BIBLICAL Horizons, No. 108
Copyright (c) 1998 Biblical Horizons
August, 1998
The three large patriarchal narratives of Genesis concern the three aspects of the cosmos: matter, space, and time. Over these three is man given dominion. Lucifer was originally appointed to train man in this dominion, but he chose to lead man into rebellion instead. Thus, the Angel of Yahweh replaced the fallen Supreme Archangel, and He became humanity’s tutor. In the stories of Abraham, Jacob, and Joseph, we see that tutorial programme in action.
The high point of the material substance of the universe is humanity. Human beings eat the world into themselves, quite literally, as they eat animals and plants, which have converted earth, air, water, and light into food. Human beings interface with God, and through humanity, the cosmos faces God.
Similarly, while the cosmos is full of spaces and places, it is only those occupied by human beings that are important — and specifically those occupied by human beings restored to God and to His programme. As well, what we call the flow of time only becomes significant as it is experienced and governed by human beings.
Originally, God created human beings, put them in a place called the Garden of Eden in the land of Eden, and called on them to learn to think about time and history. God told them that all the trees of the world were given for their food, but that for a time they were to refrain from eating of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, which means the Tree of Judgment. They were, by implication, freely invited to the Tree of Life. Thus, there was a Tree of beginnings and a Tree of rewards. These two Trees bracketed time, and living with reference to them, humanity would learn the nature of time and history, growing from infant Life to mature Judges.
The rebellion of humanity brought about a destruction of these three aspects of existence. As persons, they were doomed to die, and to bring other human beings into existence only through pain. They were exiled from the good land. And, having already seized the eschatological rewards of the Tree of Judgment, they found themselves with no history, no future, because they had already seized the future. Thus, all pagan religions are devoid of historical consciousness.
Ultimately, of course, these three aspects of existence reflect the Father (the Ultimate Person), the Brother (the Organizer of Places), and the Spirit (the Lord of Time and Development). Man, being the image of God, was to develop along these three lines, and God determined to bring human history to its proper fulfillment despite man’s sin.
The Patriarchs
While God promised Abram seed, land, and blessing (future reward), the primary focus in the Abraham narratives is on the seed. Abraham is the earthly Father, who relates most fully to the heavenly Father, and whose story is about sons. The barrenness of Sarah is a major theme in the Abraham narrative, while the barrenness of Rachel is a minor theme, since Jacob had many sons by his other wives. On two occasions, Sarah was taken into the harems of other men, though evidently not defiled. The birth of Ishmael, the covenant of circumcision, the birth of Isaac, the conflict of Isaac and Ishmael, and the call to sacrifice Isaac, all focus our attention on the dimension of person, of matter.
The three promises are reiterated to Jacob. (In the way Genesis is organized structurally, Isaac is a transitional figure.) Jacob bargains with Esau for the birthright, and with Rebekah, conspires to obey God’s command that he be given the blessing as well. The blessing is phrased in terms of land. But Esau is determined to have the land for himself, and Jacob is driven out of it. God meets him on the way, and again promises the land to him. Jacob struggles in a foreign land, but eventually prospers, and returns to the promised land. His exodus from Laban and his entrance into the land strongly prefigure the later experience of the nation of Israel at the Exodus. Once in the land, however, his sons defile his presence, and he is forced to move away from the vicinity of Shechem. Eventually, famine in the land forces him and his family out of the land altogether, and into Egypt. Thus, the theme of land is the overarching concern in the Jacob narrative.
God does not meet directly with Joseph, for the emphasis in the Joseph story is on the guidance of the Spirit. The third promise was that the family of Abraham would bless all nations, and this theme is paramount in the Joseph narrative. As before, it appears that this cannot happen. The righteous Joseph is rejected by his brothers, and then enslaved and eventually imprisoned by the Gentiles. Yet, through the wisdom of the Spirit this situation is completely reversed. Joseph becomes ruler of Egypt in all but name. All nations are blessed by him, and through wisdom and craft he brings his brothers to repentance, so that they are blessed as well. Blessing is something that comes with time, and Joseph’s Spirit-given wisdom makes him a lord of time. His first dreams unfolded a future in which his father, mother, and brothers would depend on him. He interpreted the future for the cupbearer and baker in prison, and for Pharaoh regarding fourteen future years of plenty and famine.
