Cosmology 101 for a Pagan Culture (Part Two)

Cosmology 101 for a Pagan Culture (Part two)

By Jay Wegter, with Shane Haffey

IV. What are the consequences of choosing the devil’s cosmology?

The pride which accompanies the devil’s cosmology is suicidal. Even if the world of unbelievers were entirely composed of dyed-in-the wool atheists, they would still be exercising religious faith. The reason why is we were created to worship God and to rule over the works of His hands by interpreting our world truthfully, according to His infallible self-revelation. Thus, every man is an ‘interpreter’ of this world. When an unbeliever (atheist or not) gives credit to the creation for its own origin and its own existence, that is an act of interpretation, of religious faith, an act of worship. Consider that the person committed to philosophic naturalism still retains a philosophy about ultimate reality, truth, morality, and law. The atheist and the agnostic have chosen a philosophy which takes away God’s authority to providentially rule over His creation. In their minds, they have cancelled God’s authority as revealer of absolute truth, and moral law. Consider the boundlessness of this pride. Natural man has not actually removed God’s authority and usurped it for himself. What the unbeliever has done in challenging God’s authority, is deepen his own slavery to the powers of darkness.

Pagan worldview rejects the transcendence of God, and in so doing, invests the creation with divine powers. Though the academy would not admit to subscribing to paganism, pantheistic cosmology is the surreptitious bedfellow of Darwinism. Darwinism and paganism are related because both systems embrace the idea that the universe is self-originating, self-sustaining, and self-defining, in other words, divine, godlike. The pagan worldview is not a philosophical invention which originated in an ancient cave, pagan worldview is the default religion of our fallen race. For, the lie in Eden offered self-worship; the worship of the creature as a ‘benefit’ of casting off the worship of the Creator. And, as it has been rightly said, due to the fall, we are all ‘hard-wired’ to nature worship. We do not have to look any further than the Tower of Babel to support that assertion. For, the sentiment was: we will make a name for ourselves, and we will be in charge of our own identity and significance (Gen 11:4). The post-flood world sought to unite itself around a pagan conception of the world in which man establishes his own meaning (Gen 11:4). The Western world today has embraced this ancient pagan cosmology.

Because the natural man does not know himself as he actually is—in other words, he does not view himself through the lens of Scripture, therefore, he does not regard himself as what he actually is, an adversary of God. The unregenerate man is an enemy of God in his mind; his thought processes are rife with enmity and hostility toward the knowledge of God and toward the claims of his Creator upon him (Col 1:21). Therefore, it is not an exaggeration to say that the unregenerate person secretly wishes with all his might that the God of the Bible would stop being God. That is a shocking thought since we associate human decency with a benign and charitable attitude toward persons.

The natural man, because of his sin, and his sin nature is separated from God (he is created for communion with his Maker, but is estranged from Him). Nevertheless, he ‘normalizes’ the abnormality of this separation even while bringing his needs to created things. This is why he selects a cosmology which normalizes a broken rebellious world in which the divine is but a category contained within the creation—creation being reality, and the divine, but a category within reality. He chooses this ‘Gentile cosmology’ (Eph 4:;17-19) in order to placate his conscience. Philosophically speaking, the natural man needs a worldview which authorizes him to serve sin and self with impunity without the compunctions of conscience and righteous requirements of God interfering. And, though dressed in the sophisticated garb of secular humanism and scientism, paganism functions as that permission-giving worldview. The love of darkness dulls and numbs the conscience, granting tacit permission to the sinner to serve his sinful appetites. The apostle Paul vividly summarizes this connection between futile thinking and immoral license in Ephesians chapter four:

So this I say, and affirm together with the Lord, that you walk no longer just as the Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart; and they, having become callous, have given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness (Eph 4:17-19).

