Category: Hermeneutics Page 1 of 3

Typological readings are essential

On January 19, 2024

We have a lot of nervousness about typological readings in the West and rightly so. Typology has been used in a way that is excessive and fanciful, proving all kinds of things that it was never meant to prove It goes to the point where people use typology to undermine the clear teaching of scripture; a deeply foolish enterprise.

However, we have no choice, but to read the Bible typologically, as the wise like to say, abusus non tollit usum. The abuse does not take away the use. The arguments from the apostles is well attested. The apostles use literary and typological readings in order to make their arguments in the New Testament scriptures.

However, it goes further than that. The typological readings of the apostles underly fundamental doctrines in the New Testament. If we leave behind the typological readings of the Apostles, we become all the more susceptible to readings of the New Testament that undermine these doctrines.

I want to briefly treat two doctrines, Penal Substitutionary Atonement (PSA) and Paul’s teaching about the exclusion of women in preaching.

Although a lot of good work is done defending PSA atonement from the new Testament, the fundamental image that the Apostles are using is the sacrificial system. Jesus is the lamb of God, given for the sake of the world. Trusting in that lamb of God, the people of God offer themselves as living sacrifices to God in Jesus. We cannot understand that apart from the sacrificial typologies in the Old Testament. The worshipper must take hold of the animal and kill the animal, so that the animal is given in his place. Apart from this primary image, we can only rely on abstract concepts and various prepositions, that can always be bent into some other understanding of the atonement.

The other doctrine is the calling of males to the preaching ministry to the exclusion of females. We can appeal to the plain word, but in order to defend against the claims that things have changed, we need to understand typology. A case could be made that the reason the church is capitulating on this right, left, and center, is because of the rejection of typology by an overly rationalistic church. (The objection would be many traditions that rely on typology also have female preachers, but of course these traditions have already rationalistically undermined the plain truth of scripture and have reduced Biblical typology as a smorgasbord to pick and choose from.) Of course, men and woman are different, and a case can be made from that as well, in order to support Biblical teaching, but that in itself cannot fully make the case. We need the typology that Paul appeals to in 1 Corinthians 14 and 1 Timothy 2, in order to make our case.

Another reason to start to read the Bible as the apostles did.

page of a holy bible in close up photography

Am I a Theonomist?

By James

On October 19, 2023

In Covenant, Hermeneutics, Reformed Theology

I take God’s law in the Old Testament and I believe that the civil magistrate ought to use that law to inform his role as God’s servant.

Does this make me a theonomist? To many the answer is “yes, of course.” And many around me will say that they are theonomists because they believe something similar. This includes the rather strange animal, the theonomic baptist. I do not object to that being a thing. I just find it a strange thing. But the point here is not theonomic baptists per se, but how theonomy has come to mean something like “I want to take the Old Testament Law of God seriously for our civil institutions.”

A prime example (back to the Presbyterian world) is my fellow presbyter, Douglas Wilson in this recent blogpost where he argues that theonomy is one of the things that makes his work and the work of those connected to him attractive. His point is correct. His theonomy is attractive. I’m just not sure you can call it Theonomy.

Perhaps I helplessly push against the winds of history on this point. Words come to mean very different things than the word-coiner’s intentions. This transformation of the word theonomy has been going on for a long time. Perhaps, I am a theonomist.

Perhaps I am too precise about the joists and beams in my intellectual architecture. In my understanding, RJ Rushdoony and Greg Bahnsen see a theonomist as one who holds that the civil law is to be directly applied to the civil magistrate’s role today. I do not agree. I believe in what the WCF calls a “general equity.” That has to be defined, but it is not theonomy. Therefore, the word is historically conditioned by a particular movement in time. I like my theology done decently and in good order, just like my worship, so I prefer to respect that historical moment. Therefore, I am not a theonomist.

For now I prefer to distance myself from the word theonomy, though I happily admire those who might not agree. Without a doubt I also admire Rushdoony and Bahnsen. They brought an important light on a forgotten topic. They are the reason I am much more sanguine about the benefits of Deuteronomy for the civil magistrate than the early reformed may have been. Let the civil magistrate have a Bible. Let him use his Bible to define his task. However, Rushdoony and Bahnsen are not careful in seeing what changed in the light of Jesus Christ. Further, they defined their project in a way that excludes certain ways of approaching this question. Therefore, I am not a theonomist.

