[Vision2020] Old and New Covenant
Taro Tanaka
taro_tanaka at hotmail.com
Sun Aug 20 01:12:07 PDT 2006
I'm going to go through Herr Doktor Professor's assertions line by line.
Let's see whether we find some fertile thought, or only fertilizer . . .
nickgier at adelphia.net wrote:
[[ The problem is that the Trinity has the least scriptural support of any
Christian doctrine. ]]
This is great news, because as the Trinity has solid scriptural support, it
means all the other Christian doctrines are in great shape too.
[[ There are no verses in the Hebrew Bible that support it, and there are
only five in the New Testament. ]]
Well, even if it were the case that there are no verses in Hebrew that
support it -- but there are, as we shall see -- "only" five verses in Greek
would be plenty. The Bible says that everything is to be established by two
or three witnesses. The most powerful direct scriptural evidences for the
deity of Christ -- they are either that or they are evidences for the
blasphemous insanity of Christ -- are his repeated references to Himself as
YHWH. The Greek scriptures quote, with reference to Jesus of Nazareth,
passages from the Hebrew scriptures that actually use the word YHWH, so
there can be no mistake about this point whatsoever. No doubt Nick would
like to try to dismiss the famous passage from the Genesis creation account
where God says "Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness . . . God
created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and
female created He them " as something other than a reference to the
plurality of the Persons of the godhead, but the text states clearly that
God created humans to image Him by making them male and female, as "them,"
so the meaning is clear. Now I admit that if there had never been any
subsequent special revelation beyond this point, looking just at this one
text in isolation it would be hard to see Trinitarianism in it, but we do
have the benefit of subsequent revelation to fill this out.
There is also a related ontological problem that needs to be mentioned --
although I know Nick is focusing on the biblical text at this point -- in
that if there is not an essential plurality in the godhead, how would it
have been possible for God to build plurality into the fabric of created
existence? That would mean that there is actually a sense in which there is
something lacking in God that the created world provides to augment God's
lack, and it makes God dependent upon His creation in a certain sense. This
might be just fine and dandy in religious systems that tend into monism or
pantheism, but the people who received the Bible over the millennia never
had such inclinations.
As long as I'm getting away from the biblical text to discuss the a priori
reasonableness of the doctrine of the Trinity, we might note something
similar with respect to "sonship." God created all the angels at once: they
do not reproduce. Man, however, as God's special image, was not made as a
complete, finished race all at once like the angels were; rather, the
"begetting" of children is essential to mankind's imaging of God. Man is a
social creature, and the society is perpetuated and built up through the
begetting of children. It would be exceedingly strange if something so
essential to God's special image, man, did not correspond to something
equally essential to God Himself.
Continuing in the same vein, we can say the same thing again about
"language." Linguistic communication is useless to a monad, but essential to
the Persons of the Trinity. Ditto for "love." If we say that God had a need
to create the universe in order to be able to communicate and express love,
then we are saying that the Creator depends upon the creation for full
self-realization. There are religious perspectives that can say such things
with a straight face, but none of them are religious perspectives informed
by either the Hebrew or Greek scriptures. I'll end this sidebar by returning
to the text itself: remember that the Greek scriptures tell us one name for
God is Logos -- Nick wants us to believe this is an "organizing principle"
but the inseparability from language is undeniable -- and also that God is
love. Such expressions leave absolutely zero room for the possibility that
God might be a monad. That the godhead includes multiple Persons is
undeniable. Yet the Bible also declares that God is One. So, although it
boggles our minds to say it, we cheerfully simultaneously confess both the
limitations of our human comprehension and also the fact that God is Triune.
The fact of the matter is, until the closing of the canon of scripture with
the book of Revelation, subsequent special revelation always tended to shed
greater light on what had been given before. Even now, with the complete
canon, there are still theological questions that Christians are unable to
answer with certainty, and we probably won't be able to answer them until we
are reunited with Jesus in Heaven and able to question Him directly.
