An Untenable Response on Matthew 24:37-41

Jamin Hubner, a co-blogger of mine at Alpha & Omega has responded to my article in which I argue that in Matt 24:37–41 those who are left behind are the wicked for judgment.

I concluded that his response was untenable for three reasons. (1) He used texts outside of Matthew 24 and imported their foreign meanings back into Matthew 24. (2) He quoted some commentators on this text that did not further his argumenation (3). The responses he gave to my four reasons I deemed as surface-level. In summary, he breaks the unity between Matthew 24:31 and 37-41. To disconnect these two passage misses Jesus' meaning.

I'd like to address his points one by one.

But before I do that, at the beginning of his article he made this comment: "[I] deny that the thousand years in Revelation 20 is a literal 1,000 year reign."

Even though this assertion has nothing to do with the text in this article, I want to clear up a misconception I hear frequently from my amill brothers.

The real debate has never been about whether the 1,000 years are a literal 1,000 years. Maybe they are literal, maybe they are not. I think they are literal. But they could just represent a long duration of time. I have no problem as a premillennialist saying that they are symbolic of a long period of time. Fine. But the whole debate has been on when the inception of that time begins. Amills place it at Christ's first coming, Premills place it at the second coming. That is the crux interpretum. This is why amillers are notorious for diving right into 20:1 and lifting it out of its context and placing it at Christ's first coming. But if one takes the context as a whole (the context begins in Chapter 19:11) then one can observe that the time period begins at Christ's Return.

Next Hubner writes:

Just so we have the text in our faces, here it is (ESV), beginning with Luke’s Gospel:

He goes on to first cite Luke 17:22–35. But this is not the text at hand. And it does not recognize that Luke and Matthew can (and often do) have different purposes in Jesus' eschatological teaching. We should not collapse Luke's teaching into Matthew, or vice versa. We should start with Matt 24:37–41, and once we exhaust exegetical considerations, then we are warranted to move outward, which helps to protect our interpretation from importing unintended meanings into our text. Second he cites the text at hand Matthew 24:37-41.

Then he lists this chart as if to prove something that he does not explain. I don't share his preterist presuppositions, especially for Matthew's account. Nevertheless, my aim is to focus on Matthew's purpose in illustrating the parousia event.

Next he writes:

It seems obvious enough (for me) that the ones “taken” in Matt. 24:40-41 correspond to the ones “swept…all away” in v. 39 (“destroyed them all,” Lk. 17:29), and the ones “left” (v. 40-41) correspond to Noah and his family left on earth (v.37-39). This is especially clear against the backdrop of previous words of Jesus in the gospel of Matthew, when at “close of the age,” “the Son of Man will send his angels and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all law-breakers and throw them into the fiery furnace” (13:4-42). In both cases those “left behind,” as we have often heard in the last century, are actually the righteous. As scholars and pastors have said:

Notice here he immediately goes outside of the text to cite two texts: Luke 17:29 which actually argues against his position, since it is Lot who was delivered, and Sodom left to be destroyed.

Then he cites Matthew 13:4-32 and selectively quotes: “the Son of Man will send his angels and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all law-breakers and throw them into the fiery furnace." Then he follows up with this assertion: "In both cases those “left behind,” as we have often heard in the last century, are actually the righteous." But this is not the case as I pointed out above on Lot, in addition, since Jesus just a bit earlier stated:

“Let both grow together until the harvest. At harvest time I will tell the reapers, “First collect (syllego) the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned, but then gather (synago) the wheat into my barn.”’ (Matt 13:30)

The weeds are collected and tied and placed to the side in order to not waste time burning them; then the task of harvesting the valuable harvest is performed first. And only after the costly harvest is complete would the weeds be disposed of by burning them. In ancient Palestine, weeds were often bundled and used later for fuel, as were other agricultural scraps (Snodgrass, 202).

Then he cites assertions of selective commentators.

“In the context of 24:37-39, “taken” presumably means “taken to judgment” (cf. Jer. 6:11 NASB, NRSV).” – Keener, IVPBBCNT, 115

“Who was taken away in the judgment of the flood? Not Noah and his family. They were left behind to carry on God’s work.” – DeMar, Last Days Madness, 196

“the one shall be taken, and the other left; as before, one shall be taken by the Romans, and either put to death, or carried captive.” – John Gill, Exposition of Matthew

“[Wright] contends that “being ‘taken’ in this context means being taken in judgment. There is no hint, here of a ‘rapture’, a sudden ‘supernatural’ event which would remove individuals from terra firma. Such an idea,” says Wright, “would look as odd, in these synoptic passages, as a Cadillac in a camel-train. It is a matter, rather, of secret police coming in the night, or of enemies sweeping through a village or city and seizing all they can. If the disciples were to escape, if they were to be ‘left’, it would be by the skin of their teeth” (Victory, 366).]” – Sam Storms, quoting NT Wright

These are not arguments. I could list commentators that support my conclusion as well. But I am more interested in argumentation, instead of creating a catalog of commentators that agree with me. So no reason to comment here.

Finally Hubner begins his critique.

My first reason I gave was:

First, it breaks the parallelism of the illustrations. Noah’s family being delivered is described first ("the day when Noah entered the ark," v 38) then the judgment on the ungodly is described second ("the flood came and swept them all away," v 39). To preserve the parallel, a man in the field and a woman grinding at the mill is first described as taken (delivered), then the other man in the field and other woman grinding at the mill are left (judgment).

He responds:

I disagree. The specific chronology-parallels Alan demands is neither the point of the text nor part of the parallel drawn from Noah’s flood, but is an artificial requirement constructed to “preserve” something that doesn’t really exist.

But that is the natural reading. It cannot be ignored since the illustrations illustrate the parousia. And when the text states that God will take his elect with him at the parousia, and his follow up illustrations state that people will be "taken," you can't simply say that it is "artificial."

He writes:

Clearly, the comparison between Noah’s flood and the Coming of the Son is made to demonstrate unexpectedness and the fact that there is judgment (group A) and non-judgment/deliverance (group B). That’s what Noah’s flood and the Coming of the Son of Man have in common, and that’s why Jesus brings it up.

The comparison demonstrates not just unexpectedness, but separation in deliverance and judgment, hence the emphasis in the parousia event and the illustrations.

