Relocating To Elfland

I assume most of us recognize the distinction between fiction and non-fiction. The stuff of fiction stories hasn’t actually occurred in “real life”; the stuff of non-fiction stories has. Less obvious, perhaps, is the distinction between fantasy fiction and non-fantasy fiction (which, as stated here, is my own brainchild, so it’s a good time to trigger critical filters): non-fantasy fiction could occur in our world as we know it (though, in fact, it hasn’t); fantasy fiction is stuff that couldn’t occur in our world, though it might in a different one. In fantasy fiction, the rules of that world are different from those in play in our own.

Whither this? Well, I’m in a running dialogue with a friend about the value of fiction stories. Is there any real value in stories that have never actually happened; and mustn’t we ask the question even more seriously about stories that couldn’t possibly occur in the “real world” at all?

I wouldn’t have thought 2 Samuel 22 a likely source of answers to these questions, but preaching through the text, it has been impossible to ignore some truly fantastic elements in David’s song. We find him sinking in the “waves of death,” in “torrents of destruction,” entangled in “the cords of Sheol” (vv. 5–6). He cries out to Yahweh, and the next thing we know the earth is reeling and rocking – the very foundations of heaven tremble at the erupting wrath of the Most High (v. 8). Yahweh mounts a cherub (v. 11); He bows the heavens and descends upon the earth, veiled in canopies of watery darkness (vv. 10, 12). He roars from heaven (v. 14), scattering the enemies of His servant with lightning shafts (v. 15); at the fiery blast from His nostrils, the channels of the sea are laid bare, and the foundations of the world uncovered (v. 16). It’s a scene of fearful glory and stunning power. Now here’s the question: When did this “really” occur? In fact, we must ask whether this scene even could occur in the “real world” – does Yahweh have nostrils? could He possibly ride on a cherub? Well, not exactly, but such questions badly miss the point of the text. This isn’t about what actually happened, or what actually could happen, in the world as we know it: it’s intended to open our eyes to a whole other sphere of reality that intersects with our world in the most ordinary things (the death of a king on Mount Gilboa, for one), and in which lies our hope of deliverance from all the evils we suffer in this world.

One of the uglier bits of fallout that has attended the Enlightenment’s disenchantment (or, as we might prefer to say, demythologizing) of the world is the erection of a firm barrier between what is “real” in the “real world” and what is . . . uh, myth. What I think may not be so obvious to us is that in erecting this firm barrier, we have also erected very high and firm partitions between the actual (non-fiction), the possible (fiction), and the impossible (fantasy). Never mind where we got these partitions: they are up, and not going anywhere. Certain things are real, actual, and therefore believable. Other things are possible, given the rules of the world as we know it; but it is also quite clear that other things lie beyond the borders even of possibility – out there are the myths, the objects of unreasoned faith (UFOs, gods, fairies, dragons, trolls, and so on).

I’m not going to offer a critique of the Enlightenment at this point, but I find it interesting that the Bible regularly takes us into the realm not only of fiction (parables, for instance), but even of fantasy (especially in its poetry and prophecies). Why? I think at least part of the reason must be that we need constant reminders that our God is not simply the God of the actual; He is also the God of the possible, and indeed of the impossible. We need, for example, to know that God will move heaven and earth to save those who trust in Him: not because we’ve ever actually seen this happen in the world as we think we know it, but because it happens all the time in the sphere of reality where nothing is impossible, and which we have apprehended by faith. And to take this a step further, I think extra-biblical fiction stories and fantasies may serve a similar function in our lives: they may remind us that “what is” is not all there is, not all there need be, and not all there will be. They may gesture at that sphere of reality without boundaries: the sphere of the working of God. They may awaken hope in us; they may open our eyes again to transcendent things.

My daughter once asked me if the wind was God’s shaking the acorns out of the trees. If we are going to take 2 Samuel 22 seriously, I believe the answer must, at some level, be yes. And that’s also why I’m glad she loves a good fantasy story. Who knows, her God may use it to shake some Enlightenment silliness out of her head one day.

So it’s bugging me again, as I near the end of preaching through the life of David: Why does it seem that on one hand David is presented as a “type” of Christ (no attempt here to use that term with absolute precision), while on the other hand he is presented as an all-too-human example of the saints (who are, most assuredly, not Christ)? How can he be simultaneously a larger-than-life progenitor of the Messiah (the giant-slayer par excellence) and also an ordinary guy in whom we recognize ourselves and whose faith we are called to follow? To put it even more starkly, how can we hold together what is inimitable about David (his foreshadowing of Messiah) with what is imitable (and must, indeed, be imitated).

