The unity Jesus is leading us toward has far less to do with hammering out a single organizational structure and far more to do with many different Christian tribes and tongues bringing their respective glories to the King.

There are many legitimate reasons to lament the divided state of the church. Fleshly pride, theological hubris, sectarian rivalries are each in their own ways modern versions of the Galatian heresy, refusing table fellowship with brothers and sisters for whom Christ died. And denominations have frequently played the same role as the names of Paul and Apollos in Corinth, for which we join in Paul’s manifesto to know nothing but Christ and Him crucified.

Yet, as we pray for the unity of the Body of Christ, as we labor to be one as the Father, Son, and Spirit are one, there ought to be just as much concern over the dangers of certain forms of unity. It seems there’s a romantic demon lurking in all the sons of Adam, and I mean that in a rather wooden etymological sense: there’s an idolatrous love of Rome and her ways that seems often lurking in discussions of catholicity. And by that I do not merely mean the Roman Catholic Church, but rather something subtler, more ancient, more pervasive in human nature. We do well to remember that Rome was the last of the great beasts that Daniel saw coming up out of the sea, a certain way of power, a style of consolidation, a promise of unity going all the way back to Babel that Jesus came to shatter.

Continue reading at Theopolis Institute.

“A baptism which does not discern between the fruit of the womb and the fruit of the tomb is anti-Christ, denying He has come in the flesh.”

This post follows on from Exposed To The Elements.

An online paedobaptist friend commented that he had never heard sacred architecture offered as an argument for credobaptism before. My experience with the brilliant Bible teaching by the various Federal Vision gents is that I get a principle under my belt, then automatically begin to see its implications for all of Scripture. But then numerous times I would be surprised when no one had thought of applying it consistently. The main offender is paedobaptism. Despite their claims, it is a rite that does not spring naturally from Scripture. In fact, it has to be protected from Scripture, from the very principles I have been taught by paedobaptists.

There’s a reason that people with Asperger’s are being employed to find bugs in software. We can hold a lot of data in “working RAM” at once, which means we can “spot the difference” visually. Penelope Trunk writes:

 I have a feeling that what gave me the ability to bridge from a quirky writer to a marketable writer was focusing obsessively on Generation Y. Nobody could memorize the facts as fast as I did, and because they were all in my head I could synthesize them faster than everybody else and come up with trends. [1]

My friend Chris Wooldridge is a data analyst. His job is to find trends in data and present them pictorially. I have no doubt this is why he has picked up the Bible Matrix so quickly and is parsing passages like an old hand. To some degree, this ability requires having all the other key instances of the matrix in a “holding pattern” so they can be overlaid and compared. It is immensely beautiful, and it is one of two reasons why the practice of paedobaptism irks me so much. It is the fly in the ointment, the bug in the software. The Bible Matrix is the DNA of the Scriptures, which, like DNA, have a mechanism of self-correction. The matrix process of maturity rejects paedobaptism in every instance. Not only is the practice never described or commanded in Scripture, forces the redefinition of Christian, Church, Gospel, faith and just about everything else in its perverted path, the very DNA of the Bible treats it as a foreign body to be neutralized, a bug to be exterminated, an error to be corrected. The structure of the Scriptures themselves is as fussy as someone with OCD.

Now that I have many of my readers in defensive mode, I would like to take a look at a very simplified version of the architecture which makes paedobaptism the impossible doctrine. This has to do with the definition of “son of God.” Are sprinkled babies children of God? Both James Jordan and Peter Leithart maintains that the Gospel “redeems” natural patterns. I agree with them to some point. But their conflation of the image with the imager is an unwitting form of idolatry, with infants as the idols. They claim that paedobaptism is a New Covenant version of circumcision, at least as far as defining the boundary of the Covenant people (Jordan rightly says that circumcision is not baptism, and we strangely agree on many other points.) But a son of God is not a son of man. Paedobaptists love to abuse the Covenant with Abraham to support their well-meaning but perverted rite. I want to undermine that by taking us right back to the Garden of Eden.

Jesus called Himself “the Son of Adam,” a fact made clearer by the use of the phrase concerning the prophet Ezekiel, in whose book it appears over 90 times. I believe the reason is that Ezekiel is the only prophet given access to the heavenly Sanctuary, the throne of God. He is made, as Jordan observes, a kind of “rival High Priest in exile,” much as was Jesus many centuries later. The prophet is symbolically slain, falling on his face, then lifted up and filled with the Spirit of God. As a new Adam, he goes through a process of death and resurrection, and the rest of the book describes the same process measured out upon Israel.

But Jesus also called Himself “the Son of God.” This has an entirely different meaning. It is not genealogical, since it does not refer to an earthly father but the heavenly Father. An earthly father is most certainly an image of the heavenly Father, but the two cannot be conflated. The Pharisees who challenged Jesus had Abraham as their earthly father, and the devil as their heavenly father.

You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and bhas nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I tell the truth, you do not believe me. Which one of you convicts me of sin? If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me? Whoever is of God hears the words of God. The reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God.” (John 8:44-47)

Based upon the relationship between the Father and the Son in heaven, that which is at the heart of earthly sonhood is Representation. This is why the Succession step of the matrix process often concerns physical offspring in many Old Testament passages. It refers to genealogical Succession in history, God’s faithfulness to many generations of the faithful. But the New Testament moves the goal posts. Instead of physical offspring, it puts Gospel messengers at this point in every instance. The emphasis has moved from earthly sonhood to heavenly sonhood, from sons of Adam to sons of God. The switch began at the baptism of Jesus, the only Adam who was both.

At Jesus’ baptism, the Father chose Him from among all the other circumcised sons of Israel. It is the same scenario as that which brought about the anointing of David. All the possible choices were circumcised in the flesh, but God looked upon the heart of Jesus. This heart alone pleased Him. David’s name means “Beloved,” and I have no doubt that this is why the heavenly Father says, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” Since Christ was the only one who truly displayed Priestly submission, He was chosen to be King.

