Red State/Blue State

Eric is memorizing the book of Romans. Last time we talked, before he went to Campus Crusade's Christmas Conference in Greensboro, he was able to recite chapters 1 through 3:10. He expects to be able to get through chapter 4 by the time he goes back to school for the spring semester. He is following the memorization techniques of his pastor, Andy Davis, pastor of First Baptist Church, Durham, North Carolina, known for being able to recite whole books of the Bible verbatim from memory.

He's expressed some eagerness to get past chapters 1 and 2 to get to the "good stuff" about justification by faith in chapters 3 and 4. I've tried to encourage him to linger over these chapters. Their message is vitally needed today. I've probably read these two chapters more than any others in the book of Romans even though I was converted through Romans 5:5.

In trying to convince him of the relevance of these two chapters, in which Paul argues that all human beings are without excuse before God and in need of His righteousness, I told him to think of chapter 1 as Paul's indictment of blue states and chapter 2 as his indictment of red states.

As I've thought about this, I've realized just how relevant this analogy really is. Chapter 1 indicts blue state thinking in many ways. For example, blue state thinking detaches any discussion of ethics from religion. Basing political ethics, especially, on religious commitment is automatically invalidated. However, according to Paul, it's all ultimately about religion, responding to the one true God who constantly reveals himself to us with worship and thansksgiving. Ethics is secondary in the sense that unrighteous behavior follows from rejecting God; it is the means used to suppress (distract from) knowledge of God; and, it is God's punishment for irreligion. Because, "they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done." (v. 28) Religion comes first, ethics second.

Blue state thinking prides itself on religious tolerance, so long, of course, as you believe everything or believe nothing. If you believe some things and not others, you yourself are intolerant and hateful. All religions are equally valid except for those that claim validity for themselves. Religion arises out of a sincere seeking after truth. Paul, of course, demolishes this view of religion, arguing that the religious impulse is indeed a response to God's continual self-revelation, but most of it arises out of a concerted effort to substitute our own futile speculations about God, which we prefer, for his revelation of himself.

Finally, blue state thinking turns moral judgment inside out, calling good "evil" and evil "good." Forming moral judgments is itself to be despised as wicked and evil; it is hateful intolerance. Blue state thinkers not only indulge in immorality, but "give hearty approval to those who practice [the things God condemns.]" (v. 32) Blue state thinkers see themselves as having progressed beyond the old fashioned, provincial traditionalism of red staters.

But in chapter 2, Paul turns to those who do pass judgment. (2:1) Paul indicts those who believe that forming accurate moral judgments is enough, thinking correctly, about God and ethics, is sufficient. He indicts those who rely merely on asserting the exsistence of moral absolutes and objective truth and locating the basis for human rights in God's ordaining, as though this exempts them from scrutiny of their practice.

This is red state thinking. We* emphasize virtue, with a capital V, and character. We adhere to traditional values. Yet, our practice is not significantly different from blue states. We have the same divorce rates. We are as materialistic and worldly. Though our moral judgment is finely tuned, this only serves to aggravate our self-condemnation.

Red state and blue state thinkers are alike without excuse and in need of God's righteousness. Paul's indictment, culminating in Romans 3:10-18, is intensely relevant today.

*My town in Connecticut is red, though just barely.

Fact Fundamentalism

Marcus Borg suggests that there are 4 different possibilites with regard to Jesus' own self-awareness and whether he was the messiah: 1) Jesus thought he was the messiah and he was right, 2) Jesus thought he was the messiah and he was wrong, 3) Jesus did not think he was the messiah and therefore he was not, 4) Jesus may or may not have thought he was the messiah and he is.

Borg says that the third possibility "sounds like common sense but is actually 'fact fundamentalism' or 'fact literalism' ... [that is,] if something isn't factually and literally true, it isn't true." (p. 55, The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions)

Now, I am sure I am betraying my naivete and lack of sophistication when I say this, but this still seems like a very odd thing for one who claims to be a diligent historian to say. What does it mean for Borg to assert that something is historically true? Why does he spend so much time distinguishing between the Jesus of history and the Jesus of tradition? Can't he just make blanket assertions of truth about the Jesus of history without regard to facts? Doesn't he presuppose that the difference between the Jesus of history and the Jesus of tradition is that one is the factual Jesus and the other is the metaphorical Jesus? Isn't this an irrelevant distinction if all truth is metaphorical anyway? And what does it mean to assert the truth of anything? When Borg says something is true, doesn't he really mean just that he gets a warm, fuzzy feeling when he makes the assertion?

I'm just grateful that the mechanic at the Granby Garage is a fact fundamentalist. When he works on our broken down cars and asserts that they now run, they actually do run. I'm not sure how we could operate in a world where a mechanic's assertions are dismissed not as common sense, but fact fundamentalism, and therefore ought to be disregarded. If a mechanic tells me my car runs like a charm but it doesn't run at all, do I still have to pay him?

To me, Borg is playing an astonishing word game -- a game that seems fundamentally dishonest. Some of the old religious existentialists asserted that Christianity was historically false yet we could affirm meaning in spite of it. Because existential meaning trumps all other concerns, historicity is irrelevant. Christian history is false; but who cares! Borg, on the other hand, still asserts that existential meaning trumps all other concerns, but also claims the history is true. It's just that he's redefined "true" to mean "gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling." I'm not sure what he gains by asserting "truth" when he clearly does not mean "truth" as anyone could apply it. It seems this is simply a more effective guerilla strategy to undermine Christian faith.

At least Robert Funk, the founder of the Jesus Seminar is more upfront on his agenda, (quoted from markdroberts.com)

"Robert Funk’s opening remarks at the first meeting of the Jesus Seminar in 1985:

What we need is a new fiction that takes as its starting point the central event in the Judeo-Christian drama [Jesus] and reconciles that middle with a new story that reaches beyond old beginnings and endings [creation and eschatology]. In sum, we need a new narrative of Jesus, a new gospel, if you will, that places Jesus differently in the grand scheme, the epic story.

Not any fiction will do. . . . The fiction of Revelation keeps many common folk in bondage to ignorance and fear. We require a new, liberating fiction, one that squares with the best knowledge we can now accumulate and one that transcends self-serving ideologies.

This doesn’t exactly sound like the beginning of an objective quest for the historical Jesus, does it? In fact in that same lecture Funk said this about what his Seminar fellows would experience:

What we are about takes courage, as I said. We are probing what is most sacred to millions, and hence we will constantly border on blasphemy. We must be prepared to forebear the hostility we shall provoke."

Redefining "truth" is a ploy to appease "common folk" -- the "ignorant" and "fearful" superstitious -- while surreptitiously substituting blasphemous new ideas for the old gospel.

Woman Charged in Grisly Theft of Fetus

This headline is an example of the AP's pro-abortion bias run wild! The fetus is a baby girl named Victoria Jo. I wonder if the AP has a policy to distinguish kidnapping from "fetus stealing."

Yahoo! News - Woman Charged in Grisly Theft of Fetus

UPDATE: see article by Rich Lowry about this "linguistic confusion"

Rich Lowry on National Review Online

Virgin Birth

Today's installment of Mark Roberts's response to Newsweek is especially good.

The Birth of the Virgin Birth Story

I'm looking forward to his next post in which he will list resources for additional study.

Knowing Jesus and Newsweek

Motivated again by Newsweek’s Christmas Story, I decided to read the discussion (it’s not really a debate) between Marcus Borg and N.T. Wright about the Jesus of history.

As with so many of those Jesus Seminar scholars, Borg’s statements are not at all clear even when they seem to be: “[the historical] Jesus is dead and gone—a claim that does not deny Easter but simply recognizes that the ‘protoplasmic’ Jesus isn’t around anymore’” But the post-Easter Jesus is around, that is, “what Jesus became after his death. More fully, … the Jesus of Christian tradition and experience.” What he of course means by this is not that Jesus the historical person really became anything; the post-Easter Jesus is a character in a work, or works, of fiction. But by labeling fiction as metaphor, and claiming that metaphors are true because they are meaningful, he tries to assert the “truth” of Easter, and the possibility of “seeing Jesus.”

