Christmas Verses

Since most of my three readers will not be receiving a Christmas card from me this month, I thought it would be good to post the verses I have included in my cards this year. There's a PDF available if you'd like something to print out.

The texts follow:

The angel said to him, "Fear not, Zacharias!" And the angel said to her, "Fear not, Mary!" And the angel said to shepherds, "Fear not! For behold, I bring you the gospel of great joy: unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord." And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, "Glory to God in the highest!" (Luke 1.13,30; 2.10,13)

Who is this King of Glory? He is the LORD, strong and mighty. We beheld his glory, the glory as the only begotten of the Father. And his name is called "The Mighty God." (Psalm 24.8, John 1.14, Isaiah 6.9)

This mighty God has done great things for you that you might serve him without fear. Many, O LORD my God, are your wonderful works that you have done, and your thoughts toward us. If I could declare and speak of them, they are more than can be numbered:

You forgive all our iniquities and heal all our diseases.
You redeem our life from destruction, and crown us with lovingkindness and tender mercies.
You satisfy us with good things, and renew our youth like the eagle’s.
You execute righteousness and judgment.

(Luke 1.49,74; Psalm 40.5, 103.3-5)

Now Jesus offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared, committing himself to the one who judges righteously:

I will declare thy name to my brethren, and in the midst of the congregation I will praise thee. Ye that fear the LORD praise him! O magnify the LORD with me, and let us exalt his name together; for I sought the LORD, and he heard me, and delivered me from all my fears; he has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, neither has he hid his face from him—but when he cried unto him, he heard.

(Hebrews 5.7; 2 Peter 2.23; Psalm 22.22,23; 34.3,4; 22.24)

I wanted to connect some central themes of the gospel ("fear not," God's glory and might, his works for us) to the person and the work of Christ. I limited myself to a page (including footnotes for the references). It was difficult to put everything together as I wanted.

I think it came out well, though, and it really does highlight so many important pieces of the gospel. Glory to God in the Highest, indeed. We have so much to be thankful for.

On Death

I subscribe to TeamPyro's RSS feed, and I was pleasantly surprised to find a great article on hating sin there today. Not because I think the Pyros are in any way libertine, but because of how well they linked it to its consequence and to the curse.

The ultimate consequence of sin is death, and with it, the dying. A family friend recently "graduated," as my grandmother would say. I went to visit him in the hospital and was shocked at his appearance—it was the first time in a long time I have seen the dying so up close. It was a brutal reminder of the consequences of sin. The morphine had rendered him virtually catatonic, and while he could answer questions, I wouldn't say he was exactly responsive.

I think the Pyros' post today really did a great job of looking at death through the lens of Lazarus' resurrection, something I commented on when we studied John 11 in my Bible Study. Phil comments specifically on Jesus' sorrow (Jn 11.35), but it's interesting to me also that Jesus was angry (Jn 11.38), too.

The idea that death is somehow a part of life is in most ways antithetical to the essential hope of Christianity, and I cannot help but think that Jesus' anger is not only directed at the onlookers' lack of faith, but also at death itself. Death is no analog to life, no yin to life's yang. It does not somehow bring existence into balance. Death is the last enemy, and I personally can't wait to see it destroyed.

Go read Phil's post. It's worth it.

Fools

I'm not much of a Proverbs man. I don't read a proverb a day, and when I read them I'm looking for the same thing I always do: the person and the work of Christ. The proverbs confuse me a great deal, probably because I make them too complicated.

But they nonetheless hold a lot of quotable moments for me, and among my favorites is the famous "As the dog returns to his vomit, so the fool to his folly." It struck me in the past few days that this verse really describes the essential nature of the fool: someone who works folly and goes back to it. The fool is also described (Ps 14.1) as an atheist, as one who does evil, as one who works iniquity.

It is no wonder that Solomon describes the beginning of wisdom as "fear of the Lord." Foolishness in the eternal sense relates more to lack of faith (it's worth noting here the behavior of the Israelites with respect to their idols) than it does poor business sense or misuse of resources. It's not surprising to me to find this faithlessness an endemic quality of mankind (Ro 3, Ps 14, et c.).

My own sin alone convinces me of these things, and so does my experience with others. Why we are driven to touch the stove again when we know that it burns is not a hard question for me, I suppose; but it is still striking.

Creation

I do not often enter the Evolution / Creation debate, and I don't really intend to. One of my more submerged interests is philosophy, and I think that a significant source of conflict between creationists and evolutionists, whether they realize it or not, is a vastly different philosophy. It's fair to say that at least some philosophical considerations enter the debate, but in my experience most of the argument is spent (wasted?) on science.

This isn't sufficient because when the Christian says that God created, he does not use the word materialistically—the way that it must be used in science. The Scripture treats creation more fully than simple creation of stuff; God also created spirit and soul, neither of which are under the purview of science.

Someone with better vision than I will be able to better connect the immaterial creation with our own ability to create; materialism cannot explain narrative or myth, it cannot explain babies or consciousness, or why Terry Brooks simply cannot write another good book. In fact, materialism is probably one of the least descriptive philosophies, and one of the greatest arguments against chance.

The Corporate Nature of Worship

I am confessedly not much of a singer, a fact that belies my heritage (both of my parents are reasonably good at it and like music) and whatever musical education I had growing up. My wont during worship is to read my Bible, either to catch up on the recent readings from the one year Bible, for comfort, or whatever.

I began doing this as a defensive practice in high school youth group in response to the worship songs we would sing week to week. My distrust for youth group and the church was at an all time high then, spurred largely by the semi-pelagian perspective that dominated the church I attended at the time.

Then, as now, my interest remains more in doctrine and less in praxis. I have always been more interested in the meaning of baptism than the mode of baptism, the motivation for worship rather than the regulative principle, and so on. I have found, however, that as my interests in theology grew, I couldn't really divorce the study of doctrine from its implementation. This is probably earning me a big fat "duh" from the three readers or so that this blog enjoys, and it's well-deserved.

(This is not to give credence to ridiculous debates about the mode of baptism or any other nonsense; just that doctrine and praxis are inseparably woven together, I think.)


Worship is one area in which my feelings regarding practice and theology have not really had much time to settle. The beginning of the connection between the practice of worship and the theology of worship was the phrase "Proper orthodoxy breeds proper doxology," or "Right theology breeds right worship." This makes sense in many respects; worship without theology is idolatry, because we worship a god of our own devising.

All this is a pretty long introduction to the main story, for which I apologize.

I have been a little under the weather, which tends to exacerbate my logorrhea. However, it also has provided me a different excuse lately for not singing during church. There is a member of our group who has a pretty strong baritone (his father sings up front, and this one definitely takes cues from him) and isn't ashamed to use it.

As I was listening this past Wednesday to the various songs—the selection is usually better on the off days—it struck me more fully that worship really is a corporate experience. We worship together. And so in Psalm 34, we read, "O magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together" (verse 3).

One of my complaints about praise and worship songs is that they're hard to sing harmony for if you're at all like me. There's no songbook in our church, so I can't even make any pitiful efforts to read the music, so I'm stuck with the melody, which is generally out of my range (if not also my theological purview). But as this fellow was bravely adjusting the music for his baritone, I saw a glimmer of what worship used to be like for me: an opportunity to sing with other people, to commune in the things that cause us to praise God. It was not an individual's experience, but the body's.

The Content of the Gospel

I'm sure my fascination with the Psalms will someday wane, but for now it's still going strong. The recent readings from the one year Bible plan (now linked at left) have been in Psalms 93-100. I had the privilege of sitting in a Sunday school class on the gospel of Luke one year, and we began by looking at the gospel as it was revealed in the Old Testament, identifying key themes and passages.

As soon as we had done this, it really opened up a new avenue of studying the OT to me. I was suddenly able to see the same gospel themes exposed in a great many places, and among them the Psalms.

My initial forays into the Psalms were borne, I think, of my own introspection and the comfort they brought to a naïve eighth-grader who felt like he was picked on more than his due in school. My second shot into the Psalms was more mature, guided by the realization that many of them provide glimpses into the nature of Jesus Christ and the Godhead. Many of the Psalms still remained a mystery to me, at least in the sense that I was looking for something in the white spaces, the background of the story.

(As an aside, this is a sometimes destructive tendency for me and has certainly put me into some rather poor doctrinal positions in the past. Ockham's Razor is certainly not the best thing to happen to Christianity, but it's a rather useful tool when dealing with difficult passages.)

The key was the content of the gospel, elements identified by their presence in obvious gospel passages (Isaiah 40-45, 53, and many others). They consist mainly of God's attributes:

• righteousness, judgment (94.1,15; 96.10,13; 97.2,6,8; 98.2,9; 99.4)
• power, might (93.4; 95.4,6; 96.3-5; 98.1)
• reign (93.1; 95.3; 96.10; 97.1; 99.1)
• mercy, lovingkindness (98.3)
• faithfulness
• salvation (96.2; 98.2,3)
• truth

Man's response to these attributes is uniformly supposed to be praise (a fact I find interesting, considering all of the emphasis we place on belief). See (95.1,2; 96.1-3; 97.8,12; 98.1,4-9; 99.3,5,9).

Not surprisingly, each of these occurs in great quanity in the Psalms. I've provided some references from our latest readings in the bulleted list.

