Of all the ways to go out of your mind, 
Some are good;
Some not so good.
Do you desire other worlds, other ways?

I hallucinate every night: 
Brain makes
What some take
And does it for free every time.

At the Seaquarium you can go down
Glass tubes 
On ocean's floor
And see life from the side of the fishes.

You can take hard beans,
Roast brown
And drink them,
Pour jitters right into your mouth.

Music can do what nothing else can:
Lift up
And break clean
Your heart, in fourteen different ways.

At the glass tubes you can go down 
Seaquariums
On floor's ocean
And see fish from the life of the sides. 

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The Case of Craig

‘Hail and well met’ I say to all the non-Protestants who have commented on the problems with William Lane Craig’s recent statement about the Son’s eternal generation from the Father. His rejection of it, I mean. It’s not surprising and it’s only the latest in a series of unorthodox positions taken by the great apologist and philosopher.

First (if memory serves) it was a rejection of the Church’s historic confession of dyotheletism, the teaching that Christ has two wills, a human and a divine, and that this is a necessary consequence of him having two natures. Craig instead believes Christ, being one person (defined in a modern way), has one will. Then it was a rejection of divine simplicity. Then of certain tenets of Trinitarian dogma, such as the idea of a single will and mind in the Godhead. Craig instead favors a Social Trinitarian model.

Many Protestants have a problem with his departures as well. We (I will deign to speak for some of them) believe he is dangerously wrong on each of these matters. In leaving them behind, he leaves behind the historic teaching of the Church (Protestant, Orthodox, and Roman Catholic), as well as the more Biblically influenced worldview that had formulated these things prior to the advent of Modern, secular schools of philosophy. In abandoning those doctrines, he does not realize how vulnerable he makes others: without a strong account of divine simplicity, all kinds of new lines of attack on theism become available to its enemies; without eternal generation and dyotheletism, we lose the strong bases on which Christ’s full divinity and full humanity rest. Salvation itself is called into question.

But the issue is not Craig’s commitment to Sola Scriptura (his version of which probably looks quite different from that of historic Protestants of Reformed, Lutheran, and Anglican stripes). That doctrine is in no way at war with the Church’s longstanding teaching on these things. Craig is the aberration and the exception historically in the Church, and even among Protestants. He is not the norm.

But he is also not alone, and he is part of a growing contingent of Evangelicals in the English-speaking world. These folks are what I would call hyper-Biblicist in their approach to Scripture and thoroughly Modern in their approach to philosophy. When I say “growing” I am looking at the scale of about two centuries. Zooming in a bit more to the past 50 years, say, we can be encouraged from seeing quite a revival of emphasis on historical and confessional forms of theology.

But I want to lay out three things that I believe the Evangelical tradition needs in order to prevent more Craigs from happening:

1. A Commitment to the Right Kind of Sola Scriptura

In training our pastors, in hiring for our seminaries, in training our missionaries, in church preaching and discipleship, in new member’s classes, I believe we need to recover and emphasize the true doctrine of Sola Scriptura.

Sola Scriptura is the affirmation that Scripture, being the only deposit of God’s inspired and infallible words for his bride for all ages, is the norming norm, that is, the standard and measure of all truth, and in particular of truths pertaining to life and godliness for God’s people, making it their highest authority, to which all other teaching must conform. It is not an affirmation that Scripture is the only authority for God’s people, or the only source of truth, or that all Church doctrine must be expressly found in Scripture.

Scripture’s teaching can and must be translated, expounded, exposited, studied, systematized, and so forth, to be of maximal use to God’s people. Sola Scriptura therefore does not preclude but rather encourages the creation of Biblical rules of faith, creeds, confessions, and other works of theology.

When understood in this way, Sola Scriptura aids the Church and the theologian in doing theology and philosophy (and everything else) correctly, rather than being at war with them.

2. Church Adoption of Creeds and Confessions

In light of the foregoing point, I believe Evangelical churches need to formally adopt certain creeds or confessions into their official church documents, and bring these regularly before the congregation in the form of liturgical recitations, songs, and teaching. Everything from the Apostles Creed, the Athanasian Creed, and the Nicene Creed, to the Westminster Confession or the 1689 London Baptist Confession, or the Augsburg or the New Hampshire Confessions of Faith are on the table for us. The deliverances of at least the first four ecumenical councils are ours, and the riches of many catechisms too, such as the Heidelberg and the Westminster, not to mention the teaching of theologians from Irenaeus to Anselm to Aquinas.

Our people need to know that they belong to a 2,000 year old church, not a restorationist sect that sprang up 500 or 200 years ago, or when their pastor graduated from seminary. They need to see and hear constantly the Spirit-blessed results of millennia of theological reflection, debate, and response to heresy. This will protect them from the upstart and arrogant Modernist assumptions that swirl around us.

3. Training in Philosophy as the Handmaiden of Theology

Philosophy used to be considered the handmaiden or servant of theology, which was the queen of the sciences. Among Evangelicals, it has been almost entirely abandoned. When not, we usually encounter it in one of a couple modern strains: Analytic or Continental/Postmodern. Craig belongs to the former.

There are certainly some great tools in Analytic Philosophy, but as a whole system of thought, it rivals rather than serves a thoroughly Biblical worldview. I would say the same of Ancient Philosophy or Medieval Philosophy or any other school, insofar as they aspire to totalizing and metaphysical claims. All human worldviews and systems of thought need to bow to Christ and be sanctified if they can be of true value to us. I would argue that Craig has allowed his Analytic Philosophical worldview to get out of its lane and color his reading of Scripture and understanding of theology in a harmful way.

Philosophy needs to be taught, especially to our pastors-in-training and theologians, so they can understand how to reason well and combat the world’s errors, but also so that they can understand the great theological and philosophical gains of the Church over the last 2,000 years, and defend them.

Conclusion

Craig’s buffet of heterodox beliefs is unfortunately quite logical. He is well on his way to denying several other key doctrines of theology proper, and we shouldn’t be surprised when he does. Such denials are entailed in his core suppositions.1

I hope and pray that more Christians wake up to the glories of the orthodox faith and choose to shun the modern, secularizing Analytic worldview. I would love to see William Lane Craig himself change his mind on it. He has done great good for the faith in the past, and is, I believe, doing some harm to it now.

But we can do what the Church has always done: recognize error when we see it and formulate a better way in reply.

At Lake Cuivienen, by Ted Nasmith

[This article is from my forthcoming book, The Monsters and Tolkien, which I hope to release in 2027. Currently being illustrated.]

The raising up of the lowly is one of the major themes in The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien usually calls it ‘ennoblement’, and he mentions it, probably more than any other, as being at the heart of his book. In a 1956 letter to a reader, he says this: “nothing moves my heart (beyond all the passions and heartbreaks of the world) so much as ‘ennoblement’ (from the Ugly Duckling to Frodo).”1 And of all the ways in which readers of LotR have noted debts to the Virgin Mary and her story, I think none is so central or so dominant as the subject of ennoblement.

Ennoblement is her story. She is a maiden of lowly station who is lifted up to cosmic significance, beginning with the Annunciation of the angel Gabriel, who brings her the news that she will bear the Messiah. In response to this, Mary breaks into a psalm of praise that we call the Magnificat, found in Luke 1:46-55. Here are just a few lines: “my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant… he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts; he has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble estate”. Tolkien quotes some of this in a letter to W.H. Auden:

“Anyway, I myself saw the value of Hobbits, in putting earth under the feet of ‘romance’, and in providing subjects for ‘ennoblement’ and heroes more praiseworthy than the professionals: nolo heroizari is of course as good a start for a hero, as nolo episcopari for a bishop. Not that I am a ‘democrat’ in any of its current uses; except that I suppose, to speak in literary terms, we are all equal before the Great Author, qui deposuit potentes de sede et exaltavit humiles. [who hath put down the mighty from their seat, and exalted the humble]”2

He is there at the end quoting in Latin from the Magnificat. The fact that he brings it into a conversation on LotR, and in nearly the same breath as Hobbits are mentioned as subjects of ennoblement, is evidence of its centrality. He is thinking of the Hobbits in ‘Magnificatic’ terms. Look also at how he speaks in Letter 142 to Father Robert Murray, who had just read a draft of LotR and written with his thoughts: “... and of course by your references to Our Lady, upon whom all my own small perception of beauty both in majesty and simplicity is founded.”3 After this comes the famous line: “The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work”.4 There is ennoblement and Hobbitry in that ‘majesty-and-simplicity’ pairing. It’s not difficult to see that this statement belongs with the one quoted earlier, about ennoblement being what moves him most in the world. If it is Mary who has shown him all the beauty that he knows, “both in majesty and simplicity”, then it makes perfect sense to describe this beauty in terms of that which moves him most, the ennobling of the lowly. The lifting up of the humble to a glorious estate is Mary’s story.

