Pergamon.  This site makes the acropolis in Athens look like a molehill, and it gives new meaning to the phrase nosebleed seats in stadium or theater. You will soon see exactly what I mean.  Here are two illustrations of what the site looks like (which by the way takes a ski lift to get to, normally).

Let’s focus on the theater hanging on the side of a cliff first….

To make matters worse,  the god of wine, Dionysius had his temple at the bottom right next to the theater, and here are its remains.

Can you imagine a slightly inebriated person trying to walk down those aisles to their seat without killing themselves and falling to the bottom?   Imbiber emptor!   We’ve already shown you, in one of the previous Istanbul posts,  what Pergamon looked like before the German archaeologists carted off the Temple of Zeus lock stock and barrel and set it up in a museum in Berlin.  Well this below is what remains of it.

Yes those few perimeter steps and a few others under the trees are all that’s left of a once incredible temple of Zeus.  It’s bad enough that an archeologist’s life is constantly in ruins, but then some pilferers from another country and come and steal the best part of the remains!  Yikes! Notice the remarkable view of the lower city from here.

Despite the precipitous height of this acropolis the ancients still didn’t feel safe enough so they built very substantial city walls to protect the acropolis and they at least are still remarkably intact.

Over centuries building continued at this site, with some of the latest being Trajan’s decision to build a platform at the very pinnacle of the on top of which he would build a temple and other things.  This required no little engineering just to build the platform. Look at these shots…

The last three shots show some of the very substantial under structure that had to be built before one could build anything on top of it.

Before you reached the very top, there was a wide area where the famous Pergamon library once stood, a library pilfered by Marc Anthony to impress Cleopatra, who had the world’s greatest ancient library in Alexandria already.  Pergamon was a major center for learning, and it is the place parchment was invented. The word itself is an Anglicized or barbarized version of the ancient name of the city Perg-mon. parch-ment.  Parchment was not made from the stalk of reeds like papyrus, and so was an improvement as it was not easy to tear or destroy. It was made from cellulose from tree fibers, or from cotton like material and is more durable than papyrus.  More important books and papers tended to be put on parchment once it became readily available, including many of the books and treatises in the Pergamon library.  The picture below shows sadly all that is left of where the library was….

Pressing on to the top of the acropolis you can see that Trajan was not interested in building anything small— he wanted huge columns, hugh capitals, huge statues, huge platforms, all demonstrating what a BIG man (with a big ego), he was.

Wait that’s not Trajan, that Mark a pastor from Macon Georgia, a member of my tour group. 

The temple was such an undertaking it took two emperors to finish it, Hadrian being the successor of Trajan.

There were also free standing altars as well for sacrifices not related to the emperor cult.

Sparing no expense, only the finest artistry and marble carving would do…

There are also many honorific columns near the top of the acropolis including this one which speaks about Pergamon having the neokoros, that is the privilege of being the temple keeper.

  In fact it lists Trajan, and oddly Germanicus, so named for his military victories against the Germans. he may be listed here because he came to Asia Minor and helped set up provinces like Cappadocia.   He may have been poisoned like Claudius and in any case he died prematurely in Antioch.

When you get down from the lofty heights to where you catch the ski lift back down the acropolis, there are of course in inevitable tourist trap shops with their books and trinkets and statues of gods no one believes in any more.

I agree with the dog. That stuff just puts me to sleep.

In our next post, we will explore the medical complex outside the lower city of Pergamon, the temple of Asklepius the god of healing, and consider the greatest doctor of his age— Galen, who came from here.

At the same site as the Franciscan church we saw in the last post, we also have one of the more remarkable ongoing digs in all of Israel, at Migdal. What we have is a giant garum factory, making the much popular fish pickle sauce out of small fish.  So we have brine vats etc.  But what we also have is two synagogues at Migdal, and we will be concentrating on the one where the remarkable small altar was found.

As Richard Bauckham has demonstrated at length, these are symbols from the temple in Jerusalem, including the menorah, the lamps, the columns, the pouring jars and more.  This next picture gives you a sense of just how small this altar is….

