[Vision2020] Old and New Covenant

[Taro Tanaka]

I'm going to go through Herr Doktor Professor's assertions line by line. 
Let's see whether we find some fertile thought, or only fertilizer . . .

nickgier at adelphia.net wrote:

[[ The problem is that the Trinity has the least scriptural support of any 
Christian doctrine. ]]

This is great news, because as the Trinity has solid scriptural support, it 
means all the other Christian doctrines are in great shape too.

[[ There are no verses in the Hebrew Bible that support it, and there are 
only five in the New Testament. ]]

Well, even if it were the case that there are no verses in Hebrew that 
support it -- but there are, as we shall see -- "only" five verses in Greek 
would be plenty. The Bible says that everything is to be established by two 
or three witnesses. The most powerful direct scriptural evidences for the 
deity of Christ -- they are either that or they are evidences for the 
blasphemous insanity of Christ -- are his repeated references to Himself as 
YHWH. The Greek scriptures quote, with reference to Jesus of Nazareth, 
passages from the Hebrew scriptures that actually use the word YHWH, so 
there can be no mistake about this point whatsoever. No doubt Nick would 
like to try to dismiss the famous passage from the Genesis creation account 
where God says "Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness . . . God 
created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and 
female created He them " as something other than a reference to the 
plurality of the Persons of the godhead, but the text states clearly that 
God created humans to image Him by making them male and female, as "them," 
so the meaning is clear. Now I admit that if there had never been any 
subsequent special revelation beyond this point, looking just at this one 
text in isolation it would be hard to see Trinitarianism in it, but we do 
have the benefit of subsequent revelation to fill this out.

There is also a related ontological problem that needs to be mentioned -- 
although I know Nick is focusing on the biblical text at this point -- in 
that if there is not an essential plurality in the godhead, how would it 
have been possible for God to build plurality into the fabric of created 
existence? That would mean that there is actually a sense in which there is 
something lacking in God that the created world provides to augment God's 
lack, and it makes God dependent upon His creation in a certain sense. This 
might be just fine and dandy in religious systems that tend into monism or 
pantheism, but the people who received the Bible over the millennia never 
had such inclinations.

As long as I'm getting away from the biblical text to discuss the a priori 
reasonableness of the doctrine of the Trinity, we might note something 
similar with respect to "sonship." God created all the angels at once: they 
do not reproduce. Man, however, as God's special image, was not made as a 
complete, finished race all at once like the angels were; rather, the 
"begetting" of children is essential to mankind's imaging of God. Man is a 
social creature, and the society is perpetuated and built up through the 
begetting of children. It would be exceedingly strange if something so 
essential to God's special image, man, did not correspond to something 
equally essential to God Himself.

Continuing in the same vein, we can say the same thing again about 
"language." Linguistic communication is useless to a monad, but essential to 
the Persons of the Trinity. Ditto for "love." If we say that God had a need 
to create the universe in order to be able to communicate and express love, 
then we are saying that the Creator depends upon the creation for full 
self-realization. There are religious perspectives that can say such things 
with a straight face, but none of them are religious perspectives informed 
by either the Hebrew or Greek scriptures. I'll end this sidebar by returning 
to the text itself: remember that the Greek scriptures tell us one name for 
God is Logos -- Nick wants us to believe this is an "organizing principle" 
but the inseparability from language is undeniable -- and also that God is 
love. Such expressions leave absolutely zero room for the possibility that 
God might be a monad. That the godhead includes multiple Persons is 
undeniable. Yet the Bible also declares that God is One. So, although it 
boggles our minds to say it, we cheerfully simultaneously confess both the 
limitations of our human comprehension and also the fact that God is Triune.

