[Girardian sacrifice:] it’s how civilization works. Now, if you’re not allowed to put the blame on somebody else, and you have to put the blame on yourself, then you have to kill yourself, right? That’s what we call mortification. Mortification is killing yourself. Instead of killing somebody else, putting all the blame on him and killing him, and instantly feeling good, you kind of have to wrestle day by day killing yourself: mortification of sin; dying to self.
That’s not something that happens all at once in a big crisis, and you just go out the other side and build your city. That’s something that’s hard to do, and it takes a long time to do; but gradually, the city is built. So, Christianity functions the same way, but because we have to kill ourselves and we have to have discipline in the church, it builds much more slowly. But it’s the same principle. Our city is built on the cornerstone of the death of Jesus Christ, just as the false cities of the world were built on human sacrifices.
Sometimes, quite literally: we read that Jericho was rebuilt by [Hiel of Bethel]. It says he laid the foundation with the death of his firstborn son. He killed his son, put him as a foundation stone; the city was built on him. That’s called a threshold sacrifice. And Cain’s [son’s] death is the foundation of Enoch. Remus’s death is the foundation of Rome. Remember, Romulus killed Remus and built Rome.
Jesus’ death is the foundation of the new Jerusalem.
But, see, we’re not allowed to get into this scapegoating thing. When there’s a crisis of culture, and there are distresses, and pressure is building up, we’re supposed to turn to the Psalms and interact with God. And we’re supposed to lay hold of the true Pentecost, which is the coming of the Holy Spirit. And we’re supposed to go back to the true old ways, which is the Bible and not some culture myth. That way we don’t get involved in fanaticism and crusades.
You know, it’s kind of interesting that people who are Christians find it much harder to get sucked up into movements than other people do. The more mature you are as a Christian, the more stable you are; the more you tend to be just a little bit nervous about big crusade-type things. You go to a Promise Keepers’ meeting, and there’s 10,000 charismatics there and 200 Calvinistic pastors. The charismatics all find it real easy to get into this. The Calvinists were saying, “well, I don’t know.” You know, they kind of get into it, and they’re kind of not sure. Some of the songs they feel like getting into, and some of them they don’t, right?
Because the more mature you are as a Christian, the more the gyroscope inside of you spins faster and faster, and you’re more stable. That’s the analogy I use. We all have gyroscopes inside ourselves, and the more mature we are, the faster the gyroscope spins, and the more stable you are; the less you are tossed about by every wind of doctrine, and the more difficult it is for you to get sucked up into mass movements. The more mortification you practice on the inside, the more you know of the Scripture: the more difficult it is for you to get sucked up into mass movements.
So at this point, we’re different. We don’t go out on a crusade and kill a bunch of people. We’re not supposed to. That’s not the way we relieve pressure on ourselves and on our society. But that’s the way they do, and that’s what’s happening here in Revelation chapter 13. The Jews experienced a big revival of what they think is their traditional religion, the oral law. That’s the problem. We had strayed from it. And a whole bunch of people who had become Christians undergo this experience. And what do we call those Christians who convert back to the oral law tradition? Judaizers. And Paul talks about them. He says, Demas is apostatized. There’s a big apostasy that happens that Paul talks about. It says it’s happening; it’s about to come: the big apostasy. A bunch of people who become Christians, and then all of a sudden they say, you know, “this was a mistake,” and they go back. They’re part of this revival, revival of false religion. And then there will be a persecution of those who don’t go along with it, which is the massacre of the two witnesses or the massacre of the 144,000. But then things don’t turn out the way they expect: because God acts.
One last point. . . . If the scapegoats in this activity turn out to be really innocent, sooner or later their killers feel guilt and become open to the message of the scapegoats. That’s why martyrdom leads to conversion. The Christians refuse to go along with what’s going on, so the Christians are massacred. But a lot of people begin to think, “maybe we shouldn’t have done this; these people were innocent.”
Remember what happens in Revelation chapter 11. Those who dwell on the land rejoice over the massacre of the believers, but: the people from the tribes and tongues and nations and peoples contemplate their dead bodies for three and a half days, don’t allow them to be buried. And then—we read that a lot of them are converted.
