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Human equality and creation care depend on the Immanent God.

Transcendence assures us of Someone outside ourselves (see last week’s video here).

Immanence assures us that this Person cares for us.

Watch our Truth in Two to find out why (full text below).

You can have Jack London’s “red in tooth and claw” or “The August Presence.” You can’t have both.

 

Subscribe to MarkEckel.com (here). Find the MarkEckel.com YouTube Channel (here). Mark is President of The Comenius Institute (website). Dr. Eckel spends time with Christian young people in public university (1 minute video), teaching at Indiana University Purdue University at Indianapolis, and interprets culture from a Christian vantage point (1 minute video). Consider becoming a Comenius patron (here).

Picture Credit: Luke Renoe, Snappy Goat

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Rat and Mole feel a great awe fall upon them in Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows.  Met in a holy place by the August Presence, Rat responds to Mole’s question of fear, “Afraid?” murmured the Rat, his eyes shining with unspeakable love, “Afraid!  Of Him? O, never, never! And yet—and yet—O, Mole, I am afraid!”  I can think of no better portrait of The Almighty’s transcendence and immanence combined!

God’s transcendence teaches that He created His world while His immanence emphasizes God’s continued care for people and planet.  Christians have a foundation for both human equality and earth stewardship. God, at the same time, is separate from while caring for His creation.

Does our treatment of people and planet depend on our view of how the world came to be? Yes. If God is immanent, He is personal and protective, caring and compassionate. Christians mirror God’s immanence by being a careful custodian of earth. Christians also bear personal responsibility for the weak, the infirm, those who cannot care for themselves.

Another view of earth and humanity is read in Jack London’s classic The Call of the Wild. London says humanity is “red in tooth and claw” because we live in a “dog-eat-dog world.” If London’s view of human life is correct, there is no purpose in life, no basis for ethics, no dignity for humanity, and no possibility of an afterlife.

But, if God created the world He gives meaning to all things, a standard for right living, worth for all people, and hope that injustice in this life will be rectified in the next life.

I stand with Rat and Mole who meet the August Presence. The combination of God’s transcendence and immanence fill me with awe and love. Because God is immanent, I have a reason for creation care and loving others.

For Truth in Two, this is Dr. Mark Eckel, President of the Comenius Institute, personally seeking Truth wherever it’s found.

[This Truth in Two was reshot for green screen but was first published 18 June 2018 here: https://warpandwoof.org/transcendence-immanence-2-m-vid-text/ ]

 

 

How does everything stick together?

The biblical doctrine of “coherence” is the answer.

Watch our Truth in Two to find out why (full text below).

 

Subscribe to MarkEckel.com (here). Find the MarkEckel.com YouTube Channel (here). Mark is President of The Comenius Institute (website). Dr. Eckel spends time with Christian young people in public university (1 minute video), teaching at Indiana University Purdue University at Indianapolis, and interprets culture from a Christian vantage point (1 minute video). Consider becoming a Comenius patron (here).

Picture Credit: Luke Renoe, Snappy Goat

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How does honey get to your breakfast table or find its way into your afternoon tea? Every 16-ounce honey bear in your pantry exists only because tens of thousands of bees flew some a hundred thousand miles in a relentless, unquestioned pursuit of nectar gathered from 5 million flowers. By the time the life of each ended—they live all of six weeks during honey-making season—each bee flew about 500 miles in twenty days, the span each lives outside the hive.

Wow. What bees do to give us sweet flavor in our food is astounding! Honey production is just one small example of what Christian thinkers call coherence. We humans want to make sense of reality. We seek consistency, unity, and wholeness. We want to know everything coheres, which simply means how everything sticks together.

The first verse of the Bible teaches coherence. “The heavens and the earth,” in the Hebrew mind, included everything from A to Z. Believers and unbelievers alike declared The Hebrew God created and unified all things. Prophets throughout Scripture declare the same—all things come from and are held together by the God of the Bible.

John Amos Comenius—the namesake of The Comenius Institute—believed in coherence which he called “pansophy”—wisdom gained throughout the world. All great universities seek the same thing—the coherence of all knowledge. In fact, that is the definition of university: uni = one, versity = many. The great question for all universities is “How do many studies fit together?”

For educators like me, coherence allows the study of everything from A to Z. Scientists, grammarians, counselors, economists, historians, mathematicians, educators in all disciplines – and yes, even bees –  depend on coherence to do their work.

For Truth in Two, this is Dr. Mark Eckel, President of the Comenius Institute, personally seeking Truth wherever it’s found.

