Thoughts on the Apocrypha So Far

I've been enjoying my reading of the Apocrypha thus far. It has been quite interesting, and I thought I'd post a few more or less random things that have occurred to me while reading.

Tobit: An excellent story. I enjoyed it very much.

Judith: An extremely entertaining story, but historically atrocious. I was baffled when Nebuchadnezzar was introduced as an Assyrian king ruling from Nineveh as opposed to a Babylonian king ruling from Babylon. I was even more confused when I realized the story was taking place after the exile, and thus during what ought to be Persian rule. In addition, the footnotes told me that few of the places mentioned were actual cities and towns. So, as a work of fiction, Judith is wonderful and holds up very nicely, but it shouldn't be taken as historically accurate in any way.

Esther (with Greek additions): This one was very problematic for me. For the most part the additions to Esther are not wholly detrimental to the story, but there are several places where the additions blatantly contradict the Hebrew story. For example, one of the Greek additions says that Haman's sons were hanged with him, but a few verses later in the original Hebrew story, we see Haman's sons being killed in battle. The additions also tend to do away with some of the subtlety and humor of the original. The biggest problem by far, however, is in the treatment of Mordecai. The additions tend to try to justify Mordecai in every possible way and make him a supremely devout character. However, the text in Hebrew doesn't bear this out. We see this particularly in his refusal to bow to Haman. There is no law prohibiting Israelites from doing obeisance to dignitaries and rulers. They may not worship them, but we see several examples throughout the Old Testament of honor being shown by bowing. Mordecai's failure to bow to Haman was not piety but rather pride. The story is dumbed down and simplified by making Mordecai and example of a perfect Jew and making Haman the perfectly evil bad guy.

The Wisdom of Solomon: This was a good book overall, and in keeping with the spirit of the Proverbs. It is clear also that the author was very familiar with Greek literature and philosophy. The strangest thing is that the book emphasizes the Greek idea of the immortality of the soul rather than the more Hebrew idea of bodily resurrection. Also there is some hint of the preexistence of souls, which is quite problematic for a Biblical worldview.

Well that's about is for my observations so far. I'm about to read Ecclesiasticus (a.k.a. Sirach). I'll probably post more rambling thoughts then.

Intertestamental Judaism and Almsgiving

I'm reading through the Apocrypha right now, and I thought that this quote was interesting in the way it illuminates the importance of almsgiving in intertestamental Judaism.

"Prayer with fasting is good, but better than both is almsgiving with righteousness. A little with righteousness is better than wealth with wrongdoing. It is better to give alms than to lay up gold. For almsgiving saves from death and purges away every sin. Those who give alms will enjoy a full life, but those who commit sin and do wrong are their own worst enemies." Tobit 12:8-10

Gems from Luther Part 4

This will be my last Luther post from Bondage of the Will, so I'm going to throw in all the quotes left that I marked as being particularly good or funny. A couple of them I marked because of references to classical myths and legends, and because they were rather witty. The first is from an argument Luther presses to say that one must not quote from Church Fathers and old theologians authoritatively as if a simple quote holds enough authority in itself to prove an argument. (Abelard had already written his Sic et Non at this point, a collection of apparently contradictory quotes from the Church Fathers that shows that there was a wide range of opinion on various topics.) Luther wonders why Erasmus picks the worst statements of the Fathers rather than the best:

"To take an example: what can be said that is more carnal, more utterly godless, sacrilegious and blasphemous, than what Jerome is wont to say: "Virginity peoples heaven, marriage earth"-as though earth, not heave, is the right place for the patriarchs, apostles and Christian husbands, and heaven for pagan vestal virgins without Christ! Yet is it these sentiments and others like them, that the Sophists collect from the fathers to get themselves authority-for their weapon is numbers, rather than judgment. So did that idiotic Faber of Constance, who has just presented the public with his precious jewel, that is, his Augean stable-thus ensuring that there might be something to make the godly learned feel sick, and vomit!"

One thing I found funny was that Luther is comparing Faber's Malleus in Haeresin Lutheranam to the Augean stable. Those familiar with Greek mythology will know what the Augean stable was full of.

