A Good Friday Post: Toward a Preterist Reboot Starting with Matthew’s Gospel

To be a Christian is to believe that Christ lived, died, rose bodily to immortally, ascended into heaven and sent the Holy Spirit at Pentecost as recorded in Acts 2. It means to believe that Jesus will come again, that all the dead shall be raised and judged—either vindicated in Christ or condemned for their sins.

To be a Christian also means to believe “the New Testament” (as we call it) records the origin of Christianity. We have been raised for generations to believe that these documents mainly teach the substance of what I listed in the first paragraph. Virtually no believer comes to the Greek Scriptures expecting anything else. Christianity is basically a “movement” that began with Jesus and Pentecost and then has been transmitted throughout the world from that point in time and space. Eventually the Apostles and the first generation of Christians died, but their younger converts continued and grew the “movement.”

Notice that Evangelicals don’t have such an interpretation of the so-called “Old Testament.” While they often don’t show much interest in anything that seems unrelated to a kind of “pre-movement” view, they do acknowledge that the Word or God contains a lot of geo-politics and other social disruptions and transformations. The Hebrew Scripture may not be read or studied as much as they should be, but one can point out that they teach something beyond the creation of a “movement.”

Proverbs: A Brief Introduction

Proverbs is written for everyone yet it presents itself as instruction from a king or queen to a royal son, a prince. Proverbs is itself a collection of books. The first book (chapters 1-9) starts off as Solomon addressing “my son” (1:1-8) and climaxes with Queen Wisdom addressing “sons” (8:32). Corresponding to this, the whole book of Proverbs is closed by that last book (chapter 31), in which King Lemuel’s mother, rather than a father, exhorts him to stay away from the wrong women and value instead a godly wife.

Scapegoating & the Gospel Story

So the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered the council and said, “What are we to do? For this man performs many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.” But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, “You know nothing at all. Nor do you understand that it is better for you that one man should die for the people, not that the whole nation should perish.” He did not say this of his own accord, but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but also to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad. So from that day on they made plans to put him to death (John 11:47–53 ESV).

Caiaphas was prophesying, but he did not mean to prophesy (or did not mean the prophecy). God gave him words that meant something (see Matthew 1:21; 20:28), but Caiaphas imagined a different meaning. His false narrative is essentially a counterfeit Gospel that superficially resembles the real Gospel.

Kingliness v. the Treehouse in the Horse & His Boy

The last time I read The Horse and His Boy by C. S. Lewis was the first time in many years and also shortly after the publication of Solomon Says. It was a transfixing re-read! It seemed like the perfect novelization of my nonfiction book on Proverbs.

The story is literally about a journey from slavery to sonship. Shasta had to learn to handle freedom and, ironically, found his identity at the end of the journey in involuntary obligations that he could never escape. Adulthood means responsibility. All other “freedom” is a scam.

The Birth of the Age of Wisdom

I started my book, Solomon Says, with a discussion of learning to drive as an extended analogy (or perhaps example?) of gaining wisdom. I compared the transformation that occurs in a modern teen who changes from an exclusive passenger to a driver to the transformation to adult maturity and (for a Christian) godliness.

One element that intrigued me about this analogy (or example?) is that it had an obvious parallel to human culture through history. There was a time when no one thought a sixteen-year-olds would often be piloting self-propelled vehicles faster than a mile a minute. That thought would have been considered crazy. Even if the technology was imagined, probably no one would think of controlling such a machine as an everyday skill. It was not considered a part of human potential.

Yet, here we are. We live in an age of mechanized superheroes and invent fantasy characters like Tony Stark/Ironman to make us blind (or because we are blind) to the fantastic miracle that occurred in human history through the automotive revolution.

The Wisdom of Jael

Judges 4 and 5 tell the story of Jael. She is in the Bible for a reason.

And that reason is not to give male theologians an opportunity for “mansplaining.”

“Mansplaining” is typically a pejorative word used to cow men into silence. As such, it is a manipulative and cowardly expression. But sometimes men communicate in such a bad way and/or with such bad content that the insult seems justified.

So Tim Keller:

A video debate: Is Postmillennialism Biblical?

Many thanks to Lucas Curcio of the Method Ministries Podcast for the opportunity to exchange views!

What do you mean, “prunes”?

“Prunes” is the word used in the ESV and other English Bible translations for a word in Jesus’ discourse in John 15:

I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit (John 15:1–2 ESV).

The meaning of this passage commonly understood to refer to life’s trials that God sends our way to refine us (like in James 1:2).

But I have to wonder if something more might being also hinted at.

How Blood Moves History Forward

Admittedly, this is a macabre headline, but it does allude to a Biblical issue.

I recently tweeted about Matthew’s Gospel, arguing that Jesus literally told his followers to expect violent death before that entire age was judged. This is explicitly in Matthew 23 and 24, but by the time you read through chapter 10, the message is obvious.

In this post, I want to point out in this post is that this [major!] aspect of Matthew’s Gospel fits with other Biblical patterns.

An Obstacle to Reading the Bible No One Talks About

Christians are supposed to read their Bibles. They are supposed to listen to Scriptures read in public worship by a minister called to speak to them for God, but they should also augment this by their own regular reading.

An advantage to hearing someone else read the text is that he might be able to explain it better than what you would get reading on your own.