Fascinating people and reading narrative portions of Scripture

by Dan Phillips

As I read through Acts in the morning, I'm struck anew by what fascinating people Luke introduces — and how little he tells us of them.

Take Simon Magus in chapter 8. Wouldn't you like to know a lot more about him, from Luke? When Luke says he used to do magic, what does that mean? Actual magic, or tricks? What kind? And what was his background? Also, what did he do in response to the apostles' rebuke? He figures prominently in post-NT writings, but is any of that accurate? What became of him?

Or the Ethiopian eunuch in that same chapter. What an interesting fellow this man is! We read his story anachronistically, and just think how cool it is that he was in Isaiah 53 instead of Leviticus 21:20. But what about the fact that he had a copy of Scripture at all? How rare was that? How did he come by it, how wealthy must he have been! Or was the scroll Candace's? What became of him? The same Holy Spirit who told Philip to go preach to him also told Philip (in effect) not to do any followup with him. So the eunuch went his way rejoicing, we read... and then what? Wouldn't you love to know?

Or Lydia the business lady in chapter 16, or the demon-possessed slave girl in the same chapter — what different women, yet side by side in the narrative. What was their background, and what came of them after these encounters?

These and many other figures crowd the book of Acts alone, to say nothing of the other Biblical books.

But what we as readers (and particularly as preachers) must remind ourselves is that the text of Scripture is what is God-breathed and profitable, and that must always be our focus. It isn't the stories that hold this place, nor the people. It is the text, the words of Scripture, that must be our focus.

It is the text that reflects and unfolds the mind of God. In that text, God told us everything He wants to know, which means He told us everything we need to know. So we must both discipline ourselves not to run off on rabbit-trails, and to focus on what's there to see the mind of God. What we want to know about Simon, the eunuch, Lydia and the rest is not the same as what God wants us to know — and we must see to it that we focus on the latter, not the former.

In fact, this is all the more arresting and important in proportion to how fascinating the person is. God in effect is saying to us "Never mind all that, don't let the shiny objects distract you: this is what I want to impress upon you."

So it doesn't matter what kinds of snakes bit the Israelites in Numbers 21, or how big the copper serpent was, or how long the pole, or any of that. What matters is that those snakebit Israelites who believed Yahweh's words and looked, lived — and no one else. And on and on.

We know that the main thing is the main thing; we need to remember that the text of Scripture is always the main thing. If it were important, God would have told us. If He told us, it is important.

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The gift of Parbar

by Dan Phillips

At Parbar westward, four at the causeway, and two at Parbar.

(1 Chronicles 26:18 KJV)

Mm. Parbar. Deep stuff, eh? Oh yeah.

Back in the 70s and 80s, this was a chucklesome verse to many. Some claimed it as their life-verse. If I remember, it was the "motto" of the Christian satire magazine Wittenburg Door.

Why? Well, because nobody knew what "Parbar" meant. The translators of the KJV apparently didn't, so they just transliterated it. Same with the ASV, the NAS, and other versions.

So you could expect "Parbar" to come up in conversations among certain wags. After all, it was the ultimately wild-card. Nobody knew what it meant; so it could mean anything.

See where I'm going with this?

Remember when Mark Driscoll claimed the Holy Spirit was showing him pornographic footage? Note that he just tosses out, "This may be 'gift of discernment.'"

It may? On what exegetical grounds, pray? Mark doesn't share them. He just throws that out there, and then does what Charismatics must do: he tells select stories.

Now, lesser mortals such as you and I dursn't criticize this practice, because

1. At one point there was something called "gift of discernment" (?);
2. That was in the Bible (if he means 1 Cor. 12:10);
3. Nobody's absolutely sure what that is; so...
4. Maybe this is that!
5. You don't want to criticize something in the Bible, right?

Driscoll knows he's had the experience, it's got to be valid, we should probably call it something... so let's spin the wheel and pick one of those gifts concerning which Chrysostom, writing just a few centuries after the (hel-lo?) close of the Canon said

This whole place is very obscure: but the obscurity is produced by our ignorance of the facts referred to and by their cessation, being such as then used to occur but now no longer take place. [John Chrysostom, Homilies on First Corinthians, Homily XXIX]

Because, who knows? Could be!

But then again, really, since the whole point is that we've got this imperative (we must validate the Charismatic's experience and his special powers), then heck: why not call it the "gift of Parbar"? I mean, do you know it's not the gift of Parbar? Well, do you? Of course you don't.

So there you go!

See, that's where the modern inventors of Charismaticism/"continuationism" went wrong. Parham and his poor dupes were originally seeking the Biblical gift of tongues. That is, they expected to be able to speak in unlearned human languages supernaturally. And when they started babbling and gobbling, they were convinced it had to be that, that Biblical gift, that falsifiable gift with defined contours and edges. So they went off to mission fields, expecting to be understood by the Chinese... but, yeah, you know how that went. Natives shrugged and, in effect, made little circular gestures by their temples. Incomprehensible babble.

So here's where the first-gen errorists went afield. They were sure their experience was valid (Charismaticism 101), so then took some large hammers and saws to the Bible, and eventually changed the interpretation of what "tongues" meant from, well, what it meant, to what they were doing. They took a well-understood gift and invented something that gave cover to their experience.

Never should have done it.

Should have just just said they got the "gift of Parbar."

See?

Same thing for all their other redefinitions. If they wanted some holy status for their errant feelings and hunches and "leadings," they should never have assaulted the well-known and well-defined Biblical phenomenon of prophecy, and embarrassed themselves by trying to redefine it to suit their experiences. If they were unwilling to call a hunch a hunch and take responsibility for it, just call it "the gift of Parbar."

Same with these bizarre little clairvoyant parlor-tricks, called (with zero exegetical support) "word of wisdom" and "word of knowledge" — they could be just subcategories of the multifaceted and glorious "gift of Parbar." Who knows? Who can disprove it?

I know some of you are seething, but if you've been here any time at all you know: we have this discussion every time we talk about Da Gifts. Every time we're trying to talk God's Word, someone is sure to ask, "So, what about when X happens? or when Y happened in 1843? How do you explain that, huh?" As if this is what really should consume the Christian, because we already have so well mastered all that actually-in-the-Bible stuff.

So look, here's my modest proposal: If we aren't going to start with sound exegesis of the Bible and be content with that... well then, I've got my answer:

Got to be the gift of Parbar.

Hey. It's as Biblical as all the other stuff. Every bit as Biblical.

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Words mean specific things — especially God's words

by Dan Phillips

The baleful effects of postmodernism are not confined to the classroom nor lecture-hall. They can be heard and felt in home Bible studies, frequently run by someone unqualified to lead and unconnected to a local church. They are seen in the oft-heard inquiry, "What does that passage mean to you?"

Now, I don't want to be a Pharisee who pronounces the death-penalty for word-choice. That question can simply mean something like: "God's Spirit uses His unchanging word to touch each of us in individual ways, so that a text with one meaning can apply personally in a thousand manners. What personal application do you take from the one meaning of this text?" Sola-est Sola-ist couldn't object to a question like that... or shouldn't.

However the question sometimes is framed expressly to claim that nobody can really say what a text means. Its meaning is out of our grasp. In fact, its meaning isn't even our goal. If we ask ten people what a verse means, and we get ten irreconcilably different answers, that's a good thing, and all the answers are equally valid.

Yeah, see...that's a problem. And I do mean it.

Paul Henebury makes a great point at the start of his lectures on Biblical covenantalism, focusing on the first chapter of Genesis: God is the inventor of language, and Himself illustrates that words have distinct referents; they are adequate to convey meaning.

