I was asked by the church I attend to write a short study/meditation for the conclusion of the Sermon on the Mount. It was part of a larger, 14-week study the entire congregation had been doing.
Having just finished it, I wanted to post it here in case anyone is interested. Each day was supposed to have some specific reading, either from the Sermon on the Mount itself or from a separate passage relating to it. The guide was supposed to also offer opportunities for meditation, reflection, and response.
The Upshot: Concluding the Sermon on the Mount
Day 1: Matthew 7:7-28
What do you expect at the end of a sermon? We all give sermons to others, or at least we imagine giving them occasionally. How do you finish yours?
Matthew 7:24-28 is not really the conclusion of the Sermon on the Mount. It is the conclusion of the conclusion. The larger passage from 7:7-28 is the conclusion of the sermon. In the body of the sermon (5:21 to 7:6), Matthew reports specific teachings and admonishments, the commands Jesus mentions in 5:19. The conclusion, though, includes no such specific requirements and possesses a different texture.
Does Matthew 7:7-28 incorporate the aspects you expect in a sermon’s conclusion? How?
What do you consider the basic purpose of the Sermon of the Mount (either in Jesus’ ministry or in Matthew’s presentation)? Does your reading of the conclusion support this view or ask you to alter it?
Day 2: Matthew 28:18-20
What common themes can be found by comparing the end of the Sermon on the Mount (verses 7:24-29) to the end of Matthew’s gospel (28:18-20)?
What imperatives are given in both? What justification is given for the commands discussed in both?
How does the wording of Matthew 5:19 connect the introduction of the Sermon on the Mount to the conclusion of Matthew’s gospel?
Jesus asks Peter, John, and the rest to make disciples of all nations. What does this word mean to you? Is this meaning reflected in the passage? Are there ways you see yourself fulfilling the call to make disciples? Are there endeavors you are considering that would fulfill Jesus’ call to make disciples of others?
What aspects of the conclusion of Matthew’s gospel (28:18-20) do not appear to have counterparts in either the introduction to the Sermon on the Mount or its conclusion?
Day 3: Luke 11:9-13
Comparing Matthew 7:7-11 to Luke 11:9-13 reveals something interesting. The “good things” that the Father will give according to Matthew’s gospel are rendered as “The Holy Spirit” in Luke’s account.
How does this relate to the conclusion of Matthew’s gospel mentioned in yesterday’s meditation? In particular, how does it relate to those aspects that might not have obvious parallels in the introduction or conclusion to the Sermon on the Mount?
Very rarely, a rabbi would arise who was said to have “authority” (Jewish term: semikhah, though many other transliterations are possible.) Such a rabbi had the right to promulgate new interpretations or rabbinical traditions. These teachings would then be passed down to later rabbis. This practice maintained a certain degree of consistency among the teachings of Judaism since rabbis were not generally free to make up their own interpretations.
But occasionally someone received special revelation for a short time and would do or say things while being “in the Spirit.” We normally think of this in terms of prophecies, but often it was for instruction. An utterance made while “in the spirit” was cherished and given special authority. The biblical writers use this idiom in Matthew 22:43, Luke 2:27, and Acts 19:21 to describe actions or words provoked by God’s call. The idea that the Spirit of God would be available to everyone all the time was probably incomprehensible, and it is unsurprising that the apostles spoke in such humbled terms of the Spirit’s availability. It is called the “gift” and the realized “promise” multiple times in Acts, and chapters 13-16 of John put the Spirit in the spotlight as well.
If we temporarily set aside the mental pictures Matthew 7:7-11 plants in our Western, individualistic minds, we can grope for how Jesus may have intended this message on a community-wide scale. The Sermon on the Mount repeatedly speaks of the “Kingdom of Heaven” that the Jews were expecting to come upon them as God’s people. The Jews of Jesus’ day commonly prayed for their national salvation. If Matthew 7:7-11 is an allusion to that, we see in the conclusion to the Sermon on the Mount the first hints at one of the most amazing nuances of the coming Kingdom: that it would be a revolution by spiritual revelation. Instead of suggesting his Jewish brothers ask for an army to bring about their deliverance, he asks them to pray for the Spirit to come.
Just imagine living in a faith society where the Spirit of God had been almost silent for centuries, very rarely possessing anyone and only for short periods of time. How amazed early Jewish Christians must have been to find the Spirit pervading their community and touching all believers! That which was once desperately rare had become abounding, as though diamonds were falling like rain.
What role does the Spirit have in your life?
Day 4: Matthew 7:1-6 and Romans 11:11-21
In the sermon’s conclusion, Christ discusses the twin dangers of following those who should not be followed and failing to follow those who should be.
Christ’s final admonition, Do not judge lest you be judged, leads into this conclusion by suggesting the Jews in general are not being a good example to others. He tells them to remove the plank from their eye so they can see to remove the specks from their brothers’. And he follows that up with a curious statement: Do not give what is holy to dogs or throw your pearls before pigs, otherwise they will trample them under their feet and turn around and tear you to pieces.
When this phrase is quoted today, people often think Christ is saying “don’t waste your time on those unreceptive to your message,” but there is nothing anywhere near Matthew 7:6 that suggests he has this in mind. It would be rather strange for Jesus to ascribe pearls of wisdom to those he had just called hypocrites and accused of having planks in their eyes. Furthermore, the idea that we should not engage those we do not believe are receptive would go against Christ’s own model. He debated the scribes and Pharisees in his own ministry and even addressed the aristocratic Sadducees, who were probably even less receptive to his views. His later disciples would similarly engage all manner of people, not allowing their prejudices determine who was fit to hear the gospel.
Instead, Matthew 7:6 is probably a reference to the danger of God’s favor passing to the Gentiles [“pigs” and “dogs” were both Jewish epithets for Gentiles, the former emphasizing their living outside God’s law, the latter emphasizing their idolatry]. By continuing in disobedience, the Jewish nation risked having their inheritance retracted and given to someone else. This theme has already come up earlier when Jesus asks in Matthew 5:13 (the only other place where “trampled” appears in his gospel): You are the salt of the earth. But if salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled on by people. This concern shows up several times later as well, in Matthew: 21:33-41, 22:1-10, 23:37-39, and perhaps 25:28.
We might think that his concern for the Jews is an academic one, irrelevant to us today. However, Matthew saw fit to capture this concern (as did Luke) in gospels many believe were written long after the Jewish leadership rejected Christ. How do Paul’s words in Romans 11:11-21 interpret the loss the Jewish nation suffered? Do Christians run the same risk?
Do you see the modern Christian church prone to dangers like those Christ and Paul warned their audiences against?
Day 5: Luke 6:46-49 and Exodus 23:20-32
Luke’s version of the conclusion to Christ’s sermon (note how Luke 6:37-49 matches up with Matthew 7:1-27 if verses 6-14 are omitted) can aid our interpreting of Matthew’s account. Fitting together Luke 6:46-49 with Matthew 7:21-27 suggests that Luke 6:46, Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord’ and don’t do what I tell you? is Luke’s version of Matthew 7:21-23.
How does Luke 6:46 guide your interpretation of Christ’s words in Matthew 7:21-23?
In addition to comparing Matthew’s version to Luke, we can compare it to the scripture Matthew undoubtedly had in mind when portraying Jesus preaching laws on a mountain, an obvious reference to Moses on Sinai. The commandments given there composed the statutes for the Mosaic covenant, a “lease” of sorts between God and Abraham’s descendents for their occupation of the promised land.
Covenants between rulers and vassals in ancient times shared a common structure. After the stipulations describing what was required of the vassal came a set of blessings, a set of curses, and provisions for the ongoing validity of the covenant. In the case of the Mosaic covenant, the stipulations were the Mosaic Law (e.g. Exodus 20:1 – 23:19) and a short version of the blessings, curses, and continuity provisions can be found immediately afterward (Exodus 23:20-32). (A longer version can be seen in Deuteronomy, where the Laws span from chapter 5 through 27, the blessings, curses, and provisions for the continuity are found in chapters 28-32.)
The body of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:21-7:2) parallels the commandments given on Sinai, the stipulations for Israel’s occupation. It is unclear if the conclusion of the sermon is intended to be analogous to the blessings, curses, and provision for continuity typical for a covenant. Still, there are interesting parallels between Exodus 23:20-32 and Matthew 7:7-29.
What points of contact do you see between these two passages?
In the Exodus passage, the Israelites were told to destroy the altars of their pagan neighbors, and God promised to drive those idolaters from the land. How does this apply to us today? What altars are you called to smash down? What do you yearn for God to drive out from within you?
Day 6: Matthew 5:13-20
A common formula for public speaking is “tell them what you are going to tell them, tell them what you told them you would tell them, and then tell them what you told them,” referring to the introduction, body, and conclusion of a speech. So far, we have looked at the conclusion of the Sermon on the Mount as its own entity, in comparison to Matthew’s conclusion to his gospel, in comparison to Luke’s account, and in comparison to the account of Moses giving the Torah. The final place to look for confirmation that we understand the sermon’s meaning is in its introduction.
How do specific sections of Matthew 5:13-20 match up with Matthew 7:1-29?
We tend to read the Bible in a piece-meal fashion, often remembering just a verse or short passage that speaks to us without reference to what part it plays in the writer’s overall design. When we see individual passages as relating to common themes in a letter, it can change our views on a passage’s intended meaning. Verses we assumed meant one thing we can find were really aimed at a different objective entirely. For each match-up you find, explain how seeing the introduction and conclusion in parallel modifies how you have viewed/interpreted the individual parts.
The Sermon on the Mount is a well known phrase. Many people have heard of it without being able to identify any particular part, other than perhaps the Beatitudes. If you overheard a group of people in a coffee shop laughing about how they all knew the phrase “Sermon on the Mount” without really knowing anything about it, what would you tell them?
Showing posts with label Theology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Theology. Show all posts
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Monday, September 28, 2009
The Gospel Story and Wandering in the Desert
The question of what counts as “the Gospel,” is oft-debated among Christians, but most of those debates come down to questions of “how much is included” rather than questions of what the core narrative underlying salvation history is.
Many people have been told a version of the gospel that is summarized in five steps:
1. God creates everything, and all is well.
2. Adam rebels against God’s command, causing all creation to fall. God’s sense of perfect justice mandates that, outside mitigating circumstances, the all-powerful Almighty would be forced to punish all people for all eternity.
3. God curses the serpent who brought about this calamity (Genesis 3:15), promising that the woman’s “seed” and the serpent’s “seed” would be at odds, but the woman’s “seed” would crush the head of the serpent’s while the serpent would strike the heel of the woman’s offspring.
4. Fast-forward 4000 years. Jesus comes as the promised “crusher of the serpent’s head,” and through His sacrificial death, God now has the ability not to roast everyone forever.
5. Fast-forward to either the day of Judgment or the death of the believer, where said believer is pardoned/forgiven of all sin through Christ's sacrifice and allowed into heaven.
Anyone who reveres the Bible should take significant exception to the above version of the Gospel story. There are several problems with it from a scripture-based perspective, but I will just mention a few.
First, it casts as marginal about 80% of the Bible. If the gospel story is rooted in scripture, one has to be rather skeptical of any version that considers incidental everything from Genesis 4 to Matthew 1.
Second, if we step off our 20th century perch, we recognize an immediate chronological issue preventing the above from being the “Gospel” Mark, Matthew, Luke, John, Peter, Paul and Co. were spreading. If the above represents the Gospel story, then someone in 50 AD trying to spread such a tale would be claiming that nothing that has happened in the last 6000 years (give or take) is critical. Imagine someone today trying to start a theological/philosophical/sociological movement that claimed nothing essential to the overall scheme of things has occurred between now and the first generation of humanity.
Thirdly, it is a very self-serving, anthro-centric gospel. It is a story revolving about how we are blessed in the way we want. Note there are two separate issues here: both that we are the primary beneficiary and the manifestation of that blessing is exactly what we humans think of as the greatest gift: immortality.
While there are many, many more problems with the above (as shall become evident later in this article), I am going to finish here with what is perhaps the most obvious biblical problem with the above: it suggests as core concerns items that have practically no presence in the evangelical writings of the apostles themselves!
Mark wrote his entire gospel without reference to the fall or the curse on the serpent. So did Luke. So did Matthew. So did John. Furthermore, neither of these items appear anywhere in the many evangelism periscopes found in Acts. If numbers 2 and 3 of the above 5-step gospel are critically important, you would think they would show up somewhere in the actual writings of the apostles to those they were trying to convert! Indeed, the only place Genesis 3:15 shows up in the entire New Testament is Romans 16:20, where Paul depicts the prophecy as neither fulfilled by Christ’s sacrifice nor, even, by Christ Himself!
Indeed, not only does this 5-step gospel not match the evangelistic sermons found in Acts, but it suggests a purpose for the Christ altogether alien from the Later Prophets [Isaiah, Jeremiah, …, Malachi] who spoke through the Spirit of the coming savior. We Gentile Christians tend to plunder these books to prove that Jesus is the Christ while ignoring completely what the same prophets describe as the reason and purpose for the Christ’s coming. There are many deeds and accomplishments ascribed to the Christ throughout those many, many pages of scripture, but “saving us from God’s eternal, righteous judgment” is not one of them.
This is not to say the 5-step gospel has no inkling of truth behind it. The fall is, at least indirectly, the principal calamity subverting creation. There is a promise involved, and an afterlife, and Christ’s work is certainly at the gospel's heart. I want to describe here an alternative less alien to the apostle’s preaching and scripture as a whole.
Fundamentally, the gospel story is a description of how God blesses Jesus and, secondarily, how both humanity and all creation are blessed through that blessing. This might sound odd, that we are not the primary targets of God’s love and blessing, but Christians in general need to get used to putting Jesus as the center of the universe instead of themselves.
Paul hints at this blessing in Galatians 3:16 as part of an explanation as to why it was possible for Gentiles to have any part in Christ's salvation. His point is that the promised blessing was not to Abraham’s descendants (plural) but to Abraham and his descendant, who is Christ.
And if we tug on these promises, and try to see things from the perspective of a 1st century Jewish Christian instead of a 21st century Gentile, many things become much clearer. Let’s do just that.
The Basis for the Gospel
The center of the gospel is not a problem to be a solved but a promise to be fulfilled. To be sure, there is a problem to be fixed, but its solution is a secondary item. The center of the gospel was a promise made to Abraham (which the promise made to David is an extension of). This sounds harsh to us Gentiles, but scripture very much defends the view. I would cite in particular Hebrews 2:16, but the Bible is rife with discussions placing the promises made to Abraham and David at the root of salvation, not the curse of the serpent. [Isaiah 37:35, Jeremiah 23:5, 30:9, 33:15-21, Ezekiel 34:23-24, 37:24-25, Hosea 3:5, Amos 9:11, Matthew 1:1, 9:27, 12:23, 15:22, 20:30, 21:9, Mark 10:47-48, 11:10, Luke 1:27, 32, 69-76, 3:8, 13:16, 18:38-39, 19:9, 24:49, John 7:42, Acts 2:33-39, 3:25, 7:17, 13:23-24, 26:7, Romans 1:3, 4:16, 9:7, Galatians 3:7-8, 14:29, 2nd Timothy 2:8, Revelation 5:5, 22:16.]
It would not be too much an exaggeration to say the Bible is a description of the fulfillment of these promises. But what was promised? And how were these promises actualized?
The First Promise
The first promise to Abraham was an inheritance in Canaan, aptly called “The Promised Land.” God showed that the time had come for that fulfillment by breaking the Israelites out of bondage in Egypt. This Exodus was not the fulfillment of the promise, but was proof to those who had a stake in the inheritance that God planned on making good on the promise. The signs in Egypt, the successful escape, the manna, the covenant on Sinai, these were all pledges or indications that the Living God has the power and the desire to fulfill the promise made to Abraham.
However, that in-between-time in the wilderness was a very taxing one for the Israelites. They had a stake in the inheritance and they had been saved from their oppressors, but they had not received the inheritance or life of ease that had been promised to them. They were wandering around with only manna to eat and only God’s signs as proof that God would see them through.
We Christians should meditate on the story in Exodus 16-33 and Numbers 1-14. The Israelites were pulled in two directions. They had had better food and stability in the servitude endured in Egypt, and they were looking forward with only the promise of God that eventually they would have something better to do than wander around with only bread to eat. We might see them foolish today, but in reality they were just a people having trouble keeping their eyes on the promise in the straits of difficulty.
