The Error of Inerrancy

All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work. – 2 Timothy 3:16-17

Next to the divinity of Jesus, there is probably nothing more sacred to the modernist evangelical worldview than the doctrine of inerrancy. Indeed, most evangelical churches have a statement of faith that begins with a sentence about inerrancy, like “We believe that only the sixty-six books of the Bible are the inspired and, therefore, inerrant Word of God.” The twin ideas of biblical inspiration and authority come, of course, from NT passages like the one quoted above. But for most evangelicals, inerrancy is the necessary corollary to inspiration and authority, and is thus indispensible for upholding the orthodox faith against the skepticism of liberal scholarship.

It should be recognized, however, that the doctrine of inerrancy is deduced from Scripture’s statements about authority and inspiration, not read directly from Scripture itself. Unfortunately, many evangelicals see inerrancy as being synonymous with authority and inspiration, to the point that any argument against inerrancy is received as an attack on the other two beliefs as well. But this simply isn’t the case. My aim in the following paragraphs is to disentangle the doctrine of inerrancy from the claim of biblical authority, and to explain why the former is poorly equipped to provide the necessary foundation for the latter. Before we get into it, though, I’d like to make a few opening remarks.

First, while this should go without saying, I want to be absolutely clear that my intent is not to tear down anyone’s faith in the authority of Scripture. Quite the opposite, in fact. My hope is that, by drawing attention to the weak foundation which inerrancy provides for our faith, the path might be cleared to discover a more secure foundation. Paul tells us to test all things, and yet many believers simply accept the doctrine of inerrancy without even questioning or weighing the various alternatives, and thus debates about the subject tend to be overly reactionary and alarmist. Most conservatives assume that any mistake on the part of the human vessel, however insignificant it might be, altogether invalidates the truth of God’s word. But for others, like myself, minor mistakes are taken for the relatively insignificant things that they are. The question is this: Can the truth of God’s message still shine through clearly when there are minor, peripheral mistakes on the part of his messengers? I contend that it can. It’s like misspelling a word in an otherwise coherent sentence. One misspelled word does not render the entire sentence unintelligible.

Secondly, many Christians don’t realize that the doctrine of inerrancy is a fairly recent construct, adopted by conservatives since the Enlightenment as a way of fortifying their faith in the authority of Scripture against the attacks of liberal scholarship. But the premise of the whole controversy is entirely off base. I understand how threatening the subject appears to a contemporary evangelical mindset, but we must understand that it was never a serious issue of controversy until at least the eighteenth century. We are free to ignore these questions if we wish, but by ignoring them we forfeit the historical claim upon which Christianity is founded.

Thirdly, there’s a larger problem that goes mostly unnoticed in the fray of these debates, a problem which actually renders the whole argument completely irrelevant. As we have seen, the explicit purpose of inerrancy is to provide a philosophical foundation for the belief in the authority of Scripture. It aims, in other words, to support the idea expressed in passages like 2 Timothy 3:16, that all Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for the church. Of course, none of those passages actually claim that because a text is inspired it is therefore always correct in its historical or scientific statements. The larger problem with inerrancy, however, lies in the purpose of the doctrine itself.

The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy states that the doctrine applies only to the original documents. Conservative theologians like Wayne Grudem agree with this qualification: “Scripture in the original manuscripts does not affirm anything that is contrary to fact” (Systematic Theology, p. 90). Yes, of course. How could it be any different, since we all know that the copies and translations we possess actually do contain minor errors? But therein lies the problem: Inerrancy only works as a legitimate means of supporting the authority of Scripture if it works for the manuscripts which we actually possess, or else it undermines the authority of everything that is not an original manuscript. And since we do not possess any of the original manuscripts, the doctrine of inerrancy only succeeds in sabotaging its own purpose.

Is the Bible in my hand authoritative or not? Inerrancy cannot answer this question. Much better to simply admit some minor mistakes in the original documents themselves and to see them for what they are: trivial and peripheral scaffolding to the message God wanted to speak through the authors or Scripture, which shines through clearly despite the limitations of the authors.

Now, with those opening remarks out of the way, we can finally address the subject head on. I’d like to start things out by focusing on the apparent difference between Matthew 27:3-10 and Acts 1:16-19, two accounts of Judas’ death. In Matthew’s account, Judas returns the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests, goes and hangs himself, and then the chief priests buy a field with the money to use as a cemetery. In this account, the fact that the field was paid for with blood money and turned into a cemetery explains why it later became known as the “field of blood”. In Luke’s account, however, Judas himself uses the silver to buy a field, and then he falls head first in that field and bursts open so that his entrails spill out. In this account, the fact that Judas died in the same field that he purchased with blood money explains why it later became known as the “field of blood,” not because the chief priests purchased the field and used it for a cemetery.

The way that both passages explain things by an appeal to Scripture is also noteworthy. Matthew specifically cites a passage with the plural pronoun “they,” which fits with his understanding of the events in question, i.e. that the chief priests (plural) used the blood money to buy a field. Luke, however, cites an entirely different passage with the singular pronoun “he,” which of course fits with his understanding of the events in question, i.e. that Judas (singular) used the blood money to buy the field that he later died in.

So the question presses: How do the differences between Matthew’s account and Luke’s account fit with the doctrine of inerrancy? Of course, no two accounts of anything would be completely identical. But it does appear that these two texts represent different interpretations of how a particular set of closely related events happened. In order for the proponents of inerrancy to really provide a credible solution here, they must provide an explanation that has a ring of historical plausibility to it. From what I’ve seen, however, every attempt to harmonize the two passages is far too convoluted to be taken seriously.

Beyond the questions of historical harmony, though, there’s also the question of scientific accuracy. Is the ancient near-Eastern understanding of the cosmos, which lies behind passages like the creation account of Genesis, a factually accurate description of the universe? Many Christians seek to give a modern scientific (or, more often, pseudo-scientific) explanation for the details of Genesis 1, but, truth be told, these explanations only distort the meaning of the text by trying to make it fit with our modern view of the cosmos. If God decided to communicate a modern scientific understanding of the cosmos in Genesis 1 and similar passages, then it would have been completely unintelligible to its original audience. The ancients believed that the sky was a material thing, a solid dome upheld by massive pillars that kept the waters from falling on the earth all at once, and texts like Genesis 1:6-8 reflect this primitive understanding. If we believe in the authority of Scripture, then we are warned not to change the meaning of the text into something it never intended to say. But again, we are forced to ask, how does this understanding of ancient cosmology fit with the doctrine of inerrancy?

The real question we should be asking at this point, however, is this: How is God’s message endangered by such minor disagreements as these? Is the gospel about the identity of the person (or persons) who bought the field of blood? Is the point of Genesis 1 to correct an ancient understanding of the cosmos, or indeed to dictate the boundaries of modern science? This, in turn, invites some further questions: Does the affirmation from 2 Timothy 3:16 (that all Scripture is God-breathed and therefore authoritative) warrant the abstraction that the human authors through whom God spoke were themselves completely free from error? Is the trustworthiness of God’s message nullified by minor mistakes on the part of the human authors? Does “inspiration” mean that God basically overrides our human faculties so that his message can get through unfiltered, undefiled by flesh, or does it actually involve the human faculties of his messengers and become flesh?

Truth be told, the particular name on the title deed of the field of blood is completely inconsequential to the evangelists’ goal of testifying faithfully to Jesus’ kingdom-bringing work. The widespread agreement of the gospels testifies to their reliability as historical witnesses, and the few minor disagreements are the exceptions that prove the rule. Likewise, the point of Genesis 1 is not to explain the material details of the cosmos with an abstract science from above, but to say that God, the one true God of the universe, made everything that exists, brought order out of chaos, and light out of darkness. The writers of Scripture were not inspired to confront the material cosmology of their culture; they were inspired to confront the dominant worldview of their culture. For the ancients, Genesis 1 challenged polytheism with monotheism: there is one God, and he made everything. For the modernists, it challenges a meaningless, naturalist view of reality with a story of purpose and design.

