Book Review: Ryan Thompson on The Bondage of The Will
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Erasmus was wrong. This is no tender statement of a Victorian morality in which one seeks not to hurt feelings or gently tickle the ears. It is not a hesitant tiptoeing around a problem. It is not an overstatement. Erasmus was wrong. It is a harsh statement but one that Martin Luther would most certainly have approved of. Of course, one here wonders, “Why was Erasmus wrong? What indeed did the poor soul do who could garner such a lead line?” It would be prudent to alert the reader to a certain debate that seems to have been present in the Church for many hundreds of years. This debate has raged since Paul when men hurled the furious objection, “Why does [God] still find fault? For who resists his will?” (Romans 9:19). It is a debate that has raged from the days of Origen and a debate that without a doubt found its full power in the days of Augustine and Pelagius. While this debate may have quelled in some more peaceful form for several hundred years it nonetheless remained on the minds of Christians in one form or another up until the Protestant Reformation. It was at this point that the debate exploded. What debate is this? It is none other than the pressing question, “Do I have a free will? Can my will trump God’s will?” During the early 16th century this issue began to be fiercely debated due in large part to Luther and in no small part to Erasmus of Rotterdam. So it was that Erasmus, the great rhetorician and unfortunate mediate between Rome and the Reformers came to write the incredibly explosive and highly controversial Diatribe on Free Will (De libero arbtitrio Diatribe sive collatio) which was an essentially polemic text against Luther and the Reformer’s stance on free will. So the question remains, “What on earth did poor Erasmus say that could garner such a fierce lead line? Why this thesis?” Let Erasmus speak for himself,
“Free will...is a power in the human will, by which, a man may apply himself to those things which lead unto eternal salvation, or turn away from the same.”1Perhaps Luther’s paraphrase of this statement may make it more palatable,
“Free will is a power of the human will, which can, of itself, will and not will to embrace the word and work of God...”2Erasmus was wrong, or so said Luther in his cornerstone work The Bondage of the Will (De servo arbitrio.)
I had always wanted to read Luther beyond the secondary sources and after enrolling in a European studies class at my longtime favorite Emmaus Bible College3 I was given the great opportunity to do so with The Bondage of the Will. I was certainly not disappointed and this book will remain in mind as formative on this issue of the will and the providence of God. Indeed, I could not have asked for a better place to start in understanding Luther and the Reformation than what I shall heretofore label simply Bondage. Until this book I was left totally in the dark as to where this whole raging, dare I say, flaming, debate about the will and providence of God had come from and where it should go. I did not really know any further than my favorite conservative reformed Baptist preacher what it meant to believe in the sovereignty of God. I was not even sure how to properly define the issue apart from a stern personal conviction that Paul was speaking of individual election in Romans 9 and Pharaoh was most certainly hardened by the sovereign God in the account of Israel’s Exodus from Egypt. But, I definitely did not have any well formed arguments (not being a terribly original thinker) to develop these thoughts. Luther’s Bondage changed all of that. This book has left no small imprint in my thinking and has opened doors for the enlargement of my mind in thinking about the sovereign God and the bound will of man.
