Idolatry And The Shape Of Worship

Idolatry is one of those Bible words that can feel obvious until you try to use it carefully. We live far from Baal temples, yet we still talk about idols constantly and sometimes we label everything as an idol until the word loses its bite. Derek and Alistair slow down and rebuild the category from the ground up, starting where Scripture starts: the Ten Commandments, the golden calf, and the question of what it means to worship the true God rather than a controllable substitute.

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Transcript

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Derek Rishmawy 1:29

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Why Idolatry Still Matters

Derek Rishmawy 1:51

Hello and welcome to another episode of Mere Fidelity, a podcast by Mere Orthodoxy, where we think about the Word of God and the world we live in. My name is Derek Rishmaui, and I'll be your host for today. I'm joined by regular cast and crew member Alistair Roberts. So it's good to see you.

Alastair Roberts 2:06

It's good to be here. And it's just us two this time.

Derek Rishmawy 2:09

And that is sufficient, I think, for the subject that we're going to bring up today. I wanted to talk a little bit about uh the category of idolatry in scripture. Um, I think we've we've probably talked about it dozens of times in passing ways over the you know the decade or so that we've been doing, but I don't think we've actually dedicated uh an episode to it. I wanted to think about it A as a biblical category, B, kind of how it's functioned. It's functioned beyond that in theology and in preaching and in just kind of cultural analysis. It's it's very prominent, I think, in many of our circles. Uh popularized, uh I think it's most synonymous with I think Tim Keller recently, but it it's ubiquitous in the Reformed tradition, Lutheran traditions, and and uh across the whole. But so I wanna we wanted to kind of get into that. It's it's use, it's pro it's proper use, it's abuse and and and application. So to get us going, Alistair, I wanted to see where you wanted to take us on this or kind of orient us a little bit to the conversation.

Ten Commandments And The Golden Calf

Alastair Roberts 3:09

Well, it might be worth just paying attention to how the category is used in scripture and where it fits within the broader structure, for instance, of the Ten Commandments, and then how it gets used used in contemporary discourse, where it does get deployed quite a lot. We're not actually worshiping, for the most part, actual gods in the way that Israel might have worshipped Baal and Ashra Asherah, or we're not actually engaging in the sort of practices of ancestor worship that the some of the characters in scripture might have engaged in. But yet we still talk a lot about idolatry, and it's a category that has been used a lot to speak about some of the big forces, some of the big things that orient our we orient our lives around, whether that's money, whether it's the family, whether it's power, whatever it is, we can put the term idolatry of before it and have some sort of analysis along those lines. So I wanted us to think whether that is actually legitimate. But to start, let's start with the biblical language and how it gets used, what are some of the specific sources of the Bible's treatment of idolatry, and then how does that get developed within the prophetic critiques, for instance?

Derek Rishmawy 4:37

So obviously we have we have the biggies. We've got the analysis in the Ten Commandments in its various iterations in Exodus and in Deuteronomy. Uh, we find it in Leviticus implied several places, Leviticus 19. Um those are just iterations of the Ten Commandments. And I'm sure there's a couple other places that the commandments are listed out partially. But you know, it stands at the fountainhead of the first, depending on how you read the first couple of commandments, you know, we're dealing with the idolatry of, you know, thou shalt have no other gods, and then versus the idolatry of, you shall not make any images of me. So you've got, you know, no other gods, and then no graven images of me. And I'm I'm I'm going for the classic reformed counting of the second commandment being about um illicit images of the deity. And so right there you have kind of a twofold analysis of what it means to have an idol. You can make an idol of another thing other than God, or you can make an idol of God Himself, perhaps. Uh obviously, we've within Exodus itself, right after the exposition, you have uh the book of the law, but you also have, you know, the the great kind of Exodus fall narrative of the golden calf, right, which situates what could this mean? What could this look like? Right off the bat, um Israel breaks several commandments all at once, but the big obvious one is they did some kind of idolatry. Whether or not they were worshiping other false gods or they were worshiping their god falsely, they were doing idolatry, right? And so right off the bat there, we have within Exodus a major concern. It seems like there's there's there's the question of di is idolatry something that comes into play only in Exodus, or really is it there earlier? And I think there's an argument that actually this goes all the way back to the garden. This goes back to, you know, at least in the Exodus narrative, a whole bunch of the Exodus narrative is about God confronting the gods of Egypt, disarming them, uh, or or kind of unmasking them, so to speak, the so-called gods. Uh, you go back into Genesis and write what what's what's half the narrative is is, you know, you've got the godly line of Seth learning to call on the name of the Lord. And then what is what does Abram do? What's the conversion of Abram? Abram is converted from some sort of like moon-worshiping idolater into a priestly figure for the true God who sets up altars. And, you know, Genesis, what, 12, 13, half of that. Oh, I just preached on worship the other day. And like Abram, among other things, is an altar builder, right? He is he is a true worship institutor. Um, and so this is you know the question of idolatry, or like Rachel steals Laban's gods. And then there's the question of like how much idolatry is there uh as a temptation for the sons uh of Jacob, right there. And so it's it's it's not just tucked in some commandments, it's not buried there only after the Exodus. It's it's pervasive from you know Genesis onwards as a theme of which who's the true God? Who are you worshiping? Um, are you worshiping rightly? Uh so I mean, Alish, if you want to add on, that th that's just some introductory, cursory material.

