Considering A Biblical and Philosophical Case for Conditional Immortality

Posted by expedition44 on February 18, 2026

The doctrine of hell has long occupied a central and often troubling place within Christian theology. For many in the Western tradition, hell has been understood as a state of eternal conscious torment (ECT)—a never-ending experience of pain and separation from God for the unredeemed. Yet in recent decades, an increasing number of evangelical scholars, pastors, and theologians have revisited the biblical and theological foundations of this claim and found it wanting. What has emerged in its place is not a denial of judgment, but a re-articulation of it: conditional immortality, sometimes called annihilationism—the belief that only those united to Christ are granted everlasting life, while the wicked ultimately perish.

This reconsideration is not driven by sentimentality, nor by a desire to soften the hard edges of the gospel. Rather, it arises from a more careful reading of Scripture, a renewed attention to the character of God revealed in Christ, and a philosophical concern for coherence between divine justice, goodness, and ontology.

The Biblical Story: Life, Death, and the Gift of Immortality

When Scripture speaks of the final destiny of humanity, it overwhelmingly frames the issue in terms of life versus death, not life versus eternal torment. This is not merely rhetorical; it reflects the entire narrative arc of the Bible.

From the opening chapters of Genesis, life is depicted as something contingent upon God’s sustaining presence. Humanity is formed from dust and animated by divine breath (Gen. 2:7). The warning in Genesis 2:17—“in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die”—introduces death as the fundamental consequence of rebellion. This same framework carries through the canon.

The New Testament reiterates this contrast with remarkable consistency:

“The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 6:23).
“Whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).
“God can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna” (Matt. 10:28).

The language of perishing, destruction, and death appears not as a metaphor for endless conscious suffering, but as its own category of final judgment. Conditionalists argue that this lexical pattern cannot be dismissed as figurative without collapsing the plain meaning of Scripture’s central categories.

Even in apocalyptic passages often cited in support of ECT, the imagery is consistent with consumption and finality. Revelation 20:14 calls the lake of fire “the second death.” The Old Testament background for such imagery (e.g., Malachi 4:1–3) describes the wicked being burned up like chaff, leaving neither root nor branch. The fire is eternal not because the suffering never ends, but because its effects are irreversible.

Exegetical Tensions in Key Prooftexts

Proponents of ECT frequently appeal to Matthew 25:46—“These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” The parallelism here is significant, yet the key question is what “eternal punishment” entails. Conditionalists argue that the phrase refers to a punishment whose result is eternal, namely the irreversible loss of life. The same adjective (aiōnios) modifies both “life” and “punishment,” but the nouns themselves differ in kind. Eternal life is ongoing existence; eternal punishment is a completed act with everlasting consequences.

Similarly, Revelation 14:11 speaks of the “smoke of their torment” rising forever. Yet this language echoes Isaiah 34:10, where the destruction of Edom is described in identical terms, even though Edom is not literally still burning today. The imagery communicates permanent devastation, not unending conscious experience.

Thus, when the full canonical context is considered, the cumulative weight of Scripture appears to favor a reading in which the final fate of the wicked is destruction, death, and exclusion from life, rather than perpetual conscious torment.

Likewise, in passages such as Matthew 25, conditional immortality frames the final judgment as a genuine contrast between life and death, while in ECT the contrast ultimately becomes one of location or experience—since both the righteous and the wicked are granted an everlasting conscious existence, differing only in where and how that existence is lived.

Anthropology and Ontology: Is the Soul Immortal by Nature?

At the heart of the debate lies a deeper ontological question: What is a human being? The doctrine of ECT typically assumes that the soul is inherently immortal and therefore must exist forever in either bliss or torment. This assumption, however, owes more to Platonic philosophy than to Hebrew anthropology.

Biblically, immortality is not an intrinsic human possession but a gift bestowed through union with Christ (1 Cor. 15:53–54; 2 Tim. 1:10). Humans are mortal creatures sustained by God’s life-giving presence. To be cut off from that presence is not to exist forever in torment, but to cease from life.

From an ontological perspective, conditional immortality better preserves the Creator-creature distinction. Only God “alone has immortality” (1 Tim. 6:16). Eternal life, therefore, is participation in God’s own life, not an automatic property of the human soul.

Christology and the Logic of the Atonement

The doctrine of hell must also be examined in light of the cross. The New Testament repeatedly states that Christ died for our sins (Rom. 5:8; 1 Cor. 15:3). If the penalty for sin is eternal conscious torment, then Christ did not bear that penalty, since he did not suffer eternally. But if the penalty is death—the loss of life—then the atonement is perfectly coherent: Christ entered into death, defeated it, and rose again to grant life to those united with him.

This Christological lens reveals the deep unity of the biblical message:
the gospel is fundamentally about deliverance from death and the gift of life, not escape from endless torture.

