Cosmology and Epistemology

I just came across a quote from Garret Green’s Theology, Hermeneutics, and Imagination which made me put down my book and pick up a metaphorical pen and paper. The quote is this:

From Galileo and Newton to Einstein and Stephen Hawking, the reigning scientific
models of the cosmos have provided the larger culture with powerful analogies
and metaphors that shape its epistemology, its poetry, its politics, and its
religion…many of the leading postmodernist ideas borrow much of the their
imagery, and not a little of their social prestige, from scientific notions of
relativity, uncertainty, and incommensurability.

The thought that struck me was this: How might our reading of Scripture be different were we not living in and under an Einsteinian cosmology? How quick are we to allegorize and metaphorize passages of Scripture simply because we 'know better'? We know that the heavens have no vocal chords, they have no personhood, so how can they declare the glory of God (Ps 19) in any way other than a metaphorical one? How can they “day to day pour forth speech”? We know that space is simply a vast and immense void spotted with spheres of flaming gas and frozen rock? Right? Since we know that to be the case, Ps 19 must be speaking in a less than realistic mode. Right?

Here is my contention. It is not to argue specifically for a certain reading of Ps 19. It is much broader than that. It is to argue for the reigning paradigm that will necessarily shape our “epistemology, [our] poetry, [our] politics, and [our] religion.” From what paradigm does our epistemology come? Who determines the basic, most foundational, even subconscious, mode of our understanding? What well do we draw from to make our every day determinations as to what is real, what is symbol, what is metaphor, and what is hard, cold fact? What paradigm determines even our vocabulary for such discussions to inhabit?

Was the medieval church wrong to think of the cosmos in terms of reigning personalities? Was the Psalmist wrong to think of the heavens, day to day, pouring forth speech, “their voice [going] out through all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world”? How do we understand the Psalmist? From what altar do we sit and judge?

More questions. Does Scripture ever speak in terms of facts? Did Paul ever speak in terms of discovery (as opposed to revelation – the distinction is important)? Did Abraham look up at the stars and see flaming balls of gas? Even if he knew that’s what they were made of (like we do), is that what he would have seen? Did David see a tree as simply a whole made of up of distinct parts (root, trunk, stem, branch, leaf)? Did John ever speak of 'inanimate objects'?

Is there room in our current cosmology for seriously thinking of the sun as a “bridegroom”, let alone as a “bridegroom leaving his chamber…running his course with joy”? Does our epistemology have a category for heavens which declare the glory of God with speech and words whose voice is heard? Does our understanding of planetary motion and heliocentricity leave room for concepts of planetary obedience, response and submission?

How would our worldview be different if we supposed these things to be true? How might we think of creation differently, were we to see the Creator/Creature dialogue occur even with ‘inanimate objects’? Do we really believe Jesus when He says even the stones would cry out in praise to their Maker?

The purpose of these questions is not so much to answer them, as it is to provoke thought. We necessarily sit on an altar and judge all that comes before our eyes. The question is what altar do we sit upon? An altar on which all is sacrificed to the Most High God, even our cosmology and epistemology? Or do we sit on an altar dedicated to the gods of science, realism, relativity, and cold, hard facts? We must sit somewhere. We must serve one or the Other.

Matthew

My wife and I had the privilege this past Lord's Day to sit under the teaching of our former professor, Dr. Leithart, at a local Church, near the Abbey. It was a pleasure to see him again, as we had not for over a year, and he was a friend, as well as an instructor. He spoke on Matthew. It is the substance of that sermon which I wish to share here at the table. So pull yourself a pint of something dark, drag one of those thick heavy chairs from the corner over to the table, and lean back. This might take a while.

Matthew’s aim, as is well understood, in writing his account of Jesus’ life, was to approach the Jewish nation with the Gospel. This is seen in his mentioning of Jewish customs, and not explaining them (23:5), and his constant use if the Old Testament, more than any other gospel (21 times; Mark, 15 times; Luke, 16 times; John, 11 times). Those are just the direct quotes. To understand Matthew well, a thorough knowledge of the whole Old Testament is required. This outline is one step in that direction.

