This will really help with tough Old Testament passages. A THOUGHT EXPERIMENT ON RIGHTLY UNDERSTANDING THE WRATH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT Imagine you are the father of an infant child who has just started verbalizing words. The infant is at the developmental stage where has effectively learned to call his mother mamma and you dada. It took him a while to distinguish between the two of you, but now he has fully separated and severed the two of you in his thinking by calling by you two different names. You each have a DIFFERENTIATED identity in his young mind. However, the child has NOT learned to differentiate you from other men. He calls ALL men dada when he sees them. He needs more time, more maturity, more mental development before he can effectively distinguish BETWEEN different male identities. Until that happens, calling every male dada is right for him CONSIDERING where he is at DEVELOPMENTALLY. But, for us, calling all men dada would be weird and woefully wrong BECAUSE of where WE are at developmentally. Now, lets apply this to the Old Testament saints. John Calvin, in one of our few areas of agreement, rightly noted how the Old Testament saints had only a sleight capacity to understand the truths of God. The Old Testament saints were not indwelt by the Holy Spirit because they lived PRE-Cross and PRE-Pentecost. The promise of the Father had not yet descended upon and within men. Luke 24:49; Acts 1:4; 2:23. Galatians says the Old Testament saints were children in bondage under the elemental spirits of the world in need of a tutor until the faith of Christ came (2:20; 4:1-9). Put in practical terms, Old Testament saints were spiritual infants. They saw God as their spiritual dada, but they also saw Satan as their spiritual dada because they could not separate and sever his identity from Gods. Simply put, the Old Testament saints had an UNDIFFERENTIATED understanding of God and Satan. Jewish and Christian scholars alike have both noted that the Old Testament view of God differs SIGNIFICANTLY from the New Testament view in one key aspect-- the way Satan is viewed. THE WAY SATAN IS VIEWED explains all discrepancies between the Old and New Testaments. Let me explain. For the Old Testament believer, Satan was an obedient angel who had a tough job as Gods enforcer who was in charge of 1) executing the wrath of Gods curses on disobedient men, 2) dispensing eventual death to all men, 3) testing mens faith by oppressing them with circumstances to see if they remain righteous, 4) hardening the hearts of certain men to commit acts of rebellion so that they quickly destroy themselves, 5) destroying what God commands through war, plague, famine, and natural/ supernatural disasters, and 6) accusing men of their failures before God based on his eyewitness reports. Do you see? The Old Testament saints saw Satan as dadas left hand. They were not able, because of their developmental limitations, to effectively separate and sever Gods identity from Satans identity. Satan is not seen by them as an enemy of God, a rebel opposed to the Kingdom of God on every level, like he is portrayed in the more DEVELOPMENTALLY advanced New Testament. For sure, the New Testament confirms that Satan does engage in wrath, accusation, destruction, and temptation, BUT NEVER under the approval or direction of God. The Old Testament says Satan is just following orders as Gods LEFT HAND, while the New Testament says Satan is off the grid in complete disobedience to God. In short, Old Testament saints see Satan as a Luca Brasi figure. Brasi was a character from THE GODFATHER novel and movies who did the Godfathers dirty work, but who was absolutely loyal to his leader, perhaps even the most loyal. Brasi was an assassin, spy and fixer who always worked behind the scenes to discover and destroy those disloyal or opposed to his Godfather. He rooted out, then disposed of the Godfathers enemies. He always had his Godfathers trust and blessing. This was the Old Testament view of Satan. As THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF JEWISH CONCEPTS by Philip Birnbaum says, Satan...is...identified with the angel of death. He leads astray, then he brings accusations against man, whom he slays eventually. His chief functions are those of temptation, accusation and punishment. Under the control of God, he acts solely with the divine permission to carry out his plots. (Sanhedrin Press, page 594). Rabbi Benjamin Blech similarly writes, Judaism sees Satan as a servant of God whose function is to set up choices between good and evil so that we can exercise our free will.... [His] apparent harshness is merely camouflage for divine concern and love. IF GOD IS SO GOOD, WHY IS THE WORLD SO BAD? Simcha Press, pages 7-9. Author Stephen Harris notes that the Old Testament Satan is not the same entity as the New Testament Satan. In the Old Testament: The Satan figure acts as Yahwehs spy and prosecuting attorney whose job is to bring human misconduct to the deitys attention and, if possible, persuade Yahweh to punish it. Throughout the Old Testament the Satan remains among the divine sons, serves as Gods administrative agent, and thus reveals a facet of the divine personality.... At the outset, some Bible writers saw all things, good and evil alike, as emanating from a single source-- Yahweh. Israels strict monotheistic credo decreed that Yahweh alone caused both joys and sorrows, prosperity and punishment (Deut. 28).... The canonical Hebrew Bible grants the Satan scant space and little power. Whereas the Old Testament Satan can nothing without Yahwehs express permission, in the New Testament he behaves as an independent force who competes with the Creator for human souls.... According to Marks