More limits

As a brief post-script to yesterday's post, it is particularly encouraging in these troubled times to recall that God has also set limits for nations and temporal powers.  Both in time and in space, the nations are bounded. It seems to me that there are direct parallels to the way the sea is described in the Old Testament. The nations are always potentially chaotic, potentially anti-God and anti-creation. But they are restrained. And of course the nations are also a part of creation, potentially good and a blessing to those who live in them, and so within their constraints they are given time and space to flourish.

It is worth remembering with gratitude that the supreme limit against which the nations bump up is the enthronement of the Lord Jesus as the King of the universe. They cannot undo this, nor can any political arrangement (or lack of arrangement) threaten it. Therefore God's people are secure, no matter what.

I think it's a bit of a mug's game to try to discern exactly what is going on out there from the point of view of providence. But the certainty that providence rules, and that God has already allotted the times and spaces of the nations, is encouraging to me - precisely because he is the good God, who is for us in Jesus.

Reasonable, because real

On Sunday I preached from the opening part of Acts 17, and amongst other things noted that Luke reports that the apostle Paul "reasoned", "explained", and "proved" the content of the Christian message in the synagogue.  A noble response to the message, according to Luke, was not so much to just take Paul's word for it, but to "examine the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so".  Because he was in the synagogue, Paul was able to make use of the Scriptures as an acknowledged authority, in a way that we mostly won't be able to do in our context, but the broader point I was making was this: the gospel is the sort of thing that can be discussed, argued over, reasoned.

To put it another way, the gospel is reasonable, because it is real.  Contemporary Western culture wants to put a hard border around a world of 'facts' which can be debated, and to put religious claims outside that border, in the world of 'opinions' and 'beliefs'.  Some people think they're doing religion a favour here - putting it outside the grubby world of argument and within a transcendent realm where you can hold your beliefs in a mystical way without being bothered.  Others think, more accurately, that they're defending the secular order against dangerous religion - it neuters religious opinion by making it the sort of thing which one can't really discuss.  Either way, the point is that religion may be a nice interpretive story that people tell themselves to find meaning in the world, but it has nothing whatsoever to do with truth (not, at least, the everyday sort of truth which concerns the way things are), and therefore can't be argued over, except in ways unrelated to truth: we can argue, for example, about whether religion is helpful or harmful, but not about whether it is real.

The whole Bible stands against this point of view.  Everything in the Christian faith stands or falls with the reality of Christ's resurrection, in history, at a particular place, in reality.  If Christ didn't rise, Christians are pitiable fools.  The book of Acts stresses again and again that the message proclaimed by the apostles has to do with public, accessible events: these things were not done in a corner.

If this is true, it is possible to argue, to reasonably engage in a demonstration of the truth of Christianity.  (I don't mean here the sort of Enlightenment reasoning, as if a person sat down with nothing but their intellect and the world around them ought to be able to arrive at Christian conclusions; I mean that given God's revelation in Christ in history, it is in principle possible to discuss the reality or otherwise of the Christian faith).

I argued on Sunday that there is one thing in particular that it is incumbent on Christians to know about: why do they believe that Jesus rose from the dead?  There are some good resources out there on this question.  N.T. Wright's big book on The Resurrection of the Son of God is the very best, in my opinion, setting the question in its historical context and showing that there really is no other plausible explanation.  Some of the arguments are summarised in the first part of his more popular level Surprised by Hope, which might be more manageable.  It doesn't seem to have got the attention it deserves, but Daniel Clark's little book Dead or Alive? is a helpful introductory presentation of the evidence for the resurrection set in the context of a gospel presentation, and would be a good one to have on hand to give away.  And of course there is still the classic Who Moved the Stone.

On the broader question of the rationality of faith, a good introductory run through many of the questions that people ask about Christianity can be found in But is it Real? and Why Trust the Bible? by Amy Orr-Ewing.  I continue to find the argument of C.S. Lewis in Miracles to be deeply convincing, though I'm aware it has its detractors.  The Reason for God by Tim Keller is excellent.  I would warn against many more philosophical works, for example those by William Lane Craig, not because there is nothing useful in them but because in my view they ultimately depend too little on God's revelation in Christ.

Have others found particular books (or other media; I'm aware that I don't really engage much with audio or video presentations, just because I like books better...) helpful in thinking through the rationality of faith?

Gone up

I used to think the ascension was mainly about answering the question: so, where did Jesus go, then? It's an apologetic, an explanation for Jesus' absence.

