The DNA of God

I received a sideways compliment recently. Hearing of my involvement with missions to Venezuela, I was asked by Michael Horner while we were in London if I had some Hispanic heritage. I don't as such and said as much. I'm not very dark compared to many, but I'm dark enough to have made the Hispanics at work wonder if I was Hispanic. So, I understand where the question came from. I went on to explain my mutt heritage: English, German, Irish and other north European, Cherokee, and something unknown that seems to be Mediterranean of some sort. Michael mused that he noticed that people of mixed heritage do tend to be physically strong and attractive people.

Where does one go with a comment like that? I duly appreciated it, although I've never seen myself as particularly attractive. So I opened up a discourse on genetic speciation and the reintroduction of lost genetic potential in isolated populations. (It's okay - he understands these things. One of the things I enjoyed in London was the intellectual capital represented in our group.)

At precisely the same time as this was taking place in London my wife, Lois, and our kids were spending time in the Sierra de Perijá with the Yukpa Indians. I had wondered from an anthropological perspective of their level of homogeneity. After they got back top civilization, Lois posted some photos from their time there and I noticed striking morphological clues that this tribe had likely been genetically isolated for some time. While she respectfully didn't get any photos, she offered recently that there was an alarmingly high incidence of physical deformity in the tribe. That's an indicator that the population size has remained small enough to lose the genetic variety necessary to cover genetic defects. In other words, people can't find mates in their own ethnicity that aren't too closely related to them. That's the problem with Kinism. (By the way, it also evidences that speciation does not result in eventual mutation.)

Also in London with our group were several people from South Africa. Our purpose was to minister to an ethnic group who vacations in London in the summer. Remarkable about the presence of the South Africans is that there were white and black South Africans working side by side. I remember the years of Apartheid and how God changed all that seemingly overnight. There are still racial tensions in South Africa, but the testimony of our brothers and sisters we met in London is that God had changed their hearts. Now, with new hearts for the people of God here were two ethnicities formerly at great odds working side-by-side to reconcile yet a third ethnicity to the One who reconciles all things.

Genetic information is what causes all living things to reproduce after their own kind. Young are produced in the image of their parents. If this is observed then could it not also be observed that God creates his spiritual children after His spiritual likeness? This is DNA that comes directly from God. It is inextricable from the existence of those who have His DNA. Just as physiological DNA determines our basic morphologies, spiritual DNA determines our basic spiritual nature. We don't need a good mix of genes to give us healthy spiritual DNA, however, because God gives His children spiritual DNA that is perfect and incorruptible. Inasmuch as we are His, we possess His beauty. It doesn't matter what your human ethnicity or physical DNA - if you are a child of God, you are beautiful.

Black And Reformed

Some of our brothers and sisters who hail from the black American culture hold to a reformed soteriology. This is no small thing for them and Pastor Lance pointed to a discussion at The Council of Reforming Churches that asks the question, "Can we be both Black and Reformed?"

I was born in what was then a rather homogeneous area of Ohio and raised there throughout my early formative years. My exposure to Black culture was on TV with programs like Good Times and Fat Albert. I was (and still am) vocally imitative. My kids love for me to read to them because I affect different voices. I could imitate nearly all the the Fat Albert gang. Despite these television shows, I knew little of the real black culture they caricatured. On a trip to Detroit for my dad to obtain his ham radio license, we left very early in the morning and brought breakfast with us to eat on our arrival. I remember my aunt offering leftover orange juice to a black lady on the street and getting a strange look.

A few years later we moved south and I was introduced further to black culture. As far as I could see, these were people like any other people who had been dealt a difficult cultural hand. However, my new associates were kind in general and I made several friends among them. In high school, I enjoyed hours of writing and improvising jazz with a remarkable saxophone player who happened to be black. I even had a chance to sing in a black country church one Christmas. The walls of the small church were held together by a small cable and the church was packed. The choir was small but dynamic and I could swear the whole building moved with praises to God. I fell in love with black gospel music then.

In the Marines I continued to broaden my experience with brothers in arms who were black. For a short time I played with an R&B group that played base clubs - we did Keith Sweat stuff mostly. The group gave me my black nickname "P-bone". Many of my fellow jarheads who were "dark green" (they said there was no white and black - only green) were also brothers in Christ. As I strayed from the faith, among the brothers God sent to bring me back was a godly black man named Larry Williams. I started going to the base chapel and sang in the choir. The choir director was black and the choir was thoroughly mixed. We sang a variety of things, but I learned how to sway and clap here.

