Full of Grace and Truth

A lie is the truth! So seems postmodernist verbal sleight-of-hand. Postmodernism can be tied to a number of intellectual trends, from a denial of any normative overarching metanarrative to the relativity of truth, but most postmodernists assume with ancient Greek philosopher Protagoras that “Man is the measure of all things” and that we humans are the sole source of meaning, morality, and “truth.”[1] Postmodern philosophy constructs “truth” unconnected to any referent in objective reality “out there.” As the godfather of postmodernism, Friedrich Nietzsche, said, we create truth from out of the perspective of our perceived need, in our contemporary world, out of marginalization, powerlessness, racial, gender, or sexual oppression.[2]

The unfitness and insufficiency of the postmodern rhetoric to account satisfactorily and do justice to the way things are was vividly lit up for me in the Johnny Depp v. Amber Heard defamation trial last spring 2022. The celebrity trial fascinated millions of people worldwide. Depp contended that Heard damaged his reputation by declaring through various public media sources that he had committed domestic violence against her and physically and sexually abused her. Amber’s statements under oath highlight for me the postmodern proclivity to use objectively false “true-for-me” statements as authentic, legitimate, moral speech protesting exploitation and abuse of an oppressed class—in this case, a woman Amber Heard.

Ms. Heard spoke as a vulnerable woman oppressed by a rich, violent man. In the Virginia court of law, she accused Johnny Depp of beating her up and breaking her nose. Photos of her face the next night after a gala showed no signs of being beaten—no marring, no swelling or bruising, and no crooked nose. There were no doctor visits. When confronted with her speech and the lack of correspondence to actual outside reality, she defended her speech saying it certainly “felt broken”!

To Amber, “felt broken” is the same as being broken. No, they are not the same. Neither does “felt broken” describe the fact he had not struck her at all! A claim must correlate with the facts it describes. Rather than creating a harmony of justice in which right is restored and the injured party and the malefactor get what each deserves, Amber Heard’s speech created injustice she sought to right. Amber Heard was not the injured party. Heard’s claim, “I spoke up against sexual violence,” justified as authentic testimony of an oppressed woman, carries significance only if it is connected with actual oppression. If she was not an offended party against whom sexual violence had been committed, words to that effect are simply untrue.

In fact, Johnny Depp proved to be the injured party because the public prior to the trial considered Amber Heard’s words to be connected to actual reality and acted accordingly. Movie studios did not renew Depp’s contracts for leading roles such as iconic pirate “Jack Sparrow” in Pirates of the Caribbean and villain “Gellert Grindelwald” in Fantastic Beasts. Depp was deemed an abuser of women. His reputation suffered and he lost employment.[3] Of course, in recent days our society has done at least a marginally better job taking the claims of real victims seriously, but if claims of abuse are demonstrably manufactured, investing them with authority will not advance the cause of justice, but subvert it.

With postmodernism denying truth as objective and considering only personal perspective authentic, the Depp/Heard trial claims drew me this Advent season to juxtapose it with the Word become flesh “full of grace and truth.” The Incarnate Word’s claims of deity were and have been received or rejected since based on whether they correspond to objective, existent reality. In Acts 2:17 and following, Jesus’ disciple Peter told the Jewish crowd on Pentecost that the Lord’s display of deity by acts of power and might was visible to them as eyewitnesses. Though defying human explanation, His words and wondrous acts connected with this real, corporeal world.

The truth embodied in Jesus is not rhetoric originating from Jesus’ particular perspective as a minority Jew subjugated by an imperial Roman power. It was and remains words and acts corresponding with reality they describe and to which they were directed. The Word become flesh has abided with this vulnerability for millennia. Christian teaching has from the very first century rejected Gnostic tendencies to separate the Word from His incarnation in this sensual, material world. The Word become flesh full “of truth” in correspondence to this world is a fascinating contrast to postmodernism’s refusal to be evaluated by the truth and falsity of the existent, objective world. The Word become flesh “full of grace and truth” connected to this objective world beckons all to view Him in accordance with it.

In postscript, the Word become flesh is judged against the objective world, but the objective world is also judged against Him. He the Truth came “to testify to the truth” that the way things are inhere in Him. His Advent promises “the glories of his righteousness.” He reveals Himself the universal scale by which all things are weighed, including oppressor, and oppressed; and all, both oppressor and oppressed, are found wanting; neither is the way they’re supposed to be.

