Metábasis eis állo génos (3-21)
I came to send fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! But I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how distressed I am till it is accomplished! (Luke 12:49-50, NKJV)
I rarely think about the fact that Jesus was baptized twice: first, as his priestly ordination, and second, absorbing the deluge that was meant for us and for the entire old world. We are baptized into the benefit of this; we are those who escape the flood and the Red Sea.
But He answered and said to them, “An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh will rise up in the judgment with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and indeed a greater than Jonah is here. The queen of the South will rise up in the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and indeed a greater than Solomon is here. (Matthew 12:39-42, NKJV)
That generation was spared by the work of Jesus for forty years.
Genesis 2 reminds us that there is a category of “not good” that is distinct from “evil.” Jordan points out three great themes in Scripture: that of redemption, that of holy war, but also that of maturation. Often we are faced with the challenge of having to wrestle with an amalgam of not–good and evil. The sharpening and winnowing process God is undertaking now will slowly separate these out. At this point I’m still working for a multinational corporation but I don’t think that can continue indefinitely.
Matthew Henry the Christian nationalist on Matthew 28:
. . . Christianity should be twisted in with national constitutions, . . . the kingdoms of the world should become Christ’s kingdoms, and their kings the church’s nursing-fathers. What is the principal intention of this commission; to disciple all nations. Matheµteusate–“Admit them disciples; do your utmost to make the nations Christian nations;” not, “Go to the nations, and denounce the judgments of God against them, as Jonah against Nineveh, and as the other Old-Testament prophets” (though they had reason enough to expect it for their wickedness), but “go, and disciple them.” Christ the Mediator is setting up a kingdom in the world, bring the nations to be his subjects; setting up a school, bring the nations to be his scholars; raising an army for the carrying on of the war against the powers of darkness, enlist the nations of the earth under his banner. The work which the apostles had to do, was, to set up the Christian religion in all places, and it was honourable work; the achievements of the mighty heroes of the world were nothing to it. They conquered the nations for themselves, and made them miserable; the apostles conquered them for Christ, and made them happy.
I’ve criticized the many evangelical songs that tell of a personal conversion story, since their narrative doesn’t really match the experience of our children compared to how the Psalms speak. But Paul in Ephesians does give us a model for speaking this way, only he does it using the language of historia salutis rather than ordo salutis:
Therefore remember that you, once Gentiles in the flesh—who are called Uncircumcision by what is called the Circumcision made in the flesh by hands—that at that time you were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. (Ephesians 2:11-13, NKJV)
Remember that you were once lost!
Wise men know this without becoming bitter. (Doug Wilson, Joy at the End of the Tether, speaking of political corruption)
Metábasis eis állo génos (3-20)
The pugcast crew points out yet another inconsistency in demonism: it has a kind of hyper-scrupulous natural law concerning nature (don’t touch) but not concerning humanity (abolition of man). Of course, the real underlying principle here is the escape from law and responsibility, and hypocrisy is the point. It is part of the terrorism of the anti-Normal.
They also point out the shift in the definition of equity: a move from defining it in terms of deserts to radical equality. A race to the bottom is the inevitable result. Make equity great again!
It astonishes me how few wise Turks understand this principle:
In a multitude of people is a king’s honor,
But in the lack of people is the downfall of a prince. (Proverbs 14:28, NKJV)
ESG and resource actions and abortion and depopulation are great self-defeating ignominies. Whom the macrobes mean to destroy they first make blind.
Judging by publication dates, Everett Fox translated around one chapter of the Bible per month.
I listened to a conversation recently on nullification and selective enforcement where there was some libertarian hand-wringing over whether it would only be used in procedurally appropriate ways. Can we really have magistrates over-ruling both greater and lesser magistrates? Can we enforce this law but not that one? Yes, we must do so, and proceduralism be damned. When righteousness reigns, procedure and decorum are a blessing. When proceduralism reigns, it needs to be put in its place by some good old-fashioned righteousness. Sometimes that comes from the lesser magistrate and sometimes it comes from the greater magistrate. I am thankful for Dobbs but it would have been much better if the court had simply recognized that abortion was murder and directed all states to treat it appropriately according to common law.
