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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ADDENDUM:

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

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

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

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

“For they bind heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers.”
Matthew 23:4

One of the great benefits of understanding the “preteristic” nature of the New Testament is the way the many supposedly “generic” apostolic warnings in the epistles are suddenly grounded in their Jewish context. The destruction of the Temple barely gets a mention in any church today, yet when the letters of Paul, Peter, James and John are understood to be aimed at Jews outside the Church and Judaizers inside it, the New Testament doesn’t become less relevant to us, but more relevant.

To modern Christians, the Herods and the Pharisees are clearly the bad guys when mentioned by name, yet there is a strange reluctance to recognize their presence or influence when they are not. Many scholars rail against first century Greek rhetors and Roman cultists as the target of the apostles’ ire, but nothing could be further from the truth. Those issues are out in the shadows, but judgment begins at the house of God.

James Jordan has done a great job in explaining the presence of the Herodian line as it was predicted, not by name but by nature, in the book of Daniel. [1] Peter Leithart has also made some interesting observations in his commentary on the epistles of John. [2] One reviewer, however, doesn’t think he goes far enough:

Leithart identifies the enemies against whom John is writing as a variant of Judaism. He then gives a thorough discussion of the various nuances of post-apostolic Judaism(s) and Gnosticism(s). He explains that scholars are divided on whether the enemies are Gnostics or Judaizers. The problem is that the enemies display characteristics of both groups, but are not reducible to either. John is writing before Gnosticism really became a problem, and the Judaizers seem to display anti-Jewish presuppositions.

Leithart is baffled by the Judaizers’ anti-material worldview. Is this not fundamentally at odds with the rich, creation-oriented worldview of the Old Testament? Leithart cannot really answer this question except to say the Jews were influenced by some Eastern proto-gnostic cults. That’s a half-truth, though. Leithart does not factor in the influence of the Talmud at all. This remains a fatal weakness in the Federal Vision movement. They note certain qualities of the Old Testament and read that into the worldview of “all Jews and all times.” When this happens, as we see here, they cannot account for the anti-Christian character of the Jews in John’s time.

Nevertheless, Leithart is onto something. His discussion points the reader to the interplay of Gnosticism and Judaism. Leithart’s weakness, though, is that he keeps wanting to see Judaism as something good and Old Testament-ish. After the Jews killed Christ, though, and in the book of Acts began defining themselves as violently anti-Christian, they became a different creature.

Perhaps Dr. Leithart is simply being polite in his assessment of post-Pentecostal Judaism. Or perhaps there was a marked difference between the “Old Testament” religion of the people and the “Talmudic” religion of the Jewish leaders, who oppressed the people and led them astray. Michael Hoffman writes:

Recall the scene in the Book of Luke when the Pharisees, using their sly ability to twist words, which has remained with their spiritual heirs to this day, tried to ensnare Jesus, when they asked Him, “By whose authority do you teach?” Jesus countered by asking of them a question in turn, “By whose authority did John baptize?”

This passage in Luke illuminates the extent to which the peasantry among the Jewish people, the am ha’aretz, were on Jesus’ side at that time. The Pharisees murmered among themselves, “If we answer that God sent John, He will say why were you not then baptized? But if we say John’s authority did not come from God, the people will stone us because they believe that John was a prophet.”

The “people” of Israel, the am ha’aretz, for a time believed John the Baptist and did not hold with the Pharisees or their anthropomorphic traditions. What is the status of Judaics in our time who do not believe in the Talmud? How do the rabbis judge Judaics who have not learned and may even have rejected the Talmud?

Hoffman goes on to quote some rabbinic definitions of the am ha’aretz in the Talmud, showing how Jews who did not highly regard or acquaint themselves with the oral tradition were viewed by the Pharisees. The quotations are astounding and disgusting, and they give modern Christians a glimpse of the perfect hatred of which Jesus and the first martyrs were victims. I will repeat only one quotation here:

“Rabbi Eleazaer said: An am ha’aretz — it is permitted to stab him (even) on the Day of Atonement which falls on the Sabbath.

“Said his disciples to him, Master, may we slaughter him (ritually)?

“The rabbi replied: This (ritual slaughter) requires a benediction, whereas that (stabbing of the am ha’aretz) does not require a benediction.

“Rabbi Samuel ben Nachmani said in Rabbi Yochanan’s name: One may tear an am ha’aretz like a fish!

“Said Rabbi Samuel ben Isaac: And (this means) stab him along his back.” [3]

Rabbinic Judaism was not and is not in any way “Old Testament-ish.” When Jesus warned His disciples about the “leaven” of the Pharisees, it had more to do with elitist hatred than “works salvation.” Familiarizing ourselves with the Talmud’s perversions would not only help us to interpret the New Testament more clearly (including the “ritual slaughter” of Christ and His Firstfruits), it would free many modern Christians of the erroneous idea that modern Jews worship the God of the Bible.