Matthew begins his account of the Good News with a genealogy. This is extremely reminiscent of Genesis. To top it off the opening verse of Matthew, “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ...” in the Greek reads, “The book of the genesis of Jesus Christ...” using the same Greek word that the LXX uses to give title to the book of Genesis. And in Genesis 5 (as well as nine other times throughout the book), the exact phrasing is used, βίβλος γενέσεως ἀνθρώπων, compared with Βίβλος γενέσεως Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ. Matthew is the story of a new creation, and a new “ἀνθρώπων”, Jesus Christ, the Creator God Himself. These are His generations, His “beginnings”. In Genesis, whenever a genealogy is given, the descendents are listed. But here in Matthew, the ancestors are listed. Could it not be that Matthew is hinting that they too are descendants, starting with Christ, and then Abraham? Abraham is a new Adam, the father of faith. Being a new Adam, he himself was a son of God, as Adam was. Abraham is a son of God, and therefore a son of the Son. Here lies a difference between the two genealogies of Matthew and Luke. Matthew starts with Abraham, and lists fathers. Luke starts with Christ, and lists sons. Matthew and Luke are doing two separate things. Luke wants to pick up where Mark left off, “Truly this was the Son of God.” But Matthew wants to show Jesus in a different light than Luke, with a different perspective. Perhaps this is to highlight the unity of the Father and the Son, showing the Jews this was written for, that Jesus is the “I AM” who was before their father Abraham, and greater too. But now we are approaching the skinny branches. What is clear is a harkening back to the first book of the Bible. Matthew wants us to view this story as a new Beginning for a new world, a new order, a new covenant.

The story of Matthew follows closely the story of Israel through their long and sordid history. To begin with, there is the genealogy, then the birth of Christ, His descent into Egypt, and His return followed closely by His baptism. Here we see a recapitulation of the birth of the nation of Israel, their time in Egypt, their exodus from the land, and their “baptism” in the Red Sea. It follows perfectly. What comes next is a time in the wilderness. As Israel wandered for forty years, so Christ for forty days. Matthew sets the stage in the temptation of Christ, showing us that not only is this a new Israel, it is an obedient Israel. Jesus rejects Satan on all the points Israel failed on. The grumbled for bread, the tested the Lord, they desired the kingdoms of Egypt. Jesus proves faithful, when the nation of Israel did not.

The next three chapters of Matthew, 5-7, are a record of Jesus, standing on a mountain, proclaiming to the people a new Law. This is exactly what happens after Israel finished their time in the wilderness. They were brought to a mountain, and the Law was recounted to them, full with blessings and curses. This also alludes to Sinai when I AM gave the law. Here Christ, who is the great I AM, gives the law. At the end of chapter 7 Jesus says this, “And everyone who hears these words of Mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.” This again, is a picture of the house of Israel. Jesus is alluding to their immanent and final fall, as he does more explicitly later in the book.

Then in chapter 10, Jesus gathers 12 disciples officially. He prepares them, and subsequently sends them out into the unconquered lands. This obviously looks like the 12 nations of Israel, being called out, equipped with the word in Deuteronomy, and sent into the promise land, to conquer it. Hence Matt 10:34, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” Jesus is a new Joshua, coming to bring the sword against Satan and his followers. He is coming to bring the sword against death itself. This also fits with Jesus using the examples of the old Canaanite cities of Tyre and Sidon and Sodom in chapter 11. But the new Conquest of Canaan, is not one of extinction, it is one of redemption. In chapter 11, Jesus tells John the Baptist that “the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them.” Canaan is to be given new life. In chapter 12 this is made explicit with the quotation from Isaiah, which ends with “and in His name the Gentiles will hope.” Jesus has come to bring hope to all who are spiritually Gentiles, coming to conquer them, and kill them, but in order that He might raise them up again.

The second half of chapter 12 leads the people to be amazed and wonder if this Man is the Son of David (12:23). The Pharisees think he is of Satan. Jesus responds by telling them that a kingdom divided against itself cannot stand. And then in chapter 13, Jesus, in concentrated form, is concerned with kingdoms, and explaining the kingdom of Heaven. This fits perfectly with Israel’s history. They conquer the land of Canaan, and not too long afterwards, desire a king. The kingdom of Israel grows to maturity under Solomon, the son of David. Jesus, here, in a very Solomon-like way, gives word-pictures of what the kingdom of Heaven is like. Jesus is the King of the Jews. In chapters 14-15 he acts like a king, providing for His people, bread for 5000 first, and then 4000. To confirm this, and to answer the question posed in 12:23, He is confirmed as the Son of David by the Canaanite woman (15:22). This comes to a climax in the confession of Peter in 16, and the transfiguration in 17. Christ is the ultimate King, the Son of God, and the three witness His glorious majesty. The King theme is carried through chapters 18-20. It reaches another climax in chapter 21, as the Son of David returns to Jerusalem, this time on the foal of a donkey. Jesus assumes the Kingship of Jerusalem, as He is labeled on the cross, and His disciples and worshipers flock to His side. Then in chapter 22 the parable of the wedding feast for the King’s son is given. This is an important parable on two accounts. One, the inclusion of the nations is explicit. Two, a wedding is coming. The Bride is alluded to, made up of every nation, and every tribe, and every tongue. The very final verses of 22 wrap up this Kingship section. It is where Jesus tests the Pharisee’s knowledge of the Psalms. “Who is the Christ,” He asks. “The son of David,” they reply. “How so, in light of Psalm 110:1?” He answers (paraphrase mine). They cant answer, and Matthew leaves it at that. The answer is of course, that the Lord is not simply a descendant of David, He is also the Father of David, and is Himself a greater David. All that David was points to Christ. Pharisees have no eyes to see this, however.

