Calculating Christmas

By William J. Tighe
Touchstone Magazine

On the Story Behind December 25

Many Christians think that Christians celebrate Christ’s birth on December 25th because the church fathers appropriated the date of a pagan festival. Almost no one minds, except for a few groups on the fringes of American Evangelicalism, who seem to think that this makes Christmas itself a pagan festival. But it is perhaps interesting to know that the choice of December 25th is the result of attempts among the earliest Christians to figure out the date of Jesus’ birth based on calendrical calculations that had nothing to do with pagan festivals.

Rather, the pagan festival of the “Birth of the Unconquered Son” instituted by the Roman Emperor Aurelian on 25 December 274, was almost certainly an attempt to create a pagan alternative to a date that was already of some significance to Roman Christians. Thus the “pagan origins of Christmas” is a myth without historical substance.

A Mistake

The idea that the date was taken from the pagans goes back to two scholars from the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Paul Ernst Jablonski, a German Protestant, wished to show that the celebration of Christ’s birth on December 25th was one of the many “paganizations” of Christianity that the Church of the fourth century embraced, as one of many “degenerations” that transformed pure apostolic Christianity into Catholicism. Dom Jean Hardouin, a Benedictine monk, tried to show that the Catholic Church adopted pagan festivals for Christian purposes without paganizing the gospel.

In the Julian calendar, created in 45 B.C. under Julius Caesar, the winter solstice fell on December 25th, and it therefore seemed obvious to Jablonski and Hardouin that the day must have had a pagan significance before it had a Christian one. But in fact, the date had no religious significance in the Roman pagan festal calendar before Aurelian’s time, nor did the cult of the sun play a prominent role in Rome before him.

There were two temples of the sun in Rome, one of which (maintained by the clan into which Aurelian was born or adopted) celebrated its dedication festival on August 9th, the other of which celebrated its dedication festival on August 28th. But both of these cults fell into neglect in the second century, when eastern cults of the sun, such as Mithraism, began to win a following in Rome. And in any case, none of these cults, old or new, had festivals associated with solstices or equinoxes.

As things actually happened, Aurelian, who ruled from 270 until his assassination in 275, was hostile to Christianity and appears to have promoted the establishment of the festival of the “Birth of the Unconquered Sun” as a device to unify the various pagan cults of the Roman Empire around a commemoration of the annual “rebirth” of the sun. He led an empire that appeared to be collapsing in the face of internal unrest, rebellions in the provinces, economic decay, and repeated attacks from German tribes to the north and the Persian Empire to the east.

In creating the new feast, he intended the beginning of the lengthening of the daylight, and the arresting of the lengthening of darkness, on December 25th to be a symbol of the hoped-for “rebirth,” or perpetual rejuvenation, of the Roman Empire, resulting from the maintenance of the worship of the gods whose tutelage (the Romans thought) had brought Rome to greatness and world-rule. If it co-opted the Christian celebration, so much the better.

A By-Product

It is true that the first evidence of Christians celebrating December 25th as the date of the Lord’s nativity comes from Rome some years after Aurelian, in A.D. 336, but there is evidence from both the Greek East and the Latin West that Christians attempted to figure out the date of Christ’s birth long before they began to celebrate it liturgically, even in the second and third centuries. The evidence indicates, in fact, that the attribution of the date of December 25th was a by-product of attempts to determine when to celebrate his death and resurrection.

How did this happen? There is a seeming contradiction between the date of the Lord’s death as given in the synoptic Gospels and in John’s Gospel. The synoptics would appear to place it on Passover Day (after the Lord had celebrated the Passover Meal on the preceding evening), and John on the Eve of Passover, just when the Passover lambs were being slaughtered in the Jerusalem Temple for the feast that was to ensue after sunset on that day.

Solving this problem involves answering the question of whether the Lord’s Last Supper was a Passover Meal, or a meal celebrated a day earlier, which we cannot enter into here. Suffice it to say that the early Church followed John rather than the synoptics, and thus believed that Christ’s death would have taken place on 14 Nisan, according to the Jewish lunar calendar. (Modern scholars agree, by the way, that the death of Christ could have taken place only in A.D. 30 or 33, as those two are the only years of that time when the eve of Passover could have fallen on a Friday, the possibilities being either 7 April 30 or 3 April 33.)

However, as the early Church was forcibly separated from Judaism, it entered into a world with different calendars, and had to devise its own time to celebrate the Lord’s Passion, not least so as to be independent of the rabbinic calculations of the date of Passover. Also, since the Jewish calendar was a lunar calendar consisting of twelve months of thirty days each, every few years a thirteenth month had to be added by a decree of the Sanhedrin to keep the calendar in synchronization with the equinoxes and solstices, as well as to prevent the seasons from “straying” into inappropriate months.

Apart from the difficulty Christians would have had in following—or perhaps even being accurately informed about—the dating of Passover in any given year, to follow a lunar calendar of their own devising would have set them at odds with both Jews and pagans, and very likely embroiled them in endless disputes among themselves. (The second century saw severe disputes about whether Pascha had always to fall on a Sunday or on whatever weekday followed two days after 14 Artemision/Nisan, but to have followed a lunar calendar would have made such problems much worse.)

These difficulties played out in different ways among the Greek Christians in the eastern part of the empire and the Latin Christians in the western part of it. Greek Christians seem to have wanted to find a date equivalent to 14 Nisan in their own solar calendar, and since Nisan was the month in which the spring equinox occurred, they chose the 14th day of Artemision, the month in which the spring equinox invariably fell in their own calendar. Around A.D. 300, the Greek calendar was superseded by the Roman calendar, and since the dates of the beginnings and endings of the months in these two systems did not coincide, 14 Artemision became April 6th.

In contrast, second-century Latin Christians in Rome and North Africa appear to have desired to establish the historical date on which the Lord Jesus died. By the time of Tertullian they had concluded that he died on Friday, 25 March 29. (As an aside, I will note that this is impossible: 25 March 29 was not a Friday, and Passover Eve in A.D. 29 did not fall on a Friday and was not on March 25th, or in March at all.)

Integral Age

So in the East we have April 6th, in the West, March 25th. At this point, we have to introduce a belief that seems to have been widespread in Judaism at the time of Christ, but which, as it is nowhere taught in the Bible, has completely fallen from the awareness of Christians. The idea is that of the “integral age” of the great Jewish prophets: the idea that the prophets of Israel died on the same dates as their birth or conception.

This notion is a key factor in understanding how some early Christians came to believe that December 25th is the date of Christ’s birth. The early Christians applied this idea to Jesus, so that March 25th and April 6th were not only the supposed dates of Christ’s death, but of his conception or birth as well. There is some fleeting evidence that at least some first- and second-century Christians thought of March 25th or April 6th as the date of Christ’s birth, but rather quickly the assignment of March 25th as the date of Christ’s conception prevailed.

It is to this day, commemorated almost universally among Christians as the Feast of the Annunciation, when the Archangel Gabriel brought the good tidings of a savior to the Virgin Mary, upon whose acquiescence the Eternal Word of God (“Light of Light, True God of True God, begotten of the Father before all ages”) forthwith became incarnate in her womb. What is the length of pregnancy? Nine months. Add nine months to March 25th and you get December 25th; add it to April 6th and you get January 6th. December 25th is Christmas, and January 6th is Epiphany.

Christmas (December 25th) is a feast of Western Christian origin. In Constantinople it appears to have been introduced in 379 or 380. From a sermon of St. John Chrysostom, at the time a renowned ascetic and preacher in his native Antioch, it appears that the feast was first celebrated there on 25 December 386. From these centers it spread throughout the Christian East, being adopted in Alexandria around 432 and in Jerusalem a century or more later. The Armenians, alone among ancient Christian churches, have never adopted it, and to this day celebrate Christ’s birth, manifestation to the magi, and baptism on January 6th.

Western churches, in turn, gradually adopted the January 6th Epiphany feast from the East, Rome doing so sometime between 366 and 394. But in the West, the feast was generally presented as the commemoration of the visit of the magi to the infant Christ, and as such, it was an important feast, but not one of the most important ones—a striking contrast to its position in the East, where it remains the second most important festival of the church year, second only to Pascha (Easter).

In the East, Epiphany far outstrips Christmas. The reason is that the feast celebrates Christ’s baptism in the Jordan and the occasion on which the Voice of the Father and the Descent of the Spirit both manifested for the first time to mortal men the divinity of the Incarnate Christ and the Trinity of the Persons in the One Godhead.

A Christian Feast

Thus, December 25th as the date of the Christ’s birth appears to owe nothing whatsoever to pagan influences upon the practice of the Church during or after Constantine’s time. It is wholly unlikely to have been the actual date of Christ’s birth, but it arose entirely from the efforts of early Latin Christians to determine the historical date of Christ’s death.

And the pagan feast which the Emperor Aurelian instituted on that date in the year 274 was not only an effort to use the winter solstice to make a political statement, but also almost certainly an attempt to give a pagan significance to a date already of importance to Roman Christians. The Christians, in turn, could at a later date re-appropriate the pagan “Birth of the Unconquered Sun” to refer, on the occasion of the birth of Christ, to the rising of the “Sun of Salvation” or the “Sun of Justice.”

Gifts That Money Can't Buy

By Dena Dyer
Focus on the Family

If you're trying to decide on a gift for your spouse, remember that handmade and creative presents are often the most meaningful.

Ask anyone to name a favorite gift that he or she has received and you'll probably hear "the drawing my child did of me" or "the poem my husband wrote to propose." Handmade and creative presents are often the most meaningful.

