In God We Trust

By John Mark Reynolds
Scriptorium Daily

President Obama will take the oath of office on a Bible as is customary. There will be prayers at the swearing in as has always been done and he will ask for God’s help in doing so. He is right to do so.

His actions are only controversial amongst the sad souls who are so sheltered and delicate that the actual costumes and beliefs of the nation shock them out of their bubble. Of course, one tries to be polite, but they are very easily offended. The mere sight of a Christmas crèche on public land can ruin their day. Since we are not willing to flush traditional American patriotic songs from our ceremonies, it really will be impossible to do.

Should we stop singing God Bless America? Should America stop asking God to shed His grace on us? Will the Battle Hymn get rid of the “hallelujah?”

It would require totalitarian force to separate traditional American patriotism from any mention of the Divine!

The just pleas for accommodation by secularists, who should not be forced to sing or to pray, can turn into tyrannical demands that silence the religious majority from living out their beliefs in the public square as they always have done.

A healthy family tries to meet the needs of all its members. Even the desires of one family member should not be ignored. Imagine the family member, however, who decided he or she does not like the way things have been done in the household. The other family members politely listen to what he has to say, but decide that the old ways are good and important to them.

A good family cannot find itself dominated by the eccentric demands and imagined offenses of one of its members.

The harm done by traditional religious ceremonies to secularists is non-existent. If secularism is true, then it does nothing but affirm a tradition of the Republic. It is difficult to imagine the harm in praying to a non-existent God and old forms are comforting. An atheist is not being excluded from a ceremony when he does not agree with every aspect of it anymore than Republicans are excluded from the festivities when they disagree with some aspect of the speech made by the new president.

We are mostly a religious people in a religious nation and when we celebrate religion will be a natural part of the party. Unless someone is forced to pray with the President, it is difficult to see the damage when our religious president-elect decides to pray.

Secularists need to be better members of the American household. They have chosen to adopt a minority position that is at odds with the overwhelming theism of the American experience. That position should be tolerated and when well argued respected, but there is no reason that our ceremonies have to be neutered when we politely disagree.

It is extremism in government that is dangerous and Americans have rightly decided to reject theocracy and total secularism. We have chosen the more difficult middle way between the two dangers and it is has served us well for over two hundred years.

President Obama embraces that position, as do most Republican and Democratic leaders.

As most Americans know from personal experience and best reason secularism is false, therefore, the good done by traditional religious ceremonies is great. God exists and it is good for human beings to acknowledge the facts in their ceremonies. Denying reality is, in the end, not a good move for any culture. The humbling fact that even the most powerful man in the world will acknowledge the limits of human power is refreshing.

Our rights, as the Declaration says, come from God and not government. Our fundamental personhood came from the Creator and not from the state or impersonal nature. A few Americans disagree with those basic American ideas and nobody should persecute them as a result. If they win elections, they should be allowed to hold ceremonies that reflect their beliefs.

It is only polite, however, to acknowledge the Jewish and Christian roots of American ideas. The very words engraved on the Lincoln Memorial make no sense if they are read without Biblical and religious knowledge.

Even though I will not agree with all his policies, like all patriots I am going to rejoice in the ceremonies of the day. I am going to celebrate the peaceful transition of power, the working Constitution, and the wonderful symbolism of an African-American president. I will not agree with some of the things he says or does, but that will not take away from my happiness as an American.

Mr. Obama soon will be my president. As head of government, I will pray for him daily and honor him. When he acts as head of his party, I will act as the loyal opposition. Like all Americans, I am delighted that Mr. Obama is acknowledging the religious traditions and roots of our nation.

Here is hoping my secular friends will not be too offended if on this happy day they listen to the choirs sing the National Anthem and sum up most of our feelings:

Praise the Pow’r that hath made and preserv’d us a nation! / Then conquer we must, when our cause is just, / And this be our motto: “In God is our trust” / And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave / O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

That Controversial 'Messiah'

Christianity Today

Christian art continues to stir people in unexpected ways.

Maestro John Nelson left Shanghai shortly after directing Handel's Messiah in 2006. Most of the audience members had loved it, Nelson said, although neither the English words nor a translation had been in their programs. "The force of the text must have come through," Nelson said. During the Hallelujah Chorus, "the audience rose to its feet and stomped and clapped and even screamed.

"The government officials that were there sitting with the [Shanghai opera] music director did not stand up," Nelson said. While driving Nelson to the airport, the music director told him of an even more surprising response to the performance: "My wife was sitting next to me and said, 'I think I saw God when I was listening to this music.'"

Amid post-Olympics shifts in China's attitude toward the West, the government decided that sacred music should disappear. "Quietly and without publicity, the Chinese authorities have let it be known that Western religious music should no longer be performed in concert halls. It's an unexpected decision, and one for which there is no obvious explanation or trigger," Catherine Sampson wrote in The Guardian. Even things that merely seem like Western sacred music — including Carl Orff's decidedly unsacred Carmina Burana — have been stopped.

The ban may not last long, but it highlights the dual ambassadorship of religious art. Is an audience thoroughly engaged in Messiah a challenge to worldly authority? Is it worship? A threat to a secular Christmas? Part of a secular Christmas?

It may well be all of the above. Messiah is one of the greatest examples of Western music; it is also one of the greatest expressions of the gospel (the libretto is pulled directly from Scripture).

Nelson is Directeur Musical Honoraire of the Ensemble Orchestral de Paris and artistic director of Soli Deo Gloria, which commissions and otherwise tries to cultivate contemporary sacred music. When he directs pieces such as Mendelssohn's Elijah or Brahms's Requiem abroad, he presents his faith frankly and the works as cultural artifacts — much the way Christian scholars are teaching Christian history and theology in Chinese universities.

"I don't consider it a stealth operation," Nelson says. Indeed, the performances can be wholly cultural and wholly Christian. While good music is valuable in itself, Christians contribute transcending value when they create beautiful art that carries the gospel — the specific, explicit Good News about Jesus. Soli Deo Gloria has been commissioning works from composers Nelson believes will be significant centuries from now. Christopher Rouse composed a requiem for Nelson's organization that was performed in Los Angeles last season. Nelson says it was very well received by critics. Aaron J. Kernis is working for them on a project about Noah.

It may take deliberate action, like Nelson's, to cultivate Christian art on the highest level — art for an audience of more than one, art that strives to be something with a long half-life, art that strives to be art, not propaganda. There is no small risk involved, because we never know at the time which art will, in fact, last. Yet despite the risk and difficulty, some of us should be deliberately creating it.

