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Published on Leave a comment on “My Body Hell”

Last night I caught the end of a wonderful documentary about Marlie Casseus from Haiti.  She suffers from a rare disease called Polysostotic Fibrous Dysplasia.  A 16-pound growth overwhelmed her whole face to point she could barely breathe and was about to go blind.

She was ostracized by her community - many considering her to be demon-possessed. (Some websites I've read have made much of this "primitive" reaction to her).  But, by contrast, she has been well loved by her family and her church.  And Marlie loves Jesus - she was able to speak about her faith a number of times.  It was very moving.

A Christian charity arranged for her to fly to Miami to receive life-changing if not life-saving surgery.  Here are the results:

Marlie's new face

 

Here's what I found so incredibly awful though.

In the commercial breaks there were adverts for the show that went on immediately prior to this documentary. The title of this other show was: “My Body Hell”, suggesting a similarly sobering subject.  Not so!  This other programme dealt with the ‘living hell’ of nipple hair and relative breast size. Apparently such concerns can have devastating implications for one’s date-ablility index. 

It was indeed truly hellish. But not in the way the programme makers intended.

It got me thinking about those 'primitive' Haitians who demonized Marlie for her physical deformity.  They've got nothing on the body Nazis of the West.  We'll demonize anyone's physical imperfections, beginning with our own.

A sense of perspective please.  And a sense of hope that the Christian community can be different.

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Published on Leave a comment on "My Body Hell"

Last night I caught the end of a wonderful documentary about Marlie Casseus from Haiti.  She suffers from a rare disease called Polysostotic Fibrous Dysplasia.  A 16-pound growth overwhelmed her whole face to point she could barely breathe and was about to go blind.

She was ostracized by her community - many considering her to be demon-possessed. (Some websites I've read have made much of this "primitive" reaction to her).  But, by contrast, she has been well loved by her family and her church.  And Marlie loves Jesus - she was able to speak about her faith a number of times.  It was very moving.

A Christian charity arranged for her to fly to Miami to receive life-changing if not life-saving surgery.  Here are the results:

Marlie's new face

 

Here's what I found so incredibly awful though.

In the commercial breaks there were adverts for the show that went on immediately prior to this documentary. The title of this other show was: “My Body Hell”, suggesting a similarly sobering subject.  Not so!  This other programme dealt with the ‘living hell’ of nipple hair and relative breast size. Apparently such concerns can have devastating implications for one’s date-ablility index. 

It was indeed truly hellish. But not in the way the programme makers intended.

It got me thinking about those 'primitive' Haitians who demonized Marlie for her physical deformity.  They've got nothing on the body Nazis of the West.  We'll demonize anyone's physical imperfections, beginning with our own.

A sense of perspective please.  And a sense of hope that the Christian community can be different.

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Published on Leave a comment on Christ in OT video

Have you heard about this guy Paul Blackham?  Apparently he's into the whole Jesus in the OT thing too.

;-)

Check out the body language as he switches between talking about the two views.  The first half is a brilliant impression of Kurtz in Apocalypse Now. 

The horror...  The horror...

Watch here.

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Published on 17 Comments on Summary post

These are my concluding thoughts for a blog discussion here. 

So for the three of you who know what I'm referring to...

 

Here's what the discussion is not about:

It's not about progress of knowledge.

It's not about trust in Messianic prophecies.

Those are important questions for another time.

 

Here's what I am not saying:

I am not by any means saying that the Angel is the only title by which Christ is known in the OT.

Neither am I saying that every divine Person of the OT is Christ (the Appearing LORD reveals God Most High in the power of the Spirit).

I am not saying that Christophanies are the only or even the main way by which Christ was present to the OT saints (there were also the promises and types).

I am not saying that everyone who had true faith had to have met the pre-incarnate Christ.

I am not saying that conscious faith in the Mediator stands or falls on an identification of the Angel as Christ.

