Old vs New testament

A Two-faced God?

2 Comments / Blog, Home Bulletin, My Blog / Christopher Peppler

‘A Two-faced God?’ is an intentionally provocative question. I do not mean to offend, but rather to bring into sharp focus the central issue I explore in this article.

In my previous post (found HERE), I made the case that Jesus of Nazareth is the full representation of the nature and character of the triune Godhead. In this article, I claim that any attempt to present God’s nature and character as anything other than that which is displayed in and through Jesus of Nazareth is tantamount to declaring God to be two-faced. By the way, I am using the term ‘Jesus of Nazareth’ as shorthand for ‘God incarnate in bodily form in the person of Jesus’.

The problem that some folk have with my contention that Jesus FULLY represents the Godhead, is that Jesus of Nazareth appears devoid of wrath and justice, but that these are divine qualities much in evidence in the Old Testament and the book of Revelation. Therefore, they reason that Jesus of Nazareth is the ‘fullest’ but not the ‘full’ representation of God. Crudely put, God has both a happy face and an angry face, much like the theatre masks worn by early Greek thespians. However, Jesus did speak of wrath and judgment and so we are able to apply a Jesus-perspective to these subjects.

Jesus in the Old Testament

Some people claim that Jesus, God in bodily form, appears throughout the Old Testament and therefore we can attribute the words and acts of wrath and justice associated with parts of the Old Testament witness directly to Him. A second claim is that as all of the Bible is inspired, we must regard any depictions of divine wrath and judgment attributed to God as pertaining to the triune godhead, which obviously includes Jesus.

Christologies and Angelologies

Apparent manifestations of God in a form tangible to human senses are known as theophanies, but on closer inspection can be separated into angelic appearances (angelophanies) and appearances of the pre-incarnate Christ (Christophanies). There are nine generally accepted theophanies in the Old Testament and in my assessment, four pertain to angels and five to the pre-incarnate Christ. In a short article of this nature, I cannot give much detail, but here is a brief outline of the Christophanies:

Genesis 12:6-7 The Lord appeared to Abram and promised to give his descendants the land of Canaan. Abram built an altar to memorialise this theophany. The account reveals only benign intent.
Genesis 17:1-22 Here the Lord appeared again to Abram to confirm and elaborate on the covenant He had made. God changed Abram’s name to Abraham and his wife’s name to Sarah, introduced circumcision as the outward sign of the covenant, and blessed Abraham’s descendants, including Ishmael. Once again, the account reveals only blessing and benign intent.
Genesis 18:1-33 What at first appeared to be three angles approach Abraham while on their way down to Sodom and Gomorrah, but it soon became evident that one of them was in fact God. The Lord told the two angels that He intended to disclose to Abraham his plans concerning the two cities of iniquity. The reason He gave was that He had chosen Abraham to teach his people to “keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just”. So, the question is ‘what did the Lord demonstrate to Abraham of His righteousness and His just ways?’
1. Although the evidence was that the sin of the people of these two cities was great and grievous, He would personal verify this before acting against them.
2. Even if there were only ten righteous people there, He would not destroy the city while they were in it.
3. Chapter 19 tells just how wicked the inhabitants were and how the two angels led Lott (Abrahams cousin) and his immediate family to safety before destroying the area.
Exodus 3:1-15 This is the account of how the Lord appeared to Moses from within a burning bush. Here He commissioned Moses to return to Egypt to bring the Israelites out of captivity. He revealed His name to Moses as ‘I Am’, which Jesus of Nazareth later attributed to Himself in the statement that, “before Abraham was born, I am!” (John 8:58). Once again, what can we learn of God’s nature and character from this account?
1. That God was concerned with the suffering of His people in Egypt.
2. That He cared enough to send Moses to Egypt as His envoy to secure their release and lead them into the promised land.
Joshua 5:13-15 Here the Lord appeared to Joshua before he began the conquest of Canaan. He referred to Himself as the commander of the army of the Lord and stated that He was neither for nor against Joshua. The strongest evidence that this was a Christophany was the command to Joshua to take off his sandals because he was standing on holy ground. Nothing particular concerning God’s nature and character is revealed in this encounter. However, His neutrality indicates that He was not necessarily endorsing Joshua’s subsequent violent actions.

In these five theophanies, God revealed Himself in ways consistent with His self-revelation in and through Jesus of Nazareth.

The four angelophanies are not relevant to discussing the nature and character of God in any direct way, but for the record, they are found in Genesis 32:1-30, Numbers 22:22-35, Judges 13:1-22, and Daniel 3:16-28.

