1 Peter 3:21

1 Peter 3:21, ἀλλὰ συνειδήσεως ἀγαθῆς ἐπερώτημα εἰς θεόν, “but the appeal (request) of a good conscience unto God.” The phrase “not the putting away the filth of the flesh, but the appeal of a good conscience unto God”, is parenthetical. Once we see that, we can see the connection between baptism and the resurrection of Christ. 

ἐπερώτημα does not mean “answer” as the King James suggests. Rather, it means to appeal, demand, question, or request. In the broader context of the passage, baptism points back to Israel’s Red Sea Crossing, but also to Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. In baptism, the conscience is appealing to God (or, God is appealed to on behalf of the conscience) to give to him or her what is demonstrated in baptism: namely, the benefits obtained through the work of Christ, i.e. salvation in all its fullness. And God responds, the passage tells us, by giving what is demonstrated and promised in baptism - He gives the benefits of the finished work of Christ. “Which also is baptism, the antitype, now saving you (y’all).” People get hung up on the phrase “not the putting away of the filth of the flesh”. But that doesn’t mean that it’s baptism, but not physical baptism. It means that washing dirt off of your body doesn’t save you - baptism isn’t like your morning shower. It is an external symbolic act with spiritual effects. 

Everybody, even the Baptist, demonstrates implicitly that they believe something transitional is happening in the act of baptism. The person being baptized transitions from one state of being to another. The person moves from being someone who is not baptized to being someone who is baptized. And so baptism does do something, contrary to the Baptist’s protests. Anybody that has spent time in Baptistic circles knows this.

Loki and Ant-Man

 Some realizations based off of recent Marvel rewatchings.

The second and third Ant Man films roughly copied, or maybe ripped off, “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe”. The tip-off is the fact that Hope tells us in the beginning of the second film that when she was a child and played hide and go seek with her mother, she would hide in a wardrobe. The film then gives us a reenactment of this. This isn’t just a simple allusion, but stretches through both films. The Quantum Realm is Narnia, Janet is Lucy, and Kang is the White Witch.

In the Loki show, there are regular references to the conflict between free will and religious dogma, or maybe more properly cosmological dogma. But what I haven’t heard anyone point out is that what is as much being questioned in the show is free will so-called versus Machiavellianism. This exchange  is what clued me in to it, from season one episode four:

Mobius: Yeah, I guess you don’t do partners. Unless, of course, it benefits you, and you intend to betray them at some point.

Loki: It was a means to an end, Mobius. Welcome to the real world. Down there, we’re awful to one another to get what we want.

Mobius: Now I gotta have a Prince tell me how the real world works?

Loki is the proponent of Machiavellianism, while Sylvie stands solidly on the side of free will. Their conflict arises amidst the hope that the two positions could somehow be reconciled as friends or lovers, but in the end it is impossible.

The Radicalist skepticism toward religion as anything other than a tool for power or the State is tangible.

You Must Be Born Again

 “Don’t marvel that I said to you that it’s necessary for you all to be born from above.” - John 3:7

1. The Greek word translated “above” here is also often translated as “again” in verse 3. Both are implied in the word and in the passage. People who were born once already had to be “born a second time”, with a heavenly birth, a birth that comes down from God - in fact, a birth that had come down from God in Jesus Himself. They weren’t discussing merely abstract spiritual ideas. There is implied in their conversation a historical-redemptive reality to that moment in time. It was grounded in real time and matter and space. Salvation had come down from heaven, from God, in Jesus.
2. “You all” - Jesus moves the conversation from talking about the rebirth of an individual (vs. 3), to talking to Nicodemus as a representative of Israel about their collective rebirth (vs. 7), to talking about the rebirth of the whole world, including both Jew and Gentile (vs. 14-18). The salvation Jesus was bringing was cosmic in scope, as testified by the Old Covenant prophets. He was bringing salvation to all mankind, a fact that Israel in general did not care to hear.
3. “It is necessary for you all to be born from above.” Jesus’ statement is a statement of fact, not a command. It is not something a man has to do himself, or even can do to himself. No man birthed himself the first time, and he cannot birth himself a second time. It must be of the Spirit of God.

