We have a trio of items for this week’s Bible lesson.
First, review Genesis 3:21 where God clothed Adam and Eve with skins. These days, everyone assumes this is an obscure reference to shedding blood as forerunner to the sacrificial system. However, nothing else about this passage signals such. While we probably can’t trace the idea, a much older theological assumption was that this refers to “clothing them with mortality”.
Given the ambiguities of Hebrew language, a plausible reading would be that God gave them “tunics of [bare] flesh”. There is nothing in the word itself to differentiate human and animal skin except the context. Given the broad symbolism of “tunic” as clothing, it should not surprise us that Paul references this idea in 1 Corinthians 15:53-55 and 2 Corinthians 5:1-4.
As a consequence of the Fall, Adam and Eve were clothed in mortal forms and no longer eligible to eat from the Tree of Life. Paul leans heavily on the image of vestment, or being vested with immortality.
Second, 1 Peter 2:4-10 is a reference to Isaiah 66:18-23. Note that the text of Isaiah here is somewhat in dispute, as well as its translation. Still, Heiser insists that is says Israel’s covenant kinfolks will be brought back from the nations, a reference to Gentiles brought into the New Covenant. Gentiles are those kinfolks.
The immediate context in Isaiah begins with v.17 where God says He’s had enough of pagan worship practices. He’s going to slay a bunch of those worshipers. Meanwhile, He’s going to gather people from all the nations scattered at Babel. They will come and witness His glory, and then be commissioned to go back among the nations to witness for His name. From there, they will return with Israel’s “brethren” as an offering to the Lord. Some of them will be chosen as Priests and Levites.
Peter writes about how the Gentiles have become part of the Chosen People of God. They were previously handed over to the pagan gods and had no inheritance in faith. But now they are called into covenant. It’s a nuanced difference from the Replacement Theology that tries to keep the Covenant Nation as a political entity. Christ leaves that behind.
The only way Gentiles can become a legitimate priesthood is if they are serving under a High Priest according to the order of Melchizedek.
Third, is the issue of a coherent worldview. We have all been pickled most of our lives in some mainstream church traditions. The theology was backed up by a cosmology that we rarely ever thought about, much less would we have imagined questioning it. Aside from Catholicism (which is Medieval), and to some degree Anglican traditions, that cosmology is almost uniformly from the Enlightenment.
Even before we picked up on Heiser, we were struggling hard to break away from the habits of an Enlightenment mind. It was quite difficult because we knew too little about the Hebrew cosmology. With Heiser, we gained a very broad and deep view of how the Hebrews talked about reality. However, Heiser and Moreau are consistently Enlightenment men. It does not help us much that the men who teach this outlook don’t absorb it themselves.
It’s one thing to know the mythology, if you will, but another thing to actually view the world the way a Hebrew mind worked. We still have a long way to go with that. Some of us are quicker than others at absorbing a Hebrew expectation of how God does things. Some particular sticking points are things like recognizing inside versus outside the Covenant. Another is how, within Creation, humanity alone is offered redemption. None of the other Creatures God made get that option.
But while it may sound like I keep harping on humans being the object and not the subject of the heavenly drama, I keep running into questions that still assume a traditional church outlook that makes mankind the center of things. This is particularly strong where people think about eschatology. We don’t matter too much until after Christ returns. Until then, we simply aren’t privy to much of what God is trying to accomplish. Our role is still, as Heiser said, “already but not yet”. We are already God’s family, but an awful lot of the implications of this are not visible while we are in the flesh.
That’s because very little about our mortal existence matters in the big picture. The only thing we can do is testify to His glory – we are supposed to be His excited kiddos cheering Him on as He does everything. We aren’t supposed to notice when things don’t go as we might like them. This world is not where the real action takes place. It’s all we can do to shake off the controls Satan has built into our human lives. That’s pretty much the whole thing.
I’m constantly encountering people who simply expect too much from God about things that rub them raw in the world around them. I’m willing to be you get tired of that, too.
