Category: Analysis

Privileges, blessings and Providence: Christmas and Palestine

The fact is that in life, different people get different benefits. Calling these things ‘privileges’ isn’t entirely wrong, but when you compare it to the word ‘blessings’, it shows the deceitful difference in connotation.

When people use the word ‘privilege’, there are a loose set of connotations that most people would understand are associated with it (generally). It suggests that these benefits unfairly raise you above some other person, and that there is a social disharmony created by that. It suggests that in some measure, these benefits corrupt the goodness of your character, or at the very least place you in exactly the kind of circumstance where we should expect to see your character start to corrupt. Below are a few generic phrases that you may have heard, and which carry something of this network of meanings:

  • “Yeah but these laws were made by a bunch of privileged old white guys”
  • “Honesty, I think that’s just your privilege speaking”
  • “I feel like you can’t speak to this issue due to your privilege”

You might be thinking, ‘yeah there might be some truth to what you’re saying, but so what? People have to use words, and I think that one is just fine’. It is most certainly not. If your ‘privileges’ are unfair, if they corrupt you, if they improperly raise you above your common man, it is both easy and morally justifiable (in the minds of many), both on the personal and societal levels, to take action to change that. ‘We could even things out and make it better and more fair. Perhaps even, we should.’ More on this later.

On the other hand, you could choose to look at a person’s benefits as ‘blessings’. Blessings are more naturally conceived as those pieces of fortune granted to unworthy man by a Good Father. This view sees benefits not as the random but unfair outcomes of chance, but rather as the intentional outcomes of a person’s will and agency. This is a large part of the doctrine of ‘Providence’, which John Piper has described as God’s ‘purposeful sovereignty’. This way, when one person receives X and another Y, and a third person receives nothing at all, you can’t step in and correct some non-personal mistake of chance, but rather you have to reckon with the fact that the almighty and most merciful God intentionally gave out his gifts in that manner. Providence is personal, and the person behind it is God. God’s every action is good, and the goodness of Providence is therefore unimpeachable.

So, how does this all connect? Palestine? Christmas? Cancelling out privilege?

Well, unfortunately, a political action group planned the “Crash the Christmas Windows” protest, which was attended with the tagline “Christmas is cancelled, and there will be no joy or frivolity while children in Gaza are massacred.”.

To be clear, this protest was not designed to destroy property or to harm those families who would attend the windows, but it was designed to disrupt the gaiety and joy of the occasion (the unveiling of the Myer Christmas Windows, a long-standing Christmas tradition in Melbourne), and there’s no two ways about it: that’s grinch behaviour.

See, here’s the thing. If you think that all people need to have the same benefits before anyone can use or enjoy what they have in front of them (the ‘privilege’ mindset), you might feel justified in preventing Melburnians from enjoying Christmas, citing the very real and painful truth that almost every Gazan can’t. However, if you are a Christian, you ought to have the ‘blessings’ or Providence mindset: God has given you gifts, and he intends for you to enjoy them. You don’t have to be ashamed when you enjoy them either. God’s gifts are supposed to be embraced with enthusiasm.

Now please, do not assume that by our silence we are unfeeling for the plight of the Palestinians. This author cared deeply for their cause long before October 7 put them in public consciousness. The abundance of compassion this author feels for the sojourning Palestinians has been the motivation behind several posts and topics that we would love to enlarge on further at a later date.

But this Christmas, let us receive every good and perfect gift from a Father who loves each one of us, and who gave the world the ultimate gift of his son: A Jew born in Palestine, who is the king of every nation, and who will one day bring real, visible, tangible peace to every child of God who receives that gift with joy. So rejoice. And don’t let anyone smear your blessings as ‘privilege’.

Our stolen generation

Every year on the 26th of January, our wonderful nation observes Australia Day. However, there has been a growing swell of younger people agitating to move the day to some other day of year, citing their argument that the 26th of Jan represents a dark day in Australian history, not a bright one.

To those who are not aware for one reason or another, this is because on the 26th of Jan, 1788, the First Fleet (11 British ships that brought the English convicts and the new colonists to Australia) arrived in Sydney Cove in New South Wales. Many see this day as the start of a history of violence, bloodshed, theft, rape and land acquisition. Others see this day simply as the birth of the modern nation of Australia, with both its indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples meeting for the first time.

Another, more specific reason that some Australians disown 26th Jan and feel no pride on Australia Day is the blight upon our history known as the Stolen Generation. In short, this phrase represents a set of policies and programs implemented between 1910 and the 1970s which ostensibly sought to uplift the lives of the Indigenous Australians by assimilating their children into the British/European culture and Christian faith, a mission that involved removing these children from their parents and communities, giving them new names and clothes, and essentially re-educating them.

Needless to say, this was a horrible program/set of policies, and it does bring shame to the national history and identity of modern Australia. Before moving on, it is appropriate to mention that when Christians bring the gospel to all the nations, they should be bringing the gospel to people of different ethnicities, not taking the people from different ethnic groups and attempting to change their ethnicity and culture and then add Christianity to that new identity. It is totally proper to introduce all the nations to Christ, to beckon and adjure sinners to come to Christ, but this should create a uniquely Indigenous expression of biblical Christianity, not a rip-off of the imported British culture associated with their expression of the faith. Altogether, the stolen generation was a terrible thing, and we are right to rue its memory.

However, in our day, there is an altogether different generation having their identities stolen from them.

Kids who are encouraged and groomed to ‘transition to the opposite sex’ (which is not ultimately possible, though many of the visible expressions are imitated, and so these young people effectively become eunuchs, and plunged into lifelong dependence on the healthcare system) are having their God-given bodies and healthy sexual organs defiled and destroyed, not only rendering their generation unable to experience the normative and God-glorifying calling of parenthood, but also worryingly compromising the potential of future generations to keep the birth rate in Australia above replacement. The trend of plunging birth rates across first-world nations is a worrying one, but it is little more than an expression of the culture of death, a comprehensive rejection of Christ that pervades every part of culture like rot.

We recognise how much of a travesty it was simply to change the clothing, home and name of an Indigenous child in the 20th century. How much more should we see the utter injustice and crying shame it is that our politicians, media behemoths, medical establishment and social media influencers are all banding together to not only change the appearance and name of a generation of children, but to encourage vulnerable and often confused and hurting children to seek to destroy their bodies and totally remove any chance of them experiencing natural sexual pleasure and natural family? If this analogy causes you to bristle, it must be that we are still too close to the issue to see it clearly.

This author is convinced that in somewhere between five to fifteen years, we will see the full ramifications of this insane time in our history. We will see a generation of young men and husbands who cannot become fathers. We will see untold numbers of young women who longer have a womb, or breasts to nurse a child. We will see countless young people who live in constant pain and discomfort as a result of botched surgeries, complications and infections. What’s more, many of these young people may either be still stuck in a delusion that says they are neither male nor female. Then again, some of those same young people may be walking the un-envious path of attempting to reverse those surgeries and procedures, in a last ditch attempt to return to their this is all still fresh, and the voices of the detransitioned youth are not yet as numerous or loud as they will come to be. It will be a day of reckoning. Dear reader, cultivate only charitable love for the confused child, and direct your fury towards the irresponsible adults who are performing these actions, and getting filthy rich from doing so.

This generation will never be able to erase from their minds the knowledge that untold numbers of possible future descendants have been permanently erased from the potential future. Not only two or three generations have been stolen, as with the 20th century in Australia. Generations without number will now never exist. Many of these preyed upon youngsters, if they survive medical complications and live to their forties and fifties, will live ever with the phantom of the children and grandchildren they will never father or bear.

Christians, we must love our neighbours. If you have the opportunity to show the restorative love of Christ to an individual whose family has been affected by the Stolen Generation or by the current sexual suicide, proclaim and broadcast that love clearly and without reserve. Let them see the abundant life that is to be found lavishly in Christ. Let them see the balm in his word that soothes and mends even the most entrenched historical woe. Let them see that what can be stolen can’t be kept anyway, and what cannot be stolen is a joy on earth and an inheritance laid up for them in heaven if they would turn to Christ in faith as their Restorer and Lord.

Discussing Israel and Gaza: Boundary markers and warning signs

In the days and weeks following the outburst of conflict between Israel and Hamas, many have undertaken to give a full history and explanation of the conflict, and make sense of who is doing what and why.

This post will not attempt to give that history, nor to trace all the motivations and historical contexts. We do not pretend to be an important voice on the subject, but this author is burdened with a few injunctions and reminders that hopefully will keep the wise and temperate reader away from sin and folly.

We also do not pretend to be an unbiased voice. Believing that the reader is better situated when they know explicitly the biases of the author, rather than having to discern them from what is written, we will lay out what you should know before reading on.

This author is politically Pro-Palestinian, meaning that in our understanding, there is no biblical, geo-political, historical or legal justification for the (a) establishment of the state of Israel, (b) the invasion and occupation of Historic Palestine by the Zionist entity, (c) the ongoing displacement of Palestinian people and (d) the ongoing erasure of Palestinian culture and history in Palestine.

