Latest / Reformed Thinking / Sanctified Perplexity: Aporia in the English Bible and the Formation of Faith

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Sanctified Perplexity: Aporia in the English Bible and the Formation of Faith · Reformed Thinking

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  Welcome to Reformed thinking. I'm so glad you were here with
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  us today. It's good to be here.
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  We have a stack of heavy books on the table, a couple of open
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  Bibles, and a topic that I think it's going to resonate with,
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  well, pretty much everyone. Listening.
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  Oh, absolutely. This is a topic that touches the
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  life of every single serious reader of Scripture.
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  There's no escaping it. You know there's this, this very
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  specific experience that happens when you start taking the Bible
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  seriously. You're reading along.
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  Maybe it's your morning devotion.
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  You've got your coffee. Everything is flowing pretty
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  well. You feel encouraged.
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  You know you're learning things, right?
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  It feels good. And then just without warning,
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  you hit a wall. You read a verse that just stops
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  you cold. It's the kind of verse that
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  makes you blank. Maybe rub your eyes and read it
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  again. Because you you have to assume
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  you just misread. It exactly.
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  It might be a verse that seems to blatantly contradict
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  something you literally just read 2 chapters ago.
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  Or, and this is a big one, maybe it's a Psalm where the writer
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  says something to God that feels incredibly uncomfortable.
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  Yeah, like a like a complaint or almost an accusation, a depth of
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  raw emotion that feels, I don't know, almost irreverent to our
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  modern ears. And in that moment, the modern
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  reader, well, they usually have one of three reactions.
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  OK, let's walk through them. Reaction one.
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  Ignore it. The easiest one.
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  Just pretend you didn't see it, turn the page and keep on
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  moving. Hope it goes away.
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  And reaction 2 is what I see a lot.
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  Rush to fix it? What?
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  Do you mean by fix it? We try to come up with some kind
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  of quick, easy answer to smooth out the bump.
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  You know, just so we don't have to feel awkward about God's
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  Word. We want it to be neat and tidy.
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  Right, and reaction 3 is probably the most dangerous one.
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  It is. It's doubt.
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  You start to wonder if the scripture is actually reliable,
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  if this verse contradicts that one, or if this lament feels way
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  too dark. Then maybe, maybe the whole
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  structure is a bit shaky. And that's a scary place to be.
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  But today we're going to look at a fourth option, a much better
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  option, I think I agree. We're looking at a concept that
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  completely reframes these difficult moments, and the
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  concept is called aporia. Aporia.
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  APORIA. It's a Greek term, and it
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  originally comes from classical rhetoric.
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  It literally describes a state of being at a loss, an impasse.
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  The best way to picture it is imagine you're walking down a
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  hiking trail, you're confident in your direction, and then
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  suddenly the path is just blocked by a sheer Cliff face.
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  There's no way forward. There's no way through.
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  That's oporia. So just to be 100% clear, when
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  we hit these moments in the Bible, these apparent
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  contradictions or these heavy emotional walls, that is oporia.
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  That is precisely what it is. But here's the crucial shift we
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  need to make today. This is the whole point of our
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  deep dive. OK, Oporia is not an error.
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  It is not a mistake in the text. It's not a bug, it's a feature.
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  It's a feature, it's a pedagogical tool, a teaching
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  tool that's being used by the Holy Spirit.
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  Wow, OK that that's a massive paradigm shift.
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  You're saying God put the roadblock there on purpose?
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  Yes, that's what our sources argue, and I think they're
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  right. God uses these impasses to
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  arrest our attention. He uses them to humble our
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  reason and to force us to stop skimming and actually start
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  digging. He stops us in our tracks so we
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  have to ask for directions. That's a great way to put it.
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  We have to look up from the path and look to the guide.
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  I love that. OK, so we have a road map for
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  our discussion. Today.
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  We're going to tackle this concept of oporia from 2 pretty
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  distinct angles. First, we're going to look at
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  the head, how we resolve logical or theological difficulties
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  through rigorous study. The technical term is exegesis.
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  That's the intellectual side. When the text seems to clash
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  with itself, how do we use the tools of interpretation to find
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  the underlying harmony? And then we're going to pivot to
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  the heart. We're going to look at what some
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  of our sources call sanctified perplexity.
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  Sanctified perplexity. I like that phrase.
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  It's great, isn't it? This is when the ephoria isn't a
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  puzzle to be solved, but an emotion to be felt, like we see
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  in the Psalms of lament. And throughout all of this, we
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  need to be clear about where we're standing.
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  We're approaching this from a specific theological stance,
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  right? We're looking through the lens
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  of the Westminster Confession of Faith.
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  We believe that Scripture is the infallible rule of
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  interpretation for Scripture. So we're not just making things
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  up as we go. We have a standard a guardrail.
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  You do. The answers are found within the
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  system God has revealed in His Word.
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  OK, let's unpack this. Let's start with Section 1, The
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  Nature of Oporia and the Exegetical Toolkit.
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  Sounds good. You define oporia as being at a
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  loss, but I have to think it's more than just being confused.
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  It is. It's much more confusion can
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  happen just because you're tired or you know you don't know a
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  particular vocabulary word, or maybe you just skip breakfast.
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  Sure, Apori is a deliberate no way through moment.
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  It's a rhetorical device. Think about the classic examples
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  we always hear. OK, on the one hand, Numbers
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  23.19 says God is not a man, that he should repent.
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  Unequivocal, right? He doesn't change his mind.
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  But on the other hand, in First Samuel 15, Scripture says the
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  Lord repented that he had made Saul king.
