Latest / Reformed Thinking / Mention-by-Denial: Apophasis and Pastoral Rhetoric in the English Bible

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Mention-by-Denial: Apophasis and Pastoral Rhetoric in the English Bible · Reformed Thinking

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  Hello and welcome back. You are listening to Reformed
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  thinking. I'm your host and I am here with
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  our resident expert to work through a stack of notes that
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  frankly, it looks a little intimidating today.
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  It. Is good to be here, and yes, the
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  stack is high, but I think the payoff is pretty substantial.
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  We've got some heavy lifting to do.
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  We certainly do. You know, usually when we sit
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  down for one of these deep dives, we're looking at a
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  specific doctrine or maybe a historical figure, something
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  like that. But today, looking at the prep
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  material, it, it seems like we're doing something a bit
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  different. We're talking about a word.
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  A single word. A single, very small word.
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  It's a small word, but it does a tremendous amount of work in
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  well, in Scripture and in the Christian life.
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  We're talking about the word no, no.
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  Or I guess be a bit more technical about it, The function
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  of the negative, the power of denial.
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  That's right. And I know how that sounds.
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  It sounds like we're about to spend an hour being, you know,
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  killjoy. It's like we're the theology
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  bullies coming in to tell everyone what they aren't
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  allowed to do. That's usually the stereotype of
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  reformed theology anyway, isn't it?
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  The frozen chosen the people who define themselves by what
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  they're against. Sadly, that's a reputation we
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  sometimes earn. But that is absolutely not what
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  we're doing today. We're looking at the concept of
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  negation, of saying no from 2 specific angles that I think are
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  going to surprise people, right? I see a two big buckets here in
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  the notes. Bucket number one is rhetorical.
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  It's about how the biblical writers, well, how they write.
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  And bucket number 2 is theological.
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  It's about who God is. Correct.
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  On the rhetorical side, we're looking at a device called
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  apophysis. That's a fancy Greek term for
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  mentioned by denial. It's the art of saying I'm not
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  going to talk about this while you are in fact talking about
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  it. Which, to be honest, sounds a
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  little bit manipulative. It sounds like a politician
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  saying I won't even bring up my opponent's terrible voting
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  record, you know, while flashing it on the screen behind him.
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  And it can be used that way for sure, but in Scripture it's used
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  for something much, much holier. And then on the theological
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  side, we have what's often called the theology of not.
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  This is the discipline of describing God by listing what
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  he is not. He is not visible.
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  He is not finite. He is not changing.
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  So we have a writing trick and a doctrine of God.
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  How do these two things connect? What's the bridge here?
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  The bridge is the idea of clearing space, A holy clearing
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  if you will. Rhetorical apophesis clears away
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  distractions to create emphasis in the text.
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  The illogical apophesis clears away our idols to prevent us
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  from worshipping a false God. So both of them use the negative
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  to protect the truce. That's it.
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  It's a protective function. That's a helpful way to set the
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  stage, and I think it's important to remind our
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  listeners where we're coming from on this.
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  We're standing on the shoulders of the Westminster Confession of
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  Faith. We believe the words matter,
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  especially the words of Scripture, and we care deeply
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  about worshipping God as He actually is, not as we might
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  wish Him to be. Amen to that.
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  If we get the nature of God wrong, we get everything wrong.
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  It's foundational. So let's start with the writing
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  style, the rhetorical side. The outline calls this the logic
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  bump. I like that term.
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  It describes that feeling you get when you're reading the
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  Bible and you hit a sentence that just makes you stumble
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  because it doesn't seem to make logical sense.
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  It's a speed bump in the text you're reading along,
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  everything's fine. And then the author says I will
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  not speak of X. And then in the very next
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  breath, he gives you a detailed description of X.
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  And as a modern reader, my immediate reaction is well, you
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  just lied or you're confused. Right.
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  It does feel dishonest to our ears, doesn't it?
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  We live in an age that prizes a kind of technical, literal
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  precision. If I say I'm not going to talk
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  about the budget and then I pull out a spreadsheet, you'd say I'm
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  being deceptive? Or that you forgot what you just
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  said 5 seconds ago? But the biblical writers aren't
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  confused. They're using apophysis.
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  It's also known by its Latin name Pretoriccio.
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  But let's just stick to hypothesis.
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  It's a discourse move. It's a specific strategy where a
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  speaker claims to pass over a matter while at the same time
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  highlighting it. Highlighting it.
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  OK, so that kind of verbal spotlight?
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  Think of it like a film technique.
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  Imagine a movie scene where something really terrible is
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  about to happen. Some act of violence.
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  Let's say the camera doesn't show the violence.
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  It pans away to a shadow on the wall, or it focuses on a vase
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  falling off a table. Right.
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  And somehow that makes it more intense.
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  Your mind fills in the blanks. Precisely.