They did not have the faith to obey God. That might sound like a strange statement because we generally separate “faith” from “works,” and “obey God” sounds like “works.” But the writer of Hebrews 3:17-19 describes it in exactly that way. They did not have faith that God would provide for them, so they refused to go into Canaan [see Numbers 14:1-30]. They had a stake in the inheritance, but they forfeited that stake through disobedience. They died in the desert, never entering the Promised Land. They had been saved from Egypt, but did not receive the blessing they had been saved for.
The Second Promise
The second promise was that all the earth would be blessed through Abraham’s descendant. Before going forward on this, it is very useful to summarize the first promise:
I have taken pains to call out these matters because Christ’s salvation mirrors them and is described by them so well. Christ was faithful to God and so God exalted Him, giving Him Lordship over heaven and earth [see Philippians 3:8-9, among other places], He is thus the principal benefactor of the promise, as He has inherited the world [Romans 4:13]. Those who have faith become adopted sons of Abraham and receive a stake in this inheritance (Romans 8:16-17, Galatians 3:29).
Just as Abraham’s physical children piggy-backed on his faith and received a stake in his physical inheritance, those who have the same kind of faith he had, become his spiritual children and can piggy-back on Christ’s merit to receive what He has received, a resurrected body free of selfish temptation. Romans 6 discusses this at length, but in general it was this reward that was the focus of early Christian evangelism: Acts 23:6, 24:21, 26:6-8, 1 Corinthians 15:13, 21, 2 Corinthians 1:9, Philippians 3:10-11. Today we conflate "afterlife" with "physical resurrection," because all we care about is immortality, but for the Jews these items were quite different. The Jews and the nation of Israel in general had an understanding of a spiritual existence of some sort for many, many centuries [see 1 Samuel 28:15], but belief in an actual physical resurrection only started to spring up during the exile period, a few centuries prior to Christ.
Moving on to the third bullet, the purpose of Christ’s exaltation is the same as the purpose of the original Exodus, to have a righteous kingdom for God [Jeremiah 33:15-21, Ezekiel 37:24-25, Hosea 3:5, Malachi 3:3, Acts 3:26, Titus 2:14, 1 Peter 2:24, Revelation 22:3-4, among others].
Regarding the fourth bullet, Christ’s teachings, model life, and (most importantly) His resurrection are the manna now, showing God’s power and desire to fulfill the promise. The Holy Spirit is many times called a “pledge” and “the promise.” These are the signs and proofs for our faith.
The Israelites were enslaved externally in Egypt. They were put under forced labor, and they had Egypt’s idols thrust upon them. These external slaveries were broken in the exodus. The New Covenant breaks the internal slavery to sin. This is not slavery to the “punishment of sin.” When I speak of “slavery to sin,” I refer to what Paul describes in Romans 7:15-25: the inability to do God’s will and refuse to buckle under our desire to serve ourselves. Paul refers to this as a type of spiritual "death" that all inherited from Adam's rebellion. [See Romans 5:12-21]
It was this weakness and concomitant refusal to repent that had caused Israel’s downfall. This behavior is given as the reason for the new covenant [Jeremiah 31:31-34]. This is the problem cited again and again in the Old Testament: even when God’s people were freed externally, they did not have the internal strength to do God’s will. This is the slavery Christ speaks of John 8:34, the slavery He says He will free people from. And it is this slavery that Paul says Christ’s death was meant to end in Romans 6:6 and Romans 7:6.
It is the Spirit that breaks us free of these things, the ‘first fruits” of the more glorious existence we will have later when we are no longer dogged by the selfish flesh.
And, just as the Israelites did, we too are wandering in a desert. We who have received the Spirit have been freed from captivity to sin, but we have not received the inheritance. We have the promise of a renewed body in an eternal kingdom to look forward to, but we live in a dying, decaying world that tests this faith. We live in a world that teaches us to rely on what we can see and touch (like our retirement accounts) rather than on God to provide. We live in a world that tells us God is not real and those who live by God’s commands are wasting what precious time we have. We are constantly called to look back at our own Egypt, a much worse existence, but one that requires no faith in the unseen. We are tempted to live by the laws of this world, the lies that say our image before other people is more important than our image before God.
These temptations are dangerous, just as they were to the Israelites in the desert. For, while the Spirit is a pledge of the “Promised Land” (Our resurrected bodies: See Romans 8:23), we risk forfeiting this inheritance by not following Jesus’ commands. This is why Paul uses the words he uses in Ephesians 5:5, Colossians 3:24-25, Galatians 5:21, and 1st Corinthians 6:9-10 to describe why even believers are in danger if they continue in sin. Hebrews 10:26-31 also speaks on this topic, but the clearest description on the fifth bullet (which we have now progressed to) is given by Peter in quoting a prophecy about Christ in Acts 3:22-23, the latter verse reads:
And it will be that every soul that does not heed that prophet shall be utterly destroyed from among the people.
To "heed" Jesus does not just refer to the commands we think of, like not stealing, but also refers to our having the kind of faith that Jesus refers to in, say, Matthew 6. Faith that God has the power and inclination to take care of us so we do not choose to depend on the power of the world. Some of the greatest punishment visited upon Jerusalem was due to the Jews seeking aid from Egypt when their enemies attacked them. God was incensed that Judah would seek aid there rather than trust in the Almighty. When we hoard up excess wealth in our barns rather than give to the poor (which Christ demands) and trust God to navigate our future, we are essentially doing the same thing that caused judgment to reign down on Judah. [See Isaiah 31] When we try to live by the rules of the world, we are turning back to Egypt, just as the murmuring Israelites did in the wilderness. We should not expect this epic of our existence to be all fun and games. It certainly wasn't for Paul, John the Baptist, Peter, etc.
We cannot simply live in this world with the perspective of this world and wait for our inheritance to come to us. We have to accept that Christ calls us out into the desert to rely on God to provide. And while we are in the desert we cannot live by the conventional wisdom of Egypt. We must, instead, live by the commands of Christ, even when they seem foolish. It was hard for the Israelites in the desert to rely on God, and it hard for us to do so now. It was hard for the young man in Luke 18:22-23 to sell his possessions and give to the poor. It is hard to put our priorities and insecurities to the side and take on God's priorities instead.
Thus, the gospel is not a story about how God saves us from God’s own justice, but rather a story about Christ’s exaltation to lead a Kingdom of people after God’s own heart, a kingdom those who believe have an inheritance in, but that inheritance can be forfeited, as the writer of Hebrews remarks, through disobedience. We are not being saved from God, but rather we are saved from spiritual infirmity for God.
The Judgment, then, is not about God’s justice but about Christ’s choosing those who will contribute to the society He is lord over. Given that the aim of that society is to do God’s will, it is no surprise that Christ says in Matthew 5:19,
Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others {to do} the same, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches {them,} he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
Many people have been told a version of the gospel that is summarized in five steps:
1. God creates everything, and all is well.
2. Adam rebels against God’s command, causing all creation to fall. God’s sense of perfect justice mandates that, outside mitigating circumstances, the all-powerful Almighty would be forced to punish all people for all eternity.
3. God curses the serpent who brought about this calamity (Genesis 3:15), promising that the woman’s “seed” and the serpent’s “seed” would be at odds, but the woman’s “seed” would crush the head of the serpent’s while the serpent would strike the heel of the woman’s offspring.
4. Fast-forward 4000 years. Jesus comes as the promised “crusher of the serpent’s head,” and through His sacrificial death, God now has the ability not to roast everyone forever.
5. Fast-forward to either the day of Judgment or the death of the believer, where said believer is pardoned/forgiven of all sin through Christ's sacrifice and allowed into heaven.
Anyone who reveres the Bible should take significant exception to the above version of the Gospel story. There are several problems with it from a scripture-based perspective, but I will just mention a few.
First, it casts as marginal about 80% of the Bible. If the gospel story is rooted in scripture, one has to be rather skeptical of any version that considers incidental everything from Genesis 4 to Matthew 1.
Second, if we step off our 20th century perch, we recognize an immediate chronological issue preventing the above from being the “Gospel” Mark, Matthew, Luke, John, Peter, Paul and Co. were spreading. If the above represents the Gospel story, then someone in 50 AD trying to spread such a tale would be claiming that nothing that has happened in the last 6000 years (give or take) is critical. Imagine someone today trying to start a theological/philosophical/sociological movement that claimed nothing essential to the overall scheme of things has occurred between now and the first generation of humanity.
Thirdly, it is a very self-serving, anthro-centric gospel. It is a story revolving about how we are blessed in the way we want. Note there are two separate issues here: both that we are the primary beneficiary and the manifestation of that blessing is exactly what we humans think of as the greatest gift: immortality.
While there are many, many more problems with the above (as shall become evident later in this article), I am going to finish here with what is perhaps the most obvious biblical problem with the above: it suggests as core concerns items that have practically no presence in the evangelical writings of the apostles themselves!
Mark wrote his entire gospel without reference to the fall or the curse on the serpent. So did Luke. So did Matthew. So did John. Furthermore, neither of these items appear anywhere in the many evangelism periscopes found in Acts. If numbers 2 and 3 of the above 5-step gospel are critically important, you would think they would show up somewhere in the actual writings of the apostles to those they were trying to convert! Indeed, the only place Genesis 3:15 shows up in the entire New Testament is Romans 16:20, where Paul depicts the prophecy as neither fulfilled by Christ’s sacrifice nor, even, by Christ Himself!
Indeed, not only does this 5-step gospel not match the evangelistic sermons found in Acts, but it suggests a purpose for the Christ altogether alien from the Later Prophets [Isaiah, Jeremiah, …, Malachi] who spoke through the Spirit of the coming savior. We Gentile Christians tend to plunder these books to prove that Jesus is the Christ while ignoring completely what the same prophets describe as the reason and purpose for the Christ’s coming. There are many deeds and accomplishments ascribed to the Christ throughout those many, many pages of scripture, but “saving us from God’s eternal, righteous judgment” is not one of them.
This is not to say the 5-step gospel has no inkling of truth behind it. The fall is, at least indirectly, the principal calamity subverting creation. There is a promise involved, and an afterlife, and Christ’s work is certainly at the gospel's heart. I want to describe here an alternative less alien to the apostle’s preaching and scripture as a whole.
Fundamentally, the gospel story is a description of how God blesses Jesus and, secondarily, how both humanity and all creation are blessed through that blessing. This might sound odd, that we are not the primary targets of God’s love and blessing, but Christians in general need to get used to putting Jesus as the center of the universe instead of themselves.
Paul hints at this blessing in Galatians 3:16 as part of an explanation as to why it was possible for Gentiles to have any part in Christ's salvation. His point is that the promised blessing was not to Abraham’s descendants (plural) but to Abraham and his descendant, who is Christ.
And if we tug on these promises, and try to see things from the perspective of a 1st century Jewish Christian instead of a 21st century Gentile, many things become much clearer. Let’s do just that.
The Basis for the Gospel
The center of the gospel is not a problem to be a solved but a promise to be fulfilled. To be sure, there is a problem to be fixed, but its solution is a secondary item. The center of the gospel was a promise made to Abraham (which the promise made to David is an extension of). This sounds harsh to us Gentiles, but scripture very much defends the view. I would cite in particular Hebrews 2:16, but the Bible is rife with discussions placing the promises made to Abraham and David at the root of salvation, not the curse of the serpent. [Isaiah 37:35, Jeremiah 23:5, 30:9, 33:15-21, Ezekiel 34:23-24, 37:24-25, Hosea 3:5, Amos 9:11, Matthew 1:1, 9:27, 12:23, 15:22, 20:30, 21:9, Mark 10:47-48, 11:10, Luke 1:27, 32, 69-76, 3:8, 13:16, 18:38-39, 19:9, 24:49, John 7:42, Acts 2:33-39, 3:25, 7:17, 13:23-24, 26:7, Romans 1:3, 4:16, 9:7, Galatians 3:7-8, 14:29, 2nd Timothy 2:8, Revelation 5:5, 22:16.]
It would not be too much an exaggeration to say the Bible is a description of the fulfillment of these promises. But what was promised? And how were these promises actualized?
The First Promise
The first promise to Abraham was an inheritance in Canaan, aptly called “The Promised Land.” God showed that the time had come for that fulfillment by breaking the Israelites out of bondage in Egypt. This Exodus was not the fulfillment of the promise, but was proof to those who had a stake in the inheritance that God planned on making good on the promise. The signs in Egypt, the successful escape, the manna, the covenant on Sinai, these were all pledges or indications that the Living God has the power and the desire to fulfill the promise made to Abraham.
However, that in-between-time in the wilderness was a very taxing one for the Israelites. They had a stake in the inheritance and they had been saved from their oppressors, but they had not received the inheritance or life of ease that had been promised to them. They were wandering around with only manna to eat and only God’s signs as proof that God would see them through.
We Christians should meditate on the story in Exodus 16-33 and Numbers 1-14. The Israelites were pulled in two directions. They had had better food and stability in the servitude endured in Egypt, and they were looking forward with only the promise of God that eventually they would have something better to do than wander around with only bread to eat. We might see them foolish today, but in reality they were just a people having trouble keeping their eyes on the promise in the straits of difficulty.
They did not have the faith to obey God. That might sound like a strange statement because we generally separate “faith” from “works,” and “obey God” sounds like “works.” But the writer of Hebrews 3:17-19 describes it in exactly that way. They did not have faith that God would provide for them, so they refused to go into Canaan [see Numbers 14:1-30]. They had a stake in the inheritance, but they forfeited that stake through disobedience. They died in the desert, never entering the Promised Land. They had been saved from Egypt, but did not receive the blessing they had been saved for.
The Second Promise
The second promise was that all the earth would be blessed through Abraham’s descendant. Before going forward on this, it is very useful to summarize the first promise:
- Abraham was faithful to God and God freely promised the land to him. [Note that this is the biblical understanding of "grace," not that God "forgives" or that our righteousness is irrelevant to God. The Biblical understanding of "grace" is that God chooses to do what God wills without obligation to us. God can be swayed by our good deeds, but is under no requirement to be. Paul's point in many of his epistles is that Christ's coming was not part of the Mosaic covenant, so even if the Jews had kept the law, they would have no exclusive claim on the Messiah. Christ's coming was based on a promise freely given without regard to the Law (Galatians 3:17-18), so God had every right to save the Gentiles through Christ as well as the Jews.]
- His physical offspring piggy-backed on this promise and received a stake in the inheritance.
- The purpose of the whole Exodus was that God would have a righteous people of God’s own.
- There were two blessings: one in which a group was saved from oppression and given a pledge of the coming fulfillment of the promise, and the second was the fulfillment itself (possession of Canaan).
- Being a descendant of Abraham gave someone a stake in the inheritance, but disobedience could prevent someone from receiving this inheritance.
I have taken pains to call out these matters because Christ’s salvation mirrors them and is described by them so well. Christ was faithful to God and so God exalted Him, giving Him Lordship over heaven and earth [see Philippians 3:8-9, among other places], He is thus the principal benefactor of the promise, as He has inherited the world [Romans 4:13]. Those who have faith become adopted sons of Abraham and receive a stake in this inheritance (Romans 8:16-17, Galatians 3:29).
Just as Abraham’s physical children piggy-backed on his faith and received a stake in his physical inheritance, those who have the same kind of faith he had, become his spiritual children and can piggy-back on Christ’s merit to receive what He has received, a resurrected body free of selfish temptation. Romans 6 discusses this at length, but in general it was this reward that was the focus of early Christian evangelism: Acts 23:6, 24:21, 26:6-8, 1 Corinthians 15:13, 21, 2 Corinthians 1:9, Philippians 3:10-11. Today we conflate "afterlife" with "physical resurrection," because all we care about is immortality, but for the Jews these items were quite different. The Jews and the nation of Israel in general had an understanding of a spiritual existence of some sort for many, many centuries [see 1 Samuel 28:15], but belief in an actual physical resurrection only started to spring up during the exile period, a few centuries prior to Christ.
Moving on to the third bullet, the purpose of Christ’s exaltation is the same as the purpose of the original Exodus, to have a righteous kingdom for God [Jeremiah 33:15-21, Ezekiel 37:24-25, Hosea 3:5, Malachi 3:3, Acts 3:26, Titus 2:14, 1 Peter 2:24, Revelation 22:3-4, among others].