In this next quote, Luther makes a humorous comparison between Erasmus' conception of God and Homer's Zeus.

"On your view, God will elect nobody, and no place for election will be left; all that is left is freedom of will to heed or defy the long-suffering and wrath of God. But if God is thus robbed of His power and wisdom in election, what will He be but just that idol, Chance, under whose sway all things happen at random? Eventually, we shall come to this: that men may be saved and damned without God's knowledge! For He will not have marked out by sure election those that should be saved and those that should be damned; He will merely have set before all men His general long-suffering, which forbears and hardens, together with His chastening and punishing mercy [inside joke from previously in the book], and left it to them to choose whether they would be saved or damned, while He Himself, perchance, goes off, as Homer says, to an Ethiopian banquet!"

Finally, I thought it would be good to conclude with this. Luther, despite his sarcastic and satiric tone throughout Bondage of the Will, genuinely respects Erasmus as a scholar and is much is very grateful for him. Luther's German Bible was translated from Erasmus's Greek text, and Erasmus contributed greatly to the study of classical languages and literary arts. Luther shows himself to be a big man by acknowledging this and praying that Erasmus will learn to think as clearly theologically as he has in other areas:

"However, if you cannot treat of this issue in a different way from your treatment of it in the Diatribe, it is my earnest wish that you would remain content with your own gift, and confine yourself to pursuing, adorning and promoting the study of literature and languages; as hitherto you have done, to great advantage and with much credit. By your studies you have rendered me also some service, and I confess myself much indebted to you; certainly, in that regard, I unfeignedly honour and sincerely respect you. But God has not yet willed nor granted that you should be equal to the subject of our present debate. Please do not think that any arrogance lies behind my words when I say that I pray that the Lord will speedily make you as much my superior in this as you already are in all other respects. It is no new thing for God to instruct a Moses by a Jethro, or to teach a Paul by an Ananias."

As a brief conclusion, if you haven't read Bondage of the Will, go out now and buy a copy so you can. It is an amazing book, and a wonderful read. Luther's style is as fresh and witty today as it was 500 years ago, and his reason is clear and compelling.

Against Christianity

I just finished reading Against Christianity by Peter Leithart. In this book, Dr. Leithart contrasts compares and contrasts "Christianity" and "Christendom." Christianity is defined as "a set of doctrines or a system of ideas." Unfortunately, as the good doctor points out, "The Bible gives no hint that a Christian 'belief system' might be isolated from the life of the Church, subjected to a scientific or logical analysis, and have its truth compared with competing 'belief systems.'" Jesus didn't come to propose a new philosophy, but rather to establish a new society, the Church. And the Church is not only a new society, but a new humanity, the beginning of the eschatological state of the human race. As Leithart writes, "...the Church presented herself not as another 'sect' or cult that existed under the umbrella of the polis; she was an alternative governing body for the city and the beginning of a new city."

As there is far too much in this book that I love, I'm going to simply list a few of the things that I really liked about it.

1) I very much appreciated Dr. Leithart's interaction with John Yoder and Stanley Hauerwas. It has been several years since I read Yoder's The Politics of Jesus, but Leithart seems to put his finger on exactly what made Yoder so right, and exactly what made him so wrong.

2) I loved the little sketch he wrote of the Apostles Paul, Peter, and John meeting with Georgus Barnus to discuss how they were going to market their new religion.

3) I loved this passage: "Theology is a specialized, professional language, often employing obscure (Latin and Greek) terms that are never used by anyone but theologians, as if theologians live in and talk about a different world from the one mortals inhabit.

Theology functions sociologically like other professional languages--to keep people out and to help the members of the guild identify one another.

Whereas the Bible talks about trees and stars, about donkeys and barren women, about kings and queens and carpenters."

4) Related to the previous is this: "Let us not talk of theology. Let us talk about the Church's language and myth. The Church is a distinct 'language group'...the Church speaks and must speak one language. We have one confession, and with the confession comes a distinct way of naming the world and unique categories for interpreting creation and history.

As a language group, the Church is called to maintain and develop her own, Scriptural naming of the world. When the church enters a new mission field, she always comes into an existing culture in which the world is preclassified. The Church enters that situation with a new classification and new names. That is mission: Christian language penetrates an existing language, and the Church begins to attach new labels to everything she finds.

