the Word is the revelation (John 1:14-18)

Our only certain knowledge of God derives from the Christian Bible, both the Old and New Testaments in their entirety. And yet the Word of God is a term better applied to Jesus Christ than to the theopneustos (God-breathed) Scriptures. Certainly, what we know of Jesus is found in the Bible, but when the apostle John spoke of "the Word of God" he was speaking of God's self-revelation in the form of His only-begotten Son.

As humans very attached to our physicality, we like to have objects to tie our faith on. God has granted us two eminently physical elements in the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper, but we are seldom satisfied with what we've been given. All of us are prone to searching beyond the stated means of grace for some kind of object in which to put our trust and on which to found our certainty. For many, that object is the Bible.

This is going to sound to some like I'm saying something I'm not. The Bible is central to our faith in that it was inspired by God and tells us everything He intended to directly reveal about Himself. We can have no real faith without the Bible. I affirm these and other statements like them. What I do not affirm is that it is the Bible in which we put our faith.

Evidential apologetics and other modernist attitudes implicitly take the view that the Bible is the source of our faith. Evidentialists work hard to prove that the Bible is trustworthy, that the events recorded in it actually happened, etc. Anti-intellectuals share this attitude, though with a slightly different trajectory: they fall back on "the Bible says so" response to any challenges to their beliefs and attitudes.

Christians put their faith in Jesus Christ. The Bible reveals to those who believe the nature, character, and doings of the triune God, but it isn't the source of faith, and its veracity doesn't depend on our ability to defend it or prove its truth. The Bible is a subservient revelation to the incarnation of Christ, Who is the truest revelation of God to mankind; we must hold to it as our only source and rule of doctrine and life, but we must receive our faith from Christ Himself, and He alone must be the object of our faith. All else is subsidiary.

I AM, therefore we are. (John 3:1-21)

Commentators have rendered Descartes's first principle cogito ergo sum ("I think, therefore I am"), though a more accurate rendering would be dubito ergo sum ("I doubt, therefore I am"). Philosophers are fond of making propositional statements anchored in their own limited range of perception, especially since the French novel-reading thinker first proposed doubt as the basis for knowledge.

Christians have an entirely different presupposition: I AM, therefore we are. We exist because it pleased God to create us. To put it more personally: I exist because I AM made me, and I have eternal life because I AM re-made me. Our existence is a fact, not because we can reason it out (solipsism), but because the great I AM creator God Yahweh declared it to be so.

Any other starting point is wrong. God is at the center of all things, and He has revealed Himself to us through His holy Scripture, in which He also describes our creation. There is no way to trust the validity or truth of Scripture unless we accept the whole truth of Scripture, and unless we accept it as God's self-revelation rather than the musings of fallible humans.

If the Bible is only a collection of fallible human writings, we are fools to put any faith or trust in it. Faith is an all-or-nothing venture, not a pick-and-choose affair. When we trust the Word of God as our ultimate source of wisdom (rather than our doubt, or knowledge, or philosophy, or whatever), we see that our existence is dependent on nothing else than God Himself, and that our spiritual life issues only from His grace and will.

Causal Love (1 John 4:19)

"We love because He first loved us" (1 John 4:19).

This isn't merely reciprocal love, it's a causal fact. Reciprocity declares that God began loving us at some point, and therefore we respond in love. The biblical doctrine is much different: in Psalm 103:17-18, David says, "But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear Him, and His righteousness to children's children, to those who keep His covenant and remember to do His commandments."

Of course that doesn't mean any of us keep His covenant or do His commandments—through our faith in Christ we receive the imputation of righteousness (Ephesians 2:8-10; Romans 3:21-31). But the fact that God's love is "from everlasting to everlasting" shows that He never (as the great Geerhardus Vos put it) began to love us. Rather, God always loved His elect children, before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:3-14).

If we bear this in mind, we won't fall into anti-Gospel attitudes that demand of us something we can't give. No one is able to conjure love for God out of his own deceitful, sin-poisoned heart, which is what a reciprocal view of 1 John 4:19 leads to. But if we understand God's love to be causal, i.e. that from which our love flows, we can embrace fully the glory of the Gospel message that God raises dead sinners to life.

How do we love God and keep His commandments, then? We trust in Christ for our salvation. Only the God-man Jesus was able to love God the Father as His righteousness, law, and majesty demand, but through the faith He gives us that perfect love is imputed to us. Salvation is about God: He bestows it, He maintains it (Hebrews 12:1-2), and He is glorified by it. Truly, we love Him because He loved us from everlasting to everlasting.

Real Community (Hebrews 10:24-25)

A big deal is made these days about "community." In many Christian circles, the idea of community actually has more to do with Eastern collectivist philosophy than the biblical doctrine of the Church. Leaders, particularly those within the purpose-driven and emergent strands of broader Christianity, have no real concern for individuals: their focus is the group, the city, the community.

The word community as such is foreign to Scripture. There is the covenant people of God, there are the nations, there are the enemies of Yahweh, but none of these are characterized as communities in the modern (or shall we say, postmodern) sense of the word. For contemporary postmodern leaders, "community" takes on political and sociological overtones, and the reason is clear—if the true doctrines of the individual forgiveness of sins and the particular salvation of souls are abandoned, Christianity becomes simply a program for social improvement and worldly betterment.

Thus, community becomes a political objective, while the Church becomes an outmoded concept. Sin is traded for talk of suffering; forgiveness ceases to be a gift of the sovereign God and becomes something we must bestow on ourselves or on rival communities; Jesus Christ is our leader, and therefore pastors aren't shepherds, they're CEOs.

