My Middle-East Peace Plan
Step #1-Abolish the U.N. This blatantly stupid and worthless organization has probably caused more wars that should not have happened and delayed more wars than were justified. By the way, abolishing the U.N. would also abolish any and all binding resolutions.
Step #2-Create a very strong military alliance with Israel. This alliance would be stronger than any in history, stronger than the Axis or Allied forces in World War II.
Step #3-Expand the War on Terror. Expand the war to include the countries of Iran (for building nuclear weapons), Syria (for aiding Iran and Hezbollah), and Lebanon (for being a government, like Afganistan before 2001, that supports terrorism. Granted, Hezbollah is not technically part of the Lebanese government, but they have not stood up against them to oust them either. This makes then passive supporters of terrorism and this policy has proven to be a threat to Israel.).* **
Step #4-Impose the draft. Any and all able-bodied Americans from the ages of 18-25 (and to be expanded sooner) would be enlisted in the military.
Step #5-The War on Terror will now be labeled World War III. A first and relatively simple front would be to invade Lebanon and annex it to Israel. Then using the United States and possibly some of its allies like the U.K., begin to invade and annex each country. The current political situation in Iraq confirms that the Middle East is not ready for democracy. Therefore, martial law will be declared until each country is firmly under the fist of the United States and its allies.
*North Korea could also be considered in this plan, but with the possible exception of allowing it to return under the government of South Korea, thus reuniting it with its motherland. This would be a bit harder to accomplish and may require the same polices as in the Middle East.
**Cuba could also be considered in this plan and would be a relatively simple annexation to pull off. We could easily make Cuba one of the hottest tourist destinations in the world and use the money to fund World War III.
At the end of Step 5, peace would be obtained in the Middle East.
Monday, August 21, 2006
Friday, August 18, 2006
I got a great laugh out of this!
A West Texas cowboy was herding his cows in a remote pasture whensuddenly a brand-new BMW advanced out of a dust cloud towards him. The driver, a young man in a Brioni suit, Gucci shoes, Ray Bansunglasses and YSL tie, leans out the window and asks the cowboy, "If Itell you exactly how many cows and calves you have in your herd, willyou give me a calf?" The cowboy looks at the man, obviously a yuppie, then looks at hispeacefully grazing herd and calmly answers, "Sure, Why not?" The yuppie parks his car, whips out his Dell notebook computer,connects it to his Cingular RAZR V3 cell phone, and surfs to a NASA pageon the Internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite navigation system toget an exact fix on his location which he then feeds to another NASAsatellite that scans the area in an ultra-high-resolution photo. The young man then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop andexports it to an image processing facility in Hamburg , Germany . Withinseconds receives an email on his Palm Pilot that the image has beenprocessed and the data stored. He then accesses a MS-SQL database through an ODBC connected Excelspreadsheet with email on his Blackberry and, after a few minutes,receives a response. Finally, he prints out a full-color, 150-page report on his hi-tech,miniaturized HP LaserJet printer and finally turns to the cowboy andsays, "You have exactly 1,586 cows and calves." "That's right. Well, I guess you can take one of my calves," says thecowboy. He watches the young man select one of the animals and looks onamused as the young man stuffs it into the trunk of his car. Then the cowboy says to the young man, "Hey, if I ca n tell you exactlywhat your business is, will you give me back my calf?" The young manthinks about it for a second and then says, "Okay, why not?" You're a Congressman for the U.S. Government", says the cowboy. "Wow! That's correct," says the yuppie, "but how did you guess that?" "No guessing required." answered the cowboy. "You showed up here eventhough nobody called you; you want to get paid for an answer I already knew, to a question I never asked. You tried to show me how much smarter than me you are; and you don't know a thing about cows........ Now give me back my dog."
A West Texas cowboy was herding his cows in a remote pasture whensuddenly a brand-new BMW advanced out of a dust cloud towards him. The driver, a young man in a Brioni suit, Gucci shoes, Ray Bansunglasses and YSL tie, leans out the window and asks the cowboy, "If Itell you exactly how many cows and calves you have in your herd, willyou give me a calf?" The cowboy looks at the man, obviously a yuppie, then looks at hispeacefully grazing herd and calmly answers, "Sure, Why not?" The yuppie parks his car, whips out his Dell notebook computer,connects it to his Cingular RAZR V3 cell phone, and surfs to a NASA pageon the Internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite navigation system toget an exact fix on his location which he then feeds to another NASAsatellite that scans the area in an ultra-high-resolution photo. The young man then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop andexports it to an image processing facility in Hamburg , Germany . Withinseconds receives an email on his Palm Pilot that the image has beenprocessed and the data stored. He then accesses a MS-SQL database through an ODBC connected Excelspreadsheet with email on his Blackberry and, after a few minutes,receives a response. Finally, he prints out a full-color, 150-page report on his hi-tech,miniaturized HP LaserJet printer and finally turns to the cowboy andsays, "You have exactly 1,586 cows and calves." "That's right. Well, I guess you can take one of my calves," says thecowboy. He watches the young man select one of the animals and looks onamused as the young man stuffs it into the trunk of his car. Then the cowboy says to the young man, "Hey, if I ca n tell you exactlywhat your business is, will you give me back my calf?" The young manthinks about it for a second and then says, "Okay, why not?" You're a Congressman for the U.S. Government", says the cowboy. "Wow! That's correct," says the yuppie, "but how did you guess that?" "No guessing required." answered the cowboy. "You showed up here eventhough nobody called you; you want to get paid for an answer I already knew, to a question I never asked. You tried to show me how much smarter than me you are; and you don't know a thing about cows........ Now give me back my dog."
Monday, August 07, 2006
Who Really Owns the “Holy Land”?
Robert L. Reymond
Editor’s note: This essay is an address delivered by Dr. Robert L. Reymond, Professor Emeritus at Knox Theological Seminary, to “Advancing Reformation Truth and Spirituality” (ARTS) on April 21, 2006, at DeVos Chapel, Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
The Challenge Facing Covenant Theology
A gigantic effort is underway today to convince the evangelical citizenry of the United States of America that the political state of Israel rightfully owns in perpetuity the so-called “Holy Land” [1] at the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea by virtue of God’s bequeathing it to Abraham and his descendants in the Old Testament. This effort is being made not so much today by the secular leadership of the state of Israel as by self-acclaimed Christian scholars and televangelists who claim to speak for over seventy million evangelical Christians. These men, including Assemblies of God preacher and televangelist John Hagee, founder and pastor of the Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas;2 Kenneth Copeland, televangelist; Paul and Matt Crouch of the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN); Jack Hayford, founder and pastor of the Church on the Way in Van Nuys, California, and president of the Foursquare Gospel Church; Benny Hinn, pastor of the yet-to-be-built World Healing Center in Dallas, Texas; Rod Parsley, pastor of the World Harvest Church in Columbus, Ohio; Pat Robertson, founder and chief executive officer of the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) and the Bible teacher on the 700 Club;3 and Jerry Falwell, founder and pastor of the Thomas Road Baptist Church and founder of Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, are all purveyors of that system of hermeneutics known as Dispensationalism.
Apparently convinced by this propaganda effort, President Clinton, after citing the words of his desperately ill Baptist pastor to him: “If you abandon Israel, God will never forgive you,” declared before the Israeli Knesset in Jerusalem on October 27, 1994: “…it is God’s will that Israel, the Biblical home of the people of Israel, continue forever and ever,”4 a statement that enters deeply into Biblical hermeneutics concerning the nature of the church and the kingdom of God, not to mention Biblical eschatology (note his “forever and ever”). President Clinton concluded his speech by saying: “Your journey is our journey, and America will stand with you now and always,” a statement that illustrates this nation’s deep involvement in both Middle East politics in general and its specific political commitment to Israel in the Israeli/ Palestinian conflict in particular in a way that cannot but affect the course of world politics for the foreseeable future.
In my opinion, President Clinton’s statement is bad politics based on equally bad theology. I say this because, as I shall argue in this paper, all of God’s land promises to Israel in the Old Testament are to be viewed in terms of shadow, type, and prophecy, in contrast to the reality, substance, and fulfillment of which the New Testament speaks. Consequently, contrary to John Hagee who insists that “Israel has a Bible mandate to the land, a divine covenant for the land of Israel, forever…[and] Christians have a Bible mandate to be supportive of Israel,”5 I will argue that it is we Christians, as members of Christ’s Messianic kingdom, who are the real heirs to the land promises of Holy Scripture, but only in their fulfilled paradisical character.6 Hagee terms this view “replacement theology” because, he says, it “replaces” in the economy of God the Jewish people who are, he says, “God’s centerpiece” and “the apple of his eye” (Zechariah 2:8) with the church of Jesus Christ. Of course, Hagee’s perception of ethnic Israel is in error, because ethnic Israel per se was never the center-piece of God’s covenant program since, according to Paul, God’s promises always applied only to the true spiritual Israel (that is, elect Israel) within ethnic Israel (Romans 9:6-13); and the land promises of the Old Testament, as we will show, were always to be viewed typologically. Nevertheless, Hagee has thrown down the Dispensational gauntlet; and it is high time that covenant theologians picked it up and responded to him Biblically. This is what I propose to do now. But I offer a word of caution, and it is this: Reflect carefully upon what I say before you accept or reject it. With that caveat I will now begin with a discussion of
Eden and the Abrahamic Covenant
O. Palmer Robertson begins his treatise on the significance of the land as a theological idea by stating:
The concept of a land that belongs to God’s people originated in Paradise. This simple fact, so often overlooked, plays a critical role in evaluating the significance of the land throughout redemptive history and its consummate fulfillment. Land did not begin to be theologically significant with the promise given to Abraham. Instead, the patriarch’s hope of possessing a land arose out of the concept of restoration to the original state from which man had fallen. The original idea of land as paradise significantly shaped the expectations associated with redemption. As the place of blessedness arising from unbroken fellowship and communion with God, the land of paradise became the goal toward which redeemed humanity was returning.7
In the Edenic paradise of Genesis 2 we see God, whose garden it was (Ezekiel 28:13; 31:8), and which garden was employed later as the prototypical ideal (Genesis 13:10) and type of the eschatological paradise of God (Isaiah 51:3; Revelation 2:7), placing the original pair he had created within it to tend and to keep it and to enjoy communion with him. But the paradisical nature of Eden was lost in and by Adam’s fall, and our first parents were expelled from this land of blessing. But the idea of paradise was renewed by God’s inaugurating with the guilty pair a second covenant — the covenant of grace of Genesis 3:15 — and later by his covenant with Abraham of Genesis 12:1-3 to redeem a people from their fallen condition and to transform the cosmos. Just as Adam and Eve had known God’s blessing in Eden, so also God would bless his redeemed people in a new Eden, a land flowing with milk and honey, that lay somewhere ahead of them in the future.
With the call of Abraham in Genesis 12 the covenant of grace established in Genesis 3:15 underwent a remarkable advance. The instrument of that advance is the covenant that God made with Abraham that guaranteed and secured soteric blessing for “all the families of the Earth” (Genesis 12:3). So significant are the promises of grace in the Abrahamic covenant, found in Genesis 12:1-3; 13:14-16; 15:18-21; 17:1-16; and 22:16-18, that it is not an overstatement to declare these verses, from the covenantal perspective, the most important verses in the Bible. The fact that the Bible sweeps across thousands of years between the creation of man and the call of Abraham in only eleven chapters, with the call of Abraham coming in Genesis 12, suggests that God intended the information given in Genesis 1-11 to be preparatory “background” to the revelation of the Abrahamic covenant. Revelation subsequent to it discloses that all that God has done savingly in grace since the revelation of the Abrahamic covenant is the result and product of it. In other words, once the covenant of grace came to expression in the salvific promises of the Abrahamic covenant — that God would be the God of Abraham and his spiritual descendants (Genesis 17:7) and that in Abraham all the families of the Earth would be blessed — everything that God has done since that time, he has done in order to fulfill his covenant promises to Abraham (and thereby the eternal plan of redemption).
If this representation of the salvific significance of the Abrahamic covenant seems to be an overstatement, the following declarations from later revelation should suffice to justify it:
1. It is the Abrahamic covenant and none other that God later confirmed with Isaac (Genesis 17:19; 26:3-4) and with Jacob (Genesis 28:13-15; 35:12).
2. The Scriptures state that God redeemed Jacob’s descendants from Egypt in order to keep his covenant promise to the patriarchs: “God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob” (Exodus 2:24: see 4:5).
3. Again and again throughout Israel’s history the inspired authors of Scripture trace God’s continuing extension of grace and mercy to Israel directly to his fidelity to his covenant promises to Abraham (Exodus 32:12-14; 33:1; Leviticus 26:42; Deuteronomy 1:8; 4:31; 7:8; 9:27; 29:12-13; Joshua 21:44; 24:3-4; Psalm 105:8-10, 42-43; 2 Kings 13:23; 1 Chronicles 16:15-17; Micah 7:20; Nehemiah 9:7-8).
4. When we come to the New Testament it is no different. Both Mary and Zechariah declared the first coming of Jesus Christ, including the very act of Incarnation, to be a vital part of the fulfillment of God’s gracious covenant promise to Abraham. Mary in Luke 1:54-55 said: “He has helped his servant Israel, remembering to be merciful to Abraham and his descendants forever, even as he said to our fathers.” Zechariah in Luke 1:68-71 said: “Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, because he has come…to remember his holy covenant, the oath he swore to our father Abraham.”
I may note in passing that, whereas Christians today mainly celebrate only the Incarnation of God’s Son at Christmas time, Mary and Zechariah, placing this event in the covenantal context of Scripture, saw reason in Christ’s coming to celebrate the covenant fidelity of God to his people. In their awareness of the broader significance of the event and the words of praise that this awareness evoked from them we see Biblical theology at its best being worked out and expressed.
5. Jesus, himself the Seed of Abraham (Matthew 1:1; Galatians 3:16), declared that Abraham “rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad” (John 8:56).
6. Peter declared that God sent Jesus to bless the Jewish nation in keeping with the promise he gave to Abraham in Genesis 12:3, in turning them away from their iniquities (Acts 3:25-26).
7. Paul declared that God, when he promised Abraham that “all peoples on Earth will be blessed through you” (Genesis 12:3), was declaring that he was going to justify the Gentiles by faith and was announcing the Gospel in advance to Abraham (Galatians 3:8). Accordingly, he stated that all believers in Christ “are blessed [with justification through faith] along with Abraham” (Galatians 3:9).
8. Paul also declared: “Christ became a Servant of the circumcision…in order to confirm the promises made to the patriarchs so that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy” (Romans 15:8-9).
9. Paul further declared that Christ died on the cross, bearing the law’s curse, “in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles in Christ Jesus, in order that we [both Jews and Gentiles] might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith” (Galatians 3:13-14).
10. Paul expressly declared that the Mosaic covenant and law, introduced several centuries after God gave his covenant promises to Abraham and to his Seed (Christ), “does not set aside the covenant previously established by God [with Abraham] and thus do away with the promise” (Galatians 3:16-17).
11. Paul also declared (1) that Abraham is the “father of all who believe” among both Jews and Gentiles (Romans 4:11-12); and (2) that all who belong to Christ “are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise” that God gave to Abraham (Galatians 3:29).
12. Finally, Christ described the future state of glory in terms of the redeemed “taking their place at the feast with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of Heaven” (Matthew 8:11).
What this all means is that the promise of God, covenantally given to Abraham, that he would be the God of Abraham and of his spiritual descendants after him forever (Genesis 17:7-8) extends temporally to the farthest reaches of the future and encompasses the entire community of the redeemed and the renewed cosmos. This is just to say that the Abrahamic covenant, in the specific prospect it holds forth of the salvation of the entire church of God, is identical with the soteric program of the covenant of grace. It also means that the blessings of the covenant of grace that believers in Christ enjoy today under the New Testament economy are founded upon the covenant that God made with Abraham. Said another way, the “new covenant” whose Mediator is Jesus Christ is simply the administrative “extension and unfolding of the Abrahamic covenant”8 in redemptive history. The church of Jesus Christ, then, not ethnic Israel, is the present-day expression of the one people of God whose roots go back to Abraham.
These passages also highlight the unity of the one covenant of grace and the oneness of God’s people in all ages over against the discontinuities injected into redemptive history by the Dispensational heresy that lies at the root of all the bad “land theology” being espoused today concerning Israel’s so-called “perpetual divine right” to the land of Palestine.9 That is to say, God’s redemptive purpose, first disclosed in Genesis 3:15, once it had come to expression in the terms of the Abrahamic covenant, was continuously advanced thereafter by the successive covenants with Israel, David, and finally the new covenant. Accordingly, in his letter to the Gentile churches in Galatia Paul described those who repudiate Judaistic legalism and who “never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ,” that is, Christ’s church, as “the Israel of God” (Galatians 6:12-16). In his Ephesian letter Paul told those Gentile believers that God had in Christ made them citizens of Israel and beneficiaries of the covenants of the promise (Ephesians 2:11-13). And in his letter to the Philippians Paul declared that those “who worship by the Spirit of God, who glory in Christ Jesus, and who put no confidence in the flesh” are “the [true] circumcision” (Philippians 3:3). Clearly, the church of Jesus Christ is the present-day true Israel of God.
