God is not a man that He should lie

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Dr. James White writes:

I was just perusing some comments about the debate that took place in South Africa between Jonathan McLatchie and Yusuf Ismail on the Trinity in the Old Testament. Now I wasn’t able to watch it live, and might be able to slip it into the “riding queue” for next week (I do have at least one mega long ride planned), but I wanted to comment on this statement from Ijaz Ahmad, as it caught my attention:

There were quite a few fronts that the Christian side simply did not show up for, which had they been demonstrated would have been better than merely reading off as many quotes as was possible. Take for example the argument by Jonathan that Br. Yusuf’s use of Numbers 23:19 was incorrect because it was not about the character of God, but of man, foregoing that as a Trinitarian he believes that the Person of Christ was both man and God, therefore if it did speak of the Trinity (in this case the Trinitarian Person of Jesus), then he should have not denied that it referred to the character of God, unless Jonathan himself denies that the Person Of Jesus was not a divine actor with two natures. The interesting thing here is that if Jonathan does believe that God inspired the Old Testament (in whatever form), then shouldn’t God have known He would appear as a man at some point and therefore the verse’s relevance would apply then? This seems to have gone over Jonathan’s head altogether.

I have never found the use of Numbers 23:19 by Islamic apologists to be a weighty objection, but one founded more upon ignorance of the subject than upon deep reflection. Christians use this text in responding to Mormons frequently, and for good reason:
“He came to him, and behold, he was standing beside his burnt offering, and the leaders of Moab with him. And Balak said to him, “What has the LORD spoken?” Then he took up his discourse and said,
“Arise, O Balak, and hear;
Give ear to me, O son of Zippor!
“God is not a man, that He should lie,
Nor a son of man, that He should repent;
Has He said, and will He not do it?
Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good?
“Behold, I have received a command to bless;
When He has blessed, then I cannot revoke it.”
(Numbers 23:17–20 NASB)

The text comes from Balaam’s encounter with Balak and the matter of cursing or blessing the people of Israel. The issue is, obviously, the irreversibility of Yahweh’s promise to bless Israel as His covenant people in giving to them the Promised Land. Verse 19, the beginning of the word given to Balaam by Yahweh, states a basic reality: God is God. God is not human. God is the creator of humanity. This seems obvious, but Balak is undoubtedly outside the covenant community and in need of basic instruction in truth. The emphasis in pointing to the otherness of God’s nature in contrast to man is that God’s promises and blessings are not fickle, as is the case with man. Hence, immediately upon stating that God is not a man, we have “that He should lie.” Lying, being dishonest in His promises, is in the realm of fallen creatureliness; it is not something to be found in the realm of the Divine Creator. Using standard Hebrew parallelism (this is a poetic section), the same truth is restated, this time with the statement “that He should repent.”

The term used here, nacham, (the auto-correct on my computer attempted to change that to “nachos”), is deeper than the Western concept of “repent” as in “change one’s mind,” but often includes within it the idea of regret at one’s actions, or at least regret at the results of past events. In any case, the point is made plain by the rest of the verse—God has said He will bless Israel, and He will “do it” and will “make it good.” God’s revelation to Balaam cannot be changed no matter how much Balak may wish it to be so. God will not be bought off by the king’s money.

So, it is rather obvious, on any basic reading of the text in its context, that these words refer to God’s faithfulness to His promises, similar to the words of Psalm 12:6-7, for example. They are, in fact, relevant to Mormonism, which, in its orthodox historical teachings (given the nature of Mormon epistemology, all of this could change tomorrow), denies the ontological distinction between God and man. Hence, the foundation of the distinction upon which God’s word to Balaam rests, is denied in LDS theology. So, Numbers 23:19 is relevant to Mormonism, for in that religion, God and man are the same species, ontologically identical (being separated only by progression in time and status).

But the text is, rather obviously, irrelevant to the doctrine of the Trinity, and I will have to candidly admit that when I see Muslims using this text I know that their knowledge of the doctrine is, well, less than robust.

The historic doctrine of the Trinity does not teach that God’s nature is that of a man. God has eternally been God. God has never ceased to be God, and cannot by definition do so. In the Incarnation God did not cease to be God, God’s nature did not become human, etc. As I explained fairly clearly in the context of knowledgable Islamic objection in my debate with Abdullah Kunde in 2011, we believe the Second Person of the Trinity voluntarily took on a perfect human nature in the Incarnation. The Second Person did not cease being fully God, fully eternal, etc. There was no inter-mixture of the natures so that the divine became semi-human or the human became semi-divine. Two natures, one Person, “the Lord of glory” Jesus the Christ. The Word became flesh without ceasing to be the Word. The essential, eternal, unchanging nature of God did not change in the Incarnation anymore than when the Triune God brought the universe into existence. The Incarnation was a divine act in time.

