Dispensationalism – history and critique #2

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

This is the second section to what I am currently writing. In the final pdf I will footnote the various references, for ease of reading and tidyness I am not doing so in these posts.

Theology and practice

As with all theology there is a practical outworking to what we believe.

A belief in the Rapture, namely that one day (and very soon) the church will be raptured out of this world, and there are those who are in danger of being left behind is a hope / belief in escapism.

  • Such a mentality will not help us be committed to transformation of the world as we have it.
  • It will also mean that any increase in darkness will only confirm our viewpoint, and rather than challenge the darkness we will tend to accept it as a ‘sign of the times’.
  • I consider that perhaps there is little that has been more destructive to an expectation of transformation than this teaching.
  • Also such teaching on eschatology produces fear rather than faith – a fear of being left behind.
  • It also lends itself to an abandoning of this world to the devil.
  • There can also be an over-focus on signs of the end, seeking to interpret what is happening in the world in the light of supposed prophetic Scriptures.
  • There can be more of an interest – and a passive interest at that – in the rise of evil than in the prayer for the kingdom of God to come. Maranatha being the prayer of the New Testament.

How did Dispensationalism develop?

An important element is the historical socio-political context. The predominant eschatological view during the 17th and 18th centuries was that of post-millennialism. Post-millennialism is the belief that the spread of the Gospel will bring in a golden age, i.e. the millennial / 1000 year rule by Jesus on earth will take place after there has been great success through the preaching of the gospel. The rule of Christ will be manifest after (post) the work of evangelism. So in the 17th and 18th centuries there was an optimism that prevailed concerning the prospective success of world-evangelisation. The writings of the revivalists Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield were prominent in spreading the belief that the millennium (this golden age for the gospel) was arriving. The gospel was expected to soon prevail and it would not be long before there would also be a conversion of the Jews to Christ.

There is however a shift that began to take place as the optimism was challenged by world events. In a short space of time there were three significant wars in the late 18th and early 19th centuries that brought a reality check.

  • The war of independence (1775-84)
  • The French revolution (1789-93)
  • The Napoleonic wars (1809-15).

In this period there were also a number of major changes within a number of the European monarchies; there was widespread unrest in Britain, and the wider socio-political arena was equally unstable.

Napoleon was setting family members on various thrones in Europe – his vision was to become ‘supreme king of kings and sovereign of the Roman Empire’. A number of ‘students’ of prophecy speculated that he could indeed be the antiChrist and that there would be a revived Roman Empire in fulfilment of Daniel 2. All of this unrest fuelled interest in things prophetic and brought a revival of pre-millennial expectation. (The pre-millennial understanding that Jesus would return to set up his kingdom on earth as the spread of the gospel was failing and darkness was visibly increasing.)

‘Pre-’ meaning before: Jesus would have to come before there would be any real manifestation of his kingdom on earth. So we are entering a period of new interest in eschatology and the return of Christ: it is during this period that:

  • Adventism arose with Joseph Miller saying that Christ was to return on March 21, 1843; and,
  • Jehovah’s Witnesses also developed with Charles Russell saying that Christ would set up his ‘heavenly kingdom’ in 1914.
  • So there is a shift from the optimism of the triumph of the Gospel to a pessimistic view that the last times had arrived and the powers of darkness were prevailing.

This is the context in which two early figures that are at the root of Dispensationalism come on the scene.

One is a controversial Scottish minister and the other one of the main influences within the Plymouth Brethren movement. As we look at this again note that – relatively speaking – Dispensationalism and a belief in the Rapture is a very recent phenomenon. Edward Irving (1792-1834), licensed as a church of Scotland minister in 1815, came to London to Caledonian Chapel in Hatton Gardens in 1822. He was both controversial and popular. In 1825 he addressed an audience with the title of ‘Babylon and Infidelity Foredoomed’. In that he challenged the post-millennial optimism and spoke of a ‘series of thick-coming judgements and fearful perplexities before the return of Jesus Christ.’ He was disparaging about the success of mission work on many lands, including Southern Europe as judgements were about to fall there. Irving was in no doubt that the Gentile Church had failed, seeing the judgements of Matthew 24 applying to the church. There was though an expectation of a Jewish Dispensation that would soon come:

When the Lord shall have finished the taking of witness against the Gentiles… he will begin to prepare another ark of testimony… and to that end will turn his Holy Spirit unto his ancient people, the Jews, and bring them unto those days of refreshing… This outpouring of the Spirit is known in Scripture by ‘the latter rain’. (Edward Irving, preliminary discourse, “on Ben Ezra”, The Coming of Messiah in Glory and Majesty, by Juan Josafat Ben-Ezra a converted Jew, Translated from the Spanish, with a Preliminary Discourse (London, L.B. Seeley & Sons, 1827), pp. 5-6.).)

In 1826 Henry Drummond had opened up his home at Albury Park to a group of 20 invited guests to discuss issues concerning the immediate fulfilment of prophecy. Irving had already developed a ‘Society for the Investigation of Prophecy’ and that society was soon subsumed under the conferences that were taking place at Albury. The conferences became an annual event from 1826-30 and became increasingly more speculative on issues of prophecy and the interpretation of Scripture. Alongside the conferences a publication came forth: The Morning Watch. Irving died in 1834 otherwise he might have become the main continuing voice in developing Dispensationalism. This however was to become the task of J.N. Darby (1800-82). In closing this section I quote the main text that is used as a claim for a rapture. I suggest that you read the text and note the question that Paul is being asked and the total absence of comfort along the lines of ‘heaven’ as he centres on the historical hope of those who are aligned to the God of hope, ending with how that hope is what will bring encouragement to one another.