But her story is just a part of the larger story of the Incarnation, which Tolkien loved deeply. He said this about it in his essay “On Fairy-Stories”:

“The Birth of Christ is the Eucatastrophe of Man’s history. The Resurrection is the Eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation. This story begins and ends in joy… There is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true, and none which so many skeptical men have accepted as true on its own merits… Art has been verified. God is the Lord, of angels, and of men—and of elves. Legend and History have met and fused. But in God’s kingdom the presence of the greatest does not depress the small. Redeemed Man is still man. Story, fantasy, still go on, and should go on. The Evangelium has not abrogated legends; it has hallowed them, especially the “happy ending.””5

On top of being a fairy-story, he happened to think the Incarnation story was true, in that it really occurred in history. As historical truth, and also as purely literary creation, he found it deeply moving. “Of course, I do not mean that the Gospels tell what is only a fairy-story; but I do mean very strongly that they do tell a fairy-story: the greatest. Man the story-teller would have to be redeemed in a manner consonant with his nature: by a moving story.”6

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We know that some stones at the very foundation of his invented mythology owe their placement to the Incarnation story—in particular, to a Christmas song: the name ‘Earendel’ (a name he took for the character who would later become his Earendil) comes from an Anglo-Saxon translation of a medieval antiphon.7 The antiphons are seven liturgical prayers sung or chanted during Advent, as bookends to the Magnificat. ‘Earendel’ was the Anglo-Saxon way of rendering ‘Oriens’, meaning ‘Rising Sun’ or ‘Dayspring’ (in the poem Crist I). The Christmas hymn “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” is based on these antiphons. Tolkien took inspiration from the word ‘Earendel’ (which struck him as a name of great beauty) to write what many consider the first work of his Middle-Earth legendarium, a poem called “The Voyage of Earendel the Evening Star”, in 1914.

In The Silmarillion, Earendil was the famous Half-Elven mariner who sailed to the uttermost West, to the Undying Lands, and eventually became a star in the night sky. His son Elros (Elrond’s brother) became the first king of Numenor. Bilbo’s chanted poem in Rivendell, in Chapter I of Book II in The Fellowship, is about Earendil. Tolkien drops a fascinating hint about this in Letter 297, to a ‘Mr. Rang’, largely about his nomenclature. It is worth quoting:

“The borrowing [of real words for his invented mythology], when it occurs (not often) is simply of sounds that are then integrated in a new construction; and only in one case Earendil will reference to its source cast any light on the legends or their ‘meaning’—and even in this case the light is little. The use of earendel in A-S Christian symbolism as the herald of the rise of the true Sun in Christ is completely alien to my use. The Fall of Man is in the past and off stage; the Redemption of Man in the far future.”8

This is intriguing. On the one hand, he says that the source of the word sheds some light on “the legends or their ‘meaning’”, while at the same time maintaining that the Christian connection is “completely alien” to his use. Now, in a sense, he is overstating his case. For, his Earendil also becomes the Morning Star, just as Earendel is in the antiphon. The Morning Star is a thing which in the primary world has Biblical significance, as a common descriptor for Christ (and also, strangely, for Lucifer). To say the secondary-world meaning is “completely alien” from that of the primary world is hyperbolic in this case.9 But he seems to be, legitimately, stressing the fact that no overt, deliberate Christian meaning is intended by the name-borrowing; Earendil was not a herald of the Incarnation, as Earendel was in the antiphon. Fair enough. And yet, for this word, “reference to its source” will cast “light on the legends or their ‘meaning’”. Fascinatingly, he is not merely admitting that ‘Earendel’ just as a word was a source for ‘Earendil’, as a word; he is admitting that it is a window (or perhaps just a crack) onto some of the significance of the legend or legends themselves. This is actually a huge admission. I submit that this is because the story of the Incarnation (and in particular the Annunciation) is at the heart of what Tolkien was weaving into LotR, and The Silmarillion.10 It casts light on his love of ennoblement.

And we may go further, pointing out something Tolkien does not rule out as a primary-world connection with Earendel/Earendil: Mary as the Morning Star. This too has quite a pedigree in Roman Catholic tradition: to mention a source Tolkien loved and urged his son to recite, there is the Litany of Loretto.11 Among her many titles in it we find “Morning Star” (Stella matutina in Latin) right after, “House of gold, Ark of the covenant, Gate of heaven”. Even though Christ as the Morning Star might have had nothing to do with Earendil, Mary may have. It could be that the “light” cast by that name’s source falls on the story of ennobled Mary.12

Like her, Earendil is raised above his station (as half Man, a mere mortal) and accepted at Valinor rather than killed, which was the punishment for any mortal who came there, because he came to plead the cause of Middle-Earth to the Valar themselves (the angel-like ‘gods’ who in some ways guide and steward the earth). He was given the great gift of choosing which fate to accept—that of Elves or of Men, since he came from both peoples. He later literally becomes a star in the heavens, due to the Silmaril on his brow. The words of “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” could be sung of him: “O come, thou Dayspring,13 come and cheer / Our spirits by thine advent here. / Disperse the gloomy clouds of night / And death’s dark shadows put to flight.”

It is the light of this star that is captured in the glass phial given to Frodo by Galadriel. And so it is no wonder that Frodo’s cry in the darkness of Shelob’s Lair, while he holds the phial aloft, is (when translated from Elvish) “Hail, Earendil, brightest of stars!” This is not so far from “Hail, Mary, full of grace!”

Photo by Megan Nevils

A hedge before me breaks in two
And I see amid something far
That wants to pull me through.
It's all that eye or mind can see 
For six or seven seconds,
And I think it's where I want to be--
A complete eglimpse through the shabbier nearness,
Perfectly filling the hedge-gap,
Which and all around it sat in drearness.

Think of what it might have shown: 
A wall, a fence, a road or cars,
Of what it might have hid and kept unknown,
And how I might instead have never seen
The far trees swaying from a distant breeze,
The sunlight making a happier green.
The birds of that country take their ease;
I watch them sport and turn,
And then at last their homely branches sieze.

As some unknowing have angels hosted,
So might some, like me, I think,
Have had the chance and of it boasted
To see them at their play
On bright leas unspoiled,
Through a hedge, in brief eglimpse, on a day.

“Winter Landscape” by Caspar David Friedrich

The final day of Advent is here. The glories of the Coming One rise to their highest pitch, before all goes still and the Moment arrives.

At his first coming he offered himself to the world, but he really came for his Bride. At his second coming he offers himself to no one, and comes for his Bride again—this time to rescue her finally from all her enemies, to judge and punish them, and to bring the first world to a close.

As Hebrews 9 says, “Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.” (v. 28) His second coming will be an occasion of at least equal joy to his people as was his first coming. In his first appearance he began the work of creating a people for himself, and in his second he will save them and dwell with them in the flesh forever.

After all, he is a king. A king neither suffers his enemies to live, nor his subjects to disobey, forever. He will take them in hand, and “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Hebrews 10:31). He will finally lay claim to all that is his and banish the usurpers into outer darkness. This too is Christmas. We can oversweeten it if we aren’t careful, and focus on the babe in the manger and the lowing oxen too much. These things aren’t wrong, but if they are the only things about Christmas visible to you, you are too zoomed in.

Thank your God as you close this Advent season for his first coming, quiet and small, and for his second, world-ending and grand. We did nothing to deserve either one, and all we have earned is his judgment. But thank him that his mercy was given, if you are in Christ.

Thank him and hark to hear his voice, which still goes out, and will until the end. Amen.

Christmas hymn: “Carol Of The Bells” (I recommend the version sung by the U.S. Air Force Band and Singing Sergeants)

Christmas fun song: “White Christmas” (I recommend the version sung by Bing Crosby)

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost: as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end, amen.

“Bread and a Glass of Wine”, designed by IrinaSherArt

Yesterday we looked at the feast of faith by which God’s own people feed on their savior, the Lord Jesus. Jesus’ command to eat his flesh and drink his blood is referring to an act of believing on him for salvation.

But the Lord’s Supper, or Communion, is another question. It is not part of our justification, which is by faith alone, but it is tied into our sanctification. And it is clearly more than just a remembrance. It is a mystery nearly as dark as the Son’s own incarnation in human nature, and yet glorious things are spoken of it.

First, it is called a “participation” in Christ’s body and blood (1 Corinthians 10:16). This seems to refer, at least in part, to Jesus’ intention for the Supper: it is meant to be taken as a remembrance of the Lord and his work, according to how he instituted it (he told his disciples to do it in remembrance of him). Paul calls it a participation by way of commanding the Corinthians to flee idolatry. His logic is: “How can you take the bread and wine of the Lord’s Supper and then go eat meat offered to a false god, or participate in some pagan ritual? Do you want to belong to God and to idols?” Doing so would “provoke the Lord to jealousy” (v. 22).

