In this sequel, moral absolutes have succumbed to corporate interests and brutal pragmatism. The film poses uncomfortable questions for a culture whose prosperity is maintained artificially and unsustainably through abortion, exploitation and war, and whose divorce of sex from procreation is slowly but surely drifting into a demographic winter.

(Warning: The following analysis contains spoilers for both Blade Runner films.)

Released in 1982, the original Blade Runner confronted audiences with a stark depiction of a future that was disturbingly plausible and depressingly tangible. The fact that its pacing was unhurried, focussing on ideas more than characters, and was told through a disorienting hybrid of genres, made it a difficult pill to swallow at first viewing.

However, seeds were planted in the imaginations of a fertile few. More than three decades later, it is difficult to think of a movie that has shaped the world we live in and how we view that world to the same degree as Ridley Scott’s box office bomb. His vision is self-consciously postmodern, exposing the transcendence offered by technology as a scam. In this moody, dystopian prophecy, where nothing is original and everything is derived, progress and degeneration can be difficult to tell apart. Even worse, the difference between them becomes merely a matter of opinion, since moral absolutes have succumbed entirely to corporate interests and brutal pragmatism. The code of the street is now the code of humanity: survival at all costs.

Continue reading at ethos.

Redemption of the Female Eunuch

“We are not things.”

George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road is a two hour chase movie. It is also, unwittingly, a bold portrait of biblical feminism.

Balls to the Wall¹A term used by pilots. When accelerating quickly, the throttle is pushed all the way to the panel and the throttle lever (ball) actually touches the panel (wall).

Miller delivered the expected testosterone-fest but not a few men felt like they had been had. The central character is not Max, the ex-cop of the previous films, but a woman called Imperator Furiosa. Even worse, Max spends most of the movie surrounded by women. The film has been called triumphantly feminist by some critics. In some ways it is, but I would argue that Miller’s gender politics, understood in a biblical light, bring feminism full circle. Womanhood ends up back where it began, but it will never be the same again.

Blood Bag

There are only two ways to achieve prosperity. The first is the promised abundance from the hand of God given after faithful obedience. The second is through slavery and robbery, which turn Eden into Egypt. Miller’s post-apocalyptic story begins in an Eden-gone-wrong, a tree-covered mountain in a desert which withholds its life giving springs as a means of control, releasing only occasional streams of water pumped up from the depths of the earth as a reminder of its power over life and death. An enormous carving above its ruler’s balcony tells us that this is the place of the skull.

The longevity of this city depends upon raids against other gangs of survivors by “war boys,” a brood of Cains, male children rendered sick by radiation but raised to murder and pillage. This is a world filled with violence, the bloodshed given divine sanction through a false religion welded together of relics from the old world, a fusion of scraps of men and machines, ferocious, glorious and hilarious, much like the cars and trucks which serve as extensions of the characters.

The ruler of the citadel is Immortan Joe, the Adamic everyman who has ascended to power—and extended his natural life—through unnatural means. Indeed, everything natural is farmed, exploited and hoarded, from human blood to breast milk. Max, who has told us that his only goal is survival, is himself strapped to a cross on the front of a war vehicle, silent as a lamb beneath a metal muzzle.²The two “war boys,” Nux and Slit, represent the two thieves at the cross. Both curse Max but Nux eventually comes to bless him, reaching paradise through a spectacular act of self-sacrifice. He is attached to its dying driver with an IV line, supplying the blood required to sustain the warrior while he takes part in the chase. Despite his claims, right from the beginning, where Max crushes under heel and devours a two-headed desert dragon, he is the truly great one, the Christ.

Hell Hath No Fury

The driver of the plot—and of the largest tanker, the War Rig—is Imperator Furiosa, a one-armed woman with a crew cut who is one of Joe’s best raiders. Furiosa was kidnapped as a small child and thrown into the breeding program, but now she is barren, unable to bear children or produce milk. Without her cunning as a raider, she would have remained a throwaway in the eyes of Joe. But now, she uses a convoy supply journey to rescue the young women of Joe’s harem, girls kept for the purpose of breeding healthy sons, so it is apt that the body of the stolen War Rig tanker is filled with human milk.

Here is a female action hero who is actually a woman. Sexuality after the apocalypse is back to the needs and wants of men—sex and offspring. This angry empress is a used-up supermodel, now devoid of everything that made her desirable, including her hair. She is what feminism has become: a womanhood which escaped exploitation by becoming the exploiter. Germaine Greer’s “female eunuch,” repressed sexually by the constraints of culture, sought to be free of the chains of nature but became something unnatural, something sexless. These things were stolen from Furiosa, but the barren has cause to rejoice. She is not a hero because she can kick and punch but because she has the motivation of a bereaved mother, the fury of a she-bear. Without children of her own she risks her life to rescue the daughters of men.

Mad World

Some view Max as Furiosa’s sidekick, but in reality he is her enabler. Indeed, he and one of the war boys come to be the only men whom the numerous women in the film learn to trust. It is the women who blame the men not only for their continued exploitation, but also for bringing about the end of the world. Land and womb are both made barren by Adam’s desire for godhood. The planet is poisoned, and even the promised land, the “green place of many mothers” is now a bog filled with scavenging crows, both human and animal.

The refreshing thing about all of Miller’s women is that they are real. Even the stolen supermodels are real people. When Joe discovers that his prized possessions are missing, he sees “We are not things” scrawled in large letters on the wall of the empty harem. Even better are the old women of the desert, grannies on motorbikes who live under the stars, with leathery faces but soft hearts. They are the biggest surprise of the film. They have become suspicious of all men since men view even the end of the world as an opportunity for gain and control. But they still maintain hope even though their own days are numbered. In Max and Furiosa, they see a reconciliation of man and woman and a new beginning, a world where Adam will not rule over Eve, and all her desires will be met by him. The two begin in fisticuffs but instead of romance there develops a deep, reciprocal sense of honor.

In the film’s one heartrending scene, after Furiosa’s hopes of reaching the green place are dashed, she falls to her knees, alone in the sand, and lets out a cry of despair. The only way this crew can survive is to return to Joe’s citadel. The movie is a there-and-back-again, which on one level makes the rescue and the chase seem pointless. But as in the Bible, the trip to Egypt and back to Canaan changed Israel forever. Feminism’s green pastures are not “out there.” They are back where women began, but in a home transformed. For Eve to be truly free, she must be empowered by Adam.

