Jews and Christians: Coming to faith

On the RoshPinaProject Messianic Jewish site appears a report on Eddie Beckford, a Christian missionary in Israel, who was found guilty of attacking a group of (Jewish) anti-missionaries. The Messianic Jews (followers of Jesus/Yeshua) defended Beckford while the Jewish camp said he’d got his just desserts. Nothing – predictably – was resolved. Most people, naturally (because that is human nature), have fixed views, where no argument, no matter how clear, is going to persuade. I said most people; there are, though, a minority who – upon hearing a different view, even an opposing view – change. There’s also no lack of pride and prejudice in the human soul.

Although I hadn’t read anything on the Beckworth affair, I added – as is my wont – my titbit to the conversation, because like Lady Catherine de Burgh in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, “I must have my share.”

I quoted Stuart Chase: “For those who believe, no proof is necessary. For those who don’t believe, no proof is possible.” (Stuart Chase was a celebrated economist of the first half of the 20^th century).”

For Stuart Chase, any belief not based on external verifiable proof was nonsense. For this reason, he rejected philosophy and religion. “I pass it up, Chase says, I pass up all such talk…. It saves a lot of time. But the talk of Einstein and Planck I do not pass up. I do not understand all of it , but I know by diligence I could come to understand it. The symbols connect with real things. The talk checks with observable phenomena…In reading, in listening, I try to separate talk which goes round and round from talk which refers to something outside my head.” (Chase in “I believe. The Personal Philosophies of twenty-three eminent men and women of out time,” 1952 (first published 1940), London, George Allen and Unwin, p. 56). (My underlining).

If a Jew could have proved to Chase’s satisfaction that, first, the Torah was a true historical document, and second – which is a tad more difficult – that God appeared in the lightning and thunder on Sinai, Chase would still not have believed. What he meant by “for those who believe, no proof is necessary” is that “for those who want to believe, no proof is necessary; and what he meant by “for those who don’t believe, no proof is possible is “for those who don’t want to believe, no proof is possible.” In other words all human beings choose what they want to believe. This, ironically, is also the Christian biblical position. Come with me to discover why this is so.

Here is Filo’s reply to my comment containing the quote from Stuart Chase (“bography” is my blog user name):

“To bography’s ultimate statement of Christian faith, hear hear: ‘For those who believe, no proof is necessary. For those who don’t believe, no proof is possible.’ For bography, and indeed all Christians, the one thing that must be avoided is an intellectual engagement with the facts. Whereas no one remains in Judaism except by a consideration of the evidence, no one remains in Christianity except by ignoring it.”

Filo says (above) that my “unjustifiable leap-of-faith mentality” causes me to that Jesus fulfilled messianic prophecies of the Jewish Bible. Filo continues:

“Contrary to bography’s willful disregard of the facts (and his resultant arrival at Christianity), Moses urged the Jews to contemplate them (the facts) carefully: “You saw with your own eyes what the L-rd did” (Deut. 4:3), and that is the ONLY (Filo’s emphasis) reason why you should believe in Judaism. Meanwhile, bography believes in a god who’s very existence is a matter of hearsay, with the only documentation of his doings being a “new testament” written by a lone guy who never met Jesus but who had a daydream about him decades after Jesus’ alleged crucifixion. What a difference!!!”

I won’t exclaim but just explain:

Filo states that whereas his Mosaic “contemplation of the facts” is proof that Judaism is fullproof, my “wilful disregard of the facts” is proof that no proof will convince me of the truth.

There is a major difference between the Jewish and the New Testament idea of “revelation.” In Judaism, “revelation” subsumes several meanings, which range from God’s supernatural impartation of divine truth to the human apprehension of God through reason. Filo – like Moses Maimonides (Rambam) and the majority of Orthodox Jews – “contemplate” (Filo’s word) God from the rational extreme of the range.

I should mention that the Bible distinguishes between  Natural and supernatural revelation: Ps. xix : “The heavens declare the glory of God” (natural revelation) but “the heavens,” says Francis Bacon, “indeed tell of the glory of God, but not of His will according to which the poet prays to be pardoned and sanctified” (supernatural revelation).

In christianity, the New Testament defines  supernatural “revelation” as theopneustos “God-breathed”:

“All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy, 3:16).

In contrast to Judaism, Christianity has only one way to discover the God of the Bible: God. God breathes out His revelation into human hearts. Christian revelation is not strictly speaking inspiration (which refers to the target of the divine word – human beings) but expiration (the source of the divine word – God); God “expires” his life-giving breath into expired souls, that is, souls dead to the things of God.

“As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast” (Ephesians 2:1-9).

“All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy, 3:16).

Christians consider Paul’s letters as “scripture. A common Jewish objection is that Paul’s “scripture” in “all Scripture is God-breathed” (Timothy, 3:16) refers to the Jewish scriptures, because when Paul wrote the letter to Timothy he couldn’t have been referring to his own letter as scripture. A thorough examination of this issue cannot be dealt with here; instead, I mention two relevant scriptures:

“I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ (Paul’s letter to the Galatians 1:12). Isn’t this that same “lone guy” on one of his “daydreams” again (Filo above)? The Apostle Peter didn’t think so, because he states that Paul’s letters are “scripture.” Peter said:

“Account that the long-suffering of our Lord is salvation, even as our beloved brother, Paul, also according to the wisdom given unto him has written unto you; as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable twist, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction” (2 Pet. 3:15-16). Thus Peter regards all Paul’s writings as scripture. (Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, and Philemon). (My emphasis).

In Filo’s mind, this is all “daydreams,” foolishness, a false philosphy. God is not surprised, nor is Paul phased by the wise, the intelligent, the Filosophers of this world.

Paul’s first chapter to the Corinthians contrasts the “foolishess” of Christian revelation with the “wisdom of the wise”:

“For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written: “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise;
the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate. Where is the wise person? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength” (1 Corinthians 1:18-25).

This does not mean that the Christianity has no historical footing. On the contrary, the NT contains many references to what the disciples saw and heard: “what we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ” (1 John 1:3). One doesn’t have faith in a foot. Where there’s a (living) foot – historical records of what people saw and heard – there is usually a person. What Paul is saying in 1 Corinthians above is that the person of Jesus (the) Christ, and faith (trust) in Him, is not discovered through human means; it’s a gift of God. This kind of talk is foreign and nonsensical to the wise, intellectual, ratiocinating rabbinic mind, but not silly at all to the great characters of the Bible such as Abraham, Samuel, David, Isaiah, Jeremiah and, indeed, Moses himself. I’m talking about how they came to believe in the God of Israel. Here is a well-known excerpt of how Moses came to believe in God:

Exodus 3

1. Now Moses was shepherding the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the desert and came to the mountain of God, to Horeb. 2 The angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire from within a bush. He looked – and the bush was ablaze with fire, but it was not being consumed! 3 So Moses thought, “I will turn aside to see this amazing sight. Why does the bush not burn up?” 4 When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to look, God called to him from within the bush and said, “Moses, Moses!” And Moses said, “Here I am.” 5 God said, “Do not approach any closer! Take your sandals off your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” 6 He added, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” Then Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God.

Compare Moses’ experience with Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus:

“And as he journeyed, he came near Damascus: and suddenly there shined round about him a light from heaven…” (Acts 9:3); “At midday, O king,  I saw in the way a light from heaven, above the brightness of the sun, shining round about me and them which journeyed with me (Acts 26:13).”

Now, were Moses and Saul of Tarsus (Paul) engaged in an “intellectual consideration of the evidence” (Filo’s words) that ensured that they would not do an “unjustifiable leap-of-faith” (Filo’s Fido)? (Fido,“faithful” in Latin). Did they make an intellectual decision to believe? Let’s read how Saul came to believe:

9“I myself was convinced that I ought to do many things in opposing the name of Jesus of Nazareth. 10And I did so in Jerusalem. I not only locked up many of the saints in prison after receiving authority from the chief priests, but when they were put to death I cast my vote against them. 11 And I punished them often in all the synagogues and tried to make them blaspheme, and in raging fury against them I persecuted them even to foreign cities.”

12 “In this connectionI journeyed to Damascus with the authority and commission of the chief priests. 13 At midday, O king, I saw on the way a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, that shone around me and those who journeyed with me. 14 And when we had all fallen to the ground, I heard a voice saying to me in the Hebrew language, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.’ 15 And I said, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ And the Lord said, ‘I am Jesus whom you are persecuting. 16 But rise and stand upon your feet, for I have appeared to you for this purpose, to appoint you as a servant and witness to the things in which you have seen me and to those in which I will appear to you, 17 delivering you from your people and from the Gentiles – to whom I  am sending you 18 to open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may (that is, will) receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.’ (My italics).

Did Jesus ask Paul to make a decision to believe in him? Not at all. Jesus doesn’t ask Paul whether he is willing to be sent: “I am sending you,” says Jesus. And Paul willingly goes. Jesus has made him free to love Him. No more kicking at the pricks for Paul, and certainly none of “nobody is going to shape my future,” or “nobody is going to kick me around.” The same goes for Moses.

I’d better stop and run; I can see Filo and his Christian minions – the arminians – coming.

Related articles

• Jesus, the Pharisee and the Weeping Willow (onedaringjew.wordpress.com)

 

James White on the Atonement: Take your dirty little fingers off God’s glory

 

James R. White

“Unlimited atonement” means that God gives everyone the possibility to be saved/redeemed if only they open the door of their radically corrupt hearts and invite Jesus in. James White does a good job of showing why this take on the Atonement takes much away from God’s glory.

“There is no getting away from the fact, says C. S. Lewis, that this idea (of glory) is very prominent in the New Testament and in early Christian writings. Salvation is constantly associated with palms, crowns, white robes, thrones, and splendour like the sun and stars. All this makes no immediate appeal to me at all, and in that respect I fancy I am a typical modern. Glory suggests two ideas to me, of which one seems wicked and the other ridiculous. Either glory means to me fame, or it means luminosity. As for the first, since to be famous means to be better known than other people, the desire for fame appears to me as a competitive passion and therefore of hell rather than heaven. As for the second, who wishes to become a kind of living electric light bulb? (C. S. Lewis “The weight of glory” 1942, p. 6)

 In Hebrews 9:12 we read: “Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for US.” Who is this “us” that have been redeemed? In other words, for whom did Christ die, for whose did he atone? Back up to Hebrews 7:25: (Wherefore) he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever lives to make intercession for them.”

So, Christ intercedes only for those who come to him (by Him); no one else. In other words – Jesus’ words, he only prays for those the Father has given him out of the world, and not for (the rest of the) world:

 John 17:6-10

I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gave me out of the world: thine they were, and thou gave them me; and they have kept thy word. 7 Now they have known that all things whatsoever thou hast given me are of thee. 8 For I have given unto them the words which thou gave me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou did send me. 9 I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for them which thou has given me; for they are thine. 10 And all mine are thine, and thine are mine; and I am glorified in them.

 If the above verses demonstrate that Christ did not die for the whole world (every individual, what about the following passage that says that Christ died for “all?”

 Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others. But what we are is known to God, and I hope it is known also to your conscience. We are not commending ourselves to you again but giving you cause to boast about us, so that you may be able to answer those who boast about outward appearance and not about what is in the heart. For if we are beside ourselves, it is for God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you. For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised. (2 Corinthians 5:11-15, ESV).

It’s not difficult: the “all” for whom Christ died refers to – in the same sentence – to all those who have died and have been regenerated/born again to a new life in Christ. “All (say “Ahhhhl”) can mean all without exception or all of a specific group; in the verse above, Christians.

James White is my favourite defender of the faith. He never, like any good apologist, apologises for what he believes. One’s favourites, though, sometimes say, unsurprisingly, disagreeable things. In this instance it is what James White says about God’s glory. One of the five “solas” is “To God’s glory alone.” Here is the typical Reformed (Calvinist) position from James White’s very good sermon “The centrality of God in the atonement.“

(My insertions in brackets and underlining)

 (Near the beginning, 5th to 8th minute). “We believe in a God who is first and foremost glorifying Himself in creation and that the Gospel is the primary means whereby God, the triune God, the, Son and Holy Spirit glorifies Himself…the creature is not the central player of this entire drama… (Agree). The Gospel is all about what God is doing to glorify Himself.” (Will need to examine this)

Towards the end:

“When the world warps our minds, the result is we try and find ways of inserting our dirty little fingers into the purity of the Gospel itself. Not to try to steal all the glory, I mean we want continue to sing “To God be the glory,” right? But you see we will give 99% of the glory as long as the 1% I get determines my own destiny. That is the dividing between a supernatural faith and a man-centred faith.”

I agree with White that salvation is 100% of the Lord. But does this mean “the Gospel is all about what God is doing to glorify Himself?” (First paragraph)

 James White says yes. Martyn Lloyd Jones, in his sermon on Ephesians 1:6, says the same: “To the praise of his glory,” namely, that the story of our salvation is all about God’s glory. If Jones and White mean “ultimately” and “mainly” about God’s glory, then this, of course, is true. But “all” about God’s glory, is that what God wants? Let us return to John 17: “10 All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them… 22 The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one.”

So, Christ has given us, after saving us, some of the glory that His Father gave to Him.

Then there’s Romans 8: “16 The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, 17 and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.”

 Not to forget the passage par excellence of those who believe that salvation is 100% of the Lord (non-Arminians): “29 For those whom he foreknew (foreloved) he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. 30 And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified” (Romans 8).

And for good measure: “For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison” (2 Corinthians 4:17). Here is C. S. Lewis again but be careful of “us who really chooses” (“You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit–fruit that will last–and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you” John 15:16):

“It is written that we shall “stand before” Him, shall appear, shall be inspected. The promise of glory is the promise, almost incredible and only possible by the work of Christ, that some of us, that any of us who really chooses, shall actually survive that examination, shall find approval, shall please God. To please God…to be a real ingredient in the divine happiness…to be loved by God, not merely pitied, but delighted in as an artist delights in his work or a father in a son—it seems impossible, a weight or burden of glory which our thoughts can hardly sustain. But so it is.”

To those who are jealous for God’s glory, as indeed He is jealous about it Himself (now don’t be silly and say you don’t think God should be jealous – think “zealous”), God is not that jealous that He cannot glorify those for whom he died. In glorifying his own, our glorious triune God does not, of course, share the unique incommunicado glory that is His alone.

 For further discussion see my “The weight of glory.”

 

 

Jesus, the Pharisee and the Weeping Willow

Get from under your willow tree

and leave behind your Pharisee

At the RoshPinaProject site, Rey provided the opinions of “what some of the most influential people of the world has had to say about The Man Yeshua who never left the tiny nation of Israel except for short period in Egypt when Herod was tying to take His life.”

Yourphariseefriend (Rabbi Yisroel Blumenthal) responded: ”When all these historians were praising Jesus’ influence – replacement theology was still in style – hating Jews was still an integral part of Christianity. No man has more blood spilled in his name than Jesus These basic facts mitigate any positive influence he had. In any case – Scripture never tells us to look for the Messiah on the basis of his influence in history.

Yourphariseefriend uses  the term “replacement theology”in the sense of Christianity seeking to replace Judaism. This may be the Jewish meaning of the term, but in Christianity it refers to  to Christian movements that believe that the “Church” is the new “Israel. Catholics and most Anglicans and Reformed Christians (Calvin, Luther) believe this. But the “Messianics” on this site and myself, as well as a significant number of Christian groups do not see this replacement in the NT. As Paul says in Romans 11:1-4:

“I ask then: Did God reject his people? By no means! I am an Israelite myself, a descendant of Abraham, from the tribe of Benjamin. God did not reject his people, whom he foreknew. Don’t you know what the Scripture says in the passage about Elijah—how he appealed to God against Israel:  “Lord, they have killed your prophets and torn down your altars; I am the only one left, and they are trying to kill me”? And what was God’s answer to him? “I have reserved for myself seven thousand who have not bowed the knee to Baal.”

And here is where a Jew gets very hot under the collar; on the issue of grace versus works. ”So too, says Paul, at the present time there is a remnant chosen by grace.  And if by grace, then it is no longer by works; if it were, grace would no longer be grace” (Romans 11:5-6). With “replacement theology” set to rest, let’s now look at the main thrust of YourPhariseeFriend’s trist against Christianity. He says: “When all these historians were praising Jesus’ influence… hating Jews was still an integral part of Christianity.” YourPhariseeFriend claims that even though they praised Jesus Christ, this didn’t mean that they and the Christian world did not hate Jews. It should be kept in mind that all – except Josephus – of the historians quoted by Rey  (above) were either atheists or had rejected Christianity (e.g. Pontius Pilate, Julian the Apostate, Roman Emperor from 361-363 A.D, Ernest Renan, Bonaparte, Goethe, Rousseau, H.G. Wells) as well as all forms of “revealed” religion, including Judaism. As far as we know none of these personalities were anti-Jewish. What I’d like to do is consider some of the views about Jews of some of these non-believing admirers of Jesus Christ, the man (mentioned by Rey):

Napoleon

“And far from being an anti-Semite, Napoleon was good for the Jews of France and, indeed, of all of Europe

H.G. Wells

[Would] an anti-Semite would ever write:

“I really do not understand the exceptional attitude that people take against the Jews.  The Jew is mentally and
physically precocious and he ages and dies sooner than the average European; but in that and in a certain
disingenuousness he is simply on all fours with the short, dark Welsh.  He foregathers with those of his own nation
and favors them against the stranger, but so do the Scotch. I see nothing in this curious, dispersed nationality to dread or dislike.  He is a remnant and legacy of Medievalism, a sentimentalist, perhaps, but no furtive plotter against progress of things.  He was the Medieval Liberal; his persistent existence gave lie to the Catholic pretensions all through the days of their ascendency, and today he gives lie to all our ‘yapping nationalisms’, and sketches in his dispersed sympathies the coming of the world state.  Much of his moral tradition will, I hope, never die.”  (from  “Anticipations”, 1901, the book that Coren quotes to “prove” that Wells was an anti-semite.)

Ernst Renan

Renan is an interesting case. He is as anti-Judaism as he is anti-Christianity, because he is opposed to any religion/philosophy that smacks of absolutism:

“Christianity has been intolerant, but intolerance is not essentially a  Christian fact.  It is a Jewish fact in the sense that it was Judaism which first introduced the theory of the absolute in religion … The Pentateuch has thus been in the world the first code of religious terrorism.  Judaism has given the example of an immutable dogma armed with the sword.” (The Life of Jesus, 359).

Christians acknowledge – indeed praise God – that the Torah revealed to man an Absolute God. In this post-modern age of relativism, Jews and Christians are in the same boat and need – at least on this point – to row absolutely together.

The history of early Christianity  (e.g. Book of Acts) was obviously MOSTLY written by Christians just as MOST of the early history of Judaism was written by Jews. There were, however, also non-Christian and non-Jewish historians of these respective times whom we may compare with the respective Christian and Jewish sources. There also exists the tools of archaeology and historiography (textual criticism), which have both reached a high degree of integrity in recent times.

YourPhariseeFriend says: “No man has more blood spilled in his name than Jesus.” Rey responds:

“Anybody who did not live according to what Yeshua taught was not and is not His disciple!!! He taught Torah! You or nobody can blame Yeshua for the acts of evil, ignorant, and blind people did in His Name. The same was done in The Tanakh by many false prophets,priest, and people but are you going to blame Moshe or any of the true Prophets for that?? These false believers did what they thought to be correct in the name of Moshe and Torah, are you going to blame Moshe or HaShem for such evil? Anyone who claims to be a true follower of another must do what that person thought and did!! But it seems to me that you have never read what Yeshua HaMashiach taught.”

Why does one always have to defend the obvious principle that if I’m a heel, it doesn’t follow that my shoemaker is one as well. Does YourPhariseeFriend need reminding that because of their rebellion, God has spilled millions of litres of blood of his own chosen people comparable to the quantity of animal blood spilled on the altars of sacrifice.  God decreed the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians, a judgement relatively far more terrible than the Shoa (Holocaust). Why far worse? The proportion of the Jews that suffered and were slaughtered at the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem and its environs was greater than the proportion of world Jewry who suffered and died during the Shoa.  But it’s not only about numbers. People didn’t boil and eat their children in the Shoa as they did at the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem. 

Lamentations 4.

4 The tongue of the nursing infant sticks to the roof of its mouth for thirst; the children beg for food, but no one gives to them. 5 Those who once feasted on delicacies perish in the streets;  those who were brought up in purple embrace ash heaps. 6 For the chastisement of the daughter of my people has been greater than the punishment of Sodom, which was overthrown in a moment, and no hands were wrung for her. 7 Her princes were purer than snow, whiter than milk; their bodies were more ruddy than coral, the beauty of their form was like sapphire. 8 Now their face is blacker than soot; they are not recognized in the streets; their skin has shriveled on their bones; it has become as dry as wood. 9 Happier were the victims of the sword than the victims of hunger, who wasted away, pierced by lack of the fruits of the field. 10 The hands of compassionate women have boiled their own children; they became their food during the destruction of the daughter of my people.

Deuteronomy 28

52 “They shall e besiege you in all your towns, until your high and fortified walls, in which you trusted, come down throughout all your land. And they shall besiege you in all your towns throughout all your land, which the Lord your God has given you. 53 And f you shall eat the fruit of your womb, the flesh of your sons and daughters, whom the Lord your God has given you, g in the siege and in the distress with which your enemies shall distress you. 54 The man who is the most tender and refined among you will h begrudge food to his brother, to i the wife he embraces,  and to the last of the children whom he has left, 55 so that he will not give to any of them any of the flesh of his children whom he is eating, because he has nothing else left, j in the siege and in the distress with which your enemy shall distress you in all your towns. 56 The most tender and refined woman among you, who would not venture to set the sole of her foot on the ground because she is so delicate and tender, will begrudge to the husband she embraces,  to her son and to her daughter, 57 her afterbirth that comes out from between her feet and her children whom she bears, because lacking everything she will eat them secretly, in the siege and in the distress with which your enemy shall distress you in your towns.

God willed it, yet the Babylonians were still held accountable. Recall the Assyrian destruction of the Northern tribes, which God brought down on his own chosen people, and yet the Assyrians were held responsible for the delight they took in carrying out God’s decree. It is hard to reconcile the sovereign righteous judgement of God and the evil heart and actions of man. If one doesn’t struggle with this paradox on a regular basis, one cannot claim to have any meaningful relationship with Him.

Here is the heart-wrenching view of “Willow” who gave up her Christianity in empathy with “Israel”,  the “suffering servant” (She is responding to my quotations from Lamentations and Deuteronomy above)

“Aww, bography, you have touched upon some things that caused my heart much grief in reading them, first as a Christian, and then not so. What mother, such as I am, could ever imagine being so desperate as to consume her own children? What father could ever imagine denying his son a morsel of bread, if so that he might satisfy his own hunger?

“In reading the passages you have presented, please know that I have long since wept over the same, even agonized over the mere thought, in considering the fallibility of man, and so pleaded that G-d not ever allow me, nor any one of mine, to become so desperate that any one of us would so much as consider such things in order to satisfy such as our own hunger! But of course, I would that none would ever become so vile. My own heart has always been bent on seeing to the needs of those around me, prior to looking toward my own. I would hope that God would maintain that within me, no matter how desperate the circumstances. I say these things only to make you aware of how deeply the passages you offered affected me, even so that you know that I am not unfamiliar with them. I would, however ask you if you believe that the disobedience of a servant cancels out his servitude? Is not a servant still a servant regardless of his noncompliance/disobedience? Has not G-d warned His people, those whom He has referred to as His “Servant”, Israel, time and time again, that they would be so sorely punished for their disobedience, and even to the point of being sent off into exile, cut off from the land He promised to them, and even from the living in having been so slaughtered by their enemies? Even in this respect, then, I would have to say that Israel, as the Servant of G-d, has suffered much, for G-d would but bring them into compliance even through their sufferings. If this is not so, how would you explain such as Psalm 44?”

Here is psalm 44:

For the director of music. Of the Sons of Korah. A maskil

¹ We have heard with our ears, O God; our fathers have told us what you did in their days, in days long ago. ² With your hand you drove out the nations and planted our fathers; you crushed the peoples and made our fathers flourish. ³ It was not by their sword that they won the land, nor did their arm bring them victory; it was your right hand, your arm, and the light of your face, for you loved them. ⁴ You are my King and my God, who decrees victories for Jacob. ⁵ Through you we push back our enemies; through your name we trample our foes. ⁶ I do not trust in my bow, my sword does not bring me victory; ⁷ but you give us victory over our enemies, you put our adversaries to shame.⁸ In God we make our boast all day long, and we will praise your name forever. Selah. ⁹ But now you have rejected and humbled us; you no longer go out with our armies. ¹⁰ You made us retreat before the enemy, and our adversaries have plundered us. 

¹¹ You gave us up to be devoured like sheep and have scattered us among the nations. ¹² You sold your people for a pittance, gaining nothing from their sale. ¹³ You have made us a reproach to our neighbors, the scorn and derision of those around us. ¹⁴ You have made us a byword among the nations; the peoples shake their heads at us. ¹⁵ My disgrace is before me all day long, and my face is covered with shame. ¹⁶ at the taunts of those who reproach and revile me, because of the enemy, who is bent on revenge. ¹⁷ All this happened to us, though we had not forgotten you or been false to your covenant. ¹⁸ Our hearts had not turned back; our feet had not strayed from your path. ¹⁹ But you crushed us and made us a haunt for jackals and covered us over with deep darkness. ²⁰ If we had forgotten the name of our God or spread out our hands to a foreign god, ²¹ would not God have discovered it, since he knows the secrets of the heart?

²² Yet for your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered. ²³ Awake, O Lord! Why do you sleep? Rouse yourself! Do not reject us forever. ²⁴ Why do you hide your face and forget our misery and oppression? ²⁵ We are brought down to the dust; our bodies cling to the ground. ²⁶ Rise up and help us; redeem us because of your unfailing love.

There are two suffering servants. There’s the suffering servant   Israel  and the Suffering Servant, the Messiah. In “Jewish revisionism revisited I argued that modern rabbinical interpretations are incoherent. Here is the prevalent rabbinic opinion of Isaiah 53: “Isaiah 53 contains a deeply moving narrative which world leaders will cry aloud in the messianic age.  The humbled kings of nations (52:15) will confess that Jewish suffering occurred as a direct result of “our own iniquity,” (53:5) i.e., depraved Jew-hatred, rather than, as they previously thought, the stubborn blindness of the Jews.”

Here are a few verses from Isaiah 52 and 53. My substitutions appear in CAPITALS.

Isaiah 53:8b

“For he was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgression of my people he was stricken.”

Rabbinical translation:

“For MY PEOPLE (he) was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgression of MY PEOPLE, MY PEOPLE were stricken.

THAT makes no sense at all.

If only Willow would not give up on the Suffering Servant. He may  not stop her weeping – “blessed are those that mourn” – but it will certainly bring her into the Kingdom of the Son He loves.

Get from under your willow tree

and leave behind your Pharisee

Old MacDonald: John Piper shocked out of his Edwardsian socks

 

John Piper

John Piper describes a “grievous experience I had when some of George MacDonald’s sermons were published in 1976 (Creation in Christ). I had relished three of MacDonald’s novels and the Anthology compiled by C.S. Lewis. Then I read this sentence, and the budding friendship collapsed: “From all copies of Jonathan Edwards’ portrait of God, however faded by time, however softened by the use of less glaring pigments, I turn with loathing” (Creation in Christ, P. 81). I was stunned. George MacDonald loathed my God! Over the last fifteen years since I graduated from college all my biblical studies in seminary and graduate school have led me to love and worship the God of Jonathan Edwards.” (How does a sovereign God love? ).

No, not this Jonathan Edwards, once a committed Christian but lost his faith when he retired in 2007 and is now an atheist,

Jonathan Edwards

but this one.

Jonathan Edwards (1703 -1758)

George MacDonald (1824 – 1905) was a Scottish author and Christian Congregational minister. He is best known for his fantasy novels such as Phantastes, The Princess and the Goblin, At the Back of the North Wind, and Lilith, and fairy tales such as “The Light Princess“, “The Golden Key“, and “The Wise Woman“. He influenced many writers such as J. R. R. Tolkien, G.K. Chesterton and C. S. Lewis. He was Lewis Carroll’s (the pen-name of Rev. Charles L. Dodgson) mentor.

What was it that made George MacDonald say he loathed the God of Jonathan Edwards? Piper doesn’t say. One of the reasons must surely be that MacDonald considered the idea of penal substitutionary atonement an affront to God’s justice. “Because he is just, says MacDonald, we are capable of knowing justice; it is because he is just, that we have the idea of justice so deeply imbedded in us.” One of MacDonald arguments is that because the one who commits an offence is totally responsible, he or she is the only one who can atone for his offence, his sin. He continues:

“Suppose my watch has been taken from my pocket; I lay hold of the thief; he is dragged before the magistrate, proved guilty, and sentenced to a just imprisonment: must I walk home satisfied with the result? Have I had justice done me? The thief may have had justice done him—but where is my watch? That is gone, and I remain a man wronged. Who has done me the wrong? The thief. Who can set right the wrong? The thief, and only the thief; nobody but the man that did the wrong. God may be able to move the man to right the wrong, but God himself cannot right it without the man. Suppose my watch found and restored, is the account settled between me and the thief? I may forgive him, but is the wrong removed? By no means. But suppose the thief to bethink himself, to repent. He has, we shall say, put it out of his power to return the watch, but he comes to me and says he is sorry he stole it and begs me to accept for the present what little he is able to bring, as a beginning of atonement: how should I then regard the matter? Should I not feel that he had gone far to make atonement—done more to make up for the injury he had inflicted upon me, than the mere restoration of the watch, even by himself, could reach to? Would there not lie, in the thief’s confession and submission and initial restoration, an appeal to the divinest in me—to the eternal brotherhood? Would it not indeed amount to a sufficing atonement as between man and man? If he offered to bear what I chose to lay upon him, should I feel it necessary, for the sake of justice, to inflict some certain suffering as demanded by righteousness? I should still have a claim upon him for my watch, but should I not be apt to forget it? He who commits the offence can make up for it—and he alone” George MacDonald, Sermon on Justice).

C. S. Lewis regarded MacDonald as his “master.” Lewis writes:

“I have never concealed the fact that I regarded him as my master; indeed I fancy I have never written a book in which I did not quote from him. But it has not seemed to me that those who have received my books kindly take even now sufficient notice of the affiliation. Honesty drives me to emphasize it. And even if honesty did not, well, I am a don, and “source-hunting” is perhaps in my marrow. It must be more than thirty years ago that I bought-almost unwillingly, for I had looked at the volume on that bookstall and rejected it on a dozen previous occasions – the Everyman edition of (Lewis’s Preface to George MacDonald. An Anthology, edited by C.S. Lewis). (See A critique of George MacDonald’s rejection of penal substitutionary atonement.

I wonder whether MacDonald’s rejection of the penal substitutionary sacrifice of Christ (the shedding of Christ’s blood to reconcile sinners to God) had something to do with his “disciple’s” (C.S. Lewis) low view of the doctrine of Christ’s penal substitutionary sacrifice. Lewis doesn’t reject this doctrine but it seems he might as well have done so. Here is Lewis:

“You can say, says Lewis in his “Mere Christianity,” that Christ died for our sins. You may say that the Father has forgiven us because Christ has done for us what we ought to have done. You may say that we are washed in the blood of the Lamb. You may say that Christ has defeated death. They are all true. If any of them do not appeal to you, leave it alone and get on with the formula that does. And, whatever you do, do not start quarrelling with other people because they use a different formula from yours.”

So if the formula of Christ shedding his blood for sins does not appeal to you, chuck it. (See Penal Substitution in C S Lewis.

In search of French past (3): French philosophy, Paris and fleeing the OAS

In “In search of French past (2), I described the English “effluent” in my life. I never took to things English but was drawn more to the continent. Why antipathy to English culture when my first language (the language I knew best) was English. I say English was my first language, which is not the same as mother tongue. Children of immigrants, – my parents were Yiddish-speakers – often do not speak their mother’s tongue, which is what we mean by a “mother tongue.” I can think of two reasons for my dislike of English culture.

The first reason originated during my school years at Wellington High School (Grades 10-12).  I was doing poorly at school but began to improve in the middle of Grade 10. I remained poor at English literature. I had spent my early childhood in an orphanage (ages 4 to 9) where there was no story time, and no books that I was aware of. I don’t remember ever being read a story, or reading one. The Orphanage started out as a home for orphans, but ended up as a refuge for children from broken homes. Here is an excerpt from Professor Abrahams message in Eric Rosenthal’s out-of print ”The Story of the Cape Jewish Orphanage: Golden Jubilee 1910 – 1961”. The Orphanage was demolished two or three decades ago:

“Jewish standards of philanthropic endeavour generally and the loving care lavished on orphans in particular are proverbially praiseworthy. Of Oranjia it can be said that it has maintained that tradition at the highest level.  The very name is characteristic: we do not speak of the “Orphanage,” with all the unhappy Dickensian nuances attaching to such a name. We call it “Our Children’s Home” or simply Oranjia (the name of the original house); because the little inmates are our children and their dwelling-place a home in the noblest sense of the term….it is eloquence of the Jewish spirit and influence of Oranjia that throughout the fifty years, very few of our children have gone astray.”

If only Professor Abrahams  had remembered his Bible: “All of us like sheep have gone astray, Each of us has turned to his own way (Isaiah 53:6a). That is why we need a mediator, as we read in the rest of the verse: and the Lord has laid on him (the Messiah, the suffering Servant)  the iniquity of us all. (See The Cape Jewish Orphanage (5) – Chief Rabbi Abrahams and Dr Verwoerd: the not-so-odd couple).

When I was at home (ages 9 to 12), it was the same story; no stories, no books. In my senior school years (15-17), I preferred pubescent adventure stories like Biggles, eventually graduating to Jeffery Farnol’s “The amateur gentleman” and Rafael Sabatini’s “Shame of motley.” Swinging down from masts, swinging a cutlass; action, acting a part, to escape being; being cut off. The story of the Suffering Servant, the Lamb who was cut off (Isaiah 53 above), that’s the story of all stories, in whose radiance all other stories pale. God has redeemed and transformed my lost stories into the image of the Son he loves – and written me into the Lamb’s book of life. His story has become my story.

Cutlass

The second reason for my growing aversion to English culture was my early Catholicism. I entered the Catholic Church in 1960 at the age of 19, during my second year at university (see here). Most Catholics – in the 1960s at least – considered Anglicans to be heretics. Therefore, I reasoned, Englishmen are heretics. Today, of course, most Englishmen are either agnostics or “ignostics.”[1]

The continent, especially France, was very Catholic. But wasn’t Italy (in the 1960s) just as Catholic as France, even more so? What did France have that Italy didn’t?  France was more appealing because during my First Year Philosophy, my Catholic professor of philosophy Martin Versfeld introduced me to French Catholic philosophers such as Jean Guitton, Gabriel Marcel, Jacques Maritain and Etienne Gilson. Gilson’s philosophy was in the Thomas Aquinas tradition. In my first few years of Catholic fervour,

Etienne Gilson

I, like any sensitive Jewish intellectual convert to Rome, spent many hours reading Thomas Aquinas. In Catholic seminaries, three of the first four years of study are devoted to Greek philosophy, mainly Aristotle. Aristotle is central to Catholic theology because Thomas Aquinas ((1225 – 1274) built much of his theology on Aristotle.  The bulk of Catholic theology derives from the dazzling intellect  of Aquinas whose Summa Theologiae/Theologica covers almost the whole of Catholic theology. He stopped working on it the year before he died in 1274. (Thomas Aquinas: Philosophy and Education in the Middle ages).

Thomas Aquinas

I so wished I could read these French writers in the original, a wish that came true when I renounced the intense desire for friends, but never for neighbours, when I caught the French fever. “Grammaire” gave me goose bumps. With French and neighbours, I was the richest man in town. There’s a  hit song of the  1950s called “Friends and neighbours.” Mine was “French and neighbours.” Here are my lyrics adapted from “Friends and neighbours.”

When you’ve got French and neighbours

All the world is a happier place

French and neighbours

Put a smile on the gloomiest face

Here is Billy Cotton’s version.

Besides philosophy, Professor Versfeld also knew what was cooking. One of his memorable stories was how to make a seafood chowder. In his Food for thought – a philosopher’s Cookbook, we learn all about “the art of slow cooking, thinking about what you are cooking, and—most importantly—thinking while you are cooking:

“The art of preparing and eating food is inextricably intertwined with the meaning of life. There is nothing better than preparing, talking about, philosophizing over, and finally partaking in a slow and languorous meal, especially once the the mind set is adopted that making time for something is an expression of love. The Philosopher’s Cookbook is the manifesto of one of the great minds of today: a cookbook, a philosophical enquiry, and an essay on the human predicament.” (Burp, I mean the blurb of the book).

Another cookbook that had a big influence on my life was a French one: Brooks and Cook’s “French Elementary,”  my first French grammar. There were two of these books: the green, volume 1, and the red, volume 2. The green was for “go; you can do it,” the red for “hmmm, are you sure French is for you? Both books had to be completed in a single year. At the beginning of 1962, after the second year of my B.A., I decided to go to Europe, especially France. I would finish my B.A. when I returned. My father offered to pay for my ticket and give me an allowance of 25 pounds. After three months in London I took the ferry to France (See In search of French past (1).

I arrived in Paris at the beginning of  April 1962 and booked in at a youth hostel. Paris was in turmoil because of the mayhem caused by the “OAS”  Organisation de l’armée secrète - “Secret Army Organisation,” who were planting bombs all over Paris.

The bombing campaign was a reaction to President Charles de Gaulle’s declaration that Algerians had a right to decide their own destiny. As a result, he proposed a referendum for the Algerians. Algeria had been a French colony since 1830 and became independent in 1962.

A few days after my arrival at the Youth Hostel, several cafes were bombed and people were killed.  After watching the TV of one of these incidents, I pulled out my map of France looking for a safe haven far from Paris. I chose Strasbourg, in Alsace, on the Eastern border with Germany. I don’t know why I chose to go East; it may have had something to do with the name “Alsace,” which I associated with the Alsatian dog of my childhood. My brother, Sammy called him Mannetjies (little man) after the Springbok rugby player of the 1950s, Mannetjies Roux. I was fleeing the centre of French language and culture, Paris-Isle-of-France, for a region where the locals’ cultural language was, it seemed to me, a  Yiddish patois, but was in fact a low Alemannic German called Alsatian German – Elsässerditsch ; French – Alsacien. Alsace has switched between French and German control several times.

I enrolled at the University of Strasbourg in a French course for foreigners.

---

[1]          Here is a comment from a Jewish admirer of her rabbi. “Why is what is definitely not a new story “a big deal”? Not only has Humanistic Judaism been around for quite some time, but I remember decades ago a hooraw [a commotion] about a self-proclaimed “ignostic” rabbi .. He refuses to call himself “agnostic” because he thinks it is IN PRINCPLE possible to know whether or not God exists, just that we do not know. (A distinction constantly elided in the sacrosanct Popular Usage of “agnostic”).” I thought that the “agnostic” simply believes that he doesn’t know; not that he claims that it is not possible to know. Most atheists claim there is no God because they claim to know that they can never know. If they go up in a space ship, will they find God! That settles it.