"In our dilemma with Soli Deo Gloria, we feel that we should encourage the Christian composers of our time, but it is not going to have any effect unless it is culturally acceptable," Nelson said. Of course, it's nearly impossible to predict which among many perfectly good compositions will still be interesting centuries later.

The marriage of Christian content and fine art is made in heaven. If we love God with heart, soul, mind, and strength, the church as it worships will contribute to our cultures' riches. And it will have given people the means and motivation to praise God, even in the most unlikely places.

An Obvious Truth: The Bible Supports Traditional Marriage

By John Mark Reynolds
Scriptorium Daily

Both the Bible and Newsweek make assertions about marriage and homosexuality. The difference is that the Bible claims to speak for God while Newsweek simply asserts things on its own authority. If God has spoken in the pages of the Bible, it is rational to obey what He said. Charity fails to find any good reason to consider what Newsweek printed as compelling.

While we represent very different faith traditions, we agree that the Bible is a trustworthy guide for humanity and that gay marriage is inconsistent with its teachings.

The Newsweek article and the editorial that accompanies it make two false claims. First, that it is unreasonable for Bible believers to take the Bible as a serious guide to modern ethical issues. Second, that even if the Bible is taken seriously, traditional American family values cannot be found in it.

Sadly, Newsweek has fallen into the anti-intellectualism that refuses to take old books seriously. In America this prejudice often comes from confusing progress in one area, such as science, with progress in another. The art of Michelangelo and music of Handel are no less important or illuminating today than when they were created. Art, culture, religion, and ethics do not progress or develop using the same methods as science. As a result, it is easy to imagine a society that is scientifically advanced, but morally bankrupt. Stalin’s Russia was more scientifically sophisticated than some of the smaller nations in the Soviet Empire, but morally degenerate.

Old books can contain timeless wisdom, especially if those books turn out to be divinely inspired.

It is very reasonable to take the Bible’s claims seriously. Of course, this is not merely because the Bible asserts that God inspired it. Any book can make such a claim. Rather, over centuries, against critics who have used arguments and torture against Bible believers, we have developed reasons for our knowledge that the Bible is God’s word.

First, over the centuries the Bible has been found to accurately describe the human problem. Second, it points to the person of Jesus Christ. The practical experience of millions of humans and the investigation of thousands of careful thinkers has shown He is the true solution to the human problem. Third, when examined philosophically, the Bible’s insights are coherent and compelling. Scholars like the philosopher J.P. Moreland and Pope Benedict have defended the Bible’s truth in this generation.

A Bible believer is within her rights to use everything she knows in making a decision. When doing so she should not be forced to give the entire history of why her evidence is compelling every time she makes an argument. Any well-read person knows that Bible believers have argued for why they take the Bible as serious moral evidence.

This reasonable standard should apply to any group that plays by the rules of reason. No atheist should be forced to defend the entirety of his reasons for the type of evidence he excludes every time he makes a political assertion.

Newsweek is wrong, therefore, to simply assert that the Bible cannot be reasonably used in moral decisions. Of course, Newsweek also claims that the Bible supports gay marriage, but this assertion is so unlikely as to more closely resemble a wish than a reasoned belief.

The Bible and Gay Marriage

It is stunningly implausible that modern readers at places like Newsweek have discovered that the Bible teaches exactly the opposite of what almost all readers at all times have found in it.

Those who have read the Bible seriously over long periods of time come to amazingly similar conclusions about what God wants in marriage. We have had centuries to try out many different ideas and test them against the text of the Bible and experience. Only traditional marriage has stood the test of time and reality.

The Orthodox of Russia came to the same conclusion as the Roman Catholics of Italy. The Pentecostals of Kenya came to the same conclusion historically as the Reformed Christians of Scotland. Over history different accommodations have been made to extreme or difficult situations, but the ideal has been clear: God’s will is for marriage to be a covenant between one man and one woman for (at least) life. Nothing else will work.

The only dissenters have been a tiny minority of moderns trapped in a few decaying nations and religious institutions. They often delude themselves by noting support amongst the “youth” in their own nations, while ignoring their irrelevance in those very parts with the most youth! As members of global churches, we do not have the luxury of such religious ethnocentrism.

The case for gay marriage in the Bible usually depends on confusion, adopting an intellectually unsound strategy for reading old books, or a basic misunderstanding of Christ’s message.

The Confusion

Badly educated readers of the Bible often confuse a description of a moral situation in the Bible with approval.

The Bible tells the reader what the world is really like. When a newspaper like the Post reports on political corruption, they are not condoning or advocating it. A good paper is unfailing in telling what is really happening as opposed to what the editorial board wishes were happening. In the same way the Bible reports the failings of even its heroes. David committed murder and adultery. The tensions between Abraham’s two sons continue to bedevil us today. That does not mean God desired either of those situations.

Nobody reads the Bible for very long without realizing that the stories show a clear pattern: people who deviate from God’s best plan for marriage cause untold problems for themselves and others.

A Bad Method of Reading Old Books

Of course the kind of reasoning that finds a right to abortion in a Constitution written in 1789 can find anything desired in any book. The trick is to find an idea you agree with in a document and make it the only idea you will take seriously. Anything you read later that disagrees can then be dismissed as missing the “spirit of the book.”

One should not underestimate how comforting this method of reading really is. A person can pick up any important text and discover that it fundamentally agrees with his own insights! Of course, it also imprisons the reader in his own assumptions and does not allow a different voice to be heard.

An ethical system is most valuable exactly at those points where a particular culture wishes to dissent from it. The man in a deeply corrupt political culture needs “Thou Shall Not Steal” to buttress his decision making exactly when all the people he admires are stealing. In a few nations of the world it is the case that parts of the Biblical ethic are unpopular, but that only increases their importance to us.

The central problem with reading old books through modern prejudices is that they will never be able to strengthen us in the very areas where our culture needs help.

God shows humankind a truthful picture of how messed up even His followers are. He then works slowly over painful centuries to show the best way of living. It is the case that we want things that will do harm to our own lives, our neighbor’s lives, or the existence our communities, but we should not want those things. Sometimes the bad results of social experiments are not apparent for decades and only obvious when the harm has already been done.

The Bible demonstrates that wholesome sexual expression is an act reserved for one man and one woman in lasting relationship. It demonstrates though story after story how any other cultural accommodation is destructive.