From that moment, Jesus, like David, was no longer under the authority of His earthly father. This was hinted at in the event of Jesus’ disappearance at age 12, a kind of “Firstfruits.” Baptism for every Christian is the point when the individual becomes directly accountable to his new Father, to Christ, and to Christ’s Church. As Jesus did, the baptizand bows to the authority of heaven that he or she might speak with the authority of heaven.

At the instant of Jesus’ baptism, there was only one true Jew, a brand new Adam. Just as Adam was a man without genealogy, whose Father was God, so for Jesus, all heredity, all circumcision and non-circumcision, was left behind in the water of baptism. This included allegiance to Abraham, the earthly father, since the heavenly Father had now revealed Himself for the first time in history.

So, what of circumcision? This is simple, indeed, so simple that it amazes me that so many bright Reformed theologians and Christians have not thought things through with any consistent logic, especially the ones who are aware of the dominion promises in Genesis 2. If Adam was faithful as the son of God, God would make Adam a father. Both the womb and the land would be opened to him, producing their fruit in season, just as Adam had produced the fruits of righteousness, a circumcised heart, to his own Father. In Abraham, the “Great Father” who was by nature barren, both the curse and promise concerning the land and the womb were repeated. Canaan was initially barren, but we will deal with that another time (it’s quite fascinating!) and of course Sarah was barren. Circumcision was given to Abraham because he was faithful. It was a symbolic “pruning” that both the womb and land might be opened. At every point, the Firstfruits was to be given to God, including Isaac. Baptism is a rite not for the inheritance but for the inheritor. The “architectural” background of all the Psalms is Edenic.

Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord,
the fruit of the womb a reward.
Like arrows in the hand of a warrior
are the children of one’s youth.
Blessed is the man
who fills his quiver with them!
He shall not be put to shame
when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.
(Psalm 127:3-5)

Blessed is everyone who fears the Lord,
who walks in his ways!
You shall eat the fruit of the labor of your hands;
you shall be blessed, and it shall be well with you.
Your wife will be like a fruitful vine
within your house;
your children will be like olive shoots around your table.
Behold, thus shall the man be blessed
who fears the Lord.
(Psalm 128:1-4)

You can see from the diagram above that baptism is a rite that concerns circumcision of heart (things above: the Edenic Laver/Spring) that God might bless the believer with fruitfulness (things below: the Bronze Altar-Land). With the coming of Christ in the flesh, the promises to Abraham were fulfilled. The relationship of heredity to the Covenant was removed forever. It no longer mattered whether one was a Jew or a Gentile. The only household is the household of faith. The only sonhood is submission to the Father by the faith of the Son. A baptism which does not discern between the fruit of the womb (Land: below) and the fruit of the tomb (Garden: above) is anti-Christ, denying He has come in the flesh. Why do many of the world’s best Bible teachers, including many friends, fail to see this practice for what it is, especially those who know their way around biblical architecture?

Baptism is thus not about generation but regeneration. James Jordan claims that “regeneration” refers not to individuals but to the regeneration of the world in general, thus unregenerate offspring can be included in this process. But that is not the picture given in Scripture at all. Once again, the image is conflated with the original, the source confused with the result. And all the support given for paedobaptism relies on “Abrahamic” verses, texts about the earthly image. [2] In paedobaptism, the heavenly Father is conflated with earthly fathers, and the heavenly Son who, like Melchizedek has no genealogy, no earthly father, is confused with the sons of Aaron for whom genealogy was crucial.

If the Lord had slain Adam and Eve for Adam’s sin, it is obvious that the fruit of the womb and the land also would have been cut off. But Adam’s death was the source of this lack of natural fruit. Adam’s death had to do with his relationship to the heavenly Father. So baptism is not related to either the fruit of the Land or the fruit of the womb. It has to do with the fruit of righteousness, and these other things are only the result of that initial “Garden” fruit. Jesus’ death as Adam was prefigured in His baptism. He was not sprinkled or poured upon by John. He was submerged, slain, like the entire world during the Physical Flood, like Israel under Babylon and Rome in Social Floods. Only submersion pictures the complete end of the Old Order and the beginning of the New. The dove is never present over the Land, but only over the waters. If you have never been immersed, you have failed to publicly testify as Jesus did, that the old is gone and the new has come.

A paedobaptism is a false testimony. It says that a son of Adam is by nature a son of God. Even Jews would never claim such a thing. Every “begat,” every “bar,” was a testimony to earthly lineage. Even they understood the difference between physical offspring and those who represented not their earthly fathers but the heavenly Father. A son of God is one who has Sanctuary access not by the flesh but by the Spirit because they please God, having been slain and lifted up like Ezekiel, leaving that fiery courtroom as His representative on earth, to divide between light and darkness with his words as Adam did not and Jesus did. Jesus did not come to have earthly sons but heavenly ones (Hebrews 2:13), images of Himself not Physically or Socially but Ethically.

Now, my friends like to claim that their sprinkled children have Sanctuary access because they received the Spirit in their baptism and are now a child of God. Some even claim that infants who have not heard the Gospel have faith in God (the stupidity of this still blows me away. Who needs the Gospel, then?). This all stems from their unwillingness to discern the difference between earthly parents and the Eternal Parent, the image and the reality. Here is an example from my otherwise wise friend Toby Sumpter, who tweeted:

 Christians who spank their kids in love are high sacramentalists: they believe the Spirit saves souls through material means (Proverbs 23:14).

