The Cruciform View

The musings and essays of an Oklahoma MDiv student in Kentucky, trying to view the world through the lens of the Cross.

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Evangelicals and Catholics Against the World

One thing that the current anthropological heresies (used here in the technical, not the pejorative sense) concerning same-sex sexual behavior, transgender issues, and abortion will force orthodox evangelical Christians to do is develop a robust theology of the body, human sexuality, and sexual ethics.  One of the reasons so many millennial evangelicals are so quickly accepting these heretical (again technical sense, not pejorative) “affirming” positions is because Protestant theologians have, by and large, neglected to develop a biblically-rooted and theologically-sound Christian anthropology and understanding of sexuality.  

Instead of teaching my generation what Christian marriage really is, why male-female sexuality is created good but also drastically distorted by the Fall, and what sex within marriage is really for, many of our predecessors simply bought into the cultural understandings of marriage and sex, but with the Jesus of Matthew 5-7 tacked onto the side.  This understanding of human sexuality was as wispy and changeable as the culture it borrowed from, and so was destined to run into extreme problems as soon as the cultural consensus changed.  Indeed, with the advent of no-fault divorce the cultural conception of marriage and sex—as well as the typical Protestant anthropology that was built on it—had already begun to break down and has been doing so for the last four decades, with same-sex marriage being just the most recent outworking of such a cultural shift.

Just as the Christological heresies drove thinkers like Athanasius and Cyril of Alexandria back to Scripture and deep reflection on it in order to sharpen and strengthen their Christology against the heretics of their day, so too we must go back to deep, reflective exegesis of Scripture to strengthen our own anthropology against the heresies of our time.  The first place to start is to seek out the wisdom of our Catholic brothers and sisters in Christ on this issue.  They have trod much of this path before and have a much more nuanced and deeply-rooted Christian anthropology than we do. If it is going to be evangelicals and Catholics united together (and really, it already is)​ against the rising tide of anthropological heresies, best we listen to our Catholic brothers and sisters. We will differ on questions of justification and sanctification. But on the question of human sexuality we are united.  Let us as evangelicals soak in the wisdom of venerable thinkers like Aquinas and his Summa, and of modern voices like John Paul II and his Theology of the Body.  Let us as Evangelicals and Catholics Together listen equally to our best thinkers on the question of marriage and sexuality, from Karl Barth to Hans Urs von Balthasar.  

From among us God will raise up a new Athanasius of Alexandria​, a new Augustine, a new Cyril of Alexandria, to guard against the modern-day Marcions, Ariuses, and Nestoriuses that have come forth. 

It is said that, in the midst of the Arian controversy, when the whole world seemed to be imbibing the heretical view of Christ, a colleague of Athanasius came to him and said: 

“The whole world is against you!” 

Athanasius was said to have replied, “Then it is Athanasius against the world.” 

So it is with those of us committed to an orthodox and biblical understanding of marriage and human sexual ethics.  A new Athanasius will arise to meet these heresies head on.  Let’s give him (or her) all the strength and foundation they will need.

Evangelicals and Catholics contra mundi.

St. Athanasius of Alexandria

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The Logical Inconsistency of the “Clump of Tissue and Cells” Crowd

“Views of a Fetus in the Womb" by Leonardo da Vinci

You know, people who support abortion on the premise that an embryo or a fetus is simply a "clump of tissue and cells" are really not carrying their logic through to the end. 

Let me try and explain what I mean.  

If that is their starting ontological premise (that an embryo or fetus is merely a “clump of tissue and cells”) which allows the aborting of a fetus, then they should also stop ascribing any worth, dignity, or personhood to humans outside of the womb. 

Really, how does the mere passage of time, growth in size and structural complexity, and passage through a birth canal magically endow "a clump of tissue and cells" with personhood and humanity?  I mean the entirety of a person's totally unique genetic code — the same genetic code that they will have as a fully grown adult— is entirely contained in the cells of the embryo; in fact it is all there after the sperm fertilizes the ovum and forms a zygote.  Sure, the embryo develops and becomes more structurally complex eventually developing organs such as a heart, lungs, liver, a brain, etc, but a more structurally complex "clump of tissue and cells" is still just a "clump" ontologically-speaking, no matter how much time passes or growth occurs.

In fact—if we are really being consistent with the logic of the “clump of tissue and cells” school of thought—once the fetus has exited the birth canal it still maintains that status ontologically as a mere "clump," as there is nothing ontologically-endowing or magical about passage through a birth canal into open air.  It seems rather arbitrary to grant this "clump of tissue and cells" personhood merely because it passed out of a uterus.  Sure, the "clump of tissue and cells" grows and becomes more structurally complex, but in the end it is still just a larger "clump" ontologically-speaking.  Why should mere size and structural complexity grant personhood? That seems just as arbitrary as passage through a birth canal magically granting personhood.  

Remember, the fundamental genetic building blocks of this larger, more structurally-complex "clump of tissue and cells" are the exact same as when it was simply a tiny, simple "clump" in a uterus somewhere.  Size and time have not changed those base genetic components, just as they have no power to grant personhood to a "clump."  This larger, more structurally-complex "clump" may even be moving around, emitting noises, and ingesting other organic matter.  But why should any of these events magically grant the ontological status of personhood?  It is simply a very large and structurally-complex "clump of tissue and cells" comprised of the exact same genetic material as when it was a small, simple "clump"; yet somehow—magically in the strictest sense of the word, for there is no other reason for it on the "clump of tissue" worldview—the fact that this "clump of tissue and cells" happened to pass through the birth canal of another "clump of tissue and cells" at some point in the past arbitrarily grants it personhood. 

(Again, this is not my position at all.  I actually believe there are persons and that personhood is not predicated on the mere passage of time, growth in size, or passage through a birth canal. I believe that personhood can only be bestowed onto us by a Reality outside of mere nature; a creative Mind Who precedes all matter and contingent reality, as it were.  But I digress)

Back to the topic at hand, if this is the case, shouldn’t proponents of the naturalistic, "clump" worldview be more consistent?  If there is no good reason to grant a birth canal the power of "personhood endowment," why then should the "clump of tissue and cells" in the uterus not be the same non-personal "clump” outside the uterus?  If "clump worldview" proponents want to be consistent then they would say that the "clumps of tissue and cells" simply stay "clumps" even after birth, for, as we have seen, there is no reason at all to grant a birth canal (or the mere passage of time or growth structural size) with the power to endow personhood.  

Thus, if "clump worldview" proponents are fine with destroying a "clump" in the uterus, and if birth canal-passage, time, and size do not affect the ontological status of that "clump," such proponents should also see no problem (logically and consistently-speaking) with destroying the larger, more structurally-complex "clumps of tissue and cells" that just happen to have come out the uterus of another "clump" years ago and just happen to be moving around outside of a uterus now.  Indeed, ontologically-speaking they are nothing more than larger "clumps" right?  

The problem then with the "clump of tissue and cells" worldview is that there is never really a point where personhood can be bestowed, other than on a purely arbitrary and even magical basis upon exiting the uterus.  If one is really a person outside the womb, then logical and ontological necessity requires us to trace the bestowal of that personhood back into the womb (for as we have seen, neither time, nor growth in size and structural complexity, nor mere birth canal-passage have any magical ability to grant personhood) to the point where the unique genetic code of the person was formed: at fertilization and the formation of a zygote with its totally unique genetic code, different from both parents and from every other human that has ever lived or ever will live.  The formation of a unique genetic code in the zygote grants a difference in kind that differentiates it from its parents and from all other humans.  Everything after that in the development cycle from zygote, to embryo, to fetus, to infant, to child, to adult, is simply a difference in degree that does not admit for a bestowal of personhood that distinctly differentiates this one particular “clump” from any other “clump” (e.g. a difference in kind).  The genetic code that characterizes and provides all the “data” for a new, totally unique human person is bestowed with the formation of a zygote.  That then is when a new, unique organism of the genus and species homo sapiens and personhood at its most base level begins.  Everything after that is expansion on that base of fundamental genetic building blocks unique to that one individual human.

As philosophers Patrick Lee and Robert P. George put is so well in their essay, “The Wrong of Abortion”:

There are three important points we wish to make about this human embryo. First, it is from the start distinct from any cell of the mother or of the father. This is clear because it is growing in its own distinct direction. Its growth is internally directed to its own survival and maturation. Second, the embryo is human: it has the genetic makeup characteristic of human beings. Third, and most importantly, the embryo is a complete or whole organism, though immature. The human embryo, from conception onward, is fully programmed actively to develop himself or herself to the mature stage of a human being, and, unless prevented by disease or violence, will actually do so, despite possibly significant variation in environment (in the mother’s womb). None of the changes that occur to the embryo after fertilization, for as long as he or she survives, generates a new direction of growth. Rather, all of the changes (for example, those involving nutrition and environment) either facilitate or retard the internally directed growth of this persisting individual. 

Sometimes it is objected that if we say human embryos are human beings, on the grounds that they have the potential to become mature humans, the same will have to be said of sperm and ova. This objection is untenable. The human embryo is radically unlike the sperm and ova, the sex cells. The sex cells are manifestly not whole or complete organisms. They are not only genetically but also functionally identifiable as parts of the male or female potential parents. They clearly are destined either to combine with an ovum or sperm or die. Even when they succeed in causing fertilization, they do not survive; rather, their genetic material enters into the composition of a distinct, new organism. 

