Stories

A good-story addresses the backwardness in the universe, particularly in humankind, and that is why there are more than a few bad stories.

Four Years Ago

When I was a twenty-one year old collegiate
I learned a prayer for the first time from a classmate,
“Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

The two of us and our friend with the shaved head
Seeking forgiveness of sin and the Kingdom -
Everywhere, at all times, and by any Universal means.

Theology of Lordship: Servant-Thinking - Grace

Servant-thinking is humble, acknowledging that God is sufficient. Servant-thinkers will look for His grace in their weaknesses; they do so because they think Theocentrically. Biblical, that.

And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. 2 Corinthians 12:9

Reformed Theology: Sanctification

“Both Lutherans and Calvinists answered the question ‘What must I do to be saved?’ by saying that Spirit-worked repentance toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and His substitutionary work of atonement are necessary. But Lutherans had a tendency to remain focused on the doctrine of justification, whereas Calvinists, without minimizing justification, pressed more than Lutherans toward sanctification, which asks, ‘Having been justified by God’s grace, how shall I live to the glory of God?’” (Joel R. Beeke, Living for God’s Glory: An Introduction to Calvinism, p. 11).

Theology of Lordship: Servant-Thinking, Again

A servant-thinker is one who “adopts God’s world as his own.”[1] Therefore, “the believer [servant-thinker] . . . is affirming creation as it really is; he is accepting creation as the world that God made, and he is accepting the responsibility to live in that world as it really is.”[2]

[1] John Frame, The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, p. 28.
[2] Ibid., p. 28.

Theology of Lordship: Servant-Thinking

“To be a creature is to be limited in thought and knowledge, as in all other aspects of life. We are limited by our Creator, our Lord. We have a beginning in time, but He does not. We are controlled by Him and subject to His authority; we are the objects of ultimate covenant blessing or cursing, and so the nature of our thought should reflect our status as servants. Our thinking should be ‘servant-thinking’” (John Frame, The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, p. 21).

Reformed Theology: Concerned with character of Creator-creature relationship

“In His relation to us, God has only rights and powers; He binds Himself to duties sovereignly and graciously only by way of covenant. In covenant, He assumes the duties and responsibilities of being a God unto us, but that does not detract from His being the first cause and the last end of all things. The universe is ruled not by chance or fate, but by the complete, sovereign rule of God. We exist for one purpose: to give Him glory. We have only duties to God, no rights. Any attempt to challenge this truth is doomed. Romans 9:20b asks, “Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast though made me thus?” God enacts His laws for every part of our lives and demands unconditional obedience. We are called to serve Him with body and soul, in worship and daily work, every second of every day.

To be Reformed, then, is to be concerned with the complete character of the Creator-creature relationship. It is to view all of life coram Deo, that is, lived before the face of God (Joel R. Beeke, Living for God’s Glory: An Introduction to Calvinism, p. 41).”

Israel: Enemies of Israel

Israel was led out Egypt/slavery and the Lord promised to fight for them against their enemies (Deut. 20:4). This is always true, even when Israel becomes its own enemy. The Lord will fight against Israel when she is an enemy of Israel/enemy of the descendents of Abraham/promise. This happens when Israel becomes wicked and does not follow the Lord’s commandments. The Lord will fight against wicked Israel because she has become a type of Egypt, and she too will receive the plagues/curses of Egypt (Deut. 28:58-61).

The Lord will diminish the numbers of wicked Israel (“And ye [Israel] shall be left few in number,” Deut. 28:62), therefore, ensuring that obedient Israel will always remain “too mighty”; obedient Israel will remain numerous, like the stars – she remains that way because she serves the Lord who led her out of Egypt, the Lord who goes with her, the Lord who fights against her enemies.

Israel: Too Mighty

Deu 23:3 "No Ammonite or Moabite may enter the assembly of the LORD. Even to the tenth generation, none of them may enter the assembly of the LORD forever,
Deu 23:4 because they did not meet you with bread and with water on the way, when you came out of Egypt, and because they hired against you Balaam the son of Beor from Pethor of Mesopotamia, to curse you.
Deu 23:5 But the LORD your God would not listen to Balaam; instead the LORD your God turned the curse into a blessing for you, because the LORD your God loved you.

In Numbers 22:6 we learn that Balak sends for Balaam to come and curse Israel because “they are too mighty.” But Israel is “too mighty” in several senses:

1) Israel is “too mighty” because they are too numerous (causing fear in Moabites, Numbers 22:3)
2) Israel is “too mighty” because they are the descendants of Abraham, the descendants of promise (“shall surely become a great and mighty nation,” Genesis 18:18)
3) Israel is “too mighty” because the Lord does not listen to the wicked (the enemies of the descendants of Abraham/promise)
4) Israel is “too mighty” because they serve the Lord (whose lordship extends over blessings and curses); the Lord, who for the descendants of Abraham/promise, turns the curses of their enemies into blessings

Narnia: Farewell to Shadowlands

“I see,” [Lucy] said at last, thoughtfully. “I see now. This garden is like the stable. It is far bigger inside than it was outside.”

“Of course, Daughter of Eve,” said the Faun. “The further up and the further in you go, the bigger everything gets. The inside is larger than the outside.”

Lucy looked hard at the garden and saw that it was not really a garden but a whole world, with its own rivers and woods and sea and mountains. But they were not strange: she knew them all.

“I see,” she said. “This is still Narnia, and more real and more beautiful than the Narnia down below, just as it was more real and more beautiful than the Narnia outside the stable door! I see . . . world within world, Narnia within Narnia. . . .”

