MAY 2014

In this edition . . .

Welcome to the May 2014 edition of The Eclectic Kasper, a monthly web journal about theology, movies, music and more!

This month, we investigate how we can see the grace of God through His judgment, and we will survey more bizarre quotes from emergent author Rob Bell. It is interesting to look back and see some over-inflated quotes about Obama, and we will also note how superhero movies betray some interesting truths about our society and culture.

As always, we would love to have your feedback on any of our articles; feel free to give us a “like” on our The Eclectic Kasper Facebook page or you can send your cheers and jeers to feedback@eclectickasper.com.

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT: The Grace of Judgment (Malachi 1:3)

But I have hated Esau, and I have set his mountain for desolation,

and his inheritance for the jackals of the desert.

Why does God have to hate anyone? Why can’t God just love everyone and save everyone? The answer is easy: then it wouldn’t be love and grace.

In the early verses of Malachi, the last writing prophet listed in the Old Testament canon, God demonstrates the difference between the fate of Edom and that of the post-exilic Jewish community. The difference is not their relative resources or personal merits, but only God’s attitude toward each and their relationship with Him.

Edom, the descendants of Esau, is a sibling nation to Israel, since Jacob and Esau were brothers. And yet, their fates could not be more different. As demonstrated in the previous verse, God’s love for Jacob refers to His covenant keeping affection for and protection over his people, Israel. Without such a covenant, Edom had no such protection from the destruction of the Lord and the invasion of foreign nations.

The word “hate” (sanee in the Hebrew) need not be laden with emotional implications, nor should it be divested of them, either. That is, God’s “hatred” toward Edom is not a sudden outbreak of whimsical emotion, nor is it completely without emotion. The idea of hatred here is a choice to not be in a covenant relationship with someone, and therefore, to allow them to fall prey to whatever decisions they make as a nation.

God says that He “set” Esau’s fortunes (his mountain and his inheritance) for a specific purpose. The Hebrew word sim here means “to set,” “to station,” or “to ordain,” and it carries a sense of intentionality with it. That is, God set Edom on a course of destruction because they do not have a covenant relationship with Him. Therefore, Israel should be exceedingly grateful for the relationships that they do have with God – a relationship which they seem to be placing little value on (1:2, 7; 2:11, 17). Rather, it is because of that covenant relationship with the Lord that they are preserved and will be saved from the destruction to which the other nations had fallen and would fall victim. This is the unchanging covenant that God made with Abraham, that continues to preserve the nation of Israel despite her own waywardness and foolishness; Malachi 3:6 states “For I, the LORD, do not change; therefore you, O sons of Jacob, are not consumed.”

The destruction of some demonstrates the mercy of God on those who are not destroyed. The fate of the wicked reveals God’s grace on those who are saved, not by their works, but only through faith. In Romans 9 Paul picks up this theme using these verses early in Malachi. He notes that it is not from injustice but from mercy that God chose Israel and not Jacob (vv. 13-16). Paul further verifies that God makes some nations and peoples purposely for their destruction so that His mercy can be demonstrated on those He chooses to save by grace (vv. 22-24).

Does it seem callous and heartless to you that God allows some to be a sacrificial lamb so that others could enjoy God’s mercy? In reality, there is no other way that God could genuinely demonstrate His mercy and grace! If none were destroyed and eternally condemned, then there would be no value of grace. That is, if all people were saved by grace, grace would no longer be grace, but it would be entitlement; eternal life would be something that we deserved simply because we are members of the human race. Grace would be something God obligatorily owes us, not something He graciously bestows on us.