But all the same, according to the modernist evangelical perspective, any mistakes in the original text, however minor they may be, necessarily means that the text was not God-breathed. In this view, inspiration effectively means override. It seems much more likely, however, both critically and theologically, that biblical inspiration actually involves our human faculties and that God in his sovereignty ensures that the truth of his message shines through despite our human limitations. This is what some call an “incarnational” view of biblical inspiration. In the same way that God humbled himself by becoming flesh and dwelling among us, becoming accessible, touchable, and knowable to finite human minds in history, so he humbled himself by speaking through finite, historical human vessels in what has become the biblical canon. We couldn’t get to God, so God had to come to us. He came down, both in the spoken words of the prophets and in the broken body on the cross. And just as we have access to God through the humanity of Jesus, so we have access to the mind of God through the humanness of his words spoken in Scripture. This account allows for minor errors, so long as those errors do not endanger God’s message. It provides a solid, defensible foundation for our faith in the authority of Scripture, and it doesn’t sacrifice the relational character of God in the process.

The Unwritten Rules of Evangelical Discourse (and how Rob Bell breaks them)

Introduction

The history of evangelicalism in America is a complex and many-sided tale. While the New World was the natural testing ground for the fresh ideas of the 18^th century Enlightenment, it was also the perfect seedbed for conservative communities of faith. And while there has always been a tension (often played up into a biting war) between these vestiges of old-world piety and the wider American ethos of secular progress and reason, there are also a number of areas in which the evangelical movement has been shaped and influenced by the surrounding modernist project. This is nowhere more evident than in the area of language.

Stemming from the Enlightenment’s epistemology, the modernist tends to view language as a vehicle for observational knowledge, a utility through which hard, objective realities are conveyed. Just as modern architecture is characterized by simple economy, contrasted with the nonfunctional grandiosity of the Gothic cathedrals, so modern language tends to be unadorned, practical, and straightforward, in contrast with the more aesthetic expressionism of the classical and Romantic styles. These are rough generalizations, of course, but accurate in outline nonetheless.  The point, for our purposes, is that even as evangelicals have reacted to the perceived threat of the modernist project, they have (whether knowingly or unknowingly) largely absorbed modernism’s epistemology and dialectic into their own worldview and praxis. This is especially true for the discipline of theology.

But American evangelicalism is in a new state of crisis. The battle has changed, the weapons are different, and no one really knows where the enemy is.  The paradoxical kinship between evangelicalism and modernism becomes more and more apparent as both ideologies face the threat of deconstruction from postmodern critique. And just as the positivist view of reality cracks under the strain of an unremitting skepticism, so the old rules of discourse find a new light shining on all of their fixed presuppositions. What would we discover if we examined some of those presuppositions and asked how they function within the social structures of the community? In what context would we find these unwritten rules expressed? Would we learn anything new about the evangelical worldview and values from observing the community’s language? These are the questions I want to explore here.

A Controversial Case Study

Controversy has a unique way of pulling our presuppositions out into the light.  When we find a central tenet of our worldview challenged, we are forced to reach back and ask ourselves why we think the way we do, and in such contexts we often find ourselves articulating (perhaps, for the first time) things we’ve simply assumed to be true. This being the case, we should not expect to see the defining traits of a community’s discourse critically articulated between members of the same community. Rather, we should expect to find them in the midst of controversy, when the axe is laid at the root of the tree and members of the community find their sacred presuppositions threatened from the outside.  In order to illustrate this with respect to the evangelical community, we should look for a controversy in which fundamental tenets of its worldview are at stake, where unwritten rules become written rules.

Enter, Rob Bell. Recently named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people, Robert Holmes Bell is the former pastor of Mars Hill Bible Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and the author of the popular books Velvet Elvis, Sex God, Jesus Wants to Save Christians, and, most recently, the New York Times bestseller Love Wins. Educated at Wheaton College and Fuller Theological Seminary, Bell represents a growing number of American Christians who feel more at home in the new world of postmodern discourse than the (ironically) old world of modern discourse. As Andy Crouch, an editor at Christianity Today, said it, “Rob Bell is a central figure for his generation and for the way that evangelicals are likely to do church in the next 20 years. He occupies a centrist place that is very appealing, committed to the basic evangelical doctrines but incredibly creative in his reinterpretive style.”

And yet it’s Bell’s “creative” and “reinterpretive” style that has, on more than one occasion, provoked a barrage of scathing remarks and denunciations from more traditional evangelicals. The most striking example of this came surrounding the release of his latest book, Love Wins, which in the subtitle purports to be about “heaven, hell, and the fate of every person who ever lived.” More than a month before the book even arrived on the shelves of local bookstores, trusted defenders of the gospel were warning their flocks of its sinister guile and exposing its author as a Universalist soothsayer, blasting out melodramatic Tweets that read “Farewell Rob Bell.” Apparently, this charismatic pastor struck a central nerve of the evangelical worldview. What’s truly remarkable, though, is just how many different accounts there are of what exactly Bell is saying. Some readers claim he’s a Universalist; others swear adamantly that he is not. Some readers have thought up entirely new categories with which to label the hybrid slant of Love Wins.

Now that the book is out and the dust of the initial reactions has settled, however, it should be clear that the controversy was as much about how Bell said what he did as about anything he actually said. Beneath all the accusations of heresy, the traditionalist objections have as much to do with accepted modes of speech as they do with doctrinal orthodoxy.  Yes, the doctrine of eternal punishment is a sacred boundary-marker of the evangelical community, a trusted litmus test to separate the wheat from the chaff, and Bell has clearly tampered with it. But others within the community (including quintessential evangelical John Stott, also named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people) have done the same and have not been denounced as false teachers. The fact is that Rob Bell has transgressed the unwritten rules of evangelical discourse.

As a movement that has grown and come of age largely within the wider milieu of the Enlightenment, evangelicalism has (for the most part) tacitly accepted the modernist ideal for how language should function. The controversy over Rob Bell’s latest book serves to illustrate some of the governing characteristics of modernist-evangelical discourse inasmuch as Bell has opted for a more fluid, postmodern alternative. This is evident in at least four different areas.

First, Bell tends to ask more questions than traditionalists feel comfortable with, and he is sometimes content to leave those questions unanswered. As Gregg Boyd puts it, “Rob is far more comfortable (and far better at) questioning established beliefs and creatively hinting at possible answers than he is at constructing a logically rigorous case defending a definitive conclusion.” In the preface to Love Wins, Bell says that he wrote the book “because the kind of faith that Jesus invites us into doesn’t skirt the big questions about topics like God and Jesus and judgment and heaven and hell, but takes us deep into the heart of them” (ix).  And again, “There is no question that Jesus cannot handle, no discussion too volatile, no issue too dangerous. At the same time, some issues aren’t as big as people have made them” (x). Many of Bell’s critics, however, do not agree. Some see Bell’s method of inquiry as nothing more than a way to avoid the tough answers and remain “studiously ambiguous in terminology” (Taylor).  For the traditionalist, too many questions can be threatening and subversive, and for that reason it’s best to stick with the accepted statements of faith.  Reflecting a modernist epistemology, the truth is believed to be fairly straightforward, not hidden behind the haze and distortion of our own cultural perspectives, and such questions are thus regarded as mostly counterproductive.

