One In Jesus

“Covenant” defined

First, we need to cover generally the Bible’s history of covenants. These don’t line up quite with the old Scofield Bible dispensations, but that’ll be okay. It’ll be a little unfamiliar, but it will make so much more sense when we’re done.

Relying on John Walton’s work (and the work of many other theologians), we begin with the Creation as God’s creation of a cosmic temple in which he rests, in which Adam and Eve serve both as the images of God and as priests.

Now, when we speak of “covenants,” we should not confuse an Ancient Near East (ANE) covenant with a modern-day contract. Contracts are negotiated. Both parties must agree. But in the ANE, covenants were often imposed by someone in a position of greater power on a person of lesser power. Thus, when Egypt was the supreme power in the region, it made treaties — a form of covenant — with nearby nations simply by declaring what their relationship must be. The lesser power might be resentful or might be grateful, but it had no real choice in the matter. Egypt had a better army with better chariots. Continue reading →

Okay. I’m through reposting old material for a while. Now it’s time to put the ingredients together and hope the result is a cake.

I’m headed toward a new outline of the entirety of the Bible — but I have to caution you about one very important thing. This is not about “dispensations” — at least not in one sense of the word.

“Dispensations”

The idea that the Bible is a series of dispensations — Patriarchal, Mosaic, Christian — goes back to the old Scofield Study Bible from over 100 years ago. Its notes were put together by a dispensational theologian, and while not entirely wrong, it’s created a lot of problems for understanding the scriptures. Continue reading →

We need to add a fourth ingredient to our cake mix: the Creation as Temple of God.

Lately, I’ve seen several scholars refer to the fact that the Creation is pictured as God’s Temple in Genesis 1 — which is hardly obvious. I thought I’d go looking to see what the scholars are referring to.

A helpful introduction to the subject is Genesis 1 as Temple Text in the Context of Ancient Cosmology, by John H. Walton.

The cosmos is portrayed in the ancient world and in the Bible as a temple, and temples are designed to be micro-models of the cosmos. Temples are built in the ancient world for the gods to rest in, which does not refer to relaxing, but to enjoying and maintaining security and order. With the mention of God’s rest on day seven, we can see that Genesis 1 is also thinking about the cosmos as a temple. God is creating his dwelling place, putting people into it as his images (representatives), and taking up his place at the helm to maintain the order he has established.

Imagine a pagan temple of the ancient near east. It would be a microcosm of the entire cosmos as viewed by that pagan religion. God’s temple is the entirety of the cosmos! Continue reading →

Rather like preparing to bake a cake the old-fashioned way — from scratch — we’ve been adding ingredients to our narrative hermeneutic.

We started with Scot McKnight’s A-B-A’ formulation. We added some elements from John Walton’s Covenant argument.

Next, we need to consider N.T. Wright’s understanding presented in Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense. 

Wright explains Christianity in terms that make so much sense you wonder why you never thought of it yourself. The idea is that the story of the Bible can be stated in terms of the closeness of heaven and earth. It outlines like this.

In the beginning, heaven and earth touched in the Garden of Eden. They were so close that God walked with Adam and Eve. Continue reading →