Summer Gone

I haven’t posted much recently on this blog, but I do intend to use it more frequently once I start teaching for the academic year.  My summer school obligations were very stressful, and I was crushed in more than one way.  But I am ready to go back to the basics of my faith, pray, do some planning, and launch myself into my new career.

My reading plans for the summer didn’t turn out so well.  I was going to read Fear and Trembling quickly, and then move on to Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations.  Turns out I haven’t finished the former.  Oh well.  I will finish it this week, and likely put the latter on hold indefinitely—unless I can do an insane amount of planning before Day 1 at my high school.

In other news, I started translating Leibniz’s Monadology for fun.  Leibniz is the best of all possible rationalists. I’m not keen on rationalism, to put it gently, but he seems to be a bit more familiar with the Bible than many of the others who worked on the Enlightenment project of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.  He may even have had a genuine faith in Christ, though it’s not immediately clear in the works of his with which I’m familiar. All the same, the translation has been fun, and challenging.  I’ll post it once I’m done with the first draft.

A Brief Thought on Expectancy and the Faith of Abraham

One of my bosses gave an introductory speech today in front of the first-year teachers in the Mississippi Teacher Corps, the program through which I am living and working in the Delta for the next two years. He said he disapproves the language “high expectations” and “low expectations.” We should not have any expectations, he advised.

Now, upon reflection, I see that it is impossible not to have expectations. It is even good to have expectations. But what my boss is driving at, if I am to agree with his advice at all, is the question of that about which we have expectations. He was saying, I think, that we should not have high or low expectations about the kids we’ll be teaching, the conditions under which we’ll be teaching, etc.  But I don’t like the language of high and low expectations, nor can I see myself, in any honest way, having no expectations.

So I would like to abandon my boss’s language in an attempt to take in (at least in part) his advice.  I’ll turn instead to Kierkegaard: “He who always hopes for the best grows old and is deceived by life, and he who is always prepared for the worst grows old prematurely” (Fear and Trembling, Eulogy on Abraham).

As I recall my past self to my present self, I see that I have been like the latter kind of man depicted here, like him for a long time, since I was around sixteen. Maybe as a boy I was otherwise, and maybe as a boy I decided to be like this man, always prepared for the worst, grown old in heart so early. This would be like the man who has low expectations, in my boss’s language. This would be someone who had moralized and learned to despise the world in a sophisticated way—a La Rochefoucauld who tries to turn all virtues into vices. He sounds like a wise old man, but is only old (in heart) and not necessarily wise. It is sadly what I became.

The first man, who hopes for the best, would be like the man who has high expectations. This man is doomed to a different kind of failure, a failure to genuinely live and experience and grow, though he grow old in his disappointments.

“But Abraham had faith,” writes Kierkegaard, “and therefore he was young.” The old man and the prematurely old man, then, are the unfaithful. The one unfaithful because he believes according to his own wishes, puts trust in a self-made lie, and the other because he only trusts himself, if even that. Abraham trusted in the promise given by God. In my boss’s language, Abraham had expectations neither high nor low, but he did indeed have some expectancy; he expected exactly what was promised to him, something no one without faith could ever expect. The measures of high and low are within the realm of what is possible. Abraham expected the impossible, for what was promised was impossible when it was fulfilled.

So I must fight against that prematurely old man in me, the one who hopes for worst in order to defend himself against the heartache that comes from infidelity, the pain from disaster, and the wretchedness from failure. I must have faith, joy, be at peace, be young. And I must not let myself become the self-deceived man who refuses to acknowledge heartache, pain, and wretchedness. I must have faith, joy, be at peace, be young. This faith means that I will take heartache, pain, and wretchedness for what it is: there should be no defense against it, and no excuse to brush it aside.

Now my next step is to listen, to hear what God might promise me in Mississippi, so I’ll know exactly where to aim my expectancy—not high, not low, neither to the right nor the left, but right at what has been promised.