The number one thing that I loved about this book and which was a most important theme in my reading of it was that it convinced me that predestination and the issue of the will really actually mattered. I am well acquainted with that mean and base saying from many of my friends and still many of my elders that the issues of free will and providence are tertiary issues and too insignificant to argue about. I have heard any number of excuses and have more than once been branded as argumentative and one who created dissension for insisting that the Bible said the will was bound and that to say otherwise bordered biblical ignorance. I have often heard ridiculous things about how this issue is “secondary.” I have never bought that and I still cannot buy that, I would face persecution at the hands of any number of people to stand up for the truth of the sovereign God who’s will most certainly is far greater than any will which man may have. I will continue to tell Arminians that even though they may be saved they have focused far too strongly upon man and are therefore in danger of making Christianity not a Chrsitocentric and Theocentric faith, but an Anthropocentric religion that elevates man as most glorious. I have been told, by many indeed, that as doctrine goes this is a lesser doctrine and that doctrine, as it goes, isn’t really so important as to argue about silly things like whether man’s will is bound or not. This is where Luther comes in. Luther faced the exact same charges from those of his day who preferred not to deal with this issue directly. Just listen to Erasmus. He said of himself that he was,
“So far from delighting in assertions, that [he] would rather go over at once to the sentiments of the skeptics, if the inviolable authority of the Holy Scriptures, and the decrees of the church, would permit [him].”4In so many words, Erasmus didn’t like doctrine and this doctrine he liked least of all. In his head, he would rather have been a skeptic than deal with the weighty assertions Luther was making at that time. Is this not indeed what we deal with on a daily basis? Erasmus said nothing more nor less than what I am told by some of my best friends and hear from much of the current scholarship. They would have me believe that this wasn’t such a great issue after all and I should just give up trying to understand it it. They claim, like Erasmus, a sort of theological agnosticism when it comes to question of the will. Luther was all over it.
“Not to delight in assertions is not the character of the Christian mind: no, he must delight in assertions, or he is not a Christian.”5And again,
“Take away assertions, and you take away Christianity.”6Further,
“Allow us to be assertors, and to delight in assertions: and do you favor your Skeptics and Academics until Christ shall have called you also. The Holy Spirit is not a Skeptic, nor are what he has written on our hearts doubts or opinions, but assertions more certain, and more firm, than life itself and all human experience.”7But Luther doesn’t stop there, after chiding Erasmus for so light and fluffy a view on doctrine (he elsewhere called the whole debate “irreligious, curious, and superfluous”) he drives the point home that,
“It is not irreligious, curious, or superfluous, but essentially wholesome and necessary, for a Christian to know, whether or not the will does anything in those things which pertain unto salvation. No let me tell you, it is the very hinge upon which our discussion turns. It is the very heart of our subject. For our object is this: to inquire what free will can do, in what it is passive, and how it stands with reference to the grace of God. If we know nothing of these things, we shall know nothing whatever of Christian matters, and shall be far behind all people on earth. He that does not feel this, let him confess that he is no Christian. And he that despises and laughs at it, let him know that he is the Christian’s greatest enemy. For if I know not how much I can do myself, how far my ability extends, and what I can do God-ward, I shall be equally uncertain and ignorant how much God is to do, how far his ability is to extend, and what he is to do toward me; whereas it is “God which worketh all in all” (1 Cor. 12:6). But if I know not the distinction between our working and the power of God, I know not God Himself. And if I know not God, I cannot worship Him, praise Him, give Him thanks, nor serve Him; for I shall not know much I ought to ascribe unto myself, and how much unto God. It is necessary, therefore, to hold the most certain distinction, between the power of God and our power, the working of God and our working, if we would live in His fear.”8This is a breath of fresh air for a Reformed person like myself surrounded by barking and occasionally vicious dogs (thanks to Calvin for that “dogs” phrase) who would have me believe that the issue of the will of man is really not that big a deal and who get their feelings hurt when I contend that it is, in fact, a huge deal as demonstrated by Luther above. It is of great comfort to know that this issue really and actually matters, and that I am not simply chasing after air when I wrestle with it both privately and publicly!
