Monthly Archives: December 2012

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December 13, 2012

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Some Notes on Bavinck and the Relationship Between Christianity and Culture

After my post the other day, I did a little more digging on the great Dutch Reformed theologian Herman Bavinck. In the midst of my mini-research flurry I found a classic article by Bavinck on Calvin’s doctrine of common grace, which I highly recommend.  Not only is it a top-notch exposition of Calvin’s view of culture and common grace, it is also the work of one of the architects of that great and still influential movement of Dutch Neo-Calvinism. (Not Mark Driscoll and John Piper–think dead guys).

In the introduction to the article he gives his own brief sketch of “certain lines” which Scripture draws for us to understand how we should think about culture and cultural production:

It proceeds on the principle that for man God is the supreme good. Whatever material or ideal possessions the world may offer, all these taken together cannot outweigh or even be compared with this greatest of all treasures, communion with God; and hence, in case of conflict with this, they are to be unconditionally sacrificed. “Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire besides thee.” This, however, does not hinder earthly possessions from retaining a relative value. Considered in themselves they are not sinful or unclean; so long as they do not interfere with man’s pursuit of the kingdom of heaven, they are to be enjoyed with thanksgiving. Scripture avoids, both extremes, no less that of asceticism on the one hand than that of libertinism on the other hand.

The recognition of this as a principle appears most clearly in its teaching that all things, the entire world with all its treasures, including matter and the body, marriage and labor, are created and ordained of God; and that Christ, although, when He assumed a true and perfect human nature, He renounced all these things in obedience to God’s command, yet through His resurrection too them all back as henceforth purified of all sin and consecrated through the Spirit. Creation, incarnation, and resurrection are the fundamental facts of Christianity and at the same time the bulwarks against all error in life and doctrine.

This quote doesn’t cover everything, of course.  Still, Bavinck calls our attention to four points Christians need to keep in mind when thinking about cultural life:

  1. pintGod is the good to which all other goods point and to whom none can compare. Focusing on or choosing any created reality over the Creator is spiritual insanity.
  2. At the same time earthly, material, and cultural goods have relative value as long as our enjoyment of them doesn’t descend into idolatry. After all, they are the creation of God. He made them to be enjoyed with gratitude as his gift.
  3. The Gospel should lead neither to ascetism, nor libertinism; not legalism or license. In other words, a pint’s fine, just don’t get plastered and run around with your pants on your head.
  4. Christ, though he sacrificed all human material and cultural goods, has redeemed all in his life, death, and resurrection.

Now, Bavinck goes on to take account for human sin, depravity, and our natural tendency towards idolatry. He points out that in the first few centuries of Christianity, the church had to take a very contrasting stance towards the broader culture because all the cultural institutions of the day were tangled up in explicit idolatry. This is a point we ought to remember as well. At times in our rush to “enjoy culture” we fail to discern the way culture has gone wrong and too easily accommodate ourselves to its prevailing consumerism and nihilistic self-indulgence. Still, any criticism or antithesis against the culture we engage in needs to be set within the broader context of affirming the God’s good creation. The problem isn’t having some stuff, it’s obsessing over stuff and denying justice to the poor in our acquisition of it; the problem isn’t sex, it’s the abuse and perversion of sex as a unitive act into a self-centered assertion of the ultimacy of my own wants and desires.

Boiling it down to one verse, we need to remember Paul’s admonition to Timothy that, “everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving.” (1 Tim 4:14) This keeps us both from gnostic rejection of what God has made and pagan idolatry of it. Instead, culture becomes an opportunity for joyful gratitude overflowing into the worship of the Triune God.

Soli Deo Gloria

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December 12, 2012

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Thomas Oden on the Joy of Studying Theology

People don’t always understand why I geek out over theology. They don’t get how I can spend hours and hours reading it, sifting, thinking, talking to friends, stroking my luxuriant beard in deep thought, and reading more about what I just read about. Thomas Oden quickly cuts to the chase in his systematic theology Classic Christianity (as of 12/12/2012 on Kindle for the stupid price $3.79):

You are invited to the quiet joy of the study of God—God’s being, God’s power, God’s insurmountable goodness, and God’s unfailing care of creation. Over centuries this subject has been the source of contemplative happiness, intellectual fascination, and moral guidance…The most intriguing questions of the introductory study of God can be stated in plain, uncomplicated words:

classic 2Is God uncreated?

Is God free?

Is God personal?

Is God compassionate?

Does God exist?

