The Future and How We Got Here: Introduction, Lecture 1

An introduction to the Crisis of the Cross Series

No Moral Universe is Possible Apart from the Cross of its Creator.

The Cross is the in BIOS of creation. It is the Symbol/Reality of how God governs human relationships. Life revolves around the love of giving and the trust of receiving. This Trust is also called Faith. This is the perichoresis of the Trinity reflected in Creation by the sacrifice love requires to give, and the Trust of faith to receive. Dominion is the sacrifice required to understand and control creation to fulfill others. In a Trinitarian Cosmology, needs are not shortcomings but rather openings where ethical action becomes visible making things better. The fruit of dominion is the gift fulfilling others. Ethical exchange is the basis of fruitful human order. Made in God’s image, we are ethical beings who know what is right and judicial beings who do what is right, using every skill, privilege, and advantage to provide for others, not control them. Ethical voluntary exchange of Love and Faith generates exponential, multilayered systems of fruitful growth spreading resources to those most able to use them. When it is corrupted by coercion, theft, deceit, or broken faith, human order collapses. Thus the cruciform pattern of sacrifice, dominion, and mutual provision is the logic of flourishing built into creation itself and the Celestaformation of Dominion — everyone fulfilling everyone.

Introduction: History, the Story of the Perfection of Doctrine

These three remain, Faith Hope and Love.

Faith is what each Person of the Trinity has in what the others fulfill in them. Trust is that bond in the Trinity that believes — trusts — that the one loving them brings only what fulfills them. Trust is not what separates Christian from non-Christian. It is who we Trust that separates us. It is because those who do not trust God are in His image also that the overwhelming desire for someone they can trust irresistibly attracts them to God. This is the image of God discipled or stifled in each person from birth. Trust in us grows as our ability to judge matures and grows wise. But its root is always Trust — that infant on its mother’s breast knowing that if she roots, she will find a breast and if she cannot latch, there will be a mother’s hand there to provide whatever is lacking to nourish her. The infant does not “know” these things the way we do. Jesus called that infant’s Trust “faith” Kingdom faith. Without that simple trusting reception of Christ one is outside the People of God. Faith transcends maturity, immaturity, intelligence or station. The analytical ability the Greek, Roman, and modern call “Faith” is a mere “belief system” that leaves us outside the Kingdom of God if it does not have that infant’s trust. “Assuredly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will by no means enter it.” Jesus went on to make that child’s Trust the pattern of a true conversion, “Assuredly, I say to you, unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.”¹ Faith is the Trust that we belong and our needs will be met.

Love is what draws each Person of the Trinity to provide what fulfills the others. Love is His design we reflect that commits us to give to those we love something that makes life better. Love is a defining characteristic of all people. It is a design of God making humanity like Him. It is what makes us Human. Love is not what separates Christian from non-Christian. It is who we love that separates us. Who we love and how we love them either makes us or breaks us. It is because those who do not know God are in His image also that love irresistibly attracts them to what God has said and the story He tells of faith, love and their child, hope. They want these things more than life itself even in the corrupted form they so often find it among believers and unbelievers alike.

Hope is the child of Faith and Love. Where a person loves those whom they fulfill; and where a person trusts others to fulfill them, hope for the future is born. We do not know what “future” means to God. But we do know that in a time-bound creation, hope is the optimism that the future we are going to will be better than the past we came from. Hope is the compound interest of the Spirit — its proof of work, the substance of faith and love. Which is not judgment on the past. It is simply the design character or the BIOS of God’s Creation where the uniqueness of each Person in the God-head is made more perfectly unique the more perfect their Oneness becomes. Yet with this perfection in each person, their Whole is not fragmented by the increasing perfection of each Part. This is our BIOSas well. We reflect God’s reality. It is our fundamental design characteristic. We were created to be guided by love to fulfill others, and by Trust to receive fulfillment from them which makes a better and better future the substance of yesterday’s hope.