So if you'd like to lavish your spouse with simple, thoughtful gifts this holiday season, consider a few suggestions:

• Framed affection. Frame a picture of your spouse in a blank photo mat. Surround the picture with written compliments. List the qualities you adore about him or her, including the little things that usually go unnoticed.
• Clever notes. Leave short missives of love around the house — "you warm my heart" on the oven, "thanks for putting up with me" on the coatrack, and so on.
• A love song. If you're musically inclined, compose and perform a song for your mate. Are you a ham? Consider surprising your spouse with a performance in front of other people.
• Caring service. Does he usually clean the kitchen after you cook? Do both chores one night, and let him put his feet up. Is she the carpool and breakfast-and-lunch-making queen? Volunteer to take her shift so she can sleep in.
• Audio romance. Remember "mix tapes"? Do the same thing with a computer or digital recorder, alternating favorite songs with spoken memories.
• Poetry. Write a love poem — it doesn't have to be a masterpiece. Try an acrostic: Write your loved one's name vertically and list adjectives that begin with each letter.
• Prayer. Make a hand-written prayer journal that specifies requests you've made for your mate.
• Personal lessons. Share your talents and skills. Teach your spouse to bake a special dish, knit or swing a putter (and be sure to lean in close to demonstrate certain techniques).

I love blessing my husband with creative presents, and he's gotten good at doing the same for me. Coming up with personally tailored surprises is a fun way to demonstrate our affection. Try it; I bet you'll be hooked, too.

So, Why Is Incest Wrong?

By Dr. Albert Mohler
AlbertMohler.com

There are certain questions now pressed upon us that previous generations would never believe could be asked. One of these is thrust upon us by events in New York City, where a well-known Ivy League professor has been arrested for the crime of incest. What makes the question urgent is not so much the arrest, but the controversy surrounding it.

David Epstein is a professor of political science at Columbia University, where his wife also teaches. He previously taught on the faculties of Harvard and Stanford. Last week, he was arraigned before a judge in Manhattan, charged with a single count of felony incest. According to authorities, Professor Epstein was for several years involved in a sexual relationship with his adult daughter, now age 24.

Though the story was ignored by much of the mainstream media, it quickly found its way into the cultural conversation. William Saletan of Slate.com, who remains one of the most relevant writers working on the issues of bioethics and human nature today, jumped on the story with a very interesting essay that openly asked the question many others were more quietly asking: “If homosexuality is OK, why is incest wrong?”

After reviewing the various legal arguments used to justify criminalizing incest, Saletan comes to the conclusion that genetics cannot be the fundamental basis, since incestuous sex could be non-reproductive. Similarly, the basic issue cannot be consent, since no one is arguing in this case that the sex was non-consensual.

He gets the liberal response just about right: “At this point, liberals tend to throw up their hands. If both parties are consenting adults and the genetic rationale is bogus, why should the law get involved? Incest may seem icky, but that’s what people said about homosexuality, too. It’s all private conduct.”

Saletan comes to the conclusion that the basic reason for the wrongfulness of incest is damage to the family unit. As an Ohio court ruled, “A sexual relationship between a parent and child or a stepparent and stepchild is especially destructive to the family unit.”

Now, remember that Saletan raised the morality of incest as related to the question of homosexuality. He argues that the family-damage argument against incest does not apply to homosexuality. In his words: “When a young man falls in love with another man, no family is destroyed.”

Saletan’s argument is easy to follow, and if you accept his fundamental premise, it can even make sense. But his fundamental premise assumes that there is no damage to a particular family unit if a homosexual relationship exists. That argument can be made only by ignoring the impact upon a family of origin. Beyond this, it limits the family-damage argument to an individual family, when the argument must be more broadly applied to the family as an institution.

This article is a very interesting window into the sexual confusions that lie at the heart of our age. To his credit, Saletan gets the conservative argument basically right:

The conservative view is that all sexual deviance—homosexuality, polyamory, adultery, bestiality, incest—violates the natural order. Families depend on moral structure: Mom, Dad, kids. When you confound that structure—when Dad sleeps with a man, Dad sleeps with another woman, or Mom sleeps with Grandpa—the family falls apart. Kids need clear roles and relationships. Without this, they get disoriented. Mess with the family, and you mess up the kids.

That’s a pretty fair summary. Of course, the Christian argument goes much deeper than the merely conservative argument, affirming the fact that, with exacting precision, God has spoken to the sinfulness of such behaviors — specifically condemning both homosexuality and incest. In other words, Christians move the question from mere wrongfulness to sinfulness, and place all issues of sin within the biblical account of sin and redemption.

It is extremely revealing that, for many of our fellow citizens, incest may merely “seem icky.” And yet, all around us are folks who, with a straight face, deny the inevitability of this slippery slope.

God Bless Us Every One

By John Mark Reynolds
Scriptorium Daily

Scrooge repented of his greed and changed at Christmas. His sin was not his wealth, but his misuse of that wealth. Thank God the American and British governments of the eighteenth century did not confuse wickedness with wealth. Nobody should act like Scrooge, but the problem was his love of money not his money.

As a boy I heard people laugh when a rich man died: “It will only take six feet of earth to bury him,” they said, and I became aware that hating the rich was a vice that my poor home state indulged in at will. It is, I think, one reason we were, and are, poor.

No human being should be given special treatment because of his wealth or lack of wealth. No human being should be punished because of his wealth or lack of wealth. The United States should treat each citizen justly. When justice is denied the poor, the nation suffers, but when justice is denied the rich the nation will also suffer.

Jesus does not love Scrooge more than anyone else, but He does not love Scrooge less. When the government forces Scrooge to do what it thinks proper, it removes the ability of Scrooge to freely repent and do what is good himself.

It would be immoral not to cut the taxes of the wealthy, because we are cutting everyone else’s taxes. Our present system where we take a greater percentage of the wealth of the rich is simply legalized theft based on covetousness. It enriches the state and does little to help the poor. Some citizens lose liberty and other citizens become wards of the state. You cannot free Cratchit by enslaving Scrooge.

Taxation is a necessary danger. Without consent of the taxed, any taxation is wicked and consent is hard to get. The majority is always tempted to vote themselves the property of the minority. Graft and tax breaks based on bribes from the rich are unjust, but so is pandering to the mob by stealing from the rich to enrich government.

God takes ten percent from all, rich and poor. Tyranny buys influence by pandering to the mob or the plutocrat with tax policy. Favoring either rich or poor dehumanizes one at the expense of the other.

Hatred of the rich is based on the sin of covetousness. He has and I want. Not all taxation is based on covetousness, but when we judge the rich as “not needing” his own money, then Cratchit is in danger of deciding for Scrooge what Scrooge needs based on Cratchit’s desires.

Second, hurting the rich is not the same things as helping the poor. Read the chapter “Scouring of the Shire” at the end of the Lord of the Rings. When we take from the rich, the poor never get most of the money, because those who tax use it to enrich themselves. Punishing wealth, instead of wickedness, is punishing success, and we will always get less of what we tax. Cratchit is likely to trade an oppressive individual, Scrooge, for an oppressive state. History says individuals are more likely to repent than governments!

Third, asking the rich to pay a greater percentage of their income than the poor is unjust. Property rights are an excellent measure of liberty. If I lessen one man’s right to his property, then I have made his liberty less. To let some men keep all their liberty (or property) because the state arbitrarily decides they have “too little” and to take liberty from another man because the state decides he has “too much” is unequal treatment under the law.

Finally, taxing the rich to support this particular government is empowering the real robber barons. Both political parties have wasted billions of tax money and will waste billions more if given the chance. Giving these politicos more funds is like handing the keys of the car to a drunk that is staggering out of liquor store on his way to Vegas.

You cannot redeem Scrooge by giving his money to the town looters and moochers.

The poor should receive equal treatment under the law, but so should the rich. We cannot steal from the rich and give to the poor and anticipate anything but hoods running our government. This Christmas Scrooge should give, but not because a group of moochers and looters made him. Instead, America should cut the tax burden on all and each American should pay his fair and equal percentage. Rich and poor: “God bless us, every one.”

The Knowledge of the Self-Revealing God: Starting Point for the Christian Worldview

By Dr. Albert Mohler
AlbertMohler.com

One of the most important principles of Christian thinking is the recognition that there is no stance of intellectual neutrality. No human being is capable of achieving a process of thought that requires no presuppositions, assumptions, or inherited intellectual components. All human thinking requires some presupposed framework that defines reality and explains, in the first place, how it is possible that we can know anything at all.

The process of human cogitation and intellectual activity has been, in itself, the focus of intense intellectual concern. In philosophy, the field of study that is directed toward the possibility of human knowledge is epistemology. The ancient philosophers were concerned with the problem of knowledge, but this problem becomes all the more complex and acute in a world of intellectual diversity. In the aftermath of the Enlightenment, the problem of epistemology moved to the very center of philosophical thought.

Are we capable of knowing truth? Is truth, in any objective sense, accessible to us? How is it that different people, different cultures, and different faiths hold to such different understandings and affirm such irreconcilable claims to truth? Does truth even exist at all? If so, can we really know it?

As the modern age gave way to the postmodern, the problem of knowledge became only more complex. Many postmodern thinkers reject the possibility of objective truth and suggest that all truth is nothing more than social construction and the application of political power. Among some, relativism is the reigning understanding of truth. Among others, the recognition of intellectual pluralism leads to an affirmation that all truth claims are trapped within cultural assumptions and can be known only through the lenses of distorted perspective.

In other words, the problem of knowledge is front and center as we think about the responsibility of forming a Christian worldview and loving God with our minds. The good news is this—just as we are saved by grace alone, we find that the starting point for all Christian thinking in the grace of God is demonstrated to us by means of his self-revelation.

The Self-Revealing God of the Bible

The starting point for all genuinely Christian thinking is the existence of the self-revealing God of the Bible. The foundation of the Christian worldview is the knowledge of the one true and living God. The fact of God’s existence sets the Christian worldview apart from all others—and, from the very beginning, we must affirm that our knowledge of God is entirely dependent upon the gift of divine revelation.

