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It took a while, but my big essay on Paul is finally available as an honest to goodness paperback. These Are Two Covenants: Reconsidering Paul on the Mosaic Law is available at Create Space (sentence is a link). (In a few days, it should also be available from Amazon’s main store, but unless you have other stuff to put in your Amazon cart, please purchase from CreateSpace if you can – the commission structure is a lot more generous for me.)

For more info on this book, you can take a peek at its page at pactumbooks.com, my site for Pactum Reformanda Publishing (that I formed back in 2002 to publish Feed My Lambs). I’ll be revamping and updating the Pactum site over the next couple of days – presently, it doesn’t even have a link to the CreateSpace store page, which just went live. (Will correct that shortly.)

It’s often been noted that in Revelation, Satan repeatedly counterfeits what God is doing: e.g. the saints are sealed upon their (Rev 7.3; 9.4; 14.1), so in turn the beast requires his mark to be upon the foreheads of his followers (Rev 13.16; 14.9 etc).

There is also an interesting juxtaposition between the devil’s wrath and that of God. When the devil, who is the accuser, is cast down from heaven, he comes upon the earth in “great wrath,” because he knows that his time is short (Rev 12.12). In contrast, Rev 15.7 speaks of the seven golden bowls full of the wrath of God, who lives forever and ever. The devil’s wrath is temporary; his time is short. But the eternal God  has authority over the lake of fire, which will have torment “day and night forever and ever” (Rev 20.10).

Satan is a pitiful parody of the Most High God.

A lot of discussion in Pauline exegesis over the past couple of decades is whether this common phrase in Galatians (Greek: pistis Christou) is subjective (“faith of Christ”) or objective (“faith in Christ”).

“Faith of Christ” is the older translation found in e.g. the King James Version, although the translators probably were just being woodenly literal rather than making a judgment call. Most newer translations make the interpretation for us and just have it “faith in Christ.”

For reasons I won’t get into here, several years ago while studying Romans, I became quite convinced of the subjective genitive position. That is, what is in view in the phrase as such is the pistis (faith or faithfulness) of Christ Himself. This pistis of Christ in turn calls forth our responsive faith – hence the gospel is from faith (i.e. Christ’s) to faith (i.e. ours), according to a literal reading of Romans 1.17.

At any rate, while the exact pistis Christou phrase is not used in this instance, it occurs to me that a comparison of Gal 5.6 and 2.20 appears to lend further support to the subjective genitive. In 5.6, Paul says that what counts is not circumcision, but faith working through love, while in 2.20, he has written that the life he now lives in the flesh he lives by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me. The proper understanding of Paul’s exhortations regarding faith and love in chapter 5 seems to have to do with entering into a participation in Christ. And so just as the faith of Christ worked itself out in the greatest embodiment of love – His self-giving unto death – so the believer’s faith is to be worked out through loving service to others (cf 5.13).

This post is not an essay, and is not intended to be cohesive in the least. I am preaching on the Lord’s Supper tomorrow (Lord’s Day 28 of the Heidelberg Catechism), and in connection with that I have been going over this passage again in 1 Corinthians. These are thus simply my rough notes on the passage (early on much is not even complete sentences), and I don’t have time or inclination to set them into more orderly form at the moment. Still, I thought someone might find them of benefit even in their present form.

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In mulling over the matter of how AD 70 relates to the final judgment, I think I would go so far as to suggest that Jerusalem was in some senses the capital of the old kosmos (usually translated “world” but often having a strong eschatological sense in Paul, approaching something like “this present age”), and that in certain definitive ways that world was brought to judgment in AD 70.

Remember that in Galatians, Paul speaks of Torah as one of the stoicheia (“elements”) of the kosmos, parallel to idolatry etc. Thus I don’t think it is a stretch to say that the judgment on Jerusalem signifies a wider judgment.

But it is utterly wrong to think that wider judgment was simply accomplished en toto in AD 70. To the contrary, what we learn from Galatians about the stoicheia points in a very different direction. Torah stands alongside idolatry and other “elements” of the world (see e.g. Gal 4.8-10).

And while it is true that AD 70 started a chain of events that abolished idolatry in a lot of places… it didn’t end it. It destroyed Jerusalem… but it didn’t destroy all the other kosmos-cities that resist the rule of the Son.