Worship the Vehicles

Joe loses his heir, his “mobile throne” (called the Gigahorse) and finally he loses his face, all important biblical symbols, in gasoline fuelled chariot battles that take the spectacle of live action to a new level. With sparse dialogue, the film is like the loudest silent movie ever made. As one reviewer noted:

Imagine if Cirque du Soleil reenacted a Hieronymus Bosch painting and someone set the theatre on fire. This is more or less what Miller has come up with.³Robbie Collin, Mad Max: Fury Road review: ‘a Krakatoan eruption of craziness,’ The Telegraph UK, May 20, 2015.

Joe has gained the whole world but loses his own life. Max and Furiosa have lost everything and yet choose to serve. Max donates his blood once again, but this time voluntarily—to save his counterpart. The final scene is a revelation of the ascension of the bride. Like the Church of Christ, she is beaten and bloodied, her face marred more than any woman. But she has her prize. Max watches as Furiosa is lifted to glory while he humbly disappears into the adoring crowd, a new kind of everyman, a real hero, a Christlike one. And the living waters are released as streams in the desert.

Biblical Feminism

“We’re seeing in the world in many places that women are emerging as a unifying or healing force…” says George Miller. “I think that’s in the zeitgeist.” Like the women in the wilderness, biblical womanhood is not a state. It is a process of redemption by Covenant. Eve was given to Adam as a gift but he treated her like a “thing” (Genesis 3:12). To protect himself, he depersonalized her. If he had been faithful and protected her, she would have been glorified at his side as a co-regent. We see the same process in the two givings of the Ten Commandments. In Exodus, the women are included with all the other chattels, but in Deuteronomy, they are now listed with their men. The book of Esther tells the same story. Esther, although married to the emperor, is merely a possession until the serpent is crushed and she is enthroned, judging beside her husband.⁴See Esther and the Ten Words. Women must be empowered, but women can only be empowered by faithful men.

This is an essay from Inquiétude: Essays for a People without Eyes.

‘Stories are equipment for living.’ – Kenneth Burke

Blog gurus tell you never to blog “off brand,” but this one’s not as off as it might appear.

If you love the Bible and haven’t read Robert Alter’s The Art of Biblical Narrative, you really need to. One of the reasons for the Reading the Bible in 3D seminar in April was to help people understand that the tools they gain from watching quality movies and TV and reading good fiction should not be shelved when reading the Bible. Sadly, it seems most Christians really aren’t interested in understanding the Bible in a new way. They are taught by ministers who have little idea of what they are actually dealing with in the Bible, and the ministers were trained in Bible academies ruled by men without an ounce of the childlike imagination the Bible requires to be understood. Consequently they miss the beauty, the musical rhythm, the intricacies and the constant use of “plant and payoff”, all of which are understood by the best authors. This includes screen writers, who have to say everything the writer of a novel says but in less words. Robert McKee writes:

From inspiration to last draft you may need as much time to write a screenplay as to write a novel. Screen and prose writers create the same density of world, character, and story, but because screenplay pages have so much white on them, we’re often mislead into thinking that a screenplay is quicker and easier than a novel. But while scribomaniacs fill pages as fast as they can type, film writers cut and cut again, ruthless in their desire to express the absolute maximum in the fewest possible words. Pascal once wrote a long, drawn-out letter to a friend, then apologised in the postscript that he didn’t have time to write a short one. Like Pascal, screenwriters learn that economy is key, that brevity takes time, that excellence means perseverance. [1]

Aaron Sorkin has said that what got him hooked on writing was watching a play and being fascinated by the “music” of the dialogue. John Truby says that plot is not something you make up as you go along, and that all the best stories use the element of surprise. (If you are interested in the hard slog that is screenwriting, there’s a great interview with “script doctor” John Truby here.) In every case, the elements of wonder and surprise are what get people hooked. The Bible was completed two millennia ago, and it is still coming up with surprises. However, it is rarely taught this way, and plenty of good theologians are kicked out or ignored by the establishment because “mature” minds don’t understand story as art. At the heart of narrative surprise (the good ones, anyway) is the “plant and payoff” technique, which is the basis of typology, and I would argue that this is an application of God’s own Covenantal “forming and filling.” The writer plants a single seed which dies in the ground and later produces a harvest. (Here’s an article by a man who may have just lost his job for saying such things.)

One of the reasons I love cinema and good TV, from art house through well-written cable shows right down to blockbusters, is that good storytelling makes excellence possible in any genre. And the best storytelling, for me at least, involves the use of symbol. Lewis and Tolkien understood that the best way to comment on the real world is to view it from another one. All the visions of the Bible do this. They take place in the heavenly court, but of course what happens on the earth is the exposition of the compact types that come from the mouth of God.

I thought I’d lighten up for a bit and write some fiction (for my kids), but fiction with the pace and visual language of images on the screen. The only “world” I really know is Doctor Who, since I grew up with it. It’s one of those shows which had to rely on storytelling since the low budget meant the audience had to use their imaginations for much of what was going on anyway (and I find the fact that it never takes itself seriously very charming as well). It’s a show where anything can happen. When it’s terrible, it’s really terrible, but when it’s good, it’s a vehicle for commenting on the real world in a format that is infinitely flexible. Taylor Parkes writes:

Doctor Who is like pop music: it’s cheap, loud and trashy. And, as with pop music, these are not flaws but strengths – adding power and immediacy, validating everything. Enabling, from time to time, a peculiar transcendence, a particular kind of truth. And, as with pop music, trashiness is a hook, a way for Doctor Who to communicate big ideas without having to bore you; to encourage absolute mental freedom, with all those crazed audio-visual freakouts, all those mind-expanding trips into the abstract, and the absurd, and the extreme. [2]

So, here’s Bible Matrix meets Doctor Who by “James Stoker” [3]. Though it starts with some comedy, it’s quite a serious story. If you are up for it, see how many Bible stories, Tabernacle, Covenant/matrix and James Jordan references you can spot. And if you know Doctor Who, watch out for clues. There’s plenty of surprises.

You can download the ebook here. I’ve attempted to follow Truby’s advice: use a familiar format, give the people what they expect, but also transcend the format somehow, which is what the Bible does every step of the way.

And you really must read that book by Alter. So many people think the Old Testament writers were dull primitives, but it turns out that the jokes are so subtle they go right over the heads of most Christians.

