Archive for the ‘Biblical Theology’ Category
Metábasis eis állo génos (2–3)
Mark Horne surfaces a thought–provoking quote from James Jordan, pointing out, as he says on Twitter, that “the law led to wisdom because it was public property.”
Jordan frequently points out that the head–heel typology instructs us in how to live by faith. It may appear that the wicked are well coordinated while the church and the righteous walk with a limp. However, by faith we recognize that the head of the wicked has been crushed, cast down, bound. And while the church’s heel is wounded, she reigns together with her head at this very moment.
My son, if you receive my words
and treasure up my commandments with you,
making your ear attentive to wisdom
and inclining your heart to understanding;
yes, if you call out for insight
and raise your voice for understanding,
if you seek it like silver
and search for it as for hidden treasures,
then you will understand the fear of the LORD
and find the knowledge of God. . . .So you will walk in the way of the good
and keep to the paths of the righteous.
For the upright will inhabit the land,
and those with integrity will remain in it,
but the wicked will be cut off from the land,
and the treacherous will be rooted out of it. (Proverbs 2, ESV)
I think there is something to this:
I’m slowly working to decouple myself from Google, and plan to document the process on my other blog.
It is a family tradition to watch The Lord of the Rings movies in the wintertime, and we just finished this week. This year I hope to work through the books as well. One thing struck me this time through: Gandalf brought three eagles to rescue Frodo and Sam. Jackson has one of these eagles carry both Gandalf and a hobbit, but Tolkien is more vague. This makes me wonder if Jackson, or Tolkien, or both, intended to show that Gandalf hoped Gollum might have been saved.
‘Twice have you borne me, Gwaihir my friend,’ said Gandalf. ‘Thrice shall pay for all, if you are willing. You will not find me a burden much greater than when you bore me from Zirak-zigil, where my old life burned away.’
‘I would bear you,’ answer Gwaihir, ‘whither you will, even were you made of stone.’
‘Then come, and let your brother go with us, and some other of your folk who is most swift! For we have need of speed greater than any wind, outmatching the wings of the Nazgûl.’
‘The North Wind blows, but we shall outfly it,’ said Gwaihir. And he lifted up Gandalf and sped away south, and with him went Landroval, and Meneldor young and swift. And they passed over Udûn and Gorgoroth and saw all the land in ruin and tumult beneath them, and before them Mount Doom blazing, pouring out its fire.
. . .
And so it was that Gwaihir saw them with his keen far-seeing eyes, as down the wild wind he came, and daring the great peril of the skies he circled in the air: two small dark figures, forlorn, hand in hand upon a little hill, while the world shook under them, and gasped, and rivers of fire drew near. And even as he espied them and came swooping down, he saw them fall, worn out, or choked with fumes and heat, or stricken down by despair at last, hiding their eyes from death.
Side by side they lay; and down swept Gwaihir, and down came Landroval and Meneldor the swift; and in a dream, not knowing what fate had befallen them, the wanderers were lifted up and borne far away out of the darkness and the fire. (The Return of the King, 227–229)
I’ve always been intrigued by churches that choose not to register as a corporation. If you belong to such a church, your charitable contributions are likely still deductible on your income tax. See:
- IRS: Churches, Integrated Auxiliaries, and Conventions or Associations of Churches
- IRS: Exemption Requirements—501(c)(3) Organizations
- North Carolina follows the federal code
For subscribers of The Theopolitan, Peter Leithart summarizes Rich Lusk on James Jordan on the Bethlehem star: it is Yahweh’s glory cloud. Lusk points out the movement of the cloud, the host of angels appearing to the shepherds, and Jesus’s tabernacling among us. I conclude, therefore, that stars are angels.
“In our world,” said Eustace, “a star is a huge ball of flaming gas.”
“Even in your world, my son, that is not what a star is, but only what it is made of.” (C. S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader)
He counts the number of the stars,
to all of them gives names. (Psalm 147:4, Robert Alter)
I had forgotten that company originates from bread–together. How beautiful!
Charlotte and Asher made these handy deadlift stands. They’ve lasted over a year now!
You’ve probably seen this. But it has been delighting me this week:
Metábasis eis állo génos (2–2)
I received Rod Dreher’s Live Not by Lies as a Christmas present, and finished it this week. It’s outstanding, as, of course, is Solzhenitsyn’s original essay. (How striking that he would admonish us even to “immediately walk out of a meeting, session, lecture, performance or film showing if [one] hears a speaker tell lies, or purvey ideological nonsense or shameless propaganda.”) Here are my favorite quotes from the book:
“The question is, which is going to win: fear, or courage?” [Jan Šimulčik] says. “In the beginning, it was mostly a matter of fear. But once you started experiencing freedom—and you felt it, you felt freedom through the things you did—your courage grew. We experienced all this together. We helped one another to gradually build up the courage to do bigger things, like join the Candle Demonstration.”
