Category: Theology

The “divine interchange” principle of Bible interpretation: Otis Q. Sellers on olam’s control of aion (and why it matters), Part 2

Otis Q. Sellers (1901-1992), in his study, probably early 1980s.

The previous post ended with the question, “What is an eon?” Before answering it (by putting more of Sellers’s spadework in front of you), let me address a question you may be asking (if you’re a Bible-believing Christian, that is): who cares whether the meaning of olam should control that of aion?

You might not care if you belong to a church whose doctrines presuppose the veracity of traditional translations of key words. For upon that presupposed veracity hangs your confidence in the doctrines. Anything that undermines the former threatens the latter, which are nonnegotiable for you.

If your church membership is a dogmatic commitment—socially determined and psychologically reinforced in ways that have nothing to do with the meanings of Hebrew and Greek words—then those meanings don’t matter. You can skip these posts.

Still, however, I’d ask you to reflect on what you mean when you say the Bible is true in all that it affirms, teaches, or implies. (Of course, if you don’t say that, then we would need to have a different conversation before proceeding.)

But if you belong to a church that at least pays lip service to that principle—whether it’s a parish of the Roman Catholic Church or a Baptist storefront—then it does matter what olam and aion, nephesh and psyche, qahal and ekklesia mean. (There are many other examples.)

You may not say, however, at least not integrally, that you believe both in the inspiration of the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures God and in doctrines that are rooted in mistranslations thereof. That unstable conjunction only reveals your fidelity, not to the Scriptures as the Word of God, but rather to the organization. In America, that choice may be constitutionally protected, but that won’t relieve the cognitive dissonance it expresses. Continue reading “The “divine interchange” principle of Bible interpretation: Otis Q. Sellers on olam’s control of aion (and why it matters), Part 2”

The “divine interchange” principle of Bible interpretation: Otis Q. Sellers on olam’s control of aion, Part 1

Otis Q. Sellers, Bible Teacher (1901-1992)

As some of you know, my current project is a study of the life and thought of independent Bible teacher Otis Q. Sellers (1901-1992). Many times on this blog I’ve written about him and his eschatology (“end times” theology; see list of links at the end of this post), but there was much more to his thought. He brought to his study of “what comes next” insights not immediately related to how the present administration (or dispensation) of grace will end or the inauguration of the next one, the Premillennial Kingdom of God.

Sellers spent decades correcting popular misunderstandings of Biblical terms and phrases—e.g., “soul,” “hell,” “church,” “born again”—and these corrections informed his understanding of the Premillennial Kingdom (specifically the Day of Lord). This post is the first of a series on one of his principles of Bible interpretation, namely, that of Divine Interchange.

An 1875 study perpetuating the mistranslations.

When you read or hear the word “eternal,” what comes to mind? Timeless? What about everlasting? Something that never expires? These are common translations of the Hebrew word עוֹלָם‎ (olam) and the Greek αἰών (aion) in English Bibles.

But they are mistranslations.

It was Sellers’s considered opinion that αἰών (aion) is the divine equivalent of עוֹלָם‎ (olam). In “The Divine Interchange Principle,” Sellers began by critically examining a common practice of many Bible students.

Those who interpret the Bible without being guided by clearly defined principles usually end up by making God’s Word to mean what they want it to mean. It seems that many interpreters want it this way. They operate without any laws, principles, or rules of any kind. This allows them to force the Word to yield to them and frees them from any obligation to conform to the Word. There are those who will adopt principles of interpretation up to a certain point, but when they get into a bind and the Word does not say what they want it to say, they ignore the principle and interpret as they please.  (“The Divine Interchange Principle,” Seed & Bread, 125; hereafter, SB125)[1]

And so he offered a principle that guided his work:

Many years ago, I came upon the . . . Principle of Divine Interchange. It was not new; many had seen it before me, but I found it for myself, gave it a name, and put it into use . . . :

Hebrew and Greek words that are used interchangeably by the Holy Spirit are identical in value and meaning.

The Hebrew word as used in the Old Testament is the primary word and the Greek word used in its place in New Testament quotations means exactly the same, no matter what nuances of meaning it may have had among the Greeks. The Greek word must conform to the Hebrew, and not the other way around. (SB125)

The principle follows from Sellers’s presupposition concerning the nature of the Bible. He believed that whoever affirms the divine inspiration of Scripture must accept hades as the equivalent of sheol in that New Testament verse. Therefore, he reasoned, what we understand about the latter holds for the former, for “if sheol and hades are not equivalent in meaning and value, then David did not say what he is said to have said in Acts 2:27.”