Second, Bell has a way of taking old, technical terms and injecting new life into them by employing them in fresh ways. As Gregg Boyd says it, “Rob is first and foremost a poet/artist/dramatist who has a fantastic gift for communicating in ways that inspire creativity and provoke thought.” But for those not accustomed to subtle metaphors or the unconventional usage of established terminology, Bell’s style might be easily misunderstood. “Hell is our refusal to trust God’s retelling of our story,” he says on page 170, a statement taken by many to mean that he does not believe in the literal place of judgment traditionally called “hell”. But from the surrounding context and his explicit statements elsewhere (e.g., chapter 3), it does not appear that Bell intends to do away with the literal sense of the word. It’s just that he finds it a rather appropriate metaphor as well, and so, in the words of Lewis Carroll, he pays it extra, something most evangelical theologians are not in the habit of doing. Traditionalists tend to favor a straightforward literalism over fluid and expressionistic figures of speech, another sign of modernist influence.

Third, Bell sometimes prefers the rhetorical power of sarcasm and caricature to the dry precision of propositional statements. This is most evident in the promotional video for Love Wins: “Will only a few select people make it to heaven? And will billions and billions of people burn forever in hell? And if that’s the case, how do you become one of the few? Is it what you believe or what you say or what you do or who you know or something that happens in your heart? Or do you need to be initiated or take a class or converted or being born again? How does one become one of these few?” While there is a significant seed of truth to this portrait, its stabbing potency lies precisely in its overblown depiction of the traditionalist view of hell. It takes aim, not at what most televangelists actually say in their presentations of the gospel, but at what Bell sees as the ugly reality behind such presentations. Needless to say, this mode of discourse does not go over well with Bell’s opponents: “Whether the sentences end in question marks or not, the force of these sentences is to undermine—nay, to ridicule—the reality of eternal conscious punishment, the wrath of the God, and penal substitutionary atonement” (DeYoung). It seems that for the traditionalists, at least in theory, theological debate should be a no-contact sport, which again reflects the positivist vision of a detached objectivity.

Fourth, Bell prefers the governing category of “story” to the abstract, systematic approach of modernism. “Just read the story, because a good story has a powerful way of rescuing us from abstract theological discussions that can tie us up in knots for years” (12). And again, “it’s important that we be honest about the fact that some stories are better than others” (110). For Bell, “story” is a central aspect of every worldview, and so any comparison of worldviews should address the way individual beliefs function within the larger story being told. For the modernist, however, this appears to be little more than a confession of relativism. According to John MacArthur, Bell’s methodology is simply an extension of his aim “to eliminate the authority and clarity of Scripture so that he can reinvent a god who is more to his liking… He suggests that he is better—nicer, more kindly, more tolerant, more lenient—than the God who has revealed Himself in Scripture. He therefore sets aside God’s revealed Word and makes his own musings the inviolable standard.”

Now, MacArthur does not appear to have read the whole book, or even just the third chapter, in which Bell makes a sustained case for his view from countless passages of Scripture, but his reaction does serve to illustrate the modernist-evangelical perspective quite well. According to this view, the Bible is not a complex historical narrative written by many different authors within the framework of a developing worldview, but simply a depository of timeless revelatory truths, and thus an emphasis on “story” is merely a way to avoid the simple truth and justify one’s own subjective feelings. What remains unclear, however, is just exactly how Bell’s consideration of a “good story” versus a “bad story” differs in principle, on a methodological level, from the necessary considerations of reason and experience long affirmed by the evangelical tradition. Once again, the differences of language seem to have become a stumbling block in what could have otherwise been a constructive dialog.

Conclusion

The point here is not to arbitrate over who is more right, whether Bell or his opponents, but to explore an aspect of the debate that has gone mostly unnoticed and thus largely misunderstood. Rob Bell doesn’t talk like evangelicals used to, and so he’s often misinterpreted as saying things he never actually intended. Now, that’s not to say his views aren’t controversial, but simply that the recent controversy has been less about his views, in and of themselves, and more about the way he communicates them. Like every other community, evangelicalism has its own unwritten rules of discourse, and Rob Bell tends to break them.

What can we learn from all of this? Well, for starters, we can all learn to appreciate the distinct characteristics of communities other than our own. For the English-speaking world, we can become more conscious of the many different ways we all employ the same words, how our worldviews affect the way we speak and hear the English language. For Christians, we should be more self-conscious of those elements of our worldview which sometimes owe more to our surrounding modern and postmodern cultures than they do to the sacred text of Scripture. Instead of assuming that “the gospel commits us to one side of the debate,” as N. T. Wright says it, we should realize that “things are rarely that easy,” and we should take the risk, out of a place of prayer and humility, “of hearing both sides,” and perhaps “of being shot at from both sides” (The Challenge of Jesus 191). This, as I understand it, is part of what Jesus meant when he called us to follow him. This is what it means to be peacemakers.

In Christ,

Matt

Tom Wright, on Being a Peacemaker

I have known economics faculties and history faculties and others too, where half the professors are Marxists and half are not, or where half are committed postmodernists and half are not. Where should the Christian be in such a case? You may well believe that the gospel commits us to one side of the debate, though these things are rarely that easy. But my suggestion is that you see it as a call to be in prayer where your discipline is in pain. Read the Scriptures on your knees with you discipline and its problems on your heart. Come to the Eucharist and see in the breaking of bread the broken body of Christ given for the healing of the world. Learn new ways of praying with and from the pain, the brokenness, of that crucial part of the world where God has placed you. And out of that prayer discover the ways of being peacemakers, of taking the risk of hearing both sides, of running the risk of being shot at from both sides. Are you or are you not a follower of the crucified Messiah? And of course this applies in many other areas as well: in families and marriages, in public policy and private dilemmas.

May I speak personally for a moment? I have had a very clear vocation that has resulted in some very unclear choices. I live in a world that has done its best, since the Enlightenment, to separate the church from the academy. I believe passionately that this is deeply dehumanizing in both directions, and I have lived my adult life with a foot on both sides of the divide, often misunderstood by both. I live in a world where Christian devotion and evangelical piety have been highly suspicious of and sometimes implacably opposed to serious historical work on the New Testament, and vice versa. I believe passionately that this is deeply destructive of the gospel, and I have done my best to preach and to pray as a serious historian and to do my historical work as a serious preacher and pray-er. This has resulted in some fellow-historians calling me a fundamentalist and some fellow-believers calling me a compromised pseudo-liberal. The irony does not make it any less painful.

I am not looking for sympathy in saying all this. In my experience it has been precisely when I have found myself in prayer on one of those fault-lines in another private Gethsemane (and sometimes they have been moments of real agony) that I have known the presence and comfort of the living Messiah, that I have discovered that the one with whom I was wrestling and who has left me limping was none other than the angel of the Lord, and I have been reassured again and again that my calling is not necessarily to solve the great dualities of our post-Enlightenment and now postmodern world but to live in prayer at the places where the world is in pain, in the assurance that through this means, at a level far deeper than the articulate solving of the problem, my discipline may find new fruitfulness and my church, perhaps, new directions. And out of that may perhaps grow, I pray, work that is peacemaking and fruitful. The darkest times have again and again been the most productive at every level. We British don’t like to talk about ourselves in public, and I hesitate to hold myself up as a model, but it may be that my experience will resonate with some others who read these words and perhaps bring encouragement to some for whom Gethsemane has been hitherto an unnamed and hence misunderstood reality. “As the Father sent me,” said Jesus, “so I send you; receive the Holy Spirit; forgive and retain sins.” We need to reflect long upon, and to be prepared to live with, the meaning of that “as… so.”