By contrast, Wright is the model of clarity. His description of the “hermeneutic of paranoia” embraced in New Testament studies almost refutes, by itself, Jon Meacham’s nonsense in that Newsweek article.

I’d love to post Wright’s entire chapter, “Knowing Jesus,” but this would violate copyright laws. However, I can’t resist quoting excerpts from four paragraphs defining what it is to know Jesus by faith.

… It has been inherent in Christianity from the beginning that the believer “knows Christ”; Jesus, as the good shepherd, knows his own sheep, and his own know him. This is regularly described in terms borrowed from ordinary personal relationships: believers are aware of Jesus’ presence, his love, his guidance, his rebuke, and even perhaps his laughter. They are aware of being in touch with a personality that is recognizable, distinct, frequently puzzling and unpredictable, always loving and lovable, powerful and empowering, loyal and calling forth loyalty …

… It is not just “belief.” It is natural to say “I believe it’s raining” when indoors with the curtains shut, but it would be odd to say it, except in irony, standing on a hillside in a downpour. For many Christians much of the time, knowing Jesus is more like the latter: being drenched in his love and the challenge of his call, not merely imagining we hear him like raindrops on a distant windowpane. (For many, of course, the latter is the norm; hinting, promising, inviting.)

… When we “know” a person (as opposed to, say, knowing the height of the Eiffel Tower), we imply some kind of relationship, some mutual understanding. We are used to each other; we can anticipate how the other will react; we accurately assess their wishes, hopes, and fears …

When someone claims to “know” Jesus of Nazareth in this sense, they are making a claim about other things as well: the existence of a nonspatiotemporal world; the existence of Jesus within that world; the possibility of presently alive human beings having access to that world, and of this being actually true in their case. They are claiming, more particularly, to know one person in particular, a distinctive and recognizable person, within that world, and that this person is identified as Jesus. This knowledge is what many people, myself included, are referring to when we say we know Jesus “by faith.”

From N.T. Wright’s chapter, “Knowing Jesus: Faith and History,” (pp. 24,25) in Marcus J. Borg and N.T. Wright, The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions, (New York, HarperCollins, 2000)

Against Meacham’s assumption that history and faith are completely at odds, Wright asserts that this way of knowing Jesus is reinforced by history, “history comes to the help of faith. The Jesus I know in prayer, in the sacraments … is the Jesus I meet in historical evidence—including the New Testament … as I read it with my historical consciousness fully operative … History, then, prevents faith from becoming fantasy. Faith prevents history from becoming pure antiquarianism.” (p. 26)

(Note: Meacham claims to be summarizing a scholarly debate. However, at first I simply couldn’t find more than one side. His article is much like a presidential debate where the microphone for one of the candidates is turned off every time it’s his turn to speak and then the only candidate who’s heard is pronounced the winner.

I finally realized that Meacham probably thinks he did represent both sides of the debate. The two sides are not, as I would expect, critical historical scholars who conclude that the gospel narratives are reliable vs. those who conclude that they are not; but critical, historical scholars who assert meaning in the Jesus stories despite their lack of foundation in history vs. simple believers who know nothing about history and don’t care to. He either is not aware of scholars like Wright, or he doesn’t like them. Either way it’s lousy journalism.)

Newsweek on Christmas

I've intended to write a response to Newsweek's feature on Christmas, The Birth of Jesus, Faith and History: How the Story of Christmas Came to Be, in which Jon Meacham claims that a critical, historical assessment of the gospel narratives leads to the conclusion that the Christmas stories are works of fiction and propaganda. Meacham cloaks his extreme skepticism by affirming that the story is still meaningful even if it is false. This, of course, is just plain old Christian liberalism. Meacham completely ignores those scholars who use the tools of crtical, historical investigation and believe that the gospels are historically reliable.

Today I found an excellent series of posts written by Mark Roberts, a pastor in Irvine, CA, who has a Ph.D. in Christian Origins from Harvard. Rather than write a response myself, I will just link to his series.

markdroberts.com

Christian Investment Strategy: A Meditation for Businessmen

Philippians 3:7-8

⁷ But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. ⁸ Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ

Peter T. O’Brien begins his comments on this section in his commentary on Philippians by pointing out that Paul is using accounting terminology when he speaks about gains and losses (p. 383.) Paul is dealing with the issue of valuation; that is, assigning values to objects. His conversion to Christ involves a re-valuation (O’Brien, as a theology professor, rather than a financial analyst, doesn’t quite get the accounting terms right, but the concepts are there.) I agree. Gains, losses, and reckoning – or counting, as the ESV has it – all seem to point to commercial transactions and investment strategies.

But there is a very important investment concept implicit in this passage that O’Brien doesn’t comment on. I doubt that Paul was enough of a specialist in finance to be able to put a label on it. Certainly, professor O’Brien is not. And, even most senior executives ignore it when selecting investment projects. But it is clearly included in Paul’s logic: opportunity cost.

Wikipedia defines opportunity cost as “the cost of something in terms of an opportunity foregone (and the benefits that could be received from that opportunity), or the most valuable foregone alternative.”

So, when Paul reviews his previous privileges and moral accomplishments in the absence of Christ he sees gain. But, having discovered the surpassing value of knowing Christ, he recognizes that there is an opportunity cost associated with the things that he previously valued. Relying on his own personal righteousness and moral accomplishment – that is, investing in his own righteousness – causes him to forego investing in a righteousness from God making him miss out on knowing Christ. The cost of this is the value of knowing Christ: infinite. To call that a loss is an understatement; it’s rubbish! “I count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ.”

Internet Browser

On a very different note: I am very impressed with Mozilla Firefox. I only use Internet Explorer as a last resort. The performance is much better with Firefox, and the tabs feature is wonderful.

I've organized all my bookmarks into folders: political blogs, Christian sites, and newspapers and news weeklies. At the beginning of the day, I open a folder and select the option to open all of my bookmarks in that folder in tabs. So for example, my newspapers and news weeklies folder will open the LA Times, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard, National Review Online, the Washington Times, the Atlanta Journal and Constitution, Drudge, and World Magazine, each in its own tab. Once I've scanned through all these I then select one of my other bookmark folders and replace these tabs with new ones.

I have far too many blogs bookmarked in my political blogs folder. The ones I really look at throughout the day are: the Belmont Club, Instapundit, RealClearPolitics, Powerline, Little Green Footballs, and Diplmad. I have many, many more bookmarked, but I scan them very cursorily. Of course, scrappleface.com is in a class by itself, and deserves its own separate bookmark.

This routine would be unwieldy without Firefox!

Contemplating My Career Change

Philippians 3:7-8

⁷ But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. ⁸ Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ

I am still waiting to hear whether I have been accepted into the M. Div. program at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. I called this past Tuesday to check on the status of my application, to make sure they had received my three personal recommendations and the church affirmation. The admissions assistant was just then forwarding my application to their admissions committee. I am very eager to hear and, hopefully, get moving on this next phase of life.

Though I can’t wait to get going, I am, frankly, very aware of the lifestyle we will be leaving behind. At times I am tempted to chastise myself for this. It seems so unspiritual to think about what we are giving up. If I were truly mature, and less materialistic or worldly, it just wouldn’t matter to me. But, that is a false view of spirituality. We often make ourselves most miserable when we require of ourselves what the Bible does not require, when we set unrealistic, unhuman expectations of ourselves.

For example, we often falsely think that Christianity requires us to act against our own self-interest, or even to be entirely disinterested. But that is completely false. Jesus assumes that human beings are always motivated by self-interest. His command to love our neighbor as ourselves assumes that we do love ourselves. The parables comparing the kingdom of God with finding a pearl of great price or discovering buried treasure teach not abandonment of self-interest but more zealous and wise pursuit of it. The promises of eternal reward contrast what is permanently in our interest against what will disappear.