I love learning different cultures. I was envious of my wife and children as they spent the summer in Venezuela and received firsthand experience of the culture there. I love reading mission books like "Cowboy Boots in Darkest Africa" by Dr. Bill Rice and "Peace Child" by Don Richardson. I've been deployed to England and the Middle East with the Marines and Venezuela on missions. All these required some education as to developing and utilizing an understanding of the culture.

Some observations regarding cultures:

1) Multiple cultures can provide an opportunity to destroy moral mores in each. Wisdom must be employed when transversing or mixing cultures that the law of God as manifested differently in each is not compromised.
2) Mot people understand only a single culture and other cultures often prove to be a stumblingblock to them. In this case a certain lack of cultural sensitivity is to be anticipated and some education may be lovingly offered to these.
3) Culture is fluid and changes over time, often at dramatically different rates. I'll call this "cultural progression".
4) Cultural progression carries with it popular philosophies and outlooks that influence the understanding of the people in that culture. This understanding has theological ramifications for any religious group with a contingency in that culture.
5) Reciprocally, the introduction of theological concepts influences cultural progression.
6) Therefore, Christians must understand that a culture may cloud the truth of the gospel in some ways and reveal it particularly well in others.

With regard to Reformed theology, we should understand that much of our theology is a reaction to theologies we regard as false for whatever reason. Reformed theology, by definition, is a reaction to the poor theology of the Roman Catholic Church - originally with regard to Pharisaical abuses where ecclesiology and soteriology overlap. The purpose therefore is to arrive at the truth.

I am a Reformed theologian because I believe it is the best reading of scripture, not because I necessarily want Reformed Theology to be true. I want what's true to be true and I didn't particularly like Reformed theology when I started realizing the teachings in scripture. They challenged my previous understanding. However, I wanted to align myself with truth, so I changed my understanding and reassessed my presuppositions. My personal culture (if there is such a thing) changed. My prayer is that it has changed to be more in accordance with the transcendent culture of the Kingdom of Heaven.

So, whatever culture that can be identified, whether white, black, Asian, Hispanic, or any number of the hundreds or thousands of particular iterations of culture in the world, can be said to have elements that cloud the truth and elements the reveal the truth. We must be diligent to cast off those elements that cloud the truth and use those elements that reveal the truth to proclaim the truth. From 1 Corinthians chapter 9:

19 For though I am free from all men, I have made myself a slave to all, so that I may win more.

20 To the Jews I became as a Jew, so that I might win Jews; to those who are under the Law, as under the Law though not being myself under the Law, so that I might win those who are under the Law;

21 to those who are without law, as without law, though not being without the law of God but under the law of Christ, so that I might win those who are without law.

22 To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak; I have become all things to all men, so that I may by all means save some.

23 I do all things for the sake of the gospel, so that I may become a fellow partaker of it.

This past weekend, I sang a little solo with my wife at church in a portion of a program that was choreographed and styled after the 1940s white American culture. I wore a top hat, a coat and scarf over my tux. My wife wore a nice 1940s style dress and makeup. People knew that we were from 2007, but they understood the words I sang in the context of the 1940s. It made a nice warm-up for a program that was otherwise steeped in worship and praise for our God who deigned to become a man so as to pay the penalty of sin for men.

So, can you be black and reformed? Just as much as you can be white and Reformed. If I cannot share the gospel as a white man, I must wear the culture that people understand as though it were a piece of costumed attire. "You're not one of us, are you..." may be the sentiment of someone of a different culture "...but I understand what you are saying."

The multitude of cultures speaks to the extravagance of God's grace. The pursuit of truth is possible in each of them. However, while we can enjoy many of the particulars of a culture in the truth, there are elements that must be cast off and new elements that must be added. The culture must change as we grow closer to God. This is true of the white culture as well as the black culture. You can be black and Reformed with the understanding that the grace of God is greater than all this.

The Origin of Sin and the Determination of the Elect

Reformed theologians are hardly settled on the precise origin of sin. There are two or three general camps that help to frame the debate. Primarily, there is supralapsarianism and infralapsarianism. (There is also “sublapsarianism”, but its precise definitive position has been confused with other positions.)