Since this entire platform is one dedicated to Christian reflections and engagement, it should be blindingly obvious that this author staunchly affirms and defends the sanctity and equal value of all human lives, whether Palestinian, Jewish, Ecuadorian, Icelandic or Belarussian (there are more nations in the world, but you get the point). It is intellectually lazy beyond belief to read these last two paragraphs and smear them with that worn out label of ‘antisemitism’. Don’t do it. Use your brain.

What follows here will be a laundry list of warnings, followed by some points for consideration. Consider it like going for a walk on a beautiful but dangerous forest hike with a friend who has walked here before. We don’t care to strongarm you into a particular climbing route, just to say “oh hey, slippery rocks there!” if you get too close to a dangerous precipice.

Some warnings

  1. The first warning we must give, which is sadly ignored by Christians as much as non-Christians, is the critical importance of not carrying out a judgement against someone before evidence has proven it. In other words, innocent until proven guilty. If you think you believe in ‘innocent until proven guilty’, but that when the people you hate are accused of some evil you default to believing the accusation rather than testing it, you are a hypocrite and a poor judge. Do not believe an allegation until it is proved by independent lines of testimony. This is what the Bible teaches. Yes, this means that some crimes will not be punished in this life, because there won’t and can’t be sufficient evidence. This other article goes into this idea in more detail.
  2. As hard as it may be to not waver from this, all human being are made in the image of God, we are human persons and not mere animals, and it disrespects the Imago Dei and therefore the Creator to call another human an ‘animal’, ‘savage’, ‘brute’, ‘monster’, etc. You can call behaviour animalistic, use savage as an adjective or adverb, but do not define another person with those words. It is a slippery slope when you start using non-human language to refer to those whom you hate.
  3. You don’t necessarily need to have an opinion on a complicated issue you haven’t studied. This author knew nothing about the Ukraine/Russia conflict when it broke, so he said nothing, and felt no need to take to social media with ‘the correct take’. Think about it. Is there a complicated subject, issue or fandom you are invested in? How would you react if in 24 hours, millions of people who had watched 20 mins of mainstream media talking points started pontificating as if they were the experts? There’s nothing wrong with acknowledging that you don’t know enough to have a relevant opinion.
  4. This author would warn you against framing this simply or primarily along religious lines (as a Jewish vs Islamic conflict). It is always tempting to simplify conflicts down to one axis of categorisation, and then to choose the side of that axis you side with. For example, imagine portraying the systematic sterilisation of the Uyghur people as an Atheist vs Muslim conflict, since the CCP is officially atheistic, and the Uyghur people are a predominantly Islamic people group. You would think about it very differently than if you framed it as Tyrannical Government vs Ethnic Minority. We’re not saying that either of those is more important or better, just that they both relate to some of the facts, but not all of them. So, this conflict is partially involving a religious element, but do not take the intellectually lazy path of simplifying it down to a religious conflict and then saying ‘oh, the Muslims have been starting wars ever since Islam started. God’s Jewish people have been on the defensive for all of history. Isn’t it obvious who is wrong here?’
  5. This one we cannot stress firmly enough. You are engaged in a dire, sinful, disastrous and irresponsible wrangling of the Scriptures if you would dare to say that Joshua’s conquest of Canaan is a Biblical precedent for a modern day predominantly European nation to conquest the lands of Historic Palestine, without some direct prophetic word from the Bible or a prophet (though we would argue covenantally that this kind of thing would no longer happen) to justify it. To put it simply, Joshua had his instructions straight from the Most High God, and he was a man of God. Netanyahu’s wickedness is not a result of direct revelation from God, and Netanyahu himself is about as far from a man of God as you can get. Likewise, this cannot be a continuation of Joshua’s mandate. The Palestinian inhabitants of Historic Palestine are not the Canaanites, and they would still not be the Canaanites even if 2% of them were somehow found to have Canaanite heritage. Likewise, Netanyahu and the vastly Atheistic modern nation of Israel shares only one thing in common with Joshua’s nation, and that is the name Israel. They are not the same.
  6. Further, this author would warn you against any wholehearted or unequivocal support or rejection of the parties involved. We believe that no Orthodox (meaning correct beliefs, not the Eastern Christian tradition) Christian can give her wholehearted and unequivocal support to the ‘nation’ Israel, nor to leadership of Fatah in the West Bank, and obviously not Hamas in Gaza. Any support or advocacy we give must come with some qualification. If you support Israel for whatever reason, you must be prepared to criticise their sins with unerring and impartial justice. If you support Palestine, or the rightfulness of the Palestinian people to self-determination, you still must be prepared to disavow the corruption in the administration of Fatah, as well as the sinful Islamic beliefs of Hamas. There is no room for unequivocal support. If you read this, and your first response is something like ‘but you’re not saying that we should abandon God’s people Israel right?’ or ‘but we have to still support Israel even though they make some mistakes!’, then this author has no problem accusing you of Idolatry, which is a sin of the first order.
  7. Next, this author would admonish you strongly to analyse your heart, and see what manner of hatred is there. You ought to hate evil. Let us repeat that. You ought to feel hatred in your heart when evil is committed. However, it must be hatred for what God hates. If you hate Jews because they look funny with their curls and big shawls, shame on you. Repent this instant. If you hate Israel because you have some ideas about Hollywood executives being some kind of nefarious actors, get your act together and repent, that’s not right. If you hate Palestinians because their name sounds a bit like ‘Philistines’, if you really squint, then not only repent of your lazy sin, but do your damn homework. If you hate Arabs because their skin is darker, because their women are often covered in intimidating Burqas and Niqabs, shame on you. Repent, and know that Christ suffered on Calvary for that sin. If you hate Palestinians because you believe the Dispensational rot that the unbelieving Israelis of today need to build a third temple in Jerusalem to usher in the return of our Lord, then shame upon shame on you, for your ignorance and the way you have let a ridiculous and unbiblical system dishonour the once-for-all sacrifice of Christ. Repent, and for goodness sake buy a book on covenant theology, and throw away those Left Behind books, and anything by Hagee.
  8. This is the last of our major warnings. It serves nobody and is a sin before God if we repay injustice with injustice, or if we condone it when we see others doing it. Decimating and razing Gaza is not a just retaliation against the actions of Hamas. Instead, it means that the army perpetrating that has created a new injustice, for which they stand guilty before God. No, rather if Hamas has committed the sin, then only Hamas can justly be punished for it. Before you open your mouth to say ‘but Hamas hides in hospitals and schools!’, just take one look at what has been done to Gaza. If you want to lie to yourself and pretend that every one of those residential buildings, schools and hospitals they destroyed was actually a Hamas target, then we pity you, but don’t lie to the rest of us.

So, those eight warnings are the things that this author wants you to hear loudest. They are calls for wisdom, temperance, justice, fairness, goodness and self-control. Going on from there, we have some more specific and detailed positions and criticisms to offer, for your consideration.

Even when referring to the conflict between Hamas and Israel, you have to make choices, and whether you know it or not, those choices communicate political stances and ideas. Consider the options below, how they communicate on that basis of the same essential list of facts, but position the information very differently.

  1. On the 7th of October, Hamas terrorists started a war with Israel, attacking them on one of their religious holidays.
  2. The pressure created by the illegal Israeli occupation of Gaza boiled over on the 7th of October, with armed Hamas units pushing back into Israel in an act of desperate resistance.
  3. The war between Hamas and Israel has losses on both sides.
  4. One of the most high-tech militaries in the world is tyrannising, murdering, shepherding and arbitrarily detaining a scattered, marginalised, oppressed and malnourished people, all in the name of national security.

The content of these four statements is irrelevant, our point in writing them is to show you that there is no neutral way of speaking about this conflict. Don’t we all know the phrase that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter? Whether you say that this is a ‘conflict’, a ‘war’, a ‘resistance’, or something else, gives a political attribute to what kind of conflict you are speaking about. Are the parties both mighty nations that have chosen in their war rooms to go to war? Or is there only one nation involved, and on the other side of the table a scattered and disunified set of resistance groups? Are they roughly equal in size, or is this conflict between a boot and an ant?

These questions, whether you intend to think about them or not, are answered when you choose your words. That is why we try not to refer to this as a war between nations. It isn’t. In fact, the student of politics would know that there is currently no Palestinian state, there are merely two Occupied Territories which are Palestinian, namely the West Bank and Gaza. Neither of these is a self-governing, independent state. So first things first, this conflict is between one nation (‘Israel’) and one of the Palestinian Occupied Territories (Gaza).

Let’s stop there. Is it between Israel and Gaza, or Israel and Hamas? The obvious asymmetry with that nomenclature is that we pit a nation against a paramilitary government, which makes the conflict confusing. Is Israel fighting only against Hamas? Would they want the peace, unity and prosperity of Gaza under a different leader?

The next thing to consider will raise the hackles of anyone who has a Zionist affiliation, but the truth of it is unavoidable, no matter how much they would put the history books through the Speakwrite. The Israeli army invaded a land during a war, which is something that happens all the time, and is fair game. However—and this is the critical bit—they didn’t leave. International law (and common sense) both tell you that after you defeat the foreign nation that you’re invading, you and your troops exit their borders and go back home. So, you have an internationally funded and propped up army (the IDF), occupying a foreign territory, and they are in conflict with the people who live there. The people who live there (mostly Arab Palestinians) are bitter from their occupation, dehumanised from being treated like cattle and sub-human by their Israeli military police, and some of whom have channelled that anger into their participation in military resistance, whether a solo act as simple as throwing a rock at a passing armoured vehicle, or taking up arms within an organisation like Hamas.

