Archive for the ‘Biblical Theology’ Category
Literaturely
Calvin Seerveld writes movingly on how to read the Bible:
The true story of God’s great deeds has been written down (John 20:31) so that we may believe Jesus is the Christ, the son of God, and so believing have life in his name. The Holy Scriptures have been given us historically so that we might come to know the covenanting God and his way of doing things in creation and so that we might be able to obey him more maturely as adopted sons and daughters, who had lost their way in the world. That is crucial, I believe, for rightly understanding the Bible, this God-speaking literature. It must always be pulled back to its primary level of true story for believing children.
That’s a test I have always used when challenged in my confession: I recall the way I responded as a wide-eyed child to Mother reading me Bible stories before I was trundled off to bed. Adam and Eve were real people then . . . and now, quite unlike Sleeping Beauty and Prince Charming. Balaam’s ass saw the angel and talked, and God had a whale swallow Jonah—it said so—because God loved the Israelites so much and all the people and cows around Ninevah; but Hansel and Gretel and the witch in the forest were not people in a true story. Somehow my believing parents gave me a lasting sense of how Genesis 3 and Romans 5, Exodus 20 and Matthew 5–7, Psalm 90, Isaiah 40 and Romans 8—all richly, literarily variegated—integrally told the true story of God’s saving presence on the earth, especially for those who took him at his Word, as my Dad would say (cf. I Timothy 4:10). I learned to use the Bible not so much as a book of special, extra, inside information (the way Thomas Aquinas conceived it, cf. Summe contra gentiles, 4, i) but as a source of knowledge-to-grow-on, the kind of vision (nouthesia) your father would give you as an inexperienced lad who was walking around in the world (Bible as “spectacles,” to use John Calvin’s phrase). And it is that kind of humbled, childlike, expectant hearing and fiducial reception (to use an early English Puritan expression) that I believe must be the first and last way one meets the God-speaking literature called the Bible.
So what am I after? Just this: (1) It is an insight of christian aesthetic theory that bona fide art presents reliable, specific knowledge for others to grasp; and that knowledge is of its own imaginative, suggestion-rich sort. (2) Literature is thoughtful writing that is characterized by such an artistic norming. (3) The Bible is God-speaking literature telling us a true story; that is its nature. Therefore, when faithful, childlike people read the Bible, they should read it literarily. One should not read the Bible literalistically (=”literally”?) and then figuratively when one gets stuck. One should always read it literarily, literaturely, the way it is written, to mine its special wisdom-making, true-storied knowledge for children.
The Bible is not a collection of atomic, bullet like proof-texts to be shot at people. It will take a trained person who subsumes verses within paragraphs, within chapter wholes, within total books, within the perspicuous true story connection I mentioned to interpret Scripture word for word. The Bible is not an anthology of lessons in piety which can be distributed, so to speak, like candy to whoever holds out his hand. The Bible does not give recipes, which when followed to the letter, make wonderful devotional soup. Only when the mighty, true story of civitas Dei vs. civitates mundi dominates the reading of the quiet pilgrim psalm 131 or jumps out at you from Genesis 32 when Jabbok becomes Peniel or overwhelms you seeking comfort in the letter to the Philippians: only then does one learn the God-fearing, quiet intensity (eusebeia) that is becoming to a child of God. The Bible is not like a telephone book where you can find God’s special number for emergency use, and all the heavenly office numbers to call for marriage, births and funerals, lonely hearts, potential suicides, earthquake-like disasters. People use the Bible that way, and God stoops to their weakness, but human weakness does not define the Holy Scriptures.