The Typological Nature of the Land Promises
Undoubtedly, temporal, earthly promises of land were given to Abraham and his descendants in the Abrahamic covenant (Genesis 12: 7; 13:15, 17; 15:18; 17:8). But the land promises were never primary and central to the covenant’s intention, and God never envisioned literal fulfillment of these promises under Old Testament conditions as primary. Rather, the fulfillment of the land promises must be viewed as arising from the more basic and essential redemptive promises, and for their fulfillment they await the final and complete salvation of God’s elect and the recreation of the universe in the Eschaton (Romans 8:19-23). I say this because the Bible declares that Abraham dwelt in Palestine “as in a foreign country” (Hebrews 11:9), and he never inherited any land during his lifetime (Acts 7:5), which is just to say that Abraham believed that the fulfillment of God’s land promises lay antitypically in the eschatological future.
Was this really Abraham’s understanding of God’s land promise? Or did he think that God’s promise merely entailed the small portion of land bounded on the west and the east by the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan Valley and generally on the north and the south by the Sea of Galilee and the southern tip of the Dead Sea? Hardly. Was his faith such that he would have been satisfied in knowing that someday his offspring would inherit the land “from the river of Egypt [not the Nile River but the Wadi el Arish] to the great river, the River Euphrates” (Genesis 15:18)?10 Again we must respond, hardly. His entire life experience of walking by faith and not by sight (see the recurring phrase “by faith Abraham” in Hebrews 11:8, 9, 17) taught him to look beyond the temporal circumstances in which he lived. To understand Abraham’s concept of God’s land promise to him, we must give special heed to the divinely revealed insights of the writers of the New Testament. Just as Paul declared that the events of Israel’s redemptive history were “types” for believers during this age (1 Corinthians 10:6), just as Paul said the religious festivals of the old covenant were “a shadow of the things to come” (Colossians 2:17), just as the author of Hebrews stated that the administration of redemption under the old covenant was “but a shadow of the good things to come” (Hebrews 10:1), so also he taught, in Hebrews 11:8-16, that Abraham knew that God’s land promises in their fulfillment entailed something far more glorious, namely, a better and heavenly homeland whose designer and builder is God, than the land of Palestine per se that served only as the type of their fulfillment:
By faith Abraham…went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God….
These all died in faith, not having received the things promised,11 but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and have acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the Earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland…a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city..
Quite plainly, Abraham understood that the land promised to him actually had both its origin and its antitypical fulfillment in the heavenly, eternal reality that lay still in the future. Possession of a particular tract of land in ancient times might have significance from a number of perspectives with respect to God’s redemptive working in the world, but clearly the land promise under the Abrahamic covenant served simply as a type, anticipating the future reality of the coming of the Messianic kingdom with the Messiah himself assuming the throne of David in Heaven, and ruling the universe after his resurrection and ascension, and reigning until all his enemies have been put under his feet.
How was it possible for Abraham to have the view of the land promise that the New Testament ascribed to him? What led him to “spiritualize” the promise to make it entail future heavenly, kingdom realities? The answer lies in the fact that he took seriously God’s promise to him that “in [him] all the families of the Earth would be blessed” (Genesis 12:3).12 Therefore, he perceived that the promise to him and his offspring, who is Christ (Galatians 3:16), entailed that in Christ “he would be heir [not of Palestine but] of the [glorified] world [kosmou]” (Romans 4:13). Plainly, Abraham under-stood that God’s land promise meant that God would restore the entire cosmos to its former paradisical glory and in that he placed his hope and patiently waited for it. His faith and understanding would have been satisfied with nothing less!
Moses too, and his contemporaries, wandered in the wilderness of Sinai for forty years, and died in faith, not having received the promise (Hebrews 11:39).
Under Joshua’s leadership the Israelites conquered the land, receiving in a limited fashion the paradise God had promised. But it quickly became obvious that this territory could not be the ultimate paradise. Undefeated Canaanites remained in the land as “hornets.” And because of Israel’s sin throughout the united and divided kingdom periods, finally the land was devastated by the Neo-Babylonians; the indwelling Glory departed from the Solomonic Temple (Ezekiel 9:3; 10:1-22), which Temple was then destroyed; and the people were banished and came to be known as lo-ammi, meaning “not-my-people” (Hosea 1:9). The once fruitful land took on the appearance of a desert, a dwelling place of jackals, owls, and scorpions. Paradise, even in its old covenant shadow form, was taken from them.
Even the restoration after the Babylonian captivity, under Ezra and Nehemiah, designated by Biblical scholars as the Second Temple Period, could not be paradise. But the return to the land and the rebuilding of the Temple pointed the way to it. The glory of that tiny Temple, Haggai prophesied, would someday be greater than the glory of the Solomonic Temple. What did this hyperbolic language mean? It meant that God had something better for them than a temporal land and a material temple. The promise of the land would be fulfilled by nothing less than a restored paradise on a cosmic scale! As Isaiah predicted, someday the wolf would lie down with the lamb, the leopard would lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion would live in peace, and a little child would lead them. The nursing child would play over the hole of the cobra, and the weaned child would place his hand on the adder’s den, and the Earth would be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the places of the sea (Isaiah 11:6-9). No more would sin and sorrow reign nor thorns infest the ground. Then, writes Paul in Romans 9:25-26:
Those who were not [God’s] people [not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles, Romans 9:24] [he] will call “my people,” and her who was not beloved [he] will call “beloved.” And in the very place where it was said to them, “You are not my people,” there they will be called “sons of the living God.”
Jesus’ Teaching About the Land and the Future of Ethnic Israel
When Christ came two thousand years ago, the Biblical doctrine of the land experienced a radical advance. By inaugurating his public ministry in Galilee of the Gentiles along the public trade route (Isaiah 9:1, cited in Matthew 4:12-16), Jesus was making a statement. That land would serve as the springboard to all nations. The kingdom of God — the central theme of Jesus’ teaching — would encompass a realm that extended well beyond the borders of ancient Israel. As Paul so pointedly indicated, God’s promise to Abraham meant that he would become heir of the whole world (Romans 4:13). Jesus’ pointing his ministry toward the whole of the world rather than confining it to the land of Canaan cleared the way for the old covenant “type” to be replaced by the new covenant “antitype.” Teaching that the kingdom of God had appeared in its grace modality with his first coming and that it would appear in its power modality at his second coming, he transformed the imagery of a land flowing with milk and honey into a rejuvenation of the whole of God’s created order. It was not Canaan as such that would benefit in the establishment of Messiah’s kingdom: The whole cosmos would rejoice in the renewal.13
Now what did Jesus teach about the future of ethnic Israel? In his parable of the wicked farmers (Matthew 21:33-45, Mark 12:1-12, Luke 20:9-19), Jesus tells the story of a landowner who leased his vineyard to some farmers and then went into another country. When the time arrived for him to receive his rental fee in the form of the fruit of the vineyard, the landowner sent servant after servant to his tenants, only to have each one of them beaten or stoned or killed. Last of all he sent his son — Luke says his “beloved son”; Mark says “yet one [other], a beloved son” — saying: “They will respect my son.” But when the tenants saw the landowner’s son, they said: “This is the heir; come, let’s kill him and take his inheritance.” This they did, throwing his body out of the vineyard. When the landowner came, he destroyed the tenants and leased his vineyard to others. The interpretive intentions of the parable are obvious on the face of it: The landowner is God the Father; the vineyard, the nation of Israel (Isaiah 5:7); the farmers, Israel’s leaders; the servants, the prophets of the theocracy (Matthew 23:37a); and the son Jesus himself.
The central teaching of the parable is obvious — as indeed it was to its original audience (Matthew 21:45): After having sent his servants the prophets repeatedly in Old Testament times to the nation of Israel to call the nation back to him from its sin and unbelief, only to have them rebuffed, persecuted, and often killed, God, the Owner of Israel, had, in sending Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Godhead, moved beyond merely sending another servant. Listen once again to the pertinent verses in this connection: Matthew 21:37: “Then last of all he sent his son.” Mark 12:6: “…having one son, his beloved, he also sent him to them last.”
From Matthew’s “last of all” and Mark’s “last” it is clear that Jesus represented himself as God’s last, his final ambassador, after whose sending none higher can come and nothing more can be done.14 The Son of God is the highest messenger of God conceivable. In sum, God had in Jesus finally (Matthew: hysteron; Mark: eschaton) sent his own beloved Son whom the nation would reject. But the rejection of his Son, unlike the rejections of those before him, was to entail neither God’s continuance of dealing with the recalcitrant nation nor a mere change of politico-religious administration. Rather, his rejection, Jesus taught, would eventuate in “the complete overthrow of the theocracy, and the rearing from the foundation up of a new structure [Christ’s church] in which the Son would receive full vindication and supreme honor.”15 His very words are as follows:
I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruit [Matthew 21:43].
What will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the tenants and give the vineyard to others [Mark 12:9; Luke 20:16].
Here is a Biblical “replacement theology,” and it is Jesus himself who enunciated it: National Israel, except for its elect remnant, would be judged, and the special standing that it had enjoyed during the old dispensation would be given to the already emerging international church of Jesus Christ made up of both the elect Jewish remnant and elect Gentiles. So as Jesus predicted, Israel’s rulers rejected him and incited Rome to execute him; the Temple was soon destroyed (see Matthew 24:1-35); the people dispersed; and Israel ceased to exist as a political entity, as Moses had predicted in Deuteronomy 28:15-68 (see Deuteronomy 31:24-29). Paul declared in 1 Thessalonians 2:15-16 that the Jews who “killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets…displease God and oppose all mankind by hindering us from speaking to the Gentiles that they might be saved — so as always to fill up the measure of their sins. But God’s wrath has come upon them at last [eis telos
16].” Since Paul wrote 1 Thessalonians in a. d. 50 or 51 it is unlikely that he intended by his phrase, “God’s wrath has come upon them” the destruction of Jerusalem that occurred in a. d. 70. More likely, he was referring to the divine rejection of national Israel that Jesus referred to in his parable of the wicked farmers and elsewhere (Matthew 23:38; 24:15-28), a rejection that Paul declared in Romans 11 has come to expression in God’s hardening the mass of Israel, save for an elect Jewish remnant. So once again Israel as an ethnic entity has become lo-ammi, “not my people,” only now with a finality about it save for an elect remnant (Romans 9:27-29).17 Accordingly, Paul writes in Romans 11:7-10:
Israel failed to obtain what it was seeking [that is, a righteousness before God, Romans 9:31]. The elect [remnant] obtained it, but the rest were hardened, as it is written: “God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that would not see and ears that would not hear, down to this very day.” And David says: “Let their table become a snare and a trap, a stumbling block and a retribution for them; let their eyes be darkened so that they cannot see, and bend their backs forever [dia pantos 18].”
But because God has by no means rejected every Jew, choosing in grace a Jewish remnant (Romans 11:5), today elect Jews continue to be saved by being “provoked to jealousy” (Romans 11:11, 14) by the multitudes of saved Gentiles who are enjoying the spiritual blessings originally offered to their fathers, and who accordingly through faith in Jesus Christ, their Messiah, are being grafted back into their own “olive tree” (Romans 11:23-24). The justification of Gentiles is then the primary avenue to the justification of the Jewish elect; indeed, in this way (hout?s) “all Israel” will be saved (Romans 11:26).19
Five Propositions
In light of these Biblical data we are now in a position to affirm the following five propositions:20
1.The modern Jewish state is not a part of the Messianic kingdom of Jesus Christ. Even though this particular political state came into being on May 14, 1948, it would be a denial of Jesus’ affirmation that his kingdom is “not of this world order” (John 18:36) to assert that modern Israel is a part of his Messianic kingdom. To put it bluntly, modern Israel is not true Israel at all, but is rather “the spiritual son of Hagar” (Romans 9:6-8; Galatians 4:24-25) and thus is “Ishmaelitish” to the core, due to its lack of Abrahamic belief in Jesus Christ.21 It has accordingly forsaken any legitimate Biblical claim to Palestine.
2. The land promise of the Old Testament served as a type of the consummate realization of the purposes of God for his redeemed people that encompasses “all the nations” (Genesis 12:3) and the entire cosmos (Romans 4:13). Christians as members of the Messianic kingdom of God are the real heirs, along with Abraham, of the land promise in its antitypical, consummated character.
3. Because of the inherently limited scope of the land promised in the Old Testament, it cannot be regarded as having continuing significance in the realm of redemption other than in its function as a model to teach that obedience and divine blessing go hand in hand while disobedience and divine retribution also go hand in hand.
4. The Old Testament predictions about the “return” of “Israel” to the “land” in terms of a geo-political re-establishment of the state of Israel are more properly interpreted as having fulfillment at the “restoration of all things” that will accompany the resurrection of believers at the return of Christ (Acts 3:21; Romans 8:22-23). To interpret these predictions literally would be a retrograde elevation of type over antitype.
5. The future Messianic kingdom will embrace the whole of the recreated cosmos and will not experience a special manifestation that could be regarded in any sense as “Jewish” in the so-called “holy land” or anywhere else.
Peter, the apostle to the circumcision (who surely would have had his ear tuned to any and every future privilege Jews might enjoy), when he wrote of future things in 2 Peter 3, said nothing about a Jewish millennium or about a restoration of a Jewish kingdom in Palestine but rather divided the whole of Earth history into three periods: the first period — “the world of that time” — extending from the beginning of creation to the Genesis flood (2 Peter 3:5-6); the second period — “the heavens and Earth that now exist” (2 Peter 3:7) — extending from the flood to the final Day of the Lord, at which time the Earth will be destroyed by fire (2 Peter 3:7) and the present heavens “will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved” (2 Peter 3:10); and the third period — “new heavens and a new Earth in which righteousness dwells” (2 Peter 3:13) — extending throughout eternity future. If he had believed in a Jewish millennium following this present age 2 Peter 3 would have been the appropriate place to mention it, but he makes no mention of a millennium, much less a Jewish millennium, placing the entirety of Earth history within the three time frames.
Conclusion
What should we conclude from all this? The twin facts of ethnic Israel’s unbelief and God’s wrath exhibited toward ethnic Israel (1 Thessalonians 2:15-16) pose a problem for Christians today. On the one hand, should not our attitude toward these people through whom came not only our Old Testament Scriptures but also our Messiah and Savior according to the flesh (Romans 9:5), indeed, our very salvation (John 4:22) be one of gratitude, and should Christians not do everything in their power to treat the Jewish people as they themselves would wish to be treated? On the other hand, were not the Jewish people complicit in the crucifixion of Christ, notwithstanding Roman Catholicism’s absolution of world Jewry in that event, and has not world Jewry rejected the Savior of the world, declaring him to be one in a long line of false messiahs, and do not these same Jews, when pressed, acknowledge that they regard Christians as idolaters, worshiping as they do a “mere man”?
In response to this problem, I would first say that no Christian should advocate anything evenly remotely resembling legal discrimination against Jews because of their ethnicity or religion. At the same time, in light of the fact that the only hope of salvation for the Jewish people resides in the provisions of the Christian Gospel, it would be wrong, indeed, unloving and un-Christian, for Christians to encourage or to support Israel in the establishment and maintenance of its ethnic or religious “Jewishness” that is the ground of its hope of approbation before God. This is simply to take seriously the uniqueness and finality of Jesus Christ as the only Savior and the only hope not only of ethnic Israel but also of every race and every nation. The Bible denounces every hope for approbation before God that is not grounded in the person and work of Christ. Such approbation pursued through ethnicity or through good works is futile (Galatians 2:16). Therefore, the Jew, if he is ever to know genuine forgiveness by God, must forsake the notion that his racial connection to the patriarchs and/or his allegiance to Torah make him acceptable to God (Romans 2:17-29; Galatians 5:3-4).
It is a strange twist of thinking, if not downright disloyalty to the Gospel, for Christians to aid and abet Israel in the retention of its ethnic/religious distinctives that provide the ground of its hope for divine approbation, the holding on to which only solidifies Israel in its unbelief. And yet, in order that the blessing of Genesis 12:3 might be theirs, and in order to escape the threatened curse enunciated in the same verse, many Christians fervently believe that they must support Zionist causes whatever the cost and must rejoice with every “Israeli advance” in the world. They fail to realize, as they do so (1) that as long as they encourage the Jew to continue to hold his un-Biblical perception of what constitutes “Jewishness,”22 and (2) that as long as he continues to hold to Judaism as his religion, just so long will he continue to reject Jesus Christ who is Israel’s only hope and thus be eternally condemned. The Roman Catholic Church, in its modern efforts at aggiornamento, has not helped here either, declaring in its 1994 Catechism of the Catholic Church that because the faith of the Jewish people — catechetically described as the “the first to hear the Word of God” — “unlike other non-Christian religions, is already a response to God’s revelation in the Old Covenant” (paragraph 839),23 because to the Jews belong all the privileges outlined in Romans 9:4-5 (paragraph 839), and because with Christians they “await the coming of the Messiah” (!) (paragraph 840), the People of God include the Jewish people. Never mind that the Jewish people for the most part deny the deity of Jesus Christ and thus the doctrine of the Trinity; never mind that they for the most part rejected their Messiah, the first time he came, as a misguided prophet at best and a blasphemer at worst, and had him crucified, and accordingly believe today that Christians are idolaters because we worship him whom they contend was simply a man; never mind that they see no need for Christ’s substitutionary atonement. According to Rome’s teaching they are still related salvifically to the people of God and may go to Heaven!