He is the first speaker: "Let there be light," He commands (Gen. 1:3). What happens next? Does a pyramid pop into existence? Or a quahog? Or the smell of fried chicken, the law of gravity, a Pyromaniacs T-shirt, Chicago's first album, or the concept of "boredom"?

No. Light happens. God said "light," God meant "light," light is what God created.

And so for each creative verbal act of the original Speaker:

• He said "expanse," and an expanse is what He got (vv. 6-7)
• He said "waters," and waters is what He got (v. 9)
• What He called "earth" was earth, and what He "seas" was seas (v. 10 — seeing a pattern, yet?)
• He called for vegetation, and (hel-lo?) vegetation is what He got (vv. 11-12)
• He said "lights," and lights is what He got (vv. 14-18)
• He called for land animals, and land animals is what He got (vv. 24-25)
• He said "Let us create man," and man is what He created (vv. 26-27)

Nor was there any utter bafflement when God addressed the first human. Adam understood perfectly well what ""You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die" meant (Gen. 2:16-17), apparently well
enough to tell someone else what it meant (Gen. 3:2-3). There is no record of Adam blinking in hopeless befuddlement. God chose words that conveyed meaning; and that's what they did.

Scripture is a collection of God's words. They convey meaning clearly enough and adequately enough. I don't say say "always simply," but I do say clearly and adequately.

My observation from 40+ years is that the real problem is seldom the clarity of God's word. Or perhaps I should say, it is the clarity of God's word... coupled with human unwillingness to bow the knee.

But that isn't a word-problem. It's a heart-problem.

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What in the "world"?

by Dan Phillips

In my review of the new EEC volume on the letters of John, I remarked on the author's selective lack of curiosity as to John's meaning in using "world" (kosmos) in 1 John 2:2. I noted that Derickson was forced to admit and consider other senses in later passages, though he had treated 2:2 as if the term could only be univocal, and only naked and baseless dogmatism could ever move one to another view.

My aim here is not to solve the difficulties in understanding 1 John 2:2 (on which I've shared a thought or two in the past). Rather, it is to open some minds — pause, to allow gales of laughter and tear-wiping to die down — of those who imagine that Bible readers who affirm Scripture's teachings about God's sovereignty in grace (i.e. "Calvinists") simply make up the notion that "world" could ever mean anything other than "every last man, woman and child who ever has been born or ever will be born."

I'd just like to observe that it is not only impossible to imagine that the word always has that meaning — it is, in fact, questionable whether it ever has that meaning.

My favorite example is John 1:10, which saith: "He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him."

Can we say, "World just means world," and be saying anything meaningful about that passage?

That is, is John really saying, "In the incarnation, the Logos was in the presence of every last man, woman and child who ever has been born or ever will be born, and every last man, woman and child who ever has been born or ever will be born was made through him, yet every last man, woman and child who ever has been born or ever will be born did not know him"?

Unlikely.

Rather, is not John saying "Jesus came to be in the society of mankind [Sense 1], and though the entire physical universe [Sense 2] had been made through him [cf. v. 3], yet the anti-God Satanic system within it [Sense 3] did not know him"? If so, then, do we not have three senses of the same word, kosmos, in a single verse?

Or how about John 3:17, the verse after the Arminians' favorite (imagined) trump-card verse? It reads, "For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him." Again, a threefold use of kosmos. Does John really mean, "For God did not send his Son in the Incarnation to every last man, woman and child who ever has been born or ever will be born to condemn every last man, woman and child who ever has been born or ever will be born but in order that every last man, woman and child who ever has been born or ever will be born will be saved through him"? If so, how come most of the world never got a glimpse of Jesus or heard a word He said (and still haven't), and how come so many people are in fact and will in fact remain lost?


Or take 1 John 5:19, which has virtually the same wording as 2:2 — "We know that we are from God, and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one." So, really? Is John actually saying that "every last man, woman and child who ever has been born or ever will be born lies in the power of the evil one"? What about John himself, and the believers to whom he wrote? John certainly didn't think they all lay under the power of Satan (cf. 2:13-14). As for Paul, he thought he was (and we are) "in Christ," not in the evil one.

We shall come to real misery when we try to apply this to John 17:9, where our Lord prays, "I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours." Is He saying, " I am praying for them. I am not praying for every last man, woman and child who ever has been born or ever will be born but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours." But aren't "those whom you have given me" people who have been born?

I could easily go on, and on, and on and on and on. Of course, no human power can dislodge dogma from the grips of its worshipers, but one may dare to hope that all fair-minded readers will grant the one point I'm making: the word kosmos is not univocal, and it does not "just mean 'world,' period." It means different things in different contexts.

What that specific meaning is must be determined by serious exegesis, and not by bilious assertion and airy, impatient dismissal.

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Are the commands to kill Canaanites and eschew shrimp binding on Christians? Yes — in a sense

by Dan Phillips

As I preach through a series titled Thinking Biblically, last Sunday brought us to consider What Is the Bible? It was the first of a projected pair of sermons treating the nature and use of Scripture. Last Sunday's installation was probably really about 1⅓ of a sermon, as I attempted to pack an awful lot into one message (epistemology, plenary verbal inspiration, inerrancy/infallibility, Canon, autographa, textual criticism... for starters). Praise God for those gracious folks, though; their response was very kind and encouraging.

In the course of our working through the issues we laid down the assertion that all of Scripture is morally binding. My text was James 4:17 — "So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin."

We all know that James speaks here of sins of omission. Sins of commission are when we do what God forbids (i.e. commit adultery, lie, steal). It is no less a sin to refuse to do what God commands. These are sins of omission. Once we know what God calls us to do, we are liable to respond in believing obedience.

In that category, it isn't difficult to think of examples. A Christian who refuses personally to commit himself to involvement in a local church is committing a sin of omission (Hebrews 10:25; 13:7, 17). A Christian who refuses to study the words of Christ regularly is committing a sin of omission (Jn. 8:31-32). A Christian who refuses to pray is committing a sin of omission (1 Thess. 5:17), and so on.

But we who know what Christ makes of apparently external OT laws (Matt. 5:21ff.) should know better than to confine such sins to activities alone.

For instance, Scripture tells us that Christ is God (Jn. 1:1, etc. ad inf.). Suppose we decline to affirm this teaching. Is it not a sin to refuse to embrace that truth in faith? Scripture tells us that there is one God (Deut. 6:4), and distinguishes the persons within that one God (e.g. Jn. 1:1, again). Is it not a sin to refuse to embrace either truth? Or the truths that Christ alone is the path to God (Jn. 14:6), or that His name alone brings salvation (Acts. 4:12)? Are these not morally binding on the conscience of the Christian?

But don't stop there. When pagans unreflectingly throw Yahweh's command to kill the Canaanites or the dietary laws of the Jews at us, don't some Christians cringe? Don't we sometimes beat a hasty retreat into the claim that we are not under the law of Moses, so that we can be done with the subject?

("Where are you going with this, Phillips? I thought you were a dispensationalist, not a reconstructionist.")

While it is fair enough, and true enough, to point out the progressive nature of Scriptural revelation (Heb. 1:1-2) and the unfolding nature of God's requirements of His children, the Christian is no less morally obliged to acknowledge that those commands/prohibitions are part of God's Word and that they are wise, true, and right commandments in their context. That is, we may not "write off" such commands as an embarrassing backwards part of Israel's religious evolution, since Scripture presents them no less emphatically as God's Word than it does John 3:16. In fact if anything, the claims that these OT injunctions are direct words from God is more emphatic and transparent than NT claims.