__________________________________________
[1] Robert McKee, Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting
[2] This is a great analysis, and very funny. (Thanks Daniel Stoddart)
[3] James Stoker is an anagram of “Master’s Joke,” a pseudonym once used in the show’s credits to hide the identity of the actor playing a recurring villain who was still in disguise.

“…a mystery without a solution, a horror story without savagery, a nightmare in which all the watches stop at noonday…”

The Bestial Gardens of Men

Then they will say to the mountains, “Fall on us!”
and to the hills, “Cover us!”
(Luke 23:30)

The following lines by Edgar Allan Poe, slightly reshaped, are the first spoken words in the classic Australian film, Peter Weir’s Picnic At Hanging Rock:

What we see
and what we seem
are but a dream…
a dream within a dream.

Based on a novel by the enigmatic Joan Lindsay, the film is an experience that clings to you, not merely because it is so carefully and beautifully made, but also because it is a film with secret blades: it is a mystery without a solution, a horror story without savagery, a nightmare in which all the watches stop at noonday.

On Saturday 14th February 1900, a party of schoolgirls from Appleyard College picnicked at Hanging Rock near Mount Macedon in the state of Victoria. During the afternoon several members of the party disappeared without trace…

The picnic takes place on St Valentine’s Day. Although named for a saint, the date is a licence for the expression of natural impulses, the heart of paganism. Along with the use of “pipes of pan” in the film soundtrack, the culture of the schoolgirls is a scrapbook of Victorian fertility symbols. Yet, these passionate obsessions and an awakening sexual desire are strictly bound by the corset of Victorian religion. In one scene, recitation of a personal ode to St Valentine is censored for the sake of the memorization of the curricular Casabianca. Like first century Israel, Victoriana is indeed not one but two women, the bride and the harlot.

The golden icon is a blessed sylph named Miranda, likened to “the Botticelli angel” by one of her teachers. Both her appearance and her disappearance become elements in a sort of sacrificial ascension. Time stops and her potential is suddenly a flower pressed in a vice of tragedy. The end of her childhood is the birth of Venus. Though her purity is gone from the world, the memory of its fragrance fills the imaginations of those left behind, just as the mystery of the missing women corrupts, terrorizes and curses them, one by one.

This dichotomy between nature and nurture is  echoed in the quiet but unsettling tension between conflicting cultures and landscapes. The contrast of the rough Australian stablehand with the young English gentleman is humorous but telling. They do not lock horns but become friends—and possible suspects.

There is real discord, however, between the imported English culture and the dangerous and unforgiving Australian landscape into which its literature, dress and architecture have been confidently transplanted, entirely unadapted. Appleyard College is a manmade Eden, a temple and a greenhouse with boundaries clearly defined, its lush lawns giving way abruptly to brown fields. Moreover, the building in real life, Martindale Hall, was itself a deliberate reconstruction of the English home of the owner’s wife for the purpose of luring her to Australia. She never came, and he eventually lost the property in a gambling debt.

Visually, the picnic is also a hopeful transplant. It is a European painting, an English pastoral, carefully recreated in a foreign land. Moreover, the nature versus nurture theme is found even in the disparate “beauty and terror” approaches to the rock itself: the primeval eruptions described ominously by Miss McCraw and the Renaissance esthetic of Mademoiselle de Poitiers are both represented within the party of the missing. Victoria Bladen writes:

The juxtaposition of rational empiricism and emotive response, evident during the carriage ride, is continued with the girls’ proposed ascent of the Rock. For Miranda and Irma it is curiosity; they “wanted a closer view of the Rock” (p.33). By comparison, Marion Quade’s reason for wanting to go for a walk is to “make a few measurements at the base of the Rock”; she produces “some squared paper and a ruler” (p.25) yet it is not clear how such measuring would be done. In any event, no measurements are taken and the girls’ walk quickly takes on the quality of a mystic pilgrimage. Marion discards her pencil and notebook, “toss[ing] them into the ferns” (p. 38), before they fall asleep at the Rock.

While the natural space is a source of admiration and wonder, it is only superficially and temporarily idyllic, not the nurturing landscape of Virgilian pastoral. The girls become immersed in the landscape to a point where they are no longer in control but become subject to its magnetic, subsuming and devouring forces. The tragedy of Picnic is that the pastoral immersion in nature is taken to its extremity; the landscape takes and swallows up the heart of the human group.¹1 Victoria Bladen, “The Rock and the Void: Pastoral and Loss in Joan Lindsay’s Picnic at Hanging Rock and Peter Weir’s Film Adaptation,” in Colloquy, Issue 23, Monash University.

Director Peter Weir gives the rock a brooding life of its own. The brutish, volcanic monolith with its totem-pole profiles, indigenous almost-faces, hangs over the idyllic scene, then tears and devours. Have the women been snatched from paradise and swallowed by an ancient hell? Or have they instead been rescued, released from the unnatural constraints—such as the timekeeping—of high culture by the eternal noon of a timeless land?

Marion: Whatever can those people be doing down there, like a lot of ants? A surprising number of human beings are without purpose. Though it is probable they are performing some function unknown to themselves.

Miranda: Everything begins and ends at exactly the right time and place.

Joan Lindsay’s novel was published in 1967. After the story came to her in dreams, she wrote the book in a matter of weeks. She was asked repeatedly if the story were true and repeatedly hedged the question. It seems much of it was based on her own experience in a girls’ college. Lindsay also refused to reveal the solution to the mystery. However, the original manuscript did have an ending, left out on advice from her publisher and not released until 1987. In this final chapter, the reader discovers the fate of the missing women, yet all it does is present a further enigma. The Aboriginal Dreamtime comes to the fore, with transformations into animal totems, falling rocks and the freezing of time, including, surprisingly, the mathematics and science teacher, Miss McCraw. It is beyond weird.

Many lovers of the book reject the final chapter as a fake, or at least as an ugly and unnecessary appendage to the ethereal beauty of this particularly strange and, for many years, “never-ending” story. Yet the reader is indeed given hints of the ending in the earlier chapters.²Chapter 3 shows signs of slightly clumsy editing once the contents of Chapter 18 are taken into account. See the commentary by Yvonne Rousseau published along with the missing chapter as The Secret of Hanging Rock.

This analysis is an excuse to recommend today (St Valentine’s Day, 2014), a stunning Australian film, but also to illustrate a point about the book of Revelation. The attitude of most Christians towards our own enigmatic “final chapter” resembles that of the headmistress of Appleyard College towards the Rock.