He writes:

Judgment and deliverance are simultaneous. Both “taken” and “left” are in the same tense (present passive indicative) and both “entered” and “swept” are the same tense (aorist active indicative – making them contemporaneous).

Two comments here, first, actually, the context is that deliverance comes first, then judgment. That is the consistent pattern in Scripture. Lot was delivered first, Noah's family is delivered first. The resurrection will occur then the Day of the Lord's wrath. They will indeed be back-to-back events on the same day, but not "simultaneous."

Second, he commits the "Greek tense=time" fallacy, and invokes the Greek verb tense system in determining the "kind of action." This is a demonstrable error (See Exegetical Fallacies by D.A. Carson, ch. 2 on tense fallacies; Verbal Aspect in the Greek of the New Testament, with Reference to Tense and Mood, Porter (Studies in Biblical Greek ; Vol/ 1); Basics of Verbal Aspect in Biblical Greek by Constantine Campbell).

Context and lexeme determine time and kind of action, not mere morphological tense forms.

My second reason I gave was:

Second, some translations render the action of the flood illustration in verse 39 as, “the flood came and took them [the wicked] all away.” The rendering “took” is unfortunate because unsuspecting readers may assume that it is the same term used in verses 40–41 that have “taken.” This is not the case because there are two different Greek terms with very different meanings. The English Standard Version recognizes this and accordingly replaces “took” with “swept away”: “and they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away, so will be the coming of the Son of Man” (Matt 24:39 ESV). The Greek term here is airō, which in this particular context of the judgment-flood illustration means to “take away, remove.” Therefore, this meaning is roughly opposite of the intimate receiving sense of paralambanō in verses 40–41.

Not surprisingly, just a few days later, Jesus uses this same term of intimate receiving when he taught reassurance to these same disciples about his return: “And if I go and make ready a place for you, I will come again and take (paralambanō) you to be with me, so that where I am you may be too” (John 14:3). Same context, same audience, same terminology.

His response was by citing France's commentary:

The verb is παραλαμβάνω rather than a simple λαμβάνω, and if the compound is more than just a stylistic variation, it might be understood to mean “take to oneself” (as in 1:20; 17:1:1; 18:16; 20:17). If the passive verbs are understood as “divine passives,” that would mean that God has taken selected people to himself, leaving the rest to conclude their life on earth. Some have therefore suggested that this passage speaks of a “rapture” of the faithful to heaven before judgment falls on the earth. This is not the place to investigate the complex dispensational scheme which underlies this nineteenth-century theory, but it should be noted that insofar as this passage forms a basis for that theology, it rests on an uncertain foundation. We are not told where or why they are “taken,” and the similar sayings in vv. 17-18 about people caught out in the course of daily life by the Roman advance presupposed a situation of threat rather than of rescue; to be “taken” in such circumstances would be a negative experience, and Matthew will use παραλαμβάνω in a similar threatening context in 27:27. The verb in itself does not determine the purpose of the “taking,” and it could as well be for judgment (as in Jer. 6:11) as for refuge. In light of the preceding verses, when the Flood “swept away” the unprepared, that is probably the more likely sense here. (R.T. France, NICNT, 941)

I sensed that Hubner was obfuscating on this point by citing from France for the following two reasons:

1. France says, "We are not told where or why they are “taken." This is not the case. The whole point of the illustration is to illustrate the parousia. We are taken so we can be with Jesus! “And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet blast, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.” (Matt 24:31).

2. France imports a different meaning of paralambono into this context when he asserts: "and Matthew will use παραλαμβάνω in a similar threatening context in 27:27." And he says, "The verb in itself does not determine the purpose of the “taking,” and it could as well be for judgment (as in Jer. 6:11) as for refuge." This is simply not true to the lexical data. And yet, I addressed this very point in my original article which Hubner ignored:

Another objection to this interpretation claims that paralambanō does not always carry the sense of receiving in a positive sense. This is true, but misleading. Of the 49 times this term is used in the New Testament they will cite 3 times it is used negatively (Matt 27:27, John 19:16, Acts 23:18). But this is not a warranted reason because it is a rare meaning of the word found in a narrow specific context of a prisoner being handed over to the jurisdiction of soldiers, a context that is not related to our parousia illustration. It is a strained lexical argument to apply this unlikely meaning to our target passage (On avoiding this type of error, see D.A. Carson’s Exegetical Fallacies, “Word-Study Fallacies,” 37–41).

Hubner writes:

As France noted above, word studies alone are not sufficient to establish the meaning of παραλαμβάνω in Matt. 24:40-41. And it seems unjustified for Alan to automatically assert that the term in Matt. 24:40-41 means an “intimate receiving sense.”

"Automatically assert"? Really? I am the one staying in the text. I am the one showing how this term comports with the parousia event. In fact, Hubner completely ignores what I wrote here:

Not surprisingly, just a few days later, Jesus uses this same term of intimate receiving when he taught reassurance to these same disciples about his return: “And if I go and make ready a place for you, I will come again and take (paralambanō) you to be with me, so that where I am you may be too” (John 14:3). Same context, same audience, same terminology.

The conceptual and literary parallel with John 14:3 is extremely relevant to our text in Matthew 24. To ignore it is not to deal with the argumentation from the other side head on, thus weakening his position.

Then he writes:

The term is used in Matthew 27:27, which says “Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the governor’s headquarters.” Not “intimate” if you ask me. Nor is “Then it goes and brings seven other spirits more evil than itself” (Lk 11:26), or “So he delivered him over to them to be crucified. So they took Jesus” (John 19:16), or “So he took him and brought him to the tribune and said” (Acts 23:18).

At this point he commits a common lexical fallacy, I wrote (again):

Another objection to this interpretation claims that paralambanō does not always carry the sense of receiving in a positive sense. This is true, but misleading. Of the 49 times this term is used in the New Testament they will cite 3 times it is used negatively (Matt 27:27, John 19:16, Acts 23:18). But this is not a warranted reason because it is a rare meaning of the word found in a narrow specific context of a prisoner being handed over to the jurisdiction of soldiers, a context that is not related to our parousia illustration. It is a strained lexical argument to apply this unlikely meaning to our target passage (On avoiding this type of error, see D.A. Carson’s Exegetical Fallacies, “Word-Study Fallacies,” 37–41).