Idolatry From Genesis Through Exodus

Alastair Roberts 7:52

Yes, uh I think that's all important. And we might add texts like um Genesis 35. Um Jacob said to his household and to all who were with him, put away the foreign gods that are among you, and purify yourselves and change your garments. Then let us arise and go up to Bethel, so that I might make there an altar to God, who answers me in the day of my distress, and has been with me wherever I have gone. So they gave to Jacob all the foreign gods that they had, and the rings that were in their ears. Jacob hid them under the terebinth tree that was near Shechem. You have other stories of false gods, for instance, the god Dagon that's all low as a result of the Ark of the Covenant. The humiliation of false gods is a theme in the story of the Exodus. We might think about the way that all the different realms of the gods of the Egyptians, God proves his power and sovereignty within each of those realms in succession. So we have conflict with the false gods at various points within the narrative, and it becomes more of a prominent theme as we go on.

Derek Rishmawy 9:01

One quick point on that, that I really like that you brought that out is the various realms is oftentimes we have discussions about um, and there's you know, there's contemporary discussions about monotheism in academic realms, whether or not the Bible really teaches monotheism. Half the time, some of the stuff is semantic because you're you're using a very specific definition of what it means to worship one God alone or for there to be one God alone. And and they often it often depends on, well, hey, do other books of the Bible sound exactly like Isaiah 40 to 55, where God says, I and I alone, et cetera. And it's like, well, I mean, no, but also narratives depict the singularity and uniqueness and and you know, the creator-creature distinction in various ways. And the Exodus is one of my favorite ones as an argument. Leon Cass makes this argument in uh his book on the Exodus. But essentially, what the way it narratively depicts monotheism is it shows God exercising the power of all of the entire pantheon over and against their alleged powers in all the realms with specificity, control. It it's not generalized. It shows you a realm of it shows you a range of specific, meticulous, sovereign power across every potential jurisdiction showing that whatever you might call these so-called deities, whatever they, you know, I think they're angels and demons, whatever, but there is a clas there is there's a we're dealing not with a with a you know species within a genus or anything like that. This is Aquinas. We're dealing with something utterly different, and that is a rhetorical and there that is a narratival depiction of monotheism, of God being the true creator God who has no comparison with the so-called gods, right? And I think that's just as monotheistic, even as it's calling them whatever the these beings whatever they are.

Alastair Roberts 10:55

Certainly when we're reading those chapters of Isaiah, we should have in mind passages like Deuteronomy 32 and the Song of Moses, upon which it's drawing very clearly the same language, the rock, and the way the phraseology of God, for instance, in Deuteronomy 32, verse 39, see now that I, even I, am He, there and there is no God beside me. I kill and I make alive, I wound and I heal, and there is none that can deliver out my hand. And then you have the contrast between God who is the the unique rock, the rock that bore them, and then their rock is not as our rock. Our enemies are by themselves, for their vine comes from the vine of Sodom and from the fields of Gomorrah, and then they have made me jealous with what is no God, and they have provoked me to anger with their idols. This is a fairly established theme within the Pentateuchal literature, but then it gets developed further, of course, within the prophetic critique. Beyond

Prophets And New Testament Worship

Alastair Roberts 12:00

that, we could also note the way that the concern for true worship is at the very heart of the Exodus narrative. If we think about the book of Exodus, over half of the book of Exodus is concerned with things like the Ten Commandments and their concern about worship of the true God, and then all the covenant establishment, the establishment of a true site of worship, the story of the golden calf and false worship, and then the establishment of this building and the whole order of the people around it. The book of Leviticus is all about worship. The book of Numbers has that theme again and again, and themes of false worship and um rebellion against the Lord, and then of course into Deuteronomy, which has the concern for a central sanctuary, the concern against again, idolatry, the concern for the uniqueness of the Lord, all of these are very developed themes by the time that we leave the Pentateuch, and then into the books that follow, it does not let up, it continues in various ways.

