The Proof for God (is not a syllogism)

"The Lord has made Himself known by the judgments He executes." Ps. 9:16a

Actions speak louder than words, and it is no small thing that we have an active God, a God desirous of activity. "Come unto Me and I will show you great and mighty things," He says (Jer. 33:3), almost like a dare, as if it were a matter of personal pride and honor. Of course, God can have no pride. His honor is absolute and His person perfect, so he has no need to prove Himself, and yet He calls on us to prove Him. "Prove Me now, and see" if I will not do and be all that I said I would and am (Mal. 3:10). It can almost be said (with careful reverence) that although God has no need to prove Himself, He still desires to do so, even to the point of sarcasm (Num. 11:23).

Still playing fair.

The real wonder, however, is not that God is active, or even that He desires to act. The real wonder is that He always acts rightly. "I will praise Thee, O Lord," says David. "I will be glad and rejoice in Thee." Why? Because: "You sit on Your throne judging right" (Ps. 9:1-4). If the fact that God actively reveals Himself is a great marvel, then here is one greater still: "He has prepared His throne for justice" (Ps. 9:7), justice in every way we can imagine---salvation for His people (vs. 4, 10, 13-14), deliverance for the poor and weak (vs. 9, 12, 18), and destruction for the wicked and oppressive (vs. 3, 5-6, 15-16, 17). Today, many rise to condemn Him, but one day none will rise to condemn, for all will see the justice and the righteousness of His judgments. One day we will see that whatever "game" God is playing, He has always played fair.

"Yea hath God said?"

If there were ever two truths that a Christian must believe, it is that God acts and acts rightly. And if there were ever two truths most often disparaged, it is the same two. Whether it is the "black box" conundrum or the "problem of evil," every skeptical attack or doubt comes along these lines: God has not done anything or God has not done anything right. Even Satan Himself comes this way. In Genesis, his attack on humanity was two-pronged: question what God said (Gen. 3:1), which is to question His actions; and call God a liar (Gen. 3:4-5), which is to question His goodness. Either God has not actually acted, through either non-existence or passivity, and we are all alone in our little world with our little lives; or God acts wrongly, being either evil or incompetent or both, and thus we are stuck with an all-powerful savage or idiot or both. Every accusation against God follows the logic of the Accuser himself: either God has not acted, or He has not acted right.

Seeing different.

I will not say it is a simple task to answer either attack (though many in and outside the Faith have done so). What I will say is this: God has revealed Himself to all in universal, inexcusable ways (Ps. 19:1-4; Is. 45:18-19; Rom.1:19-20; Heb. 1:1-2), but the deeper and deepest knowing of God is less general and far more intimate, i.e., God applying His truths and reality to the specifics of your individual life. There is a knowledge of God for those on the outside, but there is additional knowledge (or knowing) for those on the inside. This is not the "secret knowledge" of gnosticism but the intimate knowledge/knowing of love. Outside, your knowledge can be factual, logical, and reasonable (if not believable). Inside, your knowledge/knowing has included but also moved beyond those things to the experiential. Inside, you are no longer dealing with mere facts but rather the presence of a Person, a dynamic that is much harder to articulate in a syllogism. Those on the outside say, "We will hear thee again on this matter" (Acts 17:32). Those on the inside say, "We have seen God's glory" (John 1:14).

Again, this distinction is not meant to cast aspersions at those who are "outside." Rather, it is meant to create an understanding: you can know something by either facts or experience, or by facts leading to experience. I am simply saying that Christianity claims to be the latter. We have been told an incredible truth, and we believed the truth; but we have also moved beyond mere comprehension and belief into love and life. We found the truth to be a living truth, a living Person whose Life we experience in our own life. That is not easy to either explain or defend, but neither is love, and we are in love. God is known because He does, not because He argues, and He has done unto us and for us.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013

The Word is Alive (and Non-Negotiable)

"To the law and to the testimony. If they speak not according to this word, then it is because they have no light in them." Is. 8:20

Q: What rule has God given to direct us [on] how we may glorify and enjoy Him?

A: The word of God, which is contained in the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, is the only rule to direct us [on] how we may glorify and enjoy Him.

