Hannah
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Welcome to Halting Toward Zion, the podcast where we limp like Jacob to the Promised Land and talk about life, the universe, and everything along the way. I’m Emily Maxson here with Greg Uttinger and Bryan Broome.
Today we are moving from Judges/Ruth into 1 Samuel, which begins with the story of Hannah, one of the few women to write scripture, as her song is included in holy writs. It seems to be prophetic, although I don’t think she’s ever called a prophetess in scripture.
Neither is Mary, but they both sing songs that represent their own Bible study and are nonetheless the fruit of God’s inspiration and Spirit.
It’s the time of the Judges still. 1 Samuel overlaps with the end of Judges, so Samuel is being born about the same time that Samson is being born and about the same time that Obed, Ruth’s son, is being born, so there’s a lot going on here.
In Israel that means that to the south the Philistines are a big deal, and somewhere in here they’re going to start exercising authority, shall we say, over Judah and Dan and some of the southern tribes. In fact, before it’s done they’re going to have most of Israel under their thumb. They’re going to disarm them.
Theirs is a milder kind of gentler tyranny in that they don’t take absolutely all of their food, as some of the invading tribes have done, and they don’t seem to try to impose idolatry on them, nor does Israel seem overly fond of the Philistine gods. It’s just sort of, “Yeah, they’re in charge and we’re not and it’s been that way a long time now, and I hope no one upsets that.” See Samson’s adventures.
Meanwhile, back at home we’ve seen that the Levites from the beginning of the period of the Judges have not been doing well, and now we see it coming to fruition in the tabernacle, which is in Shiloh at this point.
Eli is both high priest and judge, so one short of Samuel being the last of the judges. He’s not very competent. He’s kind of a pushover, especially where his sons are concerned. His sons have grown up to be very wicked men, and yet they are priests. They strong-arm the people who come with offerings and take what they want, the best of the meat, rather than letting them offer it to the Lord on God’s terms, so they’re discouraging people from worship.
They’re giving vent to their lust for food and drink, but also to their sexual lusts. They are raping the women who serve in the tabernacle, so it’s really, really bad. You thought the Levites were bad? These guys are really, really horrible.
And they’re using the force of institutional worship to do their horrible things.
They are, and in the process, as is the way of things, destroying the power of the institution, because more and more people are despising the worship of the Lord and not wanting to go up to the tabernacle, knowing this is what they’ll get.
It’s sort of like the liberal churches a few generations back who basically kicked out the gospel and expected that the pastors would nonetheless be paid, only to find out that the only people who stayed were a few old people who actually believe the gospel, because they didn’t want to give up the churches they had gone to their whole life. Everyone else left, and suddenly the pastors were without income. Oddly enough, people who go to church want to go to church. People who want to worship God oddly enough want to worship God.
That would all be bad enough. This family we’re focusing on, the husband is named Elkanah. He’s fairly wealthy, apparently. He has two wives, which he shouldn’t. He has Hannah – or if you don’t do the aspiration, Anna would be the other equivalent. It means grace. The other one is named Peninnah, and she’s a piece of work. Why he married her I’ll never know, but here’s the problem. Hannah has a barren womb.
Now, to those of us who know the Bible, “Oh no, one of those again! That means…” yeah, it does, but it takes a while to get there. Peninnah, on the other hand, has lots of kids. We’re not told how many, but apparently at least two of each and probably more, because “all her sons and daughters.”
Elkanah, despite his bigamy, is faithful to go up to the tabernacle for Passover every year, and possibly the other feasts but Passover is highlighted, and he takes his family with him, which was not required, so that’s good. And as he’s offering peace offerings, he makes sure that Hannah, who is his favorite wife, gets the nicest cut of the meat. But, of course, Peninnah has herself and all of her children, so he has to dice it out so that everybody gets something substantial. Of course, he’s got to eat, too. So when it’s all said and done, you can bet that Peninnah is noticing that Hannah’s getting the favored slice every time.
Peninnah already doesn’t like Hannah. She’s a rival, but she is the wife of a Levite who does in fact love God, in spite of this bigamy thing, and she provokes Hannah, the text says.
