Hebrews Lesson 88 May
17, 2007
NKJ
Psalm 119:9 How can a
young man cleanse his way? By taking heed according to Your word.
We got started in this subject about 6 weeks ago – had a couple of
breaks when I went out of town and due to weather and some other things. We are basically coming out of a
controversial passage in Hebrews 7:9-10.
There we read…
NKJ Hebrews 7:9 Even
Levi, who receives tithes, paid tithes through Abraham, so to speak,
Or literally “in a
manner of speaking” indicating that the writer of Hebrews is writing in
figurative language.
This thing about
figurative language is really important because as I have gone through a number
of things trying to handle some of the more difficult phrases and passages related
to this whole issue of when does life begin, the origin of the soul, the
transmission of the soul - one of the things that come up is this idea of
idioms and figures of speech. It’s tough
to try to understand some of those concepts because we are so far removed from
the spoken language. It is difficult
sometimes to figure out when things are idiomatic because once a phrase becomes
idiomatic, then breaking it down syntactically can really lead you in a wrong
direction. If someone were to tell you
to go jump in the lake, if you were to take that and break that down in terms
of a wooden literal interpretation and break it down in terms of its grammar
and syntax; it wouldn’t lead you to a correct understanding of the meaning of
the phrase. The same thing is true with
other clauses.
This is one of the
things that is developed in Bible study since the advent of computers
especially in the last twenty years.
That is not just studying words and terms which has always been a part
of word studies, but to recognize that in many instances clauses or phrases or
idiomatic phrases become greater than the sum of the parts. So you can spend all the time in the world
exegeting two words in a clause or a phrase but recognize that a phrase takes
on the meaning of its own that is different from just a breakdown of the
individual terms that are in there. That
can lead you to some misapplication and misunderstanding of some passages. So
that is all part of this.
I keep going back
and reading more and more things and trying to work through different aspects
of this to kind of flesh out some of the problems because there are a lot of
problems in understanding these passages.
There have been a lot of steps and missteps. I think there have been people – it is a very
emotional subject as to when full life actually begins. Is it at conception? It is at birth? Is it transmitted physically? Just how does this all work? I think there are passages that have not been
dealt with honestly and openly on both sides of this particular controversy.
Last time (in case you weren’t here) we started off going back to
Genesis 2:7 and focusing on a few key ideas related to the fact that God formed
man and that verb yatsar indicates the fashioning, the forming the
shaping of the external part of man.
Now if I can remember this because I was doing a lot of tangential
reading right before I came to class tonight which did not necessarily make
into my notes but hopefully somehow it got engraved for at least 30 minutes on
my mental hard drive.
I want you to turn to Job 1. No,
it’s not there. Okay, we will pick it up
and grab it at some other point as we go through the night I am sure.
Just another statement of where Job is talking about how God formed his
body and then dressed the muscles and the bones and the sinews. I was going there for an example of how God
shapes the physical body. But in that
passage it speaks as if God is directly involved much like the passage we
looked at in Psalm 139. See we come in
and we talk about how God is directly involved in the creation and impartation
of the soul, but that He indirectly or mediately generates the physical body
because humans are involved in the act of procreation. But even though God is mediately involved in
something the Scriptures still speak as if God is directly doing it because God
is the author of both the soul life and the physical life – the development of
the body within the womb. That is what yatsar
focuses on.
God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils
the breath of life. I just pointed out
last time that God’s breathing is anthropomorphic because God doesn’t
breathe. He doesn’t have lungs. But the breath of life in relationship to man
is to be understood literally. There
have been those who want to claim that this breathing of life (the word neshamah
that is used here) is sort of a one time pattern – the initial creation of life
in the garden. Certainly this is
distinctive. Adam doesn’t have a
circulatory system. He doesn’t have any
sort of neurological system. He doesn’t
have any development of musculature going at all on prior to the breathing of
God and the impartation of the soul which is what happens with the development
of biological life - the development of the body in the womb. It is a progressive thing. It develops. There is not a one-to-one correspondence
there. We acknowledge that. That’s true.
