Category Archives: Christian Culture

Everyone is a Theologian, Even the aTheologians

Posted on by

Friedrich Nietzsche

I don’t think most know this: but every decision a person makes in this life is informed by theology. That doesn’t mean it is being informed by a genuinely Christian theology, but theology just the same. Many people presume that they aren’t religious, and thus further presume that they simply live a-theological lives. But the problem with that, one anyways, is that in a world that is contingent upon God’s Word, His eternal Logos, Jesus Christ, for its ongoing existence, everything in such a world necessarily becomes theological (“religious” even). If this is true (and be sure, it is!), it behooves the Christian and the non-Christian alike to work at having the good theology; indeed, as that is delivered afresh anew as Jesus Christ at the Father’s Right Hand, in-breaks into this world by the Holy Spirit into each one of our lives on the daily (second-by-second). You might think you’re free from this, oh dearest self-proclaimed “non-religious” person. Jesus makes clear that the Holy Spirit comes convicting the world of sin, righteousness, and the judgment to come. And so, this invites each and every one of us to live the repentant life. The life that Christ first lived for us every step, every breath He took for us as He lived here among us some two-thousand years ago. It is the life of the cross; we are called to take up the cross of Christ daily and follow Him. To be sure, He has already done that first for us. Hence, He has called us, and is calling us, and is calling you to walk in the power of His might, who is the Holy Spirit of the living God.

We are all theologians in this world, whether we might like it or not. Even if you think you’re an a-theologian (think atheist or agnostic, or “non-religious”), even so, you make “theological” decisions every day of your life. It is impossible not to whilst we inhabit a world that has been graciously created and recreated by the triune God; in a world where every single human life is held and made in the image of God, who is the image of Christ.

The Dandelion of God’s Kingdom in the Midst of the Profanus Communio: With Reference to Charlie Kirk

Posted on by

Charlie Kirk was just a guy, a highly motivated and gifted brother. He was constrained by the love of Christ. He saw himself as an emissary for Jesus Christ. And it was because of all of this that he died a Christian martyr’s death. He was too young, some would say (I would). And yet, the Lord has a story, has a ministry, a service for each one of us who are His own. Sometimes that story entails living a long life on this earth, eighty or ninety years, maybe. And other times, like my little brother, it only lasts thirty minutes outside of the womb; and in Charlie’s case, it was thirty-one, almost thirty-two years. Our Lord, in His earthly ministry, had somewhere around thirty-three years, and then ascended. The point is, is that we all have something to do for our Lord whilst here. He has uniquely, in Himself, given each of us the strength, the gifts (as needed, relative to steps of faith) required to live out His witness through us, one for the other, and the other for the one.

Charlie, in obedience to his calling, took many steps into the Jordan. And with each step the water parted into the promised land of God’s abundance for Him in Jesus Christ. This is the power of Christ’s witness in someone’s life who has decided to charge hard after Him and His mission for the world. This “hard charging” is of course, not by might, nor by power, but by the Spirit of the living God where there is liberty.

But as is all too apparent, as these steps are taken in this ‘evil age’ there will always be pushback. The world system, or the Beast kingdom, is at counter-purposes with the missio Dei (‘mission of God’) at every step. As the Apostle Paul recognizes, in his epistle to Timothy, there are doctrines of demons afoot and funding this world system. For those without the armor of God, for those who are still inhabitants of the kingdom of darkness, they are easy prey to such doctrines. They have no protection. As such, such populates look for safety in numbers; they look for groups and tribes that offer them a sense of safety and stridence within a clearly broken and fragmented world. It is within these cathedrals of darkness where the Enemy of our souls offers up the sacrament of their own bodies as the ultimate meaning of what is real, what is right, what is hope in the midst of darkness. And without the Holy Spirit, without being participants in the Kingdom of the Son of His love, these wary and frightened souls find repose and solace within the dictates of their own fellow bodies. It is within this type of profanus communio (unholy communion) that all manner of dastardly deeds, vices, thoughts, ideas, notions, feelings, so on and so forth are cultivated; all to the end of upbuilding this holy body, “my holy body” “our holy body” within the desires of our sickened and blackened hearts, beyond all feeling.

