The Unseen Realm, Part 2

December 30, 2023 at 9:45 pm (Biblical Theology, Hermeneutics, Theological Encyclopedia)

Filters and all that. Heiser doesn’t like filters. He thinks it is possible to come to the text of Scripture with no filters whatsoever (pp. 14-15). What he means is a grid by which we determine which intepretations are more plausible than others. Chapter 2 is entitled “Rules of Engagement.” Heiser makes several errors here which are quite costly in terms of methodology.

The first error is in assuming that all filters “are not intrinsic to the Bible. They are systems we invent to organize the Bible. They are artificial. They are filters” (emphasis original). This is quite naive, actually. Filters are completely unavoidable, most especially by people who think they are avoidable. There is a crowd of exegetes (a constellation, really) that believe it is possible not to have a systematic-theological grid in place when one reads the Bible. Anyone who tells you that they do not read the Bible with such a grid is lying. What they really mean is that if churchly systematic theology says one thing, then that is automatically a wrong view of the text. What they don’t tell you is their grid is just as binding, but all the more insidious for being camouflaged. It is just as griddy to say one has no grid as it is simply to acknowledge that one has a grid and then tell you what it is. You see it in churches all the time when they scream “no creed but Christ!” They have a very definite creed. They just won’t tell you what it is until you fall foul of it. But read this book to see that the Bible commands us to confess our faith.

To put things another way, imagine that you are looking at a Rembrandt, one of the most famous painters for contrasting light and dark. If you look at the light part of the painting, you can say, “I see this light and the patterns that are illuminated by it.” If, however, you say, “the light is too much like a grid, and it can’t impose itself on the dark part of the painting,” then you are imposing a “non-light” grid on the painting. That is exactly what Heiser does.

Since this is completely unworkable, however, he immediately contradicts himself by saying that “we need to see the mosaic created by the pieces” (15). He goes on to say “The Bible is really a theological and literary mosaic. the pattern in a mosaic often isn’t clear up close. It may appear to be just a random assemblage of pieces. Only when you step back can you see the wondrous whole…But the meaning of all the pieces is found in the completed mosaic. And a mosaic isn’t imposed on the pieces; it derives from them.” Don’t look now, Heiser, but you just described systematic theology, which derives from the pieces of Scripture (I would argue that Vos is on a better track here by calling Scripture an organically unfolding whole, not a mosaic). So, having told us that we cannot use filters, he says that the meaning of a passage is found in the completed whole. So his whole becomes a filter by which to see the individual pieces. See, he has a filter. It just isn’t what the church has said about anything. In this he follows Johann Gabler in his distinction between biblical and systematic theology.

The irony of his position is clear in a later paragraph where he opines that removing one’s filter allows one (or drives one) to ask the question about why something is in the Bible. I could be wrong in this, but it doesn’t appear to me that having a filter prevents anyone from asking the questions he raises (“Why is that in the Bible?” and “How can I make sense of all this?”).

I personally do not know who he is talking about when he claims that we have been taught that the history of Christianity is the true context of the Bible (16). The true context of Scripture is the literary and historical context. Scripture interprets Scripture, and Scripture is a revelatory interpretation of God’s redemptive actions in history. I think what he means is the italicized words “Yet there is a pervasive tendency in the believing Church to filter the Bible through creeds, confessions, and denominational preferences.” But this is not the same thing as saying that the history of Christianity is the true context of the Bible. We stand on the shoulders of previous giants in the faith. We can see farther because of them. This does not mean they are always correct. He says that we shouldn’t ignore the forefathers, but that is really what he is saying. The proper key of interpretation, for Heiser, lies in throwing off the shackles of churchly interpretation. This just winds up meaning that everyone should, in fact, put on the shackles of a Heiserian reading instead of the church.

I do agree completely with Heiser, however, that the church has been desensitized to the vitality and theological importance of the unseen world (16-17). As I said previously, one of the reasons I am taking up this book is that the Western ignorance (sometimes deliberate, sometimes accidental) of the unseen world is going to come back and bite us if we do not inquire of the Word how we are to engage in it.

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Hebrew Roots Movement, Part 5

December 29, 2023 at 6:44 pm (Hebrew Roots Movement, Heresy, Law, Mark)

The passage under consideration today is Mark 7:14-23. In this passage, the Pharisees reproached Jesus for the conduct of his disciples, namely, that they were not eating with washed hands (vv. 1-5 of the chapter). Jesus then accuses them of substituting man-made commandments for God’s commandments (vv. 6-13). In other words, the entire attack of the Pharisees is based on the hypocritical substitution. The main problem with making a fence around the Torah, as the Pharisees did, was that the functional effect wound up pitting obedience to the man-made law over against obedience to God’s law. The “fence” commandment about the possibility of giving one’s “tithe” to the Temple (though the giver maintained possession and use of the money!) was a loophole for some not to take care of their parents. So, their approach is wrong.

