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CHAPTER THREE
REALISM, REALITY AND REGALITY
FREEDOM DOES NOT FOUNDER
AND EVEN ARGUMENT FOR IT, USES IT AS BASIC
Following on from Ch. 2, Love, Liberty and the Lord, let us expand our view, for like the Rockies and the Pacific, it is there to see.
Thus, one may ask, how can there be liberty when people are made the way they are, genes and all, and are gunned into action ? and if no liberty, how then love, not just caring dynamic ?
The answer is simple, but needs repeating. Without freedom, there is no love, and without love there is what for many if not most is the most fundamental consideration for mankind, both pragmatically and psychologically, both emotionally and actually, both in preoccupation and in occupation,
love where one is not driven into action that admits only fighting, and that far more likely when one imagines this is the meaning of life, as if the prodigious care taken of their young by lions and man, for example, by elephants and magpies, were not as obvious as any other criterion of life. In fact, selective observation may satisfy the sickened soul, but it does not satisfy the criteria of truth. The natural world has many qualities often found: tenderness is one, cruelty is another. Each can be cherished and used discriminatingly, daringly or defiantly by some.
Without freedom there is no guilt, and the human specialisation in that, which did not begin or end with Lady Macbeth, and does not fail to create or at least foster insanity of various kinds, readilybecomes a morbid folly, rather than a just reaction to the vast gulf often found between behaviour and purpose, standards and attainments, the desire and the outcome, the worthwhileness of life and the dismal, whether in oneself or in one's fellows or world, which is not aseptic to guilt, nor grounds.
With liberty, mankind as such is not insane. Love also is meaningful. The disposability of thought and the considerations of conscience have their ground for sensibilities and failure, in terms of its reason for detestation and positive evaluation by many. Then in liberty also you find reason for bullying, whether of Ukraine by Russia or Germans by Hitler, or of Israel by the vast Arab and Muslim section of the acreage of this world, often morbidly morose at the tiny slither of the residue left for Israel.
Even this was done, after Israel-named Palestine's main mass had been given, not to Israel (as per the decision of the Britain and the League of Nations, 1917-1920), but to Jordan, with even more scratched and thundered for by many others who seem to have acquired a taste for disproportion, disrespect and assault on what is multiply menaced by those already given or possessed of vast tracts of land for their ways, from Egypt to Pakistan. Most of the available land, zealously appointed to Israel by the League of Nations, and gratefully by Britain, has then been occupied by other peoples, so becoming occupied territory, by all other than Israel, itself left a lean rump. In this, Israel has secured but a small part, glowered at by many who wantonly want her entire departure, some from this world.
Since Israel returned after rebuke, awaiting the massive conversions foretold to that same Jesus Christ, is a divine protectorate, this means war with God (cf. Micah 5-7, Deuteronomy 32, Ezekiel 36-39), the results of which in a little, doubtless will be seen, and felt. So liberty to grab and distort, for genocide with international attestations of acceptance of such detestable presumption, and liberty to give, as Israel has done, even of your littleness to the amplitude of others, and the call to repentance not only for this or that reviling instead of truth, but for avoidance of the whole glory of the grand gift of God in the Gospel, both appear in sharpest terms, as people weigh what they will do, and why, and how, and whether this or that is preferable to their innermost desires, in their pondering hearts.
Liberty has marvellous parameters, as has the imagination of man. It can be used for good or for evil.
Indeed, consider even this. The sacrificial lump of Palestine that once was accorded Israel as homeland, though when Israel was assailed by many nations, regained by the Jews, had been given away discreditably after designation for Israel, and yet is now ludicrously called Occupied Territory. It is better named territory regained.
As to the large part of Palestine still taken, and not returned to Israel, the real occupied territory, denied Israel but granted to others, this is occupied by any BUT Israel. Thus part of the Palestine given as a homeland for Israel, most of it, now occupied by non-Israel, is Occupied Territory indeed, and this by those to whom it was not given; and a small part of what was accorded as Jewish homeland, is in the hands of Israel, despite multi-national wars of assault, sudden, heartless and multiplied in men and nations, and gifts of both Sinai and the Gaza Strip BY Israel to its rocket-hamrmering foes.