Christians today don't have trouble accepting the reality of ignorance in
certain areas; the lack of omniscience does not threaten the certainty of
what has been revealed to us. Surely the same thing has been true in every
stage of redemptive history: the canon of scripture was still a work in
progress, but nevertheless adequate for the needs of that age. Early Jews
may not have had an understanding of the Genesis creation account as
revealing the Trinity, but the apostolic Jews Peter and Paul, living in the
era of the resurrected and ascended Jesus Christ and having witnessed the
outpouring of the Holy Spirit, certainly were able to understand the Genesis
creation account as a clear reference to the Trinity. Other passages that
subsequent revelation identifies as references to multiple Persons within
the godhead include the second psalm, "Thou art my Son; this day have I
begotten Thee. Ask of Me, and I shall give Thee the heathen for Thine
inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for Thy possession . . .
Kiss the Son, lest He be angry, and ye perish from the way, when His wrath
is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in Him."
And likewise Psalm 110, "YHWH said unto my Lord, 'Sit Thou at My right hand,
until I make Thine enemies Thy footstool.'" And so forth.
[[ Bible Scholar Robert M. Grant states: "The doctrine of the Trinity in
unity is not a product of the earliest Christian period, and we do not find
it carefully expressed before the end of the 2nd Century." ]]
The first half of Grant's assertion is simply wrong. (Ever hear of the
trinitarian "Apostles' Creed"? Ever hear of the New Testament? Those are
both from the earliest Christian period.) The second half of Grant's
assertion is correct, but it is not a big deal. The end of the apostolic age
coincided with the Jewish Wars and the subsequent Diaspora of the Jews. The
apostles and the earliest leaders of the church were all Jewish, and all
were steeped in a rich tradition of biblical scholarship. But with the end
of the apostolic age, the leadership of the church, by default, is
transferred to gentiles who were, frankly, not up to snuff in their biblical
scholarship. The writings of the early post-apostolic church fathers were
not of a very high caliber, at least compared with the writings of the later
church fathers. The early post-apostolic church fathers were doing the best
they could with what they had, but they were not very well equipped,
initially, to precisely formulate certain key doctrinal issues. So confusion
and controversy arose and it was through wrestling with those issues over
time that the church was able to recover an even keel doctrinally. But there
are no doctrinal statements in the early ecumenical councils of the church
that fail to square with the testimony of scripture itself. Therefore both
what we have in the earliest Christian period (the Bible itself and the
Apostle's Creed) and what was hammered out in the ecumenical councils of
subsequent centuries are in harmony with one another. The relatively late
date of precise formulations of the Trinity is not a problem at all. After
nearly two thousand years, even the most die-hard believers in the Trinity
still cannot get their minds wrapped fully around it. Is it any wonder that
the Bible's God defies total comprehension by His creatures?
[[ a common mistake among Christians in identifying the serpent in the
Garden as Satan. ]]
Common? That's the understatement of the millennium. Christians make such an
identification because the Bible itself does. "And YHWH God said unto the
serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and
above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt
thou eat all the days of thy life: and I will put enmity between thee and
the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and
thou shalt bruise his heel . . . and the God of peace shall bruise Satan
under your feet shortly . . . and he laid hold on the dragon, that old
serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years."
(Concatenation of verses from Genesis, Romans, and Revelation.)
[[ A related misconception is that the Hebrew Bible believes that Satan is
the enemy of God. ]]
Nonsense. Zechariah 3:2 "And YHWH said unto Satan, YHWH rebuke thee, O
Satan; even YHWH that hath chosen Jerusalem rebuke thee."
[[ Luther read his Bible correctly when he concluded that Satan is the dark
side of God, the wrath of God. Passages from Luther are available upon
request. ]]
Sorry, Nick, not even a nice try. Luther was no dualist; such heresies
having long since been laid to rest in the church by the time Luther comes
on the scene. I don't care what decontextualized statements Nick might have
culled from Luther, there is no way that Luther reached any such
"conclusion" with regard to Satan being nothing more than God's dark side.
Luther would have regarded Nick's attempt to put words in his mouth as
blasphemous and would no doubt have thrown his ink pot at anyone who tried
to ascribe such a position to him.