Nor are human embryos comparable to somatic cells (such as skin cells or muscle cells), though some have tried to argue that they are. Like sex cells, a somatic cell is functionally only a part of a larger organism. The human embryo, by contrast, possesses from the beginning the internal resources and active disposition to develop himself or herself to full maturity; all he or she needs is a suitable environment and nutrition. The direction of his or her growth is not extrinsically determined, but the embryo is internally directing his or her growth toward full maturity. So, a human embryo (or fetus) is not something distinct from a human being; he or she is not an individual of any non-human or intermediate species. Rather, an embryo (and fetus) is a human being at a certain (early) stage of development – the embryonic (or fetal) stage. In abortion, what is killed is a human being, a whole living member of the species homo sapiens, the same kind of entity as you or I, only at an earlier stage of development.

- “The Wrong of Abortion”  in Contemporary Debates in Applied Ethics (New York: Blackwell Publishers, 2005), 14-15

If you want to have persons outside of the womb, then you have to have persons inside of the womb.  Declaring a “clump of tissue and cells” to be a person on the purely arbitrary bases of time, size, and physical location either inside or outside of a uterus offers no real personhood at all.  Personhood must come at the point of conception, when the totally unique genetic code that separates a person biologically from their mother and father and from every other human being is formed in the zygote.  Otherwise, there is no other entry point along the path of time and growth for personhood to enter into the equation.

Either one is a person at conception or they are never a person at all.

(Of course, on a purely naturalistic, atheistic worldview there can be, strictly speaking, no persons even with unique genetic coding.  Personhood presupposes and requires a transcendent Source of dignity and worth, One who grants the merely physical world and physical beings a status more than simply matter in motion; a Mind Who precedes all matter unbounded and unlimited by the flow of time and space which constrains us.  To put it frankly if there is no God, no transcendent Source of Being and Mind, then there are no persons; there are just “clumps of tissue and cells” moving around.  But of course, we know that there are persons.  I’ll let the reader draw out the rest of that inference.)

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Reflections on Planned Parenthood and the Banality of Evil

Note: Since the question of the illegal sale of organs is still currently up in the air as of writing, I leave that out of my post. It really doesn't change the already vile and gruesome procedures practiced by Planned Parenthood, but if PP is found to be participating in illegal organ sales, then that will just be another token of immoral behavior to add to their collection sizable collection.

Edward S. Herman's description of the concept of the banality of evil—from Hannah Arendt's book Eichmann in Jerusalem—is as follows:

"Arendt's thesis was that people who carry out unspeakable crimes, like [Adolf] Eichmann [the Nazi who facilitated the mass deportation of Jews and minorities to camps like Buchenwald, Auschwitz, and Bergen-Belsen], a top administrator in the machinery of the Nazi death camps, may not be crazy fanatics at all, but rather ordinary individuals who simply accept the premises of their state and participate in any ongoing enterprise with the energy of good bureaucrats."

Today's news about Planned Parenthood and the video of their top doctor, Dr. Deborah Nucatola, describing the gruesome crushing and dismemberment of unborn children in a nonchalant manner over red wine and a salad reminds me of how evil is all too often not seen in the overt and blatant visage of terrible dictators and mass murdering psychopaths we tend to think of it as.

Evil does not usually stand around in a black cloak, laughing maniacally and twirling it's evil mustache.

More often than not, some of the most gruesome and egregious atrocities are committed by mundane people who simply accept the twisted premises of their state and culture and then carry them out in a repetitive and rather average manner. The methods utilized by organizations like Planned Parenthood illustrate how the banality of evil is something that is often far more dangerous and horrendously vile than the "stereotypes" of evil we often think of.

Eichmann was just doing his job.

Deborah Nucatola was just doing hers.

The killing of living human beings deemed to be unwanted and "subhuman", and then "donating" many of their limbs and organs to "science" under the (yet again) banal nomenclature of mere "tissue."

The real question is, does that last sentence describe Eichmann or Nucatola?

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“Reconsidering Arminius” Book Review

This semester has been very busy, so I haven’t had a ton of time to write a lot of stuff for the blog.  But, since even boring content is better than nothing, here is a book review I did for another publication.  The book is an edited volume called Reconsidering Arminius, and I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in classical, evangelical Arminianism, or just Christian theology in general.

Reconsidering Arminius: Beyond the Reformed and Wesleyan Divide Edited by Keith D. Stanglin, Mark G. Bilby, and Mark H. Mann Nashville, TN: Kingswood Books 2014, 169pp., paper, $40.00 ISBN 978-1-4267-9654-8

Reviewed by Taylor S. Brown

Jacob Arminius may well be one of the most misunderstood figures in Protestant theology. Despite the widespread influence of Arminius’ theology in many churches and denominations, many of both his supporters and his opponents grossly misunderstand Arminius.  This is where Stanglin, Bilby, and Mann’s edited volume comes in.  The book seeks to look at Arminius’ own theological ideas as he formulated them, both as a means of reconstructing the “historical Arminius” and as a way of finding common ground between the Reformed and Wesleyan traditions, in order to do theology together.

After a brief introduction by Mann and Bilby, the first chapter, by Richard A. Muller, examines Arminius’ views on the three-fold office of Christ (Prophet, Priest, King), coming to the conclusion that Arminius falls well within the broad parameters of the Reformed orthodoxy of his day on the issue.  Thomas H. McCall, in the second chapter, then examines recent claims that Arminius’ modal logic on issues of foreknowledge and predestination inevitably lead to a form of theological determinism.  McCall rightly assesses such claims to demonstrate Arminius’ capability as a modal logician, and that he did, in fact, avoid determinism in his mature work. With the third chapter, Jeremy Dupertuis Bangs seeks to show that even as ardent an anti-Arminian as Pilgrim preacher James Robinson nevertheless agreed with Arminius on the provisional nature of all human confessional statements, such as the Heidelberg Catechism and the Belgic Confession. The “historical section” of the book concludes with the fourth chapter, by W. Stephen Gunter. This is perhaps the most important essay for those in the evangelical Wesleyan tradition.  Among the issues discussed by Gunter, of chief importance is his analysis of the extremely close Augustinian views of original sin and prevenient grace in Arminius and Wesley, as well as the subsequent loss of such emphases in some of Wesley’s successors, particularly within American Methodism.

The “theological section” of the book begins with chapter five, wherein Oliver D. Crisp takes a critical look at the respective doctrines of creation in Arminius’ and Jonathan Edwards’ work. Crisp ably shows that while Arminius’ formulation of the doctrine fully conforms to a robust orthodoxy, Edwards’ own views end up leading logically to panentheism at best and pantheism at worst, and thus fall outside of classical, orthodox bounds.  E. Jerome Van Kuiken (with what may be the most theologically substantive essay in the book) follows in the sixth chapter with an examination of the convergences between the theologies of T. F. Torrance and Arminius. The multiple convergences Van Kuiken finds between the two theologians (particularly their mutual rejection of any sort of limited atonement and mutual affirmation of Christocentric election) should be, in this reviewer’s opinion, one of the key foundations from which Wesleyan-Reformed dialogue should proceed.  John Mark Hicks then concludes with the seventh chapter by addressing Arminius’ view of divine providence in relation to open theism.  Hicks clearly demonstrates that Arminius was nowhere near open theism and that he, in fact, affirmed meticulous providence (though not divine determinism).  Hicks also shows that Arminius was able to affirm both meticulous providence and libertarian freedom my means of God’s middle-knowledge.  Keith Stanglin then concludes the volume by arguing for a continued reclamation of Arminius’s theology, not only for the sake of recovering the “historical Arminius,” but also to serve as a key bridge-point between Reformed and Wesleyan theological dialogue.  Just as evangelical Wesleyan’s are right to reclaim Wesley’s own theology in the face of many later “pseudo-Wesleyanisms,” so too should they seek to reclaim the theology of Arminius and the title of “Wesleyan-Arminian.”

Reconsidering Arminius is an excellent collection of essays. Not only does it serve as a concise entry point into the growing field of Arminius studies, it also provides key, workable theological bridge-points between Wesleyan-Arminian and Reformed theology for future dialogue.  Whether one is seeking to learn more about classical Arminian theology, or seeking to foster evangelical dialogue between traditions, this volume is an excellent starting point.

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Your post on post-resurrection bodies was really helpful in understanding a topic that I've never heard brought up in church. Thanks for sharing it!

You’re welcome! Glad you found it helpful! 

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The Difference Between A Trans-Sensuous and a Non-Sensuous Life: A Reflection on Resurrection Bodies

A friend of mine and fellow seminary student asked an interesting question earlier today.  As a group of us were sitting and eating lunch after church, he—with a very earnest and probing look on his face, indicative of a man in deep thought—asked, “Will we still eat in our resurrection bodies?”

Now this was either a funny coincidence or providence at work, for just that morning as I was on my way to church I had been re-listening to chapter 3 of C.S. Lewis’s wonderful novel, Perelandra, the second volume in his Ransom Trilogy (yes I listen to audiobooks). It really is a marvelous work of literature that is all too often neglected by readers of fiction as a whole and Lewis fans in particular; it deserves a far wider readership.

The point that struck me was near the beginning of chapter 3.  There, before recounting his time on Venus—or Perelandra as it is known by the angels, or eldila, of Deep Heaven in the novels—Elwin Ransom (the trilogy’s protagonist and a Christian) is remembered by Lewis (who wrote a fictionalized version of himself into the story) as explaining what he thinks will happen to the sexual and gastronomic functions of our bodies after Christ returns and the eschatological resurrection of the dead occurs.  This explanation is based on Ransom’s experiences on Perelandra, an unfallen world with its own Man and Woman who do not succumb to a Fall as Adam and Eve did on Earth (known as the Thulcandra, or “the Silent Planet” in the books).  It will be helpful to quote the section in full:

Another hint [of Ransom’s experiences on Perelandra] came out when a skeptical friend of ours called MacPhee was arguing against the Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the human body. I was his victim at the moment and he was pressing on me in his Scot's way with such questions as, “So you think you're going to have guts and palate forever in a world where they'll be no eating and genital organs in a world without copulation? Hah, man you'll have a grand time of it.” When Ransom suddenly burst out with great excitement, “Oh don't you see you ass that there's a difference between a trans-sensuous life and a non-sensuous life?!”  