Divine Justice, Goodness, and Proportionality

Beyond exegesis and ontology lies the philosophical question of justice. Eternal conscious torment entails an infinite punishment for finite sins committed within a temporal life. This raises serious concerns about proportionality and the moral coherence of divine judgment.

Conditional immortality offers a resolution that preserves both justice and goodness. The final penalty for sin is severe—the loss of life itself—yet it is not disproportionate or morally unintelligible. It aligns with the biblical principle that “the soul who sins shall die” (Ezek. 18:20).

Moreover, the revelation of God in Jesus Christ presents a God who is self-giving love, who desires that none should perish (2 Pet. 3:9), and whose judgments are true and just. A doctrine of eternal torture sits uneasily within this framework, whereas conditionalism maintains both the seriousness of judgment and the goodness of God.

Pastoral and Theological Implications

In pastoral theology, our doctrine of hell inevitably shapes our proclamation of the gospel and our understanding of God’s character. Many pastors and scholars have found that conditional immortality restores clarity to the gospel message:

Eternal life is truly a gift, not something all people possess by default.
Judgment is real, sober, and final, but not morally incoherent.
God’s ultimate purpose is the restoration of creation, not the perpetual preservation of evil in a chamber of eternal torment.

This does not diminish the urgency of repentance; if anything, it intensifies it. The warning is stark: apart from Christ, one forfeits the very gift of life.

It is also pastorally worth noting that within an Eternal Conscious Torment framework, sin is never truly eradicated from God’s creation but merely quarantined—confined eternally rather than finally defeated—whereas conditional immortality presents judgment as the ultimate abolition of sin itself, not its perpetual containment.

Conclusion: The Gospel as the Gift of Life

When the biblical witness, theological tradition, and philosophical reflection are brought into conversation, the case for conditional immortality emerges as both compelling and faithful. It preserves the seriousness of divine judgment, the integrity of biblical language, the coherence of Christ’s atoning work, and the goodness of God’s character.

In the end, the question of hell is inseparable from the question of the gospel itself. The good news is not merely that we are spared from suffering, but that we are invited into eternal life—the very life of God. To reject that gift is not to endure forever in torment, but to face the tragic and final consequence Scripture names with sobering clarity: death.

Written by Dr. Will Ryan and Dr. Matt Mouzakis for Expedition44

Discussion Questions

How does the biblical theme of life versus death shape our interpretation of final judgment passages?
In what ways might Greek philosophical assumptions about the soul have influenced traditional doctrines of hell?
How does conditional immortality affect our understanding of Christ’s atoning death and resurrection?
Can eternal conscious torment be reconciled with the biblical portrayal of God as just and loving?
What pastoral implications arise from teaching hell as final destruction rather than endless torment?

Select Bibliography

Bradley, Jayson D. Rethinking Hell: A Beginner’s Guide to Conditionalism and Annihilationism.
Fudge, Edward. The Fire That Consumes. Cascade, 2011.
Peoples, Glenn. “The Case for Conditional Immortality.” Theology in the Raw.
Stott, John, and David Edwards. Evangelical Essentials. IVP, 1988.
Wenham, John. The Goodness of God. IVP, 1974.
Wright, N. T. Surprised by Hope. HarperOne, 2008.

comment response:

I’m on board…a question come to mind…where did Jesus go then to take the keys of Life from Lucifer while also collecting the souls of the Old Testament, such as Moses and Abraham and David?

The language of “hell” is multivalent.

The Hebrew Bible uses שְׁאוֹל (Sheol) to denote the realm of the dead—a shadowy underworld to which both righteous and wicked descend. In the Greek New Testament this is rendered ᾅδης (Hades), likewise a general abode of the dead rather than the final place of judgment.

By contrast, γέεννα (Gehenna) refers to eschatological judgment, and Τάρταρος (Tartarus) to the prison of rebellious angels.

Thus, in Second Temple thought the “underworld” could include differentiated regions—e.g., a place of comfort (“Abraham’s bosom”) for the righteous awaiting redemption and a place of distress for the wicked.

The New Testament locates Christ’s descent in this “realm of the dead.”

Texts such as Acts 2:27 (citing Ps 16) and Revelation 1:18 (“keys of death and Hades”) use Hades language, not Gehenna. The traditional “descent” (κατελθόντα εἰς τὰ κατώτατα) is best understood as Christ entering the domain of death itself—the human condition of mortality—rather than a combat in Gehenna with Satan.

The New Testament proclamation (1 Pet 3:18–20; 4:6) is often interpreted as Christ announcing his victory to the dead or the imprisoned spirits; whether this entails “liberation” or proclamation remains debated in scholarship.

If one adopts a conditionalist framework, Hades/Sheol is a temporary realm of the dead, not a place of eternal conscious torment. Final judgment is associated with Gehenna / the lake of fire, not the intermediate state.