But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died. For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will by no means precede those who have died. For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call and with the sound of God’s trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage one another with these words. (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18).

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Dispensationalism – history and critique #1

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

I am currently writing and will produce a pdf of around 10,000 words on Dispensationalism and so over the next days (hopefully not weeks!) I will post in bite-size pieces as I write. I will try to take on board any comments into it and who knows… might just affect what I write… though as will become clear I consider the whole framework to be something that is without biblical foundations. I am aware of ‘Progressive Dispensationalism’ (Craig Blaising and Darrell Block) but have never read what they have written. As I understand it they are bringing an adjustment to the hard lines between the ‘dispensations’ and allow for an overlap. They still hold to a ‘rapture’ a ‘millennial rule’ and the ongoing nature of the former covenant with Israel (maybe read what I wrote on ‘all Israel will be saved’ to get my take on that). Anyway here is the first part of what I have written – probably with some spelling mistakes that I hope to pick up… and some grammatical mistakes that will probably remain!).

‘Dispensationalism’: a big word that describes a recent approach to eschatology (by ‘recent’ I mean in the theological scheme of things, dating only from around 1830). For those unfamiliar with this term, please do not be put off by the word. Let me first greatly simplify it so that we know what lies at its core. At the core is the belief that the church will escape an end-time persecution through what is called the ‘Rapture’, often called the ‘Secret Rapture’.This core element holds that the the church of true believers will be taken from the earth to heaven while everyone else is ‘left behind’ and suffer great tribulation. There is much more to Dispensationalism than this one core belief and in due course I will seek to explain other elements. We can also note that there are those who believe in a Rapture who are not Dispensationalists, but virtually all who believe in a Rapture have been influenced by Dispensationalism.

The overall popularity of this viewpoint in the Western evangelical / pentecostal churches and inevitably the spread of this viewpoint around the world wherever missionaries have travelled means it is not simply a fringe view but deeply influential. The view is also popular because of the sheer amount of popularist literature, such as the ‘Left Behind’ series of books and DVDs, that has been published. And as we will cover later the publishing of the Scofield Bible greatly furthered the cause. It is worth noting that it is not at all popular though at an academic level (perhaps the ‘Progressive Dispensationalist’ school can be seen as having academic credibility)..

I consider the presence of this view is such that it can obscure the centre of eschatology, namely that of the return of Christ and the inauguration of ‘a new heaven and a new earth’. In Dispensationalism that central event gives way to a series of ‘end-time’ events. Dispensationalism is a relative newcomer to the field of theology – this does not make it intrinsically wrong; but it does mean that it should be viewed with the right level of suspicion. This claim that it is only found as far back as 1830, has been challenged in the recent years, with a number of more ancient writings being presented in order to claim that the rapture was taught previously in history.

I will look at three of those writings in what follows but perhaps two aspects, if noted, will weaken this claim to the greater level of historical credibility:

  • If (and I will disagree with this claim) the rapture has a level of historical credibility it still remains clear that Dispensationalism as taught from the 1830s has no prior place in theology. The ‘escape’ of the saints can be read into the ancient texts but Dispensationalism cannot be.
  • And a major second point is that there is no mention of a rapture or anything alluding to it in any of what might be considered foundational creeds and historical statements of faith. Not to be found in the Nicene Creed (325), the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed (381), nor the Chalcedonian Creed (451), and the Athanasian Creed (500). It cannot be found in the Augsburg Confession (1530), the Canons of Dort (1618-1619), the Baptist Confession of Faith (1644), the Westminster Confession (1646), nor the Methodist Articles of Religion (1784). It is not recorded in any document that shaped Christian understanding.

Irenaeus (bishop of Lyon, 130-202)

Tradition holds that he was a ‘disciple’ of Polycarp who was a ‘disciple of John, the disciple of Jesus. He wrote,

And therefore, in the end when the Church is suddenly caught up from this, it is said, ‘There shall be tribulation such as has not been since the beginning, neither shall be.’ For this is the last contest of the righteous, in which, when they overcome, they are crowned with incorruption (Against Heresies, 5:29).

The church is ‘suddenly caught up from this’ (tribulation) sounds as if he could be propounding an escape, a rapture of the church prior to the tribulation. If he did mean a rapture, such a view is in distinct contrast to what he wrote three chapters earlier in the same writing. There he wrote,

And they shall lay Babylon waste, and burn her with fire, and shall give their kingdom to the beast, and put the Church to flight.

In that passage, commenting on his understanding of Daniel and Revelation, he clearly indicates that the church is present in and through what he understands to be the tribulation. Perhaps he contradicted himself, but more likely (in the first passage quoted above) he sees the church present through the tribulation for he calls it the last contest and that they overcome, not that the Lord ‘rescues’ them! The ‘caught up’ is not something that occurs before the tribulation but takes place, as he writes, ‘in the end’.

His language in that isolated text could be colonised to suggest he believes in a rapture, but a wider reading of Irenaeus shows that he held to the historic pre-millennial understanding of eschatology. (This is not my position but one that has historical credibility.)

Cyprian (200-258, bishop of Carthage)

Here are two quotes that have been registered as Cyprian’s support for a rapture,

We who see that terrible things have begun, and know that still more terrible things are imminent, may regard it as the greatest advantage to depart from it as quickly as possible. … Do you not give God thanks, do you not congratulate yourself, that by an earlier departure you are taken away, and delivered from the shipwrecks and disasters that are imminent?

Let us greet the day which assigns each of us to his own home, which snatches us hence, and sets us free from the snares of the world, and restores us to paradise and the kingdom (Treatise 7: On the Mortality).

