Jesus’ words in John 14:23 follow the blueprint for His work in God’s people in the 40 years between AD30 and AD70.

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“All those who hate me love death.” Proverbs 8:36

Ralph Smith notes that Western culture, particularly the United States, is suffering from a clash of two worldviews, two competing narratives that “vie for the right to define our world.”

A review of the biblical story already sets the biblical worldview against much modern thought. The theory of evolution, of course, contrasts sharply with the miraculous creation of the world in six days and man’s special creation as the image of God. The story of Adam and Eve as the original family stands in stark, if implicit opposition to all forms of racism, feminists’ denial of different sexual roles for male and female, homosexuality, and polygamy, to name only a few areas in which contemporary thought clashes with the Christian worldview.

Theories of man that see the basic problems of human life as psychological or sociological are undermined by the truth that man is homo adorans by nature, and that all of his problems trace their source to Adam’s sin. Denying that the human body is good or asserting that our problems arise from our animal past also contradict the biblical narrative. The simple story of the creation of the world and man’s place in it has profound implications for the way life should be lived. These unfold as the biblical story continues. To build our worldview in terms of the Bible’s teaching requires us to stand firm against most of the thinking of our day, especially in the academy, where opposition to Christianity is deep and widespread.

The story of the Big Bang—in the West the “scientific” alternative to the biblical story, which posits initial conditions, an explosion, and a process of development, all enshrouded in unfathomable mystery—tells of a world of impersonal forces that by accident or by some deterministic formula produced the world we live in today. There is no special meaning in the big-bang world, no special purpose, and no explanation for the way things are, including all the misery and suffering of the world. What we see is what is, nothing more and nothing less. Why should men choose this view? Because of the inescapable demand of science? Hardly. Men choose to anchor their souls in the sands of nothingness and despair rather than turn to the God who created them. They are just what the book of Genesis and the rest of the Bible shows us all to be, sinners who prefer their own false and empty hopes to the divine promise of eternal life through faith in the God of all grace.

The biblical story of creation, fall, and redemption in a story that exalts man above the animal kingdom and gives him the astonishing quality of godlikeness. Personhood makes evil possible, for persons have the power to choose, and Adam chose to pervert the covenant relationship. Because of man’s sin, the history of the world includes profound tragedy, but the story of God’s grace in redemption is the story of victory over tragedy. It is indeed the greatest story ever told. It is the story of the Son of God who became a man and died for our sins in order to save us from sin and the devil and remake us into a new covenant in a new creation. The biblical story finds its climax in the story of the incarnation of God and the saving work of Jesus, which ushers in a new world, the kingdom of God.

Ralph Allan Smith, Trinity and Reality: An Introduction to the Christian Faith, pp. 108-110.

or The Disunited State of Samaria

“…and they are seven kings;
five have fallen,
one is,
the other has not yet come;
and when he comes,
he must remain a little while.” (Revelation 17:10)

Time for another weird one. Although it’s probably only weird to the conservative evangelical Bible scholars among us. [1]

Albert’s post on marriage the other day allows us to see the context of the sin of the Samaritan woman. James Jordan observes that this woman was most likely a victim of this unjust system, hence the other Samaritans’ readiness to believe her testimony.

Firstly, whenever the Spirit leaves a woman unnamed, we are to see her as a type of The Woman Whose Offspring Would Crush The Serpent’s Head. There is the millstone woman, Samson’s mother, and many others. When Jesus refers to His mother as Woman, that is what He is referring to. Now, she is not that woman, but the historical narrative orchestrated by God will show us some aspect of the Woman. And the story of the Woman Samaria does just that.

Secondly, this woman had had five husbands, and was now in a de facto relationship. That is six men. It is the five-points of a broken Covenant, with a non-Covenant Man on Day 6. What we see here is a division between the legal side of Covenant and the relational side. Ralph Smith writes:

“Marriage, the very first covenantal relationship among men and the foundation of all others is the quintessential covenant. The relationship binds — ‘till death.’ It is a structured relationship with authority and roles distributed between husband and wife. It is a personal relationship— ‘husbands love your wives as Christ also loved the Church and gave Himself for it.’ A man and woman living together without the bond of the covenant may have a personal relationship, but they are guilty of fornication. A man and woman married may fulfill the structural requirements of the covenant bond, but fail to love one another, separating the personal from the structural aspect of the marriage covenant.

The covenant oath, the personal love, and the structures of authority and responsibility are all required for a Biblically righteous marriage. What the marriage covenant illustrates is that the covenant is a ’social structure.’ As Jordan points out, in the Biblical notion of the covenant, law and love, form and freedom, are in harmony. The love of the covenant is expressed not in spite of the oath or in spite of fulfilling the duties of the covenant, but precisely through the solemn taking of an oath and the faithful fulfillment of one’s duty.” [2]

Jesus turns up, and He, typologically, is the seventh Man. He is not only the Covenant of Torah (five books, and Ten Words soon to be broken at the foot of the mountain), He is going to replace the false Adam and his whole house.