“With this courage also developed our sense of duty, and our need to be of service to other people,” the historian continues. “We could see the products of our work. We could hold these samizdat books in our hands, and we could see that people really read them and learned from them. We saw what we did as service to God and service to people. But it took years for us to see the fruit of our labor and to see our communities grow.” (168)
[Franišek] Mikloško’s close association with secular liberal writers and artists helped him to understand the world beyond church circles and to think critically about himself and other Christian activists. And, he says, liberal artists were able to perceive and describe the essence of communism better than Christians—a skill that helped them all survive, even thrive, under oppression. (175)
“I’ve been thinking a lot about fear, as such,” [Maria Wittner] says. “What is fear? Someone who is afraid is going to be made to do the most evil things. If someone is not afraid to say no, if your soul is free, there is nothing they can do to you.”
The old woman looks at me across her kitchen table with piercing eyes. “In the end, those who are afraid always end up worse than the courageous.” (188)
My pastor preached from Revelation 12 this week and argued that the archangel Michael is Jesus. An interesting additional proof of this is the quote from Zechariah 3:2 in Jude 9. Whom Zechariah identifies as Yahweh and the angel of Yahweh, Jude identifies as Michael, “who is like God.”
This quotation highlights another interesting bit of biblical theology. Many people, Calvin included, believe that Michael is disputing about the body of the man Moses. However, the quote from Zechariah makes clear that what was in dispute was the Old Testament church. This church was the body of Moses in the same sense that we are the body of Jesus. Some more evidence for this reading is the fact that Israel was baptized into Moses (1 Corinthians 10:2).
It is so interesting to me that one of the reasons God restrains wicked rulers is to preserve his people in faithfulness. It is true that there are such great examples of faithfulness in times of persecution, but we also pray and thank God for cutting persecution short for the sake of bruised reeds and faintly burning wicks:
Those who trust in the LORD are like Mount Zion never shaken, settled forever.
Jerusalem, mountains around it, and the LORD is around His people now and forevermore.
For the rod of wickedness will not rest on the portion of the righteous,
so that the righteous not set their hands to wrongdoing.
Do good, O LORD, to the good and to the upright in their hearts.
And those who bend to crookedness, may the LORD take them off with the wrongdoers. Peace upon Israel! (Psalm 125, Robert Alter)
Of course, he also uses persecution to strengthen what is weak.
I’ve enjoyed our little project of chanting Psalms as a family this school year. We are now a third of the way through the Psalter! Wherever possible, we are using the Theopolis Liturgy and Psalter, which is marvelous; otherwise we are using Concordia’s ESV Psalter.
How many Christians confess this:
For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome. (1 John 5:3 ESV, emphasis added)
Once again, corporate America and the media are pretty much unified in their, ah, brave stands for justice. Even the Wall Street Journal is calling for Trump to resign. What I want to know is why we are only starting to think about this now. There’s quite a few politicians, celebrities, media personalities, corporate leaders, and church leaders whose behavior over the past year year is worthy of resignation. Why, imagine: if Biden and Harris had humbled their own hearts, we might be looking forward to President Gabbard right now.
Related, Aaron Renn is beginning a series considering how and why the Republican party hates your guts.
And yet—be sure to consider also Mark Horne’s exhortation to speak cheerful words to yourself.
I love Ted Kooser’s “Splitting an order”—
I like to watch an old man cutting a sandwich in half,
maybe an ordinary cold roast beef on whole wheat bread,
no pickles or onion, keeping his shaky hands steady
by placing his forearms firm on the edge of the table
and using both hands, the left to hold the sandwich in place,
and the right to cut it surely, corner to corner,
observing his progress through glasses that moments before
he wiped with his napkin, and then to see him lift half
onto the extra plate that he had asked the server to bring,
and then to wait, offering the plate to his wife
while she slowly unrolls her napkin and places her spoon,
her knife and her fork in their proper places,
then smoothes the starched white napkin over her knees
and meets his eyes and holds out both old hands to him.
Thanks to Jon Barach for calling my attention to it.
Do this
John Barach writes:
The (Admittedly Oversimplistic) History of the Lord’s Supper:
Jesus: “Do this….”
The Church: “Let’s try this instead.”Examples:
Jesus: “Sit down.” (The Greek indicates reclining, normal festal posture.)
The Church: “Let’s kneel.” Or: “Let’s stand.”Jesus: Two prayers of thanksgiving, one for the bread, one for the wine.
The Church: One prayer.Jesus: Giving thanks (which is what “blessed” means).
The Church: Petition, asking God to do something.Jesus: Everyone eats the bread first. Only then is the wine handed out.
The Church: Some people start drinking wine before others have had bread.Jesus: Wine.
The Church: No wine. For centuries, church members get communion in one kind (bread) only. But today, wine gets replaced with grape juice.Jesus: Everyone eats the bread first. Only then is the wine handed out.
