Joe Rigney has a great piece on the Trinity House website. With apologies to Joe, I’ll give it to you in a nutshell, then make some brief observations. But make sure you read the entire article.
Turning Babel Into A Beast

Rigney asks what might be the church’s best strategy in the near future. Ignoring the same sex marriage debate would allow more time, energy and resources for the fight against abortion. It is better to work for the protection of those who are truly innocent.
But then he takes a step back, and notes that abortion and same sex marriage are symptoms of the same sickness. How did the prophets, Jesus and the apostles get to the heart of the matter in the Scriptures?

In his slaughter of the innocents, Herod the Great became a devouring dragon. But how did John deal with the Herod of his day (Herod Antipas)? He provoked him by publicly pointing out his adultery and calling him to repent. Herod was afraid to have him killed, but the wrath of Herodias forced his hand. This prefigured the events that would follow a generation later, when an army of Spirit-filled prophets would challenge the authority of the entire Herodian line. The false prophet, the harlot and the beast are the Herods, their post-Pentecost demonic Temple worship, and the authority of Rome with which they conspired. These were corporate, “fullgrown” versions of Adam, Eve and the serpent. But serpents only deceive. When they have “seed,” they multiply, take on a body, and become a devouring dragon.

Rigney calls on some helpful observations from Peter Leithart’s recent book, Between Babel and Beast: America and Empires in Biblical Perspective. Leithart rightly says that a Babel is an empire with a cultic heart. Rigney tells us that the way to deal with abortion and sodomy is to provoke Babel, the harlot and turn her into a beast. He writes:

“…it may be that the best way to hasten the demonstration of God’s righteousness and topple the abortion-regime is to awaken the ire of the unbelieving world by getting under their skin with respect to their sexual-otry, homosexual and otherwise. To put it in biblical terms, if we want God to judge the Herods for their baby-killing, idolatry, and greed, we should never tire of pointing out how offensive it is that he has his brother’s wife (or his wife’s brother, as the case may be). In short, we should endeavor to so speak and act that we soberly but gladly accept that putting an end to the massacre of unborn innocents may require us to get in between the Babel and the innocents, however we can.”

Rigney is calling us to become human shields, to allow our own blood to be spilled so that the blood of the innocents might be avenged. When Christians preach boldly, and some are martyred, this allows the powers to fill up their sins. Rigney asks the question we all ask: “Why has God not yet judged our nations for the slaughter of millions of unborn children?” The answer is that Jesus, by His Spirit, has legal representatives all across the earth. He is waiting for us to be provoked into action, to incarnate His own indignation against the wicked, to be His eyes and then to be His mouth. When the state begins to persecute and slaughter Christians, it is the “last days,” that is, the last days of that state. It was so with the power of Rome and with the power of Holy Rome, and it will be so with the secular monstrosity which Western Culture has become. The best way to hasten the destruction of the dragon, as it was with Pharaoh and with Haman, is to provoke it. When the dragon begins to devour the sons of God, God will avenge both them and the innocent sons of men.

“The Bible seems to suggest that the blood of martyrs fills up the cup of God’s wrath more quickly than the blood of innocents alone. It is this shift—-from the blood of innocents to the blood of martyrs—-that rouses God’s long-sleeping wrath which throws down the Beast, either through cataclysmic judgment or in massive Spirit-wrought awakening (or perhaps both).”

In the Garden of Eden, Babel was Eve, the mother of all living, who, with Adam’s approval, surrendered her offspring to the serpent. In the first century, it was Jerusalem, who through a Covenant with Rome, surrendered her truest sons, “Jews indeed,” to be devoured, and was filled with their blood. How would we identify Leithart’s definition of a “Babelic” empire today?

Based upon what I wrote yesterday, the beast of today is secularism, a counterfeit church, a religion masquerading as neutrality, as mere pragmatism. But this modern beast, as with all the previous ones, is a direct result of the Church’s failure to remain spotless and to witness boldly.

So I disagree with the idea of “turning Babel into a beast.” They are distinct entities, although united by adultery. Eve and the serpent were not one and the same. Herodias and Herod were not one and the same. Herod and Pilate were not one and the same: they were united in friendship over the murder of Christ. Herodian worship and the Rome which finally turned against Christians under Nero were not one and the same, though they too were briefly united over the murder of the firstfruits church. So who is the harlot today, corporately speaking? The harlot today–the murderess of modernity–is the only one that ever was. It is the unfaithful Church, hiding her identity. It those Christians who keep silent, who compromise with unrighteousness, who believe the godless when they tell them their protests are offensive and uncaring and intolerant, who ridicule those who believe in the Creation and the Bible’s chronology, who teach their own doctrines from the pulpit instead of the entire Word of God. Babel cannot be transformed into the beast. She is us. Babel can only ever be cut in two, placed on the altar and set alight as the daughter of a priest, passing through the fire to be divided once again into ashes (serpentine dust) and smoke (a resurrected bride) as she was in the Revelation and the Reformation. This means that all the current proceedings are allowed for the purification of the Church. God will let the innocents die, again and again, in Egypt, in Jerusalem, in America, for the sake of His true sons and daughters, those of the Spirit, His co-regents.