The point wasn’t that the food itself was contaminated, but that the act of offering it to a demon made it spiritually unclean for a Christian. The eating and drink showed where one’s allegiance lay.

Then, it is also called a proclamation: 1 Corinthians 11:26: “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” Who do you proclaim it to? Well, probably to all those who are present with you, and perhaps to watching angels (Luke 12:8, 1 Corinthians 11:10, 1 Timothy 3:16).

Moreover, it is said to unite us: “Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.” (1 Cor. 10:17) This might happen in a way we cannot understand. The Lord is free and able to use the Supper as a means of uniting a church together in greater accord, and to feed the faith of those who partake. We need not fear becoming superstitious mystics by acknowledging this.

As I said above, Paul calling the cup and bread a participation in Christ’s blood and body can in part be understood as a reference to allegiance. But it could also mean more than that. God clearly takes it seriously enough to say, “Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. … That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died.” (1 Cor 11:27, 30) If coming to the Supper wrongly can lead to physical illness and death, it must matter to God a lot.

God most often seems to work in this world through means: he uses people to carry his Gospel to other people; he uses angels to bring his word to men; he uses historical and political causes in one nation to effect his judgment on another (just read the prophets). It is possible that there is something happening in Communion that makes it effective as a means for various ends: for making many one and for proclaiming the Gospel, when it is taken properly; for bringing illness and death when it is not.

If you are a Christian, when Christ is offered to you in the Supper, all you need to do is accept him. If you are not a Christian, he offers himself to you too—to you and the world as a human being on Christmas Day, and “the world did not know him.” He came to his own people, the Jews, and “his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.” (John 1) This Christmas, the best thing you can do is accept him, partake of him, and be made one with his body. Accept him from his first coming, then keep accepting him again and again in the Lord’s Supper.

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Christmas hymn: “Who Is He In Yonder Stall?” (I recommend the version sung by the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir)

Christmas fun song: “A Merry Christmas” (I recommend the version sung by the U.S. Air Force Band and Singing Sergeants)

Prayer: Mighty God our Lord, we will thank You forever for Your insuperable gift of Yourself at Christmas over two thousand years ago. We thank You that You have also not left us with just our minds and imaginations but have given us tangible and visible symbols and sacraments of Your perfect work; such things as baptism and the Lord’s Supper.

We are a weak and depraved people, and yet You constantly renew Your affection and goodness toward us who are in Christ Jesus through these things.

May we accept you as you came at Christmas, and may we thereafter accept you with awe, with joy, and with gratitude in the Lord’s Supper as often as we receive it. To Your great praise and everlasting splendor we offer this prayer, and do it in the name of Jesus our King. Amen.

“The Last Supper” - Leonardo da Vinci

The Lord Jesus said some strange things in his time on earth. Not the least of them were his words to a crowd that had been fed by his miraculous sign of multiplying bread and fish the day before: “unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” (John 6:54)

This was such a strange teaching that even some of his own disciples (not the Twelve) left him and ceased walking with him. These words have been fought over by his followers ever since. Some say that they refer, at least in part, to his institution of the Lord’s Supper at the end of his ministry. Moreover, these verses in John 6, they say, show that the Supper confers eternal life or saving grace—as Jesus goes on to say in the next verse: “Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.” Others have said these words are only referring to the saving faith that a believer places in Jesus as God’s mediator and atoning sacrifice for sins.

In this Advent reading, I want to draw your gaze to what I believe is the Lord’s own interpretation of these words, and invite you to the feast that saves. To the disciples who were offended, Jesus says this: “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But there are some of you who do not believe.” (vv. 63, 64) He has been speaking to them of life this whole time. Indeed, v. 63 here is a bookend to this section on “life” and “eternal life”. The first bookend, in vv. 35 and 40, contains these statements: “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall not thirst” (v. 35)… “For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.” (v. 40) Thus, on either end of this discourse on feeding and life we find the concept of belief or faith.

After v. 40 he goes into the section on eating his flesh and drinking his blood, saying, “And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” So is the Lord’s Supper part of this? Well, whether it is or not, one thing is clear: the eating and drinking spoken of are spiritual acts. This is why he says, “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.” In other words, ‘I’m not literally telling you to eat my physical body; it is the Spirit, applying the message I’m giving you now (and which I will act out later in my death), who enlivens and saves you; not some physical act of eating or digestion.’

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So, if we want to connect this to the Lord’s Supper (and there is some reason to do so), we have to do it in this way: by remembering that consuming the bread and wine is not the eating that saves; the eating that saves is faith. The drinking that saves is faith. Faith here means right belief, which involves personal trust and intellectual assent.

This is Christmas: the bread from heaven has come down to a starving people in the wilderness, and all we need for life is to eat.

Christmas hymn: “What Child Is This?” (I recommend the version by Stephen Cleobury, Choir of King’s College, Cambridge)

Christmas fun song: “Happy Holiday” (I recommend the version sung by Andy Williams)

Prayer: O Lord, we want to dwell in Your presence. We want to inhabit the Holiest Place and dwell in the shade of Your wings. We want to partake of You. Bless us and favor us to make us wise for salvation by our knowledge of You.

Keep us and guard us in Christ Jesus, who will never cast us out but will raise us up on the last and great day, unto perfect salvation. Let us constantly eat His flesh and drink His blood and so find in us His life through Your Spirit. Our Father, bless us in Your Son and fill us with His Spirit so that His words will be our words, and His cries our cries, and His praises our praises.

Unite us with Yourself, Holy Trinity, and catch us up into Your perfect life, so that we all may be one as Father and Son are one in the Spirit. In the almighty name of Jesus, Amen.

Below is a print interview I recently did with Yaron Litwin, the CMO of Canopy, a software company that has accomplished some big things in the area of accountability for digital devices.

I’m excited to have been a part of this, and I hope everyone who reads it will spread the word about Canopy and even try it out for themselves! It’s worth it.

Noah: Canopy for Adults seems like a huge step forward for the company and for all those who have benefited from what you do. Can you explain the vision behind it and what need you believe you’re filling?

Yaron: Canopy was originally very family-focused, but at some point we were surprised to discover that many adults were downloading it for their own internet experience. There was a real need there that wasn’t being addressed by existing solutions.

Two major pain points kept coming up for these adults: a lack of suitable filtering technology in accountability apps, and a desire for privacy, even within the context of accountability. We already had AI-powered filtering that’s been developed over 15 years, and our philosophy toward digital parenting has always leaned more toward putting guardrails on the internet than toward intensive monitoring.

So it felt like a natural progression to bring that same approach and technology together for adults - creating an accountability app that protects them online while still respecting their privacy.

Noah: Is Canopy for Adults a new ‘feature’; a new ‘version’ of the original Canopy? How would you describe it?

Yaron: Canopy for Adults is a dedicated experience built on the same real-time filtering engine as our family product, but designed specifically for adults rather than families. It essentially combines the protection of a powerful pornography blocker with privacy-respecting accountability features.

Noah: With the latest data of 57% of U.S. adults aged 18–25 saying they look at pornography regularly, what do you think it will take for more people to, first, become aware of tools like Canopy, and then, secondly, see their need for them?

Yaron: I believe many of these people already realize that their consumption of pornography is an issue, especially those who are beyond the point of casual use and are closer to addiction. Many of them started down this road as children, in which case the very development of their brains may have been impacted.

Even when they recognize the problem, they may still be reluctant to help themselves, for various reasons. This is where faith leaders and institutions, schools, and wellness influencers step in. They can help people understand that they are not alone in this struggle and can normalize asking for help. At the same time, they can point their communities to specific tools like Canopy that can support them in their journey to recovery.

Noah: I personally have used Covenant Eyes and Accountable2You on my devices… what would you say to those who are on this journey and haven’t discovered Canopy yet? What sets it apart?

Yaron: Canopy has two major strengths: filtering technology and accountability that respects privacy.

Our AI scans incoming pictures and videos for explicit content and doesn’t rely on simple solutions like blacklists, as many other accountability apps do. This gives users the ability to browse social platforms freely, knowing any unexpected pornography will be blocked, instead of having the platform shut down entirely. It also means new porn websites are blocked before other apps have time to update their blacklists. It even allows for filtering of partial nudity.

In terms of accountability, Canopy users can choose an Ally who opts in to help them on their journey and is notified of certain actions, such as attempts to access known porn sites. At the same time, we highly value our customers’ privacy and do not reveal their entire browsing history or send random screenshots to their accountability partners.

Noah: Would you say that you see any differences in the prevalence of porn or the way it is consumed in Israel as opposed to America? If so, what’s behind that, in your opinion?

Yaron: In Israel, the highly religious segment of the population seems to have preceded the faith-based community in America in recognizing and addressing the issue of online pornography. They also appear to be ahead of the curve with initiatives like school phone bans.