Good morning, girls.

Good morning, Mrs. Appleyard.

Well, young ladies, we are indeed fortunate in the weather for our picnic to Hanging Rock. I have instructed Mademoiselle that as the day is likely to be warm, you may remove your gloves once the drag has passed through Woodend.

You will partake of luncheon at the picnic grounds near the rock. Once again let me remind you that the rock is extremely dangerous, and you are therefore forbidden any tomboy foolishness in the matter of exploration, even on the lower slopes. I also wish to remind you, the vicinity is renowned for its venomous snakes and poisonous ants of various species. It is, however, a geological marvel on which you will be required to write a brief essay on Monday morning.

That is all. Have a pleasant day, and try to behave yourselves in a manner to bring credit to the college.

The Revelation of Jesus Christ is not a book intended to be observed but experienced, over and over. It is designed to resonate. It is offensive to the cultured sensibilities which shield us because it is supposed to transcend them, to speak not only to us but through us. Many of those who have given themselves to it wholeheartedly are seldom seen again. They are devoured. They become alien. They speak a new language, the “madness” of the prophets whose eyes see the chariots of God (2 Kings 6:17).

Although it appears to be a hostile and foreign landscape filled with confronting symbols, animal totems, virginal sacrifices clad in pure white, chosen, slain and ascending with a disturbing sexual undercurrent, the Revelation is in fact the authentic end of the story, a denouement of the natural world. The seed, flesh and skin of Genesis is everywhere in the Revelation, employed to express the bestial nature and hidden nakedness of institutions masquerading as gods and goddesses. The primeval world of Adam, a barren landscape of widows and orphans, is not a Dreamtime but a history. Ridiculed, ignored and neglected, it waits silently until the sixth hour, when time shall be no more. The fruits of culture are ripe, and it bites and devours, consumes and transfigures. Revelation is Genesis at full throttle, a bottle to be consumed and be consumed by, a fruit once forbidden but now freely offered. It is a book which removes inhibitions and exposes the hidden intents of the heart. The gardens of men are theft and nakedness, their lands are murder, and their cities are exile. The pungent, Dreamtime symbols are the hidden reality. The grotesque totems are a tangible exposure of “what we see and what we seem.”

Yet, as with the controversial Chapter 18 of Picnic At Hanging Rock, the Revelation contains nothing that is not contained either explicitly or implicitly in the earlier parts of the story. It simply describes the natural world condemned in Romans 1 and 2 in a different language, one which is impossible to explain or contain within the Victorian corset of Western Christianity. As John Taylor writes in his introduction to Chapter 18 in The Secret of Hanging Rock:

As anyone can see, the chapter is quite unfilmable. Film can only work with what God gives it, and God did not give it the same elasticity He granted the novel—though people keep trying, as the cutting-room floor shows.

It is little wonder that the “schoolgirls” of modern Bible colleges are constrained to the safety of the lower slopes by the prim widows of worldly academia.

This is a chapter from Sweet Counsel: Essays to Brighten the Eyes.

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[This post contains detailed spoilers.]

James Bond: Everybody needs a hobby.
Silva: So, what’s yours?
James Bond: Resurrection.

In the late 60s and early 70s, the structures of traditional Western storytelling were deliberately omitted from “thinking” films. Bleak narratives reflected the randomness of life without faith. Movies were becoming formless and void.

Of course, this is a generalization. It does not apply to James Bond films, which have always followed the same formula. But as audiences grow more and more plot-savvy, a lot more ground can be covered in a lot less time. Events can be merely hinted at rather than being shown step by step. By now, we all know the tropes. Perhaps this is why storytelling is returning to carefully deliberated structure, and, in many cases, is quite consciously symbolic in nature. Moreover, the use of symbolism includes chiastic patterning. Westerners may hate the Bible, but we can’t bring ourselves to abandon an Alpha and Omega in our entertainment.

My friend Steven Opp cleverly traced Skyfall along the lines of biblical narrative. I’ve expanded on it a bit with the Creation/Covenant matrix. The story of M’s atonement for her sins follows a liturgical pattern that runs throughout the Bible. The movie is a story of Covenant renewal.

Besides the structure, we can see the biblical roles of father, mother, sons (true and false), and bride (true and false) very clearly in the relationships of authority. All are warriors but what sets the good apart from the evil is not the willingness to use violence or deception (which is exactly as it is in, say, the story of Jacob and Esau). It is their faith in a grand metanarrative where good triumphs, one which is worth any sacrifice, and their loyalty to their “ministerial” vows.

Each cycle is symmetrical (chiastic), and each cycle is also a microcosm of the whole, which is also symmetrical.

GENESIS – The Fall (Creation – Sabbath – Day 1)

Bond on a mission for M1 (Transcendence)
…..Bond with Eve: Rooftop chase in the field (Delegation)
……….Bond wrestles with a mercenary “angel” (Ethics)
……….for the lives of all other agents
…..At M1′s command, Eve shoots at the tangled men
…..and Bond falls from the sky (Sanctions)
Bond “drowns” in the river (Succession)

I guess the names Bond (Covenant) and Eve (mother of all the living) are significant here. Also notice the two “goats” of Atonement, on the rooftop of the train, passing “through” the dark tunnels. The blood of the martyred innocent “brother” becomes a legal witness.

EXODUS – Mother and Son “passed over” (Division – Passover – Day 2)

M2 pressures M1 to retire from her commission (Light and Dark)
…..M2 refuses, leaves, is saved (“passed over”) on a bridge (Waters)
……….MI6 building is blown up (Land)
……………Holed up by the sea, Bond’s eyes are opened (Rulers)
……….He returns to a relocated MI6, “resurrected” (Swarms)
…..Bond fails tests but M1 “passes over” his failure (Mediators)
M1 recommissions Bond behind the back of M2 (Rest)

The rivalry between two agents has led to rivalry between two “orders,” the old and the new. Like Bond, MI6 itself passes through a death and resurrection. But this is early on, so for the time being, the “new temple” remains in the ground, in the dark. Bond’s “wilderness” experience includes a drinking game with a scorpion. The “satanic” metal in the chest of the hero leads him into the next cycle: ascension, promise and betrothal.

