NN

Cheryl asked

2. Please give me even one Scripture where God is called the Christ before the incarnation.

In the interests of not writing a tome pointing to the various texts I shall give a single simple answer:
Psalm 2: “The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD and against his Anointed…” (Annointed =”Messiah” in Hebrew = “Christ” in Greek)

Which indisputably refers to God the Son as the “Messiah” in the OT (unless one wanted to suggest that this verse isn’t actually about Jesus who proclaimed Himself to be the prophesied Christ… Heb 1:13)

(Of course Dan 9:25 also immediately comes to mind… but I promised not to write a tome…)

Post Scriptum: don’t worry no plans or time to actually jump back into any extended discussion – just thought I would deliver a quick answer

Cheryl,
(I hope that you will allow this to post as I will not make argument but limit myself to closing remarks)

It has nothing to do with physics but of basic logic and semantic dexterity. I honestly don’t think (I hope) that you believe differently regarding the fundamental nature of God the Son’s pre-existent nature than I would. And I will be the first to point out that topics like Jesus pre-existence are very difficult to handle in discussion because our language is constructed to handle concepts like “3 golf balls” and “tomorrow” it is not constructed to handle topics like “Trinity” or “eternity”. Indeed I am greatly reassured versus some of your original words on how we should not not “equate Christ with God” – I presume that you can understand the concern that these sorts of statements might raise given your interaction with cultist groups.

I would point out a trap of your words that perhaps you have not realized. You say

Christ is ONLY tied to His human nature

However, the Christ was both fully God and fully man He could not have been the Christ were He not fully God. Therefore to assert that the title of “the Christ” refers only to His human nature would be quite contrary to Scripture.

Indeed one thing that I cannot rule out from your words which still worries me is that you would assert that God the Son did not exist as a separate Person in “eternity past” but was somehow synthesized from a previously unified Godhead in the incarnation. I suspect (again hope) that you don’t believe this but I put it out there to clarify.

In the end I have more than exhausted what time I can devote to chasing this rabbit trail – so I will close only by stating that I believe with high confidence that you are wrong in your exact assertions about the Christ and that I can prove it Biblically…. however that it is very slight error and lies mostly in poorly constructed semantics and therefore not worth the time to quibble about.

I sign off with the Words of Jesus who is the Christ to the Pharisees who questioned Jesus (the man in front of them) about His pre-existence: “Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.”

Cheryl,
This is tiresome – here is a simple series of unambiguous yes/no questions:
1) Would you agree that the being called Jesus existed in eternity past?
2) Would you agree that “the Christ” (as a title is synonymous) with the being called Jesus? [i.e. Would you agree that one could not use “the Christ” (capitalized singular reference) to properly mean anything other than the being called Jesus]
3) Would you agree that Jesus was properly “the Chosen One” and “the Coming One” – both titles distinctively associated with the Messiah – even before He actually took on flesh?

Now let me be clear on something – if the Christ had never taken on flesh then He could not have fulfilled His work as the Christ. If God the Son had remained a Spirit and never become incarnate then He could not rightly be called “the Christ” for He would not be. And certainly His title of the Christ must necessarily encompass both His full Deity and humanity (His death could not have payed for ours were He not fully God, He could not have died for us were He not truly man). But Scripture very properly speaks of the pre-existence of Jesus – God the Son – who is the Christ, and refers to Him in His role as “the Christ” before He actually took on flesh.

Finally

According to Ephesians 1:3, 4 did the seed of Abraham, David and Eve who is the “Christ” exist in eternity past?

It is clear that you are having trouble with atemporality (which is understandable so let me clarify a last point:
I had breakfast yesterday – it was a baked oatmeal fruit tart. So we can say that “the being who is herein referred to as NN is none other than the one who had a breakfast of a baked oatmeal fruit tart on 7/17/2011.” However, I was “NN” even before I had the fruit tart. The details of my existence do not mean that I didn’t exist before those details were known.
Let me apply this to the context of the Christ. The Tanakh clearly taught us that “The Christ” was the one who would come as God in the flesh, teach us the way of salvation, perform signs proclaiming the power and plan of God and die to pay the ransom for our sins in our place. Does this mean that Jesus was not “the Christ” before He died, or before He performed signs, etc? Absolutely not, Jesus the Christ testifies that He is the Christ long before He was actually crucified (Matt 16:16-17)

(Just for completeness & question answering:
As to your questions in #72 I do not see a Scripturally provable answer – I have my suspicions but I will rest no belief on them as I cannot prove it (and I recognize when I can’t prove something). However, they are ultimately immaterial to the case in point. Let us presume that I and Abraham etc. did not exist in “eternity past” – it is irrelevant to the pre-existence of the Bibles clear teaching that Jesus, who is the Christ, pre-existed as I have pointed out above.)