[[ The best example of this is the Book of Job, where God empowers Satan
(among the "sons of God") to destroy Job's flocks and family. Please note a
crucial verse at the end where God is identified as the source of "the evil
.. . . brought upon" Job (42:11). ]]
Yes, Satan is God's tool, performing God's will in spite of himself. So what
else is new? Maybe modern evangelicals who are wishy-washy in this area,
like Phil Yancey (http://amazon.com/gp/product/031021436X/), need Nick to
hold their hands in this area, but I have never struggled in the least with
the many passages in the Bible where God describes Himself as causing (in a
certain sense, because many things have multiple levels and senses of
causation) evil. In a certain sense it is true to say that (obviously: the
Bible itself says it), but God is NEVER the cause of (an) absolute evil. (As
an aside, "absolute" evil does not even exist, period.) In other words, even
when God causes something to occur that can be described, in a certain
sense, as evil, that is ALWAYS in the context of accomplishing some ultimate
good purpose. The only reason why such actions of God are referred to is
"evil" is because, from a very narrow, limited time perspective, they cause
someone to experience suffering. But as the chronological camera pulls back
to show a longer time perspective, it turns out that God was actually doing
good. Job provides an excellent case in point.
[[ The Princess also misleads us into thinking that the Hebrew Bible teaches
Original Sin. For example, Job's dilemma would have been solved immediately
by this doctrine, but Job is declared a righteous man untouched by any other
person's sin. Original Sin is a New Testament doctrine, because the amazing
fact is that, as far as I know, the Fall of Adam and Eve, is not mentioned
again in the Hebrew Bible. ]]
Even coming from an unbelieving ax-grinder, the above statement is amazing,
and ought to be a shame to anyone who appends "PhD" to his name. Job said,
"I know that my redeemer liveth, and that He shall stand at the latter day
upon the earth: and though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my
flesh shall I see God: Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall
behold, and not another; though my reins be consumed within me." If Job had
been free from any sin whatsoever, then he would have not had to face death,
for the Genesis creation account makes it plain that men only die on account
of sin. Thus he would not need a redeemer and would not be resurrected
following the physical decomposition of his body, which he clearly
anticipates. He has no delusions of sinlessness; the Book of Job opens with
him offering sacrifices up to God and sinless men do not need to make
sacrifices. Later in the book, when God rebukes "sinless" Job (do sinless
men get rebuked?), Job replies, "I abhor myself, and repent in dust and
ashes." That does not sound like the utterance of a sinless man.
Going back to Genesis 5:3, we see that Adam "begat a son in his own
likeness, after his image." This is Seth, Adam's third son; we have already
been told that Adam's first son murdered his second son. Especially coming
after Cain's murder of Abel, it is very clear from this verse that man's
sinful nature is being inherited through natural generation. Seth is in
Adam's image, and Adam's image has already been shown to be tainted by sin.
Remember too that Abel was murdered because he offered up to God blood
sacrifices that were found acceptable, whilst Cain's offerings, which
involved no blood sacrifice, were rejected. Any careful and honest reading
of the earliest biblical narrative makes it clear that from Adam's fall
onward, all men are faced with the issue of their indwelling sin, some
dealing with the issue as God commanded (men like Abel and Job) and some
refusing to do so (Cain and Nick Gier, among others).
Psalm 51:5 says, "Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother
conceive me." David is not saying his mother was a harlot -- from the
context he is clearly acknowledging that he was a sinner from the moment of
conception. A man does not need to do anything to be a sinner; he merely
needs to exist. That is part of the covenantal nature of existence: when our
covenantal head does something, we all also do it "in him." This is both bad
news and good news for us; the bad news is that like it or not we are all,
by birth, bound to the first covenantal head, Adam, and the good news is
that Jesus the Messiah has become the covenantal head of a new race of
mankind that we can be joined to through faith.
