God’s glory

Al Mohler also touches on the question that I quoted from John Piper the other day.

First he starts with an important reminder:

Human beings are trapped in a human frame of reference. When we think of motivation, we inevitably start with our own self-conscious knowledge of our own motivations. For a human to seek his or her own glory is narcissism in purest form. Human egotism is constantly on display. And, if we are honest, we know that we seek our own glory as a reflex.

then he gets to the meat of the matter:

The Bible tells us that God does all things for the sake of his own glory. As God spoke to his people through the prophet Ezekiel: “Therefore say to the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord God: It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations to which you came. And I will vindicate the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, and which you have profaned among them. And the nations will know that I am the Lord, declares the Lord God, when through you I vindicate my holiness before their eyes” [Ezekiel 36:22-23].

God’s saving acts are for the sake of his own glory, even as his people are redeemed. He acts to vindicate his own name and to display his own power and holiness. Creation itself displays his glory, extending to every atom and molecule. “The heavens declare the glory of God,” sings the Psalmist, and God created the world for the purpose of putting his glory on display [Psalm 19:1].

….
As Herman Bavinck expressed this truth, “God can rest in nothing other than himself and cannot be satisfied with anything less than himself. He has no alternative but to seek his own honor.” Similarly, though from a very different theological perspective, Karl Barth defined God’s glory as “his dignity and right, not only to maintain, but to prove and declare, to denote and almost as it were to make himself conspicuous and everywhere apparent as the One he is.”

This is merely the logic of what it means for God to be the one perfect being. As such, he cannot look beyond himself for anything or anyone greater. In an often-overlooked passage in Hebrews, we are told that “when God made a promise to Abraham, since he had no one greater by whom to swear, he swore by himself” [Hebrews 6:13]. When humans take an oath, we naturally invoke God’s name. When God makes a promise, he can invoke no greater name then his own. This is not evidence of selfishness or narcissism — only an irrefutable logic.

Even so, some who are troubled by this question may remain puzzled. Even when God is understood to be the one perfect being, this still appears to be a cold logic.

The most important corrective to this misunderstanding is to realize that God’s glory is a generous and self-giving glory. His glory is his own joy, and the display of his glory brings his creatures true joy.

When a human glorifies himself, he robs others of joy. Self-aggrandizement and human megalomania cause hurt and harm to others, not blessing and joy.

But when God displays and exhibits his glory, he shares joy with his creatures and wholeness with all creation. Put most directly, without the knowledge of God’s glory, we would be robbed of true joy. God would be less than perfect — even selfish — if he did not display his glory and allow us to share in the divine joy and fulfillment.

emphasis added

Go read the rest, and especially the conclusion. excellent.

Interview with Dinesh D’Souza

I first became acquainted with the work of Dinesh D’Souza back in law school when I read Illiberal Education. It was both interesting and eye opening in its willingness to take on directly the sacred cows of the left wing thought police.

His more recent book is What’s so Great about Christianity. In this book, Dinesh is speaking up on behalf of Christianity and taking on directly the sacred cows of the new atheists like Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens.

Here is an interview with Salvo Magazine regarding this book and new atheism. Go read the whole thing. Very good stuff.

Two excerpts to give you a tease, but you have to go read the rest:

You write in your book that “the Christian villain, Satan, has now become the atheist hero.” What do you mean?

If you read John Milton’s Paradise Lost, you discover that the book is populated with heroes and villains. The heroes, of course, are God, Jesus, and the good angels, man is sort of in the middle, and then you have the bad guys: Satan and his legion of deputy devils. Critics have noted that the action in the book always intensifies when the devils come into the picture, and Satan himself is an irresistibly attractive character. God is changeless; he always takes the same position and says the same things. But Satan is incredibly creative. Every time he is thwarted, he comes up with a new scheme or a new project. He is, from a literary perspective, a very rich and adaptive character.

Years ago, the suspicion began to arise that Satan was actually Milton’s hero. As one critic put it, “Milton is of the devil’s party without even knowing it.” Look at Satan’s reason for rebelling against God. It’s not that he doesn’t recognize that God is greater than he is. He does. It’s just that he doesn’t want to play by anybody else’s rules. This idea that it is better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven is Satan’s motto, and it turns out that this is also the motto of contemporary atheists such as Christopher Hitchens.

How so?

Hitchens has argued in his debates with me that he is not an atheist at all, but rather an anti-theist. It’s not that he doesn’t believe in God; it’s that he rejects this kind of God who acts in this kind of way and demands this or that of us. This is not scientific atheism; it’s more like the atheism of Nietzsche. Unlike Dawkins, Hitchens is not spending much time in the biology lab. His idea is that God is interfering with the way he wants to live his life. He simply doesn’t like this Christian God with all of his commandments, the demand for complete allegiance, and his divine observance and scrutiny. Hitchens asks, “If I play by the rules, what’s my reward? Well, I basically get to be a servant boy in heaven. I don’t want any of that. It sounds terrible.”

So Satan’s doctrine—I will not serve—is the poetic root of the New Atheists, many of whom claim that they would rather go to hell than heaven. “All my friends will be there,” they say. “We’re all going to party; it’s going to be great.” The Satan whom Milton portrayed as a resourceful and ingenious villain has to some degree become a modern atheist hero.

…..
I don’t believe in unicorns, so I just go about my life as if there are no unicorns. You’ll notice that I haven’t written any books called The End of the Unicorn, Unicorns Are Not Great, or The Unicorn Delusion, and I don’t spend my time obsessing about unicorns. What I’m getting at is that you have these people out there who don’t believe that God exists, but who are actively attempting to eliminate religion from society, setting up atheist video shows, and having atheist conferences. There has to be more going on here than mere unbelief.

If you really look at the motivations of contemporary atheists, you’ll find that they don’t even really reject Christian theology. It’s not as if the atheist objects to the resurrection or the parting of the sea; rather, it is Christian morality to which atheists object, particularly Christian moral prohibitions in the area of sex. The atheist looks at all of Christianity’s “thou shalt nots”—homosexuality is bad; divorce is bad; adultery is bad; premarital sex is bad—and then looks at his own life and says, “If these things are really bad, then I’m a bad guy. But I’m not a bad guy; I’m a great guy. I must thus reinterpret or (preferably) abolish all of these accusatory teachings that are putting me in a bad light.”

emphasis added

hat tip to Allahpundit at Hot Air