Understanding the Bible

Not surprisingly the Bible is more intent on showing what God is for than repeating endlessly what God is against. As we realize from our own experience, there is no limit to the inventive ways that humans can discover to wreck and destroy God things. It is simpler for the Bible to say what beautiful actions are that try to create an ever growing list of what they are not.

The ministry of Jesus proclaimed the very good news that God’s Kingdom was here. He taught His friends what life in that Kingdom could be and spent much less time on what life in it was not. In the Kingdom people can become free of being controlled by tyrannical and disordered desires. This included the hope for freedom from the love of money and the worship of power. In the Kingdom, all desires would find their proper place and marriage between a man and a woman was the only proper place for sexual expression.

When the Old Testament talks about homosexual behavior (in Genesis, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy), it condemns it. It never condones it. Since He was primarily ministering to a Jewish audience, Jesus had no more need to condemn homosexual behavior than He did other vices all His Jewish contemporaries thought wrong. However, when His earliest followers confronted more morally immature cultures they quickly and universally condemned such actions (Romans, I Corinthians, I Timothy, and Jude).

Bible readers know that God has fully expressed Himself in male and female persons. The state must be interested in marriage, which otherwise could be left to the churches, because of its vested interest in healthy children.

Children deserve to be raised with parents who express the fullness of the divine image. We reject a low view of women or men that thinks either sex is dispensable to this important project.

Of course, little in this life is ideal, but this fact should not encourage society to elevate the flawed to the level of the ideal. If we can only fall short of our best intentions, then it is wise to make our intentions the best!

Proponents of gay marriage suggest that the Bible has been twisted to support many dubious moral positions and this is true. Marriage is not, however, an issue that ever generated controversy (until recently) amongst Bible readers. All readers of the Bible agreed about the general teaching. In the age of Jesus the norm was for sexual expression to be beautifully expressed in marriage between one man and one woman.

Facile comparisons of race to sexuality in this context are useless. There are good reasons they are resented and rejected by the vast majority of those who have been subject to racial discrimination.

Race was unknown to the ancients and is not universal in the way sexuality is. Racists, as all ideologues do, invented weird categories and justified their desires with twisted religion and science. Race based slavery was not part of the received Biblical consensus in any other place or time. America was morally wicked for embracing it for so long and the Biblical justifications always dubious.

Understanding Jesus: A God of Love and Mercy

Christianity teaches love, mercy, and forgiveness for those who do bad things. Having needed it, we are personally grateful for that mercy and forgiveness. Sometimes proponents of gay marriage misunderstand what He was saying.

Jesus offered this divine forgiveness to a woman who faced the wrath of hypocrites eager to stone her for adultery. Only a fool or the hypocrite would assert that he always done the right thing.

Hypocrisy is not, however, helped by hedonism. Jesus forgave the woman, but told her to “go and sin no more.” He did not reinterpret the Old Testament to proclaim adultery another life style choice.

The Newsweek writers seek to cure moral disease by declaring sickness as health, but Jesus will not participate in their cover up. We are all sinners and need mercy and forgiveness for our sin and not the false comfort of being told that our sin is acceptable.

You cannot define away a real problem.

Jesus loves everyone enough not to let us do whatever we want. Every generation attacks Biblical ethics in some new way, but Biblical ethics endure. The hypocrite pretends he has no sin and is damned. The hedonist pretends his sin is good and is condemned. The reasonable man repents.

We can testify from our own lives that the best reaction to such failings is to pray, “Lord Jesus Christ son of God have mercy on me a sinner.”

Hark! The Herald Angels… do they sing?

By Fred Sanders
Scriptorium Daily

Christmas carols are usually pretty reliable teachers of theology. Of the sacred songs that we tend to hear a lot around Christmas time, we have a lot of great doctrine to sing in “O Come All Ye Faithful,” “Joy to the World,” and “Hark the Herald Angels Sing.” Lift your voice with Watts and Wesley this season, and you will have uttered greater truths about the incarnation of the Son of God than you are likely to speak for the rest of the year.

But one suggestion that the Christmas songs have put firmly into my mind is that angels themselves are big singers, and for the life of me I can’t find any direct evidence in the Bible that angels do in fact sing.

I feel like Scrooge for even bringing it up.

But Will Rogers used to say, “All I know is what I read in the papers,” and when it comes to angels, lacking any direct encounters with them, all I know is what I read in the Bible. So it’s pretty important that what I think and say about angels stays well within the limits of what Scripture teaches.

So, do angels sing?

Flip to your favorite passages to see if you can catch them singing, and you get surprised by the total lack of musical terminology. Just to start with the Christmas passage itself, you consult Luke 2:13-14 and find

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying,

“Glory to God in the highest,
and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!”

Ah yes, there’s the familiar Christmas hymn… wait… not necessarily a hymn, and the verb for what they did is not “singing,” but “saying.” This story proves that angels speak poetically in unison, but not that they sing.

On the other hand, maybe when the New Testament uses the expression “say,” it could leave room for a musical way of saying something. Paul seems to tell us to “say songs” in Ephesians 5:19 when he says we should “be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart.”

Carol after Carol, we get an over-interpretation of the angels as singing, or of their message as a song, or of the host of angels as a choir. Not a word of that is in the text. Even a careful reader like C. H. Spurgeon forces the text in his 1857 sermon at the Music Hall (!) in Royal Surrey Gardens, entitled “The First Christmas Carol:”

They sang the story out, for they could not stay to tell it in heavy prose. They sang, “Glory to God on high, and on earth peace, good will towards men.” Methinks they sang it with gladness in their eyes; with their hearts burning with love, and with breasts as full of joy as if the good news to man had been good news to themselves.

But Handel, of all people, gets it exactly right in the Christmas section of Messiah, when the soprano recitative has the angels “saying” Glory to God, and the full chorus picks up those words and says them, musically.

Of all the Christmas songs about singing angels, the most influential in this regard is probably Charles Wesley’s “Hark the Herald Angels Sing.” But while I do not feel compelled to defend the inerrancy of Wesley, I am eager to point out that the first line, as Wesley originally wrote it, was “Hark how all the welkin rings,” referring to the angelic message echoing off the little inverted bowl of the sky. It was a later hand, perhaps George Whitefield’s, that altered the text to include singing angels.

So, do angels sing? The fact is that I can’t find any direct scriptural support for the idea. It’s always possible that the question we’re asking is the wrong one to ask, sort of like asking, “Can we prove that Paul ever ate breakfast?” or “Were any of the apostles left-handed?” On the other hand, it’s not exactly a healthy instinct that leads us to say “Of course angels sing, everybody knows that, and the Bible doesn’t even have to bother saying so because it’s so obvious. How else would angels communicate? Music is the highest form of communication, therefore angels must use it,” etc. I could argue similarly in defense of the thesis that angels communicate using pure math.