This ‘callousness and hardness of heart’ has become a very accurate description of the dominant cosmology of the present age. Is it any wonder that Bible-believing Christians are far too willing to ‘keep their heads down?” For, “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” In a decaying culture, proclaiming the truth is considered an act of oppression. In our age of postmodern relativism, the simple practice of telling the truth is no longer possible without disapproval. This pervasive relativism also means that a lie being universally recognized as something pernicious is not possible. As Richard Weaver said in his book, Ideas Have Consequences, “we have become moral idiots.”ⁱ Bible-believing Christians need to hear on a regular basis, not simply that they are right and correct in exposing a culture of deceit, but that because of our Savior who is the truth incarnate, we are going to win. We are going to win because we have the truth. Stupidity cannot win. Imagine an engineering department that says from now on, everything will be assembled of nuts with nuts, and bolts with bolts—that stupidity will guarantee failure.ⁱⁱ

A great problem in the church today is that millennials have been blind-sided by a pagan worldview so heavily politicized they are unable to discern its heretical nature. As a consequence our own culture has become a new kind of mission field. America used to be a powerhouse of mission-sending to the four corners of the world. But, now our nation is incubating the worst kind of heresy, for the West has decided that there is no such thing as biblical cosmology and divine law. The present rising generation is the first one in western history to be presented with a comprehensive pagan worldview.ⁱⁱⁱ What the progressive left demands, erotic freedom by means of an underlying worldview of pagan cosmology, is tantamount to open war on the knowledge of God. For, when the ordained boundaries, creation structures, and distinctions which God has formed are regarded as obstacles to ‘freedom’—it is obvious to true believers that war has been declared on the knowledge of God.

For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, and we are ready to punish all disobedience, whenever your obedience is complete (2 Cor 10:3-5).

The proponents of erotic freedom would have us believe that we in the West are continually gaining new freedoms as time passes. This is the myth of endless democratization—as if someday we will arrive at ultimate freedom in which there will be absolutely unhindered self-expression. This myth underlies the lie that is being fed to parents: your little boys may become girls, and your little girls may become boys. Author, Nancy Pearcey reminds us in her book, Love thy Body that secular morality blows apart the connection between scientific and moral knowledge.ⁱᵛ Such is the fragmenting dualism of today which is at the heart of sexual and gender anarchy as well as abortion.ᵛ Secular university students are taught that the Christian perspective in the public arena violates the idea of neutrality and objectivity. But, the secular position is not neutral, it rests upon a two-level view of human nature that is crassly utilitarian in its view of the body. Put your nihilistic worldview cards on the table! The secular worldview functions as a state-sponsored ideology, today’s ‘political religion’. This fragmented view of the body treats the body as extrinsic to the person. That is the opposite of a holistic view in which the body has intrinsic value and worth.ᵛⁱ

Democracy (democratization) without biblical cosmology taught alongside leaves people blind to the reality that divine order, structure, purpose, and uniformity have as their goal God’s glory and our good operating together. When biblical cosmology is faithfully taught, it dovetails into the goodness, wisdom, and beauty of God’s moral government. And this truth, by means of the gospel is designed to bring the creature to bow before his Maker. This response, granted by sovereign grace, shows the love of the knowledge of God, and His infinite dignity and worth. Therefore, when the church effectively occupies its calling as the pillar and ground of the truth (1 Tim 3:15), she will include in her teaching the creation structures which comprise biblical cosmology.

Now corporations having taken up the mantle of pagan cosmology are using their media visibility to participate in the moral signaling embraced by the left. Their hope is that by showing that they are full participants in the moral revolution, the buying habits of the populace will be sure to follow. Our young adults are being torn in two: either they go with the flow of popular culture, or face the consequences of being ostracized. The most common choice they make is to keep their Christianity ‘under the radar’. But, the semblance of neutrality can only be maintained for a limited period of time. For consider what is lost in terms of the knowledge of God when the LGBTQ agenda is unopposed and unexposed. There is the loss of: the hatred of sin, the fear of God, the fight for purity and virtue, the education of the conscience by God’s commandments, the purpose of the cross of Christ, the exaltation of God’s moral government, and the ability to train up the rising generation. These are but a few transforming truths that disappear into the background when sin is normalized by a culture’s cosmology.

