or Sacramental Sorcery and the Seed of Abraham

“O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you?”

Having written a (basically word-by-word) commentary on Paul’s epistle to the Galatians, one which demonstrates his use of the biblical pattern of maturity at every point and every level, it amazes me how sacramentalists are not aware that their doctrine makes them the modern targets of Paul’s ire.

Sacramentalism gets my goat for the same reason the promotion of circumcision in the Galatian churches made Paul’s blood boil. It is a false doctrine which purports to be complimentary to the Gospel of Christ but is in fact diametrically opposed to it: a cunning rival, a Judas in the ranks.

Since the “office” of Jew no longer exists in God’s economy,¹See James B. Jordan, The Future of Israel Re-examined. sacramentalism has to be even more cunning than the Judaizing perversions with which Paul was confronted. Instead of promoting circumcision of the flesh, it attempts to hybridise circumcision and baptism, a division of flesh and a demarcation of Spirit, when these two are irreconcilable, forever opposed to each other (Galatians 5:17). This is why it was possible for Jews and Gentiles to unite “in the flesh” first against the Christ, and then against His Jew-Gentile Church, which was united “in the Spirit.”

So, despite their “New Covenant” pretensions, the fundamental assumptions of sacramentalism are cut from exactly the same worn out Old Covenant cloth (Hebrews 8:13; 10:20). Sacramentalism claims to be a work of the Spirit, but remains a work of the flesh. It claims to unite people in Christ, but in reality attempts to sanctify familial and tribal ties. Human nature’s desire for carnal security has not changed since Paul composed his epistle.

Since they do not see this “bap-cision” as simply an Old Covenant rite disguised in a New Covenant veneer, Paul’s argument against circumcision in Galatians is misunderstood.

Peter Leithart writes:

According to Paul, the baptized are clothed with Christ (Galatians 3:27). In baptism, all the baptized are joined in “one” in Christ Jesus. We can read backwards in Galatians 3 to see what that means.

The “one” is the “one seed” of Abraham (3:16). We might follow NT Wright in understanding that phrase corporately (one family of Abraham) or take the view that the one is Christ. I think Wright has the better reading  of verse 16. Regardless, verses 16 and 28 are linked by reference to the “one.” Baptism gives a share in the “one seed.”

According to verse 16, the “one seed” is the recipient of the promise to Abraham. And we are told in verse 14 that this promise is the promise of the Spirit. If baptism makes the baptized a part of the one, and the one is the one seed, and the one seed is promised the Spirit, then by making the baptized a member of the one baptism confers a share in the promised Spirit.

We confirm this point by reading forward from verse 28, just one verse: Those who are baptized belong to Christ, are one in Christ Jesus. And those who are belong to Christ are Abraham’s seed and heirs (v. 29). Heirs of what promise? Reading backward one last time, we have to say that the promise of which the baptized are heirs is the promise of the Spirit.

For Paul, to be baptized into Christ is to be baptized as a son of Abraham and a son of God and so to be heir of the Spirit.²Peter Leithart, Baptism and the Spirit.

So, as he frequently does, Leithart begins with a Judaistic ecclesiology, an assumption of bap-cision, then applies all the blessings of the regenerate to anybody lucky enough to be part of a “body of Christ” based on familial, tribal and other social ties. This can only work if he reads Galatians 3 backwards, starting with a flawed baptism at the root of his logical tree. Of course, paedobaptists who are not sacramentalists have to sell out when it comes to an efficacious baptism, because there are indeed many blessings conferred upon the baptised. We just have to submit to Scripture concerning the identity of the baptised.

The solution is to read Galatians 3 forwards, with Paul’s condemnation of Judaistic witchcraft as the starting point. In Covenant terms, “witchcraft” is the attempt to obtain the promised Covenant blessings without obedience to the conditions of the Covenant.³See Bible Matrix II: The Covenant Key, Chapter 7, “Ethics or Magic.” This “Covenant sorcery” began with Adam’s seizing fruit that was prohibited until he demonstrated that he was faithful to God. This seizing of kingdom without prior priestly submission was the sin of Cain, Nimrod, Israel, the Herods, and was of course the sin of the Judaizers, who conflated circumcision of the flesh with circumcision of the heart. This inversion of priesthood and kingdom is at the heart of Leithart’s ecclesiology. An individual can be declared a child of God without hearing the Gospel, without repenting, without any response to the Word, simply because they were born to, or under the care of, Christian people.