Or we buy into false dichotomies, thinking, for example, that true spirituality means full-time Christian ministry even though we find more joy in biomedical engineering, robotics, music performance, or management consulting. We ignore the fact that one of the qualifications for an elder is to “aspire” to the office (1 Tim 3:1) and to fulfill its responsibilities “not under compulsion, but willingly” and “eagerly.” (1 Peter 5:2) We forget that because God is at work in the Christian “to will … for his good pleasure,” (Php 2:13) what we delight in is often a reliable indicator of God’s will for us, our vocation.

The disciples were very aware of what they had left in order to follow Jesus. “See, we have left everything and followed you” they reminded him. (Mark 8:28) Jesus didn’t chastise them; instead he said that the one who has left house … or children … or land will receive much more in this life and in the next (along with suffering.)

It simply would be false, and ungrateful, to deny that I have enjoyed our big, beautiful house. I have enjoyed the status and position that came with my secular job. I have enjoyed being a member of a country club with so few members that I never had to make a tee time. God gave these things to us. They are good. But, they do not compare to the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. It is the comparison that counts! The joy to be found in following Christ, and in doing what he has called us to do, overwhelms any attachment we have to things that are good in themselves. It is unnatural not to appreciate all that we’ve had; but it would be foolishness not to exchange them for something infinitely more valuable.

I hope I hear soon.

Bible Translations

I am making a second concerted effort at switching from the New American Standard, which I have used for over 31 years, to the English Standard Version. My first effort failed. I could not get past being distracted by slight differences in translation. At first the distraction was useful because it forced me to pause to truly understand the meaning of a passage, but it ended up slowing me down too much.

I was also disappointed with some of the translation choices the ESV makes. For example, the ESV will often translate participles as finite verbs; long, complex sentences with subordinating participial phrases are broken into several simpler sentences with finite verbs. Though this strategy makes the translation much more readable, it hides the relationship among these sentences.

However, as much as I love my New American Standard I recognize that it will never become the dominant American translation. And, I believe that the NIV needs to be displaced as the translation of choice among evangelicals.

John Piper has good reasons for embracing the ESV.

http://www.desiringgod.org/library/topics/word_god/esv.html

I am not sure, though, that I will be as successful as he has been in switching to the ESV. John used the RSV, which was the base for the ESV, for much of his adult life. The ESV and RSV are very similar. I only used the RSV on occasion when leading InterVarsity Bible and Life seminars. The NASB is much more deeply ingrained for me.

(I also wish Crossway would produce an ESV without the two column format. I much prefer a single column of text with cross references or alternate readings in the margin or as footnotes at the bottom of the page rather than in a center column between two columns of text. With the center-column reference format, I have to use a magnifying glass to read the references, and I am far too young to buy a large print edition!)

Update as of April 17, 2005

I am still using my ESV, and recently purchased the Reformation Study Bible, which is very good. One of the main advantages of the ESV is that it is an acceptable alternative for my college-age son and his friends -- in a way that the NASB for some reason is not. It has made it much easier for us to have substantive discussions about the meaning of a text without the distraction of first squaring up the translations.

The paragraphing in the ESV can be very helpful. It often highlights the flow of an argument, especially in the epistles, in a way that the NASB's line-by-line formatting does not. When analyzing a text I outline it with a line-by-line format more akin to the NASB's.

I still do not like the two-column/center-reference-column format! I wish Crossway would do something about this. I also still think we lose important information about the relationship between propositions when participles are replaced by finite verbs. But I'm starting to get used to this translation.

The Necessity of a Firm Faith

If you are not firm in faith, you will not be firm at all. (Isaiah 7:9 ESV)

Our highest priority when faced with disappointments and dangers that threaten to dismay us is to fight for a firm faith. If we lack that we are easily demoralized and will be overcome.

Church Bashing Ad

A number of news commentators have characterized the UCC's mean-spirited, church-bashing, race-baiting ad, "Night Club," as "all about tolerance." What a novel use of a word!

The ad shows two bouncers outside the entrance to a church manning a velvet rope. A gay couple comes up to the rope seeking to enter the church and they are turned away. Then a white, heterosexual couple comes up and they are let in. The camera then shows those who have been turned away, a multiracial mix of straights and gays. A voice over then says something to the effect that the UCC is the only church that follows Jesus' example in welcoming everyone.

Of course, it is true Jesus does invite everyone to come to him. He is extravagant in his welcome, as the ad claims. However, in explaining himself to the religious hypocrites of the day, he said he had not come for the righteous but to "save sinners." He challenged the crowd to judge the woman caught in adultery but then turned to her and said, "go and sin no more." What the UCC leaves out of their ad is their view that any use of the word "sin" or the biblical concept behind it is itself unwelcoming. The UCC's Jesus is half-a-Jesus who never addresses or deals with sin. Apparently his only mission was to make people feel good about themselves, no matter what. I am curious what their view of the purpose of the cross is. Does he accomplish anything a good dose of prozac couldn't do?

As for the "tolerant" implication that all other churches are racist, this is outrageous! It is absolutely true that the Congregational church, expecially in Connecticut, has a stellar history of civil rights activism. This was a center of abolitionism and integration. The UCC is justly proud of that heritage. And, they are certainly right to assert that as one of their historical distinctives. But, it is a libel to imply that other churches today are turning African Americans and others away and barring entry into church. This is a slander.

As an aside, this is the same denomination whose representative, Davida Foy Crabtree, says, "we take the Bible too seriously to take it literally." I'm curious what their correspondence with the networks refusing to show their ads looks like. Do they write letters seeking to persuade the networks to change their position? Do they seek to explain the intent of the ads? What if the networks take these letters too seriously to take them literally and freely read into them any meaning they choose? Does the UCC get upset? ... Why?

31 Thanksgivings

I've spent 31 Thanksgivings with my wife. We celebrated one together the year before we were married, and the next 30 as husband and wife. It is the first we've ever spent just the two of us, without any family. Our first year of marriage we celebrated Thanksgiving in Canada with a bunch of expatriates studying at Canadian Theological College in Regina, Saskatchewan, so I suppose that one also could count as one we spent without family, but we were certainly not alone.

We actually were invited to neighbors' yesterday, and spent the day with them, but I found it so unsatisfying not eating my wife's cooking that we decided to redo it, today.

Though we desperately miss our two sons -- this was our first Thanksgiving without them since they were born -- we managed to enjoy each other and be profoundly grateful. We prayed, ate, then read John Piper's, Don't Waste Your Life, out loud to each other. It's a good celebration.

I am very thankful to God. I am grateful for my wife. She is truly the Proverbs 31 woman. I am grateful for my two boys. I learned a lot about God's love when I first tried to comfort a collicky first son and was overwhelmed by a sense of love for him that has only grown over the years. I am grateful for my second son whose joy-filled faith seems to have grown since leaving home.

Hidden Learning a Good Thing

I'm rereading Wayne Grudem's Systematic Theology. I read it once before from beginning to end and have reread many of its chapters on occasion as needed. I have the same reaction to this book that I have to D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones's sermons; both men hide their learning. They use very simple language to express profound thoughts informed by extensive reading and research. This is an example to emulate.

Age and Study

This past weekend I submitted an application for the M. Div. program at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary beginning, D.V., January 18th.

It would seem an odd thing for a 51-year old to do. It's fairly common for 50ish types to change careers, but it's not too common for them to choose second careers that require at least 3 years of schooling before they can get started. By the time I finish I will be close to 55.

Age is irrelevant, though, if you don't think about retiring. If your criterion for evaluating options turns from what I can do to be most comfortable in retirement to what I can do to be most of service for the remainder of my life, however long that might be, then a seminary education looks appealing. If we are called to love God with all our strength, and education adds to our strength, then the 3 years are worth it.

