So true… so true. Happy Father’s Day!
As Father Sees It
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4 Shocking Reasons the Bible is Unique (Reason 4)
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We are looking at 4 reasons the Bible is unique. Here is a brief summary of where we have been so far:
- The Bible is unique because it reveals mimetic rivalry and the scapegoat mechanism.
- The Bible is unique because it reveals how Jesus fulfills not just Scripture, but all religious writings
- The Bible is unique because it is the most violent religious text in the world
This leads us to the fourth reason the Bible is unique:
4. The Bible is unique because it is uniquely human.
Yes, every book in the world is a human book, but the Bible is a uniquely human book. Let me explain what I mean.
Usually when theologians say that the Bible is a human book, they mean that the Bible has human authors who use human words to discuss human ideas to human readers with human ways of thinking. When speaking this way about Scripture, most theologians are about to say that as a result of the Bible being a human book, it should not surprise us to discover that the Bible has errors.
I intend to make no such claim.
I do, however, agree that the Bible is a human book.
It is not that the Bible is in error. No, quite to the contrary, the Bible accurately reveals to us what is in the heart of man. God knows what is in the heart of men (Jer 17:10; 1 Cor 2:11), and He reveals it to us through Scripture. It is my conviction that Scripture does not so much reveal God to us as it reveals us to us. Scripture is a mirror which God puts up to our own hearts to reveal what is in man (Jas 1:23).
And what does Scripture reveal? It reveals that evil is in our human hearts. “It mirrors our best and worst possible selves” (Stark, The Human Faces of God, 218).
Humans Love to Blame God for our Evil
But more than that, Scripture reveals that when humans act upon the evil that is in our hearts, we like to blame God for our actions.
When we are violent, we make God the scapegoat for our violence. We learned this practice from the father and mother of humanity, Adam and Eve. After they ate the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden, Adam blamed Eve, and Eve blamed the serpent, but both inferred blame upon God. In blaming Eve, Adam said “the woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate” (Gen 3:12). Adam implies that if God had not given the woman to him, Adam never would have sinned. It was God’s fault. Eve’s attempt to blame God is not so obvious, but in blaming the serpent, it seems that she implies that if the serpent had not been in God’s Garden (for didn’t God create all the animals?), or if God had given to Eve the same instructions He had given to Adam (for didn’t God only give His instructions about the forbidden fruit to Adam?) Eve would not have been deceived.
Adam and Eve’s descendants learn the blame game well. Cain becomes angry when God accepts Abel’s sacrifice rather than his own (Gen 4:5), and after he kills Abel, claims that it is not he who is supposed to take care of Abel, that he is not his brother’s keeper (Gen 4:9). The implication once again is that if God wanted to protect Abel, God should have done so. Following this example, after Lamech killed a man for wounding him, Lamech says that he had more right to commit murder than Cain did, and therefore, God shouldn’t punish him, but should protect and avenge him (Gen 4:23-24).
This sort of pattern continues throughout the entire Bible, even if the human tendency to blame God is not always so evident.
This tendency to blame God continues all the way up into our own day as well. When bad things happen to us, we say, “Why is God doing this to me?” When we observe evil occurring elsewhere in the world, we wonder, “Why isn’t God stopping that evil?” When natural disasters like floods, earthquakes, and hurricanes come upon neighborhoods, towns, cities, and countries so that homes are destroyed and lives are taken, we call these horrible events “acts of God.” When people commit crimes of lust or passion against others, they often explain their actions by saying, “God made me this way. He gave me these desires. I cannot help myself.”
History reveals that humans love to blame God for the evil that is in their own hearts.
This tendency is laid bare in nearly every violent event in the Bible, which is one reason why the Bible can be said to be inspired by God. The Bible reveals to humans what we are really like. In this way, the text is also inerrant. Much of the Hebrews Bible inerrantly records not what God has done for mankind, but what mankind has tried to do for God using the weapons and ways of the world. These “failed attempts to act on behalf of God” (Stark, The Human Faces of God, 232) were done with evil in our hearts and the name of God on our lips, and thus reveal to us not so much of what is in the heart of God, but what is in the heart of men.
In this way, we can say that the Hebrew Scriptures are more of a revelation about man than a revelation about God. Though we have often thought that the Bible reveals God to us, it more accurately reveals man to us.
