Someone that studies the Tanakh or Old Testament as studiously as Dr. Brown has, appreciating the Judaic foundation of Christian beliefs, is bound to fear Marcionism rearing its ugly head. In Marcion's defense, I don't think we have a very good answer to how the Israelites took Canaan away from the people. If God is love and has always been love, it is difficult to imagine how God would order the slaughter of men, women, and children. (If you were to go back in time, would you ask Paul to explain "god of this world" a little better, rather than leaving it up to interpretation?) While the use of this as an atheist or secularist foil assumes quite a bit, somehow, I think we'd feel much better about it now if a host of angels just instantly struck the Canaanite population dead.
Now I agree mostly with Dr. Brown's criticism of Marcion, after all, it's very clear that the Apostle Paul in his doctrine was articulating a continuity between the Tanakh and his experience of Christ, but then trying to use that to explain how God is harsh and exacting (i.e. holy) since He is unchanging has its own "dangerous and deadly" pitfalls.
I first encountered this in some fringe hyper-grace circles, where the reasoning goes like this: “I am a spirit, I have a soul and I live in a body. My spirit is born-again, redeemed and perfect in God’s sight. Therefore my spirit—which is the real me—is incapable of sinning, which means that if there is sin in my life, it’s not really me committing the sin.”Wouldn't it be great to be so secure in Christ, like the apostles (besides Judas), that the Father had placed in Jesus hand and could not be taken from him? Maybe some of us are like Judas, devils from the beginning? Of course, those who want to dissuade us from "easy grace," from believing that He has already sanctified us and made us righteous before Him, even from believing that we are secure in our salvation and don't need to ceaseless worry that we have sinned our way out of His grace, need look no further than Jesus' own words. Of course, very few of them know what to tell those who have remarried, even though Jesus seems to have sided with Shammai that this is living in adultery.
On the one hand, if we take the spirit-soul-body trichotomy so rigidly, what do we make of "all filthiness of the flesh and spirit"? How are we affected by spiritual wickedness? Why do we even still need advocacy with the Father? On the other hand, is it really true that a believer who consistently suffered from some indulgence of pride his whole life is not born of God? If "he that is born of God cannot make a practice of sin," as Brown interprets it, then he either never experienced a rebirth or was "unbirthed."
This reminds me of extremes in the Word of Faith camp where people were taught never to say they were sick, since they were already healed at the cross. Instead, they were told to say they were suffering from lying symptoms. (How much better it is to say, “I’m fighting some sickness but I confess that God is my Healer and that Jesus paid for my healing, so believe God with me for complete restoration now.”)I agree with Brown here mostly. The practice of never acknowledging sickness is turns oppressive and superstitious, even cultic. A common criticism of the Word of Faith teaching is that it puts the believer in a terrible bind: If I don't get healed, what am I doing wrong? And certainly, we are at least as dependent on the Spirit for the manifestation of our paid-for sanctification as our paid-for healing. And yet there are believers who never got healed and we can either tell them that they never really had faith or they get told it isn't always God's will to heal. But is there no point to "calling those things that be not as though they were"? Is there no sense in which a "kingdom reality" is laid hold of through confession of faith? Is there no sense in which my own sinfulness truly is a "lying symptom" that goes against who I am in the Anointed and where I am seated in the Anointed?
Yes, I agree with Brown that it's not a good thing when faith is confused with denial. The Holy Spirit illuminates problems in order to set us free from them and manifest our sanctification. But some of the alarmist captions to these articles remind me of preachers that wanted you to always be worried that you might have committed the Unpardonable Sin. Pride is deadly. Division is deadly. Gluttony is deadly. But believing too much in the grace of God somehow became Deception #1 on Heaven's Most Wanted list for the 21st century. Believing that there is some untouchable core, some incorruptible seed in me, INCORRUPTIBLE, a holy remnant of my spirit that God has reserved to Himself that will not bow to Baal, is not the problem. I can believe that and still welcome the counsel of the Holy Spirit that reveals dangers that afflict my soul.
Some extreme hyper-grace adherents will take a biblical verse and stand it on its head. For example, John writes, “No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God’s seed abides in him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God” (1 John 3:9, ESV). But rather than understanding the plain meaning of the verse, namely that a truly born-again believer will not make a practice of sin, they conclude, “Even if it appears that I’m doing wrong things, I’m really not sinning, since God’s Word says that I can’t.” (I have read this with my own eyes.)Is that really on its head? Like I said, I think there is often sins that believers never realize a victory over. According to Brown, presumably, these are not "new creatures in Christ." They have been uncreatured or never were new creatures. In at least one Brown and another commentator argued that many scholars agree with this translation of a Greek phrase that would as easily be "produce sin." They seemed to think this was the clear meaning as opposed to the understanding of the man who replied that other scholars think differently. Which scholars will you believe? Brown believes that his interpretation avoids the blatant contradiction with the 1st chapter of 1 John, that states that if we say we have no sin we are being untruthful.
In work. More to be written...
grubby righteousness which is as
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