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  That's a classic head oporia. It looks like a straight up
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  logical contradiction. It does, and we'll get to that
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  one later. But then you have the heart
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  oporia. The emotional impasse.
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  Exactly. Think of Jesus on the cross
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  crying out My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
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  That's a theological and an emotional impasse all at once.
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  How can the beloved Son, the second person of the Trinity, be
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  forsaken by the Father? The text just forces you to stop
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  and grapple with the sheer weight of that statement.
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  You can't just skim past that verse.
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  You can't. If you do, you've missed the
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  heart of the gospel. So when we hit these walls,
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  whether it's a head issue or a heart issue, what's the very
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  first thing we should do? What's our first anchor
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  question? The first anchor question,
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  before anything else, must always be what does the text
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  actually say? That sounds deceptively simple,
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  but I feel like we often skip right over it.
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  We do, we jump immediately to what does this mean for me?
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  Or worse, how do I explain this away to my skeptical neighbor
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  who might ask me about it? But we have to stop.
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  We have to observe. We have to resist that urge to
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  flatten the difficulty just for the sake of, you know, pragmatic
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  simplicity. We have to look at the
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  structure, the verbs, the flow of the argument, what's actually
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  there on the page. OK.
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  And one of the biggest problems our sources highlight is that we
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  often get confused because we're reading a verse totally in
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  isolation. Absolutely, and this is where
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  the toolkit comes in. The very first tool in the box
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  is bounding the text. Bounding the text.
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  OK, break that down for us, A. Primary cause of confusion is
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  severing a statement from its environment.
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  You pluck a single verse out of its context, and of course it
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  can sound like it's saying something crazy.
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  Like a movie quote without the movie.
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  Perfect analogy. So the method is to ask, is this
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  a complete unit of thought? In biblical studies, we call
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  this a pericope. A pericope, So a self-contained
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  section or story. Correct.
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  You have to ask where does this thought begin and where does it
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  end? If you fragment the author's
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  intent by isolating one single sentence, you are almost
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  guaranteed to misunderstand it. You have to see the flow of the
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  whole argument. It really is like walking into a
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  movie halfway through a key conversation, hearing one
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  sentence, and then walking out, assuming you know the entire
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  plot. That's it exactly.
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  You've created a problem that wasn't there by failing to see
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  the whole picture. So once we've bounded the text
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  once we have our pericope, what's the next tool?
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  Then we get into what's called structural and lexical analysis.
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  This is where we really have to roll up our sleeves and get to
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  work OK. One technique that our sources
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  point to which is incredibly helpful is diagramming.
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  Diagramming sentences? You mean like we did in what,
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  6th grade English class? It's similar, but it's really
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  with a theological purpose. It's a form of visual exegesis,
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  mapping out the clauses, identifying the main verb, the
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  subordinate clauses, the prepositional phrases.
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  How did that help resolve attention?
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  It often reveals the logical relationship between statements.
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  You might see that one statement isn't just sitting next to
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  another one, it's actually the ground for it, or the purpose of
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  it. So it's not 2 contradictory
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  facts side by side. One is explaining or modifying
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  the other. Spot on.
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  You might see it because or an in order that relationship that
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  you missed just by reading it quickly.
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  It slows you down and forces you to see the logic.
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  OK, that makes sense. What's next in the analysis?
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  Then, and this can be a big one, we have to talk about the
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  original languages. Hebrew and Greek.
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  Hebrew and Greek. Now let me be very, very, very
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  clear here. The English translation is
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  sufficient for salvation. You do not need to be a Greek
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  scholar to be saved by grace through faith.
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  That's an important qualifier. It's vital.
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  However, the nature of translation means that English
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  can sometimes, well, mask certain grammatical nuances.
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  They can actually solve these riddles for us.
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  Can you give us an example? Let's start with Hebrew.
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  What should we be looking for? In Hebrew, one of the key things
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  to look at is the verb stems, which are called binyanum.
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  OK, stem of a verb tells you what kind of action it is.
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  Is it a simple action? Is it an intensive action, like
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  doing something with great force?
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  Is it a causative action, meaning you caused something
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  else to happen? Or is it reflexive, something
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  you did to yourself? And that kind of nuance might be
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  lost or flattened out in a simple English translation.
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  Sometimes it can be. For example, a verb might be
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  translated as he broke, but the Hebrew stem could indicate he
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  smashed it to pieces or he allowed it to be broken.
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  And that's a huge difference. It's a massive difference,
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  especially when you're talking about God's sovereignty.
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  Knowing that Binyanim can clarify if God is directly
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  causing an action or simply permitting it, or if an action
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  is reflexive, it can solve a lot of apparent problems.
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  That's fascinating. So what about Greek in the New
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  Testament? In Greek, one of the biggest
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  factors is something called verbal aspect.
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  This is a bit different from tense.
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  Tense tells you when an action happens past, present.
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  Future. Aspect tells you how the action
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  is viewed by the speaker. For instance, the difference
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  between the aorist aspect and the present aspect is critical.
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  OK. Let's simplify that for everyone
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  listening. Aorist versus present aspect.
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  The aorist aspect often views an action as a whole.
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  It's like a snapshot. He send a single completed
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  event. The present aspect, on the other
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  hand, often views an action as continuous or ongoing.
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  It's more like a movie. He goes on sinning, or he is
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  characterized by sinning. And that distinction is massive.
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  It's everything when you're looking at verses about
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  Christian obedience and sanctification.
