I think it is objectively important for many reasons, but, personally, writing this paper was a water shed experience to the extent that intellectual “arrivals” or cognitive rest are important to pastoral life.
Basically, I’m snipping pieces of it and blogging them. Long papers are not really web friendly. I suspect that I will eventually replace the essay with a bunch of smaller notes based on these blog entries.
One common explanation is that even though the prophecy seemed to be about a near event it was really about Jesus.
Another explanation is that somehow the prophet is referring to both events.
I’d like to suggest another possibility for some prophecies. I think it is more accurate to say that the event that happened closer to the prophecy is itself a prophecy of Jesus and his Work and new people. For example, rather than debate whether prophecies of the return from exile are really prophecies of Jesus, perhaps the return from exile is itself a prophecy of the resurrection of Christ.
Here’s one line of evidence that this must be the case:
And he rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed to Egypt and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, “Out of Egypt I called my son” (Matthew 2.14-15).
Matthew is referring to a prophecy given by Hosea. Here’s the passage:
When Israel was a child, I loved him,
and out of Egypt I called my son.
The more they were called,
the more they went away;
they kept sacrificing to the Baals
and burning offerings to idols (Hosea 11.1-2).
So here we have a prophecy that doesn’t even purport to be about the future. In fact, the person’s being talked about (the whole nation of Israel) actually behaved in a way that Jesus never did. So what is going on?
The answer that seems obvious to me is that Matthew thinks that Jesus was re-living Israel’s whole experience (only without sin). Israel’s whole history is a prophecy of Jesus and Jesus relives it. Hosea’s authority is invoked to speak of Israel as a single son. But aside from that naming, it is the event of the Exodus from Egypt that prophesies the escape of Jesus of Israel, the new Egypt where Herod plays the part of Pharaoh killing the babies.
The phone company Qwest Communications refused a proposal from the National Security Agency that the company’s lawyers considered illegal in February 2001, nearly seven months before the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, the former head of the company contends in newly unsealed court filings.
The executive, Joseph P. Nacchio, also asserts in the filings that the agency retaliated by depriving Qwest of lucrative outsourcing contracts.
The filings were made as Mr. Nacchio fought charges of insider trading. He was ultimately convicted in April of 19 counts of insider trading and has been sentenced to six years in prison. He remains free while appealing the conviction.
Mr. Nacchio said last year that he had refused an N.S.A. request for customers’ call records in late 2001, after the Sept. 11 attacks, as the agency initiated domestic surveillance and data mining programs to monitor Al Qaeda communications.
But the documents unsealed Wednesday in federal court in Denver, first reported in The Rocky Mountain News on Thursday, claim for the first time that pressure on the company to participate in activities it saw as improper came as early as February, nearly seven months before the terrorist attacks. [Read the rest.]
Despite the defense of John Murray and others, there are Reformed thinkers who would contend that they can deny any such “disposition” to God (of love toward the reprobate) without being guilty of “desperate exegetical violence.” Perhaps the most well-known of those who would deny Murray’s exegetical conclusion are Herman Hoeksema and David Engelsma But these authors, in their books on the subject, do not deal with the exegesis.Hoeksema does not even mention Luke 6.35, 36 in his magnum opus, Reformed Dogmatics.[Grand Rapids, MI: Reformed Free Publishing Assoc., 1966] Furthermore, his “discussion” of Matthew 5.44, 45 is rather trite [p. 106-107]. Having surveyed other passages of Scripture, Hoeksema develops a definition of love which dictates that it “can exist only in the sphere of ethical perfection. It requires an ethically perfect subject as well as an ethically perfect object.” Having developed this definition, he then “in passing, remarks” that the sort of love to which Jesus refers in Matthew 5.44 must refer to a substandard “onesided” sort of love. But why was not this verse included in the passages which contributed to Hoeksema’s definition of love? Why is it only worthy of a “passing” and dismissive “remark” after a definition which excluded it from consideration has already been decided upon? Hoeksema gives us here a case study in arbitrary theology, in which the conclusions are known well in advance of the investigation.
It is this assertion that love requires perfection which Hoeksema invoked in a much earlier and now less-well-known work to defuse the import of Matthew 5.44-45. According to Hoeksema, to use the text to prove common grace “proves too much” and “leads to absurdity.” It proves too much because “all the Scriptures witness that God does not love, but hates his enemies and purposes to destroy them.” It leads to absurdity because “if rain and sunshine are a manifestation of love for all men, the just and the unjust, what are floods and droughts, pestilences and earthquakes and all destructive forces and evils sent to all through nature, but manifestations of His hatred for all, the just and the unjust?”[The Protestant Reformed Churches in America: Their Origin, Early History, and Doctrine (Grand Rapids, MI: no pub., 1936), p. 317.]
Finally, Hoeksema demonstrates the desperate exegetical violence which Murray mentions: “Besides, it must not be overlooked that the text does not at all state that God is gracious to the just and to the unjust, but that He rains and causes His sun to shine on all.” [Ibid, p. 318.]
What are we to say to all this? First of all, the plain meaning of Jesus’ words is that the natural blessings brought through God’s providence represent His love. Hoeksema has done nothing to disprove this obvious fact.
