Overcoming

...when the apostle Paul comes forward to proclaim the will of God, he says it is not by the crushing of the body, but by the sanctification of the body: “I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” In this my Christian brethren, there is one of the deepest of all truths. Does a man feel himself the slave and the victim of his lower passions? Let not that man hope to subdue them merely by struggling against them. Let him not by fasting, by austerity, by any earthly rule that he can conceive, expect to subdue the flesh. The more he thinks of his vile and lower feelings, the more will they be brought into distinctness, and therefore into power; the more hopelessly will he become their victim. The only way in which a man can subdue the flesh, is not by the extinction of those feelings, but by the elevation of their character. Let there be added to that character, sublimity of aim, purity of affection; let there be given grandeur, spiritual nobleness; and then, just as the strengthening of the whole constitution of the body makes any particular and local affection disappear, so by degrees, by the raising of the character, do these lower affections become, not extinguished or destroyed by excision, but ennobled by a new and loftier spirit breathed through them. This is the account given by the apostle. He speaks of the conflict between the flesh and the spirit. And his remedy is to give vigour to the higher, rather than to struggle with the lower. “This I say then, Walk in the spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.”

...We hear of man's invention, of man's increase of knowledge; and it would seem in all this, as if man were necessarily becoming better. Brethren, it always must be the case in that state in which God is looked upon as the Supreme Being merely, where the intellect of man is supposed to be the chief thing—that which makes him most kindred to his Maker. The doctrine of Christianity is this—that unity of all this discord must be made. Man is to be made one with God, not by soaring intellect, but by lowly love. It is the Spirit which guides him to all truth; not merely by rendering more acute the reasoning powers, but by convincing of sin, by humbling the man. It is the graces of the Spirit which harmonize the man, and make him one; and that is the end, and aim, and object of all the Gospel: the entireness of sanctification to produce a perfectly developed man. Most of us in this world are monsters, with some part of our being bearing the development of a giant, and others showing the proportions of a dwarf: a feeble, dwarfish will—mighty, full-blown passions; and therefore it is that there is to be visible through the Trinity in us, a noble manifold unity; and when the triune power of God shall so have done its work on the entireness of our Humanity, that the body, soul, and spirit have been sanctified, then shall there be exhibited, and only then, a perfect affection in man to his Maker, and body, soul, and spirit shall exhibit a Trinity in unity.

Frederick William Robertson. Sermons Preached at Brighton / Third Series Chapter 4. 

Heaven

The symbols under which Heaven is presented to us are (a) a dinner party, (b) a wedding, (c) a city, and (d) a concert. It would be grotesque to suppose that the guests or citizens or members of the choir didn’t know one another. And how can love of one another be commanded in this life if it is to be cut short at death?

Think of yourself just as a seed patiently waiting in the earth: waiting to come up a flower in the Gardener’s good time, up into the real world, the real waking. I suppose that our whole present life, looked back on from there, will seem only a drowsy half- waking. We are here in the land of dreams. But cock-crow is coming.

From The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume III

Twice as fast as aspirin

To Joshua's "I and my house" [the Israelites] add their "we too." But then Joshua does something no decision-loving evangelist should ever do. To Israel's "we too" he opposes his "you cannot." If Israel gives herself to Yahweh it must be in a cautious commitment.

Joshua's is a shocking refusal. "You cannot serve Yahweh, for he is a holy God; he is a jealous God; he will not go on forgiving your rebellion and your sins." If you desert him, he will consume you. Don't lightly mouth your profession of faith, Joshua is saying. Don't you realise the sort of God you are dealing with? He is a holy, jealous God. You didn't dare come to him thinking, "though it makes him sad to see the way we live, he'll always say, 'I forgive.'" Yahweh is not a soft, cuddly Santa in the sky who drools over easy decisions during invitation hymns. Joshua seeks to put down that blathering self-confidence that makes emotional commitments rather than shutting its mouth and counting the cost.

"You cannot serve Yahweh." Neither Israel nor the church could hear a more beneficial word than that.

It was precisely when the Jesus bandwagon was going great guns (Luke 14:25) that Jesus emphasized who "cannot be my disciple." Rather, one must carefully "count the cost" before yielding allegiance to Jesus. The church should note this. Too frequently, the Jesus we present is some variety of prepackaged joy, peace and provision that works twice as fast as aspirin. He is our cellophane Christ. We should not sell Christ like that but warn people about him! Our task is not to bait people into saying, "I will lay down my life for you" (John 13:37), but to get them (and ourselves) to squirm under his searching, "Do you love me?" (John 21: 15-19). Too many of us perjure ourselves before a holy Judge as we sing, "I surrender all," or "My Jesus, I love thee." There are stanzas in some hymns that I dare not sing.

