Let us go on to maturity

This has taken quite a while to write.  It's been a very busy two months or so.  It was tough to get this out by Christmas.  I apologize for content that's not exactly relevant to the Advent. –mem

We are in Hebrews in church, and we came upon chapter six today (ed. now a long time ago).  It proved a fertile ground for questions, which is hardly surprising:  it comes up in eternal security debates all the time.  It's practically de rigueur for anyone opposing eternity security, and so most of the conversation about the passage seems to revolve around the subject—especially on the Internet.

If we take a bit of a step back, though, it seems that there's more here than we might usually think.  Establishing any sort of detailed context is really beyond the scope of my blog, but I think we can successfully argue that the warnings here are directed primarily to Christian Jews who were tempted to return to their Judaism.

The elementary principles enumerated in chapter six really continue from the rebuke of chapter five ("For though by this time you should be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God," 5:12).

I think we can find parallels to  the principles in chapter 6 in the Old Testament.  So for example (non-exhaustive list):

Three I's of Scripture

That's I as in EYE, not an ell.  Not one much for introduction, the three I's are Inspiration, Intent, and Interpretation.

Regardless of where you fall on the inspiration spectrum (from verbal-plenary to not-inspired-at-all), the point to be made about it is that inspiration is a quality of the text and not the author.  (Otherwise, every grocery list Paul ever made would be inspired.)  The concept of inspiration describes a relationship between the human and Divine authors of Scripture.

Intent is the characteristic of the author and speaks to the overall purpose of the text.  The concept of inspiration plays into this, of course, but the two concepts are distinct.  Depending on one's concept of inspiration, the intent of the human author and the intent of the Divine author may be different.  The fact remains, however, that intent is an attribute of the author.

Interpretation is the attribute of the reader.  This is what the reader does with the text itself.  The goal of interpretation is to uncover, at least to some degree, the intent of the author.

When we examine the Scriptures, it's important to put these different attributes in their proper place before mucking up the water with other issues (for example, how does our perspective of inspiration affect our interpretation of the text?  to what extent does God's intent in the text affect our reading?  and so on).

Impeccability and Eschatology

One of the things that's interesting about impeccability is that it's a trait that those in heaven will all share (unless you're like Origen and think that we'll be able to sin in heaven).  We are told fairly clearly in Scripture that this will be the case:  the consequences of sin (death, tears, pain, et c.) will be wiped away (Re 21.4).

What, then?  Do we conclude from this that we are no longer really human in heaven?  The Scripture is clear that we will have a glorified body (1Co 15.35ff), it is true, but it seems equally evident that this body is not entirely dissociated from our experiences and lives here on earth.  Indeed, Paul explicitly calls Jesus the "man from heaven," a man with a heavenly body.  Christianity is intensely corporeal and physical.

I do not think, however, that we are given leave to assume that the ability to sin is essential to the concept of humanity.  We will be human in heaven, and we will not have the ability to sin.  Indeed, this is what we look forward to:  how awful it would be to yet fear sin!  We all groan with Paul when he writes, "Wretched man that I am!  Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" and rejoice with him when he responds, "I thank God, through Jesus Christ our Lord!" (Ro 7.24,5).

If we orient this view backwards on Christ, then, we can gain a clearer appreciation of what it means to be impeccable:  it means that we are truly human.  It is a grave error to impute to his humanity the fallenness of my own; indeed, it's quite backwards.  Just like our personhood is seen most clearly through the personhood of the Trinity, so also our humanity is seen most clearly in the humanity of Jesus Christ.  Our reference point has been reseated:  it is no longer Adam, but Christ, who defines what it means to be human.

Because he was impeccable, so we have the confidence that we likewise shall be, when we finally see him and are like him (1Jo 3.2), and in him there is no sin (1Jo 3.5; cp. Ez 28.15?).

Indulgence is Contempt

(Or:  Esteem others better than yourself.)

I've powered my way through a lot of Scripture lately, trying to make up for some lost time this year.

In reading through Psalm 17, it concludes with the phrase, "I shall be satisfied when I awake in Your likeness," contrasting the satisfaction of the Psalmist with the satisfaction of the man whose only goal in life is to leave a posterity for his children.  (This was powerful for me, but it's another post.)

I think the Psalm itself is Messianic (it fits thematically with other Messianic Psalms, anyway, and it is in the middle of some of them, also), so I see in this statement the glorification of Jesus Christ.

But I think it is properly extended to us also, who are to be conformed to his likeness and image (Ro 8.28ff).  That is the goal of God's work in our lives, and the promise of his elective decree.  We see in other passages that Jesus humiliated himself for us, esteeming us better than himself.  It is for this reason that Paul can enjoin the same of us (Philippians 2).

It struck me in thinking about this that this implies not being indulgent or paternal in the ways that we treat others.  When we marginalize their fears or concerns or treat their dreams or pastimes as cute, we implicitly suggest our own superiority.  This is exactly the opposite of what we read in Philippians, and exactly the opposite of how Christ acted toward us.

On Hebrew Poetry

There is a really cool article on the poetic craft by Justin Taylor.  The passage he uses, Psalm 19, is one of my favorites from a gospel perspective.  I'd highly recommend the article for this reason, and because it will certainly help improve your reading.

Philemon

I was pleasantly surprised last night that we were in Philemon in church—not going every Wednesday gives you that added bit of uncertainty, I guess.  While the sermon itself tended far more to law than grace, I wanted to pick up a few bullet-points of interest to me:

• About the time of the writing (probably 60–62 AD), Lucius Pedanius Secundus was murdered by a slave.  Roman law at the time required that all of his slaves be executed, and Nero carried out the sentence on 400.  That Onesimus was also under a death sentence for running away from his master adds a certain sense of urgency to this letter.
  
• One wonders what sort of jailer Christ is (v1).  Paul is his prisoner; do we suppose that Jesus Christ is so poor a jailer as to let him go?  Rome does not hold Paul captive:  Jesus does.
  
• There are marks of grace all over the letter.  Paul's plea in vv17ff is so highly reminiscent of the pleas that Christ must make for us:  "Put it on my account" he writes.
  
• How much, incidentally, is this like the Good Samaritan, who provides coin for the recovery of the man near death, but also promises to pay any other debt he incurs when he returns.  A comforting thought, this, that Christ resurrects us and promises to pay the debts our sin nature continues to incur.
  
• The mention of Mark in verse 24 fits with Colossians 4:10, where he is admitted to fellowship despite the argument between Paul and Barnabas (Acts 15:39).  There is grace here:  Mark's errors are not reviewed or open—he is simply admitted to fellowship.
  
• Contra Mark is Demas, who at the time of this writing is in good standing but appears by the end of Paul's life (perhaps 63 AD if we accept Pauline authorship of 2d Timothy) to have forsaken him (2Ti 4:10).
  
• Onesimus' name means "useful," and so there is a lot of wordplay here in v11 and v20 also.

Lots of stuff going on in this short letter.  Really enjoy it from many different perspectives.

Self-portraits

Simon of Cyrene is a bit of a self-portrait in the Scriptures; evidently his sons were figures in the early church (cf Mk 15.21).  There is no indication in the Bible that he had any other interaction with Jesus other than to carry his cross on the road to Calvary.  But this brief walk down the road seems to have completely transformed his life—so much so that it lived on in his sons, Alexander and Rufus.

As we would expect, the focus is not on Simon, as though he is to be admired, but on Jesus Christ, the one who suffered and died.  All we know about Simon is that he carried the cross a ways and that he had two sons.

In a way, this ambiguity about the life of Simon provides us an opportunity to paint our face over his, to see ourselves in his encounter.  I think the Scriptures do this for us on purpose, though most explicitly in the life of Paul.

Paul writes of his conversion—being struck down on the road to Damascus—that he was a prototype for all future believers (1Ti 1.16).  There is a Damascus road for all of us.  While we are enemies, blasphemers, and persecutors, Jesus strikes us down and pulls us to himself.  It is a hostile invasion of sorts, but one, I think, that is in retrospect always welcome, and always tinged with the experience of the Savior suffering on his road to Calvary.

However, my mouth is on fire.

Cooking shows usually aren't inspiration for me in any form, but I was reminded of Grace in Practice by one of them recently.  In this version of reality TV, chefs submit their creations to judges to be praised or scathed.  One particular contribution garnered several compliments from a judge; the buildup couldn't have taken more than thirty seconds, but the praises were a pretty significant ego-boost.

Then he terminated by saying, "However, my mouth is on fire."  This is the classic setup for gospel to law.  It is the sort of eternal "Yes, but" that we are so used to hearing.  In the gospel this is not so:

For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we proclaimed among you, Silvanus and Timothy and I, was not Yes and No, but in him it is always Yes. For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory (2Co 1.19,20).

Just Give me the Gospel

In the final analysis, what I really need is the gospel.  I enjoy fellowship with believers, and their insight into situations in my life can be useful and helpful.  But there is nothing for me but the gospel.  When I am faced with my own sin, I need the gospel.  When I am tempted to be proud of my accomplishments, I need the gospel.  When I am unsure of where to go or what to do, I need the gospel.  When I make poor choices or suffer the consequences of decisions, I need the gospel.

So often it seems like people—myself included—are bent on giving solutions instead of simply preaching the gospel.  It is my every need.

