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Chapter 1
THE BOUNTY OF TRUTH:
IN THE BIBLE, THERE LIES NOT ONLY
THE ANSWER
TO MAN'S VEXED PHILOSOPHY
BUT TO HIS SPIRITUAL DISEASE
Recently, there has been a slight
revision for increased perspicuity and reference, to Three Anzas, One
Answer Ch. 6. In this, it was indicated
that there were two references to an advantage of no small dimension, to be
found in giving due expression, as there, to the phenomenal grace, mercy and
love of God in its expansive thrust (as in Colossians 1:19ff., I Timothy 2, I
John 2:1ff.). This is gained, without for one moment either compromising
the splendour of His sovereignty, or the fulness of His knowledge, by His
counsel of all that is to be: for He works all things after the counsel of His
own will (Ephesians 1:11). The other reference for this result, shown in the
above Ch. 6, is to Gratitude for His
Glorious Grace Appendix.
Our present Chapter and that one
therefore are a pair.
The point in view more precisely is
this: fail to be precise in terms of the Bible, and you lose the perspective in
terms of which all things cohere and being clear, have their unique magnificence
of comprehensive explanation. KEEP TO IT, however, to the very word of the
living God, and there is a bounty at once. Neither liberty nor necessity,
foreknowledge nor predestination, duty nor responsibility then constitute a
collision, an inexplicable endlessly argued fiesta. THEN, they fit like lambs
peaceably in the pasture. Comprehensive coverage of reality without reductionism
then becomes not a hope but a fact. THIS is the result of keeping to the Bible.
It is only one of the many advantages and joys of so dealing faithfully with all
of the word of God. It is its own solution. God says what He means, writes it,
and this gives the key to all.
Concerning this bounty from abiding
in the word of God on these as on other topics, there are many other references
available in this site. Such are to be found as such, in the
alphabetical index, at predestination.
In this present chapter, however, the design is to be simple in seeing the pith
of the matter in view. So much darkness seems to love to settle on such issues,
that there is a call at times, to see the light beyond it, above it, below it,
with little more than a vivifying glance.
It is a thing most wonderful, that
when, and only when, we cast aside all philosophical extremes, and keep
precisely and continuously to the biblical doctrine in this field of
predestination, foreknowledge, liberty and responsibility, guilt and goodness,
that we come to the ONLY solution which can now be.
MAN IN ESSENCE BEFORE HIS FALL
and CHARACTER WHEN IN THRALL
Thus when God made man with a
liberty to choose and a capacity to see and feel the alternative opportunities
of obedience to the Maker and self-assertion for an equal spot in the good-evil
continuum - continuum ? nay, stakes, and man DID choose, there was an end
to the splendid operation of decisive action in certain understanding and
knowledge. Action altered things. Such is the account in Genesis 3.
That wonderful gift of sighted
liberty, meaningful understanding that could be faced with a love or an indifference, or even hatred:
this now was soiled, spoiled.
Gone was that simplicity in which
seeing, it could choose; understanding ENOUGH for the purpose, it could or break
with the truth. This then passed.
Man then became complex, and his
psychiatric woes and inordinate vanities and ambitions, bringing blood in a
flood to his earth, to match the intense agonies recklessly imposed on others,
merely attest his instability and resultant spiritual deficit or imbecility
(Hosea 9:7). It is not that he is not bright; far from it. But when your main
spring is broken, you do not do much good as a watch. When your spirit is
soiled, it is hard to be hygienic; when your mind is divorced from its source,
try as you will, you do not reach home base. Such is man now.
You may think you have
understanding, even a mandate, and kill a few; or hope you do, and spoil a few
thousand; or being wrong, be sure you do, and kill millions. These are options
plentifully engaged in recently, say over the past century (when you are 80,
that seems to be recent...).
Thus what man IS and constantly
shows himself to be as exhibited in the HEXAD on these topics*1
, troubles many. He has hidden from God and from light, and hence has
become shrouded in mystery to himself. No longer, with an alienated and bruised, a blinded but reminiscing heart,
could he SEE the point.
He would know it all or know nothing, say it all or be speechless; but the very
alternating, hallucinatory dreams of total autonomy or total determinism bruised
their longing wings on fact, and none could ever manage to hold the fort*2.
Brutal and unbeautiful clashes
became like those of Oxford and Cambridge, but with less ... fellowship!
The biblical depiction shows how
readily the
philosophical problem of how man can be free not only to do what he will but to
will what he will, and so be responsible and non-insane in feeling this. It is solved. It is not solved by guesswork, or by ingenuity. It
is solved, as in scientific work that regards facts, and revelatory reality
which presents them in testable format in God's name, by careful cogitation
based on
and constrained by what is given.