Does Jesus reveal God?

Does God care about us?

Why are we born?

Why do we die?

How do we draw closer to God?

How may we participate in God’s life?

Does scripture reveal God?

Does the reception of revelation call for reasoning?

Oden, Thomas C. (2009-07-23). Classic Christianity (pp. 15-16). Harper Collins, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

Theology is fascinating because at the end of the day, theology is about God, the source of all joy. If none of these questions even mildly interest you, if you never engage with them, if you never are drawn to think or meditate on their truth, you will miss out on joy. It’s that simple. I love theology because it leads to joy.

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December 11, 2012

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discipleship, writing

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C.S. Lewis and Pascal on the Problem of “Being Original”

One of my favorite Frenchmen.

One of my favorite Frenchmen.

I’ll admit, I suffer from creative constipation from time to time. You know what I’m talking about: feeling like you want to write, you have to write, but you simply can’t. I had a severe bout of it for a few years between my last blog, back in the Myspace days, and starting this one. I had a lot of fun with my old blog until I started reading good writers and deep thinkers. At that point I realized most of what I had to say had already been said by someone smarter, funnier, wiser, and generally in every way better than I ever could. (90% of the time it was C.S. Lewis.) With that, I kind of lost my will to write. It’s not so much that I didn’t like writing, but that I had trouble seeing the point–I didn’t feel like I had anything to say. I’d be surprised if I’m the only one who’s been troubled by that thought.

Two of my intellectual and literary heroes have some wisdom for those of us struggling with the problem of “being original”:

Let no one say I have said nothing new; the arrangement of the material is new. In playing tennis both players play the same ball, but one plays it better. –Blaise Pascal, Pensees

Even in social life, you will never make a good impression on other people until you stop thinking about what sort of impression you are making. Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it. –C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (IV, 11)

Pascal was writing an apologetic for the Christian faith. He readily acknowledged that the content, the point, the truth of what he was speaking was nothing new. In fact, that was the point–he was trying to convince his skeptical, intellectual friends to re-engage, to accept the very old truth of Christianity. At the same time his apologetic method, his style, the questions he asked, were different, and “original” in that sense. He had produced a new “arrangement” of the material.

Lewis makes the same point with even less of an emphasis on being consciously original. He simply advises that we ought to “try and tell the truth” as best we know how and the odds are, given our unique wiring and design, it will end up being original. In fact, that’s one of the interesting things I’ve come to see about Lewis himself.

The first time I read Mere Christianity I thought it was amazing simply because it was so new–Lewis was pointing me to insights and truths I had never encountered, in ways I couldn’t have imagined for myself. As the years past, though, the more theology I read I came to recognize a great deal of other authors, thinkers, theologians, and presentations peeking through the edges of what Lewis was doing. Lewis’ originality lay not so much in the newness of his ideas–he would have denied any originality for himself at that point–but, like Pascal, in his peculiar talent at making the old seem new and the difficult, accessible to the men and women of his own day. He didn’t do it by changing anything for them, but rather by both listening and speaking to them.

If you’re having trouble “being original”, take a lesson from Pascal and Lewis: find something you believe in, a truth you’re passionate about and strive to communicate it as best you can to those around you. If you do that, originality will take care of itself.

Soli Deo Gloria

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December 9, 2012

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Bible, hermeneutics

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On the Difference Between “Literal” and “Idiot-Literal” Interpretation

literalI’ve already written once before on the issue of a ‘literal’ hermeneutic. I want to take time once again to clarify, from another angle, that there is a difference between a ‘literal’ hermeneutic (method of interpretation) and what I’m calling an ‘idiot-literal’ hermeneutic.

Classic Literal
A classic “literal” hermeneutic was the favored interpretive method of the Magisterial Reformers such as Calvin and Luther, which, at its better moments, has been followed by their Protestant heirs. It also might be called the “historical-grammatical” method because, in a nutshell, its aim is to first understand what the author’s intended use of a given word, sentence, paragraph was in accordance with the historical, cultural, and literary context and usual grammatical rules. As Kevin Vanhoozer has said, “the literal sense is the literary sense.” Interpreting a text ‘literally’ in this sense did not mean ignoring figures of speech, metaphors, analogy, or running roughshod over genres, context, or linguistic anomalies. Essentially, if the biblical author is trying to write history, you read the text like history; if poetry, like poetry; if a letter, then as a letter.

