THE BOOKSELLER OF INVERNESS (Review)

 The Bookseller of Inverness is well written historical fiction that helps keep alive the memory of what might have been. 

The Battle of Culloden (1746) was the day the universe changed for Scotland. The stage setting for S.G. MacLean’s novel is beautiful Inverness and its environs in the mid-1700s during its somewhat brutal and unsettled and unsettling aftermath. 

MacLean’s finely crafted characters are fittingly attired down to their very buttons. They sweep on and off stage after perfectly delivering their lines right on cue, each serving to increase the intrigue. 

The story flows like the River Ness.  

TO SERVE AND PROTECT

 

(Taken from The Kingdom – Every Square Inch a new book by Neil Cullan McKinlay & D. Rudi Schwartz)

To Serve and Protect

Image from Web

The State has no children of its own. As strange as it may seem, the State can operate with people from the Family and the Church to function as an entity in the nation. It’s covenantal. It goes all the way back to Adam in the garden of Eden. However, before we go there, let us remind ourselves of the three symbols of the three main pillars of the nation: Family has the rod, Church has the keys, and the State has the sword. The rod for disciplining, the keys for discipling, and the sword for delivering justice. The Family produces and instructs the children, the Church baptises and equips the children and the State protects the children. Each in its own sphere of operation. So, the Family brings the child up in the training and admonition of the Lord (Deut. 6:7-9; Eph. 6:4). The Church baptises and instucts the children in the things of God (Acts 2:38-39). And the State provides and maintains a safe environment for the Family and the Church. (Rom. 13:1-4, see also WCF 23:1 for details). So, in terms of God’s covenant of grace, the Family is to worship and to serve the King, the Church is to affix the sign and seal upon the Family through baptism, showing that that particular family is set apart to serve the King. And the State, again, is to provide a safe environment for all of this to happen – in the service of the King.

Of course, we are not so naïve as to not know that this is not always the case presently in nations. But be that as it may, the Lord gives us many reasons for optimism. Notice the word sword in the following covenant promise of God, “He will judge between many peoples and will settle disputes for strong nations far and wide. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore” (Micah 4:3 NIV). Swords transformed into ploughshares and spears into pruning implements all sounds like we’re back to Adam in Eden. Part of the sword aspect for the State is that “they may lawfully, now under the New Testament, wage war, upon just and necessary occasion.”

“And Yahweh God took the man   and set him in the garden of Eden to cultivate it and to keep it” (Gen. 2:15 LEB). The word “cultivate” as used here by the LEB lends itself to the whole pre-fall covenant of works with Adam as mankind’s representative head. With Eve he was commissioned by God to “be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it” (Gen. 1:28). He was to expand the garden, yes, God’s Kingdom, throughout the earth. Other versions of the Bible translate the Hebrew word עָבַד as dress KJV, tend NKJV, care for NET, work it HCSB, ESV, NIV. The idea, then, was for Adam serve God by cultivating His garden. The other word is שָׁמַר, which means to keep, to attend to, to hedge about, guard, to protect. “To serve and protect”, and variations of it, is the motto of many police forces in Western nations. This essentially is the motto for what Adam was to do in the garden. It’s ancient history that he didn’t do a very good job of this. He brought only thorns and thistles and he failed to protect his wife from an unwanted intruder. So much for “to serve and protect”! To protect the freedom of its citizens against the unlawful invasion of the colonial forces, those South African farmers who took on the mighty British Empire during the Boer War(s) (The First Freedom War 1880-81, The Second Freedom War 1899-1902), and like the nations mentioned in Joel, the opposite of God’s covenant promise for the future became the order of the day outside of the garden for mankind and the soon-to-be developing nations, “Beat your plowshares into swords and your pruning hooks into spears” (Joel 3:10). Thus, Adam was to serve and protect the God’s Kingdom on earth, i.e., the expanding garden.

God replaced Adam with new police “to serve and protect” the garden of His Kingdom, ‘garden-ians’/guardians that would be obedient to God, “therefore the Lord God sent him out of the garden of Eden to till the ground from which he was taken. So He drove out the man; and He placed cherubim at the east of the garden of Eden, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life” (Gen. 3:23-24). To be sure, the cherubs were not exactly in the gardening business. But (and the following pun is bad timing but too hard to resist!), not to put too fine a point on it!, notice the object that would become the symbol of the State: The sword.

