G1. God didn't need to create.

God didn't need to make the world. He created the universe because he wanted to.

Admittedly, it is highly doubtful that we could comprehend God's literal motivations for creation. We inevitably "anthropomorphize" when we think of God. We create him in our image. We ascribe feelings and motivations to which we can relate.

Of course God has, in effect, encouraged us to do so. After all, that is the way he has revealed himself to us in the Bible. To varying degrees, the Bible is full of anthropomorphisms. For example, an all-knowing God cannot literally regret that he made humanity, nor will he be deeply troubled literally (Gen. 6:6). He knew humanity was going to do such things, and he knew how he was going to respond. He knew the world would become vastly wicked and that he would destroy them with a Flood.

Such statements were God meeting Israel where they were, God revealing himself in terms to which we can relate as humans. Such language is "incarnated" revelation. It was God taking on human flesh in terms of how Israel and the original audiences of the Bible understood things. Such biblical language shows us what God is like by analogy to our human experiences, but it is not precise or exactly literal language.

So what pictures does Scripture give us of God's motivations for creation? Revelation 4:11 simply mentions that everything was created because of God's will. In other words, God created the universe because he wanted to. The context of this verse is the final restoration of the universe to its ideal state, with all creation worshiping its Creator.

In Acts 17:25, Paul makes it clear to his pagan Greek audience that God does not need to be served with human hands, like the gods of Athens that Acts was critiquing. Rather, God himself is the source of all life. God himself made the world and everything in it. He does not live in temples made by human hands.

As the sermon we call Hebrews makes clear, the temple of the Old Testament was only meant to point to God in a shadowy way. It foreshadowed the perfect sacrifice of Jesus on the cross and, like all revelation, gave a picture of God that Israel could understand in terms similar to the way all the people of that day worshiped their gods. But God does not literally dwell in houses made by human hands (cf. Acts 7:48-50.

Even Solomon, when he dedicates the temple in 1 Kings 8:27, recognizes that "The heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot contain you." Solomon himself, in the paradigm of his day, probably pictured the heavens as layers of sky as you move upward until you reached the highest heaven where Yahweh dwelt. But we can translate his picture and see that this universe cannot possibly contain God. Indeed, as Christians we believe that God created the universe out of nothing and thus that God in his essence is distinct from this universe.

Before God created this universe, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit alone existed and were completely self-sufficient. Christian tradition calls this characteristic of God his "aseity," the fact that he does not need the universe. We should not take that to mean he is aloof or disinterested. It is to say that while we could not exist without him, he does and could exist without us.

And he would not be God if it were not the case. The gods of the Greeks, Babylonians, and all the other ancients were not nearly so powerful as the God we serve. Indeed, they were really only larger than life versions of the men and women who imagined them. They threw temper tantrums, had affairs on their spouses, and could be defeated in battle. They were really just projections of really powerful men and women who could not die.

None of these descriptions apply to the one true God. Even if the Bible might use anthropomorphisms like God getting angry or changing his mind, these are just pictures to help us understand. They are baby talk meant to help us catch a glimpse of a God whose ways are "past finding out" (Rom. 11:33, KJV). We can catch a glimpse of what it might mean for God to have all power, but only a glimpse. We can see by analogy to things we know just a small taste of what it must be like for him to know all things.

But the literal essence of God, what he is apart from this creation, is beyond anything we could imagine (Eph. 3:20). We know him primarily in relation to the creation of which we are a part. To think we have a grasp on him literally--as he actually is without figure or metaphor--runs the risk of idolatry, of mistaking an image for the Creator himself.

While Christians disagree on many of the nuances of God and theology, faith in the self-sufficiency of God has been nearly universal throughout Christian history. There might be some today, particularly those who identify as process theologians, who might question the self-sufficiency of God. Process theology tends not to see God as distinct from the world but developing and becoming with the world. But this approach to God deconstructs the very notion of God into something else.

To say that God is God is to say that he does not need anything outside himself. God didn't need to create the world because he was lonely or because there was something imperfect about him without us. God created the world because he wanted to.

Next Sunday: G2. Is God a guy?

Grudem 15f: Old Earth versus Young Earth

I am delighted to finally put this chapter of Grudem behind me. The previous summary/evaluation is here.
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3. The Age of the Earth: Preliminary Considerations
Summary
Grudem considers the age of the earth much less important than the matters of creation he has discussed up to this point in the chapter. What has he discussed: 1) creation out of nothing, 2) creation is distinct from God, but dependent on him, 3) creation shows God's glory, 4) God created the universe "very good," 5) there is no final conflict between God and science, and 6) secular theories that deny God as creator, including Darwinian evolution, are incompatible with the Bible (289).

However, Grudem does not believe that the Bible is clear on the age of the earth. He looks at five angles. First, he argues that there are gaps in the genealogies of the Bible  (290-91). The expression, "the father of" can indicate an ancestor of rather than the immediate father. His second section argues that, from the angle of science, humanity was certainly on the earth by 10,000 BC, the dating of cave paintings by Cro-Magnon man.

Interestingly, Grudem thirdly concludes that the Bible does not say clearly whether animals died before Adam's Fall. When Romans says that death came into the world by sin (Rom. 5:12), it is talking about human death. Similarly, Grudem fourthly does not reach a biblical conclusion on whether dinosaurs were extinct by the time of Adam.

Fifth, he spends considerably more time discussing whether the days of Genesis 1 are literal twenty-four hour days or long periods of time. The Hebrew word yom can refer to a period of time, rather than only a 24 hour day (e.g., Prov. 25:13). Grudem thinks that the evidence is not conclusive either way. The word yom can mean 24 hour day and it can mean a period of time.

He does mention some significant objections to such flexibility, however. There is the phrase, for example, "there was evening and there was morning," which sounds like a 24 hour day. Then again, no one said how much time was between the morning and the next evening in the sequence. The 10 commandments sound like they are treating the days as literal 24 hour days. And most of the time when a number is used with the plural word for days, it is thinking 24 hour days.

Grudem gives other arguments and counterarguments. In the end, he does not think that the Bible is entirely clear and, thus, that a person's opinion on the age of the earth is not simply a question of whether he or she believes the Bible. "God has chosen not to give us enough information to come to a clear decision on this question" (297).

4. Christians can believe either "old earth" or "young earth."
Grudem divides this section into two parts. In the first one, he gives two biblical strategies for believing in an old earth.

a. First, there is the "day-age" view, sometimes called a "concordist" view. In this view, the days of creation are interpreted to be ages, very long periods of time. Here Grudem mentions arguments for the age of the earth that seem rather forceful and all of which consist with each other:

• radiometric dating of rocks from the moon and meteorites (which would not have been affected by the flood)
• the time required for liquid magma to cool (about a million years for some large formations)
• time and pressure necessary for some types of rocks that have small fossils in them
• the time required for continental drift (fossils in West Africa and East South America match)
• the time required for the formation of coral reefs (100s of thousands of years)

Counterarguments include the fact that the sequence of Genesis 1 doesn't correspond exactly to the current understanding of the development of life. Indeed, it might be taken to imply that the sun did not exist for millions of years while plants and trees were on the earth. Grudem wrestles with this and suggests that, if the old earth view is correct, the Hebrew verbs on Day 4 be taken as perfects that mean something like, "God had made the two great lights" (300).