If we chart these themes throughout Scripture, we'll find them in some measure in the almost spontaneous doxologies in the Pauline epistles and other letters, and in equal measure in the songs in Revelation (cp Re 14.6—"eternal gospel"). And they figure quite prominently in Mary and Elizabeth's songs in Luke 1, and in Simeon and Zarachrias' proclamations, also.

While the Psalms sometimes get a bit repetitive, it has been one of my constant delights to find them such a well of incredible depth. We so often shrink the gospel into a formula that it's difficult to keep in mind what it's really about.

On Worship

My feelings on worship are pretty easy to summarize:

God should not only be the object of worship, but also the subject.

In other words, our songs should not just worship God, they should be about God. Our inspiration should come not from our own actions, but from the person and work of Christ.

As a rule, this leads me to distrust "I tunes": worship songs centered on man in the act of giving praise. I rather prefer songs centered on the activities of God that inspire praise in us. Old standards like "O For a Thousand Tongues" and "Come Thou Fount" reflect on God's work as our redeemer and how he called us from darkness to light—and they do it without resorting to navel-staring at our own act of worship.

Songs that describe God in nebulous terms or that mitigate the force of his will and the power of his working bespeak a troubling trend in the modern Christian's perception of his Maker, Redeemer, and Friend. Losing such elements substitutes God with a feeling and reinforces, I think, the natural self-inclination of man. That is to say that man-centered worship really only caters to our depraved natures; it is perhaps one of the most subtle attacks by the enemy.

The Miracle of Regeneration

October has been a pretty slow month for writing here, for which I apologize. There have been some extenuating circumstances, though I should have been better about it, especially considering all the fodder from my current readings.

At left is a new link to a friend's blog, written as he goes through the Bible from the beginning. He's only written a few articles, but there should be plenty more in the pipe if he gains steam.


One of my predispositions in studying the Scripture is to look at physical things as a manifestation of the spiritual. We read of a heavenly pattern for the tabernacle, for example (He 8.5), and of the heavenly Jerusalem (Ga 4.25,6). There are many other hints that we're justified in looking at physical things this way, of course; it's one of the purposes of types and the institution of the Mosaic Law.

We're accustomed to looking at miracles as a purely physical phenomena—so the turning of water into wine is a miracle because it circumvents the usual physical requirements for that sort of process. Raising Lazarus from the dead is a miracle, too, hopefully for obvious reasons.

But it seems to me that these miracles in the physical realm—the laws of physics being suspended or contravened—might also be shadows of less tangible miracles. In other words, it really does make sense to use the raising of Lazarus as an example of how we are regenerated because our own regeneration is itself a miracle.

If we can accept this—and I think it is reasonable—I think it is also reasonable to suggest that it is a miracle in a spiritually-similar way: regeneration contravenes a spiritual law. This at its core, I think, denies the (semi-) Pelagian notion that original sin did not irrevocably impair the human will. If regeneration violates some spiritual law, then it stands to reason that the human will should not be able to, any more than I can expect to generate enough lift to fly by flapping my arms.

Bible In a Year

So the folks I do a regular Bible Study with decided that it would be good to read through the Bible in a year using a daily reading plan. I had just finished Leviticus when the suggestion came up, so I decided to do it. I plan on starting another book (probably Deuteronomy or Jeremiah) verse by verse soon to go along with it.

For those not in the know, the Bible-in-a-Year has one reading from the Old Testament, one from the New, one from the Psalms, and one from Proverbs. It can be a fair amount of reading.

I appreciate the overview of the text a great deal because it helps keep broad themes in perspective and helps prevent the sort of navel introspection that often accompanies in-depth verse-by-verse studies. And, while the daily texts aren't always complimentary, it's surprising at how well the themes have been matching up lately. (We're in Jeremiah, the Pauline epistles, in the 70s/80s of the Psalms, and Proverbs 24/25.)

The largest impressions have come from Jeremiah, who writes that Jerusalem was a fountain of wickedness (Je 6.7). The idea of the fountain, I think, is the same as that of a spring—a water source. It is something water flows from, rather than something water flows into. This recalls Mt 12.34, "... for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh." Jeremiah really speaks quite a bit to the fallen human condition, and the indictment is damning.

Another interesting connection with this is in Psalm 81:

8 Hear, O my people, and I will testify unto thee: O Israel, if thou wilt hearken unto me; 9 There shall no strange god be in thee; neither shalt thou worship any strange god. 10 I am the LORD thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt: open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it. 11 But my people would not hearken to my voice; and Israel would none of me. 12 So I gave them up unto their own hearts' lust: and they walked in their own counsels. 13 Oh that my people had hearkened unto me, and Israel had walked in my ways! 14 I should soon have subdued their enemies, and turned my hand against their adversaries. 15 The haters of the LORD should have submitted themselves unto him: but their time should have endured for ever.

I have been spending quite a bit of time in the past few weeks looking at the subject of regeneration as it pertains to our fallen nature, mostly due to discussions in other groups. For those not in the know, my perspective on the subject is that depraved man cannot positively respond to God.

It's verses like Ps 81.13 that sometimes make me think a bit, though. While I think my case for the effect of total depravity is pretty decent, a standard argument against total depravity is God's (and later, Christ's) consistent lamentation over the state of his people. There appears to be a sense here that there was a possibility for the people to walk in God's ways and listen to his voice (though we see something utterly different in Jeremiah, where the people cannot hear because of their uncircumcised ears).

But at the same time, it seems as though the possibility was granted because God restrained their natural lusts (verse 12). It will be interesting to pursue these little threads to see where they go.


In the near future, I'm hoping to have a quick discussion on the justification of using miracles metaphorically—not just historically. Some quick thoughts on this occurred during the aforementioned discussions and in reading a paper my father wrote for a class he's taking.

The Disease of Death

Last week at Bible Study, the leader said something that I thought was pretty profound. In reference to Lazarus, he said that Jesus "healed him from death," as though death is really a sickness from which to be healed rather than a permanent state of affairs.

This tied into my studies in Leviticus in an interesting way. There is something pervasive about human sin: it always contaminates, but is never contaminated. It is like being unclean in the Old Testament; a clean person touching a leper never cleansed the leper, but rather become unclean himself.

Of course, there is something pervasive about the life in Jesus Christ, too. When he touches lepers, they are cleansed, and the taint of their illness cannot spread to him. So, too, with death. When it closes in on the cross, it is denied its victory by the resurrection.

All of the miracles in John demonstrate in one way or another the deity of Christ, and I think the raising of Lazarus is particularly evocative in this respect. Death is the last enemy; it is not a natural part of the universe, nor is it to be tolerated. While we welcome it as the transition from our fallen, earthy bodies to the celestial, heavenly ones, there is no sense of friendship with death given in the Scripture.

When Jesus raises Lazarus, it is almost as though his life, like his cleanness, is pervasive. When death comes in contact with Christ, it does not taint him with its stain; rather, it recoils and flees, and Lazarus lives again.

Metaphor

This past week has given me some time to think about metaphor. We studied the raising of Lazarus in John 11 this week, and I coincidentally (in the sense of simultaneously) was discussing the same in a newsgroup I occasionally read.

Some objections were raised to the idea that the miracle of raising Lazarus was typical of how God regenerates us (obviously objections from the unreformed in the group). One person in particular objected because Lazarus was already regenerated before he was resurrected. He was rightly taken to task for his complaint for reasons that I hope are obvious.¹

A metaphor is a constructed figure of speech in which two often dissimilar things are identified by sometimes surprising characteristics.

I refer to the elements compared as the base and the realization. The base is something common to experience and well understood; the realization is that which acquires the characteristics of the base by association.

For example, the well-worn phrase, "You are my sunshine" is a metaphor in which the base is the sun and the realization is the beloved. The beloved acquires the characteristics of the sun in a metaphorical way—bringing light and heat to an otherwise dreary and sad existence.

In the metaphor proposed by the original poster, Lazarus' death is like our spiritual death (and his condition like ours) and his resurrection is like our spiritual rebirth.


Metaphors often contain a locus in which the base and the realization meet. In the case of the raising of Lazarus, the locus is in the command of Jesus: "Lazarus, come forth!" His physical action is paralleled spiritually: the Jesus in the base image is the same Jesus of the metaphorical realization.

It is this commerce between the image and the realization that makes the metaphor so powerful, and it is one of the reasons that Christianity is so compelling (in my opinion). It causes us to revise our understanding of reality when we see that the locus of the metaphor exists on both sides of the equation—does spiritual birth follow the pattern of physical birth, or does physical birth follow the pattern of spiritual?

Metaphor usually implies a lessening of corporeality in the comparison, but Christianity provides a metaphor that is more real than the experiences we use to understand it.



[1] My objection is two-fold.

First, a metaphor is a constructed figure of speech, and so he is not really allowed to tell someone what goes into the construction. He can only show that the construction itself is internally inconsistent (its connections require reshaping our understanding of reality) or externally inconsistent (his conclusions do not support his theology).