The Magisterial Reformers were, for the most part, humanist scholars trained in rhetoric and an appreciation for literary art, so they championed this sort of exegesis as a corrective against the spiritualizing, or rather allegorizing, interpretive methods favored by some in the Middle Ages, and passed down from some of the Fathers such as Origen and Augustine that could, and I say this with great respect for those classic interpreters, could go off the rails a bit as they found all sorts of hidden, “spiritual” meanings in rather straightforward texts. While the Reformers didn’t rule out certain typological interpretations–for instance it’s fine, and even necessary, to see a figure of Christ when discussing OT sacrifices or King David–they worried that some of the allegorizing that went on led to the Scriptures becoming a “wax nose” of sorts, that could be shaped and reshaped at will. Any typological interpretation must come after and be in line with the original story, or law that was set forth according to its intended purpose. (From what I understand, Thomas Aquinas was actually a champion of rooting the “spiritual” sense in the literal sense as well.) Now, admittedly they weren’t perfect at this themselves, but by and large this was a good move for biblical studies and theology in general.

My point here is to clarify that a “literal” interpretation in the classic sense is not what might be called a “literalistic”, or illiterate approach to the text, but rather it is one concerned with discovering the author’s intended meaning in accordance with sound rules of literary interpretation. Which brings me to our next category: the idiot-literal hermeneutic.

Idiot-Literal
An idiot-literal hermeneutic is the interpretive method that is favored mostly by liberalizing critics for straw-manning conservative  opponents. It consists of finding the most obtuse, ham-handed, or silly interpretation of any given biblical text that fails to recognize a textual or literary clue that we’re dealing with figurative language and holding it up as the necessary reading for anybody holding a “literal” hermeneutic. Often-times it’s linked in these presentations to the doctrine of “inerrancy” (which, for some reason, is usually also caricatured, confused, and conflated with a straight dictation theory of inspiration).

Now, I’m not denying that often-times you can find conservative/fundamentalist interpreters whose readings border on self-caricature. In fact, along with Beale, I do think the time might come when we need to start using the phrase “literate” hermeneutic, or something of that sort in order to distinguish things. Still, I do think it’s important to clarify that just because someone self-identifies as adhering to a “literal” hermeneutic, or because the Reformers held to one, it does not mean they must adopt whatever silliness is imputed to them by their critics on pain of inconsistency.

Conclusions
This was necessarily rough and probably simplistic, but hopefully it sufficed to make my point–a literal reading of the text is not the same as an idiot-literal reading of the text. You haven’t refuted conservative hermeneutical approaches by simply picking the dumbest reading possible and saying, “Here, this is what you have to believe, right?” Also, if you pride yourself on your conservative view of scripture and hermeneutical approach, please don’t play into the caricature–do your homework.

Soli Deo Gloria

PS. For those looking to learn how to read their Bibles better:

1.  How To Read Your Bible For All It’s Worth by Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart is an excellent place to start.
2.  Introduction to Biblical Interpretation by William W. Klein, Craig Blomberg, and Robbert I. Hubbard Jr. is also excellent, although a bit more advanced.

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December 7, 2012

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biblical studies

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9 Reasons The Garden of Eden Was a Temple

the gardenG.K. Beale is a bit of an expert on the subject of the Temple in biblical theology. He did happen to write a whole book on it. Given that, it’s unsurprising that he devotes some space to exploring the significance of the Temple in NT theology in his recent New Testament Biblical Theology: The Unfolding of the Old Testament in the New by sketching it’s structure and function in the OT. One of the more eye-opening claims he makes in this section is that the Bible pictures the Garden of Eden as the first Temple in the first creation. He gives 9 arguments/lines of reasoning for that point (pp. 617-621):