Yet some of Israel is not called Repossessed, yet named Occupied! when it is this as any home might well be.
It is not surprising that they occupy the small part of the gift given them, that they have retained after considerable bounty in allowing others to occupy some of what they won in war when assaulted, in accordance with the predictions made in Zechariah 12 for example. Occupied ? but of course, and that righteously, wheres what was torn from Israel and given others, while much of their home was thus removed from them, that is indeed Occupied Territory, by Israel's enemies.
it is this as any home is expected to be, as if this were surprising. It is, indeed, in view of this use of freedom, even that surprising enough , when you come from centuries of pogroms and Inquisition and imprisonment, by anti-Jew terrorists over the centuries. Now exclusion and expatriation for Jews is in the continuing cauldron of desire. Logic and liberty alike are shelved by various preferences, applied to the case, often with a passion which does nothing to legitimise it.
This means that what it is in fact Occupied Territory, is not called Occupied Territory, but by the name of various nations; and what IS called Occupied Territory, is just a tad of the former homeland for Israel, now repossessed and kept of the League of Nations appointment. Such was the World War I settlement, twice made.
Thus an arbitrary segment is what Israel now possesses, as residual territory, and what has been grabbed by others from the Palestine grant, is Occupied Territory, but not by Israel, rather by Palestinians.
Since God alone and not matter or various other proponents, which themselves need to be made by what is not nothing but adequate, in the first place, is the Creator, it is rather for Him to call who goes where, if His plans require this. Leaving much free, He has made it superabundantly clear that Israel has a non-cancellable (but pausable) place in their land (cf. Genesis 17:7-7, Jeremiah 31, 33, Ezekiel 47:14, Genesis 15, for example as likewise repeatedly found in Deuteronomy, with a precision stressed in Matthew 5:17-20). To them it is appointed for service which, though they failed crucially, does not in itself cancel His appointment of site, where in fact Christ died vicariously not for Jews only.
This world has freedom to give and grab the land, but not to have its own way in the end. After trials, as in races of horses, there are results; and ours as a race and as various nations include the considerations of what we did with liberty, which alike blends shame and joy, as the case requires. Moreover, efforts to displace our Maker and ignore the only Saviour through the misuse of liberty, can become like rebellion in a nation, but in this case, the division is complete, increasingly universal, and has prospect of finality assured for ever, even to a new heavens and earth (II Peter 3, Isaiah 51:6, Matthew 24:35). These things have been shown separately and often on this site (cf. the Pentad on Israel), but let us extend the cover here a little.
How then does the liberty of Adam - who simply had the unadulterated power to call his replies to situations, obediently to the Lord or otherwise, at first uncrippled, being open on all sides - differ from the liberty today, when God overseeing in foreknowledge who goes where, ensures no disruption of truth in the destiny ?
It differs in much. First it differs in this, that man is already under death sentence (we are examining interstices in the divine divulgement in the Bible here). You find this in Ephesians 2. Mankind is already far from any moral-clad marvel which some seem to want to imagine themselves to be. You find that in Ephesians 4. The case differs. It is like a car crash. In a very little while, beauty becomes ruin.
Secondly, his position differs. He is guilty before God and told so. He needs to be rescued (cf. Hebrews 2:1-3). Man needs to be an escapee from the sentence on sin.
Thirdly, God as One open to liberty, loves what He has made in His image. This has gone to the uttermost in this, that He personally made sacrifice for man in the incarnation of the Messiah, His word of expression who died to bear guilt and give free access to God.