After so maligning Erasmus’ ridiculous arguments Luther turns to reason and to Scripture and proves wrong Erasmus’ statement,
“Free will...is a power in the human will, by which, a man may apply himself to those things which lead unto eternal salvation, or turn away from the same.”9After this statement, and this is my second favorite part of the book, Luther convinced me both Scripturally and from Reason that the human will was wholly depraved and therefore bound and not free. Luther most definitely makes an argument that God is sovereign and, therefore, the human will is bound and not free, but I have no time to go into that here. You should definitely read the book for yourself. For now, I focus on his argument that the human will is depraved. Through a set of arguments based upon the depravity of the human heart, Luther says,
“Free will, having once lost its liberty, is compulsively bound to the service of sin, and cannot will anything good, I, from these words, can understand nothing else than that free will is a mere empty term whose reality is lost. And a lost liberty, according to my grammar, is no liberty at all.”10Like Calvin, and Augustine, and Paul, Luther argues that the will of man is utterly depraved, that he does not choose good, and that he indeed cannot choose good. Therefore, as he says, “free will” is a liberty lost. This is simply it, one day, before the fall, man was created as a creature who had free will, but this will was totally corrupted at the fall and subsequently left all mankind reeling with the ability only to serve sin. So...how is that free will? How is a will which by nature serves only sin and Satan free? That’s just it, it isn’t! It is bound. Bound to sin, bound, Satan, and bound ultimately by the sovereign God of the universe. Luther says,
“Scripture describes man as corrupt and a captive; and added to that, as proudly [sic] conteming and ignorant of his corruption and captivity; and therefore, by those words, it goads him and rouses him up, that he might know, by a real experience, how unable he is to any one of those things [that Erasmus says he can do].”11Further,
“We can do nothing ourselves, and...if we do anything, God works that in us.”12After speaking from the Scripture infused reason (for the better part 70 pages!) Luther moves to Scriptural arguments in whole. Luther says it plainly,
“The Word of God is to be understood according to the plain meaning of the words.”13He then proceeds to work through Romans 1-3 and proves that the will is indeed depraved and therefore bound. He says,
“Paul, writing to the Romans, thus enters upon his argument, against free will, and for the grace of God. ‘The wrath of God ([sic]saith he) is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness’ (Rom. 1:18).”So Luther goes on,
“Do you hear this general sentence, ‘against all men,’ that they are all under the wrath of God? And what is this but declaring that they all merit wrath and punishment? For he assigns the cause of the wrath against them - they do nothing but that which merits wrath; because they are all ungodly and unrighteous, and hold the truth in unrighteousness.”And so, Luther concludes,
“Where is now the power of free will which can endeavor anything good?”14In other words, Romans 1 contends that man’s will can choose nothing good and, if it can choose anything at all, will choose only bad. This argument he makes throughout a, dare I say, genius exposition of Romans 1-3 which ends with the words,
“But let us hear Paul, who is his own interpreter. In the third chapter, drawing up, as it were, a conclusion, he says, ‘What then? Are we better than they? No, in no wise; for we have before proved both Jews and Greeks that they are all under sin’ (Rom 3:9). Where is now free will! All, says he, both Jews and Greeks are under sin!...Thus he proves to them afterward from experience, showing them, that being hated of God, they were given up to so many vices, in order that they might be convinced from the fruits of their ungodliness that they willed and did nothing but evil.”15Does man have a will? Indeed, according to reason and to the Scriptural doctrine of depravity, even just by observing life in general, it can without a doubt be said, NO! Or at least, if there be any will it is a will that is wholly bound to sin and able to serve and choose only ungodliness!
Luther touches many other subjects and proofs, and I have only given a mere inkling of the whole work here. This said, I would advise a thorough reading of Martin Luther’s Bondage of the Will. Whether you are a so-called “Calvinist” or an Arminian in doctrine, this book will challenge you and hopefully work towards convincing you that God is the sovereign, almighty, ordaining, foreknowing, prescient God of the universe and that we should, as depraved and sinful men and women, be on our knees before Him in thanks and praise for Who He is and that we believe in the first place! It really doesn’t matter which side of the debate you fall on, I would argue that to ignore this book renders you historically unfit to partake in the debate at all. Even if you disagree with Luther in the end he presents arguments that must be answered and must be considered by both sides. Therefore I leave with my classic review ending cry:
Read This book!
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Ryan Thompson's new favorite theologian is Martin Luther. On the average day Mr. Thompson can be found telling his best friends that they are "vile dogs" or that their best writings are, "words of eloquence so rare in vessels of dung." Clearly, he has begun to spend too much time around Luther! Come and tell him so over at his blog here.2 Ibid., 94.
