Monday, February 9, 2015

Peter Enns - Is There A Resurrection from the Dead in the Old Testament?

brief Bible thought: is there resurrection from the dead in the Old Testament?

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2015/02/brief-bible-thought-is-there-resurrection-from-the-dead-in-the-old-testament/
TBTMS
Is there resurrection from the dead in the Old Testament?

No. Not really. Well, sort of. O.K., yes, but it depends on how you look at it.
Resurrection is pretty central to the New Testament, in case you haven’t noticed. Yet searching for that kind of resurrection it in the Old Testament makes you come up basically empty-handed.
We do have one lengthy passage, Daniel 12, which is an important text for understanding the development of Jewish faith later in the Second Temple period (in the second century BCE) when “resurrection” of individuals was in the air generally within Judaism (more below).
2 Maccabees is another example of a text from roughly the same period and which mentions the future resurrection of the dead as if no one needs it explained to them (e.g., see 2 Maccabees 7:9)
Neither Isaiah 25:7 (the Lord will “swallow up death forever”) or 26:19 (“Your dead shall live, their corpses shall rise”) seem to be “resurrection from the dead” texts.
The first seems to echo Canaanite mythology about Baal who hosts a victory banquet after his defeat of the sea god Yamm (representing chaos).
The second is a more likely candidate, but if both of these passages are read in the larger context of Isaiah, it’s hard to escape their metaphorical meaning: deliverance from the “sure death” of foreign oppression/threat. At any rate, even with these texts, the silence of the Old Testament on future resurrection is deafening.
But this brings me to where I think resurrection is very much part of the story of Israel, and it goes like this.
A perspective on the Adam story that I lay out in The Evolution of Adam and The Bible Tells Me So is that Adam represents Israel’s entire epic journey in the Old Testament–Adam is a “preview” of Israel, so to speak.
Just as Adam was created by God out of dust and placed into a Garden paradise, and remaining there was contingent upon obedience (don’t eat from the Tree of Knowledge), so, too, Israel was created by God from Egyptian slavery, placed into the paradise-like Canaan, and remaining there was contingent upon obedience (to the covenant, the Law of Moses).
This reading of the Adam story is not mutually exclusive of others, but it has medieval rabbinic precedent (Genesis Rabbah), and you have to admit the parallels are at least worth thinking about. So even if you’re skeptical, work with me here.
Remember that Adam was warned that “on the day” he eats of the the forbidden fruit, he would die (Genesis 2:17). Now, the fact of the matter is that “on the day” Adam and Eve do not die so much as they are banished from the Garden (Genesis 3:22-24).
That banishment bars them from the Tree of Life, their source of immortality, which is only in the Garden. The Lord places two cherubim at the entrance, which is on the east (hold that thought) to stand guard to make sure the doomed couple don’t go do back in and eat from the Tree of Life.
To be in the Garden means access to the Tree of Life. To be banished from the Garden to the east (keep holding that thought) means “death.”
Fast forward to Deuteronomy 30. Here we are at the final stage of Israel’s 40 years of wandering in the desert, and Moses is giving the people his last series of pep talks before they enter Canaan and take over the land as their own.
The whole chapter is worth a closer look, but we get to the real point verses 15-18. There we see that “life” means being in the land, and “death” means exile–the same notion we see in the Adam story.
If Israel will continue to obey God’s commands, the reward is life, which Deuteronomy 30 explains to be prosperity, an increased population, and longevity for the people as a whole (not individuals) in the land.
Likewise, disobedience to God’s commands yields “death and adversity,” i.e., “you shall perish; you shall not live long in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess” (v. 18).
So you see where I’m going with this. Or maybe not quite yet.
Flip to the chapter in the Old Testament that certainly is on most people’s top 10 list of weird passages: Ezekiel 37:1-14 and the “valley of dry bones.”
In a vision, Ezekiel sees a valley with dry bones that miraculously come back to life. Bones will be covered again with sinew and flesh, and God will “put breath” into those bones.
God brings to life through “breath.” Feel free to think of the Adam story here (Genesis 2:7).
Anyway, as weird as Ezekiel is in general, and chapter 37 in particular, at least the meaning of this vision is spelled out for us:
This says the Lord: I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you back to the land of Israel (v. 12).
Death isn’t physical but metaphorical. The dry bones represent Israel in exile (the grave). Where in exile? In Babylon, which is in the east (thank you for holding that thought).
To be in exile, in the east, outside of the land of Canaan, is death. The be in the land is life. The Adam story is 2-chapter summary of Israel’s national plight.
So now we finally get to the resurrection part of all this.
If moving from the land into exile is to move from life to death, returning to the land is (all together now) to be brought back to life, to be raised from the dead (as Ezekiel’s prophecy lays out for us).
And that is where we find “resurrection” in the Old Testament: returning to the land, where God and his temple are, where there is peace and security, the land promsied to Abraham (Genesis 12), the land “flowing with mik and honey.”
Physical resurrection of individuals isn’t the hot topic of conversation in the Old Testament. Revival of a nation is.
So what about physical resurrection in the New Testament? Where does that idea come from? From developments in Judaism after the exile, especially in the 2nd century BCE.
Faithful Jews are being martyred by the Seleucid King Antiochus. 2 Maccabees relays a story that captures the crisis, where seven sones are executed in a gruesome fashion for remaining obedient to the law rather than eat unclean food and reject God. And earlier were several centuries of faithful Jews who might not have been martyred but who died without seeing God fully restore Israel as a nation.
Israel’s exile, though ending in 539 BCE, still continued in a manner of speaking for centuries thereafter. Ezekiel’s “resurrection” was not complete until Israel was “fully” in the land, which meant restoring Jewish independence.
To be sure, God would one day come through for his people. And those who died waiting for the “consolation of Israel” (to borrow Simeon’s phrase in Luke 2:25) would not just miss out but, as an act of divine justice, would be raised to take part in the messianic age.
Fast forward to the Gospels.
It is surely no accident that all 4 Gospels introduce Jesus’s public ministry by citing the opening verses of Isaiah 40, one of the key texts in the Old Testament announcing that God is about to bring the the captives back from Babylon–back home…back to the land of Canaan…back to the place of life, not death.
Why do all 4 Gospels introduce Jesus’s ministry by citing this major “end of exile” announcement? Probably because whatever Jesus is going to do probably has something to do with bringing an end to Israel’s exile/death.
The New Testament twist is that the resurrection of Jesus draws together both the national and individual dimensions while also redefining them.
Jesus’s individual physical resurrection fulfills Israel’s corporate national story by creating a new people, a new nation–a new humanity–where resurrection is a present spiritual reality and a future hope for each one who in “in Christ” (as Paul puts it).
TEA
So, we move from resurrection as nationalistic and metaphorical in the Old Testament, to a resurrection that also includes individuals physically in response to crisis by the 2nd century BCE, to the New Testament, where both are realized and redefined in Jesus.
If anything, this should remind us how New Testament theology is more than a process of back-referencing passages from the Old Testament, but must also include postexilic developments in Jewish thought. The resurrection from the dead in the New Testament isn’t “in” the Old. It grows out of and transforms an Old Testament metaphor, with a middle stage in Second Temple Judaism.