(Question 2, Westminster Shorter Catechism)

For the Christian, the Bible is more than just "relevant"; not less than, but certainly more. It is "alive" (Heb. 4:12), i.e., "God-breathed" (II Tim. 3:16) and thus presenced by the Spirit of God, the same Spirit who leads to the truth (John 14:26; 15:26; 16:13) and searches and reveals the "deep things" of God (I Cor. 2:10). Divine origin is nothing new: many religions claim to have received truth from God (or the gods, or the divine essence). But divine inspiration---in that the word is alive with God's Spirit, who still speaks through it to us and thus securing its authority for all time---that is a unique invention in the history of religion. It could have only been introduced (or discovered) by a religion with incarnation at its center. The Word was made text as well as flesh (Heb. 1:1-2). This is why the Confession says the Bible trumps or supersedes all other authorities: its divine origin and inspiration.

I can see my house from up here.

It trumps and supersedes all the traditions of men, even the most wise or most holy. This does not mean that the whole body of human writing is of no use to us. On the contrary, all things are ours for the taking (Phil. 4:8), and many things can be beneficial, but nothing carries the weight of authority like the Bible. The buck stops with it. It is the rubric by which all other wisdom rises or falls. Thus, wisdom and traditions of the world, from Plato and Aristotle to Descartes and Schopenhauer to even Nietzsche and Foucault, are all ours for the taking and leaving. They own nothing in us (I Cor. 6:12). Likewise, the wisdom and traditions of the Church, from Augustin and Anselm and Aquinas to Pascal and Edwards and Spurgeon to Lewis and Schaeffer, are also ours for the taking or leaving. Let them all come, but let them all rise or fall on this one foundation: the living truth of God.

I think I need some pants.

This living truth also trumps and supersedes human reason. Again, this does not mean that reason is useless or invalid, only that it does not have the final say. It can never have the final say anyway. As finite creatures, living in our unique yet limited capacity as subjective beings on one small speck in the universe, our understanding is necessarily limited, which takes true humility to see, for we all from time to time slip into the notion that we have it all figured out. "We know in part," says Paul (I Cor. 13:9), a profound statement for two reasons: (1) it asserts that we can "know," that we can have true knowledge, that understanding is not futile nor epistemology an empty exercise; (2) it asserts that our knowledge has limits, limits that only God can and will fill (I Cor. 13:10, 12). In one simple statement, we find rebuke to both the skeptic and the egoist. We find reason defended and put in its place, viz., beneath the authority of God's revelation.

Lastly, the living word and revelation of God trumps and supersedes what was once called "the light within," a Quaker term that meant the self-guidance of the "divine spark" within us, guidance without reference to any outside authority. This idea is still very attractive. You often hear the call to "follow your heart" or "listen to your guts" or some such thing. It is not all wrong. Like human reason, instinct and common sense have a place; but also like reason, that place is limited. Even more so, for our "heart" is deceptive (Jer. 17:9; Matt. 15:18-20) and deceived (II Cor. 4:3-4). To trust our hearts with reference to nothing else is to court disaster, for it is inadequate to know the truth, including the truths that only God can reveal (I Cor. 2:9-10).

Hey! Don't you tell me what to do!

"Follow your heart" has its religious versions as well, mainly in charismatic circles and in more liberal versions of Christianity, both of which refer to it as "a movement of the Holy Spirit." Liberal Christian- ity is especially egregious in this error, wielding the "Holy Spirit" like a bludgeon against even the Bible itself. Charismatic movements may use the "Holy Spirit" to justify absurd prophecies or raucous church meetings, but liberal Christian types (e.g., Rob Bell) use it to justify the complete eradication of doctrinal clarity and (by extension) the complete reversal of certain biblical positions. All this stems from ripping "the Spirit" away from any authoritative mooring other than your own whims, which is what "follow your heart" is really all about. It is an ennobling of our own self-centeredness, another means to justify our own ends.

This is what makes the Bible so offensive to many today: it is an authoritative mooring set outside and even against our own whims. It does offer wondrous possibilities, but it also demands compliance on every level. What it has revealed is the touchstone for any and every thing else, including itself. We can distinguish between "the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error" by what has been written by the prophets and apostles (I John 4:5-6). We can know who and what has or has not "light" because of the "law and the testimony" already delivered (Is. 8:20). It is a fixed point, as fixed as God Himself, for it is His word, presenced with His immutable presence and filled to bursting with His everlasting truth.

Just follow your heaAAAAAAAAAaaaaaa...!!!

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013

Love (Isaiah's Doxology, Part IV)

"He has clothed me...He has covered me...like a bridegroom...like a bride...." Is. 61:10-11

Love is the key. (Get it?)

