Sweet, Sweet, Comfortable Confidence

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Both Feet Firmly on the Ground (Cosmology)

If It’s Good Enough for Paul, It’s Good Enough for Me (Paul)

So YES.  I have recently affirmed publicly now that I am indeed a 6 day creationist.  This is a recent development and I want to explain why I felt constrained to making this move.  The posting of this thought began in THIS [Click Here] post, and continues in the current post as installment 2:

I think I find that for many people who have always been young earth/6-day people, it is very hard to see how someone could be old earth and a consistent Christian.  But I will try to explain the struggle that I had in my head over the last 10 years.

Allegory?  Parable?

Again, I have always had an absolute commitment to the Bible, but I also felt like the old earth, and process of evolution were basically demonstrable, and scientifically hard to get around.  I thought Gen 1-11 was figurative, or parabolic.  True, yet non-historical, in the way that a parable has a true lesson, but not a factual history.

I also assumed that humanity “became” humanity at some point in an evolutionary process.  So I was able to affirm that at some point we became sinful and human, but it wasn’t necessarily in a pristine garden.

Sounds Like Myth

I also thought that Gen 1-3 was too stylistically symbolic to be real.  I thought that with names like:

Adam – “Humanity”

and Eve  - “Life”

and a talking snake and a magic fruit…. come on!

But my mind has changed, and I now welcome these literary frills as BOTH highly symbolic AND historical.

But how did it all go down?

The Beginning of the Breakdown

One day in my New Testament class, I was reading the speech Paul gave at the Aereopagus, and one of the verses struck me like a brick.  I actually gasped for air when I read it, quietly, but there was really was a breath – Acts 17.26:

And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth…

Paul is preaching to the Gentiles at Mars Hill (the Ἄρειον Πάγον).  One of the things always pointed out about this situations is the difference in how he preaches to the Jews and the Gentiles.  The Jews have a whole canon of knowledge behind their hearing of sermons.  The Greeks likely know nothing of the Old Testament so they have to be told anything that it’s necessary to know.  They are also repenting from outside the Law, and not from under it.

The outline of Paul’s sermon:

• there is ONE Lord of heaven and earth (v.24)
• and he is not in need of man (vv.24-5)
• he is not an idol of human crafting since (v.25)
• he is the ONE source of all life (v.25)
• all humanity is responsible to him since (vv.26-27)
• he made all nations from ONE man (v.26)
• he is not far from us since (v.27)
• he made us and he sustains us (v.28)
• again, he isn’t an idol since (v.29)
• we are made in his image (v.29)
• he has been patient with your sin (v.30)
• but he is going to bring judgement by ONE man who has been raised from the dead already to vindicate this fact (v.31)
• so REPENT (v.30)

The passage doesn’t use the word “one” over and over, but it isn’t absent in idea, and it DOES use the word “one” in verse 26.

The simple version is that there is ONE God and ONE Man, and we are RELATED.  The one God is both OUR JUDGE (by fact of creation), and NOT  AN IDOL (by correlation to us).  The fact that the Judge is near us and the judgment is upon us both are proven by the Resurrection of ONE MAN.

The “one man” thing seems to be pretty important – even theologically necessary.

Calm down!  I know about Romans 5 and 1 Cor 15.  I will deal with them later.  At that point, I had worked around these monster passages, but Acts 17.26 was the “little leaven” to leaven the whole lump.

Now, we have to talk about the Greek.

ἐξ ἑνὸς – is the Greek behind “one man” from v.26

That phrase can mean “one man.”  In fact, it should do so if there is no other reason to translate it other wise.  And there isn’t any other factor to change it.  So the substantival masculine adjective “one” (henos) becomes the noun “one man.”

However the word (anthropos) is not used here, but it is not use for Jesus either – he is an (aner): “a male”.  Some later texts insert the word “blood.”  Regardless, the point of the verse is a single source for all humanity, which is used as a proof that we are all unified in responsibility to the one creator.  So no way around the single source of humanity.

You could say that even with evolution and a large source of humanity we are still responsible to God, but you can’t say it without implying that Paul was either wrong or lying.

