Intelligence (artificial and otherwise) and wisdom

"Artificial intelligence" is one of the interesting new technological developments of our time.

What today's "artificial intelligence" actually is 

As ever, it's important to distinguish between what a thing is, and what it is being called. (Or when we're talking about products being sold, between what a thing is, and what it is being marketed as). The name "artificial intelligence" invokes all sorts of ideas out of science fiction: machines that perform actual thinking. Nothing of the kind is actually going on here, though. Today's text-based "AI" (e.g. if you talk to ChatGPT) is based around "Large Language Models", LLMs, which are essentially performing super-charged statistical text-prediction. That is to say, based upon the (enormous) sets of data that they were trained with, at heart, and given your starting text (and given the text from their makers given to prime them, known as their "prompts") as their inputs, they output what would be a reasonable following sequence of text. With the size of their training data, and the massive amount of computation that goes on to work out what could reasonably come next, the results may resemble the output of an intelligent being, but machine itself is doing zero actual thinking. All the intelligence, if we hope that there was some, was in the human-produced training data (and in the programming to access the appropriate parts of that training data to produce an output, and then the human calibration to deal with the consequences of the unhelpful material in the training data). What comes out is based only upon what goes in. This is unlike human intelligence, where people can ultimately output far beyond what was put in, because they are souls, made in the image of God.

So much, then for the marketing. But, leaving aside the current implementation, what about the idea in general?

Intelligence and wisdom

If we think about what the Bible has to say in this area, then we quickly come across an obvious and fundamental fact. The Bible teaches us about the concept of wisdom, which is distinguished from our idea of intelligence. Wisdom is not being very clever, and talking or writing about ideas that are very advanced, in the sense of capacity for technical problem-solving. Wisdom is skill for living rightly, based upon perception and discernment of the underlying realities. And this perception or understanding is based upon understanding the order in which we live. This is in terms of being created beings, recognising our Creator (the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom), understanding that we live in a fallen world, and being able to apply the consequent spiritual principles to the particular situations we find ourselves in, remembering that all our works will be submitted to his judgment and are subject to his providences.

That is to say: as we look at the world around us an analyse some particular situation (the "input data", if you like), then we then learn to evaluate it in terms of the principles of God, our relationship to him, the world he has made and how he intends it to run, and recognise that honouring him and his purposes is the important thing to do. We learn to recognise how, in a particular situation, the principles of wisdom apply. We perceive the workings of sin, of the corrupted desires of the flesh, seeking for worldly gain and immediate advancement contrary to the Creator's principles. We discern the long-term outcomes of different policies and ways of life. We evaluate the different kinds of "gains" at different levels: the differences between trivial but necessary achievements, false achievements and ones of real value; we sort out between such things as the need to eat, drink, look after the state of our "flocks and herds", repair and upkeep, the need to develop character and godly habits, long-term sowing and reaping of what we sowed, how an action will look when we look back perhaps from old age, or on the day of judgment; investing for earth and for heaven, what is of real value and what really impresses men who are walking in the flesh, what is real friendship and what is just empty pretence or froth, and so on, and on, and on. We then decide how to respond and react, whilst remembering that all is still subject to the higher will of our God, to whom we entrust ourselves whether the immediate, flesh-and-blood-level consequences are palatable or not.

Like an LLM's training set in the current text-prediction technology, true wisdom also requires training via considerable experience. It is not something we can have without passing through much, considering much, praying much, being amongst the people of God much, studying the word much, and exercising patience.

So, wisdom has some analogies with "Artificial Intelligence", but it is also fundamentally different, and they are ultimately not the same thing at all. It involves understanding. Wisdom is not simply technical problem-solving, but is discernment. It requires looking at a situation from different perspectives, and remembering which are the important perspectives. It looks beyond immediate appearance, and interprets in the light of God's revealed realities in his Word.

Consequences and conclusions

This being so, "Artificial Intelligence" as the "tech community" is looking at it today is actually of quite limited use. Even supposing that the (considerable) challenges of producing useful products at affordable prices in order to help us to achieve our tasks more efficiently is achieved, these products will still be, like other things, ultimately just tools for human use. Whether the uses that humans put them to will themselves be wise or foolish is another question entirely - one which you will never be able to discern simply by predicting sequential text based upon past training data. "AI" can produce plausible patterns based upon what human beings have written, in the training data. But whether these patterns reflect wisdom that enables us to live rightly in this creation or not: that is a separate question.

The (marketing) talk now from tech circles is of when "AI" will achieve "super-intelligence", surpassing man's abilities. But again, we must remember to go past the marketing: what this really means is just technical problem-solving abilities, resulting in more efficient technological progress. Whether men will be wise or foolish, whether they will be more efficient in doing good or evil, whether they will use their tools to glorify God and serve the poor and needy or whether to build self-centred empires: that is something else. And as ever, the answer is likely to be: some of both. The tares and the wheat will both grow in the field, each revealing more clearly their respective natures, until the harvest.

So, by all means use AI where it can do good, promoting the beautiful and the true. To know where that is, as with every other tool, you'll first need to learn wisdom, and you'll need to regulate your use of the tool at all steps with that wisdom. A chainsaw is a tool for good, if used wisely. If used otherwise... oh dear.

Making the gospel optional

It was good to see this link (found at Tim Challies' blog) this morning: https://www.proclaimanddefend.org/2025/10/23/a-dangerous-new-ecumenism/

Recently there's been a spate of Internet noise from people - who self-describe as evangelical Protestants - giving their opinion that the golden age of Christianity in the world was the medieval period. One supposedly Reformed evangelical publisher emailed out advertisements for a book on Christopher Columbus, breathlessly explaining that "we had been lied to" because we didn't know that Columbus' ultimate motive was to finance a new Crusade to free the "Holy Land" from "the Moslem hordes"..... and this was being presented, without any hint of irony or embarrassment, as a good thing. Many voices declare that the time has come to put aside our differences, and not merely co-operate with sufficiently like-minded people to achieve limited societal aims (such as combating abortion or the promotion of sexual depravity), but to together build a "Christian society" together with those who preach what our confessions of faith say are false gospels which corrupt the fundamentals of Christian faith.

All this is to say: there are a lot of siren voices telling us that, in effect, the gospel is optional. It can be your own private belief: good for you. But outside the privacy of your own thoughts, the Christian faith must be reduced to only the profession that there is one God in three persons, and that salvation has something to do with your preferred version of Jesus. The minimal "Christianity" in this new ecumenism will include the being of God and the fact that the gospel saves, but as to what the gospel is, that is something you can choose for yourself. In the public sphere, Christianity is to be a large tent which includes both saving biblical truth and its denial.

It is never explained why this should be. If we can edit the gospel, then why not the Trinity too? If it does not matter whether salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, or whether it is progressively mediated through the sacerdotal ministry of a official priesthood of the church, then why does it matter if someone is a Binitarian instead of a Trinitarian? That is to say: if the boundaries of what is "Christian" are being extended to include this heresy, then why not that heresy? Why does the meaning of Christianity change when moving in between the church sanctuary and the public square?

In effect, the idea seems to be that as long as we have official, outward Christianity, then it doesn't actually matter if we have genuine spiritual life or not. Which is again to say: the gospel is optional.

But the gospel is not optional: it is everything. We may well co-operate with people who are not Christians on various projects in this world, because we are members of this present age as well as the age to come. But to re-define what is meant by "Christian" in order to accomplish this, is not something the Master has given us freedom to do, and nor should we want to. The gospel is not negotiable, for whatever purpose. Our duty is to pass it on faithfully. If some political purpose requires us to soft-pedal essentials of the gospel or to treat them as optional, then we must sacrifice that political purpose. This is not a choice: this is what being a genuine follower of Jesus who told us to take up the cross implies.

Do you have any tears?

The speech of Paul to the Ephesian elders in Acts 20: 

"18 And when they had come to him, he said to them: “You know, from the first day that I came to Asia, in what manner I always lived among you, 19 serving the Lord with all humility, with many tears and trials which happened to me by the plotting of the Jews; 20 how I kept back nothing that was helpful, but proclaimed it to you, and taught you publicly and from house to house, 21 testifying to Jews, and also to Greeks, repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ."

Note:

• Paul served amongst the people. His life was an open book to them. He could appeal to them to testify as to how he had lived, because they all knew. Like the Lord Jesus Christ, he came to where those he was serving were, and walked as one of them.
• Moreover, his life of service amongst them was consistent. He was not a part-time servant: he had "always" lived amongst them in the same way. Service was not something that he turned on and off, with limits and boundaries: his identity was that of a servant of the Lord. He served with all humility, as his Master did.
• This service brought him "many tears and trials". Paul's life and soul were in his service. He was not a "fixed hours contract" man. Before he gave anything else (time, money, particular labours), he gave himself. And consequently, he brought upon himself many sorrows.

Servant of Jesus, do you have any tears? Or is your ministry carefully constructed to make sure you avoid them? All is clean, professional, well-ordered, to keep all the messiness and pain of sharing your life with other human beings who you are giving yourself in order to bless in Jesus' name at a comfortable arms-length distance?

