I've several times fantasized about how I would present my views on theonomy to my brother's church. My brother attends a very devoted, charismatic congregation. His church is of particular interest to me because its members are passionate, and they are continually experiencing and evidencing the blessings of God in their lives and in their relationships to one another (from my perspective anyway). I think this is attributable to the grace God has given them to passionately desire closeness with God. The people there  really want to do right by God, and they're prepared to pursue closeness with God in innovative ways, (hence the charismatic leaning). Furthermore , my experiences with them indicate that they're very concerned about the political environment around them, and are genuinely seeking answers from God about how best to approach the culture. (Indeed, I believe the culture in America is very nearly ripe for a theonomic establishment to put its feet in the door, and some, taking the restorationist approach, which I dislike and disagree with, have already begun to do so, and I praise God for their efforts). I would like nothing more than to spend an extended period of time with my brother's church, discussing the theonomic approach to ethics and civil government, to determine with them whether it seems to be supported by scripture, and whether it pleases the spirit, and whether they would be willing to pursue it. Something tells me that several members in their congregation would be open to it, and I am absolutely confident that all Christians who study the law in full will, as I have, find it to be refreshing and wonderful. 

Today the thought of a presentation weighed so heavily on my mind that I could not help but sit to write it out. I had some thought experiments in mind, which I would love to see them respond to. Here's what I was thinking:

Is Christ king? Everyone will agree, yes he is. "No king but Christ?" Yes. I'm confident that everyone in my brother's church would agree with that. They're the kind of full-blooded Americans who like nothing more than to emphasize their loyalty to God over government; freedom over tyranny. Everyone will definitely agree, there is no king but Christ. But is Christ really king? Of course. Really though? Yeah, we all just agreed, he is. Can there be two kings? No. We all just agreed, no king but Christ.

What's a king? A king is someone with supreme authority; the ruler of a nation; the head of a government.

So what if someone else says, "I'm king"? Clearly, they're not. No king but Christ. 

So what if they change the title, and say "I'm emperor?" or "I'm lord" (after all, there are many lords; landlords etc. A lord is just an owner over a place or people). Still, they are not. Just like the Christians said to Caesar, "there is no lord but Christ", we also say, "there is no king but Christ", and "there is no emperor but Christ". Christ is the only and final head of government. The problem isn't the name being used; it's the arrogation of authority. Only Christ has the authority which Caesar is attempting to claim.

In Rome, when Caesar commanded the early Christian church to say "Caesar is lord" and they refused, saying "only Christ is lord," were they right to do so? Yes. Changing the title from "king" to "lord" doesn't change the problem; only Christ has that authority and that position. Nobody owns them and their land except Christ. There is no king but Christ.

Well, what if there was a council of ten Caesars? Should the Christians say, "the council is lord?" No, only Jesus is lord. What if the council consisted of a thousand people, or ten thousand, or a million. Could we then say, "the council is lord?" No, we couldn't. 

So what if they change the title again. Rather than saying "the council is lord", since the council consists of so many people, they simply say "the people are lord". Is that ok? Clearly not. But suppose they change the title again. Now they say, "the people are a democracy", and they elect a council which they call a republic. Has our situation changed?

No. The problem still exists. Moving the kingship to more people, rearranging the ownership of that authority, is still a problem, as long as the authority still resides in man instead of in Christ.

But men do have some authority, right? The Bible says there is no authority except that which is instituted by God (That's Romans 13). So what are the boundaries of this authority? Well, Romans 13 explains a little about what an authority instituted by God is. Let's read it:

1 Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. 2 Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. 3 For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, 4 for he is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer. 5 Therefore one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God's wrath but also for the sake of conscience. 6 For because of this you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing. 7 Pay to all what is owed to them: taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed.

Paul writes here: "Rulers are not a terror to good, but to bad. ... do what is good and you will receive his approval, for he is God's servant for your good. ... he is the servant of God, and avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer." (emphasis mine). The terms Paul uses here are not "should be" or "may do". They're "is", and "does". Paul is explaining what an authority instituted by God is. An authority instituted by God is a terror to bad conduct, and an approver of good conduct.

So then, there are authorities instituted by God. How do we know who they are? Well, first of all, they approve of good conduct and terrorize evil conduct. But, as we established above, they also cannot claim to be the final authorities. There is no king but Christ, so Christ is the head of government. The democracy isn't the head of government. The republic isn't the head of government. Only the king is the head. So, whatever authority we have or institute must be subject to the final authority: Jesus.

So, how do we identify people who have authority given to them by God, and are subject to Jesus? Who is Paul telling us to submit to, here?

Suppose someone claims to have authority. This person is a terror to good conduct, and not to bad. He has not submitted himself to Jesus. He has only 1 follower who acknowledges his authority. Do you have to subject yourself to him? Suppose he has 2 followers? Suppose he has 10? Suppose he annexes the land in your neighborhood tomorrow. Should you resist? Suppose he has 100, 1000, or 1 million followers? At what point does his authority over you come from God, such that Paul's command in Romans 13 applies to him, and you should obey whatever he tells you to do (or not do), as long as it isn't directly a command for you to sin? 

Well, not at any point, no matter how many followers he has, or what claims to ownership and authority he makes. He is a terror to good conduct and not evil, so he does not match the description of a ruler in Romans 13, so he is not a ruler. He has no authority given to him by God. Whatever we do for him is only to keep the peace, out of love for our neighbors.