Live Peaceably with All?

By James

On July 5, 2022

In Church, Freedom, Hermeneutics, History, Holiness, The Basics, Witness

Another contextual clue to Paul’s teaching in Romans 13 is the words that come almost immediately before Romans 13, “If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.” The call to submit to the Roman civil magistrate is part of the call to “live peaceably with all.” Our living peaceably with all depends on our ability to obey God; to live according to our calling before him. We are to honor God before men.

What does it mean, “if possible, as far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all?” There are a lot of ways to apply those words to today. Does that mean we are to do everything for the sake of peace?

A good understanding of these words begins with an understanding of the church’s mission. The mission of the church, the mission of Christ, informs what it means to live peaceably with all. Our goal is nothing less than the reconciliation of all things to Christ. The church’s work in fulfilling that mission can bring times we are offensive to the world around us. In fact, says the scriptures, “to those who are perishing we are the smell of death.” Jesus says, “the world will hate you as they hated me.” This is a reality, but within that Paul wants us to work our best to live peaceably with all, including the civil magistrate, as much as possible.

But when the magistrate interferes with the mission of the church whether in her worship or in her call to love one another, the church is called to stand up to the civil magistrate. But even so, she does not do this in a way that is malicious, angry, or threatening. She does this in a way that continues to keep the peace, recognizes the importance of law and order, and seeks the city’s good.

The good of the city is our ultimate goal. It is a good that is defined by the gospel of Jesus Christ. This good has two aspects. First, the righteousness and order of Jesus Christ: those in Christ and out of Christ have two different value systems. We want to bring the value system of Christ to the world as a whole.

The second aspect of this good is how it defines our resistance of evil in this world. Or we might say how we seek to bring Christ’s value system into our world’s value system. It is a spiritual war, not a physical one, which we fight. We do not seek to destroy our enemies. No, we love our enemies and aim to transform them by putting away our desire for vengeance and ultimately seeking their good. We seek peace with our enemies by continuing to do what is good, thus heaping burning coals on his head. This action is all according to the law of love and in line with Christ’s act of obedience to our Father in heaven.

Our ability to live peaceably with all depends on our ability to live according to the righteousness of Jesus Christ. Living according to the righteousness of Jesus Christ is not only about the things we don’t do, but also about the things we do. An example of the first might be where the government commands us to give a pinch of incense to Caesar or commands us to kill somebody who is innocent. An example of the second might be things that interfere with our worship or our call to love one another, basically anything that interferes with our three-fold office of prophet, priest, and king in Jesus Christ.

We must recognize that we have a duty toward the government as those who bear the sword for vengeance. According to this calling, they are to defend the righteous and condemn the wicked. We are called to give due honor, due obedience, and due monetary support, with regard to that calling. That is part of the righteousness and order of Christ. Some could argue that those things interfere with our ability to fulfill our duty as Christians, but they are also part of our duty as we seek the good of those in authority over us. Ideally, they also secure the peace and order of the community of God.

But when the civil magistrate begins to use its monopoly on force to deny or undermine our duties, then we ought to start to think through where we might owe obedience to God before we owe obedience to the government. I say start because there is an important place for patience and for conversation before action.

Here I want to discuss a bit the use of prudence in these things in making that decision about how best to respond to various types of tyranny. The very command “as much as it depends on you, be at peace with all men” assumes a call to prudence. Our goal is the peace of God, but at the same time, faithfulness can disturb the peace. Ahab calls Elijah “A troubler of Israel.” Zechariah 1 describes a type of peace that is not due to faithfulness but due to unfaithfulness. The Apostle Paul is accused of “turning the world upside down.” He too is a disturber of the peace.

So is it time to be an Elijah or a Paul, or is it time to be quiet and patient? How do we accomplish the goals of the kingdom in our station of life? Paul is not a revolutionary, he desires to transform from within. Just as the Spirit comes into a person and crucifies the flesh and brings to life the new man, so those moved by the Spirit transform from within society with deeds of love and mercy. We look to the Spirit to apply the wisdom of scripture in our current situation.