Regarding the fourth bullet, Christ’s teachings, model life, and (most importantly) His resurrection are the manna now, showing God’s power and desire to fulfill the promise. The Holy Spirit is many times called a “pledge” and “the promise.” These are the signs and proofs for our faith.
The Israelites were enslaved externally in Egypt. They were put under forced labor, and they had Egypt’s idols thrust upon them. These external slaveries were broken in the exodus. The New Covenant breaks the internal slavery to sin. This is not slavery to the “punishment of sin.” When I speak of “slavery to sin,” I refer to what Paul describes in Romans 7:15-25: the inability to do God’s will and refuse to buckle under our desire to serve ourselves. Paul refers to this as a type of spiritual "death" that all inherited from Adam's rebellion. [See Romans 5:12-21]
It was this weakness and concomitant refusal to repent that had caused Israel’s downfall. This behavior is given as the reason for the new covenant [Jeremiah 31:31-34]. This is the problem cited again and again in the Old Testament: even when God’s people were freed externally, they did not have the internal strength to do God’s will. This is the slavery Christ speaks of John 8:34, the slavery He says He will free people from. And it is this slavery that Paul says Christ’s death was meant to end in Romans 6:6 and Romans 7:6.
It is the Spirit that breaks us free of these things, the ‘first fruits” of the more glorious existence we will have later when we are no longer dogged by the selfish flesh.
And, just as the Israelites did, we too are wandering in a desert. We who have received the Spirit have been freed from captivity to sin, but we have not received the inheritance. We have the promise of a renewed body in an eternal kingdom to look forward to, but we live in a dying, decaying world that tests this faith. We live in a world that teaches us to rely on what we can see and touch (like our retirement accounts) rather than on God to provide. We live in a world that tells us God is not real and those who live by God’s commands are wasting what precious time we have. We are constantly called to look back at our own Egypt, a much worse existence, but one that requires no faith in the unseen. We are tempted to live by the laws of this world, the lies that say our image before other people is more important than our image before God.
These temptations are dangerous, just as they were to the Israelites in the desert. For, while the Spirit is a pledge of the “Promised Land” (Our resurrected bodies: See Romans 8:23), we risk forfeiting this inheritance by not following Jesus’ commands. This is why Paul uses the words he uses in Ephesians 5:5, Colossians 3:24-25, Galatians 5:21, and 1st Corinthians 6:9-10 to describe why even believers are in danger if they continue in sin. Hebrews 10:26-31 also speaks on this topic, but the clearest description on the fifth bullet (which we have now progressed to) is given by Peter in quoting a prophecy about Christ in Acts 3:22-23, the latter verse reads:
And it will be that every soul that does not heed that prophet shall be utterly destroyed from among the people.
To "heed" Jesus does not just refer to the commands we think of, like not stealing, but also refers to our having the kind of faith that Jesus refers to in, say, Matthew 6. Faith that God has the power and inclination to take care of us so we do not choose to depend on the power of the world. Some of the greatest punishment visited upon Jerusalem was due to the Jews seeking aid from Egypt when their enemies attacked them. God was incensed that Judah would seek aid there rather than trust in the Almighty. When we hoard up excess wealth in our barns rather than give to the poor (which Christ demands) and trust God to navigate our future, we are essentially doing the same thing that caused judgment to reign down on Judah. [See Isaiah 31] When we try to live by the rules of the world, we are turning back to Egypt, just as the murmuring Israelites did in the wilderness. We should not expect this epic of our existence to be all fun and games. It certainly wasn't for Paul, John the Baptist, Peter, etc.
We cannot simply live in this world with the perspective of this world and wait for our inheritance to come to us. We have to accept that Christ calls us out into the desert to rely on God to provide. And while we are in the desert we cannot live by the conventional wisdom of Egypt. We must, instead, live by the commands of Christ, even when they seem foolish. It was hard for the Israelites in the desert to rely on God, and it hard for us to do so now. It was hard for the young man in Luke 18:22-23 to sell his possessions and give to the poor. It is hard to put our priorities and insecurities to the side and take on God's priorities instead.
Thus, the gospel is not a story about how God saves us from God’s own justice, but rather a story about Christ’s exaltation to lead a Kingdom of people after God’s own heart, a kingdom those who believe have an inheritance in, but that inheritance can be forfeited, as the writer of Hebrews remarks, through disobedience. We are not being saved from God, but rather we are saved from spiritual infirmity for God.
The Judgment, then, is not about God’s justice but about Christ’s choosing those who will contribute to the society He is lord over. Given that the aim of that society is to do God’s will, it is no surprise that Christ says in Matthew 5:19,
Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others {to do} the same, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches {them,} he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
Sunday, August 2, 2009
A New Model for Levitical Propitiation [Comments Wanted!]
I hit upon an interesting model for how God's wrath was addressed in Mosaic covenant. I wanted to put it out there for comments. I think this model matches scripture better than the most commonly rendered ones.
Good scholarship on the cultic sacrifices is hard to find due to how long ago they were instituted and the intra-church politics involved. If someone knows of solid scholarship on the matter, please let me know.
Note: This model is strictly one dealing with propitiation, not the much more important notion of protecting the Temple from defilement. That is to say, this model looks at how danger to the individual sinner is addressed, not the effect the sin has on the sanctuary. The purification and protection of the sanctuary is an altogether different matter. Indeed, if one looks through all the references to sin offerings, it should become clear that this was their intended purpose: to purge the Temple and make ritually clean those who would enter there. This understanding harmonizes Hebrews 9:22 with the rest of scripture. (Since, as I point out below, there were any number of ways to attain forgiveness in general without resorting to blood sacrifices.)
Quick Critique of Common Models
Before moving forward, I wanted to give some indication as to why a better model is even needed. To do this, I'll just fire off some problems with the two most common ones. (If you are only interested in the model I'm kicking around, skip down to the "New Model" heading.)
Model 1: Propitiation through Payment
One model of propitiation is that someone "pays back" God or appeases God through the "soothing aroma" of the sacrifices.
Overall, this is not such an untenable view. The sacrifices were seen originally as a type of "food and drink" for God, and there are many discussions of a "soothing aroma." Furthermore, this model at least explains all the instances where someone could gain forgiveness without sacrificing a living creature (unlike Model 2, below). However, it does have some problems:
The first problem for this viewpoint is that the details of the various sacrifices suggest the opposite. If the goal of the sacrifices were to appease God, we would expect the "sin offering" and "guilt offerings" to be the ones where the entire creature is burned up to provide a "soothing aroma" to God. In fact, it is exactly the opposite. The regulations are very strict and clear that the sin offerings and guilt offerings (as opposed to the "burnt offerings") had only a very small amount burned up to God. These offerings look to be instead payments to the priests, who were allowed to eat the meat. The offerings that were given wholly to God on the altar were the "burnt offerings" instead, which had different regulations.
Similarly, the phrase "soothing aroma" shows up time and time again with regard to the offerings of the Levites, but only 1 of the 13 examples of offering for particular sins use this phrase. This phrase was much more associated with the burnt offerings (which makes sense, for that was the offering where the animal was fully given to God.)
The second problem with this model is that it does not adequately explain why the sacrificial aspect of the ritual is the same for sin offerings made for individual sins as it is for purification offerings where there was no sin in sight...or even offerings meant to consecrate the Temple. [This gets back to the sin offerings being designed to purge the Temple, not by themselves address the guilt for specific sins.]
The third problem with this model is that the wording in Leviticus 19:20-22 [sacrifice for quasi-adultery], presents the offering as a type of fine or punishment itself. Rather than seeing the sacrifices as an effort at "paying God back," it is perhaps more reasonable to see it as a deterrent introduced by God for the good of the society.
The fourth problem with this model is that it is clear from scripture that righteous people can intercede for pardon without any sacrifice at all. As James says, the prayer of a righteous man accomplishes much [James 5:16]. Since righteous people could interceded for sinners without any sacrifice present, it is hard to understand why a sacrifice was needed by statute for forgiveness or pardon. [Once again, this is no longer a problem if we see the sacrifices as primarily intended to cleanse the Temple.]
In addition to these, there are a few passages that would look odd were this the proper model for atonement [see the "My Model" section for examples.]
Model 2: Vicarious Punishment
The second model commonly given is that the animal being sacrificed received the guilt/sin of the person who gives it. Then the animal receives the punishment for the sins it has been made forensiccally guilty of.
The biblical problems with this model are so obvious and easy to articulate that a simple bullet list suffices.
In my model, all propitiation is through intercession by a righteous party. Sometimes that intercession includes components that speak to the righteousness involved [for example, Phineas' killing of the rebel (Numbers 25:11) or Moses' command to light the censers in Numbers 16:46.]
This is the model:
The priests are chosen by God to be linked to Israel as a whole [just as the Temple is linked to the nation as a whole, so that sins by the people can bring impurity to the Temple]. This means that the priests share the burden of iniquity [Leviticus 10:17] when the people sin. But this link goes both ways, so that the sin of the high priest brings guilt upon the entire nation [Leviticus 4:3]. (Compare that to the sin by the political leader which does not bring guilt upon the entire nation: Leviticus 4:22-26.)
This notion of sharing the burden of guilt (without actually the sin itself) in an effort to turn away wrath is seen in Moses' own intercession (which required no sacrifice) before God. "But now, if You will, forive their sin - and if not, please blot me out from Your book which You have written" (Exodus 32:32).
The priests are charged with continually offering up prayers for the community and "making intercessions" (as Jesus is said to do as the High Priest of the new covenant in Hebrews 7:25). Paul's wording in 1st Timothy 2:5 probably gets at this as well... indicating that the earthly priests are no longer the mediator between God and man. Samuel's remarks in 1st Samuel 12:23 suggest something similar.
So, the priests share in the burden of iniquity, and by their righteousness and purity turn the wrath of God away [as Moses did]. This situation creates two problems:
i) Obviously, if the priests are intercessing before God, they are not earning their own bread...which means both they and their families are without food.
ii) While the priests are sharing in the guilt, they are also tending to the Temple, which requires cleanliness and purity from sin.
The Sin, Guilt and Grain offerings appear to serve both these goals!
The sin, guilt, and grain offering regulations specify:
i) The meat could be eaten by any priest. This provides a payment "in return for bearing the iniquity of Israel" (Leviticus 10:17)
ii) Eating the meat and the grain actually cleanses the priests who eat it. (Leviticus 6:18, 27) We see an interesting demarcation here. The grain, sin, and guilt offerings in Leviticus 6:14-7:7 (and reiterated in Numbers 18:9-10) can only be eaten by male descendants of Aaron and they make pure those who eat them, whereas the other offerings [peace, votive, etc.] can be eaten by anyone in the priest's family who is clean.
This idea that the eating of the sacrifice contributes to the priest's cleanliness might seem bizarre to us, but there are other places where holiness or cleanliness is conferred in such a way [obviously it goes the other way...no one has a problem with the notion of uncleanliness being communicative]. Isaiah 6:7 shows such an example, Matthew 9:21 is a NT example. Indeed, the consecration of the Temple itself shows this, the blood of clean animals confers holiness to the Temple.
The Lynchpin
There is one event in the Old Testament that, I believe, gives very strong credibility to this setup. After Phinehas' righteous deeds in Numbers 25:7-8, God makes a covenant with him that his descendants would serve him forever. We see a declaration that this covenant has become nullified by Eli's sin in the prophecy recounted in 1st Samuel 2:28-36.
This is shown again in God's words to Samuel in 1st Samuel 3:12-14, where God tells Samuel to tell Eli "On that day I will carry out against Eli everything that I spoke about his house --- from start to finish" and this is summaried in a single phrase "Therefore I swore an oath on the house of Eli, 'The sin of the house of Eli can never be forgiven by sacrifice or grain offerings.'"
Later this prophecy is fulfilled in 1st Kings 2:27 when Solomon dismisses Abiathar as priest.
Now, the odd thing here is if the punishment upon Eli is the loss of the priesthood from his house, why is the version Samuel given simply "the sin of the house of Eli can never be forgiven by sacrifice of grain offerings"?
If we think of the sacrifices and offerings as designed to forgive the sin of everyday people in Israel, this makes little sense. However, if the forgiveness of sin through offering and sacrifices is synonymous with being a priest, it makes perfect sense. Note how the curse given in the 2nd chapter dwells so much on the house of Eli losing the position and allottment of the priests while still remaining in the temple itself. It ends with a description of how they must beg for work in the temple to receive a scrap of bread. This all makes more sense if we see the grain, sin, and guilt offerings as the payments to the priests, where the eating of the sacrifices cleansed them from the iniquity they bore for the entire society.
If we read what caused this curse in the first place, we also see why this bit about "sins will not be taken away by sacrifices or grain offerings" refers to the eating of those offerings --- that was the thing that caused the curse in the first place! Eli's sons were eating part of the offering that they were not supposed to be eating. It thus makes sense for the punishment to be that they were no longer given the privilege of doing so.
Relation to Eucharist
Seeing these sacrifices as cleansing by eating allows the eucharist to make sense in an entirely new way. A major problem with understanding the Eucharist is that it appears to create a situation where we drink the blood of a sacrifice. That was a major no-no in ancient Judaism, and it is hard to understand how anything that is remotely related to the drinking of blood could have become a ceremony in early Christianity [which was entirely Jewish]. Indeed, the proscription against drinking blood is one of the regulations agreed to in Acts 15 as being relevant to Gentiles as well as Jews.
However, if we understand the eating of the sin offering as part of the cleansing of the Temple, things become clearer.
In the Sin Offering, the blood of sacrifice was put on the horns of the altar to cleanse it and the rest was poured out at the side of the altar. The meat of the offering was given to the priests to cleanse them. Hence we see the flesh and blood as the ways in which the Temple and its denizens were cleansed. The Eucharist, then, becomes a perfect parallel to these sin offerings. The temple "drank the blood" and the priests "ate the flesh" in the old covenant, and each of these actions sanctified the item. Now we are the temple and we are the priests, and the sanctifying sacrifice is Christ.
Summary and Bigger Picture
The above model would work well in the following general understanding of what each of the sacrificial elements meant:
i) The sinner brings the sacrifice to the Temple: This represents a confession of guilt [e.g. Leviticus 5:5--keep in mind that most of these offerings were for unintentional sins or sins done unwittingly.] It also represents a loss to the person, for he will receive nothing from the offering (the priest will end up being the one who eats his ram/goat/lamb). This loss is a deterrent and memorial that sin is a serious issue with serious consequences. It is also an easement of sorts --- the priests are bearing the guilt of the community that he has contributed to. They are praying on the behalf of the community. Thus his sacrifice both subsidizes their work and is meant to undo some of the damage (for the priests that eat of the sacrifice will be sanctified.)
ii) The animal is killed and the blood is applied to the altar: This cleanses the altar (and by extension the temple) from the taint of the individuals sin. This makes the temple a more fit house for God's spirit to rest in.
iii) A very small amount of the animal is burned up (the fat, kidneys, and appendices): This represents "God's share" of the payment to the priests. The sinner has given the animal to the priests as a payment for bearing their sin. The blood and fat are God's portion. This goes back all the way to Abel [Genesis 4:4] and is part of the submission lifestyle priests had to live. It was the breaking of this regulation that caused the curse on Eli (1st Samuel 2:16 and later). Eli's sons were eating the meat before the fat had been boiled off. Note that by now the original sinner is out of the picture. The fat is given to God because the priest gives some part of everything to God, regardless of what kind of sacrifice it is [c.f. Leviticus 2:2 5:12, 6:15].
iv) The priest makes atonement for him, and he is forgiven. The priest intercedes on his behalf, praying for the wrath to be turned away. Moses said "perhaps I can make atonement for your sin" in Exodus 32:30 before going to pray for his people, when the Levitical accounts say "The priest will make atonement for him" it refers to the same.
Note that in the case where the High Priest himself sins, no such intercession is possible and there is no atonement. (Compare Leviticus 4:3-12 with the other 12 descriptions of offering in response to a particular sin.)
v) The priests eat the sacrifice. It is not only a form of sustenance, but an act of sanctification to balance the sin whose guilt they have born.
Good scholarship on the cultic sacrifices is hard to find due to how long ago they were instituted and the intra-church politics involved. If someone knows of solid scholarship on the matter, please let me know.
