Seraphim Hamilton

In contemporary evangelicalism, the writings of the Apostle Paul are conventionally interpreted in terms of a strictly forensic doctrine of justification. According to this reading, mankind has, in sinning, incurred the just wrath of God. The sins of mankind were counted (imputed to) as if they were Christ’s, and when one exercises faith in Christ, one’s sins are recognized as punished in his person and Christ’s active obedience is imputed to the account of the believer. Paul is understood to have taught this in speaking of “God’s righteousness” coming through “faith in Jesus Christ” by the means of “propitiation” (Romans 3:21-25). Yet, difficulties with this understanding emerge in a careful reflection on the entirety of the letter to the Romans and the Pauline corpus as a whole. If this is the central argument articulated by Paul in the letter to the Romans, certain portions of the letter seem to be falling off the edge of the main point. If the point of Romans 2 is that no person can fulfill the law before God, then why does Paul twice (2:13-14, 2:25-29) appear to set up a category of Gentiles who keep the law? Furthermore, how does this reading make sense of Paul’s own connection to Israel’s story? In what way did Paul believe the work of Jesus had fulfilled his messianic task?

It is the argument of this article that, instead of Paul teaching a purely forensic doctrine of justification apparently disconnected from Israel’s story, Paul teaches justification in and through divinization. For Paul, the fundamental problem which Israel was chosen and called to address was the problem of death. Adam, in seeking after that which was not God, lost the glory of God, the glory which gives life to the body. As such, man began to die. God called Israel, the light of nations, to solve this problem through her obedience to the Torah. Yet, Israel herself has been unfaithful, and Israel’s unfaithfulness has raised the question of the faithfulness of God through Israel. Jesus is understood to be simultaneously the personal embodiment of the people of Israel and the personal embodiment of Israel’s God.1 When he is faithful unto death, God declares him righteous precisely by raising him from the dead. An individual Christian is justified, or declared righteous, when that Christian shares in the faithfulness of Jesus the Messiah. Since Jesus is the personal embodiment of the God who is radiant with divine glory, sharing in his life by the Spirit restores the “glory of God” which had been lost by Adam, and thus solves the problem of death. Hence, Paul’s doctrine of justification is a doctrine of divinization, but it is not an abstract, de-historicized doctrine of divinization. Instead, it is rooted and grounded in Israel’s story and Israel’s Scriptures.

Paul’s argument begins in Romans 1, where Paul declares that the “righteousness of God” has been revealed in the gospel of Jesus. This phrase became important in Reformation theology, where it was understood to refer to a collection of merit which could be imputed to the believer. This is not, however, what the phrase means in the Old Testament. In texts like Isaiah 40-55, the “righteousness of God” is God’s own faithfulness to fulfill his covenant to Israel in a great act of salvation. In Isaiah 45:23, for example, “righteousness” is the foundation upon which God sends forth a word which will heal and redeem Israel from her exile. Importantly, this sense of “righteousness” appears in the contexts of passages which Paul quotes. In Romans 3:14-15, Paul quotes Isaiah 59:7-8, which goes onto describe how YHWH put on righteousness as a breastplate in order to ride forth and redeem Israel. Likewise, in Romans 3:20, Paul alludes to Psalm 143:2, and 143:1 speaks of God’s “righteousness” as the power by which God saves and redeems his people.

A proper reading of Romans 1, then, must be Israel-centric and covenant-centric. Paul is discussing the way in which God has been faithful to Israel in the messianic work of Jesus. The problem of Romans 1 is the universal extent of the sin of Adam. Paul writes that the nations “seeking to be wise, have become fools” and have “exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images.” These two phrases are important, because their Old Testament background illustrates the direction of Paul’s argument. Those who “sought to become wise” are Adam and Eve, who in Genesis 3:6 “saw that the tree was to be desired to make one wise.” The nations have recapitulated the sin of Adam. The latter phrase is an allusion to Psalm 106:20, where it is Israel who exchanged the glory of God for an ox. That Paul applies a text about Israel to the Gentiles anticipates an important turn in his argument: Israel, despite being called to address the problem in which the world was mired, is itself part of that problem.

That Paul describes the glory as that of “the immortal God” anticipates 2:7, where the person justified at the Last Judgment receives “glory, honor, and immortality.” The “glory” is that which animates the resurrected body, which is why Paul says that Christ was raised by the “glory of the Father” (6:7) and that glory will be “revealed in us” at the resurrection of the dead (8:18). The fundamental problem faced by human beings, then, is that, through idolatry, they have ceased to share in the divine glory, thereby forfeiting immortality. From this point, Paul looks toward the Final Judgment, where he declares that all men, Jews and Greeks alike, will be judged by their works. For many evangelicals, Paul here sets up an category which is impossible to fulfill. Since no person actually can fulfill the law, the argument goes, Paul will go on to declare that Christ has fulfilled it in our place and imputed that fulfillment to us. Yet, this is not the direction which Paul’s argument takes. Instead, in 2:13-14, Paul says that the “doers of the law will be justified” and gives an example of Gentiles who indeed fulfill the law. While it is common to see this as a reference to a “righteous pagan”, this is almost certainly not what Paul had in mind. Instead, he says that Gentiles do the law because it is “written on their heart.” This phrase is a quotation from Jeremiah 31:33, where it refers to the Torah written on the heart of each Israelite after the promised new exodus, so that Paul is referring to beneficiaries of the new covenant. Paul, through allusion, hints at the fact that there are Gentiles in whom Israel’s Torah is fulfilled. The same strategy appears in 2:25-29, where Paul speaks of those who are “physically foreskinned” but whose hearts are circumcised. This is a direct reference to Deuteronomy 30:1-6, where Moses promises that after Israel’s exile, God will circumcise the hearts of his people, so that they might obey the law, so that they might “live.”

It is important at this point to properly read both 2:17-24 and 3:1-8, since the former is very often underinterpreted and the latter is often ignored altogether. In Romans 2:17-24, Paul addresses the Jew who “relies on the law and boasts in God”, but then challenges him on whether he keeps the law himself. Usually, this is understood to refer to a Jew who boasts that he is better than the Gentiles just condemned by Paul, but this subtly misses the point. The argument of Paul’s interlocutor is not that he is better than the Gentiles, but that Israel, as the light of the world, is the solution to the problem. This is why he is referred to in 2:19 as a “guide to the blind, a light to those in darkness.” This line of thought forms the foundation of 3:1-8, where the question is why, if Israel has failed in her calling, God called Israel in the first place. Paul writes that Israel was “entrusted with the oracles of God.” Everywhere else in Paul, “entrusted” (1 Thessalonians 2:4, Galatians 2:7) refers to something given for the sake of blessing others. To say that Israel was entrusted with the oracles of God is to say that Israel’s Torah was the means by which they were to shine light on the nations, as in Deuteronomy 4:6-8.

In Romans 3:3, then, the “unfaithfulness” of Israel is not an abstract disobedience, but precisely unfaithfulness to Israel’s vocation. This raises the question of whether God, then, will remain faithful to the world through Israel, which is articulated in terms of the “righteousness of God.” Given, as argued above, that the righteousness of God refers to God’s own saving faithfulness to Israel and to the world through Israel, the question being raised is whether God is going to remain righteous in this sense even though Israel has been unfaithful to her side of the covenant. Understanding that both Israel’s faithfulness and God’s faithfulness is in question is essential for properly comprehending the contours of Paul’s own understanding of the work of Jesus as Messiah, which is shaped by Isaiah 59.

As noted above, Romans 3:14-15 is a quotation from Isaiah 59. Understanding the fuller context of Isaiah 59 illuminates the argument which Paul will make in 3:21-31. In Isaiah 59, the Lord looks upon Israel’s unfaithfulness, and it is this portion which Paul quotes in Romans 3:14-15. The Lord then puts on a breastplate of righteousness to himself to accomplish Israel’s task(59:17-18), puts his spirit on the remnant of Israel (59:21) and then gathers the nations to Zion (60:1-3). Given that Paul is discussing Israel’s election as light of the nations and Israel’s failure to carry out the vocation inherent in her election, that Paul quotes a portion of this text is highly significant. Furthermore, the argument of the letter ends with a quotation from Isaiah 59:20 (Romans 11:26-27), setting it apart as structurally important for the theology of the argument as a whole. We see, then, that in Isaiah 59, the Lord himself is faithful to Israel as God by fulfilling Israel’s calling himself.

These two realities form the undercurrent necessary for understanding the dense argument developed by Paul in 3:21-31. Paul writes that the “righteousness of God” is through the “faith of [or in] Jesus the Messiah” for “all who are faithful.” One of the sharpest debates in contemporary Pauline studies concerns the translation of “pistis Christou.” Traditionally, this phrase has been rendered in the objective, so that it translates “faith in Jesus Christ.” More recently, however, a number of scholars2 have proposed that it be translated in the subjective genitive, so that it is “the faithfulness of Jesus Christ.” The latter translation should be preferred for several reasons. First, in Romans 3:22, the phrase “for all who are faithful” becomes repetitive if pistis Christou is translated in the subjective: “faith in Jesus Christ for all who have faith.” On the other hand, if pistis Christou is rendered in the subjective, Paul is saying that the “faithfulness of Jesus Christ” is for the benefit of “all who are faithful.” Second, the subjective genitive fits the sense of “righteousness of God” argued above. It makes little sense to say that God’s covenant promises to save and redeem Israel have been fulfilled in the faith of an individual believer. Instead, it makes much more sense to say that Israel’s long story has come to its climax in the story of the faithful Messiah, who sums up Israel in himself.

Understanding that the phrase is to be translated “through the faithfulness of Jesus the Messiah”, we can see how 3:22 connects to 3:3-5. In 3:3-5, the righteousness of God was called into question by Israel’s unfaithfulness. Since God had promised to be faithful to the world through the obedience of Israel, Israel’s disobedience brings God’s promises into question. Consequently, both the faithfulness of God and the faithfulness of Israel are subject to dispute. For Paul to speak of the “faithfulness of Jesus Christ” as enacting the “righteousness of God” means that it is the faithfulness of the Messiah which answers both problems. As is appropriate, given Paul’s citation of Isaiah 59, the Messiah is understood as both Israel being faithful to God as Israel and God being faithful to Israel as God. This explains precisely why it is that a person is not justified by the works of the Torah. For Paul, Israel’s unfaithfulness to the Torah is answered by the Messiah’s faithfulness in going unto the death of the cross. As such, it is the faithfulness of the Messiah which is the quintessential act of obedience to the Torah. He is the one in whom Israel’s election is focused, so that the boundaries of the people of God are not marked out by food laws, sabbath, and circumcision, but by inhabiting the faithfulness of Jesus Christ, which is what it means to “establish the law” (3:31).

It is likewise because Christ is both the embodiment of God and the embodiment of Israel that the people of God are reconstituted around him as a people who share in the divine glory. This is why Paul immediately follows “the righteousness of God through the faithfulnes of Jesus Christ for all who are faithful” with noting the universality of deprivation of the glory of God. The human race forfeited the divine glory through idolatry, but conformance to the image of Christ by incorporation into his faithful death (and thus, resurrection) restores the glory which brings immortality. In fact, the word “image” is only used twice in the letter to the Romans. In 1:23, it refers to idolatrous images through which the glory of God is forfeited, whereas in 8:29, it refers to the “image of his Son” which leads a person in Christ to be “glorified” (8:30).

Understanding Paul’s line of thought in this fashion enables the various themes discussed in 3:21-31 to nest together, rather than being played against one another. The doctrine of justification is forensic, but its forensic nature is rethought around the way in which Jesus was justified. Jesus was pronounced “guilty” in being crucified, but God overturned that verdict precisely in glorifying His body. For a believer to be justified, then, means to share in His death and thereby share in the glory which raised Christ Jesus from the dead. Justification is neither exclusively forensic nor exclusively participatory. A full appreciation of Paul’s argument requires both to be understood together. Likewise, the unity of Jew and Gentile fits into this fabric. Israel was called and chosen to redeem the world through obedience to the Torah. Israel, however, had an uncircumcised heart just as the Gentiles did. As such, Israel’s election devolved onto the singular person of Jesus the Messiah, who sums up Israel in himself. Because the election of Abraham’s family fell onto a single person, what it means to be a descendant of Abraham is rethought around the experience of that one Jesus. The identity badge of the people of God is then not the “marks of circumcision” but instead, the “marks of Jesus” (Galatians 6:16).  Finally, when Paul is understood against the backdrop of his Scriptures, the biblical roots for the doctrine of divinization shine forth. The one who was the embodiment of Israel was also the embodiment of God, radiant with divine glory. Since the identity of Israel is mapped around this person, to be constituted as an heir of Israel “not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit” means to share in the divine glory which animates the resurrected body. To be justified is to be glorified.

Seraphim Hamilton

When I came to Summit ten years ago, I had just been “converted” to belief in evolution. In one sense, of course, all of us believe in evolution — it simply means life changes over time in predictable ways. What I came to believe in, however, was the Darwinian theory of evolution, namely, the idea all forms of life on this planet share a single common ancestor and the differences among these forms of life can be explained by random variation in an organism’s genome and higher rates of survival for those organisms that had acquired slight, beneficial variations. When I came to believe in evolution, I was an evangelical Christian. I didn’t know the Bible or theology very well, but I did believe in Jesus. At first, I saw no conflict between evolution and Christianity. After all, couldn’t God have created the world through evolutionary processes? Couldn’t Genesis 1 be an allegory, not unlike the parables of Jesus?

