~ Act III: Israel ~
God could have dealt with the problem of evil in the same
way he created the world, by his own word; yet he chose to work through human
beings, and we must ask, Why? The answer, I think, lies back in Genesis
1: it was God’s desire from the start to create a creature who would be the
agent of his kingdom. It is out of God’s desire to work alongside his creation
that he spawns a rescue operation centering on his fallen image-bearers. God
wants his image-bearers to do their duty, to be his agents in the midst of a
fallen world, for the purpose of rescue and renewal. The people he chooses (the
people of Israel) are chosen as an act of God’s love. There’s nothing innately
special about the Jews; they themselves declared early on that their election
by God to be his peculiar and special people wasn’t something they deserved but
a gift of God’s love. God chose them not because they were better than all the
other pagan nations but simply because he wanted to. God chose to deal with the
problem of evil in the world through a people whom he called out of his own
good will, not because they deserved to be chosen. His choosing began with the
calling of a Sumerian pagan named Abram (whose name would be changed to
Abraham; we’ll call him “Abraham” for clarity).
In Genesis 12 God called Abraham to follow him. Abraham abandons his home in the ancient civilization of Ur and travels south into what will later be known as the Promised Land. There he dwells with his barren wife and according to the promise of God she bears a son. His son Isaac is the second son, but he’s the “Son of Promise”; an earlier son, Ishmael, was born between Abraham and his slave girl Hagar, and God wasn’t too appreciative of this sort of manipulation. Isaac is the first step in the fulfillment of God’s promises to Abraham. In Genesis 12.2-3, God made a covenant (or promise) with Abraham: I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you. God promised that through Abraham, rescue and healing would come to the nations of the world. This promise remained prominent in the minds of his descendants, the people of Israel, who boasted of being “guides for the blind” and “lights for those who are in the dark.” (Rom 2.19) Thus through Abraham God promised to spread blessings upon all the nations; he promised that through Abraham’s descendants, his rescue operation would be launched. In Genesis 15.7, God made another promise to Abraham: I am YHWH, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to take possession of it. God promised Abraham a nation through whom blessings would flow to all nations, and then He promised Abraham a tract of land, the Promised Land (also known as the Land of Canaan). This promise to inherit land is built so strongly into Jewish thought that one of the great pillars of the current political atmosphere in Israel today is the Jews’ knowledge of God’s promise to them to have a specific tract of land. This promise for land, however, was but a shadow and signpost to God’s ultimate promise: he would give Abraham’s descendants not just a tract of land along the eastern coast of the Mediterranean but the entire world.
At the end of Abraham’s life, we have a two-fold promise given to him: he will have descendents who will be a blessing to all the nations, and his descendants will inherit the Land of Canaan (albeit after a 400-year period of enslavement; Gen 15.13-15). The story of Abraham’s descendants is a long one filled with all sorts of grand narratives, twists and turns, wacky characters, turncoats and penitents. Abraham’s descendants entered into slavery for four centuries under an oppressive Egyptian regime, and then through Moses and the Exodus God led them into the Promised Land. There they encountered all the wicked, detestable people-groups that had settled the land, and they eradicated them. They put up stakes in the land and adopted a theocracy with “judges” who worked to settle disputes among the people and to lead military campaigns against their pagan neighbors. The people weren’t happy with a theocracy so they begged God for a monarchy. God gave them Saul, who turned out to be a not-so-good-king, and then came King David. David was a very good king, at least prior to his “falling out” with a beautiful married woman whom he saw bathing naked on a rooftop (murder turns out to be a less-than-optimal solution to his adultery). David’s son Solomon took the throne, and he was very wise but loved riches and women more than he loved God, and he came to ruin and the kingdom went through a civil war. The united monarchy of Israel was divided into two: Northern Israel (known simply as Israel) to the north and Southern Israel (known as Judah) to the south. For the next several hundred years the two kingdoms forged alliances and warred against one another, adopted paganism and embraced revival and then slipped into paganism all over again. Eventually the wickedness of Israel made God want to vomit, so he sent judgment upon them in the shape of an Assyrian army. The Assyrians wiped out Israel in its entirety and then camped outside the great city of Jerusalem to do the same to Judah. The King of Judah repented and God destroyed the Assyrian army. The repentance didn’t last very long, and when the peoples’ idolatry became “ just too much,” God judged them with a Babylonian army under an upstart named King Nebuchadnezzar. The Babylonians had their way with Jerusalem, destroying the city and ransacking the sacred Temple before burning it to the ground. The Judeans who had repented of their paganism prior to the national catastrophe found themselves exiled in Babylon, and they dwelt in that land for a long time. Many of them missed their homeland, but others settled in nicely, working decent jobs and making good pay and raising their families. A power struggle between Persia and the Babylonians resulted in a quick Babylonian defeat, and the ruler-ship over the Jews exiled in Babylon transferred to the newly-enthroned Persians. The Persian king Cyrus let any Jews who desired to do so to return home to Palestine. Not all went, since many came to prefer life in the wondrous and well-watered city of Babylon, but those who returned rebuilt the Temple, even though it was just a shadow of what it had been before (the old men who had seen the Temple of Solomon as little boys wept when they saw the shabby rebuilt Temple). Those who returned to Jerusalem got caught up in paganism all over again, and they became consumerist Jews. They didn’t experience the autonomy they enjoyed prior to their Babylonian overlords, for the Persians still ruled over them; and after the Persians came the Greeks, and after the Greeks came the Romans. This brief sketch of Israel’s history, from their enslavement to Egypt to their subjection under Rome, paints a portrait of a people who were supposed to be God’s answer to the problem of evil in the world but who, in actuality, didn’t get things right and were, instead, a major part of the problem.
All throughout their history, the Jewish people knew they were chosen by God and that God would work through them to deliver justice and peace to the world. Several strands of thought, evolving throughout the history of the Jewish people and capitalizing upon the Babylonian exile, came together to form a loosely-conjoined future hope. The spine of this Jewish hope centered on what the prophets called “The Day of the Lord.” Three primary strands came together to create this hope: (1) the hope for the Coming King, (2) the hope for the vindication of Israel and the overthrow of her pagan oppressors, and (3) the rebuilding of the Jewish temple.