Apart from contact with the Bible, there has been no other civilization with an optimistic philosophy of the future. The good future is the historically and culturally unique heart of the Bible. This Hope is not confined to the experts in the faith, love and logic of Christianity. Following Jesus is not a two or three story house with the upper floors reserved for the philosophically wise and the moral saints leaving the children, commoners and sinners on the ground floor with some simple legal do’s and don’ts. There is “One Lord, Faith, Birth and Baptism.” There is one Meal which we all share. There is one rule for all. The Doctrines believed by the most humble child or commoner are identical to the doctrines of the Doctor of Philosophy. The mysticism of the common Christian is the same mystery driving the saint out to the desert to sit on a pole and yet neither finds greater understanding over the other. Hope is inevitable if one lives the simple doctrines of the faith at any level of expression. This hope is breathed in every verse, doctrine and narrative of Scripture however well or haltingly understood and poorly or perfectly lived out. It is the story of life from Genesis 1 through Revelation 22. As these realities clarify in the lives of each Christian, they draw each life into a part of that story growing every generation into the past, present and future fulfillment of that Faith, Hope and Love. As John Owen said, God’s word is the river where babies paddle and elephants drown.

This is the meaning of Atonement, כִּפּוּר, kippur. The Trinitarian Oneness God promises in Genesis 1 & 2, the One Flesh of Marriage, is lost in Genesis 3 because the Trust of Genesis 1 & 2 is lost. Kippur is the removal of the things which destroy faith and love and the restoration of that unity. Evil is anything that blocks Trinitarian Unity. Atonement, Kippur removes anything blocking Trinitarian unity.

As the rest of the Bible makes clear, maturity requires analytical growth. But it cannot be growth if it abandons the Love and Trust which define relationship every level. When Love and Trust are breached, there is no hope for the future. This is why God promised that he would remove the things that breach Love and Trust. That removal is called death. “The day you eat of it you will die.” Death is the reality of no future. These actions make the future impossible. If God did not remove the things which make the future impossible, death would be the end of every matter. The rest of history is about how God’s promised death sentence, is carried out on someone else so that Oneness can be restored for you and through you to all creation.

The word describing that breach of Love and Trust is sin. Sin cannot be a way of life. Sin is the end of life and future. Sin is secondarily a list of things to do or not do. Primarily sin is anything that makes the uniqueness of each person greater at the expense of their unity, or a unity that makes itself greater at the expense of the uniqueness of each person involved. We will list those things, but this is the defining Trinitarian Core of ethics. The promise of death to that which removes the future is not the promise to end history. There is also the promise of the River of Life which not only gives life and hope to each communicant, it pours out of each communicant giving hope to the world.

The death of death and the outpouring of life establishing the good future, raises another point of distinction between Christian doctrine and all doctrines of all other religions and philosophies. Christian Doctrine tells a story that is as accessible to the simple as to the complex, the wise as to the fool, the infant and the emperor, the sinner as to the saint. Christians come in all these sizes and shapes. But the truth they grasp is One. Jesus, Moses, the Patriarchs, Prophets and Apostles lay the same cookies on all the shelves, from top to bottom. The adept is no farther ahead than the novice and does not pursue a different perfection for any different reason than the novice wants to seek God. This is the Trinitarian understanding of spiritual, social and physical reality. That God is Three in One doesn’t deny that there are degrees of achievement, gifting or empowerment or even privilege. God just doesn’t grant to them a status of “better,” “greater” or “more worthy.” One reason why when Jesus is asked, “Who is greatest?” He always points to the child and the servant. God doesn’t grant power over others because of these status points. Greatness attaches only to the ethical walk of each person pouring the river of life out from their heart. A widow’s 2 cents is more valuable than the Billionaires’ grant. A child may lead and be greatest in God’s Kingdom ahead of the aged ruler who submits to the child’s faith if nothing else. The faith of the child is the essence of Kingdom belonging while the reasoned faith of the wise can be a conceit leaving him far from the atonement כִּפּוּר Kippur of trust that receives like the child. The penitent whore and drunkard can find themselves ahead of the cloistered sober chaste wife of the pharisee. What is taught to the newborn on the breast who fails to latch is of the same substance as greater that what is taught to the highest graduate student who does not grasp this point. The trust of that newborn is the substance of things unseen by the graduates. “Out of the mouths of babies you have made praise perfect.” Perfect. . . . Perfect. Stop and meditate on that.

Throughout all time, God marks His people. And His marked people eat with Him.

First marked as His Image to unpack all the potentialities in creation;

Then marked as His Circumcision claiming the future in spite of sin which He will cut off in time;

Finally marked as His Baptized in Fire and Water becoming a people in whom He dwells and through whom He will release the river of life to recreate that future begun in the garden.