The original is now in the hands of the IAA in Jerusalem, so we are looking at an exact replica.  It is clear enough from some of the wavy lines in the mosaics that this area suffered from earthquakes at various points in time.

You can see as well that the place that housed this remarkable altar was once colorful.

Outside this synagogue or civic building there were mikvehs…

Also water channels for the fish tanks and water and grain vessels….

Yet another wavy mosaic further into the site.

There is still much digging to do at this site, but already it has become one of the most important near the sea of Galilee.

Cairo is a huge city of 9.5 million people, with extremes of wealth and poverty. The face they want you to see looks like this…

A city of large private residences and beautiful acacia trees…

But our focus is on the Giza plateau north of the city, and the pyramids.

The two on the left were members of my tour group, the guy on the right, burning up in a suit, bless his heart, is our security guard.

Of all the seven wonders of the ancient world, the only one still partially intact are the Giza Pyramids. Rumor has it that the new Egyptology Museum which has been built just behind the pyramids will be open next year…. but it has already been postponed any number of times. Moving all those antiquities has got to be a mammoth undertaking.

Originally the pyramids did not look like they do today. Up close they look like this—

Hence the warning sign— do not climb the pyramids.  In antiquity that would have been impossible as the sides were smooth, and there is some evidence they were covered with gold to reflect in the sun.  Wow.

In fact there are not just three pyramids in Giza plateau, there are many small ones…

In the following picture, you can see the original top, sans gold, on the distant pyramid.

You can see how close this plateau is to the modern city in this picture…

And yes, you can ride around these pyramids on camels for a fee.

You do have to be careful about these guys taking you for a ride, keeping your camera, dropping you off in the desert if you don’t pay them enough etc.

Here’s my happy travelers, followed by a 45th anniversary shot of Ann and I.  What a place to celebrate an anniversary.  at least the pyramids are a lot older than us!

So we move on to the sphinx— and if you don’t remember the riddle of the sphinx,  look it up.

Presumably you can also Google who shot the nose off of the sphinx.

Next we visited the papyrus factory. it is a fascinating demonstrating. From green stalks to strips of papyri, to document…

Note the ordinary rolling pin used to swash the strips together.

What is amazing is how resilient this papyrus material is once dry.  the strips are laid horizontally and vertically on top of each other and the natural plant juice glues it together while drying in the sun.   Next up the amazing, but not climate controlled Cairo museum of Egyptology.

On August 7th we went for a boat ride on the Achensee to Rattenberg.   It was a nice please smooth ride to a quaint little village, otherwise known as a tourist trap.

So when we arrived at our destination we saw this…

There was the expected demonstration of glassblowing.  Joke of the day— What happens when a glassblower inhales? He gets a pane in his stomach.

Honestly, we did much care for the product— too gaudy, and too thin as well. But there were other things to see in the town.

The Van Gogh immersion experience has been going on for many months now touring the country, and Ann and I finally had a chance to get to Cincinnati and see it Sunday August 21.  It is well worth the effort.  Some of our favorite 19-20th century artists are the Impressionists, and Vincent is of course one of them.  Set to the music of audio impressionists like Debussy and Satie and St. Saens and even Ravel this exhibit is a home run.   There are two galleries, the downstairs one tells the sad story of Vincent’s life, emphasizing that as an adult he struggled with psychotic episodes and end up in an asylum but before that we learned that his father was a Dutch Reformed pastor, and that Vincent actually once trained for the ministry, though he did not pursue that career.  For the record, Vincent painted the famous Starry Night picture while looking out the window in the asylum.  He committed suicide at age 37.  Above is his last known painting done only two days before he shot himself, a painting of tree roots (the fourth picture up from the last one).

Vincent was famous for his use of color, perhaps more than anything else. What fascinated the impressionists was light and how light or the lack of it could dramatically change the colors of something. It raised the question, is the color in the object or in the lighting, or both?  The focus is indeed on the impression the object makes on the human eye under certain lightings.  Hence Monet’s famous four paintings of the same Rouen cathedral from the very same spot and angle, but as the light changed during the day on the face of the cathedral.