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  By refusing to show the thing, the director forces your
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  imagination to do the work. The No creates a stronger image
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  than the yes would have. That's what the biblical writers
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  are doing. It's an attention management
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  device. When they say I won't mention
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  this, they're actually grabbing you by the collar and saying
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  hey, look at. That for saying this is so big
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  or so important, or maybe so obvious that I shouldn't even
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  have to mention it. But since I'm not mentioning it,
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  you had better pay extra close attention.
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  Let's look at the classic example, Hebrews 11, the Hall of
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  Faith. We have this massive, beautiful
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  list of Old Testament Saints, Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham,
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  Sarah, and then we get to verse 32.
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  Right after all this careful exposition, the writer asks A
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  rhetorical question. And what more shall I say?
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  For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barack, Samson,
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  Jephtha, of David and Samuel, and the prophets.
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  Time would fail me. It's the 1st century version of
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  I don't have all day. It is, He's claiming A
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  limitation. I have a deadline.
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  I can't possibly get through all this material.
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  But then he lists them. He dropped six names and a whole
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  category of profits. Yeah.
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  I mean, if he really didn't have time he should have just stopped
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  at Rahab in the previous verse. But think about the effect that
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  has on you as a the source material calls this hypothesis
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  by overflow. The author isn't stopping
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  because he ran out of ink or papyrus.
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  He's using the claim of limitation to create rhetorical
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  acceleration. Acceleration.
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  I like that word. The pace actually feels faster
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  right there. It speeds up the text.
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  Instead of giving us a slow, careful biography of Gideon than
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  a slow biography of Brock, he just bunches them all together
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  in a rush. Gideon, Brock, Samson, Jeff the
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  IT creates a sense of being overwhelmed.
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  It feels like a flood of names. That's the goal.
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  He wants you, the reader, to feel like the history of God's
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  faithfulness is so massive, so crowded with witnesses, that it
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  actually breaks the boundaries of the letter he's writing.
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  If he just wrote a steady plotting list, it would feel
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  like a catalog. Like a phone book.
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  Exactly. Boring and more importantly,
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  finite. But by saying time fails me, he
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  implies that there are thousands of other stories he isn't
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  telling. He opens the door to the
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  infinite. It makes me think of the end of
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  John's gospel where he says the whole world couldn't contain the
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  books that would be written about Jesus.
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  That is the ultimate apothesis, isn't it?
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  It's hyperbole, of course, but it serves the same function.
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  It tells you what I have written is just the tip of the iceberg.
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  The reality is far greater than I can describe.
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  So in Hebrews, no. The refusal to keep writing
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  these long biographies is actually a way of saying the
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  archives of heaven are fuller than you can possibly imagine.
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  Which, for a persecuted church like the Hebrews were, is
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  incredibly encouraging. It's a way of saying you aren't
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  alone. You are surrounded by a cloud of
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  witnesses that is too big to count.
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  Let's look at an O, and this one hits me a little differently.
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  It's in the letters of John 2, John 12 and 3 John 13.
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  This is the paper and ink refusal.
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  Though I have much to write to you, I would rather not use
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  paper and ink. See, I have always read that and
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  thought John was just tired, you know?
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  Or maybe Papyrus was expensive, or his eyesight was going.
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  And those are all practical possibilities.
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  Sure, we can't rule them out, but we have to read it
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  rhetorically first. He isn't just being lazy, he is
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  making a value judgement about the medium of communication
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  itself. He's saying the medium isn't
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  good enough for the message. He is prioritizing the content.
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  He's implying that the things he wants to discuss, the joy, the
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  fellowship, the heavy matters of the church are too weighty for a
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  letter. They require face to face
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  communion. It dignifies the relationship
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  then. It does.
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  It says are too important to me to be reduced to mere words on a
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  page. Ma'am, that is a word for us
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  today. We live in a world where we
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  think a text message is a real relationship.
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  We think a comment on the social media post is a real
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  conversation. And the apostle John is saying,
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  no, some things are lost in transmission.
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  I will not write with ink, he says, because I want our joy to
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  be complete. Notice that connection.
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  Yeah, the writing is incomplete joy.
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  The face to face meaning is complete joy.
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  No, there, no. The refusal to write is actually
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  a spotlight on the value of physical presence, of embodied
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  fellowship. It clears the way for the real
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  thing. It reminds the church that we
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  are an embodied people. We aren't just brains exchanging
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  data over the Internet. We are people who need to be in
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  the same room sharing our lives. It really changes how you read
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  those Closings to his letters. It isn't just a sign off.
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  It's a whole theology of fellowship packed into one
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  sentence. Absolutely.
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  OK, let's shift gears slightly. The outline moves us to what it
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  calls pastoral apophis. This seems less about
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  acceleration and emphasis and more about, well, psychology.
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  About how you talk to people you are trying to lead.
