Tag Archives: Biblical Intepretation

The Holy Spirit’s regenerative work includes the formation of the Church

12 Wednesday Nov 2014

Posted by in Biblical Interpretation, Difficult Texts, Holy Spirit, Illumination

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Illumination is the Holy Spirit’s work of regenerating us. First, He speaks to us in various ways and through any number of avenues to guide us towards the light of Christ. When faith arises in us, we believe, and this illuminative work by the Spirit climaxes at a definitive point where He regenerates us, refashioning our hearts and making Jesus Christ shine wondrously in our eyes. Illumination, for the purposes here, is the activity of the Spirit in transforming persons into a new character, lifestyle, and goal that centers on magnifying, glorifying, and mimicking Jesus the Christ. Although theologians often speak of illumination as the Spirit’s work of making Jesus Christ and Scripture understandable, it might be better to say that the Spirit’s work makes Jesus Christ and Scripture acceptable. The Spirit’s illuminative work is always about a change of mind and heart, which is expressed in good-works. Illumination is about lifestyle change, not only a change in understanding. Let’s look at 1 Cor. 2:12 – 14: “Now we did not receive the spirit from the world, but the Spirit who is from God so that we should know [experientially] the things which were freely given to us by God, which things we are even speaking, not in words produced from human wisdom but taught from the Spirit, interpreting spiritual things to spiritual persons. But the natural man does not welcome (or “accept”) things from the Spirit of God: For it is stupid to him and he is not able to know because they are spiritually evaluated” (1 Cor. 2:12 – 14; trans. mine). In brackets, I’ve placed  “experientially” because the Greek verb, “oida,” can focus on “knowing” something through practice, and, I contend, the context more than suggests that here. These verses do not support some strange mysticism, as though what God gives freely is not understandable. The point, from what I can tell from the Greek, is about where the knowledge comes from, not the mysteriousness of it. Knowledge can be merely human or it can be given from “above,” i.e., from God. St. Paul points out that it is not some strange mysterious knowledge, but is plainly communicable: “which things we are even speaking . . . ” The natural man, or unspiritual man, cannot accept or welcome so as to practice what God gives because the knowledge required to know whether it should be accepted or not is not derived from merely human life. The natural man will just find spiritual things dumb. To further complicate things, no one has a full knowledge of something until they experience or practice that knowledge. We might know things we have not experienced in part, but never to the same richness a person who has experienced it possesses. The unspiritual man cannot experientially know what he already thinks is stupid; it is the practice or the experience of the “yes” to the Spirit of God that opens the doors to “accept” and practice the knowledge formerly thought to be stupid. There is a change in understanding, but it is always tied to the acceptance and experience of that understanding. To merely understand with my mind is not enough to claim knowledge on that matter; just ask any snowboarder, skier, surfer, soccer player, football player, or anyone who has experiential knowledge of a game. I played soccer for two decades; experiential knowledge is radically different from watching soccer from the sidelines. Now that we have handles this, what does the Spirit’s illumination do to one’s attitude about the Church?

Illumination, then, always leads to people coming together around the life and character of the Lord Jesus Christ. When I use the word “Church,” I am not envisioning the local church per se while not denying that this may be a legitimate expression of the Church. The Church is a lifestyle. Its lifeblood is the illumination the Spirit does and continues to do. Each individual contributes to the Church (1 Cor. 12:12), and the illumination the Spirit does initiates a believer’s love for Jesus Christ, but it does not stop there. The phrase, “in the Spirit,” used frequently across the pages of Scripture is used to describe the existence of the saints (Rom. 8:9, 1 Cor. 12:3, Phil. 2:1, Col. 1:8, 1 Pet. 3:18). Being in the Spirit minimally means being attuned to the concerns of the Spirit (Gal. 5:16, 25). We want to practice what we are now accepting in our thinking and so trying to actualize it in our lives. The Spirit in indwelling individuals and the community, not one or the other. Illumination is about loving Jesus Christ, but to love Him is to love those in Him. We cannot say we love God but hate other believers. To say such is to deny one’s inclusion in the body of Christ, as 1 John argues in a number of places (1 John 2:9, 4:20). Illumination is about, therefore, coming to know Jesus Christ, that regenerative moment we say “yes” to God, and about growing in greater intimacy with other believers. We are illuminated all along the way when we are with God, for God is light.

Dr. Scalise

Reconciling Jesus’ human Nature with His divine Nature during His Incarnation

28 Tuesday Oct 2014

Posted by in Biblical Interpretation, Christ, Difficult Questions, Hypostatic Union, Incarnation, Jesus

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“if Jesus is God, why would Satan bother to tempt him; how can God be tempted with food and power?

Furthermore, why did Jesus not want to take the “cup that was given” aka the crucifixion?

Jesus also said his followers would do greater works than his. How is that possible?

