Iowa Makes Hash

Iowa has spoken, and what Iowa has said has left the political scene in disarray in both parties.

First of all the Iowa caucus credentialed two candidates who are not electable unless they somehow manage to run against one another in November. America is not ready to elect a Black man with the middle name of Hussein who used to be a drug dealer to the Presidency nor will it elect someone who wants to take the nation back for Jesus, even if the Jesus that he wants to take the nation back to is a tax hiking, immigration loving, felon pardoning, big Statist, deity who has nothing to do with the fellow by the same name who walks through the Scriptures.

On the Republican side Huckabee won Iowa by means of identity politics combined with scorched earth populism. Huckabee at one and the same time managed to come off as the champion of the marginalized Christians who voted for him in spades and the guy who is willing to take on greedy Wall Street as the champion for the little guy. He has constantly clothed himself as the ‘Jesus candidate’ from the go while on ‘the Tonight show’ where he said, “People are looking for a presidential candidate who reminds them more of the guy they work with rather than the guy that laid them off,” in response to a Leno question revealed again his not so cloaked populist appeal. Huckabee won in Iowa by being one part Elmer Gantry and one part William Jennings Bryan. Republicans voted for Huckabee in Iowa not because of who he is but rather because he is perceived, rightly or wrongly, as being the champion of the Christian middle class. If Huckabee can continue to tap into that wave he will be able to ride it a very long way.

Elsewhere on the Republican side news remains good for everyone but Romney. Huckabee’s victory adds life to the McCain and Giuliani campaigns if only because Romney’s loss in Iowa keeps him from wearing the mantle of inevitability which would have come with wins in Iowa and New Hampshire. As it stands Romney must now win in New Hampshire without an Iowa bounce or it will be very difficult for him to recover. Because of Romney’s defeat in Iowa McCain looks like the Romney alternate in New Hampshire. Similarly Giuliani’s strategy of surviving until the larger and more left leaning states vote now seems more doable without a clear front runner being in a dominant position. Fred Thompson’s third place finish allows him to move on to South Carolina where he hopes to get a win to breathe life into his campaign and finally Ron Paul’s double digit vote combined with his deep pockets probably insures that he will be a considerable factor in the primaries until the very end.

Iowa has made hash out of the Republican campaign and it is difficult to see how New Hampshire could un-hash it.

On the other liberal side Iowa likewise created uncertainty. The anointed Mrs. Clinton was un-anointed being relegated to third place behind the neophyte guy named Barak Hussein and the populist John Edwards. Hillary isn’t going to go away with this loss but neither is she going to be coronated any time soon as Queen of the Dems. Hillary’s problem in Iowa, despite her money and party connections is her inability to connect with Middle America. Most politicians come across as phony but Mrs. Clinton excels at coming across as phony. Edwards’ second place finish allows him to move on but after spending two years in Iowa campaigning it is an open question whether or not he can reproduce his strength in other states where he hasn’t established virtual residency. Senator Clinton will have to find a way to chop Barak Hussein off at the knees. Being a Clinton she has the ability to do that. The question is whether or not she can do so without coming across like Tonya Harding trying to snuff out Nancy Kerrigan. Mrs. Clinton remains a polarizing figure with high negatives but as I said earlier she still has the party machinery and lots of money in her pocket and so shouldn’t be counted out just yet. If she gets trounced in New Hampshire though, Katy bar the door.

Iowa thus has made hash out of the other liberal party campaign as well, though New Hampshire could un-hash it with a convincing Barak Hussein win.

On the Republican side I am beginning to think that this could be a process where no candidate gets enough delegates before the convention to put him over the top thus leading to a brokered convention with smoke filled rooms and back room deals and where all kinds of antics, hijinks and skullduggery will be on display. As a Ron Paul guy that delights me. On the side of the other Liberal party I don’t think Democrats are going to nominate Barak Hussein unless they have a death wish for November, which is why I still think that when the smoke clears Hillary will be the last man standing.

New Hampshire here we come.

