The Song of the Vine

Isaiah sings a song about God and his vineyard (Isaiah 5:1-7).  He sings how Yahweh planted his vineyard, Israel, on a very fertile hill, dug it, cleared it of stones, and cultivated it with the choicest vines.  He hewed out a wine vat and built hedges, walls and a watchtower to protect it.  He did everything one could do.  And yet the fruit it yielded was worthless. 

So God dug it up.  He had it trampled down, devoured and removed.  The fruit of the vine was supposed to be justice, but instead it was bloodshed (5:7).

But the song is not finished.  Twenty two chapters later, Isaiah sings for us the final verse.  “In that day, a pleasant vineyard, sing of it! …In the days to come Jacob shall take root, Israel shall blossom and put forth shoots and fill the whole world with fruit,” (Is 27:2,6). 

An echo of the promise to Abraham: All the nations of the earth will be blessed through the vine of Israel, his descendants.  And then a Galilean preacher marches on to the scene and proclaims quite audaciously: 

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser.  Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away…  Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing,” (John 15:1-2,5).

Israel was planted to be fruit and blossoms for all the nations to joyously gather around, but they brought forth only thorns and thistles.  Centuries later, Jesus assumes the vocation of Israel.  Gather around me.  Abide in me.  Be grafted into my fruit production.  The Father has dressed me –the final vine of the prophet’s song, Yahweh’s vineyard remade.

Chewing on Some Happiness

Blaise Pascal

C.S. Lewis

“Do not let your happiness depend on something you may lose” – C.S. Lewis

 “All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end. The cause of some going to war and of others avoiding it, is the same desire in both, attended with different views. The will never takes the least step but to this object. This is the motive of every action of every man, even of those who hang themselves.” – Blaise Pascal

“Thou movest us to delight in praising Thee, for Thou hast formed us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless until they find rest in Thee.” – Augustine of Hippo

Augustine of Hippo

Nietzsche, the Crown of Modernity

Friedrich Nietzsche is considered by many to be the father of postmodernism or more precisely constructivism.  But in fact, 'God was dying' (in western thought) long before Nietzsche made his bold proclamation.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Michael Horton writes:
"God was displaced by the self-conscious ego in Descartes and then deported to the unknowable noumenal realm by Kant.  Why then retain a 'noumenon' that cannot be known?  Hegal asked.  So, quite sensibly, Nietzsche wiped the 'other world' from the horizon to make room for this world, just as his predecessors had removed God from the center of being and knowing in order to made room for the autonomous self.  Nietzsche's move, and that of his a/theological successors, is hardly antimodern or postmodern, but is the consummation of modernity's eschatological plot." (Eschatology and Covenant, pg. 23)

Nietzsche just called the elephant in the room what no one else would... an elephant.