Science News

When I started this blog, I thought I could be fortunate enough to be like GK Chesterton, who seemed to have an opinion about everything.  To that end, I thought I'd add comments on the news, current events, and other such things in a manner informed by my Christianity.  That never really happened, since my passions are rooted in theology.  There are times, of course, when the secular news world intersects, especially recently.

The latest science news that caught my eye was that scientists discovered neutrinos moving faster than light speed.  If this is true—and the scientists involved are pretty puzzled—Einstein's theory of relativity may be controverted.  The importance of this really cannot be overstated.  My immediate thought is that it lends some credence to the possible inversions of cause and effect described by the Bell Inequalities of quantum physics (which state that either everything is in some way touching, or that cause and effect are not always related).

This sort of thing shows how science works.  Improving observational techniques (the paper notes that in 2006 the instrumentation required for the precision achieved wasn't available at the lab) lead to somewhat unexpected results.  I'll be intrigued to see how this story progresses.

Why did Jesus have to cleanse the tabernacle?

There is an interesting passage in Hebrews:

Thus it was necessary for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these rites, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these (9.23).

As we read in Exodus, the earthly tabernacle that was created was really a copy of a heavenly pattern.  Hebrews tells us that the pattern wasn't just blueprints, but a real tabernacle.

Setting aside for the moment some of the difficulties of "real" here, one has to ask how a heavenly tabernacle came to need purifying.  How was it that it was corrupted?

I don't really have any definite conclusions on the subject, but I can offer a couple different ideas.  Some thoughts from my two or four readers would be appreciated.

Inerrancy and Infallibility

In a somewhat tangentially-related post on science and faith, I thought I'd link an excellent read by Justin Taylor at the Gospel Coalition on the subject of Inerrancy and Infallibility.

Quoting John Frame, he writes:

So, I think it is helpful to define inerrancy more precisely (!) by saying that inerrant language makes good on its claims. When we say that the Bible is inerrant, we mean that the Bible makes good on its claims.

Now many writers have enumerated what are sometimes called qualifications to inerrancy: inerrancy is compatible with unrefined grammar, non-chronological narrative, round numbers, imprecise quotations, pre-scientific phenomenalistic description (e.g., “the sun rose”), use of figures and symbols, imprecise descriptions (as Mark 1:5, which says that everyone from Judea and Jerusalem went to hear John the Baptist). I agree with these points, but I do not describe them as “qualifications” of inerrancy. These are merely applications of the basic meaning of inerrancy: that it asserts truth, not precision. Inerrant language is language that makes good on its own claims, not on claims that are made for it by thoughtless readers.

It's fairly lengthy, and I've only quoted the conclusion. You should read the whole of it.

The Ungospel in Exodus 33

We're in Exodus 33 in church—one of the most anticipated passages in awhile for me.  It's a great gospel passage, at least in the sense that it sets us up for the gospel so nicely.

I will send an angel, and I will drive out the Canaanites, the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey; but I will not go up among you, lest I consume you on the way, for you are a stiff-necked people (Ex. 33:2,3).

God safeguards the people of Israel by refusing to go among them:  his presence would consume them.  There is an echo of the role of Jesus here in the person of the angel (the LXX is more personal here, saying, "I will send at the same time My angel"), who serves as God's representative and in a way shields them from his devastating presence.

The people mourn, and for two reasons, I think:  the first is the fear of God's presence, and the second is their desire for his presence.  In verse four, the NKJV puts it nicely:

When the people heard this bad news, they mourned, and no one put on his ornaments.

It is this bad news that is the "ungospel," and the same news that sets the stage for  the cataclysm of 33.18–20:

Moses said, “Please show me your glory.” And [God] said, “I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name ‘The LORD.’ And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live.”

The glory of God is terrifying, and this is a terrible truth.  God has just told Moses that no one is permitted to enjoy the most intimate access to himself.

This is controverted in the person of Jesus Christ, who is God Incarnate in human flesh.  God must no longer refrain from walking among his people:  he walks freely among them.  He no longer hides his face because his glory would consume:  now we see the image of the invisible God (Co 1.15).  Indeed, in Jesus we behold the glory of God (Jn 1.14, He 1.3).

It is this glory that makes us live:  "And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent" (Jn 17.3; it's no accident this verse is sandwiched by verses about the glory of God). It is in God's presence that we are truly alive.

On Science: Let God be True (Part Six)

We now (re-)confront an issue alluded to in previous posts: the Omphalos hypothesis. I'm not sure its in vogue in most young-earth creation apologetics, but it seems to have taken root in the apologetic against YEC.

The hypothesis is that God created a functional and mature world to start, including an Adam and Eve with requisite signs of age (and for completeness' sake, belly buttons:  omphalos is Greek for navel).  As we have learned more about the universe, this hypothesis has been extended to other signs of age, especially the distance in time and space that light must travel to reach the Earth.  The YEC posits that either God created the universe with an appearance of age or that some natural constant(s) changed to speed things up a bit.

The response to this is pretty predictable:  this seems pretty deceptive.  Isn't an appearance of age deceiving?  I think this argument is successful if you're agnostic or atheist, but I'm not sure we can say the some of an old-earth creationist.  Indeed, as the Scriptures say, "Let God be true and every man a liar."

Why is it difficult to make this case as an OEC?  Because science is always evolving.  Our understanding of the cosmos is changing and, we think, basically improving.  Be that as it may, the dominant theories for how the universe works have persisted even though they are inaccurate to some degree.  Newtonian mechanics is one of my favorite examples because it illustrates how our changing observational power conclusively demonstrated that Newtonian inaccuracies were not a result of experimental error but experimenter inability.

As a Christian, then, I can ask basically the same question of the OEC as the OEC can ask of the YEC:  why didn't God give us the answer ahead of time?  Why did we have to wait some 200 years between Newton and Einstein to figure this out?  Why didn't God just make it obvious that this is how things were supposed to be?  Why didn't he stop us from drinking thoriated water or make penicillin obvious?  Why did he allow us to persist in the mistaken thinking that the earth was at the center of the universe (and then the sun) or that flies would spontaneously arise from meat?


This isn't terribly different than asking why God would create a universe that appears inconceivably ancient but is really only 6000 years old.  The OEC can only really say that the universe is complicated, and it's taken science some time to catch up to that fact.  We know better now than we did then.  But there's literally no reason why the YEC cannot counter, "What makes you think the 'We know better now' of the future won't accord with a literal reading of Genesis?"

People who protest against YEC because God is deceptive if it's true miss the plain facts that we can say God is deceptive or downright cruel for not revealing more in the first place about anything else.  Landmark scientific achievements greatly improved our health:  pasteurization, vaccinations, penicillin, to name a few.  At the very least, you'd think Jesus could have shown us that screen doors would help fix pest-borne diseases.  Why didn't God make the universe easier to understand?

For my part, I have no real dog in the fight about the age of the universe.  I do think, though, that the arguments employed on both sides do some violence to the authority of Scripture and often lead to illogical conclusions.  But I think we can put this particular argument to rest for anyone who believes in God.

On Peer Review (Bric-a-Brac 2)

This really isn't suitable for another "On Science" post as it's really not concerned much with the intersection between science and faith in the sense the previous posts were.  But of course when it rains it pours, and in listening to the radio this morning, there was a really interesting news bit about peer review and publication retractions.

They referenced an interesting site, Retraction Watch, which provides a sort of monitoring service for paper retractions.  There was an interesting note in the media segment in which a contributor mentioned a study on retracted papers.  The study found that after a paper was retracted from Science or Nature, future papers still cited the retracted paper 17 times more than the retraction.


There's a question here about whether peer review is really doing its job.  Even assuming retractions happen because of current work (rather than fraud or more nefarious reasons), it's interesting that publications more frequently cite discredited research than the research discrediting it.

This reminded me some of the 2009 East Anglia global warming scandal, at least insofar as that scandal did more damage to peer review than it did to anything else.

In the final analysis, at the very least it suggests that we ought be more careful about quoting science and studies without being careful about their contents—and what's most recently been discovered.

More Science Bric-a-Brac

A couple quick hits for consideration.

The first is a post by Dr. Jay Wile titled "Science can't prove anything." This is a pretty critical point, and one I have tried to make in the past when I say that science is fundamentally undecidable. I borrowed that term from computer science, but the principle is basically the same. Science can tell us when something is wrong, but not when something is right. The idea that we've arrived at the Right Solution to Life the Universe and Everything is plausible only in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

The second is a topic I may revisit later, which is that science (as a body of knowledge) is not the same thing as natural revelation, although the two may be related. Revelation is the sort of thing that someone has to tell you, as opposed to the sort of thing you can find out for yourself. So when we say that the heavens reveal the glory of God, we are saying that it is a way for God to tell you something about himself that you wouldn't have otherwise known. The reason we call it "natural" as opposed to "special" revelation is that it is a general communication by God to all mankind. Special revelation, on the other hand, is what happens when God communicates to a specific group of people. (More precise definitions may follow as I grow my thoughts on the subject.)

On the Reliability of the New Testament

Rey pointed me to a set of interesting MP3s. There are some good things here; it's worthwhile to listen to.

On Science: Consequences Two (Part Five)

Having decided, then, what one consequence of revelation trumping science is not (that is, trusting revelation over science does not mean science is useless or generally untrustworthy), it seems like a good idea to note one of the positive consequences.