Suppose some people get together and they set up a democratic republic. They say, "this is a government under God." But then, their government terrorizes good and promotes evil. Have they really subjected themselves to their final authority? No, they haven't. They're "under God" in name only. Just like before, they have no authority.

OK, so suppose there is a government which terrorizes evil and promotes good, but the way they terrorize evil is, itself, evil. I'll give an extreme example to drive home my point. Suppose, for theft, the government instituted the "rape penalty". A person steals something, and so the government sexually assaults them in response. That's crazy, right? It's unjust. The government has terrorized the evil of theft by commanding its enforcers to do another kind of evil. This government does not terrorize all evil; it promotes evils, so it is not exercising authority given to it by Jesus. Inasmuch as it promotes evil, it acts without authority.

But wait, doesn't every penalty consist of a negative action which normal citizens should otherwise not do to one another? If I say the government can force a man to repay seven times what he stole, then isn't the government taking stuff from him without his consent? It's the "theft penalty". Is the government doing something evil here?

What's the difference between the latter action and the former? Is the former penalty wrong because sexuality is sacred? Suppose we institute the death penalty instead for theft. No, that's disproportionately harsh. Ok, so then what is a proportionate penalty? Should the thief simply have to return the money, plus that amount again? This will make the thief feel as though he has lost something, but if that's all we're aiming for then we don't need to make him pay so much. And if we aim to compensate the victim for the emotional harm done to them, then maybe we are paying too little. Every dollar off-the-mark we are is an injustice, an evil, that our government has promoted. 

We can't circumvent the matter by proposing another type of penalty. Suppose we lock the thief in a room and have the victim pay for his living expenses for the next few years by tax money. Is it just or unjust? Is this a proportionate penalty? Who is up to the task of evaluating that man's freedom and time? Every ounce of freedom lost to that man, which is lost disproportionately to his crime, is evil, and the government which does so acts without authority.

Someone will say that I have set my aim too high. There's no perfect government. How can we know what is right? 

We can't say that the Bible hasn't given us adequate information to handle this scenario, because the Bible says about itself that the scriptures are "sufficient to thoroughly equip the man of God for every good work", and the Bible makes very clear that justice is good, and doing justice is a good work. If running a government in a bad way is an evil work (and we all agree the rape penalty is evil), then the government is not morally-neutral. So executing just penalties at the right time, doing justice, is a good work. The Bible must contain words which instruct and equip us for this task. And if it does, and if we can know it (if it is sufficient to equip us then its contents must be learnable), then it is our obligation, our solemn duty before God, to strive for that justice which God has revealed to us. 

Someone will say, "but we're saved by faith, not works." That's true, but just because we're saved, can we ignore God's commands? Should we go on in sin, saying "we're saved by our faith"? The notion is so ridiculous that I won't devote my time to it.

OK. Now, let's examine what we have. Where does the Bible say what a just government should do with a thief? Where is it written?

It is written in the Old Testament Law. It's laid out for us in Exodus 22. Why should we compromise on this? Is there some group of people out there claiming to have authority, telling us we can't do justice? By what authority do they say that we cannot do justice? 

Are they a government which has authority if they forbid justice? And do they have authority if they don't submit themselves to God? No and no. Who is our government? Does the Bible have anything to say about how a government is established, and how it should be structured? Yeah! It says a lot about it! Where does it say that? Exodus 18 and Deuteronomy 1. 

If we say that these laws have no relevance to us today, then where does the Bible give us "relevant" instruction on these good works? Nowhere else! If we can't use what the Bible has said here, then it is insufficient to instruct the man of God who has a job as a police man or judge, when he should make a determination on how to penalize the thief or the murderer.

Does the Bible say anything about how to properly run a legislative system? Yes! Deuteronomy 4:2 and Deuteronomy 12:32 explain the proper legislature in exhaustive detail.

That's what I want people to see. Wherever our Government is not directly informed by scripture, wherever it has not submitted itself to God, it is no government; it has no authority.

Now, all that said, this is an incomplete presentation. A theonomic government is established peacefully, and the Bible also contains instructions on how to properly establish a Biblical government in the context of a secular state, and I've written some lengthy discourse on that in another place (not on my blog). I'll repost the whole thing here if that other place works out in the way I hope; if not, I'll rewrite a summary for my blog.

"Chains have round our country pressed,

And cowards have betrayed her"

 Getting back into Baduk lately. I wrote this post slowly over a few days, because I don't have much time to blog these days. I listened to this on the first day and thought it was pretty good (heads up, it has profanity):

I saw this article by T.D. Gordon recently, and I very much appreciated the time and effort which the author put into making it into an organized and well-structured overview of his understanding of the status of things regarding judicial Theonomy (I'm making a distinction between "Judicial Theonomy" and "Ethical Theonomy" in order to help the reader, but heads up: I don't think there is actually a significant difference, and this lack-of-a-difference will inform some of what I'm about to write). Gordon is opposed to theonomy, so he ends each section with his favored rebuttals to the arguments for theonomy.

I think it would be valuable for me to address the first argument he makes. He structured it well enough that I feel I can respond to him "point-for-point". Idk if he'll ever see this, but I certainly hope that what I write is good for the edification of any readers (google analytics says I get an average of 2 viewers, excluding myself, per post, and they both appear to be in eastern Europe. I'm not expecting much here.).

