Latest / Reformed Thinking / Human Sacrifice and the Justice of God | John Owen

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Human Sacrifice and the Justice of God | John Owen · Reformed Thinking

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In the 16th century, a Spanish soldier captured in the Americas
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is dragged up the steep, blood stained steps of a stone temple
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right. He is held down on an altar.
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His heart is physically removed from his chest and as his body
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tumbles down the temple steps, he cries out to his surviving
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friends in Spanish. It is a brutal historical image.
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It is, but then half a world away, centuries earlier, you
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have Viking tribes systematically drowning 99 men
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in the freezing waters of January.
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Yes, and if you jump back even further to the ancient Near
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East, you find kings placing their own children in the fire
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to appease unseen gods. Across completely different
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eras. Right.
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So we are talking about populations separated by vast,
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uncrossable oceans and thousands of years of history.
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How did entirely disconnected civilizations arrive at the
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precise same horrifying solution for their guilt?
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Well, it defies natural sociological development.
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When you observe human behavior across isolated populations, you
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know you expect massive variations in how they govern or
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how they build and how they solve problems.
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But when you look at the human conscience attempting to resolve
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its own guilt before the divine, that variation just vanishes.
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You see a terrifying uniformity. Welcome to Reformed Thinking.
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Today's deep dive is custom tailored for you, the listener.
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We are unpacking A challenging, staggering historical and
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theological text. We are investigating a
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dissertation on divine justice by the English Puritan
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theologian John Owen. And our mission today is highly
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specific. We are going to examine John
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Owens historical and scriptural analysis of one of the darkest
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human practices imaginable, which human sacrifice.
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Yes, and our goal is to uncover what this global, horrifying
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custom reveals about the innate human conscience.
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We want to see the natural knowledge of God's vindicatory
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justice and the absolute necessity of a true perfect
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substitute for sin. OK, let's unpack this right from
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the start. We are talking about the
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geographical and cultural scope of blood atonement.
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It is a massive scope. I want to pitch a mechanical
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analogy to you, the listener, to frame what we are looking at.
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Imagine finding the precise same corrupted software code on
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completely disconnected computers all over the globe.
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I like that analogy. Machines that have never been on
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the same network, built by entirely different companies,
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separated by oceans, yet under enough processing stress they
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all crash in the precise same way.
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Displaying the precise same fatal error message.
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Right. John Owen argues that human
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sacrifice is essentially that fatal error message.
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And if we apply that software model to John Owen's catalog of
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cultures, the geographical spread defies any natural
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explanation. It really does.
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He details historical testimonies from civilizations
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that had zero contact to one another.
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Let us start with the ancient Near East, specifically looking
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at the Jews. OK.
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Owen points out that even the covenant people who possessed
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the revealed law of God fell into this forbidden wickedness.
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Which requires us to pause and think about the context.
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These are the descendants of the Exodus.
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Yes. These are the people who
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received the law at Sinai where God that explicitly outlawed
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these practices, yet the gravitational pull of blood
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sacrifice was so strong it overrode their explicit legal
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code. It demonstrates the sheer force
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of a guilty conscience. When the Israelites turned away
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from the true worship of God, their conscience did not simply
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go quiet. It demanded appeasement.
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Right. They were urged on by the
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immense psychological pressure of a terrified conscience, and
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they began offering their own children as burnt offerings to
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Moloch or Bale. And Bale in this context was
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essentially the Saturn of the Tyrians.
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Yes, the rituals involved heating a hollow bronze statue
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of the God from below until it was glowing red hot.
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Wow, and then placing an infant into its arms.
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The beating of drums would drown out the cries.
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That is just unimaginable. God severely punished them for
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this, sending prophets to condemn the Valley of Hinnom
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where this took place, but the internal urge driving the
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Israelites to do it was overwhelming.
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So that covers the ancient Near East.
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But Owen does not stop there. He moves the lens to Northern
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Europe. He brings in the historical
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records of the Germans and the Goths.
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Owen references the Roman historian Tacitus and the Gothic
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historian Jornandus. What do they record?
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They document how these tribes worship their equivalent of
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Mercury by sacrificing human victims on specific days.
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They also appease their God of War, Mars, with the violent
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deaths of their captives. So it was not a chaotic heat of
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the moment slaughter on a battlefield.
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No, it was highly systematized. The warfare itself was brutal,
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sure, but the religious appeasement following the
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warfare was calculated ritualistic murder, right?
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They believed that the blood spilled in combat was
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insufficient. A formal religious execution was
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required to balance the cosmic scales and secure future favor.
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If you are listening to this on your commute or at the gym, it
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is easy to write these people off as ancient uneducated
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Barbarians. You might think, well, they just
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did not have science of philosophy yet.
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But Owen anticipates that. He does.
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He looks at the centers of classical civilization.
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He looks directly at the Gauls and the Romans.
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Owen brings in Cicero and Julius Caesar's first hand accounts of
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the Druids. And the Druids were not mindless
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savages. Not at all.