Related articles

• Francis Schaeffer and Thomas Aquinas’ Secular “Autonomy” (philosophicaugustine.wordpress.com)

The idol of Humanism, the betrayal of the ages

 Humanism is the betrayal of the ages (Paris Reidhead, “Ten Shekels and a shirt”)

Christians are dumb (Dr. George Yancey lectures on anti-Christian bias in academia, and beyond)





 Introduction

 On 2 April, Adrian Leftwich of the Department of Politics at the University of York died at the age of 73 of lung cancer. He was a South African student leader at the University of Cape Town, and very committed to the anti-Apartheid struggle. I was at the University of Cape Town at the same time doing my degree in philosophy (1960-1963). Although, I did not know him personally, he was very visible. Here is an excerpt from his obituary, which describes him having the finest qualities of “humanism.” 

“[He had an] extraordinary and genuine interest in and support for others.  Adrian was above all a humanist (my italics), wanting to know and understand the people he met and worked with – important leaders and charismatic taxi-drivers alike. Adrian wanted to understand the ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ weft and weave of the person, and in doing so invariably left an enduring impression on people.  As a mentor Adrian was deeply valued and respected by DLP [Development Leadership Program] researchers and the whole team.  He educated and enthused us, had the unique ability to shine a search-light and illuminate complex issues, but also the skill to encourage and bring out the ideas and thoughts of others. There were so many times where I witnessed Adrian’s endless generosity in intellect and time, but what stands out is that, on the day he was diagnosed with cancer, he somehow took time to provide detailed feedback on the draft manuscript of an AusAID [Australian Agency for International Development] colleague.  In a word, selfless.  To a person DLP friends and former colleagues have said that it was an honour and privilege to have worked with Adrian and that they truly valued his shared wisdom.” 

What is Humanism 

There exist various definitions of humanism, Here is one: 

“…a commitment to the perspective, interests and centrality of human persons; a belief in reason and autonomy as foundational aspects of human existence; a belief that reason, scepticism and the scientific method are the only appropriate instruments for discovering truth and structuring the human community; a belief that the foundations for ethics and society are to be found in autonomy and moral equality (Concise Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy).”

Paganism and humanism 

In ancient Judaism other religions are described as goyim (the nations). In modern Judaism a non-Jew is a goy. Early and Middle-Ages Christianity referred to religions other than itself and Judaism as paganism (from “rural,” “peasant”). In early Christianity, “paganism” comprised the Greco-Roman religions, neoplatonism and gnosticism, and the mystery cults, while in the Middle-Ages there was Germanic and Slavic paganism. 

“Seventy-five years ago, writes J Gresham Machen, Western civilization, despite inconsistencies, was still predominantly Christian; today it is predominantly pagan. In speaking of ‘paganism,’ we are not using a term of reproach. Ancient Greece was pagan, but it was glorious, and the modern world has not even begun to equal its achievements. What, then, is paganism? The answer is not really difficult. Paganism is that view of life which finds the highest goal of human existence in the healthy and harmonious and joyous development of existing human faculties” (my italics). And that exactly describes humanism. 

The nobler qualities of humanism also have the above qualities as the highest human goal. “Very different , continues Machen, is the Christian ideal. Paganism is optimistic with regard to unaided human nature whereas Christianity is the religion of the broken heart [by which is not meant] continual beating on the breast or a continual crying of ‘Woe is me.’ Christianity begins with the broken heart and the consciousness of sin and ends with its final reality, God in Christ.”

 The measure of all things, the pleasure of all things 

In humanism “man is the measure of all things.” Plato attributes this saying to Protagoras. Briefly, it means that truth – moral and intellectual – is not something out there, but is the product of individual human minds. Human minds differ, therefore, my truth may not be your truth. A problem: when it comes to water boiling at sea-level, surely all beach-lovers would have to agree that the 100 degrees centigrade they see on their individual pocket thermometers is not a product of their minds. In the philosophy of humanism, many other areas of human life such as the “humanities” – politics, economics, art and ethics – the rigid belief “your truth, my truth” is regarded as the natural order of things. 

In humanism, says Francis Schaeffer, “the material or energy shaped by pure chance is the final reality.” In 1982, the United States of America legislated that the only view of reality that can be taught is that matter and energy are the product of chance. This philosophy says Schaeffer, “gives no meaning to life. It gives no value system. It gives no basis for law, and therefore, in this case, man must be the measure of all things. So, Humanism properly defined, in contrast, let us say, to the humanities or humanitarianism, (which is something entirely different and which Christians should be in favor of) being the measure of all things, comes naturally, mathematically, inevitably, certainly. If indeed the final reality is silent about these values, then man must generate them from himself.” So, those in power get together and decide what is good for society in a given place and at a given time, and that becomes law. “TYRANNY! Exclaims Schaeffer (his emphasis); that’s what we face! We face a world view which never would have given us our freedoms. It has been forced upon us by the courts and the government — the men holding this other world view, whether we want it or not, even though it’s destroying the very freedoms which give the freedoms for the excesses and for the things which are wrong.” 

Man is not only the measure of all things, but all things are measured for his pleasure, his enjoyment. For the natural man, joy means enjoyment, lots of it – enjoyment of freedom, enjoyment of job, of family, of friends, of sex, of sport, of holidays, of gadgets – and enjoyment of church! “Enjoyment” here does not merely mean amusements, thrills and diversions (French divertissement “entertainment”) but has to do with such things as the relationship between lifestyles and happiness. (See “Enjoyment of life lengthens life: Findings and consequences’” by R. Veenhoven). 

All is permitted unless it interferes with someone else’s enjoyment. If there is no God, all is permissible (Dostoevsky’s “The Brothers Karamazov – free ebook). Here are two excerpts (the pagination is of the ebook) : 

“Only five days ago, in a gathering here, principally of ladies, he solemnly declared in argument that there was nothing in the whole world to make men love their neighbours. That there was no law of nature that man should love mankind, and that, if there had been any love on earth hitherto, it was not owing to a natural law, but simply because men have believed in immortality. Ivan Fyodorovitch added in parenthesis that the whole natural law lies in that faith, and that if you were to destroy in mankind the belief in immortality, not only love but every living force maintaining the life of the world would at once be dried up. Moreover, nothing then would be immoral, everything would be lawful, even cannibalism.” (p. 134). Immortality implies belief in God. Also from “The Brothers Karamazov: 

“But God will save Russia, for though the peasants are corrupted and cannot renounce their filthy sin, yet they know it is cursed by God and that they do wrong in sinning. So that our people still believe in righteousness, have faith in God and weep tears of devotion. It is different with the upper classes. They, following science, want to base justice on reason alone, but not with Christ, as before, and they have already proclaimed that there is no crime, that there is no sin. And that’s consistent, for if you have no God what is the meaning of crime? (pp. 649-50). 

The idols of the tribe 

In his “The principles of psychology, Chapter 21, “The perception of reality” William James, distinguishes seven “sub-universes” of reality: 

1. The world of sense, of physical things, as we apprehend them.

2. The world of science, of physical things, as the learned conceive them.

3. The world of ideal relations and abstract truths believable by all – logical mathematical, ethical, metaphysical propositions.

4. The world of “idols of the tribe”, illusions or prejudices common to all.

5. The various supernatural worlds.

6. The various worlds of individual opinion.

7. The various (and numerous) worlds of “sheer madness”.

James distinguishes between the “idols” of illusions and prejudices and the ” various supernatural worlds.” The three Abrahamic religions – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – also distinguish between idols and the supernatural world. Idols in these religions, in contrast to William James, do not refer to illusions and prejudices but to anything that one loves above God. John Calvin, in his preface to the Olivat translation of the New Testament writes: 

It is true enough that the Gentiles, astonished and convinced by so many goods and benefits which they saw with their own eyes, have been forced to recognize the hidden Benefactor from whom came so much goodness. But instead of giving the true God the glory which they owed him, they forged a god to their own liking, one dreamt up by their foolish fantasy in its vanity and deceit; and not one god only, but as many as their temerity and conceit enabled them to forge and cast (feindre et fondre); so that there was not a people or place which did not make new gods as seemed good to them. Thus it is that idolatry, that perfidious panderer, was able to exercise dominion, to turn men away from God, and to amuse them with a whole crowd of phantoms to which they themselves had given shape, name, and being itself. 

Idols are not only images and statues as described in Romans 1: 

21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25 They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.

 Anything you love more than Jesus the Christ is idolatry. In one culture, the family is an idol; in another culture – Western culture – the individual is an idol. In Western culture it is not polite to hurt someone’s feelings, for example, telling them that they are wrong. When it comes to religion, no one, says the humanist, is wrong. 

Your idol may be money or art or your moral rectitude, even your good works, if not done mainly for God. Idols, then, are anything that takes precedence over your Creator; in Christianity, anything that you covet more than Christ is idolatry. John Piper defines covetousness as “desiring something so much that you lose your contentment in God” (“Future Grace,” 221). Thus the opposite of covetousness is resting satisfied with God. Covetousness is idolatry “because the contentment that the heart should be getting from God, it starts to get from something else” (221). Covetousness, simply put, “is a heart divided between two gods” (221).”

 There is also the idolatry of human reason. The “Enlightenment” made reason an ultimate thing. When it came to the Bible, it threw out anything it could not explain. Our brains, it says, can’t operate without patterns and order.  We have to make some order out of what we see and hear.  It says, patterns create music, language and thought.  We need stories, it says, because they are part of our make-up.  Some people, it says, are content with fiction, while others have a need for their stories to be true.  It says, some people believe that absolute truth will always elude us, others believe that they know the Truth. 

For example, here is a comment someone wrote to me about the Suffering Servant” passage in Isaiah 53; the book of Isaiah was written 700 years before Christ was born.  “The Old Testament tells of the coming of the Messiah. The Book of Isaiah is not a prophecy.  Of course a Messiah, whether Jesus or not, would be spurned, persecuted and martyred.  To predict this, all you need is to witness human behaviour. It is the humanist opinion that the bible stems from our longing for order and understanding.  We need a beginning, a middle and an end.  In the humanist view, the bible story of Adam and Eve is a dramatic, fictional explanation for human nature, suffering and death.” 

“Critics of biblical Christianity, writes Michael Kruger have roundly argued that Christians have no rational basis for holding such a belief about the canon. Christians can believe such a thing if they want to, it is argued, but it is irrational and intellectually unjustifiable. It must be taken on “blind faith,”(Michael Kruger, Introduction to Canon revisited Canon Revisited: Establishing the Origins and Authority of the New Testament Books). This, of course, is silly. This is not the place to say why. 

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing ( 1729- 1781) is famous for his metaphor of the “ugly broad ditch” (der garstige breite Graben) between the “accidental truths of history” and “the proof for necessary truths of reason.” For Lessing, religion belongs to the “accidental truths of history.” Christians, Jews and Muslims should not consider one another’s “accidental” beliefs as wrong. Why is this silly? Because, (most) Jews believe that Jesus is not the Messiah and was crucified, Christians also believe jesus was crucified but is indeed the Messiah, while Muslims also believe that Jesus is the Messiah but that he did not die on the cross, indeed, he did not die at all but was taken up into heaven while still alive. Lessing wished that they could look past the “accidents” of religion to the “necessary truths of reason.” 

Our modern cultural elite think that science and education, not the Bible, will improve the world. This view has had devastating results. In 1920, H.G. Wells, in his “Outline of history,” praised human progress, which he maintained was due to advances in science and education. Human reason was going from strength to strength, to the end of all war. In his “Shape of things to come” (1933), Wells described how appalled he was by the selfishness of nations. In his last book, at the end of World War II, “Mind at the end of its tether (1945), he wrote ‘Homo sapiens is spent, this is the end.” Homo Sapiens lost all its sap; result you end up a sap. 

Here is the problem, which Wells, the great humanist, either ignored or was ignorant of: He had put his great hope in humanity to solve all its problems. Alas, he was forced to face the reality of the inherent depravity of man. He knew nothing of the grace and power of God to change lives.

The inevitable outcome of humanism 

What does this individualist autonomy of humanism lead to? Often not to the fine humanistic qualities described in Adrian Leftwich’s obituary but, says Francis Schaeffer, to “things such as over-permissiveness, pornography, the problem of the public schools, the breakdown of the family, abortion, infanticide (the killing of newborn babies), increased emphasis upon the euthanasia of the old and many, many other things…whatever compassion there has ever been, it is rooted in the fact that our culture knows that man is unique, is made in the image of God. Take it away, and I just say gently, the stopper is out of the bathtub for all human life.” (See the recent case of the killing of botched aborted babies). (F. Schaeffer, “A Christian Manifesto”). 

It indeed possible for the generosity and empathy of a humanist to exist side by side with some or all of the evils mentioned by Schaeffer. The above evils (that is what they are) mentioned by Schaeffer are symptoms of the deeper problem of a change in the Western world from a Judeo-Christian standard to a humanistic one. Not only a departure from the Judeo-Christian world view but, says Bavinck, from the “religious supra-naturalistic worldview [which] has universally prevailed among all peoples and in all ages down to our own day, and only in the last hundred and fifty years has given way in some circles to the empirico-scientific” (Herman Bavinck, “The philosophy of Revelation,” 1908). So, for most of human history, East and West, there existed a close connection between religion and civilization, between the world and the other-wordly. Indeed religion was the very foundation of the family and social life. 

The Christian should destroy his idols. How to do it? The Bible is ambivalent about the power of idols. In one sense they are nothing, they are not real, because there is, the Bible says, only one God. In another sense, through these idols, the powers and principalities insinuate your soul. How does a Christian disarm these evil powers – the devil and his demons? The only sure way is to be prepared to lose one’s life. The Apostle Paul was prepared to do it, and Jesus actually did it. This is what happened at the cross: 

“When you [ believers] were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross” (Colossians 2:13-15). When Jesus bowed his head and died, he totally triumphed over the idols. Your career, your wife, your children, your CV cannot die for your sins, only Christ can. 

How can God punish those who hate him – a just punishment – and yet bring them back to him. How does Jesus’ objective triumph over idols (at the cross) help one to leave one’s idols? If the reality of who Jesus is and what he has done breaks through to you, it will free you. The only way to understand why Jesus is more important is through the guidance of the Holy Spirit in prayer and meditation (not of the “transcendental” kind”). When you look into the coffin of a loved one, the real question, says Tim Keller, is: “Is Jesus there in that coffin with you?” (Tim Keller, “The Gospel and Idolatry”). 

The Church, of course, has also been infected with the idolatry of humanism. Here is Paris Reidhead: 

“Now religion [in the 19^th century] then had to exist because there were so many people that made their living at it, so they had to find some way to justify their existence. So back about the time, in 1850, the church divided into two groups. The one group was the liberals, who accepted the philosophy of the humanism and tried to find some relevance by saying something like this to their generation, “Ha, ha, we don’t know there’s a heaven. We don’t know there’s a hell. But we do know this, that you’ve got to live for 70 years! We know there’s a great deal of benefit from poetry, from high thoughts and noble aspirations. Therefore it’s important for you to come to church on Sunday, so that we can read some poetry, that we can give you some little adages and axioms and rules to live by. We can’t say anything about what’s going to happen when you die, but we’ll tell you this, if you’ll come every week and pay and help and stay with us, we’ll put springs on your wagon and your trip will be more comfortable. We can’t guarantee anything about what’s going to happen when you die, but we say that if you come along with us, we’ll make you happier while you’re alive.” And so this became the essence of liberalism. It has simply nothing more than to try and put a little sugar in the bitter coffee of their journey and sweeten it up for a time. This is all that it could say.”

“Well now the philosophy of the atmosphere is humanism; the chief end of being is the happiness of man. There’s another group of people that have taken umbrage with the liberals, this group are my people, the fundamentalists. They say, “We believe in the inspiration of the Bible! We believe in the deity of Jesus Christ! We believe in hell! We believe in heaven! We believe in the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ!” But remember the atmosphere is that of humanism. And humanism says the chief end of being is the happiness of man. Humanism is like a miasma out of a pit, it just permeates everyplace. Humanism is like an infection, an epidemic, it just goes everywhere.” (Paris Reidhead, “Ten shekels and a shirt.”

Be careful; it all depends what one means by “happiness.”  Here is John Brown: “‘Life,’ in the language of our Lord, implies happiness. When he calls himself, then, the “life-giving bread,” he intimates that he is the author of true happiness; that he, that he alone, can make men truly and permanently happy” (John Brown, “True happiness and the way to secure it: Conversational discourse to the Jews – John 6:26-65″).

 

Betrayal, forgiveness and redemption 

Sin and forgiveness are central motifs in all religions. One of the worst sins is betrayal, especially by those who say they love you. Judas’ betrayal of and Peter’s denial of Jesus are well known. “Even my close friend, someone I trusted, one who shared my bread, has turned against me” (Psalm 41:9). I return to Adrian Leftwich. The “Daily Maverick” (11 May, 2013) carries an article entitled, “Adrian Leftwich, the Unforgiven” with the following rubric: 

Adrian Leftwich, who died earlier this month, ended his life as a respected politics professor at the University of York, in England. But as a young man in his native South Africa, Leftwich was an anti-Apartheid activist who sold out some of his closest friends and comrades in exchange for his own freedom. Even after almost 50 years, some would never forgive him. Rebecca Davis looks back on a haunting South African story.”  The article quotes an excerpt from Leftwich “I gave the names”: “In July 1964, when I was 24, my life in South Africa came to a sudden end. The events which brought this about were of my own making. No one else was to blame.” Davis continues: 

“In this slightly abrupt fashion, Adrian Leftwich begins his 2002 essay “I Gave the Names”. It was the first time in 40 years that Leftwich, by that time a successful UK academic, would break his silence in public on the events that had condemned him to a life lived in exile from his home country. It was said later that he had been writing the essay for 15 years. Leftwich, looking back at events which occurred more than 40 years earlier, still revealed traces of bemusement: ‘For reasons which I still do not fully understand, I tried to do things which were far beyond me, and I failed. I tried to help change the world around me but in the process I destroyed my own, I betrayed my friends and colleagues and I damaged the cause which I believed in and had worked for,’ he wrote.” 

From the “humanistic” standpoint (as defined in this article), Leftwich, in his student days, did a heinous crime, which resulted in torture and long prison sentences for his associates and close friends. Some eventually forgave him, some half-forgave him, and others could never forgive him. I mentioned earlier, how his later life took an “extraordinary and genuine interest in and support for others.  Adrian was above all a humanist (my italics), wanting to know and understand the people he met and worked with – important leaders and charismatic taxi-drivers alike. Adrian wanted to understand the ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ weft and weave of the person, and in doing so invariably left an enduring impression on people.” (His obituary at the beginning of this article). 

Oh the contrast! The traitor seeking redemption (for surely there must be truth in this inference) in humanistic virtue. Christ, in contrast, teaches that redemption can never be found in turning over a new leaf, or even in turning your body over to be burned for any reason, even for Christ’s sake, if not done without faith in Him, without faith in His sacrifice on the cross. It was on the cross that he was made sin for those who were to believe in Him. Humanists can’t understand how faith can save you. They, like Pontius Pilate, ask, “What is truth? They are asking, if there is no Truth – which they believe is true!- in what truth can they believe? (All knowledge and action is based on belief). 

Both the humanist and the Christian agree with the Apostle James: 

14 What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? 15 Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. 16 If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? 17 In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead (James 2). 

Adrian Leftwich, in human eyes, did far more good than evil; yet, the Bible says without faith in (trust in) Christ there is no redemption – in this world and the world to come. I say this with great sadness.

I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!” (Galatians 2:20-21)

 

 Related post: Pantheism, the Enlightenment and Materialism

 

 

 

 

Pantheism, the Enlightenment and Materialism

 

Introduction: What is Pantheism

 Pantheism is the belief that what religions call “God” is the universe itself, in all its splendour and horror. In Pantheism the universe and God are synonymous. Pantheism is as old as the marrow of Indian philosophy; the Upanishads (etymology – “sitting close to” a guru) , and as new as “New Age.” The Jewish Kabbalah, Pantheist to the core, states: 

“The essence of divinity is found in every single thing — nothing but it exists. Since it causes every thing to be, no thing can live by anything else. It enlivens them; its existence exists in each existent. Do not attribute duality to God. Let God be solely God. If you suppose that Ein Sof (the Eternal, literally “without end”) emanates until a certain point, and that from that point on is outside of it, you have dualized. God forbid! Realize, rather, that Ein Sof exists in each existent. Do not say, “This is a stone and not God.” God forbid! Rather, all existence is God, and the stone is a thing pervaded by divinity” (Rabbi Moshe Cordovero, Shiur Qomah to Zohar 3:14b; Idra Rabba). 

Rabbi Moshe Cordovero’s grave in Safed, Israel

Adorning the pantheist pantheon in the late 18th to early 19th centuries were the greats Goethe and Hegel in Germany, Shelley and Keats in England, and Emerson and Thoreau in America. Later in the 19th century pantheism was close to becoming the dominant philosophy.

If pantheism is as old as the Upanishads (the bulk of it probably written circa 600 BCE), how old is materialism? At least as old as the pre-Socratic Greek philosophy of 600-500 BCE, reaching its peak in the 4th Century BCE with the atomists Democritus and Epicurus. “Atomism” was the philosophy that ultimate reality consists of invisible, indivisible bits of randomly colliding matter. Not very different from the materialism of modern times, spearheaded by the Enlightenment. It believed that human beings and nature could be controlled by reason and empirical methods. The reasoning was the laws of society emerge from the laws of nature. Once these social laws where understood, it would be possible to create a better world. 

The Enlightenment 

In his What is Enlightenment? Emmanuel Kant describes the Enlightenment as “man’s release from his self-incurred tutelage”, where “tutelage” is (Kant continues) “man’s inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another”. The “Enlightenment” has profound relevance not only for understanding modern man. God saw that the light was good, but man saw that enlightenment was better – much better. “Enlightenment” puts man at the centre. Whereas theology, previous to the “Enlightenment,” was the handmaiden of science, after the “Enlightenment,” the movement of “positivism” (August Comte) reduced it to the “charwoman” of science (Frederick Copleston in one of his volumes on the history of philosophy. (Deconstruction and the Inworming of Postmodern theology). 

Emmanuel Kant (1724-1804)

Force and Chemical Stuff 

Scientists such as Lavoisier (1743-94) in France and John Dalton (1766-1844) in England promoted a materialistic philosophy where all entities including human beings were entirely the product of physical and chemical forces. One of the most popular books of the 19th century was Ludwig Büchner’s, “Kraft und Stoff (Force and Matter, 1855). The argument of the book is that there is no need for a transcendent (immaterial) force to explain the universe: the laws of physics and chemistry are sufficient to do the job. Here is Büchner strutting his Stoff in his concluding observations (English translation (1870) by J. Frederick Collingwood, p, 251-52): 

“Exact science inculcates modesty ; and it is perhaps for this reason, that our modern naturalists have hitherto neglected to apply the standard of exact science to philosophy, and from the treasury of facts to forge arms for the overthrow of transcendental speculations. Now and then there issued from the workshops of these industrious labourers a ray of light which, reaching the noisy philosophers, did not fail to heighten the existing confusion. These single rays were, however, sufficient to cause in the camp of speculative philosophy a feverish excitement, and gave rise to sallies in anticipation of a threatened attack. There was something ludicrous in it to see these philosophers so desperately defend themselves before they were seriously attacked. It certainly will not be long before the battle becomes general. Is the victory doubtful ? The struggle is unequal ; the opponents cannot stand against the trenchant arm of physical and physiological materialism, which fights with facts that every one can comprehend, while the opponents fight with suppositions and presumptions.” 

Büchner’s  Force and Matter was followed four years later by the sensational materialisation of Charles Darwin’s “On the origin of Species,” 1859). Darwin’s theory of evolution by means of natural selection dumped the notion that there was design or purpose in the universe. All phenomena could be explained by chemistry and physics, even history; to wit, the “historical materialism” of Marx and Engels and the evolutionary psychology of Herbert Spencer. 

Historical materialism 

Here is Marx and Engels’ broad overview of historical materialism: 

“The first premise of all human history is, of course, the existence of living human individuals. Thus the first fact to be established is the physical organisation of these individuals and their consequent relation to the rest of nature….Men can be distinguished from animals by consciousness, by religion or anything else you like. They themselves begin to distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they begin to produce their means of subsistence, a step which is conditioned by their physical organisation. By producing their means of subsistence men are indirectly producing their actual material life.”

Pantheism takes a sandwich break 

I contrast the views of Francis Schaeffer and Herman Bavinck on the relationship between materialism and the “infinite creator God (Schaeffer) in 20th century humanism. Here is Schaeffer in 1982: 

“[I]nstead of the final reality that exists being the infinite creator God; instead of that which is the basis of all reality being such a creator God, now largely, all else is seen as only material or energy which has existed forever in some form, shaped into its present complex form only by pure chance.(F. Schaeffer, “A Christian Manifesto”). 

The above position describes the Darwinian position as it exists today in 2013.Now, here is Herman Bavinck in 1908. Note how the second paragraph contrasts with Schaeffer:

(My italics) 

“The term evolution embodies in itself a harmless conception, and the principle expressed by it is certainly operative within well-defined limits throughout the imiverse. But the trend of thought by which it has been monopolized, and the system built on it, in many cases at least, avail themselves of the word in order to explain the entire world, including man and religion and morality, without the aid of any supranatural factor, purely from immanent forces, and according to unvarying laws of nature.” 

“Nevertheless, the transition from the nineteenth to the twentieth century has witnessed an important change in this respect. The foremost investigators in the field of science have abandoned the. attempt to explain all phenomena and events by.mechanico-chemical causes. Everywhere there is manifesting itself an effort to take up and incorporate Darwin’s scheme of a nature subject to law into an idealistic world-view. In fact Darwin himself, through his agnosticism, left room for different conceptions of the Absolute, nay repeatedly and em- phatically gave voice to a conviction that the world is not the product of accident, brute force, or blind necessity, but in its entirety has been intended for progressive improvement. By way of Darwin, and enriched by a mass of valuable scientific material, the doctrine of evolution has returned to the fundamental idea of Hegel’s philosophy. The mechanical conception of nature has been once more replaced by the dynamical ; materialism has reverted to pantheism; evolution has become again the unfolding, the revealing of absolute spirit. And the concept of revelation has held anew its triumphant entry into the realm of philosophy and even of natural science.” 

Bavinck’s “The mechanical conception of nature has been once more replaced by the dynamical ; materialism has reverted to pantheism.” 

This implies that in the 19th century (recall Bavinck wrote this in 1908) the purely mechanical conception of nature was in vogue, just as it is in vogue again in the late 20th and 21st century. This is not to say that “creationism” is insignficant in the 21st centrury. The interesting observation in Bavinck is that between the mechanical conceptions of the late 19th century and our time, there existed a pantheistic hiatus.

Herman Bavinck (1854 – 1921)

Here is Carl Sagan: 

“We’ve arranged a civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology.” And: Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.” One thing Sagan, while alive, was sure of; it wasn’t God.

 Conclusion: I am Gaaaaad, I am Gaaaad 

The world with all its stuff is more pantheistic than ever. No one sums it up more than the delightful Shirley Maclaine. Here is an excerpt of an ABC-TV interview featuring Shirley Mclaine:

“During an oceanside conversation, David presses her to stand up and assert the presence of the ‘God-truth’ within.  After suggesting several affirmations, he selects a powerful one for Shirley:  ‘I am God.’ Timidly, she stands at the Pacific.  Stretching out her arms, she mouths the words half-heartedly. ‘Say it louder.’ Shirley blusters about this statement being a little too pompous. For him to make her chant those words is – well, it sounds so insufferably arrogant. David’s answer cuts to the quick: ‘See how little you think of yourself?’ This deep insight embarrasses MacLaine into holy boldness. Intuitively, she comes to feel he’s right.  Lifting both arms to the sky, she pumps it out — ‘I am God!  I am God!’ — as the ocean laps at her feet.”

Shirley Maclaine (1934 – )

 

Voltaire, Darwin, Marx and Lennon: The last laugh

Voltaire, was a deist. He said that one hundred years after his death Christianity would disappear from the face of the earth. In the beginning, Darwin, like Voltaire, was also a deist; he believed a supernatural force kicked the world into motion and left it and Darwin to their own spin. Karl Marx came alongside Darwin and spun the yarn that religion was the opiate of the people and in the perfect society to come would die a natural death. And then John Lennon came along in 1966 and said the Beatles were more popular than Jesus. They were subsequently banned from the radio.

They were the kings and the rage of the earth.

Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord, and against his anointed, saying, Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us.
He that sits in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision.
Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure.
Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion.
I will declare the decree: the Lord hath said unto me, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee.
Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.

(Psalm 2)

Richard Dawkins, top dog for 2013 tops God?

Richard Dawkins, the world’s most famous atheist, has also been voted the most influential thinker of 2013. If influence is what flows into you then effluence must be what flows out of you. Jesus said “What goes into the mouth does not defile, but what comes out of the mouth, that is what defiles” (Matthew15:11). Jesus is not talking about unkosher food like pork or unwashed kosher food like lamb but about what goes into and comes out of the heart-mind. 

Isn’t it a fact, however, that bad influences (what comes in) can indeed defile you; for example pornography or watching too many sitcoms, perforating the ears every few minutes with “oh my gaaaaad.” Or books like Dawkins’ “God delusion,” in which Dawkins describes the “Abrahamic God… with unpleasantly human qualities” and as a “disgrace” (the sacrifice of Isaac). (R. Dawkins, “The God delusion, Black Swan, 2006, p. 59, 275). 

The Bible teaches the way to avoid being polluted by the effluent of the world: 

Ephesians 6

10 Finally be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. 11 Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. 12 For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. 13 Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. 14 Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, 15 and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. 16 In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. 17 Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. 18 And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people.

It seems that the more one is able to top God, the higher one appears in the list of top thinkers. When it comes to tirade, Dawkins, the top dog for 2013, can never top God – the eternal top thinker, and just judge: 

Romans 3

10 As it is written: “There is no one righteous, not even one; 11 there is no one who understands;
there is no one who seeks God. 12 All have turned away,
they have together become worthless;
there is no one who does good,
not even one. 13 “Their throats are open graves;
    their tongues practice deceit.” “The poison of vipers is on their lips.” 14  “Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness. 

That’s Dawkins and all of us who have not put their trust in the sacrifice of the Lamb that was slain.

Related post: Followers of Yeshua keeping Torah: What’s the pork?

Born again, hell and other questions from a disbeliever

Here are a few questions from a disbeliever with my replies:

1.  So, the fact that John and Marion–John, Catholic and Marion, Anglican–do not see hell as my destination–that fact implies that God has not regenerated them?

Reply –  “Any man who thinks he deserves heaven is not a Christian. But for any man who knows he deserves Hell, there’s hope” (Martyn Lloyd-Jones) [This is the first thing I wrote in Hell in a nutshell]

2.  Is that why you have said that they, too, will land up in hell?

Reply -  Any person who thinks a disbeliever deserves heaven is not a Christian.

3.  How do Calvinists differ from Anglicans?

Reply – I quote a good answer.

Difference between Calvinism and Anglicanism

[Words in square brackets are mine]

• Anglicanism is a Protestant Church that:

- Affirms the Apostolic Succession and the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, in contrast to Calvinist emphasis on the Presbytery and rejection of the Apostolic Succession.

- Accepts the Arminian view of predestination, as opposed to the Calvinist view of predestination. [The Arminian says that God predestines those whom he sees from eternity will become believers. The Calvinist says that salvation is 100% God's doing; the believer's joyful role is to receive it]

- Accepts the Monarch as head of the Church, as oppose to Calvinist rejection of the whole hierarchy, and, if they live in England and are not republicans or anti-Royalist, accepting the monarch not as a spiritual power, but simply as a temporal one.

- Anglicanism is divided into the High Church and the Low Church, the High Church being more ritualistic and more…Catholic, whereas the low church has these elements to a lesser degree, Calvinism reject all these Catholic Elements altogether.

- The above should not be taken as God’s truth about the two Churches, as the Anglican Church did include Calvinist and Arminians who frequently debated each other as to the evolution and formation of the Church…the Church of Scotland, for example, is explicitly Calvinist Presbyterian, while the Church of England become more and more ARMINIAN in its theology, though, it seems to me, mostly heterogeneous in its theology.

[When Calvinism is contrasted with Arminianism, what first comes to mind is God’s role and man’s role in coming to faith. The Calvinist says that man plays no cooperative or contributive role in coming to faith, while the Arminian says that man cooperates with God in that man turns his heart to God, that is, exercises his will to come to faith. In Calvinism, God first regenerates the sinner and then gives the sinner the gift of faith, while in Arminianism, regeneration follows the sinner’s acceptance of God’s offer of salvation. Faith, for the Arminian is something the believer does, not something God gives, as Calvinism understands it. There were many Calvinists in the early Anglican church, but very few today].

4.  Do you call yourself a born-again Calvinist or a Calvinist?

Reply- “Calvinist” is a label, nothing more. It is useful because Calvin is the most famous representative of the five solas (Latin for “alone”). The five solas are Sola Scriptura – Scripture, Alone
Solus Christus – Christ Alone,
Sola Gratia – Grace Alone,
Sola Fide – Faith Alone,
Soli Deo Gloria – The Glory of God Alone. With regard to the “Glory of God alone,” I argued in my most recent article (The weight of God’s glory. Wait!) that God will never share HIS glory; but this does not mean He won’t give us a little of our own. Humanistic modesty and Christian humility don’t mix. Christian humility is to acknowledge that “our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all” (2 Corinthians 4:17).

No one calls themselves a born again Calvinist. It would be like calling oneself a born again Paulist (Paul the Apostle). “Born again Christian”  (or Calvinist!) is a tautology, because both terms mean that God has regenerated you.Every Christian is by definition born again. it is, of course, more informative to say that you are Christian than to say I am born again, which only Christians – not all by a long shot – will understand. Many “Charismatic” Christians regard “born again” as a second experience, which is unbiblical.

5.  If you call yourself a born-again Calvinist–how do you know that God has regenerated you?

- “Born again Christian”  (or Calvinist!) is a tautology, as I replied in 4.

I know that God has regenerated me because of the primordial reason that the Bible tells me so.

Related articles

• How I Answered 6 Arminian Questions (citizenofnewjerusalem.wordpress.com)
• Arminian Theology: A Review (nathanielrmartin.wordpress.com)
• Sorry to be inclusive, but Jesus is the only Way (claytoncoombs.com)
• Calvinistic and Charismatic – Do they Mix? (hillsbiblechurch.org)
• God’s delusion (onedaringjew.wordpress.com)

 

The weight of glory

For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison (2 Corinthians 4:17).

For my own sake, for my own sake I do it, for how should my name be profaned? My glory I will not give to another (Isaiah 48:11)

Introduction

Why did the Son of God come into the world? There are two main reasons. The one is found in the most quoted verse in the New Testament, John 3:6 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” The other reason is “because salvation is of God and has been accomplished by God, it is for God’s glory and that we must glorify him always” (Monergism.com).

In this article I try to understand the weight of glory that should be given to God and the weight of glory that should be given to those to whom he gave his one and only Son.

It’s all about You. And me?

One church congregation sings, “It’s ALL about you, Jesus” (“Heart of Worship”) another sings “You thought of me above ALL” (“Above all powers”). And it is very possible that both songs be sung in the same church service.

“(Michael) Horton [in his “Christless Christianity”], says John Frame, complains that the concept of God in the American church has become “vacuous” because the church focuses on such things as ‘Discipleship, spiritual disciplines, life transformation, culture transformation, relationships, marriage and family, stress, the spiritual gifts, financial gifts, radical experience of conversion, and end-times curiosities…’ (Horton).

“Except possibly for the last item, continues Frame, it seems to me that everything on this list is a concern of Scripture itself and deserves to be emphasized in the church in some degree. The God who is concerned about such things is not vacuous. He is rather majestic and wonderful, because he is great enough to be concerned even with the details of human life. We can argue about the exact degree to which we should emphasize each of these, but that argument is not likely to be fruitful. These are matters that God cares about…“Now, certainly there is a kind of selfishness that detracts from biblical discipleship. Scripture warns of this (Luke 12:21; cf. Matt. 6:19-20). The self can be an idol, something we worship in place of God.”” (Review of Michael Horton’s “Christless Christianity”).

Eric Landry (on behalf of Horton) retorts: When it comes to the gospel, ‘we preach not ourselves, but Christ,’ because the gospel is not about us at all (My italics). (John Frame versus Michael Horton: What’s Christ all about?). Martyn Lloyd Jones, in his sermon on Ephesians 1:6, “To the praise of his glory,” says that the story of our salvation is all about God’s glory.

The Gospel is the story of man’s salvation. The question is: Is the Gospel all about God’s glory. If Lloyd Jones means “ultimately” and “mainly” about God’s glory, then, this, of course, is true.

I shall argue that the statement “the Gospel is not about us at all” reveals an over-enthusiastic (en “in” theos “God) misguided desire to let nobody – not even those for whom Christ died – cast a shadow over the glory of God.

God commands that he be praised for the glory of his name

At the beginning of this article, I quoted Isaiah 48:11 – “For my own sake, for my own sake I do it, for how should my name be profaned? My glory I will not give to another.” Here are a few verses in a similar vein:

“For as the waistcloth clings to the loins of a man, so I made the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah cling to me, says the Lord, that they might be for me a people, a name, a praise, and a glory” (Jeremiah 13:11).

Ephesians 1 contains three instances (verses 5-6, 12, and 14) that gives the reason for our salvation – God’s glory:

“He predestined us in love to be his sons through Jesus Christ according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace” (Ephesians 1:5-6).

“We who first hoped in Christ have been predestined and appointed to live for the praise of his glory” (Ephesians 1:12)…The Holy Spirit is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it to the praise of his glory” (Ephesians 1:14).

“But, says John Piper, if God is a God of love, he must be for us. Is, then, Piper asks, God for himself or is he for us?” Piper answers – “because God is unique as the most glorious of all beings and totally self-sufficient, he must be for himself in order to be for us,” because “the best gift God can give us is Himself.” This is correct. In Ephesians 2:18, we read that Christ came that we might “have access in one Spirit to the Father.” And 1 Peter 3:18 says, “Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God.”

Piper ends with “God is for us, and therefore has been, is now, and always will be, for himself.” (My italics).

All the scriptures above demonstrate that everything God does, including his plan of salvation, is for himself alone, for his own glory, whereas this last sentence from Piper maintains that God is not only for Himself but for believers as well. And it is to this dual “for” that I want to go. I shall argue that God is not only for Himself but for believers as well; that God is not only for His glory but for the glory of believers as well.

Salvation in the Word of God

J. Gresham Machen writes in his Christianity and liberalism (free ebook), Chapter 3 “The Bible”:

“The Bible also contains an account of a revelation which is absolutely new. That new revelation concerns the way which sinful man can come into communion with the living God. The way was opened, according to the Bible. by an act of God when, almost nineteen hundred years ago, outside the walls of Jerusalem. the eternal Son was offered as a sacrifice for the sins of men. To that one great event the whole Old Testament looks forward. and in that one event the whole of the New Testament finds its center and core.”

