For well over ten years I’ve been researching how Jesus healed history while He was healing both people and the landscape around them. And for all that time, I said to myself: ‘There has to be a word for this. I can’t be the first person who has noticed that Jesus is repeatedly stepping into the storyline of ancient tragedies and editing the outcome.’
For over two years, I searched for evidence that the road to Emmaus was the same route as that followed by the Levite and his concubine in the heartbreaking violence that climaxes the Book of Judges. And while I never found the evidence I was looking for, I did discover that the early church had carefully and closely linked the two episodes.
Once I was aware of how the parallel story patterning worked, I was able to spot it everywhere. Usually, the name of the town gave a significant hint and, if not, then the names of the characters were shot through with clues. But, since there is nothing new under the sun, I was puzzled that I couldn’t find references to what was seeing in anyone else’s writing. ‘There just has to be a word for this,’ I repeated to myself constantly. But because I couldn’t find it, I dubbed the phenomenon ‘the healing of history.’
And then I discovered the word recapitulation. It was almost what I wanted. It was so close and yet it seemed only halfway there. The term recapitulation refers a theory of the atonement, first articulated in the second century by Irenaeus, bishop of Lyon.
Irenaeus was mentored by Polycarp who had been personally discipled by the apostle John. Irenaeus looked to the ancient art of rhetoric to develop his idea of recapitulation. The final speaker in a debate summed up the entire argument and made a closing statement that recapitulated all that had been presented up to that point. Irenaeus chose to see the death and resurrection of Jesus as God’s summary statement on the events of history—that Jesus, as the Last Adam, on being given a choice regarding the Tree opted for obedience whereas the First Adam had chosen disobedience. Same plotline, different outcome.
That fulfilled a large component of the ‘going over’ of stories that I repeatedly glimpsed in the gospels. But it didn’t address the incomparable healings that resulted: hearts, homes, health, heritage. The vastness of what Jesus was doing encompassed far more than individual people—He gathered together the sins of their ancestors, the defilement on their land and the ruptures of history and fixed the lot. In doing so, He was God’s commentary on the past. Where we might give David or Moses, Joseph or Nehemiah a free pass on aspects of their behaviour, Jesus—by His actions—declares that their integrity has been found wanting. He mends the estrangements and schisms they have caused.
Now, as it turned out, what I was really looking for was the Greek word that had been translated as recapitulation. The Greek has nuances that are completely stripped away in English. In fact, it’s got an entire symphony of nuances to do with the healing of history and the restoration of creation. The Greek word is ‘anakephalaiosis’, and it’s found in two of Paul’s epistles. In the middle of the massive 202-word Greek sentence that runs from Ephesians 1:3–14, Paul wrote:
‘…to an administration of the fullness of the times, to sum up [‘anakephalaiōsasthai’]
all things in Christ, the things in the heavens and the things on the earth, in Him.’
Ephesians 1:10 NASB
The root of the word ‘anakephalaiosis’, is ‘áná’, each, and ‘kephalaioó’, wounded in the head. In this word, we have a promise of the fulfilment of God’s prophecy about the serpent:
‘He will crush your head…’
Genesis 3:15 NIV
But we are also reminded of the wounded head of Christ—it is through that wounded head that Jesus gathers all history and creation to Himself on the Cross and heals both time and matter.
However, as we’ve seen two episodes ago in this series, ‘kephalé’, head, also means cornerstone. It immediately occurred to me when I saw ‘anakephalaiosis’ in Ephesians 1:10 to wonder three things:
if Paul was not only using ‘anakephalaiosis’ in the sense of healing of the wounded head but also as rectification of the stricken cornerstone
if Ephesians 1:10 was in a chiastic position in relation to Ephesians 6:16
if Ephesians is designed as a symmetrical, mirror-reflective chiasmus
Now you may wonder why I asked those questions. It’s simple. In the description of the Armour of God, there is reference to ‘the flaming arrows of the evil one.’ (Ephesians 6:16 NIV) This is one of at least seven hidden references to a doorway in this passage. The Greek word for arrows, ‘belos’, also means threshold. Not an ordinary threshold but one that has been profaned, defiled, desecrated, smashed and ruined by a thief. It is exactly equivalent in sense to a stricken cornerstone—a place despoiled by covenant violation.
To strike a cornerstone meant to refuse covenant (hence God’s anger at Moses and Aaron for hitting the rock instead of speaking to it) while passing over a cornerstone meant accepting covenant.
As it turns out, yes, Ephesians 1:10 is chiastically placed with Ephesians 6:16 and, yes, also, the book of Ephesians is designed chiastically both as a totality and in smaller reflective segments. This means Paul was deliberately using a pattern common in Hebrew prophecy and poetry called chiasmus. It was a symmetrical arrangement of ideas and themes that enhanced and illuminated the meaning of the prophecy. Today, commentators tend to simply point out the niftiness of the pattern, generally ignoring the in-built clarifications that the mirror sections provide for each other.
So, it appears that, by matching ‘anakephalaiosis’ with ‘belos’, Paul was using it primarily in the sense of cornerstone—while not dismissing it as head nor discounting it as summing up and healing all of creation and all of history. He therefore invests Christ’s work of recapitulation with the additional sense of undoing all covenant violations and breaches across all of time.
Now the consequence of ‘anakephalaiosis’ being partnered with ‘belos’ leads to a further conclusion. Ephesians is segmented into smaller chiastic sections, one of which runs from Ephesians 5:19–6:18. Within that block, Ephesians 6:16, the verse that mentions ‘the flaming arrows of the evil one’, is partnered symmetrically with:
For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church,
His body, of which He is the Saviour.
Ephesians 5:23 NIV
Once again, ‘kephalé’, head, parallels ‘belos’, threshold. And once again, this placement suggests that the correct translation of ‘kephalé’ in this instance is actually cornerstone.
The word that, in Paul’s epistles, is so often translated head with an automatic implication of hierarchy—and thus superiority and subservience—is instead about foundation, beginning, origin, source.
And because a cornerstone was where a threshold covenant was enacted and where friendship and hospitality were pledged and celebrated, we see in ‘anakephalaiosis’ a reconciliation between ourselves and God in friendship—rather than sonship—as well as in invitation to the most wonderful banquet of all time.
Won’t that be utterly breath-taking?
This is Grace Drops and I’m Anne Hamilton. May Jesus recapitulate your family’s history with perfect mercy.
Thank you to Lorna Skinner of www.riversofmusic.co.uk for the background music.
Again I want to acknowledge Lucy Peppiatt who, in Rediscovering Scripture’s Vision for Women: Fresh Perspectives on Disputed Texts, commented that her personal opinion was that ‘kephalé’, usually translated head in 1 Corinthians 11:3, actually meant cornerstone. She didn’t expand on this thought at all but, as soon as I saw it, Paul’s hitherto obscure thinking instantly became obvious to me. When you’ve been researching the concept of the cornerstone as long as I have, it all fits together.
The new and expanded edition of God’s Panoply has an additional chapter which looks at cornerstone as an alternative to head in 1 Corinthians 11:3. God’s Palmoniy also discusses this issue at length. Please get in touch through the contact form at Armour Books if you are in the US, UK or Australia and there are unusual availability/price issues at the retailer.