This is not a war between rival nations with rival armies. This conflict is between an enormous and well funded state of the art army living in someone else’s house, and a rag-tag bunch of paramilitary organisations who have taken up arms in their anger and their desire to push the invaders out of their lands.

Yes, that is a biased way of looking at it, but bias is unavoidable, so the best thing you can do is not to pretend neutrality, but to acknowledge your bias and let the reader judge as they will, which is what we invite you to do.

The next thing this author feels burdened to address is the involvement of Dispensational theology on the American attitude towards Israel. As an Australian Christian, this author was blessed to grow up far from the influence of Dispensationalism, however it is so pervasive in America, that if you try to describe it to an American, they typically won’t hear you describing some unusual modern theological system, but the core mechanics of the faith that everyone they know not only believes but assumes. It is like describing water to fish.

Given that less than half of the readers of this blog are from America, here are a few points to give a description of some features of Dispensational (Dispy from here on) Theology.

  • ‘Literal’ interpretation.
    Dispy hermeneutics insists upon ‘literal’ interpretation wherever possible, as opposed to the majority of biblical hermeneutics which insists that the genre of the book or text should determine in what sense it should be understood. For example, when Jesus calls himself a shepherd, a gate, a vine, a door and a bridegroom, he was none of those things literally, but the student of Scripture can understand that an analogy is being made. On the other hand, when Jesus is raised bodily from the tomb or walks on water, the text does not give us permission to spiritualise or analogise those texts, in their contexts they are clearly a straightforward and ‘literal’ description of what happened. Dispy literalism takes this too far, and so when it encounters the Cosmic Deconstruction language in the Olivet Discourse (i.e. Jesus talking as if the cosmos itself will fall apart, just as Isaiah before him did, to signify national judgement) they insist that it must be a literal description, and that the sun itself will literally go dark, the stars will literally fall out of the sky, etc.
  • Focus on Israel, sharp distinction between Israel and the Church.
    Dispensational frameworks see the ethnic nation Israel as the overall focus of the Bible, and see the Church as this entirely new and separate body that is created during Paul’s day, and which will be teleported off to heaven in an event called the rapture, after which history will once again be centred on national ethnic Israel, and the system of temple worship which Israel used to practise. These two groups are on different ‘tracks’, where their peace before God is concerned. God deals with them in entirely different ways, and doesn’t deal with them both concurrently.
  • Dispy Premillennialism
    Whereas Historic Premillennialism is a Christian Eschatological position that has existed in the church for ages, Dispy Premillennialism is the ‘end-times’ views that go hand in hand with this system. There are some very nuanced differences between the advocates of the sub-positions (pre-wrath, mid-trib, post-wrath, etc) and no love lost between those camps, but as an overview we can summarise this position as the idea that the Christian Church will only continue to be oppressed and hunted down by the evil world system in our history, and eventually (if not these very days!) the sea beast from Revelation will make a deal with the modern nation Israel and then that deal will be violated, one third to two thirds of the world Jewry will be killed, the church will be ‘raptured’ (teleported off to heaven in the blink of an eye), where we will reign with Jesus in heaven, then seven years of hell on earth (the ‘wrath’) will afflict the Jews and pagans (or if you don’t believe in the rapture, you’re hiding underground in your bunker with your packet meals and powdered milk), and after that period Jesus comes down and establishes his throne in Jerusalem, from which place he will have his distinctively Jewish Kingdom, meanwhile Christians will keep reigning from in heaven.

These three main ideas (Literal hermeneutics, Israel/church bifurcation, Premillennialism) are a pretty good place to start with understanding Dispensationalism. You may have begun to understand while reading that summary why this modern American theological system would cause such a ruckus for Middle East politics. Millions of these Christians expect that there will not be peace in the Middle East, but only more war. If they do see peace coming, they are identifying it as a phoney deal that the bad guys are planning to break halfway through, and then destroy Israel. What’s more, they are expecting, preparing for, and in some cases funding the construction of a third temple in Jerusalem. Their support for the modern nation Israel is their support for the Old Testament people properly called Israel. It is as if Netanyahu’s Israel is the natural branch in Paul’s analogy, and Trump or Biden’s America is the engrafted branch. As such, it is as if America is a special nation, called to be the last line of defence for God’s people in the Middle East, as they are beset on all sides by the evil dirty Arabs. Now, this author and probably most of you dear readers know immediately that this is ridiculous and inappropriate, but you have to understand how widespread it is. There are more people who truly believe this than there are Australians!

So, Dispensationalism is bad news but it is also so, so cringe! These Christians wearing Israeli flags and devoting themselves to a predominantly atheistic, Christ-rejecting European-heritage nation is so cringe. The only amusing part of this is that it creates this one topic on which this author finds himself agreeing more with raving lefties than with the erstwhile sensible and ostensibly Christian conservatives.

Interested reader, if you are wondering what this author thinks the biblical and future significance of Israel will be, considering the critical things we have said about Dispensationalism here, please look forward to a post we are researching and writing regarding Romans 11. This author is certainly excited about it.

One final point before we wrap up. The Temple is an important symbol in the Bible. It is the place where God dwells, and where his worshippers come to meet with him, and to bring their sacrifices, and to be justified in his sight. The wonderful news is that as Christians, we do not need to go to any building for this, because the Spirit of God has come to dwell within each one of us, so we are Temples. We are the fulfilment of the Temple, and though we are not grand pieces of architecture, we are far more glorious temples, because God’s Spirit will never depart us, and no invading army can set up the idol of their God in our temples. The fact that we are temples is also glorious because it reminds us that no more animal sacrifice is necessary or acceptable. If you don’t understand this, read the book of Hebrews about 15 times. Christ’s once-for-all sacrifice on behalf of his people (which is his bride, which is all believers in God from Adam until the last day) was more potent and enduring than any animal sacrifice could ever be. Trusting Jesus for our salvation means trusting that his sacrifice was sufficient.

Anyone who would dare to make an animal sacrifice now is trampling underfoot the blood of Christ, proclaiming his sacrifice to be insufficient, and posturing as if they could make a better or more necessary sacrifice. Can you think of anything that would be a higher insult and blasphemy before God than that? Can you think of any action or statement that would be a fuller rejection of the gospel of free grace than that?

Every person who is funding the erection of a Third Temple is setting money aside that will work towards the express and explicit denunciation of Christ. How would you react if your friends and Elders at church were setting aside money for a shrine to River gods or Vishnu or Thor or Baphomet in Jerusalem? Even that (we maintain) is less of a pungent sin.

Lastly, let us draw your attention back to the only true and living solution to this intractable conflict. It is not policy, war, ethnic cleansing, a bad compromise, more funding, legislation, divestment, sanctions, boycotts or education. It is news. The news that will solve this conflict is the news that one Jewish man born in Occupied Palestine entered death, conquered it, and returned to our world to tell us how we can pass through death, if we only come with him.

The only way to unwind over a hundred years of strife is for the innermost parts of the Israelis and their neighbours to be changed by a Sovereign Spirit who is at work, bringing spiritually dead rebels into wonderful life in Jesus’ Kingdom. It may not happen in our lifetime, indeed in this lifetime we may only see more ethnic cleansing in Palestine at the hands of the Israeli army, but if the Lord should tarry some more, his gospel is unstoppable, and it will go through Palestine and her neighbours, and God will redeem every one of his elect, irrespective of their bloodline. We ardently believe that on the last day, many will be gathered before the throne who were Hamas militants, who were Gazan children, who were IDF soldiers, who were unbelieving Israeli politicians, and they will all embrace one another arm in arm, without partiality or the holding of grudges, because the ground is level at the foot of the cross, and it will be the mighty cross to which they bend the knee. So pray earnestly for the salvation of every Jew and Arab, and for the true Shalom that Messiah is bringing. Love your neighbours, and do not show partiality.

Be still, and know that he is God. He will be exalted among the nations. He will be exalted in the world.

To want, and not to will? that is the question

Whether ‘tis more biblical to say
That God earnestly desireth life
And yet not decree it,
Or to take up arms against
Doctrinal confusion, and by opposing,
End the free offer of the gospel.

Ok now back to prose. Though that introduction may seem complicated and convoluted, this author must break the news to you right up front that the subject matter of this reflection may be the most complicated, specific, wordy and annoying yet. If you don’t care for that, this may lose you.

This article concerns the concept of the ‘Free and Well-Meant Offer of the Gospel’, and will be primarily an analysis on Sam Waldron’s book, The Crux of the Free Offer of the Gospel. We will firstly define what is meant by that phrase, and then get stride forth into the weeds to see if it is biblical. Let the reader know this up front: this author does not have the answer, only some very important questions.

Free

A ‘free’ offer, in this context, is twofold. It is (a) given without price, as a gift, and (b) given to all, without distinction. It is offered ‘for free’, and it is offered ‘freely’ to all. The opposite of this would be any offer that is transactional (requires something to be traded or given, as if in purchase), or any offer where the audience of the offer is restricted to only those fitting into a certain category.