Since I didn’t see conflict between Christianity and evolution, I came to believe many people were turned off from Christianity because of the intellectual price of having to disagree with virtually the entire scientific community. Along with a natural desire to be right, this drove me to vigorously promote theistic evolution among my peers. Once everyone in my personal life was sick of hearing me talk about it, I started a YouTube channel (Kabane52) to promote evolution. Within a year, I had made over two hundred videos on the subject. It was my passion, as anyone who knew me at that time will remember.

Very soon, however, I began to realize evolution and Christianity were not as easily reconcilable as I thought. Not only that, I had found on the Internet all sorts of criticisms of Christianity. I had never considered the possibility I might be wrong about the Christian faith. Maybe evolution was true and Christianity wasn’t. Maybe the atheists were right. Such an idea terrified me, but multiple times, I came very near to atheism. In God’s providence, I soon discovered various Web sites and books devoted to demonstrating the historical believability of the claims of Jesus and the apostles about the Lord’s death and resurrection. If the resurrection was true, then Christianity must be true. I devoured Lee Strobel’s The Case for Christ and read a great many Internet articles about the subject. I began to debate the atheists with whom I had once made common cause against creationists. Christian apologetics became my new passion — but my questions about how to reconcile evolution with Christianity remained.

And they remained for years. Even after I had lost interest in evolution entirely, I still believed the evidence for it and against a global flood was very strong. I believed (and still believe) many popular creationist arguments against Darwinism were based on simple misunderstandings of the scientific data. So I stayed a theistic evolutionist. But time began to gnaw, and those questions kept coming back up. Here are three of the most serious issues that emerge in trying to reconcile Darwinian evolution and an ancient earth with Christianity.

First, there is the question of Scripture itself. Despite occasional claims to the contrary, the Church has always confessed the absolute inerrancy of the Bible, not only in doctrinal matters, but in historical details as well. St. Augustine, for example, says if he finds what looks to be a contradiction, he assumes he has either misunderstood the passage or there has been an error in copying one manuscript from another. St. Maximus the Confessor, one of the most influential theologians of the Eastern Church, goes so far to say the Bible expresses the truth of the eternal God as fully as text can express that truth. But the contemporary naturalistic account of origins doesn’t fit with what the Scriptures declare.

The most obvious conflict is between Genesis 1 and an ancient earth. Genesis 1 says God created the world in six evenings and mornings. With one or two exceptions, all commentators before Darwin took this passage historically. I tried to fit this passage with evolution in various ways. At first, I held a “day-age” view of Genesis 1. According to this view, the days described in Genesis 1 are not twenty-four hour days, but extended periods of time, comprising millions or billions of years. At a superficial level, this seems plausible. After all, the Hebrew word yom does occasionally mean “age” rather than “day.” In Genesis 1, however, this is an impossible reading. Each day is marked by an evening and a morning distinguished by periods of darkness and light. Moreover, the order of events in Genesis 1 do not follow the conventional scientific account of the world’s origins. For example, according to conventional science, birds appeared on the scenes long after land animals, having evolved from dinosaurs. Furthermore, the sun is created on the fourth day, after plants have been created. Conventional scientists, of course, say the sun existed before the Earth formed.

Some day-age interpreters attempt to argue the days are actually overlapping and the “creation” of the sun on the fourth day simply refers to it becoming visible after the dissolution of a permanent cloud-cover over the Earth. Frankly, such interpretations are so obviously strained it’s a wonder anyone can live with the cognitive dissonance. There’s no indication the days overlap, and that Israel’s work week is modeled on God’s proves definitively they do not. It would also be impossible to understand what constituted an evening and what constituted a morning on this view. So I had to abandon this view and try to find another.

The next view I took is a little-known reading of Genesis 1 known as the “Days of Proclamation” interpretation. According to this view, God’s own declaration of His intent to create occurs in six days, but the actual events of the creation occurred an indefinite time later. That is, it is a misunderstanding of the literary structure of Genesis 1 to see the actual events as transpiring within a single week. While this at first appeared to resolve the issues with the day-age interpretation, it soon became apparent to me this reading was fraught with even more problems. For one, it is clear in Exodus 20 the actual events of the creation took place within the creation week. The Lord does not simply say He “declared His intent to create” in six days before resting on the seventh. Instead, He states He actually created the heavens and the earth in six days and rested on the seventh. Additionally, it makes no sense to speak of a week of seven twenty-four hour days before the formation of the Earth within the framework of conventional science. This is because the days are marked as twenty-four hours in virtue of the Earth’s rotation. On the Days of Proclamation view, there was no such Earth to mark the days on the first day of the week!

The next view I took was a relatively new viewpoint, developed by evangelical biblical scholar John Walton. Walton’s view is ancient Near Eastern creation stories, including the story of Genesis, were not concerned so much with describing the material organization of the world. Instead, they were concerned with the ritual consecration of preexisting matter into a Temple. Walton notes in various ancient cultures, festivals for the dedication of the temple took six days, so the god would “rest” in the temple on the seventh day. He then reasons this is likely what is being described in Genesis 1. Out of the three explanations I have just listed, Walton’s is clearly the most defensible. Yet I realized even this view was massively problematic.

First, Walton’s strict distinction between material and ritual organization cannot be defended. Solomon’s Temple was built in seven years, clearly drawing on this pattern of seven for the construction of a temple.

Second, Walton’s view makes meaning ancillary to the actual world. For Walton, God creates the matter out of which the world develops ex nihilo and then allows it to develop according to the patterns he designed at the beginning of creation. However, it is not until God consecrates the world that created things are imbued with meaning. On the fourth day, we are told God made the heavenly lights in order to rule the day and the night and to mark festival times. This is why the Bible so frequently uses the symbols of heavenly lights to talk about political changes. Yet, this meaning is not artificial. God created the heavenly lights precisely to symbolize the rule of His Son over all things. Symbolism, then, is inherent in the world, not imposed onto it. This world is God’s world from top to bottom.

Third, and most problematically for Walton, the sequence of events in the speeches of Exodus 25-31 mitigate against his reading of Genesis 1. The tabernacle is a miniature world. Because of this, God dictates the instructions for the tabernacle in seven speeches, corresponding to the seven days of creation. Understanding these instructions can help us grasp the meaning of the creation days. We are told in Genesis 1 God created the “heavens and the earth” on the first day. The heavens refer to God’s throne room above the firmament, the earth refers to the matter God will organize in the six following days. If this interpretation is correct, then Walton must be wrong, because Genesis 1 describes the creation and organization of matter. In the first speech of the tabernacle instructions, all of the material for the building of the tabernacle is gathered together. In the six speeches that follow, this material is organized into a functioning sanctuary. Hence, Walton is incorrect. Genesis 1 refers to the creation of the material world.

Related to this idea is Meredith Kline’s “framework” view, that Genesis 1 is a literary framework designed to communicate the meaning of creation rather than to describe its history. In support of this contention, advocates of the framework view point to the literary correspondence of the first three days of creation with the second three. On the first day, God creates light, and on the fourth day, God creates heavenly lights. On the second day, He separates the skies from the oceans, and on the fifth day, God creates birds for the skies and fish for the oceans. On the third day, God creates grain plants and fruit trees, and on the sixth day, God creates man who will transform these plants into the sacramental foods: Bread, Oil, and Wine. The argument here, however, is a non-sequitur. I fully agree with the literary pattern I have just described. But this doesn’t mean the text isn’t historical! As I mentioned above, God is the God who created the world to reveal His truth. The meaning of the six days is contained in the historical creation itself, and the Holy Spirit inspired Moses to reveal this meaning in a rich literary structure.

As an analogy, consider the story of the resurrection of Jesus in John 20. According to John’s Gospel, Mary Magdalene looked inside the Tomb and saw two angels sitting on either side of the tombstone, and when she saw Jesus, she thought he was the Gardener. John doesn’t just tell us these things to give us brute facts. He is making a theological point. The order of the narrative of John follows the order of the furniture of the tabernacle, beginning with the Bronze Altar and Jesus identified as the sacrificial “lamb of God” and climaxing here, with the two angels in the Tomb corresponding to the two cherubim who carried God’s throne in the Holy of Holies. We are being told Jesus is the incarnate God who sat enthroned between two angels in the Temple. Likewise, we are told Mary thought Jesus was the Gardener because Jesus is, in fact, the Gardener. He is the true and Last Adam, the one who restores the Garden of Eden and glorifies it into a City. But neither of these theological truths mean the historical events didn’t occur! Mary really did think Jesus was a routine gardener, and there really were two angels inside the tomb. Because all history is God’s history, history itself contains theological meaning, and the biblical authors were inspired to reveal that meaning. This is why the Bible can teach us how to interpret the world and history.

These exegetical problems are true across the biblical text. A person who holds to conventional science cannot believe the Flood of Noah was global. Conventional geologists have supposedly refuted such an idea, and many Christian thinkers are trying to play catch-up. In order to reconcile conventional geology with the biblical text, I had to believe the Flood was local. The justification for this view was in the translation of the Hebrew word erets. This word is translated “earth” in Genesis 6-9, but it can be translated as “land.” Hence, it seems rather easy to make Noah’s Flood local. In reality, however, it is impossible. Not only does the text say “everything under the high heavens” was destroyed, its literary structure corresponds with Genesis 1, which no person doubts refers to the entire world. If one carefully studies the text, one will discover Genesis 7 actually reverses the creation week step by step, and it ends with the ark “floating on the face of the waters” just as the Spirit “hovered over the face of the waters.” Genesis 8, then, follows the creation days forward, starting with day one and ending with a Sabbath sacrifice offered by Noah. This literary structure reveals the meaning of the Flood story, but it also demonstrates decisively the Flood must be global.

On top of this, the long ages lived by the patriarchs of old contradict conventional scientific views of humanity. According to Genesis 5, before the Flood, it was normal to live to nearly 1,000 years old. In Genesis 11, those ages are cut in half, and then the Tower of Babel cuts these ages in half again. Since Peleg was named for the division of nations at Babel, we know the sudden shift in ages after Peleg corresponds with the Tower. After this, the ages gradually decline to present rates. Some have tried to limit the “problem” to Genesis 1-11, arguing there is a substantial difference in genre between Genesis 1-11 and the stories of Abraham, Jacob, and Joseph. In reality, however, if one rejects that which contradicts conventional science, then one continues to have problems in the patriarchal narratives. Abraham lives to 205 years old, and Jacob lives to 147! It is only with Joseph that ages begin to approach their present rates.

The basic conclusion is if one believes in the Bible, it is very difficult to agree with conventional science.

The problems, however, are not merely exegetical. They are theological. That is, they deal not just with the meanings of particular biblical texts, but with the structure of Christian theology itself. Christianity holds God created a world free of death and sin. Because all life comes only from God, in order for the creation to be free of death, it must be united with God. Man is the Image of God. That is, he reflects the glory and life of God into the world and the praises of the world back to God. The world was made as an infant world, but it was not made as a corrupt world. Man was supposed to grow in communion and relation with God and bring the creation up with him. Instead, Adam turned away from God, thereby cutting off the communication of life to the world. Hence, everything began to die, including man himself.

It is clear this poses a substantial challenge to the conventional account of Earth history. Evolution requires death to work. Certain individuals within populations must die selectively in order for beneficial genes to be passed on at higher rates. If there was no death for billions of years, nothing could have evolved at all. Furthermore, the fossil record is a record of dead things. If it was laid down before the creation of man, then death preceded the Fall. How does one explain death before the Fall if one believes in evolution and an ancient earth?

My first “solution” was simple: the death brought by Adam into the world was spiritual death, not bodily death. After all, salvation means for our soul to go to Heaven rather than for our bodies to. I soon discovered, however, this was a massive theological blunder. According to the Scriptures and the Christian faith, a human person is not just a soul. He is soul and body. This is why Jesus Christ was raised bodily from the dead. When He ascended into Heaven, He did not somehow abandon His human nature! Instead, by joining divinity with humanity, He made it possible for our whole persons to share in the life of God, body and soul alike. Thus, St. Paul speaks of our hope as the “redemption of our body” that will come at the return of Christ. Jesus speaks of us sharing in the “resurrection of life.” We shall have glorious bodies like His glorious body.

Death, then, must refer to bodily death.

The next solution was to try to argue the death described in Genesis 2-3 and Romans 5 was simply death for humans. The first humans would be apes to whom God gave souls, and they were promised immortality unless they sinned. This ignores, however, the fact Man is the Image of God. Because man is the Image of God, man reflects the life of God into the creation. The condition of man determines the condition of the world. This is why Paul says in Romans 8 the “creation waits with eager longing for the revelation of the children of God.” If man could live forever even while the world dissolved, why would it be any guarantee for the world that man will be raised from the dead? Paul’s argument only makes sense if man communicates the life of God to the world. If this is the case, however, then the curse of death pronounced on man necessarily includes the creation for the first time. Nothing died before man sinned. Nothing suffered before man sinned. Psalm 8 tells us man is the ruler of the cosmos. The hope of the cosmos is in man.