The specific word for “desolation” or “destruction” is used only here in 1:3 in the book of Malachi, but it is a favorite of the major prophets (especially Ezekiel, who used it 22 times), as well as in some minor prophets, like Joel and Zephaniah. It is used very rarely in non-prophetic writings (Ex 23:29; Lev 26:33; Josh 8:28), most notably of the fate of Ai in Joshua 8:28. The prophet Obadiah spells out the fate of the Edomites, descendants of Esau, more thoroughly, but essentially comes to the same conclusion (1:4, 6, 9, 18). Obadiah demonstrates the ironic arrogance that Edom exhibited without God (1:3, 12), and the false confidence that they placed in their rocky environment. Their mountain homes would be destroyed and their “inheritance” would be a haunt for jackals. That is, their own comfortable homes would be given to the kind of animals that only inhabit deserted places. This specific figure of domesticity-turned-to-desolation is used also by Isaiah and Jeremiah as the fate shared by those without a relationship with God (Is 13:22; 34:13; 35:7; Jer 9:11; 10:22; 49:33; 50:39; 51:37).

Those who have a relationship with God because of His grace through faith in Christ should rest in the confidence of God’s victory over evil and should continually rejoice and be thankful for their status as children of God. Believers didn’t earn this status, but were given it by God’s mercy and grace. And the outcome for those who do not trust Christ and have not received grace should make us enormously grateful for the grace that God has exhibited to us.

POLITICS: More From a Messy Messiah

We discussed in the February 2013 edition of The Eclectic Kasper that the left has a penchant toward an “Obamessiah” mentality and a Barack worship. Now, over a year later, despite the ineptitude, timidity and failures of the Obama presidency, there are still many Obamessiamaniacs out there. It is amusing to go back and review some of the Barack worshippers’ statements, but it is also disheartening to know that there are many who still revere this President with such blind adoration. Here are just a few adherents to Obamessiamania.

The gushing of Florida A&M University professor Barbara A. Thompson was almost unbearable. In July 2012, before the November elections, she published a book entitled The Gospel According to Apostle Barack: In Search of a More Perfect Political Union as ‘Heaven Here on Earth.’ I hope to learn someday that this book was a satirical piece—though I could find no evidence for this—because if it is not, then it is a truly frightful work. In the acknowledgements section of her book she defines “The Spirit or God’s (His) Spirit—a subconscious spiritual messenger that appears at night through dreams to advocate for the re-election of Barack Obama, Jr., President of the United States.” She includes the startling statement that she voted for Obama in 2008 because he is black: “Even though my vote in 2008, for Barack as President of the United States, was more of a history making event, it was based largely on his ethnic origin rather than his ideas and vision of America as a more perfect union” (page 1). Of course, this assertion comes from the kind of person who called white people “racist” for voting against Obama! Thompson’s racism turns into full scale “Obamalatry” when she writes,

“Then, as I began to contemplate ways to assist Barack in his 2012 re-election bid something miraculous happened. I felt God’s Spirit beckoning me in my dreams at night. Listening, cautiously, I learned that Jesus walked the earth to create a more civilized society and that Martin Luther King walked the earth to create a more justified society, but, Apostle Barack, the name he was called by in my dreams, would walk the earth to create a more equalized society, for the middle class and working poor. Apostle Barack, the next young leader with a new cause, had been taken to the mountaintop and allowed to see over the other side. He had the answers to unlock the kingdom of ‘Heaven Here on Earth’ for his followers” (2).

Wow (yes, that’s the only commentary about this quote that I can conjure up!).

The odd reverence continues: In a 2009 interview, Nightline co-anchor Terry Moran compared Obama to George Washington. In that interview, Moran (yes . . . that’s his real name) claims: “In some ways Barack Obama is the first president since George Washington to be taking a step down into the oval office.” One could also point to the children’s book Barack Obama: Son of Promise, Child of Hope, a bombastically-titled book containing some Obama worship as well as some excerpts from Obama’s Dreams of My Father. There have even been reports that this book will be integrated into the third grade Common Core curriculum.