However, it is much more than their approach that is wrong. Their argument is wrong, too. In saying what Jesus says here, He determines that nothing that goes into one’s mouth can defile a person any longer. This is a change in the law. The OT food laws directed that unclean foods made a person unclean. Jesus says that nothing going from outside to inside can make a person unclean (verse 15). This verse is usually ignored in the HRM. Instead, it is what comes out of a person that defiles them morally. In other words, there are no edible things that can defile us anymore.

Typically, the HRM wants to define food as being the clean animals of the OT, such that unclean animals are not even in view in the passage. This does not work, since then we wind up with a redundancy in verse 19, which would look like this: “Thus He declared all food (defined already as clean!) clean.” Jesus’ argument is much more comprehensive than this. He describes the human digestive cycle as proof that nothing that goes into a person can defile him.

Another exegetical move some make is that the participle katharizon is applied to the digestive process, instead of referring to something Jesus was doing by what He said. Thus, it would run something like this, “what enters the stomach is expelled, the process thus making it clean.” But this does not give them any purchase against the standard interpretation of the passage, since such a construction assumes that what goes into the mouth is unclean by OT definition, and then becomes clean by means of the digestive process. Besides this, the participle’s grammatical gender is masculine. If it referred to a process, it would have been neuter. As a masculine participle, it would refer to the closest grammatically masculine noun, which in this case is Jesus Himself. So the HRM interpretation of the phrase as referring to the process of digestion is not grammatically possible.

What Mark’s parenthetical comment does is draw out the implications of what Jesus said. It is incidental to the main point, to be sure, but saying that nothing can defile us by entering our mouths does have the force of declaring all edible things clean, and that the dietary laws no longer apply in the same way.

It should be mentioned here that not only do the dietary laws remain in the OT, but they still have much to teach us about holiness, even if they do not apply the same way. I mention this because the usual HRM reaction is to accuse folk like me of abolishing the law. This interpretation does nothing of the sort to any OT law whatsoever. All OT laws remain on the books and apply in various ways to us today. What we say is that the application of all civil and ceremonial laws changes when Christ comes, and it is the general equity within those laws that still applies. The literal meaning of civil and ceremonial laws only apply today in their teaching capacity. The moral law, of course, still applies in its literal form.

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Word and Spirit, Introduction

December 27, 2023 at 5:53 pm (Biblical Theology, Theological Encyclopedia)

I am planning on starting several blogging-through-books series, in addition to the Hebrew Roots Movement series and the textual criticism series. Heiser I have already started. Here is a second book, one which I like much better! This is the new collection of the shorter writings of my teacher, Dr. Richard B. Gaffin, Jr. I took five classes from Dr. Gaffin, which was as many as I could. The only class he taught that I didn’t take was his Romans class. In other words, I was thoroughly Gaffinized, as the expression goes. If my readers have not already procured his recent publications, both this volume and the outstanding In the Fullness of Time, I highly recommend both.

The Foreward is written by Dr. Gaffin’s two sons, Richard B. Gaffin III and Steven Gaffin. It is a beautiful tribute to a straight-up guy. What you saw was what you got. He is the same at home and in public. I only hope my two sons might be able to say something similar when they have the chance.

The introduction is by David Garner, a professor of systematic theology at WTS Philly. His opening statement is almost guilty of understatement: “Few theologians at Westminster Theological Seminary have had more widespread and more durable influence than Dr. Richard B. Gaffin, Jr.” He then lists five characteristics of Dr. Gaffin’s work: 1. The devotional character of his writings. This is interesting and instructive, since Dr. Gaffin bridged the academy and the church every bit as much as he bridged biblical theology and systematic theology. 2. A high view of Scripture. One could see this in action when one sat in his classes. The way he handled exegesis was careful and reverent. His writings are the same. 3. He models faithful exegesis, especially in not drawing attention to himself, but rather in pointing us to Jesus. I never had a professor who did that more. 4. Dr. Gaffin is a synthesizer of various disciplines, particularly biblical and systematic theology, but the others as well. 5. His writing is pastoral in quality. He does not engage in academic discussions for their own sake. It is always with a few towards serving the church.

This volume is well worth your time, so I hope this will whet your appetite for reading the shorter writings of a man who many (including myself) consider to have taught the central courses of WTS.