Someone: “Hey! I know! Let’s DIP the bread in the wine!”Scripture: Feast.
The Church: “Let’s make it mournful and sad. Maybe make the building dark.”Scripture: Feast.
The Church: “Let’s teach everyone to close their eyes and think their own thoughts as if they were all alone in the building.”Scripture: Break bread on the first day.
The Church: “Let’s not do it very often.”Jesus passed around the bread and the wine so that, say, the bread went to John and then to Peter and then to Judas and then to Levi and so on.
The Church: Every member must receive from the hand of the pastor.
See also: The Lord’s table
Metábasis eis állo génos (26)
Vrolijk Kerstfeest!
This post marks six months—twenty–six weeks—of this weekly bricolage. (Twenty–seven weeks if you count the final occasional edition of “Various.”) Glancing at the archive index, it looks like this month also marks two and a half years of monthly posting of one kind or another. Most of those are quotes, and for that time period many of them are from Eugen Rosenstock–Huessy.
You can, of course, get this delivered to you by email (see subscription button to the right) or by RSS reader (I like Feedly, but I wonder what you recommend). It’s a good discipline to write regularly. I’d like to see more writing from you in 2021, even if—perhaps especially if—it is mostly just your favorite quotes and poems and articles. And even if it is just once a month. Send links, please.
I picked up my title from Rosenstock–Huessy, who uses it in his course Cross of Reality, and translates it as transgression into another domain: the fallacy of transferring concepts blindly from one domain to another. It seems a fitting acknowledgement that I’m often writing at the margin of my education and experience, but not my curiosity and convictions.
I had about a quarter of our 2019 pictures left to sift through and upload this week, plus about half of our 2020 pictures. That was quite an exercise! For 2021 I plan to treat picture–sifting as an idle phone activity to be pursued alongside Twitter browsing.
I’ve joked for awhile that EDR and similar systems like CrowdStrike or Carbon Black would become Skynet. Or, more likely, a tool of international espionage and cyber–warfare. It doesn’t feel good to be vindicated. (Now imagine someone accomplishing this with a major browser or password manager application.) Complex and highly interconnected systems are difficult to make stable, resilient, or secure; and cannot possibly be made anti-fragile. (This is a lesser reason why I miss my old pickup truck.) I’m not very excited about Kubernetes for the same reason. It’s also partly why I’m not very excited about artificial intelligence; but additionally because analysis of data, whether by machine or by human, does not automatically involve either wisdom or decisiveness (see also Edwin Friedman and Nassim Taleb).
And if Rosenstock–Huessy is right, the coming turning of the age will be a turning from the big to the small, from empire to tribe. Perhaps that is still a hundred years away, or perhaps it is just one disastrous computer incident away.
Hallelujah.
Sing to the LORD a new song, His praise in the faithful’s assembly.
Let Israel rejoice in its Maker, Zion’s sons exult in their king.
Let them praise His name in dance, on the timbrel and lyre let them hymn to Him.
For the LORD looks with favor on His people, He adorns the lowly with victory.
Let the faithful delight in glory, sing gladly on their couches.
Exultations of God in their throat and a double–edged sword in their hand,
to wreak vengeance upon the nations, punishment on the peoples,
to bind their kings in fetters, and their nobles in iron chains,
to exact from them justice as written—it is grandeur for all His faithful.
Hallelujah. (Psalm 149, Robert Alter)
I now forget who reminded me of this, but as much as we love to think about the incarnation at Christmas, we ought to be celebrating it on March 25 as well.
C. R. Wiley and friends reflected on human scale recently. Wiley says that “we actually live in a world where our institutions dwarf us, make us feel insignificant and small, and reinforce that by, well, not being responsive to us.” Wiley quotes Leon Krier, who asserts that submissiveness is generally the human response to tyranny rather than primarily the cause of it, because (quoting Wiley quoting Krier quoting Boswell), “when the mind knows it cannot help itself by struggling, it quietly and patiently submits to whatever load is laid upon it.” I’m not sure that is always true, because classic conservatism recognizes that an undisciplined people does require external discipline—and if we do not discipline ourselves then God will do so in judgment. But in any case, this is an interesting corollary to the statement that evil prevails when good men do nothing. It also parallels Solzhenitsyn’s “Live Not By Lies.” And yet, I wonder: how shall I balance this against providing for my family, against being wise as a serpent, against the call to be a living dog rather than a dead lion (Ecclesiastes 9:4)? A partial answer is that we also live not by fear, of any kind.
In spite of BigEva’s complicity in enabling evil, much of the evangelical church is simply unprepared for the next decade. Who knew that we actually needed to warn our people, and brace our own selves, against great evil? Who knew that lies would be so sugar–coated and so popular? Churches that are expecting vaccines to return everything to normal are in for a big surprise. God has only just begun his work of sifting and winnowing. He is sharpening the antithesis.
