body/soul≠flesh/spirit
Gnosticism makes an initial presupposition of associating the physical, created body with what Paul in Romans calls the “flesh.”
Further,
body/soul≠law/gospel
There is an objective sense of the terms “flesh” and “spirit.” While body/soul is refers to the person as an individual in a philosophical sense, flesh/spirit are rather redemptive categories, connected to for the purposes of constrasting the first Adam and the last Adam. While Adam was mere flesh, Jesus Christ is God in the flesh, who by His resurrection poured out the Spirit at Pentecost.
We should make sure our terms are defined precicely here. Paul, at the end of Romans 2, calls us to put away the flesh and instead put on the spirit. Yet he does not condemn the body. The body is made by God. The flesh is a perversion of God’s created order (an objective term, i.e. extending beyond the individual), where affections are oriented towards a person’s benefit rather than God’s glory. Hence why Jesus tells us, “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” The call for spirit and truth is not to reject the body, but rather to reorient the body and the soul to God’s glory.
All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. (Isaiah 53:6)
My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. (John 10:27)
The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. (Psalm 23:1-2)
Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. And he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left. Then the King will say to those on his right, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” (Matthew 25:32-24)
And between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders I saw a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain, with seven horns and with seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth. And he went and took the scroll from the right hand of him who was seated on the throne. And when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each holding a harp, and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. (Revelation 5:6-8)
I’ve heard a number of sermons, as would be expected in Bible-preaching churches, that touch on the Bible’s metaphorical usage of sheep in reference to us people. It’s a common idea throughout the Bible. Now, I agree with these ministers that the reference to sheep is a reference to us sinners who are redeemed by the blood of the true covenant lamb, Christ Jesus.
Where I disagree with these ministers is their description of sheep. “Sheep are dumb.” Or, “Sheep are kind of stupid.” So, it is said, they need a shepherd. So also, we need Christ Jesus as the good shepherd. This conclusion is true enough, but the premises I would offer do some damage to the conclusion. Most of these pastors have hardly interacted with sheep and pick up the biases of popular culture. It’s a stark contrast to the agricultural-based society that the Bible was written in. I would offer that these assumptions are wrong. Sheep are not dumb. Sheep are rather intelligent. The principle these Biblical writers are attempting to convey is quite different than, “We are kind of stupid, so we need the Good Shepherd Jesus Christ to guide us.” It is more like, “We are sinners, so we need the Good Shepherd Jesus Christ to save us.”
The imagery of us as sheep encompases the whole of the law-gospel narrative. We are condemned as sheep, welcomed back as sheep, redeemed as sheep, and glorified as sheep. Every aspect of the “golden chain” Paul speaks of in Romans 8 has an equivalent sheep metaphor somewhere else in the Bible. What I find troubling about the metaphorical explanations that assert “sheep are dumb” is that it unassumingly asserts that humans are, well, dumb. This raises what we call in theological studies “the noetic influence of sin.” Put more simply, it raises the question of what the influence of sin on the human mind is.
There are two ways that this could go. We could assert that the sinner is a fool. By “fool,” I mean someone who has a limited intellectual capacity. He is not able to make right judgements. He has an inherent lack of knowledge of the truth. Place the truth before him, and he will simply not understand. In contrast, we could assert that the that the sinner is an idolater. The idolater sets up an idol instead of worshiping the one true God. He rejects what is holy for what he desires. He worships the creature rather than the Creator. The question, simply put, is this: when humanity fell, did we loose the intellectual capacity to follow what was good, or did we loose the desire to follow what was good? Are we sinners because we do not know about God, or are we sinners because we do not desire God?
