Book Write-Up: The Advocates of Peace in Antebellum America

Valarie H. Ziegler.  The Advocates of Peace in Antebellum America.  Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1992.

Valarie Ziegler was my academic adviser when I attended DePauw University, but she actually wrote this book when she was teaching at Rhodes College, before she came to DePauw.  I one time saw her book in her office, and I was asking her what it was about.  She said (as I recall) that it was about pacifist abolitionists in America’s pre-Civil War days, and how a number of them faced a dilemma when the Civil War arrived: Would they continue their policy of opposing war, or would they support a war that had the potential of ending slavery?  I have been wanting to read this book for years, but I either did not have the time to do so, or I simply could not find the book.  The book was not in any nearby libraries, and it was very, very expensive on Amazon.  Well, times have changed!  I found the book at a local library, and the book is more widely available now, and at a good price.  See here for Amazon’s page about it.

The book was excellent, but, if I had a favorite part, it was in the Foreword, which was written by the series’ editors, Catherine L. Albanese and Stephen J. Stein.  They state that Dr. Ziegler “succeeds by, as it were, getting inside each position and looking at the world from the stance of its presuppositions.”  I found that to be true when I had her as a teacher: that she was good at conveying where theologians were coming from, whether she agreed with them or not.

Did I find that to be so in this book?  Overall, I would say “yes,” for I could understand why people were pacifists.  One person in the book almost killed someone with the belief that he was defending himself, and he concluded that such a policy was not the way to go.  Someone else in the book said that, if a person smites you on the cheek, that shows that the person has problems, and thus you should feel compassion for that person rather than retaliating and possibly sending him to hell by killing him!  But does not non-resistance put one in danger of losing his own life and the lives and well-being of his or her loved ones?  In that case, many pacifists argued, one should trust in God.  Many pacifists did not believe that pacifism was just an individual Christian duty, however, but they held that it should apply to societies as well.  They could point to the disaster that war brought, and they did not feel that war was necessary.  One prominent politician became controversial when he remarked in a speech that the American Revolutionary War was not even necessary, and that America’s disputes with Britain could have been resolved peacefully!

And yet, according to Dr. Ziegler, there were different kinds of pacifists.  Some were against offensive wars, but they were open to defensive wars.  Many were Christians, basing their pacifism on the Sermon on the Mount, but William Lloyd Garrison came to move away a bit from Christianity.  Garrison was no longer satisfied with the idea that God was a war-mongering deity of wrath and violence in the Old Testament but changed into a God of peace in the New Testament, and he became receptive to the idea that the truth of moral values does not depend on whether or not they are a part of Christian revelation, for they are eternal.  Many pacifists came to support the American Civil War as a way to end slavery, an institution that a number of pacifists opposed because it entailed the use of force and violence that went against their pacifism.  Some did not fight in the Civil War themselves but decided to be tolerant of how the non-regenerates went about solving the slavery problem: through war.  Some did not even label the Civil War a war, but considered it to be the state putting down domestic rebellion and keeping order, in accordance with Romans 13.  There were some pacifists who opposed the American Civil War, however.  One view was that the North should simply allow the South to secede, and this would lead to the end of slavery because the North would no longer be dependent on Southern slave labor.  Moreover, there were British pacifists who were criticizing American pacifists for supporting the Civil War.

There were not only different kinds of pacifists, but many of the pacifists themselves could feel conflicted.  They were pacifists, yet they could identify with the slaves who rebelled against their masters, or they rooted for Mexico rather than the U.S. in the war with Mexico, which they believed was unnecessary, and which they feared would expand slavery if the U.S. won.  While there was some attempt on the part of pacifist abolitionists to love and to acknowledge the humanity of slave masters, the masters were deemed to be so vicious and lacking in restraint that there was question of whether they even could be redeemed, or whether peace was indeed enough to redress the problem of slavery.  In addition, Dr. Ziegler argues that the conflicted way in which many pacifist abolitionists approached pacifism may have opened them up to supporting the American Civil War.  On the one hand, they were for non-resistance, period, and they argued that people should follow this path even if it may lead to their harm, as Christ did when he submitted to death.  On the other hand, they contended that pacifism could bring about a just and a peaceful society, meaning that they believed it could be successful in attaining a goal.  What happened, however, when it did not appear that pacifism would lead to a just and peaceful society?  Well, a number of them backtracked a bit from their pacifism, seeing war as a necessary path to peace.