That of course directed MacPhee's fire to him.  What emerged was that in Ransom's opinion the present functions and appetites of the body would disappear, not because they were atrophied, but because they were, as he said, “Engulfed.” He used the word “trans-sexual” I remember and began to hunt about for some similar words to apply to eating after rejecting “trans-gastronomic” and since he was not the only philologist present that diverted the conversation into different channels. But I am pretty sure he was thinking of something he had experienced on his voyage to Venus.

While I had listened to or read this small section several times before, it had never struck me as it did on that drive.  While Lewis’ ruminations on the matter via the voice of Ransom struck me as true, I wondered what our Lord’s own resurrected body and the eyewitness accounts of Him in the Gospels had to say on the matter.

Now, as to the physicality of resurrection there is no question, either in the Gospels or in Paul.  Even when Paul, in the latter of half of 1 Corinthians 15, speaks of a “natural body” (soma psychikon) pertaining to our current bodies and a “spiritual body” (soma pneumatikon) pertaining to our resurrection bodies, he is not saying one is physical and one is not. No, rather Paul’s use of the word soma denotes that they are both physical bodies, but the different adjectives (psychikon and pneumatikon) denote that which animates and sustains the body.  Our current fallen psychikon bodies are physical and animated and driven chiefly by “soul” or “soulishness” (the Greek word psyche is usually translated as “soul” or that natural life-force of created beings). By comparison, our glorified, incorruptible, resurrection bodies are still physical (Paul uses soma for both types of bodies), still tangible and in some sort of continuity with the “stuff” of our old bodies—Paul’s analogy of the seed being planted and growing into something greater helps to demonstrate both continuity with, yet also difference from, our old, corruptible bodies—yet by contrast, they are no longer subject to decay or to death because they are animated by the Spirit (pneuma in Greek).

Further still in 1 Corinthians 15, Paul speaks about the temporal progression of natural/psychikon body to spiritual/pneumatikon body:

42 So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown a perishable body, it is raised an imperishable body; 43 it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; 44 it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. 45 So also it is written, “The first man, Adam, became a living soul.” The last Adam became a life-giving spirit. 46 However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural; then the spiritual. 47 The first man is from the earth, earthy; the second man is from heaven. 48 As is the earthy, so also are those who are earthy; and as is the heavenly, so also are those who are heavenly. 49 Just as we have borne the image of the earthy, we will also bear the image of the heavenly.  (1 Corinthians 15:42-49 NASB)

Notice here that Paul says it is necessary for the “earthy man”, the “soulful man” to come first and only then will the “heavenly man”, the “spiritual man” come.  Paul, a devout Jew, seems to be reflecting back on the creation of Adam in Genesis here.  It seems that even if the Fall had not occurred, it was still necessary for the man animated by soul/psyche to come first.  While we can theologize and speculate about the reason for this all we want, I’m inclined to agree with what has been called the “Irenaean theodicy” or “soul-making theodicy” on the matter.  It takes its name from the second century Church Father, Irenaeus of Lyons, who proposed (though it could be argued that Origen of Alexandria first formulated it) that free will and a world where real moral choices are presented before humans are necessary for the formation of created, contingent souls.  Thus, Adam really could have resisted eating the fruit and the Fall really could have been averted (both this theodicy and the true contingency of the Fall play a large part in Perelandra).  

While I have issues with various parts of the “Irenaean theodicy” that I do not have space to go into at present (for one, some formulations say that evil was a necessity for this process; this is wrong.  Having to choose to obeying God was necessary, for obedience is a relational action necessary for communion with a relational Triune God, but evil qua evil is purely contingent and not necessary by any means), the fact remains that I think Irenaeus—or Origen—was on to something regarding the need for real moral choices to be present for human souls to develop relationally and as God intended them to.  Of course Adam failed at this, but the Fall truly could have been averted if Adam had chosen not to eat the fruit.  

Now what is the point of this strange divergence into soul-making and the contingency of the Fall you might ask?  It is to help demonstrate Paul’s statement above in 1 Cor. 15:46.  It seems that God intended the psychikon body to come first as part of the necessary soul-making and relational response of contingent human creatures.  It was (and still is, even after being temporarily derailed by the Fall) meant to be the first in a two-stage process of God’s creation of human creatures. The first phase involved the soul-making phase of the human creation.  We can only speculate how long this period was to last had the Fall never happened, but it seems as though it would have continued long enough for Adam and Eve to “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing thatmoves on the earth” (Genesis 1:28 NASB).

Only after this phase would the Incarnation happen, only after phase-one had been completed could phase-two, the coming of the pneumatikon body in the pattern of Incarnate Son (who I, though a Wesleyan Protestant, believe, in the vein of John Duns Scotus and most of the Eastern Church, always intended to incarnate and only post-Fall did the Incarnation take on a salvific and redemptive effect to it), occur.  

So what implications does all of this somewhat complex theologizing have for food, gender, and sexuality after the resurrection of the dead?  Simply that I think Lewis was right to speculate that our current gastric and sexual functions will indeed be “engulfed” by the new and redeemed bodily life that awaits us, rather than merely discarded or atrophied.  

Eating is good, for it was created by God and He gave to Adam and Eve all the vegetation of the Garden to eat.  Indeed, it seems that eating will continue in our resurrection bodies, for the Risen Jesus ate fish in Luke 24:42.  The difference here though is that He did not eat for need of nourishment.  That need is part of the old, corruptible life; an aspect of the psychikon body. Instead He ate to help the disciples see that He was neither a ghost nor a vision, but resurrected and glorified flesh and blood.  He ate not for His own sake, but for the sake of others.  

Likewise, in John 21:12-14 our Lord prepares a breakfast of fish and bread for the disciples on the shore of the Sea of Galilee.  Again we see here that though He can indeed still eat, He does not need to eat for nourishment’s sake.  The function of eating has not atrophied, it is still there perfectly functional, still a good aspect of God’s creation.  It has not atrophied, but is has been “engulfed” for it has reached its end goal with the end of the natural body.  The resurrected body, by contrast, is empowered and “nourished” by the Holy Spirit.  

As to the question of the sexual functions of our bodies post-resurrection, we are told by Christ in Matthew 22:30 (in a turn-around response to a trick question the Sadducees set up to try and indict Jesus) that: “For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.”  Thus, marriage is a temporary arrangement for phase-one of God’s intended plan of development for humanity.  While marriage and procreative sexual union between a husband and wife are indeed good and a source of great intimacy, after the resurrection marital intercourse and procreation, it seems, has reached its telos; its end or goal.  

However, this does not mean that male and female gender and sexuality themselves are done away with.  While many in our culture incorrectly put far too much weight on human sexuality as the definitive factor of a person’s identity (it is not the end-all-be-all of identity), it does still remain a part of one’s identity as a man or a woman.  We are reminded that humans are not created as some strange un-gendered creature in God's image, but rather that, "God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them" (Gen. 1:27 NASB).

In Christ, though, we see our fallen sexuality reoriented, healed, and made whole. Likewise, male and female gender and sex are retained in our resurrection bodies; Christ was resurrected as the man Jesus of Nazareth, not some androgynous, hermaphroditic creature.  He is the first new Man, His gender and sex maintained, a work of God’s good creation and a reflection of the two halves of human existence that are male and female, meant to live together in relational unity, reflective of a Triune Creator who exists eternally in relational unity.  And just as with eating, the sexual organs and physical markers of masculinity and femininity remain and are not atrophied, rather they are “engulfed” in the new trans-sensuous resurrection life, as Lewis puts it.  

Of course there is mystery to all of this and we can only go off of  what we know of the one Person who has been resurrected to date.  But, at the same time this is not the only time in Scripture we see some aspect of creation reach its telos, it end goal, and be “engulfed” without being atrophied and done away with.  Paul frequently speaks of the Mosaic Law having reached its end/telos in the person and work of Christ (cf. Romans 10:4 as well as the whole Epistle of Galatians).  And while the Mosaic Law has indeed reached its end in Christ and is no longer binding over those who are in Christ, it—being a significant portion of the Old Testament—is also still considered Scripture and is still considered to be “inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness;” (2 Timothy 3:16 NASB).  So while the phase-one function of the Law is finished, it has not atrophied, but instead has been “engulfed” in the God’s definitive self-revelation in Christ.

So while some speculation is in order about the functions of eating, gender, and sexuality post-resurrection, our speculation is guided by what we have been shown of Christ’s own resurrection body, as well as by God’s modus operandi of not merely discarding a good aspect of His creation which has reached its end, but rather redeeming it and “engulfing” it in new Christ-centered and Spirit-filled life.  

As such, I think Lewis, speaking through Ransom, was right in saying, “that there's a difference between a trans-sensuous life and a non-sensuous life.”  The trans-sensuous life goes beyond, but does not discard or atrophy, the good that preceded it.  Rather, all that has been created good and has reached its telic end-goal is redeemed and “engulfed” in a new resurrection life, more grand and glorious than we could have possibly imagined beforehand.  

To this great and beautiful mystery, to which we have been given a small preview in the resurrected body of our Lord Jesus Christ, I can only quote the Apostle Paul in his thinking on the redemptive mercy and grace of God in Romans 11:33-36:

Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways! 34 For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who became His counselor? 35 Or who has first given to Him that it might be paid back to him again? 36 For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen.