Certainly, though Johnny Depp had not physically or sexually abused Amber Heard, the trial testimony disclosed that before God there was sin and offense enough on both sides. The Word become flesh full of truth reveals that “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God”; yet the Advent season points to the Word become flesh who is not only full of truth but also full of grace. The Gospel John says, “The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.” Indeed, His truth promises the oppressed and the oppressor justice! But better yet, His grace promises each undeserved grace more than either deserves, more than either you or I deserve. Truly good tidings of great joy and good news indeed. Merry Christmas!

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[1] I have referred to Douglas Groothuis’s book in writing this piece.  See, Douglas Groothuis, Truth Decay: Defending Christianity Against the Challenges of Postmodernism  (Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press, 2000).

[2] This has resulted in a transition from what Charles Taylor calls a “mimetic view,” according to which the world has objective order and meaning, to a “poietic” view that sees the world as so much raw material out of which meaning and purpose can be cranked by the individual. 

[3] Abby Gorzlancyk, “The Defamed Explained: Depp v. Heard,” Syracuse Law Review, Syracuse University/College of Law, June 9, 2022.

“Christ in you, the hope of glory”: Three Poems on the Incarnation

Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash

            Incarnation has come to be a theological word associated primarily with the embodiment of God Himself in human flesh, living for a time on earth with the name of Jesus of Nazareth.  He was also given the name of “Immanuel,” meaning “God with us” (Matt. 1:23).  But “God with us” means more than the fact that the Son of God was historically present on earth for a short time.  When He went back to Heaven to be with the Father, His place was taken by the Holy Spirit, so that the joyful Presence of God within us is the “hope of glory.”  Just as Jesus’ time on earth was lived and terminated for a larger purpose, so we, dying to the flesh, will find His Presence in these mortal bodies to be fulfilled by being resurrected into the eternal Presence of God.  God’s Incarnation is reenacted in us, adopted brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ.

            The three poems below present responses to and experiences of the Incarnation.  In “The Husbandry of God,” Mary wrestles with the implications and the aftermath of yielding herself to be the instrument by which the God of Heaven would be incubated and born into the world.  She is the willing ground into which divine seed will be planted to bear the fruit of Heaven, and therein she prefigures the process by which every believer in the Messiah becomes a recipient of the Presence of God and by His power reaps eternal life.

                 The Husbandry of God

                        (Luke 1:26-35)  

How can I contain this word from the Lord?

His light has pierced my being

And sown in single seed

Both glory and shame.

Content was I

To wed in lowliness

And live in obscurity,

With purity my only dower.

Now, ravished with power,

I flout the conventions of man

To incubate God.

In lowliness how shall I bear it?

In modesty how shall I tell it?

What now shall I become?

But the fruit of God's planting

Is His to harvest.

No gleaner I, like Ruth,

But the field itself,

In whom my Lord lies hid.

            In “Immanuel,” the “one birth” at the center of the poem both emanates from and ends in God’s Presence.  In the first triplet, we look back to the source of the unique “one birth”; in the last triplet we see the results of the “one birth.”  God became flesh that we might truly know Him, and He truly know us.  

                             Immanuel  

In God's Presence

Is the essence

Of perfect earth;

In one birth

Knows all earth

The essence

Of God's Presence. 

Finally, “And the Word Became Flesh” emphasizes that it was the very essence, or “Word” of God Who gave up His rightful place beside the Father and came in the form of a fleshly baby.  In His short earthly ministry, He steadfastly walked the road to a death He did not deserve, and thereby enabled us who believe in Him to become children of God, inhabited by His Presence as a guarantee that we will someday abide eternally in His Presence.

"And the Word Became Flesh"

(John 1:1)

When Word invested in flesh,

No matter the shrouds that swathed it;

The donning of sin's poor corpse

(Indignity enough)

Was rightly wrapped in robes of death.

Yet breath of God

Broke through the shroud,

Dispersed the cloud

That darkened every birth before.

Those swaddling bands bespoke

A glory in the grave,

When flesh emerged as Word.