This will probably please some and rankle others, but I think one of the positive consequences about special revelation (the Scripture) being more authoritative than natural revelation (science) is that the whole apologetic debate about the age of the earth is really pretty useless and a gigantic waste of time.

The message of this post to OECs is that scientific analysis doesn't trump God's revelation of How Things Work and what is True. (The methods are flawed, data collection evolves, the interface to the data is fallen, and so on and so forth.) The message to YECs is that it's time to stop making scientific analysis the Gospel Message of Genesis. (Because it isn't a gospel issue. Really: no one is going to hell because Genesis isn't a science book. And the same caveats to your interpretation apply: acting like there's only one way to read Genesis 1–3 is just as dumb as assuming that we can interpret scientific data objectively.)

Ironically, both groups act the same way a metaphysical naturalist does when they say that special revelation and natural revelation have to agree with each other. And the unfortunate emphasis on the non-existent scientific narrative of Genesis distracts from the actual gospel narrative of Genesis (the image of God, the fall of the first Adam, the coming of the second Adam, and so on).

Our apologetic, then, should more properly be concerned with the underlying theological and philosophical issues: imago dei for starters. Indeed, this is pretty significant: purely natural processes cannot account for the supernatural imprint of God's image on Adam and the rest of humanity—or at least I've never read anything convincing to that effect. People also often forget that the idea of the superman is an evolutionary one (not a fictional comic-book hero). The next step in human evolution drove (and still drives) the ethics of many racial superiority hypotheses.

For those concerned with the need to answer modern and post-modern science claims against the Bible, the first order of business is to look at the resurrection, not at Genesis. Creation is certainly a miracle, but it is not the primary miracle: the resurrection is. This is scientifically improbable (one would say it violates the second law of thermodynamics at least), but it is historically accessible and within that realm verifiable. People were around when it happened, testified to it, and suffered death and torture for refusing to deny it. If you can accept that God became man in the person of Jesus Christ, lived among us, was crucified, buried, and rose again on the third day, it's not such a far stretch to consider that God could have created the world in six literal days. On the other hand, if you're convinced that the universe is old and can reconcile that with the clearly supernatural presuppositions of the narrative, well and good.

On Science: Consequences One (Part Four)

So what are the implications of this thought experiment? If we admit that it's possible for revelation and analysis to contradict each other, how do we approach science and faith? This is a real tension, and not just for people whose primary reason for rejecting Christianity is faith. (The skeptic, after all, defines "faith" as an unreasonable belief.)

I suppose at the end of the last part, concluding that revelation can contradict analysis can leave us feeling a bit unhinged and perhaps a bit deceived. Does this lead directly to the so-called omphalos hypothesis? Could God really just be deceiving us? I've heard people argue in the past that the world really looks old, but it's not; some have gone so far to say that God made the world look old—perhaps a part of his "strong delusion" (2 The 2.11).

I think this is going a bit far, and it's one of the reasons I tried to take some time to mention that Christians can and should be methodological naturalists when they're practicing science. Science does work, and when properly applied it gives the best answers we can get in the areas in which it's authoritative. (Of course, the best answer is a moving target. Science evolves.)

But one may actually make a parallel argument on the other side of the fence: how is it fair to us that God didn't tell us more about the world we live in? Why should we have to do science at all? Why should we have to go through thousands of years of human history to find out how bacteria are transmitted, or even what they are? (Why didn't Jesus invent screen doors?) Why would God ever let someone sell radioactive products?

(Seriously, people used to drink this.)

Arguing that God should have made a world that looked new is a bit disingenuous, because we can just as easily say that he should've made a world that didn't require the scientific process at all. Why should we have to figure out that drinking thoriated water would make your jaw fall off?

All this aside, many people seem to forget that a lot of science, both in the past and present, was done by Christians. Isaac Newton, for example, wrote more about theology than he ever wrote about science. Christians have a reason for expecting science to work: God created, and revealed himself through creation. Creation presents an order that suggests that the scientific method may not be such a bad thing, after all.

In fact, we can argue that Christians have a better argument for the scientific method than do atheists. There is no reason to expect things to work tomorrow like they do today if you think that existence occurred purely by chance.

But since we trust God to provide a world that can be properly investigated by the scientific method, why should we not then trust God to tell us about that world? If he changes water to wine, should we not trust the revelation of Scripture, even though it's possible that our scientific analysis may suggest something different than what is revealed?

On Science: Revelation vs. Method (Part Three)

It's worthwhile to take a little side-trip down another trail in the first post, namely the question of the authority of science. For purposes of the discussion, I'll steal one of Rey's thought experiments, namely How old was the wine, and why?

Assuming we could scientifically analyze the water-turned-wine at Cana, we could imagine two possible conclusions: the wine would be properly aged (commensurate with the emcee's testimony of its quality), or that the wine would be comparatively young. For sake of the thought experiment, let's assume that the emcee's taste buds accorded with reality: the wine really was properly aged.

At issue, then, is the question: to what degree do we give science authority over revelation? The text says the wine was chronologically young; but in at least one of our possible scenarios, the analysis reveals an age of thirty days or more. Which authority do we believe? (And are these answers really contradictory at all?)

It is worth noting that there are some things you cannot know unless someone tells you. Plantinga illustrates this by talking about pie. (I appreciate this, because I know that pumpkin pie is suitable for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.) A scientist can determine a great deal about a pie from analysis, but it would be difficult (if not impossible) to determine who made the pie unless someone told him.

The question our thought experiment poses is whether analysis and revelation must always coincide. Moderns may argue that the answer to this question is yes, but I think this is actually quite a difficult statement to prove: it is a philosophical one, not scientific, just like the statement of metaphysical naturalism.

Science, after all, does not concern itself with revelation, only with observation. And if there is anything that we've learned in the past century, it is that observation is not neutral: Heisenburg (much to Einstein's dismay) demonstrated that measurement of one property changes another, and the famous double-slit experiment showed that observation actually influences experimental outcomes. We can even construct thought-experiments in which two observers experience radically different, apparently contradictory, phenomena. (Think gravitational time dilation at a black hole.) So it seems rather strong to argue that revelation must always accord with analysis when analysis itself isn't consistent.

This is not to say that scientific enterprise is doomed to err, and that is certainly not the point made here. Rather, science cannot answer all questions—and even those questions it can answer with some certainty may turn out to have wildly different explanations.

At the very least, then, we ought to acknowledge that the idea that the scientific explanation is the preferred one, or even the right one (for some value of Right), is a philosophical position, and not a scientific one. The lines here should be properly maintained if for no other reason than we can better distinguish what is the product of our scientific method, and what is the product of our philosophy of science.

On Science (Part Two)

In the last post, I spent some time distinguishing between metaphysical naturalism and methodological naturalism because I think often these two things are conflated.

This is especially an issue with atheistic science: because the scientific method assumes that natural phenomena occur because of natural processes, some make an unjustified (and unjustifiable) leap that only natural processes exist.

The basic assumption of science—methodological naturalism—cuts out any metaphysical speculation, including the assertion that supernatural causes don't exist (or do). When people say that God's existence cannot be scientifically proven, they are correct. But the reason is definitional in nature: science by definition cannot prove anything about the supernatural.

This is a far cry from saying that nothing about the supernatural can be proven; science is not a refuge for atheism (or even agnosticism, really). The metaphysical naturalist is acting as a philosopher, not as a scientist, when he says that the supernatural does not exist. Science does not and cannot prove this.

On Science (Part One)

I had originally intended this to go out a lot sooner. It's been in queue since 12 July. It's not an easy topic, and I've been traveling quite a bit lately. –mem

A glut of postings on Theologica some weeks ago, now, have been about science and faith and their intersection. I am readily piqued by these discussions (in many ways), and this post has been percolating in my head for awhile in some form or another.

Science may be thought of in two principle ways: the first is as a body of knowledge (whence we get things like political science or computer science) and the second is as a process to acquire that knowledge. It ought to be said that the first definition is the older one (science comes from the Latin scientia for "knowledge"), and what we today associate with science was once simply termed "natural philosophy."

The scientific process is iterative, with well-defined stages (your mileage may vary, but this rough outline is probably fine):

1. Observe
2. Hypothesize
3. Experiment
4. Conclude
5. Repeat

Essential to the process is the assumption of methodological naturalism, the idea that all events occur due to natural causes. While philosophical naturalism is metaphysical (asserting that only natural forces and causes exist), methodological naturalism is an assumption about physical phenomena, and provides a framework for studying them. The former excludes the existence of the supernatural, while the latter assumes that excludes the supernatural as an explanation (without making any claims about whether or not the supernatural exists).

When we argue about science and faith, this distinction is pretty critical. Christian scientists are methodologists: they assume that God orders and ordains the universe in such a way that we can apply the scientific method reliably.

I think this distinction is important to draw out, if for no other reason than that it helps articulate bits of the debate between young earthers and old earthers, or between atheists and Christians. It also helps explain why those who posit supernatural causes are not really doing science by definition. It clarifies the fact that science is a process, not a cathedral.

Atheists often conflate methodological and metaphysical naturalism: the latter assumes the point they wish to prove with the former, but all the former does is to stake out the boundaries of the scientific sandbox. I'd have more to say about this, but I think it'll wait for another post.

So we'll restrict ourselves for the next few paragraphs to the consequences of the Scientific Method, and really only the first point of it.