I am continually bowled over by the fact that this is the book where we hear God talking about what He is actually doing in the world; and its true story is so powerful, with cosmic, historic sweep and a tenderly passionate, apocalyptic temper that one says spontaneously with Paul (Romans 15:4), “All the things written earlier were put in writing for us to understand so that through the firming up and comforting power of the Scriptures we might have hope!” Part of what I am after, as a christian aesthetician, is greater recognition of the Bible as God-speaking literature that is telling a true story, so that the Bible not be so easily trivialized into a private, short-order, spiritual cookbook. That denatures the Holy Scriptures, no matter how infallible you claim the book to be. (Rainbows for the Fallen World, 90-92)
Anointing
And [Jesus’s disciples] cast out many demons and anointed with oil many who were sick and healed them. (Mark 6:13)
Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing Psalms. Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. (James 5:13-15)
In the old covenants, priests and kings were ordained through anointing with oil. In the new covenant, all God’s people are priests (1 Pet. 2:5) and are seated with Jesus as kings (Eph. 2:6). You might expect that anointing would be used for all believers as a sign of our union with Jesus the anointed one through his Holy Spirit. So it is a little startling that God appoints anointing, not for our baptism, but for those who are sick or in pain.
Of course there is no magic in either the oil or in the act of anointing. Instead, what this is showing us is that Christians who suffer sickness or pain have a unique privilege of closer fellowship with Jesus as they suffer under the curse. You could say that this anointing establishes a sort of office of suffering, in which Christians who endure sickness and pain are recognized and honored as having a special position in the service of our anointed king.
When the elders of the church anoint and pray for those who are sick, the church is, through her elders, honoring those whom Jesus has called to suffer, and praying that Jesus will by his Holy Spirit sanctify their suffering for his glory and praise. The church is also identifying sick believers with Jesus, the anointed one who heals us (Matt. 11:1-16), and with the Holy Spirit, the one who brings life to our mortal bodies (Romans 8:11). Finally, through this we pray earnestly that Jesus will bring their suffering to an end, just as Jesus’s own suffering was finally crowned with his glorification and reign.
Mercy seat
I wrote recently about one way in which the cross is a type of the day of atonement.
My friend Al writes about another way in which the resurrection is a type of the day of atonement:
. . . In John 20 the stone on which they laid Jesus at this death is empty when Mary visits on the first day of the week. But on either side of the empty bed is an angel. It seems intentional that John wants us to see this place, the resurrection place, as a new mercy seat; the resurrection bed of Jesus is the new place of covering for the law.
He was raised for our justification . . .
Cubit
Ezekiel experiences a vision in which an angel shows him a meticulously measured temple and city. One of the fascinating aspects of this vision is that we are told exactly how we are to meditate on it:
As for you, son of man, describe to the house of Israel the temple, that they may be ashamed of their iniquities; and they shall measure the plan. And if they are ashamed of all that they have done, make known to them the design of the temple, its arrangement, its exits and its entrances, that is, its whole design; and make known to them as well all its statutes and its whole design and all its laws, and write it down in their sight, so that they may observe all its laws and all its statutes and carry them out. (Ezekiel 43:10-11)
We are to see the careful measurements and reflect on the rectitude of our lives and God’s church.
Ezekiel’s visionary temple was never intended to be built, but to reflect the spiritual situation at the return from exile, where God planned for Israel to have a greater influence on the spiritual life of the nations. Consider Nehemiah and Esther, the synagogues that appear throughout the Roman empire in Paul’s day, and the Gentile God-fearers in Acts.
Another interesting thing we learn in Ezekiel’s vision is that the angelic-spiritual cubit is one and a half human cubits:
And behold, there was a wall all around the outside of the temple area, and the length of the measuring reed in the man’s hand was six long cubits, each being a cubit and a handbreadth in length. . . (Ezekiel 40:5)
These are the measurements of the altar by cubits (the cubit being a cubit and a handbreadth): its base shall be one cubit high and one cubit broad, with a rim of one span around its edge. . . (Ezekiel 43:13)
In the book of Revelation, John receives a vision of the new-covenant people of God. The dimensions of the new covenant far exceed those of the restoration covenant. But John also emphasizes that the relationship between human and angelic measurements has changed:
He also measured its wall, 144 cubits by human measurement, which is also an angel’s measurement. (Revelation 21:17)
Why the change? There are a few things we can say about this progression. Psalm 8 and Hebrews 2 indicate that man was made “a little lower than” the angels, but that Jesus and his people are now, instead, “crowned with glory and honor,” exercising dominion over the whole world. Under the old covenants, we were under the tutelage of a law delivered by angels, but in Jesus we have now entered into maturity (Gal. 3-4, Heb. 2). Once it was cherubim that guarded the way to God’s throne, but now the keys to the kingdom have been given to the church (Matthew 16:19), and we are enthroned with Jesus (Eph. 2:6, Rev. 20:4). It is even the case that the church will judge angels (1 Cor. 6:3).