Jesus said not to call him good for only God is good. But isn’t he God?”

I got this cluster of questions from a very old friend of mine, from adolescence and younger. This is certainly more than just one question to be sure, but all of them, except for the question about “greater works than these,” can be answered in one sentence. Although I intend to give this short answer, I’ll elaborate a bit on that one sentence for the sake of interest. I have given the philosophy of science’s definitions for an absurdity in distinction to a mystery in another post. By way of review, an absurdity is something that is logically impossible, contradictory, or unintelligible. A mystery is something that has a logical base and hence is intelligible, but its full understanding extends beyond human capacity. To explain the mystery in full would be to deny it the status of a mystery. Therefore, I will give a simple answer, but this is not to say that this answer does not entail mystery or that “I’ve got it all figured out.” I do not want to give that impression. A long treatise could be written on these questions without exhausting the mysteries. I, however, want to note that the answer I give has been covered many times over the ages, maybe the best short treatise on the God-man issue in Jesus was done by Pope Leo the Great in 449 c.e. in his Tome of Leo. It is worth the read: https://www.ewtn.com/faith/teachings/incac1.htm. The answer is that Jesus is both wholly God and wholly man — this is, in technical and historical theological lingo, the hypostatic union. We must be careful not to think that Jesus would just use his divine capacities whenever he willed (Phil. 2:6). The many prophecies, especially from Isaiah (11:1–5, 42:1–2, 48:16, 49:1–7, 59:20–21, & 61:1–3), show that this “servant,” Jesus, was to act in certain ways and was especially to be dependent upon the Holy Spirit’s leading like a human. This is not to say that Jesus never uses His divine capacities, but it is to say that he wouldn’t use them just as He wanted because such would be in violation of the very prophecies He came to fulfill. Hence, being human, Jesus could be tempted; it was the Spirit, who “drove” Jesus out to be tempted in the first place (Mark 1:12). The divine nature of Jesus cannot be tempted, but since the text presents the temptation as real, and Jesus handles it like a human would by quoting the truth of Scripture back at Satan, it is not an illicit inference to say that the Spirit led Jesus there to be tempted as a man, and, as such Jesus did not function at that time according to His divine nature, but according to His human nature. Remember, I am not saying that Jesus was not divine at that time; I am saying that the capacity to which Jesus functioned in his divine nature was determined by the Spirit, and Jesus followed. As an aside, if Jesus just used His divine capacity often or whenever He wanted He could not be an example to us since none of us have that capacity like Him to just use a divine nature. On a practical point, then, it is imperative to note that Jesus’ living mostly according to His human nature and being led by the Spirit sets the basis for understanding Him as an example that we should mimic: we too should live by the Spirit, relying on God to direct us in our human capacity. It is Jesus’ dual nature, wholly divine, wholly human, that answers all of the questions except for the one about “greater works.” What can be said of this? Although it is fashionable to think or speak of Jesus “raising Himself” to life, and Scripture certainly affirms this, it is perhaps more important to make plain that the Spirit was the Enlivener and God the Affirmer of the resurrection as Romans 1:4 makes plain: according to the Spirit God declared Jesus the Son of God in power . . . . Hence Jesus teaches His disciples that if they have the faith of a mustard seed they could say to the mountain, be picked up and planted in the sea, and the mountain would obey. It may be too obvious but “greater” can refer to either quality or quantity: “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father. Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son” (John 14:12 – 13). Two comments are needed on this text: 1) if greater means quantity (Greek term for “greater” is megas), then we can stop because this sufficiently answers our question, and 2) even if megas (“greater”) means quality or degree — although it is hard to imagine a miracle greater than eschatological resurrection life entering the middle of history — then it is not to be missed that the performance of the disciple owes to Jesus anyhow. The text makes this plain as day: “and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father.” The greatness of the works of any disciple first depends on Jesus’ successful ministry and work of redemption; hence the vitality and capacity of the “greater works” owe to Jesus’ work, and they owe to Jesus’ blessing in the moment as well, as Jesus says above, “Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do.”

So it is rather obvious that Jesus is behind all the works, whether His or ours.

Dr. Scalise

Revisiting Foh’s View of Women vying for Dominance over Man in Genesis 3:16

27 Monday Oct 2014

Posted by in Adam and Eve, Biblical Interpretation, Christian Ministry, Exegesis and Interpretation, Gender Issues

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“Is Foh’s view of Gen. 3:16 still the correct view to hold or are the more modern interpretations of the verse better fitting? Is man’s ruling over woman a result of the fall, or the fact that woman was made from man as a help mate mean man’s ruling over is part of God’s original design. I hope this isn’t too much of a curve ball question!”