The Beginning of the End of the End of the Beginning

This verse not only began my downfall into sweet, sweet, comfortable confidence by making me think “Paul thinks Adamic origin is important,” but it also made me formulate a litmus question:

“How does the rest of the bible treat Gen 1-11 and Jonah or any other questioned literature.”

That, my friends, is how we will proceed.

That I Did Have a Conflict, and That It Hurt

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Both Feet Firmly on the Ground (Cosmology)

Until recently, it had been my longstanding view that the earth is really old, and that Gen 1-11 must be figurative.

I have changed my mind.

[That is: I now believe those sections are intended as historical.  I am adding this line, because a friend was unclear about my position. Updated at 6 pm, Nov 19.]

Before this change, I didn’t distrust scripture; I was just convinced that unscientific sounding parts couldn’t possibly mean what they sounded like.  I think this is because I had regrettably been convinced of a mainly materialist view of the universe.  I DID in fact believe in a spiritual side of the world, but it was OUT THERE in heaven.  My re-formed view sees a physical and a spiritual together DOWN HERE in the life we have.

It’s hard to describe how my two views were held side by side, but still divorced.  Unfortunately this was a very increasingly painful way to live.  I was always having to fight the battles of the conflicting views in my head, or to ignore the fact that I did have a conflict, and that it hurt.

I want to begin a series here to highlight biblical reasons to require our submission to the text in a more radical way than I had given it credit for in the past.

A friend of mine, Nathan, on one occasion, challenged my view that the book of Jonah was a-historical.

Now please be aware, if you have always been a 6-day person, you may not be aware how pervasive the view is amongst otherwise orthodox Christians that Gen 1-11 is mythic, and that Jonah is inspired fiction.  I never believed the bible was false, but I did believe that Gen 1-11 was teaching through allegory; however, I didn’t have a sophisticated view of how to fit together that Gen 11 was fictive, and Gen 12 was historical.

Back to Nathan’s challenge – he just said that he didn’t see any reason that it couldn’t be historical.

The question is: On whom is the burden of proof that texts are parable and not historical?

Jesus does speak in parable, but he says he is doing so when he does so.  Gen 1 says, “And God said, ‘Let there be light!’ and THERE WAS LIGHT.’  And God saw that the light was good.”  So did he?

I want to write this over a string of posts, so let me outline some questions to deal with:

• How does the New Testament present Gen 1-11 and Jonah?
• Do we believe that the functioning of things in scripture is limited by material, and is knowable only by means available for examination through scientific instruments?
• Do we believe that the functioning of things in the universe is limited by material, and is knowable only by means available for examination through scientific instruments?
• Do we have proof that all things in the universe have always functioned in uniform ways and at uniform rates?
• Is there a good and biblical reason that things in the universe resemble each other, that animals look so much like people?
• Do we believe in miracles?
• Do we believe in an otherwise spiritual world?

I don’t know in what order I will get to these things, but if you have been wondering about these things, keep checking back here in the near future, and I will make more suggestions, and explain more why I think we HAVE to affirm the historicity of all of Genesis, at the same time of affirming its poetry, symbolism and yes, even numerology.

You Have Some Evil Purpose in Mind!

Filed in:

All Ate the Same Spiritual Food (Paedocommunion)

The Bible is a Book of Tales (Narrative Theology)

Now wait, WHOM do you want with you at the Lord’s feast?  Whom do you want to include in the table?

And he said to them, “Go, serve the LORD your God. But which ones are to go?” 9Moses said, “We will go with our young and our old. We will go with our sons and daughters and with our flocks and herds, for we must hold a feast to the LORD.” 10But he said to them, “The LORD be with you, if ever I let you and your little ones go! Look, you have some evil purpose in mind. 11No! Go, the men among you, and serve the LORD, for that is what you are asking.” And they were driven out from Pharaoh’s presence.

