BIBLICAL Horizons, No. 26
June, 1991
Copyright 1991, Biblical Horizons
What I intend to do in this series of studies is this: First, in the present essay we shall survey the occurrences of the Abomination of Desolation in the Bible in a cursory way, in order to get the fundamental pattern before us. Next time, we shall look at the Hebrew words underlying the English word "abomination," and we shall find that the "abomination of desolation" is a technical phrase indicating a sin that only God’s peculiar people can commit. Then we shall go back and look at the particular historical occurrences in more detail.
The Abomination of Desolation pattern is an extension of the basic Fall pattern seen repeatedly in the Bible. The Fall pattern is this: God gives His people a kingdom, and then immediately they fall into sin and lose the kingdom, but God is gracious and restores them. At certain climactic times, though, when their sin is extremely great, prolonged, high-handed, and performed right in front of His face, God brings His wrath upon them. God withdraws His presence from them, leaving them desolate, because their sins have become abominable. Once God departs, He brings in an enemy army to destroy His ruined house and His ruined city. The result is that His people are driven into exile, just as they drove Him into exile: eye for eye and tooth for tooth.
There are four occurrences of the Abomination of Desolation pattern in the Old Testament, and two preliminary occurrences. They are:
1. The Flood of Noah.
2. The Apostasy of Eli’s Sons.
3. The Apostasy of the priesthood in Ezekiel’s day.
4. The Apostasy of the priesthood in the days of the Maccabees.
The final and climactic occurrence of the pattern comes in the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70.
The pattern stands as a warning to every Church in every time. If we commit pronounced and prolonged sins of apostasy, God will do to us as He did to them (Rev. 2-3).
Let us now survey the occurrences of the pattern. First, let us consider the Fall of Man. Because the Fall of the first man was a unique event, we cannot expect to see the pattern in all its details, but we can see it in its essence. When Adam sinned in the Garden, he did so on the sabbath, in the sanctuary, right at the center where the two trees were located. Adam was a priest, and his sin performed right before God’s face was a desolating sacrilege. Instead of leaving the Garden, God drove Adam out of it. Essentially the pattern is present, however, because Adam’s expulsion separated him from God’s blessing and protection. God brought in an enemy to throw Adam out: the cherubim.
Yet, in the Fall we do not see the climax of sacrilege that leads to God’s destroying His house. That comes at the Flood, when wickedness has matured. At the Flood, God does depart from the Garden of Eden, and brings in an enemy (the Flood, which becomes a symbol for the enemy later in the Bible) to destroy it and to destroy all the people. A remnant joins Him in exile, in the Ark, and then is returned to start a new covenant.
Second, the Golden Calf. Notice that the people committed a religious crime (idolatry) accompanied by gross sexual sin (sat down to eat, rose up to "play") right in front of God’s face, for they were in the sacred area at the foot of Sinai. They got the High Priest, Aaron, to lead them in this. God’s response was to withdraw from the camp and pitch His tent far outside of it. This exposed the camp to destruction. Moses was able to persuade God to return, however, and so the full pattern of destruction was averted (Exodus 32-34).
Yet, in the Golden Calf we do not see the climax of sacrilege that leads to God’s destroying His house. That comes after many years of maturing evil, described in Judges, climaxing in the apostasy of Eli’s Sons. Again we are in the sanctuary, and again it is the priests who, reflecting the sins of the people, take a lead in committing sacrilegious abominations. They stole God’s sacrifices and committed ritual fornication (1 Sam. 3:12-17; 22). Eli refused to stop them. As a result, God desolated the sanctuary and went into exile. The priests were killed and a permanent curse put on Eli’s house (1 Sam. 3-4). God brought in the Philistines to conquer and punish Israel. But God was gracious. While in Philistine exile, God defeated the gods of the Philistines and returned to Israel with much spoil (1 Sam. 5-6). Then the covenant was renewed (1 Sam. 7).