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  This is all about tact. It's about reassurance.
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  You know, sometimes a leader needs to apply pressure to a
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  group of people. Maybe they're being lazy, maybe
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  they're drifting into air, but if you come in swinging a
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  hammer, you might just crush them.
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  You put them on the defensive and they shut down.
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  Right. So the apostles use hypothesis
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  to apply that pressure without being heavy-handed or as the
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  notes say, hectoring. The example here is Second
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  Corinthians 9 verse one. Paul is fundraising.
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  Which is, let's be honest, the most awkward task in the
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  ministry Asking for money. And look at how he starts now.
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  It is superfluous for me to write to you about the ministry
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  for the Saints. Superfluous.
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  It means unnecessary. I don't need to do this.
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  And then he writes an entire chapter doing exactly that.
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  He gives them all the reasons they should give.
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  It's masterful. And think about the psychology
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  here. If Paul writes you Corinthians
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  are stingy and I don't trust you to follow through on your
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  promise. What happens?
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  They get angry. They zip up their wallets.
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  They feel attacked. They resent him, but instead he
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  says, I know I don't even need to mention this.
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  I know you're generous. In fact, I've been bragging
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  about you to the Macedonians. It's like a kind of polite
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  shaming, but in a positive way. I would call it aspirational
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  leadership. He is treating them as the
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  people he wants them to be. By saying I won't mention your
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  duty, he's assuming their goodwill.
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  He binds them to their own good reputation.
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  It's like when a parent says to a teenager, I know I don't have
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  to remind you to be home by curfew because you're so
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  responsible. Exactly.
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  Now the kid knows he's being watched.
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  The reminder is in the denial, but he doesn't feel like he's
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  being treated like a criminal. He feels like he's being treated
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  like an adult who can be trusted.
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  Paul is banking on their desire to live up to that implied
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  trust. He's leveraging their own
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  reputation to motivate them. It's a high wire act though,
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  because if they don't give, Paul ends up looking foolish for
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  bragging about them. That's the risk of grace, isn't
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  it? You treat people with dignity,
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  and you hope they respond in kind.
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  There's another side to this pastoral coin, Not just
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  motivating behavior, but also calming fear.
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  The example is first John 2.21. I do not write to you because
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  you do not know the truth. But because you know it.
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  Imagine the context there. The early church is being torn
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  apart by Gnostics and other false teachers who are coming in
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  and saying, you guys in the church, you don't know the real
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  secrets. You're outsiders.
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  We have the special knowledge. That would breed so much
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  insecurity. You'd start thinking, man, maybe
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  I missed something. Maybe I'm not really saved.
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  Maybe I'm not smart enough for this.
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  Spiritual imposter syndrome. It's a real and painful thing.
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  So John steps in. But notice he doesn't just start
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  by blasting the heretics, he starts by comforting the
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  believers using this negative structure.
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  I'm not writing this because you are ignorant.
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  He blocks the fear before it can even take root.
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  He does, he says, in effect. Stop that panic spiral right
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  now. You know the truth.
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  You have the anointing from the Holy One.
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  I'm writing to remind you of what you already possess, not to
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  sell you something new that you're lacking.
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  That no is a warm blanket. It's him saying I'm not talking
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  to you like you're stupid or spiritually deficient it.
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  Stabilizes the believer. It tells them you are on the
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  inside. Stand firm in what you've been
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  taught from the beginning. We have to talk about the
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  translation issue here though, because looking at the notes, it
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  seems like our English Bibles sometimes scrub these moments
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  out of the text. They do and you know it's
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  understandable from a certain point of view.
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  Translators want the text to flow smoothly in English and
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  mentioned by denial is awkward. It creates that logic bump we
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  talked about at the beginning. So they just.
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  They smooth it out. Often, yes.
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  So instead of a literal, it is superfluous for me to write a
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  translation. Might say something like there
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  is no need for me to write further details or just get rid
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  of it and say. Now regarding the offering.
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  The iron out, the wrinkle. But the wrinkle was the point.
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  The wrinkle was the wink from the author to the reader.
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  When you smooth out the awkwardness, you lose the
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  rhetorical strategy. You lose the pastoral tact.
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  You just get the raw command and it feels much harsher.
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  So what's the advice for the listener?
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  How do we spot these moments if they're sometimes hidden in
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  translation? You have to look for the
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  friction. If you're reading a more literal
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  translation like an NASB or an ESV and you hit a sentence that
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  feels a little bit contradictory or clunky, don't just assume the
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  author is confused, assume he's doing something on purpose.
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  Pause on the bump. Pause on the bump, stop and ask
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  why did he say he wouldn't talk about this right before he
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  started talking about it? That's almost always where the
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  real emphasis lies. That's where the gold is.
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  That's where it is. I want to move to what the notes
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  call level C This is hypothesis adjacent restraint.