3 Let the reader beware, to accuse this beloved institution of indoctrinating me into that blanch worthy and dirty word known as “Calvinism” would be a hasty accusation indeed. No, the institution in no way leans a certain direction and I, of all the students at least, should know this. I have definitely been chided by teachers at this institution for holding so strongly to the Doctrines of Grace and have more than once been assigned books by, are you ready for this? Arminians. Yes indeed, several times I have been asked to read books by Arminians and this not necessarily in a critical fashion. I have many times had my own questions and concerns to my professors and others as to the validity of their weak belief in the Doctrines of Grace if they had any. In other words, I think they are too Arminian! Let this be a warning: to jump to the immediate conclusion that because I was assigned a book sympathetic with a strong view of the sovereignty of God Emmaus Bible College was somehow, “Calvinist” would be a totally incorrect snap judgment and I urge you not to assume this. I have so far been assigned at Emmaus to read the work of Egalitarians, Arminians, Postmodernists, Calvinists, Amyraldians, Anglicans, Presbyterians, Lutherans, the so-called Brethren, Augustinians, Hyper-Calvnists, Moderate Calvinists, Charismatics, Complementarians, Catholics, Presuppositionalists, Evidentialists, Fideists, Annhiliationists, Universalists, Open Theists, Amillennialists, Postmillennialists, Preterists, Permillennialists, and many many more. Saying that because I am Reformed, and am allowed to go to Emmaus, and do well there, and have relationships with teachers there, and am assigned books like, “The Bondage of the Will,” there, means that Emmaus must most certainly be “Calvinist” is not only a logical fallacy (if a is b and c is associated with a then c must be b) it would also be like saying that because I read and was assigned that abhorrent Egalitarian book known as “Discovering Biblical Equality” at Emmaus they must, therefore, be Egalitarians. They aren’t. I should know. I go there. Thus, it would most certainly be a wrong supposition to assume that because I have been assigned to read a book by Luther, Emmaus holds to everything he says. They don’t. I should know. I go there. I talk to faculty all the time. Take my word for it.
4 Erasmus. Qtd in Bondage, 17
5 Ibid., 17.
6 Ibid., 18.
7 Ibid., 22.
8 Ibid., 31.
9 Erasmus. Qtd in Bondage, 91.
10 Ibid., 103.
11 Ibid., 108.
12 Ibid., 134.
13 Ibid., 150.
14 Ibid., 231-232.
15 Ibid., 237.
Posted by R.D. Thompson 8:22:00 PM 0 comments
Review Coming
Monday, October 6, 2008
Luther's Scripture saturated and God enamoured polemic against Erasmus contained all the marks of the Reformation and, Ryan would argue, lays the very basis for the five solas.
Check in later this week for this helpful and inspiring review!
Posted by R.D. Thompson 9:41:00 PM 0 comments
Book Review: Sarah Lepisto on "True Spirituality"
Thursday, July 24, 2008
True Spirituality, Francis A. Schaeffer, Tyndale House Publishers, 1972, 192 pages, $13 (paperback)
What is True Spirituality? The mechanism that detects liberal theology is immediately set a-flashing. That was my initial reaction to the question raised by Francis Schaeffer in his book, True Spirituality. Forsooth, I needn’t have feared his intellectual-philosophical approach, which contrasts with liberal theology. One does not need to ignore rationality to be truly, embracingly spiritual. The liberal theologians believe that Christianity is indeed irrational, and so all sorts of compromises and compensations are made. Schaeffer is uncompromising, and True Spirituality is the fruit. He conceded that this book, “should have been my first,” and many others agree that the concepts he expresses are foundational to his other works. Skepticism was knocked unconscious by curiosity upon his introductory statement: “For the sake of honesty I had to go all the way back to my agnosticism and think through the whole matter,” that is, True Spirituality.
Schaeffer’s authorial purpose was simply to display his outworking of the “problem of reality.” What does the Bible say about reality as a Christian? He has left the crumbs of his journey from agnosticism to Christianity for us to follow. It is really a book of IF, THEN statements, so the reader has to make dozens of decisions. For example, I was a bit tired of the first few chapters trying to convince me that God exists. I know this, let’s move on! But Schaeffer points out that this PERSONAL, infinite, creator-God exists. This personal aspect is the apologetic and philosophic basis of the book. If the PERSONAL God exists, then . . .