Thus Christ’s possession of the “keys of death and Hades” signals authority over mortality and resurrection life, not the maintenance of an eternal torture chamber.

The Covenant of Marriage Communication – Conference Notes

Posted by expedition44 on February 12, 2026

Communicating as Covenant Partners: A Christ-Centered Theology and Practice of Marriage Communication

Introduction

Marriage is more than a social institution or emotional partnership—it is a holy covenant established by God, modeled throughout Scripture, and fulfilled in Christ’s relationship with the Church. Communication within marriage is not merely a set of skills; it is a sacramental expression of covenanted love, shaped by identity in Christ and sustained by grace.

In a world of transactional relationships and consumerized romance, Christian couples are called to something deeper: speaking truth in love (Eph. 4:15), bearing one another’s burdens (Gal. 6:2), and reflecting God’s steadfast love (חסד, chesed) in how they listen, speak, and respond to one another.

I. Covenant as the Foundation for Communication

1. The Hebraic Concept of Covenant

In Scripture, covenant (ברית, berith) is not a contract; it is a relational pledge grounded in faithfulness and identity. It structures marriage not around feelings or performance, but around being–with–one–another under God.

Genesis 2:24—“Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.”
One flesh implies unity in identity, purpose, and narrative—a shared life.
Malachi 2:14–16—God calls Israel my companion (רעיה, re‘iyah) in covenant, highlighting vow-keeping as essential to relational integrity.
Marriage communication reflects this same vow-oriented faithfulness.

2. Christ and the Church as the Ultimate Covenant Model

Ephesians 5:25–33 anchors marital love in Christ’s sacrificial love for the Church:

Self–giving love
Cleansing through the Word
Nurturing growth and flourishing

In this model, communication is not negotiable nor optional—it is an expression of covenant identity.

II. Biblical Models of Christ-Centered Communication

1. Jesus: Communicating with Presence and Truth

Jesus embodied communication that was:

Attentive — He saw and called individuals by name (Mark 10:21; John 4:27–30).
Restorative — He spoke truth that healed rather than harmed (John 8:1–11).
Sacrificial — His words pierced, yet offered life (John 6:60–69).

Application for couples:

Be fully present in conversation (no half-listening).
Seek truth to heal, not to win.

2. Paul: Words That Build Up

Paul repeatedly encourages the church to communicate with grace:

Ephesians 4:29 — “Let no corrupting talk come out … but only such as is good for building up.”
Colossians 3:12–14 — Compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, forgiveness, love.

Application for couples:

Make speech an agent of edification, not accusation.
Aim for restoration and peace (Matt. 5:9).

3. Proverbs: Wisdom for Everyday Speech

Proverbs 15:1 contrasts gentleness with provocation:

“A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.”

Application for couples:

Choose tone and timing wisely.
Slow down before responding; give space for Spirit-guided reflection.

III. Avoiding Destructive Patterns: The “Crazy Cycle” and Other Traps

John and Stacy Edwards’ Love & Respect highlights the “Crazy Cycle”:

Wives want love, feel unheard →
Husbands want respect, feel dismissed →
Escalation ensues.

While their gender framing has sparked discussion, the core insight resonates with covenant communication: each partner deeply desires to be known, honored, and treasured.

Redemptive pattern:

Respond to hurts with clarifying questions rather than assumptions.
Affirm identity (“I hear you; your heart matters to me”), then seek understanding.

IV. Communication as Intimacy: Pillars for Practice

Drawing from One Extraordinary Marriage (6 Pillars of Intimacy):

1. Physical Presence

Not just being in the same room—being fully present and undistracted.

2. Emotional Space

Create an environment where vulnerability is welcomed, not weaponized.

3. Spiritual Unity

Pray together before you problem-solve together.

4. Intellectual Engagement

Value curiosity over defensiveness.

5. Relational Investment

Set rhythms (weekly check-ins, shared devotions) that speak covenant over chaos.

6. Communal Support

Accountability with trusted mentors or couples enriches communication health.

V. Tools That Serve Covenant Communication

1. Love Languages (Gary Chapman)

Understanding each other’s primary love languages—words of affirmation, quality time, acts of service, gifts, physical touch—enhances mutual empathy and expressive clarity.

**2. Rhythms from Sacred Marriage (Gary Thomas)**

Thomas reframes marriage as sanctification before satisfaction. Communication becomes a means to God’s glory, not just emotional comfort.

**3. Eternal Perspective from The Meaning of Marriage (Timothy Keller)**

Marriage reflects Christ’s gospel: steadfast, gracious, covenantal. Communication is therefore missionary—bearing witness in everyday speech.

**4. You and Me Forever (Francis & Lisa Chan)**

Focuses couples on shared Gospel mission, reducing self-absorption and enhancing sacrificial dialogue.

VI. Practical Communication Principles Grounded in Covenant Identity

1. Listen Before You Respond

Listening communicates worth and attention.

