Why this subject now?  I have taken the same position on these two passages since I came to my position on these two passages.  Other men I respect a lot have taken drastically different positions.  You can’t confuse the difference between them, they’re so, so different.  If you have some general knowledge of this, you know what I mean.  I have to admit, the ones I don’t take are in my opinion very weird.  They are some of the strangest things you will hear in biblical interpretation.  But again, why now?

A youtube feed on my phone read this video:  R. C. Sproul VS John MacArthur on 1 Peter 3:18 – Biblical Clarity.  It’s kind of a fabricated debate, because they’re not really debating.  It just shows that the two men take two totally different positions on both Genesis 6:1-7 and 1 Peter 3:18-21 on the related passages.  I knew I differed than John MacArthur on both of them.  I didn’t know that R. C. Sproul did too.  Then I went looking to see if I’ve written a post on either of these in all my years of blogging.  Answer:  no.  In one post, I’m not going to end this debate.  The positions are so different that they can’t be confused.  They are not the same.  There is no way they could both be right.

Do the two differing positions make any difference?  They will definitely change your angelology.  I believe that there is very rich doctrine in the correct position that is lost.  I’m saying, since they are true, they would be missed.  Scripture, all of it, is sufficient.  If all scripture is sufficient, and we take some it away, it isn’t sufficient then.  We need all of it.  We need this teaching.  Our church decided long ago that a difference of interpretation on these two passages would not be a separating issue.  That doesn’t mean they aren’t important.  Everything is important in the Bible.  For some readers, not separating over something is the biggest news of this piece.

I want to admit that I didn’t listen to every single bit of the youtube video, but I listened to enough of it to know that R. C. Sproul and John MacArthur take a different position on both Genesis 6:1-7 and 1 Peter 3:18-21.  I also listened to enough to know that I take the same one as Sproul on Genesis 6:1-7.  Sproul seems to like two positions on 1 Peter 3:18-21 as if both of them are good, not the MacArthur one in this instance.  He gave three positions on 1 Peter 3:18-21 on the video and sounded like he liked both of the two, preferring one slightly above the other though, that were different than the one MacArthur took.  Both were very different than MacArthur’s.

None of the positions are a new position.  All of them have been around for a long time.  I’m not going to get into the history, even though that is important to the ones taking the varied positions.  In the midst of arguments, someone will say that he read support in the church fathers.

MacArthur says that angels intermarried with men producing a race of giants in Genesis 6.  He says that Jesus went to Hell to preach to demons in 1 Peter 3.  Sproul says that the godly line of Seth intermarried with ungodly line of Cain in Genesis 6.  He says that Jesus preached to people held captive by sin, these are the spirits in prison, through millennia since the days of Noah in 1 Peter 3.

In a casual moment, I heard someone I know, who takes both MacArthur positions, that these positions are very important to an overall understanding of the Bible and history.  It was a casual moment years ago after playing basketball.  I didn’t follow up because I knew there wasn’t time for that discussion.  It still intrigues me though what he might have said.  I can’t wrap my brain around a position grammatically or contextually that says angels procreated with human beings to produce giants, and then Jesus later went to preach to these fallen angels while they were chained in demon prison.

I believe Genesis 6 explains how things went south before the flood.  It is a consistent theme that runs through the Bible, which is why it is so important that believers are not unequally yoked together with unbelievers.  Intermarriage between believers and unbelievers produces an ungodly line.  There isn’t a great threat for intermarriage between angels and humans to destroy mankind.  However, read through Genesis alone and see what interhuman relations does to cause great sin and difficulty.

I Peter is about suffering.  Noah suffered in the days he prepared the ark, but God saved him and his family from the world by water.  Noah suffered when the preincarnate Spirit of Christ preached through Noah to that generation of men before they were killed by the flood waters and ended in Hell.  The spirits in prison weren’t in prison when Noah and Jesus preached to them, but Noah and Jesus did preach to the spirits in prison before they were in prison.  Who was suffering worse in the end?  Noah or those who rejected His preaching?

During a debate with a major Campbellite debater years ago now in Oakland, the crowd was silent when I brought an argument from 1 Peter 3 against baptismal regeneration from its context.  It is a powerful passage on an important purpose of baptism.  Baptism saves men from the world, so that they will have a good conscience toward God.