My final option was to argue man, indeed, is responsible for all the death and suffering in the world, even before his own existence. In order to argue this, I suggested Adam’s fall, in a sense, took place “outside of time.” When Christ returns, time will be transfigured into eternity, understood not as an endless sequence of moments, but understood instead as the instant reciprocation of all movements of love by one person to another. This is a technical theological point, but it has to do with the Trinity. God exists eternally, meaning not an infinite regress of sequential moments in the past, but the Son returns the love of the Father  as soon as the Father loves Him, and vice versa. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15 God becomes “all in all” after the return of Christ. Everything becomes filled with Him, and this is the case with time itself. If this is the case, I reasoned, then it might be true the Fall does not stand in sequential relationship with death, but instead, stands “above it.” Adam’s mode of existence was different than ours and thus did not stand in the same relation with time. Unfortunately, this argument collapsed on account of its retrojection of eschatological time into the beginning. According to the Scriptures and Christian theology, God created the world to gradually grow up into His own fullness. This would be the case even apart from the Fall, since Adam and Eve were created naked: as spiritual babies. Eventually, they would become robed in glory just as God is robed in glory.

If this is the case, then, I could not argue Adam’s relation to time was the same as our own will be after the return of Christ. This would mean the world was in fact created mature, and our entrance into eternity is not only a feature of the world at its final stage. Since this is false, however, my account of Adam’s fall with respect to time must be incorrect.

One more set of theological problems emerged relatively late in my reflection on this issue. If one studies the cultures surrounding Israel, one will find they share many things in common with the worldview of the Old Testament. For example, all cultures surrounding Israel had temples and covenants. The temples often displayed profound similarities to Israel’s Temple in the Old Testament, including three sections referred to as a Courtyard, a Holy Place, and a Holy of Holies. The covenants made between nations and their kings read very much like the covenant between Yahweh and Israel recorded in the book of Deuteronomy. The difference, of course, was Israel was monotheistic while these pagan cultures were polytheistic and idolatrous.

The problem emerges as one considers how many conservative scholars interpret this pattern of similarities and differences. According to scholars like Wheaton professor James Hoffmeier, we need to see the Old Testament as a polemic against paganism. That is, God inspired the biblical authors to imitate the pagans in many things. The pagans were the first to offer sacrifices, the pagans were the first to build temples, the pagans were the first to make covenants. God is late to the party, as it were, and He imitates the forms of pagan culture. What this does, however, is render paganism to be the primary framework for human thought and religion. Paganism becomes primary, and the true pattern of religion and worship becomes secondary. This is a necessary way of viewing things if a person is a theistic evolutionist, because according to the conventional chronology of the ancient world, man began to build cities in 8000 BC, and Israel did not begin to exist until around 1700 BC with Abraham at the very earliest.

If one takes the Bible at its word, however, then the Tower of Babel occurred around 2000 BC, and Abraham was called only 200 years later. This necessarily means historians of the ancient world have incorrectly reconstructed ancient chronology. That is, they do not understand which people and events and cultures were contemporaneous with each other. A biblical view of history solves the problem described above, because we recognize Noah and his children knew the true God. There is much evidence people outside Israel continued to worship the true God, which I describe below. The similarities between Israel and pagan cultures is not because paganism came first. Instead, on a biblical framework, pagan religions are corrupted forms of the true religion given to Noah. Sacrifice began in Genesis 4, and Noah offered sacrifice. This is why people offer sacrifice not just in the Near East, but from ancient China to ancient America. Noah knew how to build a temple, and people across the world build temples with three parts: not just in Israel and its surrounding cultures, but as far away as Mesoamerica. Mesoamerican temples even display similarities with Egyptian and Near Eastern temples.

The only way, then, to vindicate the biblical view of human culture, where monotheism comes first and polytheism second, is to affirm a biblical and creationist view of history. As an evolutionist, I had no answer.

Thus, there was simply no solution at all to any of these problems. Theological problems were just as serious and insurmountable as exegetical problems. I was fully convinced of Christianity on other grounds, so I simply set the question aside, assuming there was an answer I had not yet discovered yet. I knew, however, I would have to deal with this eventually.

What first gave me real pause about the truth of conventional scientific theories as to origins was studying the theological writings of James B. Jordan. Jordan is not well-known, but I truly believe he is one of the greatest biblical scholars in the history of the church. Jordan understands the necessity of paying attention to all of the details in Scripture. Paul tells us not only is all Scripture is inspired by God, but also all Scripture is profitable for doctrine. Hence, every detail has theological meaning. What surprised me was Jordan was a young-earth creationist. Not only was he a creationist, but he affirms the importance of biblical chronology. The Bible, when it is carefully studied, actually gives us a complete chronology from the creation of the world to the coming of Jesus Christ.

Unfortunately, some Christians, even creationists, have stated there was no intent to provide such a chronology, and the genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11 might well have gaps. As Jordan pointed out, however, whether or not there are gaps in the generations, there are no gaps in the chronology, because the age of the father at the birth of his son is given. This makes it a chronological “lock.” But what struck me was how significant numbers theologically began to emerge when one took the chronology seriously. For example, exactly 3,000 years after the creation of the world, the Temple of Solomon was constructed. Exactly 1,000 years later, the Second Temple was destroyed in AD 70. The fall of the Second Temple marks the end of the Old Covenant, which began when God created Adam. The Old Covenant, in both its Noahic and Mosaic forms, was regulated by animal sacrifice, a central sanctuary, and distinctions between clean and unclean. When the Second Temple fell, this entire order ended, and the significance of this event is described in the symbolism of the book of Revelation, which mostly concerns this period. What is amazing is from the Creation to the fall of the Second Temple is precisely 4,000 years, or 100 generations. How could this be coincidence? God gave us this chronology so we can search out the meaning of history.

Even so, this discovery was nothing compared to what I found next. According to the Scriptures, Genesis 1-11 describe the history all humankind shares in common. If this is the case, one might expect all nations to have mythological traditions concerning this period of time. It had been my assumption this was not the case. It is widely known, however, Flood stories are one of the most pervasive features of mythological traditions. In a move of either ignorance or rank dishonesty, most contemporary biblical scholars explain the origin of the biblical flood story in terms of other flood stories circulating in the ancient Near East. For example, the Epic of Gilgamesh describes a global flood similar in many respects to the flood described in the Bible. Utnapishtim builds a boat, the gods flood the world, he sends a raven out near the end of the flood, and he offers sacrifice after he emerges from the ark. Noting these similarities, many biblical scholars say the story of Noah is derived from the story of Utnapishtim in the Epic of Gilgamesh.

If the Bible is telling a historical narrative, however, then one should expect other cultures to have memories of the global flood. There is a way to test which explanation is correct. If flood stories similar to the biblical story are distributed across the planet, then the best explanation is the flood is a historical event. It is common knowledge such stories are distributed across the planet, but the most common explanation is simply “floods happen everywhere.” What I discovered when I began to read the stories themselves, however, is this explanation is completely insufficient. If these many stories originated independently, then one should not expect detailed, particular similarities. But we find such similarities. For example, the Cree tribe of American Indians in Canada tell of a global flood, at the end of which the flood hero sent forth a raven and a wood pigeon, obviously similar to the story where Noah sends forth a raven and a dove. The Hawaiian tradition calls the flood hero “Nu’u” and describes how he offered a sacrifice to the gods after emerging from his ship, just as Noah did after emerging from the ark. The same is true of literally thousands of flood stories around the globe. The similarities are too specific and detailed to be the result of chance.

Recognizing this problem, some critics have attempted to explain the prevalence of flood stories around the globe by pointing to missionary influence. But this is clearly desperate. Some of the stories are far too paganized and corrupted to be the result of missionary influence, while still displaying similarities to the biblical story. One Mesoamerican flood story records some persons offered a sacrifice to the gods that displeased them, leading the gods to turn some people into monkeys. This is plainly a corrupted form of the original biblical story, but it is too corrupt to have been the result of hearing the story from missionaries. Furthermore, are we really to believe missionaries vigorously preached the story of the Flood across the globe, leading literally all cultures to tell stories of a global flood? This problem is intensified by the fact we know such stories were circulating before missionaries, even outside the ancient Near East. For example, we have an Old World Indian flood story from 700 BC, displaying many particular similarities to the biblical account.

Other difficulties abound. For example, across the Southeast United States, Indian tribes tell flood stories which feature, not a bird, but an otter emerging from the boat near the end of the flood. The otter descends to the bottom of the sea and brings forth land. This is true across hundreds of miles in the America Southeast. It is close enough to the biblical story to require some sort of genetic relationship, but explaining this relationship by missionary influence is impossible. In order for missionary influence to explain it, independent missions to many different Indian tribes would need to generate local variations on the narrative of the flood. Each of these tribes would then need to corrupt the story in the exact same way. This defies all probability. Much simpler is the explanation this particular “otter variant” of the flood story derives from a much earlier Native American account of the Flood that had changed the raven to an otter. As the tribes spread across the American Southeast, each carried this variant with them.

I was simply stunned at the force of this evidence. I had never truly grasped the weight of the argument from flood stories before. But there was even more to discover. I found this situation is true across the stories of Genesis 1-11. For example, the story of the Tower of Babel is remembered across the planet. Some Aboriginal Australian tribes, for example, tell of a story of a great tree which was blown over by a gust of wind, after which all nations were confused in languages and scattered across the planet. Native American tribes tell the same story, including the great gust of wind. Indeed, as one looks across the planet for stories of the origin of languages, one finds these two pervasive features: something tall, such as a tower or a tree, and something like a blast of wind. Interestingly, the blast of wind is not recorded in Scripture. Where, then, did it come from?

The Jewish historian Josephus independently transmits traditions about the biblical narrative not recorded in Scripture. He tells us one night, God sent a miraculous gust of wind that destroyed the Tower of Babel. When people awoke, they found they could no longer understand each other. We therefore discover not only do people groups remember the story of the Tower of Babel, but also the traditions they remember included additional historical information about the Tower not given to us in Scripture. The same is true of the creation of man: one Native American tribe remembers God made a woman from the dust of the ground, put her to sleep, and made a man from her side!

And the same is true of worship of the true God Himself. Winfried Corduan, in his book In the Beginning God: The Case for Original Monotheism, critiques the prevailing view of the origins of religion. Most anthropologists argue without evidence polytheism and animism precede monotheism. The evidence, however, indicates otherwise. When anthropologists study tribal cultures, they often find despite the practice of animism, the cultures transmit secret and highly guarded traditions of a creator God who is the supreme lord of the world and who once communicated with these tribal people. Sadly, they remember at one point he ceased communicating with them. Christian missionaries often find tribes have a prophecy of a day when missionaries will come and restore knowledge of the true God.

But it’s not just true in tribal cultures. When we study the ancient world, we find all ancient cultures originally worshiped the one true God. The original religion of ancient China focused on One God, whom they called Shang-Ti, the Emperor of Heaven. Shang-Ti was kind, loving, just, and merciful. This is significant, because pagan gods do not have these attributes. Pagan gods in many cultures are capricious and much more interested in themselves than they are in man. But this is almost never true for the high god in these cultures. When colonists arrived in the Americas, some of them found Algonquin tribes worshiped a person whom they called the “Great Spirit.” The Great Spirit loved mankind, commanded men to love one another, ordained one man and one woman marry for life, and had once send a flood to punish the world for its evil. Here is a story the Skokomish tribe of Washington state recites, as summarized by Mark Isaak, a critic of creationism:

The Great Spirit, angry with the wickedness of people and animals, decided to rid the earth of all but the good animals, one good man, and his family. At the Great Spirit’s direction, the man shot an arrow into a cloud, then another arrow into that arrow, and so on, making a rope of arrows from the cloud to the ground. The good animals and people climbed up. Bad animals and snakes started to climb up, but the man broke off the rope. Then the Great Spirit caused many days of rain, flooding up to the snow line of Takhoma (Mount Rainier). After all the bad people and animals were drowned, the Great Spirit stopped the rain, the waters slowly dropped, and the good people and animals climbed down. To this day there are no snakes on Takhoma.

Whenever we study tribal and cultural traditions, we find their own cultural memories correspond with the history described in Genesis 1-11. Genesis really does tell the true history of mankind, even though modern man has forgotten it.

Still, this left me with one issue, the most difficult of them all: namely, the scientific evidence. Contrary to the beliefs of some creationists, the case for evolution and an ancient earth is not stupid or worthless. Arguments for both deserve to be taken seriously. Even though I am a creationist today, I am still a critic of most creationist arguments, for the simple reason most creationist arguments are bad. It is very important for our credibility as Christians we be careful which arguments we use and which arguments we do not use. Consider one argument: evolution contradicts the second law of thermodynamics, because the second law of dynamics states “everything tends toward disorder.” This is problematic for a number of reasons. First of all, “disorder” is not being used in its colloquial sense, but in a technical sense meaning differences in temperature are exploited in order to accomplish motion, what physicists call “work.” Second, the law does not state everything tends toward disorder at the same rate. Instead, given the universe as a whole is a closed system (something which I do not accept), the order in the whole system will decrease. However, the distribution of energy in the universe changes constantly, so there can be localized increases in order.

