Uri Brito asked me once how I can possibly believe that the church is central, and simultaneously be a baptist. Does being a baptistic fan of Jordan, Leithart and Wilson necessarily involve an element of schizophrenia? You might be interested to know how Federal Vision looks from where I stand. If not, just humour me.

As some hyperpreterists discovered, I’m not interested in the personalities involved in any debate. I’m interested in discussion, without prejudice. And I’m not in paid ministry so I have nothing to lose (mind you I have been hauled over the coals a couple of times by well-meaning ministers anyhow). And it’s my blog, so I’ll say what I think, and I leave it open for any readers to reply. In fact, I welcome debate. My cards are on the table and you can set them alight if you wish — and if you can.

It seems to me that the FV gents are really onto something. Their “strange” views on baptism and justification come out of the Scriptures, not so much out of the Reformation. Yet, the more I chew it over, the more I agree with them, and the more I can see what a thorn-in-the-foot their thinking is within Presbyterianism.

Concerning baptism, I think the significance they are giving to this rite is entirely Scriptural. (You can find more on my view of baptism if you click this baptism tag.) They want baptism to mark the territory of the Covenant people. Very good. The problem is, they have rediscovered this humongous V8 engine of significance, and tried to squeeze it into the mini minor of paedobaptism. The outcome is naturally a two-tiered Covenant people: those under oath by proxy (through Godparents), and those under oath by their own volition: the Christians and the Christian-ized.

Now, their enemies, also Reformed, understand that this is a problem. If the baptism of an infant has such a significance, it puts an untold amount of pressure on the doctrine of justification. The infant congregant is expected to keep Covenant (i.e. remain faithful to church, repent when they sin, stick with it), and if they don’t, they have apostatized. Baptism is likened to circumcision in many, but not all, ways by the FV gents. If you are part of the visible church, then you must be baptized.

I think this FV emphasis on a boundary, and the rite, and Covenant faithfulness is fantastic, and Scriptural. As a baptist, I have learned a great deal about the Bible from their materials, and have a lot more to learn. I might change my mind, but it seems that the entire problem is solved if infant baptism is removed from the equation. It’s the evil kid in the classroom, the ringleader, whose removal allows the other kids to take their rightful, respectful places and behave.

Uri said that Jordan says every baptism is an infant baptism. I like that thought. We come to Christ and are babes in the faith. I agree with Jordan that “regeneration” in Scripture is a process. But for all their talk about making the Covenant objective, baptism, unlike circumcision is neither a personal sign (as they accuse baptists of maintaining) nor a familial one. It is a sign that indicates the maturity of the entire New Covenant body over the Old Covenant body. Baptism does not indicate a boundary of flesh. It is a boundary of Spirit, a better Covenant sign for a different kind of Israel – a mature one that is able to judge rightly.

There are no bit-saints in the New Covenant. If you have the Spirit of God, you will persevere. God disciplines His children. Obedience becomes irresistible. That is what I see in Scripture and in my own experience. Baptism does not begins one’s life. It begins one’s ministry, one’s life of spiritual obedience.

The FVers understand the full import of the sign. Perhaps they actually are “poison” to traditional Presbyterianism. But it is a poison to which the FVs themselves are not immune. Their teachings are not at home in their own system. Strangely, their emphases gel perfectly with credobaptism, if not with the individualistic thinking of many baptists themselves.

But the other guys (TRs) understand that the giving of that import to infant baptism causes serious structural problems. At least they recognize it as poison to their system. The problem is not the poison. It is their weak system.

Allow only credobaptism and you can have both the import given to it by Scripture (serving as a priest and elder in the Holy Place and eating at Jesus’ table) and a freedom from the collateral damage to the precious Reformational sola fide.

To put this pictorially, the Scripture-sensitive FVs want to give a good shot of liquor to congregants. Full marks. The tradition-retentive TRs realize that giving a full shot of liquor to babies is not on. Full marks. Or to put it another way, one side wants to play table tennis with a football, and the other side realizes this will tear nets and smash paddles. How to resolve this? Play football with this rite, as God commanded.