Rome had the same revival. When Nero burns Rome, the Romans had a big revival of the old ways, which of course were not old ways at all, but they became, “Rome, Rome is the answer. Rome this, Rome that.” And anybody who wouldn’t go along with it was put to death—which meant the Christians were. And Nero blamed the Christians for burning Rome; he started putting them to death. So, Christians are martyred. But what happens? Romans see Christians dying, they see that they’re innocent. They think about it, and then they’re converted. The blood of the martyrs becomes the seed of the church.
And that’s why, folks, historically it’s only through martyrdom that the church grows. It may be martyrdom in the big sense of being thrown to the lions, or it may be martyrdom in the sense that you practice self-mortification and killing yourself as you mortify sin. But it’s only as Christians mortify sin—and frequently it’s as Christians are actually put to death—that God brings pressure on the world and brings people to himself.
Well, I’m sorry, our time is way up. We’ll probably touch on this again next week, but then we have to move further into other aspects of what’s going on here. Take away from here: this is the way history moves—crisis, big Pentecost, mass movements, scapegoats. That’s what happens, and that’s what happened here.
Let’s pray. Father in heaven, we ask that you would spare us from going through this kind of thing in our day. We can see the pieces of the puzzle.
(James Jordan, Revelation in Detail # 77: A False Pentecost: Rev. 13:13)
The Dutch nation, according to its origin and history, is a baptized, Protestant reformed nation; this Christian, Protestant, Reformed character of the nation should be respected and maintained.
The church should be recognized by the government as a divine institution which in its origin and existence is independent of the state. The government should protect the church in acting in accordance with Scripture and respect it in fulfilling the vocation assigned to it in Scripture. The government has the right to apply the truth, which the church professes, in its own field as it sees fit. (Hoedemaker, as quoted by James Wood, “How Abraham Kuyper Lost the Nation and Sidelined the Church”)
I usually feel like I have little time to read, but my Goodreads “year in books” report at the end of every year consistently surprises me. In recent years I have increased my audio book consumption. This has redoubled in the last couple of years as I traded more podcast time for book time during my commute to work, and also as our family read-aloud time shifted toward audio book consumption.
I joined Goodreads in mid-2009. Here is my year in books summary since then:
Of the 33 books I read in 2025, 28 were audiobooks. Four of the books were re-reads (all of these were audiobooks). Six of my books were listen-alouds with the kids.
Till We Have Faces is widely acclaimed, and Lewis himself considered it to be “far and away my best book.” I was prepared to appreciate it greatly, but it fell a bit flat and felt a bit facile for me.
First, for a conversion story, it is surprisingly lacking in a sequence of obvious confession and repentance. Can we be sure that Orual has recognized all of her sins and failures?
Second, the most emotionally powerful portions of the second part—Orual’s being enabled to assist her sister in her travails—are watered down by having occurred only in dreams.
This is a specific example of a wider problem: the second part is rushed and didactic; it hardly has the character of story, has an unclear climax, and lacks the engaging nature of the first part.
While this story has great potential, much of this potential is dissipated by these weaknesses.
II
After some days’ reflection, I am compelled to confess my foolishness and retract my prior complaint.
The short nature of the second part is not necessarily a defect, nor is it lacking in story-like quality even though it is functioning as a different kind of narrative from the first part. This structure in fact mirrors the pattern of accusation, unmasking, and revelation that takes place at the end of a detective novel. We have been looking forward to being gathered with Poirot in the parlor for a very long time. There is a definitive climax and it is that accusation-revelation.
I am increasingly struck by the nature of the title and Orual’s corresponding statement, “How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?” By this Orual means that our innermost character, which we often keep hidden even from ourselves, is fully exposed. Orual’s complaint is her confesssion, because it is a compulsive vomiting of all of the ugliness and bitterness that she held inside. Her wearing a veil to cover her physical ugliness was a symbol of this greater masking; but ironically her obsession with her outer mask was part of how she hid from herself the existence of this greater mask.