The Old Testament is not primarily a sourcebook for “Theology Proper,” the study of God, but is primarily a sourcebook for “Anthropology,” the study of man. The Bible reveals to man what is in the heart of man more than it reveals to man what is in the heart of God. Certainly, there is revelation about God in the Old Testament—and this is especially true once we get to the New Testament where Jesus perfectly reveals God to us—but for the most part, the Old Testament contains inspired and inerrant records of what God wants us to know about ourselves.
What does the Old Testament reveal?
The Bible reveals that we are sick, twisted, evil, and hell-bent toward violence.
But more than that, it reveals that when we lash out in violence and bloodshed toward others, we love nothing more than to blame God for this violence. We kill others and say, “God told me to.” We murder others and say, “It’s because they were evil and God wanted them dead.” When natural disasters occur, we shrug our shoulders and say, “If they hadn’t sinned so much, God wouldn’t have killed them.”
This is what we find over and over again within the pages of the Hebrew Scriptures, and which, if we are honest, we find in our own hearts as well. God is not violent; we are. But when we act upon the violence in our hearts, we make ourselves feel better by blaming God for it. These texts “remind us of the kind of monstrous people we always have the potential to become in the name of some land, some ideology, or some god” (Stark, The Human Faces of God, 232).
This is what the Old Testament texts reveal to us, and it is this perspective that Jesus affirms over and over through His own life and ministry.
Jesus not only reveals to humanity once and for all the depth of depravity that is within the hearts of men, but in Jesus, we finally see what it means to be truly human, and therefore, truly divine. While it is true that Jesus reveals God to us, we must also recognize that before Jesus can reveal God to us, we must allow Him to reveal us to us. In this way, by the most shocking of theological twists, we learn what God is truly like only after we have learned what a human is truly supposed to be. And both are revealed in Jesus Christ.
4 Shocking Reasons the Bible is Unique (Reason 3)
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So far in this short series on why the Bible is unique among the spiritual writings of the world religions, we have seen that the Scriptures reveal human mimetic rivalry and the scapegoat mechanism, and that Jesus fulfills the Hebrew Scriptures (just as He fulfills other religious writings as well).
The question we concluded the previous post with, however, was that if Jesus fulfills the hopes and dreams and ideals of other religious writings as well, why did Jesus come specifically in fulfillment of the Hebrew Scriptures. This post seeks to answer that question.
And here is the answer:
The Hebrew Scriptures are the Most Violent
The third reason the Hebrew Scriptures are unique among all religious writings in the world is that they are the most violent religious writings in history.
I do not say this lightly.
While I do not consider myself an expert on all the religious writings of all of the main religions in the world, I have read most of the main religious texts for most of the main world religions, and while it is not uncommon to find violent events being described in these other religious books, no other set of religious writings comes even close to describing the violence and bloodshed that one finds within the pages of the Hebrew Scriptures.
And I am not referring to simple descriptions of human violence, though there is a lot of that within the Bible. I am talking about direct commands from God for His people to go and commit violence. I am talking about commands from God for His people to engage in genocide. I am talking about descriptions of God intentionally setting plans in motion to wipe out entire groups of people (such as the Amalekites), and to kill through natural disasters millions (or maybe even billions) of people (as in the flood).
When taken as a whole, the Bible is the most violent religious text in all of history. Not even the violence of the Muslim Qu’ran comes close to describing and divinely sanctioning the violence that is found within the pages of the Hebrew Scriptures (see Jenkin’s book, Laying Down the Sword).
This certainly makes the Bible unique! Though it is not in a way most Christians are comfortable admitting.
And yet, there is a deep truth here we must not miss. I ended the previous post by asking why God would have Jesus come to fulfill the Hebrew Scriptures if Jesus can conceivably be the fulfillment of other religious Scriptures as well.
I believe that one of the reasons God chose to have Jesus fulfill the Hebrew Scriptures is because they are the most violent Scriptures.
Did God choose to do this because He Himself is utterly violent? No! Quite to the contrary, the God which Jesus reveals to us is completely non-violent.
The God revealed in Jesus Christ would rather die for the worst of His enemies than seek the death of any one of them.
Why then did God choose to send Jesus to specifically fulfill the most violent religious writings of all time? So that He could do what only God can do: So that He could redeem it.