Then in chapters 23-25, Jesus takes a very different tone. He becomes like Jeremiah, standing outside Jerusalem, proclaiming its destruction. The kings of Israel were not faithful, and another exodus was coming. But this time it was back into exile and slavery. Jerusalem would be judged. Here in Matthew Jesus speaks of the final judgment to come on Jerusalem, a judgment that would abolish the old ways, and establish the new. This judgment would bring about a time when the Priest, the King, and the Prophet were all found in one Man, the God-man, the Son of David, the King of Creation, the Christ, Jesus of Nazareth. The second Moses, the second Joshua, the second Solomon, the second Jeremiah, has come and He is the true Israel, the true seed of Abraham. He has come to make disciples out the rocks of the earth.

Following the prophecy of exile, Jesus Himself enacts Israel’s death. He Himself experiences the departure of God the Father, as in Ezekiel 10. “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” He experiences the death of Israel, for Israel. But this death is a death of deeper magic. This is a death which brings the death of death. Faithful Israel is brought to life, and is Life Himself, never to die again. Thus we have in chapter 28, the rest of the story. The Old Testament leaves us unsure of Israel’s future. They come home from exile, but are still a mess. They need a lasting death, the death of something greater than bulls and goats. This finds its fulfillment in the Resurrection.

To end it all, Matthew copies the final verses of the Hebrew Scriptures which are found at the end of 2 Chronicles 36. They read, “Thus says Cyrus king of Persia, ‘The Lord, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he has charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Whoever is among you of all his people, may the Lord his God be with him. Let him go up.’” Does this have a familiar ring? Jesus final words in Matthew, and only in Matthew mind you, are, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” Jesus, here, is a greater Cyrus who has been given power and authority and sends his people out, with the purpose of establishing something. The old Cyrus only has authority on earth, where the new Cyrus has authority over heaven and earth. The old Cyrus tells them to establish a specific house in Jerusalem, whereas the new Cyrus tells his disciples to establish a new Jerusalem. Both declare that the Lord their God will be with them, and in the second case, the Lord their God is the one telling them that He Himself will be with them, lo, to the end of the age.

Matthew, with these thoughts in mind, is basically a recapitulation of the entire history of Israel, starting from the Garden. It is structured in such a way that we might catch this connection, and witness the new Israel Himself, live as the old Israel was supposed to. In so doing, this new Israel redeems His bride. He breaks down the walls of nationality, conquering the gentiles by baptizing them and teaching them to obey all that He has commanded. This is the telos of faithfulness. This is the telos of Christ. Here is our call to go.

Again, many thanks to Dr. Leithart for his thoughts and insights. May we all seek to approach Scripture with Scripture in mind. That is the best hermeneutic.

The Beauty of the Gospel

Fear not, O ye of faint heart. That title sounds more exhaustive than I mean to be here. I merely wish to bring up another side of this toast and ode to Dispensationalism. In continuing this discussion on premil eschatology (as specifically endorsed by Dispensationalists) I wanted to follow up on the Blind Sage's comments (which were totally sagacious, dude!).

As committed Sola Scripturians, we are to rely on Scripture for interpretation. This means at least one thing, and that is this: reading post-revelatory history into revelation is bad. When the Holy Spirit completed the canon with Revelation, He completed the canon. There was nothing more to say. The entirety of Scripture was complete, sufficient, and thorough. Whether or not Israel has lived as a people group since that time, as apposed to say the Hittites, is irrelevant. That isn't proof of their Scriptural significance. It can be reduced to the old problem of the horse squarely resting behind the cart. The horse is Scripture and our understanding of it. The cart is our method of interpretation. I mean to tread lightly here, for all who seek to interpret Scripture are susceptible to this problem. Nonetheless, we are required to read and understand Scripture, and the Spirit comes along side us and enables our minds and our hearts to soak in its truth. But we must not allow our method of interpretation to be the absolute authority. Obviously we have to start from somewhere, but our methods are the malleable part, not the intention of Scripture.