Take up this flesh, O Lord:

Re-form it with Your breath,

That, clothed in wordless death,

It may be Your Word restored.

Incarnation: The Intersection of Two Universes

Gerard van Honthorst Adoration of the Shepherds, still influenced by Saint Bridget

A Twilight Musing

The word “incarnation” gets a lot of use this time of year, and like most frequently-used terms, its full meaning tends to get lost in its commonness. Literally, it means “being manifest in bodily form,” and it can refer to any disembodied entity assuming physical shape. However, when Christians say “The Incarnation,” they are of course talking about the Son of God being born and living out an earthly life as a human being. That bare fact would be astounding even if God had taken human form in the perfect world of the Garden of Eden; but His being incarnated in a world corrupted by sin betokens a cosmic intersection between changeless Divinity and the ever-changing sin-diseased heavens and earth. When the apostle John wrote the prologue to his Gospel account (John 1:1-18), he called the part of God that took human form “the Word,” which “was God” and was “with God” (v. 1) before He “became flesh and lived among us” (v. 14). Deathless Eternity was enveloped by mortal flesh, locking them in a battle from which either Eternal Life or endless Death would emerge victorious. Praise be to God, we know the outcome of that battle won by the Savior Jesus, whose incarnated flesh suffered death, but was raised in glory, the firstfruits of the victory over Death.

Both of the poems below reflect the process of the Word being encased in flesh, but then also emerging from flesh to become the Eternal Word again, having triumphed over Sin and Death. In the first poem, I have assumed a symbolic correspondence between the “swaddling clothes” in which Mary wrapped Jesus at His birth and the customary shroud in which His crucified body was buried. Although there was great rejoicing at Jesus’ birth because of the promises associated with His Advent, the lowly circumstances surrounding that birth indicated that His earthly existence would not fulfill the conventional expectations of powerful king and conquering hero. Just as His birth hid the death embedded in it, so His death was the womb of the Life embedded within it.

The second poem traces the same cycle of progress from the absolute and timeless Presence of God, to the extension of His Essence into the original creation of Earth, and finally to that Essence taking on human form, but without the corruption of sin. Through that Birth, Earth will be delivered from its corruption once again to embody the Essence of God’s original purpose for it, thereby empowering it to be the dwelling place for God’s eternal Presence.

"And the Word Became Flesh" (1985)

(John 1:1)

When Word invested in flesh,

No matter the shrouds that swathed it;

The donning of sin's poor corpse

(Indignity enough)

Was rightly wrapped in robes of death.

Yet breath of God

Broke through the shroud,

Dispersed the cloud

That darkened every birth before.

Those swaddling bands bespoke

A glory in the grave,

When flesh emerged as Word.

Take up this flesh, O Lord:

Re-form it with Your breath,

That, clothed in wordless death,

It may be Your Word restored.

Immanuel (1977)

In God's Presence

Is the essence

Of perfect earth;

In one birth

Knows all earth

The essence

Of God's Presence.

May the wonder of the Word becoming flesh be made real to each of those who rest in its redeeming power; and may each of those inhabited by the Spirit of Christ know with assurance that “this flesh . . . clothed in wordless death” is being transmuted to the “Word restored.”

Seven Reasons Why Moral Apologetics Points to Christianity

Various moral arguments for God’s existence are usually deployed for the purpose of arguing for the truth of God’s existence per se, but they strongly hint at a more specific conclusion. Namely, they are plausibly taken to be evidence that Christianity in particular is true. The claim isn’t that by moral apologetics alone one can somehow deduce all the aspects of special revelation contained in Christianity, but rather this: in light of Christianity having been revealed, moral arguments for God’s existence point quite naturally in its direction. The following list is far from exhaustive, but offers a few reasons to think this is so.

First, one of the great virtues of moral arguments for God’s existence is that they point not just to the existence of God, but to a God of a particular nature: a God who is morally perfect. A. C. Ewing once said that the source of the moral law is morally perfect. Such a notion is described in various ways: omnibenevolent, impeccable, essentially good, and the like. What does it look like when omnibenevolence takes on human form? Jesus is a powerful answer. Moral apologetics works best when it’s Christological.