There are a number of theories as to why this is, but in any case, America is certainly catching up, especially as seen in the recent waves of legislation around social media and school phone bans.

Noah: Yaron, as the CMO for Canopy, what do you do? What does a regular day look like for you, if there is a regular day?

Yaron: My job is to make sure the people who need Canopy actually hear about it, understand it, and use it to improve their lives. On any given day I’m listening to Canopy users, shaping our messaging, working with our product and data teams to improve the user experience, and partnering with schools, churches, influencers, and organizations that care about digital wellness and safety.

Noah: What motivated you to get involved with Canopy in the first place? Did you have experience in this realm before?

Yaron: I have always been drawn to mission-driven companies, and as a parent, I found Canopy to be very intriguing because of the online dangers that children are facing. Like the rest of our company, I realized the need to expand our scope once we realized how many Canopy users were looking to protect themselves online. AI is a topic that also very much interests me, so it makes sense that Canopy’s “AI for Good” philosophy was something I could easily connect with.

Noah: AI is a huge and growing factor. How does Canopy for Adults meet the changes it brings, and is it capable of blocking images that users themselves might be asking AI chatbots or generators to create?

Yaron: One of the very few benefits of “deepfake” pornography appearing so lifelike is that Canopy’s filter will tag it as explicit and block it. While AI is now becoming the primary driver in pornographic content online, we can detect and stop it with our own AI-driven filtering tech. We call it AI for Good. In other words, we fight bad AI with good AI!

Noah: When it comes to AI-generated pornography or other forms of what might be called ‘ethically sourced porn’, have you encountered people who say, “Well, as long as it doesn’t hurt anybody, it’s fine for me to use”? What would you say to that person?

Yaron: Even if no one was visibly harmed in the production, porn still distorts how we see other human beings (especially women) and how we experience intimacy, desire, and contentment.

The danger is exponentially more serious when it comes to deepfake CSAM (Child Sexual Abuse Material, or child pornography), which legislators are currently working on solutions for. Our company actually uses the same groundbreaking filtering tech behind Canopy in a separate digital forensic tool for law enforcement, so they can quickly and accurately detect such content, arrest predators, and protect children.

Noah: Since Canopy for Adults is just breaking onto the scene, are there any promotions or deals that readers could take advantage of to try it out?

Yaron: We would like to offer readers of the Substack a special 25% discount, which will work on any of our packages - so they can use it for themselves, as well as for their children, if relevant. To take advantage of this offer, they can visit our site at canopy.us and use the code PEOPLE25 when signing up for a free trial. We are always very happy to hear users’ input on Canopy so we can learn and improve. This is especially the case for Canopy for Adults. We invite any and all user input to be sent to hello@canopy.us

I’d like to thank Yaron for taking the time to answer my questions, and for the great work he and the rest of the Canopy team are doing. May God prosper it!

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The Hunt for The Ring, by John Howe

Introduction and Thesis

In 1936, J.R.R. Tolkien published an essay called “Beowulf: The Monsters and The Critics”, in which he pushed back on the scholarly consensus regarding that Old English poem and defended its heavy use of the monsters—Grendel and his mother and the dragon.

Many scholars were a bit embarrassed and confused by the prominence of these mythic creatures and the lack of a more human-centered plot, with arcs and complexities of character. In many cases, they wanted to read an Anglo-Saxon Aeneid or Odyssey or Oedipus Rex, and faulted the poem for being what it was.

Tolkien argued that these monsters and the hero’s encounters with them were actually integral to the greatness of the poem. Grendel and his mother and the dragon belong. And far from making the poem cheap or mute on the human condition, they help it say something that none of those other famous poems does. What that is I will let the reader encounter in the essay itself, which is worth reading.

Among other reasons, it is worth reading because of how it helps us understand Tolkien’s own mythical writings. In this article I want to focus on The Lord of The Rings and its monsters.

I believe these have been neglected by students of the book, to our own detriment. We who want to understand it better and enjoy it more have, I think, a lot to gain by paying more attention to Tolkien’s evil creatures and their roles in the story—in part for the same reason he himself mentions in regard to Beowulf: “I would suggest, then, that the monsters are not an inexplicable blunder of taste; they are essential, fundamentally allied to the underlying ideas of the poem, which give it its lofty tone and high seriousness.”

To start off, here’s a simple observation: the book is actually divided into six Books, two in each Part. The Parts are of course The Fellowship of The Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of The King. Each of the Books seems to feature one, and sometimes more than one, main monster. Here’s an overview, not counting quick mentions of creatures like goblins, Orcs, or trolls, or the animal spies of Sauron and Saruman:

Book I:

… The Black Riders
… Old Man Willow
… The Barrow-Wights

Book II:

… The Watcher in the Water
… The Balrog

Book III:

… Orcs in general and the Uruk-Hai in particular

Book IV:

… Gollum
… Shelob

Book V:

… The Fell Beasts
… The Dead Army

Book VI I’ll address later.

Book I: Black Riders, Old Man Willow, and Barrow-Wights

Now, more discussion is needed to understand these choices I’ve made. For Book I, some readers might feel that I shouldn’t have included Old Man Willow. He isn’t a servant of Sauron or anyone other than himself. In fact, if he answers to anybody it is to Tom Bombadil, a decidedly not-evil figure. He is, however, evil. “His heart was rotten… His grey thirsty spirit…had under its dominion nearly all the trees of the Forest from the Hedge to the Downs.”

The Barrow-Wights are a different case. They are evil in a different way. First, they are not in their natural state. Like Orcs, Balrogs, Wargs, and other creations of Morgoth and Sauron, they have been twisted or, in this case, reanimated to a new evil design. The Willow is, so far as we know, just the tree he always was. Trees are not creations of evil in Arda. Moreover, the Wights are clearly Sauron’s servants. The one that Frodo hears singing while he lies on the stone slab sings these words:

till the dark lord lifts his hand
over dead sea and withered land.

It seems unlikely that a creature not in the thrall of darkness would sing such words.

But far and away, the main antagonists in Book I are the Black Riders. They invade the Shire, they hunt the heroes from Chapter III to Chapter XII, they wound Frodo mortally, they are the cause of just about all the fear and many of the choices of the four hobbits and of Aragorn once he joins up with them.

Not only do they drive the plot of Book I, but the specific brand of terror they bring flavors it for us. That flavor, in fact, is echoed in the Barrow-Wights. These other monsters, brief though their appearance is, form a sort of call-and-response with the Black Riders. They are both played in the same key. That key I have described a bit more elsewhere, but I will mention it here. It is made up of lots of green fields and hills, and comfortable dwellings; yellow lights at night from cozy homes, and hobbits, the most comfortable creatures of all, smoking and feasting in them; all of this shattered by nightmare screams of pure terror, as one black-robed figure calls to another, his dark form atop a ridge against a blue or a gray sky.

They are the monsters that belong at the beginning, the perfect invaders into the comfort of the Shire. Mystery, warning, rumor, shadow. These cast a pall over the happiness of Frodo and his friends in the first four chapters, little by little. They are a pillar of the feel of Book I, and I love it immensely. The Black Riders are the embodiment of this pall.

The Barrow-Wights, for their part, are not invaders of the Shire, but they haunt a place which resembles it. It is our four hobbits, in fact, who invade their land: they enter into an Upside-Down Shire, if you will; a Shire from Hell. Right after the hobbits have escaped the Old Forest and recuperated with Tom Bombadil and Goldberry, they set out in good spirits across what appears a friendly country. Until the fog rolls in. They are led into the tombs of ancient kings; are dressed in crowns and gold and made royal, slumbering captives, to be the victims of one sort or another (we are left to wonder) of these underground zombies. They are shown the hospitality of the undead, who, just like hobbits, prefer living under hills rather than on them.

The stakes and scope remain relatively small, as they ought to, and the monsters fit them. So Book I.

Book II: The Balrog and the Watcher

Entering Book II, we find ourselves in a new sort of adventure. There is a new setting, a new goal, and a totally different feel. The scope is broader and loftier here. A new phase of the adventure has been embarked on and therefore a new monster must be faced.

This is the Balrog. He is a fire demon, dwelling in the dark and empty bowels of the earth, perhaps even (we can speculate) at its fiery core at times, coming up at the bidding, it may be, of his Dark Master, or to prey on the weaker beings he happens upon in the chasms where the sun never shines. Or he may be drawn to the Ring’s presence, having felt it for days as the Fellowship moved through the halls of Moria. Or he could be a permanent resident of the Halls of Khazad-Dum, tyrannizing the goblins and receiving worship.

He is Gandalf’s match and worthy opponent. Book II features Gandalf more prominently than the preceding or the one that follows. He has come back into the story here in a big way, and takes up the role of leader of the Company, and really the main mover of the story, from Chapter I through Chapter V, when he falls along with his foe into the darkness of Khazad-Dum.

