Tag Archives: Worship

Edward Taylor, When Thy Bright Beams

18 Wednesday Dec 2019

Posted by in Edward Taylor, Uncategorized, Worship, Worship

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(2009 photo contest winner for the Nature / Landscapes category. Photo by Kurt Svendsgaard/USFWS)

When thy bright beams, my Lord, do strike mine eye,

Methinks I then could truly chide out-right

My hidebound soul that stands so niggardly

That scarce a thought gets glorified by’t.

My quaintest metaphors are ragged stuff,

Making the sun seem like a mullipuff.

 

When I am struck evidence of your glory, I see how little right effect that glory works into my soul. I chide myself that I show so little effect up me. The words which I produce are of so little value.

“chide out-right”: Scold, upbraid.

“My hidebound soul”: his soul is unresponsive.

“Niggardly”: selfish, tightfisted: It is as if his soul is a miser which will pay out no praise.

“scarce a thought get glorified”: The glory of God does not translate into transformed thinking.  In Romans 12:2 Paul calls up us to be “transformed by the renewal of your mind”

“quaintest metaphors”: my most clever metaphors. The style of writing exercised by Taylor gives great emphasis to the cleverness of metaphor. He here raises his most able talent and says that it means nothing: it is “ragged stuff”.

He ends the stanza with a comic comparison: rather than raise what I know in admiration by means of comparison, I turn the very sun into a fuzzball.

 

It’s my desire, thou shouldst be glorified:

But when thy glory shine before mine eye,

I pardon crave, lest my desire be pride,

Or bed thy glory in cloudy sky.

The sun grows wan; and angels palefac’d shrink

Before thy shine, which I besmear with ink.

 

It is my aim – my desire – that you, God, should be honored by my work. But I see your already existing glory, rather than thinking of some means of providing you greater honor; I feel myself ashamed. I ask that you should forgive me (I pardon crave).

 

Rather than my writing providing something honoring to, I fear that I will dishonor you with my words. Rather than adding a luster to God’s glory, Taylor’s words will have the effect of being a “cloudy sky” to the sun. His poem will merely “besmear with ink” the glory of God.

 

This realization that (1) his soul has not responded rightly to the realization of God’s glory and (2) his complete inability to glorify God, leads to a crisis: What will I do? That crisis is set forth in the third stanza:

 

But shall the bird sign forth thy praise and shall

The little bee present her thankful hum?

But I who see thy shining glory fall

Before mine eyes, stand blockish, dull, and dumb?

Whether I speak, or speechless stand, I spy,

I fail thy glory: therefor, pardon cry.

 

Even the most simple things give glory to God: birds singing, bees humming.  This matter that all nature praises God is a theme in Scripture. For instance, Psalm 149

 

Psalm 148:7–10 (AV 1873)

7          Praise the Lord from the earth,

Ye dragons, and all deeps:

8          Fire, and hail; snow, and vapour;

Stormy wind fulfilling his word:

9          Mountains, and all hills;

Fruitful trees, and all cedars:

10         Beasts, and all cattle;

Creeping things, and flying fowl:

 

I do like “dragons”, but the contemporary translations render as something like “great sea creatures”.  All of nature praises God, “All thy works shall praise thee”. Ps. 145.10.

 

So, if all of creation praises God, then certainly Taylor – who has better reason and better ability to praise God – must do something. It is particularly wrong for Taylor to stand agape and say nothing,

 

But I who see thy shining glory fall

Before mine eyes, stand blockish, dull, and dumb?

 

So Taylor has no escape: If he praises God or he fails to praise, both will be wrong:

 

Whether I speak, or speechless stand, I spy,

I fail thy glory: therefor, pardon cry.

 

What can he possibly do but seek mercy?

 

 

 

But this I find: my rhymes do better suit

Mine own dispraise than tune forth praise to thee.

Yet being chide, whether consonant, or mute,

I force my tongue to tattle, as you see.

That I thy glorious praise my trumpet right

Be thou my song, and make Lord, me thy pipe.

 

He acknowledges that his best ability in terms of poetry is to note his own deficiency rather than God’s glory:

But this I find: my rhymes do better suit

Mine own dispraise than tune forth praise to thee.