His mark is both symbol and substance of what He has done, what He is doing and what He will do. God’s people marked as God’s family, God’s Priests, God’s Kingdom and God’s Congregation are the living representatives of the Faith, Hope and Love that created and will restore a world of peace and plenty. From the first chapter to the last God is preparing a table in the wilderness. That wilderness is the blasted fruit of their alienation which reduced like a cancer the bursting plenty of creation. God’s story of humanity begins and ends in a world of overflowing sustainable plenty, exalting our union in a way that magnifies the unique calling and purpose of each person united. On the way, He tells His story of the adventure of every life and calling that builds to His whole story; a story that would not be told without each part taking each step. You taking yours.

God tells you that as a part of His family, in His lineage, His legacy, His history — you are coming from somewhere very good; a Garden walking with Him; fulfilling each other; creating a world characterized by that Garden’s fruitful fullness. This fulfilling is not haphazard or random. God’s provision in Creation-history is how we unlock an infinite plenty which though it can be soiled, it cannot be suppressed, even by sin. His story takes you to a wedding feast where God's congregation, ekklesia, are not mere guests, but God’s bride.

When God finished committing His story to writing He cried out, “The Spirit and the Bride say Come. Let Him who hears say come. Let Him who is athirst come and drink freely of the River of Life. . . . All Creation is waiting for the children of God to be revealed.”²

Your life receives meaning and purpose as the story reveals you, clothed in the truths which clarify your world and your purposes. It does so to whatever degree you live those truths and wherever you are found in history living them. In the years allotted to you, there is a cumulative social effect over time reshaping culture, social order and interpersonal expectations. Reshaping the future itself.

This book introduces a series on how you are a part of the story God is telling about His world. Our growing understanding of how it all works together steadily taking shape in the lives of those following Him. It sketches the elements of that optimism grounded in the history God recorded from Genesis through Revelation. This record has already transformed your world and life today and will continue to transform you and your children “Showing mercy to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.” These doctrines create a people who unleash a world where, “these three remain, Faith Hope and Love.”³

The font of this historical culture-change is the story told by a very particular Being. Though we call Him by the generic “God” or “The Lord” He told us His name is YHWH, or I AM. The story He wrote down explains who He is and what He is doing in the world.

The Optimism of the Bible’s story begins in a moral universe which can only be Good, if its Creator is both All Powerful and Personal. It is only moral if this God establishes justice and healing by suffering and restoring in His Person what His image bearers do to pervert His goodness as they find it in themselves and His world. This world only works if this All Powerful Personal God is Trinitarian. One Person of that Trinity is the Logos. The Logos is the fire of Trust and Hope who not only became fully Human, but died on a Cross to make His you someone who can unite with each other and Him. He came out of the grave to transform fallen humanity, into a people who live by trusting God so that they might bear the weight of glory which created them to love, trust and hope.

“Weight of glory⁴” is the fully engaged humanity fully unlocking creation, through ethically self-governed lives individually and corporately. It is this wholeness that bears the weight of glory. To be human is to know it should be this way and recognize it when you see it. Glory and its weight are normal, to those building uniqueness of person in the power of their unity. To those tearing that unity or uniqueness apart? Glory is crushing.

It took 1400 years for these truths, the BIOS of creation, to penetrate Western Culture until every element of the West accepted them as the axiomatic structure of life. These ideas are encapsulated in six or seven simple heads which are called Christian Doctrine. That they are propositions is not the essence of their significance, but a necessary characteristic they share much the same way as they are historically true while at the same truths shaping that history. They are rooted in what actually happened since creation — chapter headings of the greatest story every told, the click-bait of the social media-defining exchange, communion, faith, love and hope.

1. Creation and Fall: God’s image bearers, we become like God.
2. Incarnation: God wants to rescue us, so He becomes like us.
3. Atonement, Cross: Jesus takes on all the evil rightfully ours.
4. Atonement, Resurrection: God Brings New Life and Creation.
5. Ascension: God Rules the world providing every Good we lost.
6. Pentecost: God enters in fire His people— His dwelling.
7. His Return: God transforms the earth through His people.
8. The Trinity— God is not a system of balanced extremes, nor of rational mathematical/legal rules. God does not pit the uniqueness of each person against the collective unity of purpose and fellowship. We embrace the Trinity, Genesis 1&2, John 17.