Now, we’re not told exactly what she said, but knowing how these things work in our generation it was probably something along the lines of, “Oh dear, sweet Hannah. Child, having so many children is such a blessing from God. You know God promises lots of children to those who serve him faithfully. It’s just such a delight and glory to have all these children. I’m so sorry you don’t have any.”
It might even be more cutting if she’s like, “Oh, you must be so happy not to have all these mouths to feed.”
You could do it that way, but I think there’s a gospel angle here. “You know, if you walked more faithfully with the Lord, I’m sure he would open your womb. Oh, I’ll be praying for you, that you too can know the blessings of God, poor soul.”
However she said it, with whatever dripping honey of hypocrisy came off of her lips, the text calls her Hannah’s adversary. That’s not the same word that’s used for Satan, but it’s close enough. The adversary – we know who that is.
The question becomes why? Hopefully the way we’ve phrased it so far is pretty clear why. I have seen this in my and your generation. It was a thing a decade or two ago. “If you are blessed of the Lord, you will have lots of children.”
“And you should seek lots of children. And if you don’t, if somehow your womb is being closed up, well, sorry God isn’t blessing you the way he’s blessing us.” It easily can become a thing of works righteousness, an odd sort of work since the people involved are wholly passive, except for one thing, but it’s that – blessing is concrete in the form of children.
At a time when I was not yet married, I had a young man who didn’t know much say, “I can’t understand why you wouldn’t want to get married and have as many children as you can.”
I said, “I want to get married. I want to marry the right woman, however. And as for children, that’s going to be in God’s hand.”
I don’t remember where that whole conversation went, but it was just sort of, “When I get married, I’m just going to have as many children as I can.” That’s nice if you want to have lots of children.
If your wife’s body can hold up to it. There are some guys who will kill their wives in the desire to produce more seed. There is no love for the wife here. It’s a brutal sort of thing. And there are women who take it upon themselves as a form of sadomasochism, because they are more blessed of God and God approves of them more than other people if they do this.
That’s not what God says. Nowhere does God say, “Have as many children as you possibly can.” It’s not in the text. You’re not going to find it anywhere.
He also tells us elsewhere that we need to steward our resources well, and if you’re having so many children that you have no resources left, it’s not stewarding your resources well.
You need to be able to take care of your children, and often we are fearful. We expect, “Well, I need to maintain everything at this level that I’m used to.” It doesn’t say that either, but there is wisdom here, and that’s what terrifies people – wisdom and free choice.
We don’t like having to determine these things for ourselves. We want clear lines to tell us what to do.
…to follow and that we can apply to everyone else, and we can judge us and each other by how well this list is followed. No one wants nuance.
Right. This is the religion of works righteousness. I don’t think any of us here are against large families. We would have loved to have more children, but there were literal life and death issues at stake, and I needed to decide with my wife whether or not I wanted her to die next time she had a baby.
Personal testimony – I did not grow up around small children. The first small child I ever was around – of course, you both know the Farschman’s – their little girl Talitha was just about to be two and about to speak her first word when I got married, and we were living in the same house at the time.
I had no sense emotionally of a need for children. What I had was a Bible that told me God said “Be fruitful and multiply” and that marriage is a good thing and that children are a good thing, and I believed God, although I had no personal emotional investment as such.
Guess what? God was right! Isn’t that amazing? Being married is a good thing. Having children is a good thing. When we first started out it was kind of like, “I don’t know about children,” and my wife was saying, “All the children we can,” and I’m saying, “One or two?” I think actually I said two or three, and we ended up with three, for which we’re very thankful.
We’re not condemning anybody who has 9 or 10 or 12, but as you look at scripture there aren’t that many people who have 9 or 10 or 12, and one who had 12 had to cheat to do it. So we need to be very careful in setting limits for anyone, including ourselves. You like having children? You make it work? Praise God, and that can be a wonderful thing. But when you start using it as a spiritual yardstick to beat down other people or yourself – and this can happen and I’ve seen it happen – there’s a problem there.
Hannah feels provoked and abused, to use a modern word. She sees in Peninnah an adversary, not simply on a personal emotional level but on a gospel level. She’s preaching at her a gospel of works salvation.
Here’s another thought. It’s one thing to know intellectually and to have a heart commitment to the gospel, and yet when you are daily slammed with the works righteousness gospel it is sometimes very hard not to feel guilty, not to feel the pressures.