For man, now blinded so that the
ultimates are no more self-evident (cf. Ephesians 4:17-19), since an endemic holding down of truth
(Romans 1:17ff.) moves
in his underlying structure of thought and indeed even of being, there comes
passion without profundity, digging without delight, romancing with reason and
frustration without limit. The case grows rather like
that of divorcees who CANNOT be fair to one another; and there is only one solution,
a return to the realities, without the hatred and with recourse to a love which
is not slanted.
Had man
been as at first, there would be no problem. Had he not fallen, all would be
simple in ways not only spiritual, but physical and metaphysical.
Now the ONLY way in which man can
have liberty at the level which is at once sublime and basic, real and
non-illusory, sane and coherent with guilt and reason, experience and results is that of his
relationship to God. This then involves man once more in the cockpit, able to be
flying understandingly in any direction at all, though without exclusion of
crashes, or of communication either. It allows for several things to happen
both meaningfully and with that integrity of personal being which brings an end
to dichotomies and derangements. It HAPPENS, it is announced, yes it is given
in the Bible: these VERY things are precisely what are presented. Let us
consider biblically the simple but profound realities and clarities, harmonies
and overview.
Firstly, in the status quo at the
start for any operation, man must be endued with
powers of thought and perception, so that he is enabled to view in thought other
ideas than those which occur to
him, and imaginations other than those immediately to be discerned; so that such can enter
or be invited to his mind or even clamour for attention or acceptance. This
however is only part; they must also be subject to logical reviewed
as to validity and verification. That is not a problem; all discussion in these
areas must begin there, even to be orderly.
Man in God's image must have such
abilities; for although he cannot be eternal or all-knowing (he does not even
know the beginning modes in inception of causal and material, spiritual, moral
and intellectual systems in synthetic co-ordination, such as he exhibits), he
must be able to know what truth is and to relate to God not as a someone who is
not a mesmerised
dreamer, but a researching and honest pursuer of reality. Only then is
freedom operational, and not stabs in the darkness, uncomprehending, always
amending, never blending, amid shades and shadows of half-perceived
inconsistencies.
Thus, firstly, there is the problem
child, who had just such powers, now hopes he has, when not in nihilistic mode,
or assumes he has, when in autonomous mode. When using these powers carefully,
he finds his origin and the character of the case, as presented in the Bible,
to be validated and verified. Man however tends to vary this way or that,
depending on culture or convenience, aim or ambition, ambivalence or distress,
desire or culpability of this kind and that; so that though these things stare
into his face, yet mists, rains, fogs arise, like weeping skies in the soul. In
this is his very pathology (SMR). If for all
that, he decides to hold to these things in his mind, however, while still
being divorced from God, he runs into problems, himself the heart of it. If he
dismisses them, then he runs into far more. He becomes like a fibrillating
heart. It cannot go; it cannot stop. It tremors. Romans 1:17ff. shows the
tension, the distension and the evil dynamic as it progressively operates in our
race.
Thus man defiled and disgraced
outside God's image by wilful distortion at the first, and vile and unrealistic
ambition, is not in such a case as he needs to be, to be operative at this
level; in this, he is not free (Ephesians 2). Yet his nature is such that it is
this that he belongs. Here he lives. It is for this reason that so often he
imagines a "vain thing", some ludicrous folly of mentality, being driven there
by the joint sense of his own nature (as it WAS), and the natural proclivities
of his heart, to act according to truth as a medium for action.
Indeed, mere logic can force the
issue and show the truth; but man is not inclined to accept this, being divorced
from God. When God the Lord acts, however, then man being restored can
understand, and find the truth without the internal mistiness and distortion,
asymmetry or astigmatism. Then his own crash results no more disfigure what
logically is irresistible, but psychologically unachievable to divorcees: the
understanding of the divorced One.
FREELY CALLED, FREELY COME
WITH DIVINE PROTECTION
How then can man be corrected, his
condition resolved ? How can man escape
the ludicrous stumblings of autonomy and determinism, and being responsible as
shame and guilt, based on deliberative realities in his choices, persistently attest
? How then can he find
truth without the covers over his spirit ?
It cannot be by CHOOSING GOD (cf.
Christ's word that YOU HAVE NOT CHOSEN ME, but I
you, cf. Romans 9:16, John 1:12-14), That would be choosing as you will, in your
pathological condition, but NOT willing as you will. You would be immersed in
your own CONDITION, filtering all in your optic occlusions, and dimness, desires
and SELF. You might or might not be true to your self, but it is limited by its
severance, self-ness, blindness, bindings.
It would be self-expression, but
what of the truth ? Self is not the centre and meaning of the universe, and to
express yourself is therefore not the point when truth is the objective. It is a
thing to be done, perhaps; but not such as to achieve the result. It is
measuring yourself by yourself, which as Paul notes, is not wise! (II
Corinthians 10).