The solution is to not only understand what baptism signifies, but whom it is actually for, and stop confusing it with Christian parenting.

Pull out the errant thorn, the doctrinal tensions will disappear, and everyone can relax. They just won’t be Presbyterians any more. They will be a kind of Christian the world has never seen, a godly hybrid of Presbyterian brain and Baptistic brawn — Uberbaptists who like poison and live on it — and I reckon that would be an incredible development. We just have to be patient and civilized until all this experimentation in the lab is finished.

and BMX reviews

A review and a comment on Bible Matrix.

First a comment on Facebook from Chris Griffith:

Started reading Mike Bull’s fascinating new book Bible Matrix. Two chapters into it and I’m already realizing this is a groundbreaking book. He’s synthesizing Jordan and Leithart and giving the layperson an access into understanding biblical typology.

And the amazon review from my friend Bryce Cassin:

Michael Bull takes a fresh look at the Bible, appropriate to the technologies we think with and the language we use in 2010. He also demonstrates a continuum – between talking about the way we use words and the language of the Bible itself. How is this possible? The rich pictures and metaphors in the biblical text have an enduring quality, they may well be the common substance of the Bible, the threads of the tapestry. This book is biblical theology at its best, but it doesn’t use those words. This book is a thorough reading of the biblical text, but you are unlikely to have read it like this before. So this review is about the art of Michael’s book, not a decomposition of its contents page – his publisher can do that for you by making the book available to view in Amazon!

Michael and I belong to the same church in the Blue Mountains near Sydney, and he has shared many stories with me about writing The Bible Matrix. In fact it is impossible to talk to Michael without him sharing a story about biblical ideas and the consequence of the rich pictures in God’s Word. I have also read through much of Michael’s Bull’s longer book, Totus Christus, the volume on which the Bible Matrix is based, and its all good biblical stuff. Through the lens of a (graphic) artist’s eyes, Michael brings an honest approach to his experience of life, God and the people around him. What becomes clear as you read this book is that the events, language, people, places and meaning within the Bible are enduring but have largely in the past been interpreted through the lens of an assumed ‘science’ when the Bible is primarily written from an artists perspective.

What often passes for ‘theology’ is a dualism of Western culture that denies access to the creative mind of God. The flowing river, the substance of the biblical text, is not designed for decomposition into buckets of analysis, but its artistic creator wanted to stir his human beings with material that made sense in the river of human experience. If we ignore the literary boundaries and conventions set by scripture we are timid when approaching the text, shy away from its metaphors, and deny ourselves its clarifying and purifying light. This is the intention of the artist. We are God’s creative material, his plot involves his people as characters. His story is our story. His words are the stuff of life. God’s perceived object in giving us his word is rarely seen as a work of music with a mood in mind, a landscape painting with a pastoral heart. Meanwhile we chop up passages about the Potter and his clay as if they were units in a high school science experiment.

It is time to animate the scriptures as a work of art. The Bible is not an exhibit based on human causal reasoning but a pervasive act of creation that demands understanding on it own terms. Michael Bull helps us unplug from the matrix of Cartesian dualism, unplug from the mythology of supposed ‘scientific’ laws, to see God’s words as they stretch out indefinitely, full of mystery, calling us to experience, to sense, to feel, to live in the unlimited envelope of His Word. The Bible Matrix beckons you to experience the Bible, to catch a glimpse of an untravelled world, that exists beyond the margins of theologies, systems, -isms and schisms, where you can live and move and find your being.

A few other people have indicated they’d like to review. They don’t have to be this long, guys! And they can be critical.