“They’re able to do this. They can give this much. They can have these many kids. They can go out on a limb for Christ,” and you list all the things like, “They spend so many hours in prayer.” You can look at all the things they do, and in and of themselves it may be great things, “But I’m a lousy Christian because I don’t. I need to start doing these things so God will like me.”
There is a constant temptation here because we are sinners and the flesh likes to reassert itself. The flesh here is that of works righteousness. “I will do stuff to make God like me and God bless me, and I will get God’s favor.” Hannah had to deal with that. She had to keep pushing that away and not letting it get to her and not giving in.
What we come to later in the first chapter of Samuel is she’s at the tabernacle and all this has just become too much for her. She’s human. She’s feeling the weight. She does want a son, for all kinds of reasons, and maybe for some bad reasons because she’s human, but there are a lot of good reasons for wanting to have a baby. So in bitterness of soul she goes before the Lord and vows a vow and says –
O Lord of hosts, if thou wilt indeed look on the affliction of thine handmaid, and remember me and not forget thine handmaid, but wilt give unto thine handmaid a man child, [very specific] then I will give him unto the Lord all the days of his life, and there shall no razor come upon his head. [I will place him under a permanent Nazarite vow.]
Now, there’s a side issue that we as good Reformed Presbyterian people could talk about. “Wait, she’s making a vow on behalf of her son that will last his entire life, and he has nothing to say?” Yeah.
There was a lady at school yesterday who asked me, “I was talking to this other lady about infant baptism because I go to a Reformed Baptist church, and I just wanted to know how that goes, and it’s not like Roman Catholics?”
“I just wanted to know about that. It’s okay, you can tell me. She said maybe I could talk to you.”
I did just a little. Thinking now it’s like, “Let me point you back to Hanna and Samuel and you think about that,” because she did say, “It has something to do with a covenant, doesn’t it?”
We kind of skipped over Elkanah’s empty comfort for her wife. He’s kind of tone-deaf here. He’s not helping her out with what she’s actually emotionally going through, and spiritually. You don’t get much of him, beyond what we can pick up. Apparently he’s wealthy and we know he’s a Levite and he loves Hannah, but this is not a flattering snapshot of him loving and cherishing his wife here.
Hannah, why weepest thou and why eatest thou not and why is thy heart grieved? Am not I better to thee than ten sons?
“No dear, you’re actually not. It’s not the same thing remotely. You don’t get it. You don’t understand what’s going on in your own household.”
Remember, this follows in the wake of the last chapters of Judges, where the Levites are the problem. Here we have a godly Levite who again is compromised on the marriage front and spiritually insensitive, although he doubtless loves her emotionally and is sentimental about her.
He does not know the first thing to do to meet her spiritual needs. He is a rotten spiritual doctor. I’m sure we’ll see him in heaven, but that doesn’t help Hannah right now at all. So she has gone and vowed that if God will give her a man-child she will give back said man-child as a Nazarite to the Lord.
Here we could spend a lot of time with Nazarites, but see the episode on Samson. I’m not going to read you all that right now. It’s a lifelong battle in this case of service to the Lord to be defined by specific terms stated along the way.
I do have an interesting question, and I hope it’s not too long of a sidebar. How does Hannah’s vow to the Lord to give her offspring to the Lord square with male headship? How would she have the authority to make that kind of claim if she’s not the head of her household?
The Bible never forbids women from making promises. The husband has the ability to annul that as soon as he hears it, but she has absolute agency.
Well, she’s supposed to tell him at some point. Also, this is a conditional vow to the Lord. “Lord, if…” God can say no.
Elkanah does leave us with one thing toward the end. In fact, I’ll just skip ahead so we don’t forget it later. When the baby is born and Hannah says, “I’m going to stay home with the baby until the baby is weaned,” which means about three or so, “and then I’ll present him before the Lord,” Elkanah says, “Do what seems you good. Only the Lord establish his word,” so Elkanah is on board with this. At what point he was told, we’re not told exactly.
Also, Eli, when he sees Hannah praying – going back in time now – she is so moved with sorrow and deep emotion that the words aren’t coming out. It was normal for people to pray out loud, to talk to the Lord, not think at him, although there are examples of that from scripture as well, but overwhelmingly it’s talking.
