The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham, the Son of God, being as was supposed the son of Joseph, Who in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father), full of grace and truth. No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him. Absurd Life is the Absurd Fruit of His Absurd Lips until Absurdity is Celebrated as the Abundant Life by those He made partakers of His Divine Nature (and not like the rest, beneficiaries of His generosity dispensed among those whom He never knew). This is the feast of fat things that satisfies those who delight in true abundance.
“I am the true vine, and My Father is the vine dresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away.” Hear as it were the voice as if a great multitude saying, “My teaching is not Mine, but His who sent Me.” Hear as it were the sound of many waters saying, “Whoever believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, ‘From their hearts will flow rivers of living waters.’” Hear as it were the sound of mighty peals of thunder saying, “I have glorified my name, and I will glorify it again.” Hear the crying out of praise by those who heard His call, “Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and exult and give Him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and His Bride has made herself ready.”
Before Him with His love in us, before we make ourselves ready as His living bride, we must render an account for every careless word, every useless word, every weighed and found wanting word lacking grace, profit, prophecy, edification, comfort, strength, rebuke, correction, instruction, training in righteousness or the exposing of evil; for every dying oracle escaping from our selfish skulls hostile to God, addicted to the interests of man without God or hope in this world, speaking the things of the flesh, of death and confusion. His Word judges our words we speak to one another, for by our words we shall be justified, and by our words we shall be condemned. Are we now ready to punish all disobedience once our obedience is complete? Ready or not, in Christ come judgment, we will. “Do you believe this?”
Hear the testimony of one who was more than a prophet: “He whom God has sent utters the words of God, for He gives the Spirit without measure.” Hear the testimony of the Father who sent Him: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to Him.” Hear the Son, who warns, “Pay attention to what you hear; with the measure you use, it will be measured to you, and still more will be added to you.”
As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself,
unless it abides in the vine,
so neither can you, unless
you abide in Me.
I am the vine
Who commands the paths of the wind,
Who gives breath from His treasury to blow
wherever it wishes to go,
Who gives life to whom He wishes,
Who knows how the spirit enters the bone,
Who knows where the Holy Spirit comes from and
where He is going,
delivering the gift of rebirth while
bringing His children safely home.
You are the branches.
He who abides in Me, and I in him,
Whose voice is powerful and
majestic and hews out flames of fire,
he bears much fruit;
for apart from Me you can do nothing.
What an odd creature I have become. I deny Man’s “life ends with his death.”[1] .~ believe, Jesus the Christ, the Son of God, the Savior is the Resurrection and the Life. .~ believe, whoever believes in Him lives in spite of death. .~ believe, everyone who lives and believes in Him shall never die. .~ believe, He commanded it be declared,“Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain, that they come to life.” Nevertheless, though hardly pressed I am easily won over to practice a way of life that believes “a man’s words are merely means of expressing his vapid thoughts.”[2] I carelessly concede we speak from the vacuous womb of earth, wind, water and fire in the Vulgar Slang of the Big Bang, or from those born of bloods, the will of flesh, the lust of man and pride of life rather than confess we speak from out of the only begotten Son, Who is in the bosom of the Father. We roll out our cannons of war to fight for truth. We cry out, “Come and take them!” Why not rather quote as prayer what our Father first spoke, and plead, “Let there be light”?
Who has the Spirit written on our hearts, to be known and read by all?
What have we forgiven in the presence of Christ for the sake of others?
Are we not too the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life?
Who is sufficient for these things?
Do we not speak from in Christ as commissioned by God, in God’s sight?
Is not our sincerity, confidence and sufficiency from God?
Do not we have hope?
Should we not be bold?
Does not the Spirit of the Lord give us the freedom to behold the glory of the Lord?
Does not the Lord who is the Spirit transform us into the same image from one degree of glory to another?
Should we not by open statement of the truth commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God?
Has not God shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ?