Now, the Bible uses both the terms “fool” and “idolater” to speak to the human condition. David muses that “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God’” (Psalm 14:1). I would offer that David’s use of the term is different than how I defined it above. I did so to to speak to a theological category, the one asserted when many pastors talk about sheep. However, David’s foolish sinner is not per se lacking in cognative ability. David does not write, “The fool thinks in his mind” but rather “The fool says in his heart.” It is both a condition imposed knowingly by the person (i.e. the action of speaking) and one done out of desire rather than simple intellectual ability (i.e. the heart). The sinner is not passively born into a state of not knowing about God. He is not, to put it more bluntly, stupid or dumb. He knows about God. His problem is that he does not desire God.
Sheep are not dumb, but they are limited. This is the aspect that the Bible seeks to emphasize. Sheep know to follow the rest of the herd, but when they are lost they lack guidance. Sheep know to follow the voice of the shepherd, but when the shepherd is absent, they lack guidance. What I find remarkable is that when the Bible speaks of us sinners as sheep in a derrogetory manner, it nearly always speaks of a sheep that has wandered. The sheep that wanders without a herd and without a shepherd is one that seeks to overcome the natural limits that is placed upon him. The call of the law never calls us intellectually limited. What the law does do, however, is call out our tendency towards idolatry. Idolatry occurs when we exalt what is low and we ignore what is exalted. Idolatry is, simply put, a neglect of natural limits. It is a desire to elevate ourselves above our natural limits. The sheep who wanders has neglected the essence of the law: to love what is above him (his shepherd) and love what is around him (his neighbor sheep). The sheep who wanders neglects a cosmic structure that limits him, all for the purpose of guiding him.
Interestingly, we do not cease to become sheep when we are saved—not even when we enter heaven! We are called sheep when Jesus says “my sheep hear my voice.” This is not indicative of intellectual limitation. Quite the opposite. As sheep, we are promised that we will hear, and know, and delight in the guidance of the Good Shepherd. So also, we are called sheep when we are about to enter heaven. I have yet to find a place in the Bible where sheep are condemned for all eternity. The law-aspect of being a sheep ends at the cross. All the sheep hear Christ and follow Christ, all the way to the new heavens and new earth. It is not an insult to call a person a sheep. A sheep hears the shepherd, follows the shepherd, is loved by the shepherd, and is rewarded for his faithfulness by the shepherd. The good, redeemed sheep recognizes his duty towards his shepherd and towards his fellow sheep—and he follows it by faith in the shepherd.
What I find most remarkable, however, is that Jesus himself is described as a sheep. Jesus Christ is the perfect sacrifice lamb. It would be quite incorrect to ascribe the derrogatory adjectives usually imposed upon sheep in sermons upon Jesus Christ, the perfect lamb of God. Jesus is a sheep in that he recognizes his duty to his own shepherd, God the Father, and follows it in faith. He is the model sheep of what we are to be as sheep. Yet here is the paradox of all of this: Jesus Christ saves us by being the perfect sheep. Jesus Christ also saves us by being the perfect shepherd. How can Jesus Christ be a sheep and a shepherd at the same time? This is the mystery of the incarnation. Jesus is Christ because he is both God and Man at the same time. He both sympathizes with our weaknesses (we like sheep) and is Lord over our lives (the Good shepherd).
When interacting with the sheep on our farm, I always find it a delight to see all this. First, I can see myself as a creature rather than a creator. I see my need for guidance, my need for care. Second, I see myself as a creature who is redeemed. I delight in the Shepherd’s voice. I delight in the Shepherd’s gift. And, when I fail to delight in these things, the Shepherd still offers them and I learn once again. But most of all, I am reminded that there is indeed a perfect sacrifice Lamb. In any flock of sheep, there are some flaws. Yet in Jesus Christ as both a shepherd and a sheep, his perfect nature is given to his flock, the church. In, through, and by Jesus Christ, we are brought as perfected, redeemed sheep to the holy fold of God.
visible/invisible≠noumenal realm/phenomenological realm
Christians historically have distinguished between the visible Church (viz. baptized people who profess Christ’s name) and the invisible Church (viz. the elect of God). It seems that this visible/invisible distinction has been confused with the noumenal/phenomenological distinction that Kant makes, which I believe has led to all sorts of confusion regarding the sacraments, law, and more. For instance, it has contributed both to the anti-sacramental and works-based sanctification in Evangelicalism and also has led to an overly zealous sacramentalism among the Federal Vision folks (both the introduction of baptismal regenration into “Reformed” theology and infant communion).