The Word of God comes to us in different clothes. In Genesis it comes dressed as a tidy, three-piece suit of historical, reliable narrative. The Psalms come to us flowing in gowns of rich imagery, painful emotions, and the raw, unashamed truth of life. The Prophets approach, warily but with perseverance, the essentials barely covered with unadulterated animal skin. We cannot deny the differences between these styles/genres. They are as different as David and John the Baptist.

Here we catch a glimpse at the Triune Beauty. Does God reveal Himself to us employing only one method of revelation? Not at all. We look at the mountains and see His majesty, we enjoy the privileges of marriage, and are witness to the community of love our God shares in Himself. We read the Word of God and the Spirit enlightens our hearts, minds, souls, and bodies. In other words, we do not look at a mountain, or marital bliss, and literally interpret creation with respect to God. We do not look at the ocean and see God face to face. We see Him, but through a deeper beauty. God has revealed Himself to us in all of life, but restrained, and through veils of sign and symbol. That's what language is after all, verbal and written signs, signifying something real, and weighty. Therefore we see God in all of creation, or Natural Revelation, but through metaphor, and not by explicit, undiminished, raw vision. And praise God for His kindness in this. The same is true with Special Revelation. God explains Himself, as far as He does (Deut 29:29), through different forms, enabling us to see different sides of His glory. The mountain does not mean the same thing as marital bliss. Nor do we interpret it in the same way. Thus Ezekiel's vision of God in His glory, reveals a different side of God than Paul's Epistle to Titus, and thus needs to be interpreted differently.

Here we see an aspect of the beauty of the Gospel. God in His wisdom, spoke to us in His Word. But He did not speak to just part of us, the historico-grammatical part up in our left brain. He also spoke to our emotions, our desires, our hopes, our spirits. Every aspect of our whole body is given a mode to understand God in. To limit the interpretation of Scripture to one mode, denies the trinitarian make up of our own body. It places undue emphasis on one way of understanding, leaving the other ways weak and starved. But God did not intend for this to be. His Gospel, which extends from Genesis 1 through to Revelation 22, is full of rich and varied texts, all of them interacting with all of us, heart, soul, mind, and body. Here we find a Triune God not interested in one aspect of His creation, such as their historical sensibilities, but a God who loves all of life, and gave all of life to His creation. Here we find a God who enriches His creatures with not just a rational brain, but with emotion and senses as well. Here we find not a dry and arrid text, full of strict and literal non-sequitors, but the tremendous and humbling complex beauty of the Gospel.

Toddlers and Elephants

Jolly Friar made a great comment about Fairsized's great post, regarding hermeneutics. This does seem to be one of the central issues in the debate between premillenniaism (especially the Dispensational variety) and the other main views (postmillennialism, amillennialism).

In short, different genres of literature require different reading strategies. If we don't employ reading strategies appropriate to particular genres, then we necessarily flatten those genres out and reduce all of them to the level of our (lack of) literary sophistication. Friar's point is exactly this - that a firmly held belief in the doctrine of sola scriptura includes a conviction that the scriptures are God's Word. If they are God's Word, then they need to be interpreted and understood as God intended when He inspired them. This includes the agency of the human authors who, under divine inspiration, penned the original texts.

The question is not - cannot - be, "What does it mean to me?" Or, "How do the principles of common sense determine the meaning of the text?" Interpretation cannot be primarily reader-centric. It must be governed by authorial intent. What did John intend for his readers to understand? What did God intend? How would those original, 1st Century Jews living in the Roman Empire understand the Apocalypse? Just like we 21st Century, post-Enlightenment, Western Americans understand it?

When you read Moby Dick for the first time, did you think of it as being primarily a great adventure story about a big whale? Maybe so - but if so, you missed much of what Melville intended to communicate to you. Maybe then you became better versed in literary symbolism, and were able to go back and re-read the story with an eye for all of the authorially intended messages below the shallow surface of the story itself.

