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If a Jew could have proved to Chase’s satisfaction that, first, the Torah was a true historical document, and second – which is a tad more difficult – that God appeared in the lightning and thunder on Sinai, Chase would still not have believed.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.

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

 

 

 

 

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)

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 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.

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

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?”

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.

YourPhariseeFriend’s 365 theses: A thesis a day keeps the missionary away

In Rabbi Yisroel Blumenthal (YourPhariseeFriend) “The Applicant with 365 references,” he strives to show the falsehood of “the prophecies listed on a piece of missionary literature that was mailed to members of the Orthodox Jewish community in Lakewood New Jersey. This list presents 353 prophecies allegedly ‘fulfilled’ by Jesus.”

Before he begins his list, Rabbi Blumenthal says:

“The Jew doesn’t see the scriptures as some secret code that needs to be unlocked or as a mystery novel that needs to be solved. The question that the Jew asks himself as he reads the Scriptures is: “what is the prophet trying to tell me?” The interpretation of Scripture that you will find here will be based on the straightforward contextual reading of the passages.”

It seems that the “straightforward contextual reading of the passages” has radically changed with the development and entrenchment of Kabbalah whose most famous creator/compiler was Rabbi Isaac Luria (Arizal).

Here, according to Rabbi Tzvi Freeman, is the “standard narrative” of Judaism up to advent of the Kabbalist, Rabbi Isaac Luria. “Until the Ari, the standard narrative scripted the human being into a passive role in his own redemption: G-d had made a magnificent world; human beings had messed it up. You now had a choice of doing mitzvahs, cleaving to G-d and being good, or continuing to contribute to the mess. Better to be good, because the day will come that G-d will take retribution from those who were bad and dispense reward to those who are good.” (Rabbi Tzvi Freeman, “Eighteen Joyous Teachings of the Baal Shem Tov,” p. 18).

Then comes Arizal:
“The Ari, says Freeman, stood all that on its head, providing humanity a proactive role: G-d made the mess, he said; we are cleaning it up.” http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/1395566/jewish/In-Context.htm

See also http://onedaringjew.wordpress.com/2012/02/18/when-the-jew-cleans-up-the-holy-one-of-israels-mess-messiah-will-he-come/

The “straightforward contextual reading of the passages” (Rabbi Blumenthal) is called the P’SHAT (surface level). Rabbinic Judaism adds three other levels of meaning of which the deepest is the SOD (secret level). The SOD is the main domain of Kabbalah.

Since Rabbi Luria, the secret is out: the standard narrative, P’SHAT, is (thrown) out, namely, the Jew made the mess, and the SOD is in, namely, it is God who really made the mess. Not only did God make the mess, the Jew is given, or rather, takes over the job of cleaning it up.

Rabbi Freeman above, who described the switching of roles – Jew as saviour, God as saved – represents Chabad Judaism, which considers Rabbi Luria’s writings as part of the Oral Torah. Rabbi Blumenthal of “Jews for Judaism” seems to be close to Chabad Judaism. For this reason, I don’t think Rabbi Blumenthal will contradict Chabad too soon. This is not to say that once Rabbi Blumenthal verifies what Rabbi Freeman has said about Arizal’s “mess,” he will not speak out, thus: “No, Arizal’s SOD is wrong; the P’SHAT of the Tanach says that man made the mess, not God.” Until such time, I won’t be taking Rabbi Blumenthal’s 365 “theses” too seriously.

Calvinism: Word, logic and heart – and faith, of course

This is an elaboration of  Intelligence counts. Humanist and Christian practice.

Introduction

In the previous post, I  mentioned that  Aristotle and Goethe covered three aspects of personality, namely, intellect (logic [how we think] and knowledge [what we think]), the will and behaviour. When we add the emotions/feelings to the pot, we have the basic ingredients of the Psychology of Personality (or Personality Psychology). Christian theology adds another ingredient, faith, which is the reason for the existence of the intellect, the will, the emotions and behaviour (works). 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. In his article, I examine in more detail the relationship between logic (how we think), knowledge (what we think), the will, and the heart.

The essence of Christianity and the limits of the mind

Abraham Joshua Heschel in his “God in search of man,” says that the God of the Prophets is the source of reason. Reason, however, according to Heschel, is not able to find God, let alone experience Him. The Prophets taught that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob was also the source of everything, including experience of Him, and that the only right way to experience Him is through the Hebrew scriptures. Christianity is an extension of this belief: everything, both good and evil, are under God’s absolute control. The biblical position is this: the biblical position is this: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6). So, all our own efforts to find the way the truth and the life are worthless. In his heart a man plans his course, but the LORD determines his steps (Proverbs 16:9).

The essence of Christianity is found in the summary of the the letter to the Romans found in the doxology (praise) at the end of Romans 11, where God reaffirms that he is the cause and end of all things, and all exists for his glory.

33 Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!
How unsearchable his judgments,
and his paths beyond tracing out! 34 “Who has known the mind of the Lord?
    Or who has been his counselor?” 35 “Who has ever given to God, that God should repay them?” 36 For from him and through him and for him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen.

These verses are also the springboard of Calvinism. Opponents of Calvinism (Arminians – Roman Catholics and most Protestants) love quoting “Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ” (Colossians 2:8). As an Arminian told me: “I’d suggest we continue to Humbly study the Word, and do what is commanded of us. That is to spread and teach the gospel; to continue to seek the Kingdom of God first; to ask Forgiveness and to repent of our sins… but all the time to remember that God sees and weighs up the heart – so whatever we do or say, may it be with an examined heart, or we could fall into a trap ourselves.” Good advice. My question is: How is one going to teach the Gospel to enemies of the Gospel, which all human beings are in their natural state? The writer asks: “Why try to analyze it all? God is not subject to any laws or rules.”

Obviously there is much sifting, demarcating, differentiating, categorising, analysing going on. Walking with Jesus will have to also involve thinking about Jesus and how to explain to non-believers how to think about Jesus and Jesus as the Son of God. “Analyse” means use your reason to give reasons for the faith that you have received, and defend the body of teachings (doctrines) that pertain to this faith. The Bible is clear: “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect” ( 1 Peter 3:15). There are many examples of Jesus and Paul reasoning (analysing, and synthesising) with their listeners. One important topic in this regard was the authenticity of the historical events in the scriptures. Paul was a master “apologist” (defender) of the Gospel. “Apologetics” is a very important part of learning and teaching the faith. (See Analysis of the Modern Evangelical Mind and the Lost Art of Boxing).

Philosophy, therefore, cannot bring the alienated from God to Christ, neither can mysticism do it, because, Christians, “you, who were once alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath He reconciled, in the body of His flesh, through death, to present you holy and unblameable and unreprovable in His sight” (Colossians 1:21-22).

“Calvinism, says James Packer, is not a rigid system of logic imposed on the simple testimony of scripture. There are many who regard Calvinism as a logical and philosophical speculation which adulterates the simple testimony of scripture.”

Indeed, Calvinists do have a sweet tooth for logic, How else are they going to chew through what the scripture says, and paint a clear picture of what’s on the menu (no à la carte, forgive). With the one hand, Calvinists get slapped for being too logical, and with other, for being wanting in the upstairs department.

Let me, as a Calvinist, try to apply my Jewish mind to the process of salvation and the related paradox of divine sovereignty and responsibility. Calvinists insist that God never fails, and so if a person is saved, it is because God decreed it to be so. The person being saved plays no part in his regeneration (he’s dead, for starters), yet those whom God does not regenerate are held responsible for rejecting God. The Calvinist says that God has not called them to reconcile the paradox of divine sovereignty and human responsibility; he has called them to reconcile themselves to Him and be an instrument in reconciling others to Him. Scripture drives a Calvinist to accept this supra-rational (beyond reason) doctrine. He is not embarrassed to call it a mystery (on a par with the incarnation and the trinity).

To affirm, says Charles Spurgeon, of any human production that it contained many great and instructive truths which it would be impossible to systematize without weakening each separate truth, and frustrating the design of the whole, would be a serious reflection upon the author’s wisdom and skill! How much more to affirm this of the Word of God! Systematic theology is to the Bible what science is to nature. To suppose that all the other works of God are orderly and systematic, and the greater the work the more perfect the system; and that the greatest of all His works, in which all His perfections are transcendently displayed, should have no plan or system, is altogether absurd. If faith in the Scriptures is to be positive, if consistent with itself, if operative, if abiding, it must have a fixed and well-defined creed. No one can say that the Bible is his creed, unless he can express it in his own words.” (Quoted by Iain Murray in his “The Forgotten Spurgeon”).

Calvinism is “the consistent endeavor to acknowledge the Creator as the Lord, working all things after the counsel of his will.” (James Packer’s introduction to John Owen’s The Death of Death in the Death of Christ). The Lord never fails, is never disappointed, is never frustrated. Not one drop of Christ’s blood is wasted because all three persons of the Godhead want it that way… Calvinism is a unified philosophy of history which sees the whole diversity of processes and events that take place in God’s world as no more, and no less, than the outworking of his great preordained plan for his creatures and his church. The five points assert no more than God is sovereign in saving the individual, but Calvinism, as such, is concerned with the much broader assertion that he is sovereign everywhere.”

Calvinism is an outworking of divine preordination; Arminianism is an inworming of human “post-ordination.”. “Post-ordination” is the Arminian idea that “Preordination” (predestination) means that only after (post) God sees whether a person is going to open the door of his heart to Christ, does God pre-destine the person to eternal life. This is the only case I know in the English language (and in logic) where pre means post. Pre in “predestination” means “that sinners do not save themselves in any sense at all, but that salvation, first and last, whole and entire, past, present and future, is of the Lord, to whom be glory for ever; amen!” (James Packer).

Many understand Calvinism to believe:

 1. Only that which God wills happens.

2. God doesn’t love all people.

3. Jesus didn’t die for all people.

And they are right. Let’s spend a little time on each:

1. Only that which God wills happens.

There are God’s decrees and God’s precepts. The first is concerned with what must and will happen with certainty. The second is concerned with what God morally requires of human beings, which has nothing to do with whether man will actually do what God  commands. God’s decree, in contrast, determines what actually happens. Neither God’s preceptive will nor his decretive will can every be frustrated.

In the Old Testament God prescribes to the Jews his commandments. Most disobey. God permits them to follow their reprobate hearts. He decrees  to have mercy on a remnant, and thus grants to them the desire for repentance leading to reconciliation with Him. Even repentance is a gift of God.

Acts 5:30-31 “The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom ye slew and hanged on a tree. 31 Him hath God exalted with his right hand to be a Prince and a Saviour, for to give repentance to Israel, and forgiveness of sins.”

Acts 11:18 “When they heard this, they had no further objections and praised God, saying, “So then, God has granted even the Gentiles repentance unto life.”

 2. God doesn’t love all people.

If God loves all unbelievers, there’s no need of a mediator.  Love means absence of enmity, thus there is no need for reconciliation, and so need for a mediator, Jesus. The Gospel message is the following progression: wrath of God, enmity, mediator, reconciliation and peace. Telling an unbeliever God loves them is a false Gospel. This is one of the reason for false conversions. The popular Arminian slogan, “God loves you [you vile worm] and has a wonderful plan for your life,” is not in scripture and (consequently) was never taught in the historical church. You might say that God loves all without exception but ceases to love them and sends them to hell if they thwart his desire to save them. There’s nothing like that in the Bible.  All mankind without Christ are under condemnation.

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes [the ones believing - the Greek)]  in him should not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. (John 3:16-18). The “world,” not Mars or any other planer/star. If “world” meant every single individual then it would mean that he condemns (to hell) those who do not believe (“ but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God”). Romans fleshes out John 3:17-18:

[8:1] 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, 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.

[9] You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. [10] But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. [11] If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you. (Romans 8:1-11).

The Father (and the Son) only loves those he has given to the Son before the world began, and only those he loves will be saved. One proof that Jesus does not love everybody is that He prays for His “own,” not for the “world.”

[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.” (John 17:6-9).

The meaning of “world” in John 3:16 becomes clear in the light of John 17. “World” in John 3:16 means all kinds of people: rich, poor; Jew, Gentile. So, people without distinction (from every tribe and nation, every walk of life); not people without exception.

3. Jesus didn’t die for all people.

If he did die for all people then they would all be  reconciled to God. Why does God refuse to open blind eyes and deaf ears, as He says so clearly In John 12:40 (and isaiah 6:9) about the Jews: “He has blinded their eyes
    and hardened their hearts,
so they can neither see with their eyes,
    nor understand with their hearts,
    nor turn—and I would heal them.” The answer lies in another difficult-for-synergists verse: “God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden” (Romans 9:18).

“Then why does God still blame us? For who is able to resist his will?” 20 But who are you, a human being, to talk back to God? Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’ Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for special purposes and some for common use?”

Both Isaiah and Paul saw God. Do they recoil and scream “but God, you’re not being fair. What are you doing!” What does Isaiah say to God on his throne (in Isaiah 6)? Simply, “How long?” Oh what an answer! 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 orignal meaning. (“Calvinism is terrible”). I return to Isaiah:

[11] Then I (Isaiah) 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. (Isaiah 6:11-13).  If I were God, that is not how I would have planned salvation. Thank God I’m not God – and thank Him more that you’re not either.

