text:
The Big Story of the Bible
In early November on the Sentinel Facebook page I posted a succinct summary of the biblical story:
God wanted a family (the divine council).
God wanted another family (human imagers).
God was betrayed by both his divine and human families.
God chose to join and save (glorify) his human family.
God succeeds and will be with his new family forever.
So what does the bible teach us about what God wants? The answer is simple: He wants you. That might surprise you. You may doubt it. That's okay. But it's the right answer.
It didn't take long for atheists to respond in an emotionally negative manner. I won't re-paste the discussion, though I recommend you read how it transpired. Most of their assertions demonstrated that they had no clue what the bible says, and I have written before that most atheists were brought up within fringe religious backgrounds, and afterward believe that their activism is against what they perceive to be the correct biblical story. In reality, they are merely reacting toward their own fringe upbringing. Thus, this post will be about the true biblical story that Christians (and atheists) ought to know and appreciate. Though it's summarized above in red, I shall now take the time to lay out a larger overview of exactly those points, starting with some preliminary concerns.
1. Preface: My Five Concerns for the Christian Church
To know what the bible is about, to know its larger story, we need to experience the stories, plot-lines, and themes snaking through scripture much like we need to drive (and even get lost in) the highways which lead into and around a city. We can't just jump in and experience a few right and left turns and say we know what the bible is about. We need to draw back, look at our map, and even get lost. It is in this context that I have five concerns for the Christian Church today:
Concern #1
Christians are content to describe the story of the bible without appealing to what is actually happening in the bible. Christians have been so busy making right and left turns through the bible, that we have lost sight of the big picture. In fact, the solution is not by making more careful turns either! The only way out of this problem is to step back and notice what is linking one story to another, or even linking one book to another. I will recommend not thinking of the bookends of the traditional story (sin and atonement) as the shiny objects that demand our attention, but instead spend time looking at what is lining up on the shelf between those bookends. When we do that we will notice that the bible does not render sin management as its main narrative.
Concern #2
Christians have been taught to ask what the bible means to us instead of asking what it meant to the biblical authors. We are doing a good thing when we read the bible for ourselves. But no ancient document (and not even the bible) can be understood without first drawing it through the lens of its original authorship and readership. The main narrative of the bible is not hiding from us, but happily standing out in plain view for those who simply read the bible in its original context.
Concern #3
Evangelicalism, especially the modern American version of the movement, has concentrated on providing answers to the wrong questions. This is where I have come to appreciate the books of N. T. Wright. If you have not read any of his books, I would recommend starting with Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense and then trying The Day the Revolution Began: Reconsidering the Meaning of Jesus's Crucifixion. The first book will give you a scent of Wright's story of the bible, and the second wades into the details. Wright's genius in my opinion is challenging the questions that Luther and Calvin tried to answer when reforming the Roman Catholic Church in the 16th century. He is an evangelical writing to evangelicals. But he thinks that evangelicals should basically start over when interpreting the bible's story. While I do not end up subscribing to everything he maintains, listening to him challenge long-held views within the Western Christian tradition is refreshing and will lead us to think for ourselves, especially when trying to rethink our original questions.
Concern #4
Christians need to seriously take stock of the reality of other gods. I would recommend reading Michael Heiser's The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible. There would have been nothing more commonsensical to the ancient bible writer than the reality of an unseen host of gods ruling over the affairs of men from the heavens, and for this reason there is no more commonsensical place to start for understanding the larger story of the bible.
Concern #5
Christians should not describe God as a payment-based being. I want to challenge this "sin paid for" model of the bible story, where it not only fails the bible, but fails in explaining God's character. It is a serious thing to damage God's character, and I believe a leading culprit in this regard is the idea that God can be satisfied with payment for sin. I look forward to explaining this further.
2. What is the Big Story of the Bible?
As explained above, locating the story of the bible can be difficult, and that simply being more fluent in the bible does not solve the challenge. But, our modern Sunday sermon shares some of the blame: we are dropped into a text and then guided, often expertly, through right and left turns while never backing up (or backing out) to hear what is generally going on.
During the sermon I suspect that everyone assumes (even the preacher) that everyone else knows how the text works in the larger scheme of things. When the sermon ends, we leave knowing the bible better; yet the main story of the bible is either assumed, or left out, and very likely left unchallenged. I think you know the drill. But while no one is hiding the main story of the bible from us, neither is our current evangelical climate excited at the prospect of rethinking it. I speak here from personal experience. I have seen academic deans, bible departments, denominational leaders, and even college presidents who are simply not interested in reviewing the story of the bible. When the question is asked, I sense that a siege mentality appears: why challenge the system?
But why is precisely my burden here. Why would a movement so interested in explaining the bible clam up (or worse, clamp down) on the greatest question we could ever ask of the bible? I begin to wonder if we are hiding something after all. It's as if the only thing a modern Sunday sermon can offer is the "creation-fall-redemption-consummation" story, where the problem of sin on the front end (called "the fall," coming on the heels of the creation) is solved by atonement on the back end (Jesus' redemption, followed by the consummation). The story goes from Genesis 1 to Genesis 3, then jumps to Matthew 26 and finally to Revelation 22. It is the distance and time between Genesis 3 and Matthew 26 about which I am most concerned. As referenced above, N. T. Wright has cynically described this as "helicoptering our way" over the bible, arriving at our destination with suspiciously clean feet. We certainly wouldn't want a big story that makes us trudge through the details! Thus, here are the details.
Proposition #1 - Adam disobeyed God in the garden of Eden
From what we know about the story of Adam and Eve, this point seems clear. Adam was told not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 2:17), and he did just that (Genesis 3:6). This was an act of disobedience.
Proposition #2 - Adam's sin and its ramifications for all humans
The exact nature of Adam's threatened punishment ("you will certainly die during the day that you eat from it," Genesis 2:17) seems rather clear on the face of it, not least because God chose to use a word which turns out to be the most common way of describing physical death throughout the OT (mot, appearing 827 times). It is repeated by Eve in Genesis 3:3, and by the serpent in Genesis 3:4. From everything said in the story we would suspect that God was threatening Adam with physical death if he ate from the tree. Mot describes Adam's physical death in Genesis 5:5 as well as each individual who is reported to die throughout Genesis 5. So I think it is safest to say that God kept his death-promise to Adam in the sense that Adam eventually died. That is easy enough. What we do not know is what would have happened if Adam had not disobeyed. Augustine thought it was possible that, as a being created from dust, Adam was destined to die a natural death no matter what happened in Genesis 3, and that Adam's sin only made his life more miserable while waiting for the inevitable. Calvin later agreed in principle with Augustine's suspicion, admitting that we simply don't know what would have happened if Adam had walked away from the tree. So this much we do know: Adam disobeyed, and he later died. God kept his promise.
God's means of keeping this promise was as simple as keeping Adam away from the tree of life (Genesis 3:22, "so he won't reach out, also take from the tree of life, eat, and then live forever"). Scripture never ties human death in principle to Adam's tree-sin until Paul does so in Romans (5:12, 15, 17, 21; 8:10), and no writer in either the OT or the NT will ever make the claim that Adam's sin resulted in the punishment of hell for all humanity. What has happened is that over time the phrase "the wages of sin is death" (Romans 6:23) has been interpreted as referring to spiritual death, and thus hell. But this triangulation is unwarranted, or it at least has no place in the story of scripture as it is presented. If people go to hell, they apparently go for some other reason than because of what Adam did in the garden. Michael Heiser has written an excellent series on Romans 5:12, showcasing the incoherence of this teaching, since Christians wrongly interpret Paul as apparently saying that the original sin of Adam's guilt is transferred to the rest of humanity. However, when rightly understood, Romans 5:12 shows that we are all guilty before God because of what we do (we sin individually), not because Adam sinned. It was death that passed to all humankind because of Adam, not Adamic guilt. God's wrath on anyone is due to their own sin. The following chart should illustrate my point (I hold to the "Naked Bible" view):
Proposition #3 - Adam's sin and its ramifications for the creation
After Adam sinned God cursed the "ground" (adamah, Genesis 3:17), a word that carries general meaning for dirt or earth. It denotes the whole world in Genesis 6:1 ("human beings had increased throughout the earth"), so our suspicion is that what happened in the garden was indicative of what happened worldwide. Humans now toiled through thorns and thistles. But, was the pre-fall creation "perfect" as Young-Earth creationists want you to believe? God said that he thought his work was "very good" (tov meod, Genesis 1:31), which indicates that he was very pleased. Indeed it is very good. However, it doesn't necessarily mean that everything is perfect. How does one define ontological perfection? Did mosquitoes bite Adam? Did plants that Adam ate "die" in his stomach? These kinds of questions are often multiplied, and it is not long before we realize that we do not know how to delimit God's definition of "very good." In almost the same breath God admitted that Adam's lack of a human mate was "not good" (Genesis 2:18). Paul will much later speak of the painful state of creation ("because the creation has become subject to futility, though not by anything it did," Romans 8:21). Notice, that the futility of creation is never applied to Adam's sin (since Young-Earth creationists teach that his sin resulted in the change of state for the creation). The creation has always been futile (as seen in the watery-chaos imagery in Genesis 1:2).
Proposition #4 - Adam's sin and its ramifications on God's wrath
This hearkens back to Michael Heiser's series on Romans 5:12. Does the word "Adam" ever appear in the same verse as "wrath" or "anger," whether in speaking of God or anyone else? Nowhere in scripture is Adam's guilt the primary cause of God's wrath on humanity. Paul did say that Adam's sin caused our "condemnation" (katakrima, Romans 5:16), but this is in reference to being condemned to physically die (Romans 5:12, 15, 17, 21), or to have a "body that is infected by death" (Romans 7:24). There will be plenty of fuel for God's anger in scripture. But, God is not angry with us because of Adam, or our relationship to Adam.
