Everyone is a preterist
Everyone is a preterist:
For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. (Mt. 12:40)
In fact, everyone is a preterist when it comes to worldwide events:
Then one of them, named Agabus, stood up and showed by the Spirit that there was going to be a great famine throughout all the world, which also happened in the days of Claudius Caesar. (Acts 11:28)
As I wrote previously,
The preterist recognizes that once–fulfilled scripture is not useless to us; rather, it gives us powerful assurance of God’s faithfulness to his promises, and insight into his ways with his people and in his world. It will be many times fulfilled. For example, Revelation shows us how “things fall apart” when the gospel shines into any new situation.
Hagar part 3
But as God has distributed to each one, as the Lord has called each one, so let him walk. And so I ordain in all the churches. Was anyone called while circumcised? Let him not become uncircumcised. Was anyone called while uncircumcised? Let him not be circumcised. Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing, but keeping the commandments of God is what matters. Let each one remain in the same calling in which he was called. Were you called while a slave? Do not be concerned about it; but if you can be made free, rather use it. For he who is called in the Lord while a slave is the Lord’s freedman. Likewise he who is called while free is Christ’s slave. You were bought at a price; do not become slaves of men. Brethren, let each one remain with God in that state in which he was called. (1 Cor. 7)
For those who are called, circumcision thus dies out in a generation.
Hagar redux
(Building on my Hagar bricolage.)
The weaving together of Israel and the nations is one of the central themes of the New Testament.
For He Himself is our peace, who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of separation, having abolished in His flesh the enmity, that is, the law of commandments contained in ordinances, so as to create in Himself one new man from the two, thus making peace, and that He might reconcile them both to God in one body through the cross, thereby putting to death the enmity. And He came and preached peace to you who were afar off and to those who were near. For through Him we both have access by one Spirit to the Father. (Eph. 2:14-18)
Then He said to them, “Thus it is written, and thus it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day, and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. And you are witnesses of these things.” (Luke 24:46-48)
This is in fact what it means for Israel to be redeemed. As we see time and time again, the older brother is saved by his incorporation into the younger:
“But we were hoping that it was He who was going to redeem Israel. Indeed, besides all this, today is the third day since these things happened.” . . . Then He said to them, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken!” (Luke 24:21, 25)
There is no such thing as a promise that does not actually accomplish adoption:
For I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my countrymen according to the flesh, who are Israelites, to whom pertain the adoption, . . . and the promises. . . . [T]hose who are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God . . . (Romans 9)
The New Testament has a name for someone who wishes to preserve the old man: Judaizer. And as we see with Peter and the great sheet, to preserve the old man is to despise the new man.
All prophesy
Paul speaks of all prophesying in 1 Cor 14:
But if all prophesy, and an unbeliever or an uninformed person comes in, he is convinced by all, he is convicted by all. (1 Cor 14:24)
It seems common to take the idea of “all” prophesying as hyperbolic. But I recently suggested that one possible way to read this is “all worship” or especially “all worship in the vernacular.”
James Rogers suggests the same:
Paul, for example, observes that when “the whole church assembles together” and “all prophesy”—in this context “prophecy” almost certainly means “to speak God’s word” (1 Cor 14:26, cf. Heb 4:12) . . . . (Hell Shall Not Prevail, 5)
A Hagar bricolage
I listened to Wilson’s American Milk and Honey recently. Parts of it are great, but parts of it not so great. Following are some thoughts on Romans 11, in no particular order.
Wilson’s strongest point, I think, is to wonder how the fullness of the Gentiles could possibly be said to have arrived in the first century. I don’t think his concern holds up on reflection; it seems that the semantic scope of “come in” readily includes “entered” or “come into life,” or inaugurated. This inauguration is completed and sealed in AD 70, when the old man and the new man are fully united in the church. Gentiles are now a part of the priestly people, fully initiated as heirs to every single promise as those promises are magnified and transfigured in Jesus.
James Jordan makes an interesting point about the promises attached to the covenant name of Yahweh:
For I, Yahweh your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments. (Exodus 20)
Jordan’s point is that the visitation of iniquity is simultaneously both a threat and an act of mercy. Ever since the garden, and in spite of outward appearances from time to time, God has not allowed wickedness to outgrow and outpace his kingdom, but rather brings it to an end. The fourth generation is a limit on his vengeance and a means of bringing wickedness to a complete end. If it were the case that Romans 11 was still waiting for a future fulfillment, then we would have to deny that God’s mercy outran his judgment in this way. We would have to say that God was, strangely, preserving wickedness just as scrupulously and carefully as he preserves righteousness.
