This year, the Jewish people celebrate their iconic festival, Passover or Pesach, from sundown on 22 April to sundown on 29 April in the land and to sundown on 30 April in the diaspora. The Passover celebrates the liberation of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. Whether or not one believes that the event occurred just as is described in Exodus or that Exodus greatly embellishes the story to make it seem much larger than it was or that it is a mythic tale that has no basis in history, what cannot be denied is the central role that the Exodus had and has in the life of the Israelites then, the life of the nation of Israel that followed them, and the lives of Jews today. The celebration of Passover this year takes on an added significance in light of the current genocide of the Palestinian people by the Zionist state.
A Matter of Terminology
Before I proceed, some readers may wonder about my terminology ‘Zionist state’. Over the past months I have struggled with what to name the Zionist state. In earlier posts I wavered between calling it ‘the nation of Israel’ or ‘the current nation of Israel’ and ‘Israel’. However, it has become increasingly clear, to me at least, that using the name ‘Israel’ in connection with this nation prejudices people – Jewish, Muslim and Christian – to connect it with the nation of Israel in the Old Testament. Since, in my view, there is no legitimate connection between this nation and the Old Testament people of Yahweh, referred to as ‘Israel’, using the term ‘Israel’ in connection with the modern state only confuses the issue. However, the terminology ‘Zionist entity’, often used by those who reject this nation’s right to exist, seemed too extreme for me.
Hence, I have used the phrase ‘Zionist state’. The first word delinks this nation from the Old Testament people of Yahweh. The second word allows this state the right to exist in the same way as the other states that currently exist have a right to exist. Just as the former Soviet Union split into 15 independent states and the former East Germany and West Germany unified to form the current state of Germany, so also I do not consider any state to have any inalienable right to exist since its existence depends on the people.
I also wish to distinguish the Zionist state from the Israeli citizens, most of whom are being duped and misled by their government, though, as I will argue, are still complicit in the actions of the government, and from Jews everywhere, many of whom are facing increased anti-Jewish sentiment in light of the actions of the Zionist state. Those who know me well know what I am going to say. But for clarity and in service of being explicit about it in a context where I could be misquoted, let me assert that every human, without exception, deserves to be treated with dignity and without the threat of violence against them.
The Context for the Exodus
Anyway, I was talking about this year’s Passover being more significant than usual. The significance resides in the varying interpretations of the event of the Exodus and its relevance for the lives of the Jewish people today. And in the middle of this, there are varying interpretations from Christian perspectives that highlight not only the fact that, against the oft repeated claim that the scriptures are perspicacious, the scriptures are undeniably and irreducibly equivocal, but also that Christian support or opposition for what is being done by the Zionist state depends, at least in part, on how we interpret the central event of the Hebrew scriptures.
In order to interpret the celebration of the Passover and the Exodus event it memorializes, we need to set everything in proper context. However, rather than start where Exodus starts, I wish to go further back to the last few chapters of Genesis. This is like those who support the Palestinians refusing to accept a history that begins on 7 October 2023 with the Hamas attack from Gaza, but rather insisting on placing that horrid event in its proper context of over a century long occupation and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians by the British Empire from 1917 to 1948 and the Israeli state ever since.
I wish to begin in Genesis 47.20-21, where we read, “So Joseph bought all the land of Egypt for Pharaoh. All the Egyptians sold their fields, because the famine was severe upon them, and the land became Pharaoh’s. As for the people, he made slaves of them from one end of Egypt to the other.” Earlier, Joseph himself had been sold as a slave by his brothers, eventually coming into the service of Potiphar. He had had the experience of being a slave. When he was powerless in the face of his ten brothers he had been at the receiving end of injustice. And in Genesis 47, when he was at the zenith of his power, we read that he had no qualms about dispossessing the people of Egypt and enslaving them under Pharaoh. But this is not the first instance of slavery that we encounter in the bible. That dubious honor belongs to Abram, the progenitor of the Abrahamic faiths, for we are told in Genesis 16 that his wife, Sarai, had an Egyptian slave, Hagar.
Of course, prior to this we have the episode where Noah cursed Canaan and his descendants to be slaves, though we do not have an actual reference to any slave. Hence, the first three instances of slavery that are mentioned in the bible involve the ancestors of the Israelites as slaveholders (Abram), slave traffickers (Joseph’s brothers), or slave makers (Joseph). And incidentally, in both cases that involve non-Semitic people, those who were enslaved were Egyptians. And in the case of Joseph’s brothers, they trafficked one of their own.
This is the proper context within which we are to read the account of Exodus, for Exodus was never intended to be a standalone document but was set up to follow Genesis. Genesis 48-50 serve as the denouement of the book, with all the multiple endings, much like the multiple endings of Return of the King. However, the climax is chapter 47, which sets up a cliffhanger, with the Egyptians being enslaved to Pharaoh through the work of Abraham’s great-grandson, Joseph. The reader, who has hopefully been following the unfolding story of Abraham and his descendants, is expected to ask, “Was this what Yahweh meant when he said he would bless all nations through Abraham and his descendants, namely, that they would be enslaved by the Israelites?”
Context and the Purposes of Yahweh
So when we reach Exodus and read about the enslavement of the Israelites, what are we to make of it? We could read it as though this was the start of the story, just as the Zionist state and its Western supporters push us to think that the history of Palestinian struggle in the land began on 7 October 2023 when Hamas attacked the Zionist state. Or we could recognize that Exodus is the second scroll of the narrative and realize that what is happening here probably has its roots in the earlier scroll.
Before we go ahead it pays to observe that an atomized view of the bible and the history it narrates will almost invariably lead to a false understanding of the narrative and a falsification of the purposes for which the narrative was given to us. In this particular context, thinking that the story starts with Exodus rather than with Genesis will lead to a falsification of the purposes for which Yahweh gave Exodus to us. Similarly, believing that the struggle of the Palestinians is due to the events of 7 October 2023 rather than at least a century earlier, will lead to a falsification of the purposes for which Yahweh allowed that horror to happen.
The Pharaoh of Exodus
As the narrative of Exodus unfolds, the Israelites have been enslaved by the Egyptian Pharaoh. The narrative does not give us a specific reason for this enslavement. We only read, “Now a new king arose over Egypt who did not know Joseph.” (Exodus 1.8) What in the world does this mean? Quite obviously, after four centuries, which is the period between the end of Genesis and the start of Exodus, there would have been no one living who actually knew Joseph. So the text is clearly not making that ridiculous claim.
According to one source, “The implication is that previous Pharaohs respected Joseph’s role in saving their nation” (italics added). However, this all too positive interpretation can scarcely be supported. We must ask, “What might be the reason for which the present Pharaoh did not respect Joseph?” Could it be that this Pharaoh realized that his people had not been saved by Joseph, but enslaved by him? Could this be the reason for which he did not respect Joseph? Could it be that there was a regime change from a dynasty that did not mind the enslavement of the Egyptians to one that took offense at their enslavement?
The Plagues of Exodus
The Exodus narrative continues, after introducing Moses and describing his encounter with Yahweh at the burning bush, to describe the battle between the gods of Egypt and Yahweh, through their agents, Pharaoh and Moses respectively. In this to and fro, Yahweh shows himself to be more powerful than the gods of Egypt. The plagues scale in intensity and then begin to distinguish between the Egyptians and the Israelites. Finally, we get to the tenth plague – the death of Egypt’s firstborn children. The tenth plague is particularly troublesome. For the first nine we can perhaps explain away Yahweh’s actions because, harsh though most of them were, at least they did not involve the death of anyone. Yet, with the tenth plague, we have explicit statements that Yahweh was going to kill Egypt’s firstborn children, not even sparing the firstborn among the animals. Why was Yahweh targeting the firstborn of Egypt? And was this not both excessive and unjust since the Egyptian civilians surely were innocent?
Back in chapter 4, when Yahweh was giving Moses instructions on what to do when he returned to Egypt, Yahweh said, “When you go back to Egypt, see that you perform before Pharaoh all the wonders that I have put in your power, but I will harden his heart, so that he will not let the people go. Then you shall say to Pharaoh, ‘Thus says Yahweh: Israel is my firstborn son. I said to you, “Let my son go that he may serve me.” But you refused to let him go; now I will kill your firstborn son.’” (Exodus 4.21-23) Later we read, “Afterward Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and said, ‘Thus says Yahweh, the God of Israel: Let my people go, so that they may celebrate a festival to me in the wilderness.’” (Exodus 5.1) Is this just an instance where the narrator dropped the ball or did Moses and Aaron forget the part about firstborns? Actually, they could not give the message as related to them in chapter 4 because Pharaoh had then not refused to let the Israelites to leave. Hence, we see that, just before the tenth plague, Moses, while in Pharaoh’s presence says, “Thus says Yahweh, ‘About midnight I will go out through Egypt. Every firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sits on his throne to the firstborn of the female slave who is behind the handmill and all the firstborn of the livestock. Then there will be a loud cry throughout the whole land of Egypt, such as has never been or will ever be again.” (Exodus 11.4-6) Hence, Pharaoh was warned about the grave consequences that continued refusal to allow the Israelites to leave would entail for him and the people of Egypt. Yet, later in v. 10 we read, “Moses and Aaron performed all these wonders before Pharaoh, but Yahweh hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and he would not let the Israelites go out of his land.”
A Case of Mistranslation
Here, a small diversion is essential. When we read the phrase, “Yahweh hardened Pharaoh’s heart,” it is easy to conclude that Pharaoh wanted to let the people go but that Yahweh forced him to be stubborn. This is unfortunate and stems from what I believe is an instance in which a certain theological position, namely Calvinism, has overwhelmed the understanding of the word in a few cases. The word used here is ḥāzaq, which appears 290 times in the Hebrew scriptures. However, as the lexicon entry indicates, it is only in the context of the sparring with Pharaoh, with one exception in Joshua 11.20, that the word is translated as ‘to harden’. In most occurrences, however, ḥāzaq is translated with ‘to be strong’ or ‘to strengthen’. There is absolutely no reason to translate it in the context of the conflict with Pharaoh as ‘to harden’ because ‘to strengthen’ works perfectly well. What that would say is that Pharaoh wanted to continue oppressing the Israelites. However, the plagues caused him to waver in his determination to oppress the Israelites. Hence, Yahweh ‘strengthened’ him so that he would still have the fortitude to do what he actually wanted to do.
In other words, when we first read about Pharaoh ‘strengthening’ his own heart (Exodus 7.13, 22; 8.15, 19, 32; 9.7, 35) we understand that he was able to encourage himself to stay the course of oppression that he wanted to be on. There was no reason for him to ‘harden’ his heart because that would actually mean nothing from his perspective. However, when we read that Yahweh ‘strengthened’ Pharaoh’s heart (Exodus 9.12; 10.20, 27; 11.10; 14.4, 8) the most natural understanding would be that, with the increasing intensity and severity of the later plagues, Pharaoh was losing courage and would have done something against his convictions were it not for Yahweh’s help.
Erasing the Unbiblical Line
So now we have an Exodus narrative in which the Pharaoh could only think of the Israelites in terms of oppressing them. That does sound quite familiar today, doesn’t it? We know of political leaders in the past and, unfortunately, in the present, who can only think of exploiting and oppressing certain people groups.
It is important here to observe that we cannot go behind the text to determine the veracity of what it claims about Pharaoh. Quite obviously no Egyptian record would ever make any statement that portrays their ruler in such a poor light. And we only have the biblical account to go by in terms of Pharaoh’s words and attitude. All we can say is that the narrative portrays this Pharaoh as someone who was determined not to treat the Israelites humanely. And the punishment for this, according to the text, was death of the firstborn.
However, the text is clear that it is not only Pharaoh who will be affected. Rather, all the Egyptians were going to bear the brunt of the final plague. What? But what about Article 51.1 of Protocol I additional to the Geneva Conventions of 1949, which states, “The civilian population and individual civilians shall enjoy general protection against dangers arising from military operations”? When Exodus portrays the events of the plagues, it is clear that the battle is between Yahweh and the gods of Egypt.
However, the bible recognizes one thing that the Geneva convention articles seem to forget. Armies are representatives of the people. In other words, the bible is clear that the common people are as complicit in the actions of the armies of their nations as are the soldiers themselves. The bible knows of no distinction between military and civilian populations. In fact, I assert that it is this convenient and fictitious distinction that has been introduced by the deceptions of the Geneva conventions that have lulled those we call civilians into a stupor that enables them to ignore the atrocities their armies commit in their names.
In the worldview of the bible, everyone is a combatant because there is always the possibility of dissent. Yes, it may cost you your life, as it did for many of the prophets in the Old Testament who were killed by the then reigning kings and for many of Jesus’ first disciples who were killed by the Roman empire. The prophets and the first disciples tell us one truth that we Christians, ever since the Constantinian apostasy, have done our best to forget. The option to dissent always exists. However, when we draw a line separating the military from civilians, we encourage the civilians to think that they can dissociate themselves from the actions taken by the military. And this the bible will not allow.
Just as all of Israel was to be a kingdom of priests and the Church is said to be a kingdom of priests, so also the bible understands that every citizen is responsible for the actions of their government. This is the grounds on which Christians have protested government action in the past. If it were possible to wash our hands off the atrocities committed by our governments, then it would be pointless for Christians to protest as citizens of any country because they would not be implicated. It is precisely because we are implicated that we protest and hope that our governments would not continue with their unjust policies and practices.
What I am saying is that the Egyptians, by not protesting the Pharaoh’s exploitation and oppression of the Israelites, became complicit in those unjust policies as much as if they had been in Pharaoh’s army or cabinet. Hence, Yahweh’s decision to kill the firstborn constitutes a targeted military operation to give evidence for Yahweh’s ability to target all and only a certain kind of Egyptian combatant, namely, the firstborn.
Yahweh’s Patience with Egyptian Complicity
I see some still protesting Yahweh’s decision to kill the Egyptian firstborn. Let us consider what the Egyptians had done. The Egyptians citizens had remained silent as the Israelites were enslaved, exploited, and oppressed. When the Egyptian taskmasters whipped the living daylights out of the Israelites, the rest of the Egyptian populace remained silent. We hear that Pharaoh ordered the killing of all male Israelite babies. This policy is reprehensible in itself since it involved the killing of infants. However, this policy, which allowed female babies to live, would eventually ensure the decimation of the Israelites and the forced sexual exploitation of the Israelite women since they would not have had, in that patriarchal culture, any males to provide for them.
Despite this, the Egyptian citizens remained silent. These are the people Yahweh was targeting. He was targeting those who, with their silence, supported infanticide, genocide, and female sexual exploitation. When many of us today decry the genocidal actions of the Zionist state, supported by the silence of the citizens of that state, what do we say about the citizens of Egypt in Exodus, who allowed the same kind of atrocities to be committed against the Israelites? The Egyptians who remained silent were guilty of Cain’s sin. They allowed their fellow humans to be killed without even protesting.
For more than two decades now, I have been an unwavering objector to any kind of violent action. Quite obviously, then, the parts of the biblical narrative that present divine violence have been particularly troubling to me. In the context of the Exodus, I am uncomfortable with the divine violence that the plagues, especially the tenth plague, portray. How do I make sense of it? Was Yahweh not able to find another way of dealing with the enslavement of the Israelites by the Egyptians?
I think the preceding nine plagues, with their increasing intensity and severity, were Yahweh’s attempt to deal with the situation through other means. Actually, the attempt began with the rod that turned into a snake. When Aaron’s rod ate up the rods of the Egyptian diviners, it was a sign that Pharaoh should have listened to. This would have been a completely nonviolent campaign. The nine plagues that follow authenticated Yahweh’s resolve to deliver the Israelites. From the fourth plague onward, Yahweh even showed that he was able to afflict only the Egyptians and spare the Israelites. In other words, Pharaoh received ten opportunities to change his mind before the tenth plague. The tenth plague was in response to the failure of the preceding ten attempts at convincing Pharaoh that Yahweh would not remain silent in the face of Egyptian injustice. In other words, when we fault Yahweh for the violence of the tenth plague, we can do it only by forgetting that Pharaoh and the Egyptians, who were affected by all the plagues, chose not to listen to ten previous warnings. To isolate the tenth plague, horrendous as it is, from the rest of the narrative is to falsify the narrative, much like the Zionist state hopes to convince us that the conflict began on 7 October 2023.
Mind you, while I can understand the violence of the tenth plague in its narratival context, I still find it particularly unsettling. But perhaps it is there precisely because, by unsettling me, it will be able to teach me something crucially important that Yahweh intends me to learn.
Lessons from Deuteronomy
Indeed, as we move forward in the Torah, we come to Deuteronomy, where, in five instances, Yahweh through Moses instructs the Israelites to remember they were slaves in Egypt. Why did Yahweh want the Israelites to remember such a sordid past? What would they gain by remembering such horror? Let us consider each of the five instances in Deuteronomy.
In Deuteronomy 5.15 we read, “Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and Yahweh your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore Yahweh your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.” So the reason for remembering is about keeping the Sabbath. Strange? Absolutely not! For in the preceding three verses we read, “Observe the Sabbath day and keep it holy, as Yahweh your God commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to Yahweh your God; you shall not do any work—you, or your son or your daughter, or your male or female slave, or your ox or your donkey, or any of your livestock, or the resident alien in your towns, so that your male and female slave may rest as well as you” (italics mine). While in Egypt they did not have a day of rest. It would have been natural for them to insist that their slaves and the resident aliens would still have to work on all seven days. However, the remembrance of their slavery in Egypt was to serve as the motivator for them to allow everyone, including their animals, to rest on the Sabbath. The memory of their enslavement in Egypt was no longer to serve as a way of dismemberment of other humans and animals, but as a way of ‘rememberment’ of all life in their midst.
The second instance is in Deuteronomy 15.15, where we read, “Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and Yahweh your God redeemed you; for this reason I lay this command upon you today.” What command is Yahweh referring to? Once again, in the preceding verses we read, “If a member of your community, whether a Hebrew man or a Hebrew woman, is sold to you and works for you six years, in the seventh year you shall set that person free. And when you send a male slave out from you a free person, you shall not send him out empty-handed. Provide for him liberally out of your flock, your threshing floor, and your winepress, thus giving to him some of the bounty with which Yahweh your God has blessed you.” I will deal with the issue of slavery in the bible in another post. However, here the point is clear. The deprivation that was forced on them during the Egyptian enslavement was not to inform how they treat their slaves. When a Hebrew slave entered their service, it was not for an indefinite period. And when they left their service, they were to be given more than enough to start a life on their own. The remembrance of miserliness of Egyptian slavery was to serve not as a way of dismembering the future life of the slave so he would be enslaved again, but as a way of re-membering him so he could avoid being enslaved again.
In Deuteronomy 16.12 we read, “Remember that you were a slave in Egypt, and diligently observe these statutes.” Again, we must ask, “Which statutes?” There, in the context of celebrating the festival of Shavuot, we read, “Rejoice before Yahweh your God—you and your sons and your daughters, your male and female slaves, the Levites resident in your towns, as well as the strangers, the orphans, and the widows who are among you—at the place that Yahweh your God will choose as a dwelling for his name.” Shavuot was supposed to be a time of joy during which the slaves and strangers were to be enabled to rejoice. The slaves here may or may not have been Hebrew slaves. Nevertheless, they, along with the strangers, who were certainly not Israelites, were to join in the rejoicing that surrounded Shavuot. In other words, at least for one day in the year, the collective rejoicing was to remove all grounds of separation between different people groups. The remembrance of the dismemberment of humanity that the Egyptian enslavement represented was to serve as the grounds for reconstruction of a unified humanity that rejoices together.
As we continue, we come to Deuteronomy 24.18 and 22, where we read, “Remember that you were a slave in Egypt and Yahweh your God redeemed you from there; therefore I command you to do this” and “Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt; therefore I am commanding you to do this.” Why does Yahweh have to remind the Israelites about this twice in the space of five verses? Must be something really important. In vv. 17, and 19-21 we read, “You shall not deprive a resident alien or an orphan of justice; you shall not take a widow’s garment in pledge.” and “When you reap your harvest in your field and forget a sheaf in the field, you shall not go back to get it; it shall be left for the alien, the orphan, and the widow, so that Yahweh your God may bless you in all your undertakings. When you beat your olive trees, do not strip what is left; it shall be for the alien, the orphan, and the widow. When you gather the grapes of your vineyard, do not glean what is left; it shall be for the alien, the orphan, and the widow.” Justice, in the form of clothing and giving grain, oil (from the olives) and wine (from the grapes), which were essential to life in the Levant, was supposed to be guaranteed to the weakest members of society, namely the widows, the orphans, and the aliens. The Israelites were commanded to ensure the basic needs of everyone were taken care of. They were not to facilitate the destruction of the lives of the most vulnerable but were to actively ensure the reconstruction of their lives.
Re-Membering the World
What we have seen from our excursus into Deuteronomy is that the remembrance of the trauma of being slaves in Egypt was to serve as a motivating factor not to ensure that the Israelites would never be enslaved again, but rather to ensure that they never became the people who do what the Egyptians did. The remembrance of the Exodus was, therefore, the iconic way by which the Israelites were expected to break the cycle of dehumanization, exploitation, and oppression.
The memory of their slavery in Egypt was to serve as a way of enabling them to empathize with others, especially the weakest members of society – the orphans, the widows, and the aliens. The memory of the trauma of slavery was not so that they could recall it in order to justify oppression of others simply on the grounds that they had once been oppressed. Rather, the memory of their slavery in Egypt was to serve as a catalyst for generating a society that would never participate in or perpetrate such atrocities.