Rights from Wrongs

I spent the day, yesterday, preparing myself to read Alan Dershowitz's new book, Rights from Wrongs: A Secular Theory of the Origins of Rights. He wants to argue that human rights do not need to be transcendent, that is, they are not derived from natural law or nature's God. At the same time, he recognizes that having no external source of rights may create a problem for the concept of minority rights. If rights are simply an expression of societal will, then rights are conveyed always, and only, by the will of the majority.

Dershowitz proposes an experiential theory of rights. It seems to be very much like Justice Potter Stewart's approach to obscenity laws, "I can't define it [obscenity], but I know it when I see it." We cannot define rights a priori, but we recognize their violation when we see it. Human rights evolve through some sort of trial and error approach. Rights are not transcendent, but are a response to recognition of wrongs.

Again, I haven't yet read the book, so it is probably premature for me to even be writing this much, but I am eager to see how he handles this. I am eager to see who, in his scheme, is responsible for identifying these wrongs and rectifying them. If it is the popular will, then we're back to a majoritarianism that excludes minority rights. I suspect he will argue that it is the responsibility of judges, or an enlightened few, and we are left with the kind of thinking that gave us Lawrence v. Texas where cloistered judges respond to the latest thinking of the lawyers' guild, among whom Dershowitz and other Harvard and Yale law professors, his peers, take a lead.

How did I get myself ready to read this book? Very simply. I read the Declaration of Independence. "When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people ... to assume the ... equal station to which the Laws of Nature and Nature's God entitle them" and "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

The ignorance displayed by the media in ridiculing Bush's assertion that freedom is God's gift to man, an ignorance of our own Declaration of Independence, only reveals that they have already bought into Dershowitz's arguments, probably without even being aware of it.

As I get older, I become more convinced that God must be presupposed if knowledge, morality, and human rights have any validity. If we begin with ourselves, we end up with solepcism.

Thomas Sowell on Specter

Thomas Sowell has an interesting series on Arlen Specter beginning with this piece:
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/ts20041109.shtml

He reminds us of the Bork hearings -- the lies and smears perpetrated against an eminently qualified, honorable man. If the Democrats want to find the real source of division in this country they ought to review their behavior in those hearings. Those hearings made me a Republican.

Bush, Fallibilism and Health Care

I am writing this in response to recent comments about Bush’s arrogance and the insinuation that he sees himself as infallible, that he does not listen to his advisors, that he believes that his personal intuition is the will of God, and that he has a messiah complex. I was especially dismayed by John Piper’s recent Fresh Words in which he contrasts Lincoln’s humility with the absence of confession of personal fallibility by both Bush and Kerry.

It is absolutely true that Bush is not the orator Lincoln was. He often seems uncomfortable except in extremely partisan settings where he is guaranteed a sympathetic audience. He speaks in sound bites, pausing awkwardly in the midst of sentences, indicating that the teleprompter controls his delivery more than the meaning of his statements does. It is also true that he is often his own worst advocate and is too defensive to freely admit to errors and miscalculations. (I happen to believe his defensiveness is justifiable given his treatment by the mainstream media.) However, it is clear that Bush’s policies and decision-making assume human fallibility where Kerry’s do not.

Decision-making

Bush is a satisficer; Kerry an optimizer. Satisficing is a model of rational decision-making first described by Herb Simon, I believe, in his Administrative Behavior. It assumes that human reason is both limited and bound. Perfect information is impossible; even if perfect information were available, the human mind is limited in its capacity to process it. Therefore, decision-makers and problem solvers ought to search for solutions that are good enough -- that is, satisfactory -- not necessarily optimal. Once we know that we have identified a good course of action – that is, doing something is substantially better than doing nothing -- the additional cost we incur to find the optimal course, even if it were possible to find it, would eat up all the benefit of that better solution. The additional costs may take many forms: delays, costs of information gathering, human costs, etc.

What does a satisficer look like in the real world? Often it will look like he makes decisions prematurely. Optimizers, especially, will accuse him of making decisions without enough information. He is free to take bold action. Knowing that he can never know exhaustively the consequences of his decisions, he will act with principle as his guide. He can make a best guess as to the outcomes of his decisions, but, ultimately, he will base his decisions on what is right on philosophical or moral grounds. Because he knows every decision he makes is wrong to some extent -- it is after all non-optimal – he sees no point in dwelling on errors and mistakes. Second-guessing decisions after the fact is as useless and costly as seeking the optimal solution before-hand. It is more useful to consolidate the gains achieved by actually doing something.

An optimizer, on the other hand, rarely acts. He assumes that perfect solutions are possible and that the cost to attain the optimal solution is irrelevant. Can there be any question that Kerry is constantly in the process of gathering information and refining his positions? His constant criticism of Bush only makes sense if he assumes perfect decisions are possible a priori. Is it at all surprising that Kerry made his name in the Senate only as an investigator, not as a legislator? At least in the arena of decision-making, it is Bush who humbly embraces human fallibility and Kerry who arrogates to himself the possibility of exhaustive knowledge. Bush is a leader; Kerry a legal engineer.

Health Care

Bush’s domestic policies assume human fallibility as well, exemplified by his health care plan.

Both candidates seem to recognize that financing American health care is messy. Normal market models do not apply; not because health care decisions are somehow not economic decisions -- they are. Economics simply deals with the allocation of scarce resources that have alternative uses. As much as people wish the opposite were true, health care is a scarce resource. Rationing does, and must, occur. There are also alternative uses for health care. Any elective surgery provides a good example for this, especially cosmetic surgery. We must admire the knowledge and skill demonstrated by plastic surgeons in these extreme makeover shows on TV; but we also recognize that there is an unlimited demand for their services and a variety of alternative uses of their skill.

The mechanism for allocating resources in a market economy is price set by supply and demand. Prices serve the very useful function of impersonally enabling millions of transactions between consumers and suppliers. Prices are, in essence, ambassadors conveying messages about the desires of consumers and suppliers and negotiating a compromise agreement between them. However, the fundamental laws of supply and demand, assuming a transaction between consumer and supplier, don’t really apply in health care; the consumer, purchaser and payer are all different parties. Generally, the employer is the purchaser. Benefits managers within our large corporations evaluate the prices and quality of services of different health plans. The employee is the one who actually then uses the service. The insurance company, or the government, pays for the service. So, market forces are muted and confused in our health care system.

Once we recognize that our health care system is an economic hybrid, we can devise a couple different strategies to fix it, to purify it, if you will. The first, Bush’s, is to introduce more elements of a standard market economy into health care financing, to reunite consumer and purchaser. The intent of health savings accounts, and cost sharing mechanisms, is to involve the consumer of the health care service in the purchasing decision so that standard laws of supply and demand can work, and so that price can play its normal very useful role in allocating health care resources.

Kerry’s strategy, on the other hand, remains a hybrid but moves away from a market model for health care toward centralized control. It reunites payer and purchaser, but not consumer. The consumer is even more insulated from the purchase decision than before. Kerry would deny that. He argues that his is an entirely voluntary plan. However, everyone who has worked in health care knows that the 80/20 rule applies: 20% of the cases generate 80% of the cost. (Actually in the studies I’ve been involved in a much smaller percentage of cases generated a greater percentage of the cost.) Kerry’s plan is to reduce employer-based health insurance premiums by making the 20% of cases and 80% of cost the responsibility of the government. There is absolutely no question health insurance premiums will go down, and no employer would continue to offer private insurance plans for catastrophic health care. However, the actual aggregate cost will not go away but will probably increase because of administrative inefficiencies.

Under Bush’s proposal, the market guides millions of individual health care decisions. Otherwise the health care system is too complicated, and unintended consequences of policies too varied and unpredictable, for the limited human mind to fully comprehend. Under Kerry’s plan technocrats will deliberately steer health care decisions through the creation of “self-executing rules” similar to those already in play in the Medicare system. Bush’s plan assumes limitations of human understanding; Kerry assumes an intelligentsia can overcome these limitations.