Hubner states:

Of course, Alan could easily respond with a dozen or so verses demonstrating that the term can be “an intimate receiving” as he says. And that’s precisely my point: words studies are not enough, as I’m hoping Alan would agree.

It is Hubner who is arbitrarily stating meanings of words. While I have been careful to show how this word means such and such in specific contexts. Hubner and France grabbed meanings from unrelated contexts and read them back into Matthew 24. I have shown meanings from very relevant contexts and thus support my position on Matthew 24 (e.g., John 14:3).

He cites John Walvoord as disagreeing with me. And how is that relevant? At this point, I am getting the impression that this is filler. Why is this surprising that Walvoord disagrees with me, as those other commentators above? If I list more guys that agree with me than Hubner, does that mean my interpretation is the correct one? Walvoord is pretrib. It is generally posttribs and prewrathers who take the position that those who are taken are taken in the resurrection/rapture. So Hubner's citation of Walvoord is irrelevant.

My third reason I gave was:

Third, it is important to remember that the agricultural illustrations in verses 40–41 (men in field and women grinding) are not intended to illustrate the illustration of Noah and the flood in verses 37–39, but instead illustrates the climax of the Olivet Discourse, which is the gathering of God’s people at the parousia (Matt 24:30–31). At the separation when the parousia begins in verse 31, who is being taken? It is God's elect. That is the point of invoking the illustration in the first place.

He asserts: "I disagree, and I see absolutely no exegetical basis for believing this at all." Really? At the parousia God's people are taken, then Jesus uses illustrations to demonstrate that people are "taken," and Hubner says, "I see absolutely no exegetical basis." Um, OK.

He writes:

First of all, there is simply no reason to separate v.38-39 from v.40-41 (how is one going to understand v.40-41 apart from 38 and 39, and why would one wish to do so?), let alone declare that verses 30-31 is a “climax of the Olivet Discourse” (what type of climax? Because v.34-35 seems equally or more climactic if you ask me, and perhaps v. 44 as well), or that v. 37-39 is somehow an illustration of this climax. Alan references v. 30-31 which says “they will gather his elect from the four winds.” But, does that really sound like “swept them all away” (v. 39) and “destroyed them all” (Lk 17:29)? There is absolutely no exegetical basis – except raw presupposition – to say that v.40-41 specifically summarizes or illustrates v.30-31.

1. There are two illustrations that illustrate the parousia. They are Noah and a two-fold agricultural illustration. The first illustration with Noah even explicitly states that it is illustrating the parousia (twice!): "so the coming of the Son of Man will be. "

2. Hubner denies that the climax of the OD is the parousia. Verses 1-31 are primarily didactic followed by vv.32ff as application-hortatory. And again, the illustration is explicit to what it is referring to: "so the coming of the Son of Man will be. " How could Jesus be more specific?

3. Next he makes a blunderous misunderstanding of my position, he writes: "Alan references v. 30-31 which says "they will gather his elect from the four winds.” But, does that really sound like “swept them all away” (v. 39) and “destroyed them all” (Lk 17:29)?" That is not my position. Hubner grossly misrepresented me. The gathering of the elect is God's people, not for judgment! How Hubner misunderstood this is beyond me. Those who are taken in the illustrations are the righteous, which corresponds with those who are taken at the parousia in verse 31, the elect.

He writes:

There is absolutely no exegetical basis – except raw presupposition – to say that v.40-41 specifically summarizes or illustrates v.30-31.

Yes there is, immediately before vv 40-41 in v 39, it says, "It will be the same at the coming of the Son of Man." It is clearly referring back to the parousia event in v 31. How could Jesus be more specific? Do you really want to assert, "There is absolutely no exegetical basis"? Really?

Next he writes:

Second of all, even if Alan is correct, this completely contradicts his first point. Did he not just argue for parallelism between Noah’s flood and the two grinding and being in a field? Then why does he now completely deny this connection and make the radical assertion that the men in field and grinding really have nothing to do with Noah and the flood, but actually parallels verse 31?

Hubner is reading me carelessly. It goes back to his blunderous misunderstanding of my position. The elect of God at the parousia that are gathered, which is referred to by the ones who are taken (paralambanō) in the illustrations.

My fourth reason I gave was:

Fourth, Luke records the same illustration that Jesus gives to describe his coming: “(34) I tell you, in that night there will be two people in one bed; one will be taken and the other left. (35) There will be two women grinding grain together; one will be taken and the other left.” (37) Then the disciples said to him, “Where, Lord?” He replied to them, “Where the dead body is, there the vultures will gather” (Luke 17:34–37). This last verse containing the disciples’ question of “where” is insightful because Jesus responds that where the dead body is it will attract vultures—this judgment imagery evokes vultures hovering over dead people, who represent those deemed judged, the ungodly, not the righteous. This comports much better with those who are “left” and not with those who are taken.

Hubner does not recognize (as even Dickerson seems to) that this comports with those who are left for judgment. He gives a strained reading that honestly I cannot make heads or tails with. He writes, "Alan wants to say that, somehow, the corpses on the ground represent those who are “left.” That makes no sense." It makes no sense because there seems to be a forcing of an interpretive grid on the illustration, ensuring a desired outcome. The natural reading as I have shown has those who are left as being judged.

In my estimation, Hubner failed to provide substantive responses to my points. Of all of them, my third argument is most problematic for them. It is the natural reading that the illustrations that Jesus uses illustrate the parousia event. To deny it, results in a tortured reading.

What astonishes me is that Hubner denies there is a correspondence between these two passages:

Parousia Event: “(30) Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and all the tribes of the earth will mourn. They will see the Son of Man arriving on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. (31) And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet blast, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.” (Matt 24:29–31)

Illustrating the Parousia: “(37) For just like the days of Noah were, so the coming of the Son of Man will be. (38) For in those days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark. (39) And they knew nothing until the flood came and took them all away. It will be the same at the coming of the Son of Man.” (Matt 24:37–39)

Only imposing an unwarranted theological grid can deny this natural reading of the text.