So, getting to the point: the argument I want to discuss is what he has called "The Argument from Necessity". The argument from necessity is an argument in favor of Theonomy. He presents it and then rebuts it from several angles.

He says that the argument from necessity is this: "we need to know how to function in the civil arena, and therefore the word of God must provide us with such instruction."

The first part of his rebuttal is (summarily): that knowledge of "statecraft" is a "want", not a "need", and the Theonomist must provide grounds to distinguish statecraft from other affairs, such as medicine and science, in order to justify the notion that we need guidance in statecraft and therefore God must provide that, but we apparently don't need guidance in these other areas, and so the Bible has not provided guidance there. 

My response: I reject the distinction he makes between God's commands relevant to "statecraft" and the other commands which I suppose he might say are not relevant to statecraft (such as the command to not murder, etc). That is, I see the command to carry out a specific prescribed penalty for thieves as similar in weightiness to the command to abstain from acts of theft. Why should he say that the second one is binding and not the first? Moreover, as far as categorical necessity goes, the fact that God has provided a comprehensive set of guidelines indicates that the guidelines are, themselves categorically similar in such a way that they (as a whole) distinguish themselves from whatever pieces of information are not presented to us in scripture (i.e. medicine and agriculture). Thus, the grounds which T.D. Gordon requests for distinguishing statecraft from other scientific fields, in terms of our need for its description from God, is thus: the commands which we need are the commands given. The commands which we do not need are the commands not given. 

In short, in order for him to make his case, he should produce scripture which dictates a hermeneutic which substantially distinguishes between laws pertaining to "statecraft" and not. I recognize he makes some effort to do this in his discussion of covenant theology, and I don't intend to address all that in this rebuttal, but I pick out a few points I found valuable to respond to at the end of this post. 

As to whether the law is a "need" or a "want" -- given my above responses, I'm not sure that the distinction is still relevant.

The second part of his rebuttal is (summarily): that natural revelation has proved sufficient in the field of science, and likewise proves sufficient in the field of government. He asks, "If we could not develop and refine statecraft by this method, then how can we account for the fact that many governments have proceeded, with varying degrees of success, by this method?"

My response: The "varying degrees of success" you mention are all, in their conclusion, failures. Just because one government lasts an extra hundred years or so before failing, it does not make it any less of a failure. If we could develop and refine statecraft by this method, then how can we account for all these failures?

The third part of his rebuttal is (summarily): Why would Paul urge obedience to the Roman government if he thought that the Roman government was fundamentally wrong?

My response: The premise that Paul urged obedience to a government which was fundamentally wrong is flawed. Paul urged obedience to governing authorities, and then he said "Rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad.". Was the Roman government in his day a terror only to bad conduct? Weren't they in the business of punishing people for spreading the gospel and worshipping God? What better conduct is there than to worship God? Clearly, inasmuch as Rome was terrorizing good conduct, they were not a ruler as Paul defines here -- otherwise, submission to them would have been precisely to abandon the faith whenever they demanded it (and they did demand it). So, ultimately, we obey rulers and authorities only inasmuch as they act according to the authority given to them by God (indeed, "there is no authority except from God"). It is therefore providential that God has given us an outline for what practices and means are delegated to human governing authorities. Any exercise outside of God's delegation is not "an authority instituted by God".

The fourth part of his rebuttal is (summarily): that Theonomists, leaning on the doctrine of the sufficiency of scripture, see statecraft as being "necessary for man's life", but that this is dependent on an erroneous understanding of the sufficiency of scripture. He argues that scripture is a guide to "faith and life" in the religious sense, but not something intended to "answer all of our questions". He supports this using WCF 1:6 "The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man’s salvation, faith and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture." He then calls back to his request for a rule for distinguishing between statecraft and other fields of knowledge (see my response to his first rebuttal).

My response: Typically when I hear Theonomists mention the "sufficiency of scripture", they reference the Bible rather than the confessions. I don't intend to poo poo the confession here, but I just want to make sure we're talking about the same thing so that we understand each other well. I think his rebuttal here is partially dependent on a misunderstanding of Theonomy (although not necessarily a misunderstanding of what the authors of the WCF intended; I have never met them, and I wouldn't know). Usually I've heard Theonomists utilize 2 Tim 3:16-17 to say "Scripture is sufficient to thoroughly equip the servant of God for every good work". I want to emphasize: "thoroughly" and "every good work". It isn't the case that curing cancer is a "good work", but rather the effort to cure cancer can be called a "good work", and the Bible equips a person to know that pursuing the well-being of our neighbors is a good work. If we don't succeed at curing cancer, then was our research not a good work? And if we succeed, is it because we're "more good", or rather because we were "more skilled"? So, to the distinction between "statecraft" and "science", I refer back to my first response: the rule for distinguishing what explanation is "needed" to equip us for good works, and what explanation is "not needed" to equip us for good works (the same distinction which enables us to specify that these commands in the category so-called "statecraft" are required whereas instructions on how to cure cancer are not) is, "what explanation do we have in the Bible?". If we have it in the Bible, then it contributes to equipping us for every good work.

