Peter Leithart is very, very, very clever. He's someone whose learning makes me feel that I need to return to nursery school and try again to see if perhaps next time I could reduce the distance between us.
One of the dangers, though, of being so clever, is that you can talk yourself into believing all kinds of things, which a lesser mind would never be able to accept because they're too preposterous.
Which brings us to this Tweet:
Baptize nations, Jesus says. That is: Do for all nations what Yahweh did for Israel at the sea.
Chosen nation status isn't here cancelled, but universalized, as one people after another is incorporated into the chosen nation, each receiving a new political identity by baptismal death and resurrection, each called to its unique historical vocation.
Concerning the grammar of the Great Commission "make disciples of all the nations, baptising them in the name", much ink has been expended (and if we're going to expend ink on anything, I can think of few better places, so no complaints there!). How do these clauses correlate? Are the nations baptised and then discipled? Must one be a self-conscious disciple to be baptised? Are the disciples called out from the nations, or do nations each themselves become some sort of corporate disciple, nationally brought under the tutelage of Christ?
As with many such questions, the grammar can actually bear more than one construction, and the syntax isn't finally determinative (even whilst we can argue about which is the more natural or likely meaning)....
.... but on the other hand, what the disciples actually went out and did in response to this command is recorded in great detail and is as plain as the proverbial pikestaff. And no less plain is what they then instructed those disciples to carry on doing, and also what they entirely omitted to ever make mention of in their teaching.
So plain, that only someone very, very clever and very decided upon using that cleverness to believe and uphold a doctrine that appeals to them, could fail to register. (It's somewhat akin to arguing about Jesus' words to Peter, "upon this rock I will build my church" - if by this, Jesus was telling Peter about an unbroken line of universal pontiffs based in Rome, succeeding from him to all generations, then Peter never afterwards appears to have known anything about it, and that stubborn fact remains no matter what you can argue that the better syntax-level understanding of the words is or isn't).
The New Testament has a nation in it. That nation entirely supersedes and relativises all other nations. The kingdom of God is not a collection of nations, beginning with the apostate 1st century Israel and then one-by-one progressively assimilating one more nation at a time; and if it were, it has not yet begun, if the New Testament's teaching about discipleship means anything at all. The New Testament's actual teaching gives no countenance to the fever-dreams of some post-millennial theonomic Presbyterians, who hold that once your nation is covenanted, it's always covenanted, end of - and nations never really cease to exist, or come into existence, so there's always an ever-growing number of covenanted nations. The New Testament explicitly and directly redefines the meaning of nations. There are the old nations, which are passing away. They still exist as this old age still endures, and they certainly still have much relevance to our lives; but they are nevertheless passing away. (Analagously: my marriage to my wife endures and is deeply important, notwithstanding my membership of the bride of Christ - it will continue until death do us part, and nothing about Christ's espousal to his eschatological bride can reduce the importance of this relationship in the here and now; and yet, at the same time, human marriages are already passing away, from the New Testament's viewpoint - 1 Corinthians 7:29-31). The kingdom of God is the one nation that will remain, and it exists where there are real disciples of Jesus, who have been born again of his Spirit and are then pass through baptism as individuals and who now belong to his glorious Body. Other nations are around: but also already fading.
If Jesus was telling his apostles to assimilate old-order nations, one-by-one, into his kingdom, as the constituent parts of his kingdom, then they utterly misunderstood, failing to either do it, or tell anyone else to do it, or explaining a theology that would ground it. More than that, they were false teachers, who openly, clearly and pervasively taught in its place a new theology of nationhood that was simply wrong, because Jesus was actually still asserting the old theology of nationhood.
Peter Leithart is very clever. This is a great gift. But his postmillennial/theonomic beliefs, on this subject, have blinded him to what the New Testament does straightforwardly and explicitly and pervasively teach, both at a doctrinal level, and in terms of what program the apostles of Jesus actually implemented.
No comments:
Post a Comment