One of the healthiest things a Christian can do is to doubt and question his easy expressions of commitment. One of the ordination vows my denomination asks of me is:

Do you engage to be faithful and diligent in the exercise of all your duties as a Christian and a minister of the Gospel, whether personal or relational, private or public, and to endeavour by the grace of God to adorn the profession of the Gospel in your manner of life, and to walk with exemplary piety before the flock of which God shall make you overseer?

I would not touch that with the proverbial ten-foot pole. It asks too much of a proud, angry, lustful, covetous man. I affirm it only because there is that clause, "by the grace of God," in it. Otherwise, I would have to turn away, for it would be too much to promise. Baptismal, membership and marriage vows should receive the same scrutiny.

Dale Ralph Davis in No Falling Words, expositions on the Book of Joshua, pages 201-2

Humility

The apostle Paul felt it a great privilege to be allowed to preach the gospel. He did not look upon his calling as a drudgery, but he entered upon it with intense delight. Yet while Paul was thus thankful for his office, his success in it greatly humbled him. The fuller a vessel becomes, the deeper it sinks in the water.

Idlers may indulge a fond conceit of their abilities, because they are untried; but the earnest worker soon learns his own weakness. If you seek humility, try hard work; if you would know your nothingness, attempt some great thing for Jesus. If you would feel how utterly powerless you are apart from the living God, attempt especially the great work of proclaiming the unsearchable riches of Christ, and you will know, as you never knew before, what a weak unworthy thing you are. Although the apostle thus knew and confessed his weakness, he was never perplexed as to the subject of his ministry. From his first sermon to his last, Paul preached Christ, and nothing but Christ. He lifted up the cross, and extolled the Son of God who bled thereon. Follow his example in all your personal efforts to spread the glad tidings of salvation, and let "Christ and him crucified" be your ever recurring theme.

Charles Spurgeon, in Morning and Evening, for March 2nd. 

Dissecting the recipe instead of feeding the family

From a footnote in Dale Ralph Davis' No Falling Words, page 167. 

Simplicity is, in my book, a plus; the more complicated an explanatory critical theory becomes, the less probability it holds of being correct, since every additional element inserts new (frequently uncheckable) variables into the problem. Multiplying the variables in a theory multiplies the uncertainty of their (all) describing the true course of events. Whether for a book or a chapter, the customary critical proposals inspire less confidence than a naive one. For chapter 22 [of Joshua], someone will hold we have a Gilgal tradition and a Shiloh tradition - these may have been in conflict originally. Of course, a Deuteronomic editor contributes his material, and a Priestly hand adds his touches - nor must we forget another post-exilic redactor (cf. the commentaries by Gray and Soggin on Joshua 22), Someone else will speculate differently. There are no controls; it is sheer guesswork. What's more, it seldom makes any difference (except to place question marks after the reliability of Scripture).

The real problem with such bloodless speculation is that, after having done it, its practitioners strangely enough do not bother to tell us what their literary monstrosity has to say to the flock of God. The problem with most commentaries of such genre is that they can in no way nourish the church in godliness. Do they provide technical help - linguistic, archaeological? Yes. But to them the Scripture is not warm. It is an artifact from the past, not an oracle from God. Nor should they wonder if the church finds all their furrow-browed, pin-the-tail-on-the-tradition-centre activity next to useless.

Change for change's sake

What we want, if men become Christians at all, is to keep them in the state of mind I call ‘Christianity And’. You know—Christianity and the Crisis, Christianity and the New Psychology, Christianity and the New Order, Christianity and Faith Healing, Christianity and Psychical Research, Christianity and Vegetarianism, Christianity and Spelling Reform. If they must be Christians let them at least be Christians with a difference. Substitute for the faith itself some Fashion with a Christian colouring. Work on their horror of the Same Old Thing.

