The Word Dwelt–Like a Tabernacle
When the Old Testament Israelites traveled with the tabernacle, and when they camped around it, they could rightly say, “God is with us.” But the tabernacle was a shadow, a type, of something greater—Someone greater. Jesus is the true and greater tabernacle who came to dwell among sinners. He is Immanuel, God with us.
The opening of John’s Gospel contains some of the most epic words that have ever been written. The language in John 1:1–14 is beautiful and profound, and the main subject—the Word—concerns the one for whom and by whom all things were made.
In John 1:1–14, we learn that the Word always was, that the Word was before everything else, and that the Word came into the world like light—divine light. God’s speaking was at the same time a shining, and this light was revelation, the revelation of the incarnate Word.
When John tells us about what we call the incarnation, he says, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).
That whole verse is dense with wonderful things, but I only want to focus on one of them. The Word dwelt among us. Let’s think about that.
The verb dwelt is ἐσκήνωσεν, which is from the verb σκηνόω, and it means to dwell or encamp. This is why the Greek translation of the Old Testament uses the word σκηνη for tent or tabernacle. In the Old Testament, the presence of the tabernacle signaled the presence of Yahweh drawing near to the Israelites in their camp.
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The Greatest Prooftext for the Doctrine of Eternal Generation?
The reason Jesus acts the way he does, the reason Jesus is worthyof the worship he receives, is that Jesus’ origin is what it is: he is the eternal Son of the eternal Father, the heavenly Son of the heavenly Father, the only-begotten Son who is from above, not from below, whose filiation is not of this world.
The doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son is a central feature of orthodox Christian teaching. In this doctrine, the church confesses not simply that the second person of the Trinity is the one true and living God but how he is the one true and living God: as the Son eternally begotten by the Father who thereby shares the Father’s self-same being, attributes, works, and worship.
The church confesses the doctrine of eternal generation on the basis of Holy Scripture. But it is precisely at this point that many contemporary Christians–who may otherwise sympathize with the importance of sharing the church’s universal confession–nevertheless stumble. Is the doctrine of eternal generation really a biblical doctrine? Does it truly possess the only force it could possess to command the assent of the faithful, i.e., the authority of the Holy Spirit speaking in Scripture?
There are plenty of reasons for answering this question in the affirmative. Some reasons follow from the ways Scripture “names” the second person of the Trinity. Other reasons follow from the ways Scripture portrays the second person of the Trinity in his actions of creating, saving, and consummating all things. Still, many contemporary Christians continue to find these lines of argument unconvincing. Part of the problem doubtless stems from the hermeneutical culture in which they were trained, which tends toward atomism in exegesis or, when it does consider larger canonical patterns of meaning, tends to focus on “horizontal” redemptive-historical patterns to the exclusion of “vertical” analogical patterns of meaning.
There is a place for criticizing these hermeneutical cultures and for repairing them as need be (the latter is, as a matter of fact, my full-time job). But it is the responsibility of the church’s teachers also to address church doctrine to its members within the hermeneutical space that they actually inhabit, not simply in the ideal space that teachers believe they should inhabit. That’s part of faithful shepherding: leading God’s people from where they actually are to where they should be.
Now to the (pretentious) title of my post: What is “the greatest prooftext for the doctrine of eternal generation”? I hope it is clear, gentle reader, that I am not insinuating that there is one great prooftext for the doctrine that stands above all others. The doctrine of eternal generation is the teaching of the whole counsel of God read as a whole. What my title means to suggest is that there may be one particularly instructive, particularly helpful prooftext for leading those sympathetic to but still unsure about the doctrine to the place of more confident affirmation. That text, I suggest, is John 8.
In John 8, Jesus roots his actions of revealing God’s words and accomplishing God’s saving purpose, the very actions that reveal Jesus’ identity as the one true and living God (Jn 8:24, 28: “that I am”), in his origin, his being “from above,” his being from “the Father” (Jn 8:23, 27). Jesus acts the way he does because of where (or better: whom) he is from. Moreover, it is precisely in contrasting the analogy between Jesus’ origin and actions and his opponents’ origin and actions that Jesus confirms the deep biblical logic of the doctrine of eternal generation.
Jesus introduces the link between action and origin in John 5, basing his authority to work on the Sabbath (a prerogative unique to God) in his status as God’s natural-born Son. As one who shares his Father’s nature, he also shares his Father’s self-existence, performs his Father’s works, and is worthy of receiving his Father’s worship (see here and here). Jesus takes up this theme again in John 8 and elaborates on it by contrasting his origin and action with his opponents’ origin and action. “You are from below; I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world” (Jn 8:23). “I speak what I have seen with my Father, and you do what you have heard from your father” (Jn 8:38).
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Words as Weapons: Why We Must Stand Our Ground over Pronouns
In the autumn of 2016, trans activists targeted Dr. Jordan B. Peterson, at the time a relatively obscure psychologist based at the University of Toronto. Peterson had released a video explaining why he opposed proposed Canadian legislation, Bill C-16, an amendment to the Canadian Human Rights Act regulating speech regarding gender identity. Due to his decades-long study of totalitarianism, Peterson stated in no uncertain terms that in the fight for civilization, language was always one of the first battlefields—and was thus the hill to die on. We all know how that fight went. Instead of getting cancelled, Peterson got rich and famous.