Intrusion Ethic and Its Problems Part I

A couple of days ago I brought up the idea of ‘intrusion ethics’ which has become popular in some quarters of Reformed Churches and Seminaries. This hermeneutical idea is most closely associated with Dr. Meredith Kline, who first floated the idea in an article written over 50 years ago, and is now heavily pushed by the academic community at Westminster West in California, where Dr. Kline taught for a number of years.

What I intend to do in this article is to spend a little time defining ‘intrusion ethics’ and the hermeneutic to which it belongs. Also I hope to give some examples of how ‘intrusion ethics’ work as well as looking at the implications for ‘intrusion ethics’ when they are consistently followed. Finally I hope to critique ‘intrusion ethics’ with a view to introducing grave doubts in the reader as to the legitimacy of this hermeneutic.

In order to understand ‘intrusion ethics’ we must first understand that originally it was developed as a means to understand the incremental growth of the covenant of redemption after the fall. The thinking was that in redemptive history God was pleased to introduce (thus intrusion) a sort of eschatological reality (an in breaking of the consummation in physical time and place) into the period of delay that represents the time of common grace, the period of time that lies between the historical bookends of the fall and the full consummation. The purposes of this redemptive-historical ‘intrusion ethic’ were twofold. First, the ‘intrusion ethic’ serves to bring God’s people into contact with the yet future consummation thus revealing that God dwelt in the midst of His people. Second, the ‘intrusion ethic’ serves to foreshadow and adumbrate the fullness of the consummation age that is promised and is yet to come and presumably finds its inaugurative fulfillment in the advent of the Christ. Dr. Kline offers that, “The Covenant of Redemption all along the line of its administration, more profoundly in the New Testament but already in the Old Testament is a coming of the Spirit, an intrusion of the power, principles, and reality of the consummation into the period of delay.”

By Dr. Kline’s lights this time of intrusion is a time where in the context of divinely sanctioned redemptive-historical temporal forms a time of preparation for a later age of fulfillment is commenced. This ‘intrusion time’ both suggests and veils (suggesting by veiling) the consummation that is yet to come. Within this ‘intrusion husk’ there is an abiding kerygma that anticipates itself.

Thus far this is really quite excellent stuff. The problem though comes in with the application for what Klineans do is they use this ‘intrusion time’ as what seems to be a dispensationalizing tool in order to invalidate those portions of the Scripture that putatively belong only to the ‘Old Covenant intrusion time.’ For example, laws that were given to God’s people as applicatory and explanative of the Moral law are seen as no longer valid for this ‘non Old Covenant intrusion’ time. Klineans hold that the case law as part of and along with the Theocracy that ruled God’s people in the Old Testament was part of the intrusion husk that fell away with coming of the reality of all it foreshadowed.

Now, Klineans don’t believe that the ‘intrusion time’ was taken away with the advent of He who is the consummative Kingdom. Instead they seem to hold that the intrusion time remains but that it is characterized and takes shape differently. Again here we would have to agree with this assessment in general. Who could disagree that there was a certain ‘eschatological nowness’ (thus the presence of ‘intrusion’ in the Old Covenant) about God’s Kingdom in the Old Covenant that informed the clear ‘eschatological not yetness’ of the coming Kingdom? Likewise who could disagree that there remains a certain eschaotologial ‘not yetness’ (thus the necessity for an intrusion) about the eschatological ‘nowness’ of the present Kingdom? The problem with the Klineans seems to be that they have either weighted the Old Covenant time of the ‘not yet’ with to much eschatological ‘nowness’ or they have characterized the age of ‘eschatological nowness’ with to much ‘not yetness.’ This problem is seen when Kline says, “While, therefore, the Old Testament is an earlier edition of the final reality than is the present age of the new covenant, and not so intensive, it is on its own level a more extensive edition, especially when considered it its own more fully developed form, vis., the Israelite Theocracy.’ What Dr. Kline is saying here is that the Old Covenant, at least in some sense, has more of the consummation in and about it then we have in the Church age even after the consummation has come in Christ Jesus.