Now, I am not advocating pietism, a “kingdom of the heart” which is private and must not be allowed to speak to the kingdoms of the world. I am saying that the kingdom of Christ begins in the heart (Luke 17:20-21), with priestly submission, and authority in the kingdoms of men will follow.

As I have written elsewhere, it is from the Biblical Horizons crowd that I learned to see this pattern of judicial maturity in the Scriptures, and I am simply calling them to be consistent with it when it comes to baptism. There is a reason that Paul puts baptism at this point in his argument, and it is Covenantal. For the individual, baptism comes after the Law has done its work in circumcising the heart, just as it did for Israel.

So, Paul begins with witchcraft (kingdom-by-circumcision), a sign of judicial immaturity, but works his way forward to spiritual maturity, the work of the Law vindicated in the fruit of the Spirit, and testified to publicly in baptism as a robe of authority, a sign of qualification for priestly rule (1 Peter 2:9) just as it was at the baptism of Christ. Leithart, however, begins with bap-cision, and from this false foundation predictably works his way backwards, textually and Covenantally, into sacramental sorcery.

The Shape of Galatians: A Covenant-Literary Analysis is now available on amazon. An ebook edition will follow shortly. As of writing, the ‘look inside’ function is not yet functional, but the introduction is as follows:

INTRODUCTION

This “musical” survey of Paul’s letter to the Galatians is probably nothing like any commentary you’ve seen before. And yet I believe this method of literary analysis gets us right inside the Apostle’s head and heart.

How foreign the clinical instruments of theology are to the lyrical texts of the Bible! At heart, Paul’s letter to the Galatians is neither a stream of propositional truth, nor a logical argument. Certainly, it communicates truth in a well-reasoned order, but it does so in a captivating “musical” form. There are symmetries, oppositions and references inscribed not in the text but built into its arrangement, right down to the order of the words in the Greek.

One of the channels of communication used by ancient authors was literary structure. The Bible takes this a step further and uses commonality of structure as a means of carrying on a profound and often entertaining internal conversation. Structure allows one text to allude to another not only implicitly, but with extreme efficiency. This method of writing was a convention practiced by every biblical author, including Paul.

The Apostle arranged all his texts in patterns drawn from the Hebrew Scriptures. Paul not only used words to convey meaning, but conferred greater meaning upon each word and phrase through its placement in relation to every other word and phrase.

Recognizing this aspect of Paul’s literature opens up to us new depths of meaning without contradicting what we see on the surface. In fact, this integrity between shape and content often serves to clarify his meaning, or explain his choice of words.

This convention also makes his prose instantly compatible with the rest of the Bible. By this, I do not mean that it agrees in doctrine, which it certainly does. This is the kind of compatibility which exists, by design, in telecommunications networks. Paul’s works do not merely sit within the Canon, like books on a shelf. Each is a flawless construction of sounds and images drawn from every corner of the Bible, tailored for a specific purpose yet ordered in exactly the same way. Bearing the same image as all the Scriptures, his phrases and sentences are actually plugged into a network, where each image-bearer, being unique, sheds light upon every other unique bearer of the same image. The structure makes his text an extension of the rest of the body, gives it an organic connection, and brings it to life. At a practical level, by composing his text in this way, Paul is able to bring all the Bible to bear upon the immediate situation through structural allusion. When Paul touches on something, he brings every corresponding literary and historical “node” in the Canon to light.

If this sounds unbelievable, it might help to understand that this is exactly what the Father does to us when He puts us “into” His Son, the one who fulfilled these patterns perfectly. Inspired literature bears the image of God.

Learning the “tune” sung consistently throughout the Bible not only enables us to understand it better, it also enables us to sing along. The “fractal” literature of the Scriptures is a divine marriage of mathematical method and poetic playfulness, structure and glory. It is music for the mind’s eye.

Or, if music is not your thing, reading the Bible with a musical sense is like spending hours on your surfboard. Experience builds you a schema of previous waves, so you not only “feel” the flow of the text as the flow of the ocean, you are able to make predictions about its behavior. You become one with the text as a surfer is one with the wave, or a musician one with the music. The participation becomes intuitive, which explains the (supposedly) unconventional use of the Old Testament by the authors of the New. They are not quoting texts as “direct” fulfillments. They are playing the same tune and showing us, with great delight, where we have heard it before.

The literary conventions and historical outcomes which shape the Old Testament are the tunes playing inside Paul’s head as he writes to the Galatians: the processes of God as expressed in the Creation Week, the testing of Adam, the order of the Canon, the Covenant documents, the festal calendar, the history of the Covenant people and even sacred architecture.

