One of the commentators I looked at said that Jesus made his defense to calling himself God on but one word in the Law, saying that scripture could not be changed. He was referring to Psalm 82, which is about corrupt judges, who considered themselves above others. It is not exactly a psalm that praises the judiciary.

I said, “You are gods, sons of the Most High, all of you;
nevertheless, like men you shall die, and fall like any prince.”
Ps 82:6-7

And there is nothing new about judges thinking they are somehow immune from the frailities of our human condition. This is from flat white (the Aussie spectator) and deals with the invidious section 18C of the race relations act, which makes it an offence to say something that may be reasonably construed as hateful.

A weapon no judge should have.

On last week’s Q&A, comedian turned mature age law student Corinne Grant shed light on perhaps the most compelling reason why 18c of the Racial Discrimination Act must be repealed: free speech is too important to be left in the hands of courtrooms and self-regarding elites.

According to Grant, we should have no qualms that four students have spent years facing down a six figure law suit that could end with the Federal Court labelling them racists for criticising their university’s racially segregated computer labs.

Why? Because “the legal system exists for a reason and part of that reason is for these debates to be able to be had in an open court with an impartial judicial officer weighing up the pros and cons.”

These words are either coy or wilfully ignorant. The whole point of repealing 18C is that so-called ‘impartial judicial officers’ have a terrible record when it comes to upholding free speech.

The assumption behind Grant’s view is that the questions raised by 18c have a legally correct answer. This buys into the fallacy that what is ‘reasonably likely to offend or insult ‘someone on the basis of race can be objectively discerned concept by the finely tuned moral compass of an ex lawyer appointed to the Federal Court.

It is far, far better to avoid the court and treat the judiciary with a finely graded sense of contempt.

But the passage here is a hate fact. To liberals.

Christ claims he is God and justifies it: and he claims scripture is inerrant en passant.

The Jews picked up stones again to stone him. Jesus answered them, “I have shown you many good works from the Father; for which of them are you going to stone me?” The Jews answered him, “It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God.” Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your Law, ‘I said, you are gods’? If he called them gods to whom the word of God came—and Scripture cannot be broken—do you say of him whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world, ‘You are blaspheming,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’? If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me; but if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.” Again they sought to arrest him, but he escaped from their hands.

He went away again across the Jordan to the place where John had been baptizing at first, and there he remained. And many came to him. And they said, “John did no sign, but everything that John said about this man was true.” And many believed in him there.

(John 10:31-42 ESV)

If Christ built his argument on a Psalm, then the Psalms have validity. This was a slap in the face of the liberals of his day, who said that the Torah only had that status. Christ called it all the Law. If one or two words have validity, and very stroke of the pen has meaning — as Christ said in the sermon of the mount — then all the words are valid, and the text matters.

It is God inspired. The words in it are promises: it has power, indeed, to discern our hearts.

The fundamentals of theology are unchanged. Inerrancy in scripture has scriptural justification.

So the decision is binary. Do we follow Christ, and take his words seriously? In that case, there is a purpose in exegesis and a conscientious scholar reads the older writers and considers their errors and insights in the light of the text. There is no new thing here, for the work of Christ is complete for our salvation.

The new things are the errors of this age, and our ongoing need to reform ourselves

Alternatively, it is all a metaphor and there is no salvation. In which case, the Christian is to be pitied, for they will converge into some pale, insipid form of political theatre. There will be no sense of salvation, but copious guilt. There will be pride, virtue signals, but no Godliness and no reformation.

They will be the elite judges, corrupt and calling themselves gods, at prayer.

May God spare us from that fate.