I sincerely hope this little meditation doesn’t disturb any of your Christmas singing. After all, we who normally talk are spending this season singing about the coming of Christ, and in those songs it seems appropriate to sing about singing. The evidence, let us admit, does not entitle us to teach dogmatically that angels sang to the shepherds of Bethlehem or sing in heaven. But it does permit us to say that they spoke poetically composed lines, and they probably, at the very least, spoke them so beautifully and artfully that their words can be called singing.

And who knows? They may well have sung, and they may well be singing now. It’s good for us to be stirred up by suggestions of great beauty in the heavens, and also good to be reminded that we don’t know everything we’d like to know about those heavens. Nothing we know about angels was revealed to satisfy our curiosity. Everything was revealed to point us to the glory of God in the highest: that’s the angelic message, said or sung.

Newsweek, or Opinion Weak?

By Peter Sprigg
FRC Blog

Newsweek has declared war on marriage. That is the only way to interpret its publishing a lengthy cover story by Lisa Miller that rehashes a laundry list of unoriginal arguments in favor of same-sex "marriage." There are so many logical and theological errors in this piece that we felt it deserved a detailed, point-by-point rebuttal. FRC's President, Tony Perkins, and Vice President for Policy, the Rev. Peter Sprigg, collaborated in preparing this piece

Passages in bold below are quotes from the Newsweek article; following each is a rebuttal/response.

"Let's try for a minute to take the religious conservatives at their word and define marriage as the Bible does. . . . Abraham, Jacob, David, Solomon and the kings of Judah and Israel-all these fathers and heroes were polygamists.

There is a difference between how the Bible defines marriage and how it depicts it in all it's sin-corrupted reality. It is defined in the creation:

22The LORD God fashioned into a woman the rib which He had taken from the man, and brought her to the man. . . . 24For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh. (Genesis 2:22, 24, NASB)

The accounts of the lives of the Patriarchs, like Abraham, Jacob and David make abundantly clear that deviations from the model of one man one woman led to a multitude of personal and societal problems.

"The New Testament model of marriage is hardly better. Jesus himself was single and preached an indifference to earthly attachments-especially family. The apostle Paul (also single) regarded marriage as an act of last resort for those unable to contain their animal lust."

Neither Jesus nor Paul were indifferent to marriage or familial ties-they simply gave priority to unhindered service to God. Jesus' first recorded miracle was at a wedding, which is hard to see as a non-endorsement of the institution. Paul taught extensively on proper family relationships, especially of those of husbands and wives and fathers and children (Eph 5:22-6:4). To somehow infer that Paul was indifferent to marriage is a denial of reality. Paul was also very clear on one man one woman marriage (1 Tim 3:2, 12). There was a reason for Paul's repeated focus on marriage - marriage is central to the gospel because it is a reflection of the relationship between Christ and the Church. Christ is the bridegroom and the Church the bride. He instructs husbands to follow the manner of Christ and give themselves for the benefit of their wives (Eph 5:25). It is incomprehensible that Paul would say same-sex marriage reflected the life-giving, hope-filled union of Christ and His bride.

Of course, marriage was not mandatory in the New Testament-nor is it for social conservatives today. Jesus and Paul both upheld celibacy-as the only acceptable alternative to fidelity in marriage between one man and one woman. The same value is upheld by the modern abstinence movement.

"First, while the Bible and Jesus say many important things about love and family, neither explicitly defines marriage as between one man and one woman."

This is flatly false. See again Genesis 2:

22The LORD God fashioned into a woman the rib which He had taken from the man, and brought her to the man. . . . 24For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh. (Genesis 2:22, 24, NASB)

This was explicitly affirmed by Jesus himself, as recorded in two of the gospels:

3Some Pharisees came to Jesus, testing Him and asking, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason at all?" 4And He answered and said, "Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning MADE THEM MALE AND FEMALE, 5and said, 'FOR THIS REASON A MAN SHALL LEAVE HIS FATHER AND MOTHER AND BE JOINED TO HIS WIFE, AND THE TWO SHALL BECOME ONE FLESH'? 6"So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate." (Matthew 19:3-6, NASB)

2Some Pharisees came up to Jesus, testing Him, and began to question Him whether it was lawful for a man to divorce a wife. 3And He answered and said to them, "What did Moses command you?" 4They said, "Moses permitted a man TO WRITE A CERTIFICATE OF DIVORCE AND SEND her AWAY." 5But Jesus said to them, "Because of your hardness of heart he wrote you this commandment. 6"But from the beginning of creation, God MADE THEM MALE AND FEMALE. 7"FOR THIS REASON A MAN SHALL LEAVE HIS FATHER AND MOTHER, 8AND THE TWO SHALL BECOME ONE FLESH; so they are no longer two, but one flesh. 9"What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate." 10In the house the disciples began questioning Him about this again. 11And He said to them, "Whoever divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her; 12and if she herself divorces her husband and marries another man, she is committing adultery." (Mark 10:2-12, NASB)

Paul also twice affirms one man one woman marriage as a condition for church leadership (although it is somewhat unclear whether he is contrasting it with polygamy or with divorce and remarriage):

1It is a trustworthy statement: if any man aspires to the office of overseer, it is a fine work he desires to do. 2An overseer, then, must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate, prudent, respectable, hospitable, able to teach . . . (I Timothy 3: 1-2, NASB)

5For this reason I left you in Crete, that you would set in order what remains and appoint elders in every city as I directed you, 6namely, if any man is above reproach, the husband of one wife, having children who believe, not accused of dissipation or rebellion. (Titus 1:5-6, NASB)

"Biblical literalists will disagree, but the Bible is a living document, powerful for more than 2,000 years because its truths speak to us even as we change through history. In that light, Scripture gives us no good reason why gays and lesbians should not be (civilly and religiously) married-and a number of excellent reasons why they should."

The Bible is a "living document" only because it is the Word of God, inspired by the living Holy Spirit, not because we have been given license to ignore its plain teachings to compromise with the spirit of the present age instead. Everywhere that Scripture refers to marriage (even the polygamous ones), it is a male-female union, and everywhere that Scripture refers to homosexual conduct, it either condemns it in the strongest possible terms or at the very least casts it in a negative light. (Note: there is not one shred of evidence that the love between David and Jonathan was sexual in nature.)

