Sludge
In Rousseau, we especially find ourselves awash with so much that is modern. There is bathos, sentimentality, and the relish of pity that has its origin in self-pity. He nearly succeeds in making the self absolute as the feeling self, and then very quickly loses that same self as it drowns in its own self-felt concern. He is lost in self-pity and in self-importance in petty tragedy. Anything can be a tragedy—a toothache, the smallest unrequited love.
Rousseau didn’t invent anything absolutely new. He simply placed an emphasis on certain aspects of life that had never before been given such importance. Everybody has always known about feelings. Bathos and sentimentality have been around for a long time, but mostly as comedy. Rousseau made self-concern, in a deepened way, the end of life; for literary Europe, however, he managed to make it respectable. The importance of romance is not the glory of the beloved. The importance of romance is the glory of my own feeling of being in love. He was in love with being in love, and the beloved is a really quite secondary self-extension. He glorified the self’s importance by making the smallest self-pity seem as immense as the tragedy of King Lear.
What Rousseau accomplished was a lineage that is very old, and is deeply tied, ironically, to the love of death. The final glory, one begins to suspect, would be suicide over the tragedy of a toothache. Hopefully others will notice. My tragedy makes me overwhelmingly notable and important. . . .
Who was this lover and this beloved inside of Rousseau? Is this one who feels love for the self, sensing a prior self, or does he create this self? Did Rousseau exist before he felt himself in love, or did this love create this person?
There is a manifest contradiction here. Rousseau makes a good deal of “virtue.” The self is a “virtuous” self. But Rousseau is very interested in maintaining the utter independence of his existence. This good or virtuous self is only good because Rousseau loves this self. He creates himself by loving himself, and makes himself “virtuous” because he loves himself, and then “feels” this self-creation. He, in other words, creates himself out of nothing. Did he authentically exist before he loved himself? Where was he before he discovered this love? Apparently nowhere. He did not exist. Then he who did not exist began to exist and brought himself into existence by love. But how? By loving himself. Unfortunately, there was no one there to carry out the act of loving. Which is prior: self-love, or existence of the self? One cannot be without the other. This is creation out of nothing, creation ex nihilo. . . .
The United States—my own country—is, at this moment, in grave danger of falling into a final and irreversible sinkhole of Rousseauian sludge. Some years ago, the American education system adopted the “middle school” philosophy, which replaced the old-fashioned junior high school. The purpose of junior high was quite simply to prepare students for high school; the purpose of high school was to complete a basic and foundational educational curriculum that would enable one to enter the work and domestic force of the country, and also prepare some of those students for higher education at the nation’s colleges and universities. One, in other words, had to submit oneself to a particular body of learning. However, by the 1970s and 80s, America had been extensively psychologized. The purpose of education for adolescents ceased to be submission to a curriculum for life preparation, and was replaced with collective therapy to enable students to develop a “healthy self-esteem.” School, in other words, became “student-centered,” making the development of the students ego the central reality. The student, then, no longer submits him or herself to something larger than and outside of themselves, but the entire educational establishment submits itself to them. School became “ego-centric” in the most literal way. This was the essential purpose of middle school as opposed to junior high.
The middle school is an entirely Rousseauian institution, and has built into it all of the contradictions and conflicts that are outlined above. Not surprisingly, it has, over time, issued in all of the above contradictions. . . . If God cannot be one’s final and ultimate audience (as with Augustine in his Confessions, who gave himself to, but did not pander to, a public), then one can only “play to the crowd” as with Rousseau. The result is a world of constant offense, extensive hypocrisy, and a societal “anti-covenant” in which harmonious relationship is nearly impossible. In short, the Rousseauian “middle school” philosophy is a recipe for a completely neurotic society, one dominated by psychiatry and a legal profession with an inordinate number of people involved in lawsuits over absurd and petty offenses. What should have been a passing moment in the development of the adolescent’s personality in junior high school (with the constant sense of seeking to be “in” and “popular”) is now elevated to the final meaning of life and as grist for an everlasting therapy mill. It is a recipe for an adolescent society in which everything coalesces around nothing. (Rich Bledsoe, Can Saul Alinsky Be Saved?, 14-17)
Forgiven
You asked if there was anything in my congregation that could not be naturally accounted for by an unbelieving skeptic. My answer would be emphatically yes, but you will think me cheating when I tell you what they are. My congregation is filled with people who have been washed in the blood of the lamb, who have had their sins forgiven, who have been justified, and sanctified. No naturalist can account for any of these things. They have come to participate in the salvation of God. You will accuse me of begging the question, and of assuming what I need to prove, but my point is that the naturalist begs the question himself. He pretends he is searching for evidence that his epistemological grid has already ahead of time dogmatically declared cannot exist. So even if a man were to rise from the dead there would be a natural explanation for it and could not mean what, say, the Apostle Paul says it means. . . .
