Catacomb Resident Blog

How Fleshly Nature Works

28 July 2024

Nothing originates here. I said we should keep our eyes on that truth.

In terms of practical outcomes, that doesn't mean everything is fixed. The idea that destiny is locked in on a detailed level is a human fantasy, arising from a fear in our fallen sense of hubris. You still have choices, but they are constrained, hemmed in by boundaries that are not always visible to the flesh. We understand gravity and the limits of matter instinctively, but we don't understand moral boundaries and the consequences of crossing them without revelation.

Be wary of your own imagination. Don't put up straw men for target practice. Real people tend to shoot back. A biblical cosmology expects higher powers to set limits and enforce them in one way or another. It's not about the facts, but aims at fundamental moral questions.

We've already discussed the Unseen Realm at length, and will continue to do so. At a very minimum, scholars like Heiser alert us to what the Jewish scholars actually believed, particularly leading up the time of Christ. We can discuss whether their beliefs are accurate, but then Heiser also connects that body of belief with what the Apostles wrote. The filter is there, but you must pay attention to catch subtle references. The Apostles were Second Temple Jews. It is very hard to justify rejecting that level of scholarship, that weight of evidence. It's not hard to trace how the church leadership left all of that behind after the First Century, leaving a much smaller subset of truth that constitutes common Christian belief today.

We know we cannot comprehend the whole truth of the Unseen Realm. What we can deduce from statements in Scripture, in light of the context in which it was written, a certain amount of rhyme and reason for some of what we face as humans. God put us in this world to take His side in His debate with the Devil and his allies on the divine council. We testify that He alone is worthy of glory and adoration; He alone is worthy of faith and submission. It is our duty to swear allegiance and fealty to Christ; He owns us by right of redemption. So far as we could possibly understand, this is the crux of the dispute in Heaven.

Thus, the primary temptation is to do anything that amounts to betraying our duty to worship and service of the Lord of glory. If we imagine that we are simply preferring our own talents and capabilities, then we have betrayed Christ, because only the Devil would propose such a thing. It is taking sides with the Devil.

There is no free choice in regards to serving. Both God and His divine council outrank us all. You will choose one heavenly power or another. Every choice you make testifies for one side or the other. Nor is it as simple as knowing whether the thing itself is good or evil; it goes far beyond that on a fundamental level of fealty. It's not a question of success or failure in the thing itself. Whose servant you choose to be determines whether you are at peace with the Creator and His Creation. If you do not work with Him in gathering the harvest together, then you are scattering it.

You are obliged to keep pressing forward for Christ; your duties are ever increasing. The goalposts are moving -- don't let them outrun you. You are never finished until you die. Without persistence, you fail Him and you cannot do justice. There is no neutral position. You are either led by the Holy Spirit or you are serving the Devil.

Human behavior at large will always belong to Satan. Christ warned that following Him was so strenuous that the majority would always decline. For this reason, human choices at large are guided by the Devil and his allies. Humans without a conscious and determined submission to Christ cannot do good. They cannot possibly understand what is morally good, and only rarely do they manage to be harmless. Satan would never offer them truth and righteousness; he and his allies are determined to destroy us. Humans under his authority will ever be guided away from the glory of God. That's how the fleshly nature works.


Comments

John the Fool

In terms of practical outcomes, that doesn’t mean everything is fixed. The idea that destiny is locked in on a detailed level is a human fantasy, arising from a fear in our fallen sense of hubris.

I hope you know that I am not looking for a fight or to somehow correct you, but as someone who has experienced the Lord's sovereignty/Providence in some rather astounding ways, who even tried to prevent and/or sabotage the Lord’s revealed will to no avail, I do not know how to reconcile those words with my own experience and understanding.

Being consistent with my admittedly very high view of sovereignty, I tend not to make comments on such things because in the end, it matters not if we believe we have choices or not, the Lord does not need us to understand what is clearly not meant to be understood but only believed. His will is done regardless of if we believe it requires so much of our cooperation/free choices or not.

Determinism or fatalism is simply the error of deferring to the divine side of the paradox, which arguably, nearly every pre-modern religion did. The Greeks, for example, held the oracles with such reverence that they kept them in the state’s treasury. But that is not where the accent lies today, and I believe that a lower view of sovereignty is detrimental to faith.

I do not wish to pull you into the free will/sovereignty paradox, but my question would be what advantage is there to believing that we in some sense have a choice? I know that on my end, the temptation is towards inaction, but the positive side is that I have no doubt that the Lord’s will is accomplished no matter what I do or do not do.

Such abstracta pulls us out of the medium through which the life of faith is actually lived, and that is only in the present moment and in relation to God. If one has a genuine relationship with Jesus and is led by the Spirit, then we would obviously choose to obey him. But then it could be argued that the choice we made, although of our ‘free will,’ was not in fact our choice at all. Our only choice is whether or not to submit to the choice that has already been made by the Lord.

The past is gone and the future unknown, even if we obey and make the right choices, that does not mean things will turn out as we would like or expect. Having expectations at all, at least for me, has proven to be an error. If our choices often do not produce the outcomes that in some sense motivated us to make them, which is often the case, then that just kicks the can down the road or brings us right back to the paradox: free will/sovereignty, and then we have to concede that whatever the outcome, the Lord’s will was done, or that we failed plain and simple.

I obviously defer to the later because I have no faith in myself. It is the Lord who causes me to will and to do for his good pleasure. Foreknowledge does not equal causation or determinism, but my job is not to understand how it works but to believe and submit according to the light and faith I have. I can do no more.

CatRez

I think the issue here is the degree of freedom, not whether we have any. What most people don't understand is that this degree of freedom varies from one individual to the next; we are not all called to the same experience. But we can always choose to play along and be blessed, or not play along and have a rough time. But I can't count how many times I pressed God for guidance on some choice and He told me, "Pick one. It won't matter."

John the Fool

No disagreement with you there. I am not a determinist/fatalist, but that is the trap I often fell into in the past. The subjective element is also important, and I do not seem to come across that much in Churchian teachings that attempt to 'get everyone on the same page' and treat the spiritual life like a one-size fits all affair.

Also, what is often left out of the discussion is the divine will/action. We do have freedom, and many of our choices simply do not have cosmic significance, other than if we make them by faith because Paul says that whatever is done apart from faith is sin, so all of our choices should have our relation to the Lord as their primary motivation.

On a side note, I just noticed that my last paragraph begins by saying I defer to the later when it should say the former.


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