[Reshot for green screen effects. First published here on 29 May 2018: https://warpandwoof.org/honey-bees-coherence-2-min-video/ ]

 

 

 

 

Where did everything come from?

Look to the Owner of the forest hut.

Francis Schaeffer’s famed story explains a Christian view of origins.

Watch our Truth in Two to find out (full text below).

 

Subscribe to MarkEckel.com (here). Find the MarkEckel.com YouTube Channel (here). Mark is President of The Comenius Institute (website). Dr. Eckel spends time with Christian young people in public university (1 minute video), teaching at Indiana University Purdue University at Indianapolis, and interprets culture from a Christian vantage point (1 minute video). Consider becoming a Comenius patron (here).

Picture Credit: Luke Renoe, Snappy Goat

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Francis Schaeffer tells this story. Imagine you become lost hiking through a forest. You’re relieved to come upon a hut in a clearing. A light shines from the window, and smoke curls from the chimney. You knock. No answer. You call. No voice replies. You go to the window to look in. What a relief! You see a fire burning, stew bubbling in a kettle. The table is set for supper. A freshly baked pie sits in the center.  What do you know from your observations? You know that someone lives in this hut. Someone had to have built the fire, put water in the kettle, set the table, and baked the pie. You deduce that the person will come back soon to eat the supper he’s prepared. You are not alone in the forest.

“God” is the owner of the forest hut. He is introduced in the first verse of the Bible. No argument is made, no evidence compiled, no defense given. Genesis begins with what theologians call a presupposition. Everyone begins with what we presume, what we believe to be true. Philosophers would refer to Genesis 1:1 as a statement of origins. What is real? Where did we come from? Why are we here? These are basic origin questions. But Genesis makes a simple statement: “God is.  Everything else follows.”

Just look around. Everything that is, is dependent upon One who already Is. Order—necessary for every form of authority, boundary, and definition—comes from Outside of us. Logic—upon which lawyers make cases, teachers create lessons, and guides our travel by GPS—is given by Another. Energy—which powers our solar system, our industries, and our bodies—is impossible to define apart from One who made it. If you are lost in the forest, look to the Owner of the hut.

For Truth in Two, this is Dr. Mark Eckel, President of the Comenius Institute, personally seeking Truth wherever it’s found.

[Reshot for green screen, this Truth in Two was originally published here: https://warpandwoof.org/lost-2-min-video/ ]

Personal. Compassionate. Invested. Involved.

The God Who created all things, Providentially oversees all things.

Find out why by watching our Truth in Two (full text below).

“. . . God created the heavens and the earth . . .”

 

Subscribe to MarkEckel.com (here). Subscribe to “Truth in Two” videos from Comenius (here). Mark is President of The Comenius Institute (website). Dr. Eckel spends time with Christian young people in public university (1 minute video), teaching at Indiana University Purdue University at Indianapolis, and interprets culture from a Christian vantage point (1 minute video). Consider becoming a Comenius patron (here).

Picture Credit: Luke Renoe, Snappy Goat

 

 

 

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Rat and Mole feel a great awe fall upon them in Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows.  Met in a holy place by the August Presence, Rat responds to Mole’s question of fear, “Afraid?” murmured the Rat, his eyes shining with unspeakable love, “Afraid!  Of Him? O, never, never! And yet—and yet—O, Mole, I am afraid!”  I can think of no better portrait of The Almighty’s transcendence and immanence combined!

God’s transcendence teaches that He created His world while His immanence emphasizes God’s continued care for people and planet.  Christians have a foundation for both human equality and earth stewardship. God, at the same time, is separate from while caring for His creation.

Does our treatment of people and planet depend on our view of how the world came to be? Yes. If God is immanent, He is personal and protective, caring and compassionate. Christians mirror God’s immanence by being a careful custodian of earth. Christians also bear personal responsibility for the weak, the infirm, those who cannot care for themselves.

Another view of earth and humanity is read in Jack London’s classic The Call of the Wild. London says humanity is “red in tooth and claw” because we live in a “dog-eat-dog world.” If London’s view of human life is correct, there is no purpose in life, no basis for ethics, no dignity for humanity, and no possibility of an afterlife.

But, if God created the world He gives meaning to all things, a standard for right living, worth for all people, and hope that injustice in this life will be rectified in the next life.

I stand with Rat and Mole who meet the August Presence. The combination of God’s transcendence and immanence fill me with awe and love. Because God is immanent, I have a reason for creation care and loving others.

For Truth in Two, this is Dr. Mark Eckel, President of the Comenius Institute, personally seeking Truth wherever it’s found.

 

 

 

 

 

Separate. Apart from. Independent of.

