Easter Through a Divine Council Lens - Episode 173

Carey Griffel: Welcome to Genesis Marks the Spot where we raid the ivory tower of biblical theology without ransacking our faith. My name is Carey Griffel, and today we're gonna do a special Easter themed episode. This question came up in the Divine Council Worldview Facebook page, which probably many of you already know that I am an admin there. The question was about Easter through a DCW lens. When you look at Easter through the Divine Council worldview, what's one thing you learned that really stood out to you or changed the way you looked at it?

[00:00:46] I saw that question and I really liked it, and I only had time for a really short reply. So I said that the DCW basically began my understanding of good historical theology like the nature of God, but also began dismantling bad historical theology that paints the narrative of the Bible and the gospel in an overly simplistic and very wrong framing.

[00:01:15] So I said that, and then someone else came along and said, oh, I'd really like to hear more, but I haven't written anything specifically about that to share. And this is a really expansive, big topic. Which I love, and this is fantastic, and I thought, well, why not do an episode where I kind of unpack at least some of this.

[00:01:38] So, today's episode is going to be another stint into my life as a disciple of Christ and my faith journey. And if you haven't listened to my first one I did all the way back in episode number 18, I suggest you go listen to that one because this one will kind of play a little bit off of that one. I previously described how Dr. Heiser and biblical theology in general really helped me on a deep level in my own theological and faith journey as I came out of the LDS faith. And I was really struggling with understanding a lot of historical Christian doctrines, in particular the Trinity. How do you get the Trinity out of what we see in the Bible? I just couldn't read it that way. And so biblical theology actually opened that door for me and helped me understand it.

[00:02:33] And as I further understood biblical theology and Scripture in context, that helped me to understand a lot of historical theology that maybe I wasn't really struggling with at the time, but the deeper I get into it, the more I realized, well, not all that historical theology is actually good.

[00:02:53] Some of it's just not actually in alignment with what the context of Scripture says. And because that is my framework, that is my hermeneutic, that is my methodology for reading Scripture, i've really gone down some very interesting, I don't really wanna call them deconstruction paths, because since I was raised LDS, I wasn't really fully steeped in Christian theology, although a lot of LDS theology is very adjacent to it. So when I entered into the Christian world, a lot of it was fairly normal to me. A lot of it I understood on some level. My LDS understanding of the atonement was not exactly like a Christian Protestant understanding of the atonement, but it wasn't really all that far off.

[00:03:48] So I fit really well into most Christian theology. Now, the path I took from LDS theology into Christianity was basically into Lutheranism, although not formally at the time, but that's what was in front of me. And I thought, well, this is okay, because it's not that Catholicism that seems really scary and feels really strange, but it's also not later Protestantism.

[00:04:14] At least that's how I'm thinking about it at the time, and so I'm like, well, we can kinda stick with Lutheran theology. I'm not quite sure about all of the particulars, but it seems okay enough to me. And then I went from Lutheran theology into more non-denominational contexts. That kind of widened my perspective in some ways in theology. Not that I was really strictly rooted in Lutheran theology 'cause I wasn't, but a lot of it appealed to me and I think, and still think a lot of it's helpful and very uplifting and very much part of this historical stream of Christianity that we should take seriously. And you move into non-denominational contexts and it kind of is a bit of a rodeo at times. So that was interesting.

[00:05:04] But the deeper I get into the context of Scripture, the more I see that earlier context of Christian interpretation, like historical interpretation do seem to align better and more with the Bible. Although not always perfectly. I wouldn't say that there is any tradition that really preserves that stream perfectly, and I don't necessarily think it's supposed to. Because I think once we get into the early church, we do get away from what the context of the Old Testament is. We even get away from the context of the New Testament. The church becomes more populated with Gentiles, moves away from a lot of understanding in Jewish ways and things like that.

[00:05:55] So by necessity in a new context, you can't just do the same old thing again. I mean, you can certainly try, but it doesn't really work out that well, especially when you have empires raging around you and pagans. And how do we deal with these new people coming in who simply do not understand that Jewish context.

[00:06:18] There's a lot going on, so we should not presume that the early church moving in a historical direction should just pick up and plop down that New Testament theology and understanding precisely. I don't think it's meant to. I don't think that's how we're supposed to understand anything. Just like we cannot take that context of Scripture and plop it down directly into our lives. We ought to use it to inform us as best we can, but we cannot just do an ultimate perfect transfer.

[00:06:52] I don't see it as a problem that the early church gets into more philosophical understandings of things, and they're dealing with conflict and they're dealing with heresies that show up. So it's not really a problem that we have historical Christianity and historical interpretation in the way that we do.

[00:07:10] And it's not that biblical theology as I'm doing here in this podcast, is perfect. I'm not saying that biblical theology is the be all end all of everything, because it can't be. It's simply unaccessible to people earlier when they don't have the knowledge of the languages. They don't have the knowledge of the culture or the archeology.

[00:07:34] But at this time, when we have that amount of information, we would simply be foolish not to use it. So it's not like all interpretations in the past were terrible or bad, or that we should see them in a negative light. But now in the context we have currently with the information we have, we should use that information and we should use it well.