It is sheer speculation but one can’t help but wonder if this staggering admission is due to the strongly affirmed a-millennial tenets of the Klineans school of thought. Certainly the idea that consummation will only come in a catastrophic in breaking fashion would be served by a redemptive historical hermeneutic that insists that the very means (the application of God’s Law Word to all of life) for seeing the already present consummative mustard seed Kingdom incrementally grow must be held to be null and void for the Church age. By dismissing the applicability of God’s Law Word to every realm due to its putative uniqueness to the Old Covenant – only a a-millennial story line can possibly bring in the consummation.

Another Klinean School tenet that is served by this redemptive-historical hermeneutic is their insistence on divorcing common and sacred realms. If God removed the ‘intrusion ethic’ of the Old Covenant time with the intrusion of He who was the incarnation of God’s Law Word then there is no Scriptural standard by which God’s people, as a covenantal entity, can measure what happens in the shared common realm. In other words by insisting that with the disappearance of the Old Testament Theocracy along with the case law that governed it what the Klineans have done is, by means of Theological interpretation, created a secular realm.

While it has been hinted at already, another problem with this reading is that in some respects it burdens the Reformed person in their explanation of how it is that the New Covenant is better than the Old Covenant. If in the Old Covenant God’s people, corporately and covenantally speaking, had God’s laws to live by but in the New Covenant we have to appeal to controversial notions of Natural Moral law in order to be ruled then clearly the person in the Old Covenant had a better covenant, in the respect just mentioned, then God’s people currently living. In this respect at least it must be questioned how it is that the New Covenant is a ‘new and better’ covenant.

How To Create National Identity

(The state),”applies itself to loading everybody’s brain with prejudices, and everybody’s heart with sentiments favorable to the spirit of disorder, war, and hatred; so that, when a doctrine of order, peace, and comity presents itself, it is in vain that it has clearness and truth on its side; it cannot gain admittance.”

Frederic Bastiat

It is in the State’s interest, especially when trying to manage a unwieldy and geographically unnatural Republic, to develop in its citizenry a shared animosity towards a common enemy. This is especially true, when, as in America, all the other natural common ground is systematically tilled under. When the common ground of a shared faith, family ties, and local custom are tilled under then the common denominator that serves to hold a people together is their shared animosity towards the State conjured bogey man. During most of my lifetime the State conjured bogey man was the Soviet Union. I say it was State conjured because it was America’s policies that propped up the Soviet Union. All the US ever had to do was cease subsidizing the Russian communists in order to see them whither and die. Today the State conjured bogey man is a third world country like Iran.

It would be interesting if Americans could find enough in common to go on together as a people if they did not have a common enemy to rally against. The State, understanding this, has an interest to create enemies in order to create a shared national identity and purpose. This artificial creation of enemies also serves the State’s ends, because when successful, it is the State that the citizenry must look to in order to protect them from their shared enemy.

Once the State has convinced the citizenry that somebody out there is the enemy then it is nigh unto impossible to dispel that impression. This becomes especially so once Americans start sending their sons and fathers overseas to fight. To take up the argument that some State conjured bogey man is not really a threat to US national interests is to automatically call into question the wisdom and bravery of their soldiers and typically earns all kinds of lack of patriotic ardor opprobrium.

Let me say this as clearly as possible. The greatest threat to America is not the Muslims. The greatest threat to America is not the illegal immigrants. The greatest threat to America is not the Democratic party. The greatest threat to America is not the neo-cons. The greatest threat to America is a centralized government whose chief interests are to increase its size, perpetuate its existence, and create enemies against whom it will spill the blood of the citizenry in order to provide the glue the keeps otherwise disparate people glued together.

Chistopher J. H. Wright — On The Law

“The motivation for God’s people to live by God’s law is ultimately to bless the nations. After all, what would the nations actually see? The nearness of God is by definition invisible. What, then, would be visible? Only the practical evidence of the kind of society that was built on God’s righteous laws. There is a vital link between the invisible religious claims of the people of God (that God is near them when they pray) and their very visible practical social ethic. The world will be interested in the first only when it sees the second. Or conversely the world will see no reason to pay any attention to our claims about our invisible God, however much we boast of His alleged nearness to us in prayer, if it sees no difference between the lives of those who make such claims and those who don’t.”

