It's not Quite Screwtape, but...

“Good evening everyone, good evening. It’s 7 o’ clock, so I’m calling to order our biannual meeting to decide who shall be the leader in what’s cool and relevant.”

Voice from the audience: “Our club is strictly about who hates God more, you castrated clod. Our job is to move society as far from Christianity as possible, who gives a rip if it’s cool or not?!”
“You’re out of order sir, new atheism is dead. You know very well the importance of getting buy in from the public. Being well liked is an exploitable phenomena that the public at large will gladly voluntarily consent to, and if we frame the debate properly then we can lead people against the bloodthirsty God of the Christians humanely. You know that. Now where was I? Oh yes, since tonight is a special night, I’m going to give a brief word of exhortation here before turning it over to an open debate as to who should be our next leader.
We’ve made great, I’ll even say tremendous strides in this last administration, and I can’t be more proud of my Gay Pride coalition for having lead our group to these great heights. We’ve stuck our finger in the eye of God in using His promise not to bring watery judgement upon us as our banner to sexual promiscuity and same sex attraction, and we’ve got the foundational institution of marriage on the run even in Catholic Ireland. If re-elected for another six months I plan to push man-boy-intergenerational love affairs as cool and continue to financially ruin Christians using the court systems. I promise we’ll have even more success in the near future railroading everyone, even gays with my plan, because we’ve got so much great momentum. Want to envision the future with my group at the helm? It’s a thousand times more of what we’re already doing. Why, with our opposition scattered and scared, we won’t even need to lie in the near future. I don’t think it a stretch to say that if re-elected I guarantee success. With that, I’ll turn it over to whoever wants the mic next, although as first speaker I’ll be moderating any out of line comments. Wow that was fast, yes you madam, the floor recognizes your voice.”

“As the oldest one here I say now’s the time for the leadership to return to Feminism. We kicked off the movement, we first paved the way to success, and therefore it’s our movement. We built it from the ground up and it’s high time you give it back—”
“Ha! Sit down grandma. You’re idea that women are better than men was good only because God made men and women equal. Not to downplay that, I’ll grant you the point that you’ve done a nice job hiding your hand that men should be weak and servile, you’ve done well pushing men out of the public sphere and declaring a war on boys, and that’s well played against the nuclear family, but you’re still clinging to biology. You’re not willing to go where this needs to go. You can’t drive looking in the rearview mirror and you can’t lead from the past, it isn’t cool. We need new ways to stick our finger in God’s eye, so what have you got for us in terms of vision today?”
“Working women.”
“Your plan is a simple swap of the gender roles?”
“No, it’s much more miserable and wretched then that; we plan on blighting women too! We’re going to teach all the women that they’re the victims of male oppression, that they’ve not, nor can ever achieve parity with men and should be angry about this. We’ll tell them they can be happy once they’re equal, and so long as they’re unhappy they know they’re unequal. Thus we’ll tie happy feelings to justice, and mire them a perpetual unhappiness. In this way the men on the bottom will be unhappy because they’re oppressed, and the women on top will be miserable because we’ve taught them to cherish misery. Imagine a society of perpetually unhappy middle aged childless women who slave over careers, their backs bent and broken, while the rest are single women worried sick over their misbehaving kids who grow up without fathers and end their lives in jail.”
“You just equated childless women with misery and affirmed women can and should be mothers. I warned you not to look back but you didn’t listen. Now you’re disqualified.”
“You’ve moved too far, too fast! It’s one thing to take control, but you’ve taken away our voice, and done so deliberately! You’ve set up an administration that’s no longer friendly to us. We never intended to have you co-opt the definition of feminine with your patriarchy notions of female. We want the vagina monologues to be about people who have vaginas again—”
“You’ve made your point I think. Out of charity I’ll give you a vote. All in favor of bringing feminism to the forefront of cool? Hands? You’re dismissed madam. Your holding to the tenants of fruitlessness is commendable but insufficient. Yes, you, the floor recognizes the minority candidate representative. Go ahead sir, but I warn you, grievance mongering won’t be permitted in here as it is out there.”