Isaiah's metaphor for our new identity and function point us to something in addition to that purpose and function: our purpose and function are not simply a matter of duty. Remember, he could have used any metaphor he wanted. His word choices prove that: "decks" means "to meditate" and carries the image of church service as well as a wedding, and "jewels" means any prearranged thing, even the garb and tools of a worker going to work. Yet he did not use those images, images of duty and work. He chose instead the images of a bride and groom, images of love.

You missed a spot.

Now, it is true that a bride and groom have a duty to give, both in the wedding and in the marriage. But that exception only proves the rule: we expect them to fulfill their duty because we assume that they love each other and will gladly give their best to each other. If they failed or deliberately faltered in their duty towards each other, we would feel a sense of disappointment. However, if they did their duty only out of duty and nothing more, then we would feel the same thing. We would feel as if something had been missed, left out. The situation suggested and called for more than mere dutifulness or efficiency. It called for love, a much deeper and solid thing. Love is the only sure foundation for dutiful action, because it alone can keep the fires burning for years to come.

As we adore...

Just as a bride and groom have an identity and function out of love, so too do those whom God has redeemed. Their purpose and function is done out of love, because it came from love. It was Love that redeemed totally and absolutely (John 3:16; Rom. 5:6-11; I John 4:7-10). He wrapped His people in salvation and righteousness just like a groom is decked out for his bride (and vice versa). The groom decks himself (or is decked) out of love for the bride, and because of that love he is decked in his finest, in all that makes the bride happy. Likewise the bride adorns (or is adorned) out of love for the groom, and because of that love she adorns herself with beauty, with all that makes the groom happy. Every action belongs to love. It is a mutual reception of joy, each giving to and receiving from each other out of love for each other. That is the image Isaiah is going for, that God is going for through him. God has decked His people out in the best that He has: a salvation and righteousness all-encompassing and overwhelming. And as He has given His best out of love, so too His people give back their best out of love. To do it for any lesser or other reason would be a corruption of the whole relationship.

...so too we adore.

This is where all the "relational" language comes from in Christianity. Having a "relationship" with God may be an overused and abused idea, but it is still the closest to the truth. We were made to love God, saved to love God, and we can only love Him the same way we come to love anyone else: we must begin to know Him. Such knowledge is only possible through His self-disclosed revelations: Nature (Ps. 19:1-4; Rom. 1:19-20) and Natural Law (Rom. 2:12-15), as well as His word (II Tim. 3:16; Heb. 4:12) and Word (Heb. 1:1-4). We must learn who He is and what He loves. We must learn to listen to Him, talk to Him, and spend time with Him. If we are to love God, then we must know God, and if we are to know God, then we must immerse ourselves in His revelations. Spend your time amongst Nature and its beauty. Spend your time studying virtue and truth. Above all, spend your time in His word, learning from His Spirit (I Cor. 2:6-12) and His Son. From that soil your knowledge will grow, and from that your love will grow, and from that and that alone will your activity grow, for truth is the foundation of love, and love is the foundation of life.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013

Homily 31: The Unsearchable Goodness of God (as preached by an orthodox rebel)

"...many widows were in Israel in the days of Elijah...but unto none of them was Elijah sent, except unto Zarephath, a city of Sidon, unto a woman that was a widow. And many lepers were in Israel in the time of Elisha the prophet, and none of them were cleansed, except Naaman the Syrian." Luke 4:25-27

In the immediate sense, Jesus is predicting His rejection by His own people (Luke 4:24). This was also referred to by John in his gospel (John 1:11), as well as Paul in his epistle to the Romans (Rom. 11:25-32) where he states that Israel's rejection of Christ meant that the gospel has come to the gentiles, whose salvation will subsequently lead back to the salvation of Israel. Jesus' audience understood what he was saying: the blessing that he recited from Isaiah (Luke 4:18-19) was not necessarily meant for them. Thus, they tried to kill Him out of anger (Luke 4:28-29).

In a general sense, we see here that God does not abide by our preconceived notions or modes of thought. In fact, God's design is typically to upset our established notion of things, to step into our individual synagogues and overturn our private assumptions until we stop thinking in our terms and start thinking in His. This is always a struggle, perhaps even the struggle of the Christian life: to never reach a point where you have God "settled out" in your mind, where you think you know exactly how He is going to deal with you and others. Such ignorance and arrogance are always upset by God so that he may restore us to the correct posture towards Him: "O the depths of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out!" (Rom. 11:33).