Cheryl,
I believe that you would agree that the being who we call “Christ” (as a title) existed in what you call “eternity past.” So the only possible contention you can make is that He is not properly called “the Christ” in the context of eternity past. However, since Paul explicitly & unambiguously does so this contention will not bear out unless you wish to maintain that Paul was wrong to do so. Nor ought this be surprising to us – throughout the Tanakh some of the synonymous ideas to the Messiah were “the Coming King” {2 Samuel 7:12–16, Jer 30:8–9, Zech 9:9, many other} and as the “Chosen One” {an idea implicit within the concept of “Messiah” – e.g. Isa 42:1}. And since He was “Chosen” & “Coming” since before the foundations of the earth it should be no surprise when we learn via Paul with absolute certainty that Jesus is properly called “the Christ” in the context of eternity past.

Cheryl,
Though I find it only amusing that you attempt to… let us say educate me about how the dimensionality of time works (my PhD is in physics) – I think that I can get at it from another angle which will be more broadly tractable.

We both agree that “Christ” as a title refers to Jesus’ (God the Son) role and work as Redeemer of the human race.
Eph 1:3-4 ~ “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as He [the Father] chose us in Him [Christ] before the foundation of the world…”

Paul refers directly to Christ’s pre-existence “before the foundation of the world”… I am not one to argue with Paul writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

(and while I appreciate your efforts in including bits of commentaries on the meaning of “Christ” & “Messiah” – I think that we will probably both be saved time if I let you know that these are quite superfluous, and that I am well acquainted with both the Greek ideas of Christos and its borrowed use in the NT and the more pertinent Tanakh ideas of ha’Moshiach)

To Cheryl,
I believe that it is vital to recognize that though Christ voluntarily adopted the form and even weaknesses of a man that in doing so He never gave up his divinity. And therefore to seek to divorce any of His actions from His unchangeable existence as Deity (including such experiences as hunger and death) will create irreconcilable contradictions in any theological idea.

Indeed this may clarify what I mean in more detail:
Human Existance of God Incarnate
I recently listened to a person assert that the deity of the Christ can be observed in the miraculous nature of his earthly life – that specific passages pointed to his omniscience, omnipotence and omnipresence. I do not believe this to be the case.

Don’t get me wrong, I do believe that Jesus the Christ was and is Deity and possesses the attributes of Deity. However, these verses do not prove the Christ’s deific attributes and, I think, ultimately create a misunderstanding in the nature of his earthly life.

Let us take omniscience. The verses used to “demonstrate” the Christ’s omniscience include Mark 2:8, John 2:24-25, John 18:4 which point to the Christ possessing knowledge beyond the scope of typical human experience. But, we must of course understand these verses in the light of such verses as Matt 24:36 (Mark 13:32) ~ “But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only” and others. Similarly, though the Christ performs miracles these are not a specific demonstration of direct deific omnipotence – the prophets in the Tanakh performed miracles just as spectacular.

And I do not believe that this is a matter of great Scriptural mystery. Though Jesus was and is God, when He came to earth he voluntarily took on the limitations of a man; though by nature He had all power and all knowledge He chose to forgo them and not access them – Jesus taking on human nature was essentially an act of voluntarily limiting His deific nature not a hybridization of God with man (Phil 2:6&7).

And I believe that this point is of more than academic interest which has direct bearing on our lives as Christians. For if He chose to not access this power during His earthly life then that means that His knowledge and His miracles came not as a direct exercise of His power as God but rather came about through reliance on and obedience to the leading of Holy Spirit. And this is a vital point to recognize for this is the same Spirit with whom the Christian is indwelt. To chalk up these verses as aspects of Christ’s deity I think blinds us to the power of the Spirit in the life of the Christian; it can blind us to our own insensitivity and hardheadedness toward the Spirit of God and remove from us the Scriptural instruction into our lives in the example of the Christ’s life.

To Retha,
“Ba’aliy” is transliterated from the Hebrew – it is a possessive construction of the root word “Ba’al” with a possesive pronoun suffix and would most exactly be translated as “my Ba’al.” So to understand what it means using Strong’s and how the same word is used throughout Scripture one has to jump to the entry for the word Ba’al – an honorific which carries husband as a primary meaning.