These, I consider, are easily refuted when placed in the historical context. He is writing during a time of plague and persecution. He comforts Christians who feared death; in that context dying in Christ was a blessing, sparing them from the various hardships. Far from being rapture-affirming statements they are affirming that the last enemy, death, has been overcome.

Ephraem the Syrian (4th Century)

The writing that is quoted is in different forms and is now held to be pseudepigrapha and dating from the 6th or 8th century, hence now often referred to as being the work of Pseudo-Ephraem.

The report of these things does not disturb us, nor the spectacle itself. For the elect shall be gathered prior to the tribulation, so they shall not see the confusion and the great tribulation coming upon the unrighteous world.

Again the isolated text could be taken to support a rapturist interpretation, but when read in the wider context of this writing it is clear that the escape is through death, not rapture! Here are quotations from the wider work (emphases added – any comments inside square brackets:

Nation will rise up against nation, And kingdom against kingdom. Lawlessness will be sovereign on earth. And the defiled will pursue after the saints. People will openly apostatize and augment the left side; the righteous ones will suffer indignities from those who belong to the side of the sinners [no escape].

Here we have death as an escape from the persecution; that saints are not raptured away but they suffer while the devil is active on earth persecuting and killing Christians during tribulation is clear in the writings. The writing as a whole and not an isolated text needs to be considered. Here are a few quotes that indicate the presence of believers during the tribulation.

Pronouncing the good fortune of the deceased who had avoided the calamity: ‘Blessed are you for you were borne away [evidently to the grave]) And hence you escaped [by death] from the afflictions!

Then the Evil One will become enraged with the saints at that time; he will draw his terrible sword and sever the necks of the righteous ones {no escape and the saints are persecuted and killed]..

In those days [during the tribulation] people shall not be buried, neither Christian, nor heretic, neither Jew, nor pagan, because of fear and dread there is not one who buries them; because all people, while they are fleeing, ignore them.

There of course could have been writers who believed in some form of rapture (they might have been influenced by texts reflating to Enoch, Elijah or Moses) but there are no mainline writers who held those views and there is no Dispensationalist structure prior to the one developed by J.N. Darby (1800-1882).

Scripture is not focused on an escape but on resurrection:

Everything that the Father gives me will come to me, and anyone who comes to me I will never drive away, for I have come down from heaven not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me but raise it up on the last day. This is indeed the will of my Father, that all who see the Son and believe in him may have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day (John 7:37-40).

No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me, and I will raise that person up on the last day (John 6:44).

Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day (John 6:54).

Resurrection – the hope that is within us. Resurrection was the theological answer to how God will be faithful. If the restoration of all things is the bringing of created things and persons to their fitted conclusion (not their destruction) then a question remains. That question was related to the destiny of those who had departed but were righteous – how will they be rewarded? The belief of the restoration of creation raised the issue of ‘but what about those who have died’ (the very same question that Paul answers in the supposedly core-passage on the rapture!). The resounding answer was that God is faithful and those departed saints will be raised on the last day. Resurrection, not rapture, was and is the hope.

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To meet

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by Martin Scott
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A short post into 1 Thess. 4:13-18 the central passage on the ‘secret rapture’. The biggest issue is the question that Paul is seeking to answer – ‘what about those who have died’. The answer certainly would not be ‘no worries we will escape what is come’! Makes no sense at all, but of course if we have a Hebraic world view Paul’s answer makes sense. The resurrection is the answer. Those who have died will not miss out on the great day when restoration arrives here. Those who have died will rise first – and the others (those who are alive on earth) changed. To go to a parallel Scritpure:

in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed (1 Cor. 15:52).

Everything happens instantaneously. There is no time gap… but back to 1 Thessalonians.

We will meet him (and the resurrected saints) in the air. This phrase is within Scripture (2 other occasions in the NT) and a common phrase in the era and context. It was used of the visit of the emperor to a city and in the process the various dignitaries would go out of the city to meet the emperor and together they would travel back to the city.

We see the same with those who welcomed Paul to Rome:

And so we came to Rome. The brothers and sisters from there, when they heard of us, came as far as the Forum of Appius and Three Taverns to meet us (εἰς ἀπάντησιν) (Rom. 28:14,15).

Same word as in 1 Thess 4:17

Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet (εἰς ἀπάντησιν) the Lord in the air, and so we will be with the Lord forever.

The dignitaries do not end up outside the city, but return to the city; Paul’s friends did not stay at Appius but came with Paul to Rome. The same understanding – and the only way to make sense of the answer to the question of ‘what happens to those who have died’. It is clear we who are alive will not miss out on the transformation, but what about the righteous who have passed away. We are all coming here with the Lord who has already ‘departed’ his location (‘heaven must hold him until…).

Is there a literal going up (into the air)… maybe. But it is instantaneous, hence I think that question is pretty meaningless – Paul is using language and a totally understandable parallel story to illustrate.

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1830… or before?

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by Martin Scott
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I am currently writing a pdf concerning ‘Dispensationalism’… maybe if I simplify that term to refer to the whole system of teaching that centres around a ‘secret rapture’ or two stages to the return of Christ – once for his people to get them to safety before the big bad days arrive (the ‘Great Tribulation’). Invented around 1830 with a man called J.N. Darby and given real legs through the Scofield reference Bible. A great way to promote a theology… I read a text (for example ‘Gog and Magog’) have no idea what it is about, but my (Scofield) Bible has notes in that tell me what it is about… I no longer need to read the Bible for myself as I now know what it means, in other words the notes become the text I read! In later times the whole framework of antiChrist, Tribulation and rapture was given a great boost with the novels / movies of ‘the left behind’ series. Claiming to be novels, but basing themselves on a (recent) interpretation of Scripture leaves them with the all-but implicit weight of Scripture. If I embrace the novels the lens through which I read Scripture will be defined.

