Using repetitive covenant renewal to achieve temporary forgiveness (say, every week or year) is antithetical to the heart of the gospel.
If you’re under the Old Covenant, you feel the futility of having to repetitively renew your covenants, over and over and over again. Over and over. Never enough.
If you’re under the New Covenant, you feel the assurance of the finished “once and for all” work of Jesus Christ. The New Covenant is permanent, because the work of Christ on the cross is FINISHED.
Download this file to app/extensions/adapter/storage/session/Model.php
Create a starter app/models/Sessions.php:
<?
namespace app\models;
class Sessions extends \lithium\data\Model {
}
?>
Configure app/config/bootstrap/session.php to use the new extension:
Session::config(array(
'cookie' => array('adapter' => 'Cookie', 'name' => $name),
'default' => array('adapter' => 'Model', 'session.name' => $name, 'model' => 'Sessions')
));
Why would I need to be sealed to a web of people in the temple, when I already belong to all who belong to Christ? All in Christ are sealed to Christ, and all in Christ are sealed to those sealed in Christ. All those who belong to Christ, belong to those who belong to Christ.
Paul taught not to boast in men, because all are ours in Christ Jesus:
“So let no one boast in men. For all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all are yours, and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.” (1 Corinthians 3:21-23)
This is profound.
Not everyone has a good dad, but I do. The “how much more” argument for God’s love strikes me in a deep way: If my dad loves me this much, then how much more does God love me? For those of you who had a bad dad, the argument can work the other way: Because God loves you, your dad ought to have loved you.
Jesus assumes that even the best of dads are evil, and even bad dads have a modicum of love for their children. This is how he argues:
“What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!'” (Luke 11:11-13)
It is an awesome thing to be a child of God:
“See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are.” (1 John 3:1)
But this is not by natural birthright. It is by grace and adoption and rebirth:
“But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.” (John 1:12-13)
“The human heart cannot satisfy the human heart.” (Tom Stroman)
(Update: see AdamGod.com)
Here is the relevant portion from Young’s sermon:
“Now hear it, O inhabitants of the earth, Jew and Gentile, Saint and sinner! When our father Adam came into the garden of Eden, he came into it with a celestial body, and brought Eve, one of his wives, with him. He helped to make and organize this world. He is MICHAEL, the Archangel, the ANCIENT OF DAYS! about whom holy men have written and spoken–HE is our FATHER and our GOD, and the only God with whom WE have to do. Every man upon the earth, professing Christians or non-professing, must hear it, and will know it sooner or later. They came here, organized the raw material, and arranged in their order the herbs of the field, the trees, the apple, the peach, the plum, the pear, and every other fruit that is desirable and good for man; the seed was brought from another sphere, and planted in this earth. The thistle, and thorn, the brier, and the obnoxious weed did not appear until after the earth was cursed. When Adam and Eve had eaten of the forbidden fruit, their bodies became mortal from its effects, and therefore their offspring were mortal. When the Virgin Mary conceived the child Jesus, the Father had begotten him in his own likeness. He was not begotten by the Holy Ghost. And who is the Father? He is the first of the human family; and when he took a tabernacle, it was begotten by his Father in heaven, after the same manner as the tabernacles of Cain, Abel, and the rest of the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve; from the fruits of the earth, the first earthly tabernacles were originated by the Father, and so on in succession. I could tell you much more about this; but were I to tell you the whole truth, blasphemy would be nothing to it, in the estimation of the superstitious and over-righteous of mankind. However, I have told you the truth as far as I have gone.” (General Conference, April 9th, 1852, Journal of Discourses, vol. 1, p. 50)
1. Hosea Stout wrote in his journal that same day:
“Stormy morning. Attended conference. House much crowded, did not stay in the house long. Afternoon was not in because of the crowd. Another meeting this evening. President Brigham Young taught that Adam was the father of Jesus and the only God to us. That he came to this world in a resurrected body and etc. more hereafter.”
From The Gospel According to John: An Introduction and Commentary, pp. 191-196. Footnotes renumbered for format.