Second, his requirement that the realization of the metaphor not contain elements of the base image is arbitrarily restrictive and really prevents him from using any miracle analogically. The locus of the metaphor is where the base image and the metaphorical realization intersect. Since, in his theological system, faith precedes and causes regeneration, faith cannot be an appropriate locus for the metaphor (since the one experiencing the miracle is thereby regenerated, disqualifying regeneration from being the subject of the miracle).

Uncleanness

I have just finished reading through Leviticus 14 and 15, chapters discussing leprosy and bodily discharges. These are pretty tedious chapters, and Leviticus, I confess, is not the least tedious book I've read (neither the most).

But I was struck by two things as I read.

The first is that uncleanness spreads, but cleanness doesn't. In other words, no one ever possessed pervasive cleanliness—a clean person cannot touch a leper and make the leper clean; rather, touching a leper makes one unclean. The sole exception for this rule is that immediate family members were allowed to touch the bodies of their dead relatives without suffering uncleanness; but in all other cases, touching something unclean, or touching something that touched someone unclean, sufficed to make one unclean.

The second is that the very act of procreation made the participants unclean. So, too, giving birth. While I don't want to say that this is a strong argument for original sin, it certainly does give a different overtone to Ps 51.5.

From a cultural perspective, some argue that these rules were intended to separate the Israelites from the people they were displacing, in which it was common to profane worship with deviant sexual practices.


It is interesting to me that it was forbidden for anyone who was unclean to enter the tabernacle. Those who were unclean were cut off from fellowshiping with the rest of the congregation, and in the case of the lepers, maimed, or deformed, this excommunication was permanent.

At the same time, we have to be impressed with the healing of the lepers in the gospels. It is never recorded in the Bible that a leper presented himself to a priest to verify his cleansing—until Jesus says, "I am willing; be thou clean" (Mt 8.3). In Jesus there is a pervasive cleanness. His cleanness drives away the uncleanness of the leper.

If we understand leprosy, for example, as a metaphor for sin, the application is obvious—Jesus really does cleanse us, and he does it perfectly. I don't want to over-extend this, but I think if we look at the Spirit living in us, this is a continual cleansing, too, just as the fire for the burnt offerings was to burn continually.

Happy Returns, Revelation Thoughts

I am back from vacation, having spent a couple weeks in Kenya. I'm writing about it at Abracadafrica, a blog I started for that purpose. It's perhaps a bit warmer than this blog, and more interesting by half.

I read through the rest of Leviticus while I was gone and started reading Jeremiah, but I haven't taken any notes on them, so I'll probably go back to where I was before and start afresh.


We have been going through Revelation in church in the past several weeks, and this has occasioned a little bit of thought. My own eschatology is not well-developed, and I think that concentrating on it to the exclusion of all else when reading Revelation is a mistake. For the most part, we perceive Revelation as a revelation of what is to happen at the end times.

But the book itself tells us that it is actually a revelation of Jesus Christ (Re 1.1). As such, I think our focus should be more on how he is revealed through the book rather than the overplayed mysticism that seems to accompany any sort of commentary on apocalyptic literature.

And so in the letters to the churches we have seven separate revelations of the person of Christ. We see him revealed, too as God—Jesus says, "I am the one who is." (I wonder if the outline of the book is given in the phrase "I am the one who was, who is, and who is to come." The things which "must take place after this" in Re 4.1 fit nicely, I think, in that theme.) I think there are correlations between what we read through the book and the gospels, too.

It's hard to summarize the several weeks we've been in the book, but I'll be keeping my eyes open for more of these incidentals. I don't expect to comment as much on the eschatological distinctives, except as they pertain to showing us who Christ is. I'm beginning to think that the ultimate thrust of the book is to demonstrate the deity of Christ, though I'll have to run it through the various themes and images that prevail in it.


Hopefully regular posting will resume now that I'm back from my trip and can come to this with a little more frequency. It has been a busy month, and not just for travel.

Vay-Kay

I'm going to be out for a couple weeks on vacation. I'll see you all in mid to late August again, hopefully with some good stories and perhaps some fresh insight.

The Sacrifices

I've been putting some miles in Leviticus, and I have come up for air to discuss just some brief thoughts from the book. And to mention that for the first couple weeks of August I'll be gone, so what irregular posting I write here will be interrupted further.  Also, as a quick aside, Tim Enloe put up an interesting post about science fiction and religion; as a fan of the genre, I found it pretty neat.

There a great many hints of the sacrifice of Christ in the laws concerning the offerings. The obvious ones:

• the death of the innocent lamb, goat, ram, bull in place of the guilty priest, person, nation
  
• grain offerings without leaven (often a symbol of human works)

I think there are some other interesting notes here, though.  The priesthood lived off of the sacrifices.  And we see in the New Testament that we are also a priesthood, and we live off of the sacrifice of Christ.  It is not a mistake that Christ is the bread of life, and we do not celebrate an empty symbol in the eucharist.

Another example is the burnt offering, which was to burn continually.  The fire burned day and night, never to be extinguished.  In a similar way, the sacrifice of Christ is a continual one, and continuously effective.

There are several kinds of offerings, also:  sin, trespass, peace, and burnt.  In each we see, I think, a shadow of the cross.  We see him also as the high priest, making intercession for the people.

There really is a lot there, and it's well worth the time to read through it and try to digest a few things it has to say.

Leviticus

I'm reading in Leviticus now, having moved from the New Testament (where I recently finished second Thessalonians) to the Old. My time in the Scripture usually involves more verse by verse study, but in this case I'm trying a slightly different tack—short notes jotted on each logical unit to get an overall view. I'm hoping that it moves faster, for starters, and that my view is "big picture" more than "nitty gritty."

The first several chapters of Leviticus deal with the sacrificial system. The text is rife with types of Christ, and I hope that in the coming weeks I'll have some examples and commentary on them and how we might see them realized in his person and work.

John 6

In Bible study lately, we've been working in John. The theme of the book is found in John 20.30,31:

30 Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; 31 but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

The last two weeks have seen us ploughing through chapter six, which records the feeding of the 5000 and the subsequent fallout.

To most readers, this is probably a fairly well-known story, so I'll skip the synopsis to what follows after the miracle.

The narrative is that Jesus and his disciples leave for Capernaum across the sea of Galilee after the feeding. The next day, the people he fed couldn't find him conveniently and sought him out. The latter half of John six documents the conversation the people have with Christ.

As seems to be a habit, Jesus rarely answers their questions directly. The questions here are directly fleshly in nature. The first is, "When did you come to Capernaum," which Jesus rightly interprets as, "We're hungry. Why did you leave in the middle of the night without making some breakfast first?"

He counsels them thus: "Do not labor for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on him God the Father has set his seal." The word for "labor" here is related to the one we see in the next verse, when the people ask, "What must we do to work the works of God?" We might paraphrase, "Uhhhhh, it doesn't sound like you're going to make us breakfast out of thin air. Will you teach us how to do it ourselves?"

Once again, Jesus directs their thinking to the Spirit: "This is the work of God, that you believe on him whom he has sent."

This doesn't satisfy, so they ask again, "What sign will you show us? Moses gave us bread from heaven." They are, in other words, politely nudging him again to their fleshly need—breakfast.

After a bit more thrust and parry, Jesus finally tells them that he is the bread from heaven, that it is his body that will satisfy. He gave them earthly bread to expose their spiritual need for his body, the heavenly bread.

There are a lot of facets to the miracle: the abundance left over, the fulfillment of the type of manna in the desert, the subtle references to Christ as the Word, the followup to the living water (John 4). It's a little much to go into, but at least we can look at it with fresh eyes.

And I would be remiss not to mention how it looks forward to the Last Supper. In the book of Mark, we read of three times that Jesus breaks bread: once for the four thousand, once for the five, and once for his disciples. It is in the last that we see him breaking his body; what a revelation that it indeed is enough.

Current Readings

I'm still processing first Thessalonians a bit. In a previous entry, I spent a little time discussing progressive sanctification in the light of 1 The 4, looking particularly at the first eight verses.

I've tried to let some of the ideas percolate a little bit in my head. I've since moved on to the second epistle, but I'm still thinking about the end of the first. In chapter five, for instance, several different commands are issued, especially in vv 14-22. I wonder if perhaps these are left for us to consider as a part of the sanctification process in 4.3-6.

But we hit a very interesting passage immediately following:

23 Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely: and may your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. 24 He who calls you [is] faithful, who also will do [it].

There's too much here to work with at midnight on a Tuesday evening, but it seems to me that we have here a germ of the idea of trichotomy—the idea that man consists of three fundamental elements (spirit, soul, body), and the expectation of sanctification.

The link to chapter four is pretty unmistakable—God's will is our sanctification (4.3), and he also called us in sanctification (4.7).

It seems a little trite to me on the face of things to suggest that sanctification is living a good life here on earth—I think there is a somewhat more eternal aspect to it that needs to be explored (e.g., as I mentioned before, in Hebrews 10). And I'm still trying to wrap my head around how the two sides of it fit together harmoniously. (Can we really say that the one who called us won't sanctify us completely given these verses? But this is precisely what we suggest when we say that sanctification is entirely bound up in human effort or will.)

The idea of trichotomy here also raises some questions for me, since I have held the position for a long time that the regenerate spirit is incorruptible and the body not. It makes me wonder why the body should be sanctified if it is to pass away and be replaced with another (per 1Co 15).

