On the Road to Emmaus

Last time, I wrote about the “new exodus,” describing it as a way of speaking of the ending of the Jewish exile while investing it with the epochal significance of replacing the Exodus as the defining event in Israel’s history and their revelation of God. I then described reasons for believing that theologically, the Jewish people did not understand the exile to have ended when the exiles in Babylon physically returned to their homeland in 538 B.C. Understanding this brings a dynamic twist in understanding the NT and the person and message of Jesus. Before we look at how interpreting the New Testament is affected by these realities, it is important to add another dimension.

A significant theme which recurs throughout the later OT writings is the link between the ending of exile and the forgiveness of sins. The classic introduction of this theme is in Isaiah 40 where (if you do something funny to account for the peculiar placement of Isaiah 35) Isaiah’s in-depth exposition of New Exodus kicks off:

Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God.

Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
and cry to her

that she has served her term,
that her iniquity has been pardoned…

Notice the two couplets that I have marked off by leaving space between them. This is to illustrate the extremely common and primary feature of Hebrew poetry called parallelism. We commonly think of poetry as rhyming the sounds of words. This however, is not at all how Hebrew poetry functions. Instead of rhyming words, they would rhyme thoughts. This came in two primary forms (although technically one could tease out various additional nuances). The first is synonymous parallelism, where the two lines of poetry express synonymous thoughts, i.e. their meaning are essentially the same. Examples of such would include:

O come, let us sing for joy to the LORD,
Let us shout joyfully to the rock of our salvation. (Psalm 95:1)

I will extol You, my God, O King,
And I will bless Your name forever and ever. (Psalm 145:1)

One generation shall praise Your works to another,
And shall declare Your mighty acts. (Psalm 145:4)

The LORD of hosts is with us;
The God of Jacob is our stronghold (Ps. 46:11)

The wilderness and the desert will be glad,
And the Arabah will rejoice and blossom (Isaiah 35:1)

Behold, the Lord GOD will come with might,
With His arm ruling for Him (Isaiah 40:10)

The point in all these and many other verses is not that each line is communicating a new and distinct idea. Rather it is a poetic way of saying the same thing. Where this becomes critical is that seeing parallelism can often indicate to us two concepts that the author is holding closely together in a semi-synonymous (though not necessarily precise - remember this is poetry) relationship.

The other major form of parallelism is antonymous parallelism, in which the two lines of the couplet express the opposite idea. This form of parallelism is much less common than the former.

The LORD keeps all who love Him,
But all the wicked He will destroy. (Psalm 145:20)

For the LORD knows the way of the righteous,
But the way of the wicked will perish. (Psalm 1:6)

They will find gladness and joy,
And sorrow and sighing will flee away. (Is. 35:10) - an interesting case, not precisely synonymous or antonymous parallelism, it is expressing the same idea in opposite ways

The purpose of this digression on Hebrew poetry is to show how meaningful it is when the Isianic text brings into parallel the notion of the ending of exile (she has served her term) and the forgiveness of sin (her iniquity has been pardoned). In other words, the author is bringing into a poetically synonymous relationship, the twin notions of the end of Israel’s exile and the forgiveness of their sins. How can these two seemingly disparate themes be related? One has to do with their historical circumstances, the other with their relationship with God. One concerns “horizontal” relationships, the other “vertical.” The one is temporary, the other eternal. Let me explain how I think this works.

The book of Deuteronomy is essentially the covenant charter of the people of Israel. It explains at length the relationship between God and Israel. In chapter 28, blessings are described, which are for Israel if they keep the covenant, while curses are described for Israel if they do not keep the covenant. Interestingly, these blessings and curses are not for individuals, but are for the nation as a whole with regards to corporate obedience or corporate disobedience (an extremely foreign concept for twenty-first century individualism-assaulted denizens). The result of obedience is that God “will establish you as a holy people” and consequently, they will be blessed and prosper, specifically with regard to the surrounding nations of political adversaries. However, if as a nation they do not follow the covenant, they are told that “the LORD will scatter you among all peoples, from one end of the earth to the other end of the earth” and that “The LORD will bring you back to Egypt in ships.” In other words, God’s deliverance of the people from the Egyptian captivity (the exodus) will be reversed by virtue of their corporate disobedience. Chapter thirty also promises that if while in captivity in foreign nations, if they will return to the Lord, he will bring them out of captivity, restore them to the land and bless them abundantly. In summary the result of corporate disobedience is exile and the result of corporate repentance is return from exile.

What we see from Deuteronomy is that the concept of sin and exile are intricately related. Sin is understood in essentially a causal relationship with going into exile. The reason why the captives addressed in Isaiah 40 are in exile is because of their corporate sin. These sins are delineated in much of the pre-exilic prophetic literature and the historical books.

What is critical to grasp here is that sin and forgiveness are not primarily viewed from an individualistic or existentialist perspective. The concern in Isaiah 40 is not “how one feels” when relating to God (i.e., feeling forgiven or feeling shame). Neither is the concern the accumulation of merits and demerits, nor the eternal fate of individuals (i.e., heaven or hell). Rather, the concern is typically Jewish: it is historical, national, geographical, political and related to the future of life on earth. When these people were awaiting the “forgiveness of sins,” they were not anticipating a spiritual experience whereby their guilt-anxiety complex was assuaged. They were not expecting a declaration from heaven announcing their forgiveness or status of righteousness. They certainly we not even dreaming of being assured of escaping the earth for an eternal heavenly abode. They were looking forward the ending of the exile, freedom from foreign powers, the restoration of the nation and the fulfillment of God’s covenant promises in which the entire earth would be renewed. According to Deuteronomy, they would know they were forgiveness, not by the warm-fuzzies, but because they had been brought back to their land and restored as a people. In this passage the forgiveness of sins is not individualistic, internal or “spiritual.” Rather it is corporate, historical, national, geographical, ecological and political. For the exile to end means that Israel has been forgiven of their sins. If the exile has not ended, the logical interpretation is that they have not yet been forgiven and the “wrath of God” still remains over them.

This perspective helps to makes sense of some other “baffling” passages. I always used to get tripped out over verses like these:

Psalm 103:9 - He will not always accuse, nor will he keep his anger forever.

Psalm 85:4-6 - Restore us again, O God of our salvation, and put away your indignation toward us. Will you be angry with us forever? Will you prolong your anger to all generations? Will you not revive us again, so that your people may rejoice in you?

Psalm 79:5 - How long, O LORD? Will you be angry forever? Will your jealous wrath burn like fire?

Micah 7.18-20 – Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over the transgression of the remnant of your possession? He does not retain his anger forever, because he delights in showing clemency. He will again have compassion upon us; he will tread our iniquities under foot. You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea. You will show faithfulness to Jacob and unswerving loyalty to Abraham, as you have sworn to our ancestors from the days of old.

I would think, “don’t the Israelites understand that we’re saved by faith? All you have to do is ask God to forgive you and he will.” I would change the words of these Psalms around when praying and singing them. Instead of saying “you will not always accuse, nor will you keep your anger forever,” I would say something like “you do not always accuse, you do not stay angry forever.” I didn’t make any sense that one would have to plead with God for him to forgive you. That sounded like Medieval penance theology.