Derek Rishmawy 13:09

No, I I think of uh one of my favorite passages is in 1 Samuel uh chapter 2, um uh uh gosh, Hannah's prayer. She's just drawing specifically on Deuteronomy 32. For the Lord is a God of knowledge, by him actions are weighed, and she goes on, he kills, he brings to life, he brings down to Sheol and raises up, he makes poor and makes rich, he brings low, exalts, etc. You know, he he's the rock, right? He's he there's none, he's holy, there's none holy like the Lord, for there's none beside you, there's no rock like our God. That's right there in the narratives, right before, before Samuel comes in to purify the worship of the true God uh by, you know, and and and there's judgment on on uh Eli and and and his sons and the false worship, uh, the the the the loss of true worship, and then that leads into the Dagon event. And and so the the question of prophet kingship and the place of worship is all throughout the narrative, which then ends up culminating in David establishing the the temple, right? This is this is a lead up of like a true king establishing a true temple for true worship, goes all the way through, right? And then the prophets, all what the prophets condemn Israel for, why they get dragged off into exile, is because they're worshiping false gods, right? There's there's it's the th it's the big three. We've talked about this before, but it's you know, bloodshed, uh sexual immorality, and idolatry, right? Those are the big three for which uh Israel will be vomited out of the land. And over and over, because it's like, hey, I I I called you, you got worship of other gods. Uh Hosea, like you're you're you're whoring after other gods, gods you did not know. Uh Ezekiel, the adultery metaphor, the adultery and idolatry metaphor is massive. And so this oftentimes we we think, oh man, we talk about idolatry so much. And it's actually the Bible talks about idolatry so much. This is this is job number one. Uh this is this is commandment number one for a reason in in the structure and order of things. And so I think the biblical material, not just in the and not just in the old testament, the the New Testament, it seemed, it elect it seems initially more muted, but but it's not really when you actually start to kind of pop the hood a little bit and see how all of the see how all of the illusions and and the kind of like all of the stuff that's establishing the lordship and deity of Christ, these are all drawing off, half of them are drawing off of monotheistic texts that are are militating against idolatry. So that's I mean, that's part of the the the remarkable thing. You think about Philippians chapter two and how he's drawing on the rhetoric of Isaiah in the you know the 40s and 55s, and he's drawing on these classic monotheistic texts about how like God's not going to give his glory to another, I and I alone, et cetera, et cetera, and my name and so on and so forth. Oh, by the way, that's Jesus's. Right. And so the the the concern about the worship of the true God is now refracted or focal focused, focal focalized in the worship of Jesus as the way that you do you you suddenly don't commit idolatry. When you don't commit idolatry by worshiping God in Jesus Christ.

Alastair Roberts 16:23

We can also think about the way that along with that critique of turning to false gods and idols, there is also this critique of the way in which the true worship of the Lord gets perverted into a sort of idolatry. The temple itself becomes a sort of idol as the worship within it is completely out of consistency with their lives. But also as people begin to trust in the temple itself as a sort of talisman. This is the critique that Jeremiah raises against the worship of the temple in his temple sermon in chapter seven. The challenge that they put their trust in the temple rather than in the Lord, and the temple itself becomes like a den of thieves, a sort of place where brigands go back to find refuge in the midst of their iniquity.

When True Worship Turns Talismanic

Alastair Roberts 17:15

They trust in the security of this to protect them from any claims of justice, and in the same way the existence of the temple can function like that. In the same way you might think about the story of the um bronze serpent back in Numbers, and the way that the bronze serpent becomes a sort of idol that needs to be removed in um 2 Kings. So we do have on the one hand foreign gods that um are idols and that they should not serve, but also the way in which the true worship of the Lord can become perverted into a sort of idolatry.

Derek Rishmawy 17:58

Yeah, I mean, even if think about uh another parallel with with um Exodus 32 is um Gideon, Jerobaal, then you know, he he he cuts down, he cuts down um the idol to Baal, and then and then hey, let's worship the true God, and then we have all this plunder after after the victories, etc. And then what does he set up? Right? He sets up an ephod. He he he actually, hey, we'll we'll be a priest to the true God, and we're just gonna have an idol of him. And over and over again, you have these these attempts to domesticate the Lord into a recognizable form of deity, a more controllable form of deity that is much like, hey, we want much like having a king like the other nations. Behind the desire to have a king like the nations is a desire to have a god like the nations. And that is the one thing that God reiterates over and over again in Leviticus is you're gonna be holy because I'm holy. You're gonna be unlike the pagan peoples because I'm unlike the pagan gods. I'm not like them. You can't control me like this. I'm I'm pure, I'm distinct, I'm powerful, I'm not, I'm not one of these fake little knockoffs, and so you have to live differently. And your worship has to not just mirror uh their worship, which is why you're not involved in orgies and all sorts of other sorts of enthusiastic and uh uh kind kinds of forms of worship. It's interesting, and this is true even in the New Testament. I was, I was uh I'm reading um finishing up Larry Hurtada's book, Destroyer of the Gods, and part of what he talks about is part of this the Christian distinctiveness is the fact that the form of religion that Christianity um uh brought into the ancient Greco-Roman world, it's not like it's not like the ancient Greco-Roman world was utterly just a just a total moral mess, although a lot of it was, but that Christianity was weird in that in some ways it functioned like a philosophy, a way of life. Uh, unlike the religious, the, you know, the religious practice, the, the, the piety of the day, it wasn't like, hey, here are here are Zeus's commands and here are Isis's moral forms. And uh they were not i it was more about, hey, we got religion and and liturgy and ritual, and that's that's that stuff. And then there's ethics, and there's kind of philosophy, there's a way to live that's just, etc. But it wasn't as tightly knit together as a package deal in the way the Christian introduced this this different way of life uh that made them distinctive.