Some statements that people have published about Obama drip with a new-ageism and are just plain creepy. In June 2008, Mark Morford writing in the San Francisco Chronicle lauded Obama thusly: “Many spiritually advanced people I know . . . identify Obama as a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who has the ability to lead us not merely to new foreign policies or health care plans or whatnot, but who can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet, of relating and connecting and engaging with this bizarre earthly experiment. These kinds of people actually help us evolve.” In a February 2008 Huffington Post article, Gary Hart used new age language and Obama reverence to side-step Obama’s lack of experience:

“He is in fact an agent of transformation. He is not operating on the same plane as ordinary politicians, and this makes him seem elusive to the conventional press and the traditional politicians. His instinct for the moment and the times is orders of magnitude more powerful than the experience claimed by others. Experience in the old ways is irrelevant experience. In an age of great transformation, experience of the past is worthless because it is a barrier to the breakthrough gesture, the instant response in crisis, the instinctive bold decision in the face of totally new circumstances. . . . I see Barack Obama as a leader for this transcendent moment, the agent of transformation in an age of revolution, as a figure uniquely qualified to open the door to the 21st century and to convert threat to great new opportunity.”

This kind of language and the frequency of its use is quite disturbing. Obama himself utilized some of this Messiah rhetoric, such as during a campaign speech in Lebanon, New Hampshire on January 7, 2008: “A light will shine through that window, a beam of light will come down upon you, you will experience an epiphany . . . and you will suddenly realize that you must go to the polls and vote for Obama.” Later during his Victory Speech at the end of the primaries on June 3, 2008 in St. Paul, Minnesota he intoned: “Generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth.”

Obama himself joked about his Messianic complex at a Hollywood fundraiser, as noted in the April 2007 edition of Men’s Vogue: “When Morgan Freeman comes over to greet Obama, the senator begins bowing down both hands in worship. ‘This guy was president before I was,’ says Obama, referring to Freeman’s turn in Deep Impact and, clearly, getting a little ahead of his own bio. Next, a nod to Bruce Almighty: ‘This guy was God before I was.’”

Now, here’s something weird that should check any divine delusionalism: the story immediately above is well attested, but I always like to go back to the original source, especially with online material. I have tried several times to find the original article only to discover that Men’s Vogue folded within a year and a half after this anecdote was printed.

What is wonderful about a Messiah is that his cosmic power and inherent worth makes people want to belong to him. The masses want him to be their Savior, and he wants them to be his people. Did we perhaps see a glimpse of this at the 2012 Democratic National Convention when they showed a video claiming, “We do believe that you can use government in a good way because it’s something we all belong to.” I hope that this was just a major error and that the video intended to declare what we could all affirm, namely, that “We do believe that you can use government in a good way because it’s something that belongs to all of us.” However, these are not semantic gymnastics, but rather this slight adjustment to this last phrase represents the monumental discrepancy between the liberal and conservative agendas, and between whether Obama and his administration is a servant to the American people or a Messianic monarchy over us.

People recognized the Obama worship even as early as 2008. An ABC story during that year quoted from columnist James Wolcott, who stated: “(P)erhaps it’s my atheism at work but I found myself increasingly wary of and resistant to the salvational fervor of the Obama campaign, the idealistic zeal divorced from any particular policy or cause and chariot-driven by pure euphoria.”

Six years into the Obama presidency, the United States continues to be riddled with economic and social problems and escalating international concerns. If there is something messianic in Obama, we’re all still waiting for it to ascend (or descend?). Unfortunately, the savior many Americans thought they were getting turned out to be not only very un-messianic and ordinary, but incompetent, as well.

EMERGENT CONCERNS: The Bizarreness that is Rob Bell, Part 2

We have done many articles on some of the bizarre statements that prominent emergent authors have made, such as “Off the Deep End” (June/ July 2012) and “Off the Deep End, Part Two” (November/ December 2012). We also had an article in the November 2013 edition that specifically featured some of the weird and near-heretical things that Rob Bell has said called “The Bizarreness that is Rob Bell, Part 1.” Most of those quotes were taken from Bell’s book Velvet Elvis (2005). This month, we will investigate some of Bell’s quotes from his highly controversial 2011 book Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived.