Better to have whole parts of Scripture that is not understood than to cancel out Scripture through something imposed on it… my opinion, and maybe my excuse for reading whole parts (particularly of the OT) and not getting it!

Anyway I have noted that there has been a recent pushback among dispensationalists where there is a claim that ‘the rapture’ has been taught in earlier history, with even some quotes going back to Irenaeus (132-202). I have not yet had time to read all the claims but a few responses.

  • Any such references (going by the ones I have read) could possibly be interpreted as a rapture but probably are referring to escape by death (along the lines of Jesus: they will kill you but not a hair of your head will be damaged… wonderful language!) or by protection throughout any time of persecution / tribulation.
  • There is certainly no systematisation that resembles the later structure – that lies totally in the era beginning 200 years ago.
  • If there are such references we have to put them against not simply the NT texts but the Hebraic world view, not the Greek view of salvation being one of escape! (I think I remember that someone prayed that the Lord God would not take the disciples out of the earthly context????)
  • This escapist theology does not appear in any of the foundational creeds of Christianity. The Nicene Creed (325), the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed (381), the Chalcedonian Creed (451), and the Athanasian Creed (500) make no reference whatsoever to such an approach. Later confessions of faith likewise do not present this idea of a secret rapture (e.g.the Augsburg Confession (1530), the Canons of Dort (1618-1619), the Baptist Confession of Faith (1644), the Westminster Confession (1646), the Methodist Articles of Religion (1784)). ABSENT from any historic line of understanding.

Maybe some prior to Darby believed in the rapture, though I remain unconvinced. Certainly it is Darby who develops it. And I personally find no evidence of it in Scripture… 1 Thessalonians uses the normal language relating to a visiting dignity to a city – using the same literal words as when the disciples went to meet Paul on his way to Rome – they went out to come back with him to Rome. No need to posit a movement into the sky (or ‘heaven’) but a clarity that Jesus will come with all his saints – those who have died prior and those alive at the time of his parousia. Oh and who will be left and who will be ‘taken’ – in the context of the Roman assault on Israel / Jerusalem?

I have got more reading to do but don’t think I will find anything significant before 1830. It is always interesting to see how eschatologies change. Late 1990s I did a thesis on the eschatology of the wider ‘New Church Movement’ and traced back to the late 50s / early 60s the changes that came through. The vast majority of those within the movement came from a Plymouth Brethren (or Pentecostal) background and steeped in the secret rapture approach with the letters in Revelation being descriptive of the church from the time of the NT to the ‘end’. The last letter was to Laodicea, so the last era would be a ‘lukewarm’ church. In the margins of the notes I had from that era was written ‘but what about Laodicea’… written there as the speaker was speaking about the restoration of the church now that apostles and prophets were becoming the foundation. The restored church and the Laodicean church were not compatible in the end times!

I suspect that a lot of Scripture ends up not compatible with our beliefs!

I of course am the exception! Aided by I am really not convinced there is any series of events laid out for us – no tribulation, no antiChrist, no millennial rule, and certainly no rapture. Although the first two in my short list might come to pass, though the relevance of them is minimal – Scripture pushes us to live in the light of the return of Christ, so by default means quit the speculation and get on with life!

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Palestine / state of Israel… where to?

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by Martin Scott
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Posting any comment on the above is a challenge. The history, back through the Zionist movement, the anti-Semitism of the West and then add in the Bible, or at least what we term the Old Testament adds layers upon layers. Is there a way forward? In Jesus there is always a way forward. I do not like the term ‘the better of two evils’ as an ethical frame but I do understand what is being proposed by that term. I rather would operate with ‘the most redemptive path’. It is not easy to always advocate the right response in an absolute sense, but we can consider the most redemptive route and then look at it again later and respond with a further response. I think we see that in Scripture and that is the whole basis of a theology of sanctification – ongoing, from glory to glory.

It is not possible to look at the current scenarios in the Middle East without referring to the political powers (Imperialistic colonisers) and such agreements as the Sykes–Picot Agreement of 1916. A secret treaty between the United Kingdom and France, with assent from Russia and Italy, to define their mutually agreed spheres of influence and control in an eventual partition of the Ottoman Empire. The land of Palestine was to be controlled by Britain, and then further lands carved out with no respect to ethnicity nor (flavour of) religion. Follow this up with the Balfour Declaration (1917) with the promise to work toward a Jewish state in Palestine (a land with people already within it, a people that were mainly Muslim but included Christians and a small Jewish community). A land with people living within it – who had lived there for centuries – this is so common with regard to colonisation. The common argument has been there were no people living there, or (maybe worse, but really the same) the people were not significant / less than human. Common… And wrong. Wrong historically and wrong ethically, and a blatant trespassing. Anglo-Saxon ‘christians’ going to church Sunday morning then hunting first-nation people (wrongly termed ‘aborigines’) post-church in Australia – such stories can be repeated over and over. (For a year Gayle and I tracked the horrific expulsion of Muslims from Spain; here in ever-so-kind Oliva the church records of Muslims being marched to church on Sunday and ‘converted’ then killed as they were marched out again with the proclamation of a two-fold outcome in that ‘we raised their souls to heaven and filled our own pockets’.)

I am sure that the Palestinians were the offering of appeasement on the altar for the anti-Semitism that had gone on with the pogroms of Europe that aligned with the bloodshed that went before and after with the holocaust.

In the two years following the state of Israel being established (1948) 400 cities and villages were destroyed with some 1 million people being driven violently from their homes (this was not an ’empty land’) with many of those people forced into Gaza. Such activity is in direct conflict to international law.