"I wrote to you out of much affliction and anguish of heart and with many tears", Paul said to the Corinthians. "many, of whom I have often told you and now tell you even with tears, walk as enemies of the cross of Christ", he wrote to the Philippians. "I remember your tears", the aged Paul wrote to his son in the faith, Timothy.

Again I ask, servant of Christ, do you have any tears? Is your heart and life sufficiently joined to those that you are serving that, when inevitably the trials and sorrows of human reality intervene, you can only weep? If yes, then the promise of Scripture is that they are stored up before God and precious to him - and one day Jesus will wipe them all away. If no, then, why is this?

Jesus, the divine bridegroom

"For your Maker is your husband, the Lord of hosts is His name; and your Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel; he is called the God of the whole earth." - Isaiah 54:5.

"You shall no longer be termed Forsaken, nor shall your land any more be termed Desolate; but you shall be called Hephzibah, and your land Beulah; for the Lord delights in you, and your land shall be married. For as a young man marries a virgin, so shall your sons marry you; and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride,
so shall your God rejoice over you." - Isaiah 62:4-5.

“When I passed by you again and looked upon you, indeed your time was the time of love; so I spread My wing over you and covered your nakedness. Yes, I swore an oath to you and entered into a covenant with you, and you became Mine,” says the Lord God. ...  You are an adulterous wife, who takes strangers instead of her husband." - Ezekiel 16:8 and 32.

"“I will betroth you to Me forever; yes, I will betroth you to Me in righteousness and justice, in lovingkindness and mercy; I will betroth you to Me in faithfulness, and you shall know the Lord. " - Hosea 2:19-20. 

These are just a few of the Old Testament verses which represent a consistent thread of Old Testament teaching, depicting God as the bridegroom of his covenanted people. The later prophets, such as Hosea, lament the unfaithfulness of the bride, but promise that God will renew the covenant, and take his people, his wife, to himself again.

The New Testament, and Jesus personally, explicitly states that this is fulfilled in Jesus himself, and in the union of Jesus with his church, e.g.:

"And Jesus said to them, “Can the friends of the bridegroom mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast." - Matthew 9:15

"You yourselves bear me witness, that I said, ‘I am not the Christ,’ but, ‘I have been sent before Him.’ He who has the bride is the bridegroom; but the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly because of the bridegroom’s voice. Therefore this joy of mine is fulfilled. He must increase, but I must decrease." - John 3:28-30

"Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, that He might [g]sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish." - Ephesians 5:25b-27 

"Come, I will show you the bride, the Lamb’s wife" - Revelation 21:9 

Were these the only related verses and the only related theme in the Bible (whereas in fact there are very many others on both counts), it would still be quite sufficient to show that Jesus is explicitly presented as God manifest in the flesh, the covenant God of Israel now come personally to fulfil the Old Testament promises. He is not a man, or the most exalted created being, through whom God acts: he, himself, does the things that the Old Testament tells us that God personally does. The concept of God taking a bride through an intermediary who does the actual taking of the bride in the New Testament, as a fulfilment of the Old Testament promise, would be absurd. Jesus, and his apostles, explicitly taught that Jesus himself is God. He does the things that the Old Testament tells us God himself is going to come and do.

On the Calormenes

From time to time, you hear or read someone arguing that C S Lewis was a racist, and that this is proved by his depiction of the Calormenes in the Narnia books.

In recent years I've read enough history to now understand that the Calormenes are essentially - and very clearly - based upon the rulers of the Ottoman Empire during the medieval period and their excesses. i.e. Not upon all "brown-coloured" people in general.

Ironically, then, the people arguing that C S Lewis' depiction was racist seem to be indulging in some sort of racism themselves, because they think that the negative traits of the medieval Ottoman sultans and elite which are poked fun at are something generalisable to all "brown people" in general. Why would they think that? It does sound quite like racism, but perhaps they have some other reason for making that leap.

Or to put this another way: it's like concluding that all the things which Lewis and Tolkien clearly adapted from Norse mythology and its heroes when they formed their heroes form a reliable guide to their view of people of white European descent in general. This makes no sense.

Of course, neither the Calormenes nor the medieval Ottomans are separable from their religion, which is clearly some brand of Islam, filtered through their culture(s). To some modern minds, critiquing a religion in any form is also some sort of racism. I don't recall coming across a serious attempt to explain why this is. Both Islam and Christianity claim to be global faiths, which are not the possession of any specific people-group or race. C S Lewis was a Christian apologist. He can hardly be expected to portray the religious culture and practices of a group based upon the Ottomans positively - just how many of his critics would do so? If the claim is that he deliberately picked upon the medieval Ottomans in order to ridicule Islam in general, then this claim needs to be accompanied by some actual proof. A bare assertion is not an argument.

On deceiving the simple with plausible-sounding words

Seen today on the feed of a prominent Reformed Baptist ministry: 

Premise 1- Government must promote the public good
Premise 2- Christianity, as the only true religion, is part of the public good 
Conclusion- Government must promote Christianity as the only true religion

This conclusion does not at all follow, since (amongst other reasons, but we'll just go with this one for now) there is a disguised/missing premise which is also required:

Hidden Premise: It is the explicit duty of Government to promote any and all public goods (and actively suppress alternatives)

i.e. This argument collapses, or at least severely reduces, all concept of "sphere sovereignty". Must the government force children to do enough exercise, and actively interfere if they fail to? And why just children?

Once such a premise is admitted, both logic and actual human history tell us that there's no logical stopping place to hold back where it'll be taken to. Why just "promote Christianity as the only true religion", and why not "promote the correct specific form(s) of Christianity, and hinder others"? Is it only some vague, under-specified Christianity itself which is a public good, and not any doctrines or practices in particular?

And who will be deciding which ones are correct, by the way? I mean, as long as it's me, then things will turn out just fine, so, no worries there. But if it's you then I'm already quite worried, since I've observed that you sometimes fail to even manage yourself and your family correctly, so being the one true arbiter of all religion for the nation is certainly beyond you. Alright then, that observation applies to me too. Who's it going to be, then?

Oh, it'll be "the Bible", of course! But again - who will be adjudicating what is correct interpretation of the Bible? Is that me, or will it be you? For a start, since the apostles never teach us anything at all resembling the above syllogism, I think we're already off to a very bad start.

But, I suppose, you're going to propose some new version of a "mere Christianity", a minimal creed which the state will decree as acceptable, and it will promote that, and suppress the rest? The Trinity's in then, presumably. I hope, though, that this won't include Eternal Functional Subordination, or attributing three wills to God, and everyone who's dabbled with those will be suppressed? Good stuff. And as Christianity is defined by the gospel of justification by grace alone through faith alone, independently of needing the benefit of any ritual performance to be justified, and not merely by Trinitarianism (which even the demons believe, and tremble), then certainly Roman Catholics are out. The state has a duty to suppress the works of G K Chesterton and J R R Tolkien. Oh, you like those two? They're different? Well, we'd better have some kind of star chamber of the approved theologians to work all this out for us. Who's going to be on that, by the way? And... what will the state be doing to those unfortunate people who feel conscience-bound before God to promote the errors they believe? I mean, the mental vision of all recalcitrant promoters of incorrect eschatology being marched off to the gulags has a certain Je ne sais quoi to it (good job I'm not one and that only people I disagree with will be caught by these proposals!), but I'm wondering if that's exactly what you had in mind?

And so on and on and on we could go. In practice, in 2025, even generally healthy evangelical denominations have difficulty policing their boundaries. And yet, apparently some Reformed Baptists now think that not only should we allow the state to arbitrate doctrinal questions and what is and isn't inherent to the promotion or denial of true Christianity, but that it's actually required of it.

On the contrary, we should hold to the historical Baptist understanding that the state has been delegated limited authority from the triune God (which it would be better if it recognised, but whether it does or not) to deal with outward breaches of and promote obedience to the second table of the law, as well as to regulate all other necessary accompaniments of government itself, but that the promotion of Christianity is a task which the Great Commission handed explicitly, and only, to the church.

Ah well. It's clear, then, that the given syllogism is about as valid as this one is: 

Premise 1- Government must promote the public good
Premise 2- The historic Baptist position, as the revealed will of our Saviour in Scripture, is part of the public good 
Conclusion- Government must suppress all its competitors, including the invalid syllogism with which this post began

The meaning and the corruption of the Great Commission

One claim amongst those who embrace "Christian Nationalism" that is currently quite prominent is the claim that the Great Commission is the marching orders of their programme.

I've talked about this before, here. But earlier this week, missionary Bible translator Nathan Wells has written a brief and very helpful summary of why this equation perverts God's word. He amply demonstrates that the apostles would not have recognised the programme that is claimed by "Christian Nationalists" to be the one which they received and passed on to us, and that it is not recognisable in their actual activities or teachings. 

Rather, doing this to the church's marching orders, since they are so fundamental, is to pervert the Scriptures to our own harm, and the harm of those who hear such teaching. Nathan Wells distinguishes clearly, as orthodox explanations of the Great Commission throughout church history has, between believing, as we do, that "Christians today may rightly work for justice, integrity, and reform in the public square", and the novel and counterfeit Commission being pushed by "Christian Nationalism". I commend his article to you.