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They were the intellectual, legal, and religious elite of
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Celtic society. They memorized massive amounts
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of lore, studied astronomy, and philosophized about the nature
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of the gods. And Caesar notes a specific
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druidic doctrine that should make anyone familiar with
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reformed theology stop and pay attention.
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Here is where it gets highly fascinating.
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What? Was the doctrine.
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Caesar recorded that the Druids believed unless a human life be
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given for a human life, the heavenly deities cannot be
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appeased. Let me.
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Stop you right there. A human life for a human life
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that sounds identical to the theological concept of penal
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substitution. It is a dark, distorted
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reflection of the actual truth. We need to define what penal
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substitution is in a biblical framework to see why this is so
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terrifying. Please do.
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Penal substitution asserts that the penalty for sin, which is
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death, must be paid. God's justice requires it, but
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God in his grace provides a substitute to endure that penal
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consequence in the place of the guilty party.
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Jesus Christ is that substitute. The Druids grasp the first half
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of that equation with chilling clarity.
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They recognize the scale of human guilt and concluded that
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animal blood was insufficient. They reasoned that if a human
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committed the offense against heaven, a human life had to be
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the payment. Yes, they understood the
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mechanism of the debt, but they were completely blind to the
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identity of the true pair, so they just started grabbing
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people to settle the Ledger. They build massive Wicker men,
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filled them with living people. Often thieves are captives, but
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innocent people if they ran short and they set them on fire.
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And this logic was not isolated to gall.
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No Tacitus records the cruel superstitions in the Groves of
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Anglesey among the Britons, where they sacrifice guests and
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captives, reading the future in the entrails of the murdered.
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And the timeline just keeps extending.
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We see the practices of the Franks.
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Yes, the historian Procopius writes about them.
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He says the Franks made use of human victims even after they
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nominally adopted Christianity. They would throw captives into
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the river as the vanguard of their army cross, mixing Pagan
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appeasement with Christian military campaigns.
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It is a bizarre mixture. We see it with the Normans.
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We see the Danes sacrificing 99 human creatures every January to
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secure the coming year. The Egyptians had systems of
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human sacrifice. And then, crossing the Atlantic
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entirely, we hit the Americas. Which brings us back to the
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Spanish soldier you mentioned in the introduction, right?
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Owen references Peter Martyr's account of the Spanish conquest.
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When the Spanish arrived in the Americas, they encountered
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civilizations that had been utterly severed from the EUR
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Asian landmass for thousands of years.
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They had no contact with the Druids, no contact with the
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Tyrians, no contact with the Danes.
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Yeah, they had constructed massive pyramidal altars
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specifically designed for blood atonement.
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The Aztec Empire ran on an economy of human sacrifice.
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They believed the sun would literally stop moving and the
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universe would collapse if the guides were not fed with human
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hearts. The sheer volume of executions
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carried out to appease their deities is historically
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staggering. So what does this all mean?
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We have this global footprint of blood and altars.
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How does Owen synthesize this mountain of horrific data into a
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theological verdict? Owen argues that this universal
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panic proves something fundamental about human nature.
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Mankind possesses an innate, unerasable sense of sin.
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In Reformed theology we often refer to the Westminster
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Confessions teaching on the light of nature.
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Yes, the confession states that there is a natural knowledge of
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God and of our own accountability.
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And Owen uses this historical record to prove that the light
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of nature is not a comfortable, gentle glow.
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It is not a warm feeling. No.
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When the conscience is activated by guilt, that light becomes a
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glaring spotlight of condemnation.
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Humanity inherently knows it is guilty, and humanity has an
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inherent expectation of future terrifying judgement.
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They know the ledgers in the red, they know justice is
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coming, They just do not know how to clear the debt.
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Correct. They feel the absolute weight of
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God's vindicatory justice, but without the special revelation
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of the Gospel, without knowing about the cross of Christ, they
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resort to the most extreme, horrifying measures to try and
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balance the scales themselves. They attempt to manufacture
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their own substitute. OK, that establishes the what?
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We see the global footprint of this practice, and we see the
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psychological engine driving it. A guilty conscience terrified of
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divine justice. But I want to shift the
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conversation to the how and why, If humans have this innate
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knowledge of God's justice, why did it manifest in such
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abominable, counterproductive ways?
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Let's bring in the demonic element Owen discusses.
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That is a crucial part of his argument.
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And I want to push back on Owen's premise here.
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If the enemy of mankind, the devil, wants to pull people away
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from God, why encourage any form of religious worship or
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sacrifice at all? That is a fair question.
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Wouldn't the devil prefer straightforward atheism?
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Just convince everyone that God does not exist, there is no
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judgement and they can do whatever they want.
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Why bother with all these complex bloody rituals?
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That is a highly logical question for a person living in
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a post enlightenment secularized world, but it completely
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misunderstands the ancient mind and the nature of the human
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conscience. John Owen provides a brilliant
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framework for understanding the Devil's two pronged strategy.
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You see, atheism is actually an incredibly difficult concept to
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sell to an ancient mind. Because they live so close to
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the elements. Exactly.