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Textual Criticism: a Primer, Part 1

December 26, 2023 at 9:43 pm (Textual Criticism)

When theologians use the term “criticism,” conservatives tend to get very nervous. While there are positions (such as Bart Ehrman’s) that are generally outside the pale of orthodoxy, the term “criticism” in this case is not and should not be viewed as an automatic flame word. In the field of textual criticism, the word “criticism” only means the attempt to ascertain the original autographic reading my means of the apographs. “Autographic” here means what the author of a text actually wrote on vellum or papyrus. “Apographs” refer to the copies made from the original.

Old Testament textual criticism is quite different from New Testament textual criticism, and therefore must be a distinct subject of conversation. We have far fewer manuscripts for the OT than for the NT. However, the manuscripts we do have for the OT have amazing accuracy. The case of Isaiah is well-known in this regard. The main text for printed Hebrew Bibles is that of the Leningrad Codex, although the Aleppo Codex is used in Israel. These both date from the Middle Ages, 10th century in the case of the Aleppo Codex, 11th in the case of the Leningrad. But in the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, a nearly complete Isaiah scroll was found, nearly a thousand years older than Aleppo and Leningrad, and it is nearly identical with them! The textual stability of the Hebrew Bible is remarkable in most cases (Jeremiah being an exception, but more on Jeremiah in a later post).

What is most controversial about OT textual criticism is the use of versions. Can we use the Greek translation (usually abbreviated the LXX, the Septuagint), and/or the Latin Vulgate (translated by Jerome) for textual criticism? Many of a confessional persuasion believe they cannot be used, since only the Leningrad and Aleppo codices are actually Hebrew. However, in some cases, the LXX can be used as a witness to its original Hebrew parent manuscript. This is fraught with difficulty, since mistranslations occur in the LXX, necessitating a careful study to see if the LXX reading is a mistranslation or a witness to an alternative Hebrew reading, which would be the manuscript from which the LXX was copied. An impetus to LXX studies was given by the Dead Sea Scrolls, since some of the readings found there support LXX readings, while others support the Masoretic text (Leningrad, Aleppo).

In the case of the New Testament, the situation is quite different. We have many, many manuscripts for the New Testament, by a large margin more than for any other ancient text. Counting fragments, we have well over 6,000 manuscripts for the Greek New Testament. The copying was not done nearly as well as for the Hebrew OT. However, the number of manuscripts helps us get back to the original. The original is there in the copies.

However, should all of these manuscripts be used? Should future discovered manuscripts (if there are any) be taken into account? I believe they should. To anticipate an objection, the King James version translators said in their preface: “That we do not deny, nay, we affirm and avow, that the very meanest translation of the Bible in English, set forth by men of our profession, (for we have seen none of theirs of the whole Bible as yet) containeth the word of God, nay, is the word of God.” This, some of their erstwhile modern defenders would needlessly deny on text-critical grounds, or at least heavily qualify. However, the Word of God in the New Testament is to be found in the entirety of the Greek manuscripts that we have or will discover. To this it is often objected, “What if a manuscript is discovered in the future that completely contradicts everything in the rest of the manuscript tradition? Doesn’t this mean that your foundation will be always shifting?” Not at all. How could one newly discovered manuscript outweigh everything that comes before it?

Some might also object to this position on the basis of a single edition, like the Textus Receptus. Defenders of this edition believe that the TR is the best edition of the Greek NT, and that all others are inferior (their rhetoric ranges from the scholarly to the absurd on this point). They tend to believe that Scrivener’s edition of 1881 effectively ends all such text-critical endeavors. I beg to differ. If the Scrivener TR is the only completely accurate Greek NT (usually understood as being in fundamental continuity with the TR tradition going back to Erasmus’ Greek New Testament published in 1516), then no one had the Greek NT before that time. There is no single Greek manuscript that is completely identical to the Scrivener NT. In the interests of full disclosure, I will be primarily intending this series of posts to be ranged against what is called the confessional bibliology movement that seems to be gaining ground today, much of which is schismatic in the sense of intending to disenfranchise anyone who does not use a translation based on the TR. As I already pointed out, they disagree with the KJV translators. The plan is to post some things about OT textual criticism first, and then post quite a few things about NT textual criticism.

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Seven Differences Between Gifts and Graces

December 23, 2023 at 1:15 pm (Anthropology, Covenant, Holy Spirit, Jesus, Quotes, Sanctification)

I just read this chapter from John Owen this morning, and I though I would share Owen’s marvelous insights into the question of how to distinguish between the gifts of God and the graces of God. This is from his A Discourse of Spiritual Gifts, chapter 2. In the old Banner of Truth edition, it is volume 4, pp. 425-438. In the new Crossway edition, it is volume 8, pp. 259-273, which is the edition I will be referencing here. I have seldom read anything from Owen so insightful.

He actually first discusses three similarities. Both come from Christ’s mediation, both are wrought by the power of the Holy Spirit, and both are ordained for the good of the church.