The fact of the matter is, until the closing of the canon of scripture with 
the book of Revelation, subsequent special revelation always tended to shed 
greater light on what had been given before. Even now, with the complete 
canon, there are still theological questions that Christians are unable to 
answer with certainty, and we probably won't be able to answer them until we 
are reunited with Jesus in Heaven and able to question Him directly. 
Christians today don't have trouble accepting the reality of ignorance in 
certain areas; the lack of omniscience does not threaten the certainty of 
what has been revealed to us. Surely the same thing has been true in every 
stage of redemptive history: the canon of scripture was still a work in 
progress, but nevertheless adequate for the needs of that age. Early Jews 
may not have had an understanding of the Genesis creation account as 
revealing the Trinity, but the apostolic Jews Peter and Paul, living in the 
era of the resurrected and ascended Jesus Christ and having witnessed the 
outpouring of the Holy Spirit, certainly were able to understand the Genesis 
creation account as a clear reference to the Trinity. Other passages that 
subsequent revelation identifies as references to multiple Persons within 
the godhead include the second psalm, "Thou art my Son; this day have I 
begotten Thee. Ask of Me, and I shall give Thee the heathen for Thine 
inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for Thy possession . . . 
Kiss the Son, lest He be angry, and ye perish from the way, when His wrath 
is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in Him." 
And likewise Psalm 110, "YHWH said unto my Lord, 'Sit Thou at My right hand, 
until I make Thine enemies Thy footstool.'" And so forth.

[[ Bible Scholar Robert M. Grant states: "The doctrine of the Trinity in 
unity is not a product of the earliest Christian period, and we do not find 
it carefully expressed before the end of the 2nd Century." ]]

The first half of Grant's assertion is simply wrong. (Ever hear of the 
trinitarian "Apostles' Creed"? Ever hear of the New Testament? Those are 
both from the earliest Christian period.) The second half of Grant's 
assertion is correct, but it is not a big deal. The end of the apostolic age 
coincided with the Jewish Wars and the subsequent Diaspora of the Jews. The 
apostles and the earliest leaders of the church were all Jewish, and all 
were steeped in a rich tradition of biblical scholarship. But with the end 
of the apostolic age, the leadership of the church, by default, is 
transferred to gentiles who were, frankly, not up to snuff in their biblical 
scholarship. The writings of the early post-apostolic church fathers were 
not of a very high caliber, at least compared with the writings of the later 
church fathers. The early post-apostolic church fathers were doing the best 
they could with what they had, but they were not very well equipped, 
initially, to precisely formulate certain key doctrinal issues. So confusion 
and controversy arose and it was through wrestling with those issues over 
time that the church was able to recover an even keel doctrinally. But there 
are no doctrinal statements in the early ecumenical councils of the church 
that fail to square with the testimony of scripture itself. Therefore both 
what we have in the earliest Christian period (the Bible itself and the 
Apostle's Creed) and what was hammered out in the ecumenical councils of 
subsequent centuries are in harmony with one another. The relatively late 
date of precise formulations of the Trinity is not a problem at all. After 
nearly two thousand years, even the most die-hard believers in the Trinity 
still cannot get their minds wrapped fully around it. Is it any wonder that 
the Bible's God defies total comprehension by His creatures?

[[ a common mistake among Christians in identifying the serpent in the 
Garden as Satan. ]]

Common? That's the understatement of the millennium. Christians make such an 
identification because the Bible itself does. "And YHWH God said unto the 
serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and 
above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt 
thou eat all the days of thy life: and I will put enmity between thee and 
the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and 
thou shalt bruise his heel . . . and the God of peace shall bruise Satan 
under your feet shortly . . . and he laid hold on the dragon, that old 
serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years." 
(Concatenation of verses from Genesis, Romans, and Revelation.)

[[ A related misconception is that the Hebrew Bible believes that Satan is 
the enemy of God. ]]

Nonsense. Zechariah 3:2 "And YHWH said unto Satan, YHWH rebuke thee, O 
Satan; even YHWH that hath chosen Jerusalem rebuke thee."

[[ Luther read his Bible correctly when he concluded that Satan is the dark 
side of God, the wrath of God. Passages from Luther are available upon 
request. ]]

Sorry, Nick, not even a nice try. Luther was no dualist; such heresies 
having long since been laid to rest in the church by the time Luther comes 
on the scene. I don't care what decontextualized statements Nick might have 
culled from Luther, there is no way that Luther reached any such 
"conclusion" with regard to Satan being nothing more than God's dark side. 
Luther would have regarded Nick's attempt to put words in his mouth as 
blasphemous and would no doubt have thrown his ink pot at anyone who tried 
to ascribe such a position to him.

