Great Christian Biographies with John Piper: Athanasius Part 3

The Need to Reframe Basic Christian Truths for Fallen Minds

We must not treat these two principles. Become all things to all people and be transformed in the renewing of your mind. We must not treat those two principles as sequential. They start and continue together.

We must not assume that the first and basic truths of the Christianity fit in the fallen human unbelieving mind. Like, okay, we start with just start. This is 101 and it fits. It doesn't fit. If it fits, it isn't the truth.

Fallen human minds don't like 101, 201, 301, or 401. We must not assume that these truths can be contextualized in categories of thought that are already present in the minds of 21st century unbelieving people.

And only later, after they become Christian, can we begin to alter their way of thinking with more advanced truth as though the advanced doesn't fit and the basic fits. It doesn't. It's not the case. From the very beginning, we are speaking to them.

God centered, Christ exalting truths that shatter fallen human ways of thinking. We must not shy away from this. We must go after this and advance this to help our people by the grace of God. Get new categories in their heads for understanding the basics and the advanced parts of the gospel from the beginning in the most winsome way possible.

We must labor to create new categories. Give me give you six or seven. Here they go. Number one, God rules the world of bliss and suffering and sin right down to the roll of the dice, the fall of a bird, the driving of a nail into the son's hand.

Yet though he will such sin and suffering, he does not sin, but is perfectly holy. There's a category to blow your brain. It is not sin to will that sin happen. That is a category that must be in people's heads eventually.

And very near the front end, or they do not embrace the biblical God. Number two, God governs all the steps of all people, both good and bad at all times and in all places. Yet such that all are accountable before him and will bear the just consequences of his wrath if they do not believe in Christ.

Category number three, all people are dead in their trespasses and sins and are not morally able to come to Christ because of their rebellion. Yet they are responsible to come and will be justly punished if they don't.

Category number four. Jesus Christ is one person with two natures, divine and human, such that he upheld the universe by the word of his power while living in his mother's womb. Category number five, though committed by a finite person.

And in the confines of finite time, sin is nevertheless deserving of an infinitely long punishment because it is the sin against an infinitely worthy God. And number six. The death of the one God, man, Jesus Christ, so displayed and glorified the righteousness of God that God is not unrighteous.

Proverbs 1715, notwithstanding.

To declare.

Righteous, ungodly people who simply trust in Jesus. Those are the kinds of mind boggling, category shattering truths that demand our best thought, our most creative labors. We must speak them in a way that by the power of the word and the spirit, which will, I'm sure here tonight, create a place in the brain for them to find a home.

And you can't do that, brothers. That's the only way to grow a church is to change the way people view the universe and everything in it. We must not preach only in the categories that are present in our listeners minds when they come.

If we do, we betray the gospel and conceal the glory of God. Finally, last lesson. And the one that I have enjoyed most and the one that I give most thanks to Athanasius for. We must not assume that old books, which say some startling things are necessarily wrong, but may in fact have something glorious to teach us that we never dreamed.

I was warned by numerous folks last year to watch out for Athanasius. And they listed off all the defects. And that's one of the reasons I put the title in the folder that you were sent. And I didn't find the problems as bad as I was told.

And I've collected gobs and gobs of texts on irresistible grace and on the fall and on the atonement that to me make Athanasius squarely orthodox on those as well. But I'm not going to go there. I'm just going to go to the most controversial one.

That is thrown up immediately when you say you're going to go back to the fathers, especially the Eastern fathers and start profiting. They say, whoa, don't you realize they taught? I said, well, have you ever read them?

Any idea what that word means? And the word is deification, deification, divinization. Here's some quotes from Athanasius. The sun was made man that we might be made God. Well, I can see jerking that one out and saying heresy.

I'll use this guy dangerous or he was not man. And then became God. But he was God and then became man. To deify us. The Greek word is set up. Poet, though, men that up,.

Oh yeah, oh, very easy, right? Make God.

But is it clear?

You make a God, make God, make divine, make like God. But what does that point mean? Is that really obvious? I mean, so quickly we write off a person because they say something with categories we don't use.