Misunderstanding God's Grace and Holiness. The Emphasis is Always on God's Grace.




Understandably Christianity is very interested in the righteousness of God becoming central to its practice and behavior. This stands out in Kevin DeYoung's book, "The Hole in Our Holiness." Obviously, for many practising Christians "holiness" is front-and-center to the Christian belief of what pleases God. Here is but one of twenty of Mr. DeYoung's firm beliefs and something we here at Relevancy22 would hotly debate:

“Not only is holiness the goal of your redemption, it is necessary for your redemption. Now before you sound the legalist alarm, tie me up by my own moral bootstraps, and feed my carcass to the Galatians, we should see what Scripture has to say. . . . It’s the consistent and frequent teaching of the Bible that those whose lives are marked by habitual ungodliness will not go to heaven. To find acquittal from God on the last day there must be evidence flowing out of us that grace has flowed into us.” (26)

If you wish to read more of these neo-Reformed gems of wisdom simply follow the link here provided - you will not be disappointed. Or visit the Google sites here and here filled with the images of Christian banners and book titles declaring the importance of God's holiness. I don't think it can be said enough that Christianity must ever wage war upon the legalists of its faith lest it become overwhelmed by an unloving, ungracious odor that reaches to the heavens even as it would fill the nostrils of those around us peering ever curiously at the kind of God we declare by our words and deeds.

