Big Things
In the last two parts I detailed some of the big popular monuments around Australia, like the Big Merino and the Big Gumboot, but today I want to mention the ‘Big Station’. I am referring to the S. Kidman and Co. parcel of land, which was last sold in 2015 to Gina Rhinehart and a Chinese Co. for around $360 million.
It was Sir Sydney Kidman who built the empire from scratch. He left his home near Adelaide at age 13 with only 5 shillings and a one-eyed horse to his name and joined a drover, learning fast. He worked as a Rous-a-bout and Jackeroo on stations out west, started trading different things, and then bought Cowarie Station with his brother.
The plan, which he amazingly achieved, was to buy a string of properties stretching from the north and west of Australia down along watercourses to Adelaide, so as to drought-proof his operation. Kidman built a vast network of connected stations stretching from the Gulf of Carpentaria and Fitzroy River in Western Australia down into South Australia near the Flinders Ranges and also across New South Wales.
He eventually had ownership of an enormous area of land covering somewhere between 220,000 to 280,000 square kilometres (85,000 to 107,000 mls2) incorporating 68 separate stations and amounting to 3% of the land mass of Australia. It was stocked with 176,000 head of cattle and 215,000 head of sheep. There has been nothing bigger in terms of an individual ownership of agricultural property in the modern world. It was bigger than countries like Uganda (197,100 km2), Ghana (227,533), Belarus (202,900), Romania (231,290), and New Zealand (262,443).
Big Differences - Pts. I & II
In the last two sermons we have looked at the two biggest differences between a biblical understanding of scripture and what the bulk of Christianity teaches. We looked at how, following Catholicism and Platonic philosophy:
1. Christianity taught a separation between the soul and the body, leading to many other related fallacies (including eternal torment for the lost). And secondly,
2. Christianity sees a basic split between the Testaments, which then sees Israel being ousted from the plan of God, the church supplanting it, and a dichotomy between the “old covenant” and the “new covenant,” with some parts of Christianity claiming the ten commandments are done away with. Whereas, the Meta-narrative of the Bible, the overarching story of the Bible, is the story of Israel, the chosen people of Yahweh.
Big Differences - Pt. III
Today I want to look at the third big difference between biblical Christianity and that promulgated and followed by the majority of Christian denominations.
a. Is our means of Salvation Determined by Individual Predestination? Or is it based on Free Will working through Faith? This will also bring into question the character of God.
b. The Temporal and Spatial Nature of Human life. A timeless eternity in a nebulous vacuum? Or a temporal history on a re-created earth? Spirit Heaven or Space-time universe?
Let me put these in other terms:
3. Why Catholic Philosophy Rules Christianity Still:
a. Who makes the final decision in salvation? Do we have a say in our salvation, or has God decided our fate beforehand?
b. Is our saved life on a created sphere or in a timeless, space-less vacuum?
Constantine and Augustine
I have suggested in Parts I and II of this series that a divide between Christianity and Judaism crept into the church from as early as the second century and received a massive boost when Constantine “converted” to Christianity, and especially through the Platonic teaching of Augustine from around 400 A.D. onwards.
Firstly, Judaism started persecuting Christians, as we see in the first instance of Jewish leaders calling for the crucifixion of Jesus, and later we find Paul traipsing around persecuting Christians in his pre-conversion life. Then Rome turned on Judaism when the Jews engaged in armed rebellion against Roman rule, firstly in 70 A.D., and finally in 135 A.D., which led Christians to rapidly separate themselves from Judaism. The final separation took hold when the Roman Emperor Constantine “converted” to Christianity in 313 A.D. and within ten years Christianity was the official religion of the Roman Empire and Judaism was pushed into obscurity. Constantine basically “baptised” the whole of the Roman population, in a classic, “If you can’t beat-em, join-em” ploy.
Christianity stepped away from Judaism because this move gave them a better standing with the Roman rulers, who had had enough of Judaism's belligerence.
After a particularly desperate time of Christian persecution from 303 to 311 A.D., Rome suddenly changed course, with Constantine's mind shift, and not only did the persecution finish but the Roman Empire became the Holy Roman Empire. I am sure many Christians gasped a sigh of relief at this time – but there were dangerous warnings hidden in the fine print.
Augustine of Hippo was converted to Christianity in 386 A.D. and thereafter we see a further rapid separation from Judaism in all sorts of areas, such as the immortality of man, and the diminution of what I call the meta-narrative of the Bible, which is the story of the calling of Abraham and the choice of Israel as God's people.