Again, the Christian is often told today that in his witness to his modern Jewish friends he may assume that the Jew to whom he speaks already believes the Old Testament and that it only remains to show him that Jesus Christ is the one about whom the Old Testament prophets spoke. This is surely an inaccurate appraisal of the actual situation. The great mass of world Jewry today neither believes that the Old Testament is the inspired, inerrant Word of the living God nor does it have a clue about what the Old Testament teaches. We must think more carefully here, for can one truly believe the Old Testament and not acknowledge Jesus Christ to be the Messiah, Savior, and Lord revealed therein? No one who has heard of the Messiah and his atoning work and then rejects him believes the Old Testament. Jesus himself expressly declared: “If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote of me” (John 5:46). When the modern Jew claims that he believes and follows Torah, even though he may say that he sees grace taught therein, but who at the same time also believes that he must live a certain way if he is to remain a “son” or “daughter” of Torah, he does not believe the Old Testament and is denying the saving provision of which Torah actually speaks. The Levitical sacrificial system pointed to Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, who alone takes away the sin of the world.
Christians must realize that to bring any unbelievers, including ethnic/religious Israel, to the Christian faith, they must show them the futility of any and every hope for God’s approbation apart from faith in Jesus Christ. The fact that Jews have Abrahamic blood flowing in their veins (Matthew 3:9; John 1:13), or that they are physically circumcised (Romans 2:25-29; Galatians 5:2-4; 6:15), or that they are practicing “sons and daughters of Torah” (Romans 2:17-24; 3:9; Galatians 3:10; 4:21-5:1) are all insufficient for salvation.
Thus we must conclude that just as for God “as far as the Gospel is concerned, [Jews] are [regarded as his] enemies [for the salvific sake of non-Jews]; but as far as election is concerned, they are loved on account of the patriarchs” (Romans 11:28), so also for Christians they should love Jews in whose remnant God will fulfill his elective promises to the patriarchs. Christians must also do everything they can, without being arrogant toward them (Romans 11:28), to bring ethnic/religious Israel to the place where they will forsake any and every Jewish ethnic/religious distinctive in which they rest their hope for salvation. Christians must do this for the sake of Israel and out of loyalty to the cause of the Gospel.
Appendix
Biblical prophecy says nothing about modern Israel. In fact, far from the formation of modern Israel being a fulfillment of Biblical prophecy, it is, if anything, a major instrumentality in the hand of God to sustain Israel in its divinely imposed hardening.
Christian Zionists claim that the establishment of Israel as a nation on May 14, 1948, fulfilled Biblical prophecies. The following Old Testament prophecies are samples from a larger group of passages that these Biblical interpreters say were fulfilled in 1948:
1. Jeremiah 29:14, it is said, predicted the founding of the modern state of Israel. But the context of Jeremiah 29 makes it clear that the predicted “restoration” after the completion of the seventy years of Babylonian exile (29:10), refers to the return from exile under Zerubbabel in 536 b.c.
2. Isaiah 11:11, it is said, speaks of a “second time” that God would restore the remnant to the land, the first being the return from Babylon in 536 b.c., the second being the establishment of modern Israel in 1948. But the context of Isaiah 11 makes it clear that Israel’s first deliverance was from Egypt under Moses (11:16) with its second restoration being from the nations into which the Jews of the Assyrian/Babylonian captivity had dispersed.
3. Zechariah 8:7, it is said, predicted that God “will save [his] people from the east country and the west country, and…bring them to dwell in the midst of Jerusalem.” It is, however, a reach to see this prediction as referring to the modern state of Israel. In fact, the passage speaks of the faithfulness and righteousness of the inhabitants of Jerusalem in that day (8:8), something that is definitely not true of present Jerusalem. Much more likely is it that Zechariah was predicting the return of exiles during the days of Ezra, Nehemiah, and after (see Ezra 7:1-10; Nehemiah 11:1-2) that, again, pointed typically forward to the antitypical new Paradise of God.
4. Ezekiel 36:24-26, it is said, predicted that Israel would be restored to the land “in unbelief” which agrees with the situation in Israel today. But the passage does not speak of a restoration “in unbelief.” God does not reward disobedience. Verse 33 states: “On the day that I cleanse you from all your iniquities, I will cause the cities to be inhabited,” clearly implying that those who are “restored” have first been spiritually cleansed, thereby meeting the requirement of Leviticus 26:40-42: “…if they confess their iniquity…; if their uncircumcised heart is humbled…, then I will remember my covenant…and I will remember the land.”
5. Amos 9:14-15, it is said, declares that this condition of permanent national establishment that would someday prevail simply was not true of any Old Testament restoration. But given the fact that James in Acts 15:16-17 applied the prophecy immediately preceding these two verses to the church of this age, the restoration envisioned here most likely describes in pastoral terms the rejuvenated cosmos.
This essay concludes in the June/July 2006 Trinity Review.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] I say “so-called” because the phrase “holy land” occurs only twice in Scripture (Psalm 78:54; Zechariah 2:12) and in both instances the word “land” must be supplied. Apart from the holy God’s manifested presence in it, there is nothing holy about the “Holy Land.” But wherever God manifests his presence that place is holy, as God taught Moses at the burning bush in Sinai (Exodus 3:1-6).
2 According to Julia Duin, “San Antonio Fundamentalist Battles Anti-Semitism,” in The Houston Chronicle (April 30, 1988), 1, Hagee does not believe that Jews must trust Christ in order to go to Heaven: “The Jewish people have a relationship to God through the law as given through Moses. I believe that every Gentile person can only come to God through the cross of Christ. I believe that every Jewish person who lives in the light of the Torah…has a relationship with God and will come to redemption.” This radically Dispensational statement is heretical in its denial that faith in Christ is universally essential for salvation.
3 Pat Robertson stated on public television on January 5, 2006, that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel suffered his massive stroke at the hand of God because he was in the process of giving a portion of Israel’s land to the Palestinians in exchange for peace. He later apologized for his statement.
4 See Vital Speeches 61, no. 3 (November 15, 1994): 70, 3.
5 John Hagee, “Most evangelicals are seeing the error of ‘replacement theology,’” online edition of the Jerusalem Post, March 20, 2006.
6 I happily acknowledge my great debt to O. Palmer Robertson, The Israel of God: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow (Presbyterian and Reformed, 2000), 3-31, for many of the thoughts in this section of the paper.
7 Robertson, The Israel of God, 4.
8 John Murray, Christian Baptism (Presbyterian and Reformed, 1962), 46.
9 For the redemptive implications of this bad “land theology” see Knox Theological Seminary’s “An Open Letter to Evangelicals and Other Interested Parties: The People of God, the Land of Israel, and the Impartiality of the Gospel” posted on the Seminary’s websiteMailScanner has detected a possible fraud attempt from ""http:" claiming to be www.knoxseminary.edu under “Wittenberg Door.”
10 This particular divine promise has already been literally and explicitly fulfilled by the conquest of the land under Joshua and Solomon’s reign (Joshua 21:43-45; 23:14; 1 Kings 4:24). It does not require some future fulfillment in a Jewish millennium.
11 Abraham owned only the plot of ground, the field of Mach-pelah, that he purchased from the Hittites living in the land for a burial ground for Sarah his wife (Genesis 23).
12 Paul tells us in Galatians 3:8 that when God made this promise to Abraham he was in effect “preaching the Gospel beforehand to Abraham,” that is, he was declaring that he would justify the Gentiles by faith.
13 The thoughts expressed in the last four paragraphs I have adapted from O. Palmer Robertson, Understanding the Land of the Bible (Presbyterian and Reformed, 1966), 7-13.
14 This parable also carries implications concerning Muhammad’s claim to be the last and greatest of God’s prophets, even greater than Jesus. It shows him to be a false prophet.
15 Geerhardus Vos, The Self-Disclosure of Jesus (Presbyterian and Reformed [1926] 1978), 162.
16 BAGD, “eis telos", 812g, properly views this prepositional phrase as an adverbial expression and suggests it should be translated “forever, through all eternity” or “utterly.”
17 Robertson, The Israel of God, 174, fn. 3, rightly contends that the word “remnant” etymologically does not necessarily intend a small, insignificant number but simply that which is “left.” But when Isaiah declares: “Though the number of the sons of Israel be as the sands of the sea, it is the remnant that will be saved,” the implication is that God will harden the mass of ethnic Israel.
18 This phrase may also be translated “continually,” but “continually” conveys the same sense as “forever” in this context.
19 For my exposition of Romans 11 see my A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith (second edition, Thomas Nelson, 2002), 1025-1030. There I show exegetically that just as God throughout this age is bringing the divinely determined full number (Romans 11:25) of elect Gentiles to faith in Christ, so throughout this age he is also bringing the divinely determined full number (Romans 11:12) of elect Jews (“the remnant”) to faith in Christ so that both “full numbers” are reached in this age. While Israel as a nation has no salvific covenant with God in this age, standing as it is under God’s wrath, the remnant of elect Jews, as they are saved, are grafted by faith in Christ into the “cultivated olive tree” (Romans 11:17-24), that is, the church.
20 I have adapted these with additions and alterations from Robertson, The Israel of God, 194.
21 Modern Israel must face the fact that to be the physical descendants of Abraham and to have Abrahamic blood flowing in their veins means nothing as far as acquiring God’s approbation is concerned. As John the Baptist warned: “Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our Father,’ for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham” (Matthew 3:9). To the Jews who said, “Abraham is our Father,” but who were seeking to kill him, Jesus, said,: “If you were Abraham’s children, you would be doing what Abraham did [that is, you would rejoice to see my day].... You are of your father the devil” (John 8:39-44, 56). Ethnic Jews must recall that Abraham had two sons, which means that “not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring”; rather, “it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise who are counted as offspring” (Romans 9:7-8).
22 In no uncertain terms Paul declared that “no one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical. But a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, and not by the letter” (Romans 2:28-29). Moreover, he taught that “the present Jerusalem,” the enslaved and doomed city, is the “son of Hagar” bearing children for slavery, whereas Christians have “the Jerusalem above” for their mother (Galatians 4:25).
23 Theirs is indeed a response, a negative one, to God’s revelation in the Old Covenant. To suggest that the faith of Christ-rejecting Jews is in any sense a proper response to the Old Testament revelation is surely an inaccurate appraisal of the situation. In light of the fact that the only hope of salvation for Jews resides in the provisions of the Christian Gospel, it is simply gross wrong-headedness to encourage or to support them in their “Jewishness” or in their Zionist causes.
Robert L. Reymond
Editor’s note: This essay is an address delivered by Dr. Robert L. Reymond, Professor Emeritus at Knox Theological Seminary, to “Advancing Reformation Truth and Spirituality” (ARTS) on April 21, 2006, at DeVos Chapel, Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
The Challenge Facing Covenant Theology
A gigantic effort is underway today to convince the evangelical citizenry of the United States of America that the political state of Israel rightfully owns in perpetuity the so-called “Holy Land” [1] at the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea by virtue of God’s bequeathing it to Abraham and his descendants in the Old Testament. This effort is being made not so much today by the secular leadership of the state of Israel as by self-acclaimed Christian scholars and televangelists who claim to speak for over seventy million evangelical Christians. These men, including Assemblies of God preacher and televangelist John Hagee, founder and pastor of the Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas;2 Kenneth Copeland, televangelist; Paul and Matt Crouch of the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN); Jack Hayford, founder and pastor of the Church on the Way in Van Nuys, California, and president of the Foursquare Gospel Church; Benny Hinn, pastor of the yet-to-be-built World Healing Center in Dallas, Texas; Rod Parsley, pastor of the World Harvest Church in Columbus, Ohio; Pat Robertson, founder and chief executive officer of the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) and the Bible teacher on the 700 Club;3 and Jerry Falwell, founder and pastor of the Thomas Road Baptist Church and founder of Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, are all purveyors of that system of hermeneutics known as Dispensationalism.
Apparently convinced by this propaganda effort, President Clinton, after citing the words of his desperately ill Baptist pastor to him: “If you abandon Israel, God will never forgive you,” declared before the Israeli Knesset in Jerusalem on October 27, 1994: “…it is God’s will that Israel, the Biblical home of the people of Israel, continue forever and ever,”4 a statement that enters deeply into Biblical hermeneutics concerning the nature of the church and the kingdom of God, not to mention Biblical eschatology (note his “forever and ever”). President Clinton concluded his speech by saying: “Your journey is our journey, and America will stand with you now and always,” a statement that illustrates this nation’s deep involvement in both Middle East politics in general and its specific political commitment to Israel in the Israeli/ Palestinian conflict in particular in a way that cannot but affect the course of world politics for the foreseeable future.
In my opinion, President Clinton’s statement is bad politics based on equally bad theology. I say this because, as I shall argue in this paper, all of God’s land promises to Israel in the Old Testament are to be viewed in terms of shadow, type, and prophecy, in contrast to the reality, substance, and fulfillment of which the New Testament speaks. Consequently, contrary to John Hagee who insists that “Israel has a Bible mandate to the land, a divine covenant for the land of Israel, forever…[and] Christians have a Bible mandate to be supportive of Israel,”5 I will argue that it is we Christians, as members of Christ’s Messianic kingdom, who are the real heirs to the land promises of Holy Scripture, but only in their fulfilled paradisical character.6 Hagee terms this view “replacement theology” because, he says, it “replaces” in the economy of God the Jewish people who are, he says, “God’s centerpiece” and “the apple of his eye” (Zechariah 2:8) with the church of Jesus Christ. Of course, Hagee’s perception of ethnic Israel is in error, because ethnic Israel per se was never the center-piece of God’s covenant program since, according to Paul, God’s promises always applied only to the true spiritual Israel (that is, elect Israel) within ethnic Israel (Romans 9:6-13); and the land promises of the Old Testament, as we will show, were always to be viewed typologically. Nevertheless, Hagee has thrown down the Dispensational gauntlet; and it is high time that covenant theologians picked it up and responded to him Biblically. This is what I propose to do now. But I offer a word of caution, and it is this: Reflect carefully upon what I say before you accept or reject it. With that caveat I will now begin with a discussion of
Eden and the Abrahamic Covenant
O. Palmer Robertson begins his treatise on the significance of the land as a theological idea by stating:
The concept of a land that belongs to God’s people originated in Paradise. This simple fact, so often overlooked, plays a critical role in evaluating the significance of the land throughout redemptive history and its consummate fulfillment. Land did not begin to be theologically significant with the promise given to Abraham. Instead, the patriarch’s hope of possessing a land arose out of the concept of restoration to the original state from which man had fallen. The original idea of land as paradise significantly shaped the expectations associated with redemption. As the place of blessedness arising from unbroken fellowship and communion with God, the land of paradise became the goal toward which redeemed humanity was returning.7
In the Edenic paradise of Genesis 2 we see God, whose garden it was (Ezekiel 28:13; 31:8), and which garden was employed later as the prototypical ideal (Genesis 13:10) and type of the eschatological paradise of God (Isaiah 51:3; Revelation 2:7), placing the original pair he had created within it to tend and to keep it and to enjoy communion with him. But the paradisical nature of Eden was lost in and by Adam’s fall, and our first parents were expelled from this land of blessing. But the idea of paradise was renewed by God’s inaugurating with the guilty pair a second covenant — the covenant of grace of Genesis 3:15 — and later by his covenant with Abraham of Genesis 12:1-3 to redeem a people from their fallen condition and to transform the cosmos. Just as Adam and Eve had known God’s blessing in Eden, so also God would bless his redeemed people in a new Eden, a land flowing with milk and honey, that lay somewhere ahead of them in the future.
With the call of Abraham in Genesis 12 the covenant of grace established in Genesis 3:15 underwent a remarkable advance. The instrument of that advance is the covenant that God made with Abraham that guaranteed and secured soteric blessing for “all the families of the Earth” (Genesis 12:3). So significant are the promises of grace in the Abrahamic covenant, found in Genesis 12:1-3; 13:14-16; 15:18-21; 17:1-16; and 22:16-18, that it is not an overstatement to declare these verses, from the covenantal perspective, the most important verses in the Bible. The fact that the Bible sweeps across thousands of years between the creation of man and the call of Abraham in only eleven chapters, with the call of Abraham coming in Genesis 12, suggests that God intended the information given in Genesis 1-11 to be preparatory “background” to the revelation of the Abrahamic covenant. Revelation subsequent to it discloses that all that God has done savingly in grace since the revelation of the Abrahamic covenant is the result and product of it. In other words, once the covenant of grace came to expression in the salvific promises of the Abrahamic covenant — that God would be the God of Abraham and his spiritual descendants (Genesis 17:7) and that in Abraham all the families of the Earth would be blessed — everything that God has done since that time, he has done in order to fulfill his covenant promises to Abraham (and thereby the eternal plan of redemption).
If this representation of the salvific significance of the Abrahamic covenant seems to be an overstatement, the following declarations from later revelation should suffice to justify it:
1. It is the Abrahamic covenant and none other that God later confirmed with Isaac (Genesis 17:19; 26:3-4) and with Jacob (Genesis 28:13-15; 35:12).