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They were surrounded by the terrifying, uncontrollable
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realities of nature, storms, famines, plagues, and they
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possessed that screaming internal conscience we just
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discussed. They knew they were accountable
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to a higher power. So the devil realizes he cannot
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simply turn off the conscience. He cannot erase the hardware of
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the human soul, so instead of trying to delete the conscience,
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he manipulates the software. OK, I am following.
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The first prong of his strategy, according to Owen, is
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counterfeit worship. The enemy knew the prophecies.
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He knew the Son of God was coming in the fullness of time
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to be the one true perfect substitute for human sin.
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So he decides to flood the market with fakes, Yes.
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Think about how counterfeit currency works.
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If you want to undermine a nation's legitimate currency,
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you don't just tell people money doesn't exist.
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Right, you print millions of high quality forged bills and
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flood the economy with them. And by the time the real
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currency is handed to someone, they are completely suspicious
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of it. The devil influenced nations to
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commit these detestable crimes to pre emptively obscure the
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light of the true sacrifice. Wow.
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By filling the globe with endless, horrific human
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sacrifices, he created a chaotic, bloody counterfeit.
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I see. So when the true sacrifice,
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Jesus Christ, is finally offered on the cross, the concept of a
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man dying for the sins of the people is already deeply
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associated with the worst, most barbaric practices of the Pagan
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world. Yes, the Romans look at the
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cross and think, well, we have seen this before in the forests
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of Gaul. This is just primitive
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superstition. Precisely.
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Which leads directly to the second prong of the demonic
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strategy, which is poisoning the well.
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The counterfeit worship trapped the desperate, terrified masses.
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But the devil also needed a strategy for the educated elite,
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the philosophers right. By associating blood atonement
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with horrific, atrocious rights, the Devil aimed to prejudice the
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more acute, intelligent, philosophical parts of mankind
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against the very concept of a life giving sacrifice.
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He wanted the statesman, the educated class, to look at the
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mechanics of atonement and say that is irrational barbarism.
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We are too advanced for that. Owen cites a classical example
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from Cato's districts to demonstrate this.
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The districts were a collection of Latin proverbial wisdom,
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heavily studied in Roman schools.
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What's the verse say the. Specific verse Owen points to
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reads Since it is thyself that art guilty, why need any victim
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die for thee? It is madness to expect
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salvation from the death of another.
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If I am entirely honest, that verse makes a lot of logical
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sense. It does to a human mind.
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If I commit a crime today, say I rob a bank, the judge cannot
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legally sentence my innocent neighbor to prison while letting
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me go free. Our entire modern legal system
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is based on individual culpability.
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How does my neighbor's punishment satisfy my legal
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debt? That is exactly why Owen calls
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that verse a diabolical Oracle. It appeals to natural human
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legal logic. It sounds sophisticated.
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It is a very clean argument. But the devil designed that
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philosophical argument to trap the intellectual class in their
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own pride. By making the concept of
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substitution seem like intellectual madness, he ensures
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that educated people will reject the only actual mechanism God
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provided for salvation. It is a devastating crap.
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If you are terrified and uneducated, you fall into the
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ditch of barbaric superstition, slaughtering captives to appease
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a silent sky. And if you are educated and
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comfortable, you fall into the ditch of intellectual pride,
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rejecting the concept of substitution entirely because it
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offends your human legal sensibilities.
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Either way, you miss the true substitute.
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You miss Christ. And this leads to a fascinating
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historical dynamic. All of this Pagan distortion,
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this counterfeit worship, and this philosophical pride did not
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develop in a vacuum. The biblical narrative was
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unfolding at the same time. The actual timeline of
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redemptive history was playing out on the exact same world
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stage. The surrounding ancient nations
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were watching the Israelites. This is a perspective we often
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miss when we read the Old Testament.
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We tend to read it like a closed room drama.
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Just God and Israel in a bubble. But the neighboring nations, the
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Canaanites, the Phoenicians, The Edomites, they were looking over
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the fence, they were observing the patriarchs.
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They were observing, but they were completely misunderstanding
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the context of God's actions. Let us look at one of the most
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pivotal moments in redemptive history, which is the trial of
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Abraham and Isaac in Genesis 22. The Binding of Isaac.
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Right, God orders Abraham to take his son, his only son
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Isaac, whom he loves, to the region of Moriah and offer him
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there as a burnt offering. It is the ultimate test of
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faith. Abraham obeys.
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He travels for three days, builds the altar, binds his son
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and raises the knife. He demonstrates A sincere heart
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and resolute faith. In fact, the writer of Hebrews
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tells us that Abraham reasoned that God could even raise the
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dead. The Holy Spirit credits Abraham
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as if he had actually offered Isaac because his internal
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compliance was total. But the crucial part of the
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narrative is that God stops him. The Angel of the Lord calls out
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from heaven, halts the execution, and God provides a
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ram caught in the thicket a substitute for the substitute.
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Exactly. But how did the surrounding
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world interpret this event? Abraham was a wealthy, powerful
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figure in the ancient Near East. The fame of this event spread
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across the Eastern nations. They heard the rumors.