Third, the apostasy of the priesthood in Ezekiel’s day. The kingdom had been given to David, and 1 Chronicles describes how David as a new Moses set up the priesthood. David fell into sin right away, but God restored him through much trauma (2 Sam. 7; 11-19). The full climax and maturation of evil comes in the years immediately preceding the exile. Ezekiel 8-11 describes in fullest detail the detestable acts that cause God to desolate His Temple. The people committed every kind of idolatry right before God’s face in the Temple, and the priests were the leaders in it. Ezekiel sees God pack up and move out of the Temple, leaving it desolate. Soon God sent in Nebuchadnezzar to destroy the Temple and the city — and remember that Daniel was Nebuchadnezzar’s right-hand man at this time. The people joined God in exile, receiving a punishment equal to what they had done to Him. Again, however, God was gracious, for in Babylon God went to war with the false gods (Dan. 4-5). Eventually the people returned to Israel, with God, and the covenant was renewed.
Fourth, the apostasy in the days of the Maccabees. The kingdom of God had been restored in the days of Ezra, and then the people had immediately fallen into sin (Ezr. 9-10; Neh. 13; Malachi). God had restored them, however. Their sinfulness continued, though, and climaxed in the days of the Maccabees. This is prophesied in Daniel 11, and recorded in Josephus and in 1 & 2 Maccabees. The people rejected the Lord, and the High Priests self-consciously adopted Greek religion. They did this in the Temple, right in God’s face. For political reasons, they asked Antiochus Epiphanes to come to the city and set them up in power. As a result, God desolated the Temple and city, and caused the people to anger Antiochus, who returned to the city and instituted a reign of terror. Antiochus defiled the Temple, but this is only the aftermath of what the Jews had already done. Antiochus could not really defile the Temple, because he was not one of God’s peculiar people and he had no legal access to it. His defiling the temple is not the abomination of desolation, therefore.
Finally, the fulfillment of this pattern is seen in the events leading down to A.D. 70, as predicted in Daniel 9, Matthew 24 and parallel passages, many places in the epistles, and the book of Revelation. The Jews continued to do sacrifices in the Temple, right in front of God’s face, after the final sacrifice had been made. They then compounded their sin by persecuting the Christians. They were eventually joined in this by apostate Christians, the Judaizers. The apostasy of the Judaizers is the "fall" of the new kingdom, but as before, God did not destroy them when they fell. He gave them opportunities to repent, but they only got worse and worse. We see in the book of Acts that it was the Jews and Judaizers who kept asking the Romans to persecute the Christians, as the High Priests in the days of the Maccabees asked Antiochus to do. The persecution of Paul by the Judaizers encapsulates the events leading to A.D. 70. In A.D. 62, they slew the Apostle James. As A.D. 70 approached, they massacred many Christian Jews. The final abominating event was the invitation by the Zealot Jews to the Idumeans (Edomites) to invade the Temple and kill anyone not favorable to the Zealot cause. This massacre of righteous people in the holy place, I believe, was the event to which Jesus pointed in Matthew 24:15-25. (See Josephus, Jewish War 4:3-6.)
At this point, God stopped giving the Jews a second chance, which He had been doing ever since Pentecost. They had committed blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, by rejecting this second chance. They had committed a desolating sacrilege by attacking His bride. So, He finally abandoned them. Then He brought in an army, the Romans, to destroy the Temple and the city.
But God was gracious. He went with His new people, the Church, into the Roman world, and made war on the gods of Rome, defeating them. He offers His Church to anyone, including those who think of themselves as Jews, who wants to enter her.
This is the Abomination of Desolation pattern. In our next study, we shall look at the laws of Leviticus, and we shall find two different Hebrew words, indicating that an "abomination" is any gross moral sin committed in the land, while a "detestable act" is immorality mixed with idolatry committed in God’s sanctuary. We shall see that a better translation of the phrase Abomination of Desolation would be "detestable act causing desolation," for it is the Hebrew word for "detestable" that is used in the phrase we render in English "abomination of desolation." This study will prove that it is God’s people and not gentiles (Antiochus; Titus) who commit the sin known as the Abomination of Desolation.