Christian thinking is not reducible to mere theism—belief in the existence of a personal God. To the contrary, authentic Christian thinking begins with the knowledge that the only true God is the God who has revealed himself to us in the Bible.

As the late Carl F. H. Henry reminded us, “Divine revelation is the source of all truth, the truth of Christianity included; reason is the instrument for recognizing it; Scripture is its verifying principle; logical consistency is a negative test for truth and coherence a subordinate test. The task of Christian theology is to exhibit the content of biblical revelation as an orderly whole.”

That same affirmation is true for all Christian thinking. Christianity affirms reason, but divine revelation is the source of all truth. We are given the capacity to know, but we are first known by our Creator before we come to know him by means of his gift of self-revelation.

The Total Truthfulness of the Bible

Once our dependence upon the Bible is made clear, the importance of affirming the total inspiration and truthfulness of the Bible is apparent. Affirming the inerrancy and infallibility of the Bible is not merely a matter of articulating a high view of Scripture. The affirmation of the Bible’s total truthfulness is essential for believers to have an adequate confidence that we can know what God would have us to know. Furthermore, our affirmation of the inerrancy of Scripture is based, not only in Scripture’s internal claims, but also in the very character of God. The God who knew us and loved us long before we came to know him is the God we can trust to give us a completely trustworthy revelation of himself.

Even so, ignorance of basic biblical truth is rampant. Remarkably, this is a problem inside, as well as outside, the church. Many church members seem as ignorant of the true and living God as the general public. Too many pulpits are silent and compromised. The “ordinary god” of popular belief is the only god known by many.

As Christian Smith and his fellow researchers have documented, the faith of many Americans can be described as “moralistic therapeutic deism”—a system of belief that provides the image of a comfortable, non-threatening deity who is not terribly concerned with our behavior but does want us to be happy.

The accuracy of the Christian worldview in the modern age can be traced directly to a significant shift in the doctrine of God. The God worshiped by millions of modern persons is a deity cut down to postmodern size.

The One True God

The one true God, the God who reveals himself in the Bible, is a God who defines his own existence, sets his own terms, and rules over his own creation. The sheer shallowness of much modern “spirituality” stands as a monument to the human attempt to rob God of his glory. The Christian worldview cannot be recovered without a profound rediscovery of the knowledge of God.

Inevitably, our concept of God determines our worldview. The question of the existence or non-existence of God is primary, but so is the question of God’s power and character. Theologians speak of the “attributes” of God, meaning the particulars about God’s revealed nature. If we begin with the right concept of God, our worldview will be properly aligned. If our concept of God is sub-biblical, our worldview will be sub-biblical, as well.

God’s attributes reveal his power and his character. The God of the Bible is omniscient and omnipotent, and he is also faithful, good, patient, loving, merciful, gracious, majestic, and just.

At the foundation of all the attributes ascribed to God in Scripture are two great truths which form central pillars for all Christian thinking. The first of these is God’s total, final, and undiluted sovereignty. God’s sovereignty is the exercise of his rightful authority. His omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence are the instruments of his sovereignty.

The second of these great pillars is God’s holiness. Just as sovereignty is the great term that includes all of God’s attributes of power, holiness includes all of the moral attributes ascribed to God in the Bible. At the first level, holiness defines God as the source of all that is good, true, beautiful, loving, just, righteous, and merciful. In other words, holiness establishes that God is not merely the possessor of these moral distinctives—he is the ultimate source of them, as well. In the end, God is not so much defined by these moral attributes as much as he defines them by the display of his character in the Bible.

In other words, to say that God is righteous is not to say that he passes muster when tested against our own understandings of righteousness. To the contrary, we gain any adequate understanding of righteousness only by coming to know the self-revealing God who is himself righteous. One of the central problems of modern thought is the attempt by human beings to judge God by our own categories of moral perfection. Our proper responsibility is to bring our categories into submission to the reality and revelation of God.

The question of the existence or non-existence of God is primary, but so is the question of God’s power and character. The Christian worldview is structured, first of all, by the revealed knowledge of God. And this means the comprehensive knowledge of the self-revealing God who defines himself and will accept no rivals. There is no other starting point for an authentic Christian worldview—and there is no substitute.

An Exceptional But Not Chosen People

By John Mark Reynolds
Scriptorium Daily

A Chosen People

I have met the Chosen People and some of them are Americans, but not all of them. To be Chosen is special, but a mixed blessing as the history of the Jewish people demonstrates.

Just as the blessings of my neighbor do not make me poor, so the Chosen status of the Jews does not make me less. As an individual standing before God, I am equal to any man or woman, but that does not mean I share all the same roles. My sex prevents my enjoying the blessings of motherhood, but that does not make me less than my wife as a human being.

In the great drama of human history, the Jews were chosen to play a special role. God gave His Law to Moses and transformed the legal, social, and political world for good. The brave fight of the Jewish people to maintain identity and liberty is uniquely inspiring. As a Christian, I believe that God took on Jewish flesh forever on the first Christmas. This singular blessing can never be changed or lost.

History, however, also contains exceptional peoples, sometimes for good, sometimes for bad, that leave a deep mark on human history. The world was changed by the Mongolian people under the Great Khan. The small island nation of Great Britain created an Empire and culture that had exceptional impact on the very words I am writing and you are reading. Nations that fail their exceptional opportunities through vice disappear.

The Chosen always will be chosen, but the exceptional might become unexceptional. All men are created equal, but not all nations. Some have a big role to play and others, in God’s good providence, a small one.

It is a false humility to hide from blessing or pretend it does not exist. Economic choices in the United States impact the health of people all over the world in an unparalleled way at present. If we pretend America is not exceptional, then we will be tempted to act irresponsibly. If we acknowledge our leadership of the free world, then this great power will be tempered by great responsibility. Our very election choices must be shaped by knowledge of our exceptional status.

A minor nation can afford petty leaders, but a great nation cannot.

An Exceptional People

America is not “chosen” in God’s plan, but we are exceptional.

God created all men as equals, but not all nations are equal in importance. If you are a citizen of the United States, you are blessed to be part of a wonderful experiment and one of the greatest nations in history. You are not of greater value to God than a citizen of Liechtenstein, but you have greater power and responsibility.

America is exceptionally powerful and wonderfully modest in the use of that power. At the end of World War II, the United States was the only nation with atomic weapons. Most Empires in the history of the world would have used this great power to quickly wipe out their foes and seize the wealth of the world, but the Jewish and Christianity moral majority in the United States never considered doing this. We abused our power too often, but it should never be forgotten that we chose the hard road of the Cold War and of alliances rather than the easy road of true Imperial power. The pagan Romans with nuclear bombs would not have been so kind.

The United States is blessed with an exceptional Constitution. The genius of the Founders in balancing law and liberty amazes any objective person. The hard work of generations of Americans in making the initial promise a reality, mostly through peaceable means, is remarkable. Any nation with one leader of the caliber of Abraham Lincoln is exceptional, but the United States also found Frederick Douglass in the same decade.

Pretending we are not exceptional tempts us to moral laziness. A sports star simply is a role model to young people (are you listening Brett Favre?) and America simply is a model to all the nations of the world. We are deciding right now whether we will model a decadent and materialistic Babylon to the world or the balance between public and private morality.

Beloved Persons

Some of us are part of groups, nations, or families that are not exceptional in a good way. America’s exceptional blessing and power from God has allowed us to do wicked things as well as good ones. The shame of race based slavery in our history, when sane nations knew better, is nearly unbearable. Our treatment of First Americans was dreadful by the standards Americans set for themselves.

We quickly assert that our national shame is not, after all, our personal shame. This is true, but it means we cannot take personal pride in the greatness of America. I benefit from the Constitution, but did not write it. My duty is to preserve it.

Another problem with the great blessing of being an American is to turn our wonderful nation into an idol. We are exceptional in many ways and some of them are bad. A patriot loves his nation and is proud of her achievements, but also is ashamed when we fail. Patriots take pride when we liberate nations and shame when we torture prisoners.

In the end, Christians are called to deal with nations, but love men. We are not just a member of a group, our jobs, or a tiny fragment of humanity. There is no human being in the entire world that is unloved or forgotten by God. Every human being is created in His image and has a remarkable chance at redemption.

Why Cultural Theology Is Not Relativistic

By Allen Yeh
Scriptorium Daily

African theology. Asian theology. Latin American theology. Aren’t all these “cultural” theologies just relativism? Why can’t we just do “pure” theology?

I encountered this question just earlier today, though phrased a little bit differently. Let me explain the background leading to this question. I am in Atlanta for the annual ETS (Evangelical Theological Society) conference. This year I decided to start a new initiative: a World Christianity consultation, in light of the fact that the center of gravity of Christianity has shifted to the non-Western world in the last 25 years. I’ve been attending ETS for many years now, and I noticed something: there is nothing about missions, World Christianity, or non-Western theology, in the entire program. In contrast, I counted how many consultations or study groups there are about systematic theology and Biblical studies: 31 and 67 sessions, respectively! Now, as Evangelicals, I find this lack of world perspective surprising. Shouldn’t we, as Evangelicals, be on the forefront of concern with evangelism/missions/contextualization?