[00:08:00] Let me just get into some definitions here because I don't think we always define things quite enough. I just mentioned biblical theology, so let me talk a little bit about that, not to encapsulate it perfectly, but just trying to get the general feel and idea of a biblical theology approach to Scripture.

[00:08:20] The highest priority is going to be understanding Scripture in its context. That means looking at grammar. That means looking at words. That means looking at the culture and how they're thinking about things. And culture means that you have to expand the scope into extra biblical literature. It means you have to expand the scope into archeology.

[00:08:43] So in biblical theology, you have the context of all of that going on, but you also have the context within a passage or a book or a section of Scripture. So Genesis should not be read the same as the Book of Joshua, and neither one of those books should be read the same as Isaiah. And Isaiah should not be read the same as the New Testament. Because you're gonna need to understand the context in each one of those places.

[00:09:13] But biblical theology isn't just about taking apart the text and saying, this is what the Book of Job says. It's also important to understand the context of Scripture in a canonical way. So you have the Old Testament, but you cannot just leave it there. You have to understand that as a progression that goes through history and leads to Christ and the New Testament must be understood in light of the Old Testament.

[00:09:42] So let's define the DCW, the Divine Council worldview, otherwise known as the Deuteronomy 32 worldview. Those phrases were either made up or made popular by Dr. Michael Heiser. And so I take a lot of his context because I kind of see him as my mentor because a lot of his work did bring me directly into historical Christian theology.

[00:10:09] But what is the Divine Council worldview? Well, I'm not gonna give you a full definition of it, but basically what we're doing is we're looking into that context of Scripture where the ancient audience understood the spiritual realm and the physical realm in a particular way.

[00:10:29] Now, what's interesting to me about the Divine Council worldview is that a lot of people will take it and they will tend to focus on the gods of the nations and the dark spiritual powers. That's usually kind of the focus we have. And fair enough, if that is the new information that this worldview brings to you. If you previously did not understand Scripture in a way where the authors were presenting these beings as being a real part of the story and that fit into the context of God's Divine Council.

[00:11:09] If you didn't understand that previously, then it's very fair to kind of focus on those lower beings as, this is the new information that the DCW is giving me. Absolutely fair enough. But the problem I see here is that that doesn't encapsulate the actual meaning of the Divine Council worldview.

[00:11:33] And I think that this is much of the problems in people's understanding of what Dr. Heiser was doing. And if you're part of the DCW Facebook group, you know exactly what I'm saying because this kind of thing comes up all the time where people are bringing in critiques of Dr. Heiser and his work and asking for feedback and saying, well, what do we do about this? Or how do we see these critiques?

[00:12:01] And almost always, not always, there's some good critiques out there, and I appreciate that because I like critiques. But almost always the critiques revolve around a misunderstanding of what Dr. Heiser was saying and what he was doing.

[00:12:19] They don't understand his methodology, or if they understand it on some level, they don't approve of it. Which, you know, you don't have to approve of somebody else's methodology. I get that. But taking him out of context and you're not understanding the whole picture of what the Divine Council worldview is about.

[00:12:40] And so rather than focusing on the gods of the nations, I would call you to focus on the council and God himself. And also to understand how those things are not just a reality about God in heaven and God's nature and the nature of the spiritual beings, but the real picture here is the mirroring of that with what's going on on earth.

[00:13:09] So rather than just focusing on the individuals involved, I think that a broader picture of the DCW is a picture of that mirroring of heaven and earth. The gods of the nations are tied to the kings on earth, and the kings on earth are tied to the gods of the nations.

[00:13:30] But that is also a very simplistic way to see it. And I think a lot of people kind of struggle with that because they're like, well, talks about 70 sons of God. Does that mean there are only 70 nations? And we go through all of these questions that are absolutely fair questions to ask, but you're getting into nitty gritty details before I think you quite understand the structure of what we're supposed to be seeing in the Divine Council worldview.

[00:14:00] And because of that, the way that the Divine Council worldview is not just another systematic, it's not just another package of information for you to learn. But it's meant to be something that is aligned with the methodology of biblical theology, and they kind of go hand in hand in a sense. I don't really think you can do the one without the other because biblical theology gets into that context. Once you get into that context, you see the reality of things like the Divine Council worldview. And again, it is not just about the rogue spiritual beings or the rogue spiritual beings and the good guy spiritual beings. It is about how those things impact the earth and how what we're doing here in the physical realm also impacts the heavenly realm.

[00:14:52] So even though it's called the Divine Council worldview, you could name it something different. You could call it the mirroring of heaven and earth worldview. And it becomes a different way of understanding the structure of how the Bible is presenting reality itself. So you see, we get really lost in the weeds about Baal and Marduke and Ishtar and Allah, and what about the nations today? And what about war? How do we see that today?

[00:15:24] And fair enough, those are questions that fit inside this whole concept. But the first thing we have to understand is this reality that the earthly physical realm unseen spiritual realm are deeply connected. And in fact, that's why Dr. Heiser's famous book is not called the Divine Council Worldview. It's called the Unseen Realm because the actual broader picture is that that unseen realm is connected deeply to our realm.