Should we not for Jesus’ sake make ourselves the servants of others to proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord? As each has received a gift, we are instructed to use it to serve one another. If we speak, then as good stewards of God’s varied grace we should speak oracles of God; speaking only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. Every word we speak yearns for its proper setting and perfect timing. Every word I speak from my own initiative is stillborn, off its timing and is misplaced. For every word there is a social standing that brings speaker and listener into relation with one another. We deceive ourselves into believing we do not share the Gospel with others because we are afraid of messing up the message or might be mistreated by our listeners. This is not true. We choose not to declare the truths of the Gospel because we do not want to give up control of the social standing we enjoy remaining silent. To follow Jesus means to confess His standing seated at the right hand of the throne of God, while living out the social standing He took up when living among us. Our Lord became a servant to the circumcised to show God’s truthfulness, in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs, and in order that the peoples of the nations might glorify God for His mercy. All of us then, the Jew first and the person too of the nations should serve Jesus by following Him to where He is now by going there by the the same way of the cross He traveled. He desires our being with Him where He is so we may see the glory the Father has given Him so that the love with which the Father has loved the Son may be in us with the Son. He came among us as the One who serves. The Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost by being a servant to all. He did not come to be served but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for man. He gave us the example of Himself that we also should do just as He has done to us. A servant is not greater than his Master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. We are blessed if we serve others, and especially one another, as He served us. O Lord of liberty free us to be servants to all.
God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens from out of the ground. He brought them to the Man to see what he would call them. And whatever the Man called every living creature, that was its name. But God calls Man to Himself so he may know who he is and be called by the name God alone has given him. Listen for Him! Hear His voice! Let each pray, “Here .~ am Lord, speak that we might see you!”
We fight against the truth-hating hoards who dare proclaim,“man’s life ends with his death.” Oh, yes Lord, we have believed that You are Jesus the Christ,the Son of God, Savior, even He who comes into the world. For if there is no resurrection of the dead, not even our Jesus has been raised, then our preaching Christ crucified is vain, our faith in the Son of God also is vain, and we are still in our sins without a Savior. I think truth with this inflection of status to prove for me human words are nothing more than the way we express our thoughts. Anchored in the madness of vain selfishness all speech dictates only a certain probability calculated according to what is analogous to our only calibrated compass, the present, our moment in a self-contained system of knowable becausing effects. I have dammed off my words from their rightful meaning. I have made my words void of all God-given, God-desiring, God-demanding meaning by siphoning them off as my own stash of soul. I eat and wipe my mouth, and say, “I have done no wrong.” But I keep chattering, bitching, whining, complaining. I keep talking, pitching and wooing. I keep arguing and maneuvering. I point out. I suggest. I prove beyond a reasonable doubt. I digress, I go apart to deceive myself.
I shall be judged and found wanting if all I ever express in this life are my vapid thoughts void of meaning, as if my soul is adjudicated to no one. I shall be judged because I judged human speech expresses nothing but vapid thoughts void of any meaning. I shall be judged because I turned away from the fullness of grace and truth with which every word I ever heard adheres. Can Man as mere nature merge with Man as mere speaker in nature?[3] This split personality we stitch together like fig leaves to hide our nakedness fails to restore Man whom God has created in His own image. In the image of God He created him; male and female He created them, to the one end He created them, for our being baptized into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit He created them. We have been created in the image of God so that we might understand ourselves by His likeness, which is the one necessary standard able to explain Man.
Which camp of war do we join to press into our service the Messiah, our Prince of Peace, Who comes to each of us first as the Captain of the Lord’s Host? One camp fights for language as mimesis – imitator & representer – of all. They make it imitate an already given reality to insist it represents it truly or falsely. Nature, Man and Language are one, we are one with nature, we speak of everything as one. The multifaceted wonder of it all is but its working parts. “They recur and recur,always in the same lawlike way, with the same causal antecedents and the same effect. Their causal efficacy persists into the future independent of whether any one of us is around to observe the consequences.” Whoever will best affirm or refute must but learn to compute. Taskmaster science enslaves language “to describe such items and events, [enforcing] the regulative ideal of a precise and neutral description of an independently given external reality,”[4] to include even our biologically evolving,electro-chemical, problem-solving, behavioral selves.
