Redemption 4

Gordon Kaufman, in a chapter about what theological language should do, made a distinction that has been important to me for a long time. He said that the words ought to mean what the Church has said they meant, or we won’t know how to fit them together. But they ought, also, to mean what they feel like, or we won’t know why we should pay attention to them.[1] Here is that passage.

All of this project about redemption, beginning when I learned that his parents had taken Jesus to the temple in Jerusalem to redeem him back from God, has begun at the first of Kaufman’s poles. I have devised a simple physical and temporal model of “redemption” in Israel and have kept as many of the five categories alive as I could while pushing the model toward more metaphorical New Testament uses.

It’s time now to start at the other pole. If redemption is the explanation of an experience I have had, just how should the experience be described? Does “I once was blind but now I see” do the job? Should we say that we were living in the dark and then the light came? Should we say we were living a life we though was pretty good and then discovered Joy and the desire for Joy and everything was transformed? Should we say we were anxious and alone and then a Friend came—or maybe just a friend—and the anxiety went away and the aloneness with it.[2] Should we say we were living lives without meaning, then found out we were intended for something both significant and wonderful?

I could go on. But, so could you. Anyone who has read about the dramatic changes some a person’s life is familiar with the fact of change on this scale. On February 7, Bette and I heard a lecture on depression and the brain by a psychiatrist/neurologist who employs “deep brain stimulation.” She reported that once the surgeon had the probe placed just right, the patient said she felt she had been living for many years in a locked house with ten screaming children and “you just made the children leave the building.” Her life had been redeemed.

It wouldn’t be hard, either, to say that she had been “saved,” provided we remembered to “saved from what?” Looking at the list above, we could say saved from darkness or from Joylessness or anxiety and aloneness. Those all sound like human experiences to me. But once we place “saved” into the religious context, its meaning suddenly becomes clear—we know for sure what the speaker means—and at the same time, abstract and difficult. That’s why it is interesting, and might even be worthwhile, to start at the experiential end of the question.

At this point, pausing at the lip of a question that would take a book, not a blog, to answer, I want to put a few limitations in place. All I want to do here is ask some questions and then tell a story. The questions all have to do with the fundamental or inevitable character of blood sacrifice. It is perhaps a cheap point that God could have done all this differently than He did. The argument I am making is that there is nothing about the nature of God that requires blood sacrifice. But God chose Abraham and Isaac and Israel and the Children of Israel and redeemed them from slavery in Egypt. Animal sacrifice as “pleasing to God” grew up in the context of the covenant with this particular people. Had God chosen farmers or hunter-gatherers or whale hunters, it is reasonable to think that the particularities would have been different.

I say this not to complain about God’s chosen people and the rich history of the Covenant, but only to say that when God intervened in our history, it was a particular history he intervened in and a different culture would have recognized and honored His intervention through other institutions.

So let’s imagine that redemption is what needs to get done. There must be an intervention that moves the focal person from a bad place to a good place. We don’t need all five of the Israelite categories for this—the condition of slavery and a redeemer and a ransom and a slave master and the condition of freedom. We need only one, two, and five.

The story I have in mind is Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age. The full citation is on the excerpt. Nan is the focal person and she moves from something like slavery to something like freedom through the intervention of Miss Matheson. I have included the whole story about Nan’s release here, but I can give you the three steps. Here is Step 1.

Nell had reached the point where she could transcribe the old books all day long without actually absorbing a single word. During her first weeks in Supplementary Curriculum she had been frightened; in fact, she had been surprised at the level of her own fear and had come to realize that Authority, even when it refrained from violence, could be as disturbing a specter as anything she had seen in her earlier years. After the incident with Elizabeth, she became bored for many months, then furious for quite a while until she realized… that her anger was eating her up inside. So with a conscious effort, she went back to being bored again.

That will serve us as the condition of slavery. Now here is the intervention. Miss Matheson intervenes to change Nan’s condition in some way.

“Miss Stricken is not someone I would invite to dinner at my house. I would not hire her as a governess for my children. Her methods are not my methods. But people like her are indispensable. It is the hardest thing in the world to make educated Westerners pull together,” Miss Matheson went on. “That is the job of people like Miss Stricken. We must forgive them their imperfections. She is like an avatar—do you children know about avatars? She is the physical embodiment of a principle. That principle is that outside the comfortable and well-defended borders of our phyle is a hard world that will come and hurt us if we are not careful. It is not an easy job to have. We must all feel sorry for Miss Stricken.”

