5. Adventures in Hair

Thus far:

1. The Memory Verse Approach
2. Adventures in Interpretation
3. Adventures in Jewelry
4. Beginnings of Context

___________________ 
1. I've mentioned questions about hair in our journey so far. In the circles of my childhood, women were to have long hair, and men were to have short hair. By the time I was born, most Wesleyan women did not have buns. But many still did in my corner of the Wesleyan world. I never heard terms like "Wesleyan wads" or "Methodist buns" until seminary, but those are playful descriptions I heard later.

My three oldest sisters sang in a "Schenck Trio." They were once canceled from singing in a service when it was discovered they had bangs -- with some hair cut around their ears. In the 1960s, some of them had shoulder-length hair. That was quite liberal for some of the holiness circles we swam in. 

When one of my aunts cut her hair short, I remember hearing the comment that she had "backed up on light." It was one thing not to know any better, the thought went. But it was really bad if you had once known what you were supposed to do and then violated the rules. It was seen as defiance against God -- a threat to one's eternal destiny.

2. So where did these hair standards come from? To be honest, I think the real driving forces were resistance to cultural change. Jonathan Haidt has suggested that, in a typical society, the majority is resistant to change. Their middle name is "friction," and they like to perpetuate the status quo ("We've always done things this way"). 

On the other hand, there is also a minority in society that is more innovative by nature. They like change. They like to try new things. So, the majority in a culture are often suspicious of change while others love to explore new possibilities. If you haven't seen the animated movie, The Croods, it's worth a watch.

Haidt's idea is that it helps a society survive if, while most people are wired for stability, a strategic few are wired to be explorers.

Hairstyles and women's dress started to change significantly in the mid-twentieth century. After World War II, women were increasingly empowered and entering the workplace. And a lot of men (and women) didn't like it. It's only natural that they would seek a divine basis to decry such changes. It's a predictable pattern. Use God to give a divine imprimatur to your resistance to societal change. God doesn't want you to change your hair. God doesn't want you to wear pants or slacks.

So, I suspect thus that the move against women having shorter hair or wearing pants had as much to do with resistance to social change as anything else. It's basic sociology. Nevertheless, there were passages in the Bible that were used to say that God opposed these changes, namely, 1 Corinthians 11.

3. I think for most Christians, 1 Corinthians 11 is a somewhat obscure passage in the Bible. Many Christians read it and think, "What is THAT all about?" It is beginning to get a little more play right now because husband headship in the family is becoming a more common discussion. But for most of my life -- except for my holiness circles -- this was one of those chapters that few "selected" in their paradigms as central for today.

Take 1 Corinthians 11:10: "A wife ought to have authority on her head because of the angels." Whaaat? I used to tell my students that if a verse seems crazy weird like this, they've probably hit a point of great cultural difference between our time and that time. Another example is when Jacob puts speckled rods in front of mating sheep when they are procreating so that they will have speckled offspring. Whaat?

Some will want me to note quickly that these are not always instances where an ancient perspective is in place. They could also be instances where our culture is blind to some value that we should pay attention to. In other words, we must keep in mind that a verse may seem strange because our culture is so off track. This possibility must certainly be kept in mind.

However, we need to understand the passage first clearly before we can evaluate any cultural difference. To do so, we must get our heads around the paradigms and worldviews of the biblical worlds. It means knowing the historical and cultural contexts of the Bible. 

The biblical text alone will only take us so far on that journey. Why? Because this sort of context is often not explicit in the text. Far more often, it is assumed. It was the water in which the biblical authors and audiences swam. 

They did not need to spell out the cultural context because it was thoroughly assumed. When my mother wrote me letters, she didn't have to explain to me that she had given me birth and that I had grown up with her. We both knew all that. In the same way, the most foundational assumptions of a letter like 1 Corinthians did not need to be spelled out because they knew them thoroughly. Indeed, they were likely unaware of their own cultural assumptions to a large extent.