Well-meant

A ‘well-meant’ offer, in this context, implies the ability and genuine desire on the part of the giver to bestow the thing offered, and the genuine desire that the party to whom it is offered should receive it. The opposite of a ‘well-meant’ offer is when you offer your sibling chips off your plate, secretly hoping that they won’t say yes, because then you get to keep all your chips, and you have the moral superiority of having offered them.

Gospel

The ‘gospel’, in this context, refers to the truth of Christ Jesus’ perfect righteousness, substitutionary atonement, and resurrection, and the proclamation that all who turn to Jesus in faith will experience the Great Exchange: their sin for his righteousness, their death for his life.

The case for the Free and Well-Meant Offer

This analysis will not cover all the aspects of Waldron’s argument, in particular we will be passing over his analysis of the presence of the Free Offer in church history, and in the Reformed Confessions. Suffice it to say that something like the Free Offer does appear to feature in those fathers and confessions.

We will here analyse only the biblical argumentation, and collectively scratch our heads as we do.

A necessary distinction

The first and fundamental distinction that is basic to all the other arguments henceforth is that distinction between God’s Decretive will and his Preceptive will. God’s decree, or will of decree, or decretive will (we will use these terms interchangeably) is the simple one to understand.

In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory. (Ephesians 1:11-12, emphasis mine)

God’s decree is his sovereign, comprehensive determination of all things that take place in history (by no means considering him the author of evil though), from the moment of creation to the inauguration of the eternal state, the entirety of which God planned and knew prior to creation. When we speak of God’s decretive will, we are speaking about things that will actually and surely happen, as firmly as God will remain God. God’s decree therefore involves both (a) good things that he has commanded to take place, such as Moses’ deliverance of the Israelites from Egypt, and (b) bad things that represent a rejection of God’s rules, such as the sinful thoughts and actions of this author, and his patient reader.

God’s preceptive will, on the other hand, represents things that God has instructed mankind to do, which sometimes do not come to pass, and which are rejected. For instance, God gave the 10 Commandments to his people, and sometimes they are obeyed, in which case we can say that we are obeying his will, and sometimes they are violated by man, in which case we can say that man is rejecting/opposing his will.

It is utterly important that we do not mix or confuse these two concepts. Both can be undeniably demonstrated by various texts to be proper and necessary categories indigenous to the Scriptures.

Preceptive will: Matt 17:21, 12:50, 21:31, Mark 3:35, Luke 12:47, etc

Decretive will: Matt 18:14, 26:42, John 1:13, Acts 21:14, Romans 1:10, etc

Later we will further consider what this means for Divine Simplicity and for God’s decree as instruction vs desire.

The following are four key texts that Waldron uses as evidence to demonstrate God’s “unfulfilled desire” to bring about spiritual blessing. Establishing that this indeed occurs (God having genuine and unfulfilled desire) is a necessary foundation for his argument so that he can argue that God can have another unfulfilled desire: that ineffectual desire to save the reprobate. In each quotation, we are emboldening the part of the reference most in question. So, let’s look at the texts!

Deuteronomy 5:28-29

“And the Lord heard your words, when you spoke to me. And the Lord said to me, ‘I have heard the words of this people, which they have spoken to you. They are right in all that they have spoken. Oh that they had such a heart as this always, to fear me and to keep all my commandments, that it might go well with them and with their descendants forever!

The above text (which we firstly studied in its chapter context before copying it here) does appear to demonstrate God expressing approval or desire that his people would fear him and keep his commandments.

The main question that we would have you mull over, astute reader, is if this is the statement of a counterfactual state of mind (e.g. if this author said “I would be so happy if I could press a button and turn all of Japan into Christians”). Such a counterfactual does not logically necessitate the statement that this author ‘wills to press a button to save all of Japan’, because this author knows that such a thing absolutely will not happen, because it is not in line with God’s clear statements about how he made the world. This author has no unfulfilled desires regarding Japanese button-salvation because what was expressed was this author’s propensity to love and enjoy the salvation of those who do not know God, so it would be natural to want to bring that to pass. Since such a propensity did not reach the point of being willed (it was conceived in a counterfactual scenario), we will henceforth refer to such things as ‘pre-volitional propensities’.

If indeed, this was some kind of counterfactual statement along the lines mentioned, then the text becomes far more complicated. If it was not that, but was much more simply a statement of actual desire that reached the point of being a positively willed outcome, we encounter the following conclusion, which this author will seek to lay out in a logical syllogism.

  1. God has desires which he fulfils
    1. God has desires which he does not fulfil
    2. Therefore, God desires some things ineffectually
  2. The salvation of the reprobate cannot come to pass
    1. God wills the salvation of the reprobate
    2. Therefore, God wills the salvation of the reprobate ineffectually
  3. It is misleading to use the same unqualified phrase two mean two fundamentally different things
    1. God’s effectual saving will towards his elect is fundamentally different from his ineffectual saving will towards the reprobate
    2. It is misleading to use the phrase ‘God wills their salvation’ equally, unqualified, of both the elect and the reprobate

As we drag our feet through this murky terrain, a thought may be occurring to you. ‘When he says God has an ineffectual will towards the salvation of the reprobate, is he not simply describing the revealed or preceptive will?’ If this were the case, and God’s saving will towards the reprobate was simply just his revealed will that all people everywhere ought to repent of their sinful ways and come to Jesus in contrition and humility, then this whole subject would be a lot simpler. However, it appears that Waldron is saying more than this.

One issue that this author has with the use of this text (Deut 5) is that the unactualised blessing here cannot be simply ‘spiritual’, which was the banner under which Waldron referenced it. This author would say that in the Deut 5 context, it should be either a material blessing (that it might go well with them ‘in the land’ to use 5th commandment terminology) or both material and spiritual. However, recognising that this issue is tangential to Waldron’s argument, we will settle for calling this an oversight on his part, and not a substantial flaw in his argumentation.

Deuteronomy 32:28-29

“For they are a nation void of counsel,

    and there is no understanding in them.

If they were wise, they would understand this;

    they would discern their latter end!

This author finds it rather tenuous to take this text and load into it God’s unfulfilled desire for spiritual blessing. The text makes counterfactual statements, but does not explicitly demonstrate God’s desire for that end. Granted, it is totally in line with how God often speaks in his word to say that he would love for people to turn from their wicked ways, but we reckon that this text shouldn’t bear the weight of that claim.

Psalm 81:11-16

“But my people did not listen to my voice;

    Israel would not submit to me.

So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts,

    to follow their own counsels.

Oh, that my people would listen to me,

    that Israel would walk in my ways!

I would soon subdue their enemies

    and turn my hand against their foes.

Those who hate the Lord would cringe toward him,

    and their fate would last forever.

But he would feed you with the finest of the wheat,

    and with honey from the rock I would satisfy you.”

The blessings that God here says he would readily pour out for his people are wonderful, truly. The subduing of their enemies and God’s provision of fine wheat and honey from the rock are lovely things. The thing we find most intriguing about this text is that right before God’s big exclamation, he clearly says that he “gave them over to their stubborn hearts”, which is the language of judicial hardening. We note this simply to mention that we see something else of God’s will here, namely, his good pleasure in unleashing some men to pursue the full extent of their natural wickedness. In that context, the following words seem more mournful, and more like “they are so wicked! It’s hard to believe they continue to rebel and yet they do. Little do they know how good it would’ve been for them if they obeyed me…”

Also, the wonderful truth we should quickly touch on and remind ourselves of is that the true servant of God did walk in his ways, and God is subduing all his enemies under his feet (Ps 110, 1 Cor 15) until the kingdom has spread over all the earth.

Isaiah 48:17-22

Thus says the Lord,

    your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel:

“I am the Lord your God,

    who teaches you to profit,

    who leads you in the way you should go.

Oh that you had paid attention to my commandments!

    Then your peace would have been like a river,

    and your righteousness like the waves of the sea;

your offspring would have been like the sand,

    and your descendants like its grains;

their name would never be cut off

    or destroyed from before me.”

Go out from Babylon, flee from Chaldea,

    declare this with a shout of joy, proclaim it,

send it out to the end of the earth;

    say, “The Lord has redeemed his servant Jacob!”

21 They did not thirst when he led them through the deserts;

    he made water flow for them from the rock;

    he split the rock and the water gushed out.

22 “There is no peace,” says the Lord, “for the wicked.”

On pain of not repeating the same conclusion verbatim each time, let’s simply point out here that God laments the unfaithfulness and resultant judgement of his people, and emphasises the blessings they would have enjoyed if they had been faithful. Yet, he describes how he has redeemed his people, and how the wicked receive judgement. In all fairness, this author can see how this text would be read either way: to say that God’s desire here for their comprehensive blessing is unfulfilled, or how God is describing out of almost frustration how good they would have had it if they had been faithful.

John 5:34

Waldron makes John 5:34 his central text, or at least his primary example of God’s desire for the salvation of those who will not ultimately be saved.

