FdD Notebook - 1/15/25
The supernatural in other religions - Church councils and the deity of Christ - A hot guitar
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Bonjour dear reader,
I hope your first week after the Christmas break was better than ours. We all had a stomach flu and an awful night where nearly the whole family was sick. On that Monday morning I was saying in a prayer meeting that the family had been sick during the vacations but that everyone was finally healthy... just in time for the kids to go back to school and find some new germs, and it was that very afternoon that the middle school called to tell me to come and pick up Titus because he’d thrown up…
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Like many of you, Chelsea and I were very encouraged to watch a bit of the conversation between Wesley Huff and Joe Rogan. Honestly I could hardly believe my ears hearing all these subjects that I'm passionate about, ancient languages and textual criticism, being discussed in front of the audience of Joe Rogan. I'm currently preparing a presentation on the reliability of the Bible, and this is a good reminder that there are people out there who want to hear and who need this information.
World Religions
The supernatural in other religions
I had a discussion this week with a friend on the subject of spiritual experiences in the context of other religions. My friend had just read the testimony of a man who converted to Sufi Islam because he was convinced that he had experienced God through Sufi practices. The question that came up was how we Christians should account for such experiences. Some thoughts:
(1) Sometimes we confuse a non-spiritual experience with a truly spiritual one. This happens even in the Church. We can sometimes imagine ourselves transported by angels, when it's simply a melody working on our emotions.
(2) Experiences, in general, do not interpret themselves. When we feel something or witness a scene that seems beyond the natural, we look for an explanation in the understanding we already have of the world. When Paul heals a lame man in Lystra, the crowd takes them for Zeus and Hermes, and in Malta when Paul isn't hurt by the viper's venom, people conclude that he himself is a god.
(3) There are spiritual powers other than God whose aim is to lead people astray. As Westerners, I think it's this aspect that we tend to forget. We've inherited from the Enlightenment a materialistic, mechanical worldview. We believe that the world functions automatically according to the laws of nature, with God intervening on the rarest of occasions. This is not the worldview of most people who have lived on this earth, and it's not the approach of the authors of the Bible either. If the activity of supernatural beings seems bizarre to us, that itself may be explained by a strategy of the dark powers, as imagined by C.S. Lewis in his imagined correspondance between two demons:
I wonder you should ask me whether it is essential to keep the patient in ignorance of your own existence. That question, at least for the present phase of the struggle, has been answered for us by the High Command. Our policy, for the moment, is to conceal ourselves. Of course this has not always been so. […] I do not think you will have much difficulty in keeping the patient in the dark. The fact that ‘devils’ are predominantly comic figures in the modern imagination will help you. If any faint suspicion of your existence begins to arise in his mind, suggest to him a picture of something in red tights, and persuade him that since he cannot believe in that (it is an old textbook method of confusing them) he therefore cannot believe in you.1
The Biblical authors speak openly of the activity of demons and evil spirits, which is not always recognized as what it is. The magic practiced by Simon Magus was attributed to God by the Samaritans (Acts 8.9-12), and Satan himself disguises himself as an angel of light according to Paul (2 Cor 11.14). So we shouldn't be surprised if there are supernatural experiences outside Christianity. This is exactly what a biblical worldview would predict.
Afterward there's the question of how to talk about it. It may not be the best approach to automatically respond to any account of a supernatural experience with: “It was a demon!” For myself, I don't claim to know where the Qu’ran comes from, for example. I simply argue from the text we have that it is not a revelation from God. That way the discussion stays objective grounds where it can be more fruitful.
Church History
Councils and the deity of Christ
Frédéric Lenoir, Comment Jésus est devenu Dieu:
[Constantine] soon realized, however, that Christian divisions over the nature of Jesus were undermining his project. It was imperative for Christ's followers to agree among themselves on this crucial issue. It was therefore for eminently political reasons that he convened a council in Nicaea in 325, bringing together all the Christian religious authorities scattered across his vast empire and even beyond. He urged them to agree on the essential point that had divided them for two centuries: who was Jesus? A man chosen by God, perhaps even elevated to divine rank by the Father, or God himself made man?