This is as confused as the claim that infants are believers because they trust God on their mother’s breast (Psalm 22:9). The Psalmist conflates the heavenly with the earthly poetically because one leads to the other, but they are not the same thing. The natural comes first, and then the spiritual. It is a process of maturity. The entire point of baptism is that one no longer needs to be spanked by one’s parents because one now serves the Father in heaven. Again, baptism is for the inheritor, not the inheritance, for the earthly father, not his babies. When Jesus blessed the children, who was the baptised one? It was Jesus. Somehow, everyone overlooks the obvious because they are looking for support for something else.

The blindness involved in such teaching mystifies me. Baptism is for heavenly sonhood and confers Sanctuary access as a representative of the Father. The only choice for paedobaptists is to eliminate the efficacy of baptism (and deny Sanctuary access) or to maintain the efficacy and minimise the requirement for heart circumcision. Both are really stupid, unbiblical ideas, and the solution is incredibly obvious. But I have no doubt they’ll keep fighting over this for decades to come, trying to unite heaven and earth by the will of man rather than by the true work of God in the hearts of contrite men and women, relying on badly composed, complicated statements by Reformers whose typological skills were not far removed from the sophistries of Rome, and thinking that because they have been sprinkled, witnessed so many sprinklings, and perhaps even performed their own sprinklings, this perversion must be the work of God. (I would draw a helpful diagram to demonstrate the difference between a womb and a tomb, but I haven’t got a crayon. I’m sure you can work it out.)

I hate paedobaptism because I love the Bible, which spits it out at every opportunity. But I also hate paedobaptism because I love the Gospel of repentance and faith, and an inheritance of the Spirit which expresses itself in willing identification with the sufferings of Christ. If this is offensive to you, you neither understand the promises to Abraham, or the promises in Christ. They are very different things, as different as the heavens are from the earth. They are obscured by well-meaning but carnal doctrine.

________________________________________________
[1] Penelope Trunk, 3 Things you need to know about people with Asperger’s.
[2] With such a misguided foundation, it is little wonder that my friend Luke Welch takes things to such shocking but logical conclusions. Apparently, the children of Christians are like Aaronic priests, who were symbolic sacrifices for sin.

One way to describe the book of Job is as an extended argument between the book of Proverbs and the book of Ecclesiastes. Proverbs generalizes about the way the world works: fools are like this, wise people are like this, you do this and you’ll get blessed; you do that and you’ll get in big trouble. Ecclesiastes says that the world doesn’t always work that way. Sometimes you do what’s right, and you still get in trouble. Sometimes that other fellow does what is wrong, and he keeps getting blessed anyway. That’s in a nutshell a small version of those books, and much of the arguments in Job are concerned with these seemingly contradictory visions of life.

The three friends of Job seem to be reading their cues with mathematical precision from the book of Proverbs. They have logical proofs and diagrams, and their conclusions are something reminiscent of the disciples’ question to Jesus. “So who sinned, this man or his parents?” In this tidy-minded world there are only two options, and we might as well get down to brass tacks. However, Job sees through the veneer of piety in the so-called friends, sees their evil intentions, how they twist the principles of Scripture to their purposes, and at the same time he insists that the world is more complicated and challenging than they are willing to admit. In one sense, we can see Job as Proverbs and Ecclesiastes arrayed for battle…

…in the end we must insist that Proverbs and Ecclesiastes are actually very good friends. These books complement and explain each other. If Proverbs generally explores wisdom as a skill, Ecclesiastes explores wisdom as a very unique sort of skill. Wisdom is a skill, but it is both like and unlike many other skills… If the skills needed to live and build in God’s world are crucially centered on people, an entirely different sort of skill is needed than a simple, straightforward following of directions. People are messy, complicated, confusing, and frustrating. They have cultural differences, personality quirks, gifts, weaknesses, health problems, sin, and they frequently fail and let us down… In many ways it’s far easier to build a house out of bricks, wood, or stone, than to build a house out of people.

Available here.

[Apologies to those readers who have had enough of me railing against paedobaptism. It's not personal. It's not that I have any loyalty to any doctrinal system, denomination or tradition. It's that a group of godly guys taught me how beautiful the structure of the Bible is but maintain, to my eyes at least, a tradition which contradicts that beauty. The internal logic of the Scriptures -- including the Old Testament Scriptures -- spits out paedobaptism at every turn. In every round of typological musical chairs I play, paedobaptism has nowhere to sit.]

We ended last time with the observation that all Israel was a “bridal” nation. The Israelite robe, like the Nazirite vow, was something that pertained to both males and females. Why is this?

Because circumcision was Adamic, that is, priestly. As James Jordan notes, there are kings and queens, prophets and prophetesses, but no priestesses. Not a one. Eve could not serve in the Tabernacle or Temple because it was not yet safe. The serpent had not been crushed. Satan still stood, bloodthirsty as ever, as an accuser in the court of God (as Joshua the High Priest discovered).

Yet, outside the tent of death lived a (symbolic) resurrection body, twelve tribes, twelve stars, twelve constellations—the glorious Warrior Bride, a city of living stones gathered around the Lamb. Greater Eve didn’t see the blood either shed or presented. She saw only the memorial, the fragrant smoke. She herself, as a body raised from the grave, was a memorial to the blood shed in Egypt.

The blue-tasseled robe was a memorial. The command to wear blue tassels does not appear in Exodus or Leviticus, but in Numbers, after Israel has broken the Law (many times) and temporarily forfeited the Promised Land. What was Israel to remember?

The tasseled robe was a reminder of holiness. In a veiled way, they were “putting on the Lord Jesus Christ.” But at this “Mosaic” stage, the clothing reminded each adult of his or her vow.

So Moses came and told the people all the words of the Lord and all the judgments. And all the people answered with one voice and said, “All the words which the Lord has said we will do.”

