The Navarre Bible on 2 Corinthians 5:21

  

5:21. “He made him to be sin”: obviously St Paul does not mean that Christ was guilty of sin; he does not say “to be a sinner” but “to be sin”. “Christ had no sin,” St Augustine says; “he bore sins, but he did not commit them” (Enarrationes in Psalmos, 68, 1, 10).

 

According to the rite of atoning sacrifices (cf. Lev 4:24; 5:9; Num 19:9; Mic 6:7; Ps 40:7) the word “sin”, corresponding to the Hebrew ašam, refers to the actual act of sacrifice or to the victim being offered. Therefore, this phrase means “he made him a victim for sin” or “a sacrifice for sin”. It should be remembered that in the Old Testament nothing unclean or blemished could be offered to God; the offering of an unblemished animal obtained God’s pardon for the transgression which one wanted to expiate. Since Jesus was the most perfect of victims offered for us, he made full atonement for all sins. In the Letter to the Hebrews, when comparing Christ’s sacrifice with that of the priests of the Old Testament, it is expressly stated that “every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, then to wait until his enemies should be made a stool for his feet. For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified” (Heb 10:11–14).

This concentrated sentence also echoes the Isaiah prophecy about the sacrifice of the Servant of Yahweh; Christ, the head of the human race, makes men sharers in the grace and glory he achieved through his sufferings: “upon him was the chastisement that made us whole, and with his stripes we are healed” (Is 53:5).

 

Jesus Christ, burdened with our sins and offering himself on the cross as a sacrifice for them, brought about the Redemption: the Redemption is the supreme example both of God’s justice—which requires atonement befitting the offence—and of his mercy, that mercy which makes him love the world so much that “he gave his only Son” (Jn 3:16). “In the Passion and Death of Christ—in the fact that the Father did not spare his own Son, but ‘for our sake made him sin’—absolute justice is expressed, for Christ undergoes the Passion and Cross because of the sins of humanity. This constitutes even a ‘superabundance’ of justice, for the sins of man are ‘compensated for’ by the sacrifice of the Man-God. Nevertheless, this justice, which is properly justice ‘to God’s measure’, springs completely from love, from the love of the Father and of the Son, and completely bears fruit in love. Precisely for this reason the divine justice revealed in the Cross of Christ is ‘to God’s measure’, because it springs from love and is accomplished in love, producing fruits of salvation. The divine dimension of redemption is put into effect not only by bringing justice to bear upon sin, but also by restoring to love that creative power in man thanks to which he once more has access to the fullness of life and holiness that come from God. In this way, redemption involves the revelation of mercy in its fullness” (John Paul II, Dives in misericordia, 7). (Saint Paul's Letters to the Corinthians [The Navarre Bible; Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2005], 155-56)

 

M. C. D’Arcy on the Sacrifice of the Mass being Offered to Jesus and the Holy Spirit, not the Father only

  

One difficulty, however, rises out of this mediatorship. Christ is both God and Man and he is Priest and Victim. How, it may be asked, can “these things be”?

 

The answer will be understood if we call that Christ is God, that he is Man, and that he is the God-Man. As God he is the recipient of Sacrifice, because it is the Trinity which is worshipped and propitiated in Sacrifice. Some theologians, indeed, regard the father, the first Person, as the acceptor of the sacrifice of the Cross, and the words of Trent, Christ “offered himself unto God the Father,” and certain texts in the New Testament seem to support the view. But generally the expression used at Trent is taken to be one of appropriation, a term explained in another essay, which means shortly that certain actions common to all three Persons are attributed by convenience and analogy to one Person above the others. The expression in this context is, however, still more simply explained by the fact that Christ is regarded there as the God-Man, “the one mediator of God and men, the Man Jesus Christ.” However mysterious and above reason this conjunction of natures in one Person must ever remain, it does allow for the possibility of God using manhood as a propitiatory gift, endowing it with his own personal merit, and so combining the representative and the pleasing and holy. If Christ had been the Word and no Man, then he could not have been a Mediator, for there would have been nothing between himself and the Father save a distinction of personality. If he had been but a man, again mediation in the strict sense would have been impossible, because the gulf between sinful man and God would not have been bridged. The mysterious conjunction of two natures does, however, resolve the difficulty; and as long as the mediation is assigned to One who does not lose anything of the Godhead by being Man nor anything of his Manhood by being God, and we can understand how Christ though God can offer sacrifice to God. (M. C. D’Arcy, “Christ, Priest, and Redeemer,” in The Teaching of the Catholic Church: A Summary of Catholic Doctrine, ed. George D. Smith, 2 vols. [New York: The MacMillan Company, 1927, 1961], 1:485)

 

The Navarre Bible on 1 Corinthians 4:6

  

4:6. “Not to go beyond what is written”: this is open to various interpretations. It may be a proverb with which the Corinthians were familiar, meaning that one should stay on safe ground (in this case, Paul’s guidelines for the infant Church at Corinth). “What is written” could also refer to all scripture or just to the quotations which Paul has used (cf. 1:19, 31; 3:19). In any event he makes it clear to the Corinthians that it is they themselves who, due to their immaturity and pride, have caused the dissensions in their community through exalting one preacher at the expense of others. Paul and Apollos have behaved quite properly and therefore cannot be held responsible for these divisions. (Saint Paul's Letters to the Corinthians [The Navarre Bible; Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2005], 51)

 

D. Michael Quinn and the Tanners on the "Rocky Mountain Prophecy"

On p. 14 of Jerald and Sandra Tanner's Distorted View of Mormonism: A Response to Mormonism—Shadow or Realty? the author (long believed to be D. Michael Quinn) wrote:

 

