First Things First-

Authority From Which We Speak

(An excerpt from The Ikon of God)

The first and most basic element any reader would want to examine when reading  non-fiction is authority: how does the reader know that what the writer is saying is true? What does the author base his information on? Essentially, how do you know that you can trust us and what we say? Primarily, our authority starts and ends with the Bible. The first and foremost presupposition is that the Bible is understood to be the inspired, infallible Word of God that does not err. Even if the student does not have all of the theological nuances of what that means, he or she must understand that we are using the Bible as the authority for the way we should think about, implement, and live out a core understanding of Man and his relationship to God. Simply stated, it is through the Bible that we are able to peer beyond the veil of human limitation into God’s wondrous plans. Answers to all of the major questions of life are found in the Bible.

While mainly referring to Scripture as our guide for our study, we also will be referring to theological commentators from a broad spectrum of the Church. Interpretations will be quoted from some relatively new Christian authors and some very ancient writers, theologians, and Church Fathers. The wealth and volume of revelation contained in Christendom is immense and it spans many generations and comes from Christians of all walks of life.  

Our study can be described as your grandmother’s stew. Many things go into that stew, both vegetables and meat. The flavors of potatoes, carrots, beef, and many seasonings, all intermingle when cooked over time.. Here, you will find the Protestant with the Roman Catholic and the Presbyterian and the Charismatic, the new with the old. We will not be camping out in a particular denominational perspective but will be taking from a broad treasure and throwing it into one pot, simmering it until the common flavor exudes from every morsel. Like when the potatoes take on the flavor of the meat and carrots, we see a unity across the division as when we realize how various thoughts settle together from various branches of Christendom.

This melting pot of sources will, as we said, include some of the Church Fathers (by consulting the Church Fathers on matters of biblical interpretation, we are using the  lens of tradition). Many people today would ask why we consult the Church Fathers on Bible interpretation. How could they be relevant in obtaining a deeper understanding of the Scripture? There are two reasons: one, they were closer to the time of Christ and the first apostles. This makes their commentaries more reliable because we are always reforming and referring back to what God had established at the beginning. And two, they express a common thought for the entire, complete, and unified Church. It is hard for us today to think of the Body of Christ in any state other than its current condition with all of its denominations and non-denominations. The modern Church is highly fractured, but this has not always been. The Church developing out of its roots in Jerusalem was one in thought and mission. For 1,000 years (think about that) the Church was, very much a united body. The first major division did not occur until AD 1054 when the Catholic (western) and Orthodox (eastern) churches split. And even then, for another 500 years, the Church was only split in two. With the emergence of the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century, a fracturing process began to shape Protestant churches, first with the establishment of multiple denominations and— in recent times— a further splintering with the establishment into the “non-denominational/independent church,” each having a customized form of outside oversight or none at all. Modern writings no longer represent the stance of a unified whole, as the writings of the Church Fathers did. We certainly do not consider what the Church Fathers wrote to be of equal authority as the Scripture, but looking back at the Church and its writings in its pre-divided state brings a more accurate interpretation of the biblical authors for the very reason that the Church was completely unified and these men were closer to the Apostles (some, such as Clement of Rome, had even conversed directly with and learned personally from them).

Saint Vincent of Lérins (5^th century Christian writer) articulates why we need the lens of tradition when interpreting Scripture:

If someone wants to be protected from tricks and remain healthy in the faith, he must confine his faith first to the authority of the Holy Scriptures, and secondly to the Tradition of the Church. But someone may ask, is not the canon of Scripture sufficient for everything, and why should we add thereto the authority of Tradition? This is because not everyone understands the Scriptures in the same way, but one explains them this way and another that way, so that it is possible to get there from as many thoughts as there are heads. Therefore it is necessary to be guided by the understanding of the Church ... What is tradition? It is that which has been understood by everyone, everywhere and at all times ... that which you have received, and not that which you have thought up ... So then, our job is not to lead religion where we wish it to go, but to follow it where it leads, and not to give that which is our own to our heirs, but to guard that which has been given to us.[i]  

Basically, we are not saying much that new in this volume. We disclose things already discovered and they can be found in other writers throughout church history. We only hope for a pulling together into one location from across a broad history in order to obtain a better understanding of things already known and understood.

As with the astronauts of Apollo 8, discussed in the “Introduction,” Man needs outside perspective. It is not within Man to discover his origins or the origins of the universe on his own. He needs outside help. He needs God’s help. God provides that help through the Church (as well as the Holy Spirit); without the historical perspective of the Church, most readers succumb to their own private interpretation (2 Peter 2:20), formulating errors.

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[i] Deacon George Maksimov, “Three-Hundred Sayings of the Ascetics of the Orthodox Church,” Orthodox Missionary Society

of Venerable Serapion Kozheozersky, 01-18-2013, http://orthodox.cn/patristics/300sayings_en.htm.

Two Basic Modern Worldviews

Two Basic Modern Worldviews

(an excerpt from the book The Ikon of God)
vs.