BIBLICAL Horizons, No. 26
June, 1991
Copyright 1991, Biblical Horizons
Last month we surveyed what is meant by the abomination of desolation. We suggested that it refers to sacrilegious acts performed by the religious leaders of Israel, captained by their High Priest, right in front of God’s face in the Temple. Later studies in this series will provide evidence for this interpretation, and will survey the numerous times the abomination of desolation occurred in the Old Testament, before returning to a detailed study of the events prophesied in the New Testament. This time we complete our introduction by surveying 2 Thessalonians 2. We shall see that the Man of Sin in that passage is most likely the High Priest of Israel.
2:1. Now we request you, brethren, with regard to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and our gathering together to Him. This could refer to the final coming of Jesus at the end of the world, or to His soon coming to render judgment on Jerusalem. There was a "gathering" that took place right after the destruction of Jerusalem (Matt. 24:29-31), and so this verse could be referring to that event. In that case, the verses that follow predict something that will happen right before this gathering. On the other hand, this verse may refer to the Last Advent, as the preceding context in chapter 1 seems to indicate. Whichever is the case, the verses that follow deal with something that is in the near future in Paul’s day, something that must take place before the AD 70 advent, and thus also before the Final Advent.
2. That you may not be quickly shaken from your mind or be disturbed either by a spirit or a word or a letter as if from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord is upon us. Every Lord’s Day is a day of the Lord, but that clearly is not what Paul has in mind. In the Old Testament, God’s times of national judgment were called days of the Lord, and so the A.D. 70 Advent was a day of the Lord. Of course, the Final Advent is also a day of the Lord, the climactic one. The Thessalonians were looking for a near day of the Lord, an idea they must have gotten from Paul’s teaching. Accordingly, this verse almost certainly is referring to the A.D. 70 Advent, which Paul tells them is near but not as near as certain false teachers have led them to believe. In my opinion, this understanding of verse 2 settles the question of which Advent verse 1 refers to.
3. Let no man in any way deceive you, for it will not come unless the apostasy [of many believers, Matt. 24:10] comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction. The next verse makes it clear that this is the apostate High Priest, prince of the Temple, no longer a man of God’s law but a man of lawlessness, no longer a son of Abraham but a son of destruction.
4. Who opposes and exalts himself against all that is called God and every object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the Temple of God, displaying himself as being God. The High Priest had opposed Christ and God, and thus had opposed the true meaning of all the worship objects in the Temple. "The scribes and Pharisees have seated themselves in the seat of Moses," Matthew 23:2. Those who reject God make themselves God, Genesis 3.
6. And you know what restrains him now, so that in his time he may be revealed. The Church and her evangelism in Palestine created fence-sitters who were restraining apostate Judaism. An example is Gamaliel, Acts 5:33-42. Perhaps the falling away of so many early Christians into the Judaizing heresy would release the Man of Sin.
My own best guess is that the restrainer is the presence of believers in Jerusalem, whose presence kept Sodom from being destroyed. Their captain was James.
7. For the mystery of lawlessness [the apostate Judaizing counterfeit of the Pauline Gospel Mystery] is already at work; only he who restrains will do so until he is taken out of the way. The Church would be removed from Jerusalem before her destruction; also possibly this means that the fence-sitters like Gamaliel would either be converted to Christianity or would be "converted" to a whole-hearted adoption of apostate Judaism, and in either event would stop restraining. Josephus records that the Zealots and Edomites slew one such restrainer, Zechariah the son of Berechiah or Baruch, in fulfillment perhaps of Matthew 23:35. After the removal of this restrainer, all hell broke loose. See Josephus, Jewish War 4:5:4. Since Jesus had mentioned this man by name, possibly it is he who is particularly referred to here, as one they "know."