As this seems a suitable place, I'll add one final thought that occurred to me during the last year. Historically, orthodox Christians have generally recognised that the Great Commission is the New Covenant form of the "Dominion Mandate", the Genesis command to man to fulfil the earth and subdue it, filling it with God's glory, as man's great task. This mandate was given in new, covenantally-appropriate forms to Noah, Abraham, and Israel, during the Old Testament. It reaches its climax and fulfilment in the call to disciple amongst all the nations and establish obedient communities of believers in them all.

"Christian Nationalism" subverts this, and reads things as if the Great Commission does not fulfil the Dominion Mandate, but as if it actually were the Dominion Mandate. Instead of the New Testament showing us how, now, after Christ's Resurrection and before his return we are go out and glorify God throughout all domains of life as we await for the day when he'll be revealed to renew all creation and reign visibly, as the fulfilment of all that went before, instead it is re-read as if it were what went before. The precise same goal remains, to be achieved before the Eschaton, and the gospel only edits the means of how to get there. The victory of Christ is re-interpreted, such that having a redeemed people throughout the nations who overcome the trials of the world, flesh and devil is not itself a victory: it is only a preliminary step along the way towards dominating this present age at all levels, with political domination over all other ideologies being the crowning glory which we consciously aim for in order to fulfil the Commission. As such, the disciples in the gospels didn't, until Christ's resurrection, lack understanding of how the ages would unfold and overlap: they actually understood things just right, and just got the timings wrong. (And when they explicitly and repeatedly taught the churches about the overlap of the ages, we're supposed to just bracket that out as still having no real meaning in the end). Once you identify the significance of this mis-reading, it helps to make sense of "Christian Nationalists". It's not that they don't want to arbitrarily stop discipling people after teaching what obedience means personally and within families, but progress also to community life. That would still remain an entirely orthodox position. The problem is that their claims about the Great Commission subvert and change it fundamentally.

Evil, secularism and denial

I had not until today come across this quote from former Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks:

"‘But there was one sense in which the Holocaust changed the whole human equation,’ Sacks added. ‘The culture that produced the Holocaust was not distant. This colossal tragedy and crime took place in the heart of the most civilised culture that the world has ever known. A culture that had achieved the greatest heights of human achievement, in science, in philosophy, in rationalism – this was the culture of Kant and Hegel and Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, the culture of Goethe and Schiller and Bach and Beethoven. Half the signatories of the Wannsee Declaration [authorising the ‘Final Solution’ from 1942] carried the title of Dr. And that was just Germany. France: the country that gave us the Revolution and The Rights of Man had an astonishing history of anti-Semitism. As for Vienna: the cultural capital of Europe was also the epicentre of anti-Semitism. After the Holocaust some people lost their faith. Some people kept their faith and some people found faith in God. But after the Holocaust it is morally impossible to believe in man. The Holocaust is the final, decisive refutation of the idea that you can have a humane civilisation without fear of heaven and without belief in the sanctity of life. The Holocaust may make some lose their faith in God, but it must make all people lose their faith in humankind. After Auschwitz you have to be either very ignorant or very naive to believe in secular humanism. The real challenge of the Shoah is not to faith, but to lack of faith.’ (Rabbi Jonathan Sacks)"

That's very incisive. The reality of profound cosmic evil permeates our existence. To deny it is madness and is to choose to live in a fantasy world that has no real overlap with the one we are actually situated in.

This doesn't stop many people from doing so, from living in the fantasy world of post-war secular humanism, prioritising their personal career, entertainment and comfortable retirement. Evil, though, by its nature, can't stop rearing its head, whether at the personal, familial, national or other levels. The human capacity for evil - both to commit, and to pretend not to notice it going on right in front of our noses - is astonishing.

Denial is the preferred option in the West for those who have no answers. If you don't admit the problem, then you don't need to offer a solution. And if you can't offer a solution, then pretending that there is no actual problem that needs a solution is about the only option left (inasmuch as living in a permanent state of complete self-delusion can be called an option). And that is where we are. Secular humanism can't admit any concept of cosmic evil. Problem can only be failures of proper technical process. More training, more funding, better processes, and we'll lick the problems! Except, they keep conspicuously not doing so. Or rather, they would, if they were possible. But the human problem keeps intervening and corrupting the purity of the utopian vision (or rather, of the day-dream). It turns out that failing to factor original sin and our need for God's grace and our repentance into your thinking just makes things worse. 

Here's the secular paradox once we leave behind confident declarations of ideology and enter experienced reality: leaving out all the "irrelevant" supernatural realm leaves us with no tools to even understand the resulting mess in the natural one. Telling oneself that God needs to keep himself strictly to the realm of theory and not intervene in practice results only, time and time again, in practical catastrophe.

Jesus took the evil upon himself. He died and lived again, and teaches us to similarly give away our lives so that others might experience his life. It's not better processes, funding programmes or improved managerial oversight that can deal with cosmic evil. It's the risen life of the innocent one who freely took it all upon himself.

On national consciousness

National consciousness is an interesting thing, which we take for granted. As Christians, though, we should seek to examine and understand it, as part of loving God with all our minds.

By "national consciousness", I mean our awareness of ourselves as members of a particular nation, and that nation's corporate life, including its history, culture, conventions and the sense of belonging to a particular space as part of it.

Recently I was gifted, and read, Robert Massie's very informative biography of Peter the Great. (The whole series is currently on special offer on Kindle). One fascinating section explained the life of the typical Russian at the start of Peter's reign. I was struck by the fact that the typical peasant (which was the great bulk of the people) could, and did, pass their lives without knowing what was happening anywhere more than a few miles from their homes.

How different to today that is. How different to ours the thought-world of such people must have been. How different their relationships, and sense of what was going on and connection to not only those far away (almost no connection at all) and those near at hand (surely much heightened).

Today, it is common for us to know about events happening thousands of miles away, within hours or even minutes of their happening. And then, rapidly, the whole current "conversation" of entire countries is re-shaped by those events: people quickly begin to think "what does this mean for us, how does this change things?"; and commentators, partisans and those searching for followers after their cause (or just after themselves) begin to calculate how they can "weaponise" the event to aid them and promote whatever narrative they're promoting. We're so accustomed to this, that most of us probably only reflect upon the dynamics of it very rarely.

Encountering the 17th century Russian peasant reminds us not only that this has not been the universal experience of human beings, but also whispers the thought that it is actually in large point a choice for us today also. The fact that it's quite normal in the West to feel more familiar with a whole range of characters that we've only actually seen or heard through the mediation of LCD or OLED screens and speakers, than we do with the people who live in our streets, estates, villages and towns, is generally a decision of some sort (even if only the decision to lazily "go with the flow").

It's widely observed that a society in which everything is politicised is not a healthy or strong one. Speaking personally, it was really only with the "Brexit" referendum in 2016 that the new phenomena of specifically national politics being a constant topic of conversation entered into my experience. Brexit, Covid, BLM, Ukraine: a "new normal" arrived in which people's primary consciousness seemed to all be tuned into the "national conversation", by default, becoming the default setting in which they moved and discussed and evaluated life and their place within it.

To be sure, all my life we've been aware of what's going on nationally; the radio and newspapers were a normal part of life long before. But from 2016, something seemed to come to fruition, with Brexit being not the cause, but the final trigger.

In this post I want to just highlight the fact that this pervasive, default "national consciousness" does very much remain a choice. And as Christians, it's a choice we should evaluate, and consider how it relates to serving our Master. There is no law of our existence which requires anyone to be continually plugged into the ebb and flow of events several layers above them in society, requiring them to make it the main thing that they think about as they think about their relationship to the world. To be sure, just as Peter the Great's policies reached into the lives of every village and home, so some national and international events will reach into ours at some level. But even so, that in no way requires them to be the default and most prominent background to our thought-world.

This post has been long enough, but I'd like to end with a suggestion. God loves people, and after loving him with all that we have and are, our other great duty is to love our neighbour. God has made us physical beings, and during Covid we had the "opportunity" to be reminded of how fundamental and irreplacable embodied life is. When Jesus came in the flesh, it wasn't only a means to the end of offering himself in his death. It was also a statement about his love for us. He sat at the tables of tax-collectors and sinners, a whole assortment of complete "nobodies", because of his love. He showed the value that he had for all of those he visited, by visiting them. Surely this has implications for us? Just because someone can decide that he's called to broadcast to the world, does not mean that there's any indication that he should. If we understand the implications of Jesus' incarnation and manner of conducting his ministry, then I'd suggest that there must be very few people who truly are called to such a ministry. The vast, vast majority of us are called to love all the people whom God has placed us among. If 99% of those focussed upon the national scene withdrew themselves, there'd still be plenty of people to speak to that scene... but there'd also be vastly more people to minister in the way that we should, not by word only (whether online or offline), but by meaningful and sustained involvement in the lives of those that God has created.

No man can serve two masters. Meaningful, sustained involvement in the lives of people around us demands a lot of time. The time that we spend making the choice to live primarily as if the national level and conversation were where we should locate ourselves could instead be used for it. If we are to be honest with ourselves, isn't it very likely that the time would be used far, far better if we turned off the news and the Twitter feed and invited the lonely (but perhaps complicated) widower or widow a few doors away if they'd like to come around for tea and cake, or if we could mow their lawn?