The point being this: there is nothing in the statement “God is not a man” that is in any possibly logical sense relevant to the future action of the Second Person of the Trinity in taking on a human nature so as to accomplish the prophesied redemption of God’s people (Isaiah 9:5-6). God’s nature is that of God, not man—always has been, always will be. The Incarnation did not change that. Further, the point of the statement is focused upon the fallenness of man resulting in the unreliability of his promises and actions—which likewise would be irrelevant to the sinless Son when in the flesh. So any serious reflection upon the Trinity would reveal that the citation of Numbers 23:19 is errant on the part of Islamic apologists.

Now, I would likewise like to comment that I have been rather clear over the years in stating that I do not believe the Trinity is a specifically Old Testament revelation. While there are prophetic glimpses of this truth, I agree with Warfield that its primary revelation is found between the Testaments, specifically in the Incarnation of the Son and the outpouring of the Spirit. Hence, the New Testament becomes the record of this historical revelation, not the actual ground of that revelation. That is, the NT reveals the Trinity simply because it is written in light of the historical action of the Triune God that preceded it. I have addressed this in my book, The Forgotten Trinity, and you can read an excellent discussion of these issues in Warfield’s classic work, available on line here.

Who Is the True Israel of God?

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Article: Who Is the True Israel of God? by Rev. Nicholas T. Batzig (@Nick_Batzig), pastor of New Covenant Presbyterian Church in Richmond Hill, Ga., and editor of reformation 21. He blogs at Feeding on Christ.

I recently read an article in which a noted Christian theologian was encouraging Christian churches to celebrate the Passover Seder. The author’s line of argumentation was not that God requires Christians to keep the Old Testament feasts and festivals but that by observing Passover, Christians can better remember the Jewish foundation of their faith as well as help foster improved Jewish-Christian relations. Strikingly absent from this article were any biblical references to Christ’s fulfillment of the old covenant feasts and festivals.

Yet the Apostle Paul, along with the other New Testament authors, in no uncertain terms explained that Jesus fulfilled each and every single shadowy and typical aspect of the old covenant ceremonial law (Col. 2:16–17), just as He came to fulfill all of the Old Testament promises and prophecies (2 Cor. 1:20). While Christians profess that Jesus is the fulfillment of all of the preparatory and anticipatory aspects of the Old Testament, many lack the overarching framework by which the individual parts find their place in the grand narrative of God’s plan of redemption. In short, Jesus fulfills every preparatory and anticipatory aspect of the history of redemption in the Old Testament in general—and in the history of Israel in particular—because He is the true Israel of God. He recapitulates—summarizes and repeats—Israel’s history in His own experience and work in order to secure for His people the blessings promised to Abraham.

While there are many places in Scripture to which we might turn when seeking to understand the biblical teaching about Jesus as the true Israel of God, the gospel of Matthew develops it most fully. Matthew begins his account by focusing on Jesus as the son of David and the son of Abraham. By tracing Jesus’ lineage back to Abraham, Matthew explains to the covenant people that Jesus is the long-awaited and ultimate son of Abraham.

Abraham is, of course, the father of the Jews—whom God called, in the days of the exodus—“my son” (Ex. 4:23). When God called the Gentile Abram to Himself, gave him promises of redemption, and justified him only through his faith in the coming Redeemer, He turned him into the father of Israel. In order to properly understand Israel, we have to first understand Abraham. But in order to understand Abraham, we have to first understand God’s covenant plan of redemption—His eternal plan which He began to work out in time immediately after the fall of our first parents (Gen. 3:15).

In the Scriptures, Abraham stands as the covenant head of the people to whom God revealed Himself and His promise of redemption. The New Testament authors home in on the fact that God gave promises “to Abraham and to his seed.” The Apostle Paul goes a step further by suggesting that Christ is “the seed” (singular) to whom God was referring when He made His covenant promises with Abraham (Gal. 3:16 NIV). The point is clear: God gave promises to Abraham so that they might be passed down to Christ who would, in the fullness of time, fulfill them in His person and by His work.

We see this in the divine dialogue that the writer to the Hebrews sets out from the Old Testament Scriptures (e.g., Heb. 2:10–16). The covenant promises that God gave to Abraham and to David had to make their way to the incarnate Christ. When the writer cites Psalm 2:7 and 2 Samuel 7:14 in Hebrews 1:5, he is helping us understand that God the Father was speaking to God the Son in the Old Testament about the covenant promises made to David.

The implications are large. In the Old Testament, everything that seems to be for the nation of Israel had to be passed down to Jesus, who then fulfilled the realities of the promises for us in His own person and work. This is how the Apostle Paul could say, “All the promises of God find their Yes in him [Christ]” (2 Cor. 1:20). It is also the reason why he could say of the Old Testament Scriptures: “Whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope” (Rom. 15:4).