Imagine the prophet Nathan writing the following in David’s day. Israel converted from king Saul to king David in seven years. I believe that it is no strange thing to say that they converted to king Jesus in forty:
I say then, have Benjamin and Israel stumbled that they should fall? Certainly not! But through their fall, to provoke them to jealousy, salvation has come to Judah. Now if their fall is riches for the land, and their failure riches for Judah, how much more their fullness!
For I speak to you Judah; inasmuch as I am an apostle to Judah, I magnify my ministry, if by any means I may provoke to jealousy those who are my flesh and save some of them. For if their being cast away is the reconciling of the land, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead?
For if the firstfruit is holy, the lump is also holy; and if the root is holy, so are the branches. And if some of the branches were broken off, and you, being a wild olive tree, were grafted in among them, and with them became a partaker of the root and fatness of the olive tree, do not boast against the branches. But if you do boast, remember that you do not support the root, but the root supports you.
You will say then, “Branches were broken off that I might be grafted in.” Well said. Because of unbelief they were broken off, and you stand by faith. Do not be haughty, but fear. For if God did not spare the natural branches, He may not spare you either. Therefore consider the goodness and severity of God: on those who fell, severity; but toward you, goodness, if you continue in His goodness. Otherwise you also will be cut off. And they also, if they do not continue in unbelief, will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again. For if you were cut out of the olive tree which is wild by nature, and were grafted contrary to nature into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these, who are natural branches, be grafted into their own olive tree?
For I do not desire, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this mystery, lest you should be wise in your own opinion, that blindness in part has happened to Benjamin and Israel until the fullness of Judah has come in. And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written:
“The Deliverer will come out of Zion,
And He will turn away ungodliness from Jacob;
For this is My covenant with them,
When I take away their sins.”Concerning David they are enemies for your sake, but concerning the election they are beloved for the sake of the fathers. For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. For as you were once disobedient to God, yet have now obtained mercy through their disobedience, even so these also have now been disobedient, that through the mercy shown you they also may obtain mercy. For God has committed them all to disobedience, that He might have mercy on all.
The latter Saul of the tribe of Benjamin understood this principle so well because he had lived all his life in the good of this great conversion to king David.
Water and wine
Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die. “He that will lose his life, the same shall save it,” is not a piece of mysticism for saints and heroes. It is a piece of everyday advice for sailors or mountaineers. It might be printed in an Alpine guide or a drill book. This paradox is the whole principle of courage; even of quite earthly or quite brutal courage. A man cut off by the sea may save his life if he will risk it on the precipice.
He can only get away from death by continually stepping within an inch of it. A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut his way out, needs to combine a strong desire for living with a strange carelessness about dying. He must not merely cling to life, for then he will be a coward, and will not escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide, and will not escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it; he must desire life like water and yet drink death like wine. No philosopher, I fancy, has ever expressed this romantic riddle with adequate lucidity, and I certainly have not done so. But Christianity has done more: it has marked the limits of it in the awful graves of the suicide and the hero, showing the distance between him who dies for the sake of living and him who dies for the sake of dying. And it has held up ever since above the European lances the banner of the mystery of chivalry: the Christian courage, which is a disdain of death; not the Chinese courage, which is a disdain of life.
Chesterton, Orthodoxy
Kept alive
Seeing the parental relation is what the Scripture describes it, and seeing Satan has perverted it since the fall for the diffusion and multiplication of depravity and eternal death, the education of children for God is the most important business done on earth. It is the one business for which the earth exists. To it all politics, all war, all literature, all money-making, ought to be subordinated; and every parent especially ought to feel, every hour of the day, that, next to making his own calling and election sure, this is the end for which he is kept alive by God—this is his task on earth.
Dabney, Parental Responsibilities
Tongues and Prophecy
In this essay I explore what Paul means by prophecy and tongues in his first letter to the Corinthians. I suggest that:
- By “prophecy” Paul generally means the church’s corporate prayer and especially singing, especially in the vernacular; and
- By “tongues” Paul means worship in Hebrew rather than in the vernacular.