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  When the apostle John writes in First John three that a believer
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  does not sin, is he saying we achieve sinless perfection in
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  this life? Which would contradict what he
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  says in chapter 1. If we say we have no sin, we
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  deceive ourselves. Exactly.
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  There's the ephoria, but the Greek verbal aspect solves it.
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  John uses the present aspect, suggesting he means a true
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  believer does not continue in a settled, ongoing, habitual state
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  of sinning. It's not their lifestyle
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  anymore. That completely changes the
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  meaning. It resolves the ephoria between
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  Christians don't sin and of course Christians sin.
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  It's talking about two different kinds of sinning.
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  Precisely. It's about character and
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  pattern, not isolated acts. OK, this is really helpful.
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  What's the final tool in this initial section?
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  The final tool in the exegetical toolkit is genre awareness, and
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  this one is a primary source of what you might call false
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  oporia. Misidentifying the genre of the
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  book you're reading. Right, we talked about this a
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  little already. You cannot read a proverb as if
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  it's a legal promise from God. Explain that.
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  A proverb is by definition a general principle of wisdom.
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  Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he
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  will not depart from it. That is a generally true wise
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  principle for parenting. It is not a contractual money
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  back guarantee from God that says if you do X, God is legally
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  bound to do Y 100% of the time. So when a pastor's kid goes
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  astray, it doesn't mean the Bible is false.
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  It doesn't. Yeah.
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  It means you misunderstood the genre.
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  You treated a proverb like a covenant promise.
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  Same thing with apocalyptic literature.
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  Daniel, Revelation. Exactly, you cannot read the
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  wild imagery in those books. Beasts with 10 horns, multi
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  headed Dragons as if it were literal history or a modern
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  newspaper report. The genre has its own rules of
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  interpretation. So if you try to force a poem to
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  be behave like a law code or an apocalyptic division to behave
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  like a historical narrative, you're going to find
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  contradictions that aren't actually there.
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  That's it. You are creating the confusion
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  yourself by applying the wrong set of rules to that specific
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  text. OK, so we have our exegetical
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  toolkit. We're bounding the text, we're
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  checking the grammar and the original languages, we're
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  identifying the genre. But sometimes, even after all
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  that, the theology can still seem tricky.
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  That's right. And this brings us to Section 2,
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  theological resolution. This is where we move from the
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  microscope looking at the individual words to the wide
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  angle lens looking at the whole counsel of God.
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  And here we need what you called the safety mechanism.
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  The safety mechanism which the Westminster Confession calls the
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  analogy of faith. The analogy of faith.
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  This is in the 1st chapter of the confession, section 9.
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  It is, and the principle is simple but so weighty.
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  Scripture is infallibly interpreted by Scripture.
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  The Holy Spirit is the author of the whole book from Genesis to
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  Revelation, and the Holy Spirit does not contradict Himself.
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  Therefore, the clear, plain didactic passages must be used
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  to interpret the obscure, difficult or narrative passages.
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  That is such a helpful rule. So if I'm stuck on one verse
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  that seems really confusing, I shouldn't build a whole new
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  theology on top of it. Please don't.
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  I should instead look at the 50 other verses in the Bible that
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  are crystal clear on that same topic and let them guide my
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  understanding of the difficult one.
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  Correct. This is where using a good
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  confession of faith is so helpful.
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  We use the confession not as something above Scripture, but
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  as a reliable map of the territory that Scripture
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  reveals. It helps us achieve what we can
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  call systematic theological clarity.
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  We have to ask which doctrine is being taught.
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  Here, who has to categorize the text?
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  Yes. Is this passage primarily about
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  justification, or is it about sanctification?
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  Is it about the nature of God, the Doctor of the Trinity, or
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  eschatology, The end times? If we don't categorize, we get
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  our doctrines all messy and confused.
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  And we have to check our interpretation against known
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  errors. This is a huge guardrail if my
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  interpretation of a difficult verse leads me down the path to,
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  say, moralism. The idea that I can earn my
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  salvation through good behavior. Right.
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  Or if it leads me to antinomianism.
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  The idea that because I'm saved by grace, the law of God doesn't
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  matter anymore then I have interpreted it wrong.
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  Period. Because we know from the clear,
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  overwhelming teaching of Scripture that both of those are
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  serious errors. They're ditches on either side
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  of the road. They are.
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  We also need what our sources call biblical theological
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  placement. That sounds like a bit of a
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  mouthful. It just means locating the text
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  in the grand story of redemptive history.
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  What covenant are we in when this is written?
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  This is so important. It's crucial you cannot take a
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  command given specifically to national Israel under the Mosaic
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  Covenant, like the dietary laws or the civil penalties, and just
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  apply it directly to the New Covenant church without first
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  filtering it through the finished work of Jesus Christ.
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  He is the lens through which we read the Old Testament.
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  He is, yeah. And as part of that, we also
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  have to understand the already not yet tension of the Christian
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  life. Yes, the great.
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  It's the source of so much confusion.
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  We are already saved, justified, adopted.
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  But we are not yet glorified. Our salvation is not yet
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  complete. The Kingdom of God is here now,
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  but it's not yet here in its final full consummation.
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  And many apparent contradictions in the New Testament epistles
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  come from confusing the now with that.
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  Not yet. The tension is part of the
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  reality of living between Christ's first and 2nd comings.
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  OK, this is all great theory. It's a fantastic framework, but
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  I want to see this in action. Let's do it.
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  Let's move to Section 3, Case study A.