To #58 – not to be difficult but yes it is an ambiguous construction. “Is ‘A’ ‘B’?” Is ambiguous in natural language as it really asks is ‘A’ isomorphic to or have a shared property relation set to ‘B’? However it does not specify which question is being asked or what isomorphic relationship is in view. Normally natural language provides enough context that we don’t get confused but in the case of such conceptually difficult concepts as the Trinity the ambiguity is best to be careful to avoid. I specified an isomorphic operation (“interchangeable with”) to avoid this ambiguity and answered a resounding ‘No’ (many times now).

To #59 – you do seem to recognize that Jesus, who was the Christ, was fully God.

And if we recognize that the Christ was fully and inseparably God then to assert that human marriage reflects Christ but not God is quite exactly non-sense.

Cheryl,
Your questions was ambiguous (which can be hard to avoid when discussing the concept of the Trinity) – I answered a set of questions designed to answer your question while avoiding ambiguity.

So to re-answer yet again: “Is the Father the Christ?”

Is Jesus is interchangeable with the God the Father?
– No they are separate persons of the Holy Trinity which comprises the Godhead – each of whom is fully God.

Do I think that Jesus is interchangeable with the God the Father?
No.

Do I think that Jesus, who was the Christ, is fully God – just as much as God the Father (and for that matter the Holy Spirit), and that His Deity is inseparable from His humanity.
Yes

Do I believe that Jesus was involved in the Godhead’s communication to humans in the Old Testament?
Yes, absolutely. (Jhn 8:58 ~ ..”Before Abraham was – I AM.”)

To be absolutely clear,
I assert that Jesus the Christ, the Messiah of Israel, is God the Son, called the Word, who took on human flesh. That He was in the beginning with God the Father and that He is God. (Jhn 1:1)

And in accordance with the teaching of Scripture I affirm that marriage reflects the relationship between Christ (who is fully Deity) and the church.

NN, I think you are running into a problem as you are equating “Christ” as “God” when the two terms are not synonyms.

I am saying that Jesus, the Christ, Messiah of Israel – was fully God [the Son] who became incarnate.

And as said before, the Scripture repeatedly uses the metaphor of marriage to describe the relationship of Christ (God the Son) to the Church with Christ the Bridegroom (a common title ascribed to Him in the Gospels) and the Church as His Bride.

If, as your argument asserts above, you do not agree that Jesus was God then I think that there are perhaps more important and fundamental things that we should be talking about.

Well…. though I am not entirely sure of the question as Christ is fully and inescapably God… Perhaps you are asking about the OT Scriptural passages which refer to the relationship of God to His Chosen People in the metaphor of a marriage relationship.

I think that I have pointed out a number of these above but here are a few compiled for convenience:

Jer 31:32 ~ not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the LORD.

Isa 54:5 ~ For your Maker is your husband, the LORD of hosts is his name; and the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer, the God of the whole earth he is called.

All of Hosea & Song of Songs… the list goes on.

(And before anyone says “But you take the metaphor too far”… I am not even offering a suggestion as to what the metaphor of the above verses means – I am merely pointing out that it exists, and that it must mean something, and that therefore human marriage should reflect this – a point dealt with in significant detail by Paul)

To Retha (#39)
I will answer in two points:

1) “Baali” is a possessive variant of “Ba’al” a word which is translated master, husband, lord, commander, and used as an epithet of pagan Canaanite deities. (I looked up the Strong’s reference for Ba’al for you – here it is: http://www.blueletterbible.org/lang/lexicon/Lexicon.cfm?Strongs=H1167&t=KJV) So, yes the word does have a primary meaning of “husband” and as such it is commonly used in the OT (e.g. Deu 22:22).

2) On your assertion:

The slightest knowledge of human nature would tell you the verse does not speak about obeying a selfish man. The verse speaks of someone motivated to change by submission. A selfish person does not change because his selfishness is rewarded.

I appreciate your argument – it is the same fundamental argument leveled at Christianity as a whole since the beginning. “Salvation can’t be by grace alone – or people will simply say the words, get a free ticket into heaven and then act however they want to. It will simply be a free license to enable their own selfishness without negative consequences.” But of course the NT deals with this idea of true conversion (e.g. Rom 6:1), and by being an example to the world by turning the other cheek rather than fighting back repeatedly.
So, I appreciate your arguments, I recognize the weight of psychological journals you have on your side. But I for myself am going to have to go with the Scriptures as the revealed word of God on this one.