If there was a position in the book that I had a difficult time understanding, it was that of the non-resistants, the more radical among the pacifists.  They tended to be against engagement with government.  They did not take this policy to an absolute, for they did sometimes exhort the government to act a certain way, on the Fugitive Slave Law, for example.  But they were not too keen on running for office, for they thought that the government was evil in its compliance with slavery.  They seemed also to have been rather critical of the nature of government itself, for, while there apparently were indications that they acknowledged Romans 13 and regarded the government as a necessary evil, they still recognized that the state rested on coercion and force, even violence, which went against their pacifism.  Their approach was to try to convert people to Christianity and their way of thinking, in the hope that this would lead to a peaceful society.  And their eschatology played a role in their mindset: they believed that they were in the millennium then, and that Christ had actually returned (in some manner) in the first century.  I admire their integrity, but their approach strikes me as unrealistic and overly optimistic, plus I am unclear as to their view of government: Did they see it as necessary, or not?  (UPDATE: I should also note that, according to Dr. Ziegler, a war in Europe was challenging certain pacifist tenets.  There were pacifists who actually were optimistic that a Christian society could accept pacifism.  For one, a society that is predisposed towards Christianity would be more open to Jesus' teaching on non-violence.  Second, there was a pacifist belief that most people did not support war, and that war was primarily supported by powers-that-be.  In Christian Europe, however, there was popular support for a particular war, and that influenced some pacifists to re-examine their convictions.)

I am glad that I finally got to read this book!

Do I Care If People Become Christians?

For the past few months, a question has recurred to me: Do I care if other people become Christians?  I used to be encouraged to pray for people to become Christians.  I still am sometimes when I go to church, but I have become rather hardened to that message, to tell you the truth.

Why have I prayed for people to become Christians?  Perhaps it was so that they would arrive at a state of inner peace, or become better (more loving) people, or avoid hell.  The thing is, a self-absorbed, narcissistic, inconsiderate, self-righteous atheist can easily become a self-absorbed, narcissistic, inconsiderate, self-righteous Christian, only this time with religious delusions of grandeur or stamps of approval on his or her obnoxious behavior.  Why should I care if such an atheist becomes a Christian?

I think that I should care because that can at least bring the person some sense of inner-peace, a loving God to lean on.

Book Write-Up: The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind

Mark A. Noll.  The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind.  Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans/Leicester, England: Inter-Varsity Press, 1994.

I first learned about this book at a graduate school Intervarsity meeting that I attended.  It had a guest speaker, and she was talking about faith and academia.  In the course of her talk, she mentioned Mark Noll’s book.  Someone from the audience clarified what Noll believed the “scandal of the evangelical mind” was: that there was not much of an evangelical mind.  The point here was not that evangelicals are dumb, but rather that the American evangelical sub-culture has neither done a lot of rigorous thinking nor contributed significantly to the world of academia.

I have wondered for a while whether or not I wanted to devote my time to reading this book.  I thought that it might be dated.  Not only are we now approximately twenty years after the time that Noll wrote this book, but it also seems to me that a number of evangelicals are within academia.  This is true in biblical studies, but also in the natural sciences.  I was curious about whether or not the book was still relevant.  I then read a blog by someone who had a Pentecostal background, and he attested that the book helped him immensely.  He is a young adult: he was probably a small child when Noll’s book first came out!  Yet, what Noll had to say resonated with him, due to his religious background and his longing for a Christianity that would honor God with the mind.

Noll’s book was more nuanced than I expected.  It’s not the case that evangelicalism was completely outside of academia, even when Noll wrote.  After all, Noll quotes scholarly evangelicals!  Noll acknowledges that evangelicals have participated in academic biblical studies, theology, and philosophy (though, on philosophy, Noll seems to be arguing that evangelicals are not contributing anything distinctly evangelical, but are resting on the work of other versions of Christianity, such as the Dutch Reformed, who have differences with evangelicals on such issues as the emphasis placed on conversionism).  Noll does not believe that dispensationalism is particularly rigorous intellectually, contending that it does not make a habit of interacting with other ways to interpret the Bible, and yet Noll does note that evangelicals are in biblical studies, while giving his opinion that the evangelical contribution to theology has been better than the evangelical contribution to biblical studies.