Prominent secular conservative voices repudiated British singer-songwriter Harry Styles for appearing on the cover in Vogue magazine in a dress.  Both Candace Owens (also here and here) and Ben Shapiro confronted his masculinity.  MSNBC defended Styles with the exact or identical argument used by evangelicals and fundamentalists for unisex apparel:  “Jesus wore dresses.”   That I have seen, only secularists have renounced this fashion.  Zero of what we call the Christian public intellectuals say anything about it.  I don’t hear any public Christian voices.  A very low percentage of professing Christians mount any defense of designed gender distinction.  Very little makes evangelicals and even most fundamentalists more angry than a Christian who stands for unique female and unique male items of clothing.

Last week going door-to-door, I rounded a corner to visit some duplexes, and a man was standing outside, who seemed 65 plus, short and heavy.  I approached him with the intent of preaching the gospel.  The first thing he said was, can you help me get into my house, I locked myself out?  I followed him to his condo.  He needed to get over his back fence to get in, which was about six foot high.  I lifted him up to where his behind was on my right shoulder, and then I shoved him up with both hands in that same anatomical area to slide over to the other side of the fence.  He got in his house and invited me to come in and sit down.  I thought, “Wow, this is going to be a great opportunity to preach the gospel to this man!”

I sat down on his couch and his little dog Marlie walked over to me for me to pet.  And the man said, “He’s friendly. . . if you’re a good person.”  Marlie was friendly.  A sign.  Then I sat and listened to this man espouse his hatred of biblical Christianity, much different than how I thought it was going to go.  He would not let me talk at all.  I sat and listened and listened. . . . and listened.  I just looked at the man, hearing the falsities proceed from his mouth in rapid fashion one after another, waiting for a pause to refute in as nice a way as possible.

From his story, I heard from the man that he had several heart attacks in the last few years until he went in for surgery to have a stint put in a major artery.  He had considered just dying of the heart attack, but Marlie, the dog, gave him reason to live.  I didn’t want him to die of a heart attack after sharing my thoughts with him, but it didn’t matter.  He wouldn’t let me talk, despite the fact that he said that the Hebrew language behind the Old Testament came from two different species of space aliens.  I tried to remove a disapproving look from my face, because even when my countenance showed even the slightest show of disagreement, he would turn red and his voice would raise in anger.  He hated Leviticus, because in that book the God of the Bible said to destroy other people (my brain said Leviticus was the priesthood and sacrificial system).  That wasn’t God, he said.  After fifteen minutes, I rose from my seat, said goodbye, and walked out.

At one point, the man said that he had deeply studied twelve or so religions and that he found that they all were the same.   In other words, all religions taught the same teachings.  Through my entire adult life, I’ve heard this same belief and exponentially more today.  Now I hear that school of thought all the time.   This false doctrine or religion has a name now:  perennialism.

In its most developed representation, perennialism says that religions are just iterations of a singular spiritual comprehension, that is the deeper reality.  It would say that embracing the deeper reality should be the goal of the religion.  Many perennialists would explain the religions as providing a variation of archetypes, essentially the same characters known by different names.  In Christianity, Jesus is one of them.

The perennialist looks at a religious person with the condescension that religion is an expression for a simpler mind.  He can grasp this, so if it works for him all the better, just as long as he doesn’t take it further than what it really is.  When he starts condemning others that take a different viewpoint, that is taking the religion further than he should.  As along as it results in helping others and giving him the strength to deal with his own difficulties and overcome obstacles, then it’s good.  Perennialism isn’t saying there is a god any more than conventional wisdom, something tried and true through many years for which the religion provides understanding or enlightenment.

Perennialism provides grounds for toleration.  None of these religions has a unique corner on the truth.  The truth weaves its way through all of them.  The key for perennialism is to receive the ultimate enlightenment from the religion that will bring the optimal personal and societal wellness.

Even if professing evangelical churches do not claim perennialism, in greater numbers they embrace the popularity of perennialism.   Christianity works better as a philosophy of life that helps its adherents thrive and succeed in a worldly sense.  It allows them both to be a Christian and then to fit into this world.  Millennials especially are drawn to the elimination of dogmatic belief and practice.  They can still call themselves a Christian and say they believe in Jesus Christ, while not rejecting the religion of other people.  Professing Christians and other religions coexist.

