David, Amasa and Joab

One of our readers writes, “It seems strange that David should make Amasa, recently head of the rebel army of Absalom, his commander in chief (II Sam. 19-20).”

David, Amasa, Joab and Absalom were all related. Amasa, Joab and Absalom, David’s son, were cousins; Amasa and Joab were sons of David’s sisters (II Sam. 17:25; I Chron. 2:16-17). Amasa and Joab, therefore, were both nephews of King David. Amasa had supported Absalom and was the commander of his forces in his rebellion against David (II Sam. 17:25). Joab was one of David’s commanders in the battle against Absalom and the one who saw to it that Absalom was killed (18:1-17). David, who had told Joab to spare Absalom, was angry with him for having Absalom killed. So he fired Joab, making Amasa commander in his place (19:13).

David’s appointment of Amasa does seem strange. Some believe that David was attempting to reunite the people by appointing Amasa, the commander of the rebel army, but, because this happened immediately after the battle in which Absalom was killed, it is more likely that Amasa was appointed to spite Joab (19:13). Joab, always jealous for his own prestige and position, soon murdered Amasa, using as his excuse Amasa’s sluggishness in mustering the army against another rebel, Sheba the son of Bichri (20:1-13).

Of Amasa we know little. David seems to have appointed him not only to spite Joab but also because he was his nephew (17:25). Though captain, first under Absalom and then under David, he does not seem to have been very competent as a military leader. Not only did he lose the battle as Absalom’s commander, but he was tardy in mustering the men of Judah against Sheba (20:4-5) and naively did not take heed to the murderous sword of crafty Joab (8-10). At that point, David had, in effect, reappointed Joab and Joab’s brother, Abishai, but Joab murdered Amasa anyway (6-10).

Joab, though fiercely loyal to David and unafraid of telling him when he was wrong (e.g., 19:1-8), seems to have been an evil man. He not only murdered Amasa but had previously murdered Abner, who had commanded the armies of the other tribes against David, before David became king of all Israel. Abner, Saul’s cousin (I Sam. 14:50), had been Saul’s general and, when Saul died, he had supported Saul’s son, Ishbosheth (II Sam. 2). Abner abandoned Ishbosheth after a dispute about one of Saul’s concubines and came over to David, but Joab, to avenge his brother, Asahel, who had been killed in a fair fight by Abner, and perhaps out distrust, murdered Abner (II Sam. 3).

David seemed unable to handle Joab but, before he died, he gave instructions to Solomon to deal with Joab (I Kings 2:5-6). Benaiah, under Solomon’s orders, dispatched Joab (28-34), after he supported Solomon’s rival and half-brother, Adonijah.

However, it is not Amasa or Joab but David who is the main character in this history. David, born around 1040 BC, would have been in his 60s at the time of Absalom’s rebellion and Amasa’s murder, with only a few years left before his death at 70 years of age.

The disorder of David’s latter reign included not only Absalom’s rebellion and death, and the rebellion under Sheba the son of Bichri, but near civil war between Judah and the rest of Israel (II Sam. 19:40-43). Just before David died, another son, Adonijah, tried to take the throne, and was supported by Joab and Abiathar the priest (I Kings 1). This was partly David’s own fault for not making it sufficiently clear that Solomon was his heir. It was obvious at this time that David was failing. He was nearly killed in a battle with the Philistines (II Sam. 21:15-17) and needed a concubine to keep him warm (I Kings 1:1-4). It may also have been during this time that David took a census of the people, angering God who then slew 70,000 men with a plague (II Sam. 24).

This disorder was not only the result of David’s age and weakness, but was God’s judgment on him and his house for his sin with Bathsheba, whose husband he had murdered (II Sam. 11). God had forgiven David (II Sam. 12:13; Ps. 32; 51), but David and his family suffered the consequences of his sin. God said to David through Nathan the prophet, “I anointed thee king over Israel, and I delivered thee out of the hand of Saul; And I ... gave thee the house of Israel and of Judah; and if that had been too little, I would moreover have given unto thee such and such things. Wherefore hast thou despised the commandment of the Lord, to do evil in his sight? thou hast killed Uriah the Hittite with the sword, and hast taken his wife to be thy wife, and hast slain him with the sword of the children of Ammon. Now therefore the sword shall never depart from thine house; because thou hast despised me, and hast taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be thy wife. Thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will raise up evil against thee out of thine own house” (II Sam. 12:7-11).