Believers in these doctrines from infant to sage cannot help but be optimistic about and believe in the Future. Those who are not believers but live in a world shaped by this belief begin to construct alternative futures for us. No one can escape this infectious hope once they hear it.

I. FAITH: Celestaforming — 2,000 Years and Counting

“On Earth as it is in Heaven”

By the dawn of the modern world, the reformatting of the Western mind had taken place making that modern world not merely possible but inevitable. The conceptual framework was in place, and no, this framework was not math, science, and the yearning for freedom, meaning and self-discovery. The Framework, was the basic ideas that gave Math, science and freedom a constructive world to grow.

In 1500 if you asked the nun, the whore or the proper wife; the Lord of the Keep or wakened the sleeping town drunk from the gutter; the soldier, the knight, or the peasant; the merchant, the sailor or the pilgrim and asked what they believed, they would tell you these same doctrines that changed the world in the next 500 years. Every person, from child to dotard, could tell you these ideas and they would be offended if you asked, “But do you believed them?” Each would gasp, “What? You think me a Jew? A Moslem? A Witch? An Atheist? A Gypsy?” And if you asked that outcast fringe of Western society what these distinctive beliefs were, they too could have told you. In fact, they were socially outcast because they did not believe that God was Three and One; that God became man, died on a Cross and came back from the dead as payment for their sins or that a future judgment awaited and a new heaven and earth. These were not merely the arcane teachings of the priestly intelligentsia. For 1500 years, time itself was marked hourly as church bells called everyone to pray, remember, meditate and celebrate these ideas. Wars were fought over them. Their singular understanding overtook the Western Mind from 300 to 1900 and their afterglow continues to transform the world. Over those centuries these ideas reformatted the twisted human soul to grasp and undergo an ethical-social morphing. The Oneness world of the East finds them naïve. The individualistic empirical mathematical world of the classical Mediterranean and its 14^th Century Renaissance finds them whimsical seed-picking. The mysterious Order/Chaos Chthonic world of Ancient Civilizations would find one more ineffable deity to worship on their way to the ideal of an all-absorbing unity.

This series of lectures will look at the impact of just one of these ideas, The Trinity and the Cross, as an introduction to all of these doctrines and how history is transformed and perfected by them.

Christian Cosmology, ultimate reality, is Three distinct Persons yet One Being. Their creation of image bearers and social order. Their Creating a world fit for their Triune Being and for their Image bearers. This Doctrine has already recast the story told by the pre-Biblical world in ways no one thought possible. Here are examples:

* The historically unthinkable idea that a society, if ethically⁵ bound, becomes stronger by dividing the functions of government into individual power-centers Executive, Legislative and Judicial rather than uniting them in one leader. This is the first political outworking of rejecting what Jesus rejected calling it a “Great One” concept of rule. Both the Logos who is the Second Person of that Trinity, and Moses His law-giver opposed central controllers at every turn.⁶

* The historically unthinkable idea that the common person could be self-controlled and actually hold the “Great Ones” accountable to “the Mob” whom Jesus transformed from the heart into His Ecclesia. Yes, 98% of humanity being illiterate serfs, peasants and slaves were called “the mob” before the bedrock of Western Consciousness was reshaped by Christian doctrine transforming the Mob into churchmen and citizens. Who imagined that dividing authority into as many units as there are ethically responsible people could create a stronger united purpose instead of the dissipated anarchy of the “mob” needing government violence to unite it? (Other than Moses and Jesus, of course, in Deuteronomy 1:13 and Mark 10:42-43 )⁷ The concept of representative government is a thoroughly Biblical step away from violence-based governing. The enlightenment takes credit for it and to that extent those committed to Any-god-But-God (AgBG) have moved a major step toward Trinitarian social order that in time will need no executive representatives to unite and protect us through legitimated violence. The Divinely Created order designed into our being, irresistibly draws us in our basic humanity to love those around us, and fulfill their needs. (See Cross Diagram pg. 2.) Even where some want to remove the Trinitarian Author of this creation, they can only do so after stealing His ideas. Ancient pre-Christian religion (AgBG, Any-god-But-God) was hopelessly inadequate after AD 33 to persuade anyone when opposing Christianity head to head. Its recent success since 1700 came after it appropriated the ideas of liberty, self-control, prosperity and love of neighbor found in Scripture.