From the Notebook: a conversation

—You believe that words can give you peace?
—Is that a scoff?
—It’s a bit ridiculous.
—You’ve never tried to calm someone with words?
—But that peace is so temporary. Another circumstance will come along, another external war, that upsets the peace within.
—What if I consoled someone with words that remained true in all circumstances.
—Fine. Suppose he knew this to be the case also. That would not stop him from forgetting it in the midst of troubles.
—So, is there some force that could work against forgetfulness?
—If so, what would it be called? Not memory, that would beg the question.
—No, you’re right. Let’s call it “faith.”
—Okay.
—Now, if my words are met with faith in the anxious person, he could have peace so long as he has faith in my speech, which means that he does not forget the words that keep their peace-giving power in all circumstances.
—Now, don’t forget what I said about him knowing it to be the case….

On Augustine’s Confessions: his wager among the books

Along Augustine’s long road toward submission to biblical authority, he comes to a place where he takes up the Academic philosophers’ recommendation to suspend belief about some matters until certainty arises. The astronomers are adequate to expose the dubious character of the Manichæan fables, but this does not give him enough reason to take up the Bible again. He also does not hold on to the Academics, for the same reason that he says he did not overly admire Cicero’s Hortensius, given in Book III, Chapter iv:

Perchance it was that book I was stirred up, and enkindled, and inflamed by: this thing only in such a heat of zeal took me off, that the Name of Christ was not in it. For this Name, according to thy mercy, O Lord, this Name of my Savior thy Son, had my tender heart even together with my mother’s milk devoutly drunken in, and charily treasured up: so that what book soever was without that Name, though never so learned, politely and truly penned, did not altogether take my approbation.

So now two elements have come into focus:—unwillingness both to rejoin the Manichæans and to submit wholeheartedly to the Academic philosophers. But the lack of will toward these two sects does not adequately account for his decision to join the Church in Milan as a catechumen. This seems to come out of nowhere. Augustine, at this point, has not submitted himself to catholic doctrine, nor accepted the claims of the Bible’s legitimacy or authority. To this point he writes the following in Book V, Chapter xiv:

For first of all the things began to appear unto me as possible to be defended: and the Catholic faith, in defense of which I thought nothing could be answered to the Manichæans’ arguments, I now concluded with myself, might well be maintained without absurdity: especially after I had heard one or two hard places of the Old Testament resolved now and then; which when I understood literally, I was slain. Many places therefore of those books having been spiritually expounded, I blamed mine own desperate conceit, whereby I had believed, that the Law and the Prophets could no way be upheld against those that hated and scorned them.

Ambrose’s preaching had at least exposed Augustine to alternate possibilities for biblical interpretation, though not supplied him with adequate counter-argument or refutation of the Manichæans. Augustine has only the possibility of a refutation. He doubts that the Manichæans accurately describe the natural world, that biblical doctrines necessarily lead to absurdity, and that the philosophers can offer him the wisdom that he craves. There are many possibilities, but no feelings of certainty, no signs of necessity.

Yet did I not resolve for all this, that the Catholic way might be held safely; seeing it might be able both copiously and not absurdly, to answer some objections made against it: nor yet did I conceive that my former way ought to be condemned, because that both sides of the defence were equal. For although the Catholic party seemed to me not to be overthrown, yet it appeared not to be altogether victorious.

Philosophically, Augustine has the negative. This might mean that he is an Academic philosopher par excellence.  But when considered psychologically, he might say of himself merely that he is unwilling. He has been unwilling toward the Manichæans and the Academic philosophers, and now it is clear that he is equally unwilling toward the Church.  Rather than a philosophical virtue, Augustine seems to think his unwillingness is a sign of intellectual failure.

And so there remains a little confusion about his decision to join the Church as a catechumen. Why would he make this move? Why would he submit himself to biblical doctrine without the positive, without the will, and without faith?