Part of this prudence is in recognizing your situation. If the evil done to you comes from those who are positioned over you, the response is different than to one who is your equal or under you. You owe greater honor and patience to the civil magistrate than to your average citizen because of the nature of their role in society. You will also have a different response as a pastor, plumber, farmer, policeman, or nurse. Each of those comes with varying factors of risk. It also matters whether you have dependents or not. Paul sees the importance of the work of providence in giving us each a different vocation in our lives. That is why he tells us in 1 Corinthians 7 to “Only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him, and to which God has called him.”

Another part of that prudence is discerning what you are willing to risk or what hill you are willing to die on. The natural way of the Gentiles is to lord it over one another and we should expect that they will try to lord it over the church as well. The natural way of our hearts is to lord it over one another. Therefore, the first attitude toward the rise of tyranny is one of patience.

In terms of Covid, which is the apparent reason for writing these articles, I would argue that most Christians responded with patience. Still, beyond initial patience, Christians had different metrics for deciding when civil disobedience was necessary and different understandings of the severity of the pandemic, understandable because of the lack of open conversation about these things in the public square.

Yet even when we decide that it is necessary to ignore government mandates, we must still seek peace with all men as much as possible. That doesn’t mean we can’t be sarcastic or confront the authorities. After all, Christ gives us examples of precisely this type of action. But we must, in all this, prioritize mercy and justice. In all this, we must follow the way of Christ. “Do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good.” “Bless those who curse you,” says the Lord. God gives us this truth generally and this is where prudence and the leading of the Spirit come in. We’ll come to this more in our next article, where we will discuss resisting the government God’s way.

Devotional Insights #9

By James

On June 10, 2020

In Devotional, Hermeneutics

Matthew 13: 52: “ Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house, who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.”

Jesus has just been teaching about the nature of the kingdom of heaven. He has recently compared the kingdom of heaven to a mustard seed and to leaven. The kingdom of heaven is already in Israel in seed form. The kingdom of heaven is something that Israel ought to desire much, like buried treasure or a pearl without price. In these parables, Jesus suggests that Israel possesses the kingdom of heaven in a hidden form. But she does not recognize it’s true value. She may even be willing to sell it off to those who truly desire it. The kingdom of heaven is Israel’s birthright, her natural inheritance. Like the Old Testament Esau, she is willing to sell that birthright.

The reason they don’t understand the value of the kingdom of heaven is that they do not recognize Jesus.

Jesus ends this discussion of the kingdom of heaven with instruction to his disciples on how they are to understand the kingdom of heaven. They are to bring out of the treasure of the house what is new and what is old. If we’ve been listening, we know that that treasure has something to do with the kingdom of heaven.

This parable is a fascinating little vignette into Jesus’ teaching about how we are told to understand the Old Testament in the light of Jesus. We find a similar lesson in Matthew 5, “I have not come to destroy the law but to fulfill it.” Jesus’ words in Matthew 13 help narrow down what that means. Jesus is bringing in a new world into the old world of Judaism. He is bringing in a new administration of the covenant to replace the old administration. The scribes of this new world are going to pull out the treasure of scripture and find new treasure and old treasure.

The disciples of Jesus will be the first scribes of the kingdom of heaven. Through the Spirit, they will provide a foundation for the church to apply the works of the old dispensation to the new dispensation. We see this all over the gospels and all over the letters. The apostles are demonstrating explicitly and implicitly how we may fulfill the law in Christ.

Interestingly, Christ puts the new here first. To find the treasure of scripture, we need to begin with the fulfillment of scripture Jesus Christ. We begin with the new, with the new Adam, the new Israel, the new living and reigning King David. We use his words and acts to apply the old to our lives. As the Belgic confessions, Art. 25, says, the law of the Old Testament helps us to order our lives well before God. The Old Covenant presents a spiritual order that the scribes of the New Covenant apply to the people of the New Covenant.

The Jews could not know the treasure they had because they did not know Christ. It was only in accepting Christ that they could find the true value of the law. Even today, Christians and Jews might both recognize the Old Testament as the word of God, but only Christians can truly understand and apply the Old Testament.