If we use these patterns as a lens through which to view his highly structured prose, Paul’s internal logic becomes immediately apparent, and the skillful allusions he makes to the Old Testament hammer home his message of freedom for us with greater depth and clarity than ever before.

This work is a “structural commentary.” It not only identifies the literary melodies and rhythms found in Paul’s letter to the Galatians, it allows similar patterns throughout the Bible, both before and after Galatians, to speak to their counterparts in this particular book.

(See Steven Opp’s review here)

The book is currently with the editor for a polish and will be available soon. Here’s a unique review from Steven Opp, who is actually quoted in the book, but don’t let his bias deter you. I still reckon the literary “riffs” are the Apostle Paul’s, not mine, so imagine it’s Paul up there on stage with a “drumitar” and a heart full of jazz.

Several years ago I went with my brother Ryan to see Béla Fleck and the Flecktones in concert. They are an instrumental fusion band consisting of a banjo, sax, bass, and “drumitar” (if you donʼt know what a drumitar is, go on youtube and find out!) As we waited for the curtains to open, I asked Ryan if he knew what songs theyʼd be playing. He said they would do some of their hits but that it would probably morph into a jam session. But not just any jam session. We would witness some of the worldʼs best jazz and bluegrass artists come together and just have some fun. “The truth is,” he said,“weʼre basically going to watch four really talented guys get on stage and play with their toys for a couple hours.” As the night unfolded, I realized he was right. And it was a great concert!

Reading a book by Michael Bull is like watching a Flecktones jam session. He gets up there with some funny looking instruments, opens his Bible, and starts making sounds. Before you know it you start nodding your head to the beat as he plays a tune you know youʼve heard before but never quite like this.

This time the song is Galatians. But before Bull starts jamming, he gives the audience a chance to look over his “toys” which he will be playing with. They are these funky boomerang-shaped gadgets he calls Covenant-Literary Templates. Somehow they appear similar yet different at the same time. But they all look a bit familiar, though you swear youʼve never seen one before. Before you can look too long, he opens up Galatians, grabs an instrument and begins to play.

As you listen to the familiar intro, you comfortably hum along. But then he takes it places you hadnʼt counted on and begin to wonder if he forgot to tune before the show. He plays a note that sounds like it came out of nowhere. The note is Achan. Yes, Achan, the guy who took a little off the top from the Jericho haul–how did he make it into the Galatians song? Then Bull gets back into the tune youʼre familiar with. “Oh well.” You think. “Maybe Iʼm the only one who noticed the flat note. Even the greatest musicians make mistakes now and then. Maybe heʼll retune at intermission.” But just as you have moved from giving him the benefit of the doubt, he does it again. This time with King Ahazʼs prophets. Another bad note. “Weʼre talking about Paul and the Judaizers, whereʼd these Baal worshipers come from?” As you ponder this, he does it again. And again. Now you begin to wonder if heʼs even playing the right song. The program says “Galatians,” but you keep finding yourself in the backwoods of your Bible, a long way from Jesus and Paul and the early Church. Who is this guy? What is this exotic stuff heʼs playing? No wonder people used to think jazz was the devilʼs music!

So you decide to ask him at intermission why he was destroying one of your favorite songs with these strange chords. “You have a very, um, interesting style. But I gotta ask you, why did you play that Esau chord in Chapter 2? I have the sheet music for Galatians at home and I donʼt see that anywhere on there.”

He answers: “Because I felt like it.”

You are aghast! “Because you felt like it? What kind of exegesis is that?”

He replies, “I knew the song of the Bible. Figured it didnʼt matter what octave I played it in, so long as I play the right note. Esau seemed to fit there. Howʼd it sound?”

You werenʼt ready for this. You think for a second…“It sounded okay, I guess, I just wasnʼt expecting that particular…”

“Keep listening,” he assures you. “See if it doesnʼt start to sound familiar. And try to relax.” He gets back on stage, picks up a new instrument and continues to jam.

As you listen again you decide to put your expectations of what Galatians is aside and just take his version for what it is. You decide to enjoy the melodies about the patriarchs and the law and Ezekiel at face value. You fold your program, which for whatever reason still says “Galatians” on it, and put it in your pocket. You allow yourself to sway to the music. Youʼre out on a Friday night and you are committed to having a good time.