What is happening in the new covenant is that heaven and earth now kiss. Today that takes place spiritually every Lord’s day when we stand before the throne (Heb. 12:22ff); one day that will be a physical reality. Earth will be so fully remade after the heavenly pattern that all earthly measurements conform to heavenly ones; the permanent dwelling place of God will no longer be with the angels:
And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.” (Revelation 21:3)
Glory and beauty
In Exodus 28, God instructs Moses in the creation of “holy garments for Aaron your brother, for glory and for beauty.” The innermost garments are linen undergarments, and upon them are layers of more glorious garments. Ordinarily the high priest wore all these garments for his duties. But on the day of atonement (Leviticus 16), he was to enter into the most holy place dressed only in linen: undergarments, coat, sash and turban. “These are the holy garments” (emphasis added).
The white linen of holiness serves as the precondition — the foundation, the root — of the color and sparkle of glory and beauty. (Equally, we might add, does a blood sacrifice serve as the precondition of glory and beauty.)
How else can we speak of what grows from this root of holiness? The fruit of the holy Spirit is “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Galatians 5). This is how you measure glory and beauty.
Barabbas
Israel’s yearly day of atonement ritual included the offering of two goats. One was offered on the altar, and the other was sent into the wilderness:
Aaron . . . shall take the two goats and set them before Yahweh at the entrance of the tent of meeting. And Aaron shall cast lots over the two goats, one lot for Yahweh and the other lot for destruction. And Aaron shall present the goat on which the lot fell for Yahweh and use it as a sin offering, but the goat on which the lot fell for destruction shall be presented alive before Yahweh to make atonement over it, that it may be sent away into the wilderness to destruction. . . .
And when he has made an end of atoning for the Holy Place and the tent of meeting and the altar, he shall present the live goat. And Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat, and confess over it all the iniquities of the people of Israel, and all their transgressions, all their sins. And he shall put them on the head of the goat and send it away into the wilderness by the hand of a man who is in readiness. The goat shall bear all their iniquities on itself to a remote area, and he shall let the goat go free in the wilderness. (Leviticus 16:6-22)
James Jordan comments that this ritual has two complementary images. First, it reflects the double work that Jesus’s death accomplishes for us: like the first goat, Jesus’s blood covers our sins; and like the second goat, Jesus’s death removes our sins. But this ritual also reflects the reality of limited atonement, the fact that Jesus is a dual redeemer-avenger: those who trust in Jesus have their sins covered by his blood and enter into his throne room, but those who reject Jesus’s sacrifice will go to destruction.