[[ The best example of this is the Book of Job, where God empowers Satan 
(among the "sons of God") to destroy Job's flocks and family. Please note a 
crucial verse at the end where God is identified as the source of "the evil 
.. . . brought upon" Job (42:11). ]]

Yes, Satan is God's tool, performing God's will in spite of himself. So what 
else is new? Maybe modern evangelicals who are wishy-washy in this area, 
like Phil Yancey (http://amazon.com/gp/product/031021436X/), need Nick to 
hold their hands in this area, but I have never struggled in the least with 
the many passages in the Bible where God describes Himself as causing (in a 
certain sense, because many things have multiple levels and senses of 
causation) evil. In a certain sense it is true to say that (obviously: the 
Bible itself says it), but God is NEVER the cause of (an) absolute evil. (As 
an aside, "absolute" evil does not even exist, period.) In other words, even 
when God causes something to occur that can be described, in a certain 
sense, as evil, that is ALWAYS in the context of accomplishing some ultimate 
good purpose. The only reason why such actions of God are referred to is 
"evil" is because, from a very narrow, limited time perspective, they cause 
someone to experience suffering. But as the chronological camera pulls back 
to show a longer time perspective, it turns out that God was actually doing 
good. Job provides an excellent case in point.

[[ The Princess also misleads us into thinking that the Hebrew Bible teaches 
Original Sin. For example, Job's dilemma would have been solved immediately 
by this doctrine, but Job is declared a righteous man untouched by any other 
person's sin. Original Sin is a New Testament doctrine, because the amazing 
fact is that, as far as I know, the Fall of Adam and Eve, is not mentioned 
again in the Hebrew Bible. ]]

Even coming from an unbelieving ax-grinder, the above statement is amazing, 
and ought to be a shame to anyone who appends "PhD" to his name. Job said, 
"I know that my redeemer liveth, and that He shall stand at the latter day 
upon the earth: and though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my 
flesh shall I see God: Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall 
behold, and not another; though my reins be consumed within me." If Job had 
been free from any sin whatsoever, then he would have not had to face death, 
for the Genesis creation account makes it plain that men only die on account 
of sin. Thus he would not need a redeemer and would not be resurrected 
following the physical decomposition of his body, which he clearly 
anticipates. He has no delusions of sinlessness; the Book of Job opens with 
him offering sacrifices up to God and sinless men do not need to make 
sacrifices. Later in the book, when God rebukes "sinless" Job (do sinless 
men get rebuked?), Job replies, "I abhor myself, and repent in dust and 
ashes." That does not sound like the utterance of a sinless man.

Going back to Genesis 5:3, we see that Adam "begat a son in his own 
likeness, after his image." This is Seth, Adam's third son; we have already 
been told that Adam's first son murdered his second son. Especially coming 
after Cain's murder of Abel, it is very clear from this verse that man's 
sinful nature is being inherited through natural generation. Seth is in 
Adam's image, and Adam's image has already been shown to be tainted by sin. 
Remember too that Abel was murdered because he offered up to God blood 
sacrifices that were found acceptable, whilst Cain's offerings, which 
involved no blood sacrifice, were rejected. Any careful and honest reading 
of the earliest biblical narrative makes it clear that from Adam's fall 
onward, all men are faced with the issue of their indwelling sin, some 
dealing with the issue as God commanded (men like Abel and Job) and some 
refusing to do so (Cain and Nick Gier, among others).

Psalm 51:5 says, "Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother 
conceive me." David is not saying his mother was a harlot -- from the 
context he is clearly acknowledging that he was a sinner from the moment of 
conception. A man does not need to do anything to be a sinner; he merely 
needs to exist. That is part of the covenantal nature of existence: when our 
covenantal head does something, we all also do it "in him." This is both bad 
news and good news for us; the bad news is that like it or not we are all, 
by birth, bound to the first covenantal head, Adam, and the good news is 
that Jesus the Messiah has become the covenantal head of a new race of 
mankind that we can be joined to through faith.