In other words, how could
pathological man choose outside the constraining powers of what it is that HE
IS! It is possible only if someone who has love for man so that His desire is
for man to be what he ought to be, is made to be - would be if he could be and
still wanted to be as in the initial case of Adam and Eve - acted from outside
him. It would require an operation at once delicate and radical. He would be
liberated by infinite knowledge outside himself which, unlimited by
superficialities and the perception of man's diseased state, could find what is
the truth, past the automatic delusions of sin, and dissuasions of its rule over
man. It would not be subject to the ignorance of blindness and the bindings of
mere selfhood, as minister to thought.
In fact, Adam fell; he had what it
took and took what was illicit, so losing what he had, in that antiquely
horrible pattern for man. Not merely did he not realise the infinite
significance of his simple defilement, default from duty, irresponsibility in
autonomy, violence against truth when he fell (as in Genesis 3); but he did not
understand that death does not live, death of the spirit. In other words, when
you fall in this sphere, at once you are not spiritually what you were; you gain
'everything', but are not 'there', in continued existential reality, to possess
it! Adam however DID realise this: that what he did was forbidden by reality, by
God who made him. Adventurism had appeal; self-elevation has charms. Sin is like
that. He therefore fell into a multitude of problems, light distant, darkness
near .
God however had plans for remedy.
With
power to overcome innate distortions in man and will to realise what would be
true if these were not so, this God can therefore make man free to will as he will.
He must, having KNOWN and foreknown this, then IMPART the result in regeneration
dependent on Himself alone. THIS is what the Bible teaches (John 1:12-14,
Ephesians 2).
What then ?
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1. God would have all to be
reconciled to Himself, having made peace by the blood of the cross (Colossians
1:19ff.).
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2. Man is unable to choose in the
sphere concerned, God Himself. Sin prevents it. The self is a shroud,
self-limited (Romans 9:18).
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3. Pathology makes it so (Ephesians
4:17ff.).
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4. God KNOWS from eternity which of
the creation called mankind, without dictation or manipulation, in truth past a
pathological generality, are His (II Corinthians 2:19, Romans 8:29ff.). He would
like all (as in 1 above), but His love like all true love, is chaste, not making
of its object a means of self-fulfilment. That is not love but pleasure.
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5. In such love, man is KNOWN (I
John 4:7ff.), and with this devotion to truth, he is sought, and in regeneration
he is restored not by his will, but in accord with the truth concerning him, so
that where love may reach, it does; and where it would be violation, it does not
(Matthew 23:37, Luke 19:42ff.). There is no merit in this for man when he comes
back to God, because it is as foreknown.
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There, where sin is not the
dominating feature, and God is not learning from it but giving grace beyond it,
seeing all and able to dismiss what He wills, God knowing beyond it, there IS no
superiority, only reality. You are not better or worse when viewed in the
eternal mind of God, past sin, being foreknown, works apart. It is sin which
makes inferiority and superiority (all being below par, but some in more ways
than others, though all are either with or against the Lord). Where it is not
involved, such things are irrelevant, a matter of another model. God knows all
before time, and knows them absolutely we learn in Romans 9, quite apart from
any question of human attainments.
This then is what works.
This is what solves the problem of sick man choosing to be what he will, when
his will is morbid and its condition polluted. The will is dysfunctional, but
not absent; God is functional and present, and God knows what is beyond the
power of man to determine, with that intense and illimitable passion, though it
be chaste in quality, which seeks for all objectively. So the Bible gives the gen, the
data, the perspective in which alone not only is the whole spectrum of
competing philosophy resolved, but the underlying need is met, and all is
explained. More, it is remedied, but not for all; for some PREFER the
darkness.
When there are options, there is
liberty. Where these are within reach, it is operational. When there is
dysfunction, this is frustrated. When there is power, love and wisdom to seek
for man to find him and place him where in reality he exists as operational and
where alone, then the self of man no longer is the criterion, and past this
bondage, man is placed in an investigatory medium which both makes the option
and secures its action in integrity.
The practical matter was difficult
because pathology; but not too hard for the One of such objective love and
inherent virtue to perform, who became practical on the Cross and all the way to
it, to undo what wrought for man, a devastation defoliation. The sacrifice was
horrific, but in principle not complex. It is multi-faceted, but not unclear.
God did, paid, redeemed, secured, knowing the payees.
It was simple before the pathology;
and in principle, it remains so. It is just that disease takes cure, and when it
is spiritual, only God can do it. He does it constantly, acting in love from
foreknowledge, assured in predestination, so that WHOM HE FOREKNEW those He
predestined, and NOT VICE VERSA. It all depends on the knowledge, indeed the
foreknowledge (not about performance, but the reality, for performance expresses
the self which is only an indirect way of not having freedom, if it be a
criterion for choice).
This is necessary; and it is
PRECISELY what God indicates is the case! This is found in Romans 9:10-11.