 

 

What I am saying:

The Angel who is both of the LORD and is the LORD was correctly identified by OT authors and saints.  This shows that they had a trinitarian conceptuality able to identify the distinct, divine Person of the Mediator. 

The Angel - the Sent, Appearing God from God - can be none other than the Image of the invisible God, the eternal Christ.

Reticence to identify the Angel as Christ betrays a quite different conception of revelation, mediation and doctrine of God.

There seems to be two interdependent presuppositions informing this reticence:

1) OT saints could not grasp a divine, distinct Mediator

2) OT saints did not need to grasp a divine, distinct Mediator.

1) remains stubbornly opposed to the plain sense of the Angel texts.

2) is what's really worrying me...

 

What I am worried about:

I still think solus Christus is threatened here.

While-ever the 'anonymous Christian' position is entertained...

While-ever the entirety of the Hebrew Scriptures are considered as pre-incarnate Son (a truly bizarre and worrying proposition)... 

While-ever mediation is considered a broader concept than the concrete Person of the Mediator...

While-ever phrases like 'ultimate', 'final', and 'par excellence' dominate the discussion (as opposed to 'eternal', 'universal' and 'only')...

While-ever the history of interpretation on this issue is set aside, driven as it has been by solus Christus...

While-ever such stubborn resistance has been put up to the obvious meaning of the Angel texts...

While-ever it is considered that even if the Angel was a divine Visitor, He needn't be Christ...

'Christ alone' is patently under threat.

 

Some might feel I insist on a particularly strong version of 'Christ alone.'  In my opinion 'sola's stop being 'sola's when they are weakened.

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Published on Leave a comment on John Owen – Communion with God

John Owen's masterpiece On Communion with God the Father, Son and Holy Ghost was written at a time when Socinianism (a form of Unitarianism) was infiltrating England.   Their belief (as expressed in the Racovian Catechism) was that Jesus was essential for salvation.  He was manifestly predicted and prophesied in the OT.  The Hebrew Scriptures were indeed a word about Christ.  But, for the Socinians, Christ existed before his birth only inasmuch as God always had a plan (or 'word') which Christ fulfilled in the NT ('was made flesh').  Christ's pre-existence then was not as a distinct, concrete Person in the Godhead, but as a saving/revealing disposition belonging to the one God of Israel.  Thus Jesus was not the eternal word/wisdom/revelation of God but only the ultimate word/wisdom/revelation of God.

John Owen considered this to be a foul assault on the divine Person of Christ.   This was a re-incarnation of Arianism - the great heresy of heresies.  Perhaps his major response was Christologia in which one of his key arguments is that the OT also reveals Christ as a 'distinct Person within the deity.' (a repeated phrase).   Perhaps we'll look at that book another time.  But for now let's look at Communion with God penned 20 years earlier.

His main premise is that there is a distinct and distinguishable communication of grace coming from each Person of the Trinity.  The saints should therefore have distinct communion with each Person of the Trinity individually.  The rest of the book unfolds the ways in which we hold communion with the Father, the Son and the Spirit.

What's interesting for our current purposes is that Owen argues for this distinct experience of each Person from both testaments.  According to Owen the OT also reveals the distinct Persons in their distinct roles.

I will list his OT Scriptures regarding the distinct Person of the Son.  I am not including his verses on the Song of Songs or verses teaching more general truths about God's character.  But these, according to Owen, are specific verses about the Son :