Alastair Roberts 20:26

You might also think about the way that there is this relationship between the idol and the worshipper, those who worship them become like them. And there's a sense in which the description of the worshipper of idols, the person who's turned away from the true God, they become increasingly insensitive, hard-hearted, stiff-necked. All these sorts of descriptions that speak of the breaking down of the functionality of the body. And we can think about the depiction of idols in places like Isaiah, which is mocking and parodying the experience of the idol worshipper who ends up doing things that are ridiculous. They misrecognize something that they have made as a god that they're serving. Now I imagine the idols had the idolaters had pretty sophisticated theologies, pretty sophisticated understandings of what it means to relate to these images. For instance, go back to Genesis chapter 32 and the story of the golden calf. I don't think that they were building that golden calf to replace God. They were building it to replace Moses. It was a mediator. It was not a replacement for God. It was the fact that Moses had gone up on the mountain and the intermediary with God that they had formerly had in Moses is now replaced with an idol. They don't want to deal directly with God. That's one of the things that is a crisis beforehand. Now they want to. Golden calf as an intermediary between them and God, a sort of God technology that protects them from having to deal with the personal God who's present in his glory in Sinai. So you've got that aspect. And I think as you go through scripture, you can see this develop further in things like the critique of Paul in Romans chapter one, which we referenced in our discussion with Carl Truman. The way in which the worshipper increasingly dishonors themselves as they start to worship things that are not God, as if they were God. And the degree to which they transform God to become like the image of brute beasts, so they become engaged in activities that are dishonoring of their own bodies. We are the image of God, and so as we break down our image of God, we break down, in the end, ourselves. And so there's a connection between idolatry and worship and the worshipper that I think is very much an aspect of the biblical reflection upon what idolatry means and some of its implications.

Modern Idols Money Sex Power

Alastair Roberts 23:14

One thing I think we should probably turn to reflect upon at this time is how the concept of idolatry gets used more broadly within our Christian critiques and discussions. What is it about the category that is attractive to us and useful to us in analysing some of the broader phenomena that we use it or deploy it, so to speak, of and how might we be maybe moving away from the biblical use, or are we? Where it's very much related to specific false practices of false worship, which take on a very concrete idolatrous form, where people are bowing down to images and um they're serving false gods that are named specific gods. They're not more general things like family or um money or power.

Derek Rishmawy 24:11

So so I thought a lot about that because there's been there's been a lot of uh I think for for a lot of us, we you you the first time you hear somebody name something that you don't think of as a deity, as a deity, and the fact that you can relate to it that way, you know, it's like, hey, I'm not I'm not a Hindu, I don't have, you know, however many dozens and hundreds and whatever gods, I'm not not worshiping Zeus, I'm not worshiping Hera, so on and so forth. Uh and you don't really think you're uh potentially guilty of this because you had a church representing, and then somebody points out, well, yeah, what's your relationship to money look like? What's your relationship look to sex look like? And you're like, oh wow, I really do place a high value on that. And and then people can kind of go overboard, and then people can boomerang back around and say, hey, we're calling a whole bunch of stuff idols. And really the only way you can be an idol idolatry is if you're worshiping other gods. I'm not worshiping other gods, et cetera. And you can have this kind of this kind of reactionary effect. And the reality is, I do actually think a lot of that extended usage is compl is really legitimate, and it's rooted in the in the Bible, and it's rooted in our theological tradition. You know, very famously, very fame biblically, I'll just say this. You you see Jesus using that use itself with Jesus, what what does he name as a as a potential rival God in the Sermon on the Mountain? He talks about you can't serve God and mammon, you can't serve God and money. Right there, he takes this idea of taking a created, a created reality and treating it as deity, as a rival to the Lord in your either affections or loyalties or service. And he extends, he extends that. And I don't think he just extends it, he just names it, that it that this created thing for many people functions in the way that um that the Lord God ought to in our hearts and affections. And you have the structure of idolatry in Romans chapter one, where Paul talks about basically worshiping created things, giving, not giving thanks and glory and honor to God, but to rather creatures. And then, you know, you you look at you look at people within the tradition, uh, the the famous, the famous one that a lot of people in our circles use is just Martin Luther in his larger catechism. And he says, Well, what is it to have a God? And he says, basically, to have a God is to seek your good, place your trust, your faith, your hope, or whatever in, and kind of seek from it what whatever it is that you're seeking your good from, whatever it is you're seeking your your salvation from, that is what it is to have a God. And your faith, in a sense, makes a God true or right. And you're either putting it in the true God or you're putting it in some other created, um, creaturely reality. When you So this is Luther, this is not just some modern, uh, although, you know, depending on how you how you count, uh, he's the beginning of modernity. Um but I mean, this is Luther who still thinks of devils and and the supernatural and and is fairly clear about like average like witchcraft superstitions kind of things. And even he says, like, people function this way when it comes to money, people function this way when it comes to uh power, all that sort of thing. You you you you make it you make it functionally do for you what the Lord God is uh is supposed to do. And so in the contemporary moment in the West, where we live in allegedly disenchanted times, um, that is a normal, I think normal extended sense that people have engaged in that has a theological root in Jesus' own use, is present in the tradition, right? You know, Calvin talks about Harz and Idol Factory, et cetera, et cetera. I will say we probably need to be aware of the fact that that extended usage is not the only usage anymore, given that we are living in religiously weird times. And, you know, you get high levels of immigration, you get high levels of online kind of syncretism happening and spirituality. And for a lot of people, um, you're no longer having to just preach about the extended sense of idolatry. You know, 1 Corinthians 8 and 9 and 10 are no longer about like, hey, should you drink alcohol in front of your friend or not? It's like, no, actually, should you go to that meal where where there's demons being invoked, uh, other gods being invoked because, you know, you're in LA and there's all sorts of weirdo religious cults that your friends are involved in. So I do think I do think that that that use is basically licit, um, even if it can't, and I'll acknowledge, it can be overextended at times to to say like, hey, you like that thing too much. Are you sure it's an idol? Uh and that can be, you know, that that that can just be uh uh that can be toxic in its own way, but but I I think there's a reaction to that that is underselling how much biblical roots there actually are. But Alice Rann, if you want to push back on that.