Jesus in the book of Revelation

A major consideration here is that John developed this book almost entirely as a collection of vivid symbolic pictures. Very little in this apocalyptic work should be taken at surface-level. For instance, the Lord Jesus is depicted in chapter one as having burning feet and a sword instead of a tongue. In chapters five and six, He is imaged as a lamb, and in chapter nineteen, as a warrior mounted on a horse. The symbolism in these images speaks figuratively of His glory, His redemption, and His ultimate judgment.

Chapters two and three record seven letters to the churches that Jesus dictated to John. In my book Revelation in the Stars, I list His condemnations and warnings as well as His commendations and promises. Significantly, He accompanies His words of warning and condemnation to the churches with instructions on how to remedy their condition.

The later chapters of the book paint a terrible portrait of judgment, yet it would be a mistake to think that Jesus of Nazareth did not speak about these things.

The rationale for a two-faced God

Before, setting out my understanding of how we can interpret all of scripture form a Jesus-perspective, including the wrath and judgment passages, I want to attempt to describe how I understand why some scholars resist the idea of Jesus being the FULL representation of God.

The problems appear to be around the question of how to deal with the wrath and judgment parts of the Bible that do not appear to reconcile with how Jesus portrays the Godhead.

To put it another way, how to accept the divine self-revelation in Christ Jesus without compromising the inspiration and trustworthiness of the whole Bible, including its ethically and morally difficult bits. The solution for many is to contend that Jesus of Nazareth, whilst being the fullest revelation of God, is not the full revelation. In other words, they contend that there are other aspects of the divine character and nature not revealed in and through Jesus. As I have pointed out in my previous article, this flatly contradicts key texts in Paul’s writings as well as what Jesus said about Himself.

Once again, I am limited in an article of this nature but I have written other posts on this matter and you can find the latest of them here: Sabbath Sticks, Stones and Sacraments

I hold that the problem arises for many in not recognising:

The actual nature and purpose of the Bible and that the scriptures faithfully and accurately record the thoughts, words, perceptions, and understandings both of God, and of humans who do not necessarily present God’s sentiments or motivations.
That Jesus of Nazareth does, in fact, speak on wrath and judgment. The revelation of Jesus as presented in the Old Testament and the last book of the Bible is not in conflict with God’s self-revelation in Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus spoke of wrath and judgment and interpreted the most significant of all historical examples, the account of the great flood, giving vital insights into divine love and compassion in the context of judgment.
That His life and the full body of His teachings give context to His statements concerning wrath and judgment.

Red Letter Christianity

Before I end this article, just a brief note on what theologians refer to as ‘a canon within a canon’. What they mean by this is the misguided idea of regarding the Gospels as a higher order of inspired scripture than the rest of the Bible. In years gone by, folk often referred to this as Red Letter Christianity because only the words of Jesus (printed in red in some Bibles) were deemed important. In our day the ascription Red Letter Christianity is applied to religious politics more than anything else. Folk with this agenda take the words of Jesus and apply them straight into their modern political framework with little regard for their original intended meaning. So, for instance, the Sermon on the Mount becomes a manifesto for a dominionist religious-political agenda, and so on.

I do not subscribe to either form of Red Letter Christianity. All of the Bible is inspired and necessary. Jesus fully presents the nature and character of the Godhead and therefore constitutes a reliable interpretive yardstick for the whole Bible. He is the primary interpreter of Scripture (note the word ‘primary’).

How I understand a Christocentric interpretation of scripture

My most succinct statement of this is in the article I wrote for Conspectus academic journal, which you can find HERE.

The shortest way I can state my Christocentric method of interpreting the Bible is as follows:

I interpret all of scripture through the lens of what Jesus said, did, and what He revealed of the nature and character of the Godhead. When something appears contradictory to this divine revelation in Christ Jesus, then I search for other ways of understanding the apparently contradictory testimony. If I cannot find a way to do this without potentially violating the integrity of any part of scripture, then I admit that I just do not understand adequately and I focus on what Jesus revealed. In doing this, I am not copping-out, but simply acknowledging the reality of divine mystery as well as my limited ability to adequately comprehend. In essence, I say to myself: “This I do not understand, but what Jesus has revealed I do understand. Therefore, I will focus on His self-revelation and leave the rest open to possible future understanding, either in this life or the next.” You can find many examples of my attempts to follow this methodology in my blog posts over the last few years.