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We Were Promised Joy, Not Happiness

There are many aspects of the Christian faith that I absolutely love.  I love studyingthe Old and New Testaments and the rich collection wisdom, poetry, parable, and history contained within their pages. 

I love the study of philosophical and systematic theology, working through it bit by bit and gaining a greater picture of the beauty and coherence of the Christian worldview. 

I love applying the insights of Christian teaching and truth to the problems that face us in society at large.  And most importantly of all, I love my growing relationship with the Triune Creator God of the universe, being healed, cleansed of sin, and gradually restored by His sanctifying grace each and every day.

But for all of the things about the Christian faith which I love and cherish—Christ, the study of the biblical text, theology, etc.—there are still aspects of it that I find challenging and often frustrating. 

For one, the awkward greeting time at the majority of churches I have attended throughout my life is often brutally painful for an introvert like myself.  I’m much more content to greet new people in a more natural setting before or after the service, not looking around awkwardly to shake hands.  But I digress.

On a more serious note, one of the parts of Christianity that I struggle most with (particularly within the world of American, evangelical Protestantism which I inhabit) is happiness.  I often feel out of sorts in many church and seminary settings because I am often surrounded by people who seem far too happy.  

Don’t get me wrong, I have happy moods on a regular basis.  Honest I do. I’m happy a good deal more than I am sad or downcast.  But at the same time a great moroseness can often come over me.  Such a mood is often related to something I’m working through in my life, be it academic, theoretical, social, etc. 

But often it comes when I think about the war-torn (both physical and spiritual), fallen world we live in.  

Often it comes when I think of the future and can see nothing but a foggy haze at best, and numbing darkness at worst. 

Often it comes when I begin to buy into the lie that I am a failure at life and that, despite the veneers of friendship, love, and academic achievement, I really am nothing more than a failure in the long run, with nothing but a brief respite of happiness in the present. 

Often it comes when loneliness overwhelms me.  When I feel as though I am doomed to be alone, even in midst of friends and family all around me.

A painting by William Blake depicting Job's suffering and unhappiness

I say all this, because I often wonder how so many of my brothers and sisters in Christ seem to maintain a happy-go-lucky attitude almost perpetually. 

You know the type of person.  The one who never seems to have a cloudy day.  Who always seems to be able to smile.  The kind of person who is so happy it makes you sick. 

I often wonder how they maintain such an attitude.  I wonder this because we both have the same Savior, the same Messiah, the same Lord.  And yet, I often feel so distant from other Christians. 

Its not that I feel distant from Christ.  Indeed, it has often been in my times of deepest darkness, of most gut-wrenching despair, of my darkest nights of the soul, when the crucified God-Man who cried “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” on Golgotha, has come closest to me and grown me in ways not possible otherwise.

It is in those times that I remember that our Lord did not promise us happiness.  Indeed, He promised us that we would be hated by others (Lk. 21:16-17; Matt. 10:22, 24:9; Mk. 13:13). 

C. S. Lewis puts it well in reflecting/lamenting the death of his wife Joy in A Grief Observed:

“We were promised sufferings. They were part of the program. We were even told, 'Blessed are they that mourn,' and I accept it. I've got nothing that I hadn't bargained for. Of course it is different when the thing happens to oneself, not to others, and in reality, not imagination.”  

What we can be sure of is not happiness; for all happiness may never come to us before death or Christ’s return.  No, what we can be sure of though, is joy.  

Notice what is conspicuously absent from Paul’s listing of the various fruits of the Holy Spirit:

 “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.” (Gal. 5:22-23)

Happiness is not listed here, but joy is.

Even in the New Testament, two different words are used to distinguish the two concepts: makarios (μακάπριος) for “happy” and chara (χαρά) for “joy.”  Both come, etymologically, from different root words, and in fact, chara is more closely related to the Greek word for grace, charis (χάρις), than it is to the makarios.  In fact, both “joy” (chara) and “grace” (charis) share etymological roots in the verb chairo (χαίρω) which carries the idea (depending on the context) either of rejoicing for someone or greeting someone.

Now you might think, “But don’t such actions require one to be happy?”  I would argue they do not. One can still rejoice for someone in the midst of sadness, just as one can greet another with goodwill though the greeter may be downtrodden in their own soul.  This is because both such actions are actions of the will.  One chooses to greet another or rejoice for them. 

Though our choices and actions are no doubt influenced (often heavily so) by both internal and external factors (such as the state of our happiness) they are by no means determined by such factors.  One of the greatest gifts and exercises of God’s omnipotence was to give His creatures a modicum (in comparison to His infinite freedom) of free will to say “yes” or “no” in response to His actions and to the actions of other creatures. 

Whether we realize it or not, rejoicing (chairo) in or for another is a choice on our part; an act of the will. Likewise, while we cannot choose happiness, we can choose joy.  We choose to live, by our obedience and actions to Christ Jesus, in the joy that is “now and not yet;” the supreme joy that comes from the crucified and resurrected Son of God, who has inaugurated the future Kingdom of God in the midst of the present.  Joy in its truest sense—the impassible joy of a Creator God who graciously chose not to leave His creation in ruins—has invaded from the future into the present.

It is joy we have been given, joy we were promised, joy we choose by God’s prevenient and enabling grace. 

I hope for happiness, though I know it may not come to me.  But I choose joy everyday I pray in Christ's name.  I choose joy when I obey His commandments.  I choose joy when I rejoice for others, even when I find no rejoicing for myself. 

Happiness is out of my control, though I am grateful when it comes to me.

Joy though, true Joy, is—thanks be to the Triune God—within my reach, and only because it first reached for me on the cross. 

But you need not listen to my musings on the matter.  Indeed, anything that I have said has already been said far better by the Psalmist thousands of years ago, a master of choosing joy in the midst of grief, pain and darkness:

1My God, my God, why have You forsaken me? Far from my deliverance are the words of my [c]groaning. 2 O my God, I cry by day, but You do not answer; And by night, but I have no rest. 3 Yet You are holy, O You who are enthroned upon the praises of Israel. 4 In You our fathers trusted; They trusted and You delivered them. 5 To You they cried out and were delivered; In You they trusted and were not disappointed. A reproach of men and despised by the people. 7 All who see me sneer at me; They separate with the lip, they wag the head, saying, 8 “Commit yourself to the Lord; let Him deliver him; Let Him rescue him, because He delights in him.” You made me trust when upon my mother’s breasts. 10 Upon You I was cast from birth; You have been my God from my mother’s womb. For there is none to help. 12 Many bulls have surrounded me; Strong bulls of Bashan have encircled me. 13 They open wide their mouth at me, As a ravening and a roaring lion. 14 I am poured out like water, And all my bones are out of joint; My heart is like wax; It is melted within me. 15 My strength is dried up like a potsherd, And my tongue cleaves to my jaws; And You lay me in the dust of death. 16 For dogs have surrounded me; A band of evildoers has encompassed me; They pierced my hands and my feet. 17 I can count all my bones. They look, they stare at me; 18 They divide my garments among them, And for my clothing they cast lots. O You my help, hasten to my assistance. 20 Deliver my soul from the sword, My only life from the power of the dog. 21 Save me from the lion’s mouth; From the horns of the wild oxen You answer me. In the midst of the assembly I will praise You. 23 You who fear the Lord, praise Him; All you descendants of Jacob, glorify Him, And stand in awe of Him, all you descendants of Israel. 24 For He has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; Nor has He hidden His face from him; But when he cried to Him for help, He heard. I shall pay my vows before those who fear Him. 26 The afflicted will eat and be satisfied; Those who seek Him will praise the Lord. Let your heart live forever! 27 All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord, And all the families of the nations will worship before [u]You. 28 For the kingdom is the Lord’s And He rules over the nations. 29 All the prosperous of the earth will eat and worship, All those who go down to the dust will bow before Him, Even he who cannot keep his soul alive. 30 Posterity will serve Him; It will be told of the Lord to the coming generation. 31 They will come and will declare His righteousness To a people who will be born, that He has performed it. 6 But I am a worm and not a man, 9 Yet You are He who brought me forth from the womb; 11 Be not far from me, for trouble is near; 19 But You, O Lord, be not far off; 22 I will tell of Your name to my brethren; 25 From You comes my praise in the great assembly; (Psalm 22 NASB)

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Is Belief in the Doctrine of the Trinity Important?

I had a friend of mine ask me the other day whether or not I thought the doctrine of the Trinity was integral to being a truly devoted and faithful Christian.  While I cannotbe sure, I believe another question that might have been lying beneath thesurface of the first, was whether or not belief in the Trinity is necessary forsalvation.

Regarding the first question (and really the only one thatwas truly asked of me), yes I do believe that a belief in and affirmation of the Trinity—that is that God exists eternally as three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, in one essence—is integral to being a faithful and fully devoted Christian.  There are many reasons for this, but for brevity’s sake I will simply lay out two of what I consider to be the most important.

Is Belief in the Trinity Important for the Christian Faith and Life?

The Shield of the Trinity (Scutum Fidei)

1.) The New Testament Triune Formulae 

The New Testament (and many parts of the Old Testament) is permeated with both explicit and implicit references to the Triune Godhead.  Matthew ends his Gospel with the Risen Jesus’ commission to His disciples to go out into all the world, proclaiming the good news, making disciples, and baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. (Matt. 28:19).  Likewise in all three of the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke) after Jesus has been baptized by John the Baptist, God the Father speaks from heaven, as the Holy Spirit—in the form of a dove—rests upon Jesus and the Father declares him to be his beloved Son (Mark 1:10-11; Matt 3:16-17, Lk. 3:21-22).  

