Either/Or

No one will claim that understanding the Bible is simple.  This mysterious book was written by over 20 human authors and 1 divine Author over the course of about 1000 years.  It contains every genre of literature from Poetry to Philosophy, from songs to bizarre visions, from ethical teaching to parables that seem to contradict all ethics.  It teaches of our sin and its collision with a God of Holiness and Grace.  It is Law and Gospel, death and life.  To try and comprehend this vast diversity is a task that the greatest men of every discipline and culture and age have failed at utterly.

We are told that we should try and balance all of the seeming contradictions of Scripture in order to understand it, to combine opposites into some many sided, intricate synthesis.  Our theology is a giant structure built to the most exacting dimensions of the theologians and orthodoxy is protected with anathemas on all sides, such that it would be easier to balance on the highest pinnacle of the temple than to stand on this monstrosity that we have built.  Most important in all of this is defining the scope of Law and of Gospel and their particular spheres of operation.  What has been done for us, and what is demanded of us?  But what if in all of this we are doing nothing more than trying to combine light and darkness, trying to make Christ and the World agree when they never can?

The separation of Law and Gospel is often thought to have originated with Paul, or at best with Christ.  But because of my lack of training in the intricacies of theology, my overconfident hubris, and my general enjoyment of arguing, I am going to suggest that this distinction goes back much farther.

For I desire mercy and not sacrifice,

And the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings. Hosea 6:6

The book of Hosea is a massive parable acted out in one man's life.

Then the Lord said to me, “Go again, love a woman who is loved by a lover and is committing adultery, just like the love of the Lord for the children of Israel, who look to other gods and love the raisin cakes of the pagans.”

So I bought her for myself for fifteen shekels of silver, and one and one-half homers of barley. And I said to her, “You shall stay with me many days; you shall not play the harlot, nor shall you have a man—so, too,will I be toward you.”

For the children of Israel shall abide many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or sacred pillar, without ephod or teraphim. Afterward the children of Israel shall return and seek the Lord their God and David their king. They shall fear the Lord and His goodness in the latter days.  Hosea 4

 The entire work of this prophet is an extended comparison between following God alone, marital faithfulness, and following God plus someone or something else, whoring.  People who actually understand the Bible understand that this comparison is between following the Law, loving God with your whole heart, and breaking the Law.  But I am not one of those people, and I am dumb enough to believe that Christ and His Gospel are the key to the prophets.  And I will proceed to eisegete this comparison, and much of the other work of the prophets, in terms of Free Grace vs. Law, in terms of Sola Christos vs. Christ + Something Else.

In this paradigm, harlotry is legal obedience, what we imagine to be holiness.  And the faithfulness, which nowhere exists, is to trust in the finished work of Christ, and to anyone who says that Christ's work wasn't finished when Hosea wrote this I answer that the Lamb was slain from the foundation of the world.

“I will not have mercy on her children,For they are the children of harlotry.
For their mother has played the harlot;
She who conceived them has behaved shamefully.
For she said, ‘I will go after my lovers,
Who give me my bread and my water,
My wool and my linen,
My oil and my drink.’ Hosea 2

We imagine that we are justified, saved, by the Gospel(represented by Hosea, the Lord, the Faithful Husband) and then that we are made complete(represented by receiving bread, water, wool, linen, oil, and drink), perfect, by Something Else.  Israel never abandoned the Lord, instead she added other gods to Him.

I will cut off every trace of Baal from this place,The names of the idolatrous priests with the pagan priests—
Those who worship the host of heaven on the housetops;
Those who worship and swear oaths by the Lord,
But who also swear by Milcom;
Those who have turned back from following the Lord,
And have not sought the Lord, nor inquired of Him.” Zephaniah 1

Israel was certain that it was the Lord who had delivered them from Egypt and established them, but she felt as if the worship of other gods would add something that was lacking.  If my point is not yet clear enough,

O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you that you should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed among you as crucified? This only I want to learn from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh? Have you suffered so many things in vain—if indeed it was in vain?Therefore He who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you, does He do it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?—just as Abraham “believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.” Therefore know that only those who are of faith are sons of Abraham. And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel to Abraham beforehand, saying,“In you all the nations shall be blessed.” So then those who are of faith are blessed with believing Abraham.Galatians 3 

I think that the parallels are unmistakable.  Could this be what the prophets are referring to when they speak over and again of the "jealousy" of God?  Is it not other gods that concern Him but the addition of a righteousness of works to a righteousness of grace?  There is only one thing to add.

And Elijah came to all the people, and said, “How long will you falter between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow Him; but if Baal, follow him.” But the people answered him not a word. 1 Kings 18

If righteousness comes by faith, then believe in the finished work of Christ; but if righteousness comes by something that you do, something that you add on top of the Gospel, then go back to Judaism.  You can't make a Both/And out of an Either/Or.

The words are not "obscure or ambiguous" here.(referring to Isaiah 40)  He saith, that their warfare was ended, by their iniquities being forgiven them: manifestly signifying, that the soldiers under the law, did not fulfill the law and could not fulfill it: and that they only carried on a warfare of sin, and were soldier-sinners.  As though God had said, I am compelled to forgive them their sins, if I would have My law fulfilled by them; nay, I must take away My law entirely when I forgive them; for I see they cannot but sin, and the more so the more they fight; that is, the more they strive to fulfill the law by their own powers.  Martin Luther The Bondage of the Will

Let him ,then, be anathema who shall say, "that those things which are of no force in their own places are made to be of force in Paul." Martin Luther The Bondage of the Will

The Only One