These verses (and MANY others) only doesn’t make sense when a modern notion of “justification by faith” and the radical individualization of sin and forgiveness is applied to these passages (See my posts on “Reading the Bible in the Right Direction” for more on this). There is certainly a personal concept of sin in the Scripture but it is not the only way sin is treated and in many passages it is not primary. The verses given above, however, are patently not about the individual assurance of forgiveness. That was not the primary concern of the Israelites in captivity. We don’t see in the Scripture a spirituality of “well, we’re in captivity and slavery, but at least we have the inner assurance of God’s forgiveness so we are content.” That kind of forgiveness was not on their radar. For them, to be forgiven meant to be restored in the full sense of the word, as we see in Ps. 85:4 (restore us again). This is not an issue of “pre-cross/post-cross” as I’ve sometimes heard it described (as if only after Jesus died on the cross can we be forgiven immediately, before then we had to beg and do penance). The context of these passages make clear to us what they are about without bringing in an artificial theological framework that is foreign to the texts. The context of Psalm 85:4-6 is immediately in relation to the notion of the captivity of Israel in exile. The context of Psalm 103 immediately preceding the quote above is all about Moses and the exodus and a quotation from Moses’ encounter with God on Mt. Sinai. Psalm 79 is about the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple as the Babylonian exile was inaugurated. The passage from Micah seven explicitly correlates forgiveness of sin to faithfulness of the covenant with Abraham (i.e., the land).

As I will develop further in my next post, the notions of the ending of exile and the forgiveness of sins are intricately linked in these and many other passages. Understanding this helps restore a more authentically Jewish (and less of a Medieval European) biblical perspective and sheds (in my opinion), radical new light on the both the OT and the NT, especially the life, message and mission of Jesus and the theology of sin, forgiveness and justification in Paul.

One way it immediately helps us, is it beckons us to break out of the morose and obsessive inwardly-bent introspective posture that we can develop when all we think about is dealing with our personal sin and the corollary confusion that the focal point of Christianity is to aid you in dealing with your guilt-anxiety complex. I hate to break it to you, but there is more to Christianity than you and your personal sin! God has a much more expansive and exciting vision for the world and the future than for you to neurotically manage your besetting sins. Of course, dealing with sin and our own insidious propensity towards hatred and violence is incredibly significant, but it can only be done when we are fully engaged with God’s bigger picture for the human race and the future of life on earth. It will necessitate getting our eyes off of ourselves, perhaps at first for only moments at a time, but more and more we will lift our gaze and begin to see the wide and open space of freedom and life God is inviting us to.

Wow. I’m kind of getting excited and am feeling this already-too-long post burgeoning into more than can fit here. More on this to come…

O God, who deemed the creation exceedingly good, richly supplies us with all things to enjoy, and through the raising of Jesus from the dead infuses the world with life ever new: awaken in your people an undreamt-of love for life, loosen the shackles of cynicism and jaded despair and lighten upon us the daybreak colors of the new creation, that as we open to the world, faith, hope and love would once again flow freely in the risky endeavor of whole-hearted living, expecting the rebirth of everything that lives by the quickening of the Spirit, and with this expectation, experiencing our own rebirth, and the rebirth we share with everything else, through Jesus the Messiah our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

Inspired by Jurgen Moltman’s Spirit of Life

I realize that this is the third post thus far entitled “new exodus” and I have as of yet mentioned neither what the New Exodus in fact is nor its significance. Instead, I have given thoughts on the divine name revealed to Moses in the Exodus event and the meaning of that name. This lead into a discussion of the significance of the historical faithfulness of God as revelation. The Jews were anticipating and hoping for a decisive act of God which would be the definitive revelation of God’s faithfulness and indeed his deity. Until this future and final action, according to the Biblical record, God’s faithfulness and even his deity are openly questionable. It is only the historical revelation of God that will bring this questionable-ness to an end.

OK - here’s where I say what the New Exodus is: the decisive event that the Jew’s were waiting for that would bring the definitive revelation of the “God who will be” faithful to his covenant promises was the ending of exile. The ending of this exile was often described with exodus-like imagery and language. The “New Exodus” is a way of speaking of the ending of the Jewish exile while investing it with the epochal significance of replacing the Exodus as the defining event in Israel’s history and their revelation of God.

As a quick historical review the “exilic” period of Israel’s history officially began in 586 B.C. when Babylonian armies sacked Jerusalem, destroying the temple and exiling most of the people of Jerusalem (excepting the poorest) to be slaves in Babylon. This period of deportation ended when Cyrus issued the decree for the return of the exiles and the rebuilding of the temple in 538 B.C.

However, while this physical deportation to Babylon ended in 538 B.C., there are many reasons for believing that according to the Jewish people, the exile had not in fact ended. This point is crucial for understanding the message of the Old Testament as a post-exilic canon of literature and for understanding the historical context of the New Testament. There are two distinct interpretations of this phenomenon. The first, the leading exponent of which is N.T. Wright, is that the Babylonian exile was believed to have not ended. The second interpretation, offered by Brant Pitre, disagrees with Wright in that he believes the exile had not ended because there were in fact two exiles - one in which the ten northern tribes were deported by the Assyrians around 727 B.C., and the second, in which the remaining tribes of Judah and Benjamin were deported by the Babylonians beginning in 597 B.C. and again in 586 B.C. and 581 B.C. Of these two exiles, the Babylonian exile of the southern kingdom had ended, but the Assyrian exile of the northern kingdom had not ended. For this reason, then, according to Pitre, in the days of Jesus it was still believed that the exile had not yet ended.

I believe that Scripture points to the conclusion that both are true: neither the Babylonian nor Assyrian exiles had truly ended.

1) The first reason is the clearest literary example that the Babylonian exile itself was not believed to have ended. This is found in Daniel 9, esp. vv. 24-27. Daniel had been reading the writings of Jeremiah and after concluding that the appointed time had come for the exile to end, began to pray and fast for its fulfillment. While praying, the angel Gabriel appeared to him and in essence explained that the exile was in fact not over, the time of fulfillment had not come, but that there remained 490 years until its conclusion.

2) With regard to the exile of the northern kingdom, there are a number of scriptures, especially in Jeremiah, which speak of both Israel and Judah coming back together. This gathering never happened and yet remained unfulfilled.

Jer. 3.18 – “In those days the house of Judah will walk with the house of Israel, and they will come together from the land of the north to the land that I gave your fathers as an inheritance.

Jer. 30.3 – “For behold, days are coming,’ declares the LORD, ‘when I will restore the fortunes of My people Israel and Judah.’ The LORD says, ‘I will also bring them back to the land that I gave to their forefathers and they shall possess it.’”

Hos. 1.11 – “And the children of Judah and the children of Israel will be gathered together,  And they will appoint for themselves one leader…”

3) Additionally, all the promises given in conjunction with the announcement of the return from exile were not fulfilled. One example will suffice. Isaiah 35 speaks of ecological renewal, bodily restoration, freedom from ungodly beasts, the cessation of suffering and the arrival of everlasting joy simultaneously with the return of the exiles to Jerusalem. This could be demonstrated many times over throughout the prophetic literature. When the exile was to end, it was expected that Israel would be freed from its enemies, the creation would be restored, justice would go to the ends of the earth. At this point, forget the renewal of creation and global justice, after the return from the Babylonian deportation, the Israelites still continued under the domination of foreign powers. Theologically, this meant that the exile had not yet ended.