The main question in Calvinism, as it should be in Christianity, is not logical consistency but “Have you seen God?” Have you seen him lifted up on his throne? Has it made you fall down low? I’m no saying at all that you must stop thinking and start feeling, for how can you “Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Or do you not realize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you fail to meet the test!” (2 Corinthians 13:5 ). Also, logic (noggins) are useful for 1. “be[ing] all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall” (2 Peter 1:10); 2. for “being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you…” (1 Peter 3:15 ESV) and for being able to distinguish between human tradition and the scriptures.

4. There is nothing that a person can do to be saved.

Al Martin (in his “What is Calvinism) says: “the question is not the sincerity of my resolve, not what I have done but “has God done something in me? Not have I accepted Christ but has Christ accepted me; not “have I found the lord?” but has he found me?

The natural condition of man is to love what he wants, not what God wants. That’s the pith of Original Sin. What he wants is NOT to be saved by God. So, in this sinful state, the last thing on his mind/heart is “I wish I could be saved but as there is nothing I can do about it, my hands are tied.” If he does show the desire to be saved, then it is God who had mercy on him. God regenerates him, that is, brings him back from spiritual death. He sees that he has offended a holy  God. He believes. He repents (repentance is necessary consequence of regeneration). he has become a child of God. In a word, he accepts Christ. He has been freed from his bondage.

Now, you might say it’s all so intellectual. True, If all it did was to grease your brain – and your palm if theology is your profession (means of livelihood). No one is a Calvinist – or truly biblical, or truly religious, or truly evangelical until the Bible, until theology, are “burnt into your soul” (Al Martin in part 2 of “What is Calvinism?”).

Here is Benjamin Warfield on John Calvin:

“As he contemplated the majesty of this sovereign Father, his whole being bowed in reverence before Him, and his whole heart burned with zeal for His glory. As he remembered that this great God has become in His own Son the redeemer of sinners, he passionately gave himself to the proclamation of the glory of His grace. Into His hands he committed himself without reserve . . . All that was good in him, all the good he hoped might be formed in him, he ascribed to the almighty working of the divine Spirit. The glory of God alone and the control of the Spirit became the twin principles of his whole thought and life.”

Arminians, generally, despise Calvin. That, of course, was not the reason for his  excruciating headaches for much of his adult life. Here is Warfield in his “Calvinism today“:

“Calvinism will not play fast and loose with the free grace of God. It is set upon giving to God, and to God alone, the glory and all the glory of salvation. There are others than Calvinists, no doubt, who would fain make the same great confession. But they make it with reserves, or they painfully justify the making of it by some tenuous theory which confuses nature and grace. They leave logical pitfalls on this side or that, and the difference between logical pitfalls and other pitfalls is that the wayfarer may fall into the others, but the plain man, just because his is a simple mind, must fall into those. Calvinism will leave no logical pitfalls and will make no reserves. It will have nothing to do with theories whose function it is to explain away facts. It confesses, with a heart full of adoring gratitude, that to God, and to God alone, belongs salvation and the whole of salvation; that He it is, and He alone, who works salvation in its whole reach. Any falling away in the slightest measure from this great confession is to fall away from Calvinism. Any intrusion of any human merit, or act, or disposition, or power, as ground or cause or occasion, into the process of divine salvation,—whether in the way of power to resist or of ability to improve grace, of the opening of the soul to the reception of grace, or of the employment of grace already received—is a breach with Calvinism.”

The Christian view of “faith” is summed up in Ephesians 2:8-10 [my square brackets and italics]:

“For by grace you have been saved through faith [in Christ]. 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 [be faithful – Hebrew “emuna” – in them).

Put the above together with Romans 11:36 and you’re well on your way to talking, if not walking, scripture. (Talkies and walkies: John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Regress).

The Roman catholic is caught between the scylla of tradition and the Charybdis of scripture. In a similar vein, the “orthodox” Jew is caught between the Oral and the Written Torah. One `Jew will say the Written Torah is primary, another that the Oral Torah is primary. (The Written and Oral Torah: Which is Primary?). From the human standpoint, there’s the Word and there’s the heart, and the brain in between. One thing the Apostle did, and shewed us how, was “Use your loaf.” Not to forget that  light, supernatural as well as natural, comes from the Lord – except the fluffy kind.

 If you’re dying or dying to know the identities of the two people on the left, they are the Borgia Pope, Alexander VI and the Kabbalist, Isaac Luria (Arizal).

Intelligence counts. Humanist and Christian practice

This is a follow-on from  Talkies and walkies: John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Regress.

“Intellect by itself, says Aristotle, the humanist, moves nothing, but only the intellect which aims at an end and is practical.” (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics). C. S. Lewis agrees:

“It is intelligence that counts,” said Humanist.

“It moves nothing,” said John. “You see that Savage is scalding hot and you are cold. You must get heat to rival his heat.” (“The Pilgrim’s Regress,” Book 6, Chapter 7, p. 139. Collins, Fount Paperbacks, 1990 [1993]).

The Greek humanist, Aristotle, and the English Christian, Lewis, both agree that Humanist is wrong to think that brains is what it’s all about. What is important to humanists as well as Christians is “use your loaf, yes, but don’t loaf around – do.” C.S. Lewis’s Humanist does not seem to be a typical humanist. As far as I know all humanists, John Dewey, for example, are do-gmatic pragmatists.

We find an echo of Aristotle in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s “Knowing is not enough; we must apply.
 Willing is not enough; we must do,” which is the motto of the counsellor Ra Lovingsworth.

Aristotle and Goethe cover three aspects of personality, namely, intellect (logic [how we think] and knowledge [what we think]), the will and behaviour. When we add the emotions/feelings/heart to the pot, we have the basic ingredients of the Psychology of Personality (or Personality Psychology). Christian theology adds another ingredient, faith, which it maintains is the very reason for the existence of the intellect, the will, the emotions and behaviour (works).

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 such a thing, your mental assent is more of a mental descent. To understand why it is a mental descent, you need to ascend to the the third level of faith: fiducia.

Fiducia is full trust and commitment, it’s the heart knowledge of Jesus’ prayer to His Father. It is Fiducia that ultimately counts, which, itself is the (irresistible) gift of God (Two conversions: the mind (NOTITIA) and the heart (FIDUCIA) of faith in Blaise Pascal).

Here is the practical part:

“As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him: 7 Rooted and built up in him, and established in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving” (Colossians 2:6-7).

What is more practical than a regenerated heart, that is, a dead heart that has been “transfused” by (faith in) the blood of Christ and brought near to the Father: “Remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. 13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ” (Ephesians 2:12-13).

Talkies and walkies: John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Regress

(Any similarities between my title and C.S. Lewis’ “The Pilgrim’s Regress” is fortuitous).

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 such a thing, your mental assent is more of a mental descent. To understand why it is a mental descent, you need to ascend to the the third level of faith: fiducia.

Fiducia is full trust and commitment, it’s the heart knowledge of Jesus’ prayer to His Father. It is Fiducia that ultimately counts (See Two conversions: the mind (NOTITIA) and the heart (FIDUCIA) of faith in Blaise Pascal).

Notitia without Fiducia is transparent and empty. Scripture and theology are gripping for both believer and unbeliever. There is no way, therefore, to tell if somebody who loves talking theology are Bible really believes in Christ. If you say you hate Christ, that you hate the Bible, you definitely do hate Christ and the Bible. If, though, you say you love Christ and the Bible, you might in reality hate what you say you love, Of course, if you know a person well, it is easier to tell whether a person who loves talking Bible really loves and believes in its central figure. Here is an excerpt from John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. “Faith” and Talkative” are journeying together:

FAITH. Come on, then, and let us go together, and let us spend our time in discoursing of things that are profitable.

TALK(ATIVE). To talk of things that are good, to me is very acceptable, with you or with any other; and I am glad that I have met with those that incline to so good a work; for, to speak the truth, there are but few that care thus to spend their time, (as they are in their travels), but choose much rather to be speaking of things to no profit; and this hath been a trouble for me.

FAITH. That is indeed a thing to be lamented; for what things so worthy of the use of the tongue and mouth of men on earth as are the things of the God of heaven?

TALK. I like you wonderful well, for your sayings are full of conviction; and I will add, what thing is so pleasant, and what so profitable, as to talk of the things of God? What things so pleasant (that is, if a man hath any delight in things that are wonderful)? For instance, if a man doth delight to talk of the history or the mystery of things; or if a man doth love to talk of miracles, wonders, or signs, where shall he find things recorded so delightful, and so sweetly penned, as in the Holy Scripture?

FAITH. That is true; but to be profited by such things in our talk should be that which we design.

TALK. That is it that I said; for to talk of such things is most profitable; for by so doing, a man may get knowledge of many things; as of the vanity of earthly things, and the benefit of things above. Thus, in general, but more particularly by this, a man may learn the necessity of the new birth, the insufficiency of our works, the need of Christ’s righteousness, &c. Besides, by this a man may learn, by talk, what it is to repent, to believe, to pray, to suffer, or the like; by this also a man may learn what are the great promises and consolations of the gospel, to his own comfort. Further, by this a man may learn to refute false opinions, to vindicate the truth, and also to instruct the ignorant.

FAITH. All this is true, and glad am I to hear these things from you.

TALK. Alas! the want of this is the cause why so few understand the need of faith, and the necessity of a work of grace in their soul, in order to eternal life; but ignorantly live in the works of the law, by which a man can by no means obtain the kingdom of heaven.

FAITH. But, by your leave, heavenly knowledge of these is the gift of God; no man attaineth to them by human industry, or only by the talk of them.

TALK. All this I know very well; for a man can receive nothing, except it be given him from Heaven; all is of grace, not of works. I could give you a hundred scriptures for the confirmation of this.

FAITH. Well, then, said Faithful, what is that one thing that we shall at this time found our discourse upon?

TALK. What you will. I will talk of things heavenly, or things earthly; things moral, or things evangelical; things sacred, or things profane; things past, or things to come; things foreign, or things at home; things more essential, or things circumstantial; provided that all be done to our profit.

FAITH. Now did Faithful begin to wonder; and stepping to Christian [CHR.], (for he walked all this while by himself), he said to him, (but softly), What a brave companion have we got! Surely this man will make a very excellent pilgrim.

CHR. At this Christian modestly smiled, and said, This man, with whom you are so taken, will beguile, with that tongue of his, twenty of them that know him not.

FAITH. Do you know him, then?

CHR. Know him! Yes, better than he knows himself.

FAITH. Pray, what is he?

CHR. His name is Talkative; he dwelleth in our town. I wonder that you should be a stranger to him, only I consider that our town is large.

FAITH. Whose son is he? And whereabout does he dwell?

CHR. He is the son of one Say-well; he dwelt in Prating Row; and is known of all that are acquainted with him, by the name of Talkative in Prating Row; and notwithstanding his fine tongue, he is but a sorry fellow.

FAITH. Well, he seems to be a very pretty man.

CHR. That is, to them who have not thorough acquaintance with him; for he is best abroad; near home, he is ugly enough. Your saying that he is a pretty man, brings to my mind what I have observed in the work of the painter, whose pictures show best at a distance, but, very near, more unpleasing.

FAITH. But I am ready to think you do but jest, because you smiled.

CHR. God forbid that I should jest (although I smiled) in this matter, or that I should accuse any falsely! I will give you a further discovery of him. This man is for any company, and for any talk; as he talketh now with you, so will he talk when he is on the ale-bench; and the more drink he hath in his crown, the more of these things he hath in his mouth; religion hath no place in his heart, or house, or conversation; all he hath lieth in his tongue, and his religion is, to make a noise therewith.

FAITH. Say you so! then am I in this man greatly deceived.

CHR. Deceived! you may be sure of it; remember the proverb, “They say and do not.” [Matt. 23:3] But the kingdom of God is not in word, but in Power. [1 Cor 4:20] He talketh of prayer, of repentance, of faith, and of the new birth; but he knows but only to talk of them. I have been in his family, and have observed him both at home and abroad; and I know what I say of him is the truth. His house is as empty of religion as the white of an egg is of savour. There is there neither prayer nor sign of repentance for sin; yea, the brute in his kind serves God far better than he. He is the very stain, reproach, and shame of religion, to all that know him; it can hardly have a good word in all that end of the town where he dwells, through him. [Rom. 2:24,25] Thus say the common people that know him, A saint abroad, and a devil at home. His poor family finds it so; he is such a churl, such a railer at and so unreasonable with his servants, that they neither know how to do for or speak to him. Men that have any dealings with him say it is better to deal with a Turk than with him; for fairer dealing they shall have at their hands. This Talkative (if it be possible) will go beyond them, defraud, beguile, and overreach them. Besides, he brings up his sons to follow his steps; and if he findeth in any of them a foolish timorousness, (for so he calls the first appearance of a tender conscience,) he calls them fools and blockheads, and by no means will employ them in much, or speak to their commendations before others. For my part, I am of opinion, that he has, by his wicked life, caused many to stumble and fall; and will be, if God prevent not, the ruin of many more.

Holy Communion dunking style: You can’t have your wine and eat it

Some things we all absorb by instinct. Some Christians also absorb by intict. It happens at communion when the minister warns the congregation that the cup contains real wine and that if you don’t drink wine you may “dunk your wafer” instead of drinking from the cup. So, if you don’t like drinking wine, you can eat it.