"Social conservatives point to Adam and Eve as evidence for their one man, one woman argument-in particular, this verse from Genesis: 'Therefore shall a man leave his mother and father, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh.' But as Segal says, if you believe that the Bible was written by men and not handed down in its leather bindings by God, then that verse was written by people for whom polygamy was the way of the world.

That is true, so if these men wanted to cover their tracks, would they not have tried to create cover for their ideas of marriage by saying it was God's idea? Rather it is made clear that is a singular union. And by the way, God's model of marriage was designed prior to the fall of man.

"Ozzie and Harriet are nowhere in the New Testament either. The biblical Jesus was-in spite of recent efforts of novelists to paint him otherwise-emphatically unmarried. He preached a radical kind of family, a caring community of believers, whose bond in God superseded all blood ties. Leave your families and follow me, Jesus says in the gospels."

Yes, Jesus was definitely unmarried, and it is true that the "bond in God superseded all blood ties." But "leave your families and follow me" is a rather simplistic paraphrase. Jesus' disciples James and John, adult men, leave their father's fishing business when Jesus calls them (Matt. 4:18-22, Mark 1:16-20), and Jesus admonished one questioner who wants to "bury my father" not to delay in following him (Matt. 8:19-22, Luke 9:59-62). The most sweeping statement of this nature made by Jesus is recorded in Mark 10:28-30 (paralleled by Luke 18:28-30):

28Peter began to say to Him, "Behold, we have left everything and followed You." 29Jesus said, "Truly I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or farms, for My sake and for the gospel's sake, 30but that he will receive a hundred times as much now in the present age, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and farms, along with persecutions; and in the age to come, eternal life. (NASB)

It is not clear whether "children" here actually refers to minors; and none of these passages speaks of leaving one's spouse. How Miller can conclude that adult sons leaving home to pursue their own calling undermines the traditional nuclear family is not really clear.

"Jesus never mentions homosexuality, but he roundly condemns divorce . . ."

This is undoubtedly because Jesus encountered many more people who were tempted by easy divorce than he did people who were tempted by homosexuality. The whole argument that "Jesus never mentions homosexuality," and therefore that he must have tolerated it, is ridiculous on its face. Jesus never mentions rape or child sexual abuse, but that can hardly be interpreted to mean that he condoned them. As with those sexual sins, he may have felt that homosexuality was so clearly offensive that there was no point in stating the obvious.

A more precise exegetical point is this. There certainly are parts of the Old Testament law that were abrogated in some sense by Jesus, such as the dietary laws. But that was never the case for any of the laws governing sexual conduct. Both, for example, are mentioned (and contrasted) in Mark 7:14-23:

14After He called the crowd to Him again, He began saying to them, "Listen to Me, all of you, and understand: 15there is nothing outside the man which can defile him if it goes into him; but the things which proceed out of the man are what defile the man. 16["If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear."] 17When he had left the crowd and entered the house, His disciples questioned Him about the parable. 18And He said to them, "Are you so lacking in understanding also? Do you not understand that whatever goes into the man from outside cannot defile him, 19because it does not go into his heart, but into his stomach, and is eliminated?" (Thus He declared all foods clean.) 20And He was saying, "That which proceeds out of the man, that is what defiles the man. 21"For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed the evil thoughts, fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries, 22deeds of coveting and wickedness, as well as deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride and foolishness. 23"All these evil things proceed from within and defile the man." (NASB)

Note that while he "declared all foods clean," the same is not true of all sexual relationships, because "fornications," "adulteries," and "sensuality" remain among those things that "defile the man."

If anything, Jesus strengthened the Old Testament teachings against sexual sin, rather than weakening them. He tightened restrictions on divorce (Matt. 5:31-32; Matt. 19:1-9; Mark 10:2-12; Luke 16:18) and on adultery:

27"You have heard that it was said, 'YOU SHALL NOT COMMIT ADULTERY'; 28but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. [Matt. 5:27-28: NASB].

There is no passage where Jesus ever weakened restrictions on sexual behavior. In the case of the woman caught in adultery (John 8:3-11), he prevented the imposition of the death penalty by stoning, but he did not say that she had not sinned-rather, he admonished her to "sin no more."

"It probably goes without saying that the phrase "gay marriage" does not appear in the Bible at all."

Precisely-so how the author can claim that the Bible supports it is a mystery.

" . . . nowhere in the Bible do its authors refer to sex between women . . ."

This is simply false-see Romans 1:26:

26For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, 27and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error. (NASB)

This is the passage which even liberal evangelical Tony Campolo says cannot be evaded in giving proof that all homosexual conduct is sinful.

"Twice Leviticus refers to sex between men as 'an abomination' (King James version), but these are throwaway lines in a peculiar text given over to codes for living in the ancient Jewish world, a text that devotes verse after verse to treatments for leprosy, cleanliness rituals for menstruating women and the correct way to sacrifice a goat-or a lamb or a turtle dove."

Homosexual activists are fond of dismissing the Leviticus passage by dismissing the larger context of the Levitical code. However, they never place the most famous Leviticus verse (18:22) in its immediate context:

20'You shall not have intercourse with your neighbor's wife, to be defiled with her. 21'You shall not give any of your offspring to offer them to Molech, nor shall you profane the name of your God; I am the LORD. 22'You shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female; it is an abomination. 23'Also you shall not have intercourse with any animal to be defiled with it, nor shall any woman stand before an animal to mate with it; it is a perversion. (Leviticus 18:20-23)

Adultery, child sacrifice, and bestiality are the behaviors that are most directly compared with homosexuality-not leprosy or menstruation.

"Religious objections to gay marriage are rooted not in the Bible at all, then, but in custom and tradition . . ."

This is a completely ridiculous statement that is supportable only when you accept the idiosyncratic postmodern exegesis she has already laid out, which is completely out of step with responsible biblical interpretation. Even many homosexual activists concede that there is no question that the Bible condemns all homosexual relationships. They argue that we must simply dismiss the Bible as a source of moral authority.

"The Bible endorses slavery . . . It provides conceptual shelter for anti-Semites. A mature view of scriptural authority requires us, as we have in the past, to move beyond literalism. The Bible was written for a world so unlike our own, it's impossible to apply its rules, at face value, to ours."