2. The Scriptures state that God redeemed Jacob’s descendants from Egypt in order to keep his covenant promise to the patriarchs: “God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob” (Exodus 2:24: see 4:5).
3. Again and again throughout Israel’s history the inspired authors of Scripture trace God’s continuing extension of grace and mercy to Israel directly to his fidelity to his covenant promises to Abraham (Exodus 32:12-14; 33:1; Leviticus 26:42; Deuteronomy 1:8; 4:31; 7:8; 9:27; 29:12-13; Joshua 21:44; 24:3-4; Psalm 105:8-10, 42-43; 2 Kings 13:23; 1 Chronicles 16:15-17; Micah 7:20; Nehemiah 9:7-8).
4. When we come to the New Testament it is no different. Both Mary and Zechariah declared the first coming of Jesus Christ, including the very act of Incarnation, to be a vital part of the fulfillment of God’s gracious covenant promise to Abraham. Mary in Luke 1:54-55 said: “He has helped his servant Israel, remembering to be merciful to Abraham and his descendants forever, even as he said to our fathers.” Zechariah in Luke 1:68-71 said: “Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, because he has come…to remember his holy covenant, the oath he swore to our father Abraham.”
I may note in passing that, whereas Christians today mainly celebrate only the Incarnation of God’s Son at Christmas time, Mary and Zechariah, placing this event in the covenantal context of Scripture, saw reason in Christ’s coming to celebrate the covenant fidelity of God to his people. In their awareness of the broader significance of the event and the words of praise that this awareness evoked from them we see Biblical theology at its best being worked out and expressed.
5. Jesus, himself the Seed of Abraham (Matthew 1:1; Galatians 3:16), declared that Abraham “rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad” (John 8:56).
6. Peter declared that God sent Jesus to bless the Jewish nation in keeping with the promise he gave to Abraham in Genesis 12:3, in turning them away from their iniquities (Acts 3:25-26).
7. Paul declared that God, when he promised Abraham that “all peoples on Earth will be blessed through you” (Genesis 12:3), was declaring that he was going to justify the Gentiles by faith and was announcing the Gospel in advance to Abraham (Galatians 3:8). Accordingly, he stated that all believers in Christ “are blessed [with justification through faith] along with Abraham” (Galatians 3:9).
8. Paul also declared: “Christ became a Servant of the circumcision…in order to confirm the promises made to the patriarchs so that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy” (Romans 15:8-9).
9. Paul further declared that Christ died on the cross, bearing the law’s curse, “in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles in Christ Jesus, in order that we [both Jews and Gentiles] might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith” (Galatians 3:13-14).
10. Paul expressly declared that the Mosaic covenant and law, introduced several centuries after God gave his covenant promises to Abraham and to his Seed (Christ), “does not set aside the covenant previously established by God [with Abraham] and thus do away with the promise” (Galatians 3:16-17).
11. Paul also declared (1) that Abraham is the “father of all who believe” among both Jews and Gentiles (Romans 4:11-12); and (2) that all who belong to Christ “are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise” that God gave to Abraham (Galatians 3:29).
12. Finally, Christ described the future state of glory in terms of the redeemed “taking their place at the feast with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of Heaven” (Matthew 8:11).
What this all means is that the promise of God, covenantally given to Abraham, that he would be the God of Abraham and of his spiritual descendants after him forever (Genesis 17:7-8) extends temporally to the farthest reaches of the future and encompasses the entire community of the redeemed and the renewed cosmos. This is just to say that the Abrahamic covenant, in the specific prospect it holds forth of the salvation of the entire church of God, is identical with the soteric program of the covenant of grace. It also means that the blessings of the covenant of grace that believers in Christ enjoy today under the New Testament economy are founded upon the covenant that God made with Abraham. Said another way, the “new covenant” whose Mediator is Jesus Christ is simply the administrative “extension and unfolding of the Abrahamic covenant”8 in redemptive history. The church of Jesus Christ, then, not ethnic Israel, is the present-day expression of the one people of God whose roots go back to Abraham.
These passages also highlight the unity of the one covenant of grace and the oneness of God’s people in all ages over against the discontinuities injected into redemptive history by the Dispensational heresy that lies at the root of all the bad “land theology” being espoused today concerning Israel’s so-called “perpetual divine right” to the land of Palestine.9 That is to say, God’s redemptive purpose, first disclosed in Genesis 3:15, once it had come to expression in the terms of the Abrahamic covenant, was continuously advanced thereafter by the successive covenants with Israel, David, and finally the new covenant. Accordingly, in his letter to the Gentile churches in Galatia Paul described those who repudiate Judaistic legalism and who “never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ,” that is, Christ’s church, as “the Israel of God” (Galatians 6:12-16). In his Ephesian letter Paul told those Gentile believers that God had in Christ made them citizens of Israel and beneficiaries of the covenants of the promise (Ephesians 2:11-13). And in his letter to the Philippians Paul declared that those “who worship by the Spirit of God, who glory in Christ Jesus, and who put no confidence in the flesh” are “the [true] circumcision” (Philippians 3:3). Clearly, the church of Jesus Christ is the present-day true Israel of God.
The Typological Nature of the Land Promises
Undoubtedly, temporal, earthly promises of land were given to Abraham and his descendants in the Abrahamic covenant (Genesis 12: 7; 13:15, 17; 15:18; 17:8). But the land promises were never primary and central to the covenant’s intention, and God never envisioned literal fulfillment of these promises under Old Testament conditions as primary. Rather, the fulfillment of the land promises must be viewed as arising from the more basic and essential redemptive promises, and for their fulfillment they await the final and complete salvation of God’s elect and the recreation of the universe in the Eschaton (Romans 8:19-23). I say this because the Bible declares that Abraham dwelt in Palestine “as in a foreign country” (Hebrews 11:9), and he never inherited any land during his lifetime (Acts 7:5), which is just to say that Abraham believed that the fulfillment of God’s land promises lay antitypically in the eschatological future.
Was this really Abraham’s understanding of God’s land promise? Or did he think that God’s promise merely entailed the small portion of land bounded on the west and the east by the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan Valley and generally on the north and the south by the Sea of Galilee and the southern tip of the Dead Sea? Hardly. Was his faith such that he would have been satisfied in knowing that someday his offspring would inherit the land “from the river of Egypt [not the Nile River but the Wadi el Arish] to the great river, the River Euphrates” (Genesis 15:18)?10 Again we must respond, hardly. His entire life experience of walking by faith and not by sight (see the recurring phrase “by faith Abraham” in Hebrews 11:8, 9, 17) taught him to look beyond the temporal circumstances in which he lived. To understand Abraham’s concept of God’s land promise to him, we must give special heed to the divinely revealed insights of the writers of the New Testament. Just as Paul declared that the events of Israel’s redemptive history were “types” for believers during this age (1 Corinthians 10:6), just as Paul said the religious festivals of the old covenant were “a shadow of the things to come” (Colossians 2:17), just as the author of Hebrews stated that the administration of redemption under the old covenant was “but a shadow of the good things to come” (Hebrews 10:1), so also he taught, in Hebrews 11:8-16, that Abraham knew that God’s land promises in their fulfillment entailed something far more glorious, namely, a better and heavenly homeland whose designer and builder is God, than the land of Palestine per se that served only as the type of their fulfillment:
By faith Abraham…went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God….
These all died in faith, not having received the things promised,11 but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and have acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the Earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland…a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city..
Quite plainly, Abraham understood that the land promised to him actually had both its origin and its antitypical fulfillment in the heavenly, eternal reality that lay still in the future. Possession of a particular tract of land in ancient times might have significance from a number of perspectives with respect to God’s redemptive working in the world, but clearly the land promise under the Abrahamic covenant served simply as a type, anticipating the future reality of the coming of the Messianic kingdom with the Messiah himself assuming the throne of David in Heaven, and ruling the universe after his resurrection and ascension, and reigning until all his enemies have been put under his feet.
How was it possible for Abraham to have the view of the land promise that the New Testament ascribed to him? What led him to “spiritualize” the promise to make it entail future heavenly, kingdom realities? The answer lies in the fact that he took seriously God’s promise to him that “in [him] all the families of the Earth would be blessed” (Genesis 12:3).12 Therefore, he perceived that the promise to him and his offspring, who is Christ (Galatians 3:16), entailed that in Christ “he would be heir [not of Palestine but] of the [glorified] world [kosmou]” (Romans 4:13). Plainly, Abraham under-stood that God’s land promise meant that God would restore the entire cosmos to its former paradisical glory and in that he placed his hope and patiently waited for it. His faith and understanding would have been satisfied with nothing less!
Moses too, and his contemporaries, wandered in the wilderness of Sinai for forty years, and died in faith, not having received the promise (Hebrews 11:39).
Under Joshua’s leadership the Israelites conquered the land, receiving in a limited fashion the paradise God had promised. But it quickly became obvious that this territory could not be the ultimate paradise. Undefeated Canaanites remained in the land as “hornets.” And because of Israel’s sin throughout the united and divided kingdom periods, finally the land was devastated by the Neo-Babylonians; the indwelling Glory departed from the Solomonic Temple (Ezekiel 9:3; 10:1-22), which Temple was then destroyed; and the people were banished and came to be known as lo-ammi, meaning “not-my-people” (Hosea 1:9). The once fruitful land took on the appearance of a desert, a dwelling place of jackals, owls, and scorpions. Paradise, even in its old covenant shadow form, was taken from them.
Even the restoration after the Babylonian captivity, under Ezra and Nehemiah, designated by Biblical scholars as the Second Temple Period, could not be paradise. But the return to the land and the rebuilding of the Temple pointed the way to it. The glory of that tiny Temple, Haggai prophesied, would someday be greater than the glory of the Solomonic Temple. What did this hyperbolic language mean? It meant that God had something better for them than a temporal land and a material temple. The promise of the land would be fulfilled by nothing less than a restored paradise on a cosmic scale! As Isaiah predicted, someday the wolf would lie down with the lamb, the leopard would lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion would live in peace, and a little child would lead them. The nursing child would play over the hole of the cobra, and the weaned child would place his hand on the adder’s den, and the Earth would be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the places of the sea (Isaiah 11:6-9). No more would sin and sorrow reign nor thorns infest the ground. Then, writes Paul in Romans 9:25-26:
Those who were not [God’s] people [not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles, Romans 9:24] [he] will call “my people,” and her who was not beloved [he] will call “beloved.” And in the very place where it was said to them, “You are not my people,” there they will be called “sons of the living God.”
Jesus’ Teaching About the Land and the Future of Ethnic Israel
When Christ came two thousand years ago, the Biblical doctrine of the land experienced a radical advance. By inaugurating his public ministry in Galilee of the Gentiles along the public trade route (Isaiah 9:1, cited in Matthew 4:12-16), Jesus was making a statement. That land would serve as the springboard to all nations. The kingdom of God — the central theme of Jesus’ teaching — would encompass a realm that extended well beyond the borders of ancient Israel. As Paul so pointedly indicated, God’s promise to Abraham meant that he would become heir of the whole world (Romans 4:13). Jesus’ pointing his ministry toward the whole of the world rather than confining it to the land of Canaan cleared the way for the old covenant “type” to be replaced by the new covenant “antitype.” Teaching that the kingdom of God had appeared in its grace modality with his first coming and that it would appear in its power modality at his second coming, he transformed the imagery of a land flowing with milk and honey into a rejuvenation of the whole of God’s created order. It was not Canaan as such that would benefit in the establishment of Messiah’s kingdom: The whole cosmos would rejoice in the renewal.13
Now what did Jesus teach about the future of ethnic Israel? In his parable of the wicked farmers (Matthew 21:33-45, Mark 12:1-12, Luke 20:9-19), Jesus tells the story of a landowner who leased his vineyard to some farmers and then went into another country. When the time arrived for him to receive his rental fee in the form of the fruit of the vineyard, the landowner sent servant after servant to his tenants, only to have each one of them beaten or stoned or killed. Last of all he sent his son — Luke says his “beloved son”; Mark says “yet one [other], a beloved son” — saying: “They will respect my son.” But when the tenants saw the landowner’s son, they said: “This is the heir; come, let’s kill him and take his inheritance.” This they did, throwing his body out of the vineyard. When the landowner came, he destroyed the tenants and leased his vineyard to others. The interpretive intentions of the parable are obvious on the face of it: The landowner is God the Father; the vineyard, the nation of Israel (Isaiah 5:7); the farmers, Israel’s leaders; the servants, the prophets of the theocracy (Matthew 23:37a); and the son Jesus himself.
The central teaching of the parable is obvious — as indeed it was to its original audience (Matthew 21:45): After having sent his servants the prophets repeatedly in Old Testament times to the nation of Israel to call the nation back to him from its sin and unbelief, only to have them rebuffed, persecuted, and often killed, God, the Owner of Israel, had, in sending Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Godhead, moved beyond merely sending another servant. Listen once again to the pertinent verses in this connection: Matthew 21:37: “Then last of all he sent his son.” Mark 12:6: “…having one son, his beloved, he also sent him to them last.”
From Matthew’s “last of all” and Mark’s “last” it is clear that Jesus represented himself as God’s last, his final ambassador, after whose sending none higher can come and nothing more can be done.14 The Son of God is the highest messenger of God conceivable. In sum, God had in Jesus finally (Matthew: hysteron; Mark: eschaton) sent his own beloved Son whom the nation would reject. But the rejection of his Son, unlike the rejections of those before him, was to entail neither God’s continuance of dealing with the recalcitrant nation nor a mere change of politico-religious administration. Rather, his rejection, Jesus taught, would eventuate in “the complete overthrow of the theocracy, and the rearing from the foundation up of a new structure [Christ’s church] in which the Son would receive full vindication and supreme honor.”15 His very words are as follows:
I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruit [Matthew 21:43].
What will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the tenants and give the vineyard to others [Mark 12:9; Luke 20:16].
Here is a Biblical “replacement theology,” and it is Jesus himself who enunciated it: National Israel, except for its elect remnant, would be judged, and the special standing that it had enjoyed during the old dispensation would be given to the already emerging international church of Jesus Christ made up of both the elect Jewish remnant and elect Gentiles. So as Jesus predicted, Israel’s rulers rejected him and incited Rome to execute him; the Temple was soon destroyed (see Matthew 24:1-35); the people dispersed; and Israel ceased to exist as a political entity, as Moses had predicted in Deuteronomy 28:15-68 (see Deuteronomy 31:24-29). Paul declared in 1 Thessalonians 2:15-16 that the Jews who “killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets…displease God and oppose all mankind by hindering us from speaking to the Gentiles that they might be saved — so as always to fill up the measure of their sins. But God’s wrath has come upon them at last [eis telos
16].” Since Paul wrote 1 Thessalonians in a. d. 50 or 51 it is unlikely that he intended by his phrase, “God’s wrath has come upon them” the destruction of Jerusalem that occurred in a. d. 70. More likely, he was referring to the divine rejection of national Israel that Jesus referred to in his parable of the wicked farmers and elsewhere (Matthew 23:38; 24:15-28), a rejection that Paul declared in Romans 11 has come to expression in God’s hardening the mass of Israel, save for an elect Jewish remnant. So once again Israel as an ethnic entity has become lo-ammi, “not my people,” only now with a finality about it save for an elect remnant (Romans 9:27-29).17 Accordingly, Paul writes in Romans 11:7-10:
Israel failed to obtain what it was seeking [that is, a righteousness before God, Romans 9:31]. The elect [remnant] obtained it, but the rest were hardened, as it is written: “God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that would not see and ears that would not hear, down to this very day.” And David says: “Let their table become a snare and a trap, a stumbling block and a retribution for them; let their eyes be darkened so that they cannot see, and bend their backs forever [dia pantos 18].”
But because God has by no means rejected every Jew, choosing in grace a Jewish remnant (Romans 11:5), today elect Jews continue to be saved by being “provoked to jealousy” (Romans 11:11, 14) by the multitudes of saved Gentiles who are enjoying the spiritual blessings originally offered to their fathers, and who accordingly through faith in Jesus Christ, their Messiah, are being grafted back into their own “olive tree” (Romans 11:23-24). The justification of Gentiles is then the primary avenue to the justification of the Jewish elect; indeed, in this way (hout?s) “all Israel” will be saved (Romans 11:26).19
Five Propositions
In light of these Biblical data we are now in a position to affirm the following five propositions:20
1.The modern Jewish state is not a part of the Messianic kingdom of Jesus Christ. Even though this particular political state came into being on May 14, 1948, it would be a denial of Jesus’ affirmation that his kingdom is “not of this world order” (John 18:36) to assert that modern Israel is a part of his Messianic kingdom. To put it bluntly, modern Israel is not true Israel at all, but is rather “the spiritual son of Hagar” (Romans 9:6-8; Galatians 4:24-25) and thus is “Ishmaelitish” to the core, due to its lack of Abrahamic belief in Jesus Christ.21 It has accordingly forsaken any legitimate Biblical claim to Palestine.