But, this phrase “breath of life” (and
neshamah) is used again and again throughout Scripture as being
indicative of when life is present. We
talked about Genesis 2:7 and Deuteronomy 22:16 and Joshua 10:40 and
Then we have the phrase nephesh hajah which is one of those
clauses that it is not just nephesh which is sometimes translated
soul. It is not that it becomes a living
soul. It is not just hajah; but
it is the phrase nehpesh hajah. Nehpesh
hajah is used in Genesis 1:20 for birds, in Genesis 1:21 for sea creatures
and in Genesis 1:24 for animals. So this
is not a term or a phrase that is distinctive to a human soul. And so it is
more correct to say that this simply means he becomes a living entity. He is alive.
He wasn’t alive before. There is
life.
So that is another difference between the progress of a biological
development, development of the body in the womb because it is alive as
biological life. It is living. There is circulation. There is the development of neurological
pathways. There is response to external
stimuli. If you had given any kind of
external stimuli to the body of Adam lying there on the ground before God
breathed into him, there wouldn’t have been any response. It was completely inanimate and
lifeless. So these are aspects of this
that we must take into account.
I pointed out again in terms of review is that the key issues become
determining how the Bible expresses the parameters of life. I had concluded in the lesson before that
that the position that I am articulating is that you don’t have full life – you
have a progressive development – the progressive development of the body in the
womb prior to birth. But it is at birth
when the soul is given. That is when you
have full human life – only at birth.
The parameters in the Scripture are birth and death as I pointed
out.
So to illustrate that and to show that I am not making this stuff up out
of thin air - see there are a number of evangelicals who really react to
this. But if you go Judaism and you go
back to the Talmud, you go back to the Mishnah and I quoted from the Encyclopedia
of Judaism that they articulate this same position. It is not full life, human life until it is nephesh
at birth. I am not going to quote the
whole article like I did last week. Just
in review in that article it states…
The commentators explain that
the fetus is not considered to be a nephesh or person until it has left
the womb and entered the air of the world; one is therefore permitted to
destroy it to save the mother’s life.
That is the only exception because in Judaism and the Talmud and the
Mishnah, they understand that what is going on in the womb is human. It is not just a mass of cells that is
non-human. God is involved in that
process and that you don’t interfere with it and stop it at all. It may not be murder; but it is just short of
murder. Unless you have to make a
decision between the life of the mother and the life of the infant in the womb,
there is no interference whatsoever – no abortion. This has been the traditional view in Judaism
and it was the view of the early church.
In fact there were some early church fathers that even went so far as to
say it was murder. Now they hadn’t
refined at that point (That is the early second century.) of distinction
between traducianism and creationism.
None of those things had been developed.
Then I went to a modern anti- abortionist Harold O. J. Brown who is a
well-known evangelical scholar who is really at the forefront of the whole
right to life, the protestant right to life anti-abortion crusade. He wrote an article that came out in the
early 90’s in the Trinity Theological Journal out of Trinity
Seminary. He makes some astounding
statements in this particular article.
One of the statements he made is that the discussion of ensoulment for
all practical purposes is necessarily confined to those religious circles
especially but not only Christian ones who do believe that man has a soul. He goes on to say that the question of
ensoulment cannot be answered scripturally.
Now I think it can be answered scripturally.
But he is claiming from his position as an anti-abortionist, as a
right-to-lifer he is claiming, “Well, we don’t know.”
Well, if you don’t know from your study of Scripture and I went through
all of his academic last time - he is an extremely well-educated, biblically
educated individual.
He is saying, “We can’t know.”
Well, if you don’t know how can you base law on something you can’t know
as a Christian? When you have access by
the Holy Spirit to the completed canon of Scripture and if you say you can’t
know, how can you go out and insist that abortion is murder? The presupposition of that is that a soul is
there.
He does make a point in discussing this whole issue that he can’t
imagine – he doesn’t give one shred of support for the statement – he can’t
imagine how any Christian could ever think that the fetus could go a full 9
months without ever having a soul. He
presuppositionally rejects the creationists’ at birth position because he
doesn’t think it makes any sense whatsoever.
So I concluded with him last time by making three points of what he is
saying.
So I made a three point conclusion.
I think this is the core of my presentation on this issue. Number one, only Christians have access and
can understand the things of the Spirit of God – i.e. revelation. I Corinthians 2:14. If you can only know when the soul is
imparted (no matter when it is) through revelation and unbelievers cannot know
it because it is revelation (they can’t understand the things of the Spirit of
God) then you can’t base law code on information that is not accessible to the
unsaved mind.