These words have generated a host of interpretations, the most important of which may be summarized as follows:
1) Noting that v. 6 describes two births, one from flesh to flesh and the other from Spirit to Spirit, some interpreters propose that ‘born of water and the Spirit’ similarly refers to two births, one natural and the other supernatural. Natural procreation is not enough; there must be a second birth, a second begetting, this one of the Spirit. To support this view, ‘water’ has been understood to refer to the amniotic fluid that breaks from the womb shortly before childbirth, or to stand metaphorically for semen. But there are no ancient sources that picture natural birth as ‘from water’, and the few that use ‘drops’ to stand for semen are rare and late. It is true that in sources relevant to the Fourth Gospel water can be associated with fecundity and procreation in a general way (e.g. Song 4:12-13; Pr. 5:15-18),[1] but none is tied quite so clearly to semen or to amniotic fluid as to make the connection here an obvious one. The Greek construction does not favour two births here. Moreover the entire expression ‘of water and the Spirit’ cries out to be read as the equivalent of anōthen, ‘from above’, if there is genuine parallelism between v. 3 and v. 5, and this too argues that the expression should be taken as a reference to but one birth, not two.
2) Many find in ‘water’ a reference to Christian baptism (e.g. Brown, 2. 139-141). For Bultmann (pp. 138-139 n. 3) and others who have followed him, this is so embarrassing that he suggests the words ‘water and’ were not part of the original text, but added by a later ecclesiastical editor much more interested in Christian ritual than the Evangelist himself. There is no textual support for the omission. At the other end of the spectrum, Vellanickal (pp. 170ff.) suggests that when the Evangelist received this account there was no mention of water, but that he added it to provide an explicit reference to the rite of Christian initiation. Added or not, the simple word ‘water’ is understood by the majority of contemporary commentators to refer to Christian baptism, though there is little agreement amongst them on the relation between ‘water’ and ‘Spirit’. After all, reference is made in the near context to Jesus’ own baptismal ministry (3:22; 4:1), and John has connected water and Spirit in a baptismal context before (1:33, 34). Moreover John’s alleged interest in sacraments in ch. 6 encourages the suspicion he is making a sacramental allusion here. Many accordingly suggest the Spirit effects new birth through water (= baptism) (e.g. Ferraro, Spirito, pp. 59-67).
Those who adopt this position, of course, are forced to admit that John’s words could have had no relevance to the historical Nicodemus. This part of the account, at least, becomes a narrative fiction designed to instruct the church on the importance of baptism. What is not always recognized is that this theory makes the Evangelist an extraordinarily incompetent story-teller, since in v. 10 he pictures Jesus berating Nicodemus for not understanding these things. If water = baptism is so important for entering the kingdom, it is surprising that the rest of the discussion never mentions it again: the entire focus is on the work of the Spirit (v. 8), the work of the Son (vv. 14-15), the work of God himself (vv. 16-17), and the place of faith (vv. 15-16). The analogy between the mysterious wind and the sovereign work of the Spirit (v. 8) becomes very strange if Spirit-birth is tied so firmly to baptism. Some doubt if there is any explicit reference to the eucharist in John 6 (cf. notes on 6:25ff.), casting doubt on the supposition that the Evangelist is deeply interested in sacramental questions. If he were, it is surpassingly strange that he fails to make explicit connections, neglecting even to mention the institution of the Lord’s supper. The Spirit plays a powerful role in John 14 – 16; 20:22, but there is no hint of baptism. Moreover the allusions to Jesus’ baptismal activity (3:22; 4:1), far from fostering sacramentalism, explicitly divert attention elsewhere (cf. notes on 3:25-26; 4:2; 6:22ff.). The conjunction of water and Spirit in 1:26, 33 is no support for this position, as there the two are contrasted, whereas in 3:5 they are co-ordinated.