A theology of divine inspiration, not a secular theory of linguistics, determined Sellers’s thinking. Continue reading “The “divine interchange” principle of Bible interpretation: Otis Q. Sellers on olam’s control of aion, Part 1”

Gordon H. Clark’s problematic rationalism

My Philosophy after Christ project continues with notes on the late Reformed philosopher Gordon Haddon Clark (1902-1985). Douglas Douma, the author of The Presbyterian Philosopher: The Authorized Biography of Gordon H. Clark, recently posted an essay about how one ought to go about defending the Christian faith (AKA, apologetics methodology). I commend Douma’s stimulating post to readers. It forms the background of this one, a (nonexhaustive) commentary upon most of it.

Cornelius Van Til, 1978, speaking on the steps of Federal Hall National Memorial, Wall Street.

We sometimes learn by drawing contrasts, and when it comes to defending the Christian faith, one of the most instructive is that between the apologetics method of Cornelius Van Til (1895-1987) and Clark’s.

 

 

Greg L. Bahnsen

For Van Til and his expositor Greg L. Bahnsen (1948-1995), the first question is: what worldview are unbelievers presupposing when they raise their objections?

John W. Robbins

For Clark and the first proponent of his philosophy and theology, John W. Robbins (1948-2008), it is: how do you know? For Clark, that means: what axiom does your objection to Christianity presuppose and what follows from it?

For Clark and Clarkians, the only rationally defensible axiom is: the Bible is the Word of God and therefore every proposition affirmed or taught in it may be taken as true and upon it one may build a philosophy of life.

For a time in the late ‘80s, I was a Clarkian (see my exchange with Bahnsen here and here. I was also a correspondent of Robbins’s. I have copies of our letters; Robbins’s estate should as well.) I had been a recent graduate student in philosophy, and Gordon Clark (who chaired Butler University’s philosophy department for 28 years) epitomized for me the ideal of Christian intellectual. That he also admired aspects of the thought of one of my philosophical heroes, Brand Blanshard, was also a plus for me.

Continue reading “Gordon H. Clark’s problematic rationalism”

“Conspiracy theorist!,” our era’s “Red-baiter!” Complementary warnings from Diana West and Murray Rothbard.

Diana West

In American Betrayal, Diana West exposes the role that name-calling plays in inhibiting, even shutting down, critical thinking about vital subjects. Her words are worth quoting at length, given the relevance of our conditioned reflex both to criticism of Islam and how we’ve been conditioned to disarm before the Communist threat (present as well as past).

Bat Ye’or (pen name of Gisèle Littman)

She had been reading Bat Ye’or’s investigations into the decades-long self-subjugation of the West to Islam, including The Dhimmi: Jews and Christians under Islam, The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam: from Jihad to Dhimmitude, and Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide–all of which debunk the proposition “Islam is peace.” No, West learned . . .

Continue reading ““Conspiracy theorist!,” our era’s “Red-baiter!” Complementary warnings from Diana West and Murray Rothbard.”

Otis Q. Sellers: Prophetic Prayers about God’s Kingdom

“I will be a king over you.” Ezekiel 20:23

The cumulative effect of the following 25 prophecies is the conviction that God is going to govern this planet. What they pray for has not occurred, but will. Yes, they express happy thoughts—“Wouldn’t it be great if God one day governed the earth . . . ?,” but they do much more. They speak God’s word authoritatively. And that’s what it means to prophesy.

Like the prayer Jesus taught His disciples (Matthew 6:9-13), these prayers are prophecies that are also predictions. Not one describes present conditions. They all await realization. God’s word never returns to Him void (Isaiah 55:11).

I’ve excerpted the following from This I Believe, a 1963 pamphlet by Otis Q. Sellers, the subject of a biography I’m working on.