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  Now we're getting into the weeds a little bit.
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  But these are important weeds. This is about liberty of
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  conscience, and for us here at Reform Thinking this is bread
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  and butter stuff. It is this is first Corinthians
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  7, verse 25. Paul says.
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  Now concerning the betrothed, I have no command from the Lord,
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  yet I give my judgement as one who by the Lord's mercy is
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  trustworthy. I have no command.
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  That's the negative. That's the no.
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  And it is a massive, massive admission.
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  Paul is an apostle. He speaks with the authority of
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  God. He could easily say God says
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  stay single or God says everyone must get married.
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  But he steps back. He pulls his punch in a way.
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  He creates A distinction. He very carefully separates law,
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  which is a command, from the Lord, from wisdom, which is his
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  Apostolic judgement. Why does that matter so much?
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  Why not just make everything a law?
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  I mean, it would be simpler. Do this.
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  Don't do that. It would be simpler, but it
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  would be legalism, and it would destroy the human conscience.
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  The Westminster Confession is so strong on this chapter 20.
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  God alone is Lord of the conscience.
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  We cannot bind a person's conscience with a rule that God
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  Himself has not spoken. So if Paul said thus, saith the
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  Lord, do not get married, when the Lord hadn't said that he
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  would be creating a sin where God hadn't created one.
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  Exactly. And that is a form of spiritual
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  tyranny. But, and here's the other
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  guardrail, which is just as important, He doesn't then say
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  so just do whatever you feel like.
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  Right, He doesn't say it doesn't matter.
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  Just follow your heart, he says. But I give my judgement.
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  This creates 1/3 category that we often miss.
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  We like to think in a binary it's either a sin or it's a
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  duty. It's either forbidden or it's
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  required. But Paul opens up this whole
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  middle category of wisdom. The good, better, best category.
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  Yes, he says. I don't have a command, so I
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  can't order you and you don't sin if you get married.
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  But I have the Spirit of God and I have Apostolic wisdom, and
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  here is my advice. In this present distress, it is
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  better to stay single. This is so relevant for how we
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  handle all the Gray areas today, things like schooling choices or
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  diet or entertainment or political engagement.
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  Absolutely. The church is filled with people
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  who love to turn their personal preferences into God's universal
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  laws. You must homeschool.
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  You must not drink any alcohol. You must vote for this
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  particular person. And Paul is teaching us the
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  discipline of the no, the discipline of saying I have no
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  command. We need more pastors and elders
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  who are willing to say that. Look, I have a strong opinion on
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  this and I think it's wise, but I have no command from the Lord
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  for you. That protects the flock from man
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  made legalism, but it still allows for genuine pastoral
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  guidance. It honors the authority of
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  Scripture by not adding to it. Precisely.
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  The silence of Scripture is just as authoritative as the speech
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  of Scripture. Where God stops speaking, we
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  must stop commanding. That's a hard discipline.
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  I think we like to control people.
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  We do, and that is why this rhetorical no, this I have no
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  command is actually a deeply spiritual act of humility.
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  OK, we're going to make a hard turn here.
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  We've been talking about how men speak, how Paul and John and the
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  writer of Hebrews use the negative to manage attention and
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  protect the conscience. The rhetorical side of things,
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  right? Now we're pivoting to the
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  theological side, how the Bible speaks about God, and this is
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  where the water gets deep very quickly.
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  We are moving from human speech to the divine nature itself.
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  The outline brings up a term here, the infinite qualitative
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  distinction. That's a term from Kierkegaard
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  originally, but it captures a biblical reality perfectly.
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  God is not just a bigger, better version of us, He's creator.
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  We are creatures. There is an infinite
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  unbridgeable gap between our kind of being and his kind of
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  being. Calvin had a famous line about
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  our minds related to this. He did.
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  The human mind is a perpetual factory of idols.
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  Factory just churning them out 2047.
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  And the raw material for those idols is usually our own
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  language. We take a human concept like
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  strength or love or wisdom and we just project it onto God, but
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  bigger. So we think my dad is strong and
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  Olympic weight lifter is stronger.
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  God is like that weightlifter but times a billion, right?
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  But that just gives you a kind of Zeus.
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  It gives you a superhero, it gives you a being who is still
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  part of the created universe, just really, really big and
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  powerful. It doesn't give you the creator
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  who made the entire universe out of nothing.
• 18:14
  So how do we avoid making a Super Zeus in our minds?
• 18:17
  We use the theology of not. This is also called apophatic
• 18:21
  theology. We describe God by saying what
• 18:24
  he is not. By systematically negating the
• 18:27
  limits of humanity, we protect the unique majesty of God.
• 18:31
  It's. Like a sculptor.
• 18:32
  That's the classic analogy. A sculptor doesn't add clay to a
• 18:36
  block to make a statue. He chips away all the marble
• 18:39
  that doesn't belong. We chip away the human
• 18:42
  limitations to reveal the shape of the divine.