There was a definitive judgment on the stoicheia in AD 70. Well, there was a definitive judgment on the stoicheia at the cross and resurrection too… but the stoicheia of the old kosmos still remain. The new heavens and new earth which we may enjoy today (for those in Christ, there is a new creation, 2 Cor 5.17) is a tiny earnest/down payment, and is only enjoyed in the midst of the old heavens and old earth. (Cf Rom 8 in context: we’ve been redeemed, but we still await the redemption of the body.)

And therefore, to take AD 70 as the be-all and end-all is to miss the whole point. AD 70 is a real and truly significant event in salvation history. But it is a very small part for a much larger whole that even to this day has not come. The full coming of the new covenant is not completed until all the enemies have been put down – including the last enemy, Death (1 Cor 15.26).

AD 70 is a marker that points directly to the final judgment and consummation.

At long last, my extensive essay on Paul and the law, These Are Two Covenants: Reconsidering Paul on the Mosaic Law, is available!

I was sort of commissioned to write this piece back in 2004, but the book in which it was to appear fell on hard times and was not published. I later had a contract with another publisher to have it released on its own, but it fell victim to cutbacks. Knowing that I do not have present resources to publish in paperback as I did with Feed My Lambs, I decided on my first ebook-only (PDF) release.

You can get more information and learn how to purchase by going to my Pactum Reformanda Publishing web site.

New post on the Biblical Horizons blog on 2 Corinthians 5.21.

One of Peter Leithart’s chief insights is that a priest is a palace servant.

In preparing a sermon on Lord’s Day 12 for this Sunday (by way of Revelation 1 – which, by the way, focuses upon God’s people as servants in 1.1 and as a priesthood in 1.7), this got me reflecting on the question of how the high priest relates to this. If a priest is a palace servant, what is a “high” palace servant?

This in turn led me to think about the predominant Servant theme in Isaiah, a rabbit trail that turned out to be helpful, although I’m not entirely sure yet where to go with it. (more…)

I have recently been engaging in a discussion regarding the importance of recovering the biblical meaning of terms like “law” and “gospel.” We Protestants have inherited a rather dominant tradition of using these terms in a rather abstract sense something along the lines of “law = any requirement God lays upon man.” “Gospel” has become virtually a technical term for forgiveness of sins apart from works. (Just as an aside: just as there is a typical Protestant use of these terms, there are also Roman Catholic uses that no doubt could be criticized. My aim here is not to say we Protestants are wrong, and Rome is right, after all; it is rather to engage in critique from within, so that we can correct things we ought to correct.)

Now, of course, God does lay requirements upon man, and God does grant forgiveness of sins apart from works. But the Bible’s use of the terms “gospel” and “law,” particularly in Paul’s writings, where Protestant discussion on these subjects tends to centre around, is very different from these definitions.

Paul always uses nomos (“law”) to refer to Torah, whether in the sense of “the Mosaic covenant” (by far his most frequent usage) or in the more general sense of “the five books of Moses.” In the second sense, his focus is on Torah as Scripture, as e.g. the Genesis narratives concerning Abraham are referred to as nomos in Galatians 4.24 and, given the immediately following context, likely in Romans 3.31 as well.

Similarly – and not surprisingly, given the content of the books we call Gospels – the term “gospel” is a very concrete term with definite historical connections (after all, it means “good news“). While free forgiveness of sins has always been God’s way of dealing with sinners, the term “gospel” is tied to God’s concrete and dateable historical actions related to what some scholars call “the Christ event,” with Christ’s death and resurrection at the center (see e.g. 1 Cor 15.1-4).

I have become increasingly convinced of the importance of abandoning the abstract usage of these terms, not because the general theological point is wrong; it is not. God saved us, out of His own sovereign mercy, not because of works of righteousness which we have done (Titus 3.5). But the problem with using the specific terms law and gospel in the way that we do means that inevitably those “synthetic” meanings get read into all the biblical texts where the terms appear. And that is not a good thing.

What follows is a lightly modified version of a private post I made on this subject. I have tried to clean up the style slightly, as well as eliminate points that were really germane only to a narrower discussion. To aid clarity, I have also added a couple of brief statements that distill thoughts I had made in the more extended discussion.  I trust making this public will prove somewhat helpful in terms of clarifying the importance of the fight for biblical language. (more…)

As we’ve seen, Israel was ignorant of God’s righteousness and did not submit to it. Meaning: they did not acknowledge the Messiah as their Lord, as God’s embodied righteousness for their salvation.