On the topic of “being made for marriage” as raised by Lydia & Elaine (34 & 40):
Let me make sure that I am not misheard:
Humans – all humans are made for an ultimate marriage in which we experience ultimate intimacy. Where we are completely known, through our deepest faults and loved despite them. For a love so deep and so cleansing that it removes them from us at the cost to our Beloved. This is the Christian idea of marriage.

But this type of marriage for which we are all made is – just as I said in what I wrote above – something that no human marriage; which nothing on this earth, will ever come close to. This sort of marriage which we all need and for which we were all made is the reality of the relationship which God created and payed for to exist between Christ and the Church.

This does not mean that everyone needs or ought to be in a human marriage.

Hope that clarifies the apparent misunderstanding.

There are a couple of questions/arguments now coming from several people: I shall try to keep them all straight and answer in individual comments according to question:

#34That is exactly what NN is saying the “sacred text” is teaching. You see, some take metaphors waaaaay too far.

Actually, If I take NN’s teaching to it’s logical conclusion, it means that I, a woman, cannot be “Christlike” because Jesus is male and only males can represent the Christ part. That is where his interpretation of that metaphor takes us.
(this topic is re-covered by several other comments but I shall try to clarify for all in this one response)

It is quite incontrovertible that Sacred Scripture refers to the relationship between humans and God in the metaphor of a marriage relationship (and I will make no apology for referring to the Bible as either Sacred or Scripture – if you disagree with that there are much more fundamental issues to be addressed). And in this metaphor God always refers to Himself as the Husband/Bridegroom and His Chosen People as his Bride/Wife. As a metaphor – whatever you think it does or doesn’t mean the point is that it must mean something. Therefore, a right marriage relationship between a husband and wife will necessarily be a reflection of Christ and the Church (as God’s chosen metaphor this is inescapable) and a poorly conducted marriage will equally be a twisting and distortion of Christ and the Church. Now, I made no claims as to how the metaphor is supposed to be applied practically – I simply out that it is there in Scripture and therefore has practical consequences (which authors such as Paul discuss at some length).

And on an aside – this in no way implies that a woman should not be “Christlike” – indeed the Church is herself instructed to be “like Christ.”

Pinklight – rather than offer personal commentary of God’s instructions to us I think it might be most profitable to simply examine the direct words of Sacred Scripture.

Eph 5:22-33 Paul gives us a long commentary and set of instructions on how we are to conduct ourselves in the marriage relationship:

Wives, [submit] to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the church; and He is the Savior of the body. Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything.
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish. So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies; he who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as the Lord does the church. For we are members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones. “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.”

Then tells us that all of these highly practical bits of instruction for our lives are getting at a deeper truth of the gospel:

This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church. Nevertheless let each one of you in particular so love his own wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

Nor is this unique in Scripture’s explanation of this issue. Indeed several of the Psalms (e.g. 45), bits of Isaiah, Christ’s own use of the title of “the Bridegroom” & relevant parables, the entire books of Hosea and Song of Songs all speak of marriage and use it as a direct idiom for how we are to understand our relationship to God, represented as the ultimate and loving Husband to His people, His Chosen Bride.

Since the idea of marriage as a reflection of deeper christian truths seems to have garnered interest – here is a longer exposition of it:
(From Here)

Ephemeral Reflections of Eternal Truths

Eph 5:22-24 ~ “Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, His body, and is Himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.” [ESV]

We human beings are made for marriage, made for ultimate intimacy. We all want it; we all need it. We are made for a relationship in which we are completely known, through our deepest faults and loved despite them. A love so deep and so cleansing that it removes them from us at the cost to our Beloved. This is the Christian idea of marriage.

Many feel disappointed in their marriage. It does not satisfy the need for intimacy, spoken or unspoken, which aches within us. The husband may be overbearing, the wife shrewish; and we long for a union of love and charity. But in fact never in human history has their been a marriage of a man and woman that completely satisfied this need. But that is the point, we must not forget the end of this passage!

“This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.”

Human marriage could never live up to our need for our need was made to be satisfied in God, for a Marriage eternal and unfading. But rather Paul teaches us that human marriage is a shadow of a deeper truth. And that is the key – to understand the distinction between image, shadow and reflection versus reality; and to understand the point and purpose of the reflections at all.

Now in the reflection there is a danger. It is the common practice of the human heart to make idols, and reflections of what we really seek often make the best idols of all. Sometimes because we become confused, often we are impatient. If we seek to fulfill our need for intimacy in marriage we are destined to be left empty, unsatisfied and consumed for a need which cannot be met as we have sought it. The shadow is not the reality. The aroma of the finest dish is not food itself and a picture of our beloved is not their presence.