LOL ERH as “one-punch man:”
Metábasis eis állo génos (3-19)
In his lectures on the Marrow controversy, Sinclair Ferguson shared this quote from Scottish minister Robert Traill:
That which concerneth our case is that the middle way betwixt the Arminians and the orthodox had been espoused and strenuously defended and promoted by some nonconformists of great note for piety and parts; and usually such men that are for middleways in points of doctrine, have a greater kindness for that extreme to which they halfway go, than for that from which they halfway come.
I think about this from time to time. It is obvious that this is true in the case of compromise, even among many who have no conscious intention to compromise but are simply drawn or carried along. But this is also true of those who are making a genuine shift in their convictions. It generally represents a temptation that must be guarded against even if we are not remaining in the “middleway;” it is possible for us to be over-enthusiastic and cover more ground than we ought. Christians ought to have great aplomb, to be complacent in the good sense of the word; very like ents. It is rare that we ought to despise our beginnings or purposely scandalize the normies.
When Logres really dominates Britain, when the goddess Reason, the divine clearness, is really enthroned in France, when the order of Heaven is really followed in China—why, then it will be spring. But in the meantime, our concern is with Logres. (C. S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength)
How very postmillennial of him! I look admiringly at Logres and Holland and other places in my patchwork family tree, but me and my house must work to establish—I don’t know, what shall we call it? Roanoke?
Every time I reread THS I’m freshly impressed by how prophetic it is. This time I’m struck by the presence of depopulation and homosexuality. But I’m also surprised that abortion is relatively absent.
Wendell Berry is suspicious of movements.
Institutions in any sphere can easily stray from their purposes if they are not constantly renewed in repentance. As Ken Myers says, it is possible to institutionalize rebellion against Jesus. This seems especially true for big institutions. If big banks come to take on the job of money laundering, then surely big media comes to take on the job of news laundering.
Is there a better indicator against investment than ESG? Look at this list of companies that are not gonna make it if they don’t repent.
Herman Dooyeweerd developed Kuyper’s idea of sphere sovereignty, suggesting the presence of many additional spheres. The idea is helpful; as is his insistence on irreducibility, even though I think his taxonomy of modes is a little too precise. I think of it this way: if you can imagine its developing a guild, then it’s likely a kind of sphere.
It strikes me how often God gathers his enemies in one place. He likes to tempt them with a great victory and then deal with them decisively.
The deer are after our tomatoes. I’ve tried garlic spray and fencing to compartmentalize our garden into smaller sections, to no avail. I’m working on a 7-foot fence now.
In college I played in our orchestra and our symphonic wind band. We recorded two albums during my time there: Crosswinds and At the Strongholds.
From Jon:
Metábasis eis állo génos (3-18)
Do not give your strength to women,
Nor your ways to that which destroys kings. (Proverbs 31:3, NKJV)
It struck me reading this today: how much more and greater could Solomon have accomplished if he had but one wife?
And, how much is the one-woman-man who is greater than Solomon going to accomplish?!
Metábasis eis állo génos (3-17)
Ken Meyers describes culture as “a system that has the power to make you feel guilty.” Although this is partly tongue in cheek, I think he is right. Culture is the cultivation of a standard of goodness, truth, and beauty, and it is inescapable. This means that Girardian systems are inescapable. It is not a question of whether there is guilt or even a question of whether you deal with it by scapegoat, but who is your scapegoat.
My friend Dave notes that premillennialism makes the exact same error as second temple Judaism: it expects that the mission of God’s people will fail but Jesus will make up the difference by means of the physical sword.