So he’s looking at someone who should be praying, that is talking out loud to God, and she just seems to be moving her lips and looking emotionally stricken and incoherent, so he concludes that she’s drunk. He’s seen enough drunkenness in his own family, so that’s probably his first thought.
He rebukes her and she says, “No, no, no. That’s not what’s happening here. I’ve poured out my soul before the Lord,” and Eli says –
Go in peace, and the God of Israel grant thee thy petition that thou hast asked of him.
He is a judge. He is the high priest. We’re not told whether or not she exactly explained it, but he does commend her. Again, that does not remove Elkanah’s headship, but there’s nothing here that says Elkanah is not on board with this or any point pulls back from it.
So they go home, and lo and behold in the providence of God she conceives and bears a son and calls his name Samuel. They continue to do their yearly thing, and Hannah, as I said, says, “I’m not going up until the child is weaned.” The only hint we have from scripture is someplace in Chronicles where we’re told that the Levites don’t start getting official support until they’re three years old, which suggests it’s because of breastfeeding and all that, so probably about that long. In Egypt it was four years.
When the time comes, she takes him up with all the appropriate offerings and presents him before the Lord to Eli, and apparently Eli adopts him into his household, so this would be a step up. He becomes at some level a member of the high priest’s family. We’re not told exactly what the details are.
Tying this back to our discussion of simony a few weeks ago, is there a cost that Elkanah has to pay?
Well, he’s a Levite. It’s something we actually don’t find out in Samuel. We have to read the genealogies, of all things…
…to find out that he actually is a Levite. But going into the high priest’s family, at the very least there is a very expensive sacrifice, three bullocks. A young bull is expensive. Three of them is a lot of money. Remember I said Elkanah was wealthy, so he’s on board with this, in addition to the flour and the whole bottle of wine, maybe a sheepskin full of wine and all that.
The thing that we will perhaps come back to another time is, “And she turns the boy over to Eli to raise,” and our hands go to our face and we say, “Oh no! This cannot end well!” Amazingly, it does. Samuel grows up to be a godly young man, although he’s growing up in a household of reprobate sons. The ways of God are mysterious.
That brings us to chapter 2, which is the thing we want to talk about. It is straightforward in some ways in the light of the new covenant, particularly in light of Mary’s song. It’s much easier to understand, but there are some things worth noting.
I think far too often it’s reduced to, “I have a baby. My world is great,” rather than, “This is one small expression of the movement of God in history, and God’s going to use my son to do great things that go beyond me having a baby and being able to check off the list ‘approved of God on this account.’ This is God working. This is not me working.” This is not works righteousness. This is the gospel.
So she prays, and many, many years later, 1,000 years later, Mary will have studied her song and will innovate on it and play with it some, but the theme of the two songs is almost identical, and that is what I’ve called an eschatology of humility.
Where and how does the kingdom of God progress? Along what lines? To what end? And how does it do that? If we’re good Marxist Socialists we will say, “Well, by violent revolution ending in bloody conflict between classes, which will bring down one order and establish another.”
Yeah. Despite things that have happened in our country within the last few years, that’s not it, nor is voting the government more and more power to stop that from happening, because that’s the same thing backwards.
The Christian temptation has always been, “Well, let’s force people to be good by taking control of enough power, so that the people in power can take control of the environment, and we will outlaw slavery, alcohol, tobacco, red meat.” I’m still in the 1800s here. “We will allow women’s suffrage.”
You go down the list of all the external things, which may or may not be good or bad, but if we give the government the power to deal with these, then the millennium, the latter-day glory will be at hand. The kingdom of God will arrive.
That’s something that America in its collective history has faced for a long time. It’s a perversion, a secularization of post-millennialism. It’s Utopianism. “We believe in a new order. We believe America is part of this and we believe it will happen when we get the right people in office and give them enough power to finally make the right changes.” Unfortunately, it’s also the socialist vision, which is also a perversion of post-millennialism.
If the right person sits in the magic part of government, then everything is happy.
Exactly, and we’ve seen that too in America within the last few years. “If only we get the right person in, that’ll fix everything. The wrong person will end everything.”