The horror of the Same Old Thing is one of the most valuable passions we have produced in the human heart—an endless source of heresies in religion, folly in counsel, infidelity in marriage, and inconstancy in friendship. The humans live in time, and experience reality successively. To experience much of it, therefore, they must experience many different things; in other words, they must experience change. And since they need change, the Enemy (being a hedonist at heart) has made change pleasurable to them, just as He has made eating pleasurable. But since He does not wish them to make change, any more than eating, an end in itself, He has balanced the love of change in them by a love of permanence. He has contrived to gratify both tastes together in the very world He has made, by that union of change and permanence which we call Rhythm. He gives them the seasons, each season different yet every year the same, so that spring is always felt as a novelty yet always as the recurrence of an immemorial theme. He gives them in His Church a spiritual year; they change from a fast to a feast, but it is the same feast as before.

C S Lewis, in The Screwtape Letters (for those who don't know the book, it's 'written' by an arch-devil to his apprentice, and so things are twisted to seem to be the reverse of the truth; the 'Enemy' is God himself.)

The irrepressible Dale Ralph Davis

A few extracts from Dale Ralph Davis' commentary on Joshua: No Falling Words. 

I do not want to get caught in soupy spiritualization here. However, it may be proper to point out that this remains one of God's patterns with his people. God's power still works among us (cf. Phil 2:13), not necessarily in quick flashes but over a long time, which calls for simple, durable fidelity over such time. Even though God is at work, many days still consist of washing your face, brushing your teeth, taking out garbage, and attending class. That is why 'you have need of endurance.' (Heb 10:36) Page 100. 

In verses 10-11 [of chapter 14] Caleb reveals the perspective of faith: 'And now, look how Yahweh has kept me alive, as he promises, these forty-five years...and now look how I am today eighty-five years old, yet I remain as strong today as the day when Moses sent me off; my strength is the same now as then for war and for going out and coming in.' This is the way of biblical faith - it remembers what Yahweh has done, and remembers in gratitude. So Caleb, as he builds to his punchline in verse
12, remembers Yahweh's goodness to date. Yahweh had kept him alive through the last forty-five years, (cf. Psalm 33:18-19). This was no small bounty, since it was through war and wilderness. And Yahweh was still blessing him with strength and stamina, old as he was. This is the way faith looks at things: faith is always looking into the past, seeing God's goodness there, dragging it into the present, pondering it, praising for it, and so going on from strength to strength. The perspective of faith takes in God's goodness, responds in gratitude, and finds grace for God's next call. Pages 118-9

The God of the Bible tends to be concrete, his gifts tangible and visible. The inheritance he bequeaths is not an idea but boundaries, not thoughts but towns; in a word, real estate. Yahweh has always been this way - and his enfleshment is the great witness to the fact (John 1: 1, 14). We western Christians probably need to get a hard grip on this; we need to rediscover the earthiness of God. We must realize that even enjoying the grand act of the kingdom of God will not mean floating as a beeping soul in some sort of spiritual ether but walking around with a resurrection body in new heavens and a new earth (cf. Isaiah 65-66, Rev 21-22).
So perhaps we can say that Israel's concrete and tangible inheritance in Canaan is a foreshadowing of our own. Our full possession is in new heavens and a new earth, not in some earthless, fleshless void. Our full expectation ought not to be in dying and going to heaven, as the usual cliche has it. The New Testament language is that believers, when they die, are 'with the Lord'. But the New Testament always lifts our eyes and fixes our minds upon the fullness of our hope, the redemption of our bodies on resurrection day at the return of our Lord. Pages 125-7

Being blameless

From the commentary by James Burton Coffman, on Psalm 18:20-24:

We do not believe that David, in any sense whatever, was here claiming to be absolutely perfect and sinless in the sight of God, but that he had been forgiven of all sins he had committed and that, at the moment of his deliverance, he was "clean" in "God's eyesight" (Psalms 18:24). Of course, all forgiveness during the dispensation of the Mosaic Covenant was dependent, in the final analysis, upon the ultimate sacrifice of the Christ upon Calvary. However, in the practical sense, "God passed over the sins done aforetime" (Romans 3:25), and that was the practical equivalent of divine forgiveness.

The explanation we have offered here is the only way we are able to think of David as "clean," "perfect," "righteous," and the keeper of" all God's ordinances." Of course, if the words are understood as descriptive of the "Son of David," even the Christ, then there is no problem.
Addis, rejecting the Davidic authorship of this psalm, did so, partially, upon the grounds that David could not possibly have described himself as one "Who kept the ways of Jehovah," However, we believe that Addis misunderstood what that verse really means. Rawlinson has the following very enlightening comment on that passage: "I have kept the ways of the Lord." The parallel line here is, "And have not wickedly departed from my God." "Departed wickedly" implies willful and persistent wickedness, an entire alienation from God. Not even in the humblest of the penitential psalms, in which David bewails his offenses against God, does he use such terms as `departed wickedly' concerning himself.