Things we learned this time about Vincent is that when he cut off his ear, he sent it to a nearby brothel he apparently had frequented, wanting the girls to literally have a piece of him.  Vincent had 3 sisters, but it was his brother Theo’s wife (and Theo was by far his closest sibling, to whom he wrote some 632 letters— see the Penguin edition of his letters) who acted as the collector and preserver of Vincent’s art.  We also learned that there was manic sort of period late in his life when he would make 100 paintings in a week or so. Just amazing.  We learned more about his friendship with Paul Gauguin, another impressionist.  Gauguin visited Vincent late into his life and they got along well for some weeks, but then there were times when Vincent’s brain went off the boil and he argued and even became aggressive with Gauguin.  Gauguin in fact went to the local police when Vincent cut off his own ear, and at first the police were going to charge Gauguin with attacking Vincent, but that was resolved.

Vincent’s sad and troubled life nevertheless produced some of the most treasured art of the 19th century, and it demonstrates that even the mentally ill if given a chance can contribute something valuable to the world in terms of beauty, truth, and love.

RECENT QUERIES ABOUT THE MARYS

One of the real problems in early Christian history was the tendency to blend people with similar or the same names together, as if they were all the same person.  We have this problem with assuming John Zebedee is the same person as John the elder who in turn is also the same person as John the seer who was in exile on Patmos.   In fact, there were at least two if not three different persons involved, as Papias’s comments made clear who says he met John the elder, but not John the original apostle.

This same problem has arisen notoriously with Mary Magdalene, who was assumed to be the same person as the anonymous sinner woman mentioned in Luke 7, and sometimes also assumed to be the same person as the Mary of Mary and Martha fame mentioned in Luke 10 and John 11.   A part of this tendency has recently been resurrected by the research of Elizabeth Schrader who has done her doctoral work at Duke University (and see also the recent JBL article by Joan Taylor and Elizabeth Schrader. “The Meaning of Magdalene. A Review of Literary Evidence”, SBL 140.4. The problem is, this study does not properly engage with the non-Christian early Jewish evidence, and the proper archaeological evidence at Migdal which has been and is being dug as we speak).

In this particular post I want to deal with certain assumptions that are undergirding some of this lets blend together the Marys speculation (and speculation it is).  The first point has to do with textual criticism.  There has in the guild been an increasing tendency to suggest that there is considerable ‘elasticity’ or flexibility, when it comes to the issue of textual variants.   Now Schrader quite rightly admits that most textual variants are innocuous, of no real historical or theological import.   But some are not.  I underline the word some.  This is true. It is also true that we have very few manuscripts that we can securely date to the 2^nd century A.D.

Nevertheless, one of the tendencies that has surfaced in the wake of all the Nag Hammadi materials and the rise of interest in ‘Gnostic’ Gospel texts in recent decades is a serious failure to consider the source of the documents.  The question that should be asked is do these documents come from proto-orthodox sources which are the mainstream of early Christianity, or do they come from heterodox sources like the numerous Gnostic texts.  The failure to consider seriously the source of the material is a serious failure indeed, and it has led to all sorts of historical mistakes—for instance the assumption that Jesus was likely married to Mary Magdalene, or that Mary Magdalene was the beloved disciple (when John 11.3 is perfectly clear that it is Mary of Bethany’s brother, Lazarus who is the one called ‘the one whom Jesus loved’ and there are no textual variants for that verse that might lead us to think otherwise).  I could say much more about synthetic tendencies and their problems, and problematic readings of textual variants without considering where they came from, but I need to move on to another problem.