Nan understands and here is what happens as a result.

Nell could not bring herself to agree with what Miss Matheson had said; but she found that, after this conversation, everything became easy. She had the neo-Victorians all figured out now. The society had miraculously transmutated into an orderly system, like the simple computers they programmed in the school. Now that Nell knew all of the rules, she could make it do anything she wanted. “Joy” returned to its former position as a minor annoyance on the fringes of a wonderful schooldays. Miss Stricken got her with the ruler from time to time, but not nearly so often, even when she was, in fact, scratching or slumping.

So in this simple story, I see Nan’s misery and Miss Matheson’s intervention and Nan’s release from that toxic inner anger and they look to me like steps one, two, and five. Miss Matheson unquestionably effected a change. It doesn’t look like there was anything that could be called a ransom. It doesn’t look like it cost Miss Matheson anything personally. There is no vicarious benefit here. In short, it is clearly unlike the notion of atonement as it is developed in the New Testament on the basis of the sacrificial metaphors of Israel.

So let me come back to the point with which I began. If the language of theology is not rooted in our experience, it will be of no use to us whatever other virtues it may have. The transformation of Nell from a life dominated by anger and frustration to one of understanding and inner peace is a transformation that could easily be called religious in another story. We know what the experience felt like to Nell. We have what I would call “a choice of redemption narratives” available to us; some better, some worse. But all of them, both better and worse, begin with Nell’s experience. Without that experience, nothing needs to be explained.

It is the actual movement from slavery to freedom—the experience of that movement—that we are trying to explain when we talk about redemption.




[1] Gordon Kaufman, Systematic Theology, A Historicist Perspective. p. 75-76.
[2] The theological word atonement means that the alienated parts of a relationship become at-one (united) so atonement isn’t a bad vibration to get from this reported experience.

Redemption 3

I have been working with a very early and very material Hebrew model of redemption. My two examples are land belonging to Israel, i.e., belonging to God, and members of the nation of Israel, who belong, by definition, to God as well. When land strays outside the nation by being bought by a Gentile, it must be “redeemed” because it belongs to God and it is not right that it “belong” to anyone outside the covenant community. This means it must be purchased and returned, by the way, not that it may be “taken” because it belongs to the wrong person. Similarly, a member of one of the tribes of Israel may not belong to another in perpetuity, because he belongs to God and whoever bought him “owns” God’s property.

Reflecting on this arrangement, I wrote a post called Redemption: It’s not about you” and in that post I said I was going to try to push that model as deep into the New Testament as I could. In that effort, I should say right here at the beginning, I have been aided in every way by Bill Teague, who has shared this project with me. We did, however, run into just the kind of trouble we expected in the New Testament.

Here’s one. In the first model, the payer, the payment, and the receiver of the payment are all nicely distinct. Not so in the New Testament. Following the sacrificial model of Israel, Jesus is the payment, the “lamb that was slain.” In one way of looking at it, we may say that Jesus is also the payer. We might say that he paid with his own life, the price that we were justly obligated to pay. That sounds right. On the other hand, it sounds right, too, to say that God was the payer, giving up “his only-begotten son.” This squares with Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac who was the only apparent means by which God could make good on his promise to Abraham that Abraham’s descendants would be numerous beyond counting.

Since this sacrifice was vicarious, it was not a sacrifice that we would expect to achieve a change in the status of Jesus. And it was vicarious not only for a person—as Sydney Carton was for Charles Darnay in A Tale of Two Cities—but vicarious for a category of persons, as if, for instance Carton’s death paid the debt of all French aristocrats.[1] For me, however theologically necessary it is, it is the application to a category of people that is most uncongenial. It is that use I need to work at.

So Jesus’ death would, following the model, achieve a change in status for us, those for whom the sacrifice was made. This doesn’t fit the “redeemed from slavery” model very well, I’m afraid. The nature of our “enslavement” is quite abstract, by comparison to the slavery of the Israelite who was to be redeemed. Similarly, the “freedom,” consequent on the payment is abstract by comparison. The hardest question would be who, in the New Testament model, receives the payment which frees the category of people who are thus “redeemed” from slavery? That is my next concern, but I want to touch on another matter first.