This means that in all the protestations of David here to the effect that he is clean in the sight of God, there is not a claim of never having done anything sinful, but a claim, which was true, that he had never "wickedly departed from his God," nor renounced his allegiance to the Lord. This is a very important distinction.

In the lives of two of Jesus' apostles, we find the distinction exemplified. (1) Judas "wickedly departed" from Christ, being terminally alienated from Him. (2) Peter, who shamefully and profanely denied the Lord, nevertheless, did not forsake Him, did not "wickedly depart" from Him; and, consequently was permitted to continue, after his repentance, as a faithful apostle.

The great consolation for Christians in these observations is that "Not even gross sins can prevent their ultimate and final salvation," provided only that they do not "wickedly depart" from the Lord, but repent of their lapses and forsake him not.

"I was also perfect with him" (Psalms 18:23). Leupold called attention to the fact that this should have been translated, "And so I was blameless (or perfect), etc."Also, in the very next verse, the text should read, "And so the Lord requited me." This has the effect of indicating that, therefore, David was blameless; therefore, the Lord recompensed him as perfectly clean and righteous. In other words, it was because David had never in any sense whatever "wickedly departed from God," but had clung to him even in the face of shameful sins and mistakes, God requited him on the basis of his fundamental love of God, and not upon the basis of human sins and mistakes of which he was most certainly guilty.

"I kept myself from mine iniquity." "It appears here that David had an inclination to some particular form of sin, against which he was continually on guard. We have no way of determining just what that sin was."

A fact not often stressed is that any Christian still in fellowship with the Lord may say anything that the psalmist here has said of himself. How so? "That I may present every man PERFECT in Christ" (Colossians 1:28). How wonderful, how glorious, how absolutely precious above everything else is the privilege of being "perfect" in Christ Jesus, as David claimed in these passages! Perhaps we should be a little more eager in our stress of this magnificent truth. But, don't Christians make mistakes, and sin? Indeed yes; but, "If we walk in the Light as he is in the Light, then we have fellowship one with another; and the blood of Jesus Christ his son cleanseth us from all sin" (1 John 1:7). The present participle "cleanseth" is an indication that the cleansing is constant, continual, and never-failing, thus keeping the child of God in a state of holy perfection.

The way in which all of this is deployed upon the sacred page is a providential arrangement designed to constitute also a prophetic indication of the absolute and genuine perfection of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

****

From Dale Ralph Davis' book on 2 Samuel, Out of Every Adversity, page 238-240., focusing on the parallel verses in chapter 22:

David makes some readers nervous as he continues:

Yahweh requites me as I act justly,as my hands are pure so he repays me (v 21, Jerusalem Bible)

Is David in verses 21-25 dragging in a Santa Claus theology of works-righteousness? Does he claim too much for himself? Has he become blind to his sinfulness? Or do these words reflect a self-righteous attitude and a weakening of the sense of sin? These verses baffle thoughtful believers: how can David who had Uriah's blood on his hands and Uriah's wife in his bed even dream of saying anything like verses 21-25?

...In verse 22 David maintains, 'I have kept the ways of Yahweh, and I have not acted wickedly in departing from my God.' That can hardly be pressed as a claim to perfection. What he does claim, especially in the second half of the verse, is a general, overall fidelity to Yahweh. He has not, after all, committed apostasy, not turned his back on Yahweh. ('Though he had sometimes weakly departed from his duty, he had never wickedly departed from his God.' Matthew Henry...)

Verse 23 is another general statement: Yahweh's ordinances are 'before' David and he does not turn away from Yahweh's decrees. Then, it seems to me, in verse 24 David interprets all this. 'So I proved wholehearted towards him.' The Hebrew [word] does not claim perfection in life's particulars but wholeheartedness in life's commitment, Then note verse 24b: 'And I kept myself from iniquity.' He knows his nature, his tendencies. He has, however, guarded himself from giving way and giving in to the pull of his iniquity.

When David speaks of his righteousness and purity he does not point to sinless perfection but life direction; he is not sporting a pharisaical pride over errorless obedience but expressing a faithful loyalty via consistent obedience. All this is important, for it is such faithful, wholehearted (though afflicted) servants that Yahweh delights to rescue and who can then revel in the power and safety that Yahweh has provided.