These difficult questions affect our whole method of interpreting the Old Testament. If we want to take seriously Jesus’ statements that the OT is about Him (Luke 24:25–27, 44–47), if we want to avoid the gross moralizing of the “dare to be a Daniel (or David)” approach that many of us learned in Sunday school, then we must affirm that various OT characters (especially anointed ones) foreshadow Christ to come. Some would even argue that to read the OT any other way – to make it in any sense about character rather than about Christ – is to read it legalistically and turn it into a sourcebook for works-righteousness.

Yet, on the other hand, if we want to take seriously the apostle’s statements that the OT is about us (Romans 15:4; 1 Corinthians 10:11), we need to be careful not to draw lines from the OT to Christ in a way that blurs the lines from the OT to us, the saints of God. We need to be careful lest a fear of moralizing keep us from drawing any “morals” (i.e., instruction in how our God would have us live). We need to beware, for example, lest speaking of David as an anointed one eclipse speaking of him as a Spirit-filled worker for God’s kingdom, very much like ourselves.

It is not true that finding human examples in the OT leads necessarily to moralism, perhaps even threatening the doctrine of justification by faith alone. It is not true, conversely, that finding Christ in the OT leads to a kind of “drifting” over the text, with no ability to draw applications or imperatives from it. The reason is that the OT saints are examples to us, above all, of faith (see Hebrews 11) – they show us how to live by faith, how to walk with God by faith, how to please God by faith. They themselves looked forward to the very Messiah whom, in various cases, they typified. To see David is to see Christ in shadowy form; but it is also to see ourselves, our sins, and the victories of a faith that overcomes the world. The OT anticipates the Christ in whom the obedience of the people of God is fulfilled; it also anticipates the obedience of the new people of God in Christ – which is always the obedience of faith.

Here’s a revised proposal regarding the chiastic structure of 2 Samuel 22:

A          Praise to Yahweh for deliverance (vv. 2–4)

B            Yahweh routs the king’s enemies (vv. 5–20)

C              The king’s faithfulness (vv. 21–25, 3rd person)

D                Yahweh’s varied faces (vv. 26–27, 2nd person)

E                  Yahweh’s friends and foes (v. 28, 2nd person)

D´              Yahweh’s face toward the king (vv. 29–30, 2nd person)

C´            Yahweh’s faithfulness (vv. 31–35, 3rd person)

B´          The king routs his enemies (vv. 36–46, 2nd person)

A´        Praise to Yahweh for deliverance (vv. 47–51)

I’m outlining 2 Samuel 22 for an upcoming sermon. Various commentators see a chiastic structure in the text, but I haven’t found a proposal that’s detailed enough to be really helpful, especially when it comes to verses 26–46. Here’s one of my own:

A          Praise to Yahweh for deliverance (vv. 2–4)

B            Yahweh routs the king’s enemies (vv. 5–20)

C              The character of the king (vv. 21–25, 3rd person)

D                The mysterious ways of Yahweh (vv. 26–30, 2nd person)

C´            The character of Yahweh (vv. 31–35, 3rd person)

B´          The king routs his enemies (vv. 36–46, 2nd person)

A´        Praise to Yahweh for deliverance (vv. 47–51)

“[The] self-sacrifice of God in His Son is in fact the love of God to us. ‘He gave Him,’ which means that He gave Him into our existence. Having been given into our existence He is present with us. Present with us, He falls heir to the shame and the curse which lie upon us. As the bearer of our shame and curse, He bears them away from us. Taking them away, He presents us as pure and spotless children in the presence of His Father. That is how God reconciles the world to Himself (2 Cor. 5:19). We can, indeed, speak of the love of God to us only by pointing to this fact. It is the work and gift of the Holy Spirit that the fact itself speaks to us, that in the language of this fact God says: ‘I have loved thee . . . fear not, then; for I am with thee’ (Is. 43:4ff). No other saying is needed, for this one says all there is to say.” (Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, p. 2.378)

I’d like to resume a series of posts on the Psalter that I began a while ago: preceding installments are here, here, and here. The basic idea I’m exploring is that the Psalter’s structure (developed in five books) and its “gateway” (Psalms 1 and 2) indicate that the work as a whole is as much interested in the history of the world as it is in the devotional piety of individuals. This is worth exploring, because most readers of the Psalter (in my experience, at least) find it much easier to relate to than other Old Testament books, precisely because it is not full of history or prophecies about the future. When the Bible talks about the world, we’re kind of lost; when it talks about us and our feelings, it makes sense. The problem here lies not in thinking that the Psalter addresses feelings and experiences on the individual level: it does. The problem lies in a general ignorance of the biblical view of history, such that when the Psalter displays its historical/eschatological “face” (Vos’s term), we brush past it in favor of more individualistic concerns.