 

And God, you also see since I deserve no matter I do (“whether consonant or mute”), but you also see that I cannot help but speak and praise you.

 

So then, Taylor prays that God will work in Taylor’s praise to remedy his defect. In making this prayer, Taylor is seeming relying upon the promise of Romans 8:27 that when we pray the Holy Spirit will intercede for us – that He will effectively correct our defective prayers.

 

He then ends with a praise to God’s great glory which shall be revealed on Judgment Day.

The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment, Study Guide. 10.1

27 Thursday Apr 2017

Posted by in Jeremiah Burroughs, Study Guide, Uncategorized

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It’s been a long time, but the previous post in this series may be found here.

Burroughs now moves to the question of motivation: it will take work to “learn” (Phil. 4:11) how to be content. Contentment is a heavenly flower, a mark of the age to come, and it is not common to this world. If anything, contentment has only become more difficult for people living at this time, because we live in a world that engages in constant propaganda to make us discontent. This is a fact noted by all. From those who are negative to Christianity, ” The whole thing [advertising] is a set up to keep us unhappy and foolishly intent on spending our way out this unhappiness.” But it was noted far earlier by Solomon,

 

Ecclesiastes 1:8 (ESV)

8           All things are full of weariness;

a man cannot utter it;

the eye is not satisfied with seeing,

nor the ear filled with hearing.

 

There are all the false offers of happiness in this world. Even though they all end the same (Ecclesiastes 2:11), we find them irresistible (Jer. 2:25). Therefore, breaking off from these false hopes and setting our hope in God such that we will do the work to learn contentment with God’s will for our lives — even when it crosses are desires — will require a hope in that contentment is better than what we have now.

 

It is to this task which Burroughs turns.

 

  1. How does Burroughs describe the result of this learning? If we have learned contentment, what would be the nature of our speaking about contentment? Read Philippians 4:1-13, the passage where Paul says that he has learned contentment. What is the tone taken by Paul in this passage? Verse 13 is a famous verse: in context, what is that God gives Paul the strength to do?

 

  1. Why does Burroughs note that even the greatest pagans thought contentment a great goal?

 

  1. The worship due God. In raising this issue, Burroughs is both showing us the greatness of contentment, and at the same time, raising the greatest barrier to contentment.

 

  1. How does Burroughs first define contentment? In particular note the aspect of free submission.

 

  1. What sort of thoughts, desires and fears keep you from freely submitting to God’s will for your life? If they hold that God is sovereign, and that our present circumstance must work for good, then what must we think when our present circumstance runs contrary to our will? What must we think about ourselves? What must we think about God?

 

  1. How does willing submission to God help bring about contentment?

 

  1. Why should giving God proper worship be a motivation for contentment? Honestly, does that seem like a sufficient reason?

 

  1. Burroughs uses some language which may sound offensive to your dignity, when he discusses worship. Read Genesis 3:5. Does this lie of the Serpent help shed light on why this is difficult for us?

 

  1. Look at a few passages involving humans meeting God:
  2. Leviticus 10:1-3
  3. Deuteronomy 5:22-27

iii.        Isaiah 6:1-5

  1. Ezekiel 1
  2. Luke 5:8
  3. Luke 9:34

vii.       Revelation 1:17

 

  1. What is wrong with our natural thoughts about God? ii

 

  1. How does Burroughs describe the greatness of this aspect of worship?

 

  1. Read Revelation 5: i) What sort of worship does Christ receive from those who know him best? ii) What is the basis for this worship? iii) Do you rightly value this worth? iv) Is it wise to submit one’s condition and life to such wisdom? v) Read Romans 8:31-32: is there any good which God would not give you?

 

Richard Sibbes: God is a Relationship

16 Thursday Mar 2017

Posted by in Biblical Counseling, Richard Sibbes, Sanctification, Sanctifictation, Uncategorized, Worship

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But you will say, How shall we know that this covenant belongeth to us? that we are such as we may say, God is our God?
I answer, first—to lay this for a ground—you must know that to be a God is a relation. Whosoever God is a God to, he persuadeth them by his Spirit that he is a God to. The same Spirit that persuadeth them that there is a God, that Spirit telleth them that God is their God, and works a qualification and disposition in them, as that they may know that they are in covenant with such a gracious God. The Spirit as it revealeth to them the love of God, and that he is theirs, so the Spirit enableth them to claim him for their God, to give up themselves to him as to their God.

