Read the Fathers

Here's a blog that will help us do just that, page by page, seven a day in fact, with suggested secondary readings too.

Can't be bad.

Take a look here

Get with the programme

Co-opting and approving the congenial bits of the Christian faith, and jettisoning the rest, in the name of a political programme or philosophical world-view is not only a contemporary issue but has roots that run deep into ancient history.

That said, the 21st Century politics of left and right rely on the isolation of key words (fairness, equality, justice) used with minimal reference to the specific content given to them by particular political ideologies, and with almost zero explicit connection being made between those words and the intellectual positions that underpin them.  That's hardly surprising given the intellectual muddleheadedness of trying to get ethics out of fundamentally atheist assumptions.

When you peer through the fog of political rhetoric and start looking for substance and arguments the whole thing unravels.  N. T. Wright comments "Oh you're taking the moral high ground, tell me about the moral high ground you are standing on."

Politicians pick and approve the bits of Christianity that seem to fit with their programme and world view.  Our answer to that should be the same as that penned by Origen in his response to Celsus (written in Caesarea in 248 AD, two years before his martyrdom after prolonged torture).  Celsus had argued that:

...the Greeks are more skilful than any others in judging, establishing, and reducing to practice the discoveries of barbarous nations.  

And therefore Christianity is to be judged by the Greeks owing to its Judaic origin.  To which Origen replied:

Now this is our answer to his allegations, and our defence of the truths contained in Christianity, that if any one were to come from the study of Grecian opinions and usages to the Gospel, he would not only decide that its doctrines were true, but would by practice establish their truth, and supply whatever seemed wanting, from a Grecian point of view, to their demonstration, and thus confirm the truth of Christianity.  

We have to say, moreover, that the Gospel has a demonstration of its own, more divine than any established by Grecian dialectics.  And this diviner method is called by the apostle the “manifestation of the Spirit and of power:”

The Gospel will not get with anyone's programme.

Original goodness

Non-dualism peering through the narrative of Middle Earth:

"And that is another reason why the Ring should be destroyed: as long as it is in the world it will be a danger even to the Wise: For nothing is evil in the beginning.  Even Sauron was not so."

Elrond, The Fellowship of the Ring (being the first part of The Lord of the Rings)

The ordering of our faith: the blessed Trinity

This, then, is the ordering of our faith....God, the Father, uncreated, incomprehensible, invisible, one God, creator of all.  This is the first article.

The second is the Word of God, God the Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who was revealed to the prophets...At the end of the times, to sum up all things, he became man among men, visible and palpable, in order to destroy death and bring to light life, and bring about communion with God.

And the third is the Holy Spirit, by whom the prophets prophesied and the patriarchs were taught about God and the just were led into the path of justice, and who in the end of times was poured forth in a new manner upon men all over the earth renewing man to God.

Irenaeus of Lyon, (130-202 AD)

When the Trinity Appeared

"At the time of the Epiphany [that is, the baptism] of Christ, the Trinity appeared at the Jordan."

Jacob of Sarug

Evil in The Lord of the Rings (Peter Kreeft lecture)

Providence in The Lord of the Rings

"It was the strangest event in the whole history of the Ring so far: Bilbo's arrival just at that time, and putting his hand on it, blindly, in the dark.

There was more than one power at work, Frodo.  The Ring was trying to get back to its master.  

It had slipped from Isildur's hand and betrayed him, then when a chance came it caught poor Deagol...when its master was awake once more and sending out his dark thought from Mirkwood, it abandoned Gollum.  Only to be picked up by the most unlikely person imaginable: Bilbo from the Shire!

Behind that there was something else at work, beyond any design of the Ring-maker.  
I can put it no plainer than by saying that Bilbo was meant to find the Ring, and not by its maker.

In which case you also were meant to have it.  And that may be an encouraging thought."

Gandalf to Frodo, The Fellowship of the Ring

Suffered under Pontius Pilate

Here are the opening words of Luke 3:

In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene,  during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness.

The names Pilate, Herod, Annas, and Caiaphas, cast the shadow of the cross over the very beginnings of Jesus' public ministry.

Oops! Calvin and Cromwell bloopers

In Hans Kung's memoirs (Disputed Truth, Memoirs II) he refers to his travels through Cromwell, New Zealand, named he says 'after the famous Scottish Reformer, revolutionary and 'Lord Protector' Oliver Cromwell'...oops, that'll be the same Oliver Cromwell who was one of the most famous Englishmen ever to walk the earth.  Oh well, at least Kung never claimed to be infallible.