[[ Nowhere is it written that the Hebrew Messiah will pay a "penalty of
death." ]]
Try Genesis 2:17 for starters. And here is an extended concatenation of
related verses from Zechariah and the gospels which clearly refute Nick's
claim: "And YHWH said unto me, 'Take unto thee yet the instruments of a
foolish shepherd. [This is a reference to the unfaithful spiritual leaders
of Israel -- P.S.] For, lo, I will raise up a shepherd in the land, which
shall not visit those that be cut off, neither shall seek the young one, nor
heal that which is broken, nor feed that which standeth still: but he shall
eat the flesh of the fat, and tear their claws in pieces. Woe to the
worthless shepherd that leaveth the flock! the sword shall be upon his arm,
and upon his right eye: his arm shall be clean dried up, and his right eye
shall be utterly darkened . . . [what follows is a reference to the Messiah
-- P.S.] And one shall say unto him, 'What are these wounds in Thine hands?'
Then He shall answer, 'Those with which I was wounded in the house of my
friends.' Awake, O sword, against My Shepherd, and against the Man that is
My Fellow, saith YHWH Sabaoth: smite the Shepherd, and the sheep shall be
scattered: and I will turn mine hand upon the little ones. And it shall come
to pass, that in all the land, saith YHWH, two parts therein shall be cut
off and die; but the third shall be left therein. And I will bring the third
part through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will
try them as gold is tried: they shall call on my name, and I will hear them:
I will say, It is my people: and they shall say, YHWH is my God . . . [The
following is from the gospel of John, and a clear allusion to Zechariah --
P.S.] 'I am the Good Shepherd: the Good Shepherd giveth His life for the
sheep. But he that is an hireling, and not the Shepherd, whose own the sheep
are not, seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep, and fleeth: and the
wolf catcheth them, and scattereth the sheep. The hireling fleeth, because
he is an hireling, and careth not for the sheep. I am the Good Shepherd, and
know My sheep, and am known of Mine. As the Father knoweth Me, even so know
I the Father: and I lay down My life for the sheep. [The following is a
reference to the gentiles -- P.S.] And other sheep I have, which are not of
this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear My voice; and there
shall be one fold, and one Shepherd.' [The following is from Matthew, and
Mark has an almost identical passage -- P.S.] Then saith Jesus unto them,
'All ye shall be offended because of Me this night: for it is written, [The
next sentence is a direct quote from Zechariah -- P.S.] "I will smite the
shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered abroad." But after I
am risen again, I will go before you into Galilee.' Peter answered and said
unto him, 'Though all men shall be offended because of Thee, yet will I
never be offended.' Jesus said unto him, 'Verily I say unto thee that this
night, before the cock crow, thou shalt deny Me thrice.'"
[[ The Ancient Jews did not recognize the Suffering Servant of Isaiah as the
Messiah. The Jewish Messiah would come in glory, defeat the enemies of
Israel, and set up God's kingdom on earth. ]]
So there's progress in God's special revelation over time -- what's the big
deal? God didn't reveal everything to Adam that He revealed to Abraham, and
He didn't reveal to Abraham everything that He revealed to Moses, and He
didn't reveal to Moses everything that He revealed to Daniel, and He didn't
reveal to Daniel everything that He revealed to the Apostle John. I've got
news for Nick, what Nick claims above was true not only of the Ancient Jews
but even Jesus' own disciples -- they refused to believe Him when He told
them in no uncertain terms that He must die. After the resurrection they
realized that they had been very wrong in their understanding of scripture.
[[ Please note that Christianity had to invent the Second Coming of Christ
in order to make good on Hebrew prophecies. ]]
Never heard of postmillennialism? The Messiah reigns on His throne even now.
The Hebrew prophecies have indeed been fulfilled.
[[ Please note that I always use the term "Hebrew Bible" and not "Old
Testament," and this is the final and most important point that I want to
make. By saying that the Old Covenant failed, the Princess is saying that
Judaism is a false religion. The Gospels are openly anti-Semitic . . .
blaming the death of Jesus on the Jews. ]]
This is a brazen distortion. To start with the closing sentence, the gospels
do blame the death of Jesus on the Jews, and also on the gentiles. That
covers all the bases, Nick. The gospels are anti-everybody. To state that
"the gospels are openly anti-semitic" is a grave slander.