I've told my students for years that what we get in Paul's letters is "clean up on isle six." The most core and central themes of Christianity (like the cross) were matters he would have covered in person when he founded churches. In his letters, we are getting instructions on the more peripheral issues that arose in his absence. When I teach 1 Corinthians, I always say how sorry I am for them for being so messed up. But I am delighted they had so many problems for our benefit. Think of all the things we wouldn't know about the earliest church if the Corinthians had not been so messed up!

Paul says in this passage, "Does not even nature itself teach you that if a husband has long hair, it is a dishonor to him?" (1 Cor. 11:14). I'm sure that most of his audience probably resonated with this statement. I frankly find it puzzling. Mind you, I grew up in holiness culture. I have an intuitively negative reaction to men with long hair. I just don't see how nature indicates that its dishonorable. The word nature here seems to mean something more like culture or custom.

Paul is clearly tapping into the worldview of his first-century culture here. I have never been able to figure out any natural argument for men having short hair or against long hair on men. His statement amounts to something like, "Everybody knows that it's dishonorable for a husband to have long hair."

4. So what was 1 Corinthians 11 really about? ...

4. The Beginnings of Context

Thus far:

1. The Memory Verse Approach
2. Adventures in Interpretation
3. Adventures in Jewelry

___________________
8. I have been sharing some personal and relational pieces of my journey with holiness standards. But of course, there were verses that went along with these beliefs about how to dress and present your hair. I've already mentioned several of them. 

For example, 1 Timothy 2:9-10 says, "Likewise also, I wish wives to adorn themselves in proper clothing with modesty and discretion, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly garment." 1 Peter 3:3 similarly says, "Wives, don't let your outward adornment be the braiding of hairs or wearing of gold or wearing of garments."

I grew up treating these as timeless individual commands. I did not think to ask what these verses meant in the first century or even in the situations of these letters. The words applied directly to you and me -- and I read the look of our jewelry and our hairstyles into the words. 

The question of the original context -- what the hairstyles were like in the first century, what jewelry was like in the first century -- I didn't even think to ask that question. It never occurred to us that the specifics of a verse might have a lot to do with that time without being for all time in its particulars. After all, why would God have put it in the Bible then?

9. In 2005, I was privileged to go with Wilbur Williams to Israel. In the group was an engaged couple. In fact, Wilbur did an unofficial wedding for them at Cana in Galilee. While we were in the Old City of Jerusalem, she wanted pizza, and he wanted a gyro. So while she went into the pizza place for a slice of cheese pizza, he went across the alley to get the gyro.

A funny thing then happened when he returned to the pizza place with his gyro, wanting to eat with her. He was immediately shooed out of the restaurant. Why? Because of Exodus 23:19: "You will not boil a baby goat in its mother's milk." What?

What does this have to do with pizza and gyros? Well, Jewish tradition associates the milk with dairy and the baby goat with meat. So the rabbinic tradition did not allow a person to eat meat and cheese in the same meal. Thus, no meat on your pizza for a Jew who follows kosher dietary rules.

The way Jews observe this commandment today has nothing to do with its original purpose. In fact, we don't really know what the purpose of this command in the Law was. Its original meaning is locked up in the ancient past, lost to history, and we simply do not have any ancient evidence to tell us what it was about. I have a hunch that it had something to do with a Canaanite religious practice. But we just don't know. 

(As a side note, you hear a lot of chatter out there from people claiming to know the real meaning behind many biblical mysteries. Nine times out of ten, these ancient secrets have no historical basis. The "secret knowledge" these influencers give rarely has any basis in historical evidence. For example, there was no gate to Jerusalem called the "eye of a needle." The high priest did not wear a bell or rope when he went into the Most Holy Place so they could pull him out if there was a problem. These legends are completely made up.

(Alternatively, some people wrongly assume that all the practices in the Mishnah (AD200) or the Talmud (400s and 500s) go back to the time of Jesus. But Judaism changed dramatically after Jerusalem was destroyed in AD70 and then even more after the Bar Kochba revolt was squashed in AD135. For example, the seder meal many Christians celebrate today probably wasn't fully developed at the time of Christ. We love these traditions when we hear about them because they make us feel like we have secret knowledge and are right there with Jesus. But many of them are anachronistic. 

