Embracing Our Inner Warrior

posted by Roderick of TMin @ 10:46 AM 1 comments

Proverbial Quadruplets

The proverbial quadruplets of Proverbs 30 each bring powerful experiential support to bolster one priority point of wisdom. I love the quadruplet about Amazing Things. It teaches us that we must not attempt activities for which we do not understand the principles; and that warning applies most importantly to attempting intimate relationship. In courtship particularly, we must understand the principles of healthy relationship before engaging!

Thanks to Shannon and Jessica for bringing in the Krispy Kremes today. We bless you, ladies!

posted by Roderick of TMin @ 4:16 PM 0 comments

Choices

Last week we talked about Proverbs and how every proverb presents us with a choice. Here’s a proverb for Katie: Proverbs 15.30. The Lord is showing her how to walk it out!

posted by Roderick of TMin @ 11:05 PM 0 comments

The False Corollary of Job's Friends

Gal 6.7,8 tells us the law of sowing and reaping: “A man reaps what he sows.”

Like Job’s friends, we tend to assume that the corollary of the law is also true: “A man has sown what he is reaping.” When we see someone enduring heavy trials, or suffering under some debilitating illness, we have the same impulse that the disciples of Jesus did when they saw the man born blind (John 9): we ask, what kind of sin must this person have committed to come under this chastening from God?

However, the corollary of the law of sowing and reaping is often not true. The man born blind had not sown an awful sin that resulted in his blindness. Nor had Jesus sown the unrighteousness that resulted in His crucifixion. In like manner, Job had not sown some perversion that resulted in his great tragedy. The Scriptures allow us to peek into the spiritual realm and see that some trials come from Satan or are brought about by the actions of other people and having nothing to do with specific sins we have committed.

The lesson for us is to be compassionate.

Don’t judge rashly.
Be gracious like Ashley!

posted by Roderick of TMin @ 9:29 PM 0 comments

Principles of Family

One of the first things the OT begins to teach us is the principles of family. Here’s what we’ve observed so far:

1. Family shares the same blood (Gen 2.21). This will take on more significance shortly!
   
2. God recognizes a chain of responsibility and authority (Gen 3.9).
3. Occupational and relational responsibility is part of God’s redemptive plan for family members (Gen 3.16,17; 1Ti 2.15).
4. Only a Kinsman (= redeemer/avenger) can redeem family members and property (Lev 25.25, 47,48).
   

posted by Roderick of TMin @ 1:33 PM 0 comments

Fallenness

The Question:
What is fallenness, how is it passed down from generation to generation, and why didn’t Jesus get it?

The Answer:
It is not a spiritual “germ” transmitted through Adam’s blood. Otherwise Mary would have had it as a daughter of Adam, and she would have passed it down to Jesus who was fully human and likewise a descendant of Adam.

Roman Catholic theologians, assuming a version of this “germ theory” of fallenness (i.e., “original sin”), felt the need to explain why the “germ” did not pass down to Jesus. They devised the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, making it official dogma in 1854. According to this doctrine, Mary of Nazareth was immaculately conceived in her mother’s womb, and supernaturally kept from the taint of original sin so that she could bear the sinless Jesus. There is no biblical basis for this idea, and it seems superfluous (as one of our MC students observed), for if God only needed to do a miracle to keep Mary from being born with original sin (i.e., fallenness), God could have just done that same miracle at the conception of Jesus. By the way, to support the dogma of Mary’s Immaculate Conception, which implies she was not subject to The Curse with its sentence of death, Pope Pius XII in 1950 established the dogma of The Assumption of Mary. According to this doctrine, Mary went to heaven directly at the end of her life, i.e., she was “assumed” body and soul into God’s presence.

The answer is “spiritual deadness.” Biblically, we discover the definition of fallenness by studying the fix or cure for fallenness. Jesus taught in John 3 that a person must be born again of the Spirit in order to even perceive the kingdom of God. Paul taught that our salvation involves a spiritual resurrection (Col 2.11-13), and confirms that the problem was that we were dead in our sins. Indeed, hadn’t God warned Adam and Eve that in the very day* that they ate the forbidden fruit they would surely die (Gen 2.17)? And yet they lived physically for almost a millennium. We realize that our first parents died spiritually, and with the loss of their spiritual vitality, they also lost whatever ability they had to transmit spiritual life to their descendants.