If this author is being honest, John 5:30-47 is a pretty confusing section, where Jesus is dealing with what makes evidence or testimony valid, and what testimony the religious leaders have received, etc. However, this author currently thinks that this passage primarily shows Jesus confronting the misplaced hope of the Pharisees with the clear testimony and necessary witnesses to leave no doubt in their minds that he is the salvation that their people have been waiting for, and yet they will certainly not believe. Indeed, they won’t even truly believe Moses’ words, whom they ostensibly trust.

In conclusion, when Jesus says “I say these things that you may be saved”, it appears to us that this means something like “I have now given you all the light you could possibly want, every teaching that would give you the understanding and opportunity to come to me for salvation”, and not “What I am saying to you right now might actually cause you to be finally saved”.

On page 22 of his book, Waldron critiques A.W. Pink for advocating that Jesus’ apparent desire for the salvation of the Pharisees was merely a statement of his human will, not of his divine will. Waldron acknowledges that this is a valid distinction to make in other places in the Scriptures, citing Matthew 24:36, but does not recognise it being valid here. Critically, he fails to provide a rubric or standard by which this conclusion should be accepted. Essentially, it appears that he accepts the division of divine will/human will in texts where that distinction aligns with his commitments, but not in those where it doesn’t. Personally, this author does not think that Waldron is that double-minded or inconsistent exegetically, but in this part of his book he gives us no reason to think otherwise.

So, when Waldron says, “What conclusion must be deduced from the evidence? It is plain that the unavoidable implication of John 5:34 is that Jesus speaking on behalf of God the Father expressed a desire and intention for the salvation of men who were finally lost.” (p24), we say not so fast, brother. It is not obvious or self-evident that that text carries the weight you pile upon it.

Further issues with unqualified equivocation

In this foray, we have suggested that God has a propensity from his nature to love repentance and desire faithfulness, though this propensity need not be considered as having progressed towards the state of volition (of willing a certain outcome to take place, of having a discrete desire that those outcomes should take place, of planning for that to happen). In that light, please ruminate on these following suggestions and offers regarding the nature of God’s revealed will.

When considering God’s ‘revealed will’, specifically by which we refer to such things as the two tables of the law, ceremonial rules and directions etc, we are speaking of instructions that God has given to his people to fulfil. That all men should repent and believe the gospel is God’s revealed will, because it represents the course of action which is justly required by man’s sinfulness in the face of God’s holiness. It can be called appropriate, fitting, praiseworthy and more.

However, it is God’s purpose and good pleasure that many men should in fact not repent and come to salvation. If we affirm the Scriptures that all things happen according to God’s will and counsel, and that God does all that he pleases, then do we not violate the law of noncontradiction by insisting that God wills to save the reprobate in any manner comparable to his will to save the elect? This point is so critical that we shall say it again a second way. Do we not violate the God-given requirements of logic if we say that the way God wills to save the reprobate is at all similar or comparable to the way God wills to save the elect?

Imagine if a chef told you that they tried just as hard to cook two parmigianas and wanted them both to turn out well, but one of them was a culinary masterpiece and the other one was still frozen, covered in oil, squishing a pile of chips still in their plastic packaging, and smeared with ranch that had turned. You would be totally in the right to insist that the chef did not treat them both the same way, or that he was actually unable to bring his intention to pass with the second one.

So, we feel drawn to conclude that we must say that God has a will which is genuine, decretive and effectual, and one which is merely imperative, dispositional, propense and pre-volitional. However, as stated previously, there is no getting away from the fact that the Scripture describes God’s thwarted preceptive will as a true will. However, if this preceptive and ineffectual will must be stuck fast with such labels as ‘genuine’ and ‘well-meant’ then I must ask for definitions of ‘genuine’ and ‘well-meant’, because I have never genuinely offered something that I knew all along I would certainly not give, and for which I had a higher sublime purpose against giving.

Concluding page 100, Waldron writes, “God earnestly desires the salvation of every man who hears the gospel—with the desire, intention and will—that they might be saved by it”. If you speak this way of God’s ineffectual preceptive will, what linguistic or terminological room have you remaining in which you can differentiate the preceptive from the decretive and effectual? Never before has this author heard a Christian on any other subject say that some course of action was God’s desire, intention and will but that he failed to bring it to pass—or indeed, never really intended to finally bring it to pass. What’s more, what aspect of the English word ‘might’ does Waldron intend by this usage? If simply to describe that something which was once categorically unavailable has become available, i.e. ‘that they can now be saved by it’, then fair enough. However, the other common meaning is the subjunctive mood (an indication of desire for a possible but uncertain outcome) that you understand in the phrase ‘that I might go shopping later if I feel up to it’. Altogether, Waldron’s use of this language leaves a reader such as yours truly, utterly confused. He believes that there was never a chance that those men might have been saved by the proclaimed gospel because of the doctrine of Election, and yet he speaks as if God was working and willing just as forcefully towards an outcome he didn’t ordain as to an outcome he did ordain. The last time we found a Christian writing so frustrating was in the unnecessary metaphors and muddy analogies of Clive Lewis’ Mere Christianity.

To the reader who considers this author hard-hearted or is worried that we make God out to be somehow unfair or unloving, please think very hard about this: what do ‘genuine’ and ‘well-meant’ mean if God knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that he has not purchased the salvation of the non-elect and that either way these reprobates would not accept it? Would you really be prepared to tell an unbeliever that God genuinely offered salvation to those Pharisees, when he was not going to give it, and they were not going to receive it? Is that genuine?

We groan inwardly at even writing such weighty words as those, but this author will not settle for what feels comfortable or ‘sounds right’ in the face of sincerely reading and investigating a Bible that appears to say something else.

Before we go on, please let us change the tone here for a second. In researching this topic, this author has found a complexity and an interrelation with other subjects so deep and so scholarly that it supersedes any other researched topic in its complexity. Therefore, please hear all of the thoughts, suggestions and arguments that you have read as attempts at the problem and developments, but not as conclusive or comprehensive final statements. The way that the subject of the two wills of God interacts with a myriad of other subjects is truly mind-blowing, and an author like this one that you are reading does not have the time, nor the scholarly pedigree to parse out all that has been written. One treatment we read that was thought provoking can be found here.

Waldron claims that “John 5:34, Ezekiel 18:23 and 33:11 and many other passages teach that God commands, wills and desires, the salvation of all who hear the gospel. On the other hand, the Bible teaches that God has not decreed or predestined, or willed, the salvation of all who hear the gospel.” (p. 42)

Waldron evidently recognises the contradiction he is queueing up, so he solves it by appealing to the distinction of decretive/preceptive will of God, but then spends all of page 91 assuring us that it is not proper to talk of two wills in God, but one will only, with two dimensions. How is there no conflict between those two different dispositions held by the two distinct dimensions of God’s otherwise unified will? How does that not create multiplicity? Perhaps it is the intellectual insufficiency of this author that accounts for this, but time and time again it appears that Waldron solves contradictions, not by providing a meaningful system, but by insisting that there is no contradiction, voilà!

On page 100, Waldron criticises the following phrase, “the will of precept has no volitional content”. This is important to consider because it affects some of the proposals we have been building so far. When God reveals his law, is he revealing what man ought to do, or also what he wills that men should do? If perceptive will is not volitional, then calling it a “revealed will” or “preceptive will” is indeed dubious. We would be left with God’s ‘decretive will’, and his ‘preceptive instruction’. Ultimately, Waldron is correct that the Scriptures do use the term ‘will’ even when speaking of God’s clearly unmet statutes, so as a result we cannot simply call his preceptive will instruction, but must allow for it to be some kind of will, or some expression of his one will.

A perilous suggestion: accommodated revelation

It seems Waldron essentially argues (culminating on page 119) that (a) all revealed theology has been accommodated for human understanding and is rife with anthropomorphism and anthropopathism. Following, (b) since the revealed (ectypal) theology has been accommodated from the immediate (archetypal) theology which truly is God’s self-understanding, we must accept that we may encounter things that oppose our logic and reasoning. (c) God truly willing the actual outcome of things he does not decree therefore can be accepted as a “paradox”, not a contradiction.

 Let’s stop here for a second. It really is convenient to be able to reconcile contradiction with that get-out-of-jail-free card, ‘paradox’. If indeed, there are such truths in the Christian faith that whether on their face or in deep study cannot be parsed out, we must acknowledge that we reach some points where our theology does not all line up, and be content in trusting God’s revelation and believing all that he has revealed. However, we encounter the classic warning of the boy crying wolf. If there are paradoxes, how are we to adjudicate between true Scriptural paradoxes and mere contradictions hiding behind that moniker? Is there any rubric or standard by which these may be recognised? Otherwise, you have given a blank cheque to those who would introduce false doctrine, since they have only to baptise it in ‘paradox’.

If, as we charitably consider, Waldron is right in saying that all revealed theology (all of what we read and learn in the Bible) has had to go through a process of ‘accommodation’ to our understanding, and that there is some latency in that process, such that we could arrive at apparent contradictions in the mere revelation itself, how on Earth are we to rebut and disprove the detractors of the Christian faith who would argue that any number of controversial doctrines (headship and submission, God’s abomination of sin, God’s sovereignty in salvation and damnation, the exclusivity of the Saviour) are merely the result of theology being accommodated to our understanding, but that the immediate reality in the mind of God is actually exactly in line with our current cultural fads?