And though there seemed to be, and indeed were, a thousand roads by which a man could walk through the world, there was not a single one which did not lead sooner or later either to the Beatific or the Miserific Vision. (C. S. Lewis, Perelandra, chapter 9; also see Sharper)
Fortunately, we have the opportunity right now to repent and study harder for the next exam! In Jesus, and through his church, death is no longer contagious: life is!
Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.
And he said to me, “These words are trustworthy and true. And the Lord, the God of the spirits of the prophets, has sent his angel to show his servants what must soon take place.”
“And behold, I am coming soon. Blessed is the one who keeps the words of the prophecy of this book.” (Revelation 22:1–7, ESV)
Childermas, the feast of the innocents, is the original sanctity of life day. I realized this week that these young men show up again—as part of the host under the altar:
When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the witness they had borne. They cried out with a loud voice, “O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?” Then they were each given a white robe and told to rest a little longer, until the number of their fellow servants and their brothers should be complete, who were to be killed as they themselves had been. (Revelation 6:9–11, ESV)
One of the things that their blood and their prayers accomplish is our release from Abraham’s bosom:
And I heard a voice from heaven saying, “Write this: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.” “Blessed indeed,” says the Spirit, “that they may rest from their labors, for their deeds follow them!” (Revelation 14:13, ESV, emphasis added)
By the end of this heavenly liturgy, their prayers have helped to bring about the destruction of God’s and their enemies. God has judged and de–created the old covenant world, and these young men have been released to stand face to face with him in the freedom of the glory of the sons of God:
After this I heard what seemed to be the loud voice of a great multitude in heaven, crying out,
“Hallelujah!
Salvation and glory and power belong to our God,
for his judgments are true and just;
for he has judged the great prostitute
who corrupted the earth with her immorality,
and has avenged on her the blood of his servants.”Once more they cried out,
“Hallelujah!
The smoke from her goes up forever and ever.” ( Revelation 19:1–3, ESV)
Worship is warfare (6)
This event from David’s life is striking:
But the Philistines went up again,
and spread out in the Valley of the Shades.
So David inquired of YHWH,
and he said:
You are not to go up;
lead [your men] around, behind them,
and come at them in front of the balsam-trees.
And let it be:
when you hear the sound of marching on the tops of the balsam-trees, then you are to act-decisively,
for then YHWH will go out before you, to strike down the camp of the Philistines. (2 Samuel 5:22–24, Everett Fox)
I wanted to find a connection to balsam or mulberry trees in the New Testament but can’t think of one. However, apart from Chronicles, the only other place this word for balsam trees appears is in Psalm 84, as the Valley of Baca:
How lovely Your dwellings, O LORD of armies!
My being longed, even languished, for the courts of the LORD.
My heart and my flesh sing gladness to the living God.
Even the bird has found a home, and the swallow a nest for itself,
that puts its fledglings by Your altars, LORD of armies, my king and my God.
Happy are those who dwell in your house, they will ever praise You.Happy the folk whose strength is in You, the highways in their heart,
Who pass through the Valley of Baca, they make it into a spring—yes, the early rain cloaks it with blessings.
They go from rampart to rampart, they appear before God in Zion.
LORD, God of armies, hear my prayer. Hearken, O God of Jacob.Our shield, O God, see, and regard Your anointed one’s face
For better one day in Your courts than a thousand I have chosen,
standing on the threshold in the house of my God, than living in the tents of wickedness.
For a sun and shield is the LORD, God is grace and glory.
The LORD grants, He does not withhold bounty to those who go blameless.
O LORD of armies, happy the man who trusts in You. (Psalm 84, Robert Alter)
When the happy folk of Yahweh of armies go up to his house to worship him, this is a marching through the balsam trees.
See also: Worship is warfare (5), etc.
By faith, not by sight
I read and enjoyed Gaffin’s By Faith, Not by Sight recently. I think that he could have gone a little farther towards finding multi-perspectival resolutions, but I am generally very appreciative of the book. Some choice quotes:
Since the goal of redemption is union with the risen Lord, there seems little doubt that, if Paul has a center to his order of salvation, it is this doctrine. When other applied blessings, such as justification or sanctification, are made central, there are inevitably deleterious consequences for the Christian life, whereby incipient forms of antinomianism and legalism creep in. For example, a certain Lutheran view that justification precedes sanctification, so that it causes union with Christ and sanctification, ends up attributing to justification a renovative/transformative element. The notion that one applied benefit can cause another applied benefit has always perplexed me. But when union with Christ structures the whole of applied redemption, the aforementioned errors are dealt with better. This has to do with the fact that Christ’s person, not simply his work or his applied benefits, must have the preeminence. Indeed, the gift of Christ’s person is a greater gift to us than his benefits. As many of our finest divines have vigorously argued, there exists a priority of Christ’s person over his work. Union with Christ helps us to keep this salient fact in mind. We are not simply recipients of his benefits; we also belong to him. (Mark Jones, Foreword, p. x)
One important methodological consideration is that, with all due attention being given to his immediate historical context, including relevant extracanonical texts and materials, in interpreting [Paul’s] letters the context that is not only primary but privileged is the canonical context. (10)
All along I have been speaking of Paul’s “theology” and referring to him as a “theologian.” For many, that will not be a problem, but this way of speaking warrants some clarification, since for some it is questionable at best. The perceived danger here is that we will, as it could be put, “drag Paul down to our level.” . . . What offsets this leveling danger is appreciating Paul’s identity as an apostle, at least if we understand apostleship properly. . . . Regarding [his] authority, the apostle is as Christ himself.
