(Recorded October 2013)

“The serious magical endeavour and the serious scientific endeavour are twins: one was sickly and died, the other strong and throve. But they were twins. They were born of the same impulse.”

The Dangerous Trajectory of Those Who Seek to Be Gods

An excerpt from Joe Rigney’s new book, Live Like a Narnian: Christian Discipleship in
Lewis’s Chronicles.

Reading Lewis today, it’s easy to believe that he was a prophet (or at least the son of a prophet). His analysis of education, government, culture, society, and the church has proved to be unusually prescient. One of the chief reasons for this is that Lewis understood the deep reality of narrative, of story, of progression and trajectory.

This is something that many today, for all of our talk of Christian worldview, do not truly grasp—or at least, if we grasp it, we don’t always apply it with the level of insight that he does.
In Chapter 3, I showed how in Edmund’s character Lewis communicates to us the profound truth that we are all headed somewhere and sooner or later, we’re bound to arrive. We may not like our destination, but that is neither here nor there. We have all boarded the train, and it is inexorably going somewhere. This is what Douglas Wilson calls an inescapable question: It is not whether we will have a destination, but which destination we will have. Not whether we will choose to go, but where.

Lewis is capable of portraying this truth through a single character, or, as in The Magician’s Nephew, through a comparison of a few characters. As we read about Uncle Andrew, Jadis, and Digory, we are meant to see something crucial, not only for us as individuals, but for our communities and indeed the world as a whole.

The Tyranny of Scientific Conditioners

Before reflecting on these characters, it’s worth reminding ourselves of some things that Lewis writes about in The Abolition of Man.

There Lewis argues that men who have rejected the Tao (that is, traditional morality, the wisdom of the ages, the God-given order of the universe) have substituted for it the desire to conquer Nature through science and technology. A number of results follow from this.

First, “what we call Man’s power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.” [1] Because we are aiming to conquer Nature through science and technology, those who possess the technology have the power and ability to give or withhold it from the rest of mankind. In this way, “Man’s conquest of Nature, if the dreams of some scientific planners are realized, means the rule of a few hundreds of men over billions upon billions of men.” [2]

Second, because the conquest of Nature includes the attempted modification of human nature, such an endeavor truly means Nature’s conquest of Man, that is, the reduction of Man to an “artefact,” an object, or, in other words, the turning of Man into a “thing”—a He into an it. The scientific planners primarily engaged in this conquest are therefore compelled by a lust for power, the desire to control and shape the destinies of the rest of humanity (this is why Lewis refers to them as “the Conditioners”).

Third, in order to modify Man, these Conditioners must begin to “use” particular men as test subjects and guinea pigs. To do this, they must set aside their shared humanity and reject the common Law which stands over all men (namely, the Tao). As Lewis says, “the conditioners have been emancipated from all that. . . . They themselves are outside, above.” In seeking to be gods, they have ceased to be men, at least men in the traditional sense. They are, in essence, Former Men, “men who have sacrificed their own share in traditional humanity in order to devote themselves to the task of deciding what ‘Humanity’ shall henceforth mean.” [3]

Fourth, the last quotation introduces the key element of Time into the picture. For the tyranny of the Conditioners extends beyond their own generation. Indeed, one of their fundamental motivations is to shape what Man shall be in the future.

In order to understand fully what Man’s power over Nature, and therefore the power of some men over other men, really means, we must picture the race extended in time from the date of its emergence to that of its extinction. Each generation exercises power over its successors: and each, in so far as it modifies the environment bequeathed to it and rebels against tradition, resists and limits the power of its predecessors. [4]

Finally, it’s worth highlighting the historical connection Lewis draws between the scientist’s quest for power and the magician’s lust for the same.

I have described as a ‘magician’s bargain’ that process whereby man surrenders object after object, and finally himself, to Nature in return for power. And I meant what I said. The fact that the scientist has succeeded where the magician failed has put such a wide contrast between them in popular thought that the real story of the birth of Science is misunderstood. You will even find people who write about the sixteenth century as if Magic were a medieval survival and Science the new thing that came in to sweep it away. Those who have studied the period know better. There was very little magic in the Middle Ages: the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are the high noon of magic. The serious magical endeavour and the serious scientific endeavour are twins: one was sickly and died, the other strong and throve. But they were twins. They were born of the same impulse. [5]

Later he writes,

There is something which unites magic and applied science while separating both from the ‘wisdom’ of earlier ages. For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men: the solution is a technique; and both, in the practice of this technique, are ready to do things hitherto regarded as disgusting and impious—such as digging up and mutilating the dead. [6]

With this background, we’re now in a position to compare Uncle Andrew, Jadis, and Digory . . . .