God wants humanity to understand that nothing and nobody is beyond the scope of His redemptive purposes, and so by sending Jesus as the fulfillment of the most violent of religious texts, God not only revealed Himself by way of a stark contrast to that violence, but also showed how to reinterpret and understand those violent events in light of the self-sacrificial God dying on the cross for the sins of the whole world.
People rightly question how a good and loving God can allow violence in the world. God answered this vital question by sending His Son, Jesus, as the fulfillment of the most violent religious writings, to show us that He had nothing to do with the violence, but was instead dying along with us in the midst of the violence, taking our sin and suffering upon Himself, bearing our guilt and shame in His own being, all for the sake of those He loved.
Jesus fulfills the hopes and expectations of the violent Hebrew Scriptures by suffering instead of conquering, by serving instead of killing, and by dying so that others might live.
Though we may not always understand why and how sin and suffering enters into God’s world, one thing we can know through the crucifixion of Jesus is that God does not send sin and suffering, but rather, is a victim of it along with us.
With every shed tear and every cry of pain, God suffers. This is why God chose to have Jesus come in fulfillment of the most violent texts. He wanted to show us that God’s role in those violent religious texts is not in the inflicting of pain and suffering of others, but in receiving and suffering that pain along with us.
In Jesus, we see that God is not against us; God is with us.
Are you shocked yet? Well, it all comes together tomorrow with one last post about how the Bible is unique. We will see that, based on the first 3 shocking ways the Bible is unique, we have been reading the Old Testament wrong all along. Join us tomorrow for the conclusion of this study…
4 Shocking Reasons the Bible is Unique (Reason 2)
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We are looking at 4 shocking reasons the Bible is unique among the world’s religious literature. Yesterday we saw the first reason, that the Bible reveals mankind’s destructive cycle of mimetic rivalry and the scapegoat mechanism by which we escape the cycle.
The second reason the Hebrew Scriptures can be considered unique is that they are the writings which Jesus explicitly claimed to fulfill and which He said pointed to Him (John 5:39-40). The Hebrew Scriptures not only contain prophecy about Jesus, but all the stories, hopes, and longings contained within the Old Testament also find their fulfillment in the person and work of Jesus Christ.
You may think, “This is not shocking. Most Christians believe this.”
Yes, but read on. It is about to get shocking…
I would argue that one of the primary reasons Jesus said what He did in John 5:39-40 is because He was speaking to a Jewish audience who taught and believed the Hebrew Scriptures.
Based on my own detailed study of other religious beliefs, practices, and writings, I believe that Jesus could have made such a statement about any stream of religious writings.
Jesus Fulfills All Religious Writings
If Jesus had been born Chinese, He could have said of the Buddhist Sutras, “These are the Scriptures which speak of me.”
If He had been born a Norseman, He could have pointed to the Poetic Edda, “These are the Scriptures which speak of me.”
If Jesus had been born as a Native American, He could have pointed to their legends and stories passed down from generation to generation and said, “These are the traditions that speak of me.”
I know this is a challenging and shocking idea (some might call it heresy), and I hope to defend this idea in a book someday (I am already compiling notes), but such a claim is not as outrageous as it may initially sound.
Jesus Fulfills Movies and Myths
Have you ever noticed that nearly all great stories and movies have a common theme and common plot? Almost all great stories, novels, myths, and movies have as their core plot the idea of a person who sacrificially gives of himself for others, to rescue and deliver them from some calamity, and in so doing, suffers great personal loss, but ultimately rises into glory. Is it just pure coincidence that this is the basic storyline about Jesus Christ as well?
Critics of Scripture think so, but I beg to differ.
I think the common storyline which all people around the world and throughout history long for is the storyline which God has placed in our hearts, and which the Holy Spirit is unceasingly whispering into our hearts and minds so that, when we hear the story about Jesus, it rings true in our hearts, and our souls cry in recognition. Jesus is the “true myth” (with the emphasis on true) which proves the validity of many of the themes and longings of men’s hearts which are found in the pagan myths of other religions.
I am not at all saying that the stories about Jesus are myth. Quite to the contrary, the stories of Jesus are some of the truest stories in history. I call them “true myth” because they resemble so many of the pagan stories and myths, and yet, the stories of Jesus are true. This “true myth” idea comes from C. S. Lewis, who said that his realization of Jesus being the fulfillment of the pagan myths which Lewis had studied his whole life is the realization that led him to move from atheism into Christianity.