4) The exiles left Babylonian according to the decree of Cyrus to return and rebuild the temple. Though the prophet Haggai could say that the glory of the latter temple would be greater than the glory of the former (Haggai 2:9), the historical reality is that the second temple was quite lackluster when compared to the former. This is so simply in terms of the quality and comparative magnificence of the building. More importantly, though while with the first temple we have glowing reports of the glory of Yahweh descending and filling the temple (e.g., 2 Chr. 7), there is nothing comparable in the entire period of the second temple. No where is it ever said that Yahweh himself returned to Zion by dwelling in the temple.

5) A further reason is the on-going lament over the fall of Jerusalem and the end of the Davidic Monarchy in 586 B.C. This can be exemplified in the book of Psalms. This collection of songs is evidently a post-exilic redaction as shown by Psalms that celebrate the return from exile, such as Psalms 107, 147 and possibly 66, 96, 98, 132 and others. Nevertheless, laments over the fall of Jerusalem and prayers for the ending of the exile remain in the collection:

Ps. 74:2b-7 - “Remember Mount Zion, where you came to dwell. Direct your steps to the perpetual ruins;   the enemy has destroyed everything in the sanctuary. Your foes have roared within your holy place; they set up their emblems there. At the upper entrance they hacked the wooden trellis with axes. And then, with hatchets and hammers, they smashed all its carved work. They set your sanctuary on fire; they desecrated the dwelling place of your name, bringing it to the ground.”

Ps. 79:1 - “O God, the nations have come into your inheritance;   they have defiled your holy temple;   they have laid Jerusalem in ruins.”

Ps. 89:38-40 - “But now you have spurned and rejected him; you are full of wrath against your anointed.  You have renounced the covenant with your servant;   you have defiled his crown in the dust. You have broken through all his walls;   you have laid his strongholds in ruins.”

Ps. 106:47 - “Save us, O LORD our God, and gather us from among the nations, that we may give thanks to your holy name and glory in your praise.”

Ps. 126:4 -  “Restore our captivity, O LORD,   like the watercourses in the Negev.”

Ps. 137:7 - “Remember, O LORD, against the Edomites   the day of Jerusalem’s fall,  how they said, “Tear it down! Tear it down!  Down to its foundations!”

Other examples could include Pss. 42-43, 68, 80, 85, and 102. What could this phenomenon mean, that after the exile had ended, the prayers and laments of the exilic condition were collected as part of the nation’s continuing liturgical material? What would it mean for the people who had already come out of exile to lament the exile and pray for its ending? It seems that in a significant way (especially considering the poignant and potent language used in some of these Psalms) the Jewish people believed that the great restoration related to the fall of Jerusalem and the exile had not yet in fact happened. It remained in the future and hence the past events should still be lamented and the future events prayed for.

Other reasons could be given, but these five points develop a case that after the Babylonian captives returned to the land, the promised had not been fulfilled and the exile had not yet ended. The faithfulness of Yahweh to his covenant promise to Abraham was still awaited. Hence the ending of exile and the new exodus were future events  anticipated as the definitive revelation of God through his historical intervention on behalf of his people and his creation.

In response to my previous posts on “Reading the Bible in the Right Direction,” one reader asked, “so where does one begin on this journey of rediscovering the full context of the bible through the old testament?” I think this is a great question. So in departure from my standard conceptual model of discussion, I purpose here to tease out a few practical suggestions in following the line of biblical interpretation I laid out previously. 

First it would be appropriate to say that understanding the Bible in this manner (i.e., interpreting the NT through its OT context) is not only for scholars. We have to remember that the Jews in Jesus’ day were mostly illiterate, but were able to interpret his actions in their OT, Jewish context. While granted, they were living in that context, it at least tells us it is possible without a PhD in Jewish studies.

However, it also tells us that this is not something that will be fully grasped in a day or a week. The Jews in Jesus’ day had a lifetime of formation in the Hebrew Scriptures and in the story of God’s dealings with Israel. If we want to take Jesus life, words and actions seriously in their Jewish context we have to be willing to expend the effort to reorient ourselves from whatever story we have been living in (i.e., the Modern Progress Myth, the American Dream, the American Apathy, the MLB schedule, etc.) to the story of God’s dealings with his creation through the Jewish people. While not requiring post-graduate work, it does require that we immerse ourselves (this takes time and effort) in narrative thought world of the Old Testament.

And now for being practical… 

1)  Make reading the OT a regular part of your “spiritual diet.” Many Christians spend all their time in either the gospels or Paul (both of which I love!) but very little time elsewhere. Don’t be afraid to spend a few months reading and studying a section of the OT. Don’t worry - you won’t “get into law” and lose grace. When at a later time you come back to focus in the NT it will be richer and fuller, not diminished.

2) Don’t get bogged down in details. If your goal is to memorize the entire king list of Israel and Judah so be it. If your goal is to understand who Jesus is in his Jewish context and what God did in and through him, it is not critical to memorize every detail of every story in the OT. Neither is it necessary to glean every possible “principle” that can be squeezed out of each story. I think this is one of the reasons people avoid the OT - they think they need to master all the content - THIS IS NOT TRUE. What is critical is to notice the reoccurring themes and motifs and how they are functioning in the narrative. Some themes and motifs to pay attention to are: creation, covenant, exodus, promise, land, inheritance, children (progeny, childbirth, pregnancy), obedience/faithfulness, sin/idolatry, justice/injustice, forgiveness, exile, return from exile, restoration/redemption, king/kingship, life/death, temple, nations/foreigners. I’m sure there could be many others, but I think you get the point.

3) Though I may get shot for saying such, I do believe that certain parts of the OT are (a lot) more important than others. This is a corollary of the previous point. Memorizing every detail in the historical books is not essential for grasping the overall flow of the OT narrative and its primary messages. If you don’t remember who every king is and what they did, but do remember that king after king after king violated the covenant, led the people in sin and idolatry, promoting grave injustice, which was the ultimate reason for them being removed from the land, for the temple being destroyed and for them being sent into exile to be ruled over by foreign nations, you would not be far from the Kingdom of God. With that said, it is not necessary to spend months memorizing all the details unless you want to be a scholar whose expertise is in the historical books of the OT. 

My humble (and open to change) opinion is that some of the more significant sections of the Bible (that bear the greatest weight in shaping first century Judaism and the NT) are Genesis, Exodus, the Psalms and Isaiah 40-55(or 66). I know these are long and scary books. Read them anyway! If you read them over and over they will in due time become familiar. As for the Psalms - I do not mean thirty selected verses in your favorite eight psalms – I mean ALL of them. There’s some weird stuff in those psalms, but they are the recorded prayer life of Israel. It is how Israel understood, interpreted and responded to the events described in the other books of the OT. I am really passionate about the book of Psalms in its entire. I am very tempted to digress, but will make a note to write an entire post on the Psalms in at a later date.

Spend time in these books attempting to grasp their key messages. If you memorize details but cannot say what the main themes are you are missing the point. Chill out with the memorization, read the books in long chunks and then reflect on what stands out as thematic.