Likewise, the concept the entire fossil record was laid down by the Flood of Noah is untenable. This does not explain the particular order of fossils we discover in the ground, especially for what paleontologists call Cenozoic, or Tertiary rocks. Paleontologists divide the Earth’s history into three periods, corresponding to three different layers of rock. There are Paleozoic, or Primary rocks. These contain fossils from the Precambrian and before. Above this are Mesozoic rocks, containing fossils from the Cambrian to the end of the Cretaceous, when the dinosaurs are understood to have gone extinct. Finally are Cenozoic, or Tertiary rocks, where we find mammals, most birds, and ourselves. The difficulty with the older creationist view that all of these rocks were laid down by the Flood is we only find humans at the top of the rock layers, and we find remnants of human civilization, which would be completely wiped out by a global Flood. Why do we only find humans at the top?

Two issues ought to be distinguished. First is the issue of evolution by means of mutation and natural selection. In contemporary science is a small movement of scientists following the “Intelligent Design” movement. These scientists do not necessarily reject common descent, but do believe life exhibits features of design. I found that, despite widespread criticism from mainstream scientists, many of these proponents of design make an excellent case. Michael Behe argues much cellular life exhibits evidence of “irreducible complexity.” That is, such life is composed of a great multitude of parts, but remove even one of those parts, the entire system ceases to function. Since natural selection operates by small, slight modifications, it is difficult to explain how such systems could have evolved directly.

Evolutionary scientists such as Ken Miller have noted ostensibly irreducibly complex systems such as the flagellum do have precursors, but those precursors did not operate as a flagellum. Miller cites the Type III Secretory System, which uses only ten parts of a forty-part flagellum. While it does not operate as a flagellum, it does function as a mechanism for injecting poison into other cells. Behe has responded in two ways. First, the evidence indicates the Type III Secretory System actually descends from the flagellum and not the other way around. Second, it is nigh impossible to explain how a system could move forward by natural selection if it changes function each time it acquires a new part. If selective pressure is refining a particular system, it is refining it with respect to a particular function. Miller’s argument, while sounding persuasive on the surface, has little depth. I found in actual debates with proponents of Intelligent Design, evolutionary scientists did not have as clear as an edge they claimed in the public square.

This still left the most significant scientific issue: the age of the earth. Sadly, many arguments for a young earth simply do not stand up to scrutiny, and are made by people with little to no familiarity with the scientific literature or the scientific evidence. We Christians need to have a better standard than this. We have no reason to fear. All truth is God’s truth. If we are rigorously committed to the truth, then we will find far better arguments than if we are not.

What I discovered, however, was a modern movement of a different kind of creationist scientist. These scientists are interested in doing science because they want to study God’s world in the light of what God has spoken in Scripture. Instead of being motivated by a desire to “refute evolution,” they were committed to formulating a coherent model that could describe the world in creationist terms, leading to productive insights. Furthermore, these scientists were critical of older creationist work which took a disrespectful, polemical tone against those who disagreed. Included in this group are scientists like Kurt Wise, Leonard Brand, and Todd Wood.

Kurt Wise, educated in paleontology at Harvard University, is one of the most creative thinkers in the modern creationist movement. He noted the sequence of plants in the fossil record was exactly what evolution would predict. Plants began at their shortest and least complex and gradually became taller and more complex. He noted, however, the order of plant fossils also described an order of plants that lived in the sea to plants that lived in the land. Asking whether any such ecological order was present in the modern world, he realized this order is exactly what one finds in “quaking bogs.” A quaking bog is a small, floating mat of plants that becomes thicker as one moves toward the center. In the center, one finds trees that actually grow on this mat and whose roots extend into the water. The roots, therefore, are not deep, but extend below the mat and expand outwards. Kurt Wise discovered the order of plants in the fossil record reveals before the Flood was a massive quaking bog the size of a continent, which Wise calls the “floating forest.” Indeed, the trees one finds in the fossil record are actually hollow, which made them lighter and more able to float on this large mat. While hollow trees are extinct today, other sorts of hollow plants have survived in quaking bogs. Furthermore, the well-known “fish-with-legs” fossils are found in this context. These appear to be, not evolutionary transitions, but animals that lived on the floating forest and were thus capable of walking around on the plant mat and swimming below its surface.

Scientists associated with the RATE project have also made substantial progress in understanding why radiometric dating methods tend to give old ages. Radiometric dating works by measuring the relative amounts of certain chemicals in rocks. “Radiometric decay” is one chemical gradually turning into another chemical over time. This occurs at a constant rate, so if one sees the relative amounts of the chemical in a rock, one should hypothetically be able to find when the rock formed. However, whenever radiometric decay occurs, helium is released into the rock. Helium is a leaky chemical, meaning it escapes the rock relatively quickly. A certain amount of radiometric decay will always generate a certain amount of helium. Hence, if all of this radiometric decay occurred millions of years ago, it should nearly all be gone. If it happened at a different rate a few thousand years ago, there should be a predictable amount of helium left in the rocks. What the scientists working on the RATE project did is to take these rocks and predict precisely how much helium should be left in them, given the creationist model. They published the predictions before receiving the results of the experiments, and then they sent the rocks to secular labs so secular scientists could do the experiments. The creationist prediction was confirmed with flying colors.

The same is true with respect to the decay of our magnetic field. Our magnetic field is decaying at a particular rate. Given the present rate of decay, the magnetic field would be prohibitively strong just 20,000 years ago. In order to deal with this conundrum, secular scientists have developed a “dynamo” theory of the magnetic field that allows for its strength to increase and decrease over time. Reversals of the polarities of the magnetic field, in this model, can only occur over a period of about a thousand years. Russell Humphreys, a creationist physicist, developed an alternative model for the magnetic field, based on a young age for the earth. According to Humphreys, the magnetic field is generated by the circulation of electrons in the mantle of the earth. Humphreys’s model allows for reversals of the field to occur in as little time as two weeks. When he developed the model in the 1980s, he predicted short-term reversals of the field would be observed. Only a few years later, his predictions were confirmed. Additionally, NASA published predictions about the rates of planetary magnetic fields given the dynamo model, which would then be measured by the Cassini-Huygens spaceprobe. Russell Humphreys published predictions based on his own model shortly afterwards. When the measurements were made, NASA’s predictions were falsified and Humphreys’s were confirmed.

I further discovered problems with older creationist models were not true of newer creationist models. Take the issue of the entire fossil record being laid down by the Flood. Contemporary creationists no longer believe this. Instead, they argue the Paleozoic layers were laid down before the Flood, largely on the third day of creation, the Mesozoic layers were laid down in the Flood, and the Cenozoic layers were laid down as the Earth rocked back from the geological upheaval of the Flood. This is evidenced by the fact many of the so-called transitional fossils are found in the Cenozoic. There is actually a good series of horse transitional fossils. However, creationist biologist Todd Wood has developed a model for extremely rapid diversification of animal and plant life after the Flood. According to Wood, God created all “kinds” (called a baramin in creationist literature) with natural potentialities for diversification. There are various “switches” in the animal that turn on and off certain features. God made life so it could develop and change, but the mechanism of this change is not primarily mutation and natural selection. Wood’s argument accounts for much of what we see in the late fossil record, and this newer model of the Flood solves many of the older problems with Flood geology.

None of this is to say creationist scientists have solved all of the problems with young-earth models. Not by a long shot. But it is to say the amount of progress made by traditional Christian scientists, given their small number and relative lack of funding, is impressive, and is very promising as to the ultimate profitability of a scientific model faithful to Scripture.

The paradigm shift I have experienced has been profound. While I most certainly believed in Jesus while I accepted evolution, accepting evolution prevented the full realization of a thoroughly Christian worldview. A fully Christian worldview accounts for beauty, and asserts the reason for the form of plants and animals is not simply survival value, but its aesthetic value. A fully Christian worldview does not make paganism primary. It asserts human history begins with true worship of the true God, and it begins again with the renewal of that worship under the Second-Father, Noah. Coming to accept creationism has led to a profound reconfiguration of my worldview, and happily, it has led to the dissolution of virtually all doubt about the truth of Christianity. The sun really shines, the birds really sing, God really loves me and Jesus truly rose to renew all things.

How glorious are thy works, O Lord. In Wisdom hast thou made them all.

Seraphim Hamilton

If we accept that Genesis 4-6 happened, then there must have been a lot of history that’s not reported to us. If the history of the world from the creation to the Flood is more than a literary construct, then there are 1,656 years of history that are condensed into three chapters. For context, this about the amount of time from the cutting of the Abrahamic covenant to the arrival of Christ. This is something which interests me, and luckily, there are clues in the text as to what is actually going on. James Jordan has written some interesting essays called “Getting Real in Genesis” that have stimulated my thought.

Genesis 4. Cain kills Abel. Most of what we imagine about this situation is dead wrong, and we should be able to figure that out. Cain and Abel are clearly not the only people on the scene here, because Cain goes out and builds a city. Moreover, we see from Genesis 5 Adam is 130 years old when Eve bears Seth. If we assume a period of two years between Abel’s death and the birth of Seth, then the murder of Abel takes place 128 years after the expulsion of man from Paradise. Given that man lived to nearly a thousand, the time when childbearing was possible was much more extended in the antediluvian world. And we know from Genesis 5 each of the antediluvian patriarchs had plenty of children unreported to us.

So in Genesis 4, there are many more people than Adam, Eve, Cain and Abel. Cain and Abel were their first two kids. But then they continued to have children. Cain and Abel probably had their own children. And grandchildren. And great grandchildren. There are thousands of people on the scene once we get to 128 AM (Anno Mundi, in the Year of the World). Moreover, the text informs us this occurred at the “cutting off of days” or harvest-time, the turn of the year.

This is a time for liturgical celebration in Israel’s festival year, as well as the festival years of most ancient cultures, indicating this is a part of God’s primeval revelation to mankind. We’re told Adam was to “guard and cultivate” the world. Guarding is priestly, cultivation is royal. Adam is Priest-King. But Cain is a cultivator of the ground, and Abel is a guarder of sheep. As with Christ and His children, the roles of priesthood and kingship devolve separately upon the descendants of Adam. So, in 128 AM, it’s the turn of the year, and it is time for Adam to lead the entire human race in worship. Cain is crown prince and Abel is high priest.

This has been going on for over a century, so Cain and Abel know what to do. Abel would bring a blood sacrifice to the gate of Paradise (just a little west of where they lived), and Cain would bring the firstfruits of his harvest on top of Abel’s blood sacrifice. But one year, Cain decides he should be able to celebrate his own liturgy. We know what this looks like from Israel’s history as well — the kings decide liturgical celebration shouldn’t be the exclusive privilege of the priests. And we know God does not like it when this happens.

So when Cain celebrates his independent liturgy at the gate of Eden, the flaming sword of the cherubim come crashing down upon his offering, and he is publicly humiliated in front of the entire human race — thousands of people.

This is what enrages Cain. He brings Abel out into the field and murders him.

Given the sheer amount of people involved at this time, the result was likely chaotic. God publicly demands Cain move east, to the land of Nod, and Cain summons whomever will join with him to ally with him. Hundreds do. And Cain builds a city after the name of his son — City (or Enoch). A couple years later, Eve bears a new priest — Seth, who begins again to lead Adam’s faithful children in liturgical worship. All the while, Cain’s civilization begins to expand.

Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch. When he built a city, he called the name of the city after the name of his son, Enoch. To Enoch was born Irad, and Irad fathered Mehujael, and Mehujael fathered Methushael, and Methushael fathered Lamech. And Lamech took two wives. The name of the one was Adah, and the name of the other Zillah. Adah bore Jabal; he was the father of those who dwell in tents and have livestock. His brother’s name was Jubal; he was the father of all those who play the lyre and pipe. Zillah also bore Tubal-cain; he was the forger of all instruments of bronze and iron. The sister of Tubal-cain was Naamah. Lamech said to his wives: “Adah and Zillah, hear my voice; you wives of Lamech, listen to what I say: I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for striking me. If Cain’s revenge is sevenfold, then Lamech’s is seventy-sevenfold” (Genesis 4:17-24).

This is Cain’s dynasty — the kings of the city of man. From their names, we can tell something about who they were. According to James Jordan (read more in his series of studies, Trees and Thorns)

• Enoch: City
• Irad: Man of the Untamed City
• Mehujael: He Who Strikes Out Against God
• Methushael: He Who Kills the Peace of God
• Lamech: King

Whether these were the actual names of the heirs of Cain’s dynasty or a commentary on the nature of Cain’s dynasty by the Sethites is irrelevant: this is the text as we have it, and we are to understand the progress of Cain’s civilization by it. It’s not that difficult to decipher what is occurring here. Cain builds a city after the name of his heir, City. Enoch bears the man of the untamed city — the city of man is descending further into evil, and beginning to expand. The Man of the Untamed City bears He Who Strikes Out Against God. Mehujael is a conqueror — he moves out of the land of Nod and begins to dominate the other lands of the world, as the Cainite civilization goes global. He Who Strikes Out Against God bears He Who Kills the Peace of God. Methushael’s eye is on the land of Eden, where the Sethites are. He’s beginning to attack the people of God. We’ll discuss why in one moment. The wickedness of Cain’s dynasty reaches its fullness in King:

And Lamech took two wives. The name of the one was Adah, and the name of the other Zillah. Adah bore Jabal; he was the father of those who dwell in tents and have livestock. His brother’s name was Jubal; he was the father of all those who play the lyre and pipe. Zillah also bore Tubal-cain; he was the forger of all instruments of bronze and iron. The sister of Tubal-cain was Naamah. Lamech said to his wives: “Adah and Zillah, hear my voice; you wives of Lamech, listen to what I say: I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for striking me” (Genesis 4:19-23).

