Note: References Added to Islam Article

I have added references to the controversial items in the Islam article recently posted on this site. Readers will now be able to check the Muslim sources for themselves. I have removed my editorial comments from that section of the post, which has now become more of a reference. I've also removed any details that could not be directly verified (e.g. in Aisha's account of Mohammed's night journey, I removed the reference to a "tent" since, while Aisha said Mohammed had remained physically in place all night, she did not specifically mention a tent). The post remains substantially as originally entered.

The stumbling block of the average systematic theology

Systematic theology aims to organize the truth. The Bible's truth is cleaned of all extraneous matter and distilled into definitions and propositions. These definitions and propositions are then the building blocks of systematic theologies, often rigorously and logically defined.

Logic is a good thing, but the logical process does not necessarily lead to truth. If you do not start with the right premises, you do not get the right conclusion, logically enough. "Garbage in, garbage out" as they say in my line of work. If you want your logical results to be true, your starting point must be true.

"I am the truth." -- Jesus

Jesus' saying does not compute in most syllogisms about knowing God. In fact, it is opposed to our natural way of thinking about truth. The truth is the sum total of what can be known, the highest transcendent perception of reality. The truth is where all decent thinking must begin and towards which all decent thinking must aim.

Jesus challenges us to understand God through him, to begin our systematic theologies with him, to start with him as our premise and end with him as our aim. Our natural thinking hardly knows where to begin with a venture like that. So we take an easier road -- but that road is not the way we were meant to travel.

In our reasoning about the things of God, if the first premise is not Jesus, the last conclusion will not be fully Christian. Jesus is our foundation, and we build from there.

I am not against systematic theology. But if we assume that Christ is the truth, then the best theology would begin and end with Christ; the best theology would center around Christ. The best "systematic theology" might very well be a biography. In the Bible, God has given us the right kind of book. Our systematic theologies are like a child's notebook, where we copy down pieces we do not yet fully understand. The more fully we understand, the more closely our systematic theologies resemble the Bible.

Christ's role in every spiritual blessing

Western Christianity has a long history of missing the point of Ephesians 1, particularly the section about spiritual blessings (as opposed to worldly blessings). How do we know what an author's point is? We know the author's point by what the author says, of course. Sometimes a writer's work has sections that just beg to be set into a traditional outline format because they are so tightly organized as a statement of the main topic and detailed supporting points. Such is the case with the opening section of Paul's letter to the Ephesians, particularly 1:3-14.

I'll spare you the actual outline, but watch Paul frame the following points around this main point: that Christ has the central role in every spiritual blessing, since every spiritual blessing is received only in or through Christ. First, Paul's own statement of his own topic from the beginning of his letter to the Ephesians:

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.

So plainly enough, this is about being blessed through Christ, and about how God is praiseworthy on account of blessing us through Christ. How can we be sure that this is really Paul's topic? Notice how Paul spends the follow-up section by listing spiritual blessings and showing Christ's role in each and every spiritual blessing that we receive:

• 1:4 "in him" (Christ) we are chosen;
• 1:5 God's predestination that we are adopted as Sons of God comes through Jesus Christ;
• 1:6 God's glorious grace is given us in "the One he loves" (Christ);
• 1:7 "in him" (Christ) we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins;
• 1:8-10 he has made known the mysteries of his will for the fulfillment of time: to head up all things in Christ, whether things on heaven or on earth;
• 1:11-12 in him (Christ) we are chosen as God's inheritance, as he predestines for the praise of his glory those who have placed their hope in Christ;
• 1:13-14 believing in Christ, we are sealed with the Holy Spirit guaranteeing our inheritance.

Now, after Paul has thoroughly tied each and every spiritual blessing -- whether forgiveness or being among God's chosen people -- to Christ, what have Christians made of this?

The mistakes go back at least to Aquinas, who when discussing predestination, quotes Ephesians like this:

inasmuch as God gratuitously and not from merits predestines or elects some; for it is written (Ephesians 1:5): "He hath predestinated us into the adoption of children ... unto the praise of the glory of His grace."

Notice the "..." ellipsis mark, which J.R.R. Tolkien aptly called the trail of the passing editor. What has been edited out is the reference to Christ's role in this.

Many have followed the same footsteps, missing Paul's point about Christ's role in every spiritual blessing. I've discussed Ephesians 1 with a number of people who consistently mentally read "he chose us before the creation of the world ... he predestined us to be adopted as his sons ... were were also chosen, having been predestined" (etc.), having become accustomed to mentally deleting all references to Christ while reading that passage. On-line, there's CARM's on-line dictionary which takes the classic Calvinist/hyperCalvinist view of "elect, election" in that it quotes this passage of Ephesians but deletes the reference to Christ's role in the spiritual blessing of election:

The elect are those called by God to salvation. This election occurs before the foundation of the world (Eph. 1:4) and is according to God's will not man's (Rom. 8:29-30; 9:6-23) because God is sovereign (Rom. 9:11-16). The view of election is especially held by Calvinists who also hold to the doctrine of predestination.