Proposition #5 - Adam's sin and its ramifications for Total Depravity
There may be no more common theorem in Christian theology than man's sinfulness. It is the basis for many other Christian doctrines, especially those having to do with salvation. But I have been bothered by this for some time. What is at stake is its precise wording. No one doubts that humans can be remarkably evil. We cannot get through the news without hearing stories of deliberate, unprovoked wickedness and cruelty. But here I am concerned with the word "total" (by which the word "natural" is also used in regards to the "depravity" of the human heart). Are we naturally evil in the sense that we "sin by nature," much as we breathe by nature? If we were to settle this question biblically, we would need to find the place in scripture where this is both posed and settled in context with such ideas as "naturally" and "totally.
When the subject of man's sinfulness occurs, the biblical writer quickly and unequivocally finds weakness and sinfulness to be our present lot. We easily sin. The bible (following the pattern set out by Job and the psalmists) presents a pessimistic anthropology in that it does not believe that humans have the ability to be consistently good, moral, or ethical for long stretches (Job 5:7; 15:14-16; 22:5; 28:12-13; 33:12; 35:2; Psalm 39:4-6; 51:5; 70:5; 73:22; 78:39; 94:11; 103:14; 109:22; 119:176; 144:3-4). But these same writers also claim that humans can be very good and very moral at times, even very faithful to God (the entire basis of Job's story is the fact that he was considered "was blameless as well as upright. He feared God and kept away from evil," Job 1:1; and compare with Psalm 40:1, 4, 8). So why the back-and-forth? Traditional Judaism has a quick answer: that's the way we actually are.
We are both good and evil at the same time in the sense that, assuming normal mental health, any human at any time has the choice to do good or to do evil. It sounds just like Genesis 3:5 has happened in that we have the knowledge (and ability) of good and evil at our fingertips. Think of it this way. If we were naturally evil, would we know we are evil or even what evil is? Does a fish know it is wet? At a funeral, does anyone praise the dead person's evilness? Just the opposite, in fact: it appears that we know what good and evil are, and we want to be good while we end up being (at times) very evil.
I find that all biblical passages which set out (in context) to talk about man's sinfulness agrees with this basic point. We do not have to sin. We choose to. And that is what makes evil so evil. In my opinion, the Reformed tradition comes to its view of human depravity as the result of reading lengthily developed conclusions backwards into such texts as Romans 3:10-18 ("not even one person is righteous"), to then frame out the idea that mankind is naturally and totally sinful. It serves their purpose to say this because it sets up their later understanding of grace and salvation. But I do not believe this tradition is found while reading the bible from start to finish, as I watch the stories of scripture unfold. What we do discover is that man's behavioral depravity (however it is defined) is not the problem that Jesus came to solve, nor a problem that even involves itself in the story of human salvation!
Proposition #6 - Does God's holiness demand moral perfection from us?
What did Jesus mean when he said "be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Matthew 5:48)? Behind the English word "perfect," you might be asking yourself what Jesus meant by this in Aramaic (the spoken language of his sermon), or what Matthew meant by this in Hebrew (most scholars think that Matthew wrote in Hebrew), or how the Greek-reading person would have later understood it (our only surviving copies of Matthew are in Greek).
Neither Jesus nor Matthew was teasing his audience, telling them to be teleios while knowing they would fail. He was asking them to be complete or mature (the most tangible meaning of teleios in the NT) in respect to loving the unlovable, their enemies (Matthew 5:43-47). This is hard to do, maybe one of the hardest things a person can do who is truly suffering under the cruelty of another. But that is what God the Father is like, and the point that Jesus was trying to make. If listening to Jesus while being familiar with the OT, we would have connected Jesus' request of perfection to the OT requirement to be tamim (often translated as "blameless," Deuteronomy 18:13). Numerous OT people were considered, or considered themselves to be, tamim (Abraham in Genesis 17:1; David in 2 Samuel 22:24; Psalm 18:23; and Job in Job 1:1). It was even the goal for the average Yahwist to be tamim (Psalm 37:37; Proverbs 13:6). What is missing from every occurrence of tamim is any hint of perfection in the sense of moral sinlessness. Being righteous or upright before God was a million miles away from any sense of behavioral perfection.
Considering the biblical story in its larger scope, do we ever hear that moral perfection is demanded by God? I know this has been drummed into our heads since Sunday school, but I am frankly left scratching my head when I start looking for this idea in the bible. It's a rumor, and a terrible one. Old Testament writers celebrate Torah without fearing that it sets out an impossible goal (Deuteronomy 10:12-13; 30:11-20; Psalm 119), and NT writers agree (Romans 13:8-10; 1 Peter 3:8-12; James 1:25; Titus 3:5). Most importantly, Israel knew Yahweh as a deity who was both righteous/just and forgiving at the same time; a very unique combination ("The Lord is gracious and righteous; our God is compassionate," Psalm 116:5; and compare with Psalm 36:5-6, 10; 37:21; 85:10; 89:14; 103:17; 112:4; 145:7-9, 17; Proverbs 12:10; 21:21; Isaiah 57:1; Daniel 4:27; 9:18; Jeremiah 10:24; Hosea 2:19; 10:12; Micah 6:8).
So, very importantly, this turns out to be a character issue regarding what kind of God we have. To say that God's holiness demands sinless perfection on the part of humans is to do almost irreparable harm to the story of the bible. If that is offensive to your interpretation of the story, I ask that you wait for biblical definitions of "holiness" and "righteous." It will encourage you to enjoy God's holiness and righteousness even while being imperfect.
Proposition #7 - Does God's holiness demand that he cannot be in the presence of moral sinfulness?
Let's consider the meaning of God's "holiness," especially in its relation to sin. The Hebrew word most commonly translated as "holy" in the OT is qodesh (first appearing in Exodus 3:5, "the place where you are standing is holy ground"), appearing over 400 times. The general meaning of qodesh is not contested ("holy or sacred; set apart as dedicated to God"), though its use within the bible has at times led to confusion.
Here is why. While we know that qodesh may be used to describe non-moral things, such as a day of the week or clothing ("a holy Sabbath to the Lord," Exodus 16:23; "make holy garments," Exodus 28:2), qodesh also seems to appear in places where the story is trying to describe the non-sinfulness of something or someone ("he is to make atonement on the sacred place on account of the uncleanness of the Israelis, their transgressions, and all their sins," Leviticus 16:16; "you will not be able to serve the Lord, because he is a God of Holiness. He is a jealous God, and he will forgive neither your transgressions nor your sins," Joshua 24:19).
So it is easy to see why the idea of "being qodesh" has become associated with "being non-sinful." Thus, in this regard, I recommend looking into "holiness" (and its cognate term "sanctify") with the help of Michael Heiser's podcasts on Leviticus. Here is what you will find: qodesh consistently relates to, or is used when describing, the ceremonial or ritualistic elements within Israel's religion. Holy does not mean "non-sinful." It means "special" or "sacred." So the opposite of "holy" will not be "sinful," but "profane"; something along the lines of normal, regular, or common ("observe the Sabbath, because it's holy for you. Whoever profanes it is certainly to die; indeed, whoever does work on it is to be cut off from among his people," Exodus 31:14).
So if God's "holiness" is not directly related to the absence of sin, who came up with the idea that God cannot be in the presence of evil? It developed over time as we tried to express how God was against moral evil. When we began to allow the word "holy" to poke its nose into the tent as the operative word for describing God's sinlessness, it was not long before we had a full-fledged doctrine announcing that God can't be in the presence of evil. But this simply wasn't true. As it turns out, God can be in the presence of moral evil if he so decides to be. He can also decide if he does not want to be in the presence of sin. It is his choice.
Proposition #8 - Does God's holiness demand that sin must always be punished?
This idea does not come out of scripture. Thus, who started the rumor that God cannot forgive sin without also punishing it? I know that Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109) is generally credited with the theology of "satisfaction," or the idea that God's honor was in need of repair because of human sin, the kind of repair that could not be satisfied by mere forgiveness of sin. But it would be out of step for the evangelical movement, to depend on a medieval theologian for their view of God and the punishment of sin. I have been around the block numerous times with my Reformed friends about this issue, and I think I have come to understand why they resist believing that God could just forgive sin without punishing it.
We must ask, is sin really serious if God can forgive without requiring some form of penalty or punishment? If God forgives sin (or "just" forgives sin, whatever that means), this means God does not think the sin was all that serious. Forgivable sins cannot be taken seriously. That is why they are forgivable. The very idea behind forgiveness is being able to punish, to know that the other person deserves punishment, and then deciding not to punish. I am not trying to be difficult when I say that I am honestly confused by this. Jesus told us to forgive people, even beyond seeming respectability (for example, "Peter came up and asked him, "Lord, how many times may my brother sin against me and I have to forgive him? Seven times?" Jesus told him, "I tell you, not just seven times, but 77 times," Matthew 18:21-22).
I feel we are going down a very dangerous path, an opposite direction from that of Jesus, when we believe that forgiven sin cannot be seriously-taken sin. Of course sin is serious. That is why forgiveness is serious!
Proposition #9 - Did God institute OT sacrifices to teach of his hatred toward sin?
Evangelicals take a great interest in the subject of sacrifice in the bible, but I find it interesting that we tend to think through the subject backwards. By this I mean that we don't start where sacrifice starts (watching the ritual played out in pre-biblical Mesopotamia), but instead dwell on the sacrificial meaning of Jesus' death and only then work our way back into such books as Exodus and Leviticus. If that sounds too bold an assertion, try this experiment the next time you go to church: lean over and ask your friend what sacrifice meant in the bible. Then compare their answer to the article on sacrifice in the Dictionary of the Ancient Near East.
I'm not saying which answer is right. I am merely saying that the difference between these two answers exposes a more serious problem. We are approaching the subject of sacrifice from two different directions. So what was sacrifice in the days of the OT, and what did it mean? Who started it? We really know so very little of this ancient practice, largely because, well, it is just so very old. We are told that humans were sacrificing as early as Genesis 4 (Cain and Abel), but we are not told why. We are not necessarily told that God "instituted" sacrifice any more than he invented the harp and flute (Genesis 4:21) or the process of smelting bronze and iron (Genesis 4:22). We want to give sacrifice meaning, especially religious meaning, but we may be moving too fast. After Genesis 4, it will be thousands of years and possibly millions of sacrifices before Moses is even born! From there, many of the whens, whys, and hows associated with sacrifice in Torah are still left unanswered, and any ability to psycho-analyze the mind of the worshipper during sacrifice is simply not afforded to us.