Many Protestants are either not aware or do not take seriously Jesus’ command to both eat his body and drink his blood. I am not for one moment saying, as Roman Catholics and Lutherans do, that the body of Jesus, sinews bones and blood and so forth, in heaven replaces the substance of (Roman Catholicism)  or mingles with (Lutheranism) the bread/wafer and the wine. What I am saying is that there is a sense – don’t be afraid to call it “mystical” – that we are eating Jesus’ body and drinking his blood. Here is the Apostle Paul:

“For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you: that the Lord Jesus on the same night in which He was betrayed took bread; and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, ‘Take, eat; this is My body which is broken for you; do this in remembrance of Me.’” (1 Corinthians 11:23-24).

And then:

“For he who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgement to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body. For this reason many are weak and sick among you, and many sleep” (1 Corinthians 11:29-30).

Here is Rick Phillips:

Why Intinction Matters

One of the Book of Church Order amendments making the rounds of PCA presbyteries this year is a proposed change to forbid the practice of intinction.  For those not in the know, intinction is the procedure of receiving the Lord’s Supper by dipping the bread into the cup. Instead of eating the bread and drinking the cup, one eats the wine or grape-juice saturated bread.  It seems likely that this amendment is going to fail to achieve the necessary 2/3 of presbyteries to be approved, so that we will see the novelty of a Reformed Presbyterian denomination approving a procedure historically associated with the Roman Catholic Mass.  What is more revealing, and to me discouraging, is the kind of argument being reported in presbytery after presbytery.

Typical arguments include the following:

“People doing intinction are just trying to reach people with the gospel.  Why are we giving them a hard time?” “What is wrong with the PCA that we even debate silly things like this?” “Are we really going to say that brothers are wrong and force them to do things our way?”

There is, of course, no doctrine or practice that can be excluded under the above arguments, which it seems will carry the day in the PCA.  But what is most alarming is that there is no doubt regarding what the Bible teaches on this matter.  The NT passages instituting the Lord’s Supper state clearly that Jesus first took bread, gave thanks, broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, “Take and eat.”  Then, Jesus passed the cup, saying “Drink of it” (Mt. 26:26-28; Lk. 22:19-20; 1 Cor. 11:23-26).  So here we have a worship practice for which Jesus gave us detailed procedural instructions.  It is curious to me that a Reformed and Evangelical denomination would want to administer the sacrament in a way that is different from Jesus’ institution.  Do we think we are improving on his procedure?  If we think it is safe to disregard the Bible here, where else are we doing this? Still, people will say, “Okay, but why does this really matter?”  The first answer is that it always matters greatly how we respond to the clear teaching of our Lord.  A spiritually-alive church will “rejoice with trembling” (Ps. 2:11) at the Word of God.  We should joyfully desire fully to obey the Scriptures and fearfully tremble at the thought of doing otherwise.  This is a very big matter for any church and denomination, and it makes the intinction debate important.

Second, intinction matters because the Lord’s Supper is important to the life of the church.  To say that this is a “silly” debate that “wastes our time,” raises questions about what our ministers think is important to the spiritual life and health of our churches.

It has been curious to me that many who seem least concerned to be biblical about the Lord’s Supper are those who administer it most frequently.  In fact, during the General Assembly, more than one minister who emphasizes weekly communion told me that intinction was necessary because the biblical procedure takes too long.  I realize that this subjective data does not prove that everyone who differs on intinction has become cavalier about the sacrament.  But the argument, “Why does this matter?” and “Why are we wasting our time on this instead of preaching the gospel?” raises serious questions about our attitude toward the sacrament instituted by our Lord on the night of his arrest.” (End of Phillips).

Ok, so you’re afraid that if you drink from the cup you’ll catch a germ. Solution, come early and sit in front – and pluck up courage to let your minister know, even if he’s not German, how you instinctively now feel, since reading this piece: Dunking is Verboten.

Vielen Dank.

The foul smelling Christian spice and sweet Jewish incense of the Talmud: Together again

“When I learned that a Christian printer out of all people designed the format of the Talmud, it somehow reminded me of that one foul smelling spice in the incense that gets transformed into something good.”

(First comment on Rabbi Eliezar’s Introduction to Talmud).

Hear is the Christian and the Jew together again:

Isaiah 65:1-4

1 I am sought of them that asked not for me; I am found of them that sought me not: I said, Behold me, behold me, unto a nation that was not called by my name. 2 I have spread out my hands all the day unto a rebellious people, which walketh in a way that was not good, after their own thoughts; 3 A people that provoketh me to anger continually to my face; that sacrificeth in gardens, and burneth incense upon altars of brick.

Providence and Ibn Ezra’s not so original take on Moses the Egyptian: Can God decide my destiny without me?

In its description of Ibn Ezra’s writing style, “MyJewishLearning” says something quite odd about God. I capitalise the relevant remark:

”Ibn Ezra usually writes in a cryptic style, leaving much room for conjecture as to his meaning, probably because he was aware of the daring nature of some of his ideas which might lead the ignorant to unbelief. He is not averse to suggesting ORIGINAL INTERPRETATIONS of biblical events, as when he suggests that DIVINE PROVIDENCE HAD SO ORDERED IT THAT MOSES WAS RAISED IN Pharaoh’s PALACE. Had Moses been brought up among his fellow Israelites, they would have been too familiar with him from his youth to have respect for him as their leader. Moreover, the future leader had to have a regal upbringing and an aristocratic background to endow him with the nobility of character suitable for a leader.”

I’m surprised that the writer – that is if he/she believes that the Torah is God-breathed – considers Ibn Ezra’s interpretation that God ordains events to be a daring interpretation; for how else did Moses end up in Pharaoh’s court, and end up leading the Hebrews across the Reed/Red Sea, and all the other things he did, For that matter, how else did the writer of the above piece get to write it, and while I’m about it, how else did I end up writing this piece, or anything if it were not for God’s sovereignty?

“What!” you might protest, “do you think we’re robots? Don’t you realise that our free will is exactly what makes us human. Are you telling me that Miriam, Moses’ mother, and Pharaoh’s daughter, and all the other biblical characters, were merely pawns pushed around the chessboard?”

I answer: no, they (and everone else) are not pawns, yet all are are directed by the sovereign hand of the Almighty. How can this be? Joseph Ibn Isaac explains (Genesis 50:19-20).

Genesis 50:16-20

16. So they sent a message unto Joseph, saying, Thy father did command before he died, saying, 17 So shall ye say unto Joseph, Forgive, I pray thee now, the transgression of thy brethren, and their sin, for that they did unto thee evil. And now, we pray thee, forgive the transgression of the servants of the God of thy father. And Joseph wept when they spake unto him. 18 And his brethren also went and fell down before his face; and they said, Behold, we are thy servants. 19 And Joseph said unto them, Fear not: for am I in the place of God? 20 And as for you, ye meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive.

Proverbs 16 explains further:

 1 To humans belong the plans of the heart, but from the LORD comes the proper answer of the tongue…4 The LORD works out everything to its proper end— even the wicked for a day of disaster.

Theologians speak of the “primary will/cause” of God and the “secondary will/cause” of man, which work in perfect synchrony. It is, of course difficult to understand the relationship between God’s will (His sovereignty) and man’s will (his responsibility). We read in Isaiah 55:

   8 “ For My thoughts are not your thoughts,
Nor are your ways My ways,” says the LORD.
9 “ For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
So are My ways higher than your ways,
And My thoughts than your thoughts.
10 “ For as the rain comes down, and the snow from heaven,
And do not return there,
But water the earth,
And make it bring forth and bud,
That it may give seed to the sower
And bread to the eater,
11 So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth;
It shall not return to Me void,
But it shall accomplish what I please,
And it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.

God’s will/thoughts/ways are not only higher than (a difference in degree) but also unlike (a difference in kind) our wills/thoughts/ways. No matter what man wills, the will (word) of God will not return to Him void, ”for I will accomplish what I please;” which is totally independent of what man pleases.

To return to Joseph (Genesis 50:20): his brothers planned evil, but God planned it (the evil) for good. Now it won’t do to say that God looked down the corridors of time, saw what Joseph’s brothers were going to get up to, and so(God) acted accordingly. If this were so, it wouldn’t even mean that “God proposes, man disposes,” but that God doesn’t even propose. What you get instead is, “Man proposes, and God does knee-jerks” (see No. 4 below).

There is:

1. The God who knows everything because he sovereignly controls everything, which is­ (surely!) the God of the Bible. Then there are the:

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

3. “Middle knowledge” theists (Molinists) who say 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).

4. There’s also another kind of theist called the “knee-jerk theist” (See The Violation of Philippians 2:6-10 – Knee-jerk theism).

^{Psalm 118}

²² The stone the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone;
²³ the LORD has done this,
and it is marvelous in our eyes.

The builders reject the cornerstone; the Lord has done this; but the builders are still held accountable. There you have it. Marvellous in ”our” eyes; isn’t it?

I could have used many New Testament passages to support the Hebrew Bible passages discussed above (Jesus quotes the Psalm 118 passage above – Matthew 21:42), but I think that I’ve made my point within the boundaries of my Jewish learning, and within the brief of MyJewishLearning.

Where are the Jews in redemptive history? Exactly where they have been predestined to be

Introduction

In Begin at Jerusalem, to the Jew first? Yes and no, I argued that Jesus’ admonition to his disciples to witness first at Jerusalem (to the Jew first) does not apply today. In this article, I present a talk by a Messianic Jewish missionary from Israel. Our little grasshopper of a church – we’re in good company with the ancient Israelites, who were also called a grasshopper of a nation compared to other nations – had a visit from the Messianic Jewish missionary, Israel Iluz of the “Trumpets of Salvation to Israel” ministry,” Jaffa, Israel. It was a special moment for me. Here is the transcript of his message that I recorded in “Christ Church,” Port Elizabeth, South Africa, 19 November, 2012. My clarifications within his message appear in square brackets.

Here is the transcript of Israel Iluz’s talk:

When you see what is happening in Israel it’s unbelievable to see what the Lord has done, where we are historically in redemptive history… We (the State of Israel) are only 64 years old. We are an ancient people but we are young in one sense. God has taken 400 years in Egypt to build and to create a people for himself. Forty years in the desert, 70 years in Babylon in exile, and 2000 years scattered around the world…[you should] take a godly perspective of time and redemptive  history…we are in the end [of the story]. A story that began with Moses before they entered into the land before he was about to die and be gathered to his fathers…[God says to Moses] I want to write you a song, a song that will be a witness to Israel retelling the story of the whole history of the Jewish people: now you are going into the land, your people will worship under God…[in the Song of Moses] “with a foolishness they will anger me…we will make them jealous with a people who is not a people, with a foolish nation i will anger you.

Always when the Lord has called his judgment upon Israel, he pours his mercy and grace and there is restoration. And in the end in that chapter he says I will restore my people and  my land. I want to share with you the fulfilment of this prophecy. Today we are living in a time when these things are being fulfilled. Ezekiel speaks about a time that will come…let’s read from chapter 36:33-36.

“This is what the Sovereign Lord says: On the day I cleanse you from all your sins, I will resettle your towns, and the ruins will be rebuilt. 34 The desolate land will be cultivated instead of lying desolate in the sight of all who pass through it. 35 They will say, “This land that was laid waste has become like the garden of Eden; the cities that were lying in ruins, desolate and destroyed, are now fortified and inhabited.” 36 Then the nations around you that remain will know that I the Lord have rebuilt what was destroyed and have replanted what was desolate. I the Lord have spoken, and I will do it.’”

For those of you who have been in Israel, you can sense, you can touch this reality. The British said, “Let’s give them this land. It’s rubbish, there’s nothing there. We couldn’t manage to do anything in this land. Give it to the Jews.” Today you go to Israel and it’s green. We export flowers. We export Jaffa oranges [Israeli Jews need to be reminded that before the foundation of the State of Israel in1948, the indigenous Arabs had a thriving, world famous Orange enterprise in Jaffa previous to the state of Israel]. Israel is green. The cities are built. The technology is one of the best in the world. All the computers you are using has Israeli technology. Almost every aspect of technology that you touch, that you use, Israelis are there. Today, Israel is a fulflment now.

One of the things he [Ezekiel] says further on, I will bring them into the land. I challenge you to read the whole book [Ezekiel, especially] Chapters 36-37 because later on [it says], “When I will gather them into their land, I will bring them to the land that was desolate. I will restore and I will be their God and they will be my people. They will be in their land forever. No more, there’s no more turning back. There’s no more going back, there’s no more exile. It’s fully restoration and the waiting of the coming of the Messiah. 

And then I [God is speaking] will dwell there. And when Romans  says chapter 11 don’t boast [because of] those who are cut off. The Gentiles will look and see that I am the God who sanctifies them. And they (the Gentiles] will see it and say  wow, what an amazing God. God has chosen this people.

We have been fighting since we crossed the Jordan, the Amorites, the Gergeshites, the Hittites, the Amalekites and so on and so on and so on. We were like grasshoppers [See, our little church does have something in common with the Israelites] in those mighty nations. God said don’t worry I will deliver you. Have you ever met a Gergeshite or a Hittite or a Jebusite? And the Jews? There’s my son [Israel Iluz’s son was present]. There’s a whole nation of us. Throughout all the generations people persecuted us, hated us, killed us. You know what, we haven’t changed, we’re still the stubborn stiff-knecked people. Believe me we are. They [Jews] haven’t changed. You have changed. The Lord has changed your heart. And some of you who hated the Jews before should share the gospel with them and provoke them to jealousy. What do you have that they dont have, what? They have more money than you’, believe me. We have minds, we [have more] in so many ways …what can you give them? The Gospel. If you do not present them the gospel, they will not be provoked to jealousy.