I can sympathize with your account of spending (I assume) heart-breaking time trying to find a miracle, or a clarity and experience of God in your earlier years, and not finding it. I went through something very similar, and spent a number of years close to despair at the “brass heavens.” God was nowhere. For all of my desperation, I could not “find” him. Then I met some people who were able to help me. What they helped me to see was that if we are to find God, and to find a real and living experience of Christ, it will be in the midst of a moral war that I must wage with myself. The only way that Christ can ever be found is when I’m thrown on, most specifically, an utter need for a Savior who can save me from sin. That meant I had to begin to take sin seriously in a way that I never had before. Before (and I was raised in the church), I was caught up in seeking “experiences,” and happiness, and (in a youthful way) success (of which I had little of any adolescent sort). (Rich Bledsoe, Can Saul Alinsky Be Saved?, 115-116)
Fire
God inaugurates his covenant administrations with exceptional works of the Holy Spirit, normally accompanied by heavenly fire. Examples include:
- Genesis 3:24, the flaming sword of the cherubim
- Genesis 15:17, the smoking oven and burning torch that appear to Abram
- Exodus 3:2, God’s appearance to Moses in the burning bush
- Leviticus 9:24, fire from God lights Moses’ altar
- 2 Chronicles 7:1-3, fire from God lights Solomon’s altar
- 1 Kings 18:38, fire from God lights Elijah’s altar
- Zechariah 3:2, Joshua the high priest is described as a brand plucked from the fire by God
- Acts 2:3, fire appears on the church at Pentecost
Genesis 2 is an interesting case. God breathes into Adam the breath of life, commissions him, and fashions a bride for him. At this point Adam is called by a new name—ish, or man. It is commonly pointed out that this word is a likely pun for esh, or fire.
The pattern we see above validates this connection. God’s inaugurating his covenant with man as steward of creation is a life-giving work of the Holy Spirit, which involves heavenly fire that lights a new fire that man must preserve.
Fair and excellent
“All things are hard which are fair and excellent.” (Dedication to Queen Elizabeth, The Geneva Bible, 1560 edition)
Silence the avenger
Twice in the last few months I have checked myself when quoting Psalm 8:
Out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants
You have ordained strength,
Because of your enemies,
That you may silence the enemy and the avenger.
The word “avenger” feels out of place. Why would it be necessary for infants to silence the kinsman redeemer-avenger? As it turns out, the word for avenger here is a more general term, possibly even conveying the idea of self-vengeance.
Jesus quotes Psalm 8 in Matthew 21:
But when the chief priests and scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying out in the temple and saying, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” they were indignant and said to him, “Do you hear what these are saying?”
And Jesus said to them, “Yes. Have you never read, ‘Out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants you have perfected praise’? ”
Jesus leaves off the latter part of the verse, but we cannot avoid hearing its echo. Jesus is accusing the chief priests and scribes of having become God’s enemies, of seeking to avenge themselves against him and his people.
Likewise those who bar little ones from Jesus’s table. Many of them do so heedlessly rather than high-handedly. But there is still a rightful sting and shame they ought to feel as these little ones otherwise participate fully in Jesus’s worship.
Do not marvel
There was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. This man came to Jesus by night and said to Him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.”
Jesus answered and said to him, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
Nicodemus said to Him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?”
Jesus answered, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
Nicodemus answered and said to Him, “How can these things be?”
Jesus answered and said to him, “Are you the teacher of Israel, and do not know these things?” (John 3)
Let’s see how Nicodemus ought to have derived this from Genesis. We know that God intended to give every gift to mankind, but he held one gift in temporary reserve until they matured:
And God said, “See, I have given you every herb that yields seed which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed; to you it shall be for food. . . .”
And Yahweh God commanded the man, saying, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” (Genesis 1-2)
The serpent accused God of withholding a good gift, reserving it for himself:
Then the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” (Genesis 3)
Let God be true but every man a liar. In order to receive God’s good gifts, there is now no other possible pathway except for mankind to pass through the the death that God prescribed.
One man passed through this death and was reborn from the grave: “even so must the Son of Man be lifted up.” (John 3) This is the birth that Jesus tells “you” (Nicodemus, singular) that “you” (mankind, plural) can now participate in by means of union with him. We are reborn by believing in him (John 3:16)—that is, by entrusting ourselves to him, allying ourselves to him.
Every nation
On the face of it, it is easy to recognize that the purpose of the gift of tongues was to bring God’s kingdom, in the words of Revelation, to every nation, tribe, tongue and people. You can see this in Acts 2 mentioning “every nation under heaven” and in the fact that Pentecost is a mirror image of Babel. Instead of reversing Babel, Jesus subverts it, or in the words of Michael Heiser, “infiltrates” it; without destroying nations as such, he orchestrates to bring every nation and language under his rule.