Second, there is what he calls the "literary framework view." This view, as Grudem presents it, sees Genesis 1 as a literary device to indicate that God created everything. "Chronology has no place here" (301), he quotes Henri Blocher. [1] One feature of this approach is to see the first three and last three days of creation as parallel. So the creation of light in Day 1 mirrors the creation of the sun in Day 4. The sky and waters of Day 2 connect with the creation of fish and birds in Day 5. Then the creation of dry land in Day 3 connects to animals and humanity in Day 6.

Grudem has some questions about this approach. For one, he thinks the correspondence between the days is more imprecise than it might seem at first. For example, the sun is placed in the firmament of Day 2, not Day 1. Similarly, the waters do not become seas for fish until Day 3, not Day 2.

Next, he wants to be careful that we not pick a theory because it is convenient in reconciling science and Scripture. He also does not think some of the objections to the sequence are as strong as the literary view protests. For example, he does not see a conflict between the order of events in Genesis 2 (humanity-trees and plants-animals).

In the end, he does not find the literary framework view very convincing because he thinks Genesis 1 wants to be read as a chronological sequence. The commandment about the Sabbath day also seems to read the days of creation as a sequence of days.

b. Then Grudem gives how a person with a young earth view might process science that seems to point in a contrary direction. First, there is the "apparent age" approach. This approach basically agrees that the earth and the universe "look" old, but that God created the universe to look this way. God created light in mid-stream. God created trees already with rings just like he made Adam and Eve as adults.

Grudem ultimately has problems with this approach because the earth appears very old even where there is no apparent benefit to humanity. Did God put the fossils of what look like very old, dead animals into the initial creation and call it "very good"? It is only in the modern age that scientists have discovered much of this evidence for an old earth--why would God have made those pieces look old, even though they aren't, evidence that has never even been observed before the last one or two hundred years?

Second, he considers "flood geology." What he calls "neo-catastrophism," which attributes most of the present geological evidence of the earth to the immense catastrophe of the flood. Interestingly, Grudem strongly distinguishes the science in relation to flood geology with than in relation to biological evolution. "The controversy over flood geology is strikingly different from the other areas of dispute regarding creation, for its advocates have persuaded almost no professional geologists" (306). By contrast, Grudem argues that evolution itself has very significant problems in explaining facts of observation from the created world.

5-6. Conclusions and Moving Forward
In the final parts of this chapter, Grudem suggests that there is neither enough scientific or exegetical evidence to know the age of the earth. He believes the science leans heavily toward a very old earth and that the interpretation of Genesis leans toward young earth. But neither, in his opinion, are conclusive. We should therefore not fight over this particular issue but cooperate as Christians in continued discussion on the age of the earth. He considers intelligent design a much more profitable apologetic.

Evaluation
Given Grudem's general bent, it is intriguing that he is non-committal on the question of the earth's age. It would seem, in general, that his hermeneutic would most naturally lead to considering the days of Genesis 1 as literal 24 hour days. It is perhaps a testament to how strongly the scientific evidence points away from this conclusion that he will not eliminate other interpretations of Genesis that, in general, are quite different from his interpretations elsewhere. It leads him, and others like him, to drive a wedge between the question of the earth's age and the question of evolution per se.

His arguments against the apparent age view are compelling. It is one thing to say that God created the light already to the earth so that humanity had light. It is one thing to say that God created Adam and Eve already as adults. We can see why God would do such things.

But to say that God planted fossils in rocks that look a certain age--that weren't actually from animals that ever really lived--so that he could finally test the faith of us once they were eventually discovered in the 1800s and 1900s? This presupposes a "gotcha" God who is not the God of the Bible. To say that God also arranged any number of other converging lines of scientific evidence to support an old age of the earth, only to be discovered in the twentieth century to test us? This would be a morally sick god more like that of Loki in Norse mythology.

The fundamental problem with this entire discussion is a genre problem. Both Grudem and those who are ardent for a young earth assume that Genesis 1 means to give us straightforward history. Genesis 1 may not exactly be a poem, but it is poetic. It is, in my opinion, highly anachronistic to read it in the way Grudem and others do. Grudem's anguish over perfect tenses and precise orders is completely unnecessary. It is a genre mistake.

Rather, the closest Grudem comes to reading Genesis appropriately is with what he calls the "literary framework view." But he does not let this view have its full impact. He is still trying to read that view with the assumption that Genesis 1 means to give us history. But what is the literary purpose of Genesis 1? Is it not primarily 1) to introduce the Pentateuch 2) in a way that identifies who the God of Israel is in contrast to other gods, and 3) expresses Israel's way of looking at the world? The purpose is neither history nor science but theological, in a broad sense. Even if it is not in the form of poetry, it is more poetic in nature than literal.

Grudem's critiques of the literary view are based on the fact that he still sees that view as historical with a twist. But what is Genesis 1 about?  More than anything, it indicates that, unlike the gods of the other creation stories, the God of Israel competes with no other. He creates by command and does not have to defeat other gods for the creation to obey. He is in complete control.

Not all Christians will be as comfortable with seeing Genesis 1 more as an expression of a Levitical worldview than as an explanation for it. If we are not a scientist, it is not a problem. Nevertheless, Grudem suggests that it is hard to find any Christian geologists who think the earth is 6000 years old, even if you can find a number of Christian scientists who question evolution.

For those who struggle with the issue, his recommendation is appropriate. Let Bible readers and scientists with faith continue their dialog without dechristianizing or demoralizing the other. Those of us especially who are not scientists should give some leeway to scientists with faith and trust that God will explain everything in the kingdom.

[1] In the Beginning: The Opening Chapters of Genesis, trans. by D. G. Preston (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1984), 52.

My Theology in Bullet Points

I was recently admiring a pastor who just seems to be able to boil down concepts into the most powerful little proverbs and snippets. For a brief moment, I had a glimpse of expressing my version of Wesleyan-Arminian theology in bullet points (with some idiosyncrasy mixed in, of course). It would look something like this:

Faith

• Start with the faith you have. Don't try to start from scratch. Start with whatever faith tradition you are in and go from there. (faith seeking understanding)
• All truth is God's truth. God is not a trickster. On the whole, the evidence points toward the truth. There's something suspicious about a faith that can only survive within a framework of untouchable presuppositions.
• Why believe in God? Because he exists. It really isn't up to you. Either he exists or he doesn't. What I think about the subject or my motivations to believe are irrelevant to the answer.
• We don't have to reach up to God. There's again something strange about an approach that feels like we have to prove God, as if it's up to me. God reaches down to us and that is the ultimate mechanism for our faith.
• Most of the arguments for God more or less boil down to cause--cause of existence, cause of order, cause of miracles, ground of being. It is hard for us to fathom, but it may very well be that it is impossible to consider existence without presupposing God.

God

• God didn't need to create. He created the universe because he wanted to.
• God can do whatever he wants (but he doesn't want to do certain things).
• Creation indicates certain things about God, especially creation out of nothing. It implies that he has all power in relation to the creation and all knowledge in relation to the creation. 
• He is also all-present within the creation (especially the Holy Spirit), both in terms of time and space.
• God's presence in all time suggests that God not only knows every possible eventuality of history but that God knows every actuality of history.
• Because God has seen all of history, his knowledge of the actualities of history does not imply determinism. He knows because he has seen, not because it is determined prior to it happening. For God, it has already happened even though it hasn't yet for us.
• God's primary disposition toward the creation is love, the desire for the best of everything in his creation. Justice is simply letting the consequences of our actions play out. It is not a drive within God but a default within his creation.
• God is so sovereign and self-secure, that he can let us disobey him without feeling threatened by it.