“We should lead cool. It’s our time now. It’s our right to lead. The notion of race has been used powerfully to separate people from each other, foment division, and it can be so used again. God created us a single family and yet we’ve managed to get everyone to use the word as if we’d evolved independently. That’s an achievement that deserves recognition because it’s still paying dividends. As of late we’ve done great work in developing protected minority groups. Combined with a socialist system where the protected minority is the oppressor but labeled as the victim, we are poised to make a mockery of God’s notion of justice too.”
“Vote of hands? No sir, sit down. You’ve made a valid contribution in having protected victim classes, but that can just as easily be my coalition based on sexual identity than it can yours based on skin color. Plus my group has the added bonus of being an explicit perversion in the Bible while yours isn’t. Your group also represents a delightful form of diversity to God whereas mine doesn’t. You sir, the floor recognizes your presence. Go ahead and share with us your vision for leading.”

“Thank you. I’m going to officially bring a splinter from your group into the forefront.”
“Aright, the floor recognizes the transvestite group to make an independent bid for leadership. Proceed.”
“We think the future of cool lies with transvestites. I know some of you think that we’re a hide bound 1980s kind of cool, but with modern surgery, hormones, and fashion trends, we’re a viable kind of cool now. As you know my group is explicitly condemned in the Bible, but what I think makes us worthy of the leader of the anti-God movement here is our plan to simultaneously affirm and deny gender categories.”
He looked around at the shocked expressions before continuing. It wasn’t what they’d been expecting, and was a radical application of post-modern thought.
“On the one hand we trannies affirm biology—that a woman should have breasts, wear dresses, and flirt with men, and that men shouldn’t have and do these things. On the other hand we assert that all it takes to be a woman is to be someone who feels like a woman, and the brilliant part about this is how it solves our biological problem of not actually having wombs or birthing hips. Our plan is to say that reality is what you feel it is, and in this way we can deny even the biological reality around us while affirming it when absolutely necessary. We’ll pretend when we can create reality, and when reality breaks in, at say the bathroom, we’ll pervert the gender categories enough that it will be acceptable to use the women’s locker-room. It’s win-win. Thank you for your consideration.”
“Oh my yes, that’s a fabulously cool trend. We can get everyone to pretend that men in tight dresses are women, holding their glasses, nodding in sophistication that it’s courageous to be a woman while having the sexual organs of a man. Can you imagine everyone at an upscale urban party forced to agree soberly that a hairy linebacker with a huge wiener is an attractive woman? Its offensive to our created order, while brilliantly making a mash of logic to assert something can be its opposite at the same time. I like it.”
“All in favor?”

“Wait!”
“Yes, you sir with the tight shirt, soul patch, and ripped jeans. Go ahead why you should be the leader in cool.”
“Because my coalition offers a safe and happy alternative to most of your perversions, yet are tolerant and inclusive of everyone, perfectly willing to love anyone no matter what. Besides, why should cool mean anti-God? I propose that it means instead what young people are doing.”
“Wait a minute, wait, wait, wait. Aren’t you a pastor representing the latest mega church movement?”
“Yes. But I’m more than yesterday’s cool, I’m tomorrows cool too! I’m timelessly cool! I do a lot of things God isn’t pleased with just as you do. Have you considered that perhaps I make Him even angrier than you do? Remember He had more to say about the Pharisees and people who were religious and outwardly pro-God than He did to you ordinary perverse sinners.”
“No I’m sorry sir, you are still too close to the matter.”
“No! We don’t believe in Him either you know! We’re more like clubs! We really worship nature and global warming and all that!”
“We’re aware of the facts. Your bloggers and recent work to get God classified as a she is admirable. But while you may be cool to Christians, being a big fish in a small pond, here you’re a small fish in a big pond. You’re never going to be cool, your organizational name has too much baggage.”
“No, you’re making a mistake here—a human person is more than a collection of lusts and urges—we’ve got minds. We’re worshipful creatures who need to look up to something suitably big or we’ll become disenchanted. It’s not a matter of if we will worship a god, it’s a matter of which god we’ll worship. If you don’t at least involve my coalition then people are going to wake up one day from the spell and bring down the whole system in rebellion.”
 “The day they wake up will come too late. Sit down. That’s better. Final call for applicants for leadership? Go ahead sir.”