Note: This model is strictly one dealing with propitiation, not the much more important notion of protecting the Temple from defilement. That is to say, this model looks at how danger to the individual sinner is addressed, not the effect the sin has on the sanctuary. The purification and protection of the sanctuary is an altogether different matter. Indeed, if one looks through all the references to sin offerings, it should become clear that this was their intended purpose: to purge the Temple and make ritually clean those who would enter there. This understanding harmonizes Hebrews 9:22 with the rest of scripture. (Since, as I point out below, there were any number of ways to attain forgiveness in general without resorting to blood sacrifices.)
Quick Critique of Common Models
Before moving forward, I wanted to give some indication as to why a better model is even needed. To do this, I'll just fire off some problems with the two most common ones. (If you are only interested in the model I'm kicking around, skip down to the "New Model" heading.)
Model 1: Propitiation through Payment
One model of propitiation is that someone "pays back" God or appeases God through the "soothing aroma" of the sacrifices.
Overall, this is not such an untenable view. The sacrifices were seen originally as a type of "food and drink" for God, and there are many discussions of a "soothing aroma." Furthermore, this model at least explains all the instances where someone could gain forgiveness without sacrificing a living creature (unlike Model 2, below). However, it does have some problems:
The first problem for this viewpoint is that the details of the various sacrifices suggest the opposite. If the goal of the sacrifices were to appease God, we would expect the "sin offering" and "guilt offerings" to be the ones where the entire creature is burned up to provide a "soothing aroma" to God. In fact, it is exactly the opposite. The regulations are very strict and clear that the sin offerings and guilt offerings (as opposed to the "burnt offerings") had only a very small amount burned up to God. These offerings look to be instead payments to the priests, who were allowed to eat the meat. The offerings that were given wholly to God on the altar were the "burnt offerings" instead, which had different regulations.
Similarly, the phrase "soothing aroma" shows up time and time again with regard to the offerings of the Levites, but only 1 of the 13 examples of offering for particular sins use this phrase. This phrase was much more associated with the burnt offerings (which makes sense, for that was the offering where the animal was fully given to God.)
The second problem with this model is that it does not adequately explain why the sacrificial aspect of the ritual is the same for sin offerings made for individual sins as it is for purification offerings where there was no sin in sight...or even offerings meant to consecrate the Temple. [This gets back to the sin offerings being designed to purge the Temple, not by themselves address the guilt for specific sins.]
The third problem with this model is that the wording in Leviticus 19:20-22 [sacrifice for quasi-adultery], presents the offering as a type of fine or punishment itself. Rather than seeing the sacrifices as an effort at "paying God back," it is perhaps more reasonable to see it as a deterrent introduced by God for the good of the society.
The fourth problem with this model is that it is clear from scripture that righteous people can intercede for pardon without any sacrifice at all. As James says, the prayer of a righteous man accomplishes much [James 5:16]. Since righteous people could interceded for sinners without any sacrifice present, it is hard to understand why a sacrifice was needed by statute for forgiveness or pardon. [Once again, this is no longer a problem if we see the sacrifices as primarily intended to cleanse the Temple.]
In addition to these, there are a few passages that would look odd were this the proper model for atonement [see the "My Model" section for examples.]
Model 2: Vicarious Punishment
The second model commonly given is that the animal being sacrificed received the guilt/sin of the person who gives it. Then the animal receives the punishment for the sins it has been made forensiccally guilty of.
The biblical problems with this model are so obvious and easy to articulate that a simple bullet list suffices.
- If the animal received the guilt/sin of the person, its very presence would defile the Temple and the Altar.
- The treatment of the animal's remains shows the animal maintained its innocence throughout [sin offerings for sins made by the whole congregation had to be discarded to a clean place, the other sin offerings had to be eaten in a clean place and actually made the eaters clean...hardly possible if the animal had become guilty.]
- There is no indication whatsoever that the sins were laid on the animal. The exception to this, of course, was the scapegoat which was not sacrificed in the Temple. In the case of the scapegoat, the scriptures make clear the iniquity is put on the animal...and yet such verbiage is unseen anywhere else for those sacrifices killed in the Temple.
- The Bible specifies the priests, not the animal, bore the guilt of the people.
- Obviously, if this was the way that guilt was defused, it would not explain how grain, silver, incense, etc. could procure propitiation.
- Other examples where God's wrath is clearly in view show that this wrath is not turned away by its execution. For example, God's wrath was upon all of Israel in Numbers 25:7-8, and is turned away by Phinehas by killing the guilty party. This is clearly not Phinehas being the agent of God's wrath, for God's wrath was "turned away" and had been upon all of Israel, not just one person. Phinehas turned away God's wrath through showing the same jealousy for righteousness that God has [see Numbers 25:11], not by simply being the hatchet-man for God.
- An extention of the last: God does not need a priest to execute God's wrath. God has shown God is perfectly capable of executing wrath Godself. Hence, when a priest does a sacrifice, he is not executing God's wrath.
- Once again Leviticus 19:20-22 provides a problem. The text goes out of its way to specify that some punishment is required, but not the full punishment of adultery [which would be death]. However, the "propitiation by vicarious punishment" view would suggest that death was, in fact, the fitting punishment for the sin involved. This is not an isolated incident, for there were other sins where the punishment was specified as something less than death [for example, barrenness of womb in Leviticus 20:20], yet those who claim the creature recieves the punishment for someone's sin have to say that all sins have death as the only punishment. Indeed, the penal substitution interpretation gets everything backwards because the sins requiring a sacrifice were less offensive than those that were punished by barrenness of womb, yet the vicarious punishment interpretation would indicate the opposite. [Of course, if we see the sacrifices as a fine, this all makes sense...for losing a lamb is less a punishment than dying childless, and the offences specified for loss of a lamb are less than the offense specified for dying without children.]
In my model, all propitiation is through intercession by a righteous party. Sometimes that intercession includes components that speak to the righteousness involved [for example, Phineas' killing of the rebel (Numbers 25:11) or Moses' command to light the censers in Numbers 16:46.]
This is the model:
The priests are chosen by God to be linked to Israel as a whole [just as the Temple is linked to the nation as a whole, so that sins by the people can bring impurity to the Temple]. This means that the priests share the burden of iniquity [Leviticus 10:17] when the people sin. But this link goes both ways, so that the sin of the high priest brings guilt upon the entire nation [Leviticus 4:3]. (Compare that to the sin by the political leader which does not bring guilt upon the entire nation: Leviticus 4:22-26.)
This notion of sharing the burden of guilt (without actually the sin itself) in an effort to turn away wrath is seen in Moses' own intercession (which required no sacrifice) before God. "But now, if You will, forive their sin - and if not, please blot me out from Your book which You have written" (Exodus 32:32).
The priests are charged with continually offering up prayers for the community and "making intercessions" (as Jesus is said to do as the High Priest of the new covenant in Hebrews 7:25). Paul's wording in 1st Timothy 2:5 probably gets at this as well... indicating that the earthly priests are no longer the mediator between God and man. Samuel's remarks in 1st Samuel 12:23 suggest something similar.
So, the priests share in the burden of iniquity, and by their righteousness and purity turn the wrath of God away [as Moses did]. This situation creates two problems:
i) Obviously, if the priests are intercessing before God, they are not earning their own bread...which means both they and their families are without food.
ii) While the priests are sharing in the guilt, they are also tending to the Temple, which requires cleanliness and purity from sin.
The Sin, Guilt and Grain offerings appear to serve both these goals!
The sin, guilt, and grain offering regulations specify:
i) The meat could be eaten by any priest. This provides a payment "in return for bearing the iniquity of Israel" (Leviticus 10:17)
ii) Eating the meat and the grain actually cleanses the priests who eat it. (Leviticus 6:18, 27) We see an interesting demarcation here. The grain, sin, and guilt offerings in Leviticus 6:14-7:7 (and reiterated in Numbers 18:9-10) can only be eaten by male descendants of Aaron and they make pure those who eat them, whereas the other offerings [peace, votive, etc.] can be eaten by anyone in the priest's family who is clean.
This idea that the eating of the sacrifice contributes to the priest's cleanliness might seem bizarre to us, but there are other places where holiness or cleanliness is conferred in such a way [obviously it goes the other way...no one has a problem with the notion of uncleanliness being communicative]. Isaiah 6:7 shows such an example, Matthew 9:21 is a NT example. Indeed, the consecration of the Temple itself shows this, the blood of clean animals confers holiness to the Temple.
The Lynchpin
There is one event in the Old Testament that, I believe, gives very strong credibility to this setup. After Phinehas' righteous deeds in Numbers 25:7-8, God makes a covenant with him that his descendants would serve him forever. We see a declaration that this covenant has become nullified by Eli's sin in the prophecy recounted in 1st Samuel 2:28-36.
This is shown again in God's words to Samuel in 1st Samuel 3:12-14, where God tells Samuel to tell Eli "On that day I will carry out against Eli everything that I spoke about his house --- from start to finish" and this is summaried in a single phrase "Therefore I swore an oath on the house of Eli, 'The sin of the house of Eli can never be forgiven by sacrifice or grain offerings.'"
Later this prophecy is fulfilled in 1st Kings 2:27 when Solomon dismisses Abiathar as priest.
Now, the odd thing here is if the punishment upon Eli is the loss of the priesthood from his house, why is the version Samuel given simply "the sin of the house of Eli can never be forgiven by sacrifice of grain offerings"?
If we think of the sacrifices and offerings as designed to forgive the sin of everyday people in Israel, this makes little sense. However, if the forgiveness of sin through offering and sacrifices is synonymous with being a priest, it makes perfect sense. Note how the curse given in the 2nd chapter dwells so much on the house of Eli losing the position and allottment of the priests while still remaining in the temple itself. It ends with a description of how they must beg for work in the temple to receive a scrap of bread. This all makes more sense if we see the grain, sin, and guilt offerings as the payments to the priests, where the eating of the sacrifices cleansed them from the iniquity they bore for the entire society.
If we read what caused this curse in the first place, we also see why this bit about "sins will not be taken away by sacrifices or grain offerings" refers to the eating of those offerings --- that was the thing that caused the curse in the first place! Eli's sons were eating part of the offering that they were not supposed to be eating. It thus makes sense for the punishment to be that they were no longer given the privilege of doing so.
Relation to Eucharist
Seeing these sacrifices as cleansing by eating allows the eucharist to make sense in an entirely new way. A major problem with understanding the Eucharist is that it appears to create a situation where we drink the blood of a sacrifice. That was a major no-no in ancient Judaism, and it is hard to understand how anything that is remotely related to the drinking of blood could have become a ceremony in early Christianity [which was entirely Jewish]. Indeed, the proscription against drinking blood is one of the regulations agreed to in Acts 15 as being relevant to Gentiles as well as Jews.
However, if we understand the eating of the sin offering as part of the cleansing of the Temple, things become clearer.
In the Sin Offering, the blood of sacrifice was put on the horns of the altar to cleanse it and the rest was poured out at the side of the altar. The meat of the offering was given to the priests to cleanse them. Hence we see the flesh and blood as the ways in which the Temple and its denizens were cleansed. The Eucharist, then, becomes a perfect parallel to these sin offerings. The temple "drank the blood" and the priests "ate the flesh" in the old covenant, and each of these actions sanctified the item. Now we are the temple and we are the priests, and the sanctifying sacrifice is Christ.
Summary and Bigger Picture
The above model would work well in the following general understanding of what each of the sacrificial elements meant:
i) The sinner brings the sacrifice to the Temple: This represents a confession of guilt [e.g. Leviticus 5:5--keep in mind that most of these offerings were for unintentional sins or sins done unwittingly.] It also represents a loss to the person, for he will receive nothing from the offering (the priest will end up being the one who eats his ram/goat/lamb). This loss is a deterrent and memorial that sin is a serious issue with serious consequences. It is also an easement of sorts --- the priests are bearing the guilt of the community that he has contributed to. They are praying on the behalf of the community. Thus his sacrifice both subsidizes their work and is meant to undo some of the damage (for the priests that eat of the sacrifice will be sanctified.)
ii) The animal is killed and the blood is applied to the altar: This cleanses the altar (and by extension the temple) from the taint of the individuals sin. This makes the temple a more fit house for God's spirit to rest in.
iii) A very small amount of the animal is burned up (the fat, kidneys, and appendices): This represents "God's share" of the payment to the priests. The sinner has given the animal to the priests as a payment for bearing their sin. The blood and fat are God's portion. This goes back all the way to Abel [Genesis 4:4] and is part of the submission lifestyle priests had to live. It was the breaking of this regulation that caused the curse on Eli (1st Samuel 2:16 and later). Eli's sons were eating the meat before the fat had been boiled off. Note that by now the original sinner is out of the picture. The fat is given to God because the priest gives some part of everything to God, regardless of what kind of sacrifice it is [c.f. Leviticus 2:2 5:12, 6:15].
iv) The priest makes atonement for him, and he is forgiven. The priest intercedes on his behalf, praying for the wrath to be turned away. Moses said "perhaps I can make atonement for your sin" in Exodus 32:30 before going to pray for his people, when the Levitical accounts say "The priest will make atonement for him" it refers to the same.
Note that in the case where the High Priest himself sins, no such intercession is possible and there is no atonement. (Compare Leviticus 4:3-12 with the other 12 descriptions of offering in response to a particular sin.)
v) The priests eat the sacrifice. It is not only a form of sustenance, but an act of sanctification to balance the sin whose guilt they have born.
Thursday, July 2, 2009
The Word, the eternal life, and the spirit
I'm going through my book again, looking for things I should revise, and the study I did yesterday on John 1:1 made me see something I don't know that I would seen normally.
In my book I make the claim that John and other NT writers us the term aiōnios zōē to refer to the "Holy Spirit" or the indwelling thereof. In our bibles that term is translated "eternal life," but a better expression would be "boundless life" or "life in the age to come."
Anyways, I showed in Who Really Goes to Hell three linkages between the way NT writers spoke of the Spirit and the way they spoke of "eternal life."
What floored me last night was a linkage between "the eternal life" and "the Word." [Yes, there are many places where the "the" is there in the Greek...yet another reason why translating aiōnios zōē as "eternal life" should be considered a bit odd.
Anyways, check this out:
John 1:1b "The Word was with/toward/near/related to God"
John 1:14a "And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us,"
Now, compare that with
1st John 1:2 "...and the life was manifested, and we have seen and testify and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested to us"
the eternal life was "with the father" and the life was "manifested to us."
What's my point, John uses the same language to talk about "The Word" [an abstract concept] as he does to refer to "the eternal life" [another abstract concept]. They are both seen as being "with" God and being sent and manifest to us.
This makes perfect sense if we see (as I do) "the eternal life" as a reference to the Spirit (or its indwelling). Jesus speaks of the Spirit as another helper God will send after Jesus "goes away" (John 16:7) and could only come when Jesus had died (John 7:39 as well as the John 16:7 again).
Furthermore, we are told that "God has life in Himself and has granted that the son could as well...almost certain a reference to Jesus' baptism by the holy spirit [one of the few items that occurs in every Gospel. The early church focused on this far more than we do today.] (John 1:4, John 5:26)
Anyways, I just thought it was interesting that John treats "The Word" and "The 'eternal life'" in similar ways, as abstract principles that became manifest in the agents of Jesus and the Holy Spirit.
In my book I make the claim that John and other NT writers us the term aiōnios zōē to refer to the "Holy Spirit" or the indwelling thereof. In our bibles that term is translated "eternal life," but a better expression would be "boundless life" or "life in the age to come."
Anyways, I showed in Who Really Goes to Hell three linkages between the way NT writers spoke of the Spirit and the way they spoke of "eternal life."
What floored me last night was a linkage between "the eternal life" and "the Word." [Yes, there are many places where the "the" is there in the Greek...yet another reason why translating aiōnios zōē as "eternal life" should be considered a bit odd.
Anyways, check this out:
John 1:1b "The Word was with/toward/near/related to God"
John 1:14a "And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us,"
Now, compare that with
1st John 1:2 "...and the life was manifested, and we have seen and testify and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested to us"
the eternal life was "with the father" and the life was "manifested to us."
What's my point, John uses the same language to talk about "The Word" [an abstract concept] as he does to refer to "the eternal life" [another abstract concept]. They are both seen as being "with" God and being sent and manifest to us.