On having a good name

Proverbs 22:1 says "A good name is more desirable than great riches; to be esteemed is better than silver or gold."

Whether or not we have a good name is not, finally, under our complete control. And if we are faithful, we are very likely to be despised by those who despise God. We follow the one who was crucified, and his apostles were seen by their enemies as "the filth of the world, the off-scouring of all things until now" (1 Corinthians 4:13). So, the Bible is not telling us to make the pursuit of our reputation a priority above all others. Sometimes we must say or do things that will make some people think badly of us, in order to be faithful to our Lord.

Nevertheless, the Bible commands us to behave with integrity - wholeness, one-ness, being a single person who does not have different "sides" to him, in different situations. We must live as those who obviously think that integrity is a better thing to possess than great riches. The elder of a church must "have a good testimony among those who are outside" as taught in 1 Timothy 3:7; and examination of that passage will show that ultimately the elder is simply required to actually, clearly, manifest the behaviour that is demanded of all Christians. Elders should demonstrate general Christian maturity consistently, in practice.

What does it take to gain such a reputation? Life-long consistency; and if there are falls, then, as Spurgeon said, one's repentance should be as notorious as one's sin was.

Ecclesiastes 10:1 says "Dead flies putrefy the perfumer’s ointment, and cause it to give off a foul odour; so does a little folly to one respected for wisdom and honour". Ruining your reputation is easy, and will take a long time to undo. It's no good saying "don't look at the 2% of folly; look at the other 98%!" That's not how human beings work. Try that argument in a court of law and see how far it gets you! If someone "only" commits adultery once a year, and the rest of the time is a model of faithfulness and loving self-giving, then what do we call that someone? We'd call them an unrepentant, serial adulterer. This sort of illustration/example could be extended to just about anything. Once the dead fly is in the perfume, it's not just a tiny bit of ruin that can be bracketed off; it's just ruined, generally, and everyone will notice.

Christian, do you want to be someone who causes your brothers and sisters in the faith to inwardly mourn at your foolishness, at how your testimony dishonours as much as it lifts up the name of Christ, and to be making it a matter of prayer that you'd instead care about having a good name that honours Christ before the world, rather than putting people off him? Does it bother you if, when people say "following Christ doesn't really make a difference", part of what they're thinking is "after all, look at you - you lack self-restraint just as much as us, we don't think you take it all that seriously in the end yourself; you say that Christ is Lord, but is that what you really believe" ?

Brothers and sisters, let "every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath; for the wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God" (James 1:19-20).  This goes not only for wrath, but for all sorts of foolish behaviours.

God says, "Even a fool is counted wise when he holds his peace; when he shuts his lips, he is considered perceptive" (Proverbs 17:28). We live in the age of quick fixes and life-hacks. Well, I don't know if I've come across many better ones than that one.

Prophetic speech, prophetic lament

A very perceptive article here, which doesn't just apply to its target, but to all Christians on the media who are building their brands in partnership with the mistaken belief that their ungodly speech is actually some form of prophetic witness: https://mereorthodoxy.com/doug-wilson-is-not-a-prophet

On a related note: recently Douglas Wilson's son-in-law recently tweeted, in relation to a review of the development of his church's ministries over the years: "We do many wonderful things here. We make great tri-tip, we make viral videos, we make progressives lose their minds, and it's all just a lot of fun. All of that together is just a whole lot of fun. ..." (I had to look up "tri-tip"; it is "a triangular cut of beef from the lower part of the sirloin").

Watchers of Christ Church, Moscow, Idaho, and their associated ministries are accustomed to this rhetoric. It's consistent and uniform enough - without anything said to the contrary - that you eventually notice it. Whatever they're doing, it's a blast, they're having great fun (often in small or large part because they're provoking ideological opponents), and the Christian life in this age is a great party (preferably with good steak). The above is one example of a consistent pattern of output over the years.

God's servants in the Bible do not have anything like this pattern of speech, or presentation of the realities of their ministries.

God's servants in Scripture pen Psalm after Psalm after Psalm of lament, wrestle with the painful experience of God's mysterious (yet good) providence in trying to understand why the wicked enjoy the good life whilst the righteous struggle, say things like "I die daily" (1 Corinthians 15:31), teach that through many troubles we must enter God's kingdom (Acts 14:23), and rebuke and expose the poor understanding of those who think that it's already time to reign with Christ in this age, when in reality it's time to suffer with him (2 Corinthians 8).

They spoke of being lambs for the slaughter (Romans 8), of carrying the precious treasure in earthen vessels of weakness (2 Corinthians 4), and asserted against all outward appearance that the sufferings of the precious time were not worthy to be compared with the glory that would come at the appearance of Christ (Romans 8 again). They commended themselves as God's servants "in much patience, in tribulations, in needs, in distresses, in stripes, in imprisonments, in tumults, in labours, in sleeplessness, in fastings", amongst other things (2 Corinthians 6:4-5). They followed Jesus, who taught us that if we want to save our lives, we shall lose them: so, instead, we must consciously, continually, be counting the cost and then giving them away. Such references could be multiplied very many times over, so consistent and pervasive are they.

Yes, Jesus' apostles rejoiced - but not because it was fun to lampoon the follies of either unbelievers in their darkness, or other Christians. They rejoiced because as the crucified Christ dwelt in them, so did the resurrected Christ - they life that they lived, they lived by Christ living in them, having died to self. And they saw this in those they invested their lives for too: "so then death is working in us, but life in you" (2 Corinthians 4:12). The Spirit of the one who has met with death, died, and then beaten it and entered into endless life, was also in them at the same time. Great sorrow, and invincible joy, together. They served "by honour and dishonour, by evil report and good report; as deceivers, and yet true; as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and behold we live; as chastened, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things" (2 Corinthians 6:8-10).

I confess that for a long time after first encountering it I didn't reflect upon this consistent self-testimony of the ministers of Christ Church Moscow, that their ministry has always been a great ride, full of fun, with little to say on the other side of the ledger. (And probably I hadn't yet reached enough maturity of understanding to do so). Now I've come to the viewpoint that when people repeatedly tell us this in a way that makes clear that it's an important part of their self-identity and self-identification to the world, we should believe their self-testimony, and understand its implications. Frankly, the world, the flesh and the devil have made the ministries I've been involved in difficult in various ways for many years, and the thing that helps me to take up the cross and persevere in them is the knowledge that those who die with Christ will be raised with him, and the experience too of a harvest of joy as we see his life appearing in others too: this brings the conviction that he is worthy to be served despite the pains.

If someone else wants to say that their ministry runs, year after year, on quite different lines to that then, well, I'm at least grateful that they have been clear about this.

It is certainly not a coincidence that Christ Church, Moscow promotes theonomic post-millenialism (which the same author wrote a very good critique of around a couple of years ago). The implications of theonomic post-millenialism is that whilst in the Bible and generally subsequently, God's method of discipling people is through the way of the cross, yet in the future there will be a golden age before the return of Christ in which Christianity will be generally popular and accepted, and so suffering will fade into the past, as memory. God's people will then be discipled some other way, not described in Scripture (I've never yet read an explanation of what it will be). It seems to me that many adherents of these beliefs then manage to mentally confuse themselves into believing that this supposed coming age has already dawned, and that they personally are living in it. And that is understandable at some level: your eschatology drives how you live in the present. That's why it's important not to get it wrong (I wrote about the misplaced hope of post-millennialism here).

(Related piece written in 2024, with some similar concerns to those Jeremy Sexton raises). 

Do we want a pagan nation? And - why does social media lead to clever people saying silly things?

"Christians who are against Christian nationalism - seems (sic) to want to convert a nation but not disciple it, want it to be Christian but live under pagan laws! If you are Christian, but against a Christian national identity, I think you are suffering from cognitive dissonance."

On X (Twitter), one British Christian Nationalist with 50,000 followers (re-tweeted by another, one promoted repeatedly by Christian Concern with 8,000 followers), posts the above.

I realise that X is not the place to look for nuanced presentations of ideas, but, the above sort of reasoning is what we see from many Christian Nationalists in their longer-form pieces too. It is all so beautifully simple, and you wonder how could anyone oppose it? Jesus tells everyone to obey him, whoever and wherever they are, and Christian Nationalists are just applying this to kings and presidents, applying it at the national level. Surely you don't want people to disobey Jesus, do you?

In 2025, a lot of people with thoughts about ideas that seem reasonable to them don't then proceed to buy a few books to find out how historically Christians have thought about those ideas. They go straight to X and promote their ideas to their followers, and start accumulating likes and re-tweets. But let's not make this too much of a grumble-fest about social media.... let's answer the point being made instead. I'm a "Christian who is against Christian Nationalism". Does that mean that I am one who "seems to want to convert a nation but not disciple it, want it to be Christian but live under pagan laws" ? Well, no; and also, no.

Seems? Or actually are? 