Charlie Kirk, and all faithful Christians bearing witness to the holiness of the Kingdom of God, the ‘kingdom of the Son of His love,’ push into the aforementioned unholy communion. The darkness and delusion are exposed by the light of Christ, the power of God. It is this reality, the ascended Christ reality, that buggers the whole darkness-project. When self-actualization driven by my darkened inward turned navel feelings is challenged all it can do is recoil in shrieking anger and despise. The devil himself, identified by Jesus, as the father of lies, as the author of murder, becomes instigated by the light-bearers, as they reflect the Light of Light in the face of Jesus Christ, and he attempts to mount a counter-assault on such faces. This counter was what Charlie Kirk experienced; indeed, instigated by the devil, and implemented by his minions within the multilayered kingdom of darkness. Within this more volatile, this more active aspect of his kingdom, within the evil age, these agents of darkness, ensnared in ways that  they cannot even imagine themselves, lash out. In this instance, Charlie Kirk experienced what, I’m sure, the Dragon of old, in all his futility, hoped would extinguish the penetration of the Kingdom of Light of Light, into his kingdom of darkness; particularly among the young. And yet because of the Great Reversal, the one where Jesus triumphed on the cross, making a public spectacle of the Enemy and his minions, has been flipped on its ugly dragon head. The seed of the Kerygma, the Gospel, the Power of God, has now been blown a thousandfold all across the globe. The Kingdom of Light of Light spreads, not by might, nor by power, but by the Spirit of the LORD. Like a massive dandelion, the breath of the Holy Spirit blows forth, in what appears to be dead seeds, only to spread God’s Word all across the lands. Indeed, so much so, that it penetrates the conclaves of darkness the Enemy has so ghoulishly and carefully been cultivating for his own murderous and destructive ends.

The bottom line, the eschatological reality, is that God has already won. Charlie Kirk’s death within the economy of God’s Kingdom is no death at all. Instead, it is a spur that only magnifies the strength and Light of God’s Kingdom; resulting in more seeing, rather than less. We grieve at Charlie’s death, and we really do!, but we know the Victory has been already had. Charlie stepped into the eternal arms of the everlasting Father the split-second that bullet ended his earthly life; at least “ended” for the time being. Charlie was in union with Christ. Christ has already died, been buried, rose again, and ascended for over two thousand years; thus, Charlie, and all the saints past, present, and future (as the Lord tarries) lives, not dies.

Charlie Kirk, An Aroma of Christ

Posted on by

Charlie, died in Christ. Christ in Charlie was an aroma of life leading to life, for some, and for others, an aroma of death leading to death. It was the aroma of Christ perfusing through Charlie’s witness for his Lord that brought connection for all, through the Holy Spirit. People are longing deeply for the peace of Christ, the speech of Grace that perfumed Charlie’s interactions with others, and we collectively saw that taken away in a violent way. Charlie, was just living the Christian life in public, which is a uniting not a fracturing life. Rest in the peace of Christ, Charlie.

The Secular Background Behind the, Shepherds For Sale

Posted on by

If you hadn’t noticed, I deleted my last post in support of Megan Basham’s new book: Shepherds For Sale. Here is something else I have written in its place.

While exposing the darkness is what we ought be about I’m having second thoughts on putting too much stock into Megan Basham’s book, Shepherds For Sale. What she is confronting is clearly a problem in the evangelical churches, and one that has been present long before the expose. But I’m afraid her book is relying too much on making some type of forensic case in regard to following money-trails and backers. Ultimately, what matters is what is being introduced into the Christian world by the folks Megan is highlighting, and many others who she is not. It seems people on the side she is exposing are attempting to claim that if all the details of MB’s work aren’t inerrant, then her recognition of the broader problem is in fact errant. But of course this isn’t the case.

In other words, it isn’t that I think MB’s book is reporting things that aren’t true, per se. But ultimately the problem remains an ideational one, as communicated by these mainstream evangelicals. The case, at an ideational level could be made that the real problem that stands behind evangelicalism is the fact that it is built on a turn to the subject anthropology and thus, epistemology. Evangelicalism’s foundations, as those took shape under American Fundamentalist pressures, are rationalist, romanticist, and positivist just as much as are the leftists’ and progressives’. Until the pastors and churches who are against the progressive agenda realize this no amount of pietism and moralism will be able to finally stave off the very foundations that ground the whole evangelical experiment.

Conversely, I think an unintended consequence of Basham’s book might be to allow her opponents (in her book) to deflect away from the real ideological and theological issues by arguing against the details of her reporting (i.e., following the “money-trail”). But I don’t think that is where the argument is at, even to start with. Whether or not Soros, and others like him, are behind the funding of the mainstream evangelicals, particularly as we find that at Christianity Today, and other like outlets, (and I think they are, in many demonstrable ways) is not where this argument should terminate. It only counts further against these types of operatives within the churches. But the better way to counter them, as in any spiritual war, is to undercut the very rootage of their beliefs and agendas at the ground level. At best, Basham’s work can expose some of the financial compromise that is happening behind the scenes, which then ties into identifiably secular (and satanic) agendas. But the “argument” need not rise or fall on that point in itself.

Addendum:

I am continuing to read through Megan Basham’s book. She is writing as a reporter should write, and simply following the leads as they present themselves. This type of work needs to be done so people in the churches can, at the very least, understand better where their tithes are going; and with what “other monies” it is being mixed. This is no small matter since tithe money is collected as unto the LORD, and ostensibly being used to execute the work of His ministry through the Church. The problem though remains; as Os Guinness titled one of his books, evangelicals in the main, “have fit bodies but fat minds.” Until the pastors stop fleecing the sheep—by not teaching them deep and stretching biblical theology etc.—I’m afraid Basham’s work will fall on mostly deaf ears. Even so, the work itself needed to be done.