“I will slay all of you infidels.”
“Ah, sir, do remember who the real enemy is. Our coalition is held together by thin margins as it is, it’s not prudent to vocalize your schismatic tendencies so openly.”
“I do not hear your pathetic mouse like squeaking as warnings. Allah willing, I will kill all of you and take the throne of this pitiful organization. There is nothing you represent that I don’t. Child marriages? False religion? Persecution of Christians? Thuggish minority power structure? Violence against the weak and helpless? Long history? Enemies paralyzed with offending us? Face it, we’ve done more to fight against Him than all of you put together. That makes us cool. And whether you agree we are cool or not we are taking over anyway. Because we are men.”

“Oh my. That is cool. It’s problematic to say the least since you don’t get along with any of our other groups on the face of it, but that’s a reasonable price to pay for how cool it is. And rather than abort children you could raise them to be weapons of hate and terror… mmmm… alright, let’s take a vote.”
“No vote, if he wins then my feminists are done for. I block the vote.”
“You can’t.”
“We either vote now or we all disband and each pursue their own agenda.”
“Each group would struggle to mint their own agenda and furnish their own credentials on who is most anti-God. There would be total chaos. It would be a bloodbath.”
“Better red than dead. I vote to disband.”
“You can’t!”
*Transcript ends*

What my daughter taught me about God today

During the walk home from school, after an unusual burst of disobedience and hysterical tears, my daughter got sent to her bed when she got home. (Normally she'd be having lunch.)
The purpose of the time out was of course to get her to calm down and take a breath, relax a little while Mommy fixed sandwiches. But she didn't know that.
She thought she was being starved, and would miss lunch for her earlier tantrum which she knew she was in the wrong for. So she gathered up her courage, accepted her fate, and because she had a contrite heart wrote a note: "I'm sorry for disobeying. I'm sure you won't let me eat."
It was her way of saying, "I know what I did was wrong, and you were right to punish me in this way. The thing I did was so bad that it's fair that I got my food taken away, I won't make an excuse for it. I trust you to do this for my good, painful though it may be. I trust that whatever punishment you gives is right, and if I have trouble accepting it, then I need to get over it."

Her open admission is surprising (and sweet for drinking such a bitter draught), but her thought process isn't unexpected at all. It's all to predictable. Given the few words she had to go on she immediately deduced cruelty and sternness from Mommy, and then stoically accepted her fate as the just consequence, while all the while completely unaware it was just a brief time out to prepare her lunch and calm her down enough that she'd be in a position to eat and enjoy it. She assumed the discipline would last forever, when in actuality it was only a few short minutes. She assumed torture when it was a respite. Because she looked to her past conduct she missed the affection and attention that's always there for her, even when she's not aware of it or doesn't think she deserves it.

The anecdote is so perfect I hardly need to draw the point out explicitly. How much is God like this to us? An assumption of His sternness toward us, as if our fate is a bitter pill that must be swallowed with resignation! All the while we have a loving father with a surprise in store for us if only we could calm down enough to look forward to it.

Kids are a wonderful instructor in theology. The Scriptures aside, there's nothing like it for practical understanding of God and His nature.

Romans 5:12 - Part III

"Therefore just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned…"

THE LOGICAL VIEW

Having exhausted the options with the instantaneous explanations, let’s now put them aside and examine the explanatory power of the logical view. In this one, “death spread to all men because all sinned” isn’t an inventory of what happened at the garden but the logical progression of sin entering the world. Paul is saying something like, “Through Adam sin infected the world, and now death comes to all men because all have sinned in their past.” It does not mean that we will sin, although that’s true, but that we have sinned and so are now sinners. Sinners since conception.
Unlike the previous distinction which had four distinct mechanisms, there seems to be only three which flesh out the concept this time around.