What then do we find in the
presentation of biblical principles ? It is this.
God is free. Man was made so. Man
fell and lost the function of freedom at the level of God (and 'died' twice,
once spiritually and once more physically); but God did not share this failure
or its result.
God restores the function of freedom
by regeneration. It is in terms of a universal, divine desire for all to be
found, restored to liberty and reality, and that, it is a desire of the heart of
God as expounded in detail in Three 9Anzas, One
Answer Ch. 6, SMR
Appendix B, Great Execrations ... Greater Grace Chs.
7, 9 and
elsewhere on this site. Thus the mere revelation of self, as given, is not the
limit; the essence of the way it was created in God's image IS the point
(Colossians 3:10) to which it must and does come. God as interpreter is the
reality which transcends, but does not abort or condition or defile, the reality
which, though soiled, remains in man as to principle and power.
It all ends well. Is it all well
then that ends well ? Yes, for those with this end it is; but for those whose
intractable intransigence is known by God, whose Spirit does not always strive
for the spirit of man would wear out before Him (cf. Isaiah 57:15-16), it ends
woefully. Yet in terms of truth, it is well, for this is NOT to beguile liberty
with pathology, or to limit man by his fall to irresistible subjection to
obfuscation. It is God who, rising above it, and knowing it, acts for it,
in integrity of truth, in purity of motivation and in passion of heart, with
practicalities performed.
If, for all of this, those who
are forever ashamed in darkness, have nevertheless wilfully persisted in the
private passion of self-possession, then they are in sad case: yet put them in
heaven against the Head towards whom they are so negative, by indifference,
declaration or device, and what is this ? It would be like but putting a panting
divorcee back by force, worse, by manipulative force, right back with her former
husband. That becomes a virtual prototype of hell. Man is as his heart is,
and where it is not, man is not content; and where guilt speaks atmospherically,
in very essence, the light being blindingly bright for darkened eyes, there is
no respite there. No heaven is no haven for darkness. It flees.
God does not deal by force in things
spiritual, or manipulate. He is a free spirit, not a totalitarian
dictator. He is love, not thrust. Power serves truth, not ambition. God is
already THERE! He always has been and will be. Some seek to rise on the
backs of others, use dynamic to do it.
God is not like that.
Liberty is not another name for
manipulation or for nothing; and what is fixed is as free to clamor against the
spirit of man as air against the trees.
But nothing changes here. The forces
mingle, the facts assemble, the liberties act, the deliverance of the delinquent
proceeds, and the issues are resolved as mist by morning light.
Man is not autonomous, but has
access to liberty. In seeking irrational power, he sacrifices the very power of
spiritual choice to return; but he does not because he cannot sacrifice the love
of God, which makes His transcendence of mere polluted will an open door. Thus
if ANYONE seeks God, He is to be found. None is frustrated. If He is not REALLY
desired, does not God know this ? Past the present, is eternity in which all
things are known; but even IN the present, there are signals of destiny and
breathings of the spirit of man so intense, that he becomes to some extent aware
of the work being done on and in him, and heaves as one restless in his sleep,
as the love of God researches his heart, and the wonder of salvation is offered
past his own understanding, but in a fashion of comprehending charity which
achieves truth in love for liberty.
This Chapter, then, has shown one
bounty is so regarding the purity and indefeasible character of the love,
unselfish and sublime, of God. It provides the only possible way of making
freedom real in man, escaping the bondage of circumstances, culture, history,
psychology, emotions amiss or adrift, by penetrating beyond all this, to the
reality past this pathology, in man; and so acting. Whom He foreknew, all having
NO CLAIM on Him and no merit, being sinners, THESE He predestined.
Man is responsible all the more
because of the infinite knowledge and love for him, of God. His guilt is
rational. His discomfort has grounds, His madnesses have meaning. His
confrontation instead of conformation is a passion illiberal and unredeemed. Yet
God has it covered. Man is not left to it. God has intervened, and so liberty in
essence is achieved by His action, motivation, knowledge and power.
Self is no more the limit when,
based on knowledge infinite, God acts upon it, and fulfils the entire orbit of
liberty in Himself, granting grace as the case requires for His operating
passion to redeem. Thus the sheep come when called, or not if they happen to be
avid beyond all, for not coming; and He who knows, knows how to call His own.
In the next, we shall look at A
SECOND BOUNTY from this same basis! God is liberal. His word liberates, and
grants riches of understanding (cf. Proverbs 8).
NOTES
*1
The Hexad, a set
of 6 volumes, is named:
On Predestination and Foreknowledge, Liberty and
Necessity, Responsiblity, Duty and Creativity.
*2 See:
Repent or Perish
Ch. 7,
SMR Chs. 3 and 5 in mutual contrast,
with Ch. 10, 422Eff. and in
overview, and the Hexad as in *1 above.