by Anonymous Logician, Copyright February 10, 2008, all rights reserved.
What is
In the next few posts I'd like to take a brief look at Ephesians–a sort of bird's eye view that will follow Paul's flow of thought and mark his main points. I suggest the following three-part outline of Paul's focus: First, God saves people (Paul covers this from the first verse roughly to
Paul's first point, if you will, explores how God saves everyday sinners like you and me. Gratitude overwhelms his whole discussion; the first chapter is a long prayer filled with run-on sentences about how glad Paul is for the salvation of the Ephesians. Yet even Paul's rambling introduction carries massive theological weight.
He first covers how salvation is planned (1:1-1:6). In theological terms, we would call this the doctrine of predestination or the sovereignty of God. God, says Paul, "chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will." The result is "the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted" in Christ.
Some shy away from the strong emphasis on God's sovereignty; they look for something in us–such as our choice of Christ–for the reason that God chose us for salvation. God, in other words, being the great psychic that He is, looked into His crystal ball, saw who would eventually chose Jesus anyway, and then predestined them to salvation. Paul's reasoning is much different. God, according to Paul, made this decision "according to the good pleasure of his will" (v. 3). Verse 11 will later say that we are "predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will." God needs no reference point outside Himself; He makes His choices based solely on His own will, so that no one will boast, but rather give praise to "the glory of His grace" (v. 6).
Paul continues, explaining how salvation takes place (1:7-2:10). Unpacking the rich theology of this passage could take a whole book, but if we hit only the major highlights, we see two key themes: redemption through Christ's blood, and the overpowering grace of God. "In Him," Paul goes on, "we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace which He made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence…" (1:7-8). Paul can never separate the good news of the Gospel from the bad news of sin; the bad news is the necessary prerequisite. We are saved from something, and Paul doesn't shy away from this.
But not only are we saved from something; we are saved by something. Salvation isn't just a free pass or a Monopoly pardon card. Salvation cost the blood of God the Son. Paul here uses the term blood as a summary of what we now call the doctrine of Christ's "substitutionary atonement." That is, Christ stood in my place, bearing my sin legally before God, and took upon himself the punishment that a just God required. In the article linked above, I've tried to collect the biblical passages that support and develop this idea further.
Second, Paul wants us to focus on God's amazing grace. The word grace itself is packed with meaning; it tells us that even though we're at fault, God shows us undeserved favor because of the work of His Son. Have you ever heard some "positive" or "prosperity" preacher on TV say that we should just focus on grace and not worry about sin? The concept makes no sense; grace and sin go hand in hand. And Paul certainly has no desire to BS us when it comes to the severity of man's condition apart from God: "And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked…and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others [no sense of self-righteous superiority here]. But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved)… (2:1-5).
Paul then gets to some famous verses: "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast" (2:8-9). Paul leaves no room for bragging rights; not only are we saved "by grace through faith," but even this faith is "not of [our]selves." It's "the gift of God."
There's a powerful line about this in the recent movie Amazing Grace. Named after John Newton's famous hymn, the film explores the work of Englishman William Wilberforce to abolish the slave trade. In the movie, Albert Finney plays
Posted in Ethics & the Church Theology & Philosophy • 2 Comments • Permalink • 1128 views
by Anonymous Logician, Copyright February 06, 2008, all rights reserved.
With election year underway, we're sure to see our culture worshipping at the shrine of our political gods. The political process, we've been told, is our savior, and everyone seems to have his favorite apostle. Some hail change-embracing Democrats; some idolize law-and-order Republicans; others insist that only unknown third-party candidates can save us.
But, as Doug Wilson points out, all these saviors are false, despite the religious zeal with which they're embraced. This critique applies equally to socialistic leftists (some of whom profess Christ) and libertarian conservatives (some of whom profess Christ). Statism is an idol no matter which side of the aisle it sits on.
Wilson also points out how the modern political system, like a priesthood, uses threatenings and impending crises to build up its own messianic image:
-----The looming "crises" vary, and the contending saviors vary accordingly. This is not to deny the reality of genuine threats in the world, for they are out there, and we do need competent leadership to deal with them. But in modern political campaigns, the momentum that carries them forward is an emotional investment in the candidate as a person (which by itself is fine and healthy), but when this is combined with the crisis/savior approach it leads directly to a weird civic idolatry. People get attached to their candidate with a religious fervor (and even Christians do this), and when it comes out that you are not voting for that guy, they respond as if you had just heaved a dead cat into the Holy of Holies.
Posted in Politics & Current Events • 0 Comments • Permalink • 819 views
by Anonymous Logician, Copyright January 10, 2008, all rights reserved.
I guess I'm not quite done with the song "Believe" by The Bravery. Another great thing about Sam Endicott's lyrics is how the bridge shows up materialism for the enslaving system that it is:
I am hiding from some beast, but the beast was always here,
Watching without eyes, because the beast is just my fear
That I am just nothing–now it's just what I've become.
What am I waiting for? It's already done.
In one interview, Sam explains the band's name: "We're called The Bravery because that's the mindset I was in when I was writing the songs. Everyone in my age group wants to know what they're going to do with their lives. They all think that they're worth nothing and they're heading nowhere. People are drowning in these thoughts and I just got sick of it. I didn't want to be like that. The name is also connected with living in New York in this really weird time. People are constantly waiting for something bad to happen. I wrote these songs and formed this band to make sure I didn't get overcome by that sense of fear. That's what this band is about–standing tall and not being afraid."
The fear Endicott sees results from our flirtation with nihilism, a philosophy which holds that meaning is impossible; nothing really matters. And while it's great that a courageous few will stand against it, most people don't realize how closely related nihilism is to today's acceptable Darwinian, materialistic evolution.
"Materialism" means simply the view that nothing but matter exists–no spirit, no soul, no God or devil. Somehow, preexistent matter gave rise to life, which slowly developed into more complex living forms. Eventually we get humanity, but there's nothing particularly special about man. He's kind of smart, a good tool user. A collection of chemicals. Nothing more.
The key word is accidental. Everything happens by chance. Logically, then (not that logic means anything in a nihilistic worldview), even the thoughts in our heads would be the accidental by-products of random neuron firings. Ironically, that gives us little reason to trust the materialist's explanation of the world; as C. S. Lewis pointed out, it's like upsetting a milk jug and then expecting the shape of the spill to describe how and why the jug was upset. One person happens to think "atheistically" and another might think "theistically," but the difference is like preferring Pepsi to Coke.
In other words, if humanity is nothing more than an accidental collection of molecules resulting from some previous accidental explosion, there seems little use in trying to explain anything or make something of oneself. To use Endicott's phrase, the "beast" of fear is inescapable, because it's housed in our very worldview. The last line has a dual meaning: In one sense, Endicott points to the foolishness of waiting; There's nothing to wait for. Everything's over before it begins. The other meaning has to with Endicott's fear of being a "nothing"–he realizes that the atheistic worldview already makes us nothing anyway. It's already done.
Humanity's secret fear is that being human, in the end, really has no meaning. But as Endicott points out, living that fear only feeds the beast.
-----Posted in Music & Film Theology & Philosophy • 0 Comments • Permalink • 1097 views
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