Before we get to some of the more disturbing and bizarre quotes from this book, I’ll make a few comments about his method. First, if you are not a patient person—and I sometimes am not—then you will not want to read this book. It is irritatingly riddled with rhetorical questions. Emergents are passionate about conversation, but that lunge toward dialog rather than answers can itself become an idol; Bell shockingly declares of open inquiry about theological topics: “I believe the discussion itself is divine” (ix). I understand that he uses these rhetorical questions to get his reader to think; but, most people buy a book to receive answers, and not questions. Bell is notoriously lacking in answers and certainty, but still manages to sell lots of books. Also, like most false teachers, Bell pulls individual verses out of context, specifically about the love of God and God’s desire to save all people (1 Timothy 2:4), and then normalizes them with no sensitivity to the context of that passage or statement.

You know that you are reading a bizarre book when you encounter this quote on the second page of the preface:

“A staggering number of people have been taught that a select few Christians will spend forever in a peaceful, joyous place called heaven, while the rest of humanity spends forever in torment and punishment in hell with no chance for anything better. It’s been clearly communicated to many that this belief is a central truth of the Christian faith and to reject it is, in essence, to reject Jesus. This is misguided and toxic and ultimately subverts the contagious spread of Jesus’ message of love, peace, forgiveness, and joy that our world desperately needs to hear” (viii).

Refuting Bell and asserting the reality of eternal Hell for those who deny Christ requires simply listing a few verses, including Isaiah 34:10, Dan 12:1-2, Matt 25:41, 46, Jude 1:7, Rev 14:11 and 19:1-3. Jesus’ many references to Gehenna, Hades or Hell in the Gospels demonstrates that this was not a tangential teaching for Him; note, for instance, this list of references just taken from Matthew: 5:22, 29; 10:28; 11:23; 16:18; 18:9; 23:15, 33.

For Bell, heaven is far more about the present than the future. He claims: “When Jesus talked about heaven, he was talking about our present eternal, intense, real experiences of joy, peace, and love in this life, this side of death and the age to come. Heaven for Jesus wasn’t just ‘someday’; it was a present reality” (59). The emphasis on the present is motivated by Bell’s erroneous assertion that “‘Forever’ is not really a category the biblical writers used” (92). Of the presence of Hell, Bell declares: “There are individual hells, and communal, society-wide hells, and Jesus teaches us to take both seriously. There is hell now, and there is hell later, and Jesus teaches us to take both seriously” (79).

Bell doesn’t see that the Bible solves the tension between freedom, love and salvation. In a move very reminiscent of Arminianism and liberal theology, he claims that “Love, by its very nature, is freedom. For there to be love, there has to be the option, both now and then, to not love. . . . Although God is powerful and mighty, when it comes to the human heart God has to play by the same rules we do. God has to respect our freedom to choose to the very end, even at the risk of the relationships itself. If at any point God overrides, co-opts, or hijacks the human heart, robbing us of our freedom to choose, then God has violated the fundamental essence of what love even is” (104). This is very different from C. S. Lewis’ explanation in Surprised by Joy of God working in his life against his will to forcefully and graciously convert him from atheism to theism:

“You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 1 gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night the most dejected and reluctant convert in all of England. I did not then see what is now the most shining and obvious thing; the Divine humility which will accept a convert on such terms. The Prodigal son at least walked home on his own feet. But who can duly adore that Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance to escape? The words compelle intrare, compel them to come in . . . [when] properly understood . . . plumb the depth of the Divine mercy. The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and His compulsion is our liberation.”

By the end of Rob Bell’s Love Wins book, both the friendly and the hostile reader is just wanting Bell to clearly state whether he believes that some will go to Hell or whether he is a universalist, believing that all will be saved. The destiny of humanity is too important of a topic for ambiguity. Yet all he provides us is this: “Will everybody be saved, or will some perish apart from God forever because of their choices? Those are questions, or more accurately, those are tensions we are free to leave fully intact. We don’t need to resolve them or answer them because we can’t, and so we simply respect them, creating space for the freedom that love requires” (115). His ambiguity on this question justifies the accusations that he is a universalist; and these accusations are also supported by the way he marginalizes eternal condemnation in Hell (93), disproportionately emphasizes that God wants all to be saved (98), and states that “What Jesus does is declare that he, and he alone, is saving everybody” (155).