And the old treasure follows the new. As we come into the new situation, the new kingdom, where the new Adam is seated at the right hand of God, the old treasures of scripture continue to form us. We find value in the case-law of the Old Testament. There are truths here about how we ought to live with one another. We see value in the stories of the Old Testament. In these God shows us how he works in forming his church both corporately and as individuals within that church. We find value in the instruction God gives us about temple, sacrifices, and the Jewish calendar. These last cultic or sacramental practices find an end in the cross of Christ. However, they continue to teach us about the holiness of God and the pattern in which he desires to be worshipped.

As Christians, we want to hear every word that comes from the mouth of God. Let us not give up on finding those new and old treasures in the Word of God. And so we will grow in faith, in knowledge, and good works.

Is a King a Good Thing?

By James

On April 18, 2018

In Hermeneutics, Reformed Theology

The question arises from reading Deuteronomy 17 and 1 Samuel 8. In Deuteronomy 17, God assumes that Israel will eventually want a king like the nations around them. He gives instructions for how that king is to live before him and before Israel.

In 1 Samuel 8, when Israel comes to that moment where she does look for a king like the nations around here, Samuel refuses. He sees the folly of Israel’s request. God tells Samuel otherwise but encourages him to warn Israel about the prerogatives of a king.

Samuel presumes that the king will not follow the rules of Deuteronomy 17. Deuteronomy warns against multiplying horses (Deuteronomy 17: 16). The king Samuel speaks of has many horses and his depredations are connected with his stables (1 Samuel 8: 11-12). The king in Deuteronomy does not pile up silver and gold (Deuteronomy 17: 17). Samuel’s king freely taxes the people (1 Samuel 8: 13-17).

The key difference between what happens in Deuteronomy 17 and 1 Samuel 8 is not that Israel wants a king like the nations around them. This is a common comment from the commentators. The fact is both Deuteronomy 17 and 1 Samuel 8 assume that the king is like the nations around Israel.

No, the key difference is that Israel, when she comes before Samuel is rejecting God as king. She is coming with the wrong heart. She is not seeking a king after God’s own heart. If she was she would seek the king of Deuteronomy 17. This is demonstrated in that after Samuel’s warning, Israel gladly accepts the type of king that Samuel describes. If she had been reading Deuteronomy, she would have asked God to apply the warnings of Deuteronomy 17 to the king. Now God does provide a king for Israel and he does warn the king to follow in his ways, but this is out of grace, despite the fact his people rejected him.

Actually, if Israel had been careful to circumscribe their king with the laws that Deuteronomy provides, much of the bad power of the king would have been undermined. The king would have been constrained by the law of God from seeking great riches and honor. God told the king not to collect gold, or horses, or wives. If the kings of Israel had listened, they would not have moved in the direction of tyranny.

But why was it so important to have a king? Did God intend to give Israel a king all along? The king is important because the people of God needed somebody who could give true justice. In the end, judges failed, regular avenues of justice failed, and the people of God needed a person with great wisdom to discern the hardest cases. It is interesting that in Deuteronomy 17 the rules for a king follow the section concerning hard cases. Because of man’s sinful nature, there is no such thing as perfect justice and we crave that justice. The king would fill that role but in order for the king to fulfill that role well he had to be a man after God’s own heart.

In the end the only king that did not fall prey to the temptations mentioned in Deuteronomy 17 was and is the Lord Jesus Christ.

We can conclude that a king is a good thing. The rules of Deuteronomy 17 assume that. 1 Samuel 8 demonstrates that the impatience of the people warped God’s gift of a king to Israel. Israel did not have the patience to put boundaries in place so that the king would not become a tyrant. The role of Jesus Christ assumes that. A king without the boundaries God gave is an evil thing. Israel never asks for the boundaries of Deuteronomy 17 in 1 Samuel 8. Israel rejects the Lord as king because she rejects his teaching for a king.

n.b. I don’t pretend to have the final word on this controverted subject.

Some Highlights of Peter Leithart’s Defense of Typological Preterism.

By James

On April 7, 2018

In eschatology, Hermeneutics, Traditionalistic exegesis

Peter Leithart’s new commentary on revelation recently came in the mail. On reading the introduction I came upon these gems, which respectfully but clearly take apart idealist and a-millenial readings of revelation. You can find the commentary here.