To sum up my main point:

It is important to remember that the agricultural illustrations in verses 40–41 (men in field and women grinding) are not intended to illustrate the illustration of Noah and the flood in verses 37–39, but instead illustrates the climax of the Olivet Discourse, which is the gathering of God’s people at the parousia (Matt 24:30–31). At the separation when the parousia begins in verse 31, who is being taken? It is God's elect. That is the point of invoking the illustration in the first place!

And the Word was God

DALE [TUGGY] SAID:

Consider this sentence: Steve, poster on this blog, likes beer.

Here, I affirm that you like beer. But this also shows I assume what is in the dependent clause. Why'd I add it? To clarify just who I was talking about. I'm not here asserting that you post here, but this does show I assume it.

Now, go back to the verse. Jesus is praying in front of the disciples.

"Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent."

Again, the relative clause specifies who the "you" is. It's the only true God - the speaker here assumes that the Father (v.1) is (numerically identical to) the one true God.

That the Father is the grammatical referent of the phrase “the only true God” in Jn 17:3 is not in dispute.

The only difference between the examples is that "poster on this blog" but not "the one true God" could be predicated of more than one thing.

That’s based, in part, on your persistent failure to appreciate the stereotypical import of that particular phrase, as well as the way Jn 17:3 functions in reference to related statements earlier in the Gospel, although I’ve corrected you on both points.

When you raise an objection, I respond, and you repeat the same objection instead of interacting with my response, that does nothing to advance the argument.

This was just too corny to pass up

"The Dalai Lama Walks into a Pizza Shop…"



HT: Justin Taylor

Understanding the Early Development of the House Churches in Rome, Part 3

Part 1
Part 2

I want to take a look at one of the “travel” paragraphs in Acts:

After three months we set sail in a ship that had wintered in the island, a ship of Alexandria, with the twin gods [the Greek gods Castor and Pollux] as a figurehead. Putting in at Syracuse, we stayed there for three days. And from there we made a circuit and arrived at Rhegium. And after one day a south wind sprang up, and on the second day we came to Puteoli. There we found brothers and were invited to stay with them for seven days. And so we came to Rome. And the brothers there, when they heard about us, came as far as the Forum of Appius and Three Taverns to meet us. On seeing them, Paul thanked God and took courage. And when we came into Rome, Paul was allowed to stay by himself, with the soldier that guarded him (Acts 28:11-16).

Having owned a study Bible most of my adult life, I can testify that this is one of those passages that I read over quickly, maybe referencing a nearby map, and then skipping on to “meatier” topics.

But this is a first-person factual account upon which an historian, who naturally looks to such attested accounts, can hang his hat. By the time Paul first got to Rome, there were Christians there.

Fact-checking footnotes

Although this has immediate reference to art history, there's a parallel problem in "mainstream" Bible scholarship:

Creighton was scrupulous about sources, and nothing pleased him more than to trace a footnote through multiple generations of citation and to discover at the origin a misinterpretation or some indisputable evidence of neglect that he could wield against an adversary farther down the citation chain.  “Scholars tend to be lazy,” he often observed with charming smugness, knowing that we knew that he took pride in being an exception.

http://www.baroquepotion.com/page/3/ 

Animal rights BBQ

http://keithburgess-jackson.typepad.com/blog/2011/06/roger-scruton-on-eating-ones-friends.html

Is Stark a moral compromiser?

I’m going to make two brief observations about Thom Stark’s bitter review of Paul Copan’s book Is God a Moral Monster:

i) For 300+ pages, Stark waxes indignant over Copan and the OT. Yet Stark never bothers to lay the necessary framework for his knee-jerk moralizing. What is the metaphysical basis for Stark’s value-judgments?

ii) Stark automatically appeals to source criticism and redaction criticism to discount evidence that’s inconvenient for his thesis. So he indulges in special pleading. Contrary evidence is outsourced or redacted out of existence. The remaining evidence just so happens to agree with him.  

"Foolish nonsense"

DALE SAID:

“only true god” - yes, that phrase refers to the same thing as “Father” in v.1. The term “god” here, though, is quantified over. Compare: addressing the King as “King” (proper noun) vs. saying “you are the only true king” (common noun). Don't be fooled by the English capital “G”. But really, this common vs. proper nouns distinction is irrelevant. Read it your way – “that they may know you, the Father, and Jesus” - there are two objects of knowledge here - eternal life consists in knowing *them*.

i) The fact that there are two parties (the Father and the Son) in Jn 17:3 is a red herring. No one is arguing that the Father and the Son are interchangeable Jn 17:3.

ii) Your argument would only go through if (a) John always uses “theos” as a common noun rather than a proper noun, and (b) John reserves “theos” for the Father to the exclusion of the Son.

iii) You also disregard the idiomatic nature of the phase “only true God” in Jn 17:3. You act as if John is simply adding the sense of the adjective (“only,” “true”) to the sense of the noun (“God”).

To the contrary, John is using stereotypical Jewish jargon, where the “only God,” “true God,” or “only true God” picks out Yahweh in distinction to pagan deities. This idiomatic semantic unit is not synonymous with the individual parts of speech which comprise it.

Then, as I already pointed out (which you ignore), John sets this characterization in implicit contrast to the attitude which the religious establishment took to Jesus. John is using this as a wedge issue. The Jewish establishment prides itself on following the one true God (i.e. Yahweh), over against heathen idolaters–like the Romans. Yet the same establishment is guilty of rejecting the Son, whom he sent.

That’s the intended contrast. The point is not to contrast the deity of the Father with the non-deity of the Son. The point, rather, is to underscore the ironic position of Christ’s Jewish opponents.

In Jn 17:3, the “one true God” deliberately evokes intertextual parallels with earlier confrontations in the narrative arc (e.g. 5:44; 7:28).

non sequitur

It’s hardly a non sequitur to point out that Jn 17:5 further weakens the unitarian interpretation of Jn 17:3

red herring - it needn’t be contrasting them, but only assuming them two - and it plainly does. There’s the one god, and the one whom that one god sent. In other words, the Father isn’t the Son.

i) Irrelevant. Trinitarian theology presupposes a distinction between the Father and the Son.

ii) Your dichotomy would only work on the dual condition that (a) John only uses theos as a common noun and (b) his use of theos is confined to the Father.

a) It’s arguable that John typically uses theos as a synonymous proper name for the Father.

b) In addition, there are programmatic examples in Jn 1:1,18 where John alternates between theos as a common noun and theos as a proper noun when he uses the common noun as a covering term for the Father and the Son alike. Both are divine.