Prophecy
I take it for granted that 1 Corinthians 11 is addressing corporate worship, including Paul’s dealings with head coverings. This poses a problem: why does Paul countenance women’s praying and prophesying in corporate worship, when in chapter 14 he requires them to be silent?
We know that there is a sense in which prophecy can essentially mean spiritual song, as it does in the case of Saul and the company of prophets in 1 Samuel chapters 10 and 19. I suggest that this is the sense in which Paul is speaking of prayer and prophecy in chapter 11. Setting aside the question of whatever is meant by head covering, the prayer and prophecy that he is referring to must be the corporate prayer and song of the assembled church; this is within the extent of the words, and it is only at this point in the service that women are not silent.
Let’s consider whether this pattern holds in the more difficult passage of chapter 14.
Tongues
Chapter 14 is difficult to parse. Few interpretations make sense of the apparent contradictions in this passage. Paul does not wish to pray without understanding—and yet he speaks in tongues more than the Corinthians. Tongues are a sign to unbelievers (I assume this is unbelieving Jews)—and yet the Corinthians are not to speak in uninterpreted tongues lest the unbelievers fail to be convicted.
The charismatic interpretation that glossa = glossolalia seems to align with the general idea of unintelligibility that Paul is expressing, but it does not address Paul’s apparent contradictions. Worse, it is inconsistent with other occurrences of tongues in the NT, which generally seem to refer to known human languages. Moving from charismatic to cessationist interpretations, I’m intrigued by James Jordan’s observation that the church likely worshipped next to the Jewish synagogue (see Acts 18:7). The fact that the church’s worship would have been in Greek underscores the prophecy from Isaiah 28 that Paul cites. However, if we take glossa simply to refer to the church’s worshipping in Greek, this makes no sense of Paul’s argument, since it suggests that Greek may be unintelligible, and implies that he is forbidding worship in uninterpreted Greek.
There are a number of cases in the New Testament where God enacts an ironic reversal of old covenant realities. For example, Matthew 2:15 cites Hosea, identifying Jesus’s flight from Israel with Israel’s flight from Egypt; Israel herself has become the new Egypt, and Herod the new Pharaoh. In Galatians 4, Paul categorizes Israel as children of Hagar rather than Sarah. Paul, in Romans 3, quotes Psalm 14, identifying Israel not with “my people” and “the righteous” in that Psalm, but instead with the foolish and corrupt workers of iniquity. Paul understands that there has been a great and ironic reversal of loyalty and fortune for Israel.
Consider another likely reversal: by this time the Jewish diaspora has largely lost their familiarity with Hebrew. Hebrew itself has become an “other tongue” for God’s people. When Hebrew is spoken in the synagogue, God’s people do not hear him. Even before the reign of Jesus is preached in Corinth, Isaiah’s prophecy has already begun to be fulfilled. This is a good thing in itself; God’s word is going to many lands and languages (witness the Septuagint), just as he intended. It is not even a bad thing that Aramaic becomes the vernacular in the land of Israel. What transforms all this into a judgment is that Israel refuses to listen to and obey this word. The capstone of this judgment is that it will be pronounced in a foreign tongue.
This lends a double meaning to Isaiah’s prophecy. It is already a shame to Israel that her disapora cannot hear God in Hebrew. On top of this, it is a further shame that the proclamation of Messiah’s reign is being made week to week in Greek but they do not respond. What Paul refers to as “tongues” appears in this light to be, ironically, some kind of fascination with Hebrew, or perhaps even some kind of Judaizing conviction that the Corinthian church has toward Hebrew (perhaps especially when it comes to singing the Psalms); whereas “prophecy” is the church’s ordinary corporate worship in the vernacular Greek.
Paul is not writing this way to be clever or to confuse us; rather, he is making a devastating point about how Israel has become wholly deaf to God in every language whatsoever. Israel is no longer able to hear in Hebrew, and apparently unwilling to hear him in Greek. It is essential that God’s proclamation through his church be heard and understood by all. If the church were to worship in Hebrew, it must be interpreted or else none will understand. Although it is a shame to Israel regardless of whether worship take place in Hebrew or in Greek, unbelieving Jews will be convicted and provoked to jealousy only if they hear in Greek. God is giving Israel one final test to see whether they are deaf to him. For the sake of the church and for the sake of Israel, the church must worship in the vernacular—or at least must explain all Hebrew speech in the vernacular.
What a reformation this represents! At last God’s people hear him (c.f., Acts 2). At last God’s people can participate in genuine worship.