Jesus Fulfills Culture
But more than that, I believe that the Spirit of God moves even today upon the whole earth, whispering and drawing people of every tongue, tribe, and nation to follow in the wake of Jesus. I believe that the gravitational pull of Jesus is so strong, that He pulls all people after Him, whether they call themselves “Christian” or not (No, I am not a universalist).
I think this helps explain why the church often gets it cultural cues from the world.
Much to our shame, though the church should be leading the world in issues like the abolishment of slavery, women’s suffrage, affirmative action, income inequality, taking care of the poor and homeless, and human trafficking, it seems that far too often, the church resists such changes while the surrounding culture cries out for justice and equality.
It usually takes the church thirty or forty years to come around and see that the surrounding culture was right after all. This does not mean that the Holy Spirit was slow in speaking to the church, but that the church is slow to listen to the Spirit. And while the Holy Spirit waits for us to take the earplugs of tradition out of our ears, He goes to the rocks and the stars (often in the form of Rockstars) to have them cry out the message that He is whispering to the entire world.
“If God can speak to Balaam through an ass, God can speak to a Baptist through an atheist. The key is knowing how to listen for God’s voice” (Stark, The Human Faces of God, 237).
God is Not Silent
So God is not silent.
He is whispering His truth and His message to the world all the time. And sadly, those who claim to know God the best are often the ones who hear Him the worst.
But thankfully, our deafness does not mute God. God whispers His truth to all people, and this truth shines forth (though often dimly) through the writing of other religions, through literature and art, through music and movies, through shifting political winds, through the longings of men’s hearts and dreams, and through the cries of people for justice and equality (Stark, The Human Faces of God, 238).
The church that refuses to listen to such movements of God upon the face of the earth is the church that also fails to hear the whisperings of God to their own hearts and minds.
So if this is true, that the Spirit of God whispers the truth of God to all people everywhere so that religion, literature, music, art, politics, and cultural movement all contain echoes of what God wants done in the world, why is it that Jesus came to the Jews to be a fulfillment of their Scriptures? The answer to this question leads us to the next reason the Hebrew Scriptures are unique, which we will consider tomorrow.
Until then, do you think this idea magnifies or undermines the authority of Scripture? Do you think it magnifies or undermines God’s work in the world? Weigh in with your feedback in the comments below!
4 Shocking Reasons the Bible is Unique (Reason 1)
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In yesterday’s post I suggested that if we understand the inspiration of God as the “whisperings of God” then it makes sense to think that God has been whispering truth not just to the authors of Scripture, but also to people who wrote the writings of other religions. And yet, I do not believe that this makes the writings of other religions equal to that of Scripture. The Bible is unique.
In this post, I share the first reason the Bible is unique.
The first reason the Bible is unique among all the writings of the world religions is that the Hebrew Scriptures contain an early unmasking and critique of what René Girard calls “mimetic rivalry” which he claims is not found in any other religious writings.
Mimetic Rivalry Revealed in Scripture Alone
In his books, Girard goes to great length to show how rivalry between humans develops and how this rivalry leads to violence, until eventually, this violent rivalry evolves into blaming and violently killing an outside third party so that the original two factions can once again live at peace.
Girard shows how this theme is found everywhere in ancient mythology and religious writings, but how only the Hebrew Scriptures begin to reveal that the third party, upon whom blame was laid for the original violence, was really an innocent scapegoat.
It is this unmasking of the scapegoat mechanism which led Girard to believe that the Bible was unique among all religious literature, and therefore, uniquely deserving of being called “inspired.”
The Hebrew Scripture contain a truth which is not found in any other religious literature in the world, and which could not have come in any way, shape, or form from the mind of man.
As such, this truth proves that Scripture is inspired of God. What truth is that? It is, to use René Girard’s terminology, the single victim scapegoat mechanism.
The Scapegoat Mechanism Revealed in Scripture
Though all religious literature contains stories of scapegoats and victims, all religious literature also assumes the guilt of the scapegoat victim and the innocence of the crowd that kills them. It is the Hebrew Scripture alone throughout all the religious writings of the world which reveals the guilt of the crowd and the innocence of the scapegoat victim (I See Satan Fall Like Lightning, 114, 107-120, 184).
Such revelation could have come only from God.