No! This cannot be. Quick, steal Jesus, come with me, we’ll travel gravity’s rainbow to cross over to the other side. Here they announce nothing external to language exists. There exists no external world to which language could correlate truly or falsely. Language as the daughter of history depends upon this conjuring craft, which “can never be given independently of the interests and values of those who read and write history. No precise and neutral description of historical events exists…” For example, should the headline read, “Total Lunar Eclipse Expected,” we should immediately challenge, by whom and how was this determined and unto what end? Might it not be more advantageous to our own interests to deny this alleged eclipse, perhaps to condemn it as corrupt, or the plot of a conspiracy against us? There is no Arbitrator who could give the final pronouncement on what ultimate evaluation of eventsshould emerge from the private, legal, parliamentary, and international debates that surround the events. “We find history a closed arena of talk furthered by talk about talk.” The unmoved Mover unnerved, seen through historicist’s eyes becomes talking Talk talking about talk. History really doesn’t exist outside of language and of its own efficacious translation in the utterances and actions of future human beings. Therefore, we pronounce, “if we perish, history and indeed all human culture die with us.”[5]
Whoever cannot believe, even if when holding a drawn sword in His hand, that the angel of the Lord is able to make a donkey speak, will listen willingly to another nonetheless, if getting it straight from the senselessly beaten dead horse’s mouth: “What then is truth? A movable host of metaphors, metonymies [figures of speech in which the name of one thing is used in place of that of another associated with or suggested by it, for example: “the senselessly beaten dead horse’s mouth” for “Nietzsche.”] , and anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding. Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions-they are metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force,coins which have lost their embossing and are now considered as metal and no longer as coins.We still do not yet know where the drive for truth comes from. For so far we have heard only of the duty which society imposes in order to exist: to be truthful means to employ the usual metaphors. Thus, to express it morally, this is the duty to lie according to a fixed convention, to lie with the herd and in a manner binding upon everyone. Now man of course forgets that this is the way things stand for him. Thus he lies in the manner indicated, unconsciously and in accordance with habits which are centuries old; and precisely by means of this unconsciousness and forgetfulness he arrives at his sense of truth.”[6]
Oh broken leaper, cursed cursus, protector of those who forget they can speak, .~ cannot climb the steps up to your temple. Thankfully you refused to be taken seriously or otherwise. I salute you from a distance, commending you to rest in the land of your dreams, here, in this moment, repeating after you in your honor, ”I am only a maker of words: words matter! I matter!” We transcend your will to power. We have witnessed the old gods try to imitate their Maker and watched them assassinate one another, letting the meek inherit this earth. No one can serve two masters, nor serve in two domains. Where you were ”ready to rule the world,”[7] we are ready to live beyond your rule. What God has joined together through our division no man can cut asunder. Upon hearing His voice speak as unity beyond the division between us and your followers, a unity made by our division, we are ready to speak in behalf of this unity. We yield to this unity that does not justify our division, but baptizes it as a prophetic anticipation of the unity it produces. This unity rebukes our division. May we learn from it how to heal the division we together have caused and by which we have so long together suffered.
Who knows how many more unities we must yet learn to hear before we can hear His voice speak as the most absurd unity. What is most absurd[8] but that the absurd is ever heard? Science, poetry and critical commentary,what do they offer except wisdom (being as was supposed) bantered, brandished, or bragged about on the levels of the “personal, political and metaphysical”[9]? Whether we mean well or aim to do ill, we never win a consensus that can hold within ourselves or with one another. On our own we set a din to barking so to drown out the voice of Jesus, who alone is the on-going Arbitrator of our souls, the only All-Souls Unifier.
Hearing voices but not being able to make out the words, the crazed, deaf-driven world is mercifully becoming more like Jesus even without ever repenting of the sin of rejecting the convicting call of Jesus, who calls each of us by name. Yet, in spite of this all the while the world speaks nonetheless as the fruit of His lips. If His mercy fails to beget His wrath, then what manner of God do we worship? What harmony has Christ with Belial, or what has a believer in common with an unbeliever? Or what agreement has the temple of God with idols? An enemy has done this! Allow both to grow together until the harvest; and in the time of the harvest I will say to the reapers, “First gather up the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them up; but gather the wheat into my barn.” Did He not tell us, “Thus the last shall be first, and the first last”?
“Do you believe this?” To whom else shall we go except to Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Savior? Who else has the words of eternal life? Therefore, wait for Me,” declares the Lord, “For the day when I rise up to the prey. Indeed, My decision is to gather nations, to assemble kingdoms, to pour out on them My indignation, all My burning anger; for all the earth will be devoured by the fire of My zeal. For then I will give to the peoples purified lips, that all of them may call on the name of the Lord, to serve Him shoulder to shoulder…” Many therefore of His disciples, when they heard this said, “This is a difficult statement; dry and stiff, fierce and offensive, who can listen to it?”
