The in Between

There lies not a thin line but a great open plain between remembering and forgetting. This open space is perhaps best called haunting. Recently I was driving my thirteen year old back from an orthodontist appointment. What could be more ordinary, more suburban? We waited in our average sedan for the light to turn green when I asked her a question I never would have anticipated when she had been born: When we are sitting here at this light, does it cross your mind that your mother and your sister are buried right over there?

This was, as my daughter well knew, a genuine question, and not in any way an accusation. I wasn’t scolding her for not noticing, or, if noticing, not saying anything. It just struck me that sometimes I go weeks without driving by the cemetery where my precious ladies’ bodies are planted. Sometimes I drive there, walk to where they are buried and pray, cry, and remember. But then there were these times, when the cemetery is not my destination but it is just there, right next to me.

There are no moments when I am not conscious of their absence. But there are moments when I am less conscious. Like the constant ringing in the ear that assaults some people my lonesomeness for them cannot be escaped. To enter into missing them is in many ways easier than living in the in between. When I remember, when I weep, I am entering in. When, however, the reminders come to me, it is entering in, nagging. Their absence is always announcing its presence.

It was three years ago, just a few days before Valentine’s Day. I was, I suspect, unloading some groceries on the shelf in our rec room. Beside me was our ping pong table. She stood at the entrance of the room, looking like she had seen a ghost. “They just called,” she told me, gingerly taking steps toward me, “It’s leukemia.” I held her there as we cried, in the same spot I pass through now everyday. Here, by the shelf, beside where the laundry gets folded, here is where I first knew that we were facing a problem I couldn’t fix, where I first heard her death sentence.

I sleep now, as I have done since the day she died, on her side of the bed. Not, strangely, that I might be close to her, but that I might be farther from where I used to sleep when she was with us. So each morning I wake where she is supposed to be.

While this reflection is more an exposition of the constant, nagging pain rather than a revelation of those moments of the blinding pain, while I am merely sad, not flirting with despair, I still have no answer. I will not scrub my life clean of these landmarks of our journey through the valley of the shadow of death. I will not pretend that my wife or my daughter were Enochs, who walked with God, and then were no more. Instead I will continue to be haunted. I will continue to walk where they walked. And He will continue to walk with me.

What's the Difference between the Ontological and the Economic Trinity?

Do you know the meaning of the word Trinity? In all likelihood, most of those reading this are familiar with this word and its meaning in theology. But what if I were to ask you to distinguish between the “ontological Trinity” and the “economic Trinity”? If I said, “Please describe for me the difference between the ontological Trinity and the economic Trinity,” could you do it? The distinction is very important.

Ontology is the study of being. When we talk about the ontological Trinity, we are referring to the fact that God is three in one. There are three persons in the Godhead—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit—who together are one being. The ontological structure of the Trinity is a unity. When we speak of the economic Trinity, we are dealing with roles. We distinguish among the three persons of the Godhead in terms of what we call the economy of God. It is the Father who sends the Son into the world for our redemption. It is the Son who acquires our redemption for us. It is the Spirit who applies that redemption to us. We do not have three gods. We have one God in three persons, and the three persons are distinguished in terms of what They do.

In orthodox Christianity, we say that the Son is equal to the Father in power, in glory, and in being. This discussion rests heavily on John 1:1, where we read, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” This verse indicates that the Father and the Word (the Son) are different and are one. In one sense, the Son and the Father are identical. In another sense, They are distinguished. From all eternity the Father sends the Son, and the Son is subordinate to the Father. The Son doesn’t send the Father; the Father sends the Son. So even though the Father and the Son are equal in power, glory, and being, nevertheless there is an economic subordination of the Son to the Father.

That is what Jesus said in John 5:19-93. He declared: “I don’t do anything on My own. I do what the Father tells Me to do. I do what the Father sent Me to do. I watch the Father, and I do what the Father does. The Father is preeminent. The Father is the One to whom I am obedient and subordinate.” He even affirmed that He could not do anything of Himself, only what He saw the Father do. Out of His love for the Son, the Father showed Him all the things that He Himself did. Then Jesus stated that the Father would show Him even greater things, so they should expect His works to become greater. In this context, Jesus specifically mentioned the raising of the dead.