Also, if it works technologically (I’m a bit impaired in that department), I’ll be on Uri’s Trinity Talk show soon. Not that kind of Trinity.

bmxreview

A quote from N. T. Wright on Pentecost (pilfered from Uri’s blog):

There’s an old chorus which begins, ‘Turn your eyes upon Jesus; look full in his wonderful face’. That’s a great invitation, but sadly it goes on ‘and the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace.’ There is a truth in that, but actually in today’s gospel a very different note is sounded: when we look fully at Jesus, risen, ascended and glorified, and when Jesus sends his Spirit on his people, then the things of earth will be seen in a new, sharp and properly disturbing light. And instead of escaping from the world, retreating like an embarrassed chameleon to one colour-field only, we are sent into the world, not to take on its colour but to reveal the new combined reality of heaven and earth, to live in that reality – which we do in sacrament here, and in service outside – and to declare to the awkward and unready world that Jesus is Lord. Pentecost is the end of the great cycle of events that began with Advent; but it is of course the beginning of the new world, the world of God’s kingdom, of his combined heaven-and-earth reality, the world in which, by praise and prayer and prophecy, we are now called to live without embarrassment and to love without measure.

I love the idea of Spirit-filled people being full colour in a monochrome world. Jesus Himself was more of everything than we are, including more emotional, but perfectly appropriate in every instance, and perfectly genuine.

Tom needs to realise that the first century story actually moved beyond Pentecost to Trumpets, etc. and the rest is history (see J. B. Jordan). But that’s another story.

Also, he is rightfully speaking against the escapist sentiment in the old chorus. But I’m not sure it’s totally incorrect. The pattern is that we receive kingdom office through obedience. When we are tempted to seize the things of the world, we look to Jesus. The things that once charmed us grow neither dim nor disturbing. Both their significance and their insignificance becomes apparent to the Spirit-lit eye. The things of earth are good, but we are to view them with the eyes of stewards, not those of hording tinpot despots.

Steven Wedgeworth wrote an excellent piece called The Goodness of Stuff. Here’s a few quotes:

“…the Lutherans and Reformed argued that all creational institutions had their own legitimacy.  Both spiritual and physical things were created by the good God, and thus apart from removing sin, no “extra” spiritual blessing needed to be added to physical things.”

“Contemporary moral philosopher Charles Taylor routinely promotes what he calls, ‘the affirmation of the ordinary life,’ and he states that this found some of its greatest defenders in the Protestant Reformation.  This was true precisely because, as Taylor writes, ‘One of the central points common to all Reformers was their rejection of mediation.’ Creation had no need to be mediated through the institutional church.  Ordinary life was good in itself, according to the Reformers, and as Taylor goes on to argue, this affirmation of creation and humanity lead to the successive social gains that we now enjoy.”

“Whenever Christians set out to ‘reclaim’ the culture, they invariably do a bad job of it. This is usually because they have given too much credit to the devil. As Uncle Screwtape has told us, the demons are actually incapable of producing anything good. Indeed as Lewis teaches us elsewhere, along with Augustine and Athanasius, the devil is incapable of creating anything at all. Whenever we engage cultural expressions, we should keep in mind that at the bottom of each and every one of them is a remnant of the good. A proper culture will have much in common with the original culture, with natural culture.”

But then, back to Tom. Stuff is good, but like Jesus’ willingness to leave all that He possessed with the Father in heaven, we leave our stuff (not disturbing or dim stuff but good stuff) to go into the world to serve. We are willing to give it all up so that there can be more stuff, just like we leave comfy home in the morning to go to work and come home with a comfy paycheque.

Missionaries live in poverty so that Christ can transform culture, not just people. The transformation of the people produces an honest, integrated culture that God blesses until the cup runs over. [1]

The Bible is full of rich people and plunder; rich people who horde and rich people who serve. Zacchaeus is a perfect example of the transformation from one to the other that the Spirit brings. Was his stuff still good? Yes. It was not disturbing, but it was not as alluring. He became a rich channel instead of a sinkhole. It became a greater blessing to give good stuff to others. The culture wasn’t rejected. It was enjoyed in community and with discernment. Jesus didn’t refuse to transform stones into bread because bread is bad. Nazirites didn’t abstain from grapes and grape products because grapes are evil. They had one eye on the future. All good soldiers die for the next generation.

Unlike Babette, we cast our bread upon the waters and expect to see some returns. There is no Last Supper. That’s not how God works. Where welfare failed to transform third world cultures, micro-loans are succeeding because there is a Covenant involved, a day of reckoning for the stewards, blessings and curses.