In fact, the people repeat this vow twice. The Law required two witnesses (and, of course, the passage follows the Covenant pattern!) They did it consciously. They did it as representatives of their children and their animals, those who could not take the vow. The “robe of righteousness” called them back to the “words of the Lord and all the judgments” to which they had agreed. It was not only glorious, and made a public testimony out of being an Israelite, but it was also a mnemonic device. It called Israel to remember, not the circumcision of every male born in Abraham’s house, but the conscious vow made to obey the Laws of Moses. If we had to correspond this robe to anything under the New Covenant, it would not be circumcision but baptism.

When to Trash a Baptism

Toby Sumpter tweeted: “Sometimes a pastor needs to take a man’s baptism and trash it and bury it in front of him and only then will it become true.” This statement comes from the frontline of ministry, and out of a pastor’s heart. Toby has an excellent blog post on this subject here, and I don’t mean to take anything away from that.

But trashing someone’s baptism means holding somebody accountable, calling him back to his vow. We could say this about the fulfilment of any vow, but paedobaptism plays games with what a vow actually is. You can call someone back to their baptism only if they were conscious at their baptism. Otherwise you are suing someone based on a contract they didn’t sign.

A Seal Upon Covenant Children?

How many men, circumcised in their infancy, can recall their circumcision? This seems a fair question, but it assumes that baptism performs a similar role to circumcision in marking out “Covenant children.” It’s amazing how paedobaptists will tell me that baptism is New Covenant circumcision when it suits them, and also tell me that baptism isn’t a New Covenant circumcision when it suits them. So, which is it?

Well, neither circumcision nor baptism marked out Covenant children. Circumcision was always genealogical. It was Adamic. Like the Tabernacle, it was a substitutionary death on behalf of Eve. It was about males, not infants. So, even Israel did not have a rite related to childhood. Paedobaptism not only misunderstands baptism, it misrepresents circumcision in order to use it as support for a misguided tradition.

Israel’s Conscious Vow

Israel made a conscious vow in the wilderness. Did that involve circumcision? No.

It was circumcision that made them Israel — a separate nation. But what is very interesting is that the Covenant vow took place in the wilderness, and no infant males were circumcised for around four decades, until the next generation reached Jericho (Joshua 5). So the corresponding of circumcision with Covenant accountability for individuals (a la Doug Wilson) is not even a long shot. Were there no “Covenant children” until after the death of Moses? Of course there were! God held the “circumcised” generation accountable to the vow they made at Sinai as adults, males and females. The Covenant responsibility fell upon the parents who made the vow to teach their children — even when their boys were uncircumcised!

God most certainly judged the patriarchs for sin, but the Law of Moses was not in force. There were no stonings, no lepers exiled mandatorily outside the camp, until the Law of Moses. The Law of the Covenant required a conscious vow. The blue-tasseled robe was a reminder of that vow. They didn’t put these robes on any babies, let alone the male infants. We know this because the tassels on the robe served a deliberate purpose. The robe was a call to a circumcised heart, a circumcision made without hands.

This “investiture” was a circumcision of heart, not flesh. It was to signify the imputed righteousness of the sacrificial, priestly people. In Exodus 24, Moses and the elders ascended the mountain and saw the Lord on the crystal sea. That’s what baptism pictures—mediators. The children of Israel were at the bottom of the mountain. The “baptized” elders mediated for Israel, and, in turn, all Israel carried out this same mediatory role for all nations. As glorious Israel was an outcome of the sacrifices, so the bridal robes were an “outcome” of a hidden circumcision. Every Israelite was part of the Warrior Bride, mediating for the Gentiles.

(Of course, all Israel was “baptized” in the Red Sea, but not as individuals. They were baptized as one flesh in one event. That’s not the case with Christians. I have covered this elsewhere on this blog.)

Now, I must say here that if somebody could show me some good arguments for paedobaptism, I’d publicly apologize for my rants, and very likely become the most ardent paedobaptist the world has yet seen. But I’ve discussed this with even the big guns, and so far, if they have any ammo left at all, either they can’t be bothered shooting it or they are afraid it might bounce off. That probably sounds like hubris, but it isn’t. How about starting with this fact that the first generation of “Covenant boys” were uncircumcised. Think of this as another gauntlet thrown down. Even I’m getting tired of discussing this, but I reckon it has been worth it. I’ve been thrown some curly ones, but there’s not a single doctrinal or typological hole left through which Christening can be snuck.

Confession and Confessionalism

So we have no business telling everyone we are bap-cising the hearts of our offspring before they hear the gospel.

The Westminster Confession of Faith has some good things to say about baptism, but I find it ironic that a confession confers Covenant accountability upon those who cannot confess. Consulting the Reformers before we consult Moses and the Prophets to make sense of the New Testament is replicating Talmudism. There’s no support, whatever the claims, for infant baptism in either the Old or New Covenant Scriptures. WCF XXVIII: III, IV and VI are made up out of whole cloth.

Aligning baptism with circumcision demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of both baptism and circumcision. How many Israelite women could recall their circumcision?

Cursed Confessors

A pastor cannot call a saint back to his or her baptism if it did not include a “legal” Covenant confession, their public witness. It makes no sense at all to lay Covenant responsibilities upon newborns. Not even Israel did that! Who died in the wilderness? It was the ones who took the vow — first, those who worshiped the golden calf, and then the rest over the next few decades. Only two people survived the threshing, Joshua and Caleb. And who made it out? The children of those who died, and it seems that all the males under 40 were uncircumcised. What were these people called back to in the book of Deuteronomy? Not Abrahamic circumcision. While they were separated from Gentiles geographically it served no function. It seems one could leave Israel and not suffer death for leaving (unlike some churches!). Circumcision was only what made them a separate “flesh.” They were called to remember the Law under which their parents made the original vow at Sinai.

The men, boys and infants were circumcised outside of Jericho. It wasn’t an infant thing. It was a male thing (generation). Just as baptism isn’t an infant thing. It is a believer thing (regeneration). Paedobaptism screws up the message of both these signs.

