Photo by Pete Bell
Fearghas,
What is your basic take on common grace? I ask because I am trying to reply to a sermon by [] who believes movies are sinful. He presupposes this from the outset which possibly means he takes the whole idea of fiction to be deceit and a form of lying. I am trying to work out an answer without going to the other extreme which sees movie-going as a mere innocent pastime which does not involve spiritual judgement.
Alan
_________________________
Hi Alan,
I would summarize "Common Grace" as basically the obvious fact that God reveals truth to non-Christians as well as to Christians. (And since we are all sinners, we all suppress it to some degree). God causes the sun to shine on the just and the unjust. He bestows talents on the Christian and the non-Christian. It is also important to register that Truth is not just propositional, it is structural and existential. To be completely devoid of truth would involve utter insanity, and indeed utter physical disintegration, since the coherence of our very atoms is also an expression of truth.
I think John 1 is a useful starting point -
"In him was life, and that life was the light of men...The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world."
From which I take the import that there is no light whatsoever in human existence which does not derive from Christ. All truth is His, wherever it is found. There is no other source of truth. Cf John 8:44 -
"You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father's desire. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies."
And of course Rom 1:18-20 famously insists that all the truth we encounter (including "non-propositional", "concrete" truth) exhaustively testifies to the reality of God -
"The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities— his eternal power and divine nature— have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse."
So also Isaiah, eg -
"Listen and hear my voice; pay attention and hear what I say. When a farmer plows for planting, does he plow continually? Does he keep on breaking up and harrowing the soil? When he has leveled the surface, does he not sow caraway and scatter cummin? Does he not plant wheat in its place, barley in its plot, and spelt in its field? His God instructs him and teaches him the right way. Caraway is not threshed with a sledge, nor is a cartwheel rolled over cummin; caraway is beaten out with a rod, and cummin with a stick. Grain must be ground to make bread; so one does not go on threshing it forever. Though he drives the wheels of his threshing cart over it, his horses do not grind it. All this also comes from the LORD Almighty, wonderful in counsel and magnificent in wisdom." (Isaiah 28:23-29 NKJV)
Thus Van Til frequently comments that just as the child cannot slap the father's face unless the father raises the child high enough, so the atheist cannot attack God without presupposing God. In other words the language, the logic, the range of reference etc which the atheist employs are not "neutral" but saturated with God's credentials, God's ID. The articulate Hitchens has (ironically) plundered them from God. As Dawkins and Attenborough systematically plunder the animals from God. Van Til also writes -
"The argument between Christians and non-Christians involves every fact in the universe. If it does not involve every fact it does not involve any fact. If one fact can be interpreted correctly on the assumption of human autonomy then all facts can. If the Christian is to be able to show the non-Christian objectively that Christianity is true and that those who reject it do so because they hold to that which is false, this must be done everywhere or else it is not really done anywhere." (p 171)... "And since God's face appears in every fact in the universe they oppose God's revelation everywhere. They do not want to see the facts of nature for what they are; they do not want to see themselves for what they are. Therefore they assume the non-createdness of themselves and of the facts and of the laws round about them....Shall we in the interest of a point of contact admit that man can interpret anything correctly if he virtually leaves God out of the picture? Shall we who wish to prove that nothing can be explained without God first admit that some things at least can be explained without Him? On the contrary we shall show that all explanations without God are futile." (p 200) ("The Defense of the Faith")
Parables are essentially visual and dramatic "short stories" (as are also OT episodes like David & Goliath, Jonah & the Fish etc), which would well lend themselves to film. Christ in His parables thus endorses and uses a literary "art form" which the Holy Spirit had already overwhelmingly anticipated and demonstrated via the highly varied literary forms of the OT text. Christ makes an aesthetic judgement when He remarks about the lilies (the antecedents of which He created, "sculpted", "painted", "choreographed") that "Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these... yet a greater than Solomon is here". Do we imagine Christ the carpenter never appreciated the beauty of the various wood-grains and colours he worked with? Did He never carve a shape or pattern? Did he never sing as He laboured? The parables also, importantly, make it clear that Christ presupposed (and, I would contend, clearly endorsed) world-immersed social and workaday lives in his hearers - in other words, lives which were not simply spent "reading the Bible" but were concerned with "implementing the Bible" in all areas of life.
In John 17 Christ prays -
15 My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. 16 They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. 17 Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. 18 As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world.