And the Gospels are not alone in this regard.  Paul speaks of the three persons of the Trinity as acting together in unity on multiple occasions.  For example in his epistle to the church in Galatia he writes:

“ But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, so that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. Because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” Therefore you are no longer a slave, but a son; and if a son, then an heirthrough God.”  (Gal. 4:4-7 NASB)

Further still, in concluding his second epistle to the church in Corinth, Paul concludes the discourse with a Trinitarian prayer:

“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with you all.” (2 Cor. 13:14)

The original Greek text is even more illuminating in this short prayer because the exact wording for “God” which Paul uses is τοῦ θεοῦ (tou theou), literally, “of the God.”  Whenever Paul uses that wording (the Greek direct article with theos), he almost always uses it in specific reference to God the Father, as opposed to the Son and the Spirit, which he uses different names for.  Thus, in this short closing prayer—the formula of which Paul likely received from someone else, possibly even one of the Twelve—we can see in the earliest strata of historical evidence available to us an already existing and established Triune formula. 

I of course could list many other references in the Johannine corpus and the Petrine corpus, as well as the Old Testament, but these few will suffice for now.

2.) God’s Eternal Existence as Love

One of my favorite verses in the whole Bible is 1 John 4:8.  There, John, in the context of exhorting his audience to love another in Christian community writes: 

“The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love.”

Those three words are undoubtedly some of the most important ever penned in human history.  While many of the pagan gods could be loving, their existence was not defined by love; indeed most were quite spiteful and morally destitute.  Yet here, we see that John is not referring to one of the lesser pagan gods, but “the God,” the Creator God, the God who is the ground being and existence Himself! And this God is love.  That is to say, He exists eternally in a state of self-giving, other-oriented, loving relationality.  God has never not been loving toward another and He will never cease to be loving toward another. 

But the created world is finite.  Everything other than God Himself has not existed from all eternity.  Even the greatest of angelic beings had a beginning in time.  So how then can God be eternally loving if the object of his love is finite?  The answer of course is that long before time and space ever existed, God had eternally been in a state of loving relationality.  The Son is eternally begotten (not made, nor created) of the Father and the Spirit is eternally sent from the Father.  As eternity is that state of “eternal now” and there is no temporal succession of discrete moments such as we finite creatures experience, this begetting of the Son and sending of the Spirit from the Father is not comprised of a series of moments of temporal becoming for either the Son or the Spirit; they simply are.  The verbs “eternally begotten” and “eternally sent” are more aids for our limited minds in trying to get a picture of the tri-unity of God than they are direct descriptors of the inter-Trinitarian relations.  God is, after all, wholly Other than us, and it is only because He has graciously revealed His Triune nature to us that we are even able to speak of it at all.

The point of all this is merely to illustrate that if we as Christians take Scripture seriously and view it as inspired and authoritative on all things pertaining to salvation and God (which I certainly do), then for God to be love, He must exist eternally as a multiplicity of persons in loving relationship in one distinct, uncreated essence.  The number of persons could theoretically be anything, but the Triune God has revealed Himself to us in the three persons of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. 

Is Belief in the Trinity Necessary for Salvation?

"The Trinity" by Tintoretto

While I can answer the main question above with an unequivocal “yes!” the second question is honestly a little more hazy.  Must one believe in the Trinity to be saved?  I’m not sure.  

While I fully believe that Jesus is the only means of salvation for the world and that one must place their trust in Him and what He did on the cross to be saved from sin and eternal death, the question of whether or not one must wholeheartedly affirm the tri-unity of God for salvation doesn’t really have a direct answer.  The New Testament does not say whether one must believe in the doctrine of the Trinity to be saved.  It most definitely says that one must trust in Christ for salvation and affirms His divine status (the NT is filled with such statements, but see Rom. 10:9-10 and Jn. 3:16-17 for two of the most direct and most well-known statements on the matter), but as to the cognitive assent of the Triune Godhead for salvation it remains quiet.

My own speculative thought on the matter (and I emphasize speculative here) is that bare salvation does not hinge on cognitive assent to the doctrine Trinity.  Many have come to salvation in Christ without ever giving a second thought to the tri-unity of God.  I myself came to faith when I was ten years old and never even realized what the doctrine of the Trinity entailed until several years later.  So my initial thoughts on the matter are to say that cognitive assent to the doctrine of the Trinity is not immediately necessary for salvation, though I do think it is necessary in the long-run of the Christian walk.

However, I believe that one can never have a fully-orbed Christian faith or life without belief in the doctrine of the Trinity and the impact it has on radically reorienting our understanding of both God and loving relationality.  One can indeed be initially saved without belief in the Trinity, but one cannot go much farther past that and it is questionable as to how sustainable one's faith will be long-term, at least in my opinion. 

Think of going to college.  All that is necessary to get through college and get a degree is to pass all of one’s classes with the minimum passing grades.  This will get you a degree, but you will not experience the deep joys of delving into a particular subject of interest, plumbing the depths of an area of study that you love and feel called to pursue as either a vocation or a career. 

Likewise, one can be saved by simply trusting in Christ’s work on the cross and leaving it there, but that is a bit like going into a huge, beautiful mansion and being content to linger in the doorway.  Lingering in the doorway will keep you out of the cold night, but you will never be able to explore the riches and depths of the mansion, nor will you fully get to know the wonderful Owner of the mansion who has prepared a room for you and invited you in out of the cold, dark night.

So is belief in the doctrine of the Trinity a bare necessity for salvation?  I cannot be certain, but probably not, at least not for initial conversion to Christ.  The New Testament is quite emphatic that salvation qua salvation is by grace through faith in Christ and His atoning death on the cross. Of course this necessitates at least a binitarianism (belief that both God the Father and the Son are divine) and from there it is a logical next step to orthodox Trinitarianism.

Is the belief in the doctrine of the Trinity necessary for a full-orbed and vibrant Christian faith and life, the life God intends for His people to fully live?  Yes, I believe so.

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Some Thoughts on Nazism, Charlie Hebdo, and the Imperative for Christians to Be Students of History

I love biblical studies and theology.  They are my favorite subjects to discuss, read, and debate about.  I have pretty much devoted my vocational goals to them and feel to called to teach them in the future, both in a university/seminary setting and in a local church setting.  But of course, anyone who has ever read anything I’ve written knows this about me.  But what some don’t know is that I have a deep interest in history as well, an interest that is older than my love for theology and biblical studies.  I grew up loving history, particularly modern history.  Being that my father was and is a veritable lay expert on both the American Civil War and World War II this was bound to happen.  

One of the things I love about history is that it is alive.  The study of history connects us to our past, our roots, and has so many lessons to teach because—surprise, surprise—our forebears experienced much of the same questions, joys, problems, and pitfalls of life that we do.  This is because regardless of how technologically advanced a society becomes, the fallen human condition remains the same.

I think history is especially relevant to the Christian life for a variety of reasons.  Firstly, it is because ours is a faith and Truth that is rooted in history, in space and time, in a Jewish healer-prophet from Nazareth being condemned to crucifixion by Pontius Pilate in c. 30 A.D. and then rising from the dead on the Sunday after His death, being seen and attested to by multiple eyewitnesses, and verifying for them that he was not, in fact, a ghost or spirit, but really was alive again.  We Christians are only here today because God entered into space and time as the God-Man, Jesus Christ.

Secondly, history is important because it teaches us lessons.  One thing the ancients, both in the Greco-Roman world (you know, little-known guys like Aristotle, Cicero, Plutarch, etc.) and in the Jewish world (the Hebrew prophets, David, the Evangelists, Paul, etc.) got right that our culture largely has gotten wrong, is that a knowledge of history is imperative because it helps us to avoid mistakes of the past, as well as to emulate and learn the virtues of those great figures who came before us.  For many in the ancient world, history was really a living discipline.  It connected them to their roots and allowed those who came before to continue to edify and instruct.  While we obviously still teach history in our schools, often it is not given the emphasis it should receive and is dolled out to instructors who are simply warm bodies in a classroom, with little to know care for the discipline itself.  Our culture and education pay lip service to history, but we rarely take any of it to heart.

One area of history I have been studying in my spare time is the rise of National Socialism (aka Nazism) in Germany between the two world wars.  It is a fascinating subject, and not in a good way.  One thing that I see in it is how easy it was for a madman like Hitler to climb the rungs of power in the midst of social and economic depression in pre-World War II Germany (known then as the Weimar Republic), particularly after he was released from his first attempt to seize power with the Beer Hall Putsch of 1923.  Hitler, for all his evil, deranged thinking when it came to the Holocaust, was a shrewd politician who knew how to manipulate the sentiments of the poverty-stricken German people for his own twisted goals.  The rise of Nazism and the Holocaust seem so far away, especially for the Millennial generation to which I belong.  But in reality it was only a little over a half century ago that these events took place.  Eyewitnesses to the horrors of Nazism and the Holocaust, though they are dwindling, are still alive today.  Yet, so many people of my own generation treat it as something in the past that could never happen again.  We’ve advanced as a culture, we would never let such a thing happen. 

Many Germans before the WWII believed the same thing.  There was no way anything of the magnitude of the Holocaust could happen, especially after the Great War, the so-called “war to end all wars.”  They were civilized Westerners, not barbaric heathens of ages past!  

And yet the German people rallied around Hitler and his Nazis.  

And yet the German people turned a blind eye to their Jewish neighbors who were slowly being deported, locked in ghettos, or disappearing mysteriously in the night, loaded on train cars bound for far-off places with names like Dachau, Sobibor, Bergen-Belsen, and Auschwitz. 

And yet the German people believed that they were avenging the wrongs done to them in the Treaty of Versailles by conquering Poland and enslaving a large portion of its populace.