Paul the theologian, then, is Paul the apostle. That points to the God-breathed origin and authority of his teaching, its character as the word of God. It highlights the radical, categorical difference there is between his theology and post-apostolic theology. His teaching, along with the teaching of the other biblical writers, is Spirit-borne, canonical, and foundational. (14-15)
Increasingly over the course of the last century, to fill out this brief historical sketch, a new consensus concerning Paul emerged across a broad front in biblical studies. This happened in tandem with a reassessment of the kingdom proclamation of Jesus. It is now widely maintained that the controlling focus of Paul’s theology, as for Jesus before him, is eschatology—or what is equivalent for some, redemptive history (historia salutis). Specifically, the center of his theology has been recognized to be the death and resurrection of Christ in their eschatological significance.
In my view, this basic conclusion is sound and, by now, well established. (29)
The center of Paul’s soteriology, then, at the center of his theology as a whole, is neither justification by faith nor sanctification, neither the imputation of Christ’s righteousness nor the renewing work of the Spirit. To draw that conclusion, however, is not to decenter justification (or sanctification), as if justification is somehow less important for Paul than it is for the Reformers. Justification is supremely important; it is absolutely crucial in Paul’s “gospel of salvation” (cf. Eph. 1:13). If his teaching on justification is denied or distorted, it ceased to be gospel; there is no longer saving “good news” for guilty sinners. But no matter how close justification is to the heart of Paul’s gospel, in our salvation there is an antecedent consideration, a reality that is deeper, more fundamental, more decisive, more crucial: Christ and our union with him, the crucified and resurrected, the exalted, Christ. Union with Christ by faith—that is the essence of Paul’s ordo salutis.
At the opening of Book 3 of his Institutes of the Christian Religion and controlling all that he has to say about “the way” of salvation—that is, its personal, individual appropriation, including what he will eventually say about justification—Calvin writes, “First, we must understand that as long as Christ remains outside of us, and we are separated from him, all that he has suffered and done for the salvation of the human race remains useless and of no value for us.” (49-50)
[Some have observed] that Paul’s exhortations to the church as a whole, his ethics of the Christian life in their entirety, can be summed up in the epigram, “Become what you are.” This is helpful, but by itself it carries a liability that can render it decidedly unhelpful (suggesting some form of personal autonomy), unless it is read with an all-encompassing Christological gloss, “Become what you are in Christ.” (80)
The point here is that “the path of good works runs not from man to God, says Paul, but from God to man.” [quoting Berkouwer] Ultimately, in the deepest sense, for Paul “our good works” are not ours, but God’s. They are his work, begun and continuing in us, his being “at work in us, both to will and to do what pleases him” (Phil. 2:13). That is why, without any tension, a faith that rests in God the Savior is a faith that is restless to do his will. (88)
On the coherence between [faith and works], it is hard to improve on what J. Gresham Machen writes aphoristically, “As the faith which James condemns is different than the faith that Paul commends, so also the works which James commends are different than the works which Paul condemns.” (118)
Baptism exhortation (2)
Amos,
In the New Testament, Peter and Paul speak of two great old–covenant baptisms: the baptism of the flood, and the baptism of the Red Sea crossing.
In both of these, God rained water on his people, and drowned his enemies. Psalm 77 tells of God’s rain at the Red Sea crossing, and Psalm 68—the great battle Psalm of the Huguenots—tells of rain in the wilderness:
O God, when You went forth before Your people,
When You marched through the wilderness:
The world shook;
Indeed, the heavens dripped at the presence of God, the One of Sinai,
At the presence of God, the God of Israel.
A rain of gifts You showered, O God;
Your inheritance, though it languished, You Yourself established.
Your beasts dwelled in it;
You prepared it in Your goodness for the lowly, O God. (Psalm 68:7–10, James Jordan)
So you see that the waters of baptism are a rescue from judgment and death, and they are a source of life and refreshment. But they are also a commissioning, into a priesthood and into an army! As soon as Israel had crossed the Red Sea in battle array, they fought the Amalekites. Likewise, Psalm 68 continues:
My Master gives the word;
The messengers are a great army.
