Animals that could be sacrificed in the OT

Peter Leithart (who is on good form at the moment) observes:

Biblical sacrifices were confined to clean animals, and, more specifically, to domesticated clean animals. No wild animal ever ascended to Yahweh's altar?

What does it say about Israel that it offered only domesticated animals? What does it say that Israel detached the cult from the hunt?

I don't know the answer to that question although I have ideas. These sort of questions are going round my head a lot while reading Leviticus at the moment. Would birds count as domesticated animals though?

One passage that includes all the animals that could be sacrificed in a slightly different context is Genesis 15:8-10 when God makes a covenant with Abram:

But he said, "O Lord God, how am I to know that I shall possess it?" 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.

Of course there were non-animal offerings too (e.g. grain and wine) but I think that only cultivated crops were offered. A particularly interesting omission is fish.

Leithart and I on Law and Gospel

To quote Leithart in full:

A strict distinction between law and gospel is offered as a prophylactic against works-righteousness. If it is admitted that law is gospel in any sense, all is lost.

But this view assumes the very same view of law that it contests. A proponent of works righteousness sees the law as demands that need to be kept, and the end of the law is simply its keeping. The proponent of law/gospel segregation has the same view of law.

Both detach law from its purpose, which, as Knight argues, is eschatological. Law exists to correct, instruct, lead to maturity. And to that extent, law is always intended as, and in practice often is, good news.

However is this to misunderstand what is properly meant by Law/Gospel. Charles Arand and Robert Kolb in their conversations on the Book of Concord note that even "Christ died for your sins" can be "Law" rather than Gospel if you hear it as condemning you for the magnitude of your sins rather than lifting you from despair (they said it in a really menacing and accusative way to emphasise the point).

Kolb and Arand don't make the connection but I wonder if the same cannot be true for commandments. Commandments can be good news if they bring life rather than condemnation. I think of the beatitudes which Matthew characterises as Gospel (Matt 4:23) although most people teach them as commandments - do this and you will receive this (be merciful and you will receive mercy etc). However, if read in context they seem to be saying: “rejoice because you who are X are going to be saved”. It does not say be X, but assumes that they already are. Equally though it could be preached as an impossible standard we cannot reach in seeking justification by our works.

So the same words can have the different meanings for different people. God knew this so the Law of Moses was intended to be both life and death to people, just as the Gospel is (2 Corinthians 2:16). This may make interpretation of the different statements in the bible a whole lot easier (although it may be cheating).

Hot theology

Bruce McCormack has been weighing in on the debate about Peter Enns' book (see here and here if you missed it and are curious), and as a aside mentions something I have noticed but haven't had the theological knowledge to put a fancy Greek name to:

The last thing most of my friends want is a truly Protestant theology (whether Lutheran or Reformed); theosis is the hot topic in soteriology and both Lutheran and Reformed theologians are struggling mightily to find something akin to a theosis doctrine in their own church fathers (in Luther but also in Calvin - as Todd Billings’ recent book amply demonstrates). (source HT: Michael Bird)

Not only do I not have the knowledge to put a fancy name to it but I find it too mind-bending to try and analyse theosis in the light of the Bible. Similarly I can't really make up my mind about the whole Enn's saga (bizarrely, or perhaps not, I think Peter Leithart has managed the best critique of the book). But it is nice to be aware of what is hot in theology at the moment as it all trickles down and I often swallow stuff before realising later that its not as straight forward as I thought. I hate swallowing stuff unknowingly.

BTW I must remember to get round to reading Bruce McCormack properly. The tiny amount I have read has been very stimulating.

Leithart on Watson on NPP (x2)

In his recently revised Paul, Judaism and the Gentiles, Francis Watson offers a pithy summary of the agenda of the New Perspective. Sanders, he says, extended the critique that G. F. Moore mounted in 1921 against German Lutheran scholarship on Judaism; Moore basically argued that German scholarship was systematizing and apologetic rather than genuinely historical, and Watson suggests that Sanders’s work extended the Moore critique to the Strack-Billerbeck rabbinic collection and the scholarship that came from it.

