Walter C. Kaiser Jr. et al.: Gideon was Not Wrong to Request a Miracle in Judges 6:36-40

  

6:36–40  Was Gideon Right to Test God?

 

Was Gideon wrong in asking God for reassurance by means of a wet or dry fleece? Had not God made his will clear to Gideon already at the time of his call (Judg 6:14–16)? While it is understandable that Gideon was apprehensive over his impending conflict with Midian, given the disparity in the number of weapons and men and the morale of the soldiers, he was still wrong in doubting God. Or, at least, that is what some contend.

 

Did Gideon use a proper type of test? Supposing a test is permissible, isn’t it wrong to ask God to accommodate our weakness, to assure us through physical signs or miracles of a word he has already spoken?

 

One further objection focuses on the fact that Gideon did not keep his word. Gideon promised that he would know God was going to use him to deliver Israel if God made the fleece wet and left the ground dry. Though God complied, Gideon insisted on running the same experiment in reverse fashion before he would believe. So what can we say, not only for Gideon but also for modern believers who wish to use similar tactics in order to validate the will of the Lord for them?

 

Some who object to Gideon’s method for discerning God’s will feel that he was not really desiring to know the will of God. Instead, they say, Gideon was angling to have that will changed!

 

This does not appear to be the case, based on what we are told in the text itself. Such an assertion tends to psychologize Gideon. How can we penetrate into his heart and mind and say what it was that Gideon was feeling or hoping?

 

Clearly, Gideon struggled. But he wanted God to provide his overwhelmed mind with more evidence for the words “as [God had] said” (Judg 6:37). He was responding to God’s call (Judg 6:14–16). Thus he was hesitant, but not unbelieving.

 

What about the matter of asking for signs? When we do so, are we acting like the scribes and Pharisees of Jesus’ day, who always wanted a sign? And how specific is the will of God in our ordinary life? Granted, in revelation God often gave specific, detailed instructions for particular actions. But is Judges 6 an invitation for all believers to demand similar specificity? Must the will of God be a dot with a fixed point and nothing else?

 

Gideon’s boldness can be seen both in his asking for a sign and in his specifying what that sign should be. The sign, though simple, involved a miracle. He would place the fleece on the leveled ground where the people threshed their grain (probably in the entrance to the city gate). If the dew was on the fleece alone while all the ground was dry, then he would know that God really would use him to deliver Israel from the hand of the Midianites.

 

The next night, using rather deferential language, he asked that the sign be reversed, with the fleece being dry and the ground soaked with the dew of the night. In both instances Gideon’s request was granted, confirming what God had promised—that his strength comes to peak performance and full throttle in our weakness (2 Cor 12:9).

 

Thus Gideon’s faith was supported. The phantom fears that had haunted his countrymen about the Midianites no longer afflicted him. Before setting out to overthrow the Midianites, he had approached God in prayer, and there he had found his courage renewed and fortified. His importunity was not wrong. And actually he provides a model for us: when we are beset by internal struggles and when challenges seem too great for us to handle, we must go to God in prayer.

 

Nevertheless, this passage does not give encouragement to those who assume they can expect God to attend each of his instructions with whatever signs we may request! God could just as well have refused Gideon’s request. The fact that he didn’t does not set a precedent to which any and all believers may appeal in their moment of distress. God may be pleased to repeat such an act of mercy, but he is not bound to satisfy our desire for visual, physical miracles to confirm his will. Whether he does so rests in his hand alone. (Walter C. Kaiser Jr., Peter H. Davids, F. F. Bruce, and Manfred T. Brauch, Hard Sayings of the Bible [Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1996], 192-93)

 

Thomas Rees (Unitarian) on Baptism for the Dead in 1 Corinthians 15:29

  

Paul’s Argument

 

Some of the Corinthian Christians denied the resurrection of the dead, and Paul advances three arguments to convince them that the dead will be raised: (1) “If there is no resurrection of the dead, neither hath Christ been raised,” but Christ is raised (1 Cor 15:13, 20). (2) If the dead are not raised, why are men being baptized for the dead (ib 15:29)? (3) Why should the apostle himself wage his spiritual warfare (ib 15:30)? The first argument rests upon the central fact of Christianity, and the other two are appeals to the consistency of the Corinthians, and of Paul himself. Whatever “baptism for the dead” meant, it was, in Paul’s opinion, as real, valid and legitimate a premise from which to conclude that the dead would rise as his own sufferings. The natural meaning of the words is obvious. Men in Corinth, and possibly elsewhere, were being continually baptized on behalf of others who were at the time dead, with a view to benefiting them in the resurrection, but if there be no resurrection, what shall they thus accomplish, and why do they do it? “The only legitimate reference is to a practice … of survivors allowing themselves to be baptized on behalf of (believing?) friends who had died without baptism” (Alford in loc).

. . .  