  The failure to cite well-known evidence that challenges their conclusions occurs repeatedly in the Tanners' analysis of the seven-volume History of the Church.  For example, it is implied (pages 134-35) that the prophecy of Joseph Smith about the Mormons moving to the Rocky Mountains (HC 5:85) was a falsification added to the history after the Mormons were actually in the Great Basin.  However, in 1964 (eight years before this edition of Shadow-Reality) Stanley B. Kimball published a bibliography of sources for the Nauvoo history of Mormonism (of which the Tanners should have been aware) where he noted that the Oliver H. Olney Papers (written in 1842-43) at Yale University, "recorded the early plans of Joseph Smith to move west. . . .” [7] If the Tanners did not trust that description, they or their widely scattered friends could have read the versified, anti-Mormon manuscript by Olney, dated July 2, 1842:

As a company is now a forming / In to the wilderness to go  /  As far west as the Rocky mountains. . . . If this was not the secret whispering  /  Amongst certain ones of the Church of L.D.S.  /  And could be easily proven If man could speak. [8]

 

Notes for the Above:

 

7  Stanley B. Kimball, Sources of Mormon History in Illinois, 1839-48: An Annotated Catalog of the Microfilm Collection at Southern Illinois University (Carbondale-Edwardsville, Ill., 1964), 24.  In the expanded edition published in 1966, this entry was on page 25.

8  Oliver H. Olney Papers, Western Americana, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven, Conn.

 

In response, the Tanners wrote that:

 

Dr. Clandestine seems to feel that the Olney manuscript sheds new light on the Rocky Mountain Prophecy. Actually, we read this manuscript before we published the 1972 edition of Mormonism—Shadow or Realty? And even cited a reference to plural marriage in our book Joseph Smith and Polygamy, page 7. It was, in fact, partly because of Olney’s manuscript that we said that there “is some evidence that Joseph Smith considered going west to build his kingdom . . . “ (Mormonism—Shadow or Reality? p. 135). In his zeal to prove that we suppressed evidence, Dr. Clandestine seems to have completely overlooked this statement in our book.

 

In any case, while Olney does indicate that the Mormons were looking west, he says nothing about a prophecy given by Joseph Smith. The reader will notice that Dr. Clandestine says that “Olney recorded the rumors about the move west in July, and someone else recorded the prophecy in August.” He is unable, however, to tell us just who this “someone else” might be, and has to admit that “the exact source for the account of Joseph Smith’s prophecy of August 6, 1842 is not clear.” (Jerald Tanner and Sandra Tanner, Answering Dr. Clandestine: A Response to the Anonymous LDS Historian [rev ed.; Salt Lake City: Utah Lighthouse Ministry, 1978], 30)

 

Since the Tanners wrote this, Olney's journals have become available en toto. See Oliver H. Olney's 1842 Journal Entries on the Saints Then-Future Move to the Rocky Mountains

On Joseph Smith's Prophecies in general, see

Resources on Joseph Smith's Prophecies

Robert Roberts on the Importance of the Writings of John Thomas

 

To the charge of holding “that the knowledge of Scripture, in the writings of Dr. Thomas, has reached a finality,” we plead guilty. If we were ignorant or unfamiliar with the Scriptures, or were like those who, when they attempt to write or speak, have to look at them through the telescope of dictionaries, concordances, and such like, we should not have ground sufficient to entertain this conviction; but our acquaintance with them in daily intercourse for twenty-one years, enables us to be confident on the point. Our reading has not been confined fined to the Scriptures, or to the writings of Dr. Thomas. We have read what others have to say. We have, therefore, all the materials to form a judgment; and our judgment is distinctly to the effect imputed—that, in the writings of Dr. Thomas, the truth is developed as a finality, and that they are a depot of the Christian doctrine. In this sense we are “committed to Dr. Thomas.” Dr. Thomas has been laid aside in the grave for a season; and so long as God permits life and health, we shall defend the mighty results of his labours against all ridicule and opposition from friend or foe. Were he in the land of the living some who are in hostility would be in a different attitude towards him. When he re-appears, they will be ashamed. Meanwhile, God, who used him in the doing of His work, lives to note the gap made by his death, and the results which were not unforeseen to Him. In His sight, and with His help, we shall hold fast to the truth brought to light by his means; and, please God, will rejoice with him at the near-impending realisation of all the hopes of the saints, in the day when the bitterness of present warfare will only add sweetness to the hour of triumph. We shall try and endure the odium which calls this a dictatorial spirit. The clear perception, strong choice, and resolute defence of that which is true and good is not the offspring of dictation; nevertheless, if enemies or friends choose to consider it so, we must heed them not. It is this spirit that enables a man to say at last, “I have fought a good fight: I have kept the faith.” It is not a question of pulling up the tares, which no man can do. It is a question of not being partakers of other men’s sins, and of washing our hands of all complicity in the practical treachery to the truth which would preach it as an uncertain thing, and defile it by admixture with the leaven of the Scribes and Pharisees. (Robert Roberts, The Christadelphian 11, no. 123 [September 1874], 408-9, emphasis added)

 

Further Reading:

 

Listing of Articles on Christadelphian Issues

J. D. C. Fisher on Thecla's Self-Baptism in the Acts of Paul

  

The Apocryphal Acts contain accounts of baptisms which, however legendary, may have some bearing on the content of the rite known to the authors. In the Acts of Paul Thecla asks for the seal in Christ, to which St Paul replies, ‘Have patience, Thecla, and you will receive the water’. The natural inference from this is that the seal and water both refer to the act of baptism, unless this is the writer’s quaint way of saying that the rite is twofold, consisting in baptism and sealing. Again it is to be noted that the seal is called the seal in Christ and not the seal of the Spirit.

