The Story of the Blood Issue (from my Perspective)

In 1983, Moody Press published John MacArthur's Hebrews commentary.  That summer I read it completely, all the way through.  I had never heard anyone explain "the blood issue," so MacArthur filled a bit of a void for me.  I had really no view and now I had read one.  By default, I took the MacArthur position without being introduced to any other position.  That's often how I rolled in those days, and maybe you can relate.  I was open to change my position, but I then had a position, the one MacArthur wrote in his Hebrews commentary.

In April of 1986, Bob Jones University published something in Faith for the Family that called MacArthur's view on the blood, "heresy."  You can see how in tune I was on this issue at the time.  I was in my second year of a M. Div. program at the time, and I would go into the periodical room of the library every week, as a habit, to look at the new periodicals.  Yes, I was freaky.  I read that Faith for the Family article and disagreed with it.  I thought they were slandering MacArthur, misrepresenting his position.  I was very defensive of him.  I had read his Hebrew commentary and I thought that Bob Jones was simply giving a cheap-shot to MacArthur because they didn't like him.  I had not heard or read the comments that he had made in sermons earlier (Al Gore had not invented the internet yet) that might have given me some concern (I don't know).  Later, the Fundamental Baptist Fellowship (the FBF) took some strong stands against MacArthur.  I read their criticisms too and very much disrespected their answers to him.  They were horrible.  I still think they were.  They would have the net effect of sending me toward the MacArthur position.

In 1987, I wrote my paper on the blood, that I mentioned in the first article in this now two part series.  Nobody had given me a blood position, but MacArthur.  My teacher criticized my paper, but he had not provided me with any kind of alternative to MacArthur's position or showed me that MacArthur's position was new.  That kind of work had not been done, that I knew of.  Maybe it had, but I had never read it.  I still don't know if anyone had written anything like that as an an answer to him.

I left to California in 1987 and then was in the work here and continue in California still.  When I established permanent residence, fairly quickly I sent for several periodicals.  I ordered BibSac, the former Calvary Theological Journal, Grace Journal, and more.  I read all those and others.  That year, the Calvary Baptist Theological Journal did a series on the blood of Christ.  They were "fundamentalists" who seemed to position themselves with MacArthur on the blood issue.  Others in the FBF did.  I remember Jim Singleton in Tempe, AZ taking the same position as MacArthur on the blood, which was a bit of a controversy.  Singleton always seemed to be a maverick in the FBF.

As I recall that time period, I remember that a major attack angle on MacArthur was that he was espousing the teachings of R. B. Thieme and that he denied the blood.  By denying the blood, I took that to mean that he didn't believe that Jesus bled very much.  MacArthur wasn't saying that Jesus didn't bleed.  He was saying that Jesus bled a whole lot.  I rejected that MacArthur denied the blood, understanding that "denying the blood" meant that you said that Jesus didn't bleed or barely bled.  Or "denying the blood" meant that Jesus didn't need to shed His blood, which MacArthur also rejected.  He taught that Jesus had to shed His blood for us to be saved.  He was just breaking down how everything occurred with Jesus' blood like no one else seemed to be doing at the time.

After a few years, "the blood issue" calmed down and I rarely heard about it anymore.  However, as I preached through books of the Bible and read more and more outside material, I didn't see that MacArthur position as tenable any longer.  I didn't think it accurately represented all the passages in the Bible about the blood of Christ.  I tweaked my position to something different.  And then upon further reading, I saw MacArthur's position as different than the historical position on the blood.  I didn't know of anyone who taught his position (and he represents his thinking in a youtube audio that I critiqued in part one and part two here).  What initially gave me trouble was Acts 20:28.  And that sent me to all the references on the blood and into history.

How is MacArthur changing the historic position?  MacArthur says that blood means death.  It's no more than a synonym or metonym for death.  The death is what saved us, and when the Bible references Jesus' "blood," it is simply saying "bloody death."  MacArthur says that he is swinging away from Roman Catholic teaching about the blood.  Fine.  But he's also swinging away from Baptist and Protestant teaching too.  He attacks an artificial boogeyman, who says that the blood has mystical or magical qualities to it.  MacArthur says that blood doesn't do anything itself.  His position on that comes from a logical leap for him.  Jesus took a human body ("flesh and blood"), so the passages that say His blood does do something have to be seen in the light of that.  That was new.