You can build all kinds of ethical systems developed totally apart from
Scripture that recognize that murder is wrong, that recognize the right of
private property, that recognize that thievery is wrong - all kinds of moral
standards. Don’t fall into a distorted
evangelical distortion that says that only Christians can come up with ethics.
Only Christians have a consistent basis for coming up with the ethics that they
do. But there are a lot of non-biblical
systems that come up with high moral standards.
They are robbing. They are not
consistent. We can point that out, but
it doesn’t mean that they don’t. That doesn’t mean that on the basis of reason
on the basis of empiricism - you can’t decide willy-nilly murder isn’t a good
thing. That doesn’t promote stability
in society. You can come to certain
conclusions about ethics just on the basis of empiricism and rationalism, but
you can’t determine when the soul enters the body on the basis of anything
other than revelation. So you don’t
base law that is for believer and unbeliever on something that is knowable only
to the believer. And by the way
believers don’t agree at all and have argued this for centuries. So why would you want to base a universal
standard on disputed understanding of revelation.
As we go through this whole issue there are three passages that
continuously come up in terms of the question - how can you claim whatever side
you are on in light of this particular passage.
The most difficult, the one that gives trouble to both sides and both
have to be honest with that has to do with John the Baptist. Let’s face it - there are things about the
ministry of John the Baptist that are a little bit strange. John is a cousin of Jesus. He has probably heard the story of what
happens in Luke 1, the story of his miraculous birth, announcement of his birth,
the announcement of the birth of his cousin Jesus and the virgin birth and virgin
conception of Jesus all of his life.
Yet when he gets thrown in jail he sends a message to Jesus and says,
“Are you really the Messiah?”
There are other things about John the Baptist that are a bit unusual to
understand because we don’t always understand the dynamic that is going on in
terms of Old Testament theology. If you
don’t understand Old Testament theology and the whole issue related to the
kingdom, you are going to fall flat on your face with John the Baptist.
So, let’s go to Luke 1. This is
the first passage people will go to. Of
course first of all we have to properly translate it. Now his father is Zacharias. His mother is
NKJ
Luke
NKJ
Luke
We will come back to this verse in just a minute.
You have a couple of key words there in the Greek that are very
important, but the most important is the one translated “gladness”. This is a word that from its Old Testament
background was always associated with the joy that would come from the presence
of the Messiah. When Messiah would
appear and bring the kingdom there would be great exuberant joy and excitement.
That is what this word has. The emphasis
is it is not the mental attitude stability of the first word “joy” which is chara. It is a different word that has a very strong
emphasis from the Old Testament. It is
the Greek word agalliasis. So
it has this nuance. When you see that
word immediately you should be thinking in terms of the coming of the Messiah –
eschatological joy.
Remember we think of eschatology as what is happening in the future at
the rapture and at the Second Coming.
But, if you were at the time of John the Baptist and the Messiah hadn’t
shown up for the First Advent yet, when you are thinking eschatology you are
thinking about the Messiah coming and bringing the kingdom. Remember the message of John the Baptist was
going to be – prepare the way of the Lord for the kingdom of heaven is at hand
and repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Then Jesus shows up and the message He starts
off with is – repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Then He sends out the disciples and their
message is repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. It was all eschatological.
So this word is very important because the angel is telling him that he
and Elizabeth are going to have this particular kind of eschatological
exuberance. It is going to characterize
him and Elizabeth. We will come back to
that in a minute.
In verse 15 he says…
NKJ
Luke
Now wine is what we think of as wine.
It is the fruit of grapes. Strong
drink is beer. I know some of you are
already thinking it is scotch or bourbon.
But, they hadn’t developed the process and abilities to distill
beverages yet. That didn’t come along
until about the 8th or 9th century AD. So, strong drink from the Old Testament word
referred to barley beer. So he is saying
that he…
and
shall drink neither wine nor strong drink. He will also be filled with the Holy
Spirit, even from his mother's womb.
Now before we look at this issue of “filled with the Holy Spirit”, let’s
stop a minute and look at the initial announcement about his not having wine or
strong drink. Who does that remind you
of? Somebody who we have studied
recently - who does that remind you of?
Sampson. So let’s go look at Sampson
for a minute. Now this is going to be a
tough passage for some of you.