2. The land promise of the Old Testament served as a type of the consummate realization of the purposes of God for his redeemed people that encompasses “all the nations” (Genesis 12:3) and the entire cosmos (Romans 4:13). Christians as members of the Messianic kingdom of God are the real heirs, along with Abraham, of the land promise in its antitypical, consummated character.
3. Because of the inherently limited scope of the land promised in the Old Testament, it cannot be regarded as having continuing significance in the realm of redemption other than in its function as a model to teach that obedience and divine blessing go hand in hand while disobedience and divine retribution also go hand in hand.
4. The Old Testament predictions about the “return” of “Israel” to the “land” in terms of a geo-political re-establishment of the state of Israel are more properly interpreted as having fulfillment at the “restoration of all things” that will accompany the resurrection of believers at the return of Christ (Acts 3:21; Romans 8:22-23). To interpret these predictions literally would be a retrograde elevation of type over antitype.
5. The future Messianic kingdom will embrace the whole of the recreated cosmos and will not experience a special manifestation that could be regarded in any sense as “Jewish” in the so-called “holy land” or anywhere else.
Peter, the apostle to the circumcision (who surely would have had his ear tuned to any and every future privilege Jews might enjoy), when he wrote of future things in 2 Peter 3, said nothing about a Jewish millennium or about a restoration of a Jewish kingdom in Palestine but rather divided the whole of Earth history into three periods: the first period — “the world of that time” — extending from the beginning of creation to the Genesis flood (2 Peter 3:5-6); the second period — “the heavens and Earth that now exist” (2 Peter 3:7) — extending from the flood to the final Day of the Lord, at which time the Earth will be destroyed by fire (2 Peter 3:7) and the present heavens “will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved” (2 Peter 3:10); and the third period — “new heavens and a new Earth in which righteousness dwells” (2 Peter 3:13) — extending throughout eternity future. If he had believed in a Jewish millennium following this present age 2 Peter 3 would have been the appropriate place to mention it, but he makes no mention of a millennium, much less a Jewish millennium, placing the entirety of Earth history within the three time frames.
Conclusion
What should we conclude from all this? The twin facts of ethnic Israel’s unbelief and God’s wrath exhibited toward ethnic Israel (1 Thessalonians 2:15-16) pose a problem for Christians today. On the one hand, should not our attitude toward these people through whom came not only our Old Testament Scriptures but also our Messiah and Savior according to the flesh (Romans 9:5), indeed, our very salvation (John 4:22) be one of gratitude, and should Christians not do everything in their power to treat the Jewish people as they themselves would wish to be treated? On the other hand, were not the Jewish people complicit in the crucifixion of Christ, notwithstanding Roman Catholicism’s absolution of world Jewry in that event, and has not world Jewry rejected the Savior of the world, declaring him to be one in a long line of false messiahs, and do not these same Jews, when pressed, acknowledge that they regard Christians as idolaters, worshiping as they do a “mere man”?
In response to this problem, I would first say that no Christian should advocate anything evenly remotely resembling legal discrimination against Jews because of their ethnicity or religion. At the same time, in light of the fact that the only hope of salvation for the Jewish people resides in the provisions of the Christian Gospel, it would be wrong, indeed, unloving and un-Christian, for Christians to encourage or to support Israel in the establishment and maintenance of its ethnic or religious “Jewishness” that is the ground of its hope of approbation before God. This is simply to take seriously the uniqueness and finality of Jesus Christ as the only Savior and the only hope not only of ethnic Israel but also of every race and every nation. The Bible denounces every hope for approbation before God that is not grounded in the person and work of Christ. Such approbation pursued through ethnicity or through good works is futile (Galatians 2:16). Therefore, the Jew, if he is ever to know genuine forgiveness by God, must forsake the notion that his racial connection to the patriarchs and/or his allegiance to Torah make him acceptable to God (Romans 2:17-29; Galatians 5:3-4).
It is a strange twist of thinking, if not downright disloyalty to the Gospel, for Christians to aid and abet Israel in the retention of its ethnic/religious distinctives that provide the ground of its hope for divine approbation, the holding on to which only solidifies Israel in its unbelief. And yet, in order that the blessing of Genesis 12:3 might be theirs, and in order to escape the threatened curse enunciated in the same verse, many Christians fervently believe that they must support Zionist causes whatever the cost and must rejoice with every “Israeli advance” in the world. They fail to realize, as they do so (1) that as long as they encourage the Jew to continue to hold his un-Biblical perception of what constitutes “Jewishness,”22 and (2) that as long as he continues to hold to Judaism as his religion, just so long will he continue to reject Jesus Christ who is Israel’s only hope and thus be eternally condemned. The Roman Catholic Church, in its modern efforts at aggiornamento, has not helped here either, declaring in its 1994 Catechism of the Catholic Church that because the faith of the Jewish people — catechetically described as the “the first to hear the Word of God” — “unlike other non-Christian religions, is already a response to God’s revelation in the Old Covenant” (paragraph 839),23 because to the Jews belong all the privileges outlined in Romans 9:4-5 (paragraph 839), and because with Christians they “await the coming of the Messiah” (!) (paragraph 840), the People of God include the Jewish people. Never mind that the Jewish people for the most part deny the deity of Jesus Christ and thus the doctrine of the Trinity; never mind that they for the most part rejected their Messiah, the first time he came, as a misguided prophet at best and a blasphemer at worst, and had him crucified, and accordingly believe today that Christians are idolaters because we worship him whom they contend was simply a man; never mind that they see no need for Christ’s substitutionary atonement. According to Rome’s teaching they are still related salvifically to the people of God and may go to Heaven!
Again, the Christian is often told today that in his witness to his modern Jewish friends he may assume that the Jew to whom he speaks already believes the Old Testament and that it only remains to show him that Jesus Christ is the one about whom the Old Testament prophets spoke. This is surely an inaccurate appraisal of the actual situation. The great mass of world Jewry today neither believes that the Old Testament is the inspired, inerrant Word of the living God nor does it have a clue about what the Old Testament teaches. We must think more carefully here, for can one truly believe the Old Testament and not acknowledge Jesus Christ to be the Messiah, Savior, and Lord revealed therein? No one who has heard of the Messiah and his atoning work and then rejects him believes the Old Testament. Jesus himself expressly declared: “If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote of me” (John 5:46). When the modern Jew claims that he believes and follows Torah, even though he may say that he sees grace taught therein, but who at the same time also believes that he must live a certain way if he is to remain a “son” or “daughter” of Torah, he does not believe the Old Testament and is denying the saving provision of which Torah actually speaks. The Levitical sacrificial system pointed to Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, who alone takes away the sin of the world.
Christians must realize that to bring any unbelievers, including ethnic/religious Israel, to the Christian faith, they must show them the futility of any and every hope for God’s approbation apart from faith in Jesus Christ. The fact that Jews have Abrahamic blood flowing in their veins (Matthew 3:9; John 1:13), or that they are physically circumcised (Romans 2:25-29; Galatians 5:2-4; 6:15), or that they are practicing “sons and daughters of Torah” (Romans 2:17-24; 3:9; Galatians 3:10; 4:21-5:1) are all insufficient for salvation.
Thus we must conclude that just as for God “as far as the Gospel is concerned, [Jews] are [regarded as his] enemies [for the salvific sake of non-Jews]; but as far as election is concerned, they are loved on account of the patriarchs” (Romans 11:28), so also for Christians they should love Jews in whose remnant God will fulfill his elective promises to the patriarchs. Christians must also do everything they can, without being arrogant toward them (Romans 11:28), to bring ethnic/religious Israel to the place where they will forsake any and every Jewish ethnic/religious distinctive in which they rest their hope for salvation. Christians must do this for the sake of Israel and out of loyalty to the cause of the Gospel.
Appendix
Biblical prophecy says nothing about modern Israel. In fact, far from the formation of modern Israel being a fulfillment of Biblical prophecy, it is, if anything, a major instrumentality in the hand of God to sustain Israel in its divinely imposed hardening.
Christian Zionists claim that the establishment of Israel as a nation on May 14, 1948, fulfilled Biblical prophecies. The following Old Testament prophecies are samples from a larger group of passages that these Biblical interpreters say were fulfilled in 1948:
1. Jeremiah 29:14, it is said, predicted the founding of the modern state of Israel. But the context of Jeremiah 29 makes it clear that the predicted “restoration” after the completion of the seventy years of Babylonian exile (29:10), refers to the return from exile under Zerubbabel in 536 b.c.
2. Isaiah 11:11, it is said, speaks of a “second time” that God would restore the remnant to the land, the first being the return from Babylon in 536 b.c., the second being the establishment of modern Israel in 1948. But the context of Isaiah 11 makes it clear that Israel’s first deliverance was from Egypt under Moses (11:16) with its second restoration being from the nations into which the Jews of the Assyrian/Babylonian captivity had dispersed.
3. Zechariah 8:7, it is said, predicted that God “will save [his] people from the east country and the west country, and…bring them to dwell in the midst of Jerusalem.” It is, however, a reach to see this prediction as referring to the modern state of Israel. In fact, the passage speaks of the faithfulness and righteousness of the inhabitants of Jerusalem in that day (8:8), something that is definitely not true of present Jerusalem. Much more likely is it that Zechariah was predicting the return of exiles during the days of Ezra, Nehemiah, and after (see Ezra 7:1-10; Nehemiah 11:1-2) that, again, pointed typically forward to the antitypical new Paradise of God.
4. Ezekiel 36:24-26, it is said, predicted that Israel would be restored to the land “in unbelief” which agrees with the situation in Israel today. But the passage does not speak of a restoration “in unbelief.” God does not reward disobedience. Verse 33 states: “On the day that I cleanse you from all your iniquities, I will cause the cities to be inhabited,” clearly implying that those who are “restored” have first been spiritually cleansed, thereby meeting the requirement of Leviticus 26:40-42: “…if they confess their iniquity…; if their uncircumcised heart is humbled…, then I will remember my covenant…and I will remember the land.”
5. Amos 9:14-15, it is said, declares that this condition of permanent national establishment that would someday prevail simply was not true of any Old Testament restoration. But given the fact that James in Acts 15:16-17 applied the prophecy immediately preceding these two verses to the church of this age, the restoration envisioned here most likely describes in pastoral terms the rejuvenated cosmos.
This essay concludes in the June/July 2006 Trinity Review.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] I say “so-called” because the phrase “holy land” occurs only twice in Scripture (Psalm 78:54; Zechariah 2:12) and in both instances the word “land” must be supplied. Apart from the holy God’s manifested presence in it, there is nothing holy about the “Holy Land.” But wherever God manifests his presence that place is holy, as God taught Moses at the burning bush in Sinai (Exodus 3:1-6).
2 According to Julia Duin, “San Antonio Fundamentalist Battles Anti-Semitism,” in The Houston Chronicle (April 30, 1988), 1, Hagee does not believe that Jews must trust Christ in order to go to Heaven: “The Jewish people have a relationship to God through the law as given through Moses. I believe that every Gentile person can only come to God through the cross of Christ. I believe that every Jewish person who lives in the light of the Torah…has a relationship with God and will come to redemption.” This radically Dispensational statement is heretical in its denial that faith in Christ is universally essential for salvation.
3 Pat Robertson stated on public television on January 5, 2006, that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel suffered his massive stroke at the hand of God because he was in the process of giving a portion of Israel’s land to the Palestinians in exchange for peace. He later apologized for his statement.
4 See Vital Speeches 61, no. 3 (November 15, 1994): 70, 3.
5 John Hagee, “Most evangelicals are seeing the error of ‘replacement theology,’” online edition of the Jerusalem Post, March 20, 2006.
6 I happily acknowledge my great debt to O. Palmer Robertson, The Israel of God: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow (Presbyterian and Reformed, 2000), 3-31, for many of the thoughts in this section of the paper.
7 Robertson, The Israel of God, 4.
8 John Murray, Christian Baptism (Presbyterian and Reformed, 1962), 46.
9 For the redemptive implications of this bad “land theology” see Knox Theological Seminary’s “An Open Letter to Evangelicals and Other Interested Parties: The People of God, the Land of Israel, and the Impartiality of the Gospel” posted on the Seminary’s websiteMailScanner has detected a possible fraud attempt from ""http:" claiming to be www.knoxseminary.edu under “Wittenberg Door.”
10 This particular divine promise has already been literally and explicitly fulfilled by the conquest of the land under Joshua and Solomon’s reign (Joshua 21:43-45; 23:14; 1 Kings 4:24). It does not require some future fulfillment in a Jewish millennium.
11 Abraham owned only the plot of ground, the field of Mach-pelah, that he purchased from the Hittites living in the land for a burial ground for Sarah his wife (Genesis 23).
12 Paul tells us in Galatians 3:8 that when God made this promise to Abraham he was in effect “preaching the Gospel beforehand to Abraham,” that is, he was declaring that he would justify the Gentiles by faith.
13 The thoughts expressed in the last four paragraphs I have adapted from O. Palmer Robertson, Understanding the Land of the Bible (Presbyterian and Reformed, 1966), 7-13.
14 This parable also carries implications concerning Muhammad’s claim to be the last and greatest of God’s prophets, even greater than Jesus. It shows him to be a false prophet.
15 Geerhardus Vos, The Self-Disclosure of Jesus (Presbyterian and Reformed [1926] 1978), 162.
16 BAGD, “eis telos", 812g, properly views this prepositional phrase as an adverbial expression and suggests it should be translated “forever, through all eternity” or “utterly.”
17 Robertson, The Israel of God, 174, fn. 3, rightly contends that the word “remnant” etymologically does not necessarily intend a small, insignificant number but simply that which is “left.” But when Isaiah declares: “Though the number of the sons of Israel be as the sands of the sea, it is the remnant that will be saved,” the implication is that God will harden the mass of ethnic Israel.
18 This phrase may also be translated “continually,” but “continually” conveys the same sense as “forever” in this context.
19 For my exposition of Romans 11 see my A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith (second edition, Thomas Nelson, 2002), 1025-1030. There I show exegetically that just as God throughout this age is bringing the divinely determined full number (Romans 11:25) of elect Gentiles to faith in Christ, so throughout this age he is also bringing the divinely determined full number (Romans 11:12) of elect Jews (“the remnant”) to faith in Christ so that both “full numbers” are reached in this age. While Israel as a nation has no salvific covenant with God in this age, standing as it is under God’s wrath, the remnant of elect Jews, as they are saved, are grafted by faith in Christ into the “cultivated olive tree” (Romans 11:17-24), that is, the church.
20 I have adapted these with additions and alterations from Robertson, The Israel of God, 194.
21 Modern Israel must face the fact that to be the physical descendants of Abraham and to have Abrahamic blood flowing in their veins means nothing as far as acquiring God’s approbation is concerned. As John the Baptist warned: “Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our Father,’ for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham” (Matthew 3:9). To the Jews who said, “Abraham is our Father,” but who were seeking to kill him, Jesus, said,: “If you were Abraham’s children, you would be doing what Abraham did [that is, you would rejoice to see my day].... You are of your father the devil” (John 8:39-44, 56). Ethnic Jews must recall that Abraham had two sons, which means that “not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring”; rather, “it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise who are counted as offspring” (Romans 9:7-8).
22 In no uncertain terms Paul declared that “no one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical. But a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, and not by the letter” (Romans 2:28-29). Moreover, he taught that “the present Jerusalem,” the enslaved and doomed city, is the “son of Hagar” bearing children for slavery, whereas Christians have “the Jerusalem above” for their mother (Galatians 4:25).
23 Theirs is indeed a response, a negative one, to God’s revelation in the Old Covenant. To suggest that the faith of Christ-rejecting Jews is in any sense a proper response to the Old Testament revelation is surely an inaccurate appraisal of the situation. In light of the fact that the only hope of salvation for Jews resides in the provisions of the Christian Gospel, it is simply gross wrong-headedness to encourage or to support them in their “Jewishness” or in their Zionist causes.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Experiential Calvinism
and the Charismatic Gifts
The issue of the whether or not the extraordinary spiritual gifts are for today has caused much debate and opinion in the body of Christ. There are biblically based groups who say that if you do speak in tongues, then you are under demonic control and are not saved. On the other hand, there are groups who say that if you do not speak in tongues then you are not saved. Both sides use scripture to support their position. As far as the Reformed camp goes, the position is that the gifts died with the apostles as the Bible was completed. As a Calvinist, and after examining the biblical evidence for cessationism, I do not believe that the extraordinary spiritual gifts have ceased. Therefore, I call myself an "Experiential Calvinist." As an experiential Calvinist, I seek the Holy Spirit, His filling, and I am open to God using me and others in extraordinary ways.
If you are Reformed, you might be slapping your forehead right now and saying something like, "How could he possibly believe that?". I do because I have examined the scriptures and am convinced by what I read. The following paper, in part, is what I have discovered.
Please understand, that even though I am convinced that I am right, I am also convinced that I could be wrong. I can only speak for what I believe and why I believe it. If you disagree then that is quite alright. As Romans 14 says, we are not to pass judgment on our brother's (and sister's) debatable issues. And the spiritual gifts is definitely a debatable issue.
For simplicity sake, I will state a standard objection to the perpetuity of the spiritual gifts and then I will give what I believe is a basic but sufficient refutation for that argument. All the verses quoted are listed in full at the end of this paper.