And of course, if we are faithful and loyal to this calling, the most frightening and unexpected thing of all, as least within many Protestant and evangelical traditions, is that we will in turn be for the world not only what Jesus was for Israel but what YHWH was and is for Israel and the world. If you believe in the presence and power of the Holy Spirit in your life, this is what it means. You are called to be truly human, but it is nothing short of the life of God within you that enables you to be so, to be remade in God’s image” (The Challenge of Jesus, p. 191-193).

Why Did Saint Paul Write?

The following is another essay that I wrote for my college writing class. The goal of this project was to find an artifact of writing and analyze the author’s reasons for writing in relation to the thoughts of George Orwell in his 1953 piece “Why I Write”. Predictably, I chose to analyze something from the Bible. 

Saint Paul is widely considered to be responsible for writing no less than thirteen of the twenty-seven books of the New Testament, or almost thirty-two percent of the text. He had a notable influence during his lifetime, as he was one of the first Christian missionaries to spread the message of Christ outside Palestine into Rome, Greece and Asia Minor. The particular shape that Christianity took early on in its development is largely the result of his tireless work. As much as Paul accomplished in his life, however, his lasting contribution has been through his writings, which have endured as a major part of the Christian canon. Samuel Taylor Coleridge famously said of Paul’s letter to the Romans that it was “the most profound work ever written!” Many of the most influential figures in Western history—such as St. Augustine, Martin Luther and John Wesley—have recalled the writings of Paul as their main source of inspiration. Because of the incalculable impact of his writings, he is regularly placed near the top of “most influential people in history” lists.

But why did Paul write? If we attempt to consider his work against the template of George Orwell’s “four great motivations for writing,” for instance, which one would it sit next to most naturally (107)? Did he write mostly out of “sheer egoism,” “aesthetic enthusiasm,” “historical impulse,” or “political purpose”? Do Paul’s motives for writing add anything to our understanding of what writing is?

Given the fact that Paul was persecuted, imprisoned and even tortured for the controversial content of his writing (2 Cor. 11:23-27), it seems rather unlikely that he was driven mostly by the desire to “seem clever,” “be talked about,” or anything so superficially vain (Orwell, 107). That’s not to say that Paul didn’t take personal pride in his work, or that he was not particularly ambitious, but it’s simply to recognize that the record of his life and the ethic of self-sacrifice which he constantly endorsed do not resemble anything like the portrait of a narcissist. Likewise, it seems rather evident that Paul did not have an overwhelming passion for the arrangement of words themselves, since his style is just as brusque and cumbersome in Greek as it is in English (e.g. especially Rom. 5:12-21; Eph. 1:3-23). So it appears that Orwell’s first two motives are ruled out.

These observations already bear significance for our larger question, since they subvert any analysis which views ego-centrism or the Freudian “pleasure principle” as the primary driving force behind all writing. Ultimately, though, to answer our question with anything resembling certitude we must first understand the various different worlds in which Paul lived, which form the only context in which his motivations for writing make sense. In other words, we must do history as well as exegesis. In his book Paul: In Fresh Perspective, the prominent biblical scholar and historian N.T. Wright describes Paul as standing in at least three different worlds, each of which shines through the contours of his writing (3-13).

The first world was the one in which Paul himself grew up, the turbulent climate of Second-Temple Judaism, which was, as Wright says it, a “many-sided and vibrant mixture of what we would now call (though they would not have recognized these distinctions) religion, faith, culture and politics” (3). At the center of that complex and multi-faceted world stood a common thread: the belief that Israel was the chosen people of the one true God, that this God’s kingdom was going to break in upon the world, and that all those who walked according to his law would have a part in his kingdom. This was the world from which Paul came, and the world in which he remained even while he underwent an extreme transformation in which every area of that worldview was torn down and rebuilt around the radical claim that God had acted in fulfillment of Israel’s hope through the death and resurrection of Jesus.

The second world in which Paul lived was the wider world of Hellenistic culture, which by that time had spread throughout most of he Eastern Mediterranean and had left its stamp everywhere through its centers of learning and entertainment. While Paul grew up as a fiercely observant Jew, he held this worldview consciously in relation (and often in resistance) to the wider worldview of Hellenistic culture. And while he held his transformed faith in Jesus as Messiah to be the fulfillment of Jewish hope, he maintained the long Jewish tradition of prophetic critique of the wider pagan culture (e.g. Romans 1:18-32). From this angle, the third world in which Paul lived relates closely to the second: that is the world of the Roman Empire, of Caesar’s uncontested domain and the growing emperor-cult that venerated him as the “son of God”. While the Roman poets and politicians declared proudly that Augustus had ushered in a new era of peace and security to the world, many of the conquered provinces felt that the Pax Romana had achieved the exact opposite: “they make a desolation and they call it peace” declared Calgacus, a local chieftain of Britain who experienced first-hand the brutal might of Rome (Tacitus, 81). In this politically and religiously charged context, it’s no wonder that Paul’s message was sometimes heard as an affront to Caesar’s authority (e.g. Acts 17:7). Indeed, it’s more than likely that he intended it to be heard this way (e.g. Rom 1:1-4).

From this vantage point, we are now prepared to answer our question with a more historically informed perspective. Being a spiritual father to many Christian communities throughout the Roman Empire, and the actual founder of more than a few, we know that Paul wrote regularly to them with words of comfort and exhortation (1 Cor. 4:14; 1 Tim. 3:14-15; Phm. 1:21). As he traveled abroad and even when he was detained in prison, he wrote to the young congregations under his care as a substitute for his presence among them (2 Cor. 13:2, 10). But unlike the majority of the Jewish literature from the Second-Temple period, Paul did not write merely to expound upon and intensify the communities’ adherence to Torah. Instead, he seems much more interested in retelling Israel’s history through a new lens, with Jesus as the fulfillment of their hope. Indeed, to some degree it seems that in Paul’s worldview Jesus now occupies the symbolic place of Torah, since, as the Messiah, he has brought about the life and salvation that the law could never bring (e.g. Gal.  3:19-25; Rom. 3:20-22). But then, Paul also seems to be interested in showing Jesus as the world’s true Lord, and not merely a Jewish tribal king (e.g. Rom 15:8-12). It is perhaps because of this that he addresses his message beyond the traditional Jewish boundaries, to the wider worlds of Greece and Rome, to the dominion of Caesar.

So what does Paul teach us about writing? Paul wrote for a cause, a cause that did nothing for his reputation, comfort or health. Yet even in the darkest of circumstances, Paul kept on writing. Why? Because he was compelled. In short, it seems that Paul wrote mostly from “historical impulse” and “political purpose,” i.e. to tell what he believed to be the true story of the world—its problem and its solution—and to be a herald of that solution, which, as he summarizes it in Romans 3:21-26, is the good news that God’s covenant justice has been unveiled through the faithfulness of Jesus the Messiah, the world’s true Lord, to all who respond in faith. For Paul, Jesus has done what the Jewish law and the pagan kings could never do: he has brought life and peace and grace and redemption. And looking at the world at the time, from the dying hope of Judaism to the false peace of Rome, it’s no wonder that the story Paul told fell on fertile ground.

Works Cited

Orwell, George. “Why I Write.” Mercury Reader: A Custom Publication. Ed. Janice               Neuleib, Kathleen Shine Cain, and Stephen Ruffus. Boston: Person Learning               Solutions 2011. 104-11. Print.

Tacitus, Cornelius. Agricola. Trans. M. Hutton, R. M. Ogilvie, and William Peterson.               Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1970. Print.

Wright, N. T. Paul: in Fresh Perspective. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005. Print.