If that isn't plain enough, let me rephrase: whether or not I am commanded and thus morally obliged to do something commanded in the Bible (i.e. Exod. 29:10; Mt. 21:2) is a matter of sane interpretation (That is to be part of the topic of the next sermon. Pray for me!) But each affirmation of Scripture also places an obligation on me — an obligation to believe, to be molded in my thinking by it. I am morally obliged to believe what Scripture affirms, whether it is the facts of creation (Gen. 1) or the foundation of knowledge (Prov. 1:7) or the dietary value of hoopoes for Israelites (Lev. 11:19) or subordination within marriage (Eph. 5:22ff.).

All Scripture is God-breathed, profitable... and (on one level or another) morally binding.


(BTW, this is a corollary of this post, and this post.)

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Delight and de danger of de metaphor (from 2006)

by Dan Phillips

Last Sunday I had the pleasure of preaching The Church's Call — Big Picture, primarily drawing from Ephesians 3. In the course of that sermon, we looked at the fact that the church is an organism, but it is an organized organism, giving attention to the fact that it's a danger to excise one aspect of truth from the Bible and develop it at length without reference to other controlling truths. In my mind, I was thinking of this post, from almost exactly six years ago. A lot has changed; a lot hasn't.

Thank God that the Bible as a whole doesn't read like a legal document or — worse — anything written by any department of any branch of any government. Whereas legaloids, bureaucrats and eggheads tend to generate documents addressed mostly to themselves and the rarefied atmosphere of their peers, the Bible is addressed to craftsmen, tradesmen, farmers, parents, kids. Folks like us.

For that reason the Bible bristles with vibrantly colorful ways of communication, including stories, riddles, poems, aphorisms, personal letters, alliterations, similes and metaphors. We pretty instinctively know what a metaphor does: it illustrates something about something. It doesn't illustrate everything about anything. We shouldn't go nuts with it.

So when we read that Yahweh is our Shepherd (Psalm 23:1), we're usually smart enough to let the psalm itself bring out the implications of that word picture. We don't go nuts, and depict God as wandering around in the desert, carrying a literal stick, picking grit out of His stew and being bitten by bugs. That's leagues beyond, and beside, the point of the metaphor.

On the other hand, of course we don't sniff, "Well, of course, He isn't literally a shepherd," and then simply ignore the point of the psalm. The metaphor is used for a purpose, and we're both fools and the poorer for it if we evade that purpose.

We should similarly avoid going to either extreme when it comes to Biblical metaphors applied to believers. There are many of them.

Take the one I think is most misunderstood: disciple. What does that word itself mean? Ask any church gathering and, assuming that you know the answer, you'll be a bit disheartened. "Follower?" the first brave soul will venture. "Apostle?" "Believer?" "Disciplined, uh, person?"

They'll all mean well, and they'll all probably be wrong, because disciple has just become one of those words we use without definition. In Greek, it's quite unambigous. Mathetes is related to the verb manthano, which means "I learn," and it simply means "a learner," "a pupil," "a student." (See how much better sense that understanding makes of Matthew 28:18-20, and John 8:31-32.)

It's a neglected and much-needed metaphor, in my view. How many professed Christians come to church, Sunday after Sunday, mentally and physically prepared to do everything but learn? No pen, no pencil; no laptop, parchment, crayon, stub of coal. More often than I can bear to think, no Bible. They simply come to watch, to observe, perhaps to sing, hopefully to be entertained to some degree -- but not to participate, not to catch what they hear, tie it up, make it their own, and do something with it. They feel that their mere bodily presence fulfills all requirements.

Pastor, next Sunday, surprise your congregation with a pop-quiz on last Sunday's sermon. (No; on second thought, better not.)

So we'd move on a good bit towards the reality of Hebrews 5:11-14 if we stressed that image, that picture, that metaphor, more insistently. But it is not the only metaphor! Is the only goal of a church's function to fill up notebooks, or load heads with facts? Is a pastor doing his job if he develops a vocabulary that only his special students can understand, and develops the atmosphere of a college classroom?

Not at all. The Bible also pictures the church under the metaphors of a body (1 Corinthians 12:12), a spiritual house (1 Peter 2:5), a temple (Ephesians 2:2), a new man (Ephesians 2:15), a priesthood (1 Peter 2:5), and a family (Galatians 6:10) -- among others.

But no one of these metaphors captures the whole. I knew a pastor who "camped out" on the family metaphor, almost exclusively. Church was at 10:00am, but folks always straggled in later and later. Rather than trying to address the lack of respect or discipline, he just said, "It's a family," and moved the service to 10:30. What happened? You guessed it. They adjusted their straggle-in time to 10:45, 10:50. and the service started at 11:00. Babies were allowed to wander all over the floor, right up to the pulpit. Kids ran around. Few brought Bibles; but the ladies did bring knitting.

Maybe it resembled some families... but it didn't do much for the other Biblical metaphors.

In sum: the Bible is a big book, on purpose. In crafting our view of anything, we should take in the whole range of revelation, and not just isolate the bit that strikes us at the moment.

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Literately

by Frank Turk

This is a reprint from 2010, and back then, I tweeted the following:

Of course, my iPod corrects a lot of typos (whether they need it or not), but it didn't catch that one. So much for actually-literate. But some have asked, “well, what do you mean by that?” That’s a reasonable question, and I have a reasonable answer.

The biggest book in the Bible is the book of Psalms, yes? It’s huge. Nothing compares to it as a feat of literature, or, if I may be so bold, as a feat of theological exposition. And you would think that, for the latter to be true, it would have to be rote seminarian essays in somewhat-bloodless prose. But instead we get stuff like this in Psalms:

Oh give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever!
Let Israel say, "His steadfast love endures forever."
Let the house of Aaron say, "His steadfast love endures forever."
Let those who fear the LORD say, "His steadfast love endures forever."
Out of my distress I called on the LORD; the LORD answered me and set me free.
The LORD is on my side; I will not fear. What can man do to me?
The LORD is on my side as my helper; I shall look in triumph on those who hate me.
It is better to take refuge in the LORD than to trust in man.
It is better to take refuge in the LORD than to trust in princes.
All nations surrounded me; in the name of the LORD I cut them off!
They surrounded me, surrounded me on every side; in the name of the LORD I cut them off!
They surrounded me like bees; they went out like a fire among thorns;
in the name of the LORD I cut them off!
I was pushed hard, so that I was falling, but the LORD helped me. [Ps 118:1-16]

That’s not an essay. That’s not a book report. That’s not “exposition” in the sense that it has a topic sentence, three examples and a summary statement. It’s a poem about the grace of God.

Now, that should be enough to run after the idea of literate reading – for example, is this poem about a promise being made or a promise being kept? Why is that distinction necessary to comprehend and therefore interpret the meaning of the Psalmist’s thanks to YHVH? A literate person would grasp this immediately and know it’s part of what we’re getting ourselves into here.

But there’s more to it than that. This poem occurs in the Old Testament, and speaks to both some event in the history of Israel, and ultimately to the victory of Christ. Therefore the literate reader sees this psalm occurring in the narrative of the Gospel; that is, somehow the story of which it is a part is necessary and meaningful for the reader who is actually reading the psalm. The ESV study Bible tells us that this is the Psalm the crowds sang as Jesus entered Jerusalem in triumph, and that Christ intimated it would be sung at his second coming.