The first difference is in the title of each (263-4). He understands fruits/graces (which are synonymous in Owen’s nomenclature) as coming from the Holy Spirit as from a fountain welling up inside a person, whereas the gifts are effects of the Spirit’s work on a man (as opposed to in a man).

The second difference lies in their intentional origin. Fruit/grace comes from divine election to salvation, whereas the gifts only come from a temporary election unto an office (264-6).

The third differences is in their respective relationship to the covenant of grace. Fruit/grace comes from the essence of the covenant, whereas the gifts are of the administration. An especially sobering warning comes in at this point to all who have an office in Christ’s church: “some may belong to the covenant with respect to its outward administration, by virtue of spiritual gifts, who are not made partakers of its inward effectual grace” (267).

The fourth difference is in how they relate to Christ’s work. The fruit/grace comes from the priestly work of Christ, whereas the gifts come from His kingly office. This is nuanced a bit by the thought that the kingly office of Christ is also involved in pointing us towards His priestly work, but it is secondary to the kingly office. The gifts, however, come solely from His kingly office.

The fifth difference is one I have questions about, since he thinks the gifts can be temporary, whereas the fruit/grace are not. I would ask Owen (who doesn’t deal with this passage in this context) how he would address Romans 11:29: “For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable” (ESV). I suspect Owen would argue that the context of that verse is not about office, but about salvation. But that is only a guess.

The sixth difference has to do with its purpose. With fruit/grace, the primary benefit is for the immediate recipient, and secondarily other people. With gifts, it is the other way around: gifts are given for the benefit of people other than the recipient first of all, and the recipient only secondarily.

The seventh difference is in their effect on the recipient and where their seat is. The gifts reside only in the mind, whereas the fruit/grace reside everywhere in a human. Another warning to those in office arises here: “And although God does not ordinarily bestow them on flagitious persons, nor continue them with such as after the reception of them become flagitious, yet they may be in those who are unrenewed, and have nothing in them to preserve men absolutely from the worst of sins” (271-2, emphasis added). Brilliant stuff.

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The Unseen Realm, Part 1

December 22, 2023 at 4:33 pm (Difficult Scripture, John, OT-Psalms, the Devil)

As lately as twenty years ago or so, if you had asked me what I thought about demon possession in the West, I would have said Satan doesn’t need it since he has the entire entertainment industry, greed, and substance abuse to carry out everything he wants, while he and his ilk are pushed off into the shadows and thus ignored. Remember (via Lewis’s Screwtape Letters) that he likes either to be ignored or to be put on equal footing with God. What he doesn’t like is to be warred against by prayer warriors who know that he exists, and is very powerful (much more powerful than we are), but still infinitely below God Himself.

So in today’s world, with paganism on the rise, witchcraft becoming intriguing to people, and Satan worship also becoming appealing, more attention needs to be paid to these kinds of issues in the West. Incidentally, I came up with a syllogism recently concerning Satan worship that seems powerful to me. Firstly, Satan is a murderer (John 8:44). By means of his deception, he murdered Adam and Eve (which is not to absolve them of guilt, but still, Satan’s part is diabolically murderous). Secondly, Adam represented the whole human race. Therefore, Satan worshipers are bowing down to their own murderers.

The demonic world is not the only part of the unseen realm getting new attention, however. Enter Michael Heiser, who died last year at the age of 60. Before he died, he wrote several books related to these topics, and the one that seems to have gotten the most traction in the scholarly and evangelical world is The Unseen Realm. I believe, that while he has some very interesting and helpful things to contribute to the topic, he does not prove, in the end, to be a reliable guide. I propose to go through this book chapter by chapter and evaluate his arguments and conclusions.

Chapter 1 is entitled “Reading Your Bible Again-for the First Time.” He describes the pathway by which he arrived at the conclusion that there is a pantheon of divine, supernatural, yet created “gods” (Hebrew Elohim). A friend of his handed him a Hebrew Bible open to Psalm 82, verse 1, which he translates in the book as follows: “God (elohim) stands in the divine assembly; he administers judgment in the midst of the gods (elohim).” Noting that the word elohim occurs twice in the verse, he noted that the first instance refers to Yahweh, but the second verse says “plain as day: The God of the Old Testament was part of an assembly-a pantheon-of other gods” (p. 11).

He dismisses the classical interpretation of the elohim as human judges quite dismissively (he does this with most interpretations he disagrees with) by saying that it was “disturbingly weak.” He knows that they could not be correct because “Psalm 82 states that the gods were being condemned as corrupt in their administration of the nations of the earth” (12). This is not a given in the text of Psalm 82. The foundations of the earth in verse 5 could simply mean that justice is problematic everywhere if it is problematic in Israel. The call for God to judge the earth in verse 8 could simply mean that God’s justice everywhere will ensure justice in Israel. The elohim are therefore not explicitly said to be corruptly governing the nations of the earth in Psalm 82.