4) Read the Bible in long chunks. I know I just said that, but it bears repeating. Do not content yourself with reading a list of isolated verses. Single verses are great for meditation and reflection, but that is not Bible study. Let there be frequent times when you read five or ten chapters of the Bible in a row. Read short books in one sitting. Find a Bible without chapter and verse divisions so to avoid artificial segmentation of sections of the Bible that need to go together (check out http://thebooksofthebible.info for a great new Bible like this).

It used to be assumed that the central unit of meaning was the smaller unit like the sentence, the word, or even parts of words. However, it is more and more being asserted that the primary unit of meaning are the larger units (paragraph, groups of paragraphs). Each individual unit only has its meaning with the whole. Apart from the whole the smaller units do not mean the same thing. For this reason it is essential that all the parts are incorporated into the larger whole. Reading verses one by one in isolation will not communicate the full meaning, because the meaning is likely in the larger unit (this approach is called discourse-analysis, in case you are interested).

5) When you see a quotation from the OT in the NT, go back and read the larger context of the quotation. I often hear remarks that the authors of the NT took OT scriptures out of context. Before you come to that conclusion, go back and read the entire passage. Then bring those ideas into the NT passage and see how interpretation may be impacted. The authors of the NT are much more subtle and their meaning is much more profound then simple proof-texting.

6) When reading the NT, regularly ask what concepts mean in the OT. What does sin and forgiveness mean in the OT? How does its connection with the exile and return in the OT impact our understanding its meaning in the NT? What does redemption mean in the OT? How does its connection with the exodus in the OT impact our understanding of it in the NT? What is a “soul” in the OT? How does this bear on our understanding of NT anthropology?

7) Stop treating the OT like a second-class member of the Bible. Last night I was talking with some people about the OT and interpreting a specific passage and someone said in jest (because they know what I think about these kind of things): “oh, its just the Old Testament,” as in, “we let weird things slide in the OT because now that we have the NT we can forget about all those other things we don’t understand.” 
Let’s treat the Old Testament as real inspired and authoritative scripture. When we find things that don’t line up to our preconceived ideas, lets allow ourselves to be challenged by them rather than dismissing them as being “in the Old Testament.” The Bible is a book that refuses to be tamed by our contrived theological systems. The Bible does not need the sedatives of eisegesis to make it palatable to the modern Christian ethos. Much of what is in the OT can, will and should challenge our pre-existing ideas when we too-confidently have our concepts and ideology neatly arranged, cleaned, packaged and trimmed.

In the last post, I proposed that the revelation of the divine name “Yahweh” to Moses at the burning bush is better translated “I will be” rather than “I AM.” Instead of relating to static categories of existence or other such metaphysical qualities Greek philosophers were interested in, it pertains to the future of God’s faithfulness to his word in time-space history. It has been said in many times and places that in ancient culture one’s name was not simply a tag enabling one to address another in conversation. Names convey character, quality and essence. If this is the case, and this name “I will be” is strategically unveiled in connection with the Exodus event, this means that the revelation of God’s self is not truly contained within the name, but in the yet outstanding future of God’s covenant faithfulness. In other words, if God’s name is “I will be,” the primary revelation of God lies in future historical events that confirm his faithfulness.

In theology this is referred to as revelation through history in contrast to inspiration. Historical revelation is conveyed objectively through occurrences and events in history. Inspiration is conveyed through subjective experiences, often in which the “word of God” is communicated. Both are important in the Biblical record, but the historical dimensions of revelation are often overlooked and emphasis unduly falls on the verbal dimensions of revelation. At times “revelation” becomes reducible to either the words of the Bible, specific “words from God,” or propositional statements about Christian truth. However, the concept of historical revelation conveys an idea we all intuitively know from everyday life: we know more about a person from what they do than from what they say about themselves. The repetition of propositional statements despite contrary concrete experiential evidence convinces few people of truth. To be loved in both word and deed is critical, but when loving words remain in the absence of loving action, the words become reduced to meaninglessness. It is extremely difficult to maintain a proposition “God is good” without historical evidence of God’s goodness.

Furthermore, the events of God in history cannot be simply translated into propositions in the same way we know from everyday life that verbal communication about an event cannot communicate the full wealth of meaning contained in the experience. This points to the depth of meaning in the historical revelation of God that is a necessary complement to revelation by inspiration. The person with the experience and the person with the report about the experience do not have the same meaning. If at this point an appeal to the Holy Spirit is made, how can the illuminative agency of the Spirit be understood verbally? Does the Spirit simply repeat the words of Scripture to us, or give us new ways of expressing them? If we understand that the Holy Spirit illuminates the words of Scripture as profoundly meaningful (through the generation of faith?), then this meaning (faith/belief/trust/assurance) must be recognized as something that is extra-verbal and extra-rational. It is not a given in the verbal concepts themselves.

Language and words are simultaneously translators and traitors of meaning because, even in the pinnacle of expression, they fail to fully convey “what the presence of meaning wishes to say about itself” (Derrida). Even if one believes that discourse represents reality (as opposed to constructing or constituting reality), one cannot say that discourse completely conveys reality, even if God is speaking. Therefore, informative and instrumental communication is incomplete. Reality is too big to fit into propositions.

Though seemingly “rediscovered” in the twentieth century, the authors of the Biblical text readily understood this concept as demonstrated by the emphasis on the historical revelation of God. It was not sufficient to say that God was good, loving, patient, forgiving, etc. The very words demand their historical demonstration lest their sincerity be indubitably falsified. Many verses describe how God is known through what he does, particularly the exodus events. The primary way the people of Israel understood themselves and God historically was through the Exodus. He is the freedom God, the faithful God, the God of deliverance:

Ex. 7.5 – “The Egyptians shall know that I am the LORD, when I stretch out My hand on Egypt and bring out the sons of Israel from their midst.”
Exod. 20:2-3 – “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. “You shall have no other gods before Me.
Ex. 29.46 – “They shall know that I am the LORD their God who brought them out of the land of Egypt, that I might dwell among them; I am the LORD their God.
Deut. 4:35 – To you it was shown that you might know that the LORD, He is God; there is no other besides Him.
Deut. 7:8-9 – the LORD brought you out by a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. 9 “Know therefore that the LORD your God, He is God, the faithful God, who keeps His covenant and His lovingkindness to a thousandth generation with those who love Him and keep His commandments;

Even more significant than the link between revelation and the exodus event is the expected revelation of God in a future definitive intervention in which God would show himself to be faithful to his word in restoring his people.

This concept is often seen with the phrase “in that day/then you will know that I am the Lord:”

Is. 49.23 – “Kings will be your guardians, And their princesses your nurses. They will bow down to you with their faces to the earth And lick the dust of your feet; And you will know that I am the LORD; Those who hopefully wait for Me will not be put to shame.
Is. 60.16 – “You will also suck the milk of nations And suck the breast of kings; Then you will know that I, the LORD, am your Savior And your Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob.
Ezek. 37.13 – “Then you will know that I am the LORD, when I have opened your graves and caused you to come up out of your graves, My people.
Hos. 2.20 – And I will betroth you to Me in faithfulness. Then you will know the LORD.
Joel 3.17 – Then you will know that I am the LORD your God, Dwelling in Zion, My holy mountain. So Jerusalem will be holy, And strangers will pass through it no more.