Science, as a body of knowledge, is constantly evolving. It evolves primarily because our instruments of observation are changing. What appears to work in one way (with all the suitable predictions and other things that accompany scientific theory) turns out to work in a much different way than expected when we can examine it more closely.

A classic example of this appears in the early 1900s with the advent of the Theory of Relativity. Einstein's thought experiments and subsequent formalizations paved the way for a dramatically different way of viewing the world when compared to Newtownian mechanics. Einstein's genius appeared in his thought experiment (and subsequent development over several years), but truthfully the confirmation of his theories has come from new and more refined observational techniques.

When Newton codified his laws of gravitation and inertia, they weren't without their problems: Mercury's orbit wasn't properly predicted by his laws of gravitation. (On the other hand, his law of gravitation was used to predict the existence of Neptune when Uranus didn't follow its expected path.) That the theory of relativity correctly predicts Mercury's orbit is one of the triumphs of that theory.

What this implies is that science evolves with our ability to observe. (But watch out for the pesky double-slit experiment; it turns out looking at things has consequences, too: observation is not experiment neutral.) This should be a "duh" moment for most of us, but I think it highlights one of the difficulties we face when trying to resolve whatever conflicts may exist between faith and science.


The consequence of this when we attempt to shoehorn a particular interpretation of the Scripture into a current scientific model is that we are constantly changing the path to arrive at the same point.

This happens on both sides of the interpretative divide. Young-earth creationists honor the Biblical claim of instantaneous creation and find scientific data to back their interpretation. (How can I interpret scientific data to match the Scripture?) Old-earth creationists have a problem with this (rightfully so), but believe the tension between science and the Biblical narrative needs to be resolved; as a result, their authority often rests in the scientific perspective rather than the biblical text itself. (How can I interpret the Bible to match science?)

What this means is that YECs are constantly changing the route to get to the desired end, while the OECs are constantly changing the end itself. Neither of these approaches to the Biblical text are particularly satisfying, and neither of them really deal squarely with the tension between science and faith.

Both YECs and OECs adopt the same position vis-a-vis science: it's an authoritative description of how things happened. Whether science is authoritative at all is a reasonable question (since our ability to resolve detail changes, so does the science; the body of knowledge therefore is constantly changing), and it's also reasonable to point out that science cannot authenticate itself. That we should accept the scientific description is a philosophical position, not a scientific one.

I think a great many of our problems with science and faith stem from misunderstanding the limits and uses of science. Ultimately if we're going to deal with science-faith tensions, we need to do so in a way that acknowledges the proper uses of science coupled with a robust epistemology. I'm not sure I can do that here, but I'll give it the good college try.

Stewardship

My house is connected to a common area managed by our meager home-owner's association. (Dues are cheap.) Because I failed to really check the property line, I mowed the part of the common area connected to my lawn last year, and I've done it again this year.

As I was mowing last week, I thought that stewardship in many respects is simply taking ownership of things that don't really belong to you.

We are all beggars

When we present the gospel to others, it is never as a bread seller handing free bread to a beggar. It is as beggars to beggars, telling others where the bread of life may be found.

Renewed Appreciation

I hope to resume posting here on a more regular basis. I was out in Iceland for the past ten days or so for a much-needed vacation.

It is a beautiful country, combining all the desolation of the north with rich beauty I've never really experienced.

As the trip wore on, the beauty became more commonplace, and I found myself realizing that one of the effects of the curse is that we have lost the ability for renewed appreciation. We ask ourselves, "Won't heaven be boring?" We find all the things we enjoy lose their luster over time: nothing remains qualitatively new to us. We pursue youth in looks, newness in fashion and gadgetry...and we rarely realize, I think, that the things God has given us to enjoy become old precisely because we are too broken for their newness to remain.

I can't wait for a time when all things are new—including my ability to appreciate them.

The God of the Agains

There is a story about Martin Luther. Even after he had come into a liberating experience with God, he was tempted, and was always merciless with himself over the things he had done or failed to fulfill spiritually.

Once, when he was miserable, a brother said to him, "Martin, God has blessed you, but you have not yet discovered the 'God of the Agains'. You need to know the God who keeps on saving you.

Festo Kivengere, Revolutionary Love, p34. (Emphasis original.)

H/t to char and Ray Ortlund.

Useful Distinctions

Descriptive vs. Prescriptive. A simple phrase, but highly applicable in our reading of the Scripture. When tempted to take a passage and apply it, measuring the difference between its descriptive qualities and prescriptive ones is helpful.

Narrative is not always an endorsement of behavior, which is why most of us don't go out of our way to find prostitutes on the side of the road (a la Judah and Tamar) or hide Egyptians in the sand (a la Moses) or, for that matter, to unleash a sort of Joshua-style jihad on our enemies.

Moral imperatives are obvious in some narratives, of course: it's clear that God disapproved of David's sin with Bathsheba, so it's hard to take a narrative point and argue that murdering a man to commit adultery with his wife is sanctioned in the Bible. (Alternatively, it seems as though the midwives in Egypt are commended for lying to Pharoah about the birth of male children.)

To a degree, I think that a lot of the confusion about descriptive vs. prescriptive texts arises from our predisposition to color the Scriptures with a brush of application: how does this apply to my life? or how can I use this text to make me holier? and so on. While I seriously doubt anyone will object in principle to living lives worth of our election, I think it's reasonable to object to the idea that the Bible is principally about how you life your life.

Maintaining a distinction between description and prescription can give us a few other tools for reading Scripture by jarring us out of the mindset that it has to have an immediate practical application to my everyday life (by which we usually mean something moral). Putting on a different filter—the Christological one is my favorite—gives us the opportunity to see in the narrative nuances that are otherwise not always visible.

The Gospel and the Trinity

A recent blog posting over at Theologica corresponded with some thoughts I've had in the past few weeks on the necessities of Orthodoxy (right opinions) and Orthopraxy (right practice) in evangelism. One is often tempted to ask, "Is it more important what I believe, or what I do?" with respect to spreading the gospel.

I think in the main this is a false dichotomy. Legalism abounds on both sides of this question: those who value correct doctrine are sometimes so rigid that they fail to see how it impacts the way they live their lives; those who value right living sometimes fail to see the need for right doctrine at all. Properly speaking, correct doctrine and correct living are two sides of the same coin; they belong together and should inform each other.

I learned this by experience only within the last few years, when I had the opportunity to speak with two individuals about the Trinity in a gospel context. The doctrine is essential to Christianity (we are not Christians without it), but I think it's fair to say that many would find it trivial. Christianity is supposed to be about ethics and morals and how you live, not about ivory tower obscurities. How can one preach the gospel by talking about the Trinity? How does one approach faith in Christ from the Deity of Christ?

My experiences were unexpected. You sometimes run into theologically literate people on the street, and three were avowed anti-trinitarians: a Jehovah's Witness and two Muslims. In the former case, we discussed the humanity of Christ in the light of his deity. The hypostatic union is hard to unpack and to do well, but I think the ideas were sufficiently communicated. He suffered from a number of addictions and evinced no motivation to overcome them. That Jesus Christ could reveal God to him because he was in fact God, and that he could reveal True Man was good news in his state: mankind isn't doomed to the worst.

My sample size for the Muslims is pretty small, and certainly not of the African or Arabian stripe. But interestingly, they had no answer when I asked why being in the presence of God would not blow them to smithereens. Basic questions about the holiness of God and the nature of man were met in a manner that would be theologically acceptable to a Christian, but no reconciliation was offered except that of works. It is trite to reduce their theology to such a conflict, and I don't intend to oversimplify here.

But strikingly, Christianity offers a resolution that is completely outside the one who comes to God. Because Jesus is God and man, he presents God to us in a way that does not actually smash us to little bits. I have before said that Elihu's words to Job as his intercessor prefigure Christ: "I, too, am pinched off from a piece of clay. No fear of me need terrify you" (somewhat paraphrased, I think). This is a confidence absent from the Islamic conception of God, at least near as I understand it. While the Christian is not encouraged to take God's holiness lightly (that is, after all, one of the lessons of the cross), he is likewise not discouraged from seeking God.

If we were to eliminate the Trinity from the repertoire of Christian theology by some means (like indifference to matters of doctrine, for example), we would lose a significant part of our means of evangelizing the lost. This is not merely an academic concern, nor is it of trifling importance to the average person on the street (despite my rather unique examples).

The gospel is one of restoration. It speaks to the restoration of man's relationship to God, and therefore his relationship to himself.

I'm stuck in an airport finishing this, and I'm not sure how well I'm making the point...but I suppose in the end what I'd like to communicate is that doctrinal precision is helpful to the gospel and immediately practical for it.

Good Friday

It astonishes me sometimes to realize that a man lived, died, and was raised again. While the Bible records several resurrections, it is clear from the Scriptures that Jesus Christ was unique.

I hope and pray his resurrection grips your hearts as it has mine, and that this grip ever tightens. It has been so easy to fall into a rut, and so easy to lose sight of the goal in this wilderness. The only escape from the predations of sin and the terrors of that war is the resurrected Christ. He is our hope.

I doubt I shall have time to write on the Big Day itself, but for all who read, have a Blessed and Happy Easter. He is risen indeed.

Living Forever

It's a personal conviction that one of the ultimate aims of all technology, whatever its good uses, is devoted to ending the curse. This is not to say that technology is itself an evil thing, of course, but that sinful man will strive to have his cake and eat it, too. Sin has consequences, and there are generally two ways to avoid those consequences: avoid the sin, or use technology.