As with many other Emergent writings, some new ageism slips in. Bell suggests that the Greek word zoe, meaning “life,” “eternal life,” or “a living thing,” is like the Force in Star Wars, a comparison he makes on two consecutive pages (144, 145). He claims, “There is an energy in the world, a spark, an electricity that everything is plugged into . . . . This energy, spark, and electricity that pulses through all of creation sustains it, fuels it, and keeps it going. Growing, evolving, reproducing, making more” (145). I also noted another similarity with new age literature; that literature often portrays heaven and hell as now, intertwined, and something that we create for ourselves. Similarly, Bell surveys the story of the prodigal from Luke 15 and concludes: “In this story heaven and hell are within each other, intertwined, interwoven, bumping up against each other” (170). Yet I cannot think of a place in Scripture that doesn’t see these as separate spheres rather than overlapping ones. A few pages later Bell asserts: “We create hell whenever we fail to trust God’s retelling of our story” (173).

One of the more bizarre sections is Bell’s assertion that we all have a good relationship with God, but that many believers teach that God suddenly becomes mean when an unbeliever dies and God sends them to Hell. “Millions have been taught that if they don’t believe . . . God would have no choice by to punish them forever in conscious torment in hell” (173). Bell alleges that the Christian message is wrong if on the moment of death God ceases to be a loving Father to all people and suddenly becomes a “cruel, mean, vicious tormentor.” However, Bell completely misses the truth that before God is the loving, gracious Father of the believer, He is the judge and enemy of the unbeliever (Rom 5:10; 11:28; Eph 2:3). That is, there are no unbelievers who have a good relationship or even a neutral relationship with God that suddenly changes when we die and God has to send us to Hell. Unbelievers are enemies of God and that enmity can only be solved by receiving the free gift of God’s grace through trust in Christ’s death on the cross and resurrection (Eph 2:5-10). Then, God becomes our Father, adopts us into His family and promises us eternal life (Rom 8:15; Gal 4:5; Eph 1:5).

This is one of the fundamental problems with Bell and so many of his Emergent friends. Their exegesis is lacking and their grasp of truth is fuzzy. They sacrifice the doctrinal realities of Christianity in an attempt to connect with and reach out to an uncertain society. But if they are as uncertain about truth as society is, what then do they have to offer them, and what is the point of dialog, conversation and outreach? Though Bell claims that “love wins,” in the Emergent movement, truth loses. In that absence of truth, any certainty that an individual can have about Christian doctrines and Biblical truths is sacrificed (Prov 22:21; Col 2:2; Heb 3:14; 10:22).

There is a somewhat happy ending to this saga of Rob Bell. Like we reported in “The Bizarreness that is Rob Bell, Part 1,” Bell received huge backlash from this book Love Wins because it was perceived as undermining the gospel, the Biblical doctrines about heaven and hell and because it made Bell sound like a universalist. He ended up leaving his ministry at Mars Hill in Grand Rapids, a church that he started, over the contents of this book.

After leaving Mars Hill, Rob Bell pursued other media and humanitarian projects. Perhaps his greatest “success” since then is that in September 2013 he was interviewed by Oprah Winfrey, who champions modern humanistic and new-age religion on her new show Super Soul Sunday. A Christian Post article reported that Bell’s latest book called What We Talk About When We Talk About God, was on one of the “Oprah’s Super Soulful Book of the Month” lists. Additionally, it is reported that he is taping the first few episodes of The Rob Bell Show which will air on the Oprah Winfrey Network this Fall, further solidifying Bell and Oprah’s association.

And that alone should tell you everything you need to know about Rob Bell.

AMERICAN PANTHEON: Cultural Disconnects in Superhero Cinema

We have pointed out some cultural disconnects that are revealed in superhero films. In the August 2013 edition, we spotlighted how super heroines have fallen on some hard times and seem severely underrepresented. We also mentioned the same for African-American super protagonists (see Superman or Super White? Racist Hegemony in the Modern Hero Genre in the February 2013 edition). There are two other cultural disconnects that superhero films reveal about our society, that is, two areas where our society claims to believe in one thing, but wants something different represented in our superhero films.

