The small book “The Consolation of Philosophy” was written by Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius around 524 AD as he awaited trial and his eventual execution for treason by Ostrogothic King Theodoric. Boethius was a brilliant Christian thinker who rose to head all of Theodoric’s governmental and court services. Boethius came from a renowned Roman family but was executed at the untimely age of 44. He is best know for “The Consolation” which is an imaginary conversation between “Lady Philosophy” and himself about the injustice of his trial and persecution. The book offers a treasure-trove of theological reflection on such subjects as Providence, fortune, as well as good and evil.

I will here only touch on one big idea from “The Consolation.” It comes in “Fate and Providence” (Book IV, Prose 6) were Boethius asks Lady Philosophy to explain specifically why the unrighteous persecute God’s people. She answers in part that it has to do with “…divine and human knowledge, predestination, and free will.” Lady Philosophy then lays out the relationship between the unfolding of events and God’s knowledge and planning of those events.

“Providence is the vision of the divine mind as it sees the unfolding in time of all things, and sees all these things all at once, whereas the unfolding of these events in time, seen as they unfold in time, is called Fate. Even though the two are different, the one depends on the other, for the complex unfolding of Fate derives from the unity of Providence. Think of it this way: a craftsman imagines in his mind the form of whatever thing he intends to make before he sets about making it; he makes it by producing in time through a succession of acts that thing that he originally conceived of in his mind. God, in his Providence, in a unified and simple way, orders all things that are to be done in time; Fate is the unfolding in time through a succession of acts in the order God has conceived.”

This troubles Boethius and he makes a logical conclusion.

“If it is granted that Providence sees everything, (past, present, and future), that means that God, from the perspective of Providence, knows in advance everything we are going to do. If that were true, it implies that human beings really don't have any choice in the matter--that our actions have been ‘predestined’ before we even decide to act.”

But, Lady Philosophy responds by showing that God’s knowledge of things does not mean that all events must happen without human free choice (or in a “voluntarily” way). Here is what she says:

“Think of it this way: you may happen to see at one and the same time a man walking down the street and the sun shining in the sky; even though you see both of these at one and the same time, you recognize that one action is a voluntary action, the man walking down the street, and the other is necessary, the shining of the sun. In this manner, the divine mind looks down on all things and, without intervening and changing the nature of the things it is viewing, sees things as eternally present but which, in respect to us, belong to the future. Therefore, when God knows that something is going to happen in the future, he may know a thing which will not happen out of necessity, but voluntarily; God's foreknowledge does not impose necessity on things…if Providence sees anything in its eternal present, it follows that this thing exists necessarily in the way Providence sees it, but it may not exist the way it does out of some necessity in its nature. So God sees future things that are the result of human free will; these things, then, are necessary, on the condition that they are known by God, but, considered only in themselves, they are still free in their own natures. . . .”

In short, Boethius—through the literary genre of a dialogue—reveals to us that God does not cause the evil choices of men. Though God knows all things past and present, His knowledge is not like our knowledge. God knows all things simultaneously and at once that will happen in the universe, including all the free choices of all people in human history.

This truth sooths Boethius in his hour of trial and persecution for, as Lady Philosophy puts it, God can hold men morally responsible for their free choices.

“Since all this is true, we can conclude that the freedom of human will remains completely independent of God's foreknowledge, and the laws which prescribe rewards and punishments are just since they provide rewards and punishments for the free actions of the human will rather than reward or punish things that happen of necessity. God sees us from above and knows all things in his eternal present and judges our future, free actions, justly distributing rewards and punishments . . .”

If you are a pastor, it gets to be a challenge after a few years to come up with new and fresh messages for the Christmas season. It seems that here are only a few passages in the Bible related to the birth narrative of Jesus. So, after a while a pastor begins to feel like he has, “Been there, done that, got the T-shirt.” However, this year I have been reflecting on the Incarnation—the Word taking on human nature. This has enriched my personal meditation for Christmas.