Critics of Islam are the toast of western society… It is not that we are opposed to honest Christian or scholarly analysis of Islam, however critical. We can’t help noting, however, the deafening silence of all these “courageous” crusading Christian authors and “politically incorrect” Conservatives when it comes to the “dark side” of what the Talmud “really teaches.” They have apparently forgotten that the first mission of Jesus Christ was to the “lost sheep of the House of Israel” (Matt. 15:24). Today we are content to let them remain lost, while we thump our chests in glorious crusades against the hated Muslim. The modern Roman Catholic Church forbids speaking to the gentiles the truth about Judaism just as the rabbis tried to forbid Christians from doing so (1 Thessalonians 2:16). [4]

The sin of the Jewish people in Jesus’ day was not high-handed. They had been led astray by their teachers. The sin of the Pharisees in Jesus’ day, however, was “high-handed,” that is, conscious sin. They knew the Scriptures, but they were a den of snakes in the Garden of God. They twisted and replaced the words of God. Consequently, Jesus told them that their spiritual father was the devil.

But this was before Pentecost. The coming of the Spirit of God enlightened the eyes of the Jews who believed and darkened the eyes of those who would not. The cult of the Talmud ceased to be merely “high-handed” concerning its opposition to Christ and His people. [5] It became outright demonic, which explains not only the apostolic hatred of the Judaistic false teachers, but the description of the “sorcerous” Covenant crimes of the great whore in the Revelation. Jesus condemns not “the kings of the earth” but “the rulers of the Land.”

Hoffman has a great deal to say about the manipulation of the modern West by “Talmudists.” Much of it will be seen as inflammatory, but on this I agree with him: Since World War II, the rabbinical “archetypal persecutors, haters, killers and racists” have used the victimization of Jews to render their religion immune from criticism by the Church. The accusation of “antisemite,” like “racist,” is a devilish use of historical, ethic truth to mask and protect a continued doctrinal lie. [6]

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[1] See his Daniel commentary, The Handwriting on the Wall.
[2] See John’s Real Enemies.
[3] Michael Hoffman, Judaism’s Strange Gods, pp. 13-14.
[4] Hoffman, pp. 17-18.
[5] See Strong Delusion.
[6] Jesus taught us not to confuse ethnic origins with spiritual character, which is why credobaptism is crucial to the mission of His Church.

Related posts:
Parallel Theologies
The Future of Israel Re-examined

Jump the shark definition.

In Deep Comedy, Peter Leithart compares the Bible’s essentially comic and hopeful view of history with the Greco-Roman view, which is essentially and irredeemably tragic.

In Paul’s estimation, anyone who thought that the new life through Jesus pertained to some realm outside this history was simply an unbeliever. For the gospel says otherwise.

Certainly, discerning this new life at work in the world is an act of faith, but faith is not irrational or a leap into the dark against evidence. If the gospel is true, if new life was unleashed in the world on Easter morning, then we would expect there to be some signs that this is the case. And, as the church fathers were at pains to point out, we do.

Athanasius noted all the pagans turning from their idols, all the warring tribes become brothers, all the swords being beaten to plowshares, and used these things to expound the effects of the Incarnation. Paul, however, means exactly what he says, the coming of Jesus, and particularly the resurrection of Jesus, means that death and sin are themselves doomed, and life is already on the march to conquer death. Darkness is being dispelled because Light has come and the darkness could neither comprehend nor overcome it (John 1:5).

This account of the comic shape of biblical history and the gospel narrative has been challenged by a number of theologians and biblical scholars in recent years. Biblical scholars have attempted to show that the Bible’s stories fit into the generic categories of ancient drama or poetry, and have tried to show in particular that certain biblical narratives can be classified as tragedy. In my view, these are not successful efforts either in general or in detailed treatment of texts. In her Tragedy and Biblical Narrative, for instance, Cheryl Exum emphasizes the struggle against fate/gods/God as a key element of tragedy:

Tragic heroes have the hubris—sometimes in authentic greatness, sometimes in delusion—to defy the universe, not in a stoic defiance but in an insistence on their moral integrity (justified or not). Because they refuse, they will be broken … It is not that there is “no way out whatsoever,” as Jasper asserts, but that there is no way out without denying oneself. Saul refuses to acquiesce, he will hold on to the kingship at whatever the cost, rejecting the easy way out. There is a “way out” and Saul’s son Jonathan, by yielding his right to the throne to David, shows what it is, but at the cost of his identity, which as we shall see, becomes submerged into David’s.

It is true that Saul is tragic in the sense that Exum uses the term, but it is also clear that his tragedy is the result of his own intransigence. The story clearly endorses precisely the “easy way out”—the way of Jonathan, the way of self-denial—which is, of course, the very difficult way out, since it means effacing (but also eventually finding) one’s own identity before Yahweh and before the “rival,” David. Jonathan, characterized by self-denial and even “discipleship,” is manifestly the hero of the story.  One can say that the Bible presents Saul as “tragic,” but only if we are willing to give up calling him, in any sense, a “hero.” Again, as in Jeremiah and the gospels, Saul’s story leaves one with an intense sense of loss precisely because there was a way out, precisely because life was a real option.