Kings of armies flee; they flee;
And those remaining at home divide the spoil,
Those remaining with the sheepfolds:
A dove’s wings covered with silver,
And her pinions with green–gold.
When the Almighty scattered kings there,
You made it snow on Black Mountain.
O mountain of gods, mountain of Bashan,
O mountain of ridges, mountain of Bashan,
Why your hostility, you mountains of ridges,
Toward the mountain God delighted for His dwelling?
Yes, Yahweh will dwell there endlessly.
The chariots of God are twice myriads,
Thousands upon thousands,
My Master among them,
At Sinai, in the holy place!
You ascended on high;
You captured a captivity;
You took men as gifts—
And even rebels—
In order that Yah, God might dwell. (Psalm 68:11–18, James Jordan)
The same thing happened when Israel crossed the Jordan into the promised land. God brought them safely through waters, circumcised them, and formed them into his own army to conduct a holy war.
Amos, God still has an army that wages holy warfare with the sword of the Spirit: the word of God. God has commissioned you into his service today. You are and will always be a soldier of Jesus. You belong completely to him, and it is good to belong to him. I charge you to serve him faithfully and fearlessly!
See also: Baptism exhortation
Enchanted
‘Cause I can see the world is charged
Andrew Peterson, “Don’t You Want to Thank Someone“
It’s glimmering with promises
Written in a script of stars
And dripping from the prophet’s lips.
Metábasis eis állo génos (16)
I wonder if Leviticus 21:4 is another hint, together with Deuteronomy 25, that priest-pastors are levirs, husband–caretakers for God’s people:
He is not to make himself tamei (as) a husband among his people (does), to profane himself. (Leviticus 21:4, Everett Fox)
Whatever resulted in a court of Gentiles—and reluctance to eat together with Gentiles—in second–temple Judaism, it was a perversion of God’s commanded worship. It is true that you could not participate in Passover unless you were circumcised, but the uncircumcised Gentile God-fearer could bring offerings to God, and he could participate in the feast of booths. This perversion is part of the great judgment on the faithless priest–shepherd–husbands of Jesus’s day (e.g., Matthew 23:13-14).
YHWH spoke to Moshe, saying:
Speak to Aharon and to his sons and to all the Children of Israel, and say to them:
Any-Man, any-man of the House of Israel or of the sojourners in Israel
that brings-near his near-offering—including any of their vow-offerings or including any of their freewill-offerings that they bring-near to YHWH, as an offering-up— (Leviticus 22:17-18, Everett Fox, emphasis added)
Every native is to sacrifice these thus,
to bring-near a fire-offering of soothing savor for YHWH.
Now when there sojourns with you a sojourner,
or (one) that has been in your mids, throughout your generations,
and he sacrifices a fire-offering of soothing savor for YHWH;
as you sacrifice (it), thus is he to sacrifice (it).
Assembly!
One law for you and for the sojourner that takes-up-sojourn,
a law for the ages, throughout your generations:
as (it is for) you, so will it be (for) the sojourner before the presence of YHWH.
One instruction, one regulation shall there be for you
and for the sojourner that takes-up-sojourn with you! (Numbers 15:13-16, Everett Fox)
The pilgrimage-festival of Sukkot / Huts you are to observe for yourself, for seven days,
at your ingathering, from your threshing-floor, from your vat.
You are to rejoice on your festival,
you, your son, and your daughter,
your servant and your maid,
the Levite,
the sojourner, the orphan and the widow that are within your gates. (Deuteronomy 16:13-14, Everett Fox)
Thanks to my friend Nathan for this great quote from Thomas Boston:
Christians should wisely observe [God’s] providences . . . Because they are always perfect works. They will abide the strictest search and the most narrow inquiry, Deut. 32:4. Whatever faults we find with them, as we do many, it is for want of due observation. But at length he shall gain that testimony and recantation, ‘He hath done all things well,’ Mark 7:37. In these his works no flaw is to be found, no mistake; nothing too much, nothing too little; nothing too soon done, nothing too late done; nothing misplaced, nothing in or over; nay, nothing done that is not best done; nothing that man or angel could make better. The world will startle at this as a paradox: but faith will believe it, on the solid ground of infinite wisdom, though sense contradict it, Isa. 38:8, Jer. 12:1. O that they who will debate this truth would come near and observe.
This is a neat converse of iron and bronze:
Now if, after all that, you do not hearken to me,
I will continue to discipline you, sevenfold, for your sins—
I will break your fierce pride!
I will give your heavens to be like iron, and your earth like bronze, . . . (Leviticus 26:18–19, Everett Fox)
But it shall be:
If you do not hearken to the voice of YHWH your God,
by taking-care and by observing all his commandments and his laws
that I command you today,
then there will come upon you all these curses, and overtake you: . . . .