A few other items I wanted to respond to, variously, in the document, include these:

Gordon seems to be under the impression that Theonomy lives or dies on a specific interpretation of Matthew 5:17-21. This is not the case, and illustrates some unfamiliarity with the rest of the Biblical argument for Theonomy. Any reader who sees this and agrees with Gordon must be thinking, "ok, then give me the rest of the Biblical argument for Theonomy!" .... I'm not going to do it justice here; I really want to keep this as short as possible. That verse is maybe the shortest Biblical case for Theonomy, but it isn't the only case for Theonomy. For starters, I don't think I agree with the idea that "fulfill" should better be said "ratify". I think "fulfill" is appropriate to illustrate the distinction between laws which present us with an actionable obligation, and laws which Jesus makes non-actionable by means of his own actions on our behalf. For example, the Bible makes clear that we still have a sacrifice (better yet, a Passover sacrifice in particular), it's Jesus. We still have a priest, it's Jesus. We still have a temple; our body is the temple. etc. etc. etc.. It doesn't make sense for teachings such as these to be in the New Testament if the law was removed from us. If the law could simply be "changed" and "removed" from us, then why would we need Jesus to be our sacrifice and priest? Those distinctions only make sense in the context of a hermeneutic rule where OT Law is assumed to be continuous unless explicitly abrogated in this way by some action of Jesus. I am fine with supposing that any any or all of the OT laws have been removed from us, but given that we all agree at least some of the OT laws abide (e.g. "do not murder"), it is unsafe to say that any of them have ceased to abide without also providing an explanation such as the ones above (Jesus is our priest/temple/sacrifice etc). If some obligation in the law is to be removed from us, then there must be an explanation for its removal. 

Gordon also seems to argue from a nuanced understanding of "the law and the prophets", which I don't think has much warrant -- it seems to me that every example he gave of its usage remains coherent if the phrase is taken to mean "the entire OT".

Gordon proceeds to argue that imposing the requirement of the law will cause the Jerusalem council to be condemned, as well as the author of Hebrews and Paul. 

The Jerusalem council seems to be a problematic argument for Gordon, since they seem to have limited their injunction to dietary restrictions and sexual abstinence. I doubt that Gordon would agree that the dietary restrictions here are obligatory for us, or that sexual sin is the only kind of sin we should abstain from. Furthermore, if we grant that the Jerusalem council appears to have been rebutting Judaizers, who taught that the law should be followed completely *for salvation*, then perhaps the commands begin to make sense, because sexual sin and the eating of food sacrificed to idols are known to have been practiced as part of the pagan religions there, and we know from elsewhere in the Bible that we should avoid violating the consciences of our weaker brothers. 

I don't see any clear argument in Gordon's paper to the effect that Paul and the author of Hebrews would be called "least" on account of Bahnsen's confirmation of the law. I see that he discusses how the bloody ritual, circumcision, has been replaced with a non-bloody ritual, baptism, and he asks how that should inform our understanding of capital punishment -- as if the summation of meaning in the transition from circumcision to baptism were its change from "bloody" to "not bloody" (which I'm not sure is even a distinction mentioned in the Bible), and as if capital punishment were in summary a "bloody ritual" -- that simply isn't the case. Circumcision was more than blood letting, and capital punishment doesn't confirm criminals into the covenant. The connection here is a weird category conflation.

In rebutting the Westminister Assembly's teaching that the decalogue was given to Adam and Eve (I do not think the Ten Commandments were given to Adam and Eve, but I think that the abstraction stands without that detail), Gordon seems very nearly to make my case for me. He quotes Romans 5:13, saying "sin was in the world before the law", and says that this means that the law was not in the world prior to the establishment of the covenant. But then, what were they sinning against? Let's quote verse 13 and 14 together: "for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned form Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning  was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come". They sinned in ways unlike Adam's sin, and were penalized with death even though the law had not been given. How is this possible unless the law was in-effect before it was given? How could death reign before the law was given, if "sin is not counted where there is no law" unless the law is timeless, and so ignorance is no excuse? So "giving" the law was not "creating" the law, but simply formalizing the standards of righteousness which all men are already obligated to follow. If this is not the case, then why was Sodom and Gomorrah destroyed? Why was Abimelech's household almost destroyed when he took Rebekah? And why was Cain's murder of Abel penalized? 

The rest of Gordon's argument after that, equating the ten commandments with the covenant, appears to liberate Christians from the decalogue in particular, without quite addressing the rest of the law -- I was confused by it. If the Ten Commandments were only for that covenant, then do we not have to follow them now? If Jesus's advocacy for OT law were carried out only because he was giving his teachings prior to his own death, then does that mean that the only moral injunctions with any abiding validity are those in the epistles? The argument appears to be advocating either a complete removal of all OT moral injunctions or a removal only of the ten commandments; in the former case, we're in a very difficult situation because the epistles are not as specific about sin as the OT enumerations of the law, and they repeatedly reference the OT law when repeating their injunctions. In the latter case, we're still left with every OT law except for the 10 commandments, which is a very bizarre conclusion, which I've never heard advocated by anyone.

That's it, guys. I hope somebody finds this valuable.

Before I close the blog, I want to let everyone know that all of Bahnsen's lectures are free now. You can get them at https://www.cmfnow.com/mp3-bahnsen.aspx, and they will later be remastered and rehosted on apologiastudios.com as well as bahnsenproject.com. Praise God.