“For,” Paul adds, “Christ is the telos of the law.” Actually, he says more than that, but we need to sort out several things, so let’s deal with telos first.

So, what does telos mean? Its field of meaning revolves around the idea of “end,” but there are nuances. It can of course simply mean “end.” (E.g. Mt 10.22, “The one who endures to the end will be saved; Mt 24.6: “The end is not yet.”) This is the most common usage in the Gospels; and it appears frequently in Paul.

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In Romans 9.30ff, Paul explains that the Gentiles, who were not in fact pursuing righteousness, have attained (katalambano - apprehended, come upon, obtained, overtake)  it. Is Paul talking about “the righteousness of God,” or the right standing of human beings before God (justification)? Well, if we’ve been following Romans from the get-go, we would realize that these two sides meet together: the righteousness of God is revealed ek pisteos eis pistin – from faith unto faith (1.17). That is, from the faithfulness of God to the righteous response of faith which God requires. When God’s pistis and our pistis meet, the righteousness of God is revealed, and our righteousness is adjudicated, i.e. we are justified. (Romans 4 deals with this at length.) (more…)

A while back, I had a few posts on the Biblical Horizons blog discussing Romans 3. Much of the focus was upon the phrase, “the righteousness of God.” One thing I noted is that in the overwhelming majority of passages Paul cites in Romans 3, something is said about Yahweh’s righteousness. Given the fact that Romans 3 is by far the tightest cluster of the phrase “the righteousness of God” (dikaiosune theou), this can hardly be accidental.

Now, I think that what this means is that Paul doesn’t invent the meaning of the term. Throughout the Old Testament, wherever the divine righteousness is referred to, it has to do with God’s verity, His faithfulness. Usually, this centers upon promises of salvation, although the flip side of judgment of those who would harm His faithful ones is bound up with that.

This explains why in Romans 3.1-8, Paul (1) speaks about the oracles of God – and given 1.2, his central view is on the prophetic Word concerning God’s Son; and (2) veers between language of faithfulness, righteousness, and truth. In Hebrew, we are looking at ‘emunah, which captures all of these. God’s righteousness is His faithfulness, trustworthiness, verity with His commitments.

I guess you could say, then, that I am one of those people who takes the term to mean something like “covenant faithfulness.” (more…)

(If you’re wondering about my recent posting method, I’m simply putting into words the reflections I’ve been having while reading through the Greek New Testament during breaks at work (occasionally concrete work does have its perks). It’s a habit I’m trying to get back into.)

I noted earlier that the principle of election articulated in Rom 9 can cut two ways. On the one hand, it can be used to defend a “narrowing of the field”: God is still faithful even if He saves only a remnant of Israel. On the other, since consideration of works, willing or running are all excluded, God is free to save “all Israel” even if they are marked by prolonged hardness and rebellion.

This silent undercurrent also works with Paul’s quotation of Hosea later in the chapter: “I will call those who were not My people, ‘My people,’ and those who were not beloved, ‘Beloved’” (9.25). In chapter 9, Paul is making this point regarding the Gentiles, over against the mass of Israel that has fallen.

But the careful reader cannot fail to note that the original Hosea quotation is referring to lost Israelites. If God can call Gentiles “My people,” much more can He recover Israel; and the telling word here is beloved, which recurs again in 11.28: though presently hardened, the mass of Israel is “beloved for the sake of the fathers.”

Something similar can be said of the next verse: “and it shall be in the place where it was said to them, ‘You are not My people,’ there they shall be called the sons of the living God’” (9.26).

I think this is the answer to those who simply displace unbelieving Israel and say: “Well, Jesus Himself says they are not sons of Abraham, but children of their father the devil. There are no promises to them.” Not so. It is true, in a very real and direct sense, He has said: “You are not My people.” But there is a promise beyond that, and the disenfranchised will once again be called sons of the living God.

I hope to post further on Romans tonight, but the subject matter is going to shift somewhat, so I’ll leave the rest for another post.