People have taken the MacArthur teaching even further to say that people who say there is some other quality to Jesus' blood than physical and human, are denying the humanity of Christ.  And now they are also Eutychians at least practically.  We've jumped all the way to this.  And since they are denying the humanity of Jesus, they're Gnostics.  What I've found is that you can find about any so-called early Christian heresy to call anyone who takes a different position than you do.  I can spin almost anyone to any form of Gnosticism that I want, if he takes a different position than I.  For instance, I could call the MacArthur position a neo-Nestorian position, because Nestorianism says Jesus had two separate natures while he was on earth.  I could see how Nestorianism could fit quite nicely for MacArthur.  And the argument would go like the following:  "You're Eutychian."  "Well, you're Nestorian."  "You're Eutychian!"  "You're Nestorian."  Then the pies start to fly.

If you're going to talk about who it is that has seemed to take some non-historical or unhistorical teachings about Jesus' nature and Person, you could point at MacArthur, because he for most of his life, until relatively recently, denied the eternal Sonship of Christ.  He believed that Jesus became the Son of God at the point of his incarnation.  He has recanted of that, but he fought for that position for years, in addition to his new teaching on Jesus' blood.

Where I know I have a problem with MacArthur's teaching now is that he denies that the blood itself does anything.  And this is where I hear the strawmen come from him and others.  They say that Jesus' corpuscles, molecules, or fluid can't save us.  Chuckle.  Chuckle.  Sounds weird.   The doctrine of the molecules.  It's a strawman, because who in fact is saying that?  I've never heard it and I don't even think Roman Catholics are saying things like that.  Maybe it was a reaction to M. R. DeHaan and his Chemistry of the Blood.  Maybe there.  I've never read any DeHaan material, so I can't relate to that.

So we're wanting to know whether the blood does anything.  MacArthur says "no," even though the Bible and historical theology say that it does.  That's new teaching.  But if you say now that you believe the old teaching, you're a Eutychian.  Does anyone see the facetiousness of that?  Everyone was a Eutychian until MacArthur and maybe Thieme.  That's a motive to change.  But it also means there was some kind of total apostasy on the blood of Christ until MacArthur came along.  Everyone was a Eutychian.  I am Spartacus.  No, I am Eutychus.

Jesus had flesh and blood "the same" as us, Hebrews 2:14.  Alright, so go ahead and have bright light coming from inside of you like Jesus did on the Mount of Transfiguration.  Oh, that was divine.  Fine.  But it was physical light.  And it came from His body.  His body could do things that ours can't do.  So "the same" doesn't mean identical.  It means that we are the same because Jesus had all the qualities of a human.  He had flesh and blood the same as us.  We both have flesh and blood.  He had more though.  He was still 100% human and yet still could do things humans can't do and with His body.  This is what people have believed throughout history.  Now you deny the humanity of Jesus if you believe that?  That's what my first post here was about.

I write this story, because it is the story of a change in the doctrine of the blood of Christ.  We want to be accurate about who changed it.  I'm not changing it.  I'm actually reporting what others have believed.  MacArthur changed it.  Maybe someone else did too, who he relied upon, but I don't think he got his teaching from Thieme or the Jehovah's Witnesses.  All the emphasis today on "human blood" is new.  I've shown that.  What's it in reaction too?  Is there some big, bad problem with people denying the humanity of Jesus?  If anything, the bigger problem is with the deity of Christ.  Jesus' deity has shrunk to people.  He's a more human Jesus than ever.  Just look at evangelicalism and now fundamentalism.  Everything is more human.  The Bible is more human.  Worship is more human.

I let MacArthur have his position for decades without complaint.  I defended that he didn't deny the blood, but now I get what bothers people.  MacArthur, to take his position, has to turn them into theological weirdos, as a defense.  Others are taking this even further.  I recognize that some, out of reaction to MacArthur, have said wacko things.  But they weren't saying them until MacArthur started with his position and then they moved out into the theological nether in reaction to him.

Now you may say that MacArthur was right to change it, because it has been wrong for centuries.  That would need a lot, a very lot of exegesis.  You can't just brush by Hebrews 2:14 and say you're done.  That's not going to do it.  You can't just quote the Chalcedonian creed and think that you've made some major point on the blood issue.  Read the Chalcedonian creed.  It doesn't say anything about the blood of Jesus.  I'm pretty sure that Owen, Flavel, and Charnock all believed the Chalcedonian creed.  So there's zero mileage on the Chalcedonian creed on this blood issue.

You don't get to say or even think (which is where it is now) that people, who call Jesus' blood "divine blood" and believe that it is "incorruptible" and that there is some quality there that is superhuman, are stupid and heterodox.  You, my friend, are the one making the change.  I'm reporting what people have believed.  If you want to call it those things, fine.  It's your sandbox.  But that doesn't make it true, even if you put it in gold foil and have someone wearing a funny hat when he pronounces it.