One of the biggest questions in reading revelation is how specific John intends his imagery to be. The idealist reading of Revelation argues that John’s writings are not specific to a time or a place but rather are abstract. Leithart argues:

“Idealism” is a coherent, plausible, and venerable method for interpreting the symbols and types of Revelation. It is not however, consistent with the way biblical poetry works. Isaiah describes Jerusalem, not some generic city of man, as Sodom, and so does Ezekiel. Daniel sees beasts coming from the sea, and the beasts are identifiable kingdoms (with some qualifications, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome). Daniel sees a goat racing over the land without touching the ground. It crashes into a ram with two horns and shatters the ram’s horns (Dan. 8:5-8). That is not a generic portrait of “conquest.” It is Alexander’s conquest of the Persians. We can tease our generalized abstracted types from the historical referents: The goat is Alexander, but other fast-moving empires have appeared in history (e.g., Hitler the speeding goat who shatters the horns of Poland and France), and we can and must extend the biblical imagery to assess and evaluate them. There will be other cities like the Babylon of Revelation, and they will display some of the same features that John sees in the city and, importantly, meet the same fate. But John is not referring to those other cities, nor to some transcendent concept or class of “harlot-city” of which there are many specific instances. He refers to a real harlot city, one that existed in his own time, and that harlot city becomes a type of future cities.

He is appealing very simply to the way the rest of the Bible is read. People will often approach the book of Revelation with a whole different set of hermeneutical rules than the rest of the Bible.

A similar problem is encountered with the time markers of Revelation and in the rest of scripture. After summarizing the scriptural evidence for expectations of an immanent apocalypse, Leithart argues:

Faced with this mass of evidence, we have several options in reading Revelation. We might fudge the time frame: God’s arrival is always near. Common as it is, that option is exegetically irresponsible. We cannot eliminate the claims about timing, or the agitation it creates, without excising much of the NT. We might project the time frame into the future: The kingdomis near, but the prophetic clock does not start ticking until much later, perhaps in the thirteenth, or the nineteenth, or the twenty-first century. Once the clock gets all wound up, then it is imminence all the time. Until, then we are in a holding pattern. That too is exegetically irresponsible, the result of digging that chasm between Jude and Revelation I mentioned above. If the Apocalyps is part of the NT, we expect it to have some connection with the concerns of those living in NT times. We might, alternatively, take the time references seriously, and conclude that Jesus, Paul, James, Peter, and all the rest were wrong. Christianity bursts into the Greco-Roman world full of apocalyptic vim, but it soon sovers up, and (like every fervent religious movement?) becomes routinized, regularized, bourgeois, Catholic. That option has the virtue of taking the NT at face value. It has the vice of implying that all the NT writers – Jesus included -are liars.

There is another apotion: The apostles mean what they say when they say the end is near; John means that the events of the Apocalypse are going to happen soon. And they did happen. That has the virtue of taking the time references seriously, but seems ot have the vice of forcing us to fudge everything else. I think not, and this is where our discussion of the OT background of Revelation comes helpfully inot play. When the Lamb opens the sixth seal, the sun goes black, the moon turns red, and stars are shaken from the firmament (Revelation 6:12-17). The universe collapisng? Not if we read Revelation within the imaginitive framework of the OT. Heavenly lights rule the sky and earthly times (Gen. 1:14-16) and symbolize rulers (cf. Isaiah 13-14). The sixth seal describes the “eclips” of political powers, the “fall” of kings and princes from their “high places.” The poison springs and rivers from from the temple, the well-watered place that is supposed to supply living water for Israel. To say that the springs of the alnd are poisoned is to say tha the temple produces somehting deadly rather than something healthful and life-giving. And to say that is just to say what Jesus has already said: “This house shall be a house of prayer; but you have made it a den of thieves.”

At no point does this line of interpretation move from “literal” to “mere figure.” A universe really does collaps when the sixth seal is opened — not the celestial universe, but a political one. The temple really does poison people. The imagery is, always, literal-figurative, nourishment to the metonymic imagination and typological encouragement to faithful discipleship.

Once again, Leithart encourages us to read Revelation just as we would the rest of scripture. That we take the imagery and the time markers seriously. I like that.

Deuteronomy is Relevant! But How?