The Israelite sacrificial model, by which a person brings an animal to be sacrificed as a way of dealing with his own guilt is more abstract than the slavery model. The wrongdoer has an obligation to the one he has wronged—I’m not going to deal with that here—and also a guilt before God, whom he has defrauded. The sacrifice annuls the guilt and puts him back in right relationship with God. The guilt of the wrongdoer and his full restoration to right standing with God are both abstract, but the other parts are all there. There is a payer and a price and a receiver of the price. And there is a condition before and a condition after, although they are established doctrinally, rather than socially, as slavery would be.

In the New Testament model, one of the really knotty questions is “Who receives the sacrifice?” The answer I would like to pursue here is, “The Strong Man.” To do this, you have to catch up a little to who the devil had become by the time of Jesus. He was no longer the prosecuting attorney of Job, but thoroughly evil and wholly antagonistic to God. He is “the Enemy” with a capital E. On the other hand, when testing Jesus, he takes Jesus up to a high place and shows him all the kingdoms of our world and offers them to Jesus. These kingdoms belong to the Devil so he can rightfully offer them.

And when Jesus is asked how he can do all the signs that marked his ministry, he said that if you have the strength first to bind the strong man, you can despoil his house at your leisure. All three synoptic gospels have that. See Matthew 12, Mark 3, and Luke 11. The “despoiling” Jesus was talking about look pretty good to us: the blind see, the lame walk, the demon-possessed are freed, and so on. So the logic says that all those previous conditions—the blindness and the lameness and the possession—were things that were “owned” by the Devil and when Jesus overcame the Devil, he was free to distribute the Devil’s “goods.” So it looks as if a case can be made that “the strong man” is the Devil.

Further, Jesus acted with authority, not just with power. The demons Jesus cast out knew he outranked them and outranked their master as well so when he commanded them to come out, they came out. Underlying the gospel narratives is the idea that there is an evil “spirit” or an evil “presence” behind our troubles. We may think of the demon of our sickness or the demon of a violent storm, for instance. When Jesus healed the sick and when he commanded the storm, he was, again, distributing the loot from the mansion of “the Strong Man.”

Postulating an agent of this sort—active and identifiable in the synoptic tradition—gives us a candidate for “the recipient of the payment.” This is someone who, like the slaveholder of the first and most physical metaphor, can receive payment and allow the slave to go free. In Jesus ministry, we see that Jesus overcame this “Being” and distributed wholeness and health as a sign that the Kingdom of God was already beginning. Jesus dominance, in other words, insured vicarious benefits.

In Jesus's death, the Strong Man triumphs. Or, as we Christians would say, "appears to triumph." The payment is made and received. Again, the benefits are vicarious, but this time they have to do with establishing a vital and unending clearing of our guilt before God. It is fully in the Israelite sacrificial tradition, in which God receives the sacrifice and treats Israel as pure. In this scenario, the Strong Man receives the sacrifice, and God declares all “in him,” all those who trust that this sacrifice is effective and sufficient, are pure.

Let me note, in conclusion, that this is not entirely satisfying. My project was to push the physical model of redemption deep into the fundamental transaction that the New Testament presumes. That means, ultimately, finding someone who a) is capable of receiving the ransom and b) is forced, by receiving it to release his claim on us. So, as a result of the payment, we who were slaves, are freed.

The hardest part for me is conceiving of a Devil who can play this role. But I think it wasn’t all that hard for Matthew, Mark, and Luke. I think it wasn’t that hard for Jesus. So maybe I just ought to work at it harder. Besides, you do get something for all this work. You may now look at a scripture as familiar as faded wallpaper—something like “God made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that we might be made the righteousness of God in him”—and say, “Look at that! That’s really intriguing. What can it mean?”

[1] I learned, in making sure I had the right meaning for vicarious, that it is the adjective form of vicar. So, in the sacrificial model, Christ is the vicar—representing us—and in Catholic theology, the Pope is the vicar, representing Christ.

Redemption 2

I'm going to have to put "Christian Theology" in the label box below and I almost hate to. This is as much wordplay as anything, but who knows what it will grow into?