Now seriously: so what? Is this just another kind of internet snobbery about to make the rounds? Is this just another way to look down the nose at other people and dismiss their use of Scripture and their kind of faith in Christ?

It could be. In fact, I would say that in some circles it is. For me, I bring it up for one reason only.

We love the Bible: all you readers and me love the Bible. Let’s not love it like we love Ice Cream – that is, for the short and self-centered moment in which it tastes sweet and cold. Let’s love it like a living and active thing which will cut us meat from bone, and also equip us, and inform us – if we treat it like what it is.

But this was said to me yesterday, also via Twitter:

I agree. It's most common to tell stories in Scripture. But it is not the way the apostles taught the Church ab Christ.

There are at least three things wrong with this view of the NT which point to a deficiency in having or showing knowledge of literature, writing, etc.:

[1] The apostles preached the Gospel, but they aren’t hardly the only place where Christ is expounded and extolled. For example, the letter to the Hebrews is almost entirely a book about Christ fulfilling the Old Covenant – which is a narrative point, requiring all the types and symbols, and yields a rich theology of salvation in the Bible.

[2] This completely overlooks the role of the four Gospels in presenting the Gospel, and neglects the book of Acts as a book which informs us on everything from soteriology to evangelism to ecclesiology.

[3] This denigrates the Old Testament in an entirely unacceptable way because it ignores the apostolic use of the OT, and it ignores the nearly-complete apostolic reliance on it as the firm foundation of scripture.

The bottom line is that the Bible – not our doctrines of the Bible – will do more to help us reform ourselves and evangelize and inform others than our cultural pup tents set up for a short time in the changing world will do. We have to read it as if it was literature and not as if it was merely the annotated and unabridged version of the reformed confessions.

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Hermeneutics: it's not life or death... right? (Classic re-post)

by Dan Phillips

This post from 2006, very slightly edited, seems particularly timely in the light of recent events, and in the light of stories like this and this. Could any Christian leader say "Oh well, stuff happens"?

"Hermeneutics" (plural in form, but used with both singular and plural verbs) is the art and science of Biblical interpretation. It's the set of rules, held consciously or not, that govern the way you read the Bible. You have a hermeneutical construct, I have a hermeneutical construct. It may be pretty darned good, it may be smelly-awful wretched, but you and I have one.

How one arrives at his hermeneutical position may very well be a chicken/egg conundrum. Does [your-favorite-reprobate's-name-here] read his Bible the way he does because of his appalling lifestyle? Or does he have an appalling lifestyle because of the way he reads his Bible? Or is the relationship symbiotic, co-dependent?

In my case, doubtless there was symbiosis, but mostly it was the former. I was in a cult called Religious Science, or the Science of Mind. I won't honor it with a link. I was New Age before New Age was cool. Back then we called it "New Thought," though it was barely either. (If you've ever sung "Let There Be Peace On Earth," you've sung a song cherished by that cult.)

It was your standard panentheistic Christian heresy, very like Christian Science except we weren't so negative on seeing doctors. Fundamentally, Religious Science taught that God is in all things, and expresses Itself as and through all things. Therefore, we are all expressions of God, and all have within ourselves the Christ-consciousness. "Christ" is the principle of god-consciousness, the I AM, within everyone. Our goal in life was to harmonize our minds with God, and thus to manifest truth, love, joy, stuff.

Dizzy yet?

Now, like most American cults, Religious Science wants to get on the Jesus-bandwagon by mouthing great platitudes about Jesus, how He was a great prophet, a great teacher, a great mystic, the most perfect manifestation of God-consciousness to date. But Jesus was no different than we, and we can all live the same life.

Stay with me, I am going somewhere with this.

The Religious Scientist runs into the problem that Jesus did not say much that sounded like any of that.

And that's where hermeneutics comes in. See (we said) the problem is that Christians have misunderstood and misrepresented Jesus all this time. They took His words too literally and shallowly, when really they had a deeper, spiritual meaning. When He said to pray, "Our Father," He was saying that all without distinction are God's children.

So what about Hell, sin, salvation? No problem; Hell is just the experience of being at seeming disharmony with the One Mind; sin are thoughts out of harmony with the One Mind; salvation is just reaffirming and manifesting your union with the Godhead. See?

Now, the tale of my conversion, and of why I am still a Christian, is a much longer yarn than I will untangle here, except to focus on one aspect: how the Holy Spirit used hermeneutics to convert and save me. (The fuller story is told starting here.)

I learned to read the Bible the Religious Science way from my pre-teen years. I looked for (and found) the "deeper meaning" that those idiot Christians and Jesus-Freaks kept stubbornly missing. It was a mindset, on the level of the reflexive.

But I did keep running into things that He said that jarred even my firmly-set grid. It created a slowly growing tension: on the one hand, we thought Jesus was the greatest Teacher and Prophet and Mystic who ever lived; on the other, He sure expressed Himself poorly sometimes! But never mind; we were always there to "help" Him.

The single greatest snag was John 14:6 -- "Jesus said to him, 'I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.'"

Sure sounds as if Jesus was saying what we Religious Scientists all denied: that no relationship with God is possible without a personal relationship with the person, the man, God incarnate, Jesus Christ.

But that isn't what we thought He meant. It couldn't be. It would destroy the whole foundation and superstructure. Here is how Ernest Holmes, founder of that cult, explains Jesus' words: "We cannot come unto the Father Which art in Heaven except through our own nature." So, what Jesus really meant was the precise opposite of what He seemed to be saying.

That worked fine for me, for a good long while.

But over the period of many months, the Spirit of God did a work on me, convicting me of sin, exposing to me my actual distance from actual God, my God-un-likeness, the multilevel trainwreck that was me.

When I combined the realizations that I basically had found a religion that told me what I wanted to hear, and that I myself wasn't much better than a drooling idiot in the ways that mattered, it shook me to my foundations — and I started looking at Jesus anew. And I prayed, that God would show me the way to Himself, even if it meant that I had to become a Jesus Freak. (That was the worst thing I could think of at the time.) What did I have to do?

And again loomed John 14:6, giving me Jesus' answer to my question.

This was the great Teacher, the great manifestation of God, Jesus, clearly laying out the only way I could come to God. But what did He mean? Did He mean that I was my own way to God (with Religious Science)? Or did He mean that I needed to believe in and know Him, Jesus, personally (with the Jesus Freaks)?

I had no idea, but at that point my very life was hinging on a hermeneutical question.

Here's the line of thinking that the Spirit of God used to deliver me from the deceptive maze of mystical subjectivism.

I took the premise that Jesus was the greatest Teacher, and assumed that a good teacher is a good communicator. He says what he means; his words convey his meaning. He speaks to be understood by his audience.

So then I simply posed this question question to myself: "If Jesus had meant to say that each of us is, within himself, his own way to God, could He have said it more clearly?" To put it differently, do these words best express that thought? The candid, inescapable answer was an immediate No. In fact, if that had been what Jesus had meant to say, He could hardly have phrased it more poorly... in which case He wasn't much of a teacher at all, let alone the greatest ever.

Then I asked myself this: "If Jesus had meant to say that He Himself personally is the way, the truth, and the life, and that no one can have a relationship with God apart from relating to Jesus Himself, could He have said that more clearly?" I was forced to admit that, in fact, that thought is exactly what these words most naturally express. (Later I was to learn that the Greek original underscores this very point all the more emphatically.)

That was a turning-point. I had to face the fact that Jesus did not believe what I believe. Jesus did not think God could be known as I thought He could be known.

And that, in turn, threw the question to the decisive fork in the road: who is more credible? Jesus, or me?