The Incarnation, of course, is an incredibly deep subject and there has been an ocean of ink used to plumb its depths. It is doubtful, therefore, that I can add much to discussion. Yet, I have been fascinated by two things this Christmas. One is Anselm’s view that the Incarnation was inevitable. He writes about this in “Cur Deus Homo” (why did God become man). The Fordam University “Medieval Sourcebook” explains Anselm’s theory this way:

“The incarnation, according to St. Anselm, necessarily foIlows from the necessity of redemption. Sin is an offence against the majesty of God. In spite of his goodness, God cannot pardon sin without compounding with honor and justice. On the other hand, he cannot revenge himself on man for his offended honor; for sin is an offence of infinite degree and therefore demands infinite satisfaction; which means that he must either destroy humanity or inflict upon it the eternal punishments of hell. Now, in either case, the goal of creation, the happiness of his creatures, would be missed and the honor of the Creator compromised. There is but one way for God to escape this dilemma without affecting his honor, and that is to arrange for some kind of satisfaction. He must have infinite satisfaction, because the offence is immeasurable. Now, in so far as man is a finite being and incapable of satisfying divine justice in an infinite measure, the infinite being himself must take the matter in charge; he must have recourse to substitution. Hence, the necessity of the incarnation. God becomes man in Christ; Christ suffers and dies in our stead…” (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/anselm-intro.html)

A second thing I have been thinking about is the mystery inherent in the Incarnation. In other words, while we can define the limits and specify the proper notions of the Incarnation; ultimately, it is a miracle that we cannot fully explain. On the one hand it is important that we define and specify certain aspects of the Incarnation so that we avoid false notions; however, on the other hand, there remains a divine mystery, which we cannot penetrate. In my view, a proper balance between specificity and mystery leaves room for the wonder and majesty of the Christmas story.

The classic definition of those things that we are to believe about the Incarnation is found in the “Definition of Chalcedon” (451 AD). I think Chalcedon strikes a beautiful balance between specificity while leaving room for mystery. Here is Chalcedon in part:

“He is of the same reality as God as far as his deity is concerned and of the same reality as we ourselves as far as his humanness is concerned; thus like us in all respects, sin only excepted. Before time began he was begotten of the Father, in respect of his deity, and now in these "last days," for us and behalf of our salvation, this selfsame one was born of Mary the virgin, who is God-bearer in respect of his humanness…We also teach that we apprehend this one and only Christ-Son, Lord, only-begotten -- in two natures; and we do this without confusing the two natures, without transmuting one nature into the other, without dividing them into two separate categories, without con- trasting them according to area or function. The distinctiveness of each nature is not nullified by the union. Instead, the "properties" of each nature are conserved and both natures concur in one "person" and in one reality {hypostasis}. They are not divided or cut into two persons, but are together the one and only and only-begotten Word {Logos} of God, the Lord Jesus Christ.” (http://www.creeds.net/ancient/chalcedon.htm)

Anselm and Chalcedon have given me a real excitement for this Christmas.

I recently re-connected with a pastor-friend on Facebook. This friend had been a church planter in our community about the same time that I started my church. However, it has probably been fifteen or more years since we have seen each other. He has since moved to another community and our spiritual paths have diverged considerably. As readers of TFD know, I have been engaged in the study of historical theology, particularly the medieval era. Admittedly, this has led me into a high appreciation for rational discourse and natural law. On the other hand, my friend has explored the deep mystical realms of Christian experience.

We each remain committed to evangelicalism but see many things from a very different perspective. It is not surprising then that we have almost the opposite view of what Evangelicals need to do to have a stronger impact on society. In a recent email exchange with my friend I referenced the 2007 speech given by JP Moreland at the Evangelical Theological Society. It caused such a stir that Christianity Today wrote about it. This pushed Moreland to provide a rebuttal to clarify his position. In his paper, Moreland’s assertion that caused the brouhaha was the one that made the claim that Evangelicals have become overly committed to the Bible to the neglect of other key things. Here is a portion of his rebuttal where he addresses this point.

“In the paper, I make clear that no one could be over-committed to the Bible (the inerrant Word of God) in loving, promoting and seeking to obey it. By over-commitment, I mean specifically that too many Evangelicals do not believe we can have extra-biblical knowledge or justified beliefs about God, morality, and other important, related matters: e.g., the existence of God and some of his attributes; the nature of the moral law and some of the absolutes that constitute it; the nature of the human soul...” (http://kingdomtriangle.blogspot.com/2007/11/morelands-response-to-ct-blog.html)

In our little email exchange I explained to my friend that Moreland (with whom I agree) argued for a more robust theological reflection outside the strict confines of the Bilbical text. We shouldn’t stop doing excellent Bible teaching, preaching and study. However, our weakness in disciplines like natural theology have made it difficult for us to have a meaningful dialogue with the secular world. This might be understood as the necessity of bolstering our knowledge of special revelation with that of general revelation.

On the other hand, my friend sees things very differently. He believes that Evangelicals have relied too heavily upon the pursuits of the mind and what we need is a strong infusion of a more experiential and relevant approach to Christianity. As he noted, people are hungry for an authentic “spiritual” experience and, therefore, a big dose of intellectual knowledge is exactly what people don’t want or don’t need.