Isn’t the summary of Kerry’s befuddled campaign simply this, “I’m smarter, more competent and can second-guess anything!” Bush, in spite of a swagger and cocky smirks, assumes human fallibility and reveals humility where it counts.

The Period of the Judges

The Bible summarizes the period of the judges, after the death of Joshua, with an indictment of lawlessness, “every man did what was right in his own eyes.” (Judges 17:6 and 21:25) God, in His mercy, raised up judges both to deliver the nation from oppressors and to remind them of the covenant—to call the people back to the rule of law.

I generally dislike parallels drawn between the US and OT Israel. However, I am shocked by the contrast between our period of judges and the biblical one. Our Supreme Court judges seem intent on undermining the rule of law in favor of an absolute right of autonomous liberty.

The most shocking thing about the majority opinion in Lawrence v. Texas is not that it overturned Texas’s anti-sodomy laws but its basis for doing so. The court based its decision on the due process clause of the 14^th amendment, “nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” But its reasoning is absurd. Under “substantive due process” any law that abridges fundamental rights violates the due process clause. It is not a question of legal procedure or fair application of law; it is a question of the content of the law. A law that abridges a fundamental human right violates “due process” and is inherently unconstitutional. (Liberty consists in the free exercise of fundamental rights. The right to privacy -- read “abortion” -- is such a constituent element of liberty.) But with Lawrence v. Texas, the court introduced absurd tautological thinking: one of the constituent rights of liberty, they say, is the right to liberty. We have an absolute right to liberty that cannot be abridged, limited, or constrained. No law can restrict my freedom – even as I choose to define it for myself. Since the purpose of law is to constrain behavior in some way, and constraint is unconstitutional, there is no longer any role for law in human society.

Note Justice Stevens’ statement from Planned Parenthood v. Casey, quoted by Justice Kennedy in the majority opinion of Lawrence v. Texas.

“These matters, involving the most intimate and personal choices a person may make in a lifetime, choices central to personal dignity and autonomy, are central to the liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life. Beliefs about these matters could not define the attributes of personhood were they formed under compulsion of the State.” Ibid.

Justice Stevens (quoted by Kennedy in majority opinion)

Although our first impression is that this is a judge getting carried away with his own poetic language once we realize it is meant to ground the findings of the Supreme Court we have to become intensely concerned. Either it means nothing and shows the vacuity of the court’s reasoning, or there is no longer any place for law. Antonin Scalia gets it (Thank God for Antonin Scalia.)

“And if the Court is referring not to the holding of Casey, but to the dictum of its famed sweet-mystery-of-life passage, ante, at 13 (“‘At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life’”): That “casts some doubt” upon either the totality of our jurisprudence or else (presumably the right answer) nothing at all. I have never heard of a law that attempted to restrict one’s “right to define” certain concepts; and if the passage calls into question the government’s power to regulate actions based on one’s self-defined “concept of existence, etc.,” it is the passage that ate the rule of law. “

Antonin Scalia (dissenting opinion)

Obviously, Supreme Court justices would not explicitly dismiss the rule of law; however, Lawrence v. Texas proves that this Supreme Court is much too comfortable with an extreme subjectivism under the guise of the defense of private human rights. They ultimately substitute their own opinions about morality for law. Ironically, no one saw this more clearly than Alexander Hamilton in his defense of the Constitution in the Federalist Papers, “a dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of people than under the forbidding appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government. History will teach us that the former has been found a much more certain road to the introduction of despotism than the latter, and that of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people, commencing demagogues and ending tyrants.” (Federalist No. 1)

The biblical judges recalled law and liberated the people; our judges assert autonomous liberty and will ultimately substitute their own will for law.

Messianic Complex

I am in the middle of trying to rebuild my computer after a terrible crash. However, I can't resist commenting on Chris Matthews' show, today, in which he showed excerpts from the third presidential debate where Bush talked about how often he prays and how he derives comfort from prayer. Rather than admiring Bush's faith and humility, he used these excerpts to lead a discussion as to whether Bush saw himself as a messianic figure. Matthews simply doesn't understand the religious impulse. He has lost it. I once enjoyed watching Hardball, but in the last couple months he has engaged in such absurd partisanship that I can't bear to watch him any longer.

Political Credibility

Warning! This one's political. But, it's also short.

I just heard, yet again, a news commentator repeat the charge that Bush has diminished American credibility in the world. I am completely bewildered by this charge. When did the U.S. have all this credibility in the world? And, why would finally doing what you say you're going to do diminish credibility rather than enhance it?

I am the son of an expatriate businessman. We lived in Guatemala, Panama, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, and Lebanon. I reluctantly came to the U.S. for college. To me the U.S. was a foreign country we visited only on occasion to see grandparents. I was always very anxious to go home after our brief stays here. I simply didn't like it.

Except for Latin America's brief fascination with JFK, I don't remember the US ever having any credibility. The anti-American feeling was very strong then -- enough so that I still remember having rocks thrown at me just because I was a gringo. Latin Americans ridiculed Americans for their uncouth, loud behavior, their extreme naivete and provincialism, their habit of saying one thing and doing another. And, I agreed. I was embarrassed by the U.S.

More recently, I worked as the Chief Information Officer of a German company, one of the DAX 30 along with other giants such as SAP and Siemens. The German attitude toward the U.S., even during the so-called world-wide empathy for America immediately after 9/11, was precisely the same as what I encountered growing up. I heard snide comments about the U.S. that could have been verbatim quotes of comments I heard in Germany in the '70s.

When was this so-called golden age of American credibility? What evidence is there that the U.S. has ever had any credibility to lose? Are we supposed to have had credibility under Clinton? There's no question he was likeable to Europeans, especially because of his sex scandals seemed so very European and impeaching him for it so very Puritanical. But are we now equating being liked with being credible?

And, how does UN-centered multilateralism convey credibility? Weren't 17 UN resolutions proved to be laughably empty?

I just don't get it!

The Presence of God Better than a Beautiful House

Job 1:21 The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away. Blessed be the name of the LORD.

We have just put our house up for sale. The real estate agent is walking through measuring each room for her flyers as I type this. It's a difficult day for us. We have loved this house. It is more than we ever imagined we would have.

And that is the key to winning any internal struggles we may have. This house was an unsought gift. We even struggled to accept it as a token of the extravagant grace of God simply because it was so much more than anything we've ever expected. Yet, we were persuaded that God intended us to have this house, and we bought it. We have always acknowledged it as purely a gift from God.

Now, though we never wanted anything like this in the first place, it's difficult to let it go, and, once again, we need to argue with ourselves. (The first mark of sanity is talking to yourself.) The argument is obvious. God has not changed. If He was gracious in giving, He is gracious in taking. It is far better to love the Giver than the gift. It is a good thing to let go our earthly treasures; it demonstrates that a heavenly treasure is far more precious. It is absurd to seek to hold onto what we cannot keep.

All of these arguments are true. However, they are not sufficient in themselves to suppress the struggle. I know what would. I have had, in the past, such a sense of the intimate presence of God that nothing else matters. I have "seen" the glory of Christ. I have known the love of God. Even the memory of it is enough to compel me to seek a change. I pray that Asaph's confession would be mine, "But as for me, the nearness of God is my good; I have made the Lord God my refuge, that I may tell of all Your works." (Psalm 73:28) Or, David's, "You will make known to me the path of life; in Your presence is fullness of joy." (Psalm 16:11)

May He give us a sense of His presence! But even if He doesn't, "The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord."

One Thing

¹ You foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified? ² This is the only thing I want to find out from you: did you receive the Spirit by the works of the Law, or by hearing with faith? ³ Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? ⁴ Did you suffer so many things in vain-- if indeed it was in vain? ⁵ So then, does He who provides you with the Spirit and works miracles among you, do it by the works of the Law, or by hearing with faith?