Argument 1:
Since we have the Bible we do not need spiritual gifts. 1 Cor. 13:8-10 is usually quoted as scriptural support for the position.
The only place in Scripture that explicitly states when gifts will cease is 1 Cor. 13:8-13. In part it reads, "When the perfect comes the imperfect shall be done away with." Some vigorously maintain that the "perfect" is the completed Bible and, therefore, the extraordinary gifts are no longer needed. If someone wants to believe that, fine. But I do not think these verses can be used to support cessationism. This is why.
Verse 12 says, "...then we shall see face to face." The word "then" refers back to the phrase "when the perfect comes." Since the only infallible interpreter of Scripture is Scripture, a quick examination of the way God uses the term "face to face" should help us understand this passage better.
The phrase is used throughout the Bible and always means an encounter with a person. When God uses it in reference to Himself, it means a visual, personal encounter with Him (Gen. 32:30; Ex. 33:11; Num. 12:8; Duet. 5:4; and Jer. 32:4). Likewise in the New Testament. There it is also used in speaking of personal encounter (2 Cor. 10:1; 2 John 12; 3 John 14, etc.). "When the perfect comes...then we shall see face to face" seems, most logically, to refer a personal encounter; at least, that seems to be how God uses the phrase.
If the position is take that the "perfect" is the completed Bible, how then do we encounter God in the same manner as the phrase suggests: an encounter with a person. Seeing Christ face to face occurs when He returns.
Another "then" is mentioned in verse 12: "then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known." The word "then" again refers back to the phrase "when the perfect comes." Again, we need to look at how the Bible uses words, this time, the word "know." Scripture says that eternal life is to know God (John 17:3). Only the believer is known by Jesus (John 10:27; Gal. 4:8-9; Rom. 8:29). The unbeliever is not known by Jesus (Matt. 7:21-23). No where in the Bible does it say that an unbeliever is known by God. This is a salvific knowing; that is, it is a kind of knowing that God does of His people. He knows them and they are saved. The unbelievers are not known and are, therefore, not saved.
It would seem most consistent with scripture to say that "...as I am fully known" would refer to a salvation relationship between Jesus and the Christian. At the return of Christ we (the ones known) shall know fully; we shall see face to face the One who is our Savior.
Also, we don't "know" Jesus through the Scripture; we know about Him from the Scripture (John 5:39). Instead, we know Him by personal encounter (John 1:12; 1 Cor. 1:9) through the Holy Spirit's indwelling. We don't know fully right now, even though we have the Bible, because we still are corrupted by our sin nature. In our fallen state we can only see Christ through sin-clouded eyes. We see a reflection of Christ in the Word. When Jesus returns the reflection of the truth will pass to clear understanding (the way childish thoughts give way to mature ones) when we receive our resurrected bodies, no longer have to battle sinful flesh, and can see Him face to face because "we shall be like Him" (1 John 3:2).. "Then we shall know fully."
The context of 1 Cor. 13:8-13 seems, to me, to show that the spiritual gifts will cease when Jesus returns. Interestingly, 1 Cor. 1:7 may be consulted here. It says, "Therefore you do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed." (NIV) The Greek word here for "revealed" is apokalupsis. It means the apocalypse, the return of Jesus. In both this verse and 1 Cor. 13:8-13 the gifts, which aren't differentiated as to which kind they are, are connected to the return of Christ, not the completion of the Bible.
Argument 2:
Present day tongues are further revelation and must then be equal to Scripture and should be included in the Bible. But since the Bible is not to be added to, the gift of tongues (and therefore, the rest of the spiritual gifts) must no longer be valid.
This is a faulty argument because the Scripture itself recognizes inspired revelation that is not to be added to the Bible: "What then shall we say, brothers? When you come together, everyone has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. All of these must be done for the strengthening of the church" (1 Cor. 14:26). Here, in the Corinthian church, revelations were given that were not made part of the Bible. This shows that there were, for a lack of a better word, "different" kinds of revelation: one from the prophets and apostles meant for canonization and another through the Spirit to be used in the church for edification--not canonization. So, in my opinion, for someone to maintain that revelation today is a threat to the Canon does not consider 1 Cor. 14:26, is not applying scripture properly here, and is being illogical.
Argument 3:
There is such misuse of the gifts that they couldn't possibly be real.
First of all, misuse of the gifts implies their existence. They couldn't be misused if they did not exist. The only real position to be taken here would be that the use of the gifts really is no use, but is only fakery and self-deception.
First, it cannot be denied that the gifts are misused. I have heard manifestations of tongues, interpretations of tongues, and prophecy that, in my opinion, were not genuine. But I do not discredit the gifts based upon those experiences anymore than I would say the spiritual gifts are alive because I saw them used well and accurately. The final authority is the word of God. Experience does not make doctrine, the Bible does.
Second, it is not a sick child that needs discipline and correction, it is the active, energetic, exploring child that needs to be guided. This was so with the Corinthian church. They were using the gifts greatly but improperly and needed to be corrected.
1 Corinthians 13:8-13
Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
Regarding "Face to Face":
Genesis 32:30 - "So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, "It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared."
Exodus 33:11 - "The LORD would speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks with his friend. Then Moses would return to the camp, but his young aide Joshua son of Nun did not leave the tent."
Numbers 12:8 - "With him I speak face to face, clearly and not in riddles; he sees the form of the LORD. Why then were you not afraid to speak against my servant Moses?"
Deuteronomy 5:4 - "The LORD spoke to you face to face out of the fire on the mountain."
Jeremiah 32:4 - "Zedekiah king of Judah will not escape out of the hands of the Babylonians but will certainly be handed over to the king of Babylon, and will speak with him face to face and see him with his own eyes."
2 Corinthians 10:1 - "By the meekness and gentleness of Christ, I appeal to you -- I, Paul, who am "timid" when face to face with you, but "bold" when away!"
2 John 12 - "I have much to write to you, but I do not want to use paper and ink. Instead, I hope to visit you and talk with you face to face, so that our joy may be complete."
3 John 14 - "I hope to see you soon, and we will talk face to face. Peace to you. The friends here send their greetings. Greet the friends there by name."
Regarding "Know"
John 10:27 - "My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me."
Galatians 4:8-9 - "Formerly, when you did not know God, you were slaves to those who by nature are not gods. But now that you know God -- or rather are known by God -- how is it that you are turning back to those weak and miserable principles? Do you wish to be enslaved by them all over again?"
Romans 8:29 - "For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son..."
Matthew 7:21-23 - "Not everyone who says to me, `Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, `Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?' Then I will tell them plainly, `I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!'
Note: This paper was written in response to an examination at Westminster Theological Seminary where I obtained my M.Div. The occasion was generated by my receiving a call to a local pastorate. When it was discovered I believed in the spiritual gifts, I was examined and, eventually, refused the pastorate because I beleived in the perpetuity of the gifts. In response to the examiners requests I read the following cessationist material. Perhaps this bibliography will help you make a decision for yourself.
The Final Word by O. Palmer Robertson Perspectives on Pentecost, by Richard B. Gaffin, Jr. Charismatic Chaos, by John MacArthur. The articles, Has the Charismatic Age Ceased, by Donald MacLeod; The Charismatic Movement: Spectrum of Theological Opinion and Attitude, by Pastor Dave Eby; Can we Do Miracles Today? by Erroll Hulse; A Summary of Robert L. Dabney on 'Spurious Religious Excitements, by Daniel E. Wray; The Miraculous Gifts of the Holy Spirit--Have They Ceased?, by Roland S. Barnes; The Cessation of Extraordinary Gifts: Historical Evidence, by Geoffrey Thomas; and Scripture Verses the Spiritual Gifts?", by Elliot Miller at Christian Research Institute. The pamphlet, Crucial Issues Regarding Tongues, by Kenneth L. Gentry Jr. A Pastoral Letter Concerning the Experience of the Holy Spirit in the Church Today, adopted by the Second General Assembly of the PCA.
To be fair, I also read the non-cessationist book Surprised by the Power of the Spirit, by Jack Deere which proved to be most enlightening.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Following is a point of illustration.
If the cessationist argument is true then it seems to negate parts of the Bible; namely, parts where spiritual gifts for the church are listed and exemplified. I have reproduced 1 Cor. 12,13, and 14 and "crossed out," by making the text bold , those portions that are no longer applicable from a cessationist point of view. The specific verses may be debatable, but I think the point is made.
1 Corinthians 12:1-31
1Now about spiritual gifts, brothers, I do not want you to be ignorant. 2You know that when you were pagans, somehow or other you were influenced and led astray to mute idols. 3Therefore I tell you that no one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says, "Jesus be cursed," and no one can say, "Jesus is Lord," except by the Holy Spirit. 4There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit. 5There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. 6There are different kinds of working, but the same God works all of them in all men. 7Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. 8To one there is given through the Spirit the message of wisdom, to another the message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit, 9to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit 10to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues, and to still another the interpretation of tongues. 11All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he gives them to each one, just as he determines.
12The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ. 13For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body -- whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free -- and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. 14Now the body is not made up of one part but of many. 15If the foot should say, "Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body," it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. 16And if the ear should say, "Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body," it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. 17If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? 18But in fact God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. 19If they were all one part, where would the body be? 20As it is, there are many parts, but one body. 21The eye cannot say to the hand, "I don't need you!" And the head cannot say to the feet, "I don't need you!" 22On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, 23and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, 24while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has combined the members of the body and has given greater honor to the parts that lacked it, 25so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. 26If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it. 27Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it. 28And in the church God has appointed first of all apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then workers of miracles, also those having gifts of healing, those able to help others, those with gifts of administration, and those speaking in different kinds of tongues. 29Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? 30Do all have gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret? 31But eagerly desire the greater gifts. And now I will show you the most excellent way. (NIV)
1 Corinthians 13:1-13
1If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing. 4Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. 8Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. 11When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. 12Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. 13And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. (NIV)
1 Corinthians 14:1-40
1Follow the way of love and eagerly desire spiritual gifts, especially the gift of prophecy. 2For anyone who speaks in a tongue does not speak to men but to God. Indeed, no one understands him; he utters mysteries with his spirit. 3But everyone who prophesies speaks to men for their strengthening, encouragement and comfort. 4He who speaks in a tongue edifies himself, but he who prophesies edifies the church. 5I would like every one of you to speak in tongues, but I would rather have you prophesy. He who prophesies is greater than one who speaks in tongues, unless he interprets, so that the church may be edified. 6Now, brothers, if I come to you and speak in tongues, what good will I be to you, unless I bring you some revelation or knowledge or prophecy or word of instruction? 7Even in the case of lifeless things that make sounds, such as the flute or harp, how will anyone know what tune is being played unless there is a distinction in the notes? 8Again, if the trumpet does not sound a clear call, who will get ready for battle? 9So it is with you. Unless you speak intelligible words with your tongue, how will anyone know what you are saying? You will just be speaking into the air. 10Undoubtedly there are all sorts of languages in the world, yet none of them is without meaning. 11If then I do not grasp the meaning of what someone is saying, I am a foreigner to the speaker, and he is a foreigner to me. 12So it is with you. Since you are eager to have spiritual gifts, try to excel in gifts that build up the church. 13For this reason anyone who speaks in a tongue should pray that he may interpret what he says. 14For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my mind is unfruitful. 15So what shall I do? I will pray with my spirit, but I will also pray with my mind; I will sing with my spirit, but I will also sing with my mind. 16If you are praising God with your spirit, how can one who finds himself among those who do not understand say "Amen" to your thanksgiving, since he does not know what you are saying? 17You may be giving thanks well enough, but the other man is not edified. 18I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you. 19But in the church I would rather speak five intelligible words to instruct others than ten thousand words in a tongue. 20Brothers, stop thinking like children. In regard to evil be infants, but in your thinking be adults. 21In the Law it is written: "Through men of strange tongues and through the lips of foreigners I will speak to this people, but even then they will not listen to me," says the Lord. 22Tongues, then, are a sign, not for believers but for unbelievers; prophecy, however, is for believers, not for unbelievers. 23So if the whole church comes together and everyone speaks in tongues, and some who do not understand or some unbelievers come in, will they not say that you are out of your mind? 24But if an unbeliever or someone who does not understand comes in while everybody is prophesying, he will be convinced by all that he is a sinner and will be judged by all, 25and the secrets of his heart will be laid bare. So he will fall down and worship God, exclaiming, "God is really among you!" 26What then shall we say, brothers? When you come together, everyone has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. All of these must be done for the strengthening of the church. 27If anyone speaks in a tongue, two, or at the most three, should speak, one at a time, and someone must interpret. 28If there is no interpreter, the speaker should keep quiet in the church and speak to himself and God. 29Two or three prophets should speak, and the others should weigh carefully what is said. 30And if a revelation comes to someone who is sitting down, the first speaker should stop. 31For you can all prophesy in turn so that everyone may be instructed and encouraged. 32The spirits of prophets are subject to the control of prophets. 33For God is not a God of disorder but of peace. As in all the congregations of the saints, 34women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says. 35If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church. 36Did the word of God originate with you? Or are you the only people it has reached? 37If anybody thinks he is a prophet or spiritually gifted, let him acknowledge that what I am writing to you is the Lord's command. 38If he ignores this, he himself will be ignored. 39Therefore, my brothers, be eager to prophesy, and do not forbid speaking in tongues. 40But everything should be done in a fitting and orderly way. (NIV)
I would be very interested in hearing your comments on this paper. Please E-mail at the address below.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Return to the Calvinist Corner
Copyright by Matthew J. Slick, B.A., M. Div., 2005
I welcome your comments via E-mail at matt@carm.org
Experiential Calvinism
and the Charismatic Gifts
The issue of the whether or not the extraordinary spiritual gifts are for today has caused much debate and opinion in the body of Christ. There are biblically based groups who say that if you do speak in tongues, then you are under demonic control and are not saved. On the other hand, there are groups who say that if you do not speak in tongues then you are not saved. Both sides use scripture to support their position. As far as the Reformed camp goes, the position is that the gifts died with the apostles as the Bible was completed. As a Calvinist, and after examining the biblical evidence for cessationism, I do not believe that the extraordinary spiritual gifts have ceased. Therefore, I call myself an "Experiential Calvinist." As an experiential Calvinist, I seek the Holy Spirit, His filling, and I am open to God using me and others in extraordinary ways.
If you are Reformed, you might be slapping your forehead right now and saying something like, "How could he possibly believe that?". I do because I have examined the scriptures and am convinced by what I read. The following paper, in part, is what I have discovered.
Please understand, that even though I am convinced that I am right, I am also convinced that I could be wrong. I can only speak for what I believe and why I believe it. If you disagree then that is quite alright. As Romans 14 says, we are not to pass judgment on our brother's (and sister's) debatable issues. And the spiritual gifts is definitely a debatable issue.
For simplicity sake, I will state a standard objection to the perpetuity of the spiritual gifts and then I will give what I believe is a basic but sufficient refutation for that argument. All the verses quoted are listed in full at the end of this paper.
Argument 1:
Since we have the Bible we do not need spiritual gifts. 1 Cor. 13:8-10 is usually quoted as scriptural support for the position.
The only place in Scripture that explicitly states when gifts will cease is 1 Cor. 13:8-13. In part it reads, "When the perfect comes the imperfect shall be done away with." Some vigorously maintain that the "perfect" is the completed Bible and, therefore, the extraordinary gifts are no longer needed. If someone wants to believe that, fine. But I do not think these verses can be used to support cessationism. This is why.
Verse 12 says, "...then we shall see face to face." The word "then" refers back to the phrase "when the perfect comes." Since the only infallible interpreter of Scripture is Scripture, a quick examination of the way God uses the term "face to face" should help us understand this passage better.
The phrase is used throughout the Bible and always means an encounter with a person. When God uses it in reference to Himself, it means a visual, personal encounter with Him (Gen. 32:30; Ex. 33:11; Num. 12:8; Duet. 5:4; and Jer. 32:4). Likewise in the New Testament. There it is also used in speaking of personal encounter (2 Cor. 10:1; 2 John 12; 3 John 14, etc.). "When the perfect comes...then we shall see face to face" seems, most logically, to refer a personal encounter; at least, that seems to be how God uses the phrase.
If the position is take that the "perfect" is the completed Bible, how then do we encounter God in the same manner as the phrase suggests: an encounter with a person. Seeing Christ face to face occurs when He returns.
Another "then" is mentioned in verse 12: "then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known." The word "then" again refers back to the phrase "when the perfect comes." Again, we need to look at how the Bible uses words, this time, the word "know." Scripture says that eternal life is to know God (John 17:3). Only the believer is known by Jesus (John 10:27; Gal. 4:8-9; Rom. 8:29). The unbeliever is not known by Jesus (Matt. 7:21-23). No where in the Bible does it say that an unbeliever is known by God. This is a salvific knowing; that is, it is a kind of knowing that God does of His people. He knows them and they are saved. The unbelievers are not known and are, therefore, not saved.
It would seem most consistent with scripture to say that "...as I am fully known" would refer to a salvation relationship between Jesus and the Christian. At the return of Christ we (the ones known) shall know fully; we shall see face to face the One who is our Savior.