Practical tip:

Reflect back what you heard before responding.

2. Speak Truth in Love

Truth without love wounds; love without truth obscures reality.

Practical tip:

Use “I” statements and describe specific behaviors, not character labels.

3. Forgive and Seek Forgiveness

Covenant speech includes reconciliation language.

Practical tip:

Practice short, daily reconciliations to prevent relational drift.

4. Pray Before Difficult Conversations

Invite the Spirit to shape hearts before words are exchanged.

Practical tip:

Frame hard discussions with scripture (“Lord, make us quick to listen…” James 1:19).

5. Celebrate Small Wins

Acknowledging growth builds trust.

Practical tip:

Weekly “gratitude moments” during meals or prayer times.

Conclusion: Communicating as Covenant Worship

Communication in Christian marriage is not primarily a technique—it is covenant language. It reflects who we are in Christ and how covenant love shapes everyday life. Words become acts of worship, spaces of grace, and pathways of transformation when we speak and listen in the presence of God.

May our marriages echo the speech of Christ—patient, kind, humble, forgiving, and anchored in love that never ends (1 Cor. 13:4–8).

Discussion Questions

1. Covenant vs. Contract: How Does Ontology Shape Communication?

The Hebrew concept of בְּרִית (berith) frames marriage as a covenant grounded in identity and faithfulness rather than performance or emotional satisfaction.

In what ways does viewing marriage as covenant (rather than contract) reshape expectations during conflict?
How might this covenantal framework alter the way couples interpret silence, criticism, or emotional withdrawal?
How does Malachi 2:14–16 challenge modern consumerist assumptions about relational fulfillment?

2. Christological Communication: Imitating the Speech of Jesus

Ephesians 5 roots marriage in the self-giving love of Christ.

How does Christ’s communicative posture (John 4; John 8; Mark 10:21) inform a theology of attentiveness and truth-telling in marriage?
What does it mean to “cleanse by the washing of water with the word” (Eph. 5:26) in the context of marital speech?
In practical terms, how can couples ensure their words are redemptive rather than corrective alone?

3. The “Crazy Cycle” and the Doctrine of Sin

Eggerich’s “Crazy Cycle” describes relational escalation when love and respect feel absent.

How does this dynamic reflect the broader biblical doctrine of sin as relational fracture (Gen. 3)?
In what ways does pride distort listening and self-giving communication?
How might a theology of repentance interrupt destructive communication cycles?

4. Sanctification Through Speech

Gary Thomas argues marriage is more about holiness than happiness.

How can communication function as a primary instrument of sanctification?
Reflect on James 1:19–20 and Ephesians 4:29. What spiritual disciplines are necessary for obedient speech?
How might difficult conversations serve as means of grace rather than merely problems to solve?

5. Identity in Christ and Shared Mission

Drawing from Keller and the Chans, marriage reflects the gospel and participates in mission.

How does shared identity “in Christ” stabilize communication when emotions fluctuate?
What practices (prayer, shared Scripture, missional engagement) tangibly reinforce covenant identity in daily dialogue?
How does a shared eternal vision recalibrate trivial conflicts?

Bibliography

Chapman, Gary. The 5 Love Languages: The Secret to Love That Lasts. Chicago: Northfield Publishing, 2015.

Chan, Francis, and Lisa Chan. You and Me Forever: Marriage in Light of Eternity. Colorado Springs: Claire Love Publishing, 2014.

Eggerichs, Emerson. Love & Respect: The Love She Most Desires; The Respect He Desperately Needs. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2004.

Keller, Timothy, with Kathy Keller. The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God. New York: Dutton, 2011.

Thomas, Gary. Sacred Marriage: What If God Designed Marriage to Make Us Holy More Than to Make Us Happy? Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000.

Gregoire, Sheila Wray. The Great Sex Rescue. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2021.

Wright, Christopher J. H. Old Testament Ethics for the People of God. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2004.

Block, Daniel I. “Marriage and Family in Ancient Israel.” In Marriage and Family in the Biblical World, edited by Ken M. Campbell, 33–102. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2003.

The Church Hustle

Posted by expedition44 on May 31, 2025

How the church creates a treadmill that exhausts disciples instead of shepherding in peace

There’s a certain kind of Christian exhaustion that doesn’t come from the world, It comes from the church. Maybe you have experienced this. I have been a part of several church plants. The first one was in a local HS and was “church out of a truck.” It took 3 hours to setup and a couple hours to break down. It stole our best energy that should have been used for shepherding. I vowed to never do that again. Or maybe you started attending a church and wondered “what is next?” or tasked the staff “how do I get to know people deeper here?” and were answered with something to the shape of, “start serving!” At times the kingdom does require tribulation, toil, and simply work; but it shouldn’t send mixed messages with the primary pursuit of the church to shepherd.

I call it the church hustle.