Understanding Revelation: Metaphor vs. Symbol

I often come across commentaries on the book of Revelation that argue against taking a particular image literally on the grounds that all or most of the images throughout the book are symbolic. Simon J. Kistemaker’s remark on the millennium is typical: “… a literal interpretation of this number [the thousand years] in a book of symbolism and especially in this chapter filled with symbols is indeed a considerable obstacle… It is therefore more in line with the tone and tenor of Revelation to interpret the term metaphorically (Revelation, 535).” Notice in particular the way that he uses the words “symbolism” and “metaphorically” to mean basically the same thing, i.e. non-literal. We’ll return to that in a moment, but first some introduction.

Several of the most recent posts on this blog have dealt in one way or another with the question of how to rightly interpret the book of Revelation. In one post we took a critical look at the most popular approach, the literalist hermeneutic, and found it to be severely lacking. We’ve also explored an alternative hermeneutic in a few posts dealing with specific passages throughout the book (such as 7:1-8; 11:3-13; 16:17-21; 20:1-3; 20:4-6). It might be tempting at this point to simply swing the other way and declare everything in Revelation to be non-literal, which unfortunately is the route that many have gone, but that would be just as reactionary and insensitive to the text as literalism. I believe there is a middle road between the two most popular extremes, a third approach that comes naturally once we clarify an important matter of language.

What does it mean to say that something is symbolic? Unfortunately, that term has been stretched and twisted to mean almost anything anyone wants it to mean, and for that reason its wide usage in academic writing has often functioned like a Trojan horse, carrying inside whatever assumptions the user would rather not address head on. So the question now arises whether the term has been spread too thin to be of any real use. I don’t believe so. It seems to me that its absence would create a more awkward gap in critical vocabulary than its presence, particularly in regards to the discipline of exegesis. For this reason it is not only worthwhile, but actually imperative, to make some attempt at its recovery.

Returning to our case study, Kistemaker appeals to the predominantly symbolic character of Revelation as a reason to understand the “thousand years” non-literally, and then goes on to call the term a metaphor. This is a classic non sequitur. Many commentators use all three of those words more or less synonymously when dealing with Revelation, but such looseness with language often results in muddled exegesis at crucial points throughout the book. The visionary medium of Revelation is not mostly metaphorical, but it is entirely symbolical. At first glance this may seem like splitting proverbial hairs, but it’s actually a very important distinction. Let me explain.

Although they are regularly used interchangeably, metaphor and symbol are in fact two distinct categories. A metaphor is a type of speech in which something from one category (the referent) is explained by being implicitly compared with something from another category (the image). If called my 18-month-old daughter “my little rose,” I would be speaking metaphorically, implicitly comparing my daugher to a flower. My daughter, of course, is not actually a flower, but she is pretty and sweet like a flower, so I use the image of a flower to describe the similar characteristics of my daughter. A symbol, on the other hand, is anything that is representative or emblematic of something else. Any object, action, experience, or expression that evokes a world of meaning beyond its initial subject is “symbolic”. There is some overlap between these definitions, but in order to avoid confusion we must recognize at least two major differences.

First, unlike metaphors, symbols are not strictly rhetorical. Symbols can be objects, actions, experiences, or expressions. A nation’s flag is a symbolic object; it represents the nation itself. Burning a nation’s flag is a symbolic action; it represents the downfall of the nation. In the first century AD, the temple in Jerusalem was an object that carried a great deal of symbolic meaning for the nation of Israel. It spoke in particular of God’s covenant with Israel and his desire to dwell with them. When Jesus turned over the moneychanger’s tables inside the temple he was performing a symbolic action that spoke of the nation’s downfall. Metaphors, on the other hand, are a strictly verbal affair: they imply a world of meaning specifically by describing something through the non-literal use of something else as a word-picture.

Which brings us to the second distinction. This is what Kistemaker and other commentators often forget when they appeal to the highly symbolic character of Revelation. Unlike metaphors, which are always non-literal, to say that something is symbolic does not necessarily mean that it is non-literal. Rather, it simply means that it is representative or emblematic of something else.  John addresses his vision to seven churches as symbolic representatives of the whole community of Christ worldwide, but that doesn’t change the fact that these were seven historical congregations located in modern-day Turkey. Yet despite this obvious distinction, many commentators still make a superficial appeal to the highly symbolic character of Revelation as a reason for interpreting, say, the “seven kings” of 17:10 as a non-literal number of Roman Emperors, even though this is unsustainable in light of the specific qualifiers which John places on the sixth and seventh kings and at a more basic level it confuses the visionary image (seven heads) with the referent of that image (seven kings). To simply recognize the prevalence of symbolism in Revelation does not give reason for interpreting everything in a non-literal fashion.

Now, having said all of this, we must also note the particular character of Revelation’s symbols as visionary symbols. The whole book is symbolic in the sense that it was “signified” to John in a vision, as the introduction says in 1:1. Revelation is not primarily metaphorical because it is not a purely rhetorical work, but neither is it a direct transcription of history written in advance. In contrast with these both of these approaches, and in order to read Revelation with appropriate sensitivity, we must see it first and foremost as a revelatory experience in which John himself was a participant, i.e. as a vision. As such, we must always distinguish between what John saw (the visionary image) and what that refers to (the historical reality), and we must seek to discern the level of correspondence between the two. This is the middle road between the two most popular extremes.

Some images in the vision are portrayed in such a way that they more directly correspond to the things they represent in the real world. The messianic images of 1:13-16 and 19:11-16 both have a more direct correspondence to their referent than the vision of the slain lamb in chapter 5, since they are both described with the physical characteristics of a human being. But all three descriptions are symbolic in the sense that they are visionary images written up with multiple echoes of biblical and post-biblical tradition, which means that we should not assume photographic realism as much as impressionistic and kaleidoscopic depictions of reality. Jesus doesn’t literally have a sword protruding from his mouth or seven stars in his right hand, and nor is it likely that he has many crowns on his head, a blood-soaked robe, or a tattoo on his thigh. John’s visionary experience contains images and narrative that represent, i.e. are symbolic, of things and events that existed, exist, or will exist in the real world. But his experience and the images themselves should not be confused with the realities which they represent.

This may seem overly complicated, but we’ve become so entrenched in oversimplifications and ambiguities that we are driven to take this one step at a time and not take anything for granted. Interpreting Revelation, or any literature from a culture other than our own, takes great care and is always a matter of delicate subtlety. The kaleidoscopic images of Revelation serve to say something meaningful about reality which could not be easily said by describing it in prose, and it’s that great wealth of meaning which makes the sometimes difficult task of exegesis worth all the labor and so much more.

In Christ,

Matt

Why I Could Never Keep a Journal

The following is an essay that I wrote for my college writing class. The goal of the project was to explain my personal reason for writing and to develop that view in relation to the essays of the George Orwell, Joan Didion, and Roger Rosenbatt.

I own at least four different journals. Each of them contains about four or five pages worth of entries—most with the date “January 1^st” at the top of the first page. They are all very nice, leather-bound journals, but the only purpose they now serve is to look bookish and collect dust on the shelf.

I’ve always wanted to write, but I haven’t always known how to write, or even why. At an earlier age (probably through reading the autobiographies of lifelong writers like C.S. Lewis) I had assumed that journaling was the sole way to feed this impulse: to simply document the goings-on of each mundane day, to look inside myself and externalize every dark corner, hoping that some dramatic narrative would eventually emerge. Yet instead of feeding the impulse, this exercise always managed to kill it—and kill it fast. Every time I tried, which was usually for a New Year’s resolution, I never made it more than a week. I would sit there for what seemed like ages, staring at a blank page and feeling like an empty room.

But sit there I did, until eventually I discovered what the real problem was. Actually, as things usually go, I only realized that the problem had been solved in hindsight, after I had long forgotten that it was ever a problem. I now write every day, but never in journals. The truth was that I could never write about myself, to myself. If I am going to write, I have to write to someone else, about something else. There has to be some mad notion burning in my belly, something that has to come out, so that writing becomes not an end in itself but merely the means to a greater end.