Alastair Roberts 29:11

I think there are some biblical roots. On the other hand, I think it is incredibly overextended as a vocabulary for speaking about disordered labs.

Derek Rishmawy 29:22

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Derek Rishmawy 29:24

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Overuse Of Idolatry Language

Alastair Roberts 30:29

There are a multitude of different ways that our loves can be disordered that don't constitute straightforwardly at least idolatry. Or if they are idolatry, there are several other forms of terminology that might give us better purchase upon them. So often, for instance, you might think about the language of sins of commission and sins of omission. The language of idolatry is more suited, it seems to me, to the sins of commission when we are ordering our lives around very actively and determined in a determined manner, around some principle, some reality, some figure that is taking the place of Christ. Much of what we're talking about in these other cases is something that's good that has maybe a disordered place within our affections, or some ways in which we're um dealing with a dearth of virtue, with loves that aren't sufficiently ordered towards the good. And in those sorts of cases, I just think we need a better terminology. And although you might argue that you can address this with the language of idolatry, in some ways it's like it's it's taking a sledgehammer to something that requires far more sensitive tools, and it may work, but it's certainly not the best way to go about it. And I just wonder whether we need to recognize this is an extended use of this language, and the extended use does have biblical precedent, it can be useful, but we need to go back upstream and understand where this language comes from and connect it to that original biblical root or source, and reflect upon that source a bit more before we actually start to apply it more broadly. Because the broader applications, I think, have so overwhelmed our discourse that maybe we've forgotten what this language is about at its very root, and maybe some of the ways in which that language can apply to more direct violations. We might think about the ways that people use images of God or images of Christ in worship in various ways that are very clearly, I think, um perverting worship in ways that the scripture is quite unambiguous about. And so I I think focus upon those more initial uses and then reflect upon actually how scripture uses the language in places like the very end of the very end of the book of First John always sticks out to me, where you've had this long treatment of Christ and his uniqueness, and it ends on this note, and we know that the Son of God has come and has given understanding, given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true. And we are in him who is true, in his son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life. And then the final words of the of the epistle, little children, keep yourself, keep yourselves from idols. That charge suggests an importance to that particular concern that maybe is deeper than just don't go worshiping these foreign deities, but recognize that Jesus Christ is the true article, nothing else can stand in his place, nothing else can rival him, nothing else can um intermediate between us and God. Um there is a uniqueness, he is the way, the truth, and the light, but he is the one and the only Son of God. And so anything that would usurp his position is to be resisted. That it seems to me is a good place to start that develops that broader principle out of which we might think of these extended uses.

Idolatry Analysis And Heart Motives

Alastair Roberts 34:37

But I think it's still grounded in that primary sense.

Derek Rishmawy 34:42

Yeah, I I think I think all of that's right and to the point. I will say I I do think sometimes when you find it idolatry analysis just feels like a big key that unlocks a lot of doors when you first land on it. So I remember reading uh Tim Keller's uh counterfeit gods, and you know, he he maps it out all over the place. And then you look at I I looked at his I looked at his endnotes, his endnotes are the greatest thing, and I started I read a bunch of the books. So, you know, Abishai, Margolet, and um, oh gosh, what's his the other what's the other guy? Um Jewish philosopher. Their book, Idolatry, uh Moshe Halbert Hall. Yeah, that book is phenomenal on just looking at the biblical uh use of the theme of idolatry and mapping it out, all its distinct uses. And then recently, William Kavanaugh just had a big, massive volume called The Uses of Idolatry. It's similarly useful, and he connects it to you know uh Augustine and others and kind of ways of analyzing, you know, consumerism and nationalism and so these sorts of so it unlocks a bunch of doors conceptually that I think are helpful at the broad cultural level. Problem is they're also helpful.

Alastair Roberts 35:49

Certain Presbyterians come in contact with the concept like covenant that's helpful. Yes. And they think it's helpful everything. It's the space they'll put on every meal. In the same way as idolatry language is the universal.

Derek Rishmawy 36:02

What I was getting to Yes. What I was getting to though is at the personal level, though, it also um it unlocks the doors of the heart, so to speak. To I think one of the things that it does is getting people out of the mere law-keeping mode of thinking about sin of like God said X, and so we should not do X because God said not to do X. And that's true. I always preach that, like very clear. Law is law, God said it, He's good, He knows it's right. And and that should be good enough. But when it comes to the motives of the heart, why you keep being tempted to do X? Okay, well, what's under that? And what idolatry analysis often does is it speaks to the loves of the heart. It speaks to the places where you truly find things beautiful, the affections that are associated with sin and the places where your heart is, it's it's not just a matter of your will doing X or not X, but like what are your what are you loving? What is what is what is driving you motivations? And so it's a way of talking about sin that gets past purely legal categories, although I'm I'm a fan of law, I'm I'm okay with legal categories, but when it comes to the motivations of the heart and soul, that then gets you to the point of like, okay, looking at the Lord with with love, with affection, realizing the relational uh concern behind like why is God saying, don't worship other gods for various reasons, run. One, they're fake, two, it's he deserves it. B the relationality of like, what are you giving to him? What are you giving to those other things that you actually should be giving to God? Right? What what's what's impinging? And so it it relationalizes things in a way that I think is very helpful for getting people to see the heart of God behind the commands and and even the question of idols itself. It's not just uh a divine narcissism, all the uh but but it's um it's a divine love that desires relationship, uh as is expressed in a covenant. Covenant and idolatry go together. Um I do think you you you baited me.