Also, we don't "know" Jesus through the Scripture; we know about Him from the Scripture (John 5:39). Instead, we know Him by personal encounter (John 1:12; 1 Cor. 1:9) through the Holy Spirit's indwelling. We don't know fully right now, even though we have the Bible, because we still are corrupted by our sin nature. In our fallen state we can only see Christ through sin-clouded eyes. We see a reflection of Christ in the Word. When Jesus returns the reflection of the truth will pass to clear understanding (the way childish thoughts give way to mature ones) when we receive our resurrected bodies, no longer have to battle sinful flesh, and can see Him face to face because "we shall be like Him" (1 John 3:2).. "Then we shall know fully."
The context of 1 Cor. 13:8-13 seems, to me, to show that the spiritual gifts will cease when Jesus returns. Interestingly, 1 Cor. 1:7 may be consulted here. It says, "Therefore you do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed." (NIV) The Greek word here for "revealed" is apokalupsis. It means the apocalypse, the return of Jesus. In both this verse and 1 Cor. 13:8-13 the gifts, which aren't differentiated as to which kind they are, are connected to the return of Christ, not the completion of the Bible.
Argument 2:
Present day tongues are further revelation and must then be equal to Scripture and should be included in the Bible. But since the Bible is not to be added to, the gift of tongues (and therefore, the rest of the spiritual gifts) must no longer be valid.
This is a faulty argument because the Scripture itself recognizes inspired revelation that is not to be added to the Bible: "What then shall we say, brothers? When you come together, everyone has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. All of these must be done for the strengthening of the church" (1 Cor. 14:26). Here, in the Corinthian church, revelations were given that were not made part of the Bible. This shows that there were, for a lack of a better word, "different" kinds of revelation: one from the prophets and apostles meant for canonization and another through the Spirit to be used in the church for edification--not canonization. So, in my opinion, for someone to maintain that revelation today is a threat to the Canon does not consider 1 Cor. 14:26, is not applying scripture properly here, and is being illogical.
Argument 3:
There is such misuse of the gifts that they couldn't possibly be real.
First of all, misuse of the gifts implies their existence. They couldn't be misused if they did not exist. The only real position to be taken here would be that the use of the gifts really is no use, but is only fakery and self-deception.
First, it cannot be denied that the gifts are misused. I have heard manifestations of tongues, interpretations of tongues, and prophecy that, in my opinion, were not genuine. But I do not discredit the gifts based upon those experiences anymore than I would say the spiritual gifts are alive because I saw them used well and accurately. The final authority is the word of God. Experience does not make doctrine, the Bible does.
Second, it is not a sick child that needs discipline and correction, it is the active, energetic, exploring child that needs to be guided. This was so with the Corinthian church. They were using the gifts greatly but improperly and needed to be corrected.
1 Corinthians 13:8-13
Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
Regarding "Face to Face":
Genesis 32:30 - "So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, "It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared."
Exodus 33:11 - "The LORD would speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks with his friend. Then Moses would return to the camp, but his young aide Joshua son of Nun did not leave the tent."
Numbers 12:8 - "With him I speak face to face, clearly and not in riddles; he sees the form of the LORD. Why then were you not afraid to speak against my servant Moses?"
Deuteronomy 5:4 - "The LORD spoke to you face to face out of the fire on the mountain."
Jeremiah 32:4 - "Zedekiah king of Judah will not escape out of the hands of the Babylonians but will certainly be handed over to the king of Babylon, and will speak with him face to face and see him with his own eyes."
2 Corinthians 10:1 - "By the meekness and gentleness of Christ, I appeal to you -- I, Paul, who am "timid" when face to face with you, but "bold" when away!"
2 John 12 - "I have much to write to you, but I do not want to use paper and ink. Instead, I hope to visit you and talk with you face to face, so that our joy may be complete."
3 John 14 - "I hope to see you soon, and we will talk face to face. Peace to you. The friends here send their greetings. Greet the friends there by name."
Regarding "Know"
John 10:27 - "My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me."
Galatians 4:8-9 - "Formerly, when you did not know God, you were slaves to those who by nature are not gods. But now that you know God -- or rather are known by God -- how is it that you are turning back to those weak and miserable principles? Do you wish to be enslaved by them all over again?"
Romans 8:29 - "For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son..."
Matthew 7:21-23 - "Not everyone who says to me, `Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, `Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?' Then I will tell them plainly, `I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!'
Note: This paper was written in response to an examination at Westminster Theological Seminary where I obtained my M.Div. The occasion was generated by my receiving a call to a local pastorate. When it was discovered I believed in the spiritual gifts, I was examined and, eventually, refused the pastorate because I beleived in the perpetuity of the gifts. In response to the examiners requests I read the following cessationist material. Perhaps this bibliography will help you make a decision for yourself.
The Final Word by O. Palmer Robertson Perspectives on Pentecost, by Richard B. Gaffin, Jr. Charismatic Chaos, by John MacArthur. The articles, Has the Charismatic Age Ceased, by Donald MacLeod; The Charismatic Movement: Spectrum of Theological Opinion and Attitude, by Pastor Dave Eby; Can we Do Miracles Today? by Erroll Hulse; A Summary of Robert L. Dabney on 'Spurious Religious Excitements, by Daniel E. Wray; The Miraculous Gifts of the Holy Spirit--Have They Ceased?, by Roland S. Barnes; The Cessation of Extraordinary Gifts: Historical Evidence, by Geoffrey Thomas; and Scripture Verses the Spiritual Gifts?", by Elliot Miller at Christian Research Institute. The pamphlet, Crucial Issues Regarding Tongues, by Kenneth L. Gentry Jr. A Pastoral Letter Concerning the Experience of the Holy Spirit in the Church Today, adopted by the Second General Assembly of the PCA.
To be fair, I also read the non-cessationist book Surprised by the Power of the Spirit, by Jack Deere which proved to be most enlightening.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Following is a point of illustration.
If the cessationist argument is true then it seems to negate parts of the Bible; namely, parts where spiritual gifts for the church are listed and exemplified. I have reproduced 1 Cor. 12,13, and 14 and "crossed out," by making the text bold , those portions that are no longer applicable from a cessationist point of view. The specific verses may be debatable, but I think the point is made.
1 Corinthians 12:1-31
1Now about spiritual gifts, brothers, I do not want you to be ignorant. 2You know that when you were pagans, somehow or other you were influenced and led astray to mute idols. 3Therefore I tell you that no one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says, "Jesus be cursed," and no one can say, "Jesus is Lord," except by the Holy Spirit. 4There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit. 5There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. 6There are different kinds of working, but the same God works all of them in all men. 7Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. 8To one there is given through the Spirit the message of wisdom, to another the message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit, 9to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit 10to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues, and to still another the interpretation of tongues. 11All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he gives them to each one, just as he determines.
12The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ. 13For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body -- whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free -- and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. 14Now the body is not made up of one part but of many. 15If the foot should say, "Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body," it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. 16And if the ear should say, "Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body," it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. 17If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? 18But in fact God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. 19If they were all one part, where would the body be? 20As it is, there are many parts, but one body. 21The eye cannot say to the hand, "I don't need you!" And the head cannot say to the feet, "I don't need you!" 22On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, 23and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, 24while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has combined the members of the body and has given greater honor to the parts that lacked it, 25so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. 26If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it. 27Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it. 28And in the church God has appointed first of all apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then workers of miracles, also those having gifts of healing, those able to help others, those with gifts of administration, and those speaking in different kinds of tongues. 29Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? 30Do all have gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret? 31But eagerly desire the greater gifts. And now I will show you the most excellent way. (NIV)
1 Corinthians 13:1-13
1If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing. 4Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. 8Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. 11When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. 12Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. 13And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. (NIV)
1 Corinthians 14:1-40
1Follow the way of love and eagerly desire spiritual gifts, especially the gift of prophecy. 2For anyone who speaks in a tongue does not speak to men but to God. Indeed, no one understands him; he utters mysteries with his spirit. 3But everyone who prophesies speaks to men for their strengthening, encouragement and comfort. 4He who speaks in a tongue edifies himself, but he who prophesies edifies the church. 5I would like every one of you to speak in tongues, but I would rather have you prophesy. He who prophesies is greater than one who speaks in tongues, unless he interprets, so that the church may be edified. 6Now, brothers, if I come to you and speak in tongues, what good will I be to you, unless I bring you some revelation or knowledge or prophecy or word of instruction? 7Even in the case of lifeless things that make sounds, such as the flute or harp, how will anyone know what tune is being played unless there is a distinction in the notes? 8Again, if the trumpet does not sound a clear call, who will get ready for battle? 9So it is with you. Unless you speak intelligible words with your tongue, how will anyone know what you are saying? You will just be speaking into the air. 10Undoubtedly there are all sorts of languages in the world, yet none of them is without meaning. 11If then I do not grasp the meaning of what someone is saying, I am a foreigner to the speaker, and he is a foreigner to me. 12So it is with you. Since you are eager to have spiritual gifts, try to excel in gifts that build up the church. 13For this reason anyone who speaks in a tongue should pray that he may interpret what he says. 14For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my mind is unfruitful. 15So what shall I do? I will pray with my spirit, but I will also pray with my mind; I will sing with my spirit, but I will also sing with my mind. 16If you are praising God with your spirit, how can one who finds himself among those who do not understand say "Amen" to your thanksgiving, since he does not know what you are saying? 17You may be giving thanks well enough, but the other man is not edified. 18I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you. 19But in the church I would rather speak five intelligible words to instruct others than ten thousand words in a tongue. 20Brothers, stop thinking like children. In regard to evil be infants, but in your thinking be adults. 21In the Law it is written: "Through men of strange tongues and through the lips of foreigners I will speak to this people, but even then they will not listen to me," says the Lord. 22Tongues, then, are a sign, not for believers but for unbelievers; prophecy, however, is for believers, not for unbelievers. 23So if the whole church comes together and everyone speaks in tongues, and some who do not understand or some unbelievers come in, will they not say that you are out of your mind? 24But if an unbeliever or someone who does not understand comes in while everybody is prophesying, he will be convinced by all that he is a sinner and will be judged by all, 25and the secrets of his heart will be laid bare. So he will fall down and worship God, exclaiming, "God is really among you!" 26What then shall we say, brothers? When you come together, everyone has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. All of these must be done for the strengthening of the church. 27If anyone speaks in a tongue, two, or at the most three, should speak, one at a time, and someone must interpret. 28If there is no interpreter, the speaker should keep quiet in the church and speak to himself and God. 29Two or three prophets should speak, and the others should weigh carefully what is said. 30And if a revelation comes to someone who is sitting down, the first speaker should stop. 31For you can all prophesy in turn so that everyone may be instructed and encouraged. 32The spirits of prophets are subject to the control of prophets. 33For God is not a God of disorder but of peace. As in all the congregations of the saints, 34women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says. 35If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church. 36Did the word of God originate with you? Or are you the only people it has reached? 37If anybody thinks he is a prophet or spiritually gifted, let him acknowledge that what I am writing to you is the Lord's command. 38If he ignores this, he himself will be ignored. 39Therefore, my brothers, be eager to prophesy, and do not forbid speaking in tongues. 40But everything should be done in a fitting and orderly way. (NIV)
I would be very interested in hearing your comments on this paper. Please E-mail at the address below.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Return to the Calvinist Corner
Copyright by Matthew J. Slick, B.A., M. Div., 2005
I welcome your comments via E-mail at matt@carm.org
Some comments on a message board from a friend of mine:
Dear Sisters and Brothers,
I've changed the Subject line and thought that I would share some thoughts.
God has given human beings free will, the ability to make authentic choices without coercion. But this does not mean that the human will has not been radically impacted by evil.
First, I believe that it is very basic to a Christian understanding of human nature that we affirm that humankind is not absolutely, biologically determined.
Back in the nineteen-sixties I took a course called "Physiological Psychology and Neurology." Much of the focus of our texts was to the effect that human behavior is mechanistically determined. If that is the case, if our universe is some kind of glorified "Skinner Box," then humankind has no free will and cannot make authentic choices. That being the case, the push must be toward chemical and biological intervention with the human species: psychotropic drugs, not psychoanalysis; DNA manipulation, rather than moral suasion; brain washing, instead of education. That being the case, the solutions to problems such as crime and violence, lie in a comprehensive reshaping of our environment. If human behavior is biologically determined, then the answer lies in a global government that exercises totalitarian control over every aspect of life.
Curiously, the most basic quest of atheism, human autonomy, must be lost. The greater one's belief in materialism, the greater control some human authority must exercise over the mass of humanity. Perversely, the eschatological hope of atheism does not lie in the "glorious freedom of the children of God" (Romans 8:21), but in the most minuscule control of the individual by the most absolute and all encompassing decree of the State, a state not limited by nationalistic boundaries, but truly global.
Man at his most human produces not a "kinder and gentler" "New World Order," but a ferocious Beast. This is the true meaning of 666: "This calls for wisdom: let him who has understanding reckon the number of the beast, for it is a human number, its number is six hundred and sixty-six." (Revelation 13:18) The thirteenth chapter of the Apocalypse is full of irony. The meaning of the mysterious number, 666, is not some obscure thing, such as calculating the numeric value of the Hebrew letters "Neron Qasar" (Nero Caesar), or Roman Kingdom, Lateinos, in Greek letters. As with the rest of the book, the key is found in the passage itself: "It is the number of Man."
The irony is that when Man, as "The measure of all things," creates an order without God, what arises is a "beast that" is "like a leopard, its feet were like a bear's, and its mouth was like a lion's mouth." So powerful and totalitarian is his crushing might that humankind cries: "Who is like the beast, and who can fight against it?" (Revelation 13:1-4)
I know that I have gone off on a tangent from free will, but I think that it helps underscore the importance of maintaining the doctrine. I believe that humankind is endowed with free will as over against biological, materialistic, determinism. I think that is essential to people's making authentic choices and to our being responsible for our actions.
I also believe that it is important to assert free will vis-à-vis the Sovereignty of God and predestination: God's will is done in history, yet people act as free moral agents, doing what they choose, without God's forcing his will on them.
"God from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass: yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures; nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established." (Westminster Confession of Faith, § III, i)
I find the above paragraph thoroughly biblical; it asserts God's absolute sovereignty, while affirming that certain seemingly incongruous doctrines are also true:
1. God is not the author of sin;
2. God does not force his will on his creatures;
3. God’s foreordination includes not only the end result, but also all of the means to that end. Biblical predestination is never fatalistic.
Let me expand on those ideas. First, God never sins, nor is he the author of it. The events surrounding the death of the Lord Jesus illustrate not only that God is not the author of sin, but also that God’s will is done in history without his violating people's free will.
"Indeed Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and the people of Israel in this city to conspire against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed. They did what your power and will had decided beforehand should happen." (Acts 4:27, 28)
Herod, Pilate, the Jews and the Gentiles acted against the Lord Jesus. Each acted according to his own nature, each freely chose his course of action. They did what they wanted to do. God did not violate their wills nor force them to do what they did. What they did was the ultimate act of evil in history: Man killed him who is God and man, in his human nature, on the cross, theocide.
Yet, mysteriously, they did exactly what God ordained to happen before the foundation of the world: "This man was handed over to you by God's set purpose and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross." (Acts 2:23) The Lord Jesus is "the Lamb that was slain from the creation of the world." (Revelation 13:8) "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son . . ." (John 3:16) This same action, the execution of the Lord Jesus, is God's greatest act of goodness, kindness and righteousness. He is the author of it. It is the fulfillment of his plan.
So God is the author of the historical incident; it is the carrying out of his eternal decree. As a divine act, it is the supremely good act. At the same time human beings are involved; it is their act, and they sinned. I do not profess to know how such things can be, only to know that such things can be. I will state the mystery; I cannot explain it away. Man is not a puppet on a divine string, an automaton without free will. Yet man fulfills the divine purpose in history, a purpose that extends to the most minute things: "Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father." (Matthew 10:29)
Finally, God's sovereignty does not rule out second causes. Muslim predestination, as I have studied it, is fatalistic; biblical predestination is not. If I do not pray, God's will will not be done on earth as it is in heaven. If I do not share the gospel with others, God's elect will not be saved: "Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they too may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus, with eternal glory." (2 Timothy 2:10).
From the divine perspective, both are secured in God's eternal decree. From the human perspective, it seems so different. There is this popular caricature of a Calvinist as a person who doesn't really pray and who doesn't burden himself with evangelism. But a biblical understanding of God's sovereignty will never lead a person to such inaction.
While God is absolutely sovereign, and history is simply the unfolding of his eternal decree, God nevertheless presents himself as changing his mind in response to the intercession of his people. '"Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them. Then I will make you into a great nation." But Moses sought the favor of the LORD his God. "O LORD," he said, "why should your anger burn against your people, whom you brought out of Egypt with great power and a mighty hand? . . . Then the LORD relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened.' (Exodus 32:10-14) "So the LORD changed His mind (from the root, NCHM, "be sorry, repent") about the harm which He said He would do to His people." (NASB)
Ernest prayer is demanded because spiritual warfare is real. Consider Paul's words: "For we wanted to come to you -- certainly I, Paul, did, again and again -- but Satan stopped us." (1 Thessalonians 2:18) "For this reason, when I could stand it no longer, I sent to find out about your faith. I was afraid that in some way the tempter might have tempted you and our efforts might have been useless." (1 Thessalonians 3:5)
Daniel's experience is similar; God hears and answers Daniel's prayer on the very day that he prayed. Yet because of demonic opposition, it takes three weeks for the answer to come to Daniel: 'Then he continued, "Do not be afraid, Daniel. Since the first day that you set your mind to gain understanding and to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard, and I have come in response to them. But the prince of the Persian kingdom resisted me twenty-one days. Then Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, because I was detained there with the king of Persia.' (Daniel 10:12, 13) But what would have happened had Daniel not persevered in prayer?