Also--and I really am serious about this part--one of the wonderful things that happens when I find a good strong metaphor and ride it until we are both exhausted, is that I sometimes get to my own home by a route that is entirely strange to me. Now THERE is a buzz I recommend for anyone. You are entirely alone and in entirely strange territory and then you come around a little bend and there, right in front of you, is home. That has happened several times in this exercise.

I started all this back during Advent, when I noticed that Jesus' parents took him to the temple to "redeem him." Knowing that he is "the Redeemer" in our theology, it struck me as odd. The reason he needed to be "bought back from God" was that he was a first-born male--not a first-born male child, but a first-born male anything. They all belonged to God by virtue of being born first and God, who passed over all the first-born of Israel when they were in Egypt, has a permanent claim on them. As a rationale, that seemed oddly weighty to me; fundamental.

As I began to pursue the word--in Greek, there is a collection of words beginning with lytr- with meanings like "ransom," and "redeem"--I discovered that the reason given for the redemption of an Israelite in slavery or any of the land of Israel that had been bought by an Israelite from another tribe of by a Gentile, was that the Israelite and the land of Israel belonged to God through the Covenant. The act of redemption is not really about them. It is about restoring to God what belongs to God, both the land and the people.

Now is the time I climb on the back of the stallion and he takes me wherever he wants to go.

So if, according to the Old Testament, Israelites must be redeemed so that God is not defrauded of his people, and if, according the the New Testament, all who put their faith in Jesus Christ are "his people" and "belong to him," then on what grounds should we speak of the redemption of any others?

The big time theological question is often put as "Who then can be saved?" See Mark 10 among other places. That's not the question I am asking. Were I the most narrow of fundamentalists or the most broad of universalists, I would still need to ask the question of rationale. If others, beyond Israel in the Old Testament and "the church" in the New are to be saved, on what gounds. Do they "belong to God" more than by creation? Are they "children of God" in some way so that, as the Israelite slave, their redemption is "not about them?"

It's a puzzle and there are a lot more where that one came from. Let me try one more. In the tidy little blueprint I devised to help me think through this, there are five elements: initial condition, redeemer, ransom, current owner, and final condition. In the case of the Israelite slave ransomed by a kinsman, that would be: slavery, redeemer, payment, slave owner, freedom. It's so palpable; the steps are so discrete.

But there is a lot of New Testament language that travels in the wake of these images. Here's one. Paul says, in 1 Cor 7:23, "You have been bought at a price; do not be slaves now to any human being." The context is confusing. Paul is addressing Christians in the church at Corinth, some of whom were free and others of whom were slaves. His argument here is that the members should stay in the social condition where they currently are. Why? Well, those of you who are actual slaves are metaphorically "free in the Lord" and those of you who are actually free are metaphorically "slaves of Christ."

I'm not objecting to the theology, but the argument is so convoluted that it makes me yearn for the bad old days when "a slave" was a person who had been bought by someone else and when "free" meant that you weren't a slave any more.

It could be argued, as Paul does elsewhere, that we are "slaves to sin" and that we are redeemed from sin to be slaves of Christ. But this changes the momentum of "redemption" entirely. In the bad old days (BOD?), "free" meant "free from." You were not a slave anymore; you could go where you would and do what you could. The weight of Paul's use is on "free to." In the BOD, you were a slave of sin and were not free to live as you wanted to live or as you should have wanted to live--Paul was a pastor; he had to deal with both those conditions--but now you are free to live as a member of the body of Christ and of the family of God. "Free from" is only a precondition. It's "free to" that Paul wants to talk about.

The Israelite kinsman who redeemed a slave would have been dumbfounded if, on every day after becoming free, the former slave went back to the home of his old master and took up again the work of his servitude. But, as I said, Paul was a pastor and he did see the newly freed of his congrgations go right back to their servitude. He was incredulous. Or at least he pretended to be. "How can you DO that!?" he asked.

It's a good question.

Question: Where is Christof's Tent?

Answer: It’s hard to tell. It isn’t anywhere near where our tents are.

The theological current in The Truman Show isn’t very far beneath the surface. I saw, in the relationship between Christof and Truman, a new and exciting look at the Christian doctrine called the Incarnation. I want to talk about just that little piece of the movie, so if it’s been a while since you’ve seen it, you might want to consult the plot summary I have attached here.