J Gresham Machen

The Gospel is the story of how God saves sinners. Salvation is something that happened, or rather somebody who happened. God did not erupt into history but was born(e) into history.

“From the beginning, says J. Gresham Machen, Christianity was certainly a way of life; the salvation that it offered was a salvation from sin, and salvation from sin appeared not merely in a blessed hope but also in an immediate moral change. The early Christians, to the astonishment of their neighbors, lived a strange new kind of life–a life of honesty, of purity and of unselfishness. And from the Christian community all other types of life were excluded in the strictest way.”

Another name for the Christian community is the Church. Here is a good description of the Church:

19 … you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, 20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. 21 In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. 22 And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.

The goal of the church should be the same as the goal of the Gospel: salvation. I once heard this in a sermon: “We were not called to salvation for ourselves, but for God’s glory.” Salvation, the preacher said, is a “by-product” of God’s glory. Did God really say that our salvation is not about ourselves but all about God’s glory? Is that what Jesus is saying in this passage? “And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all those he has given me, but raise them up at the last day. For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day” (John 6:39-40). Is the eternal life promised to believers merely a “by-product” of God’s plan – for Himself? To answer as gently and respectfully as I can: that’s plain silly.

Jesus means Saviour. The Gospel is about being saved. Surely, though, salvation (of ourselves and others we minister to) is not a by-product. John 3:16 “God so loved the world that he gave his only son…” God loves his own. Ultimately, of course, it all comes back to God, to his glory.

Confusion in my favourite sermon from my favourite preacher

Paris Reidhead has been a great joy and inspiration to me. His “Ten Shekels and Shirt” is the greatest sermon I have ever heard. SermonIndex.com lists this sermon among its ten best sermons. So far it has had 169874 downloads. Having listened to the sermon several times, I thought I would download the transcript to study the sermon more closely. Here are a few excerpts relevant to our topic:

(The CAPITALS are in the original transcript and indicate Paris Reidhead’s shuddering – the effect on his hearers – emphasis. I underline parts for discussion).

If you’ll ask me why I went to Africa, I’ll tell you I went primarily to improve on the justice of God. I didn’t think it was right for anybody to go to Hell without a chance to be saved. So I went to give poor sinners a chance to go to heaven. Now I haven’t put it in so many words, but if you’ll analyze what I just told you do you know what it is? Humanism. That I was simply using the provisions of Jesus Christ as a means to improve upon human conditions of suffering and misery. And when I went to Africa, I discovered that they weren’t poor, ignorant, little heathen running around in the woods looking for someone to tell them how to go to heaven. That they were MONSTERS OF INIQUITY!!! THEY WERE LIVING IN UTTER AND TOTAL DEFIANCE OF FAR MORE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD THEN I EVER DREAMED THEY HAD!

They deserved Hell! Because they utterly refused to walk in the light of their conscience, and light of the law written upon their heart, and the testimony of nature, and the truth they knew! And when I found that out I assure you I was so angry with God that on one occasion in prayer I told Him it was a mighty ….. little thing He’d done, sending me out there to reach these people that were waiting to be told how to go to heaven. When I got there I found out they knew about heaven, and didn’t want to go there, and that they loved their sin and wanted to stay in it.

I went out there motivated by humanism. I’d seen pictures of lepers, I’d seen pictures of ulcers, I’d seen pictures of native funerals, and I didn’t want my fellow human beings to suffer in Hell eternally after such a miserable existence on earth. But it was there in Africa that God began to tear THROUGH THE OVERLAY OF THIS HUMANISM! And it was that day in my bedroom with the door locked that I wrestled with God. For here was I, coming to grips with the fact that the people I thought were ignorant and wanted to know how to go to heaven and were saying “Someone come teach us”, actually didn’t want to take time to talk with me or anybody else. They had no interest in the Bible and no interest in Christ, and they loved their sin and wanted to continue in it. And I was to that place at that time where I felt the whole thing was a sham and a mockery, and I had been sold a bill of goods! And I wanted to come home.

There alone in my bedroom AS I FACED GOD HONESTLY WITH WHAT MY HEART FELT, it seemed to me I heard Him say, “Yes, will not the Judge of all the earth do right? The Heathen are lost. And they’re going to go to Hell, not because they haven’t heard the gospel. They’re going to go to Hell because they are sinners, WHO LOVE THEIR SIN! And because they deserve Hell. BUT, I didn’t send you out there for them. I didn’t send you out there for their sakes.” And I heard as clearly as I’ve ever heard, though it wasn’t with physical voice but it was the echo of truth of the ages finding its’ way into an open heart. I heard God say to my heart that day something like this, “I didn’t send you to Africa for the sake of the heathen, I sent you to Africa for My sake. They deserved Hell! But I LOVE THEM!!! AND I ENDURED THE AGONIES OF HELL FOR THEM!!! I DIDN’T SEND YOU OUT THERE FOR THEM!!! I SENT YOU OUT THERE FOR ME! DO I NOT DESERVE THE REWARD OF MY SUFFERING? DON’T I DESERVE THOSE FOR WHOM I DIED?”

I was there not for the sake of the heathen. I was there for the Savior who endured the agonies of Hell for me. But He deserved the heathen. Because He died for them. My eyes were opened. I was no longer working for Micah and ten shekels and a shirt. But I was serving a living God. Do you see? Let me epitomize, let me summarize. Christianity says, “The end of all being is the glory of God.” Humanism says, “The end of all being is the happiness of man.” And one [the former] born in Hell, the deification of man. AND THE OTHER WAS BORN IN HEAVEN, THE GLORIFICATION OF GOD!

In this wonderful sermon, Reidhead says an astounding thing: the reason for being – it’s not clear whether he includes God’s Being, yet it seems so – is “Lamb that was slain receive the reward of your suffering.” That reward consists of those for whom Christ suffered and shed his blood – those in this world whom the Father gave to the Son.

On previous listenings of the sermon, I was so overcome by the power of its delivery that – this, I suggest, happens often in poignant preaching – its force short-circuited my brain. I now see. Reidhead had thundered: I DIDN’T SEND YOU OUT THERE FOR THEM!!! I SENT YOU OUT THERE FOR ME! DO I NOT DESERVE THE REWARD OF MY SUFFERING? DON’T I DESERVE THOSE FOR WHOM I DIED?”

Is it really an either/or. Isn’t the following possible: “I sent you out there for them, and I sent you out there for me; mainly for me?” If Christ died for me, surely there is something in it for me as well: to be with God eternally. And doesn’t the glorification of God include the glorification of the reward of his suffering – those he died for? It is true that “All things are from him and through him and to him” (Romans 11:36). Isn’t it true that some of those “things” is the joy God feels for what he has done for those he has redeemed – and glorified:

John 17

7 When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, 2 since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. 3 And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. 4 I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. 5 And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed…10 All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them… 22 The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one.

Romans 8

16 The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, 17 and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.

Not to forget the favorite of those who believe that salvation is 100% of the Lord:

29 For those whom he foreknew (foreloved) he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. 30 And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.

Conclusion

The chief end of God is to be glorified. The Bible tells us that one of the means of God’s glorification is in and through his creation. We also learn that the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. (Westminster Shorter Catechism). Let us not, in our enthusiasm for the Son of God’s glory, chuck out the glorification of man – the reward of HIS suffering. And, yes, God will never share HIS glory; but this does not mean He won’t give us a little of our own. Humanistic modesty and Christian humility don’t mix. Christian humility is to acknowledge that

“our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all” (2 Corinthians 4:17).

Related posts:

The Lamb that was slain: How can you reject such a great salvation? (onedaringjew)

God’s glory. And man’s? (onedaringjew)

The Weight of glory (C.S. Lewis)

“Humans need something more than themselves” – John Gray: Dog

Why does the human animal need contact with something other than itself?, asks political philosopher, John N Gray.

He writes in the BBC News Magazine:

“Montaigne didn’t want his animal companions to be mirrors of himself, he wanted them to be a window from which he could look out from himself and from the human world..,He understood that the good life means different things for animals with different natures. What he questioned was the idea that one kind of life, the kind humans alone can live, is always best.”

“Dogs seem to be capable of showing human-like emotions of shame, but though they are more domesticated they still remain different from us. And I think it’s their differences from us, as much as their similarities, that makes them such good companions…Whatever you feel about cats and dogs, it seems clear that the human animal needs contact with something other than itself. For religious people this need may be satisfied by God, even if the God with whom they commune seems too often all-too-human..It’s also obvious thatsearching for a way of looking at the world that’s not simply human expresses a powerful human impulse.”

“What birds and animals offer us is not confirmation of our sense of having an exalted place in some sort of cosmic hierarchy, it’s admission into a larger scheme of things, where our minds are no longer turned in on themselves. Unless it has contact with something other than itself, the human animal soon becomes stale and mad. By giving us the freedom to see the world afresh, birds and animals renew our humanity.”

There’s the joke of the dyslexic atheist who woke up one morning and realised that there was a dog. However, as John Gray tells it above, it may not be necessary to be dyslexic – or even a philosopher to realise that there IS a dog; but it (the dyslexic and the philosopher) does yelp. As Paul Newman said in 1956: Somedoggy up there likes me.

Look, the bottomless pit. Where? Up

In Psalm 139:7-8, we read: “Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths of hell you are there.” And in Matthew (5:3-4, 8) “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

Don’t be downcast. Look up. Can you imagine that the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken. Then will appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven. And then all the peoples of the earth will mourn when they see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory. And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other” (Matthew 24:29-31)?

This is something that no one could imagine (from scratch), just as no one could imagine that the Son of Man-Son of God would come to shed his blood for those the Father had given Him before the creation of the world, namely, his ”elect.”

Now imagine yourself looking up into the heavens again. You see scrolling clearly across the sky the words: Blessed are the pure in heart for they will see…the words are going fuzzy….they will see….they will see what…I can’t make it out…ah, now I see….what is that! Blessed are the pure in heart for they will see the…… bottomless pit. The bottomless pit!

Can that be right? Can it be true that when I look up to God in the heavens I see hell staring back at me? Another strange thing: why should such a thing happen to someone who is pure in heart? Haven’t we just read that the meek, the contrite, the broken-hearted the pure in heart will see God? Doesn’t the psalmist say The LORD is close to the broken-hearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit (Psalm 34:18) , and “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart (Psalm 51:17)?

Is God telling me, as He told Satan, ”How you have fallen from heaven, O morning star, son of the dawn”(Isaiah 14:12)? Is God telling me that because I am not pure in heart, I am only able to see Satan? Is God angry with me because I said in my heart as Lucifer had said before the creation of the worlds: “I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God; I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly, on the utmost heights of the sacred mountain. I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High?” (Isaiah 14:13-14)

No, this can’t be so, because would Satan say: “Be pure in heart and see Satan’s throne on high?” Would he say, “’blessed are those that mourn, are meek and broken-hearted, for they will see Satan’?” Does Satan love the poor in spirit, the pure in heart? Not at all. So, what is going on? Let me repeat what I saw scrolling through the heavens: “The pure in heart will see the bottomless pit.”Is not that a lie from the abyss? Doesn’t Jesus tell us in His beatitudes that the pure in heart will see God. Yes, the beatitudes do say that the pure in heart will see God; however – and this is the point I want to make – just because the pure in heart will see God, this doesn’t mean that all they will see will be God.

Let me explain. The Word of God contains many kinds of promises. In one place, Jesus says that those who are pure in heart will see God; as in the beatitudes. But in other places He says that those who love Him with all their hearts will suffer persecutions, tribulations and sorrow; they will be tempted by Satan. Satan and his devils will never leave them alone. Satan will lash them constantly with feelings of condemnation.

Satan will say that you are unworthy of God’s mercy. He will use the world to get at you. You will look at the prosperity of the wicked and wonder why they have it so good. You’ll be hated, mocked and people will snigger when you enter their ambit. Welcome, Christian to a taste of the pit, if not bottomless. The crucial thing we need to understand is that the closer you come to Christ, the more the abyss will try to drag you down. “I will not speak with you much longer, for the prince of this world is coming (John 14: 30). But, Jesus adds, “the prince of this world “has no hold on me”.So, fellow Christian, be of good cheer, he has no hold over you either. Jesus has overcome Satan and the world.

A few years ago, two evenings before Pentecost, I was reading the verse “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.” I fell asleep and dreamed that I was in a vast empty hangar. Like the ones that house supersonic jet airliners. I looked up and saw giant pages of the bible scrolling across the roof. The scrolling stopped. One verse lit up in a bright orange glow. The verse read: “Be contrite and you will view the bottomless pit. “And I saw an angel coming down out of heaven, having the key to the bottomless pit (Abyss) and holding in his hand a great chain (Revelation 20:1).”

My dream was a poor man’s adumbration of the Apostle John’s vision. So, will old men, if not see visions, indeed dream dreams? Let’s leave that question and get to the more important questions. Does the Bible teach that it is possible to look up to heaven and see the bottomless pit? Yes it does. Heaven and hell are two sides of the same salvation coin. Does the Bible teax

Second, that only the pure in heart – like John the Apostle – could have a Revelation 20:1 experience? The concept (or experience of hell) is certainly not confined to biblical Christianity (I say “biblical” Christianity, because vast swathes of modern Christians don’t believe in hell, that is, everlasting punishment). To answer the question, it seems to me that Christians (those who are truly born again/regenerated and thus pure in heart) can. to a certain extent, experience Revelation 20:1.

Third, does the Bible say that such an experience can be uplifting? It does:

There will be signs in the sun, moon and stars. On the earth, nations will be in anguish and perplexity at the roaring and tossing of the sea. 26 People will faint from terror, apprehensive of what is coming on the world, for the heavenly bodies will be shaken. 27 At that time they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. 28 When these thaings begin to take place, stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near” (Luke 21:25-28).tFinally, would this piece make for a useful sermon? I ask this question because I believe that not all sermons need to be “purely” uplifting; indeed, it ain’t a bad thing – is it?, – if now and then a sermon lifts you out of your rut and throws you down. I can’t stand it; let me come clean. I gave this sermon to a class as part of a diploma I was studying for. The lecturer said is was not biblical and not uplifting. Daring uncaring Jew!

Human nature in its fourfold state

In a comment on Repent so that you can understand, Dan Benzvi requested  I write more about “humanity.”  I suppose “human nature” is the same thing. No one can do a better job than Thomas Boston. You can find the free book online here.

 

 

The Gospel: a Jew’s (n)emesis

Truth in Hebrew is “emet.” In Yiddish, the last “t” of a word is pronounced “s,” hence “emes.” What is the Gospel for a Jew? His “emesis.”

 

Yiddish 

Hell in a nutshell

“Any man who thinks he deserves heaven is not a Christian. But for any man who knows he deserves Hell, there’s hope” (Martyn Lloyd-Jones)

“Faith ever finds its most precious resting place upon the naked Word of God”  (The Annotated Bible, by Arno Clemens Gaebelein (1861-1945): The Pentateuch)

Introduction

For most, hell is nuts. Nuts, because hell is for those who hate what God declares to be good, acceptable, perfect. In this article, I examine hell in the New Testament and various views of hell: the traditional view (hell is eternal, and so is the punishment), the universalist view (every one is ultimately saved) and the annihilationist view (God may not terminate the place called hell but does terminate the torment and then the sinner’s existence).

God’s glory, and his children’s

God’s glory is the ultimate rationale of His Being. “For from him and through him and for him are all things. To him be the glory forever, Amen.” (End of Romans 11). God’s glory is also his children’s glory – his children are those in Christ:
”God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27). Yes, it is mostly about God’s glory, but it’s also about God’s children’s glory, which, of course, comes from Christ, and not from ourselves:

“I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one — I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me (John 17:22-23).

Paris Reidhead says an astounding thing: the reason (rationale) for being is – it’s not clear whether he includes God’s Being, yet it seems so: “Lamb that was slain receive the reward of your suffering.” That reward consists of those for whom Christ suffered and shed his blood; those in this world whom the Father gave to the Son:

“Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, 2 since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. 3 And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. 4 I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. 5 And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed. 6 “I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world. Yours they were, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. 7 Now they know that everything that you have given me is from you. 8 For I have given them the words that you gave me, and they have received them and have come to know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. 9 I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours.”

Jesus on hell

The world is headed for damnation. In the Gospels, Jesus talked more about hell than about heaven. More than half of Jesus’ 40 or so parables relate to God’s eternal judgment on sinners. Although the rest of the New Testament doesn’t mention the term “hell,” it does refer to the eternal separation from God and eternal punishment. The Sermon on the Mount contains some of Jesus’ most direct warnings of hell. (The beatitudes (Matthew 5:1-11, are only a very small part of the Sermon of the Mount, Matthew 5 to 7):

“But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell. (Matthew 5:28-30). No, hell is not only for Hitler and Stalin.

“Hell,” in the eyes of Christ, is good, acceptable and perfect? “What kind of love is this?” you ask. Surely, with God, love wins. (“Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived” by Rob Bell). Love does indeed win but so does justice. Justice means punishment for crimes. God is not a one dimensional being. We often hear and think “God is love.” Very seldom, however, do we hear or think that `”God is justice.” There is no conflict between these two divine attributes – love and justice.

J. I Packer on “The Righteous judge”

J. I Packer writes:

“God is love. This, quite naturally, is a major theme in our understanding of God. We speak of God’s love, we sing of God’s love, we “love to tell the story of Jesus and his love.” It ought to be reflexive for Christians to revel in the love of God. However, God is not a one-dimensional being; he is not only love. He is a holy God who is righteous and just, as well; and his love does not nullify those attributes. Not only is he a loving father, he is a righteous judge. His justice will be served. The Old Testament is filled with narratives of the judgment of God falling on both pagans and the people of God. This is not only an Old Testament manifestation of God’s character, nor is this quality limited to the Father. Jesus himself is “the righteous judge.”

“When we turn from Bible history to Bible teaching—the Law, the Prophets, the Wisdom writings, the words of Christ and his apostles—we find the thoughts of God’s action in judgment overshadowing everything. The Mosaic legislation is given as from a God who is himself a just judge and will not hesitate to inflict penalties by direct providential action if his people break his law. The prophets take up this theme; indeed, the greater part of their recorded teaching consists of exposition and application of the law, and threats of judgment against the lawless and impenitent. They spend a good deal more space preaching judgment than they do prediction the Messiah and his kingdom! In the Wisdom literature, the same viewpoint appears: the one basic certainty underlying all discussion of life’s problems in Job, Ecclesiastes and all the practical maxims of Proverbs is that “God will bring you to judgment,” “God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden sin, whether it is good or evil (Eccles 11:9; 12:14).”

“People who do not actually read the Bible confidently assure us that when we move from the old testament to the new, the theme of divine judgment fades in the background. But if we examine the New Testament, even in the most cursory way, we find at once that the Old Testament emphasized God’s action as a Judge, far from being reduced, is actually intensified. The entire New Testament is overshadowed by the certainty of a coming day of universal judgment, and by the problem thence arising: How may we sinners get right with God while there is yet time? The New Testament looks on to “the day of judgment,” “the day of wrath,” “the wrath to come,” and proclaims Jesus, the divine Savior, as the divinely appointed Judge. The judge who stands before the door (Jas 5:9), “ready to judge the living and the dead” (1 Pet 4:5), “the righteous Judge” who will give Paul his crown (2 Tim 4:8), is the Lord Jesus Christ. “He is the one who has been designate by God as judge of the living and the dead” (Acts 10:42). God “has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed,” Paul told the Athenians (Acts 17:31); and to the Romans he wrote, “God will judge men’s secrets through Jesus Christ, as the gospel declares” (Romans 2:16).”

“Jesus himself says the same. “The Father . . . has entrusted all judgment to the Son. . . . And he has given him authority to judge. . . . A time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear the voice and come out—those who have done good will rise to live, and those who have done evil will rise to be condemned” (NEB has “will rise to hear their doom”) (Jn 5:22, 27–29). The Jesus of the New Testament, who is the world’s Savior, is its Judge as well.”

(J. I. Packer, Knowing God, InterVarsity Press, 1993, 140–141).

The harvest

Jesus said: “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest” (Matthew 9:37-38). By “harvest” doesn’t Jesus mean wheat or some other good crop? Alas, that is not all there is to it – at all. `You will often hear Christians – and preachers – describe the harvest in this verse as if it’s all about the many who are coming to Christ. They ignore or are ignorant of the other side of the coin – judgment.” Here is John MacArthur, in his sermon “The harvest and the laborers.”

“Now, I believe that when the Lord saw the multitudes, He thought of Joel’s harvest…and it’s judgment that Joel spoke of. I believe our Lord saw consummation. He saw the eternity perspective. He didn’t see people just in their current problem. He saw them as doomed to hell. In Matthew 13…the Lord, giving a parable said this. “Let both grow together…verse 30…until the harvest. And in the time of harvest, I will say to the reapers, ‘Gather together first the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them. But gather the wheat into My barn.’” It is judgment, and it is judgment on the multitudes; and some will be barned and some will be burned, but it is judgment.”

The harvest is much ado about hell. Christ came to redeem His people from eternal damnation. “His people” are those he prayed for (John 17 above) in the Garden of Gethsemane. These are the same as those Christ describes here:

“But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe. All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day…Jesus answered them, “Do not grumble among yourselves. No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day” (John 6:36-40, 44). (The labourers are few.” So, send me. “To do what?”: Why John MacArthur thought “enough already!”).

Love wins. And Justice?

In Rob Bell’s “Love wins” everyone ends up in heaven – yes, Hitler included. The devil too. Hell for Bell militates against God’s love. Bell wishes there were no hell. Not only non-Christians but also many professing Christians – who say they believe that scripture is God-breathed – don’t appreciate the holiness, the beauty and the sweetness (Jonathan Edwards’ favourite word) of God; because they have a poor understanding of the horror of sin. You say, “I have great compassion, but God, because he’s God, should have more compassion than I. I don’t think that my brother, my wife, my teacher deserves to spend an eternity in torment. So why doesn’t God have more compassion than I?”

You don’t understand; you have, as any child of Adam, made your emotions, your desires, instead of the Word of God, the basis of your convictions. God is the foundation of all truth. The Bible is His special revelation. If you don’t believe this, no one is going to persuade you. This special revelation revolves round the Cross. What kind of suffering must it have taken for the Son of God to submit to not only the brutal onslaught of men but to the crushing anguish of being torn from the bosom of his Father. How does one begin to grapple with such a mysterium tremendum? (See Rudolph Otto’s “The Idea of the Holy”). Human wisdom is useless. Understanding has to be granted from above. The Son suffered the full wrath of His Father. All the horror of sin was concentrated in those few hours. But worse; He was also cut off from the Father. To understand some of this requires to be borne on high by Christ, but first we have to be born again. Only then will you be able to see what the world or no psychology can see. (Passivity and Suffering in the Passion of Christ).

God is a terrible majesty. What love is this? You need to understand His terrible majesty. “Out of the north cometh golden splendour, about God is terrible majesty” (Job 37:22). (Both the KJV and the Hebrew Mechon Mamre translations render the Hebrew נוֹרָא הוֹד (Norah Hod) as “terrible (NORAH) majesty (HOD). “Terrible” (terrifying) in modern English and “Norah” in modern Hebrew have lost their original meaning. Today they both mean “horrible” (seldom to do with terror, horror).

Is hell really forever? Yes, and so are you

We should distinguish between “eternal” and “forever.” Strictly speaking “eternal” means not only without end, but also without beginning. In Christianity, Adam was created soul and body out of nothing ex nihilo. Once created, he will last forever. In the discussion of hell, I use “eternal” and “forever” interchangeably.

The traditional view of hell is that it is eternal. In this view, not only is hell eternal but the people who go there will be in eternal torment. Others believe that the hell is eternal but not the punishment. But surely, if the saved are going to to be in an eternal heaven or eternal new earth, then when the Bible speaks of an eternal hell, it must also mean that those in hell will be there eternally. For example, at the final judgment, The Son of Man, the Messiah King, will say:

31 “But when athe Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the angels with Him, then bHe will sit on His glorious throne. 32 “All the nations will be gathered before Him; and He will separate them from one another, bas the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats; 33 and He will put the sheep on His right, and the goats bon the left. 34 “Then the King will say to those on His right, ‘Come, you who are blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. 41 “Then He will also say to those on His left, ‘Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the beternal fire which has been prepared for cthe devil and his angels; 46 “These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

In verse 46, the Greek for both occurrences of “eternal” is aionios, which has three possible meanings: 1.without beginning and end; what always has been and always will be; 2) without beginning; 3) without end, unceasing, everlasting. So, if eternal life never ceases, then hell never ceases either.

Universalists (everyone is ultimately saved) believe that hell is a kind of purgatory where one spends a limited time. Hitler and Stalin, the theory goes, will spend more time than someone who is struck by lightning – unless the person is a Stalin (that is not if Putin had his way).

Then there are the annihilationists who say that at death (Jehovah’s Witnesses, for example) or after a period of punishment, the lost are annihilated (John Stott, for example). Surely, though, if those in hell have paid the penalty for their sin, why does God annihilate them? The Jehovah’s Witness “sudden wipe-out” makes more sense.

Those in the John Stott camp do make the annihilationist doctrine of the damned more palatable, but, in the light of the biblical evidence, this view is unsustainable. Rob Bell’s universalist view (everyone makes it to heaven in the end), however, is a different matter because if everybody is ultimately saved, there would be no need for the substitutionary sacrifice of Christ because everyone is going to heaven no matter who, no matter what. Just picture it: hell full of people who are truly sorry and want to be forgiven. Or full of people who wanted to believe but were unable to do so because God frustrated their desire to believe at every turn (an asinine anti-Calvinist argument). No, those in hell hate God and always did so.

What does Charles Spurgeon recommend to “hasten lingerers?”

“If you really long to save men’s souls, you must tell them a great deal of disagreeable Truths of God. The preaching of the wrath of God has come to be sneered at nowadays, and even good people are half ashamed of it. A mushy sentimentality about love and goodness has hushed, in a great measure, plain Gospel expostulations and warnings. But, my Brothers, if we expect souls to be saved we must declare unflinchingly, with all affectionate fidelity, the terrors of the Lord. “Well,” said the Scotch lad when he listened to the minister who told his congregation that there was no Hell, or at any rate only a temporary punishment. “Well,” said he, “I need not come and hear this man any longer, for if it is as he says, it is all right, and religion is of no consequence. And if it is not as he says, then I must not hear him again, because he will deceive me.” “Therefore,” says the Apostle, “Knowing the terrors of the Lord we persuade men.” Let not modern squeamishness prevent plain speaking concerning everlasting torment. Are we to be more gentle than the Apostles? Shall we be wiser than the inspired preachers of the Word of God? Until we feel our minds overshadowed with the dread thought of the sinner’s doom we are not in a fit frame for preaching to the unconverted. We shall never persuade men if we are afraid to speak of the t judgment and the condemnation of the unrighteous.”

Who will be saved? Those who have the Son; those whom the Son has

Only those who love God will be saved. Who does the new Testament say are the ones who love God? Those who are – as it is stated about 150 times – “in Christ.” How do we “enter into” Christ? Through faith. Without faith in Christ, you’re lost, both Jew and Gentile, for God is no respecter of person’s (status, ethnic background). In John 3:18, we read: “He that believeth on him is not judged: he that believeth not hath been judged already, because he hath not believed on the name of the only begotten Son of God.”

The Gospel is about the wrath of God and the love of God. Sandwiched in between is faith in the Son. It is faith that removes the wrath and bestows the saving love of God. He who has the Son, and only he who has the Son, has life.

Conclusion

Sam Storms said:

The most loving thing one can say to someone who has lost a child or any loved one is to tell the truth, but to do so gently and compassionately. Nothing can relieve a relative’s anguish. Biblical truth does not put this anxiety to rest. We must keep in mind that God will do what is right. No one goes to hell who doesn’t deserved it. (Theology unplugged – Hell Part 2). And those who go to heaven, do they deserve it? “Any man who thinks he deserves heaven is not a Christian. But for any man who knows he deserves Hell, there’s hope” (Martyn Lloyd-Jones). “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy,
    and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion” (Exodus, 33:19; Romans 9:15).

Christians know that God is good. They also know that he is glorious. Perhaps the glory of glories is God’s goodness revealed in His gift of repentance. “The time, says Jesus, is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.” (Mark 1:15).

When you despair in yourself, in whatever is dearest to you, it is often then that God enables you to come to faith in the Saviour, His Son.

Can someone who genuinely loves the God of Israel, prays to Him and trusts him go to hell? The New Testament says…

In A Jew does not have to believe in Jesus; love for the God of Israel is enough: one “Messianic Jewish” view, I quoted Michael Schiffman:

(“Messianic Jews” believe that Jesus, whom they call “Yeshua,” is the Messiah, and that the New Testament is the inerrant word of God).

“Michael Schiffman a prominent Messianic Jewish leader, says that he knows “plenty of people who believe Yeshua is Lord, savior, etc, etc, who treat people badly and exhibit none of the marks of a true Yeshua follower. All they have is a verbal confession. I don’t necessarily think they will receive salvation. It is not a verbal confession that brings salvation, but a life lived in faith and the love of God. I do believe that people who genuinely love God (the God of Israel), pray to Him and trust him don’t go to hell because God doesn’t send people to hell who genuinely love Him … in short, I think questions of who “receives salvation,” are best left to God, who is the one true judge.”

Dr Schiffman commented:

I really don’t appreciate being misread. I never said Jewish people don’t need Yeshua. I said I don’t believe God sends people to hell who love him. If you believe He does, explain what sense that makes. I guess my answer didn’t fit your catechism. Tell me, did you decide in advance that this was what you were going to read into my remarks. Taking them further than I intended them is not honest. Why would you do that? Is that your agenda? I answered you in good faith. Do you have any scruples at all? I have no issue with what the New Testament teaches, but I think your understanding is a bit narrow regarding its meaning. You throw verses out there as if that answers the question, but you don’t bother to state what you think they mean. Do you think faith and confession are the same thing? They are not. Many people are taught doctrine but if they don’t live it, and only carry it around in their heads and not their hearts, its no better than quoting the US constitution. What makes the difference is having it in their hearts, which I believe will manifest itself in their actions. I see no grace in yours.

I responded:

Dr Schiffman, you say I have misread you.

John 3:18 is clear. If you reject Jesus/Yeshua, you are condemned. To press the point home, you must be familiar with Ephesians 2, whose key verses in our discussion are:

Ephesians 2:8 for by grace have ye been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; 9 not of works, that no man should glory. 10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God afore prepared that we should walk in them.

And

Ephesians 2:17 and he came and preached peace to you that were far off [Gentiles] and peace to them that were nigh [Jews]: 18 for through him we BOTH have our access in one Spirit unto the Father.

You say that it is enough for a Jew (and Gentiles?) to love the Holy One of Israel. It seems you distinguish between the Holy One of Israel and Jesus/Yeshua. If so, you must reject the trinity. Even if you are a Unitarian, Ephesians 2 and hundreds of other passages make it clear that without faith in Christ, that is, without being in Christ there is no salvation.

You talk of the love of God; it is inseparable, according to the NT, from faith in Christ.
You end with:

“Many people are taught doctrine but if they don’t live it, and only carry it around in their heads and not their hearts, its no better than quoting the US constitution. What makes the difference is having it in their hearts, which I believe will manifest itself in their actions. I see no grace in yours.”

In my post, I pre-empted (pre-emptied the force of?) your “mantra” about faith and works with my “Before I get to my main point, let me just say – trite but very true – faith without works is dead.”

“Faith without works is dead” is very important to you, and so it should be to all believers, but that fact should not detract from the central emphasis that Jesus/Yeshua and the Apostles put on “faith” – in Jesus/Yeshua. The natural man, in contrast, thinks it more rational and (therefore?) more godly to put the main emphasis on works (of love). Yet, without faith (in Christ/Messiah), we remain dead in sin, as Ephesians 2 says unequivocally.

I say something briefly about “grace.” You said, “What makes the difference is having it (faith) in their hearts, which I believe will manifest itself in their actions. I see no grace in yours.”

I have already dealt with the first sentence. You say you see no “grace” in my “actions.”

First, you use “grace” here in the secondary sense of “being gentle and kind.” I wish you would also emphasise that it is by grace that firstly we have faith and secondly, as a consequence of faith, we are saved (not forgetting that faith without works is dead, and also being aware that works without faith are also dead).

By “actions” you must mean my words (unless you’ve been reading my autobiography or have inside info on my life). You say my words lack “grace;” and I say you are either stumbling, as Paul (Romans 9) describes every Jew who does not believe in Jesus/Yeshua/Saviour, or you are, in your effort to be as rabbinical as you can, a stone over which your fellow Jews – and ignorant roots-aspiring Gentiles – stumble, but hopefully don’t fall.

It is you who are misreading the NT – and thus (unwittingly, possibly) it is you who are misleading/misled.

Here are our verses in fuller context:

Ephesians 2:1-10

1 And you did he make alive, when ye were dead through your trespasses and sins, 2 wherein ye once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the powers of the air, of the spirit that now worketh in the sons of disobedience; 3 among whom we also all once lived in the lust of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest:–
4 but God, being rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, 5 even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace have ye been saved), 6 and raised us up with him, and made us to sit with him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus: 7 that in the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus: 8 for by grace have ye been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; 9 not of works, that no man should glory. 10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God afore prepared that we should walk in them.

Paul is talking to Gentile believers. We read on:

Ephesians 2:11-18
Wherefore remember, that once ye, the Gentiles in the flesh, who are called Uncircumcision by that which is called Circumcision, in the flesh, made by hands; 12 that ye were at that time separate from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of the promise, having no hope and without God in the world. 13 But now in Christ Jesus ye that once were far off are made nigh in the blood of Christ.
14 For he is our peace, who made both one, and brake down the middle wall of partition, 15 having abolished in the flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; that he might create in himself of the two one new man, so making peace; 16 and might reconcile them both in one body unto God through the cross, having slain the enmity thereby: 17 and he came and preached peace to you that were far off, and peace to them that were nigh: 18 for through him we both have our access in one Spirit unto the Father.

I didn’t hear further from Michael Schiffman.

So, Can someone who genuinely loves the God of Israel, prays to Him and trusts him go to hell? YES, according to the Holy One of Israel, if for that someone the Holy One of Israel must exclude the Son. Let’s hear directly the glorious and very disturbing truth from the Holy One of Israel:

(John 8:19-24)

They said to him therefore, “Where is your Father?” Jesus answered, “You know neither me nor my Father. If you knew me, you would know my Father also.” These words he spoke in the treasury, as he taught in the temple; but no one arrested him, because his hour had not yet come.

So he said to them again, “I am going away, and you will seek me, and you will die in your sin. Where I am going, you cannot come.” So the Jews said, “Will he kill himself, since he says, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come’?” He said to them, “You are from below; I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world. I told you that you would die in your sins, for unless you believe that I am he you will die in your sins.”

(John 8:39-59)

They answered him, “Abraham is our father.” Jesus said to them, “If you were Abraham’s children, you would be doing the works Abraham did, but now you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. This is not what Abraham did. You are doing the works your father did.” They said to him, “We were not born of sexual immorality. We have one Father—even God.” Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and I am here. I came not of my own accord, but he sent me. Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I tell the truth, you do not believe me. Which one of you convicts me of sin? If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me? Whoever is of God hears the words of God. The reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God.”

The Jews answered him, “Are we not right in saying that you are a Samaritan and have a demon?” Jesus answered, “I do not have a demon, but I honor my Father, and you dishonor me. Yet I do not seek my own glory; there is One who seeks it, and he is the judge. Truly, truly, I say to you, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death.” The Jews said to him, “Now we know that you have a demon! Abraham died, as did the prophets, yet you say, ‘If anyone keeps my word, he will never taste death.’ Are you greater than our father Abraham, who died? And the prophets died! Who do you make yourself out to be?” Jesus answered, “If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing. It is my Father who glorifies me, of whom you say, ‘He is our God.’ But you have not known him. I know him. If I were to say that I do not know him, I would be a liar like you, but I do know him and I keep his word. Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad.” So the Jews said to him, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?” Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.” So they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple.

(John 14:1-9, ESV).

“Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. And you know the way to where I am going.” Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”

Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.” Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?

(John 14:21)

Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.”

(John 15:4-5)

Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.

(John 15:18-23)

“If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours. But all these things they will do to you on account of my name, because they do not know him who sent me. If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have been guilty of sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin. Whoever hates me hates my Father also.

In conclusion, the words of Jesus are so plain, you’d have to be flying high above the clouds not to grasp them. But that’s what we do for those we love: we (believers in Jesus/Yeshua) want to save them from hell, no matter what the cost. That’s in God’s hands. Our job is to believe, understand and tell the truth.

Related articles

• Repent so that you can understand
• David Stern’s Torah “Torah” in the Justification of sinners: A legalistic spanner in the works

• Followers of Yeshua keeping Torah: What’s the pork?

Repent so that you can understand

Introduction

Faith and understanding, God created both. There are different kinds of faith such as:

1. The atheist’s faith (which he denies is faith) that his reason is rational and that it corresponds to the world out there (physical reality). I’m not talking about the atheist who says there is no way of knowing what is out there; let’s call him a nude atheist in contrast to a “new” atheist like Richard Dawkins, who certainly believes his jeans are real. In a nutshell, faith in your nut.

2. “Grocery” faith. I have faith that the meat I’m buying contains no donkey. Faith in someone else’s nut and/or good will.

In the first kind of faith, we, you might say, have faith in understanding; faith is the ground on which our reason stands, on which our bottom sits. In the second kind of faith, faith is the grist on which our stomachs churn.

3. Religious faith, specifically Christian faith, which is what I want to talk about here.

My main objective in this article is to stress that it is impossible to understand Christ unless he raises (quickens) you from your spiritual death. When you are raised, you repent and belief in Christ; in sum, you become a new creature. “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creation: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17).

Which is the cart, and which the horse, which comes first? Faith in Christ or understanding of Christ. Or is it simultaneously a bit of both? Is it true that credo ut intelligam (Anselm of Canterbury) “I believe that I may understand,” or, to put it imperatively, crede, ut intelligas, “Believe so that you may understand” (Augustine of Horse (Hippo)? I examine this question.

The dark night of the senses

In my introduction to The Night of the Senses: Belief and Understanding in John of the Cross. I said: There are two kinds of believing: believing that (something is true/real) and believing in (something or somebody), that is, trusting. You can have the first kind of belief (belief that something is true) without believing in the second kind (trust), but you cannot have the second (trust) without first believing that what or whom you trust (believe in) is true. Believing that, therefore, logically precedes believing in (trust).”

“Believe that” presupposes understanding. Since I wrote the above piece, I need to rethink this sequence, namely, that “believe that” (understanding) precedes “Believe in/trust.”