Ancient Near-Eastern scholars would love to walk up to the prehistoric sacrificer and ask, "Why are you doing this?" In reading the bible from start to finish, it appears that sacrifice was an early invention of mankind, possibly being associated with early "religion," though that word reflects a rather modern construct. The individual participated in sacrifice as a communal event, such as during a feast, and in this sense it was not attached to individual belief as much as to some kind of public social performance. Here is how Emerita Susan Cole understands the practice (from A Handbook Of Ancient Religion):
"What mattered most was the expected traditional gesture, made in the right way, at the right time. For the population at large, traditional rituals reinforced confidence in the belief that the security of the community required the attention of the gods. Communal rituals [such as sacrifice] represented the group acting as one and invited the gods to participate in human endeavor. Conversely, failure to perform a communal ritual properly could put the entire community at risk."
Though Cole is describing ancient Greek ritual tradition (going back as far as the 8th century b.c.), I think she is putting into words how Abraham (and maybe even Cain and Abel) would have interpreted sacrifice. It was a public means of communing with a deity, a human way of bridging the gap between the physical and spiritual worlds. Whether the deity would "accept" the sacrifice, or hear the plea of the sacrificer, was a difficult matter to determine. There were no guarantees. Sacrifices connected the community with the gods, but it also reiterated a kind of expected social order in which implied responsibilities existing between the humans and the gods. The supplicant constantly faced the possibility that he had offended his god in the smallest of matters (for example, did he pronounce his god's name correctly? was the fruit properly ripe?), and so sacrifices were often done in an over-the-top style. Animal sacrifice was considered the most impressive means of gaining the attention of a god, though vegetables or grains were more common (and certainly more affordable if the entire sacrifice was to be burnt away). The special requirements for participation in sacrifice (gender, status, kinship, and profession) depended upon local interpretation of the god's requirements, usually interpreted by the king or priest.
So if this is how scholars generally handle the subject of ancient sacrifice, did God institute OT sacrifices to teach of his hatred for sin? I am going to side with the secular historian on this one and say no. I do not sense that God "instituted" sacrifice at all, but that it developed as a natural response among humans as we tried to commune with the world above us. It would be like asking who started the tradition of folding our hands and closing our eyes when we prayed as children. God certainly didn't "tell" us to do this, but we somewhere along the way decided that it was a proper posture for talking to God. So why did individuals in the OT sacrifice? The biblical record shows that altars were constructed with regularity, whether by Noah (Genesis 8:20), Abraham (Genesis 12:6ff.; 13:18; 22:9), Isaac (Genesis 26:25), Jacob (Genesis 33:20; 35:1-7), Moses (Exodus 17:15), Joshua (Joshua 8:30ff.; cf. Deuteronomy 27:5), Gideon (Judges 6:24ff.), or David (2 Samuel 24:18-25). I believe that these individuals were simply following cultural norm, whether living before or after Moses.
This view is not uncommon among evangelical authors. Daniel Block argues that most of the categories of sacrifice found in Leviticus 1-5 are attested to outside of Israel (in Biblical Faith And Other Religions: An Evangelical Assessment). These are the:
- zebah (sacrifice, sacrificial meals),
- selamim (peace/well-being offerings),
- ola (whole burnt offerings),
- mincha (gift, grain/cereal offerings).
But what about sin? When God instructed Moses on the practice of sacrifice at Sinai, was this in any sense due to his desire to teach Israel about the seriousness of moral sin, or his hatred of it? As much as I would like to say yes to this idea (as it makes sense if I don't think about it too deeply), I simply cannot find enough evidence to do so, and in fact find strong evidence in the opposite direction. If the question was changed to "did God instruct Moses within Torah about the seriousness of sin, and his hatred of it?" then the answer would be an easy yes; so notice that the issue here concerns sacrifice, not Torah.
If sacrifice had been designed to teach the seriousness of sin, then the rules on sacrifice would have looked much different than they do, namely, the bigger the sin, the bigger the sacrifice. But that is not what we find. The biggest sins of all (murder) had no sacrificial equivalent. Something else must have been going on with the meaning of sacrifice when it came to Moses' teaching.
Proposition #10 - Did God institute OT sacrifices to teach the general concept of substitution?
As seen above, the practice of animal sacrifice was not invented by God. We know that sacrifices and offerings were part of ancient religion long before Moses, and that Torah's instructions regarding sacrifice mirrored many of the ceremonial practices of foreign nations. It is often helpful to turn to traditional Judaism for a question such as this, especially when it concerns a practice so foundational to Israel's history and culture. Here is a summary by Shai Cherry (from his academic course on the Introduction to Judaism), concerning the origin of animal sacrifice:
"Sacrifice was a commandment, but it was also a concession to human psychology. Here's how it works. [The medieval Jewish theologian] Maimonides said in The Guide of the Perplexed, that, quote, 'A sudden transition from one opposite to another is impossible.' What he means is that people can't go from understanding everything about the world in one way to understanding everything about the world in a completely different way. They need time to adjust. He says this in context of the Israelites being freed from slavery in Egypt where they were steeped in idolatrous practices. Those practices included animal sacrifices. So Maimonides says that when God brought the Israelites out of Egypt into the desert, the only way the Israelites knew to worship God was through these animal sacrifices. So as a 'gracious ruse,' or as a 'noble lie'—there are different translations of that platonic idea—God allowed the Israelites to continue in this idolatrous practice of sacrificing animals, but to the right address. In other words, the only thing that changed was the address, so that way the Israelites could still feel that what they were doing was efficacious. What they were doing was still worshipping God, even though that's not the most noble, the most authentic way of worshipping God—because God doesn't need it."
I realize we should be wary of labelling any one view within Judaism as "standard." The rabbis have always been adept at collecting and even appreciating dissenting and minority opinions among their ranks. At the same time modern Jews hold the views of Maimonides in highest respect. Personally, I believe his opinion about the origin of sacrifice makes good and practical sense. So if it is accurate, if sacrifice makes its way into the bible not as an invention by God but as a concession to the psychology of mankind, akin to divorce laws (Deuteronomy 24:1-4; and compare with Matthew 19:8), then we as evangelicals are guilty of giving sacrifice too much meaning in our theology. We need to change the word "instituted" to something closer to "allowed" or "permitted," before moving on to what OT Israelites were supposed to learn from the sacrificial system.
But now let's move on to the question of substitution. Did God allow OT sacrifices to teach the general concept of substitution? Here are key questions that need answers:
- What do we gain by believing that sacrifice includes substitution? What would we lose if we do not include substitution within sacrifice? Why should I include substitution in sacrifice? What is the value?
- When an answer to the above is offered, does it come directly from the bible?
- If sacrificing taught substitution, what is exactly being substituted for what? For example, if I were bringing a trespass offering after contacting an unclean carcass (Leviticus 5:2-6), I may experience a passing sense that the animal is taking my place on the altar, but this would be a momentary emotion only. I know I do not deserve to die; I've only touched a carcass, and probably plan on touching another carcass next week; and yet I have just killed an animal for my trouble! There is no substitution here. If the argument comes back "but you did deserve to die," I would need to hear this discussion played out in the bible. Torah gives us plenty of opportunity to say something like this, and it is never said.
- What does substitution say about God? Knowing what we know of Yahweh, how would he be satisfied in substituting one thing for another, such as an animal for a person? Jesus acknowledged that animals are nowhere as valuable as people (Luke 12:24), and yet substitutional sacrifice seems to presume at least some kind of equality. I find the entire concept of substitution out-of-bounds for the character of God.
- Do we as humans ever deal in substitutes? We are not allowed to do it in a court of law, for example: "your honor, my neighbor has volunteered to go to jail for me." Nor do we imagine doing it in the course of human relationships, for example: "sorry I offended your spouse. Is there something I can give you?" Why would God be open to the idea of substitution when our normal human condition is opposed to it? In fact, the only real example of where this is actually practiced in this context is the remarkable teaching within Islam, that if I were to kill my neighbor's wife, he has the right to kill my wife! This is the reading of the Quran: "retaliation is decreed on you for the murdered, the free man for the free, and the slave for the slave, and the female for the female" (Sura 2:178).
- Why is the bible silent on the topic of substitutionary sacrifice when given the chance? The Hebrew and Greek words for "substitute" or "exchange" (chalaph and mur, Leviticus 27:10; antallagma, Mark 8:37) are not uncommon, but they are never used for the subject of how sacrifice works. In test-driving the idea of substitutionary sacrifice, one of the first proofs we would look for would be a text which states the idea simply and clearly. But this is not what we find. Maybe it can be reworded, as the idea of a "proxy" (a representative who leads the way for others while not actually becoming a substitute for them) will certainly play a significant role in describing our ultimate salvation.
Proposition #11 - Was God's wrath against sin temporarily assuaged because of OT sacrifices?
If Jesus' death finally solved God's wrath against sin, and if Jesus' death was a substitutionary sacrifice, then that means that the substitutionary sacrifices which came before Jesus (OT sacrifices) must not have finally solved God's wrath against sin. Thus the logical inference is that OT sacrifices did partially what Jesus' sacrifice did fully, as it concerned God's wrath. I recommend that this whole idea is unnecessary, and that the logic is faulty on the front end. This question is based on Romans 3:25, the verse which is commonly appealed to for arguing this post-ponement idea: "whom God offered as a place where atonement by the Messiah's blood would occur through faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because he had waited patiently to deal with sins committed in the past."