This makes perfect sense if we see (as I do) "the eternal life" as a reference to the Spirit (or its indwelling). Jesus speaks of the Spirit as another helper God will send after Jesus "goes away" (John 16:7) and could only come when Jesus had died (John 7:39 as well as the John 16:7 again).
Furthermore, we are told that "God has life in Himself and has granted that the son could as well...almost certain a reference to Jesus' baptism by the holy spirit [one of the few items that occurs in every Gospel. The early church focused on this far more than we do today.] (John 1:4, John 5:26)
Anyways, I just thought it was interesting that John treats "The Word" and "The 'eternal life'" in similar ways, as abstract principles that became manifest in the agents of Jesus and the Holy Spirit.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Italians, John 1:1, and Colwell's Rule
There's a new woman working at my office. She is Italian. I think I'll ask her out.
Now, the above is completely fictional. There is no new woman at my office...I don't even work at "my office" but rather telecommute, and I just got married.
But think about that phrase "She is Italian."
Skip to John1:1-2, an oft-referenced verse that much has been made of. Standard translations go something like:
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was fully God. The Word was with God in the beginning."
The actual Greek of this statement is:
"En arche en ho logos kai ho logos en pros ton theon kai theos en ho logos. Houtos en en arche pros ho theos"
Translated interlinearly we get:
"In the beginning was the word and the word was [toward] the god and a god was the word. That one was in the beginning with the god."
(The "toward" here is one of several options.)
Now, the odd thing is John's use of "the god" and "a god." (I mean this interlinearly...not that "a god" is the proper real translation.)
"In the beginning was the word and the word was [toward] the god and a god was the word. That one was in the beginning with the god."
Now, the first thing to know is that the Greeks used "the god" to mean God [big "G"] and they used merely "a god" as a more general term to refer to idols, fictional gods, or merely powerful beings. For example, 2nd Thessalonians refers to the anti-christ exalting himself above "every god" (little g), putting himself in the Temple of God (big "G" for it is the Temple of the Living God) and claiming he is "a god" (little g).
The second thing to know is that there is really no such thing in Greek as "a god." There is no "a" in Greek. Either a noun has the article "the" in front of it, or it doesn't.
Anyway, the question is, what does John mean by using "God" in the first part of John 1:1, switching to "god" in the second, and then going immediately back to "God" in John 1:2.
Traditional translations have managed to take this grammar and claim it supports the Trinity doctrine. They claim that word order matters and the this is the only way John could have expressed exactly the trinitarian notion.
The claim [straight out of "Basics of Biblical Greek" Chapter 6 by Mounce] is that:
A god was the Word would mean Jesus was a god separate from "the God."
and
The Word was a god means that all the attributes God has, The Word has as well without exhausting what it means to be God... so the Word was "fully" God without being the same as God.
and
The Word was the god would mean The Word = God as though father and son were the same
[this of course already suffers from the obvious problem that it presumes "God" means "The father," which would in itself give the Orthodox version of The Trinity problems. Indeed, even if John had literally said "Jesus is the same as God," it would not really pose a problem for the Trinity, right? John would have to have said "Jesus is the Father" to do that...]
How does Mounce and others get away with turning "a god" into "the god"? The claim is something called "Colwell's Rule."
Colwell's "Rule" states that when predicate noun {god in this case} comes BEFORE a "be verb" (like "was"), it never has the article, even if it is meant to.
The problem with using Colwell's rule in this way is that Colwell's rule is wrong. There are many, many examples where a definite noun comes before a "be verb" and has the article. Even within the Gospel of John, this rule fails in John 6:51, 15:1, 21:7, and 21:12.
But there are other problems as well. Let's pretend Colwell's rule is right and can be used in the way Mounce and others claim it can. In that case we could derive other similar claims from the grammar that make no sense.
For example, consider John 4:19. The Greek of this verse is
"a prophet are you" translated in our bibles as "you are a prophet."
This matches the end of John 1:1c: "a god was the word"
The useful thing to note about "prophet" is that it is like "god" in that it has a special meaning when you put the "the" next to it. "The Prophet" was a very special figure in Jewish thought. John refers to "The Prophet" often. [See John 1:21 among others].
So, if what Mounce and others were saying is true, when the woman says "a prophet are you" she means "you have all the attributes of The Prophet without actually being the same as him."
That would be a rather odd statement!
Other examples can be found throughout John (including two I will mention later).
But lets get back to the Italian woman in my office that I might ask out. Notice the difference between:
"There's a new woman working at my office. She is Italian. I think I'll ask her out."
and
"There's a new woman working at my office. She is an Italian. I think I'll ask her out."
There is a subtle difference here. Indeed, in the first sentence I get to do something I normally don't get to do in English. Normally every noun in English has some sort of modifier in front of it. I cannot say "I picked up pencil" I either have to say "I picked up a pencil" or "I picked up the pencil."
That is the same as Greek. Normally there are just two options: either the word has the article before it or it does not. Either "god" or "the god."
But there is nothing wrong with saying "She is Italian." The Italian is an "adjective noun." It does not describe a category so much as a quality. The idea is not that she was born in Italy but rather that she has the personal attributes one associates with Italians.
However, saying "She is an Italian" suggests more that she was actually born in Italy [or at least is "full blood" Italian]... it does not really emphasize anything about her disposition or personal traits.
I think that is what is going on in John 1:1c. The statement is not a description of category. It is not saying "Jesus is a god." Nor is it a statement of identity. It is not saying "Jesus is God" [John appears to go out of his way to get away from saying this.] Rather it is a qualitative statement indicating Jesus' essence.
There is actually a very good verse that backs up this view. Consider the first part of John 4:24... the Greek is "a spirit is the god."
Now, if we were following Mounce's logic here, we really would be in trouble! Note that "God" has switched over from being the predicate nominative and is now the subject. According to Mounce's reasoning, this would be saying "All the attributes the Spirit has, God has as well without exhausting what it means to be the Spirit." [this is backwards from what Orthodoxy would want.]
But that isn't what Jesus means in John 4:24 at all. Jesus is not saying God is the Holy Spirit...nor is Jesus saying God is merely some random spirit [God is "a spirit"]. No, what Jesus means is that God has the quality of spirit-ness.
Note that John 4:24a has the exact same grammar as John 1:1c.
I would claim, then, that when John writes "a god was The Word," He is not claiming Jesus is "a god" (separate from God the Father), nor is he identifying Jesus as God (which he appears to go at lengths not to do) but rather claiming that Jesus has the quality of "god"-ness.
Whatever that means.
Much of this information comes from BeDuhn's excellent book Truth in Translation, but some of it is original to me [in particular the linkage to modern English and the discussion of what "The Prophet" means.]
Now, the above is completely fictional. There is no new woman at my office...I don't even work at "my office" but rather telecommute, and I just got married.
But think about that phrase "She is Italian."
Skip to John1:1-2, an oft-referenced verse that much has been made of. Standard translations go something like:
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was fully God. The Word was with God in the beginning."
The actual Greek of this statement is:
"En arche en ho logos kai ho logos en pros ton theon kai theos en ho logos. Houtos en en arche pros ho theos"
Translated interlinearly we get:
"In the beginning was the word and the word was [toward] the god and a god was the word. That one was in the beginning with the god."
(The "toward" here is one of several options.)
Now, the odd thing is John's use of "the god" and "a god." (I mean this interlinearly...not that "a god" is the proper real translation.)
"In the beginning was the word and the word was [toward] the god and a god was the word. That one was in the beginning with the god."
Now, the first thing to know is that the Greeks used "the god" to mean God [big "G"] and they used merely "a god" as a more general term to refer to idols, fictional gods, or merely powerful beings. For example, 2nd Thessalonians refers to the anti-christ exalting himself above "every god" (little g), putting himself in the Temple of God (big "G" for it is the Temple of the Living God) and claiming he is "a god" (little g).
The second thing to know is that there is really no such thing in Greek as "a god." There is no "a" in Greek. Either a noun has the article "the" in front of it, or it doesn't.
Anyway, the question is, what does John mean by using "God" in the first part of John 1:1, switching to "god" in the second, and then going immediately back to "God" in John 1:2.
Traditional translations have managed to take this grammar and claim it supports the Trinity doctrine. They claim that word order matters and the this is the only way John could have expressed exactly the trinitarian notion.
The claim [straight out of "Basics of Biblical Greek" Chapter 6 by Mounce] is that:
A god was the Word would mean Jesus was a god separate from "the God."
and
The Word was a god means that all the attributes God has, The Word has as well without exhausting what it means to be God... so the Word was "fully" God without being the same as God.
and
The Word was the god would mean The Word = God as though father and son were the same
[this of course already suffers from the obvious problem that it presumes "God" means "The father," which would in itself give the Orthodox version of The Trinity problems. Indeed, even if John had literally said "Jesus is the same as God," it would not really pose a problem for the Trinity, right? John would have to have said "Jesus is the Father" to do that...]
How does Mounce and others get away with turning "a god" into "the god"? The claim is something called "Colwell's Rule."
Colwell's "Rule" states that when predicate noun {god in this case} comes BEFORE a "be verb" (like "was"), it never has the article, even if it is meant to.
The problem with using Colwell's rule in this way is that Colwell's rule is wrong. There are many, many examples where a definite noun comes before a "be verb" and has the article. Even within the Gospel of John, this rule fails in John 6:51, 15:1, 21:7, and 21:12.
But there are other problems as well. Let's pretend Colwell's rule is right and can be used in the way Mounce and others claim it can. In that case we could derive other similar claims from the grammar that make no sense.
For example, consider John 4:19. The Greek of this verse is
"a prophet are you" translated in our bibles as "you are a prophet."
This matches the end of John 1:1c: "a god was the word"
The useful thing to note about "prophet" is that it is like "god" in that it has a special meaning when you put the "the" next to it. "The Prophet" was a very special figure in Jewish thought. John refers to "The Prophet" often. [See John 1:21 among others].
So, if what Mounce and others were saying is true, when the woman says "a prophet are you" she means "you have all the attributes of The Prophet without actually being the same as him."
That would be a rather odd statement!
Other examples can be found throughout John (including two I will mention later).
But lets get back to the Italian woman in my office that I might ask out. Notice the difference between:
"There's a new woman working at my office. She is Italian. I think I'll ask her out."
and
"There's a new woman working at my office. She is an Italian. I think I'll ask her out."
There is a subtle difference here. Indeed, in the first sentence I get to do something I normally don't get to do in English. Normally every noun in English has some sort of modifier in front of it. I cannot say "I picked up pencil" I either have to say "I picked up a pencil" or "I picked up the pencil."
That is the same as Greek. Normally there are just two options: either the word has the article before it or it does not. Either "god" or "the god."
But there is nothing wrong with saying "She is Italian." The Italian is an "adjective noun." It does not describe a category so much as a quality. The idea is not that she was born in Italy but rather that she has the personal attributes one associates with Italians.
However, saying "She is an Italian" suggests more that she was actually born in Italy [or at least is "full blood" Italian]... it does not really emphasize anything about her disposition or personal traits.
I think that is what is going on in John 1:1c. The statement is not a description of category. It is not saying "Jesus is a god." Nor is it a statement of identity. It is not saying "Jesus is God" [John appears to go out of his way to get away from saying this.] Rather it is a qualitative statement indicating Jesus' essence.
There is actually a very good verse that backs up this view. Consider the first part of John 4:24... the Greek is "a spirit is the god."
Now, if we were following Mounce's logic here, we really would be in trouble! Note that "God" has switched over from being the predicate nominative and is now the subject. According to Mounce's reasoning, this would be saying "All the attributes the Spirit has, God has as well without exhausting what it means to be the Spirit." [this is backwards from what Orthodoxy would want.]
But that isn't what Jesus means in John 4:24 at all. Jesus is not saying God is the Holy Spirit...nor is Jesus saying God is merely some random spirit [God is "a spirit"]. No, what Jesus means is that God has the quality of spirit-ness.
Note that John 4:24a has the exact same grammar as John 1:1c.
I would claim, then, that when John writes "a god was The Word," He is not claiming Jesus is "a god" (separate from God the Father), nor is he identifying Jesus as God (which he appears to go at lengths not to do) but rather claiming that Jesus has the quality of "god"-ness.
Whatever that means.
Much of this information comes from BeDuhn's excellent book Truth in Translation, but some of it is original to me [in particular the linkage to modern English and the discussion of what "The Prophet" means.]
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Comparison between Biblical and Evangelical Christianity
Bev had early suggested I create a more clear presentation of how my views on the Bible differ from the modern version of the gospel.
I spent today doing that very thing.
Any feedback is welcome.
I would welcome'request that anyone who finds the page interesting link to it on their own site.
I spent today doing that very thing.
Any feedback is welcome.
I would welcome'request that anyone who finds the page interesting link to it on their own site.
Friday, May 15, 2009
What is Grace?
Evangelicals often attack any deviation from traditional understandings of the atonement or Judgment as an "attack on Grace."
"by grace you have been saved through faith; the gift of God so no man may boast." [Ephesians 2:8-9]
and
"being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus" [Romans 3:24]
have been rallying cries for protestants since the beginning. Paul uses the term "grace" more than all other NT writers combined. What does he mean?
The Greek word for grace, charis, refers to a general disposition of "favor." This can be warranted favor or unwarranted favor. However, even if something is done from "warranted" favor, it cannot be "contractual." So, if I give a chess student a free book because he has progressed well, I would be doing out of "warranted favor," but my doing so would not be contractual...unless I had somehow earlier agreed to give him a book based on a particular progress shown, in which case I would not be giving him the book out of favor.
To understand how Paul uses the term, we must understand why Paul wrote his letters and what was going on in apostolic Christianity. We also have to take some perspective of the general state of Israel prior to Christ's coming (since it is this coming that Paul sees as grace).
Humanity at the time of Christ's coming can be broken into two groups: Jews, who had nominally kept God's laws and worshipped the Living God, and Gentiles who were generally idolatrous and had a history of oppressing God's people.
That's the situation. It is extremely important to realize that the only way to be part of God's people at this point was to be a Jew.
Paul is addressing certain Jewish-influenced Gentiles who had been taught that all Christians must observe the "works of the Law" (circumcision, dietary requirements, observation of certain feast holidays, etc.) Circumcision in particular was a major roadblock to evangelism (records indicate there were three times as many women converts in the early church as men). For Paul this was all nonsense because Christ did not come due to the keeping of the Law.
And so Paul goes about showing that Gentiles certainly no "rights" to Christ (their entire history would suggest quite the opposite!) But, more importantly, the Jews had no right to Christ either. He shows this in many separate ways:
i) The Jews had not kept the Law in the first plact (by looking at their own history), so even if the Law had been a provoker of Christ being sent, the Jews would have no right. [Romans 3:9-19, noting in particular 3:19]
ii) The Law had not brought about righteousness in Israel (once again, evident by looking at its history). Since the purpose of Christ was to bring about righteousness, and the Law had historically not accomplished that role, then it would be stupid to suggest that one is better off both following the Mosaic Law and Christ. [The above verses plus Galatians 2:21-3:1, 3:21,
iii) Christ was given as the fulfillment of the promise made to Abraham not as part of the Mosaic Covenant, so any belief that the law has anything to do with Christ's coming would be suggesting that commands given to Moses 400 years after a promise would nullify that promise.[Galatians 3:15-18, Romans 4:9-16]
iv) The purpose of the Law was to help the Jews identify the Christ. We no longer need the law to do that, so asking Gentile believers to keep the Law makes no sense.[Galatians 3:24-25, depending on the translation. There are other verses throughout the NT pointing to the Law as a shadow designed to point the way to Christ.]
v) The value of doing the Law is in serving God, so is it not logical to suspect that those who do God's will (as shown through the Spirit) are already deriving whatever benefit there is to be had by following "the Law"? [Romans 2]
With these arguments, Paul explains how the sending of Christ was a gift based on the unilateral promise made to Abraham. Thus, the amazing revolution whereby all people (not just Jews) have access to a covenant through faith had nothing to do with the law but everything to do with God's choice.