Five years ago, the AAR (American Academy of Religion) started a World Christianity consultation. This caused me to have two reactions: 1) Disbelief at ETS. How is it that the AAR, who don’t even call themselves Christian, who are extremely liberal in a variety of matters, has keen enough insight to launch a World Christianity consultation, and the ETS is still lagging so far behind? Evangelicals should have been the first to understand this global move of God! So I decided to do something about it, to take the bull by its horns. 2) A deep frustration and dissatisfaction with the way AAR was going about their sessions. I attended the AAR World Christianity consultation several times, and it was always the same refrain: postcolonialism. This is an example of Western categories being imposed upon the non-Western world, and it doesn’t do justice to indigenous non-Western theology. This is why I wanted to do a World Christianity consultation at ETS: it is (I hope) the best of both worlds: orthodox in its theology, but also highly indigenous (which are, as is the point of this blog, not contradictory—read on for why).

Our inaugural World Christianity consultation went well this morning. I am the chair of the steering committee and I moderated the 3-hour session. We opened with Andy Peloquin (Western Seminary) talking about soteriology in China; then Ray Tallman (Golden Gate Baptist Seminary) presenting on contextualization in the Arab-Muslim world; followed by Ed Smither (Liberty University) discussing missions from Brazil; and ending with Bob Yarbrough (Covenant Seminary) lecturing on New Testament studies in Africa. We covered four major geographical areas with four solid papers, and it was as fine a kick-off celebration as I could have asked for, with quite a fair audience turnout. It was the final paper, Yarbrough’s, that prompted the “cultural theology” question. A man in the audience asked, “Why do we need to look at the New Testament from an African perspective? I mean, we don’t ask what the African perspective on gravity is, so why do we need to ask what the African perspective on Biblical theology is?”

Again, I had two reactions: 1) frustration with the ignorant presuppositions behind the question; and 2) vindication that ETS needs this World Christianity consultation, precisely to dialogue about questions like this.

Basically, the presupposition behind this man’s question is that all “ethnic” theologies are cultural, while Western theology is “pure.” That’s why he made the comparison with gravity. It wasn’t in my place to respond to the man, but I would’ve made this analogy: people have different perspectives on me, don’t they? If you ask all my acquaintances, some will know me as a scholar, some will know me as a baseball fan, some will know me as a musician, and some will know me as a world traveler. Are all of them true of me? Definitely. Does anyone have the full picture of me? No—they will all emphasize one thing over another, or be missing certain pieces of my profile. In order to fully understand me, you would have to ask everyone that knows me, and then slowly the whole picture will come together. So it is with theology (which is the study of God). A European will say one thing, an Asian another, an African another, and a Latino yet another. Nobody has the full picture of God, and though every perspective might be true, each is incomplete in and of itself, and every cultural perspective is needed to fully understand this global God.

Therefore culture, rather than giving us relativistic lenses, gives us instruments which help us see our Lord better. Non-Westerners will be able to understand agrarian metaphors and supernatural phenomenon much better than Westerners—and agriculture and spirituality are all over the Bible! Another audience member also mentioned that African culture is much more similar to Biblical culture than we in the West are—so in that sense, Africans may have a better perspective on the Biblical text than we do, because of their culture.

Not only do non-Western perspectives give us insights into God that we in the West could never get on our own, Western theology also has some serious flaws in it. For example, we are often beholden to Platonic dualism which has filtered down to us through the millennia, and it is so hard for Western Christians to shake this dichotomistic thinking about the spiritual and physical worlds (this is played out in missions in the sense that evangelism is seen as more important than social justice; non-Westerners would never make such a prioritization!). Another example is the influence of the Enlightenment on Western thought—well, we all know what the Enlightenment did to European Christianity: it killed it. Today, Europe is the most secular continent on earth, thanks to the Enlightenment and rationalism. Do we really want to export that to the non-Western world? A third example is individualism. Most cultures throughout world history have been communal, but we now have Korean Christians who come to the West to study in our seminaries, imbibe individualistic theology, then bring it back to their communal Asian contexts. It is destructive, because the pastors end up doing theology completely wrongly in their native context. A fourth example is a poverty in our Pneumatology. The rest of the world understands spiritual realities far better than the West does, and we are, effectively, “Binitarian” (rather than Trinitarian) in our theology: we have a great theology of God the Father, a wonderful Christocentrism, but very little knowledge or experience with the Holy Spirit; and the third person of the Trinity is the one that is with us today! Pentecostalism is the fastest-growing segment of Christianity in the non-Western world today for a good reason; perhaps we in the West can teach the rest of the world about Christology; but the rest of the world can teach us about Pneumatology.

In short, cultural theology is not relativistic (relativism = “truth is whatever I perceive it as”); culture is needed to more fully see this infinite God who we worship (we all have true, but incomplete, perspectives—some cultures are good at seeing God as physician; some are good at seeing God as judge; some are good at seeing God as Creator; some are good at seeing God as immanent; etc). We need Latinos and Asians and Africans and Europeans and Americans all bringing their perspective of God to the table like a potluck dinner (or, in the analogy above, like all my friends sharing stories about me). Together, all our contributions make up a fabulous cornucopia of stories, images, and theologies (perspectives on God) which start to make God a little clearer to us, we who would all have blind spots if it were not for the contributions of our Christian brothers and sisters from around the world who cover our backs in the areas where we are weakest. This is why we all need each other, and why culture helps rather than hinders!

[Appendix: World Christianity is one of the hottest topics in Christianity right now. Many publishers—such as Oxford University Press, Eerdmans, Blackwells, IVP, and Orbis—are chomping at the bit to put out books on World Christianity. However, the number of authors that are writing on the subject I can count on two hands: Andrew Walls, Lamin Sanneh, Dana Robert, Philip Jenkins, Joel Carpenter, Brian Stanley, Todd Johnson, Tim Tennent; there might be a couple of others, but that’s about it. (Even Mark Noll, the quintessential historian of American Christianity, has thrown his hat into the World Christianity ring with one of his latest books, The New Shape of World Christianity: How American Experience Reflects Global Faith.) We need new (and younger) scholars to be contributing to this burgeoning field; it is not enough for the same ten scholars to be producing 90% of the material on the subject. This is one of my hopes for this World Christianity consultation, that it can be a catalyst for new scholarship in the field.]

On Keeping Goats

By John Mark Reynolds
Scriptorium Daily

The Book of Proverbs says I should look after my flocks, because if I do my goats will take care of me in an economic time of trouble.

Know well the condition of your flocks, and give attention to your herds, for riches do not last forever; and does a crown endure to all generations? When the grass is gone and the new growth appears and the vegetation of the mountains is gathered, the lambs will provide your clothing, and the goats the price of a field. There will be enough goats’milk for your food, for the food of your household and maintenance for your girls. (Proverbs 27:23-27)

If I take the Bible seriously, should I go buy goats?

No, because I take the Bible seriously, I will not go buy goats.

The path to liberalism is not paved with the taking the Bible in context. Instead, we take the Bible literally, when we take it in a literary manner. Genre matters. The idea that one can find science in the Psalms is foolish, because the Psalms are poetry and not science.

The Psalms no more teach a flat earth or a spherical earth, than the Charge of the Light Brigade (half a league, half a league, half a league on) gives the distances at the Battle of Baclava. To press the Psalms into scientific duty is an abuse of the Psalms.

In the same way, Proverbs is giving general advice, which is only generally true, to an ancient people group. The obvious fact that we do not live in an ancient agricultural society means that we have to contextualize the Proverb.

Goats are not the basis of wealth in our culture as they were in ancient times, though you can still get milk from them. It is obvious, of course, that the principle behind the Proverb still applies: make sure you watch after the thing that makes you money. If you are a goatherd, take care of your goats, if you are computer programmer, your code. If you program for Microsoft, your code may be figuratively goat-like, but it is not a literal beastie.

Context

This is not particularly controversial amongst Christians, but oddly I meet few secularists who understand it. If you talk about “application,” then they think you are not taking the Bible “literally” or making excuses for the Bible.

Many Bible difficulties, though certainly not all, disappear if we understand that making a book say something it could not possible be saying is abusing the book, not taking it literally. The Bible forces an ancient people to progress and we get to witness these pilgrim’s progress.

It also contains timeless truth, ancient history, and a full explication of God’s plan of fixing and repairing a broken human race. Humans do not change in essence, but they do change in important ways.
It is hard for me to remember that I lived for a long time before the Ipod and before mobiles. They are now such a part of life that it seems they must have also been there, but to my kid’s shock Dad is too old to have had a favorite video as a child.

The odd thing is it seems odd to me as well.

We must struggle to put ourselves into a mindset where the very concept of monotheism was new and difficult to understand. This is pre-philosophy, pre-theology, pre-scientific thinking. These were not barbarians, because they gave us philosophy, theology, and science, but it did not come to them in a flash. When God did come with shock and awe to His people, it did not seem to help.

The same group that saw the Red Sea part was worshipping a golden calf later.

Some new atheists believe that ancient culture was just a stinking version of modern culture. Instead, ancient culture is what produced modernity. Salvation history is a long educational program between God and humanity where human free will is preserved, but God leads ancient people to truth.

In some areas, people cannot understand or recognize a concept until they have a word for it. God had to teach His people over time the concepts of liberty, salvation, and law. Progress was not steady as we are not very good learners. Just as with technological innovation, early ideas, which seem simple now, were easier to grasp, while a combination of simple ideas would eventually lead to rapid conceptual breakthroughs.

How valid are the lessons for an agricultural people today? Some are directly valuable, since cheating your neighbor has never been good for long term business and is still bad for the soul. Some are only indirectly valuable and have to applied.

Our political leaders are not despotic kings ruling for life, so we have to contextualize the advice we are given. Our economy is driven more by ideas than things, by thought than muscle power, and this also will change the direction of the advice.

Making an appropriate application of principles is not usually very hard, but does require training. This is a good reason for seminary and for the hard work a pastor puts into his sermon. Only a fool would urge his congregation to buy goats or think there was nothing to learn from this advice.