Book II is, as I said, wide and lofty, like the halls of Dwarrodelf or the wide land of Hollin. Great counsels from great figures of the different free peoples sweep us up. Frodo consorts with noble Dwarves and Elves, attends the Council of Elrond along with the wise, gazes on Aragorn standing beside his Elvish love, learns about the doings of Saruman, the Elves of Mirkwood, the Men of Gondor, and more. A plan is made for the defeat of Sauron, and the Fellowship formed.

The Balrog is a good fit for this atmosphere and this new phase of the story. He tests the Company in a way no other foe could whom they might encounter—except perhaps the gathered Nine. But these have been temporarily defeated, and, more importantly, are not the right monsters for this Book. A lesser writer might have kept the same antagonists hunting the heroes for a thousand pages.

At this point it might be good to observe that, even though the Balrog is the primary monster of Book II, Tolkien doesn’t need to use him the same way he used the Black Riders in Book I. He doesn’t need to be some sort of final video game boss, where each chapter builds toward an encounter with him, nor does he need to pursue the Company. In some sense, Chapters I through V are building toward the encounter, but then we get into Chapters VI through X, which take up roughly the second half of Book II. No important monster intrudes into those chapters, except very briefly during the Anduin journey.

This shows us that, whatever the importance of the Balrog in the plot or the theme of Book II or even the story as a whole, it isn’t the whole ball game. The flow of the story, the balance of tones and of heaviness and lightness, and the good characters and beautiful places that we encounter in the rest of the Book, are all just as important.

Joseph Loconte has made the observation that Tolkien and C.S. Lewis were the only fiction writers in the 20th Century that he knows of who lived through the horrors of the World Wars and the corruption and malaise of modernity and met them with an answer. Plenty of writers (even very accomplished writers) became famous and successful from bemoaning or analyzing or cataloguing those things, but Lewis and Tolkien actually fought back against them with their stories.1

This rings true to me. It seems that Tolkien’s depictions of evil (mostly seen in his monsters) are there not for their own sake or because he is grimly fascinated with them. They are there to show what bravery looks like from the good guys. And goodness, and hope in seemingly hopeless settings. Of course, in another sense, they are there because he wants to tell a good story. And that, too, is a complete answer.

As for the Watcher in the Water, it’s interesting to note that it is a fearful monster from depths of water, while the Balrog is a fearful monster from depths of the earth, fiery instead of watery. Just as with Book I’s Black Riders and Wights, these two mirror or complement each other. It seems pretty clear that, as with most evil creatures in the period of Sauron’s resurgence, it is aware of the presence of the Ring and so targets Frodo out of all the Company.

Book III: The Orcs and Uruk-Hai

As we turn to Book III, we find yet again a shift in tone and in setting. This one is not as dramatic as the shift between Books I and II, but is noticeable nonetheless.

Book III is all about Men and Orcs. Orcs are the perverted and twisted version of Men (or of Elves), and the Uruk-Hai in particular a horrid cross-breed between the two, with all the strengths of both. They are the result of the evil craft of Sauron and Saruman.

We are introduced to the people of Rohan and brought into their struggles, hopes, and fears. Against them is arrayed an appropriate foe, one designed to wipe them out. The Orcs are Man-like, but mass-produced and able to overwhelm with numbers. They are for all intents and purposes nameless and faceless, clones of the same one, dumb, evil idea. They are, perhaps, what the European nations in 1914 made their men into. What is called for to defeat and overcome them is for Men to be men: heroic, wise, brave, strong, indomitable, and incorruptible. Because they are irreplaceable they must act as those who are indispensable. Noble war (unlike what much of World War I must have felt like) has to be waged.

All of this is epitomized at Helm’s Deep. Each man there at least has the glory of being needed far beyond his own capacity. They must fight with courage but not abandon, ferocity but not recklessness. Noble warfare is displayed and is given occasion through the monsters of Book III.

Book IV: Gollum and Shelob

With Book IV we get a new kind of break and shift. Leaving behind all the other heroes of the Fellowship and the world of Men, we turn to the small, the almost claustrophobic, storyline of Frodo and Sam as they drearily bring the Ring closer to Mordor. When we find them they are more or less lost. Their only hope (shaky and suspect and surprising as it is) of finding their way turns out to be their perennial pursuer: Gollum.

Gollum is probably the most fascinating and the most discussed character in The Lord of The Rings. I consider him one of our primary monsters in the novel as a whole, and in Book IV in particular, where he plays his largest part.

It’s in him that we most clearly see the moral complexity Tolkien is working into his world. Gollum is an unfortunate and pitiable creature who has been, through weakness, corrupted by an evil much greater than he. This brings us back to what I was saying earlier on Old Man Willow, in regards to monsters and evil. There are the unequivocal good guys, such as the hobbits and Gandalf and so forth; there is Sauron who is pure evil (not that he began that way) and his creations and servants; then there are creatures like the Willow who, as I said before, are in a sense monstrous but are not in the service of the Enemy, and not as purely evil. There is also the Dead Army, which is encountered with great fear and trepidation by our heroes. However, those men are not really evil, but fallen and disgraced. And then there is Gollum or Smeagol.

He is in a class of his own. He is not evil by nature (that is, he was not a creation of the great evil powers), but, as I say, he was corrupted and twisted and has become mostly evil, through desire for the Ring. But there is still a spark of his old self in him, and his own natural and decent desires, weak and stifled to be sure.

One of the great themes of the story (and by ‘themes’ I don’t mean ‘messages Tolkien consciously wanted to convey to his readers’, but rather truths that emerge from the story itself) is that evil is self-destructive. Gollum is the consummate instance of this. His own lust for the Ring, created in him by the Ring and by Sauron, ends up being the cause of the Ring’s (and therefore Sauron’s) destruction. The seeds of the Ring’s fate were written into its creation: from evil and to evil returning.

As a monster, Gollum mirrors the hobbits. He is what Frodo could become if he gave in to the Ring’s temptation and possessed it. The hobbits walk many long leagues with this fearful reminder.

Intriguingly, the monstrous (in the form of Gollum) must be recruited and pressed into the service of the good (Frodo and Sam and their quest). This is a fascinating moral vector that deserves to be explored more. For our purposes here, it’s enough to note it and see how it is mirrored in Book V. Some evils, such as the Ring, cannot be used in any way by even the most noble and good-hearted. But others, such as Gollum and the Dead Army, can and need to be put to good ends; to be redeemed, we may say. Sauron is not treated as redeemable in any way.

The great spider Shelob is the other monster in Book IV, and she is a monster par excellence. She is, in the words of Psalm 91, “the pestilence that stalks in darkness”, and a perfect fit for the tone and mission of Book IV. Unsurprisingly, we find again a mirroring of the monsters: Gollum gets compared to a spider by one of the Orcs in “The Stairs of Cirith Ungol”. He is a creeping, repulsive, nocturnal creature himself, and his treachery leads the hobbits into a den of evil and utter darkness, where a thing of nightmare awaits.

Book V: The Fell Beasts and Dead Army

Book V is filled with two things: death and stone. For the latter, there is the great stone city of Minas Tirith; the barren, haunted Dwimorberg that Aragorn and his companions enter; the stone Pukel-men who line the path up to Dunharrow where the Rohirrim chiefs encamp; the marble slab on which Denethor builds his pyre; and the great Stone of Erech, brought out of Numenor, where Aragorn summons the Dead Army. As for death, there is the great slaughter on the Pelennor Fields, the death of Theoden, Denethor’s suicide and attempted homicide of his son, and, most notable of all, Chapter II’s long and desperate journey through the Paths of the Dead and the ghost army that haunts them.

It is no surprise, then, that the Book’s main monster is a kind of giant carrion-fowl, a leathery pterosaur from the underworld, as it were, stinking like death. Five of these Fell Beasts circle over Minas Tirith as the battle grinds on, and one in particular, ridden by the Witch-King of Angmar, slays Theoden and his horse Snowmane. Aragorn bringing the Dead Army to Gondor as reinforcements can be seen as death itself being recruited to defeat evil. This is what happens in the Gospel story as well.

Book VI and a Parallel

But what about Book VI? There really are no monsters here, except for a brief reappearance of Gollum, and then some nasty men and half-men in “The Scouring of The Shire”, and of course a neutered Saruman and Grima. Well, naturally enough, Book VI is wrapping things up. The Ring gets destroyed, Aragorn crowned, and everything set to rights again as much as it can be. So it is unlike the preceding five Books because it completes the story they were all telling.

In it, Frodo and Gollum almost merge into a single character, but with two wills, both vying for control of the Ring. And it is merely Providence, at the end, that dictates Gollum be the one who falls into the Cracks of Doom.