King is the fullness of Adam’s fall. Adam seized the Tree of Kingship, and in Lamech, kingship reaches its very worst. As Moses warned in Deuteronomy 17, and as Samuel reinforced, kings want to take, take, take. So Lamech takes two wives — an attack on marriage. He’s the climax of Adam’s history through Cain, so he bears a New Cain: Tubal-Cain. And a New Abel: Jabal. Tubal-Cain gets ores out of the ground as Cain was a cultivator of the ground. Jabal develops new modes of animal husbandry as Abel was a guarder of sheep. But there’s something new. Jubal begins to compose music. Remember another king, much later in history: King David does the same thing. He organizes the Levitical choir around the Tabernacle, and he writes Psalms. King Lamech also writes a Psalm, but it’s an evil one:

What we see here is the great sin of all kings: presumption against God. God, in spite of Cain’s sin, swore to protect king. King Lamech therefore presumes God will protect all sinners, no matter how wicked — after all, he’s the true king. If I commit a sin an order of magnitude worse than Cain’s, then God is my servant — He will avenge my blood an order of magnitude more.

With this said, let’s turn to the line of Seth and figure out what’s going on.

This is the book of the generations of Adam. When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them Man when they were created. When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth. The days of Adam after he fathered Seth were 800 years; and he had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days that Adam lived were 930 years, and he died. When Seth had lived 105 years, he fathered Enosh. Seth lived after he fathered Enosh 807 years and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Seth were 912 years, and he died. When Enosh had lived 90 years, he fathered Kenan. Enosh lived after he fathered Kenan 815 years and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Enosh were 905 years, and he died. When Kenan had lived 70 years, he fathered Mahalalel. Kenan lived after he fathered Mahalalel 840 years and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Kenan were 910 years, and he died. When Mahalalel had lived 65 years, he fathered Jared. Mahalalel lived after he fathered Jared 830 years and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Mahalalel were 895 years, and he died. When Jared had lived 162 years he fathered Enoch. Jared lived after he fathered Enoch 800 years and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Jared were 962 years, and he died. When Enoch had lived 65 years, he fathered Methuselah. Enoch walked with God after he fathered Methuselah 300 years and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Enoch were 365 years. Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him (Genesis 5:1-24).

Just as with the dynasty of Adam through Cain to Lamech, I’ve taken you seven generations through the line of Adam through Seth to Enoch. We ought to assume the generations of Seth and the generations of Cain moved roughly contemporaneously with each other, and when we do that, we discover something very interesting. Remember that Enoch means “city.” What we should figure out from this is Enoch’s father Jared began to build cities in the land of Eden. Up to this point in time, while Cain’s civilization (recall He Who Strikes Out Against God) had been developing into a global society, the Sethites were building villages in the land of Eden. As with later in history, the wicked often reach cultural advances first, because they’re willing to break the rules. But with Jared, the Sethites finally develop enough technology to begin to construct cities.

This is when we get Methushael: He Who Destroys the Peace of God.

In other words, once the Sethites began to construct cities, their civilization looked ripe for conquest. The armies of the Cainites began to invade the land of Eden.

Now, what do we know from later in Israel’s history? We know that when the Gentiles begin to invade the land, the temptation is for the royal house to make an alliance with the pagans in order to defend the land. This is what is happening in Isaiah 7, when King Ahab fears the alliance of Assyria and the Northern Kingdom. Take a look at the language Isaiah 30:1-2 uses for this sort of temptation:

“Ah, stubborn children,” declares the Lord, “who carry out a plan, but not mine, and who make an alliance, but not of my Spirit, that they may add sin to sin; who set out to go down to Egypt, without asking for my direction, to take refuge in the protection of Pharaoh and to seek shelter in the shadow of Egypt!”

And what happens when Israel’s kings begin to make marriage alliances with the wicked? Prophets begin to prophesy against them. This is what occurs with Elijah, who confronts Ahab and his wicked pagan wife, Jezebel. Elijah, of course, is ultimately taken into Heaven in a chariot of fire.

Back to Genesis 4-6. So what’s happening? The Sethites have begun to build cities. Methushael is leading his armies into the land of Eden, ready to conquer it. And the Sethites are utterly terrified. So here’s what they do:

When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were beautiful. And they took as their wives any they chose. Then the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.” The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown (Genesis 6:1-4).

The refrain of Genesis 5 is the sons of Seth had “other sons and daughters.” The “sons of God” here in Genesis 6 are, as in Deuteronomy 32, the fallen angels. And in Genesis 12, Pharaoh sees Sarai is “beautiful” and wishes to make a marriage covenant with Abram through her. Remember that Abram is a prince, and Pharaoh wants to extend his dominion over the land of Canaan through a marriage alliance with Prince Abram. This is what is going on here. Satan already dominates the world through Cain, but he wants to dominate the last little bit of the world through the Sethites.

When he sees the Sethites are terrified of conquest, he makes an offer: Make a marriage alliance with me, and I’ll give you victory.

The sons of God then go into the daughters of Adam, and they bear Nephilim, giants. These Nephilim were the “mighty men” before the flood. Later in the Bible, Nimrod is called a “mighty man.” He’s a conqueror. Joshua and his armies are righteous “mighty men.” They conquer the land of Canaan through the power of God. We ought to understand the mighty men of Genesis 6, then, as the conquerors who resulted from the union of the sons of God with the line of Seth.

Now, we can find something very, very interesting. I noted that when the kings of Israel began to make marriage alliances with the pagans, Elijah came to prophesy against them and was ultimately taken up into heaven. This is what happened with Enoch:

Thus all the days of Kenan were 910 years, and he died. When Mahalalel had lived 65 years, he fathered Jared. Mahalalel lived after he fathered Jared 830 years and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Mahalalel were 895 years, and he died. When Jared had lived 162 years he fathered Enoch. Jared lived after he fathered Enoch 800 years and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Jared were 962 years, and he died. When Enoch had lived 65 years, he fathered Methuselah (Genesis 5:14-21).

Note the contrast here. It takes longer to bear Enoch than it takes to bear any of the other sons. Why? I submit that this is because Jared’s earlier sons went astray — they gave their daughters in marriage to the sons of God, and they produced conquerors. Enoch is a later son born to Jared, and Enoch begins to prophesy against the royal house of Seth:

It was also about these that Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying, “Behold, the Lord came with ten thousands of his holy ones, to execute judgment on all and to convict all the ungodly of all their deeds of ungodliness that they have committed in such an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things that ungodly sinners have spoken against him” (Jude 1:14-15).

And just like Elijah, Enoch is taken into Heaven.

Let’s recap where we are:

Cain moved into the land of Nod with hundreds of people. He built a city, and over time, Cain’s city began to expand into a global civilization with high technology. Once the Sethites began to build cities in the land of Eden, Cain’s heir decided to conquer it. The Sethites were afraid, and made a marriage alliance with fallen angels. Through this marriage alliance, the Sethites produced conquerors of their own, and Enoch began to prophesy against the fallen royal house of Seth. Enoch is the seventh from Adam, and King Lamech from Cain’s line is the seventh from Adam.

So here’s the question. Why, after Lamech’s three sons, do we not see any more descendants of Cain?

My suggestion is the key is in the identity of the Nephilim — conquerors. Through their union with the sons of God, the Sethites produced conquering kings. My suggestion is these conquerors were successful, and they defeated the Cainites and wiped out their royal house. The line of Seth ruled the world, but they had done so at the expense of their own relationship with God.

It’s when their victory was secure, and when half-demon, half-human (I’ll write more about the mode of their union another time) kings were ruling the throne, that:

The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.” But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord (Genesis 6:5-8).

Thanks for reading.

Seraphim Hamilton

Genesis 17-22 is set against the backdrop of the Flood. Abram has just fallen, by “listening to the voice of his wife” (compare Genesis 3:17) and broken the covenant. This is part of a pattern in the Bible where the covenant is made and immediately broken. It happens to Adam in Genesis 2-3, it happens to Abraham in Genesis 15-16, it happens to Israel in Exodus 20-32, and it happens to David in 2 Samuel 7-12. Following the breaking of a covenant, God renews the covenant through death and resurrection. In the story of the Flood, the solution was the “cutting off” of all flesh so that the world might be reborn. In Abraham’s case, the solution is the “cutting off” of his flesh in circumcision, which symbolizes death and resurrection. There are many ways we know this, but one way to understand it is by connecting circumcision with Passover.

In Exodus 4:22-23, the Lord comes to Moses in the night and attempts to kill his firstborn son. The boy is immediately circumcised and the blood made visible to the Lord on his leg. This is a type of the next time that the Lord comes to strike down firstborn sons, and only those with blood on the doorposts are saved. Meredith Kline points out that the word “pasah” (from where we get “Pascha”) is actually a parody of an Egyptian word “psah” referring to sacramental tomb temples. The houses of Israel are their tombs, and the Glory of God “covers over” the doors so that when the sun rises, the people of Israel rise from the dead.

So we know that circumcision is about death and resurrection. We know that it is associated with the Flood, which is about the rebirth of creation. And this story continues with the account of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. In order to precisely understand how the two are parallel, it is essential to understand that water and fire are twin symbols in the Bible. For example, in Daniel 7, a throne of fire proceeds from the throne of God. The Garden of Eden corresponded to the Holy Place of the Tabernacle in the middle of the holy mountain. At the very top of the holy mountain was a fountain that flowed into Eden- presumably with a throne, eventually to be occupied by the Last Adam. In Revelation 22, we see Daniel’s vision again, except this time, it is not fire, but water that proceeds from the throne of God.

That is why in the account of the fall of Sodom and Gomorrah, we are told that fire “rained from heaven.” Symbolically, this is the glory of God which falls from Heaven and wipes out the wicked. Furthermore, the Flood itself was associated with the exodus. Israel passes through divided waters and comes to the holy mountain, while God redivides the primeval waters and brings Noah to the holy mountain. These types coalesce in the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. When the two witnesses come to inspect the city, the people wish to abuse them. Lot (who by this point, was a judge in the city) abhors such violence, but wants to toss his daughters to be abused by the mob instead. We will see what this eventually leads to. As he leaves the city, he bakes unleavened bread- an obvious type of the exodus.

Fire is raining from heaven, and unleavened bread is cooked as Lot flees the city. But here’s the interesting part: Lot is told to flee to the mountain. While most translations render this in the plural, there is no justification for this in the text. After making his exodus, Lot was supposed to join Abraham at the holy mountain. But he’s prideful. He had chosen the land which was “well watered like the garden of the Lord” and now that land was desolate, just as Eden was “because it had not yet rained” (Genesis 2:4). Instead of fleeing to the holy mountain, Lot flees under the Earth — the opposite of the holy mountain. As mountains symbolize exaltation and new life, caves symbolize death.

Echoes to the flood story abound. Noah was exalted by the waters to the holy mountain, planted a vineyard (a New Eden) and drank Wine in Sabbath Rest. While most people tend to read Noah’s “drunkenness” as sin, the word need only mean that Noah enjoyed a couple glasses of Wine and relaxed. He had been exalted. All flesh had been given to him. And the symbol of Sabbath and exaltation is Wine. The sin in Genesis 9 is when Ham seized his father’s robe of authority, just as Adam had seized God’s authority in Genesis 3. Returning to the story of Lot, Lot is now under the Earth instead of on a mountain peak. And his daughters give him Wine to drink. But this isn’t the Wine of Sabbath, it is the Wine of anti-Sabbath. And his daughters abuse him- just as he had tossed them to be abused.

Eye for eye, tooth for tooth.

It’s a sad note for the story of Lot to end on, but we haven’t finished the story of the holy mountain. The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah has more to do with Abraham than it has to do with Lot. Abraham is the one who had fallen, and the “cutting off” of all flesh in the Flood falls on Abraham in circumcision. But circumcision is merely a sign of the death and resurrection, it is not the substance of death and resurrection. The story of Genesis 17-22 comes to its climax in Genesis 22. God had protected Sarah from Satan’s attempt to prevent the birth of Isaac in Genesis 20. And now the Seed of Promise had arrived.

And where do we find ourselves? The holy mountain, and God wants an ascension (typically translated burnt) offering. When Noah arrived at the holy mountain after the Flood, Noah provided an ascension offering of all creation. Now Abraham is to do the same. He brings his seed, Isaac, to the top of the mountain, and offers him to God- except that Isaac is replaced by a ram. Isaac symbolically dies and rises from the dead. And that is why it is in Genesis 22 that God renews the covenant at last. Covenant renewals come by death and resurrection. David’s covenant was renewed when he lost the kingdom to Absalom and later had it restored to him. Israel’s covenant was renewed when Moses went into the “cleft of a rock” (remember, symbolizing death) and emerged with a glowing face. Abraham’s covenant is renewed when Isaac dies and rises from the dead. This calls is back to the story of the Flood. In Genesis 8, when Noah had been saved from the Flood and arrived on the holy mountain, he offered ascensions to make peace between God and Creation. Isaac fulfills the sacrifice of Noah.