Strand #1: The Hope for The King. God made a promise to King David that his royal house would endure forever, and that he would always have a descendant on the throne (2 Samuel 7). David was a great king (at least for a while), and his son Solomon definitely had his high water marks. But after Solomon the kingdom split down the middle. All the kings of Judah following the split were downright awful at worst and weak at best. Even the best kings (Hezekiah and Josiah) couldn’t keep God’s coming judgment at bay. On one hand is God’s promise that the Davidic line would endure forever, and on the other hand was the stark reality of it all: David’s line of kings came to a brutal end with the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians. As the Jewish people wrestled with this paradox, a hope emerged that there would come a True King, a new sort of king, a king who would be the fulfillment of God’s promise to David. This king would do what all the other kings, including David himself, had failed to do: he would flood the earth with justice and peace (Ps 72.1-4). This new king would be anointed with God’s own spirit; the Hebrew word for “anointed one” is messiah, and the Greek word for the Hebrew messiah is christ. This Messiah, this Christ, would be the one who would put everything to rights.
Strand #2: The Hope for Vindication. This True King would do many things, not least overthrow the oppressive pagan empires that had enslaved and mistreated the Jewish people throughout their various exiles. The Jewish people experienced slavery under the Egyptians, then the Assyrians, then the Babylonians, and on down the line: the Persians, the Greeks, and then (in due time) the Romans. The Jewish people yearned for the day when the True King would take up sword and shield and lead the great revolt. He would set up a Jewish government and would be King, establishing Israel as the dominating and enduring world power. A holy war would take place under Messiah, the pagans would be ground to powder under the feet of Jewish warriors, and the righteous Jews would win the absolute victory; through them God would reign over the pagan nations of the earth with the Jews being his co-regents.
Strand #3: The Hope for a Rebuilt Temple. King David laid the groundwork for the original Temple, and his son Solomon built it. The Jewish people understood the Temple to be the dwelling place of God, where Heaven and Earth collided. Solomon’s Temple was glorious, but it was destroyed by the Babylonians sometime around 586 BC. When the Persian king Cyrus allowed the Jews to return to Palestine, they rebuilt the Temple, but it paled in comparison to Solomon’s. Later prophets such as Zechariah and Ezekiel prophesied of a coming Temple that would rival even the one Solomon built. The Jewish hope centered on Messiah also centered on Messiah’s rebuilding of the Temple.
In the midst of these three strands of hope came an over-arching hope, that of the hope for New Creation. This hope finds its birth in the prophet Isaiah, who spoke of God’s intentions to restore Israel and to bring light to all the pagan nations. Isaiah weaves the three strands of the Jewish hope together into a masterpiece of worldwide peace and justice. Isaiah speaks of a replanting of the Garden of the Eden, of a “new creation.” Isaiah 2.2-4 offers a vision of hope not just for Jews but for pagans as well: when God would finally act to deliver his people, when he would reestablish Jerusalem (or Zion) as the place where he lives and reigns, Israel alone wouldn’t share in the blessing. As God promised to Abraham from the beginning, through his descendants he would bring blessings to all the nations, not just his chosen people. In Isaiah 11.1-8, Isaiah asks, “How will God accomplish this?” It will be accomplished through the coming of the ultimate King of Israel, the Davidic descendant, the “Son of Jesse.” This king, possessing wisdom, would bring God’s justice to the whole world. The rule of this king, this Messiah, would flood all of creation with peace, justice, and harmony (cf. Isa 55.1, 3-5, 12-13). Isaiah 65.17-18 and verse 25 open a window into an entire universe renewed by God: heaven and earth would be wedded together, given in marriage, becoming one. This is a promise that the entire universe would be rescued and renewed. It is nothing short of new creation.
During the Babylonian exile, with these texts in the background, the Jewish people continued to rearticulate their hopes. All the exiles they experienced were but echoes of a greater exile. In a sense, all of Israel’s expulsions from the Promised Land (and their subsequent returns to the land) symbolized and enacted the original expulsion of mankind from the Garden. The ultimate return, over against expulsion from the Garden, would be a return to the Garden; and thus we have the hope of New Creation. And New Creation, according to a good number of Jewish folk, would happen when “YHWH returns to Zion”: when Messiah would come, lead a successful holy war against the pagans, exercise judgment over the defeated pagans, rebuild the Temple, and take his seat alongside God to rule over the world. When this happened, homecoming would happen: the problem of evil would be dealt with, and everything would be put to rights. The end of Babylonian exile found the Jews longing for YHWH’s return to Zion, the results of which would be nothing short of a genuine return from exile and new creation.
Much of this expectation is built upon the prophet Isaiah, and in the prophet Isaiah we find something cryptic and strange, something downright weird—and dark. We find that the coming king who would be pivotal in God’s return to Zion would be YHWH’s servant, and this servant would become Israel, being what Israel couldn’t be and doing what Israel couldn’t do, since Israel failed to be obedient to her vocation. Israel was just as shipwrecked as the rest of the world and was no better than the pagans. Isaiah 11 serves as the backbone to this strange image; here we find a sketch of the coming King, a sketch enhanced with more prophecies regarding him found in Isaiah 42, 49, 50, and 52-53. This servant, the coming King, would be expelled, like Israel in exile; drowned in shame, suffering, and death; and then, after death, he would be brought through to the other side. Jewish scholars sought to make sense of this strange text that put a “chink in the armor” in the Jewish conceptions of this coming King. Even the most advanced and articulate of the Jewish scholars couldn’t grasp the simplest explanation: that this king would suffer, die, and rise again; and that through this king, through this dying and resurrecting Messiah, God would fulfill all of his promises to Israel beginning with his covenant to Abraham and stretching past David and into the exile. Through this Suffering Servant, YHWH would deal with the problem of evil, he would set everything right, and he would bring the world to its climax. The prophecies of the Suffering Servant stood as a strange signpost pointing ahead into a strange and dark fog interspersed with light, pointing to where all the snaking storylines of YHWH, Israel, and the universe would converge.