“Yes,” said Mr. Tumnus, “like an onion: except that as you continue to go in and in, each circle is larger than the last” (C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle, pp. 206-207).

City of God: Peace and Community

But who is the city of God? Wilken answers, “Augustine never defines this city outright, but it is closely identified with the church . . . . Wherever the church is, he [Augustine] says, there will be ‘God’s beloved City.’ The City of God is more than the church because it includes the angels and the saints who have gone before, but there can be no talk of the city of God without the church.”

Wilken goes on to say, “Augustine’s controlling metaphor for the new life that God creates is not, for example, being born again, but becoming part of a city and entering into its communal life. When the Scriptures speak of peace they do not have in mind simply a relation between an individual believer and God; in the Bible peace is a gift that human beings share in communion with God. . . . Christianity is inescapably social.”

Later, quoting the political philosopher Sheldon Wolin: “The significance of Christian thought for the Western political tradition lies not so much in what it had to say about the political order, but primarily in what it had to say about the religious order. The attempt of Christians to understand their own group life provided a new and sorely needed source of ideas for Western political thought. Christianity succeeded where Hellenistic and late classical philosophies had failed, because it put forward a new and powerful idea of community which recalled man [and women] to a life of meaningful participation.”

City of God: Worship and Happy the People

Chapter 8 from Robert Louis Wilken’s The Spirit of Early Christian Thought is titled “Happy the People Whose God is the Lord.” Wilken interacts with Saint Augustine’s City of God and notes, “The most characteristic feature of the city of God is that it worships the one true God.” Worship and happy people, the twain always meet in the city of God.

Church History - Early Church: Christian History - Deeper Level of Human Experience

In regard to early Christian thought during the “formative centuries of the church’s history,” Robert Louis Wilken writes, “The intellectual effort of the early church was at the service of a much loftier goal than giving conceptual form to Christian belief. Its mission was to win the hearts and minds of men and women and to changer their lives. Christian thinkers appealed to a much deeper level of human experience than had the religious institutions of society or the doctrines of the philosophers. In this endeavor the Bible was a central factor. It narrated a history that reached back into antiquity even to the beginning of the world, it was filled with stories of unforgettable men and women (not all admirable) who were actual historical persons rather than mythical figures, and it poured forth a thesaurus of words that created a new religious vocabulary and a cornucopia of scenes and images that stirred literary and artistic imagination as well as theological thought. God, the self, human community, the beginning and ending of things became interwoven with biblical history, biblical language, and biblical imagery.”

Romans: Entrance to Treasures of Scripture

In regard to the Argument, that is, the contents of the Epistle to the Romans, Calvin wrote, “It will hence appear beyond all controversy, that besides other excellencies, and those remarkable, this can with truth be said of it, and it is what can never be sufficiently appreciated—that when any one gains a knowledge of this Epistle, he has an entrance opened to him to all the most hidden treasures of Scripture.”

Romans: Influence - Western Thought

In the introduction to his commentary on The Epistle of Paul to the Romans, CH Dodd wrote, “The Epistle to the Romans is the first great work of Christian theology. From the time of Augustine it had immense influence on the thought of the West, not only in theology, but also in philosophy and even in politics, all through the Middle Ages. At the Reformation its teaching provided the chief intellectual expression for the new spirit in religion. For us men of Western Christendom there is probably no other single writing so deeply embedded in our heritage of thought.”

The Great Commission: Kingdoms of Christ

“The kingdoms of the world are to become the kingdoms of Christ. They are to be discipled, made obedient to the faith. This means that every aspect of life throughout the world is to be brought under the lordship of Jesus Christ: families, individuals, business, science, agriculture, the arts, law, education, economics, psychology, philosophy, and every other sphere of human activity. Nothing may be left out. Christ “must reign, until He has put all enemies under His feet” (1 Cor. 15:25). We have been given the responsibility of converting the entire world” (David Chilton, Paradise Restored, p. 213).

Plan of God: Restoration/Consummative

“Simple restoration to Eden is never all that is involved in salvation, just as it was not God’s plan for Adam and his posterity simply to remain in the Garden. They were to go into all the world, bring the create potentiality of earth to full fruition. The Garden of Eden was a headquarters, a place to start, But godly rule by King Adam was to encompass the entire world. Thus, the Second Adam’s work is not only restorative (bringing back to Eden) but consummative: He brings the world into the New Jerusalem” (David Chilton, Paradise Restored, p. 61).

History - Money - Basic Principle: Curse

“Indeed, there is a basic principle that is always at work throughout history: “The wealth of the sinner is stored up for the righteous” (Prov. 13:22), “for evildoers will be cut off, but those who wait on the LORD will inherit the earth” (Ps. 37:9). A God-fearing nation will be blessed with abundance, while apostate nations will eventually lose their resources, as God inflicts the Curse upon rebellious people and their culture” (David Chilton, Paradise Restored, p. 36).

Optimistic Eschatology: Psalms, Again

"If we are to recapture the eschatology of dominion, we must reform the Church; and a crucial aspect of that reformation should be a return to the singing of Psalms (David Chilton, Paradise Restored, p. 9)."

Optimistic Eschatology: Psalms

"The Psalms are inescapably Kingdom-oriented. They are full of conquest, victory, and the dominion of the saints. They remind us constantly of the warfare between God and Satan, they incessantly call us to do battle against the forces of evil, and they promise us that we shall inherit the earth (David Chilton, Paradise Restored, pp. 8-9)."