(If you are a real truth-seeker, get used to the answer, "We just don't know.")

10. When I wrote my New Testament Survey textbook, I wrote the following bottom line: "Doing what they did isn't doing what they did if it doesn't accomplish the same purpose." In other words, greeting the brothers with a holy kiss today (1 Thess. 5:26) doesn't "do" the same thing as greeting someone with a holy kiss in the first century in Paul's churches. 

This is such an important realization. Someone might say, "Ken, you're disobeying the Bible because you don't greet people at College Wesleyan Church with a kiss." My response is that the connotations of a kiss at College Wesleyan would be dramatically different than a kiss in the church of ancient Thessalonica. Doing what they did wouldn't be doing what they did!

Even more, what kind of a kiss would you have me give? A kiss on the lips? That might be what the verse appears to say when I come to it with the "dictionary" in my head. You say kiss; I think lips. But what if their kiss was a friendly kiss on the cheek like they do in France sometimes?

We are getting to the heart of how meaning works. The pre-modern, pre-reflective thinker 1) assumes that meaning is inherent in words, things, and actions and 2) doesn't realize a different mind might see a different meaning in those entities. When we first encounter someone with a different interpretation, our natural inclination is to think they are ignorant or evil.

This is the benefit of cross-cultural experiences. Ideally, we get to know ourselves and have our unexamined assumptions unveiled to us. (Of course, many a person on a mission trip in the past has simply come away thinking that those "poor people" are stupid. This would be a failed trip that has only reinforced ignorance on the part of the goer.)

11. I would eventually come to realize that meaning is not inherent in words, objects, or actions. Paul alludes to this principle in Romans 14:14: "Nothing is impure in itself. It is impure for the person who thinks it is impure." On its face, this is a quite radical statement and there are currently debates over the exact meaning of "impure" here and what the scope of the comment was.

However, Romans 14 would play heavily into the development of my understanding in those years of late college and early seminary. It shifted my focus from actions themselves -- Sabbath observance, clothing -- to the intentions behind the actions. Indeed, the final verse of this chapter gives great insight into the very nature of sin, "Everything that does not proceed from faith is sin." In other words, sin is a matter of one's heart far more than one's action.

I heard a story once that I have been unable to verify. I originally heard it in the context of a military person in Africa during World War II. Perhaps it is instead a missionary story. Or perhaps it is a completely made-up legend. Nevertheless, I have found it a helpful thought experiment in the meaning of actions.

In the story, a famous military general was going to be passing by a crowd of Africans. However, the African women in this particular context did not normally cover their breasts. So, they were told to be sure to cover their breasts as the VIP drove by. Accordingly, as the general's jeep passed by, the women lifted their skirts to cover their breasts -- in the process revealing something else.

The reason I find this story helpful is because it demonstrates that the significance of both breasts and privates is not entirely intrinsic to them as objects themselves. To be sure, such things have global functions. When every instance of something on the planet functions a certain way, there are bound to be overlapping connotations that appear intrinsic and appear universal. 

However, a child might not infer them, and an alien from Mars might not. In that sense, the meaning still is not intrinsic. The meaning only appears universal because each individual instance has that connotation -- not because the action has that universal meaning inherent in it. Meaning in such cases adds up to being universal. It is not universal because it has that meaning in itself.

When I was a teenager, it would have been difficult for me to believe that breasts are not always highly sexual because they certainly are for me. But I have been convinced that, at least in the past in Africa, a woman's breasts were not sexualized in the way they are in my culture and certainly not as sexualized as they are in many Middle Eastern countries. Both on my honeymoon in Greece and on a family vacation years ago in France, my wife and I had occasion to observe some middle-aged topless bathers. Although it was a little shocking, there was nothing particularly sexual about those instances.