The poison of subjectivism
From Lewis’s essay of the same name:
Everyone is indignant when he hears the Germans define justice as that which is to the interest of the Third Reich. But it is not always remembered that this indignation is perfectly groundless if we ourselves regard morality as a subjective sentiment to be altered at will. Unless there is some objective standard of good, overarching Germans, Japanese, and ourselves alike whether any of us obey it or no, then of course the Germans are as competent to create their ideology as we are to create ours. If “good” and “better” are terms deriving their sole meaning from the ideology of each people, then of course ideologies themselves cannot be better or worse than one another. Unless the measuring rod is independent of the things measured, we can do no measuring. For the same reason it is useless to compare the moral ideas of one age with those of another: progress and decadence are alike meaningless words.
While we believe that good is something to be invented, we demand of our rulers such qualities as “vision,” “dynamism,” “creativity,” and the like. If we returned to the objective view we should demand qualities much rarer, and much more beneficial—virtue, knowledge, diligence and skill. ‘Vision’ is for sale, or claims to be for sale, everywhere. But give me a man who will do a day’s work for a day’s pay, who will refuse bribes, who will not make up his facts, and who has learned his job.
Plow
Some preliminary thoughts on this passage from Luke 9 after discussing with a friend:
Now it happened as they journeyed on the road, that someone said to him, “Lord, I will follow you wherever you go.”
And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” Then he said to another, “Follow me.”
But he said, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.”
Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and preach the kingdom of God.”
And another also said, “Lord, I will follow you, but let me first go and bid them farewell who are at my house.”
But Jesus said to him, “No one, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.” (Luke 9:57-62, NKJV)
It seems that plowing here is correlated with preaching the kingdom, given both the passage itself and the surrounding paragraphs.
I lean towards reading this with the same filter as the parables; namely that it is part of an overall covenant lawsuit against Israel and her shepherds and should be read corporately first of all. The appearance of the 70 (TR) underscores this. So does the lack of place for Jesus’s head; that is not a generic calling for us for all time.
But there’s always a secondary application to the church today and her shepherds, and to individuals. “Don’t you be like those branches that were cut off; they are an example for you.” This makes me think of Lot’s wife in particular. Plowing in the rest of the Bible supports these broader secondary applications.
Leithart offers this chiasm for Luke 9-19, centered around Jerusalem. There’s some beginning (Zacchaeus) and continuing to walk in faithfulness in the matching passage. I want to read the parable as corporate/shepherds first then individuals too.
I would be careful not to apply it woodenly to the pastoral ministry, especially in case of extenuating circumstances (bivocational pastor in changing circumstances; or someone impacted by ecclesiastical politics and shenanigans). I think we can discern between someone who still treasures God’s people and is giving himself somehow to the kingdom (in its fullest sense), versus someone who is longing for Sodom or Egypt or the former days.
But even the pastor still in full-time ministry needs to guard against longing for the former days.
Night
In the morning counsels are best, and night changes many thoughts. (Tolkien, The Return of the King)
What’s in a name
I want to visit many of these places on the basis of their names alone.
And so the companies came and were hailed and cheered and passed through the Gate, men of the Outlands marching to defend the City of Gondor in a dark hour; but always too few, always less than hope looked for or need asked. The men of Ringló Vale behind the son of their lord, Dervorin striding on foot: three hundreds. From the uplands of Morthond, the great Blackroot Vale, tall Duinhir with his sons, Duilin and Derufin, and five hundred bowmen. From the Anfalas, the Langstrand far away, a long line of men of many sorts, hunters and herdsmen and men of little villages, scantily equipped save for the household of Golasgil their lord. From Lamedon, a few grim hillmen without a captain. Fisher-folk of the Ethir, some hundred or more spared from the ships. Hirluin the Fair of the Green Hills from Pinnath Gelin with three hundreds of gallant green-clad men. And last and proudest, Imrahil, Prince of Dol Amroth, kinsman of the Lord, with gilded banners bearing his token of the Ship and the Silver Swan, and a company of knights in full harness riding grey horses; and behind them seven hundreds of men at arms, tall as lords, grey-eyed, dark-haired, singing as they came. (Tolkien, The Return of the King, 43-44)
I gotta have my orange juice. 