Second, to conceive of God as essentially and perfectly loving requires some sort of account. The right account, again, isn’t the sort of idea that we’re able to generate on our own; we depend on special revelation to tell us what it is. But Christianity has provided us with an account of the divine nature that’s Trinitarian in nature. C. S. Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity, “All sorts of people are fond of repeating the Christian statement that ‘God is love’. But they seem not to notice that the words ‘God is love’ have no real meaning unless God contains at least two Persons. Love is something that one person has for another person. If God was a single person, then before the world was made, He was not love.” Moral apologetics works best when it’s Trinitarian.

Third, Christianity has a demonstrated track record historically in reaching people of every race and ethnicity, and every socioeconomic background, and radically transforming their lives. In a book chronicling the spiritual lives of various Christian saints called They Found the Secret can be found this description: “Out of discouragement and defeat they have come into victory. Out of weakness and weariness they have been made strong. Out of ineffectiveness and apparent uselessness they have become efficient and enthusiastic. The pattern seems to be self-centeredness, self-effort, increasing inner dissatisfaction and outer discouragement, a temptation to give it all up because there is no better way, and then finding the Spirit of God to be their strength, their guide, their confidence and companion—in a word, their life.” Moral apologetics works best when it’s individually transformational.

Fourth, Paul Copan speaks of an historical aspect of moral apologetics: the historical role played by Christ and his devoted followers to promote social justice. Morality demands deep cultural transformation too. Copan cites specific cultural developments that can be shown to have flowed from the Jewish-Christian worldview, leading to societies that are “progress-prone rather than progress-resistant,” including such signs of progress as the founding of modern science, poverty-diminishing free markets, equal rights for all before the law, religious liberty, women’s suffrage, human rights initiatives, and the abolition of slavery, widow-burning, and foot-binding.

Jürgen Habermas, who isn’t a Christian himself, writes the following: “Christianity has functioned for the normative self-understanding of modernity as more than just a precursor or a catalyst. Egalitarian universalism, from which sprang the ideas of freedom and a social solidarity, of an autonomous conduct of life and emancipation, the individual morality of conscience, human rights, and democracy, is the direct heir to the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love. This legacy, substantially unchanged, has been the object of continual critical appropriation and reinterpretation. To this day, there is no alternative to it. And in light of current challenges of a postnational constellation, we continue to draw on the substance of this heritage. Everything else is just idle postmodern talk.” Moral apologetics works best when it’s culturally transformative.

Fifth, Christianity holds out the hope for total moral transformation. Morality upholds a standard that all of us fall short of all the time, yet there’s nothing about morality that hints at accommodation or compromise. The right ultimate explanation of morality should be able to make sense of our aspirations for radical moral transformation, and even perfection as something more than a Pollyannaish pipedream. Christianity offers, by God’s grace through faith, moral hope instead of moral despair, forgiveness and liberation from guilt, and the prospect to be totally conformed to the image of Christ, in whom there’s no shadow of turning. The resurrection offers the prescription from both death and sin: abundant and everlasting life. Moral apologetics works best when it is soteriological (offering both forgiveness and transformation, both justification and sanctification).

Sixth, Christianity offers principled reason to think that the glory to come will not just outweigh, but definitely defeat, the worst evils of this world. Christian philosopher Marilyn Adams writes, “If Divine Goodness is infinite, if intimate relation to It is thus incommensurably good for created persons, then we have identified a good big enough to defeat horrors in every case.” Moral apologetics works best when it’s eschatological.

Seventh, Christianity gives compelling reasons to think that every person possesses infinite dignity and value. To be loved by God, the very archetype of all goodness—each of us differently, but all of us infinitely—and to have been made a person in his image is to possess greater worth than we can begin to imagine. And humanity isn’t just valuable in the aggregate, according to Christianity. Rather, each person is unique, each is loved by God, each is someone for whom Jesus suffered and died. And in the book of Revelation, for everyone who accepts God’s overtures of love, a white stone will reveal a unique name for each one of them—marking their distinctive relationship with God and vocation in him. Moral apologetics works best when it’s universal.

The way a labyrinthine maze of jumbled metal filings suddenly stands in symmetrical formation in response to the pull of a magnet, likewise the right organizing story—classical theism and orthodox Christianity—pulls all the moral pieces of evidence into alignment and allows a striking pattern to emerge.

