This first part seems hopeful. But then there’s the rest; things like this:
Reading from this sermon in particular is hard, and it isn’t MacDonald’s language. Each time it has come up I pendulate between despair and resignation, when I think of this view of God’s justice. Who could endure? Who could come out of this at all? What could be left to deliver?
Reading just this section again, I find this sermon utterly terrifying. Right now I’m trying to imagine what it would be like to sit in his congregation under this preaching. The tender heart in the pew would be terrified of God, who sounds like the most sadistic parent, who abuses “for the child’s own good.” The hard heart would be hardened further.
The Gospel as I know it can be challenging enough, and the process of sanctification is a rough road but hopeful. But this one is utterly disheartening.
Sorry, Merv. Often MacDonald is challenging, but every time I face this sermon, it’s beyond me.
I appreciate this point of view. It helps me look at it in another way. I’d like to hear more.
It is a hard one. It’s a bit obscure, as his writing tends to be, if not translated (by others better than I am). I’ve had to rely on other interpreters sometimes. I think he’s being discouraging to build us to a better answer–it’s the one Dorothy Sayers really liked, I think.
Our family is reading “The Boyhood of Ranald Bannerman,” a child-oriented story by Macdonald, at night. We’re enjoying it–but looking back at the original bits, I’m so glad for those who interpreted it for me.
I think MacDonald would be horrified that anybody has that takeaway from what he writes! And if that’s the image of God it brings up to you, then I think he would be the first to urge you to put this sermon away from yourself!
It perhaps is unfortunate then that the next few things I post here are still from that sermon. … Or perhaps some discussion generated may shed some light. Because I really do maintain that MacDonald sees an infintiely more tenderhearted God than the temper tantrum God that has been crafted by so much of Christendom of recent centuries.
The notion that the salvation of Jesus is a salvation from the consequences of our sins, is a false, mean, low notion. The salvation of Christ is salvation from the smallest tendency or leaning to sin. It is a deliverance into the pure air of God’s ways of thinking and feeling. It is a salvation that makes the heart pure, with the will and choice of the heart to be pure. To such a heart, sin is disgusting. It sees a thing as it is,–that is, as God sees it, for God sees everything as it is. The soul thus saved would rather sink into the flames of hell than steal into heaven and skulk there under the shadow of an imputed righteousness. No soul is saved that would not prefer hell to sin. Jesus did not die to save us from punishment; he was called Jesus because he should save his people from their sins.
From MacDonald’s unspoken sermon: “Justice” (207-215)
I think it might also be safe to say, Kendel, that somebody who is tenderheated like yourself already has the work of the Spirit manifesting in yourself - I.e. You are already horrified at the thought of cruelty or suffering - of anyone - even if it was deserved punishment. There are those who have, perhaps, put themselves so far away from their humanity (from God) that suffering may be their only way back, and to deny them that suffering would be tantamount to condemning them to eternal hell. Maybe a bit like your child having a splinter in his finger, and you as a parent get the tweezers, and even though you know that you must do something that will cause your child yet more pain in the short term, you also know that his bigger and lasting relief (his ‘salvation’) depends on you removing that splinter from his finger. A mother so tender hearted that she refuses to use the tweezers would be condemning her child to much greater and lasting infection, pain, and misery by just letting him be.
At least that’s the kind of spirit I think MacDonald puts forward with this sermon.
Oh - and for what it’s worth - I think I know what you mean about MacDonald’s preaching and thoughts sometimes (not even just a matter of his language!). Sometimes I feel like he’s a man near the top of Mt. Everest shouting down to me, (miles down from him), about what it’s like to scale various summits up there. Not that he’s necessarily such a saint himself, I gather, - and I think he has said as much at some points. But from what he writes in most places (like here), he sure seems like some impossibly elevated saint to me at times!
Here we see MacDonald tempering the effects of his scathing denunciation of what so many hold as being at the heart of their faith. His tenderness is toward them, not toward the falsehood that has burrowed its way into their convictions. I included vastly more than Lewis did - and still was tempted to include yet much more; -refer to the sermon itself if you are yet unsure what it is that MacDonald here thinks of as “the lie”.