Please consider, Christian reader, these things whenever such a Pandora’s box is opened to you. It may be convenient at the time, or for winning a particular argument, but where will it lead you?

To give this author’s own thoughts, we must forthrightly admit that the mind of God is too profound a thing to be perfectly understood by mere men, the way this author would expect to understand the mind of a peer. If we do not expect grasshoppers to understand the bombastic joy of P.G. Wodehouse or the earthy imagery of Seamus Heaney, nor the prophetic allegory of George Orwell, why would we expect mere humans to understand the mind of the eternal and omniscient God, who differs from us more greatly than we differ from the grasshopper?

So, rightfully we acknowledge that God uses anthropopathisms when describing his interactions in time (yearning, waiting, repenting, investigating, singing) which, although borrowing from the verbs appropriate to incarnate man, properly reflect the actions of God. Likewise anthropomorphisms (speaking of God’s right hand, his bosom, his face, his feet, the train of his garment) borrow from the shape of human man to describe true aspects of the non-incarnate Father, and we acknowledge that this is true and good, because after all the Spirit saw it fit for including in the 66 books he inspired.

However, we do not accompany Waldron in letting this ‘accommodated revelation’ justify that the impassibility of God is not violated by his having ‘unfulfilled desires’, if these desires are as real and genuine and heart-felt as Waldron has laboured to say that they are. If this author is the one at fault, we pray sincerely and with anguish that God would illuminate those texts in his word, which will be balms and salves to our otherwise resistant conscience.

So, having erected the battlement of accommodated theology to hide behind, Waldron simply rejects (without argumentation) that it necessarily follows from the impassibility of God that he has no desires which are not fulfilled. For such a weighty pronouncement, even a basic argument would be deserving.

In another surprising and mildly concerning turn, Waldron positively cites an analogy given by Dabney in which George Washington has internally conflicting desires and emotions regarding a decision he must make, and his patriotism and justice win out over his mercy and compassion. Such an analogy does not bolster the concept of the impassibility of God in the subjection of some desires under others, but rather opens God up to a comparison of internal conflict which seems totally out of step with the Scriptures.

How did we get from the God who is self-sufficient and internally pleased with himself, his plan and his actions, to a God whose desires conflict against one another, and who must subject some of his attributes to others, all the while ending up with unfulfilled desires for salvation towards the reprobate? We respect the name and reputation of Waldron, but if his name were not on this book, we would assume that it was written by a first year philosophy major, not a seasoned minister.

Our final citation from his book is drawn from the penultimate page (p. 142), in which he writes:

“We must preach the gospel with sincerity and truth being confident of the fact that not only does God genuinely and sincerely desire the salvation of all those to whom we are preaching, but also that he will effectually save some who were preordained for such before the foundation of the world. We can be assured of the fact that we will not love the souls of lost sinners nor desire their salvation more than God does himself, it is for this reason that he has commissioned us to preach to every creature”.

We reject the notion that if God did not desire to save the reprobate, and yet we have earnestly desired their salvation and made constant supplication to God towards that end, that we have somehow loved the soul of a lost sinner more than God. After all, in one day, God loves the reprobate sinner by letting them take their every breath and open their eyes in the morning by showing them his beautiful sunrise, by providing them with food to break their fast, by enabling them to use technology and machines that improve their quality of life, by enjoying filial and fraternal love and loyalty, by sending the rains on their lawns and gardens, by having them live in a place where Christians may come and improve their lives by loving them and blessing them with the friendship and community of the church, etc. We flatly reject the idea that if God, though never having worked for their salvation, does all that, but Mr Christian prays once for them for thirty-five seconds, that Mr Christian has loved them better. Rather, we maintain that the simple and commonsense reason for the promiscuous presentation of the gospel is that Christ has commanded it implicitly in his great commission, and that we cannot know who is elect and who is reprobate, so we can earnestly work and pray towards the salvation of both, and God will work to save those who he loves with the saving love he has for his bride, while he continues to love the reprobate with the common grace love he has for all creation.

In conclusion, this author will attempt to make three simple points to reflect his current standpoint:

  1. We must speak of both the Decretive will of God, which cannot be thwarted and which governs every moment and molecule of all creation and providence; and the Preceptive will of God, which is properly called a will and not merely an instruction, though it is routinely thwarted. We stand silent if asked to explain how God has one will and not two, when such things are the case, but believe it to be Biblical.
  2. Despite the thwarting of God’s revealed will, if we attempt to speak of any ‘unfulfilled desire in God’ resulting from the thwarting of his revealed will, it is not that kind of true thwarting that would arise if God’s decree were undermined.
  3. God loves his elect with a unique saving love that he does not have for the reprobate, such that we can say ‘God loves his bride and hates the reprobate’ when speaking of God’s covenantal saving love, however we must also maintain that God loves all his creation with a common grace love which is real and actual, such that we can say God both (savingly/covenantally) hates and (with reference to common grace and propensity) loves the reprobate sinner at the time.

Finally, dear friends, a post-script designed to demonstrate this author’s readiness for correction. If you see an inconsistency or unbiblical turn in our writing here, please comment either online or in person. This author is not infallible, nor perfected in knowledge and sanctification. Hopefully, you can see the earnestness with which we have assailed this icy mountain, and that that tenacious well-meaning attitude would temper any accusation of heterodoxy you may feel justified in levelling.

Finally finally, to the most patient reader who has read all this way and not skipped anything, we heartily commend you, thank you for your tenacity, and recognise that a panadol and a muffin may be needed after the headache this article has likely induced. Whether you leave with or without a muffin, go with God, and with the promiscuous offer of the wonderful Gospel on your lips to all creatures of our God and King.

That only one murder is possible: an examination of Fyodor Dostoevsky and Kinoko Nasu

How many people can you kill? It is a good question, but different thinkers have taken different approaches to the answer. However, whilst most interlocutors would focus on the ‘how many’, Dostoevsky and Nasu focus on the ‘you’. What do we mean? Let’s rewind for a second.

Fyodor Dostoevsky is a famous Russian author from the 19th century, whose exploration of the human soul in all its complexity, awfulness, compassion and contradiction may be fairly said to stand without parallel in fictional literature.

His novel Crime and Punishment follows a promising but poor university student, Rodion Romanych Raskolnikov (or Rodya to his friends). Raskolnikov plots the murder of a miserly landlord who, by all assessment, has a net negative impact on society. He reasons that if he kills her, it will give him what he needs, but also he will be able to use that money to prevent his pure sister from consenting to a terrible marriage that she was considering to stave the family away from ruin. In short, Dostoevsky sets it up as the perfect murder. Raskolnikov sees himself as a higher class of man (very much in the Nietzschean sense) that is able to make such bold and necessary steps as this to achieve the proper outcome. In short, Raskolnikov commits the murder, but what Dostoevsky labours to show is that it is Raskolnikov who doesn’t survive the murder. The old Rodion Raskolnikov is gone, murdered, forever tainted by the act of murder. His hubris and arrogance in thinking he could rise above moral norms weigh down on his shoulders like a suffocating blanket, and he remains as a mere shell of his former self, in the end so tormented by his guilt that he almost begs a police officer to accuse him of it so that he can face justice.

So, in killing another, Dostoevsky says that the murderer themself dies inside to such a degree that the person remaining is someone else altogether.

Kinoko Nasu is a Japanese author, best known for the light novel The Garden of Sinners and for his visual novels Tsukihime and Fate/Stay Night. Nasu’s familiarity with various philosophies, primarily Taoism and some elements of Catholicism, are abundantly clear in his work. The heroine of The Garden of Sinners is Shiki Ryougi, and her acquaintance with her friend Mikiya Kokutou, make this very apparent. In some sense, Shiki serves as a canvas for painting the image of a woman who is the manifestation of Ying/Yang, and in this respect showcases Taoist philosophy. She has two distinct personalities that wish to be in control, one which is feminine (式 ‘Shiki’, associated with yin), and one which is masculine (織 ‘SHIKI’, associated with yang). Shiki often makes morally ambiguous judgements, shows a nihilistic or cynical attitude to life, and in general doesn’t care for societal norms. In contrast, Mikiya (though not Catholic himself) is a young man who has clear and objective moral rules that he hates to see broken, whether by himself or any of the other characters. He is pleasant and polite, and in this sense the total opposite of Shiki. In this way, Shiki and Mikiya are almost the personifications of Taoism and Catholicism, though we would need to make so many caveats to that statement that the reader should consider it a stretch.

But what has all this to do with murder? Well, Shiki is a rather unusual lady. Events of the story lead to the death of her masculine personality, SHIKI. As a result, she has some immediate familiarity with the feeling of death, and so she doesn’t take murder lightly. In an internal monologue, Mikiya says (of Shiki), that she kills no one, because “you’re a victim and a perpetrator at the same time, so you know better than anyone that it is full of sorrow” (Kinoko Nasu, Ufotable, 2014, The Garden Of Sinners 2:And Nothing Heart.)

