Bully's Blog

“Leithart’s real problem is that one can tell the difference between a circumcised boy and an uncircumcised one, but a sprinkled baby looks no different to an unsprinkled one.”

Chapter 1 continued

See the Baptism links page for all articles in this series.

Sacraments Are Not Signs, Means Of Grace, Or Symbols

In the next section, Dr Leithart deals with three errors:

1) The tendency to treat signs rationalistically, as nothing more than a means of communicating ideas from one mind to another mind; and,

2) Talking about sacraments as “means” tend to mechanize them, turning the sacraments into machines that deliver grace rather than moments of personal encounter with the living God.

3) Symbolic exchanges (such as language) are not the “real relationship,” which is invisible and could occur just as well without them.

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We are still in the Covenant Ethics section of  Galatians. Not having looked too far ahead, I’m not yet certain of the overall structure of this section. So until this becomes clear we will stick with the secondary cycles. I have no doubt that the structure will become clear in hindsight, because it always does.

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Paul’s Leviticus

“This is where he picks up the fivefold Covenant structure and turns ‘the right hand of fellowship’ into a set of holy knuckledusters.”

This post has been refined by fire and included in a new book, The Shape of Galatians.
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Paul’s Exodus

To highlight what Paul is doing in the shape of his letter to the Galatians, I’ve updated the subtitle of yesterday’s post to Paul’s Genesis. The second cycle is thus Paul’s wilderness journey, concerning the “veil” of unknowing that remained between Paul and the apostles, and also between Paul and the churches in Judea. The “packaging” of his argument in the structure of the history of Israel is interesting. Like the birth of Israel as a nation under Moses, Paul’s ministry was not a product of the earlier apostles: his commission came directly from Christ. There is also the undertone that he has re-enacted the pattern of “prophetic” training in the wilderness, which was always a preparation of an “Israel” to minister to the nations.

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“He said to him, ‘Bring me a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.’ And he brought him all these, cut them in half, and laid each half over against the other. But he did not cut the birds in half. And when birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away.” (Genesis 15:9-11)

When Abram asked for a sign concerning the Lord’s promise concerning an heir, the Lord carried it out with animals slain and displayed upon the Land. In the Covenant-literary structure of Genesis 15, the animals were slain and laid out at “Pass-over,” and the Lord’s chariot (as a Head and Body) “passed-through” at Atonement, (matching Pass-over” chiastically) picturing Joshua and Israel entering Canaan. (See Pass-over and Pass-through, and compare the charts on pages 93 and 115 of Bible Matrix.)

What is also interesting is the “architecture” of the sacrifice. We do not know which animals were considered “clean” by the Lord in Noah’s time, but the number of sacrificial animals was now limited to five. They correspond to the architecture of the Tabernacle. If we include Abram in his deep sleep (as a “covering”) and the birds of prey representing the curse of the Law, in the following diagram we have the complete “footprint” of the humaniform house made entirely out of birds and beasts.

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or The Federal Vision’s Adam and Steve

Pushing something to its logical conclusions is most often a wise thing to do. If you have good data to start with (unlike those pushing global warming) the resulting “computer model” can be very helpful. This is also the case with biblical doctrine. It is very helpful to push hyperpreterism to its logical conclusions, which damn it entirely. It is also very helpful to push biblical typology to its logical conclusions. This may sound harebrained to some, but if done within the constraints the Bible itself gives us, false doctrine should stand out like blood stains under ultraviolet light.

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or The Architecture of Abraham’s Bosom

“For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of [Adam] be three days and three nights in the heart of the [Land].”
(Matthew 12:40)

There was some to and fro recently between Doug Wilson and Andrew Perriman on the use of Greek terms for the grave and hell used by the New Testament writers. [1] Each makes some very good points (I lean more towards Perriman), concerning “what lies beneath.” When Jesus speaks of a “divided hell,” should we be overly concerned about Greek mythology? It seems to me that those who focus on the references to pagan literature in the Bible fail to see the biblical sources of many things, even if these biblical things pick up Greek names along the way.

However, neither Wilson nor Perriman really deals with the architecture of God’s work in the world, which is what actually lies beneath. As with Shakespeare, an understanding of God’s “global theatre” enlightens us concerning the shape of His stories.

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The Vow

[Apologies to those readers who have had enough of me railing against paedobaptism. It's not personal. It's not that I have any loyalty to any doctrinal system, denomination or tradition. It's that a group of godly guys taught me how beautiful the structure of the Bible is but maintain, to my eyes at least, a tradition which contradicts that beauty. The internal logic of the Scriptures -- including the Old Testament Scriptures -- spits out paedobaptism at every turn. In every round of typological musical chairs I play, paedobaptism has nowhere to sit.]

We ended last time with the observation that all Israel was a “bridal” nation. The Israelite robe, like the Nazirite vow, was something that pertained to both males and females. Why is this?

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Red Blood, Blue Blood

Behold, when we come to the land, you shall bind this line of scarlet thread in the window from which you let us down… Joshua 2:18

Each Israelite was to wear blue tassels on the four corners of his robe. The tassel was a blue cord that unraveled into threads, a “one” that became many. Using the “systematic typology” of the Bible Matrix, we can see that these four blue tassels correspond to the four rivers the flowed down from the spring under the Garden of Eden. [1]

So, what’s the deal with the “red cord” that Rahab was commanded to display in her window in Jericho? Firstly, the Hebrew word isn’t the same word as the “cord” in Numbers 15.

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Her husband is known in the gates,
When he sits among the elders of the land.
Proverbs 31:23

“A Christian is a living, walking, talking testimony to the end of the world—to a cosmic, judicial maturity, the ‘adulthood’ of mankind.”

Doug Wilson is right to emphasize the “eschatological reality” of the final judgment, but surely the requirements and mode of baptism should communicate that reality?

If the process of “salvation through Covenant” is pretty much the same under the New as it was under the Old, as he believes, why did circumcision become baptism? Why the change in the Covenant “road sign” if there’s no real change concerning what’s down the road?

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