Right. Any Trinity theory is an attempt to explain the data of the texts. Problem is, there are many of them, and they're incompatible.

At best, that’s a theoretical problem, not a doctrinal problem. The primary issue is the witness of the Bible to the Trinity. That’s the raw material for doctrinal formulations.

Sure. All unitarians have always known this. We can’t take such applications to imply that Jesus is Yahweh himself, though. Why? That's inconsistent, because according to the texts some things are true of one that are not true of the other.

i) That argument cuts both ways. If NT writers often assign Yahwist passages to the Father, would you say, We can’t take such applications to imply that the Father is Yahweh himself, though. Why? That’s inconsistent, because according to the texts some things are true of one that are not true of the other.

ii) It’s a presupposition of Trinitarian doctrine that the Father, Son, and Spirit differ in some respect. Everything that’s true of the Father won’t be true of the Son without remainder, or vice versa.

On your idea that I somehow misunderstand nouns - this is a careless misreading. My point was that these authors assume the numerical identity of the Father and God. If f=g, and not(f=s) then it can't be that s=g. You're not getting my point that the authors don't merely predicate divinity of f & s - rather, they identify f and Yahweh.

i) I’m not sure if your using “God” as common noun or a proper noun.

ii) Once again, your objection cuts both ways. Yes, NT writers identify the Father with Yahweh. But NT writers also identify Jesus with Yahweh. They treat the Father as divine, but they also treat Jesus as divine.

You’re artificially isolating NT ascriptions regarding the Father from NT ascriptions regarding the Son (or Spirit, for that matter). But NT practice is the same. NT writers don’t identify the Father as Yahweh rather than the Son as Yahweh. You’re not getting that antithesis from the actual practice of NT writers.

Rather, you’ve chosen to artificially privilege NT statements about the Father’s Yahwistic identity, make that your yardstick, then oppose that to NT statements about the Son’s Yahwistic identity.

iii) In addition, you begin with your philosophical preconception of what constitutes identity, and then use that to filter out dominical ascriptions that don’t jive with your preconception. But that’s faulty theological method.

You’re using your philosophical categories to prejudge the exegetical results. To preempt what the NT is allowed to say.

But there’s no reason to think NT writers begin where you begin. Even if you think Trinitarian theology generates internal tensions vis-à-vis the one-over-many relation (“numerical identity”), what if NT writers don’t share your concern about how Jesus can be Yahweh if the Father is Yahweh?

That’s really a separate issue. You have to play the hand you’re dealt. If NT writers who treat the Father as Yahweh also treat the Son as Yahweh, then that’s what you’ve got to work with. The NT doesn’t prioritize one set of statements over another set of statements in that regard.

iv) When we move to philosophical synthesis, even if (arguendo) the Trinity is paradoxical, so what? Paradox is a common phenomenon in math, science, and logic. And some paradoxes prove highly resistant to domestication. Cf. N. Rescher, Paradoxes: Their Roots, Range, and Resolution (Open Court 2001); R. M. Sainsbury, Paradoxes (Cambridge, 2^nd ed., 2002).

Re: your narrative line - sorry, I don’t understand anything about the ‘poetics of narrativity’ that would require a ‘God’ which is not a self to be depicted as a self...

i) Narrative theology doesn’t “require” it to be either “a self” or several “selves.” That’s beside the point.

The point is the narratological function of the divine character in the story, as well as whether or not the narrator has any particular occasion to distinguish more than one divine character.

ii) Keep in mind, too, that a “self” is a rather crude category to work with.

Yes, an almighty God could appear other than he is, but I don’t see how this changes the fact that ‘God’ in the OT is supposed to be a god.

Do Trinitarians deny the fact that “God” in the OT is supposed to be divine? How is that pertinent to the issue at hand?

= is a one-one relation. Two different things can’t be = to one thing. This is self-evident, when you grasp what is meant by = (numerical identity). It is ‘exclusive’ in that nothing else can be = to a thing, but only itself. If I’m sounding dogmatic on this, I am - this is basic logic.

i) I used “=” to equate “kurios” as a Septuagintal loanword for Yahweh. You’re transferring what I said to something else.

ii) In addition, you’re imposing your extraneous grid on the NT data. On the face of it, NT writers don’t say the Father and the Son can’t both be Yahweh, even though NT writers also distinguish the two. Maybe you think that’s illogical, but you can’t use that to gag the witness of the NT. You have to let the writers say what they want say, whether or not that adds up in your own mind.

v) You also have a simplistic notion of how two things can (or can’t be) one thing, or vice versa. But there are different ways of modeling identity. Take enantiomorphic symmetries. These can be mapped onto each other in one-to-one correspondence, yet they’re not interchangeable.

The verses you put so much weight on are like this: OT text says Yahweh will do X. NT applies that text to Jesus, making it be fulfilled in him. So, he’s Yahweh, no? No! You’re saddling the text with foolish nonsense - saying that those are =, even though they differ (some things are true of one that aren’t true of the other).

I don’t see any fundamental, or even appreciable, difference between the way NT writers apply Yahwistic texts to Jesus and the way they apply Yahwistic texts to the Father. They freely alternate in their ascriptions.

You have a habit of relativizing one set over against another set although the NT itself doesn’t do that. But in exegeting a passage, the salient issue is not whether that seems like “foolish nonsense” to the reader (i.e. Dale Tuggy), but whether that seems like “foolish nonsense” to the writer (e.g. St. Paul, St. John).

Whether that’s foolish nonsense from Tuggy’s viewpoint is immaterial, since all that counts is the viewpoint of the NT writer. In doing exegesis, you need to assume their viewpoint, not substitute your own viewpoint for theirs.

That’s the case whether or not you agree with them. But if you disagree, what are you going on? If you don’t have God’s self-revelation to guide you, what’s your fallback? Only God can disclose what God is like. 

Really, those texts needn’t puzzle. Analogy: Astrologer says “Bush will invade Iraq.” Years later, general Smith leads the charge (sent in by Bush). See, she says, my prediction was fulfilled in Smith. She doesn't think Bush is Smith. Rather, it was through Smith that Bush accomplished his invasion.