I could go on of course.  My point here is not to denigrate the German people (I am an American, but I probably have more German blood in me than anything else).  Indeed, there were many brave and noble German civilians and soldiers who saw Hitler for the evil megalomaniac that he was and sought to oppose him.  Names like Ludwig Beck, Claus von Stauffenberg, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer come to mind.  And of course there were many other Germans who opposed Nazism as well. 

The point I am trying to make is that while we as a modern, Western culture (just as the German people were a modern, Western culture) think we are immune to such evils as extreme racial prejudice and genocide, or even from complicity with them (just as I am sure many of the German people thought they were immune), we are not.  

Underneath all the veneer of modern Western civilization and progress, the fallen human condition still remains.  For those not in Christ, it is the enslavement and bondage to sin. For those of us who are in Christ, it is the daily battle to resist temptation and returning to the bondage from which Christ’s death has freed us. 

Much has come to light over the last several weeks and months on what some have called a rising tide of anti-Semitism in Europe.  While it is highly doubtful that this is linked to a resurgent neo-Nazism of some kind (I pray that such an unholy worldview will stay forever buried with Hitler and Himmler), it does seem to be a growing problem.  This has, sadly, been illustrated again in the past week with the tragic murders at Charlie Hebdo in France, and the subsequent Port de Vincennes hostage crisis, which resulted in the deaths of several Jewish civilians at a kosher supermarket.  Whether or not radical Islamic ideology (and I mean specifically radical Islam, not the religion of mainstream Muslims who rightly condemn such acts of violence) can be placed on the same level of evil as Nazism remains to be seen, though I hope that will never be the case. 

My point in all of this is that history shows us that a hatred of a certain people can grow all too quickly, particularly anti-Semitism, and particularly in Europe.  Just as a radical firebrand gained power and influence among a disenchanted populace in the Weimar Republic, so too, similar hate-filled ideologies and ideologues can take root again and fuel anti-Semitism in Europe if left unchecked.  

As a Christian, I seek to oppose anti-Semitism at all costs, firstly because I believe that the Triune Creator God really does love all people and wants them to be saved by grace through faith, and secondly because, in many respects I owe my life in Christ to the Jewish people. It was through the Jews that Christ came.  The Word became flesh, first-century Jewish flesh, and He rose and reigns in that resurrected Jewish flesh.  The salvation of the world came through the Jewish people.  Indeed, one of the things I most look forward to at Christ’s return is the healing of wounds between the Jewish and Gentile people of God.  The Hebrew Scriptures, the history of Israel, is part of my story as a Gentile who has been “grafted in” to the people of God, by grace through faith in Christ.  Were it not for the Jewish people, neither I nor anyone else would  be able to call themselves Christian.  

It is imperative that Christians stand up for our Jewish friends and neighbors for these two (and many other) reasons.  Christians are to oppose hatred and genocide wherever it rears its ugly head.  One of the great failings of many Christians in Germany and in other parts of Europe during WWII was that they did not stand up for their Jewish neighbors.  But there were many who did.  I have already mentioned Bonhoeffer and Stauffenberg (who was a devout Catholic deeply opposed to the persecution of Jews), but there were also names like Corrie ten Boom, Karl Barth, and many other Christians who opposed the Nazis.  Christians should be the last people to condone any form of anti-Semitism (or any sort of prejudicial hatred against persons) and the first to stand up for those who are persecuted.  

We must listen to history, particularly the history of Europe and its sordid relationship with anti-Semitism.  We must listen to history so that we can actively oppose this rising tide of anti-Semitism.  The main way a second Holocaust—μὴ γένοιτο—will be prevented is by listening to the voices who have born witness to the first.

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The Scylla and Charybdis of Legalism and Antinomianism and the Path of Grace-Enabled Free Response

Legalism and antinomianism are the Scylla and Charybdis of Christian ethics. Both are negative extremes antithetical to both the gospel and sanctification. It is only when we are constantly reminded that we are freed and enabled by God's grace to respond positively to His initiatory action and ethical exhortations that we can obey the Law of Christ without falling into legalism and simultaneously live in the freedom and grace the cross brings, without lapsing into antinomianism. It is only through the lens of grace-enabled freedom and grace's freeing of Christians from the bondage to sin (contra Augustine and Luther's interpretation of Romans 7, which speaks of the non-Christian life, the life of those "in Adam") that Phillipians 2:12-13 makes sense. We are to work out our salvation and sanctification with "fear and trembling" and this is only possible because the grace of God has freed our wills to respond to His initiatory act of grace to all the world in Christ and which continues to work in us in the forms of cooperating and sanctifying grace. God does not unilaterally determine our every action "from before the foundations of the world" (a la five-point Calvinism), nor do we as Christians have freedom to respond to God apart from His grace (a la Pelagianism and Semi-Pelagianism). It is only because He has graciously acted first in Christ that we are enabled to respond positively to Him.

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Only in Relationship Are We Truly Free: Bonhoeffer on Grace and Freedom

So I started up a new, quasi-experimental devotional this past week. I am reading through the creation narrative of Genesis while simultaneously reading the corresponding sections from Dietrich Bonhoeffer's little book, Creation and Fall. It is sort of like a small theological commentary on the first few chapters of Genesis.

So far it has been going great.  I've always found the majority of modern, Christian devotional material meant to supplement Scripture, to be trite and shallow.  It is probably the reason why I have never stuck to devotional reading for very long.  Thankfully, Bonhoeffer is anything but trite or shallow.

There is so much from this little volume (only a 144 pages with the extra Temptation study added on to the end) that I would love to share here.  Among other things, through reading it alongside Genesis (as well as in conjunction with an exegetical study I just finished up on Romans 1:18-32; the very cheery "wrath of God" opening portion of Paul's probatio [chs. 1-8] in the epistle), the Holy Spirit has been reminding and convicting me of the need for gratitude to God for the gift of life and being, and for the blessings I have in life.  

It is all too easy to lose a posture of thankfulness towards God, especially as a well-off, American Christian who takes my life and blessings for granted.  In contrast to such individualism, Genesis 1 and Bonhoeffer have helped me to remember that I am, in fact, always reliant on the Triune God, even when I don't realize it and seem to have everything (materially speaking) I could possibly need.  Even, with all of my material needs met and exceeded, I am still utterly reliant on the Creator God, for the simple reason that I am a contingent creature.  

I did not have to be created. I did not have to exist.  Humanity, the Earth, the whole totality of created existence did not have to be.

None of it was necessary.  

It is all a gracious gift of the Triune God who loves in freedom.

Bonhoeffer puts it this way:

. . .the Creator, in freedom, creates the creature.  Their connection is not conditioned by anything except freedom, which means that it is unconditioned.  Hence, every use of a causal category for understanding the act of creation is ruled out. . . Between Creator and creature there is simply nothing: the void. For freedom happens in and through the void. There is no necessity that can be shown in God which can or must ensue in creation. There is nothing that causes him to create. Creation comes out of this void.

- Creation and Fall, p. 16

I am still overwhelmed by the beauty of that thought.  The Triune Creator God, who exists eternally as three persons (hypostases) in one, ontologically distinct essence (ousia) was and is perfectly self-sufficient.  He is perfect in being, love, and relational bliss.  

God needs nothing outside of Himself. 

He is totally and utterly free from all external and internal constraints and determining factors.

The Triune God would still be just as much "God" if creation had never happened. 

The only "constraint" (if you can really even call it that, as it is really no constraint at all) on God's action is the eternal, self-giving, relationality that comprises the eternal being of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Put simply, God loves because He loves.  Relational love is the ultimate end, the telos of everything, the grounding factor of all reality.

The Triune God who is utterly and completely free is so precisely because true freedom is relational freedom, freedom for the other.  Bonhoeffer puts it this way in referring to human freedom as creaturely freedom that is meant to be an image of the freedom of the Triune Creator: 

In man God creates his image on earth. This means that man is like the Creator in that he is free. Actually he is free only by God's creation, by means of the Word of God; he is free for the worship of the Creator.  In the language of the Bible, freedom is not something man has for himself, but something he has for others. No man is free "as such," that is, in a vacuum, in the way that he may be musical, intelligent or blind as such.  Freedom is not a [intrinsic, separate from the grace of God] quality of man, nor is it an ability, a capacity, a kind of being that somehow flares up in him.  Anyone investigating man to discover freedom finds nothing of it.  Why? because freedom is not a quality which can be revealed—it is not a possession, a presence, an object, nor is it a form for existence—but a relationship and nothing else.  In truth, freedom is a relationship between persons.  Being free means "being free for the other," because the other has bound me to him.  Only in relationship with the other am I free. . . 

. . . it is the message of the gospel that God's freedom has bound us to itself, that his free grace only becomes real [for us as contingent creatures; it is alway real in the inter-Trinitarian relations of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit] in this relation to us, and that God does not will to be free for himself by for man.  God in Christ is free for man.  Because he does not retain his freedom for himself the concept of freedom only exists for us as "being free for." 

- Creation and Fall, p. 40

  Just as the inter-Trinitarian freedom of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is that perfect, self-giving, loving freedom for the other, so too is true human freedom.  By the grace of God in Christ, our wills have been freed from the bondage which sin previously held us in; a bondage that turns us inward on ourselves, away from the other.  

One of the cruelest ironies of sin is that it tells us that true freedom is "freedom from."  We think that if we can just be free from the other (or from the supreme Other) then we will be truly free.  This is the lie in the Garden, the lie the serpent whispered to Adam and Eve.  This perverse "freedom" destroys loving relationality, turning us steadily inward on ourselves, our heart becoming a black hole of the darkest selfishness.  We are told that this "freedom from" is true freedom, but in reality it is nothing but darkness and solitary bondage.