That's certainly not how the book of Acts sees it.  In Acts 1, the story of Jesus' ascension is followed directly by the appointment of Matthias to fill the vacancy on the apostolate left by Judas' betrayal.  Matthias is called to be a witness to the resurrection, but in order to bear that witness he must have been with Jesus throughout his ministry, from the baptism of John right through to the ascension.  That is the content of the apostles' witness, according to Peter's speech in Acts 1: the life and work of Jesus, from his baptism through to his ascension.

I guess you could argue that the rest of the NT drags in a few outliers: the infancy narratives especially in Matthew and Luke's gospels.  In fact, those things present an intriguing parallel.  The appearance of angels precedes the impossible coming of God-with-us, his advent declared in advance; the appearance of angels follows the impossible going of the Son, declaring his return to heaven.  Everything between these two points is the content of the apostolic witness.

The claim being made here is that we can put a thick line around the earthly line of Jesus and say: this is it.  This is the thing to which the prophets looked forward, and this is the thing to which the apostles looked back.  Here is the real thing. Everything within this border: that is God's revelation, God's history within our history.

If Jesus had not gone up, there would have been no completed work.  God would have become a permanent part of human history.  God would be a factor in our existence.  But would he then be the transformation of our history and our existence?  Would there be something to which a band of apostles could bear witness as the turning point of human existence?  The New Testament says no.  The New Testament says that the outpouring of the Holy Spirit followed on Jesus' ascension, because Jesus' ascension no less than his virgin birth is the marker of where revelation is to be found, and the marker of his completed work.

'General' revelation? Paul before the Areopagus

One passage often thought to teach a broader concept of revelation than the one I've been hinting at here is Acts 17:16-34. Paul is granted a hearing before the Areopagus in Athens, and he proceeds to preach the gospel. He begins with the Athenian altar "to the Unknown God", proceeds to explain the folly of idolatry in typical OT and Jewish terms (but terms with which his sophisticated pagan audience would have had some sympathy), explains God's dealings with the nations in the past, and concludes by calling all to repent since God has now raised Jesus from the dead. (As an aside, this seems to be an extended and sophisticated version of Paul's address to the people of Derbe in Acts 14).

Two aspects of Paul's sermon might seem to imply a broad concept of revelation. The first is his use of the Athenian's 'unknown god'. Of course, in and of itself this is nothing more than an incidental point of Athenian culture, which was crowded (physically and metaphysically) with gods. However, Paul states his intention in his sermon thus: "what therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you". Is Paul here identifying the God of the OT, and the Father of Jesus Christ, with the Athenian idol? Is he saying that the worship the Athenians have directed to this unknown God has in fact been directed to the Creator God?

In my opinion, the answer to both questions must be 'no'. I'll come to the reasoning behind this shortly. But first, notice that the whole point here is that the Athenians do not know God. The altar to the unknown god represented, for them, the simple enough pagan fear that they might have overlooked a deity. For Paul, I would suggest, it represents more profoundly the emptiness that lies at the heart of all pagan religion. The fact that the altar is there testifies to a space - a void - that exists within this religious system. That void must necessarily exist in any religion of untrue gods, for religion is directed toward a deity (or deities), and unless the direction is toward the true and living God all the worship, prayer and devotion simply disappears into nothingness.

The second point which might seem to indicate a broad concept of revelation is Paul's outline of history: "he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined alotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel their way towards him and find him". Paul might well be taken to mean here that the general cultural history of the world is in itself a vehicle of revelation. History has been ordered such that there is potential for people to find God in it.

But note what the outcome has been: nobody has found God. "Yet he is actually not far from each one of us". All the reaching out and grasping that humanity has done, all the history of religion and philosophy, has only produced the altar to the unknown god. All the worship has only produced temples made with hands, containing gods which cannot move or act or speak. Human culture, religion and philosophy has by-passed the God who not far from each one of us, seeking a different god, a 'better' god, a god more to our taste. The conclusion of this history is that the true God breaks in in Jesus Christ and calls for repentance. Note that it is precisely this seeking after god which the nations are called to repent of, in the light of the fact that God has decisively sought after them.

Is the Unknown God to be identified with YHWH, with the Father of Jesus Christ? Absolutely not. Paul speaks consistently from the standpoint of revelation here - i.e. from the standpoint of faith in Jesus Christ and the Scriptures which testify to him. His critique of idolatry is derived thence, as is his interpretation of history. From that standpoint, Paul sees the void represented by the unknown god as the evidence of the absence of revelation, and he proceeds to proclaim Christ.

P.S. Any attempt to see broader revelation here actually leads to a very muddled concept of revelation - it is revelation that does not reveal, revelation that leads to unknowing. The sign of the unknown god bars the way to any such doctrine.