There is much more to be said about these themes, but we must draw this brief essay to a close. The programme of discipleship through which God put the patriarchs discloses to us a pattern that we should take to heart. Before outward blessing and political influence must come the establishment of a people, a "land," as it were. And before a people can be established, individual persons must be discipled by spiritual fathers. Thus, before national influence must come the restoration of the Church as a visible entity, and the Church cannot become a visible "land" entity until the people in the Church have been discipled.
Man’s original sin took place where the process begins. He did not defile the land, nor did he try to set in motion a false future; rather, he ate forbidden food. The sin, located at the primal point of personhood, had the effect of alienating man from the land and of setting in motion an evil future. But the fountain of these outflows was the sin of defiling one’s person. Rebellion against the Father was the primal sin, though it entailed rebellion against the Son (land) and Spirit (future) also.
For restoration to take place, that sin has to be rejected and killed. The original man, now defiled, must die and be resurrected as a new man, to begin the history anew. This is the meaning of blood sacrifices, and is why the killing of a representative animal has to come before human history can begin anew, which is why every new covenant and every victory in the Bible begins with an animal sacrifice. Yet, because the sinful man is not adequate as a sacrifice, a sinless man is needed. Only because the sinless man is sacrificed can sinful man participate in that sacrifice and get a new beginning.
This is why the Abraham story, which is about the beginning, the new person, is a story replete with sacrifices, culminating in the call to sacrifice Isaac. With Jacob we come to a story of organizing the new people into a community, the Church as it were; while with Joseph we see the Church having influence and being a blessing to all nations. Blood sacrifices play no part in the stories of Jacob and Joseph, though doubtless both men offered them.
Practically speaking, then, we need first the restoration of full and sound Bible teaching, and participation in the sacrifice of Christ through the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. Only on this foundation can the government and organization, the visibility, of the Church be restored. And only when that happens can Christendom become a blessing to any nation.
OPEN BOOK, Views & Reviews, No. 41
Copyright (c) 1998 Biblical Horizons
August, 1998
Part 6: Living in a Dying World (continued)
The "Trivium" (continued)
The five stages of education are simply the five stages of the covenant as God administers it in human life and history, and in the liturgy of covenant renewal:
First, God announces Himself. "I am Yahweh Your God." He says who He is. And in a larger sense, this means that He created us and therefore cares for us. He has claimed us as His own in baptism. He hugs and holds us. The announcement is made as the call to worship, inviting all of us reluctant sinners to crawl back into His lap.
Second, God says what He has done: "Who brought You out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of enslavement." This is the basic story: the story from creation to fall to redemption to glorification. It is the story found over and over in the Bible. In the liturgy, it is the call to confess our sins and leave Egypt behind again, and receive His forgiveness and be transferred again into the Kingdom.
Third, God says what He wants us to know and do: All the laws and teachings. This is the service of the Word in the liturgy, and the grammar stage in education: the perfect time to teach children the laws and proverbs.
Fourth, God says that He will apply His laws and teachings to us, blessing us if we keep faith with Him, and punishing us if we don’t. This is the Lord’s Supper, the service of the sacrament in the liturgy, which is life to the faithful and sickness to the unfaithful. This corresponds to the time in education when children want to argue and debate what everything means for them, when they want to push the borders and bend the rules, when sanctions need to be applied to them, when they are uppity, or "pert" as Sayers says.
Finally, God commissions His people to take His ways with them and apply them as they take the promised land, which is now the whole earth. They are to find new ways to express His truths, and apply them to all the earth. In the covenants, it is at this point that we find the songs and poems that people learn and that they will carry with them as they go. In the liturgy, this is the great commissioning at the end of the service, when we are sent forth. In education, this is the stage of rhetoric, the stage of artistic enhancement of what has been learned.
(I deal with these stages in more detail in my study series Your Child in God’s World, six lectures with study guide, available for $35.00 from Biblical Horizons .)
In a larger sense, the whole first 20 years of life are the grammar stage, when the youth learns the facts and principles of life. From age 20 to 30, he works under the authority of someone else, testing the boundaries, learning the ins and outs, debating the usefulness of the old ways and suggesting new ones. From age 30 to 50 or 60 he can become captain of his own enterprise, applying what he has learned in his area of dominion. Finally, in the age of eldership, he has the wisdom to express what he knows in a way that others will hear it: He has finally learned rhetoric.
The Bible clearly sets out these age boundaries in Leviticus 27 and Numbers 1 & 4, and we are making an application of these age boundaries (which are "fuzzy" boundaries) to the phases of human life. To wit:
Age 1 month to 5 years: assurance and stories.