The current Zionist state, however, has weaponized the memory of the Shoah to justify their mistreatment of the Palestinian people, involving actions of ethnic cleansing, cold-blooded murder, and genocide. In other words, the current Zionist state demonstrates that it cannot be considered the true heirs of the name ‘Israel’ for they have actually not forgotten the lessons of Deuteronomy, but have actively used the command to remember as a way of subverting its teachings by dehumanizing others. In other words, the Zionist state, and those who support it, are those who have rejected the message of the Exodus, which includes the liberation of and justice for all people, precisely because the remembrance of that deliverance from trauma was supposed to ensure the discontinuation of dismembering practices and a restoration of re-membering practices for all.
Can you imagine what a world we would have if the people of Yahweh actively heeded the five commands from Deuteronomy that we have looked at? When they called to mind any past trauma it would lead them to decide that they would never support any action that caused trauma to anyone else. When they remembered how they were dehumanized and brutalized in the past, they would determine that they would always treat everyone in humane and sensitive ways. It would truly lead to the healing of the world. And because of this I am confident that the celebration of Passover, which includes the remembrance of past trauma, is specially designed to overturn the dismemberment of the world and put into effect its ‘rememberment’.
In an earlier post, I had asserted that the current nation of Israel does not bear the name of Yahweh well and, therefore, should not be considered in any way special or chosen. I then asked the question, “Does this mean that the Jewish people do not deserve a nation to call their own?” And I promised I would deal with this question in the next post. However, last week, I published a post about the then upcoming, now ongoing, general elections in India. With that urgent matter out of the way, let me return to my original idea for last week’s post. The question, “Do the Jewish people deserve a nation to call their own?” can be answered from a variety of perspectives.
There can be a secular or non-religious perspective, which only considers the Jewish people like any other people group without any ideas of ‘chosenness’ or ‘promise’ attached to them. Within this perspective I also locate the perspectives of secular Jews, who do not wish to be defined in terms of language found in the Hebrew scriptures. Then, of course, there are religious perspectives. Here, it is necessary to split them into Jewish and Christian perspectives, since these will obviously be different. There must also be a split along the lines of Zionist and non-Zionist perspectives. Hence, there are two non-religious perspectives and four religious perspectives that I will cover. I am aware that Islam may also have perspectives concerning the Jewish people. However, I am not familiar with these. Hence, in my view, silence is the best approach here.
In labeling the religious perspectives I was tempted to use the term ‘biblical’ instead of ‘non-Zionist’ because of my conviction that Zionism is unbiblical. However, I have always opposed the weaponization of the term ‘biblical’ in the attempt to silence opposing views. Hence, it would have been inconsistent for me to use the term here in what is surely going to be quite a polemic post. Also, since I will be dealing with a secular non-Zionist perspective, it would have been inappropriate (and perhaps offensive) for me to label such a view ‘biblical’.
But before we get to discussing the various perspectives, let us define what Zionism is since it plays a key role in most of the perspectives I am considering.
What is Zionism?
Broadly speaking, Zionism is the view that the Jewish people have a right to the land conquered under Joshua and solidified under David and Solomon. While the boundaries of the land under consideration may differ from person to person depending on where the definition stops, an aspect we will deal with at length shortly, using a modern turn of phrase, Zionism believes that the land ‘from the river to the sea’ belongs to the Jewish people.
Of course, as soon as we speak of such a right to the land, we must ask about the basis of such a claim. On what grounds do Zionists claim that the land belongs to the Jewish people? We will address this question within the discussions of each of the Zionist perspectives below. However, we cannot proceed to that, since the definition of Zionism itself has thrown up another term that needs definition.
Who is a Jew?
If you asked someone, “Who is an Indian?” the most coherent answer would be, “Someone who is a citizen of India.” Similarly, if you asked someone, “Who is a South African?” the most coherent answer would be, “Someone who is a citizen of South Africa.” In both these cases, we have considered an identity based on the name of the country.
However, the case of Israel and the Jews is markedly different. If you asked, “Who is a Jew?” you cannot answer, “Someone who is a citizen of Israel,” because this is obviously false since there are Jews in India who hold Indian citizenship and not Israeli citizenship. Further, if you asked, “Who is a citizen of Israel?” you cannot answer, “Someone who is a Jew,” because there are non-Jewish citizens of Israel.
So it is clear that the identity of a Jew is independent of his/her relationship to the state of Israel. But we still haven’t answered the question, “Who is a Jew?” Since Jews of different stripes answer the question differently, we will attempt an answer to this question when we are dealing with the perspectives specific to Jews. With that out of the way, let us proceed.
The Jewish Secular Zionist Perspective
From a Jewish secular Zionist perspective, which provides the foundations for the current state of Israel, there can be no appeal to divine gift since the secular perspective would not permit it. Hence, people who hold to this perspective have to claim that the land belongs to the Jewish people because they were the inhabitants of the land two millennia ago.
However, this is an incoherent claim because, to be consistent, we would need to allow Native Americans to lay claim to the Americas and Australian Aborigines to lay claim to Australia. However, while some people may be willing to go in that direction, it is tantamount to punishing the present citizens of America and Australia for the sins of their ancestors many centuries ago.
Further, from this perspective, there is no way to define a Jew. There are Jews from Europe, Jews from Palestine, Jews from Iraq, Jews from Egypt, Jews from India, etc. Contrary to common belief and assertion, they do not share an ethnicity. Hence, there can be no collective identity for such a group. Without a factor that gives the ‘Jew’ an identity, this perspective shows itself as incoherent even on this ground.
Furthermore, there can be no appeal to a national identity since this is precisely the subject under dispute. If there is no identity for these people apart from a nation, then the nation cannot actually give the people an identity. This undermines the foundations of every nation on earth since right now most people have no identity apart from their nation. And since the nations themselves are arbitrary results of centuries of lurid politics and deplorable warfare, these nations have no more basis from a secular perspective than that they just happened to exist at a time when the secular formulation of nationhood was taking hold around the world.
Hence, from a Jewish secular Zionist perspective, the state of Israel has as much a right to exist as any other nation currently in existence. However, it cannot legitimately claim that it is the state of ‘Jews’ since, as we have seen, there are Jews who are identified with other nations and non-Jews who are identified with Israel. In other words, while I will have to concede from this perspective that Israel has a right to exist, it does not have the right to claim it is a nation for the Jews. Hence, from this perspective, while it is coherent to say that the nation of Israel has a right to exist, as all other states do, it is incoherent to call this state a nation of the Jews. This objection comes from within the Jewish secular Zionist assumptions themselves revealing the claim that the current state of Israel represents all Jews is an incoherent claim. Hence, from this perspective there can be no nation of the Jews.
The Jewish Secular non-Zionist Perspective
Here too, since we cannot invoke divine action or promise, we will have to start with the idea that there is no land gift to the Jewish people. However, people who hold to this perspective would not advocate that Jews inherently have any link to the land. These people would want to be treated as any other people on the earth, neither favored nor disfavored.
From such a perspective, the very idea of a Jewish state would be incoherent since these people would want to assimilate within the nations in which they live. They would want to have the same rights and responsibilities as the non-Jewish citizens of the countries in which they live. In other words, while the idea of a Jewish state is incoherent from the Jewish secular Zionist perspective, as we have seen, such an idea is nonsensical from the Jewish secular non-Zionist perspective.
Of course, since, within this perspective, there is no impetus to create a separate Jewish state, there is also no need to clearly define who a Jew is. While those who hold to this perspective might themselves be non-observant Jews, they would be able to accommodate observant Jews within their camp as long as the observant Jews are not themselves Zionists. Hence, within such a perspective, while the predominant view might be to define a Jew in terms of his/her parents’ (primarily mother’s) Jewishness, it may be able to accommodate those who hold to the view that Jews necessarily must be Torah observant. But here we can see an intrinsic problem that remains concerning the definition of a Jew. However, we are not in a position to solve this issue at this juncture.
The Jewish Religious Zionist Perspective
When we reach the Jewish religious Zionist perspective, we can understand that they would assert that God had promised to give the Jewish people the land in perpetuity. However, if such a claim has to bear weight, there must be absolute clarity about the portion of land that is being referred to. Yet, as can be seen in the multiple maps below, there is considerable disagreement about what the bible designates as the borders of the promised land. After each map I have given a brief comment so that some key ideas are highlighted.
The site from which the above image is taken is run by Orthodox Jews and proposes the widest interpretation of the boundaries based on passages like Genesis 15.18, Exodus 23.31, Deuteronomy 11.24, and Joshua 1.4. However, none of the links on the page actually takes the reader to the verses referred to, let alone the larger context of the chapter within which the verse is found. The site also does not seem to recognize the inherent conflict created by the narrowing of the heirs to the promise of Genesis 15.18 in the latter passages. Genesis 15.18 could be interpreted to mean that all of Abraham’s descendants, including the descendants of Ishmael and Esau, would inherit the land. Indeed, Deuteronomy 2.5 clearly states that God was giving part of Transjordan to the descendants of Esau and Deuteronomy 2.9 clearly states that God was giving another part to the descendants of Lot. Hence, within the Torah itself we have clear statements that the whole land indicated in the map had not been given only to the descendants of Jacob.
The site from which the above map is taken is run by Messianic Jews. I have clubbed the Messianic Jewish Zionist perspective here with the Jewish religious Zionist perspective because I have not found a single Messianic Jewish resource that is not also Zionist. However, their view differs significantly from the Christian Zionist perspective I will be addressing later. The source article here hides the discrepancies in the biblical accounts by changing from maps to pictures in the middle. While the pictures are great, the whole purpose of such an article is lost when you ask the reader to compare the boundaries of the land under Solomon, shown in a map, with the boundaries specified in the bible, shown with location pictures. Also given the fact that the page simply cites (not quotes) verses from Numbers 34 and Ezekiel 47, without indicating that there are discrepancies between the two, makes me conclude that the whole exercise here is one of dissimulation. I am really averse to making such a claim about anyone. However, in this instance, it seems unavoidable. And I think I know the reason for the dissimulation. It is difficult to proof-text that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah and fulfillment of biblical prophecy. Otherwise, most of the Jews would believe he is their Messiah. However, this is what Messianic Jews believe. Yet, one cannot hold that belief while also being honest that the prophecies about the land are not that clear and that there are different, contradictory versions of the land prophecies.
In the page from which the above image is taken, the discrepancies between Numbers 34 and Ezekiel 47 are indicated in the map and the article text. The text also highlights the difficulty of reconciling the account in Numbers 34 with that in Ezekiel 37. Since the purpose of the site is merely to provide maps and not to comment on the maps, we cannot expect much of a critique beyond what they have done.
In the above two images we are faced with three different interpretations of the boundaries of the land. The article does not engage directly with the maps, but presents them only for information.
On the pages from which the above two images are taken, we have two more interpretations of the borders of the land. The associated book is written from a Jewish religious Zionist perspective but recognizes the discrepancies between the accounts in Numbers 34 and Genesis 15.
What we can conclude from the vast number of differing understandings of the borders of the land is that, while the Jewish religious Zionist may claim that God has given the Jewish people the land, this goes against some scriptures, which clearly indicate that God has given some parts of the land to other people groups. Moreover, when the boundaries of the land promised by God are themselves so greatly disputed, it seems strange to insist on such a promise.
Nevertheless, let us suppose that there is a land promise that is clear. Let us assume that the Jewish people were promised a piece of land the boundaries of which are uncontested. Yet, in the same scriptures that a religious Jew would consult to find the promise we also have the promise that disobedience to the Torah will lead to expulsion from the land (Leviticus 18.24-28). In other words, consistency of interpretation would require us to say that, while the land had been promised to the Jewish people, they lost their claim to it when they violated Torah, as the people who preceded them in the land had lost their claim to it. Hence, the Jewish religious Zionist view is incoherent because it cherry picks the promises of land grant while disregarding the promises of expulsion from the land.
The Jewish Religious non-Zionist Perspective
The Jewish religious non-Zionist view would agree with the Jewish religious Zionist view that the people of Israel were promised the land. However, they will also take seriously the promised expulsion from the land for disobedience. Hence, they would say that the presence of Jews in the diaspora is crucial to the Jewish vocation right now. The descendants of those Jews who had not been driven from the land in AD 70, following the first Jewish War, and AD 136, following the Bar Kokhba revolt, were permitted to be in the land since divine judgment had not dispersed them. However, they would say that all other Jews should submit to the divine will revealed in their being in exile from the land.
Many who hold this view believe that, when the Messiah is finally revealed, and remember, they do not accept Jesus as their Messiah, he will bring them back to the land. In other words, they would hold that, till the Messiah is revealed and established, a return to the land would be disobedience to the divine will. Hence, from such a perspective, the very formation of the nation of Israel would be a supreme sign of disobedience to the divine will.
However, like the Jewish secular non-Zionist perspective, there will be a difference of definitions concerning who is a Jew. Those who are religious will link being a Jew to Torah observance, while those who are secular will try to make other bases for declaring a person a Jew. Since both these views have the same position concerning the land and the issue of a Jewish nation, and since I am not a Jew, I will let the definition of a Jew, which is not mine to make anyway, remain unresolved.
The Christian Zionist Perspective
The Christian Zionist is a Christian who believes that there should be a Jewish state. Very often there is the claim that the whole land was given unconditionally to the Jewish people. However, as is invariably the case, the cited article does not mention the verses from Deuteronomy 2 in which God gives part of the land to the descendants of Lot and Esau. Neither does it mention the conditions that would lead to expulsion from the land, as in Leviticus 18. Hence, it is clear that the whole land was never given to the Jewish people and whatever was given to them was never given without conditions. However, Christian Zionist resources rarely mention such passages. Yet, I think I can confidently state that, if we have to silence some scripture to support our position, then perhaps our position is untenable and should be discarded.
Another often made claim by Christian Zionists is that the Jews should be in the land before Jesus is able to return. But Jesus told us that we need to be watchful, ready for him to return at any time (Matthew 24.42). However, if Jesus’ return is predicated on a prior return of Jews in large numbers to the land, then till that happens we would know he is not returning. In other words, if I knew that Jesus would return only after there is a mass move of Jews to the land, then, as long as that does not happen, I can be certain that he was not going to return and his word about being watchful would be irrelevant. Since I do not believe that Jesus has ever spoken to someone with words that are irrelevant to them, I can only conclude that a view that requires him to speak irrelevant words is incoherent.
However, let us assume that the Christian Zionist premise is correct and that the Jewish people need to return to the land before Jesus returns. What would be the purpose of this? Some Christian Zionists refer to Isaiah 11.12 and say that the purpose of this ingathering would be so that the people of Israel would be a banner to Yahweh, serving as a rallying point for him. I do not dispute the fact that Isaiah 11.12 does say this. However, unless we look at the context of the verse, we will never determine if the verse has been applied correctly or not. Here we can see that v. 16 clearly indicates that this is a prophecy about the return of the people from the northern nation of Israel who had been displaced by the Assyrians. Therefore, unless we have another passage post-dating Isaiah that tells us we should apply the prophecy in a different way, we are not justified in applying the prophecy in another context. If we do not have such a constraint then anything goes! Then anyone can apply any prophecy to any context just because that is the point they wish to make. It is clear that Isaiah 11.12 cannot be applied to the creation of the modern state of Israel because Isaiah 11.16 restricts it to the return from Assyrian exile.
But someone may say that those who were displaced by the Assyrians never returned to the land. That is perfectly true. However, this does not require us to view the creation of Israel in 1948 as the fulfillment of the prophecy. But in 2 Corinthians 1.20 Paul says, “For in him every one of God’s promises is a ‘Yes.’ For this reason it is through him that we say the ‘Amen,’ to the glory of God.” In the context of 2 Corinthians 1, it is clear that Paul asserts that all God’s promises have been fulfilled in Jesus. This obviously means that at least some of the promises are not fulfilled literally. With that in mind, it seems clear that the return of the Jews exiled by Assyria was never accomplished in a literal manner.
However, consider the two maps above. The first shows the extent of the Neo Assyrian empire. The second shows the nations covered in the list in Acts 2.9-11. It is clear that the nations covered in Acts 2 included most of the areas included within the Neo Assyrian empire. In other words, per the logic of the Gospels and Acts, the return of the Jews from Assyrian exile happened when Jewish people heard the Pentecost proclamation of Peter, repented, and joined the newly founded Jewish renewal movement centered around Jesus the Messiah. To expect a future ‘return’, then, is to reject what Luke intends to tell us through Acts 2, namely that even the Assyrian exile had been brought to an end by Jesus through the outpouring of the Spirit.
The Christian Zionist view ignores passages that clearly contradict the position. It asserts a claim that makes Jesus speak irrelevant words. It applies a prophecy to another context despite the prophecy clearly being limited to one specific context. And it undermines the role of the Spirit in Acts 2. It is clear then that the Christian Zionist view is fatally incoherent. Because of this their premise concerning the relationship of the Jewish people to the land is deeply flawed. Hence, there can be no justification for a Jewish state from this perspective.
The Christian non-Zionist Perspective
Finally, we reach the last perspective I will deal with – the Christian non-Zionist perspective. This is much like the Jewish religious non-Zionist perspective in that people who propose this view would claim that God had given the Jewish people some of the land. However, the Jewish people were exiled as a result of their disobedience. And they would return to the land only when the Messiah is revealed.
Where the Christian non-Zionist would differ is in the claim that the Messiah has been revealed. Hence, the exile is over. However, because the Messiah has been given all authority in heaven and on earth, the ‘holy land’ has now expanded to include all the earth. Because of this any idea of returning to a literal geographical space because it is somehow ‘holy’ is meaningless. And because all the earth is under the dominion of Israel’s Messiah, who has created one community from the disparate peoples of the earth through his Spirit, any attempt to create a nation that separates Jews from non-Jews is an attempt to reverse the unifying work done by the Spirit.
The Stark Reality
The six perspectives I have considered are obviously split into two large groups – Zionist and non-Zionist. I have shown that the Zionist perspectives are internally incoherent and, therefore, unsatisfactory bases for answering the initial question, “Do the Jewish people deserve a nation to call their own?” I have shown that the Jewish secular non-Zionist perspective and the Jewish religious non-Zionist perspective, while internally consistent, would face a difficulty with clashing definitions of what it means to be a Jew. Yet, from both perspectives a separate Jewish state is either undesirable, the secular view, or a sign of disobedience to God, the religious view. Quite obviously I propose the Christian non-Zionist view within which the ‘holy land’ itself now encampasses the whole earth. Hence, any idea that Jews need to return to the land is incomprehensible from this perspective.
Therefore, I would hold that the answer to the question, “Do the Jewish people deserve a nation to call their own?” is “No!” just as it is “No!” for any people. No people deserve a nation to call their own. This is because defining a nation along the lines of a people group automatically puts in place an ‘us’ versus ‘them’ reality that is the seedbed for conflict. We need to move away from defining our groups in terms of unalterable aspects of our identity.
But someone may say that this would leave some people groups vulnerable to exploitation, oppression, and annihilation by other groups. Well, the truth is that vulnerability is a reality of human existence. Having our own princedoms in the Indian subcontinent did not prevent us from being exploited and oppressed by the European colonial powers. Having their own kingdoms did not prevent the people of South America from being exploited, oppressed, and annihilated by the same powers. Having their own kingdom did not prevent the Irish from being exploited, oppressed, and brutalized by the English.
The lie of the nation state is that it can protect us. But the reality is that it cannot. India does not provide security to Indians. Just ask the minorities who are persecuted within India’s borders. Or ask those who were imprisoned and tortured during the Emergency declared by Indira Gandhi. Canada does not provide security to Canadians. Just ask the native populations there, who have been abused and hounded to near extinction. The USA does not provide security to its citizens. Otherwise, why would they have to imprison the native populations in reservations? And ask the numerous African American boys, like Trayvon Martin, and men, like George Floyd, who have been killed by the America state apparatus.
No! Security is the empty promise of the nation. But only those in power are ever kept secure and they wield power to suppress and oppress the common people. However, the fact of the matter is that all humans can only have lasting security if we humans refuse the seduction of the nation state and its appropriation of the use of violence to further its ends.
For over two decades now, and closer to three, I have believed that the Jesus ethic requires his disciples to follow the path of nonviolence. I make no excuses for this belief and I do not think there are any exceptions. But I am faced with the reality that the bible contains a lot of violence. There are whole books, like Joshua and Judges, that are replete with stories of divinely sanctioned violence.
I am also faced with the reality that, right now a group claiming to be heirs of some promises in the bible are brutally attacking another people group with, most likely, an intention of erasing them from the earth. And to further complexify matters, some who claim to follow Jesus, either think that such genocidal acts are justified or turn a blind eye and deaf ear to the pleas of the Palestinians for relief from the horror inflicted on them by the Israelis.
As someone who insists on hermeneutical consistency, I cannot, in good faith, refuse to tackle these difficult passages and still claim that I am taking the bible seriously. So how do I deal with this disconnect?
Given how many passages in the bible are explicitly violent, it would be ridiculous for me to think I can deal with the matter adequately even in a series of posts. However, I can certainly start! Here I offer a novel approach to interpreting a particularly prickly passage. I have not seen this approach before, but that could be because I have not read as widely as I should have. Nevertheless, I offer this interpretation in the hope that the hermeneutical strategy will help myself and others to interpret other similarly prickly passages that contain copious amounts of violence.