The problem remains though, there isn’t a “stable” place to return to for “evangelicals.” Evangelicalism in the main hasn’t ended up where it has in a vacuum. I’m not exactly sure what the antidote is, but staying within the “intellectual” milieu that funds evangelicalism will only result in a full circle cycle of movement. Once again, these matters are not purely binaries of us/them-them/us. That is too shortsighted, and too pietistic to think this way.

What is Love? Against the Cultural and Psychological Conceptions in the Church

Posted on by

Helmut Thielicke makes an excellent observation as he engages with the “conscience” as that is distilled in the epistle to the Romans. He notes that there really is no such thing as an autonomous conscience. For Thielicke the conscience, as understood biblically, is either going to be “ridden” by a fallen broken human nature, or it is going to be ridden and shaped by God’s triune life; there is no via media or Swiss neutral ground. And it is within this understanding, which we might say is the Pauline understanding, wherein Thielicke will argue that the point of contact between God and humanity is not resident within a native (to an abstract person’s) conscience, but instead it is only as God in Christ circumscribes our humanity with His; it is only as Christ condemns sin in His body for us that we come to have the capaciousness to know and be for Him.

Thielicke writes:

We see here at the same time the consequences of Roman Catholic anthropology, which we have already discussed in some detail in connection with the doctrine of the imago Dei. If the human person is not understood in relationship, but instead is given ontic autonomy as the bearer of demonstrable components of nature and of ontic substances of grace, then loving with one’s whole heart can no longer be understood personally in terms of existence in fellowship with God. It has to be understood instead as the ontically demonstrable content of the heart, as a psychodynamic state of being filled with loving impulses. The ontology of man leads at once to psychology, and indeed to a theological-speculative kind of psychology. Once we enter upon this path, we cannot avoid the conclusion that in terms of psychical structure man’s “infirmity”—i.e., the fact that soul is necessarily filled with shifting contents, with varied impressions and desires as well as with tasks and duties which claim our attention and devotion—man’s “infirmity” is completely incompatible with his being totally filled with love for God. Love for God as a psychical “content” then enters at once into competition with other potential contents of the soul. In any case love’s claim to be total is wholly illusory—until these competing contents of the psyche are eliminated in the uninterrupted and undeflected vision of God in the life to come. Thus the command to love loses its unconditional character the moment we enter the ontological-psychological plane of thought. For on that level it is no longer possible to grasp the personal category of love.

It is precisely at this point that we can find help in the formulation of Luther whereby the subject of faith—in this context we may with equal propriety say: the subject of love—is a “mathematical point” [punctum mathematicum]. Luther uses this extreme formulation to combat the fatal psychologizing of faith and love. He refuses to regard the subject of faith and love as merely an extended psychical tract filled with diverse forces and aspirations. There is thus no place for such questions as whether we are supposed to believe or to love at every single moment of our lives, or how such permanence is to be understood psychologically. Faith and love are characterized by their object, not by the psychical accomplishment of believing and loving. I confess him who loved me, and I believe in him who has given me his promises.

Thus the life of piety has as its goal not that all our time should be filled up with “conscious” faith and love, i.e., with conscious acts of believing and loving, so that everything else is dismissed from our minds as we move to at least approximate that total filling of the psyche. On the contrary, Luther recommends periods of prayer and devotion merely as “signs” that my time is under God, not as devices for filling up my time—at least partially—with thoughts of love and faith. The object of my faith , God’s love and righteousness, is still effectively present even when I “feel” nothing, even when I am “empty” or terrorized by doubt.[1]

As Thielicke presciently identifies (along with Luther): as the root goes, so goes the tree. If the root is rotten, the tree will be rotten. If the root is healthy and vibrant, the tree will be healthy and vibrant. You will notice that Thielicke is really critiquing the Roman Aristotelian (and insofar as that is picked up in Post Reformed and Lutheran orthodox theology) categories of thinking of grace in terms of habitus (disposition and its habituizing), and as substance and qualities. In other words, he is critiquing the Thomist synthesis wherein grace becomes its own independent substance resident in an abstract self-possessing humanity. He is rightfully arguing that when such categories are deployed, in regard to thinking about an ostensible notion of God’s grace, that the person under such notion-izing is flittering about in an inward curved movement of the soul upon the soul in a striving attempt to make their innards, their ‘feelings’ somehow correspond with what they speculate, what they perceive to be God’s love, God’s affection, God’s feeling. But according to Thielicke, to use a Torrancean (TFT) phrase, “this is only to throw the person back upon themselves.”

What Thielicke is offering as the alternative to the aforementioned is the biblical reality wherein humanity, and its conscience therein, is understood to be grounded in an alien conscience; but one that has been brought into union with us, insofar that God in Christ has brought us into union with Him, and His vicarious humanity for us. The problem that Thielicke vis-à-vis Luther is identifying is that the human propensity is to constantly think itself as the prius to all else; so the ‘turn to the subject’ that modernity has sophisticated for human consumption.