 

Thecla’s own self-baptism cannot have been accompanied by a hand-laying or anointing. But apart from the miraculous element the circumstances of this baptism are extraordinary in that there was no minister present to pronounce the baptismal formula or put the baptismal interrogations. So it can hardly be used to prove what was normal. When Thecla next met St Paul she told him that she had taken the bath, whereupon the apostle led her into the house of Hermias and heard everything from her. From this Lampe (p. 106) concluded that her initiation was regarded as complete. Indeed, while St Paul could have laid his hands on her or around her or given her communion when they were in the house, if that was customary, there is no suggestion that he did so. But if the author was silent about these things, he was equally silent about any gibing o the Holy Spirit to Thecla. (J. D. C. Fisher, Confirmation: Then and Now [Alcuin Club Collections 60; London: SPCK, 1978], 5-6)

 

3,300-year old ship discovered off Israeli coast

My LDS readers will find the following article to be of interest:

 

Renee Ghert-Zand, "3,300-year-old ship discovered off Israeli coast, the oldest ever found in deep waters," The Times of Israel, June 20, 2024

Apologia Utah Embarrasses Themselves against Travis Anderson (LDS)

As Travis Anderson shared the audio earlier today, it looks like, to save face, Apologia Utah are trying to make it look like they did well. Will let people watch the video and see for themselves:

Intense Conversation with a Mormon Internet Apologist

Robert L. Millet on Matthew 2:23

  

The formula citations used in the infancy narrative by Matthew, include the following:

 

Matthew 1:22-23 citing Isaiah 7:14

Matthew 2:55-56 citing Micah 5:2

Matthew 2:15b citing Hosea 11:1

Matthew 2:17-18 citing Jeremiah 31:15

Matthew 2:23b citing (?)

 

Of course, the most difficult of these citations to deal with is the last one:

 

“And he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, He shall be called a Nazarene” (Matthew 2:[2]3). Scholars have debated for centuries as to the particular Old Testament passage to which Matthew made reference, for there is no clear message from any of the prophets in our present Old Testament that would find fulfillment through the Holy Family’s settling in Nazareth. Three main theories have been asserted that Jesus as a Nazarene was the fulfillment of passages dealing with (1) Jesus as one who lived in Nazareth; (2) Jesus as a nazir, a Nazarite, one consecrated and made holy to God by a vow (see Numbers 6:1-21; Judges 16:7); and 3) Jesus as neser, a branch in fulfillment of the passage in Isaiah 11:1 (see Brown, Birth of the Messiah, pp. 209-212). The problem of course, with the latter two possibilities is that they have little or nothing to do with the Lord settling down in Nazareth, the focus of Matthew’s remarks. It may well be that the specific prophecy in question has been lost or was never included in the present canon. One incident in the New Testament is worth considering in this light: the passage in Jude 9 seems to be a quotation or paraphrase from the apocryphal Assumption of Moses. Given that such mighty prophets as Zenos and Zenock and Neum have escaped Old Testament mention, we may conclude that the prophecy alluded to in Matthew 2:23 has been lost to the world for a time. (Robert L. Millet, “The Birth of the Messiah: A Closer Look at the Infancy Narrative of Matthew,” in The Fourth Annual Church Educational System Religious Educators’ Symposium on the New Testament [Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints 1980], 141)

 

Brian Hales, "How Could Joseph Smith Have Written the Book of Mormon?"

(the following is in English, notwithstanding the Spanish title, so it is okay if you, to quote the bestie when they served their mission, "lo siento, y no blah blah!"):

¿José Smith pudo haber escrito el Libro de Mormón? | Brian Hales

O. R. Vassall-Phillips (RC) on the "Woman" in Revelation 12:1

  

It is well known that it is often difficult in Holy Scripture to discover whether the direct reference (particularly in Old Testament types) is to the Mother, or to the Church, of Christ. We are taught by writers of great authority that our Lordy and the Church are merged in the Sacred Writings into a mystic unity; for example, already in the second century St Clement of Alexandria writes: “One only Mother Virgin. Dear it is to me to call her the Church.” He was speaking in the first place of the Blessed Virgin (Paed. i. 6). And St Augustine: “His Mother is the whole Church, because through the grace of God, everywhere she gives birth to the faithful of Christ” (De Sancta Virg. vi). It is also certain that our Lady represents and personifies the Church, as for example in her obedience: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it done to me according to why word”; and in her prayer as at Cana: “They have no wine”; and in her submission to Christ: “Whatsoever he shall say to you, that do ye”; and in her faithfulness to our Lord to the end. Therefore, we shall not be surprised if we find that some of the few writers of antiquity who have written on this Vision in the Apocalypse refer it in the first place to our Lady and others to there can be no doubt that it is to the Church under the figure of the Blessed Mother of God, who is represented to us as the Mother, not only of the Man-Child who was to rule the nations with a rod of iron, but also of “the rest of her seed,” who are expressly pointed out as Christians “having the testimony of Jesus Christ.” (O. R. Vassall-Phillips, “Mary, Mother of God,” in The Teaching of the Catholic Church: A Summary of Catholic Doctrine, ed. George D. Smith, 2 vols. [New York: The MacMillan Company, 1927, 1961], 1:540 n. 1)

 

Anne Frank and a Calvinist Showing his True Colors

This month would have marked the 95th birthday of Anne Frank, so it is a good reason to share this meme that Aaron Shafovaloff hates (be sure to share it far and wide; I know at least one of his kids has seen it):

The Navarre Bible on 1 Corinthians 1:17

  

1:17. In the first part of this verse St Paul is giving the reasons for his actions as described in the preceding verses. The second part he uses to broach a new subject—the huge difference between this world’s wisdom and the wisdom of God.