First thing: what's the word "seems" doing there? It's a typical "muddy the waters" word, obscuring the difference between something that the poster wanted to say, and what he actually could justifiably say. i.e. One of those words used when the person using it intuitively feels or suspects that what they're saying isn't true, or that there's something that doesn't quite hold in their argument, but they haven't yet done the thinking to sort it out and present the argument properly. What does it mean to merely "seem to" want to convert a nation but not disciple, and to actually want that? If they don't actually want it, then why, in your eyes, do they "seem to"? Are you conceding already that what "seems" to be so to you is in fact merely a naive reading off from immediate appearance, something that disappears once you start to make basic distinctions and think carefully? (In which case, there would be no case to answer, and no pointing tweeting it).

And of course, that is the case here. "Convert a nation but not disciple it". The key point is that conversion is the entrance-door into discipleship. You cannot disciple those who are not converted. Converted first: then discipled. That's basic to Bible Christianity: you must be born again (John 3), and the new birth is an event that happens to people as individuals. Until you can actually see the kingdom of heaven, you cannot enter it, much less be discipled in its ways. This must happen to people personally, one-by-one. Under the New Covenant, a household can be divided, two against three, and three against two, because some are converted and some aren't. How much more a clan, village, town, city or nation? Some are "born from above", and some aren't: and that's not something dispensable, something you can bracket out as optional for the purposes of discipling them.

So, any talk of Christian discipleship for people who aren't Christians is wrong-headed: it is a mistake. In historical Biblical theology (not just from the Reformation), three uses of God's law were recognised. (These are not three in a temporal or logical sequence: they have inter-relations, but the ordering is not intended to imply sequence). The first is, as a mirror showing us God's perfect holiness, which has the consequence of showing us our sin so that we might seek salvation. The second is to curb and restrain evil - in individuals and in societies. The third is to teach those who are regenerate and do know God how to walk with him in his covenant. Notice that the third is the one that particularly applies to disciples, and not to non-disciples. The first two apply universally. This is how Christians generally have historically understood God's law to apply in the context of nations: that the first two are operative amongst them, and we preach God's requirements to non-believers with them in view. The law does not exist for the purpose of discipleship of non-believers. It has a much more limited purpose, and that is linked to the fact that the whole of God's law will not be applied exhaustively within national law (which is to say, there are many sins which will not be crimes: contempt in the heart towards one's neighbour is not an offence for the civil authorities to prosecute). Restraint of societal evil is not discipleship, and restraining evil, whilst a God-honouring and legitimate activity, is not the subject of the Great Commission.

Only two options for how to apply Christianity to nations? 

The X poster above then presents us with a false dichotomy: if you don't think that the purpose of civil authority is to disciple people in the ways of Christianity, then this must mean that you wish to live under "pagan laws". These, apparently, are the only two options. You can be a Christian Nationalist, or you can wish society to be ordered by paganism. This sort of absolutist, completely-polarising statement, though, reveals nothing about the actual range of options and possibilities that do exist. It merely reveals that the person making it is completely ignorant of the attempts of Christians in the last 2000 years to wrestle with these questions - or at least, he presents himself as one when tweeting. Is it too much to point out that twisting the Great Commission into something that it isn't, and promoting paganism, aren't the only two available options for Christians?

"If you are Christian, but against a Christian national identity, I think you are suffering from cognitive dissonance." Here's the rub. A nation whose general character is not Christian, cannot have a "Christian national identity", in any meaningful sense that could be recognised from the New Testament. Christian identity begins with recognising that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah, the Son of God, repenting of our sins and trusting in him for our salvation. It is an identity wrought in us by the Holy Spirit. Under the Old Covenant there was a nation of people who did not, in general, have God's laws written on their hearts - and despite having a perfect law written on tablets of stone, they continually descended into the worst of idolatry. God, through many centuries, patiently taught us that it doesn't matter what is written externally: you need the Holy Spirit to make it a living reality. That reality is now present in Jesus Christ, and in the gatherings of those who know him and manifest that that knowledge is not a legal fiction, but a living, present and glorious reality. The label "Christian" should not be attached to a nation whose national character is profoundly non-Christian. The United Kingdom is not a nation of people who have seen true God, and delight to worship him, trusting in his risen Son. It is not a "Christian nation", and changing all of its laws would not make it one. Trying to re-create something akin to Israel living under the law, via making external changes, in order to have a "Christian nation" shows a profound confusion and lack of understanding of Scripture.

The previous paragraph is basic to understanding the Biblical covenants and their intended fulfilment in the New Testament church, which is a gathered body of people who have experienced the realities that the gospel describes, as demonstrated by their actual lives. There is no concept of a "Christian Nation" of people who are largely unregenerate, but who have been discipled by a great set of laws in order to largely conform to the outward requirements of Christian morality. As we say today "that is not a thing". It does not exist. There is no such concept. The apostles did not teach it, and what they did teach about understanding what had happened in Jesus Christ directly contradicts it. That's not because they were secret pagans; it's because they had grasped the fundamentals of the Christian faith and its relationship to history.

We can do better than this... 

As I say, the above was re-tweeted by someone else who is promoted by Christian Concern, a former Bible college lecturer in the UK - i.e. someone who should know better. He added his own comment: "If Christians are not actively trying to Christianise their nation, what on earth are they doing? Did Jesus not call you to disciple the nations, teaching them to obey Christ?"

It ought to be uncontroversial with us that the proper manner for implementing the Great Commission is sufficiently described for us in the Holy Scriptures, where they record what the apostles who first received the Commission actually went out and did. They preached the gospel, called for response to it, gathered the converts into churches, taught them how to follow Jesus in every part of life, and to look with expectancy for his return. Concerning relating to the civil authorities, they told them that their general posture was to be one of honour and obedience (whilst allowing that there may be occasions when they must be disobeyed in order to maintain obedience to God). Concerning campaigning for creating entities "Christian nations" through reform of national laws, they have nothing to say - because, as per the above, their actual understanding radically contradicted such a mistaken idea. Jesus Christ's teachings to his disciples do not, in fact, contain a section in which he lists what laws a nation should have on its statute books - and the Great Commission is not a mandate which required the apostles or the church to campaign for specific laws as part of the New Covenant, i.e. as part of Christianity.

We are asked, what on earth are we doing? Quite often I have the feeling that I don't know what quite a few people on Twitter are actually doing (as opposed to just talking around in circles to themselves about), but for myself, I'm seeking to preach Jesus Christ, and perform good works which testify to the love which God has made known in him, so that his people might be added to and built up. That, after all, is what the apostles did and told Christian servants to do, as recorded in the Scriptures (with the pastoral epistles giving especial guidance to those in formal ministry). A Bible college lecturer ought to be able to avoid trivial semantic fallacies such as finding "disciple" and "nations" in the same sentence, and then building a non-biblical doctrine that bears no resemblance to the rest of the New Testament out of that. But in 2025, this cannot be taken for granted at all. The "hot takes" put out by people with PhD-level education are as routinely full of error here as anyone else's, sadly. Brothers and sisters in Christ, let us get out of our social media bubbles of people who agree with us on everything, and who stir us up more and more to say more and more absurd and extreme things in order to maintain the previous buzz or keep gaining our followers or whatever. Let us try to love God with our minds sufficiently to say things that edify and help people to do what the Bible actually told us to do, in ways that a reasonable person reading the Bible can recognise as implementing the activities of the apostles and early church in contemporary society. Let us tremble and run ten miles before we take Jesus' Great Commission to his church, and pervert it into something else that his apostles would not have recognised as the mission they were told to implement, and did implement, and which the Holy Spirit carefully recorded for us in Scripture.

(Follow the "Christian Nationalism" tag link below to see more posts on this subject). 

Christian discernment and notable silences

Christian discernment, when understanding where some individual, or a ministry, is coming from or going to, does not only involve listening to what they do say. You should also notice what they don't say.

This, of course, takes longer, and has to be done fairly. If someone writes a short article about marriage which fails to list every article of Christian belief then, well, that's as you'd expect things. But nevertheless, people reveal their hearts clearly by their silences as well as their speeches. Not only what excites them: but also what is barely, or not at all, on their radar, or only in a nominal, box-ticking way. What does their belief system and the direction of their desires *not* interest them in? Why not? Is it because their over-emphasised belief in something else is also not actually representing the Biblical view-point, but is based upon a distortion of it?

Of course, this also demands of us that we have a solid and comprehensive understanding of the Scriptures. Otherwise we might identify people as failing to have a sufficient interest in some topic when it's actually us who has an excessive one. What did the apostles actually teach the churches? What excited them? What motivated them? What were their responses in different situations? What are the consistent presences and the driving desires and assumptions about the great pillars of their understanding of things in those responses, as opposed to what someone claims they can detect in the silences in between the lines, or as a dubious interpretation of an ambiguous phrase? If we don't have a strong grip on this ourselves, then we can never be discerning when listening to others, but will be vulnerable to being blown around by every wind of doctrine.

Cometh the hour.....

Is it not for us to decide what times we live in; all we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.

Thus spake Gandalf, surely giving voice, as he frequently did, to the viewpoint of his creator, J.R.R. Tolkien, who thus spake surely giving voice to something he'd learnt from his in turn.

History's super-men (so the theory goes) are supposed to take hold of the times, and bend them to their wills, thereby evidencing themselves to be those super-men, a breed apart to the common masses.

It should go without saying that no follower of Jesus Christ, the crucified and risen one, can endorse such a view. Not that we don't shape the times, nor that he didn't: but it's the means; he did it, and teaches us to do it, by radical surrender. To gain life, give yours away.