  1. In the later OT the Temple was the place of God’s special presence where he made himself known and felt to Israel. That is exactly how his walking with Adam and Eve in the Garden is depicted. (Gen. 3:8)
  2. Adam is placed in the garden to “cultivate (abad)” and “keep (samar)” it (Gen 2:15). The same two words are translated elsewhere “serve” and “guard”, and when they appear together, they are either referring to Israelites serving or obeying God’s word, or more usually, to the job of the priest in guarding and keeping the Temple. (Num. 3:7-8; 8:25-26; 1 Chron. 23:32) Elsewhere Adam is portrayed dressed in the clothes of the high priest, functioning as a high priest. (Ezek 28:11-19; see Beale, pg. 618 on this for more argumentation.)
  3. The tree of life served as a model for the lampstand, which was clearly shaped as a tree, in the Temple.
  4. Israel’s later Temple was made with wood carvings of flowers, palm trees, etc. meant to recall Eden’s garden brilliance  (1 Kings 6:18, 29, 32, 35); pomegranates were also placed at the bottom of the two stone pillars in the Temple. (7:18-20)
  5. The entrance to the Temple was to the east, on a mountain facing Zion (Ex. 15:17), just as the end-time temple prophesied in Ezekiel is (40:2, 6; 43:12). Well, turns out the entrance to Eden was from the East (Gen. 3:24) and in some places pictured as being on a mountain. (Ezek. 28:14, 16)
  6. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the ark of the covenant both were accessed or touched only on pain of death. Also, both were sources of wisdom.
  7. Just as a river flowed out of Eden (Gen 2:10), so a river is supposed to flow out of the End-time Temple (Ezek 47:1-12; Rev. 21:1-2)
  8. This one requires some serious argument so I suggest you consult Beale directly here (pg. 620-621), but just as there was a tripartite sacred structure to the Temple, Beale discerns a tripartite structure to creation with Eden standing at the center as a Holy of Holies.
  9. Ezekiel 28:13-14 refers the Eden as “the holy mountain of God” which everywhere else in the OT is Temple and Tabernacle language.

I have not come even close to doing justice to the exegetical work Beale does in this section, nor in the aforementioned book on the subject. Still, this rough sketch should be enough to show that there is a substantial case to be made for understanding the Garden of Eden as the first Temple in biblical theology.

What does this matter you might ask? The theological implications are actually so massive that I can’t go into all of them. I’ll just bullet-point a few that could be teased out into blogs in their own right (probably books too):

  • Creation — Why did God create the world? To inhabit it and dwell with people.
  • Anthropology — If the Garden is the Temple, then Adam is a priest. That has implications for our idea of human purpose and our relation to the rest of creation.
  • Israel/Covenant — God sets apart a people of Tabernacle and Temple-makers, who take up Adam’s original commission.
  • Christology — When we start to realize that Christ is the greater Temple, fulfilling all that the Temple was supposed to be, as well as the true Adam, it starts to fill in the picture on the aim of Christ’s work.
  • Ecclesiology — It follows from our thinking about human purpose, and our idea of Christ’s work that our theology of the church will be impacted by this idea as well.
  • Eschatology — If our theology of creation is impacted, then so is our eschatology, because God will fulfill his purposes at the end of all things.

The list could go on and on and on, but you get my point.  The Garden was a Temple and that’s big.

Also, if nothing else, it’s just interesting for Bible nerds and that’s good enough, right?

Soli Deo Gloria

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December 5, 2012

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theology

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Herman Bavinck and the Problem of God’s Glory in Predestination

Update: I’ve swung more Reformed since the original writing of this post, but will leave as is for the sake of being lazy, and because the main point still stands.  

I named this blog Reformedish for various reasons. Probably the main one is that I am a newcomer to the Reformed tradition and so there are parts of it I still wrestle with and that’s not likely to change any time soon. Unsurprisingly one such area is the doctrine of God’s predestination. I’ll just be honest and say I’ve never been excited about double-predestination for all of its logical-consistency and the strength of the biblical arguments. Laying my currently-held cards out on the table, I’m something of a Calvinistically-inclined Molinist. If you don’t know that means, don’t worry about it–I don’t know if that actually works, but that’s where I am most days–except on Thursdays when I teach–I need to believe God’s efficaciously calling people or else it’s on me and that’s just too much pressure. My buddy Scott and I have joked since college that we’ll definitely be full-blown Calvinists by the time we’re 40.

In any case, I’ll say that there is one argument that some Calvinists make I’ve always found unconvincing and will probably continue to find unconvincing even if/when I cross that final rubicon. Taking their cue from Paul in Romans 9:22-23–“What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory…”–they argue along the lines that God’s decree of election to salvation and reprobation to damnation is to perfectly display his attributes for the sake of his glory. In a nutshell, on this view, God damns sinners according to their guilt in order to display his justice and saves some in order to display his mercy. Otherwise, how would we know about these perfections?

Truly dominant-looking theological man. It's a win for Reformed beardliness everywhere.

Truly dominant-looking theological man. It’s a win for Reformed beardliness everywhere.