_________________________
1. Lewis, The Abolition of Man, 47.
2. Lewis, 49.
3. Lewis, 73.
4. Lewis, 47–46.
5. Lewis, 63.
6. Lewis, 63–68.

Peter Leithart has posted a response from Joe Rigney concerning the meaning of Luke 12-13. We had a look at the structure of these chapters here recently (See 666 in the Gospel of Luke), so I thought it would be interesting to see how these two approaches “speak to each other.”

Joe writes:

In 12:49-53, Jesus says that he’s come to cast fire on the earth and divide families. He goes on to make a point about his audience’s ability to discern weather: they recognize rain in the first clouds, and they recognize scorching heat in the first breeze from the south. The common point is that we recognize major weather events in their small precursors. We can see storms in seed form. The hypocrisy of the Jews was their unwillingness to apply this basic principle to judgments: They knew how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but not the present time (12:56). They had not learned the lesson of Amos 4:6-13: the famine, drought, blight, pestilence, and raids are simply the warm-up, the warning of what is to come if the people don’t repent. Failure to interpret the events and heed the warning will lead to the ultimate judgment: Prepare to meet your God.

Following this point through in Ch. 13, Jesus is telling them that the fall of the tower and the mixing of the blood is a precursor to a greater calamity for the whole nation. Pilate’s mingling of the blood is the cloud; the falling of the tower is the south wind. The desecration and destruction of AD 66-70 is the storm and the scorching heat. They’re drawing conclusions about the individuals involved instead of realizing that such calamities are a message to them, a merciful warning from God.

In this light, the intervening verses in 12:57-59 make sense. Israel is the accused on the way to the magistrate; judgment is coming. Now is the time to settle with the accuser, to make things right. Otherwise, you will pass through the full range of the court system: accuser, judge, and officer, and find yourself in prison until you can pay.

Thus, there’s a tight unity to Jesus’ entire discourse at this point, and one that ought to be instructive for us as we try to learn what it means to interpret the present time.

This is an important observation. It means that the “eternal” message behind Jesus’ words is secondary. This was not a threat that would be carried out at the end of history, but in the near future, the “soon” of Revelation 1:1-3.

Tying this to the Covenant-literary structure, we see the fall of the tower at Ascension as not only a great irony, but also a “promise.” Firstfruits is the “taste” of Pentecost, but it is also the promise of a greater harvest, a more mature on of grapes and olives, at Tabernacles. And what do we find at that point in the structure? Jesus weeping over not just the fall of a single tower (Covenant Head) but the entire Old Covenant Body, the city.

On the positive side, the Ascension of the true Firstfruits, Jesus, was also a sign of the coming rise of a New Covenant Body, pictured in the healing of the Woman who was bent over. The “uprightness” of Jesus as Head would be accounted to the Church through faith.

This “division” between the believers and unbelievers gives us the “plunder and plagues” at Maturity, the true Jews and the false Jews.

Now, does the historical fulfillment negate the use of Jesus’ warning today? Not at all. It demonstrates that God does work in history and that His judgment are just. Modern conservatives continue to overlook the first century significance of most of the New Testament, and keep peddling “application” as if it is interpretation. Consequently, the words of Jesus seem to have no power. They float somewhere in the sky, and will be irrelevant until the final judgment. This is a sad state of affairs. The fact that Jesus’ words came to pass in the Land means they will come to pass in the World. Joe’s final line is the best kind of application.

Joe Rigney has a great piece on the Trinity House website. With apologies to Joe, I’ll give it to you in a nutshell, then make some brief observations. But make sure you read the entire article.
Turning Babel Into A Beast

Rigney asks what might be the church’s best strategy in the near future. Ignoring the same sex marriage debate would allow more time, energy and resources for the fight against abortion. It is better to work for the protection of those who are truly innocent.
But then he takes a step back, and notes that abortion and same sex marriage are symptoms of the same sickness. How did the prophets, Jesus and the apostles get to the heart of the matter in the Scriptures?