Further, Exum emphasizes that the tragic hero struggles particularly to understand the fate that brings tragic consequences. Oedipus is a titanic figure because he relentlessly pursues the truth of his situation. Again, the Bible has a “tragic dimension” in the sense that it irecognizes the reality of this kind of struggle, yet the Bible does not reckon this as a heroic struggle—a struggle to be commended and supported. The titanic desire and need to know is the desire to be as God, to know as God, the lust to have the complete and finished story as God does.

Put differently, it is a refusal of faith, a refusal to trust that God, however random and wild He may appear and be, will do right. It is a refusal to learn the wisdom of Ecclesiastes. From a biblical perspective, the tragic hero is simply a character who refuses to trust that God knows what He’s on about with His universe, and will accept his “fate” only if he can see all its causes and ramifications. The tragic protagonist longs to live by sight. Job, faced with “tragic” suffering, demands to know the cause. Yahweh appears and answers no questions; the revelation of Yahweh in a whirlwind is sufficient to stop Job’s mouth. The tragic pursuit of knowledge is a refusal of Solomonic wisdom as expressed in Ecclesiastes, the wisdom that rejoices in limitation, rejoices precisely because this vaporous world is not under our control.

Peter J. Leithart, Deep Comedy: Trinity, Tragedy, & Hope In Western Literature, pp. 26-28.

Credo ut intelligam.

“In Genesis 1, God creates the world in six days, through certain steps. Then He creates human beings out of ‘world,’ and human beings made out of world are going to live like ‘world’ does. They are going to go from darkness to light, formlessness to form; they are going to marry and take dominion. They are going to become like lights ruling over the earth. They’re going to live in 24 hour cycles. They will undergo times when God pulls them apart and puts them back together in new ways–all because they are made out of world. And these are all steps of glorification.” — James B. Jordan (The Bible You Never Read)

Some Christians assert that Adam was not the first man, only the first man in Covenant with God. [1] This means that the judgments upon such a Covenant could only be social, not “Creational.” They could only fall upon those under Covenant, not the “pre-Adamic” people from which this Covenant separated Adam. This assertion must be made to support the view that the Great Flood was only a local event, destroying only the “Adamites,” not all people on the planet. Does this assertion have any support in Scripture? Apparently yes, but factually no.

The problem is that, although all Covenants are social in one sense, that is, between God and people, there are differences in the domains. Covenant history looks like this:

CREATIONAL

SOCIAL

PERSONAL

SOCIAL

CREATIONAL

This first Covenant was between God and the world. World stuff was shaped, brought to life, and walked and talked in Adam. This Covenant was Creational.

ALL FLESH

The Covenant-making in Genesis 1 was not a Covenant made with heaven and earth. It was a Covenant that made heaven and earth, and the final step in its glorification was the Creation of Man. This was a Covenant made with “all flesh,” and if all flesh failed, all flesh would die. Did all flesh sin? No, but its representative did.

The phrase “all died in Adam” wasn’t limited to people. Animals died too. What would be the point–Covenantally, let alone practically– of the Lord gathering animals into an ark if the animals were not under Covenant. Adam had named them as their global representative.

The flood judgment involved the entire physical world because Adam was the representative of the entire physical world. He was not simply the representative of “the Adamites.” His Creation was a part of the Creation, which is not the case if the Adamic Covenant was not only ceremonial (as all later Covenants were) but also Creational.

Adam was made of world. He was the world “doing Covenantal stuff.” He was not only in the world but of the world. So, when the time came for judgment, the entire world had to be destroyed.

Adam’s sin was temporarily covered. Cain’s sin was temporarily covered. But the time came when sin could no longer be covered. When all domains (Garden, Land and World) were corrupted, the world, not just the people, had come to maturity. The world, not just the people, was fruit ripe for judgment. Was it good to eat?

The Great Flood was the end of Adam’s representative role of the physical creation. Noah was invested as the new representative, again, not merely over a certain people among other nations, but over the world. The Flood was not simply a local judgment of a certain people. A local flood means that all did not die in Adam.

Noah’s Covenant was also a Covenant made with all flesh. As Adam’s Covenant failed in Garden, Land and World, Noah’s succeeded in the Garden (judging Ham’s offspring) but failed in the Land (Babel). Before another Flood could occur (World), God stepped in and tore humanity in half. By His word, he called a Man out of the world. Abram would be in the world but not of the world.

IN THE FLESH

Just as the Sethites and Cainites were divided, so now Jew and Gentile would be divided. This time, God would keep the Covenant carriers from intermarrying with unbelief and abdicating their Covenant office.

This calling out put a temporary barrier, a veil, a wall, between Adam and the physical Creation. The first Covenant not made with “all flesh” was not until Genesis 12. Instead of cutting off all flesh, the flesh of Abram was cut off. It began the process of putting sin to death in the flesh. The Covenant scope was narrowed from the created order to a social order. Humanity was put into a deep sleep, and blood was spilt.

THE POINT OF CIRCUMCISION

Unlike the first two Covenants, the Abrahamic Covenant is what I call “social” because it set one nation, one genealogy, apart from all the others. Abram was called out from other men. That is what some Christians want to do with Adam. But was Adam simply called out from other men? No. We can’t take the traits of the Abrahamic Covenant and apply them to the Adamic and Noahic Covenants. The latter two were global in scale. They were not social divisions, otherwise circumcision has no significance whatsoever.