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Owen argues that nations ignorant of Abraham's true
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covenantal friendship with God simply saw him as a powerfully
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strong holy man who commanded respect.
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So they looked at the story of Mariah and falsely concluded
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that the divine could be propitiated by the sacrifice of
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a child. They saw the setup, they saw the
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wood, the fire, the sun on the altar, but they completely
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missed the resolution. They missed the voice from
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heaven saying, do not lay a hand on the boy.
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Or worse, they assumed that the willingness to slaughter your
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own child was the ultimate cheat code to unlocking divine favor.
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They thought, well, if Abraham got so rich and powerful because
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he was willing to kill his son, we should actually do it.
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Owen provides a historical connection here that is deeply
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unsettling. He cites the writings of
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Porphyry. Yes, Porphyry was a Neoplatonic
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philosopher who recorded the religious customs of the
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Phoenicians. And Porphyry notes that the
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Phoenicians, in times of great national disaster such as war,
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famine or plague, would sacrifice one of their dearest
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friends or beloved children to appease their gods.
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Not an enemy, not a prisoner of war.
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A beloved child. Which mirrors the specific
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command given to Abraham. Take your son, your only son
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whom you love. Yes, and Owen traces A
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linguistic and genealogical theory to explain how this
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specific distortion spread. He knows that the word
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Phoenician means red, right? This links linguistically to
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Edom, which also translates to red.
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And Edom is the nation descended from Esau, Isaac's son.
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Precisely. Owen suggests that the
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Phoenicians or the Idemians who descended from Esau corrupted
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the oral tradition of their own patriarch.
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Think about the bitter rivalry between Jacob and Esau.
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Esau was the slighted older brother.
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His descendants carried that animosity.
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It is highly plausible that they remembered the traumatic story
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of their grandfather Isaac being bound on the altar by Abraham.
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But over generations, stripped of divine revelation, they
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twisted that historical memory into a recurring ritual
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requirement. That is wild.
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So the very historical event God used to definitively demonstrate
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that he will provide the substitute, the ram in the
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thicket pointing directly to Jesus Christ on the cross, the
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surrounding nations weaponized. They twisted it into a mandate
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to kill their own loved. One, it illustrates the immense
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danger of human tradition separated from the Word of God,
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and Owen is careful to clarify why God strictly forbade human
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sacrifice both at Moriah and later in the Levitical law.
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The first reason is straightforward.
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God values human life and intends to protect human blood
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from murder. But there is a much heavier
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theological mechanism at play. What is a mechanical theological
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reason? We established that God's
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vindicatory justice requires a substitute, but that substitute
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must meet specific criteria. OK, all mankind is polluted with
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iniquity, we inherit A sinful nature, and we commit active
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sins. Therefore, no normal human being
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could ever act as a true efficacious type for the
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Immaculate Son of God. Let me make sure I understand
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this. You cannot pay a bankrupt man's
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debt by offering the empty wallet of another bankrupt man.
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That is an excellent analogy. A sinful human dying for another
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sinful human accomplishes nothing in the court of divine
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justice, because the substitute already owes a debt for their
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own sin. They have no surplus
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righteousness to apply to someone else.
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The substitute must be spotless. Isaac was spared not just
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because God hates human sacrifice, but because Isaac was
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a Sinner. He was fundamentally
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disqualified from being the true lamb.
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Only a perfect, sinless human could satisfy the demand, which
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is why the Incarnation of Christ is an absolute necessity.
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OK, that makes perfect logical sense for the story of Abraham
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and Isaac. It was an aborted sacrifice
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meant to point to God's provision.
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But we have to address the most difficult text in this entire
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discussion. We are moving from a sacrifice
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that God stopped to a vow that was actually carried out.
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You were. Referring to the history of
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Jephthah. Yes, the Jephthah dilemma in
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Judges Chapter 11. I will admit this text has
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frustrated me for a long time. It is a notoriously difficult
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passage. We have this man Jephthah, who
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is explicitly celebrated for his faith in the Hall of Faith in
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Hebrews Chapter 11. Yet in Judges he appears to
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sacrifice his own daughter as a burnt offering.
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It is a massive textual knot. I need you to walk the listener
20:28
through the specific legal and historical frameworks Onan uses
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to untangle this. It requires careful, rigorous
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legal analysis. Let us establish the facts of
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the narrative. Jephthah is a military commander
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in Israel. Right.
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He is facing a massive existential threat from the
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Ammonite army. Before heading into battle, he
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makes a vow to the Lord. He says, If you give the
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ammonites into my hands, whatever comes out of the door
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of my house to meet me when I return in triumph will be the
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Lord's, and I will sacrifice it as a burnt offering.
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He wins a crushing victory. He returns home and the first
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thing to come out of his house is his only daughter dancing to
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celebrate his return. And the text says he tore his
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clothes in despair, told her about the vow, and after giving
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her two months to mourn her virginity, he did to her as he'd
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vowed. Right.