Three Reasons Christmas Matters for Morality

At this time of year, Christmas images are everywhere. As we walk into the grocery store, we see Santa and his reindeer painted in the window, adorned by the phrase, “Peace on earth, good will to men.” As we drive by a neighbor’s house, we notice a brightly lit nutcracker. Close beside, a nativity. These decorations go up right after Thanksgiving, and by the first week in December, they just blend into the background. I think the lack of attention we pay to ornaments often extends to Christmas itself. We hear the sermons and sing the carols, but the reality they point to, we often overlook. The preacher says, “One of Jesus’ names is ‘Emmanuel.’ That means ‘God is with us.” We nod our heads, and we know that is a good thing. But why is it a good thing, exactly? And what is this business about “peace on earth and good will to men?” That’s a question I aim to answer at least partially by giving three reasons Christmas matters for morality.

1. Jesus’ birth reveals the metaphysical nature of human beings

Many atheists today think that human beings are merely biological machines. For example, Richard Dawkins has famously said, “We are machines built by DNA whose purpose is to make more copies of the same DNA. ... This is exactly what we are for. We are machines for propagating DNA, and the propagation of DNA is a self-sustaining process. It is every living object's sole reason for living.” A similar idea is expressed by Daniel Dennett who thinks of humans as “information processing machines” created by mindless natural forces. Now, Dawkins and Dennett are likely quick to affirm the dignity and value of human persons. But difficulty arises when we ask, “How is it that a machine could have such value?” It does not seem the bare matter could ground real value. Besides that, what follows from such a view is that humans have no genuine free will. Instead, their actions are determined by physical necessity. Not everyone agrees this precludes free will, but the views of such compatibilists strain credulity and common sense. Another problem is that on such reductive materialist views, humans as humans don’t even exist. Instead what we have is a pile of parts arranged human-wise. Humans are, when we take the view seriously, a collection of elements hanging together due to natural forces. “Human” is just the term that human-shaped piles call other human-shaped piles. With a view like this, it easy to see why ethicists like Peter Singer have argued that very young babies or the mentally disabled are justifiably euthanized.[1]

Consider the contrast presented in the Christmas story. For one, there is a certain metaphysical view of human persons at work. God became a man.  We’ve got to keep in mind that God did not just appear to become a man. He really did become a man. If this is true, then humans could not possibly be mere machines. As Jesus tells us, “God is spirit” (John 4:24). Something that is essentially and necessarily spiritual cannot become only material and retain its identity. If God, who is spirit, became a pile of parts arranged human-wise, he could no longer be called God. Therefore, there must be something more to man than his physical parts. But what kind of thing must humans be for God to become one of us? It seems that, at the least, humans need to be souls.

Why is this so? First we must realize that the Second Person of the Trinity existed as a person prior to his incarnation. This person is a person without any physical parts. If this person continues to be a person in the incarnation, his personhood cannot depend on any physical parts or else he would not be identical with himself prior to incarnation. That is to say, the material parts of Jesus as the incarnate Son of God must be only accidental properties and not essential ones. If they were essential, it would mean there was an essential difference between Jesus incarnated and Jesus prior to his incarnation. The person incarnated would not be the same person as the Second Person of the Trinity. But, Jesus, who is an essentially spiritual person, became an actual human person. Consider what this must means for humans in general. If Jesus really became a human, humans must also be essentially spiritual persons. Humans, then, must essentially be non-material substances; humans must be souls.[2]

If humans are souls, everything they do is not determined by the physical laws of the universe. Having a soul also provides the “metaphysical goods” to ground a human nature. If humans are souls, they are not piles of parts. Instead, they are a unified substance endowed by God with personhood. These powers include the power of volition so that humans are able to direct their lives toward one end or another. So when we see Jesus laying in manger, one of the things we ought to perceive is a rejection of the reductive view of human persons proposed by Dawkins and Dennett. The incarnation tells us that humans are body and soul. As such, they have the capacity to transcend the determinative laws of nature and become agents, capable of directing their own lives.