There are multiples of implications to all of the aforementioned, particularly as we think about the state of the Christian church in the West (and elsewhere). We can immediately see the effects of what happens when the church ingests a psychologized self wherein people, Christians in their spirituality, are reduced to performing for themselves and others. When genuinely triune love is not what constrains us, as that is truly actualized for us in Christ, then all that we ultimately have is a love within the ‘accidents’ of our being that we can strive to produce and express in “sacrosanct” efforts to demonstrate that while we were yet sinners we died for Christ’s sake. That is to say, as Thielicke has: that when love is thought of in philosophical rather than personalist terms what we necessarily end up with is a self-driven and cultivated notion of love that is not necessarily at the core of our beings coram Deo (before God).

[1] Helmut Thielicke, Theological Ethics: Foundations (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966), 342–43.

Are the Western churches even the Church Anymore?

Posted on by

Confusing the various subcultures of Christianity, with the Gospel itself is fleeting. Each Christian tradition has its own idiosyncratic ways of liturgizing, and various parochialisms, and its just straight up weird stuff that they do. For my respective “tribe,” broadly speaking, as an American evangelical, what has become weird is driven by its slavish commitment to consumerism at all costs. Whether it be professional worship bands leading worship (like the folks who didn’t quite make the American Idol cut), the pastor wearing skinny jeans, sporting a mustache, with a man bun, or just the self-help sermons and programs that run amok in such environs, there is a cultural Pelagianism present behind such productions. That is to say, the belief that people, in the main, are simply neutral beings, and that given the proper external stimuli they can be persuaded, one way or the other, to affirm Christ or not; they can be “led” into a situation, through various conditionings (and programs), where, as the theory goes, they will come to feel included in the community. You know the whole “felt needs” and “real needs” combine. One big problem with this is that such seeker sensitive churches get so hyper fixated on meeting peoples’ felt needs—with the rationalization that it’s all being done in the name and claim of the Gospel—that that becomes the end. They are unable, under such inertia, to ever get to the real need; which has been the supposed justification for using the felt needs to begin with.

As an American evangelical who has grown up in this, from its more fundy iteration to where it is now, what I have come to realize, along with many, that such Pelagianistically funded churches really aren’t representative of the church writ large at all. That is not to say that there aren’t “saved” people in the pews all throughout such churches. But it is to say that these people have become used to, and thus expectant of having their ears and eyes tickled with feel good messages; for the most part. After awhile though, the discerning Christian has to start asking at what point such a group ceases to be operating as a real life, Spirit led church, and instead finds its function more in line with some sort of social club (e.g., think of Christian Smith’s adage: moralistic therapeutic deism). None of this is to suggest that the church, this side of the Eschaton, will ever be perfect. But it is to say that at a certain point the Ghost has been given up indeed, and the so-called pastors are nothing more than “hirelings” for cultural dereliction.

For those of us seeking a healthy local church to attend, in such environments, this scenario makes it exceedingly difficult. For me, the pastors involved in this type of tripe are heading for a serious and heavy judgment. In the end, the Gospel cannot be reduced to these church subcultures; and yet often, people do engage in such reductions—and so they become so-called Exvangelicals, Nones, or straight up atheists (of a certain pop type). The Gospel is Christ as attested to and encountered in Holy Scripture. The Gospel is God’s triune Life for the world, and a genuine church is to faithfully bear witness to this deep reality; through deep and stretching teachings, activities, so on and so forth. Outwith this I have a hard time seeing how the apostasies of the Western churches (and elsewhere) can be curbed.

“Beggars All”: On Abandoning the Progressive and Legalist Mode of Salvation

Posted on by

I don’t think I’ll ever understand the impulse towards perfectionism; not in light of the Gospel, that is. And yet it is rampant, especially as given non-stop expression on “Christian social media” (I’m mostly thinking of X/Twitter). There are always these extremes on a continuum. There are those who think to be anti-legalist is to be progressive and loose to everything. On the other hand, there are those who think to be holy (saved) is to be legalistic to the point that all of what they say about others never applies to them; as if they have perfectly arrived; as if they just are one of the elect and everyone else is reprobate, or at least highly suspect. But both centers stem from the same type of “meism.” As if the human agent is the determiner, on either side, of what is good, and beautiful, and free. This, I take to be, the perfectionist impulse; which really is just a performative mood wherein a person, one way or the other, simply must assert their own self-contrived standing before God and others. Either they assert their “freedom,” or they assert their ”legalism”; both being given ground by the homo incurvatus in se.

We aren’t saved based on being so-called “free” or so-called “constrained by our obedience.” We are justified before God because He who knew no sin assumed our unrighteousness that we might become the righteousness of God in Him; it is because of His poverty that we are made rich in the beautiful garments of righteousness which He has robed us with. All our righteousness is like filthy rags; that doesn’t end once we become Christians. We live, moment-by-moment, afresh anew, by His righteousness for us; by His re-creating for us and in us and with us. We remain simul justus et peccator (‘simultaneously justified and sinner’), as such, we live by His mercy and grace as He always lives to make intercession for us.