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Owen thoroughly dissects the three possible interpretations
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of this vow, based strictly on the Levitical law code that
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Jephthah would have been operating under.
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What is option one? Option 1 is that it was a simple
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singular vow with a clause for redemption.
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Breakdown the mechanics of a simple vow for us.
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Under Leviticus chapter 27, if an Israelite made a singular
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voluntary vow dedicating a human being to the Lord, say
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dedicating themselves or a family member to service at the
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Tabernacle, they could legally redeem that person.
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They could pay a specific valuation to the priest.
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Yes, for a female between the ages of five and 20, the
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redemption price was 10 shekels of silver.
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So if it was a simple vow, Jeff though, just goes to the priest,
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hands over 10 silver coins and his daughter lives and goes
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free. Yes.
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But Owen dismisses this interpretation entirely.
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Why? Jethal was a seasoned leader in
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Israel. He was familiar with the law and
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Israel at history, as we see in his earlier diplomatic messages
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to the Yemenite king. If he had made a simple vow, he
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could have easily paid the valuation.
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That makes sense. There would be absolutely no
22:21
reason for him to rent his clothes, collapse in grief, and
22:24
say his daughter had brought him very low.
22:26
The trauma in the text makes no sense if A10 shekel loophole
22:30
existed. OK, that eliminates option one.
22:32
What is option 2? Option 2 is the literal
22:34
interpretation he offered her physically as a burnt offering
22:38
on an altar, burning her to ashes, as the raw text of his
22:42
vow originally stated. But Owen vigorously dismisses
22:45
this as well. He does.
22:47
But wait. If Jephthah was a military
22:49
leader in Israel, he knows God hates human burnt offerings.
22:54
He physically couldn't drag his daughter to a Levitical priest
22:57
at the Tabernacle and ask them to perform a human sacrifice.
23:00
The priest would have refused, and he likely would have been
23:02
stoned by the congregation. So how could option 2 even
23:06
happen? It couldn't legally happen
23:08
within the framework of Israelite worship.
23:10
A burnt offering requires A consecrated priest to minister
23:14
the blood and arrange the pieces on the bronze altar.
23:17
No legitimate Levitical priest would have participated in such
23:20
an abomination. God had explicitly condemned
23:23
human burnt offerings as the practice of the surrounding
23:26
pagans. Jeff The could not have executed
23:29
A legitimate sanctioned burnt offering with a human victim.
23:33
So if he cannot buy her back with silver, and he cannot burn
23:36
her on the altar because the priest would reject it, what
23:39
loophole did he think he was falling through?
23:41
What is option 3? Option 3 relies on a very
23:44
specific, severe category of devotion found at the very end
23:49
of Leviticus. Chapter 27 is called the Cherim
23:52
Vow. Cherim explain the mechanics of
23:54
that. But cherim vow is a declaration
23:56
of devotion to destruction. Think of it like an irrevocable
24:00
legal trust. In modern finance, if you place
24:03
an asset into an irrevocable trust, you forfeit all ownership
24:07
forever. There is no legal mechanism to
24:09
buy it back or change your mind. The asset is gone.
24:12
In the Levitical system, a cherim was a thing devoted to
24:15
God that absolutely could not be redeemed with silver.
24:18
What kinds of things were put under a cherim bow?
24:20
It was typically applied to the enemies of God.
24:22
For instance, when Israel conquered Jericho, the entire
24:25
city was declared cherim, devoted to destruction.
24:27
No plunder could be kept. Every living thing had to be put
24:31
to the sword. Right.
24:32
The law in Leviticus 27 verse 29 states explicitly no person
24:37
devoted to destruction may be ransomed.
24:40
They are to be put to death. So you were saying, Jeff, that
24:42
accidentally categorized his own daughter as an enemy combatant
24:46
devoted to destruction? That is, Owen's a rigorous
24:49
conclusion. Jephal made a rash, overly broad
24:52
vow, categorizing whatever came out of his house as cherim.
24:56
He may have assumed an animal would come out, or perhaps a
24:59
slave he could dedicated to temple service.
25:01
But by framing the vow as absolute and unredeemable, he
25:05
trapped himself when his daughter emerged.
25:08
He believes he was legally banned by the highest, most
25:10
severe law of devotion. He adhered strictly to the law
25:13
of the Cherim vow. Yes, turning her over to be put
25:16
to death. Even though his original
25:17
conception of the vow was deeply flawed and foolish.
25:20
He did not burn her on an altar in a religious ritual, but she
25:24
was executed because she could not be redeemed.
25:26
That is an unbelievable tragedy. It is a portrait of a man
25:30
entirely trapped by his own legalism.
25:32
Constrained by a flawed understanding of God's desires
25:36
and paralyzed by a rash oath. It is a devastating tragedy and
25:40
its impact radiated outward. The surrounding nations saw this
25:44
happen. They saw a great judge of Israel
25:46
seemingly sacrifice his daughter.
25:48
Owen points out that Epiphanius, an early church father, notes
25:51
that the Samaritans later deified Jephthah's daughter,
25:55
celebrating A yearly festival in her honor.