Circumcision, the cutting of Abraham’s flesh, was the “division” of Adam on a global scale. Being a bloodied, sacrificial wanderer meant there was a pure Adam mediating between heaven and earth, a place that was set apart between the throne of God and the physical world, moving about like the Tabernacle, a flying scroll, a bit of physical world stuff cut off–quarantined–from the physical world. In the grand scheme of things, Covenant had moved from the court of the Gentiles (nations) to the Holy Place. The Creation Temple was protected from judgment by a substitutionary, microcosmic Temple, a veil of flesh.

SOCIAL FLOODS

The prophets often used Creational terminology for this Holy Place which represented the Creation and kept it from being destroyed. When Israel’s sins were filled up, mature, it was the Tabernacle and Temple, not the physical world, that were torn apart. The “floods” under this social Covenant were floods of Gentiles: Babylonians and Romans. To conclude that because these “social” floods were local the Great Flood was also local  is to miss the “mediatory” point entirely. Israel was the bulkhead between God’s wrath and a physical, Creational judgment.

Adam’s and Noah’s Covenants were global. They concerned dominion of the physical Land and Sea. Abraham’s Covenant was social. This social, symbolic “Land and Sea” (Jews and Gentiles) didn’t begin in Adam but in Abraham. And it ended in AD70. AD70 was the end of Israel’s representative role for the nations, and the end of a “social” Land and Sea.

ALL THINGS NEW

The substitutionary structures were fulfilled eventually in the body of Jesus, in a deep sleep. In Jesus, the Covenant moved from the Holy Place into the Most Holy, from a social Covenant to a personal one.

In Jesus, all Creation was legally slain and legally resurrected–not just Adam, and the people, but the physical order also. He is a three level ark. At Jesus’ ascension, the “world stuff” was now in heaven, the physical body of Christ, justified flesh doing “three-level” Covenant stuff on our behalf, and on behalf of not just the people but of the entire Created order.

Now that those “social” substitutes are gone, as well as the body of Jesus (“personal”), all men everywhere are commanded to repent, but the outcome will not be limited to the world of men.

At Pentecost, Christians began representing the social (Jew-Gentile) world in the courtroom of God. This new Creation broke down the old social divide, the “wall of enmity,” until the Covenantal “Land and Sea” were again the physical land and sea. The world groaned until its firstfruits–the first resurrection, the revealing of the true sons of God, the Christians. Yet it groans still, because the harvest is not complete.

The new physical world, contained in Jesus, created a new social order. This Spirit-filled social order will mature eventually into a new physical order. As mediators, we are in the world but not of the world, yet the world will be ours. The CREATIONAL – SOCIAL – PERSONAL – SOCIAL – CREATIONAL chiasm will be finished in the physical world at the second resurrection. [2] The remaining physical disconnect is temporary. One day, the often venomous physical world will no longer be trying to kill us. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.

History will end as history began, with a Creational judgment. The entire physical realm will again be ripe, mature. The Lord will taste it and see that it is good. In fact, He will judge it to be very, very good.

“…in the chiasm of redemption
the first shall be last, and the last first.”
Peter J. Leithart.

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[1] See also Biologos’ Jenga Bible.
[2] See A New Heavens and a New Earth.

When Sam Frost reviewed Bible Matrix, he was a full preterist. What changed his mind was the Bible’s inescapable trajectory, its relentless reach towards maturity and glory.

From Sam’s blog:

Mike Bull has recently sent me his new book, Bible Matrix II: The Covenant Key (Westbow Press, 2011).  Like his Bible Matrix, this one is full of “patterns”. Did you ever think that Esther, probably one of the most neglected books in the Bible, was covenantal in structure and outline? That it speaks directly to us?  Get ahold of Bull’s “key” and you will.

Bull takes the most basic and fundamental structure from one Ray Sutton. You may have heard me from time to time mention Sutton, Jordan, Chilton, Gentry, DeMar and Grant – the Tyler, Texas gang funded by Gary North back in the late eighties and early ninties.  I cut my teeth on these men.  Sutton is currently Bishop of the Church of Holy Communion in the Reformed Episcopal Church (REC).  As an aside, my family has recently joined an Anglican Province of America (APA) body which has established “intercommunion” with REC. Our Bishop knows Sutton.  Weird how God brings things around like that. Sutton is no longer a “theonomist” in the strict sense of the word. Nonetheless, his “covenant outline” has survived.

If you don’t remember it, it is:

1.  Transcendence
2. Hierarchy
3.  Ethics
4. Sanctions
5. Inheritance

Or, to put it into everyday speak:

1. Who’s in charge here?
2. To Whom do I report?
3. What are my orders?
4.  What do I get if I obey or disobey?
5. Does this outfit have a future?

Now, this structure, if you will, further came from M. Kline’s work on the ancient near eastern covenant pattern, and is clearly seen in the covenantal structures of the Bible.  The Bible is covenantal. The Reformed faith has picked this up more than any other religious sect within Christendom. The Reconstructionists picked up on it with greater clarity, carrying it into every book of the Bible.  It sort of became the “glasses” of the believer.  After a while, you start “seeing it” everywhere.