All those who have studied Hebrew, or remember a little from grammar school, or have memorized a little, must not be puffed up; they must not be little Judaizers. Paul, who speaks Hebrew more than all the Corinthians, gladly sets it aside. To the Greek speakers, he becomes as a Greek speaker. “How shall we sing Yahweh’s song in a foreign land?” We shall sing it in the vernacular.
Let’s walk through chapter 14 and see how this reading holds together:
1 Pursue love, and desire the spiritual, but especially that you worship in the vernacular.
Worship in spirit and truth is worship united together with God’s people on the foundation of the Spirit-breathed word.
2 For he who speaks in Hebrew does not speak to men but to God, for no one understands; however, in the spirit-breath he speaks mysteries.
3 But he who worships in the vernacular speaks edification and exhortation and comfort to men.
4 He who speaks in Hebrew edifies himself, but he who worships in the vernacular edifies the church.
It is difficult to understand how glossolalia could edify; Hebrew makes far more sense here in the case of those who understand it or who may have memorized some Hebrew and also its meaning.
5 I wish you all spoke in Hebrew, but even more that you worship in the vernacular; for he who worships in the vernacular is greater than he who speaks in Hebrew, unless indeed he explains, that the church may receive edification.
Paul genuinely wishes that we all studied the original languages, but this is not his priority. Note that the word for interpret here has a range that includes explanation and expounding.
6 But now, brethren, if I come to you speaking in Hebrew, what shall I profit you unless I speak to you either by revelation, by knowledge, by proclaiming in the vernacular, or by teaching?
Here it makes sense that we would understand the use of prophesying as referring specifically to the preaching portion of worship.
7 Even things without life, whether flute or harp, when they make a sound, unless they make a distinction in the sounds, how will it be known what is piped or played?
8 For if the trumpet makes an uncertain sound, who will prepare for battle?
9 So likewise you, unless you utter by the tongue words easy to understand, how will it be known what is spoken? For you will be speaking into the air.
Here Paul is speaking of the human tongue.
10 There are, it may be, so many kinds of voices in the world, and none of them without significance.
11 Therefore, if I do not know the meaning of the voice, I shall be a foreigner to him who speaks, and he who speaks, a foreigner to me.
12 Even so you, since you are zealous for the spiritual,let it be for the edification of the church that you seek to excel.
13 Therefore let him who speaks in Hebrew pray that he may explain.
Here again interpret means explanation rather than translation.
14 For if one prays in Hebrew, his spirit-breath prays, but his understanding is unfruitful.
Paul here is using personification, as he often does. I’ve written this as “one” to clarify. He is not referring to himself but to Corinthians who may have memorized some Hebrew—hocus pocus—without understanding. Such a man does not even edify himself, let alone others.
15 What then? We will pray with the spirit-breath, and we will also pray with the understanding. We will sing with the spirit-breath, and we will also sing with the understanding.
I have adjusted Paul’s personification to “we.”
16 Otherwise, if you bless with the spirit-breath, how will he who occupies the place of the uninformed say “Amen” at your giving of thanks, since he does not understand what you say?
Paul switches to “you,” confirming his earlier personification.
17 For you indeed give thanks well, but the other is not edified.
18 I thank my God I speak in Hebrew more than you all;
19 yet in the church I would rather speak five words with my understanding, that I may teach others also, than ten thousand words in Hebrew.
20 Brethren, do not be children in understanding; however, in malice be babes, but in understanding be mature.
21 In the law it is written:
“With men of other tongues and other lips
I will speak to this people;
And yet, for all that, they will not hear Me,”
says the Lord.
22 Therefore Hebrew is for a sign, not to those who believe but to unbelieving [Jews]; but worshipping in Greek is not for unbelieving [Jews] but for those who believe.
23 Therefore if the whole church comes together in one place, and all speak in Hebrew, and there come in those who are uninformed or unbelieving [Jews who do not know Hebrew], will they not say that you are out of your mind?
24 But if all worship in Greek, and an unbelieving [Jew] or an uninformed person comes in, he is convinced by all, he is convicted by all.
25 And thus the secrets of his heart are revealed; and so, falling down on his face, he will worship God and report that God is truly among you.
26 How is it then, brethren? Whenever you come together, each of you has a psalm, has a teaching, has a word in Hebrew, has a revelation, has an explanation. Let all things be done for edification.