Image from Web

The State is that which serves and protects the nation. From borders to law-courts, the State is the guardian of Christ’s Kingdom in any nation. That is why Family and Church are to be obedient to God’s minister: “For he is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer … Pay to all what is owed to them: taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed” (Rom. 13:7 ESV).

So we see then where the State fits into God’s Cultural Mandate. It is supposed to be about the business of ensuring a safe, clean, yes, a “cultivated” environment in which the nation can raise its families in peace, safety, security; where the Church can go about its business unrestricted in obedience to the Great Commission. This works best when the Thomistic sacred / secular, nature / grace, upper-story / lower-story, or whatever other dualisms have been allowed to enter into Western thought, have been put to the “flaming sword which turned every way”: “For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart” (Heb. 4:12).

Family, Church, and State make up the nation. Each of these three spheres comprises of many satellite spheres all whirring around its nucleus. There ought to be no interference or impediment to any sphere going about its lawful business. The State has been ordained by God to ensure this. Thus, its sword of justice and equity.

Teach the nations to obey the King, for “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people He has chosen as His own inheritance” (Psa. 33:12), and with or without His Church obediently engaging in the Great Commission due to Two Kingdom Theology or other setbacks,  progressively “all nations shall come and worship before You, for Your judgments have been manifested” (Rev. 15:4b).

SORRY

                                                                         Sorry

Sorry is one of those words that is always in need a partner. Sorry to bother you about my sorry state of feeling sorry for myself for doing something for which I am sorry! Yes, sorry, like misery loves company. In the Biblical context, sorry seeks for forgiveness to be its partner. Whenever you wrong someone, saying ‘I am sorry’ to them is like a marriage proposal. If they reply with an ‘I forgive you’, then it is wedded bliss and time to rejoice.

Rembrandt's
Return of the Prodigal Son

Jesus says, ‘there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents’ (Luke 15:10). Repent is fast becoming one of those ‘Christianese’ words, right up there with ‘behold’, ‘begotten' and many more. However, we are glad that the angels still understand the meaning of repent! It has to do with being sorry, in this particular instance, the sinner being so sorry for his/her sins against God, that he/she has turned away from them and has sought God’s forgiveness. This is what Jesus meant when He was walking around saying to people, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel’ (Mark 1:15). In brief, if anyone wishes to enter the kingdom of God and thereby escape His eternal judgment on you for your wrongs against Him, then give the angels something to rejoice about. Tell God that you are sorry and thereby receive His forgiveness. The gospel is the good news that God forgives sorry sinners.

Of course, we know that not everyone will be sorry and believe in the good news of forgiveness. For it was un-sorry unbelievers that had Jesus nailed to a cross. However, that was part of God’s grand scheme of things. ‘For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life’ (John 3:16). Being raised from the dead to never die again was God showing His approval that Jesus lived a perfect life representing believers, and that He died a death by receiving their punishment as their substitute. Thus, the Father took all our sorry sins and placed them on His Son by having Him put on a cross. The Son took all our sins willingly. The Father turned out the lights during the day and then incinerated every last one of our wrongs against Him.

Image from Web

The tomb couldn’t hold Jesus because death is the wages of sin (Rom. 6:23) and He had no sin, no sin of His own. ‘For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him’ (2 Cor. 5:21). Here’s what happened. God did a swap. He transferred our wrongdoings to Jesus and shared Jesus’ non-wrongdoing with us. His non-wrongdoing is righteousness, which is His perfect obedience to God on our behalf. ‘It will be counted to us who believe in Him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification’ (Rom. 4:24-25). The way for us to receive God’s forgiveness is for us to to believe in what God is telling us, which is that which is another word for good news, namely, the gospel.

Being sorry for wronging someone and seeking their forgiveness is a small picture of something infinitely larger. God says that ‘All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God’ (Rom. 3:23). Jesus is that glory (John 1:14). Dear reader, surely you’ve experienced the conscience-clearing joy that comes when you say sorry to someone you’ve wronged and they forgive you? Ask any angel, but it is everlasting joy for those who say sorry to God.