Humanity and Creation

• A day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as a day. God is in no hurry when it comes either to revelation or judgment. He is more interested in our hearts than our heads.
• God has a "directive" will toward the creation and a "permissive" will. Everything that happens, happens with God's permission, but God does not directly command everything that happens. 
• God has created natural laws that play out without his direct command, and God gives a certain freedom to humanity as well.
• Miracles are when God interrupts the normal cause-effect flow of events.
• God loves all his creation. We are but an infinitesimal part of it in the vast scheme of things.
• We may be animals but we are more than animals. To say we are the "image of God" suggests that all human beings are significant and to be respected. We are to love our neighbor and our enemy, because they are in the image of God.
• God did not ultimately make males to rule over females. He created them to "tend the garden" side by side. Christ restores the possibility for this ultimate eventuality of the kingdom of God.

Evil

• God created the possibility of evil when he created the possibility of disobeying him. Evil is not a "thing." God did not create a thing, evil, but the possibility of making evil choices. He created Satan and Adam with the power to choose against him but not with "evil" in them.
• Context determines meaning, and intention determines sin in its most significant sense. Satan's desire for power or Adam's desire for knowledge were not intrinsically evil desires. They were evil choices because of the context in which Satan intentioned for power and the context in which Adam intentioned for knowledge. 
• Adam or Christ can thus be tempted without having a sinful "nature" because temptation can be a good drive or desire given an inappropriate object or with an inappropriate intention. E.g., sex is morally neutral. The intention and context of sex is what can make it morally wrong.
• There are two types of sin--objective and subjective. Objective sin is when we wrong God or others, "wrongdoing." Subjective sin is when we intend to do wrong. All have wronged God and others objectively. But the sins about which God is most concerned are intentional in nature.
• Since Adam's sin, the default state of humanity is one of separation from God and moral dis-empowerment. "There is none righteous, no, not one." We all wrong others. "The tongue is a restless evil--who can know it?" We cannot in our own power resist our animal drives to express our desires in the wrong ways and in the wrong contexts. 
• The amount of corporate sin committed by the human race is nothing short of astounding. Our default state is to kill other tribes and races. Our default state is to destroy others to advance.
• God, although loving, allows evil to take place 1) because he allows us to choose between good and evil, with the result that some choose evil and 2) because he has given the creation the freedom to follow natural laws to their consequent end. 
• Suffering is not evil but painful. It gives us the choice to mature or morally deteriorate.

Christ

• Christ was "eternally begotten of the Father." Our sense of the Trinity before the creation is inevitably filtered through a post-creation lens. Even the notion of God in eternal relationship is presumably somewhat analogical. 
• The picture of Christ as the Logos suggests that the primary role of the pre-incarnate Christ was as the agent of creation, the "world-bridger."
• Christ only became human when he came to earth as Jesus, the incarnation, God assuming humanity. From that point on to eternity, he has been both fully human and fully God. 
• Christ is the Word of God. The Bible gives witness to the Word. Preaching gives witness to the Word through the word.
• While he was on earth, Jesus played it by the human rules. Although he was filled with the Spirit from conception, he did nothing while on earth that we cannot also do by the power of the Spirit.
• God raised Jesus from the dead so that he could become the "author of our salvation" and "lead many sons to glory." Just as in Adam all have died, so all those in Christ will be made alive. Just as we have born the image of the earthly Adam, so we will bear the image of the heavenly Adam, Christ.

Atonement

• God the Father didn't learn anything on the cross (although the human side of Jesus did). He has always known everything, both experiential and cognitive.
• God didn't "have" to atone for sins--he's God. He doesn't have to do anything. As sovereign, he could have forgiven us by divine fiat. And as omnipotent, he could have healed us by miracle.
• Nevertheless, the death of God on the cross satisfies the order of things. It is a "deep magic" whose logic drives to the core of the human condition in a way that is difficult for words.
• Christ defeated the one who holds the power of death, the Devil.
• God made him who knew no sin to become sin for us. Christ transferred our curse onto himself.
• God has ordained that no one can be in right standing (justified) before him apart from the atonement provided by Christ's death. "There is no other name under heaven whereby we must be saved."
• Christ died for all. It is the plan that God has predestined, not specific individuals. When God "hardens" hearts, he is using a heart that has already chosen against him and intensifying its existing hardness.

The Holy Spirit

• "The Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son." Filtered as our understanding is by the creation, we know the Spirit primarily as the omnipresent person of God within this creation, God immanent.
• The Spirit creates the church. The Spirit gives an assurance to a believer that, in fact, he or she is a child of God, adopted into sonship in the family of God.
• The Spirit gives purity and power. The Spirit "sanctifies" us from the guilt and stain of previous wrongdoing and sets us apart as God's.
• The Spirit empowers us morally to want to do the good and to be able to "do the good we want to do."
• The Spirit empowers us to unity, to do miracles, to perform signs and wonders. All the gifts of the earliest church are still in play, including prophecy. Only the role of apostle seems to have been restricted to the earliest church and those who first saw the risen Christ.
• The Spirit "leads us into all truth." The Spirit convicts us of sin, righteousness, and judgment.

Salvation

• God has been reaching out and preparing the way for humanity long before we knew it. He both has given "common grace" to all humanity, and his "prevenient grace" meets us and pulls us toward him long before we know to respond.
• In God's patient walk with humanity, he came to Israel first as the beachhead of his Normandy invasion of the earth with salvation. His covenant with Israel foreshadowed the final redemption he would bring to the earth through Christ.
• There will come a day when God will play out the ultimate consequences of redemption and set the world right. Those who have not come to God, both the living and the dead, will be lost. 
• Whatever hell is, it is the inevitable destiny of an unredeemed life, a life without salvation.
• God may judge us by our response to the light we have. God "lights everyone who comes into the world." We cannot get to God on our own, but God reaches out to all of us at some point in life.
• We are not free to choose God in our default human state. We can only choose God because of his gracious empowerment for us to be repentant and have faith. 
• We should not assume that the empowerment for faith will always be present. Those who postpone faith may not be able to find a "place of repentance" later, let alone true faith.
• The Holy Spirit not only "sanctifies" us initially of past sins, but he empowers us to do righteousness. We never stop being animals--we will always be subject to temptation. But the power of the Spirit can so fill our lives that we will love to do what is right and have the mind "that was also in Christ Jesus."
• God will never walk away from us, but he will not stop us from walking away from him. Once we believe on him, the only sin he reckons is intentional disobedience. "Whatever is not of faith is sin." "He who knows to do good and does not do it, it is sin."
• All such sin damages our relationship with God. The greater the degree of intentionality against God, the greater the sin and the greater the damage to our relationship with God. Some sins may be so high handed that they severe our relationship with God at once. For others, the process of ignoring God can take place over such a long period of time that we do not even realize that we have left God.
• Like the prodigal son, there is no distance we might walk from God that is so far that he will not take us back if we turn back. The Spirit gives us the power to repent, so anyone who can repent is not so far that he or she cannot return.
• For humanity, the final phase of salvation is our resurrection/glorification. For the creation, the final phase is when the creation is freed from its slavery to corruption and is transformed to be a "new creation."

