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

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

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

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

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

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

“Touching a bone made an Israelite unclean. Burning bones upon Jeroboam’s altars defiled them. This was not because bones were unholy but because they were already holy.”

Here’s a new chapter from God’s Kitchen (members only).

“This is now bone of my bones
And flesh of my flesh;
She shall be called Woman,
Because she was taken out of Man.”
Genesis 2:23

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“…you have come… to the blood of sprinkling that speaks [more useful, more serviceable, more advantageous] things than [that of] Abel.”  Hebrews 12:22-24

In Biblical Horizons newsletter 203, James Jordan argues that since Cain’s “exodus” to build a city occurred around 130 years after the Fall, he was publicly humiliated before thousands. He would have been accompanied by at least 1000 people, so he didn’t build the city on his own.

This means that Adam, like Solomon, was father to a divided kingdom. 1 Kings presents Solomon as a new Adam, even down to his naming of animals in his biological studies. Cain was like Jeroboam, shown mercy, given a chance, but who then caused Israel to sin.

What does Genesis give us after this? We have Adam as a failed Moses, Cain in a corrupt exodus. What follows after the murder of Abel is the construction of a false Tabernacle in the wilderness. The list of the talented is a corrupt artisans guild. It is the Aholiab and Bezalel from hell. (No wonder the Freemason password is Tubal-Cain.) [1]

Their father, Lamech, was a murderer behind a pretence of justice. The authority to execute murderers was not given by God until He gave it to Noah. Lamech took vengeance into his own hands and sang it as liturgy at the Altar of the Abyss. Cain’s rage was institutionalised. It reached full term in Genesis 6, with intermarriage between the two kingdoms.[2] A violent society was the outcome of innocent blood shed at the Altar.

Why did the blood of Christ then speak of greater things than the blood of Abel, crying as a witness [martyr] from the ground? Abel’s blood was not avenged until the flood. The author of Hebrews was calling his readers to be courageous and reassuring them that the blood of the martyrs would be avenged. Just like Abel, vengeance came like a flood. In fact, vengeance for the blood of all the martyrs from Abel onwards fell upon that generation. As men were (idolatrously) marrying and giving in marriage, with murderous wives like Herodias, an Athaliah and a Jezebel, the false Tabernacle was washed away in a sudden destruction.[3]

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[1] See Unashamed Artisans.
[2] See James Jordan’s very interesting The Nephilim Factor.
[3] See My Brother’s Keeper,  The Sons of God and the Daughters of Men and Esther’s Evil Twin.

or Worship-styles of the Bitter and Twisted

Under Rehoboam, Solomon’s kingdom became even more like Egypt. Solomon had imposed greater taxes upon his people than were appropriate, and his son Rehoboam took this to the extreme. So the Lord brought about a new Exodus, with Jeroboam as a kind of Moses. David felt guilty for cutting the corner off Saul’s robe — ie. grasping at Saul’s symbol of office — but to Jeroboam the prophet gave ten of the twelve pieces of his robe, the ten northern tribes.

Jeroboam was given the same blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience as are all Adams promised a kingdom, but he turned it into a kingdom of envy. The northern tribes envied the worship in Jerusalem, so, like Aaron, he appeased the people with golden calves. He even named his two sons after the sons of Aaron whom the Lord incinerated for offering strange fire. It was harlotrous worship.

Our worship is now centred in heaven, so churches founded after a split have no real reason to envy. Still, we manage it. If a new church is founded because the old church is apostate, is it characterised by an emancipated love for God, or is it twisted into greater bondage by a bitterness towards those who lorded it over us, making our escape from Pharaoh into a blind alley wilderness graveyard.

In the wilderness, faithful saints shine like the sun, moon and stars. In the wilderness, those who commit harlotry have their bones spread beneath the sun, moon and stars whom they worshipped (Jer. 8).

As usual, the Lord waited a generation, giving Jeroboam a chance to repent. Eventually, his altar was defiled with bones. Judah, the “originating church”, did not learn from the fate of the Northern Kingdom under Assyria, and even the “official worship” was defiled by God.

Worship is not a competition.