What a wonderful passage to bring a smile to my face!  Throughout the text, there have been different definitions of the goal of getting to Sinai:

• “Let my people go, that they may hold a feast to me in the wilderness.” (Ex 5.1)
• “Let us go and offer sacrifice to our God.” (Ex 5.8)
• “Let my people go, that they may serve me.” (Ex 10.3)

Go, but don’t leave!  Go, but not far!  Go, but not all of you!  (8.25, 8.28, 10.8-11).  God was never happy with Pharaoh’s restrictions:

“²⁶But Moses said, “It would not be right to do so, for the offerings we shall sacrifice to the LORD our God are an abomination to the Egyptians. …²⁷We must go three days’ journey into the wilderness and sacrifice to the LORD our God as he tells us.” …Only let not Pharaoh cheat again by not letting the people go to sacrifice to the LORD.”" (Ex 8.25-29)

The food had to be right, and the place had to be right, and the people had to be right.  ALL the people MUST.

This is the build up to the first passage we saw at the top of the page (Ex 10).

All of this is the build up to Exodus 12 and the Passover requirements, which are the same… because, as Tim Gallant points out in Feed My Lambs, they only ate the Passover in Egypt because they had been refused the chance to eat, to serve, to sacrifice to God at Horeb.

If you are considering the idea of allowing your children to eat the Lord’s supper, instituted at Passover (1 Cor 5.7-8), remember that in THIS meal God required their “little ones” AND their women to feast.  Remember that God required at the first passover, “all the congregation of Israel must celebrate it” (Ex 12.47).

Remember that as with Manna and with Quail, “all [who were baptized into Moses] ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink.” (1 Cor 10.1-4).  Remember that it wasn’t mere food, but “they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ” (1 Cor 10.5).

THE FEAST shows the BORDERS of who is with God.  That’s what Moses told Pharaoh.  The people must feast!

And now WE use the SAME ANALOGY: “(1 Cor 10:) ¹⁷Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread. ¹⁸Consider the people of Israel: are not those who eat the sacrifices participants in the altar?…(1 Cor 12:) ¹²For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. ¹³For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body— Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit.”

Whatever the restriction in 1 Cor 11 are, they are NOT against the little ones (or the women).  They are against IDOLATORS, and IMMORAL, and against the PROUD RICH.  Those same sins caused men to fall in the wilderness.

But the humor used is NOT exaggerated to say that we paedocommunionists “have no evil purpose in mind” by “taking our young and our old, and our sons and daughters” for “the people must feast!”.

It isn’t an exaggeration because the anger of the Lord burned at Pharaoh and killed his son, because he would not “let God’s firstborn son go to serve God” (Ex 4.21-23).  We know that serving God meant feasting on a sacrifice.  We know that the language of God’s threat (Ex 4) is the continued language of “let all my people go,” and it is at the height of the story that the pinnacle representation of the idea of the first born is the LITTLE ONES of Israel.  The Least of These My Brethren.

If we abandon allowing the little ones to have their place in the narrative, then we don’t have narrative redemption to the slaughter of the firstborn in the Nile in chapter 1.

But why did God do all these things?

“that you may tell in the hearing of your son and of your grandson how I have dealt harshly with the Egyptians and what signs I have done among them, that you may know that I am the LORD.”  (Ex 10.1-2)

To teach their children and their children’s children.

He is, after all, a covenant keeping God.

Geography and Resignation

“Family, Not Community [Part 2]“

Filed in:

Union and Communion (Covenant)

 

Communities are parallel worlds crammed into the same universe.

Families are single worlds made of interdependent parts.

Communities are divisible, and are mainly unified by geography and the resignation that it is easiest not to fight with neighbors.  If a conflict is too severe to wage, then I can move to another community, without permission from the neighborhood.

Bodies are indivisible without surgery.   Families are indivisible without divorce.  The church is a body.  Leave and you amputate.  The church is a marriage.  Leave and you are abandoning your husband.

The church is the ONLY family of its kind.  There aren’t other options.  You can’t go to another way of union with the Lord.  The ONLY route to the Father is …the Son.  The Son has already claimed his only bride.

Believers, by and large, don’t have to be convinced to be part of A church, but being part of THE church means loving it.

Family, Not Community

Filed in:

Union and Communion (Covenant)

 

Community is what neighborhoods are.