This particular problem has to do with the misreading of Luke 10, and the famous story of Jesus’ visit to Mary and Martha’s house.  First of all, this story is in Luke’s famous journeying to Jerusalem chronicle that encompasses part of Luke 9 all the way to Luke 19. It is a repeated motif in this material that he is journeying up to Jerusalem, and various things are placed in those almost 10 chapters that are not in chronological order. In the case of Luke 10 itself, the theme of what it means to be a good disciple of Jesus, and also how to act as a loving neighbor are the most obvious themes.  We are not told in Luke 10 where the village is that Jesus visited with Mary and Martha but we certainly cannot conclude it must be in Galilee because it is part of a literary creation and sequence of texts that is part of the journeying up to Jerusalem motif.  Luke is more concerned with a theological ordering than a chronological ordering of materials in Luke 9-19.  Secondly, the attempt to distinguish the Mary and Martha in Luke 10 from the Mary and Martha of John 11 simply falls flat, because in both cases the personal characterization of these two women is too similar in these two texts to ignore.  Thirdly, it is simply not the case that because we are told in Luke 10 that the house in question is Martha’s house that this must mean its not Simon the Leper’s house or Lazarus’ house.  This is an argument from silence, not an argument from substance.  If Martha is in fact the homemaker for her siblings, say as the older sister, and if Simon the Leper has passed away, there is no reason why the home could not be said to be her home.  The focus is after all on the relationship of Jesus with these two sisters, just as it is in John 11.

Then there are the assumptions about Mary Magdalene that surface in this kind of approach.  She is now being called Mary the Tower, as if Magdalena were a personal attribute of Mary herself.  I’m sorry, but this ignores altogether that the town Luke is referring to is a real Galilean town called Migdal, which does indeed mean tower.  It’s the town, not the person that Luke is referring to.  Here I would refer all the readers to Richard Bauckham’s very careful study of Migdal including names and nomenclatures in his work entitled Magdala of Galilee. A Jewish City of the Hellenistic and Roman Period and also his study entitled Gospel Women.  The careful historical work that went into these two studies simply can’t be ignored or dismissed, and they lead to the conclusion that Mary from Migdal/Magdala not Mary the Tower is the correct reading of the data.  She is a Galilean disciple, out of whom Jesus exorcised some demons, and her name always comes first in the list of female disciples from Galilee.  This is surely NOT the same person as the Mary in Luke 10 or John 11.

I could say much more about all this (see my Women in the Ministry of Jesus), but this must suffice.  Curiosity and historical conjecture are of course important parts of analyzing the incomplete data of the New Testament, especially because of all the aporia.  One must keep an open mind about traditional assumptions.  But at the end of the day, there are usually very good reasons to reject speculations that the vast majority of scholars have not and do not now entertain, for good reasons.  The newest is not always the truest and the latest is not always the greatest when it comes to the analysis of the NT and its texts and textual variants.

One of the real problems in early Christian history was the tendency to blend people with similar or the same names together, as if they were all the same person.  We have this problem with assuming John Zebedee is the same person as John the elder who in turn is also the same person as John the seer who was in exile on Patmos.   In fact, there were at least two if not three different persons involved, as Papias’s comments made clear who says he met John the elder, but not John the original apostle.

This same problem has arisen notoriously with Mary Magdalene, who was assumed to be the same person as the anonymous sinner woman mentioned in Luke 7, and sometimes also assumed to be the same person as the Mary of Mary and Martha fame mentioned in Luke 10 and John 11.  A part of this tendency has recently been resurrected by the research of Elizabeth Schrader who has done her doctoral work at Duke University (and see also the recent JBL article by Joan Taylor and Elizabeth Schrader. “The Meaning of Magdalene. A Review of Literary Evidence”, SBL 140.4. The problem is, this study does not properly engage with the non-Christian early Jewish evidence, and the proper archaeological evidence at Migdal which has been and is being dug as we speak).

In this particular post I want to deal with certain assumptions that are undergirding some of this speculation (and speculation it is).  The first point has to do with textual criticism.  There has in the guild been an increasing tendency to suggest that there is considerable ‘elasticity’ or flexibility, when it comes to the issue of textual variants.   Now Schrader quite rightly admits that most textual variants are innocuous, of no real historical or theological import.  But some are not.  I underline the word some.  This is true. It is also true that we have very few manuscripts that we can securely date to the 2^nd century A.D.  Nevertheless, one of the tendencies that has surfaced in the wake of all the Nag Hammadi materials and the rise of interest in ‘Gnostic’ texts in recent decades is a serious failure to consider the source of the documents.  The question that should be asked do these documents come from proto-orthodox sources which are the mainstream of early Christianity, or do they come from heterodox sources like the numerous Gnostic texts.  The failure to consider seriously the source of the material is a serious failure indeed, and it has led to all sorts of historical mistakes—for instance the assumption that Jesus was likely married to Mary Magdalene, or that Mary Magdalene was the beloved disciple (when John 11.3 is perfectly clear that it is Mary of Bethany’s brother, Lazarus who is the one called ‘the one whom Jesus loved’ (and there are no textual variants for that verse that might lead us to think otherwise).  I could say much more about synthetic tendencies and their problems, and problematic readings of textual variants without considering where they came from, but I need to move on to another problem.