For this reason, I find that I identify deeply with George Orwell’s motives for writing. I write as much out of what he called “sheer egoism” as the next person, but I find that my self-interest is only truly satisfied when the focus of my writing is pointed in the opposite direction, away from the self all together. Likewise, while I care immensely about the aesthetic and arrangement of words themselves, unlike Joan Didion I find an obsession with form to be thoroughly exhausting—a guaranteed way to quickly extinguish whatever it was that was burning in me. But the two great motives, the realities which drive me to the page every day, are what Orwell called “historical impulse” and “political purpose”, i.e. “the desire to see things as they are” and “the desire to push the world in a certain direction”.

Writing, for me, is largely an extension of my search for truth. It allows me to think long and hard about some odd subject of inquiry and when the concept is fully grown to let it go and live on its own. Both in reading and in writing I’m constantly addressing the fundamental questions of every worldview—“Who are we? Where are we? What’s wrong? What’s the Solution?”—all of which inevitably employ historical impulse and political purpose. Like Orwell, I’m always writing for something and against something else, even if my allegiance may sometimes change through the process. But if the act of writing is a long and painful ordeal, as it usually is for me, then the only sensible reason to stick with it is the hope that it will carry some greater meaning and enduring value.

So even if no one ever reads what I write, I write with the goal of someone else reading it. Because for me, writing is about having a meaningful dialog, a vigorous discussion in which serious ideas are conveyed from one person to another. In this regard, I write for the same reason I read: to grow as a human being through interacting with other human beings. I suppose that this is where my motives also align with those of Roger Rosenblatt’s essay. It’s not just about ideas in the abstract: witty little constructs to admire in an ivory tower. No, ultimately it’s about relationship: that deep need to “spill out,” to know and to be known, to tell the story that is in me and to hear a story in response. I write so that I might receive a response. I write so that I might form a community. I write to know that I’m not alone.

The Historical Case for Amillennialism

There’s a popular conception that premillennialism is the oldest and most orthodox of the eschatological views, but I believe this is based on a misreading of the earliest evidence through the lens of later patristic debates. Contrary to this popular view, there is a strand of amillennial eschatology which has deeper roots in the Jewish tradition than premillennialism. This Jewish strand of amillennialism stands in stark contrast with the later dehistoricizing, anti-creational, and individualistic eschatology of the Alexandrian school. Here are six short propositions in favor of this strand of amillennialism. One day I hope to develop this into an actual thesis, but for now I welcome any questions or arguments in the comments below.

1. The prevailing outlook towards history within the Jewish worldview, both in the Old Testament and in the Second Temple period, was that it was divided neatly into two distinct ages: (a) the current age, characterized by the curse of the fall, by sin and injustice, by Israel’s exile and the dominion of pagan nations, and (b) the age to come, characterized by the curse undone, by the forgiveness of sins, by righteousness and peace, by Israel’s return from exile and her exaltation over the nations, and ultimately by Yahweh’s becoming king and returning to dwell in the midst of his people forever.

2. Only after the destruction of Jerusalem in AD70 do we begin to see the development of the idea of a temporary messianic kingdom between this age and the next, most notably in the apocalypses of 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra. It appears that this view of history, commonly called “chiliasm”, was a later and more scattered belief which likely arose in order to support various messianic movements while taking into account the eschatological difficulties associated with the recent destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple. However, none of the speculated lengths for such a hypothetical period seems to have stuck in the prevailing Jewish worldview.

3. Within the more traditional, non-chiliast scheme of Jewish thought, the age to come was always conceived of in very “earthly” and “this-worldly” terms. But it would be a naïve mistake to retrojectively label this prevailing outlook “chiliast” in nature, as many have done, for it lacked any interim messianic reign on earth between this age and the age to come, which is the basic tenet of chiliasm. Rather, as Strack and Bilerbeck say in Kommentar zum Neuen Testament aus Talmud und Midrash, “Only the post-Christian synagogue distinguishes between the days of the Messiah and the final perfection in the ‘olam ha-ba, that is, in the future world” (Vol. 3, p. 824). Or, likewise, as Hans-Alwin Wilke says in Das Problem eines messianischen Zwischenreichs bei Paulus, “Besides in the Apocalypse of John, the idea of a Messianic intermediate kingdom appears in the pseudeprigraphic apocalypses only in 4 Ezra—possibly also in Syriac Baruch” (p. 48).

4. We do find a striking development away from the two-stage view of history in the New Testament writings. But this development does not rightly qualify as chiliasm. Instead, the NT writers develop a three-stage view of history as the result of their conviction that the messiah had already come and inaugurated the kingdom for which Israel had longed. In the view of the earliest Christians, the present time between Jesus’ resurrection and parousia is an age of overlap between the age of sin and death and the age of righteousness and life. In other words, while the worldview articulated throughout the New Testament does express the belief in an interim messianic reign, that “reign” is consistently seen as being coterminous with this present intra-advent age, this time of “already but not yet”, and never with a future transitional period after the second coming (e.g. Acts 2; 1 Cor 15; 2 Thes 1; 2 Pet 3).

5. Revelation 20 may seem like the one exception to this particular three-stage view of history, but all the attempts to establish some form of chiliasm from that chapter end up relying mostly on other passages for the content of their view (passages like Isaiah 65:17-25, which in their own contexts actually speak of the earthly age to come) and on the thoughtless insertion of the themes of those passages into the “thousand year” framework of Revelation 20. In contrast, I have found the content of Revelation 20 to be much more in keeping with the rest of the New Testament’s portrayal of this present age of “already but not yet”, albeit with the kind of imagery appropriate to an apocalypse.

6. Those early church fathers who adopted a chiliastic scheme seem to have relied more on the late Jewish apocalypses than on Revelation, as witnessed both by their allusions to these apocalypses and by their rejection of a heavenly intermediate state, which Revelation depicts frequently. Throughout Revelation we see the souls of the martyrs “resting” in God’s heavenly temple, not waiting in Sheol as in 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra (see Regnum Caelorum, by Charles E. Hill). Combine this with the fact that Revelation 20 lacks almost all of the distinctive features of a chiliast reign such as we find in the aforementioned Jewish apocalypses, and it becomes clear that, far from reading Revelation on its own terms, the early Christian chiliasts arrived at their particular eschatology through very different sources, and only by means of superimposing that eschatology onto Revelation did they turn their chiliasm into a distinctively Christian (or should we say quasi-Christian?) eschatology.

The 144,000 Servants of God: a case study in apocalyptic symbolism

A few posts ago we took a brief look at the most popular approach to the book of Revelation in our culture, the “literalist” hermeneutic, and we pointed out its serious inadequacy when faced with many of the bizarre images which John conveys to his readers. When dealing with a literary composition from a period and culture different from our own, and especially with the visionary medium of an apocalypse, we simply cannot decide what is literal and what is non-literal in advance. A one-size-fits-all approach actually never fits anything.

I’ve tried to model a more empathetic and contextually sensitive alternative to the literalist hermeneutic in several posts on this blog (here, here, and here, for instance), but I’d like to take this post and look briefly at one more passage in Revelation: the famous vision of the 144,000 sealed servants of God (Rev 7:1-8).

The question which concerns us is this: are we to understand Revelation 7:1-8 in a non-symbolic fashion, showing us 144,000 actual Israelites who are sealed and protected as God’s true servants, or are we to understand it as a visionary symbol which actually represents something else? I am personally convinced of the latter. In fact, I think this passage is a perfect case study to illustrate the weakness of a “literal if possible” approach.