Then Mordecai told them to reply to Esther, “Do not think to yourself that in the king’s palace you will escape any more than all the other Jews. For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” (Esther 4:13-14)

This is actually where Rigney finally takes us: a call to purity and boldness for the Church. It is an altar call with real flames.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

It’s been a while since I blogged due to some pesky Russian hackers.

Well, it looks possible at this point that Ephesians actually has eight cycles, just as many of its “sevenfold” stanzas have eight lines. This is because step three reflects the Altar and the Table, the Land and the fruits of Day 3 (the first half of the cycle has a preliminary “filling”).

This means that the previous cycle, which spoke of the gifts to the Church, concerned the initial outpouring of the Spirit by Christ at His ascension. If that was the “three-and-a-half,” this next cycle must then be the Day 4, the governing lights, which seems to be the case as it begins with a reference to enlightenment, and proceeds to comment on what this looks like in the saints. If this is indeed the structure here, what follows below is the “Ethics opened” section of the epistle. The new Israel will not be given to harlotry in the wilderness, as the old one was.

Creation – Light (Genesis – The Fall)

This sounds a lot like Romans 1:18-23, doesn’t it? which subtly refers to Adam and Eve. Besides that, the architecture here is fascinating. The Ark of Testimony here is Paul’s testimony. The “circumcision/exodus,” the man leaving so he might cleave to God, is not a physical Exodus into a physical wilderness (which Doug Wilson doesn’t really get) but a way of living. The futile mind comes at Ascension, which is where the Law is given, where the blameless one opens the mystery (Joseph, Daniel, and also Haman, but ironically). The darkness at the centre is the darkness of a sky without stars, a Temple without the Lampstand. Line 5 concerns resurrection, and this connection of old Israel to the life of God was why she kept coming back from the dead while all the other nations passed away. The last two lines are a veil that remains closed (un-Atonement) and a blindness that is a failure of righteous judgment.

Division – Veil (Exodus – City of Destruction)

As the first stanza begins with the source of morality, the second deals with its “hierarchical” outflow: cultus becomes culture (atheists take note). The callousness, or numbness, of line two, must have to do with the flesh. These people will not be cut, they will not repent, they will not mourn for either their sin before God or its consequences in society.

As the first stanza was architectural, so this one is sacrificial. At the Bronze Altar we have them “giving themselves up,” but not to God. Men were not permitted to “walk up” onto God’s Altar. The priests of Baal cut themselves and threw themselves onto their god’s altar on Carmel. Interestingly, those who could not feel in line two actually give themselves to a perverse kind of feeling, to sensuality, which appears where the “blameless” one is presented, the Table. The word means “violent spite which rejects restraint and indulges in lawless insolence.” So it is a parody of the receiving of the Law in Exodus, and the opening of the Covenant scroll in Revelation. Hearts of stone lead to life lived according to the flesh.

The ESV swaps lines 4 and 5. In the Greek, 4 is a reversal of the Covenant Ethics, and 5 literally means “lust for numerically more” which is the multiplication that comes once the law is obeyed (plunder) or disobeyed (plagues). The word “learned” in line 6/7 has to do with discipleship, which again refers to “delegation.”

I hope you appreciate the literary skill demonstrated here! Perhaps I am mad, but it is becoming clear to me that attempting to understand the Bible without reference to Covenant-literary structure is willful ignorance!

Ascension – Altar & Table (Leviticus – Priestly Sons)

This stanza is truly beautiful. It works through the Covenant structure, but the “Ethics opened” line at the centre is truly opened into its own sevenfold cycle, each line of which refers to the pattern in an ethical way. The central pattern is thus a microcosm of the entire stanza: “put off your old self” aligns with the “corrupt” life put on the Bronze Altar outside the tent, and the “renewed” body aligns with the “put on the new self” at the Golden Altar inside the tent.

Then we have “created in the likeness of God” in the Day 6 spot, and “true righteousness and holiness” as God’s rest on Day 7, the “tent” into which Adam and Eve failed to enter.

Testing – Lampstand (Numbers – Harlotry – False Kingdom)

We are into the “wilderness,” and since this is actually the Day 4 cycle, this is the stanza that must be at the centre of the epistle. This also explains the reference to the sun, and also the “throne” of Satan at God’s table, the seat of judgment usurped from Adam. Again, there is the reference to unity by the Spirit at the centre. The anger here seems to be a reference to legal witness (because this is where the law is repeated by the people, which aligns it to the structure of the Ten Words). It seems that lines 2 and 3 together are a fivefold pattern, and lines 6 and 7 are another fivefold pattern. If this is so, what is at the very centre of Ephesians is a reworking of the Law of Moses. At the centre of the Ten Words is murder and adultery, or “strange knife and strange fire,” which together are the sacrificial replication of the angelic sword of Eden. This would explain the mention of “members” here. The Church is the sacrificed (murdered) Body reunited by fire that is holy — Christ’s desire for His bride. (This is what “cross-eyed exegesis” reveals, comparing similar structures to each other.)