 

“Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the Gospel”: this is a reminder that preaching is St Paul’s main task, as it is of the other apostles (cf. Mk 3:14). This does not imply a belittling of Baptism: in his mandate to the apostles to go out into the whole world (cf. Mt 28:19–20), our Lord charged them to baptize as well as to preach, and we know that St Paul did administer Baptism. But Baptism—the sacrament of faith—presupposes preaching: “faith comes from what is heard” (Rom 10:17). St Paul concentrates on preaching, leaving it to others to baptize and gather the fruit—a further sign of his detachment and upright intention.

 

In Christian catechesis, evangelization and the sacraments are interdependent. Preaching can help people to receive the sacraments with better dispositions, and it can make them more aware of what the sacraments are; and the graces which the sacraments bring help them to understand the preaching they hear and to be more docile to it. “Evangelization thus exercises its full capacity when it achieves the most intimate relationship, or better still a permanent and unbroken intercommunication, between the Word and the Sacraments. In a certain sense it is a mistake to make a contrast between evangelization and sacramentalization, as is sometimes done. It is indeed true that a certain way of administering the Sacraments, without the solid support of catechesis regarding these same Sacraments and a global catechesis, could end up by depriving them of their effectiveness to a great extent. The role of evangelization is precisely to educate people in the faith so as to lead each individual Christian to live the Sacraments as true Sacraments of faith—and not to receive them passively or apathetically” (Paul VI, Evangelii nuntiandi, 47). (Saint Paul's Letters to the Corinthians [The Navarre Bible; Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2005], 33-34)

 

Mark E. Petersen on John 1:1

  

Let me refer briefly to his premortal existence. You remember what John said in the King James Version of the Bible, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God.” (John 1:1-2.) That scripture, as you know, confused the sectarian people, who thought it meant that there was a three-in-one God, that there could have been two Gods, but one in substance. And it was all a great mistake.

 

I was glad when I read these words in the Goodspeed Bible in John 1:1, “In the beginning the Word existed. The Word was with God, and the Word was divine,” just as we have heard in this lovely solo. (Edgar J. Goodspeed and J. M. Powis Smith, The Short Bible [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1933], p. 515.)

 

The Authentic New Testament, by Hugh J. Schonfield, puts it this way in John 1:1: “In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was with God. So the Word was divine.” ([New York: New American Library of World Literature, Mentor Books, 1958], p. 389.) Isn’t it beautiful the way these new versions bring it out?

 

The New World Translation, which is the scripture of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, has this interpretation or version, “In [the] beginning the Word was, and the Word was with God, and the Word was a god” (John 1:1). And I like that better than the others. The only thing I don’t like about it is that in their Bible they refuse to give him a capital letter. They use lower case when they said that he was a god—a lower case god. They don’t believe in the divinity of Christ, and so they said, “and the Wore was a [lower case] god.” And that bothers me because I thought they had such a good translation.

 

But this Word who was divine in the beginning now became the physical, but still the divine, Son of God. You remember that the Father so declared at the baptism of Christ. And then again at the Transfiguration, he declared that Jesus was his beloved and Begotten Son, in whom he was well pleased. And then Jesus, himself, frequently declared his own divine Sonship. I especially like one of the instances in which he spoke of this. It was when he healed the blind man, who was cast out by his fellows. “Jesus heard that they had cast him out; and when he had found him, he said unto him, Dost thou believe on the Son of God? He answered and said, Who is he, Lord, that I might believe on him? And Jesus said unto him, . . . It is he that talketh with thee.” (John 9:35-37). (Mark E. Petersen, “Christ the Creator,” in The Fourth Annual Church Educational System Religious Educators’ Symposium on the New Testament [Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints 1980], 1-2)

 

John E. Anderson on Jacob’s Prayer in Genesis 32:10-13

  

The prayer does operate at another, deeper level in the narrative, a level that ties Jacob’s request for divine assistance to a history of his deceptions guided by God. Four specific occurrences draw the reader’s attention. First, the word usually translated ‘staff’ ( מקל ) in v. 11 has important resonances. Frolov notes that this word appears in the entire Hebrew Bible only 18 times, one-third of which are located in Gen 30:37–43, the perplexing story of Jacob’s attempt to manipulate the breeding of Laban’s flocks with rods.(מקל) According to Frolov, this semantic overlap highlights the “unfinished” nature of Jacob’s return. But another possibility exists: the word is reminiscent of the successful deception of Laban, perpetrated jointly by Jacob and YHWH. Placed in the context of Jacob’s prayer, the line “with my staff ( במקלי ), I crossed this Jordan” may be heard by YHWH on two different levels: (1) the once destitute Jacob has grown exceedingly wealthy through YHWH’s fidelity to the promise, and (2) the method by which YHWH has demonstrated this fidelity in the past was by using deception.

 

A second example builds on this same previous deception. The word meaning ‘deliver’ ( נצל ) in Gen 32:11 is the same root that appears in 31:9, 16 with the meaning “snatched/stripped away” in reference to God’s giving to Jacob at Laban’s expense by ensuring the success of Jacob’s plan with the rods. Thus, in his prayer, Jacob makes certain that his request resonates with the divine ear through a meaningful wordplay. Brueggemann sums up the essential message: “As God has ‘snatched’ property for Jacob from Laban, so Jacob prays to be ‘snatched’ from the power of Esau.”