It’s what happens when discipleship becomes a to-do list. When spiritual growth gets measured by the offering plate, perfect attendance, your service record, or how many books you’ve read or podcasts you have listened to and reported back to your pastor this year. Barna says this is the number one reason people don’t trust churches.¹

It’s the creeping pressure that says: If I just try harder, God will finally be pleased with me.

have you experienced this feeling? A subtle uncertainty that your church wants more of your assets when you are just hoping to be shepherded? We rarely say it that plainly. But we’ve felt it.
The unspoken message: You’re not quite there yet… but maybe if you pray more, serve more, repent better, or climb the next ladder, you’ll get there. Is that the message the church is sending?

Spiritual Capitalism in Disguise

Richard Rohr (you might remember him from our liminal spaces post) recently named this dynamic with piercing clarity. He calls it “spiritual capitalism”, the belief that we can somehow earn our way to spiritual success.² Spiritual Capitalism has shaped American churches, political movements, and personal financial strategies. It views free-market capitalism as divinely sanctioned and tells people that if they work hard, give enough, and believe enough, wealth and deeper spiritual alignment will follow.³

This kind of thinking is far from the texture of shepherding in the Bible. It creates a theology of pressure. A treadmill masked as discipleship and will burn out our body dynamics with things that have very little kingdom methodology.

How the Hustle Gets Into Us

We’ve spiritualized the very mindset Jesus came to free us from.⁴ We say we believe in grace, but we measure ourselves by performance. We don’t view grace as a reciprocal unending gift to be accepted and returned in the way we live out the love of Jesus. We talk about love, but we form people through fear.
We preach mercy, but we disciple for control.

Have you experienced this, pressure confused with passion, and metrics confused with maturity. I’ve seen people carry deep shame for not living up to standards God never asked them to meet and it is devastating to people’s spiritual identity and the mission of the church.

And even now, in a much healthier rhythm, I still catch myself slipping into hustle-mode, believing that if I don’t produce enough, lead well enough, or fix everything around me, I’m somehow less worthy.

This isn’t the way of Jesus.

NOTE: There is of course a need to live out Jesus in your gifts and that includes serving in a church context. We need that and we need it in a better context for shepherding and discipleship.

Jesus Didn’t Hustle

The life of Christ was many things, urgent at times, disruptive often. but never frenzied.⁵ He lived in a sacred sense of shalom. Never performative. Jesus didn’t hustle His way to holiness.⁶ He moved at the speed of Love.

When He invites us to “take my yoke upon you… and you will find rest for your souls,” He isn’t calling us to a hustle. He’s offering us a different kind of shepherding, one marked by humility, mercy, and presence. Follow this link for more on that kind of leading.

But so many churches, while preaching grace, disciple people in fear.

We build cultures where burnout is seen as faithfulness.
We equate spiritual growth with spiritual productivity.
We tell people God loves them… and then hand them a list to prove it.

No wonder people are walking away.

The Myth of Perfection

Rohr also names the damage done by misreading Matthew 5:48: “Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” We turned that into a mandate for moral flawlessness instead of what it really is: a call to boundless love.⁷

Perfection, in Jesus’ language, isn’t about never messing up.
It’s about expanding love beyond what seems reasonable, even to enemies.
It’s about letting God’s perfection flow through us, not manufacturing it ourselves.⁸

But we turned it into a weight. And people carried it until they broke.

I don’t preach alot but here is a sermon on a better view of perfection.

Grace is the Exit Ramp

If you’ve been hustling, hear me clearly:
You can stop.

You don’t have to climb your way into God’s love.
You don’t have to earn your way into grace.
You don’t have to be perfect to be held.

The church doesn’t need more hustlers.
It needs more people who are learning to rest in grace and be formed by love.

You can step off the treadmill.
You can fall into mercy.
You can breathe again.⁹

What Formation Could Be

Spiritual formation isn’t about spiritual accomplishment. It’s not about reaching a higher rung. It’s about becoming more open, more surrendered, more grounded in your belovedness. More transparent before God and those you are in covenant with.¹⁰

It looks like…

Slowing down enough to hear the voice of Love again.
Releasing shame-based religion for grace-centered transformation.
Letting prayer become presence, not performance.
Trusting that you are loved, not because you got it right, but because you belong to a God who is endlessly merciful.

Reflection Questions

Where have you felt pressure to perform spiritually?
How has the church hustle shaped your view of God, or yourself?
What would it look like to embrace a formation rooted in grace, not effort?
Where might Jesus be saying, “You can stop striving… and come rest”?

If you’ve been caught in the hustle, you’re not alone. And you’re not a failure. You’re tired. And grace is calling. Come down from the ladder. There’s nothing to prove. There’s only Love, waiting to catch you.

This Article was written by Dr. Will Ryan and Paul Dazet.