But when they adopted the Sermon on the mount while exiling God from their philosophy, they found a new problem tearing at them. They were torn between the whimsically sweet utopianism of Teilhard de Chardin, New Age, One-world spirituality movements and the hard authoritarian utopianism of Marx, Fascism, or Davos, and the golden Mean of the individualist American Way. Those who steal God’s ideas become whimsical, deadly or waffle between whimsy and death. They have no way to reshape humanity other than wishful thinking or the executive brutality of government reducing those controlled to the “freedom” of automatons, a subspecies of whatever government controls them.

People in God’s Image whether in groups as small as a family or as large as leagues of Nation States are not designed to be controlled by violent force from the outside. Knowing this, the new post-modern enlightenment must develop a mechanism, theory or story that can do what the Holy Spirit does. We are living through the horror of their trial and failure in the 20^th Century where 900 Million were murdered by the state, not including wars, or abortion in its attempt to create the New Man who could live in utopian peace.

* The Historically unthinkable idea that the world outside of God’s Covenant People would someday accept the ethical ideals of Moses’ and Jesus’. Western Europe and the Mediterranean were moved to become a newer, kinder, gentler humanity. Compare the Vikings to Sweeden and Norway. To compete, the Classical Pagans 1,000 years after their defeat turned these achievements of Christian Doctrine into the Enlightenment taking credit for much of what Jesus and Moses said, while rejecting Jesus and Moses as credible witnesses.

* Just as unthinkable, when one AgBG civilization after another started down the Moses/Jesus road they became historical optimists. This optimism inevitably flows from God’s revealed standards and actions in Scripture. Modern and Postmodern humanism lusted after the hope those standards offered claiming that even without the character of the Triune-God to give their ethics and hope meaning they would still usher in a golden age of peace. Ancient AgBG being unable to compete with Jesus and Moses disappeared in 600 years. Then, after another 1000 years it found new credibility in the world by incorporating Moses and Jesus into their vision. These ideas had begun to celestaform the west. Seeing their success, the AgBG accepted vast drafts of their teaching and buried their source. Today we find versions of the Sermon on the Mount promoting the state as the only way to love, feed, house, cloth or protect our neighbor. The deified AgBG State regularly guilt-trips Christians for failing to live up to their own standards, “I was hungry and your fed me, naked and you clothed me.” This enlightenment adaptation of Jesus and Moses is working. On the Left, even Christians are incorporating the State-god into a pantheon along with Jesus and empowering it to feed the hungry, clothe the naked and disciple our young. On the Right even Christians believe the state-god is necessary to protect them and so they empower it with a military and police force to pacify the world. The failure of the enlightenment State-as-God is a direct testimony to the fact that there is no creative or neutral ground where those who look to Any-god-But-God can build. It’s all God’s dirt, God’s unity, God’s diversity which He has built into His creation. This is the impact of the 2^nd Commandment. “You shall have no other gods besides me.” There is nothing in the created order, or in the human social order that can replace the executive and legislative function of a Triune personal God dwelling in His people. But the point is, they have been forced to buy into his ethics and optimism.

* The historically unthinkable idea that unimaginable prosperity flows when individuals ethically control their own property and they only exchange what each side ethically agrees to. The radically Trinitarian aspect of this is that ethical-economic division of labor produces an unmatched unity of the whole which produces the freedom for each person to maximize all that is unique and good about them. Unethical exchange is abhorrent to all except those with the might and power to benefit from it because it eats away the value of each person and destroys Trinitarian unity replacing it with a violence based unity. This Trinitarian reality is the true cosmology of a world where far more needs are met for each member of that society than anyone imagined before 1700. Today this economic unity in diversity and the Trinitarian ethic which drives it unleashes the creative genius of 8 billion people threatening the adequacy of executive violence-based government everywhere to stay out in front and maintain its myth of control. No! I’m not describing Capitalism. Capitalism is the radical dualistic corruption of this Trinitarian world where goodness grows when people meet each other’s needs. Capitalism suppresses this reality in favor of a dualistic concept of a world where one person can only gain at the expense of another through government violence taking sides. For that world only “might makes right” and therefore the executive is a necessary part of the rejection of Trinitarian Ethics. The same twisted fool who defined “Capitalism” also defined “Communism”