Are there standards of righteousness and holiness that we bear witness to as Christians? Yes, but this by the Holy Spirit in Christ in us, and not just against the broken world out there, but the broken world “in here,” in our own fallen and broken hearts. We ought to call out unrighteousness and evil, exposing the darkness with the light of God’s Word, but in so doing we really are only exposing our own wretched hearts, outwith Christ’s heart for us. This ought to at least humiliate us to the point that we remain obedient, even to the death of the cross. And the ground of this obedience is funded by God’s eternal life of humility for us, as He freely chose to become us in the humanity of Jesus Christ (Deus incarnandus). We certainly do have freedom in Christ, but it is a freedom circumscribed by being for God, and not for ourselves. It is a freedom to be holy as He is holy. It is a freedom to bear witness to the world that the Son has set us free, free indeed.

I’m not suggesting that we ought to be looking for some type of balance between being libertine or legalistic. I am suggesting that we abandon that whole paradigm altogether. God’s righteousness in Christ confronts us in the living color of His flesh and blood life for us in Jesus Christ; indeed, as He continuously breathes and hovers over us, from within, by the Holy Spirit. His work is ‘out of nothing’ (ex nihilo), which means that our daily lives are totally contingent upon His Word and Way, and not ours. There is nothing inherent to this world system that supplies us with the sustenance we require to live in the free life that God has brought us into by yoking Himself with us in His freedom for us in Christ. We have a new creation life that comes from outside of us, as an ‘alien life,’ as if manna falling from the heavens in the morning dew each and every day. This freedom, this righteousness we have been given through union with Christ, and thus participants in the triune life Godself, is not a possession of ours, as if a self-possession; we, instead, are a possession of this righteousness’s. This cannot be stressed enough: our lives, as Christians, as human beings, are fully and continuously, moment-by-moment, contingent on God’s Logos. We bring nothing to this arrangement except our dissolute selves, which the Creator, the Sustainer, indeed, the Father in His eternal relationship with the Son, has entered into, in the Son’s assumption of flesh, taking the depth of our fallenness, which He alone can see, into the bones and marrow of His humanity, allowing that to have its final and just result in the human life lived in obedience unto the Father, finally eventuating in death, even death on a cross. We couldn’t and cannot do that. It takes the homoousios Theanthropos (GodMan) to do that for us. And while that event, in itself, is once and for all, it is an event that has ‘perfect tense’ reality insofar that we gain our reality before God, continuously, as events-in-happening, moment-by-moment, through God’s reality for us in His Melchizedekian life as the Son of David, our High Priest, who sits at the right hand of the Father always living to make intercession for those who will inherit His eternal life.

Since our lives are contingent in the above way, we have no space for boasting except in the fact that our God is indeed the living and triune God who has not left us as orphans. This ought to change the way we approach the world, others, and ourselves. We, as Luther was wont to say (paraphrase), “are beggars all.”

Barth on Adultery in the Church Dogmatics and 1 Corinthians 11

Posted on by

Photo copyright of the Karl Barth-Archiv in Basel, Switzerland

Almost seven years ago now I wrote a post based on Christiane Tietz’s just released essay (at that point) where she offers some of Karl Barth’s and Charlotte von Kirschbaum’s love letters, translated for the first time from their original German into English. My initial blog post ended up going relatively “viral” in the theo-blogosphere, and eventually, beyond. My post, and then series of posts, was referred to by an article written by Mark Galli at Christianity Today, and then at Mere Orthodoxy and other like outlets online. A little later my blog posts (as a series at this point) were referred to in an essay published by the Scottish Journal of Theology, and then in a book chapter published in a volume by Brill. Since then, Christiane Tietz went on to write a book called Karl Barth: A Life in Conflict where she addresses, even more fully than she did in her original essay, the Barth-von Kirschbaum relationship (among many other unrelated things vis-à-vis Barth’s theology).

These days I prefer not to opine on these things much. But in this instance, I am going to make an exception. On my current read through of the Dogmatics I’m in that section of III/2 where Barth, more broadly, is developing his theological anthropology, but in this particular instance is offering his treatment on the male-female relationship; particularly as that is situated within a biblical, New Testament frame, for marriage. He is engaging with the crux interpretum found in I Corinthians 11, wherein so-called complementarians, egalitarians, and everyone in between or beyond, have spilt much ink, and voiced many spoken words on the relationship between the sexes vis-à-vis God. For our purposes what I find informative about this passage from Barth is how it implicates his ongoing relationship with Charlotte. Indeed, what is ironic, as this is well-known in Barth studies, is the close role von Kirschbaum played in the composition of the Dogmatics (some even argue that she wrote large sections of it). What I think is important to note is that even given their relationship neither one of them shied away from still bearing witness to what Holy Scripture itself says with reference to the fidelity of Christian marriage. Even though what “they” write directly bears witness against them and their relationship, they still write it. Let’s read along:

We recall from 1 Cor. 11 that the knowledge of the true relationship between man and wife established and determined and limited by the knowledge of Jesus Christ stands in contrast to the enthusiasm for equality which will not accept the fact that they are both allotted to their distinctive place and way in the peace of God. Where it is not a matter of this intoxication but of the fulness of the Spirit, not of the boasting and defiance of man but of the praise of God, not of the establishment of one’s own right by one’s own might but of constant thanksgiving, there flows from the Gospel the necessity of the reciprocal subordination in which each gives to the other that which is proper to him. This is the meaning of the house-table: Suum cuique [To each his own]. It has nothing really to do with patriarchalism, or with a hierarchy of domestic and civil values and powers. It does not give one control over the other, or put anyone under the dominion of the other. The ὑποτασσόμενοι [submitting] of v. 21 applies equally to all, each in his own place and in respect of his own way. What it demands is ὑποτασσόμενοι ἀλλήλοις ἐν φόβῳ Χριστοῦ [submitting one to another in the fear of Christ], mutual subordination in respect before the Lord. He is the Exalted but also the Lowly, the Lowly but also the Exalted, who causes each to share in His glory but also His burden, His sovereignty but also His service. And here there is only mutual subordination in full reciprocity. In this way order is created within the creaturely sphere, and humanity established. It is, of course, no accident that more than half of the table is devoted to the relationship of man and woman, and particularly their relationship in marriage. This relationship is typical or exemplary for the whole relationship which has to be estimated in the fear of Christ. In good or evil alike all relations between the sexes have their fulfillment and norm in the fact that this man finds this woman and this woman this man and therefore man the fellow-man to whom he is referred and with whom he is united. We stated at the outset that expression is given to fellow-humanity as one man looks the other in the eyes and lets himself be seen by the other. The meaning and promise of marriage is that this should take place between man and woman, that one woman should encounter one man as his, and one man one woman as hers. Where it takes place we have a good marriage; the marriage which can only monogamous. It is from this height that the whole field is surveyed. Again, it is accident that the list of admonitions opens with that to the wife and not to the husband (v. 22). That the participle clause ὑποτασσόμενοι is naturally continued in this way, and general mutual subordination has its first concrete form in the wife, is explained at once in v. 23 by the comparison: “For the husband is the head of the wife (a statement taken from 1 Cor. 11.3), even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body.” Because her subordination stands under this comparison, the woman must see to it that it is not broken but maintained. And therefore the subordination of woman to man is the first and most interesting problem which arises in this field. Not man but woman represents the reality which embraces all those who are addressed, whether they be wives or husbands, old or young, slaves or masters, which claims even the apostle himself in his peculiar position, and from which he thinks and speaks and admonishes them to think and act. They are all the community which has in Jesus Christ its Head. They are all set in this place and called and gathered to this community by baptism. For none of them can there be any question of a higher or better place. None of them can ever think of escaping from or trying to climb above it. In the fulness of the Spirit they can only wish to remain at this place, listening, obedient and therefore subordinate to the One from whom and for whose sake the whole community exists, and without whom it could not continue for a single moment or in any respect, since it is the body which is snatched and rescued from the fire of perdition only in virtue of its union with this Head. The advantage of the wife, her birthright, is that it is she and not the man who, in relation to her husband and subordination to him, may reflect, represent and attest this reality of the community. The exhortation specifically addressed to her is simply a particular form of the basic admonition which applies to all. She is subordinated to her husband as the whole community is to Christ. The whole community can only take up the position in relation to Christ which is proper to the wife in relation to Christ as the wife in relation to her husband. This is what makes the admonition to the wife so urgent and inescapable. And this is what characterizes it as a peculiar distinction for the wife. If she does not break but respects the true relationship to her husband, the wife is not less but greater than her husband in the community. She is not the second but the first. In a qualified sense she is the community. The husband has no option but to order himself by the wife as she is subordinate in this way.[1]

So much depth of richness here. But for space constraints let me simply close this way: many of Barth’s critics “out there” (who typically haven’t read him very much or at all) simply dismiss him on the rather scandalous relationship he had with Charlotte; and I can understand this. Some, including myself, have wondered how that relationship might have impacted Barth’s (and Charlotte’s) capacity to remain faithful to the teachings of Holy Scripture (that is how they handled them); particularly with reference to texts like we find in I Corinthians 11. Hopefully this passage (which I shared in length for greater context) will help to cast some critical light on Barth’s tethering to the authority and teaching of the Sacra pagina. Does this excuse Barth (and Charlotte)? Of course not; may it never be. But what it should help to show is that neither Barth or Charlotte allowed their relationship to skew their reading and teaching of Holy writ. Even so, they remained in a posture of disobedience through their ongoing relationship (to death); and yet they continued so under the clear knowledge they held in regard to the principled and Holy expectations that God required for men and women, and society in general, to function in God’s ordered and desired way. They knew they lived in failure as a result of their relationship, and had to know the type of damage it was producing, firsthand, as Barth and Charlotte witnessed how it affected Barth’s wife, Nelly, and their children. It just goes to show the disaffected and irrational nature of sin; it remains a pernicious force, even for those who profess Christ. May we count ourselves, and the members of our bodies, as dead to sin and alive to Christ; afresh anew, moment by moment by the Grace of God in Jesus Christ. Kyrie eleison

[1] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics. The Doctrine of God III/2 §45 (London/New York: T&T Clark, 2010), 108–09 [emboldening and brackets mine].