NATURAL ORDER

Posted by expedition44 on January 14, 2025

I want to talk about what is meant by God’s order, but before I do that, I want to guide you through a brief exegetical teaching through the text. When you hear the word order in relation to a biblical sense we have been conditioned to think about creation, law, hierarchy in the church and marriage, and perhaps even church discipline. Although it encompasses those things, I find it unfortunate that we start there, and therefore I feel we might need some deconstruction to get to good.

In the morning, O Lord, You will hear my voice; in the morning I will order my prayer to You and eagerly watch. Psalm 5:3 NASB

As I begin to read this in Hebrew the first thing that I notice in contrast to most English translations is the phrase “My prayer” is not found in the text. It isn’t a bad translation as I get the context leans that way but in Hebrew the verse better reads, “I will order toward you” which emphasizes a slightly different posture. Interesting the word prayer isn’t really there, perhaps a NT implication or even insertion. Prayer in the OT was a bit different than the way we understand it today. It was communal and far less personal (unless God appeared to you in a bush and orally spoke directly to you), after Jesus ascends to the throne and sends the Spirit to dwell in us and intercede, the biblical concept of prayer takes on a different form than what it had been considered over the last 2000 years or more. The way people thought of “prayer” in the OT may or may not be accurate. Are we just reading what they thought prayer was supposed to be perhaps based on what they knew of their former deities? Is this something that they got a bit off track with and Jesus sought to adjust or shed new light on? Perhaps, but perhaps not. Maybe our prayer should take a cue from the OT notions. When we read this verse in Hebrew form, we see that David isn’t talking about ritualistic prayer, or is he? He isn’t necessarily folding his hands and closing his eyes – but he is sort of. He is making a statement that if his life is in alignment with what is of God – TOV (creation order language), then he expects God to acknowledge and “DO THINGS” on his behalf. This may tie into the never-ending OT grappling over whether God was retributive or not, but it certainly had the trajectory of demonstrating the idea of devotion in connection to intimacy with the Lord. This connection over the years will then be attributed to the conjecture of relationship with the father in prayer. Some prayer is communal and some is personal.

Different people interact with God differently and perhaps in different seasons. Some say they don’t hear God and others act like God never stops screaming in their ear. How can the voice of God differ from person to person? Is it based on the posture of the heart, covenant faithfulness, gifting, seasons, understanding, choice, some sort of prejudice, or something completely different that is higher than our understanding? I believe that God is just that dynamic. I don’t know why He communicates differently to people and what it might be based on; I don’t always have the eyes of God. I believe Him to be Sovereign and know significantly more than we do in a much more complex grid. I am convinced that there are many things that influence this covenant relationship at a cosmic level. It is far bigger than simply me, and to think of my relationship with God (the creator of the universe) as doating on my every thought seems like a selfish notion. Does that view minimize a personal relationship or exemplify it?

God’s order is described in everything naturally defined by Yahweh and described generally as what is good (TOV). This is creation, the waters, the counting of the ark, the building of the temple, the pieces of firewood set in order for a sacrificial fire, showbread set out in two rows of six cakes on the gold table (Lev 24:8); seven altars set up by the pagan mantic Balaam (Num 23:4); stalks of flax arranged by Rahab for hiding the spies (Josh 2:6); a table prepared for dining (Ps 23:5; Isa 21:5); words produced for speaking (Job 32:14); a legal case developed for presentation (Job 13:18); etc. In II Sam 23:5 David exults in the covenant granted him by Yahweh, “for he has made with me an everlasting covenant, / ordered (ʿărûkâ) in all things and secure.^[1] We see God’s order in many ways, but the common thread that binds seems to be that it is given as a framework for our devotion to Him. This intimate devotion that is often described as reading or memorizing scripture, devotional repetition, standards of practice and living, and so much more are all described as what it means to be defined as SET APART. That we are defined and claimed as part of God’s order not the chaos of the world.

What defines this? Covenant. Covenant is the secure, accessible, and recognizable attribute of everything good that God offers to us. It is the basis of all of our interaction with the LORD. Without covenant we are detached or separated from the creator and his ways. When David chooses every morning to be in order, he is making a statement about the balance of life and the posture of the heart. The Hebrew term בְּרִית bĕriyth for “covenant” is from a root with the sense of “cutting”, because pacts or covenants were made by passing between cut pieces of flesh of an animal sacrifice.^[2] It meant something deep.

The New Covenant is a biblical interpretation originally derived from a phrase in the Book of Jeremiah and often thought of as an eschatological world to come related to the biblical concept of the Kingdom of God. Generally, Christians believe that the New Covenant was instituted at the Last Supper as part of the Eucharist, which in the Gospel of John includes the New Commandment.^[3] A connection between the Blood of Christ and the New Covenant is portrayed with the saying: “this cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood”. Jesus is therefore the mediator of this New Covenant, and that his blood, shed is the required blood of the covenant. This is true looking back in both testaments and can be seen in all of the biblical covenants of the bible.