Let’s draw a few more implications from this. First, the story of Genesis 18-22 clarifies and explores the meaning of circumcision. Circumcision was given after Abram broke the covenant, but it also signifies the seed that is coming from Abraham’s own body. The message is thus, when we read the whole story carefully and with attention to detail, that God will “raise up” (resurrect) Abraham’s seed after him and in that way renew the covenant. Circumcision is a profound type of Christ, and the circumcision of the heart is when the shape of the cross is cut into the Christian heart by suffering.

Second, it is a ram who replaces Isaac. In the system of offerings set forth in Leviticus, the ram is the animal used in the trespass offering. One “trespasses” against God when one seizes duties that are not one’s own. A typical punishment for such seizures are leprosy. When Adam trespassed, he was cursed with “garments of skin”, which, while protecting Adam from the full force of the divine glory, nevertheless is associated with leprosy in Leviticus 13-14, as the whole shape of Leviticus 11-15 follows the curses of Genesis 3. When Uzziah attempts to seize priesthood in the Lord’s Temple, priesthood reserved only for the Levites, he is struck leprous. And when Miriam attempts to rise up against Moses as prophet of the Lord, she is struck leprous.

Adam’s sin was a trespass, and a trespass incurs the curse of leprosy (associated with death). The trespass offering is a ram, associating it with Genesis 22. The seed of Abraham was to be offered to God, but God took a ram instead. The incredible thing is that all of these themes meet in Isaiah 53. Isaiah says that the Servant of the Lord became leprous for the sake of His People. He says that the Servant gave himself as a “trespass offering.” Now God has found the true Seed of Abraham, and the true Seed of Abraham is offered to God, bringing creation to its final rebirth, and finally bringing peace between God and mankind, as Noah’s ascensions had typified in Genesis 8.

Seraphim Hamilton

An error that drifts around Christian circles is what I call “hyper-supersessionism,” which maintains that, not only is the Church the New Israel, the physical descendants of Abraham are essentially irrelevant to biblical prophecy.  This is a false idea.  The Church is the organic continuation of old Israel.  The olive tree was not cut down and replaced, but those Jews who rejected Jesus as Messiah were cut off for their apostasy, and those Gentiles who accepted Jesus as Messiah were grafted into the olive tree and became sons of Abraham by their faith in Messiah.

With this in mind, read the words of Christ and Peter:

Acts 1:6-8: So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?”  He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority.  But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”

This seems to imply that the Lord will one day place the land back in the hands of Israel — true Israel.  At the moment the land is possessed by the apostate Jews who were cut off from true Israel because of their rejection of Messiah.  However, I believe that their return to the land does have some significance in biblical prophecy.

Zechariah 12:10-11: And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy, so that, when they look on me, on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a firstborn.  On that day the mourning in Jerusalem will be as great as the mourning for Hadad-rimmon in the plain of Megiddo.

The Prophet Zechariah writes that at some point the inhabitants of Jerusalem will look on the LORD, whom they pierced, and they will mourn.  They will plead “Lord, have mercy!”  This implies a turning to God on the part of the ethnic Jews.  Combine this with Romans 11:25-27: Lest you be wise in your own conceits, I want you to understand this mystery, brothers: a partial hardening has come upon Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in.  And in this way all Israel will be saved, as it is written, “The Deliverer will come from Zion, he will banish ungodliness from Jacob”; “and this will be my covenant with them when I take away their sins.”

So, at some point, ethnic Israel will cry out to the Lord and repent for rejecting their Messiah.  They will be grafted back into the tree of true Israel, and thus, the Nation of Israel will be converted to an Orthodox Christian state.

Seraphim Hamilton

I am by nature an argumentative person.  I love a good debate.  By debate, I mean debate, not fighting.  Fighting is yelling insults at each other masked as “arguments.”  A debate is a rational gunfight where logic and evidence are the guns.  Because of my nature, I invited missionaries from the Jehovah’s Witnesses over to talk to them about their faith.  For those unfamiliar with the Witnesses, their basic beliefs are:

1. God is one person, the Father.

2. Jesus Christ is the Son of God because he is the first creation of “Jehovah God.”

3. The divine name “Jehovah” [it’s really YHWH] is the proper name of God that should be used.

4. Jesus Christ was the Messiah sent by Jehovah, who was crucified on a torture stake, not a cross, providing for the salvation of mankind.

5. On the third day, Jehovah disintegrated Jesus’ body and raised Him to “spirit life.”  In other words, the resurrection was not a bodily resurrection, but Jesus was simply a spirit.

6. The 144,000 are a group of Jehovah’s Witnesses selected from eternity past by Jehovah to rule with Christ in the Heavenly Kingdom forever.

7. Other Jehovah’s Witnesses who have attained some level of salvation will live on an earthly kingdom.

8. Damnation is annihilation of the soul; there is no conscious suffering.

9. The Day of the Lord is imminent, where the world will be judged and the damned annihilated.

In addition, JWs use a special translation of 66 books of the Bible called the “New World Translation,” which has been translated specifically to support JW doctrines and to mask orthodox Christian doctrine.

Well, here’s how the argument went.  During the first meeting, we simply went over our present beliefs and they gave me a small book entitled “What Does the Bible Really Teach?”  This book is intended to prove that the Bible teaches JW doctrine.  I read the book for the next meeting, and we delved into what I really wanted to discuss: the deity of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  As expected, they took me to Colossians 1:15, which says “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.”

According to JWs, this passage demonstrates that Jesus was the first creation of God the Father, thus “firstborn.”  In response, I pointed them to three things:

1. In the Hebrew Scriptures, The Prophet King David is called the “firstborn,” though we know that he was actually the youngest son.  This implies that “firstborn” is simply a title denoting the heir to the kingdom.

2. An ancient Jewish rabbi named Benchai refers to YHWH God as “firstborn.”  If firstborn really denoted that the figure in question was created, how could an Orthodox Jew use this title of the LORD Himself?

3. The Greek word used for “firstborn” here is prototokos.  If Paul wished to convey the idea of “first-created,” the much clearer Greek word would be protoktizos.

So, what was the JW response?  Move to another verse: “Well, in the Book of John, Jesus even says that Jehovah God is greater than he is!”  John 14:28: You heard me say to you, “I am going away, and I will come to you.”  If you loved me, you would have rejoiced, because I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I.  “As we can see,” the Witnesses stated, “the Father and the Son are not the same.  And, on top of that, Jesus Christ proclaims that Jehovah God is greater than he is!”

In their argument I could see two clear misunderstandings of the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity.  “First of all,” I told them, “no Trinitarian argues that the Father and the Son are identical.  They are two distinct persons, as the Holy Spirit is a distinct person from the Father and Son.  The Trinity is one in essence, but it is not one in personhood.  Secondly, while the Son is functionally subordinate to God the Father, this does not refute His ontological equality with God the Father.  When Christ states that the Father is greater than He is, He is speaking of His functional relationship with the Father.”

Most Witnesses don’t understand what the doctrine of the Trinity actually is.  They tend to picture it as the modalistic heresy, which teaches that God is one person who simply manifests in three forms.  First proposed by the ancient priest Sabellius, it was condemned by the Church but has enjoyed recent revivals among certain sects of Pentecostals.  I could see that they were confused.  “Well, we really don’t see evidence from the Bible that Jesus Christ is equal with Jehovah God.”

I wanted to talk with them about their use of the divine name, and then I wanted to give them biblical support for Christ’s deity.  “In that New World Translation that you use, the name ‘Jehovah’ is used several places in the New Testament.  Why is that, considering that in no place in the original Greek New Testament is the divine name actually used?  The New Testament authors simply used ‘The Lord.’”

“The New Testament did use the divine name originally.  It was removed by biased translators.”

I asked them which manuscripts of the New Testament used the divine name.  “Considering that we have over 5,000 Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, and none of them use the divine name, how could you say that?”  They told me that several manuscripts had the divine name.  “No, that is simply not true.  The tetragrammaton [the Hebrew divine name YHWH] is nowhere used in the Greek New Testament,” I replied.  “I have a book upstairs by Bruce Metzger and Bart Ehrman called The Text of the New Testament, which deals in detail with the manuscripts of the New Testament.  Would you like me to get it and show you?”  They assured me that this was not necessary.

“Well, even though there may be no manuscript evidence of the divine name, it was clearly removed by biased copyists.”

“That’s untenable for two reasons.  First, there are many streams of textual tradition from a geographically diverse area, and none use the divine name.  The systematic conspiracy to destroy the divine name would have to spread across thousands of miles and be perfectly coordinated.  For a conspiracy of that magnitude to leave no evidence is impossible.  Second, even in the pre-Christian Greek Septuagint translation of the Old Testament, the divine name is replaced with ‘The Lord.’  This is because by ancient Jews and ancient Christians, the divine name was regarded as so holy that it was not usually written down.”

They decided to try a different tactic.  “Look at the Gospel of John,” they said.  John 17:25-26: O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me.  I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.  “As we can see, Jesus states that he made known the name of Jehovah to the people.”

I responded, “That’s not what He says at all.  First, if Jesus was talking about the divine name, why is there no place in the Gospels where Christ actually uses that divine name?  Second, it is clear from the context that He is speaking of making the general knowledge of God the Father accessible to the people.”

Silence again.  I changed the subject.  “Let’s talk about the biblical evidence for the deity of Christ.”  They had to leave soon, but I wanted to give them two verses of Scripture that demonstrated that Christ was God.  “Well, first, let’s go to the book of Hebrews.  In heaven we can see a conversation between the Father and the Son.  The author quotes passages of the Hebrew Scriptures where the Father is speaking.  Hebrews 1:5: For to which of the angels did God ever say, ‘You are my Son, today I have begotten you’?  Or again, ‘I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son’?  As we can see, in this context, the Greek theos clearly refers to God, not merely a lesser angelic being.  The important thing in this chapter is when God the Father tells the Son: (Hebrews 1:8) But of the Son he says, ‘Your throne, O God, is forever and ever, the scepter of uprightness is the scepter of your kingdom.’  The same Greek word, as we can see, is used in the immediate context to refer to both God the Father and the Son.  The Father even addresses the Son as ‘God’ and speaks of His eternal reign.”

“Well,” the Witnesses replied, “Jesus Christ can be spoken of as ‘a god’ meaning that he is a very powerful being, but not as ‘Almighty God,’ because there is only one ‘Almighty God.’”

I could see that they still did not understand the doctrine of the Trinity.  “But you see,” I said, “I completely agree that there is only one Almighty.  In fact, the ancient creeds of the Orthodox Church use that precise terminology [I refer to the Athanasian creed].  The persons of the Trinity are one God in essence.  Secondly, this cannot refer to a lesser god because the author uses the precise same Greek term in the same immediate context to refer to both God the Father and God the Son.”

There were a few moments of silence, so, to break the awkwardness, I asked to move to the next verse.  They agreed.  I took them to the Book of Revelation: “Let’s look at the beginning of John’s Apocalypse.  The Apostle writes of God (it is unclear whether this is the Father or Son speaking): (Revelation 1:8) ‘I am the Alpha and the Omega,’ says the Lord God, ‘who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.’”

The Witnesses agreed that this was clearly a reference to God.  I then took them to the end of the Apocalypse.  Revelation 22:12-13: Behold, I am coming soon, bringing my recompense with me, to repay everyone for what he has done.  I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.  “As we can see, the Apostle is actually using a framing device.  He opens the Apocalypse with a declaration from God that He is the Alpha and the Omega, and ends it with a declaration from the Lord Jesus Christ that He is the Alpha and the Omega.  We know that Revelation 22 has Jesus speaking because the speaker says ‘Behold, I am coming soon.’  There are three options.  One, there could be two Alphas and Omegas.  We know from the Bible that this is false.”  They agreed.  “Two, there could be two gods.  We know from the Bible that this is false.”  They agreed again.  “Or three, there could be one Alpha and Omega who exists in three persons.”

They were silent for a few seconds.  Slowly, they answered, “Well, we agree that in verse twelve, Jesus is speaking, but in verse thirteen the speaker changes to Jehovah God.”  I asked them how they came to that conclusion.  They replied that they knew from the rest of the Bible that Jehovah is not the same as Jesus, so that is the only logical conclusion.  I didn’t have time to reply, because they had to get to a meeting, so we said farewell and agreed to meet again in a few weeks.