In the same ball-park is Mark Driscoll's anecdote in his book on the atonement (page 170), that James Arminius was in fact the son-in-law of John Calvin.  I have also discovered, claimed by another writer, that Theodore Beza was Calvin's son-in-law too.

Just imagine the fun the three of them must have had debating limited atonement.  I bet they teased him a lot, "Go on old boy tell us what you really think, stop messing about with all that ambiguous use of 'the world', and 'all'."  But I am sure that John just chuckled to himself and said "Wouldn't it be funny if several centuries from now people debated what I really thought about the matter."

Christus Victor

Gustav Aulen's work Christus Victor is noteworthy for several reasons, not least among them being the astonishing fact that it is a book on the atonement that makes no mention at all of Isaiah 53.  But he was right to draw attention to the Enlightenment attack on the "church doctrine" of the atonement:

"The theologians of the Enlightenment were the declared enemies of orthodoxy; and a chief object of their assault was just the satisfaction theory of the atonement, which they described as a relic of Judaism surviving in Christianity." (p. 7)

An example of what Aulen was referring to can be found in Immanuel Kant.  Note the following from Religion and Rational Theology:

It is totally inconceivable, however, how a rational human being who knows himself to deserve punishment could seriously believe that he only has to believe the news of a satisfaction having been rendered for him, and (as the jurists say) accept it utiliter [for one's advantage], in order to regard his guilt as done away with...No thoughtful person can bring himself to this faith.

That is Enlightenment man showing incredulity toward the atonement.

Old school exegetical arguments for the deity of Christ

Old school exegetical arguments for the deity of Christ start from the Pentateuch.  The following is from Justin Martyr's (c. 100-165 AD) work Dialogue with Trypho:

When I had spoken these words, I continued: “Permit me, further, to show you from the book of Exodus how this same One, who is both Angel, and God, and Lord, and man, and who appeared in human form to Abraham and Isaac, appeared in a flame of fire from the bush, and conversed with Moses.”  

And after they said they would listen cheerfully, patiently, and eagerly, I went on: “These words are in the book which bears the title of Exodus: ‘And after many days the king of Egypt died, and the children of Israel groaned by reason of the works;’ and so on until, ‘Go and gather the elders of Israel, and thou shalt say unto them, The Lord God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath appeared to me, saying, I am surely beholding you, and the things which have befallen you in Egypt.’ ” 

In addition to these words, I went on: “Have you perceived, sirs, that this very God whom Moses speaks of as an Angel that talked to him in the flame of fire, declares to Moses that He is the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob?"

The Great High Priest

Louis Berkhof's Systematic Theology may well be regarded as dry as dust, but as John Murray once said, you can find gold dust:

It is a consoling thought that Christ is praying for us, even when we are negligent in our prayer life; that He is presenting to the Father those spiritual needs which were not present to our minds and which we often neglect to include in our prayers; and that He prays for our protection against the dangers of which we are not even conscious, and against the enemies which threaten us, though we do not notice it. He is praying that our faith may not cease, and that we may come out victoriously in the end.

The Inexhaustible Saviour

First John Owen:

...when the conduit of Christ's humanity is inseparably united to the infinite, inexhaustible fountain of the Deity, who can look into the depths thereof? If, now, there be grace enough for sinners in an all sufficient God, it is in Christ.

And on this ground it is that if all the world should (if I may so say) set themselves to drink free grace, mercy, and pardon, drawing water continually from the wells of salvation; if they should set themselves to draw from one single promise, and angel standing by and crying, "Drink, O friends, yea, drink abundantly, take so much grace and pardon as shall be abundantly sufficient for the world of sin which is in everyone of you;"--they would not be able to sink the grace of the promise one hair's breadth.

Then Samuel Rutherford:

If there were ten thousand, thousand millions of worlds, and as many heavens full of men and angels, Christ would not be pinched to supply all our wants, and to fill us all.

Christ is a well of life, but who knoweth how deep it is to the bottom?

Subjective revelation: The opening of the gates of light

"There existed, long before this time, certain men more ancient than all those who are esteemed philosophers, both righteous and beloved by God, who spoke by the Divine Spirit, and foretold events which would take place, and which are now taking place. They are called prophets. 

These alone both saw and announced the truth to men, neither reverencing nor fearing any man, not influenced by a desire for glory, but speaking those things alone which they saw and which they heard, being filled with the Holy Spirit. 