Orual is physically unmasked and then unmasks her inner self, revealing “my real voice.” Her confession that “Yes,” she was answered is her repentance; she recognizes the thorough ugliness of it all. And this is the climax of the story.
But this is not a typical detective story; it is a Chestertonian one. The climactic revelation is followed by a second revelation. And this second revelation is not primarily that Orual’s dreams have a different meaning, but that her whole life is shot through with a different meaning.
The ways that Orual sacrificially helps her sister appear to occur entirely in dreams. But this does not necessarily mean that Orual is not actually suffering or giving of herself. In fact, since Orual’s life and strength are so suddenly and greatly weakened, it seems she is genuinely suffering through the course of these dreams. But in addition to this, Orual’s entire life has been consumed by a desire—selfish, but real—for the good of Psyche. In her confession and repentance, this desire is purified and, I suggest, Orual’s lifelong prayers are equally purified, and answered by the gods as such.
But it is also significant that the one real, non-dreamlike, active, and lifelong participation that Orual is revealed to have had in Psyche’s suffering was to serve as a harm, as an obstacle and temptation. The thought that Orual thus contributed to her sister’s maturation, purification, and sanctification does not seem immediately as beautiful or as emotionally powerful as the thought that Orual had helped her sister through other trials. But it is beautiful; a deeper, darker kind of beauty. What’s more, the reciprocal nature of this exchange, of this shared salvation, is more obvious than it is in the other exchanges—Psyche, in passing the test, herself becomes a means of Orual’s obtaining forgiveness and salvation.
If anyone intends the journey to Berea, let him bring this book for a traveling companion.
I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance, but He who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. (Matthew 3:11 NKJV)
First of all, I am not a language scholar and I hesitate to make much of a preposition.
Second, John’s baptism is not the same thing as Trinitarian baptism, so we should hesitate to make straight-line applications from John to Jesus and his church. In a manner of speaking, John was bringing faithful covenant people back to life after their having come into contact with death. By contrast, Jesus by baptism brings people into his covenant for the first time, bringing them to life once and for all.
Nevertheless, the idea of a baptism being unto or toward repentance is significant. Rather than baptism being, as Robert Stein would have it, a mere synecdoche for a faith-repentance-baptism sequence, this shows that baptism is in fact a performance of repentance. Just as James teaches us that faith must be performed in order to be fully realized, so too repentance must be performed in order to be fully realized.
This by itself is not proof of paedobaptism, though it is highly consistent with paedobaptism and paedofaith. But it is proof against a facile credobaptism: if you require someone to repent before their baptism, you are in a sense requiring the impossible.
And for yourself, may the gods grant you Your heart’s desire, a husband and a home, And the blessing of a harmonious life. For nothing is greater or finer than this, When a man and woman live together With one heart and mind, bringing joy To their friends and grief to their foes.” —Homer, Odyssey, Book 6, trans. Stanley Lombardo
Leviticus 12 specifies the old covenants’ rules for purification after childbirth:
Then Yahweh spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to the children of Israel, saying: ‘If a woman has conceived, and borne a male child, then she shall be unclean seven days; as in the days of her customary impurity she shall be unclean. And on the eighth day the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised. She shall then continue in the blood of her purification thirty-three days. She shall not touch any hallowed thing, nor come into the sanctuary until the days of her purification are fulfilled.
‘But if she bears a female child, then she shall be unclean two weeks, as in her customary impurity, and she shall continue in the blood of her purification sixty-six days.
‘When the days of her purification are fulfilled, whether for a son or a daughter, she shall bring to the priest a lamb of the first year as a burnt offering, and a young pigeon or a turtledove as a sin offering, to the door of the tabernacle of meeting. Then he shall offer it before Yahweh, and make atonement for her. And she shall be clean from the flow of her blood. This is the law for her who has borne a male or a female.
‘And if she is not able to bring a lamb, then she may bring two turtledoves or two young pigeons—one as a burnt offering and the other as a sin offering. So the priest shall make atonement for her, and she will be clean.’ ”
It’s widely recognized that circumcision is what serves to reduce the time of impurity for a son compared to a daughter; a son’s circumcision functions as a kind of partial sin-purification offering.