Nala’s Salvation: Against Her “Christian” Legalistic Critics

Posted on by

Legalism continues to be rife on the theological interwebs. An OnlyFans porn star (at the top of the “game”) just gave her life to Christ (she grew up as a Baptist pastor’s kid, like me). I watched her whole interview, where she shared her life story and testimony, on the Michael Knowles show (2:20 minutes). She has gotten lots of pushback and skepticism, particularly on the website formerly known as Twitter. There is a high profile (on said website) Jewess who has been saying vile things about this former star. But she’s a Jewess and not a Christian; so, definitionally she wouldn’t understand the nature of God’s grace (at least not yet). But then there have also been “Christians” pushing back at this sister. I want to highlight one of these fellas. Of course, this guy has written a book on “biblical masculinity,” has a podcast on the topic, and unfortunately, has quite a few followers on X and probably other social media platforms. What he says about this young sister makes my blood boil; it is as antiChrist/antiGospel that someone can get (let his message be anathema). Here is part of what he said:

Nala’s entire life has been a lie. She has profited in multi-millions from the twin society-crushing evils of Feminism and the Sexual Revolution. She has led countless men astray for pay, selecting for her profession a task built on values that are explicitly anti-family, anti-Law, and therefore anti-Christ and anti-Logos. She should be revolted at the multi-generational forces that twisted a creature made in God’s image into this demonic mockery of a human female. God didn’t just save her from hell. He saved her from years of her own sin-enslaved wretchedness, which spread virally over the internet touching the lives of potentially millions in exchange for cash. Honorable men with grit under their nails and sweat on their brow and scars on their arms engaged in months of backbreaking labor to make less than she probably did for one weekend’s parade of digital sin. You do not understand the truly cosmos-rending chain of confession, repentance, mercy, grace, and salvation well enough if you think baptism and a few words on camera suffice to expunge the stain on the earth, let alone herself, that she has created. A repentant heart would scrape off all remnants of that clownish makeup to reveal the unadorned face of the woman underneath, as God sees her, and beg the men she exploited for forgiveness. She would stare into the image of the photo below with horror and never wish for one second to be mistaken for that death-cult parasite again. She would decry from the mountaintops the fallenness of the world that allowed and even encouraged her digital prostitution, and tear her garments witnessing the wickedness in her bones and bloodstream that seduced her into this line of “work.” Work which she then relished in perfecting her craft to infernal excellence, I might add. She would strip herself of artificial beauty and clothe herself in modesty then disappear into her husband’s home and hearth, next seen by the public with a small pack of children, and a tearful song of Romans 8:28-29 on her grateful lips. In so doing, she would model the true path home for women. We live in a Christ-hating nation that despises God with every fiber of its being, making a middle-class, single-income household all but impossible as an explicit attack on the institution of the family and especially the role of the father. And suddenly I’m supposed to believe we’re all celebrating a sinner being saved? On the network that just fired a female commentator, in part, for daring to say, “Christ is King”? Please. Candace Owens, who showed at least a flash of true courage, should be furious. Nala has stepped onto the public stage and been thrust into a default position of spiritual leadership, as many celebrities sadly are the moment they whisper the name of Christ to a camera. Thus I criticize her as a leader. “Give her time”? How about instead we bring on a repentant believer who has already had time? I propose Rosaria Butterfield. Maybe Nala should give herself time. Maybe the media should give her time. Maybe the legions of female sinners and their white knight cheerleaders should at this very moment be ushering Nala off the stage forever, for her own good, rather than clapping like seals in the hopes that she’ll legitimize their poorly-discipled, halfhearted repentance for sins. Because she won’t. She literally can’t. Not until Feminism and the Sexual Revolution that produced her (and women like her) are ripped up root and branch from the salted earth of the American family, burned, and the ashes cast into the brook Kidron. (2 Kings 23:6) But that’s not what we really want, is it? Women today desire to be led… but only where they were already planning on going. Others want this to be a “meat sacrificed to idols” moment. 1 Corinthians 8 is the world-befriending Christian’s dog-eared chapter, isn’t it? “It’s not that bad. I’m under grace not law.”[1]

All this gal is doing is sharing her testimony. When a person is “born from above” they are born again of an imperishable seed; the seed of Christ’s life blossomed to the right hand of the Father for them/us. This guy, Will Spencer, thinks we need to “wait and see.” Is that what Jesus did with the Samaritan woman at the well; or many other female sinners, inclusive of prostitutes? No, once the re-birth is realized in someone’s heart, they become participant with Christ (participatio Christi), and partakers of the divine and triune being of God. Nobody can separate Nala from Christ, not even her. She’s entered into an indestructible life that is not contingent on her obedience, but Christ’s for her (which in fact is what the Gospel is all about).

