Perhaps most neglected of all anthropological doctrines has been the idea of culture. Culture fits squarely into the doctrine of humanity (with overlaps into the doctrines of revelation and bibliology). It examines the question of how humans are shaped by religion, how meaning is transmitted and represented, and how God’s providence and revelation has used and interacted with cultures over the centuries. 

When Joab prepared for battle with Ammonites, he realised he was now to face conflict from behind and before: from the city walls of Rabbah, and from a hoard of arriving mercenaries (2 Sam 10:9-12). He told Abishai to be ready to run to wherever the battle was hottest. It did not make sense to simply divide their forces evenly, for they did not yet know from where the fiercest opposition would come. Furthermore, enemies attack more fiercely where they sense the defences are weakest.
Believers who earnestly contend for the faith must mimic that approach: run to where the battle is. Practising swift sword-strokes in the air while on the battlements facing south when you can hear a real battle raging to the north is wilful ignorance, and probably cowardice. The quote attributed to Luther (which is a very dynamic paraphrase of his original words) runs thus :”If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the Word of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Him. Where the battle rages there the loyalty of the soldier is proved; and to be steady on all the battle front besides, is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point.”
Similarly, the spiritual forces of wickedness are likely to assail that point of doctrine which has been neglected, poorly guarded, or merely taken for granted.
In our day, the theological battle is on many fronts, but none rages so hotly as the battle over anthropology. Anthropology – the doctrine of man or the doctrine of humanity – is one of those doctrines that usually gets short shrift in Systematic Theology 101. Along with hamartiology (sin) and angelology (fallen and unfallen spiritual beings), these doctrines have usually been seen as auxiliary to the grandly developed doctrines of Christology, soteriology, and even bibliology.
But today we see the painful consequence of neglecting any area of doctrine. For many of the false ideas of social justice, intersectionality, critical race theory and the LGBTQ+ are simply heretical ideas of the doctrine of man.
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The window for tolerating thought is closing even as we breathe. Compared to the Middle Ages our tech age can seem more intolerant and less enlightened.

How long did it take for a papal intolerance to come back to bite? The answer is, as long as the Enlightenment lasted. On June 22, 1633 Pope Urban VIII’s inquisitor, a Father Maculani da Firenzuola, tried Galileo for heresy. At the time the ‘settled science’ held that the sun moved around the Earth. Galileo posited the opposite. The order that the Vatican handed down creepily reverts to our own guardians of thought and the penalties unleashed on the unbeliever.
We pronounce and declare that you, Galileo, have rendered yourself vehemently suspected by this Holy Office of heresy, of having believed and held the doctrine (which is false and contrary to the Holy and Divine Scriptures) that the sun is the center of the world We order that the book of Dialogues of Galileo Galilei be prohibited. We condemn thee to the prison of this Holy Office during Our will and pleasure.
In fact the astronomer spent a life sentence locked down at home. Are the holy cow wisdoms of today an improvement on the edicts of the Pope in Rome?
The parallel is too close for comfort. The Church powers are Experts, and the way they defend their science makes you think of it as settled as Newton’s law of universal gravitation. A deacon of poetry, Alexander Pope, made quite another Adam of him.
Nature and Nature’s laws lay hid in night:God said, “Let Newton be!” and all was light.
Were our Covid Tsars, our doomsday spinners and tech wizzkids more like Newton and less like fakes, our sick world would not be on the mend from a purposeless devastation. Were our ‘elites’more like Newton they would not be panicked by views which fit the facts better than their settled science. Our elites would not be drawn to flag heresies, to fact check , to ban repeated  dissenters, to rubbish  outcomes  that put their science to the sword as misinformation or anti-science or conspiracy theory or the raving  of anti-vaxxers.
I read a pithy joke that drops in too close for comfort.
If you still need a booster after being FULLY vaccinated , and still need to get tested after being FULLY vaccinated, and still need to wear a mask after being FULLY vaccinated, and still get hospitalised after being FULLY vaccinated, It is probably time you admitted that you have been FULLY conned.
Despots are never secure people. The terror driving the little squeaky woman with weird teeth who runs New Zealand is her overthrow. The nightmare of baby Trudeau throwing tantrums in his Ottawa bunker is being disobeyed. Biden’s vile slur that America has a pandemic of the unvaxxed comes from his being confronted with higher Covid fatalities during the year of vaccines than the year without vaccines.
“The motivation of the Cathedral now is to protect their power against what they view as an unruly, prideful, and disobedient rabble.” Their fear is well founded. The people are indeed fed up with the elite panic agenda. They have, as the Monmouth poll indicated this week, moved on — they believe “it’s time we accept that Covid is here to stay and we just need to get on with our lives”.
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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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