1. Jesus’ birth demonstrates the value and dignity of human beings

Jesus’ birth also demonstrates the value and dignity of human beings. It does this a couple of ways. First, as we read in John 3:16, God sent Jesus into the world because he loved the world. God loved humanity and so he made a way for us to be saved from our sins. And he did this at very great cost. God could have loved us, but only a little. In that case, he might refrain from sending his Son, but feel very bad about doing so. Suppose you have a friend who you loved only half-heartedly. Unfortunately, some malicious criminals take your friend hostage. They are the kind of criminals that will slowly torture and kill your friend just for the fun of it. And then these criminals send you a ransom note saying that, if you agree, you can take her place. Now, only loving your friend half-heartedly, you feel empathy for her, but you don’t make the trade. You would have to love your friend deeply and fully if you were to trade your life for hers. And this is what Jesus has done for us.

For humans, though, we often love what we should not. We love things that are not good. However, God, who is maximally good, has no misplaced affections. When God loves us, he does so because we are his children and made in his image. We have intrinsic value and are therefore worth loving. Notice, though, that this worthiness is not autonomous from God, as if we could make ourselves worth loving. Instead, we are only worth loving because God graciously made us in his image, investing us with the worth we possess. As Mark Linville puts it: “God values human persons because they are intrinsically valuable. Further, they have such value because God has created them after his own image as a Person with a rational and moral nature.”

The fact that Jesus came as a man is another way his birth shows the value and dignity of humans. Not only were humans worth saving, it was also worth becoming a human to do it. Consider this proposition: “Being a human is good.” How could we know whether this was true or false? A reductive atheist would have real trouble here because (1) there are no such things as human beings, only human shaped piles, and (2) there is no clear way to make sense of “good.” David Bentley Hart, with his characteristic confidence and cadence, writes, “Among the mind’s transcendental aspirations, it is the longing for moral goodness that is probably the most difficult to contain within the confines of a naturalist metaphysics.” However, as Christians we know both that humans exist and that God grounds the good. We also know that God, being maximally great, only ever does what is good. Therefore, if God became a human being, being a human being must be good. That may sound like a trivial idea, but consider the implications. If being human is good, it means that our lives have meaning. We do not need to progress to the next stage of evolution, we only need to live as humans as God intended. It also means, contra the worldview of many, that there’s nothing inherently bad about the body; salvation includes the redemption of the body, not deliverance from it. If being human is good, all humans have dignity and value.

1. Jesus’ birth means it is possible for humans to live the moral life

If we consider the possibility of living the moral life on reductive atheism, we end up with some dim prospects. One worry is that there is no objectively good moral life. This is why so many atheists talk of making one’s own meaning in life. Though the universe is cold and dark, human ought to nevertheless pull themselves up by the bootstraps and choose to live a life of meaning. I am inclined to think this is just wishful thinking. Besides this, if humans are machines and have no free will, it seems impossible to live a moral life. It seems that for a choice to be moral, it must be chosen by an agent. We don’t think our computers are immoral when they crash (despite the temptation); neither are human biological machines when they do something destructive.

Further, unless the universe just happens to cause us to live a moral life by accident, we will have to work at becoming a virtuous person. We must act as agents who are capable of making moral progress. Atheist Sam Harris agrees and makes this suggestion: “Getting behind our conscious thoughts and feelings can allow us to steer a more intelligent course through our lives (while knowing, of course, that we are ultimately being steered).”[3] But of course, to say that we can steer ourselves in any sense is to discard the idea that humans are machines. In order to steer ourselves, we must be something more than that. So reductive atheists seem to have no hope for living the moral life, whatever that might be. And the way Harris in such sanguine fashion affirms a contradiction as if doing so makes sense doesn’t eliminate the incoherence.

The birth of Jesus, on the other hand, suggests a very different outcome. To see why, we must go all the way back to the creation account in Genesis. There we see that God made man in his image and to rule and reign as his representatives on the earth (Gen. 1:27-28). Adam and Eve were, in a very real sense, responsible for realizing the kingdom of God. And God’s kingdom is what humans were made for, a place where God, humans, and creation live together in peace. It is important to understand here that peace means much more than we modern readers might normally think. We tend to think of peace as the absence of violence. But for the Jews, peace was much more robust than that. Peace, for them, was happiness and human flourishing—shalom. If we live in peace, we live according to the created order, enjoying and appreciating God and all that he has made, especially other humans.