Bonhoeffer reminds us that by reflecting on creation in the Genesis 1, we remember that the universe was not created out of such "freedom from," but out self-giving, loving "freedom for."  Life is grace. Being is grace. The world is grace.  It is all gift. And for that we Christians (especially we who have been saved by grace through faith!) must never forget to give thanks to our Triune Creator for so many gifts of unconditional love.  

Even in the midst of a fallen world, we remember that the darkness is temporary; it is a cosmic contingency, a privation of the good, an evil that had it's critical blow struck at Golgotha and is now a "dead man walking." Death and darkness are temporary; it is Triune love and grace that are eternal.

Thanks be to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit! 

Amen.

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Jesus and Kingdom Prayer: An Examination of Matthew 6:5-15 in Light of Jesus’ Eschatological Kingdom Proclamation

This is a paper (just click on the hyperlink or the full link below to read it) I wrote a year ago for a class on the study of the historical Jesus.  It specifically examines the Lord's Prayer (or as I refer to it  Jesus's Kingdom Prayer) in light of the first-century Jewish apocalyptic worldview within which Jesus operated, lived, and preached.  

I decided to post it here after some reflection on how many American Christians pray the Lord's prayer, and specifically how the last line in Matt. 6:13b of the prayer—"but rescue us from evil"—is often mistranslated, and rather should be translated "but rescue us from the evil one."  Jesus' Kingdom Prayer is fundamentally rooted in what Gregory Boyd refers to as the "warfare worldview" of first-century Judaism, and if we miss that when we pray it, we miss something key to understanding Jesus as the Kingdom-bringing Messiah.

https://cruciformview.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/jesus-and-kingdom-prayer1.pdf

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Justification Through Faith and the Faithfulness of Messiah Jesus: An Exegetical Study of Galatians 2:15—21

Just in case anyone was interested in reading some of my more scholarly (and more dry and pedantic) work, here is an exegetical study I did on Galatians 2:15—21.  Just click on the hyper link! 

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What Does Physical Fitness Have to Do With Christian Faith?: A Brief Theological Reflection

This is a bit of an odd topic for me to write about.  Typically I try to keep my articles and posts within the realms of biblical studies, systematic theology and philosophical theology; egghead topics basically.  Lately, however, I’ve been increasingly thinking about the intrinsic relation between physical fitness and Christian theological tradition, particularly as regards the Incarnation of our only Lord and Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth (I’ve also been trying to use more traditional referents to Jesus lately. They carry far more meaning than simply saying something along the lines “my buddy Jesus” or some other dogmatically-deficient modern parlance. But I digress.) Since the uncreated Logos, the one and only eternal Son of God, has taken on a fully human nature and body and even now dwells in heaven in His glorified, resurrection body and will return at the Parousia in that self-same Galilean Jewish, glorified body, what does that entail for our own theology of the body?  More important for this particular post, what does that entail about how we Christians (at least we Christians who have the time and means) think theologically about the maintenance of our bodies?  As I hope to show below, it entails that we are obligated to take care of the very bodies that God has gifted us with.

  “You Don’t Have a Soul. You Are a Soul and a Body." 

Anyone who has spent a significant amount of time in Christian circles will have likely heard famed quote by C.S. Lewis:

“You don’t have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.” 

Short and pithy right?  The problem is that (1) its not consistent with classic, consensual Christian anthropology and (2) Lewis likely never said or wrote it.  It goes against most of what he did write on the topic of embodiedness and physicality and also leans closer to Gnosticism than the Christian emphasis on eschatological redemption and glorification of the body.  Just read Paul’s treatment of resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15 and you’ll see that from the very beginning, Christian orthodoxy has emphasized the goodness of created and redeemed embodiedness.  True, Scripture and Christian tradition also emphasize the fact that we exist in a fallen world where disease, decay, and corruption afflict our bodies, but that fallen status is a perversion of the created goodness of the physical world, of which our bodies are a part. 

The created goodness of physical embodiedness precedes the fallen corruption that perverts it.

More to the point of the “Pseudo-Lewis” quote, a truly Christian saying would be more along the lines of: “You don’t have a soul. You don’t have a body. You are both a soul and a body. 

                                                         Do you really think the man who wrote the Space Trilogy and Narnia would say such a "Gnostic-esque" thing? Aslan says "No."

Our Embodied, Contingent Souls and Our Future Resurrection Bodies

When one looks at the broad sweep of the Old and New Testaments it becomes evident that the biblical notion of the soul is one of what is technically termed “conditional unity” by some theologians and biblical scholars.  While the technical specifics of the phrase are too large to unpack fully in a short post like this, suffice it to say that the Biblical view of the person does hold to a dualism (e.g. that human persons are made up of both a material body and an immaterial soul), but it is a dualism that is inextricably bound together.  A whole human person is comprised of both body and soul.  Take away one or the other and you have less than a full person.  As I’ve written elsewhere in the context of arguing for the conditional immortality/annihilationist view of hell:

“…the Jewish [and thus Christian] conception of the person was more holistic; both the physical body and the immaterial soul were inextricably tied together (what some theologians refer to as “conditional unity” or “contingent monism”). Indeed, it was for this reason that the Jews (at least most of the Jews of Jesus’ day; the Sadducees being an obvious exception) emphasized the resurrection of human bodies, and not the Platonic notion of immortal, disembodied souls. Human souls did not preexist; they were contingent creations made by the Creator God. Nor could a person really be considered a whole human person without a body. The closest one gets to a disembodied personal state is seeing Samuel’s shade in 1 Sam. 28:3-25.  Even then though this is not Samuel as a whole person, but rather an out-of-the ordinary appearance of a prophet; nor does the text state that this is a permanent state for Samuel.  Human immortality is conditional on whether one is connected to the source of life Himself—God through the Mediator Jesus Christ. In Genesis 3 we see that the first humans have immortality only when they are obeying God’s commands and in undamaged relationship toward Him. It is only after they “disconnect” themselves from the source of life and being (God and His Tree of Life) by disobeying God’s commands and rejecting His purposes for them, that Adam and Eve are subject to death.”

Saul and Samuel's Shade

We don’t necessarily need to fully engage in a detailed examination of each and every passage pertaining to either body or soul in the Bible to verify this though.  We need only look at Jesus Christ.  In the person of Jesus of Nazareth, God the Son has taken on a fully human nature in addition to His fully divine nature.  He is the one and only, totally unique God-man, Jesus Christ.  Thus, we see in the person of Jesus Christ not only what it means for God to be God, as Jesus is the “radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of His nature,” (Heb. 1:3) but also what it means to be fully human.  Jesus of Nazareth is quite literally the prime example of what humanity is meant to be in His sinless, faithful, loving, just, and perfect life. 

More importantly though, Jesus shows us what human destiny looks like when we are in full, loving relationship with the Creator God, our Father: resurrection and glorification.  Jesus’ glorified, resurrection bodily existence is what we can expect if we put our faith (aka trust in the purest relational sense) in Him as the sole Savior and Mediator between God and man.  By doing so, we trust God himself to save us and ultimately to resurrect and redeem our bodies, because Jesus is the Son of God, the Word made flesh, the Second Person of the Trinity. 

Thomas Encounters the Physically-Resurrected Jesus of Nazareth

What has happened to Jesus in His resurrection is a proleptic foretaste of what God intends to do eschatologically to all people who have laid down their rebellious arms and have — through faith, trust, and clinging to Christ— been saved and sanctified by Him.  God’s intended destiny for humans who have freely (by the freeing and enabling prevenient grace of the Holy Spirit) placed their trust in Jesus Christ and wedded themselves to Him, is endless, embodied, loving relationship with the God who eternally exists in loving relationship as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (1 Jn. 4:8). 

Incorruptible, material, resurrection bodies and redeemed, immaterial created souls fully and perfectly integrated as full persons, forever in loving relationship with the God who has taken on a fully human, embodied nature in addition to His fully divine, uncreated nature so that He might redeem and restore all of His good and beloved creation, both the physical and the spiritual.  

Stewarding our Created Bodies 

As I hope to have demonstrated above, physical embodiedness is not something that God is indifferent about. Rather, His ultimate plan for his human creatures is incorruptible physical embodiedness as seen ultimately and perfectly in Jesus of Nazareth’s own resurrected and glorified body (again, see 1 Cor. 15 for Paul’s wonderful treatment of this topic).

We must care for our souls.  I know of no Christian who would argue otherwise.  It is our souls that must be saved and sanctified by grace through faith in Jesus Christ.  We must care for our souls. 

But our souls are not meant to exist without our bodies.  As human creatures, we are inextricable, conditional unity of immaterial soul and material body.  We are not simply material bodies as naturalism says, nor are we simply immaterial souls who temporarily inhabit temporary bodies as the ancient (Greco-Roman paganism and Platonic and Neo-Platonic “theory of forms”) and modern paganism (e.g. Hinduism, New Age, Buddhism) say.  

We, as contingent human beings created in the image of the Creator God, are body and soul inextricably bound up.  Each and every human person who has ever lived is a unique, dual-unity of a totally unique soul and a totally unique body.  The atoms and cells that comprise our bodies are constantly exchanged, sloughed off, and replaced with new ones. The strange and wonderful miracle of course is that despite this changing out of the building blocks of our bodies, our bodies is still uniquely and only ours, just as our immaterial soul is uniquely ours.  God has created us with physical bodies that are more than merely the sum of their parts.

Despite this wonderful, embodied and soulful existence that the Creator God has gifted us with, He has also given us rules and commands on how such an existence is to be used properly and in accordance with His loving plans for His good creation.  Such laws can be found throughout the Torah, the Prophets, the Wisdom literature, and the commands of Jesus Himself.