The Church

• The Spirit creates the church. The presence of the Spirit in a person is the indicator that a person is in the people of God. 
• The church is the body of Christ and the Holy Spirit is the spirit within the body.
• The church is "invisible" in the sense that it is not to be identified with any visible denomination. The church is one church, the church is a catholic church, but it is not the Roman Catholic Church or any other earthly organization. "One, holy, catholic, and apostolic church" applies to the invisible, true church.
• The church is visible insofar as believers meet together in physical groupings on earth.
• Not everyone in the visible church is part of the one true, invisible church, which crosses all denominations, all boundaries of space and time, the "communion of saints."
• For Protestants, the marks of a church are a place where 1) the word is preached, 2) two sacraments are administered, and 3) a community is rightly ordered. But in general, a visible church is anywhere that two or three individuals with the Spirit gather together regularly in Jesus' name to worship God and be transformed by his presence.
• There is no one right form of church government. All forms of church government--episcopal, presbyterian, congregational, and pneumatic--find precedents in Scripture and are more or less appropriate in different contexts.
• The true church is both "holy" and "apostolic." As holy, it is "in the world but not of the world." As apostolic, it "exists by mission, as flame exists by burning." It restlessly seeks to see the entire world saved and transformed.

Sacraments

• A sacrament is a divinely ordained "means of grace," a God-given catalyst for God to transform us (not to save us but to transform us). God takes an ordinary medium and uses it to do extraordinary things in his people.
• God can use anything he wants as a sacrament and, given his principle of incarnation, he may use some instruments more in some times and places than in others.
• The chief sacraments of the ages are baptism and communion.
• Baptism is a sacrament of inclusion and is associated with receiving the Holy Spirit. The primary model of Acts suggests that the model for a new believer is to be baptized in association with conversion. 
• However, Acts may also hint that a child can be included in his or her formative years on the basis of the community's faith, and most Christians throughout the ages have followed suit. This is the sense that even an infant can receive some measure of the Spirit when baptized within a community of faith. Such baptism does not ensure final salvation.
• Communion is a sacramental remembrance of Jesus' death, a potential moment of renewal, re-cleansing, and re-filling with the Spirit. People experience God's transformation more often in the moment of communion than they experience him in most other contexts.
• God also regularly uses other "sacred moments" to transform us by his grace. Such contexts include prayer, Scripture reading, fasting, Christian fellowship, and helping others.

Scripture

• Any speaking of God is equally authoritative, infallible, and inerrant, because it is God speaking. The greater authority of Scripture than other potential modes of speaking (e.g., prophecy) is based on the uncertainty of knowing whether we are truly hearing God in those other contexts. But if we could know for certain God was speaking, that word would hold absolute and unconditional authority no matter the mode in which it came.
• The Bible is a sacrament of transformation that God uses to change us, far more about God doing something in us than about us reaching up to him.
• The Bible is more about God creating faith in us than about us gaining knowledge. It is about knowing him more than knowing about him.
• It was predictable that the Bible would become a more central sacrament in Christian life after the invention of the printing press and the transition of world culture to a literary paradigm.
• The Bible was the word of God to those for whom it was first written. It is the word of God as the Spirit has interpreted it for the church universal. It becomes the word of God as we read it today.
• The Bible was incarnated revelation. It was God meeting his people where they were within their existing paradigms. The Bible is thus a subset of the Truth. It does not answer every question, and those it answers it largely answered in the language and paradigms of its first audiences. 
• The so-called Wesleyan quadrilateral holds the sources of our knowledge of God in balance. Scripture first (prima scriptura) is the starting point. Yet the Spirit has clarified Scripture throughout the ages (tradition), given his church wisdom to apply it (experience), and revealed himself as well in creation (natural revelation and reason).
• The Bible is infallible, meaning that it does not fail to achieve the purposes to which God set it. When God's purpose is to command, it is authoritative. When God's purpose is to convey truth, it is inerrant. When God's purpose was to promise, such promises will not fail. All such commands, promises, and statements of truth must be understood within the framework of God's intention. 

Christian Ethics

• All Christian ethics--and indeed all biblical ethics--must be filtered through the twin love commands to love God and love neighbor, as Jesus did. These are the fundamental Christian moral absolutes to which there are no exceptions.
• Love of God never contradicts love of neighbor. If there seems to be a contradiction, one or the other is misunderstood. We generally demonstrate our love of God by our love of neighbor.
• Loving one's neighbor (and enemy) is a matter of concrete action rather than feeling. We act for the benefit of others and do to them what we would have them do to us.
• Discipline does not contradict love of neighbor. Discipline is not to punish in the name of justice but 1) to try to redeem and reform a person, 2) to protect a larger group of people, or 3) the elimination of irredeemable evil. The last category is that into which hell fits.
• Loving God primarily relates to our submission to his kingship and the recognition of his complete and absolute authority over our lives. "Jesus is Lord."
• Christians largely live in the world as pilgrims, strangers, and aliens. Until Christ returns, the kingdom of this world is not the kingdom of our God. 
• At times, however, we have the opportunity to make the world more like the kingdom, namely, a place where systems of government "love neighbors as ourselves," a place of "social justice" such as the prophets urged on Israel and Jesus illustrated in his earthly mission. 
• When Christians can work to eliminate the oppression of others on a societal level, we should. When we can work to stop slavery or discrimination, we should. A world in which "there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female" is a world more like the kingdom, and when we can work to see the world become more like the kingdom, we should.
• However, God has also granted humanity the freedom to sin for the time being. There is a difference between working to end harm to others (e.g., opposing slavery) and trying to force the world to adopt Christian values (e.g., blue laws). The former seeks to stop oppression. The latter  tries to make the world Christian by force. God's model with the latter is to "give them up" until the day of judgment.

The Renewal of All Things

• "Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again." Christianity looks to the literal return of Christ to the earth to set up his eternal kingdom and to set the world to right and free it from its bondage to decay and corruption. 
• The embodied resurrection of the dead corresponds to the liberation of the creation. We are conscious in some form between our death and the final resurrection.
• There will be a final judgment of the living and the dead. Hell is is the eternal consequence of irreconcilable differences with God. The finally, fully established kingdom of God is the eternal destiny of the redeemed.

#40daybible Day 10 (1 and 2 Thessalonians)

Here's the final reading for the week. It goes through 1 and 2 Thessalonians.

Some points I find interesting:

• Paul wrote them both from Corinth, presumably not long between them. He had to leave Thessalonica in a hurry, so sent Timothy back to check up on the new converts.
• It's interesting that he must not have gone much into the resurrection while he was there. The priorities are flipped from us today. Today, we would talk primarily about the resurrection to a new believer and, oh yes, Jesus could return any day. Paul must have approached it the other way around. Jesus may return any day and, oh yes, there will be a resurrection for those who die first.
• The rapture is probably not a matter of us meeting Jesus to go off to heaven but meeting him and returning to earth to participate in the judgment (see 1 Cor. 6), like going out to the edge of a city to escort a king back in. Paul probably taught that we would spend eternity down here on a liberated and transformed new earth (Rom. 8).
• If 1 Thessalonians says Christ will return suddenly, 2 Thessalonians makes it clear it won't come completely unannounced.
• 2 Thessalonians is full of mystery. Note that it refers to the "man of lawlessness." It does not call him the Antichrist. It doesn't speak of a 7 year tribulation.