In his slaughter of the innocents, Herod the Great became a devouring dragon. But how did John deal with the Herod of his day (Herod Antipas)? He provoked him by publicly pointing out his adultery and calling him to repent. Herod was afraid to have him killed, but the wrath of Herodias forced his hand. This prefigured the events that would follow a generation later, when an army of Spirit-filled prophets would challenge the authority of the entire Herodian line. The false prophet, the harlot and the beast are the Herods, their post-Pentecost demonic Temple worship, and the authority of Rome with which they conspired. These were corporate, “fullgrown” versions of Adam, Eve and the serpent. But serpents only deceive. When they have “seed,” they multiply, take on a body, and become a devouring dragon.

Rigney calls on some helpful observations from Peter Leithart’s recent book, Between Babel and Beast: America and Empires in Biblical Perspective. Leithart rightly says that a Babel is an empire with a cultic heart. Rigney tells us that the way to deal with abortion and sodomy is to provoke Babel, the harlot and turn her into a beast. He writes:

“…it may be that the best way to hasten the demonstration of God’s righteousness and topple the abortion-regime is to awaken the ire of the unbelieving world by getting under their skin with respect to their sexual-otry, homosexual and otherwise. To put it in biblical terms, if we want God to judge the Herods for their baby-killing, idolatry, and greed, we should never tire of pointing out how offensive it is that he has his brother’s wife (or his wife’s brother, as the case may be). In short, we should endeavor to so speak and act that we soberly but gladly accept that putting an end to the massacre of unborn innocents may require us to get in between the Babel and the innocents, however we can.”

Rigney is calling us to become human shields, to allow our own blood to be spilled so that the blood of the innocents might be avenged. When Christians preach boldly, and some are martyred, this allows the powers to fill up their sins. Rigney asks the question we all ask: “Why has God not yet judged our nations for the slaughter of millions of unborn children?” The answer is that Jesus, by His Spirit, has legal representatives all across the earth. He is waiting for us to be provoked into action, to incarnate His own indignation against the wicked, to be His eyes and then to be His mouth. When the state begins to persecute and slaughter Christians, it is the “last days,” that is, the last days of that state. It was so with the power of Rome and with the power of Holy Rome, and it will be so with the secular monstrosity which Western Culture has become. The best way to hasten the destruction of the dragon, as it was with Pharaoh and with Haman, is to provoke it. When the dragon begins to devour the sons of God, God will avenge both them and the innocent sons of men.

“The Bible seems to suggest that the blood of martyrs fills up the cup of God’s wrath more quickly than the blood of innocents alone. It is this shift—-from the blood of innocents to the blood of martyrs—-that rouses God’s long-sleeping wrath which throws down the Beast, either through cataclysmic judgment or in massive Spirit-wrought awakening (or perhaps both).”

In the Garden of Eden, Babel was Eve, the mother of all living, who, with Adam’s approval, surrendered her offspring to the serpent. In the first century, it was Jerusalem, who through a Covenant with Rome, surrendered her truest sons, “Jews indeed,” to be devoured, and was filled with their blood. How would we identify Leithart’s definition of a “Babelic” empire today?

Based upon what I wrote yesterday, the beast of today is secularism, a counterfeit church, a religion masquerading as neutrality, as mere pragmatism. But this modern beast, as with all the previous ones, is a direct result of the Church’s failure to remain spotless and to witness boldly.

So I disagree with the idea of “turning Babel into a beast.” They are distinct entities, although united by adultery. Eve and the serpent were not one and the same. Herodias and Herod were not one and the same. Herod and Pilate were not one and the same: they were united in friendship over the murder of Christ. Herodian worship and the Rome which finally turned against Christians under Nero were not one and the same, though they too were briefly united over the murder of the firstfruits church. So who is the harlot today, corporately speaking? The harlot today–the murderess of modernity–is the only one that ever was. It is the unfaithful Church, hiding her identity. It those Christians who keep silent, who compromise with unrighteousness, who believe the godless when they tell them their protests are offensive and uncaring and intolerant, who ridicule those who believe in the Creation and the Bible’s chronology, who teach their own doctrines from the pulpit instead of the entire Word of God. Babel cannot be transformed into the beast. She is us. Babel can only ever be cut in two, placed on the altar and set alight as the daughter of a priest, passing through the fire to be divided once again into ashes (serpentine dust) and smoke (a resurrected bride) as she was in the Revelation and the Reformation. This means that all the current proceedings are allowed for the purification of the Church. God will let the innocents die, again and again, in Egypt, in Jerusalem, in America, for the sake of His true sons and daughters, those of the Spirit, His co-regents.

