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Who Was the Evilest Person Who’s Ever Lived?

If someone asked you that question, I expect you might answer with a dictator with a body count in the millions, like Hitler, Stalin, or Mao. Or you might reply with a serial killer with a much lower body-count, but much more sadistic and agonizing means of execution. (And if you answer with Donald Trump, I really question your priorities and urge you to do a little more reading up on those others and a lot less time listening to propagandists who use those same dictators’ methods to silence dissent).

But, since Halloween is a time for reflection on good versus evil, I will give you what I think the Biblical answer to the evilest person in history was. The choice might surprise you. In fact, in contrast to all the mass-murderers and tyrants in history, this person only has a body count of one. I speak of Judas Iscariot.

The Bible doesn’t spend a whole lot of ink going into Judas and what made him tick. Unlike our modern crime shows and documentaries, we don’t get a psychoanalysis of Judas and why he did what he did. What it does say, however, is chilling enough. Judas was called to be one of Jesus’s Twelve Apostles, a disciple who followed him and attended on him throughout his ministry in return for receiving his teaching. We do know that Judas spent a lot of his time with Jesus pilfering the money box. In the end, he is best known for betraying Jesus and leading the detachment of troops who went to arrest him in a place Judas knew Jesus would be at without a crowd to interfere. The priests intended to get their hands on Jesus to execute him, which they did the following morning. For this, he agreed to receive the measly reward of thirty pieces of silver.

Now, don’t get me wrong. All those dictators and serial-killers are going to suffer unspeakable torments in Hell for all eternity, for they were in fact especially evil. But if we look at Biblical categories of evil, one of the most important factors is how much a sin is a sin against knowledge. Consider what Jesus says to Capernaum in Matthew 11:24, in a statement that should make every Western skeptic tremble, “But I say unto you, that it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment than for thee.”

Let that sink in. The Bible pronounces horrible condemnations on Sodom. In Genesis 19, its entire male population comes out to storm Lot’s house and gang-rape his angelic guests. This crime would have struck the Old Testament listeners even more harshly than it does us since the code of hospitality was so much more sacrosanct to them. Sodom is so evil God wipes it off the map with literal fire and brimstone. There is not one hint of such blatant sinning on Capernaum’s part. Indeed, they welcomed Jesus and crowded around to hear his teaching. What was their sin? They heard Jesus, but “they repented not” (Matthew 11:21).

One of the most important factors is how much a sin is a sin against knowledge.

Capernaum had a revelation Sodom did not. Sodom had Abraham’s and Lot’s righteous examples, but here were people listening at the feet of the Son of God, seeing his miracles performed. Sodom never heard the Ten Commandments or the Sermon on the Mount, but the people of Capernaum did. They marveled at Jesus, discussed the words and works for a few days amongst themselves, and then went right back to their business. Jesus said this indifference to him was worse than homosexual gang rape.

He states it even more clearly in Luke 12:47-48: “And that servant which knew his Lord’s will and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes. But he that knew not and did commit things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes.” This key component of knowledge is why Paul goes to such great lengths in Romans 1-3 to show that everyone has a knowledge of God and his law written on their hearts and are therefore guilty whenever they sin. That would be the Sodomites. But those who have been exposed to greater degrees of truth than this are even more accountable when they sin. Or, as Uncle Ben might have put it, “With great revelation comes great responsibility.”

Has anyone else sinned against knowledge to the extent of Judas Iscariot? He followed Jesus for three years and heard practically all his teaching. He saw the miracles Jesus wrought and the extent of his compassion towards everyone. He heard the words Jesus spoke that are not recorded in the Gospels and the “many other signs truly [that Jesus did] in the presence of his disciples” that John didn’t have space to record (John 20:30). Jesus gave him power to do miracles in his name. Had he proven faithful, he had held before him the promise of being “appoint[ed] unto a kingdom” with Jesus, sitting on a throne and “judging the Twelve Tribes of Israel” (Luke 22:29-30). Judas had greater revelation and privilege than any of us alive today. He admitted that he himself knew Jesus was innocent. Yet, he chose to deliver him over to death. And, not that any price would have justified his actions, but the cheap bribe he took for his betrayal was downright insulting to Jesus.

Has anyone else sinned against knowledge to the extent of Judas Iscariot?

In the end, we don’t know why Judas did what he did. Theories have been set forward, from a generous one saying he wanted to provoke Jesus into acting to assert his messianic power, to the more realistic one saying he really was base and greedy enough to sell out the Son of God for thirty pieces of silver. We don’t really know what got him started down the road in the first place. We do know both that Satan was directly involved and that God had sovereignly ordained that it come to pass this way. Neither excuses Judas.

The Bible doesn’t explicitly state who the evilest person who’s ever lived was, though it does state that Judas would have been better off “if he had not been born” (Matthew 26:24). But if we look at the very Biblical approach to evil that sins against greater knowledge are greater than sins against just the universal knowledge that makes everyone guilty before God, Judas must rank as the most offending soul ever.

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What Does the Old Testament Law Mean for Us Today?

A popular trend in skeptical circles is to attack Christianity through pronouncements people would perceive as ridiculous or barbarous in its laws with today’s mores. Not surprisingly, most of these come from the Old Testament. Most delicious to them is the fact that the Church no longer observes most of these precepts. I remember seeing a blog post one time about “Ten Things the Bible Says Not to Do, But You Do Anyway,” or something to that effect. The favorites are usually about the laws for kosher food that nobody observes today outside of Judaism or the execution of the following: homosexuals, adulterers, lazy children, children who curse parents, blasphemers, etc. (basically anything they don’t personally think is a big deal).

It’s amazing how many problems a little consultation with the Westminster Standards will solve. (For those of you not familiar with these sublime documents, they were Parliament’s attempt to bridge the differences between Anglicanism and Presbyterianism during the English Civil War. Presbyterians like myself accept these as secondary standards- that is, our guide to beliefs wherever they are not in conflict with Scripture, which is the primary standard).

Well, what does the Confession have to say about laws like this, which for the most part 17th century Britain did not enforce either? Chapter XIX:

“God gave Adam a law, as a covenant of works, by which He bound him and all his posterity to personal, entire, exact, and perpetual obedience (para. 1).”

“Besides this law, commonly called moral, God was pleased to give to the people of Israel, as a church under age, ceremonial laws […] All which ceremonial laws are now abrogated, under the new testament (para. 3).”

“To them also, as a body politic, He gave sundry judicial laws, which expired together with the State of that people; not obliging any other now, further than the general equity thereof may require (para. 4).”

So, for many of the unusual things in the Old Testament, we don’t observe them because God told us not to anymore. In the Mosaic law, you’ll find intertwined moral, ceremonial, and civil laws. The moral ones, yes, are as binding today as the day they were proclaimed on Mount Sinai. It’s still wrong to commit adultery or murder or to take God’s name in vain. 

The ceremonial law, however, was fulfilled in Christ. It symbolized how Israel needed to be separated from the rest of the world and carefully kept from all semblance of death and disorder to be fit for the presence of God. The ceremonial laws regarding blood, leprosy, etc. represent wholeness of life or stability in distinction from morality, which God dealt with in other laws. God explicitly did away with the ceremonial law when He gave Peter a vision and told him to eat unclean things, symbolizing that Israel was no longer on its own and that the Gospel was for all nations now. Christ has cleansed us with His blood, so we don’t need to make sacrifices or take baths to make ourselves clean in God’s sight.

Nowhere does Jesus or an Apostle try to force Mosaic civil laws on Rome.

I’m not really familiar with any verse as explicit as Peter’s vision in Acts as far as getting rid of the civil law of Israel, but it’s pretty clear God doesn’t want the Church governed like Israel. Israel was prone enough to corruption from without, so God mandated a wide range of capital punishments for wicked Jews to keep the nation pure. Now, though, He wants the Gospel of reconciliation offered to sinners, not war waged on them. Nowhere does Jesus or an Apostle try to force Mosaic civil laws on Rome.

As for executing homosexuals, that was not the Apostle Paul’s practice although he was proudly Jewish. He told the Corinthians: “Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind [the KJV is trying to delicately refer to passive and active homosexuals], nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you, but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the Name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God” (I Corinthians 6:9-11).

So, a few observations about homosexuality in this passage that are relevant today. Yes, it is still a sin under the New Covenant; Christ’s death did nothing to change that, only to save from it. Second, it appears that Paul extended his ministry to homosexuals (of which there were many in the cult of Apollo in Corinth) just as readily and lovingly as to any other sinner. Finally, it appears they repented and overcame this sin (though no one said it would be any easier than the drunkards overcoming an addiction). So, there’s something for people to learn here on both sides of the cultural contest over homosexuality.

The moral ones, yes, are as binding today as the day they were proclaimed on Mount Sinai.

A lot of the civil code of Israel rubs enlightened Westerners the wrong way, but Jesus made an important observation about it in Matthew 19. Some of the Pharisees thought that, because the civil code allowed for divorce, they could morally divorce their wives for any reason. Jesus tells them that provision about divorce was only because of the “hardness of your hearts.” In other words, God doesn’t normally approve of divorce, but it could lead to worse if He clamped down on it in His civil law. When you look at the Old Testament’s milieu, with slavery and different tiers of justice being universal practice, a lot of the Torah’s civil law appears a compromise between the crude legal codes Israel was familiar with in the Ancient Near East and the higher ideals taught by Christ and the Apostles. The moral law is at all times the great standard of conduct, but the civil law may not always measure up to it. That said, many times it is a thousand times more enlightened than what you’ll find in Babylonian or Assyrian law.

The one problematic thing remaining is when we don’t know if something was a ceremonial or civil law. Generally, if you can tie it back to a duty required by one of the Ten Commandments or a sin forbidden by them, it’s moral. But sometimes there’s room for argument. There are laws against tattooing, blending fabrics, mixing seeds, interbreeding different species, and transvestitism. (Actually, the law against transvestitism is a little more specific than that; the Hebrew literally prohibits women from “bearing the accouterments of a warrior.”) Some of these seem harmless and are possibly even beneficial, like interbreeding horses and donkeys to make mules. In fact, the Jews were perfectly willing to buy mules from Gentiles as long as they didn’t breed them themselves, and God makes reference to mules in the new heavens and new earth in Isaiah. I’m pretty sure from my own research into these issues that you’ll find a commentator on every one of those laws who links it back to one of the Ten Commandments. I really don’t know on some of these, and I advise caution. As R.C. Sproul pointed out, it’s better to treat a ceremonial law like a moral one than a moral one like a ceremonial one.

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Six Even More Stupid Things People Thinks the Bible Says, Which It Doesn’t

Here is the 2024 installment of the Six Stupid Things series. Skeptics love to claim the Bible makes these absurd statements, when in fact, it says the opposite.

  1. Jesus denied being God.

The conversation between Jesus and the rich young ruler is important since all three Synoptic Gospels mention it, but it’s badly misunderstood by some. Two misconceptions will be addressed here. First, when the rich young ruler says, “Good master (i.e., Teacher), what good thing shall I do that I may have eternal life?” Jesus answers, “Why callest thou Me good? There is none good but one, that is God” (Matthew 19:16-17). I’ve heard it said that Jesus here is denying being God and being perfect. That would be inconsistent, however, for someone who claims the angels as His own and challenged His harshest critics to convict Him of one sin (John 8:46). I think Jesus says this for two reasons. One, He’s telling the rich young ruler, “You’re not good, so you can’t work your way into eternal life like you suppose.” Two, He’s saying, “If I’m good, it’s because I’m God.” He’s basically anticipating what C.S. Lewis would write 1,900 years later, that someone who makes the kind of claims Jesus makes can’t be just a Good Teacher like the rich young ruler calls Him. He must either be crazy, an evil deceiver, or God Himself. See my post on Lewis’s trilemma at https://deliberationsatmimirswell.blog/2017/10/03/lewiss-trilemma-defended/.

    He’s saying, “If I’m good, it’s because I’m God.”

    2. Christians are to give away everything they own.

      In the story of the rich young ruler, Jesus also tells him to sell all His possessions and give to the poor. Some have felt that all Christians are obligated to do this. St. Anthony’s reading of this is what started the monastic movement. While Jesus has the right to order such a thing from everybody, I think the Bible as a whole teaches that this was a specific challenge to this young man at his particular idol rather than a prescription of poverty for His entire Church. It’s true the Jerusalem Church practiced a form of Christian socialism at first, but the Greco-Roman Church did not. Note how in I Corinthians 16:2 Paul tells the Corinthians “to lay something aside,” not “lay everything aside.” In I Timothy 6, Paul gives instructions to rich Christians to be rich in good works and not to trust in their riches. The fact that he’s instructing rich Christians as rich Christians would make no sense if Jesus had prohibited all Christians from being rich at all times. Otherwise, Paul would have simply repeated Jesus’s command for them to sell all they have. Christians are called to be the most generous people on earth, but God has not chosen to overrule completely man’s propensity to appropriate. He even protects it with two of His Ten Commandments by banning theft and covetousness.

      3. The Apostles didn’t think of Jesus as God.

      Throughout his epistles he says things about Christ no monotheistic Hebrew of the Hebrews would dare say about an angel.

      Those who seek to deny Christ’s lordship will come up with the wildest interpretations of clear Scripture to avoid the plain fact that Paul and the other first Christians thought of Christ as God. Even a hostile witness like Pliny the Younger wrote a little after the New Testament period that the Christians were singing hymns to Christ like a God. No, Paul did not think of Jesus as a particularly exalted angel. He specifically calls Him God in Titus 2:13 and Romans 9:5. Throughout his epistles he says things about Christ no monotheistic Hebrew of the Hebrews would dare say about an angel: “Who, being in the very form of God” (Philippians 2:6); “according to the working whereby He is able even to subdue all things unto Himself” (Philippians 4:21); “And He is before all things, and by Him all things consist” (Philippians 1:17).

      4. Jesus commands us to hate our family.

      Jesus often spoke in a shocking and hyperbolic fashion that people take at face value to their peril. One commentator I heard of took deep umbrage at Jesus’s teaching in Luke 14:26: “If any man come to me and hate not his father and mother and wife and children and brethren and sisters, yea and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.” Anyone with any sense of context of Scripture knows Jesus is not literally commanding any of His followers to hate anyone. If we are to love our enemies, how much more our family? Clearly, Jesus means that love of Him must be above and paramount to any other allegiance, so much so that earthly loves are “hatred” by comparison, and we are to always take Christ’s side over our family’s when they conflict. Jesus did not hate His own parents. He “was subject unto them” (Luke 2:51), and even during the agony of the cross, He found time and precious breath to provide for His mother’s care after His departure. 

      5. The Bible prescribes faith plus works for salvation.

      James writes, “Ye see then, how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only?” (2:24). Latching onto this, the Roman Catholics made their formula of salvation faith plus works. Martin Luther found this book so inconvenient, he called it “an epistle of straw.” Time to let Scripture interpret Scripture. Paul, in a much more in-depth look at justification in Romans, states, “Therefore by the deeds of the Law, there shall no flesh be justified in his sight” (3:20). Jesus repeatedly tells the recipients of His healing, “Your faith has saved you.” James cannot be saying that we become right with God by producing works to add to our faith. (What could we possibly add to Jesus’s righteousness?) Rather, his point is, as he writes earlier, “Show me thy faith without thy works, and I will show you my faith by my works” (2:18). The kind of faith that God uses alone to save us will of necessity evidence itself in works. It’s not that you need to add works to saving faith; it’s that if you don’t have works, you don’t have saving faith.

      6. The Bible commands that we do penance for our sins.

      One popular stereotype of Christians in the unbelieving world is Christians harming themselves in penance for their sins. Take the self-flagellating monk in the Da Vinci Code or, with rather less excuse, my favorite YouTube channel Studio C’s depiction of the Puritan roommate. In the Roman Catholic tradition, prayers and other less self-destructive deeds are used to atone for sins. While penance (of a violent kind or otherwise) did develop as a tradition of the Middle Ages, there is not a hint of it in the New Testament. The closest thing you find to it in the Old Testament is fasting and wearing sackcloth, which are a lot less dangerous than flogging yourself. In the New Testament, with Christ’s perfect sacrifice to atone for our sins, there is nothing we can add to that. We are commanded to mourn for our sins and turn away in hatred from them to do good works, but none of the Apostles tell us to do anything to get right with God other than believe in Jesus’s all-sufficient work.

      Have you heard any of these from skeptics of the Bible? Yes, they are stupid things to say, but, no, the Bible doesn’t say them. In fact, it says the opposite.

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      Laughing at Sin

      Comedy is a human tradition as old as art. The earliest practitioners of theatre, the Athenians, had many famous tragedies, but they also entered comedies in their competitions. Some of us devote half an hour a week for the space of a decade for shows like Cheers and Friends (okay, I’m exaggerating there, but you get the idea). Comedy is extremely varied, but much of it involves sinful actions. A character makes an underhanded scheme that blows up in his face. Someone lies and gets found out. Some shows devote most of their airtime to sexual jokes, obscenities, and profanities.

      Several pastors I know of have said that it is wrong for Christians to laugh at sinful situations. I can understand their concern. Sin is a deadly serious matter. One way or another, every sin is going to result in a curse, whether it’s Christ becoming accursed for us on the Cross or that person becoming accursed forever in Hell. What could possibly be funny about that?

      Well, despite the prevalence of comedy in our culture, the Bible says fairly little about it. One admonition it does give is that obscenity, foolish talking, and crude joking are not fitting for saints (Ephesians 5:4). While this does not quite answer the question of if we can laugh at those things as long as they’re not coming out of our own mouths, it does indicate to me that we should steer clear of shows where that’s the common fare. So, a whole bunch of current shows are out. Back when television standards were more tight-laced, however, there were still plenty of hilarious, albeit more refined, shows. And I don’t suppose an instance or two of those things means we can’t ever watch an episode of the show ever again. Can we avoid those things in their entirety without going out of the world?

      But, let’s say the humor isn’t dirty, but otherwise sinful. The underhanded scheme gone wrong, the lie that gets found out, the lazy person trying to get out of a commitment, etc. I don’t think we’re laughing because we approve of those things or even because we wouldn’t think they were a big deal in reality. I think what makes them funny is the irony when the guilty party admits what they’re doing openly to or tries some weak excuse- in other words, it’s funny because, while we might think such things, none of us would dare to state our underhanded purpose so blatantly. The British comedies Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister make fun of the bureaucratic mentality. When Sir Humphrey or one of the civil servants says what they’re up to or what their reasoning is, it’s funny because we know bureaucrats really think that way but a real one would never admit it in such plain language. Or it’s funny because the person gets themselves in a tight, awkward position through their scheming- we don’t approve of it, and it’s amusing to see them get their just desserts, usually in a broadly predictable pattern with a slightly ironic nuance.

      One sin I think we should avoid as much as possible is blasphemy. In most shows today, there will be multiple “OMG”s and other taking of the Lord’s name in vain. Frankly, it would be best for us if we were as reticent about taking God’s name in vain as we are in using the N-word. The Bible is extremely reticent about this sin. I can’t think of a single time someone blasphemes and the Bible actually reports their words. It says, “The person blasphemed,” or, “On it were written blasphemous names.” If the Biblical writers are so determined not to expose their readers to blasphemy, I think we should do our best to avoid it although, again, the only way to avoid that completely is to never associate with a non-Christian again, and obviously that’s not what we’re supposed to do.

      As a general rule, though, I think laughing at such sins, as long as we’re not tempted to do them ourselves, is okay. My chief evidence for this is Psalm 2. The whole world is arraying itself against God and Christ, and God’s first reaction is, “He that sitteth in the Heavens shall laugh. The Lord shall have them in derision.” Humor is largely based on irony, and what could be more ironic than utterly dependent creatures openly resisting the omnipotent God?

      So, I think we need to understand what’s making us laugh in these comedy shows. Laughter doesn’t always mean that it’s not a big deal in reality. What we usually laugh at are carefully contrived fictional scenarios that bring out ironic words from the characters’ mouths. Were someone really doing these things to us, we wouldn’t be laughing. That said, there are things the Bible fairly clearly states we should do our best not to expose ourselves to. As always, we have to keep the glory of God foremost in our mind.

      Posted on by deliberationsatmimirswell

      Infant Baptism- The Odds Are in Our Favor

      Having dealt with one controversy, I should like to plunge into another, namely, infant baptism. My denomination baptizes believers’ children in addition to new converts, and I shall make the case that that is the proper way to do things.

      First of all, though, I should like to say that I don’t think this is an issue worth splitting churches or denominations over. Given that Christ had Christian unity most on His heart before His death in the High Priestly Prayer, I think it’s arrogant, even sinful, how fractious the Christian Church has become. Churches, or at any rate denominations, should only be split when the current church is unrepentantly practicing something evil and dangerous. Thus, when the Catholic Church made a thorough practice of substituting or adding all kinds of things to salvation besides faith, grace, Scripture, and Christ, there was clear Scriptural warrant for the Protestants to break off. The Protestants then took to splitting off from each other in a quarrelsome spirit that is, frankly, disreputable to the Church. Growing up, I had a Muslim friend who thought one of the reasons Islam was more correct was how Christians couldn’t agree on their doctrine among all those denominations when Islam has only two branches whose differences he didn’t think were doctrinal but merely political. (The fact that those two branches were slaughtering each other in Iraq at the time didn’t seem to have much weight with him). Anyway, if it were truly evil to baptize infants or not baptize them, I think we’d have a bold print verse saying, “Thou shalt/shalt not baptize infants.” As it is, we have to go with clues from Scripture as to which way God prefers it, and I think the odds are on the side of the infant baptizers.

      I live in a predominantly Baptist part of the country, so I heard their arguments in my theology class. They liked to say how the baptisms in the New Testament are all adult baptisms. “Repent and be baptized, it says, so you have to repent before you’re baptized.” “Well, hold on,” we infant baptizers say, “What about all the household baptisms in Acts?” There are four, and presumably the Apostles abided by this practice in many other instances as well. A household in those days consisted of immediate family, extended family, servants, etc.- the people under the paterfamilias’s protection and authority. What are the odds all of those households had no children whatsoever? John Piper counters that off the top of his head he can name four households in his congregation with no children, but there’s no escaping the fact that the most basic and most typical household consists of parents and children. That being the case, presumably the Holy Spirit would have clarified that the commonest conception of a household was not what He had in mind, especially if not doing so would lead most of the Church to do something wrong. It’s not hard to write, “along with all the adults of his/her household,” or, “along with his/her household, who were all believing adults.”

      The clear implication of Colossians 2:11-12 is that circumcision has replaced baptism as the sign of covenant membership. Paul contrasts circumcision made with hands with a spiritual circumcision that comes from Christ and links that spiritual circumcision with baptism. It’s not something you do to announce your allegiance to God; it’s something He does to mark you out as a member of the covenant community. The Bible is clear that children are part of the covenant community. Jesus welcomed children and blessed them, and is there any other way to read Paul’s statement in I Corinthians 7:14 that the children of at least one believing parent are “holy”? Paul cannot be saying that having an unbelieving spouse is a magic formula for ensuring regenerate children since history has shown that to not be the case. Instead, he’s saying that children under the authority of a believing parent are, for that time at least, part of the covenant community, and if they are, why withhold from them the mark of admission to that community?

      Baptists are apparently terrified and/or indignant that we would put a mark of covenant membership on an infant who may very well grow up to be a nonbeliever. Apparently, God doesn’t share that concern. He explicitly required circumcision of all male infants in Israel as a mark of His covenant with Abraham, and we know from the Old Testament that most of them wound up faithless and perverse. Nevertheless, God said that if they weren’t circumcised, they would be cut off from the covenant community. Given that baptism has replaced circumcision as the covenant sign, that’s about as close to an explicit command one way or the other where infants are concerned, and in this case it’s clearly a mandate to mark the covenant children.

      Or perhaps you still don’t believe baptism has replaced circumcision. Here’s another question of probability. After countless generations of mandatory marking of their male children, Jewish Christians were suddenly told, “Neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision.” If baptism didn’t replace circumcision as the sign of covenant membership, or if it wasn’t to be applied to infants, what are the odds that Jewish Christians didn’t ask, and Paul didn’t have to explicitly write a negative answer to, “Well, what do we mark our children with?” Or, put another way, circumcision was explicitly the sign and symbol of belonging to the Old Covenant, and what else is Baptism but the sign and symbol of belonging to the New Covenant?

      Now, I will admit, I got a little uneasy with infant baptism when I read the Westminster Catechism say that in baptism a “solemn vow [is] made,” which “obliges” us to obedience. For the longest time, I thought, “Wow. That’s the worst thing you can do to a child who turns out an unbeliever to oblige them to obedience with a solemn vow that they can do nothing but break.” In fact, that was the reasoning of Tertullian, the first recorded critic of infant baptism. Well, besides God not having a problem with doing that to unbelieving Israelites, recently I had the “duh” moment that, “Everyone’s already obliged to obey God anyway, baptism or no!” So, no, I don’t think baptizing an infant who turns out an unbeliever increases their punishment any more than it would be already for rebelling against godly parents’ admonitions.

      So, from the clues we have from Scripture, it seems more likely than not that the Apostolic Church baptized infants and that we should too. That is certainly the plain reading of the texts. That said, I don’t think we should split the Reformed camp into Baptists and Presbyterians over it. Y’all should just come over to the Presbyterian camp! 😉

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      How (Not) to Read Revelation, Part II: What Did Jesus and Paul Really Mean?

      Well, now that tax season’s finished, I’d like to pick up where I left off. My last post looked at Revelation and concluded that John did not mean to set out a linear course of events by which we’ll know when the Second Coming is. So what is Jesus talking about when He says in the Olivet Discourse, “When ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors” (Matthew 24:33, KJV)? He describes some pretty unusual things occurring, somewhat along the lines of Revelation. I would posit that all the extraordinary events He talks about here were signs of the fall of Jerusalem. He says, “This generation shall not pass till all these things be fulfilled” (24:34, KJV). To a Jewish audience, a generation would have meant a span of 40 years. Jesus said these words in approximately 30 A.D., and Jerusalem fell in 70, so there’s your generation. Moreover, note how Luke abbreviates his account of the Olivet Discourse. The disciples don’t ask about the Second Coming in Luke’s account, but Jesus still says that, “This generation shall not pass away till all this be fulfilled” (21:32, KJV). Evidently, these things are not referring to the Second Coming. Luke doesn’t mention the part about not knowing the day or the hour. I think this was the Holy Spirit’s subtle way of telling us how to interpret the extraordinary events of the Olivet Discourse.

      Of course, how does this prediction measure up with what we know happened? Can we link all the signs to things we know happened? That interpretation actually makes a lot of sense. As far as nation rising against nation, there were a lot of wars in the 60s. Boudicca and the Britons famously rebelled against Rome, as did the Batavians, not to mention of course the Jews. Worst, Nero’s suicide in 68 A.D. led to the famous Year of Four Emperors in 69 A.D. There was civil war between four Roman emperors, a bloody event the likes of which only a centenarian, if there was any, had seen in living memory. This was the Pax Romana, after all, and Roman generals had not fought each other since Actium in 31 B.C. At one point, part of Rome burned, and Druids were proclaiming that the fall of Rome was near, a very dire prediction for people who had known a century of stability under its (admittedly stern) sway.

      As for earthquakes, those were a common feature of the era. The most devastating disruption of the earth in this period, Mt. Vesuvius’s destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum, actually occurred 9 years after the fall of Jerusalem, but it was only an extreme example of a trend that had been going on for some time before Jerusalem’s fall. As for famine, we know of at least one from the book of Acts, and no doubt there were others. The Church in Jerusalem, who would be the ones most interested in Jesus’s prophecy, needed widespread financial support from the Church throughout the world, as shown by Paul’s letters. Certainly, the persecution depicted so vividly in the Discourse occurred in Acts as well. Of course, there remains the most spectacular stuff, the signs in the heavens. Well, both the Jews (via Josephus) and the Romans (via Tacitus) reported seeing strange things in the sky during the Siege of Jerusalem.

      The early Church took to heart what Jesus said about fleeing Jerusalem in this event. At one point, when the Romans inexplicably withdrew from besieging the city, the Christians took advantage of the opportunity and left the city, such that not a hair of their heads perished, as Jesus had said.

      Now, I’ve been mostly looking at Luke’s account for the predictions. Matthew’s does put what seems to be a clear description of the Second Coming in verses 24:27-31, which comes before the part about relying on the signs to know it is near and the generation not passing away until these things happen. I think this is a parenthetical aside, a digression from the subject of the fall of Jerusalem for comparison to the Second Coming, which is not to be included in the “all these things happening before the generation is gone.” Indeed, to include them with the signs that will make us know when it is near is to contradict Jesus’s saying that we won’t know the day and hour.

      So that’s what I think about Jesus’s and John’s depictions of the Second Coming. I will say I have a harder time with Paul’s since he does seem to indicate that certain noticeable events will take place before it. Romans 11 pretty clearly describes a large number of Jews turning to Jesus when they see the Gentiles’ relationship with their Messiah, and that has not happened yet. His statement that their reconciliation with God will be “life from the dead” (v. 15, KJV) does seem to indicate this will be part of the end of the world. I really don’t know what to make of this, though I think it does mean we should be praying and reaching out for the Jews to recognize their King since it will be something great.

      Then there’s the matter of II Thessalonians 2, where Paul specifically says that rebellion and the Man of Lawlessness will come before the Christ’s coming. I think the best interpretation is probably that Nero was the Man of Lawlessness and that Paul is largely referring to his persecution and the fall of Jerusalem, which were supposed to happen before the Second Coming. Now that these things have happened, Christ can return at any second. If we turn them into signs of Christ’s imminent coming, we make Jesus talk out of both sides of His mouth. On the one hand we have him telling the Twelve Apostles no one knows the time of His coming, and then on the other we have Him telling the Apostle to the Gentiles to give the Thessalonians signs of His coming. We’d be dangerously close to a contradiction in the Bible or at the least Jesus wasting His inspiration giving signs for an event that don’t help the hearers know when it’s going to happen.

      These are all very controversial passages, of course. In this case, I think the safest thing to do is fall back on Jesus’s very plain statement that the Second Coming will occur while business is going on as usual with nothing we can use to know when it’s coming. However we interpret these other passages, we shouldn’t contradict something so unambiguous. He taught a lot about His Second Coming, but when He gave all those signs, He must have been referring to His coming in judgment over Jerusalem, not over the whole world at its end. I don’t think it’s helpful to compare every world leader we don’t like to one of the beasts or read Revelation while watching the news. However you interpret Revelation, it’s not going to tell you the day or the hour.

      Posted on by deliberationsatmimirswell

      How (Not) to Read Revelation, Part I: What Did John Really Mean?

      Is there a book in history as controversial as Revelation? How many books have close to as many schools of interpretation as it does, each with their own variations inside them? I’m not even sure of the name of my own school of interpretation, and I wouldn’t tell you if I did in case that would make you tune me out. I’m not confident about the interpretation of every symbol John saw, but I can tell you a whole bunch of Christians are reading it wrong.

      Here’s what I will say I believe. I think the best interpretation is that the main part with all the signs and extraordinary events is a cycle of visions (usually counted at 7) telling the same story with different emphases and intensities. You can see that many things are repeated throughout the story that you would think would only happen once. For instance, chapter 6 has the stars falling to earth and mountains and islands being removed. Then in 12:4 the Dragon pulls down a third of stars from heaven, and in 8:11 another star called Wormwood falls from the sky. In 16:20 the islands and mountains disappear again. “Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen!” is proclaimed in 14:8 and again in 18:2. A voice calls out, “It is done,” in 16:17, then John sees some more things happening, and then Jesus says, “It is done,” again in 21:6. If this were a linear progression of events, why the first, “It is done,” if there’s more to follow before, “It is done,” again?

      I think the point of Revelation is to reveal the cosmic conflict that goes on every day as the Church struggles against a fallen world. I don’t think we should identify any one person we really don’t like as one of the beasts, but rather that when tyrannical governments everywhere imprison and execute Christians because they won’t put the state first in their hearts, we see the first beast at work. We don’t have that problem as much in America, but we do have the Whore of Babylon tempting us away from our spiritual duties with promises of material affluence and sensual pleasures.

      Of course, the strongest argument against Revelation predicting the signs of the Second Coming is that Jesus said there wouldn’t be any.

      Anyway, I can tell you what Revelation is not. It is not a linear depiction of all the extraordinary things that will precede the Second Coming of Christ like many Christians make it. For one thing, Christ is born in Chapter 12, midway through a book that starts after His Resurrection. For another, everyone who has tried to predict the Second Coming as imminent in his own day based on Revelation’s “clues” about his current events has been wrong so far. Every generation or so, the interpreters have to reformulate what the symbols stand for according to what’s going on at that time, though the job never wants for volunteers. Would God give a book in the first century that no one in the Church would understand its true meaning for 2,000 years?

      Of course, the strongest argument against Revelation predicting the signs of the Second Coming is that Jesus said there wouldn’t be any. This is a case where we must fall back on the tried-and-true method of interpreting ambiguous Scripture with more explicit Scripture. In Matthew’s version of the Olivet Discourse, the Apostles ask two questions: “When shall these things (the destruction of the Temple) be? And what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?” (24:3, KJV). As I interpret it, Jesus answers the first question and gives them signs about the fall of Jerusalem, and then He answers the second question that, “Of that day and hour (My Coming) knoweth no man” and that ,“Ye know not what hour your Lord doth come” (24:36; 24:42, KJV). I really doubt Jesus told His disciples that they wouldn’t know when He would come again and then gave them a whole book full of signs that would precede it. In fact, He says that He will come “in such an hour as you think not” (24:44, KJV), so evidently Revelation isn’t much use in regards to predicting the time of the Second Coming anyway.

      Moreover, the depiction Revelation supposedly gives of the Last Days is significantly at variance with Jesus’s. He says that people will be “eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage” (24:38, KJV); in other words, life will be going on as usual. That’s not what Revelation depicts. The people can’t eat and drink because they’re gnawing their tongues in anguish and the water has become blood, and they’re not likely to be having weddings while seventy-five-pound hailstones are falling from the sky.

      So, bottom line: I think the Church has been seeing the prophecies in Revelation being fulfilled for the past 2,000 years. I don’t think it was written to just describe events that have happened in the last 50 years or so. What I do know is that you can’t use it to predict the time of Christ’s coming; we have Jesus’s explicit statement that we won’t know that. Tune in next week for a discussion of what Jesus said about the Last Days.

      Posted on by deliberationsatmimirswell

      Six More Stupid Things People Think the Bible Says, Which It Doesn’t

      A while back I did a post demonstrating with six examples that to find something manifestly ridiculous in the Bible to criticize about it, you have to make it up (if you missed it, check it out here: https://deliberationsatmimirswell.blog/2018/08/05/stupid-things-people-think-the-bible-says-which-it-doesnt/). Anyway, here are 6 more:

      1. Racism- People think that the Bible condones racism against people of African descent. It’s true that that was the position of Southern slaveholders to justify themselves, but that’s really not what the Bible says. They said that in Genesis 9, when Noah got so drunk he passed out naked in his tent and his son Ham looked on him, Noah cursed Ham and his descendants into servitude to Shem and Japheth. Since the traditional understanding was that Africans descended from Ham and Europeans descended from Japheth, they reasoned that they had Biblical grounds for enslaving Africans. Well, actually, Noah curses Ham’s son Canaan, and this curse was played out in Israel’s conquest of Canaan in the Book of Joshua. As far as racism against Africans goes, consider Numbers 12, wherein it’s related that a Hebrew as saintly as Moses married an Ethiopian. Aaron and Miriam take offense at this, and in response to Miriam’s racism, God makes her white as snow- with leprosy! It definitely doesn’t look like interracial marriage bothers God at all.
      2. Male domination- Some people think the Bible was written by tyrannical patriarchs to support some sort of agenda to subjugate women. Yes, it’s true that the Bible states that the husband and father is the spiritual head of the household. Yes, women are told to submit to and honor their husbands. Yes, the Bible is very strict about the grounds over which a woman can divorce her husband. But the Bible has no comforts for an abusive husband and father. In Roman society, the paterfamilias had almost unrestricted control over his household, even getting to say when a baby would be exposed on a mountainside or trash heap to die. They were also notorious for their adultery, be it with slaves or prostitutes. To counteract this “toxic masculinity,” Paul told Roman husbands to “love your wives, even as Christ also loved the Church and gave himself for her […] so ought men to love their wives as their own bodies […] for no man ever yet hated his own flesh, but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the Church” (Ephesians 5:25, 28, 29, KJV). Yes, he’s the boss, and he’s the tiebreaking vote, but he’s not a tyrant. Peter tells husbands to “dwell with them according to knowledge [and here some translations have “understanding” or “consideration”], giving honor unto the wife as unto the weaker vessel” (I Peter 3:7), and he warns abusive husbands that being abusive will “hinder” their prayers. If a feminist has trouble submitting to a husband like Peter and Paul’s model for him, then that’s on her, not Scripture.
      3. Adornment- While we’re on I Peter 3, let’s back up a few verses to verse 3, wherein Peter states that, with regards to “adorning, let it not be that outward adorning, of plaiting the hair, and of wearing of gold, or of putting on of apparel.” Some people interpret this as a prohibition against all make-up and jewelry, but here as so often in Scripture, the “not” here means “not so much as.” Clearly, we have to interpret it this way, as an absolute “not” would ban wearing clothes! The point is that the Bible prescribes modesty in our outward appearance and a focus on inward thoughts and attitudes. Focusing too much on appearance or trying to call people’s attention to our outward beauty is unhealthy and causes us to overlook more important matters. Still, gold and make-up are allowed if reasonable. God Himself metaphorically says He gave Israel bracelets, a necklace, and earrings in Ezekiel 16, and God tells the Israelites in Exodus 3:22 to ask for jewelry from the Egyptians as they are leaving.
      4. Shellfish- I saw on a site titled, “25 Things the Bible Says Not to Do, But You Do Anyway,” or something like that, the prohibition against eating shellfish. Yes, there’s a whole list of things Old Testament Israel was not supposed to eat. Besides being limited to food that was safer with their primitive means of preparing it, this was a symbol to Israel of being set apart from the pagan Gentiles. Now that God has opened His Gospel call to all nations, these laws are no longer necessary. In fact, God specifically rescinds the kosher laws when he shows Peter a blanket full of unclean animals and says, “Rise, Peter, kill and eat” (Acts 10:13), tellingly, right before Peter meets with Gentiles who are interested in hearing the Gospel. I don’t care for shellfish myself, but if you do, God won’t condemn you for eating it.
      5. Women wearing pants- On the basis of Deuteronomy 22:5, some people have a problem with women wearing pants. The typical translation follows the KJV: “The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth to a man, neither shall a man put on a woman’s garment.” Well, for one thing, this is not a particularly good translation. The Hebrew is closer to prohibiting a woman from “bearing the accoutrements of a gibbor.” A gibbor is the term used for David’s “mighty men,” his elite warriors. But, really, the intent is for both sexes to maintain a distinct appearance based on what their culture associates with each gender. It seems pretty easy to me to tell women’s pants from guys’ pants, so that shouldn’t be a problem. A lot of this is cultural, as demonstrated by the fact that some of Britain’s finest gibborim, the Highlanders, wore kilts, whereas we would think of that as a decidedly feminine look. But in the wet ground of the Highlands, men working in bogs and heaths found skirts more practical than trousers, which were more for the rich gentlemen who had servants to carry them over water so their feet wouldn’t get wet. There’s a deeper issue than just a blanket prohibition on one type of clothes for everybody.
      6. God wants us to be miserable for our sin- When people think of the Puritans, they think of dour, humorless people oppressed by guilt. Besides the fact that this image isn’t true of most Puritans, it shouldn’t be true of any Christian either. God wants us to repent of our sin, and while much of that involves grief for the evil we’ve done, the other major part is finding joy in God’s ways rather than in our fleshly ways. Tellingly, there are only 7 psalms that include a really marked penitential element, but there are far more praising God. Joy is one of the fruits of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22. In fact, several times in his writings, the great Puritan Thomas Watson says that Christians going around all sulky and miserable is an insult to God that would turn people away from following Him.
      Posted on by deliberationsatmimirswell

      Christmas- A Study in Humility

      Theologians often speak of the earthly ministry of Christ up to His death as His humiliation and the period ever after as His exaltation. This Christmas, I’d like to delve a little more deeply into the humility aspect. Quite frankly, it takes my breath away. I don’t think I can do justice to it, but here goes…

      I think we’re all pretty familiar with how humble the first Christmas was. Jesus’ parents were poor, so poor that a few days after Christmas they had to present the second-rate sacrifice for a firstborn specifically designated as relief for impoverished Israelites. Jesus’ first bed, as we all know, was a food trough. God called shepherds to be the first witnesses, and these people were far from royal heralds. There is a belief among Christians that shepherds’ testimony was not admissible. That is, if their saying that the Messiah had been born had been brought before the Sanhedrin, they could have been laughed out of the court.

      But that’s just the beginning. For thirty years Jesus lived a life of quiet righteousness, obeying every part of the Mosaic Law but doing so little as far as the spectacular goes that the Gospels only record one event from this time period. No, He didn’t perform miracles or show off; John says His turning the water into wine after His baptism was the first sign He did. When He prepared to teach, He called uneducated fishermen with uncultured Galilean accents to be His disciples. He defended Himself resolutely against the effrontery of opponents who thought they knew so much more about the Law than He, but when these arguments turned violent, He either hid Himself or simply let them blindfold Him, spit on Him, slap Him, and finally nail Him to the cross. To any Jew this was a sure sign of God’s curse upon Him, and Romans held crucifixion in such horror that you didn’t mention the word in polite company. And even someone suffering that same fate still held himself high enough over Jesus to mock Him in His misery.

      But consider what Jesus’ birthright was. He created the world and everything in it! To quote the old Jacobite song about Bonnie Prince Charlie during his time as a fugitive, “On hills that are by right his own, he roves a lonely stranger.” He could have called down fire on His enemies justly any time He had wanted to. In fact, His disciples suggested this to Him. Instead, “I gave my back to the smiters and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair” (Isaiah 50:6). Instead of stupid disciples who misunderstood Him at every turn and the praise of fickle crowds who eventually called for his death and picked a criminal in preference to Him, His right had been constant love from His perfect Father and their Holy Spirit and the praise of tens of thousands of perfect angels. To sum up His ministry, Jesus said, “For even the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister” (Mark 10:45).

      Which we should consider next time we want to stick up for our “rights.” There’s a place for basic human dignity as a God’s image-bearer and protection of one’s rights, but sometimes there are more important things than some “rights” we think we have. Paul told the Corinthians they should rather let their Christian brothers defraud them than embarrass the Church and hinder the Gospel by making a case of it before the entire world. He repeatedly described how he gave up some of his rights for the sake of furthering the Gospel or to build up fellow believers. We should not be quick to point out every fault or criticize (let alone avenge!) every wrong done to us. For serious wrongs, Jesus gave a procedure for dealing with them (that involved keeping things as quiet as possible), but for many of the smaller things He said, “For charity shall cover the multitude of sins” (I Peter 4:8). He also issued a grave warning for those who would insist on their “rights” against penitent transgressors when God did not insist on His infinitely greater right against them.

      While recognition is nice and a natural human longing, Jesus sought the infinitely more valuable recognition from God the Father.

      Christmas is a time to remember Peter’s instruction, “Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God that He may exalt you in due time” (I Peter 5:6). People will do horrendously stupid things to be the center of attention. They’ll make fools of themselves before the world on Television and Internet, thinking themselves wise, or they’ll delight in mocking such people to feel superior. They’ll break promises to score cheap political points, or they’ll backstab to get ahead. What they want is the acclaim of man. While recognition is nice and a natural human longing, Jesus sought the infinitely more valuable recognition from God the Father.

      And He got it. The same night He was sleeping in a food trough, a company of angels were proclaiming His praises against the backdrop of God’s Shekinah glory. Meanwhile, a special star commissioned by God was proclaiming His birth and whereabouts to neighboring Parthia’s elite who came to offer Him some of the finest gifts in the known world. God audibly affirmed His love of Him and claimed Him as His Son twice, and He was acknowledged as the great coming one by the first prophet to appear in Israel for 400 years.

      But the big reward, like for us, came after His death. Paul said that, because of Jesus’ willingness to undergo such utter humiliation, God “hath highly exalted Him and given Him a Name which is above every name” (Philippians 2:9). Jesus’ glory right now is so great that one of His best friends fainted at the sight of Him. This is to say nothing of His official enthronement as King of the Universe.

      One of the lessons of Christmas is that we should be worrying far more about what God thinks of us than what the world thinks. No bystander looking at a baby of peasants lying in a food trough would think that they were looking at their eternal Sovereign. When we stop seeking the world’s acclaim, we’re in a better state to seek the much more satisfying words from God, “Well done, good and faithful servant” (Matthew 25:21).

      Posted on by deliberationsatmimirswell

      The Gospel According to Caiaphas

      Many liberal intellectuals believe that people sin out of ignorance. With enough instruction and correction (though without using any forms of discipline that might hurt any feelings), humans can be perfected and the golden age ushered in. Well, that is not how the Bible portrays it. Jesus’s opponents in the Gospels have a very clear understanding of what Jesus is saying and oppose Him anyway.

      In fact, often the unbelievers in the story have a better grasp on what Jesus said than His own disciples. After the crucifixion, the disciples have lost all hope. They assume Jesus is gone forever, completely forgetting the fact that He told them three times He would rise from the dead. The chief priests, however, are well aware of this prediction. Even if they don’t believe Jesus will rise again, they fear the disciples making it look like He has (which the disciples are far too demoralized to do) because they know that if Christianity can preach the resurrection, it will be unstoppable. Or, as they put it, “The last error shall be worse than the first” (Matthew 27:64, KJV).

      Jesus’s opponents realized what so many people today deny- that Jesus claimed to be divine. They just didn’t believe Him. At the beginning of His ministry, when He announces forgiveness of sins to the paralytic, they assume He’s blaspheming because they know only God can forgive sins. Several times in John’s Gospel, Jesus’s claims of His unique relationship with the Father drive the Jews to try to stone Him for making Himself equal with God. Finally, they get the chance they’ve been waiting for when Jesus affirms He is the Son of God in front of all of them at His trial when they ask Him. Critics of the Bible today try to weasel out of Jesus’s statement by missing the contextual forest for the semantic trees. Because He literally says in Matthew and Luke, “You say that I am,” they claim He was denying divinity, but the chief priest’s reaction shows that he took it as an affirmation, especially considering Jesus’s going on to affirm that they will see Him coming in the clouds with power. The critics should also note how Mark reports Jesus simply affirming that He is the Son of God, reporting the plain gist of Jesus’s words rather than His exact statement. They should also note how in Matthew a few verses before Jesus answers the high priests, “You say that I am,” He uses the same answer to unquestionably affirm that Judas is the traitor. What He means is not, “You say that I am, but I say I’m not,” but rather, “You already know the answer to what you’re asking me.” Earlier they had asked, “Are we blind also?” To which Jesus had replied, “If ye were blind, ye should have no sin. But now ye say, ‘We see,’ therefore your sin remaineth” (John 9:40-41, KJV).

      They also knew what He required of them. That’s largely why they hated Him. He rejected their external traditions and demanded the much more rigorous life of self-sacrifice. They knew that if they followed him, they would have to stop doing the things that got them glory from man and do some real soul-searching and living for others. One of them, the Apostle Paul, realized when he met Christ that whatever he had thought he was gaining from being a Pharisee he would have to count as loss relative to what Jesus called him to.

      All of the Gospels report rich ironies in their Passion narratives. Despite Jesus’s opponents doing all they can to obstruct Him, they wind up unwittingly affirming His truth or furthering His Kingdom by fulfilling Scripture. At Palm Sunday, the Pharisees cried out, “Perceive ye how ye prevail nothing? Behold, the world is gone after Him” (John 12:19, KJV). Though they were utterly frustrated, they knew where He was going. Ironically, the chief priests make a big deal about mocking Jesus’s being the King of the Jews and the Son of God at His crucifixion when Jesus didn’t make a big deal of those titles during His ministry. Yes, He knew He was God’s Son and the Davidic King of Israel, but He preferred to call Himself the Son of Man.

      Jesus’s opponents wanted Him crucified because hanging on a tree represented God’s curse in the Old Testament Law. They felt a cursed death was fitting for one who claimed to be the Son of God, not realizing that Jesus was dying a cursed death because He was the obedient Son of God. Similarly, they scoff that, “He saved others; Himself He cannot save” (Matthew 27:42, KJV), when the reason He can’t save Himself is precisely because He’s saving others. They go on to taunt Him that God can save Him if He really wants Him, which is precisely what David predicted Jesus’s enemies would say in Psalm 22.

      So, apparently, ignorance wasn’t really Jesus’s opponents’ problem. Their problem was suppressing the truth in unrighteousness. They understood what He was saying and knew that He was accomplishing signs to verify it, and they went ahead and opposed Him anyway. So much for enlightening humanity into perfection. If people understood Jesus’s teaching and it didn’t perfect them, I don’t think there’s much hope of liberal education perfecting them. Knowing what’s right is not nearly the same as doing what’s right.