The New Testament brought a greater appreciation of God’s assessment of us as His vessels, His possessions. Peter Leithart writes:

In an essay in Engaging Economics: New Testament Scenarios and Early Christian Reception, Aaron J. Kuecker contrasts the economics of the Spirit in Luke-Acts with the health and wealth gospel on offer in some “Spirit-filled” churches. Instead of guaranteeing an increase of net worth, the coming of the Spirit opens believers outward in generous use of their gifts and goods. Economics is Spirit or Satanic,[2] a point that Kuecker emphasizes by contrasting Ananias and Sapphira, who falsify the Spirit by their greed, with Barnabas.

In sum, “Possession of/by the Holy Spirit explicitly turns people away from the self and outward toward the broader community and the ‘other.’  The outcome of this allocentric identity is that people, and not possessions, become valued as one’s ‘own’. . . . Spirit-influence thus leads to the use of possessions freely for the ‘other,’ as is exemplified by Barnabas.  In clear contrast, the influence of Satan turns people away from the broader community and the ‘other’ and inward toward the self. The outcome of this egocentric identity is that possessions, and not people, become valued as one’s ‘own.’ . . . Satan prompts a treacherous turn away from the community and leads to destruction. . . . The Spirit prompts a turn toward the community and leads to restored relationships and times of refreshing.’”

So, the good stuff grows strangely dim only because we’ve got our eyes on something better. It’s not because stuff itself is bad or disturbing. It’s because something else is outshining it, but it’s not Jesus. More on this tomorrow.

Also, what do you think is the significance of Zacchaeus being in a tree?

_________________________________
[1] And when a culture turns from God, the abundance must be manufactured. See Building A Cage Out of Freedom.
[2] See Worship as Commerce.

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?

____________________________________________
[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.

“Reprobation is a real theological and biblical idea. It is directly related to the idea of apostasy. Apostasy is a real theological and biblical idea. It is directly related to baptism. In baptism, apostates find their worst nightmare. It is better to be baptized by a cult (which is an invalid baptism to begin with) than to be baptized by an orthodox Trinitarian church. The problem for the apostate with the latter baptism, is that they incur the full wrath of the waters. As Leithart writes: ‘Their baptisms are effective in being witnesses against them.’ Baptized apostates will receive what the Egyptian army received.”

How can an involuntary baptism be a witness against anyone? If I am in a coma for some reason on my wedding day and the best man has to make the vows for me, what sort of case are the witnesses going to have if I break those vows because I feel like I have woken up with Leah instead of Rachel?

Bad analogy, I know. I think the Egyptian army picture is a brilliant one because it points to the military symbolism behind baptism.[1] As discussed elsewhere here, baptism is for those who consciously decide to join the army.

When a soldier goes AWOL, he is not rebelling against the significance of the family of his birth. He is not called to account for rebellion against his nationality. He has broken the vows he took when he joined the army, when he publicly declared his allegiance and his submission to the authority of the armed forces. His worst nightmare is his sergeant, not his father. The punishment is a court-martial, not disownment.

To my limited mind, the boundary-marking ‘Federal Vision’ views on baptism are spot on, but they only make sense as they concern credobaptism, which is perhaps why the non-FV paedobaptists have such a problem with them. The FV attempts to cram a V8 engine into a Mini Minor.

The waters of baptism are mystical but not that kind of mystical. Baptism does bring with it the potential for both blessings and curses, but it is not the blessings and curses conditioned upon obedience to your parents or a decision made for you by them. Jordan is right in condemning ‘worship by proxy.’ But surely neither do we decide to follow Jesus by proxy. This is not the way following Jesus is presented to us in the New Testament at any point.

Jordan says that a Covenant child’s birth is his/her betrothal and that infant baptism is their marriage to Jesus. Marriage by proxy? Vows by proxy? Never. Christian parents dedicate their child to Jesus. This fits the symbolism of betrothal. A conscious baptism is the wedding day, so we have no business condemning those who wake up from the coma and want a divorce. Under the bridal New Covenant, we get to say “I do” with our own lips.

So help me God.