 

 

Two final examples are perhaps even more germane to the present discussion in that they recall Jacob’s original deceptions in Gen 25:27–34 and 27:1–45, of which Esau was the victim. At the beginning of 32:11, Jacob makes a statement that most translations construe with regard to his ‘unworthiness’ before God. In the Hebrew, however, the resonances are much richer. The word usually translated ‘unworthy’ comes from the root ,קטן which I argued in chap. 2 means ‘little, younger’. Genesis 27:15 and 42 employ this same root to identify Jacob as the younger son of Rebekah. One should thus not take Jacob’s statement that he is קטן as an admission that he is undeserving but, rather, as a reference to Jacob’s age in relation to Esau. This one word conjures up YHWH’s original election of Jacob prior to birth (25:23), along with the deceptions that ensued as a result, and solicits YHWH’s help in line with that election. Just as YHWH had chosen and watched over Jacob earlier, despite his being קטן , so now Jacob asks that YHWH again take account of him as קטן and protect him from his older brother, from Esau.

 

Last, Jacob’s double mention of the word ‘hand’ ( יד ) in v. 12—asking for deliverance “from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau”—recalls the frequency with which this word occurs as part of Jacob’s deceptions of his brother. Turner provides an excellent list:

 

This request is somewhat ironic, since the ‘hand’ motif has been used to good effect previously when Jacob had been acting against Esau. Jacob’s hand gripped Esau’s heel (25.26), his hands were covered with goats’ skins (27.16), the savoury food and bread were given into his hand (27.17), and Isaac believed Jacob to have the hands of Esau (27.22–23). (Turner, Genesis, 141)

 

In the past, Jacob’s “hand” had deceptively triumphed over Esau with God’s help; now Jacob asks that God make certain that Esau’s hand does not triumph over him.

 

This analysis of Jacob’s prayer, imploring God for assistance through appeal to a joint history of promise and deception, shows that the prayer functions on two levels of meaning. On one level, Jacob seeks to persuade God to deliver him from Esau for the sake of the ancestral promise, lest it be decimated in one fierce attack by Esau and his band. On a more subtle, deeper level, Jacob uses words connected with his past tricks, of which YHWH has been a part, to provide concrete examples of occasions on which YHWH deceives for Jacob’s betterment. When read in tandem, Jacob’s prayer creates for the reader a tension and an expectation: will God answer Jacob’s prayer, and if so, how? At this stage, however, all the reader can do is wait alongside Jacob in the hope that God will in some way hear his prayer and deliver him from the presumed wrath of Esau. As the text continues, the initial tension over whether God intervenes is quickly replaced by a new tension centered on how God sets out to deliver Jacob. This divine assistance comes in a much more foreboding form than Jacob or the reader could anticipate: an encounter with the divine that quickly takes on a terrifyingly violent tenor. What kind of deliverance is this that includes God’s assault on the bearer of the promise? (John E. Anderson, Jacob the Divine Trickster: A Theology of Deception and YHWH’s Fidelity to the Ancestral Promise in the Jacob Cycle [Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2011], 144-46)

 

Amazon Wishlist for the Blog/Podcast

I have made my Amazon wishlist public, so if anyone wishes to buy me a book, you can do so if you wish:

Scriptural Mormonism Wishlist

J. N. Sanders on John 21:11 and 153 Fish being Caught

  

The number a hundred and fifty-three has attracted much attention, though unfortunately Jerome’s statement that Latin and Greek naturalists through there were 153 species of fish does not seem reliable and hence cannot be used to explain this passage. As far back as the time of Augustine it was noted that 153 is the sum of the numbers from 1 to 17; it is thus a triangular number since 153 dots can be arranged as an equilateral triable with 17 dots on the base line. However, many of the mathematical explanations which have been advanced are too arbitrary to be allowed to stand, and have insufficient relevance when seen in context. A relationship has sometimes been noted between this verse and Ezek. xlvii. 10, ‘Fishermen will stand beside the sea; from En-gedi to En-eglaim it will be  place for the spreading of nets; its fish will be of very many kinds, like the fish of the Great Sea,’ and it has been suggested on the basis of this that it was observed that the numerical values of the Hebrew consonants of Gedi and Eglaim add up to 17 and 153 respectively, and that these figures are mathematically related. This explanation based on the principle of gematria is more plausible than many other attempts to find Hebrew or Greek words whose letters have a numerical value of 153, but it is perhaps still more probable that the number ‘represents the full total of those who are “caught” by the Christian fishermen’, for, in addition to those features of 153 noted above, ’17 is the sum of 7 and 10, both numbers which even separately are indicative of completeness and perfection. The fish then represent the full total of the catholic and apostolic Church.’ That they are large fish means they are a worthwhile catch, and that the net was not torn means that Peter, whose role is emphasized, is able to bring them safely to the land. There is probably also an allusion here to the perfect unity which ought to characterise the Church. (J. N. Sanders, A Commentary on the Gospel According to St John, ed. B. A. Mastin [London: Adam & Charles Black, 1968], 447-48)

 

Excerpts from "The Bishop of Rome" (2024)

   

36. Catholics have also been challenged to recognize and avoid an anachronistic projection of all doctrinal and institutional developments concerning papal ministry into the “Petrine texts”, and to rediscover a diversity of images, interpretations and models in the New Testament. They have first of all recovered a more rounded picture of Peter. As John Paul II notes in Ut unum sint (90–91), Peter was not only the “rock” named by Jesus (Mt 16:18; Jn 1:42; Mk 1:42); but also a missionary fisherman (Lk 5, Jn 21); a witness and martyr (1 Cor 15:5; cf. Jn 21:15–17; 1 Pt 5:1); a weak human being, a repentant sinner, rebuked by Christ and opposed by Paul (Mk 8:33; Mt 16:23; Mk 14:31, 66–72; Jn 21:15–17; Gal 2:5). John Paul II concludes: “It is just as though, against the backdrop of Peter’s human weakness, it were made fully evident that his particular ministry in the Church derives altogether from grace” (UUS 91). (The Bishop of Rome: Primacy and Synodality in the Ecumenical Dialogues and in the Responses to the Encyclical Ut Unum Sint—A Study Document [Collana Ut Unum Sint 7; Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2024], 26)