Our next meeting only had one of them there.  We dove right into the discussion.  I had brought along a book called Putting Jesus in His Place, which is a systematic case by two New Testament scholars for the deity of Jesus.  I opened first to 1 Peter 3:14-15:…Have no fear of them, nor be troubled, but in your hearts regard Christ the Lord as holy….  “Let’s compare this passage of scripture to a passage from the Prophet Isaiah: (8:12-13) Do not call conspiracy all that this people calls conspiracy, and do not fear what they fear, nor be in dread.  But the LORD of hosts, him you shall regard as holy.  Let him be your fear, and let him be your dread.”  While these passages look somewhat different in English, the original Greek New Testament and the Greek Septuagint language is almost identical:

1 Peter 3: ton de phobon auton me phobethete mede tarachthete kurion de ton christon hagiasate

Isaiah 8: ton de phobon autou ou me phobethete oude me tarachthete kurion auton hagiasate

I showed him the Greek text.  “As we can see, Peter almost directly quotes the Prophet Isaiah, merely replacing YHWH with ‘Christ the Lord’ indicating that the Lord God and the Lord Christ are equal.”

The Witness responded, “Well, Peter is simply making the same point as Isaiah is.”  I asked him what that point was.  “Well, it’s to serve the Lord God.”

“Exactly!” I exclaimed.  “And that only works if the Lord Christ is God in flesh.”  He changed the subject.  I’m not sure what he was about to get at, but he began saying,

“Well, because Jesus used to be a man…”

“Wait.  Did you say, ‘used to be’?”

“Well, yes,” the Witness replied.  “He is now only a spirit, because as the Bible says, it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.”

I knew the exact verse he was talking about from arguments with secularists over Paul’s doctrine of the resurrection.  “Let’s go to 1 Corinthians 15 then.  The Apostle Paul states: (1 Corinthians 15:44) ‘It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body.’  However, the Greek here for spiritual is pneumatikos. The suffix tikos indicates that Paul is talking about spiritual in orientation, not substance.  That is, it is a glorified, supernatural body, not an incorporeal spirit.  Paul uses the same Greek word in Galatians 6:1: ‘Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness.  Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted.’  Paul here mentions ‘spiritual people’ here, who are to counsel the others.  He obviously is referring to Christians in their local churches, not incorporeal spirits.  He means Christians who are filled with the Spirit of God.  This is what pneumatikos means.  It has nothing to do with the substance of the body.”

“But,” the Witness countered, “Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:50 ‘I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.’”

“Well, Paul is using an ancient Semitic idiom here.  ‘Flesh and blood’ is an idiom that does not refer to physicality, but to corruption.  This is why Jesus says that He is made up of flesh and bone in the Gospel of John.  Paul is simply saying that corruption cannot enter the kingdom of God.”

I then asked him to turn to 1 Timothy 2:5.  We turned there: “For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.”  I explained, “The Apostle Paul states that the figure that presently mediates between God and men is in fact a man.  He uses the present tense, which demonstrates that Jesus Christ is in fact still a man.”

The Witness changed the subject.  He asked me to turn to 1 John 4:8 and read that passage: Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.  “Now, your parents love you.  Would they want you to be confused?”  Not sure where he was going with this, I answered that they would certainly not.  “So why would God require one to do all this deep study to come to a true understanding of His Word?”

“Well, my answer is twofold,” I responded.  “First, God has not left us alone but has sent the Spirit of Truth into the Orthodox Church’s tradition so that it may guide us to the correct interpretation of Holy Scripture.  Second, it would actually be much more confusing if you are right.  The Bible clearly states that the Word was God.  It clearly states that the present mediator between God and man is a man.  It clearly states that Jesus rose from the dead in a body of flesh and bone.  If none of these things are actually true, it seems to require a lot more mental gymnastics for your interpretation of the Bible than it does for mine.”

The Witness answered, “I don’t really see that at all.”  In response, I told the story of Jewish Orthodox Christian Fr. James Bernstein.

“Young James had come to believe that Jesus was God’s Messiah, but he was not sure whether the New Testament taught His deity.  He wanted to see if the New Testament was clear enough that the New World Translation could not even mask it.  Thus, he purchased a New World Translation Bible and read the entire New Testament.  After reading it for himself, he concluded that even the NWT clearly taught the deity of Christ.  This is but one example of a man coming to the deity of Christ by himself without picking up over a hundred books on the subject.”

Silence again.  “Let’s talk more about the deity of Jesus,” I said.  He agreed to discuss it some more.  I brought out Philippians 2:5-11: Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the nature of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.  And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.  Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

“Now, the Greek word for nature here is morphe.  Daniel Wallace, a highly regarded scholar of the Greek language, states that this is one of the strongest ways to express Christ’s deity.  Morphe refers to internal attributes and characteristics, and Paul says that Jesus possesses the internal attributes and characteristics of deity.”

“But,” the Witness countered, “how can Jesus be the same as God the Father if God the Father exalts him?”

“The first thing we must understand, as I’ve mentioned, is that God the Father and God the Son are distinct persons in one being, and therefore can communicate with each other and exalt each other.  Second, as Richard Bauckham explains [I had the book in front of me]: ‘The verb does not indicate that God has exalted Jesus to a higher status than he had previously occupied (whether in pre-existence or in mortal life), but that God has exalted him to a higher status than that of anyone or anything else, i.e., to the pre-eminent position in the whole cosmos.’  Basically, God the Father is eternally exalting the Son to the pre-eminent position in the universe, just as the Father eternally begets God the Son and eternally spirates the Holy Spirit.”

Our time was up; the JW had to get to a meeting.  We shook hands and he politely informed me that we are at a stalemate and that unless we come to an agreement, there is no real point in discussing this further.  He asked me to call him back if we ever came to agreement on this issue.  I understood his point here and accepted.  We bade farewell, probably for the last time.

Thus, folks, that is my experience with JW missionaries. I hope you’ve learned something from it.

Seraphim Hamilton

In Martin Luther’s break from the Papal Church, he was forced to develop a doctrine that allowed him to legitimately break from the institutional church.  This doctrine, known as Sola Scriptura, is hailed by many today as divine truth.  In short, Sola Scriptura suggests that Scripture is the supreme witness of divine truth, to be held above the Church’s tradition.  In a more extreme variation, Sola Scriptura is the doctrine that only the Scripture reveals divine truth, with all other church tradition being worthless.

Both of these doctrines are repulsive to the Scripture itself.  Denying the Tradition of the Church does not exalt the Scripture any more than denying God the Son exalts God the Father.  In supporting their doctrine, Protestants often appeal to the Lord’s words in Mark 7:8, where Christ rebukes the Pharisees, saying, “You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.”  And likewise, in Matthew 15:3, Jesus asks the Pharisees, “Why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition?”  From these passages, it can seem to the lay reader that the Bible speaks forcefully against tradition.  However, one must take into account the whole of Scripture.

St. Paul writes in 2 Thessalonians 2:15, “Stand firm and hold to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by our spoken word or by our letter.”  And likewise, in 1 Corinthians 11:2, it is written, “Now I commend you because you remember me in everything and maintain the traditions even as I delivered them to you.”  Yet, St. Paul also writes in Colossians 2:8, “See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition….”

What does one make of these seemingly contradictory passages?  The answer is to simply look at the qualifiers attached to tradition.  When the Lord speaks negatively of tradition in the Gospel, He does so against the Pharisaic tradition, the tradition of men, which had corrupted the word of God.  However, it is simply illogical to then infer that there is no divinely inspired tradition.  The Gospel of Thomas is a false and heretical “scripture.”  It does not follow, however, that the Bible is not divinely inspired.  Likewise, there are traditions that corrupt the word of God.  However, there are also traditions that are the word of God.  When St. Paul speaks of human tradition, he is clearly speaking of the former kind.  Again, we see that there is no statement that all tradition is uninspired, only the “human traditions.”

On the contrary, we saw in 2 Thessalonians 2:15 a clear portrait of the status of Tradition.  St. Paul wrote that Christians are to keep the Apostolic Traditions, contained in their writings and in their spoken preaching.  Hence, St. Paul implies that not all of the apostolic faith is contained within their writings.  The Apostolic Writings later became known as the New Testament.  The teaching of the Apostles that was not written in Scripture is known colloquially as “tradition.”  More properly, however, Tradition is the entire deposit of faith, made up of the written Scriptures as well as the rest of apostolic teaching.  Christians are to maintain the tradition of the Church as delivered by the Apostles as steadfastly as they maintain Scripture.  Neither is supreme over the other, because both are divinely inspired.  To say that one is superior is like saying that St. Mark’s Gospel is more inspired than St. Matthew’s.

The final authority on the interpretation of Scripture is not the individual reader.  Rather, it is the visible, united body of Christ, the Orthodox Catholic Church.  It is written in 1 Timothy 3:15, “If I delay, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of truth.”  It is then the Church of God that is the pillar and ground of divinely revealed truth.  It is the Church that is to guard and define the revealed truth.  Christ endowed his authority to the Church with the keys of the Apostolic priesthood, which He promised to give in Matthew 18:18, where the Lord says to the Apostles, “If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church.  And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.  Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”

Christ endowed the Church with the divine authority to render judgment on men and justified this authority by endowing the Apostles with the keys to bind and loose.  Lest the Church lose its authority, the Apostles endowed the grace of the priesthood upon others, as it is written in Acts 1:20, “For it is written in the Book of Psalms, ‘May his camp become desolate, and let there be no one to dwell in it’ and ‘Let another take his bishopric.’”  And likewise in Titus 1:5, it is written, “This is why I left you in Crete, so that you might put what remained into order, and appoint priests in every town as I directed you.”

For 40 years the Church existed without a complete New Testament.  How then could the New Testament be a requirement for the existence of the Church?  The New Testament did not build the Church.  God built the New Testament through His Church.  The New Testament is recognized Scripture only because the Church has decreed it so.  In the synods of Rome and Carthage, the Church ratified the canon of the New Testament as containing 27 books.  Hence, for a Protestant to use the Bible is in itself a subtle acknowledgement of the authority of this Church, and hence, a refutation of Sola Scriptura!

Sola Scriptura is in itself a tradition of men.  Protestants must abandon this corrupt tradition and get in line with the Word of God.

Seraphim Hamilton

The centerpiece of Reformed argumentation is their interpretation of Romans 9.  They read Romans 9 as a discussion of unconditional predestination unto salvation.  However, Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart notes that according to the plain reading of the text, and according to the Greek Fathers, Romans 9 has very little to do with individual election unto salvation at all.  Rather, it has to do with the separation and ultimate reconciliation of Israel and the Church (77).

Let us therefore look closely at the ninth chapter of St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans that we may see and understand what it really teaches.  St. Paul begins in verses one through five by identifying his own love for Israel, and that they are honored with the Old Testament Scriptures and prophecies, that they are honored in that the Messiah Himself — God incarnate — comes from their people.

They have been chosen as the covenant people, St. Paul says, and that is their honor.  The question that he deals with, then, is, “how in the world can Jesus be the Messiah if His own people reject Him?”  St. Paul begins his answer in verses six and seven.  He states, “For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, and not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring, but ‘Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.’”

We therefore see the point that Paul is making.  Those who believe not in Jesus as Messiah are not truly part of Israel.  To prove that not all who are descended from Abraham are under the covenant, St. Paul points to the first child of Abraham who was not under the covenant — Ishmael.  Therefore, because not all children of Abraham in the beginning were necessarily under the covenant, the same can be true of the modern fleshly descendants of Abraham.  St. Paul seals this argument in verse eight.  He writes, “This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring.”  Thus, we see that covenant status is not dependent on fleshly inheritance.

St. Paul continues his argument in verses nine through thirteen, key passages in Reformed theology.  He writes, “For this is what the promise said: ‘About this time next year I will return and Sarah shall have a son.’  And not only so, but also when Rebecca had conceived children by one man, our forefather Isaac, though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad — in order that God’s purpose of election might continue, not because of works but because of his call — she was told, ‘The older will serve the younger.’  As it is written, ‘Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.’”

What does St. Paul mean by this?  Is he talking about election unto salvation?  We see that he is not.  First of all, when St. Paul quotes Malachi 1:2-3 in saying that “Jacob I loved, Esau I hated,” it is not talking about lack of divine love.  Rather, the Old Testament is using hyperbolic covenant terms.  Douglas Moo writes to this effect, “The verbs ‘love’ and ‘hate’ in Malachi are covenantal terms. They do not express God’s emotions…but his actions….  We might paraphrase, ‘Jacob I have chosen, but Esau I have rejected’” (58).

We see something very important in St. Paul’s quotation of the prophet.  If one examines the immediate context of Malachi 1:2-3, one sees that the prophet is not speaking of Jacob and Esau as individuals.  Rather, he is using them as symbols for the nations which they bore — Israel and Edom.  Thus, St. Paul is speaking of the covenant election of corporate bodies for the purposes of God’s plan — not individual people unto salvation.  Furthermore, we see later in the book of Genesis that Esau is reconciled to his brother Jacob and forgiven.  Because we know that at least one Edomite (Esau) was saved, we know that St. Paul is not speaking about election unto salvation.  Edwards states likewise, “In the present context Paul is not discussing the eternal salvation of individuals, but God’s purposeful choices in history from Abraham to Christ” (231-2).  Witherington concurs, writing, “The discussion of election in chs. 9-11 is a discussion of corporate election, in the midst of which there are individual rejection by some and selection for historical purposes of others” (246).