That’s you’re harmonistic gloss, but NT writers frequently apply Yahwistic passages interchangeably to the Father and the Son. 

Results of my wife’s biopsy

A couple of weeks ago I posted to the effect that I had attended my first bone marrow biopsy, which was performed on my wife, after she had been admitted to a hospital with very low blood levels.

At the time, we treated it as just something routine, but as it turns out, she has been diagnosed with “myelodysplastic syndrome” (MDS), which is one among a group of pre-leukemia types of cancers of the blood. Even though it is a “pre-leukemia,” it is still a cancer, and it seems as if they will be treating it aggressively. This means a regimen of intense chemotherapy, followed by a bone marrow transplant. The prognosis for this is about 70%-80% for a “complete remission” (CR).

Essentially, with this disease, it seems as if you get one chance at a cure; if for some reason there is a relapse, all the “prognosis” numbers seem to go way down. Left untreated, some 30% of cases progress to an aggressive form of leukemia called “acute myleoid leukemia” (AML). But once the “chemo-and-transplant” efforts have run their course, they seem to be far less effective the next time around.

Here are a few links, for those who are interested:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myelodysplastic_syndrome
http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/pdq/treatment/myelodysplastic/Patient
http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/pdq/treatment/myelodysplastic/HealthProfessional/page1
http://www.mdanderson.org/patient-and-cancer-information/cancer-information/cancer-types/myelodysplastic-syndrome/index.html

So far this is something that I’ve discussed privately with some fellow bloggers and online friends, and I’d like to thank those of you who have been praying for us. We have an appointment set for next week to meet with the specialists.

I won’t be writing about this here very much, but I have a personal blog where I’ll hope to be going into a bit more detail. Lord willing, I’ll have all of that together some time soon.

Also, comments are off for this post, as I'm at work today and won’t have time to respond; I do appreciate your prayers and concern.

Those "Left Behind" are the Wicked, A Response to Matthew Dickerson

In a recent post, my co-blogger friend Jamin Hubner linked and agreed with the Christianity Today article entitled, "Who Gets Left Behind?" by Matthew Dickerson. Dickerson's conclusion is that those who are left behind are the righteous, and those who are taken are the wicked. I was taken back by Dickerson's surface-level exegesis of Matt 24:37–42, even grounding his word analysis on an English translation!

I ask the reader to read Dickerson's article then compare it with my exegetical reasoning below in which I argue that those who are left behind are the wicked:

We refer Matt 24:37–42. It is asserted that the judgment of “the flood came and took them [the wicked] all away” parallels with “one will be taken (paralambanō).” This is a misunderstanding for the following four reasons:

First, it breaks the parallelism of the illustrations. Noah’s family being delivered is described first ("the day when Noah entered the ark," v 38) then the judgment on the ungodly is described second ("the flood came and swept them all away," v 39). To preserve the parallel, a man in the field and a woman grinding at the mill is first described as taken (delivered), then the other man in the field and other woman grinding at the mill are left (judgment).

Second, some translations render the action of the flood illustration in verse 39 as, “the flood came and took them [the wicked] all away.” The rendering “took” is unfortunate because unsuspecting readers may assume that it is the same term used in verses 40–41 that have “taken.” This is not the case because there are two different Greek terms with very different meanings. The English Standard Version recognizes this and accordingly replaces “took” with “swept away”: “and they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away, so will be the coming of the Son of Man” (Matt 24:39 ESV). The Greek term here is airō, which in this particular context of the judgment-flood illustration means to “take away, remove.” Therefore, this meaning is roughly opposite of the intimate receiving sense of paralambanō in verses 40–41.

Not surprisingly, just a few days later, Jesus uses this same term of intimate receiving when he taught reassurance to these same disciples about his return: “And if I go and make ready a place for you, I will come again and take (paralambanō) you to be with me, so that where I am you may be too” (John 14:3). Same context, same audience, same terminology.

Third, it is important to remember that the agricultural illustrations in verses 40–41 (men in field and women grinding) are not intended to illustrate the illustration of Noah and the flood in verses 37–39, but instead illustrates the climax of the Olivet Discourse, which is the gathering of God’s people at the parousia (Matt 24:30–31). At the separation when the parousia begins in verse 31, who is being taken? It is God's elect. That is the point of invoking the illustration in the first place!

Fourth, Luke records the same illustration that Jesus gives to describe his coming: “(34) I tell you, in that night there will be two people in one bed; one will be taken and the other left. (35) There will be two women grinding grain together; one will be taken and the other left.” (37) Then the disciples said to him, “Where, Lord?” He replied to them, “Where the dead body is, there the vultures will gather” (Luke 17:34–37). This last verse containing the disciples’ question of “where” is insightful because Jesus responds that where the dead body is it will attract vultures—this judgment imagery evokes vultures hovering over dead people, who represent those deemed judged, the ungodly, not the righteous. This comports much better with those who are “left” and not with those who are taken.

Another objection to this interpretation claims that paralambanō does not always carry the sense of receiving in a positive sense. This is true, but misleading. Of the 49 times this term is used in the New Testament they will cite 3 times it is used negatively (Matt 27:27, John 19:16, Acts 23:18). But this is not a warranted reason because it is a rare meaning of the word found in a narrow specific context of a prisoner being handed over to the jurisdiction of soldiers, a context that is not related to our parousia illustration. It is a strained lexical argument to apply this unlikely meaning to our target passage (On avoiding this type of error, see D.A. Carson’s Exegetical Fallacies, “Word-Study Fallacies,” 37–41).

Dickerson attempts to argue for his hypothesis by going to 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17 and by invoking the Greek term apantesis as support. I have lectured against this interpretation in the past and my lecture notes will suffice. (See also this related article.)

My last comment on Dickerson's article. He asserts: "I would suggest that the popular interpretation owes more to Platonism or Gnosticism, which devalue the body and physical creation, than to Christianity."

This is a bit of a desperate attempt at this point. Refute by pulling out the Gnostic card!

Trust & Obey

My unqualified condemnation of those who bludgeoned babies to death in Rwanda is rooted in a belief that you ought never ever bludgeon babies (NEBB). NEBB is not only a basic belief, it is as indubitable as any belief I have (and more indubitable than most). Though I am not clear on the mode by which I know NEBB, fortunately I need not know how I know to know that I know. It may be that I know NEBB as an immediate intuition,25 or perhaps I know it by a faculty of moral perception that parallels sense perception.