The heavens that are above your head will become bronze,
and the earth that is beneath you, iron. (Deuteronomy 28:15, 23, Everett Fox)
I always thought that it betrayed a deep misunderstanding—of God’s word and his ways—for modern Israel to name their air defense system Iron Dome. Much like how we used to sing “they rush on the city . . .” with such oblivious gusto.
Leviticus 27 is not a later addition or afterthought to the book. One reason we know this is that there are credible chiasms where it fits well. Also, if we take Leviticus as a covenant document, this chapter fits perfectly in the “succession” section of the pattern, immediately following the “oath” or “sanctions” section. Leviticus would be incomplete without making plans for the sustaining of the sanctuary.
To the Word took us through Ephesians this week. Some reflections, past and present: (1) There is a very real shadow government that determines everything that takes place (Eph. 1:20–23), and we are privileged to participate in it by our prayers and worship (Eph. 2:6). (2) Once you see that Ephesians 2 is primarily about historia salutis rather than ordo salutis, it is difficult to unsee it. (3) The mystery here and elsewhere in the Bible is that of Daniel’s stone cut by no human hand: Jesus would inaugurate a new kingdom that would not be Israel über alles, but would rather supersede all other kingdoms. (4) There is a counterfeit and impotent stone, uncut by hand, reputed to be from the heavens, right there in Ephesus! (Acts 19:35) (5) Jesus’s giving gifts is not Paul misquoting David through the Septuagint; it is a brilliant application of totus Christus: what Jesus receives he shares with his bride. (6) You can find echoes of all ten commandments in the book. (7) The identity between covetousness and idolatry (here, as in Colossians) is profound and important. (8) It is interesting to me that the word itself is an offensive weapon (the sword of the Spirit), but faith in that word is a defensive weapon. I suppose that we must trust the Spirit to make the word powerful in and toward others, but we also have some direct responsibility to cultivate its power within ourselves.
Hindsight is 20/20, isn’t it? Making room for Lenin, Stalin, and Mao is a sin (even if a foolish and unwitting one), and certainly a disqualification for leadership.
My son, if sinners entice you,
do not consent.
If they say, “Come with us, let us lie in wait for blood;
let us ambush the innocent without reason;
like Sheol let us swallow them alive,
and whole, like those who go down to the pit;
we shall find all precious goods,
we shall fill our houses with plunder;
throw in your lot among us;
we will all have one purse”—
my son, do not walk in the way with them;
hold back your foot from their paths,
for their feet run to evil,
and they make haste to shed blood. (Proverbs 1:10–16, ESV)
This is a year the evangelical church will look back upon with great regret. In so many ways, we have redoubled our effort to appear respectable to the world, and unsurprisingly we have been played. But friendship with the world is enmity with God. There is a slow-motion coup being attempted in the United States, under cover of a thin veneer of righteous platitudes and bald-faced deception. Many people in our bureaucracy, politics, journalism, media, entertainment, and big tech are well overdue for their stay in prison. And this is not just about the bloodletting of babies but also the grooming of our neighbors’ sons and daughters, and the general bloodletting of our neighbors’ households and livelihoods. To make room for this coup is to actually disobey Romans 13, grossly; to hate our neighbor grossly; and to disqualify ourselves from leadership. You know that they will not be satisfied with the heads of inconvenient troublemakers (aren’t all prophets inconvenient?) like Wilson and Gagnon and Baucham. No, they will also come for Greear and Chandler and Thabiti and even Mason—the omelet must have its stooges—and eventually for you and me. Bezhmenov, McCarthy, Solzhenitsen, and many others are being vindicated before our eyes.
Of course, you have to observe flesh and blood rather than chapter and verse to discern that I am right and Keller is wrong, to discern that our political future is not a simple and neutral debate over which reasonable people may disagree. I was going to say that it requires wisdom to see where this is going, but that is not really true: it is already out in the open, unmasked, so to speak, and brazen. And this is why identifying this evil is a qualification for leadership; the fact that the line separating good and evil passes through our own hearts does not acquit us of this responsibility, but simply requires us to overcome that evil too. A pastor–husband must know what needs to be done, and he may not fear seeming unloving when this requires him to speak words of warning in actual love.
And yet we are happy warriors; we are ministers and officers of such a shadow government, and the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh:
Why do nations conspire,
And peoples murmur a vain thing?
Positioned are earth’s kings,
And rulers take counsel together,
Against Yahweh,
And against His anointed;
Saying, “Let us break Their chains,
And throw off of us Their ropes!”
The One enthroned in the heavens laughs;
My Master scoffs at them! (Psalm 2:1-10, James Jordan)
God is doing a good work of exposing and testing and tempering right now. May we be strengthened, purified, and proven true!
C. R. Wiley and friends recently provided a delightful encouragement to study Protestant resistance theory from, of all quarters, a Roman Catholic. Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos is in my reading queue after Solzhenitsyn.