My personal take-away:

• I grew up with 1 Thessalonians 5:23 as a preaching text for entire sanctification. I noticed more recently that it is plural and addressed to the whole congregation. Is not Paul praying that the whole Thessalonian church be set apart to God as a pure and blameless church?

#40daybible Day 9 (Acts 19:21-28:31)

You'll find the reading for Day 9 of the 40 Day Bible here.

Today we finish the book of Acts.

• Paul's stay at Ephesus ends with a riot in the theater (picture below). Some think Demetrius might actually have filed charges against Paul, that Paul may have been jailed before appearing before a Roman governor (cf. 2 Cor. 1:8). Some think it may have been during this imprisonment that Paul wrote Philippians. Acts doesn't tell everything that happened and may have reason not to mention a difficult run-in with the Romans.

• After Paul leaves Ephesus, he writes 2 Corinthians from Macedonia and Romans from Corinth. Then he heads to Jerusalem. There is a lot of foreshadowing in these chapters. "Don't look behind the door, Paul."
• Paul gets arrested in Jerusalem. Figures--they never nab you for the right thing. They accuse Paul of taking a Gentile into the temple. A mob ensues, the Romans swoop in. There's a plot that's foiled.
• Paul spends two years waiting a sentence. He speaks before two Roman governors and the only Herod the Bible has anything positive to say about. When Paul sees he's headed back to Jerusalem and possible ambush, he appeals to Caesar, his right as a Roman citizen.
• The rest of Acts gives Paul's trip to Rome, his shipwreck, the ultimate origins of snake handling (I think Mark 16:18 referred to this incident), and his two years under house arrest in Rome.
• Traditionally, it was during this house arrest that Paul wrote Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon.

My take away:

• Paul continues to Jerusalem despite repeated prophetic warnings and urging by the brothers to turn back. He is a model of continuing to move forward step by step in obedience even though you know it is going to bring trial and persecution. One step at a time, in God's power do what comes next, and God will walk with you.

Inspiration, Authority, Infallibility, Inerrancy

Here is a summary of my current thoughts on the words inspiration, authority, infallibility, and inerrancy as they relate to Scripture. I submit them to the body of Christ as part of the ongoing dialog of the church.

1. It seems to me that there are two approaches to the Bible in relation to these "power" words. The first is that we need to get the words straight and then we can read the Bible. Perhaps I am unable to see the cultural glasses I am wearing but I resist this approach because, to me, it suggests that I can't let the Bible say what it says. I have to construct an elaborate system of electric fences and barbed wire before I try to interpret the biblical text.

In our modern context, I see debates over these sorts of words as a defensive mechanism against modernism or, to be more precise, against the rise of the historical-contextual method of reading the Bible. In other words, these words set up boundaries for how you can and cannot interpret the Bible in its historical context. Again, this is my opinion and one that should be weighed carefully. To me, the text meant what it meant. If the original authors and audiences understood it, then those meanings were a function of the language and contexts of that time.

2. So what is inspiration then? For me it becomes, first, a contextual inspiration, inspiration to speak to a specific time and place. It is a mysterious cooperation of the human and divine. The vocabulary and thought patterns are both those of the human author and yet guided by the Holy Spirit. At times I think the Spirit wanted specific wording; at times I suspect he was content for a number of different possible wordings.

The first inspiration was an "incarnated" inspiration. That is to say, it came largely within the worldview categories of the original audiences (heaven is up, the world is flat, the dead are "under the earth").

But I believe God had more in mind than just the initial audiences. He knew everyone who would read those words for the centuries to come. He planted meanings that would jump out at the earliest Christians as they scoured the Bible for truths about Jesus. Who knows, perhaps he even planted specific wordings with you and me specifically in mind. Again, these are my perspectives, to be weighed.

3. Scripture is authoritative because God is authoritative. IMO, a premodern reader reads the text as God's direct commands to him or her. In context, these were commands in specific contexts and so, to be true to their actual meaning, we have to understand the principles behind the precepts to apply them appropriately. Just doing what they did may not be truly doing what they did in a different context.

Authority relates most specifically to biblical material that is in the form of command. A narrative can have some authoritative implications but it is more indirect. Again, it can get complicated, IMO. The authority of the commands to sacrifice in Leviticus has to be processed through the fact that Christ died for our sins as the sacrifice to end all sacrifices. So the authority of Leviticus is the need for me to trust on Jesus for the atonement of my sins.

4. Infallibility relates to the fact that God's word never fails (Isaiah 55:11). It always accomplishes what it sets out to do. So when God makes a promise in Scripture, it will not fail within the parameters he has set for it (sometimes his promises and threats of judgment are conditional on our response, as with the threat of destruction on Nineveh in Jonah).

5. Similarly, when the purpose of God's word is to relate truth or information, it is without error. I believe these truths, as I said, come in incarnated form. In other words, we have to distinguish the truth from the clothing in which it comes. We need to know the parameters of what is being said. Is the statement that a mustard seed is the smallest of seeds really a comment about botany? I don't think that's the point.

6. Finally, when 2 Timothy 3:16 says that all Scripture is inspired and profitable for instruction, correction, reproof, and training in righteousness, I don't think we should assume that Paul or the biblical authors always saw this truth on a literal level. That is to say, many of the truths of Scripture were on a spiritual level. IMO, there is a good deal of circularity in the way some authors use this text as an endorsement of a particular modernist hermeneutic. In the case of "don't muzzle the ox," the biggest inspired truth Paul saw for the Corinthians had to do with supporting your ministers materially--a spiritual rather than literal meaning of the text (1 Cor. 9:9-10).

So those are a few of my thoughts at this point on the journey...

#40daybible Day 8 (Acts 12:25-19:20)

Day 8's reading for the 40 day Bible is here.

These chapters give us Paul's so called three missionary journeys.

• The first journey starts with Paul and Barnabas in Cyprus and the south-central part of modern day Turkey. It's on this journey that Paul starts going by Paul, probably his Roman name.
• There's some great conflict resolution in these chapters. Mark goes home in the middle of the first missionary journey for whatever reason. Paul and Barnabas later get into it over taking Mark on a second journey.
• But there is something deeper going on. Acts 15 doesn't tell us about Paul calling Peter a hypocrite at Antioch and Barnabas siding with Peter. Acts 15 tells us about James' concession that Gentiles can be saved without converting to Judaism, but it doesn't tell us about the debate over how Jew and Gentile believer might eat together. I don't think Paul and James agreed on this one... ever.
• The second missionary journey brings Paul into Greece. He spends 2 years at Corinth and writes 1 and 2 Thessalonians from there.
• The third missionary journey involves 3 years at Ephesus, and Paul writes 1 Corinthians, maybe Galatians, maybe more.

My personal take-away:

• I once heard someone who had been part of a church split say not to spend too long in Christian disagreement. If you cannot resolve your differences fairly quickly, agree to disagree and multiply the kingdom. This is what Paul and Barnabas in effect do. They agree to disagree and go their separate ways... and the kingdom is better for it.

#40daybible Week 2 Day 2 (Acts 6:8-12:24)

The book of Acts continues with Day 2. For today's reading, see here.