It is not an exaggeration to say that Palestinians continue to live in an apartheid context and that there is ongoing genocidal activity. (I am not making comments about Israeli citizens of Israel, but of the state of Israel, and I am certainly not condoning any violence that originates from Hamas. More below on that…)

Yesh Din, an Israeli organisation registered with the government in a report in 2020 (58 pages entitled ‘The Israeli Occupation of the West Bank and the Crime of Apartheid: Legal Opinion’) concluded,

That the Israeli regime in its entirety is an apartheid regime. That Israel is an Apartheid state.

It does so sadly and as an Israeli registered organisation.Thank God for the many Israeli Jews who see others as their equal and as human. (The report is found here.)

In response to the Hamas attack of October 2023 Israel’s defence minister said,

I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed… We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.

Such state responses and statements abound and cannot be justified under the heading of the right of self-defence. Genocide is an appropriate term. Omer Bartov, a former Israeli soldier and a professor of Holocaust and genocide studies wrote in the Guardian that he had become convinced that,

At least since the attack by the IDF [Israel Defence Forces] on Rafah on May 6, 2024, it was no longer possible to deny that Israel was engaged in systematic war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocidal actions .

But the Bible?

Netanyahu has positioned himself as a ‘secular Jew’ but has been willing to use Scripture as justification. The ‘Amalekites’ need to be wiped out and the land promised by God restored to those to whom God gave it. Weaponising the Bible is so common by colonising powers, what greater justification does one have but being the anointed of God?

Christian Zionists such as Tim Walberg (and many, many others could be quoted) who trained at two evangelical seminaries in a town hall meeting (he is now in politics) said that bombs should be dropped on Gaza like Nagasaki and Hiroshima to get it all over with quickly. When asked about humanitarian aid he replied with ‘we should not be spending a dime on humanitarian aid’. (When he replied with those words the UN had already warned that 70% of the population was suffering from catastrophic levels of hunger.)

Random thoughts:

  • Two peoples corporately traumatised rarely find a solution.
  • If we dig into the OT we find the lex talionis (eye for an eye) – a restrictive law on how revenge is taken, so that any response is equal to what was committed. This is not what is governing the response.
  • Jesus advocated a love response that embraced the enemy; he blessed the peacemakers. We have to read from the NT back into the OT. Any apparent change of ethical instruction does not mean that there was a different God in the OT (Marcion’s conclusion), but as followers of Jesus we insist there is no other God than a Jesus-like God. And yes for sure we have to read the OT critically – that is a huge hermeneutical task, but we cannot make God into an image that is not seen in Jesus. (In certain places it seems that Christians vote for a bully who knows how to support their agenda as their God is also a bully who forces an agenda.) ‘You have heard it say, but…’
  • Paul said ‘do good to all’ and added ‘especially to the household of faith’. Do good to all… and in Palestine, and currently in Iran where there are so many coming to faith, there are ‘many of the household of faith’ being starved, tortured and killed – with the full backing and indeed encouragement of evangelical ‘Bible-believing’ people. Something is wrong!
  • I do not read of any expectation of the land being restored to ‘Israel’ nor of some end-time opening of eyes with regard to the land in the NT. (I date most books prior to AD70 and Revelation late 90s – so neither before nor after the fall of Jerusalem do I find such an expectation.)
  • What do I make of 1948 and ‘Israel’? If a return to the land was an act of God it was to be preceded by repentance. Repentance is not what provoked a return. I am told that statistically more Jews come to Christ outside of Israel than inside. The return to the land is a Zionist persuasion – and to be anti-Zionist is NOT to be anti-Semitic. Most Palestinians are not anti-Jews (some of course are) but they are anti-Zionist. Is God at work… for sure but I see no basis to suggest the ‘return’ is something initiated by God. I have been struck by the convivencia that was present for centuries in Palestine. Those from the 3 Abrahamic faiths lived together. That term, convivencia, is a term used of Spain prior to the Reconquista by the Christians. Prior to that the three faiths lived respecting one another in the same space. We have prayed into this often.
  • God is present in every situation that we create and works ‘for good’; but the Satan is also at work. If there was one land where reconciliation would be a sign on the earth above all others it would be that piece of land in the Middle East that is in conflict. Jesus was clear that those who murder are not descended from heaven but from the devil who was a murderer from the beginning.
  • I do not have answers but do not sleep easily and I long for there to be a Jesus-aligned people who are not looking for an end that is provoked by some made-up Armageddon scenario but a beginning that is in response to an empty tomb.

Gayle has many dreams. The short version of a very long and profound dream she had prior to the current genocide is of a gathering inside a marquee. Support for Palestine becomes central; two groups find commonality – those of Christian faith and those who expressed faith for humanity (humanists)and one group exited – Zionists. Many aspects followed including the appearance of flamingos (now present in Albania) which then ended with an appeal to the banking system to get rid of the professional clothing and play with the children in the grass. We have to see a major shift in the economic realm (war enriches the few) as it is willing to sacrifice the next generation for blessing now (condemned as the sin of Moloch in the OT).

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All Israel – all?

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

Romans 9-11 definitely stands as a section within the whole book but is not simply unrelated to the remainder of the book. The latter chapters address the inter-relationship of the people from the former covenant who have responded to Jesus as Messiah and those from the Graeco-Roman world who have acknowledged the God of Israel and the work of the cross (deeply practical – a people who are Torah obedient and a people of faith to whom the Torah was not given). And the earlier part of the book has all people have fallen short of the glory of God (of course we read this individualistically but Paul is writing it collectively), with the fullness of salvation available for all. Then these middle chapters are in answer to the faithfulness of God with Paul insisting that ‘It is not as though the word of God has failed’ (Rom. 9:6).