There are huge problems with Heiser’s interpretation of Psalm 82. The first problem is a simple one. The question of verse 2 hardly seems likely on a divine being interpretation. The “wicked” are surely wicked humans. How then could the elohim, if they are divine beings, be showing partiality to the wicked? How does the divine-to-human partiality work in this situation?

Secondly, as Richard Phillips notes in his commentary on the passage, why would God entrust justice of the weak, fatherless, afflicted, and destitute to these elohim in verse 3?

Thirdly, Jesus interprets verse 6 authoritatively in John 10:31-36. Jesus’ point is that He should not be accused of blasphemy simply by claiming to be the Son of God, since even humans could be called elohim on occasion. Heiser has an extremely convoluted attempt to circumvent the meaning of this passage in footnote 3 on p. 268. He says modern commentators fail to give due place to the original context of Psalm 82 “which has the divine council as its focus.” This is doubtful. He misses the point of Jesus’ words entirely when he says that Jesus was trying to argue about Himself. He wasn’t. He was arguing about the Jews’ injustice in charging Him with blasphemy. He begs the question of Psalm 82’s focus as well. Jesus’ words plainly challenge the “divine council” interpretation of Psalm 82, to which Heiser basically says, “but Psalm 82 is about the divine council, therefore John 10 can’t be saying what commentators think it is saying.” It is difficult to see how this interpretation of Psalm 82 as referring to humans could undermine Jesus’ claim to be God, when, as Andreas Kostenberger says, “In essence, Jesus is saying that there is OT precedent for referring to humans as ‘gods'” (CNTUOT, 465). Kevin Bauder (in an article cited below) adds an intriguing layer to this interpretation, since He is standing among people who are setting themselves up to be His judges!

The other, more serious objection to the “human judge” interpretation is verse 7, which seems to put distance between men and gods: “nevertheless, like men you shall die.” However, Kevin Bauder has an excellent answer to this objection in his article “Who Judges the Judge? Psalm 82” in the volume The Old Testament Yesterday and Today: Essays in honor of Michael P.V. Barrett, pp. 153ff. His argument is that these unjust judges became arrogant to the point of thinking they were superhuman (pp. 176ff). So the stricture in verse 7 says that they have not progressed or evolved beyond humanity nearly as much as they think they have.

A further objection to the divine council interpretation is the ignorance ascribed in verse 5. This seems unlikely on a divine council interpretation (see Bauder, 177).

Despite Heiser’s attempts to reboot the divine council interpretation of Psalm 82 on a footing independent of the history of religions basis most liberal scholars used before, his case is ultimately unconvincing here.

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Hebrew Roots Movement, Part 4

December 21, 2023 at 2:58 pm (Hebrew Roots Movement, Heresy, Law, Mosaic Law)

I last addressed this heresy a year ago in a three-part series (here, here, and here). The promise was that I would start to address some of the individual passages that the HRM twists in order to come up with their theology. Today I will go for the jugular, the central passage in the discussion, Matthew 5:17-20. Here is the passage in Greek:

17 Μὴ νομίσητε ὅτι ἦλθον καταλῦσαι τὸν νόμον ἢ τοὺς προφήτας· οὐκ ἦλθον 

καταλῦσαι ἀλλὰ πληρῶσαι.

18 ἀμὴν γὰρ λέγω ὑμῖν, ἕως ἂν παρέλθῃ ὁ οὐρανὸς καὶ ἡ γῆ, ἰῶτα ἓν ἢ μία κεραία 

οὐ μὴ παρέλθῃ ἀπὸ τοῦ νόμου ἕως ἂν πάντα γένηται.

19 ὃς ἐὰν οὖν λύσῃ μίαν τῶν ἐντολῶν τούτων τῶν ἐλαχίστων καὶ διδάξῃ οὕτως 

τοὺς ἀνθρώπους, ἐλάχιστος κληθήσεται ἐν τῇ βασιλείᾳ τῶν οὐρανῶν· ὃς δ’ ἂν 

ποιήσῃ καὶ διδάξῃ, οὗτος μέγας κληθήσεται ἐν τῇ βασιλείᾳ τῶν οὐρανῶν.

20 λέγω γὰρ ὑμῖν ὅτι ἐὰν μὴ περισσεύσῃ ὑμῶν ἡ δικαιοσύνη πλεῖον τῶν 

γραμματέων καὶ Φαρισαίων, οὐ μὴ εἰσέλθητε εἰς τὴν βασιλείαν τῶν οὐρανῶν.