Family are people you let sleep in your house.

Community makes regulations against how you are free to build your house on your property.

Family is your house.

The church is a covenant something….

We are not a community.  We are a family.  The covenant is like marriage, and adoption.  Actually, it is marriage to the Son, and adoption by the Father.

Community is many in a way that family is one.

One baptism, one bread, one wine, one family.

Destined to Become the Tabernacle

Filed in:

The Bible is a Book of Tales (Narrative Theology)

The Zeal of the Lord of Hosts (Post-Millennialsim)

I was reading Exodus 3 again to my children tonight.  We are trying to get it down before going on.  I let my eyes wander ahead, and saw a phrase that I have read over in class several times lately, teaching OT to 7^th graders:

“²¹And I will give this people favor in the sight of the Egyptians; and when you go, you shall not go empty, ²²but each woman shall ask of her neighbor, and any woman who lives in her house, for silver and gold jewelry, and for clothing. You shall put them on your sons and on your daughters. So you shall plunder the Egyptians.”

• I thought of purple clothing and suddenly a path of inquiry opened up…
• I thought of “So shall they put my name upon the people of Israel, and I will bless them.” Nu 6.27
• I thought of “For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.” Gal 3.27

(granted: the “put on” here is not a Greek link through the LXX, enduw vs. epitithEmi, but when they were doing the ‘tithEmi’ putting in Ex 3 they were literally doing ‘enduw’.)

But…

…before the bear can come over the mountain, we need to read a few other passages (and then the bear can “see what he can see.”)

“⁴Moses said to all the congregation of the people of Israel, “This is the thing that the LORD has commanded. ⁵ Take from among you a contribution to the LORD. Whoever is of a generous heart, let him bring the LORD’s contribution: gold, silver, and bronze; ⁶blue and purple and scarlet yarns and fine twined linen; goats’ hair, ⁷tanned rams’ skins, and goatskins; acacia wood, ⁸oil for the light, spices for the anointing oil and for the fragrant incense, ⁹and onyx stones and stones for setting, for the ephod and for the breastpiece.

¹⁰“Let every skillful craftsman among you come and make all that the LORD has commanded: ¹¹ the tabernacle, its tent and its covering, … ¹⁹the finely worked garments for ministering in the Holy Place, the holy garments for Aaron the priest, and the garments of his sons, for their service as priests.” (Ex 35.4-19)

Okay, so here are my thoughts:

Holy Place

1)      The items of plunder were destined to become the tabernacle.

2)      The items were clothing the children of the Hebrews.

3)      The tabernacle was clothing the children.

4)      The people of Israel were being labeled as “the holy place”… God would dwell within.

AND

Priests

1)      The items of plunder were destined to become the priestly garments.

2)      The items were clothing the children of the Hebrews.

3)      The ephods were clothing the children.

4)      The people of Israel were being labeled as “priests”… God would be brought  through them to the nations

AND

Gentiles/Neighbors/Glory of the Nations

1)      The items of plunder were FROM the WEALTH OF EGYPT.

2)      The items of plunder were DESTINED FOR THE HOLY PLACE.

3)      God was not opposed to making his kingdom out of Gentile splendor.

This is Revelation 21:

“ ¹⁸The wall was built of jasper, while the city was pure gold, clear as glass. ¹⁹ The foundations of the wall of the city were adorned with every kind of jewel. The first was jasper, the second sapphire, the third agate, the fourth emerald, ²⁰the fifth onyx, the sixth carnelian, the seventh chrysolite, the eighth beryl, the ninth topaz, the tenth chrysoprase, the eleventh jacinth, the twelfth amethyst. ²¹And the twelve gates were twelve pearls, each of the gates made of a single pearl, and the street of the city was pure gold, transparent as glass.

²²And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. ²³And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb. ²⁴By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it, ²⁵and its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there.²⁶They will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations. ²⁷But nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life.”

Final observations:

As Jesus was once asked: “Who is my neighbor?”

Whom do you want in the kingdom?  The nations?  We must capture their lives with the gospel, and carry their glory with us into the kingdom.