• 18:45
  So let's look at the tools we use for this chipping.
• 18:47
  The Greek language I see here has a built in tool for this
• 18:50
  called the Alpha primitive. It sounds like a sci-fi weapon,
• 18:54
  but it's just a bit of grammar. In Greek you can often put the
• 18:57
  letter alpha the a sound at the front of a word to negate it.
• 19:01
  It's like our prefix on or in or non.
• 19:04
  Let's run through some of these biblical examples.
• 19:06
  A Rados. We translate it as invisible,
• 19:09
  but literally it's unvisible. Now when I hear Invisible, I
• 19:13
  think of a ghost or the Invisible Man from HG Wells,
• 19:16
  someone who is physically there but you just can't see them with
• 19:19
  your eyes. And see, that's the trap.
• 19:22
  That's the idle factory at work. Again, you're thinking of a
• 19:24
  physical object that is simply hiding.
• 19:27
  But eritos means God belongs to a different order of being
• 19:31
  entirely. He is spirit.
• 19:33
  He doesn't have a body to reflect light waves.
• 19:36
  He cannot be seen by creaturely eyes.
• 19:38
  So it's a category denial. It's not playing hide and seek.
• 19:41
  Exactly. It's like asking what color is
• 19:43
  the #7. It isn't red or blue.
• 19:45
  It's uncolored. It doesn't belong to the
• 19:47
  category of color at all. God is unvisible.
• 19:50
  That helps. What about Athertus?
• 19:52
  We translate it immortal or imperishable, but literally it
• 19:56
  means unrotting or undecaying. Unrotting that is a vivid image.
• 20:00
  Think about the ancient world. They didn't have refrigeration.
• 20:03
  Everything rotted. Food bodies, buildings, empires.
• 20:06
  Everything is subject to entropy.
• 20:08
  Everything is constantly falling apart.
• 20:10
  We feel that, my knees feel that every morning.
• 20:12
  Exactly. We are defined by decay.
• 20:15
  To call God aftatos is to say he is not subject to entropy.
• 20:18
  He doesn't age, he doesn't breakdown, he doesn't get tired
• 20:22
  or wear out. And then this one, a catalyzin,
• 20:25
  This is in Hebrews 7, Speaking of Christ priesthood.
• 20:28
  Indestructible life, literally undissolvable.
• 20:31
  It sounds like a chemistry term. It is, really.
• 20:33
  It's the idea of a compound that cannot be broken down into its
• 20:37
  constituent parts. It can't be dissolved.
• 20:39
  Why does that matter for me as a believer?
• 20:41
  Because the author of Hebrews applies it directly to Jesus, he
• 20:44
  has an indestructible life, and because we are united to Him by
• 20:49
  faith, our salvation is indestructible.
• 20:52
  If his life cannot be dissolved, then our union with Him cannot
• 20:55
  be dissolved. So these negative words,
• 20:57
  unrotting, undissolvable, are actually the basis for our
• 21:01
  security and our hope. They are the bedrock.
• 21:03
  If God could rot, we would all be in very big trouble.
• 21:06
  Let's move to the big four. The Westminster Confession lists
• 21:09
  these attributes that belong only to God, the incommunicable
• 21:13
  attributes. The things we cannot share with
• 21:15
  him, even in part. First up.
• 21:17
  Infinite, meaning not bounded. God has no edges.
• 21:20
  He's not limited by space, which we call His immensity, and he is
• 21:23
  not limited by time, which we call His eternity.
• 21:26
  Now be careful here. When I hear infinite, my brain
• 21:28
  just defaults to really really big and.
• 21:31
  Again, that is the idle factory. That's the trap.
• 21:34
  God isn't big. Space is big.
• 21:37
  God created space. He is not inside the box of the
• 21:40
  universe. He made the box.
• 21:42
  What's the practical comfort of that doctrine?
• 21:44
  The comfort is this, because he is not spatial, because he isn't
• 21:48
  a giant body taking up room, he is present everywhere fully.
• 21:53
  If God were just a giant, His left foot might be in Mars and
• 21:57
  his right hand on Earth, but because he is infinite Spirit,
• 22:00
  He is fully present in this room with us, and fully present with
• 22:03
  a believer in China at the very same moment.
• 22:06
  He's near to all his people. He's closer than your own skin
• 22:09
  because he isn't fighting with you for physical space.
• 22:11
  Second. One immutable, not changing.
• 22:15
  This is a huge battleground in theology today.
• 22:17
  It is. People don't like a static God.
• 22:19
  We want a God who relates to us, who goes on a journey with us.
• 22:22
  We want a God who evolves. This is the heart of what's
• 22:25
  called process theology or open theism, the idea that God is
• 22:28
  learning and growing and adapting to what we do.