Their writings are still extant, and he who has read them is very much helped in his knowledge of the beginning and end of things, and of those matters which the philosopher ought to know, provided he has believed them. 

For they did not use demonstration in their treatises, seeing that they were witnesses to the truth above all demonstration, and worthy of belief; and those events which have happened, and those which are happening, compel you to assent to the utterances made by them, although, indeed, they were entitled to credit on account of the miracles which they performed, since they both glorified the Creator, the God and Father of all things, and proclaimed His Son, the Christ [sent] by Him: which, indeed, the false prophets, who are filled with the lying unclean spirit, neither have done nor do, but venture to work certain wonderful deeds for the purpose of astonishing men, and glorify the spirits and demons of error. 

But pray that, above all things, the gates of light may be opened to you; for these things cannot be perceived or understood by all, but only by the man to whom God and His Christ have imparted wisdom."

Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho

Our God contracted to a span

It's a mind blowing thought that the Son of God, who created the heavens and the earth, became smaller than the full stop at the end of this sentence when he was in Mary's womb.

When was he rich?

"For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich."

2 Corinthians 8:9

With the ghost of Adolf Von Harnack looking over his shoulder and nodding with approval, Hans Kung describes the idea of the incarnation as a Hellenistic concept, conjured up by Hellenistic councils, deriving from a Hellenistic world. 

Kung writes:

"In the context of the history of the Jew Jesus, the Greek conceptual model of 'incarnation' must to some degree be buried." (Credo, p. 60-61).

Along with this withdrawal from the incarnation comes a denial and re-interpretation of the pre-existence of the Son of God.

But Paul says that 'though he was rich' Christ became poor.  And as an old Welsh preacher put it "He became poor when he came to Bethlehem.  Tell me, when was he rich?"

Or as Maxentius expressed it against those who deny the eternal pre-existence of the Son: 

We do not confound the diversity of natures, howbeit we believe not what you affirm, that Christ was made God; but we believe that God was made Christ.  For he was not made rich when he was poor; but being rich, he was made poor, that he might make us rich.

He did not take the form of God when he was in the form of a servant; but being in the form of God, he took on him the form of a servant.  In like manner, he was not made the Word when he was flesh; but being the Word, he was made flesh. 

Why it's unthinkable to deny penal substitution

"It would, of course, have been unthinkable that God should go back upon His word and that man, 

having transgressed, should not die" 

Athanasius, On the Incarnation

And how will man be redeemed from death unless another takes his place and bears his punishment?  Forgiveness without substitution would mean that every word of God did not prove true after all.

No Mere Luck

 

"Then the prophecies of the old songs have turned out to be true, after a fashion!" said Bilbo.

"Of course!" said Gandalf. "And why should they not prove true? Surely you don't disbelieve the prophecies, because you had a hand in bringing them about yourself? You don't really suppose, do you, that all your adventures and escapes were managed by mere luck, just for your sole benefit? You are a very fine person, Mr. Baggins, and I am very fond of you; but you only quite a little fellow in a wide world after all!"

"Thank goodness!" said Bilbo laughing...

No Paradise Lost

Hans Kung's Credo makes for curious reading.  As these four snippets illustrate, he retreats from the traditional biblical framework of Christian belief (how irrational to believe in the Fall in the modern world) and yet takes a giant existential (irrational) leap in the hope that macro evolution is meaningful:

On Eden:

"A perfect primal state--Fall--Redemption: three historical stages?...As if there ever had been a world without desire and death, devouring and being devoured." (p. 21)

On Original Sin:

"But the idea of an 'original sin'...can no longer be maintained, because there never was this human couple who sinned for all humankind." (p. 21)

On Macro Evolution:

"While we may not be able to prove that the whole process is fundamentally meaningful, we may presuppose this meaning in trust." (p. 25) 

"Only a yes in faith to a primal ground, primal base and primal meaning can answer the question of the origin, basis and goal of the evolutionary process and thus give people hope for an ultimate certainty and security." (p. 26)

The grace of revelation

"The Lord taught us that no one is able to know God unless taught by God.  God cannot be known without the help of God."

Irenaeus

"It was by an act of grace that God appeared to Abraham and the other prophets.  The eye of Abraham's heart was not the only cause of his seeing God; it was God's grace freely offered to a just man that allowed him to see."

Origen

"Our will does not suffice to give us a wholly pure heart.  We need God to create such a heart.  That is why the one who prays for understanding said:

 'Create in me a clean heart O God'."

Origen