When a society that once had the knowledge of God drifts into full-blown paganism, one of the judgments God sends is a ‘spirit of distortion’. In other words, the social order which finds its source in divinely ordained distinction begins to degrade. For, when God is no longer at the top, a people will not be ordered under Him as they should be. The culture begins to implode when the appointed roles of individuals in a society no longer take their instruction from God. Consider the following texts:

And I will make mere lads their princes, and capricious children will rule over them, and the people will be oppressed, each one by another, and each one by his neighbor; the youth will storm against the elder and the inferior against the honorable. For Jerusalem has stumbled and Judah has fallen, because their speech and their actions are against the LORD, to rebel against His glorious presence. The expression of their faces bears witness against them, and they display their sin like Sodom; they do not even conceal it. Woe to them! For they have brought evil on themselves. Say to the righteous that it will go well with them, for they will eat the fruit of their actions. Woe to the wicked! It will go badly with him, for what he deserves will be done to him. O My people! Their oppressors are children, and women rule over them (Is 3:4-6, 8-12).

The pagan cosmology of the progressive left is an illusory worldview; it is delusional, an escape from reality. And it is a blatant participation in the Lie of Eden, for the serpent’s murdering false promise was that rebellion against God would create a new reality. Eating the forbidden fruit (infers the devil) would allow our first parents to transcend the boundaries and limits inherent in their creaturehood. At the core of Satan’s lie is the soul-damning notion that sin creates a new order—a reality in which one may operate as a being autonomous from God. How horrifying that countless westerners are fully immersed and invested in this lie. The evil one’s deception has not changed much, it has always been: ‘you can win your freedom from God by rebelling against Him’.

V. How do we use Biblical Cosmology to confront today’s apostasy?

Our Christian students are in trouble because they cannot make the truth they believe ‘speak’ to this culture.ᵛⁱⁱ They lack the training necessary to see the total relevance of God’s truth to all of life. As a consequence, they either keep their convictions private, or blend with the world. Unfortunately, the latter choice is the most common one, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Through training in biblical cosmology, our young people can be equipped for effective Christian apologetics and evangelism. Unlike evangelism in the recent past, our struggle now involves a ‘worldview clash.’ The unbeliever’s faulty worldview must ‘collide’ with the timeless truth of God’s Word so that the unbeliever sees exactly where he opposes God. It is only the Word of God that is capable of deconstructing the unbeliever’s faulty worldview. This ‘clash’ between worldviews is necessary because in today’s world, knowledge has been privatized into personal opinions without absolute truth. And, without the truth claims of Holy Scripture, there can be no recognition of objective sin or evil—one is left with a domesticated God who does not judge, govern, or redeem.ᵛⁱⁱⁱ

The philosophical ‘climate’ on college campuses literally ‘stacks the deck’ against biblical Christianity. D. A Carson makes the following observation: “The pressure exerted by philosophical pluralism is so great that to press for an exclusive truth claim is to be regarded as a bigot. The postmodern world is relativized so totally that one is no longer allowed to say somebody else is wrong without sounding like a hypocrite.”ⁱˣ Author Christian Smith notes that, “The very idea of religious truth is attenuated, shifted from older realist and universalist notions of convictions of objective truth, to more personalized and relative versions of ‘truth for me’ and ‘truth for you.’” Smith comments, “We often hear youth proclaim, ‘Who am I to judge?’ ‘If that’s what they choose, whatever,’ ‘Each person decides for himself’ and ‘If it works for them, fine.’”ˣ But, ‘who am I to judge?’ is a tacit admission that one does not believe that God has spoken clearly, absolutely, and authoritatively.