In Genesis 12 God called Abraham to follow him. Abraham abandons his home in the ancient civilization of Ur and travels south into what will later be known as the Promised Land. There he dwells with his barren wife and according to the promise of God she bears a son. His son Isaac is the second son, but he’s the “Son of Promise”; an earlier son, Ishmael, was born between Abraham and his slave girl Hagar, and God wasn’t too appreciative of this sort of manipulation. Isaac is the first step in the fulfillment of God’s promises to Abraham. In Genesis 12.2-3, God made a covenant (or promise) with Abraham: I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you. God promised that through Abraham, rescue and healing would come to the nations of the world. This promise remained prominent in the minds of his descendants, the people of Israel, who boasted of being “guides for the blind” and “lights for those who are in the dark.” (Rom 2.19) Thus through Abraham God promised to spread blessings upon all the nations; he promised that through Abraham’s descendants, his rescue operation would be launched. In Genesis 15.7, God made another promise to Abraham: I am YHWH, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to take possession of it. God promised Abraham a nation through whom blessings would flow to all nations, and then He promised Abraham a tract of land, the Promised Land (also known as the Land of Canaan). This promise to inherit land is built so strongly into Jewish thought that one of the great pillars of the current political atmosphere in Israel today is the Jews’ knowledge of God’s promise to them to have a specific tract of land. This promise for land, however, was but a shadow and signpost to God’s ultimate promise: he would give Abraham’s descendants not just a tract of land along the eastern coast of the Mediterranean but the entire world.
At the end of Abraham’s life, we have a two-fold promise given to him: he will have descendents who will be a blessing to all the nations, and his descendants will inherit the Land of Canaan (albeit after a 400-year period of enslavement; Gen 15.13-15). The story of Abraham’s descendants is a long one filled with all sorts of grand narratives, twists and turns, wacky characters, turncoats and penitents. Abraham’s descendants entered into slavery for four centuries under an oppressive Egyptian regime, and then through Moses and the Exodus God led them into the Promised Land. There they encountered all the wicked, detestable people-groups that had settled the land, and they eradicated them. They put up stakes in the land and adopted a theocracy with “judges” who worked to settle disputes among the people and to lead military campaigns against their pagan neighbors. The people weren’t happy with a theocracy so they begged God for a monarchy. God gave them Saul, who turned out to be a not-so-good-king, and then came King David. David was a very good king, at least prior to his “falling out” with a beautiful married woman whom he saw bathing naked on a rooftop (murder turns out to be a less-than-optimal solution to his adultery). David’s son Solomon took the throne, and he was very wise but loved riches and women more than he loved God, and he came to ruin and the kingdom went through a civil war. The united monarchy of Israel was divided into two: Northern Israel (known simply as Israel) to the north and Southern Israel (known as Judah) to the south. For the next several hundred years the two kingdoms forged alliances and warred against one another, adopted paganism and embraced revival and then slipped into paganism all over again. Eventually the wickedness of Israel made God want to vomit, so he sent judgment upon them in the shape of an Assyrian army. The Assyrians wiped out Israel in its entirety and then camped outside the great city of Jerusalem to do the same to Judah. The King of Judah repented and God destroyed the Assyrian army. The repentance didn’t last very long, and when the peoples’ idolatry became “ just too much,” God judged them with a Babylonian army under an upstart named King Nebuchadnezzar. The Babylonians had their way with Jerusalem, destroying the city and ransacking the sacred Temple before burning it to the ground. The Judeans who had repented of their paganism prior to the national catastrophe found themselves exiled in Babylon, and they dwelt in that land for a long time. Many of them missed their homeland, but others settled in nicely, working decent jobs and making good pay and raising their families. A power struggle between Persia and the Babylonians resulted in a quick Babylonian defeat, and the ruler-ship over the Jews exiled in Babylon transferred to the newly-enthroned Persians. The Persian king Cyrus let any Jews who desired to do so to return home to Palestine. Not all went, since many came to prefer life in the wondrous and well-watered city of Babylon, but those who returned rebuilt the Temple, even though it was just a shadow of what it had been before (the old men who had seen the Temple of Solomon as little boys wept when they saw the shabby rebuilt Temple). Those who returned to Jerusalem got caught up in paganism all over again, and they became consumerist Jews. They didn’t experience the autonomy they enjoyed prior to their Babylonian overlords, for the Persians still ruled over them; and after the Persians came the Greeks, and after the Greeks came the Romans. This brief sketch of Israel’s history, from their enslavement to Egypt to their subjection under Rome, paints a portrait of a people who were supposed to be God’s answer to the problem of evil in the world but who, in actuality, didn’t get things right and were, instead, a major part of the problem.
All throughout their history, the Jewish people knew they were chosen by God and that God would work through them to deliver justice and peace to the world. Several strands of thought, evolving throughout the history of the Jewish people and capitalizing upon the Babylonian exile, came together to form a loosely-conjoined future hope. The spine of this Jewish hope centered on what the prophets called “The Day of the Lord.” Three primary strands came together to create this hope: (1) the hope for the Coming King, (2) the hope for the vindication of Israel and the overthrow of her pagan oppressors, and (3) the rebuilding of the Jewish temple.
Strand #1: The Hope for The King. God made a promise to King David that his royal house would endure forever, and that he would always have a descendant on the throne (2 Samuel 7). David was a great king (at least for a while), and his son Solomon definitely had his high water marks. But after Solomon the kingdom split down the middle. All the kings of Judah following the split were downright awful at worst and weak at best. Even the best kings (Hezekiah and Josiah) couldn’t keep God’s coming judgment at bay. On one hand is God’s promise that the Davidic line would endure forever, and on the other hand was the stark reality of it all: David’s line of kings came to a brutal end with the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians. As the Jewish people wrestled with this paradox, a hope emerged that there would come a True King, a new sort of king, a king who would be the fulfillment of God’s promise to David. This king would do what all the other kings, including David himself, had failed to do: he would flood the earth with justice and peace (Ps 72.1-4). This new king would be anointed with God’s own spirit; the Hebrew word for “anointed one” is messiah, and the Greek word for the Hebrew messiah is christ. This Messiah, this Christ, would be the one who would put everything to rights.
Strand #2: The Hope for Vindication. This True King would do many things, not least overthrow the oppressive pagan empires that had enslaved and mistreated the Jewish people throughout their various exiles. The Jewish people experienced slavery under the Egyptians, then the Assyrians, then the Babylonians, and on down the line: the Persians, the Greeks, and then (in due time) the Romans. The Jewish people yearned for the day when the True King would take up sword and shield and lead the great revolt. He would set up a Jewish government and would be King, establishing Israel as the dominating and enduring world power. A holy war would take place under Messiah, the pagans would be ground to powder under the feet of Jewish warriors, and the righteous Jews would win the absolute victory; through them God would reign over the pagan nations of the earth with the Jews being his co-regents.