I don’t think it is necessary to view this as a free-for-all worship service. In the verses that follow, I take Paul to be addressing the elders, those who prophesy (i.e., preach and proclaim) in the service. Often this is the case when he writes to “brothers,” and it is self-evident that he is writing here to those who speak in the service. Corinth is disorderly and it is little surprise this disorder extends to and likely originates with the men who rule and teach. But even if you believe Corinthian worship to have been very nearly Quaker in form, it seems evident that Paul is referring to Hebrew and Greek in these verses.
In these verses, I take the sense of prophecy to be narrowed from corporate worship specifically to preaching and proclamation.
27 If anyone speaks in Hebrew, let there be two or at the most three, each in turn, and let one explain.
28 But if there is no one to explain, let him keep silent in church, and let him speak to himself and to God.
29 Let two or three preach in the vernacular, and let the others judge.
30 But if anything is revealed to another who sits by, let the first keep silent.
31 For you can all preach in the vernacular one by one, that all may learn and all may be encouraged.
32 And the spirit-breath of the preachers are subject to the preachers.
33 For God is not the author of confusion but of peace, as in all the churches of the saints.
34 Let your women keep silent in the churches, for they are not permitted to speak; but they are to be submissive, as the law also says.
35 And if they want to learn something, let them ask their own husbands at home; for it is shameful for women to speak in church.
36 Or did the word of God come from you? Or was it you only that it reached?
37 If anyone thinks himself to be a preacher or spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things which I write to you are the commandments of the Lord.
38 But if anyone is ignorant, let him be ignorant.
39 Therefore, brethren, desire earnestly to worship and preach in the vernacular, and do not forbid to speak in Hebrew.
Preachers everywhere are greatly relieved.
40 Let all things be done decently and in order.
Amen.
Summary
This interpretation seems to make better sense of this passage, resolving the apparent contradictions. Paul touches on tongues and prophecy in chapters 12–13 as well. In chapter 12 it seems possible that Paul is referring not just to knowledge of Hebrew but to skill with languages in general. Chapter 13 underscores some of the fleshly reasons that people may have been speaking in Hebrew.
AD 30
Andreas Köstenberger argues that AD 33 is the date of the crucifixion. James Jordan argues instead for AD 30 based on Herod’s death in AD 44 (Acts 12) and Paul’s fourteen years (Gal 2; Acts 11–12). It seems difficult to adjust Jordan; is there potential to adjust Köstenberger?
Köstenberger connects the fifteenth year of Tiberius’s reign (Luke 3) with the three Passovers Jesus attends (John 2, 6, 11). He holds that the first Passover could have been no earlier than AD 29, making the crucifixion no earlier than AD 31. But I think Köstenberger is wrong to say that the fifteenth year requires that Luke 3 must be no earlier than August of AD 28. We see a counterexample in the resurrection itself: Jesus rises the third day at dawn: Friday afternoon, Saturday, Sunday morning.
Thus, if we allow for this possibility, Tiberius’s fifteenth year begins as early as the winter of AD 28 rather than August. That makes it possible for the first passover to be in AD 28, and this is consistent with Jordan’s chronology. Köstenberger actually allows for this kind of flexibility in language in how he reckons the possible end of the fifteenth year; but not for its beginning:
The earliest possible date at which Tiberius’s “fifteenth year” began is August 19, a.d. 28, and the latest possible date at which his “fifteenth year” ended is December 31, a.d. 29.
Taken together, Jordan shows that the crucifixion could have been no later than AD 30, while this adjustment to Köstenberger’s argument shows that it could have been no earlier than AD 30.
Beowulf
Tolkien’s translation is okay:
Then that warrior turned his horse, and thereupon spake these words: ‘Time it is for me to go. May the Almighty Father in his grace keep you safe upon your quests! To the sea will I go, against unfriendly hosts my watch to keep.’ (22)
Heaney is better:
. . . then the noble warrior
wheeled on his horse and spoke these words:
“It is time for me to go. May the Almighty
Father keep you and in His kindness
watch over your exploits. I’m away to the sea,
back on alert against enemy raiders.” (23)
But Wilson’s rendition is the best (it must be read aloud):
Then he wheeled and he went, wished them Godspeed,
“May the great Father favor you and find you in kindness,
Bestowing His blessings and backing your exploits.
For myself I must go and make my way back
To the coast where I can keep my watch up for raiders.” (17)
I gotta have my orange juice. 