Gen 3:15

Gen 49:8-12

Psalm 2

Psalm 21:5,6

Psalm 22:1

Psalm 25:14

Psalm 40:7,8

Psalm 45

Psalm 110

Prov 1:22

Prov 3:13-15

Prov 8:22-31

Prov 9:1-5

Isaiah 4:2

Isaiah 6:2

Isaiah 11

Isaiah 28:5

Isaiah 35:8

Isaiah 40:11

Isaiah 42:16

Isaiah 45:22

Isaiah 49:15-16

Isaiah 53

Isaiah 54:5

Isaiah 61:1,2,10

Isaiah 62:3,5

Isaiah 63:3,4,9

Jeremiah 23:6

Ezekiel 16

Daniel 2:44

Daniel 7:9,27

Daniel 9:24

Hosea 2:19-20

Zephaniah 3:17

Micah 5:4,7,8

Zechariah 3:9

Zechariah 6:13

 Zechariah 13:7

Malachi 3:1

Malachi 4:2

I hope you see the importance of these verses.  Owen uses these as proof texts that the Son is distinct and known as distinct from the Father and Spirit.  Owen's argument doesn't work if they're just verses about 'God' in general and 'hey, Jesus happens to be God too!'  It's about proving from all of Scripture that the Son is revealed in His deity and distinction.

I maintain that it's this kind of biblical theology that will protect us from unitarian pressures in our own day.

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Published on Leave a comment on The classical reformed position

In this comment on another blog Mo has claimed that classical reformed theologians were not interested in identifying which Person of the trinity is talking in the OT.

When it comes to appearances of the LORD and when it comes to the Angel of the LORD, that couldn't be further from the truth.

I could list many other quotes and many other theologians, but these will do for now:

Calvin in Institutes, I.xiii.10

The orthodox doctors of the Church have correctly and wisely expounded, that the Word of God was the supreme angel, who then began, as it were by anticipation, to perform the office of Mediator. For though he were not clothed with flesh, yet he descended as in an intermediate form, that he might have more familiar access to the faithful. …Hence it follows, that he is the God who was always worshipped by the Jews.

John Owen, Works, vol 18, p221 - discussing Genesis 18: 

Neither is there any ground for the late exposition of this and the like places, namely, that a created angel representing the person of God doth speak and act in his name, and is called Jehovah; an invention to evade the appearances of the Son of God under the old testament, contrary to the sense of all antiquity, nor is any reason or instance produced to make it good. 

Owen discussing Gen 19:24:

…in this place it is Moses that speaketh of the Lord, and he had no occasion to repeat ‘The LORD’ were it not to intimate the distinct persons unto whom that name, denoting the nature and self-existence of God, was proper; one whereof then appeared on the earth, the other manifesting his glorious presence in heaven…  There is therefore in this place an appearance of God in human shape, and that of one distinct person in the Godhead, who now represented himself unto Abraham in the form and shape wherein he would dwell amongst men, when of his seed he would be ‘made flesh’.  This was one signal means whereby Abraham saw his day and rejoiced; which Himself lays upon His pre-existence unto His incarnation, and not upon the promise of His coming, John 8:56, 58  (ibid, p222)

Owen discussing Jacob's wrestling:

From what hath been spoken, it is evident that he who appeared unto Jacob, with whom he earnestly wrestled, by tears and supplications was God; and because he was sent as the angel of God, it must be some distinct person in the Deity condescending unto that office; and appearing in the form of a man, he represented his future assumption of our human nature.  And by all this did God instruct the church in the mystery of the person of the Messiah, and who it was that they were to look for in the blessing of the promised Seed. (ibid, p225)

 

Jonathan Edwards, A History of Redemption

When we read in sacred history what God did, from time to time, towards His Church and people, and how He revealed Himself to them, we are to understand it especially of the Second Person of the Trinity. When we read of God appearing after the fall, in some visible form, we are ordinarily, if not universally, to understand it of the Second Person of the Trinity... John 1:18. He is therefore called the image of the invisible God - Col 1:15 - intimating that though God the Father be invisible, yet Christ is His image or representation, by which He is seen.

John Owen especially uses the phrase 'distinct Person in the deity' very often when discussing the revelation of Christ as Mediator in the OT.

This insistence is not driven by any social trinitarianism but by solus Christus.  Verses such as John 1:18; Colossians 1:15; Matthew 11:27 and, of course, John 14:6 were at the forefront of their thinking on this. 

Whenever I see a departure from this classical reformed position on the Mediator's activity in the OT I fear a parallel departure from solus Christus in the strong form which the reformers held dear. 

That's why I bang this drum.

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