Nationalist Nonsense and the Gospel

 Responding to the ongoing silliness from the anti-Semitic Nationalist crowd on another platform.

*****

As someone a bit older than most of the folks involved in this seemingly unending debate, this re-emergence of anti-Semitism (however it may disguise itself) is bizarre. Romans answers this all quite clearly - all are equally under sin. Israel’s punishment in 70 AD may have taken a unique form due to the covenant, but it was their following after the Gentiles in their wickedness, rather than worshipping and obeying Yahweh, that was the problem from the moment they left Egypt on until Yahweh divorced them. They followed the Gentiles. Their sin may have been worse in the Old Covenant due to their relationship to God. But we have greater light and blessing now, per Hebrews, making any Gentile sin today even worse. Treating Jews today as the same as those pre-70 AD is anachronistic.

Eros and Popular Christian Culture, part two

 Continuing yesterday’s line of thought, from a conversation elsewhere online.

Women can teach Scripture correctly and truthfully to a degree, and generally have right doctrine. They are allowed to teach women and children in a limited way, under the care and guidance of their husbands and their church leadership. But they aren’t allowed a formal position of teaching or preaching pastor as defined by the New Testament in the Church, and they aren’t allowed to teach men. Paul specifically says so in 1 Timothy 2:11-14, and this is reiterated in ch. 3. And history has proven how women tend to allow their own dispositions to misguide their understandings of Scripture. That’s exactly at the core of this conversation, and reinforced by Genesis 3, as Paul points out in 1 Timothy 2. You don’t see Priscilla acting independent of her husband, but with him. Adam and Eve specifically went wrong because Adam did not stop and correct Eve on her erroneous doctrine. That’s at the heart of what Paul said. One can’t get around the Scriptural point that women regularly tend to go off the rails doctrinally. It will offend some women, but it is what it is.

Eros and Popular Christian Culture

 Romantic language is used in Scripture to picture the collective relationship the Church has with Christ, not the relationship any individual believer has with Christ. The Church is Christ’s Bride. No individual believer is Christ’s Bride. But even then the Greek word “Eros” never appears in the passages that talk about the Church as Christ’s Bride. It doesn’t appear anywhere in the Greek New Testament. Eros is a component of the marital relationship. But try making any marriage subsist entirely on that, and that marriage will fail. And it will not honor God, because it isn’t operating the way God designed and intends marriage to operate. 

But affection toward God is not unimportant in the individual’s relationship with God. It is cultivated through prayer and worship and service. We are to be entirely consecrated to Christ in every part of our being. But when feelings fail, as they do in any relationship, agape love perseveres and knows feelings will be perfected eventually, as we move on into the eternal state where we will be resurrected physically and fully sanctified.

As Doug Wilson once said, men can’t feel what it’s like to be a bride normally. They aren’t designed to. But if they can, then that’s a whole different set of problems.

Leon Podles’ book “The Church Impotent” is a good survey of the growth of the effeminacy of the Church over time. These days you have female teachers and “worship leaders” and song writers, with effeminate men alongside of them, in the midst of a still effeminate culture. The consequence is a sappy, Romantic, sub-Biblical notion of salvation and all it entails. When you have women dictating the Church’s teaching, which they shouldn’t be, romantic overtones that warp one’s understanding of the Gospel are the result.

Lent

The Puritan abolishing of the traditional Church calendar left a vacuum that the secular Statist, and now pagan globalist, calendar has been more than happy to fill.

But hey, maybe we can just return to the Puritan communion season traditions that the Regulative Principle birthed.

Every branch of the Church in its sincere attempt to honor Christ produces traditions that find no explicit warrant in Holy Scripture. We live an embodied existence, no matter how we war against it. 

For me, Lent is as precious as Advent and Christmas. But appreciating it takes putting worship of and love toward God first, and letting everything else flow from that. The man who makes theology and politics and culture-warring first will not understand, without reorienting himself.