Never one that is easy to follow, but Paul having laid out his case concludes with ‘In this way all Israel will be saved‘. The chapters are dense and that sentence is somewhat dense too!

  • He is not predicting some future turning of all Jews to Jesus as Messiah. His language is ‘in this way’ not ‘and then…’ He is not seeking to give a timeline. His slow to build (though dense) argument is to present an ongoing process of a faithful God.
  • He is not saying ‘all Jews’ but ‘all Israel’. That is a vital part to note. The term ‘Jew’ and ‘Israel’ are not synonymous. Outside of these chapters in the Pauline corpus his usual language is ‘Jew’; inside these chapters his language is ‘Israel’.
  • This distinction of ‘Jew’ and ‘Israel’ is consistent with other authors such as Josephus or Philo. (Josephus (37-100AD), for example, wrote the Jewish Antiquites (a history of Israel) and refers to Israel/Israelites 188 times in the first 11 volumes but does not use those words outside of those 11 volumes; and conversely he uses the term ‘Jew’ only 26 times in the first 10 volumes, but in the remaining 9 volumes he only refers to the term ‘Jew’ (1162 times)).
  • ‘Jew’ refers to those who returned from the exile in Babylon, consisting of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin; ‘Israel’ is a larger term relating to the whole 12 tribes, who did not return to the land but were scattered among the nations. Paul expresses the hope of the 12 tribes when he stands before Agrippa – the hope of Israel, and if that hope is to be fulfilled then God has to be faithful. If he has abandoned his people then he will prove to be unfaithful.
  • Thus Paul is writing of an ongoing process through which all Israel will be saved, not some ‘end-time’ event.
  • Further he has argued (as Scripture does consistently) that Israel is a faith term more than an ethnic term. Those who are not ‘of Abraham’ can become descendants of Abraham, while ‘not all (ethnically) descendants of Abraham’ are of Israel. ‘Israel’ is a term larger than ethnic Israel and at the same time smaller than ethnic Israel!
  • The global mission is the means by which all Israel will be saved. All Israel, not simply those living in the land of Israel (those whose designated term was ‘Jews’), but those from among the nations whose ethnicity is rooted in Abraham (those from the tribes who never returned); all Israel in that those who have no ethnic roots in Abraham but are adopted from among the gentiles (ta ethne – gentiles of nations as it was a term used to describe those who are not ethnically descended from Abraham).

The above is a summary of part of my reading of this ‘all Israel’ use in the context of Romans 9-11 and the fuller text is here.

In seeking to narrow down as to what Paul is arguing and thereby exclude certain other meanings I plan to jump to some perspectives on the situation in Palestine / Israel.

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Christian humanism

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

Some of you will have read the pdf on the theology behind Paul’s statement that ‘All Israel will be saved’ (available here via the menu under ‘Journals‘) and since then I have read Munther Isaac’s book ‘Christ in the Rubble’. He is a Palestinian Christian pastor (and much more!) living in the West Bank. Deeply informative of the history and sensitive to the issues but very clear. Two aspects remain with me constantly that the creation of the state of Israel by the colonial powers used the Palestinians as the atoning offering for the anti-Semitic history of those colonising powers and the history of the land prior to the modern state was one of convivencia.

Some years back Gayle and I took a year to research then travel throughout the whole of mainland Spain to pray into the years that culminated in the brutal expulsion of the Muslims (1609). With a measure of rose-tinted lenses and a significant measure of reality under the rule of the Muslims there was what was termed convivencia in Spain – those of the three Abrahamic faiths (Christian, Muslim and Jew) co-habited space. We see Spain as the ‘canary in the mine’ (not original to us – a recent history book wrote with this lens on Spain in the context of Europe) so do believe that Spain is key to lead a path back toward genuine convivencia – the vision of the New Jerusalem is that: every tribe… and no temple!

Maybe we are naive and yesterday we had two socially active people with us who do not express faith. I admire their stance and understand the huge measure of pessimism as without faith in the transcendent ‘Other’ how much faith can anyone have in humanity to bring about change. The pope recently called for a ‘Christian humanism’ to rise up. For too long we have seen a divide between a focus on humanity and a theology of God. This is why I wrote Humanising the Divine, though I don’t think the pope was one of the four readers of the widely acclaimed book (widely acclaimed in my head!).

I have at times alluded to what I consider is the most profound dream Gayle had which began with Palestine and the coming together of Jesus-aligned people with humanists in the context of Europe in close harmony and support, coinciding with the exit of Christian-Zionists. The end of the dream pushed for a new order economically. (There were many details in the dream that we have watched play out – including a phase of the appearance of pink flamingos with the question: ‘did you see that?’ Did you see what was happening in Albania???)

Palestine, Israel, convivencia, the Bible, genocide – huge questions. And in real life situations there are rarely ‘here is the answer’ but rather here is the first step… and if the steps can be followed bravely and without fear something redemptive unfolds. I think this is the way God / faith works – from glory to glory.

I read this morning an article: Israeli West Bank settler tells BBC attacks on Palestinians are justified as revenge (https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g4djgdyk2o). I am lifting part of the dialogue below:

I think now, after they killed one Israeli, we need to kill all the people in Tal and Sarra, even Jit and Farata,” he said, naming the Palestinian villages closest to the outpost.
I put it to him that he was equating one Jewish life with hundreds or even thousands of Palestinian lives.
“No,” he said, “millions. One Jewish life, it’s 10 million [Palestinians].”
Challenged on the racism of his statement, he did not deny it.
“Yes, I know,” he replied. “But this is the truth, because God chose us [and] because of this you are jealous.”

‘God chose us’… there is the issue right in our face. And Paul quotes Deut. 32:21 that God would make Israel jealous by a nation that are not a people!