I was ready to be excited about it. The Incarnation—the actual presence of God among us in the life, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus—is squarely orthodox. It is also, when it has been referred to in your hearing many hundreds of times and never really cherished, just…well.. square. Christof’s final appeal to Truman falls in the “close but no cigar” category as a ploy, but it falls well short of the Incarnation and I found it clarifying to spend some time looking at just how short it falls and in what ways.

This post is a little on the long side. I apologize for that. I have three excuses; none really adequate. The first is that the dialogue itself is indispensable and takes up some space. Ditto for the textual basis of “incarnation.” The baseball metaphor isn’t strictly necessary, but I liked the outcome--“Truman walks”—so very much that I was not willing to part with it.

Let’s start at the movie’s final scene. Truman has been dissatisfied despite living in “paradise” all his life. When odd things begin to happen, he starts looking at everything more critically. Under his suspicious inspection, the whole charade of The Truman Show begins to unravel. Truman discovers that he is a prisoner and has always been a prisoner. He launches a daring escape and, right on the edge of success, he hears a voice calling him. Here’s what happens.

Christof: Truman. (Truman whips around trying to locate the voice. What he actually sees is a vast sky with a brilliant sun coming out from behind the clouds) It’s OK. You can talk. I can hear you.

Truman: Who are you?

Christof: I’m the creator…of a television show that brings hope and joy to millions.

Truman: Then who am I?

Christof: You are the star

Truman: Was nothing real?

Christof: You were real. There’s no more truth out there than there is in the world I created for you. The same lies. The same deceit. But in my world, you have nothing to fear. I know you better than you knowyourself.

Truman: You never had a camera inside my head.

Christof: You are afraid. That’s why you can’t leave. It’s OK, Truman. I understand. I’ve been watching you your whole life. I was watching when you were born. I was watching when you took your first step. I was watching on your first day of school.
(Chuckles as he remembers)…the episode where you lost your first tooth. You can’t leave, Truman. You belong here. With me. Talk to me. Say something. (Agitated) Say something, goddammit, you’re on television. You’re live to the whole world.

Truman: In case I don’t see ya’, good afternoon, good evening, and good night. (Truman takes a long theatrical bow, turns, and goes through the Exit door into the dark.)

So let’s return to the initial question, which is, “Where is Christof’s tent?” The imagery of the tent comes from John 1: 14. Raymond Brown translates it, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.”[1] Brown points out that the verb here, skenoun, which he renders as “made his dwelling” is related to skene, “tent,” so it is, literally, “to pitch a tent.”[2]

A crude and common way to describe the Incarnation is to say that God (in the Book of the Revelation) or the divine Word (in the Gospel of John) has pitched his tent with ours. If our tents have bad drainage, then His tent has bad drainage as well. If the ground is hard to sleep on for us, it is hard to sleep on for Him. We won’t even talk about how far it is to the latrine.

That, in any case, is where God’s tent is. Where is Christof’s tent? It’s not with Truman. It’s not anywhere in Seahaven. It is, in fact, on the 221st floor of the Omnicam Ecosphere, far above “the world” where Truman lives. Christof is, in the most literal sense, “the man in the moon.” Here, we see him "directing" Truman's life.

OK, so Christof is up there and Christ is down here. What difference does it make? Frankly, it’s hard to say when you take the question on directly. Fortunately, we aren’t doing that. We are going to look at Christof’s appeal in terms of its face value. In fact, there’s a good deal wrong with Christof’s position, but let’s just look at the argument. In answer to Truman’s question, “Who are you?” Christof says, essentially, “I am the producer of the most popular and remunerative television show ever made.” You’d have to say that‘s impressive. It will stand him in good stead when he goes looking for his next job. It doesn’t do much for Truman. Nor does his answer to Truman’s next question, “Then who am I?” The answer, “You are the star,” establishes no relationship between Truman and Christof. It establishes a relationship between Truman and The Truman Show.

Let’s say that relationship, the one between Truman and the show, is Christof’s first pitch. It is too high. Truman watches it go by.

The relationship question has been asked and answered. There is a distant and professional relationship from Christof’s side. From Truman’s side, there is no relationship at all. There are no funds in Christof’s bank, Truman Branch, and he will try shortly to withdraw some resources from that account. It doesn’t work.

Reality is Christof’s second pitch. It’s too low. Truman doesn’t go for it. It looks like this.