David, the greatest of Israel’s kings, was a man after God’s heart (I Sam. 13:14) and a picture of Christ as the Captain of our salvation who delivers us from our enemies. The two are so closely identified in the Psalms that it is often difficult to say, “This is David” or “This is Christ.” Psalm 45 is an example of the intimate relationship between David and Christ as warrior kings. David the shepherd speaks of Christ the Good Shepherd in Psalm 23. In Psalms 41:9 and 55:12-14, David complains of Ahithophel’s betrayal (II Sam. 15-17), but one can hear Christ speaking through David of Judas and his betrayal.

Nevertheless, David was only a shadow of Christ and, though in some ways he pictured the might and victories of Christ as king, his failures pointed to the need for a better king than himself. The disorder in which his reign ended showed that no mere man could bring the deliverance Jesus brings by His great victory over sin, that is, everlasting righteousness and peace. Psalm 72 and Isaiah 11 speak of Christ as that greatest of all kings, who alone has the victory over our greatest enemies, and who establishes a kingdom that will endure when sun and moon have ceased to shine.

Unlike David, Jesus needed no Joab or Amasa to fight His battles. He needed no swords or spears, like the weapon with which Joab killed Amasa. He fought His battle alone, and fought it by surrendering Himself to His enemies and letting them do their worst, until they destroyed themselves in crucifying Him. He brought life out of death and eternal blessedness out of the misery of sin. That is the gospel of David’s failures as king, a message that David himself acknowledged, when he wrote, “The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand” (Ps. 110:1). Rev. Ron Hanko

Total Depravity and Manichaeism

Our question for this issue of the News is very interesting: “Folk who oppose the Reformed faith often claim that total depravity is nothing but a resurrection of the old heresy of Manichaeism. (Interestingly, this was also the charge of the Remonstrants against the doctrines laid out in the Canons of Dordt—see the ‘Conclusion.’) Augustine (354-430) was a Manichaean in his early years, and they claim that his views of the ‘total depravity of man’ are just remnants of Manichaeism that remained in his theology and these eventually became incorporated into the Reformed churches. What exactly is Manichaeism? And what are the clear differences between the Reformed view and that of the former?”

What was Manichaeism? Manichaeism was an ancient heresy, named after its founder, the Persian false prophet, Mani. It flourished from the third to the seventh centuries in the Roman Empire and Augustine was a Manichaean for nine years. Manichaeism was an attempt to combine the world’s religions into one system, incorporating elements of an old Persian religion called Zoroastrianism with Christianity, Gnosticism and Buddhism, with Mani being the great self-proclaimed prophet of this new religion.

Manichaeism was dualistic and fatalistic. It viewed spiritual things as good and material things as evil, but saw the outcome of the struggle between them as uncertain. This was its dualism, good and evil, the material and the spiritual, two independent and equal powers. Its fatalism lay in the teaching that ordinarily the soul of man, which is spiritual and good, is dominated by the body, which is material and evil, leaving a person helpless in the struggle against evil. It was this latter aspect of Manichaeism that attracted the early pre-Christian Augustine, since it meant that he was not responsible for the sins in which he was living.

Those who claim that the doctrine of total depravity is a carry-over from Manichaeism point to that doctrine’s view that man is evil by nature. They say that it is the same as Manichaeism’s view that the body is evil. Such critics also see the doctrine of total depravity as fatalistic, claiming that it destroys all responsibility for sin, just as did the Manichaean view of the evil body as dominant over the good soul in the personal struggle between good and evil. Total depravity leaves a person unable to do good and, therefore, they claim, without responsibility for sin.

Our questioner is right in claiming that the Remonstrants (Arminians) charged the Reformed churches with Manichaeism at the time of the Synod of Dordt. This charge is addressed in the conclusion to the Canons. The Remonstrants said, “That the doctrine of the Reformed churches concerning predestination, and the points annexed to it, by its own genius and necessary tendency, leads off the minds of men from all piety and religion; that it is an opiate administered by the flesh and the devil, and the stronghold of Satan, where he lies in wait for all, and from which he wounds multitudes and mortally strikes through many with the darts both of despair and security; that it makes God the author of sin, unjust, tyrannical, hypocritical; that it is nothing more than interpolated Stoicism, Manicheism, Libertinism, Turcism; that it renders men carnally secure, since they are persuaded by it that nothing can hinder the salvation of the elect, let them live as they please; and, therefore, that they may safely perpetrate every species of the most atrocious crimes; and that, if the reprobate should even perform truly all the works of the saints, their obedience would not in the least contribute to their salvation …”

“Stoicism, Manicheism, Libertinism, Turcism” are all different forms of fatalism, the wicked notion that our actions are predetermined either by some imaginary deity or by our evil nature, so that it makes no difference how we live or act and that we cannot be held responsible for what we do. “Interpolated … Manicheism” is Manichaeism reintroduced in a new guise, the charge levelled by the Arminians against the five points of Calvinism as taught in the Canons of Dordt.