Well, that’s what Bull does.  I mean he sees it everywhere.  But, he does not simply reuse Sutton’s five points.  He develops a seven-fold pattern:

1. Creation
2. Division
3. Ascension
4. Testing
5. Maturity
6. Conquest
7. Glorification

This “overlay” (p. 12) onto Sutton’s work forms the Bible matrix.  Previous details in the OT particular suddenly make sense. Why did God have them wash the legs of the sacrifices?  Why did he command this act, and not that act. Why are there genealogies? Two themes dominate here: dominion and progression. Dominion is progress. God moves. History moves until it will finally come to rest (glorification).

It’s the way God works, as revealed in Gn 1.  God is a God of order, not chaos.  He takes chaos and orders it.  Straightens it out.  Systematizes it. And, here’s the kicker: if you are in a blood covenant with this God, then he demands that you imitate him. Put order in your life.  Remove the chaos. Ultimately, he will give you rest. But, not so much individually. In a sense, we “rest from our works” when we die (Rev 14.13). However, on earth, the Church is still working the ground as priests. Ultimately, the whole Body will come to rest. This is what Bull calls, “the bigger picture.”

There is no single “prooftext.” The whole Bible is the prooftext. God has demonstrated this patterning over and over again in the Bible; in the stories, the covenants, the books, the laws, down to the details of the Tabernacle and its movements to its rest in Jerusalem. Creation is the focus for it belongs to the LORD. And, he will give it “rest” as well.  That’s our mission.  As long as Canaanites pollute the Land and cause the “Land to sin” (Lev 18.24-ff), creation is not at rest.  This is the language of covenant.  It ain’t your grandma’s “spiritual” Christianity.  The New Covenant is not a “spiritualizing” of the older ones.  It is the covenant through which the older ones can now be entirely realized.

The whole point of Conquest (Joshua-Judges) was to bring “safety, peace and rest” in the Land (Deut 28.10; 12.10 et al).  The Land is now the Earth.  How the Christian Church has, in some quarters, spiritualized away the “physical” promises and the principles behind them for art, covenant, education, science and politic is the great sin of Gnosticism. It amounts to saying that the Israelites got real peace and safety under Solomon, but we only get “spiritual peace and rest” in the New Covenant, with no promise of every bringing peace on earth, literally.

Bull’s book is imaginative, of course. He takes liberties here and there. But, you can’t really find fault there. If biblical patternings like the ones he points out are there, then they are there. We tend to think only in terms of straight-jacketed exegesis. “What’s the original audience relevance?” “What’s the date of the composition”? All good questions to be sure.  But, the Bible also teaches us to use our imaginations in the things of God, so that an ordinary matter, like going to the grocery store to buy food, involves covenant. How?  Well, “food.”  “Buy”. “Going to.” Mobility.  ustenance. Longetivity and health. Food is in the Bible, is it not?  And, where did that money come from (Deut 8.18)?

Think about what you are doing. Open your eyes to the hand of God. There is no doubt why the word “matrix” is chosen. Like the movie, what you see is just “stuff” – illusion. What’s behind the stuff is what Transcendence is all about. But, biblical covenants never transcends the stuff so that that is all that one thinks on (heavenly minded, spiritual). You transcend the stuff so that you can now think correctly about the stuff (Creation, matter, substance, stuff). You order what is daily around you in terms of covenant. Even when I see a star athlete cross himself, or take a bow, or say, “I want to first thank my Lord and God” I see Deut 8.18. God is at work. Everywhere. What, you don’t take omnipresence seriously? Bull does.

One of things for us Preterists to answer concerning the future. How do we know when the Bible appears to say so little about the end of time and history? That the Bible appears to speak more of the “time of the end” (AD 70), than the “end of time.” Well, the end of time is there because it has always been in the covenant structures themselves.

God has a goal (end) in each covenant. The patterns of the Bible have instructed the “man of God”. How much more does the Bible need to spell this out? What, does it need to give the Church a detailed blueprint for what is supposed to happen in the future? You can’t develop one from the previous umpteen patterns and repeated story motifs? You don’t get it by now? That’s why any biblical idea that comes down the pike that has no “future” in terms of the dominion mandate is false. How can you tell it’s false? It does not fit the covenant pattern. It does not take into consideration the whole stuff, heaven and earth, spirit and body, soul and dirt. It usually, radically separates these things and becomes materialistic (science, which sprang from the Church), or Gnostic (spiritualism, which sprang from the Church).

Covenantalism unites heaven and earth. Before you know it, we will start “spiritualizing” the opening chapters of Genesis! Oh, wait, that’s already being done. Jesus, however, shatters this notion. He was raised dust. His earthy body was transformed. It Ascended. The dirt of creation from which it originated (Luke 3.38) arose to Heaven, restored. Jesus is Covenant in Action from First to Last.  Jesus is the all things of Covenant. He is the Model. He is the Future (Omega).  He is what Covenant will look like for all of God’s people, and for Creation itself, as God makes all our enemies under our feet, because they are already under His. He set the Covenant Standard. He is the Goal – the telos of Covenant Law.