By James

On February 1, 2018

In Applied Hermeneutics, Hermeneutics

My title today is misleading. I don’t have the full answer to the relevancy of Deuteronomy for today’s world. However, if you believe that scripture is the word of God, Deuteronomy is relevant. Christ commands that we disciple the nations in Matthew 28. The natural follow-up question is, “How?” The Bible has its own answer to this question. The Bible tells us the story of one nation that God discipled through Moses and through the prophets. That nation was Israel and Deuteronomy gives us the details of what God taught her.

Unfortunately, this realization doesn’t automatically give one the ability to apply the law recorded in Deuteronomy to modern communities. Many mistakes are made and many mistakes have been made. When we recognize the applicability of Deuteronomy to modernity it is wise to read widely in the past, in order to understand the history of Christian reflection on economics and political philosophy. We must also take stock of Christian theology. God the Son took on flesh and died on the cross between the time of Moses and our own time. That changed everything.

I want to take this opportunity to point out some assumptions we must be critical of in applying Deuteronomy to our modern context.

1. Don’t forget about Christ: It is easy to get excited about the equity and the wisdom that is evident in the law of Moses. But, Christ changed everything. In particular, Christ changed the nature of our relationship to God, to one another and even to land in general.

2. Don’t forget about the church: Moses is speaking to the church of God, which God organized as a nation at that time. The church is the new nation of God. We must apply Deuteronomy to the church before we apply to a nation.

3. Don’t forget about context: The people of God lived at a certain time in history. There were different expectations in terms of how a nation functioned at that time. God started to disciple his people within a cultural context. Jesus teaches us in Matthew 19 that Moses created some laws to allow for the hardness of their hearts. Jesus cites laws concerning divorce and notes that God’s desire is for the holiness of marriage. However, because of the hardness of the people’s hearts, God, through Moses, gives an exception at that time. The applicability of Deuteronomic laws remains true. The principle here might be that we need to be patient with the hard-hearted on certain issues today, but the permissiveness in Deuteronomy is not an automatic excuse for permissiveness in the church today.

4. Don’t forget about basic economics: Teachings about the poor, or anything else, in Deuteronomy are not necessarily about your favorite public policy. Neither should one cherry-pick in defending church polity. Understand Deuteronomy’s message as a whole before applying it to particular issues.

5. Don’t forget about political science. We have learned a great deal over the past two hundred years about how the exercise of political freedom is beneficial for all involved. Deuteronomy has the desire for freedom at its heart, freedom from slavery, freedom to do good without coercion.

6. Deuteronomy is not a civil code: The fact is, a lot of Deuteronomy is sermonic, not what we would expect in a civil code of law. It is not a list of laws that the Israelites were to enforce in their society through coercion. The Israelites are called to enforce many of these laws, but not all of them. Details of proper punishment are given to the Israelite people. However, many laws do not detail a punishment for infractions other than the fact that God will come in judgment on his people. These laws function as teaching more than as a civil code. If Deuteronomy is not a civil code (even though it contains elements of a civil code), then it is better to describe Deuteronomy as teaching.

Did God make a Covenant with Adam?

By James

On November 18, 2017

In Covenant, Genesis, Hermeneutics, Uncategorized

In attempting to answer this question, I use the definition of the covenant I wrote of in the past. A covenant is a formalization of a personal relationship. This leads me to answer both “yes” and “no.” It depends on how you approach the Adamic administration. If you look at the creation of Adam in terms of paternity and sonship, the tendency is to say “no.” If you look at the creation of Adam in terms of Creator and creature, the tendency is to say “yes.”

This question would be very easy to answer if the Adamic administration was referred to as a covenant in scripture. It is not. There is the possibility that Hosea 6:7 refers to a covenant with Adam. It may also refer to a more general covenant with mankind, such as the Noahic covenant. It is more responsible to prove that the Adamic administration fits the concept of the word covenant before we argue for one interpretation or the other in Hosea 6:7.

I want to argue first that the Adamic administration is revealed as a father-son relationship. Though this relationship is covenant-like, it is not necessarily a covenant. For this, I use the arguments of Jason Van Vliet in his graduate work.

He draws from a number of places in scripture to prove that the image of God is revealed in Adam’s sonship to God. Luke is most explicit. In the genealogy that Luke gives for Christ at the end of Luke three, Luke refers to Adam as a son of God, just as Seth was the son of Adam.