However, humans chose to disobey God and thus sin entered the world. The effects of sin were so dramatic that humans could no longer live as God intended; the kingdom of God could not be established by these fallen humans. However, God did not leave us in this predicament. God set into motion a plan that would restore the kingdom of God to the earth and the story of the Bible is very much this story. God called Abraham and promised that through him, all the people of the earth would be blessed (Gen 12:3). Then, from the descendants of Abraham, God formed the nation of Israel. God promised Israel a King who would restore peace to the earth. God says this King will take away punishment and take great delight in his people. He will “rescue the lame” and “gather the exiles”; he will restore their fortunes (Zeph 3:15;19-20).  Zechariah records for us what God says it will be like when this King comes (8:3-12):

This is what the Lord Almighty says: “Once again men and women of ripe old age will sit in the streets of Jerusalem, each of them with cane in hand because of their age. The city streets will be filled with boys and girls playing there.”

 This is what the Lord Almighty says: “It may seem marvelous to the remnant of this people at that time, but will it seem marvelous to me?” declares the Lord Almighty.

 This is what the Lord Almighty says: “I will save my people from the countries of the east and the west. I will bring them back to live in Jerusalem; they will be my people, and I will be faithful and righteous to them as their God.”

 This is what the Lord Almighty says: “Now hear these words, ‘Let your hands be strong so that the temple may be built.’ This is also what the prophets said who were present when the foundation was laid for the house of the Lord Almighty. Before that time there were no wages for people or hire for animals. No one could go about their business safely because of their enemies, since I had turned everyone against their neighbor.  But now I will not deal with the remnant of this people as I did in the past,” declares the Lord Almighty.

“The seed will grow well, the vine will yield its fruit, the ground will produce its crops, and the heavens will drop their dew. I will give all these things as an inheritance to the remnant of this people.

The takeaway from this passage should be that this King will restore the robust, Jewish notion of peace to the world. Without this King, humans would be left without hope and the possibility of ever flourishing as humans. But, under the reign of this King, the effects of sin will be done away with and human flourishing will once again be possible.

We are also told by Micah that this king would be born in Bethlehem and from the tribe of Judah; his origin will be “from old, from ancient times” (Micah 5:2). So when Jesus, Son of God and from the family of Judah, was born in Bethlehem, we know this must be the King about whom we were told. We should understand that God has kept his promise to make the world right again. Now, while Jesus was still laying in a manger, how this would happen had not been made clear. That would come later. But we should be very happy indeed to know that God, our King, was born on Christmas some 2000 years ago because with his birth came the promise that humans can live as God intended – in peace.

[1] Singer thinks that the only thing that counts as a person is a rational, self-conscious person. Babies and the mentally disabled are therefore not persons and do not deserve the same rights as other persons. See for example his Should the Baby Live?: The Problem of Handicapped Infants (1988), Oxford University Press.

[2] This is not to say that having a body is not the ideal way for humans to exist. However, humans can apparently be separated from their bodies at least for a short while. Paul, for example, was caught up to the third heaven. Also, prior to the Second Coming, humans will apparently exist sans bodies while they await the resurrection. J. P. Moreland and Scott Rae defend this view in Body & Soul (2000) IVP Academic.

[3] Sam Harris, Free Will. Simon & Schuster.

Photo: "Nativity" by Jess Weese. CC License. 

Podcast: Chad Thornhill on the Impeccability and Humanity of Jesus

On this week's podcast, we hear from Dr. Chad Thornhill on the impeccability and humanity of Jesus. Dr. Thornhill explains whether Jesus could sin, what impeccability has to do with Jesus being truly human, and why all this matters for morality.

Image: Ivan Kramskoy - Христос в пустыне - Google Art Project

Podcast: Leo Percer on the Impeccability of Jesus

This week, we will be sitting down with Dr. Leo Percer to discuss the impeccability of Jesus. Dr. Percer is a professor of New Testament and Greek at Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary. One question you might have as we start this series on impeccability is what this subject has to do with moral apologetics. Well, quite a lot actually. For one, whether or not Jesus could sin tells us something about the moral character of God and the kind of being he is. Is God, even as he was incarnate in Jesus, capable of a moral failure? On the other hand, if Jesus was not capable of sinning, in what sense was he fully human? And how could he really be understood to be the ideal man or our moral exemplar? These are important and tough questions. In this first part of our discussion with Dr. Percer, we will hear what “impeccability” means and explore the nature of temptation. We will also discuss what it would mean for Jesus, as fully human and fully God, to be tempted.