One particularly startling passage showing that Paul is really referring to Jewish-Gentile relations here and the idea that Jews felt they had some right over the Gentiles because they were true sons of Abraham comes in Romans 3:27-29. Paul has just hit a climax in Romans 3:24-26 about how all are justified in the same way, and in Romans 3:27-29 we see that the focus here is precisely on the Jew's having no elevation [and hence the Mosaic law having no added benefit to Gentiles] because we read:
"Where, then, is boasting? It is excluded! By what principle? Of works? No, but by the principle of faith! For we consider that a person is justified by faith aparts from the work of the law." (Romans 3:27-28)
People point to the above and think Paul is talking about "boastin" in "good" works...but that is not at all what Paul is referring to..as is shown quite clearly in the very next verse:
"Or is God the God of the Jews only? Is He not the God of the Gentiles too? Yes, of the Gentiles too!"
Paul is not talking about boasting about "good works." He is referring to the contemporaneous Jews' boasting in the keeping of the Mosaic Law and having Abraham as their father [c.f.,Luke 3:8, Matthew 3:9].
Note that Paul links God's Grace to two things: the "gift" of God and the "promise" of God. As I've pointed out in another blog, for the apostles, both of these terms pointed to the Holy Spirit. Paul is letting everyone know Christ became a curse for us so that the Gentiles could receive the Spirit (Galatians 3:13-14), allowing all nations to be blessed in Abraham as members of God's people by removing the wall of division between Jew and Gentile (Ephesians 2:16) so that the traditions of Judaism were no longer a hindrance to anyone (Colossians 2:14-16, noting the similarity of language between this and the longer Ephesians passage).
So, in short, the "Grace" applied here refers to the consecrations of our souls thruogh Christ to receivethe Spirit (a blessing no one had a "right" to) and the opening of God's people to include the Gentiles (who, from a historical standpoint, had about as little claim on the Living God as one could conceivably have!)
It is 100% about the New Covenant Christ has mediated in the present as a response to the absolute failure of the earlier covenant to effect a righteous people for God [Jeremiah 31:31-34, Titus 2:14]
"by grace you have been saved through faith; the gift of God so no man may boast." [Ephesians 2:8-9]
and
"being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus" [Romans 3:24]
have been rallying cries for protestants since the beginning. Paul uses the term "grace" more than all other NT writers combined. What does he mean?
The Greek word for grace, charis, refers to a general disposition of "favor." This can be warranted favor or unwarranted favor. However, even if something is done from "warranted" favor, it cannot be "contractual." So, if I give a chess student a free book because he has progressed well, I would be doing out of "warranted favor," but my doing so would not be contractual...unless I had somehow earlier agreed to give him a book based on a particular progress shown, in which case I would not be giving him the book out of favor.
To understand how Paul uses the term, we must understand why Paul wrote his letters and what was going on in apostolic Christianity. We also have to take some perspective of the general state of Israel prior to Christ's coming (since it is this coming that Paul sees as grace).
Humanity at the time of Christ's coming can be broken into two groups: Jews, who had nominally kept God's laws and worshipped the Living God, and Gentiles who were generally idolatrous and had a history of oppressing God's people.
That's the situation. It is extremely important to realize that the only way to be part of God's people at this point was to be a Jew.
Paul is addressing certain Jewish-influenced Gentiles who had been taught that all Christians must observe the "works of the Law" (circumcision, dietary requirements, observation of certain feast holidays, etc.) Circumcision in particular was a major roadblock to evangelism (records indicate there were three times as many women converts in the early church as men). For Paul this was all nonsense because Christ did not come due to the keeping of the Law.
And so Paul goes about showing that Gentiles certainly no "rights" to Christ (their entire history would suggest quite the opposite!) But, more importantly, the Jews had no right to Christ either. He shows this in many separate ways:
i) The Jews had not kept the Law in the first plact (by looking at their own history), so even if the Law had been a provoker of Christ being sent, the Jews would have no right. [Romans 3:9-19, noting in particular 3:19]
ii) The Law had not brought about righteousness in Israel (once again, evident by looking at its history). Since the purpose of Christ was to bring about righteousness, and the Law had historically not accomplished that role, then it would be stupid to suggest that one is better off both following the Mosaic Law and Christ. [The above verses plus Galatians 2:21-3:1, 3:21,
iii) Christ was given as the fulfillment of the promise made to Abraham not as part of the Mosaic Covenant, so any belief that the law has anything to do with Christ's coming would be suggesting that commands given to Moses 400 years after a promise would nullify that promise.[Galatians 3:15-18, Romans 4:9-16]
iv) The purpose of the Law was to help the Jews identify the Christ. We no longer need the law to do that, so asking Gentile believers to keep the Law makes no sense.[Galatians 3:24-25, depending on the translation. There are other verses throughout the NT pointing to the Law as a shadow designed to point the way to Christ.]
v) The value of doing the Law is in serving God, so is it not logical to suspect that those who do God's will (as shown through the Spirit) are already deriving whatever benefit there is to be had by following "the Law"? [Romans 2]
With these arguments, Paul explains how the sending of Christ was a gift based on the unilateral promise made to Abraham. Thus, the amazing revolution whereby all people (not just Jews) have access to a covenant through faith had nothing to do with the law but everything to do with God's choice.
One particularly startling passage showing that Paul is really referring to Jewish-Gentile relations here and the idea that Jews felt they had some right over the Gentiles because they were true sons of Abraham comes in Romans 3:27-29. Paul has just hit a climax in Romans 3:24-26 about how all are justified in the same way, and in Romans 3:27-29 we see that the focus here is precisely on the Jew's having no elevation [and hence the Mosaic law having no added benefit to Gentiles] because we read:
"Where, then, is boasting? It is excluded! By what principle? Of works? No, but by the principle of faith! For we consider that a person is justified by faith aparts from the work of the law." (Romans 3:27-28)
People point to the above and think Paul is talking about "boastin" in "good" works...but that is not at all what Paul is referring to..as is shown quite clearly in the very next verse:
"Or is God the God of the Jews only? Is He not the God of the Gentiles too? Yes, of the Gentiles too!"
Paul is not talking about boasting about "good works." He is referring to the contemporaneous Jews' boasting in the keeping of the Mosaic Law and having Abraham as their father [c.f.,Luke 3:8, Matthew 3:9].
Note that Paul links God's Grace to two things: the "gift" of God and the "promise" of God. As I've pointed out in another blog, for the apostles, both of these terms pointed to the Holy Spirit. Paul is letting everyone know Christ became a curse for us so that the Gentiles could receive the Spirit (Galatians 3:13-14), allowing all nations to be blessed in Abraham as members of God's people by removing the wall of division between Jew and Gentile (Ephesians 2:16) so that the traditions of Judaism were no longer a hindrance to anyone (Colossians 2:14-16, noting the similarity of language between this and the longer Ephesians passage).
So, in short, the "Grace" applied here refers to the consecrations of our souls thruogh Christ to receivethe Spirit (a blessing no one had a "right" to) and the opening of God's people to include the Gentiles (who, from a historical standpoint, had about as little claim on the Living God as one could conceivably have!)
It is 100% about the New Covenant Christ has mediated in the present as a response to the absolute failure of the earlier covenant to effect a righteous people for God [Jeremiah 31:31-34, Titus 2:14]
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
When Propitiation isn't Propitiation
Nick has brought up an interesting point on his blog. In the context of a debate about Psub, he has essentially pointed out that those who favor Penal Substitution are rather misusing a term. If one follows the rabbit trail logically, it's hard to see how propitiation and Penal substitution can go together.
When we think of the word propitiation, most people think of God's wrath being vented upon Christ rather than on those who have sinned (i.e. everyone else). God's wrath is turned away from us and delivered to Christ instead. This upholds God's sense of Justice (so the theory goes) because the punishment for sin has been meted out.
But, as Nick points out, that is not what propitiation even means. Propitiation means "to (re)gain another's favor." Etymologically it refers to making another gracious toward you. In the 1st century it referred to appeasing pagan gods through sacrifice. These sacrifices neutralised these pagan gods.
The thing is, nowhere do we find the actual wrath of these pagan gods actually being vented. The idea was not that someone else received the wrath. The wrath was not "turned away (to someone else)." Rather the gods repented of the wrath due to sacrifice.
And so, it seems you cannot really have both propittiation and Psub. You can say God vented wrath upon Christ, but in that case the wrath was not turned away, it actually occurred (just not on us). Or, you can say that propitiation occurred because of any number of reasons ("Jesus, the new Adam, was faithful unto death and hence caused God to repent of the wrath humanity deserved" is but one of many, many options).
If you say "God sacrificed Jesus as a sacrifice to Godself, and that appeased God." then we have lost the substitution aspect because now Jesus is not being punished due to our sins but rather as a blemishless sacrifice. Jesus can either be a sinless sacrifice to appease (propitiate) God, Jesus can "absorb" or have "transferred to Him" the sin of mankind and suffer in mankind's place, but you cannot have it both ways. In the first case we have propitiation. In the second we have substitution.
And this really gets back to another observation: the only sacrifice in the OT that involved transfer of sin was the scapegoat sacrifice (and the "live bird" sacrifice for lepers, perhaps), and that is the one sacrifice that was not killed. And for very good reason: had the sacrifice died in the camp, it would have defiled the camp. The scapegoat was meant to "take away" the sin, not merely suffer for them. The lamb that was sacrificed would have defiled the temple (rather than cleansing it) if it had sins transferred to it. [See Leviticus 16:21-22]
Jesus is not mentioned once as a scapegoat offering, which is odd, as He is mentioned as almost every other type [passover, sin offering, guilt offering, burnt offering come to my mind without looking].
So, those who adhere to Penal Substitution need to come up with a different term because what they claim is happening does not fit the meaning of "propitiation."
If you absolutely want to make Jesus a scapegoat and want to adhere to penal substitution, then you should no longer consider Jesus' death as a sacrifice. The "sacrifice" would then be God's releasing Jesus into the hands of men (Luke 22:53 and note Jesus words to Pilate in John 19:11).
There is actually some support for this notion, as it makes more sense of the "three days and three nights in the belly of the earth" prophecy. The idea is that Jesus time in "the belly of the earth" was the time He was within the power of humanity to do what they pleased.
Thus we have an odd role-reversal here. In cultic Judaism, the sins are placed on the goat and let loose for God to punish. Now God (in Jesus) is given the sins of humanity and let loose for humanity to punish. In this sense, God was not sacrificing Jesus to Godself but rather was sacrificing Jesus to mankind to do with what they desire.
NOTE: I'm not supporting the above theology...just presenting the sort of atonement theology you have to accept if you really want a "substitution" atonement where sins are transferred to Jesus. Now, if you do not want the actual sin transferred to Jesus. Most Penal Substitution types adhere to this type [where both sin and punishment are commuted to Jesus], but one could allow for a type of Penal Substitution wherein the sins were not transferred to Christ while God's wrath was. I know this sounds like God is then being unjust, for Christ is now being punished for sins Jesus never did...even statutorily. But I think a case could be made for it. There are other examples where someone bore the burden/consequences/punishment of a sin without bearing the guilt. Indeed, that is how Athanasius saw original sin. We all bore the consequence of Adam's rebellion but not Adam's guilt.
When we think of the word propitiation, most people think of God's wrath being vented upon Christ rather than on those who have sinned (i.e. everyone else). God's wrath is turned away from us and delivered to Christ instead. This upholds God's sense of Justice (so the theory goes) because the punishment for sin has been meted out.
But, as Nick points out, that is not what propitiation even means. Propitiation means "to (re)gain another's favor." Etymologically it refers to making another gracious toward you. In the 1st century it referred to appeasing pagan gods through sacrifice. These sacrifices neutralised these pagan gods.
The thing is, nowhere do we find the actual wrath of these pagan gods actually being vented. The idea was not that someone else received the wrath. The wrath was not "turned away (to someone else)." Rather the gods repented of the wrath due to sacrifice.
And so, it seems you cannot really have both propittiation and Psub. You can say God vented wrath upon Christ, but in that case the wrath was not turned away, it actually occurred (just not on us). Or, you can say that propitiation occurred because of any number of reasons ("Jesus, the new Adam, was faithful unto death and hence caused God to repent of the wrath humanity deserved" is but one of many, many options).
If you say "God sacrificed Jesus as a sacrifice to Godself, and that appeased God." then we have lost the substitution aspect because now Jesus is not being punished due to our sins but rather as a blemishless sacrifice. Jesus can either be a sinless sacrifice to appease (propitiate) God, Jesus can "absorb" or have "transferred to Him" the sin of mankind and suffer in mankind's place, but you cannot have it both ways. In the first case we have propitiation. In the second we have substitution.
And this really gets back to another observation: the only sacrifice in the OT that involved transfer of sin was the scapegoat sacrifice (and the "live bird" sacrifice for lepers, perhaps), and that is the one sacrifice that was not killed. And for very good reason: had the sacrifice died in the camp, it would have defiled the camp. The scapegoat was meant to "take away" the sin, not merely suffer for them. The lamb that was sacrificed would have defiled the temple (rather than cleansing it) if it had sins transferred to it. [See Leviticus 16:21-22]
Jesus is not mentioned once as a scapegoat offering, which is odd, as He is mentioned as almost every other type [passover, sin offering, guilt offering, burnt offering come to my mind without looking].
So, those who adhere to Penal Substitution need to come up with a different term because what they claim is happening does not fit the meaning of "propitiation."
If you absolutely want to make Jesus a scapegoat and want to adhere to penal substitution, then you should no longer consider Jesus' death as a sacrifice. The "sacrifice" would then be God's releasing Jesus into the hands of men (Luke 22:53 and note Jesus words to Pilate in John 19:11).
There is actually some support for this notion, as it makes more sense of the "three days and three nights in the belly of the earth" prophecy. The idea is that Jesus time in "the belly of the earth" was the time He was within the power of humanity to do what they pleased.
Thus we have an odd role-reversal here. In cultic Judaism, the sins are placed on the goat and let loose for God to punish. Now God (in Jesus) is given the sins of humanity and let loose for humanity to punish. In this sense, God was not sacrificing Jesus to Godself but rather was sacrificing Jesus to mankind to do with what they desire.
NOTE: I'm not supporting the above theology...just presenting the sort of atonement theology you have to accept if you really want a "substitution" atonement where sins are transferred to Jesus. Now, if you do not want the actual sin transferred to Jesus. Most Penal Substitution types adhere to this type [where both sin and punishment are commuted to Jesus], but one could allow for a type of Penal Substitution wherein the sins were not transferred to Christ while God's wrath was. I know this sounds like God is then being unjust, for Christ is now being punished for sins Jesus never did...even statutorily. But I think a case could be made for it. There are other examples where someone bore the burden/consequences/punishment of a sin without bearing the guilt. Indeed, that is how Athanasius saw original sin. We all bore the consequence of Adam's rebellion but not Adam's guilt.
Monday, March 9, 2009
The Gift, The Hope, and the Promised Promise
The evangelism of the apostles revolved about three main notions: The Gift, The Hope, and the Promise. To often Christians see these as merely vague terms [or they assume they all mean "life in heaven after I die."]
Putting a fine point on these terms allows not only to interpret individual passages better, but also grants a richer understanding of what apostolic evangelism was about.
Christian Hope
When the apostles speak of "Hope," they do not refer exactly to "eternal life in heaven for believers." The hope they refer to is the idea that what God had done to Jesus already [bodily resurrection], the Almighty would do to everyone later.
To understand why this Hope is so exclusively Christian, you have to understand the culture of 1st century AD. Some Jews believed in a bodily resurrection that would occur far in the future, and many Jews did not. Those outside Judaism generally did not believe in a bodily resurrection at all.
What no one believed was that the Messiah would come, die, and be resurrected before everyone else. Not even Jesus' disciples understood that [which is why they deserted Him... the Messiah was supposed to lead the Jews to victory over the Romans [and everyone else who had oppressed them: Luke 1:71 ] How could He do that if He were dead??
This is why they wonder in Mark 9:10 what Jesus means, since He cannot possibly mean He is going to literally die. It also comes through loud and clear in Luke 24:20-21, they had hoped (but no longer)...and what did they hope for, that the Christ would redeem Israel. Like David, they were waiting for Jesus to take His position as true King. Having Jesus die crushed these beliefs, for they did not understand He had to die [John 20:9, Luke 24:25-27]
So, the resurrection not only proves that the Christian God lives, but gave hope in their own resurrection later. Note the wording of Acts 4:2 and Acts 17:32 --- this was the central message of their evangelism (as well as Jesus as the Christ and Jesus as Judge, see post on evangelism in Acts.) Paul also avers that belief in resurrection of the dead is absolutely required of believers [1st Corinthians 15:12-14].