Note also that the failure of the old covenant was in Adam, who precedes the
earliest Jews by more than a millennium. Thus Nick's assertion is shown to
be false on all counts.
Let's look at what it means to say "Judaism is a false religion." First,
nobody should be surprised that a Christian thinks a non-Christian religion
is false. But what is Judaism anyway? There is a common misconception that
modern Judaism is a direct carry-over from the Hebrew scriptures: "along
came this aberration called Christianity but the Jews continued to carry on
business as usual, and continue to live, so to speak, in the world of the
Hebrew scriptures." But such a view is false. Jesus put it best when He said
to the contemporary Jewish leaders, "Do not think that I will accuse you to
the Father: there is one that accuseth you, even Moses, in whom ye trust.
For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed Me: for he wrote of Me.
But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe My words?"
The world of the Hebrew scriptures is quite useless to modern Judaism,
because both the Temple and the Levitical priesthood have been destroyed.
This is such an important point that I'll repeat it for emphasis. The world
of the Hebrew scriptures is quite useless to modern Judaism, because both
the Temple and the Levitical priesthood have been destroyed. However, the
world of the Hebrew scriptures is exceedingly useful to the Christian,
because the believers, who are indwelled by the Holy Spirit, are the new
Temple, and all believers are the priesthood, with Jesus the Messiah as the
high priest.
It is fallacious to assume that the Jews of the apostolic era were
monolithic in their rejection of Jesus. The first Christians were
overwhelmingly Jewish, so much so that early Christianity was recognized as
one sect of the Jewish religion -- hardly surprising when we consider that
Paul, Peter, and the other apostles continued to worship in synagogues and
the Temple until their deaths, which came shortly before the destruction of
the Temple in A.D. 70. Paul had previously been an elite Pharisee.
It would not be inaccurate to describe Christianity as the sole form of the
original Judaism that was able to survive he destruction of the Temple and
the subsequent Jewish Diaspora. The true heir of ancient Judaism -- i.e.,
Judaism based on and faithful to the scriptures -- is unquestionably the
Christian faith.
So what is modern Judaism? Modern Jews are the heirs of the group of people
who originated from the world of the Hebrew scriptures but refused to accept
the Messiah prophesied by those scriptures, and continued to refuse to "get
on board" even after the destruction of the Temple in A.D. 70, when the
Christian faith was "the only game in town." There was at one time and to a
degree still is a heavy negative self-definition in terms of Christianity:
"We're the folks in Christendom who aren't Christians."
[[ I'm especially troubled by the Princess' implication that the Jewish
temple was destroyed by God in 70 CE as a sign that the Old Covenant was
dead. Millions of Jews have died because of religious and political leaders
acting out the implications of these ideas. ]]
Wrong, stupid, and slanderous. Remember, the old covenant died in Adam, who
preceded the earliest Jews by millennia. And even if one was to say
otherwise, it still does not follow, by any stretch of the imagination, that
by implication somebody ought to go out and harass, much less kill, any Jew.
[[ In conclusion, a "fully orbed biblical theology" would exclude all
external agendas ]]
The Bible itself gives me all the credendas and the agendas that I'll ever
need, thank you. It is obvious that Nick Gier has a major ax to grind and
has trouble completing even a single sentence concerning either the Bible or
the Christian faith without falling into gross distortions and
mischaracterizations. He likes to point to his academic credentials as
somehow making him qualified or able to speak with authority, so I feel it
is only fair that I do the same. My highest degree is a diploma from a
small-town public high school. I never studied at a Christian institution of
higher learning, have never been ordained, and have not got any initials
after my name. I have not published anything in any journal, whether
peer-reviewed or not. I'm just a dumb schmuck. But I do own a handy-dandy
crap detector, and it goes off the end of the red scale whenever I run it
past anything that I've read by Nick Gier. (Which is not a lot, I'll admit,
but I come away wishing I had read less.) If even a dumb schmuck like me see
the problems in what Nick says, I daresay that anyone with a real Christian
edjumacation ought to be able to hand Nick's head to him. But I assume such
folks have bigger fish to slice . . .
-- Princess Sushitushi
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