25:57
So we have more Pagan distortion of biblical events.
26:00
It goes even further. The Greek poet seized upon this
26:03
historical event or the rumors of it that filtered through the
26:06
trade routes to create one of their most famous mythological
26:09
dramas. Which one?
26:10
Agamemnon sacrificing his daughter Iphigenia to appease
26:13
the goddess Diana before the Trojan War.
26:16
I hear what Owen is saying about the linguistic shift from
26:19
Gefagenia to Efogenia, but honestly that sounds like a
26:22
massive stretch. Is Owen just playing word games
26:25
to force a connection between a biblical tragedy and a Greek
26:28
myth? Or is there actual historical
26:30
evidence for this translation pipeline?
26:32
It sounds like a stretch to our modern ears, but Owen is
26:35
engaging in classical philology. He traces how the story of a
26:39
commander sacrificing his daughter for military success
26:42
would spread. OK, in Greek, Jephthah's
26:45
daughter would be rendered as Jephthah Genia.
26:48
Over centuries of oral transmission and linguistic
26:51
drift among the Greeks, the pronunciation softens.
26:53
The J drops the consonant shift and Jeff the Genia morphs into
26:58
Iphigenia. Owen argues that the historical
27:00
tragedy in Israel provided the raw narrative hardware that the
27:04
Greeks then dressed up in their own mythological software.
27:06
That interconnectedness is mind blowing.
27:09
It really shows how this desperate urge for atonement
27:12
corrupts everything it touches. It operates like a mechanical
27:15
failure under pressure. Think of a submarine diving too
27:18
deep. Under normal conditions the hull
27:20
holds, but under extreme existential pressure the hull
27:23
cracks and the water rushes in. Yes, we see the human conscience
27:27
reaches breaking point when it is placed under the absolute
27:30
pressure of despair. When humanity abandons truth, or
27:34
when the pressure of external circumstances crushes their
27:37
natural reasoning, the terrified conscience takes over
27:40
completely, demanding the ultimate appeasement.
27:43
Owen gives us 2 extreme historical cases that illustrate
27:47
this submarine hall cracking perfectly.
27:49
Let's look at the first case the King of Moab recorded in Second
27:53
Kings Chapter 3. This is a brutal military
27:56
narrative. The king of Moab is facing a
27:59
combined coalition of the armies of Israel, Judah and Edom.
28:02
He has been driven back to his capital city.
28:04
Kerr, Harris F. The city is surrounded, the
28:07
siege engines are destroying the walls, and the water is likely
28:10
running out. He is an absolute existential
28:12
despair. The text implies he attempts a
28:15
desperate breakout maneuver with 700 swordsmen to breakthrough
28:18
the lines of the King of Edom, but he fails.
28:20
He is pushed back inside. He has no hope of escaping.
28:24
Total suffocating panic. The pressure is at maximum.
28:26
Exactly. So what does a Pagan king do
28:29
when military strategy fails and the conscience is screaming for
28:32
divine intervention? He takes his eldest son, the
28:34
heir to his throne, and offers him as a burnt offering upon the
28:38
city wall in full view of the invading armies.
28:41
He does it to appease the God of his country, Chimash.
28:45
Right. This showcases the extreme
28:47
terminal logic of the terrified human conscience.
28:50
When a man feels the absolute weight of impending doom, the
28:54
natural instinct is to offer the most valuable, most painful
28:57
sacrifice possible. He hopes that the sheer horror
29:00
and cost of the ACT will force the heavens to intervene.
29:04
It is an act of total desperation to relieve the
29:06
immediate, unbearable psychological and circumstantial
29:10
pressure. And the most disturbing part of
29:12
that text is that it seems to work at least circumstantially.
29:15
The text says there was great indignation against Israel and
29:18
they actually withdrew and returned to their own land.
29:20
So from the King of Moab's twisted perspective, sacrificing
29:24
his son saved his city, which only reinforces the demonic
29:27
delusion we talked about earlier.
29:29
Precisely. The enemy uses circumstantial
29:31
outcomes to validate the atrocity.
29:34
The Israelites likely withdrew out of horror, disgust or a
29:37
breakdown in their own coalition's morale upon seeing
29:40
the sacrifice. But the Moabites interpreted it
29:43
as Chimash defeating the God of Israel because he was fed with
29:46
royal blood. Now, what about the second case
29:50
of the conscience breaking the Ruggiani of Sklavonia?
29:54
You mentioned this in our prep notes and it sounds like a
29:56
psychological thriller. It is a chilling historical
29:59
account recorded by the German historian Albertus Krancius.
30:03
It deals with the psychology of apostasy.
30:05
Who were the Mujiani? They were an island people in
30:08
the Baltic Sea region. They were actually reached by
30:11
missionaries and converted to Christianity.
30:13
They adopted the faith, built an oratory in honor of Jesus
30:16
Christ, and dedicated in memory of Saint Vitus, a Christian
30:20
martyr. OK, so they have the light of
30:22
the gospel, they have the true software installed.