Where did Luke get this from? It is likely that Luke got this from his understanding of the image of God in Genesis 1. God makes Adam in his image. When the genealogy of Adam is given in Genesis 5, we are told that Seth is made in the image and likeness of Adam. The image of God seems to be about a father-son relationship.

Is a father-son relationship a covenant? I’ve already suggested that it is hard to call it a covenant. I believe that an adoption can be properly termed a covenant. Adoption is a legal process, which allows two individuals to act as Father and son. This is what happens in the covenant made after sin. By Christ, God worked it so that we may have the relationship of son and father that Adam had lost. There is no formalization to the relationship of a natural-born son to his natural father, however. If it is a covenant, it is one that springs from the way things are and does not need a legal creation. We could employ the distinction between nature and culture here. The father-son relationship springs from nature. Covenants are cultural, they build on natural bonds.

Compare it to marriage. In marriage, there is a creation of a new type of relationship, which the two type of individuals did not have before. In the case of a son or daughter, there is not a moment of the son’s existence, where he does not relate as a son to his father. One is natural. One is cultural. The father-son relationship is covenant-like. Marriage is a covenant.

Father-son relationships are covenant-like in that the relationship can be broken. The father or the son may forget their natural duties toward one another and betray one another’s trust. The father is called to rule well and the son to obedience and submission, at least in his growing years. Again, there is growth in that relationship, but there are also duties according to what we might call the created order. Thinking about Adam and God in this sense would suggest that covenant is not the best way to describe their relationship.

However, we must understand that this is an analogy. This is obviously true. God is God. Adam is a man. Adam is in the image of God. The children of Adam may even be referred to as gods, as they are in Psalm 82, but that means that they share the character of God, not the substance of God. This means that there is another legitimate way to think about the covenantal character of the creation of Adam.

When we begin with Creator God rather than Father God, a dramatic distance opens between God and Adam. God is eternal, infallible and unfailingly holy. Adam is none of those things. God grants Adam the image of God. God is intentionally creating a relationship between himself and Adam, which is formalized by sharing his image with Adam. From this perspective there is a covenant between God and Adam.

It is natural, or informal, in the sense that it springs from God’s imprint of his image upon Adam. But it is also formal in the sense that God chose that this should be the nature of his relationship with Adam. It is formal in the sense that God ordained that Adam should be in his image. When men have children they do not choose to have children in their image.

It is ultimately because God is not bound by his own created order, that we can understand his relationship with Adam as a covenant.

How should we speak of the Adamic administration then? Is it a covenant or is it not? It depends. Those theologians who wish to speak in Biblical terms as much as possible will be suspicious of calling it a covenant. I would count myself as one of those. However, it is important to recognize that there is a legitimacy in calling it a covenant as well, according to our philosophical understanding of what is happening in scripture. Such a way of speaking is not anti-scriptural. My preference is that covenant would not be the primary category for speaking of God’s relationship with Adam. Instead, we should think of that administration in terms of a father and a son. That is how God chose to teach us about his creation of Adam.

n.b. I’m not sure if the nature and culture distinction I mentioned works that well. The problem is Marriage is not merely cultural, it has a grounding in nature. If culture builds on and is rooted in nature, however, that is not a huge problem. The problem is with the popular understanding of culture today. We see culture as added to nature, not grounded in nature.

God has Hidden the Glory of His Creation Work from the Wise

By James

On September 16, 2017

In Genesis, Hermeneutics

Luke records these words of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke 10:21, “I praise You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because You have hidden these things from the wise and learned and have revealed them to infants. Yes, Father, because this was Your good pleasure.”

Christ applies this to the message of the gospel that the seventy have brought to Israel. The wise rejected the gospel. The simple believed it. But even among those simple persons who hear the gospel and believe, Christ’s words ring true. The simple, those who approach with a child-like faith have an easier time understanding the basic truths of scripture than the wise.

There are thousands of simple Christians who over the last two thousand years have opened their Bibles to Genesis 1 and have gloried over the work that God did there in that passage. Unless their leaders had taught them differently they had no reason to question the glory that is revealed in that passage. Right there, in the very first words of scripture, God proclaimed the mighty works that he had done. The simplest fool had access to the knowledge of these great works. We rejoice and praise God that he has given this faith to these infants.

