26 September 2024
ineffable -- "it cannot be told" in human language
I don't believe any human can explain Divine Election. We have plenty of theological statements of the Doctrine of Election, but nobody has explained what God is actually doing. Our attempts to say things about it in the Radix Fidem community are admittedly no better than approximations. We consider it an ineffable truth, one in which we are very fortunate to have some idea of mere practicalities, how it affects the human situation.
That's the best we can do. But because this much is in our reach, it becomes an obligation to work with that. We must take it into account when we assert things like how we will go about the mission of the gospel.
Given the way words are used these days, we should avoid the term "principle" in favor of "policy" in trying to understand God's ways in general, and particularly in the case of Divine Election. We have this foul tendency to think "principle" means something fundamental to the nature of things, something irrevocable even for God. The Hebraic approach to thinking about such things is that God likes to announce His policies as general guidelines within a given context -- thus, the Covenant of Moses. It is not "law" in our sense of the term, but a policy statement God makes for a given people, place and time.
Just so, Divine Election is better understood as a policy, not a principle. When we find ourselves compelled to say and do something not clearly attested in Scripture, the best we can do is an educated guess extrapolating from policies in contexts that are more clear.
The other difficulty is the vast load of nonsense that church leadership has inserted into the discussion, nonsense that arises from Hellenization, pagan backgrounds (the whole of Western Civilization, for example), and hardened traditions from ecclesiastical statements whose words no longer mean the same thing the authors had in their heads when it was written centuries ago. You might love reading the KJV, but be warned that the meanings of the phrases have drifted a very long ways in most cases.
While the ongoing study over on Radix Fidem Blog may seem boring to some of you, it's critical to understanding the radical shift in thinking when you jump from the ancient Hebrew mind to a modern western mind. Once you begin to grasp the different orientation, you discover that the mere act of translating Scripture, if not dangerous because of incompetence, can sometimes border on outright fraud.
In the case of Divine Election, the whole point is to remind us that we are by no means the central figures in the ongoing drama in Heaven. Whatever slices out of our destiny that we imagine we can control won't make any difference in Eternity. The Hebrew emphasis on the here-and-now is based very firmly in divine revelation. It's not simply the content, but the packaging of revelation in the Hebrew culture is part of the message itself. The only variable in the equation of our eternal salvation is how much of it we can claim in this world.
The meaning of "salvation" to the Hebrew was a very practical matter of claiming God's covenant promises for this life. The reason the Old Testament virtually never refers to eternal destiny is because they assumed Divine Election in the first place. For them, the ultimate goal within their reach was simply getting hold of God's promises for this life. The entire Hebrew language and culture took Election for granted.
When it came time to introduce the Hebrew concept of redemption into the broader western Gentile culture as it existed in the First Century, it became necessary for Paul to start mentioning Election. While the concept of a fixed fate was present in Gentile cultures, it was always a very perverted concept arising from a pagan background of delusion. Paul's discussion in Romans 8 & 9, along with mentions in places like Ephesians, was meant to bring the doctrine to places where it was missing, and to correct it where it already existed.
Our American pagan background (largely the Greco-Roman mixed with Anglo-Saxon mythology and a smattering of other European pagan idolatries) was not included in Paul's reckoning for his letters. Thus, we end up with a mixed bag of false notions unique to American churchianity. Here in the Radix Fidem community, we've been trying to incrementally replace that nonsense with the Hebraic understanding. But sometimes you have to get people's attention.
This is why the RF Community has such a stark statement that the New Testament term "salvation" is not what Americans have been taught, particularly in evangelical circles. When someone in the Acts asks about "being saved", they aren't talking about going to Heaven. They are talking about how to claim God's covenant promises in this life. Jesus died on the Cross, not to bring us into Heaven, but to open the national covenant promises in Moses to all the Gentile nations.
From the very beginning, God has always had His Elect. They were endowed with a limited grasp of things that non-elect folks simply could not perceive. A part of what God did with forming a covenant nation was to plant the flag for the Elect to begin recognizing what privileges they should have in this life. In Christ, the door swings wide open. Christ died to open the Covenant to all.
But the fundamental motive God had does not put us at the center of things. It's not about us; we are simply the object of a complex drama in Heaven. Without at least an introduction to the Unseen Realm and the dispute between God and the Devil, along with the elohim councilors, the whole thing cannot make sense. At a minimum, the revelation of Divine Election should remind us that we are just an object in a dispute, not the subject.
We are important to God personally, and that's why He cares enough to sacrifice His Son, but we aren't that important in the ongoing matters of God's business in His own courts in Heaven.
We have a job to do, a role to play. That role is portraying to the masses out there what eternal priorities look like. We care about other humans, but the ways in which we express that caring is the message of the Covenant. Heaven is watching, but our audience is the Elect who are hidden in the mass of non-elect. We cannot know, and so we fish with bait that should be of interest only to the Elect. There's nothing we can do for the others. Trying to "reach everyone" is a fool's errand, something the Devil has been selling for a very long time.
There's no way to avoid offering a message that will touch everyone, and promoting choices that will tend to bless all the non-elect, but it's for sure they will not understand nor like our message in general. It's not for them. But you never know who the Elect are mixed in with the rest, so we don't really have a target audience on the human level.
The paradox of revelation is that it's a love letter to God's family that everyone gets to read. That's what we are; we incarnate Christ as the living revelation of God.
Comments:
John the Fool
I don't understand why you emphasize points along the lines that we are not that important, not the object of the dispute in the divine counsel? It appears to me that we certainly are, Job being a minor example, Yeshua being the ultimate expression and resolution of that conflict, as Heiser notes explicitly that we will take the place of the rebellious elohim after the judgement, along with theological speculation that we were 'the cause' of the angelic rebellion to begin with, how they tried to destroy us by interbreeding with us, and how Christ reversed that act of rebellion. The whole thing is about us, even though we are not aware of how exactly it is playing out in the particulars
CatRez
As you say, it's a matter of emphasis. The core issue is Jehovah's justice in punishing the Devil for wanting our worship. It is complicated by the elohim being a party to this dispute. We are not the subject of this dispute, but the object. Our existence in this world is the exhibit; both parties are using us in various ways to make their point. I press this emphasis to deflate the human-centric thinking of this world. Humans reflexively consider themselves the whole point of everything. An awful lot of bad theology and practice rests on that assumption.
Yes, we shall displace the elohim council, but that's a separate issue from the primary focus on whether we actively support Jehovah's claims against the Devil and his allies in God's courts. You can certainly shift the emphasis in your own thinking and teaching. I'm addressing a very big problem that hinders correction of bad habits.
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