• 22:31
  But the theology of not the classical view says.
• 22:34
  It says no God is act as porous pure actuality.
• 22:39
  He is fully realized perfection. Think about it logically.
• 22:43
  For God to change, He would either have to change for the
• 22:45
  better or for the worse. If he changes for the better.
• 22:48
  But he wasn't perfect before that change.
• 22:50
  He was lacking something. He was deficient.
• 22:52
  And he changes for the worse. Then he ceases to be God.
• 22:56
  He is decaying, so he cannot change.
• 22:59
  Malachi 3.6 For I am the Lord, I change not.
• 23:03
  Therefore you, sons of Jacob, are not consumed.
• 23:07
  I noticed the logic there because I don't change,
• 23:09
  therefore you aren't destroyed. Our entire salvation depends on
• 23:12
  it. If God could change, He could
• 23:14
  wake up tomorrow morning and decide that grace was a bad
• 23:16
  idea. He could decide that the cross
• 23:18
  wasn't really enough. The only reason we are safe is
• 23:21
  because He is immutable. OK, third one.
• 23:23
  This is the hardest one for people, I think.
• 23:25
  Impassable without passions. Deep breath.
• 23:28
  This is the one that gets people really upset.
• 23:30
  Well, yeah, without passions. Cool.
• 23:32
  That sounds like a stone. It sounds like a computer.
• 23:35
  Yeah. The Bible says God loves.
• 23:36
  The Bible says God hates sin. The Bible says God rejoices over
• 23:40
  us with singing. How can you possibly say he has
• 23:44
  no passions? You're right to push back on
• 23:46
  that. If impassable meant God doesn't
• 23:48
  care or God has no feelings, it would be a heresy.
• 23:51
  It would contradict the whole Bible.
• 23:53
  So what does it mean then? We have to define passion the
• 23:56
  way the older theologians did. The word comes from the Latin
• 23:59
  Petit, which means to suffer or to undergo.
• 24:02
  It's related to our word passive.
• 24:04
  Passive meaning to be acted upon by something else.
• 24:07
  Correct. A passion in this sense is an
• 24:10
  emotion that happens to you often against your will.
• 24:13
  You're walking down the street, someone punches you and you feel
• 24:15
  pain. You didn't choose it, you are
• 24:17
  the victim of it. Or someone cuts you off in
• 24:19
  traffic and you feel a surge of rage.
• 24:21
  You just overrides me. I lose control for a second.
• 24:24
  You are a patient of that emotion.
• 24:26
  To be impassable means God is never a patient.
• 24:29
  He is never a victim of outside forces.
• 24:31
  Nothing happens to God. He doesn't have a bad day
• 24:33
  because the world is messy. He acts.
• 24:36
  He's not acted upon. So his love, what is that then?
• 24:40
  His love is not an emotional reaction to how cute and lovable
• 24:43
  you are. It is a settled, eternal,
• 24:45
  voluntary act of his own will. He loves because he is love, not
• 24:50
  because you triggered some kind of emotional response in him.
• 24:52
  And his wrath. His wrath isn't a temper
• 24:54
  tantrum. It isn't God losing his cool
• 24:57
  because we frustrated him. It is his settled, holy, active
• 25:01
  opposition to all evil. So impassability doesn't mean he
• 25:04
  is cold, it means his love is sovereign and UN manipulable.
• 25:08
  Exactly. You can't hurt God's feelings.
• 25:10
  You can't emotionally blackmail God.
• 25:12
  His love is too strong to be a mood swing.
• 25:14
  It's a rock. It actually makes it much more
• 25:15
  comforting. I don't want a God who is as
• 25:17
  emotionally unstable as I am. We want a rock, not a mirror of
• 25:20
  our own instability. 4th one simple without parts.
• 25:24
  The doctrine of divine simplicity.
• 25:26
  This one is a real brain Bender. It just means God is not made of
• 25:29
  stuff. No Lego block theology.
• 25:30
  Right. You and I are composite beings.
• 25:33
  We're made of body and soul. Our bodies are made of organs.
• 25:36
  Our personalities are a mix of different traits.
• 25:38
  I can be 20% hungry, 30% tired and 50% happy all at once.
• 25:43
  God isn't a pie chart of attributes.
• 25:45
  He is not. He is his attributes.
• 25:47
  He doesn't have love. He is love.
• 25:49
  He doesn't have justice. He is justice.
• 25:51
  His wisdom and his power are the same thing.
• 25:54
  And because he is simple, because he has no parts, he
• 25:57
  cannot be taken apart. Anything with parts can
• 26:00
  theoretically fall apart. Or be destroyed.
• 26:02
  And if God were made of parts, something or someone would have
• 26:05
  had to assemble him, and the thing that assembled him would
• 26:09
  be greater than him, and that would be God.
• 26:11
  Wow. OK so the take away is God is
• 26:14
  indestructible because he is simple.