The following excerpt is from Douglas Moo's commentary on Romans:
"Paul's meaning is rather that God "postponed" the full penalty due sins in the Old Covenant, allowing sinners to stand before him without their having provided an adequate "satisfaction" of the demands of his holy justice (cf. Heb. 10:4). In view of this, it is clear that "his righteousness" must have reference to some aspect of God's character that might have been called into question because of his treating sins in the past with less than full severity, and that has now been demonstrated in setting forth Christ as "the propitiatory.""
Thus, according to Moo, God's wrath is postponed presumably through OT sacrifices. But now let's ask what Paul could have meant by "waited patiently to deal with sins" in Romans 3:25. Notice that Paul's larger argument concerns God's righteousness, concluding with the realization that no one can boast because of it (Romans 3:27) and that the same God will save Jews and Gentiles in the same way, through faith (Romans 3:30). Many commentators interpret the idea of righteousness (dikaiosune, used 92 times) along the lines of legal justice, even repayment, but I find this to be a forced idea that does not bear up behind the normal use of the word across the NT (for example, 2 Corinthians 9:10 uses dikaiosune in the sense of gratuity and kindness, almost the opposite of justice or repayment, and numerous other uses [Matthew 5:6, 10; 6:33; Romans 6:18; Galatians 5:5; Ephesians 5:9; 1 Timothy 6:11; 2 Peter 3:13] signal general virtue which would not be associated with straightforward justice).
My point is that we need to decide the general meaning of righteousness before figuring out what "waited patiently to deal with sins" means since the two ideas are so closely tied together in Romans 3:25. If we pre-package dikaiosune to mean justice in the legal sense, we will likely interpret "waited patiently to deal with sins" legally as well. This is what Moo does, coming up with the idea of "postponing the full penalty due sins" as his explanation of how God "waited patiently to deal with sins committed in the past."
So let's pause and ask what Paul would have thought about righteousness. Did he think that God's righteousness (in Hebrew, tzedaqah) was primarily a legal concept, something that demanded a get-what-you-deserve "justice"? On the contrary, Paul read an OT which commonly tied God's righteousness to his mercy and grace ("The Lord is gracious and righteous; our God is compassionate," Psalm 116:5; and compare with Psalm 36:5-6, 10; 37:21; 85:10; 89:14; 145:7-9, 17; Prov. 12:10; 21:21; Hosea 2:19; 10:12; Micah 6:8; Isaiah 57:1; Jeremiah 10:24; Daniel 4:27; 9:18). This OT evidence leads me to suspect that Paul's reference to "waited patiently to deal with sins" in Romans 3:25 is hinting toward God's graciousness more than to what Moo calls the "adequate "satisfaction" of the demands of his holy justice." In fact, it strikes me that Moo is making this idea up out of thin air! In the OT, God was in the business of forgiving sin ("he, being merciful, forgave their iniquity and didn't destroy them; He restrained his anger and didn't vent all his wrath," Psalm 78:38). Various analogies are used to describe God forgiving sins, including:
- "bearing" or "lifting" them (nasaʾ, Genesis 50:17),
- "releasing" or "pardoning" them (salach, Leviticus 4:20; Numbers 30:5),
- "covering" them (kasah, Psalm 32: 1; 85:2),
- "healing" them (raphaʾ, Psalm 103:3).
We never get the sense from these common word pictures that God is postponing his anger for some later time as he bears/lifts/covers someone's sins. Thus, we are not surprised to also hear that God "waited patiently to deal with sins" with no hint of post-ponement or deferment of punishment. As we read from this OT prophet: "Is there any God like you, forgiving iniquity, passing over transgressions by the survivors who are your heritage? He is not angry forever, because he delights in gracious love" (Micah 7:18).
Paul may have had Micah's prayer in mind when he spoke of God passing over sins. Even if he didn't, the theology of "passing over" sins holds; it is synonymous with forgiveness. There is nothing in the biblical phrase generally, nor in Romans 3:25 specifically, that indicates that God is postponing punishment. So what role does righteousness have in God's forgiveness? What might Paul have meant by saying that God "did this to demonstrate his righteousness" when he forgave previous sins; presumably those in the OT? Again, I think the answer is fairly simple, coming straight out of the OT story: by faithfully and consistently forgiving the sins of his people, God was showing his propriety or his righteousness as the covenant-keeping God of Israel (Exodus 34:6-7; Numbers 14:18; 2 Chronicles 30:9; Nehemiah 9:17; Psalm 86:15; 103:8; 111:4; 112:4; 116:5; 145:8; Joel 2:13; Jonah 4:2; Nahum 1:3).
God was righteous in the sense that he always did what he said he would do, in this case forgiving the sins of those who were faithful to him. Drop this idea into Romans 3:25-26, and Romans 3:27-30 makes sense. Think again about the original question: Was God's wrath against sin temporarily assuaged because of OT sacrifices? How would the bible sound if this were true? It is reasonable to assume that the words "wrath" or "anger" would appear somewhere in a conversation about sacrifice in the OT. Thus, how many times do the Hebrew words for wrath or anger (the best options would be aph [275 times], evrah [34 times] or qatzaph [34 times]) appear in a verse having to do with sacrifice in either Exodus, Leviticus, or Numbers (where the subject of sacrifice is most prevalent)? The only result I can find is this: "Now Moses diligently sought for the goat that had been offered as a sin offering, but it had already been incinerated, so he was angry with Aaron's sons who remained. He asked Eleazar and Ithamar" (Leviticus 10:16).
That's it, one verse—and it isn't even about God at all!
Proposition #12 - Did God teach that a substitute could take the punishment of a morally guilty person?
In other words, does scripture teach that human moral guilt can be solved in the mind of God through a substitute who is willing to absorb the punishment which is due the guilty person? I have never met anyone who thought this way, nor am I familiar with any culture or society which conducts its business in this fashion. Parents certainly don't parent their children this way, and judges do not sanction substitutes in their courtrooms. If it is not taught in the bible, the entire evangelical story will need to be adjusted. Again, how would the bible sound if God accepted substitutes for solving moral guilt? I don't think the subject would be handled quietly. To the contrary, it would be seen as huge news: God accepts substitutes! Guilt is transferrable!
I believe this captivating (if not incredible) idea would be celebrated in the bible's teaching at all points across the larger story, and discussions about God's character would proceed in light of it. But this is not what we find. As shown above, the original words for "substitute" or "exchange" (chalaph and mur, Leviticus 27:10; antallagma, Mark 8:37) appear ~50 times, and that they are never used for the subject of how sacrifice works. Thus, the bible never uses "substitute" or "exchange" in any discussion of how God handles human moral guilt. So now we need to ask how this idea could have become so popular within evangelicalism. In fact, as the following excerpt from the Dictionary of Biblical Imagery asserts:
"While Christ's substitutionary atonement is the central theological doctrine of the Christian faith, the imagery of substitution in the Bible is remarkably scarce. Because Christ fulfilled the OT sacrificial system, it is easy for a NT reader to see a substitutionary aspect in OT animal sacrifices (which took the place of the penalty that sinful humanity would otherwise have to pay before a just God), but the portrayal of sacrifices in the OT does not stress this aspect."
If we flip the two clauses of this sentence around we discover an interesting admission: the imagery of substitution in the bible is remarkably scarce, and yet Christ's substitutionary atonement is the central theological doctrine of the Christian faith. Said another way, Jesus becomes the answer ("he is my substitute") before we even settle the question ("does God accept substitutes?"). It is biblically sound to assert that Jesus died for our sins. The text says as much, so we know it is true. But the question here is whether Jesus' death for us, or for our sins, is teaching literal substitution in the sense of solving our moral guilt. I don't think so.
First, consider how substitution works, or what we mean by it. We think of a substitute as something that switches with something else, as in a replacement teacher or a pinch-hitter, because procedural standards allow for it. When we say that God "allows a substitute to take the punishment of a morally guilty person," we are saying God's intentions and expectations and means of satisfaction are non-personal because he is operating by some kind of standard which gives the concept of substitution its room to work. Any situation which accepts substitutes must in the end be impersonal. This is important, because we are trying to understand how God ultimately solves moral guilt, a highly personal issue.
Second, literal substitution is not what is meant when Jesus dies "for us." If we were to hear someone pray, "Jesus, thank you for dying on the cross for my sins so that I wouldn't have to die on the cross for my sins," we would be simultaneously impressed by their attempt at accuracy, and also by their distinct lack of accuracy. No careful theologian has ever claimed that you or I deserved to be on Jesus' cross that day, nor that our death would have done any good, for anyone. Literal substitution is not in view when we hear of Jesus "dying for our sins." Numerous steps are required to get from "Jesus died for my sins" to "my moral guilt is therefore solved" even if most people mistake this for a single process. I am honestly not trying to create a brain twister here, but I can count at least seven logical steps that make up the gap between these two ideas, that if "Jesus died for my sins":
- The word "sins" refers to issues concerning my personal moral guilt.
- The words "died for" mean died as a replacement for the punishment for my personal moral guilt.
- The punishment that my guilt deserved was eternal hell.
- This punishment cannot be forgiven, but must be served by either me or an innocent substitute.
- Since Jesus was sinless, he qualifies as this innocent substitute for me and for all other guilty people since his physical death counts as eternal punishment.
- This means that God never really forgives us because he chooses to go ahead with our punishment by means of punishing our substitute.
- In this way my moral guilt is therefore solved.
Each of these steps deserves a conversation in their own right. So, what does the bible teach about the relationship between substitution and moral guilt? I recommend we start with the words of James Garrett, a Southern Baptist professor who is a proponent of substitutionary atonement himself (from his Systematic Theology, Volume 2, Second Edition):
"The NT evidence for Jesus' death as his punitive substitution for the death due to be suffered by sinful humans is less pervasive than some of its modern defenders have claimed."
Substitution has become a forced concept in our theology and that it is not part of the story of the bible. If the bible wanted to use words like "exchange" and "substitute" for God's dealing with moral guilt, it could have. But it doesn't. Instead, the bible argues for a nearly opposite view: everyone will be judged for what they do, and whatever guilt a person carries, they themselves bear it alone without hope of transference to anyone else.