The issue of the Bible and slavery is certainly a complicated one, because it is true that the Bible does not unequivocally condemn slavery-however, that it not the same thing as saying that it "endorses" it. To say, "It provides conceptual shelter for anti-Semites" is ridiculous, given that the Bible was written by Jews, about Jews, and primarily for Jews.

However, note the author's logical inconsistency here. After arguing for several pages that the Bible, in fact, does not condemn homosexual acts and does not define marriage as the union of one man and one woman, she is suddenly shifting gears and saying that we have to ignore what the Bible does teach if it conflicts with modern political correctness.

"Monogamy became the norm in the Christian world in the sixth century . . . Today's vision of marriage as a union of equal partners, joined in a relationship both romantic and pragmatic, is, by very recent standards, radical, says Stephanie Coontz, author of 'Marriage, a History.'"

The first sentence is ridiculous-see I Timothy 3: 1-2 and Titus 1:5-6, cited above. But it is undoubtedly asserted by Coontz, the left's favorite marriage scholar. David Blankenhorn (who is moderate to liberal both politically and theologically, but a serious scholar of marriage and the family) has written that "nearly every sentence that Stephanie Coontz writes contains at least one piece of confusion."

"We cannot look to the Bible as a marriage manual . . . It speaks eloquently of the crucial role of families in a fair society and the risks we incur to ourselves and our children should we cease trying to bind ourselves together in loving pairs."

Actually, there are a number of passages in the Bible with marital advice that remains timely today (even if it does not conform to the rigid egalitarianism that modern liberals insist upon). They include Ephesians 5:22-23, Colossians 3:18-21, and I Peter 3:1-7.

However, Miller cites no Biblical verses that suggest the importance of "loving pairs" other than male-female marriages, except for the story of David and Jonathan. This can fit Miller's rather elastic term "loving pair," but is nowhere described as a marital or family relationship, but rather a very deep friendship.

"In the Christian story, the message of acceptance for all is codified. . . The great Bible scholar Walter Brueggemann . . . quotes the apostle Paul when he looks for biblical support of gay marriage: 'There is neither Greek nor Jew, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Jesus Christ.'"

This is a subtle way of injecting, implicitly, the myth that people are "born gay" or that there is a "gay gene." Ethnic identity, slave status, and gender are all human characteristics that are beyond an individual's choice. The same cannot be said of homosexual conduct. In reality even today, and certainly in the Bible, homosexuality is not an "identity," it is a chosen behavior-a behavior which is in every instance condemned as sinful.

Did the early church contain people who had engaged in homosexual behavior? The answer is yes-but the relevant text is not the one Brueggemann cites, but I Corinthians 6:9-11:

9Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, 10nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God. 11Such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.

Active homosexuals will not "inherit the kingdom of God" unless and until they are washed, sanctified, and justified by Christ. The church in Corinth could not have imagined homosexual marriage, but it did have former homosexuals among its members.

"If one is for racial equality and the common nature of humanity, then the values of stability, monogamy and family necessarily follow. . . If we are all God's children, made in his likeness and image, then to deny access to any sacrament based on sexuality is exactly the same thing as denying it based on skin color-and no serious (or even semiserious) person would argue that. . . More basic than theology, though, is human need. . . . We want our children to grow up in stable homes."

There are several issues intertwined in these excerpts. Twice here Miller compares homosexual relationships with race. But race is a characteristic which is inborn, involuntary, immutable, and innocuous. None of those things can honestly be said about the choice to engage in homosexual relationships. When Miller says that "no serious (or even semiserious) person would argue that," it's somewhat unclear whether she's talking about arguing for racial exclusion (in which case she's right) or talking about "denying access to any sacrament based on sexuality"-in which case she is dead wrong. Robert A. J. Gagnon's book The Bible and Homosexual Practice: Texts and Hermeneutics (493 pages) makes a far more "serious" case for the traditional view of homosexuality than Miller makes against it. But in any case, her premise is false. Remember, strictly speaking, no one is "excluded" from marriage because of their "sexual orientation"-it's just that "marriage" is, by definition, the union of a man and a woman. Many self-identified homosexuals have been married (to people of the opposite sex), while many former homosexuals are currently married (to people of the opposite sex). Furthermore, the comparison with race is not valid (see comments on previous quote).

The "values of stability [and] monogamy" are precisely what is threatened by same-sex "marriage." The research shows that homosexual relationships (particularly male homosexual relationships) simply are not characterized by "stability" or "monogamy" to any degree that is comparable to male-female marriage, and are often overtly rejected by homosexuals (who, for example, often seek other outside sexual partners even when they already have a "long-term" partner). I would agree that "[w]e [meaning society] want our children to grow up in stable homes"-but affirming homosexual parenting by allowing homosexual marriage would undermine that goal, since the higher rates of sexual promiscuity, STD's, mental illness, substance abuse, domestic violence, and child sexual abuse among homosexuals are not conducive to a "stable" environment. Furthermore, an abundance of social science research shows that children raised by their own biological mother and father who are committed to one another in a lifelong marriage do better than children in any other living situation.

Finally, I would agree that "[m]ore basic than theology, though, is human need." And the most fundamental "human need," apart from sheer survival, is to reproduce ourselves. That is something that can only be done naturally by the union of a man and a woman. And fundamentally that-not Biblical teaching, nor "custom and tradition"-is why civil marriage is defined as the union of a man and a woman.

Turning the Bible on its Head -- Newsweek Goes for Gay Marriage

By Albert Mohler
AlbertMohler.com


Newsweek magazine, one of the most influential news magazines in America, has decided to come out for same-sex marriage in a big way, and to do so by means of a biblical and theological argument. In its cover story for this week, "The Religious Case for Gay Marriage," Newsweek religion editor Lisa Miller offers a revisionist argument for the acceptance of same-sex marriage. It is fair to say that Newsweek has gone for broke on this question.

Miller begins with a lengthy dismissal of the Bible's relevance to the question of marriage in the first place. "Let's try for a minute to take the religious conservatives at their word and define marriage as the Bible does," Miller suggests. If so, she argues that readers will find a confusion of polygamy, strange marital practices, and worse.

She concludes: "Would any contemporary heterosexual married couple—who likely woke up on their wedding day harboring some optimistic and newfangled ideas about gender equality and romantic love—turn to the Bible as a how-to script?" She answers, "Of course not, yet the religious opponents of gay marriage would have it be so."