God is not random, nor is He unknowable. He has revealed Himself and His ways unto us, both by his word and by His Son (Heb. 1:1-2). In addition, He abides by principles and reason. The key is that it is His principles and His reason, which are perfect and divine and thus ultimately beyond us. The things which He has revealed are ours and our children's forever, but that which He has not revealed belong to Him (Deut. 29:29). Thus, we are creatures who "know in part" (I Cor. 13:9). For example, we know that God is good in all things in regard to His children (Rom. 8:28), but we cannot say exactly how that goodness will manifest itself in our day-to-day lives. For a season, God's goodness may even look like hate or indifference, but it is not. It is goodness, always goodness. Goodness unsearchable and past finding out, the half of which cannot be fancied this side of the golden shore. In that mystery, we rest and find hope.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2011

Homily 23: Missing What Matters (as preached by an orthodox rebel)

"You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times." Matt.16:3b

A necessary consequence of Pharisaical idolatry is spiritual blindness. Look at this incident between the Pharisees and Jesus. Their conception of God (formed by their own traditions and considerations) had so blurred their spiritual vision that when God Himself came walking amongst them in the flesh they could see neither him nor the things that He had done. Jesus had performed many signs already; some individually (e.g., Matt. 8:1-17), some before thousands (e.g., Matt. 14:13-21), and none in secret. There was nothing hidden, and yet the Pharisee could not see. Their natural vision was fine, but their spiritual sight was blocked, perhaps even seared shut by their concept of what God ought to be. Likewise, our self-constructed conceptions of God are always blinders to our souls, and the only hope of knocking them off is by a visitation from the God who is.

"How is it that you fail to understand that I did not speak about bread?" (Matt. 16:11a). It is not necessarily the Pharisee that lets their self-made opinion of God blind them. Even the disciples did not understand what Jesus was after or about. The difference, however, is that when the God who is confronted the God of their own minds, they chose to follow the God who is despite the confusion of their minds. They did not understand Him just yet, but they did believe in Him (Matt. 16:16), and eventually they came to understand Him (Luke 24:45). That is always the way it is: we must go through the confusion and fog of our misconceptions, clinging for dear life to the God revealed in scripture and in Christ, even if there are whole areas that we do not understand yet. Our blinders are being taken off. It may take time (depending on our obstinacy), but if we stick to it and go through the dark with the God who is, we shall emerge closer to Him than we were before. For those lost in illusion, reality is always a confusion. Once we are brought through it all to the other side, however, then the illusion drops from our eyes like scales; and where once we were blind, now our eyes see Him.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2011

Homily 20: What Did You Expect? (as preached by an orthodox rebel)

"Jesus began to say unto the multitudes concerning John [the Baptist], 'What did ye go out into the wilderness to see? A reed shaken with the wind?'" Matt. 11:7

The Christian life is full of the unexpected, mainly because life is full of the unexpected. Those who try to fit life into some form of carefully systematized scheme are the first to go mad, because life will not fit the scheme, or else they have to break life in order to make it fit. To remain sane, they must either give up their scheme or ignore entire areas of life and thus amputate parts of their humanity. Most prefer the latter, because they have idolized their scheme above all other gods.

Concerning John the Baptist, Jesus said to the crowd, "What did you expect? Whatever it was, it was not what you got." That is a truth about all life, especially the life of the Christian. Our expectations are always foiled, and whether we are grievously disappointed or gloriously surprised depends on whether we see God or our personal creed and doctrine as the master of life. We all have personal creeds and doctrines; we all have our little ways of understanding and processing the world. They are not, in and of themselves, bad. The question is, when life and God (who is the master of life) upset your personal creeds and doctrines, will you have enough faith to let them go?

"For we know in part, and we prophesy in part" (I Cor. 13:9), i.e., we have true knowledge, but it is not yet complete. There are things that we do know, doctrines and creeds derived truly and accurately from Reason and Revelation, truths about life and God. However, no matter what we do know, we do not know it all, and the sooner that we realize and accept our limitations, the happier we will be. The man who tries to mount the insurmountable, to cross the infinite ocean and make it finite, he is the one who grows weary and mad with life. He is attempting to be Creator when he is merely creature, and he will find himself unable to take the strain.