This particular problem has to do with the misreading of Luke 10, and the famous story of Jesus’ visit to Mary and Martha’s house.  First of all, this story is in Luke’s famous journeying to Jerusalem chronicle that encompasses part of Luke 9 all the way to Luke 19. It is a repeated motif in this material, and various things are placed in those almost 10 chapters that are not in chronological order. In the case of Luke 10 itself, the theme of what it means to be a good disciple of Jesus, and also how to act as a loving neighbor are the most obvious themes.  We are not told in Luke 10 where the village is that Jesus visited with Mary and Martha but we certainly cannot conclude it must be in Galilee because it is part of a literary creation and sequence of texts that is part of the journeying up to Jerusalem motif.  Luke is more concerned with a theological ordering than a chronological ordering of materials in Luke 9-19.  Secondly, the attempt to distinguish the Mary and Martha in Luke 10 from the Mary and Martha of John 11 simply falls flat, because in both cases the personal characterization of these two women is too similar in these two texts to ignore.  Thirdly, it is simply not the case that because we are told in Luke 10 that the house in question is Martha’s house that this must mean its not Simon the Leper’s house or Lazarus’ house.  This is an argument from silence, not an argument from substance.  If Martha is in fact the homemaker for her siblings, say as the older sister, and if Simon the Leper has passed away, there is no reason why the home could not be said to be her home. The focus is after all on the relationship of Jesus with these two sisters, just as it is in John 11.

Then there are the assumptions about Mary Magdalene that surface in this kind of approach.  She is now being called Mary the Tower, as if Magdalena were a personal attribute of Mary herself.  I’m sorry, but this ignores altogether that the town Luke is referring to is a real Galilean town called Migdal, which does indeed mean tower.  It’s the town, not the person that Luke is referring to.  Here I would refer all the readers to Richard Bauckham’s very careful study of Migdal including names and nomenclatures in his work entitled Magdala of Galilee. A Jewish City of the Hellenistic and Roman Period and also his study entitled Gospel Women.  The careful historical work that went into these two studies simply can’t be ignored or dismissed, and they lead to the conclusion that Mary from Migdal/Magdala not Mary the Tower is correct reading of the data.  She is a Galilean disciple, out of whom Jesus exorcised some demons, and her name always comes first in the list of female disciples from Galilee.  This is surely not the same person as the Mary in Luke 10 or John 11.

I could say much more about all this (see my Women in the Ministry of Jesus), but this must suffice.  Curiosity and historical conjecture are of course important parts of analyzing the incomplete data of the New Testament, especially because of all the aporia. One must keep an open mind about traditional assumptions.  But at the end of the day, there are usually very good reasons to reject speculations that the vast majority of scholars have not and do not now entertain, for good reasons.  The newest is not always the truest and the latest is not always the greatest when it comes to the analysis of the NT and its texts and textual variants.

What exactly is the pathway to the Kingdom of God and what are the entrance requirements?  Jesus and Paul both talk about entering, obtaining or inheriting the Kingdom of God. Now the important thing about such discussions is that in each of those cases what is envisioned is a future entering of God’s kingdom when it comes on earth as it is in heaven.  It is not about dying and going to heaven.  While Paul says flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom in 1 Cor. 15 he says this in the context of discussing the future resurrection on earth of believers.  He tells us that when Christ returns to earth, the dead in Christ will be raised, and in that condition they can inherit the kingdom and be part of it.  The process of salvation is not over until we are fully conformed to the image of Christ by means of a resurrection body. Period.