Now, wait just a minute. Miller's broadside attack on the biblical teachings on marriage goes to the heart of what will appear as her argument for same-sex marriage. She argues that, in the Old Testament, "examples of what social conservatives call 'the traditional family' are scarcely to be found." This is true, of course, if what you mean by 'traditional family' is the picture of America in the 1950s. The Old Testament notion of the family starts with the idea that the family is the carrier of covenant promises, and this family is defined, from the onset, as a transgenerational extended family of kin and kindred.

But, at the center of this extended family stands the institution of marriage as the most basic human model of covenantal love and commitment. And this notion of marriage, deeply rooted in its procreative purpose, is unambiguously heterosexual.

As for the New Testament, "Ozzie and Harriet are nowhere" to be found. Miller argues that both Jesus and Paul were unmarried (emphatically true) and that Jesus "preached a radical kind of family, a caring community of believers, whose bond in God superseded all blood ties." Jesus clearly did call for a commitment to the Gospel and to discipleship that transcended family commitments. Given the Jewish emphasis on family loyalty and commitment, this did represent a decisive break.

But Miller also claims that "while the Bible and Jesus say many important things about love and family, neither explicitly defines marriage as between one man and one woman." This is just patently untrue. Genesis 2:24-25 certainly reveals marriage to be, by the Creator's intention, a union of one man and one woman. To offer just one example from the teaching of Jesus, Matthew 19:1-8 makes absolutely no sense unless marriage "between one man and one woman" is understood as normative.

As for Paul, he did indeed instruct the Corinthians that the unmarried state was advantageous for the spread of the Gospel. His concern in 1 Corinthians 7 is not to elevate singleness as a lifestyle, but to encourage as many as are able to give themselves totally to an unencumbered Gospel ministry. But, in Corinth and throughout the New Testament church, the vast majority of Christians were married. Paul will himself assume this when he writes the "household codes" included in other New Testament letters.

The real issue is not marriage, Miller suggests, but opposition to homosexuality. Surprisingly, Miller argues that this prejudice against same-sex relations is really about opposition to sex between men. She cites the Anchor Bible Dictionary as stating that "nowhere in the Bible do its authors refer to sex between women." She would have done better to look to the Bible itself, where in Romans 1:26-27 Paul writes: "For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error."

Again, this passage makes absolutely no sense unless it refers very straightforwardly to same-sex relations among both men and women -- with the women mentioned first.

Miller dismisses the Levitical condemnations of homosexuality as useless because "our modern understanding of the world has surpassed its prescriptions." But she saves her most creative dismissal for the Apostle Paul. Paul, she concedes, "was tough on homosexuality." Nevertheless, she takes encouragement from the fact that "progressive scholars" have found a way to re-interpret the Pauline passages to refer only to homosexual violence and promiscuity.

In this light she cites author Neil Elliott and his book, The Arrogance of Nations. Elliott, like other "progressive scholars," suggests that the modern notion of sexual orientation is simply missing from the biblical worldview, and thus the biblical authors are not really talking about what we know as homosexuality at all. "Paul is not talking about what we call homosexuality at all," as Miller quotes Elliott.

Of course, no honest reader of the biblical text will share this simplistic and backward conclusion. Furthermore, to accept this argument is to assume that the Christian church has misunderstood the Bible from its very birth -- and that we are now dependent upon contemporary "progressive scholars" to tell us what Christians throughout the centuries have missed.

Tellingly, Miller herself seems to lose confidence in this line of argument, explaining that "Paul argued more strenuously against divorce—and at least half of the Christians in America disregard that teaching." In other words, when the argument is failing, change the subject and just declare victory. "Religious objections to gay marriage are rooted not in the Bible at all, then, but in custom and tradition," Miller simply asserts -- apparently asking her readers to forget everything they have just read.

Miller picks her sources carefully. She cites Neil Elliott but never balances his argument with credible arguments from another scholar, such as Robert Gagnon of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary [See his response to Elliott here]. Her scholarly sources are chosen so that they all offer an uncorrected affirmation of her argument. The deck is decisively stacked.

She then moves to the claim that sexual orientation is "exactly the same thing" as skin color when it comes to discrimination. As recent events have suggested, this claim is not seen as credible by many who have suffered discrimination on the basis of skin color.

As always, the bottom line is biblical authority. Lisa Miller does not mince words. "Biblical literalists will disagree," she allows, "but the Bible is a living document, powerful for more than 2,000 years because its truths speak to us even as we change through history." This argument means, of course, that we get to decide which truths are and are not binding on us as "we change through history."

"A mature view of scriptural authority requires us, as we have in the past, to move beyond literalism," she asserts. "The Bible was written for a world so unlike our own, it's impossible to apply its rules, at face value, to ours."

All this comes together when Miller writes, "We cannot look to the Bible as a marriage manual, but we can read it for universal truths as we struggle toward a more just future." At this point the authority of the Bible is reduced to whatever "universal truths" we can distill from its (supposed) horrifyingly backward and oppressive texts.

Even as she attempts to make her "religious case" for gay marriage, Miller has to acknowledge that "very few Jewish or Christian denominations do officially endorse gay marriage, even in the states where it is legal." Her argument now grinds to a conclusion with her hope that this will change. But -- and this is a crucial point -- if her argument had adequate traction, she wouldn't have to make it. It is not a thin extreme of fundamentalist Christians who stand opposed to same-sex marriage -- it is the vast majority of Christian churches and denominations worldwide.

Disappointingly, Newsweek editor Jon Meacham offers an editorial note that broadens Newsweek's responsibility for this atrocity of an article and reveals even more of the agenda: "No matter what one thinks about gay rights—for, against or somewhere in between —this conservative resort to biblical authority is the worst kind of fundamentalism," Meacham writes. "Given the history of the making of the Scriptures and the millennia of critical attention scholars and others have given to the stories and injunctions that come to us in the Hebrew Bible and the Christian New Testament, to argue that something is so because it is in the Bible is more than intellectually bankrupt—it is unserious, and unworthy of the great Judeo-Christian tradition."

Well, that statement sets the issue clearly before us. He insists that "to argue that something is so because it is in the Bible is more than intellectually bankrupt." No serious student of the Bible can deny the challenge of responsible biblical interpretation, but the purpose of legitimate biblical interpretation is to determine, as faithfully as possible, what the Bible actually teaches -- and then to accept, teach, apply, and obey.

The national news media are collectively embarrassed by the passage of Proposition 8 in California. Gay rights activists are publicly calling on the mainstream media to offer support for gay marriage, arguing that the media let them down in November. It appears that Newsweek intends to do its part to press for same-sex marriage. Many observers believe that the main obstacle to this agenda is a resolute opposition grounded in Christian conviction. Newsweek clearly intends to reduce that opposition.