* The unthinkable transition to an economic order which to be credible incorporates central features of Biblical revelation: Whether Capitalist or Communist or Free Market, each by its own internal logic can only gain credibility by affirming a good future. Something undreamt of in any other culture in history. The concept of a world where people could be trusted to freely meet each other’s needs is one of the modern marvels of society, unknown as even a theory in the Ancient world though it has as a reality formed all trade on the personal level. People always have and always will trade when each side sees that the value of each side is as close to equal as each can negotiate. This only happens where the ideals of not harming others, breaking their word, stealing or lying are held. But to create a comprehensive system from that fact is a thoroughly optimistic economic concept, among other things the optimistic fact that interest can be compounded. Compound interest only works because things of value are built by borrowing money from their future productivity which compounds the value. This can only work if the future holds more value than the past. It is the belief that people, even sinful people, not only can but demonstrably were making the world a better place. Into this 1800 year old success story of Christian Doctrine, Karl Marx described that economic freedom as “Capitalism” and attributed it to thte state. He then argued that it was not sustainable because of the successful traders would get the state to use its “legitimate violence” to violate the very ethics that made their prosperity possible. Marx actually accounts for the inescapability of sin. He understands that to escape it, (though he does not use those terms) people must be remade into beings capable of exchanging with each other without corrupting the process. The New Man must be created. Marx believes this is possible stealing the concept 1800 years after the culture Jesus Christ founded had transformed the thinking of the Western world at a fundamental level that made optimism possible on a personal, cultural and theoretical level. Optimism is an integral part of everything written in the Bible. I said Marx “stole” the idea because Marx rejected the Triune God as the pattern for his New World and turned to the state for purging the New Man. But for the first time in history someone outside the Christian world was credibly optimistic thanks to the Christian Doctrine’s impact on the culture he was living in. Marx made the state his god to be the one that creates this new man capable of exchanging with other New Men without need of the violence inherent in a state, and these new men would create a world that no longer needs the state to control it. Both Capitalism and Communism are theoretical systems designed by Marx to appeal to two different aspects of what Jesus and Moses taught, but in both cases he made state violence the god that presides over the creation of the New Man. Though in some senses theoretically close, in practice a living Nightmare on Elm Street, “purging” to death to “create the New Man” 900 million men women and children.

This is a good place to pause this list of common place ideas and practices today that would be unthinkable to the ancient and even Medieval world. Contrast Marx’s Dualistic flat world of non-moral scarcity which he dubbed Dialectical Materialism, with a Trinitarian world. Trinitarian ethics places the future in God’s promise to dwell in and change the heart of each person making each the guardian of right and wrong thus making any sort of exchange possible.⁸ What is Trinitarian about these ethics? The Trinity is not an abstract idea like the one and many problem. The Trinity is three Persons who must get along. We may take that for granted, but YHWH who is that Three and One does not. His moral being is the character that we understand as law. His law is not arbitrary it is the only way separate persons can be united for Good. God is the embodiment of the Goodness necessary for free exchange to go beyond merely meeting another’s needs, but to fulfilling one another. This is the polar opposite of individualism in which each person does not reflect God’s character, but are themselves the source of right and wrong. The best such a system could do is to grant rightness to whomever is the mightiest. Trinitarian exchange by contrast is the embodiment of love and trust. A side benefit is it puts resources into the hands of those who can do more with them than the one who traded them away. This Trinitarian reformatting of the Western Mind is the single greatest source of sustainable growth in wellbeing ever experienced. It is the earthly reflection of the same dynamic of the Trinitarian government in God which created heaven and earth. It was introduced by this Trinitarian God’s law to each created person, not given to rulers and socio-religious lords, but to each individual member of that community in the desert, called out of the Executive master/slave social system perfected in Egypt. God said to each member, “I Am YHWH Your God, therefore you shall . . . .”⁹ God personally grants His law to each person in a binding relationship as the basis of Trinitarian human government among themselves making community possible. No executive state present. Not even the Priests mediated right and wrong to the people. Priests mediated atonement for violating what is Right so unity could be restorerd. To compete with this reality, the Any-god-But-God magicians must buy into more and more of what Jesus and His Servant Moses said. So the Modern world was taken over by these magicians who stole as many of these ideas as they could, took credit for them, and called themselves the light — the Enlightenment.