You’re  not a Gentile anymore because a Gentile is a stranger to the covenant. When they see you sharing with them about their God, they will ask, “How do you know that? My rabbi couldn’t explain it to me; you know that, you, from Africa? When I go to the rabbi and ask him he says “I don’t know,” but you know…and you can share with me [a Jew] the truth about this?” And then you will provoke them to jealousy….Give them the Gospel, give them the New Testament. Be equipped, give them a book..share with them about their God. 

When I was in Israel many in the street, you know what they say? I don’t know about God; you talk about God like you see him. If he is, he left us a long time ago…In Ezekiel Chapter 37 verse 11, “Then he said to me, “Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. Behold, they say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are indeed cut off.’”

Israelis say if there is a God he is not with us anymore. Be wise. Don’t share with them Jesus Christ. Share with them the Gospel from the Old Testament…if there is any hope [in them accepting the Gospel], they will look at it from the Old Testament…they have too many barriers…you come from where they stand, from where they’re at, from what they know. What is their familiarity? What is already known to them to some degree. So you learn and study the word of God from the Old Testament; you share with them Yeshua Hamashiach of the Old Testament. And for those whom God called and predestined, they will open their hearts. You give them a book. Maybe they will throw it away in the beginning…So many [Jews] I know, somebody gave them a New Testament. [He tells story of a Jew who was given a New Testament. He put it in his bag and forgot about it, Years later, he went to Mount Carmel to kill himself. He opened his back and found the NT in one of the pockets. Today, he is a pastor].

You be faithful and the Lord will reward your effort.

[In the last part of his message, he invites the congregation to come to Israel for a missions holiday, where they will stay in the “Trumpets for Salvation” hotel, be trained and go out to witness to Jews on the street].

My impressions

This was the first time I had met a Messianic Jewish missionary. It was very special. He, naturally, reminded us of the special love that God has for the Jewish people. But, what I would like to do here is not praise Israel (Iluz) neither Israel (the State), not even the “Israel of God” (Galatians 6), who are, of course, those Israelites whom God elected (predestined) to receive faith in Yeshua/Jesus, and consequently will inherit eternal life.¹

I now address certain sections (in bold below) of Israel Iluz’s message.

I want to share with you the fulfilment of this prophecy. Today we are living in a time when these things are being fulfilled. Ezekiel speaks about a time that will come…let’s read from chapter 36:33-36.

“This is what the Sovereign Lord says: On the day I cleanse you from all your sins, I will resettle your towns, and the ruins will be rebuilt. 34 The desolate land will be cultivated instead of lying desolate in the sight of all who pass through it. 35 They will say, “This land that was laid waste has become like the garden of Eden; the cities that were lying in ruins, desolate and destroyed, are now fortified and inhabited.” 36 Then the nations around you that remain will know that I the Lord have rebuilt what was destroyed and have replanted what was desolate. I the Lord have spoken, and I will do it.’”

Israel Iluz, like many Messianic Jews and all Christian Zionists, believes that these verses refer to the present State of Israel. These verses, however, must point to the future – after Jacob’s trouble – because modern Israel, in large part, either despises or is indifferent to the Holy One of Israel. And no living Jew (who the rabbis define as a Jew) believes in Yeshua, the Holy one of Israel. And surely, Israel can only be cleansed from its iniquities after it (the remnant that survive Jacob’s trouble) will know that “I – Yeshua – am the Lord. Ezekiel 33:36b (underlined above) says it clearly: all these wonderful things will happen “on the day I cleanse you from all your sins.”

We read in Jeremiah: “Do not fear, O Jacob my servant; do not be dismayed, O Israel. I will surely save you out of a distant place, your descendants from the land of their exile. Jacob will again have peace and security, and no one will make him afraid” (Jeremiah 46:27).

Zionist Christians – many of whom are “charismatic” Christians – believe that the present State of Israel consists of Jews who have been saved out of a distant place. However, it is clear that the modern “Jacob” (Israel) has no peace and security. The Bible is clear that only after they have been saved from a distant place will they no longer be afraid. The State of Israel is not only very unsafe, it is the unsafest place on the planet.

After God has restored the remnant to Israel, “they shall serve the Lord their God, and David their king whom I will raise up for them” (Jer. 30:9). . “And My servant David will be King over them, and they will all have one shepherd;” (Ezekiel 37:24a). (Christian Zionism – The Trouble with Jacob).

How do the details in Jeremiah 23:3-4 resonate with the 1948 Christian Zionist position:

“I will gather the remnant of my flock out of all the countries whither I have driven them, and will bring them again to their folds; and they shall be fruitful and multiply. 4 And I will set up shepherds over them, who shall feed them; and they shall fear no more, nor be dismayed, and they shall not lack anything, saith Jehovah” (Jeremiah 23:3-4). That could be 1948. But consider the following points.

They shall be fruitful and multiply.

According to Chief Rabbi of Israel Yona Metzger and Chief Sephardic Rabbi of Israel Shlomo Amar, the ”data presented to the Chief Rabbinate, [show] some 50,000 abortions are performed in Israel every year, 20,000 of which are legal. Adding to the gravity of this transgression is the fact that it impedes the coming of redemption.”

I will set up shepherds over them, who shall feed them.

I ask Christian Zionists, ”do you believe that Jews are exempt from the Gospel imperative to receive Yeshua/Jesus as Messiah and Lord?” If you believe so, then the two chief rabbis mentioned above are your shepherds prophesied in this verse. Few Messianic Jews accept this ”separate covenant” double-minded theory.

They shall not lack anything.

The present chronic housing crisis in the State of Israel disproves this point.

But there is something else that Jeremiah says in our passage that I find more striking. It is the segment that comes immediately before ”they shall not lack anything,” namely, ”they shall fear no more.” It would surely be hard to deny that Israel, as far as external threats to its very existence are concerned, is one of the most, perhaps the most, insecure country in the world. It is, therefore, not foolish to infer that more Israelis live in fear than don’t. Jeremiah 23:4 is more specific; ”they” (that is the people as a whole) shall fear no more.” (Israel: Are we heading for exile or restoration?).

I continue with excerpts from Israel Iluz:

Throughout all the generations people persecuted us.

In Jewish history of Bible times, who ordains the suffering and persecutions of God’s people? Why, God of course. Two examples from Isaiah:

Isaiah 6:8-13

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.” 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. 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.

Isaiah 10:5-11

Ah, Assyria, the rod of my anger; the staff in their hands is my fury! Against a godless nation I send him, and against the people of my wrath I command him,

to take spoil and seize plunder, and to tread them down like the mire of the streets. But he does not so intend, and his heart does not so think;

but it is in his heart to destroy, and to cut off nations not a few; for he says: “Are not my commanders all kings? Is not Calno like Carchemish?

Is not Hamath like Arpad? Is not Samaria like Damascus? As my hand has reached to the kingdoms of the idols, whose carved images were greater

than those of Jerusalem and Samaria, shall I not do to Jerusalem and her idols as I have done to Samaria and her images?”²

Here is Israel Iluz again:

Be wise. Don’t share with them Jesus Christ. Share with them the Gospel from the Old Testament. you come from where they stand, from where they’re at, from what they know. What is their familiarity? What is already known to them to some degree. And for those whom God called and predestined, they will open their hearts.

“Be wise. Don’t share with them Jesus Christ.” Imagine if the Apostles had heeded Iluz’ advice. Enough said.

I was very surprised (delighted as well) to hear the term “predestined” uttered from a Jewish mouth, even a Jew who believed in Jesus. Did Israel Iluz mean that God foresaw those who would believe in him and consequently destined them for salvation. That is what Arminians say. Such an explanation is nonsense, even from William Lane Craig is nonsense. Here is  Alan Kurschner’s A Fast Dose of Human Tradition! on William Lane Craig:

“Especially when it comes to human evil, that we would call sin in theological terms. That God does not will this, he does not promote it. But because of our free will, he permits it.” – William Lane Craig, August 12, 2007, Reasonable Faith, “Problem of Evil.”

But consider this:

“For truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place” (Acts 4:27–28).

Ironically, says Kurschner, a minute later in his radio show he (Craig) cites the event of the crucifixion as a good example of an evil that God does not ordain, but instead is brought about by the actions of man’s free will. Then he indicates that God basically picks up the pieces and makes something good come out of the crucifixion. Of course, Acts 4:27-28, or any Scripture for that matter, was not brought into the discussion. Don’t you love philosophy!

We saw earlier that God predestined Assyria to destroy the Northern Kingdom (called “Israel”), yet see what he does to his instrument, the king of Assyria:

Isaiah 6:12-19

When the Lord has finished all his work on Mount Zion and on Jerusalem, he will punish the speech of the arrogant heart of the king of Assyria and the boastful look in his eyes. For he says:

“By the strength of my hand I have done it, and by my wisdom, for I have understanding; I remove the boundaries of peoples, and plunder their treasures;

like a bull I bring down those who sit on thrones. My hand has found like a nest the wealth of the peoples; and as one gathers eggs that have been forsaken,

so I have gathered all the earth; and there was none that moved a wing or opened the mouth or chirped.” Shall the axe boast over him who hews with it,

or the saw magnify itself against him who wields it? As if a rod should wield him who lifts it, or as if a staff should lift him who is not wood!

Therefore the Lord GOD of hosts will send wasting sickness among his stout warriors, and under his glory a burning will be kindled,

like the burning of fire. The light of Israel will become a fire, and his Holy One a flame, and it will burn and devour his thorns and briers

in one day. The glory of his forest and of his fruitful land the LORD will destroy, both soul and body, and it will be as when a sick man wastes away. 

The remnant of the trees of his forest will be so few that a child can write them down.

Art Katz’s views are hated by the majority of Jews and Christian Zionists, because, first, he said that the Jewish holocaust was the result of the Jewish rejection of the Messiah and, second, that modern Israel is an abomination, is under the wrath of God, and is due for destruction. When I study the scriptures carefully, I find it hard to argue against Art Katz’s view. Here are a few pertinent scriptures.

“On the day that I cleanse you from all your iniquities, I will cause the cities to be inhabited, and the waste places will be rebuilt. And the desolate land will be  cultivated instead of being a desolation in the sight of everyone who passed by. And they will say, ‘This desolate land has become like the garden of Eden; and the waste, desolate, and ruined cities are fortified and inhabited” (Ezekiel 36:33-35).

“Like the flock for sacrifices, like the flock at Jerusalem during her appointed feasts, so will the waste cities be filled with flocks of men. Then they will know that I am the Lord” (Ezekiel 36:38).

These verses must point to the future – after Jacob’s trouble – because modern Israel, in large part,  either despises or is indifferent to the Holy One of Israel. And  no living Jew  (who the rabbis define as a Jew) believes in Yeshua, the Holy one of Israel (Chollile, God forbid!), they exclaim). And surely, Israel can only be cleansed from its iniquities after it (the remnant that survive Jacob’s trouble) will know that “I – Yeshua – am the Lord.

“Do not fear, O Jacob my servant; do not be dismayed, O Israel. I will surely save you out of a distant place, your descendants from the land of their exile. Jacob will again have peace and security, and no one will make him afraid” (Jeremiah 46:27).

Israel Iluz believes, with Christian Zionists, that the present State of Israel consists of Jews who have been saved out of a distant place. However, it is clear that the modern “Jacob”  (Israel) has no peace and security. The Bible is clear that after they have been saved from a distant place, they will no longer be afraid. The State of Israel is not only very unsafe, it is, as I mentioned earlier, the unsafest place on the planet.

After God has restored the remnant to Israel, “they shall serve the Lord their God, and David their king whom I will raise up for them” (Jer. 30:9).  “And My servant David will be King over them, and they will all have one shepherd” (Ezekiel 37:24a).

In conclusion, I prefer to say that I have not criticised but rather critiqued Israel Iluz. This is the space where one is supposed to say nice things about the person one has ripped to shreds. Silly.

1 I am saying that Jews who follow Torah but don’t believe that Yeshua is the Messiah will not inherit eternal life?” Yes, that is what the Bible says, loud and clear:

“The one believing in him is not condemned, but the one who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God” (John 3:17-18).

And:

“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.” So the Jews grumbled about him, because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” They said, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?” 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 6:37-44).

2 Here’s a thing for my Arminian friends. We saw above that God ordained that the Assyrian king destroy Israel, yet in the section immediately following, God says that he will punish the arrogant Assyrian king:

Isaiah 6:12-19

When the Lord has finished all his work on Mount Zion and on Jerusalem, he will punish the speech of the arrogant heart of the king of Assyria and the boastful look in his eyes. For he says:

“By the strength of my hand I have done it, and by my wisdom, for I have understanding; I remove the boundaries of peoples, and plunder their treasures; like a bull I bring down those who sit on thrones.