Righteousness

I was recently asked about whether I considered myself "blameless," and I thought perhaps this would be a good time to review some of my opinions on the concepts of justification and righteousness. I'm still trying to incorporate what I'm learning in 1 Thessalonians into my view of these subjects, so I suppose that my opinions may change with time.

I think the concept of justification and righteousness has changed throughout the history of the church, or we may at the very least say that there are considerable differences between the Protestant perspective and the Roman one; Sproul has some good comments about these differences.

In sum, the Reformers looked at justification in the light of a legal transaction; sin incurs a debt, and justification occurs because the debt has been satisfied. I think it is fair to say that the RCC and EOC have a somewhat more malleable definition of righteousness.

I say this because the Protestant doctrine of imputation states that the righteousness of Christ is imputed to sinners, who cannot be righteous apart from it. Christ's righteousness is permanent and static; he is not more righteous sometimes or less righteous others. The RCC and EOC, by contrast, view righteousness as personal rather than imputed. This implies that one's righteousness is mingled with sin.¹


In this instance, I certainly agree with the Reformers. God's righteousness is an absolute standard (and evidently a means of obligation) against which sinners are measured. Since we are all found wanting (Rm 3.23), there is no measure of righteousness outside of Christ's (Rm 3.24). So God in Christ makes us righteous and then declares us to be so.

I maintain a distinction further between the regenerate spirit and the depraved flesh. We see in Romans 7 and Galatians 5 that the flesh sins—that's all it can do. But the regenerate spirit, it seems, cannot (cf 1Jo 3). Moreover, in 1Co 15, we are told that we will receive a glorified body in heaven, but nothing is said about the spirit.

So to be clear, I believe that the regenerate spirit is righteous and that its righteousness is Christ's, imputed by his faithfulness in performing the will of God. It is in this sense that I consider myself righteous. Not in the sense that I have somehow achieved a Christ-like ability to do the Right Thing all the time.

This is a fairly deep and complex topic, and I'm skimming over quite a bit. As time permits, perhaps I'll expound on it further.


[1] There are some examples of support for this taken from Job and Noah, for example, and also from Pr 24.16. The last may be discounted by context, I think. The first two are usually explained from the perspective of NT justification, i.e., that OT saints are righteous for same reason that we are.

Sleeping

I am still reading in 1 Thessalonians, and I thought I would share a few thoughts that I had while looking at chapter five. I haven't got my Bible in front of me, and this is being written during a lull at work, so I hope this will be (perhaps uncharacteristically) short.

There are two words for "sleep" in Greek, and both are used in 1 Thessalonians. One is used in contrast to being watchful (i.e., wakeful, or awake and paying attention), and the other is used in contrast to being alive.

In chapter four, the apostles assure the church that the resurrection is not already past, and that those who have "fallen asleep" in the Lord will be raised again. This is the word KOIMAW, from which is derived our word cemetery. (It was Christians who first referred to the graveyard as a bedroom.)

The other word used is KAQUEDW, and we see it later in chapter five, in the phrase "whether we wake or sleep, we shall live together with him."

I wonder if perhaps there is a subtle distinction made here. The context of chapter five isn't death, but rather watching for the Lord's return. It seems to me in keeping with that context to look at the aforementioned verse as really speaking to our unfaithfulness, not to our death.

It's something I will spend some time pondering, and perhaps I'll add on to this post later.


Incidentally, there is some discussion of the words used on the B-Greek mailing list (information at link).

Morality

Jason recently posted some comments on Proverbs 13, in which he said something I found fairly interesting:

My age is an especially tough time because I am trying to find my own spiritual identity, yet I also still must rely on the spiritual nurturing my parents provided me.

The reason I find this interesting is mainly because of some real-life conversations I've had with friends regarding this self-same issue.

In general, though, it's less about spiritual identity and more about moral identity. For example, "I have this nagging feeling that such-and-such is wrong, but the only reason I think I feel that way is because Mom and Dad said so."

There is, I think, a modern stigma to this line of reasoning. I suppose we all go through periods of time where our parents really don't know anything, but it's hard for me to understand precisely why so many of us think that simply because Mom and Dad said something is wrong that it is actually right. There seems to be some kind of an illogical conclusion that if we haven't a justification for a line of thinking, that line of thinking is invalid.


Perhaps at the root of it is the willingness to accept some kind of moral relativism. Relativism implies that we determine morality for ourselves, so moral authority comes from within rather than without.

There's a lot of people who try to write conscience off as a sort of collective consciousness of right and wrong that's imposed culturally. The reason that sociologists still use the term mores, however, is precisely because morals are perceived to exist separately from culture—they are not a cultural unit. I suppose some sociologists no longer make this distinction, and perhaps practically speaking, neither does anyone else.

But at least one of the questions we have to answer for ourselves at some point is whence comes our principles of right and wrong. Cultural mores are one thing, of course, but what about the "greater" sins? The kind of clothes women wear today would be culturally unacceptable in bygone eras, but few communities have ever condoned murder.¹

In a very real way, this is connected tightly to some of the thoughts I've explored regarding authority in general in previous writings. In fact, it's connected to nearly every hotbutton issue today regarding family, religion, evolutionary philosophy, God's role as Creator, and so on.

Ultimately, I think we find that when we set ourselves up as a moral authority, we immediately deny its reality. Ironically enough, the same set of people who deny the reality of morals simultaneously expect God to act as though they are objective. This, to me, is the tacit admission that the Golden Rule, at least, impossible to deny as an objective moral, and therefore the Old Testament version: "Love your neighbor as yourself."


[1] I suppose that in the six "horizontal" commandments, the only one that has ever been specifically condoned in some cultures is adultery. The Scythians were noted for having their women in common, for example, and there's a reason prostitution is the world's oldest profession. My cultural education is fairly limited, but I don't know of any in which lying was considered acceptable in principle, or where it was appropriate to dishonor one's parents, murder someone, et c.

Progressive Sanctification

The term "progressive sanctification" is one that I'm really not all that fond of at all. I believe quite strongly in the finished work of Christ, and a part of this is certainly sanctification; see, for example, Hebrews 10.10 ("by the which will we have been sanctified forever"). I find the idea that God did as much as he could do, and now the rest is up to you, frankly quite ridiculous.

I don't want to give the impression in writing those words that I don't have strong opinions about human responsibility. But I have equally strong opinions about how that should be emphasized. The gospel is a gospel of reality, not of possibility. All too often, those who tout progressive sanctification preach the (false) gospel of possibility, not the gospel of reality, and so they teach that God didn't actually make us holy. (I'm not quite sure what they do with Hebrews 10.)

So the verses I've read in 1 Thessalonians 4 recently produced some consternation:

This is God's will, your sanctification: that you abstain from fornication; that each of you know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor...

The reason this bothers me a little bit is because I fail at this all the time. Grammatically speaking, I don't see how we can escape the pretty straightforward meaning of these verses: God's will is my sanctification, and that includes me doing and not doing certain things.

We're aided not a little bit here in the realization that (like every other passage regarding sanctification) we're being exhorted to live like who we are:

For God has not called us to impurity, but in sanctification.

Don't miss the different prepositions here; the first is EPI and the second EN. While building theology on prepositions is a shaky prospect at best,¹ I think it's important to realize that EPI is a preposition of motion,² and EN a preposition of state. So I think what we're seeing here is that God did not call us to live lives of impurity, but he called us after he sanctified us.

So to an extent, this kind of answers my initial discomfort about whether or not this is a good text for progressive sanctification. It isn't telling us to become more holy as much as it's telling us to live out externally what has already happened internally.


This also happens to answer the other problem I have had with this passage. There is no impediment to God's will: what he wills and what happens, as far as I can tell, are one and the same. I guess I have a hard time reaching the conclusion that God's will may be my sanctification, but it might not happen because of what a terrible sinner I am.

I think verse eight sheds some light on this:

So, he who rejects this is not rejecting man but the God who gives His Holy Spirit to you.

I do not believe it's an accident that God's Spirit is "holy" and that we are "holy". The "progressive" part of our sanctification is the outworking of the Holy Spirit. And so God's will is accomplished in our lives through his Spirit.


Though I generally try to avoid studying the New Testament on my own time, this has been pretty fruitful. (The reason I avoid it is because I know a lot more Greek than Hebrew—I don't know much Greek at all, incidentally—and so the going is slow and I get bogged down in the details.)


[1] Some support immersion-only baptism on the premise that Jesus came out of the water, neglecting historical data that while immersion is the preferred mode of baptism, it has been done in many ways since the early church; Eusebius comments on this.

[2] This is actually a bit of an oversimplification; there is a good discussion of Greek prepositions from the Companion Bible available online.

Followup

As a quick followup to the previous post, I want to explicate the point a little more clearly, keying on the idea that symbols have meaning because they're backed by reality.

At the end of the day, the reason that our concepts of goodness and justice have bite is because they are rooted in the ultimate reality of God's existence and his attributes. We will never be sovereign in the way that God is, but we are given to understand by virtue of God's existence that we do not define sovereignty. Its definition is not invention; it is extrinsic to us.