Can I jump in with a question? I have purposely not studied very much eschatology or history of eschatology because the fights just get so dirty, so I’m not super-familiar with the history of post-millennialism, but it seems to me that there’s something of this impulse even in the Puritans and Separatists. Our impulse is either to start afresh, make something new, or try and work on what we have until it’s unsalvageable and we have to start fresh and start something new again.
That’s one area where I have a lot of sympathy for Anglicans, who look at both of those options and say, “No. I’m not sure what the answer is, but I’m pretty sure it’s not either of those.”
The Separatists were, “This is dead. Let’s start over.” The weakness there was they did not necessarily see that anything great and good would come, although at least the American Separatists, the Pilgrims, were open to it – being a stepping stone for others in the progress of the Kingdom of God, but as far as I know they did not write a lot about that.
The Puritans for a generation or two were very strongly what we would call today post-millennial. They believed the latter-day glory of the church, or the millennium, whatever they wanted to call it, would come as the work of revival and reformation. God gave one Reformation, so surely there will be a second and a third.
In the wake of the Great Awakening it became more revival-oriented, but America remained the focus, because the revivals that happened then happened outside the churches, so the church was gradually being nudged aside and it became more Christian people and the Spirit of God and this emotionalism. This is what will happen. Then it took another step of secularization of, “Who needs the gospel anyway? What we need is American people of goodwill,” and it kept going this way.
The question here is who wins in history? There are only two answers: God or Satan. You can say Satan in any number of ways, some of which sound very pious and some of which sound outright Satanistic. To say that God wins in history, you have to define what that means.
Recently we – as an elder at our church - were interviewing a man to see if he would be fit to teach in our seminary. He did a fantastic job and we were very pleased with him. When it became my turn to ask a question about eschatology I said, “I’ve only got one for you, because you’re a basic Presbyterian and I trust your theology in general, so I’m not going to ask you a lot of technical questions. I’ve just got one for you. Will the Great Commission be fulfilled?”
He stopped and looked at me (we were doing Zoom) and he hesitated, because he knew exactly what I was asking, which meant he was smart enough to understand that eschatology has implications. What he said is – and he qualified it, sort of like, “I’m not going to talk about my formal position, but the answer is yes.”
Will all nations be made Jesus’ disciples or not? Did Jesus give us a job that he never expected us to complete? And thus we can declare it done, with half the world unconverted and half the world never having heard the gospel?
Post-millennials have traditionally said that God will, in his good time and by his good will and by the gospel and not by government action or social action bring the world into his kingdom, and that will have external effects.
Arguing that exegetically as opposed to theologically, which we could do another time, except we’re going to do a little bit right time, so let’s look at Hannah’s song and see what she says, and we’ll try to pick up the pace now.
It’s a prayer, but it is a poem. She’s been doing a lot of Bible study, because she draws together from other things that were extent already, as other people will draw on hers. It goes like this –
My heart rejoiceth in the Lord. Mine horn is exalted in the Lord. My mouth is enlarged over mine enemies because I rejoice in thy salvation.
She’s not simply thinking about Peninnah. She has a lot of enemies. There are the Philistines. There are the wicked priests. There are the wicked nations that try to destroy Israel. She takes God’s enemies as her own. This is not a purely familial king of thing. She’s able to exalt in God’s power and rejoice in his salvation, for –
There is none holy as the Lord: for there is none beside thee, neither is there any rock like our God.
God is unlike all other gods. We’re talking essentially about his essence, but also – which is the same thing – about his character.
Let not arrogancy come out of your mouth, for the Lord is a God of knowledge, and by him actions are weighed. [God judges in history.] The bows of the mighty men are broken, and they that stumbled are girded with strength.
They that were full have hired out themselves for bread, and they that were hungry ceased [from being hungry], so that the barren hath born seven [she’s only had one], and she that hath many children is waxed feeble.
She’s describing a great reversal in history. The proud, the arrogant, the rich and famous take what they want, and God’s going to take it away from them and bring them down and exalt his own people in history. But it’s important, again, that God does this.
This is not some kind of Marxist-Socialist program where the Proletariat goes out and seizes the means of production and tears down existing structures to introduce a new Utopia. This is God’s people trusting him and walking with him, and then God takes care of a lot of the social issues.
The Lord killeth and maketh alive. He bringeth down to the grave, and bringeth up.