Had you said "Hermeneutics" to me at the time, I might have responded, "Herman-who?" Had you further said "Grammatico-historical exegesis," I couldn't even have managed that much. But that is precisely what was going on.

Now it's well over thirty years later, I've taken classes in Hermeneutics on the master's and doctoral level, read books and articles, written on the subject, fleshed out and used an array of principles of interpretation. But still that single method, that simple question (along with its implications), has resolved more knotty issues for me than any other. It's why I'm an inerrantist. It's why I'm a Calvinist. It is at the root of my core convictions. In fact, at bottom, in the hand of God it is why I am a Christian.

As I've fleshed it out, it is simply a formulation of Hebrews 1:1-2a. The Bible is God's unfolding Word, and it is God's Word to us. He speaks to be heard, and understood. Hence its meaning is not a matter for secret-club decoder-rings, arcane rituals, and secret councils composed of a different class. It is to be understood according to the normal canons of language.

Does that matter? It sure matters to me.

It's what the Lord used to save me.

UPDATE: this post dovetails to a degree.

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Relationship of Old and New in Messianic Prophecy: Huh? and Oh!

by Dan Phillips

Building a bit on the previous post about Messiah in the OT, I'd like to add a couple more seed-thoughts.

The relationship of Old and New Testaments is of course a massive topic, subject of thousands of pages by men vastly my superior. Yet I have a thought I'd like to contribute which I haven't seen elsewhere phrased exactly thus. Maybe for good reason. Let's see.

The relationship has been likened to form and fullness; to shadow and substance; to Law and Gospel; to type and antitype.

My suggestion: the relationship is that of "Huh?" to "Oh!"


Here's what I mean: in many forms and in many ways God spoke to the Fathers in the prophets. He meant every word He said. Every word had meaning for the original writers and audience, and that meaning was God's meaning.

At the same time, many of those meanings ultimately led to ambivalence, puzzlement, or even frustration. They led somewhere meaningful, yet incomplete. Followed out, thought through, they still would have to leave the serious and believing thinker trusting, yet baffled and unresolved. He's stuck at "Huh?"

But when the full-day revelation of the NT dawns, then and only then comes the "Oh!" of resolution and understanding.

We could single out a number of examples. I'll take two, and be brief about it.

First: God — monad, or plurality?

God is One. We're clear on that, right? "Yahweh is our God, Yahweh is one" (Deuteronomy 6:4), the central confession of Israel's faith. "I am the LORD, and there is no other, besides me there is no God" (Isaiah 45:5a). Many Scriptures affirm this truth, beyond all doubt and ambiguity.

And yet....

Plurality in unity? The most common noun for "God" in Hebrew is, beyond debate, plural in form. Most scholars explain this in various ways unrelated to any suggestion of plurality — plural of majesty, potentiality, something. Yet God speaks in the first-person plural (Genesis 1:26), and there are other occurrences of plural verbs associated with the subject "God" (e.g. Genesis 20:13; 35:7;  2 Samuel 7:23). Sometimes plural adjectives modify the noun (e.g. Deuteronomy 5:26).

In fact, back to the verse asserting that Yahweh is "one." The word used there well accommodates the notion of a complex unity (cf. Genesis 2:24; Numbers 13:23), rather than a solitary unit (Genesis 22:2, 12, 16).

Then there's this figure, the Angel of Yahweh, who speaks both of and as Yahweh (Genesis 16:11 and 10, respectively) — that is, as if distinct from, and yet as if identical with, Yahweh. Scholars explain this language away as messenger-talk... but does that explanation really do justice to the language, and to the actions of those in His presence (cf. Joshua 5:13—6:5), and to the figure's appropriation of a title of the Messiah (Judges 13:18; Isaiah 9:6; virtually identical spelling in Hebrew)?

Add to these the baffling back and forths in Zechariah, where Yahweh speaks of Yahweh sending Him (e.g. 2:8-11 NAS). In fact, in Isaiah, Yahweh seems to send both Yahweh and His Spirit (48:16). Plus, Messiah will have God as His Father (Isaiah 7:14), and will bear His name (Isaiah 9:6; cf. Jeremiah 23:6).

So on the one hand, God is one. On the other, there's some kind of plurality going on there.

Huh?

Second: Messiah — glorious ruler, or suffering victim?

Victorious ruler. The first prophecy of Messiah depicts Him as crushing the Serpent's head (Genesis 3:15). He is the ruler from Judah (Genesis 49:10), the son of God from David's line sitting on his throne (2 Samuel 7:14) who will rule the nations and crush them as with a rod of iron (Psalm 2). In His days, peace will reign, Jerusalem will be exalted, and Eden will be restored (Isaiah 2; 11), He will reign as priest-king at Yahweh's right hand forever (Psalm 110).

Suffering victim. Yet often in the psalms we see a very different picture. If we take David's experience as foreshadowing Messiah, we see him not only triumphing and reigning, but being mocked and forsaken and poured out in the dust of death (Psalm 22), and being abandoned by his friends (Psalm 41:9). Or laying aside types in favor of full-on predictive prophecy, we see the crystal-clear portrait of Messiah offering His soul as a sin offering, and dying (Isaiah 52:13 - 53:12). In fact, going back to the root-prophecy of Genesis 3:15, is not the Serpent-crushing Seed also stricken in His heel?

So, on the one hand, Messiah is a glorious, victorious Conqueror. And on the other, He suffers and dies, forsaken by God.

Huh?

The fullness of time

But you see, in both of those cases — and I am only singling out two of a number I have in mind — once the full light of day dawns in the NT, we see (to coin a phrase) the rest of the story.

As to the first conundrum, we now see that there is but one God as to His essence, and that He is three as to His persons: Father, Son, and Spirit. All three appear and act in bold distinctness in the events and teaching surrounding the inauguration of the New Covenant, while confirming every jot of the teaching of the Old. So all of the OT is absolutely true, both in insisting at God's unity, and hinting at a plurality within that unity.

Oh!

And in the case of Messiah — victim, or victor? — we see Him born to the royal family in fulfillment of prophecy, living a holy and righteous life marked by Messianic miracles and words. And we see Him die as an offering for sin, stricken for the iniquity of His people, that by His wounds we might have peace. But after dying, He rises from the dead, ascends to the Father's right hand, and will return one day to begin His kingdom reign on earth. So all of the OT is absolutely true, both in insisting on Messiah's royal reign, and in foretelling His sacrificial suffering and death.

Oh!

As I said, this is true in a wide variety of ways. Many mysteries are stirred and tales half-told, left unresolved and unsatisfied by the time Malachi (or 2 Chronicles, in the Hebrew Bible) is finally penned. But all those central mysteries are resolved with the complex of revelation unfolded in the coming of Christ.

The NT takes the OT's "Huh?" of penultimate bafflement, and transforms it into the "Oh!" of ultimate fulfillment.

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Christ in the Old Testament: introductory challenges, parameters, cautions

by Dan Phillips

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In yesterday's meta, beloved bro Phil mentioned a dispensationalist writer who

says Christ is not the theme of the OT at all.


...It would be nice to have a refutation of some of Snoeberger's old-Dallas-style-dispensational arguments from your more Talbot-style dispensationalist perspective.

I haven't read the essay in question yet. So let me just weigh in with what amounts to a howdy-do to mine own perspective on the subject. For Phil. To aid his recovery.

But note: this is only a very brief introduction. And I continue to be instructed in this vast topic. But this is where years of study and thought have brought me.

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You who've heard this story will be patient for the sakes of those who haven't.

