks the cultural landscape, when we, as a society, lose touch with special and common grace. Nature here does not refer merely to the natural world of rocks, trees, and animals but all of creation including human nature and culture. Nature is what is natural as distinct from grace which is supernatural. Grace replenishes and rectifies nature so that we can envision its redemption. But when we try to isolate nature from grace in order to secularize society, we end up with ugly consequences.

Chris pointed out that when we began to lose God's input in art, images of man and landscapes began to smudge. Clear lines blurred and we were left with impressions, surreal bits and pieces, mere cubes, expressions of painful interior experiences, and even machine like depictions of man.

Let me paraphrase Chesterton: The separation of nature and grace does not leave us with the natural but with the unnatural. O' Lord give us grace in our personal lives that we may transmit it to a society in need of you.

Unfree Choice?

I've recently been translating Luther's De servo arbitrio (The Bondage of the Will) and thought I'd take a stab at restating Luther's thesis.

There’s no free choice since everything happens by God’s foreordination ultimately and all human choices are bound either to sin or grace. The will, however, may be said to be free in the sense of voluntary and in having ability over created things which are below man (like his possessions). The will may also be said to be free when grace brings "royal freedom" to do what is right.

Can We Say "Good" without God?

I've been watching the Hitchens and Wilson debate at Westminster Seminary, Philadelphia (click on title for the link). Wilson says there's no way to call anything true, good, or beautiful without God. Then Hitchens goes on explaining how atheists and people with no religious confession have produced some of the truest, most ethical, and beautiful cultural goods.

It seems to me that we're not saying atheists can't produce objects of the most magnificent beauty, but that there's no way to call them beautiful unless God exists. Anytime we say, "That's beautiful," about a sunset, we're not just appealing to our own subjective sense of beauty. We are also appealing to an objective standard of beauty beyond ourselves. There is a beauty behind all other beauties that makes beauty a coherent concept common to all people.

But what about when people disagree over whether the sunset is beautiful. Well most people agree on sunsets, but when we're talking about a cloudy, cold, winter day or a piece of modern art, we appeal to that God defined beauty when we argue that the day has its own kind of barren beauty or the piece of art is beautiful or not.

When we call something ugly we also appeal to an objective standard that has been violated. When we say Hitler was wrong we assume a moral standard beyond our feelings to which he was accountable. To paraphrase Lewis, we can't posit evil in the world unless we posit an object standard of good beyond the world.   

The Great Unending Conversation

I recently finished The Company They Keep: C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien as Writers in Comunity and read this quote from Kenneth Burke's "Unending Conversation":

Imagine that you enter a parlor. You come in late. When you arrive, others have long preceded you, and they are engaged in a heated discussion, a discussion too heated for them to pause and tell you exactly what it is about. In fact, the discussion had already begun long before any of them got there, so that no one present is qualified to retrace for you all the steps that had gone before. You listen for a while, until you decide that you have caught the tenor of the argument; then you put in your oar. Someone answers; you answer him; another comes to your defense; another aligns himself against you.... However, the discussion is interminable. The hour grows late, you must depart. And you do depart, with the discussion still rigorously in progress.

A Hopeful Monster?

I once heard Glenn Kaiser, the lead of the now defunct Resurrection Band but the more recently formed Glenn Kaiser Band, say:

People don't reject the Bible because it contradicts itself, but because it contradicts them.

The flip side of this coin is that one of the reasons Christians believe is because the Bible contradicts them. G. K. Chesterton said we don't want a religion that's right when were right, but one that's right when were wrong. Pascal put it a little more existentially:

If he exalts himself, I will humble him.
If he humbles himself, I exalt him.
And I go on contradicting him
Until he understands
That he is is a monster that passes all understanding.

The Lord has continually knocked me down and made me look like a fool until, I hope, I have finally accepted the fact that I am one. So I guess I'm on the brink of a New Year's resolution. Let it be resolved that I am a fool who can only find wisdom by letting the Bible contradict me. So be it for this new year and any more that the Lord may so graciously add to my number.