Christopher J. H. Wright
The Mission Of God — pg. 380

If we stipulate that the motivation for God’s people to live by God’s law is ultimately to glorify God and then penultimately to bless the nations we would heartily endorse Wright’s words here.

There are those who insist that God’s law is not abiding as it pertains to the ‘laws of nations’ believing instead that we should look to natural law for the establishment of law. Those who reason this way look to the Old Testament laws and insist that if we are to properly read the Scriptures in a redemptive-historical fashion we will see that the covenantal ethics that were established for the nation State of Israel fall under a rubric called ‘intrusion ethics’ and are no longer applicable today. This is a kind of Reformed dispensationalizing of the law texts in the Old Testament with the result that the greater but temporary fullness of the consummational Kingdom that was represented by the laws that governed National Israel in the Old Testament is withdrawn in the New covenant age only to await their re-implementation in the fullness of the Christ’s Kingdom that appears with the second advent. There is a GREAT deal wrong with this view but the most obvious seems to be this revisionist Reformed theology ends up making the Old Covenant a better covenant then the New Covenant. Also there is the problem that in relation to the ‘now, not yet’ of eschatology what this theology ends up doing is reversing what we would expect to find. What this theology does is that it front loads the ‘now’ in the Old Covenant choosing to emphasize the ‘not yet’ in the ‘age to come’ which Christ has brought in with His birth, death, resurrection, advent and session. In short, this theology under-realizes severely the reality that with Christ’s coming the Kingdom is present.

Obviously such people would strongly disagree with Dr. Christopher J. H. Wright’s quote above. While these radical two Kingdom types agree that the law applies to a personal ethic what they disagree with is the idea of a Biblical social ethic that is informed and governed by the Old Testament case law. Such Theologians can and have ended up suggesting that the Church should not speak out against matters like Homosexual marriage since that is an issue that belongs to the common grace realm. Ideas have consequences.

I will have more to say about the idea of the revisionist ‘intrusion ethic’ in my next post. Also I haven’t forgotten that I need to finish the Dr. J. P. Moreland paper on the problem of to many Christians taking the Bible to seriously.

It’s God’s Story

Different texts have different concerns. While the stories of Aesop Fables may help us navigate this present evil age, the narrative of God’s story that we find in Holy Writ is intended to get us into the age to come or alternately teaches us how the age to come overcomes this present evil age. Aesop fables tells us how to live in this world. Scripture teaches what God has done to make us fit to live in the next World AND how His work of making us fit for the next world re-creates this World so that the Kingdoms of this earth become the Kingdoms of our God.

We must be careful not to read Scripture as if it is a story about us. The purpose of Scripture is to give God’s story of Redemption and what it is He has done to put us in His Story. There is a perpetual danger on our part of taking God’s story and stuffing it in our own personal narratives with the result that God is the kind of co-star whose role is to approve of our story line while making sure that we, in our lead roles, look good. When we read Scripture like this Scripture goes from being a Story about the glory of God as seen in providing redemption for sinners to being a Story about our glory as seen in how we have spent our lives with God as our co-star who gladly conforms His actions according to our script.

The danger of reading scripture like this is that conceivably someone could quote Scripture backwards and forwards rattling off Scriptures from memory like a Brooklyn Bookie rattles off odds for the latest sporting events and yet we wouldn’t have any idea what Scripture means or teaches. To ‘know’ Scripture like this would leave us as ignorant of the Gospel as the Bat People Tribe who have never heard of Jesus who live in the deepest jungle of Borneo.

We need to keep this in mind when we come to passages like the Benedictus which is before us this morning. If we were to follow an all too typical type of sermon we might say something like,

“Zechariah serves for us as an example of faith, all be it tardy, that we ought to follow. Zechariah eventually obeyed God and we should also. Zechariah teaches us that God never gives up on people, even if he has to discipline them for a season and so if we have failed God we can still be faithful and He will give us another chance.”

But is it really the purpose of this pericope to teach us to emulate Zechariah’s example, or is there something about God’s story that we are to draw out from this?