My hand has found like a nest the wealth of the peoples; and as one gathers eggs that have been forsaken, so I have gathered all the earth; and there was none that moved a wing

or opened the mouth or chirped.” Shall the axe boast over him who hews with it, or the saw magnify itself against him who wields it? As if a rod should wield him who lifts it,

or as if a staff should lift him who is not wood! Therefore the Lord GOD of hosts will send wasting sickness among his stout warriors, and under his glory a burning will be kindled,

like the burning of fire. The light of Israel will become a fire, and his Holy One a flame, and it will burn and devour his thorns and briers in one day. The glory of his forest and of his fruitful land

the LORD will destroy, both soul and body, and it will be as when a sick man wastes away. The remnant of the trees of his forest will be so few that a child can write them down.

No, God did not look down the corridors of time to see whether the Assyrian king was going to be horrible or not, and, based on that foreknowledge, arrange to punish Israel. For the simple reason that God acts (sovereignly); he doesn’t react (to what his creatures, even man, is going to do).

Depiction and Argument in C. S. Lewis: The formula of Blood atonement and the Blessed sacrament

We have an altar, whereof they have no right to eat which serve the tabernacle.
For the bodies of those beasts, whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the high priest for sin, are burned without the camp. Wherefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered without the gate.

(Hebrews 13:10-12)

(This is a follow-on from Penal substitution: C S Lewis and the “formula” of Christ’s blood shed for our sins).

Introduction

In the Bible, the greatest commandment is “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your strength” and the second is “Love your neighbour as yourself.” For C.S. Lewis the adoration of the “Blessed sacrament” is second, and “Love your neighbour” is in third place. (C.S. Lewis and the three great commandments: Love God, love the blessed sacrament, love your neighbour; necessarily in that order). He also proposes that you can choose which “formula” (of faith) works for you. For example, instead of saying “I have been washed in the blood of the Lamb,” you could opt for “Christ died for my sins.” Lewis’ reasoning seems to be that it all comes out in the wash. In this article I argue that such talk is not merely irresponsible, but not Christianity at all. I also examine the link between Lewis’ elevation of the “Blessed sacrament and his denigration of blood atonement.

Depiction and Argument in C. S. Lewis

First a definition of the term the Passion of Christ. “Passion.” In normal English usage, “passion” means “strong emotion” of short duration. The heart of the “Passion” lies in its historical (etymological) meaning. “Passion” comes from the Latin root passio “to render.” So when we suffer, we have to submit to causes that deprive us of our freedom or well-being; we remain passive, and that is what the “Passion” of Christ means. (See Passivity and Suffering in the Passion of Christ).

Mel Gibson’s “Passion of the Christ” presents Mel Gibson’s view on how Christ died, but said nothing about why He died. The film, though, was indeed meant to be about the physical suffering of Christ, and not about why he suffered physically – and spiritually. His spiritual suffering, Christians believe, was far greater than his physical suffering, which itself was unique in the history of a crucifixion. This was so was because of the appalling treatment he received before the crucifixion. (Mel Gibson’s “How” in the Passion of the Christ: And the Why?). Gibson’s depiction of the Passion – many hate to admit this – is a moving description of the physical suffering of Christ.

C.S. Lewis is a master of depiction. We admire C.S. Lewis as “a master at two rhetorical arts, which he combined fluently: argument and depiction,” This double mastery contributed much to the success of his “Mere Christianity”, which “became the most important and effective defence of the Christian faith in its century.” (John G. Stackhouse Jr., “Why ‘Mere Christianity’ Should Have Bombed,” Christianity today, December, 2012).

“Mere Christianity” is filled with deep philosophical/ theological arguments such as the the moral argument for the existence of God. Lewis shows how moral absolutes presuppose the existence of God. Mere Christianity works, says John Stackhouse, because “Lewis can both show and tell. He can tell us what he thinks we should think, and then make it appear for us in an image that usually lasts long after the middle steps of the argument have vanished from memory.” Here is an example from Mere Christianity:

“Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of – throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.”

One cannot separate why Christ died (which Gibson above is silent about) from what Christ wants to do for sinners (the topic of Lewis’ paragraph above). What Lewis thinks – and tells us to think – is indeed unforgettably vivid ( “throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards”). The problem is that not only the middle steps of his argument but all of it from beginning to end is an imaginative flop. The reason: if the Gospel starts in the flesh – “Imagine yourself as a living house” – it may end in the flesh – Imagine yourself as a dead house.

Here is the biblical account (a masterful display of Christian argument and depiction). Begin by imagining yourself, not as a living house, but as dead in your house. Here is the Apostle Paul:

As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, 2 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. 3 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. 4 But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. 6 And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 7 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. 8 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. 10 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).

We, in our natural state, are sinners standing under God’s divine judgement. God’s justice requires punishment. Instead of punishing sinners with eternal punishment, God the Father sent His Son into the world to suffer and die on their behalf. Whereas in the view (above), the most important point is the change that Christ’s Passion has wrought in sinners, the more important point is what Christ’s Passion has wrought in His Father, namely, the Father’s wrath has been “propitiated” (expiated, satisfied). The effect of the Passion was the overthrow of the powers of darkness (the devil and his angels) and the granting of God’s totally unmerited love. By dying on the cross, Jesus paid the price for the sins of his “sheep” (John 10:3), turning the Father’s ‘no’ into a ‘yes’. Jesus Christ became the sinner’s substitute for the punishment sinners deserved. “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). (Mel Gibson’s “How” in the Passion of the Christ: And the Why?).

Find the formula that suits

“Imagine yourself as living house” is a good foundation for what Lewis wants Everyman to think about the plan of salvation. What he thinks you should think is that you can think what you like (almost):

“You can say 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.”

Yes they’re all true, but its highly irresponsible, at best, to tell human beings, who, in their natural state, all hate Christ that if the “blood of the lamb” formula (penal substitution, substitutionary atonement, blood atonement) does not work for you, ditch it. I will not be nice about it and so will quarrel about it.

The Blessed Sacrament and the Blood

In contrast to the Lewis’ à la carte of what Christ did, where the shedding of Christ blood for sinners is one among several delectables on the menu, what Lewis tells us to think about the “blessed sacrament” carries for more weight. In his “Weight of glory,” we read:

“There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendours. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously—no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner—no mere tolerance or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses.”

Jesus reiterates the two greatest commandments of Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and soul and the “royal law” (James 2:8), love you neighbour as yourself. For Lewis the two great commandments become three, with “love the blessed sacrament” displacing the “royal” commandment into third place.

For Lewis, what does it matter whether a Christian believes in the “formula” that he is washed in Christ’s blood? It’s no better than believing that “the Father has forgiven us because Christ has done for us what we ought to have done.” But this bloodless salvation through Christ’s life (or through what “we ought to have done” ) rather than through His Cross is, according to scripture, no salvation at all. The New Testament mentions the “blood” at least 90 times: “And almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission ( of sin)” (Heb. 9:22). “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” (Heb. 9:12).

Where does all this leave Lewis’s “second” great commandment – love the “blessed sacrament.” Why not make the former, as he made the blood sacrifice of Christ, one more optional formula. Or should a person eventually wean himself off “mere” Christianity and mature into full blooded bloodied Christianity, without which there can be nothing “blessed” about the Eucharist for the obvious reason that without the sacrifice on the cross re-presented (not represented) in the Mass there is no body. No body of Christ means no re-presenting of the body of Christ in the Eucharist, the sacrament of “Communion.” (C.S. Lewis and the three great commandments: Love God, love the blessed sacrament, love your neighbour; necessarily in that order). For the Protestant Reformers, the reason for the existence (raison d’être) of the act of communion, in which the church – the “body of Christ) partakes of the bread and wine – is to commemorate Christ’s body broken and blood spilt for his sheep. Outside of communion, the bread and wine no longer have any Christian significance. (See Note¹ on different views of the “Eucharist”).

Lewis regards the shedding of the blood of the precious Saviour as an optional “formula” of faith. It is hard to fathom that a good reader such as Lewis could arrive at such a view of clear scriptural passages that stress the centrality of the “blood” in redemption. Perhaps Lewis’ view that the incarnation (the word made flesh) is the grand miracle my help us understand why he thinks that second to the incarnation is the “Blessed sacrament” (the bread made flesh; the wine made blood).

The word made flesh; the bread made flesh

Here is his opening to “The Grand Miracle” (in ”God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics, Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1975, p. 80), wherein he stresses the importance of miracles in Christianity, and what he says is the pre-eminent miracle of the Incarnation:

“One is very often asked at present whether we could not have a Christianity stripped, or, as people who asked it say, ‘freed’ from its miraculous elements, a Christianity with the miraculous elements suppressed. Now, it seems to me that precisely the one religion in the world, or, at least the only one I know, with which you could not do that is Christianity. In a religion like Buddhism, if you took away the miracles attributed to Gautama Buddha in some very late sources, there would be no loss; in fact, the religion would get on very much better without them because in that case the miracles largely contradict the teaching. Or even in the case of a religion like Mohammedanism, nothing essential would be altered if you took away the miracles. You could have a great prophet preaching his dogmas without bringing in any miracles; they are only in the nature of a digression, or illuminated capitals. But you cannot possibly do that with Christianity, because the Christian story is precisely the story of one grand miracle, the Christian assertion being that what is beyond all space and time, what is uncreated, eternal, came into nature, into human nature, descended into His own universe, and rose again, bringing nature up with Him. It is precisely one great miracle. If you take that away there is nothing specifically Christian left.” (See The Incarnation or Substitutionary Atonement, which is the grand miracle? CS Lewis and John MacArthur say the former; George MacDonald, definitely not the latter).

And what if you take away the “formula” of we were washed in his blood? Adolph Saphir hits the nail on the head: “But while we adore the great mystery of the Incarnation, let us remember, that the Incarnation necessarily leads to the Crucifixion. The mystery of the manger involves the mystery of the cross. It is not enough to know that unto us the Child was bom, the Son was given, that the Word was made flesh. He never would have come down to earth unless His purpose had been to offer His life as a sacrifice for sin.”(Adolph Saphir, from his lectures on 1 Corinthians 2).

But isn’t Saphir merely referring to one of Lewis’ optional formulas, namely, “he died for my sins.” No, Saphir emphasises crucifixion, the cross. Lewis regarded George MacDonald as his “master.” MacDonald considered the idea of penal substitutionary atonement (blood atonement) an affront to God’s justice. This fact may help help us understand the reason for Lewis’ attitude to the blood. God’s justice and the lamb that was slain: A critique of George MacDonald’s rejection of penal substitutionary atonement.

Conclusion

The Passion – the breaking of Christ’s body and the shedding of his blood on the cross – is the central even of human history. If you are one of those squeamish types, you don’t have to stick with the formula “I have been washed in the blood of the Lamb.” What is important, Lewis maintains, is not to believe the means (“Father if you are willing take this cup [of blood] from me” – Luke 22:42a) but to believe the end (salvation). For this reason “Christ died for my sins,” Lewis proposes, should cut it. This may be “mere Christianity” but is certainly not Christianity. For undermining the blood, C.S. Lewis, most of whose work I admire very much, deserves censure.

“Now the God of peace, that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make perfect in every good work to do his will, working in you that which is wellpleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ; to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen”  (Hebrews 13:20-21).

1Here is Louis Berkoff from his “Summary of Christian doctrine”:

a. THE VIEW OF ROME. The Church of Rome conceives of the presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper in a PHYSICAL SENSE. On the ground of Jesus’ statement, “this is my body,” it holds that bread and wine change into the body and blood of Christ, though they continue to look and taste like bread and wine. This view is open to several objections: (1) Jesus, standing before the disciples in the flesh, could not very well say that He had His body in His hand; (2) Scripture speaks of the bread as bread even after the supposed change has taken place, 1Cor. 10;17; 11:26-28; and (3) It is contrary to common sense to believe that what looks and smells and tastes like bread and wine is indeed flesh and blood.

b. THE LUTHERAN VIEW. Lutherans maintain that, while bread and wine remain what they are, the whole person of Christ, body and blood, is present IN, UNDER, and ALONG WITH, the elements. When Christ had the bread in His hand, He held His body along with it, and therefore could say, “this is my body.” Every one who receives the bread also receives the body, whether he be a believer or not. This is no great improvement on the Roman Catholic doctrine. It ascribes to Jesus’ words the unnatural meaning “this accompanies my body.” Moreover, it is burdened with the impossible notion that the body of Christ is omnipresent.

c. THE ZWINGLIAN VIEW. Zwingli denied the bodily presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper, while admitting that He is spiritually present in the faith of believers. For him the Lord’s Supper was mainly a mere sign or symbol, a memorial of the death of Christ, and an act of profession on the part of believers. Some of his statements, however, seem to indicate that he also regarded it as a seal or pledge of what God does for the believer in Christ.

d. CALVIN’S VIEW. Calvin took an intermediate position. Instead of the physical and local, he taught the spiritual presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper. In distinction from Zwingli he stressed the deeper significance of the sacrament. He saw in it a seal and pledge of what God does for believers rather than a pledge of their consecration to God. The virtues and effects of the sacrifice of Christ on the cross are present and actually conveyed to believers by the power of the Holy Spirit.

(See related article Penal substitution: C S Lewis and the “formula” of Christ’s blood shed for our sins).