The entire view seems to rest on an unarticulated prejudice that every mention of water evoked instant recognition, in the minds of first- century readers, that the real reference was to baptism, but it is very doubtful that this prejudice can be sustained by the sources. Even so, this conclusion does not preclude the possibility of a secondary allusion to baptism (cf. notes, below).
3) A variation on this view is that ‘water’ refers not to Christian baptism but to John’s baptism (Godet, 2. 49-52; Westcott, 1. 108-109, and others). In that case, Jesus is either saying that the baptism of repentance, as important as it is, must not be thought sufficient: there must be Spirit-birth as well; or, if Nicodemus refused to be baptized by the Baptist, Jesus is rebuking him and saying that he must pass through repentance-baptism (‘water’) and new birth (‘Spirit’). ‘To receive the Spirit from the Messiah was no humiliation; on the contrary, it was a glorious privilege. But to go down into Jordan before a wondering crowd and own [his] need of cleansing and new birth was too much. Therefore to this Pharisee our Lord declares that an honest dying to the past is as needful as new life for the future’ (Dods, EGT, 1. 713).
The argument presupposes that John the Baptist was so influential at the time that a mere mention of water would conjure up pictures of his ministry. If so, however, the response of Nicodemus is inappropriate. If the allusion to the Baptist were clear, why should Nicodemus respond with such incredulity, ignorance and unbelief (3:4, 9-10, 12), rather than mere distaste or hardened arrogance? Even if John’s baptism is mentioned in near contexts, the burden of these contexts is to stress the relative unimportance of his rite (1: 23, 26; 3:23, 30). If John’s baptism lies behind ‘water’ in 3:5, would not this suggest that Jesus was making the Baptist’s rite a requirement for entrance into the kingdom, even though that rite was shortly to be superseded by Christian baptism? Moreover, as Dods sets out this proposed solution, it is assumed that Jesus is recognized as the Messiah who dispenses the Spirit, but it is far from clear that Nicodemus has progressed so far in his appreciation of Jesus.
4) Several interpreters have argued that Jesus is arguing against the ritual washings of the Essenes (a conservative and frequently monastic Jewish movement), or perhaps against Jewish ceremonies in general. What is necessary is Spirit-birth, not mere water-purification. But ‘water’ and ‘Spirit’ are not contrasted in v. 5: they are linked, and together become the equivalent of ‘from above’ (v. 3).
5) A number of less influential proposals have been advanced. Some have suggested that ‘water’ represents Torah (which can refer to the Pentateuch, or to the entire Jewish teaching and tradition about God, written and oral, or something between the two extremes). But though water is sometimes a symbol for Torah in rabbinic literature, ‘birth of water’ or the like does not occur. Moreover the stress in the Fourth Gospel is on the life-giving qualities of Jesus’ words (6:63); the Scriptures point to him (5:39). Odeberg (p. 50), Morris (pp. 216-218) and others have seen in ‘born of water and the Spirit’ an hendiadys for spiritual seed or semen, in contrast with semen of the flesh (v. 6). The entire expression refers to God’s engendering seed or efflux, cast over against the natural birth Nicodemus mentions in the preceding verse. But Odeberg’s supporting citations are both late and unconvincing, demanding that the reader (not to mention Nicodemus!) make numerous doubtful connections. Jesus’ indignation that Nicodemus had not grasped what he was saying (v. 10) suddenly sounds artificial and forced. Hodges has recently suggested that the two crucial terms, both without articles, should be rendered ‘water and wind’, together symbolizing God’s vivifying work,1 since Greek pneuma can mean ‘wind’ or ‘breath’ as well as ‘spirit’ (cf. notes on 3:8). But this fails to reckon with the fact that pneuma almost always means ‘spirit’ in the New Testament. Only very powerful contextual clues can compel another rendering: the presence or absence of the article is certainly not an adequate clue (cf. v. 8 where pneuma = ‘wind’ is articular). The word pneuma in the very next verse (v. 6) cannot easily be understood to mean anything other than ‘spirit’, and it is this consistent meaning that prepares the way for the analogical argument of v. 8, where wind symbolizes spirit.