Some highlights include:

• The first Christian martyr we know of, Stephen. The way these Greek-speaking Jewish believers preached Jesus must have been just a little more radical than the way Peter and the disciples did. Stephen ends up stoned and these "Hellenistic" believers are scattered beyond Jerusalem.
• And isn't it too bad that it takes someone dying to get the church out of Jerusalem and onto the mission!
• Paul has his 180 degree turn around in Acts 9. Here he thought he was being zealous for God when in fact he had a "zeal without knowledge." Other accounts of his life before believing are in Philippians 3 and 2 Corinthians 11.
• The gospel comes to the Gentiles in Acts 10. I love how God settles this controversial question--can Gentiles be saved without fully becoming Jews--before it ever goes to committee. We'd have appointed a study committee over 4 years to bring a recommendation back to General Conference and then have had to have it ratified by the district conferences and other General Conferences. But God sends the Holy Spirit on these uncircumcised men and the debate is over before it begins.
• Prophesy continues in the early church--don't listen to John MacArthur. There is no evidence in the Bible that prophesy has stopped. His teaching is an example of lifting an idea about the Bible over what the Bible actually says.

My personal take-away:

• Don't mistake yourself for a god like Herod Agrippa I did--your intestines might explode...

How to Start a World War

Country A invades country B. Country B has strong connections to Block of Countries B. Block B tells Country A to back off or else. Block of Countries B starts dialog, invokes sanctions, etc.

Country A doesn't back off and, with a failure of "incentives," negotiations and the fact that most men are simply upgraded baboons, a war ensues. Country A has strong connections to Block of Countries A. Block of Countries A versus Block of Countries B, otherwise known as World War 3.

#40daybible Week 2 Day 1 (Acts 1:1-6:7)

Week 2 of the 40 day read through the New Testament begins. For today's reading, see here.

Some highlights include:

• The ascension to heaven by Jesus. Have you ever considered how Jesus met the disciples within their own worldview. After all, heaven is not really "up," is it? But the disciples would have pictured the universe as layers of heaven as you go up until you finally reach the highest heaven where God is.
• The Day of Pentecost is the birth of the church because it is the coming of the Spirit. Technically speaking, there were no Christians until the Spirit came in Acts 2. 
• In Acts 6, we see some of the first leadership growing pains. The disciples aren't able either logistically or linguistically to minister to the Greek-speaking Jews in Jerusalem. A conflict over widows provides an opportunity for leaders to be recognized within the Hellenistic Jewish community of Jerusalem.

My personal take-away:

• I love Gamaliel's wisdom in Acts 5, although we would need to be careful about knowing when to use it. The bottom line for me is that you can't fight God. If something is of God, it's going to prevail over time. Sure, sometimes bad things prevail for a time. Sure, sometimes good things are squashed for a time. But in the end, God gets his people where he wants them to go.

Rightly Using the Word of Truth 1

Scenario:

1. Paul is visiting a fairly small church in rural Indiana, where they will vote on him to be pastor. He is in his early twenties and currently a student at a nearby Christian college, where he is just beginning to study to be a minister. Since they are deciding whether they want him to be their pastor, he has been thinking a lot about 1 Timothy 3, which he has been told has to do with the qualifications for leading a church.

In his short time as a Christian, he has found The Message very helpful in figuring out what the Bible means, so he decides to preach from it on this morning. He nervously stands up, his first time ever to preach, and reads from 1 Timothy 3:1-7 in The Message:

"If anyone wants to provide leadership in the church, good! But there are preconditions: A leader must be well-thought-of, committed to his wife, cool and collected, accessible, and hospitable. He must know what he’s talking about, not be overfond of wine, not pushy but gentle, not thin-skinned, not money-hungry. He must handle his own affairs well, attentive to his own children and having their respect. For if someone is unable to handle his own affairs, how can he take care of God’s church? He must not be a new believer, lest the position go to his head and the Devil trip him up. Outsiders must think well of him, or else the Devil will figure out a way to lure him into his trap."

After he reads the Scripture, he is a little uncertain of the small group in front of him. They had seemed warm enough when he came in, but throughout the sermon the crowd seemed full of frowns and folded arms. Even the church elder who had called him seemed to be frowning, and he had been very friendly before.

Paul tried to loosen them up a little while he talked. "Now I'm not married yet," he said, "but I promise I'll be committed to a wife once I find one.  Believe me, I'm working on it." He thought for sure he would get at least a chuckle somewhere on that one.

"Now some think the word wine here should be translated grape juice," he said, trying to figure out why the temperature in the room was so cold. Maybe it's because I've only been a Christian a couple years, he thought to himself. He decided to try that one. "Now I know that I am a fairly young believer, so if you think God wants you to call me as your pastor, I'll be looking for you all to help me learn a lot of things even about being a Christian."

At that comment, the group seemed to soften a little. Smiles returned. After closing in prayer, he greeted the people. An older woman smiled warmly and told him that they would help him learn how to be a good preacher. He sat in the church office while they voted, and they did indeed ask him to be their preacher for the rest of his time in college.

As the lay leader of the church was debriefing him on the vote, he finally said, "Look, there's something I need to tell you if you're going to be our preacher. You can't preach from The Message," he said. "It's not even a real Bible. It's some guy's paraphrase.

"Most of the people in the church here use the King James Version and think any other version is of the Devil. But you should preach from the English Standard Version, the ESV, because it is the most accurate translation there is right now. We need to get these old people off the KJV and onto the ESV. But you absolutely can't use any of those liberal Bibles like the NIV2011 or the New Living Translation. And you definitely can't use The Message, because it isn't even a Bible"...

Possible Devotional for Lent

I hope a lot of people are doing the #40daybible read through the New Testament, which is just about to finish its first week. If you're not, I wanted to mention a devotional I did on Passion Week in Mark's Gospel, including the resurrection.

It is 30 devotionals that you might go through for Lent, which begins this coming Wednesday.  Here's the link if you're interested:

Book Link

Kindle Link

#40daybible Dave Five (Luke 19:28-24:53)

So we come to the end of the first week of the 40 day read through the New Testament. Here's the link for today's reading, covering Luke 19:28-24:53, the rest of Luke. If you missed this week, read the whole Gospel of Luke this weekend to catch up. You can do it in a couple hours!

Some highlights of today's reading.

• This reading leads us to the cross and the resurrection of Jesus.
• Luke has some unique features during the Last Supper and is closest to Paul's wording (1 Corinthians 11). In particular, only these two mention that the wine, after supper, represents a "new" covenant (22:20). Luke mentions another cup before the bread too.
• Only Luke gives us Jesus telling the thief on the cross that he would be with Jesus in paradise. This is a rare testimony to the intermediate state in the New Testament--there really isn't much in the NT on what happens between our deaths and resurrection.
• Only Luke has the story of the men on the road to Emmaus after Jesus rose from the dead.
• In Luke, Jesus eats with his disciples after he rises from the dead, showing that he is not a ghost. I personally wonder if Luke is written around AD80, when Gnosticism was beginning to rise.
• Notice the sense of immediacy Luke gives in chapter 24, boom, boom, boom. You would never guess that, when we open up the next scroll of Acts, we would find that there were 40 days here.

My take-away

• Although it is a few verses before today's reading, here is my verse for today: "The Son of Man came to seek and save the lost" (19:10).

#40daybible Day Four (Luke 13:22-19:27)

Here's the link for today's reading, covering Luke 13:22-19:27.