The Chosen Passage
My annual journey through the bible had me read Deuteronomy 28 this past week. For those who do not know, this chapter deals with covenant blessings and covenant curses. With 68 verses in all, this chapter devotes the first 14 verses to the blessings and the next 54 verses to the curses. This drastic imbalance needs explanation. I mean, can we conclude, as many unfortunately have, that we are more likely to incur the covenant curses than receive the covenant blessings? Are we to conclude that Yahweh is actually more concerned about punishing people than praising them? A superficial reading, such as is all too common, will reach such unwarranted conclusions, leading us to be afraid of God and any potential curses that we may incur from his hand. It also makes us prone to having a heavy handed approach toward those who disagree with us. After all, if God himself is more concerned about cursing, and surely those who disagree with us are apostates deserving of curses, then why should we not join God in giving them the rough end of the stick?
In order to go below the surface and obtain a semblance of sanity from this violent chapter, we will first look at the explicit counterparts that exist between the blessings and curses. Second, we will look at the kinds of curses for which there are no counterparts in the first 14 verses. Third, we will attempt to classify those blessings and curses that have counterparts and those curses that do not. Fourth, this will hopefully give us some indication of what this chapter tells us about the character of Yahweh. Fifth, we will draw some conclusions about the current horror in Israel-Palestine.
Curses with Counterparts
The table below shows the counterparts that exist between the blessings in vv. 1-14 and the curses in vv. 15-68.
Blessing
Curse
You will be blessed in the city and blessed in the country. (v. 3)
You will be cursed in the city and cursed in the country. (v. 16)
The fruit of your womb will be blessed, and the crops of your land and the young of your livestock—the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks. (v. 4)
The fruit of your womb will be cursed, and the crops of your land and the young of your livestock—the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks. (v. 18)
Your basket and your kneading trough will be blessed. (v. 5)
Your basket and your kneading trough will be cursed. (v. 17)
The LORD will grant the enemies who rise up against you will be defeated before you. (v. 7a)
The LORD will cause you to be defeated before your enemies. (v. 25a)
They will come at you from one direction but flee from you in seven. (v. 7b)
You will come at them from one direction but flee from them in seven. (v. 25b)
The LORD will send a blessing on your barns and on everything you put your hand to. The LORD your God will bless you in the land he is giving you. (v. 8)
The LORD will send on you curses, confusion and rebuke in everything you put your hand to, until you are destroyed and come to sudden ruin because of the evil you have done in forsaking him. (v. 20)
Then all the peoples on earth will see that you are called by the name of the LORD, and they will fear you. (v. 10)
You will become a thing of horror to all the kingdoms on earth.(v. 25c)
The LORD will grant you abundant prosperity—in the fruit of your womb, the young of your livestock and the crops of your ground—in the land he swore to your ancestors to give you. (v. 11)
The LORD will plague you with diseases until he has destroyed you from the land you are entering to possess. (v. 21)
The LORD will open the heavens, the storehouse of his bounty, to send rain on your land in season and to bless all the work of your hands. (v. 12a)
The sky over your head will be bronze, the ground beneath you iron. The LORD will turn the rain of your country into dust and powder; it will come down from the skies until you are destroyed. (vv. 23-24)
You will lend to many nations but will borrow from none. (v. 12b)
They will lend to you, but you will not lend to them. (v. 44a)
The LORD will make you the head, not the tail. (v. 13a)
They will be the head, but you will be the tail. (v. 44b)
If you pay attention to the commands of the LORD your God that I give you this day and carefully follow them, you will always be at the top, never at the bottom. (v. 13b)
The foreigners who reside among you will rise above you higher and higher, but you will sink lower and lower. (v. 43)
In some cases, the counterparts are exact even in wording. In other cases, there is a similarity of ideas, though the wording is inexact. However, in these twelve (coincidental?) counterparts we see Yahweh painting a picture of life characterized by blessings, contrasted with a life characterized by curses. The Israelites were being warned of a reversal of fortunes. What they would enjoy as a result of faithfulness is what their enemies would enjoy if they were unfaithful. The prosperity that would be theirs on account of their faithfulness would visit their enemies if they were unfaithful. In other words, through these twelve blessings Yahweh tells the Israelites that whatever blessing he has for them, he will give to them if they were faithful but would give to their enemies if they were unfaithful.
However, there are big chunks in the part on curses for which there are no counterparts in the part on blessings. These cannot be considered under the rubric of a reversal of fortunes or a redirection of blessings. And to these we now turn.
Curses without Counterparts
As expected, given the massive imbalance between blessings and curses in this chapter, there are many more curses for which there are no counterparts in the section on blessings. The curses for which there are no counterparts first appear in v. 22. There we read: “The LORD will strike you with wasting disease, with fever and inflammation, with scorching heat and drought, with blight and mildew, which will plague you until you perish.” (vv. 21-22)
A little later, we read: “Your carcasses will be food for all the birds and the wild animals, and there will be no one to frighten them away. The Lord will afflict you with the boils of Egypt and with tumors, festering sores and the itch, from which you cannot be cured. The Lord will afflict you with madness, blindness and confusion of mind. At midday you will grope about like a blind person in the dark. You will be unsuccessful in everything you do; day after day you will be oppressed and robbed, with no one to rescue you.” (vv. 26-29)
Verses 21-22 and 26-29 are clearly an expansion of the curses in vv. 23-24, where it seems the author intends to tell the Israelites that the plagues that had visited Egypt would visit them if they turned their backs on Yahweh. Here, we have direct allusions to diseased animals (5th plague), boils (6th plague), and darkness (9th plague). In other words, being chosen as the people of God does not exempt them from facing punishment from the hand of God when they disobeyed him.
But what about the rest of the verses? A whole 37 verses (vv. 30-42, 45-68) are devoted to distinct curses, which cannot be classified either as counterparts of blessings, as seen in the previous section, or expansions of curses, as seen earlier in this section. And these curses are bone-chilling, to say the least. Even a person with a stout heart would shudder at some of the things described in these verses. Since there is nothing to compare these with in the first part of the chapter, we cannot do a similar comparison. And since these are, as I have said, bone chilling, nothing would be gained by my reproducing them here.
However, we can attempt to understand the two groups of curses by contrasting the ones with counterparts and the ones without counterparts. In other words, we can ask ourselves what it is about the group that has counterparts that distinguishes it from the group that does not have counterparts. Since the text has been created with a purpose and intention, there must be something about the second group that does not allow for those aspects to have counterparts in the first group. In other words, we will be attempting to go behind the text to the intention of the author or final redactor to determine why he could not include counterparts to the second group.
Contrasting the Two Groups of Curses
If we look at the set of curses for which there are counterparts, we can see that, barring the 4th and 5th above, none of them has any hint of violence. The 4th one is written in passive voice throughout, indicating that the outcome of battles will be determined by Yahweh himself. Any violence done by the warring parties only serves the purpose of Yahweh’s blessing or cursing. The 5th one has no mention of violence. However, a fleeing army would probably imply the use of violence. I will deal with the matter of violence during wars in a later post since I cannot adequately deal with such a vast topic here.
However, what we observe from the curses for which there are no counterparts is that they are, for the most part, things that involve harsh, inhumane, and unspeakable violence on the part of the enemies of Israel. For example, having one’s wife raped (v. 30) or being forced to watch as one’s children are taken away as slaves (v. 32) are things for which there is no counterpart among the blessings. Similarly, being so deprived of food that one is forced to cannibalism (vv. 53-57) is something that is described in horrifying detail but which has no counterpart among the blessings. Further, being in a constant state of fearing for one’s life (vv. 66-67) is something that is caused by an ever present external threat that acts malevolently and unpredictably. Let us just consider these four curses briefly in order to understand what we can learn from their presence in this gut wrenching chapter.
The curse that soldiers of an invading nation would rape a woman is something that any woman would be terrified of and any husband would find impossible to stomach. But the curse says that this would happen to the Israelites. This is an action that an enemy combatant would engage in. However, there is no counterpart among the blessings. Clearly, Yahweh’s act of blessing his people does not include a license that they could violate any women. Other nations, in their depravity, may rape women as a part of a war strategy, but God’s people are not permitted to do this.
The curse that one would see one’s children taken en masse as slaves is something any parent would find unbearable. Quite obviously, this is something that an enemy nation would do after defeating Israel. However, there is no counterpart among the blessings. Clearly, while the Pentateuch does describe cases in which Israelites take foreigners to be slaves, the Israelites are not supposed to engage in mass displacement of populations since nothing of the sort is mentioned in the context of blessings. Other nations may include mass displacement of populations as part of their military strategy, as did the Assyrians and Babylonians, but God’s people have no recourse to such an identity destroying practice.
The curse that one would be so close to death by starvation that even cannibalism would seem acceptable is something that most humans would find horrific. Again, this would have been the result of a military siege that deprived the Israelites of food (v. 52), thereby starving them to death. This too has no counterpart among the blessings. Clearly, while the chapter describes this as something the Israelites would face at the hands of some foreign nation, this is something they were not supposed to engage in. The people of God are not to be involved in using starvation as a method of waging war. Other nations may rely on sieges in order to starve a population into submission, but God’s people are denied such an inhumane practice.
The curse that one would be constantly afraid of losing one’s life is something no one would want to contemplate. We are created to live in the security created by a loving God. When this is not realized, we live in a constant state of fear for which we were not designed. This fear is caused by an enemy that acts malevolently and capriciously. This too has no counterpart among the blessings. Clearly, while the chapter describes this ever fearful state into which they would be cursed to live, God’s people are not supposed to create a realm of fear for anyone within their borders. Other nations may resort to state sponsored terror practices in an attempt to subjugate a population, but God’s people are prohibited from resorting to such terror inducing practices.
Bearing God’s Name
What we have seen is that there is a massive imbalance in this chapter because there are some actions that most nations use that are not available for the people of God because they are the people of God. God’s people are entrusted with the job description of reflecting his character. Since they are the people who bear God’s name, God’s reputation is linked with their reputation. What people see God’s people doing is what they will think God allows his people to do. Because of this, God’s people may not engage in sexual violence. God’s people may not engage in forced displacement of populations. God’s people may not engage in siege activity that deprives people of food and pushes them closer to starvation. And God’s people may not form a society in which anyone fears for his or her life.
What we see is that this chapter, which, with a superficial reading, seems to endorse violence of all sorts, is actually describing the kinds of actions that those who call themselves God’s people may not engage in. By extending the section on curses to include abominable behavior, the text is telling us that, while other nations may not have any qualms about engaging in such reprehensible acts, there is no counterpart that would indicate God’s blessing for his people. In other words, God does not bless his people through such loathsome behavior. Hence, even through the explicit violence of a large chunk of this chapter, the imbalance exists to showcase God’s character. There are some acts, commonly done during war, that God will not tolerate among his people because they are designed to rob humans of their dignity and humanity.
In the course of this post so far, I have employed a different hermeneutical scheme than what I have seen elsewhere. I have considered seriously Paul’s claim that, “All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that the person of God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.” (2 Timothy 3.16-17) The purpose of the scriptures is not just to inform us, but primarily to form us. And since the people of God have been called to faithfully represent God, that is, to faithfully bear God’s name, I have used that as the lens through which to interpret the gross imbalance that we find in Deuteronomy 28.
The Inexorable Conclusion
So how would I apply what I have learned about Deuteronomy 28 in the current situation in Israel-Palestine? The case that South Africa has brought against Israel at the ICJ has found that Israel is likely guilty of acting in ways that are genocidal. While Israel’s claims that Hamas systematically used sexual violence on 7 October 2023 have been somewhat verified by an official UN report, another recent official UN report has found that the Israeli Army also engaged in sexual violence against Palestinian women and children. Moreover, forced displacement of the Palestinians has occurred even before the nakba of 1948 and continues to this date. The siege of Gaza that has existed since Israel’s withdrawal 2005 has included keeping the populace at a minimal nutritional level. This has become all the more severe since October 2023, with Israel not permitting even humanitarian aid to reach the residents of Gaza. In addition to this, Palestinians live in a constant state of fear (see here, here, and here). In other words, Israel has committed all four actions that are specifically not to be done by the people of God. What can we conclude from this?
Israel has acted in ways that Deuteronomy 28 indicates the nations that are not God’s people will act. In other words, there is no way to refuse to draw the conclusion that, by engaging in actions that God’s people were not supposed to engage in, Israel has declared itself not be the people of God. That is, this nation, by engaging in the four deplorable acts, has asked God and the world to treat it as though it were not the people of God. And I think we should comply with this tacit request.
Some people may say that this proves I am anti-Jewish.1 I am not. I am against the current nation that calls itself ‘Israel’ because it has co-opted a holy name from the bible and used it to oppress and kill people. There are other reasons, but this one is most pressing and is enough for this post.
What we have seen is that a careful study of Deuteronomy 28 reveals the line that distinguishes God’s people from the other nations. Those who cross the line by committing acts described within the realm of the curses have exempted themselves from being classified as those for whom such actions are prohibited. But since such an argument may still not be convincing, allow me the luxury of a couple of illustrations.
Suppose I am a particularly bad driver, who violates traffic rules left, right, and center. A policewoman is well within her rights to stop me and confiscate my license after a few run-ins with the traffic cops. My decision to not obey the traffic rules results in my exclusion from the community of people who are given the privilege to drive. I can no longer claim to be a person who is licensed to drive in India.
Or suppose I am a landlord and have rented an apartment to a family. I stipulate some rules that they must follow. I can do this because the apartment belongs to me, not to them. Now suppose the family violates some of my rules. I am then well within my rights to evict them from my apartment. They then can no longer say that their home is where my apartment is. Nor can they associate themselves with me any longer. They will no longer be my tenants.
Actually, this second illustration is not far from the truth. First, in Leviticus 25.23, Yahweh says, “The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine; with me you are but aliens and tenants.” In other words, contrary to the common assertion that the Jewish people were granted a piece of land in the Levant in perpetuity, Leviticus says that they are actually tenants in Yahweh’s land. Second, as part of the curses in Deuteronomy 28, v. 63 declares, “And just as the Lord took delight in making you prosperous and numerous, so the Lord will take delight in bringing you to ruin and destruction; you shall be plucked off the land that you are entering to possess.” So on the one hand, Leviticus says that the Israelites were tenants. On the other hand, Deuteronomy says that if they disobey Yahweh, they will be ‘plucked off the land’. Only someone who refuses to see the logic of these two statements can avoid reaching the conclusion that the current state of Israel actually has no rights to the land since they are guilty of violating God’s laws, especially the four that we have dealt with in this post.
The current nation of Israel does not bear the name of Yahweh well among the nations and hence is not authorized to claim the blessings that Yahweh promised to the nation that would bear his name well. It has, in other words, excluded itself from being called a nation under Yahweh and is just like any other nation on this earth. It has no special status since it has wilfully committed precisely those acts that the people of Yahweh are prohibited from committing.
Does this mean that the Jewish people do not deserve a nation to call their own? I will turn to that question in the next post. But for now it seems clear that, given the actions of the current state of Israel, it has, like Esau, sold its birthright and has declared itself not to be the people of God by any accounting.
See my post Hoping for the Rubble, where, in footnote 1, I explain why I no longer use the term ‘anti-Semitic’. ↩︎
The word ‘Armageddon’ has captured the imagination of many people around the world. Commonly taken to refer to a war of unbelievable magnitude, Movie Flavor reports that there are 29 movies that have the word ‘Armageddon’ in their titles. They have overcounted, but the point still stands. And the question must be asked: What is it about this word that has scriptwriters, directors and producers reaching out for it?
The word ‘Armageddon’ appears only once in the bible, in Revelation 16.16, where we read, “And the demonic spirits assembled the kings at the place that in Hebrew is called Harmagedon.” Here note that the word ‘harmegedon’ is a transliteration of the Greek in Revelation 16.16. Most English translations, following the King James Version, render it as ‘Armageddon’. Since the most common usage of the word in English is ‘Armageddon’ and since nothing significant is lost by using this rendition, I will follow suit in this post.
The most common interpretation of the significance of Armageddon is that it will be the location of the final battle between the returning Jesus and all his enemies. However, is this actually borne out in the text of Revelation? In order to answer that question, we need to determine the place of this solitary mention of Armageddon in the narrative of the book and interpret is carefully from within that context.
The book of Revelation is famously characterized by references to or sequences of sevens. The reference to Armageddon comes in the sequence of the seven bowls of the wrath of God. As usual, interpreting any part of the bible (or any text for that matter) should take into account as much of the context as possible. Since the whole set of seven bowls comprises one single movement in the narrative, it is unhelpful to interpret any of the bowls apart from the others. Hence, I ask the reader to indulge me as I quote the entire 16th chapter.
The Seven Bowls
Then I heard a loud voice from the temple telling the seven angels, “Go and pour out on the earth the seven bowls of the wrath of God.”
So the first angel went and poured his bowl on the earth, and a foul and painful sore came on those who had the brand of the beast and who worshiped its image.
The second angel poured his bowl into the sea, and it became like the blood of a corpse, and every living thing in the sea died.
The third angel poured his bowl into the rivers and the springs of water, and they became blood. And I heard the angel of the waters say, “You are just, O Holy One, who are and were, for you have judged these things; because they shed the blood of saints and prophets, you have given them blood to drink. It is what they deserve!” And I heard the altar respond, “Yes, O Lord God, the Almighty, your judgments are true and just!”
The fourth angel poured his bowl on the sun, and it was allowed to scorch people with fire; they were scorched by the fierce heat, but they cursed the name of God, who had authority over these plagues, and they did not repent and give him glory.
The fifth angel poured his bowl on the throne of the beast, and its kingdom was plunged into darkness; people gnawed their tongues in agony and cursed the God of heaven because of their pains and sores, and they did not repent of their deeds.
The sixth angel poured his bowl on the great River Euphrates, and its water was dried up in order to prepare the way for the kings from the east. And I saw three foul spirits like frogs coming from the mouth of the dragon, from the mouth of the beast, and from the mouth of the false prophet. These are demonic spirits, performing signs, who go abroad to the kings of the whole world, to assemble them for battle on the great day of God the Almighty.(“See, I am coming like a thief! Blessed is the one who stays awake and is clothed, not going about naked and exposed to shame.”) And the demonic spirits assembled the kings at the place that in Hebrew is called Harmagedon.
The seventh angel poured his bowl into the air, and a loud voice came out of the temple, from the throne, saying, “It is done!” And there came flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder, and a violent earthquake, such as had not occurred since people were upon the earth, so violent was that earthquake. The great city was split into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell. God remembered great Babylon and gave her the wine cup of the fury of his wrath. And every island fled away, and no mountains were to be found, and huge hailstones, each weighing about a hundred pounds, dropped from heaven on people, until they cursed God for the plague of the hail, so fearful was that plague.
The Theme of the Bowls
If there is a theme to the seven bowls it is that God’s wrath is poured out on those who are allied with the beast with the intention of rendering them unable to function. Bowl 1: Painful sores would incapacitate them. Bowls 2 and 3: Blood in the seas and the rivers would affect their water supply. Bowl 4: Hot sunlight would scorch them and make them unable to function. Bowl 5: Darkness would place them in an environment deprived of light. Bowl 7: Lightning, thunder and earthquakes would threaten their lives. In other words the six bowls other than the sixth are all about frustrating the plans of those who have decided to rally against God and the Lamb. This must be the governing principle which should guide our interpretation of the sixth bowl.
In other words, any attempt to interpret the sixth bowl without looking at the overarching theme of the cycle of bowls itself is misguided at best and intentionally misleading at worst. Of course, there are many examples of the latter approach, primarily from preachers in the affluent Western countries who erroneously think that their affluence automatically places them on God’s side. And many of them are so committed to militarism that I seriously wonder if they are reading the same book as I am!
Coming back to the bowls, each of them makes it difficult or impossible for the humans who have sided with the forces of evil to function adequately. While the language used does describe some damage being brought upon the earth, the focus is not on this environmental damage but on how this damage adversely affects those who have declared themselves to be God’s enemies. It is this, then, that must guide us as we attempt to understand the sixth bowl and the role of Armageddon in the narrative.
However, before we proceed to look more closely at the sixth bowl, let us take a brief excursus as look at the last part of Revelation 19, where most people think the battle of Armageddon takes place because what we will discover there will help us in our interpretation of the sixth bowl.
The Non-Battle of Armageddon
In Revelation 19.19-21 we read, “Then I saw the beast and the kings of the earth with their armies gathered to wage war against the rider on the horse and against his army. And the beast was captured, and with it the false prophet who had performed in its presence the signs by which he deceived those who had received the brand of the beast and those who worshiped its image. These two were thrown alive into the lake of fire that burns with sulfur. And the rest were killed by the sword of the rider on the horse, the sword that came from his mouth, and all the birds were gorged with their flesh.”
Did you see it? Did you see the great description of the battle? We read that the beast and the armies of the kings of the earth were gathered to wage war. The next thing we read is, “And the beast was captured.” Where is the battle? We read only of a gathering to wage war and then of the capture. What is conspicuous by its absence is any mention of any actual warfare.
This is a common strategy in Revelation. John builds the tension and anticipation of the reader with indications to look here or see something. But when John actually looks he sees something completely different. The pre-eminent case of this is in chapter 5, where John is asked to look at the Lion of the tribe of Judah only to find the Lion conspicuously absent and only the slaughtered Lamb present.
In chapter 19 too, ever since chapter 16 and the mention of Armageddon, the reader is expecting there to be a great showdown between the Lamb and the beast with each of them having their armies alongside. The interlude in chapters 17 and 18 describing the fall of Babylon only increases the anticipation with the destruction of one of the lesser, though not inconsequential, actors. When the rider on the white horse shows up in the middle of Revelation 19, the reader would surely be thinking that the battle, which was put off for the interlude concerning Babylon, would now be the focus of the narrative.