I think we see this in all sorts of ethical debates today. For example, some assert that educating teenagers about the proper use of contraceptives is a tacit approval of premarital sex; others counter that it's a practical concession to behavior that teenagers will engage in anyway. The consequences of sex in general, and not just premarital sex in particular, are babies, of course. While the subject of teen pregnancy is a difficult one, it seems analogous to me, at least in the respect that the consequences of sinful behavior can be mostly prevented by some technology.

I'm not sure this is always such a good thing. A friend and I were talking recently about what I would do if a scientific treatment arose that would stop aging: would I use it? I said no. Ultimately I think that aging and death are the consequences of sin, and a technology that would essentially prevent them is not a real solution to the problem: it's just a treatment for the symptom.

There's also no real reason that living can't be hell, too. In fact, I think that's one of the points of the phrase in Revelation that men will seek death and not be able to find it. Lewis once said that earth was as much hell as the heaven-bound would experience, and as much heaven as the hell-bound would experience. I think that perspective has merit. In any case, I am not seeking after any sort of eternal youth—at least not here.

In Memoriam

Irenaeus says that the glory of God gives life, and that man's life consists in the vision of God. If man does not see God, he does not live. The Rightness of this impressed itself upon me almost immediately, and I have adopted it as one of the formative principles of my life.

There is something terrible about this truth. When Moses asks to see God's glory on the mountain, he is rebuffed: none may see God and live. If we accept Irenaeus' assertion, we are condemned. God interprets Moses' request to see his glory as a request to see himself, and this vision of God would kill anyone who saw it.

Until the New Testament, we are at an impasse. God cannot be seen, and so man cannot truly live. Jesus tells us that eternal life is to know God and his Son, Jesus Christ. This third-person reflection may strike us as odd, especially coming in the middle of a prayer, but it is inextricably linked to his glory: "I glorified you on the earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world existed" (Jn 17:4,5). It is no accident that in doing so, Jesus has disclosed the name of his Father. The revelation of God's glory, the revelation of his name, is the revelation of God himself.

This is why the apostles testified that Jesus is the image of God and the radiance of his glory; he is God's glory come to earth. He is like us. He is someone we can hold on to and grasp. He is human. He is not terrifying. His presence does not kill: it gives life, and life more abundantly.

Here, then, is the solution to the problem proposed by Irenaeus: Jesus Christ. Here is God's glory made visible to us in a fashion we can understand and hold on to. Here is God's glory that makes us live. This is the Jesus that Susan knew, and the Jesus with whom she rejoices. He is the reason for her eternal blessing, and the hope of our own. It is this Jesus she was so keen on introducing to everyone, and the one she sang about.

The Scriptures never give us leave to treat death as anything but an enemy and an unnatural curse. Yet they also promise that death is not the end, and that we have a glorious hope. When we finally pass that final barrier, we will find ourselves face to face with the glory of God, and we will finally live. Just like Susan does now.

"He came to his senses"

There's something about that phrase that resonates deep in me, an admission that ultimately my sins really are insane in a way. I have found myself waking sometimes wondering, "What was I thinking?" This is just another way of coming to my senses.

There is a comfort in realizing this insanity. Sin can grip so hard and so tightly that when God shines his light on our hearts, it's difficult to believe how foolish we've been.

It is remarkable to me how freighted that phrase is with repentance and the poignant return to our Father who runs to meet us with open arms. It is comforting to be reminded, as Keller does so well in The Prodigal God, that we have an older brother who seeks after us to bring us Home.

Enns on Exodus

While Dr. Enns has acquired some reputation for his more liberal views on science and inspiration, his commentary on Exodus is not a bad one at all, and has a lot to recommend it.

We've been going through Exodus in church, so when my father provided his copy of the commentary to me, I was pleased to read it. I'm through most of the plagues so far, so about 250 pages into the commentary. For the most part, I'm pretty pleased. A couple highlights:

• Emphasis of decreation in the plagues.
  Enns notes that the plagues use language that hearkens back to the creation narratives in Genesis. In addition to the usual interpretation of the plagues as a judgment against the gods of Egypt—including the pharaoh, who claimed divinity as a son of Ra—Enns notes that the plagues suggest a sort of decreation. For example, darkness (the 9th plague) stands in direct contrast to the creation of light in Genesis 1. The attacks against Egypt using creation suggest a contradiction of the command to "fill the earth and subdue it," which implies the authority of man over the created dominion.
• Use of Hebrew.
  While I'm not a huge fan of the idea that original languages are super necessary to understand Scripture, Enns does a pretty good job of showing the wordplays in Hebrew and capturing some of the ambiguity of the text.
• Overall perspective.
  One of the things I appreciated immediately about Enns' perspective on Exodus was this gem (paraphrased here): "God has already interpreted Exodus for us by raising Christ from the dead." This earned a hearty AMEN from this corner. He does a good job of visiting application in the here and now, too, but it's always with a Christological tint.

There's little in evidence of the elements that would later cause his removal from Westminster, although he does mention his incarnational model of Scripture early on in the book. One wonders if his opinions have changed significantly in the last ten years, or if he simply shut them down for the production of what was likely to be a pretty mainstream commentary. His later writings and current involvement in Biologos indicate to this reader some liberalization of his views; I wonder if some of it was in reaction to his unwilling departure from WTS.

Regardless, there's some good reading here, and it's generally recommended.

Semantical Hermeneutics

It's been awhile since I've written, and that is mostly because I need to read George Ladd's book recommended to me by Scott before I can really continue with my thoughts on the gospel.

I confess I've also been distracted by the furor over Rob Bell's latest book Love Wins. Having not read it, I won't offer any real opinions here on the book itself. I'm more interested in looking at an interpretive framework used by some in the universal reconciliation camp to avoid traditional Scriptural interpretations.

I term this a semantical hermeneutic, although I suppose any term that means, "An interpretive method based heavily on the meanings of words" will do. At the outset, I should say that I think semantics (the two-dollar word for "meaning") are important to understanding a passage. After all, words actually mean something, and we should be able to rely on those meanings to help us understand what an author is writing. You're doing that right now (probably on several levels).

The issue with an overly semantical hermeneutic is that it tends to ignore contextual clues when looking at a passage by assuming that the meaning of words is more important than the context for understanding authorial intent. Semantics and context usually co-exist in some kind of a feedback loop: semantics reinforce the context and vice versa. The meaning of a passage, then, is a combination of what the words mean and what the context suggests that they mean.

Adapting an example from Carson's Exegetical Fallacies, we can use the sentence "This house is the pits" to illustrate. Anyone familiar with American English idiom (this is context!) will understand what the sentence is communicating: the house is undesirable.

If we apply an overly semantic hermeneutic, we can easily obscure the obvious meaning. "Pits" is a word with a fairly wide semantic range, i.e., it can assume a number of meanings.

For example, "pit" could refer to a large hole in the ground (e.g., used to hold hostages, excrement, or garbage), the casing of seeds in certain varieties of fruit, where the orchestra sits, or the place where cars refuel while racing. (We could come up with more, but these will do.)

Subjecting the original sentence to such a semantic analysis could lead us in a variety of directions. For example, common to some of the definitions is the idea of a hole in the ground. Indeed, this seems the most common use of the word, so probably the sentence is talking about a house that is somewhere in the ground.

Now this may seem a little unlikely, but historical data show that sometimes people actually lived in these kind of homes, so perhaps the phrase really references a sort of dug out house. If we look at other historical data (allowing for some legendary information to creep in over time), we may extrapolate that such homes were once common and even comfortable and nice to live in. Indeed, while one wouldn't want to appear too confident, who could say whether this particular house is not, in fact, Bag End? (Those of you who are fond the definite article—which, it must be said, is quite significant in Greek and Hebrew—may argue thusly because it is "the" pits and not just "pits.")


This sort of reasoning is obviously foolish, and it is written in such a way to emphasize the point. Clearly "This house is the pits" does not mean "This house is Bag-End." But something very similar happens when reading the Bible. We find arguments that rely on the meanings of words coupled with some valid historical data.

Taking a page from recent conversations concerning eternal punishment in Matthew 25:46, we may find logic that runs a bit like this: (1) the word for eternal here has a very wide range of meanings, some of which are finite in duration if lengthy; (2) the word for punishment may connote corrective punishment instead of penal judgment. Suddenly, "eternal punishment" as translated in your Bible looks more like, "Lengthy corrective chastisement" instead of "eternal conscious torture."

I acknowledge that the word for eternal does in fact have a wide semantic range, and that the word for punishment is historically attested (by Aristotle, no less) to connote remedial punishment rather than penal justice. In fact, I think any serious student of the Scripture would agree that these words can present some rather interesting problems of translation.

The real difficulty here, though, is that the meanings of those words are not the only indicators of meaning in the passage itself. The context of the passages, like the preceding parables and Jesus' comments on the judgment—in particular, his reference to the Flood—all recommend a reading that aligns with a more traditional perspective on hell. For example, it is difficult to believe that the phrase, "cut him asunder" in Mt 24:51 is a conciliatory punishment. Or that weeping and gnashing of teeth (the latter understood to speak of anguish and anger) are the results of loving chastisement. It is hard to see in the Flood any sort of offer of peace and reconciliation.