 

37. Catholics have gained a new awareness of the different interpretations of the “Petrine texts”, in particular of Matthew 16: 17–19. As the Groupe des Dombes has shown: “From the moment they appear in patristic literature at the beginning of the third century, the interpretations of Matthew 16:17–19 are multiple: they apply the word addressed by Jesus to Peter either to every Christian because of his faith, or to all the apostles and to their successors the bishops, either finally to the person of the apostle Peter, either because he himself is made the foundation of the Church, or because his confession of faith is the foundation of the Church. But it is never forgotten that the first stone on which the Church is built is Christ himself” (Dombes 1985, 96). An ecumenical reading of Matthew 16:17–19 does not oppose these interpretations but brings out three complementary dimensions in the Church’s confession of faith: a community dimension, a collegial dimension and a personal dimension (id., 103). (The Bishop of Rome: Primacy and Synodality in the Ecumenical Dialogues and in the Responses to the Encyclical Ut Unum Sint—A Study Document [Collana Ut Unum Sint 7; Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2024], 26-27)

 

45. In the Latin Church the martyrdom and burial of Peter in Rome was the basis of the application of the “Petrine texts” to the Bishop of Rome from the beginning of the third century (see Tertullian, De Pudicitia 21, Præscriptionibus adversus Hæreticos 22.4). According to the Groupe des Dombes: “The reference to scriptural texts highlighting the role of Peter appears in the early Church as a secondary phenomenon compared to a primary practice” (Dombes 1985, 22). With Leo I (440–461), the correlation between the bishop of the Roman church and the image of Peter, which had already been implied by some of his predecessors, became fully explicit. According to Leo, Peter continues his task of enunciating the faith through the Bishop of Rome, and the predominance of Rome over other churches derives from Peter’s presence in his successors, the bishops of the Roman See (see Leo, Epistle 98). Some see this conviction supported by the bishops at the Council of Chalcedon in their approval of Leo’s Tome to Flavian: “This is the faith of the fathers; this is the faith of the apostles; this is the faith of us all; Peter has spoken through Leo” (cited in MERCIC 1986, 53). Others observe that Leo’s Tome was accepted because it was seen to be consistent with the teaching of Cyril of Alexandria, that is with the apostolic and patristic tradition: “The Council was also careful to underline Leo’s agreement with Cyril: ‘Piously and truly did Leo teach, so taught Cyril’ ” (St Irenaeus 2018, 7.6). Nevertheless, from this time the decisive factor for the Catholic Church in understanding the special position and role of the Roman See was the relation of the Bishop of Rome to Peter: “Leo’s ‘Petrine–Roman’ ecclesiology will play a determinant role in the subsequent orientation of ‘Catholic’ doctrine” (Dombes 1985, 26). The Orthodox–Catholic international dialogue describes this theological development: “In the West, the primacy of the see of Rome was understood, particularly from the fourth century onwards, with reference to Peter’s role among the Apostles. The primacy of the bishop of Rome among the bishops was gradually interpreted as a prerogative that was his because he was successor of Peter, the first of the apostles. This understanding was not adopted in the East, which had a different interpretation of the Scriptures and the Fathers on this point” (O–C 2016, 16). The German Lutheran–Catholic dialogue succinctly captures the Western development: “In place of a local principle (sedes apostolica), a personal principle appears (successor Petri)” (L–C Germ 2000, 168). (The Bishop of Rome: Primacy and Synodality in the Ecumenical Dialogues and in the Responses to the Encyclical Ut Unum Sint—A Study Document [Collana Ut Unum Sint 7; Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2024], 31-32, emphasis in bold added)

 

Maximus the Confessor (d. 662) on 2 Corinthians 5:21

  

QUESTION 42

 

 

How is it that we are said to commit sin and to know that we have sinned, while the Lord is said to have “become sin” without knowing sin? And how is sinning, and knowing that one has sinned, not a graver offense than sinning and not knowing it? For it says: “He who did not know sin, was made sin for us.”

 

Response

 

42.2. Because Adam’s natural power of free choice was corrupted first, it corrupted nature together with itself, losing the grace of impassibility. And thus the fall of free choice from the good toward evil became the first and blameworthy sin. The second sin, which came about as a result of the first, was the blameless alteration of nature from incorruptibility to corruption. Thus two sins came about in the forefather through his transgression of the divine commandment: the first was blameworthy, but the second was blameless, having been caused by the first. The first was a sin of free choice, which voluntarily abandoned the good, but the second was of nature which involuntarily and as a consequence of free choice lost its immortality. Our Lord and Savior corrected this mutual corruption and alteration of nature when He assumed the whole of our nature, and by virtue of the assumed nature He too possessed passibility as something adorning the incorruptibility of His free choice. And for our sakes, through the passibility of nature, He became sin, but He did not commit voluntary sin, thanks to the immutability of His free choice—to the contrary, He corrected the passibility of nature through the incorruptibility of His faculty of free choice, making the end of nature’s passibility, by which I mean death, into the beginning of the transformation of our nature into incorruptibility. In this way, just as the alteration of nature from incorruptibility to corruption came to all men through one man, who voluntarily turned his free choice away from the good, so too, through one man, Jesus Christ, who did not turn His faculty of free choice away from the good, the restoration of nature from corruption to incorruptibility came to all men.