[[ Nowhere is it written that the Hebrew Messiah will pay a "penalty of 
death." ]]

Try Genesis 2:17 for starters. And here is an extended concatenation of 
related verses from Zechariah and the gospels which clearly refute Nick's 
claim: "And YHWH said unto me, 'Take unto thee yet the instruments of a 
foolish shepherd. [This is a reference to the unfaithful spiritual leaders 
of Israel -- P.S.] For, lo, I will raise up a shepherd in the land, which 
shall not visit those that be cut off, neither shall seek the young one, nor 
heal that which is broken, nor feed that which standeth still: but he shall 
eat the flesh of the fat, and tear their claws in pieces. Woe to the 
worthless shepherd that leaveth the flock! the sword shall be upon his arm, 
and upon his right eye: his arm shall be clean dried up, and his right eye 
shall be utterly darkened . . . [what follows is a reference to the Messiah 
-- P.S.] And one shall say unto him, 'What are these wounds in Thine hands?' 
Then He shall answer, 'Those with which I was wounded in the house of my 
friends.' Awake, O sword, against My Shepherd, and against the Man that is 
My Fellow, saith YHWH Sabaoth: smite the Shepherd, and the sheep shall be 
scattered: and I will turn mine hand upon the little ones. And it shall come 
to pass, that in all the land, saith YHWH, two parts therein shall be cut 
off and die; but the third shall be left therein. And I will bring the third 
part through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will 
try them as gold is tried: they shall call on my name, and I will hear them: 
I will say, It is my people: and they shall say, YHWH is my God . . . [The 
following is from the gospel of John, and a clear allusion to Zechariah -- 
P.S.] 'I am the Good Shepherd: the Good Shepherd giveth His life for the 
sheep. But he that is an hireling, and not the Shepherd, whose own the sheep 
are not, seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep, and fleeth: and the 
wolf catcheth them, and scattereth the sheep. The hireling fleeth, because 
he is an hireling, and careth not for the sheep. I am the Good Shepherd, and 
know My sheep, and am known of Mine. As the Father knoweth Me, even so know 
I the Father: and I lay down My life for the sheep. [The following is a 
reference to the gentiles -- P.S.] And other sheep I have, which are not of 
this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear My voice; and there 
shall be one fold, and one Shepherd.' [The following is from Matthew, and 
Mark has an almost identical passage -- P.S.] Then saith Jesus unto them, 
'All ye shall be offended because of Me this night: for it is written, [The 
next sentence is a direct quote from Zechariah -- P.S.] "I will smite the 
shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered abroad." But after I 
am risen again, I will go before you into Galilee.' Peter answered and said 
unto him, 'Though all men shall be offended because of Thee, yet will I 
never be offended.' Jesus said unto him, 'Verily I say unto thee that this 
night, before the cock crow, thou shalt deny Me thrice.'"

[[ The Ancient Jews did not recognize the Suffering Servant of Isaiah as the 
Messiah. The Jewish Messiah would come in glory, defeat the enemies of 
Israel, and set up God's kingdom on earth. ]]

So there's progress in God's special revelation over time -- what's the big 
deal? God didn't reveal everything to Adam that He revealed to Abraham, and 
He didn't reveal to Abraham everything that He revealed to Moses, and He 
didn't reveal to Moses everything that He revealed to Daniel, and He didn't 
reveal to Daniel everything that He revealed to the Apostle John. I've got 
news for Nick, what Nick claims above was true not only of the Ancient Jews 
but even Jesus' own disciples -- they refused to believe Him when He told 
them in no uncertain terms that He must die. After the resurrection they 
realized that they had been very wrong in their understanding of scripture.

[[ Please note that Christianity had to invent the Second Coming of Christ 
in order to make good on Hebrew prophecies. ]]

Never heard of postmillennialism? The Messiah reigns on His throne even now. 
The Hebrew prophecies have indeed been fulfilled.

[[ Please note that I always use the term "Hebrew Bible" and not "Old 
Testament," and this is the final and most important point that I want to 
make. By saying that the Old Covenant failed, the Princess is saying that 
Judaism is a false religion. The Gospels are openly anti-Semitic . . . 
blaming the death of Jesus on the Jews. ]]

This is a brazen distortion. To start with the closing sentence, the gospels 
do blame the death of Jesus on the Jews, and also on the gentiles. That 
covers all the bases, Nick. The gospels are anti-everybody. To state that 
"the gospels are openly anti-semitic" is a grave slander.