The above of course echoes Matt 28 and Acts 1, where the disciples are sent into all the world with the Gospel. This "Great Commission" command in turn reminds us of the so-called "Cultural Commission" of Gen 1 -
28 God blessed them and said to them, Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.
The universality of this call is also backed up by Paul -
For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. (2 Cor 10:3-5)
For from him and through him and for him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen. (Rom 11:36)
When Paul wrote "The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world," I really don't think he intended for a moment we should not, for example, answer Hitchens' or Dawkins' polemic with Bible-based philosophical and scientific arguments. What he did surely mean is, firstly, that we don't engage in fisticuffs with Hitchens and Dawkins, and secondly, that we realize that our arguments are always in the prayerful awareness that the Holy Spirit alone opens people's eyes:
Don’t have anything to do with foolish and stupid arguments, because you know they produce quarrels. And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful. Opponents must be gently instructed, in the hope that God will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth, and that they will come to their senses and escape from the trap of the devil, who has taken them captive to do his will. (2 Tim 2: 23-26)
Hans Rookmaaker in his art lectures used to say that if we Christians did not grapple in the name of Christ with our contemporary culture, we should not be surprised if our children or grand-children end up in concentration camps - because we will have ceded so many crucial battle-fields to pagan thought-systems. So it is imperative that we appreciate that the Gospel is not just about assenting to "information" which is to our betterment come the hereafter. Rather the Gospel is about the recalibration of all the structures of existence which in human disobedience have been directed away from God instead of unto God. Should Christians just let civilization go to hell in a handcart? Do we not realize that every vestige of "civilization" is a mercy of Christ, delivering us from evil, and giving us our daily bread? Without the kindness of Christ no ambulance would be forthcoming. Without common grace, cars would not move aside to let the ambulance pass. Christ alone gives meaning to politics, to science, to engineering, to farming, to architecture, to speech, to art, to movies. The choice is essentially between Christ and nihilism. But God in His common grace gives so many non-Christians faith that life is a constructive worthwhile venture, worth getting up for, worth fighting defensive wars for, worth surviving all adversities for. God bestows the gift of "ontological heroism" on the "just" and the "unjust". Thus we pray "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done...on the earth".
The "movie" thing is of course not too far removed from the "novel" thing, and in the first instance it is surely a question about the legitimacy of the "aesthetic" realm as a call of Christ. If it is being argued that God is not interested in aesthetics, then we have already tried to address that briefly above. Like Christ, the Psalmist was not insensible to the aesthetic side of creation -
When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them? (Psalm 8)
So if aesthetics as such are legitimate, WHY are they legitimate? They are legitimate ultimately because they are "from Christ and through Christ and to Christ" (Rom 11:36). All life is about Christ. Full stop. Ultimately, aesthetics are ONLY about Christ. Christ Who is altogether lovely. We worship Him in the beauty of holiness. Aesthetics are legitimate because they are an integral part of the fullness of Truth. Sure, sin tries to hijack aesthetics, but that is true of all aspects of creation. It is plain to see for instance that biology and cosmology have been largely hijacked by an anti-God agenda - do we therefore conclude that Christians should have nothing to do with these?
So is it only Christians who can discover and express aesthetic "truth"? We have seen above that the answer is most certainly "no". To answer "yes" would mean the rejection of an incalculable amount of art, music, poetry, drama, architecture, car-design, clothes design, landscape gardening, not to mention tea cosies. It is patently obvious that just as non-Christian engineers have been enabled by the common grace of Christ to construct bridges and skyscrapers which don't fall down, and as non-Christian medics have been enabled by the common-grace of Christ to develop medicines and procedures to heal people, so also non-Christian artists have been enabled by the common grace of Christ to explore aesthetic reality and elicit truth.
Not all novels are frivolous. It is ridiculous if such a point needs made. There are serious novels out there intelligently analysing the human condition. There are novels which informatively deal with historical matters. The step from novel to film is small in a sense (pictures in your head to pictures outside your head?) and infringes no Biblical injunctions I can think of (other than awareness of the strong arguments against pictorialising the face of the Lord - which was also an issue with painting). Some films ostensibly focus on "fact" (documentaries?) rather than "fiction" (sci-fi?). Yet a documentary can be perniciously biased (eg Dawkins' self-indulgent TV diatribes) and a sci-fi movie can raise constructive questions about where humanity is headed and what it means to be human (Blade Runner, Matrix etc). War films can be historically informative, salutary warnings of what humanity has been capable of, and give an insight into the human being's varied reactions to the reality of death (“Schindler's List”, "Thin Red Line", Saving Private Ryan").