Contextualization be damned. The Church's mission is not to accommodate her language to the existing language, to disguise herself so as to slip in unnoticed and blend in with the existing culture. Her mission is to confront the language of the existing culture with a language of her own."

5) Dr. Leithart's view of the Church is breathtaking and beautiful. Outside of the context of the book, this may not make sense, but it's wonderful anyway: "The Church is neither a reservoir of grace nor an external support for the Christian life. The Church is salvation."

I could go on and on like this but it will suffice to say that this book is outstanding and, one might say, brilliant. I'm looking forward to letting it settle on my mind for several months, and then going back to read it again in order to see what more I can glean from it.

Christian Economics 1

Part I: Foundational Truths
CHRIST IS LORD

Before we can talk about the “green stuff” (or the “gold stuff” for those who hold to such standards) there are a couple of foundational issues that we need to consider. Capitalism is necessarily dependent on the idea of the ‘free market’. I do not say that the ‘free market’ is dependent upon capitalism because I don’t think it is, but I’ll save that for a later discussion. The question I’d like to deal with here is: What is a ‘free market’? A common definition of a ‘free market’ might be, “an economic scenario in which buying and selling are engaged in without restriction and competition among businesses is unregulated.” If we’re all agreed about this definition then we can move on. Good? All right, let’s go.

I would be happy to sign on to this idea of a ‘free market’ if we make one stipulation; the restriction and regulation that do not exist in a ‘free market’ are governmental restrictions and regulations. There can be no market that is ultimately unrestricted and unregulated. Ultimately all democracies and all republics are under a divine monarchy, the monarchy of King Jesus. After his resurrection, Jesus told his disciples, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth” (Matt. 28:18). What does this authority encompass? It certainly encompasses all world governments: “Now therefore, be wise, O kings; Be instructed, you judges of the earth. Serve the LORD with fear, And rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest He be angry, And you perish in the way, When His wrath is kindled but a little…” (Psalm 2:10-12). But more than this, it encompasses all our lives. Jesus is our King. He is our Lord. And we are bound to serve him. It is important for us, as Christians, to understand that there is no little area in our lives over which we can claim sovereignty. Jesus has it all. Is Jesus sovereign over how we raise our children? Of course. Is he sovereign over how we teach history, or math, or science? Naturally. Is he sovereign over how we submit to our earthly authorities? Quite. Is he sovereign over how we run our businesses? Ummm…I’ll get back to you on that one…

In the words of the great Dutch statesman Abraham Kuyper, “There is not one square inch in the whole domain of human existence over which Christ, who is sovereign over all, does not say, ‘Mine!’” Jesus is king of our whole lives, and this means that, yes, even in the way we run our businesses, we must answer to his ultimate authority. The biggest problem I see with most people who tout a ‘free market’ is that they see it as self-regulating. Set up a free market anywhere and it will work, just like gravity, just like the laws of thermodynamics. (Incidentally, I believe that scientific laws only work because God constantly supports them. Things fall, not of necessity, but because God wants them to. So all of scientific study must be based on the assumption of God’s faithfulness. But that is another topic.) In reality, there can be no self-regulating system, only a Christ-regulated system. Set up a free market in an atheistic society and you will get very different results from a free market set up in a Christian society. Whether the result of a free market is good or bad is dependent upon whether the free market is founded on a worldview that is in submission to Christ or a worldview in submission to sin and death. The same is true for systems of government. A monarchy in submission to Christ will be a good monarchy. A democracy in submission to Christ will be a good democracy. Monarchies and democracies not in submission to Christ will be bad monarchies and democracies. As a Christian, I am not bound to a particular economic theory or governmental theory (though I may have my preferences). I am bound to Christ and his law. There is no neutrality.

Now, the thing that makes me pause in considering the popular economic theories of our day, capitalism and communism (I include socialism under the latter category), is that both were invented by atheists. Adam Smith was most likely an atheist, though possibly a weak Deist. Karl Marx was a god-hater as well. So even though, yes, atheists can sometimes have good ideas, we need to pay special attention when an atheist seeks to tell us how we ought to live or regulate our society. If they are not for Christ, they are against him (Luke 11:23), and as Christians we must discern which of their ideas are inseparable from their wicked view of the world and which may be brought into submission to Christ.