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  We mentioned this one at the top of the show, The Immutability of
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  God. This is from First Samuel
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  chapter 15. This is a classic, classic
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  example of oporia. In First Samuel 15 verse 11, the
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  text says, speaking from God's perspective, I repent that I
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  have made Saul king. I repent in English.
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  That sounds exactly like I made a mistake and I wish I hadn't
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  done it. It sounds like regret.
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  It certainly does. But then in the very same
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  chapter, just a few verses later in verse 29, the prophet Samuel
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  says to Saul, the strength of Israel will not lie or repent,
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  for he is not a man that he should repent.
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  And there it is. It feels like a direct,
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  undeniable contradiction regarding the very nature of
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  God. Is he unchanging or does he
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  change his mind? He can't be both.
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  So let's use our toolkit first tool, lexical analysis.
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  We look at the original word. The Hebrew word here is netshum.
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  Netshum what does it mean? Well, this is key.
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  It has a broad semantic range. It's not a laser precise word.
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  It can mean to sigh, to be sorry, to pity, to comfort, or
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  to console oneself. It allows for both the
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  expression of emotional grief and something like a change of
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  mind or action. So the word itself is flexible.
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  It's not a one to one match with our English word repent.
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  Not at all. And now we apply our next tool,
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  systematic and contextual distinction.
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  Verse 29, where it says God does not repent, is speaking about
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  God's decree and his ontological nature.
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  Ontological meaning his very being, who he is in himself.
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  Yes, as the Westminster Confession says so well in
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  chapter 2, Section 1, God is without body parts or passions.
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  He is immutable. He does not change.
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  He does not have mood swings. He does not discover new
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  information that makes him realize he made a mistake and
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  needs to switch to Plan B. Because there is no Plan B.
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  There's only Plan A. That is what verse 29 is
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  affirming. It's a statement about the
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  essence of God. OK so 1st 29 is the solid
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  bedrock theology. God is not a man.
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  But what about verse 11? The Lord repented.
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  How do we handle that? Verse 11 is speaking
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  phenomenologically. Phenomenologically, that means
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  as it appears to us or from our human perspective.
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  Correct. It is describing God's
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  administration in history, His relationship with his creation.
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  Think of it this way. When the moral object, in this
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  case King Saul, changes from obedient to rebellious, God's
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  relationship to him must change. If God treated a rebel king
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  exactly the same way he treated obedient servant king, God would
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  not be holy. He would not be just.
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  Oh, that's good. That's really good.
• 18:46
  So the change is not in God's character or his eternal plan.
• 18:50
  It's a reaction of his unchanging holiness to Saul's
• 18:53
  change. Precisely.
• 18:55
  It is not a change in his eternal counsel.
• 18:57
  The confession is clear. He decrees all things from
• 19:00
  eternity. He knew Saul would fail, but it
• 19:03
  is a genuine biblical expression of divine grief and judgment in
• 19:07
  time and space. It's a reaction of his
• 19:09
  relationship to Saul. So it's describing the
• 19:11
  relationship, not God's essence. Exactly.
• 19:14
  This explanation protects us from serious errors like open
• 19:17
  theism, which wrongly claims God doesn't know the future, while
• 19:21
  it's still reassures the heart that God is a personable, living
• 19:24
  God who is responsive to sin and righteousness.
• 19:27
  He's not a static, unfeeling, philosophical absolute.
• 19:30
  That makes so much sense. The ephoria is there to force us
• 19:33
  to hold 2 crucial truths in tension.
• 19:36
  God is unchanging in His essence, but He is dynamic and
• 19:39
  alive in His relationship with His creation.
• 19:41
  That is the right way to see it. The difficulty leads to a
• 19:44
  deeper, more robust theology. All right, let's look at another
• 19:46
  one, Section 4, case study B. This is the big one, especially
• 19:50
  for our tradition justification, Paul versus James.
• 19:55
  This one is troubled people for centuries.
• 19:57
  Martin Luther himself famously struggled with the Book of James
• 20:00
  because of this very issue. OK, let's lay it out.
• 20:03
  Paul in Romans 3.28 says, For we hold that one is justified by
• 20:07
  faith apart from works of the law.
• 20:10
  Clear faith alone. Solofate.
• 20:12
  But then you turn over to James chapter 2 verse 24 and he says
• 20:16
  you see that a person is justified by works and not by
• 20:20
  faith alone. It sounds like a complete head
• 20:21
  on collision. One says not by works, the other
• 20:23
  says by works. One says by faith, the other
• 20:26
  says not by faith alone. So how do we possibly resolve
• 20:29
  this using our methods? First tool.
• 20:31
  Again, authorial intent and audience.
• 20:33
  We have to ask who are these apostles talking to?
• 20:35
  What pastoral problem are they trying to solve?
• 20:37
  OK, Paul, especially in Romans and Galatians, is combating
• 20:41
  legalism. He is right to people, often
• 20:44
  influenced by Judaizers, who think they can earn their
• 20:46
  salvation or at least contribute to it by obeying the Law.
• 20:49
  So Paul is building a fence to protect the root of our
• 20:52
  salvation. He's saying it's all of grace
• 20:54
  through faith. 100% he's protecting the free gift.
• 20:59
  James, however, is combating the opposite error.
• 21:02
  Antinomianism, A dead faith. A dead faith.
• 21:06
  He's writing to people in the church who are saying, oh, I
• 21:08
  believe in Jesus, but their lives are full of sin.
• 21:11
  They show no love for their brother.
• 21:13
  They have no spiritual fruit whatsoever.
• 21:15
  They have what he calls a dead faith.
• 21:17
  So James isn't talking about the root of salvation, he's talking
• 21:20
  about the fruit of salvation. That's.