However, if that was what the reader was expecting, she would be sorely disappointed because John only tells us about the capture of the beast and the false prophet without even one word about the actual battle? I know I am speculating here, but I can imagine that those who first heard the book being read aloud would have asked the reader to do a double take here to confirm that there was no description of this greatly anticipated battle. And I’m sure they would have been confused about this seemingly unacceptable omission. However, if they had the opportunity to go back to chapter 16 they would have been able to understand that, from what John has written in chapter 16, we should not have had any expectation of a battle!
The Non-Place of the Non-Battle
As mentioned earlier, John tells us in chapter 16 that the demonic spirits assembled the armies at a place called Armageddon in Hebrew. Most often this is taken to mean ‘mountain of Megiddo’. However, Michael Heiser objects to this in The Naked Bible Podcastepisode 392. Since his argument is quite involved, indulge me while I quote a large chuck from the episode. Heiser says, “Har Magedon means ‘mount of’ something. And it can’t be Megiddo, because there is no mountain there. Anyone who’s been to the site, the first question should be to your tour guide, ‘Where is the mountain?’ Because there isn’t any. It’s a plain. So Kline thought, ‘What if we’re not dealing with Hebrew M-G-D (the first three consonants of Megiddo)?’ What if instead we have har and then mem, ’ayin (the other Hebrew consonant that has that G sound). Like Gomorrah is actually not spelled with Hebrew G (gimel); it’s spelled with ’ayin (’amorah). It has that back of the throat G sound. So Kline’s like, ‘Well, what if we have mem ’ayin daleth? And we have har mōʿed?’ And as soon as he came to that observation, the whole thing opened up. Because har mōʿed is the mount of assembly from Isaiah 14. This is where God rules. It’s Zion. It’s Jerusalem.”
The last claim, however, is patently false! Isaiah 14 does mention a ‘mount of assembly’. However, the parallel in v. 13 is with Mount Zaphon and not Mount Zion. And Mount Zaphon was on the eastern side of the Jordan between the Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee, in other words, nowhere even near Jerusalem. This kind of misleading of readers or listeners to make a point is really sad and I have to admit that I have lost quite a bit of respect for Kline and Heiser because of this. Unfortunately, there are so many sites online that seem to have not bothered to check either the text of Isaiah or the geography of the region and who have bought hook, line, and sinker into what Kline and Heiser have proposed. It’s time we stop being gullible consumers!
Anyway, since Heiser is speaking off the cuff here, the sentences are all broken and disjointed and not entirely coherent. So let me explain his point. He recognizes that there is no mountain in Megiddo because it’s a plain. So he concludes that it cannot refer to Megiddo. What then could it refer to? He picks up an argument from Meredith G. Kline, which goes as follows. There are two Hebrew letters that could have the ‘g’ sound. One is obviously the gimel. The other is the ‘ayin. Kline observes that the place name ‘Gomorrah’ is spelled with a leading ‘ayin in Hebrew but is pronounced with a leading ‘g’ sound as indicated by the word itself, i.e. Gomorrah. Hence, Kline suggests that when John writes ‘harmagedon’ and refers to a Hebrew place name, he intends us to understand that the first three consonants are not mem (‘m’), gimel (hard ‘g’) and daleth (‘d’) but mem (‘m’), ‘ayin (guttural ‘g’) and daleth (‘d’). Kline then proposes that this indicates the Hebrew word har mo’ed, which means ‘mount of assembly’. He then claims that this is a reference to Jerusalem, a point that I have strongly disputed above.
Granted that Greek has no way of rendering the Hebrew ‘ayin, the above argument about ‘har mo’ed’ might make sense, except for three glaring reasons that both Kline and Heiser fail to observe, even though these points are glaringly obvious. First, the Hebrew text during the first century did not have any vowel pointing. Hence, any reference in the Old Testament to the assembly would have read ‘mw’d’. Note, that I have added a ‘w’ to indicate the ‘waw’ that always appears in the Hebrew and indicates the initial ‘o’ vowel sound. However, if John intended magedon to refer to assembly in Hebrew, why did he not write mogedon, with an initial ‘o’ vowel sound? After all, Greek has the letters omicron and omega that could provide an ‘o’ sound. Yet, John chose to write magedon, with the first vowel being an alpha rather than either an omicron or an omega, strongly suggesting he was not thinking of ‘mo’ed’.
Second, relying on the leading consonant in Gomorrah is worse than circular reasoning. We have already admitted that Greek has no way of rendering the ‘ayin sound. Hence, any alphabetic rendering of it must be ad hoc in nature rather than universal, especially since ‘ayin itself was known to have multiple sounds. We ourselves know that ‘g’, for example, can have a hard sound as in ‘gut’ or a soft sound as in ‘giraffe’. Finding that it has a hard sound in any particular word does not tell us anything about how it should be pronounced in another word. In fact, this view is further undermined by the fact that ‘mo’ed’ is pronounced without the guttural sound! (See this video and pay attention to the reading of v.14. at the 3:58 mark.) In other words, even if ‘ayin is sometimes pronounced with a ‘g’ sound, it is not in the word ‘mo’ed’, which is the only word that matters for this argument. So this seems to be a reasoning from absolutely nothing!
Third, John was writing to Greek speaking people, most of whom were probably Gentiles. The book is already quite cryptic and would have required the hearers to spend quite a bit of time trying to understand it just as twenty centuries later we are still attempting the same. Which is more likely, that he expected them to know obscure idiosyncrasies of Hebrew pronunciation, which are accessible only to native speakers of the language, or that he expected them to know or get to know the topography of a well known place in the Jezreel Valley? I submit it is the latter because the former stretches all bounds of imagination.
Proof by Contradiction
Suppose, however, that Kline and Heiser are right. Maybe they are seeing something that eludes me. How would that fit in with the rest of the bowl cycle? We have the first five bowls, all introducing some kind of obstacle or difficult situation for those who are against God. And we end with a grand earthquake, which would hinder any plans the forces of evil would have. Just before this we are told that the demonic spirits assemble the armies at Jerusalem (according to the view of Kline and Heiser). How is this a hindrance to these forces? According to the book, Jerusalem is already under the control of the forces of evil. These armies would be gathering at their headquarters. This is not a hindrance of any sort.
To the contrary, if we say that the armies would gather at Jerusalem, we are saying that they already have a preferred base of operations and are gathering there. Their plan would then be to launch their assault against God and the Lamb from this base of operations. Far from being a hindrance of any sort, this would actually align exactly with their plans. In that case, we have to ask ourselves how this sixth bowl actually fits into the bowl cycle. If the first five and the seventh bowls all present a case in which the forces against God are hindered or thwarted, how would the sixth fit into that scheme when it does exactly the opposite?
It is quite clear then that any suggestion that Armageddon refers to Jerusalem is based not on anything inside the text but on some quite esoteric considerations from outside the text. While taking cues from outside the text is not necessarily poor hermeneutics, when this goes against the thrust of what is in the text, it should be a warning about these external considerations. This warning is amplified when the considerations themselves are so esoteric that they require, in this case, the implausible expectation that Gentile Christians would know the variability of pronunciation of Hebrew consonants when the vowels themselves do not point in that direction! It is for these reasons that I think Kline’s and Heiser’s proposal actually carries very little water.
An Alternate and Subversive Interpretation
Now, we saw that Heiser admits that there is no mountain in Megiddo. He concludes then that this must mean that John did not intend to refer to Megiddo. But what if we take it the other way around? Megiddo was a well known place in the Jezreel Valley and had been the site of many battles. In the imagination of the Old Testament, Megiddo played a significant role because it was where the last ‘good’ king, Josiah, was killed in 609 BC. Since Josiah was the last king who was not a vassal of any foreign kingdom, it is technically with his death that the independent kingdom of Judah ceased to exist. Hence, the place of his death, Megiddo, carried enormous significance in the imagination of the exilic and post-exilic Judeans. Because of its significance, the terrain of Megiddo was also well known. Everyone knew or could easily get to know that there was no mountain there.
I can imagine a scenario where the scroll of Revelation was being read out to the first recipients. When the reader got to Revelation 16.16 and mentioned Armageddon, someone may have asked, “I thought Megiddo was a plain. Are you sure John wrote Armageddon?” When the reader checked and responded in the affirmative, someone may have asked, “But then where is this mountain?” The reader may have then checked with the courier who had brought the scroll from Patmos. He might have been carefully instructed by John concerning some of the more gnarly parts of the narrative.
“Where is this mountain?” the reader would have asked the courier. And the courier, with a wry, knowing smile and a carefully timed wink, would have replied, “Precisely!”
Just like the conspicuously absent lion of chapter 5, a conspicuousness that we have done our very best to forget through art and song, the mountain of Megiddo is also not something that actually exists. In other words, when the demonic spirits are assembling the kings of the earth at Armageddon, they are assembling at a ‘non-place’. What this means is that these spirits will do their very best to assemble their forces but will never find a suitable place where they can take their stand against the truth speaking white rider. This fits perfectly with the idea of hindrance or obstacle that characterizes the other six bowls. What could be a greater hindrance or obstacle to an army than that it cannot find a place at which to organize itself for a battle? What could be more devastating to an army than the truth that, in the face of God’s wrath on them, they will never be able to extricate themselves from chaos and achieve even the slightest bit of organization that a headquarters could facilitate?
What we have seen is that, not only will there not be any actual battle between the Lamb and the forces of evil, but also there is no place at which the forces of evil can make muster! Hence, contrary to being the scene of the most cataclysmic battle in history, Armageddon is actually a word that spells the final defeat of evil precisely when evil is shown to be powerless even to organize itself against the truth speaking white rider. Armageddon, then, is not something that the people of God need to fear. It is not the site of some upcoming battle that we should hope God would spare us from, as expected by those who adhere to the odious doctrine of the Rapture. Rather, it is the non-site of the upcoming non-battle between the Lamb and God’s enemies, who cannot even find a place from which to attack the Lamb.
We should have expected this if we took the book of Revelation seriously. The book was written to seven churches in first century Asia Minor. These churches were facing different levels of opposition and the book was written to demonstrate that the slaughtered Lamb is still in control despite the opposition that the people of God were facing. It was a book written to comfort and reassure Christians who were increasingly pressured to think that the opposition they were facing meant that the Lamb was no longer in charge of putting God’s plans into effect.
But Revelation was also written to convince those persecuted Christians that violence is the tool of the dragon, utilized by the beast, and sacralized by the false prophet. That is why there is no Lion in the book of Revelation. God does not work through a Lion but only through a Lamb. And that is why there is no place called Armageddon for the dragon, beast, and false prophet cannot even take a stand against the truth speaking white rider.
If this second purpose was not crucial to Revelation, John could well have portrayed the white rider wielding a sword in his hand rather than in his mouth. He could have described a Lion with a luxuriant, flowing mane instead of a Lamb standing with its throat slit. It is precisely because of these features of the book that we should reject all views that give violence a divine imprimatur. Of course, Revelation is a book that contains a lot of violence. However, the elusive-because-illusive Lion and the non-site of the non-battle of Armageddon should be the interpretive lenses through which we interpret even those passages that describe violent action, especially violent action purportedly committed by God.
It seems clear to me that it is our consistent refusal to accept the way of the Lamb that makes many of us salivate for a final bloody battle between Jesus and the dragon’s forces. I would go so far as to say that those Christian teachers who actually teach that there will be such a battle are the antichrists of our time, causing the great apostasy that Jesus did warn would precede his return. But if you have reached here, you have no excuse. You can no longer rely on an empty hope.
In recent weeks, especially following the Hamas attack on 7 October 2023 and the ensuing genocidal response of Israel, Christians around the world seem to have awoken to the reality of a ‘Jewish’ people around the world. What with the scale of Israel’s onslaught against the Palestinians, many Christians are now wondering about the place of the modern state of Israel in God’s plans. There are some leaders among Christians who have an unhealthy and voyeuristic preoccupation with divine violence, often seeing themselves as being spectators from the clouds when Jesus returns to defeat his enemies. In the period before he returns, some of them believe that they are free to take violent action and they even laud those who do so. Now, the belief in a secret ‘Rapture’ is not only unbiblical but is, ironically, also one of the main doctrines that fuels modern anti-Jewish1 attitudes, even as its proponents vociferously and unthinkingly support the current apartheid state of Israel, while undermining all efforts to secure a lasting peace in the region. I have cited three articles that tell us about John Hagee’s positions because he is currently the leading proponent of all these odious views. Since, I have addressed the issue of the secret ‘Rapture’ elsewhere, I do not wish to address this issue here.
However, one additional belief that many who accept the doctrine of the secret ‘Rapture’ also accept is that a third temple2 will be constructed around the time when Jesus returns. The various schools of Dispensationalism differ in the sequence of events. Some believe that Jesus will return prior to the construction of the temple, others, once it is completed. But almost all of them link the two events in some way.
I do not wish to debate whether or not a third temple will be constructed. I wish to address whether or not the bible prophesies a third temple. For me the fact of a third temple is beside the point. The only thing that matters with respect to any temple is whether it is a temple that features in the purposes of God. And as we prepare for Palm Sunday in six days, it helps to understand what the temple was, what it was intended to accomplish, and how what Jesus did on Palm Sunday affects how we understand the future of any temple.
Honesty and Consistency with Scripture
Now, it is true that, following the destruction of the first temple, Ezekiel and Haggai predict that the temple will be rebuilt. Despite the fact that the second temple was a massive let down for the people of Israel, Jesus calls it God’s house when he predicts its destruction. In other words, we have it from Jesus himself that the second temple did qualify as a valid temple. Hence, it must follow that the second temple was the fulfillment of the prophecies in Ezekiel and Haggai. Indeed, it is disingenuous to think that either of the prophesies applies to a third temple, especially if that claim is made based on an idea that these prophecies need to be fulfilled in a literal manner. Let me explain.
I concede the point that the prophecies in Ezekiel and Haggai were not fulfilled to the letter. However, let us be consistent with what we read in the bible. By common consensus, the Babylonian exile started with the first deportation in 597 BC. The Persian emperor Cyrus allowed the Jews to return to the land in 538 BC. This equals a period of 59 years. However, Jeremiah said that the period would be 70 years! Even if we start counting from the first siege of Jerusalem in 607 BC or when Judah became a vassal state of Babylon after Jehoiakim began paying tribute in 605 BC, we do not get an exact 70 year period for the exile. Hence, it is duplicitous to expect a to-the-letter fulfillment of the prophecies concerning the temple when the prophecies surrounding the period of the exile, which, mind you, only involve one number, can evidently not be taken literally. This one instance itself should be convincing enough for anyone who is honest to agree that biblical prophecy is not intended to be taken literally. But then, some of us are married to our views. And we know that God hates divorce!
Recovering Biblical Symbolism
Moreover, the dimensions of Jerusalem in Ezekiel 48.30-35 are tiny compared to the dimensions in Revelation 21.16. Both of them cannot be literally correct since, with a literal hermeneutic at least one must be false! Actually, Ezekiel’s number is tiny by any measure since 18,000 long cubits is less than 10 km, making it less than 100 sq km in area! In contrast, the New Jerusalem in Revelation measures 12,000 stadia in length, which is around 2,200 km, giving an area of about 4,840,000 sq km. There is no way except through deceit that we can conclude that both of these are true literally. Now, since the New Jerusalem in Revelation clearly refers to some reality in the future, the Jerusalem in Ezekiel cannot refer to the same thing! Only someone with the express intention of misleading will ever claim that both are to be taken literally and that both refer to the same thing.
The only honest alternative is that one or both of the dimensions are to be taken as symbolic. In fact, Ezekiel’s Jerusalem is smaller even than today’s Jerusalem, which has an area of about 125 sq km! Moreover, Ezekiel’s Jerusalem is a square, which has never been true about the real Jerusalem. So it is clear that even the dimensions and shape of the city cannot be taken literally! In fact, only if we understand that both Ezekiel and Revelation are using numbers and shapes in a symbolic manner can we ever hope to understand what they were trying to say.
Indeed, the powerful symbol of how the city and the temple will be perfect, communicated through their dimensions and shape, is lost if we take the numbers literally. In that case, we fail to see that the cubic city in Revelation 21.16 is actually a symbol of how the entire city of the New Jerusalem replaces the only other cubic structure in the bible – the holy of holies! Revelation 21.1-2 makes it clear that the new heavens and the new earth is synonymous with the New Jerusalem. Hence, in v. 3 we read, “See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them and be their God.” Now God’s presence is no longer confined to a small space inside a physical temple. Rather, all of creation would now function as the holy of holies where creation can live alongside the living God. A desire for a third temple rejects this glorious vision and instead settles for another physical structure in which God’s presence is localized. This desire is a sign of a great apostasy in which some who claim to be God’s people would rather settle for a local presence of God rather than the prophetic vision of God’s glory filling the whole earth to overflowing.
Jesus and the Second Temple
If the period of the exile and the dimensions of the city are clearly not to be taken literally, on what basis do we say that the dimensions of the temple should be taken literally? But more crucial, if the dimensions are not to be taken literally, on what basis do we say that this prophecy was not fulfilled when the second temple was constructed? If Jesus himself accepted the second temple as the house of God, then saying that the Ezekiel prophecy is not about the second temple would be an argument from silence because there would have to be a second temple about which Ezekiel was not informed even though it was to him that the vision of the departing glory was given. It would mean that Haggai was given a vision of a third temple while almost all of his ministry was to encourage the Judeans to finish the construction of the second temple! Could there be anything more damaging to the vocation of the prophet? The more reasonable interpretation is that Ezekiel’s and Haggai’s visions are about the second temple and that it was fulfilled in a non-literal manner.
But someone may say that Ezekiel had prophesied that the glory of God would return to the temple. And there is no evidence that the post-exilic Jews ever saw the glory returning. Indeed, Ezekiel 43.4, Isaiah 40.5, and Haggai 2.7 predict the revelation of the glory of Yahweh, which clearly did not happen in a literal sense during the post-exilic period. And Malachi 3.1 says that Yahweh himself would come into the temple, another thing that did not happen in a literal sense in the post-exilic period. So would that not mean that a third temple is needed to fulfill both these prophecies?
Absolutely not! The New Testament presents Jesus as the person and presence and glory of Yahweh. Hence, when he comes to the temple on Palm Sunday, it is the fulfillment of the prophecy in Malachi. And when Jesus is crucified, this is the revelation of Yahweh’s glory. In other words, all the prophecies about the temple given to the Old Testament prophets were fulfilled in and through the person and work of Jesus.
Now, it is clear that the New Testament also presents Jesus, the fully divine and fully human person, as the place where heaven and earth full intersect and intermingle. And this was what a temple was supposed to achieve. Hence, the temples of the Old Testament were only pale shadows of the reality that would finally be revealed in Jesus. John makes this clear in his Gospel when he has Jesus speak of his body as the temple. And the Synoptic Gospels are clear that Jesus did announce the destruction of the second temple.
If Jesus is the temple that superseded the second temple and if he is the fulfillment of what the temple was supposed to achieve, namely, the unification of heaven and earth, then any future temple that’s build will be done as a repudiation of what and who Jesus actually is. In other words, anyone who hopes for a future temple, explicitly denies that Jesus is the true temple that the previous two temples pointed toward. What this means is that, from a properly oriented Christian perspective rather than one that takes prophecies as stand alone features pulled apart from the contexts of the biblical narrative, it is a denial of what Jesus has done to claim that there is any role for a future temple in God’s purposes.
Inconsistency and Special Pleading
Now, since the Jewish people, for the most part, do not accept Jesus as their Messiah, it stands to reason that they would reject his judgment of the temple. In other words, for them the destruction of the temple in AD 70 is an event that needs another explanation. However, there is no text in the Old Testament or in the extra-biblical second temple literature that promises the destruction of the second temple. In that case, without a promise of the destruction of the second temple no text in the Old Testament can be taken as promising a third temple because that would just be illogical to promise a third temple without the destruction of the second. The Jewish people, therefore, have no option but to think that the prophecies about the destruction of the temple had dual fulfillment and applied to the first and second temples, leading to them applying the prophecies of the rebuilding of the temple to the second and future third temples.
Since we Christians do see dual fulfillments (e.g. Isaiah 7.14 and 2 Samuel 7.12-13) we cannot deny the Jewish people the right to propose multiple fulfillments. However, we must be careful because any such view is based on a rejection of Jesus as the Messiah and, hence, cannot be a properly Christian view. Just because the Jewish people share the Old Testament with us does not mean that we should be dictated to by their interpretation, especially when an interpretation denies what we believe Jesus has done.
Nevertheless, the view of Judaism is inconsistent and involves special pleading. The prophecies of the destruction of the first temple were given in specific contexts. The context was that Israel and/or Judah had Israelite kings ruling them. And these Israelite kings were held responsible for not being faithful to Yahweh. Their unfaithfulness, either through idolatry or through promoting injustice, was the reason for which the exile happened and the first temple destroyed. However, neither of this was true in the first century. In fact, if Jesus is to be taken seriously (and I hope Christians are willing to do that!), it was the Jewish rejection of their Messiah and their preference for violence that resulted in the destruction of the temple.
Therefore, to take the prophecies of the destruction of the first temple and blindly apply them to the second when the contexts were utterly different reveals a deep inconsistency and case of special pleading on the part of Judaism. In fact, Judaism cannot explain why the temple was destroyed in AD 70. They may claim that they were unfaithful to Yahweh but will be unable to point to anything specific that would qualify as supporting this claim of unfaithfulness. Indeed, there is nothing in the Old Testament that even suggests that, after the Judean exiles returned from Babylon, they would enter into another period of unfaithfulness that would require a second exile.