(Gal 3:1-5 NASB update)

One thing!

One thing would conclude the dispute between Paul and his opponents. One thing would fix Galatian loyalty. One thing would expose their confusion to be a bewitched denial of the meaning of Christ’s death. One thing would keep them from making even their own previous suffering meaningless. One thing would make it blatantly obvious to them how the Christian life is to be lived. One thing would settle the matter. “This is the only thing I want to find out from you: did you receive the Spirit by the works of the Law, or by hearing with faith?” (v. 2)

This is surprising. This is the most passionately urgent of Paul’s letters. He lets it all hang out. He is intensely concerned over the Galatians.

Look at the beginning of this series of questions, “You foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you?”

Look at the beginning of the letter. It’s the only one of his letters to the churches, besides 2 Corinthians, without a thanksgiving section (compare Rom 1:8ff; 1 Cor 1:4ff.; Eph 1:15ff; Php 1:3ff.; Col 1:3ff; 1 Th 1:2ff; 2 Th 1:3ff.) 2 Corinthians still begins with an encouraging affirmation; in the midst of his opening blessing he affirms, “our hope for you is firmly grounded” (2 Cor 1:7). But, he doesn’t have anything good to say about the Galatians. After the normal salutation, “Grace to you …” (1:3-5) Paul exclaims, “I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you by the grace of Christ.” Rather than thanking God for them, he accuses them of desertion. Paul was able to thank God for the Corinthians, a church that not only tolerated incest, but bragged about it. (1 Cor 5:1,2) The Corinthians were morally confused; some advocating asceticism within marriage, some frequenting prostitutes. (1 Cor 7:1; 6:16) They were also so doctrinally confused that they denied the resurrection of the body, not knowing that necessarily implied a denial of the resurrection of Christ, too. (1 Cor 15:12-14) Yet Paul is somehow able to give thanks for them, and call them saints. He has no such nice things to say about the Galatians, neither addressing them as saints nor giving thanks to God for them. Paul’s urgency in this letter is unparalleled.

Look at the solemn curse he pronounces on anyone who would distort the gospel -- not once but twice! “But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed! As we said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you have received, he is to be accursed!” (1:8,9) Paul believes that blessing and curse is at stake in this letter. The false teachers in Galatia are distorting the gospel to such an extent that they have brought eternal condemnation upon themselves. The Galatian Christians have to be shaken out of their befuddlement to see for themselves the very real danger they are in. They are at risk of falling from grace, denying Christ, and being cursed.

Look at the shocking language he uses. Paul is so angry he wishes these false teachers would even castrate themselves. (Gal 5:12) If they are so eager for circumcision, let them Bobbetize themselves! Can you imagine a pastor saying anything like this from the pulpit, today?

There can’t be any question that the issues Paul deals with in this letter are urgent. Paul dispenses with his usual formalities at the beginning of this letter, he pronounces a solemn curse on his antagonists, and he uses shockingly strong language to denounce them. Yet, he says, “this is the only thing I want to find out from you … “

Paul is obviously appealing to the Galatians’ experience. And this raises many questions for us[1], but the most important – the most urgent -- is this, would Paul’s argument work on us? Are we so intimately familiar with the Holy Spirit that this is where Paul would begin with us? Is our own experience of the Spirit’s ongoing ministry so real that Paul could use it as the foundation for a defense of justification by faith and an explanation of the believer’s freedom from the Law? Do we know the Spirit as a Person? Do we know His ministry as teacher, guide, comforter, sanctifier, witness, as the one who enables all our worship, as the one who will transform our bodies? Would one thing settle the matter for us?

---

[1] For example, aren’t arguments from experience, especially experience of the Spirit, dangerous? Aren’t we notoriously prone to misinterpreting our own experience at the expense of sound doctrine? To what extent does experience outpace our theology and so guide our thinking? To what extent does sound doctrine precede and determine whether our experience is valid? How do we keep this tension in balance? None of us fully understands all that is happening when we are first converted; we take a lifetime to grow into our initial experience. Isn’t this true too of our experience of the Spirit?

Shame, Sex, and Honor

Webster’s Dictionary defines shame as “the painful feeling of having done something dishonorable or improper.” The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary defines it as “the feeling of humiliation or distress arising from the consciousness of something dishonourable or ridiculous in one’s own or another’s behaviour or circumstances, or from a situation offensive to one’s own or another’s sense of propriety or decency.”

So, shame is a painful emotion, a sense of dishonor, impropriety, and disgrace.

If there is anything characteristic of American culture it is a fear of painful emotion. The worst offense anyone can commit these days is to make someone feel bad, especially ashamed.

Clearly, though, shame can be a good thing. It is the right response to God’s condemnation of idolatry. Look at Paul’s indictment of the human race in Romans 1:18 through 3:20. The climax of that indictment is that “every mouth must be closed.” (3:19) No one, Gentile or Jew, has any excuse before God. There is nothing we can say in our defense, nor to mitigate our crime. We have no excuses. (1:20 and 2:1) We have nothing to say. We must be silent in our guilt. We must be overcome by our sense of accountability to God, stare at our shoes, and not say a word.

But it is not just guilt that ought to overwhelm us; we ought also to be overcome by shame. We ought to lose all color in our faces. We ought to go weak-kneed. We ought to faint. We ought to feel intense humiliation. God intends to shame us. Rom 1:24, “Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them.” Rom 1:26, “For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions.” Rom 1:28, “God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper.” Rom 2:23, 24, “You who boast … do you dishonor God? For the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.” Dishonored bodies, degrading passions, depraved minds, doing what is not proper, and dishonoring God. The healthy response -- the appropriate, true and accurate emotional response -- to this, is shame. A lack of shame is pathological.

Although we all shy away from physical pain, an absence of pain is very dangerous. I remember many years ago as a newborn Christian, I was very impressed with a pair of missionaries with the Christian & Missionary Alliance who worked at a leper colony in Vietnam. I was very taken with them and spent as much time with them as I could. They explained to me that the worst part of leprosy was the loss of the sensation of pain. Their Vietnamese leper friends could not feel the cuts, scrapes and lacerations they’d often get as they walked around in the jungles. They’d get infected and ultimately lose their limbs — it was unfortunately most common for them to lose their feet, though it was also common for them to be oblivious to burns on their hands and fingers. They had lost the sense of pain that should have been the signal that something was wrong. Pain was a good thing. They longed for a recovery of painful sensation. In the same way, we ought to long for a recovery of shame.

One of the reasons our culture seems to shy away from shame is that it is often tied to sexuality. It is thought that shame is a holdover from a sexually repressive, immature society. It is a Victorian-era emotion, to be sloughed off by sexually enlightened moderns. We know too much about sex to give in to old superstitious cultural taboos. But what is striking is how biblical, not just cultural, shame over sex is, or ought to be. The New Testament doesn’t quite put it that way; instead, the New Testament associates sex with shame’s opposite, honor. “This is the will of God, your sanctification; that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each of you know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor, not in lustful passion, like [those] who do not know God.” (1 Th 4:3-5) “Let marriage be held in honor among all, and the marriage bed be undefiled.” (Heb 13:4) “God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them.” (Rom 1:24) A desire for illicit sex is a spiritual disease. It is idolatrous. Shame is the pain that warns us of it, designed to prevent the spread of infection.

When was the last time we thought about honor and sex? A focus on honor itself seems a little old fashioned. We don’t commonly think about honor except in times of war or with big sporting events such as the Olympics. Or we think of honor as a Southern thing; in the movies it‘s the Confederate officers who are obsessed with honor. We pay little attention to personal honor day-by-day, even less with respect to sex. It certainly doesn’t seem a strong enough motive to really move us. Yet, it ought to be; eternal life is for those who seek honor. (Rom 2:7)

We need for the sake of the health of our own souls to recover a true sense of honor and of shame.