The Divine View: God, in forming a man, instills into him sin, weaving it into his fabric and make up. Just as God bequeaths us a soul and attaches it somehow to our bodies, so too does He makes sin a unique part of our nature. In short, Adam opened the door to God making us sinful by a direct, positive action of His will.
I’m not even going to pretend this is valid enough to deserve a refutation. It’s so far removed from what Paul was driving at that it shouldn’t be taken seriously, to say nothing of the blasphemous notion of God making men sinful by a positive action which suggests that sin is something God gives out of His abundance.

Conception-as-Sin: in this view the joining of the sperm and egg is itself a sinful act, one which brings the moral guilt with it.
But seeing as how this is a simple interaction of nature by two impersonal, non-moral things, it’s hard to take this view seriously either. Sin is much more than a simple act of nature like the blowing of the wind or pollinating of a pine cone, and likewise there is nothing inherently praiseworthy or guilt-worthy about the correct number of chromosomes coming together.
While it’s one thing to be unaware of a sin, it’s another altogether to say the carbon cycle or the crystal lattice of diamond is sin. And once we’ve agreed that the natural world is inherently evil we’ve recovered the Gnosticism that so much of the New Testament preaches against, and we’re lost.

The Hereditary view: the corruption of our will and nature in Adam is passed on to us simply because he is our father, and we are his offspring. Adam fell into ruin, and then begot descendants after his image, and as a consequence we inherit a corrupted flesh from him. So I don’t share in Adams sin, nor am I counted as being sinful, but instead I begin life with a fallen will, a ruined flesh, having been handed through no fault of my own a broken disposition that is permeated, from my will to my affections, with sinfulness. This want of conformity to Gods perfect standard and Gods creation is itself a sin. We are imperfect, not as created or designed, and therefore we are sinners.
This, incidentally, perfectly explains the presence of v14. Some of us die not having committed a volitional sin like Adam did, but death still came to them; ergo they must have sinned in a non-volitional way. They are guilty of being fallen, not of embracing fallenness as did Adam.
There are two objections I can think of to this model. The first and most serious is that, similar to the point above, that isn’t what sinfulness means, sin necessarily has a volitional element to it.
But that’s problematic when we consider that we can sin unintentionally, and indeed, likely sin much of the time against God and are merely unaware of it. (Why else would hell seem so out of proportion unless we were actually racking up a number of transgressions against God while thinking we were doing nothing wrong?) Once it’s granted that we can sin while not being consciously aware of it, it’s not a big stretch to affirm this model, which has the upside of being completely consistent with how the Bible defines sin elsewhere.

The second objection is that it’s hard to draw a close parallel from Adam to Christ with this view since we are born sinful thanks to Adam, but are imputed righteous thanks to Christ. The furthest comparison we can get is a loose one: the actions of both men changed our state. But that seems to be the whole point, and it’s we who’ve taken the comparison too far. All Paul seems to be saying is that just as the fall of Adam spread outward to us and we died, so did the justification bought by Christ and given to us spread outward and we lived. That makes sense given the ways in which Adam and Christ are the same is very thin while the ways in which they are dissimilar abound.

Ways which they are alike:

• Adam is a type of Him who was to come. (v14)
• One action on the part of both men changed the state of many people (v19)

Ways which they are dissimilar:

• Jesus gives us a gift (v16)
• Adam offended God (v17)
• Adams action brought condemnation (v16)
• Adam’s action brought judgment (v16)
• Christ’s actions brought potential justification to all men (v18)
• Christ’s actions brought certain justification to many men (19)
• Death reigned through Adam (v17)
• Grace and righteousness reign in tremendous measure through Christ (v17)
  

 

CONCLUSION

Of these three views then I find the argument for this last one compelling, and the model to be intuitively right. It answers the questions posed by the text, does the best job of explaining the surrounding text, and avoids unnecessary speculation. 

And it's head and shoulders above the previous four explanations. The conclusion of the matter is then that by the disobedience of Adam sin has been spreading and growing throughout the whole human race, being a corruption of our nature—an inherited depravity which even infects small infants

in their mother’s womb, and is the root which produces in humanity every sort of sin.