But why then the reflection at all? The Law is another example of a shadow given to us by God. The Law spoke of righteousness, but it could never make us righteous. And in the Law the Pharisees substituted the shadow for the reality of Christ. And in Galatians we are given a clear answer as to the purpose of the shadows. They are meant to instruct us, to tutor us about about a reality which we do not yet fully experience. (Gal 3:21-25)

Just as an aroma gives us a foretaste of the dish (though it does not fulfill our hunger for it) and as a picture reminds us of the object of affections even as we miss their presence. The very world we live in passing away; yet we, the immortals, live in it and often times find it so distracting. But within this ephemeral life God has provided us shadows of His eternal realities. That we might recognize the important and learn.

In discussion of biblical ideas of gender roles, egalitarians will often denounce complimentarian thought as elevating men to a “god-like” position in relation to women, that the husband is substituted for Christ.

This misses the point entirely, of course the husband is not Christ. The reflection is not reality. But marriage is a God-given shadow of an eternal truth, it is to teach us about the reality yet to come. Remember your lessons in school; we learned in two ways: through observation and through practice. A teacher’s lecture or watching a Christ-honoring marriage can teach us a great deal. But most often, a great deal of our learning came through practice. Just as the endless arithmetic problems that most of us didn’t enjoy but that drilled those truths into our heads anyways; living in a marriage provides a practical instruction to us on the nature of an eternal truth. Now just as with the arithmetic problems we can do it wrong, but this fault is introduced by us, the student, not the shadow God has provided us.

Therefore let us recognize this truth, about these fleeting reflections we are given of the everlasting. But let us also recognize the dangers in reflections; the best husband in the world is not Christ. And to forget this, even in the tiniest is to elevate the shadow into an idolatry following an illusion which will only leave us empty. Let us not condemn them for not being the reality; and be edified by them as they were meant for us. When we recognize that human marriage is not the eternal marriage then it is liberated of our disappointment and elevated to our benefit and God’s glory.

Retha,
Starting from the recognition that the Bible teaches us that our marriages ought to reflect the truths of the gospel – you as a very natural and worthwhile question which can be couched as:

How is a woman supposed to reflect the church if the man does not properly reflect Christ?

Before I really answer this question I’d like to start with a few side comments to ensure that some points are not misunderstood:
~ Most complementarians I know of would not advocate a woman staying in a context that endangers her health or see this as a Biblical mandate.
~ More generally, the woman ought not submit to any command of the husband which violates the instructions of God (for instance she ought not obey him if he tells her to rob a bank)
~ But this comes with a danger, it is a natural temptation to begin looking for the exceptions when we find a commandment uncomfortable or inconvenient. For instance, one is also called to “turn the other cheek.” Yet, most christians if they saw a someone hurting heir child would protect their child and use physical force to stop them and believe it right to do so. However, we must be careful lest “exceptions” become a way to simply disobey the command of God.

Those said – we can explore the general question – “But what happens if the other spouse does not act as they should?” Is the husband prevented from reflecting the Gospel if the wife does not reflect the Church well? If she were to be shrewish and unsubmissive ought the husband respond by not loving her and sacrificing himself for her? Of course not! The husband is called to reflect Christ to his wife and before the world regardless of the wife’s behaviour.
What then of the wife? Is she called to reflect the Church even if the husband is being a selfish jerk best described by a string of epithets not fit for typing here? Taking an extreme case – let us say that the husband is an unsaved jerk – not able or seeing any reason to want to reflect Christ:

Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives, when they see your respectful and pure conduct. {1 Pet 3:1-2}

A sandwich will typically not violate the Word of God – even if the husband ought to have recognized how busy his wife was and not asked her. (<a href=”http://nuallan.livejournal.com/11628.html”)Indeed here are some thoughts to husbands on the proper enactment of headship) But in general disobedience is not what the wife is called to. Yes, absolutely she ought to seek to bear up and help him overcome his areas of sin – but Biblically she is called to do so from a role of submission – not through being shrewish or nagging (Proverbs has a fair bit to say about such behaviour). And just as much for the husbands – for he is told to take absolute initiative in finding ways to love and sacrifice himself for his wife whether she acts as she should or not.

To comment on Elaine’s words and answer Cheryl’s question:

Elaine said ~ “The problem with NN’s view is that he has it backwards. Christ and the church are being held up as the example for everyone of what marriage is supposed to look like – not the other way around. There is nothing in Scripture that says human marriages are supposed to be the example to the world. The relationship of Christ and the church is the example.”