Gospel, one of Jesus major goals is to break up Satans kingdom and the hold that he and lesser evil spirits exercise on the people. Hence, Mark stresses Jesus works of exorcising devils and dispossessing the victims of demonic control. The New Testament, then-- in sharp contrast to the Old-- shows Satan and the devil as one, a focus of cosmic evil totally opposed to the Creator God. This evil one is the origin of lies, sin, suffering, sickness and death. UNDERSTANDING THE BIBLE: A READERS INTRODUCTION, pages 26-28. The renowned INTERNATIONAL STANDARD BIBLE ENCYCLOPEDIA is in full agreement with this in its entry on Satan: The Old Testament does not contain the fully developed doctrine of Satan found in the New Testament. It does not portray him as at the head of a kingdom, ruling over kindred natures and an apostate from the family of God.... It is a significant fact that the statements concerning Satan become numerous and definite only in the New Testament. The daylight of the Christian revelation was necessary in order to uncover the lurking foe, dimly disclosed but by no means fully known in the earlier revelation.... In the early states of religious thinking it would seem to be difficult, if not impossible, to hold the sovereignty of God without attributing to His agency those evils in the world which are more or less directly connected with judgment and punishment.... The progressive revelation of Gods character and purpose, which more and more imperatively demands that the origin of moral evil, and consequently natural evil, must be traced to the created will in opposition to the Divine, leads to the ultimate declaration that Satan is a morally fallen being to whose conquest the Divine Power in history is pledged. Finally, scholar Jeffrey Burton Russell, who has written multiple volumes on the historical development of our understanding of Satan, notes that the reason early Jewish thought saw Satan as Gods servant is as follows: Since the God of Israel was the only God, the supreme power in the cosmos, and since, unlike the abstract God of the Greeks, He had personality and will, no deed could be done unless He willed it. Consequently, when anyone transgressed morality, God was responsible for the transgression as well as for its punishment. THE PRINCE OF DARKNESS: RADICAL EVIL AND THE POWER OF GOD IN HISTORY, Cornell University Press, 29-30. Russell goes on to trace that later in Jewish history, closer to Jesus day, more and more Jews began to see Satan as an evil entity acting independently of Gods approval. This is easily proven by considering the incident in which King David sinned by numbering Israel. This incident is first recorded in 2 Samuel 24:1, and then centuries later in 1 Chronicles 21:1. In the earlier entry, Davids sin is caused by the anger of God, while in the later passage Satan is the cause of Davids sin. Same sin, same event, entirely different cause. The Jews were beginning to see that they could not attribute BOTH sin and punishment to God, good and evil to God, love and hate to God. They began to develop the idea that Satan was an enemy to Gods purposes rather than an obedient friend. Unfortunately, when Israel as a nation rejected Jesus as Messiah, they also rejected the truth about Satan and have since sadly regressed back to their early Old Testament view, as the earlier quotes above show. But lets catch our breath and think about this for a moment. If in the passage above, Satans destructive activity is wrongly attributed as Gods wrath, then where does that leave us? Well, unless we adjust the Old Testament Scriptures for developmental distortions, it leaves us either wanting to throw the Old Testament revelation out altogether as outdated and wrath-infested garbage, OR if we choose to retain the Old Testament as authoritative, it can lure us to digress back into wrathful Old Testament attitudes ourselves. But, I propose a different response, one that allows us to keep the Old Testament as both inspired and authoritative, but also allows us to adjust it for developmental distortions so that we wont slip back into Old Testament wrathful and childish mindsets. Unless we adjust its literal meanings to comply with the more developed New Testament, the Old Testament leaves us falsely accusing God of all sorts of evil events, motives and destructions. We will have chained God and Satan at the spiritual hip, good and evil at the spiritual hip, love and wrath at the spiritual hip--- God is blamed for all that Satan does, while Satan gets partial credit for the good God does. The end result is that the character of God is clouded and men are unable to fully see, trust and rejoice in his love and forgiveness. So here is my proposal. Dont throw out the Old Testament. Just modify it with what I like to call the Jesus adjustment. Here is the Jesus adjustment. When I read the Old Testament. I always spiritually imagine Jesus right there physically standing in the middle of the situation, unperceived by the OT saints, but clearly visible to me as I read the passage with the Holy Spirit. I then ask Jesus what He says about this passage. What would Jesus do if He were manifestly present there at the time visible to all. If I dont hear or see Jesus say that He would kill, maim, stone, afflict, oppress, or destroy flesh and blood humans, then I cant agree that the Father was doing it either. Jesus lives IN us to explain the Old Testament TO us. If we cant imagine, by using our Spirit-quickened consciences, Jesus killing children, or women, or misguided men, then we cant imagine the Father doing it either. Jesus is the perfect representation of the Father. And I mean perfect!
Posted on: Fri, 02 Jan 2015 22:34:47 +0000
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