(210) Charity and Orthodoxy
If you say the best of men have held the opinions I stigmatize, I answer, 'Some of the best of men have indeed held these theories, and of men who have held them I have loved and honoured some heartily and humbly–but because of what they were , not because of what they thought ; and they were what they were in virtue of their obedient faith, not of their opinion. They were not better men because of holding these theories. In virtue of knowing God by obeying his son, they rose above the theories they had never looked in the face, and so had never recognized as evil. Many have arrived, in the natural progress of their sacred growth, at the point where they must abandon them. The man of whom I knew the most good gave them up gladly. Good to worshipfulness may be the man that holds them, and I hate them the more therefore; they are lies that, working under cover of the truth mingled with them, burrow as near the heart of the good man as they can go. Whoever, from whatever reason of blindness, may be the holder of a lie, the thing is a lie, and no falsehood must mingle with the justice we mete out to it. There is nothing for any lie but the pit of hell. Yet until the man sees the thing to be a lie, how shall he but hold it! Are there not mingled with it shadows of the best truth in the universe? So long as a man is able to love a lie, he is incapable of seeing it is a lie. He who is true, out and out, will know at once an untruth; and to that vision we must all come. I do not write for the sake of those who either make or heartily accept any lie. When they see the glory of God, they will see the eternal difference between the false and the true, and not till then. I write for those whom such teaching as theirs has folded in a cloud through which they cannot see the stars of heaven, so that some of them even doubt if there be any stars of heaven. For the holy ones who believed and taught these things in days gone by, all is well. Many of the holiest of them cast the lies from them long ere the present teachers of them were born. Many who would never have invented them for themselves, yet receiving them with the seals affixed of so many good men, took them in their humility as recognized truths, instead of inventions of men; and, oppressed by authority, the authority of men far inferior to themselves, did not dare dispute them, but proceeded to order their lives by what truths they found in their company, and so had their reward, the reward of obedience, in being by that obedience brought to know God, which knowledge broke for them the net of a presumptuous self-styled orthodoxy. Every man who tries to obey the Master is my brother, whether he counts me such or not, and I revere him; but dare I give quarter to what I see to be a lie, because my brother believes it? The lie is not of God, whoever may hold it.
Clearly MacDonald was not a fan of systematic theology.
: )
I appreciate the generosity of this sentiment. While it’s “risky” to explore outside the box, and some go farther afield than others, a lot of us can’t help it, either by circumstance or inclination. Sometimes/Often we find things we can use in learning obedience. It takes discernment, of course. But still, we find things.
I appreciate the saying “All truth is God’s truth,” for the same reason. It frees us from fear of exploration. It also places great responsibility on us, but we already had that.
And I think it is a universally required charity all of us believers are obliged to both give and receive. After all, which of us is the perfect image of Christ - whether we’re ‘systematic’ about it or not? So anybody who benefits from anything we’ve done or said - is drawn closer to Christ as a result - would that not have happened despite our still-present sin? Our mixed motivations? Our stubbornly held, but still wrong opinions about so much? I’ve heard it said, the light of Jesus shows through all our cracks. …Jars of clay indeed!
To put off obeying him till we find a credible theory concerning him, is to set aside the potion we know it our duty to drink, for the study of the various schools of therapy.
Another hard one here, Kendel. Some of these can be bleak sounding words to sin-weary ears like mine. The use of fire - as an image for punishment, yet also refinement, yet also - existing at God’s very center as … something else yet? … is interesting to me.
(212) Inexorable Love
I believe that justice and mercy are simply one and the same thing; without justice to the full there can be no mercy, and without mercy to the full there can be no justice; that such is the mercy of God that he will hold his children in the consuming fire of his distance until they pay the uttermost farthing, until they drop the purse of selfishness with all the dross that is in it, and rush home to the Father and the Son, and the many brethren–rush inside the centre of the life-giving fire whose outer circles burn.
Yeah, Merv. I get it. I understand the logic of the theology MacDonald is proposing/promoting.