The doctrine of Transcendence is imperative for Christian teaching.

Find out why by watching our Truth in Two (full text below).

“In the beginning, God created . . .”

 

Subscribe to MarkEckel.com (here). Subscribe to “Truth in Two” videos from Comenius (here). Mark is President of The Comenius Institute (website). Dr. Eckel spends time with Christian young people in public university (1 minute video), teaching at Indiana University Purdue University at Indianapolis, and interprets culture from a Christian vantage point (1 minute video). Consider becoming a Comenius patron (here).

Picture Credit: Luke Renoe, Snappy Goat

 

 

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It was 1994. I was a high school teacher instructing young people that there must be a source of authority outside of ourselves. Then I read a speech that the then president of The Czech Republic had given at Stanford University. He immediately became my favorite politician. Vaclav Havel said

“Democracy must rediscover and renew its own transcendent origins. Democracy must renew its respect for an external order. This order is above us but also in us and among us. Transcendence is the only possible and reliable source of human respect, political order, and all authority.”

Why did Havel use the word transcendence? Havel believed, as do those of us in The Comenius Institute, that transcendence is the basis for any truth. No matter what truth a human being speaks or writes, something is true because an outside authority exists. Transcendence means we have an external source of all knowledge. We can count on something being right or wrong because of transcendence.

The God of the Bible is transcendent. He is apart from, not a part of, creation. In fact, the Bible declares “He is before all things, and in him all things are held together.” Transcendence means there is an outside standard for good and bad, truth and falsehood, right and wrong. If no God exists, we have no meaning or purpose, no reason to love our neighbor.

When the Soviet system died and the Berlin Wall fell, Vaclav Havel was moved from prison to the presidency. Vaclav Havel is my favorite politician for many reasons. But I esteem Havel most for his view that a transcendent authority must exist apart from humans. Havel believed that human responsibility only makes sense if divine authority exists. His Stanford speech says it well: a source of truth must exist outside of humanity.

For Truth in Two, this is Dr. Mark Eckel, President of the Comenius Institute, personally seeking Truth wherever it’s found.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Agreeing to disagree, agreeably.

A Black liberal, a White conservative, both Christians.

You mean people can strongly hold opposing views without rancor?

Yes. In fact, Cornel West and Robert George visit college campuses to say so.

Watch our Truth in Two to find out why (full text, citation, afterword below).

Subscribe to “Truth in Two” videos from Comenius (here). Mark is President of The Comenius Institute (website). Dr. Eckel spends time with Christian young people in public university (1 minute video), hosts a weekly radio program with diverse groups of guests (1 minute video), and interprets culture from a Christian vantage point (1 minute video). Consider becoming a Comenius patron (here).

Picture Credit: Luke Renoe, RIT, Wikipedia

FULL TEXT:

Is it possible for a black liberal and a white conservative to have a civil conversation in front of a university audience? Yes. In fact, the event is replicated at universities around the country.

Cornel West, a black liberal and Robert P. George, a white conservative are friends and can often be found speaking together on campuses. Both men are Christians. Both men taught together at Princeton. Both men dialogue well with each other about their differences. Both men believe in teaching truth, goodness, and beauty.

Cornel West says,

“That’s one reason why I spend the time that I do with my dear brother Robby George of Princeton. We’ve taught many classes together on great books. He is a deeply conservative brother. I love and respect him as a person. We go at it on his positions in a variety of different ways, but we’re both fundamentally wedded to the “adventure of ideas.”

West continues,

“Respect for anyone or anything or any group necessitates a standard. Douglass, Tubman, MLK, or Tutu all adhered to Christian rootedness for their ethics; a standard outside themselves. The assumption base is an important starting point. We may have different assumptions, approaches, and attentions but we share an inherent belief that there is right and wrong and we bear responsibility to speak when we see either.”

At the Comenius Institute we ask questions West and George would ask.

1. What is the basis for our difference?
2. What is the source of any solution?
3. What should be the expected outcome?
4. Is there room for compromise, give-and-take, or alternative approaches?
5. By whose authority will we come to any conclusion?

West and George continue to speak together at universities, in West’s words, “wedded to ‘the adventure of ideas.’”

For Truth in Two, this is Dr. Mark Eckel, president of the Comenius Institute, sadly and personally seeking truth wherever it’s found.

CITATIONS

West’s quotations are taken from Janice McCabe, “Activism and the Academy: An Interview with Cornel West,” Contexts, 13 August 2018. https://contexts.org/articles/activism-and-the-academy-an-interview-with-cornel-west/

AFTERWORD

If you do an online search of West and George you will find pictures of them in jocular embrace, together holding Harriet Tubman’s Bible, or sitting on a university stage, engaged in conversation. You will also find a picture you will not see often: West and George together, holding hands, heads bowed in prayer.