Then Mordecai told them to reply to Esther, “Do not think to yourself that in the king’s palace you will escape any more than all the other Jews. For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” (Esther 4:13-14)

This is actually where Rigney finally takes us: a call to purity and boldness for the Church. It is an altar call with real flames.

While Jesus clearly did many signs throughout his ministry (2:23; 6:2; 20:30), most scholars agree that there are seven signs that are emphasized in the Gospel of John, but only six are universally identified.

1) Water into wine (2:1-11)
2) Healing the official’s son (4:46-54)
3) Healing the paralytic (5:1-18)
4) Feeding the 5,000 (6:5-14)
5) Healing the man born blind (9:1-7)
6) Raising of Lazarus (11:1-45)

When it comes to the seventh sign, some scholars suggest that walking on water [1] is the seventh sign:

Option 1

1) Water into wine (2:1-11)
2) Healing the official’s son (4:46-54)
3) Healing the paralytic (5:1-18)
4) Feeding the 5,000 (6:5-14)
5) Walking on the water (6:16-24)
6) Healing the man born blind (9:1-7)
7) Raising of Lazarus (11:1-45)

Others suggest that the cleansing of the temple [2] is the seventh sign:

Option 2

1) Water into wine (2:1-11)
2) Cleansing of the temple (2:12-22)
3) Healing the official’s son (4:46-54)
4) Healing the paralytic (5:1-18)
5) Feeding the 5,000 (6:5-14)
6) Healing the man born blind (9:1-7)
7) Raising of Lazarus (11:1-45)

Both of these options founder on the same fact: neither possesses the characteristics of the remaining undisputed signs:

Signs are 1) public, supernatural acts 2) performed by Jesus himself that 3) show the glory of Jesus to the disciples (2:11) and crowds (6:2; 12:18), 4) are designed to bring about faith in Jesus as the Son of God (2:11; 4:48; 6:14; 7:31; 20:31) or 5) to harden the unbelieving (12:37-43), 6) are explicitly identified as signs within the gospel, 7) confirm his identity as the one sent by God (2:23; 3:2), and 8 ) emphasize that Jesus brings life to the world through physical signification. [3]

Walking on water was not performed before crowds, is not identified as a sign, and does not demonstrate that Jesus brings life to the world through physical signification. Cleansing the temple is not a supernatural act, is not identified as a sign (though it does provoke a request for a sign), and does not demonstrate that Jesus brings life to the world through physical signification.

What then are the remaining options for the seventh sign? The two most likely options are either the cross or the resurrection. Because both options lend themselves to a chiastic analysis, I’ve displayed both options as a chiasm:

Option 3: The Cross

A Turning water into wine (2:1-11)

B Healing the official’s son who is near death (4:46-54)

C Healing the paralytic who sat near the pool at Bethesda on a Sabbath (5:1-18)

D Feeding the 5,000 with bread (6:5-14)

C’ Healing the man born blind in the pool of Siloam on a Sabbath (9:1-7)

B’ Raising Lazarus from the dead (11:1-45)

A’ The Crucifixion of Jesus (18:16-30)

A The Resurrection of Jesus: the beginning of a new creation (cf. John 1:1, 20:1, 19)

Option 4: The Resurrection

A Turning water into wine (2:1-11)

B Healing the official’s son who is near death (4:46-54)

C Healing the paralytic who sat near the pool at Bethesda on a Sabbath (5:1-18)

D Feeding the 5,000 with bread (6:5-14)

C’ Healing the man born blind in the pool of Siloam on a Sabbath (9:1-7)

B’ Raising Lazarus from the dead (11:1-45)

A’ The Resurrection of Jesus (20)

The strength of these chiasms is as follows:

1) B and B’ both have to do with life and death: the official’s son is about to die and Lazarus dies as a result of Jesus’ intentional delay. Jesus tells the official that “your son will live” (4:53) and then raises Lazarus from the dead. In both cases, it is Jesus’ word that is efficacious in producing life.