It is so vile and enormous in God’s sight that it is enough to condemn even unborn children to death, and it is not abolished or wholly uprooted even by regeneration, but remains a sin that constantly boils forth as poisoned water from a contaminated spring. It is the original source of sin in us, not Adam, even though it was given to us by our descent from Adam.
That, it seems to me, is what Romans 5:12 is teaching.

C.S. Lewis on "Gay Christian"

No, let me say straightaway that I have no direct quote from the man on the matter. Don't get your hopes up. It's just that today I remembered a quote Lewis said on another issue and it was the exact answer to the 'gay' dilemma. You know, the question, "can a person be gay and Christian?"
To that, that debate on whether the PCUSA and Christians in general, can love Jesus, be gay, and still go to heaven, or are schismatics who say they love the God of the Bible but are actually loving the god of their own creation, I hold up this quote. It's Lewis with his usual clarity:

...Mortals misunderstand. They say of some temporal suffering, 'No future bliss can make up for it,' not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory. And of some sinful pleasure they say, 'Let me but have this and I'll take the consequences,' little dreaming how the damnation will spread back and back into their past and contaminate the pleasure of the sin. The good man's past begins to change so that his forgiven sins and remembered sorrows take on the quality of Heaven: the bad man's past already conforms to his badness and is filled only with dreariness.

That is ever so right. "Let me but have this and I'll take the consequences." Let me have this imagined joy of homosexuality that God forbids while I have Christ and all will be well. Let me hold Him with my left and my sin with my right and I will have everything. I can do it.
But the time will come soon enough when they will either find their full identity in either gay or in Christian. Either their most cherished sin will be driven out entirely like every other sin or Christ will be driven out that they may cling to it without restraint. The gay path splits off to the left while the God path goes to the right and to hold both is to be pulled apart, for there is no middle ground.
That aside, He warns us plainly He's a jealous God, and we should take that seriously. He won't share His pleasure, and so eventually the gay Christian will have to opt for either holiness or emptiness.
So church discipline aside, sorting it all out is easier than ever: we just preach the Bible, the truth, pray for the man, and let God worry about the rest.

Romans 5:12 - Part II

"Therefore just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned…"

THE CHRONOLOGICAL VIEW 

If we read all three phrases as happening concurrently, then Paul is saying something like, “when Adam ate the fruit, at that very instant, we fell too.” How is that possible? I can think of four options, broadly grouped under two questions, with names I completely made up. They look something like this:

		Were you personally guilty of the sin of Adam?
		Yes	No
Were you somehow present with Adam?	Yes	High Agency View	Covenantal Oneness
	No	Lesser Agency View	Covenantal Imputation

The High Agency view: Just as someone can be guilty for orchestrating a murder though he wasn’t there, we are guilty in Adam for instructing him to do what he did. This isn’t an exact parallel of course, the actual mechanism is something more of a mystery, but the example shows how someone can be guilty of a crime though not present. We in some sense directed Adam to do it, and therefore we are personally responsible for the result. Origen and Muller seemed to hold a view substantially similar to this.
The problem is that this explanation requires the believer to throw up his hands right off the bat, admit total ignorance of how it could all have happened, and abandoned further inquiry and discussion. As a hypothesis it’s a bad one because it doesn’t open up the text to us but instead locks the whole thing away in a tornado shelter, and posts a sign that says, “Keep out! Mystery!” It’s a totally useless answer. And since it’s not only wildly speculative but counter to reason, I’ll just go ahead and dismiss it, along with the rest of the agnostic answers to the mechanism of our guilt.