Richard Sibbes, “The Faithful Covenanter” in The Complete Works of Richard Sibbes, ed. Alexander Balloch Grosart, vol. 6 (Edinburgh; London; Dublin: James Nichol; James Nisbet and Co.; W. Robertson, 1863), 8.

This is a profound bit of theology and needs some thought to be understood.

Consider first, “you must know that to be a God is a relation”. We too easily abstract God: God is a being with a set of attributes. Another sort of one has an idea of a celestial butler, the god of moral therapeutic deism:

As described by Smith and his team, Moralistic Therapeutic Deism consists of beliefs like these: 1. “A god exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth.” 2. “God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.” 3. “The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about ones self.” 4. “God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.” 5. “Good people go to heaven when they die.” (As Dr. Mohler summarized Smith’s findings.)

Or some other god. But consider what Sibbes is saying: The “God” part of our understanding of God is relational. For instance, Moses speaks to Pharaoh of the “LORD our God.” There is a particular person(s) who is our God. Since He is God, we have a particular relationship toward him.

The abstract God is a powerful being, but we have little relationship to him. He have created us, but he may also have forgotten us: he is not God to us. The Therapeutic god is no God at all. He is a powerful helper, but he is not a God to anyone. That is why the Christian confession is that Christ is Lord.

The remainder of Sibbes’ discussion speaks about how God himself, God the Spirit, brings the human being into a right relation to God. God is there for everyone, but not everyone is God-worshipper relationship with God (indeed, one can think of sanctification as merely the process of turning human beings into right worshipers).

Whosoever God is a God to,
1) he persuadeth them by his Spirit that he is a God to.
2) The same Spirit that persuadeth them that there is a God,
3) that Spirit telleth them that God is their God,
4) and works a qualification and disposition in them,
5) as that they may know that they are in covenant with such a gracious God.
6) The Spirit as it revealeth to them the love of God, and that he is theirs,
7) so the Spirit enableth them to claim him for their God,
8) to give up themselves to him as to their God

Each of these elements makes plain what is in the relationship of “God”. There is a God. This God stands in some sort of relationship to the human being. The human being is in a covenantal relationship to this God. The human being’s affections, thoughts, dispositions, actions are brought into a correspondence to the covenant (that is also known as sanctification: note that sanctification is not merely morally appropriate behavior, although it is not less). Counseling/preaching is the process of using the Word of God (assisted by the Spirit of God) to bring about this relational process.

The Spiritual Chymist, Upon the Payment of a Pepper-Corn

20 Friday Jan 2017

Posted by in Glory, Praise, Uncategorized, William Spurstowe, William Spurstowe, Worship, Worship

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MEDITATION XXXVIII
Upon the Payment of a Pepper-corn

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(Photo courtesy of John Lodder)

Logicians have a maxim, Relations sunt minimas entitatis & maxime efficace: relations are the smallest entity, and of the greatest efficacy: the truth which may appear in the payment of a single peppercorn, that freeholders pay their landlord, they do it not with any hope or intent to enrich him; but to acknowledge that they hold all from him. To affect the one it is not have to mean about you, get a preservers the Lord’s right fully as a greater rent, and aggravates the tenant’s folly to withhold more then if the demand had been higher.

What Naaman’s servant spoke on to him, If the prophet had bid thee do some great thing, wouldest thou not have done it? How much rather then, when he saith to thee, wash and be clean?

The condition which meet bounty happily has so easy had been by the same hand and power restraints to a more costly and ample homage ought it not to have been performed? How much more when nothing is required but what may how inexcusable then must the ingratitude of those men be, receiving all their blessings from God, withhold a peppercorn of praise and honor for him, which is the only thing that they can pay or that he expects? To cast the least mite into his treasury, which may add to its richest, is beyond the line if men or angels, for if it could admit to increase [if the praise could make God’s existing merit and treasure larger than it is at present], the abundance of it were not infinite: but to adore its fullness and to acknowledge that from it they derived theirs is the duty of all the partake of it.