You got to get inside Athanasius head and figure out what are you saying? What do you mean? This troubles me that you say God became man, that man might become God. That's a troubling thing. And those guys didn't bat an eye.

I mean, were they really that heretical? Why aren't you batting eyes at this? And then you find second Peter one for. Which says that you may become partakers of the. That us who set us. Divine nature.

Anybody want to call Peter a heretic? Here's the way Athanasius explains that and other passages in John.

It's beautiful.

John then thus writes, hereby know we that we dwell in him and he in us because he hath given us of his spirit. And the sun is in the father as his own word and radiance. But we, apart from the spirit, are strange and distant from God.

And by the participation of the spirit, we are knit into the Godhead so that our being in the father is not ours, but is the spirits which is in us and abides in us. What then is our likeness and equality to the sun?

The sun is in the father in one way and we become in him in another. And that neither we shall ever be as he nor is the word as we.

Hmm, hmm.

So maybe he's not so far off. In fact, might he not be seeing something we need to see in dealing with second Peter one for or Romans 8, 29, those whom he foreknew he predestined to be conformed to the image of his son that he might be the first born among many brothers?

I mean, this is a shocking thing to say. I am the brother of the second person of the Trinity that ought to shock us. He's my brother. I'm in the family. That's a shocking thing. So don't get them out of shape too quick with that up until you know, oh, how valuable to read old books.

Or maybe he was thinking about Revelation 226, where using the Old Testament reference to the sun's rule. We are told if we conquer, we will rule the nations with Iran. Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute.

That's supposed to be spoken of Jesus and is spoken of us or even more amazing. Revelation three twenty one. When you conquer, you will sit with me on my throne. That's unbelievable. How do you do this?

That's heresy.

If it weren't in the Bible that we're going to sit on the throne, we're going to judge angels now.

So what do you do? You read the whole book.

Why Reading Old Books Can Expose Blind Spots

Little princess here. C .S. Lewis wrote the introduction for on the incarnation by Athanasius. I don't know whether that is in print anywhere, but it's all over the Internet. You can just type in C .S. Lewis introduction on the incarnation and you can read it takes 10 minutes to read.

And he argues in there that this book as a classic is more readable than all the books that have been written about it in the last 2000 years. And we're scared away from old books, he says, because we think because they're old, they're inaccessible.

And he said the reason they're classics is because they're so accessible. Books that are not accessible die, they go out of existence. Books that keep getting read generation after generation are called classics because they're readable.

But you if you try to read the the PhD dissertations about them, they're totally unintelligible. And so Lewis is pushing on us. And you remember this quote. He said that every third book you read should be outside your own century.

That's really good advice because here's his rationale. Every it's not because the early ages had no blind spots, they just had different blind spots. And so they tend to correct ours. We can see there's pure problem, but you might bump into something you'd never seen before because of the blind spots.

He said it's something like in 200 years. The common errors in our centuries right in 20th century will be shared by Hitler and President Roosevelt. And they don't have a clue that they're making the same mistake because it's just in the air.

Oh, brothers, let's read old books, he said it would be just as fine to read books two centuries from now, but you can't get at them yet. The only option we have for not being in our own blindness is old ones, new ones written in two thousand two hundred and twenty would be just fine.

Read those. But if you can't get at them. And so the only way to be free from the blindness of our own times is to read old books. And I'm bearing witness to the preciousness of this last point because he has helped me so much.

I feel like I've I've gone farther and I'm just going to share with you where I am right now. And then you interact tomorrow at the by writing your questions for the panel tomorrow. But moving toward a conclusion here, here's my last.

It's the same. We're on the same lesson. The old books will possibly reveal something beautiful to you. And here's the question deification raised for me. I saw and then I read it in this book that deification is the Eastern church word for glorification in the West.

And if you think through glorification, it's just as problematic because of the glory we're talking about is God's. And to be glorified is not to be praised. It doesn't mean just God's going to praise you.

It means you're going to. Have it, be it, see it, and that's the question, that's the question, and thinking about this question has been huge for me. So the question is, what is the ultimate end of creation?