Anyhow, get this book. Read it. Study it. Give it to a neighbor, or your Pastor or Bishop. You won’t regret it.

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From James Jordan, The Framework Hypothesis: A Gnostic Heresy, Biblical Horizons No. 107

…I submit that the entire Christian faith stands or falls on how Genesis 1 is interpreted, and that the guardians of the Church must take an unequivocal stance on this matter.

The issue is hermeneutics and religion. Since these “contradictions” in Genesis 1 serve to indicate that this passage is not to be taken historically, the only alternative is to take the passage as giving some kind of archetype for creation by God. It is a foundational “myth,” expressing in “human language” matters that cannot be expressed any other way. It is a true myth in that the ideas taught in Genesis 1 are true.

And this is where the shift from true religion to gnosticism comes in. History has been replaced by ideas.Now, with the arbitrariness of a man selecting a meal from a smorgasbord, evangelicals who reject the historicity of Genesis 1 insist on the historicity of later passages in the Bible. In this happy inconsistency they rest, never inspecting their intellectual sloppiness.

But let us turn to two other seemingly historical events in the Bible and apply the hermeneutical principles of these gnosticizing brethren. The first to which we turn is the ten plagues visited on Egypt.

First of all, we note that 20th century historians of the ancient world cannot find any evidence of a vast host of people leaving Egypt at the time the Bible says it happened. Moreover, according to the text of Exodus, all the Egyptian crops and cattle were destroyed, along with the Egyptian army and a large number of Egypt’s sons. Modern “scientific” archaeology and history finds no such event. Therefore, we have to look at the text of Exodus anew. Maybe these events never really happened. Maybe they are just a “true myth,” providing archetypical “ideas” that undergirded God’s relationship with Israel.

Well, do we find any indications in the text that the ten plagues are only a story, that they never really happened? Yes, we do, it seems. According to Exodus 9:6, all the livestock of Egypt died in the fifth plague, but according to 9:19, there were still more livestock to be killed in the seventh plague. Also, according to Exodus 8:22, the insects destroyed all of Egypt, clearly including the plants, while in 9:31, the flax and barley were destroyed later on in the seventh plague, and then in 10:15, the locusts ate all the remaining plants. These are much clearer “contradictions” than anything found in Genesis 1. And to these we may add that repeatedly Pharaoh says he will let the people go, and then changes his mind. How likely is this?

Well, since we have found such clear indications that these plagues are not to be taken as real history, do we find a literary framework to posit as some kind of alternative? Certainly. There are three groups of three plagues, and then a tenth. The first plague in each cycle begins with a command to go to Pharaoh in the morning. The second in each cycle begins with a command simply to go to Pharaoh. The third in each cycle is not announced to Pharaoh at all. The first three plagues are brought by Aaron’s staff, while the last three are brought by Moses’ hand. And so forth. So, we have a clear literary structure.

Of course, traditional expositors have suggested ways around the “contradictions” in the historical narrative of the ten plagues, but if we are going to let the interpretation of Genesis 1 be our guide, we may not try to get around these “contradictions.” Rather, we must let them be indicators that these events never really happened. The plagues on Egypt were not historical events, but are a foundational and archetypal myth for the nation of Israel, just as the six days of Genesis are a foundational and archetypal myth for the whole universe.

Now let us turn to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Repeating our Genesis 1 procedure, we note first of all that “scientific” historians can find no evidence that Jesus rose from the dead. Josephus says nothing about it, and neither does any other “unbiased” source. So, maybe it never happened. We must inspect the text anew.

Do we find contradictions that indicate that the resurrection never happened? Of course we do! The four gospels are in obvious conflict with one other regarding the events of Easter morning. Of course, traditional expositors try to harmonize these four accounts, as John Wenham does in his book Easter Enigma: Are the Resurrection Accounts in Conflict? (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1984; highly recommended). But no, we should let the contradictions stand as they are, for they indicate to us that we are not dealing with what we think of as history at all.

So, seeing that there are contradictions in the text, do we find literary structures that indicate the real meaning of the text? Certainly. In John, for instance, Jesus’ tomb is presented as a holy of holies with the slab on which He lay as an Ark-cover ith two angels at either end. Moreover, Jesus appears as Gardener in a new Edenic garden in John. Thus, John is giving us theology, ideas, not history.

…If we approach the Bible the way the ahistorical interpreters of Genesis 1 want us to, the Christian religion disappears into gnosticism. By the same token, if we take other passages of the Bible in their obvious historical sense, and resolve seeming contradictions in the way the Church has always done, then we must do the same with Genesis 1.

“In the middle of its street, and on either side of the river,
was tree of life, which bore twelve fruits,
each tree yielding its fruit every month.
The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.”
Revelation 22:2

NOTE: THIS POST HAS BEEN REMIXED AND INCLUDED IN GOD’S KITCHEN.