My own best guess, however, is that it is James who is referred to. James was martyred in A.D. 62 by a particularly wicked High Priest, Ananus, who was immediately deposed. He was succeeded by Jesus the son of Damneus, who was succeeded by Jesus the son of Gamaliel. Presiding over all these acting high priests, however, was the retired but still active Ananias, the same Ananias whom Paul rebuked in Acts 23:3. This corrupt man presided over everything in the Temple like a spider. Shortly after James’s murder the Temple of Herod was finally completed. If there is anyone who is a likely candidate for Man of Sin, or at least the first person to occupy that position, it is Ananias. You can read about him briefly in Josephus’s Antiquities 20:9, where the martyrdom of James is also recounted. (I might add that according to Luenemann’s commentary on Thessalonians, which is part of Meyer’s Commentary on the New Testament, an expositor named Harduin suggested that Ananias was the Man of Sin; Meyer’s Commentary, vol. 7, p. 614.)
8. And then that lawless one will be revealed whom the Lord will consume with the breath of His mouth and nullify by the appearance of His coming. The "breath of His mouth" might refer to Gospel preaching, which slew apostate Israel, as Chilton points out in his liturgical remarks throughout Days of Vengeance. But the Greek verb translated "consume" is used for Divine destructive fire in Luke 9:54 and in the Greek Old Testament. My believe is that this verse pictures Jesus as the True Dragon, of whom Satan is the counterfeit (compare Job 41). We can correlate this with the outpouring of fire on Jerusalem in the book of Revelation.
The "appearance of His coming" refers to Daniel 7:13 and to Jesus’ prophecies in Matthew 26:64, that the High Priest would "see" (discern) the Son of Man "come" to the Father to receive His Kingdom. When the fact of that "coming" become apparent ("appears"), the Jews will be without excuse, and will be destroyed. Note: the "coming" is not the Second Coming, nor is it a "coming in wrath upon Jerusalem," but is the event predicted in Daniel 7:13 and shown in Revelation 5. Christ came to the Father at the ascension, and this was "shown" to Israel for 40 years. When Israel rejected this "second chance," they were destroyed. Jesus’ entrance into the heavenly Temple "nullified" the earthly high priesthood and the earthly Temple.
Ananias was slain by Zealots in A.D. 66. Those who followed him enthroned in the Temple were equally bad. The whole company of them was brought to an end in A.D. 70.
9. The one whose coming is in accord with the activity of Satan [the High Priest as son of Satan, not of Abraham; "You are of your father, the Devil," John 8:44], with all power and signs and false wonders [see Chilton and Josephus on the situation in Jerusalem just before the end].
10. And with all the deception of wickedness for those who perish because they did not receive the love of the truth so as to be saved. [This clearly describes the situation of apostate Judaism.]
11. And for this reason God will send upon them a deluding influence so that they might believe what is false. [Compare Romans 1:21-32 and 1 Kings 22:19-23.]
12. In order that they all may be judged who did not believe the truth but took pleasure in wickedness.
When the Veil of the Temple was rent, the mystery locked up in the Holy Places was revealed. Parallel to this, the mystery of evil, the counterfeit of the gospel mystery, was also released (Zechariah 5:8; Revelation 17). Initially, many Jews accepted the gospel, but then under the influence of the mystery of lawlessness, many apostatized into the Judaizing counterfeit. Between the years AD 30 and 70, the mystery of lawlessness gained momentum, until it drew forth an Antichrist, the Man of lawlessness, who "incarnated" the mystery of iniquity. Parallel to this social development of wickedness was the continuing building of the Temple in Jerusalem, which was completed in A.D. 64. (Parallel to the development of wickedness and of the false Temple was the development of the true Church and Temple of God during this period.) The statement that this Man sat in the Temple, passing judgments on God Himself (on Christ and His followers), indicates that the focus and concentration-point of this phenomenon was in the High Priest, who was the head of Judaism and thus also of the Judaizers.