We pay the price for not listening our whole life, only to learn in death all this was but a down payment on a debt we must pay forever. We define this dull condition of our soul cut off from God’s kindness and favor to mean we judge what Jesus said to be so clearly untrue or unreasonable as to be laughable or ridiculous. So stricken, the soul apart from being slapped by the Holy Spirit judges the Gospel ridiculous, a jest, a laughable thing, a lousy comedian’s sick shtick without a happy ending. To the world’s ear the Good News is good grounds for a good laugh on the world’s terms, because there are no other alternatives. The outsider hears the Gospel to judge the Speaker worthy of being made the object of scornful laughter by making Him (or did we think we say something that we ourselves invented?) the butt of jokes, cruel mocking, and derision. This is in fulfillment of the Scriptures, for it is written: “Behold, the Lord came with many thousands of His holy ones, to execute judgment upon all, and to convict all the ungodly of all their ungodly deeds which they have done in an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him.” Difficult sayings go down hardest during perilous times. Well might there be no atheists in foxholes (Revelations 6:15-17), but worse still is to use the shelter of His words to curse Him. Nonetheless, men would rather speak to mountains and rocks than bend the knee at the name of Jesus and confess Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. It is only natural that we more prefer to stumble than be crushed. So freely speaks the Lord of Liberty, who never speaks on His own initiative, but only whatever He hears to glorify the Son to the glory of the Father, that all this may be forgiven. Therefore, the Son says of Him who speaks only as He has heard, “I say to you, any sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven men, but blasphemy against the Spirit shall not be forgiven. And whoever shall speak a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him; but whoever shall speak against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him, either in this age, or in the age to come (Matthew 12:31-32; John 16:13-15; Jude 15).”
The Spirit speaks this special tongue to both the Jews and to the Nations to announce the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham, “…by Tamar…by Rahab…Ruth…by her who had been the wife of Uriah…and to Jacob was born Joseph the husband of Mary, by whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ, the Messiah.” So begins the Gospel of Jesus Christ, as it was being thought the son of Joseph, who in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Why only four women? Why but these four women? Why bother to ask if there can be found no scientific answer? Why ask what I cannot know for sure by way of making another certain, when my soul may be overwhelmed with being satisfied with the abundance mine to enjoy by simply wondering, how can this be?
Here for the heart that hungers for true humility is understanding. The broken confess the world has never heard the absurd! For the absurd is whatever is laughably inconsistent with what the world judges as true or reasonable. We hear His voice. We follow Him in the way of excessus mentis,[10] the way of overabundance, of excessive mentality,of overflowing reality, of mystical rapture most sane and alone the being freely human. We hear Him whom God has sent who tells us of the Father. We hear Him who speaks the words of God; for He gives the Spirit without measure, Who “created a brotherhood of the outcast, the fellowship of the silent victim, in which He became its first speaker. Why would He speak? Because He offered Himself willingly where until then the victim was without will.”[11] Even the terrorist killer speaks inside his camp a martyr by the fruit of His lips. Hence, let us go out to Him outside the camp, bearing His reproach. For here we do not have a lasting city, but we are seeking the city which is to come. If each of us must bear his or her own load, then let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up. So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, especially to those who are of the household of faith.
As announced by the messenger God named man God,[12] who stands in the presence of God, whom He sent to speak and to bring Good News, who need not speak again because He came, He came, the One of whom he spoke, the One free man who can do nothing on His own initiative, who judges as He hears. What we call our reality in history adjudicated to no one, is the dragging draw of what the Already Living has already done. We live in the draft of eternal life, the Word of Life. He dispenses time at that rate which conforms to the Spirit of prophecy, in accordance with the Scriptures so that the Scriptures may be fulfilled.
Jesus, the Christ, the Son of God, Savior: Calling Him His names did not make Him worthy of them or change Him ontologically to become what these names mean as if by magic. Calling evokes the privilege of response as the experience to have confirmed in faith these things that are true as God promised them to be, according to the Scriptures. We not only believe because it is absurd, we believe because we have been made absurd to those who speak to the world and to whom the world listens. But more, this privilege itself pours out of the time He transformed by entering it. His faith changes the times forever and ever because He who sanctifies will never be ashamed to call us brethren, saying, “I will put My trust in Him” who is our Father. His faith gives “countenance and form” to our virtuous act of presenting our bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is our rational service of worship. We all live in the newness unleashed by His faith working through the lottery of love as providence. Christians live the mystical rapture of reality as the way out of the prisons of the soul that remain but dead reminders of what once brought death but has been conquered. So we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight, seeing the death around us changed by the life that lives throughout all we see, stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly when the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved, and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn!