Too often as Christians we get the proverbial "cart in front of the horse" leading out with God's judgment and wrath upon sin and evil when perhaps it may be better to explain by our actions and words God's grace as His very reason for relationship to this wicked world in the first place. Certainly DeYoung is describing the need of Jesus' substitutionary atonement as God's way towards holiness. This is not the debate. The debate is how evangelical Christianity places the weight of its Christian dogmas on holiness to the skewing of all following biblical church practices and doctrines. And thusly we at Relevancy 22 will say, "Not so!" It is God's grace that must skew all practices and doctrines and not God's holiness.

Why?

To simply favor holiness over grace creates an attitude of schism within the community of Christ's body by declaring one part of its body to be "more holy" than other parts of the body not observing those same rules and regulations. Even as it does with the watching world around the church which would misunderstand this attribute of our Lord's to be more important than His grace (I'll go on to explain what I mean by this in a bit).

So let us say this again, "It is not our works-righteousness that will make us righteous before God but through Jesus' substitutionary atonement that grants to us God's holiness. And yes, holiness to God is important but it is God's grace that makes God's holiness surmountable.

And to the church at large, neither are our ragged works done in Jesus' name what grants God's favor but that those works are done from hearts filled with God's grace thus forestaying any personal declarations of works-righteousness, pride, or legalism.

And more so, though Christians are to live as righteous people, we too often get this attribute of God ahead of God's grace. What? We end up holding attitudes and beliefs that would lower God's grace ahead of God's holiness. And when doing this end up affecting our attitudes towards God, mankind, the church's mission to the world, and even false beliefs about very basic Christian doctrine we should be holding in the hands of God's grace.

So let us say this again, it is not works-righteousness that makes us holy before God but God's grace through His Son to us. It is not by living "untainted" in the world that creates favor from God but that we know how to share God's love and grace to those around us while living and being a part of this world. Not as bigots, or judgers of men, or by proclaiming "sin upon everything we cast our eyes to." But by proclaiming God's mercy and forgiveness through ministrations of service and helps.

Are we then saying that God's attributes are ranked? That Holiness is more important than Grace. Or that Grace is more important than Holiness? Nay, let us not be so foolish! But know that God's attributes are not ranked except within His own foolish church when it seeks to proclaim its own self-righteousness as favor from God over a humbled heart crying "Thank you Father for your grace and mercy."

But, if we were to rank God's attributes, then as sinners saved by grace, God's grace is the one attribute that makes the most sense to our lives, to faith living, to our witness, and to our relationship with our heavenly Father.

Why?

Without grace, descriptions of God's holiness and righteousness sound as hollow things falling like tinkling brass upon the ears of our pagan hearts even as it does to our fellow man. Without grace, the holy Creator-God would never become our Redeemer-God nor would this be demonstrated in the Christian life of service. That is, God would not be moved to reach out to us if He were all austere holiness before all else. Nor would we as God's people ever desire to reach out to those sinners and evil doers around us whom we are but one redeemed by grace.

Appropriately so, the church's righteous means very little to the starving, the belittled, the hated, the envied, the harmed, and the condemned. But the grace of God as lived through His people is that very thing that will change all things within so many desperate lives lived impossibly on the edge seeking personal fulfillment, identity, and justice from God. But should God's people become like the vaunted Scribe or unbowed Pharisee filled with self-righteousness and condemnation upon others less worthy. Who turn a blind eye to the many grace-projects living about us - than fear and tremble and pray ye for God's forgiveness and repent of this evil thing by the winnowing Spirit of the Lord!

Yes, dear brothers and sisters, be righteous. Be holy. Let this fill all your actions to one another as to the world about us. But above all be gracious as your Lord is gracious sharing His mercy, love, forgiveness and hope. Let God's grace be the leading attribute in your doctrinal vernacular and dogmas and not those Pharisaical practices of condemnation and hatred to our fellow man. Be the grace-filled vessels of God in Jesus' name and learn to rewrite harsh doctrinal statements and church dogmas to more favorable treatises perfumed and scented with God's grace and love, hope and forgiveness. Amen.

R.E. Slater
February 9, 2014




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"God’s righteousness is that attribute of God that means he is determined to sort the mess out through the way that he has chosen, ultimately through Jesus Christ. That means that one has a solid platform on which to stand to talk about putting things right in the community.