Strand #3: The Hope for a Rebuilt Temple. King David laid the groundwork for the original Temple, and his son Solomon built it. The Jewish people understood the Temple to be the dwelling place of God, where Heaven and Earth collided. Solomon’s Temple was glorious, but it was destroyed by the Babylonians sometime around 586 BC. When the Persian king Cyrus allowed the Jews to return to Palestine, they rebuilt the Temple, but it paled in comparison to Solomon’s. Later prophets such as Zechariah and Ezekiel prophesied of a coming Temple that would rival even the one Solomon built. The Jewish hope centered on Messiah also centered on Messiah’s rebuilding of the Temple.
In the midst of these three strands of hope came an over-arching hope, that of the hope for New Creation. This hope finds its birth in the prophet Isaiah, who spoke of God’s intentions to restore Israel and to bring light to all the pagan nations. Isaiah weaves the three strands of the Jewish hope together into a masterpiece of worldwide peace and justice. Isaiah speaks of a replanting of the Garden of the Eden, of a “new creation.” Isaiah 2.2-4 offers a vision of hope not just for Jews but for pagans as well: when God would finally act to deliver his people, when he would reestablish Jerusalem (or Zion) as the place where he lives and reigns, Israel alone wouldn’t share in the blessing. As God promised to Abraham from the beginning, through his descendants he would bring blessings to all the nations, not just his chosen people. In Isaiah 11.1-8, Isaiah asks, “How will God accomplish this?” It will be accomplished through the coming of the ultimate King of Israel, the Davidic descendant, the “Son of Jesse.” This king, possessing wisdom, would bring God’s justice to the whole world. The rule of this king, this Messiah, would flood all of creation with peace, justice, and harmony (cf. Isa 55.1, 3-5, 12-13). Isaiah 65.17-18 and verse 25 open a window into an entire universe renewed by God: heaven and earth would be wedded together, given in marriage, becoming one. This is a promise that the entire universe would be rescued and renewed. It is nothing short of new creation.
During the Babylonian exile, with these texts in the background, the Jewish people continued to rearticulate their hopes. All the exiles they experienced were but echoes of a greater exile. In a sense, all of Israel’s expulsions from the Promised Land (and their subsequent returns to the land) symbolized and enacted the original expulsion of mankind from the Garden. The ultimate return, over against expulsion from the Garden, would be a return to the Garden; and thus we have the hope of New Creation. And New Creation, according to a good number of Jewish folk, would happen when “YHWH returns to Zion”: when Messiah would come, lead a successful holy war against the pagans, exercise judgment over the defeated pagans, rebuild the Temple, and take his seat alongside God to rule over the world. When this happened, homecoming would happen: the problem of evil would be dealt with, and everything would be put to rights. The end of Babylonian exile found the Jews longing for YHWH’s return to Zion, the results of which would be nothing short of a genuine return from exile and new creation.
Much of this expectation is built upon the prophet Isaiah, and in the prophet Isaiah we find something cryptic and strange, something downright weird—and dark. We find that the coming king who would be pivotal in God’s return to Zion would be YHWH’s servant, and this servant would become Israel, being what Israel couldn’t be and doing what Israel couldn’t do, since Israel failed to be obedient to her vocation. Israel was just as shipwrecked as the rest of the world and was no better than the pagans. Isaiah 11 serves as the backbone to this strange image; here we find a sketch of the coming King, a sketch enhanced with more prophecies regarding him found in Isaiah 42, 49, 50, and 52-53. This servant, the coming King, would be expelled, like Israel in exile; drowned in shame, suffering, and death; and then, after death, he would be brought through to the other side. Jewish scholars sought to make sense of this strange text that put a “chink in the armor” in the Jewish conceptions of this coming King. Even the most advanced and articulate of the Jewish scholars couldn’t grasp the simplest explanation: that this king would suffer, die, and rise again; and that through this king, through this dying and resurrecting Messiah, God would fulfill all of his promises to Israel beginning with his covenant to Abraham and stretching past David and into the exile. Through this Suffering Servant, YHWH would deal with the problem of evil, he would set everything right, and he would bring the world to its climax. The prophecies of the Suffering Servant stood as a strange signpost pointing ahead into a strange and dark fog interspersed with light, pointing to where all the snaking storylines of YHWH, Israel, and the universe would converge.
~ Intermission:
The Carpenter’s Son of Nazareth ~
The search for who Jesus is, what he did, and why that
matters (or doesn’t matter) has accelerated over the last several decades. The
official “quest” began with Hermann Reimarus, a German philosopher and writer;
an outspoken deist, he’s credited with beginning what the later German scholar
Albert Schweitzer called “The Quest for the Historical Jesus.” D.F. Strauss
took the Quest to the next level with his own biography of Jesus, in which he
denied Jesus’ divinity and attributed gospel miracles to natural events that
the unenlightened first-century Jews misunderstood and thus misinterpreted.
Since the Quest was born out of the Enlightenment, Strauss’ claims weren’t
shots out of a vacuum but dispelled from a predominantly Enlightenment-infused
approach to the gospels. The French philosopher Ernest Renan took a similar
approach, construing Jesus as an historical person with no divinity. The
Quest’s search for the historical Jesus (which was nothing more than a
deconstruction of the biblical record through the lens of “enlightened” deist
thought) didn’t come absent opponents: the famous German theologian Martin
Kähler argued that the real Jesus was the one preached by the scriptures, not a
mere historical hypothesis. Albert Schweitzer, the one who coined the
movement’s emblem, argued that the gospels say less about Jesus than they do
about the gospel writers’ biases. Protests emerged, namely in the biblical
scholars Karl Barth and Rudolf Bultmann; Bultmann, though standing against
Schweitzer, didn’t argue for a divine Jesus but, rather, argued that the only thing we can truly know for certain
about him is that he existed. Out of this first wave of the Quest came the
foundation for the epic dichotomy between “The Jesus of Faith” and “The Jesus
of History.”