Thus we wait for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells, the age of absurdity to come. We are children of listening. The single Christian is the person to whom Christ has already spoken. The body of Christ is comprised of them who together hear Him sing whenever they are filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with their heart to the Lord; always giving thanks for all things in the name of their Lord Jesus Christ to God, even the Father; being subject to one another in the fear of the Christ.
Each must answer the question He asks us together, “Have I for you closed and sealed the ancient world? Do you live after Me? Are you free from the tribe, indentured task, the public spirit and the prophet’s tale with which your ancient lineage would have imbued you? What Spirit possesses you, indwells you, and leads you?” This is the question He asks that matches His command, “Follow Me!” Do we see Him by what He has done to all of us, whether we hear Him or not? The Spirit strives in the hearts of the lost, connives in history and frees the people of God. We can however grieve and quench Him. We can fall out of fellowship with God and fall back in step with the world. In culture, consciousness and conscience we can commit the sin of emptying out Jesus if we forget He really is Lord. We then abuse creation and build a civil order that oppresses people.
When this happens whatever we say together as the church manifest, the church militant is no longer of the Vinedresser, no longer of the Vine, but as branches who do not bear fruit and who will be taken away. Keep us from the sin of Elijah Lord whenever you should ask us twice, “What are you doing here?” Prune us Father when we speak gibberish rather than speaking the oracles of God, whenever we forget our speech is to be the fruit of your lips. This is the mystery of love revealed to us: the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, purifies our conscience from dead works to serve the living God, for Jesus Christ the Righteous is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.
Father, we have forgotten the remnant you have chosen by grace. We have forgotten salvation. We have forgotten life from the dead. Chastise our arrogance. We fail to stand through faith, nor do we stand in awe of your kindness and severity. We give no thought to the fullness of the Nations as the salvation of Israel, beloved for the sake of their forefathers. We no longer preach Christ became a servant to the circumcised to show your truthfulness, in order to confirm the promises you gave to the patriarchs, and in order that the Nations might give you glory for your mercy. We ignore both our bond in disobedience and your mercy that joins us in prophetic solidarity.
To Him be glory forever. Amen. We do not run well. We have been hindered by a persuasion that is not from Him who calls us. In whose behalf do we do our research? For whose benefit do we publish our findings? To whom do we confess our allegiance? Who is it in fact we serve? Right now as I speak, does Jesus merely live a biographical life for me? Hypothetically speaking, should I suspend my adoration to answer this question? Of course He is Lord, but right now who is He for me? Is Jesus an idea about Jesus that came upon me, of my making for my fancy? I dishonor my Lord and disserve my neighbor when I suspend listening to Him, for He says, “At the acceptable time I listened to you, and on the day of salvation I helped you.” Do I receive grace in vain? Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation. Jesus is our true ancestor, our one forefather for this common era in which we all live, which He Himself alone made by entering history. This Jesus who offered up both prayers and supplications with loud crying and tears to the One able to save Him from death, who was heard because of His piety, and who learned obedience from the things which He suffered; this very same Jesus hands over to the generations after Him humanity as an emerging experience, an emerging culture, an emerging consciousness and an emerging conscience, which is altogether ours. Whatever is spoken is a result of this gift-enriching common revelation. His speech bears fruit, is of true consequence for all humanity. Christ gives speech even to the antichrists and every spirit that does not confess Christ. He makes the world speak as the fruit of His lips, yet without the Spirit of Christ, for no one can say, “Jesus is Lord,” except in the Holy Spirit. He joins together His own in the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace to hold us in the beauty of perfect harmony. Nonetheless, in history (not in Christ) He brings us together with those bound in the bond of peace as the world gives. The world in the spirit of the antichrist and the church indwelled by the Holy Spirit enters in His one future interpenetrating us all, for apart from Him we can do nothing. Here is the perseverance of the saints who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus. Through Him then, let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that give thanks to His name. May we speak the gracious words which proceed out of His mouth, even if it should fill with rage those who hear these things (Luke 4:22, 28).