"There's no problem with your understanding"

I'm becoming increasingly aware of my cognitive limitations. I have a clear goal in my mind, but I miss details here and there; I overlook small things and make mistakes. I review my work multiple times and fail to notice the errors. The limits of my mental faculty are exposed to me, and I'm not sure if these limits are hard and fast, or if I can overcome them by spending more time on a given project. Or perhaps it's my mode of thinking in general which can be improved. Should I work to train myself to multitask (perhaps I can play two pieces of familiar classical music simultaneously, sit and focus on distinguishing them, to build a mode of thinking relevant to multitasking). Or should I pursue modes of thinking relevant to focus (after all, I do struggle quite a bit with my attention span. Perhaps some transcendental style counting would build a good habit in me, although sometimes I'm afraid that this kind of mind-numbing exercise would serve only to make me more of a slave to common practice, incapable of seeing around erroneous cultural norms; swayed by every argument which tracks with itself). It's equally to my horror and my relief that I find myself able to identify these errors after the fact.

In addition to being convinced of my own foolishness, I'm beginning to suspect that most non-Christians are (at least selectively) illiterate. In my online debates (for which my distain seems to increase daily) I am frequently confronted with pasted "contradictions" from rational wiki. Someone online recently, who was hand-picking the ones he thought most compelling, asked me why Genesis 10 indicates that there were multiple languages developed by the time all the nations had spread abroad from Noah's children, but Genesis 11 indicates that there was only one language prior to the Tower of Babel, as if to suggest that the Babel incident must temporally come after the end of the genealogies by virtue of its placement below them in the text, ignoring the fact that the genealogy of Shem is written both immediately after and immediately prior to the Babel narrative in the text, appearing in both chapters 10 and 11. This is the caliber of textual criticism I find myself dealing with most often, and I'm not sure I have much recourse except to conclude that atheism somehow causes people to be illiterate.

Speaking of those debates, I've been working on picking open a small locket I found on the top of the garbage heap. The question which tumbles in this enclosure is, "what motivates us to do good?".

Certainly a few motivators can be listed readily:

• Fear of penalty (but there is no fear for believers; and fear is no proper motive on its own, should we desire not to be like the wicked servant who buried his talents saying, "I knew that you were a hard man.")
• The reward which follows (And again, is it right that we should only do good for selfish gain?)
• Love for God (But what is love, and what is it about love which motivates us to do good? Is it the case that the relationship with God motivate us by imbuing us with great pleasure at the thought of pleasing our loved one? And if so, is that not reducible to acting for selfish gain, whereas the selfish gain is the very same pleasure or satisfaction experienced at obtaining the knowledge that we have pleased our loved one?)
• Because it is our purpose, according to our design (but why act on our purpose or design? Don't we answer this question with statements to the effect that acting on our purpose brings great satisfaction and fulfillment, and that we are designed to experience best fulfillment when glorifying God? And if so, is it just another bid for selfish gain that we should choose to act on purpose rather than against it?)

It seems to me that none of these options really bring about "duty" or "ought". What is "duty"? Is it just a reference to a goal? ("You ought to do X if you hope to achieve Y")

When I was in college I maintained a transactional theory of ethics (cost and return). I thought, "doing this bad thing might be acceptable to me if there is no consequence which outweighs the fun of it", or, "eating this sauerkraut would be tolerable if I knew that it would benefit my health".

After college, I thought for a long time that I had escaped that transactional theory by recognizing that the ultimate consequences of my actions were so great and marvelous that I should be careful to pursue God's glory above all things. That is, having an eternal perspective enabled me to suppose that the ultimate and Biblical good were always transactionally best.

But now, I wonder whether even this "eternal perspective" is itself morally reprehensible on account of its still being transactional in nature. Shouldn't I do good simply for the sake of doing good? Or maybe, is it the case that doing good for selfish motives isn't impure (on its own) after all. Indeed, the Bible offers rewards and penalties regularly; does it make a vulgar appeal to our base natures by doing so? Certainly not; but to my recollection (off the top of my head) it also often seems to offer this reason when suggesting that we should do a thing, or not do a thing: "it is good" or "it is evil". 

What does that mean? It makes me wonder if perhaps I am broken internally, on account of the fact that I cannot see the answer. I certainly am capable of feeling "guilt", which manifests in a way abstracted from fear of penalty. When I do something wrong, I feel guilt for it without consideration of whether or not there will be an eternal consequence -- I am very confident that there is no eternal consequence to my bad behavior, except that it subtracts from what would have been greater treasure in heaven had I chosen to act better. Temporal consequences for my bad behavior do bother me, but very often it is because of the lost joy I would otherwise experience at seeing others likewise happy -- an empathetic response. So while my good behaviors still appear to be transactionally motivated, my bad behaviors are deterred both by loss of transactional value and also by something I cannot rationalize (the feeling of guilt).

So then, the question on my mind: is guilt a spiritual phenomena (i.e. imposed on me by the Holy Spirit) or a chemical phenomena (such as lust)? Certainly atheists can feel guilt, so it must be in some ways a physical phenomena designed into us as per common grace, because their spirits are dead and enslaved to their flesh. However, it is also plain that the Holy Spirit guides believers occasionally by means of these pushes toward goodness, and the scope of behaviors which elicit guilt broadens during the life and sanctification of a believer. Furthermore, although guilt is a negative emotion, I perceive that it is not my aversion to guiltiness which prevents me from doing evil, but it is rather the failure to avoid evil which gives rise to guiltiness, and so the decision to avoid evil is based on some other impulse whose existence is implied by the presence of guilt in the aftermath of an evil deed. I can't think of a word for it, and it seems not motivated by either fear, greed, or even habit, but it seems to me that it must exist.