Our schemes and plots, creeds and screeds ultimately do not matter. Our relationship with the One who is above all schemes does. Real knowledge exists, and it is wonderful to find; but it is never complete in this life, and every time we claim that it is, even on some tiny area of life, we make ourselves god of that tiny area. Can we allow ourselves to be small enough to see that God is God? Life will be a confusion and terror until we do.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2011

Post-modernism and Revelation in regards to Knowledge (a lecture from an orthodox rebel)

Post-modernism is (at bottom) an epistemological negation: it says that we cannot know or know that we know. The reason that we cannot "know," the reason that we cannot have true and objective knowledge, is because as individual subjects we are bound within our own subjectivity. That subjectivity has been shaped by many forces and contexts: family and friends, society and culture, tragedies and triumphs. Consequently, our subjectivity serves as a pair of lenses (more cynical souls would say blinders) that filters everything that we encounter.

That it filters everything must be stressed. We are predisposed towards certain bents whether we are reading a certain text or seeing a certain terrain. We are always bringing something to the table that shapes and/or skews the way we view things. To put it in religious terminology: we make everything in our own image. To put it in secular terminology: everyone comes with a bias. This is why (to use post-modern terminology) we can only produce stories rather than a Story: our predispositions prevent us from ever knowing and/or successfully communicating any over-arching objectivity.

Christianity, of course, disagrees. It holds that true and objective knowledge is possible and communicable. Post-modernism does not, holding instead to a complete subjectivism, i.e., we are bound within our subjectivity, within the maze of our own mind. Any real communication with the "outside" (if there even is an outside) is impossible as all such communication would be lost in translation. Exactly how Christianity disagrees with this can be stated in three propositions.

(1) God is there. The first is to affirm the existence of God, i.e., that there is an "outside" that contains an "outsider" who stands "outside" of our subjectivity and thus can view it objectively. This assertion is very basic, but it is also very vital to countering the fundamental assertion of post-modernity that there is no "outside" at all.

(2) God is not silent. The second is to affirm the reality of revelation, i.e., that this "outsider" has communicated with us in a comprehensible way. Even if there is an "outside," the post-modernist could retort (quite correctly) that we can never know if this is so unless the "outside" communicates with us. Thus, the Christian must put forward the reality of revelation, viz., that God has communicated with us by way of revelation (both general and special), revelation that is comprehensible because it has come to us in native (rather than alien) forms: nature, conscience, text, and flesh (see Romans 1:18-20; 2:14-15; Hebrews 1:1-2). Note: The form of "conscience" is important because it demonstrates that the communication is not separate from and outside of us. It is a part of us; as beings made in the image of God, we are still capable of sensing the objective viewpoint.

(3) The Holy Spirit is our helper. This third one is often overlooked, and yet it is on this point that the conversation between orthodox Christianity and post-modernism goes awry today. Even if there is an "outside" with an "outsider," and even if that "outsider" has communicated to us in comprehensible way, the post-modernist could retort that we can never truly comprehend this communication because it is we who have to read it, i.e., we filter it through our subjective lenses and skew the meaning our own way. Everything becomes personal "interpretation," and thus everything (once again) gets lost in translation; the original authorial intent is impossible (or at least mind-bendingly difficult) to discern.

There are two answers to this, and both support each other. The first is simply to assert the doctrine of the imago dei and thereby vehemently deny the assertion that nothing is communicable to us. However imperfectly, we still know what is true and false, right and wrong, beautiful and ugly. Any statements to the contrary are trapped in an intellectual vacuum that neither has been nor can be applied to the real, practical world where actual people live and breath.

The second answer is where the final proposition comes into play. It is perhaps by today's standards (both within and without the church) highly controversial, but it is nonetheless doctrinal and scriptural. We must assert that not only is God there, and not only has He communicated to us in a comprehensible/native way, but He has also provided for us a translator for His communication: the Holy Spirit, which (as the third member of the Trinity) is God of very God, and thus also exists "outside" as an "outsider". Therefore, it is He who correctly translates the communication for us, being immediately and intimately with us (I Cor. 6:19) so as to teach us the "deep things of God" (I Cor. 2:6-16). Therein is the answer: (1) God exists, (2) God has communicated to us, and (3) God has given us a translator for His communication. The Holy Spirit is there as translator and teacher to help us discern the original authorial intent and properly apply it to our lives.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2010