Jewish and Christian miracles: Equal measures, please

Why, asks someone on Chabad.org, don’t we see miracles today like the Jews saw in the story of Chanukah? And don’t tell me that every day is a miracle, childbirth is a miracle, and the sunrise is a miracle. I am talking about splitting seas, dead people coming alive, and voices-from-heaven and hand-writing-on-the-wall type of miracles. The really supernatural stuff — what happened to that? Here are a few different answers:

Martin Buber

Martin Buber (1878-1965) was born in Vienna where he lived for a time with his father, Solomon Buber, a famous midrash scholar. He was a member of the Third Zionist Congress of 1899. At the age of 26 he began a study of Chassidic literature. During World War I, he founded the Jewish National Committee, which helped Eastern European Jews who were suffering under the Axis powers. Buber was an idealist and promoted the establishment of a joint Arab-Jewish state. In 1938 he settled in Palestine and was appointed a professor of philosophy at Hebrew University. He died in in Israel 1965.”

In any good philosophy course, you’re bound to find Buber’s most famous work I and Thou (1923) which focuses on two kinds of relationships: the I-It and the I-Thou. In the I-It relationship, objects and people are viewed in terms of their functions; for example, when it comes to diseases, people are often best regarded as organisms rather than as individuals. Scientists learn about the world through observation, measurement, and examination. For Buber, all such processes are I-It relationships. In the I-Thou relationship, people are best viewed as individuals. That is what I learnt in my philosophy course at university. What I did not come across was Buber’s view on miracles, not normal fare in a philosophy course. Buber was greatly influenced by chassidic literature.

“On miracles” by Martin Buber

Here is Buber, “On Miracles.” (italics are added for emphasis, and square brackets for clarity):

“The concept of miracle which is permissible from the historical approach can be defined at its starting point as an abiding astonishment. The philosophizing and the religious person both wonder at the phenomenon but the one neutralizes his wonder in ideal knowledge, while the other [the religious person] abides in that wonder; no knowledge, no cognition, can weaken his astonishment. Any causal explanation only deepens the wonder for him. The great turning points in religious history are based on the fact that again and ever again an individual and a group attached to him (an individual] wonder and keep on wondering at a natural phenomenon, at a historical event, or at both together… They sense and experience it as a wonder. This, to be sure, is only the starting-point of the historical concept of wonder but it cannot be explained away.

Miracle is not something “supernatural” or “superhistorical,” but an incident, an event which can be fully included in the objective, scientific nexus of nature and history; the vital meaning of which, however for the person to whom it occurs, destroys the security of the whole nexus of knowledge for him and explodes the fixity of the fields of experience named “Nature ” and “History.” Miracle is simply what happens; in so far as it meets people who are capable of receiving it, or prepared to receive it, as miracle. The extraordinary element favors this coming together, but it is not characteristic of it; the normal and ordinary call also undergo a transfiguration into miracle in the light of the suitable hour.

The historical reality of Israel leaving Egypt cannot be grasped if the conception of the accompanying, preceding, guiding God is left out. This is the ” God of the Fathers”, with whom the tribes have now established contact. He has always been a God who wandered with his own and showed them the way. But now he has been revealed to them afresh through the secret of his name as the one who remains present with his own. He leads them by a way differing from the customary one of the caravans and armies. He has his own ideas of guidance, and those who follow him find welfare….

Following his leader; Moses comes to the shore, he steps on the sands that are barely covered by shallow water; and the hosts follow him as he follows the God. At this point occurs whatever occurs, and it is apprehended as a miracle. It is irrelevant whether “much” or “little,” unusual things or usual, tremendous or trifling events happened; what is vital is only that what happened was experienced, while it happened, as the act of God. The people saw in whatever it was they saw “the great hand” and they “believed in YHVH” or, more correctly translated, “they gave their trust to YHVH.”

(Martin Buber, Moses, (Amherst, NY: Humanity Books), 1988) (See Christian and Jewish faith: Martin Buber and Jewish bubus).

Reconstructionist Judaism

In contrast, Mordecai Kaplan, the founder of “Reconstructionist Judaism” did not believe in miracles, nor do any of the adherents of the movement. In Reconstructionism, God is not the supernatural personal being of the Torah, with a mind, a will, who loves, who judges, and so forth, but is a transcendent power, which evolves. (The Torah: shared myths and other stories in Reconstructionist Judaism).

Recall the question that began this examination: “And don’t tell me that every day is a miracle, childbirth is a miracle, and the sunrise is a miracle. I am talking about splitting seas, dead people coming alive, and voices-from-heaven and hand-writing-on-the-wall type of miracles. The really supernatural stuff — what happened to that?”

Tim Hegg’s “Apostolic Judaism”

Here is an answer that our desperate enquirer made abundntly clear he didn’t want to hear:

In his “Historic Christianity & Apostolic Judaism: The Core Difference,” Tim Hegg maintains that historic Christianity is a dualistic religion. One of it dualisms involves an opposition between the world and heaven. One example of this split, he says, is “miracles,” In his “Miracles as the evident hand of God in everyday life versus miracles as a taste of “heaven” he says:

“In the dualism of Historic Christianity miracles fall into the realm of the “heavenly” and transport man into a world in which he does not presently dwell. In contrast, miracles are seen by Apostolic Judaism as the evidence of God in our midst. Surely Historic Christianity would agree that the birth of a child, for instance, is in fact a miracle. But these “common” miracles are not given their due because they are just that, common. Apostolic Judaism, however, confesses that the miracles of God are with us everyday, evening, morning, and afternoon… One might argue that if the common events of life are in fact miracles, then the very concept of “miracles” has lost its meaning. But such an argument betrays the very difference I’m attempting to point out. For the biblical record accords all of man’s existence to the miraculous hand of God: “in Him we live and move and exist” (Acts 17:28). Biblical faith gives the believer the eyes to see that what others call “common” is, in fact, the miraculous hand of God. It is for this reason that Apostolic Judaism finds the necessity of blessing God for everything: “pray without ceasing” (lThess 5: I7); “in everything give thanks” (which means, “pronounce a blessing,” called a brachah in Hebrew [1 Thess 5: l]). Historic Christianity views life as mundane and hopes to be elevated by the miraculous; Apostolic Judaism lives life as sacred and expects the presence of God’s miraculous hand because He dwells with us. Indeed, the call of faith upon God’s children is that they should live with the expectation that God will bless them as He has promised He would. Our hope is not that God will act out of the ordinary (i.e., give us miracles) but that since God dwells with us we may anticipate His miraculous hand in the everyday events of our lives. Growing in faith means the ability to see God’s miracles in what others only call common.

Chabad (de facto) Judaism

And “de facto” Judaism, what does it say about miracles. (According to Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, Chabad Judaism is “de facto Judaism”). Of the different kinds of Judaisms, Chabad is the closest to rabbinical Judaism. One of the notable dimension of Chabad Judaism is the chassidic dimension, which, as we saw above, purportedly had a great influence on Martin Buber, who, ironically, is closer to Hegg’s position on miracles than Buber is to the chassidism of Chabad, which does believe in the distinction between the natural and the supernatural, where the latter only are defined as miracles. For example, the chassidic literature abounds in miracles, defined as supernatural occurrences. “No sage since Biblical times is more known than Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov [the founder of Chassidism] as an incredible miracle worker” (Stories of Baal Shem Tov at Chabad.org).

Another example from Menachem Posner for Chabad.org on the 10 miracles in the Temple enumerated in Ethics of the Fathers 5:5:

“Ten miracles were performed for our forefathers in the Holy Temple: No woman ever miscarried because of the smell of the holy meat. The holy meat never spoiled. Never was a fly seen in the slaughterhouse. Never did the High Priest have an accidental seminal discharge on Yom Kippur. The rains did not extinguish the wood-fire burning upon the altar. The wind did not prevail over the column of smoke [rising from the altar]. No disqualifying problem was ever discovered in the Omer offering, the Two Loaves or the Showbread. They stood crowded but had ample space in which to prostrate themselves. Never did a snake or scorpion cause injury in Jerusalem. And no man ever said to his fellow ‘My lodging in Jerusalem is too cramped for me.’”

Chabad will go on to argue that although there were miracles in ancient Israel, these hardly occur today. Here is their response to the question:

(My comments appear in italics)

“What is the Jewish standpoint on miracles? How important or unimportant is miraculous phenomena to the Jewish believer?

Answer:

Allow me to rephrase your question in the opposite manner: “What is the Jewish standpoint on nature? How important or unimportant is natural phenomena to the Jewish believer?”

G-d manages every aspect of creation at every given moment. There are no rules He must follow. There are no forces He must contend with. All is in His hands.

The above is the historic Christianity view, as well as Hegg’s “apostolic Judaism” view.

Nonetheless, He chose to create a system called “nature.” An arrangement of fixed rules. An order of causes and effects. Why did he create nature? In order to conceal His identity and hide His footprints. He wanted a world in which things would appear as if they run on their own, and thus, force Man to discover G-d on his own. In fact, the very word for nature in Hebrew, “tevah,”¹ also translates as “sunk.” Nature is G-d’s way of submerging His presence under a sea of scientific laws and patterns. And Man is a deep-sea diver given the task of finding G-d’s hand which lurks behind the veil of nature.

And so, life is very similar to a game of “Hide and Go Seek.” But every now and then, G-d emerges from His hiding place and breaks through the self-imposed shackles of nature. The sea is split. A scientific rule is broken. Mother Nature is proven wrong. Perhaps, a child is cured from an incurable disease. Or our nation is saved from a seemingly hopeless situation. And it is through these supernatural events that we realize that nature too is merely a creation of G-d.”

Chabad equates “nature” with “hidden” (sunk below the surface) because, they say, God plays “hide ‘n seek” with humanity. Judaism’s (Chabad) view of nature as “G-d’s way of submerging His presence under a sea of scientific laws and patterns” is certainly not the view found in the “Old Testament” and the “New Testament” (and I would imagine in “apostolic Judaism).”

For example, the psalms are packed with peons of praise to God for his natural creation.Psalm 19:2 (Hebrew Bible) The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth His handiwork (19:1 in English translations).

Indeed, God’s very first words to Israel, and the world, are “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”

In Romans 1 we read:

“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 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. 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 (Romans 1:18-21).

Biblical Christianity contains two kinds of revelation: general (nature) and divine revelation (the New Testament of which miracles are a part).

As far as miracles are concerned both “de facto” Judaism (Chabad) and historic Christianity, in contrast to Apostolic Judaism (Hegg), distinguish between God’s natural creation and his supernatural intervention, where only the latter is regarded as miraculous.

It may, Chabad continues, also be interesting to note that while most missionaries will cite Jesus’ performance of miracles as proof that he is the messiah, the New Testament itself indicates that there could be false messiahs who present miracles in order to trick God’s people, but they are false. Matthew 24:24: “For false Christs and false prophets will arise and will show great signs and wonders, so as to mislead, if possible, even the elect.

This being the case, miracles prove nothing, and the fact that the New Testament claims that Jesus did miracles prove nothing concerning Jesus’ role as messiah or his alleged divinity. But we don’t need the New Testament to tell us this, thousands of years before Jesus came on the scene, we were warned that there may come some teachers who would claim to be prophets and who would do miracles, whose ultimate goal would be to lead us to worship differently from what was handed down to us through Moses.

Apply equal measures, please. By the same token, we should also be wary of modern Jewish miracles, for example from Chabad: “Publicizing the miracles which G-d has done in our times is relevant to bringing the true and complete Redemption in actuality” - “The Rebbe” (Schneerson). Photo below.

The last verse in John’s Gospel explains the reason for the miracles described in the book:

21:30 Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; 31 but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

De facto Judaism concurs that miracles are signs. Recall the ten miracles in Temple times described above. So, it is not true that mainstream Judaism would say that miracles prove nothing. If, however, some Jews insist that miracles prove nothing, where do they go to prove that they have God’s revelation? Why, to the miracle of miracles, of course; to the hundreds of thousands of Israelites who witnessed God in the thunder and the lightning of the revelation at Sinai.

Here is a Chabad’s cinematic description of the revelation at Sinai:

“The dawn of the third day broke amid thunder and lightning that filled the air. Heavy clouds hung over the mountain, and the steadily growing sounds of the Shofar made the people shake and tremble with fear. Moses led the children of Israel out of the camp and placed them at the foot of Mount Sinai, which was all covered by smoke and was quaking, for G-d had descended upon it in fire. The sound of the Shofar grew louder, but suddenly all sounds ceased, and an absolute silence ensued; and then G-d proclaimed the Ten Commandments…”

Here is a comment on my site from an anonymous Jew:

“Consider that perhaps the reason you’re so fascinated with the Jews and their teachings is because you recognize that, before the publication of Paul’s dreams and the Nicene committee that gathered to vote on a new religion, long before that, there was a revelation at Sinai. That was something unprecedented in human history, and it has never been repeated since then. An entire nation stood together at the base of a mountain and experienced collective prophecy. Not one person having a dream, but all of them. Theirs is thus the only credible religion in the world.”

So, the – quite popular Jewish – claim to the falsity of Christianity is based on two mind-blowing dreams: 1 the collective dream at Sinai and 2. Paul’s dream on the road to Damascus.

John Owen (1616-1683) on Miracles

A Jew will tell you that no Gentile can understand the Hebrew scriptures as well as he. You’ve only to read a bit of Owen – after reading a lot of the rabbinical literature – to discover the unreality of such a claim. Here is a small selection of his “miracles in the Bible” from Volume 1 of his seven-volume “An Exposition of the Epistle to the Hebrews”:

His 17th century English idiom is unfamiliar and his style a bit difficult, but I think it is preferable that he speak for himself. I have entitled this excerpt, “What is good for the Jewish goose is good for the Christian gander.”