The Lesser Agency View: In this model Adam functions something more like our official spokesman, or representative. As a result of his failure God punishes me with sin because my representative did exactly what I wanted him to do in the garden. He made my choice for me. When I come into the world I’m already carrying the guilt of wanting Adam to sin.
(The argument goes like this: a perfect God appointed Adam as a representative for everyone, including you. It follows then that Adam represented you perfectly, fell as you directed, and thus you agree you’re justly guilty of sin. If you disagree God picked the perfect man for the job then you’ve just questioned the judgment of God and rebelled against Him, which is the same sin Adam committed. Thus, whichever way you answer you’ve proved you’re deserving of the condemnation of Adam.)
As convincing as this model may be, it unfortunately requires a huge number of assumptions to function properly. Where in Scripture is it declared that Adam was my representative? Assuming he was, which decisions was he appointed to make for me—all of them or just the one regarding the command not to eat? Why did that representation mechanism turn off once he sinned? I suppose you could answer that Adam was created under a covenant with God and once that covenant was broken then the further propagation of sin or righteousness collapsed, but then that begs the question, what covenant? Why is there no mention of a covenant until Noah? Why is this Edenic covenant not cut with a sacrifice like every other covenant in the Bible? Is it because or does the act of God saying “do not eat” constitute a covenant? Wouldn’t that make all His instructions covenants? How long would Adam need to go on under this covenant as my official representative? Forever until he sinned? Until he had children? Until his probationary period is up? What probationary period? Why? To salvage God’s justice? The list goes on.
So while this model should be praised for not having any show stoppers, it nonetheless requires a number of buttresses to keep from falling down.  

Covenantal Oneness: In this view Adam acts as the head for the body of humanity. We were there in him, united with him, sharing the events, even though we were unaware and not personally responsible for the sin. Still, when Adam sinned we sinned, thanks to our covenantal oneness with him. Our being in him.
On the face of it this has a lot going for it. It’s similar to how we are one with Christ, united in Him by faith. After all, did He not say that He is the vine and we are the branches? Is man not the head of woman, the head of man Christ, and the head of Christ God? From what I can tell, Edwards held to something like this view, which is a big plus since he was a smart guy.
But this model has the same problematic assumptions about covenant that the last one had, plus one that asserts covenant members share righteousness with their head rather than having it imputed to them. That aside, it’s really when the work of Christ is considered that this model unravels in a spectacular fashion, for it’s evident Christ must wipe away every sin a believer has for them to get to heaven, but since the sin of Adam is Adams sin and is only being shared with everyone, then it must be dealt with it at Adam, since it’s his sin. Therefore once Jesus pays for Adams sin and takes it off the books for him, He takes it off for everyone. In paying for any of His elect, He pays for it for every man, and the original sin goes away. The only way out of this trap is to assert that we get a copy of Adam sin, not the sin itself, which is to abandon this view entirely.

Covenantal imputation: At the time of Adams sin God counted all his descendants as guilty of breaking the covenant with God, even though they weren’t there and actually hadn’t. Unlike the covenantal oneness view however, this is more of a bare judicial reckoning. The principle reason for holding it comes from the contrast Paul is making between Adam and Christ—since Christ imputes His righteousness to us, so too Adam must have imputed his sinfulness to us. Adherents to this view reason it cannot be that Adam makes us actually sinful, because by parallel that would mean the Roman Catholic notion of infused righteousness is true.  
The problem with it is that we are not actually guilty of sin, God is merely considering us as sinful covenant breakers (for whatever reason). That is, God is counting innocent people as guilty for something they didn’t do, and putting them to death for it. Defenders will claim that this is okay because of parallel to Adam, “Do you think it’s unfair to be condemned under Adam? Then you must object to being saved under Christ?” to which the rebuttal comes, “how about those who aren’t saved by Christ?” Condemnation from an alien guilt trades on a dark legal fiction, and no matter how we try to evade it, it must be the case that we are actually guilty of sin, not merely counted as guilty, or God is not just.

At this point it’s worth noting that all four of the explanations for the chronological understanding of Romans 5 require God to have put in place a special arrangement, agreement, or mechanism with us through Adam that isn’t recorded or explained in the Scriptures. Personally, although I have a soft spot for the lesser agency view, I find that to weigh very heavily on the text of Romans. That may ultimately be necessary if they prove to be the best fit, but so the downside must be admitted up front.

Having exhausted the options with the instantaneous explanations, let’s now put them aside and examine the explanatory power of the logical view. 

Next: The logical view