What's the ultimate end of God in creating and redeeming? And I began by asking this, is it being or is it seeing that your will spin now? Go with me where I have been for the last several days, is it being or is it seeing that we are destined for ultimately?

How do Romans 8, 29 predestined to be conformed to the image of his son relate to John 17, 24? Father, I desire that they also whom you have given me may be with me where I am to see my glory. How does relate to each other?

Conformed, the being language and the seeing language of the beatific vision of God, which is the ultimate goal, should I be excited about what I'm going to be or what I'm going to see? And Athanasius helped me here.

I thank God for Athanasius here. I don't know anybody else talking about this, you know, so I got help. I'm inclined. You may have heard me say it, I'm inclined to stress seeing rather than being. That's my present bent in my system development to always being developed.

I want to know more. I want to fix what's not right. I want to enlarge my view of God and universe. And right now I'm in a place where I am emphasizing seeing because of John 17, 24, and because it helps me in so many ways.

Athanasius wouldn't let me be content, right?

He's pushing on me.

He's pushing on me with texts about deification, glorification, being language. He's pushing on me and I'm struggling and I want to be biblical. Don't don't want to just defend my system. I want to be shaping the system biblically all the time.

So Athanasius won't let me run away from biblical texts that stress the language of deification and glorification. And conformity to his image and me becoming something like that. So here's my present conclusion.

The ultimate end of creation is neither being nor seeing. But delighting and display. The ultimate end of creation is neither being nor seeing. But delighting and displaying, delighting and displaying the glory of God in the face of Christ and the displaying happens both in the delighting.

Since we glorify most what we delight in most. And in the deeds of the resurrection body that flow from this delight in. The glory of God, the display of God's glory. Will be, in the end, internal and external, it will be spiritual and physical.

We will display the glory of God by Christ exalting joy in the glory of God in the face of Christ. And by Christ exalting deeds done with our resurrection bodies. Creative things, writing and making and building and playing all manner of working and relating and talking and singing and thinking.

There will be deeds done in the final state that will be external and visible and they will flow from a heart ravished with Jesus Christ. Therefore, I must now ask this question. How shall I speak of future being and seeing if I've said being Piper's being your being, anything and my seeing and you're seeing anything are not the ultimate aim of God in creation, but you're delighting and you're displaying.

Being are the ultimate ends. What shall I say? How shall I talk about the being and the seeing? And here's my effort by the spirit of God who dwells in us, our final destiny is not self admiration. Or self exaltation, but being able to see the glory of God without disintegrating.

And being able to delight in the glory of Christ with the very delight that the father has in his own son, that's as close to deification as I get. And being able to do visible Christ exalting deeds that flow from this delight and in this way.

In being that kind of person able to see, able to delight, able to do things that come from and flow back to God, a wave of revelation of divine glory in the saints is set in motion that goes on and grows for all eternity as each of us sees Christ and delights in Christ with the delight of the father mediated by the spirit, we will overflow with visible, visible actions of love and creativity on the new earth.

And in this way we will see the revelation of God's glory in each other's lives in ever new ways, new dimensions of the riches of the glory of God in Christ will shine forth every day from new delights and new deeds.

And these, in turn, will become new seeings of Christ and will elicit new delights and new doings, which will become new seeings, which will produce new delights and new doings, and they will produce more seeings.

And the wave will roll on forever and ever and ever with the revelation increasingly of the riches of the glory of God, which now brings us back to ask help once more from Athanasius and he gives it. We will discover.

In the ages to come. That this. Goal was possible only because the infinite son of God took on himself a human nature. So that we in our human nature might be united to him and display more and more of his infinite glory.

We will find in our eternal experience that his infinite beauty took on human form so that our human form might increasingly display his infinite beauty. I am thankful to God. That I did not turn away.

From Athanasius and the word deification. There is here, this is a quote from Calvin, there is here at this word and second, Peter, one for a grace, the magnitude of which our minds can never fully grasp.

Thank you.

At the nation's. And thank you, Father, and thank you, Holy Spirit. In Jesus name.

Amen.