[00:15:55] It is not necessarily connected in a way where we can map it straight on and say this thing, it directly connected to this thing simply because we don't have that kind of revelation anymore.

[00:16:08] Now, this is why the DCW is so very tied to something like biblical theology. So remember my comment in the Facebook group where this worldview basically helped me understand good historical theology, but also dismantles bad. And that is because I started to see the Bible as a rule of faith. What I mean by the rule of faith is that it's really tied to that methodology. And that's not only how we should read Scripture, but it's also how we should understand Christian theology in general and Christian history and a whole bunch of other things.

[00:16:50] So the Bible as a rule of faith, is not primarily a claim centered on the Bible's authority, although it encapsulates some of that. And so that's why I say it's not really sola scriptura because sola scriptura is about the location of the highest authority. And it places that within the biblical text.

[00:17:11] And I say, well, fair enough, in a way. But the text itself is not really our authority. Our authority is God. And of course the church is the Body of Christ, and so we are reflecting God. And so I'm really hesitant to say that our authority is in the Bible because the authority needs to be within God and he shares that with us.

[00:17:36] That makes things awfully messy though, doesn't it? Because we look at Christian history and we're like, well, that can't possibly all be correct. But we're kinda looking at it from a very dogmatic institutional way instead of a "Body of Christ way."

[00:17:54] Even though the Bible is not the top authority, in my opinion, it does function as a rule of faith. It has to be read as an unfolding canon and theology must arise from the Bible's own categories and patterns and narrative. Now, that can possibly look differently throughout history because of the way that people are interacting with the text and the way they can possibly read it in their context.

[00:18:25] You simply cannot read the Bible in a way that is out of your own context. You can't do it. But the problem would be in creating a bubble around that later doctrine and the later theological interpretations and making that the same as Scripture, instead of allowing Scripture to correct those things as we see it needs corrected.

[00:18:49] Like later doctrine can be useful, but it should not flatten or replace the biblical framework of Scripture, which is why the DCW is so crucial to me. I mean, okay, so the thing is, someone can be sola s scriptura while still reading from within their tradition. A lot of people think that sola scriptura is anti tradition, and in some articulations it can sound like that, but really it's going to function within your tradition, generally speaking.

[00:19:23] Any particular tradition can claim Scripture as the highest authority if they want to, but their reading is still going to be governed by their inherited doctrinal principles and priorities. So sola scriptura is not anti tradition. It's going to be read within a tradition.

[00:19:43] On the other hand, if we use the Bible as a rule of faith that is canonical and that is narrative based, then maybe truth is not placed within doctrinal categories and institutional authority.

[00:19:57] That doesn't make tradition or institutions bad. They can be made up of people from the body of Christ who are doing their best in their own situations, but that institution is not the same as the Body and community of Christ itself. Because the Body of Christ is made up of people, imagers of God, who are being conformed to the image of Christ. That is where I would put the authority. And so that involves the text since those were written by people like that. It involves church history and tradition and historical interpretation.

[00:20:35] But again, that gets messy. So what do we do with that? And this is where the Bible comes in as a rule of faith that is written down for the preservation of some of this information that we have in history, right, that is crucial for the Body of Christ to understand.

[00:20:53] And I think that many people in many contexts in history have used the Bible as their rule of faith. But again, they do that within their own understanding and their own situation. Now, what I think that the rule of faith and a narrative reading and biblical theology and a DCW reading is going to do for us is that it's going to resist collapsing categories, finding single proof texts, and just creating small statements as being true.

[00:21:28] So back to the DCW in general, while it's important context to see the spiritual realm, again, that is not all that it is.

[00:21:37] Something that I need to work with more in some research and things is that I really think that a proper understanding of the divine council is going to give us a proper understanding of the Trinity. And that might seem really strange to us. That might seem quite unrelated, like the Trinity is not the council. Absolutely it's not. But our understanding of monotheism from an ancient perspective, I think that's going to get us a lot closer to an understanding of the Trinity than a modern concept of monotheism.

[00:22:14] So I think this is crucial to what is really foundational to Christianity, understanding the character and the nature of God.

[00:22:23] So obviously that's going to play into an understanding of what's going on during Passion Week and during Good Friday and on into Easter Sunday. Again, the bigger frame is the mirroring and the effects between the heaven and the Earth. I see that mirroring between the heaven and Earth as being intimately related to the character of God, the idea of monotheism, and who we are as people because we are the image of God. And once you start seeing how these things compound, then all of this information is gonna bleed out more and more into different passages, not just about spiritual beings, but about divine reality itself.

[00:23:08] And is it possible that I'm just kind of seeing it because I'm looking for it, because I'm in this context? Well, certainly that's possible. Kind of don't really care at this point because I find it so rich and so meaningful and I really struggle with seeing how this deep of a pattern that shows up this often can be something that is anything but reality. This is the beauty of narrative and story and pattern versus a dogmatic approach where we're just trying to find a systematic answer.