_____________________________________
[1] See Protesting the Draft, The Acid Test and Comparing Apples with Apples.

“I affirm and use the grammatical historical method in all my study of Scriptures, but I do not think it is the only method to use in our study or sermon preparation. If the Bible is one history with many sub-histories, then the grammatical historical method focuses too much on the subs and little on the one history. It draws our attention to the locus without seeing the larger picture. It focuses on the tree while missing the forest. Typology, on the other hand, working with GHM, gives validity to the Biblical language and the Biblical worldview.”

Uri Brito, http://apologus.wordpress.com

The resurrection of Christ is the linchpin upon which all of Christianity depends. It is the point of the spear when it comes to evangelism.

But when the best theologians spend much of their time philosophising about its basic implications, their thinking divorced from most of the Bible, and relying instead upon Jewish fables and other ancient writings to form their opinions, we have a problem. When the cream of the crop are gagging on the milk, we have a problem.

If we are going to have tunnel vision, then the resurrection is the thing to be focussed on to the exclusion of all else. We need to live close to the cross and the empty tomb. But it seems to me that if Paul was around today, he’d put us all in the kindy class. We struggle with his writings because we don’t really get (or bother much with) the Bible that he read.

Therefore, leaving the discussion of the elementary [principles] of Christ, let us go on to perfection, not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, of the doctrine of baptisms, of laying on of hands, of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment. [Hebrews 6:1-2]

I maintain that James Jordan is one of the most biblical and creative theologians ever, yet a number of times I have seen his views referred to as “bizarre.” His work on most of the Bible, from what I can see, came out of a close study of the Torah. Consequently, he is often misunderstood.

“…my criteria when reading or hearing Jordan is to think he is a nut the first time I read him, think he is less of a nut the second, and then think he is a genius the third.”  – Uri Brito

I concur with this. Jordan has said many things in his lectures that initially make me shake my head. After further study, they almost always play out throughout the Bible in a big way. They are “universal themes” that can be accessed only through a careful, consistent use of typology. Sometimes he will make an offhand remark, a throw-away aside, that answers a question I have had for twenty years!

So, move on from the resurrection and the other fundamentals. And if you have a teaching position, get your church or group past the basics. Get into James Jordan lectures today at www.wordmp3.com 

And if you don’t think we have a problem, or don’t understand this post, we really do have a problem. A big part of it is plain old boring unbelief.

James Jordan makes some interesting remarks concerning scientific methods and the questions posed by science. [1] According to Jordan, modern scientific assumptions about the present betray the past and an accurate approach to the future. Science assumes that what we have today (referring to scientific discoveries) is exactly as it was in the past. However, scientific questions posed today are vastly different than the ones posed one hundred years ago. What Jordan is questioning with this reasoning is that science cannot be certain of its claims in the present, hence it must be seen with skepticism and understood for its limitations. When scientists claim certainty in their methods, they are in essence claiming ignorance of the lessons of the past and the future. Jordan writes:

The point of all of this is that the past is not subject to the kinds of controls and observation that science requires. Interpreting the past involves guesswork to a far greater degree than observational science, and thus there is far more room for presuppositions and assumptions to play a role. [2]

Jordan argues that unbelievers invariably are prone to wander in their scientific endeavors. Hence, “unbelieving ‘science’ does not perceive the true nature of the universe.” [3] Their worldviews restrain them from seeing biblical truth exchanging it for a lie. Jordan concludes that “when Christians operate on the same premises as unbelievers, they will not perceive aright either.” [4] Is it any wonder that natural theologians have begun to deny the historicity of the Creation account?

Jordan makes one further assertion worthy of consideration. He argues that Matthew 13 provides an excellent example of the intention of the Biblical record. According to our Lord, the parables were meant to reveal truth to believers and to deceive unbelievers. Jordan draws a similar parallel to revelation in creation. “If creational revelation is truly revelation, then it partakes of this same parabolic nature.” [5] As the written word misleads the faithless, so does the natural Word. Any approach that seeks to dispel the account of the Scripture is prone to self-deception.

___________________________
[1] James B. Jordan, Chapter 6, Creation in Six Days: A Defense of the Traditional Reading of Genesis One
[2-4] Jordan, p. 126
[5] Jordan, p. 127