(My italics)

All true and real miracles are effects of divine power. Many things prodigious, marvellous, led or monstrous, differing from the common and ordinary productions of nature, may be brought forth by an extraordinary concurrence of causes. Many marvellous things may be wrought by the great, hidden, and to us unknown power of wicked spirits : many things may have an appearance of prodigy and wonder, by the force of some deceit, pretence, or delusion, which attends the exhibition of them. But real miracles are effects so above, beside, or contrary to the nature and efficacy of any or all natural causes, that by no application or disposition of them, though never so uncouth and unusual, can they be produced. Miracles, therefore, must of necessity be the effects of an almighty creating power, causing somewhat to exist in matter or manner out of nothing, or out of that which is more adverse unto the being or manner of existence given unto it. Such are the works of raising the dead, opening the eyes men born blind. And this position the Jews will not deny, seeing they make it the foundation of their adherence to the law of Moses.

When God puts forth his miracle-working power, in the confirmation of any word or doctrine, he avows it to be of, and from himself; to be absolutely and infallibly true, setting the fullest and openest seal unto it which men, who cannot discern his essence or being, are capable of receiving or discerning. And therefore when a doctrine, in itself such as becometh the holiness and righteousness of God, is confirmed by the emanation of his divine power in the working of miracles, no greater evidence of the truth of it can be given, even by God himself.

The Lord Jesus, in the days of his fiesh, wrought many great, real miracles, in the confirmation of the testimony that he gave concerning himself, that he was the Christ, the Son of God : see John v. 20, vii. 31, X. 25, xii. 37- Greater confirmation it could not have. Now, that the Lord Jesus wrought the miracles recorded by the evangelists, with others innumerable that are not recorded, (see John xx. 30, xxi. 25,) we have in general all the testimony, evidence, and means of certainty, that any man can possibly have of things which he saw not done with his own eyes. And to suppose that a man can have no assurance of any thing but of what he sees or feels himself, as it overthrows all the foundations of knowledge, and of all human society, yea, of every thing that as men we either do, or know; so when this is granted, it will necessarily follow that we know not the things that we see, any longer than whilst we see them ; and perhaps not even then, seeing the evidence we have of knowing anything by our senses proceeds from principles and presumptions which we never saw, nor ever can see. These things, however, need not be insisted on, for in reasoning with the Jews, we have all the advantage for the confirmation of what we affirm, that we either need to desire, or that the subject can admit of.

We plead our own records, that are written by the evangelists. And here we have but one request to make to the Jews, namely, that they would lay no exceptions against them, which they know to be of equal force against the writings of Moses and all the prophets. If they declare themselves to be such bedlamites, as to set their own houses on fire, for no other end but to endanger those of their neighbours; if they will destroy the principles of their own faith and religion, to cast the broken pieces of them at the heads of Christians… I desire then to know what objection the Jews can make to this record, which mutatis mutandis [only changing what has to be changed] may not be made to the Mosaic writings. And if they have always held all such objections to be invalid, when opposed to the evidences on which they believe those writings, why will they not give us leave to affirm the same of these objections, when urged against the New Testament Scriptures, which we receive and believe on no less certain testimonies and evidences ? Unless, then, they can plead something against the credit of these writers, or disprove that which is written by them, from records of equal weight with them, (which they can never do, nor do they attempt it,) they have nothing reasonable to plead in this cause. To tell us that they do not believe what is written by them, and that their forefathers did not believe it, is, as to themselves, no more than what we know, and as to their forefathers, is nothing but what those very writers testify concerning them. To expect, then, a proof of the consent of their fathers to that record, while the record itself witnesseth that they dissented from it, is to overthrow the record and all that is contained in it. The Jews, then, have nothing to oppose to this testimony, but only their own unbelief; which, for all the reasons that have been insisted on, cannot be admitted as any just objection. History or circumstance they have none to oppose to it.

We plead the notoriety [prominence] of the miracles wrought by Christ, and the tradition delivering them down unto us. This also the Jews plead concerning the miracles of Moses. They were, say they, openly wrought in the sight of all Israel, and that they were so wrought, the testimony of Israel in succeeding ages is, next to the writings themselves, the best and only witness which they can produce. And wherein doth our testimony come short of theirs ? Nay, both on account of their first notoriety, and also of succeeding tradition, our evidence far exceeds what they have to plead. For the miracles of Moses were indeed wrought openly, but the most of them were wrought only in the sight of that one people, whom he had under his own conduct, and in a wilderness remote from any converse with other nations; and that in the dark times of the world, when men were generally stupid and credulous, as having not been imposed on by the delusions by which the following ages were awakened. The Jews also lay no greater weight on any miracles, than on those which were in the wilderness of Midian, which had no witness unto them but that of Moses himself. But the miracles of Jesus were all, or most of them, wrought before the eyes of multitudes, envying, hating, and persecuting him ; and that in the most knowing days of the world, when reason and learning had improved the light of the minds of men to the utmost of their capacity. They were wrought upon multitudes for sundry years together, and were all of them sifted by his adversaries, to try if they could discover any thing of deceit in them. And although his personal ministry was confined to one nation, yet the miracles wrought by his disciples in his name and by his power, for the confirmation of his being the Messiah, were spread all the world over; so that all mankind were first filled with the report of them, and then satisfied with their truth: and lastly, the generality of them with faith in him, whom they directed unto. The notoriety [prominence], therefore, of his miracles far exceeds that of those of Moses. And for the means whereby the certainty of them is continued unto us, whether we respect the number of persons confirming it, or their quality, or their having no temptation from any carnal advantage, or their suffering for their testimony ; it is notorious [well-known] that the secluded circumstances of the Jews could not provide evidence which can in any way be compared with it. So that we may truly say, that no Jew can on any rational account give credit to the truth of the miracles wrought by Moses, and deny it to the record of those which were wrought by the Lord Jesus.

1“Tevah” should be Teva (the “h” is the ה (Hei)

In Hebrew there is

teva (טבע) – “nature”.

tevah (תבה) – “box” or “ark”

Chabad.org is thinking of teva not tevah; tevah is not “nature” but “ark”(Noah) or “box” (baby Moses on the river).

“nature” derives from teva (טבע), which has the following meanings (I stress the last one one): following meanings (I stress the last one):

to sink, sink into, sink down, pierce, settle down, drown, be settled, be planted

Psalm 69:14

Deliver me from sinking [teva טבע]in the mire; let me be delivered from my enemies and from the deep waters.

to sink, sink into, sink down, pierce, settle down, drown, be settled, be planted

Psalm 9:15

טָבְעוּ גֹויִם בְּשַׁחַת tav-oo (have sunk) goyim (nations) b’shachat (in pit)

The nations have sunk (down) [teva טבע] in the pit

Christian and Jewish faith: Martin Buber and Jewish bubus

I examine the Christian concepts of “believe,” “believe in” and ”trust” and present a few misguided views on what these mean.

Would it be more correct to say that I don’t believe in Jesus but simply BELIEVE him? No, because it is both. Similarly, a believing Jew, I suggest, believes in God as well as believes God. What is important is that believing logically precedes believing in (trust). There is no need to prove his emunah (belief and trust). “In the beginning” (Genesis 1:1) should be enough, and if not, then the man doesn’t have, according to Martin Buber, a genuine biblical bone in his body. “Biblical man, says Martin Buber, is never in doubt to the existence of God. In professing his faith, his EMUNAH*, he merely expresses his trust that the living God is near to him as he was to Abraham and that he entrusts himself to Him” (“Two types of faith” 1962).

Scripture comes alive because God gives it life, and thus it is God who opens the eyes that we may understand. This opening of the eyes is faith. One spends the rest of one’s life adjusting the eyes to the light, keeping in mind that in His light we see the light (Psalm 36:9). What a contrast to Dylan Thomas’ “Rage against the dying of the light” do we find in “Who hath put wisdom in the inward parts.. who hath given understanding to the heart? (Job 38:36). *EMUNAH comprises both Assensus (belief in the sense of mental assent) and Fiducia (trust, personal commitment).

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), and 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 “I believe it, that settles it,” your mental assent is more of a mental descent. To understand why it is a mental descent, you need to ascend to the third level of faith: fiducia.

Fiducia is full trust and commitment, it’s the heart knowledge of Jesus’ prayer to His Father in 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.”

Notitia (content) is related to our understanding. Without the regenerative life of fiducia (believe in, trust), one is no better off than the devils, who have enough notitia (and assensus) to open a shop. Credo ut intelligam “I believe (in Christ through regeneration) that I may understand” and  fides quaerens intellectum “faith (in Christ through regeneration) seeking understanding?” (Anselm of Canterbury).

Martin Buber

Martin Buber, the Jewish professor of philosophy, contrasts “belief in” with “trust (in).” Buber says, “Following his leader; Moses comes to the shore, he steps on the sands that are barely covered by shallow water; and the hosts follow him as he follows the God. At this point occurs whatever occurs, and it is apprehended as a miracle. It is irrelevant whether “much” or “little,” unusual things or usual, tremendous or trifling events happened; what is vital is only that what happened was experienced, while it happened, as the act of God. The people saw in whatever it was they saw “the great hand” and they “believed in YHVH” or, more correctly translated, “they gave their trust to YHVH.” (Martin Buber, Moses, (Amherst, NY: Humanity Books. 1988).

Not only Christians but anyone who knows English on a par with a mother-tongue speaker of English understands the difference between believing something/somebody and believing in something/somebody. “Belief in” someone means “trust.” Yet Martin Buber equates “believe (that)” with “believe in,” which is evident in his contrast between “believe in” and “trust.” It might have been merely an English slip on Buber’s part; which, alas, owing to his greatness, has probably influenced others.

Not only the “reformers” (the Protestant Reformation) but all Christian movements understand the distinctions between notitia (content), assensus (accepting the truth of this content, that is, believing that it is true) and fiducia (belief in Christ, or trust in Christ). Jews, and, surprisingly, sometimes “Messianic Jews,” accuse Christians of focusing on “faith” (by which they mean “(mental) assent to” while ignoring trust (Hebrew emunah). Martin Buber’s confusion may help us to understand the unjust criticisms levelled at Christians.

In Romans 3, “faith” is mentioned many times; for example:

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.

A member of a Messianic congregation tells me that her rabbi says that “justified by faith (verse 28) should be translated “trust” rather than “faith.” Buber is not the only one making a bubu. And that’s not because he’s a Jubu (Jewish Buddhist). I’d be surprised if this Messianic rabbi had not read, if not fallen under, Buber’s spell. What we do know is that Buber can spell.

And here’s another bubu from a prominent Jewish “anti-missionary, Rabbi Moshe Shulman. In his commentary on Isaiah 53, which he considers “the fullest explanation and discussion of the subject that now exists anywhere,” he says: “To receive this atonement one must believe that this death [of the Messiah] was for that purpose. You may be familiar with the doctrine, and know that people believe it, but if you don’t believe in it, then you are not saved.”

To clarify, Rabbi Shulman believes that Christians believe – wrongly – that to receive atonement is is enough to “believe that this death [of the Messiah] was for that purpose [of atonement]. But that is not enough: they, says Rabbi Shulman, have to “believe in it.”

A Christian apologist comments: “This statement… needs correction and completion. For if one merely believes that Jesus’ death was for the purpose of atonement, he will not receive that atonement. Only the rebirth, which has faith as a result, is sufficient. One has not merely to believe the doctrine of atonement in general, but also has to appropriate it, that is, trust in it. Not merely ‘Christ has died for sinners,’ but also ‘Christ has died for me, and has atoned for me’.”

The Christian view of “faith” is summed up in Ephesians 2:8-10 [my square brackets and italics]:

“For by grace you have been saved through faith [in Christ]. 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 [be faithful “emuna” in them).

“Belief in” in Christianity is always believing in your heart, and putting your complete trust in Christ.

Michael Brown’s Unconditional election of Israel: surely what’s good for the Jewish goose is good for the Gentile gander.

Michael Brown is good for me in at least two ways: He is very good on the election of Israel, and not so good on the election of individuals. So why do I find “not so good” good? Because it provides me with another opportunity to show up the weak position of Arminianism (in a nutshell, Arminianism is I decide whether to be saved or not). This, of course, is not all I do (protesteth he too much).

I was listening to the “Israel debate” between Michael Brown and Steve Wohlberg.

Michael Brown is a Messianic Jew who believes that God’s promise to preserve (a remnant of) the Nation Israel is unconditional. He believes, therefore, that the Church has not replaced physical Israel. Steve Wohlberg is a Jewish Seventh Day Adventist who believes that God’s promise to preserve the Nation Israel was conditional. For Brown, the Church has not replaced Israel, whereas for Wohlberg (no matter how much he protests; his words say it all), the Church has replaced Israel. Thus, Brown believes in the unconditional election of Israel while Wohlberg believes in the conditional election of Israel. Election to what? Eternal life (ultimately), of course.

Both Brown and Wohlberg are Arminians, that is, they believe that only after the sinner decides to believe is he born again – the sinner’s act of faith precedes his regeneration (by God). In other words, his regeneration is the effect of his willingness to accept Christ.

I am reminded of John 6:37 and 6:40:

37 All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out….40 “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.”