Maturity – Incense Altar (Deuteronomy – Legal Witness)

Here, in stanza 5, we have references to “do not steal” and “do not bear false witness,” the plunder and plagues of Israel as a holy cloud, the teeming, swarming, united body gathered at the Feast of Trumpets.

Conquest – Mediators (Joshua – Sin Removed)
Based upon what comes up down the track, Conquest seems to have three stanzas, which usually refers to the three levels of the Tabernacle, or the original world. This step concerns the Day of Atonement, so, architecturally speaking, Paul is cleansing the Sanctuary, the Holy Place, and the Gentile Courts.

G A R D E N

Once again, the focus is on the words of the mouth, and line 5 is expanded into a fivefold pattern, presumably a reference to the Covenant, which is unsealed at line 3 that the saints might be sealed (a structural reference to the Revelation once again). The saints are sealed as miniature scrolls that they might be unsealed once they reach their destinations, and the words that come out must be the words of Jesus. In Revelation, this secondary scroll is the “little book” given to John, who speaks, trumpets, seven thunders against Herodian whoreship, er, worship.

I love how “be put away from you” appears at line 6, referring to the goat expelled into the wilderness. As some readers would know, the Last Supper follows this pattern, and it is Judas who is expelled at this point.

If this first of three stanzas alludes to the Garden, it begins with grieving God and ends with hatred, which takes us to the Land.

Glorification – Shekinah (Judges – The Marriage Feast)

L A N D

This stanza is the Cain and Abel sin. In the Greek, the “circumcision” line 2 is “one another,” and line 6 is “each other,” which alludes to the difference between the Old Covenant sign and New Covenant baptism. Circumcision was about Israel as one flesh. Baptism requires a profession from every individual member, united not by flesh but by one Spirit.

W O R L D

Here, the Ethics is expanded into a “negative” witness. The sin condemned is the combination of harlotry and covetousness by the sons of Seth in Genesis 6, a compromise of the Covenant which was condemned by Jesus as the sin of the Herods (marrying and giving in marriage).

Notice the use of “named” at Sanctions, which ties the Covenant oath to the naming by Adam. Then we see this same Oath at the “Joshua” step, which is the Sanctions of the complete stanza. Jesus has only words of blessing for us now, so we must only have words of blessing for each other.

Glorification – Shekinah (Covenant Succession)

Following the Covenant pattern, the final stanza deals with inheritance. It amazes me how those bright scholars can insist that the Bible’s Covenant pattern was copied from other Ancient Near Eastern civilizations, when this structure is what holds the Bible together from Genesis to Revelation.

Finally, you might notice that “covetousness” is right bang smack in the ethical middle of both of these final cycles, which indicates to me that Paul indeed had the Ten Words in mind here: coveting the house itself (Adam) and coveting the contents (Eve and her children) which is always a satanic attempt to hijack the future.

The Nephilim (“great” or “amazing”) were the first “mighty men” of the Bible. They were the result of the intermarriage between the priestly sons of Seth and the rebellious Cainite kings. The text gives us a split genealogy after the murder of Abel, priests serving God outside the garden, and Cain’s false kingdom (Cain went and built a “fortress” to protect himself). So, humanity was divided into two camps: those who served God as their king and those who rebelled against Him.

The sin of the sons “of God” (God was their authority) was marrying daughters “of men” (man as authority), and we know this is what it is talking about because it happens over and over throughout Bible history. These women were unconverted. Marrying such women was forbidden in the Mosaic Law, especially for kings. This sin eventually brought about Solomon’s apostasy, which destroyed Israel under a Babylonian “flood.” His failure led to a splitting of the kingdom, and Omri in the northern kingdom also attempted to co-opt Judah through intermarriage. Ezra and Nehemiah deal with such intermarriage as well. Unconverted women and their children were to be expelled, to save Israel from another judgment.

Finally, Jesus said that His generation would soon be destroyed for such “marrying and giving in marriage,” as it was in the days of Noah. In the first century, the compromisers were the “rulers of the Land,” the Herods and their high priesthood, through their dependance on the state power of Rome. Rather than being an obedient priesthood, humbling themselves and being exalted by God, they exalted themselves and were finally abased.

There is nothing wrong with intermarriage as long as the move is towards God. God loves holy hybrids (just look at some of His angels!) Rahab and Ruth are prime examples. In the first century, this holy intermarriage was the union of Jews and Gentiles in Christ, pictured for many centuries in the Feast of Booths. They too were united, but by the Spirit through priestly obedience. This is true kingdom. Once united, nothing would be withheld from them.

But why were these men in Genesis 6 called “mighty,” the supervillains of the day?