If we think that we are shaping the times by directing the events in the way that men normally do, then we are surely deluded. Who can say what tomorrow will bring? After not many years, we can all look back to seismic events after which "nothing was the same". That might be a personal event - meeting someone, falling in love, children - or a related personal tragedy. There are things from before we were born: what shaped our parents, and their parents, so that we were born in such a place and time, and in such circumstances? And then there are the great "political" events such as 9/11,  the prosecution of wars, the fall of one government and its replacement by another, Covid and government responses to it, the decisions made in order to maintain power and the compromises and consequences (e.g. the British Brexit referendum that was held as a consequence of coalition negotiations, and then the consequence of the narrow result). Two days ago a non-politician in the US was shot dead, most likely because the shooter detested his opinions.

A lot of people seem to live with the delusion that because they talk a lot about these things in their small, inward-looking circles, that they are playing a significant role in shaping them. Furthermore, they apparently believe that that role is the most important part of their reaction to the events.

How history would look if we'd never been born, nobody can say. Perhaps some very insignificant people have been the unwitting initiators of long chains of events leading to monumental consequences. I suppose that most of us go along to vote knowing perfectly well that it's very unlikely in our lifetimes that 1 vote will end up being the difference in the final outcome; and yet quite rightly, we still do it.

The main, very important, thing to be understood, though, is that God has not told us that we are responsible for the times and seasons that we dwell in. We are held responsible for how we respond to them. Christ has given us the mission of proclaiming him, his death, resurrection and exaltation, amongst the nations according to the modern and pattern laid down by his apostles in the New Testament. We have not been given responsibility to control the outcomes, and have not been told that we have a task of gaining political power so that we can shape the times: the apostles were spectacularly, completely disinterested in strategising or telling others how to strategise to do so. They did not see it as part of their mission, either in practice or teaching. Of course, in the nature of living in this world, it may come to pass that an individual Christian does receive a calling to exercise political power. This then means that questions about how Christians would exercise such power do arise, and the church has to study them; but they cannot be allowed to re-write our actual mission. This fact should not be a loophole which can be widened to drive the complete proverbial coach and horses through.

Christ calls us to be faithful. The events that happen around us which, sometimes in a moment, change the situation we're living in, perhaps dramatically, without asking our permission, must be responded to. But we must respond to them as Christians. Our mission is to take up the cross and become servants of all. Our calling is to demonstrate the love of God in our churches, homes and to our neighbours according to our opportunity, especially doing good to suffering fellow-believers. Our aim is that, when the self-sacrificing love between us is observed, all men might know that we are truly followers of Jesus of Nazareth. Our way of life must show that we have a Master whom we are obeying and imitating. What shape that will take in different situations will vary. And each one of us, individually, will have to answer to him for what we did with our situations. Again: he will not condemn us for failing to control the times. Faithfulness means how we respond to them. When they observe us, will people say "that's living how Jesus would have lived - now I understand!"... or not?

September 11th: the world has changed

I remember September 11th 2001. I didn't have a television, but I was at Bible college for one of the weeks when distance learners were present for introductions to courses. There was a television there, so like many people that day, I got to see those shocking images played over and over and over again.

This was one of those moments for which you remember where you were, because instinctively you felt that the world had changed. And indeed, many people today still live (or have in the intermediate time died) in the world that has been changed by the reality of 21st century Jihad, with many consequences.

Looking at the news today feels like a similar moment. I won't pretend to have known who Charlie Kirk was; from descriptions of his political prominence, it seems likely I probably did hear his name in the past, but I don't remember ever doing so. So, it's not for that reason that I say this. Neither is because I live, as sadly too many Christians who venture online appear to do, that whatever is happening today in the American news cycle is ipso facto "the big thing". The big thing for Christians is that the risen Jesus delivered us the Great Commission, and told us to make disciples, to form them into churches who are to shine his light out into the world, as we joyfully await his return, the day of judgment and the renewal of all creation. That's big, and transforms every day, and page after page of the New Testament tells us that we should strive to have that at the forefront of our minds, not the back.

Neither is political violence in America itself a new thing. Human nature in this fallen world can never make the dream, the myth, the ideal, actually be the reality - we will only ever, before Christ's return, gain glimpses of it (for which we should be profoundly grateful). "JFK" was shot and Reagan survived an assassination attempt; the attempts on the present president's life were far from unprecedented.

What then, do I mean?  This: this was a 31-year old man, with two young children. He was not an elected official. He was (from what I understand from the reports) a public speaker, who positioned himself around the importance of civil debate with those who disagree with us. Not that he shied away from controversial views, or views that make some others very angry. But at the end of it, he wielded political power in only indirect ways, making his views, those of a private citizen, known, and trying to persuade other people of them in a civil manner. And for that - as far as we know at this point - he was brutally killed in broad daylight, by (again, as far as we can know) by someone who wished him dead for his success in spreading his views. Today some people made in God's image, wake up for the first time in their new roles as widow and orphans, because of political disagreement.

That's not very unusual in the context of world history. There are lots of places in which it's not so unusual today, throughout less direct means if necessary. But it's not the post-WW2 West that many of us grew up in. (Perhaps the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr six decades ago is the most recent analogous event?) "I may completely disagree with you, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" was the cultural milieu - even if you suspected that this wasn't said so sincerely (history shows that few people will defend to the death even their own professed beliefs when it comes to it!).

Time will tell whether this really is an inflexion point in the cultural setting. If so, it is not unexpected. The signs have long been there. What binds us together has been progressively weakened; what makes us hate our neighbour has been strengthening. "Love your enemies", and Christ's dying for his enemies, are increasingly thought to be a sign of contemptible weakness (if they're even thought about at all), rather than the  world-changing intervention that we need. Sadly, even in Christian/Christian-ish circles (if we may judge from what's on the Internet) the point of engagement appears to be increasingly thought of in terms of performatively humiliating your enemies (whether by doing so you achieve anything useful or not), "owning the libs", etcetera, and seeking or showing a better way is seen as a sign of weakness that can only lead to defeat. Better to slaughter your enemies and rejoice in their flowing blood as you mock their stupidity, than to let them crucify you, if it has to come to it in the end.

As I say, time will tell. When you look back at history, what has happened takes on the aura of inevitability. September 11th 2001 did not have to lead to all that it did; there was no required straight line from there, for example, to destablising Libya, plunging it into the still-ongoing civil war and all the effects that that has had across Africa and Europe. If we look back in 24 years time from waking up on September 11th 2025, what will we see about how the re-introduction of killing non-politicians for political reasons into the West changed things? One-off, or portent of many more changes to come, in the same direction?

As Christians, we are not bound to follow any current prominent political strategy, because we don't believe that the be-all-and-end-all is getting our preferred candidate into power at the next election. The next election is, once you've lived long enough you begin to notice the pattern, always proclaimed as "the most important election of our lifetimes". But actually, the most important thing in the next 4, 5, whatever years is: will Christians give their lives away in order to announce Jesus Christ? By word and by deed will they demonstrate the reality of the Holy Spirit, by following his death-and-resurrection pattern? Will churches take up the cross so that Christ can be made known to the most needy? Will they earnestly disciple their members to live for Christ and not in indifference or for self?

There are many ages and places in church history in which the church, we can now clearly see, was so terribly corrupted by a worldly spirit, that it was completely ineffective. If instead we are driven by the Spirit of the Crucified One, we will be held contemptible in the eyes of the world, and many self-appointed Christian political gurus will proclaim us to be pietists, obscurantists, and to have doomed-from-the-outset strategies if we were intending to have some real influence, real impact on the world.... but, I ask, should we be appointing the blind to be our guides in any case?

I'm grateful for Christians who are called to seek to speak for truth and justice in the political sphere. This is an honourable work. All of us share in it as we pray for our rulers and leaders too. It is, however, according to the Bible, primarily a limited and defensive work, aimed at restraining wickedness, and maintaining the freedom for us to do the real work. That is of proclaiming Jesus Christ, worshipping God joyfully, and demonstrating his love in practice to those who don't yet know of him so that they can join the group of disciples, as we expectantly await his return. This may often bring us into the spheres that people deem to be "political" or "social action", with those terms understood in various different ways; what they deem them doesn't really matter. What matters is that God has made people in his image, has revealed himself through his Son, and many of them don't yet know him, and are suffering in all kinds of ways - and we know how to help them. Let's get busy!

The quest for illegitimate certainty

I like certainty. God likes certainty too, and has told us lots of things so that we can be certain of them. Of that, I am certain!

On the other hand, though, there are things that God hasn't told us. Some of them are on topics that will cut "close to home", having a significant impact on us in some way or other. They may touch upon important issues of theology and consequent practice.

Some people find this difficult to cope with, and as such are drawn towards simple solutions. The problem is, the simple solutions tend not to have sufficient reason for people who love God with all their minds to be able to say "God has said this" rather than just "this might be true, but it remains obscure because the revelation on it is partial and fragmentary". As such, it's actually wrong to say "this is revealed by God as true", even if the thing actually does turn out to be true: because our belief is not justified. We are giving false testimony; we are saying God has said what he has not, which is bad just as denying what God has said is bad.