Proverbs are, of course, only generally true. They are not “promises,” but reflections of the way things generally turn out. You should obey a proverb except when you shouldn’t! They don’t so much tell you what you should do in a particularly situation, but what you generally should do in a situation of the sort.

A proverb is valuable advice, but not an iron law telling you what to do.

Going to the Goats

So what do we learn from the goats of Proverbs?

First, we learn that a leader should tend to his core business. Though diversification can be a good strategy, if it destroys or weakens the focus of the main money maker. A family farm might fund some foreign trade, but the trade had better not put the family farm at risk.

Second, Proverbs is reminding us that times change. Nothing good lasts and so a person needs a fall back plan. This sounds obvious, but anyone who watched the churning activity in California land knows that moderns can also fall for the idiocy that good times will last forever.

Finally, goats are tangible and there is something to be said for tangible assets. A point of this passage is Proverbs seems something like this: “If all else fails, at least you can drink goat’s milk.”

This seems right.

Buy stock in a worthless company and you have paper, but land is at least land. There are many things you can do with land in a crisis. Even gold, which seems so tangible, is in a severe crisis not something you can eat, wear, or which will shelter you.

Goats, or things like goats, at least partially cover very basic human needs. In ancient times, the economy was much more fragile and a more severe “fall back” position was necessary. Americans are much less likely to starve (at least at the moment) than ancient Israelis.

One bad harvest could spell doom for ancients, but we can weather more bad weather.

Having a fall back plan for emergencies is prudent even if it need not be as severe as an ancient needed. In our culture, it might include buying life insurance for the family, having sufficient savings, and in Southern California having an earthquake preparedness kit.

Nobody needs to prepare for the apocalypse, because it is so unlikely to happen and so difficult to anticipate the particular conditions if it does.

That doesn’t begin to exhaust the advice one can get from these Proverbs, but it does get me thinking: “What are my goats? How can I tend them? What is my plan for hard days?”

Consider the Polar Bear

By John Mark Reynolds
Scriptorium Daily

Consider the polar bear.

Really it is quite impossible not to do so, since environmental evangelism is all about us. That this is so is one of the best things about contemporary culture. As a Tolkien-nerd, I have always favored the Ents over Saruman.

Traditionalists and liberals may disagree about how to do it, but we agree that being green is good. Phillip Johnson, the Berkeley law professor and gadfly, once noted that the best thing about community radicalism is that it had preserved Berkeley untouched in a 1950′s time warp.

While the means were regrettable, some of the ends were magnificent. Every year my family celebrates the Fourth of July in the all American city of Berkeley with buildings that the Cleavers would recognize and sidewalk hippies the Partridge Family would adore.

It is the West Coast version of Williamsburg.

Traditional Christians know that God’s creation is good and is designed with great wisdom. Fallen men and women hesitate over great changes to Creation. Our first rule as stewards of that Creation, given our vanity, is to first do no harm.

Better to save a tree and lose a strip mall, then quickly to cut down the work of centuries without counting the cost and have our grandchildren regret it.

So both traditional Christians and the rest of America have reason to consider the polar bear.

The Christian conservationist and the secular environmentalist agree that the polar bear is worth considering. While lilies of the field and the polar bears of the ice floe are worth less than a man, beauty of the field and might of the bear is surely worth more than any given gross of plastic parts.

And that agreement should give the secularist pause when he becomes too critical of the Christian God. It is a complex cosmos and God has many cares in it. God considers the lilies, the fields, the bears, and the ice flows. He must balance the needs of each against the greater good.

At the same time, God has made humankind the crown of His creation by giving to men and woman a free will. This further complicates the calculus of the goods of bears, lilies, fields, free will, and men.

Humankind has not even come close to deciding how to do this calculus, but secularists are quick to judge God for any perceived shortcoming. And yet if people concede all these competing goods, we must first know what a better world would look like if we would judge God.

How can we know that this is not the best of all possible worlds when we do not yet have a good idea of what such a world would look like?

How many polar bears does this planet need to be good? How much freedom do men need?

We value polar bears and ice fields to some extent over gadgets and strip malls, but have no real knowledge of the extent we should value them. How then can we judge the justice of God? What is the basis of comparison?

If God stopped a particular hurricane at great cost to the ecosphere, what cost would be too high for the secular environmentalist? When environmentalists are willing to ban DDT, and allow the spread of disease bearing misquotes, the same person must not too hastily judge a God balancing many environments and many goods.

The calculations are further complicated by the cosmos not being the way God made it. Humans put grit in the mechanism which complicates everything. We refuse to listen to caution and build cities where prudence would suggest we should not and then fail to take basic precautions to protect human life in those cities.

When Pompeii is destroyed by yet another volcano, will men blame God? What if volcanoes are needed to keep Italy the way it must be to support its fragile ecosystem? Why have we built a new city there and provided the people in it no adequate means to escape the volcano everyone knows will erupt?

God, and not just Al Gore, considers the polar bears, though God may value Gore more than bears. When I read the work of modern scientists studying the complexities and fragility of even one ecosystem, I recognize how hard it would be for me to see God’s actions in any particular detail of environmental history.

I can see God’s goodness overall in Creation, but the devil has room to roam in the details, cracks created by our sin. To paraphrase Saint Augustine, we can see Providence in the existence of polar bears, but strain to see it in any given day of their, or our, lives.

So consider the polar bears.

On White Collar, Covert Affairs, and the Trivial

By John Mark Reynolds
Scriptorium Daily

Two Shows We Try to Watch as a Family

Monk is gone.

The most reliable family entertainment to appear on television disappeared last year. Occasionally (ahem!) even our family likes to watch television and when we do we wish to watch it together. Tony Shaloub knew how to keep a diverse Reynolds room engaged in a series.

He was a rare and blessed actor and producer.

At some point, the members of the culture without an Arab Christian heritage or working for Pixar decided a “General Audience” (G-rating) meant a show so stupid only a five year old could live through it. Those doubting this never sat through the Piglet Movie. Compare it to the original Disney classic, or better the books read aloud, and think what this says about the estimate of your intelligence and attention span on the part of the respective studios.

Apparently in our culture the choices are childish or gross . . . as my priest, of blessed memory, discovered when he tried to get cable. The fellow putting it in suggested he get some “adult” channels. When Father said he was a pastor, the cable guy suggested the Disney channel. That might be alright, but the Disney channel gave up on Walt’s vision of family entertainment a long time ago to pander to tweens.

Zack and Cody did not have parts written to entertain us all.

The USA Network was the home of Monk and so we have been trying out two new shows there. The first is White Collar and the second is Covert Affairs. Both shows feel like they were written by the same people with White Collar being designed as the male fantasy with a good looking guy as the lead (think Bond meets Oceans 11) and Covert Affairs empowering a woman with the type of woman networks think is good looking. My grandmother would have worried that the poor soul was starving.

Both shows are entertaining, though neither show has the mix of humor and mystery that made Monk special for most of its run. The writing at the end of Monk relied too much on formulas, but both of the new shows embrace formulaic writing from the beginning in an obvious way.

Both shows rely on the “lost love” story arc to tie together the shows from each season though most episodes contain a complete story for the week as well. Think: set up story, climax of story, conclude story, and reveal something about the series story arc.

That is it.

Formulaic television can work. When you want to rest mentally, the old Perry Mason is a great friend. Full of solid acting and some decent stories, there are rarely any surprises. Perry will win, he will not marry Della, and Paul will not get (or hardly ever get) the last word.

Covert Affairs is burdened; however, with a leading lady one dimensional enough in her acting that she makes Raymond Burr look positively emotional. A fun family game is to count her three (and there are only three) facial expressions: smirk, wounded, “sultry” . . . though sultry may only count as a combination of wounded and smirk.

On the other hand, the blinded vet is one of the more interesting characters to appear on television. He is hard to predict and shows strong range. It is easy to see him taking over the series as the Spock in the cast. The women of the house assure me that this would be no bad thing from their perspective. Also enjoyable is the married couple that works in the CIA and the dynamics of their relationship, though she always wears an evening dress to work.

Be warned: everyone not married on the show thinks sex before marriage is part of the courtship process. The shacking before packing hasn’t made anyone on the show happy and it may be the way most folk in this generation now act, but that doesn’t make it right.

Covert Affairs gets one more season to develop wit, encourage the women on the show to eat, develop a story line that is less predictable, or it will not be worth anybody’s time.

White Collar is a different, if predictable, story. It features a “white collar criminal” with Bond looks who has gone sort of straight and works for the FBI. His FBI handler and his wife are the most attractive married couple on television. They make being married romantic and she looks like an actual woman!

On this show too non-married people shack before packing and acting on your sexual orientation is the way things are. That is fertile ground for conversation in our household. I think it generally good for my (almost grown) kids to see that people who make wrong choices are not obviously “bad” and are often attractive and “good” folks.

One can accept the way some people are without condoning their actions.

The plots of White Collar are more intricate than those on Covert Affairs, have taken more risks with the series arc, and there is more genuine humor. The character chemistry is better, though the show has been on the air longer giving the actors time to develop rapport.

It is more “adult” than Monk, which in our culture means less virtuous. It isn’t obvious from the show that crime does not pay. The main character still seems willing to reap many of the wages of his sin . . . and none of them are death. He is manipulative, but an endearing part of the long line of “lovable rogues”in fiction that made Cagney and Harrison Ford stars.

It is worth a look, though it does raise an interesting question: what is the value of trivial television?

Why Bother?

There is always something better to do than watch Perry Mason or White Collar. My IPod could read the Divine Comedy aloud. There are concerts to attend and Southern California to explore. Better still I could kiss my wife. I could help the poor. Heavens, I could read my Bible and pray.

And we should do all those things, but sometimes we are not fit for the better or best. Plato deserves attention that my weary mind cannot give him and my prayers would be vain repetition if I approached God in certain attitudes. They are not bad attitudes, but they are attitudes unfit for the sublime.