In Judges 13 we have a parallel situation. We have a mother who is barren. We have an announcement of a supernatural
conception by the angel of the Lord.
NKJ Judges 13:3 And
the Angel of the LORD appeared to the woman and said to her, "Indeed now,
you are barren and have borne no children, but you shall conceive and bear a
son.
I made a point out of this that these are two separate words, two
separate actions. Conception is the
start of the process, when fertilization occurs. Giving birth is what happens at the end of
the process when the child comes out of the womb.
NKJ Judges 13:4 "Now
therefore, please be careful not to drink wine or similar drink, and not
to eat anything unclean.
That is to the mother. Now the
angel of the Lord is not concerned with pre-natal health here. This has to do with the Nazirite vow that
Sampson is going to be under. But from the moment of the announcement, (the
conception is going to occur momentarily - in the next day or two) the mother
is not supposed to drink wine or strong drink or to eat anything unclean. Why?
NKJ
Judges 13:5 "For
behold, you shall conceive and bear a son. And no razor shall come upon his
head, for the child shall be a Nazirite to God from the womb; and he shall
begin to deliver
What we would think is that if that is just biological protoplasm in the
womb and it really doesn’t have great significance until there is ensoulment,
then why does it matter what she does?
It matters because as I have pointed out we shouldn’t create this
dichotomy between the body and soul, between the material and the immaterial. They are both part of the image of God. They develop separately so that this passage
is showing that God is very much concerned about what happens to that which is
in the womb. So for the period of her
pregnancy because of who she is going to give birth to because of Sampson’s
future purpose she has to indicate the distinctiveness and uniqueness of his
future ministry. So she too is not
supposed to drink wine or beer or eat anything unclean. Verse 5 explains.
for the child shall be a Nazirite to God from the
womb;
This is iterated there. The point
that I want to make is that it shows again that we have to take into account
the importance of the development of what is going on in the womb.
There is this myth that it is part of the mother’s body. It is not part of the mother’s body. That is why it has in many cases the baby in
the womb has a different blood type. You
can fertilize an egg in a Petri dish and implant it in any womb in any female
on the planet and if they are biological white parents, you can plant that in a
womb of a black woman and that baby is gong to be white. That baby will have the genetic tendencies of
the parents. It is going to look like
the biological father and the biological mother because that entity is a
distinct entity.
It’s mother dependent in the sense that for life it must get its
nourishment through the placenta. But
the interesting thing in God’s creation is that the placenta will allow a
mother with one blood type to mix her blood in with the fetus who has a different
blood type. The mixing of blood types
doesn’t occur naturally. That is a
provision of God that shows that what is in the womb is not just a tumor or
hangnail or just a mass of cells. It is
something that is going to be a full human being and must be treated as sacred
life. That is the Jewish position. Life is sacred. Even if it doesn’t have the soul yet, it is
sacred life. God treats that which is in
the womb as that which is very valuable.
So let’s go back to Luke 1:15
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Luke
That is the New King James translation.
He would be filled with the Holy Spirit.
That word for filling is this word which also shows up in Luke 1:41 pempleme
which means to cause to be full. It is
related to but is a distinct word from plerao. It is not the same word that is used in
Ephesians 5:18 for the filling of the Spirit.
It is a different word. It is pempleme
plus a genitive. See in Ephesians 5:18
when you have the command “be filled by means of the Spirit” that is a command
using the verb plerao (a different verb) plus a dative which is an
instrumental dative. It should be
translated “filled by means of the Spirit”.
That is a different operation of the Spirit than what we have going on
here. This is pemepleme plus the
genitive - “be filled of or from” literally – of or from the Holy Spirit. This kind of genitive can often be used for
means.
It is the same kind of ministry of the Holy Spirit that you have in the
Old Testament with enduement. It is the
ministry of God the Holy Spirit just as you had (but to a greater degree)
because you remember John the Baptist was greater than all the Old Testament
prophets. He has a greater measure and influence of the Holy Spirit than any of
the Old Testament prophets; but it is the same kind of ministry to the leaders
to Bezalel and Aholiab who crafted the tabernacle, to the judges, to Sampson. It is related to his role within the
theocratic
A precondition for having this operation of the Holy Spirit is that you
have to be regenerate. The way some
people want to handle this and I think they are some translations that will
translate this next phrase “He will be filled with the Spirit even within his
mother’s womb” and that’s not a good translation. The New King James translates it “even from
his mother’s womb” which is more literal – ek koilia. But the NIV catches the sense of this idiom
in that it is from birth.