Capital punishment, i.e., execution by death sentence, is on the decline in our country. Once a hot button topic and a conservative pillar, it has virtually faded into the cultural background as something barbaric, rarely utilized, and then only in the most backward states. A 2012 report from Amnesty International claims that two-thirds of the countries in the world have abolished the death penalty, except for backward countries like China and the U.S. That report claims that the death penalty is unfair and racially biased. Gallup tracking demonstrates that those in favor of the death penalty for someone convicted of murder has declined from 80% in 1994 to 60% in 2013.

However, superhero cinema demonstrates a different attitude toward the death penalty, which is especially curious coming from the Hollywood segment of our country that typically leans left.

I did a survey of the most popular superhero movies since 2000. This consisted of almost thirty films that were in the top 100 grossing films for their respective year according to Box Office Mojo. When surveying these movies, I discovered that over 60% of the time, the villain was killed. (For stat nerds, here are the specifics: out of 28 movies, I counted 33 villains, 12 of whom [36.4%] survived the movie, and 21 [63.6%] died or were killed at the end of the movie. I’m willing to admit some flexibility and interpretation in these numbers, but the results are fairly clear.) In some cases, the villain survives with the intent of possibly bringing him back for a future movie, such as the Joker in The Dark Knight, or Loki in The Avengers and the Thor movies a fact which, by the way, statistically skews the numbers. In some cases the exact fate of the villain is a bit more ambiguous, such as Doom in Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (of course, the bigger question with that terrible movie is, Who cares?!?). In many cases, the antagonist dies directly at the hand of the protagonist, such as Zod in Man of Steel. So, here is the cultural disconnect: while we claim as a society to increasingly oppose the death penalty, we think that it is acceptable for the villain to die at the end of most superhero movies. In fact, movies where the antagonist does not die seem somewhat incomplete (cue Sandman drifting off in Spider-Man 3 still claiming that he’s not a bad person!). But it seems satisfying when the bad guy “gets it” at the end of the movie; it provides a gratifying ending to know that the super villian has met his demise, and again, over 60% of the time, Hollywood agrees! Apparently, death sentences that result from vigilantism are far more acceptable than judicially driven capital punishment.

You thought that was a controversial disconnect? Wait until you hear the next topic . . .

Another important disconnect between what society claims and what society pays to see in superhero cinema regards the issue of homosexuality. I was at a loss to note a single gay episode or gay protagonist in these superhero movies that I surveyed. There have been, of course, some openly gay characters lately, most notably, Marvel’s character Northstar. Yet he is curiously absent from any of the numerous Marvel incarnations that have been produced in the last decade and a half (of the 28 in the yearly top 100 gross, 21 are Marvel movies). Filmmakers had plenty of opportunities to integrate an openly gay character into the panoply of protagonists, but chose not to do so.

Of course, some will take my comments here as an anti-gay rant, but that is to entirely miss the point. It is not me who has subdued these super-homo-heroes; it is the writers, directors, and producers of these 28 movies who apparently felt that this particular element was not appropriate or marketable for their superhero films. This, to me, demonstrates a huge cultural disconnect; our society claims to be more homo-friendly than we used to be (at least that is what we are told!), and yet, homosexuality is absent from our super silver screens.

It seems that what we say we want, or what we are told that we should want is very different from what we actually pay to see. We want the bad guy to get it at the end of the movie because people like the sense of right-ness that a death-penalty-conclusion provides. Also, we prefer to watch the protagonist save the girl probably because an overwhelming majority of people in our society connect with the blossoming of a heterosexual relationship rather than a homosexual one.

Inevitably, someone in Hollywood will come out with a chief protagonist in a superhero film who is openly gay (not just indicated by a side comment, but a character who is openly and obviously gay). I will be curious to see the box office results for that movie. And despite the fact that we are told that we are more open and accepting of homosexuality, I suspect that Hollywood, too, will be surprised from those box office results about how conservative the American public still really is.