It has this surround of sin and guilt, and liberty (only the last God's, since man is pathologically afflicted with sin), and it is this which is used consistently to enable the core of man's conception and creation, his liberty, still to be guarded. God knows how to preserve this creation of His despite its shame, since God both knows the heart beyond man, being unfazed in understanding by the deceitfulness of sin and sees through and beyond all special pleading that is dishonest and directed merely to gain without love or even honesty. His way has this testimony of divine love. Man's heart is still open to God's disclosure of it and of Himself in His own way, and to the free grant cover, though man as such be closed to himself in much, and to others in more. It is God's liberty and love which has this completeness of prior divine knowledge and sentence-payment for those who receive it into their breasts, this glory of pardon and incalculable depth of peace.
There is much more; but
not less.
LIBERTY IS THE DOWER OF THE DIVINE
So may man be restored as at the first, in integrity, despite many mars (Colossians 3:10), and this without fear (I Thessalonians 5:9-10), and with redemption for immortality (I Corinthians 5, Ephesians 1:11), that those who believe in Him, trusting in His word and provisions because they are His, may live not only for ever, but as adopted children, even in the prodigies of His grace. Man is made so that he is able to appreciate these things, and when sinful mortals of our race so receive the Lord, they are given power to become the children of God (John 1:12), and His spiritual 'seed' remains in them.
This is after the analogy of a physical seed, and it is out of the question to lose this identity whether physically, for your body, or spiritually for your life with Him as a child of His. Here is liberty's love, freedom's outcome, with provision against pollution, deception, and for eternity (cf. Revelation 21:1-8, Matthew 22:12ff.).
Thus this is the situation, the divine knowledge of the core of liberty, the quest for what grace grants fulfilled, God stirring what is defunct in sin, and enabling what was foreknown as His own (John 16). Next is the maintenance of this 'new creation' (John 3, II Cor. 5:17ff.), where trials indeed expose spiritual forgeries, as also spiritual blessings to be inherited on the pilgrim path, surrounded by its beauties and its trials. With this comes the total maintenance to God's children (for a child is born or not, and if born, belongs spiritually as in the physical case). Kept past the historical pollutions, to match God's KNOWING each one before even creation (cf. Romans 8, Ephesians 1:4), the Christian nevertheless can be tried ot the uttermost, and there is some relish in this, for to been enabled when confronted is a singular blessing (I Peter 1:3-8, II Peter 1:4). There its essence and feature are kept at their core, centre and level of destiny. Indeed, there is nothing that is not manifest to God (Hebrews 4:13), and His word is clear (Ephesians 1:11, I John 5, John 5:24, Romans 8:29ff.).
Is it then simply an IF situation ? Is it simply this, that God is saying: IF you come to Me, then all is well, and you must will it ?
No, it is not. That is a pragmatic and practical outcome (as in Proverbs 1); but BEHIND and BEYOND this is the foreknowledge which being before creation, is also in fact and in principle both, before man's sin; and indeed God's foreknowledge of persons is direct (as in Romans 8 where it is a sui generis item, a thing which has the backing and basis in God Himself, just as has the rest of the creation, apart from its misuse). God KNOWS and FORE-KNOWS each, at the level of each, and appoints to many by predestination, that sure and equal destiny, in tune with His foreknowledge of each one, whichever for whomever*1, which accords with that knowledge. Since God IS love and would have all reconciled to Himself, and says so (Colossians 1:19ff., I John 4), and so loved the world that He has removed all effectual impediment for ANY to find Him - He SO loved that whoever does not prefer selectively darkness, may come, it is well, wonderfully well, for those who come.
When the Almighty SO loves that any may come, and the object is the world, in the context of its creation, then to tell Him that this is not so, that He does not SO love, but only has affection of a much narrower kind is simple contradiction. It omits both the power of the presence of God and the provision of predestination with foreknowledge.
HE ought to know His own love, and does and whom it reaches; and only some imaginary created being extorts pleasure from hurting his creation, being thus shown up as incomplete and in need, and not himself God. God is not so. His way is not thus. Gods without glory, idols, these may do any foolish thing, in mind, but meet the barriers in the God who is so indeed, without whom nothing can avail.