There were times when the power of the Lord was present (Luke 5:17) and times when that was not the case. In Nazareth, for example, Jesus "could not do any miracles there, except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them." (Mark 6:5)
Within the sphere of his absolute sovereignty and freedom, consistent with his own holy character, God has often chosen to limit himself by human beings' lack of faith, even though that very faith itself is God's own work.
If Jesus was unable to do any significant healing miracles in Nazareth because of human unbelief (Matthew 13:58 and Mark 6:6), how much more necessary is it for us to pray with faith and expectation?
Yet all of this human drama is the unfolding of an eternal, immutable decree. Consider the book of Job. At a certain level, everything that happens can be explained by natural phenomena: there were robbers, lightning, mercenaries and a windstorm in chapter one; in chapter two, there was this terrible disease. However, at another level of explanation, everything that happens is the result of the cosmic war between God and Satan, the insight of which is found only in the prologue and epilogue of the book. Yet, at another level of explanation, ultimately, all is simply the unfolding of the divine plan: "They comforted and consoled him over all the trouble the LORD had brought upon him, and each one gave him a piece of silver and a gold ring." (Job 42:11)
How is the human will not free? All Christians accept some version of the doctrine of original sin. We all believe that Adam's act of disobedience affected more than simply himself.
I believe that the Bible teaches that humankind was radically affected by the fall and that every facet of human nature has been impacted by sin. I affirm total depravity. By that I do not mean that I believe that a person is as bad as he can be, simply that no aspect of human existence is unaffected by the fall. All of us are contaminated by sin, not only morally, but volitionally, emotionally and intellectually as well. That is that to which the word "total" refers in "total depravity."
In the fall, humankind did not simply lose a gift of original righteousness or super-added grace (donum superadditum), rather the image of God (imago Dei) was radically marred. Christian and non-Christian alike are created in the image of God, but, like a mirror that has been broken, we distort that image as a result of the fall.
The fall has affected all of our drives: "This only have I found: God made mankind upright, but men have gone in search of many schemes." (Ecclesiastes 7:29)
Consider the pattern of work and rest that was part of the original order at creation. Those good drives have become twisted into either sloth or sinful obsession with work. God created us with a desire and need for food, but we distort that into gluttony or anorexia. Or, take human sexuality as another example: God created the male different than the female, but we have distorted that difference into everything from adultery to homosexual acts. The original pattern of a male being perceptive to female openness, has been gnarled into the male's "having eyes full of adultery" and being polygamous.
As an interesting aside, having counseled many homosexuals, I would submit that rather than their being a blend of the two genders, they are at the extreme ends. Homosexuals are notoriously promiscuous; this is the fallen, male sexual drive in its most masculine form. Whereas, every lesbian to whom I have ever ministered was pathologically connected to her partner by a "you and me against the world" attitude; that is a neurotic exaggeration of the female approach to sex which is not genitally centered, but relationship centered.
Intellectually, our species is not neutral and objective, we "suppress the truth by" our "wickedness." (Romans 1:18) That is why we cannot "prove" the existence of God; people already have all the proof they need and repress the data.
Jeremiah said, "The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?" (17:9)
The Apostle Paul's words in the last part of Romans five are most instructive: "Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned (5:12) . . . the many died by the trespass of the one man, (5:15) . . . The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, (5:16) . . . by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, (5:17) . . . the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, (5:18) . . . through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners," (5:19)
This means that even my good deeds are colored by the presence of sin that is in me. Isaiah put it this way, "All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away." (64:6) The word translated in the NIV as "filthy rags" refers to cloth that has been contaminated by organic, human waste, something odious and repulsive, something that under the ceremonial code of the Old Testament was defiling. That does not mean that people cannot do morally correct deeds; it means that we never act without the contaminating influence of sin affecting what we do. The implications of Isaiah's words are obvious: not only my sins, but my "righteous acts" as well have no saving merit before God. I need the blood and righteousness of the Lord Jesus, not only for my sins, but so that my good deeds might truly be good in the sight of God. So an aspect of total depravity is the concept of total inability, meaning that we are unable to please God by our unaided human efforts and that we are unable to come to God apart from his grace drawing us.
When it comes to our response to the gospel invitation, all Christians affirm that grace must precede our response. That is the Roman Catholic position, as well as that of the Orthodox, Lutherans, Arminians and Calvinists.
Saint Paul said, "As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions -- it is by grace you have been saved." (Ephesians 2:1-5)
Our Lord said, "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day." (John 6:44)
In the biblical understanding of that prevenient grace is the affirmation that with regard to the elect there is a grace that always accomplishes its purpose: "All that the Father gives me will come to me . . . .." (John 6:37)
I hope that helps.
Cordially in Christ,
Bob
"We have only one doctrine--Christ is our righteousness" (Bugenhagen).
Robert Benn Vincent, Sr.
Grace Presbyterian Church
4900 Jackson Street
Alexandria, LA 71303-2509
Tutissimum Refugium Sanguinis Christi
80 Hickory Hill Drive
Boyce, Louisiana 71409-8784
318.445.7271 church
318.443.1034 fax
318.793.5354 home
bob@rbvincent.com
http://www.rbvincent.com
http://www.grace-presbyterian.org
http://www.gcsla.org
Dear Sisters and Brothers,
I've changed the Subject line and thought that I would share some thoughts.
God has given human beings free will, the ability to make authentic choices without coercion. But this does not mean that the human will has not been radically impacted by evil.
First, I believe that it is very basic to a Christian understanding of human nature that we affirm that humankind is not absolutely, biologically determined.
Back in the nineteen-sixties I took a course called "Physiological Psychology and Neurology." Much of the focus of our texts was to the effect that human behavior is mechanistically determined. If that is the case, if our universe is some kind of glorified "Skinner Box," then humankind has no free will and cannot make authentic choices. That being the case, the push must be toward chemical and biological intervention with the human species: psychotropic drugs, not psychoanalysis; DNA manipulation, rather than moral suasion; brain washing, instead of education. That being the case, the solutions to problems such as crime and violence, lie in a comprehensive reshaping of our environment. If human behavior is biologically determined, then the answer lies in a global government that exercises totalitarian control over every aspect of life.
Curiously, the most basic quest of atheism, human autonomy, must be lost. The greater one's belief in materialism, the greater control some human authority must exercise over the mass of humanity. Perversely, the eschatological hope of atheism does not lie in the "glorious freedom of the children of God" (Romans 8:21), but in the most minuscule control of the individual by the most absolute and all encompassing decree of the State, a state not limited by nationalistic boundaries, but truly global.
Man at his most human produces not a "kinder and gentler" "New World Order," but a ferocious Beast. This is the true meaning of 666: "This calls for wisdom: let him who has understanding reckon the number of the beast, for it is a human number, its number is six hundred and sixty-six." (Revelation 13:18) The thirteenth chapter of the Apocalypse is full of irony. The meaning of the mysterious number, 666, is not some obscure thing, such as calculating the numeric value of the Hebrew letters "Neron Qasar" (Nero Caesar), or Roman Kingdom, Lateinos, in Greek letters. As with the rest of the book, the key is found in the passage itself: "It is the number of Man."
The irony is that when Man, as "The measure of all things," creates an order without God, what arises is a "beast that" is "like a leopard, its feet were like a bear's, and its mouth was like a lion's mouth." So powerful and totalitarian is his crushing might that humankind cries: "Who is like the beast, and who can fight against it?" (Revelation 13:1-4)
I know that I have gone off on a tangent from free will, but I think that it helps underscore the importance of maintaining the doctrine. I believe that humankind is endowed with free will as over against biological, materialistic, determinism. I think that is essential to people's making authentic choices and to our being responsible for our actions.
I also believe that it is important to assert free will vis-à-vis the Sovereignty of God and predestination: God's will is done in history, yet people act as free moral agents, doing what they choose, without God's forcing his will on them.
"God from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass: yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures; nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established." (Westminster Confession of Faith, § III, i)
I find the above paragraph thoroughly biblical; it asserts God's absolute sovereignty, while affirming that certain seemingly incongruous doctrines are also true:
1. God is not the author of sin;
2. God does not force his will on his creatures;
3. God’s foreordination includes not only the end result, but also all of the means to that end. Biblical predestination is never fatalistic.
Let me expand on those ideas. First, God never sins, nor is he the author of it. The events surrounding the death of the Lord Jesus illustrate not only that God is not the author of sin, but also that God’s will is done in history without his violating people's free will.
"Indeed Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and the people of Israel in this city to conspire against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed. They did what your power and will had decided beforehand should happen." (Acts 4:27, 28)
Herod, Pilate, the Jews and the Gentiles acted against the Lord Jesus. Each acted according to his own nature, each freely chose his course of action. They did what they wanted to do. God did not violate their wills nor force them to do what they did. What they did was the ultimate act of evil in history: Man killed him who is God and man, in his human nature, on the cross, theocide.
Yet, mysteriously, they did exactly what God ordained to happen before the foundation of the world: "This man was handed over to you by God's set purpose and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross." (Acts 2:23) The Lord Jesus is "the Lamb that was slain from the creation of the world." (Revelation 13:8) "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son . . ." (John 3:16) This same action, the execution of the Lord Jesus, is God's greatest act of goodness, kindness and righteousness. He is the author of it. It is the fulfillment of his plan.
So God is the author of the historical incident; it is the carrying out of his eternal decree. As a divine act, it is the supremely good act. At the same time human beings are involved; it is their act, and they sinned. I do not profess to know how such things can be, only to know that such things can be. I will state the mystery; I cannot explain it away. Man is not a puppet on a divine string, an automaton without free will. Yet man fulfills the divine purpose in history, a purpose that extends to the most minute things: "Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father." (Matthew 10:29)
Finally, God's sovereignty does not rule out second causes. Muslim predestination, as I have studied it, is fatalistic; biblical predestination is not. If I do not pray, God's will will not be done on earth as it is in heaven. If I do not share the gospel with others, God's elect will not be saved: "Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they too may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus, with eternal glory." (2 Timothy 2:10).
From the divine perspective, both are secured in God's eternal decree. From the human perspective, it seems so different. There is this popular caricature of a Calvinist as a person who doesn't really pray and who doesn't burden himself with evangelism. But a biblical understanding of God's sovereignty will never lead a person to such inaction.
While God is absolutely sovereign, and history is simply the unfolding of his eternal decree, God nevertheless presents himself as changing his mind in response to the intercession of his people. '"Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them. Then I will make you into a great nation." But Moses sought the favor of the LORD his God. "O LORD," he said, "why should your anger burn against your people, whom you brought out of Egypt with great power and a mighty hand? . . . Then the LORD relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened.' (Exodus 32:10-14) "So the LORD changed His mind (from the root, NCHM, "be sorry, repent") about the harm which He said He would do to His people." (NASB)
Ernest prayer is demanded because spiritual warfare is real. Consider Paul's words: "For we wanted to come to you -- certainly I, Paul, did, again and again -- but Satan stopped us." (1 Thessalonians 2:18) "For this reason, when I could stand it no longer, I sent to find out about your faith. I was afraid that in some way the tempter might have tempted you and our efforts might have been useless." (1 Thessalonians 3:5)
Daniel's experience is similar; God hears and answers Daniel's prayer on the very day that he prayed. Yet because of demonic opposition, it takes three weeks for the answer to come to Daniel: 'Then he continued, "Do not be afraid, Daniel. Since the first day that you set your mind to gain understanding and to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard, and I have come in response to them. But the prince of the Persian kingdom resisted me twenty-one days. Then Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, because I was detained there with the king of Persia.' (Daniel 10:12, 13) But what would have happened had Daniel not persevered in prayer?
There were times when the power of the Lord was present (Luke 5:17) and times when that was not the case. In Nazareth, for example, Jesus "could not do any miracles there, except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them." (Mark 6:5)
Within the sphere of his absolute sovereignty and freedom, consistent with his own holy character, God has often chosen to limit himself by human beings' lack of faith, even though that very faith itself is God's own work.
If Jesus was unable to do any significant healing miracles in Nazareth because of human unbelief (Matthew 13:58 and Mark 6:6), how much more necessary is it for us to pray with faith and expectation?
Yet all of this human drama is the unfolding of an eternal, immutable decree. Consider the book of Job. At a certain level, everything that happens can be explained by natural phenomena: there were robbers, lightning, mercenaries and a windstorm in chapter one; in chapter two, there was this terrible disease. However, at another level of explanation, everything that happens is the result of the cosmic war between God and Satan, the insight of which is found only in the prologue and epilogue of the book. Yet, at another level of explanation, ultimately, all is simply the unfolding of the divine plan: "They comforted and consoled him over all the trouble the LORD had brought upon him, and each one gave him a piece of silver and a gold ring." (Job 42:11)
How is the human will not free? All Christians accept some version of the doctrine of original sin. We all believe that Adam's act of disobedience affected more than simply himself.
I believe that the Bible teaches that humankind was radically affected by the fall and that every facet of human nature has been impacted by sin. I affirm total depravity. By that I do not mean that I believe that a person is as bad as he can be, simply that no aspect of human existence is unaffected by the fall. All of us are contaminated by sin, not only morally, but volitionally, emotionally and intellectually as well. That is that to which the word "total" refers in "total depravity."
In the fall, humankind did not simply lose a gift of original righteousness or super-added grace (donum superadditum), rather the image of God (imago Dei) was radically marred. Christian and non-Christian alike are created in the image of God, but, like a mirror that has been broken, we distort that image as a result of the fall.
The fall has affected all of our drives: "This only have I found: God made mankind upright, but men have gone in search of many schemes." (Ecclesiastes 7:29)
Consider the pattern of work and rest that was part of the original order at creation. Those good drives have become twisted into either sloth or sinful obsession with work. God created us with a desire and need for food, but we distort that into gluttony or anorexia. Or, take human sexuality as another example: God created the male different than the female, but we have distorted that difference into everything from adultery to homosexual acts. The original pattern of a male being perceptive to female openness, has been gnarled into the male's "having eyes full of adultery" and being polygamous.
As an interesting aside, having counseled many homosexuals, I would submit that rather than their being a blend of the two genders, they are at the extreme ends. Homosexuals are notoriously promiscuous; this is the fallen, male sexual drive in its most masculine form. Whereas, every lesbian to whom I have ever ministered was pathologically connected to her partner by a "you and me against the world" attitude; that is a neurotic exaggeration of the female approach to sex which is not genitally centered, but relationship centered.
Intellectually, our species is not neutral and objective, we "suppress the truth by" our "wickedness." (Romans 1:18) That is why we cannot "prove" the existence of God; people already have all the proof they need and repress the data.
Jeremiah said, "The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?" (17:9)
The Apostle Paul's words in the last part of Romans five are most instructive: "Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned (5:12) . . . the many died by the trespass of the one man, (5:15) . . . The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, (5:16) . . . by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, (5:17) . . . the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, (5:18) . . . through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners," (5:19)
This means that even my good deeds are colored by the presence of sin that is in me. Isaiah put it this way, "All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away." (64:6) The word translated in the NIV as "filthy rags" refers to cloth that has been contaminated by organic, human waste, something odious and repulsive, something that under the ceremonial code of the Old Testament was defiling. That does not mean that people cannot do morally correct deeds; it means that we never act without the contaminating influence of sin affecting what we do. The implications of Isaiah's words are obvious: not only my sins, but my "righteous acts" as well have no saving merit before God. I need the blood and righteousness of the Lord Jesus, not only for my sins, but so that my good deeds might truly be good in the sight of God. So an aspect of total depravity is the concept of total inability, meaning that we are unable to please God by our unaided human efforts and that we are unable to come to God apart from his grace drawing us.
When it comes to our response to the gospel invitation, all Christians affirm that grace must precede our response. That is the Roman Catholic position, as well as that of the Orthodox, Lutherans, Arminians and Calvinists.
Saint Paul said, "As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions -- it is by grace you have been saved." (Ephesians 2:1-5)
Our Lord said, "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day." (John 6:44)
In the biblical understanding of that prevenient grace is the affirmation that with regard to the elect there is a grace that always accomplishes its purpose: "All that the Father gives me will come to me . . . .." (John 6:37)
I hope that helps.
Cordially in Christ,
Bob
"We have only one doctrine--Christ is our righteousness" (Bugenhagen).
Robert Benn Vincent, Sr.
Grace Presbyterian Church
4900 Jackson Street
Alexandria, LA 71303-2509
Tutissimum Refugium Sanguinis Christi
80 Hickory Hill Drive
Boyce, Louisiana 71409-8784
318.445.7271 church
318.443.1034 fax
318.793.5354 home
bob@rbvincent.com
http://www.rbvincent.com
http://www.grace-presbyterian.org
http://www.gcsla.org
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