But the “then you will know” formula is not necessarily present:

Is. 25.9 – And it will be said in that day, “Behold, this is our God for whom we have waited that He might save us. This is the LORD for whom we have waited; Let us rejoice and be glad in His salvation.”
Is. 52.10 – The LORD has bared His holy arm In the sight of all the nations, That all the ends of the earth may see The salvation of our God.
Is. 66.13 – “As one whom his mother comforts, so I will comfort you; And you will be comforted in Jerusalem.”
14 Then you will see this, and your heart will be glad, And your bones will flourish like the new grass; And the hand of the LORD will be made known to His servants, But He will be indignant toward His enemies.
Psa. 98.2 – The LORD has made known His salvation; He has revealed His righteousness in the sight of the nations. 3 He has remembered His lovingkindness and His faithfulness to the house of Israel; All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God.
Ezekiel 36:36 - Then the nations that are left round about you will know that I, the LORD, have rebuilt the ruined places and planted that which was desolate; I, the LORD, have spoken and will do it.”

The final, definitive revelation of God comes at the end of history. Revelation of God is ultimately eschatological. This then means that, in a sense, all revelation we have of God now is partial and provisional. It awaits a final word yet to come. This “final word” comes at the end, when God renews all things.

Thus far, I have only been explicating this concept from Old Testament passages, but will illustrate it with simply one passage from the New Testament. Revelation 22:4 makes a startling declaration in saying that “they will see his face.” In the New Heavens and New Earth, the people of God who have overcome look into the very face of God. This is remarkable considering that strands of tradition explicitly state that those who see the face of God would die. Seeing the face of God means direct unmediated contact and full revelation. This realm is inaccessible to mortals. In the first chapter of John we are told that no one has seen God at any time. Paul says in 1 Corinthians that we “see in a glass dimly” and that even the best of us only “know in part.” However, when God renews all things, when he makes his definitive intervention and transformation of history, we will see him face to face. This full revelation awaits a time in the future when the fulfillment of every promise of God is made fully manifest. In the New Creation we will see God fully as He is. “Only God’s final revelation at the end of history will bring with it final knowledge of the content and truth of the act of God in Jesus of Nazareth. God alone has the competence to speak the final word about God’s work in history” (Wolfhart Pannenberg).

A friend recently asked me to condense some thoughts on the concept of “new exodus.” Surprisingly, especially if such a concept is new to you, I believe that “new exodus” is one of the primary interpretive frameworks for understanding the New Testament. This is an additional example of how biblical interpretation must move in the direction of Old Testament, first and foundational, New Testament second and derivative (though launching off in some surprising turns and creative new directions). I figured I might as well make my response public.

The first thing to say is that the New Exodus is a huge subject and has been the treatment of many scholarly monographs. Here I hope to just introduce some of the primary Scripture verses related to the subject and will by no means be a full discussion.

Obviously, any discussion of a “new exodus” must take into consideration the “first exodus.” The exodus was the deliverance of a company of Jewish slaves from the nation of Egypt in either the 15th or 13th century B.C. This event is described as Israel’s redemption (Ex. 21.8; Deut. 7:8; 13:5; 24:18; an extremely significant word in later biblical texts). By this event, Israel was forged as a covenant nation and it became the pivotal moment of remembrance in the nation’s history. Critical and curious to note is that the exodus, while becoming foundational for many later prophetic and Pauline discussions, had nothing to do with sin. The “redemption” from Egypt was not related to forgiveness, it was sheerly an act of salvation as an overflow of compassion.

In context to the Exodus, God reveals himself for the first time with his personal name Yahweh (Ex. 3.13ff.), which does not carry the metaphysically intrusive (and static) meaning of “I AM” in the sense of an “eternal present.” The concept of an “eternal present” was expressed by the Greek philosopher Parmenides to describe the being who is completely removed from the temporal sequence of everything we experience. Instead this being experiences our past, present, and future simultaneously as one “eternal present.” This was related to his belief that reality is most essentially what is unchanging. This obviously precludes anything in the natural world. The manifold diversity, movement, motion and change in the world we observe are less real than the eternal and indivisible realities behind them. In fact, change, motion and diversity came to be viewed as imperfections from that which is eternal. This philosophical understanding of god and reality was taken up by Plato and Aristotle, and later by Augustine, Boethius and Aquinas, all in varying nuances.

The Hebrews were entirely unfamiliar with the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle at this point, and in the midst of the people’s sufferings, I am certain that God did not pause to give a lesson on abstract metaphysics and the relationship between God and time (i.e., that God is “outside of time”). This makes absolutely no sense of the passage in which God declares himself to have seen their affliction, heard their cries, knows (not in an abstract theoretical sense, but in an experiential sense) their suffering and has “come down,” in history, to deliver them. He is the God of history, he is the God experientially involved in history, far from soaring above it as a detached observer, but to the chagrin of Aristotle, participating in its sorrows.

The first key to understanding this divine name is its approximate translation in Hebrew. It seems to be a form of the verb “to be,” and when translated into the English (or even Greek) present tense is rendered as “I AM.” However, Hebrew grammar does not use tense, which indicates the relative time of an action (past, present or future). Instead it uses aspect, which rather than describing the time of an action in relation to the speaker, it describes the contour of the actions. In Hebrew there are only two distinct aspects, the perfect and the imperfect aspect. The Perfect aspect considers an action as complete, or as a whole, regardless of when it happens. This is different than describing an action as completed. It is not an event that is over, but is being consider in its totality without an incomplete, unresolved, progressive aspect to it. It can refer to an action in the past, present or future, but the completeness of the action is in sight and is considered as a whole. The Impefect aspect considers an action that is not seen as a whole. It is on-going and unfinished, regardless as to whether it is past, present or future. In essence, perfective aspect views an action as closed and complete, imperfective views an action as open, on-going and dynamic.

The name Yahweh is a form of the verb “to be” in the imperfective aspect. This means that the interpretation as “I AM” as a static eternal present cannot be what is meant by the Hebrew text. Whatever it does mean, the concept of God’s being expressed in the name is not conceived of as a complete entity, a timeless existence in which all of history is simultaneously present. Whether or not this concept is true of God is a different question, but it is certainly not the meaning of the divine name and is not at all being expressed in the Exodus narratives. Instead, this name connotes an on-going nature of openness, of a dynamic future of engagement with history and the on-going drama of salvation.

The second key is the context in which this revelation comes. The surrounding speech is entirely about the suffering of the Israelites and God’s intention to deliver them. The ensuing narratives are likewise about the same - a suffering people and a compassionate God delivering them with great might and power. It seems odd that God takes a time out to have a lesson in abstract metaphysics. It makes more sense to believe that the revelation of this name is in context to the people’s historical situation and God’s historical intervention.

The third key to understanding the divine name is in the next verse when God describes himself as the “God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.” In other words, Yahweh is the God of covenant. He is the God who made concrete promises to a bunch of earthlings about the future of their life on the earth. Those individuals became pilgrims (nomads, really) in hopeful expectation of the promises of God.