There are a few less obvious ways in which Scripture highlights this. Michael Heiser points out that God is not simply bringing the gospel into every language, but also transferring every nation from the elementary principles and powers back to Jesus. In doing so, Luke presents a litany of nations that mirrors the exhaustive list of seventy nations of Genesis 10. Of course, it is “every nation,” but it is also structured from east to west just as it is in Genesis 10. And while Heiser does not call attention to this, Luke’s list covers a total of seventeen nations and people groups. This is significant because seventeen (10+7) is often a Biblical analog for seventy (10*7). The number seventeen is significant in the structure of the Psalms, and is the backdrop for the 153 fish of John 21, since 153 is the triangle of 17. This is another way of indicating that the purpose of the gift of tongues was to thoroughly distribute the wonderful works of God to every human language and nation.
Heiser also suggests that the word for “divided” in verse 3 is a significant allusion to this fact, since it can also be taken to mean “distributed.” The gifts of the kingdom are distributed to every language.
Anxious
Usually when I use the word “anxious” I have Edwin Friedman in mind. However, following are quotes and reflections from John Williamson Nevin’s The Anxious Bench.
My friend Jon observes that, while the anxious bench and even the altar call may have disappeared from many churches, reformed charismatic churches have an “anxious mic,” that is, the “prophecy mic.” In my experience, the absence of a confession and absolution from worship leaves a gap that needs filling. If there is a prophecy mic then it is frequently filled by the most anxious church members reassuring one another. By this means women often preach to the church.
I think it is interesting that the modern answer proposed for dead formalism is an equally dead emotionalism. Both are dead externalisms. Perfume will not awaken a dead body.
Study, and the retired cultivation of personal holiness, will seem to their zeal an irksome restraint; and making their lazy, heartless course of preparation as short as possible, they will go out with the reputation of educated ministers, blind leaders of the blind, to bring the ministry into contempt, and fall themselves into the condemnation of the devil. Whatever arrangements may exist in favor of a sound and solid system of religion, their operation will be to a great extent frustrated and defeated, by the predominant influence of a sentiment, practically adverse to the very object they are designed to reach. . . .
False views of religion abound. Conversion is everything, sanctification nothing. Religion is not regarded as the life of God in the soul, that must be cultivated in order that it may grow, but rather as a transient excitement to be renewed from time to time by suitable stimulants presented to the imagination. A taste for noise and rant supersedes all desire for solid knowledge. The susceptibility of the people for religious instruction is lost on the one side, along with the capacity of the ministry to impart religious instruction on the other. The details of christian duty are but little understood or regarded. Apart from its seasons of excitement, no particular church is expected to have much power. Family piety, and the religious training of the young, are apt to be neglected. (63-64)
It is certainly a little strange, that the class of persons precisely who claim to be the most strenuous, in insisting upon unconditional, immediate submission to God, scarcely tolerating that a sinner should be urged to pray or read the bible, lest his attention should be diverted from that one point, are as a general thing nevertheless quite ready to interpose this measure in his way to the foot of the cross, as though it included in fact the very thing itself. And yet a pilgrimage to the Anxious Bench, is in its own nature as much collateral to the duty of coming to Christ, as a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. In either case a false issue is presented to the anxious soul, by which for the time a true sight of its circumstances is hindered rather than promoted. (68)
A low, shallow, pelagianizing theory of religion, runs through it from beginning to end. The fact of sin is acknowledged, but not in its true extent. The idea of a new spiritual creation is admitted, but not in its proper radical and comprehensive form. The ground of the sinner’s salvation is made to lie at last in his own separate person. The deep import of the declaration, That which is born of the flesh is flesh, is not fully apprehended; and it is vainly imagined accordingly, that the flesh as such may be so stimulated and exalted notwithstanding, as to prove the mother of that spiritual nature, which we are solemnly assured can be born only of the Spirit Hence all stress is laid upon the energy of the individual will, (the self-will of the flesh,) for the accomplishment of the great change in which regeneration is supposed to consist. . . .