Some Jews today may argue that the second temple was destroyed because the Jews took up arms against the Romans. This would be consistent with what many of the prophets said, namely that Yahweh’s people are not to resort to military action. However, if you ask the Jewish people for any prophecy concerning this destruction in the context of the first century, they will not be able to do so. Ironically, it is the Christian tradition, which is an outgrowth of the Jewish tradition, that has a prophet who does announce the destruction of the second temple in the context of the first century – Jesus.
Anti-Messianic Jews?
Now, it is not only Judaism that looks forward to a third temple. I cannot skirt the fact that many Messianic Jews also believe that there will be a third temple and that it is crucial to God’s purposes. How is it that they have such a different perspective than the one I am presenting here. This article3 is revealing. It admits that the temple was destroyed about 40 years after Jesus’ death. However, it crucially (conveniently?) forgets that Jesus had announced the destruction of the temple, as we have seen earlier. In fact, given the role the article claims for the third temple, I must, with great despair, assert that, if Messianic Jews are driving or hoping for the reconstruction of the temple, then this is one of the greatest acts of idolatry the Jewish people have ever been engaged in, since they claim that the third temple will fulfill the purposes that the New Testament clearly declares have been fulfilled in Jesus. I would like to focus on two.
First, they claim that the third temple will “bring the Light back into the world,” which they clarify is a reversal of what happened when the glory departed the temple. Now, as mentioned earlier, there is no non-Christian Jewish text from the second temple period that claims that the glory of Yahweh returned to the second temple. However, the utter failure on the part of Messianic Jews to see that the Jesus’ Transfiguration, entry into the temple, and crucifixion are how the New Testament authors present Jesus as the revelation and incarnation of the divine glory is perplexing to say the least. I seriously wonder if such Messianic Jews are followers of Jesus or of some twisted and revivified version of Moses!
Second, they claim that the third temple will allow the restoration of the Aaronic priesthood. The article claims, “The Temple Institute’s School is training certified, DNA-tested Cohen (descendants of the High Priest Aaron) to perform the Temple duties.” This is one of the most mendacious and untruthful statements ever. Do we have the DNA of Aaron so we can verify someone actually is his descendent? The present day claim to be a descendant of Aaron is based on self-reporting of Jews. This is a circular argument. Without Aaron’s actual DNA to compare with, how can anyone be certified, especially for something as important as this? In fact, a recent study argues that those who self-certify as descendants of Aaron actually have multiple lineages! In no other area of life do we allow self-certification, but require documentary evidence, especially when the certification grants privileges. This is just certified madness, an ideology gone awry, with absolutely no controls to ensure that truth is pursued. But then perhaps truth is not what they are after!
However, even if we are, by some strange and miraculous twist of fate and statistically improbable occurrence, able to identify a descendent of Aaron, is the restoration of the Aaronic priesthood not a rejection of the priesthood of Jesus? If Jesus’ priesthood was needed because animal sacrifice could not procure the forgiveness of sin, is it not a return to what did not work to try to rejuvenate the Aaronic priesthood? According to Hebrews, this would be tantamount to saying that we need Jesus to be crucified again because we have failed to understand that and the ways in which his offer of himself is far superior to anything that existed under the Aaronic priesthood.
The Third Temple Apostasy
In other words, the only tradition in which the destruction of the second temple is explicitly announced is the Christian tradition. But in this tradition, the destruction of the temple is announced precisely because the temple was being replaced by Jesus. Moreover, any tradition based on multiple fulfillments of temple related prophecies must rest on a denial that Jesus is the true temple.
Despite this, there are quite a few Christian pastors who teach that there will be a third temple in the future. This is a great apostasy since this teaching can only hold water if we deny what Jesus has done. Such teachers, from the perspective of the Christian faith, are false teachers who are leading people astray with their misguided views and all too often abhorrent position that has Jesus return to inflict the very kind of violence he rejected at his first coming.
Unfortunately, one factor contributing to the popularity of such teachers is precisely their claim that, when he returns, Jesus will do so in a violent way, thereby catering to the bloodlust that has infected humans ever since Cain slew Abel and since his descendant Lamech glorified and institutionalized violence. Also, since these teachers cater to the almost universal human desire to think our group is special compared to other human groups and that, therefore, we must be given privileges that should be denied to those on the outside, they accumulate many followers who are led astray by their appealing but seductive and gospel-denying teachings. For, if the god we believe in is a god only for a select few and not for the whole world, then there is no good news that we can proclaim since a parochial god can never be concerned about the wellbeing of everyone.
Jesus concludes his Sermon on the Mount with the words, “Everyone, then, who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock…And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand.” The rock on which to build is not the Dome of the Rock, but Jesus’ teachings! Any Christian teacher who has forgotten this and is focused on the building of something whose time is past is rejecting Jesus and his teachings and building not on something sturdy but on shifting and unsteady sand. When Jesus returns, they may find themselves saying, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?” only to receive the response, “I never knew you; go away from me, you who behave lawlessly.” After all, if God has given his Son to and for the world out of his overflowing love, placing one’s hopes in the reconstruction of an inanimate and inorganic building is nothing less than rejecting the gift that has been given.
Recovering Sacred Space
To the contrary, Paul and Peter describe the people of Jesus as the new temple made not with lifeless stone but with living bodies and beating hearts. It is in us now, as God’s image bearers and extensions of Jesus on the earth, that the reunification of heaven and earth is being established. Each of us individually is and all of us as a group are the temple of the living God. It is to this task that Jesus has called us. We are to bring to life what we have seen in him – the perfect unity of heaven and earth, the divine and the human. We are to become persons in whom the Holy Spirit is gloriously welcomed to dwell, creating his sacred space within and around us.
But if we place our hopes in the rebuilding of the temple, that is a rejection of our vocation to be the new creation sacred space with which God is invading the earth to dispossess the forces of evil. When Jesus sent his disciples to go to all the earth with the message of the gospel, he was creating a mobile temple that could exist without the need for physical foundations because the foundation on which this new temple was built was his teachings. He was creating an enduring temple can cannot be destroyed because, as the nation of Israel is discovering, you can destroy all the buildings you want, but you cannot destroy an idea.
Unfortunately, the majority of the Christian Church only thinks that the purpose of the Christian faith is to provide passage out of hell and intro heaven. With such a truncated view of God’s purposes for his creation and creatures, it is no wonder that the majority of the Christian Church has failed to grasp how crucial the idea of being the temple of God is for the life of the Church. Instead, we too cling to our structures as though it is through them that we find salvation and in them that we receive our identity.
It is time we recovered the grand vision for the human race and for the Church as God’s representatives of the human race that we find in the bible. Humans were created to be the bridge between heaven and earth. We were created to be mobile outposts of God’s sacred space. It is time we recovered this rather than continue to abdicate responsibility and expect lifeless bricks and stone to achieve what can only be achieved in and through humans – individually and collectively – who have been renewed by the breath of God’s Spirit.
Am I saying that a third temple will never be constructed. No! I have no position about whether or not the temple will be rebuilt. What I am claiming is that, since God has now established his temple in Jesus and his body, the Church, there is no place for another temple in God’s plans. Hence, any temple that may be constructed in the future will be constructed against God’s will and will be a sign of deep apostasy on the part of those either directly or indirectly involved in the construction. Since Jesus announced the destruction of the temple with his image of no stone remaining on top of the other, any hope for a future third temple is a hoping for the rubble.
I have decided, against the common usage, that I will no longer allow my language to be co-opted by a virulent Zionism that does not represent the God I believe in. The term anti-Semitism should include hatred of any ethnic group that descends from Shem like Arabs, Jordanians, Palestinians, and Syrians, among others. The convention that uses anti-Semitism only to refer to hatred of Jews is itself anti-Semitic since it excludes non-Jewish Semitic people from the umbrella. ↩︎
Note the clear anti-Palestinian perspective of the article, which presents the conflict in the region as an ‘Arab-Israeli’ one, without any mention of Palestinians. These kinds of views seep in with their insidious vocabulary and do not allow us to see the current state of Israel as an occupying power whose existence should be questioned. ↩︎
Note the clear anti-Muslim nature of this article, which fails to recognize the injustice that the Israelis have forced on the Palestinians and exonerates them from all blame. ↩︎
Note: This post contains some strongly worded views. While I may disagree with people over their actions and/or policies, those who know me know that I am a proponent of nonviolence. I do not believe there is any situation in which violence is justified. In addition, the call of Jesus to love my enemies means that, no matter how strong my disagreements with someone may be, my approach to them is one of love. I will not harm them and will not support any action that harms them. Rather, my views are a result of my convictions that they have betrayed the call of Jesus to love our enemies and I hope to call them to repent of that betrayal. However, I pledge no loyalty to any human institution. Despite this, while I may advocate protesting policies of institutions, I will never advocate any violent protests. With that in mind, read on…
Preamble
We were there when it happened. And everything changed after that fateful day. Now, all discussions centered around the event and the responses to it. Every conversation was infused with the pain of the event and the anguish of those who had lost family members or friends, colleagues or acquaintances. It seemed that the horror had left no one unscathed. Indeed, the scars of that day are still unhealed for many, driving them to actions that I can only label ‘insane’ for it stems from the madness of a desire for revenge rather than reconciliation, fratricide rather than forgiveness.
I had woken up a little late that morning. Prayerna had had a restless night and I, being the stay-at-home dad, had the ‘night shift’ with her. Alice had to leave for work by around 7:15 AM (Pacific Daylight Time). After my ‘night shift’ I woke up around 8:00 AM, Prayerna snuggled against me, safe against my body. But though she was safe, everything around us felt quite eerie. I got out of bed and went to the balcony to check on this eeriness. As I opened the balcony door it hit me like a punch to the stomach. If ever it was true that silence could be deafening, it was on that day. The usual sounds of cars up and down the street were strangely absent. And while our apartment complex was normally a commotion in the morning, given the huge number of kids leaving for school, on that day you could hear the gentle rustling of the leaves in the trees with no human voices drowning it out.
Something was clearly wrong. My first instinct was to call Alice to ensure she was safe. Thankfully, she answered. I later understood that there were no customers at the bookstore. I asked her what had happened. She sounded shaken up and just told me to turn on the TV.
I was shocked at what I saw on the screen. Was that footage of a plane flying into a building? And another? And was that a third plane that crashed in a field? Yes! Yes! Yes! I was aghast while I watched. Right away my thoughts went to those who had died in the attacks. They had left their homes in the morning, kissing their wives or husbands, daughters and sons goodbye with the full intention and expectation of returning for the evening meal. But their lives had been snuffed out.
Fallout
And my next thought was, “Great! Now the wonderful Evangelical preachers will say that this is God’s punishment because America was tolerating homosexuals or because they were allowing the eroding of ‘family values’.” And my third thought was, “Now the ‘beast’ has been shaken awake. Its coat of scales had been shown not to be impenetrable. And it will retaliate with a vengeance never seen before this.”
I waited eagerly for Alice to return home. She came early. Everything had shut down around 10:00 AM. We sat in silence, drinking coffee, while Prayerna played in blissful ignorance, unaware that our world – and here I mean not our world as in ‘Earth’ but our world as a family – had changed.
You see, till then I had been the foremost candidate to become the Senior Pastor of our church, the then Senior Pastor having planned to relocate in 2002 to Thailand for ministry there. But now my skin color would prove to be an impediment to my candidacy. No one would want someone with dark skin color. Of course, we knew that the real reason they would give would not be my skin color. That would be discrimination! So instead they would give me the excuse that my views were too ‘liberal’ for the church.
Absolute hogwash! The church was composed of mostly students from the University of Southern California for whom my exploration of new ideas with faithfulness to Jesus was refreshing. During my one year there, during much of which the Senior Pastor had been in Thailand preparing for his future move, the congregation had grown so much that we had to relocate from within the campus to a significantly bigger facility just outside it. But, as we expected, I was told that my views were not conservative enough. When that happened, I knew something was festering not just within that church but also within the soul of America.
I drove back home after the meeting with the elders in which they said they were willing to keep me on as the Assistant Pastor, but had to look for a more conservative Senior Pastor. I called Alice from the car and gave her the news. She told me we would talk when I reached home.
Rumination
And talk we did. Well into the night. Since she had to work the next day, Alice went to bed, leaving me alone with my thoughts in the living room. Prayerna slept well that night. But I didn’t. I stayed awake for most of it ruminating over what had happened. I knew that, whether the elders would admit it or not, my theology was not the issue, it was my skin. Oh, who am I kidding! My theology gave them an excuse. So at some level my theology was an issue. And both reinforced each other quite well!
After all, with the warmongering that ensued in America you did not want a brown skinned pastor preaching a message of peace! Especially when he wasn’t even a proper green card holder, let alone a citizen! That would call into question the loyalties of the church. After all, he could very well be a plant of those hated ‘brownies’, charged with ensuring America did nothing but roll over passively! During those days any call to peace was seen as a rejection of American sovereignty, a denial of the hurt that ensued from the attacks, and an indication of a lack of loyalty to the nation.
And the ‘beast’ is not forgiving toward those who cannot give it their complete loyalty. Any appearance to the contrary could result in ostracism at best, or worse a smear campaign, or at worst the loss of life. Eventually, after a long search, the church capitulated to the ‘beast’ and chose a white man who had sons in the military. What better way to prove its allegiance.1
I would say, what better way than to reject the way of the Lamb and adopt the way of the Lion! What better way to assert our enslavement to the domination structures of the ‘beast’. I knew that I could not continue at that church anymore. Not with that warmongering ethos entering it. It was then that we decided it was time to plan our return to India.
Prophecy
But at the same time, I received a thought from the Revelation of Jesus Christ. Ever since 1999 I had been gripped by the last book of the bible and the figure of the slaughtered and victorious Lamb. And the result of the Lamb’s victory today resounds in the refrain: “Fallen is ‘Babylon’.” I pondered those words for many days before I revealed it to Alice along with what I thought was my ‘interpretation’ of it.
I told her that in about 15 years we would see the downfall of the USA. In the years that followed she often would joke to me about my ‘prophecy’. She knew that I was wary of prophecies but still had uttered one to her. Over the years, however, she stopped ribbing me about it and I actually forgot about it.
That was until Donald Trump became the Republican candidate in 2015! Alice asked me if I remembered the prophecy. And knowing how much I detest how Trump conducts himself, she asked me if I thought this was a fulfillment of the ‘prophecy’. I took a few days’ time and then answered in the affirmative.
When Biden was elected in 2019, Alice asked me what had happened to the ‘prophecy’. It was mostly in jest, but I think she really wanted to know what my take on it was almost four years after the supposed ‘downfall’. I really wish she were around now because I have ruminated over this for the past years and especially over the months since October 2023. So what is my take?
Interpretation
I believe that the downfall actually began with the lies of the George W. Bush administration regarding Afghanistan and Iraq. But I believe that the downfall was revealed when Trump was elected as President. That is, the downfall became evident as people, notably Evangelical Christians, were willing to overlook the man’s moral failing just to ensure that a woman and a Democrat would not come to power. Don’t get me wrong. I have no sympathies for Hillary Clinton. She is one of the worst kinds of white supremacists around, who speaks with a forked tongue every opportunity she gets.
However, if you are presented with a wolf and a wolf in sheep’s clothing, it does not help to exonerate the wolf! When Evangelical Christians elected Trump they sent a clear message to the world: “Even though we are short sighted and cannot really see that the gospel has political implications, we will not even ensure our truncated vision is upheld. Rather, we are willing to elect a misogynistic, hateful person who will ensure our white supremacist agenda moves forward.” That message was the final revelation of the turning away of the American Church. And it was when the downfall became evident.
Four years of Trump’s insanity made the Democrats wake up, go to the poll stations, and elect Biden. They hoped that Biden would undo the damage that Trump had initiated. However, Biden has proved to be ineffectual on most domestic fronts. But most damaging has been his willingness to support Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people. Now the people of the USA have two prime candidates both of whom will eagerly support Israel without question. And if it’s a question of choosing the lesser of two evils, however you define evil, it is just an assurance that evil will win. If this is not a downfall then I don’t know what is.
The reader may ask me whether my current interpretation aligns with what I originally thought. I have to confess that it does not. I thought of a political dismantling of the USA. I know that will come as all empires are doomed to implode because “fallen is ‘Babylon’.” However, just as Isaiah’s original prophecy about a ‘young woman’ was later interpreted as a reference to a ‘virgin’ so also I think the meaning of a prophecy could become more nuanced or clear as we get closer or past the fulfillment. Now I am not claiming the same status as Isaiah! I am not that deluded. However, the rot that has been growing within America over the past centuries, since its violent founding to its support of violence around the world, from its belief that might makes right to its willingness to force its will on others through violent means, was revealed without doubt in its elections of Trump in 2015 and Biden in 2019.
Two years after taking on the new Senior Pastor, the church shut its doors. In 2006 the elders wrote to me apologizing for what they had done and admitting that they had made the wrong choice for that church. ↩︎
On the occasion of International Women’s Day 2024, it is unfortunate to admit that the Church is still debating the ‘acceptable’ roles of women in the Church. About two years ago, on 5 February 2022, I presented talks in which I defended two of the most popular views concerning ‘Women in Ministry’. I attempted to present each as strongly as possible, even though I clearly hold the view that a woman should not be excluded from ministry based on her gender. Anyway, the video of the two talks is below following the text. Hope this enriches the viewer/listener/reader.
Introduction
Our scriptures open with a chapter that describes God’s grand work of creation. And toward the end of that account we read, “God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” The belief that women and men are equally and together the image of God is not disputed among Christians, though Christians of different stripes will understand what that means in differing ways, leading to confusion at the very least.
Today we are tackling the issue of ‘women in ministry’. Actually, we should be more specific, we are talking about women in leadership roles over men within the church for almost everyone will agree that women have ministries in the church. Women read the scriptures in most denominations. They sing in the church choirs and teach Sunday school. And they lead women’s ministries without anyone batting an eyelid. So we will restrict ourselves to women in ministries of leadership over men in the church.
We are also not going to be dealing with the roles of wife and husband within a marriage. That could be tackled on another day. But today we will restrict ourselves to the narrow question of whether or not it is acceptable for women to hold positions within the church where they would have authority over men in the congregation. There are many views on this matter and I will be presenting two such views only, because these are the more commonly held views.
The first one I will present is commonly known as complementarian. The second view I will present is commonly known as egalitarian. I do not like either of these names because they are quite misleading. I will clarify further when I present each view. In the interest of full disclosure right at the start I should let you know the position I hold. Neither! Well, the view I hold is very similar to the egalitarian view, according to which there are no restrictions placed on women leadership in the church.
However, the arguments I use to support the view I hold are different from those used in the more common kind of egalitarian perspective. Nevertheless, since I come to the same conclusions as the common egalitarian position, I think it would only be right for me to say that my view is also egalitarian. If any of you wish to press me on the arguments I would use, please do so during the Q&A time. But for now, in this introduction, let me lay down some ground rules that I will follow and hope that you would too.
First, when I present a view I will refrain from calling into question the faith or rigor of those who hold a different view. Too often we accuse those who disagree with us of believing ‘unbiblical’ things. Or we say that they are not taking the scriptures seriously. I will not do this. If any position cannot stand without demonizing the other positions, it does not deserve our attention. I will, therefore, assume that these are debates between Christians who earnestly desire to follow Jesus and to interpret the scriptures the best they can.
Second, I will not use ad hominem arguments where the name of someone is used to support or discredit arguments. The fact that Augustine is venerated by most Western Christians does not mean that everything he said was right. And the fact that his opponent, Pelagius, was denounced does not mean that everything he said was wrong. We need to take the contributions of any person on a case by case basis and not make sweeping generalizations.
Third, I will not use any strawman arguments when presenting the complementarian view. Even though I disagree with this view, I will present the best case that can be made for this view. And I will use arguments I have not found elsewhere but which I think are stronger than the ones normally presented. This is because I believe I cannot earn the right to hold a view unless I am able to make the case for the view I reject and also refute the arguments I make to support it.
Fourth, I will present both cases not as anticipating or answering the other, but as presenting evidence to support it. In other words, this is not going to be a debate format, where an attempt is made to refute the other position. However, there are some passages that both positions need to interpret and here there will naturally be some overlap and disagreement. But the intent is to interpret these passages in a manner that lends support to the position I will be presenting at the time.
Fifth, while some scholars may posit some passages or even whole books of the bible are inauthentic, I will be assuming that the sixty-six books of the Protestant bible are the canon of scripture. In other words, I will rely only on the thirty-nine books of the Old Testament, as divided by the Christians, and the twenty-seven books of the New Testament. However, where textual variants play a role in interpreting the passage, I will bring them in to support the position I am presenting.
Sixth, since the Old Testament was written in Hebrew and Aramaic and the New Testament in Koine Greek, I will at times rely on the original languages, especially if I think that the English translations have not done a good job of rendering either a word or a phrase. Remember that any view of inspiration of the scriptures has to do with the original manuscripts and not even subsequent copies let alone translations. I do not claim to be infallible, but where I differ from the translations it is because I think neither can they.
Seventh, I will be using the New Revised Standard Version as the main English translation. In a debate about the role of women in Christian leadership ministry it seems wholly inappropriate to skew the matter by using a non-gender inclusive translation to begin with. I do this recognizing that the issue of gender inclusive language is almost entirely a peculiarity of English. However, though the NRSV has its own problems, at least it attempts to include women in the biblical text rather than exclude them from the outset.