At first glance, there is no sense in it. A reader might be suspicious that Augustine is knowingly omitting from the narrative some reason for making this move. This suspicion should be rejected for two reasons:—first, because part of Augustine’s project is to show how God mercifully moved him throughout his life toward the catholic faith, and so to leave out a known reason for becoming a catechumen would only take away from that project, since all reasons so far have been redeemed and subsumed under God’s gracious plan;—second, because the move is not as unreasonable as the first glance might suggest. To the second point, Descartes in Part III of the Discours says that he will continue to go along with the laws and customs of his country and keep himself in the religion in which he was instructed from his youth, even while claiming to enter into a skeptical project. Maybe Augustine’s thinking matched this. But in case anyone calls the honesty of Descartes’ words into question,* another plausible answer might be found in Pascal’s wager argument. In Pensée 233† he writes,

You wish to go to the faith, and you do not know the way; you wish to be healed from unfaithfulness, and you ask about the cure for it: learn from those who have been bound like you, and who now wager all their goods; these are people who know the way that you wish to follow, and who are cured of an evil of which you wish to be cured. Follow the form through which they began: that is, doing everything as if they believed, taking the holy water, having masses spoken to them, etc.; that will make you believe, even naturally, and you will be rendered compliant.‡ – But this is what I fear. – And why? What do you have to lose?

What Pascal describes may in fact be based on his interpretation of instances like Augustine’s own story, but the anachronism does not take away from the thought behind what is written: What has Augustine got to lose by joining the Church while he waits for a sign giving further direction? Having determined that Manichæanism is a risk, and that the Academic philosophers do not promise what he craves, and knowing that the Church does at least promise such, while being unsure of the substance behind that promise, he is making the gamblers move to stay in the game and wait to see what cards turn up.

Before this point, he had been prevented from such a wager because of the high risks that he had associated with the Bible and biblical doctrine. Ambrose’s preaching, however, changed the stakes. Mirroring Pascal’s account of the relationship between miracles and demonstration in Pensée 842,° this is the pivotal point where Augustine obtains the first half of what is sufficient for his conversion, namely, the lack of conflict between the Bible and his own criteria for reasonableness. Ambrose’s words make it less repugnant to him, and he no longer dismisses it on the basis of the absurdity of its content, as he had done previously because of his Manichæan prejudices. So the thinking that goes into Pascal’s wager now applies, once there is any probability, however slight, given to the claim of the authority of the Bible, since it presents infinite gain to Augustine if true and no loss if false.

More needs to be said for the sermons of Ambrose that effect this wager, and also the large change in Augustine’s hermeneutics that comes from reflection on 2 Corinthians 3.6.

*And rightly, I think, should we suspect Descartes of being less than honest.

†My translation.

‡The verb in French is abêtir, which means to be rendered bête or beastlike. It has connotations to docility, tameness, acquiescence, submission, dullness, silliness, stupidity, and simplicity. Pascal’s use of it here has some shock-value, but I think that he also means what he writes.

°The following is my translation of one of the paragraphs in the middle:

The proofs that Jesus Christ and the apostles draw from the Scriptures are not demonstrative; for they say only that Moses said that a prophet would come; but they do not thereby prove that this is the one, and that was the entire question. These passages, therefore, are used to show that someone is not against the Scriptures, and that there appears to be no conflict, but not that there is agreement. Now, this is sufficient, exclusion of conflict, along with miracles.

The word translated conflict is répugnance in French, here taken in the logical sense of inconsistency, incoherency, incompatibility, impossibility, etc. In Augustine’s case, the last two sentences could be modified: Ambrose’s interpretations are used to show that the Bible is not in conflict with the criteria for reasonableness, and that there appears to be no conflict, but not that there is agreement. Now, this is sufficient, exclusion of conflict, along with submission of the will. So Augustine has the first part, and does not find the second until the garden scene in Milan.