Of course, in any particular example I give, it'll be something that some will find controversial. That's the nature of things. One man has a deeper understanding and sees things that are there, though subtle, because of prolonged, careful study and thought; another has a drive to believe that something is true without adequate grounds, and takes up beliefs on flimsy grounds merely because he likes them - or, worse, because his false certainty makes him look authoritative and clever, ahead of others, and thus more able to draw followers after himself. Which is which? That takes time and effort to work through, and even then we might not be sure.

So, let me annoy everyone (though they're not reading, so I'll get away with it) by giving enough examples to do so:

• When will the end be? We haven't been told.
• Has my young child become one of God's people? I'd really like them to be.... a doctrine like paedobaptism would be really comforting there. (Except that having an "inner ring" and "outer ring" then brings back the same problem, because being baptised in historical Reformed theology doesn't mean you're in the "inner ring" - so then people are pushed onto even more aberrant theologies like the Federal Vision and paedocommunion). (Don't misunderstand me: I do believe young children can respond to the gospel, with visible consequences in their lives. But that's quite different to saying that we will always or even, at certain ages, usually or likely know the answer to the question posed).
• When my baby or small child died, are they guaranteed salvation? (Even if you think the Bible does say "yes" to this question - I am of John Bunyan's view that where the Bible has no voice, we have no ears, but can rest content that God is astonishingly merciful and makes no mistakes - then you still can't tell anyone at what age the Bible says a child passes to an "age of responsibility").
• What proportion will be saved? (We are told that they will constitute a great absolute number; but concerning relative proportions, we are not told directly, though the imagery we are given of God's true people throughout Scripture at various times invariably pictures a remnant seed - for example, the ark, strangers and exiles, the ubiquity of sufferings before glory in discipleship, etc.).
• Is there a single best manuscript (or best manuscript family, or procedure for identifying infallibly the best reading at every point) for the Scriptures? People can speak about "the preserved text", but this begs the question, since if all the variants we have to discuss hadn't been preserved, we wouldn't have to discuss them! So much easier to boil it down to a nice, simple rule that removes ambiguity (except if you ask difficult questions, which then pushes people even further into utter absurdity, like the alleged infallibility of the King James translation).
• What would all the laws of an ideal Christian nation look like? What percentage will all the taxes be, and which heretics will be executed? (There is no such thing; you question has no meaning; none of them).
• What is the one true procedure that I should carry out for disciplining my children, dealing with a straying wife, church member, or whatever, a set of rules I can apply in all situations to know I did the right thing? What is the one proper way of educating my children to make sure that I brought them up in the fear of the Lord?

The sorts of people drawn towards seeking more certainty than God has provided may be tempted to respond to some of the above with false dichotomies. "Are you saying anything goes? We should have no convictions? God hasn't said anything? Everything's relative, then?". Well, to answer that: no; no; no; no it isn't.

Life is complicated. And since it's not a simulation and we don't get to rewind after seeing the consequences of our decisions, and since procrastinating is also an action we are responsible for, we have to make choices, and learn from them: hopefully, we will mature through reflecting upon them.

The New Testament does have some people in it who couldn't cope with complexity, and whose way of looking at God and his Word led them to try to tie everything down precisely. And of course, when cases came up outside of their very neat rules, things went wrong. (A contemporary example of that that springs to mind is when churches' rigid, one-sided understandings of marital submission and when the Bible allows separation leads them to tell abused wives and children that they have a duty to keep living with their abuser, and then begins to disciple them if they don't). Who were those people? The Pharisees. They tithed mint and herbs... but overlooked the weightier matters of justice, mercy and the love of God. They knew all the details: but unfortunately mainly the ones they'd invented for themselves.

In the mindset I'm thinking of and warning against here, there's a lot of fear. "David, if you speak that way, you've begun a journey; soon you'll be questioning the Bible, then you'll be affirming sexual depravity, and then the year after you'll be an atheist and have announced your new identity is as Deidre!" But this kind of thing is to say: we must hold on to our illegitimate certainties, because admitting "I don't know, but we can trust God and seek to honour him with what we do have" is too dangerous. Trusting God is not actually dangerous, though, when it is trusting God. God is able to take care of us when we hold onto what he's revealed whilst also confessing that we're also in the dark about other things. What is it to walk by faith, after all, if there is no darkness that matters? 

Some people do claim to be ignorant of things God has actually revealed; but claiming to know things that God hasn't revealed isn't a better alternative. I really don't see where God told us when the end will be, that all babies (or all babies of at least one Christian parent, or is it grandparent, or is it great-grandparent?) go to heaven if they die young, that God has told us that a flat tax of 20% (or is it 23% or 26%) is the ideal tax rate, that all valid manuscript readings of the Bible are found exclusively in the bundle of manuscripts that Erasmus had (or is it the Majority tradition?), that God has promised that 100% of my children will be saved if I'm faithful enough (not even father-of-the-faithful Abraham had that), or (as a friend told me this week - really!) that we should have no qualms about baptising any 4-year old who says that they love Jesus), or any such. It's not in the Bible, so I don't have to believe it. If I do chose to believe something might be possible, or even probable, then that's still all. But if I make it a significant plank of my faith or practice, then to the extent that I do that, I'm actually following a man-made idol, rather than walking in the faith that should characterise the sons and daughters of pilgrim Abraham.

It seems to me that God deliberately, intentionally gives us unavoidable complexity. It's part of his call to trust him in darkness or partial darkness. He gives us things we find difficult to cope with and that go beyond what we can see: not just in every-day life, but in doctrinal questions too. At some point a pastor will preach through John's gospel. What exactly should he say about the passage about the woman caught in adultery? (Do read the article to understand the situation and possibilities. If you have a firm conviction either way, which one of the possibilities in the article are you in, precisely?).

Personally I'm comfortable with the idea that even though we can't show that it was known to anyone before the 5th century, and even though it has numerous features indicating very strongly that it has a separate origin from the rest of the gospel, yet we can trust God's providence (though on the other hand, there is also his providence in making it known to us that this passage isn't terribly well attested), and inspiration isn't the same idea as "we can name which apostle wrote every passage, and no passage ever had an inspired editor" (for it is evident in the Pentateuch that later editors wrote some things, which Jesus and the apostles accepted as Scripture - and hence we thus know that those editors were divinely inspired; so, super-intending divine inspiration does not mean believing that the final book was written at a single sitting by a single person). So, I do not see the passage as definitely non-inspired. However, uncertainty remains, because I don't hold to any doctrine that says that the church in any one particular year or Bible translation must have got everything right. I could be wrong; a mistake could have been made in my weighing up of the data, or perhaps indeed I don't have enough data to be able to know even after weighing it all up. It might, after all, not be inspired. God is providentially super-intending history, and it's that supervision that has led to the present-day complexity that leaves us with issues like this one (or if you don't agree on this one, there are many others with all kinds of different features) where we can't truthfully say "I know, for God has revealed it" - even though the thing itself is important.

Excessive certainty is not a sign of spiritual maturity, but the opposite, spiritual immaturity. And this spiritual immaturity can go with being highly educated and confident too, as history proves repeatedly. Again, don't misunderstand me. If I were saying that the list of issues I've given above is definitely the one true list of debatable issues, then I'd be making the same mistake myself. What I am saying is that here is a tendency and temptation, to be aware of in ourselves - and to be aware of in others, if we want to be discerning about healthy and unhealthy spiritual influences upon us. Unfounded dogmatism is not a virtue, it is a fault. Admitting to not knowing may indeed be "a sign of weakness"; but if you're a disciple of Christ rather than aspiring to be Nietzsche's Übermensch (super-man) , that's a good thing, not a bad.

Why we serve

I don't know if you've had cause to browse lists of job advertisements lately. How does this one take your fancy? "For I will show him how many things he must suffer for my name’s sake." (Acts 9:16).

That, of course, is the apostle Paul. "I affirm, by the boasting in you which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die daily", he wrote to the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 15:32). "For we who live are always delivered to death for Jesus’ sake, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So then death is working in us, but life in you." (2 Corinthians 4:11-12).

That was Paul's service. He was a disciple of Jesus Christ, the cross-bearer. Jesus taught that if anyone wishes to be his disciple, then he must take up his cross - to die to self - daily. Cross-bearing is not a special event in the Christian life: it is the Christian life. The Christian says "today, I choose to give away my life for others, for Jesus' sake". Ship-wrecked, stoned, naked, hungry, in constant danger, exhausted, beaten, imprisoned for years, etc.: this was the life Paul chose. Death worked in him: but what glorious life has worked in so many others, because of the choice he made.

I was touched by this in reading Acts 13 this morning:

"⁵⁰ But the Jews stirred up the devout and prominent women and the chief men of the city, raised up persecution against Paul and Barnabas, and expelled them from their region. "

There it is: more death. Expelled from the reason. The great ones of the region against them, and they had to leave and go elsewhere. But what about two lines later?

⁵² And the disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit.

Ah. That's why we serve.  That's why we choose, each day, to give away our lives. Death works in us: but life in you. Lord, it's hard, it's very hard. But, it's not the hard life of living still for self: that's the other sort of death. The sort without any resurrection in it: just barren death, leading to eternal death. We who take up the cross see Jesus, the risen one. After the cross, there was the resurrection. And we know as well that one day we'll be where he is. Death worked in him: and because of that, life works in us too. 