The teaching of verses 21-31 is not some strange new wrinkle on your Bible page. It's been there all along. It is mainstream doctrine. Those who faithfully follow Yahweh and esteem his word by obeying it are those who can expect his blessing; those who don't can't. One can catch the flip side of 2 Samuel 22:21-31 in Judges 10: 6-14, Psalm 50: 16-23, or Jeremiah 2: 26-29. Why should those who reject Yahweh's lordship and despise his law (and therefore despise him) expect his rescue? Such folks have no ongoing commitment to Yahweh, only a temporary need for him. They no covenant relation with Yahweh; they only crave his prostituting himself for their immediate crisis. They do not seek God but a bomb shelter.

Science, in spite of...

Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfil many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. 

Richard Lewontin, in a review of Carl Sagan's The Demon-haunted World: Science as a candle in the dark, published in the New York Review of Books, Jan 9th, 1997.

No Falling Words

Dale Ralph Davis in the Preface to his commentary on Joshua, No Falling Words.

My purpose has been to provide a model of what a pastor can do in biblical study if he will sweat over the Hebrew text and assume that the text as we have it was meant to be bread from God for his people. My conviction is that if one is willing to keep his Hebrew Bible before his eyes, a congregation of God’s people next to his heart, and the struggle of hermeneutics (i.e., what does this writer intend to proclaim to God’s people in his time, and how do I faithfully hold to that intention and helpfully apply that text to God’s contemporary flock?) in his mind, he will have manna to set before God’s hungering people.

Clearly, I think commentaries should be written from this conviction and after this pattern. I never felt I could expect my college or seminary students to warm to the Old Testament unless they sensed it nurturing them as they heard it taught. (Why should not the Spirit be at work in our classrooms?) But if once they felt the fire of the Old Testament text ˗ well, then, the Old Testament becomes a new book to them! Certainly, all the technical matters (linguistic, archaeological, critical) are in order; but we must bring the fragments together in an expository treatment that is not ashamed to stoop to the level of application.

 In recent years, evangelicals have made much of the inspiration, infallibility, and inerrancy of Scripture. Rightly so. But three “i’s” is not enough. We must push the “instruct-ability” of Scripture. The apostle was surely completely sober when he wrote that the Old Testament is “profitable” (2 Tim.3:16). We must demonstrate that. If the church is to recover the Old Testament, our expositions of it must show that, without torturing or twisting, it speaks for the comfort and correction of the saints.

 I trust No Falling Words approximates such standards. The title comes from Joshua 21:43-45, the sheet anchor of the book (precisely, from v.45; see also 23:14). There were no falling words among the ancient Genesis promises; no falling words means no failing words. I trust readers will find the same ˗ that God’s promise contains no falling words, only standing ones, upon which we, too, can stand.

Betwixt and between

I often tell my children that one of the main reasons we go to church is so that we can learn and practice loving people that we don’t really like that much – people who irritate us, people who we find odd and who we’d never be seen dead with otherwise, people who frustrate us and hurt us and disappoint us. We belong to the church because that is how we hope to learn the truth that is required for our being truthful about ourselves and about one another. What is the Christian community if it is not a unique training ground for learning the lessons of being the kind of community that God intends for all humanity – for learning that to be truly human is to belong to and to relate to and to do life with those who are other than ourselves, those whom God has joined together?

And so we eat and drink – not only with friends, but also with strangers, with enemies and with betrayers … and with our own inner demons. For that is the context in which Christ makes himself available to us.

From Living betwixt and between muddle and ambiguity, blog post by Jason Goroncy, 3rd Feb, 2016.

  

The one who rules over all

God's people in our day have no revealed mandate to swing the actual word sword of God's justice at contemporary pagans. But the principle remains - we must retain a distinct separation from our culture while mounting an active opposition to it, else we will blend with it. We are still called to this separation from and combat with our own godless culture.

Time was when we used to smile a bit at the fundies who denounced television and the cinema (I mention these because they are very 'Canaanite' in their sexual preoccupation), but the more recent pornographic explosion has sobered us. Celluloid is a powerful cultural medium, fully as dangerous to the Christian mind for what it suggests as for what it preaches, as perilous in what it finds laughable as in what it seriously propounds. But that is simply one aspect of our secularized culture. [The explosion of pornography on the Internet since these lines were written only confirms what he says.]