So, have you seen any other cultural disconnects in sci-fi, high fantasy or superhero cinema? If so, or if you have any civil comments about this article or any of our other articles, send us a wave at feedback@eclectickasper.com!

WHY I AM A CESSATIONIST: One’s Attitude Toward Acts

The book Acts is one of the more unique books in the Bible. How one perceives it and uses it is colored by one’s understanding of the gifts of the Holy Spirit and whether they all continue down to the present day or not. The charismatic individual or continuationist argues that all of the gifts of the Spirit, even the miraculous or sign gifts like tongues and healings, are still available today. They see 1 Corinthians and Acts as evidence of their position. A cessationist like myself, will use Acts to verify the opposite.

The question comes down to whether Acts, and especially Acts 2, is supposed to portray the normal Christian experience or not. There are flames of fire on the disciples’ heads, people speaking in tongues, and a mass conversion in Jerusalem of Jews to Christianity. It is powerful and dramatic Christianity; but is it normal Christianity? If it is, then Christians today should be speaking in tongues and healing people regularly.

However, I do not believe that it does represent normal Christianity, but rather was a unique and unrepeatable point in church history. Here’s why:

First, Acts 1-2 represents a very unique moment in redemption history, as God’s plan hinges from an Old Testament phase into the post-resurrection church age. There are a variety of circumstances that make this particular period unique. First, this is right after the resurrection and ascension of Christ. Also, the original apostles were still alive and had a unique ministry in Jerusalem and in the Ancient Near East. Also, Acts 2 presents the first mass evangelistic effort to the Jewish people; this notion of “to the Jew first and then the Greeks” was an important strategy for the early church but not today (Acts 3:26; 13:46; Rom 1:16; 2:9, 10 [though evangelism to Jewish people is still very important today]). The apostles themselves recognized the unique nature of what was happening. In his sermon in Acts 2, Peter quotes from Joel 2 noting how signs and wonders will accompany the inauguration of the Messianic age and the new phase of the day of the Lord, which will come more dramatically in the future. Peter’s own apostolic authority is authenticated in Acts 3 when he heals a beggar. Similarly, Paul’s apostolic authority is seen in the miracles he did (13:9-11; 19:11) as well as through his teaching. The author of Hebrews also affirms that the initial spread of the gospel was accompanied with “signs and wonders and by various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit” (Hebrews 2:3-3). Acts clearly describes this shift from the Old Covenant to the New Covenant of Christ and that transition is authenticated by signs and wonders. But as the transition period closes, and the gospel moves more permanently into the Gentile phase, so also do the authenticating signs and wonders cease. Again, Acts was a unique hinge and transition from the OT economy to the economy of the Gospel of Christ. Acts is helpful and instructive, but should not be taken as normative.

By the way, one must also be careful of believing that 1 Corinthians 12-14 was “normal Christianity.” Rather, 1 & 2 Corinthians provide snapshots of a church in chaos. The Corinthian believers’ understanding of gifts was not “mature” (1 Cor 14:20); they are exhorted to strive for the “greater gifts” of love, faith and hope (12:31), and the Corinthians should not be held up as an example for today. I would point to churches such as those in Thessalonica, Philippi, or Rome as more normative. While the NT demonstrates that these other churches were not completely without their own problems, they clearly exhibited greater maturity than did the church at Corinth.