He we see in greater fullness what this divine name may mean. He is the God of an on-going, unfinished historical interaction. He is the God of compassionate involvement with and for his people. He is the God of covenant. Taken together, it seems that although still insufficient, it would be more accurate to translate Yahweh as “I will be” and the explanatory phrase as “I will be who I will be.” In other words, the divine name is about the future of God’s faithfulness to his covenant in the historical intervention and deliverance of his people. This divine name takes the exodus as its paradigm and moment of revelation. If this is what the divine name means, there are significant implications through the remainder of the biblical writings. Yahweh is not simply a tag so God can be called something. It is a powerful expression of hopeful openness to the future despite a conflicted present, in which our confidence is rooted in the historical faithfulness of God to his covenant promises. “He will be” in that he will be true to himself and his word, faithfully present to his people in the actualization of a yet outstanding and unimaginable future, with its ultimate fulfillment in the new creation of all things. The exodus (and the “new exodus”) are centrally about the historical faithfulness of God to his creation, his covenant and his people, in which he participates with compassion in the suffering of humanity, intervening for their deliverance, salvation and restoration.

In my last post I proposed a manner of biblical interpretation in which the ideas, concepts, world-view, etc. of the Old Testament must be the foundation for understanding the New Testament, rather than vice versa. The thought must flow from an informed Old Testament understanding into the New Testament, rather than reinterpreting the Old Testament by what is assumed the New Testament means.

One illustration will suffice for now, although I will elucidate this principle in a number of subsequent posts. In Matthew 2:15, Matthew describes how after the birth of Jesus, his parents took him to Egypt to avoid the threat of Herod. After Herod died, they came back to Judea. Matthew says, “This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: “Out of Egypt I called my son.” On first glance, this may look like a fulfillment of prophesy “proving” that Jesus is the Messiah. It seems that way until one looks at the context surrounding the verse quoted in Hosea 11.  Instead of being a prophecy foretelling the future, it is the recollection of God’s past faithfulness to Israel in bringing them out of Egypt in the Exodus. The “son” is Israel, who in the Exodus accounts is called Yahweh’s “firstborn son” (Ex. 4:22). Does Matthew 2 thereby “prove” that Jesus is the Messiah on the basis of Hosea 11? Is that what Matthew means by “fulfillment?”

It seems like we have two interpretive options. We can read the Bible backwards - inserting the NT idea into the OT. This would leave us with a Hosea 11 which is maybe a little bit about Israel, but is really about Jesus, predicting his departure from Egypt when he was young so we could conclusively prove that Jesus came to die for our sins and bring our souls with him to heaven. The other possibility is to read the Bible in the other direction. Hosea 11 really is about Israel. It really is about the covenant. It really is about the history of promises given to an earthling (i.e., Abraham) about the future of life on earth. History does not become irrelevant in the light of eternity. Earth does not become irrelevant in light of heaven. Humanity does not become irrelevant in the light of God. Instead of Hosea 11 becoming about Jesus (which would make Hosea 11 pretty incomprehensible, especially to its original audience), Matthew is telling us that the birth and life of Jesus and the story he is recounting is in direct continuity with the OT history of promise, covenant and exodus.

This is not a proof-text for the Messiah-ship of Jesus. Rather it tells us that Jesus is embodying the history of Israel and is indeed re-enacting it, to prepare us to understand that Jesus is the true representative of Israel, the one who will go into exile for their sins and burst through the bonds of the exile of death to herald the restoration, indeed the resurrection of Israel and all humanity. Jesus fulfills what was written in the prophets, in that he is the climax, the consummation, the fulfillment of the story of Israel. All of Israel’s hopes had been looking back to the covenant promises and forward to the nation’s restoration. They were looking for a new exodus, a final, eschatological exodus in which all things would be made new. This story of promise and expectation finds its fulfillment in Jesus. In Him, the Pharaoh of history, death itself, has been defeated and the way is opened for all to enter into the perpetual existence of resurrection life.

Paul, a bond-servant of Christ Jesus, called as an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which He promised beforehand through His prophets in the holy Scriptures, concerning His Son… (Romans 1:1-3)

Now to Him who is able to establish you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery which has been kept secret for long ages past, but now is manifested, and by the Scriptures of the prophets, according to the commandment of the eternal God, has been made known to all the nations, leading to obedience of faith… (Roman 16:25-26)

What the previous posts about the flesh/spirit conflict bring out is my conviction that the order of the Bible must necessarily be heeded. By this, I do not refer to the order of the books, as there has been a variety of such orders throughout the history of Biblical usage. I simply mean the order Old Testament first, New Testament second. Far from being derogatory, the term “old” in Old Testament refers to its being foundational to the New Testament rather than something that is replaced or superseded. The Bible must be read in the right direction.

In the above quoted passages, which form a bracket around the book of Romans, both mention the dependence of Paul’s gospel on the previous testimony of the Old Testament scriptures. This does not simply mean that the Old Testament is a repository of predictions awaiting proof which have now been provided in the New Testament. Rather, Paul’s gospel is based on the entire Old Testament narrative, which although taking some surprising turns, still remains intact as its foundational element. Paul, and all the other authors of New Testament, understand that what happened in and through Jesus was in dynamic continuity with the OT narrative, beginning with the creation of the world, through Abraham and the covenant made to him, Moses, David and the covenant made to him, and the proclamations of the prophets before, during and after the exile. All of these elements are clearly drawn upon specifically in the book of Romans (Rom. 1:20; 4:1ff; 1:3-4; 9:14-17; 9:25; 15:9-12) and throughout the New Testament writings.

We should not expect the New Testament (hereafter NT) authors to repeat the entire content of the Old Testament (hereafter OT). Not only would this make the NT three times longer, it would be redundant. The respective aspects of the OT narrative did not need to be and were not repeated in the NT, because they were already developed in the OT and first-century Jews were well acquainted with them. The NT authors built on this already assumed understanding. They start from this foundation (i.e., formidable acquaintance with the literature of the Old Testament) and then explicate the new developments and difficulties that are brought about by the decisive action of God in and through Jesus the Messiah.

If this is the case, then in order to understand the NT, one must understand the OT first. Then, the direction of interpretation must flow from the OT into the NT. After being acquainted with the framework of thought in the OT, that then forms how we understand and interpret the NT. The narrative of the OT and the meaning it gives various concepts sets what is normative for interpreting the NT. We must remember that before anything else, the Bible is a story and the gospel is an announcement of good news, i.e., events have occurred whereby God has been faithful to his covenant people and fulfilled his promises to them. In order for stories to make sense, the beginning and middle must be read (not necessarily before reading the end, but at least at some point). True, the fulfillment of the promise can give illuminative insight into the original promises (just as reading the end of a story can clarify some nuances of the story’s beginning), but how can we adequately understand the fulfillment in abstraction from the originating history of promise? How does the conclusion of the story make any sense apart from it being the consummation of something that has long since begun? It often seems as though what God did in the NT is completely new and bears no relation to the OT. If this is the case, we have not understood the Bible aright.

It strikes me that there is a widespread avoidance of the OT, possibly due to its large amount of content, or to its seeming opacity, or the seeming discontinuity between the vision of God and life between the two testaments. We then settle in the more comfortable world of the NT, which is “more easily understood” and is relatively more tame. This then cultivates the opposite approach of interpretation, where our “understanding” of the NT becomes normative for our interpretation of the OT. Suddenly, nothing in the OT is about Israel, creation, the covenants, the land, the exodus, and the exile, but is now about Jesus, and the spiritual life of the soul on its journey to heaven. Those are just the external trappings for the “deeper” “spiritual” message of the OT, which often enough winds up being identical to the OT-free interpretation of the NT.