The answer, then, to "why do good", and "what is duty", must manifest itself in a way opposed to that impulse underlying guilt, but similar in nature (as blue is opposed to orange, though they are both colors). I acknowledge that there is a certain small satisfaction which grows and culminates in broad contentment following many good works, as long as they are plucked while ripe and in season, and as long as the worker is careful to avoid giving way to pride at his own goodness. However, it is not this satisfaction which motivates me to do good, although certainly I anticipate contentment should I persist in good works with a right heart. 

... (stopped writing... waited 3 days... began writing again here) ...

So I spent a lot of time thinking about this, and I have concluded that the train of thought I was going down suffered from a few significant flaws. First, that I was mistaken in my assumption that it's unacceptable to do good with expectation of a consequent gain or positive experience. If I followed that path to its end, the result would be that the only good things are those done devoid of pleasure, which is opposed to the Biblical principle that a righteous man rejoices in God and takes joy in doing good. Indeed, if the definition of "good" is "that which conforms with God's character", and by implication, "that which gives God glory", then every good thing God does is for the express purpose of his own benefit, and that is good. Furthermore it is God's great mercy to us that he created us in such a manner so that we would experience fulfillment and joy whenever we conform to God's good pleasure, so that we with similar motive to God can do good for His glory, while receiving a well anticipated reward. So then the good we do is for two reasons: first and foremost, because we desire to glorify God on account of our love for him (which translates to the idea that we do it because it pleases us to please those who we love); second, because when we do things on account of our love for him we achieve, by virtue of our design, contentment on earth, and much pleasure and reward in heaven. So, in short,  transactionalism is not itself either wrong nor evil, but overly simplistic; a transactional view must be qualified with a firm understanding of reality and eternity. The "eternal" transactional view is still a stable and fine system.

The next conclusion I came to was somewhat disappointing to me, and I am given to think that this is really the root of the whole issue. I don't understand what "duty" is. Certainly this lack of understanding is due in no part to my father, who was a military man, and who modeled duty in my presence in ways most admirable and even awe inspiring (from my perspective). I could go on a long tangent about the excellent virtues I perceived in my parents while I was young, and I still hold them both in high regard (though I still struggle with anger toward them for the part they each played in their divorce, in particular my dad, who appears to have in the most significant way possible breached the very duty for which I only just now praised him). But on to the conclusion anyway.

Now, I said I don't understand what "duty" is, but in reality I think it is more that I do not wish to accept that it is the thing which I think it is. That is, simply, that duty is a function of authority, authority is an abstraction which is entirely dependent on the existence of God. In the words of Epictetus's good student, "He is the master of every other person who is able to confer or remove whatever that person wishes either to have or to avoid. Whoever, then, would be free, let him wish nothing, let him decline nothing, which depends on others else he must necessarily be a slave." If that is the case, then even the man who wishes and declines only what depends on himself is a slave of God, for he can neither wish nor decline anything, and has no power whatsoever, except that God upholds him by the Word of His Power. Thus all men are intrinsically enslaved to God, and so God is the final and ultimate authority.

What's disappointing about it is that I have not yet derived a clear relationship between "duty" and "authority", except that God, who has authority, has by verbal articulation commanded us to observe duty. Furthermore, although I do see a relationship between authority and empirical reality (I'm using "empirical" in a sense here which is unique from my usage of the word in other posts on my blog), I do not see the same relationship between duty and empirical reality, except simply that God's choice will affect reality in consequence of our observance of duty. Duty isn't a "stuff" like authority or morality (where morality can easily be called a "stuff" when we look at the way that an immoral person experiences physical and psychological destruction in the presence of the holy God, and if we consider the impact of morality on ceremonially clean and unclean objects, etc. There is plainly an interaction between the physical and spiritual world, hinging on consideration of morality and holiness).

And therein is the answer: God's design is ultimate as an epistemological justification; his character is ultimate as a moral rule; his modes of thought are ultimate as imposing logical uniformity on all things; his status and power are ultimate in divine authority; and so his preferences are ultimate in determining duty. So then, I have to ask myself, what is so disappointing about making God's simple preferences an ultimate, when I have no issue saying "God is in all respects ultimate, and is ultimate over all things"? Why should I be bothered that my "duty" is a function of God's supreme choice and pleasure? Isn't it rather a convenient and happy coincidence, a burden lifted, that I can accomplish my duty by acting on my love for God, achieving all "should" by observation of a single rule? Yeah, I have to again change myself so that I will see God's imposition of duty on me, his choice, not just as the choice of any being, but as the ultimate choice whereby duty is generated and distributed to all other choices. My disappointment is a symptom of my imperfection, and I must be transformed so that I will love what I previously hated.

The next step is to consider what implication this view of divine authority has on my respect for earthly authority. I'll think about it and maybe get back here later.

"If a person gave your body to any stranger he met on his way, you would certainly be angry. And do you feel no shame in handing over your own mind to be confused and mystified by anyone who happens to verbally attack you?"

The apartment has been a real relief, but some of the unpacking is hanging over my head. There's still a lot of work to do before the place will be totally baby-proof and comfortable; I just hope we can get it all done in time to enjoy it. I've recently been suffering from an inexplicable desire to have friends. I think it's a good desire, so I don't intend to resist it, but I do worry whether these visitors to my thought-life will subtract from my internal monologue. Other humans, non-myself, are in a way frightening; what if their pleasantries only cover up a deeper extension of my negative expectations, waiting to be revealed as soon as I begin to feel myself connecting with someone? I've always been a sort of open-book (to a fault); what does vulnerability even mean if not that? Maybe I'm just a normal dude and I haven't really had the opportunity to be friends with people for the past few years, on account of all the stressful stuff happening to me and my family?