Second, it is well worth asking how we are to interpret the destructive forces of nature, but such a question cannot reduce the plain meaning of Jesus’ words to absurdity, unless God can be guilty of absurdity, which is blasphemous to contemplate. Perhaps we need to ask if we have not created more trouble than necessary by absolutizing the distinction between God’s “Fatherly displeasure” and His “wrath,” between “discipline” and “chastisement” on the one hand, and “punishment” on the other. As Louis Berkhof asks rhetorically: “Are the elect in this life the objects of God’s love only, and never in any sense the objects of His wrath? Is Moses thinking of the reprobate when he says: ‘For we are consumed in thine anger, and in thy wrath we are troubled’? Psa 90.7.”[Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1941), p. 445.] It is a profound truth and great comfort that all things, including sufferings, work ultimately to our good as Christians. The question is whether that fact necessitates that all things are alike and in the same way to be considered “good” simply because of the future result in glory.
Third, Murray does not deny the doctrine of reprobation, that God purposes to destroy some of His enemies, those whom He does not reconcile to Himself. Murray, like those Hoeksema is attacking, believes that common grace is compatible with reprobation. To say that a passage that seems to teach common grace simply cannot do so because other passages clearly teach reprobation, is to fundamentally beg the question. Hoeksema needs to demonstrate this contradiction, not simply assume it as the basis of his argument.
David Engelsma only mentions Matthew 5.44-48 once in his defense of Hoeksema from the charge of “hyper-calvinism.” Of Murray’s and Stonehouse’s booklet on “The Free Offer of the Gospel” he writes:
But where do they begin when they look for Biblical support for this doctrine? Matthew 5.44-48! a passage which they themselves admit “does not indeed deal with the overtures of grace in the gospel . . . . The particular aspect of God’s grace reflected upon here is the common gifts of providence, the making of the sun to rise upon evil and good . . . .” Nevertheless, this “common grace” in things temporal is made the foundation and source of the doctrine of a grace of God that desires salvation and that operates in the preaching: in the common grace of God “is disclosed to us a principle that applies to all manifestations of divine grace, namely, that the grace bestowed expresses the lovingkindness in the heart of God . . . .” [Hyper-Calvinism & the Call of the Gospel (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformed Free Publishing Assoc., 1980), p. 112.]
Yet, after strongly denying that Matthew 5.44-48 has anything to do with the genuine offer of the Gospel, on the very next page Engelsma writes:
Men simply cannot escape the overpowering testimony of Scripture that the grace of God is one, not two, and that this grace is the glorious favor of God towards damnworthy sinners that wills their deliverance from sin and death, provides redemption for them in the cross of the Beloved, and manifests itself in the gospel. If, then, there is a grace of God for all, men must conclude that the grace of God in Christ Jesus is for all. . . The only safeguard against universal, saving grace is the complete repudiation of Kuyperian common grace.
Now Engelsma is, as far as I can tell, making some gross exaggerations in merging universalism, with hypothetical universalism, with the sincere offer of the Gospel, with common grace, but, at the very least, this statement strongly supports the use of Matthew 5.44, 45 to defend the genuine offer of the Gospel! If Engelsma is even partly right (and he is only partly right), then it makes perfect sense to cite God’s disposition of love toward the reprobate as evidence that this disposition motivates the offer of the Gospel. Yet Engelsma never bothers to explain where Murray made his mistake. He simply goes on to argue against common grace and the sincere offer of the Gospel without ever again mentioning Matthew 5.44, 45. He avoids “desperate exegetical violence” by simply avoiding exegesis altogether.
This looks cool (though I had to go to google to find a link)
Jeff Meyers posted a long and very good piece by the astute Anglican J. C. Ryle (while some guardians of the alleged Presbyterian “moral community” don’t often admit it, there have been many helpful Anglican teachers such as Ryle in his day and N. T. Wright in ours). This statement stood out to me.
A liturgy for unbelievers or unconverted people would be absurd and practically useless. The people for whom it was meant would care nothing for any liturgy at all, while the converted part of the congregation would find its language entirely unsuitable for them.
While there are instances where one might be able to argue for exceptions to the rule (preaching is an important part of the liturgy and I can imagine homilies that could aim at both the converted and those who are not), I think it is a good generalization.
It also applies to Christian Education programs. Paul writes,
Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.
And yet, how do we teach our children? Like some of them are going to be incapable of Spiritual instruction. No. The premise of Christian teaching of children is that they are able to understand what we are teaching them–that they are not “natural” persons.
I liked La Femme Nikita (the tv series, I mean), so I should like this new version of the Bionic Woman. Maybe. I kind of wanted the sister to die in this episode to simple things up. (On the other hand, I don’t want Sarah to prove to be a cold stone killer, even though that is pretty much a given after her sniper activity in the pilot.)
Not sure what to think. It looks like there is a parade of abusive men manipulating the women (both bionic women). Could be a theme (pretty much straight out of Genesis 3 where Adam is right with Eve letting her take on the serpent to see what will happen if she eats.)
I’m actually liking Proson Break even though it almost seems like a different show now. I guess they could have Michael imprisoned in different places all over the world by various groups wanting someone extracted…. Which would be very lame. I hope the season is good because I fear the rationale of the series is fading.
Heroes seems OK, thought the flying boyfriend was too easy to write into it. I’m sticking with it.
Moonlight. Ugh. I’ll view the rest of the second show and decide what to do next. But so far it looks like it is built entirely of cliches.
Happily, I have season 5 of Angel, of which I only originally viewed four or five episodes when it was on the air. I think watching it through this year would be my best revenge on NBC.