The first foundational truth here is this: Christ is Lord of all. We are required by the gospel to submit every area of life, even economic theories, to the commands of Christ. The Bible is authoritative in every area it addresses, and it addresses everything. Later we will discuss exactly what the Bible has to say about economics. For now, let us agree that the free market is regulated by Christ, and at the last day no one will be excused from any sins committed by saying, “It’s just business. That’s the way it works.”

In my next post, I’ll discuss the doctrine of the Trinity, and how it informs our ideas of human society and individualism.

Who is America's King?

"The Christian faith is a public faith. The claims of Jesus Christ are absolute, and we have no authority to diminish the authority that God has given to Him to make these claims. We may not say, of any name, that it has the right to refuse to acknowledge that that name of Jesus is the ultimate authority. No one, standing at the last judgment, will have the right to say that he would have acknowledged the authority of Jesus, but certain key interpretations of the First Amendment prohibited it. At that great day, when the sky and earth have fled to hide themselves, they will not be authorized to appeal to Jefferson's 'wall of separation' between church and state. There is no wall of separation between the authority of Jesus Christ and the authority of the civil magistrate. American Christians must come to grip with this...

He has authority in heaven, and He has authority on earth. Not only is this the case, but He says that He has all authority in heaven and on earth. There is now no authority in heaven or on earth that is not subordinate to His authority. This includes, but is not limited to, the United States Supreme Court, the Muslim rulers of Saudi Arabia, every parliament on the continent of Europe, the United Nations General Assembly, the U.S. Congress, the legislature of South Dakota, the communist thugs running North Korea, every secret meeting ever convened by the Illuminati or whoever those guys are, and the commissioner of baseball."

-from Heaven Misplaced by Douglas Wilson

Heaven Misplaced

I just finished the new book Heaven Misplaced, by Douglas Wilson. It's a very unusual sort of book to read: a theology book that sets out to convince the reader of the beauty, rather than the truth, of its propositions. Not that Doug Wilson is uninterested in truth. Quite the contrary. He writes, "He [Tolkien] was once asked whether he believed that Middle Earth was real. His reply was, 'One hopes.' Even a work of fiction, if it is compelling enough, can awaken a deep desire for it to have been true. So here is my proposal. There are many Christians who believe that the future of our world (prior to the Second Coming) is bleak indeed. I am asking them to read this little book as though it were a work of fiction. Just for a short while, I am asking for that willing suspension of disbelief. And if that request is granted, then I believe that a striking feature of this kind of historical optimism will become plain. Every Christian can agree on one thing at least. Wouldn't it be glorious if this really were true?"

There are many wonderful books on Postmillennial eschatology that beat the reader over the head with verses and evidence to show the truth of the position. Doug is attempting, not to do away with such books, but to show the beauty that is often left behind in those sorts of books. Not only is this way of thinking true, but even if you don't agree with it, you have to admit that it is a beautiful story and wish that it could be true.

This is a short book and for those already versed in postmillennialsism it shouldn't present many surprises. But I recommend it as a nice refresher for those who have lost the vision or forgotten how one's theology of Christ's kingdom affects the way we live our lives as Christians. It would also be good to give to any pessimistic friends who have been left behind in premillennialism or amillennialism.

Gems From Luther Part 3

In defending the Biblical position that the human will is enslaved to sin against the arguments of Erasmus in favor of free will, Luther has his work cut out for him. He must play the part of Menelaus capturing the shape-shifting Proteus. It seems like Erasmus has a hundred different definitions of free will that he mixes and matches without rhyme or reason. Some of the best passages in Bondage of the Will are results of Luther dealing with Erasmus' refusal to define his terms and begin the discussion.