The most plausible interpretation of ‘born of water and the Spirit’2 turns on three factors. First, the expression is parallel to ‘from above’ (anōthen, v. 3), and so only one birth is in view. Second, the preposition ‘of’ governs both ‘water° and ‘spirit’. The most natural way of taking this construction is to see the phrase as a conceptual unity: there is a water-spirit source (cf. Murray J. Harris, NIDNTT 3. 1178) that stands as the origin of this regeneration.3 Third, Jesus berates Nicodemus for not understanding these things in his role as ‘Israel’s teacher’ (v. 10), a senior ‘professor’ of the Scriptures, and this in turn suggests we must turn to what Christians call the Old Testament to begin to discern what Jesus had in mind.
Although the full construction ‘born of water and of the Spirit’ is not found in the Old Testament, the ingredients are there. At a minor level, the idea that Israel, the covenant community, was properly called ‘God’s son’ (Ex. 4:22; Dt. 32:6; Ho. 11:1) provides at least a little potential background for the notion of God ‘begetting’ people, enough, Brown thinks, that it should have enabled Nicodemus ‘to understand that Jesus was proclaiming the arrival of the eschatological times when men would be God’s children’ (1. 139). Far more important is the Old Testament background to ‘water’ and ‘spirit’. The ‘spirit’ is constantly God’s principle of life, even in creation (e.g. Gn. 2:7; 6:3; Jb. 34:14); but many Old Testament writers look forward to a time when God’s ‘spirit’ will be poured out on humankind (Joel 2:28) with the result that there will be blessing and righteousness (Is. 32:15-20; 44:3; Ezk. 39:29), and inner renewal which cleanses God’s covenant people from their idolatry and disobedience (Ezk. 11:19-20; 36:26-27). When water is used figuratively in the Old Testament, it habitually refers to renewal or cleansing, especially when it is found in conjunction with ‘spirit’. This conjunction may be explicit, or may hide behind language depicting the ‘pouring out’ of the spirit (cf. Nu. 19:17-19; Ps. 51:9-10; Is. 32:15; 44:3-5; 55:1-3; Je. 2:13; 17:13; Ezk. 47:9; Joel 2:28-29; Zc. 14:8). Most important of all is Ezekiel 36:25-27, where water and spirit come together so forcefully, the first to signify cleansing from impurity, and the second to depict the transformation of heart that will enable people to follow God wholly. And it is no accident that the account of the valley of dry bones, where Ezekiel preaches and the Spirit brings life to dry bones, follows hard after Ezekiel’s water/spirit passage (cf. Ezk. 37; and notes on 3:8, below). The language is reminiscent of the ‘new heart’ expressions that revolve around the promise of the new covenant (Je. 31:29ff.). Similar themes were sometimes picked up in later Judaism (e.g. Jubilees 1:23-25).
In short, born of water and spirit (the article and the capital ‘S’ in the NIV should be dropped: the focus is on the impartation of God’s nature as ‘spirit’ [cf. 4:24], not on the Holy Spirit as such) signals a new begetting, a new birth that cleanses and renews, the eschatological cleansing and renewal promised by the Old Testament prophets. True, the prophets tended to focus on the corporate results, the restoration of the nation; but they also anticipated a transformation of individual ‘hearts’ — no longer hearts of stone but hearts that hunger to do God’s will. It appears that individual regeneration is presupposed. Apparently Nicodemus had not thought of the Old Testament passages this way. If he was like some other Pharisees, he was too confident of the quality of his own obedience to think he needed much repentance (cf. Lk. 7:30), let alone to have his whole life cleansed and his heart transformed, to be born again.
Some have argued that if the flow of the passage is anything like what has been described then it is hopelessly anachronistic, for John’s Gospel makes it abundantly clear (cf. esp. 7:37-39) that the Holy Spirit would not be given until after Jesus is glorified, and it is this Holy Spirit who must effect the new birth, even if the expression ‘born of water and spirit’ does not refer to the Holy Spirit per se. So how then can Jesus demand of Nicodemus such regeneration?