Since I felt forced by the text of Romans 11 to adopt the future-conversion view (i.e. that it prophesies the conversion of the people prior to the return of Christ), I have frequently come across those who attempt to counter that reading by appealing to Romans 9. The earlier chapter, after all, says that not all Israel is Israel, and thus narrows down the recipients of the promises.

There are numerous problems with this way of dealing with Romans 11, however.

1) Romans 9 has at least as many obscurities and difficulties as does Romans 11. So why is it that the latter chapter is treated like it must be subjected to Romans 9, but not vice-versa?

2) The principle of election articulated in Romans 9 is in fact a double-edged sword that can cut two ways.

3) While Romans 9 makes a comparison between the hardness of the Pharaoh of the exodus and that of Israel contemporary to Paul, careful reading of the two passages reveals an explicit disanalogy at a very critical point.

I’m not going to argue for (1) here, but I do want to reflect a bit on (2) and (3).
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Because the creation itself will be freed from the slavery of the corruption unto the freedom of the glory of the children of God.
[Romans 8.21; translation mine]

This is an interesting text on a wide variety of levels, not least of which is the central point, viz. that just as God’s people look forward to an eschatological hope, so does the creation itself.

In my reading today, though, the thing that intrigued me was the parallelism. (more…)

I’ve long held that Romans 11 promises a future conversion for “all Israel” – i.e. the preponderance of the people. (See esp my essay here: http://www.biblicalstudiescenter.org/interpretation/rom11_26.htm as well as my forthcoming essay in the James Jordan festschrift which is in the works.)

But I’ve largely remained indifferent to whether there remains a future land promise (built e.g. on Gen 12 and a host of related passages), and I’m more than wary of Zionism, which I take to be a very misguided attempt to manufacture a fulfillment of God’s promises without understanding either the promises or the corollary conditions.

I still don’t claim to have a settled position on the land issue. But I was forced to lean toward it when I was struck recently by how much sense it would make. After all:

1. We know that a whole host of Israelites have savingly believed God over the years, both before and after the advent of Christ.
2. We believe in the resurrection of the body, not an eternal state of disembodied “spirituality.”
3. Correspondingly, we believe in the renovation of the earth, just as we believe in the renovation of the body.
4. Surely a renovated earth would have geography, and since the renovation is a renovation of this earth, it seems at least plausible – nay, overwhelmingly likely – that the new earth will have the land of Canaan.
5. Since everyone has to live somewhere – why wouldn’t believing Israelites live in Palestine? Why should that be thought the least bit “strange”?

I have just posted “Sabbath and Sunday: A Brief Biblical-Theological Consideration” at my biblicalstudiescenter.org site.

The essay includes treatment of Paul’s comments about “days and months and seasons and years” in Gal 4.10, as well as discussion of “the Lord of the Sabbath” passage (Mk 2.23-28) and a variety of related material.

This has really been a paper that I probably should have worked on long ago, given how often the subject comes up and I get involved in protracted discussions, but anyway… judging from the sorts of issues that have come up in conversations/debates I’ve been involved in, I think I’ve covered the major bases necessary. See what you think….

Regretfully, I have just learned that Canon Press will not be publishing These Are Two Covenants. We signed the contract about 13 months ago, and contract signing to release date is usually about a year, so I thought I’d contact them and see what the story was. My understanding is that Canon is cutting back for financial reasons.

Unfortunately, I have no idea regarding an alternative publisher at this time. Disappointing, but five years after first writing and two failed contracts later, I’m still without a publisher, and don’t have the resources on hand myself to print it through my own company.

My former prof has a recent book on paedocommunion – I don’t have it yet myself, though Doug Wilson and Lane Keister are going at it on their respective blogs.

Yesterday, William Hill of the online Covenant Radio did an interview with Venema on the subject. The audio is available here.

In turn, I’ve written this response. Enjoy.

Well, I didn’t manage to sleep a wink last night. After two or three times in bed, I pretty much gave up at around 5 a.m. and got up – listened to music until it was really “get-up” time. It was actually good; I had some opportunity to worship the Lord in the still of night.

Anyway, several hours before that, I wrote another piece for Change in the Wind. Working in part from Romans 13, “The Supremacy of God and the Rule of Law” shows how the prologue to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms offers the foundation for true liberty.

There are now five articles on site, as well as a growing list of links and blog posts. Check it out.