[00:23:45] Okay, so the DCW and Easter for me, really shines the light on the understanding of reality itself and the interconnectedness of Scripture.

[00:23:56] So what about dismantling the bad historical theology? I said that it paints the narrative of the Bible and the gospel in an overly simplistic and very wrong framing. Well, the first thing we could go to here is God's relationship to us and sin is not a theological problem that the cross has to solve.

[00:24:22] Is it connected to that? Absolutely. But is it a story of the Father needing to put out his wrath on the Son and balance some impartial scales where Jesus is taking the place for us in that structure so that we don't have to go through that?

[00:24:41] I don't think that's the story. I don't think God is a problem that has to be managed. And I say God and not sin because that's kind of how we're structuring it. Like our problem is, oh no, we're so sinful and we're gonna be punished by God. Well, our sin in that story is not really the problem is it? The problem is God. The problem is God's wrathful justice and we need to be saved from that God and that wrathful justice, and so Jesus is gonna step in and save us.

[00:25:18] That's really what that story is saying. It divides the Trinity. It is just a bad reading in general because it doesn't fit into the narrative pattern of Scripture. Like at all. It just does not. We do not have an angry wrathful Father or, you can take out the emotion there. I don't care. We don't have a perfectly just Father and a Son who takes our place as a sacrificial victim.

[00:25:48] This is not the story of Scripture. It goes against the very nature of the DCW. It goes against the nature of God as we are presented in the text where God is long suffering, where God is forgiving, where God does not have to take his pound of flesh in order to be satisfied. It is simply not the structure and the pattern of Scripture. And so the DCW is leading me here. Biblical theology is leading me here.

[00:26:20] It's very much a problem when so much of modern evangelical, Protestant, maybe American in particular, Christianity is so focused on this as the problem.

[00:26:36] So when you are approaching Easter and you have this problem in mind, then you are being presented a story where the Son is at odds with the Father. You can say that he's doing it in a loving way. You can say that it's okay because the Son is giving himself up voluntarily. That is true. But is he giving himself up to the Father's wrath in order to satisfy scales of justice?

[00:27:05] Again, you have to go against the understanding of biblical terminology of justice and how that plays into both retribution and mercy. It goes against the idea of covenant. It goes against, again, the whole pattern of Scripture that I see. Now, that poses a difficulty for us, of course, because if that is the narrative of Scripture that you have been taught all of your life and that you have seen this as the central problem and the thing that Easter is fixing, that is very problematic to dismantle that, isn't it?

[00:27:42] It causes us difficulty because what do we do then? What is the story of Scripture, if that's the case? I think that is a very fair question. And I don't wanna make light of that. But at the same time, it's kind of like. I just wanna point to the empty tomb.

[00:28:02] As many sermons that are going on this week will point out that kind of a story. It's so focused on the death of Jesus that the resurrection is almost a sidelined thought. Which is like, that is the point of Easter, isn't it? I mean, sure. You don't get a resurrection without a death. The death of Jesus is crucial. It's important. It has theological meaning. But is that meaning about suffering for our sake in order to get us off the hook because we sinned?

[00:28:36] I don't think that's the story. That's not the pattern.

[00:28:39] But again, what do we do? Well, first of all, we see death as a problem in general. I was just talking about this, in fact, in my biblical theology community. I was doing a little bit of a live stream where I was wrestling with the problems of sin, death, and suffering, and how those tend to fit into a penal substitutionary atonement framework in a particular way where sin is a legal problem, where death is not actually-- the problem is not death any longer. The problem is actually hell.

[00:29:15] Have you noticed that? In a penal substitutionary atonement framework, the problem really is not physical death. The problem is that we need to be rescued from hell. Because on this side of the resurrection, we're not really thinking of death in the same way that we would think about it before.

[00:29:36] I mean, picture yourself in the Old Testament where you had this afterlife and there is a hope that you are going to be rescued from the afterlife, but it's not really a fully formed idea that you're gonna be rescued into a bodily physical resurrection and enjoy a new earth. You have some of that context going on, but it's pretty haphazard, pretty hit and miss.

[00:30:00] And so the problem really is a death problem. Like a physical death problem. You don't wanna be in that afterlife. But now we are like, well, we're resurrected. And even if you are not a good person, you're still gonna be resurrected. But now the problem is not death. The problem is hell. So we're kind of sidelining the problem of death entirely, even though the whole point of the resurrection and the whole center is being saved from death.

[00:30:34] Jesus experienced death, but then he went through it and he was resurrected, and that is now our new hope, right? So kind of makes sense that we've shifted the narrative because of this, but the problem is also that we've shifted the narrative. We don't understand a biblical concept of sin because we're primarily putting it in a legal category, whereas it can be part of that, but sin is so much more. The DCW has shown me that it is about rebellion and allegiance. It's an allegiance problem.

[00:31:09] We've kind of sidelined the problem of physical death because, well now we don't have to worry about that anymore. We now have to worry about hell.