This divine revelation which is only hinted at in the Old Testament is made explicitly clear in the New Testament, and especially in the Gospels. “The Gospels reveal everything that human beings need to understand their moral responsibility with regard to the whole spectrum of violence in human history and to all the false religions” (I See Satan Fall Like Lightning, 125).
When God does finally reveal Himself in the person and work of Jesus Christ, the pinnacle and apex of this revelation is seen on the cross where Jesus takes the sin of the world upon Himself and dies as a criminal for all to see.
There, on the cross, when God truly reveals Himself as He is, and in the process also reveals His vision for mankind, there is no hint of violence to be seen. Instead, God is most fully revealed as God when He soaks up the sin and violence and evil of the world onto Himself, and allows people to think of Him as accused, outcast, accursed, despised, and rejected.
On the cross, God becomes both the curse and the cure for the sin of the whole world.
The Bible is Inspired … And so are other religious writings (Wait … What?!)
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Let’s see if I can get someone to condemn me as a heretic (again)…
In some previous posts, I have suggested that the term “inspiration of God” in 2 Timothy 3:16 could be understood as the “whisperings of God.”
In this post, I want to float out an idea which has been bouncing around in my head recently, and which I am submitting for your input and comment.
Is the Inspiration of God Only for a Select Few?
The way some people talk about the Bible, it seems that God’s whispering of truth was only heard by a small group of Middle Eastern men for a few brief centuries. In other words, since Moses began writing the Pentateuch (Genesis–Deuteronomy) around 1400 B.C. and since the last book of the Bible was written around 400 B.C., are we to believe that throughout all history and around the entire world, God was only whispering to a select few individuals for only a few brief centuries?
The Old Testament contains 39 books written by less than 30 men over the span of about 1000 years.
Did God only whisper truth to these few people who lived in a tiny section of the world for such a brief period of time?
Based on what we know about God, it is preposterous to think so.
God has communicated with many others
Even Scripture itself reveals that God was whispering truth to other people. Other than the universal revelation of God available to all people through creation and conscience, God was whispering truth to people who were not biblical authors.
Many of them were women (e.g., Miriam, Deborah, Ruth, Esther), and there are numerous hints within Scripture itself that God was whispering His truth to people who were not even Israelites (e.g., Melchizedek in Genesis 14:18-20; Balaam in Numbers 22–24).
It seems likely that if God was whispering truth to non-Israelite people like Melchizedek and Balaam, they He may also have been whispering truth to people whom we know nothing about.
For example, why couldn’t there have been men and women living in the Far East to whom God graciously whispered truth?
Why couldn’t there have been a Native American tribal leader to whom God whispered truth about His creative power and His dominion over all the earth?
Why couldn’t there have been a hardworking clansman from Northern Europe to whom God whispered truth about the origin of all things and the imminent arrival of One who would defeat evil once and for all?
This is not too hard to believe, is it?
If God truly is the God of all, then why would God not reveal more of Himself to people all over the world who responded to revelation He had already provided through creation and in their conscience?
In fact, Scripture seems to indicate that this is exactly what God was doing.
The Universal Inspiration of God
He placed eternity within the hearts of men (Eccl 3:11), and through dreams, visions, and other forms of special revelation, revealed Himself to people who were not yet “His people” (cf. Gen 14:18-20; Num 22–24; John 12:32; Acts 10:3-8; 16:9; 17:26-27).
Quite likely, many of these people saw that creation was red with tooth and claw and wondered what kind of deity would create such a place. Many of them, seeing the love and care that family members often showed for each other, wondered what such relational love among human taught us about the God who created humans. Many of them, looking at the innumerable stars, wondered about the power and glory of the God who created such beauty.
And it is not wrong, I think, to assume that in all these situations, God was there, through the universal presence of the Holy Spirit, whispering His truth to people who lived in all corners of the world. How could it be otherwise and God still be all-knowing, all-present, all-powerful, and all-loving? If God did not whisper truth to people who were seeking Him, what kind of God would He truly be?
Furthermore, what if some of these people to whom God whispered His truths wrote down the things they were seeing, thinking, and learning?
What if various people in Asia, as they contemplated the things they were seeing in nature and hearing in the whispers of God, wrote down what they were learning? Is that too far-fetched to believe?