Christians ought to boldly stress that cosmology in general revelation (creation) is as R.C. Sproul has said, “Infallible and inerrant.” Creation is His general revelation, it is the ‘book of God’s works’—it infallibly reveals God: “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse” (Rom 1:18-20). Is it any wonder therefore, that truth-suppressors are held guilty for denying the inescapable truths revealed in creation (Rom 1:18-23)? When the truth is suppressed, it does not disappear. It resurfaces as soul-destroying heresies and lying cosmologies which become staging areas for further idolatrous rebellion (see Rom 1:24-32). The natural man is not neutral in the matter of God’s revealed truth. In his denial and suppression, he flees into pluralism, naturalism, and relativism lest he behold the face of God everywhere as his very environment.

How does biblical cosmology address today’s runaway apostasy? Biblical cosmology asserts that the government of God is inseparable from the binaries He has created by fiat—that is, by His sovereign declaration. For, the binaries He has established within the cosmic order: male-female, parent-child, man-animal, good-evil, etc. are inseparably tied to His glory. Genesis 1:31 is a kind of benediction or doxology where God blesses the cosmological order He has established with its beautifully ordered binaries. Thus, to know God truly, is to know the ‘cosmic furniture’ or binaries He has ordered which point to His wisdom and goodness. This inescapable truth sheds light on the human rebellion of our age. When a person rejects the distinctions and the binaries God has created, Satan gains not only a follower, but a proselyte to promulgate his lying worldview and cosmology.

In 1948, author Richard Weaver saw the nihilistic consequences of a cosmology which reduced man to a cosmic accident, a soul-less creature born of chance, a biological robot made in the image of an animal.ˣⁱ We look at the moral madness of our current age and often fail to see that there is a perverse logic, a ‘Gentile cosmology’ underlying the current moral revolution. Our nation has changed cosmologies; changed religions. True believers need to know that the progressive left cannot win a debate when their moral idiocy attempts to take on God’s infallible truth. And, because they cannot win, they fight dirty; they lie, maim, bite, and poison.ˣⁱⁱ Therefore, rather than constantly running a defense as opposed to an offense, Christians need to learn how to ask sane questions in a culture that has gone morally insane.ˣⁱⁱⁱ 1) We must insist that both sides in the debate define their terms. 2) We also must insist that both sides outline their proposals, and, 3) that both sides answer all the questions. No debate is actually possible if these three ground rules are rejected.ˣⁱᵛ The goal is to lead the unbeliever to faith and repentance—a change of mind and heart—there is no other way to know God and experience His blessed favor. The unbeliever loves darkness and foolishness for the reasons Christ gave in John 3:19-21—because his deeds are evil, and because he fears exposure to the light.

In exposing the absurdity of pagan cosmology, consider a cosmological quote from Stephen Hawking. “The human race is just a chemical scum on a moderate size planet.” Let that nihilistic statement sink in. How might a reductionistic sentiment like Hawking’s have ramifications on politics? We are already seeing the impact of this worldview politically everywhere we look. If humanity is but ‘chemical scum’ then killing a baby is without moral implications or consequences. Argues Doug Wilson, ‘human rights endowed by God are high octane deep theology’. Remove God, and pagan theology rushes into the theological vacuum remaining, and with it, legislation which sanctions the ramifications of that godless theology.ˣᵛ The significance of God’s changelessness means that we are the party that must be changed not Him. The standards of morality that He has commanded are not grounded upon anything down here, but are grounded upon the character of God. Righteousness is not on the ballot, but is woven into the very fabric of creation. A common absurdity today is when we hear a politician claim, “I won’t allow my personal religious beliefs to influence my behavior in public service.” But, this is moral schizophrenia, for all law is an exercise in moral obligation.ˣᵛⁱ Upstream from politics is culture and upstream from culture is faith—and one’s faith is ineluctably expressed in one’s cosmology.