Nailing the Colors

A baptism that isn’t a conscious change of allegiance, doesn’t nail new colours to the mast, doesn’t rub non-Christians up the wrong way or scare them or leave them in awe, isn’t a baptism. The only way to trash somebody’s Christening is to actually baptize them as a public witness to their confession.

“Deny that God speaks to any area of life, and you have denied God’s jurisdiction in that area of life.”

A very intelligent Christian recently posed the question, “What will be the most pressing intellectual challenge facing the church over the next 50 years?” What if the biggest challenge facing the church is not intellectual at all, but ethical. [1]

Through the Reformation, the church regained the understanding that obedience to the Law cannot merit salvation, even in part. But since the Reformation, the church seems to have lost the understanding that obedience to the Law is, as always, the tool of dominion.

Modern theologians are adept at identifying the church’s problems, but hopeless at providing solutions. The Old Testament terrifies them. The very idea of Christendom terrifies them. [2] Preaching obedience to God’s laws terrifies them. Authority terrifies them. Male headship offends them. Executing any kind of church discipline is bullying. Authority will always be abused. Just look at the conniving so-called Christians in politics. Look at Constantine! We are Christians, and we have God’s Spirit, so we don’t need God’s Law. We can do what is right in our own eyes now.

Fed with sermons below the level of Sunday school lessons:

J E S U S   S A I D,   “B E   N I C E.”

the “true” church is seen as one relegated to the ghettos and catacombs and soup kitchens (after all, isn’t real Christianity always menial?), and that is where the church is to stay. Is that the kind of kingdom Christ promised? One that is irrelevant and powerless in the public square until the very last day, when all-of-a-sudden downtrodden and marginalised Christians will have what it takes to judge angels? Is that what we see modelled for us in the Bible? Joseph can run Potiphar’s household and Pharaoh’s gaol, but public power, as a Christian, in the name of God, will mean getting his hands dirty? Are the Law and the Prophets now redundant because Jesus summed them up in a simple soundbite?

Gary North writes,

C. S. Lewis understood that there is a war going on between Christ and Satan. His magnificent novel, That Hideous Strength, subtitled A Modern Fairy-Tale for Grown-Ups, deals with the fusion of magic, technology, and the demonic quest for power. Perhaps better than any Christian writer of this century, he understood Satan and Satan’s mode of operations.

We cannot say as much for his understanding of Christianity. His theology was muddled, at best, and his epistemology was clearly a mixture of Platonism and the Bible. So we would not normally go to Lewis to discover a solution to our problems. We go to him for an understanding of our era, however.

His view of history was very much like Van Til’s. He believed in the increase of epistemological self-consciousness over time. This progress over time removes the latitude for making moral decisions, for the issues of life become clearer. Here is a speech given by a college professor (possibly modeled after Lewis himself) in That Hideous Strength:

“If you dip into any college, or school, or parish, or family — anything you like — at a given point in its history, you always find that there was a time before that point when there was more elbow room and contrasts weren’t quite so sharp; and that there’s going to be a time after that point when there is even less room for indecision and choices are even more momentous. Good is always getting better and bad is always getting worse: the possibilities of even apparent neutrality are always diminishing. The whole thing is sorting itself out all the time, coming to a point, getting sharper and harder.”

The problem with Lewis’ outlook is that he never suggested any way that Christians could make these moral decisions in the public realm. He told us of the war, told us that we would not be able to escape our responsibilities, told us that our decisions would become ever-clearer, and yet refused to offer any hope that the public issues of any era could be solved by an appeal to the Bible. Indeed, he specifically rejected such a suggestion.

He dismissed as unrealizable the creation of any distinct or distinctly Christian political party — a long-time ideal of many Dutch Christians. Christians do not agree on the means of attaining the proper goals of society, he argued. A Christian political party will wind up in a deadlock, or else the winning faction will force all rivals out. Then it will no longer be representative of Christians in society. So this minority party will attach itself to the nearest non-Christian political party.

The problem as Lewis saw it is that the party will speak for Christendom, but will not in fact represent all of Christendom. “By the mere act of calling itself the Christian Party it implicitly accuses all Christians who do not join it of apostasy and betrayal. It will be exposed, in an aggravated degree, to that  temptation which the Devil spares none of us at any time — the temptation of claiming for our favorite opinions that kind of degree of certainty and authority which really belongs only to our Faith.”

This is an odd line of argumentation. First, what he describes as a strictly political problem is in fact the problem with any distinctly Christian institution. Christians need to do what is God’s will, but in doing it, they exclude other acts as not being in God’s will. Yet according to his view of history, these decisions will become clearer over time, and the range of Christian (as well as non-Christian) choices will become much narrower. So what is the problem? It should be easier as time goes on to build Christian institutions of all kinds, not just political organizations.

Second, why doesn’t this same problem of speaking in the name of the accepted moral sovereign afflict every religious, political, or ideological group? Why single out politics? Isn’t ascertaining God’s will equally a problem in all other institutions? Furthermore, why are Christian political coalitions so evil, so doomed to defeat? Aren’t coalitions going on in every area of life all the time? Besides, why is the problem of coalitions a uniquely Christian problem? Humanists make coalitions all the time – yes, even highly ideological humanists. Coalitions are basic to life.

What he is really saying is that humanists can run their institutions and our lives just fine, but Christians cannot – not because Christians are presently incompetent, but simply because they are Christians. He argues that anyone who adds “Thus saith the Lord” to his earthly utterances will insist that his conscience speaks more clearly “the more it is loaded with sin. And this comes from pretending that God has spoken when He has not spoken.” Hath God said? That was what Satan asked Eve. But God had said. And He has spoken to us, too: in His Bible. Dare we deny His words? Eve dared. See where it got her. And us. But Lewis feared those who speak concretely to real-world problems in the name of God.