Age 5-20: learner stage: facts and laws, always taught in a context of love and of story.
Age 20-60: warrior stage, within which are:
Age 20-30: apprenticeship: beginning to make applications, beginning to wrestle with a calling. Age 30-60: journeyman: full wrestling with a calling. (Priest retires at age 50.)
Age 50 or 60-: master: eldership; accumulated wisdom enables the man to know the best way to pass on truth (rhetoric).
Now, from what has been said I hope that it is clear that Christian education is more than merely learning something from the Christian middle ages about the trivium and its usefulness in educating children. If we separate the trivium from the foundations of Church (assurance) and Bible story, it becomes just a piece of humanistic technique.
Also, Christian educators need to realize that the cycle of the trivium that takes place before the age of 20 (from memorizer to debater to artist) is only preliminary, and that the entire cycle takes place within the context of grammar, memorizing, learning the heritage. The high school student is not so much an artist and he/she is someone ready to study art (music, poetry, etc.). Real creativity is something for later life, after learning the foundations.
We can see a picture of this cycling through the five stages if we look briefly at Biblical history, which is the biography of one man (Adam). To begin with, the first cycle, for Adam in his already-sinful infancy:
1. Genesis: This is a book of promises, which corresponds to God assurance of love for His people. Repeatedly God takes the baby in His arms and promises good things.
2. Exodus: This is a book of story, wherein God keeps the promises He has made, after which God gives two things to delight His children: laws (which kids love to learn) and a wonderful architectural picture of the kingdom (the Tabernacle).
3. Leviticus: Exodus has moved us to the grammar stage of laws and facts, and this continues through Leviticus. Starting in Leviticus 10, however, we find a series of rules for uncleanness and abominations, which require evaluation in enforcement. God gives them some puzzles to solve, and some matters to debate about.
4. Numbers: Clearly the warrior stage. Organized as an army, Israel is called to pass judgments on other nations, and is judged herself for her sins. The uppity "pert" Israel is spanked many times.
5. Deuteronomy: The book of rhetorical enhancements. Moses takes the laws God gave and provides a wonderfully organized sermon on them to show the new meanings he has uncovered after 40 years of living with them. He also includes a song for them to sing generation after generation, and a prophetic poem.
This is the first cycle, all of which as a whole provides the childhood of Israel, the first 20 years so to speak, forming a larger stage of assurance or acculturation. After which we get:
1-3. The Pentateuch: The foundational assurance and acculturation for God’s people, including the formative stories and the basic facts and laws, for even though Numbers is warrior-stage and Deuteronomy is rhetoric-stage, they still deal mainly with laws and fall in the larger grammar-stage.
4. Judges, Ruth, Samuel: New stories, based on the larger foundation. These books deal especially with Israel apprentice-warrior stage, from ages 20-30. These stories are also a new warrior (logic, argument) stage for what follows with the establishment of the Davidic Kingdom.
5. Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Canticles: A new and much fuller rhetoric-stage section, the culmination of the previous history. Though all of these are highly rhetorical, yet we can also find the three later stages building on the history of Judges, Ruth, and Samuel:
(2). Judges, Ruth, Samuel: Stories.
(3). Proverbs: Rules (grammar).
(4). Psalms, Job: Wrestling (logic).
(5). Canticles: rhetoric of love in early life; Ecclesiastes: rhetoric of wisdom at the end of life.
This second cycle lays the foundation for the third, the time of full warriorhood, from age 30 to the age of eldership. David’s warrior apprenticeship was over when he became king at age 30. Then he became a warrior-ruler, though he was to listen to the elders and prophets.
When we look at the first and second cycles from the standpoint of the rest of the Bible, we can see that as a whole they provide a foundation of assurance, story, and law. What follows in the third part of the Bible is almost entirely in the stage of mature warfare, which goes with our fourth stage of life and education. The book of Kings delineates that warfare and conflict, while the books of the prophets provide evaluations, which are hotly debated. This is the great time of argument and conflict in Adam’s history.
The age of warriorship ends in failure with the exile, but after God restores His people, He treats them as elders, as those in the rhetoric phase of life. No longer are then engaged in warfare and conflict, but rather they are scattered among the nations as witnesses. They now have a complete history/biography to tell, and this is their calling in the Restoration Era. The book of Chronicles-Ezra-Nehemiah (which is one book) is the rhetorical retelling of that entire history. In a sense, Chronicles and the Greek Scriptures (the so-called New Testament) are the rhetorical phase of the entire biography, the transformation of everything by mature wisdom.