This is the first clear description – unless you include Job – of resurrection, that the God who kills is the God who raises from the dead. This woman is honored by God in a lot of remarkable ways, and that’s one of them. It’s the first clear prophecy of resurrection, although it’s implied from the beginning.
We’ve also got Abraham, knowing that God will raise Isaac from the dead after he offers him.
Yes, but he doesn’t say that, and she says it. Being the first one to get to say something – even if everybody already knows it – “Daddy, can I say it? Can I say it?” “Okay, you go ahead and say it.”
The Lord maketh poor, and maketh rich. [Economic circumstances are in God’s hands.] He bringeth low and lifteth up. He raiseth up the poor out of the dust, and lifteth up the beggar from the dunghill, to set them among princes and to make them inherit the throne of glory. For the pillars of the earth are the Lord's, and he hath set the world upon them.
This is not a cosmological statement about how the world is shaped and whether or not the earth is flat. That’s something else. This is a description of society. The pillars of the earth are those offices, institutions, and person that God has ordained to stabilize society – kings, priests, prophets, pastors, judges, generals. These are all offices that belong to God. The powers that be are ordained of God, and God can and will in his good time exalt his people into these offices. It’s not their job to grab for them and get them at any cost, although we should be ready and willing, should God give them to us.
Again, this is not a social program whereby we bring about the kingdom by our efforts. This is a program of humility, bowing before God, rejoicing in God, and then letting God in history act – in history, not simply beyond, not in some future millennium beyond the Second Coming, or in heaven or in a merely spiritual sense – but God acts in history. This is clearly what she expects.
He will keep the feet of his saints [perseverance of the saints] and the wicked shall be silent in darkness; for by strength shall no man prevail.
Good or bad, righteous or unrighteous, faithful or unbelieving, men don’t prevail by their own strength. God sets the parameters. God accomplishes purposes.
This is not a future millennium where Jesus reigns on the earth. This is in history while Jesus sits at God’s right hand.
We’ve had one reference that kings shall come out of thy loins and the scepter shall not depart from Judah, so she gets a privilege in even mentioning the king to come.
As far as I know, this is the first use of the word Messiah, so God honors her enormously in using her to produce this song for his people to sing.
The reference to king and to anointed would first of all be to David, who is just around the corner and who Samuel, her son, will anoint to office, but ultimately all of this is pointing to Messiah. God is intervening in history and, although things seem horrible and everything is going downhill and the world is falling apart and the enemies are at the gate – no, the enemies are in the sanctuary, there’s no spiritual leadership, no one is preaching the gospel, it’s all over – God is just beginning and God is about to turn things upside down.
That doesn’t mean it will be a sweet peaceful ride for God’s people. He doesn’t say that. He just says that God’s got you covered and God knows what he’s doing. This is called an adventure story. Ever want to be in an adventure story?
I also wanted to draw the parallel to the Magnificat in Luke, where Mary’s heart overflows with prophetic praise. There are so many parallels and things that line up in what you’ve pointed out in Hannah’s song and what Mary praises God with.
He that is mighty hath done to me great things, and holy is his name. And his mercy is on them that fear him from generation to generation. He hath shewed strength with his arm.He hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree. He hath filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he hath sent empty away. He hath helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, as he spake to our fathers, to Abraham, and to his seed forever.
I skipped part of the beginning there, but it’s also beautiful in that if you’re right that this is the first usage of the term Messiah in Hannah’s song, then all these parallels – you have two women who are barren in some sense. Mary, being a virgin, can’t spontaneously give birth.
She’s more barren than anyone. But then also they are both gifted with children. Now, Mary has the special privilege of having an angel tell her point blank to her face, “You’re going to have this,” before any request is made. And they both respond with prophetic words that become enshrined in scripture, and both speak the same kinds of things. One is looking forward to the Messiah and the other one is in response to being told the Messiah is coming.
It’s not, “Wait, I will now go out and change society.” It’s, “I will do as you said and I will submit passively to what you are doing inside me.”
That’s also the other thing, is that neither of these songs are a call to action like, “Let’s go out and do this.” This is a response saying this is what the Lord has done or will do.
Which is the gospel. It’s not a religion of, “Do this.” It’s a religion of, “God has done that.” It reminds me too that there was a woman named Anna who was serving in the temple when Jesus was brought in.