Translated (my own translation): Do not suppose I came to abolish the law or the prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfil. For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, a jot or a tittle will by no means pass away from the law until everything has happened. Therefore, whoever destroys one of the least of these commands and teaches men accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven. Conversely, whoever does the law and teaches men accordingly will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will be no means enter the kingdom of heaven.

The passage’s context in the Sermon on the Mount places these verses at the beginning of Jesus’ explanation of the law. He will go on after this to discuss anger’s relationship to the sixth commandment, lust’s relationship to the seventh commandment, divorce’s relationship to the seventh commandment, an oath’s relationship to the third commandment, etc. Jesus’ primary goal is to make clear the full extent of the moral law. Nothing from Matthew 5:21-6:4 has to do with anything other than the moral law. This does not mean that 5:18-19 can be limited to the moral law. However, we must observe closely what Jesus means by “until everything has happened.” It is closely linked in the text to Jesus’ fulfilment of the law in verse 17. Now, the “everything” of verse 18 is generally regarded as including both Christ’s first and second coming. So, the force of the passage cannot be limited to some such idea as that Christ has eliminated the law with His first coming. Plainly, His succeeding exposition of the moral law leads in a different direction, one of highlighting the internal aspects of obeying the law, something you will notice the HRM spends precious little time explaining.

The key point for our purposes, however, has to do with this question: does the durability of the law in this passage imply that there will never be a change in its application? The HRM movement says there will never be a change in the application of the law, and that such is the meaning of the passage (they especially point to verse 19 in claiming this). However, the passage says nothing about application. The law will never pass away in the sense of ceasing to exist. It is all there in the OT. There are changes in application. As was mentioned in previous posts, many of the OT laws are explicitly tied to being in the land. Hebrews tells us (7:12) that where there is a change in the priesthood, there is a change in the law. HRM advocates cannot admit that there is ever a change in the law.

I remember asking an HRM advocate once why they do not sacrifice animals in accordance with OT law. His response was shocking to me: “Because there is no temple in Jerusalem.” It wasn’t because Jesus had come and put an end to the sacrifices (as Hebrews says repeatedly and quite clearly in 7:11, 7:27, 9:12, 9:15, and especially 9:25-28 and 10:10-14. This is so clear in Hebrews that only a thoroughly deceived person could possibly think Hebrews means for us to go back and build a temple in Jerusalem, such that we will finish denying the once-for-all sacrifice of Jesus Christ. But this is what the HRM does: it denies the finished once-for-all sacrifice of Jesus Christ. How can it not do so, when its central tenet is that we still have to obey the entirety of the OT law in exactly the same way as before Christ came. For the HRM, Jesus’ coming makes no difference at all in the command to obey the OT law. When Hebrews says that the old covenant is obsolete (8:13, referring to the Mosaic version of the covenant of grace, not the Abrahamic, as is clear from verse 9), it can’t really mean that, according to HRM.

The OT law is still relevant in this way: that it teaches us about the Lord Jesus Christ. In previous posts, I defended the traditional position that there are three parts to the OT law. The moral law still applies today in the same way as it did before Christ came. The civil and ceremonial law, however, do not. The ceremonial law does not apply in the same way because Christ has put an end to sacrifices, and therefore also to the sacrificial system. The civil law does not apply in the same way for two reasons. Firstly, it was tied to the promised land, and secondly, it was for the time when the church and state were the same entity.

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Against the “And’s”

December 20, 2023 at 10:08 am (Bible)

Translations in the KJV stream (which would include the KJV, RV, ASV, RSV, NASB, NKJV, and ESV) include a translation device that is a mixed bag. On the one hand, it allows the English translation to be more transparent in one way to the original languages. On the other hand, it is not good English. This is the practice of using the word “and” to indicate every place where there is a vav-consecutive imperfect in the Hebrew, or a de (non-adversative) or kai in Greek.

The word “and” is a conjunction in English that is meant to connect two thoughts together. This is not how the word is used when mirroring Hebrew and Greek conjunctions. The problem is this: the Hebrew and Greek constructions have much more to do with simply continuing a narrative, rather than connecting two specific thoughts together. The Hebrew and Greek can be quite adequately translated simply by using paragraphs, or other more connective words like “then,” which we often use to describe the next element in a story.

Here is one of the more egregious examples. In the original Hebrew of Deuteronomy 5, in the second giving of the law, there are vav-consecutives starting with the seventh commandment (these are not present to nearly the same extent in Exodus 20). Some translations (KJV, ASV, RSV, and NRSV) use the acceptable “neither.” But the ESV uses the word “and,” resulting in this monstrosity: “You shall not murder. And you shall not commit adultery. And you shall not steal. And you shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. And you shall not covet…” It is the only translation I know of that does this in Deuteronomy 5.