LEVITICUS – Commission / Covenant (Ascension – Firstfruits – Day 3)

Shrapnel from Bond’s chest identifies the “angel” (Initiation)
…..Bond tracks the mercenary (across water) to Shanghai (Delegation)
……….Following Patrice’s trail of blood, Bond “ascends” with his “twin”
……….The compromised “bride” appears, a victim is “enthroned,”
……….the bait is unveiled, and the sacrifice is made (Ethics 1 – Ascension)
……………In the darkness, in the sky, amongst the neon lights,
……………Bond and Patrice wrestle once again. This time it is not the
……………man (Bond) who falls from the sky, but the angel.
……………(Ethics 2 – Testing)
……….With the windows broken, the man and the woman (Sévérine)
……….are rendered “naked” to each other. (Ethics 3 – Maturity)
…..A gambling chip exposes the mercenary’s employer (Sanctions)
whom Bond tracks to a dragon-themed Casino in Macau (Succession)

The clue at Division was metal cutting meat, a token of death. The clue at Ascension is a gambling chip, the price for the highrise assassination of a high flyer, a token from the temple of the dragon. Bond’s “ascension” under the elevator is interesting. It is almost as though he is holding onto Patrice’s heel.

NUMBERS – The Jealous Inspection (Testing – Pentecost – Day 4)

Bond approaches Sévérine for her employer’s identity
and fights dragons (human and reptilian) to escape the casino
…..With Sévérine, he travels by boat to Silva’s desolate island,
…..an abode stolen using a clever lie.
……….Bond is captured and tied to a chair (“enthroned” as a sacrifice).
……….Silva descends in an elevator to make an entrance. Here the brother/bride
……….theme is twisted into Silva’s taunts and sexual advance
……………The “Numbers” theme of the jealous inspection is played out in
……………the two men shooting a glass of liquor from Sévérine’s head.
……………Like the woman caught in adultery, she is a “guilty victim”
……………led the centre of the “legal” courtyard
……………Her true lover is the man who deliberately aimed to miss.
……….The troops show up just in time.
……….Now it is Silva who is incarcerated — underground at MI6.
……….He reveals his motives, his hatred for M (“mother”)
……….and escapes disguised as The Law.
…..Bond pursues Silva (Underground), while M, another woman,
…..is subjected to an enquiry. This time it is M who is “passed over”
…..as the serpent attacks
All eyes opened, Bond, M1 and M2 are now a united force.

The biblical themes and structures here are really extraordinary, and possibly quite deliberate. The name “Silva” comes from the Latin word “hiss,” and refers to a jungle or a forest of trees. And the cup of liquor on Sévérine’s head as she received two “shots” is beyond the pale (Numbers 5). Sévérine’s name possibly refers to her being “cut off” in the wilderness. Just as in the Garden of Eden, and the Book of Revelation, the dragon and the woman are right at the centre, stars in a dark sky (Day 4).

For those familiar with the pattern, we could expand the casino sequence into its own cycle as “Table.” It’s bloody, he seals the bond with Severine, there is a preliminary “filling” (lots of cash) and then he finishes it with “put everything on RED.” (See cycle 6 for the order of the Tabernacle furniture.)

DEUTERONOMY – Preparation for Battle (Maturity – Trumpets – Day 5)

With M at risk, Bond now calls the shots
…..He drives M to his icy home, Skyfall, leaving Silva a deceptive trail
……….They enlist the help of the wise old gamekeeper, Kincade
……….(“head of the pass”)
……………Only lightly armed, they work to booby trap the house
……………and plan their escape
……….Silva’s men arrive and are defeated, but M is wounded
…..Silva arrives from the sky, playing the Animals’ Boom Boom
…..from a loudspeaker
Bond sends M and Kincade through a tunnel at the back of a
priest’s hole to a chapel in the grounds

The themes at Maturity are mustering the troops, sharing of wisdom, and bridal music. It is also the establishment of a New Covenant. The old temples, the placed of childhood and training, vacated by the Spirit, are ready to come down to make way for a new order.

JOSHUA – The Walls Come Down (Conquest – Atonement – Day 6)

Silva sends fire from the sky and incendiary grenades into the
house (Ark of the Covenant)
…..Bond sets off gas canisters and escapes through the priest’s
…..hole into the tunnel, where he is passed over by the flames (Veil)
……….The resulting blast disables Silva’s helicopter which crashes into
……….the house, killing most of Silva’s men (Altar and Table)
……………Bond again wrestles with an angel, this time underwater
……………in an ice-covered lake (crystal sea/laver). He sets off a flare.
……………Silva sees Kincade’s torchlight in the chapel (Lampstand)
……….He forces his gun into M’s hand, and, eyes closed, begs her
……….to kill them both (Incense Altar)
…..Bond rescues M and “cuts” Silva with a knife (metal in the back)
…..(High Priest and sacrifices/Laver)
M’s continued bleeding causes her death. But her decision concerning
the recommissioning of Bond is vindicated. (Shekinah/Succession)

At Passover and Atonement (which match each other chiastically), the blood is presented in the dark. This is the sixth feast, the Day of Atonement, and Bond reminds Silva of his sick story of the two surviving rats. Here, they are the two sacrificial goats. One goes to heaven and the other to hell. Here, we also see M1 pass through the narrow gate and atone for her “sins.” The ascension of the bride from the old childhood house, over the crystal sea to the house of worship. Here, Bond is Joshua, crushing the serpent underfoot. In this film, he has lost everything (including his house — legally then physically), his car, and the one in his charge. All his past is gone in blood, fire and smoke. But as he says, “I never did like this place.”

The veil of flesh is torn, for Adam (true and false), for Eve (old and new), and for the serpent. The only one who is not bloodied is Abraham’s oldest servant, the one who took charge of the bride by the well, the Holy Spirit, Kincade.

JUDGES – Rule of the Champions (Glorification – Booths – Day 7)

Following M1′s funeral (Transcendence)
…..Eve introduced herself as Eve Moneypenny (Hierarchy)
……….She has retired from fieldwork (Ethics)
…..Bond enters the office of his new boss, M2 (Sanctions)
And when commissioned, says, “With pleasure.” (Succession)

We began with M, Bond and Eve, and we end with M, Bond and Eve, and Succession arrangements. The internal struggles of Israel are over, and she is now free again to minister to the nations (MI6 is the international security branch). Also, if you look carefully, you will see that every one of the seven structures is reflected in the whole.