After the fact, many wondered: why was Peterson so willing to sacrifice his career over the issue of transgender pronouns? He is now one of the world’s most well-known intellectuals, but at the time there was every likelihood that his story would end the way most of these incidents do—with a quiet firing, a 24-hour news story, and another victory for the dudes in drag. I heard a student ask Peterson this question at one of his early lectures in 2017, before he launched his global tours marked by the presence of security and prohibitive speaking fees.
His response was simple: why not? Usually, he pointed out, there are few compelling reasons to die for any particular patch of soil. But in order to fight, one has to draw a line. For Peterson, that line was language. He would not say what the trans activists and their government enforcers told him he must say, because he refused to cede the right to choose his words to the state.
It is cliché to mention George Orwell these days—everyone does it. But when it comes to explaining how totalitarians of all stripes manipulate language for ideological ends, it is difficult to beat 1984. “Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?” Syme, of the Ministry of Truth, tells Winston Smith. “In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.”
When the range of available terminology is narrowed, so are the boundaries of the debate. When you accept the confines placed on language—or, in the case of ‘preferred pronouns’, use the compelled speech demanded of you—you accept ground chosen by your ideological opponents and agree to put aside the most potent weapons you have for making your case: words. -
What Is the Regime?
Any institution that potentially competes with the influence of the regime (e.g., families, churches, other private associations or subsidiary units of government) is opposed, usually through subversion rather than open hostility. Thus, the individual is made a fit subject of the regime by a process of emancipating the individual from any non-regime source of authority and alienating the individual from any competing human societies. Culture war flare-ups, like CRT, LGBTQ+ activism and COVID-19 are merely the most visible effects of the deeper tectonic project.
Part 1: An Explainer
This is part 1 of a series explaining the concept of the regime, how it relates to Christians and their institutions, and how it should be opposed.
Why has the pace of social change increased so rapidly over the last 15 years? Why have all major institutions in society become intellectual monoliths committed to the same shibboleths in policy and practice? Why have the people who comprise these institutions become so cowed, apparently incapable of meaningful dissent or critical thought? How have facially absurd ideas, like COVID-19 hysteria, transgender transitions for minors and ESG investing criteria come to so thoroughly mainstream institutions and crush dissent? The best explanatory framework for these dizzying developments is the idea that a new regime has ascended.
You will encounter this term regime if you spend five minutes on right-wing Twitter or in the pages of New Right publications. The phrase may strike you as odd at first, especially since it is often used to refer to non-governmental actors. But the phrase is vital. It can be defined with precision. It names something real that might otherwise escape notice. And it has incredible explanatory power in deciphering why social “progress,” often facially insane and politically unpopular, has so quickly advanced.
If you want a quick and dirty heuristic for identifying the regime, just look for any institutions that fly its banner – the Progress Flag.
But if you want a more precise understanding of the regime, read on. I propose the following:
A set of public, quasi-public and private actors exercising coordinated power for the purposes of advancing a shared agenda for social and political control.
The definition includes actors typically considered to be part of any regime – i.e., governmental actors – but also much more. And crucially, the regime is not under the control of the electoral process. Now, to be fair, conservatives have long decried how the administrative state inevitably grows and is impervious to reform-minded presidential administrations. Even the most wildly successful conservative administrations succeed only in temporarily halting its growth. And of course, substantive administrative law is laden with one-way ratchets that quickly facilitate progressive expansion but make rollback of progressive agenda items nearly impossible. So far, this may all sound like a traditional conservative account.
But we must next consider the interactions between formal government actors and quasi-public actors – actors that are technically private, but in fact function under administrative state control because of expansive financial or other regulatory controls. Some of these quasi-public actors are professional associations or other bodies with licensing functions who have de facto monopolies over certain regulatory functions and play a pivotal role in the work of the administrative state (i.e., regulatory rulemakings, adjudications and licensure). Examples include various licensing and accreditation agencies, the American Medical Association and bar associations. In other cases, the administrative state commandeers quasi-public actors in order to further policy goals through expansive uses of existing statutory authority (e.g., higher education and Title IX, or DEI requirements amongst government contractors).
Finally, this regime expands outward even to actors traditionally considered to be entirely private. In some cases, the regulatory state is the explicit cause of such coordinated action – the SEC, for example, now requires companies to disclose certain ESG metrics and in some states, public companies are even subjected to DEI requirements for their boards or executive teams. In other cases, America’s security apparatus exerts pressure through means that we cannot entirely ascertain, but appear to be effective – the CIA and FBI, for example, now routinely coordinate with social media companies to suppress certain viewpoints and factual reporting. But in most cases, companies voluntarily participate in the social change agenda, walking in lockstep even in cases where doing so demonstrably imperils the bottom line.
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