Alastair Roberts 38:07

That relational dynamic is a a really strong point in favor of um some language that is getting at the heart of what worship is about, for instance, that and the importance of true worship, the importance of our relationship with God in that positive sense. In some ways it's something that maybe needs to be coordinated a bit more carefully with virtue and vice language, which is less relational, but it's also maybe more suited for certain types of analysis of sin than the more relational focus. There is a time for that relational focus, but there are also ways in which you need to understand the inner logic of some of these sins, the way that they have a structure, they're related to vice, deeper vices that we've been feeding, there's a way in which they are interrelated among themselves, there's ways in which they have alternatives in virtues that we should be pursuing and developing in community. Now that sort of analysis, it seems to me, needs to be better interlocked with the idolatry analysis, which maybe is maybe um it's too powerful a tool for many operations, and we need to hold those things in a better correspondence. In not every situation is it a matter of our fundamental love for God or for some false God. It's often um just disordered affections that we haven't managed, or um a failure to order our love towards God in a way that's something less than straightforwardly um serving a false God rather than the true God. But the questions I think of vice and virtue can be more helpful in in our our repertoire or toolbox at such points.

Family Power And Subtle Disorders

Derek Rishmawy 40:10

I I I very much agree that I think part of the challenge here is it it is so tempting to go to this too quickly. And we we just we have to have way more tools in our toolkit, I think, talking about the virtues, talking about the vices, all those sorts of things. Absolutely the case. The the the Bible gives us many, many different ways of talking about sin. And so you shouldn't just go to the one, right? It might be your favorite, it might be the one under all of them, it's it might be the most powerful, right? You might say this is the most powerful one. But if God gave you six other ones, you should use those too. Uh, right. So don't just use your favorite tool, use all the tools, especially if especially if as you're preaching, the text gives you a different metaphor. You can still get to idolatry if you want to, but like deal with deal with the dimension or angle on sin that the text is associating with this issue in the moment. And so um absolutely I so I think there's an overuse, an overplayed, or or at least not not in its proper perspective. So Fred Sanders has talked about emphatic evangelicalism when he talks to um talks about like the fact that, hey, the cross, the cross, the cross, you can, you can, or exclamatory, you can you can put an emphasis on it, but the emphasis on the cross only makes sense against the backdrop of the entirety of like the paragraph of Christian doctrine, so to speak. And so the emphasis matters only when it is an emphasis and not the exclusive content that you're giving. And so idolatry critiques should, I don't think they should go away. I don't think we should become less attuned to them. We just have to be more attuned to the various other tools that we're given to analyze and think about how God calls us to repentance and faith and true worship and and and lives of righteousness, uh, lives of virtue, self-control, so on and so forth. Um But I I I do wonder, I I just think I think some of the critiques are about overplayed versions. And I do think a couple of the critiques are maybe um there because certain things have been named as idols that people don't want to hear about. So sometimes I mean sometimes, sometimes it's like, oh, hey, you're over the target. Uh not all the time, right? A lot, there's a lot of fair critiques. And so if you're like, that's not me, no, it's not you. You are the one who critiqued this rightly. And I would never say that about you. So don't have to email us or something like that. Um, but but I do think that there are some folks who get sensitive about it, because like something that they it really is functions, functions as an idol got named as an idol.

Alastair Roberts 42:43

I mean, there are some people not. That people have uh an excessive love for that needs to be put in its proper place. I mean, there is an idolatry of covenant that people love that language, and maybe it just needs to be toned down slightly. I mean, it's good, but let's not have a disordered level.

Derek Rishmawy 43:04

Alistair, we're we're doing a we're doing covenantal podcasting right now. We've made an agreement.

Alastair Roberts 43:09

Some examples like people talk about the idolatry of the family or the idolatry of power. These are there are real instances of these things, but most of what we're dealing with in the way of disordered love can be dealt with in far better categories. So, for instance, I think about the biblical analysis of power is far more subtle. There's a recognition, for instance, in the biblical narratives of the way in which a connection with power that you need to maintain can be something that's corrupting or compromising. There can be a way in which it undermines true worship, there's ways in which it makes you vulnerable or it depends upon virtue. And there's a very sophisticated analysis, and I think if you rush at It with the concept of uh idolatry, you lose most of that. And there's so much, again, in the case of family, that we should be loving. Power is not a bad thing. Family is not a bad thing. And we need, I think, a lot more care in the way that we deal with the ways that our loves can be disordered relative to these things. So, for instance, in the case of the family, it's you should love your family, you should love your children, you should seek their um their needs over other people more generally. There is something about your calling that is specifically tied to their good. But there are also ways in which that can become something that eclipses your primary end, to um serve God and to enjoy Him. Now, of course, the relationship between those things is one that is sophisticated and challenging to articulate. And I it seems to me that the category of idolatry offers itself as an analysis that ends up causing a lot more heat than light and actually making it a lot harder for us to get at the very subtle ways in which a good love for family can become disordered, and ways in which people can be misled out of love for family members into um accepting sin or compromising on various fronts. We can think about all the warnings about this sort of thing in places like Deuteronomy, not to follow family members into sin, not to allow your love for family to stand in the way of the service of the Lord. And so I that sort of language rubs me up the wrong way, particularly in relationship to things like power or family, where there is so much more sophisticated biblical treatment of these topics that gets into the really the crevices of the heart.