"You describe the power of 'free-will' as small, and wholly ineffective apart from the grace of God. Agreed? Now then, I ask you: if God's grace is wanting, if it is taken away from that small power, what can it do? It is ineffective, you say, and can do nothing good. So it will not do what God or His grace wills. Why? Because we have now taken God's grace away from it, and what the grace of God does not do is not good. Hence it follows that 'free-will' without God's grace is not free at all, but is the permanent prisoner and bondslave of evil, since it cannot turn itself to good."

"And first, we will begin, as we should, from your actual definition. You define 'free-will' thus: 'Moreover, I conceive of "free-will" in this context as a power of the human will by which a man may apply himself to those things that lead to eternal salvation, or turn away from the same.'

...This is the kind of definition that the Sophists call vicious--that is, one in which the definition fails to cover the thing defined. For I showed above that 'free-will' belongs to none but God only. You are no doubt right in assigning to man a will of some sort, but to credit him with a will that is free in the things of God is too much. For all who hear mention of 'free-will' take it to mean, in its proper sense, a will that can and does do, God-ward, all that it pleases, restrained by no law and no command; for you would not call a slave, who acts at the beck of his lord, free. But in that case how much less are we right to call men or angels free; for they live under the complete mastery of God (not to mention sin and death), and cannot continue by their own strength for a moment."

"Out of one view about 'free-will' you devise three! The first, that of those who deny that man can will good without special grace, neither start, nor make progress, nor finish, etc. seems to you 'severe, but probable enough'. You approve of it because it leaves man effort and endeavour, but does not leave him anything that he may ascribe to his own strength. The second, that of those who contend that 'free-will' avails for nothing but sinning, and that grace alone works good in us,etc., seems to you 'more severe'; and the third, that of those who say that 'free-will' is an empty term, and God works in us both good and evil, and all that comes to pass is of mere necessity, seems to you 'most severe'. It is against these two last that you profess to be writing.

Do you know what you are saying, my dear Erasmus? You represent here three opinions, as if of three parties, simply because you fail to realise that it is the same thing in each case, stated by us same spokesmen of the selfsame party, but in different ways and different words...How, I ask, does that definition of 'free-will' which you gave above square with this first view, which is 'probable enough'? You said that 'free-will' is a power of the human will by which a man can apply himself to good; but here you say, and approve of its being said, that man without grace cannot will good...So the 'free-will' you define is one thing, and the 'free-will' you defend is another. Erasmus now has two 'free-wills', more than anyone else, and they are at loggerheads with each other!"

Gems From Luther Part 2

Erasmus accused Luther of saying that, "all we do is done, not by free-will, but of mere necessity." Luther had earlier expressed his distate for the word 'necessity' though admitting that language does not afford a better one. He writes, "I could wish, indeed, that a better term was available for our discussion than the accepted one, necessity, which cannot accurately be used of either man's will or God's. It's meaning is too harsh, and foreign to the subject; for it suggests some sort of compulsion, and something that is against one's will, which is no part of the view under debate. The will, whether it be God's or man's does what it does, good or bad, under no compulsion, but just as it wants or pleases as if totally free. Yet the will of God, which rules over our mutable will, is changeless and sure..."

In other words, Luther was qualifying the debate. As to the question of whether man can choose between, say, a hot dog or hamburger for dinner, Luther says that man acts as he pleases, though his will is ultimately mutable and subject to God's immutable will. In other words, man acts freely, but his mutable will is under, and agrees with, God's immutable will. This is, so to speak, a metaphysical discussion.

Luther, however, steers the debate in another direction. The question he and Erasmus are debating is not whether God can be sovereign and man be free at the same time (the metaphysical question). The question they are debating is a moral question: can a sinful man alter his own will to desire good, and, if so, what is the need for the Holy Spirit. Again Luther writes:

"I said 'of necessity'; I did not say 'of compulsion'; I meant, by a necessity, not of compulsion, but of what they call immutability. That is to say: a man without the Spirit of God does not do evil against his will, under pressure, as though he were taken by the scruff of the neck and dragged into it, like a thief or footpad eing dragged off against his will to punishment; but he does it spontaneously and voluntarily. And the willingness of volition is something which he cannot in his own strength eliminate, restrain or alter. He goes on willing and desiring to do evil; and if external pressure forces him to act otherwise, nevertheless his will remains averse to so doing and chafes under such constraint and opposition. But it would not thus chafe were it being changed, and were it yielding to constraint willingly. This is what we mean by necessity of immutability: that the will cannot change itself, nor give itself another bent, but, rather, is the more provoked to crave the more it is oppose, as its chafing proves; for this would not occur, were it free or had 'free-will'...