In a homely mood, there must be homely activities. Great saints and sages may be able to live in an exalted state at all times, but history shows great saints and sinners are hard companions and are rare. Since I am neither a great saint nor a sage, I can at least be a gentle companion.

It is better to discuss Plato than to watch Gilligan’s Island, but sometimes I am not my best. I am fit only for the company of Gilligan. We are the men and woman God has made us to be and we do not live in Paradise quite yet. So there is a place for the lesser loves and the lesser pleasures, if only because we are less than what we could be.

Beyond this hard fact there are four good reasons to watch trivial television, read trivial books, or play some trivial board game.

First, there is rest that only comes to me when my mind is just engaged enough not to “churn,” but not so engaged that it cannot fall into a happy almost-slumber. This is a bad way to live, but it is a good way to rest. It is not sleep, which is also necessary, but it is restful.

To live in a fog is a bad thing, but to wonder about in it can be fun! This is no guilty pleasure, because there is not guilt in it, if we are exercising our minds, our hearts, and our bodies in our daily life. Living in a fog is only proper in Holmes’ London, but visiting is fine.

Second, much that is trivial acts as a good window into the rest of the culture. Much as I might wish it, most of what I enjoy is not universally consumed. My favorite book of the last week was a Dr. Thorndyke mystery and my favorite activity was listening to a lecture. These pursuits are not widely shared in American culture.

If I want to love my neighbor, I need to broaden my experiences enough to include some of them in my play. Sports helps . . . my love for the Packers has broadened my friendships considerably, though it has alienated me from folks from Chicago.

This was no great loss.

Of course, unlike the “greats” there is no duty to read or view any given piece of pop cultural ephemera. You should read John Locke if you are an American voter, but you don’t have to watch American Idol. Why? Because in another decade, if this essay is still read, most of the pop culture references in it will require an Internet search, but Locke will still be ruling our lives from his writings.

He is a constantly grave matter, but White Collar is less lively the week after an episode is aired.

This illuminates a third value of trivial things. There is almost no better window into the way most folks thought at the time it was made. My children and I love to read magazines from the 1890’s because it balances our image of that time. If your image of the 1970’s is all drawn from present stereotypes, go watch Adam Twelve.

One recent speaker at Torrey challenged us to watch Green Berets and The Graduate and realize they are the product of the same period. Watch both and you learn something about the last fifty years of history and the nature of the folk who now interpret it to you.

Finally, the trivial engages one part of self and allows other parts to shine. Playing Risk is no great pursuit in itself, but it allows a social setting where fellowship can take place. Playing the card game “hearts” was one of the great learning times of Bible College, though “hearts” should never appear in any curriculum. While we were dealing the cards, we talked about everything and somehow achieved an honesty that would have escaped us if we had nothing to do but sit and talk.

“Let’s talk” shuts many of us up, but “let’s play cards” opens up many a mouth.

Trivial television does the same thing in my family. By this I don’t mean the dreaded, “What is the philosophy behind this show?” question forced on a room by a well-meaning parent who spoils the fun. I mean the organic, often random talk that a show can inspire. In our house, this might include sartorial, soteriological, and spiritual insights. Sometimes we simply laugh at shows like Sponge Bob.

We don’t have to do anything but share a wholesome laugh to make the time well spent.

Being What We Are and Enjoying It

This could be summed up with the practical advice: Don’t ever sin, but don’t try to be more than you are.

Youth groups are constantly telling my student to try to live out the “mountain top” experience they had at camp. This is nonsense. Mountaintop experiences are precious, but they are not work-a-day ready. Students can give an intensity of attention to hard intellectual work at a camp like Wheatstone Academy and experience the deeper things of God as a result.

This intensity and commitment would be out of place in the rest of life. Camp, or the mountaintop, is no less real than the work-a-day world, but it is no more real. It is a time and place, but not every time and place.

The same principle applies to marriage. The expectation that we can have a constant honeymoon is a form of greed and a failure of love. When we marry, we marry the whole person as they are on a Monday as well as the way they are on holiday.

Holidays are good times, often the best times, but they are not the entire substance of life.

So my family will continue our trivial pursuits and hope that your family finds your own. If you are looking for a suggestion, you might try watching White Collar together.

On Letting Go

By John Mark Reynolds
Scriptorium Daily

Some sins are easy to start doing, but hard to quit. Gluttony is like this. The more I eat, the less satisfied I am, but the harder it is to eat properly. The first three weeks of a diet are so difficult that quitting “cheating” is easier than continuing.

Even when the weight is lost, my immoderation toward food may not have changed. My self-denial might seem real given my weight, but still food is my master. I have not made real progress if I do not eat, but think always about eating. Food must return to its proper place.

This is much harder than not eating, but if I don’t change this way I will soon give up and go back to my old habits. Worse would be to never give up, but spend a life miserably longing for my false god of food while restraining myself by not eating. I would sell my birthright for cheesecake, but then not eat the treat.

This simple observation came to mind when reading Dante’s Inferno. This profound book has many deep lessons for me, but on this reading I came to a simple one. People cannot always let go of desires, even when those desires no longer make them happy.

At the bottom of Hell, there are those who feel rage against those who have harmed them. The rage is understandable, but the quest for vengeance continues long past any good. Torturing the torturer does not help the victim, but binds him.

Justice to the one who tortures others is good, but allowing bitterness and hatred to consume a man is not good. Why? Bringing justice to sinners does a man good, but trying to find vengeance will harm. It is an indulgence that begins to enslave.

Non-Christian friends often worry about the duration of Hell. Shouldn’t God let people go if they are sorry? Let’s assume this is true for moment. Nothing about human experience makes me hopeful that giving up on vice is easy in this life, let alone in the life to come. Habituation in vice eventually makes a sin part of the essence of a man.

If I will not use the grace of God to find freedom now, how will I do it in timeless eternity? If I clung to my gluttony through the moment of death, what greater shock exists that would shake me apart from this folly? I see no reason to think that the mere passage of time is likely to make a fool wiser.

Dante says the occupants of Hell have “lost the good of the intellect.” They can think, but they no longer can act on their thoughts, the very definition of repentance. Most of us have known folk who reach this point in this world, so why would we doubt that for some the problem would continue in the world to come?

This sins a needful warning chill through me. My “little vices” and the sins I so easily condone in my life are not so little if they become petty lords that keep me from proclaiming Jesus as my true Lord.

There will be no slaves in Paradise, because Paradise is a place fit only for freemen and freewomen.

An even greater cause for repentance is in the knowledge that at times all of us aid others to continue in their vice, if it is vice that our community does not find offensive. We tolerate slavery in our neighbor, if the master is one that does not offend us. We are only selective abolitionists railing against masters whose rudeness disturbs our comforts.

If it is true that most men will choose foul masters, woe to me if I introduce any man to such rulers. Another reason to seek true liberty is that this example will help others and will prevent my being Pander to the prey of demons.

Our very sins become confused with good things and make us long what we should not want.

In Dante, the lover Francesca has what she wants: her beloved, though it does her no good. If Hell was opened and she could leave, she would not go, because to go would be to “lose” her lover. She would have to be sorry for her adultery and sorry is the one thing she will not be.

Romance is good, but the goodness mixed with sin can glue us to the sin. When men will destroy careers for folly in this life why think they will not continue in their folly when only endurance is needed to continue as fools? The very pain that we cause through our sins often binds us more tightly to it.

After having suffered so much, and caused so much suffering, how can we admit that we were wrong, dreadful and wicked? The pains of Hell are more intense and the loss much greater, but if we habituate ourselves to the “joys” of the false martyr, they will only increase our desire for sin.

Eternal hell is necessary if only one soul would choose this way. It is easier to imagine billions choosing to cling to pride for all eternity, than that no man would do so. In our day, we even have an admiration for those who fight the unbeatable foe God. It may be utterly stupid, we think, but it is a hell of a thing.

Exactly.

It goes even deeper than letting go of things sinful in themselves. I must also let go of things good in themselves, lest I corrupt them by improper use. There was a time for me to be a honeymoon husband, but that time is past. I must let go of the first year of marriage, if I am to enjoy the twenty-fifth. The old goods can be a check to the enjoyment of the new goods.

Many of us may find ourselves in Hell for refusing to let go of the goods of this life. We demand Christmas in summer and long for summer fun in the winter.

God help me let go of all that stands between me and real Beauty, Truth, and the Good. God help me to desire happiness enough to let go of mere pleasure.

The Shack — The Missing Art of Evangelical Discernment

By Albert Mohler
AlbertMohler.com

The publishing world sees very few books reach blockbuster status, but William Paul Young’s The Shack has now exceeded even that. The book, originally self-published by Young and two friends, has now sold more than 10 million copies and has been translated into over thirty languages. It is now one of the best-selling paperback books of all time, and its readers are enthusiastic.

According to Young, the book was originally written for his own children. In essence, it can be described as a narrative theodicy — an attempt to answer the question of evil and the character of God by means of a story. In this story, the main character is grieving the brutal kidnapping and murder of his seven-year-old daughter when he receives what turns out to be a summons from God to meet him in the very shack where the man’s daughter had been murdered.

In the shack, “Mack” meets the divine Trinity as “Papa,” an African-American woman; Jesus, a Jewish carpenter; and “Sarayu,” an Asian woman who is revealed to be the Holy Spirit. The book is mainly a series of dialogues between Mack, Papa, Jesus, and Sarayu. Those conversations reveal God to be very different than the God of the Bible. “Papa” is absolutely non-judgmental, and seems most determined to affirm that all humanity is already redeemed.

The theology of The Shack is not incidental to the story. Indeed, at most points the narrative seems mainly to serve as a structure for the dialogues. And the dialogues reveal a theology that is unconventional at best, and undoubtedly heretical in certain respects.