This is the only homage that those Stars of the Morning and Sons of God who behold his face do given in heaven, and this it is which the children of men should give on earth. But alas! From how few are those sacred dues tendered to God, though all be his debtors? Does not the rich man when well flows in on him like a river forget that only the Lord gives him power to get riches? And sacrifice onto his neck, and burn incense onto his drag? Is it not the sin that God charges all Israel with, that they rejoice in the thing of nought, and say have we not taken horns to us by our own strength?

Yea, does he not expressly say that he will not get his glory onto another? Shall any man then take it onto himself? And yet what stolen bread is so sweet to any taste as the secret nimmings and purloinings of God’s glory our onto the palate of most? If any design be effected, they think that their wisdom has brought about; if any difficulties be removed, they ascribed it to their industry; if success and victory due build upon their sword, it is their own arm and right hand that has obtained it. O how great is that pride and on thankfulness which reigns in the hearts of men who affect to rob God, rather than to honor can’t, and she denied him to be the author of what they possess, than to acknowledge the tenure that they hold in capite [a holding immediately from the king; English law].

Stealing from men may be acquitted again with single or double, with fourfold or sevenfold restitution: but the filching from God’s glory can never be answered. For who can give anything to him which he has not received? Others may steal of necessity, to satisfy hungry; but such [as do not praise God] violate out of pride and wantonness the Exchequer of Heaven, and shall never escape undetected or unpunished.

Consider therefore this all you who are ready to kiss your own hands for every blessing that comes upon you, to what danger you expose yourselves, while you rob God – whose name is Jealous, who will vindicate the glory of neglected goodness in the severe triumphs of his impartial justice. It is Bernard’s expression Uti datis, ut innatis est maxima superbia, to use God’s gifts as things inbred in us is the highest arrogance. And what less merit than the very condemnation of the Devil – whose first sin (as some divines [theologians] conceive) was an affection of independent happiness, without any respect or habitude to God. I cannot wonder that the blackness of his sin and the dreadfulness of his Fall should not make all to fear the least shadow and semblance of such a crime in themselves as must bring upon them the like ruin.

Look upon him you proud ones and tremble, who are abettors of Nature against Grace, and resolve the salvation of man ultimately in to the freedom of the will rather than into the efficacy of God’s grace. [The one ] who in the work of conversion make the grace of God to have only the work of a midwife, to help the child into the world but not be the parent and sole author of it. Is not this to cross the great design of the Gospel, which is to exalt and honor God and Christ? That he that glorieth might glory in the Lord? And is not every tittle of the Gospel as dear to God as every tittle of the Law? Can then any diminish aught from it and be guiltless?

Oh fear then to take the least due from God who has threatened to take his part out of the Book of Life and out of the holy City and from the things which are written in the Book of God.

Non test devotions dedisse probe totum, sed fraudis retinuisse vel minimum, It is not devotion, says Prosper rightly against his Collator, to acknowledge almost all from God, but accursed theft to ascribe though but a very little to ourselves.

Lord, therefore, whatever others do
Keep me humble,
That as I receive all from thee,
So I may render that tribute of praise which thou expects from me
Both cheerfully and faithfully;
And though it can add nothing to thy perfection,
No more than my beholding and admiring the Sun’s light can increase it
Yet let me say, as Holy David did,
Not unto us, O Lord,
Not unto us,
But unto thy name be the glory
For thy mercy
And for thy truth’s sake.

What the Ascension Means to the Church

09 Monday May 2016

Posted by in Ascension, Ecclesiology, Uncategorized, Worship, Worship

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Jesus has taken his place at the right hand of the Father. He has vanquished all the powers. In his person he has carried human nature up into the presence of God the Father. Ascension points to the fact that the whole cosmos has been re-organized around Jesus of Nazareth. Mission is a response to this doxological reality. And so is the church’s life of worship.