Religion does not get the sinner, but it is the sinner who “gets religion.” Justification is taken to be in fact by feeling, not by faith; and in this way falls back as fully into the sphere of self-righteousness, as though it were expected from works under any other form. In both the views which have been mentioned, as grounded either in a change of purpose or a change of feeling, religion is found to be in the end the product properly of the sinner himself. It is wholly subjective, and therefore visionary and false. The life of the soul must stand in something beyond itself. Religion involves the will; but not as self-will, affecting to be its own ground and centre. Religion involves feeling; but it is not comprehended in this as its principle. Religion is subjective also, fills and rules the individual in whom it appears; but it is not created in any sense by its subject or from its subject. The life of the branch is in the trunk. (114-116)
To acquire, in any case, true force, [the will] must fall back on a power more general than itself. And so it is found, that in the sphere of religion particularly, the pelagian theory is always vastly more impotent for practical purposes, than that to which it stands opposed. The action which it produces may be noisy, fitful, violent; but it can never carry with it the depth, the force, the fullness, that are found to characterize the life of the soul, when set in motion by the other view. (127)
This spiritual constitution is brought to bear upon [man] in the Church, by means of institutions and agencies which God has appointed, and clothed with power, expressly for this end. . . . Due regard is had to the idea of the Church as something more than a bare abstraction, the conception of an aggregate of parts mechanically brought together. It is apprehended rather as an organic life, springing perpetually from the same ground, and identical with itself at every point. In this view, the Church is truly the mother of all her children. They do not impart life to her, but she imparts life to them. Here again the general is felt to go before the particular, and to condition all its manifestations. The Church is in no sense the product of individual christianity, as though a number of persons should first receive the heavenly fire in separate streams, and then come into such spiritual connection comprising the whole; but individual christianity is the product, always and entirely, of the Church, as existing previously and only revealing its life in this way. Christ lives in the Church, and through the Church in its particular members. . . .
Where it prevails, a serious interest will be taken in the case of children, as proper subjects for the Christian salvation, from the earliest age. Infants born in the Church, are regarded and treated as members of it from the beginning, and this privilege is felt to be something more than an empty shadow. The idea of infant conversion is held in practical honor; and it is counted not only possible but altogether natural, that children growing up in the bosom of the Church, under the faithful application of the means of grace, should be quickened into spiritual life in a comparatively quiet way, and spring up numerously, “as willows by the water-courses,” to adorn the Christian profession, without being able at all to trace the process by which the glorious change has been effected. Where the Church has lost all faith in this method of conversion, either not looking for it at all, or looking for it only in rare and extraordinary instances, it is an evidence that she is under the force of a wrong religious theory, and practically subjected, at least in some measure, to the false system whose symbol is the Bench. If conversion is not expected nor sought in this way among infants and children, it is not likely often to occur. All is made to hang methodistically on sudden and violent experiences, belonging to the individual separately taken, and holding little or no connection with his relations to the Church previously. Then as a matter of course, baptism becomes a barren sign, and the children of the Church are left to grow up like the children of the world, under general most heartless, most disastrous neglect. The exemplifications of such a connection between wrong theory and wrong practice, in this case, are within the reach of the most common observation. (129-132)
How prophetic.
Nazirite
There is a sense in which God’s covenant with David, and David’s kingship, are exemplary of the new covenant and of Jesus’s kingship in ways that exceed later covenants. Peter Leithart works to demonstrate some of the ways in which this is true in his outstanding book From Silence to Song.
I especially like to highlight a few aspects of this. The so-called “Messianic Secret” is a fruitful parallel between the ministry of Jesus and the life of David. Related to this, the seven-year period in which Israel was gathered from Ish-bosheth to David is a significant parallel to the forty-year period in which old Israel was called to change her allegiance to Jesus. I especially like to reflect on the water crossings during the time Absalom drove David into the wilderness. Everyone who crossed the Kidron with David into the wilderness—including Ittai and his little ones (2 Sam. 15)—was baptized into David and enjoyed a union with David and all of the blessings of his kingship, victory, and vindication. In fact, on David’s return, it was necessary for the leaders to welcome David back by entering into his exile and crossing over the Jordan to bring him back (2 Sam. 19). These are clear analogs to our baptism into Jesus as well as our children’s baptism.
Mephibosheth was unable to join in this ministry to David. Instead, he allowed his hair to grow long (2 Sam. 19). Mephibosheth was thus to David what the Nazirite is to God. Earlier Nazirites had conducted a ministry of holy warfare; Mephibosheth’s ministry was instead a ministry of spiritual warfare, of prayer and fasting. This is instructive for Christians today. Today, all Christians are baptized; we are all priests (as well as being sons and prophets). There is therefore no more Nazirite, no need for a temporary priest or holy warrior. But the ministry of prayer—especially prayer in corporate worship—is how we fulfill the offices of priest and Nazirite today.
The fire that sat upon the heads of Christians in Acts 2 is equally instructive. This is not just the making of every Christian into a sacrifice and offering; it is also the making of every Christian’s head into a sacrifice and offering, just like the Nazritie. In terms of Pentecost, the work of speech, prayer, and worship is once again a significant characteristic of our service to God and his house.
I gotta have my orange juice. 
Govern
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As a precondition to discipling the nations, the church will disciple the revolutionary spirit.
She will gain the means to do so by learning to govern her own revolutionary spirit.
Relevant to this:
Written by Scott Moonen
June 25, 2025 at 7:06 am
Posted in Biblical Theology, Christ is Lord, Commentary, History