In John of the Cross, if you want to understand faith, you need to enter the night, the dark night – the dark night of the soul. (No, not the Dark Knight’s soul). For John, faith (as full commitment to Christ) does not come through the light of understanding. He says in his Ascent of Mount Carmel Chapter 3:3:

“The light of natural knowledge cannot inform us of these things, because they are out of proportion with our natural senses. We know them because we have heard of them, believing that which the faith teaches us, subjecting thereto our natural light, and making ourselves blind before it: for, as it is said by St. Paul, faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of Christ. Faith is not knowledge that entereth in by any of the senses (italics added), but rather the ascent of the soul to that which cometh by hearing. Faith, therefore, far transcends the foregoing illustrations for not only does it not produce evidence or knowledge, but, as I have said, it transcends and surpasses all other knowledge whatever, so that perfect contemplation alone may judge of it. Other sciences are acquired by the light of the understanding, but that of faith is acquired without it, by rejecting it for faith, and it is lost in its own light. Therefore it is said by Isaias, ‘if you will not believe you will not understand.’ (The Septuagint’s translation of the Hebrew Isaiah 7:9b).

“It is evident, continues John of the Cross, that faith is a dark night to the soul. and it is thus that it gives its light: the more it darkens the soul the more does it enlighten it. It is by darkening that it gives light. According to the Words of the prophet,’If you will not believe, that is, ‘if you do not make yourselves blind you shall not understand.’”

So, John of the Cross is not an evidentialist, where evidence of the truth of the Bible comes first, faith in (commitment to) Christ, second. For John of the Cross, unless you are blind, or rather, make yourself blind – to the natural world, you can never have any supernatural knowledge. If you think John of the Cross’s “faith before evidence” is bizarre, wait till you read what the Bible says. The Bible, in contrast to John of the Cross, says that there is no need to make yourself blind, for you were blind from birth, worse, dead from birth. Jesus comes to open the eyes of the blind because they cannot and don’t want to see unless Jesus enables them not only to see, but to want to see:

“But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:4-10). “For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind” (John 9:39).That is why faith is an unmerited gift of God. (The Night of the Senses: Belief and Understanding in John of the Cross).

Repentance, understanding and faith

Here is an excerpt from a transcript of an exchange Sye Ten Bruggencate had with atheist Justin Schieber on Schieber’s podcast on July 11, 2011:

“Sye: He is explaining why he doesn’t discuss the Bible with unbelievers) … you will be unable to see the truth until you repent. That’s Biblical as well – 2 Timothy 2:25 – that it’s repentance that comes before a knowledge of the truth, and that’s why I object to so many different forms of apologetics because what people try to do is get people to see the truth so that they’ll repent, and what I’m saying is that you will not be able to see the truth until you repent. So that’s why I don’t, I don’t bother trying to explain these things to unbelievers because you will not be able to see the truth of it until you repent.”

I sent the above excerpt to a friend for whom I pray continually that God would grant her repentance so that she may come to a knowledge of the truth. She replied, as most would: “Repentance comes before knowledge of the truth . . . Raphael. look at that sentence. This is hocus pocus.” ROFL RPHL.

The most important of God’s commands is to repent and believe. Repentance and faith (belief/trust) go together.

Matt. 4:17 – “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

Mk. 1:15 – “Repent, and believe the gospel.”

Lk. 24:47 – “repentance for forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in His name.”

Acts 2:38 – “Repent and be baptised for the remission of sins.”

Acts 3:19 – “repent and be converted, that your sins might be wiped away.”

In “Steve Jobs bio points out the good and the bad” (thanks to Ignatius Insight for this link) we read What Steve Jobs thought about Christianity, Jesus, and faith. Jobs said: “The juice goes out of Christianity when it becomes too based on faith rather than on living like Jesus or seeing the world as Jesus saw it.”

Ignatius Insight writes: “it seems he didn’t know that the person and message of Jesus were intimately bound up with the necessity and reality of faith.” Jesus chastised people for not exhibiting faith (Mt 6:30; 8:26; 14:31; 16:8; 17:20; 23:23; Mk 4:40; Lk 8:25; 12:28; etc.)
Jesus praised and acknowledged those, especially Gentiles, who displayed faith (Mt. 8:10; 9:2, 22, 29; 15:28; Mk 2:5; 10:52; Lk 5:20; 7:9, 50; 8:48; etc.)
. Jesus exhorted his disciples to have faith (Mt 21:22ff; Mk. 11:22, etc.).

Having stressed the importance of repentance and faith, my main objective in this article is to stress that it is impossible to understand Christ unless he raises (quickens) you from your spiritual ignorance, indifference, hatred of God (of the Bible). Recall Augustine’s imperative: crede, ut intelligas, “Believe so that you may understand.” Augustine taught that salvation is entirely of God, which is summed up in Augustine’s famous “Grant what You command, and command what You desire” (Confessions 10, 29).

Evidence, assent and trust/faith

Here is an excerpt from the Preface of Jonathan Edwards “Original Sin”:(1757) written by its first editor: “His method in preaching was, first to apply to the understanding and judgment, laboring to enlighten and convince them; and then to persuade the will, engage the affections, and excite the active powers of the soul.”

The three-stage progression of “apply the understanding” (knowledge of who Christ is), “convince and persuade the will” (leading to assent) and “engage the affection and excite the soul” (trust/faith) is the normal human means God uses to convert souls. It would, however, be a big mistake to think that (Edwards thought) this is all there is to “coming to Christ.” For Edwards – so should it be for all Christians – it is “by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it (grace and faith) is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9).

The Reformers of the 16th Century divided true saving faith into three parts: notitia, assensus and fiducia. Notitia comprises knowledge, such as belief in one God, in the humanity (1 John 4:3) and deity of Christ (John 8:24), His crucifixion for sinners (1 Cor. 15:3), His bodily resurrection from the dead, and some understanding of God’s grace in salvation. Assensus is belief. This belief hasn’t yet penetrated the heart; it is still on the mental level – a mental assent. “I believe it, that settles it.” Of course, when you say that, your mental assent is a mental descent. To understand why this is so, you need to ascend to the third level of faith: fiducia. Fiducia is trust and commitment, reflected perfectly in Jesus’ prayer to His Father in the Garden of Gethsemane, which we shall read shortly.

As we know, you can have oodles of notitia and boodles of assensus yet still remain unconverted. And here’s the rub, without God working in you, these two are not genuine stages on the way to fiducia, for unless God open’s your dead eyes, you will understand very little. That is what is meant by credo ut intelligam (Anselm of Canterbury) “I believe that I may understand” and crede, ut intelligas, “Believe so that you may understand.”

In the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus prays: John 17: 24 Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. 25 O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me. 26 I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”

Those whom have been given to Christ by the Father are the ones whose eyes God opens, the ones whom he raises to life, which equips and qualifies them to understand. Without the regenerative life of fiducia, one is no better off than the devils, who have enough notitia and assensus to vomit. (Two conversions: the mind (NOTITIA) and the heart (FIDUCIA) of faith in Blaise Pascal).

Jesus also says in his Gethsemane prayer that he is not praying for the world (those who think that after studying the evidence they are able to choose to be or not be born again): John 17: 6 “I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world. Yours they were, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. 7 Now they know that everything that you have given me is from you. 8 For I have given them the words that you gave me, and they have received them and have come to know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. 9 I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours.

Conclusion

The Bible states that the main obstacle in coming to faith is, naturally, the sinner. He (or she) – no matter the religion – doesn’t want to find anything, arrive anywhere; it’s the searching, the journey that matters. In his review of Matthew Levering’s “The Theology of Augustine: An Introductory Guide to His Most Important Works,” Carl Trueman describes the postmodernist’s penchant for pursuing truth in the hope of not finding it. “Augustine [however] was cut from different cloth. For him, it was not the pursuit of truth or some nebulous ‘journey’ which was the important thing; it was finding and resting in truth, real truth, God’s truth.” (The postmodern pursuit: Always departing, never arriving).

What’s the deal with having a messiah who’s arrived? Where is the mystery once he’s exposed and had his say? It is unremarkable, unsurprising that sinful man would ask such a question? Undergirding this question is not the fear that a Messiah, a Judge, exists, neither is it the conviction that Truth can never be found. What such a question implies is rather the chutzpa (hubris) that nothing higher than man has the right to exist, for man is the measure of all things. Satan asks Adam “Did God really say?” (Genesis 3:1). And therein lies the genesis of the question “What’s the deal with having a messiah who has arrived, unless he’s arrived at another departure lounge?” (The Deconstruction of Messiah: Always Arriving Always Departing).

I don’t want to arrive because then I will no longer be doing anything meaningful; I will no longer be in control; I will no longer be at the centre. That is why I say there is no centre, no ideal. “The great mistake of Jesus for Renan was to forget that the ideal is fundamentally a utopia (Philip Schaff).” Renan was talking through his fundament, naturally.

The night of the senses and the sense of God in Augustine of Hippo

As far as the senses and the sense of God are concerned, I think Augustine of Hippo had it just right; Augustine’s “Confessions,” Book 10:

“But what is it that I love in loving thee? Not physical beauty, nor the splendor of time, nor the radiance of the light–so pleasant to our eyes–nor the sweet melodies of the various kinds of songs, nor the fragrant smell of flowers and ointments and spices; not manna and honey, not the limbs embraced in physical love–it is not these I love when I love my God. Yet it is true that I love a certain kind of light and sound and fragrance and food and embrace in loving my God, who is the light and sound and fragrance and food and embracement of my inner man– where that light shines into my soul which no place can contain, where time does not snatch away the lovely sound, where no breeze disperses the sweet fragrance, where no eating diminishes the food there provided, and where there is an embrace that no satiety comes to sunder. This is what I love when I love my God.”

“The labourers are few.” So, send me. “To do what?”: Why John MacArthur thought “enough already!”

Here are a few thoughts on part of John MacArthur’s sermon on “The harvest and the laborers.”

Bible text – “Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” (Matthew 9:37-38).

John MacArthur

Here is MacArthur:

(Parts for discussion are italicised)

“Now, I believe that when the Lord saw the multitudes, He thought of Joel’s harvest…and it’s judgment that Joel spoke of. I believe our Lord saw consummation. He saw the eternity perspective. He didn’t see people just in their current problem. He saw them as doomed to hell. In Matthew 13…the Lord, giving a parable said this. “Let both grow together…verse 30…until the harvest. And in the time of harvest, I will say to the reapers, ‘Gather together first the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them. But gather the wheat into My barn.’” It is judgment, and it is judgment on the multitudes; and some will be barned and some will be burned, but it is judgment.”

“Listen, beloved, Jesus ministered to people because He loved them. He ministered to people because of their terrible condition, and He ministered to people because He could see their ultimate consummation; and if you’ve lost that vision, you’ve lost a major portion of your motive. Paul said, “Knowing…2 Corinthians 5…the terror of the Lord, we persuade men. We understand hell.” Romans 12, Paul talked about the vengeance of God. Hebrews, the writer talks about it. “Men will die, and after that, the judgment.” In 2 Thessalonians, the Apostle Paul painted such a vivid picture. “In the day when the Lord Jesus is revealed from Heaven with His mighty angels and flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God and obey not the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power.”

“So easy for us to lose the sense of the imminence and inevitability of eternal judgment. There’s no way to describe hell. Nothing on earth can compare with it. No living person can really comprehend it. No madman in the wildest flights of insanity ever beheld the borders of hell. No man in delirium’s ever pictured a place so utterly terrible. No nightmare racing across a fevered mind ever produced a terror to match that of the mildest hell… and our Lord saw that…and He was moved…to reach out to people…. What are you gonna do about the condition of men and women who are trapped under those false shepherds who feed them lies that damn their souls? What are you gonna do?… How many times in the Bible do you read this? “Watch and pray.” Or this? “Be sober. Be vigilant.” Or “Be alert.” We’ve gotta know what’s going on. Can you see the signs of the times? Can you see the needs of men? Are you really discerning? Do you look through the religious facades? Can you see past the phonies? Do you know how few real laborers there really are?.. God wants His people to see, and so He explains it to the disciples. You see, the harvest is so plenteous. I mean it’ll include everybody, but the laborers are so few.”

Listen, friends, God has called us to teach His Word, to proclaim His Kingdom, to touch peoples’ lives, and to be moved to do that, because His love is in us, because we see their condition, and because we understand their consummation; and He’s asked us to analyze it, to have insight, to intercede on their behalf by asking God to send forth laborers; and then when the call comes, like Isaiah, “Here am I. Send me.”…

I focus on the sections in italics:

“Joel’s harvest…and it’s judgment that Joel spoke of. I believe our Lord saw consummation… He saw the eternity perspective. He didn’t see people just in their current problem. He saw them as doomed to hell…Romans 12, Paul talked about the vengeance of God. Hebrews, the writer talks about it. “Men will die, and after that, the judgment.”

Here is the reference in Joel 3:13 “Swing the sickle, for the harvest is ripe. Come, trample the grapes, for the winepress is full and the vats overflow– so great is their wickedness!”

The harvest is much ado about hell. Christ came to redeem “His people” (MacArthur’s words) from eternal damnation. Who are “His people?” They are – Jesus could not emphasise it enough:

“But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe. All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day…Jesus answered them, “Do not grumble among yourselves. No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day” (John 6:36-40, 44).

“God wants His people to see, and so He explains it to the disciples. You see, the harvest is so plenteous. I mean it’ll include everybody…”

In the harvest, there is a distinction between “His people,” which I described earlier (and which I am certain is MacArthur’s view as well) and “everybody,” which subsumes both “His people” and the lost.

“because His love is in us, because we see their condition, and because we understand their consummation; and He’s asked us to analyze it, to have insight, to intercede on their behalf by asking God to send forth laborers; and then when the call comes, like Isaiah, “Here am I. Send me.”

If you are a Christian, Christ’s love is in you where the main objective of that love is to tell everybody not only of the love of God but also the terror of his majesty (Job 37:22):

מִצָּפֹון זָהָב יֶֽאֱתֶה עַל־אֱלֹוהַּ נֹורָא הֹֽוד׃

1. Mi-tzafon OUT OF THE NORTH

2. zahav GOLD/SPLENDOUR

3. ye-eteh COMES

4. al-eloha WITH/IN GOD (IS)

5. nora TERRIBLE/TERRFYING/FEARFUL

6. hod SPLENDOUR/MAJESTY/HONOUR

In an earlier part of his sermon, MacArthur says:

“So easy for us to lose the sense of the imminence and inevitability of eternal judgment. There’s no way to describe hell. Nothing on earth can compare with it. No living person can really comprehend it. No madman in the wildest flights of insanity ever beheld the borders of hell. No man in delirium’s ever pictured a place so utterly terrible. No nightmare racing across a fevered mind ever produced a terror to match that of the mildest hell.”

MacArthur provides more details of the horror of hell that I won’t mention.

Now, to “send me.”

I once asked two different Christians whom I assumed had more than a nodding acquaintance with the Bible what came after (the well-known, often heard in sermons):

“And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said, “Here I am! Send me.”

They didn’t know. So I flicked open my ipad and read it to them”

“And he said, “Go, and say to this people:

“‘Keep on hearing, but do not understand;

keep on seeing, but do not perceive.’

Make the heart of this people dull,

and their ears heavy,

and blind their eyes;

lest they see with their eyes,

and hear with their ears,

and understand with their hearts,

and turn and be healed.”

Then I said, “How long, O Lord?”

And he said:

“Until cities lie waste

without inhabitant,

and houses without people,

and the land is a desolate waste,

and the Lord removes people far away,

and the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land. (Isaiah 6:8-12).

Why did MacArthur not quote the verses after“send me,” which are crucial to God’s judgment at harvest time? Because he had already used up his sermon time? I don’t think so. I hope not. He was probably thinking Jewish: “Of tsorres (misfortune), enough already!”

Until you know the plague of your own heart, there is no hope for your recovery

“Until you know the plague of your own heart, there is no hope for your recovery” (Thomas Boston).

The Bible tells you that you are miserable, poor, and blind, and naked (Revelation 3:17). That is why I pray that before you die you will see how wretched you are.

You may answer:

“Why would believing in Jesus make one a good person? Why would not believing in Jesus make one a bad person? Why should I believe the Bible, why should I believe Jesus? Does the Bible come from God? No, from men. I try, in my own very faulty way, to be a good person. I do have at least an inkling of my own weaknesses, selfishness and callousness. My life is exhausting, but, believe me, I try to be kind. I know the Bible (rather your interpretation of it) claims that good works without faith are useless. Maybe so–useless as far as being ‘saved’ is concerned. But not useless as far as helping other people is concerned. People, animals, birds, insects, fish, plants, the earth, the sky, the sun, the other worlds, the universe . . . I believe in the divinity behind and in all of that. (I believe, but I don’t claim to KNOW.) But I do not believe in the Jewish, Christian, Hindu, Muslim or other societies’ both contemporary and ancient–conceptions of God or Gods. I lead a secular life. If your Bible says I am to be damned for that, then that just convinces me that I can have no faith in it!”

Would I be beating a dead horse by quoting from the Bible? Yes, in more ways than one, because we are by nature sinful, and so spiritually dead to the things of God; the God of the Bible. “When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins” (Colossians 2:13). We can only be made alive by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, who died that we may live. “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Ephesians 2:8-10). What God says of Israel applies to all believers in all times: “… at the present time there is a remnant, chosen by grace. But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works; otherwise grace would no longer be grace. (Romans 11:5-6). “As many as received him, to them gave he power to become the children of God ;” (John 1:8).

You can’t work your way, earn your way into God’s grace(s). If you have a sensitive conscience, when you fail, you try again, and again and again. You want to make things right. You suffer when you can’t alleviate the suffering of those you cause to suffer – indeed also the suffering that others cause. Here’s a sanguine remedy; sanguinary too – the Blood of Christ.

Those who humble themselves before God, who regard themselves unworthy of Christ, how did they arrive at such a blessed state? How did they come to reflect the beatitudes?

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.

“Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

“Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. (Matthew 5:3-12).

They are blessed in these virtues because they are gifts, like faith, from God.

“The Spirit of God, writes Thomas Boston, convincingly discovers to the sinner his utter inability to do any thing that is good ; and so he dies. That voice powerfully strikes through his soul, “How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?” (John 5:44). You can no more believe, than you can reach up your hand to heaven, and bring Christ down from thence. And thus, at length, he sees he can neither help himself, by working nor believing ; and having no more to hang by, on the old stock, he therefore falls off. And while he is thus distressed, seeing himself like to be swept away with the flood of God’s wrath ; and yet unable so much as to stretch forth a hand to lay hold of a twig of the tree of life, growing on the banks of the river, he is taken up and ingrafted into the true Vine, the Lord Jesus Christ giving him the Spirit of faith. (Thomas Boston: “Human nature in its four-fold state of primitive integrity, subsisting in the parents of mankind in paradise; entire deprivation in the unregenerate; and consummate happiness or misery in all mankind in the future state”).

I pray that the Father will draw you to Christ. “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them, and I will raise them up at the last day” (John 6:44).

Suicide of a – Christian? If YOU’RE sure then I’m not sure.

“God’s way is to speak the truth in love. As Christians we can be great on the ‘love’ part, but the ‘truth’ part is more often than not lacking, simply because we’re immersed in a culture where any pointing out of right and wrong is said to be called “mean” and “judgmental”. (Comment on Michael Patton’s “Asphyxiation of Hope: Michael Warren.”

Introduction

In the Garden of Eden, Adam ran – away from God. The Bible doesn’t tell us whether Adam, at a later stage, ran back. Ever since, sinners have been running away from God. Some sinners, through God’s mercy, run to God, to Christ. Some of these Christians run to and fro between faith and doubt, between hope and despair. The most desperate human act is arguably suicide. The question I deal with here is whether a Christian who commits suicide will hear these wonderful words from the King: “’Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world” (Matthew 25:34).

The suicide of Matthew Warren

A week ago I attended a memorial service for someone who had killed herself. What the preacher said disturbed me very much because it seemed so out of kilter with scripture. I wasn’t going to write anything about it until I heard today that Rick Warren’s youngest son, Matthew, had also committed suicide. Here is an excerpt from a short report on Matthew Warren in the New York Times:

“The 27-year-old son of the Rev. Rick Warren, one of America’s most influential religious leaders, committed suicide, Mr. Warren said in an e-mail released on Saturday to staff members and congregants at his 20,000-member Saddleback Valley Community Church.

Rick Warren said in the e-mail that his youngest son, Matthew, had “struggled from birth with mental illness, dark holes of depression, and even suicidal thoughts.” After a happy evening with his parents, the e-mail said, “in a momentary wave of despair at his home, he took his life. Mr. Warren said that he and his wife, Kay, often marveled at Matthew Warren’s “courage to keep moving in spite of relentless pain. I’ll never forget how, many years ago, after another approach had failed to give relief, Matthew said ‘Dad, I know I’m going to heaven. Why can’t I just die and end this pain?’ but he kept going for another decade.”

If Matthew Warren was sure he was going to heaven, it seems that, in his setting, he would have believed, but not necessarily, that he was a Christian, and thus a stranger in this world and a citizen of God’s kingdom, for that is how the Bible describes Christians.

Christians as strangers in the world

The question is, how do Christians “show their colours” (Martyn Lloyd Jones, “Privileges and responsibilities”). The Christian is involved in the cares and worries of this world but does not allow them, with God’s grace, to choke the word: “The seed falling among the thorns refers to someone who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke the word, making it unfruitful” (Matthew 13:22). Christians – those who say they believe in/trust Christ – are strangers and pilgrims in this world but citizens of God’s kingdom. Christians are in the world but not of this foreign world. They are sojourners – Gershoms (The name Gershom consists of ger and shom. Ger means alien, exile, stranger, sojourner; shom could mean either “there” (sham) or “name” (shem). “[Ruel] gave Moses his daughter Zipporah. She gave birth to a son, and he called his name Gershom, for he said, ‘I have been a sojourner in a foreign land’ ” (Exodus, 2:16-22).

“No person, writes Jonathan Edwards, who seeks to go on a pilgrimage to a glorious and exotic place will take up permanent residence at an inn along the way.” Succoth (feast of Tabernacles) commemorates Israel’s sojourn in the midbar wilderness (Leviticus 23:43). Succoth reminds us that we are merely sojourners on this earth (1 Peter 2:11): “Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul.”

The preacher’s sermon

What was it in the preacher’s sermon (mentioned earlier) that got my theologicals in a spin? In brief, the preacher said that the person who had killed herself believed; “she will definitely be in heaven, she lost a battle but won the war.” The preacher ended by appealing to the congregation, “some (of you) will be raised up to eternal life others to damnation.”

The gist of the sermon: believing in Jesus is the issue. By “believing in” I think he meant more than believing in the facts of Jesus as saviour – the devils believe that – but trusting in Jesus as saviour. So, the upshot is that as long as you trust Jesus as your saviour, it’s ok to commit suicide, as long as you have tried your best to win the battle of (this) life. But if you lose it, through suicide, in this case, you still win the war, and so winning abundant life, eternal life.

Hans Herzl

Here is the story of Hans Herzl (Theodore Herzl’s son), who had converted to Christianity but also suffered from deep depression. In Bordeaux, the day after his sister Pauline’s death, he wrote the following letter:

“If a ritual can really calm our spirits and give us the illusion of being in the company of our beloved dead once more I can’t think of anything better than a visit to the Temple: there I can pray for my parents, ask their forgiveness [Hans' father hated religion] and repent my apostasy before God. I am destitute and sick, unhappy and bitter. I have no home. Nobody pays any attention to the words of a convert. I cannot suddenly turn my back on a community which offered me its friendship…“Without prejudice, even if all my physical and moral impulses urge me to: I have burned all my bridges… What good is the penance which the Church has ordained for my “spiritual healing”! I torture my body in vain: my conscience is torturing me far worse. My life is ruined… Nobody would regret it if I were to put a bullet through my head. Could I undo my errors that way? I realize how right my father had been when he once said: “Only the withered branches fall off a tree – the healthy ones flourish.”

Hans was 39 years old (1891- 1930) but didn’t wish to survive. The day after the death of his sister Pauline in Bordeaux and thirty-five years after Theodor, his father’s dream about crowning him King of Israel, Hans wrote a short note to the hotel manager, in which he apologised for the mayhem he was about to unleash. Then “with a single gunshot, pierced the head his father had dreamed would wear the crown of Israel.” (Hans Herzl (3): Catholicism, liberal Judaism and death).

Hans’ life – indeed the lives of the whole Herzl family – was consumed by tragedy (I wrote much on the Herzl family here). Hans said: I realize how right my father had been when he once said: “Only the withered branches fall off a tree – the healthy ones flourish.” Contrast this with:

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. 2 Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. 3 Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. 4 Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. 5 I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. 6 If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. (John 15:1-6, ESV).

John MacArthur on suicide

Here are some thoughts on suicide from John MacArthur’s “Grace to you” (my italics):

Suicide is a grave sin equivalent to murder (Exodus 20:13; 21:23), but it can be forgiven like any other sin. And Scripture says clearly that those redeemed by God have been forgiven for all their sins–past, present, and future (Colossians 2:13-14). Paul says in Romans 8:38-39 that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. So if a true Christian would commit suicide in a time of extreme weakness, he or she would be received into heaven (Jude 24). But we question the faith of those who take their lives or even consider it seriously–it may well be that they have never been truly saved. That’s because God’s children are defined repeatedly in Scripture as those who have hope (Acts 24:15; Romans 5:2-5, 8:24; 2 Corinthians 1:10, etc.) and purpose in life (Luke 9:23-25; Romans 8:28; Colossians 1:29). And those who think of committing suicide do so because they have neither hope nor purpose in their lives. Furthermore, one who repeatedly considers suicide is practicing sin in his heart (Proverbs 23:7), and 1 John 3:9 says that “no one who is born of God practices sin.” And finally, suicide is often the ultimate evidence of a heart that rejects the lordship of Jesus Christ, because it is an act where the sinner is taking his life into his own hands completely rather than submitting to God’s will for it. Surely many of those who have taken their lives will hear those horrifying words from the Lord Jesus at the judgment–”I never knew you; Depart from me, you who practice lawlessness” (Matthew 7:23). So though it may be possible for a true believer to commit suicide, we believe that is an unusual occurrence. Someone considering suicide should be challenged above all to examine himself to see whether he is in the faith (2 Corinthians 13:5).”

I comment on “So if a true Christian would commit suicide in a time of extreme weakness, he or she would be received into heaven (Jude 24).” Here is Jude 1:24 (there is only one chapter in Jude): “To him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy.” Obviously, the “Grace to you” writer (John MacArthur?) would not regard suicide as stumbling – and certainly not falling.

John Piper on suicide

The following is the final part from a funeral meditation given by John Piper for a member of Bethlehem Baptist Church who committed suicide in 1981. Identifying information has been removed.

“God’s ways are strange and we must be slow to pass judgment on his wisdom and love. There is great mercy and long-suffering and patience and forgiveness with God. Anyone who will trust him can be made new. Finally the question: What about our friend? Was she made new when she put her life into the hands of God? We have good reason to think she was on the new road. Not instant change, but on the road. The wounds of sin don’t heal easily. But then came the suicide. And in our minds there lingers the question: Is she safe with Christ? Or does suicide bring condemnation? Jesus has a word for us here: ‘Truly I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the sons of men, and whatever blasphemies they utter; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness but is guilty of eternal sin’ (Mark 3:28–29). Only one thing puts a person beyond forgiveness: blaspheming against the Holy Spirit. But this is not any single act, for Jesus says any sins and blasphemies will be forgiven those who follow him. No. Blasphemy against the Spirit of God is treating the Spirit as dirt by continually and persistently resisting and rejecting this call to repentance until death. No single sin, not even suicide, evicts a person from heaven into hell. One thing does: continual rejection of God’s Spirit. Our friend, we believe, gave up that resistance and accepted the forgiveness of Christ. What sort of momentary weakness, what brief cloud of hopelessness caused her to take her life remains a mystery. But no one can say this: that her final act is unforgivable. Nor any other act by any of us. For Jesus said: all sins will be forgiven the sons of men if they give up resisting the Spirit and look to Jesus for salvation.”

Piper said: “No single sin, not even suicide, evicts a person from heaven into hell. One thing does: continual rejection of God’s Spirit.” The problem is that suicide is often not a single act but a long process. Granted that there have been single (mostly frantic) acts. I think of the WWI pilot who shoots himself in his burning plane heading for the ground. I’m sure you can think of many situations.

Suicide and human freedom

In “Suicide and the Silence of Scripture” (Christianity Today), the writer says:

“Suicide is confusing for Christians. Although the general thrust of scripture is clearly opposed to the taking of one’s own life, it provides no clear disapproval of the few cases of apparent suicide it recounts. Suicide also confuses us because some of those we believe to be strong in the faith have considered it as a ‘way out.’…Must we believe that those who have taken their own lives suffer the eternal punishment of God? Nothing in scripture drives us to that conclusion. Of the seven or so suicides reported in Scripture, most familiar are Saul, Samson, and Judas. Saul apparently committed suicide to avoid dishonor and suffering at the hands of the Philistines. He is rewarded by the Israelites with a war hero’s burial, there being no apparent disapproval of his suicide. And while there is no hero’s burial for Judas Iscariot. Scripture is once more silent on the morality of this suicide of remorse. The suicide of Samson has posed a greater problem for Christian theologians. Both Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas wrestled with the case and concluded that Samson’s suicide was justified as an act of obedience to a direct command of God.”

With regard to Judas Iscariot, He was chosen, but not to be saved. He is called the Son of Perdition (Matthew 26:24; Mark 14:21; John 17:12).

“Objections to suicide have a long history in the church. But the idea that suicide is an unforgivable sin is less easily traced. Among the church fathers, Saint Augustine was the most prominent and influential opponent of suicide. And early church synods declared that bequests from those who committed suicide (as well as the offering of those who attempted suicide) ought not to be accepted; and throughout the medieval period, proper Christian burial was refused those who committed suicide.”

And here is the pivotal paragraph:

“We must understand suicide as free and uncoerced actions engaged in for the purpose of bringing about one’s own death. Once we define it this way, it is easy to grasp the church’s clear teaching throughout the centuries that suicide is morally wrong and ought never to be considered by the Christian. Life is a gift from God. To take one’s own life is to show insufficient gratitude. Our lives belong to God; we are but stewards. To end my own life is to usurp that the prerogative that is God’s alone. Suicide, the church has taught, is ordinarily a rejection of the goodness of God, and it can never be right to reject God’s goodness.”

Having said that, the writer, adds:

“If we define suicide as consisting of only free and uncoerced actions, we must ask a series of questions as we try to understand any particular suicide: To what extent do we know the suicide in question was genuinely free? Could pain (either physical or emotional) have coerced the individual to do what he otherwise might not have done? But even if we could know that an act of suicide was genuinely free, can we know that the aim of the act was indeed one’s own death rather than a misguided cry for help? Can we know that the suicide believed this action would really kill? These questions lead us to withhold judgment in many cases; but more telling yet is this question: Did the individual aim at removing himself from God’s goodness by suicide? Was this an act of suicide directly aimed at saying no to God? Or was it rather a tragically misguided attempt at saying yes to God? Eternal punishment is reserved, Christians believe, for those who directly reject God and reject God as a consistent pattern in life, not merely in a solitary final act. Every suicide is not a rejection of God’s goodness. Indeed, in many cases suicide is mistakenly chosen to bring one nearer to God. We cannot say that such a motive for suicide is correct. Nor can we say that a person who makes this tragic mistake has removed herself forever from the grace of God.”

(This article originally appeared in the March 20, 1987, issue of Christianity Today. At the time, Thomas D. Kennedy was visiting assistant professor of religion at Hope College in Holland, Michigan. He is now associate professor of philosophy at Valparaiso University in Valparaiso, Indiana).

Suicide and the regenerated sinner

My question is: can someone who has been regenerated (born again) by God be so overcome by the worries and cares of this world to commit suicide? Scriptures that speak to a person’s situation – depression, bereavement, poverty and so forth – are often the ones that attract one to the Gospel, but not always, for what is irrelevant to us may be, and indeed often is, relevant to God. God sovereignly chooses both means and ends, which may either connect to our situation or become a gradual realisation, or sometimes arrive as a bolt from the blue, where the last thing on your mind is Christ. Archibald Alexander explains:

“The question is sometimes asked, is regeneration an instantaneous or a gradual work? This is not a merely speculative question. If this is a gradual work, the soul may for some time, yea, for years, be hanging between life and death, and be in neither one state or nor the other, which is impossible. Suppose a dead man to be brought to life by a divine power, as Lazarus was, could there be any question of whether the communication of life was immediate? Even if the vital principle was so weak as not to manifest itself at once, yet its commencement must be instantaneous; because it may be truly asserted that such a man is dead or alive; if the former, life has not commenced, and whenever that state ceases, the man lives, for there is no intermediate state. So in regard to the communication of spiritual life, the same thing may be asserted; for whatever regeneration is, the transition from a state of nature to a state of grace must occur at some point of time, the moment before the sinner was unregenerate” (Archibald Alexander, A Practical View of Regeneration).

The Bible says that once a person has been regenerated, there cannot be any turning way from trust in Christ. One “cannot” turn away because one wills not to turn way. Yes, I mean once saved always saved. This is a clear teaching of scripture: “All those the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away” (John 6:37). This, you may object, all depends on whether the person wants to stay, for, of course, Jesus will not turn away anyone who desires to stay. I reply, Jesus says a few verses later in Chapter 6, “”No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them, and I will raise them up at the last day.” Now, if Jesus raises up on the last day all those he draws, then they will certainly always (want) to have faith in Him, and always (want to) remain steadfast. Jesus guarantees that they will remain steadfast, because he says that he will definitely (in the English of yesteryear, “he shall”) give them eternal life.

”Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will… being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will (Ephesians 1:5, 1:11). “And this is the Father’s will which hath sent me, that of all which he hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day” (John 6:39).

All these Bible verses apply to those who will inherit eternal life in God’s heavenly kingdom.

Conclusion

I return where I began – the sermon at the memorial of a suicide, Recall the preacher: believing in (trusting) Jesus is what he regards as the ultimate issue. As long as you trust Jesus as your saviour, it’s ok to commit suicide. As long as you have tried your best to win the battle of (this) life, it’s ok to commit suicide. So, when you lose the battle of this life and decide to end it, you – as long as you trust Jesus, will win the war and receive your reward in heaven.

It is hard to reconcile 1. the preacher’s certainty that this person, who succumbed to the cares and worries of this life, is now definitely in the bosom of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit with 2. the fact that those who believe in/trust Christ have been “predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son,” You might ask, “But didn’t Jesus take his own life? No, he gave it – as a ransom for many – to take it up again.

“Put me in a den of atheists. Put me with those who hate me. Put me in a crowd of those who hate God and my Lord, Jesus Christ. My faith will remain. But put me in a crowd of those who are all calling on their God to save them from doubt, pain, and depression and my faith will be in quick-sand with them. Why? Because I don’t know what to do.”( Michael Patton THE ASPHYXIATION OF HOPE: MATTHEW WARREN (1986-2013)).

Patton’s URL is http://www.reclaimingthemind.org/. His faith will be in quicksand, he says. And his mind? Difficult to reclaim from quicksand. How does one help those whose mind is made up to to end their life? Have they lost their mind and, in the process their freedom to struggle on? Scripture knows best: ”Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God” (Psalm 43:5).

Once at a pastors’ conference, relates John MacArthur, a man asked me, ‘What’s the real secret of Grace Community Church’s vitality and growth?’ I said, ‘The clear and forceful teaching of the Word.’ I was shocked when he countered, ‘Don’t give me that! I tried it and it doesn’t work. What’s the real secret.’” (John MacArthur, “Our sufficiency in Christ,” Struik Christian Books, 1991, pp. 118-119).

What then is a Christian, that is, someone with a saving faith? Someone whom God secures in hope to the end. Does God secure in hope to the end a suicide who claims to have Christ at the centre of their lives? God knows.

Since the publication of this article, Christianity Today (13 April 2013) published the article When Suicide Strikes in the Body of Christ? Here is a relevant excerpt:

“Those ministering to the grieving should not offer certainty that a loved one who died by suicide is in heaven, but they shouldn’t definitively state that he’s bound for eternal condemnation, either. The simple truth is that only God knows his fate. To say otherwise is beyond our knowledge” (Al Hsu).
Related article

• The Asphyxiation of Hope: Matthew Warren (1986-2013)

The Talmud and those beastly parasitic bloggers

“First of all, what is the Talmud?” asks Rabbi David Eidensohn, and then answers his own question.

“Although the Talmud is printed in book form, it was not designed as a book. Rather, the Talmud is the Oral Law. What is the Oral Law? G-d at Sinai gave the Ten Commandments and the Torah, or the Five Books of Moses, to Israel. This was written down, and is today the Torah Scrolls read in the synagogue. In addition, G-d gave Moses an Oral Law. The Oral Law was a code to interpreting the Written Law. True to its name, it was not written down, although scholars could make notes. For about 1500 years the Talmud was memorized, that is, the arguments of the sages were memorized, and a scholar was required to know much of it by heart. But this standard could only be maintained when the Jews lived in Israel. After the Destruction of the Second Temple, the Jews could not longer maintain such a level, and the rabbis had to compile written editions of the Talmud.

“Our point is, that a book must be written for an audience, but the Talmud is not written for an audience. It is simply a collection of oral discussions of the rabbis. The audience for these oral statements were other rabbis. Talmudists are known to be ferocious debaters, and therefore, the level of ferocity in the verbal exchanges is very high. The Talmud wanted this and taught, “When the father and son study Torah, they seem to hate each other from the vicious debating. But when they cease learning together, we see that they love each other.” This applied to all learners. In debate they must fight for the truth. They must argue with every fiber. But this was never personal. This led to a very high level of truth, because an opponent would tear you apart if you made a mistake. The rules were, you had no pity on anyone, not even a parent or a child. This led to the parent or child becoming better scholars, so everyone was satisfied.

“Because the high level of intellectual debate created a climate of savage invective, we find rabbis saying incredible things to defend themselves in debate. They take oaths, they utter incredible imprecations, because nothing must stand in the way of accurately recording the teachings of the Torah. Every rabbi felt like a chain in the Law from Sinai, and any mistake, any laxity, could break the chain and ruin it. Thus, people spoke as they did. A Medieval gentile who entered an ancient Spanish Yeshiva described it as a den of bull fights. Yeshiva students don’t just read when they study, they argue, and the room is a roar of debate.

“When I discuss Torah with my children or grandchildren, if I don’t get war, I am sad.

“If you want the Jewish attitude towards gentiles and pagans, read the Jewish Torah literature, beginning with the bible or the Five Books of Moses and going through the Talmud,. If you do, and are careful in your reading, you will notice something extremely interesting. The Jews lived more or less at peace with the gentiles during the entire Biblical Era. The Jewish Era in the Bible begins 3700 years ago with the Jewish year 2000, with Abraham’s becoming a Jew. Abraham was greatly honored and respected by all of the Egyptian and Canaanite Kings. So was his son Isaac, and so was his grandson Jacob. Other than a few problems with having their wives taken and then returned, the basic atmosphere was quite positive. One bad episode was when Dinah the daughter of Jacob was raped, but it is obvious from the story in the bible that this has nothing to do with anti-Semitism. Even when the sons of Jacob destroyed the village of the rapist, the pagan kings despite their feelings did not harm the Jews.”