This is precisely why I have stressed that there are three tenses to salvation for all of us who are being saved: 1) I have been saved (which refers to justification and also the new birth which can also be called becoming a new creature/creation), 2) I am being saved (which refers to sanctification, which indeed does involve our own participation, co-operating with the Spirit we must work out our salvation with fear and trembling as God works in us to will and to do.)  Notice that that discussion in Philippians 2.12 says that our willing and our doing is a necessary part of working out our salvation. It doesn’t happen inexorably or without our free and voluntary co-operation. Notice that Paul makes that remark having prefaced it with a reference to ‘obedience’.  Salvation, involves obedience, not merely faith.  Behavior is what obedience is about as the context makes clear.  It is simply not true that salvation is by faith alone.  Martin Luther’s reading of Romans 1 is frankly badly off the mark.  Yes, you can say that initial salvation or justification is by grace and through faith. What you cannot say is that is all there is to salvation.  It is not. Lastly, 3) final salvation is in the hands of God and involves his raising us from the dead.  Notice that even Paul talks about hoping that he may attain to final salvation— he puts it this way in Phil. 3, one of his very last pronouncements on salvation: ” ¹⁰ I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, ¹¹ and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead. ¹² Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.”   If even Paul can say that he has not yet attained to resurrection, and that he must make every effort to press on to that goal, it should have been very very clear that the salvation process is not concluded before the resurrection of believers and that our behavior in this life definitely has something to do with the final outcome.  Obedience to God is required.  In short, you are not eternally secure until you are securely in eternity.   You just aren’t.   Why not?   Because before you die, there is the danger of apostasy.   So let’s talk about what that is and what that isn’t.

Apostasy is not about forgetting, losing, or misplacing your salvation.  You can’t lose your salvation like you’d lose a pair of glasses— ‘I swear that my salvation was here this morning.  Now where have I lost it.’  Nope, it doesn’t work like that.  Apostasy doesn’t happen by accident at all.  It is by definition a willful turning away from the relationship you have already had with God Almighty.  It is a deliberate and willful rejection of the work of Christ already done in you.  It is a quenching of the Holy Spirit’s presence and work in you.   And this activity has nothing to do with whether or not God loves you,  because God loves all his creatures, and he sent his Son to die for them all.  The reason some aren’t save is precisely because they reject the Good News, whether when first offered or later.

Hebrews 6 is the classic passage about this, and it could not be much clearer, as the author is warning Jewish Christians who have already experienced both initial salvation and some sanctification as follows: “It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, ⁵ who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age ⁶ and who have fallen away, to be brought back to repentance. To their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting him to public disgrace. ⁷ Land that drinks in the rain often falling on it and that produces a crop useful to those for whom it is farmed receives the blessing of God. ⁸ But land that produces thorns and thistles is worthless and is in danger of being cursed. In the end it will be burned. ⁹ Even though we speak like this, dear friends, we are convinced of better things in your case—the things that have to do with salvation. ¹⁰ God is not unjust; he will not forget your work and the love you have shown him as you have helped his people and continue to help them. ¹¹ We want each of you to show this same diligence to the very end, so that what you hope for may be fully realized.” Notice at the end of this quote that it speaks about God knowing of the person’s work and love shown, and then the exhortation that they need to keep doing that to the very end so their hope of final salvation can be fully realized.   

But you may say— but what about a passage like at the end of Romans 8—  ^{38 “}For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, ³⁹ neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”  And while we are at it, didn’t Paul just say in Romans 8.28-30 that there was this thing called predestination?   Yes he did.  More on that in a second.  But first, look closely at Romans 8.38-39.  What’s the one thing not listed in that list of things that cannot separate you from the love of God?  Answer—YOURSELF.  Paul is assuring his audience that no circumstance, no angel or demon, no human being, in short no third party or circumstance can rip you out of the loving grasp of God.  The Devil cannot make you an offer you can’t refuse.   Apostasy is a deliberate and willful choice to abandon ship and the outcome is disastrous.  It happens not because God chose for it to happen before the foundations of the universe.  It happens because that individual person, despite all the blessings etc. from God chose for it to happen— knowingly, willingly, and never by accident.  Does attaining to final salvation involve our, with the help of God’s grace, persevering to the end in faithfulness and obedience? Yes it does. 