I mentioned Psalm 91. There is a rather intriguing parallel between verses 3-6 of that psalm and the monsters of Books I through V of Lord of The Rings. If you count up the things that God saves his anointed from in those verses, you really get five of them, since ‘pestilence’ is repeated. What you get, in order, are:

1. The snare of the fowler (or ‘a trap of hunters’ in the Septuagint)

2. The terror of the night

3. The arrow that flies by day

4. The pestilence that stalks in darkness

5. The destruction that wastes at noonday

These are not a far cry from the monsters and situations of the first five Books, and in the exact same order. Book I is all about the heroes being hunted and traps set for them by the Black Riders. Book II features the Balrog and the Watcher, both terrors faced at night or in darkness. Book III features a lot of chasing and battling over land, in which many arrows fly. Most notably, Legolas fires an arrow at Gandalf (in the daytime) and it poses no threat to him. Book IV of course has Shelob, who couldn’t be described any better than with that phrase from the psalm. And Book V is all about war (the destruction that wastes). Indeed, Tolkien wanted to name it The War of The Ring when he was giving names to each of the Books.

I have no evidence that Tolkien consciously made his story follow this pattern. But I find it a close enough connection to mention it and even slightly suspect it of being intentional. Psalm 91 is, after all, a psalm of eucatastrophe.2 It is about God’s rescue of his righteous one from death and danger. Tolkien described Christ’s birth in eucatastrophic terms, and then his resurrection as the culmination of this theme in the Christian story. The Devil quotes this psalm to Jesus in the wilderness, correctly identifying Christ as the subject of it, but twisting its purpose. It would be well within the bounds of plausibility for Tolkien to think in this way when creating his story.

But even apart from this, it’s clear that Tolkien chose with great care the creatures and expressions of evil that his heroes would encounter throughout the tale, and that each of them is interwoven with the purposes of each Book.

As we’ve seen, each Book has its own distinct feel, its own arc and themes, and monsters which fit and support them. They are not peppered throughout the story randomly, nor do they overstay their welcome. As in Beowulf, they are very much to the point. Indeed, they are part of the point. The “lofty tone and high seriousness” of The Lord of The Rings wouldn’t exist without them.

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“Jesus Collapses Under The Cross” by Gustav Doré

As the last psalm focused on the Lord’s triumphant Anointed Messiah, ascended and reigning, this one focuses on that Anointed One’s work to bring justice and defeat the wicked.

The superscription ‘al muth-labben’ is intriguing, and theories abound on what it could signify. Certain versions, such as the NASB, ESV, and CSB, don’t attempt a translation but stick with the Hebrew words. Others are more confident, such as the New King James, which renders it “To the tune of “Death of The Son.”” Obviously that reminds many of Christ. Other translations range from suggesting that Goliath might be the referent or some other Gentile aggressor, to Judas Iscariot as the ‘Son of Perdition’; or that these are merely musical terms.1

As I go from vv. 1-4 into vv. 5 and 6, I feel a growing sense of magnificent and warlike prophecy; it feels as if David is telling us of a vision he is seeing from the Messianic future, in which God’s enemies have finally been defeated and he is reigning as King on earth. And it is so certain that he speaks of it in the past tense. David is seeing a glimpse of what will be even more fleshed out in Psalm 101, where he says:

“No one who practices deceit shall dwell in my house; no one who utters lies shall continue before my eyes.

Morning by morning I will destroy all the wicked in the land, cutting off all the evildoers from the city of the LORD.” (Vv. 7, 8)

In Psalm 9 it seems that David (or the Church, the anointed people of God) is describing God and Christ, whereas those words from Psalm 101 seem to be spoken by the Christ.

This is a kingly song and a song of judgment. God has judged the wicked, but he must still judge them and finally defeat them. David moves in and out of speaking of this as a past and a future reality: on one hand, “He has executed justice”, but on the other, “Rise up, Lord! Do not let mere humans prevail; let the nations be judged in your presence.”

In addition to a past statement and a hope for the future, the imperfect aspect is used in v. 8, which can be understood as an ongoing, incomplete action in the present, or a future action. Most translations opt for the present: “And he judges the world with righteousness; he executes judgment on the nations with fairness.” It’s something God does, something that characterizes him.

It’s hard not to hear vv. 13-16 as speaking of Jesus. He was lifted up from the gates of death to proclaim God’s glory, and the demons and religious leaders who conspired to defeat him have sealed their own doom with the black pitch of their crimes.

It seems that Athanasius believed that v. 17 spoke of the future resurrection of the wicked, who would be raised from the dead only to return there after being judged, now for bodily torment (Festal Letters, 7.2). This is in high contrast to Christ, who, once living as a man and then sent to briefly inhabit the Place of the Dead, returns to life. His arc is the exact inverse of theirs, and therefore his victory is accentuated and held before their faces, if we follow the Church Father in his reading. This is of course what will happen, whether or not it’s what Psalm 9:17 is trying to convey.

How fervently we also want the object of vv. 19 and 20. The world is today still filled with nations and men who want dominance over all and try in every way to prevail over God by throwing off the constraints of reality. It would be a safer and happier world if such persons lived in fear and knew what it was to be a mere human. The great glory of God is that, if they did, they would actually find joy in it and find that the God they feared was himself the God of all comfort.

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Art by Bulgan Lumini

This glorious psalm is quoted three times in the New Testament, to glorious purpose. In all three, the quotations magnify Christ as God and Lord, because he is the Lord’s true Anointed One.

It is a wonderfully mysterious work in some ways, and doesn’t tell us everything it means, as with so many places in Scripture. Some things, though, are obvious:

1. It is full of exuberant praise to God. It strikes me as praise not of a purely sober kind, but praise with a smile. It is filled with a searching, curious joy. Just as awe-stricken, certainly, as the soberest praise you can find, but on top of that, wonder-full.

2. David holds out some stark contrasts for our consideration. These are the source of his wonder. It’s as if he keeps looking from one hand to the other, and up and then down, trying to understand how both things can be. He looks at the heavens and then at man; at the birds and then at the sea creatures, at the angels and then men, at babies and at strong enemies, perhaps human and supernatural.

3. Based on how the New Testament uses this psalm, we know that Christ is the main character.

On this last point, John Gill believes that when it says, “You have set your glory above the heavens”, it speaks of Christ, after his ascension, who is perpetually beholding the glory of God, and he connects this to Psalm 63:2. He is the glory of God in Psalm 8. I find this plausible, since this is indeed a psalm about Christ’s reign over all things (v. 6), as Hebrews 2 tells us.

The other two places where the New Testament applies this psalm are Matthew 21:16 and 1 Corinthians 15:27. In 1 Corinthians 15:27, Paul says that Jesus is the son of man from Psalm 8 under whose feet God has put all things.

In Matthew, the religious leaders confront Jesus for not rebuking the words of the children in the temple who are crying out, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” Jesus replies with: “Have you never read, ‘Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise?”

It’s interesting to note that in both Matthew 21 and Hebrews 2, the Septuagint (Greek) version of the psalm is quoted, rather than the Hebrew. The Hebrew, as you can see above, says “you have established strength” or “ordained strength”. The Septuagint says “praise” instead. The ideas can be understood to be very similar, though. The ESV Study Bible has a note on this verse which says:

Perhaps the ‘babies and infants’ are the people of Israel, seen as weak in comparison with the mighty unbelieving Gentiles, the ‘foes’, the ‘enemy’, the ‘avenger’. It is through these insignificant mouths that God reveals his majesty. The Greek translation of the Septuagint (see Matt 21:16) rightly interprets ‘strength’ as “strength attributed to God in song,” or “praise.”

The use of the Septuagint reminds us that God’s word is not bound or restricted to one language, one set of physical sounds or marks on a page. Yes, texts are extremely important for preserving God’s word, and must be studied and adhered to strictly by his people if we are to understand it. But God’s words are no less inspired in Greek (or in English or Ethiopian or Spanish or Russian or any other language) than in Hebrew.

The psalm appears to be something of a chiasm.1 This is most clear from the first and last verses, which contain identical sentences. The center or crux seems to be vv. 4 and 5 together. It’s here, therefore, that the stark contrasts climax and crystallize, particularly in v. 5: man lower than heavenly beings, and yet crowned with glory and honor.

That man is Jesus Christ, and the low and high shall honor Him; the great and the small. He has prepared praise from all of them. Let us sing out our parts the more fervently.

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God is the righteous judge over the just and unjust. That is the main note struck by this psalm. If you have been wronged by someone, you want a righteous judge more than almost anything else. If you are being accused unjustly, a righteous judge is your great hope.

That’s the situation David finds himself in here. It seems that he was being accused wrongly of harming somebody he knew; “him who was at peace with me” is a pretty literal translation of the Hebrew. The ESV renders it “my friend”, but it could be what we would call merely an acquaintance.1 Matthew Poole believes this person was King Saul, and John Calvin thought it plausible as well. Poole says it might be that Saul was the one accusing him, or that this person called ‘Cush the Benjamite’ was somebody else, accusing David of wronging Saul, the anointed king.

