Beginning with the Triune God

I ditched the books I was reading and started a new one. I decided the reason I was having such trouble reading—I’ve been reading (or supposedly reading) the same two books since June—was that I wasn’t very interested in either of the books I was trying to read.

I needed a book I would enjoy reading, so I began Covenantal Apologetics by K. Scott Oliphant.

Here is Oliphant’s first tenet in a list of “ten crucial theological tenets for a covenantal, Christian apologetic”:

1. The faith that we are defending must begin with, and necessarily include, the triune God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—who, as God, condescends to create and to redeem.

Generic theism is no part of the Christian faith.  … [A]ny defense that does not include the triune God is a defense of a false theism. And theism of this sort is not a step toward Christianity, but an idolatrous reaction to (suppression of) the truth. Thus, a belief in theism that is not Christian theism is a sinful suppression of the truth. It masks, rather than moves toward, true knowledge of the triune God.

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Green Eggs and Ham Again

James White has an article responding to Roger Olson’s use of what I’ve called the green-eggs-and-ham argument. Olson tells of being asked this question:

If it was revealed to you in a way you couldn’t question or deny that the true God actually is as Calvinism says and rules as Calvinism affirms, would you still worship him?

He goes on:

I said no, that I would not because I could not. Such a God would be a moral monster.

The green-eggs-and-ham argument disturbs me every time I hear it. You’ll want to read all of all of White’s response.

Ordained Is A Wonderful Word

Once the words are nestled in the places “ordained” for them—“ordained” is a wonderful word that points to the inexorable logic of syntactic structures—they are tied by ligatures of relationships to one another.

— Stanley Fish in How to Write A Sentence

“Ordained” is a wonderful word, too, for describing God’s relationship to what occurs in our world. It points to the logic behind what happens; it means there is a reason for every circumstance. If history was ordained, there was purpose in it. If the future is ordained, there will be meaning to it.

Some balk at using “ordained” for what God did in eternity in regards to creation and what happens in it, thinking it too strong a word. Some mistakenly suppose that if we say that God ordains something, he must be the immediate cause of it or the one who directly does the deed, but this is not so. When used for God’s relationship to an event in history, “ordained” simply means that he put it in his plan. Some ordained events he did himself, solely by his own hand, but others he knowingly permitted for good reason.

An ordained history is a history of ordained causes and effects, “tied like ligatures of relationships to one another,” tugging forward toward a planned completion. It’s the same for the future, because the future is only history yet to be. A God-ordained future gives sure hope, for it is a future that will finish as intended.

If the events of my life are ordained by God—and they are—then my life has meaning. Or to look at it from another direction, if the hardships in my life work to conform me to Christ’s image—and they do—then God has at least one reason for them. And if there is a reason, there is ordination.

“Ordained” is a wonderful word that points to the logic of the universe, including its history and its future. It’s a wonderful word that points to the purpose of my life. There is hope in “ordained.” It is promises fulfilled and plans accomplished, in the past, in the future, and in my life. And in sentences, too.