I hope this and the previous article have been helpful. More and more scholars are writing and teaching on the centrality of Jesus and I am convinced that this is a subject currently on God’s heart. I trust that what I have written here will help provide insights into what others are producing as well as the body of my own work

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Sabbath Sticks, Stones, and Sacraments

3 Comments / Blog, Home Bulletin, My Blog / Christopher Peppler

The words Sabbath Sticks, Stones, and Sacraments sound strange as a title for an article, but let me explain. The Old Testament contains the disturbing story of a man stoned to death for picking up sticks on the Sabbath. A millennium and a half later the Lord Jesus addressed the matter of Sabbath Law violations (Matthew 12:1-8). Despite this, many today still read 1 Corinthians 11:17-34 as an early church example of a sticks-and-stones judgment. However, this time for violating a sacrament.

In this article, I am attempting to deal with these troublesome passages from a Jesus perspective. Hence the title, Sabbath Sticks, Stones, and Sacraments.

The Jesus Perspective

If you have read my books and articles, you will know that I am a passionate champion of Christocentricity. In essence, this word signifies a focus on the Lord Jesus Christ as the ultimate revelation of the Godhead. What I refer to as the Christocentric Principle is an approach to biblical interpretation that seeks to understand all parts of scripture from a Jesus-perspective. In other words, it is a way of interpreting scripture primarily from the perspective of what Jesus taught and modelled, and from what He revealed concerning the nature, character, values, principles and priorities of the Godhead.

Raising a red flag

In terms of this principle, when we encounter things in life or in the scriptures that do not seem to conform to what Jesus revealed, then we need to ‘raise a red flag’. By raising a flag, I mean that we should recognise that we need to understand more about the troublesome text or circumstance. What Jesus said, did, and revealed of the Godhead is the standard against which we weigh everything. So, we need to rigorously interrogate anything that appears contrary to this.

If, at this point, you want to understand more fully what I mean by Christocentricity and why I hold this view, then please read my academic article HERE.

The man stoned for picking up sticks on the Sabbath

I have commented on this incident before in a post titled ‘The Bloodthirsty Warrior God of the Bible’ but here is the gist what I wrote:

Numbers 15:32-36 reads: ‘While the Israelites were in the desert, a man was found gathering wood on the Sabbath day. Those who found him gathering wood brought him to Moses and Aaron and the whole assembly, and they kept him in custody because it was not clear what should be done to him. Then the Lord said to Moses, “The man must die. The whole assembly must stone him outside the camp.” So the assembly took him outside the camp and stoned him to death, as the Lord commanded Moses’.

We don’t know why the man was violating the commandment not to work on the Sabbath. Perhaps he needed to make a fire to cook his food, but had been too sick to gather the wood earlier. We just don’t know. However, it seems that Moses enquired of God what to do and believed that God’s answer was that the poor man should be stoned to death! Now, what are we to do with this?

Perhaps God was setting an example of what would happen to defiant Sabbath-breakers? But hang on a moment… didn’t Jesus Christ later say; “If you had known what these words mean, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the innocent. For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath”? (Matthew 12:7-8) Moreover,He also said, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27-28).

Jesus teaches on Sabbath violation

Matthew 12:1-8 contains the full account of this event: Jesus and His band of disciples had been travelling through some grainfields on the Sabbath. This in itself was problematic for the religious teachers of the day because their theologians had ruled that walking anything more than a few paces on a Saturday was a violation of the commandment not to work on the Sabbath. Yet Jesus’ disciples went one step further (excuse the feeble pun) by picking heads of grain to eat. Now they were not only travelling on the Sabbath, but they were also harvesting! The legalistic penalty for this was that ‘whoever does any work on the Sabbath day must be put to death’ (Exodus 31:15-16).

When the Pharisees confronted Jesus with His supposed Sabbath violation, He responded with, “If you had known what these words mean, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the innocent. For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.”

The Red Flag

In light of what Jesus said to the teachers of His day, we must raise a flag when we read the Numbers 15 passage. Jesus was responding to their accusations of His current Sabbath violation, but He quoted Hosea 6:6, which is a prophetic word set in the context of the Numbers 15 era. Something is happening here that we just do not understand. Perhaps the man had been gathering wood to sacrifice to a pagan god. Or perhaps his child was sick and in urgent need of cooked food. Maybe Moses misunderstood what God was saying to him. We just don’t know.