Recovering The Biblical Center Of Gravity

Alastair Roberts 46:02

This is not on the central pedestal of the heart. This is the subterranean operations of the heart that are far more sophisticated and need a lot more work to smoke out. And if you go out with the big guns all the time, you'll maybe miss a lot of the sophisticated way that these sins operate.

Derek Rishmawy 46:24

Yes and no. I I'll just say this. I I absolutely think people call, you know, anytime somebody cares about their family like more than you do, it's an idol. Anytime anybody wants to, anytime anybody runs for office in a way that you don't like or they have a position you're like, oh you're addicted to power. It's like, well, you know, shut up. Somebody's gotta somebody's gotta take the office, whatever. I get that. Um nevertheless, nevertheless, there are there are instances where you just there are times when people's hearts it's not just a matter of like, like, you know, disorder disordered love, disordered affections, it gets connected to the issue of idolatry, inevitably. Actually, Kavanaugh's got a great chapter about how Augustine's analysis of uh, you know, youth and and and love and all and delight and all those sorts of things is is really idolatry analysis in in its own extended form, but there's just good and bad versions. There's sophisticated and unsophisticated versions. There's ways of of of recognizing like, you know, has your sense of, you know, this is where we're getting the senses of self and identity language, which is its own kind of can of worms. But but I think when you're in kind of the family era, it is very easy to see the tendency in your heart to measure the entirety of your world, the entirety of your sense of self, of worth, of whether life is worth living or not, whatever it is, based on not the Lord, his love, his affections, his your salvation in Christ, all these sorts of things, but how this little human running around uh is doing. And you call it disordered affections, call it, you know, uh idol idolatry. There's something going on there that gets at like, I, I, I, you know, why is Isaac, why why does the story of Isaac resonate? Why does sort of Aram and Isaac resonate in sacrificing and whatever? We're in that realm. Uh and so I think people have been careless about it. I think people have used it as a bludgeon. I think people have been, and and especially, you know, I'm very sympathetic to the critique on the family thing of like, like in an age where in an age where, you know, we've got falling birth rates, et cetera, et cetera, you you might argue for a little bit more idolatry of the family than people would have some, right?

Alastair Roberts 48:43

That is really one of the problems that I'll be.

Derek Rishmawy 48:47

I know the counter against that, which is that like the idol is the idol is having a particular kind of family, which means you have a certain amount of money and a certain kind of lifestyle, and your kids attend a certain kind of thing, and you have to, and that actually stops you from having more kids, ironically enough. But um so I I get all that. But yes, so I'm sympathetic. And at the same time, I I I actually just do think you can probably make an idol out of most things.

Alastair Roberts 49:09

You can uh you can do that, but again, there are far more ready tools, I think, to deal with these problems than idolatry. And when we use the terms idol terms related to idolatry so broadly, we lose the ability to use them most effectively where they really are effective and where they really do have their center of gravity in biblical analysis. So, for instance, the degree to which we focus upon idolatry in the reformation of our worship. Um evangelical worship, there can be all sorts of references to idolatry and sermons, but evangelical worship is an absolute mess in many contexts. There's very little thought in it. And as a result, we're being formed by worship all the time in our concept of who God is, who we are, in ways that are maybe shaped deeply by the values of a consumer society rather than by a true ordering towards God. And if we really focused idolatry language where it gets focused in scripture, maybe we'd be dealing with that a lot more than with maybe the fact that we care about little Jimmy a lot more than we do. Um it just seems to me that let's give the language its proper center of biblical gravity. Let's recognize which are more extended uses, which are legitimate in their place, but maybe not the first ones that we go to when we're analyzing those phenomena. And I think that just helps us to use it more effectively where it is really the primary and vocabulary that should come to have.