Now, this survey of the Bible is not the only way to describe the educational sequence of the Biblical revelation, nor is it necessarily the most comprehensive. It is enough, though, to show that educating in terms of the times of human life is not something grounded merely in scientific studies of children, but is part of the warp and woof of how God deals with His children.
Some Aspects of Fundamental Education
By "fundamental education" I mean those things that should be foundational to the education of the Christian person as homo adorans. We need to consider what things should be a normal part of the education of every Christian, whether or not he goes on to work in the intellectual areas of life. What are the things that the student destined to be an engineer or a postal carrier or an auto mechanic needs to be taught?
Worship and Music.
On the basis of the above discussion, there are some implications for Christian schooling that need to be highlighted. The first is the centrality of worship. That means a daily chapel service. There is no need for preaching in this service, since supposedly the child is learning information all day long. Rather, the focus should be on singing the psalter and Bible passages, and memory of the proverbs. Do this every day for 30 to 45 minutes, and by the time the child is out of the eighth grade, he or she will know the entire Psalter by heart. Why would we settle for anything less? How dare we settle for anything less? Yet, though I have read here and there in Christian school material over the years, I have never seen this advocated anywhere.
Second, we should take our cue from the Bible regarding what is important. Certain things stand out as very important in Biblical education: Bible content, music, martial arts. Certain things are obvious from their absence from Biblical culture: sports. I suppose most Christian schools do a fairly good job on Bible content, but what about music? If the second person of God is the Word of God, the third person is the Music of God, for Breath (Spirit) means the sounding of words out loud, which involves tone and timbre and rhythm, etc. It is pretty clear that worship in the Bible is musical (even if this is not much the case in American Christianity), and we are told that the Father seeks worshippers. The first goal of Christian education is to train worshippers, and that means to train musicians. It is clear in the Bible that the next thing people learn after they learn the Word of God is how to make music with it.
Now, a few people in this world are blind, and a few more are color blind. And a few people in this world are deaf, and a few more are tone deaf. But not many. Not nearly as many people are tone deaf as think they are. The vast majority of people can be taught to sing, and they can be taught easily if that teaching begins as children and is carried through.
I posit as an axiom of Christian education that music is given as much attention as grammar and literature. If "English" is taught for one hour a day, music must be taught the same. As grammatical theory is taught, so should musical theory be taught. As children write paragraphs, so should they do just a little bit of musical composition. (I know that musical composition is harder than paragraph and essay composition, but who knows what might happen if children were given a chance, at least occasionally?) If "great literature" is read and studied, so should great music be read and studied, and just as much of it. Finally, every child without exception should have a musical instrument, if only a guitar or a recorder, because the psalms command us to worship God with instruments.
Now of course, most such students will not grow up to be musicians. Most students will not grow up to write essays or work in the area of literature either. But music is far more central to the Kingdom of God than is essay-writing and literature. Biblical people were expected to be musicians; they were not expected to be able to read and write, because before Gutenberg, few people could or needed to.
The Father seeks worshippers, not intellectuals. It is fine to be an intellectual, but we must be worshippers. And in the Bible, worship means the whole-personed participation that only music makes possible.
High school students should be in choir all four years, just as they study literature and read Shakespeare and Moliere out loud all four years. They should sing through a curriculum, whether they ever perform it or not. They should know the great plainsong melodies, read and study the isorhythmic mass of Machaut, read and study the seamless polyphony of Ockeghem’s Missa Mi-Mi, do a bit of Josquin and Goudimel, wallow in Bach, and get a taste of Mozart, Bruckner, and some modern Christian choral music (such as is published by Fortress or Concordia, not the junk that is too often sung in evangelical churches).
They should study the courtship of man and woman in the sonata-allegro form; reflect on the changeableness of life in the theme-and-variations form; enjoy dance and conversation in the menuetto-trio form, and consider the return to sabbath after a day of work in the rondo form. Well, I could go on and on. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, just consider what you might have learned if you had had a really Christian education!
BIBLICAL Horizons, No. 108
Copyright (c) 1998 Biblical Horizons
August, 1998
He had come, he said, to seek his brother’s advice. I can see that I messed up. But you did okay. I just want a chat. Maybe you can tell me where I went wrong.
Sure, if I can, said the younger man.
Look, I don’t want to hold you up, I know you have to check on your flock. Why don’t I walk along with you? We can talk as we go.