This is what we read from the biblical authors ("the person who keeps on sinning is going to die," Ezekiel 18:4; "If I tell the righteous person that he will certainly live, if he trusts in his own righteousness and commits evil, none of his righteousness will be remembered, and he will die because of the wrong that he commits," Ezekiel 33:13; "For he will repay everyone according to what that person has done: eternal life to those who strive for glory, honor, and immortality by patiently doing good; but wrath and fury for those who in their selfish pride refuse to believe the truth and practice wickedness instead. There will be suffering and anguish for every human being who practices doing evil, for Jews first and for Greeks as well. But there will be glory, honor, and peace for everyone who practices doing good, initially for Jews but also for Greeks as well, because God does not show partiality," Romans 2:6-12; "each of us will give an account of himself to God," Romans 14:12).
Substitution is both unnecessary to the story and even contrary to it, principally because sin should never have been placed at the beginning of the conversation for why people face the judgment of God. We started wrong, so we got the whole story wrong. I can't help but think that the greater message of substitution (the concept that God needs to replace me and what I'm really like with something morally perfect, even Jesus) has harmed our modern presentation of the gospel a lot (I see this all the time when I interact with non-Christians online, especially Muslims). I can see why many people are confused when they hear that God loves them but that he also can't stand being around them. That would confuse me too. The courtroom substitution picture that we have so often appealed to is also confusing. A judge who accepts someone else's death for what I have done may sound romantic to some, but it does not sound romantic to me, nor to most of my non-Christian friends. I know this because they have told me. To paraphrase what one of my atheist friends said about the courtroom picture he was given at church:
"I did not understand then, nor do I understand now, how this shows love, or shows forgiveness, or how it ultimately solves the situation. After Jesus dies I am just as guilty as I was before. The 'good news' Christians speak of only deals with the punishment phase of the story, not with the person who is still left standing in the courtroom."
Of course the bible will use plaintiff / judge terminology in describing our relationship to God, but this will be the exception. Most commonly our relationship to God is defined in terms of ancestry, asking to which family do we belong? And that becomes a beautiful story of love, forgiveness, and solving my moral guilt. I can understand why substitution is necessary for those who describe salvation in terms of sin management, since in this view God ultimately is satisfied by nothing less than moral perfection, whether mine or Jesus'. But substitution will never enter the discussion for those who see salvation as primarily relational, or family-oriented. Parents don't need substitutes for their children. I don't need to be substituted! God accepts me, the real me, as his child! And as for moral guilt, be assured that once your relationship with God is settled (when you are a member of his family), your moral guilt will certainly be solved in God's chosen way. Thank God!
Proposition #13 - Did priestly actions in the OT (sacrifice, atonement, etc.) play a role in OT salvation?
Christian tradition has been careful to avoid saying that an OT priest (or any priest for that matter) could affect the spiritual state of a worshipper. To put it positively, Christians believe that a person in both the OT and the NT can be right with God only through their individual faith, and that bare rituals or ceremonies play no role in a person's salvation. I agree with this. Thus, was it true that priestly actions in the OT played a role in salvation? The answer involves Jesus' priestly actions (sacrifice, atonement, etc.) that played a role in human salvation! Since Jesus' priestly actions in the NT were salvific (principally in his atoning sacrifice), it stands to reason that OT priestly actions must have been salvific as well. We can assume that the Christian is trying to be consistent in describing what a priest did, or the effect that his actions carried, across both the OT and the NT. I am not comparing the effectiveness of Jesus' priestly sacrifice to the ineffectiveness of OT animal sacrifices, as Paul highlights in Hebrews 10:1-4. I am instead considering the meaning of sacrifices in general. What were they meant to accomplish? What did they mean to the life of the OT Israelite? What did they accomplish in the mind of God? Most importantly, did sacrifices play a role in salvation? The OT nowhere ties righteousness (Hebrew, tsedaqah) to priestly activity, and numerous OT stories tell of people who were considered righteous without a priest or tabernacle in sight (Noah in Genesis 6:9; Abraham in Genesis 15:6; the inhabitants of Sodom in Genesis 18:23; exiles in Babylon in Ezekiel 3:20). Christians must give theological account for the long stretches of time (the exile is our best example) when Jewish priests and their sacrifices were not available to God's people. In believing that righteousness was by faith we are forced to admit that access to a priest did not affect one's ability to be right with God. I am not aware of any argument by Christian scholarship that contradicts this rather simple point.
Proposition #14 - Did priestly actions in the OT (sacrifice, atonement, etc.) prefigure Jesus' future priestly actions?
Most Christians put a lot of thought (and even a lot of weight) into this idea. Here is an excerpt from Mark Rooker in his Leviticus commentary that writes:
"The citation in Heb 10:6–8 is particularly significant where burnt offerings, in association with other offerings, are shown to be inferior to the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, who offered himself as a sacrifice for sin once for all (Heb 10:1–4, 10). This suggests that the sacrificial system and particularly the burnt offering foreshadows or typifies the death of Christ for sins."
Rooker uses the words "foreshadows" and "typifies" where I am using the word "prefigured." The larger point is that Christians have traditionally interpreted OT priestly activity as predicting what Jesus would someday do, and they believe it is important for the reader of the story of the bible to catch this connection. But there is a potential problem with this idea, or at least something to think about. It is probable that the idea of a priest (a person acting as a divine/human intermediary or arbiter) was not invented by God at all. Instead, the idea seems to originate along with sacrifice and other religious practices within ancient cultures which pre-dated Israel (as mentioned above). The law for divorce got into the Torah, not because God invented divorce, but because human experience led to the need of clarifying the practice (Deuteronomy 24:1-5; Matthew 19:8). The same can also be said for the origin of the law for slavery (Exodus 21:2) and the law for polygamy (Deuteronomy 21:15). The point is that many things found their way into the Torah which were not of divine design, but of human design needing correction, or ultimately to become "obsolete" (Hebrews 8:13).
And recall where priests show up in the biblical story: like sacrifice, they appear well before Moses (for example, Melchizedek in Genesis 14:18; Joseph's father-in-law in Genesis 41:45). Add to this that the instructions for the priesthood in Torah compare closely with earlier pagan law codes (the Code of Hammurabi, etc.), and we are led to the likely conclusion that the origin of the role of a priest is simply religious tradition. It was how humanity decided to establish and maintain contact with the world of the gods, and not how God decided to establish his contact with mankind. Priests are not as important to the biblical story line as we have traditionally made them out to be. A man like John the Baptist, whose father was a priest (Luke 1:5), could completely withdraw from Temple/priestly activity and still function as a righteous man (Matthew 11:11; 21:32). Jesus instructed a person to visit a priest on a few occasions (Matthew 8:4), but this was never for the purpose of getting right with God. All this happened before the crucifixion, of course, which negates the common argument that Jesus' death fulfilled or abolished the need for future priests. The relative unimportance of the priesthood becomes a developing (but clear) story within the bible's larger narrative, extending well back into the days of the OT. To put it bluntly: the connection between Jesus and the priesthood is that of simple association, not fulfillment.
Proposition #15 - Did Jesus' priestly actions (sacrifice, atonement, etc.) play a role in human salvation?
I would confidently bet that almost every gospel presentation you have ever heard has been based on this question in the affirmative. When someone says that Jesus "paid for your sin" or "propitiated God's wrath" or "bore your penalty of hell" he is appealing to what he believes to be the primary effect of Jesus' priestly work on your behalf. This is commonly referred to as the "finished work of Christ," a concept which traditionally investigates the meaning of Jesus' death as opposed to his life. This claims that Jesus' actions as a priest make a difference to our spiritual status before God, even our salvation. This is quite an assertion. So let's consider this idea more carefully. It is good to remember that Jesus was not a Jewish priest. He did not qualify for the office (born of Judah instead of Levi), and he never referred to himself as a priest (for example, "When Jesus saw them, he told them, "Go and show yourselves to the priests"," Luke 17:14). Nowhere in the book of Acts, nor in the writings of Paul, is Jesus referred to as a Jewish priest. However, writers of the NT often describe Jesus acting as a priest, especially when interpreting the meaning of his death.
As a matter of history, a Jesus-acting-as-priest idea would not have been surprising to the original audience of the NT, even if they knew Jesus did not qualify for the office. Herod's temple was full of non-Levitical (and even non-Jewish) priests, as the king had imported Egyptian and Mesopotamian priests to serve out their functions. The office of the high priesthood was no better, with the position known to go to the highest bidder. Thus, no one would have been theologically offended to hear of Jesus the carpenter acting as a priest even if he failed the ancestral test. So, where does the NT say that Jesus performed priestly functions? Producing such a list involves a few judgment calls since some ancient concepts like redemption are at times associated with the Jewish priesthood, while at other times they are not. But we need not split hairs on this matter. For now, let's think of as many passages as possible where Jesus appears to function as a priest:
- Mark 10:45;
- John 1:29; 11:50; 17:19;
- Acts 20:28;
- Romans 3:24-25; 5:6-11; 8:3, 32;
- 1 Corinthians 1:2; 6:11; 15:3;
- 2 Corinthians 5:14, 18-21;
- Galatians 3:13;
- Ephesians 1:7; 2:13-16; 5:2, 25-27;
- Colossians 1:20;
- 1 Thessalonians 5:9-10;
- Titus 2:14;
- Hebrews 2:10-12; 4:14-16; 6:19-20; 7:24-25; 9:12-15, 22, 26-28; 10:10-14, 19-22, 29; 13:12;
- 1 Peter 1:18-19; 2:24; 3:18;
- 1 John 1:7; 2:2; 4:10;
- Revelation 5:9.
The sheer size of this list shows us that the priestly function of Jesus is especially in relation to his death. Something very important happened at the crucifixion! But here is where things commonly go askew. If we are not careful, we may presume that our salvation is based on phrases within this list (for example, "forgiveness of sins," "reconciled to God," "place of mercy for our sins"). For remember where we just were: in the OT, a priest did not function in a saving capacity. That was not his role. Nor did he grant the ability for someone to become righteous. If we are going to interpret Jesus' priestly role as affecting our salvation, we need to realize what we are asking for—a vast change in how Israel's story works, a change in how Torah works, and even a change in how the whole bible works!