—Anthony Flood

As the pages of the Old Testament are turned, one reads of a time to come when the entire flow of satanic evil will be overwhelmed by a greater flow of righteousness from one who is the seed of the woman, even Christ (Genesis 3:15).  He goes on to read of a time when

  • All the ends of the earth will remember and be turned to the Lord (Psalm 22:27)
  • All the earth will fear the Lord and all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of Him (Psalm 33:8)
  • The meek will inherit the earth and delight themselves in the abundance of peace (Psalm 37:11)
  • The streams of God’s river will make glad the city of God (Psalm 46:4)
  • Wars will cease and God will be exalted among the nations (Psalm 46:8-10)
  • God’s way will be known upon the earth and His saving health will be the portion of all nations (Psalm 67:2)
  • God will judge the peoples righteously and govern the nations upon the earth (Psalm 67:3-4)
  • God will bless Israel and all the ends of the earth will fear Him (Psalm 67:7)
  • all nations will call Him blessed and the whole earth be filled with His glory (Psalm 72:17, 19)
  • The world will be established so that it cannot be disrupted (Psalm 96:10)
  • The nations will fear the name of the Lord (Psalm 102:15)
  • One generation will praise His works to another and declare His mighty acts (Psalm 145:4)
  • God will turn His hand upon Israel and purge away her dross (Isaiah 1:25)
  • The mountain of the Lord’s house will be established in the top of the mountains and all nations will flow unto it (Isaiah 2:2)
  • Nations will beat their swords into plowshares and turn all instruments of destruction into instruments of peace (Isaiah 2:4)
  • The wolf will dwell with the lamb and the leopard will lie down with the kid and a little child will lead them (Isaiah 11:6)
  • None will hurt or destroy, and the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea (Isaiah 11:9)
  • God’s judgments will be in the earth and the inhabitants of the earth will learn righteousness (Isaiah 26:9)
  • The eyes of the blind will be opened and the ears of the deaf be unstopped
  • The lame will leap as a hart and the tongue of the dumb sing (Isaiah 35:5, 6)
  • the glory of the Lord will be revealed and all flesh will see it together (Isaiah 40:5)
  • God will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, put His law in their inward parts and write it upon their hearts (Jeremiah 31:27,33)
  • God will fulfill His great promise to Israel to seek them out, bring them out from all peoples and all countries and bring them to their own land, and to set one shepherd over them, even David (Ezekiel 34:11-24)
  • Out of Bethlehem will come One to be ruler in Israel, whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting (Micah 5:2)
  • The Lord will be king over all the earth (Zechariah 14:9)

Check out related posts
Here are a few short studies on the Kingdom by Otis Q. Sellers (PDFs at Seed&Bread.org)
Otis Q. Sellers (1901-1992) in his library and recording studio

Yielding to Scripture outwardly and inwardly

A friend sent me an image of Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger, vested as Pope Benedict XVI, his title from 2005 to 2013, the year he retired, now living a life of prayer, meditation, and Scripture study. Inscribed on it is an exhortation:

I urge you to become familiar with the Bible, and to have it at hand so that it can become your compass pointing out the road to follow.

It comes from his April 9, 2006 message to on World Youth Day. The Scripture chosen for his address is from Psalm 119:105.

“Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.“

In his homily, Benedict doesn’t consider the internal resistance some Christians have to letting the Word of God operate as a compass, light, and lamp unto their feet. To understate things, God’s speaking can wrench one out of one’s comfort zone and bring one into conflict with one’s neighbors, business associates, friends, family, and even fellow believers. Continue reading “Yielding to Scripture outwardly and inwardly”

Sellers’s Eschatology: Some Distinctives

Otis Q. Sellers, 1920

At a distance, Otis Q. Sellers (1901-1992) might appear to be just another independent Bible teacher, the kind that can be found across America, in big towns and small. It would be lazy to describe his spot on American Christianity’s map as “nondenominational.” Christian Individualist” is how he positively referred to his walk as a believer in and follower of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The personal and theological merged in his life. Unless his ideas matter, only family and friends will care to read the biography I’m working on. My interest in his life grew out of my fascination with his ideas. My hope is that your interest in both will grow together.

We’re not disembodied, ahistorical spirits. We struggle with ideas while we raise our families, maintain our health, and pay our bills in concrete circumstances. Sometimes our responsibilities threaten to crowd out our projects which, if the threat is repulsed, can speak to people in times and places different from the author’s.

With difficulty, but also with perseverance and God’s grace, Sellers balanced his life and ministry. He wasn’t an academic theologian writing for colleagues (and neither am I). Sellers does deserve academic attention, however, and I hope this book will stimulate it. He was an industrious, self-educated man who fought for every insight to help the average believer understand the Bible. He changed his mind as his studies dictated. “My latest writings are my latest light,” he’d insist. I don’t say this to preempt criticism. My appreciation of his work won’t prevent me from pointing out errors.

First publication, June 1, 1935. Henry “Harry” Allen Ironside (1876-1951) belonged to the Plymouth Brethren movement and was a friend of Sellers. Ironside criticized “Bullingerism” or “ultradispensationalism” in “Wrongly Dividing the Word of Truth,” a series of articles in the Brethren organ “Serving and Waiting.”