So we rove happily for new insights in this field. These principles from the Bible answer every challenge, interpret every facet of human life and experience, and as unique in coverage of our total situation without contradiction, attest the God who in His Bible gave them. One major stumbling block to many is the extent of suffering which, like the extent of joy (cf. I Thessalonians 5) is notable. However this is closely connected to the extent of rebellion (as from atheists and heretics, twisters of truth and the wilfully confused), indifference (as in parallel, from those ignoring their parents) or mockery (as, for example, from callow youths who often seem to find no satisfaction greater than in libelling their seniors, sometimes the more disturbed when their records were splendid, and they are subverted by their own sin or the preachments of sinuous deceivers).
Types of sin for all ages, in the face of magnificent divine kindness constitute a starting point that is so common, that in one way or another, it twists the very situation of this world into one of urgency, insurgency and writhing, on the one hand, as well on the other hand, as not touching or defiling some with its unwashed taint: those who having found the Lord are insulated effectually, but not without battles, given victory in Christ.
The extremity of the situation being ignored, the nature of the case is often not understood, as if one consigned to the gallows said glibly, Well on my script, I had no liberty. The hand that had liberty was attached to a field of choice, which is reciprocal, whether for the carelessly cruel or the judiciously assessive. While madness may be pled, and may actually occur, the taking of life is not a toy, and results are not cancellable by saying nice words. Desire to murder is not even excluded from the agenda possibilities of some, and there is such a thing as a meeting of morals with inveterate and devastating hatred. God knows basis and cause, responsibility and competence, talent and truth. He discerns (Psalm 11).
That is where it is so
significant that you have
a deceitful illusion on the part of many (cf Jeremiah 7, and 17). Evil is not
only corruptive and disruptive, but insidious as well as invidious, and is not
lame.
FUNDAMENTAL ERRORS CONCERNING FUNDAMENTALISM,
A TERM TOO MISUSED TO BE CLEARLY USED WITHOUT PURGING POLLUTION
cf. For the Biblical Workman Appendix 3
Some, without realising that they become guilty of seditious slander, will tell all people who believe God has spoken explicitly, that as thus fundamentalists of a kind, they are one crew with all others who attribute words of instruction to God, and with these, hateful and hating. That is like telling someone who loves that he never has wisdom. It is just a figment, based on nothing, like a universe without God. In fact, just as a king is sovereign, but not even if absolute, necessarily kind or cruel, there is no indication in the sovereignty alone. Autonomy is not necessarily atrocious, the confusion coming to some perhaps because what is NOT fitting for it, and CANNOT have it, such as any creation, may pretentiously act as if he or she did have it, and so invite scorn and horror alike. But with God this is not so. The creation IS His idea, the principles are His, and so are the provisions.
Thus those who believe that God has spoken are not thereby committed to kindness or cruelty, but certainly to thought. As just noted, cruel gods are but myths, and in fact knowing the actual God of power, purity, truth and love, of mercy, is the very opposite: those thus are servants of the God who SHOWED His love by His actions, sacrifice and pardon in providing a costly redemption; and even at that, its reality by NOT forcing, but graciously offering it.
For a doctor to hate influenza is far removed from hatred of patients with it, as he may slave away out of kindness and with heart, to dismiss it from the victim. To assume that since he fights it and the patient has it, he must hate the patient is near to the impression of lunacy. Yet many apparently quite intelligent persons try to imagine that they are not becoming little sovereigns, immune to reason, logic, truth and equity when they try to link biblical Christians as such, to ancient hatreds, or any hatreds of persons. The process of deliberately spreading influenza, this may indeed be hateful, and so assessed because of love for those thus afflicted, by the sadists. But again, this is to hate those in fact concerned for the very opposite, namely to provide help and healing. If for the one, their evil collaboration with death and its means is on this heartless scale, as to those seeking redress for others with grace, is on a consignment of contrast. Confusion here is absolute, misrepresentation at its peak, folly in the domain of boundless.
These are opposites, ruthlessly confused. Is it love or hatred which does this!
Where healing and help is in view, not force and subversion, then the case is so assessed in love, which seeks the best for all, and clarity for what refuses all goodness.