• 21:21
  Correct. Paul has answered the question
• 21:23
  How does a Sinner get right with God?
• 21:26
  James is answering the question How can you tell if someone's
• 21:28
  face is real? Two different questions.
• 21:31
  Now let's go to the lexical analysis.
• 21:33
  The keyword here is justify right Dicayo in the Greek.
• 21:38
  Yes, de kayo. Does it mean the exact same
• 21:40
  thing in both places? No, and the context dictates
• 21:42
  that it can't. Paul uses De Kayo in the
• 21:45
  forensic sense. Forensic like a courtroom.
• 21:47
  Exactly. It means to declare righteous.
• 21:50
  It's a legal verdict. God the judge looks at the
• 21:53
  Sinner who has faith in Christ, and because of Christ's perfect
• 21:57
  righteousness imputed to them, he slams the gavel down and
• 22:00
  declares them not guilty, righteous in my sight.
• 22:03
  OK, that's Paul's meaning. A legal declaration.
• 22:06
  What about James? James uses decaio in the
• 22:09
  demonstrative sense, means to vindicate or to show to be
• 22:13
  righteous. It's about evidence.
• 22:15
  Can you give another example of that usage?
• 22:17
  Sure, Jesus himself uses it this way in Luke 7 when he says
• 22:20
  wisdom is justified by all her children.
• 22:23
  He doesn't mean wisdom is legally declared righteous.
• 22:26
  He means wisdom is shown to be true.
• 22:28
  It is vindicated by its results, by its fruit.
• 22:30
  So James is saying you claim you have faith.
• 22:33
  Prove it. Show me.
• 22:35
  Justify your claim by your works.
• 22:37
  Let your works demonstrate that your faith is real and not dead.
• 22:40
  You've got it. Paul is Speaking of the root.
• 22:42
  We are declared righteous by faith alone.
• 22:45
  James is Speaking of the fruit. Our real faith is demonstrated
• 22:48
  to be alive by our works. And if we connect this all back
• 22:51
  to Christ, he's the resolution. He is Christ fulfilled the law
• 22:55
  perfectly, resolving the legal tension that Paul talks about,
• 22:58
  and the risen Christ lives in the believer by his Spirit,
• 23:01
  empowering the practical works of love that James talks about.
• 23:05
  It is not faith versus works, it's that a living faith works.
• 23:10
  I love that it takes what looks like a contradiction and turns
• 23:13
  it into a beautiful, complete picture of of the Christian
• 23:17
  life, the root and the fruit. And that really brings us to a
• 23:20
  major pivot point in our whole discussion today.
• 23:23
  OK, we have been using our head, our logic, our Greek and Hebrew
• 23:27
  lexicons, our systematic theology to solve these puzzles.
• 23:30
  And that is good and right. We must do that.
• 23:32
  But the Bible isn't just a book of logic puzzles.
• 23:35
  No, it's not. And sometimes the Emporia is not
• 23:38
  meant to be solved with lexicons.
• 23:39
  Sometimes it is meant to be felt.
• 23:41
  And this brings us to Section 5, sanctified perplexity.
• 23:44
  This is where we shift gears from sort of explaining the text
• 23:48
  to sitting in the text. Exactly.
• 23:50
  Our source material calls this sanctified perplexity.
• 23:52
  I really like that phrase, it feels right.
• 23:54
  What does it mean? It means that God sometimes uses
• 23:57
  a poria, these impasses, not to make us smarter, but to make us
• 24:01
  humbler. He uses it to humble the proud
• 24:05
  intellect and to authorize even command prayer.
• 24:09
  So when we hit a wall of emotion or suffering in the text, it's
• 24:13
  not a sign of unbelief to be confused or to cry out.
• 24:15
  Not at all. It is what our sources called
• 24:17
  covenant speech. Like when the psalmist cries
• 24:19
  out, How long, O Lord, will you forget me forever?
• 24:22
  Exactly. That is a form of oporia.
• 24:24
  We could call it an existential oporia.
• 24:27
  The psalmist knows theologically that God is good and faithful,
• 24:31
  but his lived experience in that moment is pain and abandonment.
• 24:35
  The gap between those two things, theology and experience,
• 24:38
  creates the holy perplexity. And God includes that cry in His
• 24:41
  inspired word. He gives us the words to pray
• 24:44
  when we're in that gap. He does.
• 24:46
  What are the other types of oporia that our source material
• 24:48
  identifies in this category? Well, there's epistemic oporia.
• 24:51
  This is what you see in the Wisdom literature.
• 24:52
  Like Ecclesiastes, who can know the mind of the Lord, it
• 24:56
  confronts the hard limits of human knowledge.
• 24:59
  We can't figure it all out. We can't.
• 25:01
  Then there's theodicy, oporia. This is a big one.
• 25:04
  It's a problem of God's justice versus the constant presence of
• 25:07
  evil. Why do the wicked prosper?
• 25:10
  Asaph asks in Psalm 73. A backhoe asks it too.
• 25:14
  It's a question that echoes through the ages.
• 25:16
  And finally, there's narrative aquaria.
• 25:18
  You see this all over the Gospels.
• 25:19
  The disciples are constantly confused.
• 25:21
  They're in a state of aphoria. They see Jesus stole the storm
• 25:24
  and they ask who then is this, That even the wind and waves
• 25:29
  obey him? They don't have a category for
• 25:31
  Him yet. The miracle creates a question.
• 25:33
  So what is the function of all this perplexity?
• 25:36
  Why does God sometimes leave us in the dark?