But there are more historically unthinkable things being taken for granted in the world today as a result of the Trinitarian Consciousness forged from The time of Christ until 1900 —

* The historically unthinkable ethical union of a man and woman in marriage trusting One Flesh to reflect the Triune God, not their parents, society or friends. “A man shall leave his father and mother.” This union creates a stronger whole than either of the parts on their own or under parental authority. In doing so it creates stronger parts to the union than either would be alone. The union multiplying responsible family units accomplished exponentially more than either of them alone or under their parents. Everyone is made stronger, better, fuller when the 20 year maturation of the child and 40 year maturation of the children takes place in that trusting lovers’ union we call “Family.”. Both Puritans and Quakers were in the forefront of this historically radical concept stemming from the One Flesh of Genesis 2. Marriage is for lovers called “Sweethearts” — a term they coined. Love as an ethical, binding, uniting force that gives without physical threat, with breaking oath, without stealing what is unique to the beloved and without lying is Trinitarian to the core. Only a dim approximation exists outside God’s 3 in 1 example. The Trust necessary for that love to be received is the other side of the bond. Love drawing two to become one flesh is the spiritual structure of the Trinitarian God creating social order in His image transcending any sin.¹⁰ This Trinitarian Love-Trust fulfills all who are shaped by it. It buries the alternative premodern ideal of socially controlling the marriage on the one hand, or the postmodern idea of the individual in ultimate control bucking whom they can. Marriage is Trinitarian. Forsaking all others, one unique man and one unique woman become One. In fact it is the defining point of the 7^th commandment — Keeping your word is Fidelity. Breaking your word is Adultery.

* The historically peculiar idea that an individual is both an Identity, as well as one who reflects on their own Identity and both together are alsoThe Identity. It is historically unique that this concept of identity finds its freedom in the ethics of God’s law, not unbounded choice. It is not that this peculiar reality wasn’t noticed in the past and in other cultures. It was only after the Trinitarian concept had reformatted the Western mind did this idea rest comfortably as an inescapable reality reflecting God’s Image in each of us and we could begin to study the mystery of personal identity. Unbelieving Psychology tried to flatten this dynamic out into competing poles and extremes or triads pulling at us the most well known being the Id, Superego and Ego. As much as anything this tells us how much the world needs and is ready for this Triune Vision of God which psychological and sociological grope after. The Trinitarian reformatting first brought all the social sciences into being and now will bring order to them. Though these disciplines were structured independently from the Trinity in the 19^th Century, they will in time be restructured by it at which point the AgBG will realize they need to buy into more of what the Bible says and then take credit for the Trinitarian world as they have today for the ethical and political world. But that will be a problem the shrinking foundation and credibility of thte AgBG movement will pose to our grandchildren. The idea that our “self” arises out of the conflicting vision of each half of the brain is a physiological snap-shot of that Trinitarian identity as the inexplicable things going on at the subatomic level are a snap shot of Trinitarian Cosmology.

* It’s easy to scoff, “what is Christian about the West?” as many Christians today do thinking themselves radical critics of the obvious. The Christian West has secularized and become the bastion of transhuman individualism, they say with a strong basis in fact. But the Christian West has also been home to brutal Fascist and Socialists centralizers Like Hitler, Marx. Lenin and Stalin who inspired a completely Eastern Mao. So how is today’s West the fruit of Trinitarian thinking?

First of all, Secular individualism and Secular corporatism would not exist were they not a last gasp of the non-Trinitarian Cosmology of the Modern and Ancient world trying to make sense of themselves in Trinitarian concepts. To give you an idea of the power of the Logos speaking through Moses and actually Incarnate in Jesus — even the rotting secular leftovers of the first civilization they gave birth to, known as “The West,” are the one place that 8 Billion unwashed hordes across the planet most want to migrate to. These hordes are not Trinitarian. But when presented with a world shaped by Trinitarians, a world where uniqueness as person does not fragment their unity, and their unity as a people does not absorb their unique personhood, these hoards are more than willing to leave everything behind and cross any country’s border legally or illegally to access even the rotting secularly corrupted fruit of that Ethical Tree, even if the AgBG think they hold YHWH hostage or claim he has nothing to do with it. “Clutching at the [tattered remains of Western Christian] garments, the immigrants say, ‘Take us with you, ‘for God is with you.’” Zechariah 8:23.