Thus, do the priestly actions of Jesus (such as his atoning sacrifice), play a role in our salvation? Here is where things get tricky. It's both a "yes" and a "no", depending on what we do with the subject of priestly ritualistic cleansing. I would say "yes" if our approach to Yahweh for salvation required prior cleansing. On the other hand, I would say "no" if we should interpret this cleansing as a matter of religious/cultural tradition. I realize that a lot of theology rides on where we go with these two options. I want to affirm the importance Jesus' death to the larger story of the bible. I believe he needed to die by the will of the Father to complete our salvation. As a separate issue, I believe that Jesus' actions as a priest are also critical to the bible's explanation of salvation. The challenge remains in sorting through how these ideas (priesthood, sacrifice, cleansing, death, salvation, etc.) relate to one another. Our goal is to explain them to the liking of the original writers and readers of the bible.


text:
First of all, please introduce yourself to our readers that might not be familiar with you and your work.
I am Marielle Sinclair. I was born in Port Jefferson, Long Island New York but lived in Colorado most of my life until I moved to Boston, Massachusetts in 1997. I graduated from Massachusetts College of Art and Design (MassArt) in 2004 with a BFA in Sculpture. I lived and worked out of the Distillery in South Boston for five years but currently my studio is where I reside in Dorchester.
When and how did you get interested in art making?
I think I really became serious about art when I was in high school. I remember being obsessed with my photography and drawing classes. The teachers were really amazing and I still keep in touch with them today. I remember drawing creatures all the time and my parents used to ask me why I couldn't draw anything nice.
When I graduated I thought the realistic thing to do was to try and get into Illustration even though I was sculpting in clay and secretly fancied getting into special makeup or monster making for movies! I was accepted into Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design (RMCAD) for Illustration but things eventually led me to Boston instead.
When I moved out here I started taking classes at New England Institute of Art and MassArt, I got into Montserrat College of Art but waited until MassArt granted me admission into their Illustration program in 2000. However, I quickly realized how completely mediocre I was at Illustration and sculpture had secretly been luring me toward it for a while. It was a scary decision but I made the leap into sculpture instead. I absolutely fell in love with the limitless bounty of materials which were at my disposal, each one speaking a different language.
Currently, what type of job(s) you do besides making art?
I have been lucky to only have had art related jobs after college. I worked at a bronze foundry since I loved metal casting and wax working so much. I have worked as a wax worker, as a fabricator, mold maker, art handler etc.
I am completely obsessed with welding, so I have taken multiple TIG welding classes as an attempt to try and satisfy that side of the metalworking urge. I suppose I just love building in general because I find working with my hands extremely satisfying and for me to continue doing so has been a never-ending goal of mine.
Please tell us a bit about your work in general. What media do you work in? What are the inspirations behind the creation of your work? What is the specific message you would like to convey to your viewers? Would you like to discuss a bit your creative process?
When I was at MassArt I was becoming so drawn into Fibers and Metals and I felt I had to decide how to focus the remainder of my education, then I had this teacher who reminded me of how I would most likely never have the opportunity to learn metalworking any other way then by learning it at Massart. I am so glad she gave me this advice because it has been a source of pride for me to have picked up some useful metalworking skills.
I have always been obsessed with anything industrial so naturally I was completely mesmerized by the metalshop, it was this dark, intriguing place, hidden deep in the basement. The processes of foundry and welding were the most magnetic for me. I was attracted and frustrated by these hard, industrial materials which I wanted so badly to manipulate into something organic. Foundry ended up being the way to accomplish this; it is also where I discovered wax, which is an essential element in my work.
I created a series of fabric manipulations which were inspired by a major surgery I had so I was pretty preoccupied with almost performing these little surgeries on organic or anatomical forms.
Marielle Sinclair, Manipulation 2 (detail), 10 x 10 x 2",
fabric and thread, 2003. Photo: Marielle Sinclair
Marielle Sinclair, Samples 4-5 (detail), 3 x 3 x 1",
fabric and thread, 2003. Photo: Marielle Sinclair
The soft sculptures were definitely more abstract then my more "figurative" current work. Eventually after making many of these soft sculptures with fabric, I noticed how unsatisfied I was with only using one material.
Marielle Sinclair, Little Burdens, (detail) size of installation varies,
pantyhose, batting, pins and thread, 2007. Photo: Marielle Sinclair
Marielle Sinclair, Dark Heart, 20 1/2 x 8 x 8", wire,
wax, thread and wood, 2003.Photo: Marielle Sinclair
I began to transition into the use of fabric, wire and wax. Dark Heart was the first wire and wax piece that I created and there is really no other way to explain it other than that it was love at first sight. I have been captivated by these creatures in mixed materials ever since.
Marielle Sinclair, Twins, 3 1/2 x 6 x 2", wire, wax,
pantyhose and thread, 2007. Photo: Marielle Sinclair
Marielle Sinclair, Twins (detail), 3 1/2 x 6 x 2", wire wax,
pantyhose and thread, 2007. Photo: Marielle Sinclair
So I consider myself a mixed media sculptor with a bit of an obsession for metal. You can definitely see that split of interest between soft sculpture and metalwork in my art. The metal often represents restriction, structure, and mankind's need to control, whereas the soft materials have vulnerability, and a life span.
Marielle Sinclair, 13 Bees, size of installation varies, wire, wax,
paper, beads and thread, 2011. Photo: Marielle Sinclair
paper, beads and thread, 2011. Photo: Marielle Sinclair
The process is immensely important to me, the act of assembling, disassembling, fragmentation and analysis, constructing and deconstructing are ever present in my work.
Marielle Sinclair, Spill, 5 x 2 x 3", fabric, wire, wax, sinew,
hair, beads and thread, 2007. Photo: Marielle Sinclair
hair, beads and thread, 2007. Photo: Marielle Sinclair
Marielle Sinclair, Spill (detail), 5 x 2 x 3", fabric, wire, wax,
sinew, hair, beads and thread, 2007. Photo: Marielle Sinclair
sinew, hair, beads and thread, 2007. Photo: Marielle Sinclair
I adore sewing, by hand and machine and wire working. I would absolutely consider myself a wire worker above all else and currently most of my small scale sculptures are articulated creatures which emerge out of wire and found materials.
Marielle Sinclair, Not So Velveteen Rabbit, 4 x 6 x 2 1/2", wire, wax,
fabric, thread, hair and velvet, 4 x 6 x 2 1/2", 2009. Photo: Marielle Sinclair
fabric, thread, hair and velvet, 4 x 6 x 2 1/2", 2009. Photo: Marielle Sinclair
I collect the waste from my process and manipulate it. I intuitively grab all the fabric clippings, pulled threads, wax blobs and jagged wire cast offs in hopes that a creature will emerge and reveal its personality and quirks to me.
Marielle Sinclair,The Condition of Being Neglected, 12 x 7 x 5 1/2",
pantyhose, wax, burlap, thread and wood, 2004. Photo: Marielle Sinclair
I am pretty preoccupied with expressing vulnerability in my work, lately it has been coming out in the form of creatures impacted by man's interference with nature.
Marielle Sinclair, Quilt, 2 1/2 x 4 x 2 1/2", wire, wax, hair,
burlap and dress pattern paper, 2003. Photo: Marielle Sinclair
burlap and dress pattern paper, 2003. Photo: Marielle Sinclair
Marielle Sinclair, Victim, 3 1/2 x 1 1/2 x 5", wire, wax,
hair, burlap and thread, 2004. Photo: Marielle Sinclair
hair, burlap and thread, 2004. Photo: Marielle Sinclair
After the "automatic writing-like" process of bringing forth these creatures, I enjoy setting up little sets with warm lighting and shooting close up photos of them, which remind me of crime scenes or film stills.
Marielle Sinclair, Charlotte, 12 x 10 x 4", wire, wax, paper, thread,
copper pipe, dust, and found crate, 2011. Photo: Marielle Sinclair
Marielle Sinclair, Scuttering Brat (detail), size of installation varies, wire,
wax, fabric, thread and beads, 2011. Photo: Marielle Sinclair
I actually had the opportunity a couple years ago to make some prototypes for a stop-motion animation music video that was to be called, Shattered, unfortunately it never happened.
Sculptures for the stop motion animation music video, Shattered, wire,
wax, hair, burlap, latex and thread, 2009. Photo: Marielle Sinclair
wax, hair, burlap, latex and thread, 2009. Photo: Marielle Sinclair
Would you like to inform our readers of your recent and current exhibition(s)?
I recently showed some work in the Small Obsessions show curated by Carolyn Wirth. This exhibition was held at the Somerville Museum in Somerville, Massachusetts back in June.
Marielle Sinclair, Itchy Itchy Itchy, 3 x 12 x 3", wire, wax, ribbon,
taxidermy eyes, thread and found box, 2011. Photo: Carolyn Wirth
Marielle Sinclair, Itchy Itchy Itchy, 2 x 2 x 1", wire, wax, ribbon, taxidermy eyes,
and thread, 2011. Photo: Marielle Sinclair
Please follow these links for reviews of this exhibition:
and thread, 2011. Photo: Marielle Sinclair
Please follow these links for reviews of this exhibition:
Would you like to share your contact info with our readers?
Your readers may contact me at firstname.lastname@example.com or visit my website at www.mariellesinclair.com to learn more about my work.

subset: commoncrawl


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Got Incentive? Are You Matching the Right Incentive to the Right Audience?
Incentives can be critical to getting people to respond to your marketing offer, and not every incentive will motivate every buyer. The two have to be properly matched. Do you put as much thought into the incentive as you do into your list, your creative, and your message?