Some of the special features of this section:

• Luke isn't as negative toward the Pharisees as Matthew. In fact, some Pharisees come to Jesus to warn him that Herod Antipas is trying to kill him.
• Parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15
• Parable of the Shrewd Manager is very bizarre in Luke 16, but it fits with the fact that Luke is very hard on the wealthy.
• The new NIV2011 has a better translation of Luke 17:21. The idea is not that the kingdom of God is inside you as an individual but that it is among us as a community of faith.
• The story of Zacchaeus is unique to Luke.

My biggest reminder:

• Don't assume you belong in the seat of honor. Take a lower seat and let the host call you to come up higher.

Day Three #40daybible (Luke 9:51-13:21)

Here's the link for today's reading. It covers Luke 9:51-13:21

Some of the highlights include:

• The sending of the 72 (symbolizes the nations, unique to Luke)
• The fall of Satan from the sky is probably not about his fall at the beginning but the fact that the exorcist ministry of Jesus and his disciples was dethroning Satan as the prince and power of the air on earth.
• Parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10.
• Notice how the material in Matthew's Sermon on the Mount is scattered throughout Luke.
• Notice Luke's woes on the Pharisees, parallel to Matthew 23.
• The Parable of the Rich Fool in Luke 12 reminds us of James 4:13-17.
• Luke 13:1-5 indicates that natural catastrophes are not necessarily God's judgments on the wicked. Just because you were in the Twin Towers on 9-11 doesn't mean you're more wicked than anyone else.

My personal take-away:

• It's not the Jesus way to pray down fire on those who don't receive the truth, especially when we are hiding the fact that we don't like them anyway.

Luke 1:1-9:49 (40 Day Bible)

Two days into the 40 day Bible experience and we've blasted through almost 9 chapters of Luke. Here is the reading for today.

What strikes me the most about this first section of Luke is what I like to call Jesus' inaugural address in Luke 4:16-21. Luke arguably has put this incident first to capture what he wanted to bring out as the primary focus of Jesus' earthly ministry.

Another interesting feature of this section are the women who followed Jesus and provided for Jesus and his disciples as they ministered around the countryside.

The sayings of Jesus in Luke seem barer than those it shares with Matthew, and they aren't collected into sermons like Matthew has them. If you take the sermon in Luke 6, for example, Luke's version is "Blessed are the poor," period. Matthew 5 has the more spiritualized, "Blessed are the poor in spirit."

What stands out to you in these chapters?

Read the New Testament with us?

The Wesleyan Church starts the 40 Day Bible experience today: http://40daybible.com/nt/daily/day1/

Want to join us?  Here is the reading for today. It's Luke 1:1-4:13.

For more information, go here.

Which Sources Should I Trust?

This is my seminary blog post for the day.

We live in the information age. The glut of potential sources of information is overwhelming, even if amazingly beautiful. Gone are the days when you have to find a library to read a book. Also gone are the days when you can successfully insulate your children or congregation from ideas you consider to be dangerous.

With the internet close at hand, we are forced to become more discerning in how we filter information. Who do we trust? To whom are we going to listen? From person in the pew to minister, which source is right? So many of them seem so convincing, so confident that everyone else is wrong. Many even demonize those with differing positions on the issues.

We are all working out how to deal with this situation, but here are some beginning thoughts on the issue:

1. Faith seeking understanding
There is no reason to start from scratch. You may as well start on the assumption that the form of Christianity with which you are beginning, whatever it might be, is innocent until proven guilty. If you are Baptist, who are the voices to whom Baptists tend to listen? Are you Wesleyan, what are the voices to which Wesleyans like to listen?

No need to start over. If you know the kinds of people to whom your tribe listens, why not start by trusting those sources the most.

And perhaps we should mention that there’s a lot of interpretation that goes on in reading the Bible. Our first instinct is to say, “Well what does the Bible say on this issue?” But what we may not realize is that there are different ways to read the Bible and that these “ways of reading” are part of our traditions too. There is a certain circularity to the “just go to the Bible” idea. We inevitably go to the Bible with a certain way of going to the Bible. Inevitably, we find similar things to what everyone else reading the Bible that way finds.

The overwhelming majority of the churches in your city are reading the Bible, but they still disagree on what it means. Until we recognize that we all are wearing glasses when we read the Bible, we will never advance toward real understanding.

2. Phone a friend
Of course, you may not know what sources your tradition likes the most. Indeed, you may not really know what your tradition is. To be sure, there’s no such thing as a “blank slate” church. Every church represents a mixture of influences, even if it calls itself non-denominational. It probably baptizes a certain way and leans certain ways on certain issues. It probably has a position on tongues or women in ministry. It may say it is just reading the Bible, but its answers to these questions will quickly reveal what its underlying traditional influences are.

Who is someone you trust who has studied stuff? If you can think of someone like that, seek out their advice on good sources for whatever question you are pursuing.

3. God is bigger than one tradition.
If God’s first order of business was getting everyone’s head straight, there would probably be a single church that all the most godly people were in. And it would be obvious to anyone with the eyes of the Spirit that it was the one true Church. The fact that there is no such church suggests that God is primarily interested in our hearts rather than our heads.

But it also seems likely that each Christian tradition has a piece to add to the puzzle. It is human nature for us to go to extremes but is it possible that different Christian traditions preserve different emphases within the overall truth? Some may make God’s authority clearer than others. Some may make God’s love clearer than others.

The point is that you can recognize the strength of your own tradition–as well as perhaps its weaknesses–if you make it a discipline to read things also by traditions other than your own.

4. The more the merrier.
Every interpretation and argument you know makes you freer in what you think. If you have heard all the arguments to the contrary of your starting point, yet you remain convinced of where you started, then you hold that position more freely than you did to begin with. Chances are, the more angles you hear, the more sides you hear to the story, the more of a Christian hybrid you will become.

Don’t just look at one source of information. Listen to several. Figure out what the spectrum of positions are on a question before you reach a final answer.

5. Become an expert yourself.
The current American context is arguably one in which experts are almost distrusted simply for being experts. It’s as if popular opinion feels threatened by the very existence of individuals who know the most about a particular issue. But there are such things as experts, and you can become one on a particular topic. An expert is someone who thoroughly knows the issue, thoroughly knows the various positions that have been taken on the issue and why, and has come to an informed and reasoned conclusion on that issue.

Anyone is welcome to have an opinion on an issue, but not every opinion counts as much as every other.

So these are some first thoughts on how to deal with the glut of information that now lies at our feet. Like someone who cannot distinguish a cacophony of sounds from each other, there can be so many voices that we can’t tell which one we should listen to. It is a skill that we will all need to develop in this age of information.

The God-fearers

As you might expect, there has been some debate over the years over exactly who "God-fearers" were. [1] Nevertheless, we have every reason to accept the basic picture of Acts, where many of the earliest Gentile converts to the Jesus movement were already sympathetic to Judaism and had frequented the synagogue (e.g., Acts 10:2, 22, 35; 13:16, 26, 43, 50; 16:14; 17:4, 17; 18:7). [2] While Philo and Josephus may exaggerate their accounts, their depictions of the attractiveness of Jewish law and custom ring true with what evidence we have. [3] Even Roman historians make passing comments that indicate substantial interest in Judaism by Romans, including some elites. [4] Augustine quotes Seneca, referencing sympathizers to Judaism, complaining about how "the conquered have given their laws to the victors." [5] The Roman satirist Juvenal similarly mocked those who go beyond their parents, who merely followed some Jewish customs. Their children, he complains, go on to become circumcised and fully converted. [6]

This last reference is significant, because it points to a readiness on the part of many to convert fully to Judaism. That is to say, it verifies the picture in Galatians of Gentile believers who would consider circumcision. If there was significant enough interest in Judaism to draw such frequent criticism by Roman elites like Juvenal, Tacitus, and Seneca--and in relation to conversion in general--then we can easily see that Gentile converts to the Jesus movement might be susceptible to such pressure. Indeed, they would likely be more susceptible, given the apocalyptic pressure of Jesus' imminent return...