PBS recently produced a “Firing Line” episode featuring the two friends. https://www.pbs.org/wnet/firing-line/video/cornel-west-and-robert-george-mpaztt/

Attucks: The School that Opened a City

Watch the documentary (here).

Black History month is important for many reasons.

We should never forget our history and we should always seek ways to overcome it.

Watch our Truth in Two to find out why (full text below).

Overcoming injustice means coming over to secure justice for others.

Subscribe to “Truth in Two” videos from Comenius (here). Mark is President of The Comenius Institute (website). Dr. Eckel spends time with Christian young people in public university (1 minute video), hosts a weekly radio program with diverse groups of guests (1 minute video), and interprets culture from a Christian vantage point (1 minute video). Consider becoming a Comenius patron (here).

Picture Credit: Luke Renoe, Snappy Goat

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I sat in stunned silence. I could not believe what I was seeing. I could not understand what I was hearing. The atrocity cut to the core of my being. I often sat with my head bowed. More often than not, tears welling in my eyes. What was the event that overcame my emotions?

Harold HB Bell and I have been working together four years through radio. I accompanied HB on opening night when the documentary Attucks: The School that Opened a City was first shown at the Indianapolis Walker Theatre. I met the director Ted Green. HB and I had our picture taken together with him. I met folks from around the city and nation, people whose lives had been changed by Crispus Attucks High School. I was just learning about Attucks, the movie that so stirred my sensibilities.

The online promotional page for the documentary includes these words, [Quote] “When all-black Crispus Attucks High School was built in the 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan ran Indiana and its capital. The governor, the majority of the state legislature, the mayor and the entire School Board were Klansmen or Klan-backed. The school, Crispus Attucks, was designed to fail. But it did not fail. For more than 40 years, the students who came of age within the brick walls of Attucks overcame a system designed to belittle them. They became surgeons and teachers, scientists and politicians, world-class musicians and athletes.” [End-quote] Basketball legend, Oscar Robertson was an Attucks alumni as was Army General Colin Powell.

It is an important story to watch during Black History Month, or any month. HB and all of us at the Comenius Institute encourage you to watch the documentary Attucks: The School that Opened a City. And be prepared with a box of Kleenex and a repentant heart.

For Truth in Two, this is Dr. Mark Eckel, president of the Comenius Institute, sadly and personally seeking truth wherever it’s found.

What is the role of government?

And why does government matter?

Watch our Truth in Two to find out why God’s common grace is imperative for living in a nation where government is for the people, by the people, to protect the people (full text below).

Christians bear responsibility to pray for “all those in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way” (1 Timothy 2:1-2).

 

Subscribe to “Truth in Two” videos from Comenius (here). Mark is President of The Comenius Institute (website). Dr. Eckel spends time with Christian young people in public university (1 minute video), teaching at Indiana University Purdue University at Indianapolis, and interprets culture from a Christian vantage point (1 minute video). Consider becoming a Comenius patron (here).

Picture Credit: Luke Renoe, Snappy Goat

 

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What is the role of government? Government is responsible to protect its citizens so that citizens can help neighbors and families. Government should maintain the rights of property owners, to care for their homes. Government is responsible to provide space for entrepreneurs to produce goods to sell. Government should provide safety for its people, so that people can govern themselves. Government’s role is to protect citizens, no matter ethnicity, status, identity, or belief. Government’s job is to protect freedom. If government protects freedom, then people are free to care for family, neighbor, workplace, and country.

Government protected freedoms allow atheists, Muslims, Jews, and Christians to work together. A theological principle called “common grace” promotes a view that people can live and work together. I bear responsibility to live graciously, in common, doing good on behalf of my neighbor. Americans may differ on the role of government. But we do not differ on responsibility to neighbor. I believe that’s where we begin; with what we agree on, the “common grace.”

Serving the common, public interest means that government’s role is to create boundaries of law that benefit all. If all people – the public as well as politicians – abide by the same laws, our opportunities to help our families and neighbors increases. Government’s role is not top-down, “I’m going to tell you how to run your personal life.” Government’s role should be to protect the God-given rights of all people. Government’s responsibility is not to hinder freedom but to enhance it. Government is a God-given institution for the common good established by God’s common grace.

For Truth in Two, this is Dr. Mark Eckel, President of the Comenius Institute, personally seeking truth wherever it’s found.

The First Testament gives my life formation.