This led to the distortion of the means of salvation, and the change of the biblical understanding of the temporal and spatial nature of creation, in favour of the introduction of a Platonic understanding that our salvation is predetermined by God, and that after death we float around in a spaceless and timeless vacuum.
Also, part of this process led to a two-fold God, the OT God being stern and aloof, while the meek and mild Jesus of the NT was all lovey-dovey.
The Separation of the Testaments and the Flow of History
Here I have arranged, in order, theologians who had a significant influence on Christianity. Those in bold are major theological influencers, while those in normal print are lesser influences. Those in red followed, more or less, Augustine of Hippo in regard to predestination, while those in blue followed Arminius' understanding of salvation by faith through grace.
Schematic of Protestant Doctrinal Lineage
396-430 Augustine, formalized Medieval theology
1330-1384 John Wycliffe and Jan Hus (1369-1415)
1517 Martin Luther – 95 Theses: Reformation begins
1519-1521 Ulrich Zwingli (Switzerland)
1525 Anabaptist movement begins
1528 Denmark-Norway & Holstein Reformed Trad. (Lutheranism)
1534 Henry VIII est. Church of England
1536 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion
1560-1609 Jacobus Arminius, The Reformed tradition
-1561 Menno Simons (Mennonites)
1609 Baptist Church (John Smyth - adult baptism; separation of church & state, {Reformed tradition}) [Split tradition on predestination]
1648 George Fox founds Quaker movement
1678 John Bunyan - Pilgrim's Progress. Puritan (Calvinist)
1738 John Wesley & The Methodists
1831 William Miller (Advent Movement)
1844 (1863) Seventh-day Adventism: E.G. White; Joseph Bates; George Storrs
1901 Pentecostal and Charismatic Movement
Timeline of Protestant Leaders on Means of Salvation
Here are some of the same Protestant leaders in a timeline, with those leaning more toward predestination above the line, and those leaning more toward faith and free choice, below the line. The further away from the line the stronger are they as proponents of that view.
If you want to understand the state of Christian teaching today, you have to understand the huge influence of Augustine on Christian history, and who he influenced in the Protestant movement. Augustine was a great Christian and a convert from paganism, but his theological direction was largely detrimental to the church.
John Calvin, despite being a great Christian reformer on the one hand, also leaned strongly toward Augustine in regards to predestination.
Calvinism taught almost absolute determinism in salvation on the one hand, and the transcendence of divinity on the other, which tended to emphasise the stern aloofness of God the Father.
This third Big Difference is closely related to the first big difference we looked at, that the soul is a separate entity from the body and essentially immortal. When the individual dies, it is said, the body simply decays and the soul goes to heaven or hell, residing there for eternity.
This concept of eternity is not simply referring to a very long period of time, but to the idea that time ceases altogether, it is time-less-ness. The idea is that God is ‘timeless’ and that we then enter the realm of God, a timeless realm. And of course, if we leave the body behind, then we have no place for space either because we are spirits and our world is spiritual. We have left behind the evil arena of matter and time when we enter heaven.
I want to suggest that these are Platonic fallacies introduced into the church mainly through the teaching of Augustine from around 400 A.D. onwards.
Biblical Understanding of Time
The Bible only knows of two time periods regarding the people of God, “this age” and “the age to come.” Both ages are historical in the sense that both are associated with the physical world and encased in historical time. There is not some abrupt end of time followed by a timeless entity called eternity.
In the biblical scheme we have both space and time continuing to pertain to mankind, even after Jesus comes. We retain our bodies and live on a physical earth that God so graciously created for us. We don’t leave this earth, it is our home and inheritance.
Following on from this idea of ‘space’, time also must of necessity have sway, since that is the only possible scenario if the new earth continues to revolve around the sun and the rest of the universe does its thing, which is spatial expansion.
So physical ‘space’ and chronological ‘time’ rule as opposed to a spirit/soul and timeless eternity.
The Biblical Evidence
Let’s look at some biblical evidence on this. The first is:
Gen. 1:1 “In the beginning God created the sky and the land.”
This is a basic truth underlying all biblical truth, that God created a physical realm for mankind to live in. And this physical realm had time intrinsically built into it, because, firstly it was a beginning, and secondly there was sky and land the universe.
Genesis 1:14–19 (NRSV) — 14 And God said, “Let there be lights in the dome of the sky to separate the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years, 15 and let them be lights in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth.” And it was so. 16 God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. 17God set them in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth, 18 to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19 And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.