The basic precepts of humanism are false
Rationally, I can believe this because I am personal
This means that God must be my “integration point”
The personal relationships with myself and others take on a new depth and responsibility.
Responsibility to the truth is not ‘heavy’. I think the term responsibility throws us, and we pretend not to hear it. Even today I have to fight with every fiber in my being the impulse to run outside to sunshine and freedom when my mother says just one word: dishes. I could make all sorts of excuses, like the intonation in her voice made me feel threatened and so forth. But responsibility to truth is not like that. It is light because it is in agreement with who we are! We are responsible to exhibit God’s character and relate to one another in love and mercy because we ourselves need it. We are created by a personal God.
The theme of this book is ‘What True Spirituality looks like and why the Christian answer make sense,’ while the thesis asserts ‘True Spirituality is based on the reality of the Creator-creature “temporal-spatial” relationship that answers the basic problems of man.’
The book is organized into two sections: Freedom from the Bonds of Sin, and Freedom from the Results of the Bonds of Sin. I confess that at first I thought Schaeffer rather tedious for addressing these elementary issues. As I read I was reminded that it was Francis Schaeffer doing the thinking. I was surprised, yes, and am now convinced that this book is the chicken soup for the intellectually agitated Christian.
Schaeffer argues that True Spirituality and the Christian life should be synonymous. Christianity is not merely a set of “do-nots.” Regrettably, it is to some, which illustrates that the “inward area is the first place of the loss of true spirituality,” (4). Stripping away the “do-nots” we Christians have the Law of Love and the 10 Commandments. Both of these place the centrality of Christian practice outside of ourselves. Schaeffer argues that the last commandment, “Do not covet,” is the summation of the others and points True Spirituality inward. One must fight covetousness by two tests: “I am to love God enough to be contented,” (9) and “we should love man enough not to envy,” (13). Schaeffer was helpful in defining envy as “a mentality that would give us secret satisfaction at man’s misfortune.” Another weapon against covetousness is thankfulness, for ALL things. If we do not do this, or any other commands of God, we deny what we say we believe by our incriminating practice.
To admit True Spirituality, acknowledging its inward centrality, we must say “no to the world in rebellion with its Creator,” (24). This means death in our lives, the “centrality of death” actually. Schaeffer exhorts that Christ’s death is not only our redemption, but our pattern. Christ taught “rejection in the matters of daily life. This is where we must die,” (28). Schaeffer contrasts this with the prevailing humanistic worldview: “Absolutes of any kind, ethical principles, everything must give in to affluence and selfish personal peace,” (20). He goes further and challenges: “How much thought does the necessity of death by choice provoke, how much conversation?” (26).
The merit of this concept is that it is a sort of breaking the glass cup at the end of the marriage ceremony. Wake up! to what it means to be a Christian. How then, as Christian Hedonists, do we perform daily death rituals? We obey, knowing that as we align ourselves in the will of God through reading His word, prayer, discipleship, we are receiving the best in exchange for the counterfeit. Consider the persecuted church. They suffer daily – secret baptisms in the creek by night, beatings by family for skimming the Bible, imprisonment in a shipping container for years with broken legs. The persecuted church deems imprisonment as safety. It is daily rejection and slaying. And it is happening now. Perhaps it should come to us.