Watson summarizes Sanders: "The crucial concept of ‘covenant nomism’ was set in polemical opposition to the familiar pejorative terminology - 'legalism,' 'externalism,' 'formalism,' 'earning salvation,' 'works-righteousness,' 'acquiring merit,' and so forth - whose overwhelmingly negative connotations eliminate from the outset all possibility of sympathetic understanding. It is easy to forget hw freely and unquestioningly such terminology was used prior to Sanders, especially in the field of Pauline studies. After Sanders, the whole conceptual apparatus underlying the terminology would have to be dismantled. And that mean rethinking all the polemical Pauline antitheses: faith and works, grace and law, Spirit and letter, life and death, blessing and curse, promise and flesh." (source)

As Watson goes on, he notes Dunn’s early and fundamental attacks on Sanders’s reading of Paul. Dunn argues that Sanders treats Paul as an un-Jewish theologian, rejecting not only covenant nomism but the whole apparatus of covenantal, biblical theology that the Jews built from. Dunn insists that Paul opposes covenant nomism (in Watson’s words) "on the basis of an expanded, inclusive, but still recognizably Jewish covenantal theology." Wright has made similar criticisms of Sanders, adding that Sanders’s view is vitiated by his avoidance of eschatology.

Watson concludes laconically: "it is ironic, then, that Sanders and Dunn are both commonly seen as representatives of a single 'New Perspective on Paul.' The reality is that a repudiation of Sanders’s reading of Paul is integral to the New Perspective as Dunn conceived it." (source)

Apologies to Peter Leithart for lifting two of his posts wholesale from his own blog. The trouble is I just couldn't find a sentence that I could cut out and I thought the comments to well put to just link to.

Justification according to some Federal Vision proponents

I'm still busy with studying law but that doesn't mean I've called a halt to thinking about the doctrine of justification. I came across a helpful summary from Peter Leithart on how he has come to think of justification as more than a matter of a 'bare verdict'.

My work on justification has focused on passages where the Bible uses "justification" terminology to apply to delivering acts of God. In these passages, "justify" is still a judicial term and describes a judicial act. God is acting as judge. But the verdict that He gives is an enacted verdict, a verdict that takes the form of deliverance from enemies and death. I’ve coined the term "deliverdict" to capture the two sides of this. Some evidence:

1) Romans 4:25 says that Jesus was raised for our justification. I accept Richard Gaffin’s exegesis of this passage, in which he argues that Paul implies that Jesus' resurrection was His justification, and that we share in that verdict by union with Christ. Jesus' resurrection is the ground of our justification, and the prototype justification. And it's certainly not a "bare verdict." God declared Jesus "righteous" by delivering Him from death and raising Him to new life.

2) This is, I think, what Paul means in Romans 6:7 when He says - in a context having to do with deliverance from the power of sin, and, not incidentally, with baptism - that we are "justified from sin." That is, God delivers a verdict of righteous that takes the form of liberation from sin’s power. (This is how John Murray understands Romans 6:7 as well.)

3) Behind these Pauline uses are various passages in the Psalms and prophets where judicial language is used in contexts where it refers to deliverance from enemies, from death, from national catastrophe. Jerusalem’s restoration is "their justification [vindication]" in Isaiah 54:17. David seeks deliverance from enemies when He calls on God to "judge me" (Psalm 7:6-11; 35:27-28). (source)

I find that pretty convincing. The quote comes from a post in a big Federal Vision showdown over at De Regno Christi. It's not a pretty sight to behold, and perhaps surprisingly to some it is focusing more on tradition than any controversy over the sacraments or justification. But in the same place James Jordan (another FV proponent) has posted a comment on Peter Leithart's post:

I[n] Numbers 19 there are two justifications, two cleansings, two resurrections. We have here ritually directed the Biblical philosophy of history, one that every Jew of Jesus' day would know very well from having to experience if ofttimes. The first justification, on the 3d day, is totally apart from any works we can have done, for we are dead (unclean = symbolically dead, having contracted the death that spreads to all). But after the first resurrection, we are now partly alive and can do good works, leading to the second justification of the 7th day.

It can be no surprise then that the foundational justification is by faith alone, and yet there is a future justification in which God says that He likes us, likes what we've become, approves of us, and says "well done." All the good stuff we do (WCF 16) is in union with Jesus and by the Spirit, but it is still we who do it. The Judge approves of US and justifies US, not merely sees Jesus through us as if we don’t exist.