A friend of mine asked the question above. Foh’s interpretation of Gen. 3:16 in 1975 was a break with the traditional understanding of “Your desire will be for your husband, but he will rule over you.” It seems that the majority view down through history was that the woman would desire her husband to an unhealthy extent, supplanting her desire for God with her desire for her husband. Since this sentence appears in the curse, whatever the desire is or how it manifests, it cannot be good or healthy. Foh looked at the only other two verses in the OT that used the same word for “desire,” which in Hebrew is teshokah: Gen. 4:7 and Song of Solomon 7:10. We may dispense with Song 7:10 because the supercharged sexual talk just before it all but guarantees a translation of the word to bring out this heated passion: “I am my beloved and his passion is for me.” The underlying meaning of the Hebrew word is “urge,” obviously denoting a certain “forcefulness” as illustrated in Song 7:10. This is not to say that the Beloved was domineering in his “urge,” but the potency of sexual desire with two willing partners (as in Song 7:10) is plainly an “inexorable drive.”

More important is the Septuagint’s (Greek OT) translation of the Hebrew term into Greek because obviously Hebrew scholars around 200 B. C., still speaking Hebrew and fluent in Greek, would know better than us — in most cases — what the meaning was. It is apostrofe, and roughly is the idea of turning aside, turning back, or turning against someone. I have to opt for a negative meaning for Gen. 3:16 since it is a curse, and so “turning against” fits nicely. Further, the same negative meaning fits the context of Gen. 4:7 as well, where God says that sin lies at Cain’s door. “It turns against you, but you must rule over it” (trans. mine from Greek).

Even if the Christian church has traditionally not understood Gen. 3:16 to have the meaning of “your desire (forceful urge) will be for/against your husband,” the earlier Hebrew translators and interpreters of the Septuagint’s Gen. 3:16 opted for a Greek term that, taken negatively, displays hostility and dominance. What cannot be missed is the contrastive and hostile aversion man has to woman and woman to man: “Her domineering urge will be against him, but he will rule over her” (Gen. 3:16, trans. mine from Hebrew). With this preface, I am ready to answer the above question.

What enters at the fall and is enforced by God’s curse is the manner of male and female relations. When God says that “he will rule over her,” the Hebrew term is the verbal form of king (Mashal), but it is neither of the terms God used in the original mandate to man and woman to “subdue” the earth and have “dominion over it” in Gen. 1:28. Something has changed; now woman wants to lead, taking the dominant role, and, it seems, that man is equally as hostile in return, reigning like a monarch over her. They have turned on one another. What was an original peace, that is, a co-rulership as both man and woman were given God’s command to subdue and have dominance (Gen. 1:28), has now become a perpetual vying for position. All this to say that Foh’s insights largely stand. The only nuance I am adding is the fact that man’s “ruling like a monarch,” which is to say, in an autocratic fashion, is the outcome of the fall and God’s spoken curse. Woman was created for man’s assistance, but there is little doubt, from a high view of God’s image in both man and woman alike in Gen. 1:27 – 28, that man and woman were to rule together, in harmony. There was a order to the rule, man then woman, but not a superiority or dominance just as there is an order to the Trinity, Father then Son, but not inequality among any of the Persons of the Trinity, Father, Son, and Spirit.

For my questioner, if you have a specific contemporary interpretation of the text you’d like me to take a look at, post it on my wall, and I will revisit this topic again.

Dr. Scalise

Biblical Interpretation: the Difference between Allegory and Typology

08 Wednesday Oct 2014

Posted by in Biblical Interpretation

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Allegory and typology differ because allegory wholly removes the meaning of one thing and replaces it with another but typology builds and uses parts of that meaning. For instance, Hagar in Gal. 4 represents Mt. Sinai; the meaning, “a woman named Hagar” is removed and replaced with “a mountain where the law was given.” But typology would use parts of the meaning of the type while “unpacking” or “increasing” or “adding to” that earlier type. Jesus and Adam are a good example; both men are founders of a humanity (same meaning) but Jesus is God (additional meaning added) and not the founder of sinful humanity (like Adam) but of righteous humanity. Allegory need not be historical, but typology must. Take Hebrews 11:16’s report that persons of faith seek a better country, a heavenly one and the heavenly Jerusalem. The earthly land and city of Jerusalem are historical places, and they act as types for their heavenly correlates. Moses was told this long along in the Book of Exodus: 25:40:

“And see that you make them after the pattern for them, which is being shown you on the mountain.”

The author of Hebrew expands,

“They serve as a copy and shadow of the heavenly things” (Heb. 8:5; 9:23)

Moses saw heavenly realities on the Mountain of God, Sinai, and God commands Him to create the Tabernacle and all that was in it “after” these heavenly patterns He saw. Similarly, God crafted the history around Jerusalem so that it stood for God and as the City of God. This historical reality then acts to help us think about the heavenly reality waiting to be revealed during the eschaton, when heaven meets earth (Revelation 21).

Dr. Scalise