Under this new resolve, the music begins to take you to a thousand places with as many ideas and insights, some of them familiar, some foreign. He plays a little ditty about Passover. Not what you bargained for but whatever, it sounds nice. Later he does a short solo… something about Lamech. Didnʼt see that coming, but the more you think about it, the more it seems to fit.

As the concert continues, it starts to sound more and more familiar. You realize that while this wasnʼt what you were expecting, he really was playing your cherished Galatians all along. That jam session was kinda fun, you decide. After the show you buy the CD. You listen to it several times. You realize you kind of like this version, not only of the song, but of this music making style itself. You donʼt mind the apparent diversions from the text into dustier parts of the Bible. While itʼs not the octaves youʼre used to, it really is all the right notes. It works. Then you begin to discover youʼve got a little jazz in your own hermeneutical soul. You start reading your Bible a little differently. You start to experiment. You pick up some of Bullʼs instruments and goof around with them. You have some fun…

Over time you realize that youʼve started to get pretty good at synthesizing beats from various angles. One day you remember something Bull said about the internalizing of the law, something about maturity, something about glory. You wonder if somehow youʼve moved that direction as youʼve become more jazzy of a Bible reader. But you donʼt think about that too long because you just thought of a new melody you want to try out.

You pick up a toy and start playing.

Back cover: Click for a larger image.

My Federal Vision friends believe baptism is an important subject, from both theological and pastoral points of view. I agree, but for me it is also an issue of aesthetics. The Bible has a wonderfully consistent internal logic, and paedobaptism crunches the gears at every turn.

Peter Leithart just posted something concerning baptism, and it’s worth answering, not only “because somebody on the internet is wrong,” but also because it is an issue I’ve just finished dealing with in The Shape of Galatians. It should be noted that Trinity House is hosting some lectures on sacraments by a baptist, so Dr Leithart and his colleagues have a spirit that should be imitated by theologians everywhere. My own posts here are always bait in the hope of a bite, a friendly disputatio, so don’t take them the wrong way. If a friend has soup on his tie, or wax in his ear, or a fertility rite in his sacrament, what sort of friend isn’t going to point it out!?

Dr Leithart writes:

Paul calls circumcision a “seal of righteousness” in Romans 4:11, and that same phrase has historically been applied to baptism.

But what does it mean to be a “seal of righteousness”? A seal (Greek sphragis) is an identifying mark. The word is used to describe brands on animals, identifying tattoos on slaves, signs that identify a man’s regiment in the military. To be sealed is to be identified in some way.

A “seal of righteousness,” it would seem, is a mark that identified the one sealed as “righteous.” That’s true for Abraham: He trusted Yahweh’s promise, Yahweh counted it for righteousness and thus considered Abraham to be righteous, and the seal of circumcision imposed that status on Abraham’s flesh. Abraham would have explained his circumcision as a seal that Yahweh considered him righteous.

But then that same seal is applied to the infant Isaac, and then many other infants, on the eighth day. It’s still a “seal of righteousness.” Changing Isaac’s nappies, Sarah could have seen Isaac’s circumcision and thought, “Yahweh sealed my little son as a righteous one! Praise to Yahweh!”

When we apply this logic to baptism, as paedobaptists are wont to do, what are we to conclude? Is baptism a “seal of righteousness,” also for our children?

Firstly, what does Paul actually say in Romans 4? Abraham became the father of a priestly nation because he believed. He believed first, and then received the Circumcision. The question here is this: if Abraham and the men in his household believed before they were circumcised, why wasn’t Isaac required to believe first? Because Abraham was sealed as righteous, and through him all Israel were given promises. It says nothing about Isaac being sealed as righteous. He was the fulfillment of the promise.

Notice that Dr Leithart doesn’t mention males, but infants. That’s the classic bait-and-switch. Circumcision wasn’t about child rearing but child bearing, about a physical seed. Yes, Sarah would have praised God every time she changed Isaac’s nappy. She would also have praised God every time Abraham was naked before her. Circumcision was a reminder of their previous barrenness, which was removed because Abraham believed God. Both the birth and circumcision of Isaac were a sign of Abraham’s righteousness, and nobody else’s.

So, why were Abraham and Sarah barren in the first place? Because they were a new Adam and Eve, the beginning of an “Edenic” nation which would carry the curse for all nations. Abraham plants trees and buries Sarah in a tree-circled grove. Thus, Circumcision was about the Land and the womb, the firstfruits and the firstborn. It was about cutting off Cain and cutting off Canaan. It was inherently Edenic, because the original promises were given to Adam and then distributed by Noah.