The author of Hebrews has a different concept altogether. Hebrews 10:24-25 says, "And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near." Inasmuch as the Church is called to community, it is for the purpose of encouragement in faith and good works, not to press some social agenda, to become yet another postmodern community in the midst of many.

At bottom, the call for community as defined by emergent leaders and their ilk is nothing more than a rejection of the uniqueness of the Church, the Christian faith, and (worst of all) Jesus Christ Himself. If sin is no longer something ubiquitous from which we need to be saved, then we're "free" to pursue a mere social agenda, side-by-side both physically and ideologically with heretics, pagans, and blasphemers. It's time we recovered the real community of the Church, and encourage one another to love and good works.

Being in Christ (Romans 8:1)

There are phrases used so commonly in the Word of God and quoted so often in church, seminary, and theology books that we lose their importance and depth. We've all heard and used the phrase "in Christ," but how often do we remind ourselves what that means?

It's not just a figure of speech. If it were simply a metaphor, then we'd be forced to admit we aren't literally "in Christ." But the apostle Paul constantly refers to our status "in Christ," making much of the statement doctrinally and practically.

All of the Bible is about Jesus Christ. If we read the book of Isaiah the prophet as the story, not of God's people, but as the story of God's people as lived out in the single God-man Jesus Christ, we get the key for understanding what it means to be in Christ.

Jesus Christ is the whole people of God distilled into a single person. He became sin on our behalf and in Himself; He defeated sin and death on our behalf and in Himself; He rose from the dead and ascended into heaven on our behalf and in Himself.

When we are saved by Him, we become part of His body, we are truly in Him. Everything that has been done for our salvation was done through Jesus Christ, the eternal God come to us in human flesh, and our only hope of salvation is to be found in Him.

We can't afford to think of the Gospel simply as the story of God's redemption of His people; we must think in terms of of God's redemption of His people through Jesus Christ. The Bible isn't about us, it's about our saviour, to whom alone belongs all glory and honor.

The faithful 300.

I'm tired of writing about movies, books, and random stuff. There's nothing more important for Christians than to know their God through His Word, and the things of this world are distractions. I haven't become an ascetic, I've just come to the conclusion that if I'm going to take the time to blog, it better be about something eminently worthwhile. What's more worthwhile than God Himself?

As a result of this shift, I've renamed "St. George and the Dragons" to "The 300." I'm no fan of Zack Snyder, or of ancient Sparta; I am a fan of faithful men of God, including Gideon and his 300 faithful Israelites who defeated Midian under God's protection and in His power (Judges 7). I'd rather identify with the faithful people of God than with a legendary figure.

So, my blog is operational again, but it's not entirely the same blog. It's theological and apologetic, and my aim through it is to glorify our risen savior, Jesus Christ, whose self-revelation is more important than any script or novel or music album. If we don't know it better than we know ourselves, how can we call ourselves His children? This world offers no hope; Christ offers us the hope, not of peace or well-being here, but of the life of the world to come. Let us faithfully proclaim that hope.

The Hobbit Part 1: An Expected Travesty

Having seen all of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings films, I wasn't expecting anything from his version of The Hobbit. In some sense, I was expecting much less, simply because the story has less immediate depth and could therefore be easily twisted into something far different from its original form. What I witnessed in the film exceeded my expectations, as in, "This is far worse than I was even expecting it to be."

I feel embarrassed offering a spoiler alert, but here it is: I'm going to ruin the movie for anyone who hasn't seen it by explaining the last couple minutes and why they're awful.

In Tolkien's novel, Bilbo Baggins and Thorin Oakenshield have a strained relationship, due mostly to Thorin's regal bearing. He doubts Bilbo's ability to burgle, and Bilbo in turn is a bit put off by Thorin's majesterial presence. One of the most beautiful moments in the book comes at the end, when, after having endured all manner of adventures and terror together, Thorin repents of having mistreated Bilbo and even confers on him the honor of companionship.

Peter Jackson has obviously never had a meaningful relationship in his life, and obviously knows nothing of the nature of repentence, and is obviously just as uncultured and morally suspect as all Australians accuse all Kiwis of being.

At the end of the first installment of The Hobbit (the fact that a 300-page book is going to take up nine hours of screentime is an abomination in itself), the eagles have just dropped off Thorin's group atop the edge of the Misty Mountains. Bilbo hasn't been able to prove himself much at all yet, and one of his exploits in the book (orchestrating the rescue of the dwarves from the trolls) has even largely been stripped from him in the movie. So, there's little if any reason for Thorin to have had his mind changed as to Bilbo's worth.

And yet, he says something grumpy to Bilbo, followed by a big grin, and a "you're okay, kid" kind of speech, and topped off with a bear-hug. First of all, the nature of dwarves: not only are dwarves not teddy bears, but Thorin least of all would be bear-hugging anybody. He's a loner, and he's a king, and he's a grumpy old man.

Far more importantly, the grandeur and pathos of Thorin's deathbed repentence is completely obliterated by this premature and shallow reconciliation. It doesn't even make sense by the rules of good filmmaking: if you're going to stretch a story out through three long movies, you want to leave as much unresolved as possible in order to keep folks interested. Sadly, most people seem to be convinced The Hobbit movies are great before they've even seen them.

I wasn't expecting a good movie, but what I actually got was nearly unwatchable (and this from the guy who embarked on a ten-year quest for the worst movie ever made). If you have any love for Tolkien's work, at least watch this film with a critical eye. And don't tell me you were able to "just watch it as a movie, and not as the book," because Peter Jackson must be held to the standard of the book because his movie has the same title as the book, and because he's making money not on his own name but on the name of a great writer whom he's slandered and misrepresented.