Our focus is on the doctrine of total depravity and the charge that it destroys human responsibility, encourages carnal security and lets men live as they please. These charges are false and the doctrine of total depravity is not interpolated Manichaeism. We, with other Calvinists, hold the doctrine of total depravity because it is biblical, not as some hold-over from Manichaeism.

The scriptural doctrine of total depravity is found in such passages as Genesis 6:5, Psalm 14:2-3, Jeremiah 13:23, John 3:5-6, Romans 3:9-19 and Ephesians 2:1-3. It teaches that “all men are conceived in sin, and by nature children of wrath, incapable of saving good, prone to evil, dead in sin, and in bondage thereto, and without the regenerating grace of the Holy Spirit they are neither able nor willing to return to God, to reform the depravity of their nature, nor to dispose themselves to reformation” (Canons III/IV:3). This spiritual death and depravity came on all men “for that all have sinned” (Rom. 5:12). The passages show that there is a world of difference between Manichaean dualism and fatalism, and the biblical doctrine of total depravity.

The differences are especially these five.

(1) Manichaeism is dualistic, teaching that evil exists independently and is equally powerful with good, so that the struggle against evil is always uncertain or hopeless. The Bible teaches that, though God is not the author of sin, sin and evil are decreed by Him, as are all things, and are entirely under His sovereign direction and control (Eph. 1:11). In the struggle against evil, therefore, God and His grace will certainly triumph, for He rules it and uses it for His own holy purposes.

(2) Manichaeism has nothing akin to the Bible’s doctrine of man’s fall through disobedience to a divine command (Gen. 3; Rom. 5:12-21). Scripture teaches that man’s depravity, though a matter of his nature, is not part of his original creation, for God created man good and after His own image (Gen. 1:26-27; Ecc. 7:29), with man’s depravity being divine punishment for his disobedience, the death threatened in Genesis 2:16-17 (cf. Eph. 2:1). Man’s depravity, too, is under God’s control.

(3) Manichaeism denies man’s responsibility. God’s Word is clear: Man’s depravity is the result of his own disobedience and for it he is responsible, as he is for his actual sins. His spiritual inability is his own fault. In Psalm 51:1-5, David confesses not only his actual sin, but the fact that he was shapen in iniquity and conceived in sin. Our depravity, then, is not an excuse for sin or an encouragement to live as we please, as the Manichaeans suggested, but something for which we are accountable, and something from which we must be delivered, and can be delivered, only by the grace of God.

(4) According to Manichaeism, its good god took no part in the creation of matter, and so the world and the human body are possessed of evil/darkness. Contra Manichaeism, it is not just man’s physical body that is evil but the whole of man’s nature: soul, spirit, mind, will and body. Nor is the body evil because it is material. Man’s body was created good by God, and in body and soul he is redeemed and delivered when God saves him. The problem is not that man has a body which is inherently bad, but that man, with body and soul, has fallen into sin and needs to be saved. This is the reason why the Son of God assumed our complete human nature, including a body (Heb. 10:5; 2:16-17), that He might deliver us, body and soul, from the dominion of sin.

(5) Given Manichaeism’s dualism, and its false views of man’s creation, body, fall and responsibility, it is not surprising that its doctrine of human deliverance and salvation is totally different from, and opposed to, the gospel of Jesus Christ. Manichaeism teaches that man needs to be delivered from his body and only in that way will he be saved from evil. That has no relation to the teaching of Scripture, but is a pagan and heathen notion. Death is all that is needed for salvation from evil in Manichaeism and there is no need of God or His grace. The Bible teaches that God delivers us from evil through the cross and exaltation of Jesus, and that by grace we experience and receive a complete transformation of our nature, both body and soul, a spiritual rebirth and transformation that is a miraculous work of God known only by faith. We are new creatures in Christ (II Cor. 5:17) and even our lowly bodies will be changed into the likeness of His glorious body (Phil. 3:21).

My depravity is not, therefore, something to which I may appeal as an excuse for my sins, but something which must be confessed as the source of all my evil-doing and my own fault, and against which I must struggle all my life long. Nor is the struggle against evil, as I experience it, hopeless but, turning to the Lord Jesus in faith, I go on unto perfection (Heb. 6:1), trusting that the good work God has begun in me will be finished in the day of Christ (Phil. 1:6). Rev. Ron Hanko