All the above seems self-evident. But I think another extremely important point which certainly should be made is that Christians are allowed before God to enjoy imagination. We do not have to find some moralistic justification for reading a novel or watching a movie, as if the Holy Spirit was some kind of frosty-faced prim Victorian nannie. We are to enjoy existence. We are to enjoy possibility. We are to enjoy imagining. We are to enjoy play. Before God. In the company of God. Relaxing, laughing in His presence. Whether we eat or drink or watch a film, we give thanks to the Lord and seek His blessing and company. Some people are more imaginative, more artistic, more aesthetic than others, of course. So low-aesthetic or anti-aesthetic Christians should be aware that by calling aesthetic matters per se into question (as supposedly un-Biblical) they are putting an intolerable burden on other Christians for whom aesthetics is at the heart of their call before God. Is it somehow more “righteous” NOT to watch a movie than to watch a movie? Let us beware -
Jesus called the crowd to him and said, “Listen and understand. What goes into someone’s mouth does not defile them, but what comes out of their mouth, that is what defiles them.” Then the disciples came to him and asked, “Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this?” He replied, “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be pulled up by the roots. Leave them; they are blind guides. If the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit.” Peter said, “Explain the parable to us.” “Are you still so dull?” Jesus asked them. “Don’t you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body? But the things that come out of a person’s mouth come from the heart, and these defile them. For out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what defile a person; but eating with unwashed hands does not defile them.” (Matt 15:10-15)
That comment: “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be pulled up by the roots. Leave them;" is reminiscent of the "wheat and tares" parable. Van Til sees common grace in some such terms. Just as the Children of Israel wandered in the wilderness until the sin of Canaan was ripe for judgement, so the Christian and the non-Christian are constructing their different versions of civilization. Different at their core yet not so easy to tell apart sometimes. Yet the time will come, says Van Til, when the two sides, Civitas Dei and Civitas terrena, reach "epistemological self-consciousness" and it will become more and more easy to tell them apart. Hitchens and Dawkins and Attenborough are surely as "epistemologically self-conscious" as any Christian. Their faith is as strong as ours, as clear as ours, as committed as ours, as philosophically and dogmatically articulated as ours. But a broad swathe of society are not "epistemologically self-consciousness". They are confused sheep, following first this plausible shepherd, then that.
So we still have to be wise about what we eat and wise about what we read and wise about what we watch. "Fact" and "Fiction" are more elusive concepts than is at first sight apparent. A lie is a "fiction", but a work of imagination is not a "lie" if it realizes the real potential within God's creation, if it is true to "how humans behave" or how nature presents itself, and so on. Nor is a work of imagination a "lie" even in envisaging a new reality – the building-blocks, however re-assembled, cannot but be borrowed from the current reality. Thus like the wheat and the tares it is not always easy to tease the aesthetics of "Fact" and the aesthetics of "Fiction" apart. When Christ calls Herod a fox (Luke 13:32) was that "fact" or "fiction"? Is the Psalmist purveying "fact" or "fiction" when in Psalm 18:8 he says of God -
Smoke rose from his nostrils;
consuming fire came from his mouth
Is the Book of Revelation "fact" or "fiction"? Is Pilgrim's Progress "fact" or "fiction"? Is Moby Dick "fact" or "fiction"? The point is that it is overwhelmingly obvious from the nature of Scripture that "metaphor" (an aesthetic device) is not only legitimate but is an exemplary means of elucidating truth. Herod was not a fox. It would be a lie to say he was. But the metaphor informs us in a flash of familiarity just what the personality of Herod was like. In other words, the metaphor (the "fiction") imparts truth ("fact"). If Christians considered it to be morally wrong to use the "imaginary picture language" of metaphors in their everyday speech (let alone in preaching) where would it leave them?
OK, so now tell me this: What is the most influential medium on contemporary consciousness? It is film. Obviously. It is TV and it is movies. Let us note that these highly aesthetic-oriented vehicles popularize the rarified (accurate or erroneous) thoughts of the philosophers and thinkers. So we ignore them at our peril. And to our bewilderment, as we become more and more estranged from what is going on in the minds of broad society. And to our detriment as Christian communicators since we will find fewer and fewer points of contact with misbelievers. And to our mystification when they misunderstand us or stifle a laugh at our terminology because the language has changed so that the words we use mean the opposite to them that they mean to us.