On Augustine’s Confessions: the Hortensius dialogue provides the negative

Augustine, in the Confessions, recalls a few books from his studies in youth that he considers to have contributed to the overall confession of his life. Among those of which he gives favorable mention is Cicero’s Hortensius,* described in Book III Chapter iv.

When Augustine is around eighteen or nineteen, he is supposed to be acquiring the excellences of oratorical and written style in order to become a lawyer. He approaches the reading of Cicero—“whose tongue almost everyone admires, though not so his heart”—expecting to find beautiful language that he might adopt for his own uses in the rhetorical fields. But Augustine takes the Hortensius to heart in a strange way: he enjoys what is written more than how it is written! This aberration is celebrated by Augustine because that book happens to contain an exhortation to philosophia, which Cicero straightforwardly defines as “the love of wisdom,” as opposed to the common love of dispute that characterizes many activities under the same name. The change in his manner of reading coincided neatly with a message that would change his young views and values.

This was what delighted me in that exhortation, that it did not engage me to this or that sect, but left me free to love, and seek, and obtain, and hold, and embrace Wisdom itself, whatever it was.

It was a turning point in his life in which he left behind “vain hopes” of becoming a wealthy or famous lawyer in order to pursue “the immortality of wisdom.” He even admits that at this time his prayers were turned toward God. And then he writes at the beginning of the next chapter, “I resolved thereupon to bend my studies toward the Holy Scriptures, that I might see what they were.”

Before examining his view of the Bible, it is worth looking at Augustine’s account of the Hortensius in light of the Phædrus dichotomy between books that are barren and those that are fecund. While Augustine speaks favorably of it, he does not bother sharing with the reader any of its content other than the exhortation to love wisdom and how that exhortation led him to reexamine the Bible. It cannot be considered among the fruit-yielding books, because it lacks a manner of endurance. He receives it, and he takes its words upon him, but they do not positively teach him. The Hortensius only provides the negative. In other words, it only leads him away from his current practices, but does not impregnate him with knowledge beyond its own words. It is efficacious, but not fecund. It tells him to pursue wisdom, but Augustine adds “quæcumque esset”—Wisdom itself, “whatever it was”—showing that he was entranced by the thought, but that its marrow escaped him at the time.

In Chapter v he admits that the Bible’s message eluded him in his youth, even though the exhortation to wisdom had encouraged him to read it. It seemed “far unworthy to be compared to the stateliness of the Ciceronian eloquence. For my swelling pride soared above the temper of their style. . . .” Evidently the impression left by the Hortensius, while providing the negative, did not teach Augustine the humility that he considers prerequisite to an understanding of the Bible. It gave him the appearance of wisdom by means of the exhortation to pursue wisdom, but it did not give him the wisdom itself; and so he did not at that time pursue the catholic faith, in which he believes wisdom is found, but fell into the good words and strange Manichæan teachings.

Bringing the Hortensius under the scheme developed from the Phædrus is convenient for speculating about Augustine’s views on the matter, but it will become clear that his views on the Bible do not fit so conveniently into the scheme.  This is equally insightful, though, and so the scheme will continue to be used to bring out a principle that Socrates and Phædrus did not anticipate.

*Because the dialogue is no longer extant, Augustine’s account must suffice for a judgment in this inquiry.

On Augustine’s Confessions: the relationship of many interpretations to one written word

In a previous post, I already noted that Augustine says love stands over all the diverse interpretations of Genesis. His central argument is, in short, that if the interpreter believes that all the Law and Prophets is summarized by the commandments to love his God and his neighbor, then he discredits his own interpretation by violating love whenever he quarrels about the supposedly true meaning of the words. And in Book XII chapter xviii of the Confessions, Augustine writes:

All which things being heard and well considered of, I will not strive about words: for that is profitable to nothing, but the subversion of the hearers; but the law is good to edify, if a man use it lawfully, for that the end of it is charity, of a pure heart and good conscience, and faith unfeigned.