Jesus died at the time of Passover, and much of the imagery surrounding the cross has to do with a Passover-exodus. But there is one key event that calls to mind the ritual of the day of atonement:
Now at the feast the governor was accustomed to release for the crowd any one prisoner whom they wanted. And they had then a notorious prisoner called Barabbas. So when they had gathered, Pilate said to them, “Whom do you want me to release for you: Barabbas, or Jesus who is called Christ?” . . . Now the chief priests and the elders persuaded the crowd to ask for Barabbas and destroy Jesus. The governor again said to them, “Which of the two do you want me to release for you?” And they said, “Barabbas.” Pilate said to them, “Then what shall I do with Jesus who is called Christ?” They all said, “Let him be crucified!” And he said, “Why, what evil has he done?” But they shouted all the more, “Let him be crucified!” (Matthew 27:15-23)
We see two men presented just as with the goats in Leviticus 16. By the will of the priests and elders (Mark also takes pains to say that the chief priests were involved), one man is put to death and one is released. Because of this atonement, the way into the holy of holies is opened:
And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And the earth shook, and the rocks were split. (Matthew 27:51)
However, this is an ambiguous day of atonement. It is necessary to accept the sacrifice, but many rejected Jesus:
The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” . . . . After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. (John 6:52,66)
It is also necessary to confess your sin over the scapegoat and repudiate your sin. But many did not repent from their spiritual pride. John 18 describes Barabbas as a robber or brigand, using the same word that Jesus uses in Matt. 21 and Luke 19 to describe what had become of his house. Far from sending the sin of Barabbas into the wilderness, the priests welcomed his sin into God’s house. And so, since they did not send their own sin to destruction, destruction itself came to Jerusalem in AD 70, Jerusalem that had become Babylon, the ultimate apostate church (Rev. 11:8 taken together with Rev. 18:10ff).
Parousia
[Jesus] ascended into heaven,
and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty;
from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead. (Apostles’ Creed)
When will this coming of Jesus be? We cannot know for sure, but the Bible gives us some helpful clues.
One clue is a prophecy made by David:
Yahweh says to my Lord:
“Sit at my right hand,
until I make your enemies your footstool.” (Psalm 110:1)
Jesus will remain seated until his enemies become his footstool. This is an ambiguous image—they may become his footstool either in repentance or in judgment. Closely related to this, we have the great commission that Jesus gives to his church:
Go therefore and disciple all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age. (Matthew 28:19-20)
This has echoes of God’s promise to Abraham that “in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed” (Gen. 22:18). This promise was partially fulfilled at times in the Bible. For example, Joseph became a father to Pharaoh (Gen. 45:8) and ministered to “all the earth” (Gen. 41:56). Much later, through Esther, God’s supremacy was proclaimed “in every province and in every city” of a global empire, so that many peoples were converted (Esther 8:17).
There is no reason to doubt that the gospel of Jesus (the greater Ahasuerus) will be successful in accomplishing the great commission, as the church (the greater Esther) offers her own life for the world. God declares that it is too small a thing for him to save few people or nations:
[Yahweh] says:
“It is too light a thing that you should be my servant
to raise up the tribes of Jacob
and to bring back the preserved of Israel;
I will make you as a light for the nations,
that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.” (Isaiah 49:6)
But so far we have no indication of timing, only of context. In Joseph’s case, the entire world came to Joseph in fourteen years. In Esther’s case, many nations were converted in nine months. God made David’s and Solomon’s enemies to be at peace with them in a matter of decades.
However, the Bible gives us a time-related clue in another one of God’s promises:
Know therefore that Yahweh your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations.(Deuteronomy 7:9)
If we take a generation to be 40 years (the time Israel spent in the wilderness, the reign of a king), then God promises to show faithfulness for 40,000 years. There is some elegance to taking this number, because it makes the old covenant, which spanned 4,000 years, to be a tithe of all of history. However, in other places God speaks of plural thousands of generations (Exodus 20:5-6, 34:6-7, Deut. 5:9-10, Jer. 32:18). And in another case when God lays claim to thousands, we take it to be an understatement, not an overstatement:
For every beast of the forest is mine,
the cattle on a thousand hills. (Psalm 50:10)
So it seems that 40,000 years may be a bare minimum.
Perhaps it is not just the earth, but the universe, that God intends for us subdue.
See also: The future of Jesus
Bound
Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding in his hand the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain. And he seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years, and threw him into the pit, and shut it and sealed it over him, so that he might not deceive the nations any longer, until the thousand years were ended. After that he must be released for a little while. (Revelation 20:1-3 ESV)
If you are an amillennialist or a postmillennialist, this verse poses a little problem. How can it be that Satan is bound, and yet he also “prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (1 Pet. 5:8)?