James Jordan has a must-read article on this, aligning the intermarriage with events in our own day. [1] In summary, what he calls “the Enoch factor” is the habit of the unrighteous initially achieving more, culturally-speaking, than the righteous, because they are willing to resort to slavery and robbery (like Pharaoh, and Rehoboam). But this kind of kingdom is short-lived. It springs up quickly but fades because it has no true integrity. Paganism, left to itself, is unsustainable. The only way paganism can continue is by co-opting the strength and integrity of a righteous culture. This is exactly what has happened in western culture. This is what Jordan calls the “Nephilim factor.” The sanctimonious atheism we see today has no moral capital of its own. It has to borrow, or steal, everything from Christianity, including science, and then relabel this cultural integrity as the product of human reason. What results is a culture of great strength and technical ability, all the blessings of God co-opted, stolen by a corporate Adam. [2]

The serpent offered Adam a kingdom without priestly obedience first. “You shall be like God.” The Nephilim were simply a race of men who were “like god” (Genesis 3:4-5) in a bad way — “mighty men.” (Notice that David and Boaz were also “mighty men,” but in a good way.) The Nephilim were the fulfilment of this satanic offer, a race of Cains, a sin that was now full grown (as James writes to first century Jews) and ripe for judgment.

So forget the angels, and the aliens. It was the integrity of the Church co-opted and corrupted by a secular state with Messianic pretensions. [3]

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[1] James B. Jordan, The Case Against Western Civilization.
[2] See also How To Be Really Evil.
[3] If the West Wing TV series was renamed “The Messiah Complex,” it would suddenly become the most brilliant satire ever.

“Getting Genesis 1 wrong, capitulating to the worldview and resulting pseudo-science and pseudo-history of darkened minds, will eventually lead you to get Genesis 2 wrong as well.”

[Addendum added below for those who are not familiar with my biblical-theological framework. This post is not really about the complementarian debate. It is about our modern ignorance of biblical structure and process.]

Sydney Anglicans used to have an online forum for discussion of theology. It was a great way to spend a few hours I didn’t have. From those times, two things stick in my mind: the creation/evolution thread that would not die, and one commenter who denied that compromising on a particular controversial issue would lead the compromisers down the proverbial “slippery slope.”

Since I called people names this week, very ungraciously, perhaps it might help if I explained myself a little. I see the interpretation of early Genesis as crucial for our interpretation of the rest of the Bible, but also for our understanding of the world we live in. If a Christian gives in to whatever the prevailing culture demands, there will be ramifications for the rest of his theology. This is because the Bible is fractal in its nature. It is a closely knit network, a carefully constructed grid, just like the created world. To cave on one issue will have outcomes in other areas of theology, and the example I have in mind right now is John Dickson, a brave, educated and wise Christian apologist.

Last week, on national TV, John said that Genesis 1 was poetry, not literal history, and that Christians who believed otherwise simply needed some education. It boils down to many Christians not being aware of Ancient Near Eastern cultures, and how they would have understood this passage. But every atheist knows that compromise on this issue is like the iceberg under the water, slowly ripping its way along the entire side of the Titanic. If evolution is true, Christianity is simply a human ideology (like a creation story), which may be helpful, but sits within a framework of “reality” as defined by modern scientism. In other words, the Christian is on the atheist’s turf. If Genesis 1 is literal history, then the atheist not only sits within a Christian reality, a turf that the saints will inherit from him, but does so under a very bright and interrogative light, the light of not only physical but social and liturgical Law–God’s grid.

John represents the Centre for Public Christianity, which was founded to put Christianity back into the secular arena to which it gave existence but which has been stolen from it. If you are interested in the Ancient Near Eastern theory, the centre’s site has some introductory videos by John Walton here, and you can read a rebuttal here. I would add to the rebuttal by saying that neither Dickson nor Walton seem to have considered that the biblical text can be scientific (observational), liturgical, architectural, historical (a true chronology) and poetic all at the same time. They are victims of modernity who either have not been instructed in how to actually read ancient texts (including observation of repeated patterns) or else have little respect for these ancient texts which they implore us to understand. Genesis 1 contains all of these facets because all of them are expressions of the nature of God, and of man.

Well, enough on that, and back to the slippery slope. Unless one is walking on ice or a wet floor, one does not expect to slip. It happens very suddenly and generally before one really knows what is going on. The first experience is generally an awareness of pain. The Katoomba Christian Convention invited John Dickson to speak at its next Women’s Convention. Because John has recently published a thoughtful book stating that he believes women should be able to preach sometimes, and this has caused some controversy, John has been disinvited. I’m not questioning anybody’s motives here, and I’m not putting it down to politics. John is sincere and the convention made a wise move (you can read their statement here). My whole point here is to say that getting Genesis 1 wrong, capitulating to the worldview and resulting pseudo-science and pseudo-history of darkened minds, will eventually lead you to get Genesis 2 wrong as well.