This would be odd, since King Saul was not at peace with David. He was actively and repeatedly trying to kill him. It is, however, interesting to note that this accuser is from Benjamin, the same tribe that Saul is from.

David might have been accused of two things, based on the two scenarios he gives in v. 4: doing evil to someone at peace with him, and doing evil to an enemy. Either way, he says, this would be wrong. He claims to be innocent of both things.

In this psalm, God is a refuge, a judge, and an avenger. The Hebrew for ‘judge’ in v. 11, calling God a righteous judge, is the same word used in v. 8 (there as a verb) where David asks the Lord to judge him. The CSB renders it “vindicate me”. Only somebody confident in their innocence asks to be judged, or equates judgment with a verdict of ‘not guilty’. We can be this confident, if we have our trust in Christ, the only perfectly righteous one. He is the only person who has ever existed who never has to fear the outcome of God’s judgment of him. He will always be vindicated because no sin was found in him, nor any deceit in his mouth (1 Peter 2:22).

In vv. 7 and 8, David expands his request to God: he asks for “the peoples” to be gathered and God to give judgment. This is the same Hebrew word used in Psalm 2:1 when it asks why the “peoples plot in vain”. It’s not goyim, the word we typically translate as ‘nations’, but it seems to often be used synonymously, or at least in parallel (including in Psalm 2:1, among several other places). Therefore, David is likely asking for God to bring justice to all, not just to the nation of Israel, as some have suggested. In other words, he says, ‘And not just to me, Lord; bring justice to the whole world while you’re at it.’

It’s intriguing to see how closely vv. 14-16 follow on vv. 11-13. They almost seem to depict the way in which God’s metaphorical sword, arrows, and instruments of death show up in the physical world. It’s as if the means God uses to destroy the wicked man are the man’s own wickedness and folly. If we read vv. 14-16 as an explication of vv. 11-13, then what we are being told is that God has made the world in such a way that the wicked will just naturally tend to fall victim to his own schemes, and this is how God gets vengeance. God’s justice is built into the natural order of things and the natural consequences of this world.

If, however, this is not how 14-16 relate to the preceding verses, then they seem to be laying out a second option for the downfall of the wicked: either God will smite them, or they will smite themselves. And either way justice is done. We say the punishment should fit the crime, and what more fitting punishment is there for a transgressor than to meet the very fate he meted out to others? This is exactly what these verses describe.

David may have been the king of God’s people when he wrote these words or he may not have been, but he was already anointed by Samuel. As I said in the introduction to this series, every psalm is written by or written about the Lord’s anointed in some way. Here, God’s chosen king, the ancestor of the Messiah, cries out for justice.

And we know that God hears when his Anointed prays to him: “In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence.” Hebrews 5:7

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She saw the thing in profile, or close to it.
Her eyes were riveted on it, and she couldn’t
Blink until she knew what she was looking 
At. Would it move? Would it look 

At her, if it actually had a face, 
As she feared? All these thoughts happened
Inside her head in three seconds and she
Barely noticed them. It moved. Its head 
Bowed low and left only a hunched 
Back visible against the dark sky. 
Something raised up, large and flat, 
Like a tent. But she saw there were two 
And it seemed rather that they were giant
Wings, at first mistaken for part of the roof.
They were stretched up and out, and then
Furled again around the creature, each.

It stood and took a backward step, and froze
And looked directly at her--
                                                  As if a beam
Of light had blazed into her eyes, her vision
Ceased and was overwhelmed, wrenched from her grip
And turned innards out so that she only 
Saw herself, from alien eyes. All
Was as a sea of bewildering chaos; she 
Was lost and felt under water. But then,
Like remembering which way is up, 
She kicked to the surface and found herself again. 

Agency returned to her and she 
Could look out at a changed world. The Reeds’
House, the window in front of her, seemed
The surface of some strange lake, and gave

Her the feeling that all of it could melt into
Another shape, or no shape at all. 
It was a heaving and roiling frenzy of matter,
The very sea she had just been drowning in.
It was everything. She looked 
Down at her own hands and they too
Belonged to the sea of particles. Then she saw
The face again, and this time saw it all.

The eyes were dark, emitting and reflecting
No light. The harder she looked, the better
She descried that face, increasing horror.
For instead of eyes, sockets only
Could be seen, hungry pits that drank
In the world, on a neck of perpetual swivel. 

She was so afraid, she dared not move,
To or away from the window. As if you faced
A bear in the woods and caught its gaze, amazed

And rooted to your spot, you wouldn’t risk
Doing anything to arouse it to action,
So she waits for the creature to make a move.
Below its head are only the hands, grasping 
The gutter, the rest spread up the sloping roof,
Giant wings half furled, and making
No sound. It shook and then it went

Like a cormorant without a splash
Down into the house, which rippled a bit and wavered.
Megan again was struck with the sense that it 
Was a miracle for anything to hold its shape, could feel
How much everything wanted to come apart,
Go its own way. Indeed, she looked around
Her, into everything, to find the reason it 
Cohered into these forms at all; there had
To be some hammer to sound the note which rang
In all these things, or some great drum.

There was nothing she could find, and nothing
To be heard; then her vision spun,
She lost her balance, came down to the floor
And landed with a small thump on her bottom. 
The world looked normal again, and sweat
Was on her upper lip and lower back 
And on her eyelids. The rain still came. 

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Canto I

The storm came like the crack of a whip. No
Corner of Brandywine was left unstroked by 
Its lash. It roared and whined, and the water puddled 
Down the windows in trafficky sheets. Megan 
Watched it slip and river.

The wind she didn’t care as much about,
But she is still young and that will change.
Misty the dog came in. Megan
Could tell by the room getting a little brighter.
The dog would bump the door open with her nose.
“Come up here, Misty! Come 
On!” Megan thumped the bed with 
Her hand, and Misty wagged her tail
And jumped, grunting.

Missed the first try, shook herself, 
And tried again. Made it, and was welcomed  
Into an embrace that was as much 
Face as arms. Megan loved storms. 
Misty did not. She always wanted to be 
Closer and be comforted when thunder rumbled.  

Megan’s dad was gone, out on a date
Again. The same woman as always, and it
Didn’t get any better.

She missed having her dad around the house.
It felt empty and lonely without him. Sometimes they
Would watch movies, or go out to a store and then
Pick up food. Sometimes he’d have the news on
In the evening in the den and then

She’d come in and lounge on the couch
Just to be nearby. Recently he even 
Invited her to come to the gym with him.

Megan went out to the living room to get
Misty’s storm jacket and became side-
Tracked by the rain hitting the lake out back.
Lightning flashed. It made her look just a 
Bit over, toward the Reeds’ house 
Twenty feet away. On the rooftop,
Where it peaked, sat a shape, hunched
And dark, and a face, it seemed, that looked out
To the left over the lake, and made

No move.

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Melchizedek does come again, if you can accept it.

In a whirlwind, on Sinai, striding down.

But not yet!

Now it’s Fall, and the wind is blowing and this night there will be a storm.

Down this far south, the leaves don’t change color, but Megan can tell, by the wind, the air, and the way the sunlight falls, that Summer is leaving.

There’s a smokier smell in the air.

The Everglades are burning.

They have posted their suffering in the sky so everyone can know and sympathize, but not so many people do.

In her case, she loves the colors too much. Deep orange, almost red, and gold periphery to remind you of a paper burning from its edges inward.

She loves Fall. Born in September, hair a dark brown and eyes the color of a pile of leaves, some turned by the year, and others still green and fresh, it seems likely that Fall loves her too.

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A Narrative Poem

This is something I’ve been working on for a while—over nine years, really. It took on a new form when I met the woman who would become my wife; the Muse called out to me and gave me my words, my theme, my inspiration. She took hold of me and my story and brought it into Epic.

It’s a narrative poem. These don’t really exist anymore in a way that past generations would recognize. Meters have fallen away, subject matters have become political rather than heroic and romantic, and subversion or slyness have been put in the place of beauty. I may be missing something, but to my knowledge, only Malcolm Guite’s forthcoming Arthuriad will break this trend.

The kinds of stories that would once have been put to verse are now written in prose. This comes from a deep-seated taste in our age, and one that I generally share. I think we feel not only that telling stories in verse is odd and boutique-y, but that the story and style themselves are adulterated by having to conform to a meter or rhyme scheme. But in the past, the poetry was part of the delight. On top of this, when it is done well, it takes even more skill to tell a good story in poetry than in prose.

But there is another difference that I have discovered: The poetry can beguile. It can help take subject matter which is odd and at times too whimsical for straight-faced prose, and set it free. It allows the message to find its medium.