"This is not something off on the side, as in, “Oh, Christian faith is over here, and then, oh dear, there’s some people in pain there. Let’s get the Band-Aids out.” It’s absolutely vital to make those connections between justice and justification, and to say God intends eventually to put the whole world right. He has already done it in Jesus Christ. We who live in between those two poles have got to make sure we are moving in the power of the Spirit from the one towards the other."

N.T. Wright

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"When we understand the character of God, when we grasp something of His holiness, then we begin to understand the radical character of our sin and hopelessness. Helpless sinners can survive only by grace. Our strength is futile in itself; we are spiritually impotent without the assistance of a merciful God. We may dislike giving our attention to God's wrath and justice, but until we incline ourselves to these aspects of God's nature, we will never appreciate what has been wrought for us by grace. Even Edwards's sermon on sinners in God's hands was not designed to stress the flames of hell. The resounding accent falls not on the fiery pit but on the hands of the God who holds us and rescues us from it. The hands of God are gracious hands. They alone have the power to rescue us from certain destruction."



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8 Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. 9 But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me.

20 Therefore no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin. 21But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. 22 This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.

14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

1 Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God-- 2 the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures 3 regarding his Son, who as to his human nature was a descendant of David, 4 and who through the Spirit of holiness was declared with power to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord. 5Through him and for his name's sake, we received grace and apostleship to call people from among all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith.


8 Now Stephen, a man full of God's grace and power, did great wonders and miraculous signs among the people.

7 But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it.

9 Do not be carried away by all kinds of strange teachings. It is good for our hearts to be strengthened by grace, not by ceremonial foods, which are of no value to those who eat them.

8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith--and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God-- 9 not by works, so that no one can boast.

2 Grace and peace be yours in abundance through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.

16 Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

10 Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God's grace in its various forms.

6 But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says: "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble."

7 But just as you excel in everything--in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in complete earnestness and in your love for us--see that you also excel in this grace of giving.

11 For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men.

14 For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace.

6 And if by grace, then it is no longer by works; if it were, grace would no longer be grace.

11 No! We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved, just as they are."


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The “grace” vs. “holiness” debate
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/geneveith/2013/01/the-grace-vs-holiness-debate/

by Gene Veith
January 31, 2013

Christianity Today has set up a symposium discussing the following question: Do American Christians Need the Message of Grace or a Call to Holiness? As usual, no Lutherans were asked to participate, and the whole debate is maddening for a Lutheran to read, not just because of its false dichotomies but because of what is missing in the understanding of both terms.

For example, is it true that the Biblical definition of “holiness” means “being good”? For convenience, here is a link to every use of the term “holy” in the Bible, and here is a link to the uses of the word “holiness”. We learn that the Sabbath is holy, certain mountains and lands are holy; the Tabernacle (and later the Temple), its furnishings, the priests’ vestments and tools are holy. None of these inanimate objects are capable of moral action, but God’s Word declares them holy. There is a contrast with what is ritually unclean or profane, but this isn’t a matter of moral righteousness as such. God, above all, is supremely holy. So are His people. Christians constitute a “holy priesthood.” The holiness of Christians seems to be connected to the Holy Spirit. To be sure, God’s holy people must avoid contact with what is “impure,” just as holy objects must not be touched by something “unclean.”

There are indeed passages in the Epistles that call for holy conduct, but there is more to the concept than that. The word, of course, means “set apart” for God’s special use or for His spiritual presence. The word “sacrament” comes from the word “sacred,” which, says the Online Etymological Dictionary, derives from the “obsolete verb sacren ‘to make holy’ (early 13c.).” In Baptism, God sets us apart. He makes us holy. In Holy Communion, Christ makes us holy. In the Holy Bible, God’s Word brings us His holiness through the Holy Spirit.

I’m not saying this exhausts the issue, but it is strange, in Lutheran eyes, to talk about “holiness” simply in behavioral terms. It is also strange to talk about “grace” as an abstract quality without mentioning Christ, the Cross, or the tangible “means of grace,” which gets us back to “holiness.”

Good works? Of course! But these grow out of both grace and holiness. Both have to do with God’s gifts and what God bestows through Christ. How can they be set against each other?