When we read of God’s promises of restoration that He gave Israel through the Old Testament prophets, we must do so through the lens of the person and work of Christ. All of the judgment prophesied about the nation prepares us for the judgment that fell on Christ—the true Israel—for our sin. In His resurrection, Jesus secures the restoration that was promised so long before. When the Apostles appeal to Joel 2:28–32 in Acts 2:16–21 and Amos 9:11–12 in Acts 15:16–17, this is what they have in view. The fulfillment of those restoration promises occurs first in the risen or restored Son of Abraham, who will consummate them in a new heaven and earth.

What has been written only begins to scratch the surface of the way in which the Scriptures hold forth Jesus as the true Israel of God. In the forthcoming posts in this short series, we will consider New Testament expositions of pertinent Old Testament passages as well as the structured narrative that Matthew gives us to help us get our minds around the importance of this most marvelous—yet often overlooked—aspect of the history of redemption.

Don’t Be Caught without a Confession

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Article by Dr. Michael Reeves. president and professor of theology at Union School of Theology in Oxford, England. (Original source here)

Christians have always written and cherished summaries of their beliefs. The Bible records the earliest of these confessions of faith (1 Tim 3:16). Then, the early post-Apostolic church produced definitive statements of essential Christian belief, such as the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed, still considered benchmarks of orthodoxy. In the centuries that have followed, Christians have continued to produce confessions: the Augsburg Confession (1530), the Thirty-Nine Articles (1562), the Westminster Confession of Faith (1646), the London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), and so on. The church has never been without a confession or creed.

THE RECIPE AND THE PUDDING

However, for all their defining importance in Christian history, confessions of faith have met with mixed reactions from Christians. While many believers have used confessions enthusiastically, others have claimed that confessions replace a vital relationship with God with a desiccated list of doctrine, replacing the Spirit with the letter, leaving only a husk of dead, dull orthodoxy. However, to understand confessions this way is to mistake the recipe for the pudding. Confessions, like recipes, are descriptions of the vital ingredients in the Christian life of faith, not to be confused with the reality itself. That does not mean the description is unimportant: different ingredients will make a different pudding. But, if you try to eat the recipe card rather than the pudding, you will be sadly disappointed.

There is a deeper, more sinister reason for our distrust of confessions. It started in the garden of Eden when Adam and Eve refused to listen to God. Ever since then, mankind pretends that God has not spoken to us. If we admit that God has spoken, we must also admit that we knowingly disobey Him—an admission that we are not the lords and gods we daily pretend to be. Vagueness about what the Bible teaches and a lack of specificity in matters of theology maintain this Edenic error. Without confessions of faith, we are speculating in the dark, denying that God has spoken His revealing light into the world (John 1:1–5). Undisturbed by the harsh light of divine revelation, we are free to dwell in the shadows, fashioning idols to our hearts’ content, crafting a self-made religion out of comforting experiences, moralism, or whatever we choose.

History is replete with this tendency. Consider an example. In seventeenth-century England, a group of theologians called latitudinarians, tired of the never-ending theological debates that flowed from the Reformation, sought a Christianity shorn of most of its doctrine. Doctrine became a dirty word. For them, Christianity was essentially morality—the less doctrine it had, the more people could agree and unite. The problem was that this unity was built around the standards of morality rather than Christ.

In many ways, the latitudinarians were heralds of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment skepticism toward all doctrine epitomized by Edward Gibbon. In his monumental Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Gibbon looks despairingly at the doctrinal disputes of the early post-Apostolic church as nothing but irrelevant bickering. For example, Gibbon dismisses the Arian controversy’s debate over whether Christ is truly God (homoousios) or merely an exalted creature (homoiousios) by saying, “The difference between the Homoousion and the Homoiousion is almost invisible to the nicest theological eye.”1 For Gibbon, it was an immaterial debate over the single letter i. Yet the argument was over far more essential matters. The controversy was about whether Christ is God, whether He is to be worshiped as God. That single i divided orthodoxy from heresy, with one side claiming Christ as Creator, while the other saw Him as nothing more than a created being. Gibbon’s blithe indifference to doctrine could just as easily argue that the difference between Christianity and Islam is merely one of numbers: one (Allah) or three (Father, Son, Spirit). We know, however, that doctrinal precision matters.

HAS GOD SPOKEN?

When natural, Edenic inclinations and mainstream Western intellectual history stand together against confessions, it is easy to see how a love for confessions has become an unthinkable offense. God’s revelation, objective truth rather than subjective sentiment, offends modern culture.

That is precisely the intent of a confession—it refuses to go along with the pretense that God has not spoken. A confession asserts that God has spoken clearly and specifically. Holding to a confession is an act of humility, admitting that we are not, as we would wish, the final arbiters of truth. Instead, in our confessions we proclaim that God has given us absolute, nonnegotiable truth. Confession is our obedient response to what God has spoken. It is an acknowledgment that God is God, and that we are not. Continue reading →