42.3. The Lord, then, did not know my sin, that is, the turning away of my free will: He did not assume my sin, neither did He become my sin, but [He became] sin because of me; that is, He assumed the corruption of nature which came about through the turning away of my free choice, and He became, for our sake, man passible by nature, abolishing my sin through the sin that came about because of me. And just as in Adam, the individual free choice for evil rescinded the common glory of nature’s incorruptibility—since God judged that it was not good for man, who had used his free choice for evil to have an immortal nature—so too, in Christ, the individual free choice for good took away the common disgrace of corruption, with the whole of nature being recreated incorruptible through the resurrection on account of the immutability of the faculty of free will, since God judged that it was good for man again to receive an immortal nature, in that he did not turn away his free will. By “man” I am referring to the incarnate God the Word, on account of the flesh endowed with a rational soul that He united to Himself according to hypostasis. For if the turning away of the faculty of free will in Adam brought about passibility, corruption, and mortality in nature, it follows quite naturally that the immutability of the same <capacity> in Christ brought about, through the resurrection, a return of impassibility, incorruptibility, and immortality.

42.4. The condemnation of Adam’s freely chosen sin was thus the alteration of nature toward passibility, corruption, and death. Man did not receive this alteration from God from the beginning, but it was rather man who made it and knew it, creating the freely chosen sin through his disobedience, making his free will into something sinful, the offspring of which is clearly his condemnation to death. The condemnation of my freely chosen sin—I mean, of human nature’s passible, corruptible, and mortal elements—was assumed by the Lord, who for my sake became “sin” in terms of passibility, corruption, and mortality, voluntarily by nature assuming my condemnation—though He is without condemnation in His free choice—so that He might condemn the sin of my free choice and nature as well as my condemnation, simultaneously expelling sin, passibility, corruption, and death from nature, bringing about a new mystery concerning me, who had fallen through disobedience: the dispensation of Him, who for my sake and out of His love for mankind, voluntarily appropriated my condemnation through His death, through which He granted that I be called back and restored to immortality.

42.5. In many ways, I think, it has been succinctly demonstrated how the Lord “became sin” without “knowing sin,” and how man did not become sin, but rather committed and knew sin, both in his free choice, which he himself initiated, and on the level of his nature, which latter for his sake the Lord accepted, while being completely free of the former. Consistent, then, with the understood aim of my argument, and with the proper distinction between the two senses of the word “sin,” we can say that committing and knowing sin is in no way superior to “becoming” sin. For the one brings about separation from God, inasmuch as the faculty of free will voluntarily drives away from itself divine things, while the second quite often hinders evil, not permitting the evil intention of our free choice to proceed to the level of action.

 

Scholia

 

[1] The sin of nature, he says, is death, according to which we withdraw from existence even against our will. The sin of free choice, on the other hand, is the choosing of things that are contrary to nature, according to which we willingly fall away from well-being.

[2] He says that even though the Lord, when he became incarnate, was corruptible (insofar as He was man, according to which He is also said to have “become sin”), He nonetheless is naturally incorruptible according to His free choice, inasmuch as He is without sin.

[3] The death of the Lord, he says, became the beginning of the incorruptibility for the whole of nature.

[4] The sin of which we are the cause is the corruption of nature, while our own sin is the constitutive turning away of our free choice. This is why man became mortal, being subjected to the just judgment of natural death, unto the destruction of the death of his free will.

[5] The first sin, he says, is the turning away of free will, which the Lord did not possess, even if He indeed assumed the passibility of human nature, which was the punishment for the turning away of Adam’s faculty of free will. This is why He alone was “free among the dead,” for He was without sin, through which death came into being. (Maximus the Confessor, On Difficulties in Sacred Scripture: The Responses to Thalassios [trans. Maximos Constas; The Fathers of the Church 136; Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2018], 241-45)

 

Maximus the Confessor (d. 662) on Romans 2:13 (cf. Galatians 5:4)

  

QUESTION 18

 

If, according to Saint Paul: “It is the doers of the law who will be justified,” how is it that he later says: “Whoever has been justified by the law has fallen away from grace”?

 

Response

 

18.2. It is not simply the doers of the law who will be justified, but rather those who in spirit practice the spiritual law understood spiritually according to the inner man. Those who so practice do not fall away from grace insofar as the Word has passed into the depth of their souls through their purification. Those, on the other hand, who corporeally serve the outer aspects of the law completely fall away from divine grace, for they are ignorant of the perfection of the spiritual law, which through grace purifies the intellect from every stain, and whose perfection is Christ. (Maximus the Confessor, On Difficulties in Sacred Scripture: The Responses to Thalassios [trans. Maximos Constas; The Fathers of the Church 136; Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2018], 137)

 

J. N. Sanders on John 20:23

  

23. Cf. Matt. xviii. 18; xvi. 19. In view of the fact that ‘to forgive sins’ (αφιεναι αμαρτιας) and ‘to retain’ (κρατειν) are expressions not used elsewhere in the F[ourth]G[ospel] are not found in the Matthean parallels, it is unlikely that this verse is an adaptation from Matthew or a free invention of the Fourth Evangelist. It has frequently been noted that Matt. xvi. 19 recalls Isa. xxii. 22, and it has been plausible suggested that if the Matthean and Johannine sayings are variants of a common original (which one might reasonably suppose was composed in Aramaic), this may well have followed Isaiah in describing the authority conferred in terms of opening and shutting, but without defining it further. Matthew and John then provide different interpretations of what was said, the Johannine version developing naturally out of an ambiguity in the Aramaic; אחד, ‘to shut’, can also mean ‘to seize or hold’, and פתח, ‘to open’, could well have suggested the meaning ‘to release, let loose, set free’. One merit of this hypothesis is that it satisfactorily accounts for the verb ‘to retain’, which is not used here in any of its normal Greek senses, as a Semitism.