2) C and C’ both revolve around the healing of a disability on a Sabbath (5:9, 9:14) with reference to a pool of water. The paralytic is lying near the Pool of Bethesda and Jesus tells the blind man to wash in the pool of Siloam.

The strength of Option 3 is primarily the connection between A, D, and A’: Wine, Bread, and Cross. Such a structure emphasizes the strong sacramental theology of John’s gospel. Additionally, given that John’s gospel is introduced as a new Genesis (“In the beginning…” John 1:1), it is significant that John 20 emphasizes that Jesus was raised “on the first day of the week” (20:1, 19). Thus, the resurrection is not the seventh sign of the old creation, but the first sign of the new creation. The chief weakness of this proposal is that the cross is not identified as a sign within the gospel nor is it a supernatural act like the remaining signs.

The strength of Option 4 is that the resurrection is identified as a sign in John 2:18-22. In response to the Jews’ request for a sign, Jesus says, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” Significantly, Jesus portrays himself as active in his resurrection (see also 10:18), a feature that is unique to John’s gospel. The reason for this anomaly is that signs are performed by Jesus’ himself. Additionally, the resurrection is a fitting final sign because it is the pre-eminent demonstration of Jesus’ bringing life to the world through the transformation of his own body.

It is possible that Option 3 and 4 can be combined so that the seventh sign is the death and resurrection together. Support for such a reading lies in the fact that the request for a sign after the temple cleansing is met with a statement about both the destruction and raising of the temple of Jesus’ body. Likewise, in John 10:17-18, Jesus claims to have authority both to lay down his life and to take it up again. Additionally, while mention of “signs” ceases after 12:37, 12:33 records that Jesus “signified” (semaino) what kind of death he was going to die (cf. 18:32; 21:19). Thus, a type of signification continues in discussions of his death, so that both his death and resurrection are identified as ‘signs.’ [4]

Well, that’s a meticulous analysis. Thanks to Joe for sharing it. Here’s my go at it, based on the Bible Matrix (which is presented here for your interest and not to detract from Joe’s analysis in any way).

Identifying Lazarus with Trumpets (resurrection) also has the extra benefit of making sense for us of the inclusion of the comment from the crowd, “by this time he stinketh”! The response of the corpse of Lazarus to the voice of Jesus is a “bridal” response (so much for a strictly “objective” New Covenant).

Ascension is often two-fold in the pattern (Altar and Table) but sometimes it is presented as a three-level house, which it seems to be to my mind in this case. It allows us to include Jesus’ walking on the water, which, as Joe points out, is not identified as a sign. It was only witnessed by the disciples. It also ties the end of the “Head” section of the structure to the end of the “Body,” which is Peter’s dominion over the same “Gentile” waters as a fisher of men. Jesus takes dominion over the nations in heaven (as Head – waters above) and the disciples take dominion over them on the earth (as Body – waters below).

________________________________________

[1] Mark Strauss, Four Portraits: One Jesus.
[2] Kostenberger.
[3] These characteristics are based in Nick Nowalk’s criteria set forth in his paper. I have modified and supplemented Nick’s criteria with my own.

[4] This was an excerpt from Joe’s teaching notes on the Gospel of John. Regarding attribution, he writes: “I forget which scholars adopt which view, but I know that I drew from Kostenberger’s commentary, Carson, and Strauss’s Four Portraits: One Jesus. The section about the definition of the signs is a slight modification of a friend’s categorization based on a paper he wrote in seminary arguing for the resurrection as the seventh sign. His name is Nick Nowalk, and he blogs here. The actual argumentation about which view to adopt is also a conglomeration of my own and Nowalk’s. I’m the one who noticed the Eucharistic possibility (I think), and he argues strongly for the resurrection view (though he’s open to the both-and solution).”

“Churches that don’t practice church discipline, whether baptist or paedobaptist, have AIDS. They’ve got no way to fight off infection.”

The seven part series contains the following topics:
1. Introduction
2. Personal Piety
3. God’s End in Creation
4. The Church
5. The Trinity
6. Typology
7. Edwards and Lewis

YouTube Playlist of all 7 topics