The Cross Is War

This is my reply to a Mr. Hale who opines that the cross is "suicidal empathy." I have to disagree with you Mr. Hale. Jesus did not commit suicide and his compassion was never ever suicidal. On the contrary, Jesus like God the Father is a "man of war" as we read in Exodus. Jesus' suffering on the cross is the suffering of a soldier who takes on our sins and dies from them but at the same time when he says, "It is finished," it IS finished for Sin, Death and the Devil. It's over for them, Jesus is Victor. He is victor not only in the resurrection but on the cross itself. This is why in Matthew the dead rise and go into Jerusalem, now called the Holy City, because through Jesus' death it is holy. How did he accomplish this mission? The Father not only saved Jesus in the Garden (see Hebrews) he also girded Jesus with the belt of faith. Jesus was victor on the cross by "enfaithment." God the Father gave his all and indeed more than his all by sending his only begotten son. This compassion on the Father's part is his yes to creation and his no to the powers that seek to destroy. What we see on the cross is war.

It's "Begettings." Brave the Scandal.

"These are the begettings of the heavens and the earth." (Genesis 2:4, see also the "begettings" in 6:9, 10:1, 11:10, 25:12 & 19, 36:1, 37:2 and of course in the gospels!). It's hard to underestimate what we gain when we translate "toledoth" as "begettings." It's also hard to underestimate the damage done from NOT being brave and translating it correctly. Clearly, this mistranslation was done in order to conform God to our ideas of a god but the Lord God, as ever, is extremely non-risk averse. How will preachers in the pew and pulpit ever unpack the truth without the Hebrew and the Greek though? How are we supposed to make the connection between the creation of Genesis and the palingenesis that starts with the birth of Jesus? There's a reason that Matthew starts with "all those names." What becomes confusing when we mistranslate the "genesis" verbs in Matthew 1 is that all these names are the "begetting of Jesus," the begetting of the new heavens and the new earth i.e., it's renewal and restoration. One complication that gave some sort of excuse to the scholars is that it was not known that both the "gen" words, whether with one "n" or two has the sense of birth or begetting in the Greek of the Septuagint.

God Doesn't Need Appeasement. We Need Help.

Does Torah really teach us "what we are to do when we fail"? I have to say, "No." We have to be much more exact. What the Torah teaches us is what God GIVES when we fail (sin). Throughout the Torah the word "give" frequently occurs. Sadly, it also frequently mistranslated. God does not "set" the tent of meeting, he gives it. One place where there is not a mistranslation, however, comes in Leviticus 17:11 and there we hear a very unambiguous word from God, "I have given it (the sacrifice) to you to make atonement ("kippur," CPR) for your souls. All of the offerings for sin are given by the Lord God. You see, other gods demand offerings in order that they might be placated. Not the God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel. He gives offerings for the covering over of sin, that sin itself (Isaiah 40:2) might slack off and trouble us no more. This is what Jesus' cross is amongst other things, it is not an offering to God, it is not an appeasement of God's wrath, it is an offering for sin, to heal us, to help us, to make right what is wrong.

Metaphors? Yes and No. Mostly, "No."

Does the Bible, that is, the TNK and the booklet called the New Testament, does this book have "metaphor" and "simile" and all the rest? Yes and no. Mostly, "No." Consider Psalm 23, "he makes me to lie down in green pastures." We would consider this a metaphor, "one thing representing another." We take the green grass there to be representing peace or contentment or safety or somesuch. But here's the thing in the New Testament, this "metaphor" comes true in actuality. Jesus sits the men down on green grass. The "metaphor" is revealed as both peace, safety, love and actual green grass. We need to let the Bible define its own linguistic devices.

Man, A Walking, Talking Statue of God

We want the verse that tells of how man was created in the image of God to be something abstract and something that will soften or erase the scandal of what we see here. James Barr called it: What it means that man (not woman) was created in the image of God is that man is a walking statue of God. Man is the spittin’ image of God as we used to say. Note that Seth is not the spittin’ image of God but rather of Adam. In other words, Seth looks just like Adam. The Bible (TNK plus the booklet called the New Testament) is saying that we do not make images of the gods, rather God, the God, HE makes the image and it is the man. This does make woman second class, on the contrary, as Paul a TNK scholar if there ever was one (after God himself of course) says that while man is the glory of God, woman is the glory of man; she is glory to the second power. It’s after creating her that God declares everything “very good."

The Face of God

We don't usually translate the word for "face" in the Bible as "face." Sometimes this is for okay reasons but often, I suspect, it is done to avoid the scandal of the fact that God has a face. When we suppress this word we cheat and mistreat ourselves. Case in point: Jonah. When we translate "panim" as "presence" we lose a through line in Jonah, the "glow" of anger, the expression of the eye, the torturous heat on Jonah's head. Even more we lose the possibility of seeing how all this is spoken of in the Bible intertextually. To take just one example, think of how God's face is pleased with Jacob when Jacob wins in the wrestling match with God at the Jabbok. Not to see this dialogue within the Bible itself is fatal to our unpacking of the TNK and the booklet we call the New Testament. P.S. Please note Barth's advice is to consider that it is God who defines "face." We don't extrapolate "up" from our dictionary definitions of face, naturalistic definitions of "face" to God but rather we allow the Bible to define what God and indeed man's face might be. No natural theology here.

Augustine and Love

Which will it be?—“Father, Son and Holy Spirit” or “Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer”? Without “Father, Son and Holy Spirit,” we cannot know love. Yes, this sounds counterintuitive. The mention of “Father” causes many people pain; maybe their own fathers were abusive, indifferent or just plain wrong. At seminary, the use of the word “Son” was discouraged (perhaps it reminds one of “Father”) and “Christa” suggested, instead of “Christ” because, I suppose, Christ might remind us of men in general. All of these ideas were brought forward under the banner of love, to lift up the oppressed and heal the wounded heart. But, really, what do we men and women know of love? When we “love ourselves” don’t we often do so by inhaling ten slices of pizza? Is that love? No, not for the pizza and not for ourselves. Doesn’t Augustine teach us that God (the Father) reveals what love is?—“he sent us his Word, who is his only Son, so that—from the fact that he assumed flesh, was born, and suffered for our sake—we might learn how very much God valued human beings.” (City of God, VII.31) Further, this love bears fruit; we are “purified of all our sins by that one sacrifice.” (City, VII.31) This is a sacrifice given by the Father in love and made by the Son, in love, “the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Sermon #2, 12) And this same love is spread abroad in our hearts through the Holy Spirit. (City, VII.31) What we see here is that the words of Jesus, “Father, Son and Holy Spirit”? (Mt 28:19) have opened the Bible to Augustine. He sees the “through-line;” he sees particular stories and prophecies, all of it connecting together to show what love actually is. Compare this to “Creator, Sustainer and Redeemer.” It just dumps us in a morass. How is the Creator related exactly to the Sustainer? Did he (it?) beget the Sustainer? Who is the Sustainer anyway? Is he the “son of David”? The confusions are too many to list and lead only to dead ends no matter how you strain your brain. I get that we want to create our own non-offensive God. We want to live in our own light. (Confessions, IX.22) And yes, this “divine spectacle” of Father, Son and Holy Spirit is scandalous (Sermon #2, 1 ref. I Cor. 4:9) but we have been newly created by the mercy and grace of this God, the God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit (Letters 214:4) And he gives us all things (Letters, 214:3) We go through the waters by the outstretched arm of this God. His words open the Bible to us so that all our ideas, especially our ideas about love die… and are born anew. We say with Peter “Lord, to whom would we go? You have the words of eternal life” (John 6:68)