[00:31:17] And then what do we do about the problem of suffering? In a penal substitutionary atonement framework, the point of suffering is, again, to satisfy the justice. But if that's not what justice is all about, then how does suffering fit in here?

[00:31:35] So, I know I don't have time to explain all of this stuff. If you want to join a little bit more of this conversation, I highly, highly recommend you come into my biblical theology community. On the paid tier, we are going through the book Lamb of the Free, and I don't agree with everything that Rillera says and I bring out some of my disagreements there.

[00:31:58] But we are wrestling through these questions and I'm not trying to give you exact pristine answers, but there are opposite ideas. Instead of substitution, we look at participation. And participation is a much more biblical, rich pattern that we see in Scripture. I mean, think about it. It is from Genesis one onward.

[00:32:23] We are the image of God. That is participation. We are the body of Christ. That is participation. Christ suffered not so that the people of the church can no longer suffer, but so that we can have his example and we can have solidarity with him, and we can know that we, too, are vindicated through the suffering.

[00:32:45] Not using suffering as a hammer of justice, but suffering as something that is part of our going through things to get to the end of salvation and to the end of deliverance. Just like I was describing last week about the wrath of God. Noah had to go through the flood in order to be saved.

[00:33:08] Noah wasn't just going to be able to build his own boat and get through the storm. If some other person had watched Noah and said, aha, we're gonna do that, too. Do you think they would've been preserved through the storm? Noah was preserved through the storm because God told him to build an arc because Noah then obeyed that and God instituted a covenant with him and saved him through the waters.

[00:33:37] That is a whole picture of salvation. It is not a salvation because Noah was sinful. It is a salvation that lies within the concept of covenant and deliverance by the king. And being in allegiance to that king is how we make it through. So no matter what our suffering is, no matter what we're going through, our hope is in that salvation through that, not in spite of it, not making it not happen. Which is what we prefer and understandably so, but that's just not a reality. Our reality is a life of suffering.

[00:34:17] And so participating in that with Jesus, compared to Jesus taking our place, replacing us so that we don't have to go through something. The participatory model fits all of the biblical patterns we see. It just does.

[00:34:33] Now, what about atonement, you might ask. Isn't atonement important? Absolutely, but atonement, is very complicated. Atonement has multiple ideas. Are we talking about the English word atonement, which can literally be broken up into "at-one-ment", where we have reconciliation and at-one-ment with God. Is that the idea we're thinking of? Or are we thinking of the word that is actually used in Leviticus and other places, which is much more about purification and purging sacred space from impurity?

[00:35:13] And then we have to then ask, well, how does that apply to what Jesus did and our life as Christians? Again, really highly recommend you come and join me in my community 'cause we're having great conversations about this. Atonement is a part of this story, but it's only a part.

[00:35:32] Protestant theologians have made it the whole thing and it's just not. Not all sacrifices are atonement. Sacrifices are not in the context of death and suffering. Good Friday is on Passover, not the Day of Atonement, by the way. And purification can involve sinful impurities, but it's not primarily about that.

[00:35:55] And atoning purification is generally about the sacred space. And I'm sorry this is going to be uncomfortable for some people, but sin is generally purified internally via our repentance. And so the idea of atonement is not just about our individual selves, but reconciling to the community. It is also about removing our liability to the community because of our pollution of sacred space.

[00:36:27] And so, we might think that liability is an awful lot like guilt. But it's not a one-to-one thing. If you're guilty of doing something wrong, then that is centered on what you did wrong. But liability can be something that is much broader than guilt. You can be liable for something that is only tangentially related to your guilt.

[00:36:51] Again, come and have more conversations about this because you see how difficult this conversation is about how the DCW has changed my understanding of things. There are so many pieces, and this is because there are so many patterns. This is because the Bible is so rich and narrative gives us such a more complete picture than doctrine can ever do.

[00:37:15] The thing that got me most on the trajectory of understanding atonement in a different way, or at least that first did, was the Naked Bible Podcast series on Leviticus. Completely blew my mind, reorienting my understanding of what Leviticus was doing and saying. Then I read the book, Who Shall Ascend The Mountain of The Lord by Michael Morales.

[00:37:41] That is a fantastic book. But if I went back and read it again today, I'd probably take a lot of issue with a lot of places because Morales is still going down a path of wrath and explaining things in terms of God's wrath in a way that I'm not really sure that's quite the pattern there. Again, it's not that sin isn't a problem, but it's not the problem that Protestant theologians have placed in Leviticus and on the cross.

[00:38:11] And if people get uncomfortable with the fact that we need to do something like repent as a part of our incorporation into the body of Christ, well take that up with Jesus at the beginning of his ministry where he's proclaiming the kingdom-- before the cross, by the way-- and his call to repentance in that. Take it up with all of the language of participation in all of the stories that show that people are genuinely able to do something within the economy of God and in relation to him.

[00:38:46] And look, this is not a works-based salvation narrative. Because we aren't delivered by our repentance. Again, Noah wasn't saved by the Ark. He was saved in the fact that God granted him the covenantal status, where upon God provided the means of getting through the flood. He gave him the Ark instructions and the covenant protection. Noah wasn't saving himself, but he couldn't do it by doing nothing.