Psalm 1, as we have seen, speaks of “blessed” individuals who inherit the land (the new Eden) because they are rooted in the instruction (Torah) of Yahweh. Such individuals are not sinless, but they do not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the way of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers; they listen to a different voice, are in a different way, sit in a different place.

So far this all sounds very Abrahamic. Abraham believed God – he listened to and lived by every word that proceeded from the mouth of the Lord – and his seed inherit the earth. We come then to Psalm 2, the other door in the “gateway,” which opens up further dimensions of all this.

Psalm 2 situates the concerns of Psalm 1 on a global scale. The movement from the first psalm to the second looks something like this: (1) Yahweh wills that not merely individuals but also kings and nations listen to His voice, submissively trust in Him, and walk in His ways. (2) The rule of Yahweh has been “localized” in the person of His Anointed, and obedience to Yahweh must take the particular form of trusting (taking refuge) in His Son (see especially 2:12). (3) The judgment that befalls individuals who refuse to listen to Yahweh (1:5–6) will be visited on kings and rulers who seek to cast off the “bonds” of Yahweh’s Anointed (2:3), for He has given all things to His Son (2:8) and wills that all living things be united under the rule of His Son.

This globalizing of trust in Yahweh and obedience to Yahweh, coming to focus in reverence for and trust in His Anointed, opens the way into the rest of the Psalter. I will take that up in more detail in later installments, but for now I’d like to propose that Psalm 1 is a beautiful depiction of Old Testament piety, centered upon the Torah of Yahweh. It must be remembered, though, that Torah had at every point an eschatological focus: the future arrival of Messiah and of Yahweh’s “sabbatical” kingdom in Him. Though the psalmists could not have known just when and how this would occur in their future, we know from the standpoint of New Testament revelation that Messiah’s enthronement culminated when Jesus “ascended on high” and took His seat at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. It is appropriate, then, to read Psalm 2 retrospectively as an ascension psalm, and to understand much of the remainder of the Psalter as a description of what Yahweh’s Anointed will do during the days of His ascended reign.

A few humble thoughts on how to read the Bible:

Every text in the Bible is situated in four contexts, and each of these contexts helps us understand what the text is saying and how we are to respond to it. The four contexts are as follows:

1. The historical context

The question to ask here is what was happening in the world and the life of the author when this text was written. Every writer is a product of his or her time, and in order to understand a writer, we must understand something of the time in which he or she lived. It is no different with the biblical writers, even though they were inspired by the Holy Spirit and kept from error.

2. The literary context

We need to try to recreate the writer’s dictionary (what particular words meant at the time he was writing), and also learn as much as we can about the grammar and syntax of the language in which he thought and wrote.

But there is much more than this to literature. The biblical writers were working within a literary tradition overseen by God Himself, so biblical texts are full of allusions to prior texts, and full of hints, images, shadows, and “types” of things yet to come. We must ask how the words, imagery, and ideas in a particular text are informed by any number of other biblical texts. This requires a growing familiarity with the Bible as a whole.

3. The canonical context

Because God is the primary Author of scripture, the Bible (the entire “canon” of scripture) is one cohesive story. We must ask how a particular text serves this overall biblical story of the Triune God, His Messiah, and His kingdom.

4. The covenantal context

God intended scripture to teach us, reprove us, correct us, and train us in righteousness. We must therefore ask how each particular text is intended by God to shape the life of His people in every age, including our own.

Sometimes it’s the blindingly obvious stuff you miss when reading scripture. Today I had a few minutes to explore more fully Geerhardus Vos’ article, “Eschatology of the Psalter” (Princeton Theological Review, January 1920). I felt myself, all at once, “strangely warmed” by a truth that would be old news to a high school Bible student: the entire hope of the Old Testament, in all its variegated richness, clusters around the arrival of Messiah. Now, maybe we need immediately to qualify this and point out that there are really two arrivals of Messiah, one in grace and the other in glory, one for salvation and the other for judgment, one as an infant and the other as the King, one as Savior and the other as Judge. Fine, but let us not too hastily overlook the fact that the Old Testament sees absolutely grand stuff on the horizon of its future, and that it expects (in a rather undifferentiated way) that Messiah will usher in all of it when He comes.

Under the tutelage of the apostles, we rightly understand that the fullness of the new heavens and new earth anticipated by the prophets will arrive only when Messiah returns. But I think perhaps we owe to Dispensationalism, rather than the apostles, the idea that the glories of the prophesied kingdom will appear only after we rise to meet Him in the air. If it sounds as if I’m contradicting myself, I’m not. One can maintain that the promise of Christ’s appearing (the second time) is His people’s glorious hope, while still maintaining that His ruling of the nations – as the psalms and prophets said He would – is to occur, and is already occurring, in the present messianic age. The point here is simple (and it’s something, incidentally, on which “amils” and “postmils” ought to be able to agree): Jesus is someday going to deliver a kingdom up to His Father, and it’s going to be a kingdom recognizable by the standards supplied in the Old Testament. God really has raised Christ from the dead “and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come” (Eph 1:20–21); and that phrase “in this age” is seriously important.