Of particular concern to Noll is the dearth of evangelical contributions to social and natural sciences.  Whereas Protestant Christianity, including the Puritans and Jonathan Edwards, reflected on how Christianity can speak to the way society should be, American evangelicalism has largely backed away from this.  It turns to end-time scenarios and conspiracism rather than thoughtful reflection about why the world is as it is, and how Christians should address it.  Noll does identify what may be changes in this current, such as the religious right and left, but he is not sure where they will lead.  On the natural sciences, Noll laments the growing influence of young-earth creationism, contrasting that with the openness to science that existed among earlier American evangelicals or fundamentalists, including such conservative Christian heroes as B.B. Warfield.  Noll is also discouraged by the lack of evangelical contributions to literature.  Noll mentions Frank Peretti’s Darkness books, but he does not appear to care for them, contending that they disregard the complexity of human nature in favor of some spiritual warfare model.  The overall problem, according to Noll, is that many American evangelicals choose not to engage the world.  More than once, Noll calls their approach “Manichean,” as if they embrace dualism in their withdrawal from the world.

To what does Noll attribute this scandal of the evangelical mind?  Well, he mentions a variety of factors.  Revivalism coincided with a zeal that did not exactly promote the life of the mind.  Noll also appears to believe that American Christians hastily adopted democracy and capitalism without a whole lot of reflection, as a way to fill the void in American society after America seceded from the British empire.  The Scottish Enlightenment’s influence on the United States also played a role, according to Noll, and it seems to me that the role was two-fold.  First, by emphasizing knowledge through intuition more than Scripture, the Scottish Enlightenment was contributing to forces against which many American evangelicals would rebel, leading them to retreat from the world and wait for Christ’s Second Coming.  Second, the Scottish Enlightenment’s emphasis on intuition of self-evident truths would still impact American evangelicals in that it would discourage them from rigorously trying to figure the truth out: after all, they intuited it!  This is my understanding of Noll’s beliefs about the historical significance of the Scottish Enlightenment, and I am open to correction on this.  I should also note that, on some level, Noll has problems with American evangelical Baconianism: its modernist attempts to pick out truths in the Scripture to convey absolute truth about the world.  For Noll, such an approach disregards the historically conditioned nature of both the interpreter and the texts that are being interpreted.

For Noll, a way out of the scandal is to exalt Jesus Christ: to recognize that Jesus Christ did not forsake the world but became incarnate and died for it.  Therefore, Christians should be interested in the world and what goes on in it.  Noll also promotes a Christocentric approach to Scripture, thinking that this would discourage the prophetic speculation in which dispensationalists engage.

In my opinion, Noll was probably on to something.  Yet, I have reservations.  First, I do not think that Noll was entirely fair, for, while I can see Noll’s point that young-earth creationism in focusing on the Flood resonated with dispensationalists who believed in a coming catastrophe, I do believe that young-earth creationists can appreciate nature, which is a far cry from rejecting the world around them.  Second, I question whether a Christocentric approach to Scripture is beneficial to the life of the mind.  It strikes me as reductionist, and I believe that it could ignore the complexity and original contexts of the Hebrew Bible’s writings.  While I do believe that dispensationalism is a rather flat approach to Scripture, I wonder if it can have insights that could encourage the life of the mind in terms of biblical interpretation.  Noll notes a dispensationalist belief that Scripture serves not just to foreshadow Jesus but to glorify God, and perhaps this is how it seeks theological significance in the various ways that it believes God has dealt with humanity.  Maybe such an insight can be reconciled with attempting to theologically deal with the diversity and historically-conditioned nature of Scripture.  Third, while I admit that many dispensationalist views on current events are simplistic and us vs. them, I believe that they should be engaged within intellectual dialogue.  Rather than dismissing conspiracy theories about the UN or knee-jerk Zionism, engage them, as much as you can (assuming the dispensationalists want a dialogue, which may not always be the case).

I do not know what Noll currently believes, but I wonder: Are things better now than they were when Noll first wrote the book?  I would say “yes,” in areas.  Biologos is an evangelical attempt to address and interact with science.  While I would not label evangelical fiction as “literature,” I do believe that, on some level, it acknowledges the complexity of human beings.  There are more evangelicals who are politically progressive.  And yet, many of the phenomena that Noll criticizes still remain, and that is probably why the book continues to resonate with certain people.