Advent and Christmas Poetry: Awe – John Donne’s “Holy Sonnet 15”

After the anticipatory and penitential season of Advent, we come to Christmas. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God... And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:1, 14) Christmas is the Feast of the Incarnation of Jesus Christ – the Word made flesh.

The Greek word used in the Gospel for “Word” is Logos. It doesn’t just mean word, in the sense of a spoken or written word; Logos also means order, rationality, logic. The universe is an orderly place, one in which laws of nature can be discerned. Cause and effect function; we can observe nature and draw conclusions from it; we can use our own minds, our own reason, to interpret the world rightly and put our interpretations into practice. We take all this for granted, but we shouldn’t. It doesn’t have to be the case that the universe is orderly and comprehensible. The ancient Greeks thought the world was fundamentally chaotic; as a result, they didn’t bother to pursue experimental science. Why observe nature, when it is random? Why run an experiment, if it will just come up differently another day? We should pause in wonder and awe at the fact that the world is, indeed comprehensible, because it doesn’t have to be. Though there is so much that we do not understand about the world, yet we can understand so much through the use of our minds, somehow standing above and apart from the universe that we study.

The underlying structure of the cosmos; the basic rationality from which all reason comes; order, rationality, meaning – Logos. “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us... full of grace and truth.” When we speak of the order of the universe, whether we know it or not, we speak of the Second Person of the most holy Trinity, the Son of God, Jesus Christ.

Who was born in a stable in Bethlehem.

John Donne’s poem “Holy Sonnet 15” invites us to consider what that means.

Holy Sonnet  15

Wilt thou love God as he thee ? then digest, My soul, this wholesome meditation, How God the Spirit, by angels waited on In heaven, doth make His temple in thy breast. The Father having begot a Son most blest, And still begetting—for he ne'er begun— Hath deign'd to choose thee by adoption, Co-heir to His glory, and Sabbath' endless rest. And as a robb'd man, which by search doth find His stolen stuff sold, must lose or buy it again, The Sun of glory came down, and was slain, Us whom He had made, and Satan stole, to unbind. 'Twas much, that man was made like God before, But, that God should be made like man, much more.

Like Eliot, Donne shows the connection between the Incarnation and the Crucifixion. For why did God become man? For us, and for our salvation: “The Sun of glory came down, and was slain, / Us whom He had made, and Satan stole, to unbind.” We are bound by sin, stuck in alienation, misled by Satan to put our own wills higher than the will of the One who made us. Despite the fact that our situation is, to put it bluntly, all our own fault, the Son, the Light of the World – the Sun of Glory – came infinitely far down to us, to loose us from the chains of sin.

And at what a cost. He made us, and so we are rightfully His, but even so, He chose to pay for us again – to pay the ultimate price of His own perfect and sinless life, for us: “And as a robb'd man, which by search doth find / His stolen stuff sold, must lose or buy it again, / The Sun of glory came down, and was slain.”

Yet Donne reminds us that our Lord offers not just rescue from sin, but eternal life as adopted children of God! “The Father... Hath deign'd to choose thee by adoption, / Co-heir to His glory, and Sabbath' endless rest.” It is an offer that seems too good to be true... except that it comes from the hand of the Father, who is perfect Good, and so it is an offer that we can trust.

What does Christmas Day mean to us? It means that on a particular day in history, God Himself took on mortal flesh and was born as a human baby, in cold and poverty, in fear and uncertainty and the shadow of Herod’s murderous intentions.

We could not reach up to Him, so He came down to us. No myth, this. No fairy tale – but reality, a fact of history, as hard-edged as it gets.

What does this mean to me, to you?

If it is true – it changes everything.

“'Twas much, that man was made like God before,

But, that God should be made like man, much more.”

Photo: "Virgin and Angels Watching Over the Sleeping Infant Jesus." By Francesco Cozza. Public Domain. Obtained from National Gallery of Art.