Notes
- Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, Fruit of Lips (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: The Pickwick Press, 1978), p. 6. Remembering, if we choose, that Rosenstock-Huessy first wrote this rebuking, thus refreshing confession in 1954 might perhaps temper our handling of it, remembering too it was published posthumously. The scholar censored his soul’s prepared-impromptu/impromptu-prepared swansong for nearly twenty years. In 1964 Rosenstock-Huessy the scholar published the first German version of the work, with a final shorter version again in German given in 1968. What we read then is the most rustic, the rawest, the most vulnerable, and therefore most explosive (expletive?) version of his thought, which he wrote first in English, his second home language.
- Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, Fruit of Lips, p. 6.
- Emily Grosholz unleashed these thoughts through, “Poetry and Practical Deliberation,” in Unrelenting Readers, ed. By Paul M. Hedeen and D. G. Myers (Ashland, Oregon: Story Line Press, 2004), p. 73-93.
- Emily Grosholz, “Poetry and Practical Deliberation,” pp. 74-75.
- Emily Grosholz, “Poetry and Practical Deliberation,” p. 75.
- Friedrich Nietzsche, “On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense,” (1873), read from http://www.e.scoala.ro/biblioteca/friedrich_nietzsche.html.
- Friedrich Niezsche, “Fragments from a Shattering Mind,” in The Antichrist + Fragments from a Shattering Mind, trans. by Otmar Lichtenwöther with intr. by Stephen Barber (Solar Books, Creation Books, 2002, 2007), pp. 143, 152
- Latin, absurdus, not to be heard of <ab-intensive + surdus-dull, deaf, insensible.
- Emily Grosholz, “Poetry and Practical Deliberation,” p. 80.
- Rosenstock-Huessy, Fruit of Lips, p. 8.
- Rosenstock-Huessy, Fruit of Lips, p. 79.
- See Appendix below
Appendix, God Named Gabriel
(October 13, 2007)
God named Gabriel – man God — to match the task He assigned him.
God sent Gabriel to the city of Nazareth in Galilee
in the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy
by which she bore the son of Zechariah
whom he told to call John.
God named Gabriel – man God –
to speak to a virgin named Mary
betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph,
who was of the house of David.
Gabriel announced to Mary she would conceive in her womb and bear a son whom she shall call Jesus. About Jesus Gabriel said, “He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” In this manner Gabriel announced the Incarnation as our consolation, as our one Mediator of God’s mercy who is able to show us the only true God in the way, and the truth and the life we can hear, see and touch, which leads to salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and faith in the truth unto enjoying fellowship with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ by realizing through His glory that the Father loves us with the very same love with which He loves the Son.
Cursed be the false prophet who claims in the name of this flaming wind God named man God that Jesus Christ our only Lord and Master is not the only begotten Son of God who dwelt among us and who rules over us all as the Anointed One of His people and the Prince of the nations. If anyone does not love the Lord, let him be accursed for aligning him- or herself with the spirit of abomination that brings desolation, who would have the Messiah cut off and allotted nothing. Whoever covers over a spring in the desert to hide it from those dying of thirst earns God’s curse.
Ho! Every one who thirsts, come to the waters; and you who have no money come, buy and eat. Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost. Why do you spend money for what is not bread, and your wages for what does not satisfy? Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good, and delight yourself in abundance. Incline your ear and come to Me. Listen, that you may live; for as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there without watering the earth, and making it bear and sprout, and furnishing seed to the sower and bread to the eater; so shall My word be which goes forth from My mouth; it shall not return to Me empty, without accomplishing what I desire, and without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it (Isaiah 55:1-3a, 10-11).
Let us love in truth all those who know the truth because of the truth that abides in us and will be with us forever (2 John 1-2). Let us together rejoice in the wonderful blessings of grace, mercy, and peace, which will be with us in truth and love from God the Father and from Jesus Christ the Father’s Son (2 John 3). Let us encourage one another to walk in truth, just as we were commanded by the Father (2 John 4). Let us watch ourselves so we may win a full reward by not listening to the deceivers who have gone out into the world, those who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh (2 John 7-8). Let us remind one another that everyone who goes on ahead and does not abide in the teaching of Christ does not have God, while whoever abides in the teaching of Christ has both the Father and the Son (2 John 9). If anyone comes to us and does not bring this teaching of Christ, let us agree not to receive him into our assembly or give him any greeting conveyed in the name of Christ, for whoever greets him takes part in his wicked works (2 John10). And the Spirit and the bride say, “Come.” And let the one who hears say, “Come.” And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who wishes take the water of life without cost (Revelation 22:17).