In the Christian context, this New Covenant is associated with the word ‘testament‘ in the sense of a ‘will left after the death of a person (Latin testamentum),^[4] the original Greek word used in Scripture being diatheke (διαθήκη) which in the Greek context meant ‘will (left after death)’ but is also a word play having a dual meaning of ‘covenant, alliance’.^[5] This notion implies a reinterpreted view of the Old Testament covenant as possessing characteristics of a ‘will left after death’ placing the old covenant, brit (בְּרִית) into a new application of understanding as revealed by the death, resurrection, ascension, and throning of CHRIST THE KING, JESUS. All things will forever connect at the covenants and be defined by the atoning accomplishments that transform into a covenant of eternity.

Order today might be better understood as a continually evolving algorithm based on the posture of your covenant faithfulness which, as I have described, is defined by many facets of devotion. Some may hear the audible voice of God more clearly while others simply see Him in every image. The revelation of God to us isn’t in a form of hierarchy. One form of transcendence doesn’t trump another. Who are we to judge anyway. But I do know that most of Christianity seems to be off course here. Rather than coming to the LORD as the cosmic wish granting genie in a bottle, let’s get back to biblical roots and think more covenantal and devotional based on the order that God modeled for us.

^[1] Harris, R. L., Archer, G. L., Jr., & Waltke, B. K. (Eds.). (1999). Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (electronic ed., p. 696). Chicago: Moody Press.

^[2] Strong’s Concordance (1890).

^[3] “Comparison of the two covenants mediated by Moses and the two covenants mediated by Jesus”. 25 September 2022. Archived from the original on 2022-09-28. Retrieved 2023-01-29.

^[4]“testamentum: Latin Word Study Tool”. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu. Retrieved 2020-08-12.

^[5] G1242 – diathēkē – Strong’s Greek Lexicon (KJV)”. Blue Letter Bible. Retrieved 2020-08-12.

Faithful Exegesis – Teaching a better Hermeneutic

Posted by expedition44 on November 9, 2024

Wait what? All that in the one word? -I don’t think so!

Just about every day I scroll through a “BIBLE” meme on Facebook that makes me cringe. I used to comment but I no longer do largely because I think sometimes people don’t interpret the comments as useful, or teaching better theology but as some kind of self-promotion, or “I think I am better than you” type of thing. I think that is unfortunate. I believe part of shepherding and discipleship is a Mars Hill or rabbinical teaching method of being open to constantly learning and working through a better understanding of the test with the giftings of those around you. To keep each other Biblically sharp and accountable to be faithful to the text. Letting people get really loose with the text has led to alot of bad theology and ditch diving. I believe the Bible greatly encouraged textual exploration together within the body. That is what the body of Christ is supposed to do. I have 40 years of deeply studying the Bible under my belt and God has gifted me with a certain learned spiritual intuition of exegesis. I hope it comes as a gift to those that have a learning posture towards the scripture. To those more interested in fighting or finger pointing, or making internet dumpster fires, I am not interested.

THE MEME:

At first glance this probably looks pretty neat. It’s challenging, it looks at the original language rather than an English glossed translation, it comes off as going deeper. So, what’s the problem? Well, it isn’t faithful.

A faithful translation means you let the text speak for the text. You don’t read your own desire into the text. This commonly referred to as good exegesis.

In this case, here are some issues:

One word? Sort of. The text is Genesis 3:9. Start by typing that into a browser followed by the word interlinear. The first link will be the Bible Hub, click it. The word is ’ay·yek·kāh and you will see the [are] is in parentheses. It technically isn’t in the text but linguistically it is- but it is understood such as an understood “YOU” in English. Click the word and you are going to find there is only one occurrence of this “word” or conjunction of words in the Bible. This is called a Hapax Legomenon. The basic hermeneutical law or idea of any Hapax Legomenon is because it is rare don’t read too much into it. See if you can find how it is used outside of the Bible to give you a better understanding of how the text uses it. But in this case, it isn’t a “TRUE” Hapax Legomenon in the sense that if you click the root word above which is Strong’s 335 you will see the root is “ay” in Hebrew which occurs 36 times in the Old Testament. We have a pretty good idea of what it means! There are some words or phrases in the Bible where we don’t even have the root anywhere else and that is a better example of a Hapax Legomenon, but they are both technically considered Hapax Legomenon’s. This one we can see essentially means “where or how” which makes sense in the English translation “where are you?” I would encourage you to read the usage and cultural notes below the word. These are theologically very basic and at times arguable, but still give you a better start. In this case it notes that the word can come with distress or lament. Seems true to this text! It also notes that this particular word is often noted of spiritual locations within the cosmos. Again, true to the text. Most of the time these notes don’t get too controversial and are written by well noted scholars. This is sort of important because there are other similar words in Hebrew that could have been used without a sometimes-spiritual emphasis. We see this importance in Deuteronomy 32 when the text asks “Where are there gods.” It is also used in 1 Samuel 9:18 in regard to the SEER. It is used in 2 Samuel 15:2 in regard to the city which is interesting and could be signified as one of the reasons I believe in ancient times cities were gatherings of fallen spiritual beings and people aligned to their ways and rival to Yahweh. In Job 2 it is used to ask where “the satan” came from. The problem is (as you can see to the column on the right of all the verses using this Hebrew root) there are at least a few texts that don’t seem to take on “spiritual spatial” significance, it just means where? So that tells us we can’t read too much into a sense of cosmic space every time we see the word used. Hermeneutically it may or may not have spiritual bearing. Therefore, we have to determine from the rest of the text whether it does or not. In other words, we don’t have the “RIGHT” to attribute a spiritual significance to the simple text “where” unless something in the rest of the text gives it to us for certain. If the text doesn’t grant it, then we have to determine if we the ability to say it could go that way, but we don’t know for sure. It may or may not have spiritual spatial implications. In this text we already know they are in Eden, so the context gives us the sacred space.