We are back to Barthianism. God’s will in history cannot be conveyed in cognitive sentences, creeds, political programs, economics, or anything else in this scientific, factual universe. God does not speak to specific problems in history. This is the essence of Barthianism. It is also the essence of antinomianism.

Perhaps Lewis was willing to accept creeds as God’s word, but creeds are written by Christians who disagree with other Christians. That is the function of creeds: to separate (exclude) wrong-thinking Christians from better-thinking Christians. Creeds are hammered out in the midst of controversy, sometimes including political controversy, and sometimes even life-and-death controversy. Are we to deny, as Barth did, that God speaks cognitively to men in creeds? Deny that God speaks to any area of life, and you have denied God’s jurisdiction in that area of life. Deny that men are responsible before God for searching out God’s will and then working to apply it, and you have adopted the theology of mysticism.

Then how are Christians to make moral decisions? Lewis appeals to that old Stoic standby, natural law. “By the natural light He has shown us what means are lawful: to find out which one is efficacious He has given us brains. The rest He left to us.”

In short, do your own natural thing, but do not do it in the name of Jesus.

What he recommended was an interdenominational voters society whose members will write letters to their political representatives. They will “pester” the politicians. But in whose name should they pester them? In God’s name? If not, then haven’t Christians become just another special-interest group with no distinctly Christian platform?

But he did offer some hope — a postmillennial hope. He ends the essay with these words: “There is a third way — by becoming a majority. He who converts his neighbour has performed the most practical Christian political act of all?”

What can we make of all this? He said that choices in life will become more epistemologically self-conscious. He was afraid of politicians who speak in God’s name. He appealed to natural reason. He told Christians to pester politicians. Then he said to spread the gospel and become a majority.

What then?

It is all a muddle, but at least it is a four-page muddle. The endless publications of those who call for Christian relevance in society, but who refuse to turn to biblical law as God’s inspired “platform” in every area of responsibility, are no less muddled than Lewis, and far more verbose.

The principle is simple enough: no law of God, no jurisdiction of God. Until Christians get this straight in their thinking, they will remain either Christian activists who are publicly muddled and culturally irrelevant, or else Christian retreatists who are privately muddled and culturally irrelevant. [3]

Making clear the distinction between the mandate given to Adam, and the mandate given by Christ, is crucial. The first was flesh; the second is Spirit. The first was a Law written on stone; the second is this very same Law written on our hearts. (As in Esther, there were two decrees: bread and wine, priesthood and kingdom.)

The church’s job is not to impose biblical law on society by coercion. The church’s role is to humble God’s people under God’s Law, training them in governmental roles within the “household” until they are ready to take on positions of leadership within society and teach the nations. The modus operandi of the Great Commission is yeastlike infiltration. That usually does involve ghettos and catacombs — and soup kitchens — to begin with (priesthood), but if the Old Testament and Christendom 1.0 are anything to go by, God exalts those who humble themselves, and uses them to change the world (kingdom). [4] As Doug Wilson says, authority flows naturally to those who take responsibility.

Everything God does in the Garden flows out into the Land and the World. Yes, we are to bring every thought into captivity to Christ. But then we are also to bring every nation into captivity to Christ as well — under His jurisdiction. This is not triumphalism. It is authority delegated from the throne of Greater Joseph, the Servant-King. And He will reign, through the church, until He has put all His enemies under His feet. We live in a world where there is still great suffering and horrific abuses of human rights. But it was the West, despite all its faults, with the church at its heart, that taught the world that foreign aid is a good thing, that there are such things as human rights, and that brought incredibly increased health and prosperity to many nations over the past few centuries. [5]

As James Jordan says, I believe, and then I understand. Obedience to the Law, and the subsequent world-changing biblical wisdom, are the order of the day. Intellectual debate is not. If a man cannot manage his household, he cannot be a steward of the church. If the church cannot manage its household, why would the world want its opinion on anything at all?

We live in a culture desperate to maintain the blessings of Christianity but without Christ; do its rulers look for help to a church (and the families within the church) integrated miraculously by God’s Law-Spirit, running businesses that are productive and prosperous because they are obedient and blessed by God? Or do they see Christianity’s skills shortage when it comes to practical government?

The American Dream flowed out of the Bible: faithful obedience to God, hard work (and innovative, wise thinking), brings from God the miraculous increase, and a cup that overflows into the nations. The church has followed the humanistic barons of barrenness and bankruptcy in their attempt to turn the world into one big soup kitchen. We need some new Josephs to reinterpret the Constantinian (postmillennial) dream for the nations, the construction of a kingdom of plenty according to the manufacturer’s instructions, the “Tabernacle” pattern given on the mountain by Christ that turns the world upside down, both spiritually and materially.

Western New South Wales, after many years of drought, has recently suffered terrible flooding. Imagine an Australian Parliament where a Christian politician could suggest that the nation’s immorality was the problem, that obedience to God’s Law would bring the rain in season, and due to his reputation for wisdom the Parliament would not laugh but listen.

Then Pharaoh said to Joseph, “Inasmuch as God has shown you all this, there is no one as discerning and wise as you. You shall be over my house, and all my people shall be ruled according to your word; only in regard to the throne will I be greater than you.” And Pharaoh said to Joseph, “See, I have set you over all the land of Egypt.” Then Pharaoh took his signet ring off his hand and put it on Joseph’s hand; and he clothed him in garments of fine linen and put a gold chain around his neck. And he had him ride in the second chariot which he had; and they cried out before him, “Bow the knee!” So he set him over all the land of Egypt. (Genesis 41:39-43)

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[1] Another very intelligent Christian answered that the challenge was proving to the world that life has purpose, as if this can be done intellectually, and with a mythical interpretation of Genesis. “Hey, come and believe the Bible, just like we don’t!”

[2] See Toby Sumpter’s assessment of Walter Bruggemann’s misunderstanding of Solomon’s kingdom in Oppressing the Text.