Just a note: when an interpretation systematically deletes the references to Christ from a passage, it's not going to be the right interpretation. Paul's point is how all these blessings -- including predestination to adoption and being in God's chosen people, being forgiven and redeemed, and receiving the Holy Spirit -- are granted through Christ. You cannot understand predestination apart from Christ, or being included in God's chosen people apart from Christ, any more than you can understand redemption and forgiveness apart from Christ. Christ is how we are predestined and how we are chosen just as surely as he is how we are forgiven; none of these things can be productively, Scripturally discussed apart from Christ. This, as Paul reminds us, is God's eternal purpose, his once-hidden mysterious will which has now been made known.

VA Weekly: Why Jesus' Death is a Sacrifice

Vox Apologia is trying a weekly series where apologists field questions from skeptics. The first one up for March 6 is about what constitutes a sacrifice. This week's skeptic takes the line that Jesus, being God and knowing he would be raised again, would not be as affected as other people by being tortured to death. This is a basic misunderstanding of what constitutes a sacrifice. The animals in the Old Testament sacrificial system did not suffer much at all; they simply died. Sacrifice does not necessarily involve pain; it involves death. As I've discussed elsewhere, Jesus' suffering is redemptive. But suffering is not necessary for something to be classified as a sacrifice.

The "don't judge" dodge

"Judge not, lest you be judged; for with the measure you use, it will be measured to you." -- Jesus

In my experience, this saying of Jesus is misused more than many others. Every defiant sinner takes up "Judge not" on his or her lips as a shield against criticism. When Jesus taught the Sermon on the Mount, he kept coming back to the point of mercy and humility towards each other. It's a lesson we all need. Mercy is, in its way, a shield against the Law. But it is a shield against its condemnation, not against its rightness. "Judge not" should keep the one who points out wrong away from hypocrisy or pride or setting himself up as a judge; it should not excuse the wrongdoer or obscure whether a thing is right or wrong.

Sacrifice: death and redemption

"People are saved by faith, not by whether someone made a sacrifice for them."
"Why is sacrifice necessary? Doesn't God simply forgive whom he pleases?"

Those are thoughts about how we are redeemed that I have heard often enough. I think we as Christians have not given much thought to sacrifice in the ancient sense of the word, the sense in which something is killed as part of a religious ritual. We might mention that type of sacrifice in order to point out that we don't do that anymore. After all, how much thought should we give the old Temple sacrificial system when the Temple no longer stands and the final sacrifice -- God's own sacrifice, once, for all has been made. I have also heard the old sacrificial system denigrated as a barbaric scheme meant to appease a vengeful, bloodthirsty God. Because the topic can be embarrassing or awkward (though I think that it does not deserve to be), we do not often take a deep and steady look at it. The reason I pursue it is that it helps us understand Christ's sacrifice and our sacrifice.

In the ancient sacrifices, a man's sin might be atoned for by the death of an animal. If you picture this as only a transaction or an exchange, it makes little sense. As an exchange it is not only unfair to the victim, it also does nothing for the wrongdoer except some would say in a legal sense, if the laws were set up in such a way, but that is an artificial and arbitrary connection.

The sacrifices were a graphic reminder that sin necessarily brings death. Destruction and corruption are a basic part of what sin is, and death necessarily follows. We know that it is not the sacrificial victim but we ourselves who have deserved death. The sinner has no part in a sacrifice if the victim dies but the sinner remains hard-hearted and unchanged. We have a part in a sacrifice when we desire that our sin should die. We participate in the sacrifice by putting to death the part of ourselves that deserves to die, putting to death the wrong thoughts and desires, the corruption in our lives. The revulsion we feel towards the blood and death of the sacrfice, this revulsion is rightly directed to the sin. We die with the sacrifice; we participate by dying to sin ourselves. When we participate in the sacrifice in this way, it transforms us and purifies us. Forgiveness alone does not make us fit to be in the presence of God. The sin in us must die.

We remember Christ's sacrifice for us, the victim in our place. We also put to death our own sins and die with him. Death, then, is turned upside down; in Christ's death and resurrection, its destruction of evil restores us to newness of life.

Here is a trustworthy saying: If we died with him, we will also live with him. (2 Timothy 2:11)

More is planned for a future post about how we are united with Christ's sacrifice not only in his death, but also in his resurrection.

Why forty days of Lent?

Those who recount the history of Lent say that it has not always been for 40 days, though the symbolic number seems fitting. Interestingly, the Talmud records that there was a long-standing plot on the part of Jewish leaders to take Jesus’ life:

For forty days before the execution took place, a herald went forth and cried, ‘He is going forth to be stoned because he has practised sorcery and enticed Israel to apostacy. Any one who can say anything in his favour, let him come forward and plead on his behalf.’ But since nothing was brought forward in his favour he was hanged on the eve of the Passover! – Sanhedrin 43a

The Talmud mentions that the public declarations of intent to kill Jesus began forty days beforehand – the traditional length of time for which Christians now observe the Lenten Fast. Or as the records of Jesus' followers mention,

But the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the leaders among the people were trying to kill him. (Luke 19:47; there are others like it)

This is the traditional time of year to focus on Christ's death and our own joining our death to his by dying to sin now.