God promised fertility to Adam, constructed Eve, and then qualified Adam to receive that fertility as a gift. The Land and the womb would not be opened until Adam was qualified. He sinned, but the shedding of blood allowed God to bless him still with a fertility in Land and womb that was tempered, not cut off, by a curse. Circumcision was likewise a shedding of blood that would allow God to give a faithful Man a fruitful Land and a fruitful womb. But things had progressed, because although death was mitigated in Eden, human blood was still shed. The mitigating blood in Circumcision was now human blood. In a sense, every male Israelite was cut off as an Abel that he might not be a Cain. Isaac himself was a son offered as an ascension sacrifice. He was symbolically slain as a Cain and “born again by faith” as an Abel, hence the constant battle for Covenant Succession between firstborn and secondborn sons, right up to Christ and the Herods, upon whom all the righteous blood from Abel would be avenged.

Because of his faith, righteousness was counted to Abraham. Working through Galatians I noticed a structural correspondence between Paul’s reference to this counting, and the counting of the sons of Israel. The name of the book Numbers refers to the two censuses which bookend it, the generation which came out of Egypt (“my firstborn son”) but died in the wilderness, and the new uncircumcised generation which took possession of the Land. The children of Israel are numbered so many times it gets boring. But the point is that they are counted. As Dr Leithart has himself noted, Revelation 7 alludes to Numbers when it counts out the 144,000, the “firstfruits” of the Land, the first Jews who believed the Gospel. But notice that the Gentile believers are not counted. They are count-less, like the stars in the sky or the sand of the seashore. To be “counted” is to be a sacrifice, an ascension offering like Isaac. The counting of righteousness to Abraham resulted in the counting of sons and their inheritance in the Land. Israel’s physical and agricultural fertility were evidence of the faith of Abraham in the promises of God.

But the third promise was this countless blessing to all nations. The nations, generally speaking, were never under such a curse of barrenness. Their offspring were always countless, and their swarming hordes were held back by God when Israel was faithful, and brought by God upon Israel in a “flood” of judgment when faithless. And the famines also seem linked to the presence of Abraham and his sons. Indeed, it was the very fruitfulness of the nations (in both Land and womb) which deceived Israel into worshiping their gods of fertility, the Baals. Just as it was in the Garden, Molech was simply another dragon hijacking the offspring of the woman with an offer of certain food. [1]

So, what kind of sons is Paul talking about when he refers to Gentiles who have Abraham as their father? Obviously, it is those who believed.

Paedobaptists take this faith as “household by household” to tie it once again to offspring, but for Gentiles it was never about offspring, or the Land, which were always tied together, just as Abel and the ground were tied together. This question is answered by taking note of the nature of this great blessing for all nations. Once again, it takes us back to Genesis. Just as the Land and womb were opened by the mitigation of death, so also the curse upon Land and womb was swallowed up in the defeat of death. The resurrection of Christ made Circumcision, the Jew-Gentile distinction, redundant. [2] This is why the writer of Hebrews works his way from slavery to death (World), to the children of Abraham (Land and womb), to Adam’s temptation (Garden), in Hebrews 2:14-18. Jesus was a better Adam, then a better Abel, and then a better “son of God,” [3] a priest king after the order of Melchizedek, a priesthood of all nations:

Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. For surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham. Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.

So, the blessing upon the Gentiles was not a fertility which they already possessed. It was the removal of the fear of death. Israel bore their barrenness as a substitute, and then Jesus, as Israel, bore their death as well. The significance of the womb of Sarah and the tomb of Sarah were united in Christ. The very Land itself shook with birth pangs at His resurrection, and again just before the first resurrection, as Jesus predicted. There was never any need for a sign upon infants. There was a sign upon all Abrahamic males as  Cains who received God’s mercy and subsequently enjoyed the restoration of the fruit of the Land.

Now that the seed had come, and the old Land had “given birth,” a new sign was required, a sign which pictured a new Land rising from the abyss, a heavenly country. The New Covenant, and its sign, are not about the fertility of Christian wombs but about the fertility of Christian tombs. This is not hard to understand.

Baptism has nothing to do with physical fertility, but that is where the baptismal regeneration of the Federal Cision, er, Vision, takes us. A Federal Vision friend recently celebrated the birth of another child, and commented that this birth was another victory against Satan. That floored me, but this is surely the next logical step. The second and third generations of the Federal Vision are not going to be scared to claim the crazy things that the first generation would be reluctant to say out loud.