[3] Gary North, Dominion and Common Grace, pp. 148-153.

[4] See Did Plato Read Moses? by Peter Leithart, and Church and State.

[5] Doug Wilson posted this video.

In Envy and the Sons of God, I wrote:

…those with the title “the sons of God” in Job were not angels but priestly, mediatorial men (an observation I have heard from Gary DeMar). Satan envied them, accused them, as he always does. They are Adams in the garden, Covenant heads, and he hates them. Job was a priest-king.

DeMar has also just published an article on Job in the last few days that deals with the crazy angel/human hybrid Nephilim theory, and of necessity covers the identity of the sons of God.

Part of the problem in interpreting the Bible is that while it has the marks of ordinary writing, it is much more than literature. Jesus sat down with His disciples after His resurrection and poured over the OT to showed them how all of the books—designated as “Scripture” or “the Scriptures”—applied to Him (Luke 24). We have to assume that the book of Job was included in the survey. In what way is the book of Job a sign post that points to Jesus Christ? I believe it’s found in the use of “sons of God” (Job 1:6; 2:1). Many commentaries have posited that “sons of God” is a reference to angels rather than human beings. In the instance of the phrase’s use in Genesis 6:2, they are said to be fallen angels who cohabitated with humans and created a super race of giants called the Nephilim. While this is a popular interpretation, I believe it’s mistaken. “Sons of God” never refers to fallen angels. The only place where “sons of God” could refer to angels (not fallen angels) is in the highly poetic passage in Job 38:7: “When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?” But this also may be a reference to earthly rulers (Judges 5:19–20). Elsewhere in the Bible, “sons of God” always refers to humans.

Job is described as “the greatest of all the sons [bene] of the east” (Job 1:3). Most translations have “men of the east.” We read in Job 1:6 that “there was a day when the sons [bene] of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them.” Many assume that this is a description of a heavenly court of angelic beings. To present oneself before the Lord is a common biblical phrase designating judgment (ethical evaluation): Do I meet God’s standards? We know this divine evaluation was always on Job’s mind because he offered “burnt offerings” according to the number of his children. “Perhaps,” Job reasoned, “my sons have sinned and cursed God in their hearts” (Job 1:5). To flee from the presence of God—as Cain (Gen. 4:16) and Jonah did (Jonah 1:3, 6)—is an attempt to avoid God’s evaluation of our deeds. Of course, there is no place where we can flee from God’s presence (Ps. 139:7).

Satan was present when Adam (“the son of God”: Luke 3:38) and Eve broke their fellowship with God and came under God’s negative sanctions. He was there when Jesus, as the Second Adam and “the Son of God” (Matt. 4:6; Luke 4:3), was in the presence of His Father in the wilderness (Matt. 4:1–13; Luke 4:3). Jesus, as the Second Adam, was enduring a time of testing and moral judgment. Satan’s goal was to separate Jesus from the will of His Father. We can assume that he was there when Jesus was in the Garden of Gethsemane.

What about Satan’s role? He is described in the Bible as “the accuser of our brethren . . . who accuses them before our God day and night” (Rev. 12:10). In the case of Job, Satan interjects himself among the godly rulers—“sons of God”—and accuses Job before God by using God’s own standards. He’s always trying to tweak God’s Word just enough to spoil its meaning. According to Martin Luther, “the Devil is ever God’s ape.” [1]

But that one verse in Job is still a problem. Drew commented:

I’ve heard this explanation of Job, based largely on Hebrews 2 where it says that God didn’t refer to any angel as a “son of God.” But I still haven’t heard a good explanation for Job 38:7.

The verse is found within a “Bible matrix” poem. Verses 1-13 follow the Creation/Feast pattern.

The Lord talks about the foundation of the Land, the mediatorial territory “raised up” out of the sea between heaven and the abyss.

At the centre of this poetic cycle (Day 4) are the stars, and the “sons of God” are the “swarms” of Day 5. These are usually military, but they could still be either angels or men. Revelation puts both kinds of armies at this step, angelic and human, in its uses of this pattern, but it concerns the judgment of the earthly mediators (“men” or “Adams”, ie. the Jewish rulers) by the heavenly ones.

However, these “sons” in Job 38 are definitely in reference to the Land. The stars, the heavenly rulers, sing (praise from heaven) and the earthly rulers give a military shout in response (praise from earth). We do see this pattern in the Revelation as well, not to mention the armies of Israel arranged in 12 tribes under the 12 constellations in the book of Numbers (the “Day 4″ of the first seven books of the Bible). [2]

There were angels who stood before God, the 24 elders. Joshua the High Priest was promised access among them depending upon obedience. But it is men who are truly mediators between heaven and earth, prefiguring the ascension of Christ, dust made clay made precious “Tabernacle” metal.

So I think it is most likely that this verse is a reference to mediatorial men, a holy army. The question is which “Land” is being referred to. The original physical Land; the new Land of Noah; or the Land founded by Abraham’s faith, when the Lord divided the “Sea” of nations into Jew and Gentile? All of these “new earths” follow the same pattern. (We also see it in the baptism of Christ, who became the new Land of Israel in which we must be “buried” to obtain resurrection.)

According to Jordan, Job was most likely an Edomite king, and would thus be familiar with this structure. So, nothing conclusive, but the verse is a part of a “Creation-matrix” speech, and the ubiquitous use of this pattern in the rest of the Scriptures would make human “sons” the much more likely contender.

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[1] Gary DeMar, Is Job a Type of Christ? Toby Sumpter also has some interesting comments here.
[2] Totus Christus provides a helpful survey of the pattern throughout Scripture.