Mikiya knows the moral damage done to a human soul by murder, so at the end of the seventh installment (The Garden of Sinners: A Study in Murder (Part 2)), Mikiya tells Shiki that even though she has committed murder, he will “carry [her] sin in [her] place”, and again that he’d “bear the burden of [her] crime in [her] place” (Kinoko Nasu, Ufotable, 2014, The Garden of Sinners: A Study in Murder (Part 2)). 

What Nasu presents through his characters is very similar to Dostoevsky. Nasu’s Mikiya is the stabilising and cautionary force trying to hold back the murderously impulsive Shiki from committing the sin and crime of murder that he knows would so unalterably mark her soul that she would truly die, and that whatever personality of hers remained would be once again fractured and torn apart. Shiki herself, though driven by a constant impulse for murder, insists on the murder being meaningful, and turns down several opportunities for murder on the basis that they didn’t seem meaningful enough. As if this plot point wasn’t clear enough, Shiki’s final nemesis, Lio Shirazumi, has as his primary goal to corrupt Shiki by tricking her into thinking of herself as a murderer and leading her to commit murder, because even he knows that this would corrupt her, and that is an end unto itself for him.

This author’s explanation of the characters and themes of The Garden of Sinners here is very brief and surface level, but a more in depth analysis (though worthwhile, and a well-earned credit to Nasu’s excellent writing) will not be undertaken here. Buy and watch the series for yourself if your interest is piqued.

At the end of the day, neither Dostoevsky or Nasu are truly correct in their fictional explorations of murder. Though it should seem obvious that committing murder would cause significant damage to a person, it is not true that they stop being who they truly were, because the true and living God holds all men and women accountable for their actions, and any sins committed after murder are still sins that the individual is responsible before God for. Additionally, the detriment of murder on the soul of the murder is not truly irreversible. The Spirit of God has saved murderers many times before, and in His work of renewing them day by day, and conforming them to the image of the Son of God, he is powerful even to cleanse the soul from the guilt and stench of murder. This is truly good news, because for all of the artistic and literary beauty in Crime and Punishment and The Garden of Sinners, neither of those worlds offer true redemption to the one who has killed their own soul in the act of murder.

This author invites the reader to hold whatever ideology or philosophy they prize at an arm’s length, and to hold the gospel of true peace close to their hearts. If you have not yet found true peace through Christ, there is no better time than now.

Microfiction break: Farsight III

My M.O. for microfiction is to write a three or four paragraph non-linear story, where the climax of the story isn’t shocking when you read it because you lack the context to understand its significance. This way, when you re-read the paragraphs, you see what they really mean, and get to appreciate them in a new light. I also like them to be a little bit of a riddle, so that words are few, but meaning is dense.

Here is the link to a new microfiction story of mine, Farsight III. Hope you enjoy it.

This is my favourite of my microfiction compositions, which I wrote shortly after reading ‘The Big Sleep’ by Raymond Chandler, a truly excellent American Crime novel. Check it out! Also, if neither of these stories make any sense to you, leave me a comment so I can improve them.

Long live the King

You can go elsewhere if you would like to read an obituary of the late Queen Elizabeth II, others who have more to say on the subject have surely written such a thing by now. This author is not aiming to lionise or demonise her memory, to weigh in on her eternal destination, the new King Charles, or to call for a switch to a Republican form of government.

So, what’s left to say? Well, we invite the considerate reader to take a step back and think conceptually about monarchy. Years ago, this author was struck when he overheard a Christian casually say that Iran isn’t unique, because every country is a theocracy. Iran and the Vatican City are the two formal Theocracies in the world today in 2022, but the reality is every country has a God, just as every person has a God (whether they recognise it or not).

In a similar way, we must realise that since Christ has ascended in victory to his Father, and all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to him, there is not a maverick molecule in all the world over which Christ’s royal sceptre does not extend (to roughly paraphrase Kuyper). Christ is currently the King of Estonia and Libya and Portugal, just as he is the King of Massachusetts and California and Oregon. He is the King in the science class, he is the King in the music room, and in the kitchen. He is the King when you enter the sanctuary, when you are out for work drinks, and when you’re cracking open a cold one all by yourself.

It is not that Christ someday will be King over these things. Granted, Satan and his demons have presence and power and activity all over the earth, and much of the world obeys his devilish schemes, such that he can be called ‘the god of this world’, but his administration and authority is so many rungs lower than that of King Jesus that it is inappropriate to think of The Adversary as the final and ultimate King of this world.

We will try to be as broad-brush as we can here, and not exclude the gentle reader for holding to a different understanding of eschatology (the study of the last things), but this author will assert the following:

  1. The New Creation has begun in the regeneration of the elect (Gal 6:15, 2 Cor 5:17), but it has not reached its fullness, for it will continue to spread like leaven throughout the loaf or the branches from the mustard seed (Mark 4:30-32).
  2. Christ Jesus has Kingly authority and jurisdiction over every single atom in all of creation, including those persons and nations which are currently in rebellion against him (Matthew 28:18, Proverbs 21:1).
  3. Though Christ Jesus rightly has this authority, we don’t yet see its final state of fulfilment, since not all things are yet in subjection to him, though they will be eventually (1 Cor 15:26-28).
  4. The Kingdom of God has arrived, and had already arrived in Jesus’ day (Luke 11:20), though not in its fullness.
  5. To say that Christ’s Kingdom is ‘not of this world’ is to say that it is of a different order and nature than the mere petty kingdoms of this world which so easily fade. It does not mean that his Kingdom is not in this world, and it does not mean that his Kingly authority should be ignored by our nations and laws.

So, how should this change how we see Monarchy or Theocracy? For starters, we should realise that Kings and Queens are not a vain invention of man, but a proper office instituted by God which is also answerable and accountable to God. Likewise, though Australia doesn’t formally recognise a Supreme Leader for itself like Ali Khamenei in Iran or like Pope Francis in the Vatican, Australia does worship a god—and most importantly, the wrong one.

Therefore, recognising that all nations are essentially theocratic isn’t tantamount to calling for a return to pagan models of theocracy from history, nor for calling for a return to the particular and unique form of direct theocracy that Israel experienced when Yahweh could be found and spoken to directly by Moses in the tent.

If the patient reader is finding this confusing, let us spell it out: Jesus is both God and King, and deserves to be officially recognised as such (like the example set by Poland, though that nation is predominantly stuck in the cold dead clutches of Roman Catholicism, and not of a Christianity with a Gospel that can save).

The application of this is as follows: if you are a fellow Australian who is now zealously campaigning for the switch to a Republican form of government, whether due to its benefits, or due to a disdain for royalty, or monarchy more specifically, remember that monarchy is truly inescapable, and that if you abolish the office of King or Queen, then that position of spiritual figurehead will be improperly assumed by someone else (to use some American examples, it is no accident that Elvis was ‘the King’ and Beyoncé is ‘the Queen’). So, this is a cautionary word. Regardless of how you feel about Elizabeth, or Charles, or the other royal families, haemophiliacs and cousins all the way, do not underestimate the incredible uniting force of having a good King or a good Queen who can properly represent his or her people and be the manifestation of their ideals, the representation of their spirit and the voice they need to hear in times of war and strife.

Finally, we are commanded to pray for all kinds of men, whether kings, authorities or rulers. We are to pray for their salvation, for their wisdom, for the wisdom of their counsellors, and that they may conduct themselves in a way that honours God. If you find yourself unable to pray for the welfare of that elderly man Charles, this is a friendly exhortation to you to remember the simple commandment that you must love others as yourself.

Whether or not Australia will now become a republic, we must all recognise that there will always be a king in the land, because men were made in such a way that we always worship a god of some kind, and we also have the propensity to make men into kings.

Therefore, until Christ himself is recognised as the King of Australia, this author will repeat those well-known words, “The Queen is dead. Long live the King.”

Matt Walsh, and the problem of the trash compactor

The tides of culture wash in and out, they sway one way and then the other, and perhaps this is how it has always been. There certainly have been times in history when Christian faith has been so dominant in society that different Christian traditions (Congregationalists, Anglicans, Methods, etc) have been able to maintain fellowship but still keep their distance and their distinctives. Likewise, and more importantly, Christians (including all three of the examples just given) have been able to distinguish themselves from other quasi-Christian religions, such as Roman Catholicism, Mormonism and the Jehovah’s Witnesses. What category do we put Eastern Orthodoxy into? Good question, and perhaps a discussion for another time.

Whereas in past eras, these groups have often had the space to stay distinct from one another, something different is happening in our day. The culture around us is moving the Overton Window quickly to the left, and lumping everyone to the right of that place as ‘far-right’, or whatever other pejorative is popular for the day.

So, when a sincere Roman Catholic man called Matt Walsh makes a superb but harrowing documentary about the sexual insanity of our day (What is a woman? linked here and here), we witness one little example of the great trash compactor we find ourselves in.

Matt Walsh is not a Christian, but in this fight he is our ally. Some would use the term co-belligerent. In this season, believing Christians will find themselves squished closer and closer to old-fashioned believing Roman Catholics and probably even some old-fashioned sincere Mormons, since all three groups recognise that abortion is evil.

That’s no problem, though, right? It would be, except for the fact that many Protestants today are not Protestant due to some doctrinal conviction, but merely because they don’t know any other kind of Christianity, and Protestantism (in one if its forms) was probably the version they were raised in, or found first when they joined a church. We will need to know why we reject Rome’s claims to authority. We will need to know on what basis Joseph Smith is not a prophet of God. The same goes for Muhammad.