To get around these problems, yet more semantic arguments may be used: perhaps weeping connotes repentance, and the gnashing of teeth (instead of being angry) godly sorrow; maybe "cut him asunder" is a friendly idiom; and most creatively, we see Jesus preaching to those in hell (1Pe 4:6), and that passage specifically mentions the Flood—so maybe that's not speaking of an unending conscious torment in judgment.

I've also seen another semantic argument used to suggest that Jesus dividing the goats and sheep at the end of Matthew 25 is really just him dividing mature and immature believers; the latter group is sent off for some correction. One particular proponent of this view offered the opinion that this is what the people would have understood Jesus to speak of, as it was common cultural practice at the time. (Whether this is true or not, I don't know; no sources were forthcoming, but I suppose it's possible.)

This kind of reading, however, has some serious flaws. If a word has a wide semantic range, this does not mean that any of the meanings are equally valid or likely. In fact, a wide semantic range argues against this kind of reading precisely because the context is necessary to tell us how the writer and/or speaker intended to be understood. We may posit as a rule that the less precise the word used, the more likely meaning is going to come from context.

The meaning of "eternal punishment" is clarified by the examples shown in the parables and Jesus' references to the Flood. When this doesn't meet a theological predisposition, the universalist (or universal reconciliationist) is forced back to word meanings—without indicating why one reading is preferred over another. In some cases, the reading preferred is extremely unlikely (it is not possible to imagine "cut him asunder" is a friendly idiom).

In this respect, the semantic argument sinks under its own weight. It cannot be the primary driver of meaning unless the words used are so precise that they really cannot be properly understood any other way. (Yet this poses another problem: why should we deny a writer or speaker the privilege of using a word in a novel fashion? Again, the case should be made carefully, but it is not entirely out of the question.)

In some cases, the semantic argument is buttressed by historical context. In the case of the word for punishment, KOLASIS, Aristotle (ca. 384-322BC) distinguishes between two words for punishment and notes that this one is corrective or remedial in nature.¹

This sounds pretty convincing. But it has its problems, too. The main one is that languages change over time.² The Greek Aristotle used was not the Greek Jesus would have used (if he spoke Greek), and certainly not the Greek of the New Testament.

A small example may suffice to show this; let us compare King James and the ESV (2 Corinthians 1:12):

For our rejoicing is this, the testimony of our conscience, that in simplicity and godly sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God, we have had our conversation in the world, and more abundantly to you-ward.

For our boast is this: the testimony of our conscience that we behaved in the world with simplicity and godly sincerity, not by earthly wisdom but by the grace of God, and supremely so toward you.

In 1611, the word "conversation" meant "behavior," not "talking." So the ESV properly translates it this way. Some 400 years after the translation, the word is spelled the same, but the meaning has changed. Now Aristotle wrote at least 350 years before Matthew was written (accepting a fairly early date for Matthew). Assuming that the word is used exactly the same way is rather irresponsible, especially because there are contemporary sources that use the word in a different sense than Aristotle's.³

As a final comment, I would note that translation is not a matter of word substitution; one cannot read a dictionary, look up a meaning, and assume that he has translated a document. Translation is pretty difficult to do reliably, and I think we can be fairly confident that most of our translations are faithful to the original language within the bounds of the translators' goals (e.g., dynamic equivalence, word-for-word translation, et c.).

This is one of the reasons that I find an overly semantic hermeneutic so problematic. There is a sense that we can focus so heavily on the meaning of a word that we somehow obscure the context. The word's meaning is then backported through a mess of context—sometimes literally! Why should we imagine that KOLASIS means "corrective punishment" when the preceding text suggests otherwise?—without any real justification for doing so.

This sort of hermeneutic offends basic principles of logic and reading both. While universalism is kind of a current topic thanks to Mr Bell, I've had experience with this in other cases. A common form of this hermeneutic lends itself nicely to making doctrine out of prepositions!

Regardless, arguments of this kind really are not very persuasive, and they really shouldn't receive the kind of respect that they appear to. Respect should be given, of course, to honest and difficult questions about the nature of hell and judgment (of which there are many); but this sort of reading abounds with errors that have a veneer of wisdom and learnedness but ultimately fall flat.

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[1] See Rhetoric, I.10. The phrase used is "Revenge and punishment are different things. Punishment is inflicted for the sake of the person punished; revenge for that of the punisher, to satisfy his feelings." See note on translation here. The original Greek reading is "διαφέρει δὲ τιμωρία καὶ κόλασις: ἡ μὲν γὰρ κόλασις τοῦ πάσχοντος ἕνεκά ἐστιν, ἡ δὲ τιμωρία τοῦ ποιοῦντος, ἵνα πληρωθῇ."

[2] Ironically, the universal reconciliationist makes similar arguments. The Greek word for eternal in Matthew 25 is AIONIOS. Another word, AIDIOS may be used. Evidently some have argued that its relative lack of use in the NT is because AIONIOS had evolved to cover the semantic range of AIDIOS from the time of the Septuagint, where it is more common. So at least some in the UR camp recognize that words really do shift meaning, although here they are arguing for stasis, just like they have to do in the case of the quote from Aristotle.

[3] Josephus connects the two explicitly in War of the Jews 2.8.14: "[The Pharisees] say that all souls are incorruptible, but that the souls of good men only are removed into other bodies, - but that the souls of bad men are subject to eternal punishment." In Greek, "μεταβαίνειν δὲ εἰς ἕτερον σῶμα τὴν τῶν ἀγαθῶν μόνην, τὰς δὲ τῶν φαύλων ἀιδίῳ τιμωρίᾳ κολάζεσθαι."

In this case, you'll see that the view of the Pharisees was that the souls of bad men were subject to punishment (KOLAZESTHAI): eternal (AIDIOS) vengeance (TIMWRIA). It may very well be that KOLASIS does not immediately suggest the idea of penal justice while TIMWRIA does; but one cannot misunderstand Josephus here to say that the Pharisees believed what they did not.

In the same passage, he speaks of "rewards (TIMAS) and punishments (TIMWRIAS) in Hades," indicating perhaps a similar perspective of the torments described in Luke 16:23.

On the Gospel, Part II

Given the number of electrons harmed in the writing of the preceding posts, I thought it worth a few more for sake of summary. It may be tempting to assume that my 10-word summary of the gospel (that it reveals God to us in the person and work of Jesus Christ) is a aphorism used to read the Bible in a particular way; but my experience has largely gone the other way round.

I first remember looking at the gospel in the Old Testament in 1997 or 1998 in a Sunday School class on Luke. It is to this class that I owe the basis for these posts and the rewriting of my transactional understanding of the gospel into something rather broader and more devoted to the revelation of God. While I at that point did not have any substantial opinions on the Trinity (those would wait almost ten years to really develop), it formed a solid foundation for seeing the gospel in the context of the revelation of God's divine and eternal attributes: his righteousness, mercy, faithfulness, and so on.

Between the time of this view of the gospel and a renewed interest in Trinitarian theology, the Psalms opened a new way of seeing Christ. While I occasionally strain to read Christ into the Psalms in a way that is familiar to me, even the few that I have been able to read from his perspective provide insight into his own life and role. It was in these intervening years that I could see Jesus not only as Savior, but also as the great Worship Leader (viz. Psalm 34) who directs our praise to God for his vindication (ultimately evidenced by the resurrection). Here, finally, in my own introverted narcissism, I found Jesus Christ waiting: he took from me the grief of Psalm 88 to return to me the rejoicings of Psalm 89. In the Psalms more than other books (though they are all thus directed), I was able to see Jesus in ways that are not so explicitly shown in the gospels, thus clarifying some of the opaqueness of the New Testament narrative.

When I happened upon Irenaeus (via, it must be said, Sara Groves), it struck me immediately that his perspectives were largely Christological. It is fair to say that man fully alive is the glory of God precisely because Jesus is God, and he is the one man of whom we may say, "In him was life." My thoughts on the Trinity had mostly settled by then, at least in the large, but here was a new revelation about the humanity of Jesus Christ. I suppose in my own heresies I tend more toward docetism than to Arianism, yet Irenaeus seemed somehow to have understood the humanity of Jesus in a way that I didn't. He confirmed in my thinking that Jesus really was more human than I. (It was only after this that I read On the Incarnation by Athanasius.)

It is in this that I found a strange loop in my understanding of the gospel itself. I was confronted with the divine person of Jesus Christ, one who can say that having seen him, we have seen the Father. Irenaeus connects this explicitly to Exodus 33:20, that to look on God was to die. He arrives at the terrible conclusion that even though God's glory gives life, it is paired with God's inexhaustible holiness in whose presence none can stand. The only solution to this problem is the person of Jesus Christ. He is God Incarnate, and must be (I finally understood the bedrock reason for the necessity of the Trinity, at least from my human perspective), or else it were impossible for me to know God. And that is eternal life.

The revelation of God in the gospel consists in the person and work of Jesus Christ. He shows us who the Father is by making him accessible to us; God is finally someone we can reach out and hold onto. Yet we see also in Christ the terror of his righteousness and extent of his wrath. The hypostatic union not only unifies the nature of man and God, yet also reconciles what we might see as conflicting attributes of God.

This, therefore, is why the gospel begins with the terror of God, for to persuade men. It is not because these other things are unimportant. Far from it! It is that God made a special point of condescending to man; he became man, as Irenaeus says, to bring man to God. It is with man that he is chiefly concerned, and in the True Man that he is chiefly glorified. It is therefore quite reasonable, in my opinion, to bring the gospel to man in this fashion.