The first thing we must acknowledge, when coming upon this passage within the larger narrative of Revelation, is that John elsewhere speaks of the “church” with Israel-language from the Old Testament. In fact, throughout Revelation the church is constantly spoken of as if it were Israel. Take 1:7 and 5:9-10, for instance, which both identify the Jew-plus-Gentile family of God as “a kingdom of priests” who will “reign on the earth”. This is quoting from Exodus 19:5-6, where the Lord calls Israel a “special treasure above all people” and declares their calling to be “a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation”. Consider also the passage just after the one in question, where we see a great multitude in heaven, again “from all nations, tribes, peoples and tongues”, celebrating the Jewish feast of Tabernacles (7:9-17). These are just two of the many examples where the calling and place of Israel is referenced and then attached to everyone in Jesus, which  contrasts starkly with the ironic portrayal of unsaved, corrupt Jews which we find in 2:9 and 3:9.

In fact, this one passage aside, there is no mention of Jewish believers apart from their Gentile brethren anywhere else in Revelation. The emphasis throughout is on one group, the redeemed from every nation, the faithful overcomers who are to inherit the blessings of the new world. And within the narrative this one group is linked inextricably with the seven churches of chapters 2-3, churches composed of both Jewish and Gentile Christians. Thus it would only be in keeping with the language of the rest of the book if 7:1-8 was a symbolic representation of the whole new covenant family of God.

Secondly, if we are to read an apocalyptic passage such as this with the appropriate historical sensitivity, then we must recognize that in the first century A.D. the twelve tribes of Israel literally did not exist; and, as George Caird puts it, “the hope of their eventual restoration, which is frequently found in Jewish literature, belonged to the ideal world, not to the real.”

On the other hand, Jesus himself seems to have envisioned the formation of the church, the ekklesia which he was building, in the historical terms of a renewed Israel (Matt 19:28; Luke 22:30; cf. Matt 16:18), and the earliest Christians saw their emerging movement in precisely those terms as well (e.g. Acts 1:6; Phil 3:3; Jas 1:1; 1 Pet 1:1; 2:9). So then, in light of the rest of the New Testament, it would not be surprising for a Christian apocalypse such as Revelation to take the eschatological ideal of a renewed “twelve tribes” and apply it to the whole new covenant community. Indeed, granted the emphasis on the “complete number” of God’s servants in this passage, it’s highly likely that that’s the whole point of the numerical symbolism (7:4; cf. 6:11).

Third, and most importantly, there is a close relationship between this passage, where John hears of the sealing of God’s servants, and the passage immediately following, where he sees a great multitude of the redeemed before the heavenly throne. This is one of those key passages where, if we’ve been paying attention to what John has told us so far, we would quickly recognize one of his trademark rhetorical devices. In Revelation John repeatedly hears something, conveys what he hears, and then sees that same thing; but what he sees conveys a startlingly different perspective from what he hears, even though object is the same. The effect is profound, for the way in which these contrasting perspectives are conveyed allows multiple and often paradoxical layers of meaning to be set against each other in order to draw out the deepest significance in the encounter.

In the opening vision John hears the voice of YHWH, like the sound of a trumpet, proclaiming “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last,” but when he turns “to see the voice that spoke” the reader is surprised to find, not the Ancient of Days, but “one like a son of man”. The importance of this scene cannot be overstated, for it explicitly places Jesus, as a human, within the divine identity of YHWH himself.

Similarly, and perhaps even more startlingly, John hears of a triumphant lion in 5:5, the Davidic Messiah who has prevailed and proven himself worthy to advance God’s eschatological plan. What he sees, however, is not a triumphant lion, but a slaughtered lamb. The graphic point, which is then expounded upon in the “new song” of 5:9-10, is that the crucifixion of this would-be Messiah is actually the means by which God has accomplished the great victory over the enemy and delivered his people. Far from a symbol of defeat, the cross of Christ belongs to the way God rules the world.

This same pattern occurs in chapter 7, where John hears the number of the servants of God who were sealed, “one hundred and forty-four thousand of all the tribes of the children of Israel,” but then he sees “a great multitude which no one could number of all nations, tribes, peoples, and tongues”. The contrast between what he hears and what he sees is stark, but the contrasting perspectives follow the same pattern that John has already expounded previously in the vision, a pattern which he goes on to expound again (e.g. 21:9-10).

The dissimilarity between 7:1-8 and 7:9-17 is thus not a proof that these two groups are different from one another, but rather it strongly suggests that they are the same. In the same way that John hears of Israel’s deliverer in 4:5 but then sees a sacrificial lamb in 4:6, so he hears of a numbered remnant from the twelve tribes of Israel in 7:4-8 but then sees an innumerable assembly from every tribe, tongue, and nation in 7:9-17. And the point is that this great multitude is the renewed Israel, the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham, the faithful remnant who will enjoy the blessings of God’s new world.

Of course none of this bears any weight with the literalist camp, because it conflicts with what they deem to be the “normal” reading of the passage. But if such a judgment is made without even considering the differences of literary style and genre, and without acknowledging the force of context which leads to a non-literal alternative, then how is the equation of “normal” with “literal” anything less than a gross anachronism, imposing a set of rules on Revelation which are at odds with its own inner integrity? The kaleidoscopic images of John are simply nothing like the straight prose of Hemingway. Yet such is the bias which has resulted from the modernist ideal of objectivity, a bias which ironically fulfills its own fear of subjectivity.

Hell: An Ongoing Dialog

If you’re someone who keeps abreast of popular Evangelical discussions, then you’re probably aware of all the recent controversy that has swirled around Rob Bell’s newest book, Love Wins. And if you’re a Christian who cares about the integrity of the gospel, then the chances are, you’ve formed some sort of an opinion about the whole matter one way or another.

I think Bell has some valuable insights, some good questions, and some bad answers. But I’m mostly grateful for how his book has put some vital questions on the table for discussion. My goal in this post is not to give another pedantic review of Love Wins, which has already been done a thousand times over, but to set some markers down for my own journey and create a space where more dialog might occur.

Paul told the church at Thessalonica to “test all things, and hold fast to what is good” (1 Thess 5:21). This exhortation stands as a constant reminder to me on two accounts: first, it gives me courage to always seek the truth and never shy away from asking the big questions, however unpopular those questions might be; and it also challenges me to never ask questions purely for question’s sake, but to truly seek answers to those questions and to carry those answers with conviction. In epistemological terms, it calls me to be a “critical realist”. That said, I think discussions like this one are immensely valuable. They force us to ask questions we might not have asked otherwise, to take a good look at the underlying reasons why we believe what we do, and perhaps even to revise some of that in the process.

Pertaining to the subjects of hell and final judgment, here are some of the online discussions which I’ve found most helpful over the past few months:

Jeff Cook recently wrote an article for Relevant Magazine briefly covering the current debate. He compares the main historical positions with respect and humility. I think this is a great place to start if you’re just getting familiar with the whole debate.

Jeff also gave some valuable thoughts on the Jesus Creed blog in response to Francis Chan and Preston Sprinke’s new book, Erasing Hell (one of many new books written in response to Love Wins). In one post he asks the question, to which Chan and Sprinkle give an affirmative answer, “Does God’s immense power and knowledge give him ‘the right’ to do whatever he wants?” There are many other questions that should grow out of this one, like “Is God’s character consistent?” The comments after that post are valuable reading as well.

In a related post Jeff looks at the unavoidable role which the intellect plays in our reading and making sense of Scripture, particularly with respect to the doctrine of hell. Everyone who thinks they are just objectively reading “what the Bible says”, without any subjective or interpretive element on their end, should read this post and heed its warning. And again, more good discussion ensues.