On the other hand: when God works in us, the will is changed under the sweet influence of the Spirit of God. Once more it desires and acts, not of compulsion, but of its own desire and spontaneous inclination. Its bent still cannot be altered by any opposition; it cannot be mastered or prevailed upon even by the gates of hell; but it goes on willing, desiring and loving good, just as once it willed, desired and loved evil."

Gems from Luther Part 1

I'm reading through Luther's Bondage of the Will right now,and am more pleased every day that I named my son after him. I'm going to be posting some of my favorite passages over the next few days. One thing that strikes me is the clarity of Luther's theology as he approaches his debate with Erasmus.

In this passage he is arguing against Erasmus's view that some of the Scriptures are obscure and difficult and some are plain. So there are some doctrines we ought to know and some doctrines that we ought not to worry our pretty little heads about. To prove this, Erasmus points to Scriptures that refer to the mystery of God's will and knowledge (Rom. 11:33; Isa. 40:13). Luther counters by saying that there are indeed many mysteries in God. However Scripture, as revelation, was given to man that he may know things. So while there may be mystery about things not revealed to us in Scripture, the things given in Scripture are given that we may know them. Here is Luther's argument:

"God and His Scripture are two things, just as the Creator and His creation are two things. Now, nobody questions that there is a great deal hid in God of which we know nothing. Christ himself says of the last day: 'Of that day knoweth no man, but the Father' (Matt. 24.36); and in Acts 1 he says: 'It is not for you to know the times and seasons' (John 13.18); and Paul says: 'The Lord knoweth them that are his' (2 Tim. 2.19); and the like. But the notion that in Scripture some things are recondite and all is not plain was spread by the godless Sophists (whom you now echo, Erasmus)--who have never yet cited a single item to prove their crazy view; nor can they...I certainly grant that many passages in the Scriptures are obscure and hard to elucidate, but that is due, not to the exalted nature of their subject, but to our own linguistic and grammatical ignorance; and it does not in any way prevent our knowing all the contents of Scripture...If words are obscure in one place, they are clear in another. What God has so plainly declared to the world is in some parts of Scripture stated in plain words, while in other parts it still lies hidden under obscure words. But when something stands in broad daylight, and a mass of evidence for it is in broad daylight also, it does not matter whether there is any evidence for it in the dark. Who will maintain that the town fountain does not stand in the light because the people down some alley cannot see it, while everyone in the square can see it?...


When you quote Paul's statement, 'his judgments are incomprehensible,' you seem to take the pronoun 'his' to refer to Scripture; whereas the judgments which Paul there affirms to be incomprehensible are not those of Scripture, but those of God. And Isaiah 40 does not say: 'who has known the mind of Scripture?' but: 'who has known the mind of the Lord?' (Paul, indeed, asserts that Christians do know the mind of the Lord; but only with reference to those things that are given to us by God, as he there says in 1 Cor 2...the distinction of persons in the Godhead, the union of the Divine and human natures of Christ, and the unpardonable sin. Here, you say, are problems which have never been solved. If you mean this of the enquiries which the Sophists pursue when they discuss these subjects, what has the inoffensive Scripture done to you, that you should blame such criminal misuse of it on to its own purity. Scripture makes the straightforward affirmation that the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the unpardonable sin are facts. There is nothing obscure or ambiguous about that. You imagine that Scripture tells us how they are what they are; but it does not, nor need we know...


In a word: The perspicuity of Scripture is twofold, just as there is a double lack of light...If you speak of internal perspicuity, the truth is that nobody who has not the Spirit of God sees a jot of what is in the Scriptures...The Spirit is needed for the understanding of all Scripture and every part of Scripture. If, on the other hand, you speak of external perspicuity, the position is that nothing whatsoever is left obscure or ambiguous, but all that is in Scripture is through the Word brought forth into the clearest light and proclaimed to the whole world."