You see, time automatically coincides with this physical realm, you cannot separate the two. Space and time go together. I don’t expect any argument so far on this point.
Of course, the argument comes from the Catholic quarter, who say that the soul is immortal and the body evil, and that after death space and time disappear and morph into eternity.
But according to the Bible, when we die, because we are an inseparable body-soul-mind combination, that cannot be parted, we “sleep”, as Jesus said of Lazarus' death, until the resurrection. And what happens after our bodily resurrection? Jesus says,
Matthew 5:5 (NRSV) — 5 “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.”
This is the fulfilment of the basic covenant promise first made to a doubting Abraham as part of a threefold promise,
Genesis 15:7 (NRSV) — 7 Then he said to him, “I am the Lord who brought you from Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to possess.”
“The Land” of Canaan was promised to Abraham and Israel. But in the NT Christians “inherit the earth,” as Jesus said, after the creation of a “new heaven and a new earth,” foretold in Revelation 20 and elsewhere. Paul says the same thing.
‘This Present Age’ and ‘the Age to Come’
Let’s look at some examples of the way scripture uses these terms.
John 5:24 (NRSV) — 24 Very truly, I tell you, anyone who hears my word and believes him who sent me has [the life of the age to come], and does not come under judgment, but has passed from death to life.
In Greek it does not say ‘eternity’, it says ‘the life of the age to come.’
Jesus is saying that those who believe in him already possess the life of the age to come, because that is the correct translation of this term here.
Following a long line of tradition in translation, this term is usually translated “eternal life”, to reflect earlier Catholic and Protestant understandings, but that is not how Jesus’ hearers first understood it. The Hebrews understood it in the sense of the historical age that would follow the coming of the Messiah. Jesus says they are already in possession of the life that will follow his second coming, "the life of the age to come."
Mark 10:29–30 (NRSV) — 29 Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for my sake and for the sake of the good news, 30 who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age—houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields, with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal (everlasting) life.
Some translations have “in this present age” followed by “and in the age to come” life that will not end. It is not some nebulous, timeless period, but a highly blessed historical period, here on earth, following the coming of the Messiah.
Free Choice or Predestination of the Individual
What we need to see is that if as an individual you are predestined to be saved, as those who follow Augustine understand it, then this does away with your free choice, but God is very careful to preserve that for us.
But, in the Hebrew understanding, Israel is elected to be God’s people, and as a people they are predestined to be saved. If you then become part of the group, you are predestined to be saved with the group. If you decide to leave the group, you are no longer part of the predestined ones. According to scripture, predestination is not an individual thing, it is a corporate thing.
Calvinist, Armenian & Biblical Readings on Predestination
Here, firstly, you see the Calvinist understanding portrayed pictorially, where you are either in the “predestined” camp or the “lost” camp.
Next you see the Arminian and Wesley revision, which says that all mankind is predestined to be saved and those who exercise faith are actually saved.
The third picture is how the Bible pictures it, and the way Israel saw its salvation. Here, only Israel is predestined to be saved. If you are part of God’s people Israel, you are saved. If not, you are in the camp of the lost. You are excluded from fellowship with the righteous.
This is a corporate thing, not an individual thing. The group is predestined to be saved. The individual is either part of the group or left out in the cold (“where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth”).
This understanding saves us from making the fatal mistake that individuals are predestined to be either saved or lost, with its horrendous implications. If you look at any text on predestination or election, it makes perfect sense if read in terms of Israel. But if read in terms of individuals it becomes cruel and merciless nonsense.
We will look at some aspects of these biblical understandings in more detail in other sermons, but we need to have an overview of the whole teaching here first.
Conclusions
1. Some Protestant Reformers got it all wrong when they followed Augustine in reading Predestination as an individual phenomenon rather than as corporate identity in Israel.
2. Salvation is by choosing to be part of the elect people of God, Israel, and it is by faith in a loving God, not an arbitrary pronouncement by a cold, aloof God
3. The Bible only knows of two time periods, “this age,” and “the age to come.” There is no timeless, spaceless existence in Heaven for the saved.
4. We were created by God to live on this physical earth, both before and after Jesus comes. After the Judgement we will dwell on a re-created earth with Jesus.
John 5:24 (NRSV) — 24 Very truly, I tell you, anyone who hears my word and believes him who sent me has [the life of the age to come], and does not come under judgment, but has passed from death to life.
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