They fell into a steady pace, the grass under foot wet with dew, the flowers vibrant and the spiders’ webs sparkling like a myriad of jewels. He chatted amiably enough to his younger brother, but the man’s attitude annoyed him. After all, I am his elder, he thought. This young upstart should be listening to me, not laying all this guilt on me and dishing out advice as though I were the stupid one.
Their journey came to a temporary halt when the younger man’s heel was wounded by a particularly spiky thorn, but they soon continued, and the more his brother droned on, the more annoyed the older man got. He felt so frustratingly helpless. Everybody was against him. Everybody was ready to give him the same patronising advice. If you will just admit your guilt and do what is right, you’ll be accepted. But if you don’t, watch out, because the serpent’s waiting to get you.
Blood has to be shed they said. Well, I’ll shed blood all right.
The younger man cried out, but there was no one to hear.
Only the sheep.
His blood pumped out of him thick and red, till body and blood were like two separate things: and quietly, sorrowfully, painfully the red earth received it into herself until earth and blood were one again.
The blood appeased him, until he came once again to the gate, carrying his offering in the hand that had slain his brother. He looked at the burnt patch on the ground, near where he had stood the last time, and kept his distance. This time the serpent wasn’t at the foot of the tree by the entrance. Then he noticed it overhead, in the branches looking down on him. Its eyes held him, so he nearly jumped out of his skin when the Voice from the mountain cloud said: Where is your brother?
Why does He always ask questions as though He already knows the answer? – I don’t know, am I supposed to be his shepherd? I’m not the shepherd, he is. Can’t he look after himself? But the Voice said: What have you done? Your brother’s blood is crying out to Me from the ground. His blood and the ground are one. You may till her but she will never yield to you again. Wherever you set foot, she will throw you off. When you plow open her mouth, the mouth that opened to receive your brother’s blood, she will curse you.
He still only thought of himself. This is too great a punishment! The earth’s face and Your face are set against me. You have driven me away and anyone who finds me will feel free to kill me.
Therefore, whoever kills you will suffer sevenfold vengeance, said the Voice.
This time he didn’t jump away quickly enough. The lightning sword caught his face, scarring him horribly for life.
He had to go far away: east, to a land called Rootless. Never again did he come to the foot of the sacred mountain. But the serpent’s seed was in his loins and in that exile his wife bore him a son called Burgh.1 While his son was still young he built a walled city for protection, ramming its foundations into reluctant ground. He called the city Burgh too, after his son. His descendants were like him, taking short cuts to establish their culture, and establishing it by force. They came like thorns and thistles and matured till in the seventh generation from the beginning there arose one tyrant worse than all before him.
But after the shepherd’s death, the woman, Life-Giver, had borne another son. She called him Put because, she said, he had been put as another seed in the place of his brother who had been slain.2 And the seed of the woman continued, for to Put himself a son was born, and in his days men began to call on the Name of the Covenant Maker. They stayed near the mountain to worship, and in the woman’s seventh generation another one was born to bear the name Burgh – but the country and the city that he sought were heavenly, for he was a righteous man, who walked with God.
Here is his story. When he had lived a year of years he came to make his usual offering at the foot of the mountain. As he did so, a miraculous thing happened — before he could carry the flame to his bloody offering, the cloud that normally enveloped the top of the mountain came lower and lower. Inside it there seemed to be a fire folding in on itself. Then — how astonished he was to see four living creatures, each with four faces and four wings. He had heard tell of them, but many had thought they were the foolish imaginings of the ancient father. Suddenly a tongue of fire like a sword shot out from the midst of the creatures and burned up his offering in a moment. Then, just as rapidly, the creatures seemed to put up their fiery sword.
He had fallen to the ground in terror, but a voice bade him arise, and as he did the man face of the foremost creature smiled at him, and with his hand the creature beckoned him through a long-forgotten and longer-concealed entrance that lay just beyond the altar.
So Burgh climbed up the path that never man had trod for 987 long years, forty and seven years after the ancient father who first came down it had died, and 47 x 3 x 7 years in total.
Patiently he climbed till he found himself in the garden that many had thought was only a myth. But if the garden was no myth, then neither would be the two trees in its centre.
He had heard much and seen much in his 365 years, but never had his ears heard, or his eyes seen, or his mind conceived the everlasting bliss that dazzled and enfolded him when with trembling lips he bit the fruit that never man bit before.
_____________________
Notes:
1The word Enoch became Uruk which ultimately relates to Borough/Burgh as in Edinburgh or Pittsburgh.
2Enos means put or appointed.
