Plantinga Chapter 4

I found chapter 4 of Plantinga's book Engaging God's World to be more uplifting and less depressing than his third chapter because that chapter was entitled "the Fall" while this one is called "Redemption." There were a couple of important points that stuck out to me in this chapter, many of which I already know but still find interesting. When we think of Jesus now we think of "Savior of the World" and "God's Son", but Plantinga reminds us in this chapter that to the Jews of His time Jesus was not at all what they expected. Plantinga tells us that the Jews of that time wanted a political leader to fight the Romans, and they thought Jesus would deliver them from the Romans, that was not the case though at that time.

Plantinga then puts his reformed lenses on again and he talks about redemption and what it means to be redeemed. He says that the whole world is God's and it belongs to Him, but the whole world is fallen and all of it must be redeemed. God doesn't just redeem the Christians or the ones who need it the most, He redeems everyone and everything that He has created. This simple fact should make us happy because it is much more comforting to hear that God is redeeming us now for our mistakes instead of just hearing about what we did like the chapter "the Fall" was all about.

Another part of this chapter that I really like is when Plantinga talks about the Ten Commandments and what they mean to us today. Plantinga explains that the Ten Commandmenst were given to us to promote truer freedom and to restrain the evil that is evident in all of our lives. Another important thing that these commands give us is that they bring us closer to Shalom, the way God intend everything to be, and they help to make us flourish. I think that too many times we think that the Ten Commandments just gave the people in that time rules to live by, and they still apply to us, but they are broken many times. I found it interesting to see what Plantinga said about these commands and that they not only are good rules to strive for, but they are so much more than that. It was refreshing to hear that they restrain freedom from our lives and help us to grow stronger in Christ.