What if someone in Northern Europe wrote down the stories, legends, and teachings that had been passed down from generation to generation—the stories about the struggle between good and evil and how a day was coming when good would ultimately triumph over evil? Is that so unlikely? In his book The Scapegoat, René Girard points out that the central themes of the Gospel Passion accounts are also found in all world mythologies (101).
The Universal Whisperings of God
It is this universal whispering of God to people all over the world and throughout time which can partially account for some of the similarities in ideas and belief systems for groups of people all around the world. In this way, all religion is a strange mix of God’s whisperings to mankind and mankind’s idolatry.
Though I would not go so far as to say that all religious writings are inspired by God, I think it is not too much to say that all religious writings derive in some way or another from people listening to what God whispers to their spirit.
In this way, we are not making the Bible less inspired as much as we are saying that other religious writings are more inspired than previously believed.
No, they are not inspired in the same way or to the same level as the biblical accounts, but in some way or another, other religious writings do contain wisdom, insights, and truths which God, by His Spirit, was whispering to people all around the world and throughout time. Sometimes what they wrote was a purely human invention, and sometimes what they wrote was demonic in origin, but if the Spirit of God moves where God wills, and if God’s will is to reveal Himself to all people around all the world and throughout all time, then who are we to say that God’s Spirit was not whispering truth to people in ancient Egypt, Greece, Norway, China, or North America?
Would it not make sense to assume that God was whispering to them as well, and that some of their legends, myths, and religious writings are based on what God was whispering to them? It seems entirely possible.
Please note this word of clarification: I AM NOT saying that the other religious books are inerrant. Not at all. There is a huge difference between people hearing what the Spirit is whispering to people all around the world on the one hand, and writing inerrant Scripture on the other. And as to the Spirit whispering truth to people all around the world, what is the problem with this? Doesn’t Jesus say as much in John 16:8?
The Bible is inspired in that it reveals what God was whispering to people who wrote Scripture, and to people in other parts of the world who were also responding to the revelation which they had received from God (whether it be through creation or conscience).
This does not mean that the Hebrew Scriptures are not unique in the world. They are. They are unique in numerous ways, four of which will be looked at in the next four posts.
Until then, am I off my rocker? Is this going “too far”? Or do you think it is possible that the “whisperings of God” as I have described it here might actually be more widespread than we Christians usually assume?
Church Billboard Quotes Hitler
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Have you ever seen one of those blog posts which show stupid church signs?
Here is the dumbest church sign ever… A church in Alabama decided to put up a billboard… quoting Hitler!?
No, this does not appear to be a hoax. No, the image has not been photoshopped. A ministry in Alabama truly put up this billboard. Here is a news article about it.
Try to put yourself in the mind of whoever designed this billboard… what were they thinking? Did they think it was a good idea to quote Hitler? Did they think that he had a good point, even if it was Hitler? Are they saying that even Hitler got some things right? Are they maybe trying to say that we should protect our kids from leaders like Hitler?
Anyway, all I can do is sigh…
Credit goes to Zack Hunt at The American Jesus for finding this…
Last Day to Download My Newest Book
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In case you missed it earlier this week, my newest book has been released, and you can download it for free from Amazon through today (June 7, 2014).
The book is called Church is More than Bodies, Bucks, and Bricks, and is about how church has nothing to do with how many church members we have, how big our building is, or how large the church budget.
People who are subscribers to my email newsletter already received a free PDF copy of the book earlier this week, so if you are a subscriber, check your email! Otherwise, you can download a copy from Amazon
Want a Free Paperback Copy?
I am also trying something new with this book. Lots of people prefer paperback copies of books (I know I do), and so I am making those available for free as well. I just ask that you cover the cost of printing and shipping the book ($6.95).
So if you want to get a free paperback copy of this book, you can go get them at Redeeming Press.
And hey, would you mind doing me a favor? Could you use the sharing buttons below to tell others about this free ebook? Let them know on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, or wherever else you hang out online. Thank you! I really appreciate it.
Interpreting the General Letters: Great Book; Boring Title
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It is usually quite rare to get excited about a book called Interpreting the General Letters, but either I am super geeky, or this book is simply excellent.
It’s probably a bit of both.
I initially thought this book by Herbert W. Bateman IV was going to be just another introduction to the General Letters (Hebrews, James, 1–2 Peter, 1–3 John, Jude), and while it is that, it was so much more. It contained cutting edge research on how the letters were composed, the theology they contain, and how we can understand and teach about these letters today.