Eighth, I will refrain from using words like ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ because they are altogether unfruitful. To the Roman church of the sixteenth century, Martin Luther was a ‘liberal’ who taught things that drew people away from what the then ‘conservatives’ wanted to conserve. Today Luther’s teachings are what many who call themselves ‘conservative’ would support. These words are only emotional additions designed to tug at heartstrings rather than arguments that hold any water.
So I have laid down eight ground rules that I will adhere to during the two presentations to follow. I expect that there will be questions to follow. Please hold them off until you hear both presentations. And I would encourage you to adhere to these eight ground rules. And I would propose a ninth designed specifically for the case where you wish to question a particular position. And it is this: When refuting a view it is best to do so using the assumptions made to propose that position rather than other assumptions.
Otherwise, we will just talk past each other, thinking we have made our point when in fact we have not done so. This is what happens in most debates and this is why we normally get nowhere.
All of this was by way of introduction. We will now proceed to the case for the complementarian view after a short break.
The Complementarian View
The great Greek philosopher, Aristotle, once said, “It is the sign of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” When I began writing my defense of the complementarian view, I had to keep this in mind. It is all too easy to reject outright arguments that support a perspective you reject. But I decided to go a step further than Aristotle indicated. I wanted not only to entertain the idea of complementarianism, which is not too difficult, but to actively defend it.
More to the point, I knew how I would argue against the standard defenses for complementarianism. If I just proposed those arguments, it would hardly be fair since I already knew how to undermine those arguments. So I went back to the scriptures to see if there were other arguments that could be made to support this view that I reject. And I have found some that I will indicate along the way. Mind you, these are views I have not come across. But this does not mean others have not used them before.
However, the term complementarian is, as I claimed in the introduction, misleading. It is easy to think that complementary parts of a whole are necessarily unequal. For example, you cannot have a king without subjects, the former being given more importance than the latter. And you cannot have a boss without subordinates, the very term ‘subordinate’ indicating a hierarchy of unequals. Hence, in my view, the term ‘complementarian’ is inherently problematic.
However, rather than invent a new term that only adds to the confusion, it is best for us to set things straight. No serious defender of complementarianism would argue that men and women have a different status in the church. The way they complement each other is in the roles that are available to them with any ensuant hierarchy being one only of structure rather than status. So with these two points out of the way, allow me to begin my defense of the complementarian view.
In his remarkable first letter to the Christians at Corinth, Paul wrote, “Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot would say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,’ that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear would say, ‘Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,’ that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be?
“But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many members, yet one body.”
By writing this, Paul was attempting to clarify that the Holy Spirit gives a whole variety of gifts to the church. And all are needed. Everyone cannot receive the same gift or the church would not function as a body. And no one receives all the gifts or he may decide he doesn’t need the others.
The church of Jesus is a multi-faceted, wonderful bouquet of gifts and we need to find ways to encourage this diversity. Later in the same letter, Paul writes, “God is not a God of confusion but of peace.” This is the same God, who, in the beginning, created the heavens and the earth, bringing order out of chaos, intent out of purposelessness, and structure out of formlessness. Having different roles within the church is only to be expected and the Holy Spirit decides how order in the church is established.
Toward the end of his life, with the intention of leaving a set of clear instructions for the next generations of Christians, Paul wrote a letter to his protege, Timothy, in which he clearly declared, “Let a woman learn in silence with full submission. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent.” Paul goes on to base this restriction on the order of creation – man first, followed by the woman. Paul is clear here. Women are not to exercise authority over men in the church.
Note that Paul does not say that women are inferior to men. Rather, he says, “For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor.” The account of Genesis 3 makes it clear that the woman was the one who was having a conversation with the serpent and who was deceived during that conversation. It may be argued then that, though Eve was deceived, Adam willfully went along and ate the forbidden fruit. And that would be absolutely right.
However, Adam’s rejection of his God given authority over Eve does not mean that now women are allowed to exercise authority over men in the church. That was Adam’s failing and Paul makes it clear that this should not be replicated. So he insists that women should not exercise authority over men in the church.
Now it is important that we distinguish between authority and dignity. Saying that women are not permitted to exercise authority over men does not mean they have less dignity than men.
This should be quite self evident. In our nation, the Prime Minister has more authority than the common people. But he has no greater dignity than the common people, though sycophants may believe otherwise. And it is quite likely that sycophantic adoration of Church leaders has a big part to play in the belief that women are not to exercise authority over men because they are somewhat inferior. We have idolized our male leaders in the church and this is something we need to repent about.
But just because we have introduced artificial hierarchies of dignity does not mean the legitimate hierarchy of authority should also be discarded. One should not throw out the baby with the bathwater. Having a hierarchy in the church just means that there is order and structure. And if, as it is clear that there is a line formed by the gender division, then we need to submit to the authority of scripture even if it is uncomfortable. For we do not sit in authority over scripture but it over us
But this is not the only place where Paul places some restrictions on women. In his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul writes, “Women should be silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as the law also says. If there is anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.” Now it is widely recognised that Paul permits women to pray and prophesy in chapter 11. So how can he say that they are to remain silent later?
In 1 Corinthians 14.29, Paul writes, “Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others weigh what is said.” So Paul is recognizing two kinds of roles in the church. One is a set of temporary roles, such as prophecy, speaking in tongues and speaking a word of knowledge. This gifting can come upon anyone in the church – man or woman. But this is not an office. Moreover, the exercise of these gifts are subject to verification by the church. The prophetic word is to be weighed. Speaking in tongues is to be interpreted.
So eventually, even if a woman prophesied, her prophecy would be weighed by the church leadership to see if it is something the church should accept or not. So the final authority is the church leadership, which would comprise only men since women could not exercise authority over men. What Paul says in chapter 11 is about decorum. What he says in chapter 14 is about authority. If we confuse the two purposes, we end up confusing ourselves and this has been the unfortunate problem with biblical interpretation.
The recognition that chapter 11 is about decorum and chapter 14 about authority is not something new and has a long-standing history. However, as I have often maintained, while the chapter and verse divisions help us to locate particular parts of scripture, they predispose us to split scripture in ways that are foreign to its purpose. To be more clear, if someone in Paul’s day asked him to explain what he meant in 1 Corinthians 14.29, he would be thoroughly perplexed.
For he would not have known what ‘1 Corinthians’ meant, nor what these chapter and verse references were. After all, he wrote this letter as one document, addressing different issues for sure, but not in such a way that he would contradict himself from one part to another. In other words, chapter 14 must be read in light of what he said in chapter 11, which is the first thing that I have not come across, namely the subjection of prophecy from men and women to the judgment of the male church leadership.
Now it is commonly contended that the passages in 1 Timothy 2 and 1 Corinthians 14 are restricted to the situations facing the Ephesian and Corinthian churches respectively. There is no denying that the scriptures do address specific historical and cultural situations. But if this were the case, why, when Paul spells out, in 1 Timothy 3, the qualifications that leaders should have in the church, does he not speak of women leaders in the church? This matter is somewhat obscured in the NRSV.
For in v. 2, the NRSV obscures the issue by translating the Greek phrase “μιᾶς γυναικὸς ἄνδρα” as “married only once” when the literal meaning is “husband of one wife.” This is a skewing of scripture to suit a predetermined gender inclusive agenda that the NRSV explicitly declares it has when, in its introduction, it states that one of its distinctive features is “making it clear where the original texts intend to include all humans, male and female, and where they intend to refer only to the male or female gender.”
While the move toward gender inclusiveness is to be lauded, there is nothing in the context of 1 Timothy 3 that justifies thinking that Paul meant to include women bishops when he has, in the previous chapter itself, declared that women are not to have authority over men.
The restriction on women exercising authority appears in Paul’s letter to Titus when in Titus 2.3-5 he states that older women are to teach younger women.
It is quite clear, therefore, that Paul did not authorize women to teach men, for surely the older women would have had sufficient experience in the faith to actually be able to teach men. They would have had the knowledge and also the wisdom from age to actually be good teachers of the men. But here we are not talking about qualifications, but of a structure in the church, which God has instituted. I have had many good women teachers, but according to Paul, in the church, women are not to have authority over men.
So what we have seen are two things. On the one hand, when describing the qualifications of church leaders, Paul makes it clear that he recognises only male leadership over the whole church when he insists that a bishop is to be the husband of one wife. This cannot include women by definition. On the other hand, Paul does describe a legitimate role of women leadership but restricts it to leadership over younger women. Paul could have been clearer only if he wrote directly, “Women cannot have authority over men.”
But wait a minute! He has said this. As we have seen, he tells Timothy, “I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man.” And as we have seen, he bases his argument on the order of creation and the fact that Eve was the one who was deceived. Let us deal with these two elements in greater detail. But we will do so in reverse order, first addressing the matter of Eve’s deception and then, second, addressing the order of creation – the man first, followed by the woman.
When Paul speaks of the woman being deceived, he is referring back to Genesis 3 where the serpent approaches the woman and deceives her into eating the forbidden fruit. Why would the serpent go to the woman and not the man? Intellectually, there is no difference. The woman was, in every way, the man’s equal. The man had declared this in Genesis 2 when he said, “Bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.” So the reason the serpent approached the woman was not because she was intellectually inferior.
Now the two Greek verbs ἀπατάω and ἐξαπατάω Paul uses in 1 Timothy 2.14 and the Hebrew verb נָשָׁא in Genesis 3.13 are normally translated as ‘deceive’. But because they have moral connotations, they can also mean ‘seduce’ and based on this some interpreters have argued that the serpent seduced the woman sexually, which he could not do with the man. However, there is nothing in the passage that suggests there is anything of a sexual nature in the Genesis 3 account. So the reason must lie elsewhere.
Some interpreters have, therefore, claimed that the serpent went to the woman because she was still immature, having been created after the man. So she was an easy target for the serpent. But according to Genesis 2, the time period separating the creation of the man and the woman was less than a day. Surely, the man could not have gained so much maturity in such a short period that it would make him immune to the wiles of the serpent while the woman remained vulnerable.
But the narrative actually gives us a hint about the serpent’s choice. When God issued the command forbidding the man to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the woman had not yet been formed. The command, in other words, was issued first to the man and it was his task to communicate this to the woman. We all know how difficult accurate communication can be and this was the source of the woman’s vulnerability. She was only as safe as her understanding of the commandment.
And her understanding of the commandment depended on the man’s ability to understand God’s command to him, his ability to explain it to her, and her ability to comprehend it. The risks involved with communicating knowledge made the woman vulnerable to the deception of the serpent. And we can see from her words to the serpent that the communication was not accurate. Whereas God had only prohibited eating from the tree, the woman adds the prohibition on touching the tree.
Also, while God tells the man the consequences of disobedience would be that he would be doomed to die, when the woman speaks to the serpent, she says that the consequences will be immediate death. So we can see that the message was twisted in the process of communication between the man and the woman, rendering the woman susceptible to the serpent’s devices. The reason the serpent was able to deceive the woman was because there was a gross miscommunication between the man and the woman.
Indeed, when Paul says that the man was not deceived, he is not intending to elevate the man above the woman. Rather, he is stating that the communication between God and the man was clear. The man knew exactly what God meant about the prohibition and the punishment. But he did not use this clarity to ensure that he communicated clearly to the woman. We might conclude then that, if communication between the man and the woman was so difficult or fraught with so many dangers, God would do away with it.
But this is not how Paul sees the event. What Paul sees is an order that God has established. To the man is given the commandment and it is his task to accurately communicate this to the woman in such a way that she does not become vulnerable. This is the man’s calling and God does not rescind his gifts or his calling. Even though he failed the woman greatly by not ensuring that she understood the command and its consequences, he still has to shoulder that responsibility and that honor. This is the second new idea.
The issue of communication, or rather, miscommunication, is not something that I have seen taken into account in discussing the roles of men and women in the church. We tend to want a proof text verse that can tell us directly whether or not women can have this or that role. However, the scriptures do not necessarily work in that way. At times they do give us direction with a clear statement. At other times, we have to use our God-given abilities to draw inferences to the best explanation.
The best explanation is that Paul’s insistence that women should not teach men stems from the fact that, according to God’s plan revealed through the order of creation, the man was created to teach the woman. Hence, for women to assume these roles of leadership over men within the church is to deny the order and structure that God has imbued his creation with. Indeed, to deny that there is a God given order and structure within the church is to reject the overarching scheme revealed in scripture.
Therefore, we see this in 1 Corinthians 14.33 where, just before stating the restriction on women in the church, Paul writes, “God is a God not of disorder but of peace.” From the first account of creation, where we read that the Spirit of God hovered over the seas, to the vision of the new creation, where we are told that there will be no sea, we witness a grand theme of scripture. In much of the Ancient Near East, the seas were a source of chaos and disorder, working against God in an attempt to undermine his rule.
And God’s decrees are seen as the way in which God establishes order, leading to peace and security for his creation. If, then, in 1 Corinthians 14.33, Paul speaks of this ordering purpose of God before writing of how women are to be silent in the churches, we need to take this seriously. This is one way in which God is establishing his peaceful order in the world as he subdues all the forces that are railing against him and challenging his rule, which only can provide us with peace.
Of course, this is not all we can say to support the complementarian view. We can look at some anecdotal evidence also. For example, while Jesus had many women followers, all the twelve apostles were men. If he had intended for women to lead men in the church, surely he could have chosen at least one female apostle. Granted that the twelve apostles symbolized the twelve sons, and therefore the twelve tribes, of Israel. But if Jesus were going to break the mold, surely he would have as he did on many Sabbaths.
We can think of the selection of the deacons in Acts 6. The issue that forced this selection was the perceived unequal distribution of provisions to Greek widows. In response to this, the church selected seven deacons, all Greek by name. In other words, they intentionally selected those who could most truly represent the disenfranchised widows. But why did they not select seven women or at least one woman? If Greek women were being discriminated against, why did they select Greek men and not Greek women to serve as deacons?
The failure of Jesus and the early church to include women in positions of leadership, especially in cases where they could so easily have made a clear statement, indicates that neither Jesus nor the early church leaders ever thought that women should have the opportunity to exercise authority over men in the church. But I wish to reiterate that, while this does indicate a hierarchy, this does not mean women are less able or less qualified. It is simply a matter of establishing order and structure within the church.
But someone may ask, “What about Galatians 3.28?” Galatians 3.28 reads, “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” But is this talking about roles within the church? When referring to any particular verse of scripture, it is always good practice to look at the verses surrounding it so that we can place the verse in its correct context. So let’s read Galatians 3.23-29:
“Now before faith came, we were imprisoned and guarded under the law until faith would be revealed. Therefore the law was our disciplinarian until Christ came, so that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian, for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.”
The context is about justification, that is, the conditions under which a person is included within the people of God. This is about belonging to Jesus, being in Christ. But does this mean that the church is a monolithic structure with no parts within it? Does this mean that, because there is no longer Jew or Greek, Jews are expected to give up their Jewishness and Gentiles their non-Jewishness? Absolutely not! That was the main reason why Paul wrote Galatians.
There were people who were saying that Gentiles had to get circumcised, that is, become like Jews, in order to be saved. And in response Paul rejects this view and says that Jews and Gentiles are saved only by grace through faith. Jews remain Jewish and Gentiles remain non-Jewish. So also we must conclude that men are to remain like men and women like women. In other words, with respect to justification, there is no distinction between men and women in the church.
However, when it comes to service in the church, men and women have different roles and having different roles does not mean one party is inferior to the other. As mentioned in the opening quote from 1 Corinthians 12, if we are to be like a body, then there are going to be different roles within the church. All the roles are important and crucial to the life of the body. But not all can be the same. And so also it is with the roles of men and women. They retain the roles they had at the beginning.
Which, of course, brings up the issue of what the roles were at the beginning. Here we come to a crucial element that is often neglected, even by those who support the complementarian view. If we want to know how things were at the beginning, we have to necessarily go to Genesis 1 and 2. Genesis 1 focuses on the relationship of humans with the rest of creation and with respect to this both male and female are the image of God, given dominion over the rest of creation.
Once again, please note that just because both male and female were given dominion over the rest of creation does not mean that they all had the same role. Think about a government. There are many cabinet posts and there are non-cabinet posts. Each portfolio looks after a different aspect of governance. In rank, all the cabinet members are equal. But a glance at the roster will indicate that the Ministry of Home Affairs is more prestigious than the Ministry for Food Processing Industries.
That was just an analogy. I am not saying that roles in the church are linked to prestige. But it serves to illustrate the point. Men and women are God’s co-regents over the rest of creation, But there are going to be all sorts of different roles to play in exercising that co-regency. The church is not a monolithic structure with everyone serving in the same capacity. Rather, as in any vibrant organization, there are a variety of roles, all of which are essential to the proper functioning of the organization.
But Genesis 1 does not really delve into how humans relate with each other. For that we need to turn to the next chapter, Genesis 2. Here we see something remarkable if we look at the narrative carefully. So let us do that. After some introductory statements about no plants being on the earth due to the lack of rain, we read, “Then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being.”
Now the Hebrew word אָדָם has multiple meanings. It can appear without the definite article, in which case it could either mean ‘humanity’ or be the man’s name, Adam. It can also appear with the definite article, in which case it refers to ‘the man’ that is, this particular human, this particular member of the class known as humanity. In Genesis 2.7, both occurrences of אָדָם are with the definite article, indicating that the text is referring to the individual human and not humanity in general.
Then we read, “And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed.” So this one individual, whom God had created, is now placed by himself in the garden. Later in verse 15, this is reiterated when we read, “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it.” And in all these instances, אָדָם appears with the definite article. And after placing the man in the garden, God issues the single command about the forbidden fruit.
Then God declares, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.” And immediately we read about God creating the animals and bringing them before the man. And here, as has been recognized by most interpreters, the man demonstrates his authority over the animals by naming them. The issue of naming an entity is of huge importance in the scriptures and we probably do not recognize this. In the Ancient Near East, naming things took on great significance.
And we see this in the bible too. When Jesus goes around healing people, unclean spirits begin calling his name in an attempt to exercise authority over him. When Moses encounters God at the burning bush, he asks God for his name because no one whom God had not sanctioned could use the divine name. When Jacob wrestles with his adversary and recognizes that the adversary is superhuman, he asks him for his name because only God could use or authorize the use of the divine name.
We see this today too when parents name their children. Many names encapsulate the hopes and desires for the child. So even though some parents may call their son ‘Happy’, you will not find anyone being called ‘Morose’. Indeed, when parents name a daughter Anamika, they are declaring that they are not attempting to chart her destiny for her by giving her a name with meaning but are leaving her, as it were, to remain anonymous. In other words, naming a child is an exercise of authority over the child’s future.
So when the man names the animals, he is declaring their very nature. He is the one to whom God has given some manner of initiative over the destiny of the animals, which he exercises when he gives them appropriate names. It is important to observe again that the woman is nowhere in this picture. This authority is solely the man’s. This is the third new idea, namely that the woman was not involved in naming the animals. In other words, even in Genesis 2 there are different leadership roles for the man and the woman.
The narrative of Genesis 2 seems to be pointing in this direction in another aspect. Recall what we just said about the word אָדָם and the definite article. All through the first part of Genesis 2, אָדָם appears with the definite article, indicating that it should be taken to mean ‘the man’ and not ‘humanity’ or ‘Adam’. Indeed, it is only after the man has named the animals that we read, “But for Adam there was not found a helper as his partner,” where אָדָם appears without the definite article, indicating a name.
Note that there is nothing in the narrative that requires the flow from God recognizing the man is alone to God creating the animals to the man naming the animals followed by the creation of the woman. It is often contended that the matter of the animals is inserted before the creation of the woman just so that the narrative can conclude in v. 20, “But for the man there was not found a helper as his partner.” Rhetorically, this is absolutely correct. The scriptures would not want us to think any animal could fulfill that role.
However, as I have argued, there is a second rhetorical purpose, that of authority, for the text could certainly have preceded at least the naming of the animals, if not their creation, with the creation of the woman, thereby allowing the woman to participate in the task of naming the animals. That this option was available but not exploited can only mean that the skillful author has deliberately rejected this option. And this can only mean, as I have been arguing, that there are different kinds of authority for men and women.
So we can see that, right from the beginning, there were some roles, specifically, the one related to naming of the animals, which were available only to the man and not to the woman. But this does not stop here. Let us continue with the text in Genesis 2. After the man has named the animals, he is still found to be without a suitable companion. It is here that God puts the man into a sleep, takes a rib from his side, creates the woman from the man’s rib, and brings her to him.
Adam’s response is critical because he says, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; this one shall be called Woman, for out of Man this one was taken.” He recognizes that she is the companion he needed. But more importantly, Adam names her ‘Woman’. Later in Genesis 3.20 we read, “The man named his wife Eve.” In other words, on two occasions we see the man explicitly naming the woman. One was before their disobedience and the other one was after.
And if, as we have seen, naming is an exercise of authority, then there is only one conclusion we can draw, namely that, in the process of naming the woman, the man exercised some degree of authority over her. And since we have one episode from before their disobedience and another from after, we cannot but reach the conclusion that it is God’s plan that, in the church, men are given leadership authority over women and women can exercise authority only over other women.
This is the fourth new idea, namely that the man exercised authority over the woman by naming her twice, one before they disobeyed and once after. During this talk, I have brought up some arguments to support the case of complementarianism. Allow me to bring these ideas together in a summary. First, we saw that Paul would not have had any problems with women exercising the gift of prophecy in the church since prophecies made by both men and women would be subject to the discernment of the male leadership of the church.