The church needs not only saints who live godly lives but also saints who develop godly minds and thereby critique and expose the whole gamut of the godless culture in which we live, minds that can not only recognized false doctrine (whether it comes via advertising, education, or government pronouncements) but also unmask the assumptions behind Antichrist's propaganda. Is this not our mandate? 'Instead of being moulded to this world, have your mind renewed, and so be transformed in nature, able to make out what the will of God is, namely, what is good and acceptable to him and perfect." (Romans 12:2 Moffatt)

One word more. If the church is going to do this we must cease thinking that God calls only missionaries and pastors. We must ask God to call believers to be artists, journalists, politicians and historians. That is, if we are to produce an effective counterculture we must begin by holding that all of life belongs to Yahweh (Baal has no royal rights at all in any compartment of Yahweh's universe). Our congregation has produced a brochure which we give to people we visit, part of which summarizes our beliefs. Among our essential convictions we include that 'God rules over all of life: nothing is outside his dominion - whether business and politics, economics and education, science and sex, history and harvests, art and affliction, music and marriage. All of life is holy and must be submitted to his reign.' That will not solve our cultural problem. But if we make any progress it must begin with that conviction. If we assume Baal has a corner of farming and sex, then we have already given the crown rights of Jesus to Antichrist.

From Such a Great Salvation - Expositions of the Book of Judges, by Dale Ralph Davis. pages 34/5

At this point in the book, Davis is discussing how Baal was worshipped for his supposed control over harvests (hence the reference to farming), and within the worship was temple prostitution, which the Israelites got themselves involved in, to their peril. 

Hardening of the heart

By moral necessity, humanity ever stands before Christ’s judgement seat, and one day all humanity will know it. Concerned that he may here be misunderstood, Forsyth makes the following statement in an Addendum to his fourth lecture in The Work of Christ: 

Weigh, as men of real moral experience, what is involved in the hardening of the sinner. That is the worst penalty upon sin, its cumulative and deadening history. Well, is it simply self-hardening? Is it simply the reflex action of sin upon character, sin going in, settling in, and reproducing itself there? Is it no part of God’s positive procedure in judging sin, and bringing it, for salvation, to a crisis of judgment grace? When Pharaoh hardens his heart, is that in no sense God hardening Pharaoh’s heart? When a man hardens himself against God, is there nothing in the action and purpose of God that takes part in that induration? Is that anger not as real as the superabounding grace? Are not both bound up in one complex treatment of the moral world? When a man piles up his sin and rejoices in iniquity, is God simply a bystander and spectator of the process? Does not God’s pressure on the man blind him, urge him, stiffen him, shut him up into sin, if only that he might be shut up to mercy alone? Is it enough to say that this is but the action of a process which God simply watches in a permissive way? Is He but passive and not positive to the situation?

Goroncy, Jason: Hallowed Be Thy Name: The Sanctification of All in the Soteriology of P. T. Forsyth, pp. 70-71

Opposite poles

"I don't approve of mixing ideologies," Ivanov continued.  "There are only two conceptions of human ethics, and they are at opposite poles.  One of them is Christian and humane, declares the individual to be sacrosanct, and asserts that the rules of arithmetic are not to be applied to human units.  The other starts from the basic principle that a collective aim justifies all means, and not only allows, but demands, that the individual should in every way be subordinated and sacrificed to the community--which may dispose of it as an experimentation rabbit or a sacrificial lamb.  The first conception could be called anti-vivisection morality, the second, vivisection morality.

Humbugs and dilettantes has always tried to mix the two conceptions; in practice, it is impossible.  

--Ivanov, Rubashov's interrogator.  Arthur Koestler, Darkness at Noon--"The Second Hearing"

How do we understand God in this?

“Oh yes, I’ve had it with the prophets who preach the lies they dream up, spreading them all over the country, ruining the lives of my people with their cheap and reckless lies. “I never sent these prophets, never authorized a single one of them. They do nothing for this people— nothing”! God's Decree.
“And anyone, including prophets and priests, who asks, ‘What’s God got to say about all this, what’s troubling him?’ tell him, ‘You, you’re the trouble, and I’m getting rid of you.’ ” God's Decree.
“And if anyone, including prophets and priests, goes around saying glibly ‘God's Message! God's Message!’ I’ll punish him and his family.
“Instead of claiming to know what God says, ask questions of one another, such as ‘How do we understand God in this?’ But don’t go around pretending to know it all, saying ‘God told me this … God told me that ’ I don’t want to hear it anymore. Only the person I authorize speaks for me. Otherwise, my Message gets twisted, the Message of the living God -of-the-Angel-Armies.

From The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language (p. 1053). NavPress, by Eugene Peterson. Jeremiah 23: 35-6