God's Word is marvelously, beautifully, magnificently deep. Perspicuous, yes, as Dr. MacArthur is keen to remind us of, because he believes that a non-dispensational approach to interpreting books like Revelation and Zechariah are the result of denying the perspecuity of scripture. Not so. Perspecuity does not mean simplicity or shallowness. Look - just because when I look at a page full of Newtonian Physics, and all I see is a "muddle" (that's Dr. MacArthur's word to describe amillennial hermeneutics) of numbers and symbols, it doesn't mean that Newton has muddled the field of mathematics and physics. I mean, really. Someone standing back and saying that most interpreters of prophetic scripture - in the history of the church - including Calvin - until the 1800s - have simply muddled those passages, is a bit like a 5th Grader passing judgment on Einstein because he can't make sense of the whole General Relativity bit. As Leon Morris said of the Gospel of John, God's Word is a pool shallow enough for a toddler to wade in, but deep enough for an elephant to drown in.

Dr. MacArthur himself, in his lecture on the subject of Israel and Sovereign Election, acknowledged at least two distinct genres present in scripture - Historical Narrative and Poetry. His minor point was that we can't read the Historical Narrative passages as if they were Poetry. We can't read Genesis 1-3 in the same way we read the Psalms. His major point was that this is what amillennialism does to the book of Revelation, and to all of the OT promises made to Israel. But, see, he's assuming that those passages belong to the genre of Historical Narrative. Why? Because they're not Poetry? Are those the only two options? Are there no other literary styles employed by the writers of scripture?

The amillennialist says that there are, and that interpreters like Dr. MacArthur have been guilty of reading passages that belong to one genre as if they belonged to another. We all sort of sense that this is a bad idea, don't we? We don't read the newspaper in the same way that we read Chaucer. We don't read a love letter in the same way that we read a history book. Well, maybe some of us do, and that's the reason why so many wives are so frustrated with their husbands. The point is, there are lots of different flavors of literature, and exegesis is as much an art as a science.

One of the other genres employed in God's Word is the Apocalyptic, Prophetic genre. These would be passages like Zechariah's night visions, Daniel's dreams, Joseph's dreams, Ezekiel's magnificently indescribable visions, and major portions of the book of Revelation. Passages where God isn't just speaking to and through a prophet, but showing the prophet something through prophetic, apocalyptic vision. These visions normally carry a symbolic meaning beyond the surfacy appearance of them. They are normally intended to point us far beyond visual appearances - what something or someone looks like - to communicate on a very deep level what something or someone is like. And so, where the Dispensationalist says that scripture should be read according to the "literal wherever possible" hermeneutic, the Amillennialist simply says, "Amen. It's just not possible in apocalyptic passages where the intention of the author is to speak symbolically through visions." In other words, when we come to these portions of scripture, we need to read the author literally - that is, we need to literally understand that the author is writing symbolically.

For example. Revelation chapter 1 records John's vision of the glorified Christ. He has eyes aflame with fire, glowing white hair, legs which gleam like burnished bronze, a sword protruding from his mouth, surrounded by lampstands, etc... Here's what far too many people reduce a vision of such magnitude to:

Maybe it's a nice, artistic rendition and reflects a fair amount of skill and talent on the artist's part. But it falls far short of what God want's us to know about His resurrected, glorified Son through this vision given to John on Patmos. Is our understanding of Him really to be limited to His visible appearance? Are we really to think that He has this sword poking out of His mouth, and that it's swinging around as He turns His head from side to side? Or like Melville's whale and the Pequod's crew, does the vision signify something far more important? Like the glory of His holiness, and His omniscient gaze, and the character and power of His Word (which, Hebrews reminds us, is "Sharper than any double-edged sword.")

Are Zechariah's lampstand and olive trees (Zech. 4) simply that? Literal, physical lampstand and olive trees? If so, then really, so what? So there's a Mennorrah flanked by trees in the Temple. Big deal. But it is a big deal. Such a big deal that the meaning of that vision, as stated by God Himself, is, "Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit says the LORD." (v.6) It's what they signify and symbolize that's important - not the things themselves. And that's the nature of Apocalyptic, prophetic literature. It employs imagery that points to something other - something greater - than itself.

Indeed, all of Scripture operates in this way. We must interpret the historicaly-narrative portions as history, as events that actually happened as revealed. But especially in the OT, those events themselves - those people and those things - were all significant of something far greater than themselves. Physical sacrifices that foreshadowed a greater sacrifice. A physical temple that anticiapted a greater reality (Christ's own body, John 2:19-21 - and His Body the Church, Ephesians 2:19-22). A priesthood that was but a glimmer of Christ's. On and on and on, God orchestrates His Word and history itself as a grand, spectacular revelation of His Son and His Kingdom. Not just what they look like. But what they are like in the beauty of holiness.