There is also the division between the two mountains, Zion and Gerizim, Judah and Samaria. Not only is this woman with her sixth man, but the sixth matrix step concerns blessing and cursing, the two goats of Atonement (the bride) and the two mountains between which Israel passed into Canaan (Ebal and Gerizim). Jesus is going to supersede both these mountains with a new worship, one that is not divided. (Note: He was also going to rip Olivet (Judaism) in two for the church to pass through “unmolested” as a smoking firepot body to His blazing torch head.)

Now, this poor woman was a picture of division. In a sense, she was the woman in Eden, torn between two lovers, the true Word of God in Adam, and the delightful un-word of the serpent. (Just another thought here on the purpose of having a physical animal: God’s people fought with flesh-and-blood until the Spirit was given. Now we can fight the very spirits.) She is divided between her legal protector who is content to watch and see if she dies, and a seducer who shows her an inordinate amount of “affection.”

The Samaritan, like Mary Magdalene, symbolizes for us the Bride redeemed from the false seven-eyed “Lampstand” Law of the evil one. Jesus casts out the seven demons. Used and abused by men, Eve, the mother of all, became a Legion, a haunt of jackals. That is humanity, divided and filled with the wrong spirit.

Also, her five broken marriages might possibly be the five major Covenants (Adam/Noah/Abram/Moses/David+Restoration). That makes Herod the sixth Man, the man who lived with her without a Covenant, and Jesus the seventh, her Kinsman redeemer/avenger, the one who would free her from the Adamic curse and reunite her split personality by the Spirit into one new Man.

Some have said that this woman cannot picture the people of God. She is not innocent. But she is really TWO women isn’t she, like the two prostitutes in one house? The flesh lusts against the Spirit. So Jesus is Solomon, “bring me a sword,” and she is suddenly no longer bipolar. The seventh Man casts out the seven demons, the false Shekinah, and she is clothed and in her right mind (That chapter in Matthew follows the same pattern. See Why Jesus Healed Some.) In Christ, Judah and Samaria were reunited on one mountain.

On the BH list, John Barach also commented:

Mike points out that Jesus, here, is the seventh man.  Note, too, that it’s not only that the woman has been married to or involved with SIX men. It’s also the case that it’s the SIXTH hour … but Jesus tells her that “an hour is coming…” (Earlier, of course, we’ve seen Jesus turn SIX jars of Old Covenant purification water into New Covenant celebration wine.) [4]

Something else to notice, if you’re so inclined: According to Fowler White and Warren Gage, in their John-Revelation project (which you can still find online somewhere), John and Revelation are chiastically related, so that this woman is parallel to Babylon, the great harlot (“five have fallen, one is, the other has not yet come”). Whatever that means.

It means that the breaking of the Covenant in the Garden of Eden has structured every part of history and biblical revelation since the beginning. It is written into us, and it is written for us, if we have eyes to see.

____________________________________

[1] Never watch a clever film with a conservative Bible scholar. He won’t get it. He might have Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek under his belt (and I most certainly envy that), but it is becoming more and more apparent to me that each one of these guys should have failed English. They have no imagination whatsoever. I guess that’s the way God works. We each have our gifts. We are all splinters of The Door. There, did anyone get that reference? We need to read the Bible like children. (“Kids these days. They just don’t get scared like they used to.”) Anyone capable of simple analysis of poetry, music or film, or recognizing a subtle allusion in any of these (my kids play Can You Guess Where This Film Or TV Quote Is From? in the car) can cope with the Bible’s themes. But these gents I am coming across (it’s Sydney Anglicans for me) amaze me. They lack the intuition which comes from reading or watching a long-running series. Their compromised worldview stops them from entering the world of the Bible (which is actually the world in which they live). But the kids in my high school Bible classes do get it, which means that due to a combination of postmodernism and good Bible teaching, the next generation of Bible scholars will be as incredibly perceptive as the current crop are bovine and unimaginative. (See also Typology Is Female , Exegetical Blinkers 1, 2 and 3, Cross-eyed Exegesis and Systematic Theology.) Now, I believe systematic theology is important, but it is a theology that is formed and not filled, just like the incomplete theology of Nicodemus. The Bible communicates truth through our imaginations, especially the bits that scholars entirely mishandle and then pat each other on the back as though they have actually dealt with the text as a text. (While I’m at it, see also Mercury Rising).
[2] Ralph Allan Smith, James Jordan’s Trinitarianism, www.trinitarianism.com
[3] John’s gospel is also following the Tabernacle pattern (at three levels!). In the secondary pattern, we are up to the Laver. The woman is by a well, a bride found by Abraham’s “oldest servant.”

Ralph Smith helpfully applies the five point Covenant model to the history of Israel between the captivity and Christ:

1) Transcendence: God’s sovereign control over the nations was revealed in this period of the old covenant more than any other. Daniel foresaw the whole history of the world from the time of Babylon to the time of establishment of the kingdom of the Messiah (Dan. 2:27ff.; 7:1ff.). Clearly the kingdoms of this world were in His hand and He was guiding history where He willed. For the Jews as a nation, this greater revelation of God’s Kingship was important for they would be apparently in the hands of unbelieving rulers through much of this period, but the fact that God had predicted the history of the entire era from the beginning put all of this in a different light. The Jews learned anew that “The king’s heart is in the hand of the LORD, as the rivers of water: He turneth it whithersoever He will” (Prv. 21:1).