So over the coming days I want to reflect on Israel, Palestine with reference to what I wrote in the pdf. And hopefully taking it further, for the vision is of ‘neither Jew nor Greek’… maybe it begins with the original creational binary of ‘male and female’ shifting to be ‘no longer male and female’. The binaries that we so often love are no longer present relationally in Christ (Gal. 3:28; convivencia in its fullness).

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Reflections on the news?

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Justice

It has been a long time since I have posted something here but I still remember how to get my fingers to put letters on a screen. Gayle and I are away in Galicia – Celtic lands in the north west of Spain with a coastline that is stunning and could be found in one of the Celtic lands of the UK.

Away from the heat of Oliva (at least there is some sea air there) or the altitude and heat of Madrid, and for now away from the wild fires of Spain and France. And away to reflect, seek to align for whatever is coming up, to read (I am just finishing ‘Christ in the Rubble: Faith, the Bible, and the Genocide in Gaza’ – I will at some point come back to this book).

(Wild fires in Spain – we are top left currently… got to get to the East Coast above Alicante. It can be done but which route?)

The news… the world…

We often comment that there are a billion (or more) worlds. The old request that we walk in someone else’s shoes and then we can talk with them. Or in the words of the 13th Century Sufi mystic and poet

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there.

There are rights and wrongs, but Rumi is calling us to move beyond the egocentric position that fuels scapegoating, and calling for us to ‘meet’ at that place of listening.

I usually dip into a couple of news-sites each day but if I think by doing so I have caught up on the news I would be very much mistaken. The ‘news’ as Malcolm Muggeridge said is ‘not the news but an extraction of the news’. The news in Gaza is different to the news about Gaza… and the absence of the any news concerning Gaza on the majority of the front pages of news-sites is something different again. Today the wild fires in Spain and France dominate the sites I read. Important and interesting for me; we have to consider what route we take to get home. Inconvenient, an adventure, maybe will add a few hours to our journey; but today we eat, we sleep, we keep dry and… Gaza means nothing. The person I see outside the supermarket with his (true or otherwise – probably true) sign that he would like help to feed his family of four and would I consider buying some eggs or pasta for him. I have not walked in his shoes. His world is not mine.

Those fleeing the wild fires, losing everything – another world. Those who ignore the science because it has economic ramifications – another world.

Where is God in the (literal or otherwise) rubble of the multiple worlds we live in? Where is the devil (however understood) in those multiple worlds? Where am I complicit in those worlds? All three questions are relevant.

‘What about this person?’ – said Peter to Jesus after the three-fold questioning dialogue. Paraphrasing Jesus, he said ‘nothing to do with you’.

What am I / Gayle to do in this next phase? OOOOFFFF – that is a question.

Whatever it is it needs to contribute to the future and to help one of the billions of worlds out there to move to a better place – even if it is the smallest of those billions of worlds. ‘You did it to me; you visited me… you gave a cup of cold water in my name…’

Interlude – all the pressures of (privileged) life suddenly breaks in:

I am sitting here and notice the front right tyre of our van is not looking good. I look again 10 minutes later – no we have a puncture! And we are on soft camping ground so no way can we put a jack under the van… and the tyre is sinking and deflating into the mud. And then the rain – did I say RAIN? So disastrous – just don’t use that description to the billions today living on or below the poverty line (and when I used the word ‘disastrous’ did I mention we ate a roast chicken last night? And a definite irrelevant aside – we can cook a whole chicken on a few coconut husk charcoals on the COBB – if I were an agent the number of people who come over to say – what is that? – to whom I could sell one would make me wonderfully well off in pocket).

(End of interlude – written after the ‘disastrous’ above event.)

A Jesus lens on the one big world we all live within… now this site is ‘Perspectives’ and there certainly is a ‘field’ beyond my perspectives but…

There are some big issues that are being highlighted:

  • Feminism – simply the push for women and men to stand together on the same level field. (I put at the top of this post that in spite of not writing for some time that I still know how to put my fingers to the keyboard. Back in the day anyone using a keyboard was female serving the demands of those who were male (typists / secretaries); along comes technology and suddenly the fingers are male; cook in the kitchen; but Michelin stars on offer and the gender changes… the deciding factors – visibility and money. This was central to our push over 4 months in Sicily.
  • And currently there is such a push to keep patriarchy and misogyny alive. Test the armed forces for their level of testosterone? Really? Those are the attempts at a falling Imperial (Western) system to stay alive.
  • War. Some time back Gayle had (another) dream where she dialogued with a world leader. This great peacemaker(!!!) said that there would only be one more war that he had to initiate and then peace would come. Gayle said to him (yes, as per normal a ‘him’) if you go to war it will only lead to another one. The dream… and the reality is the one more has led to another one already and neither are over.
  • Palestinians – offered on the altar as the atonement for the anti-Semitism of the West. (Gayle had a dream some years back of the Palestinian situation (prior to Gaza) and a response to it… eventually it led to the possibility of a new economic system. Sadly in the dream those wedded to Zionism could not go there.) Anti-Zionism is NOT anti-Semitic.
  • There are many ‘isms’ that are being challenged. Scripture does not primarily address the oppressed to take over and sort out the oppressors, but it does address the oppressors. Maybe I am one of those… even if not, I am one of the privileged so Scripture does address me, and it comes with a metanoia (think again) command / invitation.
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Do not ‘carry’ the Lord’s name ’emptily’

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

The third commandment telling Israel not to bear the name of the Lord in vain is pretty profound. As indicated in the title of this blog I want to carry it a long way further than using the name of the Lord in a swearing context, and certainly beyond those who call out OMG.