The Difficulty

 

But why is all this ingenuity expended to evade the natural meaning? Because (1) such a custom would be a superstition involving the principle of opus operatum; and (2) Paul could not share or even tolerate a contemporary idea which is now regarded as superstition. To reply (with Alford) that Paul does not approve the custom will not serve the purpose, for he would scarcely base so great an argument, even as an argumentum ad hominem, on a practice which he regarded as wholly false and superstitious. The retort of those who denied the resurrection would be too obvious. But why should it be necessary to suppose that Paul rose above all the limitations of his age? The idea that symbolic acts had a vicarious significance had sunk deeply into the Jewish mind, and it would not be surprising if it took more than twenty years for the leaven of the gospel to work all the Jew out of Paul. At least it serves the apostle’s credit ill to make his argument meaningless or absurd in order to save him from sharing at all in the inadequate conceptions of his age. He made for himself no claim of infallibility. (Thomas Rees, “Baptism for the Dead,” in The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, ed. James Orr et al., 5 vols. [Chicago: The Howard Severance Company, 1915], 1:399, emphasis added)

 

Hyrum Andrus (1952) on Micah 4 (cf. Isaiah 2:2-5)

 When offering the various definitions of “Zion” in Latter-day Saint thought:

 

4. To the location of the “mountain of the house of the Lord,” Micah gave the name of Zion, as he predicted its establishment in the “top of the mountains” in the latter days as a place distinct from Jerusalem. There had formerly been a Zion and a Jerusalem in the land of Palestine, but “the prophet Micah, ‘full of power by the spirit of the Lord, and of judgment, and of might’ predicted the destruction of Jerusalem and its associated Zion, the former to ‘become heaps,’ and the latter to be ‘plowed as a field’; and then announced a new condition that is to exist in the last days, when another ‘mountain of the house of the Lord’ is to be established, and this is called Zion.” In many Latter-day Saint sermons in the belief has been expressed that this prophecy is in process of fulfillment at the present day by the activities of the Church in the mountainous regions of the West. This definition is in close alliance at present with that given under the former heading, differing only by stipulating a definite location of the Church at a given time. (Hyrum Leslie Andrus, “World Government as Envisioned in the Latter Day Saint ‘City of Zion’” [MA Thesis; Brigham Young University, 1952], 8-9)

 

 

According to Mormon interpretation, Micah, the ancient Israelite prophet, spoke of the latter-day Zion as being synonymous with “the house of the Lord . . . in the top of the mountains” (i.e., while Zion is located in Western America). Following its erection a subsequent era of peace wherein men would “beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruninghooks” was to follow. Paralleling these peaceful conditions, Micah states, “the law shall go forth of Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.” Joseph Smith spoke of these two points government by noting: “Now there are two cities . . . a New Jerusalem to be established on this continent, and also Jerusalem shall be rebuilt on the eastern contingent.” (Hyrum Leslie Andrus, “World Government as Envisioned in the Latter Day Saint ‘City of Zion’” [MA Thesis; Brigham Young University, 1952], 95)

 

 

Brian Hales, "Joseph Smith, Book of Mormon Editor"

 

Joseph Smith, Book of Mormon Editor

Madison N. Pierce on the Use of Psalm 102 (LXX: 101) in Hebrews 1:10-12

  

At first glance, this is a particularly interesting selection by the author of Hebrews. In most other instances, he has selected a text where God the Father was already the speaker and identified other unspecified participants (e.g., the addressees); here, however, the author has selected a psalm that appears to be without any dialogue. Instead, it is just a Psalmist’s cry to the Father. But this is not the case in Greek traditions. Throughout Greek Psalm 101 (MT 102), the speaker describes his affliction and plight as a temporary, mortal being, while praising God for his permanence. Verse 24 of the MT contains the consonants ענה , which can designate one of two verbal roots. The MT seems to favor one option (I: “to oppress or humiliate),” while the Greek favors another (II: “to answer”), represented by ἀπεκρίθη. The latter introduces a dialogue between the speaker and God:

 

He [God] answered him by means of his strength [ἀπεκρίθη αὐτῷ ἐν ὁδῷ ἰσχύος αὐτοῦ], . . . “You are from the beginning, Lord . . .” (101:24b–26a)

 

Greek traditions not only introduce the curious “answer,” but also another potential participant. Who is the one who receives the answer (the “him”)? Throughout this psalm, the speaker has referred to himself in the first person, and God in the second, as well as the third. But in verse 24, we have two third-person references. Who is the other participant? Perhaps the author of Hebrews was also intrigued by this question. Nevertheless, he seems to either overlook 101:24b–25, where the one answering laments his own temporal existence, or reason that the answer does not begin until verse 26.

 

In other words, the author, seeing that he is to expect some answer, may then look forward to the portion that can be read with God (or in this case more specifically the exalted Christ) in mind. If this is the strategy utilized by the author, then it is not the most straightforward interpretation in Hebrews 1, but even if this insight is not the best explanation, then this still does not minimize the result of the text’s application to Christ in Hebrews.

 

In Hebrews, the addressee of Greek Psalm 101, the Son, is called “Lord” (κύριε), a title attributed to Christ elsewhere in Hebrews also (2:3; 7:14; 12:14; 13:20). Thus between this citation and the prior (Ps 44:7–8), the author has presented Jesus as both God and Lord. Although some quibble with the meaning of these titles being applied to Jesus – arguing they hold little more significance for him than they did for the previous royal recipient, for instance – the rest of this citation does little to undermine his authority. In it, the author continues to contrast the evanescence of the angels and the eternality of the Son by presenting first the Son’s role in creation (1:10), and then his stability from the time when the world is “rolled up” and “destroyed” until eternity (1:11–12). Like the angels, particularly in contrast to the Son, the earth is temporary (in its current “shakable” state; cf. 12:25–29), but Jesus is always the same (cf. Heb 13:8).

 

Even so, the Son’s presence at or role in creation presented by the author, for some, does not allow for the necessary “distinction between his eternal and his temporal existence.” As Caird argues, when Christ is exalted to his “cosmic role,” he is raised above the angels; he is praised for his role in creation simply because “he is the man in whom the divine Wisdom has been appointed to dwell, so as to make him the bearer of the whole purpose of creation.” He was not present at creation, but is “figuratively deemed so” (emphasis original). Now near the end of the catena, it seems even clearer that the author has presented the Son as a personal, embodied entity. He is a Son to the Father (1:5–6), and he is a companion to humans (1:9). Further, he is in conversation. The Father speaks to him (1:5–13; 5:5), and he speaks back (2:12–13; 10:5–7). No single citation (or speech) or title proves this definitively, but the evidence taken as a whole suggests it. (Madison N. Pierce, Divine Discourse in the Epistle to the Hebrews: The Recontextualization of Spoken Quotations of Scripture [Society of New Testament Studies Monograph Series 178; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020], 57-59)

 

 

Excepts from Joseph P. Farrell's Summary of Maximus the Confessor's (d. 662) Theology

  

(1)

 

Proper theological method subsumes theological questions and doctrines under two correlative headings of Christology and Triadology, for all properly theological doctrines would appear to have christological and triadological implications. Any proposition, method, or other statement which does not start directly and consciously from this context does not go under the name of Christian theology.

 

All theology must therefore be thoroughly grounded in the distinction of person and nature. Each of these categories must be given equal weight and emphasis with the other. Consequently, there are two basic ways in which this distinction may be lost. On the one hand, person may be subordinated to nature in order of concepts to such an extent that it becomes absorbed in it as a special kind of attribute of nature. Within the context of the discussion on predestination and free will, the apokatastasis implies just such a confusion, for the human nature of Christ was seen to determine every human person's eternal bliss in spite of, and apart from, the individual's gnomic reception of the grace conferred by Christ. On the other hand, nature may be subordinated and confused with person, and to some extent, defined as the aggregate of persons. The doctrine of the limited atonement is perhaps an example of this process, for the human nature of Christ is defined in terms of its efficaciousness for a predetermined number of individual elect: Christ loses no one that the Father has given Him, but raises them up at the last day.

 

. . .

 

(4)

 

In Christ’s human nature which is consubstantial with all men, God humanly wills, decrees, and perfectly fulfills the salvation of all men, for no human being is untouched by His Incarnation, and nothing is detracted from His sovereignty as God is individual persons choose not to accept salvation.

 

Nothing is lost to His sovereignty as God Incarnate precisely because nothing is lost to the perfection of His human nature; it retains its full integrity as human nature despite the fact that individual persons reject Him. Hence, the expression current in some evangelical circles, “once saved always saved”,  bears a certain truth, if seen in this context, namely, that all human nature, once assumed by Christ in its totality, eternally abides in and with God by virtue of the Word’s hypostatic union with it.

 

(5)

 

Christ, being truly consubstantial with all men, truly died for all men, and this His atoning Passion, Death, and Resurrection are in no way limited.

 

In turn, the doctrine of the limited atonement may be reversed to show its hidden and heretical implications: If not all men rise with the second Adam then not all die with the first Adam. There would consequently be some men who, not being affected by the consubstantiality of Christ's human nature, would not be consubstantial with Him. Therefore, they would not be in Adam either. Not being in Adam, they would have no need of Christ. This is a denial of the inheritance of ancestral sin, and is therefore Pelagianism. The way out of this impasse is the distinction between person and nature, and between the mode of the employment of the will and the natural will itself.

 

Furthermore, if Christ's human nature is efficacious in salvation only for a number of elected individuals, then it would appear that Christ's humanity, insofar as it is efficacious for those individuals, is united with them not naturally but only by the object of their wills, since His human nature itself is not united with them. This union only in object of will between God and man in Christ is Nestorianism.

 

It would also appear that, on this view, the human nature of the elected individuals gives nothing to election, and Christ's human nature certainly does not, as it affects only the elected individuals. Human nature therefore either has no will, which is a kind of "anthropological" Apollinarianism, or it is merely ineffectual in salvation ("soteriological" Apollinarianism). Christ's human decision of salvation at Gethsemane is therefore illusory, and this is Docetism. (Joseph P. Farrell, Free Choice in St. Maximus the Confessor [South Canon, Pa.: St. Tikhon’s Seminary Press, 1989], 222, 224-25, emphasis in bold added)

 

What Most Readers Miss About the Sword of Laban

 

What Most Readers Miss About the Sword of Laban