The Rabbi wrote: “The Talmud is the Oral Law. What is the Oral Law? G-d at Sinai gave the Ten Commandments and the Torah, or the Five Books of Moses, to Israel…In addition, G-d gave Moses an Oral Law. The Oral Law was a code to interpreting the Written Law.”

What I find hard to fathom is that although the Talmud is considered divine revelation – originally in oral form – of written revelation (Written Torah), it arouses “a very high level of ferocity in the verbal exchanges.” This can only mean that the sages (chochomim) who are supposed to be guardians of God’s revelation (given to Moses at Sinai) are not sure what it is but will defend ferociously what they interpret it to be. Things must really get hot considering that the fierce debates are not only on the Mishna (the commentary on the Written Torah) but on the commentary (Gemara) on the Mishna. I haven’t, though, come to blindly and blithely attack the Talmud but to defend it – on one point at least. Here is someone, very perplexed, who asks on Yahoo answers:

I recently read some shocking pieces of informations about how should jews treat gentiles..these quotations are taken from talmud and torah: 

• The Jews are called human beings, but the non-Jews are not humans. They are beasts.” (Talmud: Baba Mezia 114b).

Here is the best answer rated by Yahoo readers: “Its always hilarious to see the lengths that anti-Semites will go to in order to try and attack Judaism! “heh- you claim your so called quotes come from the Talmud and Torah (don’t forget the Torah was written 3500 years ago, the Talmud closed to further commentary 1600 years ago)- lets see: Baba Mezia – yes, that is the Talmud, but the quote is mad up and cannot be found anywhere on the tractate!”

Yes, that is correct, Baba Mezia 114b, in my Soncino edition, does not even mention the word “beast.” So, why do you see hundreds of cuttings and pastings of such beastly things on so many blogs parasiting one another’s ignorance? Because they’re not interested in truth. Let’s see what Baba Mezia 114b does say about non-Jews (Gentiles):

Beginning of Baba Metzia 114b (Soncino Edition, my italics)

[He asked him further:] Whence do we know that a naked man must not separate [terumah]? —

From the verse, That He see no unclean thing in thee.1 Said he [Rabbah] to him: Art thou not a priest:2 why then dost thou stand in a cemetery?3 — He replied: Has the Master not studied the laws of purity?4 For it has been taught: R. Simeon b. Yohai said: The graves of Gentiles do not defile, for it is written, And ye my flock, the flock of my pastures, are men;5 only ye are designated ‘men’.6

Notes

(1) Deut]XXIII, 15; man must not appear before God in an unclean state, which includes a state of nudity. When one separated terumah, he had to utter a benediction, and this is regarded as appearing before God. 

(2) According to legend, Elijah and Phinehas (Aaron’s grandson) were identical.

(3) A priest must not defile himself through the dead. Standing in or near a grave effects such defilement. 

(4) This is also the name of the sixth order of the Talmud, treating of these laws. From Rabbah’s answer, 

that he has had no time to study the six orders, it appears that he was referring to the actual order, though he proceeds to quote a Baraitha and not a Mishnah from that order.

(5) Ezek. XXXIV, 31.

(6) Cf. Num. XIX, 14: This is the law, when a man dieth in a tent; all that come into the tent, and all that is in the tent, shall be unclean seven days.

So all that is being said here is not that Gentiles are beasts but that they are not men – not sons of Adam, I infer. For all we know “not men” could mean plants or rocks but not necessarily beings belonging to the “animal” kingdom. Neanderthals? Hmmm.

Rabbi Eidensohn comments on “the idea that non-Jews are not human. This idea does not exist in the Talmud or anywhere else, for one simple reason. A non-Jew has a soul, and when G-d created the world there were no Jews. G-d said, “Let us make ADAM in our image and our form” and He meant gentiles. Thus, Jews are not the only ones called “Adam” or person. Furthermore, every Jewish child begins studying the bible in Leviticus, where it says, “A man (Adam) who brings an offering to G-d.” The first offering discussed is a burnt offering, and gentiles bring it, even pagans. Therefore, they are “Adam” or people. The person who translated that gentiles are not ADAM as not being human  made a mistake. Adam is not a word that defines people relative to animals. It defines people relative to G-d and holiness. We must know the context besides the exact translation.”

Leviticus is spot: all people are (of) Adam. If this is so, tractate Eruvin 21b loses me; to wit:

(Soncino Edition with notes)

Eruvin (Eiruvin, Erubin) 21b (my italics)

R. Hisda asked one of the young Rabbis who was reciting aggadoth in his presence in a certain order: ‘Did you hear what [was the purport of the expression,] ‘New and old’? 9 — ‘The former’ 10 the other replied: ‘are the minor, and the latter10 are the major commandments’. ‘Was then the Torah,’ the former asked: ‘given on two different occasions? 11 But the latter 12 [are those derived] from the words of the Torah while the former are those derived from the words of the Scribes.’

Raba made the following exposition: What is the purport of the Scriptural text: And, furthermore my son, be admonished: Of making many books etc.? 13 My son, be more careful 14 in [the observance of] the words of the Scribes than in the words of the Torah, for in the laws of the Torah there are positive and negative precepts;15 but, as to the laws of the Scribes, whoever transgresses any of the enactments of the Scribes incurs the penalty of death.

(9) Cant. VII, 14.

(10) Lit., ‘these’.

(11) Lit., ‘twice, twice’, first the major (old) and then the minor (new) commandments?

(12) Lit., ‘those’, the ‘old’.

(13) Eccl. XII, 12.

(14) הִזָּהֵר[hizaheir], the identical word used for ‘be admonished’.

§(15) And the penalties vary.

In Eruvin 21b, the scribes (Talmud) contrasts the Torah with the Talmud, where it is clearly stated that the Talmud requires more care than the Torah. Now, we saw above that the Talmud tells us that Gentiles are not “men,” (of Adam). What Eruvin 21b is telling us, in no uncertain terms, is that the Jew stands on two legs, the Torah and the Talmud; a thin leg – the Torah, a fat leg – the Talmud. I now ask whether Rabbi Eidensohn’s argument that Gentiles are also descendents of Adam has a leg to stand on? It seems not.

Don’t expect any ferocious debate on that one from onepusillanimousJew.

Making Jesus the Lord of your life? Impossible

Richard Ganz has written a powerful short message on the meaning of the Cross and the Resurrection. He ends with):

“The historic reality of the Christian faith, attested to both in the Old Testament and the New Testament, affirmed by the prophets and the apostles, confirmed by believers throughout the past 20 centuries, is that what Jesus did in His work on the cross brings the day of salvation. It has been accomplished. It is reality. And it can be yours, TODAY, when you come before God, surrendering, committing, and entrusting yourself to Him, repenting of your sin, asking Him to forgive you, asking Him to become the Lord of your life, and receiving Christ as your Lord and Saviour. When you do, then this day, even TODAY, will be a day of salvation for you.”

Actually, asking God/Christ to be Lord of your life is unnecessary (Paul Washer says it a bit stronger, calling it nonsense)) because He is the Lord, if not the Saviour, of everybody without exception, whether they believe in – not merely believe, of course – Him or not.

Ganz, a “ganse” (completed – Yiddish “all, whole”) Jew, can surely be forgiven for this slip – on Resurrection day.

The postmodern pursuit: Always departing, never arriving

In his review of Matthew Levering’s “The Theology of Augustine: An Introductory Guide to His Most Important Works,” Carl Trueman describes the postmodernist’s penchant for pursuing truth in the hope of not finding it.

“Augustine [however] was cut from different cloth. For him, it was not the pursuit of truth or some nebulous ‘journey’ which was the important thing; it was finding and resting in truth, real truth, God’s truth. Thus, he spent much of his early life pursuing that truth, through education, through Manicheeism and through neo-Platonism; it was only when he found Christianity and came to rest in God himself that he found the truth, beauty, and the fulfillment that comes from the same. That is not the secular mindset. Indeed, when I played Augustine in a debate with Bertrand Russell last Christmas, I was struck by how my antagonist found Augustine’s claim to have discovered truth to be so obnoxious; is it coherent, I thought, to characterize the good life as the pursuit of truth, rather than the discovery of truth? How can the best life be located in seeking truth and yet never finding it? Is it not the truth of the end point which gives the pursuit its value? And yet the restlessness of this secular mentality would seem to be no different to aesthetic of our post-evangelical arrivistes who seem to believe it is better to be always traveling than ever to arrive.” (Review of Carl Trueman).

A while back, I was in conversation with a friend who said this about Jacques Derrida’s view of truth and a Messiah:

“The question of the messiah seems eternally interesting. Derrida opined that the point about having a messiah is the promise, the hope, the aspiration, NOT that (he) comes. So what’s the deal with having a messiah who’s arrived? There’s a question for you. Where is the mystery once he’s exposed and had his say?”

Michael Patton, an evangelical Calvinist, sympathises with postmodernists. He believes that since there is nowadays much greater exposure to different cultures and religions through travel and the internet, people become more confused, and consequently don’t know whether (my summation of Patton’s message) they’re a Christian Arthur or an agnostic Martha. Here is Patton:

“I have a deep sympathy toward the confusion that postmodernism has brought about. The global culture that has been created in the last 50 years has caused us to change our perspectives on many things. The internet, world news, and globalization of culture has made it less likely that people can stay sheltered in a naive understanding of truth, religion, and morality even if they are right. The ever changing currents in science, exposure to world religions, fractures in the family unit, divisions in Christianity, and subjective change in personal beliefs and certainty have caused Christians to question the reliability of any source of truth. People are suspicious, disillusion, bewildered, and uncertain.” (M. Patton, “Would the real emerger please stand up”).

Patton, in his “Understanding the Postmodern Mind and the Emerging Church” distinguishes between “hard” and “soft” postmodernists:

“Hard postmodernists would see truth as being relative to the time, culture, or situation of the individual. In other words, truth does not exist beyond the thoughts of the subject. For example (and let me dive right in!), homosexuality, to the hard postmodernist, is right or wrong depending upon the person’s situation.”

“Soft postmoderns are different than hard postmoderns. In general they are suspicious of all truth claims. Their suspicion, however, is not rooted in a denial of the existence of truth, but a denial of our ability to come to terms with our certainty about the truth. In other words, the soft postmoderns believe in the existence of objective truth, but deny that we can have absolute certainly or assurance that we, in fact, have a corner on this truth. To the soft postmodernist, truth must be held in tension, understanding our limitations. We can seldom, if ever, be sure that we have the right truth. Therefore, there is a tendency to hold all convictions in limbo.”

What is so postmodern about rejecting the revelation of an other-worldly destination? Wasn’t that the “Enlightenment’s” claim to fame two centuries or so ago? The Lord Jesus Christ’s view is that if you pursue, you discover. For a Calvinist, the initial pursuing of truth is not done by you but by God, who grants you the desire to pursue both natural and supernatural truth. “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit–fruit that will last…” (John 15:16). The Bible has a centre, an “arriving” (salvation), a destination, a final destination, which can only be attained through revelation.

To return to the interminable indeterminable departure lounge and the Messiah. There is Derrida, again, sitting on his suitcase again. Did Derrida really want to find the Messiah? And if he didn’t want to, was it because, once found, the Messiah would no longer be of any value. Is it true – as my friend (above) says – that Derrida believed that “the point about having justice or a messiah is the promise, the hope, the aspiration, not that justice or the Messiah comes;” because “what’s the deal with having a messiah who’s arrived? Where is the mystery once he’s exposed and had his say?” As the TV “Discovery Channel” puts it: “If we had all the answers, there’d be nothing left to discover. Ignorance is bliss.” Go on finish it off: “and it’s folly to be wise.” Sure if you mean the wisdom of man:

“…when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. 2 For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. 3 And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, 4 and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, 5 so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God” (1 Corinthians 2:1-5, ESV).

Most “educated” people are soft postmodernists: although they believe that objective truth exists, they say no one can be sure what it is. André Gide, a hard postmodernist advised the softies: “Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it?” Only someone who doesn’t believe in (objective) truth talks like that.

The question is, how does one do science or literature (tone poems excluded) without a coherent, stable reality? Indeed, how can one have an intelligent conversation if words and thoughts keep toppling into one another? Scientists and all those blessed with noggins seek to know what’s going on, not only in their heads, but also in the world– theologians too. Everybody – including Derrida – hopes, if not believes, that Truth exists. And a messiah? Is Derrida waiting for a messiah? If so, what kind of messiah? “Derrida’s Messiah is not a person but an opening of experience.

“What’s the deal with having a messiah who’s arrived? Where is the mystery once he’s exposed and had his say?” (My friend’s question above). It is unremarkable that sinful man would ask such a question? Undergirding this question is perhaps not the fear that a Messiah, a Judge, exists, neither the conviction that Truth can never be found. What such a question implies is rather the chutzpa (hubris) that nothing higher than man has the right to exist, for man is the measure of all things. Satan asks Adam “Did God really say?” (Genesis 3:1). And therein lies the genesis of the question “What’s the deal with having a messiah who has arrived – unless he’s arrived at another departure lounge?” (The deconstruction of Messiah).

Aristotle believed that virtue was the means to life’s goal, which is happiness. Virtue strives for happiness and the good, the good of all. Indeed, Aristotle’s happiness (and Plato’s for that matter) IS the good. In Aristotle, every human life has a departure and a destination; the reason why you travel is – surely – to arrive at a specific place. That place, for Aristotle, is here, in this world. Since the 19th century, the place to find happiness hasn’t changed, but what has changed since the “Enlightenment” is that its all about departing and no more about arriving unless arriving at another departure lounge. Enlightenment, modern style: Bums on suitcases, all packed and ready to leave for the next departure lounge

And what about the Victorian postmoderns? – always departing never arriving. Here is Martyn Lloyd Jones:

“The Victorians said,’To travel hopefully is better than to arrive.’ Stuff and nonsense. If that were true no one would get married, they’d say courtship is better than marriage. But you see this is the sort of phrase that fascinates people and it sounds so wonderful. Ah, they say, we don’t want any of your Christian evangelical dogmatic certainty. We are seekers after truth,we like the great quest after reality. There was no such thing as the knowledge of truth; that was the nonsense they talked, based on nothing but sheer ignorance.” (Martyn Lloyd Jones’ sermon,“By faith, Abraham”).

What about our own postmodern generation? Should we like, Michael Patton, sympathise with them or should it be a plague on both their houses! For both the soft and the hard say “we don’t want any of your Christian evangelical dogmatic certainty.” (Lloyd Jones above). The “Christian” postmodern generation is epitomised in the “Lutheran” theologian Walter Brueggemann for whom theology and Bible interpretation is not a matter of certainty but of fidelity; fidelity to 1. the “divine office of creative imagination” and 2. to the “other.”

For Brueggemann, the Lutheran, any interaction between 1. certitude, which he considers limited because it is restricted to a single meaning (univocity) and 2. fidelity, should be frowned upon. We should, therefore, be open, as Jacques Derrida says, to “an unlimited number of contexts over an indefinite period of time,” and thus to unrestricted interaction between suffering persons desiring to tell their personal stories. For Brueggemann and Derrida, and all postmodernists (who believe there is no metaphysical centre, no fixed structures), there exists no such entity as Being, no such entity as essence, no such thing as a True story, but only suffering beings telling their true-ish stories, which are the only stories that ultimately matter. So, the only Lutherans who understand suffering and love are the postmodern ones.

All of us in our natural state live in “a sort of diaboliccd trance, wherein the soul traverseth the world; feeds itself with a thousand airy nothings ; snatcheth at this and the other created excellency, in imagination and desire ; goes here and there, and every where, except where it should go. And the soul is never cured of this disease, till overcoming grace bring it back, to take up its everlasting rest in God through Christ : But till this be, if man were set again in Paradise, the garden of the Lord ; all the pleasures there would not keep him from looking, yea, and leaping over All human beings in our natural state live in “a sort of diabolical trance, wherein  the soul traverses the world; feeds itself with a thousand airy nothings ; snatcheth at this and the other created excellency, in imagination and desire ; goes here and there, and every where, except where it should go. And the soul is never cured of this disease, till overcoming grace bring it back, to take up its everlasting rest in God through Christ : But till this be, if man were set again in Paradise, the garden of the Lord ; all the pleasures there would not keep him from looking, yea, and leaping over the hedge a second time.”

(Thomas Boston: “Human nature in its four-fold state of primitive integrity, subsisting in the parents of mankind in paradise; entire deprivation in the unregenerate; and consummate happiness or misery in all mankind in the future state.”)

In conclusion, each generation is responsible for the lies they tell the next. Yet, those who feed on those lies are also responsible – and no social or psychological or theological system can make that biblical truth disappear. At the same time, it is right that Michael Patton has sympathy for postmodernists, for who desires anyone to be always departing and never arriving; worse, lost? Inexorably, God has decreed it so. Yep, unlike Patton, and unlike the General. I’m a, a, a, a Jewish Calvinist.

Must pack.

Why the Jesuit, Pope Francis I will still be around a month from now; unlike smiling Pope John Paul I

I was very cross when I started reading one of the books on my Puritan Hard Drive – I popped a few hundred dollars across the Atlantic and voila, my second PHD – “The American Text-book of popery” (George Bourne, 1848), because the second page of the prefatory “Address to Protestants” was missing. Here is the first page – on the Jesuits:

“The ominous controversy which the Papal priesthood have recently excited in New York and Philadelphia, combined with their mischievous exactions concerning the entire exclusion of the Holy Bible, and Christianity, with all ancient and modern history, from our Common Schools, imperiously demand an authentic exposure of the nature and extent of that universal supremacy and jurisdiction which the Roman Pontiff and his vassals of the Papal hierarchy usurp, as their jure divino inseparable prerogative. Moreover, they are a self-evident testimony, visible among ourselves that the cardinal motive alleged by Pope Clement XIV for the suppression of the Jesuits was righteous and replete with philanthropy. In his ” Bulla,” he denounced that entire confederacy of monks and nuns, as a pestiferous band of conspirators, in bad reputation. ” Universum” enacted that Pontiff, ”pene orbem pervaserunt molestissima contentiones de Societatis doctrina” — “The most direful contentions are diffused throughout nearly the whole world by the doctrines of that society.” Wherefore, by his alleged infallible authority, he abolished the order; solemnly affirming in his pontifical anathema, that the society of the Jesuits could not any longer be tolerated, as…”

it, they, a, or what? Yep reading sure is a guessing game. What to do? Archive.org came to the rescue. Here is the second page: 

“their existence is totally destructive of the peace and welfare of mankind.They poisoned him (the Pope) during the celebration of mass, as the reward for his noble act!”

So you see why Pope Francis I, the first Jesuit Pope, will certainly see out the next month or two, at least; more than  smiling young Pope John Paul I (1912-1978).

John Paul I

Related articles

• What It Means that the New Pope Is a Jesuit (dailyqueernews.wordpress.com)

Unconditional election and unconditional eclection

In Arminian theology, unconditional election means that “whosoever” opens (by which they mean, any one who wills to open) the door of their hearts to Jesus, will be elected to eternal life – on condition, of course, that they don’t show Jesus the door in the interim. Abuse it, and lose it. “That’s the risk we must take, my Son.” The plan of salvation: Is it worth the risk, my Son? What, risk! Ask Jacques Derrida, CS Lewis and Thomas Oord.

In Reformed theology, unconditional election means that those whom God has chosen from eternity did not depend on anything – least of all on allowing Jesus into their hearts. God has mercy on whosoever (the ones) he wants to have mercy (Romans 9).

If you were a Greek speaking Christian in Jesus time, or are one today, you would not speak of election but “eclection.” So, am I saying that if you’re Greek, you think that God doesn’t follow any one method of election, which would mean that he saves those who, upon “knock, knock,” rush to open the door as well as those whom Jesus first has to raise from the dead before they can get out of their beds to do the same?

No, I don’t mean that God is eclectic . All I mean is that in the Greek New Testament, the word for “election is EKLEkTOS from ek “from” and lego “to gather,” “ to pick out.” Tee hee.

Blessed Assurance: “When I lego my elect, I never letgo. 

(Inspired by Vines Epository dictionary, Thomas Nelson, p. 351)

Related articles

• The Calvinist Robot and the Arminian Zombie: Grammars of coming to faith. (onedaringjew.wordpress.com)

God’s delusion

In God, the infinitely good, creates evil, I examined biblically texts that indicated that because everything in creation only occurs by God’s decree, this must include “evil.” One kind of evil God sends is delusion. In this article I discuss the delusion God sends to the Richard Dawkinses of this world.

There are two kinds of atheism: practical and theoretical. In the former, one lives as if there were no God. The latter is of the intellectual kind. About 50 years before Richard Dawkins’ “The God delusion” (2006), Louis Berkoff wrote the following in his most excellent “Systematic Theology”:

“There are three kinds of theoretical atheism: 1. Dogmatic atheism, which denies flatly that there is a divine being; 2. Sceptical atheism which doubts the ability of the human mind to determine whether or not there is a God; and 3. Critical atheism which maintains that there is no valid proof for the existence of God. Dawkins seems to belong to atheism of the third kind. These three kinds of atheism often go hand-in-hand, but even the most modest of them pronounces all belief in God a delusion. Dawkins’ prime beef is with biblical Christianity. The reasons he gives for hating the God of the Bible are, of course, different to the reasons the Bible gives for his hatred. One reason is contained in the verse, which appears in both the “Old” (Tanach) and the New Testament: ” And the LORD said, “…I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion (Exodus 33:19; Romans 9:15).”

The above verse epitomises all of God’s actions toward mankind. Two of these actions are that God hardens the hearts of whom he wills, as he did with Pharaoh (Exodus 4:21; Romans 9:18), and God blinds eyes and deadens ears (Isaiah 6). Immediately after God reveals himself in a literal earth-shaking way to Isaiah, He gives Isaiah the commission to prophesy to the Israelites:

Isaiah6

1 In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train] of his robe filled the temple. 2 Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. 3 And one called to another and said:

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;
the whole earth is full of his glory!”

4 And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. 5 And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!”

6 Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar. 7 And he touched my mouth and said: “Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.”

Isaiah’s Commission from the Lord

8 And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said, “Here I am! Send me.” 9 And he said, “Go, and say to this people:

“‘Keep on hearing, but do not understand;
keep on seeing, but do not perceive.’
10 Make the heart of this people dull,
and their ears heavy,
and blind their eyes;
lest they see with their eyes,
and hear with their ears,
and understand with their hearts,
and turn and be healed.”
11 Then I said, “How long, O Lord?”
And he said:
“Until cities lie waste
without inhabitant,
and houses without people,
and the land is a desolate waste,
12 and the Lord removes people far away,
and the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land.
13 And though a tenth remain in it,
it will be burned again,
like a terebinth or an oak,
whose stump remains
when it is felled.”
The holy seed is its stump.

God sends deafness, blindness, a delusion. How, you may ask, can a God who is Truth itself send a lie, indeed, lie? I attempt to answer that question.

When God sends deception, it is often irrevocable. It follows that redemption would be impossible; because God ensures that it is thus. We see this damnation, for example, in God’s dealings with King Ahab (1 Kings 22), who had forsaken the Holy One of Israel for Baal. God not only chose to allow him to follow his corrupt heart – which is man’s estate (la condition humaine) – but also decreed that Ahab wander further from Him, as we saw God doing with the majority of the Israelites in Isaiah 6 above. Also, In Ezekiel 14:9 God promised, “But if the prophet is prevailed upon to speak a word, it is I, the LORD, who have prevailed upon that prophet, and I will stretch out My hand against him and destroy him from among My people Israel.”

In 2 Thessalonians 2, God sends a delusion on those “who are perishing.” The context is probably the end of the “age” during the Tribulation and the coming of the “lawless one.“ The key verse is verse 11 (in italics):

2 Now concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to him, we ask you, brothers 2 not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed, either by a spirit or a spoken word, or a letter seeming to be from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord has come. 3 Let no one deceive you in any way. For that day will not come, unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness] is revealed, the son of destruction,] 4 who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God. 5 Do you not remember that when I was still with you I told you these things? 6 And you know what is restraining him now so that he may be revealed in his time. 7 For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work. Only he who now restrains it will do so until he is out of the way. 8 And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will kill with the breath of his mouth and bring to nothing by the appearance of his coming. 9 The coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders, 10 and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. 11 Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false, 12 in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.

Verse 11. God sends a strong (energeia) delusion (plane – wandering, error). “Error” is derived from the Latin errare “to wander.” I am thinking of the wandering Jew, especially Jacques Derrida.

Compare the “delusion” of an Arminian (Albert Barnes, a New School Presbyterian) with a Calvinist.

Albert Barnes

“God shall send them strong delusion – Greek: “energy of deceit;” a Hebraism, meaning strong deceit, The agency of God is here distinctly recognised, in accordance with the uniform statements of the Scriptures, respecting evil; compare Exodus 7:13; Exodus 9:12; Exodus 10:1, Exodus 10:20, Exodus 10:27; Exodus 11:10; Exodus 14:8; Isaiah 45:7. On the nature of this agency, see the notes on John 12:40. It is not necessary here to suppose that there was any positive influence on the part of God in causing this delusion to come upon them, but all the force of the language will be met, as well as the reasoning of the apostle, by supposing that God withdrew all restraint, and suffered men simply to show that they did not love the truth. God often places people in circumstances to develop their own nature, and it cannot be shown to be wrong that He should do so. If people have no love of the truth, and no desire to be saved, it is not improper that they should be allowed to manifest this. How it happened that they had no “love of the truth,” is a different question, to which the remarks of the apostle do not appertain.”

Here is Exodus 7:13 and 9:12, which Barnes referenced but did not quote.

Exodus 7:13

Still Pharaoh’s heart was hardened, and he would not listen to them, as the Lord had said.

Exodus 7:14

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Pharaoh’s heart is hardened; he refuses to let the people go.

“The above verses harmonise with Barnes’ “It is not necessary here to suppose that there was any positive influence on the part of God in causing this delusion to come upon them, but all the force of the language will be met, as well as the reasoning of the apostle, by supposing that God withdrew all restraint, and suffered men simply to show that they did not love the truth.”

The Arminian knockout punch: Although the human will is flawed, it is never floored, that is it has the power to remain on its feet no matter what. Hence man does play a positive, if subservient role, in his own salvation. Although God, according to Barnes, is not the cause of delusion. the “force of the language (the Greek text of verse 11) will be met,” in that God merely “withdrew all restraint” and let men follow their love of their delusions. Man hardens his heart while God leaves him to his own devices. What, though, about Exodus 4:21 and 7:3, which Barnes, like a good Arminian, skips over in his list of “hardens.”

Exodus 4:21
And the Lord said to Moses, “When you go back to Egypt, see that you do before Pharaoh all the miracles that I have put in your power. But I will harden his heart, so that he will not let the people go.

Exodus 7:3

But I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and though I multiply my signs and wonders in the land of Egypt.

So, before Pharaoh hardens his own heart in Exodus 7:13 “Still Pharaoh’s heart was hardened…,” God has already ordained (Ex 4:21, 7:3) that Pharaoh harden his heart, which, contrary to Barnes, does indeed make it necessary here to suppose that there was a “positive influence on the part of God in causing this delusion to come upon [him].”

Does this mean that Pharaohs heart, in its natural state, was pure and that God decided to poison it? Unless you reject the doctrine that we are all born in sin, God didn’t harden a pure heart. Both Arminians and Calvinists know from other biblical texts that everyone is naturally hardened against the truth (which is Christ) because they are born in sin (they have a sin nature; the doctrine of Original Sin). In passing, most orthodox Jews, all Muslims and all agnostics/atheists reject Original sin.

Barnes says “It is not necessary here to suppose that there was any positive influence on the part of God in causing this delusion.” On the contrary, the Greek grammar in 2 Colossians 2:11 is clear; God caused (energeia “power in action”) the delusion. He reinforced the delusion that was already there. To say that He merely removes his restraining hand makes God passive. He was, in Christ, passive once – at the cross and events leading up to it (the Passion means “passive“). Sometimes God merely removes his hand and other times he brings it down hard. As we are not able to distinguish between these two actions, it may be better to say that whatever occurs is ordained by God; yes, evil as well. “I form light and create darkness, I make well-being and create calamity (Hebrew ra “evil”), I am the Lord, who does all these things” (Isaiah 45:7 ESV). Here is a modern example: the re-election of the US president Obama:

“Although I’ve been worried, says Tom Chantry, about this election for months, only in the aftermath did I realize that I never really thought our country would re-elect a President who has been such an abject failure by any and every measure. It just didn’t seem possible that we would do so, and so at some level I didn’t expect it at all. As the results rolled in, I found myself reeling, unable to take in the enormity of what has happened to our nation. I scarcely slept, unable to stop running through the implications of the disaster. I was, to put it mildly, knocked down and stunned.”

Has God removed his restraining hand and leaving the North Americans to their own delusions, or has God reinforced the American delusion? Can we ever know? In contrast to the Arminian, Albert Barnes’ interpretation of 2 Colossians 2:11, here is the view of the Roman Catholic Church’s nemesis, John the Bald (Jean Calvin).

“11 The working of delusion. He means that errors will not merely have a place, but the wicked will be blinded, so that they will rush forward to ruin without consideration. For
as God enlightens us inwardly by his Spirit, that his doctrine may be efficacious in us, and opens our eyes and hearts, that it may make its way thither, so by a righteous judgment he delivers over to a reprobate mind (Romans 1:28) those whom he has appointed to destruction, that with closed eyes and a senseless mind, they may, as if bewitched, deliver themselves over to Satan and his ministers to be deceived.”

In Calvin we have the positive intervention of God (“the wicked will be blinded”) as well as God removing his restraining hand (“he delivers over to a reprobate mind”). Whereas I homed in on the recent US election, Calvin homes in on the Roman Catholic Church:

“And assuredly we have a specimen of this [God delivering over to delusion] in the Papacy. No words can express how monstrous a sink of errors there is there, how gross
and shameful an absurdity of superstitions there is, and what delusions at variance with common sense. None that have even a moderate taste of sound doctrine, can think of
such monstrous things without the greatest horror. How, then, could the whole world be lost in astonishment at them, were it not that men have been struck with blindness
by the Lord, and converted, as it were, into stumps? That all may be condemned. That is, that they may receive the punishment due to their impiety. Thus, those that perish have no just ground to expostulate with God.”

John Gill echoes Calvin:

“And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion,…. Or “efficacy of error”, which God may be said to send; and the Alexandrian copy reads, “does send”; because it is not a bare permission but a voluntary one; or it is his will that error should be that truth may be tried, and be illustrated by its contrary, and shine the more through the force of opposition to it; and that those which are on the side of it might be made manifest, as well as that the rejecters of the Gospel might be punished; for the efficacy of error is not to be considered as a sin, of which God cannot be the author, but as a punishment for sin, and to which men are given up, and fall under the power of, because they receive not the love of the truth, which is the reason here given: and this comes to pass partly through God’s denying his grace, or withholding that light and knowledge, by which error may be discovered and detected; and by taking from men the knowledge and conscience of things they had, see Romans 1:28. So that they call evil good, and good evil, and do not appear to have the common sense and reason of mankind, at least do not act according to it; and by giving them up to judicial blindness and hardness of heart, and to the god of this world, to blind their minds; and without this it is not to be accounted for, that the followers of antichrist should give into such senseless notions as those of transubstantiation, works of supererogation, &c., or into such stupid practices as worshipping of images, praying to saints departed, and paying such a respect to the pretended relics of saints, &c., as they do; but a spirit of slumber is given them, and eyes that they should not see, and ears that they should not hear, because of their rejection of the Gospel.”

J. Hampton Keathley three steps provides a pithy summary of the discussion:

“Note the three steps in falling for Satan’s lies and his end-time lie:

1. Those who are perishing will fail to love the truth; they will be negative toward truth in their pursuit of the darkness or unrighteousness (2 Thessalonians: 10, 12).

2. As the first step of judgment, God sends a deluding influence that they might believe the lie (vs. 11). The man of lawlessness is Satan’s ultimate lie (see John 8:44 and Rev. 13:1 ff).

3. This leads to God’s judgments, those experienced in the Tribulation and at the Great White Throne. The reason is failure to believe the truth, but this is really a judgment for failing to love truth.

Here is a moral law of the universe as established by a holy and righteous God: God gives the wicked over to the wickedness they have chosen as declared in Romans 1:18-28; Ephesians 4:17-19; and Proverbs 5:22.”

In conclusion, God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy (Romans 9), which is what election – divine election – is about. Many political elections, in contrast, are God’s appointed judgments on those who hate Christ, the Way, the Truth and the life.

God, the infinitely good, creates evil

The concatenation of all his counsels is not intelligible to us; for he is as essentially and necessarily wise, as he is essentially and necessarily good and righteous. (Stephen Charnock, 1632 -1680. “A discourse on the wisdom of God”).

Introduction

If only the earth were not so full of evil. The question before us, though, is a theological one: how to reconcile evil in the world with God who is all good, all knowing and all powerful? From the start, we have to realise that we can never get a complete answer for the simple fact that God is God, and man is man. Some may think, ”I suppose you’re going to pull out the ‘mystery card.’” Well, regarding the deepest things of God, yes, they remain hidden; this, however, does not mean that the deep things of God are beyond our reach. In the Bible. there are many deep things of God that are accessible to those whom God gives the grace to understand. Many are those who, although good with language, haven’t a clue what the biblical words mean. This is so because it is the Spirit of God within the words that brings light. “For with you is the fountain of life; in your light do we see light” (Psalm 36:9). Of two things a Christian is sure: God always fulfils his purpose, and all God’s purposes are good. So evil always has a good purpose. Out of evil God brings good. That is the biblical understanding of evil.

My mishmash of the midrash

In a previous article, Digging below the surface of Torah, Midrash and Vulgate: When very good includes evil. I accused the Midrash for saying that when God said his creation was very good, the reason was because until that moment he hadn’t yet created the “evil inclination” (yetser hara – ra in Hebrew means “evil”). Here is what I wrote about the Midrashic interpretation of Genesis’ “And God saw that it was very good.”

“If one wished to penetrate the deepest secret of all, one would discover – according to the Midrash – something so deep that it would defy the laws of contradiction. I would find that when God says “very good,” he means “very good” only for the hoi poloi. But if you’re Jewish and have also devoted decades to Torah, Talmud and Kabbalah, then, and only then, will you understand that when God says “very good,” he really means “very bad”; indeed, worse than “very bad”; He means the evil inclination itself, the yetser harah. Let the Midrash speak for itself:

“And God saw all that He had made, and found it very good. And there was evening, and there was morning, the sixth day.” (Genesis 1:31)—Midrash: Rabbi Nahman said in Rabbi Samuel’s name: “Behold, it was good” refers to the Good Desire; “And behold, it was very good” refers to the Evil Desire. (It only says “very good” after man was created with both the good and bad inclinations, in all other cases it only says “and God saw that it was good”) Can then the Evil Desire be very good? That would be extraordinary! But without the Evil Desire, however, no man would build a house, take a wife and beget children; and thus said Solomon: “Again, I considered all labour and all excelling in work, that it is a man’s rivalry with his neighbour.” (Kohelet [Eclesiastes] IV, 4) (Genesis Rabbah 9:7, translation from Soncino Publications).

I show in this article – in the section on the bibical view of evil – that the Midrash is not so far from the scriptures than I previously thought.

Plato and Christian philosophies of evil

When I was doing a BA philosophy degree many decades ago, I had to read Plato’s “Republic” in all seven courses over three years. I also did some Augustine of Horse (Hippo). Augustine is purported to have said (although I can’t find the exact statement in his works, it is the kind of thing he would have said ): “Plato made me know the true God, Jesus Christ showed me the way to him.” (See Frontispiece of Benjamin Franklin Cocker’s Christianity and Greek Philosophy, 1870).

In Book II of the “Republic” on the education of children, Plato describes the attribute of God’s goodness. (My italics):

“But what shall their education be? Is any better than the old-fashioned sort which is comprehended under the name of music and gymnastic? Music includes literature, and literature is of two kinds, true and false. ‘What do you mean?’ he said. I mean that children hear stories before they learn gymnastics, and that the stories are either untrue, or have at most one or two grains of truth in a bushel of falsehood. Now early life is very impressible, and children ought not to learn what they will have to unlearn when they grow up; we must therefore have a censorship of nursery tales, banishing some and keeping others…And our first principle is, that God must be represented as he is; not as the author of all things, but of good only. We will not suffer the poets to say that he is the steward of good and evil, or that he has two casks full of destinies;—or that Athene and Zeus incited Pandarus to break the treaty; or that God caused the sufferings of Niobe, or of Pelops, or the Trojan war; or that he makes men sin when he wishes to destroy them.Either these were not the actions of the gods, or God was just, and men were the better for being punished.But that the deed was evil, and God the author, is a wicked, suicidal fiction which we will allow no one, old or young, to utter. This is our first and great principle—God is the author of good only.” Plato’s “Republic,” translated by Benjamin Jowett).

That is, unsurprisingly (since Plato made Augustine know the true God) Augustine’s position as well. For Augustine:

“There is nothing to be called evil if there is nothing good. A good that wholly lacks an evil aspect is entirely good. Where there is some evil in a thing, its good is defective or defectible. Thus there can be no evil where there is no good. This leads us to a surprising conclusion: that, since every being, in so far as it is a being, is good, if we then say that a defective thing is bad, it would seem to mean that we are saying that what is evil is good, that only what is good is ever evil and that there is no evil apart from something good. This is because every actual entity is good omnis natura bonum est. Nothing evil exists in itself, but only as an evil aspect of some actual entity. Therefore, there can be nothing evil except something good. Absurd as this sounds, nevertheless the logical connections of the argument compel us to it as inevitable. At the same time, we must take warning lest we incur the prophetic judgment which reads: “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil: who call darkness light and light darkness; who call the bitter sweet and the sweet bitter.” Moreover the Lord himself saith: “An evil man brings forth evil out of the evil treasure of his heart.”What, then, is an evil man but an evil entity natura mala, since man is an entity? Now, if a man is something good because he is an entity, what, then, is a bad man except an evil good? When, however, we distinguish between these two concepts, we find that the bad man is not bad because he is a man, nor is he good because he is wicked. Rather, he is a good entity in so far as he is a man, evil in so far as he is wicked. Therefore, if anyone says that simply to be a man is evil, or that to be a wicked man is good, he rightly falls under the prophetic judgment: “Woe to him who calls evil good and good evil.” For this amounts to finding fault with God’s work, because man is an entity of God’s creation. It also means that we are praising the defects in this particular man because he is a wicked person. Thus, every entity, even if it is a defective one, in so far as it is an entity, is good. In so far as it is defective, it is evil.” (Augustine of Hippo, “The Problem of Evil” in his Enchiridion Chapter 4, par. 13).

Most “good” people, including most Christians, take the above position. They reason thus: If God is perfect (infinitely good) and infinitely powerful (omnipotent) in his being, it follows that nothing evil can flow out of his being. So anything that God creates cannot be evil.