I took the 9-axis political test on the toilet recently, hoping it would be a better indicator of where I stand. Here are the results:

I feel pretty comfortable with these results.

Anyway, here's the next transcription from my notebook. I'm gonna call this one, "the chorus". (btw, I finally took the time to figure out why my paragraph spacing has been weird. I guess blogger automatically changed the default. I'll be switching back and forth now that I know how).

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you are the sum of me, but you are not me.

you only repeat back to me what i tell you.

you repeat back to me the words i could never say.

in telling you, i learn about you.

in trying to learn about you, in hearing you talk, i learn about me.

our love is a one way street

that loops back on itself

and ends in the place where it began

but not before making that place totally new.

i am to you every word spoken

and so i am neither thought nor audition

i am somewhere in between

i cover you with a mask of dark stripes

so that i can see your real face.

we costume ourselves together

in hopes of learning who we are

in hopes of discovering that i am someone else

in hopes of reviving an old friend.

-------------------------

"I'm the president of the hypothetical club"

I wish pixel artists were cheap -- like 10$/sprite sheet or something like that.

I was thinking about it... and I think I've come to terms with the idea that, although I'm confident in the legitimacy of several arguments for God, I don't think that my belief in God really comes from any of those. I wanna emphasize: the apologetic arguments are valuable and valid. But for me personally, I think I just have plain old faith. If someone tore down every argument I have for God's existence and showed me that I have no argument in favor of God, then I am pretty convinced that I would still believe. And why? Well, there's really no alternative for me. To whom shall I go? Jesus has the words of eternal life, and I have believed, and have come to know, that he is the Holy One of God. My worldview is built on the hope of my salvation; I get sick at the thought of abandoning it; there's no hope outside of Jesus.

This is what I'm listening to lately. (This isn't the normal style that I put up here, but I listen to a lot more than what I post here):

Here's the next transcription from my notebook. I'm calling this one "Gentleness". You might notice that the marriage of church and Christ is a theme in these. I'm a little embarrassed by the perspective in this, but I don't want to change what I wrote. There are a bunch of marriages thematically explored in the notebook: Christ and church, me and my wife, poet and poem, dreamer and dream, adulterer and adulteress. I've been switching back and forth in my notebook between writing as church and husband. I learn about how to be a good man by reading about how God tends to his church. He leads her in the path of righteousness, making her a strong wall, her breasts towers (Song 8:10), attracting his full attention (Proverbs 5:19-20), keeping out wayward and idolatrous enemies of the marriage (Jer 1:18, 15:20), housing comfort in the storm, standing strong against the breath of the ruthless (Isa 25:4). But doesn't she constantly complain about how he leads her? Isn't she always saying, "a good leader would rather lead me this way, not that way" as if the only good leader is one who lets her lead instead? I've been processing the meaning of marriage and my role as husband in a big way. I find myself revisiting the same pieces of that puzzle over and over, but like a frustrating apologetic discussion, sometimes you have to go in circles for a while before you find the key that opens a door to a new path of argument; intellectual progress. 

This poem in particular represents an aspect of marriage that I have to remind myself of almost every day. Sometimes it feels like my wife's attitude toward me is like my attitude toward God, always asking "when are you coming back to me?", "why did you let X happen?", "why won't you make your plan clear to me?", "how long until you come home? don't you love me?", "don't you care about your church?", acting and letting myself feel as if God isn't concerned with me, as if his work in preparing a place for me in heaven isn't as important as him just coming home and being here with me physically, as if I don't recognize the presence of his spirit, and so I get frustrated with God when things don't go the way I expect them to. Those things hurt me when they are directed toward me from my wife; "Why do you spend so much time working? Don't you care about your family? You should come home early today." is something I feel like I keep hearing, whereas I have also heard, "why aren't you making more money? Don't you care about your family? You should get a second job.", or in a heated argument, "I hate you; I don't feel loved". But God humbles me by showing me that this is my very attitude toward God. God has taught me a way to find comfort and contentment in every situation, and I must constantly remember to walk in that way. Humbling myself toward my wife, regularly recommitting myself to work harder to provide for her as well as to encourage her and make time for her, to validate her emotions and listen to her concerns, to recognize my weakness and strive to learn to be a better man for her, is a small thing compared to the infinite condescension of the God-Man.

------------

My father chastens me, but my husband does not.

His absence is sorrow enough. How can I ever drive him away?

Though he judges the world, with me he does not fight fire with fire.

He bears me on his shoulders. Though my sin is hatred of him

He freely absorbs the pain of my sin and it kills him.

But not just my sin. He absorbed the hatred of innumerable people.

Being fully man he proved that God made man to endure much more than I will ever have to.

I was made with the capacity to endure the hatred of just one person, or many more.

And if I can't endure, I am called to give up my life for her.

My husband in his perfect love did so and still lives.

So I, following the leadership of my lord and shepherd, live also.

My life ended with a promise.
My life ends again each day.
Here I die again.

------------

"I was facing the full wrath of hell. I was facing a good death as well."