The world’s cosmology rejects the foundation Creator-creature distinction. In godless worldviews, the fabric of reality is monistic, thus all is connected and all is evolving, and all is in one circle of reality. Anything can morph into something else. For, all phenomena is the result of time and chance acting upon matter. The implication of that is that there are no fixed categories, anything can become something else. Therefore, opines the modern pagan, “What’s your beef or quarrel with a sex-change operation? After all, if a bird and a harbor seal are related through the same ancestors, what’s the big deal?” But, in biblical cosmology and or ‘two-ism’ (the Creator-creature distinction), in the beginning there was God and God said, “Let there be things that are not God, and behold it was very good.” The eternal Creator creates what is contingent or utterly dependent upon Him. He forms a created order that has fixity and is separate from Him by infinite distance.ˣᵛⁱⁱ

Biblical cosmology ought to play a key role in our apologetic strategy. God the ‘Definer’ gives us the correct categories to understand our world and to engage our world. Professor James Herrick of Hope College highlights the role of biblical cosmology in our Christian apologetic, “We must revive Christian cosmology in all its comprehensiveness.”ˣᵛⁱⁱⁱ That ‘comprehensiveness’ includes the Christo-centric elements of our biblical worldview—namely that Christ is epistemic Lord, that He, as Logos, is the source of rationality in the universe, that He unifies all knowledge, that He is the embodiment of God’s wisdom, that He alone bridges the gap between Creator and creature, and that as ‘Lord of all,’ His rule is both personal and cosmic—He governs the individual and the universe. Christo-centric cosmology is critical in light of the fact that Evangelicalism is migrating away from an understanding of Christ’s supremacy as it touches epistemology and biblical worldview.ˣⁱˣ The Person of Christ is the answer to every false form of spirituality. The ‘Christ hymn’ section of Colossians (1:13-23) is meant to dismantle the lying cosmology of pagan Gnosticism which has reemerged today.ˣˣ

Christian leaders need to provide students with the cosmological and theological categories necessary to enable them to stand against the prevailing errors of our day. We are standing at a crossroads in church history. We must ‘world-proof’ our kids to avoid sending them like lambs into the wolf packs which populate the academy. Only by providing a full-orbed theology which puts the antithesis between truth and error into bold relief will we give them back their voice.ˣˣⁱ Pivotal in our strategy is to not only set up the contrast between pagan and biblical cosmology—but we must also show the consequences of each worldview. The disastrous consequences of pagan worldview are catalogued by Paul in Romans chapter one. Those who subscribe to pagan worldview are judged by God. They experience three areas of being given over—they are: given over in their minds; given over in their spirits; given over in their bodies.ˣˣⁱⁱ By contrast Christ as Lord of the cosmos and Lord of the Church is truth and life incarnate. “. . . [He] abolished death, and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel” (2 Tim 1:10b). He is sovereign over all knowledge—in His ‘epistemic lordship,’ Christ answers, and delivers from, by His own Person, every version of ‘the lie’ (Rom 1:25). Thus, at the center of Christian worldview is Christ the ‘Savior of the World.”ˣˣⁱⁱⁱ

To reject God’s testimony in the physical order of creation is a devilish ploy to conceal one’s rejection God’s testimony in the moral order. See for example; Job 38-42, Ps 19, Ps 2. These passages shed light on why modern scientists do not readily acknowledge a personal almighty intelligent Designer. Why? Because the noetic effects of sin on human reasoning have so tainted the intellect of man, that he uses what light he does have to pursue futile thinking with greater abandon. He is a ‘studious’ truth-suppressor, living intellectually with his back to God. He uses his faculty of reason to explain away the God who created that faculty. “Who has put wisdom in the innermost being or given understanding to the mind?”(Job 38:36). In Jonathan Edwards magnum opus sermon, entitled “The End for Which all Creation Exists,” the author drops a megaton cosmology bomb. Edwards poses this rhetorical question: shall God, for His own glory create a vast universe out of nothing and then be thwarted in His goal to bring glory to Himself? God shall surely achieve the end for which His creation exists. Human and angelic sin will not deter, or thwart God from achieving the goal of His creation.