The Quest went into a fizzle to be later recapitulated by a series of scholars who focused on form criticism (how the New Testament came together) and argued for the hypothetical document Q; earlier approaches to the historical Jesus focused on what’s called Markan priority, the idea that since the Gospel of Mark probably came first, the best way to understand Jesus is to study Mark’s gospel. This new wave of study focused on the hypothetical Q, which these scholars perceived to be an original albeit lost gospel from which Matthew, Mark, and Luke were all derived. The gospel of John remained its own peculiar breed and was all but lost in the hubbub of form criticism. The prominent biblical scholar of this time was Ernst Käsemann, a Lutheran student of Bultmann.
A more recent movement, known as the Third Quest, focused and continues to focus on the social history of Jesus’ day and the use of non-canonical sources. These scholars (the most renown being Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg) seek to rework Jesus in various ways, their most notable accomplishment being the so-called “Jesus Seminar,” in which they deduced (more by presupposition than anything else) that Jesus was an itinerant Hellenistic-Jewish sage who preached, via strange tales and aphorisms, a sort of “social gospel”; he broke free from the restraints of Jewish norms, both when it came to Jewish theology and social conventions, and this nonconformity led to his death on the cross. He was executed because he was a nuisance and a troublemaker. As to the resurrection, the Jesus Seminar shouts a fiery “No!” Dominic Crossan speculated that Jesus probably hung on the cross for several days, slowly being torn apart by birds and wild dogs. While the Third Quest is most known for the “here and gone” Jesus Seminar, there are more scholars within the actual Quest who oppose the findings of the Seminar. This opposition sets itself starkly against the assumptions of the more liberal scholars, claiming that Jesus was a proto-rabbi announcing the arrival of the kingdom of God. The opposition clings to a more Jewish background and understanding of Jesus, focusing on Jesus within the constraints of the first-century atmosphere of Jewish culture and religion. Most notable among these are Bruce Chilton, James Dunn, E.P. Sanders, and N.T. Wright.
The question is begged: What’s the point? Most people assume that Christians generally believe all the same things about Jesus; suffice it to say, many of the scholars involved in the Quest for the historical Jesus are legitimate Christians who love God and their fellow man and are committed to Christ and his kingdom. Our current understandings of Jesus haven’t been without influence from the Quest. The Quest has influenced how we perceive Jesus, and even those most detached from the Quest—even those who know nothing about it!—aren’t free from its influence. Our presuppositions and perceptions about Jesus aren’t born out of a vacuum, nor even out of a “simple reading of the gospels,” but are, rather, influenced by the movement in minor and major ways.
One of the most common views among non-Christians is that Jesus was some sort of great moral teacher, a man who talked about loving your neighbor as yourself and going the second mile, a pacifist who puts even the most conservative Quakers to shame, who was one of the greatest hippies to ever walk the earth. This perception is fueled by the findings of the Jesus Seminar (though the “hippie” idea, while prevalent, isn’t what Jesus Seminarians would advocate). Within conservative Christianity, there is the contrarian view that Jesus is God, that he came to die on the cross for everyone’s sins so that we can go to heaven when we die (rather than going to hell, which is a harsh ordeal). Even this view gives much credence to the foundation of the Enlightenment and the heavy-rollers of the Quest’s beginnings. One must always be honest, and I confess that the produce of the Third Quest (specifically the works from those opposed to the liberalities of the Jesus Seminar) have influenced the way I understand the carpenter’s son of Nazareth. E.P. Sanders, James Dunn, N.T. Wright, and Bruce Chilton have all influenced how I read scripture and understand Jesus.
A wise old man once told me, “You must always establish your assumptions.” Throughout the entirety of the retelling of the Christian saga, my assumptions regarding Jesus are as follows: Jesus was the son of a Jewish carpenter, and he was known as a prophet akin to the prophet Jeremiah. He preached the kingdom of God and spoke of coming judgment on Jerusalem and, specifically, on her Temple. He was crucified not as a nuisance but, rather, because he was a blasphemer, and his deliberate actions in the Temple cemented his fate at the hands of the Jewish authorities. He died and rose again three days later, and his resurrection vindicated him over against his enemies and testified to his ultimate victory over evil: in the cross, he defeated evil, and in raising from the dead, evil’s ultimate handhold (death) was torn apart. Jesus defeated evil, reconstituted Israel around himself, swallowed up the Temple in himself, and he is now enthroned with God. He is with God, he is God, and he is Messiah.
These are foundational assumptions, and while my assumptions run much longer, they certainly don’t run shorter. Do I fancy Jesus to be Messiah? Yes. Is it what I want him to be? Absolutely. Mere wishful thinking isn’t enough for someone who seeks the truth, and my assumptions are grounded in what I believe to be valid historical, theological, and philosophical argumentation. I won’t attempt to argue for every “jot and tittle” of my assumptions; I’ll leave that up to brilliant and wizened men and women. With these assumptions established, we march straight into Act 4: the Coming of the Messiah.
The Quest went into a fizzle to be later recapitulated by a series of scholars who focused on form criticism (how the New Testament came together) and argued for the hypothetical document Q; earlier approaches to the historical Jesus focused on what’s called Markan priority, the idea that since the Gospel of Mark probably came first, the best way to understand Jesus is to study Mark’s gospel. This new wave of study focused on the hypothetical Q, which these scholars perceived to be an original albeit lost gospel from which Matthew, Mark, and Luke were all derived. The gospel of John remained its own peculiar breed and was all but lost in the hubbub of form criticism. The prominent biblical scholar of this time was Ernst Käsemann, a Lutheran student of Bultmann.
A more recent movement, known as the Third Quest, focused and continues to focus on the social history of Jesus’ day and the use of non-canonical sources. These scholars (the most renown being Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg) seek to rework Jesus in various ways, their most notable accomplishment being the so-called “Jesus Seminar,” in which they deduced (more by presupposition than anything else) that Jesus was an itinerant Hellenistic-Jewish sage who preached, via strange tales and aphorisms, a sort of “social gospel”; he broke free from the restraints of Jewish norms, both when it came to Jewish theology and social conventions, and this nonconformity led to his death on the cross. He was executed because he was a nuisance and a troublemaker. As to the resurrection, the Jesus Seminar shouts a fiery “No!” Dominic Crossan speculated that Jesus probably hung on the cross for several days, slowly being torn apart by birds and wild dogs. While the Third Quest is most known for the “here and gone” Jesus Seminar, there are more scholars within the actual Quest who oppose the findings of the Seminar. This opposition sets itself starkly against the assumptions of the more liberal scholars, claiming that Jesus was a proto-rabbi announcing the arrival of the kingdom of God. The opposition clings to a more Jewish background and understanding of Jesus, focusing on Jesus within the constraints of the first-century atmosphere of Jewish culture and religion. Most notable among these are Bruce Chilton, James Dunn, E.P. Sanders, and N.T. Wright.