It was the preaching of the gospel and the presence of believers in Jerusalem that restrained the mystery of iniquity from reaching a climax (Gen. 18:22-33; Rom. 9:29; Rev. 11:8). I believe that the removal of that restraint happened initially with the martyrdom of James, and was worked out as the faithful Jewish Christians were massacred by the Jews and Judaizers during the next few years, immediately preceding the investiture of Jerusalem (see Revelation 7:3-8; 11:3-13; 14:1-4, 12-20; 15:2-4). Revelation 11:3-13 shows that the death of some Christian witnesses caused many Jews to convert, and I believe it is this event that Romans 11 prophesies. This multitude of new believers were massacred in Revelation 14, joining their Savior "outside the city." This massacre of Christians was the climactic abomination of desolation. At this time, when the Zealots were butchering people right and left, other Christians fled the city (Matt. 24:15-21). By driving the Christians from the city, the Jews and Judaizers drove the presence of God from their midst, leaving the city desolate. The blood of the martyrs of Revelation 14 was poured out on the city in Revelation 16 and was drunk by the Harlot in Revelation 17:3-6.
Thus, Paul wrote to the Thessalonians that the world-shaking events they were expecting were not going to happen immediately, but over the next couple of decades they would watch them unfold.
Biblical Chronology
Vol. 3, No. 6
June, 1991
Copyright © James B. Jordan 1991
By James B. Jordan
Throughout history, the Christian Church has had to guard against the heresy of gnosticism. Gnosticism is not an ordinary heresy, because it does not manifest itself as a set of defined beliefs. Rather, gnosticism is a tendency, a tendency to replace the historic facts of Christianity with philosophical ideas. Gnosticism is the tendency to de-historicize the Christian religion. Gnosticism transforms history into ideology and facts into philosophy. Gnosticism tends to see religion as man’s reflections about God and reality, instead of as God’s revelation of Himself and His Word to man.
The great anti-gnostic creed of the Christian faith is the Apostles’ Creed. The core of the Apostles’ Creed is a rehearsal of historical events: "born of the virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried. The third day He rose again from the dead, and ascended into heaven, and sits on the right hand of God the Father Almighty." The reason the Creed recites these events is that the gnostic movements in the early Church tended to downplay or even to reject them. "It does not really matter if these things happened," said the gnostics. "What matters is the meaning, the truths, the great ideas we get from meditating on these things."
The gnostic tendency to convert historical events into mere ideas is very much alive in the evangelical Christian world today, and in my opinion is manifest in the so-called "framework hypothesis" interpretation of Genesis 1. The Framework Hypothesis converts the six days of Genesis 1 into Six Big Ideas. According to the Framework Hypothesis, the events recounted in Genesis 1 never happened; rather, Genesis 1 is simply describing the cosmic order using the literary device of six "days." Perhaps the most influential advocate of the Framework Hypothesis in theological circles is Meredith G. Kline.
The attractiveness of the Framework Hypothesis is plain to see: It enables us to have our cake and eat it too as regards modern science. Modern science says that the universe is much older than 6000 years, and that it came into being through "evolutionary processes" that do not resemble the events set out in Genesis 1. There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever for the modern scientific view. There cannot be, because the only possible evidence for an historical event is an eyewitness report. The modern scientific myth is based exclusively on a supposition, to wit: the way things seem to be right now is the way they have always been. It is an extrapolation based on questionable assumptions about present "processes." (For a discussion of "process" and "natural law" from a Biblical perspective, see chapter 9 in my book, Through New Eyes: Developing a Biblical View of the World [Brentwood, TN: Wolgemuth & Hyatt, 1988].)
My purpose here is not to deal with the underlying suppositions of modern science, but to point to the clear meaning of Genesis 1. There is no way we can hold to the Framework Hypothesis of Genesis 1 and still have an inerrant Bible.