The traditional and Biblical understanding of the visible versus the invisible marks a distinciton between what we can grasp as finite beings in this age and what is to be revealed in the next age or what is known by the powerful searching of God but not us: “we see in a mirror dimly” (1 Cor. 13:12); “the things that are unseen” (2 Cor. 4:18); also c.f. generally the concept of “inagurated eschatology.”
Now if the visible/invisible distinction has both this eschatological sense and also the sense that God alone is the knower of the invisible, we should be prompted to profound humility. We only work with what is seen, yet we look forward and rest our confidence in the unseen. When we worship acording to the Regulative Principle, baptize a child, raise our families in the Lord, admit someone into membership or excommunicate them, we are always acting between the ages. It is always acting in a state of “already but not yet.” We work with the facts of the visible, anticipating the goodness and the sufficient grace of the invisible.
The noumenal/phenomenological distinction is still dealing with knowledge, but in contrast is dealing with the human mind. That which is in the outside, objective world is noumenal, while the phenomenological is in reference to the human mind. The outward/inward part of this (understandably confusable with visible/invisible) is dealing with what is available to everyone in the external world versus what I feel or think within my own personal mind. We would do well to not confuse the phenomenological real with spirituality or faith, as spirituality deals with God, not our own feelings, and faith is narrowly a posture of submission to God’s (rather than our own) work of redemption. There is some overlap between the phenomenological and the invisible reality of the Church. I can access my own faith only by knowing my own heart’s desire for the gospel. I then profess this to others. We ought not confuse this with a whole understanding of what the invisible Church is.
The confusion of these two categories of distinctions can lead to two types of error.
The first and most straight forward is I fear common in Evangelicalism. It is the tendency to assume that the phenomenological or subjective grasp of faith is all that there is in marking out the invisible church. Rather than the invisible being something eschatological, not available to us between the times, it is something we can parse out. Rather than participate in the visible Church to the best of our ability, awaiting the purity of the invisible Church to be revealed, we instead strive to line up the visible Church and invisible Church right now. At best this could involve a rejection of infant baptism because we are not sure a child is a Christian until they give a testimony of faith out of their own subjective mind/phenomenological realm. At worst this could mean that what we feel inside of us is really of God, resulting in all kinds of false worship practices because it suits us.
The second deals with the other side of the distinctions and is common I fear among Federal Vision and adjacent movements. It understands well that Evangelicalism is wrong in confusing the subjective self and spirituality. However, it also fails to see that we live between the times in an “already but not yet” reality, and thus sees a person’s visible participation within the Church as a sure mark of their status in invisible Church. Rather than the sacraments being means that communicate God’s salvation to our faith, participating in the sacraments is confused with faith. Baptism is seen as regenerating rather than communicating regeneration (which is done strictly by the invisible power of the Holy Spirit). Infants are communed because participating in the visible community of the local church is considered paramount to a person’s own, personal ability to decern the body. To great a certainty is assigned to the visible signs and visible work of the Church, rather than granting that the visible work of the Church does not, in this age, fully map onto the invisible Church wrought by the power of God. Aligning the visible with the invisible is still seen as possible because the visible/invisible distinction is not seen as eschatological.
Perhaps the greatest Biblical antidote to the confusion of these two distinctions is in Colossians 3:2: “Set your minds on things that are above.” There is a sense that our minds/phenomenological realms are not currently contemplating the invisible, and that by the work of the Spirit this ought to and will change. On the other hand, there is a sense that the spirituality our minds are preparing for is one that is not yet of this earth, and thus will not be realized in the present actions of the Church—these are shadows of the things to come.