So finally, back to Romans 8.28-30, some of the most misread verses in the whole Pauline corpus. What this text says is that God works all things together for those who love God and are called according to purpose/choice (the word his, is not in the Greek text before purpose). Now what is crucial is the ‘ous’ in the next verse which has as its antecedent ‘those who love God’. The correct way to read the Greek of what follows is as follows:  ‘For those who love God, God foreknew, and destined etc.’   This is not about God choosing some lost souls to be Christians in the first place. Remember Paul is writing to those who are already Christians, and he is reassuring them that God has a wonderful future planned, a wonderful destination planned in advance for them.  Those whom God foreknew would love him,  he destined in advance to a wonderful outcome. These verses are not about God picking and choosing some to be saved. It is about God’s plans for those who have already responded in love to the offer of the Gospel.  Period.     As for the language of election in Ephesians 1, I would refer you to the whole discussion in my Biblical Theology volume for Cambridge.   Election is in Israel in the OT and does not determine the fate of particular Israelites, and election is in Christ in the NT and does not determine the final salvation of particular believers.  In short, election is corporate in both cases, not individual. 

Think on these things.  

The Bible as the Word of God

All Scripture is given by the inspiration of God. Upon this statement of facts evangelical Christianity stands. By inspiration we mean that the Holy Spirit exerted his supernatural influence upon the writers of the Bible.  The writings were inspired, not necessarily the writers, for the Bible nowhere claims to have been inspired by human beings.  The Holy Spirit is the author of the Bible.  Christ told his disciples that he would leave many things unrevealed and that the Holy Spirit would come and choose certain persons and through them reveal his perfect will unto human beings, and that the Holy Spirit would be the believer’s teacher. Human beings are the instruments the Holy Spirit used to write Scripture. The result is the infallible Word of God. Therefore the Bible is free from error and absolutely trustworthy.

The Bible is a difficult book because it came from the Infinite to the finite, from the unlimited all powerful God to limited human beings. Therefore, you cannot understand the Bible the way you would the writings of Plato or Socrates. You can study the great philosophers with the natural mind and by diligent application, grasp their profound meanings. If the Bible could be understood by the natural mind it would be a natural book and could not be the Word of God.  Since the Bible is from God and therefore spiritual, before you can receive its teachings, you must be born of the Spirit, and filled with the Spirit. Always approach the Bible praying that the Spirit will be your teacher and will guide you to a better understanding of his Holy Word, or it will remain a difficult closed book. The oneness or unity of the Bible is a miracle, it is a library of 66 books written by over 35 different authors, in a period of approximately 1,500 years! Represented in the authors is a cross section of humanity, educated and uneducated, including kings, fishermen, public officials, farmers, teachers, and physicians. Included in the subjects are religion, history, law, science, poetry, drama, biography and prophecy, yet its various parts are as harmoniously united as the parts that make up the human body. For 35 authors with such varied backgrounds to write on so many subjects over a period of approximately 1,500 years in absolute harmony is a mathematical impossibility. It could not happen. Then how do we account for the Bible?

The only adequate explanation is Holy persons of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. For the Word of God is quick and powerful. The Bible claims dividing power as a sword. The Bible will separate a human being from his sin, or sin will separate him from the Bible. The Bible claims reflecting power like a mirror.  In the Bible we see ourselves as God sees us, as sinners. The Bible also claims a cleansing power, like water.  David prayed that God would wash him from his iniquity and cleanse him from sin. The Bible claims reproductive power, like a seed. We are children of God because we have been born into the family of God by the incorruptible seed of God.  This is the new birth.  The Bible claims nourishing power, like food. The Bible is spiritual food for the soul.  No Christian can remain strong in the Lord and not study the Word of God. Study to show thyself approved unto God is a command.