To bear the name of the Lord is parallel to that of the high priest who bore (carried) the names of the tribe on his clothing – he carried them, he represented them before God; hence the core of this commandment is to represent God. Jesus faithfully ‘carried’ God’s name (character)

I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them and I in them (Jn. 17:26).

Even AI is smarter than to reduce this commandment to swearing. Here is a summary that AI comes up with:

  • Hypocrisy & Misrepresentation: Claiming to be a follower of the Lord, but acting in ways that directly contradict His teachings.
  • False Prophecy: Saying “God told me” when He did not, or claiming divine authority for one’s own desires.
  • Covenant Breaking: Making vows or promises to God but failing to follow through.
  • Superstition or Magic: Using God’s name lightly as a charm or to cast spells.
  • Careless Speech: Using God’s name in a thoughtless, casual manner.

Too much of that takes place and my slight following of what is getting shaken at the moment is to do with where the name of the Lord has been carried emptily / hypocritically / in vain. I was somewhat impacted this morning when reading about Babylon (representative of all Imperial structures) in Isaiah. The spirit of Babylon is that of self preservation of the structure at all costs – hence people will be sacrificed

I am, and there is no one besides me; I shall not sit as a widow or know the loss of children… I am, and there is no one besides me. (Is.47:8, 10).

That is the voice of Babylon – we will survive or ever and at all costs. This is why I have advocated that something akin to a corporate exorcism is needed probably once a year, even to structures that have served well. The snake on the pole was the means of healing, and then became something that had to be destroyed. If we do not do this what served become what we serve, and back we go to deny that first commandment.

The part that impacted me this morning was the sudden demise of Babylon. Took years to become ‘eternal’ in spirit and attitude, but in a short space of time the demise comes,

But evil shall come upon you, which you cannot charm away; disaster shall fall upon you, which you will not be able to ward off, and ruin shall come on you suddenly, of which you know nothing (Is. 47:11).

We all know that sadly there are those who genuinely are put off God because of us lot (and some who use that as an excuse). We carry the name of the Lord… but how do we carry it?

One further aspect struck me this morning. We know that Jesus became of no reputation, and did so as he was ‘in the form of God’ – he was like God. The humility of God. Ever been spoken against? Be slow to defend. Yes, we have a responsibility to do what we can so that we do not (actively or passively) leave a falsehood, but it cannot be from the motivation of self-defence, of preserving any reputation. To do so would be to take the name of the Lord in vain.

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Evolving theology

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

I have the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I know I do cos I can make every Scripture back me up. Really?

I have always believed in God starting out because I was told so, then experientialy, but over the years I have become an ‘atheist’ concerning a certain presentation of ‘God’, aligning myself with those who say ‘I cannot believe in a God who…’ In other words my faith in who God is has evolved – with Scripture, experience and observation needing to line up in what I consider a more coherent way.

Proof texting – taking a text in one place and lining it up with a text elsewhere (and often from two different authors writing into two different contexts) – is popular in many circles. I do not mind when someone is writing a theology and then quoting verses that illustrate what they have written, but at times other blatant texts that would disagree with what has been written are ignored (I , of course, never would do such a thing).

I consider that there is an evolution of understanding we can find within Scripture – hence at the two important areas of ‘who is God?’ and ‘who is humanity?’ we have to have a Jesus-lens. He alone, in visible human form was God, and alone was ‘truly’ human (like us fully human; unlike us truly human).

On other issues there will always be room for the ‘agnostic’ to find space. I believe in a personal devil and demons, or maybe I should write I think I believe in that direction – but am really open to it being a different reality. One could suggest that the world of the New Testament was somehow naive, but we do read in Matthew a clear distinction with those who were demonised from those who suffered from seizures (Matt. 4:24). Maybe they knew better than us – where everything is demonic or nothing is demonic! (My colleague, Johnny Barr, who some thought saw demons behind every bush, worked with a psychiatrist – both recognising their distinctive giftings.)

An evolution. The serpent in the garden seems to be equated to the devil (Rev. 12:9), but in Genesis we see traces of the serpent as wisdom which was a common persepctive in the ancient world, so much so that Jesus instructed the disciples to be as ‘wise’ as serpents. The snake on the pole to be looked at also pulls on that tradition of wisdom and healing.

We read that God is attributed as the one who ‘incited David’ to count the people,

Again the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he incited David against them, saying, “Go, count the people of Israel and Judah.” (2 Sam. 24:1)

Oh no says the later writers / editors as by then they all knew that God was not the God who tempts. They attribute the temptation elsewhere:

Satan stood up against Israel and incited David to count the people of Israel. 2 So David said to Joab and the commanders of the army, “Go, number Israel, from Beer-sheba to Dan, and bring me a report, so that I may know their number.” (2 Chron. 21:1,2).

Early writers had Satan in heaven as the accuser (e.g. Job) and as part of the counsel of the sons of God. That might well be a description of ‘reality’ and maybe it changed with the devil falling from heaven when the disciples went out proclaiming the kingdom of God (or maybe when there was warfare in heaven between Michael and his angels and the devil and his angels). Maybe reality or the story-telling way of seeking to explain the reality that we all experience.

The devil led Jesus… and yet, we are told, God cannot look on sin! (In this situation I think it is the latter assertion that needs to be critiqued with a God-incarnate manifestly eating with sinners!). Scripture must challenge our beliefs as much as it shapes our beliefs.

In it all we can be tempted to put a finger into a text and then make all the others fit what we read in one place… or maybe we let them free stand and allow for an evolution of understanding.

I think the latter. Loose ends. And seeking to bring my practice into line with the practice of Scripture. If demons and the devil do not exist as personal entities we witness that Jesus responded in a way that suggests they do. I am allowed to be agnostic in belief but not so in practice.

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Perspectives