While the literary device of an unconventional “trinity” of divine persons is itself sub-biblical and dangerous, the theological explanations are worse. “Papa” tells Mack of the time when the three persons of the Trinity “spoke ourself into human existence as the Son of God.” Nowhere in the Bible is the Father or the Spirit described as taking on human existence. The Christology of the book is likewise confused. “Papa” tells Mack that, though Jesus is fully God, “he has never drawn upon his nature as God to do anything. He has only lived out of his relationship with me, living in the very same manner that I desire to be in relationship with every human being.” When Jesus healed the blind, “He did so only as a dependent, limited human being trusting in my life and power to be at work within him and through him. Jesus, as a human being, had no power within himself to heal anyone.”

While there is ample theological confusion to unpack there, suffice it to say that the Christian church has struggled for centuries to come to a faithful understanding of the Trinity in order to avoid just this kind of confusion — understanding that the Christian faith is itself at stake.

Jesus tells Mack that he is “the best way any human can relate to Papa or Sarayu.” Not the only way, but merely the best way.

In another chapter, “Papa” corrects Mack’s theology by asserting, “I don’t need to punish people for sin. Sin is its own punishment, devouring you from the inside. It’s not my purpose to punish it; it’s my joy to cure it.” Without doubt, God’s joy is in the atonement accomplished by the Son. Nevertheless, the Bible consistently reveals God to be the holy and righteous Judge, who will indeed punish sinners. The idea that sin is merely “its own punishment” fits the Eastern concept of karma, but not the Christian Gospel.

The relationship of the Father to the Son, revealed in a text like John 17, is rejected in favor of an absolute equality of authority among the persons of the Trinity. “Papa” explains that “we have no concept of final authority among us, only unity.” In one of the most bizarre paragraphs of the book, Jesus tells Mack: “Papa is as much submitted to me as I am to him, or Sarayu to me, or Papa to her. Submission is not about authority and it is not obedience; it is all about relationships of love and respect. In fact, we are submitted to you in the same way.”

The theorized submission of the Trinity to a human being — or to all human beings — is a theological innovation of the most extreme and dangerous sort. The essence of idolatry is self-worship, and this notion of the Trinity submitted (in any sense) to humanity is inescapably idolatrous.

The most controversial aspects of The Shack’s message have revolved around questions of universalism, universal redemption, and ultimate reconciliation. Jesus tells Mack: “Those who love me come from every system that exists. They were Buddhists or Mormons, Baptists or Muslims, Democrats, Republicans and many who don’t vote or are not part of any Sunday morning or religious institutions.” Jesus adds, “I have no desire to make them Christian, but I do want to join them in their transformation into sons and daughters of my Papa, into my brothers and sisters, my Beloved.”

Mack then asks the obvious question — do all roads lead to Christ? Jesus responds, “Most roads don’t lead anywhere. What it does mean is that I will travel any road to find you.”

Given the context, it is impossible not to draw essentially universalistic or inclusivistic conclusions about Young’s meaning. “Papa” chides Mack that he is now reconciled to the whole world. Mack retorts, “The whole world? You mean those who believe in you, right?” “Papa” responds, “The whole world, Mack.”

Put together, all this implies something very close to the doctrine of reconciliation proposed by Karl Barth. And, even as Young’s collaborator Wayne Jacobson has lamented the “self-appointed doctrine police” who have charged the book with teaching ultimate reconciliation, he acknowledges that the first editions of the manuscript were unduly influenced by Young’s “partiality at the time” to ultimate reconciliation — the belief that the cross and resurrection of Christ accomplished then and there a unilateral reconciliation of all sinners (and even all creation) to God.

James B. DeYoung of Western Theological Seminary, a New Testament scholar who has known William Young for years, documents Young’s embrace of a form of “Christian universalism.” The Shack, he concludes, “rests on the foundation of universal reconciliation.”

Even as Wayne Jacobson and others complain of those who identify heresy within The Shack, the fact is that the Christian church has explicitly identified these teachings as just that — heresy. The obvious question is this: How is it that so many evangelical Christians seem to be drawn not only to this story, but to the theology presented in the narrative — a theology at so many points in conflict with evangelical convictions?

Evangelical observers have not been alone in asking this question. Writing in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Professor Timothy Beal of Case Western University argues that the popularity of The Shack suggests that evangelicals might be shifting their theology. He cites the “nonbiblical metaphorical models of God” in the book, as well as its “nonhierarchical” model of the Trinity and, most importantly, “its theology of universal salvation.”

Beal asserts that none of this theology is part of “mainstream evangelical theology,” then explains: “In fact, all three are rooted in liberal and radical academic theological discourse from the 1970s and 80s — work that has profoundly influenced contemporary feminist and liberation theology but, until now, had very little impact on the theological imaginations of nonacademics, especially within the religious mainstream.”

He then asks: “What are these progressive theological ideas doing in this evangelical pulp-fiction phenomenon?” He answers: “Unbeknownst to most of us, they have been present on the liberal margins of evangelical thought for decades.” Now, he explains, The Shack has introduced and popularized these liberal concepts even among mainstream evangelicals.

Timothy Beal cannot be dismissed as a conservative “heresy-hunter.” He is thrilled that these “progressive theological ideas” are now “trickling into popular culture by way of The Shack.”

Similarly, writing at Books & Culture, Katherine Jeffrey concludes that The Shack “offers a postmodern, post-biblical theodicy.” While her main concern is the book’s place “in a Christian literary landscape,” she cannot avoid dealing with its theological message.

In evaluating the book, it must be kept in mind that The Shack is a work of fiction. But it is also a sustained theological argument, and this simply cannot be denied. Any number of notable novels and works of literature have contained aberrant theology, and even heresy. The crucial question is whether the aberrant doctrines are features of the story or the message of the work. When it comes to The Shack, the really troubling fact is that so many readers are drawn to the theological message of the book, and fail to see how it conflicts with the Bible at so many crucial points.

All this reveals a disastrous failure of evangelical discernment. It is hard not to conclude that theological discernment is now a lost art among American evangelicals — and this loss can only lead to theological catastrophe.

The answer is not to ban The Shack or yank it out of the hands of readers. We need not fear books — we must be ready to answer them. We desperately need a theological recovery that can only come from practicing biblical discernment. This will require us to identify the doctrinal dangers of The Shack, to be sure. But our real task is to reacquaint evangelicals with the Bible’s teachings on these very questions and to foster a doctrinal rearmament of Christian believers.

The Shack is a wake-up call for evangelical Christianity. An assessment like that offered by Timothy Beal is telling. The popularity of this book among evangelicals can only be explained by a lack of basic theological knowledge among us — a failure even to understand the Gospel of Christ. The tragedy that evangelicals have lost the art of biblical discernment must be traced to a disastrous loss of biblical knowledge. Discernment cannot survive without doctrine.

On Yoga: A Call for a Christian Imagination

By John Mark Reynolds
Scriptorium Daily

A brick may be used in a pagan temple, but then reverently placed in a Christian church. A cave may be used as a stable, but then turned into the birthplace of God. No metaphysical system is safe from plundering by Christianity, because Christianity is afraid of no good idea, object, or word.

The system in which a great work of art is trapped may be corrupt, but we can reinterpret that work and so redeem it for Christ.

Is this process dangerous? Of course, because there is always the danger of being corrupted by the object of redemption before it can be reimagined. What is more dangerous is the cowardice that would leave any good, true, and beautiful thing to the Evil One. We must reclaim everything for King Jesus.

All religions that have lasted for a very long time will contain valuable insights and great ideas. These wise ideas will be deeply embedded in demonic wickedness and vice, but a Christian that engages their culture must work to redeem what is good and not leave it to empower and attract others to evil.

A culture that takes a beautiful mountain and names it for their pagan god does not thereby force us to blow up the mountain. We need to reinterpret the mountain for the people in a way that enfolds their history and insights into the broader story of Christendom.

Christ’s Kingdom makes no colonies, it redeems nations. The nationals of every land reimagine their God given insights to make them part of the Christian story.

We must acknowledge that many good things come to mankind through the common image and grace of God in each human being. Christians of all stripes would never want to hide the truth that some great idea or good thing came from another faith. That is the false path of those Muslims who take Christian churches, turn them into mosques, and then bury the earlier Christian history as if it did not exist.

Better is the acknowledgment of what a thing was and then a joyful description of what it now is.

For example, in the United States of America the art of some city landscapes was often built on materialist or secular assumptions and ignored the needs of human beings. It needs imaginative redemption and artistic reconceptualization.

Such an appropriation of the best of the cityscape cannot be syncretistic, but must condemn the greed and the materialism that sent money makers soaring over cathedral domes. This can be done, however, without tearing down a single beautiful building or covering up their sordid histories. Just as the Narnia stories redeemed the image of Bacchus for generations of children, so better Christian story tellers can redeem the best of the skyscrapers in our cities.

As the King’s College develops in the bosom of the Empire State Building it will perform this deeply Christian task.

As this dangerous work is done, we must listen to the prophets who will warn us of the danger of adopting the evil systems along with the singular ideas and works that we intend to redeem. One such faithful prophet is Al Mohler. The traditional Church must admire his courage in restoring a lost seminary and in reclaiming much that the world was appropriating from us.

Recently, Mohler wrote a courageous post condemning the importation of Yoga into the church. If a blog post was to be judged by its enemies, then Mohler is on the side of the angels. Some people who care nothing for the Bible, doctrine, or even Christian tradition have been livid. They are angry because they measure the worth of an idea only by whether it immediately helps them.