Ascension means the church is the kind of institution that is simultaneously drawn upward in worship and pushed outward in mission. These are not opposing movements. Unfortunately, too many churches today see it that way. Ascension forbids such a dichotomy. The church does not have to choose whether it will be defined by the depth of its worship life or its faithfulness in mission. Both acts flow from the single reality of ascension. Both have integrity only in that they are connected to one another. Mission is the church’s response to the universal lordship of Jesus. When people respond to the gospel— whether through faith and repentance or by bringing every area of life under the lordship of Christ—worship happens. The more authentically missional a church becomes, the more profound will be its life of worship since mission always ends in worship. It flows from the place of the ascended Christ in his heavenly reign, which means mission’s success increases the amount of praise and worship of God in the world. Together the church’s life of mission and worship enact and bear witness on earth to what is already true in heaven.

Here’s the rest: THE CHURCH UPWARD AND OUTWARD: IMPLICATIONS OF THE ASCENSION

Surely He Hath Borne Our Griefs

27 Sunday Mar 2016

Posted by in Isaiah, Music, Uncategorized

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Isaiah 53:1–12 (ESV)

Who has believed what he has heard from us?

And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?

2  For he grew up before him like a young plant,

and like a root out of dry ground;

he had no form or majesty that we should look at him,

and no beauty that we should desire him.

3  He was despised and rejected by men;

a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief;

and as one from whom men hide their faces

he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

4  Surely he has borne our griefs

and carried our sorrows;

yet we esteemed him stricken,

smitten by God, and afflicted.

5  But he was pierced for our transgressions;

he was crushed for our iniquities;

upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,

and with his wounds we are healed.

6  All we like sheep have gone astray;

we have turned—every one—to his own way;

and the Lord has laid on him

the iniquity of us all.

7  He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,

yet he opened not his mouth;

like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,

and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,

so he opened not his mouth.

8  By oppression and judgment he was taken away;

and as for his generation, who considered

that he was cut off out of the land of the living,

stricken for the transgression of my people?

9  And they made his grave with the wicked

and with a rich man in his death,

although he had done no violence,

and there was no deceit in his mouth.

10  Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him;

he has put him to grief;

when his soul makes an offering for guilt,

he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days;

the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.

11  Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied;

by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant,

make many to be accounted righteous,

and he shall bear their iniquities.

12  Therefore I will divide him a portion with the many,

and he shall divide the spoil with the strong,

because he poured out his soul to death

and was numbered with the transgressors;

yet he bore the sin of many,

and makes intercession for the transgressors.

What is Worship (2)?

10 Wednesday Feb 2016

Posted by in Culture, Thesis, Uncategorized, Worship

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Last night working this definition through my graduate theology class, I had some helpful assistance:

First, the “sin” is recognized, typically by a subject sense of unhappiness. The “salvation” thus being that which brings happiness.

Second, the matter of sin and salvation could be better understood as a matter of shame and honor.

Third, there are a series of sin/salvation events which lead ultimately to a self-honor which resolves the problem of having been put to shame in the Fall (since no one aspect of the creature is sufficient to resolve the lose of the Creator (see, Romans 1:18, et seq.) it will be necessary to seek multiple “salvations” — no creature will ever be enough).

 

What is Worship?

10 Wednesday Feb 2016

Posted by in Culture, Sin, Soteriology, Thesis, Uncategorized

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I have been trying to find a definition which captures the concept of worship when it expands out into “normal” activities. Without question, our relationship to various “idols” — sports idols, music idols, the famous, the beautiful, the powerful can constitute  worship. A college football looks like worship.

But there is also the worship of the mall (James K.A. Smith’s first chapter in Desiring the Kingdom is brilliant on this point). How do we capture work as worship? And how do we distinguish appropriate human action is appropriate and not as sinful worship? How do I go to a football game or a concert and not “worship” the performer?

This is still tentative:

Every worldview — even if it is inarticulate — grapples with the “wrong” in the world, the way it is not supposed to be. The most thoughtless person still struggles against something wrong. There is some Fall, some Sin which haunts us all — even if we don’t think of it in “religious” terms.

There is a solution to that something wrong: If you will, there is  Sin and there is Salvation.

The object of worship is that thing, person, whatever, which the human worshiper believes will resolve the “what is wrong with the world” problem. It might be the outcome of political election or new shoes.