Surely though is there not a place for polite conversation, at table when we can exchange speculations and share our own conceivings so to confirm as the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, put it, “Jews, Muslims and Christians can agree about a very great deal concerning the definition of what it’s like to be God”?[1] Such agreements can neither redeem a man’s soul nor destroy it. They can deceive those so engaged however, into designing together outside the gospel of Christ another Jesus formed of their own art and imagination, a Jesus not of apostolic confession. Through this gospel they turn themselves over for the receiving a different spirit, the spirit of the antichrist, which cannot be received by hearing and believing apostolic preaching. Therefore, such polite conversations and consultations imply constructing a ghost gospel, a shadow gospel, a different gospel, which although not accepted by the living church could nonetheless lead astray brothers and sisters from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ. For there cannot really be another gospel; but only there are some who disturb the churches, desiring to distort the gospel of Christ for the purpose of human interests untamed by the law of the Spirit of life that sets us free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.
Apart from the Spirit of the Lord there is no liberty. Let us concede with Thomas Aquinas and all confessing Christian rationalists that God’s existence can be demonstrated by rational proofs. I would think that Steven L. McAvoy[2] as the Director of the Institute of Biblical Studies located in Lake Oswego, Oregon, USA probably expresses the North American evangelical consensus held by Biblically bound and philosophically grounded experts when he explains that this fact “does not mean that anyone can know God personally by reason alone, or that reason alone brings one to saving faith in God.” What it does mean, he continues, is “that the unregenerate can see God clearly enough through nature. They see at work ‘the eternal power and divine nature’”[3] of God, of which the apostle to the nations spoke in his letter to the saints in Rome (Romans 1:20).
O speaker, they see God clearly enough for what? Do you lead us from peril or into its pit? There is only one Biblical answer: to be subject to the wrath of God, which is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within and thus among them. The sinner’s reason can dismiss whatever another sinner’s conscience offers as proof for this truth, but God has nonetheless made evident to each of us this indelible (not indubitable) axiom of our uncertain existence before the one living God. From whence assurance of these things apart from the Scriptures? The universe was created by the word of God, who calls into existence the things that do not exist, so that what is seen was not made of things that are visible (Hebrews 11:3; Romans 4:17). Ever since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, namely, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived in the things that have been made (Romans 1:20). We are without excuse because no matter what streamlet carries us, the river of speech from which it flows reaches back to when we listened to our elders tell one another distorted tales of this truth.
There is an increasing probability I suppose, that the North American evangelical consensus will censure these things, conceding to siphon off God’s wrath from all polite conversation, that is, from acceptable academic discourse, Christian broadcast, ecumenical dialog and inter-religious encounters as they relate not only to the life of the church but to civil order generally under the rule of law. I suspect Dr. McAvoy and his ilk will not take this liberal track of accommodation, even though too many fellow evangelical scholars will follow the Archbishop of Canterbury’s lead in this direction, making for the sake of relevance (like a thorn that goes up into the hand of a drunkard) the allegory the medium of catachrestical catechesis. Because I drink water from Dr. McAvoy’s camp I want to rebuke his lack of faith, and chastise him for tempting me to forsake my confidence in the Lord. Dr. McAvoy decries,
“Without absolute truth, we are not equipped to evaluate moral issues. Without a sound spiritual and moral standard we cannot hold the truth of the Christian faith. If we do not hold to truth as absolute, knowledge will disappear, tyranny will follow in the wake of moral anarchy, and all that is good, right, and just, will be engulfed in a tide of intellectual and moral nihilism.”[4]
This boast abounds in arrogance. All such boasting is evil, because for each of us who knows the right thing to do, and does not do it, to him or her it is sin (James 4:16-17). Dear Doctor of Theology, you are worried and bothered about so many things, but really only one thing is necessary.
Do not fear ignorance, tyranny, anarchy and nihilism, the four horsemen of the apocalypse of your own making. It is because we hold fast to Christ that we enjoy the blessings of everything pertaining to life and godliness granted us by the divine power of our God and Savior, Jesus our Lord. We have absolute truth, and a sound spiritual and moral standard in Christ. But thanks be to God that though we were slaves of sin, we became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which we were committed, and having been freed from sin, we became slaves of righteousness. Dear doctor, let us fight the good fight of faith; let us take hold of the eternal life to which we were called, and together contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints.