This sentence—which contains citations from 2 Timothy 2.14 and 1 Timothy 1.5,8—may seem straightforward on its surface, but it has roots tapping into some of the main themes running like an underground river through the entire work. First, on the surface, quarrels about words can cause divisions among people who are explicitly commanded to strive to agree on all things. Whereas the disputes may have begun from a desire to come to a better understanding of a biblical passage, which all had agreed beforehand was true, all hope of reaching this better understanding is thwarted by the disappearance of love in the midst of such a dispute. And how exactly is the hearer “subverted”?  Maybe his heart cannot be pure because he is told to hold another’s words in suspicion, even if that one reads from the same passage and presents a tenable interpretation. Maybe his conscience cannot remain good because he will have at the same instant assented to two interpretations while also assenting to the tenet of one possible interpretation, making him divided against himself and unable to plainly confess the truth of the passage. Maybe his faith will become feigned because he will have changed the basis for that faith, now subject to pondering one interpreter against another instead of resting in the unchanging character of the plainly written words; it is no longer a faith in God’s words, but now a faith that must waver in between little gods who have hijacked the words in their disputes. The moment of subverting the hearer is when one claims as his own what had been common to all. In other words, the interpreter’s unduly bold claim forces the hearer or reader to choose one among many instead of the one at the source of the many.

Now this is getting below the surface into one of the main themes of the Confessions:—the relationship of the many and the diverse to the one. The problem arising here in the inquiry about interpretation echoes lofty discussions on both the trinity of God and the catholicity of the church. Of course, for Augustine, three persons are in one God, and many members are in one body, the church, and so an indefinite number of true meanings are found in one written word. In all of these cases, the one is supposed where the many are apparent.  And this supposition has an interesting effect.

At the end of the same chapter cited above, xviii, Augustine poses the possibility that a reader might find a true or truth-yielding interpretation that even the writer did not intend or would not understand. This means that the written word might have the capability of expanding into new territory, of advancing its message according to the sophistication or intelligence of the reader. But this is not in exact accord with the supposition of oneness just mentioned. This is oneness inasmuch as it is a source whence the many pour out. But this sense suggests that the one loses control of the many, that the many have a longstanding independence from the one after they are drawn out. More concretely, this means that the new interpretation suggested by one man stands independent of the passage it was founded in, and also independent of the diverse other interpretations all standing independent from that passage. If two interpreters severally pull out of Genesis what Moses did not put in to it when he wrote it, then these two interpretations can be held against each other on the level of new revelation, competing holy books, whose legitimacy depends not on Genesis or Moses, or any of the Bible, but on the authority of the interpreter. This, clearly, is not what Augustine thinks or advocates.

The supposition of the one mentioned above leads him away from that possibility to a much stronger statement in chapter xxx:

. . . Let us in such manner honour that servant of thine, the dispenser of this Scripture, so full of thy Spirit, that we may believe him, when by thy revelation he wrote these things, to have bent his intentions unto that sense in them, which principally excels the rest, both for light of truth, and fruitfulness of profit.

And then even stronger in xxxi:

And if there be a third truth, or a fourth, yea, if any other man may discover any other truth in those words, why may [Moses] not be believed to have seen all these; he, by whose ministry, God that is but One, hath tempered these holy Scriptures to the meanings of a many, that were to see things true, and yet diverse? For mine own part verily, (and fearlessly I speak it from my heart) that were I to endite anything that should attain the highest top of authority, I would choose to write in such a strain, as that my words might carry the sound of any truth with them, which any man could apprehend of concerning these matters; rather than so clearly to set down one true sense concerning some one particular, as that I should thereby exclude all such other senses, which being not false, could no ways offend me. I will not therefore, O my God, be so heady as not to believe that this man obtained thus much at thy hands. He without doubt both perceived, and was advised of, in those words whenas he wrote them, what truth so ever we have been able to find in them: yea, and whatsoever we have not heretofore been able, no nor yet are, which nevertheless can be found in them.