The act of worship is that set of actions and affections which seek to obtain the benefit of the object hoped in.

There may be more than one object of worship necessary to resolve the problem as understood by the human worshipper.

Seen in this way, not all worship will entail distinctly “religious” means. The act of worship is fit to the object of worship.

“Religious” acts of worship take place where the object of worship is principally spiritual.

However, where the objet of worship is a material object the practice of worship will not appear to be “religious”. If it is an objection and action which is common to a particular culture, it will appear “normal” and be largely invisible.

 

 

The Spiritual Chymist, Meditations XXI

20 Sunday Dec 2015

Posted by in Culture, Ecclesiology, Ministry, Uncategorized, William Spurstowe, Worship

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Upon the Golden Calf and the Brazen Serpent

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Photo: Wheat-field trespasser, Jenny Downing

The makers of these two images were Moses and Aaron, such a pair of brothers as history cannot parallel for eminency and whose names outshine greatly all others of like alliance that have honorable mention in the Book of God. Where are their two brothers in that sacred Chronicle so renowned for the many miracles done by then? Are so highly dignified by titles given to them by the Spirit of God as they?

Moses being styled signally the Servant of God; and Aaron, the Saint of the Lord: and yet has strangely differing are these two images: they are unlike in the matter: the one being of gold and the other of brass; unlike in the figure, the one at calf, the other is serpent; but most alike in their effects, the one killing, the other healing. The golden calf that kills, and the brazen serpent that saves alive.

One would think that the same fountain should as soon send fourth salt water and fresh, as either of these to do anything that should terminate in such effects, by whose harmonious conduct Israel had been led as a flock of sheep through the wilderness.

But what if their actions did jar? Yet, who could readily conceived that Arron’s calf should be essay destroying poison? Or that Moses’s serpent should be in an effectual antidote to save alive? Did he not flee from his rod when it turned into a serpent, as fearing to be hurt by? And was not this brazen serpent and shaping figure like to those fiery serpents that had stung many Israelites to death?

From whence then comes this strange difference between the one and the other? Is it not from hence: Aaron’s calf, though made of gold, was without, even against a commandment of God. But Moses’s serpent, though of brass, was by his special appointment. Let the institutions of God being never so mean [low, despised] and despicable to the eyes of sense; yet they shall obtain they’re designed end. And let the inventions of men be never so rich and costly, they should be found to be no other than hurtful vanities.

Who is so small and insight in the mystery of idolatry and superstition, as to not observe how they affect I pump and splendor in their religion as if when they had made it gay, they had made it good? And how greatly they despise the simplicity of that worship which is not clothed and decked with an external grandeur? But will it close in the mouth cure the unsavory breathings of corrupt lungs? Or will the leper’s making of himself brave with the finest garments cause the priest to pronounce him clean, when he comes to the hold is sore? Then may such arts and palliations of men, wedded to idolatrous practices vindicate the evil of their doings, and justify them to be such as God will not condemn.

But as religion is not a thing left to any man’s choice, to pick out from that diversity with which the world abounds what best pleases himself; so neither are the ways and mediums of the exercise of it at all in his power. As God is the object of worship, so the means by which he is honored and his servants benefited that use them must be appointed by himself. For all ordinances do not work necessarily, as the fire burns or as the sun enlightens the air; nor do they work physically, as having an inherent power to produce their effects; but they are operative, by way of institution, and receive their virtue from God, who therefor appoints weak and insufficient things to the I have reason, that himself maybe the more acknowledged in all.

What could be more unlikely to heal the Vikings of a fiery serpent, then the looking up on only to a brazen serpent? Or to restore the blind man his sight, then the anointing of his eyes with clay and spittle? And yet these things God and Christ are pleased to make use of; not from indigency [any lack of other means], if they could not work without means, but from wisdom and counsel, to show that they can work by any [means, or without means].

Let no man then fondly [foolishly] make it his work, or counted his duty to honor God with his inventions, though specious [apparently useful] and beautiful in his own eyes; but let him value and prize God’s institutions, though to outward appearance they be contemptible. The blue bottles and in the field are more gaudy and delightful to the eye then the corn amongst which they grow; but yet the one are worthless, and the others full strength and nourishment.