Critical to biblical cosmology is the fact that to know God is to know that the chief end of all things is the revelation of His glory and perfections. This truth extends to touch all things. For, the uniting force that makes all knowledge a whole is the glory of God. Knowledge and truth exist for the glory of God. That means that every planet, twinkling star, chirping bird, or flowering plant has a particular goal or intended function; we call this purpose, teleology—making God’s perfections known (see Col 1:15-17). But, the darkness of the Edenic lie is alive and well today—we see it in the rejection of teleology. Consider that university students are daily schooled in this lie that freedom means: freedom from design (freedom from teleology, ‘nothing outside of you defines you’). That is the devil’s definition of liberty. As a consequence, today’s moral revolution is descending ever deeper into the madness of moral lunacy. How absurd to think that through hormone treatments, or through political activism, or through sexual anarchy that it is possible to deconstruct the gender binaries that God has created.

How can we bring biblical cosmology into our proclamation of the gospel? We will have to take our cue from the apostle Paul who began his sermons to Gentile hearers with a brief theology (see Acts 14; and 17). For, the gospel only makes sense in a world in which God is Owner, Ruler, Redeemer, and Judge. That most basic beginning is not the least bit redundant. In fact, few Westerners even consider the ramifications which flow from the fact that God created out of nothing, every atom and molecule (Heb 11:3-6). That fact alone establishes that God is Owner of all, and everything we have is ‘on loan’— we are but temporal stewards of what belongs to Him. At death, the human spirit will report back to God and our bodies will return to dust. Our pride will literally be placed in the dust as our bodies decompose (Gen 3:19). The Edenic lie of human autonomy will be dismantled in a moment of time. Then, at that time the impenitent sinner will realize too late what he owed God (worship, service, and reverence). Judgment Day will reveal whether or not our bodies, thoughts, speech, and actions were used in accordance with God’s purpose and design for His creation set forth in biblical cosmology.

What is missing in today’s modern gospel is God’s absolute holiness and justice, and that the Savior Himself is Lord of the cosmos—the Logos, the source of biblical cosmology’s beautiful order. Therefore, those who appeal to Him for a cleansed conscience also bow the knee to Him as their Creator and Lord, and from then on, find their life in being ruled by His infallible Word, the Holy Scriptures. To boldly speak biblical cosmology into our increasingly pagan world is the most caring and merciful thing we can do. Theocentric Bible doctrine, ‘big picture theology’ has the power, by the Spirit of God, to rectify, calibrate, and unify what is frequently fragmented into incomplete thoughts in our understanding. History is His Story. God is conducting a ‘grand demonstration’ in which He will demonstrate both His mercy and His wrath (Rom 9:22-24ff.).ˣˣⁱᵛ Through the mechanism of redemptive history, God is placing His holy perfections on display—and doing so through His works of salvation, providence, and judgment. As trophies of His matchless grace, God elicits from believers faith, obedience, love, honor, and awe. There is no undisputed middle ground in the cause of God and the destiny of souls. For every individual, it will either be wrath outpoured, or eternal refuge in Christ.

What if God, although willing to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction? And He did so to make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory, even us, whom He also called, not from among Jews only, but also from among Gentiles (Rom 9:22-24).

The rising generation, sometimes referred to as the ‘millennial generation’ is facing the most dangerous time to live spiritually in the history of the planet. For, never in the history of the world has a nation faced our current philosophical climate: having been inoculated with Christianity, our culture now regards biblical Christianity as a regressive thing of the past, a layover from a former age of oppression. Our public universities are diligently teaching their students that this view of Christianity is accurate. How can the rising generation resist the ploy foisted upon them by the progressive left, namely that the social values they enshrine (that were actually birthed by Christianity), must be protected from Christianity. Think of it! Students are being told in order to protect social values, they must reject Christianity in order to safeguard and champion those ideals.