The Difference Between Judas Iscariot and Peter — John MacArthur

“How you feel about Christ, how you view Him will determine your heaven or your hell. Peter was a betrayer. And we could see how it happened. He boasted too much. He prayed too little. He acted too fast–drew out a sword and wanted to make a war. He followed too far; he stayed off in the shadows. So you can say, ‘Yeah, there were some factors in overconfidence and lack of prayer and impulsiveness and cowardice. But Peter was no final disaster.’ He was no final disaster. Grace was operating in Peter’s life. Grace was not operating in Judas’ life. Grace was operating in Peter’s life because Peter loved Jesus Christ. And John tells us in 1 John 4, ‘We love Him because He first loved us.’ Jesus had set His love on Peter and Peter loved Him in return. They had a relationship of love. That is the deep and compelling attitude of the true believer. It comes down to this: the true believer’s love for Christ is the evidence of salvation. In fact, in 1 Corinthians 16:22 Paul says, ‘If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be damned.’ It comes to that.

You look at Christianity, you look at the church, and you can get very complicated about what it means to be a Christian. It’s this simple. Look at your heart. Do you love Christ? Do you seek His honor? Seek His glory? Does your heart go out in affection toward Him? Do you desire to please Him, exalt Him, love Him, worship Him, commune with Him, hear Him? I’ll sum it up: ‘If you love Me,’ John 14, ‘you keep My’…What?… ‘commandments’–you love His Word. You love Him. That’s how love acts.”

Listen to the entire message below as John MacArthur explains from Matthew 26-27 the difference between Judas Iscariot’s betrayal of Christ and subsequent regret and that of the Apostle Peter. Two betrayals and two sorrows — producing true repentance in Peter alone — leading to two different eternal destinations.

The Difference Between Protestants and Catholics on Tradition

Protestants tend to be very suspicious of any talk of tradition as playing a role in theology as it would seem to stand somewhat in tension with the Reformation’s view of scripture alone as the authoritative basis for theological reflection.

In fact, the Reformation itself represented a struggle over two types of tradition, that which scholars call T1, tradition based upon scripture as the sole source of revelation (the position of Protestants such as Luther and Calvin, and of some pre-Tridentine Catholics) and that which they term T2, tradition based upon two sources, namely, scripture and an oral tradition mediated through the teaching magisterium of the Church. This latter was arguably the position codified at the Council of Trent, although it would seem that the boundary between T1 and T2 is in practice often blurred, and very difficult to define in any formal or precise sense; nevertheless, as a heuristic device the distinction is useful and it is really only as Protestants come to understand exactly what the Catholic view of tradition is (i.e., T1 plus T2) that they can come to properly understand how tradition (T1) does not subvert the notion of scripture alone.

A moment’s reflection on Protestant practice should demonstrate the truth of this. Every time a Protestant minister takes a commentary off his shelf to help with sermon preparation, or opens a volume of systematic theology, or attends a lecture on a theological topic, he practically acknowledges the importance of T1, whether he cares to admit it or no. A belief in scripture as a unique and all-sufficient cognitive foundation for theology does not, indeed, cannot, preclude the use of extra-biblical and thus traditional sources for help.

Protestantism and Catholicism both value tradition; the difference lies in the source and authority of this tradition: Protestant tradition is justified by, and is ultimately only binding insofar as it represents a synthesis of the teaching of the one normative source of revelation, holy scripture.

Catholicism is more flexible. Though, as noted above, the boundary where T1 ends and T2 begins is not an easy one to formalize or define, Catholicism has proved far more open to the development of dogmas not immediately justifiable on the basis of scripture; and has also been willing to take more seriously ancient practice as a significant guide. Thus, the practice of praying to saints has no apparent scriptural warrant, but was something evident very early on in the post-apostolic era, a point used by Catholics to argue for its validity (a good example of a T2 dogma).

The difference on tradition, of course, connects to other differences on authority. Undergirding Protestant notions of scripture is a belief in the basic perspicuity of the Christian message. This lay at the heart of Luther’s dispute with Erasmus. Erasmus saw scripture as complicated and obscure and thus as requiring the teaching magisterium of the church to give definitive explanations of what it teaches; Luther saw the basic message as clear and accessible to all who had eyes to see and ears to hear. The basic Erasmus-Luther dispute epitomizes the Catholic-Protestant divide on this issue and also reminds us of why the papacy and the teaching magisterium of the church are so crucial in Catholicism. The problem of the Anglican, John Henry Newman, as he wrote his masterpiece on the development of doctrine, was not that doctrine developed, but how Protestantism could discern which developments were legitimate and which were not. By the time the work was published, Newman was a Catholic, having become convinced that the authority of Rome, not the scriptural perspicuity of Wittenberg, was the only means to resolve the problem.