The answer is that, especially for a spiritual being like Satan, binding may refer to something other than total physical restraint. In Satan’s case, it refers to a sort of covenantal or legal restriction placed upon Satan by God. He is not allowed to “deceive the nations” while the church undertakes to disciple the nations, but he may still “prowl around.”
Consider Romans 7:2, which uses the same word but in this legal or covenantal sense:
For a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives, but if her husband dies she is released from the law of marriage.
In this sense, it is proper to speak of ourselves as bound to God, and even to speak of God as bound to us. Calvin writes of God’s “mutually bind[ing] himself to us without having to do so.”
Bowls
After this I looked, and the sanctuary of the tent of witness in heaven was opened, and out of the sanctuary came the seven angels with the seven plagues, clothed in pure, bright linen, with golden sashes around their chests. And one of the four living creatures gave to the seven angels seven golden bowls full of the wrath of God who lives forever and ever, and the sanctuary was filled with smoke from the glory of God and from his power, and no one could enter the sanctuary until the seven plagues of the seven angels were finished. Then I heard a loud voice from the temple telling the seven angels, “Go and pour out on the earth [or land] the seven bowls of the wrath of God.” (Revelation 15:5-16:1)
Summarizing James Jordan, the bowls of Revelation constitute a kind of day of at-two-ment. Seven mediators, dressed in linen, come from the cherubim-throne and issue a return-to-sender for centuries of offering bowls, tribute bowls, purifying bowls, and seven-fold sprinklings. This is poured out not only upon the unbelieving land of Israel, but upon the entire old-covenant and old-creation world where Israel served as mediator for the nations.
After Jerusalem falls, Jesus is the only mediator left standing, the fountainhead of the new creation and the greater Solomon to whom kings and nations must gather.
Draw near
My pastor has some helpful reflections on the Christian’s privilege to “draw near to God” at our church blog.
Another important aspect of drawing near relates to Israel’s system of offerings and sacrifices. There are a cluster of Hebrew words that relate to this:
- qarab — to draw near, to offer; used frequently to speak of worshippers bringing an offering
- qorban — an offering, or the “thing brought near”
- qereb — inside, in the midst, inner parts; used of the inner parts of an offering that are burned and made to ascend into God’s presence
So, we can say that God’s people draw near to him through offering a sacrifice. There are two ways in which this is true for the Christian — first, we draw near through the once-for-all sacrifice made by Jesus nearly 2000 years ago. But second, we draw near week to week by offering ourselves, by offering a “sacrifice of praise.”
The purity regulations for worshippers also come into view as we draw near. There are also two ways to take this; on the one hand, we have “once been cleansed” (Heb. 10:2) by Jesus’s blood, so we may stand with confidence before our king. But on the other hand, we are called to actively cleanse our hands and purify our hearts (James 4:8), and we do so by confessing our sins (1 John 1:9). What this means is that the church’s historic practice of corporate confession and public proclamation of our forgiveness in Christ is a very appropriate and helpful part of our drawing near.
Finally, we are helped by remembering the ultimate outcome for sacrificial worship — a fellowship meal with God. The offerings themselves were food for God (Leviticus 1:9), and all but one of Israel’s offerings culminated in the priests or the worshippers sharing food with God. Furthermore, the high points of Israel’s liturgical calendar were the feasts where they met and ate in God’s presence at God’s house. The most familiar example of this is the annual Passover feast at the tabernacle and temple. In the same way, the high point of Christian worship, our drawing near, is our fellowship meal with Jesus in his house: the Lord’s supper. As Calvin writes, “the sacrament [of communion] might be celebrated in the most becoming manner, if it were dispensed to the church very frequently, at least once a-week.” Even if you do not practice the Lord’s supper weekly, you can remember and rejoice in the fact that you have an open invitation to sit at Jesus’s table.
See also: Ascent
I gotta have my orange juice. 