Mercy outdistances judgment, but only through enormous suffering and payment vicariously made, as wrought by Christ whose action has gripped the world for millenia. To slander or libel Christians because they believe in divine authority, heavenly articulation, clear communication from the Maker, something has so acted as the standard and crux for all, as if they were intolerant and mischievous, when they are tolerant enough to die daily for the spread of the love of God and the way to it, what is it ? Does it not descend to the place of being a mere shambles of thought, odious in acrimony, averse to logic, filled with artless and irrelevant generalisation, not even limping, death to logic and falling before desire.
And what desire ?
It is necessary not to act as if the opposite of some situation were thereby automatically correct, in order to indulge a vexation, apply a confusion, exact a vengeance, or to distance a challenge. But where such a course is chosen, it is necessary to expose it in the name of truth, and the provision of mercy.
NOTE
What is in the image of God Himself, its nature as eternal ? For one, there is the fact that He is never overborne AS GOD, never subordinated by limits composed, over-rule imposed, whether it be circumstantial or internal.
What was in the image of man as created in the image of God ? First there is an implicit, necessary and obvious limit for man, NOT present in God. Much false religion ignores this fact, but when this is done, the mistake, like the ACTUAL difference between God and man, is infinite. No wonder such prodigies of rebellion in the oft-found doctrines and dogmas invented by man do not work in theory or practice. An infinite mistake is not ... small.
But man is. He DOES have limits and this is as integral to a created being, dependent for very existence on another, in this case God, as any other aspect of the model as it may be conceived, presented by the Bible, and also inserted into history. There is however a human level degree of independence. While you cannot create a new universe, or liberty, yet leaving even programmatic computers of whatever sophistication, mere objects of direction, however subtly imposed and through whatever multiplied processes, all the things of your creation in terms of what preceded you in creation, yet there is amplitude for man. There are elements in the image of God which in man, which are not ruled out by the infinite difference in power and wisdom that exists between God and man as such.
One of these is the definitive nature of PERSON. As a person, distinct from a robot or programmatic entity, whether the program be imposed mechanically, metaphysically, electronically or by other elements of the created universe and its applications, there are some features which are inalienable. One is this: that you lack those constraints, for then you become and are merely an object, however cleverly disguised; then you remain the product of one who for you, is directly and without residue, responsible. The constraints instead are lacking not infinitely, but finitely, as for a finite being. AS a person you are free, when not in a pathological discard or retard condition (like a car without one of its tyres). Thus you can choose your ways, friends and loves, hates and concept of happiness, well-being and right and wrong. It is not that you have to create these, to be a person, but have the options at hand, whoever puts them there, and however that is done.
Selection is yours. The most important case is selection of God. There is only one to choose but you may choose negatively concerning Him - that very one (II Chronicles 36), and so so in spite, indeed in despite of whatever claims and truth may be in His offered Lordship and salvation as it later becomes necessary, following the fall, you continue in the short-circuit and long result.
The Lord knows, FOREKNOWS who are His, what is the inherent and eventual volition, preference the scriptural word (John 3:19); and before time and fall and sin, with His own Gospel and grace and original creation of the person, His own love KNOWS His own.
They are not chosen in a mysterious divine preference (for God performs His own will in heaven and earth as in Psalm 115), without principle, but only with unmitigated divine grace, to which man contributes nothing. Thus, It is not as if the thing most suitable for salvation would be taken, and this by divine election itself, scarcely lacking in superiority or inherent desirability at the spiritual level, hence not by grace alone. That is what has been called on this site the X-factor, the object in the mist of the mystery, the inclination basis. If despite the desire of the Almighty, He does not really want all in terms of the blood of Christ (Colossians 1:19ff.), then that is the anti-biblical position, and much theological thinking in one extreme, needs correction.