It would take more than another century of terrible disputes and polemics, three new councils, and the same relentless determination of Constantine's successors to force Christian theologians to agree, before a consensus was finally reached by a large majority, establishing the key fundamental Christian dogma: Trinitarian theology. God is both one and three: Father, Son and Spirit. The Son (or Logos) has a dual nature, divine and human, Jesus being the human incarnation of the divine Logos. Jesus is therefore considered True God and True Man, begotten and not created, of the same substance (ousia) as the Father. This complex theological formulation became the basis of the Christian faith, and remains so to this day, irrespective of the Church: Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant.2
Lenoir is somewhat dishonest here. He speaks of “three new councils” and “more than a century of terrible disputes and polemics” between 325 and 451, when he knows full well that the question he is talking about was in fact settled at Nicaea in 325. The formula he cites as the conclusion to all these debates is none other than the Nicene Creed:
We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, consubstantial to the father. Through him all things were made. For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven: by the power of the Holy Spirit he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man.
It was at Nicaea that the debate took place over the full deity of Christ, because the priest Arius taught that the Son was a lesser god, created by the Father. His perspective was firmly rejected at Nicaea, and the formula of faith adopted by the council insists that Jesus is “true God from true God,” “begotten, not created,” and “consubstantial with the Father.” Only two of the 200-250 bishops present rejected this formulation.
Subsequent debates and the ensuing councils (Constantinople 381, Ephesus 431, Chalcedon 451) had to do with the exact relationship between Christ's divinity and humanity, but there was no longer any question of whether Jesus was God, only how he could be God and man at the same time.
From the archives
Reading
Did Adam and Eve Exist?, C. John Collins
Beauty is your Destiny, Philip Ryken
I recently finished The Glory of Christ by John Owen, and it was simply magnificent. I have quite a stack of highlights that I would like to share here, but I’ll keep myself to two big ones:
Herein is He glorious in the sight of God, angels, and men. In Him there is at the same time, in the same divine actings, a glorious resplendency of justice and mercy, of the one in punishing, of the other in pardoning. The apparent inconsistency between the righteousness of God and the salvation of sinners, wherewith the consciences of convinced persons are exercised and terrified and which is the rock on which most of them split themselves into eternal ruin, is herein removed and taken away. In His cross were divine holiness and vindictive justice exercised and manifested; and through His triumph, grace and mercy are exerted to the utmost. This is that glory which ravishes the hearts and satiates the souls of those that believe. For what can they desire more, what is farther needful to the rest and composure of their souls, than at one view to behold God eternally well pleased in the declaration of His righteousness and the exercise of His mercy, in order to their salvation? In due apprehensions of it let my soul live; in the faith of it let me die, and let present admiration of this glory make way for the eternal enjoyment of it in its beauty and fullness.3
Do any of us find decays in grace prevailing in us—deadness, coldness, lukewarmness, a kind of spiritual stupidity and senselessness coming upon us? Do we find an unreadiness to the exercise of grace in its proper season and the vigorous acting of it in duties of communion with God? Do we want to recover from these dangerous diseases? Let us assure ourselves there is no better way for our healing and deliverance—yea, no other way but the obtaining a fresh view of the glory of Christ by faith and a steady abiding therein. Constant contemplation of Christ and His glory, putting forth its transforming power to the revival of all grace, is the only relief in this case; as shall farther be showed afterward.4
Music
Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, 10 and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth.”
Revelation 5:9-10
Lewis, C. S. The Screwtape Letters. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2010, p. 31.
Lenoir, Frédéric. Comment Jésus est devenu Dieu. Paris: Fayard, 2010, p. 12-13.
Owen, John. The Glory of Christ. Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2013, p. 118.
Ibid, p. 166.