But realize the logical consequences of your statement – if the relationship of Christ and the church is to be an example of marriage then our human marriages ought to reflect this example. Therefore a rightly conducted human marriage is a reflection of a deeper truth lived on display before the world. On the other hand a human marriage conducted wrongly is in effect an enacted parable of a lie lived before the world. This is true throughout our lives, as we live rightly in any aspect of our lives we declare the gospel before the world and, conversely, failures in our lives misrepresent the gospel in our living examples.
And hopefully this will elaborate on Cheryl’s question – A shorthand expression which has stuck with me describing this is “Man cannot shut up about the gospel – He may be telling the truth about Jesus or telling a lie about Jesus but he is always, always talking about Jesus.”

Cheryl,
My apologies – I simply felt that the length & formatting of the discussion made it potentially cumbersome to put here as a comment – but per your request here is the cut and paste.

A Pagan Relationship with the Christian God

It is a common meme within the christian church that we are to have “a personal relationship with God” – but too often the idea is left at that without exploring what type of ‘personal’ relationship that we are called into.

The book of Hosea offers a stunning insight into the relationship that God has in mind. In this book, God paints a tremendous picture of the relationship between God and His people as a marriage relationship. And particularly striking is Hosea 2:16.

Hosea 2:16 ~ “It will come about in that day,” declares the LORD, “That you will call Me *Ishi And will no longer call Me *Ba’ali.” [NASB]

The use of transliterated words directly will immediately clue us in that this passage is rather difficult to really translate well. But stick with me – I assure you it is worth the effort. It speaks volumes about our relationship to God, and about a common misunderstanding of that relationship and God’s intended metaphor reflected in human marriage.

To set the stage God is speaking to Israel who had gone after other gods, through the metaphor of Gomer who is the prophet Hosea’s unfaithful wife. She has prostituted herself and God declared punishment to correct her unfaithfulness and is now declaring to her that He will restore her to Himself.

Many translations express this verse as: “It will be in that day,” says the LORD, “That you will call me ‘my husband,’ {Ishi} And no longer call me ‘my master.’ {Ba’ali}” [HNV]

But this doesn’t really get across the full Hebraic idea of this passage. To start “Ba’al” is a word which has a primary meaning of “husband” as well as “owner,” master,” or “lord” and was commonly associated with many Cananitic deities. But “husband” is a secondary meaning associated with “Ish” which is most directly translated as “man” (male). So what is the intended meaning of statement?

To understand this we have to look at the person being directly addressed: Gomer. Gomer has “gone after other lovers” (just as Israel had gone after other gods). She had said (Hos 2:5) ‘I will go after my lovers, who give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink.’ She had treated them as ersatz husbands, giving them power over her body in exchange for possessions. This is the key to understand this passage.

In effect she had said to these lovers ‘I will treat you as “Ba’al”… in exchange for certain wealth.’ This of course is the core of prostitution and this is the essential relationship concept of the ancient pagan religions. The Romans even codified it in their formula prayers with the phrase “do ut des” ~ “I give that you may give.” They acknowledged this and reminded their gods that nature of the religion was that “I sacrifice this thing so that you will bless me and perpetuate this cycle” This was the religious concept – one appeased the gods for the singular purpose of receiving blessing. The service to the deity was only a means to another end.

It is in this context that God addresses Gomer and through her Israel.
God says to her, in effect, “You pursued ‘husbands’ because you thought to gain possessions. You called them ‘my Ba’al’ so that they might give you flax and wool, wine and oil, silver and gold. But not only were they not your husband and not your master but you didn’t even know what that word means. What I mean by it.”

God does not simply tell her that the relationship would change but declares to her that her very understanding of this relationship would be fundamentally altered. He says to her – you will call me “Ishi.” For us non-Hebrew speakers we gain insight into this word by looking back to its first use in Genesis 2.

“… But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said,
“This at last is bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called Woman,
because she was taken out of Man.”{ish, ???}
Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.
[Gen 2:20b-24 ESV]

And the apostle Paul’s commentary on Genesis 2:
The woman was made for the man {ish}. [1 Cor 11:9]

God in effect tells her that she has looked at this relationship as a business exchange – Provision and possessions in exchange for physical mastery. But this was never the point. He says ‘Right religion, My religion, is not about duty-bound exchange. You were made for Me. Made to be with Me; you cannot be complete without Me. All this stuff that you have been chasing is not evil in itself but it has blinded you to what your real deepest core need is, it is was always Me.’ When God says “shall call me ‘Ishi,'” He says ‘I know that you have obeyed your own lusts and given service to other gods, other masters; but you were made for Me. All your self-centered desires lead only to death; but I shall restore you beyond your dreams, and you shall be Mine in a way you never could even have comprehended.’