Now, Jonathan Edwards convinced me a while back that God does all things (creation, redemption, etc) with an endview towards his glory. No need to argue that point–I’m fully on-board. But like I said, I’ve never bought this particular argument. And as I mentioned, not all Calvinists do. In fact, theologian Herman Bavinck, contemporary to Abraham Kuyper and author of the beastly 4-volume Reformed Dogmatics (which would make a great present if any generous readers are wondering–just message me), had some questions about it as well. In an article on the difference between Supralapsarianism (supra) and Infralapsarianism (infra)–two positions regarding the logical order of God’s decrees–he argues that this, typically supra, line of reasoning has some holes in it:

In the first place, to say that the manifestation of all God’s excellencies is the final goal of all of the ways of God is indeed correct; but when supra includes in that goal the manner in which the divine glory will be revealed in the eternal destiny of rational creatures, it errs. For, the eternal state of salvation or of perdition is not in itself the goal, but one of the means employed in order to reveal God’s excellencies in a manner suited to the creature. It would not do to say that God would have been unable to manifest his glory by saving all men, if this had been his pleasure. Neither is it correct to say that in the eternal state of the reprobate God reveals his justice exclusively, and that in the eternal state of the elect he manifests his mercy exclusively. Also in the church, purchased with the blood of the Son, God’s justice is revealed; and also in the place of perdition there are degrees of punishment and sparks of divine mercy. The final goal of all God’s work’s must needs be his glory, but the manner in which that glory will shine forth is not thereby given, but has been determined by God’s will; and although there were wise and holy reasons why God purposed the perdition of many and not the salvation of all, nevertheless these reasons, though known to him, are not known to us: we are not able to say why God willed to make use of this means and not of another.

Bavinck makes what’s always been my sticking point: God can and does perfectly display his mercy and justice in the Cross and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, in which case that argument could just as plausibly be deployed in favor of univeralism. In a sense, if it proves anything it proves too much.

Of course, this does not disprove Calvinism, election, reprobation, infra- or supralapsarianism, or that God’s ultimate goal isn’t that final state of glory. It’s really just dealing with this one argument. Still, Bavinck’s wisdom is to push for greater theological modesty at this point. Calvin himself warned that the one who tries to pry too deeply into God’s secret counsels “plunges headlong into an immense abyss, involves himself in numberless inextricable snares, and buries himself in the thickest darkness.” (Inst. III.xxiv.4) Instead, it’s best to look to Christ, rest in his grace, trust that “although there were wise and holy reasons” for God’s decrees about history and salvation, “nevertheless these reasons, though known to him, are not known to us.”

Soli Deo Gloria

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December 5, 2012

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discipleship, theology

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I Want to Be God (And So Do You)

I want to be God.

I discovered this in college. Actually, what I found out is that I happen to want to be God in a particular way–specifically I wanted to know everything. In a sense, there was one attribute of God’s that I coveted, desired for myself most: omniscience. There are times that I’ve wanted to know things with a sort of desperation. I look at stacks of books and feel crushed with the weight of all that I have yet to read and discover. To those that know me, this might sound funny. “Oh Derek, you and your books.” Honestly though, the sense of incompleteness and inadequacy can be tormenting–especially in light of the fact I know I will never have the time, energy, or resources to even come close to the end of my studies.

I have this theory that we all do this to some degree–we have certain attributes of God we want more. Some of us want to be everywhere at once. We have this constant feeling that we’re missing out on something, so we try to be all places at all times as much as possible so we don’t miss a thing. Others of us want to be eternal–there never seems to be enough time to accomplish everything on our checklist. We dream of bending time to our will so that we’re not limited to the 18-20 hours of the day we’re up for. Then, there are those of us who want God’s power. We strain at the edges of our human possibilities and strive to attain those things that are just beyond our grasp. In fact, we hate the idea that there might exist anything “beyond our grasp.” Of course, there are the control freaks–people who want total sovereignty of their lives, securing themselves by making sure that all goes according to their perfect plan. The list could easily go on.

be as god 2

I have named the skull “George.”

As I’ve sat back and reflected on this a bit over the years, I’ve realized that all of these desires, in some way, are a rejection of our finitude–don’t like being limited beings. Now, of course the Bible has told us for thousands of years that ever since the Garden we’ve all been striving to be God. The Teacher has said that God has put “eternity in our hearts” (Eccles. 3:11). God made us in his Image (Gen 1:26), but apparently that wasn’t good enough. We didn’t just want to reflect God’s glory, we wanted to have it.  We didn’t want to depend on God for good and evil, we wanted to “know” it/determine it for ourselves. (Gen. 3:5) The lie that we believed is that we can be god-like apart from God.