In a rapidly decaying culture—‘redemption’ suggests that freedom is achieved by deliverance from restraint imposed by idea (Richard Weaver). ‘Redemption now’ is a utopian delusion inherent in Marxism that society’s ‘redemption from oppression’ must be brought about by any means including revolution. Biblically we see a freedom based on teleology—God’s design; while the pagan/secular worldview wants a freedom from teleology/design). Our task is to redefine the relationship between faith and reason in an age that does not know the meaning of faith.ˣˣᵛ It is generally assumed by humanists that erasing all distinctions will usher in pure democracy and its reign. But this is not so. The Bible’s teleology rejects ‘freedom from’ (design) in favor of freedom to, within (design). What dominates today is the romantic fallacy of freedom from (design).ˣˣᵛⁱ It is common for university students today to regard personal liberty as resting upon the idea that nothing outside of man defines him (no teleology). Therefore, there is no obligation to adhere to God’s design. Thus, in the loss of biblical cosmology, religion is completely severed from education—and, as the new, materialistic atheism goes mainstream, it is viewed as a proud achievement of modernism. Modern man no longer looks above his head to see the sacred canopy—for, today’s pagan cosmology has concealed the divinely ordained transcendentals which used to be universally discernable: love, truth, beauty, order, justice, and moral law.

Our image-bearing according to Genesis, immediately describes male and female. “God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them” (Gen 1:27). As man and woman, we reflect God as distinct from one another in our sexuality. We carry this holy image and are answerable to God for how we reflect His character and distinctions. The Lord has told us: “As obedient children, do not be conformed to the former lusts which were yours in your ignorance, but like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior; because it is written, ‘You shall be holy, for I am holy’ ” (1 Pet 1:14-16). According to 2 Corinthians 7:1, we are to bring holiness to completion as the people of God: “Therefore, having these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.” This is not a theory, it is a way of living, it is what it means to live a life unto God. In the New Testament the word submission is used 76 times. Because we have been conditioned by feminism and individualism to be suspicious of that word, we do not see its value in connection with biblical cosmology. Therefore, we tend not to see the word submission as taking hold of the world God has made, and then living out that holy place that God has made for us. This is where we have a profound opportunity to teach millennials and all genuine believers the ABC’s of biblical cosmology. For submission to the creation structures that God has ordained (marriage, family, gender, sexuality, law, government, gainful employment, revealed truth, His definition of beauty, etc.) does not mean we are being forced into a role we do not want. What is actually intended is that we respond with a joyful recognition of the nature of God’s creation and then find our place in it, living out our calling unto His glory.ˣˣᵛⁱⁱ

Thus, submission is an exhortation to take control of the place where God has put you. Submission is everyone’s calling. Jesus was called to submission, and according to 1 Corinthians 15:28, He will continue to be in submission to the Father throughout eternity. Children submit to their parents within the family structure, the wife to the husband. A Christian wife gladly sees the distinction of the roles as a holy thing, and finds her place in a God-ordained structure to live out the full significance of who she is. This is very much tied to the meaning of holy matrimony; its holiness involves the celebration of the distinctions God has created. In our culture of self-willed individualism, we don’t tend to view the individual as finding his or her fulfillment in the alignment of one’s life in joyful faith before God to the cosmic structures which He has created and in which we find our rightful place.ˣˣᵛⁱⁱⁱ

In the cosmology of the Bible, our calling in God’s cosmic structure is a place for us to be faithful. Our work in our area of calling or place in the world is how we bring a holy offering to God. The place in which we are deployed is that of a kind of stake-holder in God’s holy cosmos. It’s a place where through our faithfulness we are stewards of God’s glory. But, consider how far the West has moved into paganism. Today our culture denies that God has structured our cosmos and our sexuality.ˣˣⁱˣ If our young people are to come to an understanding of biblical cosmology, then they must become aware of this concept of stake-holder in God’s ordered cosmos, for we do not structure reality, God does. Therefore, pagan cosmology’s soul-destroying lie that the creation is but an illusion, or simply raw material from which one may construct the self is but a repetition of the ancient lie that you shall be as God. The pride of man is based upon ignorance—the greater the pride, the greater the ignorance. But this arrogance is a very temporary thing, for God’s Kingdom is coming. It will fill the earth and the cosmos. He will vindicate His holiness in time-space history at the Day of the Lord. The day is coming soon in which He will make His glorious presence known in the New Jerusalem, the holy city in Zion.