As you study the Bible, you will discover that it does not just contain the Word of God, it is the Word of God. You must also keep in mind that the Word of God contains the words of God, as well as the words of Satan, demons, angels, and human beings both good and bad.  God is truth and cannot lie. Satan is a liar and the father of lies. Humans are natural and therefore limited and do not always speak the truth. To illustrate, in this portion of Scripture, the Gospels, we have the words of Jesus, of the Pharisees, of the Herodians, and of the Sadducees. All these latter were trying to entangle Jesus in his teachings, so that they might accuse him of breaking God’s law. Their words were spoken with evil intentions, revealing the thinking of the natural person, along with the Words of God which came from the lips of Jesus. As you study the Bible, ask yourself these questions– Who is speaking? God, demon, angel or human being?  To whom is he speaking? To the nation Israel, to the Gentiles, to the Church, to human beings in general or to some individual person or being?  Then ask– How can this Scripture be applied to my life to make me a better Christian. This is the question for each and everyone one of us to ask ourselves.

Q. Jesus’ choice of the particular 12 he did choose—four fishermen, one or two tax collectors, one or two former zealots of some sort seems in itself an unlikely grouping of persons, indeed a grouping of persons already at odds with one another. Would you see this as some sort of statement of ‘can’t we all just get along’ and love our neighbors even our enemies? In short, would you see this as an enacted parable of what the kingdom community should look like?

A. Yes indeed. I see Jesus ‘new commandment’ to love one another of John 13:35 as hugely important for the first Christians. In John 13 it follows Jesus’ washing of the disciples’ feet and precedes the passion – very practical loving and very humble serving. Jesus says in John that this is to be the distinctive mark of his followers. The same idea comes out in Matthew, Mark and Luke, where Jesus speaks to his disciples about leadership and says that they are to be different from worldly leaders who like to rule and dominate; instead his followers are to serve – he uses the word ‘slave’ – ‘for the Son of man came not to be served, but to serve and give his life as a ransom for many’ (Mark 10:45). I see the same idea in Paul’s letters, most notably in Galatians 6:2 where Paul refers to bearing one another’s burdens and so to ‘fulfil the law of Christ’ and in 5:9 where he says ‘through love be slaves of one another’. Jesus’ community was indeed to be a lived-out picture or parable of God’s kingdom.

Q. Let’s talk about the family of faith concept which begins with Jesus and carries on in early Christianity as particularly evidenced in Paul’s letters. It is said to have priority at least over one’s obligations to one’s physical family, at least for some of Jesus’ disciples. Notice how Jesus on the cross in John bequeaths his mother to his beloved disciple, and vice versa, not back to his brothers and sisters who at the time were not Jesus’ disciples. This is a pretty radical thing to institute not only in Jesus’ day but in our own. What we tend to mean by a ‘family church’ is not a church which is a spiritual family for everyone who is present or is a member, but rather a church which nurtures nuclear physical families and neglects the priority of the family of faith. The church serves the status quo, rather than instituting a new kind of family. What do you think Jesus would think about the church as it exists today in regard to this matter? Do you think he would have agreed with Loisy’s famous quip— Jesus preached the kingdom but it was the church which showed up?

A. Yes and no to Loisy! The church has often not lived out the kingdom of God, sometimes exactly the opposite.. But I don’t think the first Christians got Jesus wrong. They and a lot of Christians since have demonstrated the love and community spirit of which Jesus spoke – imperfectly, but really. I quite like to translate Matthew 5:16 ‘Let your light so shine before people that they may see your beautiful works and glorify your Father in heaven’. The call to the church is to be a beautiful people. And yes a beautiful family. The thought of the church as a family is important, with Jesus speaking of his followers as his family and with Paul (and others) addressing fellow-Christians as ‘brothers’ (including sisters!). I agree that there is a tendency for us in modern church life to focus the physical human family rather than on the family of faith, which reflects the values of our secular society. Not that the physical family is unimportant: Jesus endorsed the fifth commandment ‘honour your father and mother’, and the ‘household codes’ in the NT letters emphasize and teach about the responsibilities of parents and children. It is a proper priority in the contemporary church to nurture family life in face of all sorts of threats, as well as to do everything to build up the life of Christ’s family the church.