[1] For those who have most leaned away from the majority position, see Alfred Bertholet, Die Stellung der Israeliten und der Juden zu den Fremden (Leipzig: Mohr, 1896); Kirsopp Lake, "Proselytes and God fearers," in The Acts of the Apostles, F. F. Jackson and K. Lake, eds. (London: Macmillan, 1933), 74-96; Max Wilcox, "The God fearers in Acts--A Reconsideration," JSNT 13 (1981): 102-22; Louis H. Feldman (more balanced), Jew and Gentile in the Ancient World (Princeton: Princeton University, 1993), 342-82; Judith Lieu, "The Synagogue and Separation of the Christians," The Ancient Synagogue from its Origins until 200C.E. (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 2003), 189-207.

[2] Cf. James D. G. Dunn, Beginning with Jerusalem (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 297-99, 560-63.

[3] E.g., Philo, Mos. 2.17-24; Josephus, War 7.45; Ant. 14:110; Ap. 1.166-67; 2.282.

[4] E.g., Suetonius, Tiberius 36; Domitian 12.2; Dio Cassius, Roman History 67.14.1-2; Petronius, fr. 37; Epictetus, quoted in Arrian, Dissertationes 2.19-21.

[5] In City of God 6.11.

[6] Satires 14.96-99.

Worthen: The Evangelical Mind (11)

The final chapter of Molly Worthen's, Apostles of Reason: The Crisis of Authority in American Evangelicalism. 

Reviews of previous chapters include:

Introduction
Chapter 1 (Birth of Neo-Evangelicalism)
Chapter 2 (Evangelicals on the Edges)
Chapter 3 (The Strivings of Christianity Today)
Chapter 4 (Mennonites and Nazarenes in the 50s)
Chapter 5 (The Drive to Accreditation)
Chapter 6 (The Church Growth Movement)
Chapter 7 (The Canterbury Trail)
Chapter 8 (Democrat Evangelicals)
Chapter 9 (A Form of Intellectualism)
Chapter 10 (The Presuppositionalists)

Finally, chapter 11: "The Paradox of the Evangelical Imagination"

1. The lead off of this chapter is a now famous question by Mark Noll in his book, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind: could it be that "it is simply impossible to be, with integrity, both an evangelical and an intellectual" (241). Noll wrote that in 1994. He has since converted to Roman Catholicism and moved from Wheaton to Notre Dame.

I wondered if there was a little more opinion in this chapter than the others. But here is the basic point of the chapter and perhaps the book: "The problem with evangelical life is not that its participants obey authority. All rational thought requires the rule of some kind of law based on irreducible assumptions. The problem is that evangelicals attempt to obey multiple authorities at the same time. They demand that presuppositions trump evidence while counting the right kind of evidence as universal fact" (258).

This critique is similar to my critique of Ken Ham. He tries to look like he is using an evidentiary approach but he only uses it until the evidence seems to point away from the desired direction (to be fair, he makes the shift most when shifting from "observational science" to what he calls "historical science." Then he invokes his presuppositions to channel the evidence in a different direction).

So if it looks like stars are millions of light years away, we can simply assume God created the light in mid-stream because of our presuppositions. When our presuppositions are in danger, we find a "possible solution" relating to evidence and thus avoid the more "probable solution." We are still talking evidence but we look for a more complex and less likely interpretation that will fit with our assumptions.

There is a spectrum to this dilemma. At what point should presuppositions be brought in to trump the apparent trajectory of evidence, if ever? We inevitably operate with certain "irreducible assumptions," but are they huge systems or more atomic in nature?

2. Worthen mentions the founding of what came to be called the CCCU in 1971. This coalition of Christian colleges and universities met even a couple weeks ago, I believe. It has made it possible for grants and exchanges to take place. It helped Christian colleges become more than they could have become on their own.

3. The chapter mentioned the bromance that has occasionally happened between evangelicals and Catholics. For example, Notre Dame has hired a string of famous evangelicals over the last few decades: George Marsden (historian), Alvin Plantinga (philosopher), John Howard Yoder (ethicist), Stanley Hauerwas (ethicist), Mark Noll (historian), Christian Smith (sociologist). Chuck Colson and Richard John Neuhaus founded Evangelicals and Catholics Together.

The Catholic idea of "natural law" has provided a way for Christians to argue for various things in the public sphere without explicit religious language. The notion is that there are certain features of the world that argue for certain legislation and that all humans can see these laws without having to reference special revelation or Scripture.

4. I didn't like the way a section on thriving anti-intellectualism threw in together Richard Mouw and Ken Ham. Mouw is worlds away from Ham, IMO. This section also mentioned David Barton, who is very popular in some circles but considered an incompetent historian by most historians. Harper Collins pulled his book on Thomas Jefferson almost as soon as it was published because of its historical problems.

5. Worthen also mentions left-leaning evangelicals in this chapter, the "emergent church" in particular. She depicts the "new monasticism" of a Shane Claiborne as picking a few features of the Middle Ages and laying them over a still very modern mindset. "Without quite realizing what they have done, evangelicals often use these ancient teachings and practices to confirm, rather than challenge, their own assumptions" (254).

She especially has Western individualism in view. "Worship is more of a therapeutic means to personal fulfillment than submission to a higher authority" (256).

6. The last section of the book speaks of the "evangelical imagination," something deeper than ideas, something that involves underlying drives and impulses. She especially engages James Davison Hunter in this section. To him, evangelicals exaggerate the importance of ideas and worldviews. To him, evangelicals take history and "warp it into self-serving myth" (260).

"The anti-intellectual inclinations in evangelical culture stem not from wholehearted and confident obedience to scripture... but from deep disagreements over what the Bible means, a sincere desire to uphold the standards of modern reason alongside God's word--and the defensive reflexes that outsiders' skepticism provokes" (261).

Here is as close to a conclusion as we get: "If we continue to use the word evangelical at all, and we will--we must allow room for diversity and internal contradiction, for those who love the label and those who hate it. We must recognize that American evangelicalism owes more to its fractures and clashes, its anxieties and doubts, than to any political pronouncement or point of doctrine" (264).

7. Take-away
I have personally hated the word evangelical because I have come to associate it with the neo-evangelicalism of the 1940s and the fundamentalism of the Moral Majority. This book has helped me, in the words of Donald Dayton, "re-discover an evangelical heritage." The publisher changed his title to, "discovering," but the title he wanted was "re-discovering."

That is to say, the word evangelical was revivalist before it was co-opted to primarily be what it is today. The book has helped me be able to use that word of my faith community without exactly equating it to the mainstream evangelical establishment that has evolved over the last 50 years. The book, no doubt annoyingly to those who think they speak for evangelicalism, makes it clear that we are a bigger group--and more diverse--than at first appears.