Thinking Augustine’s thoughts after him, here is the modern Christian philosopher, Greg Koukl (Stand to Reason):

“The first step in answering the problem of evil is this: We’ve got to get clear on what this thing “evil” actually is. It does seem to follow that if God created all things, and evil is a thing, then God created evil. This is a valid syllogism. If the premises are true, then the conclusion would be true as well. The problem with that line of reasoning is that the second premise is not true. Evil is not a thing. The person who probably explained it best was St. Augustine, and then Thomas Aquinas picked up on his solution. Others since them have argued that evil has no ontological status in itself. The word ontology deals with the nature of existence. When I say that evil has no ontological status, I mean that evil, as a thing in itself, does not exist. Let me give you an illustration to make this more clear. We talk about things being cold or warm. But coldness is not a thing that exists in itself; it has no ontological status. Coldness is the absence of heat. When we remove heat energy from a system, we say it gets colder.”

“Koukl again (a few paragraphs later; my italics and underlining):

It’s not good to promote evil itself, but one of the things about God is that He’s capable of taking a bad thing and making good come out of it. Mercy is one example of that. Without sin there would be no mercy. That’s true of a number of good things: bearing up under suffering, dealing with injustice, acts of heroism, forgiveness, long-suffering. These are all virtues that cannot be experienced in a world with no sin and evil.”

“Now the real question at this point is, “Was it worth it? Good can come out of evil, but was it worth it in the long run, the measure of good that comes out of the measure of evil in the world?” And my response is that the only One who could ever know that is God. You and I couldn’t know that because our perspective is too limited. Only God is in a position to accurately answer that question. Apparently God thinks that, on balance, the good is going to outweigh the evil that caused the good, or else He wouldn’t have allowed it to happen. Christ paid a tremendous price, an example of the tremendous love God had for us. God would not be able to show His sacrificial love unless there was something to sacrifice for.”

“Here’s the problem, and this is why we don’t think that, on balance, it’s really a fair trade. We think that life is about giving us pleasure and making us happy. That’s what we think. This view is very prevalent in the United States. Our personal happiness, pleasure, and enjoyment are the most important things in life.”

According to Koukl, God “allows” evil to happen. The word “allow” means that he sits back because, after all, that’s the price (and Koukl’s reasoning, it seems) man has to pay for the precious divine gift of free will, “No one in my universe can bark back at me and say that I have decreed him or her to do evil.” The main part of my article will discuss the biblical response to this libertarian view of man. What is odd is that Greg Koukl is a Calvinist (miraculously with sweet breath), that is, he should believe not only in the permissive will of God but in the decretive will of God; or more accurately, God allows things to happen because he decrees them – evil as well, naturally.

Here is C S Lewis on good and evil as a dualism:

“I freely admit that real Christianity (as distinct from Christianity-and-water) goes much nearer to Dualism than people think. One of the things that surprised me when I first read the New Testament seriously was that it talked so much about a Dark Power in the universe–a mighty evil spirit who was held to be the Power behind death and disease, and sin. The difference is that Christianity thinks this Dark Power was created by God, and was good when he was created, and went wrong. Christianity agrees with Dualism that this universe is at war. But it does not think this is a war between independent powers. It thinks it is a civil war, a rebellion, and that we are living in a part of the universe occupied by the rebel.”

In Chinese philosophy, the TAO (Ultimate) gives birth to the twins of Yin and Yang Yin and Yang originate together. Thus, Yin and Yang spring arm in arm out of the TAO – out of the ULTIMATE – into existence. If Yin disappears, Yang disappears. Yang is the masculine principle and Yin is the feminine principle. They can’t live without each other. Even monks need a woman to get born – if not to get born again. Thus, if there was no evil, we would have no idea what good is. (Yin Yang dualism, CS Lewis and Christianity).

Viktor Frankl and Voltaire on evil: a lamp and a lampoon.

A lamp – Viktor Frankl’s “to life” (lacha-im)

In his “The case for a tragic optimism,” Viktor Frankl asks:

“Let us ask ourselves what should be understood by “a tragic optimism.” In brief it means that one is, and remains, optimistic in spite of the “tragic triad,” as it is called in logotherapy, a triad which consists of those aspects of human existence which may be circumscribed by: (1) pain; (2) guilt; and (3) death. This chapter, in fact, raises the question, How is it possible to say yes to life in spite of all that? How, to pose the question differently, can life retain its potential meaning in spite of its tragic aspects? After all, “saying yes to life in spite of everything,” to use the phrase in which the title of a German book of mine is couched, presupposes that life is potentially meaningful under any conditions, even those which are most miserable. And this in turn presupposes the human capacity to creatively turn life’s negative aspects into something positive or constructive. In other words, what matters is to make the best of any given situation.” (My emphasis).

A lampoon – Voltaire’s satire

In Voltaire’s novel “Candide, or Optimism,” usually referred to by the shorter title “Candide,” the main characters experience all the great horrors of the few centuries of European history before 1759 (the date of publication of “Candide”). The final horror was the great earthquake and tsunami that devastated Lisbon in 1755; an event that shook the faith of many Christians, as the Holocaust shook the faith of many Jews about two centuries later. Today most Jews remain on shaky religious ground. For example, Reform and Reconstuctionist Jews, who have inverted Genesis 1:1; they say man created God, not the other way around. (See Reform Judaism and Reconstructionist Judaism here and here. One compensation – many Jews would say a new start – is that they can now do their shaking on perhaps more solid ground – the Land of Israel.

Voltaire’s “Candide”, in contrast to Frankl’s book of hope, is a stinging satire. Candide concludes with this “quiet” advice (quietism means “accept the world as it is”): “Work then without kicking against the pricks,” said Martin; “it’s the only way to make life bearable.” (Candide). I’m reminded of Saul (Paul) of Tarsus: “And he [Saul] Who art thou, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest: it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks. And he trembling and astonished said, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? And the Lord said unto him, Arise, and go into the city, and it shall be told thee what thou must do.”

If Voltaire lived after 1945, he would have included the Jewish Holocaust as one of these main horrors. Victor Frankl didn’t only live through the Holocaust, he was a prisoner in four concentration camps, and his family was killed in them. Where Voltaire is satirical, Frankl is (in his words above) “positive and constructive.”In the last few lines of “The case for tragic optimism” (p. 154), Frankl admonishes us once again to do our best: “… the world is in a bad state, but everything will become still worse unless each of us does his best.” That is the common thread running through all forms of Judaism and all kinds of Jews – and all mankind, “responsible” mankind, Frankl would say.

Man is always at war, if not with others, then – tritely and tragically – with himself:

“Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war, where every man is enemy to every man, the same consequent to the time wherein men live without other security than what their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” (Thomas Hobbes, “Leviathan,” 1660).

The biblical view of evil

For Frankl, evil is a total mystery, but unlike Voltaire, it is not a total misery. Others float between the two for whom life is mystery, misery, and short. Let us see what the Bible has to say about evil and God’s role in it.

For man, the origin of evil in a universe that God had originally created as good is probably the greatest mystery. How can a perfect God create the potential for imperfection? One example is the creation of the angelic being who later became the accuser, Satan – the very name evokes, for many, horror and disgust. God creates another perfect being – an angelic being – with the potential for evil; a potential that monotheists such as Christians, Jews and Muslims claim does not exist in God Himself.

And man? Why God would create a world where He knew man would become radically corrupt is not something we can ever know from natural wisdom but from God’s revelation in the Bible. There are spiritual things, however, that we can know from natural wisdom (philosophy). “What degree of perfection, asks Benjamin Franklin Cocker, can humanity, under the most favorable conditions, attain, without the supernatural light, and guidance, and grace of Christianity? Cocker’s answer: “philosophy is simply the analysis of our natural consciousness of God, and the presentation of the idea in a logical form. Faith in the existence of God is not the result of a conscious process of reflection; it is the spontaneous and instinctive logic of the human mind, which, in view of phenomena presented to sense, by a necessary law of thought immediately and intuitively affirms a personal Power, an intelligent Mind as the author.” (B. F. Cocker. 1870. Christianity and Greek philosophy; or The relation between spontaneous and reflective thought in Greece and the positive teaching of Christ and the Apostles, p. 51, free ebook). Romans 1 says the same thing but also adds God’s condemnation for those who suppress this “spontaneous and instinctive logic of the human mind” (Cocker above):

18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. 19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. 21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. (Romans 1:18-23, ESV).

To return to the question, “Why God would create a world where He knew man would become radically corrupt,” if you – with your spontaneous and instinctive noggin – think about it, who are you to tell God how to run his creation? “Let God be true, and every man a liar” (Romans 3:1-4). The issue then becomes not to question God on what he says or does, but “Did God really say? (Genesis 3:1). This is where divine revelation erupts into our world, specifically biblical revelation. The rest of this examination will hopefully be meaningful to those who believe that God really said what the Bible records.

The Bible tells us:

First, God was not taken by surprise when Satan and his angelic cohort sinned and when Adam sinned. Everything that happens is “according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, (Ephesians 1:11, ESV). God designed the universe to display his perfection. This perfection takes three forms: creation, providence/sovereignty and redemption. So God created the world to manifest his sovereignty in redemption: “For I think that God has exhibited us apostles as last of all, like men sentenced to death, because we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels, and to men” (1Corinthains 4:9). “I have become a sign to many; you are my strong refuge” (Psalm 71:7).

God has designed everything to manifest (show off) the radiance of His perfection and holiness; in a word, his glory:

[1] In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. [2] Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. [3] And one called to another and said:

“Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts;

the whole earth is full of his glory!”

[4] And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. [5] And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!” (Isaiah 6:1-5 ESV).

Second, and here is where human indignation, among many Christians as well, boils over: God foreordains all events: “For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen” (Romans 11:36 ESV). “In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will” (Ephesians 1:11 ESV). We read in Joshua Liebman’s “Peace of mind” that religion is “at its best” merely “the announcer of the supreme ideals by which men must live and through which our finite species finds it’s ultimate significance.” If people were honest, says Liebman, “they would admit that the implementation of these ideals should be left to psychology.” Whereas the Scripture (Hebrew and New testament) says “Man proposes, God disposes,” Liebman says, “God proposes, psychology disposes.” “In their hearts humans plan their course, but the LORD establishes their steps (Proverbs 16:1); “Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the LORD that will stand” (Proverbs 19:21).

Here’s the rub: the Lord’s purpose is fulfilled not in spite of Satan and man but because of Satan and man:

[15] When Joseph’s brothers saw that their father was dead, they said, “It may be that Joseph will hate us and pay us back for all the evil that we did to him.” [16] So they sent a message to Joseph, saying, “Your father gave this command before he died: [17] ‘Say to Joseph, “Please forgive the transgression of your brothers and their sin, because they did evil to you.”’ And now, please forgive the transgression of the servants of the God of your father.” Joseph wept when they spoke to him. [18] His brothers also came and fell down before him and said, “Behold, we are your servants.” [19] But Joseph said to them, “Do not fear, for am I in the place of God? [20] As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today. [21] So do not fear; I will provide for you and your little ones.” Thus he comforted them and spoke kindly to them” (Genesis 50:15-21 ESV).

[22] “Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know [23] this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. (Acts 2:22-23 ESV).

When we say God is all-knowing, we mean He knows everything past, present and future. That’s fine say most; omniscience is one of the incommunicable attributes of God, which He doesn’t share with man. God is also eternal, that is no beginning, no end. It follows that an eternal all-knowing God learns nothing. The Bible says that everything that happens is because God pre-ordains it, even in the number of hairs on your head. So, the reason why God knows everything and learns nothing is because He pre-ordains everything. The scriptures above are clear that this is so. But not to:

Open, Middle-knowledge and Knee-jerk theists

- “Open theists,” who believe that God cannot know something that has not happened.

- “Middle knowledge” theists (Molinists) like the philosopher, William Lane Craig who says that God has a special vision (scientia visionis) and so knows all the possibilities of what man (a free being) would choose, if the necessary conditions were fulfilled. God then supplies these conditions. A variation of Aristotle’s ”excluded middle,” where God knows both what He’s doing and what He’s not doing.

- And “knee-jerk-God-doesn’t-change-his mind theists” such as Adrian Stanley. “

God doesn’t change his mind (says Stanley…This (Philippians 2:6-10) is God’s knee-jerk reaction to our trying to hijack his glory. This is God’s response to the traitor race…who took the freedom He gave us and abused it for our benefit and to his embarrassment. Here’s how He responded: “I’ll teach ‘em.” (See The Violation of Philippians 2:6-10 – Knee-jerk theism). Here is Philippians 2:4-10:

4. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. 5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. 9 Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:4-11, ESV).

Yes, God can teach us much, but we – who were or still are – miserable (mysterious?) worms, can’t teach the Holy One of Israel anything. He’s a know-all. Because He decreed it all – evil to boot.

“So we’re all robots then!”

Hmmm. Let me sleep on it. As Fagin said, ” (You) Be back soon.”

David Stern’s Torah “Torah” in the Justification of sinners: A legalistic spanner in the works

Introduction

David H. Stern is a Messianic Jew whose “Complete Jewish Bible” is a unique melange of translation, paraphrase and commentary. “Unique” in the sense that the New Testament tranche is solely Stern’s execution.

Stern’s view is that the New Testament is a book written by Jewish believers in Yeshua/Jesus for Jewish believers in Yeshua; and these Jewish believers did not cease to practice the whole Torah. For these reasons Stern maintains that all believers in Yeshua should observe the “law” (the Torah – Mosaic Law) which, says Stern, has been carried over to the New Testament. For Stern, the New Testament is a natural extension of the Torah. When Stern in his translation puts “Torah” in inverted commas, he means “legalistic observance.”

“Torah” has two meanings: the Five books of Moses – the “Law” (Pentateuch) and the whole Hebrew Bible. Our focus is on the “Law.” Certain laws such as the sacrificial laws fell into disuse after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 A.D.

I examine the concept of “justification” and discuss how Stern’s reworking of the New Testament text in his “Complete Jewish Bible” results in the original meaning of “justification” becoming very similar to the rabbinical and Roman Catholic view of the term, namely, that justification means faith plus works (the law). In his effort to prove that the New Testament does not replace the Mosaic law but merely extends it, I shall argue that Stern illegally replaces the word “law” (which Paul always refers to in Greek as nomos) in certain verses of the New Testament with “legalistic observance.”

Protestant, Roman Catholic and Rabbinical views of “justification.”

First, I contrast the majority Protestant view with the Roman Catholic view on justification. Second, I compare Stern’s translations of biblical texts with translations generally accepted by both Protestants and Roman Catholics. Third, I show the similarity between Stern’s view, the Jewish view and the Roman Catholic view of justification.

“Justification” for the Protestant means “being made righteous” in the sense of being made right with God, not by our own efforts but by God. We are justified by grace through faith:

“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.” (Ephesians 2:8-9). Works are the fruit of faith but not a condition for justification, that is, for being made right with God: “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do (Ephesians 2:10). 

The majority Protestant view is explained in the Westminister Confession of Faith (Chapter XII):

“Those whom God effectually calls, He also freely justifies: not by infusing righteousness into them, but by pardoning their sins, and by accounting and accepting their persons as righteous; not for anything wrought in them, or done by them, but for Christ’s sake alone; nor by imputing faith itself, the act of believing, or any other evangelical obedience to them, as their righteousness; but by imputing the obedience and satisfaction of Christ unto them, they receiving and resting on Him and His righteousness by faith; which faith they have not of themselves, it is the gift of God. Faith, thus receiving and resting on Christ and His righteousness, is the alone instrument of justification: yet is it not alone in the person justified, but is ever accompanied with all other saving graces, and is no dead faith, but worketh by love.”

Stern and like-minded Messianic Jews agree they are justified by grace alone through faith alone (Ephesians 2:8), and that good works (Stern’s obedience to the commandments of Torah) do not save. So good works accompany faith, which “worketh by love” (last words of Westminster Confession above).

In rabbinic Judaism, faith means faithfulness (emunah), that is, faithfully fulfilling God’s commandments (mitzvot). A common Jewish view of Christianity is that faith in Jesus is all you need to be saved, and so a person can subsequently do what he likes, and still go to heaven. There are indeed some Christians who say that the way a Christian lives (his works) is totally irrelevant, because the moment you believe, you are saved. Once you believe, they say, you can sin as much as you like, for doesn’t Jesus say,” I tell you the truth, he who believes has everlasting life”(John 6:47)? Most Christians reject this abberation of the Gospel. If you were to realise what a great mercy it is for God to make you aware of your sin, you could never think this way. “If we (Christians) confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).

The Roman Catholic position on justification is presented in Canon 24 of the Council of Trent:

“If anyone says that justice [justification] received is not preserved and also not increased before God through good works, but that those works are merely fruits and signs of justification obtained, not the cause of its increase, let him be anathema. (Council of Trent sixth session, celebrated on the thirteenth day of January, 1547, Decree concerning Justification).” (My underlining).

In Al Mohler’s “The Briefing” of 14 March 2013, in which he discussed the election of Pope Francis I, he criticised a popular evangelical view that on core doctrines (for example, the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Virgin Birth) and social issues (for example, marriage and poverty relief), evangelicals and Catholics belong together. No mention was made of the far more important doctrine of justification. Rome says it believes in justification by faith but will not say it believes in justification by faith alone, which is the main pillar of Protestant Reformation. (See Trent above).

 Contrary to Trent’s view of Protestants above, the Protestant believes most firmly that works are “the fruits and signs of justifications obtained” This Protestant position, though, would not say that works are “merely” (Trent above) the fruits of justification, because this might create the impression that works don’t matter in salvation.

Justification, sanctification and salvation

 How many times have I heard a Christian say: there’s justification, which occurs when you are born again, and then there’s (the job of) sanctification! By sanctification they mean, if not in such rustic words, don’t just sit on your pristine born-anew bottie and talk holy talk; stand up and walk the holy walk.

Although Christians have indeed to sanctify themselves through living close to God and doing godly things, Christians who bisect the Gospel into two chronological stages, justification and sanctification, have a paltry idea of what both terms mean. In 1 Corinthians 1:2, we read: “To the church of God which is at Corinth, to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, with all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours.” Although the same Greek word “hagioi” is used in both “sanctified” and (called to be) “saints,” the first means that at the moment of justification, you become (you are passive) sanctified (holy). That is what the following scripture means: “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light” ( 1 Peter 2:9). (See I know I am justified; now I must focus on the job of sanctification).

And “salvation?” If you are an evangelical Christian and someone asks you, “Do you believe in faith alone?, you’ll politely growl – if the questioner is another evangelical Christian – “What a dumb question, of course I do!” The meaning of “faith alone” is that one is justified by faith alone, not by faith plus works. That is not to say that faith is found alone, for works are involved, but not as part of your justification but as part of your salvation. The general Protestant view is that works are the fruits and signs of justification obtained. It also matters much what kind of good works you do once you believe – not for the purposes of salvation but because “we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil” (2 Corinthians 5:10 ESV). (See Faith and Jerks: The Bible out of context is a con; that’s why James White is not going to hell).

Examples from David Stern’s New Testament translation

I now examine Stern’s translation of several New Testament texts. My clarifications/comments appear in square brackets. Emphases in bold are mine.

Galatians 5:1-6 (Complete Jewish Bible)

 5:1 What the Messiah has freed us for is freedom! Therefore, stand firm, and don’t let yourselves be tied up again to a yoke of slavery. 2 Mark my words — I, Sha’ul, tell you that if you undergo b’rit-milah [circumcision] the Messiah will be of no advantage to you at all! 3 Again, I warn you: any man who undergoes b’rit-milah [ circumcision] is obligated to observe the entire Torah! 4 You who are trying to be declared righteous [justified] by God through legalism have severed yourselves from the Messiah! You have fallen away from God’s grace! 5 For it is by the power of the Spirit, who works in us because we trust and are faithful, that we confidently expect our hope of attaining righteousness to be fulfilled. 6 When we are united with the Messiah Yeshua, neither being circumcised nor being uncircumcised matters; what matters is trusting faithfulness expressing itself through love.

I focus on verses 3 and 4:

Stern

3 Again, I warn you: any man who undergoes b’rit-milah [ circumcision] is obligated to observe the entire Torah! [νόμος nomos] 4 You who are trying to be declared righteous [justified] by God through legalism [νόμος nomos] have severed yourselves from the Messiah! You have fallen away from God’s grace!

Here is the ESV (Protestant) translation:

3 I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law. 4 You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace.

The Douay-Rheims (Roman Catholic) translation says the same thing.

3 And I testify again to every man circumcising himself, that he is a debtor to the whole law. 4 You are made void of Christ, you who are justified in the law: you are fallen from grace.

Pick up any translation in any language of these verses, and you will find the word “law” in verse 4. Stern has his own “New Perspective on Paul” (N.T. Wright), and like Wright, He admonishes us to dig below the level of the words on the page to the deeper levels. So, in verse 3, the first instance of nomos, he is happy to stay firmly planted on ground level and translate it as “law” (Torah). In verse 4, the second instance of nomos, however, he wants, like a good deconstructionist, to dive below the surface to the hidden sedimentations – hidden even from Paul. (In rabbinic Judaism the text has multiple levels of which the surface level is the first and shallow level.) Why, in verse 4, didn’t Paul write the Greek for “legalism,” the “abuse of the law,” if that is what he meant? Because that is not what he meant.

Stern does a similar job in his translation of Romans 3:20: For in his sight no one alive will be considered righteous [justified δικαιόω dikaioō] on the ground of legalistic observance of Torah (νόμος nomos) commands, because what Torah (νόμος nomos) really does is show people how sinful they are. Here is the ESV: For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.

 Stern – “legalistic observance of Torah commands”; ESV – “works of the law.”

 Here is Stern’s Romans 3:28: Therefore, we hold the view that a person comes to be considered righteous by God on the ground of trusting, which has nothing to do with legalistic observance of Torah commands (νόμος nomos). The ESV translation (and similarly in all other translations) follows the grammar of the Greek,which is once again “works of the law” (ἔργων νόμου “ergon nomou”): 28 For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works (ἔργον ergon) of the law (νόμος nomos).

According to Stern, Paul must have meant “legalist” in the places Stern has indicated. Stern’s reasoning is that Paul was a Torah observant Jew, and so couldn’t have meant that one could be righteous without observing the Torah, which Paul says is good:  “the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good” (Romans 7:12).

Consider the term “righteous.” There is a very important distinction, touching the very nature of “justification” itself, between (a believer) considered as righteous (justified) and becoming righteous (“sanctification” – living a holy life). In the first meaning, at the moment of regeneration (born again) Christ imputes his righteousness to (puts his righteousness into) the believer. This is the meaning of “justification.” In the second meaning, these justified believers, who have been given a new nature, have a radically different attitude to sin: they hate it, even more so when they fall into sin. They, alas, remain divided in themselves in that they (their sin nature) often want to do what they (their new nature) don’t want to do (Romans 7:13-25). They try to live a holy life, which is what “sanctification” means. With this distinction dangling under our kilts, let us return to Stern’s and the ESV translations of Romans 3:28:

Stern – “Therefore, we hold the view that a person comes to be considered righteous by God on the ground of trusting, which has nothing to do with legalistic observance of Torah commands (νόμος nomos).

ESV Romans 3:28 For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law (νόμος nomos).

 And Romans 8:1-7 (ESV):

1 There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus 2 For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. 3 For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin,[c] he condemned sin in the flesh, 4 in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. 5 For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. 6 For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. 7 For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. 8 Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. (ESV).

Here is Stern’s reworking of Romans 8:1-3:

“Therefore, there is no longer any condemnation awaiting those who are in union with the Messiah Yeshua. 2 Why? Because the Torah of the Spirit, which produces this life in union with Messiah Yeshua, has set me free from the “Torah” of sin and death. 3 For what the Torah could not do by itself, because it lacked the power to make the old nature cooperate (pace Calvin), God did by sending his own Son as a human being with a nature like our own sinful one [but without sin].”

In Stern there are three Torahs: the Torah of the Spirit, the “Torah” (his inverted commas) of sin and death (verse 2), and the Torah by itself (verse 3). The “Torah” (in inverted commas) is Stern’s “legalistic observance” and the Torah by itself is the holy Mosaic Law. But this bifurcation into “Torah” and Torah is not there in the Greek text. Stern, of course, says that it is implied. We, however, are no longer under the law, writes Paul (Galatians 3:25). But – and this is what Stern is grappling with – he also writes, “the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good” (Romans 7:12). And in 2 Corinthians 3:7-11, we read:

7 if the ministration of death, written, and engraved on stones, came with glory, so that the children of Israel could not look steadfastly upon the face of Moses for the glory of his face; which glory was passing away: 8 how shall not rather the ministration of the spirit be with glory? 9 For if the ministration of condemnation hath glory, much rather doth the ministration of righteousness exceed in glory. (See A Jewish view of the Christian view of the LAW).

This “ministration of the (Holy) Spirit” does not mean that followers of Jesus/Yeshua need not live a godly life. It does not mean that all you have to do is have faith and ignore the Lordship of Christ/Messiah over your life. Christ’s Lordship is his “Lawship.” The law/Torah holy as it was, administered death, because it made us conscious of our sin, and showed us how helpless we are without God’s mercy. It was not Stern’s “Torah” above of legalistic observance that brought death but the holy Torah itself. After one is justified (by grace through faith), the law previously written on stones – the Ten Commandments – becomes written into our hearts. The law is one among several of our scriptural pedagogues:

[14] But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it [15] and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. [16] All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, [17] that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. (2 Timothy 3:14-17 ESV).

Followers of Jesus/Yeshua don’t do the works of the law for their salvation but in their salvation, and in this sense they are not under the law, under the ministration that, before they were born again, brought death. I’m sure Stern would agree.

[I]t’s certainly discouraging, says S Lewis Johnson, to discover that in the Christian life you find yourself doing the very thing that you hate to do.  And so the things that you want to do you can not do, and the things that you hate to do you find yourself doing them.  The tendency is to try all forms of Christian legalism, introduced taboos.  Don’t do this.  Don’t do that.  Don’t do the other thing.  And that will be pleasing to the Lord, and you will be victorious in your Christian life.  Or resolve even harder with your will.  Perhaps, even spend more time in prayer or witnessing, giving out the gospel.  These things surely are the means by which we may find merit before the Lord God.  But we discover that Christian legalism will not do in the Christian life.  We discover as Paul has told us here in this passage that we’ve read in our Scripture reading that we are slaves to indwelling sin, and something must be done in us now. So the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ is the unfolding of something done for us and something done in us.  Christ dies for our sins on the cross, and the Holy Spirit is sent into our hearts to complete the work of redemption by doing something in us; something that is not completed until the time of the resurrection, but something that is going on constantly” (S. Lewis Johnson, The Struggle - Romans, 7:13-25).

“Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be my disciples. 9 As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you: continue ye in my love. 10 If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and abide in his love. 11 These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full. 12 This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you.”

What about “not one jot, not one tittle!” Enough already; do you want me back on the bottle! 

 Related articles

• David H Stern’s New Testament and the Body of Christ with two stomachs: More Pork Talk (onedaringjew.wordpress.com)
• Followers of Yeshua keeping Torah: What’s the pork? (onedaringjew.wordpress.com)
• Stern’s translation and commentary of Romans 1:5 (charislife.wordpress.com)
• A Calvinist drools over the ORDO SALUTIS (onedaringjew.wordpress.com)

David H Stern’s New Testament and the Body of Christ with two stomachs: More Pork Talk

This is a follow-on from Followers of Yeshua keeping Torah: What’s the pork?

David H Stern is a Messianic Jew whose “Complete Jewish Bible” is a unique melange of translation, paraphrase and commentary. “Unique” in the sense that the New Testament part is solely Stern’s, but far from his sole, production. It would be not an exaggeration to say that it is also his soul production.

Stern’s view of the New Testament can be summarised in the following syllogism.

Premise 1. Although Stern will not put his head on a block that the New testament was written in Hebrew, he argues that the New Testament is a book written by Jewish believers in Yeshua (Jesus) for Jewish believers in Yeshua. “Some phrases in the New Testament make no sense unless one reaches through the Greek to the underlying Hebrew expressions” (Jewish New Testament; Introduction; David Stern; p. xvii; 1989). Stern says “some phrases,” which sells, according to his view, the New Testament short, for it is clear that he believes that the whole NT was produced by Jews for Jews.

Premise 2. Jewish believers (in Yeshua) did not cease to practice the whole Torah. 

Conclusion. Therefore believers in Yeshua should continue to observe the “law” (the Torah ) which,says Stern, has been carried over to the New Testament. “I’m convinced, says Stern, that the Torah continues in force.” (David H Stern, Restoring the Jewishness of the Gospel: A Message for Christians). For Stern, the greatest failing of Christian theology is that it has abolished the Torah. Christianity, of course, has not abolished all of the Torah, but this is not what I want to talk about here. My object here is to examine a few of Stern’s examples of what he considers misinterpretations of Jesus words where Christians claim Jesus abolished the Jewish laws on what goes into your mouth (Kashrut/Kosher). Stern gives two examples; the first from Mark 7:15, the second from Acts 10. Note that in both examples, Stern’s beef (pork?) is not with the English translation of the Greek text but with their Christian interpretations.

Mark 7:15 There is nothing from without a man, that entering into him can defile him: but the things which come out of him, those are they that defile the man.

Here is Stern’s “Complete Jewish Bible” translation in clearer, if more prosaic, English: 7:15 There is nothing outside a person which, by going into him, can make him unclean. Rather, it is the things that come out of a person which make a person unclean!”

In Mark 7:1-20, says Stern, Jesus is not talking about “kashrut [kosher] but with ritual washing before meals (n’tilat-yadayim), a practice observed in traditional Judaism today. Therefore when Yeshua “declared all foods clean” he was not declaring non-kosher foods kosher, but saying that kosher food is not rendered ritually unclean when hands not ritually washed touch it. Although in our age it is hard for anyone not an Orthodox Jew to think intelligently about ritual impurity, its importance in Yeshua’s time can be roughly measured by the fact that one of the six major divisions of the Talmud (Tohorot, “Purities”) is almost entirely devoted to this subject. However, the important halakhah [practice – halakh “walk”] for us to note has nothing to do with eating. In this passage Yeshua does not give zero weight to the “tradition of the elders,” as do many Christians. Rather, what he does insist on is that human traditions should not be used to “make null and void the word of God.”

If Jesus had initiated the conversation on the washing of hands, then one could argue that he intended to focus on this washing ritual. But in light of what he says a few verses later, it wouldn’t have been of any import. I find it hard to synchronise Stern’s interpretation with Jesus’ crystal clear explanation in later verses of what he said previously in verse 7:15:

7:17 When he had left the people and entered the house, his talmidim [disciples] asked him about the parable. 18 He replied to them, “So you too are without understanding? Don’t you see that nothing going into a person from outside can make him unclean? 19 For it doesn’t go into his heart but into his stomach, and it passes out into the latrine.” [Latin - contraction of lavatrina “washbasin”] (Thus he declared all foods ritually clean.) 20 “It is what comes out of a person,” he went on, “that makes him unclean. 21 For from within, out of a person’s heart, come forth wicked thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, 22 greed, malice, deceit, indecency, envy, slander, arrogance, foolishness…. 23 All these wicked things come from within, and they make a person unclean.”

Stern says that “he declared all foods ritually clean” means “he declared all unwashed kosher foods clean.” I find such an interpretation difficult to fathom from the context. Verses 18-20 indicate that Jesus wanted to make it absolutely clear what he meant. He used  a mallet to kill a fly. He, of course, knew what the rabbinical mind would do to 15 There is nothing outside a person which, by going into him, can make him unclean. Rather, it is the things that come out of a person which make a person unclean!” And that is probably why we have Romans 14 (Stern’s “Complete Jewish Bible” translation; my emphasis in bold):

 

13 Therefore, let’s stop passing judgment on each other! Instead, make this one judgment — not to put a stumbling block or a snare in a brother’s way. 14 I know — that is, I have been persuaded by the Lord Yeshua the Messiah — that nothing is unclean in itself. But if a person considers something unclean, then for him it is unclean; 15 and if your brother is being upset by the food you eat, your life is no longer one of love. Do not, by your eating habits, destroy someone for whom the Messiah died! 16 Do not let what you know to be good, be spoken of as bad; 17 for the Kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness, shalom and joy in the Ruach HaKodesh [Holy Spirit]. 18 Anyone who serves the Messiah in this fashion both pleases God and wins the approval of other people.

Let us turn to another of Stern’s examples, the famous sheet floating down from heaven, Acts 10:9-17 (Stern’s “Complete Jewish Bible”):

9 The next day about noon, while they were still on their way and approaching the city, Kefa (Peter) went up onto the roof of the house to pray. 10 He began to feel hungry and wanted something to eat; but while they were preparing the meal, he fell into a trance 11 in which he saw heaven opened, and something that looked like a large sheet being lowered to the ground by its four corners. 12 In it were all kinds of four-footed animals, crawling creatures and wild birds. 13 Then a voice came to him, “Get up, Kefa, slaughter and eat!” 14 But Kefa said, “No, sir! Absolutely not! I have never eaten food that was unclean or treif.” 15 The voice spoke to him a second time: “Stop treating as unclean what God has made clean.” 16 This happened three times, and then the sheet was immediately taken back up into heaven.”

Kefa (Aramaic) ended up, as they say in Arabic, no kafir (cockroach of an unbeliever).

“Peter, says Stern, had a vision in which three times he saw unclean animals being lowered from heaven in a sheet and heard a voice telling him to “kill and eat.” Unlike those interpreters who instantly assume the passage teaches that Jews need not eat kosher food any more, Peter spent some time “puzzling over the meaning of the vision.” Only when he arrived at Cornelius’ home did he get the pieces of the puzzle put together, so that he could state, “God has shown me not to call any person unclean.” The vision was about people, not food. It did not teach Peter, who had always eaten kosher, to change his eating habits, but to accept Gentiles equally with Jews as candidates for salvation. For it must be remembered that the sheet lowered from heaven contained all kinds of animals, wild beasts, reptiles and birds; yet I know of no Bible interpreters who insist that eagles, vultures, owls, bats, weasels, mice, lizards, crocodiles, chameleons, snakes, spiders and bugs must now be considered edible. God specifies in Leviticus 11 what Jews are to regard as “food.” Even if there were a secondary message in this vision about eating, it would not totally overthrow the dietary laws but would state the same rule we found above in Galatians 2:11-14, that preserving fellowship between Jewish and Gentile believers supersedes observance of kashrut [kosher laws].”

Stern’s “I know of no Bible interpreters who insist that eagles, vultures, owls, bats, weasels, mice, lizards, crocodiles, chameleons, snakes, spiders and bugs must now be considered edible.” Tell that to the rural millions in Africa, Asia and South America for whom many of these items are part of their regular diet. For example, Mopane worms are a staple in Zimbabwe (where I lived for six years) and Botswana.

Mopane worms

Two observations, the first to do with ritual purity:

God pronounces all foods and the goyim “clean,” and thus the laws on these matters are done away with. Must I say this three times to many Messianic Jews as God said three times to Peter: “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.” Alas, expect to be shouted down with a salvo of “not one jot not one tittle.” These Messianic Jews will say that when God said “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean,” He couldn’t have included pork or He couldn’t have been referring to food. If not food, what’s with that sheet: beddy byes?

The second observation, which follows from the first, is that Gentile converts (Cornelius here) do not have to follow the ceremonial laws of Torah. (Much of these laws were to be done away with when sacrifices ceased four decades later after the destruction of the second temple, and with it lots of jots and oodles of tittles). What about Jewish followers of Jesus, did they still have to keep kosher, keep the (ceremonial) law? If you say yes, isn’t three times enough? “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.” (For further discussion on See Followers of Yeshua keeping Torah: What’s the pork?

Here are a few pertinent (arguably impertinant as well) remarks from Stern’s Restoring the Jewishness of the Gospel: A Message for Christians):

“Originally [the] Jewish form [of the Torah] was contextualized for Gentiles – this was Paul’s great contribution to evangelism. But then, as the early Messianic Jewish communities fell on hard times and disappeared, the Jewishness originally present in the Gospel also vanished, so that a Gentile-contextualized Gospel deprived of its Jewish substratum was the only Gospel there was, a Procrustean bed in which the Jewish believer was forced to lie. Recently this Gospel-at-one-remove (from a Jewish standpoint) has been reworked, contextualized, to make it “seem” more Jewish. But the double adaptation is not the same as the original. Looking at a person’s mirror reflection reflected in a second mirror is not the same as looking at him.”

“What is required, continues Stern, is an Evangelism that is “not a Gentilized Gospel contextualized for Jews, but a restoration of the Jewishness which is in fact present in the Gospel but which has become obscured. Moreover, Gentile Christians too need aspects of the Gospel which a restoration of its Jewishness will bring them.”

If Stern’s reworking (inworming?) of Matthew 7 and Acts 10 are anything to go by, his adaptation far outstrips Procrustus, by cutting Messiah not only down to size but to shreds, in order to make the New Testament an extension of Torah. In the process, the New Testament loses, ending up as a tyrannised torahnised lackey.

Why all this fuss over kashrut (food laws) in the Gospel? What is the root of the Gospel? What is it that unites followers of Yeshua/Jesus? Here is, very briefly what the New Testament means to the true Christian.

We have to brought down to the dust, reduced to our utter sinfulness and helplessness; see ourselves compared to God. The Jew thinks the law saves; it doesn’t, it condemns: “for what the law was not able to do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God, His own Son having sent in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, did condemn the sin in the flesh.” (Romans 8:3 Young’s literal translation).

Related articles

• The blond and the black: Jews of (South) Africa (onedaringjew.wordpress.com)
• Followers of Yeshua keeping Torah: What’s the pork? (onedaringjew.wordpress.com)
• Stern’s translation and commentary of Romans 1:5 (charislife.wordpress.com)

Does God hate Jewish atheists?

Art Katz, a Jewish believer in Jesus, said that the Jewish Holocaust was a judgment of the Holy One of Israel on His people. I shall not discuss Katz’s Holocaust argument here (I’ve done that elsewhere).

In one of his talks, “Jewish unbelief,” Katz relates a lecture he attended in New York by a Jew, Gabriel Schoenfeld, on the “new antisemitism.” Schoenfeld wrote elsewhere on the same topic:

“We are thus confronted with a deep irony. Will one of Mel Gibson’s achievements be to breathe fresh life into an anti-Semitic tradition that has been dying out? If so, this self-styled conservative and American patriot would be in effect joining forces with Islamic radicals and the most extreme elements of the European and American Left.” (Gabriel Schoenfeld. “Is European-style anti-semitism coming our way?” National Review online, March 5, 2004).

In the lecture, said Art K, neither Schoenfeld nor any of the audience during question time mentioned God. There were many yarmulkes (Jewish scull caps) and at least a dozen rabbis in the audience. Katz asked a question: “Has anyone in attendance considered the possibility that antisemitism was a mild (sic) and preliminary judgment to turn attention to him who has suffered gross neglect from us as Jews…don’t we have an obligation as Jews to be mindful of our God and to have him known?”

Schoenfeld replied that such a question was not scientific and thus he did not know “how to factor in” such a question.

Not all Israel (from Moses to today) will be saved, for God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy (Deuteronomy 33:19; Romans 9:15). Does that make God an anti-semite if he condemns some Jewish atheists to hell? I say some because, recall, God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy.