The reason I keep belaboring this is because this is really where I
think a lot of the discussion needs to be today. The Old Testament phrase was mibeten
and the New Testament phrase is ek koilia.
One of the things I was doing this afternoon is consulting some more
technical word study dictionaries on Hebrew that are out and came up with these
two statements.
The first statement is from The New International Dictionary of Old
Testament Theology and Exegesis – long title and long abbreviation. It is evangelical in its orientation by
evangelical scholars. It is edited by
William Van Gemeren who is evangelical. This is not one of the more liberal
based dictionaries like the second one is.
It came out in the late 90’s published by Zondervan. In that article under the heading of “beten”
it says as the discussion of the concept from the womb…
The writer states…
The beginning of one’s life on
earth is sometimes viewed as “when he comes out of his mother’s womb”.
See, that is what I have been saying.
It is birth that is the beginning of life. Here is an evangelical scholar in a technical
Hebrew dictionary admitting that this is the thrust of this particular
phrase. It is from birth. Birth is the time of the beginning of life.
Then the second quote – see he references tediote which is the
Botterweck and Ringgren who were the two editors. It is a European production of the Theological
Dictionary of the Old Testament.
They are still translating. I
bought the first four volumes when I was in seminary and that was – John the
Baptist was a private back then. They
are still translating. I think they came out with volume XIV finally this year
and they have two more to go. I might
get the last two before I die. But in
the Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament in volume II, page 97
the writer states…
Birth, then, being the
terminus a quo (that is Latin for the beginning) birth then being the beginning
in life,
Here you have two different highly respected Hebrew theological
dictionaries both of which affirm what I have been saying for the last several
lesson is that this phrase mibeten and ek koilia is an idiom for
“from birth”.
Now the reason I make this point is that there have been those who have
tried to make an issue out of the use of those prepositions - the use of the min
and the use of the ek. Some
of you have heard that – the emphasis on the partitive use of the min
and the partitive use of the ek.
What I am saying here and by taking this back to my introduction is that
this is an idiomatic statement. It’s not
based on how the preposition is used. In
fact I read one critique of that position last week and he went so far in one
direction in trying to explain the fact that min and ek never can
have this partitive idea that he completely eviscerated his own understanding
of Revelation 3:10 when Jesus says to the
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Revelation
We went through that. That is an
indication of the rapture. You see ek
and min can have several different meanings. In some contexts they clearly mean “keeping
you from something never having entered into it”. And in other passages it indicates
source. It says you came from
Luke
NKJ
Luke
The NIV translates it that way as it does both of these phrases ek
koilia and mibeten numerous times.
So that is legitimate. It is from
birth.
Now I am going to go off the reservation here. I would love to be able to say that I have
been able to demonstrate that “from birth” doesn’t mean from the instant of
birth. My gut feeling is that it is just
a general idiom for from an early age.
But, I can’t document that anywhere.
The closest I have been able to come is that passage over in Acts that
we looked at a couple of weeks ago when it talked about the man who was born
cripple and that he was crippled from birth.
That is how the phrase is.
When would you know that he was crippled? Was he going to get up and walk the first day
after he was born? Unless there is a
physical deformity, you wouldn’t know that he wasn’t going to be able to walk
maybe for weeks or months. That is different
from the blind man in John 9:1 who is blind from birth. You could figure out that a baby was blind
pretty quickly, but not with the crippled man. So that may take some time. I would love to be able to demonstrate this
because I have a sense that it has got to be early because my big problem is
and the problem you don’t find anybody wrestling with on the other side of the
question here is how can you have John the Baptist having a relationship with
God the Holy Spirit before he is regenerate?
How exactly does that work since you don’t have that pattern anywhere
else in Scripture? That is a serious
problem with anybody (especially) claiming that this filling takes place in the
womb. As I am going to point out when
you have this word pempleme, it is almost always followed by some sort
of a verbal articulation. For example we
will get into the next passage in Luke 1:41
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Luke
What is the next thing that happened in verse 42?