It was Sunday School teacher Beulah Landogoshen's first sick day in 48 years, and her young students found themselves looking at an unfamiliar face. Annie Neophyte was bright, eager, and 48 years Beulah's junior.

As the manuals suggested, Annie came up with an activity to break the ice with her class, all of whom were still in their single digits. After a warm greeting and self introduction to the silent faces, with the air of a magician producing a rabbit, Annie drew out a stack of glossy wildlife pictures. "Start with something easy," the manual said.

"I have a piece of candy for the first person to tell me what this is," Annie bubbled, holding up a picture of a lion.

Silence. Expressionless, vast, unmoving silence. Annie was puzzled. Did these rustics never see Animal Planet? Or an MGM movie? She put away the lion, and drew out the picture of a camel.

Same response. In the corner, a cricket scraped its lonely melody.

This was going badly.

Her hand now becoming unsteady, she brought out a picture of a fluffy little squirrel.

"Surely one of you can tell me what this is?" Annie pleaded. "Anyone?"

Reluctantly, little Tommy held up a lone index finger. Annie gratefully nodded to him. "Yes, young man. What is this a picture of?" she asked.

"Well," Tommy drawled. "It sure looks like a squirrel to me. But I do want that candy, so I'm going to say, 'Jesus.'"

This sometimes feels like the dilemma of "finding" Christ in the Old Testament. We're given the impression that He's in there, all over the place; but when we look, we see dead animals, dead Canaanites, long lists of names, tales of mostly mediocre-to-nasty monarchs, plus excruciating details seemingly meant for contractors, engineers, and/or butchers. Sure looks like that to us... but should we say it looks like "Jesus," anyway? For the candy?

The imperative. Jesus sure makes it sound as if we should find Him all over the place. We read that Jesus told the Jews who were trying to kill Him,

Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father. There is one who accuses you: Moses, on whom you have set your hope. For if you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?” (John 5:45-47)

Then after the Jews did succeed in killing him with the Romans' gormless and gutless collusion, and after He rose from the dead, Jesus returned to the same theme, this time even more broadly. First He speaks to the two on the Emmaus road:

And he said to them, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself. (Luke 24:25-27)

Then to the apostles:

Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. (Luke 24:44-47)

This is echoed in later words from the apostles, but I want to stop right there and make some important observations. Don't skip them, please. I'm pretty sure some good folks who are nodding right along may be about to stop nodding.

The guidelines. Here's what I think are some imperatives:

1. Jesus leads us to expect to find signposts pointing to Him all over the Old Testament.
2. If we believe in Jesus, we should expect to find them, too.
3. What is more, Jesus did not instruct His followers as to how to insert, impose, or overlay such points of attestation. In fact...
4. Jesus did not think that such points would only become compelling in light of His career, which we know because...
5. Jesus held saved and unsaved men alike morally accountable for not already seeing what He clearly believed were the evident signposts throughout. He told the unbelieving Jews that they would be damned if they did not come to heed them, and He told the disciples that they were slow-witted fools for not already believing them. Therefore...
6. There is some way in which the plain sense of Old Testament Scripture points to Jesus, from all of its parts.
7. Yet this must be uncovered and expounded in such a way that still allows a city-name to be a city-name (Matthew 2:5-6), a kingdom-name to be a kingdom-name (Matthew 2:13-14), and a donkey to be a donkey (Matthew 21:1-5).

The musing. Leaving aside non-players (i.e. liberals, unbelievers, nutcases), it seems to me that the ways in which we pursue Jesus' imperative can be mapped as somewhere between two poles:

At the one pole, the virtual Docetics approach the text as if it only seems to be talking about Noah, Abram, Moses, Israel, marriage, work, morality and all that — but what it's really talking about is Jesus. We're back with little Tommy in Mrs. Landogoshen's class. It only looks like a squirrel. But really, it's Jesus. Everything means something other than what it seems.

A newly-baptized acolyte of this school, highly wrought-up over what he perceived to be my hermeneutic, scoffed to someone, "Dan probably doesn't think the book of Job is about Jesus!" Ah, yes. Silly me, allowing myself to be misled by... oh, I don't know... the title of the book? The text? Those word-thingies that God uses as units of revelation?

This school is commendable for its desire to find Christ everywhere. The fatal error in this approach, however, is that they effectively rob the OT text of authority. It no longer speaks, no matter what the NT repeatedly says about it. The authority is no longer in Scripture, but in some canon-within-the-Canon. We cannot really affirm that God spoke to the fathers in the prophets (Hebrews 1:1), if we think He was really speaking to us over their heads and winking and gesturing behind their backs the whole time.

Further, it runs to grief against Jesus' reproaches. He really should have said something more to the effect of "I can't possibly blame you for not seeing Me in all those Scriptures; here, take this decoder-ring, and I'll show you how to work it right." But He didn't. He insisted they full well should have recognized in Him the fulfillment of OT anticipation.

But at the other pole would be the virtual Ebionites, the school that says that the OT is only about Noah, Abram, Moses, Israel, marriage, work, morality and all that. There is no greater referent than the first one, ever... except maybe in a relatively tiny handful of types and direct prophecies. If I may go back to Tommy once more, this would be the "it's a squirrel, period" school.

This approach is to be commended insofar as it is born of a desire to be true to the text. But its fatal flaw is that it really doesn't end up doing honor to all of Scripture, particularly Scriptures such as those cited above and Acts 3:18, 24; 10:43, among others. These passages clearly lead us to expect that we should be able to find Christ all over Scripture while at the same time doing full justice to the text as given. There is no hint that the apostles were rewriting or overdubbing Scripture when they saw Christ in it. They were convinced that they were simply bringing out its actual meaning.

My position. So to call Tommy to the stand one last time, my position would be "It's a squirrel, and the squirrel points me to Christ." It's an imperfect analogy, but work with me here. I don't view the squirrel as a thing-in-itself and nothing more. The squirrel is not its own purpose and end. I know that the squirrel was created by Christ (John 1:3), that it was created for Christ (Colossians 1:16), that Christ is holding the very atoms of the squirrel together (Colossians 1:17), and that Christ is carrying the squirrel towards the accomplishment of His purposes in history (Hebrews 1:3). The squirrel glorifies Christ, and when I look at it in the light of what I know about it by revelation it points me to Him.

Now, I am not saying that the OT is about Christ exactly like the squirrel is about Christ. But I am saying that, like the squirrel, the objects and events and institutions and persons in the OT are what they are, and what they are by design is a master-symphony which all points to the central theme of Christ.

We are able to look at the Old Testament, from start to finish, and see that it points to Christ in a constellation of ways both direct and indirect. Some (many? most?) of these are clearer in the light of full revelation; but revelation does not insert new elements into those texts. Rather, it brings out what otherwise might have been thought obscure and not deeply significant.

There are many direct prophecies, such as Genesis 3:15; 49:10; Numbers 24:17; Deuteronomy 18:15, and a host of others. But the godly men and women point forward to Him by positive type, while in their sins and failings they point to Him in negative type. The institutions point to Him in what they accomplish, but almost more so in what they fail to accomplish. The history of the nation of Israel itself sets the stage for Him, both in its essence and in its failings.

Yet at the same time, these things are what they are.

But what they are, are pointers to Christ.

So, to try to be frontal: is the OT about the history of Israel — with all those diverse characters, institutions, morals, and prophecies — , or is it about Christ?  My answer:

The OT is about the history of Israel (etc.).

And Israel (etc.) is about Christ.

There y'go. Mend fast, Phil; everyone misses you!