Yoga has done them some good, so it must be all good. This is fallacious, however. A system may be deeply evil, but still make trains run on time or improve education for serfs. Many of Mohler’s critics are wrong, and he is right to warn us: historic Yoga, as practiced for centuries, cannot be brought in totality into a Christian life.

But this does not mean that many insights of Yoga and all that is good in it, and there is some good, cannot be appropriated by the Church.

Mohler lacks imagination in this regard. The man who imagined that Southern could be returned to traditional Christianity should find faithful men and women who can appropriate what is good, true, and beautiful in Yoga and turn it to Christ. It was Christ who gave men of old the insight to do good through Yoga and devils that corrupted that insight into a false religion.

Can Southern purge the evil and bring out the good in Yoga? It is exactly what Christians did with the very notion of the academy when we created the modern university out of what was best of the philosophical academies.

This is normal Christian behavior, as a thought experiment would show.

If Mohler took over a town built by the Bolsheviks, he would not tear down the school buildings just because Stalin built them. He would not dishonor the blood of the enslaved who built those works with their blood by failing to keep them, redeem them, and turn them to their true purpose.

Mohler would never ignore the good done in those buildings, even while utterly damning the system that built them. The schools were not the problem, communism was. He would take those schools and turn them to good works.

In the same way, Christians can and should take the insights of Yoga and turn them to good.

Mohler’s essential argument against Yoga seems to come to three main points: Yoga involves internal meditation, Yoga conflates the spiritual and the physical, and Yoga necessarily implies a non-Christian view of sexuality.

No Christian can oppose meditation per se. We are taught to meditate on the name of Jesus, the Word of God, and His precious inerrant Words in Sacred Scriptures. It is true that no Christian could meditate on meaningless phrases or the names of pagan gods, but meditation itself is not the problem.

It is not hard to find a long Christian tradition of helpful spiritual formation through meditation.

Second, Mohler is no gnostic. He knows that bowing the knee in an attitude of prayer puts the physical symbolically in line with the spiritual in our culture.

Every culture develops physical acts that bring the outer into conformity with the inner reality. Kneeling may be a sign of adoration to Zeus in one place and time, but the problem is not the kneeling, rather with the demon to which men are kneeling. So the positions of Yoga, which are just physical positions after all, need reinterpretation by men and women steeped in the culture that created them, but also deeply Christian.

We need no superficial work, but a reimagining that is true to the original insights of the creators of Yoga while also true to Sacred Scriptures. This work has not been done, so Mohler is right to express prophetic concern about members of the Church who lightly sprinkle the Yoga imagination, but do not baptize it.

To give just one example, if Yoga implies a sub-Christian view of sexuality, then it is bad for a person and ultimately for a culture. Yet Yoga has also helped men and women with sexual dysfunction as well. Can Christians find a way to reinforce the good insight of the basic wholesomeness of sexuality without allowing base and depraved ideas to infect it?

Surely we can.

The genius that could work to reclaim the Baptist convention can also reclaim what is good, true, and beautiful about Yoga. Justin Martyr was right when with confidence he could claim anything worthwhile for Jesus, because those good things came from Jesus at the start. No logos without the Logos.

Most of the online opponents of Mohler would throw holy water on Yoga and bring it into the Church. This light and careless attitude is destructive to the Faith. It is bound to lead to syncretism and the destruction of the Church. That is the path of the Episcopal Church in the United States and it is best labeled “Ichabod.”

But shunning Yoga is not the best idea for Christian academics. Instead, with pastoral oversight, we must find what the Logos initially said to the wise, which demons turned to folly in the unregenerate sages.

As for me and my house, against all attacks, we will serve the Lord God. If an idol must be destroyed, we will get an axe, but we will also save what can be saved and appropriate what can be redeemed.

This house is afraid of nothing that is good, true, and beautiful. It is easy to imagine Yoga dying, because Christianity has enfolded all that is good in Yoga within the embrace of its true home. May some Indian genius do this very task.

On Hell or: is Plato There?

By John Mark Reynolds
Scriptorium Daily

Americans are much less sure of the existence of Hell than of Heaven. Hopefully this is because they have had such glimpses of the Divine that Hell seem fuzzy to them. There seems, however, some chance that it is because they have become too nice to believe anyone is in Hell.

In chatting with regular folk, not the sort that teach at colleges, often one only need mention Hitler to convince them that someone must be in Hell. Do we really want to ruin Paradise by potentially having Adolph (and Eva!) as neighbors?

This argument might be effective, but it is not an argument Christians can use. Called to love even our enemies, we know somebody is in Hell, but really shouldn’t root for any particular person to be there. With the exception of Judas, Christians don’t know that anybody is there for sure. It is none of our business and given the nature of Hell there is something inappropriate for wishing for a specific man to go there.

If this is so, then why do Christians believe in Hell?

First, God told us Hell exists and He is in a position to know. You might not want a place to exist, for example Cleveland, but you might be reliably informed it does exist. God told us Hell exists in the Bible and that some humans will be thrown into it, so we accept this as a given.

Second, wicked actions deserve punishment. Hell exists to punish sin that has not been forgiven. Justice demands that if you want the benefits of freedom, you should be willing to pay the price. We have been warned that certain deeds are wicked and are happy to enjoy what pleasures come with them, so we shouldn’t complain too hard when the bill comes due.

Some argue that it is unjust that the pleasures of sin are so short and the wages so long, but this seems a mistake. Sin is a bad deal, but God has done all He could to warn us against making such a deal. God insists on treating us as if our decisions mattered and of course if He did not do so, then people would complain about this!

If we don’t wish eternal torment, we need merely avoid doing the things that will lead to eternal torment.

Given the way humans are, though, we seem very apt to sin . . . to do one of the things that deserve punishment. Is it fair that sin is so easy to commit? It is certainly not fair, but it is the result of our inherited nature. We are not born as a blank-slate; all of us inherit traits or tendencies from our parents. One such trait is settling for what we want instead of what we should want. We settle for passion when we could have true love.

Even a small crime warps the soul of a man further and no warped thing can enter into the Kingdom of God. God is not willing to ruin the perfection and joy of Heaven by ignoring our self-created stench.

This is tough, but that is the way it is. This is why God cannot merely “forget about” our sins. We are broken and we would go on being broken if He did nothing about it. He simply could smite us and start over again, but He loves us and would save all He can of the good work He made in the beginning.

We must be “born again” . . . which will include the “legal” acquittal for our sins, but also will result in the Word of God coming inside us and changing us. The best analogy to the process is being “born again” so that we can start over with a new parent (God) and a new family (God’s church).

God suffered in order to make a way for man to enter this relationship. God came and became fully human; He did not just put on a skin suit like Zeus or the pagan gods. He lived out a perfect life, but then allowed us to kill Him. The God-man could die as a man, but God-man could not stay dead. He came back to life and created a new set of possibilities.

Men and women are separated from God by their actions and their heritage. God will forgive their actions and give them a new spiritual heritage.

When younger, I worried often about those who never got a chance to experience this new relationship. Wisdom finally taught me that I did not know any such people exist. The hypothetical “person who never heard in x” (insert the distant land of your choice for “x”) is a speculative proposition. Name one. Who is that person? What ideas did they hear? What was revealed to them in their dreams? What happens to a man or woman at the moment of their death? I don’t know for sure, but for all I do know all are given a chance to see clearly and to choose wisely.

Given the charity of God, there is no reason to assume that any man is not given a choice. They cannot hear without a preacher, but if those of us who know the truth fail them, there is no reason God cannot preach His own sermon or allow His holy angels to do so.

What of those who lived before the coming of the Christ?

Christians believe that the dead before Christ confronted Christ when He died and the faith of some saved them. This was certainly true of Abraham. What of those not under God’s covenant with Abraham? What of the noble pagans like Plato?

There the mind of the Church has been divided. Scripture says nothing for certain, but there are two big ideas to keep in mind. First, God desires that nobody should perish eternally. Second, some people will perish eternally and those people will perish in punishment for their sins and because they are unfit for Heaven.

Plato cannot go to Heaven simply because he was better than most. Paradise is not gained on a curve. The joys of Heaven are too awesome for us if we have not been changed. The beauty of Heaven would burn us as surely as the fires of Hell, and be unfitting on top of it, if we remained the little souls that dabble in the “pleasures” of sin in this life.

Could Plato have been born again before the coming of Christ?

Justin Martyr put Plato in Heaven, because Plato loved the Word and lived before the Incarnation. He walked in all the light he had been given. Dante put Plato in Hell, because Plato had never been changed from the inside through baptism. If a man is not born again, then he is not fit for Paradise.

Who is right?

A charitable man roots for Justin, but a thoughtful man suspects that Dante is correct. Why?

It is faith and an appeal for mercy that will save us, but Plato may be too sure that his works will be enough. In Republic he accepts that there must be punishment for evil, and even eternal punishment for some badly broken souls, but he does not think his soul is that badly broken.

We are badly defaced, monstrous, according to Plato, but he hopes the dialectic might save us from doom. Sadly, there is not time enough and even following the Word as closely as possible cannot fix the rot. It goes too deeply.

But perhaps, just perhaps, the end of the Republic indicates that Plato knows this. He appeals to religion and myth in the end and might (if one reading of the text is followed) combine a hope in God with the dialectic. If so, then Plato may have seen what needs to been seen: we need mercy and not just good works.

In any case, Plato is where he is and my worry about him may be a false one. It might distract me from working out my own sanctification with fear and trembling. Plato will stand before the judgment seat of Christ, but so will I. I can do nothing for Plato, but I must realize that my problems, my sin, goes so deep that I can do nothing that matters for me.

I fear Hell. I fear separation from all that is good, true, and beautiful. I fear the end of the dialectic in the static narcissism that is the fate of the damned. I would not lose the good of the intellect for the glories of this present age.

I must daily pray: Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.