Translation is always a trade-off in various ways. Do you go more literal or more understandable? Do you fill out the meaning, or do you keep it succinct? Do you weigh the word level higher than the phrase level or vice versa? It is a complicated business, and perfection has proven elusive in some passages of Scripture. However, compromising good English grammar for the sake of transparency to the text is not translating into English, but into “Biblese.” At least varying the connectives would prove helpful here, such as “so,” “then,” “furthermore,” “as a result.”

The ESV is a splendid translation in most respects, don’t get me wrong, and I highly recommend it as one of the three best modern translations (the others being CSB and NKJV). However, this feature is not good English. When I read the ESV from the pulpit, I usually leave out the “ands,” carrying the narrative simply by vocal inflection.

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Could Paul Have Written Hebrews After All?

December 17, 2023 at 11:33 am (Hebrews)

As someone who holds to Pauline authorship of Hebrews, I recognize that I am in a rather tiny minority of opinion, and that Reformation greats like Calvin and Luther are on the other side of the debate from me. I also wish to point out that the canonical status of Hebrews is a distinct issue from its authorship. It is firmly in the canon regardless of who wrote it.

There are four main reasons why people think that Paul could not have written Hebrews. We may take Donald Hagner’s exposition (in his introduction to the NT) as among the clearest and as representative of the non-Pauline position. The first reason is that Hebrews is anonymous. All of Paul’s undisputed letters are not anonymous. Therefore it would seem to be strange if there is only one exception. Again, it is necessary to point out both that Hebrews is anonymous, and that anonymity is not a bar to canonicity. I point this out because many writers who reject Pauline authorship seem to be afraid of recriminatory accusations from Pauline-authorship types to the tune of “Well, if you deny Pauline authorship, you are undermining its authority.” I want to make it clear that I hold no such position. However, to answer Hagner’s argument here, if Hebrews is a sermon turned into a letter (cf. the “word of exhortation” of 13:22), it might very well not have appeared necessary to the author to sign his name to it. None of Paul’s undisputed letters are sermons, either. In fact, the difference in genre accounts for a good deal, and is an essential part of the answer to the other arguments as well.

The second argument is the most substantial, namely, that the author appears to place himself among those only having a second-hand knowledge of the Lord (2:3 is always the verse quoted). Paul always claimed to have a first-hand knowledge of the Lord. So why does the author say what he says in 2:3 if he is Paul? The answer has several parts to it. Firstly, a sermon often finds the preacher identifying with the congregation to whom he is preaching, even if things he says may be more strictly true of the listeners than of the preachers. We may call this phenomenon “the sermonic ‘we'”. Secondly, as John Owen notes in his commentary, the verb should not be translated “attested” in 2:3, but rather “confirmed.” Paul, of course, denies that he heard Jesus second-hand. However, a reading of Galatians 2:1-2 indicates that Paul wanted confirmation of his message. So, even if Hebrews 2:3 means something different for preacher as distinct from congregation, Hebrews 2:3 could very much still refer to Paul in a way consistent with his undisputed letters, as long as the verse is understood to be saying that the message was “confirmed,” and not the much more comprehensive “attested.”

The third argument is the argument from style. Hebrews seems much different from the undisputed Pauline epistles. The Greek is closer to classical style (Hagner calls it “the most elegant in the NT”). Hagner says that one could attribute this fact to a different secretary. However, the difference in genre could be a much more effective explanation of the difference in style. A letter is going to be less formal in its language than a sermon is. The trappings of epistolary elements are much more subdued in Hebrews than in any of the obvious epistles in the NT. There is an inherent problem with the stylistic argument. We don’t have a large enough sample size in the NT to be as confident about stylistic differences as many commentators seem to be today. In fact, given the small sample size, I remember reading somewhere a claim that any of the NT authors could have written the whole thing! Several authors have pointed out that the so-called stylistic differences have also been exaggerated.

The fourth argument is the weakest, in my opinion. It is the idea that the theology differs from Paul in key ways, such that ideas normal in Paul are absent in Hebrews and vice versa. A sermon, however, is a very focused, narrow sort of document usually. It is not usually intended to speak about every major tenet of teaching. As there is nothing in Hebrews that contradicts Paul, there is no reason to suppose that Paul could not have written something like this.

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Why Jesus Came (1 Tim 1:15)

December 11, 2023 at 10:00 am (1Timothy, Christology, Jesus)

posted by R. Fowler White

It’s Christmas season again, and since we’re bombarded every year with things that have little or nothing to do with the Bible’s celebrations of Jesus’ incarnation, it’s good for us to be reminded of the basics by looking at key Bible passages. Usually we get our reminders from the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. But the Apostle Paul also has something to say, at least by implication, about Christ’s incarnation in First Timothy 1:15. There he writes:

It is a trustworthy saying and deserving full acceptance: that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, among whom I am foremost.