I would like to suggest naming this phenomenon “quasi-Marcionism.” Marcion was a man decisively denounced as a heretic in the second century. He taught that the god of the OT (Yahweh) was a different god than the god of the NT (Jesus). The god of the OT was a god of wrath, while Jesus was a god of love. He developed an alternate canon of Scripture which included only ten of Paul’s letters and one gospel (a chopped up version of the Gospel of Luke) and eliminated everything else (including the entire Old Testament). It seemed to him that Paul’s gospel was radically different than that declared in the OT. The early church refused to accept such an idea.

If we find it difficult to reconcile the “god” of the OT with the god of the “NT” as well as their respective themes and world-views, then I would contend that we are quite possibly, sorely misunderstanding the NT, and falling prey to quasi-Marcionism. I call the phenomenon described earlier quasi-Marcionism because it does not outright reject the OT, it simply reinterprets it as the NT in slightly more allegoric fashion (i.e., the OT is simply stories that illustrate NT principles). Instead of reinterpreting the Old Testament as being about Jesus and the salvation of souls, it is better and more consistent with the NT itself, to see the NT — i.e., our understanding of Jesus and the “salvation of souls” as being precisely about Israel, creation, the covenants, the land, the exodus and the exile. These are not merely the external trappings that the NT sheds, they are central to the message of the entire Bible. In my opinion, we need to become less familiar with the NT, less comfortable in its soil which is truly more foreign to us then we imagine. As long as the OT, its story, world-view, themes, expectations and hopes, are mystifying to us, we do not have a comfortable resting place in the NT, for it is a profoundly Jewish book embedded in the thought of the former.

In my next post I will illustrate this principle briefly…but first - I must mention that my intention is not to be down on this or that interpretation of Scripture. My hope is that many Christian will be captured by the Old Testament. These books invite us to be caught in the drama of a story that is so much bigger than ourselves, the conclusion of which is magnificent far beyond our wildest imaginations. Rather than mechanize the Old Testament as a repository of proof-texts and principles, we are beckoned to become pilgrims on the way of promise, hope and expectation. We are freed to embrace and acknowledge the concrete realities of our lived lives, celebrating its joys, mourning its sorrows, and by faith in God’s future, to gather together our joys and sorrows and lift up our eyes with hope, eagerly looking towards the yet outstanding future where God will wipe away tears from all faces and renew the face of the earth (Is. 25:8; Ps. 104:30).

In the last post I developed the idea of flesh/spirit, particularly from the angle of eschatology. To understanding the Spirit biblically, it must be considered in light of eschatology because the Spirit is the life and power of the age to come. The Spirit is not simply a force or power, but a person who is drawing the entire created order towards God’s future, renewing life and overcoming the powers of death and disorder. Understanding what the “flesh” is, has extremely practical implications for the life of faith and the orientation of one’s focus with regard to sanctification.We all know the “flesh” is bad and we should be against it, therefore the identification of this enemy is crucial in warring against it. In the last post I employed the methodology that we start with the solution and then explicate the problem rather than vice versa. Instead of beginning with a description of the flesh, we first described the nature of the Spirit and then were able to discern the contours of our enemy “the flesh.” In that post we looked at the Spirit through the lens of eschatology. Now we will look at the Spirit through the lens of the Trinity and seek to explicate “the flesh” from that perspective.

The doctrine of the Trinity tells us that God’s own being resides in the inter-relations between Father, Son and Spirit. The foundational underlying reality of God’s being is not the individual persons of the Godhead, but their communion of love with each other. Since humans are made in God’s image, this tells us that contrary to Boethius, the “basic atomic reality of humanity,” the essential indivisible constituency of humanity is not the individual, but the community. The existence of the community is ontologically and biologically prior to the individual. Our true humanity is only expressed, not as individuals, but as persons in loving relationship. This illuminates the fundamental characteristic of holiness – perfect love. The holy person is the person who loves in relationships. Notions of holiness cannot be abstract, detached or impersonal. Rather, they must be concrete, involved and relational.

The Trinitarian understanding of human relationality also illuminates the negative dimensions of human existence that holiness and sanctification seek to overcome. Sin is often understood as either “pride” or alternatively “self-centeredness.” Advocates of both views often claim Augustinian grounding. Some see understanding “self-centeredness” as an improvement over “pride” in that it is rooted in a Trinitarian theology of love. Sin is disordered and inwardly focused love rather than simply pride. The phronema tes sarkos, the “mindset of the flesh” is thus understood as a “self-centered mind-set” or “mind set purely on human goals and values.” The problem with humanity is that it is inwardly bent in pursuit of self-sovereignty, self-glorification, self-promotion, self-sufficiency, self-importance and self-gratification.

However, what the doctrine of the Trinity tells us is that we cannot allow the individual to be the fundamental unit of reality. Thus our foundational concepts of sin and depravity cannot be at center individualistic. Sin and the flesh cannot be confined to the isolated disorder of the individual. They cannot solely be understood or explicated in terms of self-centeredness. They cannot be explained only with reference to the self if it is truly impossible to rescind one’s relational nature. As long as one exists in relationship, others are involved. Therefore the nature of sin and the disordered motivation of the flesh are better viewed as an active anti-love or even hatred towards others. One’s attitudes towards one’s self and the actions of one’s self always involve others in the form of their presence or absence.
Self-sovereignty always means other-subjugating. Self-glorification always means other de-valuing. Self- promotion always means other-diminishing. Self-sufficiency always means other-rejection. Pursuit of self-importance always means other-insignificance. Misbegotten self-gratification always entails the utilitarian exploitation of others or the refusal to be generous to others. The sin of “self” is in fact not merely the “sin of self.” It must always be interpreted and articulated in the light of the relationality that one fails to exist without. Hence, these self-bending sins are all in fact forms of anti-love, or even hatred.

This demonstrates that the application of the centrality of relationality to harmartiology (the doctrine of sin) does not “reduce” a concept of sin. Humans are not in fact indicted for “selfishness” alone but for various forms of hatred and violence against others. The concept of sin through the doctrine of the Trinity seems to actually radicalize the doctrine of sin. This furthermore necessitates that any solution to the notion of sin, as manifested in a form of positive holiness and sanctification, must radically address that while humans have an insatiable craving for relationship and an instinctual urge to abscond their unavoidable sense of loneliness, they simultaneously possess an, at times insidious and at times unambiguous, fear, aversion and hostility towards the very thing they crave.