Not to say that God would not provide as a Lord or that she would not obey Him as Master. Rather He makes it clear that when she really understands what the relationship is about, His provision will be beyond her wildest expectations. He tells her that she will experience a peace and prosperity she never imagined that there will be no war at all or cause for alarm and God’s covenant will extend even to the animals. [Hsa 2:18 & 22] And He tells her that she will obey Him in a way that she had never even dreamed. He tells her that she will be set apart unto Him in righteousness and faithfulness (“betrothed” comes from the same word-root as the Hebraic word for “holy”).

This tendency is one of the most pervasive follies of human religion and of the human spirit – often even within the walls of the congregations of the church herself. Religion often appeals through promises of blessing. But if we follow God only on the promise of blessings in our life then we have missed the core of our calling to Him. Not that those blessings are wrong: health, a good family life, financial security are blessings. But if these are our priority then we offer ourselves to God only as a prostitute – not as a betrothed, not as a lover. He is to be our Husband as our Lord, King and Master [Jer 3:14, Jer 31:32] – but these are corollaries of the central truth: that we are made for Him, that we are to be satisfied first and foremost in Him. All other blessings, though good and though He delights to give them to us are secondary to His own personal presence in our lives.

Tim Keller eloquently captures this perversion of the christian church by saying “It is the difference between those people who pray the ‘Our Father’ and those who talk to their Father.”

And at the end of it all, let us not forget the metaphor which God has used to express this truth. Marriage. For as God’s metaphor our marriages are supposed to reflect this truth; to ourselves, to each other, and to those around us. If I, as husband, were to provide only as my wife honors me – then I would not reflect God but the petty pagan “Ba’alim” of the Caananites, and the wives likewise in their honor. For “man cannot shut up about the gospel.”

Seeing this pop up and skimming back though the argument – It strikes me that I failed on a key point.
Not in proving my point proper (as an exhaustive student of logic & reasoning I can diagram why the proof is sound and where the objections to it fail) – but most minds are not wired like mine (and that’s a good thing). Rather I feel that I failed in providing a worthy vision of biblical complementarian ideas.

So let me drop a link to a description that presents not an argument so much as a vision for the scope of practical complementarian theology both as it applies to the relationship between the husband and the wife and how it applies to the relationship between God and the believer. – (from Hosea 2:16 & surrounding verses)

The recent conversation which I participated in led to some reflections on what I observed:
http://nuallan.livejournal.com/53936.html

(no, I’m not back and won’t be checking for response to this, just thought it might interest some)

To Dave (508)

the concept of control is essentially anti love as a concept

I shall leave it to you to reconcile the following two verses (of very, very many that come to mind):

Matt 28:18 ~ And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

and

Eph 3:19 ~ and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

To SM & Kay (501 & 502)

Let me write a very brief note to clarify a point:
You ask”

“authority = self-sacrifice, nourishing, cherishing, my life for yours[?] So is authority the English word that best captures agape used by the author and as described in Eph 5 as self-sacrificing, nourishing, cherishing?

Which is of course not the definition or meaning of authority. Rather, these are the characteristics of the Christian usage of any authority.
To use the English definition of the word – “authority: the power to determine, adjudicate, or otherwise settle issues or disputes; jurisdiction; the right to control, command, or determine.”
Which can of course be be lived out rightly or wrongly, in self-sacrifice or in selfish greed. Self-sacrificing, nourishing, cherishing – these are the characteristics of Christ’s application of authority. Just as with any other natural gift of God it can be abused (consider food, sex, accomplishments, etc.). It can be used rightly as Christ did and does (Matt 81:18) or it can be used in perversity after the manner of the Enemy (Eph 2:2, Col 1:13, etc.). Either way authority exists – the question in our lives is how it is used. And this is what the Epistles repeatedly address as practical to our edification in Christ – they do not say “have authority” – this is inherent in any hierarchical relationship. Rather we are told of our responsibilities in the matter. Just as fathers are not told to “have authority” over their children; authority is inherent in the relationship – rather fathers are told how they are to conduct this authority in a godly manner.
Husbands also are not told “have authority” – the asymmetry of the relationship makes this implicit and inescapable. Rather, they are told what to do with it; how to reflect Christ in it.