Aside from the early chapters of Acts being a hinge between the OT economy and the post-resurrection phase of redemption, Acts itself demonstrates a tapering of the sign gifts. In a later article we will note this tapering effect of the sign and miraculous gifts elsewhere in the NT, but one can notice tapering in the twenty-eight chapters of Acts itself. Tongues and miracles are mentioned in Acts chapters 2, 3, 4, 8, 10, 14, and 19. Not only are there decreasing episodes of tongues and miracles, there is decreasing emphasis on these miraculous episodes as the book continues. The last third of the book of Acts does not contain signs, tongues or miracles (28:3-5 may be a possible exception). Again, this goes back to the purpose of tongues; 1 Corinthians 14:22 says that “tongues are for a sign, not to those who believe but to unbelievers.” Tongues were used in the initial spread of the gospel to unbelievers as a sign to authenticate the Gospel message. Beyond this initial authenticating point, as Acts demonstrates, the need for signs, wonders, tongues and miracles were no longer necessary. They especially passed off the scene when the apostles passed off the scene and left behind them the apostolic writings. So, as you see, Acts 2 isn’t even typical for the book of Acts, let alone for the entire Church age up to the present.

Also, I would also beware of those who suggest that Acts 2 resembles a modern missionary context. The analogy is wrong, because, the apostles in Acts 2 were appealing to a Jewish audience who had the revelation of the Old Testament and who had seen the crucifixion of Christ. This hinge moment is not the same as the opening of the gospel to a tribe in New Guinea, Africa, or Southeast Asia. In fact, the closest analogy to the modern missionary situation is found in Acts 17 where Paul preaches in Athens. Previously, Paul had started in a city by going to the synagogue and preaching Christ there. However, in Athens, he preached in the synagogue and also in the marketplace to a primarily non-Jewish audience, who had little or no familiarity with the Old Testament, which, again, is the closest analogy we have to a modern missionary context. With these individuals Paul utilizes logic, culture, reason, but no tongues, healings or other miracles.

Acts is an extraordinary books, demonstrating the unique transition from the Old Testament economy to the beginning of the Church phase under the resurrected Jesus Christ. Therefore, the burden of proof rests on the continuationist to establish that Acts 2 should be the normal Christian experience, even though everything indicates otherwise.

It is important that we understand Acts, and take some lessons from it about modern evangelism and church priorities. However, to claim that the unique moment of the early chapters of Acts should be normative for believers today is simply not legitimate exegetically.

QUOTE FOR CONTEMPLATION: Drift Toward Holiness?

Are we more prone to float toward holiness or to drift away from it? Heavy-hitting New Testament Scholar D. A. Carson nails that question in a devotional called, For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches of God’s Word:

“One of the most striking evidences of sinful human nature lies in the universal propensity for downward drift. In other words, it takes thought, resolve, and effort to bring about reform. . . . People do not drift toward Holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord. We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated.”

D. A. Carson, For the Love of God: A Daily Companion for Discovering the Riches

of God’s Word, Volume 2 (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 1999), 23.

FEEDBACK: Luther and Pronouns

Regarding the series on Cessationism, one individual wrote: “Great series, and very well thought out and laid out and clearly presented!!” They then followed up with a suggestion: “I like my particular NKJV version partly because it always capitalizes all references to deity (He, savior, etc.) thus helping to clarify when God is being referenced, as opposed to when mankind is being referenced, and there are many verses in scripture where that isn’t always immediately apparent, as you well know. I think that would help guarantee the same clarity in your excellent writings.” This is a great suggestion; as the NKJV and NASB do, we will capitalize divine pronouns henceforth both for the sake of clarity as well as out of respect our Triune God.

Relative to our April 2014 article called, “The Colorful Martin Luther,” one individual responded, “Luther was definitely more crude and undiplomatic than he should have been. But he was facing an enemy that said all kinds of crude and undiplomatic things about him. I agree that others I have read are not so crude and undiplomatic as Luther. For example, his words on the ‘murdering hoards of peasants,’ or about Jews.” Well said; Luther definitely lacked a diplomacy that could have helped consolidate Protestantism rather than fracturing it. Speaking of Luther, we have some exciting news to share with you about our series on Luther and the Marburg Colloquy in the next edition of The Eclectic Kasper. Also, next edition, we will continue our series on Cessationism and we will examine some significant planks for Conservativism.

Thanks for your feedback; keep it coming! You can drop feedback on our The Eclectic Kasper Facebook page, or you can send your thoughts and input to feedback@eclectickasper.com.