• 26:16
  He is the uncreated, uncomposed self existent 1.
• 26:19
  So let's just pause for a second and look at this picture we've
• 26:22
  painted. We've used the theology of not
• 26:25
  to chip away the idols. We're left with a God who is
• 26:28
  unvisible, unchanging, unsuffering, undivided.
• 26:32
  The. Absolute the transcendent.
• 26:34
  God. And honestly, it's kind of
• 26:36
  terrifying. It should be.
• 26:37
  It feels cold. It feels incredibly distant.
• 26:41
  It feels like a Deus abscondatus, a hidden God.
• 26:44
  He's safe from idolatry, sure, but he's so far away I can't
• 26:48
  touch him. I can't relate to pure act.
• 26:50
  If we stopped there, we would be Deists or perhaps Muslims.
• 26:54
  We would have a great and terrible God, but we would not
• 26:57
  have a father. This brings us to Part 6 in our
• 26:59
  notes. The Christological Pivot, the
• 27:02
  yes after all the nodes. This is where the whole thing
• 27:04
  turns. We need the knot to clear the
• 27:06
  space of our idols, but we need the yes of the gospel to fill
• 27:09
  that space with a person. John one verse 18 No one has
• 27:13
  seen God at any time. There it is.
• 27:15
  That's the apophysis. That's the knot.
• 27:17
  He is Aortos invisible. The only begotten God who is in
• 27:20
  the bosom of the Father, He has explained him.
• 27:22
  That word explained it's execosato.
• 27:25
  It's where we get our word exegesis, Jesus.
• 27:27
  Jesus is the living exegesis of the Father.
• 27:29
  He translates the unknown invisible God into a language we
• 27:32
  can understand, human flesh. Think about Colossians 1.15.
• 27:36
  He is the image of the invisible God.
• 27:39
  There's that paradox again. You've got icon, which means a
• 27:42
  visible statue or image right next to Eritos Invisible, the
• 27:47
  visible image of the invisible God.
• 27:49
  Paul is putting those two words together on purpose.
• 27:52
  He's saying you want to see the invisible God?
• 27:54
  Look at Jesus of Nazareth. You want to see the immutable
• 27:56
  God? Look at Jesus.
• 27:57
  The same yesterday, today and forever.
• 27:59
  Wait, hold on. How does that work with
• 28:00
  impassability? If God is impassable, meaning he
• 28:03
  can't suffer, but then Jesus clearly suffers on the cross and
• 28:07
  weeps at Lazarus's tomb, isn't that a flat contradiction?
• 28:11
  It's the central mystery of the Incarnation.
• 28:13
  In the one person of Christ you have two natures.
• 28:16
  The eternal divine Son of God remains immutable and impassable
• 28:19
  in His divine nature. But he took on a mutable,
• 28:22
  passable human nature, a real body and a real human soul, so
• 28:27
  that he could suffer and die for us.
• 28:28
  That makes the cross infinitely more significant.
• 28:31
  It does. It wasn't just a good man dying,
• 28:33
  it was the infinite God taking on the limitations of the
• 28:36
  finite, taking on the yes of human experience so that he
• 28:39
  could save us. So the No preserves His Majesty,
• 28:42
  but the Yes reveals his mercy. Exactly.
• 28:45
  Without the no, God becomes just a bigger version of us, a cosmic
• 28:49
  buddy. Without the yes, God remains A
• 28:51
  terrifying, distant abstraction. In Christ we have both.
• 28:55
  We have the majesty and the Mercy in one person.
• 28:58
  Hebrews one verse 3 calls him the exact representation of his
• 29:02
  nature. The word there is character.
• 29:04
  It's like the impression a signet ring makes on hot wax.
• 29:07
  When you look at Jesus, you aren't seeing a watered down,
• 29:10
  simplified version of God. You are seeing the character of
• 29:14
  the Father perfectly translated into human history.
• 29:17
  So we don't find God by emptying our minds or going into some
• 29:20
  mystical trance. No Eastern mysticism here.
• 29:23
  We find God by looking at the historical man Jesus Christ.
• 29:26
  He's the authorized image. Any other image is an idol.
• 29:29
  That's the anchor for everything.
• 29:30
  That is the gospel. Let's bring this home.
• 29:32
  We have about 10 minutes left. We like to use the head, heart
• 29:34
  and hands model for application. Let's start with the head
• 29:37
  doctrine. How does this theology of not
• 29:41
  reshape our thinking? I think it's primary job is to
• 29:44
  kill theistic personalism. Define that for us again.
• 29:47
  It's the Buddy God theology, the idea that God is just a person
• 29:50
  like us, only without a body, who lives up in the sky and, you
• 29:54
  know, helps us out. The cosmic therapist or the
• 29:56
  divine Butler? Right, the theology of not
• 29:59
  forces us to be humble when we read the Bible and we see God
• 30:03
  doing something we don't understand.