Before Paul tells us why Christ came, he tells us that He came into the world. These simple words take us into the background to the coming of Jesus, His arrival, His advent in the flesh. He came into the world, the place where we human beings live and sin, the place where there are human needs to be met and humans to be saved. The Apostle’s point is that Christ’s origin is not in this world but is from outside of it. In Gal 4:4, Paul makes clear that Christ Jesus is the Son whom the Father had sent forth into this world from outside of it. We speak rightly of Christ’s Great Commission to His Apostles and the church, but the Father’s Commission to the Son is greater still.

John the Apostle agrees with Paul’s statements and adds to them. In his Gospel, John tells us that Jesus was the Word who was with God and was God (John 1:1). Before He came into the world, indeed before the world even had come to be, Christ existed as a Divine Person and, at that, as a Divine Person communing with and also distinct from God the Father and from God the Spirit. To use the Evangelist’s phrasing, God the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. That Child in the manger existed before He came into the world, before He was born, before He was given the name Jesus. He came into the world from His glorious invisible dwelling with the Father and the Spirit and became man. As a result, our duty is at least twofold: 1) to understand that He is now and will forever be one Person with two natures, divine and human, and 2) to make sure that we are settled on the origin of Jesus. He was sent by His Father from glory and came into our world (cf. Heb 1:6a; 10:5a).

Now that Paul has told us that Christ Jesus came into the world, he tells us why He came: He came to save sinners. The details matter here, so let’s look at the components of that clause. What does the Apostle mean when he states that Christ Jesus came to save? He means that Jesus came with a commission to fulfill, with a mission to accomplish, namely to rescue, deliver, release, redeem people (not angels; Heb 2:16) from the bondage of sin by paying the redemption price. The events of Israel’s deliverance from Egypt provide the backdrop here. The price paid for the nation’s deliverance from Egyptian slavery was profound: it was the death of the firstborn. Through Moses, Israel learned of God’s substitute for their firstborn, and thus Israel offered the Passover lamb and saw their deliverance from bondage to liberty by the Lord their God.

Israel’s deliverance from Egypt was a shadow of the good news now fully revealed in Christ Jesus. There is, thankfully, a redemption greater than that of Moses. That greater redemption is captured in one word: sinners. Such are the people Jesus came to save: sinners. Antiquated as that term sinners has become, we need to explain it briefly. The Apostle refers to us humans, to what we are, what we do, in our bondage to sin. We are, by nature, born disobedient and unrighteous, alienated from God, and therefore lost. We do not do what God tells us to do; we are not what God tells us to be. In fact, we cannot be or do what He requires. We live by the wrong standard: we don’t measure up to God’s will published for us in His commandments. We have the wrong motive: we don’t love our Creator-Redeemer God or our neighbors as He requires. We pursue the wrong goal, the wrong end: we don’t live to glorify or enjoy God forever; we live to glorify and enjoy ourselves. As a result of all this, we earn the wages of sin, namely, death now and death later in the lake of fire. Friends, Jesus came to save sinners because there was no one else for Him to save.

One of those sinners whom Christ came to save was Paul himself. Paul is eager for us to reflect on his confession: I am the foremost of sinners, the chief of sinners (1 Tim 1:16b). Elsewhere he calls himself the very least of all the saints (Eph 3:8). Why would he speak this way about himself? Paul well knew that he was among the first to ravage Christ’s church (Acts 8:3; Phil 3:6), seeking by any means necessary to destroy it and frustrate His saving mission. Yet reflect more carefully on his words: I am—not I was—the foremost sinner of all. Even while declaring his continuing knowledge of Christ his Savior, Paul confesses a continuing conviction of his sin. Paul’s point, however, is not merely self-referential. No, he wants us to understand that, as aggravated and heinous as his sins against Christ and His Bride were, his salvation was no one-of-a-kind novelty. Quite the contrary. Christ had made him an example for those who are going to believe upon Him for eternal life (1 Tim 1:16b). His point is that, because it is true that Christ came to save the chief of sinners, it is also true that Christ came to save those who are going to believe upon Him for eternal life as Paul did. From Paul’s example, then, we are to see that no sinner needs to despair of finding forgiveness in Christ, precisely because even the foremost of sinners found forgiveness in Christ.

As we move through the present Christmas season, we should be careful to find ourselves rejoicing that God, in His mercy, not only brought us to know that we are sinners, but also renewed us to hear and receive God’s good news of great joy for sinners: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. That saying is trustworthy and deserving of our full acceptance: it is an authentic presentation of the gospel for sinners, worthy of a reception that is complete, wholehearted, without reservation.

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