The first justification is by faith alone, and we return to that at the beginning of the liturgy each Day of the Lord. The final justification is God’s approval of who we have become in union with Christ and through faith.

There is no justification of "works" or "merits" because there is no merit theology in the Bible anywhere at all. God approves or disapproves of persons, not of merits. (source)

That's pretty controversial stuff and my gut doesn't like it. But I do respect Jim Jordan (I've never read/heard anyone who knows the Pentatuach better) so I'll have to take on board what he says and test it against the bible... Starting at Numbers 19.

Favour in God's eyes

Peter Leithart comments:

By definition, justification must be by grace. Since the eyes are organs of judgment in Scripture, to find "favor in one's eyes" is to be justified. Plus, "favor" just means "grace."

We can put it more strongly: Justified by grace is redundant, since "justified" means "grace in one's eyes."

The author of Genesis says:

The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said, "I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them." But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.

[...] Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God.

(Genesis 6:5-9)

John Calvin comments on Genesis 6:8:

['Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord'] is a Hebrew phrase, which signifies that God was propitious to him, and favored him. For so the Hebrews are accustomed to speak: [...] here Noah is declared to have been acceptable to God, because, by living uprightly and homily, he kept himself pure from the common pollutions of the world; whence, however, did he attain this integrity, but from the preventing grace of God? The commencement, therefore, of this favor was gratuitous mercy. Afterwards, the Lord, having once embraced him, retained him under his own hand, lest he should perish with the rest of the world.

I'm thinking about justification at the moment. The only one of these three quotations I totally understand is John Calvin's so I think I've got some more thinking to do.

Quotable: Leithart on 1 John 4:8

[John] doesn't say, "The one who doesn't know love doesn't know God." He says, "The one who doesn't love doesn't know God." The test of knowing God is not "knowing love" but "loving." It's an active, pragmatic test, a test that has to do with practice.

(source)

Quotable: Leithart on justification

These are just a couple of quotes I wanted to note down from "'Judge Me, O God': Biblical Perspectives on Justification" by Peter Leithart. Both magnify the scale of God's saving (justifying) work, while reminding us that while it may have already been done, it is still not-yet.

It is true that God "reckons" or "considers" us righteous prior to His taking action on our behalf, and that "reckoning" is an act of sheer grace for the sake of Jesus. But that secret decision is not justification, any more than the decree to save the elect is the salvation of the elect. A judge may conclude that the accused is innocent, but his private conclusion does not constitute a legal decision. A legal decision must be promulgated as a decision of the court, and in many passages of Scripture, God’s public declaration of righteousness occurs when He "gives to the righteous according to His righteousness." God’s forensic declaration does not ring through the heavens while leaving earth in silence; rather, god’s declaration "He is righteous" affects the righteous in real time and real history. […]

Decades ago, Leon Morris wrote in his little book on The Biblical Doctrine of Judgment (1960) about the difference between modern and Hebraic conceptions of judgment. For moderns, to pass judgment means to weigh evidence and declare a sentence. Once the sentence has been passed, the judge’s job is finished, and someone other that the judge ensures that the sentence is carried out and that justice is actually done. In Scripture, however, judgment includes establishing justice as well as deciding what is just.

(pp. 212-213, Peter J. Leithart, "'Judge Me, O God': Biblical Perspectives on Justification" in The Federal Vision, ed. Steve Wilkins and Duane Garner)

The gospel really is a lot better news than bare 'forgiveness of sins'. I remember a John Piper sermon where he said: "forgiveness of sins... who cares right... I mean really?" (hopefully not too misquoted there).

In all of this, it is crucial to remember continually that justification, however defined, is by faith. And in part that means that our justification/vindication is not completely and fully revealed before the Last Judgment. We are justified in the present, but in another sense we await final public vindication. Many believers have been faithful to death, and their bones now lie in forgotten graves or scattered on the earth. God our Father, for His own infinitely wise reasons, did not intervene to rescue and justify them. But they are not forgotten, and someday they will rise to public vindication, while their enemies and accusers are silenced in darkness. Vindication may not be now; it may not be soon; but it will come. Or God is not God.

(pp. 231-232, ibid)

A sobering vision but a better hope than Rupert Brooke's which came to mind as I read it.