It does not surprise me to find as we drift further away from the concept of an objective reality that people reject authority (cf Jude 8 and others). Their concept of authority is rooted in self-determination, a definition that the Scriptures and the church have never supported. Freedom is always found in submission in the Bible, never in the concept of choice.¹

Accepting the idea that sovereignty is something we live up to, rather than something we have, should completely change our world view. It's one of the things I hope I can impress upon our upcoming second-degree black belts, anyway.


[1] It's interesting to me that the favorite verses in the Arminian handbook, He 10.26-29, refer to the human will in a negative way. The first time in this chapter that the human will is mentioned is not in our sanctification, but in our condemnation. We are not sanctified forever by our own will, but by God's. The only time the human will is mentioned in the chapter is all is when it's busy munging up perfection.

The Root of Authority

Black belt testing is approaching again. Last time this happened, I wrote a brief post about rank, in which I tried to expose some of my thoughts about the morals associated with it.

Now that I've shifted focus on this blog somewhat, it seems appropriate to revisit the concept offered in a few earlier posts.

I'm in charge of providing one of the essay questions for the 2nd degree black belt candidates this year, and my offering is:

Explain the meaning of the phrase, Rank is meant to be served, not to serve.

A consistent theme for me since making my first degree has been this saying, one that is pretty short but, I think, fraught with meaning. In fact, this has been one of the defining lessons for me in the past ten years I've been training.


We understand implicitly, I think, that symbols have no meaning unless they are based in some way on reality. You can buy a black belt from a store online for about ten dollars, but putting it on doesn't really mean much. The belt itself is not a symbol of the dollar value, but instead of the time and effort expended on its acquisition.

To the outsider, it's a symbol that you're dangerous¹. The belt hierarchy on the inside, though, has as much to do with responsibility as it does with skill. The demands on a black belt are different than the ones for a green belt.

In other words, associated with the concept of rank is responsibility. The belt couples authority with responsibility.

Perhaps I am multiplying words without knowledge; this certainly has been a lengthy introduction. The real question that arises from all of this discussion, though, is what justifies this connection? Why is authority imbued with responsibility?


Theologically speaking, we understand that God is not merely sovereign, he is also sovereignty. This means that own authority is granted to us from him, and it means that our idea of what it means to have authority is rooted in God's existence.

The corruption of authority naturally begins with self-determination. (Total depravity and all that.) Instead of recognizing the ideal of sovereignty, we invent one; in so doing, we bend authority to our own corrupt desires. In other words, we make rank to serve us, rather than serving rank.

As soon as we treat sovereignty as something invented rather than something that is Real, we lose our ability to properly govern. There is no longer an external standard or ideal of authority to which we aspire.

This is the ultimate fall-out of the anti-realist position, I think. As soon as we swallow a purely nominal definition of God's attributes, we deny the basis for any ideals we have.


I have been composing this at work, and it has taken me several hours to get these thoughts out. I hope they're mostly cogent. I expect to return to them sometime in the future, Lord-willing.


[1] In reality, the more skilled you are at the arts, the less dangerous you become.

Psalm 34

In a recent posting on a newsgroup I lurk on, a long-time poster linked to a paper about praise. Though some may find some of the discussion a little dry and boring, there are some really good points raised here. For example:

The praise singing movement ... introduces a new liturgy based on a new theology of praise.

The discussion following regarding the different theologies of praise is truly noteworthy. The criticism of the pentecostal style of worship is somewhat muted, and I think to the author's credit. What's more, he effectively links our praise to the incarnation of Jesus Christ.

The subject of the paper that inspired this post is the section titled "Jesus the Praise Singer." He points to Psalm 22.22:

I will tell of your name to my brothers; in the midst of the congregation I will praise you:

It is clearly Jesus Christ speaking these words, and it is here that we get our first explicit look at Jesus Christ in his rôle as worship leader. But when we gather the themes of this Messianic Psalm, we'll see that this rôle is reprised in several other Psalms.

One of particular interest in Psalm 34:

3 Oh, magnify the LORD with me,
and let us exalt his name together!

4 I sought the LORD, and he answered me
and delivered me from all my fears.

A consistent theme in the Psalms is God's deliverance, and it is most fully realized in Hebrews 5.7:

In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence.

It is this, I think, that is spoken of in Psalm 34. Why do we praise God? Because he heard Jesus' prayer for deliverance. He did not despise the affliction of the afflicted.

We are not called to a nebulous praise¹; we are rather led in worship by Christ for his resurrection.


[1] In John 4.24, Jesus tells the Samaritan woman that those who worship God must worship in spirit and in truth. The "must" here is the must of necessity; it is the same sort of must that is used in John 3 when he tells Nicodemus that he must be born again to enter heaven. We are given to understand in John 4, I think, that if we do not worship in truth, we are not actually worshipping. The substitution of "spirit" with feeling is precisely what invalidates so much modern worship. Not to mention the rotted theology present in most of it.

Esther

After finishing Job, I moved on to reading Esther, a fairly short and fast book essentially detailing the origin of the feast called Purim. I've recently finished the book.

My reactions are probably a little predictable. First, it's not a very pleasant book, victory against the Persians notwithstanding. I assume that the Jews who killed the Persians were provoked, but I'm still somewhat squeamish about the circumstances. (Of course, Haman and his cohort were no saints, either.) Perhaps at least part of this reaction is that the book is also essentially pagan—there's no mention of God in it at all, save a somewhat obscure reference by Mordecai that Esther was perhaps born "for such a time as this."

When I read the Bible, my glasses are usually tinted to pick up types of Christ—since the Scriptures are ultimately a revelation of his person and work, this approach seems reasonable to me. And it often produces some surprising results (viz., the Messianic Psalms). But in this case, it didn't work as well (or I just need to absorb it a bit more slowly).

One thing of interest is that Haman is described as an import himself—an Agagite, presumably one of the offspring of the Amalekite King Agag, either the one mentioned in Numbers or the one mentioned in I Samuel. One wonders if perhaps Haman's family was really the last of the Amalekites, and if his destruction ended the war God promised in Exodus 17.16. This might add a little outside detail to an otherwise straightforward story.

Materialism

As I was doing some reading over the past few days, I realized that one of the problems of materialism is that it cannot explain itself. I've posted before about similar problems with the postmodern thesis that truth is relative.

The long and short of it, though (since I'm on lunch at the moment), is that materialism doesn't have any good mechanism for defining reality. We're told to simply accept that material things are real. Tangibility is all well and good, but the abstract becomes significantly harder to categorize. Are thoughts real? Ideas? If the answer to these questions is no, then how can we decide that what's tangible is real?

If we deny abstract realities, I think we must simultaneously deny our own ability to realistically characterize reality. At least from the Christian perspective there is a terminus here: God contains reality.

As always, we can turn to Wikipedia for a discussion of the philosophy, and it will surely do a better job than I have done in these ten minutes of posting.

Memories and Hope

Since I am not burdened by the apparent requirement to post, as happens sometimes at the links right, the two weeks or so since last posting don't particularly bother me. It has been a busy time here, and blogging is really only a sometimes hobby of mine.

My parents flew to Columbus this evening for a celebration of a different kind. The church we attended when I was a child, and that I later attended in my college and graduate years recently experienced the passing of the choir director, a woman well-known in the church for her iron rule of law over the singers and her dramatic flair. I don't suppose that the choir would be considered one of the best in the world, but her arrangements were always good, and the song choice was excellent. There is something of home in that church, and not a little part of that was her banter with the pastor and underlined comments in the music. (As an assistant sound guy, I was privy to a few of them when recording the Easter contatas.)

One of my earlier memories is learning "Come, Christians, Join to Sing" as a member of the children's choir, and singing it now stirs those memories back into existence, like an old picture or long-forgotten scent.

The church body has obviously aged, but the place is otherwise immune to the passage of time. The smell is the same as it used to be, even the chairs are the same model (if more recently purchased). Walking into the sanctuary today is to become a young child again for me.


Her passing in many ways sets my heart yearning for the Grand Reunion, of which I have had only glimpses and shadows in my short life. I would have liked to have gone to the funeral, to mix again among my betters in the faith, to have some company walking along the road. That fellowship is rare in my experience—indeed, it's one of the reasons I even write here. There is such a happiness in that limited and brief impression of heaven.

It is late here, and past my bedtime. I meant to write here more of the hope of Christ, but perhaps it shows in my brief comments. "Sing, choirs of angels!"

Philemon

I was reading a newsgroup this morning when I came upon a posting that linked to an article on Philemon, which happens to be my favorite New Testament book. I realize we're not supposed to have favorites, and that Philemon all by itself would certainly be insufficient for much of anything. But taken in concert with the revelation we have in the rest of the NT, Philemon really provides us with such a poignant picture of our relationship with God that it has quickly become my most beloved epistle. And I have a comparatively short attention span, so the length of the letter is just perfect.

The historical context is fairly well-known: Paul is writing a letter to his friend and brother in the faith, Philemon, on behalf of Philemon's slave Onesimus. Onesimus ran away from his master, and we are given to understand that in so doing he probably deprived his master not only of his services, but also some goods (verse 18). In that time, animals had more rights than slaves; a man might be imprisoned for beating his horse, but he could do whatever he wished with a slave.¹ Running away from your master would likely be considered an offense punishable by death.