• 25:38
  It acts as a spiritual speed bump.
• 25:40
  It's a safeguard. It prevents us from reading
• 25:42
  scripture like it's a car repair manual that can be mastered and
• 25:46
  then put on a shelf. If we understood everything
• 25:47
  instantly, we'd become incredibly arrogant.
• 25:49
  We would The impasse forces the reader to stop, to confess.
• 25:54
  I am not the measure of what is true.
• 25:57
  God is, my understanding, is finite.
• 25:59
  His is infinite. It trains us in patients,
• 26:01
  doesn't it? We have to wait on the Lord.
• 26:03
  We have to trust Him even when we can't trace Him.
• 26:05
  Precisely. It trains patients under
• 26:08
  Providence. It teaches us to wait for God's
• 26:11
  timing and God's answers without walking away from God Himself.
• 26:15
  Now this brings up a really, really practical issue for us as
• 26:18
  modern English readers. OK, if the aporia, the
• 26:21
  roughness, the question, the confusion, if that's part of
• 26:26
  God's teaching tool, then we need to make sure our Bible
• 26:29
  translations actually show it to us.
• 26:31
  Yes, this is section 6 translation philosophy.
• 26:35
  This is a critical point. The issue here, as our sources
• 26:38
  frame it, is preservation versus domestication.
• 26:42
  Domestication. That's a strong word.
• 26:43
  It sounds like trying to tame a wild animal.
• 26:45
  And that's exactly what can happen sometimes.
• 26:47
  Some translators, with the very best of intentions, sometimes
• 26:51
  try to smooth out the biblical text, to make it immediately
• 26:54
  understandable, to make it read like a smooth modern English
• 26:57
  book. But in doing so, they can
• 26:58
  actually remove the formative sting of the original Hebrew or
• 27:02
  Greek. They can solve the euphoria for
• 27:03
  you before you even get to feel it.
• 27:05
  Exactly. Give us some specific
• 27:07
  translation moves we should watch out for.
• 27:09
  One of the big ones is the question to statement shift.
• 27:12
  In the Hebrew of lament Psalm, a voice might be a sharp, urgent,
• 27:16
  confrontational question aimed at God.
• 27:19
  Why have you cast me off? But a translator aiming for
• 27:22
  smoothness might soften it into a statement about the speaker's
• 27:25
  feelings. I feel as though you have cast
• 27:28
  me off. Do you see the difference?
• 27:30
  A. Huge difference.
• 27:31
  It takes all the edge off the confrontation with God.
• 27:34
  It turns a cry of the heart into a polite theological
• 27:37
  observation. It does.
• 27:39
  Another one is reducing repetition.
• 27:41
  In Psalm 13, the phrase how long is hammered over and over again.
• 27:45
  How long, O Lord, how long will I take counsel in my soul?
• 27:50
  How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?
• 27:52
  It creates this rhythm of desperation and waiting.
• 27:55
  Yes, but that kind of repetition isn't considered good English
• 27:59
  style, so a translator might be tempted to remove some of them
• 28:03
  for the sake of literary flow. And in doing so, you lose the
• 28:06
  emotional feeling of the prolonged waiting.
• 28:08
  And you also mentioned smoothing out abruptness.
• 28:11
  Yes, the biblical writers, especially in Hebrew narrative,
• 28:14
  will sometimes jump from one thought to another without a
• 28:17
  connecting word. It's jarring.
• 28:19
  It's supposed to be jarring. If a translator adds a therefore
• 28:23
  or a because or a so, then that isn't actually there in the
• 28:27
  Greek or Hebrew. They are doing the interpretive
• 28:30
  thinking for you. They're resolving the aporia
• 28:33
  before you even feel the jolt. And even something as simple as
• 28:36
  punctuation can matter. Hugely, a question mark versus a
• 28:40
  period can change the entire theology of a verse.
• 28:43
  Is the author stating a fact or are they questioning God's
• 28:47
  action? That's a fundamental difference.
• 28:49
  So what's the practical advice for a listener?
• 28:52
  We're not saying everyone listening needs to go out and
• 28:53
  learn Hebrew and Greek tomorrow. No, not at all.
• 28:56
  But what you should do is compare translations.
• 28:58
  Get a good more literal formal equivalence translation like the
• 29:03
  ESV, the NASD, or the KJV that tends to preserve the structure
• 29:07
  and even the weirdness of the original, and compare it with a
• 29:10
  more dynamic thought for thought translation like the NIV or the
• 29:13
  NLT. See where they differ,
• 29:15
  especially in the Psalms or the Prophets.
• 29:17
  And the key take away is do not assume that smooth English is
• 29:21
  always better English. That's it.
• 29:24
  Sometimes the text is supposed to be difficult.
• 29:26
  It is supposed to slow you down. If you're reading a Psalm of
• 29:29
  lament, and it feels polite and tidy and comfortable, you might
• 29:32
  be missing the whole point. OK, let's look at some of these
• 29:34
  emotional roadblocks, Section 7 case studies and perplexity.
• 29:38
  You mentioned the Psalms. Let's talk about Psalm 88.
• 29:42
  Psalm 88. It's often called the darkest
• 29:45
  Psalm in the entire Psalter. Why is that?
• 29:48
  Because it ends without any resolution.
• 29:50
  Almost every other lament Psalm, no matter how dark it gets, ends
• 29:54
  with a turn to praise or a statement of trust.
• 29:56
  Yet I will praise him. But I have trusted in your
• 29:59
  steadfast love. But not Psalm 80. 8 Not Psalm
• 30:02
  88. It ends with the devastating
• 30:03
  words. Darkness is my closest friend.