Newsweek could have offered its readers a careful and balanced review of the crucial issues related to this question. It chose another path -- and published this cover story. The magazine's readers and this controversial issue deserved better.

Assurance: Anchored in Jehovah

By Fred Sanders
Scriptorium Daily

Believers should have confident assurance of their salvation, but on what grounds? I’ve explored several options and have commended a richly trinitarian understanding of salvation as the ultimate basis of assurance. Confidence in God and his salvation rests in intelligent belief in the Trinity.

The reason for this is that, to put it as concisely as possible, the Trinity is the gospel. Trinity and gospel are not just connected in some distant way, as two ideas which can be related to each other by a long train of reasoning. The connection is much more immediate than that. Seeing how closely these two go together depends on seeing both Trinity and gospel as clearly as possible, in a large enough perspective to discern their overall forms. When the outlines of both are clear, we should experience the shock of recognition: Trinity and gospel have the same shape! This is because the good news of salvation is ultimately that God opens his own trinitarian life to us. Every other blessing is either a preparation for that or a result of it, but the thing itself is God graciously taking us into the fellowship of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, to be our salvation.

Here for certain we have a truth which evangelicalism has always grasped firmly. It is the central idea of that beloved text John 3:16, that we can see the extent of the Father’s love for the world by attending to the greatness of the gift which he gave for our salvation: his Son. And it is at this point, where God’s self-giving is most conspicuous, that we are forced to break through to explicitly trinitarian confession if we want to go any further. For in the case of God, “himself” is not a word that points to an isolated individual existing alone with his aloneness. When God finally fulfills all his promises by giving himself to be our salvation and our shield, this takes place as the Father gives the Son.

The index of how much God loves us is how much he gave to accomplish our salvation. Paul drives this point home as the climax of his far-ranging argument in Romans 8, grounding Christian hope and assurance in the fact that since God has already given his own Son, it obviously follows that nothing is too great for God to give. Dwight L. Moody, sometimes called “Mr. Evangelical,” preached frequently on this theme, and one of his last sermons was on the text of Romans 8:

Now Paul puts some questions. ‘Who can be against us? He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also give us freely all things?’ (verse 32). When God the Father gave Christ, the Son of His bosom, He literally gave up all that heaven had. He gave the richest jewel that heaven possessed. And if He has given us His Son, is there anything too great for us to ask? If a man should give me a diamond worth one hundred thousand dollars, I think I would make bold to ask him for a little piece of brown paper to carry it away in. If the Lord has given me the Son of His bosom, I can ask for anything. How shall He not freely give us all things?

When we consider the gospel of salvation in Christ, we are not dealing with the outer fringes of God’s ways, but with the very core and center of who God is. God is not trifling with us in the gospel, but opening up in the most intimate way his very heart. Of course God remains incomprehensible, mysterious, and far above all created things in a way that is not at all diminished by the way he makes himself lavishly available to fallen humanity in the economy of salvation. But his infinite transcendence over all created things cannot be construed as any kind of reserve or standoffishness. The Father’s giving of the Son renders that interpretation impossible. Having sent servants already, God takes the ultimate step and reaches out to his people by sending an agent more dear and intimate to himself: “What shall I do? I will send my beloved son; perhaps they will respect him.”

The Puritan Thomas Goodwin brought all of these insights together tersely when he said that “the things of the gospel are depths –the things of the gospel…are the deep things of God.” Goodwin loved to ponder the many ways in which the gospel was a mystery. He noted that this gospel was the thing into which prophets “inquired and searched diligently,” and that angels “longed to look into” its content. But beyond this, Goodwin said, it was a mystery in the sense that God himself considered it uniquely precious, because it “lay (as I may so speak) at the bottom of his heart, the great secrets, which he esteemed such even from everlasting.” Goodwin is drawing language not from Ephesians but from First Corinthians when he speaks of “the deep things of God.” In the second chapter of this letter, Paul puts great emphasis on how profound, secret, and inaccessible to human understanding the blessings of the gospel are. What has been made known to us in the gospel is “what God has prepared for those who love him,” and far from being conformable to human wisdom, it is something which

no eye has seen,
nor ear heard,
nor the heart of man imagined,

words which most Christians probably associate with heaven, but which Paul clearly intends with reference to the present revelation of the gospel. If this divine wisdom has now been handed over to us in the gospel, it is by miracle, because these are things whose origins lie so deep within the heart of God that only God can know them. The mystery of the gospel is locked up inside of God, and can only be communicated by someone who is God. Paul underlines this three different ways:

We speak God’s wisdom, which God predestined before the ages to our glory

To us God has revealed them through the Spirit, for the Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. Who knows the mind of a man except the spirit of the man, which is in him? Even so the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God.

Who has known the mind of the Lord, that he should instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.

The predestining Father determined this mystery; and the depth-searching Spirit has access to these depths because he is as intimate with God as my spirit is with me. But that same Spirit has revealed them to us, and we therefore have come into harmony with the mind of Christ, the one who knows the mind of the Lord. Note that the Spirit and Christ have brought out into the open a mystery which has its natural home at the center of God’s heart, at the depth of his life. This opened secret is the gospel. It has such a profound and divine character that even to make it known, God must give himself over for its revelation. That revelatory self-giving is perfectly in line with the content of the thing revealed, which is that God gives himself to us to be our salvation. He does not dispense blessings, but himself.

Trinitarian soteriology, then, grounds the assurance of salvation. I give the last word to nineteenth century American theologian Benjamin Morgan Palmer, whose excellent little book The Threefold Fellowship and the Threefold Assurance draws these connections in a powerful way.

The relation of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit to man corresponds to a relationship in God between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit; and the love which is poured out to save us is the expression of that love which has dwelt eternally in the bosom of God. The gospel scheme of salvation not only has its origin in the infinite grace and mercy of God, but also finds its method and its execution in his threefold personality ….

What amazing security does this view give to the whole system of grace, seeing that it cannot fail in a single point except through a schism in the Godhead itself. The hand trembles that writes the daring suggestion; which is only saved from blasphemy by the assurance that he who searches the heart knows it is written only to give the most intense emphasis to the truth which it declares.

Well may the Psalmist of old sweep with his fingers the strings of the Hebrew lyre to the tune of the sixty-second Psalm (vs. 6,7): “He only is my rock and my salvation: he is my defence; I shall not be greatly moved. In God is my salvation and my glory; the rock of my strength and my refuge is in God.”