To follow the pattern of Christ, Schaeffer submits that we must also live as if we have been resurrected. This is not so far-fetched. What do we say about baptism? A picture of death to sin, life to Christ. Resurrection is “not just a psychological hope,” but reality. Here Schaeffer points to the Transfiguration of Christ as a glimpse of his post-resurrected glory occurring in time and space. His argument is that we believers have seen heaven and have been resurrected, how could we be resurrected on earth and have the same perspective on earth? What if we could wipe our perspective slate clean (Schaeffer asserts, to my discomfort, even being rid of concepts of good and bad), and replace it with God’s. What if we could remove, as Schaeffer suggests (and to our discomfort), even our concepts of good and bad. What if we could enter a church building – wait, even that is perspective, ahem – what if we could gather with believers and do what God wants – not expecting the Pentecostals to gyrate, or the Quakers to frown, or the Emergents to not bring their Bibles. Communicating with God and “being alive to God,” (45). What if we could kill every instinct to avoid the obnoxious kid whose mentality is ravaged by puberty and disciple him? We would act like new creatures.
Here Schaeffer rescued these thoughts with fresh skepticism: “How are we going to live this way, if we are to think of this (selfless, resurrection business) not merely as some sort of abstract ‘religious experience’, a combination of mood and moment, a vague, contentless, meaningless, existential experience?” (53). He offers “two factors of reality” from 2 Corinthians 5.4-5: I will be with Christ when I die, and I am now indwelt by the Holy Spirit. We are to live as ones resurrected not in our own strength, by the agency of the Holy Spirit, and by active-passivity (Mary-like, constant faith). Thank you, Dr. Schaeffer, for demanding the answer to a question I ask myself every time someone tries to arouse our piety by playing on emotion - lightly playing music during prayer, or giving sermons of a promise without the exhortation to persevere. How far can I go – and still be exercising faith – in asking for daily practical guides for my thinking and my actions? The danger in taking practicality out of spirituality is that it ceases to be True Spirituality. I think this is the point Schaeffer is making: The Christian life is spiritual now. We must live as spiritual beings. True spirituality is not a mood, or even a preference. It is reality now and the reality of what is to come. These things are what Schaeffer calls “basic considerations of the Christian Life and True Spirituality” (55).
Schaeffer insists on the reality of bearing fruit as a Christian. This is the last item I will bring to attention under the “basic considerations.” I love it when authors bring my attention to items of subconscious – that is, things that have been covered with the colored glass of perspective that normally receive no attention. Schaeffer aborted a misconception from my subconscious with this statement: “It is possible as a Christian to be bringing forth the same kind of fruit now as we did before we were Christians,” (81). Doctrine does no good unless it is “doctrine appropriated,” (84). He calls the fact that we are finite creatures that can “bring forth into the external world” “sublime.” The fact that even after regeneration, I can be a “death producing machine” “sobering,” (120).
“The basis is not your faith; it is the finished work of Christ. Faith is the instrument to receive this thing from God that Christ has purchased for us,” (79). I had a flashback to childhood visits to the hairdresser. She would always tilt my head at 37.5 degrees and expect me to hold it for at least two hours – and she always noticed when I drooped half a degree. How grateful I am that the Lord has gifted teachers like Schaeffer to jerk my head back to the finished work of Christ, to what I owe restored and continuing communion with God. It would not be a bad idea to continually ask ourselves, ‘(how, why) do I appreciate “Christ’s finished mediatorial work”?’ Later Schaeffer will argue that this focused understanding of what Christ’s finished work means to me at present will be key to healthy assurance, repentance, and sanctification.
In the second section of True Spirituality, Schaeffer discusses freedom now from the results of the bonds of sin. Two of these freedoms are in conscience and in our “thought world”. In conscience, we are free from perfectionism, and free from thinking of sin abstractly. In the “thought world,” we are delivered, as much as we can be in this life, from “separation from ourselves in the internal world of thought,” (106). Paul addressed this with the phrases “ vain in . . . reasoning,” and “mind void of judgment.” Schaeffer consummates one of his main points in this chapter: Internal is central. It precedes the external (acts, emotion, etc), it is causal to the external, and it is central in morality. “Man . . . is distinguished as man by the fact that in a very real way he lives inside his head,” (112). He points out that our actions, or the fruit of our thought, are not our essence, “but they exhibit what we are,” (116). He draws the conclusions that:
1. Communion with God must take place in our inward self
2. The real battle is in ideas
3. True Spirituality begins in “thought world”
I think a lot of people picture some sort of ‘Angels in the Outfield’ struggle against obstacles of our own ambition. But when we consider, as Schaeffer reminds us, that every action is the direct result of a thought, it is obvious that “thought world” is where the real battle is. I do not think this is some super-hyped conscience ready to check-mate a thought pregnant with sin. I do not think it is exclusively reprimanding our thoughts as they appear. How pitifully obsequious the early saints, or wannabees, were to try and bring their thought world under God’s submission by asceticism. If the internal is central, reform must begin there.