The Theopolis conversation on the manosphere and the church is complete. I encourage you to read all of the articles.
Roundup:
I gotta have my orange juice. 
Metábasis eis állo génos (18)
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Last week I linked Alastair Roberts’ article on gender and discourse. One proof point for his thesis is how we have come to think our leaders ought to present themselves to us. We would rather have relatable leaders than distant, impenetrable, strong, and assured ones; we have become easily offended by what Edwin Friedman calls the well–differentiated leader. We want our presidents to pay attention to the focus groups, appear on late night talk shows, and tell us whether they wear boxers or briefs. Heaven forbid that they are (or at least fail to pretend that they are not) Machiavellian. I follow James Jordan in believing that Nebuchadnezzar, Artaxerxes–Ahashuerus–Darius–the–Great, Cyrus, the king of Nineveh, Joseph’s Pharaoh, and Constantine were all converted. I sometimes wonder if Trump is as well.
Egalitarianism flattens not only the sexes but, because of the process Roberts observes, the many different spheres of life. We would do well to rediscover sphere sovereignty. Like any explanatory rubric, it can be taken too far. But it has a lot to offer in this moment, both in terms of the form and purpose and limitations of each sphere, and also how the church ought to speak to each sphere. You could say that it gives us a kind of “threefold division” not only of the law but of the entire Bible and of life itself. For example, the parable of the good Samaritan is not something you would normally preach to the magistrate except in his private capacity. In fact, the parable as originally presented is not even a criticism of private individuals, but rather of church leaders who had deeply confused priorities. There is a time to recognize that there is none righteous and preach the gospel of free grace. There is a time to urge and pray for unity. But at certain times in each sphere of life, those principles serve as a cop-out that whitewashes the sharp distinctions of beauty, truth, or righteousness.
I had a chance to listen to Rogan interview Kanye and Jones this week. This was my first encounter with both Rogan and Jones. I enjoyed both interviews.
What would a company of prophets look like—a company of men both grim and joyful? This is a time, to steal an idea from Charles Simeon, of heavy ballast bearing hard against soaring sails of encouragement. Isn’t it interesting that we must have the one in order to fully enjoy and appreciate the other? (Then I recall that Simeon labored for years without the benefit of like–minded brothers!) Sometimes you must march through Moria in order to save the Shire. It is a rich blessing from God if you are able to do it in a fellowship.
Reflecting this week on the events of 2020, including lockdowns, social distancing, masks, riots, and more, I feel again very strongly that we are witnessing a very Girardian moment. Girard explains how a wave of perverse imitation can sweep the globe, to the point where we even imitate our excuses (“science,” “we are all racist”). But then we turn swiftly to ruthlessly scapegoat those who are not caught up in the wave of imitation. This explains why everything in 2020 has been deeply politicized; there is a sharp polarity between this pursuit of dominating perverse unity on the one hand, and the steadfast preservation of basic human dignity and self governance on the other. These are not disagreements between equally reasonable viewpoints.
The engine behind this is a very powerful one: a desire to be justified, and an unwillingness to find justification by exposing our sin and guilt and shame and receiving forgiveness in the blood of the true Scapegoat, then imitating him in discipleship and growth towards self-governing maturity. Instead we project guilt on others and crucify them. This momentarily soothes our consciences, but the relief is only momentary because it is a false justification and we have only added to our sin and guilt in the process. So the next time there is just a little more ruthlessness because there is more sin to be covered up. And this engine is further amplified by both fear and exhilaration when everyone around you is caught up in it as well. This is often tempting for the church, but seeing it clearly and resisting it is a crucial part of not being of the world.
It is right to see the seeds of persecution in 2020 even though the engine has not yet turned its full energy directly on the church. Girard stresses that the church is always the scapegoat of last resort when the cycle reaches its zenith. This is because the church is the bearer of the gospel, which is deeply offensive to everyone caught up in self justification. The church tears down strongholds, which is to say, we uniquely have the ability and responsibility to see and expose and resist this demonic scapegoating process, urging people to repent and find their justification in the true Scapegoat. That automatically begets persecution, although the ultimate fruit of that is going to be the growth and maturation of the church and kingdom, because our message is one of tremendous unearthly power: the one Scapegoat really does cover sins and give life!
So you see, there are good gospel reasons the church ought to purposefully (and cheerfully!) resist walking together with the world in any of the great issues of 2020. There is obvious darkness there to be exposed. And we need to be prepared for this to provoke a crisis point. But this will result in the growth of the kingdom.
I learned this week of the (timely) phrase normalcy bias.
Theopolis Institute published the first edition of their Liturgy and Psalter this week. Their plan is to provide fresh translations, melodies, and chants for every Psalm over the next few years.
Written by Scott Moonen
November 1, 2020 at 4:08 pm
Posted in Biblical Theology, Commentary, Current events, Miscellany