Ever Reforming, Ever Loved

Deuteronomy 11:26-28

“See, I am setting before you a blessing and a curse: the blessing, if you obey the commandments of the LORD your God, which I command you today, and the curse, if you do not obey the commandments of the LORD your God, but turn aside form the way that I am commanding you today, to go after other gods that you have not known.”

Ephesians 1:3 and 6

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places…to the praise of his glorious grace with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.”

Beauty is often found in contrast. The more striking the contrast, the more arresting the beauty. The milky way is breathtaking when seen against the backdrop of the velvety, dark space that surrounds each tiny speck of light. The same is true of the old and new covenants. While both display the beauty of God, each one focuses on a different aspect of God’s beauty. The old covenant, with its commandments, displays the awesome holiness of a righteous judge, and the blessing that comes from serving and loving him, made more striking by the curse of disobediance. The new covenant, however, operates on a completely different paradigm. There is only blessing, and that to the praise of his grace. It’s not there isn’t a curse, its just that the curse has been absorbed by Christ. The commandments have been fulfilled in him, the curse has been taken care of for our disobedience, and all that is left is blessing. I am reminded of what Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 3:7-11

“Now if the ministgry of death, carved in letters on stone, came with such glory that the Israelites could not gaze at Moses’ face because of its glory, which was being brought to an end, will not the ministry of the Spirit have even more glory? For if there was glory in the ministry of condemnation, the ministry of righteousness must far exeed it in glory. Indeed, in this case, what once had glory has come to have no glory at all, because of the glory that surpasses it. For if what was being brought to an end came with glory, much more will what is permanent have glory.”

Post modernity has ushered in an age of intense cynisism, extreme paranoia, and skepticism to a ridiculous degree. WIthout going into too much detail, I will say only this: where we are now is a result of the trajectory of the desire to grasp rationally every aspect of the Christian worldview. While it is inevitable, and totally natural, for the human mind to want to have everything nailed down in regards to intellectual and a deep, soul satisfying assent to the truths of scripture,  an unhealthy emphasis has been placed on the task of creating a rational, metaphysical scaffolding to contain the mysteries of the Christian worldview.

This overemphasis on rationality has been to the detriment of faith, both being faculties of the mind whereby the mind assents to what it encounters. In the case of reason, the mind assents to what is proposed to it by laying down propositions on top of each other until there is enough there to justify assent. Thus, reason is only capable of assenting to that which is tangible to the faculties of reason, which takes in propositions on the basis of the senses. I know my hair is on fire, and I can reasonably assent to such a thing, when I can see the flames, feel the heat on my head, and smell that horrible smell of burning hair. By faith, I mean the faculty of the mind that assents to propostions not based upon first hand experience, but rather on the basis of testimony. When I go to the doctor to get a check up, I take his word for it that my good cholesterol and by bad cholesterol are in the healthiest 1% of men my age. I can’t see my cholesterol, I  can’t really feel it, aside from my heart not being clogged up, so I take his word for it. My mind assents to that propostion based upon the doctors testimony.

When you apply that to the mysteries of the Christian worldview, you can see how an unhealthy emphasis on reason can be a detriment to depth and meaning. You can’t explain the Trinity reasonably. You can’t explain the hypostatic union using  rational means. You just can’t. To the postmodern mind, that sounds awful, and to the postmodern Christian, almost scandalous. So let me say this very, very simply: Christianity, in all of its glorious mystery, DOES NOT MAKE SENSE TO THE MIND. It doesn’t. Tri-unity, hypostasis, persona, the union of two natures, both God and man, without any communication of the two, yet existing simultaneously in one body….man that’s just plain crazy. But it’s true. And I believe it. WIth all my heart I do, because I assent to them based on faith.

John Owen writes:

Herein consists the excellency of faith above all other powers and acts of the soul-that it receives, assents unto, and rests in, things in their own nature absolutely incomprehensible. It is elegkos ou blepomenon, (Hebrews 11:1)- “The evidence of things not seen”- that which makes evident, as by demonstration, those things which are no way objected unto sense, and which reason cannot comprehend. The more sublime and glorious- the more inaccessible unto sense and reason- the things which we are to believe, the more are we changed into the image of God, in the exercise of faith upon them.

The postmodern world hates the fact that it can’t grasp at God by reason alone, and so it either denies his existence, as the atheist does, says you can’t know him, as the agnostic, or that everyone knows just a little piece of him, as the religious relativist. But all of these views place emphasis on reason alone. The atheist outright denies him because there is no room for mysteries in their worldview. The agnostic denies the ability to know him because he exists, just beyond the boundaries of human existence. The religious relativist is perhaps the most elusive when it comes to the unhealthy emphasis on reason, because faith is such an important thing to them. However, they can’t assent to the mysteries of God through faith because they refuse to believe that the God of the Bible IS. They subsititute instead a faith that they are able to have a handle on reasonably.

But we can’t be hard on these three groups….it hasn’t been revealed to them. They don’t have the testimony of the Holy Spirit speaking through the Scriptures, and so they are left to a darkened understanding, “claiming to be wise” but becoming fools. Oh God, that you would pour out beams of your illuminating resplendence, and capture the hearts and minds of men!