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UPDATE: you would swear that either I had read my friend Chris Anderson's essay on preaching Christ from Esther, or that he had read mine. Neither would be true. It is a sterling example of struggling with both text and the Christ-centered metanarrative in exactly the sort of direction I'm suggesting here.

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Christ in the Old Testament: a bibliographical colloquium

by Dan Phillips


Some of the most fun I've had over at my place is when I tap into what I call the BibChr brain trust. Now I've an issue to offer up to the TeamPyro brain trust.

I've been invited to speak at a conference in England this summer, on the topic of Christ in the Old Testament. What a delight, and a blessing.

So I ask: What (A) are your favorite books or articles or online lecture/sermon series on that topic, and (B) why?

Should be fun, eh?

Obviously, you all know one of mine. It's a favorite because Rydelnik argues that the texts really do point to Christ by the confluence of authorial and divine intent. Messianic meanings were not illegitimately rammed back into the innocent, helpless texts by later writers. He argues this from a number of angles, with constant resort to the original Hebrew texts.

Another set of works that has a special place in my heart are those by David L. Cooper, a writer from the mid-20th century, who wrote a series themed on the God of Israel revealing Himself. Much (all?) of his work is online now.

Cooper was a deep student of the original languages, and ransacked the OT for Messianic prophecies and foreshadowings. He made an extensive case for seeing the truth of the Trinity at least framed in the OT, and expounded Messianic passages at great length, including chronological considerations and going on into future prophecy. I can't follow him exegetically at all points, but reading him was a terrific workout and left me with some helpful material. The "Golden Rule" of interpretation that I give and use is an adaptation of his own (see bottom of page).

[The "special place in my heart" is because I lived near the Biblical Research Society building, got some of its material, and ended up doing my first teaching and preaching as a Christian in a church meeting that was held there for a time.]

So, there are a couple of mine.

Now, your turn!

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What did Jesus (not) say about... how to understand the OT (full post)

by Dan Phillips

"You know where you really go wrong? You just read the Torah 'way too literally."

A reader wrote me saying he'd been troubled to see a Buddhist lecturer being hosted at a Methodist church. He wrote the pastor, expressing his concern and citing John 14:6. In his response, the Methodist pastor said something like "I don't take the Bible as literally as you."

One hears this quite a bit. We are cautioned against taking Genesis too literally, against taking the history of Israel too literally. Usually in these cases, "literally" is a code-word meaning "to be true." So the problem is that we take Genesis 1—3 to be true, to actually relate events that happened in space and time exactly as recorded.

Of course our grand concern should not be to take Scripture literally or non-literally. Insofar as we claim to be Christians, our goal must be to take Scripture as Christ took it. Otherwise, we might as well claim to be "SpongeBobians" as "Christians."

Jesus lodged a great many charges against the religious leaders of His day. He complained that their righteousness fell short of that of the Kingdom (Matthew 5:20), that they didn't practice what they preached (Matthew 23:3), that they made proselytes who were worse than they (Matthew 23:15), and a host of other accusations.

But did Jesus ever fault them for being too literal?

I'd say the opposite is the case. If anything, Jesus faulted them for not attending closely enough to the details Scripture.

For instance, He faulted them for failing to learn from David's history (Matthew 12:2-4) and from the practice of the priests (v. 5). He did not suggest that either was a myth or a cultic legend with a general meaning that bypassed the text. It was from the text that He derived the meaning.

Again and again Jesus clashed with the Pharisees' traditionalism. But His problem with this plague was not that it harped too closely on the letter of the Torah, but that it completely ignored it at will, as He illustrated at length in Matthew 15:1-9. Jesus in no way suggested that the Pharisees needed to loosen their grip on Scripture; rather, they needed to tighten it (vv. 3-4, 6, 9).

Jesus accuses the Sadducees of not having a sufficient grasp of Scripture: “You are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God" (Matthew 22:29). The He presses a seemingly minor point of syntax (v. 32) to demonstrate the resurrection (v. 31).

Then He rounds on the Pharisees, pressing a literal reading of the title of Psalm 110 to make a major point which would collapse otherwise (22:41-45). Jesus took "of David" to mean "of David," and not "David-like" or "from the Davidic school."

Or let's go right to the first bail-out point for Christianoids who want the world to think well of them: Genesis 1—3. Is there any hint that Jesus saw these chapters as metaphorical, poetic, mythological? Indeed no; the genre and canonical location clearly identify them as historical prose, and Jesus accepted this. Seamlessly combining Genesis 1 and Genesis 2, Jesus said

“Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female [ Genesis 1:27], and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’ [Genesis 2:24]? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” (Matthew 19:4-5)

As in everything, Jesus puts it down to a lack of faith. Jesus Himself was in no doubt that the entire OT was the very Word of God. What the Torah said, God said. Therefore, the problem of the Pharisees was not that they clung too tightly to Moses, but too loosely. Hear Him:

You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life. ...Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father. There is one who accuses you: Moses, on whom you have set your hope. For if you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me.  But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?" (John 5:39-40, 45-47)

Anyone backing away from the full truthfulness and authority of every word of the OT should have the honesty not to appeal to Jesus, for Jesus showed no such spirit. The only Jesus who ever really lived fully affirmed the OT as God's word. If we are going to propound some other view, we should say up-front that we reject Jesus' cosmology and feel free to disagree with Him where His thinking varies from ours. But then it seems to me that we need to take the next step and disassociate ourselves from any thought that we are believers in, or students and followers of, Jesus.

One may with integrity say he believes Jesus and owns Him as Lord, or he may fret at length about the horrid evils of taking the OT too literally.

He may not do both. Not with integrity.

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What did Jesus (not) say about... how to understand the OT

by Dan Phillips

"You know where you really go wrong? You just read the Torah 'way too literally."

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Book review — The Messianic Hope, by Michael Rydelnik

by Dan Phillips

The Messianic Hope, by Michael Rydelnik

(Nashville: B & H Publishing, 2010; 206 pages)

Messianic... to whom? I always admired the scholarship of F. F. Bruce; so I was hoping his Paul, Apostle of the Heart Set Free would be the rich culmination of a life of scholarship, full of wisdom and insight. I was very disappointed, on many levels. One that stands out was how Bruce handled the NT use of Messianic OT prophecy. Again and again I read about what the NT church community believed about those passages, what they saw in those passages, what use they made of those passages, and so forth. The implication that came through to me was clear: none of these passages actually, objectively and historically predicted Jesus Christ. The NT church simply adopted, adapted, and employed them to that end.

So what of it? Does the OT actually, specifically, objectively, and in so many words predict the person and work of Jesus Christ? Or do the verses become little Transformers© in the hands of the NT writers, ripped out of context and changed into something totally different?

Enter Michael Rydelnik. The son of Orthodox Jewish parents (more on that shortly), Rydelnik earned a diploma in Jewish Studies from Moody Bible Institute,  a B.A. degree from Azusa Pacific University, a Th.M. from Dallas Theological Seminary, a D. Miss. from Trinity International University. He has taught at Moody, Dallas, Criswell, and Talbot. Rydelnik is the author of a number of journal articles and chapters in books, as well as working in the translation of the HCSB and notes in the HCSB Study Bible.