Therefore all that the Father gives the son will consequently believe and will consequently be given eternal life. This is clearly unconditional election by which I mean that the giving of a sinner to the Son unconditionally results in the gift of eternal life. Your sick will has nothing to do with it. Once, however, God has restored you to health – raised you from the dead, more like it – you will indeed feel free to accept Christ.

Although I agree with Brown on the unconditional election of Israel, it seems to me that he is inconsistent in that

1 he believes in the unconditional election of (a remnant of) Israel, where the Father sovereignly decides to preserve Israel as a gift to the Son and thus grant Israel eternal life (and a return to the Land), but

2. also believes election (to salvation), in general, is conditional on what sinners decide to with Christ, and not on the unconditional Father’s giving of them to the Son.

Wohlberg, the Arminian, is consistent because he believes salvation for all Jews and Gentiles (all human beings without distinction and without exception) is conditional on their willing obedience to God. Brown, the Arminian, is inconsistent because he believes that unconditional election only applies to Israel.

I prefer S. Lewis Johnson and John MacArthur, who believe in both the unconditional election of Israel and the unconditional election of sinners without distinction (Jews and Gentiles).

It seems bizarre that any Arminian (Michael Brown in this instance), for whom the individual’s ability to choose Christ is sacrosanct (the Holy Spirit is a gentleman and so does not resist the wishes of the human heart), should believe in the (divine unilateral) blanket election of an amorphous group (Israel) but not in the election of individuals. God, of course, Brown might retort, does not have his eye on the entire “apple of his eye” (“whoever touches you [Israel] touches the apple of his eye” – Zecharia 2:8), but only on a thinnish slice, that is, on particular individuals; those particular Jews (comprising 1. those who join the Church and 2. the unbelieving remnant) whom the Father has given together with particular Gentiles to the Son before the world began.

Thus, Michael Brown’s stance on election is bizarre because he believes in the election of the Jewish goose (not without exception; remember the remnant) but not in the election of the Gentile gander. Gentile election in the Arminian scheme is similar to the election of a president: the voter chooses him or her based on something good in them. God looks down the corridors of time to check out all the whosoevers willing to vote for Him, and elects them. ” Ah, look, there’s another one. Here Son, he’s yours.”

Logic in “Historic Christianity” and “Apostolic Judaism”

In his “Historic Christianity & Apostolic Judaism: The Core Difference,” Tim Hegg posits – as do many, but not the majority of, “Messianic Jews” – a radical distinction between “historic Christianity (let’s call it simply “Christianity”) and “apostolic Judaism.” Adherents of the latter refer to themselves as “the Branch,” in Hebrew netzer,” which they claim is the root of “Nazarene” (which may be so, but ironically with a perjorative meaning.¹); hence they call themselves “Nazarenes,” in Hebrew Notzrim. Jews, in contrast, equate “Notzrim” with “Christian” (Rabbi Ariel Bar Tzadok, “Yeshu HaNotzri The Man In His Own Words. A Torah View of the Founder of Christianity”).

“(T)he emerging Christian Church, says Hegg, sought for ways to define herself. She did this by presenting herself as distinct (“other”) from the Synagogue, and by adopting a world view quite opposite of her Jewish roots. Caught in the middle of all this was the remnant of “The Way” (cf. Acts 9:2). Still thoroughly Hebraic in her perspective, yet confessing Yeshua as Messiah, the remanant of ‘The Way’ found herself rejected by both of the other groups. Even though ‘The Way’ was thoroughly Hebraic in thought and world view, her acceptance of Yeshua as the Messiah made her persona non grata within Rabbinic Judaism.”

“The Way” is mentioned for the first time in Acts 9:2. It is true that members of “the Way” of salvation (Matt. 7:14; John 14:6) or of the godly life (Acts 18:25–26; see also Acts 19:9, 23; 22:4; 24) consisted initially, with few possible exceptions, only of Jews. It is, however, parlous to claim that subsequent members of “the Way” (Jew and Gentile) remained “thoroughly Hebraic in thought and world view” (Hegg). “The Way” does indeed have Hebrew roots, but to suggest that the whole tree has to be Hebrew is to reject God’s obvious intention to assign an important role to Greek language and thought. For one thing, the original language of the New Testament was written in Greek. (There are some who say some or all the Gospels were written in Aramaic. The burden of proof is on them). For another, if you disagree that Greek is the perfect theological language, what other language than Greek – the language of written discourse at the time – could have done such a marvelous job on the formulation of core doctrines such as the Trinity and the two natures of Christ. Would Hegg be able to describe so clearly, and admirably, John the Apostle’s description of the deity of Jesus (Hegg prefers to speak of the “deity of Yeshua”) in Chapter 1 of his Gospel without his Greek heritage:

“John, in the opening of his Gospel, writes that “In the beginning was Word, the Word was with God and the Word was God” (John 1:1). John is clearly mimicking the words of Gen 1:1, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” He intends us to know that in the same way that Moses begins the Torah with God but without any suggestion that God Himself had a beginning, so he begins his Gospel with “In the beginning was the Word,” implying that the Word also had no beginning. Moreover, the Greek literally says “and the Word was to God,” meaning that the Word had an intimate, face-to-face relationship with God, a relationship that bespeaks equality. Then John writes “and the Word was God.” After expressing relationship in the phrase “the Word was to God,” John makes the inexplicable statement that “the Word was God.” In these two statements John expresses both the Word’s distinctive individuality and His absolute oneness with the Fa-ther. Moreover, John leaves us no doubts as to Whom he refers as the Word. In v. 14 he makes gives a clear explanation: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.” Much, of course, has been written on John’s Prologue to his Gospel, and many have tried to find other ways of explaining John’s words. Some have felt that his statement regarding Yeshua’s divine nature is far too bold to have been even thinkable.”

Hegg believes that all followers of Jesus/Yeshua should strictly adhere to the “law” in the Torah. Here is another follower of “The Way,” Uri Marcus, who agrees with Hegg on this point of Torah, but rejects the deity of Jesus. Here is his view of Christianity [My square brackets]:

“You know what? I think Christianity in its present form today is the result of an invention. It was invented… but not by G-d. It was invented by man. More specifically, it was invented by non-Jewish men [Gentiles, whom Paul calls “Greeks” for obvious polito-cultural reasons] who knew that if this new religion were to stand even the slightest chance of survival, if it were to enjoy any longevity for future generations, if it were to gain power and influence in the world, and offer power and influence to men, it would have to undergo immediate surgery, with a view to cut out any vestige of Jewish Torah-based thought and practice. Otherwise, the religion would fail, and men would return to their former pagan roots, and all hope would be lost for mankind.”

Here is Uri Marcus on John 1:1:

“Yochanan [John] is sitting, dipping his pen for the first time into the ink and getting ready to write the prologue to his Gospel account. He starts to think to himself. “How can I begin to tell this magnificent story, to which I have just been a witness and partaker? Where can I start? How can I communicate in terms of what my people already understand, grew up with, and know in their hearts? I don’t want them to be offended. I don’t want to run them off. I want them to stay until I tell them the whole story. And this story is going to be quite long. I must find a way to move them forward from their present knowledge, into the knowledge that Yeshua came and died for them, and is our long awaited Mashiach. Ok, I’ll start at the beginning. Seems reasonable. I’m Jewish. I’m wanting to tell this message to Jews. I need to start at the beginning. But which beginning? Where did my people first learn about G-d? Where did we first become a nation? In what place, were we commissioned by G-d to take the message of redemption to the world, and bless the world through it? Of course… it was at Sinai. It was there that we received the Torah. I’ll start at the beginning, when we first became a nation, united under the Torah.” Yochanan starts to write… “In the beginning, was the Torah… Yes… our Torah. That was our beginning as a nation right there at the foot of Sinai with Moshe Rabbeinu.” (Uri Marcus – “And the Word was G-d – Yochanan [John] 1:1-3).

No true-blue Jew would be ashamed to invite Uri to his Yeshiva. His fable could have come from the Mishna. With regard to Jesus’ divinity, which Uri Marcus denies:

“To raise the question of Yeshua’s divinity, says Daniel Juster, is to open one of the greatest debates between Jews and Christians. This question leads to the whole debate about the Trinity, since the Messiah is said to be divine as one part of the Triune God.”

Is trinitarianism a Greek concept, and is it foreign to the “Hebraic” mind? No, to both questions. Compare: “the one encircled by the splendor of the three; the three being straightway carried back to the one” (Christianity)” with “a plurality whose action is unified, an unity whose action is pluralised” (Cabala). (See The Christian Trinity and the Unity-plurality of Cabala).

Contrary to Hegg and much of modern scholarship, Juster rejects the view that Hebraic and Hellenistic thought are so different. Recall Hegg’s (“The Way” remained) “thoroughly Hebraic in thought and world view” (Hegg). So, to answer the question, “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” (Tertullian) More than you think. For Juster, Hebrew metaphysic (there sure is such a thing) and Greek metaphysic not only touch but intermingle, “because [owing to the fact] all human beings are created in the image of God, communication and evaluation with regard to metaphysical views is cross-culturally possible.” (Dan Juster 1986:181. Jewish Roots: A Foundation of Biblical Theology. Shippensburg, Penn. In Richard Harvey, Worship and Witness to the Deity of Yeshua).

A Jew would possibly deny that he is mixing hisTorah logic with non-Christian (Greek) philosophy. The Greeks, though, didn’t have a patent on philosophical thought. For example, what could be more Jewish (AND more Greek) than the LOGOS of John’s Gospel (John 1).

I read an interesteing article at the RoshpinaProject which equates Memra (“Word”) with logos. Memra is an Aramaic word used in the Targum:

“The interpretation of the meaning of the words logos and memra shows that Judaism and Christianity hold some of the same theological tenets. The following study, although brief, bears out the fact that both persuasions have followers who believe that these two words mean the Word of God who is a Person.”

Jews are ostensibly very logical and always have been so from the day God called Abraham out of Ur. A Jew will probably say that it wasn’t so much an urge with Abraham but an urgent lucid appraisal of what he was – an idol worshipper, and what he could be – a worshipper of the One True God. Among some of the great promises God made to Abraham and his descendants was this irresistible one: “And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed” (Genesis 12:3b). To fulfil this role for the nations, claim the rabbis, Abraham had to be not only holy but also wise. And what was the very Jewish (and Greek) supreme maxim of metaphysika? It was that logic is “wisdom of the first kind” (Aristotle), the mother of all wisdom.Alas, my lyrical remains chimerical: first, I don’t agree with the Jewish view that God chose Abraham for his wisdom or purity of soul or any other qualities. He chose him in the same way he chooses anybody or anything, because he wanted to; for reasons only known unto Him – . (The logic of faith: Back to Sinai and the drawing board).

Paul wrote all his epistles in Greek. The Jewish believers had no trouble understanding them. Indeed, I suggest that they would find this discussion, if not amazing, then amusing.

Before I leave, I must say that it’s so Nice a thing that Tim Hegg is a Trinitarian. The Way of Redemption starts from there. Thank you Nicea. Or rather thank you Bible, and thanks Nicea – no, not Constantine, silly! – for getting it right.

1Nothing decisive can be said as to the root origin or real meaning of the word Nazareth. There are two interpretations – one meaning a sprout, a branch; the other meaning a guard. Probably the name Nazareth came from the old Hebrew “Netzer,” which means a sprout, and so was something to be held in contempt. A tree is cut off, hewn down, and left. One morning the passer-by sees just one green sprout coming up from the stump; “netzer.” It is of no use. The tree is gone. And so this little town, high up off the main roads at the foot of the mountains; along which the great merchants of Greece came; along which Roman legions marched, and the priests passed; was held in contempt. There were great movements down in the valley, but Nazareth was so much out of reach as never to be affected by them. And there is that thought in the quotation, “He shall be called a Nazarene”; a Man belonging to the city that is not worth naming; a Man off the highways of life, knowing nothing of the great movements of the world; a Nazarene. (C. Campbell Morgan).

The Apostle Peter takes a leaf off Mr Bean: My bodee is my toooooool.

Arminians do make is so hard when it is so simple.

- 2 Peter 3:9: “The Lord is . . . patient towards you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.”

You see, ALL, it says “all,” everybody, “everybody in the world” – “whosoeverrrr.” Now, Calvie, you’re so logical and theological, explain to l’il ole me that one.

No sweat.

Peter gets whisked away to a classroom somewhere in Kentucky, or make it my home town Port Elizabeth, darkest Africa. He’s teaching a geography lesson to a bunch of recalcitrants. It’s hard, I tell you it’s hard, for Peter. He can’t get a word in edgeways. But I can tell you when body language can do the job, he doesn’t waste words. Peter’s at the end of his rope. He stiffens, points his long finger:

“I am patient with you, not wishing for any to fail, yada, yada, yada.”

The Arminian either does not see (and thus is confused) or refuses to see that “of you” as in “ALL (of you)” is redundant (unnecessary). Everyone Peter is addressing (“pointing at”) surely understands that. Alas the Arminian is likely to point out to the irrational neural Calvinist – in love with logic more than love – that the Holy Spirit is a gentleman, who wouldn’t mess with his sacrosanct independent will, for if our wills were changed by God, what love is this! when God, without my permission, regenerates my radically corrupt neutral will to love him? Answer: It’s called saving grace, sufficient saving grace; there ain’t any other kind of saving grace.

There is linguistics – verbal language, and there is paralinguistics – body language. Mr Bean, in one if his parlous bodily gestures, says it ALL: “My bodee is my toooooool.”