30:24
They are building churches. But then they experienced a
30:27
massive spiritual relapse. They fell away from the faith.
30:30
They expelled. The Christian priests drove out
30:33
the believers and completely abandoned the teachings of the
30:35
Gospel. But they didn't become secular
30:37
humanists. Far from it.
30:39
This is where the mechanics of apostasy become horrifying.
30:42
You cannot simply uninstall the religious hardware of the human
30:46
soul. When they rejected the grace of
30:48
the gospel, their conscience did not become neutral, it became
30:52
terrified. They reverted to their Pagan
30:54
operating system, but they use the leftover Christian
30:57
terminology. They took St.
30:58
Vitus, the historical Christian martyr, and elevated him into a
31:02
Pagan bloodthirsty deity. Wait, they turned a Christian
31:05
St. into an idol? Yes, and to appease this new
31:09
terrifying God of their own making, they instituted A yearly
31:13
ritual. What did they do?
31:15
They would sacrifice any Christian they could catch or
31:18
any random merchant who washed up on on their shores, offering
31:21
their blood to Saint Vitus. That is the most twisted irony
31:24
I've ever heard. They took the Gospel, threw away
31:27
the grace, kept the name of a St. and used it to justify
31:31
murdering the very people who originally brought them the
31:33
message of peace. It is the ultimate proof of John
31:36
Owen's central thesis. When the light of the Gospel is
31:39
rejected, the human conscience falls back on the innate demand
31:43
for vindicatory justice. But without the cross of Christ
31:46
to satisfy that demand, the conscience demands fresh blood.
31:50
Superstition replaces grace and violence replaces peace.
31:54
The innate knowledge of justice, when divorced from the provision
31:57
of Christ, is a machine that crushes human beings.
32:01
OK, we need to bring this into the final theological verdict.
32:04
We've spent this entire deep dive looking at the dark
32:07
history, the twisted rituals, the psychological terror.
32:10
Yes, the heavy historical data. Where does this universal urge
32:14
to sacrifice actually come from, fundamentally, and how does Owen
32:18
apply this to the way we understand God today?
32:21
Because if I look at a modern secularized mindset, a lot of
32:24
people, like the deists Owen debated in his own time, believe
32:28
God is just naturally good. They view God as a harmless
32:31
grandfather in the sky. The modern assumption is that
32:34
God is easy to appease. He winks at our faults, He
32:37
understands we are trying our best, and he doesn't require any
32:40
severe payment for wrongs. Just try to be a good person and
32:43
the cosmic scales balance themselves out.
32:45
Right. It is a very comfortable,
32:47
frictionless theology. Owen uses the source material to
32:50
completely dismantle that modern assumption.
32:53
He quotes a story from the Renaissance scholar Erasmus
32:56
about a profane man, a joker, who is buying papal indulgences
33:00
to clear his sins. The man jokingly says, I fear
33:03
rather less the devil should not ratify it, for God by nature is
33:07
easy to be appeased. He is treating God's justice
33:10
like a punchline. He is more worried about the
33:12
devil enforcing a contract than God caring about his.
33:16
Sin and Owen contrasts that flippant, arrogant attitude with
33:20
the universal terror of ancient man.
33:22
The ancients who lived closer to the raw realities of life, death
33:26
and nature knew better. They knew instinctively that a
33:30
holy God is not easily appeased by 1/2 hearted apology or a
33:33
purchased piece of paper. They felt the crushing weight of
33:36
their guilt. Owen argues that the modern
33:38
deist or the modern secularist is actually suppressing the
33:41
natural knowledge of God much more severely than the ancient
33:44
Pagan was. That is a fascinating way to
33:46
look at it. The Pagan was horribly wrong
33:48
about the solution, killing captives or children, but they
33:51
were dead right about the problem.
33:52
Human guilt and divine wrath. The modern secularist is
33:55
entirely wrong about both. Well said.
33:58
Owen then addresses counter argument to his thesis.
34:01
There was a theologian named Samuel Rutherford who argued
34:05
that the Gentiles did not have an innate drive to sacrifice.
34:08
Rutherford theorized that the Pagan nations just borrowed the
34:11
idea of sacrifices from the Jewish ceremonial law.
34:14
They saw the Israelites killing bulls and goats and they just
34:17
copied the cultural practice, twisting it over time.
34:20
Meaning it wasn't an internal hardware issue, just a copied
34:23
cultural trend, like wearing a certain style of clothing
34:26
because you saw a neighboring country do it.
34:28
Yes, a theory of cultural diffusion, but Owen refused this
34:33
thoroughly by pointing to pre mosaic origins.
34:36
He proves that the mechanics of sacrifice predate Moses, Sinai
34:40
and Levitical law by centuries. Look at Job, who is not an
34:43
Israelite and lived before the law was given.
34:45
He is recorded offering burnt offerings for his children
34:48
continually just in case they sinned in their hearts.