It is why I have stated that the gospel must begin with the hiddenness of God from man, with sin as the chief problem. We may begin with nature, to which all must pay a final due, or with the Law, to which all our consciences assent. The idolatry of our hearts, that God is somehow fallen like us, is dealt with finally in the revelation of God in the person of Jesus Christ. It is this historical narrative understood in the light of our universal problem that forces our hand. Properly spoken, the message of grace divides; it separates us from who we were into who we are and shall be in Christ. Its warning cannot be ignored, only accepted or refused.

Yet the gospel does not stop here. It is not something that we are to grow out of, but rather to grow in to. It is for this reason that the gospel cannot simply stop at a transaction or switch in destiny, significant as it may be. It is for this reason I would argue that we can explore the gospel endlessly (indeed the reason we shall evangelize each other in heaven). It is in the gospel that we see the revelation of God, and it is through the gospel that our relationship with him grows and matures.

I think Lewis would not take too much umbrage if I were to co-opt his famous phrase "Further up and further in" to describe just this purpose. It is as unbelievers that we are outside the gospel; but as believers, we are always moving further up and further into the gospel. (I would be remiss not to say that I find Lewis' inside-bigger-than-the-outside also poignant and utterly necessary to the metaphor also. The gospel always seems small until you get inside of it, and every layer you expose is larger still.)

And thus one finds in the gospel not just empty forgiveness, as though the cosmic ledger is finally balanced and we can go off on our own debt-free. It is more than this. It is a journey to travel, and one I hope I can share more of, Lord-willing.

The Gospel of Jesus Christ (Part II)

We begin yet again with the 10-word summary of the gospel: God revealed in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

The previous post mentioned some passages from the Old Testament that explicitly describe the content of the gospel. I wanted to look at some of them in this post; the others are left as an exercise for the reader. It's a long but profitable study.

Psalm 40 and some of the chapters of Isaiah prove fertile grounds for a gospel discussion. They contain common elements from different perspectives and are thematically well-represented throughout the New Testament.

I'll not quote the passages much, although I would encourage the interested to read them carefully. If we look at Psalm 40 we can discern a structure in which elements at the beginning and end are related to each other—a rhyming of thought, as it were, rather than a rhyming of words.

Jesus says in 40:5, "You have multiplied, O LORD my God, your wondrous deeds and your thoughts toward us; ... I will proclaim and tell of them, yet they are more than can be told." His message, then, is a message about what God has done. He identifies himself with "us" here: he is not ashamed to call us brothers. He identifies himself later with our iniquities (v12), a strong and incidental indication, I think, of the imputation of our sin to Jesus Christ. His message discloses:

• God's righteousness (9)
• God's salvation (10)
• God's faithfulness and truth (10; the words are related here, though different)
• God's steadfast love (10, our friend chesed: חסד)

So then, Jesus reveals four or five key attributes of God: his salvation, his faithfulness (and truth), his righteousness, and his steadfast love.


Isaiah 40 is also a notably Messianic passage. It begins with a call to comfort and peace and a message of pardoned iniquity (40:1,2). It promises the revelation of the glory of God: "Behold your God!" (v9). We've said this several times, but it's so critical to connect this with Exodus 33:20. The gospel truly is the revelation of God to man. Lest this fill us with terror, we see the message prefaced with peace and comfort, and the assurance of pardoned sin. (It is no accident that when announcing the gospel the angels begin with, "Stop being afraid.")


Isaiah 52 begins with the theme of Israel's redemption: "You were sold for nothing, and you shall be redeemed without money" (52:3). It continues with a declaration that the people would know the name of the LORD: "Therefore my people shall know my name. Therefore in that day they shall know that it is I who speak; here am I" (52:6).

This verse fits tidily with our thematic review of "X shall know that I am the LORD." God is here revealed in his redemptive work. He has given the people to oppressors and will now redeem them back. It is in the context of his revelation that the gospel comes:

How beautiful upon the mountains
are the feet of him who brings good news,
who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness,
who publishes salvation,
who says to Zion, "Your God reigns."

The themes exposed here are:

• Peace
• Happiness
• Salvation
• God's reign

If we continue reading, we will find:

• comfort (52:9; cf 40:1)
• redemption (52:9)
• God's strength (symbolized by the baring of his arm, 52:10)
• God's salvation (52:10)

How will this be accomplished? By the glorification of the servant (cf Is 42). The glory of the servant is preceded by his humiliation, and the picture that we have of God Incarnate is not one that would fill us with fear. He is instead a man with no form of beauty, one who was despised and rejected of men. There is, as I have said before, an echo of Elihu's words in the Incarnation: "Behold, I am toward God as you are. I too was pinched off from a piece of clay" (Job 33:6).


If we assemble a list of gospel keywords, then, we'll find the following attributes of God:

• Righteousness
• Salvation
• Faithfulness
• Truth
• Steadfast love (i.e., lovingkindness or mercy)
• Power / reign

We can find all of these elements in some form or another in the written gospels. Luke is practically bursting with them:

• 1:19: "And the angel answered him, 'I am Gabriel that stand in the presence of God, and I was sent to speak to you and to bring you this good news.'" The good news to Zechariah is that he would be the father of John the Baptist, the forerunner of Christ. The message is one of reconciliation between Israel and her God, and between fathers and children. You will note his first words to Zechariah are, "Fear not."
• 1:46ff: The Magnificat begins with the magnification of God for his salvation (1:47), his might and holiness (1:49), his mercy (1:50,54), his strength (1:51; note the use of his "right arm" here, cp. Isaiah), his provision (1:53).
• 1:68ff: Zechariah's prophecy contains references to God's visitation (cp "Behold your God!") and his redemption (1:68), his salvation (1:69,71), his mercy and covenant (1:72, 78), forgiveness (1:77), peace (1:79).
• 2:10ff: The angel announces the gospel beginning with no fear and great joy (2:10), referencing salvation (2:11), and praising God (2:14). The shepherds also praise (2:20).
• 2:30ff: Simeon see Christ and speaks immediately of salvation (2:30) and the light to the Gentiles (2:31). Anna speaks of the redemption of Jerusalem (2:38).
• 3:2–6: John's message is also the gospel (see 3:16), and his preaching is the preparation for all flesh to see God's salvation.
• 4:18ff: Jesus here reads from one of our gospel passages (Isaiah 61), and so obviously ties in liberty to the captives and oppressed, sight to the blind, and the year of the Lord's favor.

It is interesting in Luke that the first recorded words of Jesus preaching the gospel are these from Isaiah 61. It is likewise interesting that he almost immediately directs the people to consider that God blessed the Gentile widow and leper during times of apostasy in Israel, and not the Jewish one.

It should go without saying to those of orthodox faith that Jesus is the revelation of God to mankind (see, i.a., Jo 1:18, 6:46, 14:7,9!, 15:24!; He 1:3,8!). Up until Jesus Christ, the primary revelations of God were mixed and confusing. Creation revealed God's majesty and power, his beauty and wonder; but it is a realm of violence and upheaval, one that suggests judgment without mercy. Likewise the Law confirms what nature teaches us by explicitly revealing the holiness and character of God. When we read the law, it teaches us a good and right way to live. When we look at ourselves in the mirror of the law, however, it teaches us that we do not live in a good and right way.

We are therefore betwixt and between, suspended in the knowledge that God truly is good, and has provided good things for us. Yet we are not good and cannot stand in his presence.

The Old Testament provides this knowledge, yet also clues for a gracious and free future. God will abundantly pardon; he will bury our sins in the deepest sea and throw them behind his back; he will look for them and not find them and search for them as far as the east is from the west. (Can you see what happens here? The vastness of his creation no longer terrifies, but comforts! He will search the breadth of the universe for our sin and not find it!)

This is revealed poignantly and perfectly in the person and work of Jesus Christ. The gospel is that God is Jesus, that he condescends to those who cannot be exalted to himself, that he assumes not just our form, but our real being and essence and takes our sin and guilt upon himself. The problem revealed by the light of the revelation of God—our sin—is solved in the person and work of Christ.

The Gospel of Jesus Christ (Part I)

The gospel: God revealed in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

The recap: unpacking the revelation of God. The first posts dealt primarily with creation and the law, loose proxies for general and special revelation. The next posts dealt more carefully with general revelation, in particular highlighting the memorial name of God (Yahweh or Jehovah) and how Jesus Christ, God Incarnate, is the revelation of God to man. There are therefore three primary means of God's revelation to man.

I've dedicated most of the posts heretofore on the revelation of God in the Old Testament because of the obvious starting point in Psalm 19. It is sometimes tempting to begin with the New Testament when looking at the gospel and work our way backwards, but I have found it rewarding to look carefully at the Old Testament as well. I think this approach helps to clarify the gospel and unify the themes of the Scriptures.

The way we'll proceed here is to look at some of the passages in which the Septuagint speaks of good news. The rule of first use is not very helpful here. Ironically, most of the initial occurrences of the word "gospel" in the Septuagint are bad or bittersweet news. The first use of the gospel in the Old Testament is actually the news of Saul's death (1 Samuel 31:9, followed by 2 Samuel 1:20, 4:10), and the second use is the death of Absalom.

We are primarily concerned with the uses of the word as they relate to the New Testament. The main passages are:

• Psalm 40:9, "I have told the glad news of deliverance in the great congregation; behold, I have not restrained my lips, as you know, O LORD.
  