In Romans 9:15, St. Paul quotes Exodus 33 in proving the justice of God, where God says that He will have mercy on whom He will have mercy.  While Calvinists have viewed this as explaining God’s lack of mercy for some, this does not fit with what God is actually saying in Exodus 33.  If one reads Exodus 33, God is actually discussing the abundance of His mercy, and that He will have mercy on people even if Moses would rather He not do so.  That is to say, St. Paul is demonstrating that God is free to have mercy on the Gentiles if He so wishes, despite the protests of the Jews.

In Romans 9:17, St. Paul draws our minds back to God’s dealings with Pharaoh in the book of Exodus.  He therefore concludes in verse eighteen that God is free to harden whomever He will.  This is a difficult passage, and we must therefore undertake a study of hardening in the Bible.  St. Paul right now is giving us an example of someone not part of God’s covenant people.  We note that, first, Pharaoh hardened his own heart first in Exodus 8:15, 32, and 9:34.  This is why St. Paul says in Romans 1:22-25 that, “Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.  Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever!  Amen.”

We see that God turned them over to their own sin in response to their continuous rebellion against Him.  The cause and effect is that the people rebel against God, and God says “Thy will be done” and turns them over.  This is precisely the relationship described between God and Pharaoh in the book of Exodus.

One must always remember the subject of Romans 9 is explaining the relationship of fleshly Israel to God in the present time.  They are not presently under the divine covenant, because they have rejected Christ.  St. Paul gives an example of one who was not in a covenant with God, paralleling the Jews who reject Christ.  We see that God has now turned fleshly Israel over to their own darkness and unbelief, for St. Paul writes in Romans 11:7-8, “What then?  Israel failed to obtain what it was seeking.  The elect obtained it, but the rest were hardened, as it is written, ‘God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that would not see and ears that would not hear, down to this very day.’”

Israel has been hardened due to their unbelief.  If Reformed theology were true and this hardening refers to predestination unto reprobation, it is not going to be reversed.  On the contrary, St. Paul later says in Romans 11:26 that all Israel will be saved!  With that said, turn your eyes back to Romans 9 for a moment.  The chapter discusses God’s purposes in corporate elections.  He elects corporate bodies according to His own will and wisdom in order to bring about salvation for the maximum number of people.  Why, then, has God not elected fleshly Israel?  Why has He now elected the body of the Church?  St. Paul answers this question in Romans 11:11, saying, “So I ask, did they stumble in order that they might fall?  By no means!  Rather through their trespass salvation has come to the Gentiles, so as to make Israel jealous.”

Yet, God still desires salvation for Israel, and thus their jealousy will ultimately lead to salvation, as it is written in Romans 11:26 and in the Prophet Zechariah.  The prophet writes in Zechariah 12:10, “And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy, so that, when they look on me, on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a firstborn.”  Thus, God has wisely elected the Church in this present day that salvation may flow to the Gentiles, making Israel jealous, leading to Israel’s rejoining of the olive tree.  How great is the wisdom of God!

In Romans 9:19-21, St. Paul analogizes God to a potter, molding things into whatever He wishes.  St. Paul is alluding to a passage from the Prophet Jeremiah, where the Lord says through the prophet, “O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter has done? declares the Lord.  Behold, like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel.”  As we can see, this is still dealing with corporate groups, rather than specific individuals.

Some Protestant translations translate Romans 9:22 as saying, “What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction.”  However, Witherington notes in his commentary on Romans that 9:22 can be translated, “Although God desired to show his wrath and to make known his power, He endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction” (257).

This makes much more sense with verse twenty-three, which says, “in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory.”  That is, God endured the unfaithfulness of Old Israel in order to bring about salvation within the New Covenant Church.

How does one deal with the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction?  This is not an example of God unconditionally predestining individuals to reprobation.  Actually, the vessels of wrath are preparing themselves for destruction.  According to Witherington, “Paul uses two different verbs when talking about the vessels of mercy and vessels of wrath….  Katertismena, used of the vessels of wrath, is a perfect passive participle.  Proetoimasen, used of the vessels of mercy, is an aorist active indicative.  This change cannot be accidental, and it suggests that Paul means that the vessels of wrath are ripe or fit for destruction.  Indeed, one could follow the translation of John Chrysostom here and understand it in the middle voice: “‘have made themselves fit for’ destruction” (258).

With this point made, St. Paul’s quotation of Jeremiah makes perfect sense.  Jeremiah is discussing God’s relationship to the house of Israel, those descended from Jacob according to the flesh.  He has a right to do with them what He wishes.  Then St. Paul explains that God endured the wickedness of the people of Israel as long as He did because it enabled Him to make known His mercy within the New Covenant Church, composed of both Jews and Gentiles.

We have seen thus far two very important things.  First, St. Paul is not speaking about salvation.  Second, St. Paul is not speaking about individuals, but covenant groups.  With these things proven, St. Paul’s argument is this: God’s covenant was never with a fleshly body.  Rather, he elected covenant nations according to His own wisdom and purpose.  Who can question the will and wisdom of God?   He has a right to mold His covenant people into whatever He wishes.  He has never broken His promise to true Israel, for true Israel is now all who are faithful to Jesus the Messiah, that is, the people of the Church.  God has elected the Church rather than fleshly Israel in order to save Gentiles, and eventually to bring salvation full circle so that all Israel may be saved as well.  Gentiles are now a part of true covenant Israel, and hence St. Paul quotes the prophet in verse twenty-five, saying “As indeed he says in Hosea, ‘Those who were not my people I will call my people, and her who was not beloved I will call beloved.’”

Seraphim Hamilton

What is the historic doctrine of the Eucharist?  The answer to this question is of great importance.  We shall begin at the first document we have speaking of the Eucharist, Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, written in approximately 56ad.  St. Paul of Tarsus says,

For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the night he was handed over, took bread, and, after he had given thanks, broke it and said, “This is my body that is given for you.  Do this in remembrance of me.”  In the same way also the cup, after supper, saying “This cup is the new covenant in my blood.  Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”  For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes.  Therefore, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily will have to answer for the body and blood of the Lord.  A person should examine himself, and so eat the bread and drink the cup.  For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body, eats and drinks judgment on himself.

Here we see that Paul equates the bread and wine with the body and blood, for he says, “Therefore, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily will have to answer for the body and blood of the Lord.”  It is fairly clear, then, that St. Paul affirms the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist.

Another key element of patristic Eucharistic doctrine is that the Eucharist is a true sacrifice.  It is not a re-sacrifice, however, but a return to the one sacrifice.  The Didache, an early Christian catechism many scholars date to the Apostolic Age, mentions this when it states, “And on the Lord’s own day gather yourselves together and break bread and give thanks, first confessing your transgressions, that your sacrifice may be pure.  And let no man, having his dispute with his fellow, join your assembly until they have been reconciled, that your sacrifice may not be defiled; for this sacrifice it is that was spoken of by the Lord.”

We see several themes in here.  First, the Eucharist is a sacrifice, and it is proper to call it such.  Second, the Eucharist is to be performed every Lord’s Day.  Third, people must do confession before they receive the Eucharist, so that they may be purified.  St. Clement of Rome also refers to the Eucharist as a sacrifice, saying in his Letter to the Corinthians, “Our sin will not be small if we eject from the episcopate those who blamelessly and holily have offered its Sacrifices.”

St. Ignatius of Antioch, a student of the apostle John and second Patriarch of Antioch after the apostle Peter, writes in response to those who believed that Jesus did not have a physical body but was only divine, “Take note of those who hold heterodox opinions on the grace of Jesus Christ which has come to us, and see how contrary their opinions are to the mind of God….  They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer because they do not confess that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, flesh which suffered for our sins and which that Father, in his goodness, raised up again.  They who deny the gift of God are perishing in their disputes.”

St. Justin Martyr, writing in 151ad, states regarding the Eucharist, “We call this food Eucharist, and no one else is permitted to partake of it, except one who believes our teaching to be true and who has been washed in the washing which is for the remission of sins and for regeneration and is thereby living as Christ enjoined.  For not as common bread nor common drink do we receive these; but since Jesus Christ our Savior was made incarnate by the word of God and had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so too, as we have been taught, the food which has been made into the Eucharist by the Eucharistic prayer set down by him, and by the change of which our blood and flesh is nurtured, is both the flesh and the blood of that incarnated Jesus.”

We thus see that the second century Church clearly taught that at the words of consecration said by the presbyter, the bread and wine were transformed into the body and blood of the Lord Jesus, and only baptized Orthodox Christians could receive it.  St. Clement of Alexandria, commenting on John 6 in 191ad, states, “‘Eat my flesh,’ [Jesus] says, ‘and drink my blood.’  The Lord supplies us with these intimate nutrients, he delivers over his flesh and pours out his blood, and nothing is lacking for the growth of his children.”

Origen of Alexandria, commenting on John 3 and John 6, applies them to baptism and the Eucharist, respectively, saying, “Formerly there was baptism in an obscure way … now, however, in full view, there is regeneration in water and in the Holy Spirit.  Formerly, in an obscure way, there was manna for food; now, however, in full view, there is the true food, the flesh of the Word of God, as he himself says: “My flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink.”

Aphrahat the Persian Sage, commenting on the Last Supper in 340ad, states, “After having spoken thus [at the Last Supper], the Lord rose up from the place where he had made the Passover and had given his body as food and his blood as drink, and he went with his disciples to the place where he was to be arrested.  But he ate of his own body and drank of his own blood, while he was pondering on the dead.  With his own hands the Lord presented his own body to be eaten, and before he was crucified he gave his blood as drink.”

Serapion, writing in 350ad, records the Eucharistic prayer said at the Divine Liturgy, “Accept therewith our hallowing too, as we say, ‘Holy, holy, holy Lord Sabaoth, heaven and earth is full of your glory.’  Heaven is full, and full is the earth, with your magnificent glory, Lord of virtues.  Full also is this sacrifice, with your strength and your communion; for to you we offer this living sacrifice, this unbloody oblation.”

St. Cyril of Jerusalem, writing in the same year, states regarding the Eucharist, “Then, having sanctified ourselves by these spiritual hymns, we beseech the merciful God to send forth his Holy Spirit upon the gifts lying before him, that he may make the bread the Body of Christ and the wine the Blood of Christ, for whatsoever the Holy Spirit has touched is surely sanctified and changed.  Then, upon the completion of the spiritual sacrifice, the bloodless worship, over that propitiatory victim we call upon God for the common peace of the churches, for the welfare of the world, for kings, for soldiers and allies, for the sick, for the afflicted; and in summary, we all pray and offer this sacrifice for all who are in need.”  We thus see that by the time the Eucharistic words of consecration were recorded, they had taken essentially the same form as used today in the Eastern Orthodox Divine Liturgy.

St. Gregory Nanzianzen comments on the Eucharist as well, saying in 383ad, “Cease not to pray and plead for me when you draw down the Word by your word, when in an unbloody cutting you cut the Body and Blood of the Lord, using your voice for a sword.”  St. John Chrysostom writes regarding the Eucharist in 387ad, “When you see the Lord immolated and lying upon the altar, and the priest bent over that sacrifice praying, and all the people empurpled by that precious blood, can you think that you are still among men and on earth?  Or are you not lifted up to heaven?”

St. Ambrose of Milan, commenting on the Davidic Psalms, says, “We saw the prince of priests coming to us, we saw and heard him offering his blood for us.  We follow, inasmuch as we are able, being priests, and we offer the sacrifice on behalf of the people.  Even if we are of but little merit, still, in the sacrifice, we are honorable.  Even if Christ is not now seen as the one who offers the sacrifice, nevertheless it is he himself that is offered in sacrifice here on Earth when the body of Christ is offered.  Indeed, to offer himself he is made visible in us, he whose word makes holy the sacrifice that is offered.”

Theodore of Mopsuestia says in 405ad, “When [Christ] gave the bread he did not say, ‘This is the symbol of my body,’ but, ‘This is my body.’  In the same way, when he gave the cup of his blood he did not say, ‘This is the symbol of my blood,’ but, ‘This is my blood’; for he wanted us to look upon the [Eucharistic elements] after their reception of grace and the coming of the Holy Spirit not according to their nature, but receive them as they are, the body and blood of our Lord.  We ought … not regard [the elements] merely as bread and cup, but as the body and blood of the Lord, into which they were transformed by the descent of the Holy Spirit.”

St. Augustine of Hippo, writing in 411ad, states in a sermon to newly baptized Christians, “I promised you who have now been baptized, a sermon in which I would explain the sacrament of the Lord’s Table.…  That bread which you see on the altar, having been sanctified by the word of God, is the body of Christ.  That chalice, or rather, what is in that chalice, having been sanctified by the word of God, is the blood of Christ.”

Fulgetius of Ruspe, writing in 524ad, states, “the time of the Old Testament animals were sacrificed by the patriarchs and prophets and priests; and to whom now, I mean in the time of the New Testament … the holy Catholic Church does not cease in faith and love to offer throughout all the lands of the world a sacrifice of bread and wine.  In those former sacrifices what would be given us in the future was signified figuratively, but in this sacrifice which has now been given us is shown plainly.  In those former sacrifices it was fore-announced that the Son of God would be killed for the impious, but in the present sacrifice it is announced that he has been killed for the impious.”

Thus, we see that during the patristic era, the dominant, if not the only viewpoint on the Eucharist was that it was truly the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ.