The Fear of the Lord.

"Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil." -Ecc. 12:13-14

It has often been supposed that Solomon here renders an entirely new light on his previous treatise, like a resolved chord does to the entire melody of a song, or Amneris' prayer for peace at the end of Aida does to the whole of Verdi's tragedy. Peter Enns, like a good delusional Mennonite, suggests that this verse is in fact an editorial gloss provided to cast the reader out of the sinkhole of Qohelet's thinking. To him we may well quote Luther, who responded to the detractors of Ecclesiastes by saying:

"Does the Holy Spirit like to indulge in loquacious and foolish babble?"

This is apparently what most of the church thinks when it comes to Ecclesiastes, and it will do nearly everything to thrust this book into the attic of scriptural inquiry.

I have a practical rule which I apply faithfully to my canonical doubts: those pieces of scripture which are most ferociously hated and discarded the most frequently by the largest groups of religious individuals are most likely the Word of God. They must be doubted and questioned the least, for there is scarcely a word of prophecy that hasn't sent Israel and the church a-reeling into fanatical contempt for it.

The fear of the Lord, his commandments, and the duty binding on man does not provide man with an escape out of his meaningless condition. It is rather the commandment itself, which provides a duty for man, in which fear is enjoined, that creates a global situation of meaninglessness.

Paul sums up this argument quite well when he says: "When the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died" and "the law was added so that the transgression might increase" and "the power of sin is the law." Ecclesiastes already suggests that the source of meaninglessness for the "wise" man is that he, like the fool, must DIE (2:16). In fact death throws all of our deeds and our accomplishments into disarray and vacuousness (9:6).

An Observation

The myth of historical female oppression was invented by woman in order to find some objective grounds for hating man. The order commonly assumed (woman discovers that she is subjugated by man, woman decides to hate man) must be reversed if we are to gain true insight into the problem: it is woman who created a situation of oppression in order to subjugate man. This situation itself is a work of bad faith, for even in those moments where women succeed in half-believing their myth, they are required by a twofold leap to attach an gratuitous ethical value to this history (what man did was evil) and a practical application (we are justified in responding in kind). The latter, to those precious few among the female intellect who possess clarity, is particularly troubling, for it bears within itself the seeds of the whole destruction of woman's machination. If certain historical situations justify contempt and vitriol for the male sex, is there not then the possibility that certain historical situations could justify contempt and vitriol for the female sex? And what if the myth, taken from the point of view of its assumption in bad faith, is precisely one of those situations? 

Naturally there will always be cases in history where the man got the upper hand over woman and used his victory to torment her. It is odd, however, that these cases (really, however many) have morphed into a universal rule. Be wary of universal rules applied to history in the realms of thought which we may call controversial.

Who teaches THIS?

"For we also have had the gospel preached to us, just as they [Israel] did; but the message they heard was of no value to them, because those who heard did not combine it with faith." -Hebrews 4:2

In an important, eternal, bounteous sense, Israel HAD the gospel. Not merely an abstract message of an abstract God and an abstract kingdom. Israel had the GOOD NEWS OF JESUS CHRIST. This is the significance of the following passages of scripture:

"Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing MY (εμήν) day; he saw it and was glad." -John. 8:56

"Isaiah...saw Jesus' glory and spoke about him." John 12:41

"[Israel] drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ." -1 Cor.10:4

Israel had Christ, for the gospel is bound up in Christ and cannot be preached without Him as the center and the foundation of the proclamation.

Scholarship has renounced this way. Accordingly, scholarship must be renounced.

Das Problem: Thomas Schreiner

"My goal is to read the message of the OT in its historical context. At the same time, I try to read the OT as the NT authors read it. The historical voice of the biblical writer is attended to and respected, but at the same time the canonical voice of the divine author is also heeded. I don’t limit myself to what Leviticus means within the ambit of the Pentateuch but also ask what it means in light of the revelation that has come in Jesus Christ. In other words, how does the coming of Jesus reshape and reconfigure our reading of Leviticus? Such an attempt does not nullify the historical meaning of the book. In fact, I spend most of my time on the former, while also considering the contribution the book makes now that the Christ has come." -http://blog.bakeracademic.com/thomas-schreiner-why-i-wrote-the-king-in-his-beauty/ (emphasis added)

Yet another "evangelical" scholar who demonstrates his disinterest and embarrassment in the Christian confession that Jesus is God. Let me put this clearly, even though it should not have to be argued: if Jesus is God, then He is God. This means that He pre-exists the New Testament. He is the God of the Old Testament, for the God of the Old Testament is the One true God. Therefore, when we read the Old Testament and unfold its truths, we read about Jesus Christ and unfold the truth about Jesus Christ. This is child's play; this is milk rather than meat. It takes all of two seconds to realize the fucking connection, yet to this date be damned if a confessing Christian scholar will own up to the weightiness of this point!! I am petrified at the order of Schreiner's concerns, as if the Gospel and its implications are of less significance than "the historical meaning" of the OT, to which he devotes all of his time.

Have you seen a Christian scholar of Paul ever teach THIS?

"May their table become a snare and a trap, a stumbling block and a retribution for them. May their eyes be darkened so they cannot see, and their backs be bent forever." -Rom. 11:9-10

Paul cites this as an imprecation against the nation of Israel for its rejection of the gospel. "May their backs be bent forever...." holy cow. The oaths and imprecations of the Psalms are curses that God has sanctioned, and be they taken in the Christological or the Davidic (the lesser) sense, they are BINDING. God heard the prayers of David, how much more those of Christ?!!!

The modern scholar of Paul, preoccupied in making romans a palatably jewish document, a narrative of Israel's supposed right to boast before God, has to trip neatly by nearly the whole freaking book to arrive at his favorite verse: "And so all Israel will be saved." This is to him or her the only factum of weight. I am not so sure. Romans pledges this irrevocable promise on the basis of FAITH IN CHRIST (ie. Israel's acceptance of the gospel; Rom. 11:23!!!!!!!). So long as this is not the case with Israel, it is damned and lost, and finally not the true Israel. Oh that Christians would cease their unbelieving dialogues with modern jews, stop trying to twist this text into some sort of post-holocaust apology letter, and finally read the whole thing as it stands.

Are women made in the image of God?

"ανηρ μεν γαρ ουκ οϕείλει κατακαλυπτέσθαι την κεϕαλην εικων και δοξα θεου ύπάρχων· ή γυνη δε δoξα ανδρός εστιν" (1 Cor. 11:7)

This is no more nor less scripture than Galatians 3:28 or Genesis 1:27, and it takes on a provisional acuteness on account of its being vehemently rejected and scoffed at by this wicked and perverse age. Nevertheless, it remains no more nor less true than the rest of the words that God, who is truth, speaks. In it we learn that the honorable dignity of bearing the εικων θεου belongs properly to man, not woman. If it belonged to woman, Paul's argument that man ought not to cover his head would fall utterly to the ground. Conceive of this passage in any other way and it loses all rhetorical significance. An egalitarian gloss would look like this: "A man ought not to cover his head because he is the image and glory of God, but women are equally the image and glory of God yet they must cover their head. The because in the first clause is meaningless." One can see how foolish and absurd these snakes are when they handle the scripture.

I find no evidence which would suggest that women have the imago dei, and this scripture stands solidly against the idea. The best argument one may proffer is an appeal to Genesis 1:27 which states:

"God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them."

Yet this verse does not anywhere say that women were created in the image of God. It only says that man was. The egalitarian has to devise a retroactive conclusion based on the fact that the last clause is placed in parallel with the others (leading her to suggest that male and female are both the "man" in question). There is no justification for this. A verse placed in parallel with another by no means signifies that the meanings of both collapse into each other. This is a very puerile notion indeed! Scripture abounds in synthetic parallelisms, where the final line adds to the contents of the first. This is quite naturally the case here, and the reading flows smoothest when it is taken in this way.

What we learn from Balaam.

This man of wickedness spoke the very words of the living God under a legitimate call and command. Woe betide King Balak of Moab should he refuse to listen!!

The canon of scripture is closed. I do not believe it possible for new "words of God" to be spoken because it seems to be the case that God wills to be silent. That being said, there is such a thing as wisdom and truth, to which God in his grace appoints certain men to have a share in. They can even be godless men; atheists, libertines, Adolf Hitlers, jews, pagans, homosexuals etc... God has given them wisdom to speak. It would be an error to make of this a principle; such would be the turning of godlessness into a call or an office. Yet woe betide those who are proffered wisdom from such as these and spurn it.