This Hope in the resurrection of the dead was the main reason Paul was in so much hot water in Acts. It was, after all, directly opposed to the beliefs of the ruling sect of Judaism. [Acts 23:6, Acts 24:15, Acts 24:21, Acts 26:6-8.]
The Gift
People use the term "a free gift" often in evangelism today, but for Paul and the other apostles, the term had a different meaning. The Gift is nothing other than the Holy Spirit.
Jesus uses this to refer to the Holy Spirit in John 4:10, Peter refers to the Spirit as "The Gift" three times: Acts 2:38, Acts 8:20, and Acts 11:17. Luke uses the term in this way in Acts 10:45, and Paul does so in 1st Timothy 4:14, and 2nd Timothy 1:6. The writer of Hebrews follows suit in Hebrews 6:4.
[Note it is important to separate "The Gift" (with the "the") from situations where there is no "the," also there are 3 words for "gift" common in the NT, and only 2 of them appear to be used in this way, the other is more of a term for "offering."]
The (Promised) Promise
And now we come to an interesting term. "The Promise." We know that God promised Abraham to bless the world through his seed, but how was God going to do that? Peter answers this question for us as well, in Acts 2:33. This is the promise Jesus refers to in Luke 24:49, and in Acts 3:26, we find that it is, in fact, the fulfillment of the promise to Abraham.
The Holy Spirit is further referred to as "The Promise" in Acts 2:39, Galatians 3:14, Ephesians 1:13, Ephesians 3:6, Hebrews 9:15-(The writer views us as receiving the Holy Spirit as an inheritance from Christ. Note this is definitely referring to the Holy Spirit available now that was not available earlier before Christ died: see Hebrews 9:16, Hebrews 9:8, and, most notably Hebrews 11:39-40, where the Spirit is once again referred to as what was "promised.")
But, the Holy Spirit is not only the fulfillment of a promise, it also acts as a promise...a reminder of the full salvation available when our bodies are transformed and New Jerusalem arrives [ Revelation 21:2]. The Holy Spirit, in granting us power over the desires of a flesh set against God [Romans 6:6] grants us a slice of our transformed future. It allows us to already begin living the life of the next era today. Indeed, it calls us to do so, for we are no longer to live for ourselves, but rather live for Christ.
In this way, the Holy Spirit is then a Promise itself. Not on an individual basis wherein we "know we are going to heaven because we have the Spirit." The Spirit allowed those in Matthew 7:22-23 throw out demons and prophesy in Christ's name, but it did not see them through the Judgment, and Hebrews 6:4-6, Hebrews 10:26-27, and 2nd Peter 2:20-21 all describe that the Spirit is not a personal guarantee but a global one. God will not be mocked.
Understanding "The Promise" is crucial to getting a handle on Paul's letters to the Galatians and Romans, where the term is used very often.
Putting a fine point on these terms allows not only to interpret individual passages better, but also grants a richer understanding of what apostolic evangelism was about.
Christian Hope
When the apostles speak of "Hope," they do not refer exactly to "eternal life in heaven for believers." The hope they refer to is the idea that what God had done to Jesus already [bodily resurrection], the Almighty would do to everyone later.
To understand why this Hope is so exclusively Christian, you have to understand the culture of 1st century AD. Some Jews believed in a bodily resurrection that would occur far in the future, and many Jews did not. Those outside Judaism generally did not believe in a bodily resurrection at all.
What no one believed was that the Messiah would come, die, and be resurrected before everyone else. Not even Jesus' disciples understood that [which is why they deserted Him... the Messiah was supposed to lead the Jews to victory over the Romans [and everyone else who had oppressed them: Luke 1:71 ] How could He do that if He were dead??
This is why they wonder in Mark 9:10 what Jesus means, since He cannot possibly mean He is going to literally die. It also comes through loud and clear in Luke 24:20-21, they had hoped (but no longer)...and what did they hope for, that the Christ would redeem Israel. Like David, they were waiting for Jesus to take His position as true King. Having Jesus die crushed these beliefs, for they did not understand He had to die [John 20:9, Luke 24:25-27]
So, the resurrection not only proves that the Christian God lives, but gave hope in their own resurrection later. Note the wording of Acts 4:2 and Acts 17:32 --- this was the central message of their evangelism (as well as Jesus as the Christ and Jesus as Judge, see post on evangelism in Acts.) Paul also avers that belief in resurrection of the dead is absolutely required of believers [1st Corinthians 15:12-14].
This Hope in the resurrection of the dead was the main reason Paul was in so much hot water in Acts. It was, after all, directly opposed to the beliefs of the ruling sect of Judaism. [Acts 23:6, Acts 24:15, Acts 24:21, Acts 26:6-8.]
The Gift
People use the term "a free gift" often in evangelism today, but for Paul and the other apostles, the term had a different meaning. The Gift is nothing other than the Holy Spirit.
Jesus uses this to refer to the Holy Spirit in John 4:10, Peter refers to the Spirit as "The Gift" three times: Acts 2:38, Acts 8:20, and Acts 11:17. Luke uses the term in this way in Acts 10:45, and Paul does so in 1st Timothy 4:14, and 2nd Timothy 1:6. The writer of Hebrews follows suit in Hebrews 6:4.
[Note it is important to separate "The Gift" (with the "the") from situations where there is no "the," also there are 3 words for "gift" common in the NT, and only 2 of them appear to be used in this way, the other is more of a term for "offering."]
The (Promised) Promise
And now we come to an interesting term. "The Promise." We know that God promised Abraham to bless the world through his seed, but how was God going to do that? Peter answers this question for us as well, in Acts 2:33. This is the promise Jesus refers to in Luke 24:49, and in Acts 3:26, we find that it is, in fact, the fulfillment of the promise to Abraham.
The Holy Spirit is further referred to as "The Promise" in Acts 2:39, Galatians 3:14, Ephesians 1:13, Ephesians 3:6, Hebrews 9:15-(The writer views us as receiving the Holy Spirit as an inheritance from Christ. Note this is definitely referring to the Holy Spirit available now that was not available earlier before Christ died: see Hebrews 9:16, Hebrews 9:8, and, most notably Hebrews 11:39-40, where the Spirit is once again referred to as what was "promised.")
But, the Holy Spirit is not only the fulfillment of a promise, it also acts as a promise...a reminder of the full salvation available when our bodies are transformed and New Jerusalem arrives [ Revelation 21:2]. The Holy Spirit, in granting us power over the desires of a flesh set against God [Romans 6:6] grants us a slice of our transformed future. It allows us to already begin living the life of the next era today. Indeed, it calls us to do so, for we are no longer to live for ourselves, but rather live for Christ.
In this way, the Holy Spirit is then a Promise itself. Not on an individual basis wherein we "know we are going to heaven because we have the Spirit." The Spirit allowed those in Matthew 7:22-23 throw out demons and prophesy in Christ's name, but it did not see them through the Judgment, and Hebrews 6:4-6, Hebrews 10:26-27, and 2nd Peter 2:20-21 all describe that the Spirit is not a personal guarantee but a global one. God will not be mocked.
Understanding "The Promise" is crucial to getting a handle on Paul's letters to the Galatians and Romans, where the term is used very often.
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Clarification: Saved by Faith
It appears a clarification is needed concerning a post I wrote recently on works-righteousness.
Based on a couple emails, I think people were drawing the conclusion that I'm opposed to a "saved by faith" theology. Not to make those people feel bad, but I believe that this is an example of something pretty common in Christianity:
i) Someone says something nettling to the theological scaffolding of evangelicalism.
ii) Evangelicals jump to conclusions based on whatever is said.
iii) They reject those conclusions as untenable, hence allowing them to ignore what was originally said rather than grapple with its merits.
In this case all I was pointing out was that the term "works-righteousness" is ill-conceived and has no really valid meaning. It is rather applied like a scarlet letter to a wide variety of thoughts evangelicals wish to denounce.
I most certainly hold that we are justified by grace and saved by faith...the question is what do those phrases mean? Here is where our 20th century Western perspective on the world really leaves Christianity prone to misinterpretation. Since the New Testament was written by 1st century Jews, we have to ask ourselves what those words would mean in the context and the lexicon of their Jewish writers. Rather than pick definitions that are line with the theology that makes sense to us or satisfies our desires or works within some extra-biblical natural theology we dream up, we have to get down into scripture and ask what the terms mean to the Jews who wrote them... taking into particular consideration the prophecies that described the Christ and His work.
Based on a couple emails, I think people were drawing the conclusion that I'm opposed to a "saved by faith" theology. Not to make those people feel bad, but I believe that this is an example of something pretty common in Christianity:
i) Someone says something nettling to the theological scaffolding of evangelicalism.
ii) Evangelicals jump to conclusions based on whatever is said.
iii) They reject those conclusions as untenable, hence allowing them to ignore what was originally said rather than grapple with its merits.
In this case all I was pointing out was that the term "works-righteousness" is ill-conceived and has no really valid meaning. It is rather applied like a scarlet letter to a wide variety of thoughts evangelicals wish to denounce.
I most certainly hold that we are justified by grace and saved by faith...the question is what do those phrases mean? Here is where our 20th century Western perspective on the world really leaves Christianity prone to misinterpretation. Since the New Testament was written by 1st century Jews, we have to ask ourselves what those words would mean in the context and the lexicon of their Jewish writers. Rather than pick definitions that are line with the theology that makes sense to us or satisfies our desires or works within some extra-biblical natural theology we dream up, we have to get down into scripture and ask what the terms mean to the Jews who wrote them... taking into particular consideration the prophecies that described the Christ and His work.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Works-Righteousness
I recently wrote a post at gush on the topic of "Works-Righteousness" and reckoned it reasonable to post here:
I was thinking about the term "Works-Righteousness" today and decided it is just another of those Christian Buzzwords that are thrown about without any care for their actual meaning. In this case, it's just a pejorative that's used to label a collection of beliefs without having a real meaning. It's like "Nazi" or "Fascist" for evangelicals.
So, I was wondering what you people think it means and if anyone can come up with a good actual definition.
Here are some thoughts I had [in an effort to show why I've decided it is just a junk-word Christians use to attack things.]
First, obviously the word indicates a philosophy/theology that links "works" to "righteousness"
The first and most important observation is that the term really cannot have anything to do with the Final Judgment if it has any meaning. People are described righteous or unrighteous throughout the Bible without any reference to the Final Judgment. So, whatever "righteous" means, it has to have a meaning/use that is not directly linked to the Judgment.
So, however one defines "works-righteousness," it cannot be defined by using the Final Judgment as a guide.
The second issue is that the word righteous refers to a state not a prize. In fact, we should probably stop using the word "righteous" altogether because 500 years of reformed writings have corrupted what the word means. The word really just means "to be as one ought to be." In today's language "acceptable" would probably be a better term.
The problem is that most of the time when people describe things having to do with works-righteousness, they do not treat "righteousness" as a state but rather as prize to be won, or as a label denoting someone is worthwhile rather than the worthwhileness itself.
The third issue, of course, is what is works, really. Do works refer to "good deeds" as in "doing the will of the father"? [a' la Matthew 7:21 and Matthew 12:50] I think that is mental definition people would often give...but often people who are attacking works-righteousness address people who are promoting "standard morality" things like not drinking, not dancing, not smoking, etc....items which are very much on the periphery of "doing the will of the father"
And, last but not least, what is the relationship that is assumed when someone decries a philosophy as "works-righteousness"?
Is it that works develop righteousness? Like pumping iron develops muscle or practicing develops mastery of the piano.
Is it that works secures righteousness, like having a majority of votes secures a person's election to government?
Is it that works demonstrates righteousness, like how the ability to scratch all other naturally occurring minerals demonstrates that something is a diamond.
Is it that works are demonstrated by the righteous in the same way that sentimental gifts are given by those who love others without really demonstrating or proving that love.
Or is that works and righteousness are tantamount to one another, like "having tons of money in the bank" and "being wealthy."
I don't really think people mean any of these because I believe most people use the term "works-righteousness" in a way that does not respect the fact that righteousness is a property someone has (or develops), not a evaluation or credential someone attains.
So... anyone care give a good definition for what "works-righteousness" means without appealing to the Final Judgment or treating "righteousness" as a credential?
I was thinking about the term "Works-Righteousness" today and decided it is just another of those Christian Buzzwords that are thrown about without any care for their actual meaning. In this case, it's just a pejorative that's used to label a collection of beliefs without having a real meaning. It's like "Nazi" or "Fascist" for evangelicals.
So, I was wondering what you people think it means and if anyone can come up with a good actual definition.
Here are some thoughts I had [in an effort to show why I've decided it is just a junk-word Christians use to attack things.]
First, obviously the word indicates a philosophy/theology that links "works" to "righteousness"
The first and most important observation is that the term really cannot have anything to do with the Final Judgment if it has any meaning. People are described righteous or unrighteous throughout the Bible without any reference to the Final Judgment. So, whatever "righteous" means, it has to have a meaning/use that is not directly linked to the Judgment.
So, however one defines "works-righteousness," it cannot be defined by using the Final Judgment as a guide.
The second issue is that the word righteous refers to a state not a prize. In fact, we should probably stop using the word "righteous" altogether because 500 years of reformed writings have corrupted what the word means. The word really just means "to be as one ought to be." In today's language "acceptable" would probably be a better term.
The problem is that most of the time when people describe things having to do with works-righteousness, they do not treat "righteousness" as a state but rather as prize to be won, or as a label denoting someone is worthwhile rather than the worthwhileness itself.
The third issue, of course, is what is works, really. Do works refer to "good deeds" as in "doing the will of the father"? [a' la Matthew 7:21 and Matthew 12:50] I think that is mental definition people would often give...but often people who are attacking works-righteousness address people who are promoting "standard morality" things like not drinking, not dancing, not smoking, etc....items which are very much on the periphery of "doing the will of the father"
And, last but not least, what is the relationship that is assumed when someone decries a philosophy as "works-righteousness"?
Is it that works develop righteousness? Like pumping iron develops muscle or practicing develops mastery of the piano.
Is it that works secures righteousness, like having a majority of votes secures a person's election to government?
Is it that works demonstrates righteousness, like how the ability to scratch all other naturally occurring minerals demonstrates that something is a diamond.
Is it that works are demonstrated by the righteous in the same way that sentimental gifts are given by those who love others without really demonstrating or proving that love.
Or is that works and righteousness are tantamount to one another, like "having tons of money in the bank" and "being wealthy."
I don't really think people mean any of these because I believe most people use the term "works-righteousness" in a way that does not respect the fact that righteousness is a property someone has (or develops), not a evaluation or credential someone attains.
So... anyone care give a good definition for what "works-righteousness" means without appealing to the Final Judgment or treating "righteousness" as a credential?
Friday, January 9, 2009
Prodigal Son, Lazarus, and other parables
I've added an article to www.biblicalheresy.com with commentary on various parables in Luke.
You can now find several such tracts on the articles page.
One of those articles, Biblical Problems with the Modern Gospel, is not meant merely to cast suspicion on the modern gospel but to serve as jumping off points toward a more scripturally sound one. It is not meant to challenge people's faith but rather to have them reconsider what their faith in Christ entails.
You can now find several such tracts on the articles page.
One of those articles, Biblical Problems with the Modern Gospel, is not meant merely to cast suspicion on the modern gospel but to serve as jumping off points toward a more scripturally sound one. It is not meant to challenge people's faith but rather to have them reconsider what their faith in Christ entails.
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Bread of Life (and a little Promotional Help)
A comment by Stephen to another post compelled me to publish for general consumption a tract that is an excerpt from the upcoming book.
The discussion is titled "The Gospel within the Gospel" and culminates in a description of what 'Bread of Life" really means.
You can find the article here.
[URL = http://www.biblicalheresy.com/GospelNGospel.pdf ]
Additionally, I have recently modified and hacked my blog's template to show a few new buttons. Some of these now appear below every post [including the del.icio.us link] There are also Digg It and Technorati Favorite voting button thingymajjigs in the sidebar. If you find any individual blogs interesting, I invite you to click these links. Doing so is a "vote" of sorts that suggests to others there might be something worthwhile here. This helps other people find this blog.