The book's burden. Michael Rydelnik makes the case that the Old Testament not only contains many direct Messianic prophecies, but itself is an eschatological, Messianic book, wholly pointing forward to Jesus the Messiah. In Rydelnik's words,

This book argues that reading the Old Testament according to its compositional strategies and canonical shape will yield a clear messianic intent, with far more direct messianic prediction than is commonly held (33)

...literal prediction and direct fulfillment are common and to be expected in the Old and New Testaments (99)

Here is my point...in the whole book: beginning with Jesus, moving to the apostolic period, and continuing until today, the message of Messiah has been proclaimed by using messianic prophecy. It is a foundational element for identifying Jesus as the true Messiah. ...the views of the modern academy have made their way into evangelical scholarship, leading t0 a minimization or even a denial of messianic prediction. Evangelical scholarship must rethink this trend.... (190)

How does Rydelnik pursue his goal and build his argument?

Shape of contents.  In the first chapter, Rydelnik makes the case as to why messianic prophecy is important.  Jesus Himself asserted that the entire OT pointed forward to Him (Luke 24:440, but too many evangelicals have come either to minimize or even eliminate the presence of directly-predictive Messianic prophecy (as opposed to "promise") in the OT (1ff.). After discussion the use and meaning of "Messiah" and other terms (2-3), Rydelnik begins to document the movement away from messianic interpretation (3ff.). He quotes Longman's (outrageous) assertion that "It is impossible to establish that any passage in its original literary and historical context must or even should be understood as portending a future messianic figure" (4). Passages such as Genesis 3:15, Psalm 110, and Isaiah 9:6-7 are dismissed as not directly predicting Christ by evangelical voices (4-7). Then Rydelnik announces his intent to show that the OT is a messianic document (7-9), and outlines the chapters to come (9-11).

It is not a merely academic issue to Rydelnik. He relates that his parents were Holocaust survivors and Orthodox Jews, until his mother was converted to believe that Jesus was indeed the predicted Messiah (10f.). This led to Rydelnik's father divorcing her, and ultimately to his own study, which led to his conversion. So to Rydelnik, the question of the actual message of the OT is a vital matter, not simply a question of how he'll be treated at academic tea-parties or in academic journals.

In Chapter 2, Rydelnik surveys the history of scholarship's view of OT prophecy, discussing major figures and their varying approaches up to modern times (13-33). Then Rydelnik provides a useful summary of the main positions, using charts for simplification (27-33). The gamut ranges from "Historical Fulfillment" (OT prophecies fulfilled around the time of their issuance) to "Direct Fulfillment," which sees Messianic prophecies as created with Messianic intent and referring directly to Messiah. It is this latter approach that Rydelnik develops and defends.

In Chapter 3, Rydelnik reminds us all that the traditional Masoretic Text (MT) of the Hebrew Bible doesn't have God's initials on it, and argues that anti-Christian Judaism reshaped the text at critical points such as Numbers 24:7, 2 Samuel 23:1, Psalm 72:5, Isaiah 9:6 and others. Often citing the work of professor John Sailhamer and others, Rydelnik contends that the MT has been crafted to point to contemporary fulfillment rather than predictive or end-time meanings. This argument is developed in Chapter 4 by means of detailed studies of texts from Genesis 49, Numbers 24, and Deuteronomy 18, showing that the prophecies of Shiloh, the Star and scepter, and the Prophet all point to Jesus. Then Chapter 5 shows how the shape of the canon in part and whole points to Messiah.

Then in Chapters 6 and 7, Rydelnik turns to Jesus' and the apostles' handling of OT prophecy, and asks the question of what their interpretive approach is, and whether or not we can and should try to imitate it today. He argues convincingly that it is the dominical and apostolic position that the OT itself is Messianic; they are not reading Messianic meanings into the OT text — and we both can and should adopt their method of reading the Old Testament. Their approach is complex, but it is neither hopelessly tangled nor subjective nor mystical, and we should read the OT as they did.

Then in Chapter 8 Rydelnik discusses rabbinic interpretation, particularly that of Rabbi Shlomo Yitzkhaki, better known as Rashi (1040-1105). Rydelnik shows that Rashi was concerned to come up with alternative explanations for OT predictions of Jesus, to the extent that he created new views of verses long held as Messianic by Jewish interpreters. It is Rydelnik's contention that, through Roman Catholic students, Rashi's views came to color some Christian interpreters, and they continue to do so today.

Then in chapters 9-11 (pages 129-184), Rydelnik focuses on the Messianic interpretation of passages from the Law (Genesis 3:15), the Prophets (Isaiah 7:14), and the Writings (Psalm 110). In each, he sets forth major interpretive positions, then goes at the text both as to its wording, its book-context, and its Canon-context, arguing powerfully that each text is a direct prophecy of Jesus.

The final chapter relates the tale of Rydelnik himself as a high school student, finding himself thrust forward against a Hebrew Club guest speaker who was winsomely and persuasively arguing against the Messianic interpretation of the Old Testament. At first over-confident, Rydelnik felt he did a miserably poor job against this well-prepared, persuasive speaker — only to learn 32 years later that the Lord had used His Word to cause the conversion of one of then-unsaved Jewish fellow-students, who was there that day. From this, Rydelnik issues a call to return to the proclamation of the OT as a book about Jesus.


Evaluation. This is a terrific book, and I recommend it enthusiastically. I received my review copy as soon as it was published, and dug in immediately. I only wish it had come out a half-year ago, so that I could have highlighted it early enough to inform and buttress Christmas preaching.

I love the tone Rydelnik strikes, on many levels. He announces his serious intent to "disagree without being disagreeable" (xv), then succeeds throughout, forcefully rejecting a number of scholars' positions while never impugning the scholars themselves. Rydelnik's source-material ranges from academic journals and volumes to Rob Bell's Velvet Elvis (which he solidly refutes) to the anecdotal. He does not strive for the scholarly pretense of detachment which I've denounced once and again and again, but writes with keen awareness of the issues at stake.

Rydelnik's argumentation is very solid; a lot of valuable notes are going into my BibleWorks. More often than not, the case he builds is very persuasive, even convincing. However, I'm not certain that I'm persuaded that both Seed and Serpent are wounded fatally (Genesis 3:15; 141), or that two children are in view in Isaiah 7:14-15 and 7:16-17 (157f.). I'll ponder further. But I find his argument that both are directly about Christ to be solid and convincing, as are his expositions of Numbers 24, Deuteronomy 18:15f., and other passages.

As to Rydelnik's emendations of the MT, I am enough of a novice at textual criticism that it makes me nervous to think of rejecting the MT as Rydelnik does at various points, where no major translation as of yet follows. However, mos of the changes he discusses are very minor: a different vowel-point in 2 Samuel 23:1 (39), a change of accentuation in Isaiah 9:6 (v. 5 in Hebrew; 43f.). More study will be necessary. However, given the changes versions such as the TNIV made to the text for sheerly cultural/political reasons, I can't reject out-of-hand the thought that apostate Jewish scribes "adjusted" the text here and there, in the hopes of denying convincing material to faithful Jews who had not departed from Yahweh when Messiah Jesus came.

Having said that, they all are very intriguing. Particularly I was interested in reading Numbers 24:7 as "higher than Gog" (after the LXX) rather than "higher than Agag," given the sense it makes of Ezekiel 38:17, which had long puzzled me (38-39).

Aside: Two personal connections heightened my interest. As I mentioned, Rydelnik leans on the work of John Sailhamer, under whom I had the pleasure of studying Hebrew for a semester. Also, Rydelnik makes use of the works of David L. Cooper (1886-1965), who did a lot of writing on Messianic (and other) prophecy. The first teaching and preaching I did was in the late Dr. Cooper's Biblical Research Society building, then in Los Angeles.

I hope this book has a wide audience, bears fruit, and helps turn the tide back towards affirming the directly-predictive Messianic nature of the Old Testament.

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