This guy, Will, is simply a product of a nomist subculture that has swallowed much of the North American evangelical community whole. It is through the “retrieval” of precisianist and juridical categories, as those are found particularly developed in the Post Reformed orthodox theologies of the 16th and 17th centuries, that this legalistic subculture, of the type this Spencer guy is fomenting, has come to have root. And yet, most of these cats aren’t aware of their informing theology. They simply receive it, and run with it. They don’t recognize, critically so, its historical and philosophical beginnings; and as such they simply conflate these mercantilist categories with the biblical Gospel. As a result, we end up with this “wait and see” attitude in regard to having certainty if someone is saved or not. This is absurdum! But this is simply a projection of their own uncertainty and lack of assurance before God. Barth was right when he wrote the following with reference to Calvin’s thinking on assurance of salvation:

How can we have assurance in respect of our own election except by the Word of God? And how can even the Word of God give us assurance on this point if this Word, if this Jesus Christ, is not really the electing God, not the election itself, not our election, but only an elected means whereby the electing God—electing elsewhere and in some other way—executes that which he has decreed concerning those whom He has—elsewhere and in some other way—elected? The fact that Calvin in particular not only did not answer but did not even perceive this question is the decisive objection which we have to bring against his whole doctrine of predestination. The electing God of Calvin is a Deus nudus absconditus.[2]

It is this ill-formed doctrine of election that hangs over all of these legalists’ heads; it’s actually rather tragic. Not only can they not find rest in Christ for them, but then they project that unrest and uncertainty on anyone else who confesses Jesus as Lord; like Nala. If Jesus isn’t both the object and subject of God’s election, then election simply hangs in the balances of the decretum absolutum (absolute decree). And it is this type of election, the type grounded in an unrevealed, secret and arbitrary decree of God, that leaves these types of legalists floundering in their salvation. But, often, such people believe they’ve hit some sort of magical mark in their lives, finding a level of assurance that they indeed are one of the elect of God (because they haven’t sinned in certain ways like they used to; so based on their performance). But they’re still “waiting to see” if other new converts really have come to Christ based upon some subjective and abstract standard of judgment vis-à-vis the performance of said new converts. That’s what this Spencer guy and others are now doing to Nala. Historically this exercise is called experimental predestinarianism, which entails exactly what it says.

I have written more than I intended. Let me leave Will Spencer and his cohorts with a parable of Jesus’. It speaks against the type of performance and legalistically based salvation he unfortunately has been “discipled” into.

“For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. 2 When he had agreed with the laborers for a denarius for the day, he sent them into his vineyard. 3 And he went out about the third hour and saw others standing idle in the market place; 4 and to those he said, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and whatever is right I will give you.’ And so they went. 5 Again he went out about the sixth and the ninth hour, and did the same thing. 6 And about the eleventh hour he went out and found others standing around; and he *said to them, ‘Why have you been standing here idle all day long?’ 7 They *said to him, ‘Because no one hired us.’ He *said to them, ‘You go into the vineyard too.’

8 “When evening came, the owner of the vineyard *said to his foreman, ‘Call the laborers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last group to the first.’ 9 When those hired about the eleventh hour came, each one received a denarius. 10 When those hired first came, they thought that they would receive more; but each of them also received a denarius. 11 When they received it, they grumbled at the landowner, 12 saying, ‘These last men have worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden and the scorching heat of the day.’ 13 But he answered and said to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for a denarius? 14 Take what is yours and go, but I wish to give to this last man the same as to you. 15 Is it not lawful for me to do what I wish with what is my own? Or is your eye envious because I am generous?’ 16 So the last shall be first, and the first last.” –Matthew 20:1-16

 

[1] Will Spencer | Renaissance Man, accessed on X 04-08-2024.

[2] Karl Barth, CD II/2, 111.

The Particularity and Concreteness of Christ: Against Cultural “Christianities”

Posted on by

A genuine Christianity is not pluriform, it does not have multitudinous realities at its core. It is not a cluster of beliefs that likeminded people rally around. A genuine Christianity—its inner reality—is in fact a person; it is God for us in the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ. When people exit or walk away from this or that perceived form or expression of the “Christian existence,” they aren’t walking away from Christianity’s inner reality, per se, if in fact they believe that to be exhaustively represented in the form of that, as they have come to experience that, in this or that Christian tradition. In other words, if someone believes, when they walk away from Christianity, that they have done so by walking away from their immediate experience of that, they are sorely in error; and in error, in such a way that it potentially could have, or will have eternal consequences.

There are certainly damaging and erroneous forms or expressions of a self-proclaimed Christianity, but much of those are simply socio-cultural constructs masquerading as THE form of Christianity; at least in the way that it is presented to and received by its adherents. If someone has a personal relationship with the living God in Christ, walking away from Christianity becomes a much different thing than walking away from an experience of a so-called Christianity.

Make sure, if and when you walk away from something, you know what in fact you are walking away from. And just as important, make sure you understand what you are walking into as an alternative.