It is interesting to note that the Framework Hypothesis has been thoroughly refuted over and over again, and yet it has more adherents today than ever before. G. C. Aalders of the Free University of Amsterdam pointed out in 1932 that (1) in the text of Genesis 1 there is not a single allusion to suggest that the days are to be regarded as a merely stylistic device, and that (2) Exodus 20:11 presents God’s activity as a pattern for man, and this fact presupposes that there was a reality in the activity of God that man is to copy. As E. J. Young of Westminster Theological Seminary pointed out in his book Studies in Genesis One (Phillipsburg, NJ: Pres. & Ref. Pub. Co., 1964), no one bothered to answer Aalders. Young himself went on for fifty pages refuting the Framework Hypothesis, and to my knowledge nobody has tried to refute Young.
Recently, Kenneth Gentry has summarized the exegetical arguments against the Framework Hypothesis as follows: "(1) `Day’ is qualified by `evening and morning’ (Gen. 1:5, 8, 13, 19, 23, 31), which specifically limits the time-frame. (2) The very same word `day’ is used on the fourth day to define a time period that is governed by the sun, which must be a regular day (Gen. 1:14). (3) In the 119 instances of the Hebrew word `day’ (yom) standing in conjunction with a numerical adjective (first, second, etc.) in the writings of Moses, it never means anything other than a literal day. Consistency would require that this structure must so function in Genesis 1. (4) Exodus 20:9-11 patterns man’s work week aftr God’s original work week, which suggests the literality of the creation week. (5) In Exodus 20:11 the plural for the "days" of creation is used. In the 702 instances of the plural "days" in the Old Testament, it never means anything other than literal days." (Kenneth Gentry, The Greatness of the Great Commission [Tyler, TX: ICE, 1991], p. 9.)
We can add two other arguments to Gentry’s. First, there are several other places in the books of Moses where we have seven "panels" of things. These seven-step passages cover the same seven aspects of creation as the seven days of creation, but without using the word "day." For instance, in Exodus 25-31, we find seven speeches of the Lord, telling Moses how to build the Tabernacle. The Tabernacle is an architectural model of the world. Each of God’s seven speeches is introduced with the phrase "Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying," or some variant of this phrase (Ex. 25:1; 30:11, 17, 22, 34; 31:1, 12). Allowing for the fact that the Tabernacle is a symbolic cosmos, we can see the seven speeches of Exodus 25-31 covering the same ground as Genesis 1. For instance, the third speech (Ex. 30:17-21) concerns the laver, the sea in the Tabernacle, corresponding to Day 3 in Genesis 1. The sixth speech (Ex. 31:1-11) appoints the man who will build the Tabernacle, corresponding to Day 6 when man was created. The seventh speech (Ex. 31:12-17) concerns the sabbath, which was Day 7. (For a full discussion of this and several other seven-section passages, see my paper, "The Tabernacle: A New Creation" [Tyler, TX: Biblical Horizons , Box 132011, Tyler, TX 75713; 1988], and also my book Covenant Sequence in Leviticus and Deuteronomy [Tyler, TX: ICE, 1989].)
Now, what is important for our purposes is that the book of Exodus does not say that God made these seven speeches to Moses on seven consecutive days. Moreover, there is no "literary device" of "days" employed in Exodus 25-31, or in any of a half-dozen similar passages, even though the same seven "cosmic features" are discussed. Clearly, if Moses had wanted to, he could have written Genesis 1 without saying anything about "days." The contrast between Genesis 1 and Exodus 25-31 shows that the "days" are not a mere literary device.
Second, the Framework Hypothesis has to hold that the events recounted in Genesis 1 never happened. Quite apart from the matter of "days," Genesis 1 makes a whole series of claims that the Framework Hypothesis says are false.