Then Jerusalem, all Judea, and all the region around the Jordan went out to him and were baptized by him in the Jordan, confessing their sins. But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, “Brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? “Therefore bear fruits worthy of repentance, ”and do not think to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as father.’ For I say to you that God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones.” —Matthew 3:5-9

Then, as He was now drawing near the descent of the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works they had seen, saying: ” ‘Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the LORD!’ Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” And some of the Pharisees called to Him from the crowd, “Teacher, rebuke Your disciples.” But He answered and said to them, “I tell you that if these should keep silent, the stones would immediately cry out.” —Luke 19:37-40

The Bible is consistent with its symbols, so what is it with stones crying out? Uri Brito commented about the stones referring possibly to the stones of the Temple.

For the stone will cry out from the wall, And the beam from the timbers will answer it. “Woe to him who builds a town with bloodshed, Who establishes a city by iniquity! —Habakkuk 2:11-12

A pile of stones is always a witness. Stones are hard earth, and the ground first cried out as a witness against Cain‘s murder of Abel. Moses had an altar and twelve stone pillars built at the bottom of Sinai to symbolise the twelve tribes (Exodus 24:4). Elijah built an altar of twelve stones and it was destroyed as a substitute for Israel’s harlotries, burned to dust as an unfaithful daughter of a priest.

The key ideas here are substitution and witness, or death and resurrection. The Habukkuk reference has to do with a witness against the shedding of innocent blood — the wrong kind of substitutionary death. It is like the murder of the unborn and exploitation and murder of foreign civilians in our own day to prop up a civilisation that has failed to witness of Christ to the nations and thus lost the blessing of God.[1] In Luke, Jesus then weeps over Jerusalem, so I believe that is His context. The Land itself would vomit out the Jewish leaders, crying from beneath the spilled blood of one better than Abel (Hebrews 12:24). The unfaithful pile of stones would be torn down and burned with fire RIGHT AFTER the firstfruits church ascended at the last trumpet. Jesus speaks of both death and resurrection in terms of stones.

The words of John the Baptist, however, speak only of resurrection. Toby Sumpter hits the nail on the head:

John the Forerunner famously says that his listeners cannot claim their Abrahamic lineage as protection against judgment. John says, “… and do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I say to you that God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones.” (Lk. 3:8)

What are “these stones” that Jesus is referring to? 

Frequently I believe it is assumed that “these stones” is just a generic reference to the power of God. He can make sons of Abraham out of trees, rocks, geese, whatever. Don’t be so arrogant, O Israel. 

But remember where John is. John is at the Jordan. And all the indicators are that John is inviting his listeners to join him in a new conquest, to cross the Jordan in baptism and join the new Joshua (Jesus) in His conquest of the land. 

That being so, is it possible that “these stones” are the very stones that Joshua had the people set up on the shore of the Jordan River centuries before? Or even if John isn’t pointing at a literal pile of stones, could he be referring to “those stones”? 

If that is the case, John’s point could still be partially concerned with the arrogance of Israel and God’s power, but it makes it more pointed referring to the previous Jordan crossing and conquest. 

First, it’s a reference to the fact that God has performed this sort of thing before. Refusal to follow the example of that second generation of Israel across the Jordan means that they are really more like the first generation in the wilderness, whose bodies were scattered in the desert. 

Second, “those stones” clearly represented Israel. There were twelve of them for the twelve tribes, and therefore, perhaps the “power of God” is not so much that God can turn anything into sons but rather specifically resurrection power. God is able to raise the dead; He is able to even raise that ancient and faithful generation of Israel from the dead. If God needs an Israel with enough faith to take this Canaan, He can raise “these stones” from dead.

The memorial pillars that Joshua set up were not covered in blood, but washed with white. In the Egypt to Canaan pattern, they are the two goats of Atonement. In this first century context, one pillar is the saints in white robes ascending to God (just like the angel in white sitting on the stone at Jesus’ open tomb). The other, like Lot’s wife, is a memorial to permanent barrenness,[2] a Land that can only ever produce thorns like Cain. This was Herod’s house of shiny white stone, the one Jesus wept over, a whitewashed sepulchre.[3]

So Jesus speaks of “false witness” Herod’s stones being torn down, and John speaks of the new Temple, a resurrected Israel with Jews and Gentiles in one body, being raised up. The Herods slaughtered the saints — shedding innocent blood — and unwittingly gave them resurrection. This crime filled up the sins of Herodian worship and brought about the end of the old altar.[4]

These pillars are two witnesses, hence the references to Moses and Elijah in Revelation 11. They are witnesses to both the goodness and severity of God. The stones as martyroi cry out as a witness of the goodness of God, and then as a witness against their murderers.

Will your church be an everlasting witness to God’s goodness or to His severity?

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[1] See Building Cages Out of Freedom.
[2] See Don’t Look Back.
[3] See A White Stone – 6.
[4] This might be why Paul calls the Circumcision “the mutilation.” They were the prophets of Baal.

“…one of the most common sacrifices in Scripture is the OLAH, what is commonly translated burnt offering or whole burnt offering, but the word OLAH literally means “going up.” The “going up offering” or Ascension Offering reveals a foundational clue to all sacrifice. It establishes a central goal of every offering by fire. When a blameless animal is sacrificed, the blameless animal is going up, going up to God in smoke. God loves the perfect, he loves the blameless, and he loves them in his presence. He loves them and wants them to commune with him.

And this begins to push the book of Job into new directions and make better sense of the overall narrative. Job is declared “blameless” in the prologue three times (1:1, 8, 2:3). Job is perfect, without blemish, and if we have been reading our Bibles carefully, we should realize that this means that Job is an excellent candidate for a sacrificial victim. Yahweh is blameless and attracted to the blameless, and he looks for ways to bring them nearer, to draw them up into his presence, but the path is always through dismemberment and fire…

The point of justification is sacrifice. The point of being declared “without blemish” is that we are now qualified to be dismembered and arranged on the altar.”

Toby Sumpter, Prequalified Sacrifices, Credenda/Agenda