The Creation Science people have been telling us for years that the liberal church’s inability to stand against gay clergy is a direct result of their mythologizing of Genesis 1, 2 and 3. If we evolved from non-life, the difference between the sexes is not a combination of physiological, social and liturgical. Social and liturgical stations become a free-for-all. Whatever I feel like is what God has called me to do. (It’s funny how we disbelieve serial killers in movies when they say that God told them to do it, yet when a woman says she wants to be a bishop because God told her to do it, entirely against His written Word, people take her at her word.) John’s new compromise is only slight, but as with the justification of same sex marriage, it has to deconstruct or ignore all the defenses against slipping further—basically, reject the biblical worldview.

Lionel Windsor has a measured response to Dickson’s book here, in which he points out that Dickson has to argue that “teaching ain’t teaching.” That is a Genesis 2 issue. God gave Adam the Law, and he was to digest it and teach his bride and protect her. This process is repeated thousands of times throughout the Bible (although these Anglican gents don’t often operate with that particular biblical lens). In these events, when the serpent is crushed, the Bride sings a song of victory and joins her Bridegroom in calling down the curses upon the evil one. [1] So, there is most definitely a time for the Bride to speak, but ignorance of biblical types and the repeated Covenantal process which they communicate will leave us open to another hidden process: the slippery slope.

I would argue that the necessity to redefine “teaching” is very similar to the bait-and-switch carried out by one of Dickson’s fellow panelists last week on Q&A, Professor Lawrence Krauss, who tried to tell us that “nothing ain’t nothing,” because he has a Genesis 1 problem. (An audience member then questioned him, “If nothing isn’t nothing, where did the nothing come from?”) Dickson bases most of his argument concerning teaching on the interpretation of a single Greek word because he does not have an interpretive grid, at least, not a biblical one. John’s rejection of the very ordered and worshipful physical creation of the world, and the animal and human life within it, for a chaotic process of sex and death (which, as my friend Tim Nichols says, is simply Enuma Elish baptized in post-Enlightenment balloon juice), leaves him without the interpretive grid within which all his favourite New Testament passages were written. It also leaves him with a God who expressed His perfect character and glory by initiating a mind-blowingly long process of suffering and death.

If John is keen to interpret the texts of the Bible with an understanding of the culture, his understanding must include the cultus, which had no problem with texts being poetic, historical, scientific and liturgical all at once. Such dissection of the text is a symptom of a similar dissection of reality, both physical and social. His questioning of the liturgical stations of men and women is the direct result of separating reality, and the rest of the Bible, from the liturgy of the historical Creation. [2 - PLEASE, PLEASE read these two essays.]

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[1] See how this pattern in Genesis plays out in Esther and the Ten Words, Trinitarian Judgments and The Throne of Eve.
[2] See Liturgical Man, Liturgical Woman.

ADDENDUM:

John Dickson has told me off for not actually reading his book. Fair enough. I’m working through it but so far Lionel’s detailed summary was spot on. And I don’t think John gets where I’m coming from.

The post was written for regular readers who are familiar with the work of James Jordan and Peter Leithart on Bible chronology, liturgy, Bible history (including a very different view on oral culture and transmission, and dating of NT texts to John’s view), and Bible structure (systematic typology).

I’m not questioning anybody’s motives. I’m saying that those who are attempting to read texts through an ancient lens are actually reading it through a very modern one, one that has little idea of the triune historical/social/liturgical structure of the Bible. Does anyone reading here see Genesis 1 in Israel’s annual festal calendar? Or in Leviticus 1 (the ascension offering)? Or in the structure of the Book of Revelation? And most importantly in the structure of worship services for the past 1900 years? If not, you won’t understand where I’m coming from. These structural similarities are not optional ornamentation. A structural allusion is very often the label on the tin. If we don’t get them under our belts, we haven’t a hope of answering the question John is asking (for example) without making a mess and capitulating to the anti-Christian culture around us. The Western church is already effeminate. To give women a greater speaking role without reference to revealed liturgy and liturgy-shaped history is going to make things worse.

So, where do we put prophetesses in the worship service? The testimony of women is part of a legal process which recapitulates Genesis 1, and in fact structures everything that God does, including His Covenant documents. The speaking roles of women are tied up with, and expressions of, the very nature of God, the relationships within the Trinity. (John makes a brief reference to Genesis in his book but so far there is no analysis of process or structure.) That was my point. I’ve been trying to promote such an understanding for a few years now but the modern mind — especially an educated one — is very often incapable of thinking in this way. Consequently, a lot of what is going on in the texts goes right over our heads. If you are interested to read more around here, my pointed criticism might seem a little less outrageous.

“With this theory of the joke in mind, the final chapter of Nehemiah is holy and hysterical.”

In his book, Deep Exegesis, Peter Leithart speaks of the biblical text as many things, but none is more confronting than his viewing the text as a “joke.” His explanation, however, makes perfect sense. What makes a joke funny? It is either prior knowledge to which not everyone is privy, or a confounding of expectations (which are also based on prior knowledge to some degree). The Bible is full of such jokes, and realizing one is in on the joke is immensely satisfying.

The great thing about the Bible is that, if we read from the beginning, and we are paying attention, we are the in crowd, and the Author expects us to pick up on His subtleties. In the Scriptures, these are repetitions of certain words (such as “shatter,” for example, which ties a cursed Israel to the plagues upon Egypt) and repetitions of structure, which are entirely overlooked by modern commentators, who can’t seem to fit more than a single Hebrew or Greek word into their heads at one time for serious observation.

With this theory of the joke in mind, the final chapter of Nehemiah is holy and hysterical. We sit around in Bible study and commend him for dealing with the sins of old Jerusalem which are starting to sprout once again like weeds in his new Jerusalem. But I believe the Author has structured the chapter (and thus the events) so that those in on the joke might laugh and cheer his every move.

Firstly, here is the “matrix” structure of the chapter (to support some of the offensive and crazy things I have written lately). Since Nehemiah is cleaning house, it makes sense that the chapter is Tabernacle-shaped. And as this is a final cycle, the overall subject is Glorification and Covenant Succession, or Temple, Jew-Gentile relations (Booths), marriage and offspring, and the future.

While we are at it, we should also notice that the first stanza (represented in line 1 above) deliberately foreshadows the content of the entire chapter:

Now, before we get to the joke, we should also notice that the passage begins with the words of Moses and ends with the triune obedience of Nehemiah as the “bridal man.” He has remembered the Word of God and now asks God to remember him.

So, what is the joke here? It is a reference to Genesis 1-9, and its three-level Tabernacle architecture, the Garden, the Land and the World. Without this knowledge, we won’t get the joke. With this knowledge, based on a reading of the Bible as a book by a single Author (who is actually smarter than we are, likes to drop hints and deliberately obscures things for us to discover), the structure itself is a threefold architectural allusion. The text does not state this explicitly, and many would argue that this is eisegesis, but the events follow a pattern repeated so many times in previous Scripture that we have no excuse to ignore it. Being so deliberately obtuse when it comes to the Bible is only possible through an unnatural literary “dissection.” It is to treat the Bible like no other literature, and thus, not like literature at all. Masked as “conservative” and “cautious”, the stupidity is mind-boggling, and the arrogance outstrips even mine.

GARDEN

Firstly, Tobiah the Ammonite, who had previously opposed the reconstruction (Nehemiah 2, 4), and is now living in the Sanctuary. He is a snake in the Garden, squatting in God’s domain, “sitting (enthroned) in the Temple of God.” Notice that this creeping thing is living in a large room which had previous contained the priestly food, that is, the Tree of Life. As with the sin in Eden, this was related to a greater sin in the next domain.

LAND

Secondly, we can see that the refusal to give the Levites their portions and the trading with Tyrians on the Sabbath are a sort of “corporate” version of the sin of Cain, who presented his kingly firstfruits offering before Abel’s priestly offering, thus putting kingdom (the Tree of Knowledge) before priestly obedience (the Tree of Life). Cain went and built a “fortress” to protect himself from vengeance. Here, Nehemiah protects the “Abels” from the influence of the Cainites.

WORLD

Finally, we can see that the intermarriage of the men of Israel with unconverted women, and the resulting godless offspring, would eventually destroy Israel as it had done under the kings, and this corresponds to the sin of the sons of Seth in Genesis 6. (Note that this is not, nor is ever, racial but Covenantal.)

Why would the reader be cheering? Because Nehemiah is a man filled with the Spirit of God, plaiting a whip, cleansing the Temple (Leviticus 14:33-57), the holy city and the people of God in righteous indignation, offering a firstfruits in all three domains and allowing God to fill all three domains once again as a mighty, rushing wind.

“Passion for your house has consumed me,
and the insults of those who insult you have fallen on me.”
(Psalm 69:9 NLT)

One final note. Nehemiah beats (Deuteronomy 25:2) and tears out the hair (or shaves) the Covenant breakers. Wesley says, “The hair was an ensign of liberty among the eastern nations; and baldness was a disgrace, and token of slavery and sorrow.”

“I gave my back to those who strike,
and my cheeks to those who pull out the beard;
I hid not my face from disgrace and spitting.”
(Isaiah 50:6)

The books of Nehemiah follows the Bible Matrix, but so do Ezra and Nehemiah as a unit. With that in mind, Ezra tears his robe and tears out (or shaves) his own hair as a priestly Covenant head (Ezra 9:3; ), and Nehemiah calls the people to mourn (as Covenant body) because they had previously vowed to break off these marriages (Nehemiah 10:29). All Israel was now called to be like a Nazirite, a priestly warrior bride working within the Gentile empire. Together, Ezra/Nehemiah is totus Christus, bald, naked and cruciform at the inauguration of a new Jerusalem.

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See also Exploiting Nehemiah.
PHOTO: If you don’t get the joke, just to make a point, I’m not going to tell you.

Any discussion of women’s ordination will obviously revolve around the direct Pauline statements on the subject, and we will certainly spend the lion’s share of our space there. However, the Pauline instructions were not delivered in a vacuum and when he makes his appeals outside his immediate situation, he makes those appeals to the Old Testament, ground his appeals in both the history recorded there and the law given there.

It is a commonplace assertion among feminists that the Bible is a partriarchal book, and this is usually said like it is a bad thing. Value judgments aside, this would seem to be correct. The patriarchs of Israel are Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, all men. Jacob, renamed as Israel, had twelve sons who become the progenitors of the twelve tribes. In the entire history of Israel, there was only one queen who ruled apart from a king and she was a usurper and a tyrant (2 Kings 11:1). From Aaron, the first high priest in Israel, down to the last priest when the Temple was destroyed in 70 AD, all were men. There were a number of prophetesses, who will be discussed in detail later; but Deborah was the only one who also ruled in a civil capacity, and she appears to have done so in her capacity as a prophetess (Judg. 4:4). The general assumption was that women ruling was a sign of judgment (Is. 3:12).

When Jesus came to establish the new Israel, he did so by gathering twelve disciples around himself (Luke 6:13), clearly declaring that he was reorganizing Israel, reconstituting it; and he did this by appointing twelve men. This is not because there were no available women—he had influential and talented women that he could have picked, but he did not (Luke 8:3). If it was time to overhaul Israel (and it was), why did Jesus not include women in the company of the twelve apostles?

So when Jesus set himself to establish Israel again, gathering a new Israel and organizing it around himself, he picked twelve apostles, all of them men. Just as Moses had the Tabernacle at the center of the camp, with the tribes encamped around, so the Lord took the place of that Tabernacle and gathered his disciples around. The new twelve tribes had masculine leadership, just as they always had. If the New Covenant was going to be the time to make a decided break with the old, outmoded, patriarchal ways, this would have been a good time to do it. But Jesus did not—why?

The fact there were no priestesses in Israel (and no women apostles) incidentally answers a common objection on this subject, and does so in passing. It is easy for objectors to say that the reason Christian women were not allowed to become religious ministers back in the “olden time” was because the position of women in society back then would have made the Christian faith disreputable to outsiders if women were allowed to function in this way. Inside the church, the truth of emancipation was acknowledged (Gal. 3:27-29), but for the sake of evangelizing outsiders, adjustments were made for the time being. Now that we all know better, it is safe for Christians to come out and say what we really thought all along.

The problem with this argument is that it is actually the reverse of the truth. The Christian church did not have to exclude women in order to fit in. Excluding women from the ministry was the odd thing to do. The ancient world was crawling with priestesses, and if Christians had admitted women into their ministry, no one would have raised an eyebrow. The church took the counter-cultural route and did something that made her stand out — which is, incidentally, what we are being called to do…

…our neo-pagan age is at home with the Great Mother, just as ancient paganism was. And there is no way to reject this resurgent paganism without rejecting the principal form that it takes, which is that of feminine ministry.

Camille Paglia has a skewed view of a lot of things, but there are some things she sees quite clearly. “The book of Genesis is a male declaration of independence from the ancient mother-cults. Its challenge to nature, so sexist to modern ears, marks one of the crucial moments in western history … The mother-cults, by reconciling man to nature, entrapped him in matter.”

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Strange Fire

We’ve reach the central “cycle” of the book of Numbers, the attempt by Balak to destroy Israel. To the unbeliever, it is a story about a talking donkey. For believers, it is a story about a wicked prophet and a carnal people. For those with a wide angle “Bible Matrix” lens, the entire landscape suddenly comes into focus as something familiar and terrifying.

Firstly, we should get our bearings. Based on what we’ve seen so far, it seems we have seven major cycles in the book of Numbers. The first cycle laid out the basic structure of the rest of the book. What was at the centre—Testing—of cycle one? Numbers 5, the strange chapter where a woman suspected of adultery was to be subjected to the “inspection of jealousy.”

Basically, the woman would drink the Covenant, and God would become an internal witness, seeing her from the inside out. Whatever was behind her legal witness, the truth or the lie, would be reflected in her own flesh and in her offspring. In Numbers 5, the priest recites the process aloud (external law) and then carries it out (internal inspection). Like some kind of liturgical X-ray, this process would take what went on behind closed doors (whether good or evil) and expose it, shout it from the rooftops. [1]

That “personal” inspection is what all Israel will now pass through. All the events so far in Numbers have been leading up to this “liturgically.” Testing in the Garden of Eden involved a false king (the serpent), a false prophet (Adam, who failed to speak the Word) and the Woman. The scene is set for a stadium-sized reenactment of the events of Genesis 3. The individuals of Eden have become “corporate.” As Numbers is at the centre of Israel’s sevenfold story, so the story of Balaam and Phinehas is at the centre of Numbers.

Understanding these events “structurally” answers the questions that remain once the action is over and the blood thickens on the ground. One thing we must keep in mind is the sacrificial structure of these events. Firstfruits put Israel on the Altar. Pentecost puts fire on the Altar. The test here is whether Israel will tolerate strange fire not only in their Tabernacle, but in their own tents and hearts.

Closeup on Numbers 25

What amazing artistry. The first fulfilment of Balaam’s “sceptre” prophecy was Phinehas. And he crushed the “forehead” of Moab by putting a spear through—circumcising—the offspring of the serpent. [5]

One final thought on this closeup. Can you think of another event which involved a “cup of testing,” spiritual harlotry, a spear, and a grant of High Priestly Succession? Yes, the death and resurrection of Christ as Adam. Then the entire process is repeated “corporately” for Israel as Eve, the harlot-bride who must drink the cup and be cut in two by the jealousy of God, into flesh and Spirit.

Okay, back to the major structure.

The beauty of this literature is sublime. And its fractal structure silences every critic. Every mouth will be stopped. Help me to share this material where you can. The lack of interest by Christians stuns me.

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[1] See Behind Closed Doors.
[2] See the notes at the end of What Lies Beneath.
[3] I use the “scroll” division of the commandments because it fits the matrix. See Bible Matrix II for a full explanation.
[4] See Esther and the Ten Words.
[5] See The Circumcision of Satan.

The “Too catholic to be Catholic” goodness continues, with Rich Bledsoe and James Jordan pitching in from different angles:

Excerpt from Rich Bledsoe – We’re All Protestants Now

“High places” belonged to the childhood of the human race (cf. Galatians 4). The idolatries practiced by Rome and Orthodoxy, are childish practices… Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy seem to be in the same soup as Presbyterians and Lutherans and Baptists in terms of the kind of idolatry that we are really struggling with. Converts to earlier forms of the church have simply complicated things by making ideologies of childhood toys.

Excerpts from James Jordan – One Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church

The Eucharistic Meal is not what you or I think it is or may be; it is what Jesus does. If I’m wrong about the theory, does that mean Jesus is not present?…

Catholicity of practice is, sadly, missing from Orthodoxy, Hard-core Baptists, the Church of Christ, and most of Rome. Rome won’t “rebaptize” Protestants, but neither will she give us communion unless there happens to be no Protestant church in the area we can attend. This is at least an improvement over how things were when I was a child, before Vatican II. Orthodoxy says our baptisms stink, and have to be cleansed by “chrismation,” a ritual nowhere found in the apostlolic scriptures. As Peter Leithart wrote recently on his blog, anyone who is truly committed to catholicity will have a hard time joining one of these sects…

…is the church Apostolic? Here again, we have sects that claim something called “apostolic succession,” a notion that cannot be found in the Bible. In fact, Paul is at pains repeatedly to deny any succession from the earlier apostles. I’m happy with the notion of ministers ordaining ministers and Christians baptizing Christians, but ultimately the succession in the Church is by the Spirit.

See also:
Too catholic to be Catholic
Separated Brothers

Peter Leithart’s blog is included on the blogroll here, and most readers here read PJL anyway, but his recent posts on Church unity are worthy of flags being flown everywhere possible.

His post Too catholic to be Catholic received a huge response, both positive and negative, which has enabled him to get down to his basis in biblical theology, specifically in the books of the Kings. The Catholic / Orthodox / Protestant divide is no different to the divided kingdom of Israel.

The idea is common on all sides of the divided church that there is in fact no divided church.  Some Protestants unchurch Catholics and Orthodox; on this view, Protestants constitute the only true, pure church, and therefore the line that divides Protestants from Catholics and Orthodox is not a line that runs through the middle of the church.  It’s instead a line that runs between church (Protestants) and non-church (everybody else).  There are forms of the same idea in both Catholicism and Orthodoxy, though since Vatican II the Catholic church has acknowledged that while the church subsists in Catholicism, “many elements of sanctification and of truth are found outside of its visible structure” (Lumen Gentium, 8) and has famously recognized that some outside the Catholic church are “brothers,” albeit separated ones.

From the perspective of 1-2 Kings, this is altogether too sanguine a view of the state of the church. In the history of Israel, the line that divides the northern kingdom of Israel from the southern kingdom of Judah is a line that divides brothers, a line that divides two covenant nations, a line that runs right through the middle of Israel herself. At the beginning of the history of the divided kingdom, Yahweh warns Rehoboam, the son of Solomon, not to attack the northern kingdom and force them back into the Davidic orbit, and in that warning describes Israel as Judah’s “brothers” (1 Kings 12:24). The prophets pick up on similar familial language: Ezekiel describes Jerusalem and Samaria, capital cities of nother and south, as twin sisters (Ezekiel 23).  More remarkably, toward the end of the Northern kingdom, after a long history of calf worship and worse, Yahweh holds back from finally destroying Israel because of the promises He made to the patriarchs: “Yahweh was gracious to them and had compassion on them and turned to them because of His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” (2 Kings 13:23).

Sectarianism is a comfort. If my church is the only church, then there’s no tragic division within Christendom, no rent in the fabric, to tearing of Christ’s body. 1-2 Kings gives us no such comfort: Christ has been divided in our divisions.

Leithart calls on all sections of the Church to tear down her “high places,” wherever they are found. He takes sides with no one but the Bible, and allows the Scriptures to highlight the tender mercies of God towards us in our carnality, which is what I love about the Biblical Horizons crowd.