What was the marvel of America sending men to the moon? What was the grandeur of that accomplishment? Was it that something wonderful would be found there, that maybe the moon was made of green cheese? When the first man, Neil Armstrong, stepped foot on the moon, how was this act  "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind?" Nothing changed on earth: life was no different other than some brief excitement. If it was such a grand frontier, why have we not been back in over 40 years?

Let us put this into perspective. When Man finally got to the moon, he only found rocks and dust, rocks and dust made up of the same stuff as rocks and dust found on earth. How was this “small step” any kind of “one giant leap for mankind?” The real discoveries of putting a man on the moon had nothing to do with the moon itself, but had everything to do with what he saw when he got far enough away from earth to look back at it. The moon was inhospitably cold and hot, but the earth was the most brilliant thing in the cosmos, sparling, shinning, and full of life. Man’s travels to the moon did not result in any magnificent lunar discovery: we did not find plants that grew upside down, new elements to include on the periodic table, or even the smallest living cell. The true discovery came in what Man saw when looking back at earth. Undoubtedly, the most remarkable, most astounding discovery was not anything found on the moon but happened in the Apollo 8 mission, before Armstrong uttered those infamous words when stepping on the moon. When viewing earth from space the three astronauts of Apollo 8 had a message for earth, revealing what they saw:[i]

Bill Anders:

"We are now approaching lunar sunrise and, for all the people back on Earth, the crew of Apollo 8 has a message that we would like to send to you.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.

And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

Jim Lovell:

"And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.

And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.

And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

Frank Borman:

"And God said, Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.

And God called the dry land earth; and the gathering together of the waters called He seas: and God saw that it was good.

And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas – and God bless all of you, all of you on the good Earth."

What was the message for earth that the astronauts wanted to convey? What was it that they discovered by going into space? This message was nothing new, but something very old, as old as earth itself. It gave the only meaningful purpose to the Apollo missions. Earth was NOT an accident! Its existence was intentional. And if earth was intentional, then Somebody had to intend it and then create it; this gives meaning to everything. Intent demonstrates meaning; earth was intentional. But who intended it? That somebody, is God. And there is nothing that can compare with earth: it is the most wonderful place in the universe, nothing has been observed through any telescope or viewed from any space probe that can even remotely compares with earth. Like Dorothy, in the “Wizard of Oz,” at the finish of her long journey, who proclaimed, “There is no place like home.”

So if this truth was self-evident to the astronauts, why do so many disbelieve it? The advent of enlightened reason during the last few centuries has taken a terrible toll on the modern mind. The modern secularist sees the existence of everything as being some sort of enormous accident (how reasonable is that! Can you imagine a train wreck ending as beautiful as earth?!) The atheist’s bible reads something like this, “In the beginning there was nothing and nobody, then boom, something appeared quite accidentally, and that something without any intent, direction, or purpose from of anybody, again, accidentally became something well defined, and it, of its own accord, accidentally, produced grass and trees and birds…and then, quite accidentally, produced Man.” Making everything an accident is a very dim view of the universe indeed. It is like living on the moon: rocks on dust and dust on rocks. There are no animals, no trees, and even no color. Everything is lifeless,  just sitting there, and just existing with no real meaning or purpose.

This presents two very strikingly different points of view of the cosmos. One view is personal: that there is a Person who had intent and meaning for everything. Conversely, the other view denies any design or intent for the universe. With this view, nothing has any meaning, because it was all a series of accidents. When there is no meaning to the cosmos, then there is no meaning for the individual. To believe in this theory of accidents is to both believe in and live a life that is morbid and meaninglessness.

If there is a Creator, then there is intent, and if there is intent, then there is meaning, and that intent is the meaning of everything to us. To find meaning for life is to locate God’s original intent for creating everything. Life then becomes about the meaning; life is full of meaning and then everything has meaning. Every blue sky, every sunset, every flower, every bumble bee, has meaning. If there is a God and His intent was relational, then everything in Creation speaks, and even shouts, with the meaning of God’s intent. Everything created is God’s love letter. To lose sight of that is to lose the meaning of everything.

The secular worldview kills everything because there is no Creator and therefore no intent; with no intent, nothing has any meaning or value. Even life itself becomes disdainful, morose, purposeless, because it all was an accident; this is the culture of death. And as with all accidents, life becomes about the injury, the pain, the hurt. The cosmos injured us by producing us through an ongoing train wreck. By giving us life with no meaning, the cosmos has imprisoned us and made us victims. The modern obsession with being oppressed blatantly manifests this symptom of our much larger sickness. The secular worldview is a dungeon, with many tortures and devices of torment, because it strips the essence of every dignity God gave to Man from him.

In summary: there are two ways of seeing the universe. One, holds onto the dream of the Dreamer: it is full of meaning, full of life, full of wonder, and is based on miracles. The other is as lifeless as the moonscape: cold, dead, and without rhyme or reason. These are the your choices.  

Moses had it right:

See, I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil. (Deuteronomy 30:15)

The choice has always been and will always be the same, life or death.

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[i] Apollo 8 Genesis Reading, Wikipedia.org, 01-08-2013, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_8_Genesis_reading