Conditional, Unconditional, David, Jesus

I watched the final lesson of The Unbreakable Promise: God’s Covenants with Abraham, Moses, and David With Michael Rydelnik yesterday, while I was eating my lunch.  My church has been going through this curriculum for its latest Bible study, but we did not get to do the final lesson.  The pastor was away, and, starting this coming Thursday, we will be doing another curriculum, one that is more relevant to the Easter season.  My pastor offered to lend the Unbreakable Promise DVD to anyone who was interested in watching the final lesson, and I took him up on that.

The final lesson was entitled “Looking for Fulfillment,” and it focused on David.  In this lesson, Michael Rydelnik was trying to argue that II Samuel 7 was about David’s dynasty, but also Jesus Christ.  In II Samuel 7, God promises David that God will establish David’s seed into an everlasting house, that God will discipline David’s seed when it sins rather than removing God’s mercy from it, and that David’s seed will build God a house.  Looking at II Samuel 7 by itself, I was not convinced by what Rydelnik was saying.  He seemed to be suggesting that the part about the everlasting house related to Jesus (but also God’s unconditional commitment to the dynasty itself), whereas the part about God disciplining David’s seed when it sinned concerned the others within the Davidic dynasty, as Jesus did not sin.  That interpretation struck me as rather arbitrary, and I doubt that it would convince someone who lacks Christian convictions (or even some with Christian convictions!).  Why can we not just say that II Samuel 7 is about Solomon and the Davidic dynasty, period, without believing that it somehow predicts a future perfect Messiah, Jesus Christ?

As Rydelnik commented on other passages of Scripture, however, I could see a bit more where he was coming from.  For example, whereas II Samuel 7 appears to present God’s covenant with the Davidic dynasty, God in I Kings 6:12 seems to condition God’s words to David on Solomon’s obedience to God’s commandments.   The problem was that Solomon and his descendants did not observe God’s commandments.  According to Rydelnik, that sets the stage for Jesus, the descendant of David who would keep God’s commandments.

This is not proof that the Hebrew Bible points to Jesus, but it does raise questions in my mind.  Within the Hebrew Bible are the views that God’s covenant with David is conditional and unconditional.  If a reader wants to hold both of those beliefs simultaneously, how could he or she do so?  Well, one way is to say that the unconditional and conditional aspects of the covenant were fulfilled in Jesus Christ: the Davidic dynasty would last forever because Jesus Christ fulfilled the conditions, God’s commandments.  Moreover, why does the Hebrew Bible spend so much time telling people that the Davidic kings sinned?  Is it because it is saying that something better will come, the Messiah?  Or maybe the Books of Samuel and Kings do not have a belief in a coming perfect Messiah, but one reason that canonizers included their books was to promote such a belief.

Of course, one could just say that the Hebrew Bible contains different sources: some believe in an eternal Davidic dynasty, whereas others think that God’s covenant with David was conditional on obedience.  Some may try to harmonize these two concepts in other ways.  One way is to say that no covenant or promise God makes is truly unconditional: God may have wanted to make David’s dynasty everlasting, but God eventually got so fed up with David’s descendants that God went back on the unconditionality of the covenant.  Another way is to say that God is still committed to the Davidic dynasty and will restore it in the future, while programming Israelites such that they do not sin, the sort of scenario that we see in Deuteronomy, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel.  That way, the unconditionality and conditionality of the covenant are both met: the covenant continues, while the people obey.

Something else to note: in my review of Rydelnik’s The Messianic Hope, I talked about Rydelnik’s argument that Genesis 3:15 says that the serpent of the Garden will struggle with the woman’s seed, the Messiah.  Rydelnik was arguing against the idea that Genesis 3:15 is about the conflict between humans and snakes, saying that the serpent of Genesis 3:15 is not your ordinary snake if it lives long enough to fight the promised seed!  My response was that the snake could fight the woman’s seed through its descendants, that there are times in Scripture where people appear to be conflated with their descendants.  For example, when the prophets mention “David” ruling Israel in the future, they most likely mean that a descendant of David will rule, not that David himself will.  Well, on the DVD, Rydelnik made this point about David, saying that David in Hosea 3:4-5 referred to Jesus, the descendant of David, rather than David himself.