To say that it is one word is accurate (I would have said the same thing), but it’s a bit complicated as in Hebrew bits of different words form one word. This is actually really helpful in determining what one word can mean because we can break the word up and study the microcosm of it. In this case you would think all the things the author of that post says the word means would be great if the word could have been textually broken up that way. The problem in this case is it doesn’t say all those things. We get “where” which (as we already noted) may or likely implies a spiritual search-find. You could take away from the text exegetically that God is “searching us out” or “looking for us” or perhaps even noting that the space is spiritual as I already alluded to. All of those things could be good exegesis. That is what the text gives us. Next, we have the understood {ARE}. We don’t really get anything magical from that. Then we have “you” essentially as formed into the singular word. There is really not much to exegete there either. He is talking to a certain person. DO we have the right to insert our name here? Well, the genre of this text is a historical narrative. Simply telling the story. So no, we don’t really have the right to insert our name. Because God was seeking out Adam in the garden doesn’t give us the textual ability to say He searches us out the same. He may or may not, but the text doesn’t give us that warrant. So here you see the author of the meme breaking some huge theological and hermeneutical laws. He takes a text that isn’t about him and tries to make it about him or us. This is called reading into the text. Using the Bible to twist it into saying what you want it to say without the merit of the text giving you that. Now could it mean that later God will act the same towards you? Yeah, later the text may do that but here it doesn’t. However, if you read the text doing that for others in the story over and over and over you might come to an ontological conclusion that if there are 26 examples of God acting this way in the narrative, we have then maybe he acts this way towards me too! (But to be clear, the text still wouldn’t give us that for certain.) Sometimes people take a lot of latitude to say the scripture means something that the text never gave or intended to give. That seems to be the case here. It simply isn’t good theology or maybe even theology at all. It is saying the Bible says something in a text that doesn’t say that.
“God’s first words after the fall” – We don’t know this either. The Bible doesn’t give us the full account. There may have been other words. Perhaps these are the first words in the Bible after the fall. But making the statement that the author makes in the way that he does isn’t true. Does this seem nitpicky? Maybe but there is a difference, and it matters in biblical interpretation and textual criticism.
This is classic for someone trying to make a doctrine or in the authors words, “a whole theology” over something the text doesn’t say. The text says nothing of the lost. Was Adam lost? We aren’t told that he was. Was he asking for a confession. Later scripture tells us that when we sin, we need to confess, but that isn’t in the text here. What about restoration and redemption? Well, everyone knows God wants restoration and redemption, right? But this text doesn’t go here either. Are you following me? There are texts that talk about redemption and restoration but not this one. In fact, maybe the opposite. This text leads to exile from the garden, that is the opposite of restoration. So what it does tell us is exile may come before restorative acts. That could be a more faithful takeaway than what the author of the meme comes up with. The author improperly says the text means something that isn’t given to us. It is as if the author is trying to write his own Bible and proof text the word to say what he wants it to say. The real problem is that we are saying the word says something that it isn’t. Maybe other places say that, but a better hermeneutic is to only exegete what the text says. Don’t add or fill in anything. There is no context for the takeaways the author asserts over the text.

CONCLUSION

A Faithful reading of the text means we only take away what the text gives us. We can’t read anything else into it. I can’t tell you how many times in a sermon I hear a pastor say “the Bible says this” and goes on to quote a verse that doesn’t say anything close to what the pastor says it said. In many cases we have become all too comfortable with accepting things like this, and it has led to a lot of bad consequences. It seems there are so many people are using the Bible for their own gain saying what they want it to ay and that is unfaithful to the text.

NOTE; The Bible Hub is free, easily accessible and works well. LOGOS is better but is $$$.

Dr. Will Ryan