The question is begged: What’s the point? Most people assume that Christians generally believe all the same things about Jesus; suffice it to say, many of the scholars involved in the Quest for the historical Jesus are legitimate Christians who love God and their fellow man and are committed to Christ and his kingdom. Our current understandings of Jesus haven’t been without influence from the Quest. The Quest has influenced how we perceive Jesus, and even those most detached from the Quest—even those who know nothing about it!—aren’t free from its influence. Our presuppositions and perceptions about Jesus aren’t born out of a vacuum, nor even out of a “simple reading of the gospels,” but are, rather, influenced by the movement in minor and major ways.
One of the most common views among non-Christians is that Jesus was some sort of great moral teacher, a man who talked about loving your neighbor as yourself and going the second mile, a pacifist who puts even the most conservative Quakers to shame, who was one of the greatest hippies to ever walk the earth. This perception is fueled by the findings of the Jesus Seminar (though the “hippie” idea, while prevalent, isn’t what Jesus Seminarians would advocate). Within conservative Christianity, there is the contrarian view that Jesus is God, that he came to die on the cross for everyone’s sins so that we can go to heaven when we die (rather than going to hell, which is a harsh ordeal). Even this view gives much credence to the foundation of the Enlightenment and the heavy-rollers of the Quest’s beginnings. One must always be honest, and I confess that the produce of the Third Quest (specifically the works from those opposed to the liberalities of the Jesus Seminar) have influenced the way I understand the carpenter’s son of Nazareth. E.P. Sanders, James Dunn, N.T. Wright, and Bruce Chilton have all influenced how I read scripture and understand Jesus.
A wise old man once told me, “You must always establish your assumptions.” Throughout the entirety of the retelling of the Christian saga, my assumptions regarding Jesus are as follows: Jesus was the son of a Jewish carpenter, and he was known as a prophet akin to the prophet Jeremiah. He preached the kingdom of God and spoke of coming judgment on Jerusalem and, specifically, on her Temple. He was crucified not as a nuisance but, rather, because he was a blasphemer, and his deliberate actions in the Temple cemented his fate at the hands of the Jewish authorities. He died and rose again three days later, and his resurrection vindicated him over against his enemies and testified to his ultimate victory over evil: in the cross, he defeated evil, and in raising from the dead, evil’s ultimate handhold (death) was torn apart. Jesus defeated evil, reconstituted Israel around himself, swallowed up the Temple in himself, and he is now enthroned with God. He is with God, he is God, and he is Messiah.
These are foundational assumptions, and while my assumptions run much longer, they certainly don’t run shorter. Do I fancy Jesus to be Messiah? Yes. Is it what I want him to be? Absolutely. Mere wishful thinking isn’t enough for someone who seeks the truth, and my assumptions are grounded in what I believe to be valid historical, theological, and philosophical argumentation. I won’t attempt to argue for every “jot and tittle” of my assumptions; I’ll leave that up to brilliant and wizened men and women. With these assumptions established, we march straight into Act 4: the Coming of the Messiah.
~ Act IV: The Coming of the
Messiah ~
Bearing in mind the Jewish expectations for what was soon
to come—the vindication of Israel and the dethronement of the pagan overlords,
the rebuilding of the Jewish temple, the overarching theme of the Davidic King,
return from exile, and new creation—we fast-forward to the first century AD. At
the close of the Old Testament, the Persians were the overlords of the Jewish
people. The Greeks followed the Persians, and the Greeks were notably hard on
the Jews in their attempts to Hellenize them (the horror stories about this
“cultural indoctrination,” especially those stories involving the ruthless
Antiochus Epiphanes IV, don’t serve as good bedtime stories). After the Greeks
came the Romans, who weren’t as bad as the Greeks, but who still used and
abused the Jewish people, especially by high taxation and the use of
crucifixion to keep them in subjection. The psychological terror-tactic of
crucifixion became necessary, as the Jewish people kept revolting; but these
revolts always ended with Jewish hopes being dashed on the rocks with some
charismatic leaders’ execution.
Despite all the false starts and bloody quelling of revolution, the Jewish people clung to the hope that the kingdom of God would come. God’s kingdom in Jewish thought was characterized by the manifest sovereign rule of God over the entire world. The kingdom of God spoke of the day when God would rescue Israel from her pagan oppressors, when evil (not least the evil of all those wicked pagan empires!) would be judged, and when God would usher in a new and final era of peace and justice. The hope of the kingdom of God encapsulated all the Jewish hopes that were coming to a head during their oppression under the Romans. Jesus of Nazareth showed up on the scene, beginning his public career after his baptism, which served as a dramatization of the Exodus, hinting that the return from exile was about to take place. Jesus proclaimed that the kingdom of God was both “here” and “at hand.” He proclaimed that all the Jewish hopes were coming together, converging in the present, reaching their climax. Heaven was coming to earth, and Jesus was at the center of it, and he showed how it was so through his miracles.
As Jesus announced the kingdom of God, this coming-to-fruition of all the Jewish hopes, one would think that the people would easily perceive him to be the Messiah, the King through whom all this would take place. But for the most part, that wasn’t the case. Most of his Jewish contemporaries thought he was a prophet in the same vein as Jeremiah. Just as Jeremiah predicted the destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple centuries before Jesus, Jesus did the same, and his predictions would come true in AD 70 when the Romans would decimate the city and ravage the Temple. Hardly anyone perceived him to be Messiah, and even his closest followers didn’t find a consensus on who he was. The Apostle Peter recognized Jesus’ identity as Messiah, which explains his actions in the Garden of Gethsemane; were Jesus the Messiah, the one who would win the military victory over the oppressive pagans, then Peter’s appropriate response, as an associate of the Messiah, would be to take up sword and shield. Not until the tail-end of Jesus’ ministry did the public sway towards identifying him as Messiah; his entry into Jerusalem on a donkey was a dramatic act revealing that Jesus was claiming to be the coming king, and the Jews’ praise of him showed that at least some of them believed him to be such. The reason for the skepticism regarding Jesus’ identity was that although he proclaimed the coming of God’s kingdom, he acted in a way that defied normal Jewish expectations of how it would come about.