Can THEIR stuff be brought into GOD’s HOLY place?  Yes, Gentiles will be there, and be clean.

What God has called clean, let no one call unclean.

Fools Go the Other Way?

Filed in:

The Fear of the LORD (Wisdom Literature)

 

I am just testing out a thought about proverbial material, and I think it will help in some instances, but probably not in all.

Can we say that in many cases it is easier to see the folly of disregarding a proverb, than it is to necessarily see results of following one?

Here is my thought example, and no, it isn’t from Scripture:

“Early to bed, and early to rise, makes a man healthy and wealthy and wise.”

Counter examples could be shown: slaves might keep a good schedule but never be made wealthy by it.

But fleeing from this wisdom brings pain:

Late to bed and late to rise makes a man weak, and poor, and foolish.  If the wisdom is actually wisdom, don’t we see that fools go the other way?

Isn’t this closer to our immediate experience and acceptance?

I am not sold on some idea here; I just want to figure out how best to read them.

Bridegroom of Blood, I Will Slay Your Firstborn Son

Filed in:

The Bible is a Book of Tales (Narrative Theology)

X Marks the Spot (Chiasms)

 

Exodus 4.21-26

Have you ever wondered about that three verse section in Exodus 4, the “bridegroom of blood” passage?  Have you secretly thought, “This sounds like an insertion into the text… it doesn’t belong!”?

I think the passage is put there as a companion of the three verse section before it, and it might be that they are both part of a larger chiastic structure.

But, if nothing else there is antithetical parallelism going on.

The passages are so short that I can post the whole thing here:

²¹And the LORD said to Moses, “When you go back to Egypt, see that you do before Pharaoh all the miracles that I have put in your power. But I will harden his heart, so that he will not let the people go. ²²Then you shall say to Pharaoh, ‘Thus says the LORD, Israel is my firstborn son, ²³and I say to you, “Let my son go that he may serve me.” If you refuse to let him go, behold, I will kill your firstborn son.’”

 

²⁴At a lodging place on the way the LORD met him and sought to put him to death. ²⁵Then Zipporah took a flint and cut off her son’s foreskin and touched Moses’ feet with it and said, “Surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me!” ²⁶So he let him alone. It was then that she said, “A bridegroom of blood,” because of the circumcision.  (Ex 4.21-26, ESV)

In one way or another,

• Moses has threatened Pharaoh with a dead child for the lack of following God’s command.
• God has threatened Moses with death for lack of following God’s command for his child.

I am sure there is MORE in there to be ferreted out.

Academics, “I am GOOD” not “I am WELL”!

Filed in:

Nerd Am I - (Academics and Details)

 

A disturbing trend from some of the most brilliant people I know behooves a comment.  While I never correct grammar of a non-student, I think it is okay to correct the general problem in a public forum.

It is tempting to respond to a question of your state with “I am well, thank you.”  But unless we are saying that we are healthy, then we ought to say, “I am good.”

To be is a copulative (coupling) verb, that is, a linking verb, and not a verb of action.  It must link a noun to a noun or a noun to an adjective, but never to an adverb.  In this case, “to be” links the noun “I” to the adjective “good.”

“I am well” meaning “I am healthy” illustrates this.  Healthy and well, are both adjectives, and neither is an adverb.  So is “fine.”

I feel good; I seem good; I am good.

—of course, I am not inherently good.  But that is beside the point.

Their Job was to Subdue

Filed In:

The Bible is a Book of Tales (Narrative Theology),

The Zeal of the Lord of Hosts (Post-Millennialism)

Confer: Gen 1.26-28, and Exodus 1.7

Look at these two passages, and notice what is missing from the second passage: the word “subdue.”

And God blessed them. And God said to them, ”Be fruitful and multiply and fill the land and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

Gen 1.26-28

(Now remember that Land/Earth are the same word in Hebrew).

But the people of Israel were fruitful and increased greatly; they multiplied and grew exceedingly strong, so that the land was filled with them.

Ex 1.7

What follows?  Pharaoh is afraid that the Hebrews might subdue his kingdom.

They were doing their job.