We know from historical records that at the time the letter was probably written, a slave uprising in Rome (where Paul was prisoner) led to the death of a prefect. The penalty exacted was death for all of the slaves of the household (of which Secundus reportedly had 400).²

It is in this situation that we find Onesimus, a runaway slave in Rome around the time that 400 slaves are executed. He, too, is under the sentence of death.


I take some time to establish this historical background for two reasons: first, because it interests me, and second, because it represents so well the situation in which we find ourselves vis-á-vis God: running away and under condemnation.

Like Onesimus, we are fleeing, conscious of our guilt. And like Onesimus, we are sovereignly brought to a relationship with the Savior (v15). Paul here acts as a type of Christ, and suddenly the words that he writes become dramatically more meaningful:

If thou count me therefore a partner, receive him as myself. If he hath wronged thee, or oweth thee ought, put that on mine account; I Paul have written it with mine own hand, I will repay it:

(vv 17-19a) In the same way, when Christ returns us to God, he says to the Father, "Receive him as though he were me." He says, "Whatever he owes you, I will pay." And that is such a comfort; in my worse hours, I am often reminded of these verses, which send me running back to the Father.

The Greek here is actually very strong, because Paul uses a first class condition. We might rather translate the phrase, "Since you count me as your partner, ...." Paul does not use rhetoric here, or make a command; he is rather assuming that Philemon indeed is his partner in the faith, and that he will therefore treat Onesimus like he would treat Paul.

The corollary is indeed a revelation of grace. God the Son requests God the Father to receive us, not on the basis of our own merits or abilities, but rather because of his relationship with the Father.

There's more there, of course, but the kernel of the letter is found in those three verses. This is where the gospel may be found, and what good news it is! Our Savior does not condemn or accuse; he assumes the penalty.³


[1] Details are abundant on the web; see here and here for examples.

[2] See Tacitus' Annals, 14.42-45, quoted here.

[3] As a post script, if you compare what I think about Philemon and what the Journal of Biblical Accuracy thinks about Philemon, I think you'll find them at least marginally different. While I would consider their reading true to the letter, I don't know that I would consider it true to the spirit. My intention is not to be critical toward the JBA, but rather to show an example of where reading with an anthropocentric view of Scripture causes us to completely miss the point.

2nd and 3d John Musings

We've recently covered second and third John in church—while they style it as "verse by verse" it's really more "chapter by chapter" there.

Probably part of this is inspired by other readings, but I was struck at the closings of these epistles:

Though I have many things to write to you, I do not want to do so with paper and ink; but I hope to come to you and speak face to face, so that your joy may be made full.

I'm not very old, even if my skeleton sometimes tells me otherwise, and so I expect that as I age I'll have a somewhat deeper perspective than I do now. I also want to tread somewhat lightly here. My initial baptism into reformation theology, if you will, was accompanied by a deep reverence for the Scripture; I would often refer to it as "Jesus on the shelf."

Lest anyone get the wrong idea, I still maintain that reverence, and I still hold fast to sola scriptura. But I found as I studied the Scripture for the Scriptures' sake, I stopped looking at the subject of the revelation—Jesus Christ. As I read in a book recently, it is as though we are studying a score of music without actually listening to the piece itself. The Scriptures have meaning because they reveal Jesus Christ; he is the Word, the fullness of the revelation of God.

And so when I read the conclusions to 2nd and 3d John, it seems almost to me as though Word Himself is saying to us, "There's more that I can tell you, more to write down; but I would rather explain it to you in person, face to face, so that your joy may be full."

We do see through a glass darkly; but the time is coming, and I pray soon, when we shall see him face to face and know him as we are fully known.

Elihu and Job, Part Two

I briefly commented on Elihu and Job in a previous entry. I wanted to revisit the subject because I've finally finished his dialogue and moved to the theophany in Job 38.

As a quick review, Job and his comforters go back and forth through the book essentially arguing about the nature of justice. Job maintains his innocence and integrity against his friends, who insist he has committed some trespass and is being punished for it.

Elihu appears somewhat abruptly—reading between the lines we might guess that the dialogue between Job and his friends occurs in the midst of a crowd of people.¹ He intends to respond differently than the others, and I think he succeeds, at least in a small part.


The theme of his speech is creation, and the sum of what he says is this: "If you can't understand the physical universe—the creation—how do you expect to understand the Creator?" The same sort of reasoning appears in the theophany, where God essentially says to Job (I paraphrase Swindoll's paraphrase), "Until you can run the physical universe, don't tell me how to run the moral universe."

If we cannot discern God's purposes in creation, how are we to discern his purposes in how he deals with us on a moral level? Elihu's logic seems to be essentially that God is just whether we understand his righteousness or not.

We are left with a bit of a bad taste in our mouths here, because the answer doesn't mean that there's less suffering to be had, and in fact doesn't provide us with any real good reason for it. The fortunate end of the story is that the inscrutable appears; in the words of Schaeffer, "He is there, and he is not silent." To understand God and his purposes, he must reveal them to us.

Job got a whirlwind (which appears, it seems, as abruptly as Elihu did), and we have Christ, the ultimate revelation of God to humanity.


In a somewhat tangential vein, Elihu explores the nature of justice in his discussion, too. He looks at righteousness as though it is something that obligates others; for example, he says to Job, "If you are righteous, what do you give to him? Or what does he receive from your hand?" (35.7).

In some respects, I think this is a reasonable way to look at God's righteousness. His righteousness (and his ability to execute justice) obligates us to meet a perfect standard. We see the same in the law given in the Old Testament. The righteousness of the lawgiver obligates the receiver.

But this doesn't work in reverse—the righteousness of the receiver doesn't obligate the lawgiver. Job doesn't obligate God by living a life of integrity.² This essentially hamstrings Job's claim that God has violated his justice; Elihu rightly accuses him of condemning God to justify himself.

We are left, I think, with the understanding that there's an absolute standard of righteousness, and that Job is not the one setting it. To accuse God of perverting justice is to say that one understands justice better than God—a claim we may debunk as easily as Elihu did.


[1] I guess some feel that Elihu is a pre-incarnate manifestation of Christ. I don't see any particular reason to promote or doubt this line of thinking, though his self-assigned role as an intermediary between Job and God implies at least a typological connection.

[2] This is yet another argument for the deity of Christ. Only God's righteousness obligates others; a mere man living a perfect life wouldn't obligate God at all.

1 John Roundup

We have recently concluded the book of 1 John in church, and the Bible Study I attend should finish it this week, Lord willing.

1 John is an interesting book for a lot of reasons. It contains probably the simplest Greek of any New Testament book, evincing none of the polish of Dr Luke or Paul, but rather uses short and simple phrases. The book describes a number of tensions, usually resolved by treating the participles in chapter three as we treat the English progressive tense.

It is generally interpreted, I think, as a response to libertine Gnostic influence in the church, especially due to repeated emphasis that Christ came in the flesh. As a rule, I am generally wary of hermeneutics that rely overmuch on historical positioning, since I think they lend themselves to abuse,¹ but in this case I am somewhat more supportive. First, because 1 John, despite its grammar and vocabulary, is a difficult book. Second, because it helps to unify things nicely.

There were evidently a wide variety of Gnostic groups, but they generally shared a common soteriology (salvation by knowledge) and, as I see it, a denial of physical reality. The flesh is seen either as evil of itself, or as a cosmic mistake of sorts, and so the idea of the humanity of Christ was, to a Gnostic, reprehensible. To the Christian, of course, Christ is more human than his followers.

The libertine Gnostics (there were plenty who were ascetic) evidently felt that due to the flesh's inferiority, fleshly actions were inconsequential—somehow less real than the spiritual. So it was acceptable, for example, to live licentiously because the spiritual world was untouched by the physical.

The Gnostics found in Christianity the logos that they desired; Christ was sent to enlighten and reveal divine knowledge. The notions of enlightenment and reason (whence, I suppose, comes knowledge) are pertinent especially because the Gnostics used similar terms with dramatically different meanings.


John begins the letter very explicitly arguing for the physical nature of the incarnation. The gospels, especially Luke and John, record that he appears physically after his resurrection. He was tangible—the wounds remained, and the disciples could probe them. He ate food, and made careful effort to demonstrate he was not a phantasm or spirit, but a flesh-and-blood human being.

He carries the theme of the incarnation throughout. We see it interspersed often with the strong moral overtones of the book: the repeated emphasis from John is that we are to love one another. At the outset, we see that the book concerns fellowship, both with God (through, e.g., confession), and with each other (through, e.g., love).

It is important to see the anti-gnostic perspective in the verse, "If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, ... his blood cleanses us from all sin" (1Jn 1.7). We err, I think, if we suppose that "walking in the light" means "not sinning"; if we didn't sin, then we would not need cleansing. To the sort of gnostic John preached against, one who was enlightened knew that there was no sin—naturally the sort of reaction we would get in this case is, "But I don't sin!" or "Sin is made up!" But 1.8 follows, which plants us firmly in the reality that sin exists.

The topic of love is not disconnected from this. If we forsake the reality of sin, we lose our understanding of love. Why? Because Christ was manifested to take away our sin. Our understanding of love is depends on how we perceive his sacrifice, and since the gnostics disclaimed the reality of the flesh and thereby the reality of sin, they could not love. We see it distorted into lust by the libertines and condemned by the ascetics. One of the most powerful revelations of God's love for us is given in 1Co 13.