But God hides this truth from the wise. Even the wisest Christians such as Augustine had a hard time simply accepting the propositions that Genesis 1 proclaims. Today, wise men such as N.T. Wright, Robert Godfrey, and Kevin Vanhoozer have the same difficulty. This is amazing since it is hidden in plain sight, in a very simple record. The words God gives are easily accessible. They are hard to understand relative to our ability to qualify and quantify what God is actually doing. It’s hard to understand what God is doing scientifically. They are not hard to understand in the sense that Genesis 1 is full of clear propositions that refer to specific works of God.

This is truly amazing. God gives simple Christians a better understanding of Genesis 1 than the wisest Christians of our age.

The 5th Act: Part 2

By James

On September 8, 2017

In education, Hermeneutics

I have argued for improvisation in the age of the church. This is an improvisation that is according to the rules. The natural follow-up is further explanation of what those rules are.

Of course the simple answer to that question is that the rules are the commandments of Jesus. Jesus says, “if you love me you will obey my commandments.” As Christians, we believe that the entire Bible is the word of Jesus. Therefore any command we find there is a command of Jesus. These words of Jesus should cause us to search the scriptures for instruction and wisdom on how to live before God.

For example, Jesus commands us to pray, and he gives us an example how to pray the Lord’s Prayer. We have to pray for mercy, for God’s providence, for one another. We have to pray on the basis of Christ’s sacrifice. However we have the ability to make choices what to pray for and how much to pray (Paul does command us to pray unceasingly, but this still does not tell us how many times we actually need to get on our knees per day. Rather, this command looks for a constantly prayerful attitude; an attitude that is ready to pray at any moment). This is part of the Spirit’s guidance in our lives. He leads us to pray for particular people and for particular situations. This is not controversial.

The real controversy is when theologians begin to undermine what at one time seemed to be clear instruction from God. I would argue that the problem here is not their theory or understanding of improvisation. They may be using that truth to support their choices, but in truth bad hermeneutics are the basis for their particular improvisations. Their bad hermeneutic is based on a desire to push against the rules that God has given for improvisation.

This bad hermeneutic doesn’t begin by undermining the authority of scripture as such. It begins by undermining the clarity of scripture. Think of the snake in Genesis saying 3, “Did God really say?” Ultimately, it goes on to undermine the authority of scripture.

Let’s think for a moment of two examples: one of positive improvisation, one of negative improvisation. Changing attitudes on the issue of slavery is one of positive improvisation. As people began to understand who man is in light of who God is and ultimately how he has revealed himself in Christ, they began to realize that the institution of slavery was highly flawed.

For example, in the book of Galatians Paul tells us that the Old Testament institutions were slave-like, while Christ brings a new freedom to both Jew and Gentile through the Spirit. Later, in the book of Philemon, Paul tells Philemon that in Christ his slave is his brother. This type of teaching is not merely spiritual, but applies to social life as well. Eventually, as a society, we were ready to get rid of the institution of slavery. It may have been permitted before, even permitted in the scriptures, but people began to fully realize how flawed it was. Slavery could not be compatible with the kingdom of God.

An example of negative improvisation is the extension of the office of pastor to women as well as men. There is a surprising clarity on this in 1st Timothy and 1st Corinthians. Yet, these passages troubled men, who thought they understood what had happened to mankind in Christ. Their explanation of these passages began to break down the former clarity of these passages. By making them unclear they were able to make room for their understanding of women in office. Society was learning to bring full functional equality between men and women. The problem; they undermine God’s teaching on women. By muddying God’s teaching they make God’s teaching less authoritative and the interpreter more authoritative.

The question comes down to, how do you improvise. N. T. Wright, however well he explains improvisation, is an example of bad improvisation. Good theologians accomplish good improvisation through a desire to submit themselves to Christ.

Christ warns those who wish to improvise, by calling them to pay attention to his commandments. In Matthew 5:19-20, Christ says, ” Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches people to do so will be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever practices and teaches thes commandments will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” Now Christ’s work will fulfill these commandments, but that should make us no less eager to apply these commandments to ourselves through the cross of Christ. We do this by growing in our understanding of what Christ’s atonement accomplished.