A KEY FOR OPENING YOUR HEART AND GOD'S LAW

(Excerpt from the upcoming The Kingdom book.)

Regarding God’s law, the idiom “Can’t see the forest for the trees” is an apt description of much of Christianity in our own day. Christians tend to become fixated on certain specific aspects of God, creation, and redemption to the neglect of the whole. Which is to say that they focus so much on Mona Lisa’s smile that they fail to see that which surrounds it, that which is designed to get the eye to land there.

Isle of Skye 2016

Christians can become Staurocentric or Jesu-centric or Christocentric or Pneumocentric or Paterocentric or Gospel-centric, yes, and even Law-centric. Various Christian denominations could be listed to exemplify that this is indeed the case. To be sure, there is nothing wrong with studying any of these aspects of God and His written revelation. However, a ploy of the devil surely is to entice Christians into becoming so totally enamoured by one particular tree to the neglect of the whole rest of the forest. We must be Theocentric, i.e., Trini-centric, if we are to guard against forming an idol out of the cross, or the Gospel, or the Law, and dare we say, of the Father or the Son or the Spirit. The built-in safety factor is always to keep the one and the many, the universal and the particular, etc., in equal tension.

Image from Web

Our eyes may focus on Mona Lisa’s smile, but as intriguing as it is, it is the gateway to greater vistas – have you ever observed that there is a bridge in the background? – so are any one of the multiple aspects of God’s revelation. A simple icon of a cross on a map or a gravestone or a necklace or whatever may symbolise Christianity, but it must not be used as an idol, an object of worship. We must worship the Triune God alone. No Person in the Godhead (the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit) should be isolated to the neglect of any of the Others or of the Godhead as a whole. With that said, Christ Jesus, if you will, is God’s smile.

“Philip said to Him, ‘Lord, show us the Father, and it is sufficient for us.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Have I been with you so long, and yet you have not known Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; so how can you say, ‘Show us the Father?’” (John 14:9). Philip was asking the same question we hear Christians ask from time to time, “Will I see God as He is? Will I see Him face to face?” The expectation is something like seeing a bright light, like looking into the sun. However, we may as well ask if we will see the Son or the Spirit as They really are! For God has elected to reveal Himself to His people via the Person of Jesus Christ. Philip asking Jesus to show him the Father is the same as asking to be shown God. Jesus was essentially telling Philip that he was already looking at God. 

Though we cannot see it, we know there’s a wind present when the movement of a tree catches our eye. Let’s say that Christ is that tree and the Spirit is the wind. The Father? This is where it is most difficult for us to understand. The Father is in the tree. The tree is the express image of the Father. The tree (the Son) by its actions in the wind (the Spirit) is revealing that something is in the tree (the Father), which is to say that, by being led by the Spirit, the Son was doing His Father’s will on earth as it is in heaven. Thus, somehow that tree swaying with the wind is revealing the Father and the Son and Holy Spirit, the Triune God.

Herman Bavinck removes Dualism’s gap by bringing together earth and heaven, yes, creation and redemption, by pointing us to the Trinity. 

"The Father is pre-eminent in the works of creation and redemption; He represents the Trinity; hence, He is often called God, even by Christ. Nevertheless, the Son and the Holy Spirit are also God."[1]

If we are agreed that redemption was not God’s “Plan B” for creation, then we will begin to see that, though creation and redemption may be distinguished from each other, like each Person in the Trinity, they must never be separated, For, to do so, is to end up with Dualism and Tritheism respectively. It is to end up separating Christ’s divine nature from His human, whereby, in relation to Two Kingdom Theology, He reigns over all creation (including the nations) only as God (the Creator) and over His Church as the God-Man (Redeemer). For Christianity, Dualism’s big mistake begins in its misunderstanding the two natures of Christ. They cannot and must not ever be separated. Creation and redemption are eternally glued together in Christ "and in him all things hold together" (Col. 1:17b ESV). The Son is the Redeemer from eternity and was revealed as such in embryonic form to fallen mankind (Gen. 3:15), yes, the promise of the incarnation, i.e., the God-Man.