So the written words also contain the many truths coming from it. The passage is not a source of new revelations, but a single revelation from which interpreters of various abilities and conditions may see different truths, like different faces of the same solid, while also having the other truths available to their consideration if they should change their hermeneutic. And every single interpretation is linked back to the source, back to Moses and the intention under which it was written. The one is not merely the source of the many, it also comprehends the them and lays claim to them. Two interpreters now point back to the original written word in their conversation with each other. Any given passage is now under the scrutiny of the whole of Moses’s writings, or the whole of the Bible. No single interpretation can stand if it does not stand alongside all the other interpretations that hold the written words to be true. This brings to mind something Plato mentions in the Phaedrus, something I will save for another article.

A Testimony of Outstretched Arms

What follows is another quoted article from my old blog.  The unnamed sin to which I referred numerous times is masturbation, a strange question that plagues the mind of most young men who put any emphasis on the word purity.  I put this up as an informative warning, but there is nothing graphic about its description below and it can be read, I think, by anyone without offense.  It should be noted that I am not making universal claims about masturbation, but about conscience.  If my reader’s own conscience is stirred about masturbation particularly, then I thank God.

I lay on my backside with my arms stretched up to the ceiling—no, to God. I didn’t know how to escape the torment. I couldn’t run away from the temptation, because it was with me, inside me. This temptation is like a shadow, it seems, that cannot be detached by struggling with hands and feet and teeth and sweat and blood. Everyone experiences this temptation, for I know that no temptation overtook me except what is common to all humankind (1Cor. 10:13). Like my shadow, it would always be touching at least one part of my body, because I cannot keep my feet off the ground for more than a few seconds. But even shadows are melted, dissolved, destroyed utterly, in the presence of the Father of lights, in whom “there is no variation or shifting shadow” (Jam. 1:7 NASB) What? Is the devil saying that even the Great Light would cause me to cast a shadow behind me? Not if his light also shines within me! So I wait for that day with longing when “the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb” (Re. 21:23 ESV; cf. 22:5, Is. 60:20)—to be surrounded and filled with light that overcomes the uncomprehending darkness!

I couldn’t escape my shadow as I lay there. As much as I affirm Paul’s command to “flee from idolatry” and all sin (1Cor. 10:14), I was on my back with no strength in my legs, because there was nowhere to run but upward, and I had no means to get there but the strong arms of my Father, to whom I was reaching. With plain confidence Paul teaches, “With the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it” (v.13). Some New Age “sage” may prescribe a remedy for escape, if he admits to avoiding sin at all, by means of inward contemplation or confessing that the body is illusory. I, however, had to pray to the Almighty; otherwise I would drown in my own shadow. To go inward would’ve been of great benefit only if I had a mind to consult my conscience or the Holy Spirit. But when I looked inward I did not set my mind of things of the spirit but on things of the flesh, and there was only death looming at the advice of inward contemplation. To say that the body is illusory would’ve given me adequate excuse, like the Gnostics conjure up, to dive into my sin, for if the body is an illusion, then the crucifixion of Jesus Christ is nothing more than a stage show (cf. 1Pe. 2:24), and also the sins committed by the body are illusions, and my conscience ought to be free in all lawlessness. But “we must not put Christ to the test” (1Cor. 10:9). No, I had to pray and trust. “God is faithful” (v.13), and only by the mightiest hand can his people be delivered from slavery (cf. Ex. 3:18-20). My help couldn’t come from my own devices. The priest Aaron was commanded to bless the people thus: “The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace” (Nu. 6:24-26). Blessing comes from the Lord, the Lord, the Lord. I cannot bless myself and keep myself, my face does not shine with glory that can heal, and the storm in my mind cannot give itself peace. The Lord must look upon me and be gracious to me if I am to live another day.