What is my point? My point is that the significance of jewelry and adornment has everything to do with 1) cultural norms and 2) internal attitudes. As I said earlier, a person can be arrogant about their plainness. A person can press the limits of how showy their hair bun is and yet officially be following the rules. Or a woman might wear a fair amount of jewelry and think almost nothing about it. 

1 Peter 3:4 instructs that a woman's adornment be her "hidden person in the heart." This is the key to the keeping of verses like these. "Doing what they did" is not so much about the specifics of jewelry as about the attitude of the heart. Of course, someone might take it to the next level and ask whether the focus on pride itself is cultural, but I don't wish to go there.

What kinds of jewelry and hairstyles did 1 Peter and 1 Timothy have in mind? Here is an example of a Flavian hairstyle. The Flavians were slightly after Peter and Paul's lifetime, but it could give us a hint of what a showy hairstyle might have looked like in the late first century. Ironically, it is not entirely unreminiscent of the "Wesleyan wads" I grew up with, with a little more panache.

12. If we desire to listen to the Bible on its own terms, it tells us that it was written to Israelites, Romans, Corinthians, Thessalonians, and so forth. This is what it says. It is hard to see how -- if we really consider Scripture to be the authority -- we can get around this most basic of conclusions. 1) The Bible tells us that it was written to people who have been dead for 2000-3000 years.

Now here's the second realization, one that some may want to debate more. It will feature over and over again as we go on this journey. 2) Meaning is contextual. What words meant to the audiences of the Bible was a function of their world. We cannot fully capture the meaning in English because our English words are a function of meaning in our world -- our words presuppose certain features of our world that did not exist or were different in the ancient worlds. Our words presuppose elements of our worldview, just as their words presupposed elements of their worldview.

This is also true about actions. Doing certain things in their world had different connotations than doing those things in our world and vice versa. That means that simply doing what they did today isn't always going to be "doing what they did."

What's the conclusion? The conclusion is that reading the Bible in context is like an intercultural experience. We are "reading someone else's mail" at least in the first instance. There is a meaning gap between us and them that is in play whether we realize it or not. 

I see no way around this conclusion. As so many have said, the Bible is for us but it was not written to us. To respond, "It's written equally to everyone" reflects a lack of understanding of how meaning works. Feel free to doubt me. In late college, my understanding of such things was only beginning and was very uneven. I have to think that, if you hang with me in the pages that follow, you will be more than convinced in the end.

13. For those who did not grow up in a context that was so out of the mainstream, it is possible to go a long time -- maybe even your whole life -- not recognizing or encountering the distance between ourselves today and the text. I heard a pastor not too long ago poo-pooing any sense that we should not simply read the text and do what it says.

However, his claim would not stand up to any close examination. Does his wife stay in seclusion for seven days during her periods (Lev. 15:19)? Like any paradigm, he selects certain verses that are deemed important and "deselects" others that are not considered as directly relevant. This all seems like common sense to him, but it is a function of his sub-culture. Some other group would select a different set of verses and deselect others. 

All of this is done fairly unreflectively, pre-modernly. In my final year of college, I was just beginning to understand that "context is everything" when it comes to meaning. And our context today is quite different from the context of the ancient world. It just undeniably is.

In Greek in college, Dr. Dongell gave us a quote from Melanchthon in the 1500s. He was the main systematizer and interpreter of Martin Luther's theology for the Lutheran tradition. I wrote it in my first Greek New Testament. It was something like, "Theology is merely the application of the rules of grammar to the biblical text." Although Melanchthon was brilliant, he was completely wrong here. A couple years later, when I was in seminary, I wrote under that quote the much more accurate statement, "Context is everything."

3. Adventures in Jewelry

The series continues.

1. The Memory Verse Approach
2. Adventures in Interpretation

___________________
1. As holiness folk go, my parents really weren't legalistic. In fact, after my mother passed, I realized that she actually wanted to look nice in the 1950s. She and my father both had some stylish hats. While I had thought she had wrestled with putting knee socks on my sisters out of a desire to keep them warm, it turns out they were simpler (and more stylish) than full leggings.