• 30:04
  Maybe in the conquest of Canaan, maybe in our own lives, when
• 30:07
  tragedy strikes, our first reaction is often to judge him.
• 30:11
  Well, I wouldn't do that. That doesn't seem fair to me.
• 30:14
  But if God is infinite and we are finite, if he is simple and
• 30:17
  we are composite, we have no right to put him in the dock.
• 30:20
  His ways are untraceable, as Paul says in Romans 11.
• 30:23
  It stops us from projecting our own 21st century morality onto
• 30:27
  the eternal God. It shuts our mouths.
• 30:29
  It reminds us that we are the clay, not the Potter.
• 30:32
  What about the heart, the affections?
• 30:34
  We talk about the comfort of stability.
• 30:36
  This is so crucial for anyone who struggles with anxiety.
• 30:39
  We live in a world of constant flux.
• 30:41
  The economy changes, our health changes, our relationships
• 30:44
  change. If God changed too, we would
• 30:47
  have absolutely nowhere to stand.
• 30:48
  We'd be building our house on quicksand.
• 30:50
  But because he is immutable, he is a rock.
• 30:53
  Because he is impassable, his love is a fickle or reactive.
• 30:57
  You can throw your whole weight on him and he will not buckle.
• 31:00
  I think about that with my own sin.
• 31:02
  Sometimes I feel like, OK, surely I have annoyed God too
• 31:05
  much this time. He has to be done with me now.
• 31:08
  That's you projecting your own limited patience onto God.
• 31:11
  Your patience runs out. His does not because it isn't a
• 31:14
  finite reason, source or an emotion that gets drained.
• 31:17
  It is a covenant commitment rooted in his unchanging nature.
• 31:21
  That is rest. That's real rest for the soul.
• 31:24
  It is finally hands our practice, our worship.
• 31:27
  How does this change what we do on Sunday morning?
• 31:30
  It fundamentally challenges the concert mentality of worship.
• 31:33
  The entertainment model. So much of modern worship is
• 31:35
  designed to make us feel good, to make us feel connected, and
• 31:38
  those aren't bad things. But the theology of not calls
• 31:41
  first for reverence. The source material quotes
• 31:44
  Ecclesiastes 5.2. God is in heaven and you are on
• 31:48
  earth. Therefore, let your words be
• 31:50
  few. When was the last time we were
• 31:52
  just silent in church? Uncomfortably silent.
• 31:54
  Just silent before the majesty of this God we've been
• 31:57
  describing. The theology of not suggests Our
• 31:59
  liturgy should have moments where we acknowledge that God is
• 32:02
  a consuming fire. We aren't just popping in for a
• 32:05
  chat with a friend. We are approaching the Holy of
• 32:08
  Holies. It calls for a holy clearing in
• 32:11
  the service itself, then yes. Clearing away some of the noise,
• 32:14
  the fog machines, the hype to just stand in awe before the
• 32:18
  Aerodos, the invisible God. But then always ending with the
• 32:21
  assurance we have in Christ. Always ending with Christ,
• 32:24
  because if you stand before the invisible God without a
• 32:26
  mediator, you die. But in Christ we have bold
• 32:30
  access into the throne room of grace.
• 32:33
  So bring it all together, the rhetorical apophysis, the I
• 32:37
  won't write this. It trains us to read carefully,
• 32:41
  to value what isn't said, to value face to face community.
• 32:44
  And the theological hypothesis that God is not it trains us to
• 32:47
  worship correctly, to strip away our idols and bow before the
• 32:50
  true and living God. It seems like no really is one
• 32:54
  of the most positive life giving words we have.
• 32:56
  It clears the construction site so the divine architect can
• 32:59
  build something true and beautiful.
• 33:00
  I want to leave our listeners with this thought.
• 33:02
  From the notes, it says true theology begins by shutting our
• 33:05
  mouths regarding our own imaginations.
• 33:08
  So that we can open our eyes to God's self revelation.
• 33:12
  That's the key. Stop imagining what God is like.
• 33:15
  Stop guessing. Let the knots of scripture
• 33:18
  silence you're guessing so you can hear what He is actually
• 33:21
  said in His Son. That's the challenge for this
• 33:23
  week. Next time you open your Bible,
• 33:25
  look for the no. Look for the author saying I
• 33:28
  won't write this. Look for the description of God
• 33:31
  as invisible or immortal or unchanging, and don't just skip
• 33:36
  over it. See it as a mercy.
• 33:38
  Those knots are the walls of the fortress that keeps you safe in
• 33:41
  a chaotic world. Thank you for diving into the
• 33:43
  deep end with us today. That was heavy, but so good.
• 33:46
  It was a pleasure. This has been reformed thinking.
• 33:48
  We'll see you next time.