Secondly, the outworking of God’s kingdom in overthrowing the kingdoms of this world – we have that completed in one aspect in the book of Acts, where Paul has walked into Rome, the last of the great empires, and said “Jesus is King” and nobody stops him. That’s called winning, right?
And that’s why that book ends there, not with what happens to Paul. It’s about the kingdom of God. “Game, set, match.”
And we know that Nero is right around the corner. We know that all sorts of stuff politically is still right around the corner in the kingdom of this world, but God has won. The victory of the gospel is still intact and it’s still going forth and it’s still going to the ends of the earth. So victory might not look like what we would normally think of as victory, but it’s the victory of the gospel, and that’s very different and surprising.
This should have been our Christmas episode. It’ll do as a New Year’s episode.
Besides, I’m a Presbyterian. Christmas is all year ‘round. I get Easter every Sunday, guys.
We should wrap up. I’ve got a recommendation, since you brought up the subject of eschatology. This is a little bit harder to find. David Chilton, who wrote many good things toward the end of his life, wrote a book called Paradise Restored. It’s an introduction to biblical theology starting with garden imagery, leading up through a discussion of the coming of Christ and the kingdom of God, the destruction of Jerusalem, and where the gospel goes from there.
If only as a primer to biblical theology, it is well worth your time, although as with everything read it with the Bible in hand and check him out along those lines. But if you also wanted an introduction to what post-millennialism can look like, this is a good place to start. Also J. Marcellus Kik’s book, An Eschatology of Victory, which is an exegesis of Matthew 24 and Revelation 20.
If you wanted a history, you can read Iain Murray’s book on the Puritans, The Puritan Hope, where he talks about how this kind of optimism shaped the good revivalism missionary impulse of the 1700’s and 1800’s, so there’s a number of things that aren’t too technical. And even if you don’t buy into everything, I think they will nonetheless be a blessing to you.
Thanks. I’m going to recommend listening to Bryan’s recommendations. David and I have been enjoying the classic TV adaptation of All Creatures Great and Small. I think I’ve read three of the books. I haven’t read all of them, but I’ve read and enjoyed a fair number of them, and I’ve never seen the TV show until now. We’re in the middle of Season 2 and we can hardly think about going to sleep at night until we’ve watched one because they’re just so charming. Sometimes it’s just very painful, the awkward situations.
I’ve seen some of Dr. Who #1, and then I’ve seen Eccleston and on, so I missed Tom Baker and all those. Anyway, this is not a Dr. Who recommendation, although we all have experience with that.
I have two actually, because I feel the contrarian urge. My first recommendation is to read Kim Riddlebarger’s excellent book, A Case for Amillennialism. I’m not contrarian enough to ever recommend anything in defense of pre-millennialism.
Honestly, I feel that. So that’s my first one. Then my second one is, since I brought up the Virgin Mary, the Theotokos, we all honestly should refer to her as such because it is a Christological term and not a Mariological term. I’m going to recommend reading Cyril of Alexandria’s Five Tomes Against Nestorius. Do not be fooled by the name. They are not that long, because paper was expensive back then.
It’s fairly short. I think I could probably read it in three hours total. It’s all free and online. You can just pull it up in your browser. I’ve read about half of it myself, then I forgot about it, and then I had to go back and finish it, which means restarting it from the beginning.
If you can read it in three hours, you should record yourself reading it aloud in three hours, so then I can just listen to the audio. It’s all public domain.
Somebody needs to provide that service for the church, really. There’s a lot of old stuff that people would listen to if someone would do it.
Honestly, I might consider doing that moving forward. That’s a good idea for my time. But I remember reading it through, and on top of the excellent theological content and writing against heretical views of Christ, there’s just so much sass.
Which is what Cyril gets a lot of flack for. He was too sassy and rude. Couldn’t he be nice to Nestorius? Well, some people don’t deserve niceness.
It was so great. There’s literally one point where he quotes something from Nestorius where Nestorius calls the orthodox view heretical, and he goes, “Look here, how him who is a heretic has styled the right view heresy! You can’t make this up!”
Thank you, guys, so much for this conversation. It’s been a delight. Thanks also to David, our producer and my lawfully-wedded husband.
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