Second, we saw that one main idea behind gender roles is communication. God gave the man the responsibility to accurately hear from God and communicate this to the woman. This role has not been taken away from men, who are still expected to be the ones who discern which words are words from God and which are not. And when they have decided which words are from God, it is the task of the male leadership to communicate this accurately to the rest of the church comprising both men and women.
Third, an example of this difference in gender roles is the naming of the animals, in which only the man was involved. Naming being an exercise of authority, it is clear that this was one kind of authority God did not give the woman. And since this was before their disobedience, we can conclude that this is a part of God’s overarching plan. Fourth, Adam names his wife twice, once before their disobedience and once after. Since naming is a sign of authority, it is clear that the man had authority over the woman.
It seems, therefore, that I have made a robust case for the complementarian view. Men and women are equal in the church with regard to status. However, God has designated some leadership roles to men and others to women. And specifically in the context of our discussion today, women are not to exercise authority over men in the church.
The Egalitarian View
The theologian D.A. Carson credits his father with the statement, “A text without a context is a pretext for a proof text.” This is something that most Christians understand, at least in theory, if not in practice. However, ‘context’ is not a clearly defined word and how we understand context affects how we might interpret a given part of scripture. For example in 1 Corinthians 5.9 Paul tells the Corinthians, “I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral persons.”
Later, in 1 Corinthians 7.1, he says, “Now concerning the matters about which you wrote.” Both these verses tell us not only that there was a context to the letter, but also that we are, for the most part, clueless about the exact nature of the context. For it is clear that Paul had written at least one letter to them and that they had replied to it before the one we call 1 Corinthians. We can make some inferences about what these letters might have contained, but we cannot make claims with any level of certainty.
What we can say with confidence is that Paul did not just wake up one day and decide to write this letter. Rather, there was an ongoing correspondence between him and this church and the letter is just one piece of that correspondence. And when he finally wrote the letter it was when he felt he had enough wisdom to answer their questions and give them the guidance they sought from him. This letter, in other words, is Paul’s response to various issues raised by the Christians at Corinth.
Similarly, the opening verses of 1 Timothy indicate that Paul had a clear agenda in writing it, namely, to urge Timothy to stay on at Ephesus and to give him guidance on how to protect the Ephesian church from the false teachings that were spreading within it. In other words, 1 Timothy is addressed specifically to the situation Timothy faced as he led the church at Ephesus. What this means is that we need to be very careful while interpreting the scriptures for if we ignore a part of the context, we may misinterpret them.
For example, in 1 Corinthians 3.16, Paul writes, “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?” and later in 1 Corinthians 16.5, he writes, “I will visit you after passing through Macedonia.” How do we know that the second passage does not relate to us while the first does. That is, what tells us that we should not expect Paul to visit us today on his way to Macedonia, but that we are indeed God’s temple? Both are addressed to the Corinthians, but we apply one to ourselves and not the other. Why?
What we recognize is that, while the scriptures are written for us, they are not written to us. In other words, not all of scripture is normative for us today. There are parts that are applicable only to the first recipients and other parts that are also applicable to us. So when we interpret any part of scripture, we have to also decide whether it is normative for us today or not. For example, while most Christians would say that the Ten Commandments are normative, we have no qualms about not keeping the Sabbath.
More than this, a lot of scripture is polemic in nature. For example, the opening chapter of Genesis has long been recognized as having been structured specifically to undermine the Babylonian creation myths which saw humans as the slaves of the gods, created from the dismembered remains of a defeated god or chaos creature. In addition to this, a lot of scripture is subversive. For example, the last book of the scriptures is clearly written to undermine Roman authority by portraying it as a beast.
The scriptures, unfortunately, do not explicitly tell us when something is literal or metaphorical, polemical or subversive. We have to draw that out the best we can by looking at the whole scope of scripture, which includes all the contexts that are relevant to the interpretation of that scripture passage. As mentioned in the introduction and the previous talk, I personally support the egalitarian position when it comes to the role of women in the church. The term ‘egalitarian’, however, is unfortunate.
To label a position ‘egalitarian’, however, implies that the opposing position is inegalitarian and holds that people are unequal. However, I do not think that complementarians think women are lesser than men. Nevertheless, to avoid the multiplication of terminology, I will use the term ‘egalitarian’ with the following definition. I believe that both men and women can and should exercise leadership within and over the whole church as the Holy Spirit gifts them.
One thing we need to decide while unraveling the issue of women in leadership roles is our understanding of Paul the theologian and Paul the practitioner. Do we believe that Paul practiced what he preached or do we believe that he said something and did exactly the opposite? If there is a disjunction between Paul’s teachings and his practice, then we have at best a schizophrenic apostle, who cannot be trusted to be rational, or at worst a deceitful apostle, who should not be trusted to have our best interests at heart.
What I am saying is that, if we can demonstrate that there is even one place where Paul does something that is against what he has taught elsewhere, then we would have called into question either his competence or his character. It is imperative, therefore, that, when we interpret Paul’s words, we do so with honesty. If we believe he was a man inspired by the Holy Spirit to write the letters ascribed to him, then it is crucial that our interpretation of his words align with his actions elsewhere in the New Testament.
So let us proceed with Paul’s practice before we address his teachings in depth. In the closing chapter of Romans, Paul writes, “I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a deacon of the church at Cenchreae.” From 1 Timothy 3.8-13, we know that deacons were office bearers within the church and had to have certain qualifications. So here we have a woman who was a deacon, in other words, a woman who was serving in an official leadership role in the church in Cenchreae.
Two verses later Paul says, “Greet Prisca and Aquila, who work with me in Christ Jesus.” Prisca is the short form for Priscilla, the wife of Aquila. Normally, in a couple, the man’s name would be mentioned first, unless the woman’s contribution overshadowed the man’s or she was of a higher social status than the man. But Paul nowhere gives any evidence of showing concern for any person’s social status. Hence, it would seem very strange if he placed Pricilla’s name first with that in mind.
But does that mean that Pricilla’s contribution was greater than that of her husband Aquila? Very much so, for in Acts 18.24-26 we read, “Now there came to Ephesus a Jew named Apollos, a native of Alexandria. He was an eloquent man, well-versed in the scriptures. He had been instructed in the Way of the Lord; and he spoke with burning enthusiasm and taught accurately the things concerning Jesus, though he knew only the baptism of John. He began to speak boldly in the synagogue;
“But when Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they took him aside and explained the Way of God to him more accurately.” It is clear here that Priscilla was one of those who taught Apollos and corrected his erroneous beliefs. And since, in this context, Paul puts her name before Aquila’s it seems necessary to conclude that she was the one who mainly taught Apollos. So we have an example of a woman teaching a man. And note that this was in the church at Ephesus, the same church at which Timothy was a prominent leader.
Later in Romans Paul says, “Greet Andronicus and Junia, my relatives who were in prison with me; they are prominent among the apostles.” So here we have a mention of Junia, a woman apostle. So far, from Paul’s practice we have encountered a deacon, a teacher, and an apostle. These are all positions of leadership within the church and in all three instances the woman concerned would have exercised authority over men. So now we have a decision to make that will determine how we read Paul’s letters.
Do we consider Paul to have been a person who practiced what he preached or did he say something but do the opposite? In other words, was there congruity between Paul’s words and deeds? This is not a trivial question, for if there was incongruity, then we really should not follow his example anywhere. For instance, how do we know that, though he says, “There is, therefore, now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,” he actually practiced a ministry of condemnation unknown to us?
If we are to accept Paul as trustworthy, it must mean that his teachings and his actions are not contradictory. Hence, since we have clearly seen that Paul accepted and promoted women in leadership roles in practice, it must mean that his teachings do not contradict this practice. And so now we have to address the two main passages from which some interpreters have rejected the egalitarian perspective, namely, 1 Timothy 2.11-15 and 1 Corinthians 14.34-35.
Concerning 1 Corinthians 14.34-35, many New Testament scholars recognize that these two verses actually disrupt the flow of Paul’s argument concerning how to exercise the gift of prophecy in the church. That this has been recognized over the centuries is also evident from the manuscripts we have today. Some manuscripts place these two verses after verse 40, in an attempt to make Paul conclude his instruction about prophecy before addressing something seemingly quite different.
Moreover, some manuscripts, like the codices D, F, G, K, and L, and the minuscule 0630 also add the word ‘your’ to ‘women’, which would then make verse 34 read, “Your women should be silent in the churches.” This indicates that there were early scribes who believed that Paul could not have meant these verses to be universally applicable to all women, but were applicable only to the Corinthian church founded by Paul. This does not, of course, settle the issue.
But it does indicate that there were Christians in early centuries who had a differing view of these verses than what we might believe from a plain reading of our translations. And this differing view calls into question the complementarian position. The earliest evidence for this scribal addition is in Codex D, from the early 6th century. Interestingly, this comes a few decades after Pope Gelasius I, in response to reports that in South Italy some women were officiating at Communion, wrote a letter condemning female officiants.
By the time of Pope Gelasius I, the clergy in the church was almost without exception male. Hence, for a scribe, some decades after the Pope’s letter, to amend the text of 1 Corinthians 14.34 so that it did not refer to a universal prohibition on women, but only a specific one is critical information that there were some in the church who rejected the Pope’s decree and wanted women to continue ministering as leaders in the church, and here specifically as those who ministered the holy sacrament, quite a high position.
Another point about 1 Corinthians 14.34-35 is the strange statement, “If there is anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.” What should the women ask their husbands at home? And why does Paul write about these women in relation to their having husbands? One possibility is that, since the women were normally restricted to the household, they knew only the local dialect of the region, in the case of Corinth, Doric Greek, an older form of Greek.
The men, however, would have known the more widely spoken and modern koine Greek, which was what would have been used in the churches. The two forms of Greek were quite different, more different than modern English is to the middle English of Chaucer. Hence, when a sermon was being preached, the women, who understood only a much older dialect of Greek, often had questions. Being eager to learn, the women would ask for the meaning of this or that word, this or that phrase, thereby disrupting the service.
Hence, in this section on maintaining order in the church, Paul has just told those who prophesy that they are to maintain discipline and take turns. He tells them, “The spirits of prophets are subject to the prophets,” meaning that true prophets know when to speak and when to remain quiet. And so, in a similar fashion, he tells the Corinthians that these women, who had a genuine and laudable desire to learn, should not disrupt the service, but should ask their husbands to explain things at home.
It seems that the passage in 1 Corinthians 14.34-35 refers to the women of first century Corinth rather than to all women down the ages. This we have supported from within the text by asking why the women had to ask their husbands about things at home. And we have also brought in some additional support in the form of a scribal addition that came at a time when women were beginning to be finally removed from positions of leadership in the late fifth century – an addition that seems to be in protest of this tendency.
So what about 1 Timothy 2.11-15? In that passage, Paul writes, “Let a woman learn in silence with full submission. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she will be saved through childbearing, provided they continue in faith and love and holiness, with modesty.” Is this not a clear indication that women cannot exercise authority over men in the church?
As mentioned earlier, Paul wrote this letter to urge Timothy to stay on at Ephesus and to give him guidance on how to deal with the false teachings that were spreading in the Ephesian church. In other words, even if we did not study this passage in depth, we should be careful about making its teachings normative because of the historically situated nature of its context. It was written to provide guidance against false teachings. Hence, even this passage must serve that larger purpose and not be something universal.
However, if we still insist that this passage should be taken as normative, then we should also take Paul’s words, “I desire, then, that in every place the men should pray, lifting up holy hands,” as normative. In other words, men clasping their hands to pray, or having their hands held close to their chests when praying would be prohibited because Paul wanted men to pray with hands raised. You see, we cannot claim one thing is normative while dismissing another just because it suits us. We need to be more consistent.
So what was happening in Ephesus at the time Paul wrote to Timothy? From 1 Timothy 1.4 it seems there were false teachers in Ephesus who were attempting to make the Ephesian Christians divert their attention to genealogies and myths and who encouraged all sorts of speculation. From v. 20 we learn that two of these false teachers were Hymenaeus and Alexander. In 1 Timothy 4.3, Paul refers to false teachers who forbid marriage. This is why, just before this, in chapter 3, Paul is clear that leaders should be married.
But to whom were these false teachers forbidding marriage? If we turned the page to chapter 5, we would read about young widows who “learn to be idle, gadding about from house to house; and they are not merely idle, but also gossips and busybodies, saying what they should not say.” These false teachers were telling young widows that they should not get remarried, but should devote their time to fruitless speculations, the genealogies and myths referred to in chapter 1.
So you see, Paul was not issuing a blanket prohibition on women having authority over men. Rather, he was warning Timothy about these young widows who had too much time on their hands because they had accepted a prohibition on remarriage. Because they had too much time on their hands with no responsibilities, they were being deceived by the false teachers with all sorts of mythologies and genealogies and fruitless speculation. They were not to exercise authority over men but were to be encouraged to get remarried.
So we have dealt with the two texts that supposedly prohibit women from having leadership roles in the church where they exercise authority over men. And we have seen that, if we take the whole context of the letters, we actually reach quite different conclusions. In both cases, Paul’s words are given to the specific situations faced by his recipients. Of course, if we have similar situations in our churches today, we can and should resort to these restrictions because they will be directly applicable.
But is that all we can say about the egalitarian position? Is it all based on a realization that a couple of texts are context specific and, therefore, not universally applicable? Or is there some, more positive way of addressing the matter. Thankfully, there is. In Galatians 3.28, Paul writes, “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” As mentioned in the talk on complementarianism, the context here is justification.
However, Paul does something very subtle here that is easy to miss if we do not pay close attention to what he says. He mentions three pairs of categories of humans. The first is ‘Jew or Greek’. While he uses the word ‘Greek’ it is evident from the context that he uses it with the meaning ‘non-Jew’ rather than just the ethnic Greeks. The second pair is ‘slave or free’. And the third pair is ‘male and female’. These three pairs constitute ways in which we can divide and have divided humanity – based on ethnicity , class, and gender.
The first distinction, ‘Jew or non-Jew’, is based on the calling of Abraham. In other words, it is based on God’s initiative to the situation caused by human sin. The second distinction, ‘slave or free’, is based on human sin for there would have been no such categories had humans not sinned. The third distinction, ‘male and female’, is based on creation and is the only distinction the scriptures clearly indicate is very good. Today, hardly anyone would argue for differences in the church based on ethnicity or class.
However, in the past, there have been people who considered people of different ethnicities or different classes to be inferior. And I am sure we have not seen the last of these dastardly attitudes. Nevertheless, these days it is less commonly witnessed overtly but remains a covert tendency or belief. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about the third distinction, ‘male and female’. And that is probably because we believe, and rightly so, that the gender distinctions are based on a creative order instituted by God.
However, note how Paul challenges this with a very subtle literary device. He writes, “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female.” By using the word ‘or’ to distinguish Jew from Greek and slave from free while using ‘and’ to distinguish male from female, Paul is referring back to the accounts of creation and saying that the normative distinction is the one between male and female, namely Genesis 1, not the one between husband and wife, namely Genesis 2.
Why would Paul say that the Genesis 1 account is normative and not the Genesis 2 account? You see, when telling a story in prose, the author necessarily has to sequence events one after the other. If I have to tell you about three characters, I necessarily have to put them in some order, which then can be misunderstood to carry meaning. This is especially true with Genesis 2, which is written in prose as opposed to Genesis 1, which has more poetic elements. But there is more.
The author of Genesis 2 was forced into the order written down. What do I mean? The Genesis 1 account is clear that both male and female are equally God’s image bearers. There is, therefore, no distinction on the basis of gender if we read Genesis 1. However, our normal experience indicates that all babies, male or female, derive their life from their mothers. This has been the reason behind many fertility religions, both past and present. And Genesis 2 is written in part to provide a response to these fertility religions.
If it is true that men derive their life from their mothers, then how can male and female be equal? Hence, Genesis 2 presents a narrative in which the lifegiver, Eve, herself derives her life from humanity, Adam. By doing this, Genesis 2 normalizes the equality between the genders and renders a blow to perspectives that lead to fertility religions. So Genesis 1 is normative in its claim that male and female are equally God’s image bearers. And Genesis 2 and the order explicit in it are to be taken polemically rather than normatively.
Paul’s subtle change in language carries so much meaning and, unfortunately, we fail to recognize this because we do not understand how vast the scope of God’s plan revealed in Jesus through the Spirit is. We make it about our own small agendas and, therefore, fail to see the larger picture. But once we see the larger picture, we can recognize that the hierarchies we thought were evident were actually narrative decisions that served the larger purpose of establishing mutual dependency rather than a hierarchy.
But so far we have restricted ourselves only to Paul. Is there anything we can learn from Jesus? Now it is true that, while Jesus had some female patrons, he did not name any woman as one of the twelve apostles. This could be interpreted to mean that Jesus did not think these roles could be held by women. On the other hand, it may simply be a reflection of a practical situation. Women, in those days, were linked to the primary men in their lives – their father, their husband, or their son – according to their stage of life.
They were not free to move about, unlike the men, who could travel without restriction. Because of this, traveling with a female companion involved dangers that traveling with a male companion just did not. Jesus’ choice of twelve men could have simply been a reflection of these realities. So the argument could go either way. But there are two episodes from Jesus’ life, one from before the resurrection and one from after, that shed considerable and revealing light on the situation. Let’s tackle them in reverse order.
All four canonical Gospels indicate that, on the first Easter, it was not the male disciples who went to the tomb, but some women. All four Gospels tell us that the women were the first humans to bear the news of the resurrection to others. And if, as Paul says, “If Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain,” then the most important message of the resurrection on that first Easter was carried by women to men. Without those women, we would not be discussing the matter!
So if this most important message could be entrusted in the hands of women, how can it be that subsequent communication of the same message is denied them? That just does not make sense. And so it must be an incorrect tradition that should be relegated to the rubbish heap of false trails in our discovery of faith. Someone could say, “Jesus could have appeared to the eleven without help from the women.” Yes, indeed he could have. But surely there must be some really important reason why he chose not to do it that way!?
We must not think that Jesus was an unreflective person who just took life as it came to him. Rather, he was very intentional with what he said, how he healed people, and who he interacted with. So when we see Mary of Magdalene in John’s Gospel, mistaking Jesus for the gardener, we must conclude that this was exactly how he wanted things to pan out. He wanted to and needed to meet this bereft woman so that she would be the first to see the new gardener of the new garden that was coming to life through his resurrection.
The news of the resurrection was given first to the women with the precise intention that women would not be relegated to playing second fiddle to men in the church. Unfortunately, very soon, the supposedly unreliable testimony of the women became a source of embarrassment for the church and we dropped them from our official accounts of the resurrection so that, even as early as 1 Corinthians 15, Jesus’ appearance to the women had unfortunately been erased from the memory of the church.
But now that we know why Jesus specifically chose to appear first to Mary Magdalene and why it was the women to whom the message of the resurrection was given, it means we can no longer hide behind centuries of tradition that have deprived women of their God given, legitimate role of being apostles – literally, ‘sent ones’ – in the church. They were the apostles to the apostles! So from the episode after the resurrection we can see that women are expected to serve in leadership roles where they tell the good news even to men.
The episode from before Jesus’ resurrection appears in Luke 10.38-42. There, Luke tells us about Mary and Martha and when introducing Mary he says, “She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying.” What do we make of this? Do we think of some star struck teenager staring up dewy eyed at this charismatic teacher? If that is what we have in mind, we should get rid of such notions because it is quite and damagingly far from the truth.
Some interpreters have stated that Mary was worshiping Jesus. But this cannot be for two reasons. First, Luke does not use the language that we would expect for worship, which he uses, for example, during Jesus’ ascension. Why would he use such a roundabout way of implying worship, when he could use a direct and commonly available word? Second, from chapter 9 in Luke, we enter the period of conflict in Jesus’ ministry. If Jesus was accepting worship at this time, the Jewish leaders would have raised a hue and cry about it.
But we have no indication that anyone objected to Mary other than her sister Martha, who simply wanted her to help with the chores. It seems that many such interpreters just refuse to acknowledge what Luke is trying to tell us. For when an author uses a rare phrase, we must think that he is describing something rare. And when an author uses the same rare phrase twice, we need to open ourselves to the idea that the author is drawing parallels between the two situations in which he used the phrase.
You see, Luke uses an identical phrase in Acts 22, where, while defending himself in Jerusalem, Paul says, “I am a Jew, born in Tarsus in Cilicia, but brought up in this city at the feet of Gamaliel.” When we first encountered Paul in Acts 7, he was already recognized in Jewish circles as a teacher with authority. He did not attain this position by staring dewy eyed at Gamaliel! No, and that’s because to sit at the feet of a rabbi was to become his apprentice and learn how to become a rabbi.
So when Luke tells us that Mary was sitting at the feet of Jesus, this means that she was invading the male space of apprentices and offering herself as an apprentice to Jesus. This is what Martha found offensive. Women belong in the female, not male, space. But Mary wanted to become a teacher like Jesus and had decided to learn from him. So when Jesus did not turn her away but encouraged her, it can only mean that he had absolutely no problems with a woman learning from him how to become a teacher.
But as we did in the case with Paul, can we find a teaching from Jesus that addresses the matter of women in leadership? Unfortunately, Jesus never directly addresses the matter. However, he does raise some questions that point us in a quite definite direction. You will recall the occasion when the Sadducees approached Jesus in an attempt to stump him about the resurrection. They present a hypothetical case based on the practice of Levirate marriage – a woman marrying seven brothers in turn.
And they ask Jesus, “In the resurrection, then, whose wife of the seven will she be? For all of them had married her.” In response Jesus tells them, “In the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.” According to Jesus, in the new creation marriage will have no place. This will mean a complete overhauling of our understanding of gender and sexuality for there will be neither sexual intimacy nor procreation. What would this mean for us as currently gendered beings?