[8] And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said, “Here I am! Send me.” [9] And he said, “Go, and say to this people:
“‘Keep on hearing, but do not understand;
keep on seeing, but do not perceive.’
[10] Make the heart of this people dull,
and their ears heavy,
and blind their eyes;
lest they see with their eyes,
and hear with their ears,
and understand with their hearts,
and turn and be healed.”
[11] Then I said, “How long, O Lord?”
And he said:
“Until cities lie waste
without inhabitant,
and houses without people,
and the land is a desolate waste,
[12] and the LORD removes people far away,
and the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land.
[13] And though a tenth remain in it,
it will be burned again,
like a terebinth or an oak,
whose stump remains
 when it is felled.”

(Isaiah 6:8-7:17 ESV)

No, the Holy One of Israel is not an anti-semite; neither is Isaiah – nor Art Katz, nor moi.

For further discussion see God’s corporate election of Israel and individual election (Jew and Gentile) and Will all Israel be saved? Of course and of course not.

Cessationism of supernatural gifts: The death of Christian theology?

I have just about finished listening to a very good series on the nature of spiritual gifts (charisma) “Why I am/not a charismatic” with contributors Michael Patton, Tim Kimberley (non-charismatics – cesssationists) and Sam Storms (a charismatic – a continuationist).

In Part 15 Patton says the reason that he is a cessationist is not that there is any biblical warrant for cessationism but that he has never experienced the “gifts.” Storms responded that cesssationists describe continuationism as”experiences in search of a theology,” yet here is Patton, whom I admire greatly, admitting that the only reason why he does not believe in supernatural gifts like tongues, prophecy and healing is because nothing like that has happened to him. I might add nothing like that has happened to the vast majority of the church since the time of the Apostles. In the Middle Ages, if you spoke in tongues, the “Church” would have given you an extra gift: the gift of tongs. The ghastly “charismatic” spectacles (woof woof) of modern times are further grist for the cessationist mill.

Like a good calvinist (as are all three of the contributors) suddenly I have been given, the gift of laugher, brought on by this equally inspired thought: So, if continuationism (of the gifts) is “experiences in search of a theology,” then cesssationism must be (non-biblical) theology in dearth of an experience.

Non-biblical theology for a Christian is the death of theology, surely?

And my view on the continuation of the “gifts?”Let me say it in comfortable Yiddish: at the moment, I’m nu?-tral

The Calvinist Robot and the Arminian Zombie: Grammars of coming to faith.

Preamble

Grammar police (Photo credit: the_munificent_sasquatch)

The term “grammar” has its origin in the Greek word for “letter,” gramma. “Grammar” used to be restricted to language, but no more. There’s now a grammar of all sorts of odds and togs, for example, a “grammar of fashion”: The larger the ‘vocabulary’ of someone’s closet, the more creative and expressive the wearer can be. If you were to attend Stanford University, you could dig into the “grammar of cuisine,” and slaver over such fare as “The structure of British meals.”And, if you are one of those who thinks deeper, there’s the grammar of the genetic code. (“Code” in linguistics is a another name for “grammar”). The reason why we can use the term “grammar” in so many diverse contexts is because the “grammar” of a system is simply the structure of interrelationships that undergirds that system, showing how things fit together into a coherent whole. (See Jacob Neusner and the Grammar of Rabbinical Theology (Part 2): What is grammar?)

In this article, I examine the grammatical relationships within Ephesians 2:8 “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and THAT not of yourselves; it is the gift of God.”

 Definitions

 When monergism/calvinism is contrasted with synergism/arminianism, what first comes to mind is God’s role and man’s role in coming to faith. The calvinist says that man plays no cooperative or contributive role in coming to faith, while the arminian says that man cooperates with God by turning his heart to God, that is, exercises his will to come to faith. In this regard, the favourite word in arminianism is “whosoever,” (John 3:16), which in the original Greek simply means “the one who” and not “the one who wills.” In calvinism, God first regenerates the sinner and then gives the sinner the gift of faith, while in Arminianism, regeneration follows the sinner’s acceptance of God’s offer of salvation.  ”Doesn’t Jesus command me (John 3), “You must be born again?” Yep. “Well, I did what he said I must do, I borned again.” Faith, for the Arminian is something the believer does, not something God gives, as calvinism maintains. 

Introduction

 Michael Horton reports that 85% of evangelicals in America haven’t a clue what justification is about. And moi? Let me try: justification is basically rightstanding with God. “Justification” is a forensic term, which has nothing to do with microscopes and solving crimes, but with absolving crimes, in biblical language, forgiving sin. But much more than forgiveness: reconciliation with God and given the righteousness of Christ. Two core biblical texts about justification are:

 (2 Corinthians, 5:21)

 “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of (in rightstanding with) God” .

 Romans 3:19 – 28

[19] Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. [20] For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.

[21] But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it—[22] the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: [23] for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, [24] and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, [25] whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. [26] It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

[27] Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? By a law of works? No, but by the law of faith. [28] For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.

 The “righteousness” in 2 Corinthians 5:21 “we might become the righteousness of (in rightstanding with) God” and in Romans 3:22 “the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe” should not be equated with what is commonly called “sanctification” (becoming holy), The quip “I know I am justified; now I must focus on the job of sanctification” is, at best, simplistic. There are two kinds of “sanctification”; the first occurs when we become Christians (born again and receive the gift of faith):

 “To the church of God which is at Corinth, to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, with all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours” (1 Corinthians 1:2).

The second kind of sanctification is illustrated in Ephesians 2:10:

[8] For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, [9] not a result of works, so that no one may boast. [10] For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.(Ephesians 2:8-10 ESV).

 In short, “sanctification is used, in its widest sense, as descriptive of the whole process, originating in regeneration, by which depraved men are restored to a conformity to God’s moral image” (William Cunningham. “Justification” in Historical theology Vol 2 : a review of the principal doctrinal discussions in the Christian church since the apostolic age, 1863).

 In Roman Catholicism, “justification” embraces the whole process of salvation: regeneration, faith, works – purgatory (if you’re not a “saint”) – glorification. Protestant Christians, by and large, are in agreement that justification is by grace alone through faith alone. Protestants are divided into monergists and synergists. In monergism, God alone is involved in a sinner’s justification – the calvinist view). In synergism, God and the sinner cooperate in the sinner’s justification – the arminian view. So, monergists are calvinists, and synergists are arminians (after Jacob Arminius 1560 – 1609). A calvinist view of justification is that God sovereignly regenerates sinners freeing their will from the bondage of their sin nature, planting in them the desire to be reconciled with God, and thus enabling them to stretch out their hands to receive the gift of faith. They have become right with God (reconciled) – justified. An arminian says that God offers degenerate sinners the gift of faith, and no sinner has lost his or her ability to choose God, and so sinners are free to accept or reject the gift of faith. If they desire to accept it, they become regenerated and thereby justified. It follows logically that such a sinner must have something better in himself or herself than the sinner who rejects the gift of faith. Most arminians would deny that they have anything good in themselves.

 Grammar in the Bible

 In Ephesians 2 we read:

 [1] And you were dead in the trespasses and sins [2] in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—[3] among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. [4] But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, [5] even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—[6] and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, [7] so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. [8] For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, [9] not a result of works, so that no one may boast. [10] For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

 I repeat verse 8, our key text: [8]“ “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves (your own doing); it is the gift of God.”

 The demonstrative pronoun that refers to both grace and faith. The letters of Paul (as with the whole New Testament) were written in Greek. So, it would be necessary in any decent exegesis to go to the original language. And so, a crafty devil or advocate would not be satisfied with a translation, for if they were, they’d be(come) calvinists. I say this because most Christians don’t know Greek and don’t care to know it, yet they believe the translated text in their language is correct. They are right to believe the translations because – unless you are a King James Onlyest – most translations (there are one or two icky exceptions in English)– in any language – do a good job.

 Calvinists are accused of turning people into robots because they maintain that everyone who comes to eternal life is predestinated to it, that is, appointed to it (Acts 13:48). They’re also accused, in their exegesis, of logical and grammatical gyrations. The calvinist argues that grace alone brings a person to faith. Here is a typical arminian commentary of “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God” (Ephesians 2:8):

 (My italics)

 “God, in creation, could have made man as some automated robot who could never fail but to please Him. Praise God, in His wisdom He chose us fallen sinners, who through faith can be cleansed of sin and be found worthy in His sight. We are still sinners but sinners saved by grace. Grace alone saves. Salvation is the gift, but it must come by us putting our faith in the shed blood of Jesus Christ.” (Do Unbelievers Really Just Not Understand the Gospel?)

 This person has indicated no rejection of the English version of Ephesians 2:8. The grammar of the verse indicates that the demonstrative pronoun “that” points back to the entire previous sentence, unless otherwise qualified (restricted). So in verse 2:8, if the writer wants to restrict the pointer “that” to grace (which saves) but not to faith (which saves), he would have written “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that GRACE (which saves you) is not of your doing; it is the gift of God.” The implication of this sentence would then be that faith is of your own doing (“putting our faith” – the writer above).

Before I move on to the Greek of this verse, Sometimes a writer/speaker mentions several items but can only retain in short term memory (Freud’s “preconscious”) the last thing he wrote/spoke. So, when he says “that” he is, in his mind, pointing back to at least the last thing (the immediate antecedent) he wrote, which in our verse is “faith”: For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God.”

All English translations of this verse illustrate the grammatical rule that the demonstrative pronoun that in Ephesians 2:8 automatically refers to, at the least, its immediate antecedent, which in Ephesians 2:8 is the noun “faith.” So, “that not of yourselves must refer to “faith.”

The Greek Arminian

The arminian is like the atheist: the atheist says there is no God, so no matter how staggering the complexity of the universe, we’re here ain’t we, so the only explanation is that we must have randomly evolved from the slime . The arminian says, the Holy Spirit is a gentleman; he doesn’t want robots, he wants someone to come to Jesus freely using the greatest human attribute we have: our freedom to love. This (to use a demonstrative pronoun pointing back – to the whole sentence, of course) is at best confused.

“No, no, says the arminian, let’s go to the Greek.” Ok then, you appealed to the Greek, so to the Greek you shall go.

 τῇ γὰρ χάριτί ἐστε σεσῳσμένοι διὰ τῆς πίστεως καὶ τοῦτο οὐκ ἐξ ὑμῶν θεοῦ τὸ δῶρον

 “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and THAT not of yourselves; it is the gift of God.”

 tē gar FOR chariti BY GRACE este YOU sesōsmenoi HAVE BEEN SAVED dia THROUGH pisteōs FAITH kai AND touto THAT ouk NOT ex OF umōn YOURSELVES theou to dōron (it is a) GIFT OF GOD.

 Both “grace” and “faith” are of the feminine gender, but touto “that” is neuter (Demonstrative Pronoun, NEUTER singular nominative or accusative case of οὗτος). Here is an arminian exegesis of Ephesians 2:8:

 “At a certain graduation ceremony, recounts Gordon Clarke, I heard a seminary president misinterpret this verse. His misinterpretation did not succeed in ridding the verse of the idea that faith is the gift of God, though that was presumably his intention. He based his argument on the fact that the word faith in Greek is feminine, and the word that in the phrase, “and that not of yourselves,” is neuter. Therefore, he concluded, the word (touto) cannot have faith as its antecedent. The antecedent, according to this seminary president, must be the whole preceding phrase: “For by grace are you saved through faith.” Now, even if this were correct, faith is still a part of the preceding phrase and is therefore a part of the gift. Taking the whole phrase as antecedent makes poor sense. To explain that grace is a gift is tautologous. Of course, if we are saved by grace, it must be a gift. No one could miss that point. But Paul adds, “saved by grace, though faith,” and to make sure he also adds, and that, that is, faith, is not of yourselves. But what of the president’s remark that faith is feminine and that is neuter? Well, of course, these are the genders of the two words; but the president did not know much Greek grammar. In the case of concrete nouns, for example, the mother, the ship, the way, the house, the relative pronoun that follows is ordinarily feminine; but what the president did not know is that abstract nouns like faith, hope, and charity use the neuter of the relative pronoun. As a matter of fact, even a feminine thing, a concrete noun, may take a neuter relative (see Goodwin’s Greek Grammar). The moral of this little story confirms the original Presbyterian policy of insisting upon an educated ministry. Here was a seminary president distorting the divine message because of ignorance of Greek – or, more profoundly, as I have reason to believe from some of his publications, because of a dislike of divine sovereignty.” (Is Faith the Gift of God in Ephesians 2:8? By Jack Kettler).

Say, however, that an arminian concedes that touto does refer to both 1. “faith” and 2. faith is not of ourselves – 100% a gift from God, he will nevertheless maintain that this does not mean that God rams this gift down a person’s throat; we still must exercise, he says, the other precious gift, the one he was born with, his free will to love God, which God not only respects but insists is His ordained decree of how salvation should be done. This means that God is merely offering the gift of faith; we still have to let God, the arminian reasons, do what He desires us to do; dare I say “dying for us to do?” Knock, knock, knock, please let me in! Contrast this knocking on the door of hearts with: “Remember the former things of old: for I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me, 10 Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure? ( Isaiah 46:9-10:9).

 Hebrew translations of Ephesians 2:8

 In this last part, I examine a few Hebrew translations of Ephesians 2:8 “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of your own doing; it is the gift of God” (New American Standard Bible). Here is the Sar Shalom translation

 כִּי־בַחֶסֶד נוֹשַׁעְתֶּם עַל־יְדֵי הָאֱמוּנָה וְלׂא מִיֶּדְכֶם הָיְתָה זּׂאת כִּי־מַתַּת אֱלׂהִים הִיא׃

 Kee (kiy)-vachesed nosha’tem al-y’dey ha-emuna v’lo meeyed’chem haiytah zot kee-matat elohiym hee (hiy).

 Literal translation: For by grace you have been saved through the hand of faith, and not by your hand was that [and that was not by your hand/your doing], because a gift of God it (is).

 The Salkinson-Ginsburg translation is a 19th Century Hebrew translation of the Greek Bible. 1876

 כִּי־בַחֶסֶד נוֹשַׁעְתֶּם עֵקֶב אֱמוּנַתְכֶם וְלֹא מִיֶּדְכֶם הָיְתָה זֹּאת לָכֶם כִּי־מַתַּת אֱלֹהִים הִיא׃

For by grace (חֶסֶד chesed MASCULINE) you (plural) have been saved due to ( עֵקֶב ikev) your faith (אֱמוּנָה emunah FEMININE) and not by your hand, this/that (זֹּאת zot FEMININE

SINGULAR) was not to (from) you because a gift of God was it ( הִיא hee/hiy FEMININE SINGULAR)

 I like the idiom (not) “through (by) the (your) hand” (of faith) in both these translations. Grace (chesed) is masculine, and faith (emunah) is feminine. (the sexual connotations I leave to the esoteric imagination).

In Hebrew, there are masculine and feminine nouns but no neuter nouns as exist in Greek (and German). The Greek neuter touto “that” translates as זֹּאת zot feminine singular), and “it” (in “because a gift of God was it) translates as הִיא hee/hiy feminine singular). It seems that the Hebrew translation is pointing back to “faith” alone (אֱמוּנָה emunah feminine singular). If the

Hebrew translation wanted to make it clear that it was referring to both grace (masculine) and faith (feminine), it could have done so by translating touto “that” by ha’eleh “those” (are not of yourselves). Perhaps the translators thought that everbody knows that grace is obviously free.

No Christian would disagree that all grace is from God whether the grace be 1 Arminian grace -. “prevenient” grace (“coming before” [faith]), which is enough to make you aware that God is knocking at your door in his attempt to save you – or 2. Calvinist grace – sufficient to save. How can anyone believe that it is not sufficient to save! Easy, if you’re a human.

In passing. The word grace comes from Latin gratis (free). Now if only there were no neuter nouns in Greek, Arminius would still be a calvinist. But, naturally, (natural) man has something else up his liberal sleeve – his “free” will (to love God).

Here is Elias Hutter’s Hebrew translation from his polyglot Bible (1599-1600); a very rare and wonderful book.

For by-grace are-ye-saved through-faith (feminine singular); and-that (femininine singular) not-at-all of-yourselves: because gift-of God it (feminine singular). Very similar to the English and the other two translations in the picture (Spanish and French). In the French translation, foi “faith” and grace ”grace” are both feminine, while cela ”that” has no gender, which fulfills the same role as the Greek touto”that,” pointing back to both grace and faith.

Conclusion (Concussion)

Two of the Hebrew translations above of Ephesians 2:8 used the expression (not by your) hand, meaning (not of yourselves). This is where confusion, on the part of the arminian, may lurk. He may protest that surely the sinner is not a robot; surely he has to receive/accept the gift – with outstreched hands. And he is absolutely right. Recall the differences between calvinism and arminianism discussed at the beginning: A calvinist view of justification is that God sovereignly regenerates sinners freeing their will from the bondage of their sin nature, planting in them the desire, and thus enabling them to stretch out their hand to receive the gift of faith. They have become right with God (reconciled). An arminian says that God offers the degenerate sinner the gift of faith; sinners are free to accept or reject the gift. If they accept it, they become regenerated and thereby justified. So, an arminian thinks that he can desire to love God, that he can accept the gift of faith while in his degenerate state. He will say he is not that degenerate; there is still enough life left to stretch out a hand.

So, both the arminian and the calvinist stretch out their hands to God receive the gift of faith; the difference between them is that for the calvinist, a person is dead in sin and thus must first be made alive to stretch out his hand. For the arminian, a person is not dead but merely deadish and so still has enough life in him to exercise his freedom to choose God. It looks like a toss up between a calvinist robot and an arminian zombie. All I can say is, eish! I was deadISH (Hebrew ish איש “man”), and now I’m alive.

“The Reformers did not ascribe to faith, in the matter of justification, any meritorious or inherent efficacy in producing the result, but regarded it simply as the instrument or hand by which a man apprehended” (William Cunningham).

[8] For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, [9] not a result of works, so that no one may boast. [10] For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. (Ephesians 2:8-10).

By grace through the instrument of faith. By, through, God. We are justified by faith alone but faith that is not alone. What’s that? Verse 10 tells us that salvation does not consist only of regeneration and faith but also of works that God prepared for his children that they should walk in them. It is not works that reconcile us to God; it is justification that does that. Justification occurs at at regeneration, which is the moment we receive the gift of faith, which is also the moment that we are saved. So we are saved/have been saved (justification and sanctified), we are being saved (good works – further sanctification) and we will be saved, that is, glorifed with Christ.

Related articles

• A Calvinist drools over the ORDO SALUTIS (onedaringjew.wordpress.com)
• Calvinism: Word, logic and heart – and faith, of course (onedaringjew.wordpress.com)

Jean Paul Sartre’s “existence precedes essence” and Al Mohler’s Sex education in kindergarten

In the philosophy of Socrates and Plato we find the distinction between the “form” of the thing and its material composition. Another term for “form” is “essence,” which generally defines the “function” of an entity. In Plato, “forms” are realities that pre-exist entities. The term “entity” comes from the Latin ens “being.” Entities, or beings, consist of two “macrobutes” (two overarching attributes): essence and existence. For example, the essence of chair is “sitting on-ness.” The essence of the chair precedes (logically and chronologically) the chair itself.

Look, there’s Plato sittting in his chair thinking about his thinking. In most traditional philosophy, including Christian philosophy, the essence of Plato precedes his existence. This essence is his human “nature.” He comes into existence with his pre-formed human nature, his essence.

Jean Paul Sartre says, “non,” it doesn’t work this way; it mustn’t work this way, because in such a scheme human freedom is lost owing to the fact that human “nature” implies a fixety, a determinism in which man is reduced to a robot. Rationality, for Sartre, can only operate when man is totally free to think and feel what he wants, independent of any pre-existent restraints such as rules of morality, which many philosophies claim are part of the essence (nature) of man.

Here is a good description of Sartre’s “existence precedes essence.”

Jean Paul Sartre

“In Jean-Paul Sartre’s “Existentialism and Human Emotions,” the author discusses the philosophical concept that existence precedes essence, a theory which involves elements of responsibility and freedom in regards to human choice. The idea that existence precedes essence means that a human being, as well as human reality, exists prior to any concepts of values or morals. A person is born a blank slate; humanity has no universal, predetermined principles or ethics common to all of mankind. Since no preformed essence or definition exists of what is means to “be human,” a person must form his/her own conception of existence by asserting control of and responsibility for his/her actions and choices. Consequently, a human being gains his/her essence through individual choices and actions. It is solely through the process of living that one defines one’s self.”

Which brings me to Al Mohler‘s “Sex education in kindergarten” (The Briefing, 28 Feb 2013).

Al Mohler

Mohler discusses new US laws that cater for transgender children. In brief(s), if a boy feels that his essence is a girl, then he should be allowed to frequent the girls’ bathroom, and if a girl feels her essence is a boy, then she may use the boys’ bathroom. And if that arrangement becomes impractical (unmanageable? – peek-a-boo), then perhaps there should be transgender bathrooms.

What, though, if they change their minds later and choose to revert to their former state (essence?). And backwards and forwards: today, Arthur; tomorrow, Martha; next week, Arthur; next month Martha; in Sartrian terms, creating and recreating their essence, limited, alas, to only four options: girl, boy, birl, goy.

Setting – Kindergarten

Teacher – Martha, you said you wanted to be a boy, so why are you back in the girls’ bathroom?

Martha – Don’t call me Martha; my name – you promised! – is Arthur.

The blond and the black: Jews of (South) Africa

In Followers of Yeshua keeping Torah: What’s the pork? I wrote on the RoshPinaProject (RPP) article “Pigs become kosher when death and evil are defeated – but should Messianic Jews eat pork?”

One of the comments in he RPP article stated that I was not Jewish. Whenever anyone tells me that, I smile, because if I’m not Jewish neither is Golda Meir or the Lemba (I explain shortly). Here is the relevant conversation on RPP.

Golda Meir (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

[The square brackets are my appended clarifications/inferences].

Dan, a Jewish follower of Yeshua [who can't be blond]

“Let me ask you [Dan is responding to someone else's comment], if you were in my place would you participate with the Mormons in their Christmas celebration, something that they asked us to do. Would you sit in their sanctuary and listen for half the night to all kind of Christmas carols and songs, knowing that they will participate in your Pesach seder? How would you feel if you have to come every Shabbat and just above where they let you keep your Torah ark there is a picture of the blond blue eyed Jesus hanging? Would you have stayed there for 2 years?”

[Me – Bography, Bog, Raphael, Refooel, chipping in]

“A (picture of) blond blue-eyed Jesus – and next to Torah! Dan, there are Jews with blond hair and blue eyes recognised (halloi, Refooel) by frum rabbis. When I was much younger, I was blond; my blue eyes, though, haven’t turned colour yet. Or was it the idea of a picture (of Jesus) that was your problem?”

[Dan replies]

Sorry Bog [my user name is Bography], South Africans are not Jews….LOL! [Lots Of Love]

End of RPP conversation [RIP]

I must protest, ’cause there are indeed some Jewish Africans. Here is moi [time past] with members of the Lemba congregation; and they ARE Jewish: they have the genes to prove it. (The origins of the Lemba ‘Black Jews’ of southern Africa: evidence from p12F2 and other Y-chromosome markers).

As for me, I haven’t had my DNA checked for Jewish genes, but I’m not worried, the Rabbinate in Jerusalem and my two Israeli brothers know that I’m a Yid. And hey, whose fault is it I look like a Khazar – before they converted to Judaism. (The invention of Shlomo Sand – a thousand “Jews” make one Palestinian).

 

Related articles

• Followers of Yeshua keeping Torah: What’s the pork? (onedaringjew.wordpress.com)
• Pigs become kosher when death and evil are defeated – but should Messianic Jews eat pork? (roshpinaproject.com)

Followers of Yeshua keeping Torah: What’s the pork?

Nothing in Messianic disputes over Torah observance animates more than the pig, as is evident in the discussion in progress at the Messianic Jewish RoshPinaProject on the article “Pigs become kosher when death and evil are defeated – but should Messianic Jews eat pork?”

Here is the beginning of the article (in italics):

“For Messianic Jews living in the light of Yeshua’s victory on the cross, we are living in a new reality. It is not unJewish to divide time into a period in which pigs are treif [impure], and another period in which pigs are kosher.

In Wolfson’s Open Secret (2009, p.165), he discusses the messianic Torah:

One of the most striking ways that the hypernomian [hyper legalism] ideal is expressed is in terms of the altered status of the pig in the messianic future. The presumed etymological basis for this contention, the explanation of the name hazir [pig] as the impure animal that will revert in the future (atid lahazor) to being pure, is found a variety of medieval sources, some of which transmit it as a dictum from the formative rabbinic period.

Drawing out the implications of this motif, Shneur Zalman [1st Chabad Rebbe] commented: “As the rabbis, blessed be their memory, said with regard to the pig that in the future it will revert and be purified, that is, in the future-to-come, death will be forever destroyed, and then the essence of the Infinite will be revealed, and the pig will be capable of ascending.”

With the obliteration of the force of evil in the eschaton, expressed in the language of the permanent annihilation of death (based on Isaiah 25:8), the pig will itself be transformed from an impure to a holy being.

The discussion, predictably and understandably, expanded to include the validity of the Torah laws in general, of which the Ten Commandments, although central, are only ten of the 613 laws. The beef of many Messianic Jews is that other Messianic Jews (and Christians) ride rough shod over the ceremonial laws. For one thing they eat pork; they even, sometimes, dream about hamburgers. Which reminds me of another dream with pork on the menu; or rather on a sheet.

Acts 10

At Caesarea there was a man named Cornelius, a centurion in what was known as the Italian Regiment. He and all his family were devout and God-fearing; he gave generously to those in need and prayed to God regularly. One day at about three in the afternoon he had a vision. He distinctly saw an angel of God, who came to him and said, “Cornelius!”

Cornelius stared at him in fear. “What is it, Lord?” he asked.

The angel answered, “Your prayers and gifts to the poor have come up as a memorial offering before God. Now send men to Joppa to bring back a man named Simon who is called Peter. He is staying with Simon the tanner, whose house is by the sea.”

When the angel who spoke to him had gone, Cornelius called two of his servants and a devout soldier who was one of his attendants. He told them everything that had happened and sent them to Joppa.

Peter’s Vision

About noon the following day as they were on their journey and approaching the city, Peter went up on the roof to pray. He became hungry and wanted something to eat, and while the meal was being prepared, he fell into a trance. He saw heaven opened and something like a large sheet being let down to earth by its four corners. It contained all kinds of four-footed animals, as well as reptiles and birds. Then a voice told him, “Get up, Peter. Kill and eat.”

“Surely not, Lord!” Peter replied. “I have never eaten anything impure or unclean.”

The voice spoke to him a second time, “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.”

This happened three times, and immediately the sheet was taken back to heaven.”

Then three men sent by Cornelius came to Peter’s house and requested he accompany them to Cornelius. The next day Peter did so.

While talking with him (Cornelius), Peter went inside and found a large gathering of people. He said to them: “You are well aware that it is against our law for a Jew to associate with or visit a Gentile. But God has shown me that I should not call anyone impure or unclean. So when I was sent for, I came without raising any objection. May I ask why you sent for me?”

Cornelius tells Peter of his vision (as in verses 1- 7 above).

Then Peter began to speak: “I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism but accepts from every nation the one who fears him and does what is right. You know the message God sent to the people of Israel, announcing the good news of peace through Jesus Christ, who is Lord of all.”

Peter then tells them of Jesus, the prophesied Messiah, and of what he did and of his suffering and death, and that “everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.”

While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit came on all who heard the message. The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astonished that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on Gentiles. For they heard them speaking in tongues[b] and praising God. Then Peter said, “Surely no one can stand in the way of their being baptized with water. They have received the Holy Spirit just as we have.” So he ordered that they be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Then they asked Peter to stay with them for a few days.

Two observations: The first to do with ritual purity: God pronounces all foods and the goyim “clean,” and thus the laws on these matters are done away with. Must I say this three times to many Messianic Jews as God said three times to Peter: “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.” Alas, expect to be shouted down with a salvo of “not one jot not one tittle.” These Messianic Jews will say that when God said “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean,” He couldn’t have included pork or He couldn’t have been referring to food. If not food, what’s with that sheet: beddy byes?

The second observation, which follows from the first, is that Gentiles converts (Cornelius here) do not have to follow the ceremonial laws of Torah. (Much of these laws were to be done away with when sacrifices ceased four decades later after the destruction of the second temple, and with it lots of jots and oodles of tittles). What about Jewish followers of Jesus, did they still have to keep kosher, keep the (ceremonial) law? If you say yes, isn’t three times enough? “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.”

“What, asks Lewis Johnson, was the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees? Why, it was the righteousness of punctilious observance of the outward commands of the Mosaic Law. Furthermore, they had loaded the law down with numberless human traditions, and they obeyed them, too. They were the religious leaders of their day. They were the people who were looked up to by the people of God as the reverends of their day. Except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you shall by no means, the Lord Jesus says, using again that strong way of expressing a prohibition, you shall by no means enter into the kingdom of heaven. How, then, shall we get into heaven? Why we get into heaven the same way that the vilest sinner gets into heaven: by pure grace, that’s how. We get into heaven by imputed righteousness that is given us when we acknowledge that we cannot have any righteousness of ourselves that exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees. It’s then that God, revealing the righteousness that comes through Christ, brings us to the knowledge of himself. “So when we get to heaven and knock on—they’re not pearly gates, incidentally, this is a figure of speech—when we knock on the pearly gates, and St. Peter opens them we say, “Stand aside, Peter, this is my place.” Why? I have the righteousness of Jesus Christ. Well, enter Lewis. You have it, truly.”

“That is what you need. The righteousness of God through Christ, only that righteousness shall attain for us entrance into heaven. Human righteousness cannot save. How may we attain it? The Lord Jesus doesn’t say definitely here, but he implies it when he says, “I have come to fulfil the law.” That’s what he did. He died, and made it possible for a righteousness to be available for those who would believe.”

Let us look closer at the context of “For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled” (Matthew 5:17).

To return to scoff (Brit. food), how can Jesus say, on the one hand, that he has not come to destroy the kosher laws, and on the other, that he has come to fulfil them?

Only God has the authority to talk like this. Jesus is talking as if he were God. But let us consider Jesus as a man. This man claims that he has fulfilled the law. But only a sinless person can fulfil the law; therefore, Jesus is claiming here to be sinless. There is more; Jesus is claiming to show how God’s revelation in the Torah (Tanach – Pentateuch, Writings, Prophets) has found it ultimate fulfilment in him – Emmanuel, “God with us.” His astounding claim is that Moses and the prophets prepared the way for God’s ultimate Prophet, High Priest and King in the one man Jesus the Messiah (Christ).

[6] who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, [7] but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. [8] And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. (Philippians 2:6-8).

It is the Son of God who came to accomplish the law and the prophets on the cross; “It is finished.” But there’s more. He came to “perfectly satisfy the demands of the law by dying under the judgment of the law. His obedience to the law is the expression of that which is necessary for our forgiveness of sins” (Lewis Johnson) All have gone astray. He took on himself the judgment we deserved. He became our substitute.

The word “fulfil” pleroō means more than accomplish, it means to fill up. Jesus didn’t add more content so much as different content, new content, new meaning, and that is what Jesus probably means by “I have come to fulfil not to destroy the law.” So, regarding pork, we don’t have to wait for “the obliteration of the force of evil in the eschaton, expressed in the language of the permanent annihilation of death (based on Isaiah 25:8)” for the scatalogical pig to “be transformed from an impure to a holy being.” (Wolfson’s Open Secret above).

“One of the earliest Christians, Theophilect said that ‘the Lord Jesus filled up Moses and the prophets as a painter fills the sketch of a picture that he has made.’ So the Lord Jesus came in order to fill in the portrait that Moses and the prophets had painted” (Lewis Johnson).

The Apostle Paul describes the Mosaic ceremonial law as a shadow.

[13] And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, [14] by cancelling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. [15] He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him. [16] Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. [17] These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. (Colossians 2:13-17).

The ceremonial law were holy shadows of a reality to come. The book of Hebrews describes the fulfilment of the sacrifices in Christ. The shadow was made flesh. All the sacrificial jots and tittles were fulfilled in the broken body on the tree. To return to the painting metaphor, Jesus painted the shadow red, and in so doing filled “it is written” with new blood in total fulfilment of the scriptures.

“Is it not simple fact, says Ian calvert, that within the beginnings of this Jewish ‘branch’ we see a group who had simply grasped the entire truth that the Law as given in stone
(the qualities and holiness of Gd) had been met in the flesh not flesh that historically had been proven inadequate but flesh that had been tested yet was found ‘without sin’ in this man we see , that in being judged and punished, a person, (the only person) who has lived completely and in his death fulfilled the requirements of the Law, not that the Law is absolved (heaven forbid it) but by walking in him we are able to walk within the Law as Hashem has allways intended.”

David Cook elaborates: “The Moshiach (Messiah) said,

17″Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come

to abolish but to fulfil. 18″For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished. 19″Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20″For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5:17).

How can a person’s righteousness, continues David Cook, surpass the scribes and Pharisees? Moses writes in the Torah, “Then he believed in the LORD; and He reckoned it to him as righteousness.” (Genesis 15:6). Saint Paul explains;
1What then shall we say that Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh, has found? 2For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. 3For what does the Scripture say? “ABRAHAM BELIEVED GOD, AND IT WAS CREDITED TO HIM AS RIGHTEOUSNESS.” (David Cook’s emphasis) 4Now to the one who works, his wage is not credited as a favor, but as what is due. 5But to the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness. (Romans 4:1-5). So we see that Abraham was not justified by keeping the Law given by Moses (the Law given 400 years later) but Abram was justified by faith, and so are those who believe in and receive Y’shua the Moshiach promised to Abraham.

Can you experience the Trinity?

In his “Search for certainty (p. 67), Herman Bavinck explains the connection between faith and experience:

“The real content of the Christian faith, whether it be taken in a broader or narrower sense to include only moral truths or also the person of Christ, the trinity, the incar-nation and Christ’s propitiation, is entirely beyond experience. It cannot be seen or heard, measured or weighed. And it is completely impossible to establish the truth of that faith by experiment. If experience is taken in the sense of inner ex-perience, it is true beyond doubt that the Christian faith brings with it a wealth of experiences…The Christian faith awakens a whole world of emotions in the human heart, ranging on the scale from groans of utter brokenness to the jubilant song of blessed exultation. But all these experiences presuppose, accompany and follow faith. They are not its ground and do not precede it. Anyone who does not believe the Scrip-tures’ teachings on sin and does not acknowledge them as a revelation from God, also will not be over-come by a sense of guilt. Anyone who does not con-fess Christ to be the Savior of the world will not seek propitiation for sin in His blood. Similarly, anyone who does not believe in the Holy Spirit will never taste His fellowship. And anyone who doubts the existence of God cannot rejoice in being His child and heir. Those who come to God must, in short, believe that He exists, and that He rewards those who seek Him.

With this in mind I proceed.

Different causes often have the same effect. Consider the effect of waving your hands in the air. Some Christian congregations do the wave but so do audiences at a pop concert. One may tremble with joy or with fear. Trembling with joy may arise from either winning the lottery or experiencing God. Trembling with fear may also arise from experiencing God or from winning the lottery – all those friends and relatives I never knew I had.

Besides trembling with joy, there might be other physical manifestations, which one might normally associate with the lower appetites such as food: You are very hungry and catch the aroma of freshly baked bread; you begin to salivate, then drool. I am reminded of Art Katz, a Jewish believer in Jesus, who asked one of his audiences whether they ever drooled over Christian doctrine. Drool over dry doctrine! But surely, doctrine – “knowledge of who God is” – is not dry, the doctrine of the Trinity, for example. Among Christians, the Trinity is often the least understood and, consequently, the least loved of all Christian doctrines, for how can your heart warm to something that is so difficult to wrap your head around.

“I love the Trinity, says James White. Does that sound strange to you? For most people, it should sound strange. Think about it: when was the last time you heard anyone say such a thing? We often hear “I love jesus” or “I love God,” but how often does anyone say, “I love the Trinity”? You even hear “I love the cross” or “I love the Bible,” but you don`t hear “I love the Trinity.” Why not? Someone might say, “Well, the Trinity is a doctrine, and you don`t love doctrines.” But in fact we do. “I love justification” or “I love the second coming of Christ” would make perfect sense. What`s more, the Trinity isn’t just a doctrine any more than saying “I love the deity of Christ” makes Christ just a doctrine. So why don`t we talk about loving the Trinity? Most Christians do not understand what the term means and have only a vague idea of the reality it represents. We don`t love things that we consider very complicated, obtuse, or just downright difficult. We are more comfortable saying “I love the old rugged cross.” (James White, “The Forgotten Trinity,” Chapter 1: Why the Forgotten Trinity?).

The most famous passage in Marcel Proust’s “Remembrance of things past” is “La petite Madeleine” (a small cake):

“Many years had elapsed during which nothing of Combray, save what was comprised in the theatre and the drama of my going to bed there, had any existence for me, when one day in winter, on my return home, my mother, seeing that I was cold, offered me some tea, a thing I did not ordinarily take. I declined at first, and then, for no particular reason, changed my mind. She sent for one of those squat, plump little cakes called “petites madeleines,” which look as though they had been moulded in the fluted valve of a scallop shell. And soon, mechanically, dispirited after a dreary day with the prospect of a depressing morrow, I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory – this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me it was me. I had ceased now to feel mediocre, contingent, mortal. Whence could it have come to me, this all-powerful joy? I sensed that it was connected with the taste of the tea and the cake, but that it infinitely transcended those savours, could, no, indeed, be of the same nature. Whence did it come? What did it mean? How could I seize and apprehend it?”

No one would think Proust cookie to find such delights in its namesake. Compare Proust’s experience with Jonathan Edwards experience of the Trinity:

“Sometimes, only mentioning a single word caused my heart to burn within me; or only seeing the name of Christ, or the name of some attribute of God. And God has appeared glorious to me on account of the Trinity. It has made me have exalting thoughts of God, that he subsists in three persons; the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. The sweetest joys and delights I have experienced, have not been those that have arisen from a hope of my own good estate, but in a direct view of the glorious things of the gospel.” (Quoted in James White’s “The Forgotten Trinity”):

The doctrine of the trinity, says Lloyd Jones, is the “essence of the Christian faith.” Without the Trinity, there would be no incarnation, no redemption, indeed no Christianity. Lloyd Jones says that the doctrine of the Trinity differentiates itself from other faiths, which, of course it does. The Trinity does not mean “three Gods,” for “behind” the Trinity, or to use another metaphor, “undergirding” the Trinity is:

“absolute, uncompromised monotheism. Monotheism – the belief in one true and eternal God, maker of all things – is the first truth that separates Christianity from the pagan religions of the world. Any discussion of the Trinity that does not begin with the clear, unequivocal proclamation that there is one, indivisible Being of God is a discussion doomed to failure. Anyone who thinks that the doctrine of the Trinity compromises absolute monotheism simply does not understand what the doctrine is teaching (James White, introduction to his “The forgotten Trinity”).