I think we may also find here an oblique statement about the spiritual corporeality present in Christianity. We perceive, and rightly, the corruption of our flesh, both material (we start to die the moment we're born) and spiritual (it is bound by sin). But we are not allowed to believe that this is the purpose and end of the flesh; rather, we are told that we will be raised in incorruption (1Co 15).

This is, I think, why Christ is called the firstfruits. As he was raised, so shall we: in bodies that do not decay. We shall be like him, in that we have no sinful nature. We'll finally be free.

The Gnostics, I think, treated the flesh as inherently corrupted. This leads us in two different paths, both expressed in Gnosticism: licentiousness and aceticism—lives of wantonness and deprivation. This is not what we look forward to.


[1] In particular, I worry that we may be inclined to treat the Scriptures as time-bound when implementing an historical hermeneutic. Some are inclined to look at the moral commands of Scripture as culturally irrelevant, as evidenced by a number of groups that wish to remove bans on homosexuality or to ordain women. Not surprisingly, I find that those who are loose in their theology also tend to be loose in their morality (in the sense that they have a much-reduced perspective of sin; I am not saying that people with loose theology perforce live licentiously).

Epistemology

In some respects, it's interesting how many of my own studies coincide with events as they happen in others' lives, also. So as I read through Job, I have been confronted with different views of substitution, for example. I find again, reading through a pre-print manuscript for a book that Job has appeared again, this time in the realm of epistemology.

A family friend has written about his own search for a valid epistemology (his words, not mine) and sent the book to my father, who has loaned it to me. I don't intend to review the book here, but perhaps to regurgitate some of the questions it asks. How we know what we know is an interesting question, and not an easy one to answer.

What I have enjoyed in the reading is getting to know a different side of a man I've known by name most of my life. His questions often parallel mine and always provoke thought. In the past several months, I have found myself confronting the same questions he asks and searching for an adequate means to answer them. I have found friends in distress and been asked to answer some of their questions.


It is extremely difficult for me to write coherently on this subject. Epistemology really begins with infinite regress. We pose a question, "How can I know that the answers to my questions are true?" Unfortunately, the answer to this question must validate itself. This sort of self-reference is a recipe for broken systems; Gödel had something to say about that with his Incompleteness Theorem.

At least to a degree, the answer to that question lies for me in Realism. I suppose my brand is a bit different than Plato's and his students'. Christianity has, however, a very realist bend. We see glimpses of it in Hebrews, where Moses was instructed to create an earthly tabernacle (the particular) based on a heavenly pattern (the universal). We see it in the doctrine of redemption, in which corruption (the particular) is subsumed by incorruption (the universal). We see it, too, in the writings against Gnosticism. There is a spiritual corporeality to Christianity that I find extremely persuasive.

Lewis argued in Surprised by Joy that materialism (contemplation) could not explain what he experienced (enjoyed). The mere act of thinking about Joy distanced himself from the experience; he could not simultaneously experience Joy and think about it. It was this that convinced him, I think, of the truth of Realism. That experience should be separate from thought does not at first blush seem that profound. But it was, I think, the realization that he couldn't manufacture Joy that convinced him it existed objectively.

Once this is admitted, the floodgates open, and we find ourselves ready to begin, I think.


I am pushed further towards the realist position by discontent with the anti-realist one. One of the difficulties with the postmodern truth-is-relative approach is that it has to argue from a perspective that there is at least one objective truth: that all other truths are relative. The obvious contradiction here is that the postmodern anti-realist has already admitted first, that there is a frame of reference that holds all observers, and second, that there is at least one truth in that frame of reference that holds for all observers.

The problem here is that this line of thinking must be accepted a priori. Axioms are a good thing, normally; they're what made Euclid's geometry so powerful. But in this case, the axiom dismantles the framework in which the observer operates. If I am to accept that there is a universal frame of reference, then why should I accept that this axiom, and this axiom only, holds for it? Postmodern anti-realism begins and ends with this point; it can't go any farther.


For some, this is probably comforting because of their own fears about what is Real. But I have only ever seen it as a haven for the cowardly.

One of the other reasons I think some trend away from Realism are the results of scientific investigation. Heisenburg told us that we change the outcome of an experiment by observing it. Gödel told us that we have mathematical systems that contain true theorems that aren't provable. There is inherent uncertainty, in other words, in materialism.

What did not happen, however, was that previous understanding was invalidated. Euclidean geometry didn't suddenly become invalid when Gödel published his groundbreaking paper (I believe it is easily the most significant mathematical achievement of the 20th century). What did happen was that the mathematical community realized that the goal they were seeking—a complete and consistent mathematical system—was impossible.

The postmodern axiom has neither the force nor the conviction of the Uncertainty Principle or the Incompleteness Theorem. While uncertainty is a part of empiricism, it is not the catastrophic sort that we find in postmodernism. We find statistical boundaries and tolerances, but never P and not-P.


When we come back to where we begin with epistemology, I think we have a good ground for knowing what is True. We can start with the assumption at the least that there is something—and in our case, Someone—to know.

The case developed here is rather short, and doesn't really answer the question that the study of knowledge poses; but at least, I think, it argues that we can answer it to at least some degree.

Elihu and Job

One of the interesting follow-ups in the discussion on Penal Substitution is the definition of justice. This theme is woven throughout Job, which I have been reading for two and a half months or so. There's a lot of repetition in the arguments and speeches.

For example, Job's argument may be essentially encapsulated as: "I didn't do anything wrong. God is finding occasions against me. He has taken away my justice." (The last sentence is more or less a direct quote.)

The three friends say, "Bad people get theirs in the end. Bad things happen to bad people. Bad things have happened to Job. Therefore Job is a bad person." This syllogistic reasoning is wrong and fails to persuade Job.

We go through roughly 32 chapters of these sorts of arguments, with some variation (mostly on the side of the friends, who occasionally concede Job's points and set their own in a different context). Job concludes his defense by calling down a lengthy set of curses upon himself if he's not speaking the truth.


At this point, Elihu steps in. He sort of appears out of no where, like Job's initial answer (Job 3.1 says that Job answered, but there isn't anything for him to answer actually recorded) and the whirlwhind that evidently accompanies Elihu's final words. I've not finished all of Elihu's discussion, but he goes to some length to establish his relationship and Job's vis-a-vis God.

Job has styled himself throughout the book as a claimant against God. Elihu accepts that position, and will serve as the mediator between the two.

I can't help but see a type of Christ here. That's one of the reasons I found the following so poignant (Job 33):

6 Behold, I am according to thy wish in God's stead: I also am formed out of the clay. 7 Behold, my terror shall not make thee afraid, neither shall my hand be heavy upon thee.

There's a succinct comfort in this, and that is that when Christ stands between ourselves and God to mediate his wrath, he does so as a human. He is not remote, nor unconcerned with our weaknesses. He knows them intimately. He does not come to terrify, but to comfort. He is, in this respect, a peer and a confidant. He is our Advocate (1Jn 2.2).


This is a bit separate from the issues of justice, but we'll get there soon enough. Elihu will spend a bit of time dismantling Job's righteousness, and his argument differs fundamentally from that of the three friends.

This is going to provide, I think, a good and different perspective on the issues of righteousness and justice that are such a key part of penal substitution.

Penal Substitution, part two

I haven't been idle in doing more research on penal substitution. I ran across an excellent article called The Logic of Penal Substitution by Packer. It's well-written, considers several different views of the atonement, and provides a decent apologetic for the doctrine of penal substitution.


In my conversations elsewhere, the notion of participation as a model for understanding the Passover, and by extension, the cross has come up, and I wanted to expound on it a little bit.

One criticism of the penal substitution model is that there's more going on than the death of the lamb. If we were to expect the focus of the Passover to be penal substitution, wouldn't there be more of an emphasis on the sacrifice than there is? There's plenty of verses there about the preparation of the food, the manner in which it's to be eaten, and so on. Why is all that there if the focus is on the judgment?

The simple response to this is that of course there's more going on than a mitigation of judgment. We should expect more and hope for it also—there's certainly more to our relationship with God than no longer being condemned.

Instead of seeing substitution penally, others see it as a matter of participation. This is a difficult concept for me to explain, but I'll do my best. Packer does do a good job, so I'd advise reading his essay.

But we can see two different (not necessarily opposing) ways of helping others. The first is doing for them what they cannot do themselves; the second is helping them to help themselves. So rather than "I'll do for you what you cannot do for yourself," they see the cross as, "I'll enable you to participate in a relationship with God."

So some see the elaborate instructions concerning the preparation of food and so on as a means of participating in the Passover.


This is all well and good, but it really doesn't change the fact that there is a very clear judgment and condemnation, and that the Israelite first-born faced it as well as the Egyptian. It secondly doesn't really answer the point that the penal substitution model may very well encapsulate others, and properly should. It has a larger scope.

So I am still waiting to see where else it goes, and trying to put my mind in an older frame of reference.

Penal Substitution

The beginnings of an interesting discussion are taking hold at one of the message boards I frequent regarding the nature of predestination. A significant side bar is the doctrine of penal substitution, which I would casually define as justice applied to one party in place of another.