If the movie resonates with us, and judging by the box office takings, it does, it is because it is a story we already know very well. The Bible does this all the time. Unfortunately, the current crop of scholars fails to study the Scriptures in this light and in this way, and consequently can’t make sense of a lot of things that would be plain to musicians, writers, artists—and filmmakers—who read the Bible.

M is for Martyrdom

Steven sent some other interesting observations:

Before seeing the new James Bond film Skyfall, I read a review by Zach Baron called “Cinematrics: Word is Bond”, which is quite interesting.

Baron suggests that the theme of the movie is the fall of imperialism (Skyfall). While I agree with his argument, I think the film can also be interpreted as being about the fall of Christendom in particular. Here’s why…

The central character in Skyfall is M, the older woman who runs the British secret service agency. Symbolically speaking, M is the mother figure of the organization and the agents are her children. Since, typologically the church is “mother” (Galatians 4:26, for example), M is therefore the Church in Skyfall. Let me suggest that her death in the little church building at the film’s climax symbolizes the end of Christendom.

The opening scene demonstrates Bond’s distaste for M’s seemingly callous disregard for an agent who is dying. Ten minutes later M orders Bond’s partner, Eve, to pull the trigger which ends up hitting Bond instead of the bad guy. Mother just “killed” her child, or, as the villain Raoul Silva later says, “Mommy was very bad.”

But why is Silva also angry at Mom? It turns out she had abandoned him to torture (or perhaps inquisition would be a better word) during a crusade for the release of other agents. Silva and Bond therefore have something in common: when the psychologist says “M” the first word coming to mind is “bitch.”

Meanwhile, M is being encouraged by the state to resign while the whole purpose of her organization is under scrutiny. The question at hand is this: In the new world of democracy, technology, and globalization in which everything is in the open, is her job really necessary? M finds her role as helper of the nation and mother of the secret agents being increasingly infringed upon by rigid bureaucracy, personified by the character Gareth Mallory who is closely observing her work.

M’s defence is that her organization’s job is still important in the “dark places,” the holes off the grid where terrorists can go undetected. After she is nearly killed by Silva, who has implored her to think on her sins, she finds she must also go into the darkness and out of sight as she goes with Bond to Skyfall in Scotland.

So far, M is a portrait of Christendom as she is brought into question in the modern world, is being usurped by statist bureaucracy, and is viciously attacked by her enemy who points out all her past mistakes. Like the church, she survives by escaping through a secret tunnel built during the Reformation, accompanied by a Scottish guide. Her final stand is in a little chapel building which Silva says is very fitting for the occasion of her demise.

After her death, M is replaced by Mallory; Mother Church is eclipsed by Father State; the spirit is replaced by bureaucracy.

In Skyfall, Bond finds himself in the same dilemma as the modern Christian: He’s been deeply wounded by “Mother Church” but still must be loyal to her and defend her from the apostates who want her to think on her sins and die. He finds his only other options are hedonism and despair and so the way for him to not be bored is to take up the hobby of resurrection. He must find a way to preserve his sense of purpose and importance under the impending bureaucratic system which is pushing out mother church’s protection of his unique style and abilities.

And he discovers he is most needed in the dark places.

They answered and said to Him, “Abraham is our father.” Jesus said to them, “If you were Abraham’s children, you would do the works of Abraham… You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do.” (John 8:39, 44)

The theme of seed and fruit, or genealogy and mission, runs throughout the Bible. Genealogy is entirely objective. Our heredity is a factor in which we have no choice. It is the tree of life. But the fruit of our lives, what we choose to do with that life, involves our volition. Volition is mission. “It’s not about the hand you are dealt; it’s about how you play it.”

Now, godly and ungodly decisions by individuals (beginning with Adam) do take on a corporate character. An idolatrous man was a man with a corrupt mission, but this would become a heredity in his culture. His children would be born into idolatry, just as Abraham’s sons were born into true worship. So there is genealogical (tribal) character and spiritual character.

Lot’s daughters’ godless decision brought Ammon and Moab into the world. Their spiritual adultery (lack of faith) led to incest, which led to idolatrous nations. One knew what to expect from an Ammonite or a Moabite.

But then God obviously takes great pleasure in violating those “genealogical” characters. Just as Israel was planted in anticipation of a good crop but brought forth thorns and thistles, so God can miraculously bring good fruit from the wild.

One could be a genealogical Canaanite but a spiritual Israelite (Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Naaman the Syrian, the widow of Sidon). And one could also be a genealogical Israelite but become a spiritual Amalekite (Edom, Saul/Doeg, the Herods). It becomes clear that genealogy is not the end of the story, any more than raw flesh left on the altar is the end of the story.

The Old Testament uses genealogical “character” to signify spiritual character. Genealogical identities were given to teach us about spiritual things. Revelation uses many of the genealogical identities of the Old Testament to describe spiritual character. When the prophets (including Jesus and John) refer to Israel as Sodom, Egypt, Tyre and Babylon, they are name-calling. Israel was defying her Abrahamic heritage. The crop didn’t match the seed. Jesus referred to Naaman the faithful Syrian, and the faithful widow of Sidon, to shame the Jews. Paul’s ministry was about exactly that: believing Gentiles from the Covenantal wilderness would bring forth the fruit that was expected of the cultivated Land.

But the genealogical element ended with the New Covenant. The genealogical divide founded in Abraham’s circumcision came to an end with the destruction of the Temple. The entire world was moving from the age of seed to the age of fruit. It was part of the process of growing up.

Circumcision was about genealogy, seed. Baptism is about mission, fruit. Blood and water are both life-giving liquids, but they are different. One concerns genealogy; the other concerns mission. This is why Jesus was baptized as an adult, at the beginning of His earthly ministry. If baptism also concerns one’s parental origins, then Jesus could have been slain for the life of the world as an infant. But He wasn’t, and this highlights the very different character of the New Covenant and its membership.

Faith in Christ puts an end to our heredity. God takes great pleasure in violating our heredity with gospel, and that is what credobaptism is all about. This is not a genealogical change, or we would not still physically die. It is a missional change. Jesus makes this plain in his tirades against the Pharisees. He only speaks the words of the Father, He only does His Father’s business, because He carries the authority of the Father, the mission. In Jesus, Abrahamic genealogy and Abrahamic mission were united.