The charge is ill-conceived. Jesus is not presented as demanding that Nicodemus experience the new birth in the instant; rather, he is forcefully articulating what must be experienced if one is to enter the kingdom of God. The resulting tension is no different from the corresponding Synoptic tension as to when the kingdom dawns. In Matthew, for instance, Jesus is born the King (Mt. 1— 2), he announces the kingdom and performs the powerful works of the kingdom (4:17; 12:28), but it is not until he has arisen from the dead that all authority becomes his (28:18-20). That is why all discipleship in all four Gospels is inevitably transitional. The coming-to-faith of the first followers of Jesus was in certain respects unique: they could not instantly become ‘Christians’ in the full-orbed sense, and experience the full sweep of the new birth, until after the resurrection and glorification of Jesus. If we take the Gospel records seriously, we must conclude that Jesus sometimes proclaimed truth the full significance and application of which could be fully appreciated and experienced only after he had risen from the dead. John 3 falls under this category.
It appears, then, that the passage makes good sense within the historical framework set out for us, i .e . as a lesson for Nicodemus within the context of the ministry of Jesus. But we must also ask how John expected his readers to understand it. If his targeted readers were hellenistic Jews and Jewish proselytes who had been exposed to Christianity and whom John was trying to evangelize (cf. Introduction, § VI, and notes on 20:30-31), then his primary message for them is clear. No matter how good their Jewish credentials, they too must be born again if they are to see or enter the kingdom of God. When John wrote this, Christian baptism had been practised for several decades (which was of course not the case when Jesus spoke with Nicodemus). If (and it is a quite uncertain ‘if’) the Evangelist expected his readers to detect some secondary allusion to Christian baptism in v. 5 (cf. Richter, Studien, pp. 327-345), the thrust of the passage treats such an allusion quite distantly. What is emphasized is the need for radical transformation, the fulfilment of Old Testament promises anticipating the outpouring of the Spirit, and not a particular rite. If baptism is associated in the readers’ minds with entrance into the Christian faith, and therefore with new birth, then they are being told in the strongest terms that it is the new birth itself that is essential, not the rite.’
[1] For a defense of this first option, cf. Ben Witherington III, NTS 35, 1989, pp. 155-160; Morris, JC, pp. 150-151.
By Harvard lecturer Michael Sandel:
Quoting from the lecture:
“This was in the Goodridge case, which required the state of Massachusetts to extend marriage to same-sex couples. The court started out… well, the court was conflicted. If you read that opinion carefully, the court was conflicted as between the two positions we’ve just been hearing, defended by Andréa and by Dan. The Court begins– and this is Chief Justice Margaret Marhsall’s opinion– it begins with an attempt at liberal neutrality. In other words, at issue is not the moral worth of the choice, but the right of the individual to make it. So this is the liberal neutral strand in the court opinion; the voluntarist strand, the one that emphasizes autonomy, choice, consent. But the court seemed to realize that the liberal case, the neutral case for recognizing same-sex marriage doesn’t succeed, doesn’t get you all the way to that position. Because if it were only a matter of respect for individual autonomy, if government were truly neutral on the moral worth of voluntary intimate relationships, then it should adopt a different policy, which is to remove government and the state altogether from according recognition to certain associations, certain kinds of unions rather than others. If government really must be neutral, then the consistent position is what we here have been describing as the third position– the one defended in the article by Michael Kinsley, who argues for the abolition of marriage, at least as a state function. Perhaps a better term for this is the disestablishment of religion. This is Kinsley’s proposal. He points out that the reason for the opposition to same-sex marriage is that it would go beyond neutral toleration and give same-sex marriage a government stamp of approval. That’s at the heart of the dispute. In Aristotle’s terms, at issue here is the proper distribution of offices and honors; a matter of social recognition. Same-sex marriage can’t be justified on the basis of liberal neutrality or non-discrimination or autonomy rights alone, because the question at stake in the public debate is whether same-sex unions have moral worth, whether they’re worthy of honor and recognition, and whether they fit the purpose of the social institution of marriage. So Kinsley says, ‘You want to be neutral?’ This is Kinsley. But this is not the position that the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts wanted. They didn’t call for the abolition or for the disestablishment of marriage. The court did not question government’s role in conferring social recognition on some intimate associations rather than others. To the contrary, the court waxes eloquent about marriage as, ‘One of our community’s most rewarding and cherished institutions,’ and then it goes on to expand the definition of marriage to include partners of the same sex. And in doing so, it acknowledges that marriage is more than a matter of tolerating choices that individuals make; it’s also a matter of social recognition and honor. As Justice Marshall wrote: This is the court. Now, this is reaching well beyond liberal neutrality. This is celebrating and affirming marriage as an honorific, as a form of public recognition, and therefore, the court found that it couldn’t avoid the debate about the telos of marriage. Justice Marshall’s opinion considers and rejects the notion that the primary purpose of marriage is procreation. She points out that there’s no requirement that applicants for a marriage license who are heterosexuals attest to their ability or their intention to conceive children. Fertility is not a condition of marriage. People who cannot stir from their death bed may marry. So she advances all kinds of arguments, along the lines that we began last time, about what the proper end, the essential nature, the telos of marriage is. And she concludes: Now, nothing I’ve said about this court opinion is an argument for or against same-sex marriage, but it is an argument against the claim that you can favor or oppose same-sex marriage while remaining neutral on the underlying moral and religious questions. So all of this is to suggest that at least in some of the hotly contested debates about justice and rights that we have in our society, the attempt to be neutral, the attempt to say, ‘It’s just a matter of consent and choice and autonomy; we take no stand,’ that doesn’t succeed. Even the court, which wants to be neutral on these moral and religious disputes, finds that it can’t.”
Mormonism’s Lorenzo Snow couplet theology suggests that Heavenly Father may have been a sinful mortal before becoming an exalted god. The clearest alternative position to this among Mormons is that Heavenly Father was a sinless savior for the previous generation of spirit children (our spirit-aunts and spirit-uncles). I have heard this referred to as The Royal Line of Sinless Saviors (RLSS).
According to traditional Mormon theology Jesus achieved a kind of secured state of non-exalted godhood in pre-mortality. Among the spirit children of our Heavenly Father, he was able to achieve a level of progression that the rest of us failed to achieve. Jesus enters into mortality not to learn from post-Fall inevitable sinful mistakes, but to sinlessly achieve his part in the plan of salvation. After his undeserved death and triumphant resurrection, he is able to be fully exalted unto full godhood, and presumably someday become his own Heavenly Father over his own spirit children, all without ever sinning.
Just as the future spirit children of Jesus would have a Heavenly Father that never sinned, some Mormons think that our Heavenly Father was once a sinless savior for a previous generation of spirit children. In this scenario, Heavenly Father would have, like Jesus, achieved a kind of non-exalted state of godhood in pre-mortality, to then play the role of a sinless savior on a fallen planet. He dies not due to any personal sinfulness. Rather, he dies an undeserved death in sacrifice for another generation of spirit children — spirit children that would essentially be our spirit-aunts and spirit-uncles — Heavenly Father’s brothers and sisters.
Continue reading “On the Royal Line of Sinless Saviors (RLSS) in Mormon thought”
Is the atheist throat big enough to swallow the implications of moral non-realism?
“If we reject the possibility of objective morality, then we must say that our own basic commitments are _never_ wrong (unless, of course, they are _always_ wrong, as the error theorist maintains)… Subjectivism’s or relativism’s picture of ethics as a wholly conventional enterprise entails a kind of moral infallibility for individuals or societies. No matter the content of their ultimate commitments, these are never wrong. This sort of infallibility is hard to swallow in its own right.” – Russ Shafer-Landau, “Whatever Happened to Good and Evil?”, p. 17 http://amzn.com/0195168739
I Am Aaron Shafovaloff 