The first command, however, comes in Genesis 1:26-28. God has just created humans in His image. Immediately following this, God directs them to:

“Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the beards of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” (Gen. 1:28)

God's First Commandment to Humanity

Now, first of all it is important that we realize that this subduing and ruling over God’s world is conditioned by the fact humans are made in God’s image.  They are to be His vice-regents, those who rule on His behalf.  As such their rule is meant to bring about the further, creative flourishing of the earth, just as the Creator God rules over all of the creation. 

We are to subdue so that creative, life-giving flourishing might ensue.

What many Christians often forget though is that we too are a part of God’s creation.  As such we must also (to the best of our ability and circumstances of course) subdue and rule over our bodily existence so that we too might flourish and live as God intended for us to. 

This subduing includes many things.  It includes the subduing of our lusts, our gluttony, our slothfulness, our greed, our ill-placed wrath, our envy, and our pridefulness (and yes, those are the seven deadly sin if you were wondering). 

Of course we are only able to subdue these by the prevenient and sanctifying grace of the Holy Spirit, but we still must discipline ourselves in subduing and resisting them so that life-giving flourishing in and through Christ might result.

Many of these sins and behaviors that need to be subdued directly affect our physical bodies.  Slothfulness, gluttony, and lust are the first three that come to mind.  By engaging in physical fitness and exercise, by disciplining the bodies that God created us with, we are, in fact, obeying His first command to subdue and rule over the created world so that life-giving, flourishing might result.  This life-giving flourishing brought on by the discipline of physical fitness and exercise not only positively affects us as creatures, but more effectively allows us to carry out God’s directive to lovingly and justly rule over all of His world. 

In our taking care of our bodies through proper exercise and diet, we not only subdue our own slothfulness, gluttony, and lusts, we also facilitate our roles as image-bearing stewards of God’s good creation.

Further still, disciplining and subduing our bodies through exercise and physical fitness enables us to more effectively carry out the Great Commission.  By eliminating what physical deficiencies we can (and I emphasize those deficiencies we can eliminate, as those afflicted with certain ailments may be more limited in this regard than others) through diet and exercise, we make ourselves more physically-able proclaimers and carriers of the gospel of Jesus Christ to difficult and hard to reach places.

Finally, by subduing and disciplining our bodies through physical fitness, we actively give thanks to God for the gift of embodied existence.  Without embodied existence we would never know the smell of fresh flowers, the sound of Bach or Beethoven, the taste of a ripe peach (I really like fresh peaches, but substitute any fruit you like), the sensation of a hug, or the sight of someone we love.  

True there is much grief and pain associated with physicality.  Scraped knees, lost limbs, cancers, and death itself all afflict our current embodied existence.

But this is not how things were meant to be.  God intended for His physical creation and embodied existence that comes with it to be good things.  It was because of creaturely rebellion and sin (both human and angelic) that these painful perversions of reality came about.  But these contingencies of evil and suffering were caused by contingent beings; they are nor eternal aspects of reality, only perversions and inversions of it.  Thus, God will one day finally do away with them completely.

So until then we give thanks with our bodies for the original goodness of physical creation and embodiedness.  We steward God’s creation and gift to us: our bodies.  We look toward the day when there will be no more death or pain and when we will be able to run without being winded, to climb mountains without fatigue, to swim without fear of treading water. 

Just as our Christian spiritual disciplines of prayer, fasting, and meditation on Scripture serve to form us spiritually in the imitation of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, so our physical disciplines of exercise and overall fitness—in whatever capacity they may be—serve to form us in our role as stewards over God’s good world, as more effective carriers and proclaimers of the gospel, and as thankful recipients of embodied existence that the Creator God will one day fully redeem, restore, and glorify, just as He has already done to His Son, our one and only Lord and Savior, Jesus of Nazareth.

Icon of the Resurrected Jesus Christ Raising Adam and Eve from Their Tombs

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Dark Thoughts Redeemed and Why Ivan Karamazov's Rage is Really of the Most Christian Character

So my second year of seminary studies has started up and I've got some stuff on my mind. I almost always do, but this topic was really "put on my heart" to use some Christianese lingo. I don't normally write about my inner mental states, but I am today for whatever reason.

Now for whatever reason(s) I have a slightly morose personality (odd for a committed Christian and seminary student right?!). And while this can be annoying, I find that God uses this weakness of mine and—by His sanctifying grace—redeems and reorients it into a strength.

I almost constantly think about things that most people would prefer not to (for those who read my recent spiel on the horror of Nietzschean consistency in atheism, you get the idea). Yet, thinking about such topics consistently serves as a stark contrast to the radical and revolutionary nature of Christianity. I find that the more my thoughts turn to such dismal topics, the more I am repeatedly drawn back to Christianity (and Jesus Christ himself) as the only real, ultimate, metaphysical, and ontological option of hope.

Hope for life as more than mere mindless matter in motion. Hope that, ultimately, justice will triumph over injustice. Hope that personal, loving relationality is the "supreme ontological predicate" (to quote John Zizioulas).

Thus, I am drawn to figures like Fyodor Dostoevsky and his fictional character Ivan Karamazov's rage against the so-called "divine order." For Ivan's argument and rage is actually one of the most Christian of moral pathos:

For the secret of Ivan’s argument is that it is not a challenge to Christian faith advanced from the position of unbelief; more subtly, it is a challenge to the habitual optimism or pagan fatalism or empty logical determinism of many Christians advanced from the position of a deeper, more original, more revolutionary, more ‘Christian’ vision of God and understanding of evil. For behind Ivan’s anguish lies an intuition — which is purely Christian, even if many Christians are insensible to it — that it is impossible for the infinite God of love directly or positively to will evil (physical or moral), even in a provisional or transitory way: and this is because he is infinitely free.

- David Bentley Hart, The Doors of the Sea: Where Was God in the Tsunami, p. 70

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The "Outright Disaster" of the Augustinian-Calvinist Formulation of Election

Phillip Cary comments on the "outright disaster" of the Augustinian-Calvinist doctrine of election vs the beauty of the Biblical doctrine of election: 

Barth's focus on Jesus Christ uncovers the fundamental structure of the biblical doctrine of election, which differs profoundly from Augustine's doctrine of election (and therefore from Luther's and Calvin's, and for that matter from Aquinas's). For the point of divine election is not that grace is given to one rather than another, but that grace is given to one for the sake of others. . . . . .The difference between Augustine's [and by extension Calvin's] doctrine of election and the Bible's can be put using the following comparison. One can imagine a foolish father who has only foolish children, and one of them is his favorite, on whom he lavishes all his wealth (far beyond what any of his children deserve) bequeathing his whole estate to his chosen one, knowing that as a result his other children will starve—as is only just, given their improvidence and disobedience. But one can also imagine a gracious father who has many rebellious children, but chooses one for special discipline so that when he grows up his father can say: "Son, I give you my whole inheritance so that you can spend it on your brothers and sisters, who will need it but who would squander it if I gave it to them directly. I want you to put them through school, pay their medical bills, buy them each a house, and throw a grand wedding when they get married. I know you could have done better things for yourself if your time and efforts were devoted to your own ambitions, but I need you to do this for them, even though it will cost you a great deal of trouble and heartache." The problem with the Augustinian [and by extension Calvinist] doctrine of election, which leads to the outright disaster of the Augustinian doctrine of predestination, is that it has the structure of the first story rather than the second.  —Phillip Cary "Inner Grace: Augustine in the Traditions of Plato and Paul" p. 122-124

The overall thrust of this chapter in Cary's monograph is that Augustine's idiosyncratic formulation of election and predestination (which would later influence Calvin and Luther's own idiosyncratic neo-Augustinian versions of the doctrine) was influenced by Platonic and Neo-Platonic thought patterns of grace that differed significantly from the Pauline and Hebraic concept of grace, which is given to one (Israel, Christ, the Church) for the benefit of others rather than merely and arbitrarily given to one instead of another, which as Cary rightly says, leads logically to the "outright disaster" of Augustine's (and later Calvin's) doctrine of double-predestination. 

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The Church Fathers, Patristic Exegesis and Why Evolutionary Theory Does Not Threaten the Classical Christian Doctrine of Creation (Except For Certain Fundamentalist-Literalist Understandings of It)

An interesting tidbit on how the Early Church Fathers read Genesis, from one my favorite theologians writing today, David Bentley Hart (Hint: most modern fundamentalists would probably declare the Church Fathers to be heretics in this regard if they really knew what they said regarding how the Genesis narrative is read):

Many of the Fathers—Origen, John Chrysostom, Augustine, for example—took "beginning" as a reference to the eternal "principle" of God's Logos. Thus it made perfect sense for Gregory of Nyssa and Augustine to speculate that, while the act of creation is timeless [for God, since by definition He exists intrinsically outside of space and time; creation did have a definite beginning point for intrinsically spacio-temporal creatures like ourselves; of course God can freely enter into His spacio-temporal creation if He wishes, as evidenced by the Incarnation], the world had unfolded progressively in time, out of its own potencies and and principles [since it is ontologically distinct from the Creator], with nature itself acting as craftsman. And such was the pattern of 'higher' biblical exegesis for centuries thereafter. Certainly anyone searching medieval commentaries on the creation narratives of Genesis for signs of fundamentalist literalism will be largely disappointed. There is a good reason why, among Darwin's contemporaries, even as orthodox a Christian thinker as John Henry Newman (1801-1890)—who was among other things, a great patristics scholar—could find nothing in the science of evolution contrary to or problematic for the doctrine of creation.

- David Bentley Hart, The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss, p. 26

Also, here's a picture of Gregory of Nyssa to brighten up your day.