Where would Attenborough be without the collusion of movie-makers? But are the creatures which Attenborough points to "un-Christian"? Of course not. They rather testify to the Creator. So is the movie technology which Attenborough depends on "un-Christian"? Of course not. It rather testifies to the Creator. So is the aesthetically discriminating eye of the cameraman who frames the shot, or the aesthetically-governed judgement of the editor who edits the footage into a pacy program "un-Christian"? No. These may testify to the Creator. The medium as such is not at fault. Ultimately it is Attenborough's heavily agended use of the medium which is problematic. A knife can cut bread or kill someone. It is not the knife but the heart which directs the hand which wields the knife which is responsible. Out of the heart are the issues of life. What does an “unspun” animal look like? Is it possible for any of us to divest ourselves of theoretical preconceptions and simply encounter the unfiltered “actual”? In one sense, the optimum natural world documentary would seem to be one which lets the animal "speak" for itself. Of course that would require raw noises of nature as the only soundtrack (a plausible editorial decision for a series) But we can clearly also benefit immensely from accurate scientific insight where that is forthcoming.
Humans, whether Christian or non-Christian, are inconsistent to our pontificated beliefs. I betray Christ daily. I am internally inconsistent in my representation of the truth I aspire to profess about God's reality. Novels and films are inevitably internally inconsistent in their representation of the truth about God's reality. We need discrimination. A film may be good apart from one scene which compromises it. A film may be poor yet have one scene which elevates it. We need a critical faculty. Brian Godawa is one Christian involved in film-making and critiquing -
With all the above in mind I wish to quote again those sweeping magnificent words of Dooyeweerd regarding common grace -
"We have nothing to avoid in the world but sin. The war that the Christian wages in God's power in this temporal life against the Kingdom of darkness is a joyful struggle, not only for his own salvation, but for God's creation as a whole, which we do not hate, but love for Christ's sake. We must not hate anything in the world but sin. Nothing in our apostate world can get lost in Christ.There is not any part of space, there is no temporal life, no temporal movement or temporal energy, no temporal power, wisdom, beauty, love, faith or justice, which sinful reality can maintain as a kind of property of its own apart from Christ.
...It is all due to God's common grace in Christ that there are still means left in the temporal world to resist the destructive force of the elements that have got loose; that there are still means to combat disease, to check psychic maladies, to practise logical thinking, to save cultural development from going down into savage barbarism, to develop language, to preserve the possibility of social intercourse, to withstand injustice, and so on. All these things are the fruits of Christ's work, even before His appearance on the earth. From the very beginning God has viewed His fallen creation in the light of the Redeemer."
(Herman Dooyeweerd, "A New Critique of Theoretical Thought" Vol II, p 34)
And finally for now a wonderful passage from Calvin himself which I also love -
Therefore, in reading profane authors, the admirable light of truth displayed in them should remind us, that the human mind, however much fallen and perverted from its original integrity, is still adorned and invested with admirable gifts from its Creator. If we reflect that the Spirit of God is the only fountain of truth, we will be careful, as we would avoid offering insult to him, not to reject or condemn truth wherever it appears. In despising the gifts, we insult the giver. How then can we deny that truth must have beamed on those ancient lawgivers who arranged civil order and discipline with so much equity? Shall we say that the philosophers, in their exquisite researches and skilful description of nature, were blind? Shall we deny the possession of intellect to those who drew up rules of discourse, and taught us to speak in accordance with reason? Shall we say that those who, by the cultivation of the medical art, expended their industry on our behalf were only raving? What shall we say of the mathematical sciences? Shall we deem them to be the dreams of madmen? Nay, we cannot read the writings of the ancients on these subjects without the highest admiration; an admiration which their excellence will not allow us to withhold. But shall we deem anything to be noble and praiseworthy, without tracing it to the hand of God? Far from us be such ingratitude; an ingratitude not chargeable even on heathen poets, who acknowledged that philosophy and laws, and all useful arts were the inventions of the gods. Therefore, since it is manifest that men whom the Scriptures term ‘carnal’ are so acute and clear-sighted in the investigation of inferior things, their example should teach us how many gifts the Lord has left in possession of human nature, notwithstanding its having been despoiled of the true good....
Nor is there any ground for asking what concourse the Spirit can have with the ungodly, who are altogether alienated from God. For what is said as to the Spirit dwelling in believers only, is to be understood of the Spirit of holiness, by which we are consecrated to God as temples. Notwithstanding this, he fills, moves and invigorates all things by virtue of the Spirit, and that according to the peculiar nature which each class of beings has received by the Law of Creation. But if the Lord has been pleased to assist us by the work and ministry of the ungodly in physics, dialectics, mathematics, and other similar sciences, let us avail ourselves of it, lest, by neglecting the gifts of God spontaneously offered to us, we be justly punished for our sloth. (Institutes 2:2:15-16).
Fearghas.
Fearghas.