But it’s also interesting to note that these numbers (seven, thirty-three, fourteen, sixty-six) all appear in Genesis 46:
Now these were the names of the children of Israel, Jacob and his sons, who went to Egypt: Reuben was Jacob’s firstborn. The sons of Reuben were Hanoch, Pallu, Hezron, and Carmi. The sons of Simeon were Jemuel, Jamin, Ohad, Jachin, Zohar, and Shaul, the son of a Canaanite woman. The sons of Levi were Gershon, Kohath, and Merari. The sons of Judah were Er, Onan, Shelah, Perez, and Zerah (but Er and Onan died in the land of Canaan). The sons of Perez were Hezron and Hamul. The sons of Issachar were Tola, Puvah, Job, and Shimron. The sons of Zebulun were Sered, Elon, and Jahleel. These were the sons of Leah, whom she bore to Jacob in Padan Aram, with his daughter Dinah. All the persons, his sons and his daughters, werethirty-three.
The sons of Gad were Ziphion, Haggi, Shuni, Ezbon, Eri, Arodi, and Areli. The sons of Asher were Jimnah, Ishuah, Isui, Beriah, and Serah, their sister. And the sons of Beriah were Heber and Malchiel. These were the sons of Zilpah, whom Laban gave to Leah his daughter; and these she bore to Jacob: sixteen persons.
The sons of Rachel, Jacob’s wife, were Joseph and Benjamin. And to Joseph in the land of Egypt were born Manasseh and Ephraim, whom Asenath, the daughter of Poti-Pherah priest of On, bore to him. The sons of Benjamin were Belah, Becher, Ashbel, Gera, Naaman, Ehi, Rosh, Muppim, Huppim, and Ard. These were the sons of Rachel, who were born to Jacob: fourteen persons in all.
The son of Dan was Hushim. The sons of Naphtali were Jahzeel, Guni, Jezer, and Shillem. These were the sons of Bilhah, whom Laban gave to Rachel his daughter, and she bore these to Jacob: seven persons in all.
All the persons who went with Jacob to Egypt, who came from his body, besides Jacob’s sons’ wives, weresixty-six persons in all. And the sons of Joseph who were born to him in Egypt were two persons. All the persons of the house of Jacob who went to Egypt were seventy. (Genesis 46:8-27)
The numbers seven, thirty-three, fourteen, and sixty-six (together with the number sixteen) symbolically represent children who traveled to Egypt. There is a kind of forward progression to the numbers. The numbers of the children are incorporated into the number of the household, seventy. This number, seventy, is widely recognized to be symbolic of the nations, after the seventy nations listed in Genesis 10. In Egypt, Jacob through Joseph feeds those seventy nations in Genesis, but by the time of Exodus it becomes clear that Israel’s full mission to the seventy nations is just beginning (Exodus 15:27).
Glossing on this, it seems that in the ritual revolving around the birth of every single child, God wants his people to recognize a participation in and a responsibility for forward progression. The mother and child are ritually incorporated into a story (ranging from Genesis 10 and 46 to Exodus 15) with a history of God’s deliverance, an expectation of the future salvation of the nations, and accompanied with a responsibility of ministry to those nations.
It’s instructive to apply these numbers to David:
David was thirty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned forty years. In Hebron he reigned over Judah seven years and six months, and in Jerusalem he reigned thirty-three years over all Israel and Judah. (2 Samuel 5:4-5; see also 1 Kings 2:11; 1 Chronicles 3:4, 29:27)
In terms of Leviticus 12, David’s reign seems to function as a kind of 7-33 childbirth-purification cycle. Israel had, in a sense, for the first time given birth to a pre-eminent son. During this time God’s house was torn apart and she could not enter into worship as God intended. She had to undergo a time of purification before she could return to God’s house for worship. This, surely, is the deeper meaning behind God’s prohibition of David’s building his house. Interestingly, neither in Kings nor Chronicles is it recorded that God told Nathan that blood was the reason that David could not build the house. Rather, this is a conclusion that David received from God (though perhaps through Nathan):
And David said to Solomon: “My son, as for me, it was in my mind to build a house to the name of the Yahweh my God; but the word of the Yahweh came to me, saying, ‘You have shed much blood and have made great wars; you shall not build a house for My name, because you have shed much blood on the earth in My sight. Behold, a son shall be born to you, who shall be a man of rest; and I will give him rest from all his enemies all around. His name shall be Solomon, for I will give peace and quietness to Israel in his days. He shall build a house for My name, and he shall be My son, and I will be his Father; and I will establish the throne of his kingdom over Israel forever.’ (1 Chronicles 22:7-10)
We are to take from this a few applications.