On my back, I began to speak to him in sheer desperation, and I recounted to him everything that I believed, scrambling in my heart to gain some defense against the tempter. This was my honest prayer: “I believe that you created the whole world, and formed and filled it—establishing your law and imbuing it with your glory. I believe that you created the first humans in your image. I believe that you spoke to them. I believe that they disobeyed and were corrupted because of their desire. I believe that you are holy and require holiness of your people. I believe that you delivered your people from oppression in Egypt. I believe that you gave them the written Law to bless them.

“O Lord, I am confused. There is no written commandment against my sin, and if not for my conscience crying out I would not see any trouble in my soul because of this. A while ago I thought I heard a voice telling me that this was sin, and I thought it was your voice. But it is not anywhere written. How am I to know?”

I paused for a moment, and then continued, because God in his grace made my conscience bold: “I believe that you called Abram and gave him your promise. I believe that you call your people to live by the law of faith, not the law of works. Oh! Now I see, Lord. There was nothing written for Abram. There was only your presence. He heard and responded. Abram was called to a mystery and given a promise that he could not see, but he walked all the same, and he believed in the promises. His faith was credited to him as righteousness. So all whom you have brought into the glory of your Son are called to a mystery and given a promise that can only be seen by a faithful heart.

“It’s faithful obedience to remember what you spoke to me and keep the commandment. And believing that you have spoken to me, and that you do not lie, and that you have never changed since the beginning, and that you always confirm what is written in the Scriptures,—to keep the commandment can only be credited to me as righteousness. I will obey the voice of the Spirit and consider the true testimony of the written words.”

It was an important prayer. In my temptation I was inclined only to think of God as a set of written words, a volume of moral information. The devil will always try to reduce the living God down to an inert and lifeless code—portraying what the Lord says as an algorithm instead of something “living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Heb. 4:12). The written words are not God. For how can the Maker of the world be contained in paper pages and leather binding if “heaven, even highest heaven, cannot contain him”? (2Ch. 2:6) Jesus rebuked the Jews who searched the Scriptures assuming they could obtain eternal life in them, because really the life is found in Christ himself, and the Scriptures bear witness about him (Joh. 5:39f.). Jesus says the word was not “abiding” in these Jews, who had never heard or seen God (vv.37f.). He doesn’t mean that they hadn’t memorized enough of the Old Testament writings. He means that they were so full, perhaps even full of “sacred” knowledge, that they were unable to provide lodging for the words, in the same way that the inn in the city of David did not have room for Messiah (cf. Lu. 2:7). They knew the words well enough, but they did not have spiritual understanding, which comes only by the voice of the the Spirit.

Likewise, as I was there on my back, I had been regarding the written words of God while not regarding the Spirit, who had beforehand spoken to me about this sin. I remembered that the apostle wrote, “You shall be holy, for I am holy” (1Pe. 1:16; cf. Lev. 11:44), and another, “God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness” (1Th. 4:7); however, I would not let these words abide in me, to teach me what it is to be holy before the Lord. I would not consider these as applying to the sin to which I was being tempted. “This act has nothing to do with holiness or profanity,” the devil would say. “You did not hear the Spirit say that. It was your own thought. You have not seen the glory of God,” he would continue. If he can get me to disregard the Spirit, then he can get me to disconnect the words commanding holiness from the profanity of the sin.

But when I prayed there, the Spirit gave me words anew, reminding me of Abram and the faith that comes from hearing. The Lord reached down and picked me up. The Spirit’s arms wrapped around me and banished the shadow, relieved me from the temptation. My means of escape was not an algorithm, not a ten-step plan, not inward contemplation, not denial of the world. I was rescued by the abiding word of God and the fellowship with the Spirit, who brought the written words to life in me.

God restored me that day. Praise the Lord. I became again like the disciples after the resurrection: “They believed the Scripture and the word which Jesus had spoken” (Joh. 2:22). I believe the Scripture and the Spirit’s words. So I stood and walked away from the temptation, by the Lord’s grace.