[00:39:18] And so the Divine Council worldview and biblical theology, they both tell me that we have framed everything in Protestant theology in general with a view of soteriology, or salvation, instead of a view of covenantal deliverance. Now, those aren't entirely unrelated, certainly. But they're not exactly the same thing because soteriology or the theology of salvation is usually centered on particular ideas from the Reformation, not the ancient Near East.

[00:39:56] It centers salvation in legalistic frameworks, which is not unheard of in the Bible. It's part of that pattern, but it is not the core of the story. The people are not saved from Egypt because of a legal transaction.

[00:40:13] And I kind of see this as the difference between a representational government and a monarchy. If you take our government, like our American government. You map it onto an ancient Near Eastern monarchy in particular, it's just not the same. We have to see it not within a realm of, I'm sorry, but reformed sovereignty that really puts things in a way that is much more governmental. But the sovereignty of the ancient and eternal and covenantal king. And that kingly context is the DCW. That is the main thing, and that's why I kind of push a little bit against people who really want to go down, all of the nerdy, who is this god and who is that god path?

[00:41:05] I mean, I get it. It's interesting and there's things we can say about that and things we can look at. But the real context is our covenantal king. And so this all brings us to Easter and Passover as a cosmic event. not just about individual salvation. It's not a story of soteriology where we're going to heaven after we die. And it's primarily about sin- salvation as a main storyline. Again, am I saying that that's not part of it? Absolutely not.

[00:41:41] But let me just give you a brief little list of things that were missing. We don't have any real emphasis on victory over rulers and authorities and how they will submit to God's authority. They are not rogue in truth. They might think they're rogue because they're rebellious. They're participating in a world that is against God. But they will submit, and that is part of God's sovereignty, again, seen within an ancient Near Eastern suzerain context.

[00:42:14] We have the of the nations, and those are nations, not countries, like modern countries. The biblical concept of a nation is not exactly the same as the modern concept of a nation state.

[00:42:30] We also have the defeat of the serpent and sin as power and death.

[00:42:36] We have new creation, massive context here.

[00:42:40] A typical PSA reading of the cross has these things as kind of a, you do this, then you do that, then you do that. But they're not inherently and internally linked with each other. If you get vindicated and you get released from your guilt, that doesn't translate to a new creation. It doesn't mean you're not gonna go and sin some more. Just because somebody gets off the hook doesn't mean they're gonna stop doing what they've always done.

[00:43:11] So a soteriological perspective where they do have the order of salvation, so you have justification, then you have sanctification, but there's no real connective tissue there. And so where do we put the enthronement and the vindication of the Messiah? Because he needed vindication. He died an unjust death, a death that is tied to the faithful remnant who endures the judgment and attains mercy via that judgment.

[00:43:42] And the public declaration that the powers do not own the world. Where is that in the individual sin salvation narrative? I'm not saying it, it isn't there somewhere, but there's no internal logic that holds these pieces to together.

[00:43:58] So sin has to be bigger than rule breaking in our understanding. And if it is, salvation is bigger than acquittal of guilt.

[00:44:07] So when we see sin as putting us into slavery, as corrupting us, as putting us into death and a state of exile where we need to be cleansed because we're impure. It's connected to idolatry, it's connected to false allegiance, disordered worship, and participation in ruin and chaos.

[00:44:30] That's the picture of sin that we have. So if that's our picture of sin, then our picture of salvation is about deliverance, cleansing, liberation, reconciliation, transfer of allegiance, restored presence of God in the new creation, and a covenant in Christ with his people.

[00:44:53] You see, that's a lot of threads to pull on, and so it gets very complex and maybe it feels overwhelming. And I understand the typical narrative of sin salvation is just much simpler. It's easier to preach because it really hits hard and you get that bonus of being able to call everybody sinful and make yourself humble in saying that, oh, I too am a sinner. I mean, all of that is part of this story, but it's just not the pattern that really flows through everything.

[00:45:29] And so the gospel is not a formula or thing that you state a belief in. It's not a mechanism that leads to our salvation when we say a single Jesus prayer and then just go on with our lives. We have to fit ourselves into the pattern of Scripture, into the pattern of deliverance and allegiance to God, and obedience to him, repentance, all of these things.

[00:45:55] I don't think most people when asked about the DCW and Easter are gonna go down all of these paths, if they're really primarily interested in golly gee whiz, who are those gods of the nations? Again, I'm not saying it's not important, but the narrative thickness of all of these patterns and the news of the gospel that surrounds them...

[00:46:18] Usually you have the creation, the fall, the redemption, and that tends to be our through line of Scripture. But what if it's something a little bit more like: creation rebellion, nations, election, exile, covenant failure, promise of restoration, the Messiah-- who's going to promise us way more than we ever expected or deserve-- defeat of evil, resurrection, giving of the spirit, unity, a new humanity, and everything renewed. That's a much more complex picture, isn't it? And I give you that list, but I don't really mean it to be read in that kind of a systematic way where one exactly leads to another, although they have internal linkings. There's actually logic to these things. There's a structure that makes sense.