Blogging Plans for March and Thereafter

Originally for March 2014, I was planning to read two books for Women’s History Month: a biography of Martha Stewart, and a biography of Hillary Clinton.  I still hope to read these books and blog through them someday in the future, but it probably won’t be for a while.  The reason that I have decided not to blog through books for Women’s History Month is not that I am anti-feminist or against Women’s History Month.  Rather, it’s that I have other things to do.

I have been receiving books in the mail and blogging about them, as you’ve probably noticed.  I also go to a local library and check out books that I can read and blog about.  Many of the books pertain to religious studies, which is my field.  Some of the books that I read are not directly related to my field—-which is biblical interpretation in antiquity—-but I figure that it is useful to me to acquaint myself with them because who knows what I will be asked to teach if I get a teaching position?

So I check out books from the library.  I receive books in the mail to review on my blog, and I have a deadline for writing those reviews.  Moreover, there is also my dissertation, which I am working on.  In order to get all of this done, I figured that I should drop one of my reading projects.  Thus, I won’t be blogging through books for Women’s History Month.  And I probably won’t be blogging through daily readings of books for some time.  Rather, what will happen is that I will write one post about a given book, rather than a series of posts about that book.

I still want to write a blog post every day, however.  How will I accomplish that, if I am not blogging through books by writing series of blog posts?  Well, on Saturday, I will still have a post about my weekly quiet time, a chapter of Scripture that I read and study each week.  On Sunday, I will have a blog post about church.  Assuming that I go to my church’s next Bible study, I will have a post about that on many Fridays.  I will probably have one or two book reviews each week.  On other days, I can blog about articles or blog posts that I read, my daily Bible reading, TV shows, or movies.  We’ll see how it goes!

Coming Down, Yet Lifting Us Up

I’m reading a book right now, The Devil Walks in Mattingly, by Billy Coffey.  The BookLook Bloggers program sent me this book to review.  This particular post is not my official review, but the review will come soon in the future.

As I was reading the book last night, a particular passage on page 18 stood out to me, and I was reminded of that passage as I listened to my pastor’s sermon at church this morning.  The context of the passage is that Kate, the wife of the local sheriff, is visiting Lucy.  Lucy is said to be a troubled young lady, in that she has swiped cigarettes and alcohol and has had lots of boyfriends.  As a matter of fact, a half-naked man is fleeing Lucy’s house when Kate arrives!  Kate notices a stack of philosophy books in Lucy’s home, and Lucy says that those books are where she (Lucy) seeks her answers.  Lucy asks where Kate gets her answers, and Kate responds, “Church, I suppose.”  Lucy then replies:

“You’re not here to give me Jesus, are you?  Because I’m afraid I’ll just stick to my books.  Church brings God down to man.  I’m more interested in what lifts man to God.”

The book then goes on to say:  “Kate said nothing to this, though she thought that sort of thinking could do more damage to a young lady than any half-naked [young man] could manage.”

This morning at church, my pastor was talking about the transfiguration and the incarnation.  He said that God came down to human beings in the incarnation, but that God is also transforming human nature, in a sense, to make it more divine.  As church fathers said, God became as we are, that we might become as God is.

My pastor and the church fathers most likely did not have in mind the sort of teaching that I got in my Armstrongite heritage: that human beings will become godlike beings within a God family, creating planets in their own universe.  But they may acknowledge that there will be overlap between believers in the eschaton and God: both have immortality, and both are perfectly moral.

The point is that God came down to human beings, and yet God also wants to lift human beings to God.
What was Kate’s problem with Lucy’s statement?  Perhaps Kate thought that what Lucy said reeked of hubris, or that Lucy needed to rely on and submit to a higher power rather than trying to exalt herself as some sort of God.  I agree with honoring a being who is greater than myself, while accepting the gift of that being’s compassionate presence in my own life.  At the same time, I also believe that this being is leading people to become greater than they currently are.

Psalm 149

In this blog post about Psalm 149, I will post the entire Psalm in the King James Version (which is in the public domain), then I will comment on select verses.

1 Praise ye the LORD. Sing unto the LORD a new song, and his praise in the congregation of saints.
2 Let Israel rejoice in him that made him: let the children of Zion be joyful in their King.
3 Let them praise his name in the dance: let them sing praises unto him with the timbrel and harp.
4 For the LORD taketh pleasure in his people: he will beautify the meek with salvation.