Messiah, after all, would be crowned the Davidic King and would rule over Israel. Jesus taught that the best way to be a ruler was to serve, a counter-intuitive statement; and whenever people surrounded him in apparent efforts to hail him as king and crown him as such, he slipped away like an introvert in a Las Vegas rave. The Anointed One was supposed to defeat the pagan enemies and thus deal with evil; Jesus talked as if evil ran rampant even within Jewish ranks (not a surprising thing for a prophet like Jeremiah to say, but not something expected of the militant Messiah). Instead of advocating the zealot’s maneuver of overthrowing the pagans by the way of violence, Jesus taught non-violence through-and-through. If you live by the sword, you’ll die by the sword. Turn the other cheek and go the second mile. Jesus saw that the best way to defeat evil wasn’t through violence, since a victory through violence would only be a victory for violence, no matter who won. Quite paradoxically, Jesus realized, evil is best defeated by suffering and martyrdom—something he would embody and put into practice at the end of his life. The Anointed One was supposed to rebuild the Temple, but Jesus condemned it as a den of rebels, and he prophesied not of its rebuilding but its destruction, the complete antithesis to the Jewish hope. His preaching against the Temple and his subsequent actions in the Temple (which rendered the Temple ineffective for several hours, symbolizing its failure to function) were foundational in the trials that led to his shameful death. When he was executed, the message was clear: he did not defeat the pagans but was rather defeated by them, and in the most grotesque and shameful way possible, suspended naked and bloodied over a mocking crowd. He did not rebuild the Temple but rather caused a ruckus and nothing about it really changed. He did not take the throne as the King of the Jews but was rather executed in a mockery of that title. Those who had followed him were disenchanted, disillusioned, and a little more than disturbed. They scattered, not so much out of fear but out of hopelessness and brokenness, having wasted so much time on yet another would-be but failed Messiah. The pagan overlords weren’t crumbled to powder under Messiah; rather, the disciples’ expectations of the Messiah were crumbled to powder under the pagan overlords. Evil still ran rampant, the status quo hadn’t changed, and Israel remained in exile, enchained by her mocking persecutors who nonchalantly crucified her would-be king.
And then Jesus rose from the dead, and everything changed.
The death and bodily resurrection of Jesus isn’t just a sufficient explanation for the empty tomb, Jesus’ post-death bodily appearances, and the explosive rise of early Christianity. It isn’t just a sufficient explanation but a necessary explanation. All other explanations seeking to account for the empty tomb, the multiple appearances of Jesus, and the rise of early Christianity fail historically. The data we have at our disposal supports the resurrection no less than relevant data supports Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon or the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70. The resurrection isn’t a “conclusion based on faith.” It is a scientific and historical conclusion, for such conclusions derive not merely by deduction from hard data but by inference to the best explanation for the gathered data. The conclusion that (a) Jesus died and that, subsequently, (b) he was bodily raised from the grave is the best explanation of the relevant data. It makes sense of the data in a simplistic, coherent manner and is, historically, highly probable. The burden of proof lies not on those vouching for the bodily resurrection of Jesus but on those denying it, since belief in the bodily resurrection makes the most historical sense. If the resurrection is so historically ridiculous, as many critics claim, then why has no one come up with any better explanation of the data, despite unending attempts to do so? The resurrection of Jesus has high historical probability, but the fact that it happened doesn’t tell us what it means. For that we must go to the scriptures.
Before his death Jesus told his accusers they would see him and thus he would be vindicated. His apocalyptic prophecy came true in two waves: first, his resurrection and ascension. This validated his teachings, his claims, and his authority. The resurrection in and of itself served as a testament to his identity as the Son of God. Second, the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70 and the destruction of the Temple at the hands of Roman soldiers vindicated Jesus against his accusers and the accusations they lodged against him. Both of these stand as testaments to the reality of Jesus’s identity as Messiah. Early on in the Christian tradition, Jesus was identified as Messiah and as God: the titles “Son of God,” “Son of Man,” nor his resurrection prove that he was in any sense divine, but in the midst of the wrestling of the early church, the conviction that Jesus was not only with God but that he is God arose, because Jesus had done what only God could do and what God had said through the prophets (not least Isaiah) he would do: defeat evil and inaugurate the New Creation. Jesus’s death and resurrection signified the dawning of a new age, the defeat of evil, and the overcoming of death itself.
St. Ignatius wrote to the Christians of Ephesus, “Mary’s virginity was hidden from the prince of this world; so was her child-bearing, and so was the death of the Lord. All these three trumpet-tongued secrets were brought to pass in the deep silence of God. How then were they made known to the world? Up in the heavens a star gleamed out, more brilliant than all the rest; no words could describe its luster, and the strangeness of it left men bewildered. The other stars and the sun and moon gathered round it in chorus, but the star outshone them all. Great was the ensuing perplexity; where could this newcomer come from, so unlike its fellows? Everywhere magic crumbled away before it; the spells of sorcery were all broken, and superstition received its death-blow. The age-old empire of evil was overthrown, for God was now appearing in human form to bring in a new order, even life without end. Now that which had been perfected in the Divine counsels began its work; and all creation was thrown into a ferment over this plan for the utter destruction of death.”
Despite all the false starts and bloody quelling of revolution, the Jewish people clung to the hope that the kingdom of God would come. God’s kingdom in Jewish thought was characterized by the manifest sovereign rule of God over the entire world. The kingdom of God spoke of the day when God would rescue Israel from her pagan oppressors, when evil (not least the evil of all those wicked pagan empires!) would be judged, and when God would usher in a new and final era of peace and justice. The hope of the kingdom of God encapsulated all the Jewish hopes that were coming to a head during their oppression under the Romans. Jesus of Nazareth showed up on the scene, beginning his public career after his baptism, which served as a dramatization of the Exodus, hinting that the return from exile was about to take place. Jesus proclaimed that the kingdom of God was both “here” and “at hand.” He proclaimed that all the Jewish hopes were coming together, converging in the present, reaching their climax. Heaven was coming to earth, and Jesus was at the center of it, and he showed how it was so through his miracles.