For a long time, I have wondered about the connection between James 1:4 and 1:5, and between James 1:5 and 1:6. The exhortation to remain steadfast under the testing of faith (1:3) and to let steadfastness produce mature Christian character (1:4) makes sense. But why the sudden mention of wisdom in verse 5? What is the connection to the preceding verse? And why then the warning that, unless wisdom is asked in faith (1:6), the wisdom so generously promised in verse 5 won’t be forthcoming? Doesn’t this take away with the left hand what the right hand has just given?

James’ line of reasoning is profound, once we understand that wisdom is simply the way of life that flows from faith. Wisdom is the life of faith; it is steadfastly living out of things unseen but nevertheless real. We are told to live steadfastly in the reality that everything we hope for in the life to come is already ours, in principle, by faith. We already enjoy a life of “no condemnation”; the love of God is already shed abroad in our hearts; we already enjoy a common identity and a forgiving love in Christ that can eradicate barriers among men; we already have the ability not to sin; and we are experiencing the gradual renovation, not only of our individual lives, but also of the institutions and structures of human life, through the power of the gospel. We know and can enjoy all of this by faith – we have all the resources for a life of true wisdom in the world – but the difficulty comes, of course, in that the visible evidence is generally to the contrary!

So we cry out to God for wisdom, for the ability to see the world and respond to the world from the standpoint of faith; and God promises to give this to us abundantly, without reproach. But it is not a matter of sitting around waiting for a divine “zap” of wisdom: we are to stir up our faith in the very asking! We are to stir our hearts to believe that God is for us, that He has given us all we need for life and godliness in this world, and will yet give it to us – and behold! as we stir up our faith in this way, by that very means God works in us wisdom. To the extent our faith rises, to that extent we are already on our way to greater wisdom. To ask in unbelief is already to be killing the root system of wisdom; and James by the Spirit wisely points us to that fact. Believe in the grace of God to you, lift up your heart to that blessed reality, and you will never find God to be anything less than all He has promised; He will enable you to see things as they really are, and to live steadfastly – wisely, sanely – in the confidence of His goodness.

A few posts ago I suggested (following Geerhardus Vos and Stephen Dempster) that the Psalter, while certainly useful in individual devotional piety, has also an important “second face”; it has not only an individual/devotional aspect but also a historical/eschatological one. I’d like to begin unpacking that now, starting with some observations about the first two Psalms, which Dempster calls “the doorway into the Psalter.”

Psalm 1 begins with the memorable words, “Blessed is the man.” Psalm 2 ends with the promise, “Blessed are all.” Already a kind of inclusio becomes visible, tying the two Psalms together, as well as a progression from what is basically individual blessedness to something more universal in scope. Here, too, we confront a contextual question: what would this word “blessed” have communicated to Old Testament readers in their historical and theological context?

Fundamentally, “blessedness” is the opposite of “cursedness” in the Old Testament. Adam was cursed; Abraham was blessed. This polarity of human conditions frames the entire canon of the Old Testament: the direction of canonical history is toward salvation from Adam’s cursed estate. It is not over-reading the text of Psalms 1 and 2 to say that, for their original readers, the promise “blessed is/are” was richly freighted with Abrahamic connotations.

This illuminates a number of things in Psalm 1 in particular. The living tree language in verse 3 harks back to Eden, the garden of God, and the rivers pouring out of Eden into the world. There is a way back into the garden-sanctuary of God: it is found by meditating/delighting in the Torah of God (v. 2). It is important to note here that Torah was much more than precepts, statutes, and judgments; it was the entire teaching or instruction delivered by Moses, including the patriarchal narratives, the history of Israel in Egypt and beyond, the account of the organizing of Israel into a “congregation of the righteous,” and the promises concerning the land of Canaan. The saint of old who lived out of this rich revelation through Moses, who believed the promises to Abraham and looked with Abraham (now through the full lens of Mosaic revelation) to Messiah to come, would flourish among God’s people as a dweller in the new Eden. The book of Proverbs speaks of such living in terms of the “fear of the Lord” – the beginning of wisdom and the antithesis of the scoffing of the wicked. Here in Psalm 1 it is described as not walking in the counsel of the wicked, nor standing in the way of sinners, nor sitting in the seat of scoffers (v. 1).

Psalm 1, then, is all about inheriting the land, which is the same thing as inheriting the new Eden. It is all about living by faith and thus entering into the blessedness of Abraham, over against the accursedness of Adam. Psalm 2, however, opens up a massive further dimension to all of this. I will explore that in the next post.