However, what we do know is that in Jesus‘ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form (Colossians 2:9). What we do know is that Jesus said to one of His disciples, “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). We also know that the Bible is a faithful and trustworthy record of what He said and did. So we accept both the account of the stoning of the man for Sabbath violation and the veracity of Jesus’ response to Philip.

But, and here is the big BUT, we take what Jesus said as the measure and yardstick of how to understand the Numbers 15 incident.

A similar situation in the Corinthian church

Now, I want to pick up on something Paul wrote to the believers in Corinth. The full passage is 1 Corinthians 11:17-34, but the troublesome part is in verses 27-32. They read, ‘Therefore, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. A man ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without recognising the body of the Lord eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many among you are weak and sick, and a number of you have fallen asleep. But if we judged ourselves, we would not come under judgment. When we are judged by the Lord, we are being disciplined so that we will not be condemned with the world’.

The traditional interpretation of this is that God inflicts those who profane Holy Communion with sickness and even death. Sticks and stones for violating sacred law all over again!

Once more, the red flag needs to be hoisted high because this understanding doesn’t appear to reflect a Jesus-perspective on the matter at hand. The Corinthians were celebrating the Lords Supper within the context of a full meal. Some of them were discriminating against the poorer members of the church by segregating them and eating all the good food before they could get any. Some were even getting drunk on the table wine! Thus, they were also profaning the work of Christ commemorated by the sacrament. The church is the Body of Christ, redeemed by His atoning sacrifice, and they were not ‘recognising the body of the Lord’. As a result, they were eating and drinking judgment on themselves.

What seems to be going on here is that some folk there were evidencing un-Christ-like and profane attitudes and behaviour. Because of this, they would suffer the consequences. They were in effect eating and drinking their own judgement.

Jesus the dividing line and standard

In stark terms, here are the implications of the Christocentric Principle in interpreting scripture:

Jesus Christ is the image of the invisible God, the radiance of His Glory, and the exact representation of His being (Colossians 1:15, Hebrews 1:3). Therefore, what He said, did, and revealed is definitive and the yardstick against which we measure all things.
Jesus Himself honoured the Scriptures, cited them often, and thus authenticated them.
The Bible testifies to Jesus’ divinity and the fact that all things in heaven and on earth were made by Him, and for Him, and that in Him all things hold together’ (Colossians 1:16-17). ‘All things’ most certainly include the Bible. Jesus is, therefore, the ultimate author and interpreter of scripture.
To understand the Bible from a Jesus-perspective is therefore to accept its inspiration and integrity. We can avoid using terms like ‘inerrancy’ and ‘plenary inspiration’ (and we probably should). However, we cannot contend that the Bible is untrustworthy.
THEREFORE, Christocentricity demands that we respect the integrity of all of the Bible. However, it equally demands that the scriptures are to be understood from a Jesus-perspective. What Jesus said, did, and revealed is the overriding interpretive consideration.
All of this means that our default position must be Christocentric. Our secondary posture must be that there are things in life and scripture that we do not fully understand. Yet even then, we seek to achieve a greater understanding by viewing the inconsistencies through the lens of Jesus’ life and teachings.

The dogma of Christocentricity

Peter quoted Isaiah 8:14 when he referred to Jesus as ‘a stone that causes men to stumble and a rock that makes them fall’ (1 Peter 2:8). Unsaved folk stumble over the dogmatism that Jesus is the only way to eternal life. However, believers often stumble over the dogmatism that He is the prime interpreter of scripture. Since the Reformation, many regard the Bible as the source of truth and its own interpreter. However, Jesus is the source of truth and He is the interpreter of the Bible. This is a big mental and faith shift for many to make yet it is a necessary shift if we are to do more than pay lip service to the centrality of Jesus in all things.

A final word

As with all things spiritual, an either/or approach seldom, if ever leads to truth. We must not fall into the trap of choosing between Jesus and the Bible. Jesus is the Living Word, the Bible is the Written Word, and we need both if we are to comprehend truth. However, just as there is divine order between God the Father and God the Son, so there is divine order between God the Son and the Bible.

As the Son reveals the Father, so the Lord Jesus Christ reveals the Bible. The third personage in the divine trinity, the Holy Spirit, both points us to Jesus and illuminates the written word.

PS: I am aware of the different interpretations of the texts I have cited, and of the meanings of various words in the Hebrew and Greek. I also realise that I have run the risk of oversimplifying complex hermeneutical (Interpretive) issues, but I have run this risk for the sake of brevity and of making my central contentions as clear as possible.

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