Elsewhere in the sermon he says this:
God does destroy sin; he is always destroying sin. In him I trust that he is destroying sin in me. He is always saving the sinner from his sins, and that is destroying sin. But vengeance on the sinner, the law of a tooth for a tooth, is not in the heart of God, neither in his hand. If the sinner and the sin in him, are the concrete object of the divine wrath, then indeed there can be no mercy. Then indeed there will be an end put to sin by the destruction of the sin and the sinner together. But thus would no atonement be wrought–nothing be done to make up for the wrong God has allowed to come into being by creating man. There must be an atonement, a making-up, a bringing together–an atonement which, I say, cannot be made except by the man who has sinned.
From: Unspoken Sermons by George MacDonald: Justice
This part helps some; seeing that God is not intent on punishing the sin, which would be unendurable, but removing them, refining the believer. Oh, but this process. If there be any other way to be free of it!
Which very likely was the underlying point of the sermon.
I believe that to him who obeys, and thus opens the doors of his heart to receive the eternal gift, God gives the spirit of his son, the spirit of himself, to be in him, and lead him to the understanding of all truth; that the true disciple shall thus always know what he ought to do, though not necessarily what another ought to do; that the spirit of the father and the son enlightens by teaching righteousness. I believe that no teacher should strive to make men think as he thinks, but to lead them to the living Truth, to the Master himself, of whom alone they can learn anything, …
Maybe you can correct me, Mervin–I think the majority of the time, Macdonald believes that doing the nearest task of serving others like Christ is generally what God wants us to do. I’m not sure I’ve run into a special directive on what to do in Macdonald’s writings, though it may be there.
The theme of “not necessarily [knowing] what another ought to do” also comes up often, I think, in Lewis’ writings, possibly in part from MacDonald–he quotes from John 21: 22, where Peter asks Jesus about John, “Lord, what about him?”. That’s after Peter says that his main job is to feed His sheep. In response, Jesus said, “If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you?”.
I agree that he does seem pretty consistently steadfast that the only real spiritually significant task any of us has to do with our neighbors is to … bring them to Christ … that they may learn directly from Him for themselves.
That said, one needn’t look far I don’t think to find MacDonald insisting on teachings of his own - even from this very sermon - such as “don’t attribute darkness, or what you can now only see as darkness, to Christ” … or … “don’t aspire to understanding that is divorced from obedience.” So, technically, one could insist that it seems MacDonald has plenty that he puts forward that could fairly be called “teaching.” I guess we could say in his defense, though, that at least for these couple of examples, he is merely trying to remove stumbling blocks that often prevent someone from seeking out Christ.
So yeah - it does seem to me he’s quite consistent and persistent about eschewing strong doctrinal gatekeeping, and in fact is quite willing to sweep all that aside as so much rubbish if it is erected as any sort of barrier to come between anyone and Christ Himself. [Granted … some or much of all that doctrine may turn out to be necessary - but only if or as Christ directs you towards it. The truest things in the world become falsehoods to you if they come between you and the Truth Himself. …is something I imagine MacDonald might say.]
Does that sound like a fair appraisal of MacDonald to you?
‘But you do not believe that the sufferings of Christ, as sufferings, justified the supreme ruler in doing anything which he would not have been at liberty to do but for those sufferings?’
I do not. I believe the notion as unworthy of man’s belief, as it is dishonouring to God. It has its origin doubtless in a salutary sense of sin; but sense of sin is not inspiration, though it may lie not far from the temple-door. It is indeed an opener of the eyes, but upon home-defilement, not upon heavenly truth; it is not the revealer of secrets. Also there is another factor in the theory, and that is unbelief–incapacity to accept the freedom of God’s forgiveness; incapacity to believe that it is God’s chosen nature to forgive, that he is bound in his own divinely willed nature to forgive. No atonement is necessary to him but that men should leave their sins and come back to his heart. But men cannot believe in the forgiveness of God. Therefore they need, therefore he has given them a mediator. And yet they will not know him. They think of the father of souls as if he had abdicated his fatherhood for their sins, and assumed the judge. If he put off his fatherhood, which he cannot do, for it is an eternal fact, he puts off with it all relation to us.