 

 

Immanent Religion

06 Friday Nov 2015

Posted by in 1 Peter, Culture, Hosea, Judges, Thesis

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Photo courtesy of Johannes Zielcke.

(Thinking through the question of religious practice of people who deny the transcendent, which help from E. Herbert Nygren.)

Nygren observes that the secular age does not merely dispense with God but rather makes God utterly immanent: what is lost is not a god per se but rather a transcendent God:

Emily Brunner, some years ago, in his book Revelation and Reason wrote: “The most characteristic element of the present age, and that which distinguishes it … is the almost complete disappearance of the sense of transcendence, and the consciousness of revelation.”

The disappearance of transcendence—this can take us in either of two directions: the total abandonment of God i:n favor of a secular society or the total involvement of God within the secular society.

The former—the abandonment of God in favor of the secular conceded to the physical world the right to exert a controlling force over life. Several distinguishable corollaries are illustrative of this mood. There is a persistent appeal to physical accomplishments, minimizing or even neglecting human needs and values.

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The second aspect of the disappearance of the sense of the transcendent involves the total involvement of God in the secular world, the nearly exclusive emphasis upon immanentism. In many instances, the churches no longer make ontological or dogmatic statements about a transcendent Diety. God-talk has been dispensed with in favor of a theological language speaking about Jesus of Nazareth, about human self-understanding, about the “Death of God.” To make religion relevant to the secular society, the supernatural has to be excised, erased, forever.

But this cry for relevance so easily results in religion’s being swallowed up in the secular society.

E. Herbert Nygren, “Secularism—The Theological Challenge,” Ashland Theological Journal Volume 4 4 (1971): 41. The effect of this loss of transcendence is the loss of direction, the loss of purpose:

How suggestive this is of modern man’s dilemma. It lies in his loss of direction; he is willing to go anyplace anyone will take him, and having arrived will do anything anyone asks him to do. It is possible that modern man’s frustrations and dissatisfactions lie in the fact that he has fallen in love with everything and anything rather than with something and someone.

Nygren, 42. Without a sufficient object, the “religious impulse” or the direction of man’s worship becomes corrupt. Nygren illustrates this corruption with the stories of Hosea and Micah in the book of Judges: one exhibits sexual immorality, the other crass materialism.

The worshippers of Baal had lost the personal God of Israel among the nature forces and immorality:

As Walter Eichrodt expressed it, Israel had lost a personal relationship with God by an impersonal entry into numinous forces of agricultural cults. In a desire to make religion relevant, they tried to imitate the mythology of the day, the mythology of the marriage of gods and goddesses with earth by having sexual relations with the cultic prostitutes at scattered shrines.

Nygren, 42. Micah directed his religious impulse toward a god of silver whom he could move — and lose to the more vicious Dannites.

In both instances, the religion becomes a desire for a god whom the worshipper can manipulate. Micah apparently believes an idol and a “priest” who give him the ability to “worship”. The Baal worshippers of Hosea certainly hoped their immorality would bring the blessing of their wholly immanent storm god.

It seem that Nygren is one to something here: the modern perversion of worship seems to tend in one of these two directions: First, there is the physical pleasure, the sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll of Hosea. Second, there is the rank materialism of Micah. If anything the decadence of the West has coupled these two into a combination of “erotic liberty” (to use Mohler’s phrase) and material progress (preferably without labor) will bring about happiness: a sort of perversion of Peter’s encouragement: to”rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls” (1 Peter 1:8b-9).

The worship of this immanent age there must be seen in the subjection of one’s life to obtain this “salvation”. We make a mistake when we think that a religion must solely be focused on some transcendent object: idolatry is by very definition something that can be seen and touched with the hope of bringing about immediate physical good.

Moreover, an immanent religion will be largely invisible, because it will be just the “normal” way one lives.

(There is also the “religious” error of a wholly transcendent religion which merely seeks the escape of this world. Christian cherishes both the transcendent and immanent which lies at the heart of our worship: Jesus the Incarnate Son of God who will raise the dead and restore the world, bringing about a New Heavens and a New Earth.)