Professing evangelicals might argue that more non-Christians will be drawn to a perennialistic style of Christianity.  The tolerance they mislabel love means they are loving non-Christians.  This favorable acceptance will draw non-Christians to Christianity, bring them in, and the church will grow.  They will believe in Jesus, because this Jesus matches their deeper understanding of Jesus.

What does someone do with perennialism?

As I said, I’ve encountered perennialism my entire adult life without having a name for it.  When someone says that all the religions are the same, he has reduced all the religions down to where they seem to agree to him.  The so-called “golden rule” is major.  What I’ve noticed is that the do unto others is mainly do unto me.  The golden rule means I’ll get treated like I want to be treated.  The attraction to the golden rule is what it does for me personally.  Self-wellness is the actual religion, which contradicts the rudimentary teaching to deny self and follow Christ.

The apparent agreement between religions is agreement on what Jesus calls the second great commandment, love thy neighbor as thyself.  I hear this from forms of perennialism and I point out that love thy neighbor is the second commandment.  You can’t keep the second without keeping the first, love God.  To love God, He must be God, as God has revealed Himself, which He does in great detail in the Bible.  It also must be love, which God lays out in His commandments.

I tell people that whatever similarity there is between religions is because false religion counterfeits the truth.  Sure there will similarities because that is the nature of the counterfeit.  That’s how the counterfeit deceives, is by imitating certain aspects of the truth.

Maybe the person feels good about his perennialist religion.   God doesn’t accept it.  He’s sinning against God by disobeying what God said.  He’s a sinner in trouble with God.  He needs Jesus Christ, not for a more comfortable life on earth, but to save Him from God’s just wrath against His sin.  God is going to punish Him for sinning.  He needs to know about this.  That is the biggest threat to his well-being, because it effects him through all eternity.  It is also true.

Perennialism is an attack on the truth.  It contradicts numbers of biblical teachings.  I am sad that so many Christians have taken up the cause of perennialism.  The allure is a 2 Peter 2 one:  lust.  They like a Christianity that continues to walk according to lust.

The word “bowels” is used in the King James Version of the Bible, translating the Greek word, splankna, which is used eleven times in the New Testament.  Here are related ones (9 of the 11):

2 Corinthians 6:12, Ye are not straitened in us, but ye are straitened in your own bowels.

2 Corinthians 7:15 And his inward affection is more abundant toward you, whilst he remembereth the obedience of you all, how with fear and trembling ye received him.

Philippians 1:8 For God is my record, how greatly I long after you all in the bowels of Jesus Christ.

Philippians 2:1 If there be therefore any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any bowels and mercies,

Colossians 3:12 Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuffering;

Philemon 1:7 For we have great joy and consolation in thy love, because the bowels of the saints are refreshed by thee, brother.

Philemon 1:12 Whom I have sent again: thou therefore receive him, that is, mine own bowels:

Philemon 1:20 Yea, brother, let me have joy of thee in the Lord: refresh my bowels in the Lord.

1 John 3:17 But whoso hath this world’s good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?

A modern reader is not usually familiar with that concept, bowels or affections, in scripture.  The reason is it is a premodern conception.  You can read it in writings from the pre-New Testament and New Testament era.  Predmodern theologians, like Jonathan Edwards, talked and wrote about it.  From the above usage, it is common, not remote.  It is also authoritative, a divine understanding, not just a cultural one, as some moderns might think or report.

The New Testament contrasts splankna with the word, “belly,” the Greek word koilia, which is used twenty-two times in the New Testament.  Here are the related ones (4 of these):

Mark 7:19 Because it entereth not into his heart, but into the belly, and goeth out into the draught, purging all meats?

Romans 16:18 For they that are such serve not our Lord Jesus Christ, but their own belly; and by good words and fair speeches deceive the hearts of the simple.

1 Corinthians 6:13 Meats for the belly, and the belly for meats: but God shall destroy both it and them. Now the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord; and the Lord for the body.

Philippians 3:19 Whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things.)