By separating creation from redemption, Two Kingdom Theology opens the gate to let in the wolf of Dualism to devour the Lord’s flock. The gate is closed by bringing together again Christ’s two natures. He is both Creator and Redeemer. As God, He created creation. As Man He redeemed it. As God he wrote God’s perfect law. As Man He perfectly kept God’s perfect law – all to the glory of God and the praise of creation.  

The Holy Spirit draws Jesus to our immediate attention. Thus, God the Spirit reveals God the Son who reveals God the Father. In the Celestial City Christians will indeed see something of the effulgence of God. "And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb" (Rev. 21:23 ESV, cf. Mat. 5:8). Therefore it does seem evident that we will see the Father, but only as He reveals Himself in the Son, i.e., the Word who became flesh.

In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven. (Heb. 1:1-3 NIV)

Therefore Christ Jesus is our hermeneutic for understanding the Triune God and His creation and redemption. Thus, Jesus is the particular in the universal. He is the tree of life in the midst the tree-filled orchard. He is the key to understanding God’s law as a whole and all its aspects. Notice what Nelson Kloosterman says about the “hermeneutical key” in the following, as it will help us to understand God’s Law as seen in creation and redemption.

 "God has inscribed “the work of the law” in the hearts of Gentiles. If we study carefully the context of Romans 2:14-15, two exegetical notes are relevant to this discussion. First, the law being referred to here in the context of Paul’s argument is the Mosaic law, the Decalogue – not “the natural law.” Second, God (not nature, not reason) has written this in their hearts. That which we know from the law of God, written once on two tablets of stone, set forth in the Law and the Prophets, we find among unbelievers because they show that they have received the law’s work, the law’s activity, written by God in their hearts. Thus, we need not deny or ignore such moral activity if we are directed from the activity to the law – not the natural law, but the law revealed in the Bible. There we find the hermeneutical key for interpreting the moral uprightness we see in the world. The universal is clarified by the particular, the human explained by the Christian. Not the other way around, such that the lex naturae becomes the hermeneutical key for the lex scripturae."[2]

As we bring our focus from the universal back on to the particular, God’s law and our hearts in particular, let us return for a moment to one among the Ten Commandments, the one which Paul drew attention to in order to explain the totality of God’s law, "I would not have known covetousness unless the law had said, 'You shall not covet'" (Rom. 7:7). Then Paul goes on to say, “And the commandment, which was to bring life, I found to bring death” (Rom. 7:10). Now, picture Adam and Eve in the Garden. Two trees and the commandment of God. The tree of life to bring life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that would bring death. Adam and Eve coveted the forbidden fruit for what they thought it would give them, i.e., wisdom without God (Gen. 3:6). By breaking that particular “You shall not covet” Commandment, they also broke God’s universal law. And ask any Pharisee, that unlike the others, the 10^th Commandment is that one particular Commandment that we think the breaking of which remains hidden from view in our heart. However, for Paul and for Adam and Eve, it is that sin is rebellion against God and that sin brings death.

Image from Web

Jesus Christ is our particular hermeneutic for interpreting the universal. By way of application: If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be? This seemingly silly but popular celebrity question arose from a famous 1981 interview, when Barabara Walters was interviewing Katharine Hepburn. But let us utilize it for illustrative purposes. Scripture says, “By their fruits you will know them” (Mat. 7:20). Are you a tree of life or a tree of death? If Christ is in you, you will bend with the wind (Spirit) and thus reveal the Father. Life everlasting! If you are not this kind of tree, then, unless you repent and believe in the gospel, you are a tree of death. "A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire" (Mat. 7:18-19).

---

[1] Herman Bavinck, The Doctrine of God, Translated by William Hendriksen, (Banner of Truth, Reprinted 1991), 266.

[2] Nelson Kloosterman, “Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms in Bavinck”, in : Kingdoms Apart, Engaging the Two Kingdoms Perspective, Edited by Ryan C. McIlhenny, (P&R Publishing, Phillipsburg, New Jersey, 2012), 69.