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Luke
You can go through every use of pempleme in the New Testament and
every tine the writer says that so-and-so was filled with the Holy Spirit, the
next thing is they say something. See
this is different from the sanctification ministry of the filling of the Holy
Spirit of Ephesians 5:18. This has to do
with revelatory information and direct guidance by God the Holy Spirit. So just exactly how is John the Baptist going
to be speaking either in the womb or in the first 6 or 8 or 10 months of his
life? I am not sure. I just have a lot of questions on this and
nobody is addressing them. I don’t think
we have enough information to address them.
The next thing we need to do is go to Luke 1:41
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Luke
These are three events that are stated - she hears the greeting, the
baby leaps in her womb, her explanation in verse 44 indicates that there is a
relationship between the two. Then
subsequently or unrelatedly
There are some important observations here.
If you go through Luke 1 you have the initial episode with the
announcement to Zacharias about the birth of John the Baptist and then the
conception of
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Luke
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Luke
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Luke
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Luke
She gets up the next morning to go see
Now let’s talk about this activity just a little bit. The same word is used in verse 44. It is skirtao which means to leap, to
spring especially of animals, to leap for joy or to exalt. Now this is a really interesting word. It is used in the Septuagint for movement in the womb. Can you think of where that might be? Jacob and Esau – movement in the womb - skirtao. Okay!
It is also used to refer to physical exuberance because you are excited
about something. Now as a result of that
it became an anthropopathized in Classical Greek (if there is such a word) … It
became an anthropopathic statement that was frequently ascribed to
animals.
For example in a writing of Longus who actually writes in 2nd
century AD which is very close to New Testament times, he says…
The word is used of a
dog leaping for joy after getting the scent of a hare.
Now this is really good….
The dog leaps for joy…
Does a dog leap for joy because he has emotions like a human and
volition or is this because this is the instinct that is bred into him and we
are anthropopathically imputing human emotions to this exuberant leaping
about? The word is frequently used of
the activity of sheep and rams gambling about on the hillside or young calves
leaping about in the fields.
So it has this figure of speech idea along with it. So it comes to be an idiom again that is
associated with humans leaping for joy. So the babe is leaping in the
womb. Now that is that word. We have got to deal with each of these words
and then we have got to deal with whether or not we have a figure of speech
going on here. The babe leaps.
Then we have that next phrase for joy.
The way that is translated in most English translations makes it look as
if - I would expect some different words in the Greek actually – some different
prepositions. But what we have is an “en”
clause. En always indicates
means, usually. En is the
preposition. We don’t have a “hoti”
clause which would be causal. It doesn’t
say he leaped in the womb because of joy.
It is the preposition en which one use could be giving a reason
for something. En plus the dative can do that.
But according to Art and Gingrich, it also has a sense of explaining the
surrounding circumstances. What are the
circumstances that are going on around a certain activity? So you have this movement of John in the
womb.
Now are we going to say on the one hand that at six months you have
fetal activity and development to the degree that this fetus hears the sound of
another person outside of his mother and knows (cognitive activity) that that
is Mary and that she is pregnant (she is not even showing yet, she has barely
conceived) with the Messiah. Is that
what we are saying? That is really what
the one position is arguing - that John knows that that is Jesus’ mommy there
and that Jesus is in her womb.
Now I find that to be difficult from our understanding. Now you can’t hang anything on science
because we are always learning new things.
But at this stage we are not sure how much cognitive activity is going
on in the brain in the womb. Now there
is certainly development of the brain.
I remember and you do to, back in the 80’s and 90’s that it was real
popular for mothers to try to develop the brain activity of the fetus by
playing classical music, other kinds of music. Mothers would do that. Studies came out in the late 90’s showing
that the connections aren’t there for that to have any impact. There is no memory - nothing. It doesn’t do a cotton picking thing because
the synapses aren’t connecting yet and all of this isn’t happening. It doesn’t really happen until 5 or 6 weeks
after birth. Hum….
So if that is not there until after birth then how can we be arguing
that what John the Baptist is engaged in is a lot of cognitive activity from
deep inside his mother’s womb? I am
having trouble with this. So, maybe
there are some other things going on here and this isn’t a passage anybody
ought to be going to trying to decide whether or not there is a soul in the
womb.
What happens is there is a viable explanation for this. It seems to fit
the text. The text is saying that both
in both verse 41 and 44 there is the connection with what happens to the
mother. In verse 41 it happened when
Here is another interesting thing – the word breathos is used for
infant here. You have a number of
different words used for infants and babies and children in Greek.