[00:47:14] So, let's go back to that atonement idea again, because it is so tied to the new creation, which is the inherent meaning of what we have with the dwelling of God with us, and the idea of temple. Let's look at the idea of sacred space. Now, I think it's unfortunate that we've kind of wishy washed it away. While it is true that believers are sacred space, and as believers are sacred space, we're not just tied to a building and we're not just tied to a location.

[00:47:53] We don't just worship in Jerusalem and we don't just bring our offerings to the central sanctuary. That's not what it looks like anymore. But I think we do ourselves a disservice by entirely dismantling the idea of a particular sacred space because we learn so well through physical, actual enactment of things.

[00:48:17] It's part of the way we learn, it's part of the way we think. It's why we have ritual. It's not that spiritual and abstract ideas are better than practical and physical lived out expressions of that thing. I think we have to have both, because if we're missing the practical side, then we're just kind of living in our heads and how are we practically understanding it?

[00:48:46] We will forget. We do not have memorials anymore in some cases, and that's terrible. It really is. You have the first Passover, right? And that is an experience where the people of Israel got saved through death and away from Egypt and out of slavery. Then subsequent Passovers are understood to be a memorial of that, a reenactment of that.

[00:49:11] And like I said, Jesus has this experience at the end of his life that is centered on Passover, not the Day of Atonement. That's not that we can't bring Day of Atonement language and ideas into what Jesus did ' cause I certainly think we can. But the immediate context is that Passover. And so when Jesus has that last supper meal with his people, and we are to reenact that in our own lives as Christians. That's a memorial. Not in the sense of we checked the box, we're just remembering something, but we are literally enacting some reality here.

[00:49:50] So understanding sacred space is, I think, crucial. And our dismantling, some might say the disenchantment of the West, where we lose the magic of the story and we lose the meaning of the ritual. And we think that liturgy is something that is empty instead of something that is life giving.

[00:50:11] And look, I've been to many liturgical services where it does feel empty. That's usually a me problem rather than a liturgy problem, though, because if I'm not engaged with my whole self. And I'm just kind of mentally checked out. I'm really not gonna get much out of that. But if I'm fully participating in the service, to the extent where I understand what's going on and I'm thinking about it, and I'm genuinely part of the process, that's a different experience.

[00:50:44] And so the very temple complex for the people of Israel was not about a life where people were killing animals in order to show how serious sin was. I mean, look, if you are in this ancient context where you're not eating meat every day, are you particularly very upset about the chance to eat meat? Is that just a horrible experience? Oh, no. Oh, I really wish we didn't have to eat meat this week.

[00:51:16] I know some of you are vegetarians and vegans, and maybe that is how you feel, but this is not the primary experience of most of humanity. We love meat. We want to eat meat. But meat is a more scarce resource, and so for most of human history, we have had to conserve it and only eat it at certain times.

[00:51:37] When you're butchering your animal in order to eat it, you're not thinking about death. That's not the context. The context is life in fellowship and sacrifice as a meal, as an offering, as something that you're participating in as a group, but also in alignment with God.

[00:52:00] The very concept of worship, the very concept of ritual and liturgy is the mirroring of heaven and earth. So, you know, the DCW is not the only way you can explain this context. But the DCW gives us this full picture of, it's not just the worship context where we get the intersection of heaven and earth. It's all kinds of other places where we get that as well. Some of those are not good.

[00:52:28] So the idea of sacrifice as being connected to death and suffering, again, not the pattern of Scripture. Resurrection is not escape from creation. It's a restored church, a Spirit- indwelt temple community. So if we're not understanding the temple, we're not understanding the church. We're not understanding resurrection even.

[00:52:52] I'm not saying that you can't be in a typical Protestant church being taught the usual things and not get any of this. I am just saying that these things have enriched my life in a way that is very life giving and that really connects me into the historical church and into the context of Scripture in a way where I am not just leaving it as interesting data.

[00:53:19] And this is where I'm going to put in the caution, that just because we have this awesome tool and methodology of biblical theology, it doesn't mean it's the be all, end all of things. I know many people from many different traditions who are faithful, dedicated Christians who lead fulfilling lives of discipleship and who understand deeply what God is doing. They're celebrating the fact that they are vindicated and saved through Christ. That is indeed the point, and the fact that we have so many of these different threads and patterns and things means you really can get there in many ways.

[00:54:01] Again, if you want to focus on one thing or the other as the central narrative, you can do that, and some are a little bit more viable for that than other patterns. There are many ways to see this ultimate reality of God with people. And that's why it's so messy. That's why you can't break it down into simply one biblical pattern. One way of explaining the structure, and just leave it at that. I mean, okay, you can, but the deeper you look and the more you get into the weeds, the more you're gonna see of it. The more beautiful it is.

[00:54:40] Now we could go into that language of mosaic or facets of things, and when people do that, the tendency is to say, well, that means that we need all of the atonement theories and we need everybody in this big happy cuddle puddle, and we're all correct. And it's all right. We don't have to correct each other.