First, the blood of war is analogous to the blood of childbirth. The establishment of a nation is analogous to the establishment of a family, house, household. In all cases, those who are bloodied must undergo a time of patience and purification before they can enjoy true rest.
Second, David is here highlighted as a kind of first, inaugural, or exemplary son. Although David’s reign is in this light presented as a time of waiting, God is doing a new thing with the house of David that he has not done before. I recommend Peter Leithart’s book, From Silence to Song, as a helpful reflection on some of the ways that David’s reign is an eruption into history of an extraordinary new covenant.
Third, this emphasizes that our hope for life and victory and rest is in the son of David.
Fourth, returning to Genesis 46, the ultimate purpose towards which David and his son’s rule are working is for the salvation of the nations; seven and thirty-three are moving towards seventy. “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations.” (Isaiah 56:7, Mark 11:17)
Finally, I want to return to the idea that the time after childbirth is a time of purification. Ultimately this implies that every Israelite child was baptized. This is because the mother’s “customary impurity” was a particularly virulent impurity:
If a woman has a discharge, and the discharge from her body is blood, she shall be set apart seven days; and whoever touches her shall be unclean until evening. (Leviticus 15:19)
The phrase “unclean until evening” is a synechdoche for washing in water; in other cases where people come into secondary contact with the woman, they must wash in water (vv. 21, 22, 23, 27). And although the Septuagint does not describe these washings as baptisms, Paul does (Hebrews 9:10). The childbirth-purification ritual that incorporates the woman and child into Israel’s history is thus a ritual that includes both baptism and sacrifice. It is therefore obviously the case that countless Hebrew newborns were baptized—likely each for several days in sequence.
And then, once David comes, it is necessary to become and remain incorporated into his history in order to be saved. In fact, in one prominent case this union-incorporation takes place by means of several baptisms; see Baptisms, Baptism exhortation.
Paul, in criticizing “various baptisms” in Hebrews 9, is not condemning baptism per se, but rather “various” baptisms, baptisms that are “only” baptisms. Paul still exults in one baptism (Ephesians 4:5), the one which unites us with Jesus (Romans 6, 1 Peter 3). We therefore baptize our babies, so that they may be incorporated into Jesus, Jesus’s history and future, and Jesus’s mission.
Jesus himself was therefore baptized as an infant, and this even before he was circumcised. Jesus’s own faithfulness and righteousness as an infant is precisely how we can have confidence that our own infants may be counted righteous by virtue of their incorporation into him. What was the point of Jesus’s coming as an infant if he did not intend to redeem infants and infancy itself? Augustine recognizes the force of this in a similar vein when arguing to those who have baptized their infants that it absolutely must be an effectual baptism rather than an empty one:
Those who say that infancy has nothing in it for Jesus to save, are denying that Christ is Jesus for all believing infants. Those, I repeat, who say that infancy has nothing in it for Jesus to save, are saying nothing else than that for believing infants, infants that is who have been baptized into Christ, Christ the Lord is not Jesus. After all, what is Jesus? Jesus means Savior. Jesus is the Savior. Those whom he doesn’t save, having nothing to save in them, well for them he isn’t Jesus. Well now, if you can tolerate the idea that Christ is not Jesus for some persons who have been baptized, then I’m not sure your faith can be recognized as according with the sound rule. Yes, they’re infants, but they are his members. They’re infants, but they receive his sacraments. They are infants, but they share in his table, in order to have life in themselves.