Infant baptism requires two separable doctrines of descent in the Old Testament

The ground covered so far 

Recently (essay, follow-up), I've been examining the Reformed (covenant) argument for paedobaptism, and conclusions from the claim that the New Testament is silent about the revocation of covenant membership for the infants of believers, when that is a subject that we would have expected to generate controversy and debate.

I've argued that the claim itself is incorrect. The New Testament contains numerous passages, self-consciously controversial, which directly contradict an expectation that under the New Covenant relationship to the Messiah can or would pass by hereditary descent.

The reason why paedobaptists overlook these passages (for they do overlook them, generally not including them for discussion at all in their analyses of relevant material in their arguments) is because of how they define how the debate ought to, according to their presuppositions, be carried out. Because the debate is not carried out in that way, thus they effectively define these passages out of existence. Specifically, they require the passages to be explicitly framed in terms of one-generational descent from covenant members (from believers) to their infants; passages discussing physical descent from Abraham are overlooked. They assume that the Old Testament's "infant inclusion" is in in terms (if we speak in terms of primary concepts, i.e. the self-conscious focus of the subject) of "the infants of covenant members" rather than in terms of "descendants of Abraham". Because they do not find such passages, they then assert that this is because the concept which they find in the Old Testament has carried over, unaltered, uncontroversial, universally accepted.

Two separate concepts? 

Noting and describing this helps us to shed further light on the precise nature of the paedobaptist error. The paedobaptist - intentionally or not, consciously or not - has asserted that the Old Testament has two separable teachings about covenant descent. That is to say: for the paedobaptist, in effect (i.e. whether he explains or even realises this or not), in the Old Testament the patrilinear descendants of Abraham via Jacob are covenant members by virtue of that descent; but also the infant offspring (at the first generation) of covenant members are also covenant members. You may be thinking "isn't this precisely the same group of people?" Yes, it is (we bracket proselytes, who are treated as de facto descendants of Abraham). And that is precisely the problem.

So: when we come to the New Testament, we have the various passages which intentionally, directly and explicitly deny that those of Jewish descent are ipso facto members of the New Covenant, the great renewal and fulfilment effected by the Messiah. These are the passages I discuss in my essay. John the Baptist, Jesus, Paul: they all directly deny that mere Jewish descent is enough to qualify you as a member of the New Covenant: you must have faith in Christ to be a child of Abraham. You must be born again. Reformed paedobaptists are aware of these passages; they read them, they understand them, and they agree with what I just said.

What they don't do, however, is allow that the same passages have any relevance to the status of the infant offspring of believers (whether Jew or Gentile). They will say things like "such passages are discussing adults, who are developmentally capable of faith in Christ; infants are not in view; thus they have nothing to say about infants, to whom a separate category of entitlement applies". (Or there are a few who will instead argue that we are taught to, perhaps presumptively if not actually, believe that infants of Christians actually have saving faith, in some prototypical form - but that is problematic when the claimant has also conceded contradictory claims about the New Testament's silence - which, after all, is the question we are responding to; it also is a doctrine that calls for wholesale revision of the Reformed doctrine of what saving faith is).

The implications of this claim, this denial of relevance, is that Jewish descent and descent as an infant from a covenant member, are two separable concepts. They are so separable that one can be entirely, explicitly abolished (via Messianic fulfilment, if we wish to be precise!), whereas the other can carry on, entirely untouched, not having even been mentioned or in anyone's mind because it was so uncontroversial. And yet, as we have already noticed, the people affected up until this point were entirely the same group of people. The infants of Israelites were Israelites. 

The thing to notice here is that the claim of "uncontroversial and complete continuity" relies upon this separation. In turn, then, this relies upon this separation, this conceptual distinction, being actually taught in the Old Testament. It cannot be argued that this separation is actually taught in the New Testament, because the claim is of perfect continuity supported by complete New Testament silence. So, the Old Testament must give us passages in which it explains that infant covenant membership has a two-fold aspect; one is from Abrahamic descent, the other is from descent from one's immediate parents, and that these two are separate claims such that one can remain whilst the other falls away.

An unreasonable demand 

It is quite evident, of course, that this demand is ludicrous and absurd. A false distinction has been introduced. A splitting of a single concept into two which has no real basis in the relevant Scriptures has been made. The two concepts are only one. Thus, when one is changed, fulfilled or abolished in whatever, then so is the other. The denial that membership by descent in the nation of Israel means participation in the Messiah under the New Covenant is the same thing as denial that the infant children of covenant members are already covenant members by virtue of their descent. The latter way of putting things, focussing on infants and parents is, as I argued in my essay, simply a choice of focus made, one which comes naturally to post-Industrial Revolution Westerners whose own primary "clan" focus is dominated by the nuclear family. But Israelites did not have the same narrowness of focus, and the Old Testament Scriptures do not teach that covenant descent has this corresponding bifurcation. There is no separable, separate "descended from Abraham" as well as "descended from my covenant parents"; no dual covenantal status of "I am a legitimate Israelite - but also a member of this nuclear family of legitimate Israelites".

We see this with clarity when we remember (as touched upon in the essay) that there was never any denial that the Jews, even after the resurrection and ascension of Christ, were under the Old Covenant. Pharisees and unbelieving Jews: those who either explicitly rejected Christ, or who at least had not yet believed in him, are spoken of as (Old) covenant members. The repudiation of the covenant, its annulment by God (together with the threatened Deuteronomic curses), is not until AD70, when the Romans come and destroy Jerusalem and the temple. Nowhere prior to that is there any claim that the Jews were not children of Abraham under the terms of the Old Covenant.

So:

• Acts 13:26 - "Men and brethren, sons of the family of Abraham, and those among you who fear God, to you the word of this salvation has been sent." Here, Paul affirms to unbelieving and not-yet-believing Jews to whom he is explaining the gospel for the first time, that they are sons in Abraham's family. He does not, and cannot, mean that he is affirming that they all have faith. And neither can he be affirming that they are all infants, for plainly his address assumes an adult audience. Though the New Covenant was already in force, these adults, independently of their actual belief in Jesus as the Messiah at this point, were the sons of Abraham (under the terms of the Old Covenant).
• 2 Corinthians 11:22 - "Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they the seed of Abraham? So am I." Paul, of course, is a true son of Abraham, as the New Covenant bifurcation of this concept was well underway by the time that he wrote. Yet he affirms that the false teachers, the false apostles, the Judaizers, if any of them had a claim to be Hebrews, Israelites, seed of Abraham - so did he. It is nowhere suggested that he believed none of them actually did. 
• “The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. Therefore whatever they tell you to observe, that observe and do," - Matthew 23:2-3. There is no suggestion that these adult Pharisees, though enemies of God's Son, had manifested a lack of faith in the Messiah that meant that they could or should be excommunicated from the nation of Israel. That would be to back-port New Covenant aspects into the Old Covenant.
• Romans 9:4 - "who are Israelites, to whom pertain the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the service of God, and the promises". The unbelieving Jews, as Paul wrote, possessed these things, in the present tense. Paul has made the distinction between them and true Jews (many times) - but he never suggests that they should also be considered as already excommunicated from the Old Covenant.

Anticipating a response 

I expect that in response to these points, a paedobaptist might make true, but actually irrelevant, observations like "there was an overlap of the covenants". Of course there was - who denied it, because I was affirming it? That is not the salient point in the observations above. The key point is that Old Covenant membership explicitly did not work along the lines of "you can join by virtue of being an infant born within the covenant, but to remain in, you must have faith". Adults, lacking faith, were members. If the paedobaptist wants to distinguish between saving faith and some form of "implicit" faith, then this opens up even more problems: should such adults, including ones who explicitly reject Jesus as the Messiah, be New Covenant church members, as they were in the Old? I don't think that paedobaptists have really thought their doctrine of "strict covenant continuity" through.

Conclusion

The Old Testament did not teach two separable-but-coinciding routes into covenant membership for the same group of people, such that the New Testament can explicitly repudiate one route, and leave the other completely undiscussed, enjoying perfect continuity, paving the way to infant baptism. Again we see that the paedobaptist demand for an explanation of the New Testament's "silence" is one based upon his own imported and unjustifiable assumptions. There is no "strict continuity", because the conceptual furniture of Reformed paedobaptism does not exist in the Old Testament any more than it does in the New. The "silence" is entirely a product of making unwarranted demands that the New Testament be written in terms of this furniture. It is silent about such things, precisely because the Old Testament also knew nothing about them. The implied split is not there in either Testament. 

Under the Old Covenant, the seed of Abraham according to fleshly descent was circumcised; under the New, his children according to the second birth which manifests by repentance and faith in Christ are baptised. There are, in fact, two separable descents. Some are born of the flesh, only - and some also of the Spirit. This is taught in both Testaments. But this in no way maps onto "patrilinear descent to any number of generations (through Jacob)" and "physical descent at one generation if your parents have saving faith". That is a chimera, a confusion, faithful to neither Testament, mixing external foreshadowing and Messianic fulfilment up into a mass that is neither one nor the other.