Genesis to Malachi is relevant for all times, people, places, & cultures.

Why is The First Testament (Old Testament) so important?

Watch our Truth in Two to find out! [Full Text below]

If Jesus utilized the First Testament as His source of instruction, so should Christians.

Find out more about becoming a Christian APOLOGIST. I would be glad to talk with you about the work of RATIO CHRISTI (here). Subscribe to “Truth in Two” videos from Comenius (here). Mark is President of The Comenius Institute (website). Dr. Eckel spends time with Christian young people in public university (1 minute video), hosts a weekly radio program with diverse groups of guests (1 minute video), and interprets culture from a Christian vantage point (1 minute video). Consider becoming a Comenius patron (here).

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Over my years of teaching, people have asked me “Why do you define yourself as a Hebraic-Christian thinker?” The answer? My views of life arise out of the distinctive teachings of The First Testament. Here is a sampling of life standards taken directly from Leviticus 19. I believe in “helping others”, “private property” rights, “equity” in commerce, proper treatment of the “disadvantaged”, courtroom “justice”, careful “communication”, and commitment to love my “neighbor.”

This is a thumbnail sketch from just one chapter of First Testament teaching. The great questions of life begin to be answered by digging into the books of Genesis through Malachi. And lest you think I’m leaving out Jesus or The Second Testament not only did Jesus quote from Leviticus when He said to “love your neighbor” but He is the embodiment of First Testament teaching according to Matthew 5.

Reflect on various laws in Deuteronomy 24, for example. It is obvious that believers are to embody God’s protection. Of first importance is the weaker party in any relationship—women (in a patriarchal society), the poor, hired workers, orphans, widows, and the “outsider” from another country.

These laws were unlike other laws in the ancient world. In other countries, material possessions were equal to human life. Privilege was protected. But Deuteronomy 24 is distinctive. Other ancient cultures ruled by despotic fiat, treating people as servants, minions of The State.

On the other hand, God’s care for humanity and each individual human person is attested to in the earliest of Hebraic-Christian documents, what we know as the Mosaic law code. Only God can give human rights. It is the responsibility of a nation-state, legislative body, and law office to protect those human rights. And I believe the Hebraic-Christian view of life is the distinctive basis for these laws.

For Truth in Two, this is Dr. Mark Eckel, President of the Comenius Institute, personally seeking truth wherever it’s found.

 

The soul of a nation . . .

. . . depends on the souls of its people.

What happens when a nation tears itself apart?

It has detached itself from a Transcendent source of Truth.

Watch our Truth in Two to find out why (full text below).

National unity is impossible if there is no true Truth to unify around.

Subscribe to “Truth in Two” videos from Comenius (here). Mark is President of The Comenius Institute (website). Dr. Eckel spends time with Christian young people in public university (1 minute video), hosts a weekly radio program with diverse groups of guests (1 minute video), and interprets culture from a Christian vantage point (1 minute video). Consider becoming a Comenius patron (here).

Picture Credit: Luke Renoe, Snappy Goat

 

FULL TEXT

In the 1980’s my students and I would read and critique the Humanist Manifestos I & II. The observation most often made by high school students was “Where do the Humanist Manifestos concept of human rights originate?” They asked the question because they saw the atrocities of nation states such as the USSR and Communist China. The second question students would ask, always at the same time as the first, was “by whose authority can these statements be made?” The instruction of authority matters.

The MORAL FIBER of a nation is tied directly to its teaching, its instruction. “The law” often spoken of in Proverbs is “torah,” the instructional foundation for a people whose belief rests in fearing God.

But in a society that has forsaken outside revelation, claims for “justice” or what is “right” are established only by those who wield power.

And “power” is not simply governmental power but must include power of control: control of language, words, definitions, and dissemination of knowledge.

Before anyone claims what is “just,” for instance, they must claim a standard for what is “right.” If the claim is based simply on an individual person or even a collective group of persons, the question will always remain, “Who are you to tell me?”

So a nation detached from outside teaching based on a supernatural source cannot claim the definition of words apart from brutal power; power in the streets, or power in government, or power in the halls of commerce, or power in the halls of learning, or power of the press.

Neither side, influential institutions nor protesting individuals, can become the arbiter, the definer of words, apart from either naked power or teaching clothed in righteousness.

And lest one think, “Ah ha! Now I can climb to the moral high ground of my nation!” that person must ask themselves, “What is the moral fiber of my soul?”

For Truth in Two, this is Dr. Mark Eckel, President of the Comenius Institute, personally seeking truth wherever it’s found.

– My thoughts based on observations from Proverbs 28:1-14