In a way, the issue is about one attribute, very much ignored in popular preaching–that of God’s aseity, or self-sufficiency. God has “life in himself” and is dependent on no one and nothing outside of his glorious, infinite, Triune self. (John 5:26; Ac 17:24-25; Rom 11:35-36) He doesn’t need anything. He is blessedly complete in the infinite perfection of his own life. This is what we want when we strive for all of the other attributes–to be the source of our own blessedness.

The truth of the matter though, is that there are only two ways of possessing infinite good: either it is yours inherently (God) or you receive it from him. This is true down to the ontological level–you can’t even keep yourself in existence if he doesn’t will it. The upshot of this is that we can either strive to be infinite ourselves (and fail miserably), or gain it by being rightly related to the infinite one through Christ. See, the very “great promises” of the Gospel is that through faith in Christ we can “become partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pet 1:4), as God redeems us from sin and grows us further in holiness and righteousness through the Spirit. In other words, this doesn’t happen by our striving for self-achieved autonomy–it happens by grace, by depending on God’s favor, looking to him alone for all of our good in Christ.

A few words then for you God-strivers:

  • If you thirst for knowledge, let God teach you the depths of knowledge and wisdom in Christ. (Col. 2:3)
  • If you long for eternity, set your hope on God’s promised future in Christ. (Rom 6:23)
  • If you strive to be present everywhere, remember that God has appointed the time and place where you would be born and live that you might reach out and find Christ. (Acts 17:26-27)
  • If you scramble for sovereignty, don’t be afraid to lose control of your life, and receive it back as a gift through Christ. (Matt 16:24-27)

Finally, if that isn’t enough: “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.” (Jas 1:17) So let him be the source of your blessedness today.

Soli Deo Gloria

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December 3, 2012

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devotional literature, Martin Luther, spirituality, theology

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Quick-Blog #11: God Listens to Prayer, But Don’t Expect Him to Obey

Time and again I find myself coming back to Luther because, even though he shoots his mouth off from time to time, you almost always come away with theological or practical wisdom you needed to hear. Take this gem of a quote on prayer:

It is impossible that God should not hear the prayers which with faith are made in Christ, though he give not according to the measure, manner, and time we dictate, for he will not be tied. In such sort dealt God with the mother of St Augustine; she prayed to God that her son might be converted, but as yet it would not be; then she ran to the learned, entreating them to persuade and advise him thereunto. She propounded unto him a marriage with a Christian virgin, that thereby he might be drawn and brought to the Christian faith, but all would not do as yet. But when our Lord God came thereto, he came to purpose, and made of him such an Augustine, that he became a great light to the church. St James says: “Pray one for another, for the prayer of the righteous availeth much.” Prayer is a powerful thing, for God has bound and tied himself thereunto. -Martin Luther, Table Talk

Luther clearly lays out a couple of key points we need to remember to keep straight for the sake of our theology and just general spiritual life.

  1. I wonder what my spiritual life would be like if I were trying to be Alfred instead of Batman.

    I wonder what my spiritual life would be like if I were trying to be Alfred instead of Batman.

    God is God. When you pray you’re making a request of your Lord, not commanding a servant. We often-times think about God and prayer as if he were our butler, like a divine Alfred (Batman’s butler/mentor) who manages to be very resourceful in helping us fulfill our missions out in the world. In fact, the situation is quite the opposite. God is equipping and aiding us in being his servants, doing his will. You are not Batman. You are not the hero of your story–God is.  If we don’t get this straight, we end up thinking God failed us when it turns out he’s simply decided in his infinite wisdom that the “measure, manner, and time we dictate” are not the way that he wants to do things. God is not in your employ. He is not someone to be fired or reprimanded. He is not waiting for your year-end performance review. He really does know what he’s doing.

  2. God Listens. At the same time, God really does listen to prayers offered up through Jesus Christ. (John 14:13; 16:23) Whatever else we think about predestination and foreknowledge, we are told that God listens to our prayers for Christ’s sake. He has “bound” himself in that way, through his promises in Jesus. So many of us do not pray because we think God will not hear us. We think we’re too guilty, too small, too silly, too insignificant. Jesus reassures us that whatever might be true of us, in Christ, we are beloved of the Father and he will always hear us. (John 14:21) He is a God who keeps his promises, even if not always in the way that we expect them.

Luther tells us to keep these two truths in mind as we approach prayer. Between them we’re able to approach the God of the universe with the bold humility of faith–and that’s the goal isn’t it?

Soli Deo Gloria