Supralapsarianism is the position that God determined the elect logically prior to creation. In this position, He created with the plan of allowing the Fall to occur.

Infralapsarianism, by contrast, holds that God did not determine the elect until logically after allowing the Fall, which He could determine logically after creation.

Both positions provide for God to allow the Fall, but the difference is in the order of His decrees. Many Reformed theologians do not hold strictly to one or the other, but rather develop an understanding using these as reference points. (As it is, all hyper-Calvinists are supralapsarians, but not all supralapsarians are hyper-Calvinists.)

I had planned on going into the whole eternity-temporality thing. However, I’m convinced I’m the only one who understands it. Therefore, I offer this quote from Gene Bridges on Triablogue. He stated the essence of my reasoning in rather simpler terms and may be better fit for public consumption. I offer it here for your consideration:

"What God decrees for His glory, men do with their own motives. For example, God hardened Pharaoh’s heart in order to judge Egypt’s gods. Pharaoh’s will was not violated, in that God allowed Pharaoh’s love of evil, which was his natural state, to increase, keeping Israel from leaving. Pharaoh did not keep them from leaving in order to glorify God and worship Him. He did it because he hated God, Moses, Aaron, and the slaves. What God did for a righteous motive, Pharaoh did out of hatred for God. The motive behind an act, therefore, determines whether or not it is truly sinful. In theory, if Pharaoh had done what he did to glorify and worship God, he would not have been condemned, however, a man that does such a thing is, in reality acting in faith and love for God and would have to be regenerate. Such a man would not hold Israel back; he would have released Israel and taken down Egypt’s gods. That was not God’s purpose for Pharaoh. For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, "FOR THIS VERY PURPOSE I RAISED YOU UP, TO DEMONSTRATE MY POWER IN YOU, AND THAT MY NAME MIGHT BE PROCLAIMED THROUGHOUT THE WHOLE EARTH." So then He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires.

God is the author of evil, in the sense that He is first cause of all things. This simply goes with pay grade. His decrees, through either action or inaction render events necessary, but, evil is the result of permission, not His direct causation, or a result of His judicial hardening of sinners, an act of justice Scripture supports repeatedly, as in the above text and in Romans 1. Nothing happens that compels a man or demon to act in a way it does not wish to act or against its nature. He may withhold constraining grace, as in the fall, in order to render a thing certain, but the agent of the evil, in this case Adam simply acts in accordance with his nature as a second cause, for reasons and motives sufficient for himself and arising from his own nature. Men thus do what God decrees, but for motives all their own. In so doing, they may incur judgment. In this way men act as infallibly as if they had no liberty, yet as freely as if there was no decree rendering their acts certain. See, for example, the predestination of Judas betrayal and Jesus crucifixion. These men did, with evil desires, what God desired and planned to happen since before creation, for Jesus is the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world itself.

Another Scholastic distinction I alluded to above even though we admit is has been discussed to death and fraught with difficulties since the Middle Ages, is the distinction between God's absolute power (Potentia Absoluta) and ordinary power (Potentia Ordinata). Whatever the difficulties of those distinctions in the older theologies (See Richard Muller's discussions in Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics - it's too long to enter for my purposes here), I think they are useful, at their root, insofar as they help accurately describe the way God uses means. With respect to things like creation ex nihilio, miracles, the Incarnation, regeneration, etc. God's absolute and direct control is very involved. In all other things, the decrees fall out according to the nature of second causes "either necessarily, freely, or contingently."

Notice that even in the creation narrative, we have an implication of second causes. There are commands that say, "Let there be..." and others that say ,"Let the earth bring forth..." In the Incarnation, we have a direct miracle @ conception, but it isn't as if Jesus just appears full formed as a 30 year old man like some sort of animus springing from Mary's womb. Rather, there is a normal pregnancy; He grows through childhood into adulthood, etc. We speak of regeneration in two senses: the wider and the narrower. In the narrower, we mean the direct act of God raising the soul dead in sin to life, but we are comfortable pointing out that "means" are the ordinary mode of that occurrence. As Dr. Sproul has said, the Spirit and the Word of God (preaching, studying, reading, etc) are working together."

I would consider that the logical order of the decrees is immaterial. They each derive directly from God's eternal nature. Here, it is more fruitful to understand that God, as the first cause, allows second order causes according to His created order.