Joseph Minich on the purposiveness of revelation

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Could God be more obvious than He is? Could He erase all atheism? Yes. … But He doesn’t. Why? Because God is only interested in His revelation being clear enough for the purposes He has in revealing Himself. That is to say, God’s revelation is about God’s rather than man’s goals. And it is not man, therefore, who determines how clear He must be. Man’s purposes are often at odds with those of God. As it turns out, God is actually not that interested in people simply believing that He exists. Consider the parallel of Jesus in the Gospels. How often does Christ actually conceal His teaching and His identity precisely because He knows that people will simply abuse His teaching or seek to manipulate His identity for their own ends? Christ is most clear to those who pursue, who hunger, who thirst—and he satisfies them, as in the case of the woman at the well (John 4). This does not mean that His identity was, as such, unclear. It means that He was not interested in maximal clarity. His clarity was fitting to His own purpose in coming and revealing Himself and His Father. … Why would He then ‘fix’ what isn’t, by His standards, broken?

from Enduring Divine Absence: The Challenge of Modern Atheism (2018), 68-69.

Out of Egypt

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Hans Boersma on Matthew 2:13-15

“Out of Egypt I called my son.” Why does God tell Joseph to take the child and his mother into Egypt? Why does he tell Joseph to flee from Bethlehem? Why does he tell Joseph to stay in Egypt until Herod’s death? Obviously, you say, to save the child! Sure, but why Egypt? Why not any other place? Isn’t it because you and I so often return to the fleshpots of Egypt? Isn’t it because you and I are just like the Israelites, and our misdirected desires often lead us back to Egypt? There “we sat by the meat pots and ate bread to the full,” we say to ourselves, while here we are in the wilderness, starving to death (Ex 16:3). The amazing grace of the gospel, the astounding love of God, is this: not only does the eternal Son of God take on human flesh, not only does he go to Bethlehem so that we can have a place alongside him in Bethlehem; no, he goes all the way to where we are. He goes all the way to Egypt. He goes all the way to the very place of slavery and oppression. He goes all the way to our country of exile. He goes all the way to the objects of our misdirected desires. he goes all the way to the center of our darkest labyrinths. “Out of Egypt I called my son.”

from Sacramental Preaching: Sermons on the Hidden Presence of Christ (Baker Academic, 2016), 75-6.

P.S. Martin Copenhaver on “He descended to hell.”

The Apostle’s Creed contains this affirmation about Jesus:  “Jesus Christ was crucified, dead and buried. He descended to hell.” The last part of that statement always used to trouble me, until one day someone told me that, for her, it is the most treasured part of the creed. When I asked why, she answered, “Because hell is where I spend much of my life.” Hell—a sense of being forsaken, the absence of God, a place of despair. We have been there. And Jesus has been there. And having been there, Jesus transformed it.

from Jesus Goes to Hell

The Difference the Ascension Makes

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Two Takes Nicholas Lash Luke’s account of the ascension can only be understood if we resist the modern tendency to carve up the paschal mystery into a series of separate ‘events’. The death and glorification of Christ and the outpouring of the Spirit constitute one event, the salvation-event. … What practical difference would it make […]