Humanity and Deity

Observations From My Study (Matthew 8:23-27)

So while I was doing my daily Bible reading, I came to the famous story of Jesus calming a storm:

And when he got into the boat, his disciples followed him. And behold, there arose a great storm on the sea, so that the boat was being swamped by the waves; but he was asleep. And they went and woke him, saying, “Save us, Lord; we are perishing.” And he said to them, “Why are you afraid, O you of little faith?” Then he rose and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm. And the men marveled, saying, “What sort of man is this, that even winds and sea obey him?” (Matthew 8:23-27)

What strikes me about this passage enough to post it on the blog is that it displays both Jesus' humanity and deity in the same passage.

To start, look where Jesus is when the storm comes: "he was asleep" (v. 23). Sleep is, in my opinion, one of the biggest markers of human weakness there is. We spend one-third of our whole lives asleep. We can barely make it a full day before we need to fall asleep to restore our energy. Cars can go longer without needed to refuel than a human can before he needs to sleep. Here is Jesus, the Son of God, the Creator of the universe, giving himself up to such a human weakness as the need to sleep.

Then the storm hits. It doesn't wake him up. I wonder if he was so tired that the storm simply couldn't wake him, or if he was just that unafraid of it that it wasn't a big deal to him. The text doesn't say. But he remains asleep when the storm hits until his disciples, fearing for their lives, wake him up.

Then comes a startling and powerful sign of his deity. "He rose and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm" (v. 26). Jesus, the man who was asleep only moments before, commands the sea to calm down. And it obeys.

I suppose one could just say Jesus was a great miracle worker, that this is not proof of deity at all. But, in the Old Testament, power over the sea was attributed to God and God alone:

For he commanded and raised the stormy wind,
     which lifted up the waves of the sea.
They mounted up to heaven; they went down to the depths;
     their courage melted away in their evil plight;
they reeled and staggered like drunken men
     and were at their wits' end.
Then they cried to the LORD in their trouble,
     and he delivered them from their distress.
He made the storm be still,
     and the waves of the sea were hushed. (Ps 107:25-29; see also Ps 29:3-4; 89:9; 93:4)

Humanity and deity. Fully God and fully man. The Son of Man, Jesus the Messiah.

Unity, Diversity, Trinity

The ancient Greek philosophers, in their search for ultimate reality, were looking for something that could account for both unity and diversity. Anyone can look at the world and see diversity in the things around us. But they believed there had to be some kind of substance, some thing, that unified it all. Personally, I'm not certain if this substance had to be in everything (that is, everything had to be made up of it) or if it just had to unify everything in some way. I think either one would satisfy the criteria.

This is another question that the God of Christianity answers. How? He answers through the Trinity, which in fact means through himself.

Look at the Trinity. The Trinity is composed of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Each of these persons is fully God, not a third of God. Each of them is also, altogether, one God, not three separate gods. R.C. Sproul describes him as three in person and one in essence. If that's hard to wrap your mind around, join the club. But the point is this: within the Trinity, within the very being of God, there is both unity (one God) and diversity (three distinct persons).

Another way God satisfies this criteria is that he created all things. He is the ultimate source of Creation. He also created a great many things. Unity and diversity.

Another question of ancient Western philosophy that God answers. While we must never ultimately compress God into the box of human philosophial systems - that is, he doesn't have to fulfill every human philosophical criteria because such things can be inherently flawed - it's fascinating to see how he answers the questions he does. It's also fascinating how human thinkers knew to think of such questions. In my eyes, it's proof of God written on the human heart.

Truth, God, and So Forth

On Saturday I was talking with a co-worker of mine about a book I was reading called Does God Exist?: The Debate Between Theists and Atheists. In that discussion I told him that I had a lot of interest in reasoned defense of faith. Apparently I was telling the truth, because along with that book I've also read Defending Your Faith by R.C. Sproul and Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis, both of which give such defenses. A few years back I also listened to the audiobook version of The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel and read More Than a Carpenter by Josh McDowell. So apparently I've had an interest in this kind of thing for a while.

As a result, I firmly reject fideism, which is basically a "blind leap of faith" kind of view of Christianity (or any religion, really) that would say that everything in terms of belief must be taken on faith and faith alone. This worldview rejects reason or science or logic, calling such things "worldly" and seeing them as the enemies of Christianity. This is the main view of Christianity in the eyes of most American non-Christians, but shockingly a lot of Christians hold this view as well. But such things should not be.

Let's take a quick look at how the Bible defines faith: "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen" (Hebrews 11:1). I'm also going to give the verse in two other versions:

• Now faith is the reality of what is hoped for, the proof of what is not seen. (HCSB)
• Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. (NIV1984)

Look at those words: "assurance," "conviction," "reality," "proof," "sure," "certain." The Greek words mean "assurance" and "proof" respectively, but my point is this: faith is not simply "Oh, I hope this is true." Faith is rooted in fact. Faith is rooted in the truth. Faith is what we know. Yes, Hebrews 11:1 uses the word "hope," but hope doesn't necessarily equal uncertainty. Hope is what we want to happen in the future. We want to be saved. We want Jesus to reign over the earth and remake creation. What I'm arguing is that we can not only want that to happen, not merely hope it will happen with some degree of uncertainty, but rather be sure that what we hope for will in fact happen. As I said, faith is rooted in fact and truth.