Research for this project requires the absorption of seventeen volumes of Word of Truth (1936-1967); 199 issues of Seed & Bread, four-page Bible study leaflets (1971-1987), whose contents total over 375,000 words; 570 43-minute tape-recorded studies, that is, over 400 hours of additional material; and dozens of pamphlets. All of these materials are freely available online. Continue reading “Sellers’s Eschatology: Some Distinctives”

A Debate on the Existence of God: Greg Bahnsen vs. George Smith (1991)

Greg L. Bahnsen (early 1990s)

A lively debate between Christian philosopher and apologist Greg L. Bahnsen (1948-1995) and libertarian atheist author George H. Smith (b. 1949) took place at Los Angeles radio station KKLA FM 99.5. It serves as a popular introduction to the approach to Christian apologetics promoted on this site. Long (10K+ words), but in my opinion smooth.

George Smith (circa 2012).

I spoke with Bahnsen by phone in 1991 not long afterward, but can’t further specify the date; I’d be grateful to hear from anyone who can. Bahnsen’s 1984 debate with Gordon Stein (1941-1996) is still the classic, but in some ways this one is more accessible: there’s more “back-and-forth” between Bahnsen and his opponent; John’s Stewart’s moderation is present, but more informal than the one held at the University of Southern California.

We owe this transcription to a “Jonah” (screenname) who posted it online “for whoever wants it” on January 7, 2011; unfortunately, that link is now “dead.” I made some editorial decisions: stylistic changes, mostly in punctuation. To conserve space, I deleted the repeated introductions and other announcements by the radio host and debate moderator.

I did not check the transcription against the audio broadcast, but as someone who has listened to it many times over the past thirty years, I can attest to its fidelity. No need to take my word for it, however: the audio recording of the debate, just under an hour in length, is available on YouTube.

My internal critique of Smith’s worldview, Atheism Analyzed: The Implosion of George Smith’s “Case against God” (2019) reflects the state of my understanding Bahnsen’s apologetic method in 1989, when I drafted it. A search of his name on this site will yield the record of the progress I hope I’ve made.

 

 

A Debate on the Existence of God: Greg Bahnsen vs. George Smith

Moderator: God. Well, the Bible begins with—“In the beginning God!” and the Bible says twice in the Psalms, “The fool has said in his heart there is no God!” But why are there so many agnostics and atheists if God’s existence is so evident? There may be many explanations, but there are certain arguments consistently raised by skeptics which call into question God’s existence. Coming up we’ll discuss atheism and the case against God with atheist George Smith and Christian apologist Greg Bahnsen.  My guest, George Smith, has written two books.  One is entitled Atheism: The Case Against God;  the other, Atheism, Ayn Rand, and Other Heresies. George first published Atheism: The Case Against God in 1974. The book is still in print published by Prometheus. For six years he was a general editor and scriptwriter for the Audio Classics audio tapes by Knowledge Products, currently senior research fellow for the Institute for Human Studies at George Mason University, and again his latest book Atheism, Ayn Rand, and Other Heresies. George Smith, we welcome you to the program.

Smith: Thank you.

Moderator: Let me get you to get a little closer to the mic there, George.

Moderator: Also, we have Dr. Greg Bahnsen, presently scholar in residence at the [now defunct] Southern California Center for Christian Studies, an author of five books and nearly a hundred journal or periodical articles in Christian apologetics, ethics, and theology. His doctorate is in philosophy . . . from the University of Southern California, and he has degrees from Westminster Theological Seminary. Dr. Greg Bahnsen, we welcome you as well. Continue reading “A Debate on the Existence of God: Greg Bahnsen vs. George Smith (1991)”

Otis Q. Sellers’s Method of Interpretation: Notes

On the website of Otis Q. Sellers’s The Word of Truth Ministry one reads:

As a personal student of God’s written word, he came to his own conclusions after considering all the Biblical material available and any extraneous material that could shed light on the subject under consideration. He studied Hebrew and Greek words in order to bring forth their exact historical and grammatical meanings.