Good news! I don't have to title my blogs anymore. Blogger fixed it. I didn't submit a formal complaint about it, so they must have had some push-back from the rest of the blogosphere. I still don't intend to retroactively apply names to those poems for which I retroactively removed the names while I was doing my inutile protest against the necessity of names. But since I do think every poem should be named...This one is called, "The common denominator is that I don't know anything".

-----------------

Two books lay open before me, a third closed.

The first book describes me intimately, but it is not relatable to me. It expresses structure and order; the schematic for my life and being.

The second book is like chaos from chaos, confusion from confusion. It's utterly meaningless. I am made to blush by its rigorous prosecution of my self-expressions; my pretense.

The third I've never read, though I view it most often. I haven't understood a single letter of its contents, but its every word causes me much grief. I wish this book would never end, and I wish that it were a different book.

A vector intersects all books, terminating in complex inky splotches; fine dust once suspended comes to rest deep in the spongy surface of the page, dark and distinct, forming expressions expressing nothing, all wise.

I learn nothing, control nothing, grow not, change not. I'm hidden somewhere in these pages, never to surface.

-----------------

Been frustrated with my religious forums lately.  Every now and then I'll come across a sharp atheist who really presents a coherent argument and challenges me, or hears me out and gives a valuable critique of my position... but for the most part they're hard headed and dull; openly stating, up front,  that I have nothing of value to present; ridiculing Christianity rather than hearing and considering an argument for it. And their arguments are basically all the same: "I need evidence!"

But I'm observing that Christians are not much better, falling basically into three camps: bleeding heart gospel presenters, presuppers by stereotype (good at Sye, but bad at Van Till), and noobs arguing from the first cause. A fourth camp would be the outliers who appear to be careful thinkers, and who adjust their argument with feedback. I'd like to think I'm in this fourth group,  but I think it would be awfully arrogant of me to lump myself in with a group I am presenting as elite. I think,  among the three camps,  the first is simultaneously most noble, most effective,  most divisive, and most similar to the atheists that I described earlier, who I strongly dislike. 

The feelers who come in pleading with atheists to accept the simple gospel,  without argument,  on promise of salvation from hellfire, are most true to the cause.  Their message will be the fragrance of life for those predestined to be God's sheep.  Surely they aren't without wisdom, but like Paul they save that for the flock.  They invite ridicule and receive it plentifully without anger,  closing the conversation with cliche statements about how they're praying for the atheist,  or calling the atheist out directly and without shame for having a hardened heart.  

This group doesn't make much effort to hide the fact that they think atheism is bunk, and atheists have nothing of value to offer, but they present their message not as an attack on atheism,  rather a call to repentance and faith.  Surely these will inherit the earth.

I want to be more like that. Shamelessly plugging the simple gospel and inviting ridicule like a total imbecile (according to the world's standards,  and mind you most of the haters are just as much plugging their simple darwinism)... but I have an attachment to my argument. It's not just an argument -- through the years it's maintained my faith in a way. You might say my reason for believing is my argument,  but you might also say that my faith doesn't depend on the success or failure of my argument. 

I've told several people that I'd be willing to leave Christianity if someone presented a more logical alternative,  but some recent conversations I've had with Muslims made me realize that this might not be true.  Islam is big, but it's easy to understand, and the trinity has never made sense to anyone. I'm not convinced that I would allow trinity-"esque" explanations for phenomena in any other context,  so why do I allow it here? I can justify myself by saying it's "not a contradiction,  but rather a paradox", and paradoxes are in every field of study,  but really... this isn't just a paradox.  We all but love the fact that nobody will ever understand it fully -- it's a paradox with no comprehensible solution,  so it undermines the idea that all truth is available to me,  and causes me to wonder what reasonable boundaries can be drawn between available and unavailable truth. 

No, I suppose I don't accept Christianity simply on the grounds that it is the most logical religion (although I do maintain that it is so,  and the trinity, incomprehensible or not,  appears to be a necessary component to solving certain other philosophical problems,  such as the One and the Many). I think my commitment to Christianity is such that I'm incapable of leaving it, regardless of the evidence or argument presented to me.  It's not a matter of being "convinced" anymore -- it's an attachment that I intend to stubbornly cling to until my grave,  whether it appears to be true or not -- and I contest that it will never really appear to be untrue. I depend fully on the promise of the shed blood of Christ. 

So having said that... can I still work on my argument in good conscience? Am I capable of intellectual honesty anymore? Maybe I should just be a bleeding heart gospel presenter. 

.... should I though?

"Apologize for your facial expression!"

Notebook Transcription 2

Been exceptionally stressed lately. Reading through some of these poems, I can't imagine publishing them as they are. I guess I've never left a poem in its first-draft state in the past; I don't know why I should think that the process would be any different with a notebook. Only, a notebook leaves much more evidence of my mistakes. Once I'm finished copying the notebook into blogger, I'm definitely destroying this notebook. I'll maybe get into the details about these stressful times in another blog. For now, here's the second bit of prose from my notebook:

---------------------

A meaningless stream of syllables wraps itself around me

In this fog I can see neither myself, nor my self-image.

My heart is divided: divided or not.

I can have what I want if I will put it in its proper place.

But the thing I want doesn't seem to fit there.

When the words stop I am a blade of grass, indistinguishable.

Swaying in quiet wind, I mark my distinctives in the ground around me.

The wind empowers me to express myself.

Every mark is washed away by that same wind.

God gives, and God takes away.

---------------------

"Denied?"