Let’s be clear about this: We are discussing what the text claims happened. Genesis 1:7 says that an event happened in which God made a "firmament" and separated waters above the firmament from those below. The Framework Hypothesis says that this event never happened. According to it, all Genesis 1:7 means is that this configuration came into being as a result of the evolutionary plan of God.
Genesis 1:9 says that God gathered all the waters on the earth into one place, and that the dry land appeared. The Framework Hypothesis says that as an event, this never happened.
Repeatedly throughout the chapter, the text claims that God said things. These are events. We might interpret Genesis 1 and suppose that since human beings were not on the scene, God did not "speak" in audible tones. We might even say that these phrases mean that He "put forth His Word," and thus refer to the work of the Second Person of the Trinity. The point, however, is that the text claims that God did these things, said these things, as discrete actions. The Framework Hypothesis says that God never did these things, that no such individual acts ever occurred. According to the Framework Hypothesis, all Genesis 1 means is that God’s Word (or "wordness") lies behind everything that came into being over the course of who knows how long a time. The Framework Hypothesis denies that there was a certain time in history when God said "Let there be light," and another, different, event in history when God said, "Let the waters teem."
To put it simply, Genesis 1 clearly claims that certain events took place, and the Framework Hypothesis says that those events simply did not take place. The Framework Hypothesis denies the specific claims of the text: The text as it stands is in error; these things never actually happened. All we are supposed to learn from the text, according to the Framework Hypothesis, is the idea that God made everything, and ordered it.
This is a very interesting way to read the Bible! Let’s apply it to John 20. John 20 says that Jesus’ body was not physically in the tomb on resurrection morning, and that He physically rose from the grave. But we "know" from modern science that dead people don’t rise! Maybe John 20 doesn’t really have to be taken with "wooden literalism." Notice, for instance, in verse 12 that two angels sat in the tomb, one at one end of the slab and one at the other. What this means is that the death of Jesus is the mercy seat where God meets with men, for in the Tabernacle two cherubim stood on either end of the mercy seat. Now that we have the idea from this verse, we no longer have to believe that it ever really happened, according to the interpretive methodology of the Frameworkers.
Or consider John 20:15. Mary Magdelene saw Jesus and thought He was the gardener, for the tomb was in a garden. Well, here is the new Eve, restored from her sins, encountering the New Adam in the new garden of the new covenant. That’s the idea. But did she really see and touch the physical body of Jesus? Who knows, and who cares, asks the Frameworker. The point of the resurrection narratives is not to tell us about historical events, but to makes us understand God’s word to us, which is: "Don’t worry; be happy!"
Now, I don’t know any evangelical Frameworkers who would want to apply their methodology to John 20, but what is to stop someone else from doing so? Evangelical Frameworkers want to have both the events of John 20 as well as the theology. In fact, most of them would see that the theology of John 20 depends on whether the events really happened: If Christ did not really rise from the tomb, then His death cannot be our mercy seat, and He cannot offer Himself as our new Gardener-Husband. When it comes to Genesis 1, however, they want the ideas without the events.
Genesis 1 makes claims about historical events just as surely as does John 20. If the claims of Genesis 1 are in error, then there is no reason to think the claims of John 20 are true. If the Bible is the inerrant Word of God, then what it claims happened really happened, and that is just as true for the creation as it is for the resurrection.
Rite Reasons, Studies in Worship, No. 15
June 1991
Copyright (c) 1991 by Biblical Horizons
In Rite Reasons Nos. 9-12, I discussed the errors of Roman Catholicism, Anglo-Catholicism, and Eastern Orthodoxy. I have had several requests to comment further on the so-called Seventh Ecumenical Council, held at Nicaea in A.D. 787. That Council ordered the excommunication of anyone who rejects the veneration of icons. (See the "Decree of the Holy, Great, Ecumenical Synod, the Second of Nice," in Henry Percival, ed., The Seven Ecumenical Councils [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans], p. 550. This is volume 14 of the Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers). Let me set down my comments as numbered points.