• 30:07
  And that's it. The Psalm just stops.
• 30:08
  That is so heavy. Why in the world is that in the
• 30:11
  Bible? What's the purpose of it?
• 30:13
  The lesson here is so weighty and so pastoral.
• 30:16
  God in his wisdom and mercy places a prayer and Holy
• 30:19
  Scripture for the Saint who cannot yet see the light.
• 30:21
  It keeps the suffer within faith's vocabulary.
• 30:25
  Even in the absolute pitch black darkness, the psalmist is still
• 30:29
  talking to God. He's not talking about God.
• 30:32
  He's complaining to God. And that is an act of faith.
• 30:35
  It validates the experience of the believer who is in the
• 30:38
  valley of the shadow of death and can't see the path out yet.
• 30:42
  That is so comforting. It means your darkness does not
• 30:44
  disqualify you from the covenant.
• 30:46
  It doesn't mean your faith is gone.
• 30:48
  What about job? The end of the book, chapters 38
• 30:50
  through 42, right? Job spends 30 something chapters
• 30:54
  demanding a trial. He wants to argue his case
• 30:57
  before God. He wants reasons.
• 30:59
  He wants an explanation for his suffering.
• 31:01
  And when God finally shows up in the whirlwind, what does he do?
• 31:05
  He asks questions. He doesn't give answers, he asks
• 31:07
  questions. Hundreds of them.
• 31:09
  Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?
• 31:12
  Tell me if you have understanding, Have you
• 31:14
  commanded the morning since your days began, God's answer to
• 31:18
  Job's demand for reasons that a long series of unanswerable
• 31:21
  questions? On the surface it seems like a
• 31:23
  total non answer. God just dodges the question.
• 31:25
  But it's actually the ultimate answer.
• 31:28
  It is the divine cure for the poison of rationalistic pride.
• 31:32
  Job learns that tree wisdom is not about mastering the reasons
• 31:35
  for his suffering, it's about reverent trust in the all wise
• 31:39
  Creator who runs the universe. So the euphoria, the lack of a
• 31:43
  neat, tidy explanation, is the very thing that brings Job to
• 31:47
  his knees in worship and repentance.
• 31:49
  He is, he says. I had heard of you by the
• 31:51
  hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you.
• 31:54
  Therefore I despise myself and repent.
• 31:56
  In Dust and Ashes he gets a vision of God, not a list of
• 31:59
  reasons. Let's move to the New Testament
• 32:01
  Mark, chapter 4, verse 41, the stealing of the storm.
• 32:05
  A great example. The miracle itself resolves the
• 32:08
  physical storm. The waves stop, the wind ceases.
• 32:12
  But it immediately creates an internal euphoria for the
• 32:14
  disciples. They're terrified, you're
• 32:15
  terrified. And they ask each other, Who
• 32:17
  then is this, That even the wind and the sea obey him?
• 32:21
  You would think they'd just be relieved.
• 32:22
  Phew, that was close. Oh good, we're safe.
• 32:24
  But they're actually more afraid of the man in the boat than they
• 32:27
  were of the storm outside the boat.
• 32:29
  Because they are suddenly confronted with raw, untamed
• 32:32
  divine authority. The question Who then is This is
• 32:36
  the point. It's meant to linger in the air.
• 32:38
  It draws the reader into the same awe and Worshipful
• 32:41
  recognition. It's a holy fear.
• 32:44
  And then we have to talk about the ultimate oporia, Mark
• 32:47
  chapter 15, verse 34, at the cry of dereliction from the cross.
• 32:50
  Illoy illoy lamasa bakfani, which is my God, My God, why
• 32:54
  have you forsaken me? This is Jesus, the eternal Son
• 32:57
  of God, and he is asking why? It is the deepest, darkest why
• 33:01
  in the history of the universe. And notice that question is not
• 33:04
  ignored. It is not suppressed, it is not
• 33:06
  explained away, it is borne by Christ himself.
• 33:09
  It's a covenantal lament. He's quoting the opening line of
• 33:11
  Psalm 22. Yes, it is the ultimate lament
• 33:14
  on the lips of the Messiah. The lesson here is that the
• 33:16
  deepest questions of human suffering and divine abandonment
• 33:19
  are not alien to God. They are taken into the very
• 33:22
  life of the Trinity of the Cross.
• 33:23
  The ephoria of the cross. How can the just die for the
• 33:27
  unjust? How can the beloved Son be
• 33:29
  forsaken? That central mystery is the
• 33:31
  resolution to all our other smaller questions.
• 33:35
  It is We don't have a God who sits apart from our confusion
• 33:38
  and perplexity. We have a God who entered into
• 33:40
  it and bore it for us. That is incredibly powerful.
• 33:44
  The center of everything. So bringing this all together
• 33:46
  now, Section 8 application, how does understanding of poria
• 33:51
  affect our head, our heart and our hands?
• 33:54
  OK, for the head, for our intellect, it means first the
• 33:58
  renewal of the mind. We need to be good theologians.
• 34:02
  We need to define our terms clearly, like justification and
• 34:06
  decree and immutability. The hard work of study.
• 34:09
  Yes, but more than that, we need to confront the idol of
• 34:13
  rationalism. The idea that if I don't
• 34:15
  understand it, it must be wrong. Right.
• 34:17
  That is the essence of intellectual pride.
• 34:19
  We must submit our finite reason to God's infinite revelation.
• 34:23
  We are the creature. He is the Creator.