What are you telling me? That the child is perfectly all right, nothing wrong with it? Then why are you running with it to the doctor, if it’s perfectly all right? Aren’t you afraid he may say to you, “Take this child away, since you consider it to be perfectly all right; the Son of man only came to seek and save what had got lost; why bring the child to me, if it hadn’t got lost? (Augustine, Sermon 174, 7)
For it seemed good to the Holy Spirit, and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things: that you abstain from things offered to idols, from blood, from things strangled, and from sexual immorality. If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well.
Farewell. (Acts 15:28-29)
How then do we drink blood every week?
Then Jesus said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For My flesh is food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him. (John 6:53-56)
This is because Jesus’s blood does not leave his body. To drink Jesus’s blood is to participate in his body:
The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? For we, though many, are one bread and one body; for we all partake of that one bread. (1 Corinthians 10:16-17)
A strong implication of this is that it is not licit to attempt to conduct the Lord’s supper in any context other than the gathered church. The Lord’s table is presented to the Lord’s church on the Lord’s day. If your gathering is not the church-body, then “it is not to eat the Lord’s supper” (1 Corinthians 11:20).
Samson is a type of Jesus. This is evident throughout his life: for example, his birth is announced to Samson’s mother by an angel.
I’m particularly interested in how Samson serves as a type of Jesus in his death:
Now the temple was full of men and women. All the lords of the Philistines were there—about three thousand men and women on the roof watching while Samson performed. Then Samson called to the Yahweh, saying, “O Lord Yahweh, remember me, I pray! Strengthen me, I pray, just this once, O God, that I may with one blow take vengeance on the Philistines for my two eyes!” And Samson took hold of the two middle pillars which supported the temple, and he braced himself against them, one on his right and the other on his left. Then Samson said, “Let me die with the Philistines!” And he pushed with all his might, and the temple fell on the lords and all the people who were in it. So the dead that he killed at his death were more than he had killed in his life. (Judges 16:27-30)
There are a few things we can take from this in application to Jesus’s death. First, Jesus’s death is the performance of a kind of vengeance against the old creation, against the sin that it produced, and against death itself.
Second, the fruit of Jesus’s death is equally the death of three thousand men and women. They were destroyed in the sense that they were brought into Jesus’s kingdom:
Then Peter said to them, “Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is to you and to your children, and to all who are afar off, as many as the Lord our God will call.”
And with many other words he testified and exhorted them, saying, “Be saved from this perverse generation.” Then those who gladly received his word were baptized; and that day about three thousand souls were added to them. (Acts 2:38-41)
The Levitical laws of uncleanness (Leviticus 16, etc.) generally have to do with the exposure of the “innermost man” to the outside world, especially in the context of participating in worship. The man who is walking in the flesh—the man who is lacking clean hands or a pure heart—is unwelcome in God’s house.
It is well known that the tabernacle-temple is a model of the human body. It is less well known that the high priest is a model of the tabernacle-temple, but Peter Leithart, James Jordan, and others observe this. The high priest’s garments are a sort of inside-out representation of the tabernacle-temple; starting with the ornate breastpiece, which appears to be a model of the ark. In fact, in 1 Sam 14:18, there is some uncertainty or equivocation between ephod and ark. Moreover, the ephod has two stones in it, just like the ark. As you move inward, the priest’s clothing can be said to correspond to the holy place and then to the courtyard.
What I find interesting here is the contrast between the inside-out of the high priest’s garments, and the inside-out of bodily discharges. You could say that the laws of purification are meant to teach what kind of inner life is forbidden to God’s people: a fleshly inner life. By the same token, the priest’s garments are meant to display what kind of inner life is prescribe for God’s people: an inner life of glory and beauty; an inner life that has a “heart of stone,” a heart that is tutored by God’s word and law. It is interesting, in this light, to consider that God wishes to replace our hearts of stone-law with hearts of flesh. God intends to transform our flesh to his purposes rather than to sinful purposes.
I gotta have my orange juice. 