To Charis (481)

Marriage was never intended to be a bed of roses for the husband with an ever obedient (slave) wife. If it was, God would have stopped at monkeys or dogs (who can be trained in obedient servitude) and Jesus would not have told the shocked disciples (3 times in one spot!) they better seriously consider. remaining eunuchs rather than the take on the rigors of marriage Matthew 19 1ff

I could not possibly agree more. If we are to interpret that Ephesians 5 & other passages imply ‘authority’ on the part of the husband – then we must more strongly still examine what it says about the enactment of this ‘authority.’ Simply looking at the phrase “as Christ loved the Church, and gave Himself for her” I think captures it all. Christ’s authority (being God) did not enact itself by demanding respect and punishing us in our failure to give it; He didn’t look at us and say “Sorry, you should be mine and you failed and that’s your problem – it’s too bad but your just getting what you deserve (though we did fail and it was our problem).” Rather, in the Highness of His authority – He chose to serve us and give His own life in sacrifice for us.
If the ‘authority’ of the husband is to mirror this then we must take it to mean quite the same thing. The only proper use of the husband’s authority (indeed of any human endeavor) can be to reflect God. And we are told that in marriage we are to reflect the relationship of Christ and the Church – that husband’s are to take their authority seriously; not to consider how they can be served but how they can serve. Parva sub ingenti, my life for theirs.

Will this be hard – most certainly. Certainly, resting on the bent back of a slave is a natural temptation to humanity – but it is service for which we are made and this in the end it will be what is of most good to us and our greatest satisfaction. To quote the Weight of Glory –

We are told to deny ourselves and to take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ; and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so
contains an appeal to desire… Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us…

(I highly recommend this short essay to anyone – http://www.verber.com/mark/xian/weight-of-glory.pdf)

To SM (466)

“Just in case it was missed in an earlier comment could you give me the names of authors, books, lecturers, pastors, etc. who have shaped or informed your eros thesis about Eph 5:22? I would be willing to search them out to see if they could help me understand.”

Particularly formative and relevant books to my thoughts on the matter include:
Romans, Hebrews, Colossians, 1 Corinthians, Ephesians, 1 Timothy, Titus, 1 Peter, Genesis, Song of Songs, Proverbs

My apologies in the above proof – certain terms are missing because the html interpreted certain terms as html tags and made them invisible.

To SM (424)
You ask: “What as been asked by me and other commenters is for you to show where it is “apparent” in Eph 5:22 and all the other scripture you have read that supports your claim that the presence of eros in marriage constitutes the basis for hierarchy.”

Over the course of more posts than I wish to go back and count I sought to establish a common reference to begin the explanation.

You never seemed to understand the need for this so let me demonstrate something else:

The energy modes in the electrodynamics vacuum in a blackbody cavity are quantized. To prove this we note that the density of states for waves in a cavity is N(f)=(8*pi*f^2*c^-3); so that the energy density can be expressed as u(f,T)=N(f)*. From the equipartition theorem the average energy per mode for a continuum distribution of these modes is = kT. Therefore the total energy in the thermal radiation field should be u(f,T)=(8*pi*f^2*c^-3)*kT. But of course this implies that there is an infinite amount of energy in the field and that it is non-integrable which diverges strongly from all physical observations. If we accept as an axiom that E=n*h*f (n=0,1,2,…) then =(h*f)/(exp[hf/kT]-1). Inserting this into u(f,T)=N(f)* we see that this the integral of this is finite and moreover that the distribution matches what is observed in nature.

Now, presumably that made no sense to you, and perhaps you could come up with an example from your field which would be equally incomprehensible to me. And all of this is because their is no common reference and background. That would have to be established for what I just said to make sense. Even so, for me to explain an idea of ‘eros’ to you as a means to understand the husband/wife dynamic instructed in the Bible would require a common basis regarding the husband/wife dynamic to begin with. Since I could never even establish with you a common agreement about what the text says ( that Paul says different things to husbands and to wives – 391) there is really no possibility of getting much further.
Best of luck.

To Cheryl (392 & 405)

I think perhaps you mistook the meaning of my argument. It was simply in response to the repeated statements to the effect that:

Since the word “eros” is not in the Bible, the concept is not Biblical.

The argument which I made simply demonstrated that this is false and gave the concept of the Trinity as an example: We believe in the concept of the Trinity though the word is not itself in the Bible. Now, when I say this, realize that this argument is both valid and true. The argument does NOT prove that the concept of “eros” is Biblical. It simply disproves the argument that others had offered against it.

(as a closing aside, may I ask what concept exactly you think is in view in the Song of Songs if it is not the specific romantic love between a husband and wife?)