Secondly, you must ask, if Christian Doctrines and ethics are so unworkable, why did the Secular Enlightenment adopt them so fervently and try to keep the God who ordained them so locked away in the attic like the crazy aunt? We understand why they did it, but you also have to ask, why did Christians adopt that sort of two or three story house as their cosmology of sacred and secular? That house is Any-god-But-God architecture to the core, not Moses’ or Jesus’ house.

Thirdly, some object that the historical processes that made the Trinity and other Christian doctrines central to our thinking were in their day often defended by brutal and bloody wars, inquisitions, executions. But what should impress us is the fact that we can only condemn those inquisitions on the basis of the faith they established. These doctrines give birth to world-changing faith, hope and Love.

Be humble with me a minute. In their day they believed themselves to be the pinnacle of the same faith as ours. Shouldn’t this challenge us to reflect on how we, think of ourselves as the “real pinnacle” just like they did? Shouldn’t this humble us to think that though we share their doctrine and their optimism, the future generations who grow out of that doctrine’s optimism as we did from theirs, will see us to be as far away from where God is taking us as we judge our bloody forebearers to have been? This clarification is of the same story clarifying this doctrine we live out through time.

History is the Clarification of Doctrine in our lives.

These basic doctrines of Scripture are compelling, causing Zechariah to predict that once God is unleashed in the world, “Ten Gentiles would grab hold the cloak of one Jew and say, ‘Take us with you for God is with you.’” Moses, so blown away by the potential of this code entrusted to him personally by YHWH, realized that the productivity would be unthinkable to the ancient world. 165 days out of the year would be feast days, holidays, and road-trip-weeks to festivals where they rejoice with all their heart with all their family, with their poor pastors and aliens in their town and their employees all of whom they bring along. Then a week’s road trip back. This productivity would permit 1 year out of 7 and 2 years out of fifty to be free of labor and cancelling debt for everyone. God promised a way to work together that would unlock sustainable plenty; a world which contained that abundance; and the ethics to make its unpacking possible and fruitful. Jesus and His servant Moses are just getting started. To compete, all those who reject them can do is secretly steal from them, lie about it, and hope nobody notices.

The distinctly Christian understanding of the basic issues of Human experience aren’t the abstractions of individualism, corporatism, executive control, anarchy, capitalism, socialism, or communism. They have literally reshaped the lives and social order of the entire planet, even social orders and cultures that have no Christian background at all. Once put into effect the world says, “I don’t care what it is or how it got here, I want that!!” The thinkers then reproduce as much of it as they can take credit for. At its best we call them the Enlightenment, in reality just People trying to get in on Moses’ optimism. At worst it is Nietzsche’s Nihilism, namely people realizing that there is no center outside of God.

History is the growing acceptance of who we are in God’s Trinitarian order of Creation and how we live out what He demonstrated when the Father, Son and Holy Spirit created all things, became Flesh, took up the Cross, walked out of the Tomb, Ascended to Rule Heaven and Earth; and filled His people with His own Presence, the Holy Spirit, to prepare all things for His return.

If you want a glimpse of the future, its government, its human relationships, it is found in John 17. The Trinity as laid out in this prayer is both basis and beacon of History.

²⁰ “I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word; ²¹ that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us. . . . ²² And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one: ²³ I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me. ²⁴ “Father, I desire that they also whom You gave Me may be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory which You have given Me; for You loved Me before the foundation of the world. ²⁵ O righteous Father! ... I have declared to them Your Name, and will declare it, that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them.”

History is the story of God perfecting the doctrines of Faith, Hope and Love as they work their way into every life and culture removing the need for institutional violence to force them into the warp and woof of human experience. We call this process History. Jesus called it making disciples. It is the story of the weight of that Glory that God’s Law and Grace from the heart bears up.

This book introduces the Crisis of the Cross series which unpacks the practical life impact of the basic doctrines of our faith in the story God is telling of a world they are increasingly Celestaforming. This is the Kingdom of God you see it unleashed in the world.