To claim that a baptized infant is “righteous” is not only to misunderstand and misrepresent baptism (and thus misrepresent the Gospel itself) but to misunderstand and misrepresent Circumcision as well.

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[1] See “Kids in the Kitchen: Passover in the Motherland” in God’s Kitchen: Theology You Can Eat & Drink.
[2] The New Covenant didn’t institute a refurbished distinction concerning offspring and territory, which is why paedobaptism historically has always been perverted into religious nationalism, the “Cainite” kingdom of the Herods, and indeed the very same offer which Satan made to Jesus in the wilderness. The reason this will always occur is because it is inherent in the “tribal”nature of the rite.
[3] Genesis 6 concerns the priestly line of Seth intermarrying with the godless, autonomous Cainite kingdom, which brought about the end of all flesh.

Here’s a new book based on the recent series of blog posts on the structure of Galatians. They’ve been worked over thoroughly, with a fair amount of helpful material (introduction, appendixes and some diagrams) added. Find out what Paul meant by “large letters” written with his own hand, how he subtly refers to the Levitical offerings, and why he structured the epistle like a ziggurat.

If you’re a blog member here, you can view the draft in a “page-flip” format (link at end of post). If you feel inclined, I’d appreciate any helpful advice for refinement. It’s best to get that before it goes to print. Any worthy advice will be gratefully credited, unless of course you wish to remain nameless.

Back cover: Click for a larger image.

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How to Fulfill the Law

“…men are enthroned as elohim (judicial ‘gods’) but not as God intended. Those who sit in the seat of Moses often lack his meekness before God, and their rule is like that of Lamech. Their seventy times seven ‘fulfilling of the Law’ is vengeance not forgiveness.”

We continue with the Deuteronomy section of Galatians, which has seven cycles. Paul moves from an Ascension/Firstfruits motif to an Testing/Pentecost motif. Being the center of this final group of cycles, and at the center of its Ethics cycles, here we have its turning point. The first half of this cycle is about sacrificial binding. The last half is about being loosed on account of the sacrifice.

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A Debtor to the Law

“Any commentary that misses the fact that the first century isn’t about Jew versus Gentile, but about the Noahic nations of the old world versus the birth of the Christian nations of the new, is way off the mark.”

We continue with the Deuteronomy section of Galatians, which has seven cycles. Paul moves from a Division/Passover motif to an Ascension/Firstfruits motif. That is, Paul gets all Levitical. It’s all about sex and death.

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I’m currently working hard on Bible Matrix III: The House of God. This third volume is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. It really is. Being so engrossed in the shape and processes of the Bible (yes, even more than usual), it has struck me how foreign the various theological schools’ thinking and speech is to the actual text.

The debates about “Pauline Theology” are the perfect example, especially the focus on narrow (yet important) topics such as justification. An academic divides and redivides the text in the way an expert in any science overspecializes. He ends up knowing everything about nothing. After spending a few hours each day wandering and describing the halls of biblical architecture, I am more convinced than ever that the only way to fully understand Scripture is architecturally. This is because, for our glorious God, architecture is ethics, and ethics is architecture. Divorced from the biblical mud map, the Edenic grid, modern theologians are discussing less than a dim distorted reflection of the book God has given us. They are feeling their way around the house with their eyes shut.
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ART: Cody F. Miller

Paul’s Deuteronomy

That day Moses charged the people, saying, “When you have crossed over the Jordan, these shall stand on Mount Gerizim to bless the people: Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Joseph, and Benjamin. And these shall stand on Mount Ebal for the curse: Reuben, Gad, Asher, Zebulun, Dan, and Naphtali. (Deuteronomy 27:11-13)

Paul now moves into the Deuteronomy section of his epistle to the Galatians, and it becomes clear that, structurally-speaking, Galatians gets no further than Moses. The epistle is fivefold in nature, a recapitulation of the Torah, and thus it ends on the wilderness side of the Jordan. Like Moses, Paul will not live to see the new order, except from afar.

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“The Spirit consistently puts earthly Succession to death, dividing families, communities and entire countries, as we see today. To claim otherwise is to work against the Spirit in the world. My heredity, my household, my culture, is the target of my ministry, not its source.”

It’s time to get back into Galatians. To recap, the epistle follows the Covenant structure, but gives the central point, the Ethics, its own Covenant structure. If this thesis is correct, what we should expect in the next “cycle” (Gal. 3:26-4:7) is a discussion of Covenant Succession. Lo and behold, this is exactly what we find.

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