It is interesting that God’s people are called “meek” here, considering the aggressive warfare that they wage in vv 6-8.  Perhaps they are meek in that they rely on God, or because they are oppressed people who are merely rising up against their oppressors.

5 Let the saints be joyful in glory: let them sing aloud upon their beds.

Why do they sing aloud on their beds?  One proposal is that they sing on their beds because they can finally relax, since they no longer have to worry about being attacked by enemies.  Maybe there is something to that, but I am not entirely convinced.  Shouldn’t they be relaxing after their enemies have been defeated?  But vv 6-9 seem to indicate that God’s people are still in the process of waging war against their enemies, or have yet to do so.  Why would they relax on their beds, if they have not even won yet?  Perhaps I should not regard this Psalm as rigidly chronological, however.

Another proposal is that the saints sing on their beds because, within the Psalms, the time of rest at night is “a time of intensified spiritual activity and receptivity.”  I quote here from Thijs Booij’s “Psalm 149, 5: ‘they should for joy on their couches,’” which appeared in Biblica 89 no. 1 2008.  Booij states that “the faithful in their beds are to punish the nations”, which intrigues me.  Is Booij saying that the warfare that God’s people wage is spiritual rather than physical: that God’s people are defeating their enemies, not by literally going out with a literal sword and waging literal warfare, but rather by praying to God?  Is the sword in v 6 spiritual rather than physical and literal?

6 Let the high praises of God be in their mouth, and a twoedged sword in their hand;
7 To execute vengeance upon the heathen, and punishments upon the people;
8 To bind their kings with chains, and their nobles with fetters of iron;

Maybe the warfare that God’s people wage in Psalm 149 is spiritual, but I can still think of reasons to view the warfare as physical and literal.  There are places in the Hebrew Bible in which God’s people actually participate in the restoration of Israel by fighting their enemies: see Zechariah 12:8 and Micah 5.  Perhaps Psalm 149 is reflecting that sort of tradition.

The United Church of God’s commentary on Psalm 149 attempts to apply Psalm 149 to Christians at Christ’s Second Coming:

“Of course, the Church in this age is not to take up arms and fight, because Christ’s Kingdom for which we wait is not of this world (see John 18:36). Yet when Jesus returns to set His Kingdom up on this earth, His saints, then glorified in divine power, will fight alongside Him-as this psalm makes clear. Indeed, as the patriarch Enoch prophesied, ‘The Lord comes with ten thousands of His saints, to execute judgment on all’ (Jude 14-15). The two-edged sword here (Psalm 149:6) would seem to parallel the book of Revelation’s figurative portrayal of a sharp sword coming out of Christ’s mouth at His return (Revelation 19:15; compare 1:16; Isaiah 11:4-5; 49:2). And the imagery of a two-edged sword is used to represent the Word of God (compare Hebrews 4:12-13).”

Is there a tension here between understanding the sword as literal, or as spiritual?  Is the sword a literal object that Christ and the saints use to slaughter the enemies of God, or is the sword rather symbolic for the word of God?  There are interpreters of the Book of Revelation who do not take all of its bloody material literally, but rather contend that Revelation is about the saints of God overcoming through spiritual means: meek suffering, staying faithful to their testimony to Jesus, praying, etc.  I am open to that interpretation, but I have a hard time saying that Revelation is not about God’s literal wrath on the wicked, a theme that appears so often in the Bible.  Moreover, the word of God that Jesus’ sword represents may be consistent with God’s literal wrath: the word could concern God’s wrath, or God is judging the wicked for transgressing God’s righteous word, and so, in that sense, the word is smiting them.

9 To execute upon them the judgment written: this honour have all his saints. Praise ye the LORD.

Where is this judgment written?  Leslie Allen states in his Word Commentary: “It may be a reference to the Holy War traditions fixed in writing, such as those which enjoined the destruction of the nations of Canaan (e.g., Deut 7:1-2; A. Weiser, Psalms 840) and/or to prophetic passages which promised eschatological victory (e.g., Isa 24:21-22; 45:14; Joel 4 (3):9-16, 19-21); or it may refer to decrees written in God’s heavenly records for past offenses against his people (cf. Dan 7:10; Anderson, Psalms, 954).  J. Schreiner has suggested a reference to an old victory Psalm (Sion-Jerusalem, 208).”