Does it still sound boring? Well check this out…
The first chapter is about how the letters were composed. Yeah, I was ready to yawn also. But Bateman shows quite persuasively that the General Letters (and probably the letters of Paul as well?) followed clear letter-writing patterns that were common and well-known in the first century AD. The authors of these letters didn’t just sit down and scribble out a letter. Instead, it appears that they used the guidelines found in professional letter writing manuals that were popular at that time. Yes, that’s right. There were books in use at the time which instructed letter writers in the art of writing letters, even down to suggestions for which words to use in your letter. The letters of 3 John, Jude, and 2 Peter clearly exhibit many of these instructions from these professional letter writing guides, even down to the very words that are used!
Who cares?
Well, if Bateman is right, then what does this say about the inspiration of the Holy Spirit? Does it make you rethink the doctrine of the inspiration of Scripture a bit if, instead of Peter sitting down and just writing a letter because the Holy Spirit inspired certain words for Peter to write, Peter instead got many of these words and ideas from a letter-writing manual?
But it gets worse.
Bateman goes on to show that it is probably unrealistic to think that John, Peter, James, and Jude had special training in the art and skills of rhetorical professional letter writing. And yet since their letters show clear indications that professional letter-writing skills were used, the true historical situation was probably that John, Peter, James, and Jude hired professional letter writers to write the letters for them. And in fact, Bateman goes on to show how there is clear evidence in the General Letters that this is exactly what happened (p. 49ff).
Uh-oh.
Now what just happened to our doctrine of the verbal, plenary inspiration of Scripture? It seems that maybe what John, Peter, James, and Jude did was go to a professionally trained letter writer and provided them with the basic ideas, arguments, and points they wanted to make in their letter, and then let the professional letter writer compose the letter according to the letter writing standards of that day. Now certainly, John, Peter, and Jude would have read the letter before it was sent out, and maybe asked for some word revisions or changes in terminology, but still, if Bateman is right about this, what does this mean for the traditional, evangelical doctrine of the inspiration of Scripture.
Now it is no longer “men of God writing Scripture as they were moved by the Holy Spirit” but rather, something like this: “Men of God having inspired ideas which they provided to a professionally-trained letter writer, who then composed the letter according to standards and guidelines found in a letter-writing manual before getting the approval of the man of God to send the letter out to its intended recipients.”
Yeah, not quite the same thing we hear from our pulpits… but I think Bateman is absolutely right to point some of this things out. It is past time we develop a more robust theology of the inspiration of Scripture.
The rest of the book follows this sort of revolutionary, thought-provoking, theology-shattering approach. The second chapter provides excellent historical and cultural background material to the General Epistles, without which you can never hope to understand the message and meaning of these letters. Chapter 3 provides an overview of the theology of the General letters, and specifically how they fit within the overall goal of God’s plan to reestablish His kingdom rule on earth and redeem a people for Himself to inhabit this kingdom. Again, without this big picture theological perspective, we cannot hope to understand the theology of the General epistles.
The remainder of the book (chapters 4–7) provide a detailed explanation of how to study and teach the texts of the General Epistles, beginning with interpreting them from the Greek and moving on into exegetical outlines and homiletical exposition. This highly scientific approach to the Scripture is the method they teach at Dallas Theological Seminary, and is roughly the same approach I follow in my own research and writing, though in a much abbreviated form. While I appreciate the approach that DTS teaches, it can really only be followed by expert scholars and theologians, and is not feasible for the average student of Scripture, which indicates to me that it is not the only oven the best way of reading and interpreting the biblical text.
Interpreting the General Letters by Bateman is a great introduction to the general letters. Even though the final four chapters will be overwhelming for most readers, the first three chapters contain great help and insight for situating the student of Scripture within the world and mindset of the first century authors and audience.
The Death of Jesus in the Tenth Plague
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If you haven’t read the previous two posts on the tenth plague, you might want to go do that now. It will help this post make more sense.
In light of the idea that God did not kill the firstborn sons of Egypt, why then does the Bible say that it is God who would destroy them (Exodus 11:1, 4-5; 12:12)? This is a perfect example of a place in Scripture where God takes responsibility for a terrible event which occurred on His watch.