The Biblical discussion of the concepts of “flesh” and “spirit” are highly problematic for several reasons. “Flesh” is one of the grand enemies of the Christian, along with the “world” (another problematic term) and the “devil” (yet another problematic term…). Hence the Christian must “war against the flesh.” As long as this remains theoretical, no problems will surface. Difficulties appear, however, as soon as one seeks to locate this “flesh” and fight against it. What does Paul mean by “flesh?” The simplest answer is a vague approximation between “flesh” and either materiality or bodily existence. I once had someone, when explaining what “flesh” was, dramatically pinch and pull the skin on his arm to make explicitly concrete this vile affiliation with the body. Another thorny interpretation of “flesh” is to call it the “sinful nature” (as unfortunately the NIV and yet the TNIV translates the greek word sarx). The Bible NEVER explicitly speaks of a “sinful nature.” Nature means what is inherent and essential. If sin is thus inherent or essential to human existence, that would invalidate an original state of innocence (thus excluding a concept of a “fall”) and make an existence without sin in the age to come impossible. Sin is never part of the central, inviolable identity of human beings. As long as humans live on earth the stranglehold of sin can be broken and exposed as the alien obtrusion that it is. Albiet, I understand what people mean when they say “sinful nature” and would never deny the depraved state of humanity. Nevertheless, “sinful nature” IS NOT a biblical term and I believe it is not the best way to express the brokenness of humanity. This however, is well beside the point…

The crux of the issue is that the interpretation of flesh in correlation with bodily or essential human existence opens the door for quasi-gnosticism. Gnosticism in a nut shell is the ancient (and heretical) belief that (for simplicity’s sake) matter is inherently evil (has an evil/sinful nature) and spirit is good. The good spirits of people are trapped in wicked bodies and need to be released by an enlightened spirit messenger and by the acquisition of a higher knowledge (gnosis). Gnosticism was the PRIMARY heresy that the early church combated, precisely because from the beginning of the church it was the most destructive idea to authentic apostolic Christianity. This idea subtly continues in the church when we ascribe a bad or inferior status to the material world or specifically our bodies. This belief slowly, yet thoroughly deconstructs the meaning and power of apostolic doctrine in its belief of the goodness of God’s role as creator, his creation, the value of life in the body and the renewal of the earth (check the tags “Gnosticism” and “new creation” for more on this).

This problem stems from common approach to interpreting Paul, and the gospel in general, to first outline the “problem” for only then can the solution be understood. Rudolf Bultmann epitomized this view when he said, “after man-under-the-Law has been made to see his situation under it as that of the ‘miserable wretch’ groaning for deliverance from the ‘body of death’, he can then see the salvation-occurrence as salvation-bringing.”  Thus we look first at the problem – the problem is the flesh – and then discern the solution – opposing, eliminating or escaping the flesh.

E.P. Sanders has suggested that for Paul, the dilemma is not self-evident, but the solution provided in the Gospel illuminates the dilemma.  This line of thought can be fruitful for understanding the flesh-Spirit conflict. “Flesh” is not primarily seen as negative in itself. It is only in light of the solution provided in the gospel that “flesh” is then seen as negative.

Flesh in the Old Testament speaks of corporate humanity in their weakness and fragility. This was not seen as evil, but was understood as an inevitable reality of existence. All living beings came from the dust and to the dust they will return (Gen. 18:27; Ps 103:14; Eccles 12:7; cf. 1 Cor. 15:47). However, in the NT, particularly in Paul, “flesh” takes on an unprecedented and unequivocal negative meaning. Here it is not because of any kind of inherent evil nature of flesh, but rather because of a dramatic alteration in the situation previously described. Whereas formerly “flesh” described the negative but inevitable weakness that characterized human solidarity, the resurrection of Jesus has introduced a radical newness. The “inevitability” of the corruption and death of flesh is no longer such. Its overcoming has not only been envisaged but has in fact been actualized in and through Jesus. As resurrection and the Spirit functioned as synecdoches for God’s entire eschatological restoration program, so “flesh” becomes a synecdoche for all that God is renewing, restoring and replacing. “Flesh” is the dangling vestage of all that is contrary to God’s future for the world. Thus, the “mindset of the flesh” is not an “attachment to earthly-things.” How could one not be attached to earthly things? Humans are quite literally “earthling” (the word for human in Hebrew is derived from the word for earth/ground). The mindset-of-the-flesh is rather that motivational force which seeks to maintain the status quo of sin, death, disorder, estrangement, alienation, suffering, injustice and unrighteousness over and against God’s work of new creation.

It is common to discuss the contrast of flesh and Spirit in terms of anthropology.  However, this is not possible. First of all, “Spirit” is not a fundamental component of human being, if it can be called a component of human being at all. Rather it is a person of the Godhead. To speak of Spirit in human anthropology would be to dangerously blur the distinction between God and humans. Furthermore, “flesh,” in Pauline terminology, cannot even be called a fundamental constituent of human nature. Though often equated with the physical body, Paul’s discussion of the flesh shows us that this cannot be the case. In Romans 8:9 he tells the believers “you are not in the flesh if the Spirit of God dwells in you.” What could this sentence possibly mean if the word “flesh” means the body or even “the body with regard to its sinfulness?” To push the physicality of “flesh” renders Paul as ludicrous in this statement. Rather, “flesh” is a sphere that individuals can be “in” or “out,” and thus cannot be part of the “nature” of humans. Nature refers to the essential characteristics of an entity. If humans can be outside the realm of “flesh,” then flesh cannot be essential to them. Hence it is not part of their nature.

Altogether, neither “flesh” nor “spirit” can be used to discuss human nature in a fundamental way. This illuminates that for Paul these terms do not function primarily anthropologically, but rather eschatologically. It is recognized by many biblical scholars today, that a fully Biblical understanding of the Spirit cannot be gained apart from the larger context of eschatology. A neat scholastic schematic that would appropriate “flesh” to the doctrine of anthropology, the Spirit as a component of soteriology and eschatology to a theological appendix (if not appendage) will never grasp the symphonic nature of Pauline thought concerning these terms. Passages like Isaiah 11:2; 42:1; 61:1 show how Jewish Messianic concepts were strongly linked to the concept of the Spirit. Passages like Isaiah 4; 32:15; 44:3; Joel 2:28ff and Ezekiel 36-37 link the Spirit to the eschatological restoration of the people of God and God’s world. The Spirit who played a critical role in creation (Gen. 1:2; Job 33:4; Ps. 33:6; 104:29) will be mightily operative to recreate God’s precious yet disfigured world.

The disparaging way Paul speaks of “flesh” is not remotely Gnostic. It does not make a gradation of “spiritual” over “natural” or “soul” over “body.” Rather the flesh is that which corresponds to the age of Adam and participates in its death-drives. It is that which is in allegiance with everything contrary to God’s kingdom, God’s future for the world, where there will be no more death, no more mourning, no more cry and no more pain. Wars will cease to the ends of the earth. The broken-heart will be bound up, the captive will be set free, the afflicted will be comforted. The entire created order will be renewed as righteousness, peace, joy and love flood the earth in the knowledge of God. To war against the flesh is to oppose, live in contradiction with and confront everything that seeks perpetuate that which God’s kingdom eradicates. It means to embody by the power of the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead, first in our own lives and relationships, that which will be true universally in the age of come. It means to appropriate now the “already” of the Kingdom and to refuse accommodation to the “not yet,” despite its persistence. Though sin reigned in death, grace now reigns through righteousness leading to eternal life in the Messiah Jesus. We have been united with Him in his death and resurrection and even now the life force of the spring-time of all creation lies resident within us. To war against the flesh is not to despise our bodily, physical, emotional, relational, and exceedingly conflicted existence. Rather in the midst of the great conflict between a dying world which is passing away and a new world which is coming to birth in the midst of it, we are called to wholeheartedly embrace and love life as agents of new creation, to be the sphere in which the power of regeneration is made operative – for through us God will send forth his spirit and renew the face of the earth (Ps 104:31).