 

In this paper I have argued that genocide is always a moral atrocity from which it follows that if Yahweh is God then Yahweh did not command the Canaanite genocide. To this end I critiqued four arguments Paul Copan uses to justify the genocide while providing four counter arguments against the possibility of divinely mandated genocide. While this may not yet tell us how we should respond to biblical narratives of divinely sanctioned violence, at the very least it will save Christians from the sorry spectacle of attempting to convince ourselves and others of that which everybody knows cannot be true.

http://randalrauser.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/Rauser11.1.pdf 

There are several basic problems with Rauser’s claim:

i) “Everyone” doesn’t know that cannot be true. For starters, the OT writers didn’t think divinely commanded “genocide” was “morally atrocious.”

And from Rauser’s standpoint, it wasn’t just OT writers. If, like Rauser, you reject the inspiration of Scripture, then ancient Israelites didn’t practice genocide or child sacrifice because the Bible sanctioned that practice; rather, the Bible sanctioned that practice because ancient Israelites practiced genocide and child sacrifice.

(I don’t think the Bible sanctions infant sacrifice. I’m merely playing along with Rauser’s allegation for the sake of argument.)

On the liberal view of Scripture, which Rauser espouses, the OT merely canonizes the prevailing social mores of the day.

Furthermore, child sacrifice was a common ANE custom. It wasn’t just an OT phenomenon.

ii) That, however, counts as prima facie evidence against Rauser’s appeal to “immediate intuition” or a “faculty of moral perception.” For if that’s the case, then why wasn’t that immediate intuition or moral perception shared by ancient Israel and other ANE civilizations?

Same problem applies to the perpetrators of the Rwandan massacres. I haven’t studied the issue, but from my recollection of news coverage at the time of the event, this was on a massive scale.

iii) In principle, Rauser could postulate that OT writers, ancient Israelites, and other ancient Near Easterners knew these practically were morally atrocious, and violated their conscience in so doing. And that could be the case.

But unless Rauser has independent evidence for an “immediate intuition” or “faculty of moral perception” according to which genocide and infant sacrifice are morally atrocious, how can he discount the prima facie evidence to the contrary?

What’s his evidence for “an immediate intuition” or “faculty of moral perception” that condemns genocide or child sacrifice? He can’t appeal to empirical evidence or testimonial evidence, then preemptively discount empirical or testimonial evidence to the contrary without vicious circularity.

iv) There is also the dilemma of secular ethics. On the one hand, Rauser is appealing to a free-floating faculty of moral perception or immediate intuition to judge religious ethics, but without a religious grounding for ethics, what does his appeal amount to? Aren’t objective moral norms dead in the water apart from God?

v) Apropos (iv), the feasible options don’t range between secular ethics and religious ethics, but between rival religious ethics. Secular ethics is a nonstarter. I

vi) Then there’s the hypothetical case of an ostensible divine command which might be so repugnant to us that this would call into question the source of the command. However, that raises two additional issues:

a) A command might be deliberately repugnant as test of faith. Indeed, that’s how many construe the command to sacrifice Isaac.

The test actually involves a counterfactual command, yet its counterfactual status can’t be known in advance of the attempted compliance with the command. Only the divine speaker is privy to his ulterior motives. Only by attempting to obey it does the human subject discover that it was just a test. That the command was never in play.

b) Or a command might be repugnant to us because we lack sufficient information to appreciate the overriding considerations which justify the command.

For instance, suppose a police captain orders a sharpshooter to kill a baby in a stroller. On the face of it, that’s morally atrocious. On the face of it, we’d say the sharpshooter has both the right and the obligation to defy a direct order from his commanding officer in that instance.

But suppose, as it turns out, the baby in the stroller is not a real baby. Suppose it’s a dummy, concealing a powerful bomb. 

vii) Rauser also sidesteps the question of whether the identity of the divine speaker can be known. If so, then his objections are moot.

The fine art of shoe-eating

With his permission, I'm posting some correspondence I had with Dr. Richard Hess today.

Dear Dr. Hess,

How do you interpret 2 Kings 3:27? I ask because some reviewers of Paul Copan's Is God/Yahweh a Moral Monster have been critical of how he handled this passage. Here are some concrete examples:

W. L. Craig debate transcripts

http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/PageServer?pagename=debates_main

HT: Pankaj Parmar

The Outsider Test for Faith Muse: Where Are My Royalties!?

John Loftus has turned his humble Outsider Test for Faith into a major merchandise industry that sells some of the hottest product around today (news from WSJ is that it's going public early 2012). Some of the most fashionable and beautiful people in the world are wearing OTF gear. The T-blog paparazzi team, headed by Patrick Chan, have captured these photos:



















But here's my question for our lawyer readers, since Loftus has credited me with being the creative inspiration behind developing the OTF, can I get any royalties off of the massive sales Loftus Inc. is pulling in from his OTF merchandise line? If so, I'll give you a cut if you draft a lawsuit and send it to Loftus' law team.

Blomberg on apostasy

JD, I completely agree with you in theory. I'm just still waiting to actually meet somebody who completely falls in the category you've described. It's remarkable how often in the forty years since I trusted in Christ I've met someone who has appeared to fall into that category and/or who has claimed to fall into that category, but if I get the chance to discuss questions of Christian faith in any detail with them, explain why I believe what I believe, do the best to give them my best answers to the classic, hard questions for believers, eventually they concede that they have no better response to give to me and/or admit that they have been deeply hurt by one or more Christians, struggled with one or more areas that the Bible deems sinful, and/or had a conception of God that didn't permit them to believe he could truly accept them, love them and forgive them as they were. I've also had the privilege of traveling enough and meeting with Christians on or from every major part of every continent on the globe and reading the stories of plenty who are now with the Lord to realize how many countless folks have had all those experiences and worse and yet remained faithful, subsequently recovering their faith on a subjective level and being profoundly grateful they had persevered--often in circumstances that put me to shame. In other words, one can't neatly separate the categories of external hardship and internal doubt because the former almost inevitably creates some of the latter. But the question is how one chooses to respond. I'm afraid it's not coincidental that the greatest proportion of deconversions have come in the modern Western world where people, physically and economically, have been by far the best off in the history of the planet and have deluded themselves into thinking they can survive without God. And various Christians need to own a fair amount of the blame because we've set the bar far too low, as if Christianity were a veneer one could place on top of an essentially secular life rather than an unflinching commitment by which all of our life is transformed.

http://www.denverseminary.edu/craig-blombergs-blog-new-testament-musings/baptisms-no-big-deal-is-it/

No one who denies the Son has the Father

DALE SAID:

Hello Steve & readers,

First, I wouldn’t call myself an anti-trinitarian.