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The free online Viking Legend slot machine is another pokie from the HD WorldMatch gaming company. It has 5 reels and 25 lines which can be adjusted in the main settings bar. A gamer can encounter on 3 playing cards from J to K, 3 types of shield icons and 3 Viking symbols. Beside those, 2 types of special symbols can be founds during play. This slot is similar to Vitamina.
Viking Rules
All wins in the Viking Legend slot machine game are paid from left to right. A gamer can start a round by clicking on the "Start" mark or he can just press the spacebar. To change the spinning to the automatic he can click on the "Autoplay" sign. This auto roll option can be stopped if a bettor activates the bonus feature or if he manually stops the wheel. Bets can be set by clicking on the "BET LEVEL" button. There are 8 possible betting levels. The minimum stake that can be set is 0.20€ and the maximum is 40€ for a single turn. If a gambler wants to set the wager automatically to the biggest amount he can just click on the "BET MAX" button. The total credit balance is shown on the right bottom side of a display.
Extra Cash Opportunities
The Viking Legend slot game is a classic pokie with 2 special icons which can grant a player some extra money.
- Scatter – this symbol can appear anywhere on the reels and it can be used for triggering bonus spins. A player can press the "Free Spin" button in the main menu to activate the extra turns. For collecting 3 or more of these icons a gambler will get 10 additional spins. While this feature is active all winning combinations will be multiplied by 3x. Bonus Spins cannot be retriggered again.
- Wild – women warrior icon is a wild card. It substitutes all cards except for the scatter symbol. It can show up at any time during play.
Mega Prizes
A gamer can play the Viking Legend free slot with no risk of losing big cash because this is a low volatility casino machine. The highest win can be obtained for getting 5 of strong warrior symbols. A player will gain a multiplier 1000x stakes. To score some more cash rewards a gambler should:
- Set the stakes to the highest value. When a gamer changes the bets to 8th level, biggest payouts can be obtained.
- Play more rounds to gain extra winning chances.
- Collect 3 or more scatter symbols for triggering the bonus turns.
- Set the number of lines to 25 for a maximum number of winning combinations that can appear on the table.
A bettor can be sure that he will always have the same odds of scoring every time he plays because this is a fair gambling system. Previous games will have no effect on current outcome and possibilities for getting the jackpot prizes. It can be downloaded on most of the PC, tablet, or mobile devices.


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There are 298 days left until the opening ceremonies of the London Olympics.
We, as Americans, expect a gold medal in basketball as our birthright, as we expect inexpensive gasoline and a well-grilled steak. To make sure we get what we want, USA Basketball will be sending its big guns — LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, Kevin Durant, etc. — and America will be the prohibitive favorite in London.
But a year out, who is our biggest threat?
Spain primarily, but once we get to the one-and-done part of the tournament, a few teams can be scary. There's a fantastic breakdown of what to expect next July over at The Painted Area today (one of the best sites for international hoops opinions), where they talk about Spain coming off its European championship.
MVP Juan Carlos Navarro was in full La Bomba mode during the knockout round, but it's Pau Gasol who is the lynchpin for this side. Pau easily led the EuroBasket with a whopping 36.9 PER (20 and 8 on 54% FG in 26 minutes per game).
While the return of Pau was essential for Team España, the addition of newly naturalized Serge Ibaka was an intriguing personnel game-changer for Spain. Ibaka, who was a force in the gold-medal game with five blocks in 21 minutes, adds a welcome dose of athleticism. The equation of Gasol brothers plus Serge might well equal the best rotation of bigs in London, depending upon the frontline players Team USA is able to assemble.
We have talked about this before — when Coach K sits down to assemble this version of Team USA, he is going to have to account for the size and athleticism of the Spanish front line. Playing Dwight Howard at the five then Carmelo Anthony at the four will not cut it against the Gasol brothers.
Everyone goes into the Olympics expecting a Spain vs. USA gold medal rematch from 2008.
Who can spoil that party? How about France? They have Joakim Noah to play defense in the paint but they were able to score during EuroBasket as well.
Certainly, the return of Tony Parker after a year off was critical to the French offense. Parker was the best guard in the tourney, averaging 22.1 points, 3.5 rebounds, 4.4 assists and 1.7 steals in 35 minutes per game. Also, Nic Batum delivered a fine EuroBasket, averaging 13.8 points and 2.0 steals with 53.5% FG in 31.5 minutes, an improvement on his play in Turkey in 2010 (12.5 points and 1.3 steals with just 42.9% FG in 28.5 minutes). France still has room for improvement, as they could potentially add players like Ronny Turiaf, Roddy Beaubois or Mickael Pietrus to this year's squad.
Argentina will make one last run at it with their golden generation of Manu Ginobili, Luis Scola and others. This is a team that is more seasoned and has played together longer than anyone else in London, and they are a threat.
Brazil will be right in there too. They came in second at FIBA Americas behind Tiago Splitter and a bunch of guys you don't know (and you may not no Splitter all that well as Gregg Popovich kept him on the bench plenty last season). But they can add Nene, Leandro Barbosa and Anderson Varejao, which will make them a threat.
Go read the entire Painted Area post. There are teams like Lithuania and Russia could be a threat in a one-and-done scenario.
That said, we're Americans and basketball is our sport. We expect our gold medal and we don't really care how we get it.


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Advanced Seaward Solar PV test instrumentation is helping a successful Caribbean based reseller and installer of solar photovoltaic and thermal systems to verify the quality of PV modules and the performance of installations.
Comet Solar is an established solar installation company based in the British Overseas Territory of Anguilla. With some of the best beaches in the world, the local economy is largely focused on tourism and Comet has been successful in encouraging local hotels, resorts, property owners and businesses to invest in solar systems as a means of helping to offset the effects of the economic downturn on tourism levels and rising energy costs.
Chris Mason, owner of Comet, explains: "Cost is very important to our customers and so we tend to look for PV modules at bargain prices.
"Without any subsidies or incentives and facing aggressive resistance from the utilities, solar has been a difficult sell. It is only because the cost of electricity is US$0.433 / kWh that we have any customers at all. At that rate and if we had net-metering, our payback on solar PV systems would be about 3 years."
Comet customers therefore tend to focus on price and return on investment, with aesthetics often being low on the list of purchasing factors. However, buying bargain priced solar PV modules brings its own challenges; second hand or refurbished modules are often used, but, in some cases the life history of the modules or the original manufacturer is not always known.
Another issue is the lack of formal installation standards or regulations. For example, operating in a Caribbean jurisdiction means that Comet is not specifically required to perform the same tests that a UK or US based installation company would be faced with.
However, in spite of this, in the interests of maintaining installation quality, Comet always aims to apply and meet the existing standards of the US NEC code and to perform to the best practices of the industry.
To help achieve this the company has recently invested in a dedicated new Seaward Solar PV150 solar installation test kit, along with a 200R irradiance meter, to enable it to carry out effective quality control and customer reassurance testing on its products and installations.
The Seaward Solar PV150 is a dedicated multi-function PV electrical tester designed specifically for solar panel system installation. It performs open circuit voltage measurements (Voc), short circuit current measurements (Isc), earth continuity, insulation resistance, operating current (via AC/DC current clamp).
With the push of a single button the new combination tester carries out the required sequence of electrical tests in a safe and controlled manner, avoiding the risk of contact with exposed live DC conductors. Results can be recorded and stored in the tester for subsequent USB downloading to a PC.
Chris Mason, explained: "In order to ensure the quality of the products we sell to our customers, we feel it is important to carry out testing thoroughly and effectively.
"We owned standard test instruments and DC clamp meters but found that these manual methods were prone to error and were not particularly practical to use in the field. There is also no efficient way to record the results. We therefore decided to find a portable but capable test system that would document the performance of each module in a recordable way."
Recently Comet was offered a container of 170W used monocrystalline solar panels and used them on a 12 kW commercial flat roof top system.
These PV units had been replaced on their original system due to yellowing of the backing but were in perfect electrical and mechanical condition. As the modules were used, Comet tested every unit prior to installation to make sure of the quality and safety of the modules and also to prevent any subsequent dismantling of the installation for any troubleshooting required.
To do this Comet set up an improvised test bench at the installation site and tested every module as it came out of its packing. All testing was carried out during the middle of the day so as to make use of full sun for testing. Every one of the 66 modules were tested individually and no issues were found, with all units performing as expected with little variation between the modules and no ground faults or open circuits.
Importantly, the speed of the test system allowed comet to perform full tests on each module without impairing the workflow of the installation crew.
The test data for each module was downloaded and given to the owner as a system spreadsheet to reassure him that testing had been carried out thoroughly to verify the quality of the modules and to confirm the anticipated performance levels of the system.
Comet's latest solar PV installation project is much larger and so requires a different test regime. The company is currently installing 500KW of Canadian Solar 240W modules, purchased directly from the manufacturer.
As these are Tier 1 Grade A modules, Comet won't be pre-testing every module, but will test each string at the combiner before installing fuses.
Working to US NEC requirements does not does not allow for easy testing of the installation in the way that typical UK systems do. The wiring is always in conduit and the combiner circuits are hard wired, so there is no easy way to test installed strings on larger systems.
For these larger projects, Comet will therefore be using 1000V rated test leads with alligator clips.
Chris Mason said: "Using the PV150 system on an installation in front of the client gives a sense of security that the installers are professional and are doing the project properly.
"We are seeing the emergence of some less than professional installers in the region who perform poorly crafted installations, test nothing and do not give the customer any comfort that the work is being done properly.
"We invite our customers to witness the commissioning tests with the PV150 so they can see how much work goes into our quality assurance procedures. This is both a marketing tool to enhance word of mouth referrals and protection against liability from call-backs.
"Documenting system performance at commissioning gives us a baseline against which to retest in the case of a complaint or problem, both with customers and manufacturers. For this use alone, the test kit and reporting system is invaluable."
Full details on the comprehensive Seaward Solar range of PV test equipment, accessories and data recording software are available at www.seawardsolar.com.


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Web applications for employee and work scheduling.