This author can stand side by side with a Sunni Muslim in wholehearted agreement that the young men of our generation are being pacified, desexed and enslaved by their addiction to porn. However, if this author is not then ready to explain why the 66 books of Scripture are the only revelation of the Yahweh of Scripture, and that Muhammad was not a prophet of God, and that Jesus wasn’t a muslim and so on, then we have a problem.

This is a call to realise that we are being pushed into a corner with people who share some common goals, but whose foundations are different and corrupt. These people are not our enemies, but we have to be prepared, as Peter said in his first Epistle, to give a defence for the hope that we have, and to do so with gentleness and respect.

After all, we bring good news. The best news.

Fiction break: An introduction to the Parable of the Library

Recently, I wrote a really fun short story called The Parable of the Library, and you can read it here.

This story is a combination of a few ideas, and draws on a number of literary influences. I have recently read (and greatly enjoyed) John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress, and I now fully understand why it was one of the most influential books of the 17th century, and the second most widely translated and published book after The Bible itself.

Reading it in its original old-English style, it had a very charming and whimsical nature to it, whilst still being an unbelievably stirring and relatable account of the Christian journey through the strife of this world to eternal rest and company in the King’s house.

Bunyan’s novel is an allegory, where every character’s name is what that character is. For example, Pliable is the easily swayed friend of Obstinate, who is a stubborn man that does all he can to convince Christian to give up his pilgrimage. What is happening there is that the author is admitting something to the reader, saying, “Yes, this character may seem predictable and one-dimensional, but he will teach you something harrowing about the manifold wickednesses of this world and its fallen people’.

The drama in Pilgrim’s Progress is not riding on nail-biting and fast paced prose, like a Matthew Reilly novel, but rather on the devastatingly accurate insights provided to the reader by watching foil characters such as Mr Worldly Wisdom and Giant Despair with his Doubting Castle show the deep inadequacy of Christian and his friend Faithful, and their deep reliance on God’s word and Providence.

Before I connect that back to the Parable of the Library, a quick word on Children’s Literature. I had the pleasure of studying one unit in children’s lit during my time at Deakin Uni, and I actually learnt a lot about the surprising depth and maturity that children can handle–and perhaps even require–in their literature. In fact, whereas YA (Young Adult) prose tends to read like normal speech, or like normal storytelling (albeit with more love triangles, where the young lady always has to choose between the Nice Guy or the Bad Boy, than appear in real life), children’s lit has the multi-layered task of being a visual and textual medium, whilst also having a style of delivery that is markedly different from normal prose.

Though it is easy to trivialise or look down upon the rhymes and repetitions of picture-story books, there is truly a poetic quality to much of this writing–or at least the best examples of it. The writer of children’s lit has the freedom to repeat something in a manner that would be decidedly foreign to common parlance, or to sit and remain on one detail at such great length that in any other setting one’s editor would be going at it with her big red pen.

The final main literary influence to this story in terms of atmosphere and absurdity is Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment. This classic has a frustratingly large number of characters who rant and rave, forsaking all semblance of logical flow or courtesy to go on and on in exhausting tirades of introspection. After a few hundred pages of characters at the end of their wits, constantly wringing their hands in shame and beating their chests in sorrow, the reader can start to feel a little loopy, like nothing in Dostoyevsky’s world makes sense anymore, or like none of the characters can be expected to act like normal humans. Dostoyevsky was masterful at creating and sustaining an atmosphere of sheer frenzy and absurdity, where everyone’s eyelids are pulled back and you feel as if you are staring right into their bones. It feels like the trials in The Crucible or the Jurors’ discussions in Twelve Angry Men, or perhaps Marlow’s terror in Heart of Darkness.

So, with the tastes of those books lingering in my mind, I found myself eager to write an allegory of my own. Due to a funny thing called Presuppositonal Apologetics (if you are a Christan, you simply must learn about this), I found it odd to watch non-Christians borrow concepts from the Christian worldview like Truth, Value, Meaning, Beauty and Justice and yet reject the Christian worldview that is solely capable of providing a rational and consistent basis for those ideas. I thought, ‘wouldn’t it be intriguing to discuss the borrowing of those ideas as if they were library books?’ With that, The Parable of the Library was born.

I would be greatly honoured if you, mostly highly esteemed reader, would read it. It was fun to write, and I hope it will be fun and provoking to read.

Analysis – Aftermath (flash fiction)

There’s a style of flash fiction I really enjoy writing, which revolves around two elements: being two to four paragraphs, and being non-chronological.

It’s fun to read, but it’s solving a puzzle as well as reading a story. I like the reader to learn the information before they know the significance. That way it creates this disjointed moment where you realise that a small passing detail was actually the crucial information, the conclusion to the story or a central plot point.

This relies on having a couple of key words that link the paragraphs, and just enough temporal indicators that the reader can piece it back together.

Anyway, I wrote this one ages back, check it out. 🙂

Super-short fiction

There’s a poem by Seamus Heaney called Limbo which is chronologically back-to-front. I love it. I wondered if I could pull that off in short fiction, and so instead of writing out a complex plan for what the story would be and how to show it, I just started writing.

The result was this super-short story, a mix between the non-chronology of Tarantino and the detective fiction style of Raymond Chandler.

‘Phileos’, and talking around the subject

At some point near the end of 2018, a wonderful day was spent with my two closest friends from uni, at the time. You probably know as well as I do that as time passes we remember the major parts of these days, all the big picture elements. It’s the small details that go first. When I wrote ‘Phileos‘, I was seeking to capture all the little tiny bits that disappear from memory, in the hope that every reading would help me recall the small details that bring back the simplicity and wonder of such a day.

I do not explain what exactly is going on in the poem, but rather I approach it from all different sides, just not head on.

There are four Greek words for love, but Phileos is the fraternal, brotherly/sisterly love that sits at the base of enduring friendship.

‘Of the Seasons’: a closer look

I had great fun last year working on this poem, ‘Of the Seasons‘. It was an idea I’d started before, but it came time to submit work for uni so, naturally, time to dig up (and develop) old work.

The key idea is that each stanza correlates to a season, and each season has a ‘sound profile’. In writing metalanguage, the tool I worked with is called the sonic chain. Seamus Heaney referred to it as the ‘earscape’ of a poem. Each of the four seasons has the same line count and structure, with the final two lines of each five really hammering home the earscape.

Here’s the first stanza, Summer. Here, it is the /ɒ/ in ‘hot’ that creates that link, using the extension of that vowel sound to suggest lethargy and breathlessness.

The dry sun-sapped air forces even
the most brave of creatures back
to our air-conditioned cocoons.
Too hot to think, too hot to bother
Too hot that we’re all hot and bothered.

Here’s the poem, give it a read and then see if you can hear the sound of the season (yes, this may require reading out loud).

In the second stanza, autumn, it is the gentle, gliding vowel sound /iːv/ that brings on the image of gentle breezes and falling leaves that is iconic of autumn. For winter, the third stanza, the biting /ɒst/ sound, akin to gale force winds, is what creates an additional layer of texture and meaning on top of the words themselves. Finally, spring is where nature and the fourth stanza boom back into life with bold colours and sounds, something I achieved audibly with /aʊd/. What I succeeded in achieving in each of these examples is what Hutcheon (2006, p. 61) calls “a derivation that is not derivative—a work that is second but not secondary.” The poem succeeds standing alone, but is enriched when transformed into a performed, audible work.

Hutcheon, L 2006, A theory of adaptation, Routledge, New York

13 ways

For uni last year, I was given the challenge to mirror the poem Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird by Wallace Stevens. The challenge was to change the subject but keep the same energy and line count.

I created my poem, ‘13 ways of beholding the cross‘, in response. It was a great challenge and took a lot of focus, but most of all the challenge was in how directly I wanted to describe my subject — and the extent to which I managed to avoid doing so.

Here’s an example.

VI (blackbird)
Icicles filled the long window   
With barbaric glass.   
The shadow of the blackbird   
Crossed it, to and fro.   
The mood   
Traced in the shadow   
An indecipherable cause.
VI (cross)
Thunderclouds bellow rolling fury,
Cast saturating needles.
Down the splintering spine
Blood, sweat and water mingle.
Every darkness
Piled upon misery
An asphyxiated sentence.

This stanza is sharp and full of colourful, charged words. I noticed where the line runs on and where the line ends in a full stop. My main focus, however, lay on the last three lines. ‘The mood / traced in the shadow / an indecipherable cause’. It could mean ‘the mood, which was itself traced in the shadow, has a cause which is indecipherable’. On the other hand, it could be read ‘the mood, which had an indecipherable cause, traced something in the shadow’. The point is, the grammatical relationship between lines 1, 2 and 3 were ambigious, which enriched the reading.

I attempted to mirror that with my lines ‘Every darkness / Piled upon misery / An asphyxiated sentence.’ The first line could be the subject or the object of the second line, the verb clause. Either way, the third line stands up.

I encourage you to read Stevens’ poem and mine side-by-side, and see if you notice more similarities throughout.