Note also that the failure of the old covenant was in Adam, who precedes the 
earliest Jews by more than a millennium. Thus Nick's assertion is shown to 
be false on all counts.

Let's look at what it means to say "Judaism is a false religion." First, 
nobody should be surprised that a Christian thinks a non-Christian religion 
is false. But what is Judaism anyway? There is a common misconception that 
modern Judaism is a direct carry-over from the Hebrew scriptures: "along 
came this aberration called Christianity but the Jews continued to carry on 
business as usual, and continue to live, so to speak, in the world of the 
Hebrew scriptures." But such a view is false. Jesus put it best when He said 
to the contemporary Jewish leaders, "Do not think that I will accuse you to 
the Father: there is one that accuseth you, even Moses, in whom ye trust. 
For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed Me: for he wrote of Me. 
But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe My words?"

The world of the Hebrew scriptures is quite useless to modern Judaism, 
because both the Temple and the Levitical priesthood have been destroyed. 
This is such an important point that I'll repeat it for emphasis. The world 
of the Hebrew scriptures is quite useless to modern Judaism, because both 
the Temple and the Levitical priesthood have been destroyed. However, the 
world of the Hebrew scriptures is exceedingly useful to the Christian, 
because the believers, who are indwelled by the Holy Spirit, are the new 
Temple, and all believers are the priesthood, with Jesus the Messiah as the 
high priest.

It is fallacious to assume that the Jews of the apostolic era were 
monolithic in their rejection of Jesus. The first Christians were 
overwhelmingly Jewish, so much so that early Christianity was recognized as 
one sect of the Jewish religion -- hardly surprising when we consider that 
Paul, Peter, and the other apostles continued to worship in synagogues and 
the Temple until their deaths, which came shortly before the destruction of 
the Temple in A.D. 70. Paul had previously been an elite Pharisee.

It would not be inaccurate to describe Christianity as the sole form of the 
original Judaism that was able to survive he destruction of the Temple and 
the subsequent Jewish Diaspora. The true heir of ancient Judaism -- i.e., 
Judaism based on and faithful to the scriptures -- is unquestionably the 
Christian faith.

So what is modern Judaism? Modern Jews are the heirs of the group of people 
who originated from the world of the Hebrew scriptures but refused to accept 
the Messiah prophesied by those scriptures, and continued to refuse to "get 
on board" even after the destruction of the Temple in A.D. 70, when the 
Christian faith was "the only game in town." There was at one time and to a 
degree still is a heavy negative self-definition in terms of Christianity: 
"We're the folks in Christendom who aren't Christians."

[[ I'm especially troubled by the Princess' implication that the Jewish 
temple was destroyed by God in 70 CE as a sign that the Old Covenant was 
dead. Millions of Jews have died because of religious and political leaders 
acting out the implications of these ideas. ]]

Wrong, stupid, and slanderous. Remember, the old covenant died in Adam, who 
preceded the earliest Jews by millennia. And even if one was to say 
otherwise, it still does not follow, by any stretch of the imagination, that 
by implication somebody ought to go out and harass, much less kill, any Jew.

[[ In conclusion, a "fully orbed biblical theology" would exclude all 
external agendas ]]

The Bible itself gives me all the credendas and the agendas that I'll ever 
need, thank you. It is obvious that Nick Gier has a major ax to grind and 
has trouble completing even a single sentence concerning either the Bible or 
the Christian faith without falling into gross distortions and 
mischaracterizations. He likes to point to his academic credentials as 
somehow making him qualified or able to speak with authority, so I feel it 
is only fair that I do the same. My highest degree is a diploma from a 
small-town public high school. I never studied at a Christian institution of 
higher learning, have never been ordained, and have not got any initials 
after my name. I have not published anything in any journal, whether 
peer-reviewed or not. I'm just a dumb schmuck. But I do own a handy-dandy 
crap detector, and it goes off the end of the red scale whenever I run it 
past anything that I've read by Nick Gier. (Which is not a lot, I'll admit, 
but I come away wishing I had read less.) If even a dumb schmuck like me see 
the problems in what Nick says, I daresay that anyone with a real Christian 
edjumacation ought to be able to hand Nick's head to him. But I assume such 
folks have bigger fish to slice . . .

-- Princess Sushitushi

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