Jesus’ life before His baptism was about Adamic blood. (We are give only one account of His childhood because it sets a pattern for His life. After His Creation, the next major step is His Levitical Ascension, representing the Twelve. He is taken, missing like Enoch and Elijah, as Firstfruits.) [1]

His life after His baptism was about the works of the Spirit. His baptism was not a genealogical event, as was His circumcision. His baptism was missional. It was an investiture, an ordination. (It surprises me that my Federal Vision friends, many of whom make a big deal of the significance of ministerial robes, don’t see this more clearly.)

Adam was fully grown when he was given his mission, but he was not blameless when it came to his investiture, so he was robed in blood. Genealogy and mission were divided. But Jesus took mankind from the Tree of Life (genealogy/heredity) to the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil (mission/career), from seed to fruit, from Alpha to Omega, from childhood to maturity.

Paedobaptism drags the nature of the genealogical Old Covenant into the missional New Covenant. Some take the “threshing” process of the first century and apply it to the Church so they can keep on baptizing tares. But the threshing process described in the New Testament was a first century event. Jesus was bringing Israel’s purpose to an end. To use these images indiscriminately now is to rip them out of their historical context. The apostles were dividing, with the sword of the Gospel, between the merely genealogical seed of Abraham and Jew/Gentile spiritual fruit.

One could be Jewish and not believe. One cannot be a Christian and not believe. We are not of the physical seed of Abraham. To maintain a genealogical Covenant, paedobaptism assumes some kind of physical “Christian seed.” Not only is there no support for this in Scripture, it rides against everything that’s going on in the New Testament. John 8:37 cannot be applied to anyone post AD70.

One was connected to Israel by blood. One is connected to Christ, the true Israel, by Spirit. That means if one is not regenerate one is not connected. The New Covenant is about a different kind of life, one that is not merely objective, but both objective and subjective, that is, missional. God calls and the Christian responds.

The “Covenant connection” assumed in paedobaptism is actually enjoyed by everyone on earth. It is the claim of Jesus upon the lives of all men of all nations. Certainly, the Church must excommunicate those who have made a false profession. But they were baptized upon that profession, not their heredity, and they are excommunicated when that profession proves false.

The Old Testament is about seed. The New Testament is about fruit. The Covenants are related, but fundamentally different. Fruit is not seed, and fruit begins with confession/profession. One joins the New Covenant people of God not because one has the same flesh, but because one is a man after God’s heart—a true representative.

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[1] The Avatar movie contains the same process. Jake is “chosen” by the creator (head) then “chosen” by the people (body). See James Cameron, Bible Avatar.

“Survival is not the highest good.”

Doug Wilson tackles contrived ethical dilemmas in his review of The Hunger Games.

There are ethical dilemmas, and then there are the phony baloney ones. The famous National Lampoon magazine cover did not pose a genuine ethical dilemma—buy this magazine or we shoot the dog.

Many years ago I was working on a television show with the local PBS station at WSU, and Nancy and I were invited over to dinner by the producer and his wife. They were very gracious, and we enjoyed our time with them. But one of the events of the evening that turned out to be a dud was when our host brought out a game which was called, I think, Scruples. Something like that. At any rate, the point of the game was that you drew a card that dealt you some kind of ethical thumb-sucker from a stack of ethical conundra, to make up a funny-sounding plural. If you are stuck in a lifeboat, and you will most certainly die if you don’t do something, do you eat the fat guy or the skinny guy first? That kind of thing. You were then supposed to say something like whoa, and think about it for a while, twisting in the wind. I can really see how a living room full of wealthy relativists in an upscale neighborhood in the eighties could really be flummoxed by the game, but we were no fun at all. There are certain things you just don’t do because the Ten Commandments were not suggestions, and the game is over.

This said, The Hunger Games specializes in a similar kind of elaborate set-up for situation ethics.

Read full review.

Doug Wilson writes:

“This objection misses the point that Peter is making. The issue with Cornelius and his household was not whether they were old enough to receive water baptism, but whether they were Jewish enough. If this household had contained an infant, the members of the ‘circumcision’ who were there would not have objected to baptism on the grounds of infancy, but rather because the infant was Gentile and uncircumcised” (To a Thousand Generations, p. 55).

Certainly, the issue was whether Gentiles should be baptized, but it was never a pitting of circumcision against baptism. They understood that circumcision was a beginning and baptism was a new beginning. Circumcision was replaced not by baptism but by the death of Christ, which united Jew and Gentile. Jesus tore down that wall, and paedobaptism unwittingly puts it up again. Circumcision marked out flesh as a plot of Land. That is entirely done with. Spirit water overflows all human barriers, it wipes out every distinction with a new one – Repentance and Faith.

A Christian is a tree with fruit, linking the Land (Bronze Altar) with heaven (Incense Altar) via the Laver. Circumcision marked out a plot of Land. It classified Adamic caterpillars, not Evian butterflies. There’s a death and resurrection in the middle.

So, our children can be “Christian” even if they are not yet Christians. They are marked out by the gospel, but all nations are now marked out. There is an outflow from the source of the Spirit into family and culture. But the young are receivers, not the springs. Spirit-filled Christians are the only true fonts.

It’s not the paedobaptistic churches which are known for their cultural diversity. Paedobaptism sends exactly the wrong message. It builds a ghetto. Credobaptists can do this too, with different means. Closed Brethren, like the Pharisees, confuse the Lord’s table with the dinner table, all for the sake of preserving their physical heirs. Their Pharisaic inhospitality has the same result — a spiritual and cultural ghetto. (However, in my experience they do business like postmillennialists — innovative, hard-working and honest!)

So, we have the exclusives who want to keep what they have in concentrated form to preserve it. They build a watery fence. Then we have the inclusives who think spreading what they have can only be achieved by diluting it. They break down the barrier of bloody repentance. Both are wrong. Both fail to understand God’s architecture. If we are really trusting in Jesus for the increase, we can cast our bread on the waters and still end up with twelve baskets of leftovers. An incorruptible outflow takes faith.

In Christ, we can keep all the strange Dutch surnames and have strange names from every other nation as well. Paedobaptism gets inbred. Credobaptism can get mongrelized. The New Covenant is actually about tough hybrids, a constant supply of fresh faith and first love, a place where the “honeymoon” is never over.

Train of Thought

[Concerning Acts 21:18-25] “A false report concerning Paul and his teaching had arrived in the Jerusalem church before Paul had. This report was that he taught Jewish Christians to cease circumcising their infant sons.” (To a Thousand Generations, p. 62).

Pastor Wilson begins this chapter of his book by stating that the duties of Covenant parents did not change with the New Covenant. This is true (with obvious minor qualifications).

He uses Timothy’s training under the Law since infancy as an example. But then he sees the Covenant sign as something to be applied to all Covenant children. This is where the logic falls down, because baby girls did not qualify. So, the reason for the disconnect between Covenant parenting and the Covenant sign must be identified, otherwise the rest of the argument is founded on a cracked slab.

Pastor Wilson admits that there are no explicit cases of infant baptism in the New Testament, and that making a strong case for it from the Old is not enough. But, as mentioned above, this “strong case” only applied to males, and not just infant ones. When it came to individual Covenant members, circumcision clearly signified something other than Covenant childhood.

He then looks for evidence of infant baptism, assuming that the New Testament writers also assumed that such a practice was an obvious and logical extension of the Old Order into the New. This brings us to the quote above. Pastor Wilson’s logic is this:

Paul did not teach that Jews should cease circumcising their sons.

Agreed.

Paul’s continued practice of circumcision (of Timothy) and his taking of a Nazirite vow were not compromises because the Temple was still standing and Paul and Timothy had Jewish blood.

Agreed. We are on the same train here.

Circumcision was not a cultural badge but a Covenant act to be practiced in faith.

Yes, it was to be practiced in faith, but it was also a cultural badge. Although temporary, Judaism was a prepackaged God-given culture, a schoolroom designed to raise a nation with a knowledge of God through object lessons and discipline. If this were the Super8 movie, Doctor Woodward just drove his pickup onto Pastor Wilson’s traintracks.

Then he writes:

“…circumcision remained an ordinance of God, marking the initiation of the one who received it as a member of the visible Covenant community. Circumcision continued to mean that the one who received it was under an obligation to be a true son of Abraham, –i.e. a Christian.” (TATG, p. 64).

This is where the train comes off the rails.

Circumcision only marked the males. It was not for all Covenant members, nor heads of households (although this was related). It marked out one genealogy of Adamic flesh that was continually innoculated with small doses of death to keep it from dying out under God’s judgment. It was entirely about seed, as if that needed to be pointed out. It was Adam’s nakedness uncovered, and blood-covered, as Covenant Head, so that he could one day be crowned with glory and honour, i.e. qualify as Mediator for a truly integrated, bridal Covenant Body.

Circumcision did not ever mean that one was to be a Christian, but a believing male Jew, one who faithfully carried on the physical lineage in faith until Messiah arrived. That’s why the term Christian was coined, to describe something new. These Christians were some strange sort of hybrid, like broccoli. Initially, the Jewish Christians demanded Gentile males be circumcised because they thought these Gentiles were joining Israel in the same manner as Caleb the Kenizzite did, or the Shechemites attempted to. It was primarily about intermarriage and physical seed; a culture of faith, yes, but nevertheless a culture.

To a certain degree, the logic of these Jewish Christians was actually sound. If baptism meant you were a “true Jew,” then you had to have the “Jew” bit in place first before baptism could justify the addition of the adjective “true.” They understood circumcision as an initiation into a culture of flesh, and baptism as vindication of faith. But the apostles made it clear that the “flesh” wall was actually now redundant. If your heart was circumcised, your flesh didn’t need to be.

[There is] therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. (Romans 8:1-4)

Jesus, a Jewish male, had condemned sin in the flesh. That’s what circumcision signified. With that completed, the Jewish culture was coming to an end, the childhood Temple outgrown like an eggshell. Paul’s observance of circumcision and vows were simply what every preacher does for his audience. He starts where they are, and brings them to where he is, from circumcision to baptism, from death to life.

A Bleeder or a Splasher

If it were true that infant baptism was the norm in the apostolic churches, the Jews wouldn’t have had the problem with it that is described in Acts 21. It would have been an entirely different problem:

“Paul, you affirm circumcision for Jews, but that leaves us with a problem. The pregnant Jewesses in our church are no longer asked if they are expecting a boy or a girl. Some tactless Gentiles are asking them if they are having a bleeder or a splasher! Are you entirely certain that we are supposed to carry out both rites on the baby boys? And if so, do we do it on the same day? And seeing as we only baptize the baby girls, are we to sprinkle the girls on the eighth day?”

No, circumcision was one of the “elementary things” that Peter said would soon be burned up. It would leave faith, hope and love. Baptism vindicates repentance and faith, the beginning of a new life.

A Helpful Picture

Back to Super8. There is a wonderful picture of the contrast and unity of the Old and New Covenants towards the end of the movie. Don’t read on if you haven’t seen it.

The alien is down in Hades, the insatiable Tabernacle of death. He’s munching on the living dead, and cutting up the “raw materials” of the world to build his new star-house. When he’s ready, he is “lifted up” into the cockpit, the throneroom, and starts to draw all sorts of strange Gentile bric-a-brac. They don’t need to be cut up (circumcised) because they are not forming the house, they are filling it, glorifying it. Finally, when the time for corporate resurrection arrives, the water tower bursts (passing through the crystal sea) and the entire apostolic hybrid church meets the Lord in the air. Baptism promises resurrection.

Baptism is the vindication of the completed mediatorial body, not the setting apart of the Adamic raw material. Infants do not qualify. If Paul had encountered Lois and Eunice when Timothy was an infant, he would not have baptized him. He was still being formed under the Law.

The New Covenant is not about carnal genealogies. God is faithful to a thousand generations, but the definition of “offspring” has been transcended. Timothy was Paul’s son “in the Lord.” That’s the kind of offspring God wants. It is a spring of faith, not flesh. Faith is the qualifier. It doesn’t replace the flesh, whether that is godly parenting or any other Covenant responsibility. It fills the flesh and wipes out every other division, cultural or otherwise, other than faith.

“The advent of Christ did not result in Jewish parents starting to wait until their children made a profession of faith before they were circumcised. The Jewish Christians did not suddenly switch to ‘believer’s circumcision.’” (TATG, p. 65.)

Of course they didn’t. They understood that circumcision was about heredity, and baptism was about faith. Walking in the Spirit negates the requirement for any type of cultural or racial ghetto. Pastor Wilson’s book has a lot of well-argued, logical progressions, but it’s facing the wrong way at the starting line. [1]

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[1] See An Atheist ‘Gets’ Baptism.