 

The authority conferred is connected with the gift of the Spirit, cf. on xvi. 8-11 for the continuation of Jesus’ ministry by the Spirit, and also Luke xxiv. 47, which speaks of the preaching to all nations of ‘repentance and forgiveness of sins’ (μετανοιαν εις αφεσιν αμαρτιων). Matt. xxviii. 19 (and also Mark xvi. 16) mention baptism in a comparable position, and it is likely that the immediate reference in the FG is to the remission of sins which accompanies conversion and baptism, and the retention of the sins of those who reject the apostolic preaching. It would not, however, be impossible for there to be a secondary reference to the situation which arises when a person who has been excommunicated wishes to be readmitted to the Christian community. In any case, ‘the controversy whether the commission is given to the Church as a whole or to the apostles is irrelevant. There is no distinction here between the Church and the ministry; both completely overlap’. (J. N. Sanders, A Commentary on the Gospel According to St John, ed. B. A. Mastin [London: Adam & Charles Black, 1968], 433-35)

 

Walther Zimmerli on Ezekiel 44:2

  

■ 44:2 The man explains to the prophet that the gate has been closed because of this divine entry. Yahweh is described here for the first and only time in the book of Ezekiel with the full title, “Yahweh, the God of Israel,” which (according to Steuernagel) had its original home in the sanctuary of Shechem.

 

With regard to men a clear ruling has been given: No human foot shall in the future cross the threshold over which Yahweh passed to his sanctuary. The closed gate proclaims the majesty of the one who came. One may ask, over and above however, whether it does not testify to a second aspect, namely the finality of Yahweh’s entry into his sanctuary, an entry which has been referred to in 43:7, 9 as לעולם (“for all time”). Yahweh closes behind him the doors which he no longer intends to open for a new departure of the nature of that in 11:23. Thus, in addition, the closed gate could proclaim also Yahweh’s fidelity.

 

Here, one cannot suppress the question as to whether the phenomenon of the closed sanctuary gate emerges here for the very first time in the framework of the vision on the part of this prophet of the exile which has just been sketched (or on the part of the school of his disciples who continue to reflect on this vision).

 

Now Unger has pointed out a related phenomenon in the city of Babylon. Pohl has followed him in the assumption that the “Sacred (lit. ‘pure’) Gate” bābu ellu, through which Marduk’s procession from Esagila passed and returned again and which was possibly also the entrance gate of the god Nabū in the “procession route of the deities Nabū and Nanā,” was a closed gate which was opened only for the gods to pass through. In line 440 of the New Year Festival ritual Unger finds the mention of a “feast of the opening of the gate” which would thus determine the date of the procession. Now, in connection with this interpretation of “gate opening” (pit bābi) we should note the observation of B. Landsberger: “‘Opening of the gate’ is certainly to be understood in cultic terms (of the temple gate), but in general the term denotes access of the people to the temple on the occasion of a festival, but not a specific or generally wide-spread festival” (see also 4. 112). Also the specific expression “closed gate,” which Unger believes he has found, cannot, on closer examination of his reading, be maintained. The fact, however, that there were periods when gates were closed is assured by the opposite expression pit bābi which expresses the end of the period of closure. One may perhaps in this context recall the end of Psalm 24 with its summons to the gates to open themselves for the מלך הכבוד (“King of glory”). Furthermore, the assumption of a reservation of the “Sacred Gate” for the passing of the deity is extremely probable.

 

With reference to the Russian late Byzantine “Sacred Gate,” which was built in 1176 A.D. in Susdal east of Moscow, Unger poses the question whether the Sacred Gate in Babylon is not to be conceived analogously to that as an entrance point to the temple which consisted of two gates side by side, one of which stood open for normal traffic while the other was usually walled up and was opened only for specific occasions. In another way one can think of the porta sancta which opened only once in twenty-five years in the year of the Jubilee for a whole year. And as more distant analogies there can be mentioned also the “golden gates” through which, in Vladimir, Kiev, Constantinople, for example, rulers passed in triumph.

 

If what Ezek 44:1–2 recounts is compared with all these different varieties of the closed gate, what strikes one is the complete uniqueness of the justification given here for the closing of the east gate. There is no trace here any longer of the periodic opening of the gate and the sacred procession of the festive crowd or even of a victorious ruler. With complete uniqueness here the gate is to be closed “once for all” because Yahweh has “once for all” taken possession of his sanctuary, and no procession, however sacred, may repeat this event regularly after him. In harsh offensiveness there is to be proclaimed through the medium of this closed gate the divine action which remains strictly over against man and which he is not to penetrate, not even in pious cultic imitation. (Walther Zimmerli, Ezekiel: A Commentary on the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel, 2 vols. [trans. James D. Martin; Hermeneia—a Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983], 2:440–441)

 

Dennis A. Wright (Reformed Protestant and long-standing anti-Mormon): "Nauvoo" is a Genuine Hebrew Word

Dennis A. Wright (who used to be associated with Utah Missions Inc.) wrote a lengthy but poorly researched book. However, to his credit, he acknowledges that Nauvoo is a genuine Hebrew word (contra Fawn Brodie in the first edition of No Man Knows My History, for e.g.):

 

A similar Hebrew word appears in Isaiah 52:7. Latter Day Saints often referred to Nauvoo as “the city beautiful”, or “the city of Joseph”—which was actually the name of the city for a short time after the city charter was revoked—or other similar nicknames) after being granted a charter by the state of Illinois. (Dennis A. Wright, Millions of Mormons Can’t Be Wrong, or Can They? [Lamb and Lion Publications, 2023], 58 n. 243)

 

Smith also attracted a few wealthy and influential converts, including John C. Bennett, the Illinois quartermaster and general. Bennett used his connections in the Illinois state legislature to obtain an unusually liberal charter for the new city, which Smith had renamed “Nauvoo” (Hebrew נָאווּ, meaning “to be beautiful”). (Ibid., 59-60)

 

 Further Reading:

Is "Nauvoo" a genuinely Hebrew Word?