Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.
Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. Because of these, the wrath of God is coming.

• Colossians 3:1-6

Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what they have done.

• Matthew 16:24-27

“ ‘The ship was threatening to run aground; the moment was at hand to turn the rudder an angle of exactly 180 degrees.’ This Barth did in the Epistle to the Romans. Here he emphasized the deity of God, God as the ‘wholly other’, the ‘infinite qualitative distinction’ between God and humanity. You don’t say ‘God’ by saying ‘man’ in a loud voice. Theology is the study not of human philosophy or religious experience but of God’s word. Barth was taken aback by the response to his book.
“ ‘As l look back upon my course, I seem to myself as one who, ascending the dark staircase of a church tower and trying to steady himself, reached for the banister, but got hold of the bell rope instead. To his horror, he had then to listen to what the great bell had sounded over him and not over him alone.’ (Christian Dogmatics, Foreword)”

• Tony Lane, A Concise History of Christian Thought

Karl Barth (1886-1968) was a Swiss theologian.  He was much like P. T. Forsyth, as the text above shows.  He studied the theologians before him and the philosophers.  He came to the realization that he was studying the wrong books.  We learn the very nature of God by studying the Bible, not what man thinks about God.

The first Scripture talks about how we are risen with Christ, and we should set our sights on higher things than those in this world.  And you would think that theology would be a higher thing.  Yet, if we apply theology to our own thinking using an earthly conceived philosophy, our words may be highly thought of, but is there any substance without taking our theology and comparing it with what Scripture says.

These days, they even attack Scripture.  The detractors say, “Scripture says this or that, but that is a metaphor.” And by the time they have apply some eloquent speech, the “this” or “that” that was in the Bible is the exact opposite of what the person using rhetoric has dreamed up.  It may sound nice, but there were errors in the logic, or the rhetoric simply made things up.

And now, the argument is between one man’s invented idea of what God is and another man’s invented idea of what God is.  For this debate, we do not need to refer to Scripture.  It is all intellectual fantasy.

Barth, in the midst of his studies, came to a crossroads to see that going forward would be intellectual brilliance with no substance.  The only way, as Jesus says in the second Scripture above, to not forfeit his soul, was to turn around and go the opposite direction.

He asked, “What does Scripture say?”

Regardless of what a person with good rhetoric can twist into knots, can we unravel those knots and find anything that is firmly based on the Scripture that defines the nature of God?

I have read hundreds of books that talk about God, living the Christian Life, and becoming a Christian.  The best ones are the ones rooted in Scripture.  Reading philosophy can make us think, but our minds should take those thoughts to see if that really is what God meant.

We find that meaning in the Bible.

If you like these Tuesday morning essays about philosophy and other “heavy topics,” but you think you missed a few, you can use this LINK. I have set up a page off the home page for links to these Tuesday morning posts. I will continue to modify the page as I add more.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.