Quite clearly we would be abusing this Scripture if we turned Zechariah into some kind of moral exemplar while all the time missing that what is happening here is that God’s Story of Redemption is reaching its climax. Zechariah’s prophecy isn’t even about Zechariah let alone about us. Zechariah’s prophecy is about God’s novel reaching its climatic moment. All the anticipations and adumbrations are being fulfilled. All the disappointments of the Novel in past characters and epochs that failed are going to be set right. The Hero who will kill the tyrant dragon who has so long unjustly oppressed the King’s people, as so many Damsels in distress, is being introduced into the novel. This is the Hero that has been promised by the King’s spokesmen (1:70) throughout the ages and it is the literary relief that God’s novel needs in order to go forward.

Zechariah’s son will be the last great royal Herald going forth with trumpet fanfare to announce the coming Hero (Luke 1:76f). But this novel has its own twist. Both the Herald and the Hero are rejected by those they came to rescue (“His own received Him not”). Worse still some of the royal people are traitors (Not all of Israel is of Israel) and are in league with the Dragon oppressor, aiding and abetting in the attempt to destroy the Herald and the Hero.

Yet that gets us ahead of where Zechariah is at in Luke 1. Zechariah is one of the Characters of the novel who the author is using to announce that the great King is true to His promise to provide a deliverer to redeem His people (Luke 1:68, 74).

First we should note that the story is linear and has teleology. That is to say that the part that Zechariah has to play in the story is consistent with earlier portions of the novel and is indicative that the Novel has a destination. This Hero comes from the promised house of Heroes (Luke 1:69) – a house that had been reduced to a withering stump (Isaiah 6:13). Further the coming of the Hero is consistent with promises that were given by God way early in the novel (Luke 1:70 cmp. w/ Genesis 3:15) that He would provide a dragon tyrant slaying Hero who would deliver and redeem His people from the clutches of His enemies (Luke 1:71). Indeed, Zechariah being filled with the Spirit of the Author of the Novel (Luke 1:67) can say that this Hero was part of a storyline that includes in it earlier Heroes such as David (Luke 1:69) and Abraham (Luke 1:73) who were literary anti-types of the great Hero in God’s novel.

Second, as we read this part of the story we realize that this story is framed by covenant (Luke 1:72). This is the literary tool used to unite the whole story. Covenant is how God, as a Novelist, brings unity and diversity into His story. The literary tool of covenant allows the novel to keep building while at the same time providing a sense of wholeness to the story as it unfolds. When Dr. Luke wanted to show early Christians that the Heroes’ life and ministry were the fulfillment of God’s ancient purposes for His chosen people, he pointed to the covenants and quoted Zechariah’s prophecy which reveals that believers such as Zechariah in the very earliest days of ‘the new and better covenant’ understood Jesus and His messianic work as a fulfillment (not a ‘Plan B’) of God’s covenant with Abraham (Luke 1:72-73). God didn’t shelf the previous story of the Old Covenant with the arrival of Jesus and start a new story with the intent of getting back to the previous story once he had finished the new story. No, Zechariah’s appeal to the covenant reveals that the characters in God’s novel understood that this was one incredible narrative.

The Novel doesn’t change plot lines with the coming of Jesus. The author of the Novel doesn’t suddenly switch to an alternate plan of rescue for His people all because His royal people reject the Hero. Quite to the contrary this was part of the Author’s intention from when He began writing His novel.

Another thing we want to see about this novel is that it is interactive, which is to say that God’s story is not a story that leaves us unaffected. While it is certainly not the case that we are to turn God’s story into our story, it is the case that God takes us up into His story so that we become participants in his story. Zechariah notes that the salvation (deliverance, redemption) that is being provided by the Messiah is to have the effect that God’s people might ‘serve Him without fear.’ The idea is that having been delivered we might be loyal servants (hence royal priesthood) to God. The redemption provided by God in His story doesn’t end with a people who deaf dumb and mute to the extension of God’s Kingdom. No, in God’s story we are delivered in order to serve. God does not become a participant in our story but we do become participants in His story, and we do so by rendering Him the service a delivered people delight in rendering.