Paul's Autobiography in Galatians

I had a new thought today about that autobiographical section in Galatians beginning at chapter 1 verse 13 and extending all the way through to the end of chapter 2. Almost all outlines I've seen regard this as a defense of Paul's independent credentials as an apostle. The idea is that the Judaizers, Paul's antagonists, have called his apostolic authority into question. They have probably claimed for themselves that they have been deputized by the apostles in Jerusalem to clear up Paul's distorted teaching, especially with regard to the practices of the Gentiles. They therefore appeal to Jerusalem for their authority. Paul responds by establishing his independence from Jerusalem putting himself on a par with the reputed pillars of the church, but also affirming that his message has been recognized as consistent with theirs. The focus of this section, then, is Paul's status and authority as an apostle.

I realized, today, that can't be Paul's emphasis, because he's already said that if he himself were to preach a gospel different than what he had already preached to them, then he is accursed. He calls down a curse upon himself if he veers from the content of the gospel. It's the gospel that's at issue, not his, nor anyone else's authority. If he distorts the gospel then he has no authority; he is damned. The truth of the gospel stands independent of its proclaimers. It is is no respecter of persons, whether they are the reputed pillars of the church, the beloved Barnabas, or, even, Peter.

It is true that Paul outlines his independence in this section, but I think that serves first, to make it clear that the gospel he preached to the Galatians is unalterable because it is a divine revelation, and, second, to assert that he has been faithful to keep the gospel pure and undistorted. The gospel he preached to them doesn't need any modification or correction.

So, the focus in this autobiographical section is not Paul's authority, but the purity of his gospel. His authority is meaningless if he has not faithfully preserved the gospel he received.

This may seem a distinction without a difference; but I think it makes more sense of the context. The flow of Paul's argument makes more sense to me. Verses 10 through 13 in chapter 1 all begin with a "for" and are clearly intended to explain and support the paragraph in vv. 6-9, as is that entire autobiographical section (though Paul makes some very strong doctrinal points along the way building to a climax in Gal 2:11-21.)

I am currently working on a detailed outline of Galatians for my own use. I am convinced that the series of rhetorical questions in Gal 3:1-5 form the center of Paul's argument in this letter rather than simply being a rhetorical ploy, an appeal to the Galatians experience to draw them into his reasoning. I believe that we have often missed the point of this letter. I've heard countless sermon series that assume that the primary issue in this letter is justification by faith. The book of Galatians is a defense of justification. I don't think that's true. I think the real issue has to do with the role of works of the Law in the life of the Christian. Paul argues that we are free from the Law. The Judaizers raise a number of objections to this. For example, implied in chapter 5 is that freedom from the Law would lead to licentiousness. Paul's argument is that it is the ministry of the Spirit that prevents license. The Christian is free from the Law but follows the Spirit. Christians begin by the Spirit and end by the Spirit. The ministry of the Spirit, I believe, is the central theme of this letter. However, I am seeking, by writing a detailed outline of Paul's argument, to verify whether this is so. It's in the midst of writing out my outline on these first two chapters that I had this "Aha!" moment about how the autobiographical section follows from 1:6-9.

Creative Love

In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us.

We love, because He first loved us.

(1 John 4:10, 19)

My wife is lovely. She has a smile that could light the city of Chicago. I still vividly remember the day, almost 31 years ago, when I held the door open for her into what was then called the CI at Duke University, now called the Alpine something-or-other. I got lost in her beautiful eyes. It seemed to last forever. I can still reconstruct in my imagination the unusual mixture of colors that make up her hazel eyes. I saw every color on that day. (She doesn’t even remember that event.) We have now been married for slightly more than 29 years, and I am constantly impressed by her loveliness, especially her beauty in “the hidden person of the heart.” (1 Peter 3:4) My love for her is a response. I respond to all that is lovely in her. Her beauty, her character, draw out my love for her.

God’s love is not like that. He does not respond to our loveliness. We know that because He’s told us what would constitute loveliness in us. It is not appearance. God is not captivated by a smile or beautiful eyes as I am, “for God sees not as man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” (1 Sam 16:7) Instead, to God loveliness is whole-hearted love: love to God with all our heart, strength and mind, and love for our neighbors as ourselves. But God’s love precedes this love. We love, Him and our neighbors, because He first loved us.

God’s love is creative. It creates loveliness in us. Because, “we have come to know and have believed [by the testimony of the Spirit (v. 13) the love God has for us” (v. 16) we abide in love. We genuinely do love God and our neighbors, though imperfectly. If we do not love, we have not come to know God.

So, God’s love always precedes and always creates. It is never a response. It is not a love because; it is a love in spite.

God’s love, though, is similar to mine for my wife in one sense. It is a distinguishing love. I do not love all women the same. I love my wife uniquely. God, too, has set his love uniquely on a people. Why? Because He has set His love on them. No reason other than His own will. It truly is a preceding, creating love. Nevertheless, it is passionate, never-ending, delighting.

No Double Jeopardy

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

(1 John 1:9 NASB update)

Why would God’s righteousness be compromised if He did not forgive sin? This verse tells us, “He is … righteous to forgive.” Does confession create an obligation on the part of God to forgive, an obligation He’d unjustly violate if He didn’t forgive? Is His righteousness the same as His faithfulness, so that faithful and righteous is simply a more forceful expression of God’s commitment to fulfill His promise of forgiveness? What is the basis of our expectation of forgiveness—is it God’s righteousness or God’s benevolence? When we so readily quote this verse to assure ourselves, or one another, of God’s forgiveness, do we wonder at it?


We’d normally expect John to affirm God’s grace in forgiving sin, “He is faithful and gracious to forgive us our sins.” We normally appeal to God’s mercy for forgiveness in spite of God’s righteousness; not because of it. We recognize that God’s righteousness requires judgment, not forgiveness. We take great comfort from the first part of God’s self-revelation to Moses, “The Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth; who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin;” but we tremble over the second part, “yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations” (Ex 34:6,7)


We know that “our unrighteousness demonstrates the righteousness of God” (Rom 3:5) not because God forgives but because He judges. He is Himself justified—shown to be personally righteous—when He pronounces judgment on sin. (Rom 3:4) In fact, God’s forbearance of sin raises questions about God’s own righteousness. Is He too pure to look upon sin, or not? Doesn’t He in fact tolerate sin? He may occasionally reveal His fury against irreverence, such as in His outburst against Uzzah (2 Sam 6:1-9), but more often He is silent. (When we read this shocking passage our reflex is to ask, “How can God do that?” though the question we ought to ask is, “Why doesn’t He do that all the time?” If God is so offended by the careless irreverence of a man simply reaching out to steady the ark of God, if this seemingly innocent act is worthy of death, then how is it possible any one of us continues to survive for a single second? We offend God, treating Him as less holy than He is every second of every minute of every day. How could God bring the flood to destroy the earth in the days of Noah when His evaluation of human character is the same immediately afterwards as before? The intent of man’s heart is evil from his youth. (compare Gen 8:21 with 6:5)) God must acquit Himself against the charge of too readily overlooking sin. He must prove His righteous revulsion against sin. (see Rom 3:25,26) It is strange for us to rely on His righteousness for assurance of forgiveness.


The key to understanding this verse is found in the first two verses of chapter 2, “And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and He Himself is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only but also for those of the whole world.” It is really found in the word, propitiation; it is because of propitiation that God’s righteousness is at stake in our forgiveness, that we can count on God to be righteous to forgive.