Reforming Worship Without Pragmatism

Derek Rishmawy 50:59

This is this is one reason that I did really enjoy Alan's book, Noble's book on you know how to live how to live well. Right. Because he to live well. Yeah. Um, is he's giving us back the language or of virtue, of like, hey, let's just talk about the virtues. And so I think having that that that set of tools in your tool, I'm I'm very pro that, obviously. Um and so I think you're right. And then also when it comes to reforming worship, yeah, like break break out some regular regulative principle and and and and start to actually really think through how God has told us he wants to be worshipped and engaged uh in his word. Um so yes, uh, I think that element of worship, that I think th those might be some of the more controversial ones of when you start calling out, when you when you start to look at somebody's worship and saying, this is false worship. I, you know, I I hate your feasts. I, you know, your your your sacrifices sicken me. Your you know, it that that that those kind of second commandment, second commandment idolatry critiques, um, those are almost more dangerous to wield. Uh if you want to, I don't know, keep making friends or keep the keep the peace of your church. Um because you but I mean but I think maybe people make an idol out of their familiar form of the case. Out of friendships and approvals. Yeah, exactly. See, there you go, right? Uh but I think I think you're right. I mean, the the focus on on right worship as as proper identification of the true God uh as he's revealed himself is a significant one. And it's it pragmatism doesn't our our kind of evangelical pragmatism often militates against that because it it worked. We got people here, they're worshiping. Uh and I know we don't have any warrant, biblical warrant, for doing the thing that we're doing to get them here, but it worked, right? And so it, you know, I I remember the first time I read that kind of critique was um was Eugene Peterson actually is booked The Jesus Way, talking about Isaiah and kind of making a bale out of out of the Lord. Right? There's there's a lot of critiques of just making the bale out of the Lord, making them a fertility God, a prosperity God, a uh a God who uh a felt experience God, right? Um and hey, I connected, it's gotta be working. I felt something, there was a froth, there is a froth in my heart.

Alastair Roberts 53:25

And there I think it's important to recognize that idolatry is the flip side of a discourse about who is God and where is God to be found. And these questions provide the positive that enables us, I think, to see where idolatry is present. And so when John is dealing with John is ending his first epistle, the fact that he moves from the uniqueness of Christ, his truth, he's the one true God. There's this sense in which the uniqueness of Christ provides the context within which he can warn them to keep themselves from all the idols, all the things that would be counterfeits, all the things that would take the place of Christ. And it in many ways, our idolatry discourse often lacks that corresponding, and not just corresponding, but the primary discourse that would tether it to what it is primarily about, which is about the worship of the true God. And often the idolatry discourse has taken a superior position. And so I'd argue in the same way as when we're talking about virtue and vice, virtue discourse needs to be primary. And then there will be a context in which we're talking about vice and the distortion of our desires and habits and um actions. And in the same way, we need to talk a lot about what it means to worship the true God, to look to the true God and trust him alone, and more generally, all the different ways that we can be misled and directed away from him in the light of who he is and where he is to be found. And I think that is at its best a very strong emphasis within the Reformed tradition. You talked about Luther and where is Christ to be found. Think about the discussion in Calvin and the importance of the knowledge of God and knowledge of ourselves and their reciprocal relation. There is fundamentally an understanding of idolatry that comes as we understand the truth of who God is and where he is to be found. And once we've got that, then we can start talking about all those other things that would misdirect or replace or usurp.

Derek Rishmawy 55:49

Completely agree. I mean, when um I keep talking about this because I I preached about a week and a half ago, but I did it. We had to

Fixing Our Gaze On Christ

Derek Rishmawy 55:56

do I did a sermon on worship. And the first third, before we talk about idols, is like going from Genesis to Revelation on you know, the the biggest idol buster is seeing the Lamb who was slain, seated on the throne, receiving the true worship of the people of God, the saints, the angels, all of creation represented and just focusing on Christ and Christ alone. And then and then everything else kind of gets when when you start to focus in on the light, all the darkness starts to be exposed for what it is in our hearts and in the world and in the culture and our churches. Um they they can't really withstand a good dose of the actual God that is there. And so, and if that's just like a general word, I I think sometimes they're the negative moment in our preaching, the law, the exposure, absolutely important, the vices. You you absolutely need to do that. Absolutely need to do that. That's fine. But if you got a 30-minute sermon and 25 of it is that, and only about five is on Christ, you've it's it's it's it's it's it's lopsided. Um and I understand the temptation there because it is you want people to see their sin, you want people to see their need, you want it, and and and maybe it's a little bit easier sometimes because we know it better. Um, but getting getting good at expounding the glories of Christ and the deity of Christ and the beauty of, you know, the power of the Spirit and the goodness of the Father, all that sort of stuff, that goes a lot further for actually expunging the temptation to idolatry uh for for your people practically is not idle, bad, idle, bad, idle, bad, idle will kill. That's absolutely the case. And also, here's what Jesus does in your life, right? Um, Alice, was there a final word you wanted to add on that before we wrap things up, bring them to a close?

Alastair Roberts 57:44

I very much agree with that. And I I wonder whether there's uh more generally a tendency to move in the direction of medicine rather than solid food, because there's just an app cultural critique sounds smart. And it's more appealing, perhaps, than just focusing upon the true God and worshipping him right. And when we've turned our eyes towards Christ and we're focusing less upon the cultural critique, maybe um maybe we won't get quite so many people attracted by our brilliance, but there is something more important there than the critique, the negative moment in actually ordering people towards the true vision of God that scripture is at its heart about, and all the things that get in the way of that we can start to remove when we begin to see the one it is to whom our gaze must be directed.

Derek Rishmawy 58:50

On that note, uh it's been a great conversation. Thank you, Alistair. And if you have been listening, thank you for listening thus far. Feel free to rate and review us on iTunes, share the episode, tell your friends, your mom, your dad, whoever it is. Uh but for now, this has been Mere Fidelity.