God didn’t participate in the destructiveness of the event, but due to the rebellion of the Egyptians and the destruction they had invited upon themselves, God was not able to fully prevent the destruction that came, and so took measures to rescue and deliver those He could. As for the rest of the event, God allows Himself to take the blame for the death of the firstborn because this disaster happened on His watch and so He bears responsibility for it.
There are two pieces of evidence later in Scripture which reveal to us that this is the way the tenth plague should be understood.
The Destroyer Killed the Firstborn Sons of Egypt
The first is what the writer of the book of Hebrews says about this event in Hebrews 11:28. In that text, the author clearly hesitates from saying that it was God who killed the firstborn sons of Egypt and writes instead about “he who destroyed the firstborn.” The author of Hebrews seems to be saying that it was the destroyer who destroyed the firstborn sons of Egypt, and it was God who kept the destroyer from touching the sons of those families who had the blood of the lamb on their doorpost.
The Death of Jesus on the Cross Reveals God’s Role in the Passover
It is this blood of the lamb which gives us the second way to read about the tenth plague in a new light.
Nearly all Christians know that the blood of the lamb is later used to symbolize the sacrificial death of Jesus on the cross for us. In the last supper, which was a Passover meal, Jesus talked about His blood being poured out for us (Luke 22:20). The book of Revelation portrays Jesus as the lamb who was slain since the foundation of the world (Rev 5:6).
So if these sorts of texts guide our understanding of the tenth plague, we must not look to the death and destruction of the firstborn sons of Egypt as a proper indication of God’s activity in this event, but rather, we must look to the blood of the lamb. The lamb slain for protection, deliverance, and redemption is where we see Jesus in the events of the first Passover.
And in fact, the symbolism could not be more clear when we remember that the Israelites would have understood the death of the firstborn sons of Egypt as proper revenge for the death of their own sons at the hands of the Egyptians 80 years earlier. When we remember this, and read about the crucifixion of Jesus in light of the first Passover, the contrast between the God who delivers and the destroyer who kills could not be more clear.
The way to see Jesus in the text of the tenth plague is not so much in what Jesus did, but in what Jesus did not do.
For example, when Moses was born, all the sons of Israel were killed by Pharaoh’s army. So, when Moses comes into prophetic power over Egypt, God is shown to be exacting revenge against Egypt by putting to death all the firstborn sons of Egypt.
When Jesus is born, something similar happens. Herod commands that all the boys two years old and younger in the region of Bethlehem be put to death. If one is thinking that Jesus is fulfilling Moses and following in the footsteps of Israel (as the opening chapters of the Gospel of Matthew indicate), we would expect that Jesus, once He enters into His prophetic power over the Roman Empire, does something similar as what was done in the tenth plague. We would expect Jesus to put to death all the firstborn sons of the Romans. But Jesus does the exact opposite.
Rather than kill the firstborn sons of His enemies, Jesus, the only begotten Son of God, lets Himself be killed by His enemies.
Rather than exact revenge upon His enemies for what they had done 33 years earlier, Jesus allows the crime to be repeated again upon Himself. He does not put His enemies to death, but dies in the place of His enemies.
Rather than take steps to protect Himself from the angel of death, He goes willingly to the slaughter so that His blood can protect His enemies.
In this way, the crucifixion of Jesus is a shocking reversal and fulfillment of the tenth plague. Through the crucifixion of Jesus, we learn what God is really like.
God is not a baby-killing deity, who seeks to exact revenge on His enemies for a crime many decades old, but is a self-sacrificial, enemy-loving God, who would rather die for His enemies than see His enemies die.
So when we read about the tenth plague in light of Jesus on the cross, we can see that God is not to be found in the destroying angel who slaughters babies out of revenge or because of the sins of a proud and self-righteous ruler.
Instead, God is to be found in the self-sacrificial death of a lamb, who pours out His blood for others, so that death and destruction, when it comes, passes over the house and cannot touch those who live within. When Jesus reveals the God of the tenth plague to us, it is not a God of death, fear, and destruction, but a God of deliverance, hope, protection, and redemption.
How can a God who says "Love your enemies" (Matthew 5:44) be the same God who instructs His people in the Old Testament to kill their enemies?
These are the sorts of questions we discuss and (try to) answer in my online discipleship group. Members of the group can also take ALL of my online courses (Valued at over $1000) at no charge. Learn more here: Join the RedeemingGod.com Discipleship Group I can't wait to hear what you have to say, and how we can help you better understand God and learn to live like Him in this world!
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