The other concepts that fall under “Freedom from the Results of the Bonds of Sin” include four “substantial” healings. Schaeffer clarifies that substantial means there is the possibility of healing, it is adequate and does not mean perfection
The substantial healing of psychological problems answers the two questions of man. The question of being (which is inescapable), and the question of what man is in the circle of his existence. The only logical position for the non-believer is the self-centered cocoon of humanism. But, “God has made him rational. He cannot move from this cocoon and yet he must – and so he is crushed by what he is.” He is, in a sense, doubly damned: by God’s justice and the denial of his whole being. Neither can man deny that he needs love, and therefore cannot be machine or animal. Schaeffer illustrates how Sigmund Frued condemns himself in this manner. We are personal creatures who need love. Freud argued the purpose of life was procreation. Schaeffer calls this plea of Freud to his fiancée “a shuddering standstill”: “When you come to me, little Princess, love me irrationally.” To stay in the “circle of rationality,” which man is compelled to do, we have two options: Return to our place as a creation of God, or go lower – treat man as animal and machine.
Concerning substantial healing of the total person, man must make God his “final integration point”. That is, God must be where we find our validity and status as creatures in a personal relationship with him. Any other false integration points – relationships, music, entertainment, sex, art – constitute a loss in the future world at the judgment seat, God’s chastisement in the present world, and in the “thought world” inside ourselves.
Finally, Schaeffer deals with healing in relation to other humans. We must beware of the humanistic danger of self-centrality that will transform us into hideous Minotaurs. He cautions that if we turn inward as our integration point, “there is no one to communicate with,” (151). With God as our integration point, we can have healthy relationships.
When I am a creature in the presence of God, and I see that the last relationship is with an infinite God, and these human relationships are among equals, I can take from a human relationship what God meant it to provide . . . enjoy(ing) what that which is beautiful without expecting it to be perfect. (152).We recognize four things:
No human relationship will be sufficient; sufficiency is met in God
Our human relationships can be valid without being finally sufficient
We are not perfect and do not need to cast away relationships
On Christ’s finished work, I can know relationships can be healed.
As Christians, our personal, loving relationships should demonstrate the existence of God. “Love is the interplay of the whole personality,” which is the unit of body and soul (162). We communicate through our bodies. To cheapen this through promiscuity, adultery, or even premature infatuation would be dishonest to ourselves.
Our final responsibility is to exhibit God through his gift of a “supernaturally restored relationship,” (165). Christians are to teach faith (by example), the present meaning of the work of Christ, and practice. This is the final IF, THEN statement: Our calling as Christians “is the only thing that is right on the basis of what Christ did for us in history, on the cross,” (180).
Schaeffer, in being honest with himself and God, has also produced a magnificent apologetic logic. Personal rationality, dear Lepisto, personal rationality . . . is from God. “The Holy Spirit makes us increasingly honest with ourselves,” (13). Fulfillment of the personality begins with accepting Christ as Savior. Why? We discover our personal gifts, how we fit with other people, how to guard ourselves. We are constantly undergoing self-evaluation, as the Holy Spirit exposes the malignancies in our inner-man. God brings a beautiful dynamic to life – we are commanded to be conformed to His Son by the “Divine Guest” who mortifies and cures with divine chemotherapy. I can say with Schaeffer, unapologetically and in the haughty face of humanism, that Christianity is the best because of the personal God who is there, and consequently the rational answers to man’s questions of being.
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Posted by R.D. Thompson 11:56:00 PM 1 comments
