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Not being from an oral communication/event-oriented culture, my recollection of the details of the following account might be a bit fluffy. But the story is true nonetheless.
Now a river went out of Eden to water the garden, and from there it parted and became four riverheads. The name of the first is Pishon; it is the one which skirts the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. And the gold of that land is good. Bdellium and the onyx stone are there. The name of the second river is Gihon; it is the one which goes around the whole land of Cush. The name of the third river is Hiddekel; it is the one which goes toward the east of Assyria. The fourth river is the Euphrates. (Genesis 2:10-14)
After the Herod and Shylock post, I had one complaint that the Worship as Commerce tag didn’t really do what it said on the tin, so I hope to capture it (briefly?) here. Now, where to start? As James Jordan explains, the idea begins in Eden.
“Eden is the land of food, and the outlying lands are lands of other raw materials. The Bible conceives of commerce between these lands, so that those of Adam’s descendants who lived in Eden would have to engage in trade with those who had moved downstream to Havilah. In this way, precious stones would be brought from Havilah back to Eden to adorn the sanctuary. When Israel came out of Egypt, she sojourned in the land of Havilah while the Tabernacle and the High Priest’s garments were made (Genesis 25:18). Here in this land of rocks were made many items of gold and onyx. Indeed, the only reference in the Bible to the onyx stone, outside of Genesis 2, is in connection with the High Priest’s garments. The shoulder stones of the “ephod” were made of onyx, and had the names of the twelve tribes put upon them (Exodus 25:7; 28:9-12).” [1]
When the worship of God is both central and elevated, the priests of God carry the Spirit to the nations. In return, the nations bring to Eden the gold and precious stones of the surrounding lands. Because of Solomon’s request for wisdom instead of wealth, the Lord honoured his selflessness, his godly rule, with wealth from the surrounding nations. The kings of the world brought their glory into the Temple. As Israel’s kings continually disobeyed the Lord, the wealth was stolen away. The Lord was like a thief in the night. The gold shields stolen by Egyptian invaders were replaced with bronze ones. Nebuchadnezzar made Judah a vassal kingdom and taxed it the way Solomon and Rehoboam had taxed the tribes. Finally he took everything.
But this “wealth for wisdom” is not only typological. God is not against wealth per se. He wants a church that is glorious both inwardly and outwardly. It is when the church becomes a shell, as Judah did, a false witness with false whiteness, that God cuts it back to Adams in animal skins. [2] The letters to the Asian churches in Revelation 2-3 recapitulate Old Testament history, [3] which makes Herod’s Judah parallel with Laodicea. Well, not so much a parallel as the same sin but fully grown.
Today we had our final “Scripture” class at the high school for this term. After a summary of the term’s lessons and a final gospel presentation, students were asked to fill out a form and tick some boxes. It was encouraging to see how many students ticked the “I made a decision for God today” box (or words to that effect). And which kids tick that box is always very surprising. God is at work.
Which left us to decide what to do next term. We can’t just do the basics again (and believe me, the lessons we are doing now are kindy stuff). I suggested we challenge those who made decisions to join a church and get baptized. Look of horror from the Anglican teacher.
The New Covenant is not about salvation. It is about dominion. Before you call in the inquisitors, have a look at this diagram from my book:
God’s one Law for Adam was temporary. He could eat from the Tree of Judicial Knowledge when mature enough to carry the responsibility. God’s food laws for Israel were also temporary. [1] When the Christ came, and the people of God was brought to maturity, this restricted menu, too, was done away with. It was designed to be outgrown. Not many theologians understand this process of Adam’s “historical maturity”, so they come up with other theories to explain why many Bible truths are not “timeless”. Peter Leithart discusses comments by John Polkinghorne this week:
Once upon a time, not far from here, there was a graphic designer who busted a gut for five years teaching the Bible in a local high school. He was committed to building a biblical worldview through the communication of the exciting, terrifying, comforting narratives of the Old Testament as a foundation for the gospel, to a generation starving for this stuff and filling the gap with movies and novels like Harry Potter and Twilight. After all, postmoderns love narrative.
My friend Matt has been blogging about how postmodernism, with its openness to narrative, is a great opportunity for the gospel. But evangelicals need to sort themselves out first. Otherwise, to the world, they are just a bunch of Patsys. Patsy Biscoes that is.
or A Thimbleful of Watery Bible Broth
The Modernist Bible is very thin. The Old Testament is a mix of myth and history, and Revelation is just a general picture book of the gospel’s work in the world (or a polemic against first century Rome). It boils down basically to some key statements by Jesus and the letters of Paul. And even here, there are problems. Evangelicals love Paul because he communicates like a Greek, but even evangelicals choke on some things he says.
Peter Leithart writes:
Reflections on a class discussion earlier today about place, our connection to the ground, and gnosticism.
- Blood and soil are “powers” that can and have dominated human life, and caused lots of human misery.
- Jesus overcomes those powers. We are identified by water and feast, not by blood or color or place.
- YET (here’s where my thought is undeveloped): Jesus doesn’t just overcome and send the powers packing. He pacifies and reconciles powers; He turns them to the purposes of His kingdom (Col 1-2).
The dilemma: How to express the reconciliation of blood and soil without falling back into the old creation, and without going fascist? How to express Jesus’ pacification of “blood” without letting it usurp the place of the water, and how to express Jesus’ pacification of “soil” without letting it usurp the place of the feast?
One of the big problems with modern theology is its habit of categorising parts of the Bible into literary genres. For sure, the Bible contains historical prose, visions, poetry and songs. But many passages won’t actually fit into these neat little pigeon holes without hamstringing their intended purpose. And as it turns out, these “genre-lisations” are excuses to compromise with humanistic pop-philosophy and pop-history.
The three main gripes I have are misuses of the genres poetry, polemic and apocalyptic.
Read the Foreword here