Personally, I haven’t bought into the prevalent Western understanding of hell as “eternal conscious torment” for quite some time, but I’ve been torn over the last couple years between a creative view which N.T. Wright proposes in his book Surprised by Hope (chapter 11) and a more traditional alternative known as “annihilationism”. I’ve come to believe that the prevalent portrayal of hell has its roots more in the middle ages and in Dante’s Inferno (a picture painted as the opposite of the cartoonish heaven with harps and clouds and so forth) than in the Bible itself.

Wright’s main point in Surprised by Hope is that since a disembodied “heaven” is not our hope, according to the New Testament, but instead a fully embodied new heavens and new earth, and a resurrected, renewed humanity within that picture, then what does the opposite of that picture look like? In his view, what we would call “hell” will not be populated by fully functional and cognitive human beings with perfectly enhanced capacities to feel and contemplate their own eternal torment, as is often assumed. Rather, since the destiny of the wicked is often portrayed in Scripture as being the opposite of the resurrection to life and as the logical end of those who give themselves over to dehumanizing lusts, he thinks that the souls who end up there are probably best described as creatures that once were human but now are not, beastly things that gnash their teeth and can thereby elicit neither hope nor pity for their fate. That’s very different from the popular portrayal.

But recently, through studying the subject out more fully, I’ve been drawn more towards the annilationist perspective. I’m not completely settled about it, but it’s where I stand provisionally. In this regard I’ve been greatly helped by Gregg Boyd and the late Clark Pinnock, as well as by my good friend Mark Edward. The main points that persuade me are (a) that eternal life is something that, biblically speaking, belongs only to God and to those whom he gives it, that humans are not innately immortal beings, and (b) that the vast majority of the language which Scripture uses to speak of the fate of the wicked is annihilation-type language, i.e. “death”, “perish”, “destroy”, “burn up”, “consume”, “end”, “vanish like smoke”, etc, etc.

Also, I’m just not sure I can follow the logic of “justice” into the justification of “eternal conscious torment”. Is that really justice? Are the finite transgressions that we commit in our few years on earth really deserving of infinite and eternal punishment? I don’t mean to belittle the severity of sin, but really? Infinite, unending, eternal torment, night and day, forever and ever, without relief, and without distinction? I freely admit that I have a hard time swallowing this. But according to the traditional view, what is it about God’s righteousness and man’s sin that I’m just not getting?

For many people, of course, it’s just absurd to even question the prevailing doctrine of hell as eternal conscious torment. Clearly, this view of hell has become one of the main fault-lines of American Evangelicalism, a theological boundary-marker of conservatism over against the ever-encroaching tide of liberalism. But as Pinnock puts it, “if the best reason for holding to everlasting torment is tradition, then we had better reconsider because it is not a good enough reason.”

For others, however, the question is settled right away by the many “Gehenna” passages in the gospels. I’ve often heard it said that “Jesus spoke about hell and eternal punishment more than anyone else in the Bible.” Often the line is added at the end, “…more than everyone else in the Bible put together!” But there are quite a few interpretive assumptions going into such a claim.

Of course Jesus spoke to his contemporaries about judgment, but do any of those occurrences of judgment-language qualify as eternal torment after death? Or is the intended meaning more often (or perhaps even always) concerned with temporal judgment resulting in death (as in, perhaps, Matt 10:28)? And as a sub-question to this, is Jesus’ use of the word “Gehenna” intended to be (a) a picture of eternal torment after death, (b) a picture of the finality of God’s postmortem judgment, or (c) a picture of the temporal fate of Jerusalem if it did not accept his offer of peace (i.e. the Roman armies would come and turn the city into a smoldering rubbish heap)? Or perhaps a combination of these?

There are many other questions to be asked, both of Scripture and of the way we read Scripture, but I think this is a good start. There are so many resources on this subject from godly men and women, and so much good discussion taking place (two books on my list to read are The Fire that Consumes, by Edward Fudge, and Hell: The Logic of Damnation, by Jerry L. Walls). I trust that the Lord will lead us into all truth as we partner with each other in humble dialog and prayer.

I welcome all comments and questions.

The Unconditional Covenant: A Misuse of Language

A sharp distinction is often made today between the Abrahamic covenant and the Mosaic covenant. Many Christians, particularly in American Evangelicalism, believe that the Abrahamic covenant was “unilateral” or “unconditional”, while the Mosaic covenant was “bilateral” or “conditional”. Hence, according to many, the Mosaic covenant (or at least many details of the Mosaic covenant) was temporary, but the Abrahamic covenant is eternal. The contemporary relevance of this distinction goes beyond the ivory tower to the sensitive and complex question of modern Israel’s right to the land of promise.

From what I’ve seen, the most common argument for this distinction is made by an appeal to Genesis 15, where, in response to Abram’s question about how he can know that he will inherit the land (v. 8), the Lord alone walks through the pieces of a sacrifice (vv. 9-21). According to those who argue for the unconditionality of this covenant, the point of this strange passage is that God alone is responsible for the fulfillment of the land promise, and therefore the land is supposed to be the inalienable possession of Abram and his children. This is probably the most substantial theological reason for the widespread Evangelical support of the current state of Israel.

But there is a major problem with this argument. Actually, the real problem goes back behind this argument, to the language chosen for the premise. I doubt that the majority of the Christians who make this claim actually believe what they are saying when they call the Abrahamic covenant “unilateral” or “unconditional”. For a covenant or promise to be “unconditional” means, quite simply, that the recipient is not subject to any conditions. In the case of Abraham and his children, if the promise that they would possess the land was truly unconditional, then they would be free to live any way they wanted, without reference to God or man, and the possession of the land would be their inalienable right. But read Deuteronomy 28-30, or Leviticus 26, and ask yourself if that is really the case.

So what do we make of Genesis 15 then? Well, reading it within the larger context of Genesis 12-17, I think we can say confidently that the point is not that the promise of the land is unconditional, but that it is assured. When Abram asks God how he can know that the promise will really come to pass, the Lord responds by making a binding agreement with him, holding himself accountable to his own word. In the act of passing through the sacrifice the Lord was symbolically  declaring that he would make a way for the promise to be fulfilled, beyond the seemingly endless cycle of exile and return, so that Abraham’s family would indeed have a homeland. The prophet Isaiah would speak centuries later of the Lord acting “by his own arm” for the salvation of his people, and here at the beginning of his dealings with them we can see, however cryptically, the foundation of that divine commitment.

As Christians, we believe that this way was ultimately made open by the inauguration of the New Covenant through Jesus the Messiah, the forgiveness of sins and the giving of YHWH’s own Spirit (e.g. Rom 3:21-26). But again, saying that the Lord would make a way, and hence that the promise is assured, is not the same thing as saying that the terms of the covenant were “unconditional” for Abraham or his children. As we see earlier in the same chapter, Abraham had to believe God’s promise for it to be “accounted to him as righteousness”, and after the compromise with Hagar in the next chapter the Lord appears to him once more with a warning that he must walk before him “blameless” if he is to inherit the promise (17:1-2).

So while it was ultimately the Lord’s faithfulness alone that made a way for Abraham’s family to meet the conditions of the covenant—through the death and resurrection of his own son, by the forgiveness of sins and the bestowal of his own Spirit—this does not change the fact that the promise was conditional, both for Abraham and thus for all who would likewise become its heirs. The only condition, as Genesis itself indicates and as Paul spells out in detail, is to “walk in the steps of faith which Abraham walked”. Hence Paul’s point in Romans 4: the “seed”, the true descendants of Abraham, are those who respond to the promise in faith, by the Spirit, through the Messiah, and not those who merely descend from Abraham according to the flesh.