Compressing all PNG images across all Wordpress posts and pages might be cumbersome. However, plugins for bulk compression are usually not entirely free; they only allow to compress a limited number of images for free. Instead, downloading all PNG images, compressing them locally and adding a simple filter for
the_content also gets the job done.
In the last few days I took some time to revisit some of my CMSimple plugins: News, a news article and blog plugin, Pictures, an image gallery plugin, YouTube, a plugin to create YouTube galleries, and BBClone, a plugin for web analytics with BBClone. In this article, I want to present the main features, the updated documentation as well as two demo applications to try out the plugins.
Relational databases can be described in terms of functional dependencies; this project implements functional dependencies as well as second and third normal form in PHP.
Experimental Wordpress plugins and themes; including this theme and plugins for author biographies and live data from GitHub.
The Simplex algorithm for solving linear programs implemented in PHP.
Common matrix decompositions, including LU, Cholesky and QR decompositions, implemented in PHP; also includes an interactive application to demonstrate and explain the material.
This article presents a very simple jQuery plugin and the corresponding Wordpress plugin allowing to easily create and reference labels in a LaTeX-style fashion.
This article presents a Kohana demo application demonstrating the compatibility and use of several Kohana modules I wrote in the course of the last few years. The application is compatible to Kohana 3.3.6, 3.2 and 3.1 and available on GitHub and among others includes Kohana Red, an authentication module, Kohana Green, an access control module, and Gaps, a form generation and validation module.
Hooks is a Kohana module implementing a simple event-listener system. Functions may be registered on events which can be fired throughout the application.


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Sabrina Kay
Chancellor and CEO,
Fremont College
Sabrina Kay moved from South Korea with her family when she was 18. She resented having to emigrate and barely spoke English, but when she got to Los Angeles she studied computer science and math in college.
"Our goal was to achieve better lives, assimilate into America and stay in this great country," she said.
She wasn't content just to study. After working with her parents in the apparel industry, she started a vocational training school out of her bedroom in 1992, teaching apparel workers how to use then-revolutionary computer-aided design and manufacturing machines.
Ten years later, after growing the enrollment, she sold the school for millions, enabling her to join 21 charitable boards and earn a fistful of graduate degrees, including an M.B.A. from USC and a doctorate in education from both the University of Pennsylvania and its Wharton business school.
Along the way, she's also developed a successful fashion line for professional woman called the Sabrina Kay Collection. And if that weren't enough, in 2007, she decided to try her hand at education again and bought Fremont College, a Koreatown vocational school.
Her biggest surprise on the road to becoming an entrepreneur? The outcome. "I've always had high expectations about my career," she said. "But reality has exceeded those expectations."
Still, she sees the downside of starting a business in the United States compared with Korea, chief among them labor costs. Also, she notes "it is a highly litigious environment where it's easy for people to try to win the lottery though lawsuits."
And success still means working hard, sometimes from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. These days she often works past midnight.
"The business environment in the U.S. gives equal opportunities to anyone who has focus, discipline, tenacity and is willing to make the honest commitment to working hard and achieving their best," she said.
Her parents still live in town and they remain close. And she goes back to Korea every other year. It's a good reminder of how much she's learned and how much effort it took.
At Fremont, she has transformed the curriculum and is applying the educational theories she developed at Wharton, which involves teaching through a work-based system that eschews textbooks and aims to turn out valuable employees.
The for-profit school offers apparel design, but many other subjects, including paralegal studies and physical therapy. It grants accelerated associate and bachelor's degrees.
"I bought Fremont College as a laboratory to prove that anyone who has focus and commitment, with proper education, can succeed," Kay said, "because that's what happened to me in this country."


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"Typical British weather."
As much as we'd love to say it's sunshine and good weather all year around (having said that, British summers can be glorious!), everyone knows that rain and wind can be the norm, and unexpectedly getting soaked is not uncommon when you live in the UK.
Rainfall here can be frequent and comes in different shapes and sizes. From your everyday showers, to sudden, all-out downpours or a persistent drizzle, the weather here in the UK can sometimes be an annoying inconvenience.
This time of the year is no better than usual with various storms battling our little island and the cold winter weather definitely set to stick around a little while longer.
So how do you brave the outside world on a rainy day?
Wrap up
The right clothes are key. Simply putting a raincoat, or even a (clear) vinyl hooded poncho over your clothes will ensure you stay dry.
Proper footwear is another important factor. Waterproof (or at least water resistant) shoes are your new best friend when it rains! You don't want to get wet feet (or worse, wet socks) or risk ruining your favourite pair of shoes because the rain caught you off guard on your way to campus.
Take cover
We know that it's impossible to avoid the rain when you have a busy schedule of lectures and seminars, so our top recommendation is to take cover. Be prepared for the weather and take an umbrella with you so you don't get soaked!
If you haven't got one, we've got the perfect solution for you with Collegiate's limited-edition umbrellas. Made from the very best materials, you'll stay dry and sheltered from rain and wind.
Large enough to fit two people, the Collegiate umbrella is a must-have for our residents. Keep it by the front door of your student apartment so you can grab it on your way out to uni, work, or catch ups with friends! Trust us, you'll be glad to have this stylish umbrella to keep you dry!
To get your Collegiate Umbrella, just log in to the Collegiate Portal and head to the Online Shop. Once you've made your payment, you can pick up your umbrella from reception!
We only have a limited number of umbrellas available so make sure you get yours before they're all gone.


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Long-time favorite for Taiwanese girls
Guanziling (also spelled Kuanziling) is a small village located in the mountains of central Taiwan, between Chiayi and Yushan National Park in Tainan County.
What's so special about those hot springs?
That's exactly what I asked my girlfriend as we were driving in the mountains on the way to our resort. We had previously been to lots of other hot springs around the island, but this time I could tell she was excited about bathing in Guanziling.
She explained to me: "The springs are very different there. The town is built on a mineral-rich clay deposit and the water is like mud. It's very good for the skin – like a natural cosmetic! There's only two other places in the world that have that kind of springs – Sicily and Japan."
So we were gonna have an actual mud bath…! Now I was the one who was getting excited. I couldn't wait to get to that place. I had all these images of me swimming and diving in thick mud.
How disappointed I was when I saw that the only thing resembling mud was the color. It surely was grey, but the thickness aspect was not like what I had imagined. It was 100% liquid water! Not mud.
Some resorts in Guanziling do have big basins filled with mud mixed with apples, tea or plant extracts. You can cover your face or entire body with the mixture and then go in the pools after letting your skin absorb the magic stuff.
My favorite resort is King's Garden Villa (Jingda Dujia Zhuangyuan). Their public pools (more than 15 of them) are the best in the area and they also have a huge swimming pool outside from where you can enjoy great views of the surrounding mountains. (adult/child NT$450/200)
What if I don't like hot springs?
Guanziling is renowned for its therapeutic water, but that's not the only thing you'll find here. The area is also home to some interesting monasteries, hiking trails and an unusual natural wonder called "Water Fire Cave". What's more? It's in the mountains and the scenery is gorgeous.
Water Fire Cave
I'll begin with a warning: Don't make it all the way up here to only see that "cave". Taiwanese people will tell you it's an absolutely incomprehensible and amazing sight! My second advice is: don't get too enthusiastic.
First, it's not even a cave – it's more like a shallow cavity in a small rocky face. Second, the fire is just a little flame. Third, the entire place has the feel of a big tourist trap – especially on weekends.
So what is it exactly? The legend says that a long time ago, a fire dragon and a water tiger had a dispute, fought and then decided to coexist… I guess that, like me, you won't buy into that and appreciate the real explanation: natural gas bubbles from a pond of water and ignites as it hits the air.
The real fun thing to do here, though, is watching the Taiwanese people – kids and grownups – freak right out as they see the flame on the water.
Biyun Temple – rituals, rituals, rituals
Guanziling's Biyun temple is one of the best places on the island to see old Chinese rituals.
I've seen men hitting themselves on the head with axes, people doing strange dances while uttering incoherent sounds as well as a drunk fortune teller giving advice to a pregnant woman.
The most remarkable thing I've witnessed was a Chinese calligrapher writing characters on a kid's face, head, arms and hands while his mother was holding him and other family members were watching.
I asked some people around what this was about and they said the kid was not getting good results at school and this ritual would fix all this.
The most intense part was the mother's grave look on her face. I could tell this was an important moment and that she had high expectations. The boy was totally petrified. He didn't even notice I was a foot away from him taking pictures and filming the big event.
Hiking in Guanziling
There's a couple of nice hiking trails around the village, but they're usually packed with tourists on weekends and holidays.
To get away from the crowds, head south on road 175, or north on 172. Look for small paths and trails that cut into the bushes. Many of them will take you deep into bamboo forests, and I guarantee you won't see any visitors there.
You'll find tons of food stalls that serve Taiwanese snacks close to Water Fire Cave and the two main temples. The stinky tofu by the cave is one of the best I've ever had. The stand is easy to find – just follow the smell… and look for the longest lineup.
The main drag in the village is where you'll find the big Chinese restaurants. If you decide to eat at one of the modern hot spring resorts, expect to pay at least 50% more.
Siancaopu village, 3km west on road 172, is a good place to try the region's specialty – roasted chicken.
Most spas and hot spring resorts offer mid-range to top-end accommodation. The only hotel I stayed at was King's Garden Villa and I was really satisfied with everything there. My room was very comfortable and had all the amenities you'd expect for NT$7000/night.
You could also spend a night in Beihe, which is not too far.
Or get a hotel room in Tainan, which is the nearest big city.
Getting There and Away
I highly recommend you rent a scooter in Chiayi and ride it all the way up here. If you have your own transportation, you'll get to see more sights than if you have to walk everywhere.
If that option isn't available to you, know that Chiayi Bus Companyhas regular buses to the village; NT$80, 1 hour.
Check out my GUANZILING MAP! A new window will open. You can locate the attractions, restaurants, and hotels in the left column.
Return from Guanziling to Taiwan Hot Springs


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