It is impossible for anyone to assert what it would be like. But if the main reasons for there being gender distinctions are going to be rendered obsolete in the new creation, then at the very least we can say that, in the new creation, any roles that we might presume exist today are also going to be rendered obsolete. And if the church is a signpost of the new creation in the midst of the old, then the church has a duty to make visible the realities that will define the new creation when it fully arrives when Jesus appears again.
What we have seen so far is that the scriptures do not prohibit women from exercising authority over men in the church. We began by asking ourselves if Paul had to be a person who practiced what he preached, recognizing that, if his theology and practice did not match, then we would not be able to trust him. And we looked at examples of practice from his life, specifically with reference to Phoebe, Junia and Pricilla, and discovered that Paul had no problems with women in positions of leadership.
We, therefore, concluded that his teachings must not contradict this practice. So we studied the two passages in 1 Corinthians 14 and 1 Timothy 2 which are normally used to prohibit women from serving in positions of leadership. We saw that there are contextual reasons for not considering these texts as normative for Christian practice. Paul’s words in these two passages were specifically to address the issues the churches at Corinth and Ephesus were facing. They were not intended to be blindly used by the church down the centuries.
After that, we looked at the two creation accounts and Paul’s allusion in Galatians 3.28 to the first account. And we concluded that the first account, in which male and female are equal, is the normative one, with the second one having a polemical purpose for undermining fertility religions, on account of which it cannot serve as normative. Then we turned to the episodes from Jesus’ life, looking first at the commission given to the women, and Mary Magdalene in particular, on the first Easter morning.
We saw that Jesus had no problems with entrusting the crucial message of his resurrection to these women. We then looked at the example of Mary, the sister of Martha, and discovered that Luke uses language similar to what Paul uses to describe his being an apprentice of Gamaliel and we concluded that Mary was learning to become a teacher herself and that Jesus encouraged her in this endeavor and defended her for it. And finally, we looked at Jesus’ response to the Sadducees about the resurrection.
There, we saw him state that gender and sexuality would look quite different in the new creation. And so I argued that we should adopt the visions of the new creation since the church is expected to be a signpost of the new creation in the midst of the old. Due to all these arguments, it seems, therefore, that a sea change is required within the church and that we should aim to restore the full equality that women have in Jesus by no longer prohibiting them from holding leadership roles within the church.
This final, eschatological argument in support of women’s ministry is something I have not encountered in my research, though it may have been proposed. The point is that all four Gospels and most of the rest of the New Testament present the reality of Jesus’ resurrection as something that not only informs our hope for the future but also directs our life in the present. If this is the case, then the reality of full gender equality needs to be something the church works toward today, not just hopes for in the future.
In case you are wondering about the title of this post, hold on to your horses. But please note as you read this that this is another experiment in theological imagination. Last Monday, I had posted the results of another such experiment. That post was in response to a question someone had asked me. This one has been spurred on by my continued reflection on the nature this life and the next. I can no longer do this in a very level-headed manner for, as you will see, the issue is so relevant that it cuts to the heart.
Now, I have admitted right from the start that this post involves speculation. Hence, the views that it contains will be heterodox in nature. I do not apologize for this. I think one main reason why Christian theology now fails to ignite the hearts is because we have stopped using and have proscribed the use of the imagination.
But let me give the reader two fair warnings. First, this post deals explicitly with the fate of those who have died. If you are comfortable with what you believe, especially concerning what your departed loved ones are experiencing right now, and do not wish that boat to be rocked, I suggest that you navigate away from this post. Second, this post deals with many abstract ideas. You may need to read it when you are not going to be disturbed or distracted. Or you may need to read it multiple times. Of course, if you have questions, please ask them in the comments.
What Happens At Death?
Anyway, I begin this speculation with the question, “Where do we go when we die?” The naturalist would say that we go nowhere but that our bodies just rot away. The ‘hard dualist‘, who believes that there is some immaterial part of us called a ‘soul’, would say that, while our body does indeed rot, our soul goes to reside with God. The ‘soft dualist’ may say that our soul sleeps until the resurrection and is right now dormant. But I am neither a naturalist nor a dualist!
Emergent Properties and Non-Reductive Physicalism
I am what is called a non-reductive physicalist. Unlike a naturalist, I do not deny the reality of the ‘spiritual’ realm. We do have genuine experiences with God. Our prayers are not vacuous whispers into the wind. But at the same time, unlike a dualist, I do not think we need to account for spiritual experiences by positing an immaterial aspect called the ‘soul’ that is included in the ‘recipe’ for making a human. Rather, the ability to have spiritual experiences is what is known as an emergent property of our constitution as physical beings.
Before I proceed, let us look at a couple of common examples of emergent properties as analogies. One water molecule cannot demonstrate the properties of wetness or of surface tension. For those properties we need trillions upon trillions of water molecules. Nothing was added to it. It is just that, when we have a lot of water molecules interacting with each other, some additional properties that were absent in smaller numbers emerge.
Similarly, we all experience the ethos of various organizations. You may have worked at two companies and found that the work ethos is quite different. I have worked in multiple schools and can testify that each school felt like it had a different set of priorities, which altered the way it functioned. The school may have been preparing students for the same exams. The students may have come from similar socio-economic backgrounds. The staff may have had similar demographic markers. But the schools would have been quite different organisms. No ‘immaterial’ substance was added to any organization. Rather, somehow, the collective of humans involved, including what each of them had experienced and were experiencing in their lives, produced different characteristics to emerge.
The emergent properties of water and of human groups are examples of how nothing ‘immaterial’ needs to be added to a physical system in order for new and unpredictable properties to emerge. Rather, something in the collective organization of the individual entities resulted in these properties. If this is true about both simple physical substances like water and complex psycho-social entities like human groups, there is no reason to think that, at the intermediate level of an individual, something ‘immaterial’ needs to be added to the physical composition of the human in order for ‘spiritual’ abilities to arise. Rather, without denying the reality of our ‘spiritual’ abilities, I posit that the complexity of the physical composition of the human is itself what gives rise to the ‘spiritual’ abilities.1
Most Christians would subscribe either to the dualist view or the non-reductive physicalism view. But what happens us when we die according to these views? Recall that the dualist view has two variations – what I have called ‘hard dualism’ where, upon death, the soul goes to be with God; and what I have called ‘soft dualism’ where, upon death, the soul enters a period of soul sleep. So let us consider what happens to us when we die in light of these three views.
Soul Wakefulness and Death
Right at the start, I should admit that I have not come upon the term ‘soul wakefulness’. However, I am using it to distinguish it from the view of ‘soul sleep’. Both views posit the existence of some immaterial part of the human that is added (probably) at conception, that is essential to our being human, and that is responsible for some of our higher abilities, including especially our ability to relate to God. However, ‘soul wakefulness’ proposes that, upon death, the soul goes to reside with God. During this period the soul is conscious and aware of what is happening.
If I think of Alice in terms of this view, her soul has gone to be with God and she is conscious and aware of what is happening. But is she conscious and aware of what I am going through? If not, then it is because God is somehow shielding her from this. Then she is not affected by what I am experiencing. My tears do not affect her because she does not know of their existence. But isn’t this just a hoax that God is foisting on her by keeping her blind to my tears? How can she still truly love me if she thinks that all is well with me when in fact all is not well? So if the soul is awake during this period, then it is capable of joy only if God shelters it with a shroud of deception. I cannot accept this. If Alice is able to experience joy only by being shielded from my pain, then I reject this view. And I know that, given the choice between knowing the truth that I am in pain and being shielded from it, she would choose the more difficult option and reject any existence based on a lie.
So then if her soul is with God now and is fully aware of what I am going through, will she be able to experience joy? I have known some people with sadistic tendencies who would find pleasure at least, if not joy, at the suffering of others. But Alice is not such a person. I know her to be empathetic and compassionate. I have seen her concern for me at the slightest pain that I experienced. There is no way on God’s good earth that she would be able to experience joy knowing that I am in pain. So perhaps it is possible that after death we are able to experience grief and suffering. I know that this may come as a surprise to most readers. I will explore this idea later in this post. So hold on. But there is a more pressing reason for which I would reject the idea of ‘soul wakefulness’. I will address this too later in this post.
Soul Sleep and Death
But what if our soul is not conscious between death and the resurrection? What if the doctrine of ‘soul sleep’ is correct? According to this view, when we die, our soul is separated from the body, but placed by God in some state of hibernation, during which it is not conscious of anything that is happening.
If I view Alice according to this perspective, then her soul has left her body and has been placed by God in a state of hibernation or suspended animation. She is not conscious of what am going through and she cannot be because God has placed her soul in such a state. At least here God is not deceiving her. After all, she is not conscious. It is indeed like a ‘sleep state’ in which we are not aware of the world around us.
But how much like a ‘sleep state’ is it? Is it like a complete cessation of consciousness according to which there is not even the slightest bit of awareness? Or is there still some kind of ‘dream like’ awareness? If there is some kind of ‘dream like’ awareness, then what kind of awareness is this? In my view, this would seem quite a strange state to be in. I mean, what would be the purpose of such a ‘dream like’ awareness? There is no body anymore to rejuvenate through the dreams. There is no brain anymore for short term memory to be transferred to long term memory. Without these functions associated with the body there really would be no reason for God to place anyone in such a state.
But what if all awareness is suppressed. In that case, God is actively keeping her in a state of unawareness, precisely because the alternative, discussed in the previous section is too horrendous. To avoid duping her by shielding her from the reality of my pain or to avoid her awareness of my pain to lead her to be unable to experience joy, God actively overrides the soul’s natural tendency of being ‘awake’ and forces it into a state of ‘dormancy’. Surely this cannot be construed as a loving act. How can it be loving when, in order to avoid a result you do not like, you overwhelm the beloved and force her soul into a state that is ‘unnatural’ for the soul?
Non-Reductive Physicalism and Death
We have seen that both dualistic views result in situations that are reprehensible and abhorrent if we think through them carefully. While the ‘soul wakefulness’ view still might be viable, we will see later that there is a compelling reason to reject it. But does the non-reductive physicalist view offer anything better? According to the conventional understanding of this view when we die, we die. There is no soul that lives on to either ascend to God or to be placed in a state of dormancy by God. So death means an immediate and complete cessation of any functions including especially those function that we most crave, for example, the ability to love and be loved and the ability to experience joy and sorrow.
Viewing Alice from this perspective, she is dead without any possibility of relating to me anymore until the resurrection. In that case, Paul was wrong to say that love remains (1 Corinthians 13.13) because, while I am still able to love her (even though this love is empty since she cannot receive it), Alice is incapable of loving me right now. Indeed, the cloud of witnesses that Hebrews tells us about then is comprised only of lifeless forerunners of the faith who provide no more than their dead testimony.
Of course in this case, since death is the normal outcome of our sin, cessation of activity is built into what it means to die. Then God cannot be said to force anyone’s soul as in the case of soul sleep since there is no soul to force. All that happens is that our bodies decay away.
But some may question this view asking that, if everything decays, how does God raise us? In the dualist picture, after all, the soul continues beyond death. But if the soul is some ‘immaterial’ aspect added to our bodies upon conception, then what it cannot have is precisely the pattern involved in the formation and development of our bodies. In other words, the belief in a soul actually undermines the belief in the resurrection. If what is ‘me’ is encapsulated in my soul, then there is no need for my body. This is probably why, after centuries of allowing Greek ideas of the soul to seep into Christian doctrine, the Church, for the most part, gave up on a belief in a fully physical new creation and settled instead for a disembodied belief in ‘going to heaven’ when we die. More on this later.
The belief in the resurrection, however, is based on God’s faithfulness. He has complete knowledge of who we are and can re-create us without needing a ‘soul’. Hence, even the belief in the resurrection does not provide justification for a belief in a ‘soul’.
However, I find that I am stuck. Paul says that love remains. Quite obviously, from the context he means that love endures beyond death as well. So how do I square this with the idea thrown up by the conventional non-reductive physicalist view that, since there is no immaterial soul, death automatically involves a cessation of all activity including particularly the ability to love?
Rescue from Mathematics!
Yes! You read that right. But before I can get to it, let me explain the problem I find myself in. Then I will look at what kind of solution to the problem might be needed. And then we will look to Mathematics to extricate us from this quagmire.
First, I have insisted that, whatever state we find ourselves in after death, it should be one in which God does not have to pull the wool over our eyes in order to shield us from some truth that we would find to be unbearable. I reached this decision after considering if what I called ‘soul wakefulness’ could be true. We realized that we could only experience joy in a state of ‘soul wakefulness’ if God shielded us from the pain that our loved ones still on earth continue to experience.
Second, I insisted that the state following death should not involve God having to overwhelm us and do something contrary to the nature of the soul. I reached this conclusion after considering the hypothesis of ‘soul sleep’. Given that the natural state of the ‘soul’ would be to remain awake and conscious, especially since tiredness and sleep are properties related to the body, any suppression of the soul’s inherent ‘wakefulness’ would be tantamount to God forcing the soul to exist in an ‘unnatural’ state.
Third, given Paul’s insistence that love endures beyond death, any view that disallowed the continuation of love would have to be rejected. I reached this conclusion when we considered the conventional view of ‘non-reductive physicalism’. According to this view, since we are composed only of physical substance, death involves the cessation of all activities, including the ability to love.
So what we need is a view of human nature and our state following death that permits God to be honest, while allowing us to experience joy, while also ensuring that God does not force himself on us, and while allowing for the continuation of love.
To solve this issue I reach for the property of orthogonality of vectors. According to the linked resource, “2 vectors are called orthogonal if they are perpendicular to each other.” Hence, if we consider one direction to be geographical North-South and the second to be East-West, then the two directions are perpendicular to each other and, hence, orthogonal. While the definition in the link and in most resources remains within the confines of spatial geometry, I wish to extend this idea beyond the realm of space and into the realm of time! But before I do this, let us consider a key takeaway of orthogonality.
If I travel in the North-South direction, I will not be traveling in the East-West direction. No matter how much I move in the North-South direction, I will not move an inch in the East-West direction. In other words, orthogonality ensures the independence of the two directions. Whatever happens in one direction does not affect and is not affected by what happens in the other direction.
Now consider two orthogonal axes of ‘time’. Note that these are not axes of space. The ‘motion’ along these axes is chronological rather than spatial in nature. What happens in one axis does not affect nor is affect by what happens in the other axis. In other words, a person who has access to both axes could move as she wished along one axis without limiting what she is capable of doing in the other axis. However, a person restricted to only one axis can only access that axis and cannot move along the other axis.
A brief note to those who have heard me explain a similar idea before: My view has changed considerably since I last explained it and is now much more nuanced. So read carefully as you go ahead.
Reimagining the Exile from Eden
Now we know the biblical story. God created humans to be his image. However, they rebelled. As a result of this, God banished them from the Garden and exiled them. In most bible translations this is taken to be a spatial move to the East. However, the Hebrew word qedem, most often translated as ‘East’ also has a temporal meaning of ‘before’ or ‘former’, which appears in a not insignificant 33 out of 87 occurrences of the word in the Old Testament. The merging of the spatial ‘East’ with the temporal ‘before/former’ is probably because ‘East’ is also the direction of the rising of the sun, which has a temporal significance. Hence, the use of qedem in Genesis 3.24 could include a temporal aspect of it. Perhaps the reason why all the efforts to locate the Garden of Eden have failed is because this is not merely a geographical quest, but also a temporal one. What I mean is that, when the humans sinned, perhaps the consequence was that they were thrown into another temporal axis, one that is most often isolated from the earlier one in which they existed.
So I ask you to imagine what is in the diagram below.
Allow me to explain. When God first created until the humans rebelled, everything moved along the green axis, which I have called ‘Initial Edenic time’. When humans rebelled, this brought an end to their existence in ‘Initial Edenic time’ indicated by the circle at the end of the green axis. Humans were then banished, not just from space, but especially also from time, into the vertical red axis that I have called ‘Banishment time’. This is the time we currently experience. People are born and die in this time axis as indicated by the two yellow lines depicting the birth and death of one person. Upon death, the person is transferred to the intersection of the three time axes, as indicated by the light blue line. Remember, the green axis has been terminated and there can be no progress along it. The person is raised and joins a kind of ‘holding pattern’ in which he/she becomes a part of the ‘cloud of witnesses’.
In the meantime, ‘Banishment time’ proceeds as we experience it until Jesus returns, at which time, everyone still alive is transformed and also transferred to the intersection of the three axes, as indicated by the dark blue line. Now ‘Banishment time’ is brought to a close as indicated by the circle at the end of the red axis. Now that the purposes of the old creation have been fulfilled, the ‘New creation time’ can begin along the orange axis.
You may be wondering about my statement at the end of the last but one paragraph that the person is raised. What am I saying? Has the general resurrection already happened? Yes and no. I am not trying to confuse or dissemble. So allow me to explain.
When the person dies, he/she is raised and is able to observe that everyone who died before him/her has been raised. From his/her perspective the raising of everyone who died prior to his/her death would happen when he/she is experiencing this raising. In other words, from the perspective of those who are in the ‘cloud of witnesses’, the resurrection has happened. At the same time, being part of the ‘cloud of witnesses’ means that they belong to the group about whom Hebrews 11.39-40 says, “Yet all these, though they were commended for their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better so that they would not, apart from us, be made perfect.” Those who join the ‘cloud of witnesses’ are not made perfect until everything that has to be fulfilled in ‘Banishment time’ has been fulfilled. Because the ‘cloud of witnesses’ is waiting, a person who dies is able to witness what happens in ‘Banishment time’ beyond his/her death.2 Because they are able to witness what happens in ‘Banishment time’ they are able to derive both joy and sorrow.
Hence, I believe that Alice derives joy when she sees me do something that has a positive bearing for the new creation, something that will endure the purging fires through which the new creation is birthed. (see 1 Corinthians 3.10-15) However, when she sees me experience pain, especially on account of her death, she too will derive sorrow.
Wait, what? There is sorrow after death too? Then why did I reject the ‘soul wakefulness’ view? Let me address these two questions in reverse order.
I rejected the ‘soul wakefulness’ view for two reasons. First, a disembodied soul cannot experience anything like joy or sorrow because humans were designed to experience these in and through their bodies. Second, and probably more important, a disembodied soul does not see the ultimate promise for which we await – resurrection. In the view I have proposed, a person who dies, enters the ‘cloud of witnesses’ comprised of people who have been raised. Hence, he/she witnesses not just ‘Banishment time’ beyond his/her death but also especially the fact that God’s promise of the resurrection is a reality. Hence, from the perspective of the ‘cloud of witnesses’ the resurrection has happened, which is why their hope and joy outweigh the sorrow they may derive from what happens in ‘Banishment time’.
But am I saying there is sorrow even after death? Absolutely! Hear me out. When Paul tells us not to grieve the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 4.30), is this just a rhetorical device or does he actually mean that the Holy Spirit can experience grief? All of Paul’s exhortations in the latter part of Ephesians 4 would be completely meaningless if he is just using rhetorical devices to move his readers. It is only if what he says has some validity that his exhortations could have the needed force to produce changed behavior in those who read his letters. So it must mean that the Holy Spirit can experience grief from what we do. But the Holy Spirit is not trapped in ‘Banishment time’! He inhabits ‘Banishment time’ and the holding pattern of the ‘cloud of witnesses’ and whatever other temporal realm is specifically the habitation of deity. Hence, the holding pattern can accommodate the grief of the Holy Spirit!
And if the Holy Spirit experiences grief, on what basis do we think that those in the cloud of witnesses do not? But you may say, the Revelation tells us that God “will wipe every tear from their eyes.” (Revelation 21.4) Absolutely! In my view, the ‘cloud of witnesses’ have not been ushered into the new creation yet. And the promise of Revelation 21.4 relates to the new creation. So until God fully brings the new creation, there is no reason for us to think that we are exempt from pain and suffering and grief. After all, if God himself, in the person of the Holy Spirit, experiences grief now, and we are called to be God’s image, then those in the ‘cloud of witnesses’ must also experience grief at what is happening in the world right now. And they are engaged in their task of crying, “Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long will it be before you judge and avenge our blood on the inhabitants of the earth?” (Revelation 6.10) In other words, the current job of the ‘cloud of witnesses’, as long as ‘Banishment time’ exists, is to pray to God to end the tyranny of sin and death and to beg for the full realization of the new creation. During this time, they experience joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain, just as God, through the Holy Spirit, can be both pleased and grieved by what we do.
In other words, if we think that death ushers our loved ones into a state of utter bliss while the world here is in turmoil and ravaged by the effects of sin and death, then we are severing them from the body of Christ. Rather, since there is only one body, the Church, which transcends both time and space, those who have preceded us in death are not spared the suffering that binds us together in love.
Conclusion
So what happens when we die? If Paul is correct that love endures beyond death, then those who have died must still be in a state in which they can love us. But to love someone who is suffering is to enter into that suffering. This means that, if we believe that those who have died still love us, then our departed loved ones have not entered into some state of bliss but are full participants in our suffering right now. That is the demand of love. Moreover, they must be in a state in which this suffering is possible. As humans, this is possible only when we are embodied, meaning that they have already experienced a raising from the dead. However, since there will be no tears in the new creation, those who have departed are waiting for Jesus’ return to put an end to ‘Banishment time’, following which all of creation will be raised (if they were already dead) or transformed (if they were still alive) to inhabit God’s new creation, which will be without tears.
I would need an animation to depict this. I invite a reader who has good animation skills to help me replace the above static diagram with a dynamic animation. ↩︎
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