As Jesus announced the kingdom of God, this coming-to-fruition of all the Jewish hopes, one would think that the people would easily perceive him to be the Messiah, the King through whom all this would take place. But for the most part, that wasn’t the case. Most of his Jewish contemporaries thought he was a prophet in the same vein as Jeremiah. Just as Jeremiah predicted the destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple centuries before Jesus, Jesus did the same, and his predictions would come true in AD 70 when the Romans would decimate the city and ravage the Temple. Hardly anyone perceived him to be Messiah, and even his closest followers didn’t find a consensus on who he was. The Apostle Peter recognized Jesus’ identity as Messiah, which explains his actions in the Garden of Gethsemane; were Jesus the Messiah, the one who would win the military victory over the oppressive pagans, then Peter’s appropriate response, as an associate of the Messiah, would be to take up sword and shield. Not until the tail-end of Jesus’ ministry did the public sway towards identifying him as Messiah; his entry into Jerusalem on a donkey was a dramatic act revealing that Jesus was claiming to be the coming king, and the Jews’ praise of him showed that at least some of them believed him to be such. The reason for the skepticism regarding Jesus’ identity was that although he proclaimed the coming of God’s kingdom, he acted in a way that defied normal Jewish expectations of how it would come about.
Messiah, after all, would be crowned the Davidic King and would rule over Israel. Jesus taught that the best way to be a ruler was to serve, a counter-intuitive statement; and whenever people surrounded him in apparent efforts to hail him as king and crown him as such, he slipped away like an introvert in a Las Vegas rave. The Anointed One was supposed to defeat the pagan enemies and thus deal with evil; Jesus talked as if evil ran rampant even within Jewish ranks (not a surprising thing for a prophet like Jeremiah to say, but not something expected of the militant Messiah). Instead of advocating the zealot’s maneuver of overthrowing the pagans by the way of violence, Jesus taught non-violence through-and-through. If you live by the sword, you’ll die by the sword. Turn the other cheek and go the second mile. Jesus saw that the best way to defeat evil wasn’t through violence, since a victory through violence would only be a victory for violence, no matter who won. Quite paradoxically, Jesus realized, evil is best defeated by suffering and martyrdom—something he would embody and put into practice at the end of his life. The Anointed One was supposed to rebuild the Temple, but Jesus condemned it as a den of rebels, and he prophesied not of its rebuilding but its destruction, the complete antithesis to the Jewish hope. His preaching against the Temple and his subsequent actions in the Temple (which rendered the Temple ineffective for several hours, symbolizing its failure to function) were foundational in the trials that led to his shameful death. When he was executed, the message was clear: he did not defeat the pagans but was rather defeated by them, and in the most grotesque and shameful way possible, suspended naked and bloodied over a mocking crowd. He did not rebuild the Temple but rather caused a ruckus and nothing about it really changed. He did not take the throne as the King of the Jews but was rather executed in a mockery of that title. Those who had followed him were disenchanted, disillusioned, and a little more than disturbed. They scattered, not so much out of fear but out of hopelessness and brokenness, having wasted so much time on yet another would-be but failed Messiah. The pagan overlords weren’t crumbled to powder under Messiah; rather, the disciples’ expectations of the Messiah were crumbled to powder under the pagan overlords. Evil still ran rampant, the status quo hadn’t changed, and Israel remained in exile, enchained by her mocking persecutors who nonchalantly crucified her would-be king.
And then Jesus rose from the dead, and everything changed.
The death and bodily resurrection of Jesus isn’t just a sufficient explanation for the empty tomb, Jesus’ post-death bodily appearances, and the explosive rise of early Christianity. It isn’t just a sufficient explanation but a necessary explanation. All other explanations seeking to account for the empty tomb, the multiple appearances of Jesus, and the rise of early Christianity fail historically. The data we have at our disposal supports the resurrection no less than relevant data supports Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon or the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70. The resurrection isn’t a “conclusion based on faith.” It is a scientific and historical conclusion, for such conclusions derive not merely by deduction from hard data but by inference to the best explanation for the gathered data. The conclusion that (a) Jesus died and that, subsequently, (b) he was bodily raised from the grave is the best explanation of the relevant data. It makes sense of the data in a simplistic, coherent manner and is, historically, highly probable. The burden of proof lies not on those vouching for the bodily resurrection of Jesus but on those denying it, since belief in the bodily resurrection makes the most historical sense. If the resurrection is so historically ridiculous, as many critics claim, then why has no one come up with any better explanation of the data, despite unending attempts to do so? The resurrection of Jesus has high historical probability, but the fact that it happened doesn’t tell us what it means. For that we must go to the scriptures.
Before his death Jesus told his accusers they would see him and thus he would be vindicated. His apocalyptic prophecy came true in two waves: first, his resurrection and ascension. This validated his teachings, his claims, and his authority. The resurrection in and of itself served as a testament to his identity as the Son of God. Second, the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70 and the destruction of the Temple at the hands of Roman soldiers vindicated Jesus against his accusers and the accusations they lodged against him. Both of these stand as testaments to the reality of Jesus’s identity as Messiah. Early on in the Christian tradition, Jesus was identified as Messiah and as God: the titles “Son of God,” “Son of Man,” nor his resurrection prove that he was in any sense divine, but in the midst of the wrestling of the early church, the conviction that Jesus was not only with God but that he is God arose, because Jesus had done what only God could do and what God had said through the prophets (not least Isaiah) he would do: defeat evil and inaugurate the New Creation. Jesus’s death and resurrection signified the dawning of a new age, the defeat of evil, and the overcoming of death itself.
St. Ignatius wrote to the Christians of Ephesus, “Mary’s virginity was hidden from the prince of this world; so was her child-bearing, and so was the death of the Lord. All these three trumpet-tongued secrets were brought to pass in the deep silence of God. How then were they made known to the world? Up in the heavens a star gleamed out, more brilliant than all the rest; no words could describe its luster, and the strangeness of it left men bewildered. The other stars and the sun and moon gathered round it in chorus, but the star outshone them all. Great was the ensuing perplexity; where could this newcomer come from, so unlike its fellows? Everywhere magic crumbled away before it; the spells of sorcery were all broken, and superstition received its death-blow. The age-old empire of evil was overthrown, for God was now appearing in human form to bring in a new order, even life without end. Now that which had been perfected in the Divine counsels began its work; and all creation was thrown into a ferment over this plan for the utter destruction of death.”
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