2) Hierarchy: Civil rule had been taken from the Jews and given to the Gentile empires, but the Gentiles were appointed as protectors, not persecutors. So long as the Jews were faithful to God they would find Gentile rulers favored them above the other nations, as, for example, the king of Persia favored the Jews in the days of Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther and Mordecai. The temple had a new priesthood examined and approved by Ezra (Ezr. 2:62). Jerusalem was rebuilt no longer as a civil power, but, what was far more important, the world center for the worship of the true God. Also, sometime near the beginning of this era, the scribes and the Pharisees apparently developed as a “prophetic” ministry of law experts to teach the people God’s word. In the beginning, they were, no doubt, faithful to God.

3) Ethics: The civil law given to Israel through Moses could no longer be applied in its literal fulness, for the Jews would have to conform to the civil ordinances of the ruling empire. The most obvious example of laws that had to change are the Mosaic regulations concerning the king, but other laws were affected, too. In some cases, this might include the definition of a crime, in other cases it may mean the imposition of a punishment different from that specified in the Mosaic law. We know, for example, that Jews under the Romans were not allowed to execute criminals and the sin idolatry would not have been defined as a crime against the State. Land laws, too, had to be modified, for after the return from the Exile not all families could prove their identity and, no doubt, many of the original families no longer existed. Add to that different boundaries, and clearly the division of the land in the days of Joshua would no longer be relevant. In sum, various modifications of the civil and social laws were required, but the essence of the law — the righteous requirement of the law — remained unchanged.

4) Oath: During this era the most conspicuous leaders of the nation were the prophets and teachers of Scripture — the scribes and pharisees. If these men were faithful to God, they would lead the nation in righteousness and the Gentile kingdom would show favor to the Jews, which is what we see, for example in the books of Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther — God sovereignly led the kings of Persia to show special kindness to the Jewish people. The Jews would be blessed by God so long as they kept His law and submitted to the Gentile authorities He placed over them. During much of this era, however, the Jews were oppressed, not because of the Gentile empires’ wickedness, but because of their own unfaithfulness to God.

5) Succession: The Abrahamic promise of global blessing was not in any way hindered, but actually facilitated by the fact that the Jews were under the rule of Gentile empires. More than any other time in their history, Jews had opportunities for trade and travel, which spread the knowledge of God into Gentile lands. It is no coincidence that the reforms of world religions took place during this period. Changes in the religions of Greece, India, and other nations may well have been due, at least in part, to the influence of ambassadors sent by Daniel from Babylon’s court, traders from the Persian empire, and other Jews who brought the knowledge of the true God with them wherever they went.

But Paul complains that the Jews failed their mission as ambassadors for God’s kingdom: “Behold, thou art called a Jew, and restest in the law, and makest thy boast of God . . . Thou that makest thy boast of the law, through breaking the law dishonourest thou God? For the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles through you, as it is written” (Rm. 2:17, 23-24). By the end of this era, the Jews, rather than inheriting the world, had won for themselves ignominy because of their hypocrisy.

From The Covenantal Structure of the Bible by Ralph A. Smith

Personal and structural…

“Jordan’s definition of the covenant is striking. It unveils both the Trinitarian nature of the covenant and the covenantal nature of the Trinity, as well as the connections between a Trinitarian definition of the covenant and the structure of Biblical covenants granted to man. His teaching on the subject is not summarized in any single place, but his work The Law of the Covenant contains a compact and highly suggestive discussion, introducing the basic issues.

In this exposition of Biblical law, Jordan explains the covenant in these words, ‘The term “covenant” is frequently used in Christian theology, but with various shades of meaning. I shall be using it to identify, the personal, binding, structural relationship among the Persons of God and His people.’ As he goes on to show, the notion of a binding personal relationship which is clearly structured is the basic Biblical notion of a covenant.

Marriage, the very first covenantal relationship among men and the foundation of all others is the quintessential covenant. The relationship binds — ’till death.’ It is a structured relationship with authority and roles distributed between husband and wife. It is a personal relationship — ‘husbands love your wives as Christ also loved the Church and gave Himself for it.’ A man and woman living together without the bond of the covenant may have a personal relationship, but they are guilty of fornication. A man and woman married may fulfill the structural requirements of the covenant bond, but fail to love one another, separating the personal from the structural aspect of the marriage covenant.

The covenant oath, the personal love, and the structures of authority and responsibility are all required for a Biblically righteous marriage. What the marriage covenant illustrates is that the covenant is a ‘social structure.’ As Jordan points out, in the Biblical notion of the covenant, law and love, form and freedom, are in harmony. The love of the covenant is expressed not in spite of the oath or in spite of fulfilling the duties of the covenant, but precisely through the solemn taking of an oath and the faithful fulfillment of one’s duty.”

Ralph Allan Smith, James Jordan’s Trinitarianism, www.trinitarianism.com