I have not paid much attention to the conflict from "the other side," so to speak, so I thought it might be worth taking some time to recapitulate some of the views on the subject I have seen elsewhere.

As it turns out, there is a lot of material. A chapter from Dr John Miley's The Atonement in Christ is available online. I found it through Theopedia's page on the subject, which has some quotes and links elsewhere. A rather brief description of several theories of atonement may be found there also. (This is a little disappointing, because how the theory evolves from the early fathers to Anselm is not mentioned at all.)


As with many debates, this one really starts with the definitions, and I think the principle ones are "just" and its close relative "justice." I would describe "justice" as "righteousness in action." Just is the adjective that describes one who is righteous.

I tend to think of righteousness in contrast to sin, i.e., "How much sin can I mix with righteousness before it's not righteousness anymore?" (In other words, we might try define righteousness as an absence of sin. This isn't quite fair, though; an absence of sin is innocence, not righteousness.) We may also define it positively, e.g., as adherence to a standard. This is not terribly different than the previous paragraph, though it avoids the parenthetical complication by defining righteousness positively. Justice, then, might be defined as the execution of the standard.

But I think it is really this definition that is questioned. Some views of God's justice either change the standard (so that righteousness is less) or God's nature (so that he needn't be satisfied in a substitutionary way, for example).


I find support from it in a variety of places.

The use of types. For example, in the Passover as a type of Christ's sacrifice. All of the first-born in Egypt were under the death sentence. The judgment was in a sense commuted for those who sacrificed a lamb of certain quality (first year, unblemished) and sprinkled its blood on the doorposts.

We also see the preposition hUPER used in the New Testament when it says that Christ died "for" us. You're free to read some commentary on the use of the preposition and its meaning, along with some others.

The different words for forgive are also a powerful argument. CARIZOMAI is a verb of legal transaction, the satisfaction of a debt. AFIHMI, on the other hand, is a word of fellowship (it literally means "to send [something] away"), and so is used of a wife sending away her husband (1Co 7.13) and of God sending away our sin (1Jo 1.9).

There are others, but these will have to suffice for this hour. This is a subject sure to be revisited as I read more and acquire a better understanding of the other side.

A Note On Psalm 23

A curious feature of both Greek and Hebrew grammar is that the being verb is omitted when there is no change of state. In many translations, this is indicated by using slanted or italic text to denote that the translator added the words for sake of clarity.

This happens in Psalm 23:1, "The LORD is my shepherd. I shall not want." We can almost translate this as an address: "Jehovah, my shepherd! I lack nothing."¹

There's a certain familiarity and immediacy to this translation that I really like. The direct address almost carries with it the intimacy that we see in Galatians, where the Spirit speaks "Abba, Father" (abba is Aramaic for papa, or daddy). It removes the time constraints of the passage, too—there's a more timeless quality about it that strikes me as more consistent with God's provision.


[1] Biblical Hebrew doesn't have any tense. The time of actions is derived from context. Young understands the second phrase to be in the present.

Tensions in 1st John

At Bible Study last night, we were looking at first John, as we have been in church, and it struck me that there are tensions throughout the book. For example, the tension in John 3 is that those born of God cannot sin (verse 9), but our experience is that we sin, and quite a bit.

It really begins in chapter 1, where we read that if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and in chapter 2, where we read that if we say we know God and don't keep his commandments, we are liars.

We're in a heap if we equate keeping God's commandments with "not sinning."¹ Doesn't that mean that saying "I know him" is the same as "I have no sin"? Aren't these two statements mutually contradictory?

We get another sense of this in 1.7, where we read that if we walk in the light, his blood is cleansing us from all sin. If "walking in the light" means "not sinning," then where is the sin to be cleansed? Doesn't the verse imply that walking in the light includes sin?

How do we approach 3.9, which says that those who are born of God cannot sin?²


I'm not sure that I have the answers to any of these questions (in fact, I'm more sure that I don't), but what interested me some yesterday in the study is the historical context of the book.³ As I understand it, the book is considered a treatment of Gnosticism (Wikipedia article / Catholic Encyclopedia).

Gnosticism is a bit complicated, and I am no expert. As I understand it, the Gnostics generally treated the world as understable through two avenues: a "fleshy" one and a "spiritual" one. This is not entirely out of line with Christian though (see Ga 5, Ro 7, and others). As I've been taught, the Gnostics essentially denied the reality of the flesh and exalted (in their minds) the spiritual realm. This provoked rather licentious living (as mentioned in the "Antinomian School" of the CE article linked above) while simultaneously denying the reality of sin.

And I think perhaps that what we're seeing here is that sin is real, that the flesh is real, and that there is connection between the two more corporeal than we might think at first. (We read of glorified bodies in 1 Co 15, but not glorified spirits.) And so walking in the light (an important concept, I think, for the Gnostics) co-exists with sinning (which the Gnostics disallowed). Our fellowship with God is based on the admission of guilt (1.9), which implies the reality of sin.

And so I wonder if perhaps part of the tension in John is really that it's an explanation of how the spirit and flesh co-exist. In Galatians we read that the flesh fights against the spirit, and that it prevents us from doing what we want to do. In Romans seven, Paul laments that he doesn't even practise (PRASSW) the good he would like to do, but he completely does (POIEW) the evil that he wouldn't.⁴

Perhaps what we see in 1 John is a description of the spirit (the righteous, incorruptible part of our nature) and the flesh (the unrighteous, corrupted, and dying part). It has given me a lot ot think about, and hopefully will help crystallize some of my thoughts tomorrow when we finish the second chapter.


[1] I'm certainly not persuaded this is the connotation of "to keep" here—the word is more complicated than that—but there's a certain moralistic tone here that can't be denied. Doing the Right Thing is a part of this.

[2] I personally find the grammatical justification for "cannot continually sin" a little weak. I understand why the NIV translates 1 John 3 the way it does—and I'm pretty sure almost everyone else follows suit—but it's difficult to push POIEW into such a translation, and it really makes for some singular translation practices.

[3] I'm not a huge fan of the historical method of exegesis, primarily because it teaches people that we can make some cultural or historic adjustments to doctrine. E.g., there are people I've met who take the Corinthian prohibition against sexual contact as somehow limited to that single church, to that single culture, or that single time period. The same sort of thing happens with any number of sins (most of which I've committed, for whatever it's worth) that are culturally more acceptable today.

[4] One of the reasons it's very difficult follow the translation as mentioned in [2] is that the word POIEW is one that indicates completeness, not habit. We get our word "poem" from POIEW; one does not half-write a poem.

More Free Will Musings

This collection of thoughts is mostly inspired by some recent stories regarding a link between faith and genetics. I found it originally on Slashdot and engaged in a short conversation with a couple posters regarding free will.

The original poster tried to demonstrate that God couldn't have free will because omniscience and omnipotence were logically incompatible. The premise and conclusion were both flawed, but it's really only the premise I'm interested in. He used a rather classic straw man argument: defining terms his way and applying them to the system of his choosing in order to show that system inconsistent. Christians never attributed free will to God in the sense that the poster would like to think of it.

The Bible is clear that (in at least one instance) God could not lie (He 6.8). All we really need in one instance to show that the poster's vision of God's omnipotence wasn't the same as the Christian's. And, for whatever it's worth, all Christians ever said was that we couldn't sin in heaven, not that we weren't free. The Scriptures really don't support the idea of free will as the power of contrary choice. They do a handy job of telling us that freedom is the ability to do what is right.


The original poster declined to respond, but another took issue with my statement that science provides no notion of free will either—it only ever ends in determinism (biological, chemical, and so on).

He used chaos theory, a new argument to me but not particularly to the debate. The mathematical basis isn't terribly difficult to grasp, and most people are familiar with the concepts regardless. The Butterfly Effect is the classic example: a butterfly flaps its wings in Venezuela and a tornado occurs in Texas. It's captured in the well-known rhyme:

For want of a nail, the shoe was lost;
For want of a shoe the horse was lost;
For want of a horse the rider was lost;
For want of a rider the battle was lost;
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.

Cutting out a fair amount of speculation and text, the thrust of it is that the present state of a chaotic system is very sensitive to initial conditions and that provided the same set of initial conditions, small variations along the way can produce drastically different outcomes after the same number of iterations.

This is important for a few reasons, one of which is that a lot of systems in nature are chaotic—the weather, for example, and the firings of neurons in the brain. What we find is that individual events are unpredictable, though classes of events are.¹

The poster admitted, however, that this really wasn't avoiding determinism at all, though it provided the perception of it through unpredictability. In fact, chaotic systems are deterministic, just not "orderly."

There's another problem here, and that is that "Joe Freewill" (the moral agent in his example) is under the same constraints I am: he can't predict his own choices, either. In other words, the person making decisions is as ignorant about them as I am.

Yet another issue is that while chaos theory describes it cannot impute. In other words, chaos theory can describe natural phenomena, but it cannot explain how they arise. Science doesn't answer those sort of questions, and indeed cannot. Chaos theory says, "Event A is unpredictable," but it doesn't tell me where the source of unpredictability is.


Lots of interesting things to think about and study here, and it will be interesting to read about if I can escape the mound of books I'm buried under. At the end of the day, though, science and math really don't provide humans with much humanity—at least not in this case.