Some people come along and they will say, “See in Greek breathos
is used of what is in the womb and breathos is used of a baby; so there
is no distinction in the New Testament between what is in the womb and what is
out of the womb.”
That was a Greek word folks! That
didn’t come out of a biblical context.
That was the Greeks’ idea. They
didn’t believe that you had full human life inside the womb at all. They were pagan. Let’s not go there. That argument isn’t going to work at
all. So we have to be careful.
That is one thing that I have discovered in reading this - on both sides
there are a lot of unguarded statements.
There are a lot of hyperbolic statements and there are a lot of
statements made that just aren’t in evidence.
As I pointed out last time in Job 3:3, just because it says…
NKJ
Job 3:3 "May the day perish on
which I was born, And the night in which it was said, 'A male child is
conceived.'
People say, “See, life begins at conception.”
No, that just says that at conception you can tell the difference
between whether it is a girl and a boy.
That’s physical. That doesn’t
tell you that there is a soul there. It
doesn’t tell you that life begins there. We read into these verses too often
what we want to see in the verse.
So you have skirtao - leaping in relation to joy. Whose joy?
I think it is the mother’s joy because we have already been told back in
Luke 1:14 that she is going to have this kind of joy. It is related to the eschatological joy of
the Messiah. So her joy, her excitement
at hearing Mary come even though she doesn’t know anything about Mary being
pregnant or the Messiah, she is just excited and that creates an environment
that causes fetal stimulation.
Now we can document this possibly.
I am not going to say that this is the only explanation for fetal movement. There are all kinds of reasons that babies
are going to move. But, it has been
demonstrated that there is one kind of reflex called the startle reflex or
moral reflex that is one of many biological and neuromuscular responses in a
fetus. There was a study done at USC a
number of years ago where they took an artificial larynx and put it up next to
the mother’s abdomen to create a three second sound and in every case there was
a physical reaction by the fetus. That
doesn’t mean there is a soul there. That
doesn’t mean it is volitional. It is
like hitting your leg just below the knee with a hammer. You leg is going to jerk. It is a reflex
action. It doesn’t indicate
volition. It doesn’t indicate anything
other than a response to sound. This is
a possible explanation of what is going on here.
The timing of course is supernatural because what God is indicating is
this movement to gain
Now that deals with Luke 1 in both of those instances. There is a lot that is going on in that
particular passage and I am not sure that we understand all of it. I think it is a very weak passage to go to
because if you have got John the Baptist engaged in all of this cognitive
activity inside the womb then you have got some other problems with him being
filled with the Spirit and not being regenerate. So there are some various problems
there.
One last statement, I mentioned breathos. The term breathos is used to refer to
Jesus and John until they are taken to the temple on the 8th day and
dedicated. Then he is called John. He is not called John…
In the start of this the angel tells Zacharias, “You are going to call
him John.”
He doesn’t start calling him John until he is dedicated on the 8th
day. He is still referred to as a breathos. That is significant. He is not personalized with a personal name
until he gets presented to the Lord on the 8th day of dedication
which is when he is no longer referred to as a breathos. So that would indicate under a Jewish concept
that he is fully recognized as a person within the context of the covenant at
the time of his circumcision on the 8th day and not before. So there is another indication that there’s a
distinction there.
Well, that ought to cover most of what we have gone into in Luke 1. The other passage that is a difficult passage
that people get into is Exodus 21:22 which we will come back to next time. This
is the episode within the law when men are fighting and there is a pregnant
woman nearby and she gets inadvertently hit and gives birth prematurely. So we have to look at that in some
detail. Then when we finish that we will
start wrapping this up and go to another level of the discussion. You see the next level of discussion is once
you decide when the soul enters into the body, and then you have to figure out
the transmission of sin and what our relationship with Adam is. Is it seminal or is it federal? This brings in a whole other ... and these
two issues of whether the soul is created at birth or passed on through
procreation or directly related to how theologians understand our relationship
to Adam in terms of federal headship or seminalism. Once again one of the key passages in our
passage in Hebrews 7:8-9. So we have to
understand this crucial to understand our whole relationship to Adam and the
transmission of sin.
So we will get to that and probably not get it all of that done before I
head off to