I began in fear and trembling. Few sermons have caused me to tremble (one was Paris Reidhead’s “Ten shekels and a shirt”). A few days ago, one that did it for me again was Martyn Lloyd Jones’ “Access to the Father” on the Trinity. The Trinity is the stench of death to the Jew and the Muslim, and the aroma of life to the Christian. Well it should be life to the Christian, but so often it is not, as with many other key doctrines such as “original sin” and “substitutionary (blood) atonement.”

Here is the essence of Lloyd Jones sermon with a few daringjewisms thrown in.

Key verse: Ephesians 2:18 For through him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father.

This verse is not only outstanding but staggering. If we understood this verse the Christian church would be transformed. The greatest thing in the world is to become a Christian. How different is the modern church. Duty, exercise of gifts, clubs, institutions, human society. What a contrast in this verse. The whole purpose of everything is access. Meditate, pause, take time. This one verse contains the most stupendous things we can ever be told or realise about ourselves. We come face to face with the mystery of the blessed Holy Trinity. Through the Son, access by the Spirit unto the Father. Great trinitarian verses, ineffable mystery. The doctrine of the Trinity is the essence of Christian faith. This doctrine differentiates itself from other faiths. One God yet we say in three persons. Inscrutable, we don’t understand, we assert it. Don’t just ignore such a matter. you can’t understand the Bible or the Christian faith without it. Humble ourselves, bow down and praise the three in one. Constantly remind ourselves of the Trinity whenever we worhsip; a sense of awe, glory and true praise. The triune God; we cannot conceive of this greatness, but we must ponder on it, become conscious of its ineffable glory.

The three persons in the Trinity are interested in us (Christians) and engaged in our salvation. That is exactly what this verse says. Staggering. The three Persons are interested in you. If only every Christian realised that. How are they, the three Persons, engaged in this? In the whole chapter (Ephesians 2) , the Father thought of salvation, initiated the plan. “H worketh all things after the council of his own will. The Father conceived, planned the idea. The Son does not extort the plan out of the Father. The Son volunteered, offers to come and execute the plan – to get Himself executed. Consider what it involved for the Son. He made himself of no repute, came in a lowly manner, a poor, ordinary life. He suffered the contradiction of sinners, their spite and envy and took on himself their sins. He was made sin for us (Isaiah 53, 2 cor 5:21), put himself under the law, identified himself with sinners. The Prince of life without whom nothing was made, coming out of eternity, out of the bosom of the father, lays his glory aside, dies, is buried and rises again.

The problem of sin was as great as that. The world despises the doctrine of sin. What is astonishing is that many professing Christians hate sermons on sin.

( I once gave a sermon in a church. Previously, I had asked the pastor of the church why he never preached on sin. He told me that sermons on sin were the old days and people need to be encouraged rather than be condemned. Besides, he said, many of his congregation are either elderly, sick or hurting in one way or another. What they needed was a boost. (See And He opened to them the scriptures: A harsh sermon).

Sin was so great that it involved God’s greatest plan, and the Son’s greatest pain. The Son came into the world from all eternity. God had to come to earth in physical form. God’s love is not the only reason. Another reason is his wrath and justice. Salvation involves three Persons whose focal point is Christ – the blood of Christ. The most staggering of all is that the three persons in the Blessed Holy Trinity so loved us to do all this for us. Self-existent in unimaginable glory yet concerned with us. The Holy Spirit applies Christ’s work to us and works it out in us one by one. He subordinates himself to the Father and Son; the Son subordinates himself to the Father. The Holy Spirit fills the individual and the church with his life. “He shall glorify me,” says the Son. The Son has given himself for you, Christian. If we realised this, it would revolutionise our life, it would be the most thrilling thing in our life. “Should I glory in anything else?” (the Apostle Paul).

The end of salvation, the goal, the object is that we may know God as our Father. For through him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father. This is the chief end of salvation. Jews and Gentiles together as one, we go into his presence.

The Apostle Paul tells us how all the barriers between men (Jew and gentile) and between men and God are broken down. Reconciliation. There’s more, however, than reconciliation; there is access, access to the Father. Reconciliation is not enough. I can be reconciled to my enemy yet have nothing further to do with him. Access is the thing, access by one Spirit unto the Father. “Approach me, come into my presence.” The Lord Jesus does not only prepare the way, but actually brings us and presents us to the Father, the grand object of salvation.

We’ve become so subjective, salvation has made us happy and it is done this and that. No, you understand little. Don’t you understand, salvation brings us into the presence of God? Salvation is much more than a thing that makes me happy and saves me from hell. It’s about fellowship with God; to know God and whom He has sent. It’s about eternal life: “Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” (John 17:3).

God has a loving interest in us. The very hairs of our head are numbered. It is to the Father we are coming. A Christian is one who has been brought into the same relationship with God as Jesus Christ has with his Father. “I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me” (John 17:23). Underneath us is always the everlasting arms.

Are we enjoying this access, this peace? Do you know that God loves you? Do you know that all things work together for good for those who love God. Do you know that if you are called, you are called according to his purpose? (John 8:28). Do you know that “All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out” (John 6:37). Did you know “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them, and I will raise them up at the last day?(John 6:44). Let us with boldness approach the throne of grace. Come with the confidence of a child to his father. With all our cares and problems like a child and leave it with the Father. Peace that passes all understanding.

Your chief end is the glory of God and to enjoy him forever, You don’t have to wait until heaven. The love of God is so great; the three Persons have taken the interest and effort to enable you to see and enjoy the one God in three persons throughout all eternity.

In conclusion, I return to Proust’s “Madeleine.” I repeat the last sentence of the quotation above (which appears in italics below) and we continue reading:

Whence could it have come to me, this all-powerful joy? I sensed that it was connected with the taste of the tea and the cake, but that it infinitely transcended those savours, could, no, indeed, be of the same nature. Whence did it come? What did it mean? How could I seize and apprehend it?

Continue:

I drink a second mouthful, in which I find nothing more than in the first, then a third, which gives me rather less than the second. It is time to stop; the potion is losing it magic. It is plain that the truth I am seeking lies not in the cup but in myself. The drink has called it into being, but does not know it, and can only repeat indefinitely, with a progressive diminution of strength, the same message which I cannot interpret, though I hope at least to be able to call it forth again and to find it there presently, intact and at my disposal, for my final enlightenment. I put down the cup and examine my own mind. It alone can discover the truth. But how: What an abyss of uncertainty, whenever the mind feels overtaken by itself; when it, the seeker, is at the same time the dark region through which it must go seeking and where all its equipment will avail it nothing. Seek? More than that: create. It is face to face with something which does not yet exist, to which it alone can give reality and substance, which it alone can bring into the light of day.

The original French title of “Remembrance of time past” is A la recherche du temps perdu (In search of lost time). The impact of the French is lost in translation. What is the point of literature, all the arts, science as well? It makes life easier to bear (Herman Bavinck, “The certainty of faith, p. 32).

In contrast: “When all things began, the Word already was” (John 1:1 New English Bible). The Word (Logos) entered time, flesh, experienced time, flesh, to redeem time, to unlose it – to unsting death (Thomas Haliburton). Through Him we have access by one Spirit unto the Father. Those in Christ shall never be lost.

NT Wright and the Nude Perspective on Grammar

Here is an excerpt of EvangelZ‘s (Zephanja Mel) book review of “The Future of Justification” by John Piper, which is a critique of NT Wright’s “New Perspective on Paul.

“Justification happens and becomes a reality because of the sacrifice of Christ and is operated once one places his faith in Christ. He is not justified at the eschaton [at the final judgment] as Wright suggests. With that said, justification has nothing to do with one being part of the covenant community because one cannot be part of the covenant community unless one is justified by Christ. As a result, justification has nothing to do with whether we are members of God’s covenant people. To say that justification is related to members of the covenant people is to blur the line of justification and ecclesiology. Justification is solely soteriological.”

In his paper, “A New Perspective on Paul,” here is what Wright says on the place of the individual in justification:

“[I]t is simply not true, as people have said again and again, that I deny or downplay the place of the individual in favour of a corporate ecclesiology. True, I have reacted against the rampant individualism of western culture, and have tried to insist on a biblically rooted corporate solidarity in the body of Christ as an antidote to it. But this in no way reduces the importance of every person being confronted with the powerful gospel, and the need for each one to be turned around by it from idols to God, from sin to holiness, and from death to life.”

The opposition of the “old” perspective to Wright’s “new” perspective is not that he places little weight on the individual but on WHEN he says the individual believer becomes justified. As EvangelZ said above: The individual “is not justified at the eschaton [at the final judgment] as Wright suggests.”

Here is Martyn Lloyd Jones on justification:

“So this is Paul’s argument: How are we justified? Well, like this: without doing anything at all we are justified because God imputes to us the righteousness of Jesus Christ. His action, not mine at all, is imputed to me, and you notice the way in which Paul brings that out? He says: l’ve got a perfect illustration here. You know that when Adam committed that one sin, though we had not committed it, it was imputed to us all. In exactly the same way, this action of Christ is imputed to us, though we have done nothing, and we are justified by it.” (“Great doctrines of the Bible”).

Jones is talking about the “how” of justification: Christ imputes it to the believer and in so doing makes us right(eous) with God. When does that happen? The moment you believe in Christ. Wright denies this.

Romans 3:21-25
But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; 22 even righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference: 23 For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; 24 Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: 25 Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God.

Justification is through grace alone through faith alone – through works alone; the works of Christ alone.

I’m collaborating with my disciples on our own ambitious project, “A new perspective of “grammar.” As Wright points out, if you get the grammar right, you get Paul right.

We’re having a class at the mo.

What’s the past tense of “new?

“Newed.”

Good. Now from what we’ve learned about the great movement of “Analogy” in philology, what’s the past tense of (the Yiddish) “nu?”

Nude?

Spot on. Now off you go and write an essay on NT Wright’s Perspective on Paul. And don’t talk rude.

Related articles

• Sins and signs, sings NT Wright (onedaringjew.wordpress.com)

Michael Wyschogrod’s how to get rid of idolatrous DNA

The RoshPinaProject warns Jewish followers of Yeshua/Jesus against Rabbi Michael Wyschogrod.

“Michael Wyschorod is admired by many Messianic Jews in the USA. I think he is overrated and not really very helpful for Messianic Jews at all. Wyschogrod has written a book called trying to dissuade Messianic Jews from believing in Yeshua, which was published by Jews For Judaism. Jews For Judaism routinely slander Messianic Jews and hype up fear about us, because we believe in Yeshua as Moshiach, we worship him, and we know he rose from the dead. In his book, Wyschogrod wrote:

“It is therefore important for Jews to know that a Jew who believes that Jesus was God in the sense asserted by the Nicene Creed commits idolatry as defined by Jewish law.”

Now say a Christian (or any Gentile) converts to Judaism, he or she not only becomes spiritually transformed, but also if not biologically transformed then quasi-biologically transformed – and that should rid any Gentile soul of idolatrous DNA for keeps.

Wyschogrod, in his “The Body of Faith,” maintains that when a gentile converts to Judaism, he or she does not merely share the beliefs of the new religion – as would be the case of a Jew converting to Christianity – but that the convert miraculously, and therefore literally, becomes the seed of Abraham and Sarah. The miracle is not totally biological but “quasi-biological.” How does this quasi-biological miracle occur? By immersion in a mikve (ritual bath), which “symbolizes” (is that why the miracle is only quasi?) the mother’s womb through which a person is born. Wysh to grod that this were true, but it seems, if not unseemly, uncalled for; for God can call forth sons of Abraham from the very stones if he wished – which I would think is a greater -and more likely miracle – than Wyshogrod’s. It’s unwise to rely on one’s Jewishness: “Do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father’; for I tell you God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham” (Luke 3:8).

See “The genetics of conversion.”

“Kinda Christianity”: The Bible as stories about ourselves; our gods

A minute after er reading SlimJim’s review of “Kinda Christianity,” by “Reformed” (that is, bad breath) theologians, Ted Kluck and Zach Bartels, a spoof of Brian McLaren’s “A New Kind of Christianity” I downloaded the slim book from Amazon Kindle. It costs one dollar but I think, if it were thicker, it would be worth a few dollars more.

Here is an excerpt:

“What to do when worship is itself something
everyone finds somewhat unconscionable and unfit
for our daytimers – dress up our time together and
inform it so that we cannot forget that we’re talking
about the creator of all things, thinking about how
Paul spoke to the folks at Corinth or maybe how the
writer of Hebrews puts together a vision of our
savior and our faith? Oh please – do the opposite:
paint the place black, light a few candles, and sit on
ratty sofas and talk about ourselves and the story
we find ourselves in.”

Reminds me of Walter Breuggemann for whom theology and Bible interpretation is not a matter of certainty but of fidelity; fidelity to 1. the divine office of creative imagination and 2. to the “other.”

For Brueggemann, any interaction between 1. certitude, which he considers limited because it is restricted to a single meaning (univocity) and 2. fidelity, should be frowned upon. We should, therefore, be open, as Jacques Derrida says, to “an unlimited number of contexts over an indefinite period of time,” and thus unrestricted interaction – if I understand Brueggemann – between suffering persons desiring to tell their personal stories. For Brueggemann and Derrida, and all poststructuralists (who believe there is no metaphysical centre, no fixed structures), there exists no such entity as Being, no such entity as essence, no such thing as a True story, but only (human) beings telling their true-ish stories, which are the only stories that ultimately matter. And if the Bible stories are able to buck – and back – them up, thank you Holy Spirit.

I’m also reminded of Reconstructionist-Reform Judaism (most Jews fall in this category), which sees the Bible as man-made stories that bind the Jewish community together. In other words, no different from many other “mythologies.”

I elaborate on the above here.

“You yourself, and I myself, says Martyn Lloyd Jones, are our greatest enemies. The
curse of life is that we are all self-centred. We live for self instead of for God, and thus we are selfish, we are jealous, and we are envious. As Paul puts it, we are ‘hateful, and hating one another’ (Titus 3:3). Why? Because we are out for ourselves. Instead of living
to God, in worship of Him and to His glory, we have all made ourselves gods.”

That’s, at bottom, the meaning of “total depravity”: we have made ourselves gods rather than God’s.

At the end of the “Author’s Note” (location 200 on your iPad, when in a horizontal position) of “Kinda Christianity,” the authors say:

“This is satire. It`s not meant to be taken seriously (unless you like it, and want to take it seriously-in that case, blog away [Oy vey]. And know that a similar book could easily be
written about smug, young reformed types…and in fact that book is being written, by us!”

I think that some who like it might take it seriously (moi?) but all who don’t like it, will definitely take it seriously.

To show their impartiality, the authors promise (the emergents?) that their young (smug) Reformed brothers are next. There’s nothing more icky, from my Reformed point of view, than impartial. Keep it very slim, and don’t charge more than a dime.

“I’m glad I’m not young anymeurrrrre.” Maurice Chevalier.

Sins and signs, sings NT Wright

I was searching on NT Wright’s home page for something on Adam. There was a brief video of his view of the Adam and Eve story. http://biologos.org/blog/on-genesis-2-and-3.
He admonishes us to dig below the level of the words on the page to the deeper level of Israel’s exile and restoration and, in turn, to the Christian’s exile and restoration. I was immediately reminded that there are four Jewish levels of interpretation. In this short video, Wright does not seem to believe in a literal Adam. “Let me see if there is anything about Original Sin on his site,” I asked myself. No nothing. On “sin” perhaps. No, no titles containing “sin”; “sin,” that is, as I understand it. There were, eight other “sins,” among which were three I enjoyed:

Vimeo, Spring 2012:
N. T. Wright SINgs about Genesis
N. T. Wright SINgs Sydney Carter
N. T. Wright SINgs Bob Dylan

There was also his, “Christian hope in a confuSINg world.”

Am I now justified in thinking that Wright does not believe in “All died in Adam.” No. But I wonder. Perhaps Wright does believe that Adam’s sin was imputed to his descendants. One thing I can tell you, this is not the general Jewish position. Owing to the fact that Wright wants us, when we read the New Testament, to think like Jews of Jesus’ time, I’ll impute nothing to Wright until I’ve followed more faithfully his – as Jacques Derrida would have said – excavations into the historical and linguistic sedimentations of the Sign – the (surface) text.

Or have I, like the Reformers, got the wrong perspective and thus am asking the wrong questions, instead of asking the questions a Jew – Paul, perhaps- would have asked? The overarching question, though, must surely be this: “Can I know, now, as I write, that I have been justified in God’s eyes, not only, as a Roman Catholic would say – and NT Wright?, at the end of my life or the world?”

Peter; forgive sins? Perish the thought

(This is a follow-on from The Roman Catholic Church’s dogma of binding and loosing sin)

The Roman Catholic dogma of “Confession,” as with all its dogmas, is based on the mother of all dogmas, the infallibility of Peter, whom they claim to be their first pope, and its sister dogma, the “Apostolic succession.” The Roman Catholic Church authorises its priests to forgive/absolve sins. In this regard, John 20:23 is one of the RCC’s texts: “If YOU forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if YOU withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.”

The Roman Catholic interpretation is that these were all or some of the 11 APOSTLES. Let us back up to verse John 20:19:

[19] On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the DISCIPLES were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” [20] When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord. [21] Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.” [22] And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. [23] If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.”

The RCC position is based on the view that these disciples were the Apostles only. But why should this be so? Because this power resides in the Apostolic succession through Peter. So, to have disciples who are not Apostles in the room (in John 20:19-23 above) would not be good for the RCC.

I turn to Luke 24, the episode when two disciples meet Jesus on the road to Emmaus and to what happened when they returned to Jerusalem to tell other disciples what they had seen and heard:

33 And they rose that same hour and returned to Jerusalem. And they found the eleven AND THOSE WHO WERE WITH THEM GATHERED TOGETHER, 34 saying, “The Lord has risen indeed, and has appeared to Simon!” 35 Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he was known to them in the breaking of the bread…44 Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” 45 Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, 46 and said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, 47 and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. 48 You are witnesses of these things. 49 And behold, I am sending the promise of my Father upon you. But stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.”

So, in the room with Jesus were the 11 Apostles as well as OTHER disciples. The upshot: the idea that “disciples” in John 20:19-23 meant more than just Apostles is extremely cogent.

To return to John 20:23, the passage can only mean this: “Now, says S Lewis Johnson, notice the force of the perfect passive. So, what does this mean then?

“Whosoever sins ye forgive, they shall have been forgiven to them; and whosoever sins ye retain, they shall have been retained.” Well, when it’s all put together, the statement is simply this; the church has not been given the authority to forgive sins. She has been given the authority to proclaim forgiveness to the believing and judgment to the unbelieving. And as long as the church is faithful to the word of God, her pronouncements do simply reveal what has already been determined in heaven. In other words, God has set forth the conditions by which forgiveness, and by which no forgiveness may take place. And therefore, the decisions that count are made in heaven, not upon the earth.” (S L Johnson, Basic doctrine, “The forgiveness of sins”).

The Apostle Peter, leader of the twelve, was without doubt Primus inter pares, first among equals. Peter, however, never ever said anything at all like “Ego te absolvo a peccatis tuis in nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti” (I absolve/forgive you in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.” What does Peter say to Simon the sorcerer? “Thy money perish with thee, because thou hast thought that the gift of God may be purchased with money. Thou hast neither part nor lot in this matter: for thy heart is not right in the sight of God. Repent therefore of this thy wickedness, and pray God, if perhaps the thought of thine heart may be forgiven thee” (Acts 20:8).

Peter; forgive sins? Perish the thought, but hopefully not those who entertain the thought.

The Roman Catholic Church’s dogma of binding and loosing sin

In the Jewish Bible (“Old Testament”) it is God, and God alone who forgives sins:

Exodus 34:7 Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children’s children, unto the third and to the fourth generation.

2 Chronicles 7:14 If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.

Jeremiah 31:34 And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the LORD: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the LORD: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.

In the New Testament, Jesus forgives sins, a blasphemy to the Jews:

Matthew 9:2-8 “And, behold, they brought to him a man sick of the palsy, lying on a bed: and Jesus seeing their faith said unto the sick of the palsy; “Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee.”

And, behold, certain of the scribes said within themselves, “This man blasphemeth.”

And Jesus knowing their thoughts said, “Wherefore think ye evil in your hearts? For whether is easier, to say, ‘Thy sins be forgiven thee;’ or to say, ‘Arise, and walk?’ But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins, (then saith he to the sick of the palsy,) ‘Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house’.”

And he arose, and departed to his house. But when the multitudes saw it, they marvelled, and glorified God, which had given such power unto men.”

The Roman Catholic Church arrogates to its priests the divine ability to forgive sins. The RCC’s key text is Matthew 16:18-19:

“I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. 19a And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven:

In 19b we the read:

“and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”

In Matthew 16:18-19 above, Jesus is addressing Peter alone. In Matthew 18:18-20, however, Jesus is not only addressing Peter, and not even only his Apostles, but all his disciples:

“Verily I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. 19 Again I say unto you, That if two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven. 20 For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”

Now, it is obvious that in “Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven,” Jesus is not giving authority to all his followers/disciples within his hearing that they have authority to forgive sins. So what can it mean? A cogent interpretation is that a disciple who has fed on the meat of the Word and is faithful will be able to 1. ascertain whether God has forgiven the sins of other Christian and thus reassure them , or 2. Admonish them to repent for unless they do, God will discipline them.

There is no problem with Peter being given the keys to understanding and the authority to correct believers when he thinks they need it. But remember Paul, when he corrected Peter:

Galatians 2
11 When Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned. 12 For before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group. 13 The other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy, so that by their hypocrisy even Barnabas was led astray.

The Roman Catholic dogma of “Confession,” as with all its dogmas, is based on the mother of all dogmas, the infallibility of Peter, who they claim to be their first pope, and its sister dogma, the “Apostolic succession.”

“Election is for everyone,” which may depend on free will but never on human choice (?).

In his article, “Election Is for Everyone” in Christianity Today! Roger Olson writes:

“When I was a kid my brother and I would sometimes spend part of Saturday handing out gospel tracts in our neighborhood. We were pastor’s sons and probably felt some obligation to do it (as it was something promoted in Sunday school and youth group), but I can honestly say we also felt it was our contribution to the kingdom of God. One of our favorite tracts pictured a voting ballot. The great preacher Herschel Hobbs, known among Southern Baptists as “Mr. Baptist,” preached a famous sermon based on that tract on The Baptist Hour in October 1967. His sermon was “God’s Election Day,” and its main point was: “The devil and God held an election to determine whether or not you would be saved or lost. The devil voted against you and God voted for you. So the vote was a tie. It is up to you to cast the deciding vote.”

The rest of Olson’s article argues why this is not the biblical view of election. Then in his concluding section he writes:

“Evangelicals can and do disagree about whether individuals’ inclusion in God’s elect people involves any level of free will, but all agree that the existence of the people of God is not dependent on human choice.”

Let me try to unpick. Some (actually, the majority of) evangelicals believe that God’s election involves a level of free while others (Reformed/Calvinists) believe that God’s election does not involve any level of free will. In Olson “free will” and “human choice” seems to be synonymous. So, in Olson what we have is this:

“Evangelicals can and do disagree about whether individuals’ inclusion in God’s elect people involves any level of free will/human choice, but all agree that the existence of the people of God is not dependent on human choice/free will.”

So we have:

Election (“inclusion in God’s elect”) MAY “INVOLVE” a “level of free will” (human choice).
2. Election (“the existence of the people of God”) “is not dependent on human choice” (free will), which surely means that election DOES NOT INVOLVE (any level of) human choice/free will.

Olson believes he can have his will AND eat it. It seems his argument got swallowed up in confusion.

When push comes to shove (keep you hands off me, I’m no robot), there are only two views of reconciliation with God (justification).

1. God has voted for you, the devil against you, and you have the final vote. Your salvation ULTIMATELY depends on you.

2. God has voted for you PERIOD. Your reconciliation with God (your justification) depends on God every step of the way.

In passing, Calvinists do believe that they freely come to/accept Christ. But not before God – as Olson correctly says – enables sinners to do so. But when this happens you have already been regenerated/born again whose logical outcome is reconciliation/justification.

In Calvinism, grace is not only – as in Arminianism – necessary (to enable me to choose Christ) but sufficient. The main reason for the Reformation was that grace is sufficient.

Who believes in God as judge (anymore)?

In his “Why & What: A Brief Introduction to Christianity,” Douglas Jones writes:

“When professing Christians display their hypocrisy, we bristle that they so widely broadcast their alleged commitment to Christ but act as if He were an empty fiction. Their open adulteries or gossip or lack of reverence show that they don’t really believe that God is their near and present judge. No criminal defendant in a human court would make nasty faces at his judge or dance a rude jig around the courtroom while the judge prepares a sentence. A Christian hypocrite is one who professes that the judge’s bench is filled but acts like it’s really vacant. Non-Christian thought has no cogent answer for such evident and world-encompassing self-deception, but Christianity does. The Christian Scriptures explain that the world is in an abnormal state, due to the destructiveness of our sin. We have rebelled against a holy and gracious God, and so we try to make up grand scenarios in order to evade Him. Such evasion isn’t a marginal error. It is concerted warfare against our Creator, and it deserves divine capital punishment. The alternative to such self-deceptive evasion is to embrace the mercy found in Christ, the God-given substitute sent to take our punishment so that we can be reconciled and at peace with God. That’s the heart of Christianity — peace with God through Christ’s work, with no more radical self-deception about the world.”

There are professing Christians, many among the clergy, who have ripped out their “Christian” hearts and thus do not believe in God as judge (anymore?).

I know two Anglican priests (well) who told me that when we die God doesn’t judge us. The one said that when we die we choose to go “towards the light or towards the darkness.” The other one said “we judge ourselves.”

Both these priests do not indulge in “open adulteries or gossip or lack of reverence” (Wilson above) yet at the same time they “don’t really believe that God is their near and present judge.” So there does not have to be a causal connection between “open adulteries or gossip or lack of reverence” (cause) and the rejection of divine judgment (effect). Having said that, I suggest that these priests have committed a far more serious sin in their disbelief of one of the core teachings of the scriptures: God as judge. More serious, this disbelief surely must reflect in their sermons and teaching.

It’s not surprising that neither of these two men believe in other core teachings of Christianity such as Original sin, the Virgin Birth and the Trinity.

The Bible is clear in many places about God as judge. For example:

1 Timothy 4

“1 I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: 2 preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. 3 For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, 4 and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths. 5 As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfil your ministry.”

Who will be judged the harshest? Men of the cloth – in school and the church.

“Not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly” (James 3:1).

Me (in coffin to Myself) – “Do you deserve punishment?”

Myself – “Who Me?

Me – “Yes you.”

Myself – “No, I don’t deserve punishment.’

Me – AyyyyyyyyyyMen to that.

For disbelievers in Adam: One small compensation

In his “Losing Adam”“, Jeremy Walker discusses what it means to reject the historical Adam:

“[L]osing Adam is likely to prove the beginning of losing our Bibles. Like the gardener who decides to trim his hedge, he finds that an aggressive cut at one point leaves a lopsided creation which requires further cuts here and there in order to restore a sense of balance and proportion to his judging eye. As Lloyd-Jones makes plain, “the Bible is a unity. We must take it all.” The whole of Scripture stands or falls together. Once the first cut is made, there is no saying how many more cuts must follow until the man with the knife is satisfied.”

What happens when we tell Adam to get lost? To summarise Walker, which does not do justice to his piece. (If you agree [that such a summary cannot do justice - to anything] why not read the article?).

1. Losing Adam means losing my dignity.
2. Losing Adam means losing my humanity.
3. Losing Adam means that I have no adequate explanation for the sinfulness of my soul or my race.
4. Losing Adam means losing hope, for my solidarity with Adam as a man condemned finds its Scriptural counterpart in my solidarity with Christ, the last Adam, as a man redeemed.
5. But losing Adam means losing not only my present but also my future hope.

A disbeliever in a literal Adam, might retort: “At least I haven’t lost my marbles.”

Psalm 22: Like a lion: Nothing about the lion of Judah

Setting: Palaestina פלשתינה

There was a man called Joshua – you might know another version of the story – who while out hunting came across a lion with a thorn in its paw. The lion saw the man, sat up on his haunches and held out his paw. The man removed the thorn and went on his way.

Two years later Joshua was accused of sedition and sentenced to be crucified. When a person gets crucified, his flesh gets torn and his limbs pierced. The odd thing about this crucifixion was that instead of nailing Joshua to the cross, they strung him up by ropes and brought a very hungry lion, sharp in tooth and claw. The lion rose up on his hind legs, but instead of tearing and piercing, he licked the man’s bloody feet.

This, of course, is just a made up story. Here is the story from the Bible, Psalm 22, the English translation of the Jewish Publication society.

13 Many bulls have encompassed me; strong bulls of Bashan have beset me round.
14 They open wide their mouth against me, as a ravening and a roaring lion.
15 I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint; my heart is become like wax; it is melted in mine inmost parts.
16 My strength is dried up like a potsherd; and my tongue cleaveth to my throat; and Thou layest me in the dust of death.
17 For dogs have encompassed me; a company of evil-doers have inclosed me; like a lion, they are at my hands and my feet.

In “The lion dug the nail into my hand,” I examined whether the masoretic Hebrew verse 17 of Psalm 22 (verse 16 in the English translation) was the original text in classical times – circa 200 BCE, which was the period of the Greek Septuagint translation of the Hebrew text. The earliest extent manuscript of the Hebrew Bible, the masoretic text, does not predate the 10th century. The masoretic text added vowels to the text, which made it easier to read for those learning Hebrew.

22:17 (22:16 English)

כִּי סְבָבוּנִי כְּלָבִים עֲדַת מְרֵעִים הִקִּיפוּנִי כָּאֲרִי יָדַי וְרַגְלָֽי׃

“For dogs encircled me, An evil congregation surrounded me;

Like a lion  - ka’ari כָּאֲרִי -  my hands and my feet.”

In the Christian Bible, the same verse is translated as: An evil congregation surrounded me; They dug (pierced) my hands and my feet.”

The Greek Septuagint translation had read the Hebrew word ka’aru, “they dug,” and not ka’ari “like lion.” Thus they translated ka’aru with the Greek word ὤρυξαν oruxsan, “they dug” or “they pierced.”

Here is one of the conclusions to Miller’s article on the “they pierced” controversy” (Glenn Miller  – “Did the Christians simply invent the “pierced my hands and feet” passage in Psalm 22?):

“So, where does this leave us on what the ‘original’ or ‘furthest back’ reading was [OF PSALM 22 - "like a lion," "they pierced"]? “Like a lion” is rejected for a number of reasons by scholars: makes no sense, MT manuscript evidence against it, all the earliest translations (not interpretive paraphrases) reject it, its highly unusual form (for the ‘like a lion’ expression), the conclusive existence of the verb reading at Qumran, and even ancient rabbinic rejection of the meaning.” (See my Psalm 22: “They pierced” and the Septuagint).

Whatever one may say against the JPS translation, “like a lion” does make sense to me –  but not Jewish sense – because “like a lion”  could be a less graphic, a less poignant way, of saying “they pierced.” (Old French poignant “sharp, pointed” from Latin pungere “to prick”  -modern French poignard “dagger”).  Verse 14 prepares us for the lion’s next move:

JPS translation:

14 They open wide their mouth against me, as a ravening and a roaring lion.

What do ravenous lions do? They ravish, pierce and tear – sooner or later.

15 I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint; my heart is become like wax; it is melted in mine inmost parts.
16 My strength is dried up like a potsherd; and my tongue cleaveth to my throat; and Thou layest me in the dust of death.
17 For dogs have encompassed me; a company of evil-doers have inclosed me; like a lion, they are at my hands and my feet.

In the Jewish Publication Society (JPS) English translation, we have a lion who must surely be doing something like biting (with sharp teeth) or digging (piercing) with sharp claws into flesh – unless the lion takes the man on the cross for Androcles, or in my version of the story, for Joshua. How unsurprising, Jesus is Joshua.

Someone said at Rabbi Blumenthal’s 1000 Verses:

“In the words of Rabbi Tovia Singer: ‘When the original words of Psalm 22:17 are read, any allusion to a crucifixion disappears.’”

Some people know little about lions, and Nothing about The LION – the Lion of JUDAH.

When “awesome” loses its power, compound it.

In The yuckiest word in the English language, I said that one word I absolutely hate to pieces is “awesome.” As a few Jews and Christians know, “awesome” used to mean “inspiring deep reverence and healthy fear.”

I have noticed recently, though, among the lexically challenged that “awesome” is no longer explicit enough and is beginning to pall. There is a new compound out there, with WordPress.com leading the way. Why click merely “like,” when you can boggle with “super-awesome.”

LOL

I mean LOVL (Very)

Adrian Stanley’s pre-inaugural worship service: leverage in the Vicarage

In Christianity today (1/25/2013) appears Mark Galli’s interview with Adrian Stanley, “Did Andy Stanley Really Mean Obama Is ‘Pastor in Chief’?” Stanley preached at President Obama’s pre-inaugural worship service in Washington.

I surfed the web for Stanley’s sermon but only managed to find out that his sermon was about the story of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples.  But I mostly got bedevilled by a deluge of “Andy Stanley says Obama is Pastor in chief. Andy Stanley says Obama is Pastor in chief. Andy Stanley says Obama is Pastor in chief. As a good Jew would ask: What’s the pork!” Here is Stanley’s explanation (from his interview):

“[At the pre-inaugural service,] I knew that I didn’t want to get up and just launch into a sermon. When you’re in an environment where you have no personal connection with anyone in the room—and I certainly didn’t—as a speaker, you want to find a personal connection. I thought,Well, here is something that I felt deeply and here we have all these clergy on this stage. So I said something like, “Mr. President, I don’t know the first thing about being President, but I know a bit about being a pastor. And during the Newtown vigil on December 16th after we heard what you did—I just want to say on behalf of all of us as clergy, thank you.” And I added, “I turned to Sandra that night and said, ‘Tonight he’s the Pastor in Chief.’ So that’s the context. I wasn’t making a declaration that he’s our Pastor in Chief. But I can understand how that got reported.”

Some Christians know that in the New Testament and early church there never was such a person as a Chief Pastor (shepherd), and so there never should be such a person in the Christian church today. So, if Stanley wants to call Obama Pastor in Chief, it’s ok, ’cause it has nothing to do with the faith practised by the saints (that is, ordinary followers of Christ). Stanley’s critics might have a knee-jerk reaction and accuse Stanley of arrogating to Obama the same title as the Lord Jesus Christ, “Chief Shepherd” and quote John 10 (maybe some have done so):

[11] I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. [12] He who is a hired hand and not a shepherd, who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. [13] He flees because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep. [14] I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, [15] just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep. [16] And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.
(John 10:11-16 ESV)

Don’t be silly, Stanley is not dumb; he knows that Jesus does not call himself the Chief Pastor, because before he created the church, there was only one Pastor, and only one good Pastor. Enough said about the “Pastor in Chief.” I have my own pork to grind with Stanley, of a linguistic kind with theological repercussions, as with much of theology:

Bob Weir and Mickey Hart of the Grateful Dead performing at the Mid-Atlantic Inaugural Ball during the Obama Inaugural. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

his penchant for the word “leverage,” which he uses several times in his pre-inaugural sermon. I had come across Stanley’s use of the term elsewhere. But first here is Stanley’s occurrences of “leverage” in the “Pastor in Chief” interview:

(Questions in italics)

1. How did you settle on a theme to preach on?

When Joshua invited me I knew immediately what I wanted to talk about, and it’s something I talk a lot about at leadership conferences—the idea that people with power are called upon to leverage their power for people who don’t have power.

2. So what did you say in the sermon?

[…] I talked about the tension that was in the room between the disciples, because they’d just been arguing about who’s going to be the greatest. Jesus removed their excuses. So those of us who follow Jesus, this is the example: You leverage your power for the sake of other people in the room. Then I told the President at the very end, “Mr. President, you have a very big room.” And he smiled. I said, “It’s as big as the nation. It’s as big as our world. And my prayer for you is that you continue to leverage this stewardship of power for the sake of our nation and the world.”

3. What do you mean by that? (“you just gave away influence”).

(Stanley had said previously “For the people who tweeted all those hateful things [about Stanley]—I won’t even mention names—well, I don’t [know] why they did it. I thought, Okay, you just gave away influence).

If I work for you, and I’m in that meeting with you and you have an idea, I don’t embarrass you or criticize your idea there. Then if I come to you privately and ask you questions, you’re going to listen to me. If I embarrass you in front of the whole group, I’ve lost leverage with you. Now, again, there are lines. There are things that you don’t cross. I’m not abandoning theology.

(End of interview excerpt)

“Leverage” has the metaphorical meaning of “to exert power or influence,” so in all four instances, Stanley’s usage is appropriate. 

I’ve now prepared the ground for the main point I want to make, which has to do with his last sentence, “I’m not abandoning theology.” Stanley has received much censure for doing exactly that when he entered the camp of the “Pastor in Chief.” But what I want to do now is to talk about another situation where I suggest Stanley has indeed abandoned “old paths” theology. In the second video of the Louie Giglio series “God is so great,” Andy Stanley says the following: ” “He will have leveraged your sin for his glory’s sake. He (God) will not be undone.” This means, according to the dictionary definition of “leverage” that God will have exerted a power or influence over a person’s sin for His glory. 

Stanley uses the term “leverage” repeatedly.“As creatures who were created with more potential to reflect His glory than anything else in creation, it is our role, it is our duty, it is our opportunity to reflect the Glory of God who invites us to call Him ‘Father’” even as a race who has abused the privilege of our freedom. It means that in the middle of your wealth, your pain, of gain of loss… you can ask God ‘how can this be leveraged for your glory.’” 

Then follows a few more questions asking God how whatever in one’s life can “be leveraged for your glory”:

“At the end of the day, we can say ‘God) if you can leverage sin for your glory, certainly you can leverage this (my life’s situations), and I make it available to you. It’s for your glory. It is for your glory. It is for your glory.’ And when that happens life begins to make sense, for suddenly we are living our lives in the context of life, which is the glory of God – the Father.”

God’s “leverage” of sin seems to resonate with the “new-model” of God, who, says Macarthur, “never demands any payment for sin as a condition of forgiveness. According to the new-model view, if Christ suffered for our sins, it was only in the sense that he “absorb[ed] our sin and its consequences”—certainly not that He received any divinely-inflicted punishment on our behalf at the cross.” But I might be too harsh. (See The “New Model” of Evangelism: Has God also leveraged forgiveness out of his vocabulary?

I’m old and old school: God may leverage (exert power over) my sin in some sense (I think Stanley means “turn it for good”), but the main thing he does is forgive it. I repent and God - why doesn’t Stanley just say it? – forgives.

I wonder whether Stanley, in his pre-inaugural, mentioned “sin,” which would certainly have been taken as personal. “Leverage of sin,” although post-modern, might have been better than no sin at all. But I suppose such talk at this inclusive event would have turned the American dream into an American scream.

Someone, however, who has access to Stanley’s sermon, might inform me that Stanley did indeed mention “sin.” Will I look foolish! But more important, if he did, kudos for Stanley.

In passing, someone may ask, “What’s with the grateful dead?” Well some will be, most won’t. Something to do with forgiveness and sin.