Since Tuggy opposes Trinitarian theology, since Tuggy classifies himself as a unitarian, that makes him, by definition, anti-trinitarian.

I’m not using “anti-trinitarian” as a value-judgment, but just a factual descriptor for his position.

I’m not from any such denomination or group, and I think believers ought to believe what seems true to them, and that they have the right to speculate.

That depends on what we mean.

Does Tuggy mean people shouldn’t pretend to believe what they privately disbelieve? Fine.

But by definition, Christian believers can’t be Christian believers unless they believe Christian distinctives.

Thus, I would not break fellowship with someone, or accuse them of misc. bad stuff because they accept some Trinity theory or other.

Since I didn’t discuss the ethical or church disciplinary dimensions of anti-Trinitarianism, it’s unclear to me why Tuggy is responding to something I didn’t address.

However, since he raises the issue, I certainly think anti-Trinitarianism is an excommunicable offense. Indeed, I think it’s a damnable offense. No one who denies the Son has the Father (1 Jn 2:23).

I am certainly a non-trinitarian, i.e. a small-u unitarian. I’ve been dragged there by the texts, and by the desperate problem faced by every Trinity theory out there.

Our warrant for the Trinity relies, first and foremost, not on a theory, but on God’s self-revelation. We can theorize about the implications of the revealed data, but our warrant for the Trinity doesn’t rest on the elegance of our Trinitarian theories.

Term-quibble #2: ‘Arian’? I suggest we should reserved this tired, unhelpful old label for those 4th c. guys - and even then, it’s not too accurate. In any case, I’m not an ‘Arian’ even in a extended sense – I’m not a subordinationist.

That’s the etymological fallacy.

Naive? Really? I don’t fail to distinguish between technical and non-technical language. Where have I made any elementary error?

Take Tuggy’s statement that:

A “god” in the Bible is always a self – not a substance, nature, or whatnot.

Moving along:

Yes - concepts are more fundamental than words. You’ll notice that at no time do I ever appeal to the true but shallow point that Trinity-lingo is not found in the Bible.

Yet he proceeds to confound words with concepts in the statement I just cited.

That’s interesting, but not decisive. What it is decisive, in my view, is that all NT authors assume the one God, Yahweh, to be the same self as the Father of Jesus.

On the face of it, that’s demonstrably false. NT writers often assign Yahwist passages to Jesus. And not merely passages in which Yahweh just so happens to be the speaker or agent, but passages which accentuate Yahweh’s unique status. 

Nothing like bald assertion. :-) Please look at my arguments for this in my 2004 “Deception” piece. To take but one example - which can be wriggled out of, but which is about as clear as could be: John 17:3. Jesus calls someone “the only true god/God”. Who is he talking to? The Father. So if he’s the *only* true god, then anyone else is not that one true god. A god, we assume, is a someone; basically all Christians believe that.

i) That nicely illustrates his inability to distinguish between proper nouns and common nouns.

ii) Tuggy ignores the application of “God” language and Yahwist passages to Jesus in the Fourth Gospel (e.g. Jn 12:41).

iii) I’ve dealt with Jn 17:3 elsewhere:

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2011/06/revealing-and-being.html

The poster argues that just because the OT God is given a proper name, it isn’t necessary a self. Well, sure. Bill Clinton called one of his parts, which was not a self, “Willard”. But a god, and the God in the OT is always a self, and this is obvious to every reader - indeed, frequently insisted on in apologetics and inter-religious contexts.

i) That’s not what I argued.

ii) Given the conventions of narrative theology (“the poetics of narrativity”), we’d normally expect God to be depicted as a “self.” That would hold true whether or not the narrator is unitarian or Trinitarian.

In OT narratives you ordinarily have a divine protagonist who interacts with his creatures. These include human protagonists as well as human antagonists or foils. There are also angelic emissaries and demonic forces.

The divine character is depicted as speaking, sending, delivering, punishing, &c. Ordinarily there is no occasion to depict more than one divine speaker or divine agent given the internal dynamics of the story.

However, God doesn’t exist on the same plane as the human characters. God exists behind-the-scenes. He manifests himself within the narrative, but he doesn’t exist within the (OT) narrative.

The fact that you generally have a (singular) divine “self” in OT narrative, to interact with human “selves,” doesn’t mean you can simply equate the narrative representation with a God who ultimately exists outside the narrative.

And the narrative conventions carry over into other genres.

iii) By the same token, NT narrators do have occasion to present more than one divine party, for at that stage of redemptive history we’re not just dealing with how God interacts with his creatures; rather, there’s the interaction between three divine parties (Father, Son, and Spirit) comes to the fore in the redemptive division of labor.

Yes, I agree that one can and in some cases should read various OT texts as having the “Yahweh” who appears by not God himself, but rather some sort of messenger, who speaks for him, and they would say “bears his name.”

Delegation is hardly sufficient to account for further distinctions. Prophets are messengers of God, but the Spirit of God is not a messenger; rather, behind the prophet of God stands the Spirit of God.

Likewise, angels are messengers of God, yet the Angel of the Lord is often in a class apart. 

The NT explicitly identifies the two, in particular in Acts.

i) This reflects an inability to even frame the question correctly. The question at issue is not whether Kurios (=Yahweh) includes the Father, but whether Kurios excludes the Son. Tuggy is assuming that the identification in Acts is restrictive. Yet Acts assigns Yahwist verses to the Son as well.

ii) Tuggy is also overlooking the polemic thrust of the speeches in Acts. When addressing a Jewish audience, the speakers will naturally accentuate the God of the Patriarchs to indict the religious establishment in Jerusalem as covenant-breakers. By rejecting the Messiah, they reject the divine Sender–the very God who made a covenant with Abraham.