• Psalm 68:11, "The Lord gave the word: great was the company of those that published it."
  
• Psalm 96:2, "Sing to the LORD, bless his name; tell of his salvation from day to day."
  
• Isaiah 40:9, "Get you up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good news; lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald of good news; lift it up, fear not; say to the cities of Judah, 'Behold your God!'"
  
• Isaiah 52:7, "How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, 'Your God reigns.'"
  
• Isaiah 60:6, "A multitude of camels shall cover you, the young camels of Midian and Ephah; all those from Sheba shall come. They shall bring gold and frankincense, and shall bring good news, the praises of the LORD."
  
• Isaiah 61:1, "The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound;"
  

Some of these passages are a bit different in the Greek reading than the Hebrew, but in the main they provide a good context for investigating elements of the gospel. For sake of space (and reader patience), I won't look at all of them. But I'd recommend that you consider them all when you have opportunity.

"I AM" and the Revelation of God (Part II)

Again, the ten-word summary: God revealed in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

The past several posts have dealt with the revelation of God, noting two principal ways he is revealed: through creation and his personal self-disclosure. We looked at the latter in the previous post, examining the commonly-used Old Testament phrase, "X shall know that I am the LORD." We see that God reveals himself by this covenant or memorial name and invests it with his personal and unique character.

In his high priestly prayer, Jesus implies that one of the purposes of his coming was to reveal God's name, to make it manifest:

I have manifested your name to the people you gave me out of the world. (John 17:6)

This little phrase carries the freight of the great many passages we have seen in the Old Testament. It is an astonishing thing to say and one of the incidental indications of the deity of Jesus Christ. Essential to the revelation of God by his name is the identification of Jesus Christ as the I AM. We see him make an explicit claim in John 8:58, of course, but others also exist.¹

The Incarnation therefore controverts Exodus 33:20. When Moses asks to see God, he is told that none may see him and live. Yet we have beheld the face of God in the person of Jesus Christ (John 1:14, 14:9; Hebrews 1:3,8). This revelation of God does not destroy us, neither does it crush us with the weight of our failure (cf. Isaiah 42:3).

This is our solution to the estrangement we find in nature and the antagonism of the law. While creation can tell us that God exists, and the law can tell us what God's standards are, neither one can bridge the insurmountable gap of human error and sin. All they do is reveal to us a God who is separate and other, one too holy for us to approach. They hold a mirror to our failure and devastate our hopes.

But Jesus Christ is also God revealed; he is the I AM. His life unifies God's justice and mercy and reveals God for who he is. His death, burial, and resurrection reconcile man and God, putting the question of sin to rest forever and guaranteeing the promises God has made to his people.

---

[1] I'm not really concerned with defending the Trinity here, but those interested may want to look at another somewhat more obscure proof in Revelation 1:8.

"I AM" and the Revelation of God (Part I)

(The 10-word summary of the gospel: God revealed in the person and work of Jesus Christ.)

Having seen, then, that creation and the law reveal God to be judge and ourselves worthy of judgment, we are without hope. In both nature and the law, we have found no good news—only bad news.

I think it's important enough to say it again: the revelation of God provided by nature and our conscience is not good news for us. It offers no security and no consolation: the law is inflexible. Even those who are motivated to please God are bereft. They have no recourse but to cast themselves on God's mercy.

Now, then, once more, the ten-word summary of the gospel: God revealed in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

I want to take a moment to look at the name of God. It sets the theme for the next posts nicely, and I think it will help develop some undergirding supports in the Old Testament.

There is a key phrase involved in the revelation of God that we can highlight throughout the Old Testament: "X shall know that I am the LORD." I think perhaps our familiarity with the statement costs us a bit in understanding it, because this is not merely a phrase that says, "You'll know that I'm God," or "You'll know that I'm in charge." It is also not a bare statement of the sovereignty of God. It is rather a statement of distinction: you will know that I am the LORD, and not some other god; you will know that I am the LORD, and that there are no other gods but me; you will know that I am the LORD, and that this is my character. In other words, I will be revealed to you as I am.

The first time that God is revealed by his covenant name is Exodus 3:14: "And God said to Moses, 'I AM WHO I AM.' And he said, 'Say this to the people of Israel, "I AM has sent me to you."'" This covenant name is shortened to the tetragrammaton, usually rendered "LORD" in most everyone's Bible and anglicized in a few places as Jehovah or Yahweh. God marks this as a special occurrence in history: "I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as God Almighty {{ Heb. El Shaddai }}, but by my name the LORD {{ Heb. YHWH }} I did not make myself known to them" (Ex 6:3). (It is worth pointing out that El was a common name for God and apparently did not connote a specifically Jewish notion of God.)

This at first glance seems like a rather pointless observation, but it's a continuing theme in Exodus and the rest of the Old Testament. Pharaoh says, for example, "Who is the LORD, that I should obey his voice and let Israel go? I do not know the LORD" (Ex 5:2). This would quickly change. Two pertinent references follow almost immediately in Exodus 7: "The Egyptians shall know that I am the LORD, when I stretch out my hand against Egypt..." (7:5), and, "By this you {{ Pharaoh }} shall know that I am the LORD: behold, with the staff that is in my hand I will strike the water in the Nile, and it shall turn into blood" (7:17).

God is, in other words, being revealed to Egypt by his judgments against her and her gods. "Who is the LORD," Pharaoh asks. He is the one who judges your idolatry—an idolatry it must be noted that is focused very much on worshiping the creature rather than the Creator. (We may follow this in Romans one. While I'm developing this specifically and purposefully from the Old Testament, we shouldn't miss that this idea receives due exposure in the New Testament.)

The phrase "X shall know that I am the LORD" appears many, many times in the Old Testament and in a variety of situations. What follows is a brief list:

• to speak of deliverance and redemption (Ex 6:7, 10:2, 29:46; Nu 15:41; De 5:6; 1Ki 20:13,28; Ps 81:10; Is 43:3,11, 44:24, 48:17, 49:23,26, 60:62; Ez 12:16, 16:62, 20:5,42–44, 28:24,26, 29:16,21, 34:24–30, 36:11,38, 37:1–14, 39:28; Ho 12:9, 13:4; Jo 2:27, 3:17; Zec 10:6)
  
• to declare judgment on Israel's enemies (Ex 7:5,17, 10:2, 12:12, 14:4,18; 1Ki 20:28; Is 49:26; Ez 25 against Ammon, Moab, Edom, Philistia 26 against Tyre, 28:22,23 against Sidon, 28:26, 29:6,9, ch30, 32:15 against Egypt, 35 against Edom/Seir)
  
• to declare judgment on Israel, and reveal himself by judgment (Ex 16:12; Ez 5:13–17, 6:7–14, 7:4,9,27, 11:10–12, 12:15–20, 15:7, 20:26,38, 21:5, 22:16,22, 23:49, 24:14,24–27, 33:29, 39:6)
  
• to declare judgment on Israel's allies (Ez 17:21,24)
  
• to declare judgment on Israel's enemies' allies (Ez 30:8)
  
• to declare judgment on the false prophets (Ez 13:9–23; 14:8)
  
• to distinguish God from idols (Exodus in many cases; injunctions in Leviticus; Ju 6:10; Is 42:8, 45:5–7)
  
• to confirm God's sovereignty, including his role as Creator (Is 43:15, 44:24, 45:5–7,18, 51:15)
  
• to distinguish Israel from her enemies (Ex 8:22)
  
• to distinguish Israel as a covenant people (Is 42:6, 44:5; 16:62)
  
• to confirm the giving of the law (most uses in Leviticus, esp. 22:31; Ez 20:7–20)
  
• to demonstrate Israel's total dependence on God (De 29:6)
  
• to reveal God to the nations (Ez 36:23,36, 37:28, 38:23)
  
• to reveal God to Israel by his actions among the Gentiles (Ez 39:22)
  

This was not a quick list to assemble and explains some of the delay in writing this.

There are a few observations I'd make here. First, that God is revealed by his direct actions in the lives of those he discloses himself to. Second, nearly all of these actions are related to judgment (if they are not judgment themselves, they follow on the heels of his judgment). Third, they are concerned with eliminating any notion of alternatives to God: there is a sense in here of ignorant worship, as when the Israelites worship the golden calf and name it Jehovah (Ex 32:5). Their history is littered with examples of profaning the name of the LORD—that is, by misrepresenting the character of God.

This revelation of God is freighted almost always with judgment in the Old Testament. The promises of redemption and salvation are connected most often with the return of Israel to the land from which they were driven. Driven, it must be said, in judgment for their sins. The very notion of God's salvation, as I've noted before, is rooted in his judgment. He is powerful to save because he also is powerful to judge.

The character of God revealed in these statements is one of otherness, separation, and judgment. Only after he judges is it possible for him to restore, redeem, and deliver.

I don't want to conclude this without noting that this particular theme of the Old Testament (knowing that Jehovah is God—cf. 1Ki 18:21) is again a theme of the separateness of God. In his revelation to his people in the Law, he demonstrates to them that he is not reachable. The people persist in worshiping a god of their own devising, that is, in pursuing idols and calling them by the hallowed name of the Lord.

The themes of deliverance promise hope, though, in the face of this judgment, a restoration of the relationship between God and his people, and the promise of a changed character.