“So, if you’re the director and I’m the star, what in all my life was real?” Christof’s answer, properly understood, is, “Nothing was real. Nothing you ever experienced was what you understood it to be.” For Truman, the meaning of Christof’s answer—“You were real”—means only that Truman, naïve and misled, reacted authentically to the fraudulent life Christof gave him.

Safety here in Seahaven is the third pitch. It’s right down the heart of the plate. It’s true. Truman will always be “safe” on The Truman Show. Truman can’t let it go, but he fouls it off. It’s true he will be safe, but he doesn’t want safety. He will, after he has escaped, but not now. Christof contrasts the world where Truman has lived with the world outside. The world outside, Christof says, is filled with lies and deceit. Further, for those outside, the consequences of falling for those lies are painful. Here, as the star of The Truman Show, Truman is “safe.”

This much is true. To recognize the bitter truth of it, we need to remember that it was Christof’s idea to raise Truman on an island and give him a debilitating fear of water. It was Christof’s idea that Truman would be raised to “know his limits” (as his faux father said) and to give up being an explorer because everything has already been discovered (as his teacher said). So in offering Truman a life of safety, Christof also offers him a life of fear and radically downsized aspirations.

Clearly, this is not a good time for Christof to play this card. Truman is on the water in a sailboat (where he has always believed his father died) and heading for the real world as fast as the wind will take him. Truman has already foregone the kind of “safety” Christof can give him.
The fourth pitch—it is now two and one—is that Truman is not the best person to be making these decisions about his own life. It’s wide.

In this pitch, Christof recounts lovingly what of Truman’s life he has seen: the birth, the first step, the lost tooth. All seen from a distance, of course. Truman’s retort is sharp. It is the first anger we have seen from him. “You never had a camera inside my head!” What Christof knows, Truman charges, is what can be known by watching his behavior. You can’t delude a man completely and then form good judgments based on his behavior. “If you wanted to know me,” says Truman, essentially, “you would have to come inside my mind. You have never asked and I would never have agreed.” Christof has no empathy, having never pitched his tent with Truman. And further, says Truman, he has no insight either. Even Christof’s 5000 cameras have not captured Truman’s hopes and dreams.

Christof is now up against it. The count is three and one and this one has to be over the plate. He still has his best pitch.

You “are” a star. That is who you are. I “am” your director. That is who I am. You belong here…with me. What Truman has been learning in the last few days and what has been decisively confirmed in the last few minutes is that he does not “belong” with Christof. He does not belong “to” Christof. He belongs, for the first time in his life, to himself and, if all goes well, to Lauren.

Truman watches closely. The pitch is inside. And he walks. Out.

It has been said through the centuries that the notion of “incarnation,” of God’s pitching His tent among ours, is incomprehensible. An enfleshed spirit is like a square circle. It has been said that it is a scandal. The glory of the spirit should not be caged in a prison of mere flesh. It has been said that it is preposterous. The Creator of the world comes to live in a little town on the eastern edge of the Mediterranean Sea? Please!

There are good things to be said for these objections and maybe someday I’ll say them. Today, I want to look at the other side of the argument. If the divine Word has, in fact, lived with us in Seahaven, then He knows what life is like in Seahaven. He is the answer the Incarnation gives us about why Truman, in a completely secure life, yearns for “something more,” something for which he has no name.

If the divine Word lived with us in Seahaven, then he knows how hard it is to continue to want to see the truth. He knows how easy it is to deny the deepest call and to settle for what is shallow and comfortable.

As a result of the Incarnation, God can look us in the eye and say, “I know who you are.” He can say, “I have prepared a place for you. It is not Seahaven.” He can say, “Going where you must go will not be easy. You will need, in fact, to leave the old Truman—who you thought you were—behind. But I will help. And you can do it.”

This is what I am calling “approaching the Incarnation” from the back side. I’m sure it’s not to everyone’s taste, but I see it differently when I do that. It seems new, somehow; more vivid, more appealing. For me, that makes it worth doing. You can make your own decision. There’s a door right over there marked Exit.

[1] Brown deals with this passage in the first volume of his The Gospel According to John, page 4. The translation of the passage is not in dispute. I cite Brown because I like the clarity of his phrasing.
[2] The only other use of this verb occurs in Revelation 21:3 “Behold the dwelling of God is with men; He will dwell (skenoun) with them.”