Sellers’s method of interpretation (hermeneutics) was that of the early 20th-century proto-fundamentalist movement in America, the movement that educated him in the Scriptures, but also from which he slowly but surely asserted his independence.[1] Although he rejected most of its doctrines, he retained its grammatico-historical hermeneutical method, which one scholar summed up as follows:

A fundamental principle in grammatico-historical exposition is that the words and sentences can have but one significance in one and the same connection. The moment we neglect this principle we drift out upon a sea of uncertainty and conjecture.[2] 

Of course, that principle requires nuance, for a verse’s “one significance” may yield meanings that do not lie on the surface. Sellers gave an example:

As there is in all fields of study, there are principles in Bible interpretation that need to be scrupulously observed. Many of these need to be discovered and established by careful study and comparison, but there is one that is clearly enunciated by the Spirit of God. I, for one, would not want to grieve the Holy Spirit by ignoring a matter that He has distinctly affirmed. Failure to recognize, admit, and abide by this principle could lead to many erroneous interpretations and the misuse of many passages of Scripture.

The principle of interpretation to which I refer is affirmed by Paul in Romans 4:17 where he declares that God “calls those things which be not as though they were.” This is a divine statement concerning how God may act, and we can  either be believers and admit that He does it, or be unbelievers and deny that He has ever so acted. It will be an act of faith upon our part if we accept the stated fact that He has spoken in His Word of those things that do not exist as though they existed.[3]

But generally, if one accepts that God spoke to Adam in the Garden of Eden, one rules out the possibility that he could doubt that fact. That is, the ideal of direct, clear, veridical, and successful communication was realized at least there.

Interpreting millennia-old Hebrew and Greek manuscripts, however, is not direct, but mediated. There is an effort to understand, coupled with a responsible awareness of how one might misunderstand, as there was none for Adam. But is it hopeless? Continue reading “Otis Q. Sellers’s Method of Interpretation: Notes”

God Has Spoken: Otis Q. Sellers’s Wartime Radio Messages

From March 1-5, 1943, as war raged in Europe and the Pacific, Otis Q. Sellers (whose life and work I’m researching) broadcast five messages on Chicago station WAIT.

The subject was the foundation of his life’s work: the fact that God has spoken to humankind in the Bible, “the greatest fact in the universe.” For Sellers, Scripture was life’s Global Positioning System (a term that was still 30 years in his future): it located him, and his family, his country, in history. “I do not study the Bible in order to get material for messages. I study it because of the needs of my own life.”

As his daughter assured me, Sellers avidly followed the news, which that week probably included reports of the carnage wrought in the Bismarck Sea, Kharkov, and Essen. That we live in the Dispensation of Grace, however, the last divine administration before God assumes sovereignty, dominated his consciousness.

Otis Q. Sellers in 1934 with wife Mildred (right) and daughter Jane (left).

A 42-year old resident of Grand Rapids, MI, having moved there in 1936 from Winnetka, IL, Sellers was married for 23 years and with a daughter in high school. The world was at war. He was not immune to the hardships of the home front: rationing; uncertainty of the return of enlisted family members; dread of what the next few years might hold. (We now see that the die for Hitler’s defeat had been cast at least two years before, but it was not at all clear to Mr. and Mrs. America, who scraped to buy War Bonds as well as food and gasoline.)

 

In a rare reference to contemporary events (which he generally regarded as distractions), Sellers wrote:

. . . I know that the problems that the post-war world must face will be as great as those imposed by the war. Victory will bring its day or week of celebration, and after that comes such things as untold millions of defeated soldiers fleeing back to their countries in dis­order, imported foreign workers and prisoners of war abandoning the countries of their captivity and returning to what was once their homes, the people who were forced to migrate returning to their war ravaged lands. In Russia alone fifty million Soviet citizens will return to the wasted territory of western Russia. Starvation, disease, disorder and chaos is almost sure to have its reign. Our own country may remain untouched by the ravages of war, yet we will not be isolated from the problems of the post-war world. These problems in our own country may be so great that all the combined wisdom of men may not be equal to them. These years are just ahead for us, nevertheless, we can face them with assurance and confidence if we know the personal and the written Word of God. (“Divine Importance of the Word,” March 3, 1943)

1947

Readers should notice in the March 1st message, reproduced below, Sellers’s self-effacing representation as a Christian Individualist. He walked in fellowship with other Christians, but not as members of an organization. In the Dispensation of Grace, Sellers held, God has been dealing with people as individuals, all shut up to The Book. Before Acts 28:28, one had to be divinely commissioned (apostello, traditionally transliterated “apostle”) to herald the Word; on this side of that dispensational boundary line, however, the salvation-bringing message of God is no longer restricted to Israelites within and without the Land of Israel: it is freely authorized (apestole) to all nations. Continue reading “God Has Spoken: Otis Q. Sellers’s Wartime Radio Messages”