He who is sovereign Lord determines the outcome of all skirmishes and squabbles raging today and coming tomorrow. We do not know what our lives will be like tomorrow. We are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away. Instead of our saying what will happen and why let us together declare, “If the Lord wills, we shall live and also do this or that.” Could we at least cast lots so we may know on whose account this calamity has struck us, for the lot puts an end to contentions, and makes a division between the mighty, because its every decision is from the Lord. I admit to too little faith to do this. Consider the weakness of my flesh. Help me now to present the members of my body susceptible to evil as slaves to righteousness, resulting in my sanctification. As your weaker brother I beseech you, remind me of what we all know, that we all have knowledge, while remembering together that knowledge puffs us up with pretentious arrogance, but love edifies. Help me love God that I might rejoice over being known by Him.
By your own testimony Dr. McAvoy, everyone knows there is no such thing as an idol in the world, and that there is no God but one. We know together that there are nonetheless so-called gods whether in heaven or on earth, as indeed there are many gods and many lords. Yet for us, thankfully, there is but one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and we exist for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through Him. However not all men have this knowledge. They are accustomed to the idol still, they believe still in sacrifices made to an idol; and their conscience being weak is defiled if we make our foundation for both absolute truth and a sound spiritual and moral standard anything other than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Their weak conscience is defiled too if we claim there is no foundation for these precious gifts, thus denouncing our foundation, which again, is Jesus Christ.
See to it that you do not refuse Him who is speaking. For if those did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, much less shall we escape who turn away from Him who warns from heaven. And His voice shook the earth then, but now He has promised, saying, “Yet once more I will shake not only the earth, but also the heaven.” Should not we remind one another what this means? And this expression, “Yet once more” denotes the removing of those things which can be shaken, as of created things, in order that those things which cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore, since we receive a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us have, give and show gratitude, by which we may offer to God an acceptable service with reverence and awe; for our God is a consuming fire.
God help us (and He does!), we’ve no need to fear these allies of death our brother names as ignorance, tyranny, anarchy and nihilism. Let no man’s heart fail on account of them. Who are these uncircumcised spirits that they should taunt the armies of the living God? Let us go out to meet these lying spirits in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel of old. Behold now is the acceptable time, behold now is the day of salvation, behold this day the Lord will deliver them up into our hands, and we will strike them down so that all the earth may know there is a God in Israel, and that all this assembly may know that the Lord does not deliver by sword or by spear or by hypothesis, deduction and experimentation; for the battle is the Lord’s and He will give our enemies into our hands.
Therefore let us together endure all things that we may cause no hindrance to the gospel of Christ. Let us endure all things for the sake of those who are chosen that they also may obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus and with it eternal glory. All who are His believe in Christ through the ministry of John the Baptist. This is a historical fact wrought by God in history. The True Light, which enlightens every man by coming into the world has come into the world. He confessed He must be lifted up, and so He was. Now whoever believes may in Him have eternal life. He said, “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to Myself.” And to those who prided themselves for their overseeing of the oracles of God He entrusted to the Jews He said in the treasury when teaching in the temple, “When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I AM, and I do nothing on My own initiative, but I speak these things as the Father taught Me. And He who sent Me is with Me; He has not left Me alone, for I always do the things that are pleasing to Him.” And He has not left us alone, for He has said, “and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”
Let us then not be consumed by these lesser things, but rather, both in and out of season let us preach the word, building one another up so we will not be ashamed of the gospel, celebrating it together as the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from beginning and ending in faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”
He who testifies to these things says, “Yes, I am coming quickly.” Amen. Come, Lord Jesus. The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all. Amen.
Notes:
[1] Rupert Shortt, “Rowan Williams, Belief and Theology: Some Core Questions,” in God’s Advocates, Christian Thinkers in Conversation (Grand Rapids, Michigan/Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2005), p. 20.
[2] Steven L. McAvoy, “Can Truth Be Known,” in The Fundamentals for the Twenty-first Century ed. by Mal Couch (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 2000), pp. 29-55.
[3] Ibid., p. 52.
[4] Steven L. McAvoy, “Can Truth Be Known?” in The Fundamentals for the Twenty-first Century, pp. 53-55. Italic and emboldened emphases added.