In His coming Kingdom, God has glorious assignments for His elect. But, these rewards are clearly based upon faithfulness as a stake holder now. For our present challenge is to live holy lives by honoring the distinctions He has made and thereby fulfilling our part in the place in which He has situated us. This role as a faithful stake holder is very much tied to our assignment in the coming Kingdom. Thus, this truth of stewarding our calling unto the glory of God brings cosmology down to a very personal level. Our believing young people will experience a kind of paradigm shift when they begin to understand that their present faithfulness and holiness in honoring God’s distinctions is very much tied to how they are being prepared for their role in the coming Kingdom.

How little we think of a day in which cosmic holiness will fill the universe. In the new heavens and the new earth (2 Pet 3:11-13), every single thing will be in its proper place. Every created thing will fulfill the purpose for which it is made and therefore honor and glorify God. Every vestige of corruption, decay, and perversion will be gone. The glory of God will cover the earth as the ocean covers the sea floor (Hab 2:14; Is 11:9). Cosmic holiness as it fulfills God’s telos, will be stunning and beautiful. The child of God must be controlled and animated by this hope of glory expressed in biblical cosmology.

All these died in faith, without receiving the promises, but having seen them and having welcomed them from a distance, and having confessed that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For those who say such things make it clear that they are seeking a country of their own. And indeed if they had been thinking of that country from which they went out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; for He has prepared a city for them (Heb 11:13-16).

Believers are aliens and strangers in an enemy occupied world—our true citizenship is in the coming Kingdom of God (1 Pet 1:1; Phil 3:20-21). God has determined that through Christ He will form a new humanity; a kingdom of priests who will be eternal trophies of His grace, and who will, to the praise of angels be a testament to God’s wisdom, power, and ability to fully reclaim His image (Rev 5:10; 20:6). The great cosmic-wide event, the revelation of the sons of God is synchronized with the lifting of the curse (Rom 8:18-25). A new world is coming, the kingdom of God. Innumerable redeemed individuals will be gathered around the throne of the Son of God forever (Rev 5:12-14).

End Notes:

i Richard Weaver, Ideas have Consequences, p. 1
ii Douglas Wilson, “Sanity as Insurrection”
iii Peter Jones, “Mission in the 21st Century; the Witness of Holiness,” Christ Church, Moscow, ID
iv Nancy Pearcey, Love thy Body, p. 12
v Ibid, p. 18
vi Ibid, pp. 63-64
vii John Stone, “On the Cause of Christian College Students being Mute” (Newhall: The Master’s College).
viii D. A. Carson, “Reaching Postmoderns with the Gospel” (Minneapolis: Desiring God conference, 2006).
ix Ibid.
x Christian Smith, Soul Searching; the Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers, p. 144, in Sean McDowell, “True for
you; but not for me,” p. 1, www.planetwisdom.com).
xi Ibid, p. 169
xii Ibid.
xiii Ibid.
xiv Ibid.
xv Douglas Wilson, “Sanity as Insurrection”
xvi Ibid.
xvii Ibid.
xviii James Herrick, “New Myths for a New Pagan Age” (Escondido, CA: Christian Witness to a Pagan Planet, think-tank, 2007).
xix Jay Wegter, “Introduction to the book of Colossians” (www.gospelforlife.org).
xx Ibid.
xxi Peter Jones
xxii Ibid.
xxiii Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield, The Saviour of the World (Cherry Hill: Mack Publishing Co., r.p. 1972).
xxiv Jay Adams, The Grand Demonstration
xxv Richard Weaver, Ideas have Consequences, p. 34
xxvi Ibid, pp. 44-45
xxvii Peter Jones, “Mission in the 21st Century. . .”
xxviii Ibid.
xxix Ibid.