That is one of the great weaknesses of what ignoring the biblical situation, as repeatedly shown as in particular in SMR Appendix B, has divine love not as the exclusion factor, but the inclusive thrust, which denotes vast grief when it is thrust aside by man (as in Isaiah 48, Jeremiah 48, Matthew 23, Luke 21). This love was SO intense that God even went to the extent of incarnation in His only begotten Son and suffering that He should suffer vicariously for the very sin of creation in man. This divine love was so great that He came NOT to condemn the world, as John 3 declares, but His coming was instead so that the world might be saved. Those were the divine parameters of stated purpose. It was so directed that WHOEVER is the designation of those invited, otherwise named "the world" and this in a context of creation itself. It is as in I Timothy 2 likewise, and I Timothy 4:10 resounds to the same tune.
When however we deal with the very nature of man as at the first, as a creation in the image of God, we see what is involved. Man may choose not to obey or to obey God in a clear-cut test situation from and at the very first. Asa mad in the image of God, that is his position.
If he chooses amiss, of course, that is a lack of faith in God, without ground other than that of the shrewd spiritual salesman who hates God, the mocking creature intent on self-important eminence, the devil, which is nothing but empty pretence: as it then was, it still is, and as man declined to trust God, so he most often still does; and as the result then was the fall, imposing blindness is many things and so debilitating, enervating and evacuating the wonder of the person called man to a vast degree, severing the line to God, and bringing in death, it still operates to amplify the bleakness of the already now fallen condition.
That is the principle of this operation of the phenomenon of person in man in the creation by God in His image as their displayed, and this being the constitutive case, it is also the foreknown aspect in man, before ever he was created or sinned, and in this freedom, product of God ONLY, man is foreseen, NOT as to what he will do, since that is fallen, but in terms of what he is before the fall known to be and seen to be, foreknown to be in essence and reality (Ephesians 1:4, Romans 9:11). Into predestination the results pour as in Romans 8:29ff.. These are the biblical figurings. God was not unjust to condemn a robot for sinning in Eden; but just, for it was not a robot but a real person as shown from the outset.
God is not unjust to condemn now what rejects Him, His offer of salvation, since this is the mere historical fulfilment of foreknowledge in all its divine truth, and whatever HE deems best for the implementation of these realities in time, these things are His to show as He will. If it is shown in the face of His offer, so the case is displayed once and for all, short of repentance, and shame is the consequence (Luke 9:26). There is no good point in knowing more about God than God does, and it is besides, mere pretension.
It is all as in the Bible, the love no less intense than Wesley insisted, and the sovereignty of the divine disposition of all things, as secure as Calvin sought, each neglecting other features!
The reality including the freedom He loved and made and showed from the first, but one misapplied so amazingly by Calvin (as in his exposition of Matthew 23:37 in his Institutes, when in incredible error, he seeks to separate Father and Son definitively on this crucial issue). In fact, they are one, Father and Son, not dissident, and no condescension makes it otherwise: all that the Father has, as Christ declared, being His. Far from differing from His Son was the Father at this point concerning Jerusalem, as in all things for the Son ALWAYS does what the Father does, and does it in the same way: and that, it was the testimony of Christ WHILE incarnate (John 8:29, 5:19-22, 16:15).
Contradicting the Bible is not a good way to interpret it. Nothing ever changes that (John 8:23).
Concern here is as always in this project, that it be shown that whatever the Bible declares, it has no systematic, no inherent clash in concepts, error in depictions, irrationality in its discourse, but stands alone in all philosophies and religions, pure as truth, clear if sometimes deliciously challenging, as the soaring songs of birds, realistic as ruins and wonderful as the glory of the dawning splendour and the evening artistries of the skies, and more so. It is both the word and the work of God and belief in its word, the Bible (written) and the Son (incarnated) is not only as natural as birth, but as necessary as 2 plus 2 being 4 in its various ways, if one is to avoid believing a lie (cf. Isaiah 44:20, Jeremiah 14:14).
In fact, departing from its ways of life and word, readily leads to insoluble problems in both life and thought, a further verification, for His name is written on creation, whether directly or in its rebuff when it contests and conflicts with Him, and what is unique in Him is not to be found in another! (John 6:68, Isaiah 45:9,21).