A Holy Satire

The idea for my story is that Christ is about to return to earth. But before him goes a preacher, just as John the Baptist prepared the way for his first coming. This time it is Melchizedek. He comes to set in order the household of God, which includes telling some hard truths to every kind of Christian, as well as to the secular powers.

The story takes place all around the world, and ranges from sections of (what will at least feel like) theological satire, to personal drama, to supernatural thriller, to romance, to high adventure, to cultural analysis, and beyond. But I hope it will all cohere around the story of our heroine, and the scary, exalted position she finds herself in, alongside the undying prophet who tries to help her find her place amid a frightening array of demonic and angelic powers, religious and world leaders, and the end of the age.

The rest I will let the reader find out in the story itself. It will be released one canto at a time, and anything might be rewritten subsequently, since this is truly a first pass.

I hope you will read along as I write, and see where it all goes with me. And I do hope you will be pleased with it.

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Photo by Megan Nevils

He came and was the Gospel. He brought
The judgment, was the judgment, yet didn't
Come to judge.

Didn't fast and didn't wash because He
Came to feed and cleanse, yet was baptized
As a sinner--the only one who never sinned.

He never swerved from staring down the 
Grisly tree, which in its soil he had planted,
Watched and watered when a seed.

Water, Light, and Life he breathed, and
Said to us, "Be healed." Yet we cringed and 
Loved the darkness, chose the flesh to be our shield.

He vanquished Satan as a man, and
As a man was raised, brought into 
The Holiest Place, from whence he ever reigns. 

          O praise Him, people of dust!

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Photo by Megan Nevils

I wrote an article a year or so ago called “The Nature of State”, which was kind of a giant salad of thoughts, helping me work through my views on questions of Christian civics. Since then I have hit upon some helpful insights which I wanted to share here. This one won’t be nearly so long.

To help orient you in this landscape, I highly recommend watching Joe Rigney’s talk here:

I am a Reformed Baptist, and I would fall somewhere between the Baptist and the Classic Reformed view that he lays out. I do not agree with the Magisterial Reformers where they believed in (or were okay with) something like an established state church to govern hand in hand with the secular government. So I skew Baptist in this regard. But at the same time, I am not against the explicit acknowledgment and influence of Christian principles for governors. In fact, I’m downright for them. The overt “mere civility” and strong separation of church and state that a Roger Williams would espouse is not for me.2 In that vision, no mention of the Bible or Triune God should be made in any public legislation or political reasoning.

But the line between establishment and acknowledgment does get blurry. In fact, it’s so blurry that I can’t in good conscience call it a line. It’s more of a ramp or a dimmer switch. Think of it like driving for hundreds of miles on the same road and seeing the country gradually change from close-growing pines to farmed hills. As you drive, you pass from civic systems in which a) the state has the Ten Commandments on the law books, to ones b) having an established state church, to ones that c) have founding documents which acknowledge Christian truths, to ones d) that acknowledge only theistic truths, to nations e) merely founded by Christians and which host a Christian-inflected culture, and on down the road toward totally secular and atheistic states. I would be against options a and b: I believe they are unwise and lead to all kinds of evils. How are you going to police covetousness, for instance?

State churches can quite easily become sinful, and I think are always foolish. Picture specifically Roman Catholic, or Presbyterian, or Baptist laws on the books, in such a way as to violate the consciences of faithful Christian citizens. I don’t want to ban infant baptism from the land when I could have many good Presbyterian citizens of my country. The other major consideration is that I don’t want my political leaders in charge of the official, approved, doctrines. I don’t want secular or lay leaders meddling in Church affairs. If your politicians have the ability to determine orthodoxy or legislate the Christian religion on the basis of their interpretations of Scripture (which, again, allows them to violate Christian consciences), you are not in a very secure situation; such leaders are far from safeguarding peace and righteousness in the land.

And this is the main thing. The Bible as well as the Great Christian Tradition present rulers as having the responsibility to wisely pilot the ship of state and seek safe harbor. They do this by punishing the kinds of wrongdoing they are competent to punish, where doing so will not lead to worse evils—evils such as excess strife, sedition, civil war, and so on. They are to do this by forming laws wherever possible which lead to virtue, and by promoting truth however they can, and this includes religious truth.

The primary responsibility of rulers is thus not the same as that of pastors or private Christians. Their responsibilities do not overlap at every point. Rulers (a broad term which includes any kind of legislator, governor, politician, or even citizen in a democracy like ours) are called to glorify and honor God just as much as everyone else, to be sure, but this will work itself out differently in their case.

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And not all nations, not all cultures, can be governed the same way. So the wise Christian ruler of one nation might not legislate the same way as the wise Christian ruler of another nation. This is basic stuff, and was well articulated by many of the Classic Reformed thinkers, such as Althusius and Turretin, not to mention earlier thinkers like Aquinas and Augustine.

So to summarize what I’m saying so far:

1. It’s hard to draw hard lines between Christianity and the state, but we can certainly rule out legislating each and every matter of Christian conscience, and we can rule out state churches.

2. I believe in the classical idea that a governor is to promote virtue and restrain vice in his society wherever possible, and this can rightfully be done with explicit acknowledgment of Christian truths and convictions.

3. This must be done with wisdom, since the primary task of rulers is to promote justice and peace in their societies. Soul care is not the primary responsibility of politicians (or governors, citizens, and so on, as before), although if they are Christians, it must enter into their work.

These are among the insights I’ve gained recently. The final and most important insight came from, I suppose, two things: the end of Johannes Althusius’ Politica, and an article by Doug Wilson. Here’s the bit of Politica that did it:

We have said that absolute power is tyrannical. … Clearly, whoever wishes law to be superior to the king, and the king to be subjected to law, or as we have plainly said, whoever considers justice and God himself to be the supreme lord, must also grant to the associated body those things that we have attributed to the ephors. . . .3

It clicked for me that if tyranny is the will of any human person or group made absolute, then this is a blasphemous state of affairs. No king or queen, no majority of citizens, can make their will law. The wills of every person and faction in a society must be subjected to actual laws, which must stem from the Natural Law and God’s Word (two sides of the same coin, based on the twin lights of natural revelation and special revelation).

Doug’s article made a similar point, in relation to the English King and Parliament before the American Revolution. He writes:

For Christians, only God is unlimited. Because man is both finite and fallen, he dare not take upon himself the role of governmental omnipotence. But in his hubris, he keeps trying.

Some Christians are fond of saying that Christianity has nothing to say about this form of government or that one. “The church is the church, and we can function equally well under any political order.” This is radically false, because all notions of unlimited human government are essentially idolatrous. They all, by design, will set up some version of Nebuchadnezzar’s statue, and they all summon the musicians to play so that we might all know when to bow down. And when, by act of Congress, they make the statue bigger, or decree that the musicians play louder and longer, some Christians circulate in the crowd, handing out copies of Romans 13, edited and redacted, and they accuse the people who are still standing up of advocating for Christian nationalism.

To which the reply should be, “Well, I am against pagan nationalism, so yeah, you got me.”

Every Christian refusal to bow down is simultaneously a religious act of devotion to Jehovah and a political act of defiance. It all goes back to the Council of Chalcedon. Because the church at that time confessed that the union between the divine and human was found in the Lord Jesus Christ, and nowhere else, this closed off every attempt to arrange for the apotheosis of the State, the Dear Leader, the Voice of the People, or the Right Side of History. Christian political theory demands that all human governments be bounded, limited, constrained, defined, circumscribed, checked. Why? Because God is God and man is not. God is good and man is not.4

The whole article is worth reading.

But the idea that an unlimited human government is in its very essence idolatrous was new to me, and really got me thinking hard. It is the same insight that Althusius offers, and it’s really been the most profound thing for my political theology that I’ve probably ever come across.

Photo by Megan Nevils

The walls are harder plaster here, drywall
Dreaming of something beautiful. Driftwood there
Above the fire, and heavy bookends hugging
First editions—second maybe. A piece 
Of art behind it all, a ship at sea. 
Three colors at the most: the blue, the white,
The brown. A corner houses all: fire, 
Mantle, more, so look to the left,
Where a wall is, 
                            slate tiles three,
Inked over and mapped with                             
                            fake Latin, see?
Suburban rap, Delta blues, Midwest
Manners and Northwest shoes                              
                            abide here. 
Pass the wall on the right (it’s just a window)
And the next one too, below which a couch—
But wait: This wall holds the door, and a sign
Of tin, on which Mr. Brando sits, looking 
Off to the left, beflanneled. Turning more,
Past the door, and this wall holds the bigger
Piece: Abstract but recognizably a shore: 
Teal, white, beige—the lighter answer
To the rest of the room. This at least is what
I’d say if any troublous person objections
Interpose (don’t be distracted by the 
Rose), for the boys of Britton Lane                              
                            decide here. 

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