While the governments of the first global economy in history explore areas of policy for which there is no historical precedent, Christians need to understand that even now, there is nothing new under the sun. It may be true, as some believe, that every war (including World War I) can be traced back to disputes over resources. But all the economic advice we need, whether personal, national or global, is contained in the Bible. The Tree of Life is still at the centre of the Garden, but it is the Church, and God is working on a forest.

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[1] R. C. Sproul Jr., Biblical Economics, A Commonsense Guide to Our Daily Bread, pp. 29-37.
[2] See Building Cages Out of Freedom.
[3] This is the heart of Peter Leithart’s timely new book, Constantine: The Twilight of an Empire and the Dawn of Christendom.
[4] See Church and State.
[5] Check out David Chilton’s Productive Christians in an Age of Guilt Manipulators. [PDF]

It’s cat-among-the pigeons time again.

Identifying the Bible Matrix in Acts reveals in quite a number of places that the author, Luke, has a sense of humour. Or the Holy Spirit does. In Acts 8, at Ascension (Firstruits), the Ethiopian eunuch asks Philip to hop up into his chariot. [1]

Philip opens the Law for him at Pentecost, the man is “resurrected” at Trumpets, baptized at Atonement (the Laver), and at Tabernacles we have both a Jew and Gentile whose witness flows out into the nations.

I think I’ve dealt with the significance of the position of the Laver as baptism elsewhere around here. Today I want to deal with the significance of the Covenant model as it overlays onto this passage.

As Eric Rauch has very helpfully summarised for us, the pentamerous Covenant model is:

1  Transcendence: Who’s in charge?

2  Hierarchy: To whom to I report?

3  Ethics: What are the rules?

4  Sanctions: What happens if I obey or disobey?

5  Succession: Does this relationship have a future? [2]

I believe that this pentamerous pattern as WORD becomes the heptamerous pattern as HISTORY when the central point (Ethics) is split into three. The Law is given to the Covenant head (Ascension), opened to the Body (Testing) and received by the Body (Maturity), unless of course the Body breaks the Law, in which case Moses has to bring a new set of Tablets (deutero-nomos) at Maturity.

This is exactly what we see in Acts 8. The Eunuch possesses the scroll; Philip “opens” it for him; the Eunuch receives it. Baptism follows at Sanctions (Atonement) and the Eunuch’s life is “cut in two.” And then, at Succession, which is my point, HOW CAN A EUNUCH HAVE COVENANT CHILDREN?

Throughout the Old Testament, this step of the pattern concerns either having children, or being made barren. Elisha atones for the sins of Jericho with a bowl of salt (barrenness) and the Gentiles are made fruitful. Then he sets the bears onto the Israelite children of Bethel (home of a golden calf). One bloodline is reconnected with history, and another is cut off. [3] He is doing exactly the opposite of what Joshua did to Jericho. He is cutting off the “old” Covenant of stones so a new one can be made—a new set of tablets, written on flesh.

So, what kind of stones does the Ethiopian get in this new, new, New Covenant. Jesus went about healing people of things that made Israelites ceremonially unfit to approach God. [4] So did the apostles. If these strange laws weren’t simply pedagogical, why didn’t Philip make this gelding truly fruitful and restore him physically?

Because, in the true New Covenant, having children doesn’t require that kind of testicles.

In his book on the Covenant structure, That You May Prosper, Ray Sutton wisely wrote, “Everyone talks about the Covenant, but nobody does anything about it.” What is it, exactly, that we are to do under the New Covenant?

The theonomy movement has helpfully reapplied the Bible to many areas long-neglected by evangelicals: to family, to economics, to politics. Under God’s Law, obedience brings blessing at Sanctions instead of cursing. As it did in the Old Testament, it still brings an abundance of children, prosperity and godly government. This redux is slowly fixing the myopic gnosticism of evangelicals who think that we under Covenant have nothing to do but witness and wait.

My problem with all of this wonderful stuff is that it takes the focus off witness. Brave testimony takes the kind of balls that Philip gave the Ethiopian eunuch.

Baptism isn’t about physical offspring at all. It gives any believer (child or adult) the authority to conceive and raise the kind of “children” an Ethiopian eunuch can have—by testimony. The New Covenant sign is outward-looking, not inward-looking. It’s not about crowding around the offspring of the Woman any more because the Child has already come. It’s about proclaiming this truth to the nations and watching them submit and join the church.

So, should Christians be careless about discipling their children under the Covenant? Of course not. God is cutting off an apostate western culture by rendering it childless.

Should Christians be careless with their finances? Of course not! Look at the debt the west is in.

Should Christians neglect to vote or run for office? Of course not. Look at the corrupt individuals in office.

None of those things has been rendered unimportant by the New Covenant. Disobedience in any of those areas still brings barrenness to a culture. But that is not the heart of the issue. Under the New Covenant, Christians also have the kind of fruitfulness that Noah’s animals, Ruth’s womb and Mordecai’s willing vassals all pointed to: a permanent, miraculous supply of true dominion by the Spirit at the very heart of the cultus: a Covenant body kept fruitful by the constant addition of willing Gentiles from outside: NEW BLOOD. We obey God and witness (as martyroi), and He gives us kingdom on a platter. [5]

Thus, I believe credo-baptism is the only kind that is truly postmillennial.