The discussion is titled "The Gospel within the Gospel" and culminates in a description of what 'Bread of Life" really means.
You can find the article here.
[URL = http://www.biblicalheresy.com/GospelNGospel.pdf ]
Additionally, I have recently modified and hacked my blog's template to show a few new buttons. Some of these now appear below every post [including the del.icio.us link] There are also Digg It and Technorati Favorite voting button thingymajjigs in the sidebar. If you find any individual blogs interesting, I invite you to click these links. Doing so is a "vote" of sorts that suggests to others there might be something worthwhile here. This helps other people find this blog.
Saturday, October 11, 2008
I am in you, you are in me...interesting note on John 14:2
No, John 14:2 is not one of those "I am in you, you are in me" or "I am in the Father and the Father is in me" verses, but it did make me think of it.
It's easy to see these phrases (John 10:38, John 14:10-11, 1st John 2:24, John 6:56, John 14:20, John 15:2, John 15:4-7, John 16:33, John 17;21) and sorta just take it as saying that some "relationship" is involved. Of course, many Christians try to turn some of them into a Trinitarian message, but that would imply that all believers were of the same substance as God, so we'll leave that to the side.
But it came to me that perhaps there is a finer point to be made here. After all, it is one thing to say "Jesus is in me," but what does it me to say that "I am in Christ"? What does that mean, really?
This brings me to John 14:2. What does it mean when Jesus says there are many abodes in His Father's house?
The word "abodes" is itself a theologically interesting term to look into (the translation "mansion" is rather bizarre), but what does Jesus mean when He says "Father's house."?
I think we generally think of "heaven," but if that is what Jesus meant, He could have just said "heaven." The interesting thing here is the Jewish conception of "house" is different from what we think of. The focus there is on the people inside. So when we say "The house of Jacob," we don't mean a structure, but a people.
So, the "Father's House" in that sense would referring to "God's people." This gives an "adoptionist" metaphor that I will not go into.
But the term "Father's house" also refers to the temple. For example John 2:16 and other discussions of the temple cleansing [and perhaps is what is meant in Luke 2:49, but that is certainly not clear.] In the OT we see several examples of God calling the temple "My house:" 1st Chronicles 28:6, Isaiah 56:7, and later when abominations are described.
Thus the notion of "house" can have an external, umbrella-type meaning of "Everyone under God's banner," or an internal meaning of "The temple where God resides among God's people."
In that latter sense, Jesus is referring to entering the temple [much as described in the theology of Hebrews]. Indeed, the theology of Hebrews helps us understand what "prepare a place for you" means. It appears Jesus is referring to the cleansing of the temple(s) of our souls so that we can receive His Spirit...but receiving His Spirit is what brings us into the New Covenant (and hence makes us a member of the Father's House in the other sense of the term.) Note that the word for "abode" in John 14:2 is the same as the word in John 14:23
I just found it striking how both uses (interior and exterior) of the term "House" can be combined in a single statement...without apparently anyone realizing it.
I actually see an interesting allegory here between:
Exodus -> Sinai -> Davidic Kingdom
Passover -> Shavuot -> Building of Temple
Crucifixion -> Pentecost -> 2nd coming of Christ
The first of all 3 of these refer to a freedom [Freedom from Egyptian rule, Freedom of bondage to Sin], the second regards the beginning of the covenant and its requirements [Command to keep the Mosaic Law, Command to keep the Spirit's Law]. In between the second and the third we have the "temple" being a temporary tabernacle (that "abodes" in John 14:2 and John 14:23] where God resided (as our current bodies are), and in the last we have a kingdom purged of ungodliness where God's Temple can be moored.
Note that the Crucifixion occurred on Passover and Pentecost is the same day as Shavuot.
It's easy to see these phrases (John 10:38, John 14:10-11, 1st John 2:24, John 6:56, John 14:20, John 15:2, John 15:4-7, John 16:33, John 17;21) and sorta just take it as saying that some "relationship" is involved. Of course, many Christians try to turn some of them into a Trinitarian message, but that would imply that all believers were of the same substance as God, so we'll leave that to the side.
But it came to me that perhaps there is a finer point to be made here. After all, it is one thing to say "Jesus is in me," but what does it me to say that "I am in Christ"? What does that mean, really?
This brings me to John 14:2. What does it mean when Jesus says there are many abodes in His Father's house?
The word "abodes" is itself a theologically interesting term to look into (the translation "mansion" is rather bizarre), but what does Jesus mean when He says "Father's house."?
I think we generally think of "heaven," but if that is what Jesus meant, He could have just said "heaven." The interesting thing here is the Jewish conception of "house" is different from what we think of. The focus there is on the people inside. So when we say "The house of Jacob," we don't mean a structure, but a people.
So, the "Father's House" in that sense would referring to "God's people." This gives an "adoptionist" metaphor that I will not go into.
But the term "Father's house" also refers to the temple. For example John 2:16 and other discussions of the temple cleansing [and perhaps is what is meant in Luke 2:49, but that is certainly not clear.] In the OT we see several examples of God calling the temple "My house:" 1st Chronicles 28:6, Isaiah 56:7, and later when abominations are described.
Thus the notion of "house" can have an external, umbrella-type meaning of "Everyone under God's banner," or an internal meaning of "The temple where God resides among God's people."
In that latter sense, Jesus is referring to entering the temple [much as described in the theology of Hebrews]. Indeed, the theology of Hebrews helps us understand what "prepare a place for you" means. It appears Jesus is referring to the cleansing of the temple(s) of our souls so that we can receive His Spirit...but receiving His Spirit is what brings us into the New Covenant (and hence makes us a member of the Father's House in the other sense of the term.) Note that the word for "abode" in John 14:2 is the same as the word in John 14:23
I just found it striking how both uses (interior and exterior) of the term "House" can be combined in a single statement...without apparently anyone realizing it.
I actually see an interesting allegory here between:
Exodus -> Sinai -> Davidic Kingdom
Passover -> Shavuot -> Building of Temple
Crucifixion -> Pentecost -> 2nd coming of Christ
The first of all 3 of these refer to a freedom [Freedom from Egyptian rule, Freedom of bondage to Sin], the second regards the beginning of the covenant and its requirements [Command to keep the Mosaic Law, Command to keep the Spirit's Law]. In between the second and the third we have the "temple" being a temporary tabernacle (that "abodes" in John 14:2 and John 14:23] where God resided (as our current bodies are), and in the last we have a kingdom purged of ungodliness where God's Temple can be moored.
Note that the Crucifixion occurred on Passover and Pentecost is the same day as Shavuot.
Monday, October 6, 2008
The Nature of Atonement [Book Recommendation]
I recently read Four Views: The Nature of Atonement, which describe four rather farflung theories of the Atonement.
I thought the responses of each author to the others' views were generally helpful in showing how unclear the Bible is regarding how atonement works. On the other hand, I would have liked to see more than just "objective" version of the atonement.
I thought the responses of each author to the others' views were generally helpful in showing how unclear the Bible is regarding how atonement works. On the other hand, I would have liked to see more than just "objective" version of the atonement.
Saturday, October 4, 2008
Who are the Demons?
Most people are taught that the demons Jesus and His apostles cast out are fallen angels. But there is no passage that actually says that [to my knowledge.]
This came to me today as I was thinking about Jude 6 And angels who did not keep their own domain, but abandoned their proper abode, He has kept in eternal bonds under darkness for the judgment of the great day
2nd Peter 2:4 is similar.
The issue here is that Satan and his Angels are cast out of heaven immediately after Christ's resurrection [Revelation 12:9]. If Jude and Peter claim that these angels were put into Hell, then they could not have been around tormenting people during Acts, and Paul would not be too concerned about their teaching people in 1st Timothy 4:1.
The issue here is that if demons are not fallen angels, then what are they, and where do they come from? Some might find this just an odd question of no real relevance but some would find it very relevant because many teach that God cannot create anything evil. [The Bible itself says no such thing, but people think it would go against God's goodness. This is the same reason people claim Satan had to be an angel at some point. Actually, it seems the above verses would suggest that Satan is not, in fact, a fallen angel, as he is not confined in hell at the moment.]
Perhaps demons are evil souls of Nephlim who died.
*shrug*
Anyone else have some ideas?
This came to me today as I was thinking about Jude 6 And angels who did not keep their own domain, but abandoned their proper abode, He has kept in eternal bonds under darkness for the judgment of the great day
2nd Peter 2:4 is similar.
The issue here is that Satan and his Angels are cast out of heaven immediately after Christ's resurrection [Revelation 12:9]. If Jude and Peter claim that these angels were put into Hell, then they could not have been around tormenting people during Acts, and Paul would not be too concerned about their teaching people in 1st Timothy 4:1.
The issue here is that if demons are not fallen angels, then what are they, and where do they come from? Some might find this just an odd question of no real relevance but some would find it very relevant because many teach that God cannot create anything evil. [The Bible itself says no such thing, but people think it would go against God's goodness. This is the same reason people claim Satan had to be an angel at some point. Actually, it seems the above verses would suggest that Satan is not, in fact, a fallen angel, as he is not confined in hell at the moment.]
Perhaps demons are evil souls of Nephlim who died.
*shrug*
Anyone else have some ideas?
Is God Violent? A Response to "Light on the Dark Side of God
Greg Boyd describes a work by M.M. Campbell, Light on the "Dark Side of God", aiming to show that God is never actively violent but rather allows unsavory things to happen to people by removing divine protection.
One problem with discussing this view is that its flexibility allows it to explain more or less anything. No matter how obviously God acts as an agent in a given Biblical narrative, one can generally come up with some way to show that it wasn't really God implementing violence, but rather evil spirits. The author suggests that God sees and describes Himself as doing what he merely permits. Clearly, it's going to be hard to show that God actually does any violence if you make such an idea a universal principal. Just think, what evidence would you find available if everything God is described as doing something it didn't actually mean what it says?
Take, for example, the author's own explanation for how the killing of the firstborn takes place during the passover:
I hope this illustrates the difficulty in assailing the position when one can posit such scenarios. Nevermind that God explicitly says "I will pass through the land of Egypt on that night and strike..." [Exodus 12:12]
The author derives her version of the events from Exodus 12:23, where the verbiage is a little different: "...then the Lord will pass over the door and not permit the destroyer to enter your house and smite you."
As this hypothesis is clearly spawned from a desire to make God more palatable to us (a property shared by several doctrines of Orthodoxy), it should not be too hard to show it untenable. Even given the challenges inherent to debunking such a hypothesis, the following objections leap to mind.
One problem with discussing this view is that its flexibility allows it to explain more or less anything. No matter how obviously God acts as an agent in a given Biblical narrative, one can generally come up with some way to show that it wasn't really God implementing violence, but rather evil spirits. The author suggests that God sees and describes Himself as doing what he merely permits. Clearly, it's going to be hard to show that God actually does any violence if you make such an idea a universal principal. Just think, what evidence would you find available if everything God is described as doing something it didn't actually mean what it says?
Take, for example, the author's own explanation for how the killing of the firstborn takes place during the passover:
The midnight hour arrives. Invisibly God's "death angel" appears, carrying in its hands the destroying weapon from the eternal Throne. He looks at one house, sees the blood and passes over. He sees no blood on the house next door, and he comes down. What does he carry in his hand? Is that a sword? Perhaps a laser or a lightning bolt? No. It is a document on which is stamped the name of God. He shows it to the guardian angel, throughout the years stationed at the door of the house devoid of the saving blood. "Release," says the document. Together the angels fly away, exposing the firstborn within to the destroyer, waiting eagerly without.The author promises to explain later why the destroyer could be limited to killing the firstborn when all the protection is gone... but I don't actually see where she does so.
I hope this illustrates the difficulty in assailing the position when one can posit such scenarios. Nevermind that God explicitly says "I will pass through the land of Egypt on that night and strike..." [Exodus 12:12]
The author derives her version of the events from Exodus 12:23, where the verbiage is a little different: "...then the Lord will pass over the door and not permit the destroyer to enter your house and smite you."
As this hypothesis is clearly spawned from a desire to make God more palatable to us (a property shared by several doctrines of Orthodoxy), it should not be too hard to show it untenable. Even given the challenges inherent to debunking such a hypothesis, the following objections leap to mind.
- The author claims that God simply "backs off," leaving people to the realm and power of evil forces when they reject the Living God. One obvious problem with this idea is that several times the destruction was not based on the sins of the victim. For example, the individual citizens in Egypt are punished in the passage described without there being any allusion to their sin.
- Violence is often demanded by God, which is rather different from God simplying allowing violence to take place without stopping it. Examples abound.
- God required Israel to sacrifice animals, not all of which were sacrifices for sins
- God required Israel to stone murderers, adulterers, etc.
- God demanded Israel to totally annihilate certain nations they came into contact with[Deuteronomy 7:2]. Astoundingly, the author attempts to deal with this language by claiming the Israelites forced God into such choices by choosing military action. The problem with this viewpoint is that the sparse evidence given (where God tells Israel it need not use its armies[Joshua 24:11-12 is the first]) occurs after God has already decreed this destruction. Furthermore, no admonition or reproach is given to Israel the first time they do take up the sword to suggest God had another plan.[Exodus 17:8-11] It's further simply unreasoable to assume God would scrap an entire policy of non-violent conquering because Israel choose to use force in a single battle. God also directs people to battle in other prophetic messages [Jeremiah 49:28]
- Often violence is not only demanded by God, but is clearly done by one of God's agents. This includes the "Angel of the Lord" being the specific agent who killed 185,000 Assyrians [Isaiah 37:36, 2nd Kings 19:35]. Remarkably the author mentions this as a type of "Exercise for the reader." Indicating the reader should figure out how this could really be someone else. I find it rather bizarre to envision an angel walking through the camp, having personal discussions with each of 185,000 other guardian angels so that some third-party evil spirit could come in and slaugher 185,000 soldiers, and instead the "Angel of the Lord" is given credit for the slaughter. Similarly, Nebuchadnezzar is called My servant several times and God speaks of specifically calling him to attack others [Jeremiah 25:9, Jeremiah 43:10.]
- Often violence attributed to God in the Bible is prophetic. Given the general strength [and one would assume intelligence] of Satan and his forces, one is hard pressed to understand why they would willfully act to legitimize God by showing such prophecies to be true.
- The author attempts to show, concomitant to God's lack of violence, that Hell is not a place of eternal suffering. To do this the author shows that the word "eternal" could be being used metaphorically given the magnitude and terror of annihilation. There is some merit in this given that the Greek word translated "eternal" in most places does not really mean "eternal." However, there is no way to get around Jude 6, where the Greek word used is actually the real word for eternal and it is not destruction that is described but imprisonment [literally "chains."]
- In Revelation 20:15 we read "If anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, that person was thrown into the Lake of Fire." My question for the author is "by whom?" Satan, Death, and Hades were already in hell...there were no more evil spirits around to blame for the "throwing." As far as I can tell, the author skips from the other wrath [the pre-judgment wrath on the earth] to the question of "how long Hell lasts," skipping this rather obvious [and some would say most troubling] vignette of God's violence.
- In an effort to defend Christ's death, the author is forced to see Christ's words My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me as actually referring to God having forsaken Christ, a viewpoint that is far less Scriptural (for when did God really forsake the Word...and HOW could that be ontologically possible?) than seeing this as a final exhortation of encouragement as Christ quotes the first and last verses of psalm 22 [Matthew 27:46, John 19:30], essentially givng His followers one final reason to believe that Christ had fulfilled the prophecies, even those in the Psalms.
- Contrary to the author's beliefs, the Judaic viewpoint of God's righteousness was inextricably linked to the notion of retribution and vindication. In fact, the same Hebrew word is used for both. Consider for example Isaiah 10:22, where the NASB translation [using the word "righteousness" instead of "retribution"] makes little sense. For how can "righteousness" overflow in a verse smack dab in the middle of a passage where God is referring to destroying most of Israel. Surely it is not the "righteousness" of God's people [elsewhere described as shining to the nations] for very little of Judah would survive. No, the Jewish Publication Society's translation of this, speaking of the "retribution" or ["just punishment" as described by the NET] is more accurate. The situation is shown even more starkly in Isaiah 5:23, where the KJV in particular makes no sense. In any event, given how much language there is God having retribution for sins against The Almighty, it is hard to ascribe those acts of violence as merely the acts of evil forces.
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