Okay, so here is the question. What do you think? Do Evangelicals (or Christians) need to deepen their understanding of general revelation (God working in the natural order) or do we need to foster a stronger experiential encounter with God? Maybe who have a completely different answer to this question. What is your answer?

Almost everything we do in life is a means to an end. There are very few things that are an end in themselves. Yet, there must be some things that are an end in themselves because we could not go on from one thing to another endlessly. That would be futile. God, of course, is the Ultimate End. He rightly is to be loved for Himself and not for some other purpose. For instance, we don’t love God to get financial blessings. If we did (and some people seem to do this), we would be actually loving financial blessings more than God.

Now when we look at human affairs we discover that even things like sports activities which seem to be done without any further purpose, actually have a proper end. That end is that our minds might be refreshed and relaxed and make us better able to handle the serious work of life. Otherwise, if sports were an end in themselves, the proper thing to do would be to play all the time, which is not appropriate. We know this to be true because if everyone engaged in sports all the time we would soon all starve to death.

One might say, but what about those people engaged in professional sports? Two things to note on this. One is that the real purpose of professional sports is to serve as a substitute activity for others. Professional sports has the purpose of entertaining others so that the viewers can be mentally refreshed and relaxed; even though the viewers would be better served engaging in their own sporting activities. Secondly, even professional athletes generally have a limited time when they can perform well enough to support themselves and their families. Their youthfulness runs out quickly and then younger more able players usually move them aside. This teaches us that, for the individual, highly competitive, professional sports is not an end in itself because it is not a lifelong activity. Human work is a natural lifelong activity. Sports are intended to refresh the mind for human work.

With this in mind, we can now see that when the average person begins to orient his life around leisure activities, he is making a fundamental error. We don’t work in order to have leisure; rather, we have leisure to enhance our work. Many people have this wrong and it is fundamentally disordering their lives.

Genesis 2:15 And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.

Recently I had the privilege of presenting a seminar in Interlaken, Switzerland to a group of European pastors. While there, to my surprise, I came across a used book titled “They Preached Liberty” which is a compilation of portions of sermons from the American Revolutionary era. The introductory essay and biographical sketches in the volume are provided by Franklin P. Cole.

This book made for fascinating reading while puttering around in Switzerland. You may know that Switzerland has a fairly strong federalist form of government with their 26 Cantons acting in a comparable role to our 50 states. The difference, though, is that the Swiss have resisted the attempts of their central government to misplace the power of their Cantons. This, as you might imagine, tends to make it harder for the central government to homogenize Swiss society and implement a “Nanny State” mentality. For instance, people in the Canton of Bern actually smoke in public restaurants and one is spared the ubiquitous recycling signs that threaten global destruction unless one carefully separates one’s garbage.

Additionally, Switzerland is one of the safest places on earth. Their low crime rate is probably due to a number of factors including their national sense of independence and self-reliance, high level of education, self-control, and that fact that they are armed to the teeth. William Tell remains a national hero and cultural icon. Therefore, the Swiss take pride in their considerable giftedness with firearms.

Here is my point. My reasonable assumption is that the Switzerland of 2009 may be closer to the culture and political milieu of colonial America than that of the 21st century USA. I’ve even read of Switzerland being described as similar to the early United States; however, with a central government weaker than the Continental Congress.

Case in point. Here are a few snippets from Revolutionary era sermons.

“The form of civil government is not of divine appointment; this is left by God very much to the will and determination of men, and depends upon a people’s temper, genius, situation, and advantages or disadvantages of kinds. But yet the from of government which is adopted and established by the consent and agreement of the body of people, and which is found by experience to be conducive to the common good and interest of society, is that which seems to be agreeable to the divine will.” Ebenezer Bridge, A.M., of Chelmsford; Mass. Election Sermon, 1767

Bridges’ point is that God allows men to establish their own forms of government but there is a type of government that fosters the optimum common good and is, likewise, in accord with God’s will. In the context of this post, Bridges might note that currently Americans and the Swiss have exactly the kinds of governments they have created for themselves. If Switzerland is freer, the only people to blame or commend are the Swiss.

Here is another snippet.

“God never gives men up to be slaves till they lose their national virtue, and abandon themselves to slavery.” Richard Salter, A.M., of Mansfield; Conn. Election Sermon, 1768.

Here Salter might say that if the Swiss enjoy greater freedoms than do Americans--and by all appearances they do--it is because Americans have chosen to abandon themselves to moral and political servitude.