Eunuchs and barren women can be as fruitful as anyone else in the church. This is “New Covenant” life from the dead. That is the kind of offspring the New Covenant is, foremost, about, and these children are just as much “flesh and blood” as the ones that come out of the womb so the accusation of gnosticism rolls like water off a duck.

For all their myopia when it comes to the Covenant, this is one thing that even the most liberal, modernist, gnostic Baptist gets totally right, and it builds big churches. Paedobaptism, in practice, brings relative sterility. A tree is known by its fruit, and paedobaptism, like circumcision, seems to me to do little more than maintain the status quo.

I wonder if the ever-reforming Reformed church will contemplate reforming on that one.

I’m not saying big churches build quality Christians or culture. They don’t. But why can’t we have both in the one place? Under the New Covenant, we can have quality and quantity, and it will come as we submit entirely to the Word and its obvious patterns.

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[1] The only reason Luke mentions sailing under the Sign of the Roman Twins in Acts 28 is because he is following the Feasts/Tabernacle pattern and he’s at Atonement. He needs two identical goats and a laver (sea).
[2]  See A Jaw-Dropping Book.
[3] See Dashing Her Little Ones and Elisha’s Short Fuse.
[4] See Why Jesus Healed Some.
[5] The significance of the nationality of the eunuch comes (mainly) from the Book of Esther.

Art: The Royal Procession of the Ethiopian Eunuch by Julian Van Dyke.

Full preterist Samuel Frost has kindly reviewed the book:

Mike Bull recently sent me a copy of his book, Bible Matrix: An Introduction to the DNA of Scriptures, 2010, Westbow Press. Peter Leithart, who I began reading when studying the book of Samuel, writes the introduction. Leithart, as many of you may know, is a close student of the works of James B. Jordan, who is perhaps closer to our view than most, but nonetheless stays within the “orthodox” limits.

I like patterns. I believe the Bible is built on patterns (tupos, or “types”), and that’s exactly what this book is about. “Genesis 1 is the Bible Matrix. As it matures throughout the Scriptures, the identification of this pattern unlocks the book of Moses, Israel’s history, the structure of Jesus’ ministry and the book of Revelation… It also has staggering implications concerning the identity, purpose and future of Christianity…” (15). Amen. God has taught us in the historical unfolding of the Bible (its stories) how He acts, why He acts, when He acts and how we are supposed to act as a result. For me, as a preterist, God doesn’t “cease” acting this way in A.D. 70.

Now, of course, Bull is an “orthodox preterist”. But, this should not deter one from buying the book. It has much to offer in the way it is laid out, and the structuring of the biblical feasts, types, patterns consistently run throughout the book. The contents takes their cue from Bible history, climaxing in the Church. The feasts, furniture of the temple, and many other “patterns” are applied throughout to the people of God. Bull is very much “dominion” oriented (read, postmillennial), and I think does a good job at showing that it is the purpose of His people to take dominion over creation. Through the continual appeals to the patterns, by the time one gets to the end of the book, it becomes clear what this purpose is, unless, of course, God changed everything in A.D. 70 and no longer acts in the way that he has repeatedly revealed; that is, according to His nature. Of what benefit would it be for God to reveal himself over thousands of years in the Bible, only to say, “okay, now I am going to change, but for the next several thousand years, I am not going to reveal anything else.” The point of having revelation “cease” is precisely because he has already revealed all that we need to know! And, as Bull has shown, all that we need to know (the Bible) is framed in terms of patterns (typology).

There are, according to Bull, three, seven-step patterns: creation, dominion and festivals. These three are divided into seven steps which are all formed in a chiastic structure. The organization of the material helps one to “see” the patterns in the Bible and to begin to read the Bible accordingly. I recommend, then, this book. Of course, in the bibliography, Bull cites Jordan’s Through New Eyes, which, when I first read it (when it originally came out), it changed everything for me. Theology was not something only intellectual, but also intellectually visual – a seeing in the mind’s eye. This allowed for the conceptualizing of a “covenantal world” within “the world”. The covenantal world (“the world above”) must be understood not so that we can escape the world below (creation), but so that we can have dominion over creation through the proper understanding of the purpose of creation (Gn 1). If these concepts are ever split apart so as to have no relationship together in the Redemption, then some form of Gnosticism or Escapism will result. Bull ever keeps our feet grounded while he soars the clouds of the spiritual. You will do well to get this book and read it. Cultivate its fruits in your own studies. There is much to glean from it.

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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.

Decades ago, my pastor and his wife worked in Papua New Guinea for what was then known as Gospel Recordings (now known as Global Recordings). They have many stories of their own and I hope to share some of those, but this one was related by one of their colleagues, who was translating the Gospel of Matthew into one of the local dialects. He left out the genealogy in Matthew 1 because he didn’t think it was relevant.

With the help of the locals, he completed his translation and it was read to the entire tribe. They weren’t very impressed. They asked if there was any more, to which he replied that there was a genealogy at the beginning. They requested to hear it. He read it to them. Their reply?

“Ah, now we know this story to be true.”