34:51
Look at Jethro, the priest of Midian, offering sacrifices
34:54
before the law was handed down. Look at Menathos Egyptian
34:57
chronologies which details sacrificial systems long before
35:00
the Exodus. The time line goes back way
35:02
further than Moses. Fundamentally, Owen traces it
35:05
all the way back to the Garden of Eden.
35:08
After the fall, Adam and Eve recognized their nakedness,
35:11
their guilt, and they tried to cover their own shame with fig
35:14
leaves. That is the first instance of
35:17
human effort trying to cover human sin, but it was
35:20
insufficient. God himself intervened and
35:23
clothed them in animal skins. And you cannot get animal skins
35:27
without an animal dying. Blood had to be shed to cover
35:30
their shame. Exactly.
35:32
God Himself ratified the first covenant of grace by shedding
35:36
blood. From that moment on, mankind
35:39
knew the central equation. Without the shedding of blood,
35:41
there is no remission of sins. That truth was passed down
35:44
through oral tradition, from Adam to Noah and outward to the
35:47
nation's, but it was also permanently implanted in the
35:50
human conscience. So we arrive at Owens final
35:53
philosophical argument. He brings in the classical
35:55
heavyweights of philosophy to validate his theological point.
35:58
He quotes Aristotle, Hesiod, and Seneca.
36:01
They all operate on a basic principle of classical logic.
36:04
The universe consent of mankind on a matter is a weighty
36:07
argument for its fundamental truth.
36:09
If everybody, everywhere, across, all time, independently
36:13
believes the thing to be necessary, there is a core
36:15
reality driving it. Owen argues that the universal
36:19
consent of mankind in the necessity of sacrifice proves
36:23
that sin avenging justice is natural to God.
36:26
It is an implanted presumption that cannot be eradicated by
36:29
philosophy or time. God is fundamentally just.
36:33
Sin must be punished to uphold the moral order of the universe,
36:36
and therefore a substitute is required.
36:39
Which brings us to the definition of vindicatory
36:41
justice. I think we need to explain the
36:43
mechanics of that phrase for the listener, because modern people
36:46
usually think of justice in terms of restoration.
36:48
If I break your window, restorative justice says I need
36:51
to pay for a new pane of glass. The goal is to restore the
36:54
property to its original state. But what happens if you murder
36:57
someone? You cannot restore that life.
37:00
Restorative justice is impossible in the face of death.
37:03
Vindicatory Justice operates on a completely different axis.
37:07
It argues that a moral law has been violated.
37:10
An offense against the Sovereign Holy Lawgiver has occurred.
37:13
And that offense intrinsically requires a penalty to vindicate
37:16
the moral order itself. The punishment does not fix the
37:19
broken window. The punishment proves that
37:21
breaking the window was a crime. Owen proves that the pagans
37:25
instinctively knew vindicatory justice was real, they just lack
37:29
the true spotless substitute to satisfy it.
37:32
So what does this all mean for us today?
37:34
I want to summarize this deep dive for you, the listener.
37:37
We have walked through a staggering, dark historical
37:40
landscape today. We have examined human sacrifice
37:43
across the globe, from the druid Wicker Man in the Forest of
37:46
Gaul, to the horrific altars of the Aztec temples, to the
37:49
psychological break of the King of Moab.
37:52
But all of this horror, all of this blood, actually points
37:56
straight to the core truth of Reformed theology.
37:59
Humanity is entirely aware of its guilt.
38:02
We are entirely aware of God's vindicatory justice.
38:05
And we are hopelessly, terrifyingly lost when we try to
38:08
balance the scales ourselves. The mechanical failure of the
38:11
human conscience under the pressure of guilt proves the
38:14
absolute necessity of Jesus Christ.
38:16
He is the perfect, spotless, once for all substitute that the
38:20
ancient world was blindly, desperately searching for in the
38:23
dark. When we view human history
38:25
through that specific lens, the cross of Christ is not just a
38:29
theological concept, it becomes the only logical, loving answer
38:33
to a universal, terrifying scream for justice.
38:37
I want to leave you with a final thought to Mull over as you
38:40
finish your commute or your workout.
38:42
Look at the modern world around us.
38:44
We like to think we have evolved past the ancients.
38:47
We no longer build stone altars in the center of our cities.
38:50
We no longer offer our children to a glowing bronze statue of
38:54
Moloch. But look at society's current
38:57
secular anxiety. Look at the intense, unforgiving
39:00
desire to cancel others for their moral failures in the
39:02
public square. Look at the constant ravenous
39:05
search for a public scapegoat to bear the sins of the culture to
39:08
be publicly ruined so the rest of us can feel clean.
39:11
How much of that modern behavior is driven by the precise same
39:14
ancient, unerasable demand for vindicatory justice?
39:18
A culture that has rejected the cross of Christ is still
39:20
desperately crying out for a sacrifice to clear its
39:23
conscience. We haven't stopped demanding
39:25
blood atonement, we just use digital stones and social ruin
39:28
instead of physical altars. A chilling thought, but
39:31
incredibly relevant to our current cultural moment.
39:34
It really is. Thank you for joining this deep
39:36
dive on reformed thinking.