[00:55:01] Well, that's also not what I see in the pattern of Scripture either. Like the fact that we need to correct each other. The fact that we need to correct theology, that we need to say that, well, I see your point here as to how you're framing that and why you're doing so, but let's take it over here and shift it a little bit and see what that does. I really think that the modern church in particular, especially in Protestant contexts, especially in non-denominational contexts, we miss the pattern of correction.

[00:55:35] We miss the pattern of righting the ship back to where it should be. But I'll also say that about non Protestant traditions as well. I'm, I'm equal opportunity here, okay. Everybody has a correction that we need to make. I know that part is a little bit hard for a lot of us. We want our answers. We want our systematic theology. We want to be part of the correct institution or the correct tradition or whatever, however you wanna say that.

[00:56:07] And if you are a person who is really struggling with a lot of that, I really sympathize with you because I've been in those places. But I will tell you that a communal understanding of things that the Divine Council brings to our minds, that God wishes to participate with us, even if that means that he's going to have rebellious people, rebellious spiritual beings, and that he himself is going to have to come down and do something about that. Not in a mechanistic way. Not as if he had no choice. But if he wants us to participate with him, he is willing himself to step down and participate with us.

[00:56:52] The gospel is not something that we need to go and bonk people on the head with. It is this exact story of God stepping down into creation. Not to satisfy himself, although I'm sure he gets satisfaction from that because I don't think God would do this whole thing and have his creation participate with him if he did not enjoy it.

[00:57:17] I started out with the idea of talking about Easter through a DCW lens. How does that change things? And I think, again, there's very good ways that that changes things. And I say it's dismantling things for me as well. Using the Bible as a rule of faith, what matches the patterns, what doesn't? What just doesn't fit the story? I don't have to have all of that mapped out. That's not the point.

[00:57:47] The point is not to identify the evil spirits and to say this or that about them. That's not the point for me anyway. The point for me is to understand God's relationship to all of that and how it doesn't matter how rogue a being is, they are still under the authority of God himself.

[00:58:08] And our sin is not simply a legal pattern to be dealt with. Relationship, covenant, God dwelling with us. These are the patterns. And the idea of justice is God turning things right. And what more could Easter be about than that kind of justice?

[00:58:28] Again, rule of faith, are we taking later context and just accepting that because it seems more interesting. We like the monsters and we like the giants and we like the hybrids and we like the cryptids. And I get that. I do. Those are interesting, but again, is that the point of the DCW? Is that the point of understanding Scripture on a deep level so that you can go and categorize all the evil beings out there?

[00:58:59] I see it as really instrumental to the whole question. Those things do give us really great lenses and really great ways to shape how we are seeing the story so that we can understand it in a way simply because we are modern people outside of the context of that particular situation.

[00:59:21] At any rate, I hope you guys enjoyed my little rambling episode today. Maybe it kind of explains to you and shows you how and why I'm doing what I'm doing and why I go down the path of explanation that I do. It is the patterns that guide us, and it is the patterns that shape us.

[00:59:40] I would not say that the Divine Council worldview gave me an entirely new perspective on Easter that I didn't have before, but it gave me a way to understand the death and resurrection of Jesus that really reveals the character of God through these patterns.

[00:59:58] I know that a lot of people do get a little bit concerned about the Divine Council worldview. And I think rightly so, because it can lead people down paths of really getting into nitty gritty demonology, for instance.

[01:00:14] And while there might not be anything inherently wrong with understanding that on some level, it really is possible to get quite deep into it and to see that as the point. And how does that connect to the gospel? This is a question. If you can't answer how your pursuit of Scripture is fitting into the story of Jesus, then you're doing it wrong.

[01:00:39] And maybe I'm biased, but I really think, especially coming from an LDS background, I think that all of this study has corrected my view of God. It's corrected my understanding of what the gospel is and what its purpose is. It's helped me understand sin and salvation on an entirely different level. And I do appreciate the resurrection in a way that I didn't before.

[01:01:04] And it helps me place the church in history and in this whole structure as well, what it is in relation to the Bible, what it is in relation to me, which is a very helpful thing. I don't feel disconnected. I feel very interconnected, especially compared to the way I felt 10 or 12 years ago. It's a very different story at that time, very different life that I was leading in Christian life. And so I just say all of that as an encouragement to you, as a hope that you will also find your way into whatever you need to find yourself into.

[01:01:45] And that is wherever you are, there are deeper places we can go. So I encourage you to celebrate Christ's victory, his vindication, your covenant placement in that, and your new creation.

[01:02:01] At any rate, hope you guys enjoyed the rambling episode. I just want to thank all of you who do support me either by sharing the episodes or by supporting me financially through Patreon, PayPal, and through my community. I really deeply appreciate all of you. I appreciate the community that I have experienced in my pursuit and my faith journey. I pray for all of you to have a great Holy Week and a blessed Easter Sunday, or at whatever time you're listening to this in the church's liturgical calendar. I hope that this is finding you blessed, and I wish you all a blessed week, and we will see you later.