1. The Protestant faith has never accepted this Seventh Ecumenical Council as true. Protestantism has accepted the first four Councils, and the fifth and sixth insofar as they refine the formulations of the first four. The Protestant faith corrects the errors of Rome and Orthodoxy on this point, and after nearly 500 years the tradition of the Protestant faith has as much weight as any of these other traditions.
2. The occasion of the 787 Council was to refute the decision of the "Iconoclastic Conciliabulum," held in Constantinople in 754. That earlier Council decreed that because Christ is God and man in one Person, it is not possible to make a true picture of Him, and thus that all pictures of Christ are idolatrous, whether venerated or not. On this point, the 754 Council erred, since clearly if we had had a camera in A.D. 26, we could have photographed Jesus. The second commandment does not forbid drawing pictures but worshipping them. In the Old Testament, the people were forbidden to make any picture of God because they had not seen Him. After the incarnation, however, it can be argued that things have changed. Pictures are now possible. Thus, to the extent that the 787 Council corrected the 754 Council, it was right to do so.
3. I have dealt already with the unbiblical character of venerating icons, and why it is at best unwise to do so, in Rite Reasons 9-12. I see no need to repeat myself here.
4. The 787 Council was indeed ecumenical, since representatives of both the Western and Eastern churches were present, but now we have to ask: What authority does that fact convey? What is the nature of Church Councils? How much authority do they have?
4.1. Christianity is indeed conciliar. The New Testament makes it plain that all believers are joined in the Council of the Holy Trinity as junior partners, and that God guides the deliberations of the Church.
4.2. This does not mean that "ecumenical" councils have necessarily any greater weight than the council of a local church. Just as a local church council can err, so can an ecumenical one. The World Council of Churches is ecumenical, in that every branch of the church has some kind of say in it. Shall we take their decisions as wise for this reason?
4.3. The Bible teaches a kind of infallibility of the Church, which is that the Church can never finally fail in her mission. In this sense, the infallibility of the Church is the same as the perseverance of the Church. The progression of councils in Church history is part of the perseverance, part of that infallibility.
4.4. The Bible does not teach a doctrine of the inerrancy of the Church. The Church, as she grows, approaches inerrancy as she learns to think God’s thoughts after Him better and better. Thus, we can expect that creeds and councils will sometimes err, and we must always be open to correcting them in the light of the inerrant Word. The question concerning councils is not whether or not they are ecumenical, but whether or not they are correct.
4.6. Since the basis of conciliar theology is that man is woven into partnership with the Divine Triune Council, an earthly council is only true and valid to the extent that it agrees with the Divine Council. The counsel of that Divine Council is found in the Bible. God certainly does lead the Church into new applications of the Bible, but no earthly council that contradicts the decrees of the Divine Council (the Bible) can be correct.
4.7. Since the 787 Council contradicted the Holy Bible, the original decrees of the Divine Council, by authorizing (yea, mandating) the veneration of icons, we can be certain that the 787 Council erred on this point.
5. It is clear that the 787 Council did not represent the whole Church. There were plenty of churchmen who disagreed, starting with those who had participated in the 754 Council. Let us assume, though, that by the year 900 the entire Church was agreed that the 787 Council was correct. In fact, let us assume that icon veneration was ecumenically practised in every single Church in Christendom in the year 900. What shall we say?
5.1. First, we would have to say that every single Church in Christendom was wrong in this practice. That is no surprise, since the Church is not inerrant. Just as individuals lapse into sin, as David did, so that whole Church can lapse into sin and error, and sometimes into serious wickedness as Israel did before she went into Babylonian exile.
5.2. Second, we say that the Church continued to be God’s Church and that she did not fail. David did not lose his salvation when he fell into sin and error, nor did the Church cease to be God’s instrument of the means of grace just because she fell into sin and error.
5.3. Third, we say that the Church repented of her sin and error at the Reformation. It is those who stand in the tradition of the Reformation who represent the "Truth-Tradition" of the Church.