So, what I don't understand is how any Christian can say that science and reason are the enemies of faith. If, in fact, our faith is rooted in fact and truth - if our God is the God of all truth - how can any truth from any discipline contradict it? Truth never contradicts truth. If any statement contradicts truth, that statement is not true. As Augustine once said, "Let every good and true Christian understand that wherever truth may be found, it belongs to his Master."¹

Thus, if Christianity is true, and if it is to be believed, then ultimately truth, no matter where it comes from, will not contradict what God's Word has to say. God created all things. God does not and cannot contradict himself. If Christianity is true, all true reason and science and philosophy and logic and math will not contradict God's Word and are not its enemies; they are its allies. We have to be careful because a lot of disciplines make claims to truth that are ultimately false, but any real truth will not undermine faith. In fact, it should strengthen it. We should see that it points to the Creator of all truth.

Footnotes

¹Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, Book II, Chapter 18. http://www.ccel.org/ccel/augustine/doctrine.xix_1.html

Let's Make Things Easier

If you ever visit any Christian theological blogs or listen to certain podcasts, I'm sure you've noticed the technical jargon that they tend to use. Contrary to popular belief, this jargon isn't used for the purpose of confusing the masses and making the writers seem smarter than they actually are (that shouldn't be the reason, at least). In reality, people resort to this usage of jargon for precision's sake. It's much easier and more precise at times to use the word "apologetics" than it is to have to write out the definition each and every time.

The problem is that, most of the time, the terms remain undefined on the website. Not everyone who visits these sites has a PhD or has ever read or written something at the doctoral, masters, or even undergrad level. Not everyone who hears one of these weird terms that no one else uses knows exactly what it means. Or perhaps the authors defined the terms in previous posts two years ago and don't feel the need to define them again. But not everyone has the time to dive into two years of old posts to find the definition, especially if the author is someone who posts every day, or multiple times every day.

Although I don't want to imply that there's anything wrong with using these terms with my next statement, I'll say that I, too, am "guilty" of using these terms at times, honestly because I'm going for precision in what I say. But that doesn't mean that everyone who reads my blog knows what I'm saying, or even that I'm using the term correctly. What we need is some definition.

You may notice the top of my blog now has a page titled "The Jargon List." Yep, I'm going to start storing all the jargon I use right there for easy reference! Right now it's pretty short, but I realized when I first considered this idea that I could potentially just keep adding things before I post it and just never post it because I keep thinking of things to add. So I've decided just to stick with words I have used recently or do use often. I'll add any new terms in the future if they come up, or if I deem it necessary to do so.

In addition, you may notice the fun little dotted line under the word "apologetics" in the first paragraph. No, it's not a link. If you hover over it, you'll see a tooltip pop up. I've decided that, while the main page is a great idea for consistency and reference, not everyone will want to have to have two pages open to scroll through to understand my posts. So I've decided that, when a technical term comes up, I'll add the tooltip with the definition of the term so you can simply hover over it, see what it means, and continue reading. Yay for (hopeful) ease of use!

I hope this helps you all out. It'll help me for sure; it means I don't have to define a term in-post every single time I use it. I can define it once and then use tooltips later. That way, the flow of the post doesn't have to be interrupted by the need to define words, and you, the reader, can know what I mean by those terms. It's a great way to ensure original intent is preserved, and hopefully will help you understand me better.

Living, Moving, and Being

Recently I've been working my way through R.C. Sproul's The Consequences of Ideas lecture series. It's a series about the history of Western philosophy, examining the various philosophical systems from a Christian worldview and discussing, as the title indicates, the consequences of those systems of thought. Thus far this fascinating journey has taken me from the pre-Socratic philosopher Thales to "The Philosopher" Aristotle (I've watched further on to Thomas Aquinas, but there's a study guide with questions and I've only gone through those up to Aristotle). These various worldviews have mostly been responses to the question of ultimate reality.

What fascinates me is how some of these thinkers, who had no access to Sacred Scripture, came to at least semi-Biblical ideas from their thought processes. It's also interesting how the God of the Bible answers all of those questions.

One of those questions was this: what is ultimate reality? What is the ultimate substance, the stuff, that makes up reality? According to what I've learned, this substance had to have the attributes of life, existence, and motion in and of itself. In other words, it's life, existence, and motion had to be uncaused. It had to be the source of those three things.

Thales' solution to this question was water. He thought it through pretty well.

1. Everything living needs water to live. There is life.
2. Water can exist in the three basic forms of matter. Its ordinary form is that of a liquid. When frozen, it becomes a solid. When heated enough, it becomes a gas. There is existence.
3. Water appears to move on its own. This is where Thales' idea falls, but not for lack of trying. He knew nothing of the moon's influence on the tides. Water simply looked as if it moves with no other influence.

Other philosophers said that the substance was air, others earth, and still others fire. Some said it was all four.

But what was it that the Apostle Paul said to the thinkers in Athens? "In him we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28). He was quoting from a Greek poem, but he declared that this was true of Jesus Christ. He was directly answering this question. God is the source of all life, existence, and motion. He himself lives, exists, and moves by his own power, not influenced by anything or anyone else. The Bible says so in John 1:3-4: "All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men." And for God to create, he has to first move. He begins all motion. He creates, beginning all life. And he sustains all of existence. He is sovereign over all life, motion, and existence.

I hope to talk more about this later on as I learn more about other ideas the philosophers have come up with. I think it would be interesting to do so. Later on in history we actually start seeing Christian philosophers such as Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas. I'm not sure what I'll do when I get to that point in history, but I'm sure I can come up with something.