Propitiation refers to the work of Christ in averting the righteous wrath of God. It’s very important for us to be clear about how this works. The editors of the Revised Standard Version, for example, translated the Greek as “expiation” rather than “propitiation” because they thought the idea of propitiating the wrath of a personal god too heathen. A heathen worshipper appeases his angry god, in essence, by bribing him, by presenting an offering that’s valuable enough to convince his god that it’s preferable befriending him than harboring anger. But Christ’s offering is far from a bribe, and He does not propitiate God simply by changing His mind. Instead, He offers Himself—an infinitely valuable offering, it is true—not to divert God’s wrath and fury but to absorb it. Christ is our propitiation because God’s fury toward sin was fully unleashed on Him. It was fully expressed, given full vent, and exhausted. Jesus cried out, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” because He really had! Jesus felt the alienation from God, the wrath of God, our sins deserved. The resurrection proves to us that God’s wrath is removed. The Father receives His Son with a smile. If God had simply changed His mind about us, there’s no reason He couldn’t change it back. There would be no reason He couldn’t revert to His previous anger. But if, instead, He has fully punished our sins with infinite fury, then it would be wrong for Him not to forgive, “He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins.” There is no double jeopardy with God.[1]

But if this is true, why is forgiveness conditional upon confession, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive … ?”

Christ’s propitiation is effective for those who are really united to Him.[2] Faith is what unites us to Him so that His propitiation is for us. We might look at our union with Christ from two different perspectives. From God’s perspective, we are united with Christ in principle in election. This, then, is effected by His calling us and subsequently baptizing us with the Spirit into Christ. (1 Cor 1:30; 12:13) From the human perspective, it is faith that unites us to Christ. Our hearts, that is, all our affections, are drawn out toward Christ in love, trust, hope, and so on. Faith is an affectional union with Him. (I see little difference between loving God and believing Him.) Confession, too, is an expression of faith, and has the same dynamic, effecting a mental union with Him. To deny that we have sinned is to call God a liar. (v. 10) That is the very opposite of faith. Faith regards God as trustworthy; to deny that we have sinned is to accuse God of lying about us. It is to claim that His evaluation of us is untrue. On the other hand, to confess our sins is to agree with God’s testimony against us. We are of one mind with God about ourselves. Confession is a condition for forgiveness because union with Christ is a condition of His propitiation being for us, faith is what effects that union, and confession is an expression of that faith.

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[1] Double jeopardy is not just the round where Ken Jennings really racks up his winnings; it is remaining liable to judgment for a crime for which one has already been acquitted. The American justice system prohibits double jeopardy. No one can be retried for a crime once they’ve already been found innocent. A person who’s been found guilty, on the other hand, often looks for a retrial.

[2] He is given as the propitiation for the sins of the whole world in the same sense that “there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we may be saved” (Acts 4:12) There is one name for the whole world; there is one propitiation for the world.

A Special Word about Free Will

Although “God is not willing that any should perish,” salvation is not God’s only, or even His ultimate, goal. God saves in order to glorify Himself and His Son. Salvation is a means to this further end.

For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren;

(Rom 8:29)

Help us, O God of our salvation, for the glory of Your name; And deliver us and forgive our sins for Your name's sake.

(Psalm 79:9)

Nevertheless He saved them for the sake of His name, That He might make His power known.

(Psalm 106:8)

For the sake of Your name, O LORD, revive me. In Your righteousness bring my soul out of trouble.

(Psalm 143:11)

⁹ "For the sake of My name I delay My wrath, And for My praise I restrain it for you, In order not to cut you off. … ¹¹ "For My own sake, for My own sake, I will act; For how can My name be profaned? And My glory I will not give to another.

Isaiah (48:9,11)

"But I acted for the sake of My name, that it should not be profaned in the sight of the nations among whom they lived, in whose sight I made Myself known to them by bringing them out of the land of Egypt.

(Ezek 20:9)

"But I acted for the sake of My name, that it should not be profaned in the sight of the nations, before whose sight I had brought them out.

(Ezek 20:14)

"But I withdrew My hand and acted for the sake of My name, that it should not be profaned in the sight of the nations in whose sight I had brought them out.

(Ezek 20:22)

"Therefore say to the house of Israel, 'Thus says the Lord GOD, "It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for My holy name, which you have profaned among the nations where you went.

(Ezek 36:22)

"So now, our God, listen to the prayer of Your servant and to his supplications, and for Your sake, O Lord, let Your face shine on Your desolate sanctuary

"O Lord, hear! O Lord, forgive! O Lord, listen and take action! For Your own sake, O my God, do not delay, because Your city and Your people are called by Your name."

(Dan 9:17,19)

God’s ultimate purpose is not to preserve the integrity of human free will. God is free to move in the hearts of men and to determine the outcomes of their free decisions.

The king's heart is like channels of water in the hand of the LORD; He turns it wherever He wishes.

(Prov 21:1)

²² And they observed the Feast of Unleavened Bread seven days with joy, for the LORD had caused them to rejoice, and had turned the heart of the king of Assyria toward them to encourage them in the work of the house of God, the God of Israel.

(Ezra 6:22)

²⁷ Blessed be the LORD, the God of our fathers, who has put such a thing as this in the king's heart, to adorn the house of the LORD which is in Jerusalem, ²⁸ and has extended lovingkindness to me before the king and his counselors and before all the king's mighty princes. Thus I was strengthened according to the hand of the LORD my God upon me, and I gathered leading men from Israel to go up with me.

(Ezra 7:27,28)

The plans of the heart belong to man, But the answer of the tongue is from the LORD.

(Prov 16:1)

18 Then his brothers also came and fell down before him and said, "Behold, we are your servants." 19 But Joseph said to them, "Do not be afraid, for am I in God's place? 20 "As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to preserve many people alive. 21 "So therefore, do not be afraid; I will provide for you and your little ones." So he comforted them and spoke kindly to them.

(Gen 50:18-21)

³⁰ But Sihon king of Heshbon was not willing for us to pass through his land; for the LORD your God hardened his spirit and made his heart obstinate, in order to deliver him into your hand, as today.”


(Deut 2:30)

⁵ Woe to Assyria, the rod of My anger And the staff in whose hands is My indignation, ⁶ I send it against a godless nation And commission it against the people of My fury To capture booty and to seize plunder, And to trample them down like mud in the streets. ⁷ Yet it does not so intend, Nor does it plan so in its heart, But rather it is its purpose to destroy And to cut off many nations.

¹² So it will be that when the Lord has completed all His work on Mount Zion and on Jerusalem, He will say, "I will punish the fruit of the arrogant heart of the king of Assyria and the pomp of his haughtiness." ¹³ For he has said, "By the power of my hand and by my wisdom I did this, For I have understanding; And I removed the boundaries of the peoples And plundered their treasures, And like a mighty man I brought down their inhabitants, ¹⁴ And my hand reached to the riches of the peoples like a nest, And as one gathers abandoned eggs, I gathered all the earth; And there was not one that flapped its wing or opened its beak or chirped." ¹⁵ Is the axe to boast itself over the one who chops with it? Is the saw to exalt itself over the one who wields it? That would be like a club wielding those who lift it, Or like a rod lifting him who is not wood. ¹⁶ Therefore the Lord, the GOD of hosts, will send a wasting disease among his stout warriors; And under his glory a fire will be kindled like a burning flame. ¹⁷ And the light of Israel will become a fire and his Holy One a flame, And it will burn and devour his thorns and his briars in a single day.

(Isaiah 10:5-7, 12-17)

²⁷ "For truly in this city there were gathered together against Your holy servant Jesus, whom You anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, ²⁸ to do whatever Your hand and Your purpose predestined to occur.

(Acts 4:27,28)

²² "Men of Israel, listen to these words: Jesus the Nazarene, a man attested to you by God with miracles and wonders and signs which God performed through Him in your midst, just as you yourselves know-- ²³ this Man, delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death.

(Acts 2:22,23)

God glorifies His mercy and grace more fully by not choosing some but dealing with them only according to justice and merit.

²² What if God, although willing to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction? ²³ And He did so to make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory, ²⁴ even us, whom He also called, not from among Jews only, but also from among Gentiles.

(Rom 9:22-24)