We can compare fallenness to the crash of a computer’s operating system. Imagine that you’ve designed a system complete with keyboard, mouse, monitor, printer, scanner, speakers and cpu with hard drive. When the system crashes, the peripherals still work (just as our physical limbs and organs still work), but the system will not do any of the things that you, its creator, designed it to do. It can’t serve you, and it certainly can’t design the next generation of computers. It must have its operating system (its spirit) brought back to life by a reinstallation (new birth) of software.

The bottom line is that fallenness is not a germ or any other substantive thing; it is a deficiency. It is the lack of that spiritual vitality that enables us to relate properly to God. Mary could not pass that vitality on to her son Jesus, but the Father of Jesus could. Hence, Jesus was born without the deficiency, without this spiritual fallenness.

* The NIV does not use the word day in Gen 2.17, but most versions do as it is in the Hebrew text.

posted by Roderick of TMin @ 11:31 AM 0 comments

The Persons

God created ex nihilo. (Gen 1.1)
Adam named the first armadillo. (Gen 2.19)
Eve had Adam’s blood. (Gen 2.21)
Noah survived the flood. (Gen 6 - 9)
Satan fell after creation (Gen 1.31),
and before the temptation. (Gen 3.1)
Abraham took Isaac to the brink. (Gen 22)
Shannon Oles likes dressing in pink.

posted by Roderick of TMin @ 8:09 PM 0 comments

Implications of Creatio Ex Nihilo

So far, we’ve discussed the following implications about God, derived from the fact that the universe originated from absolutely nothing:

1. He is above time, living in the eternal present.
2. He is almighty.
3. He is self-existent, possessing the attribute of aseity.
4. He is personal.

The final point, the idea that God is personal, derives from our observation that there are two classes of causes: personal and impersonal. Since impersonal causes require the existence of matter/energy, and since neither of these existed before the origin of the universe, we conclude that the cause of the universe “popping” into existence was personal, and therefore, God is personal. A thinking atheist will have a rebuttal of this idea; can you imagine what it would be?

posted by Roderick of TMin @ 12:03 PM 0 comments

The Problem of Evil

Thinkers reject the theistic worldview because of the philosophical Problem of Evil. The Problem of Evil is often stated as a question: If God is all good and almighty, why is there evil in the world? Intelligent skeptics assume there is no solution to this “contradiction” and so reject theistic worldviews, including Christianity.

An attempt to answer the Problem of Evil is called a theodicy. The Greek roots of theodicy mean God-justification. In other words, a theodicy is an attempt to justify or exonerate God in the face of evil’s existence and to show that He is still all good and almighty after all.

The most popular theodicy today is the Freewill Theodicy. This idea states that it was such a priority in God’s mind to give humans and angels freewill, that He was willing to risk the possibility that they would choose evil. Therefore, the reason evil exists is not because God was unable to prevent it, but because he permits it for the “higher good” of giving his creatures freewill.

When I introduce the Problem of Evil in my classes, there are usually some good thinkers who propose the Freewill Theodicy. Until now, however, I’ve never had a student offer a refutation of the Freewill Theodicy. Last Thursday, Michael Rasch sorted it out. Michael’s thinking went something like this:

• The Freewill Theodicy prioritizes freewill over the absence of evil.
• Supposedly, the reason God prioritized freewill was because He wanted authentic relationship with us.
• However, God is able to design a universe that includes authentic relationship without evil. (In fact, God had authentic relationship with Adam and Eve before evil entered the world.)
• Therefore, the existence of evil is not necessary for authentic relationship.
• Furthermore, since the existence of evil is not necessary for authentic relationship, neither are the prerequisites for the existence of evil.
• Therefore, God did not permit evil for the sake of freewill, i.e., for the sake of authentic relationship, and the Freewill Theodicy is not adequate to answer the Problem of Evil!

Way to go, Michael!

There is another problem with the Freewill Theodicy: it tends to limit God’s omniscience. In other words, the Freewill Theodicy tends to assume that God did not know beforehand what humans and angels would do with freewill. This is the unorthodox and heretical position of today’s “Open Theists” who say God does not know ahead of time what choices free agents will make. The fact is, however, that God never takes risks because He already knows exactly what will happen, including what choices humans and angels will make (consider Jesus’ selection of Judas, John 6.70). We must conclude that everything that happens, including the existence of evil, will work together for good for those who love God (Rom 8.28) because there is Divine intentionality behind it.

posted by Roderick of TMin @ 8:53 AM 0 comments