• 34:25
  And what about for the harder affections?
• 34:27
  This moves us from anxiety to doxology.
• 34:29
  When we realized that the the Bible honestly includes things
• 34:32
  like Psalm 88 or the cry of Job or the lament of Christ, it
• 34:35
  gives immense comfort to weary Saints.
• 34:38
  It tells us it's OK to not be OK sometimes.
• 34:40
  It does. It tells us that God is as they
• 34:43
  am says deep in unfathomable minds of never failing skill.
• 34:47
  He is past finding out, and yet He has revealed Himself
• 34:52
  sufficiently for our salvation. We can rest in His good
• 34:55
  character even when we cannot understand His mysterious hand.
• 34:59
  And finally, the hands are action.
• 35:01
  How does this cash out in our lives?
• 35:04
  This leads to grateful obedience.
• 35:06
  In Reformed theology, we call this the third use of the law,
• 35:09
  the law as a guide for the believer.
• 35:12
  We do not obey God's commands in order to earn his favor.
• 35:14
  That's the deadly error of legalism that Paul fought.
• 35:17
  We obey because we already have His favor freely given to us
• 35:20
  through our union with Christ. The imperative, the command to
• 35:23
  do this, is always grounded in the indicative, the declaration
• 35:27
  that you are this in Christ. Ideally put, because we are
• 35:30
  united to Christ, we are empowered by His Spirit to do
• 35:32
  the good works that God prepared beforehand for us to walk in
• 35:36
  obedience flows from grace. This is huge implications for
• 35:39
  how we teach and preach to, which is our 9th and final
• 35:41
  section. If you're a pastor or a Sunday
• 35:44
  school teacher or a Bible study leader listening to this, what
• 35:48
  is the big take away? For everyone in the church who
• 35:50
  teaches, we must learn not to outrun the text.
• 35:55
  Do not rush to the finish line before the author does.
• 35:57
  Exactly. Teachers should not rush to wrap
• 35:59
  it up with a neat little bow and a quick slogan.
• 36:02
  If the text leaves a question hanging in the air, let it hang
• 36:05
  there for a moment. Let the congregation feel the
• 36:08
  weight of it. Preaching must let the question
• 36:10
  land before it offers the answer Yes.
• 36:13
  If you try to answer the question Why does God allow
• 36:16
  suffering in 10 seconds with a cheap cliche, you have not
• 36:20
  helped anyone. In fact, you've probably hurt
• 36:22
  them. It's disrespectful to the weight
• 36:24
  of the biblical text and, more importantly, to the real pain of
• 36:27
  the listener in the Pew. It is.
• 36:29
  This whole approach to oporia rebukes 3 major errors we see in
• 36:33
  the church today. First, it rebukes pragmatism.
• 36:36
  Technique driven Christianity that treats the Bible like a
• 36:39
  self help manual. 5 steps to a happy life, right?
• 36:42
  The Bible is not a book of tips and tricks.
• 36:45
  Second, it rebukes triumphalism. The unstated idea that mature
• 36:50
  Christians never struggle, never doubt, never weep.
• 36:53
  The presence of oporia all over scripture proves that is a
• 36:57
  destructive lie. The holiest Saints in the Bible
• 37:00
  were often the most perplexed. And the third error.
• 37:03
  Mysticism. This is the era of trying to
• 37:06
  seek a private personal revelation from God to bypass
• 37:10
  the hard work of wrestling with the biblical tension.
• 37:13
  The Bible is too hard or confusing, so I'll just close my
• 37:15
  eyes and listen for a little voice in my head.
• 37:17
  Exactly. No.
• 37:18
  God speaks definitively through his word even, and I would say
• 37:22
  especially in the difficult, perplexing, oporia inducing
• 37:26
  parts. That is such a vital warning for
• 37:29
  our age. So as we wrap up this deep dive,
• 37:31
  let's just summarize what we've discovered.
• 37:33
  The journey through biblical oporia, if we take it
• 37:36
  faithfully, is an ascent into worship.
• 37:38
  We started with a head, using our exegetical toolkit to solve
• 37:42
  the puzzles of First Samuel and James.
• 37:44
  And then we move to the heart, learning to sit in the darkness
• 37:46
  and lament with the Psalms and with Job.
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  And what we see is that all of these different roads, the
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  logical and the emotional, they all lead to one place.
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  They lead to Christ. They lead to Christ.
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  All upori in the Bible ultimately points forward to him
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  the why of suffering. It finds its deepest answer at
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  the cross, the tension between God's perfect justice and his
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  lavish mercy. They meet and are satisfied at
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  the cross. The perplexity of the disciples
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  asking who is this is finally resolved in the declaration of
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  the resurrection, my Lord and my God.
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  We move from perplexity to adoration because God has
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  secured all of His promises for us in His Son.
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  Amen. Amen.
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  So here's a final thought for you, our listener, to take with
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  you. The next time you are reading
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  your Bible and you hit one of those roadblock verses, a verse
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  that confuses you or offends your modern sensibilities or
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  maybe just breaks your heart. Do not try to smooth it out.
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  And please do not just skip. It sit in it for a moment.
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  Yeah, let it humble you. Ask yourself, what does this
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  difficulty reveal about God's awesome incomprehensibility?
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  And what does it reveal about my own smallness, my own
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  intellectual and spiritual dependence on Him?
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  Let the text question you before you rush to question the text.
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  That is the path to true wisdom. Thank you so much for joining us
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  on this deep dive into reformed thinking.
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  It has been a real pleasure. We will see you next time.