In short, when my mother received Philippians 2:12 from the Lord -- "work out your salvation with fear and trembling" -- it truly was moving them in a direction that showed more leg.

I think I have observed some "young people" (they're less and less young) in holiness churches who follow the dress code but probably aren't too invested in it. They follow the norms because they go to holiness churches and it's the way. But it's really more culture for them than conviction. 

I've come to wonder if my mother and father were a little like that in their day in the 1950s. Don't get me wrong. It annoyed my father when our pastor in Florida mowed the lawn in shorts. My mother never wore sweats until she was in her eighties and -- even then -- my sister probably dressed her that way. She had a bun to her final day. (I might add it wasn't a standard issue bun. Her bun was more work than most "Wesleyan wads.")

2. One of my sisters felt a call to ministry and became ordained in the Wesleyan Church. She is by far my most conservative sister, a clear indication that conservatism in holiness circles doesn't cut the same way as conservatism in other churches. I do think that the broader conservative culture did have some impact on her. It seemed important to her in middle age for her husband to get ordained as well. There was a joke among the ordination council that perhaps she felt he was called more than he did.

The driving force on her, I believe, was the husband-headship passages in the New Testament. I believe she felt pressure for him to be ordained so that her ordination would not violate husband-headship. Of course, as I have written elsewhere, the Bible doesn't see any contradiction between husband headship and women in leadership and ministry. Deborah and Huldah are married and yet are higher leaders than their husbands.

When one of my nephews was married in a holiness church, I noticed that the ceremony made a point of the wife obeying her husband. This seemed new for me for a holiness church. The holiness churches of the early 1900s were full of female ministers, but there aren't many female ministers today in holiness circles, I don't believe. I attribute this to broader American fundamentalist influence on holiness denominations. 

I digress. My sister was the assistant pastor during some of my high school years. While "standards" of dress and such had always been in my general church environment, her ministry presence would bring them much more to the forefront. Standards and such became a new theme in preaching from time to time. For a very brief time, I even wore sweats to practice track rather than shorts.

Of course, the question of standards impacted women much more than men. If I ever worried about not wearing short sleaves, it was a very brief moment indeed. And I continued to wear shorts to run.

I did not worry too much about what other people did. I have yet to figure out that part of my psychology. My theology told me that others were endangering their eternal destiny if they did not obey God's laws, but it didn't seem to bother me. For whatever reason, I feared for myself, but the destiny of others didn't seem real to me. 

I remember at a Key Club convention that one of my high school acquaintances was allegedly in his hotel room with a girl. My theology should have been very concerned for him. But instead, I called his room and jokingly asked him what he was doing. "Are you out of breath, Chris?" I jokingly asked. I still don't quite understand how that part of my brain works.

3. Then I went to college. Being at a college where most everyone was somewhat like me was exhilirating. I had always felt like I was in a foreign land in high school. Although many of my high school classmates actually turned out to be rather serious Christians, they didn't fit my box at the time. I more or less assumed they were all hell-bound.

But the people at Central Wesleyan College (now Southern Wesleyan) were my people. It was like coming home or going to church camp. Of course, they weren't really holiness people. More on that in a moment.

Since no one at my high school was my kind of Christian, there was no one I thought I should date. I had crushes on various classmates, but in my narrow-minded world, I assumed they weren't Christians. But now at college, I could date. It was an incredibly terrifying thought, but my hormones would overcome.

There was a girl I had seen in a traveling singing group before I had gone to Central. I thought she was cute and -- in the most fearsome moment of my life to that date -- I asked her to the Christmas banquet. It was incredibly merciful of her to accept, given what an incredibly awkward, backward person I was. We would end up dating for about a year and a half.

But now all the neurotic tendencies that are Ken would ramp up. In general, it didn't bother me if the women on campus wore make-up, wore pants and slacks, wore jewelry, or cut their hair. Like I mentioned above, my psychology seemed singularly unconcerned about what others did.

However, I feared for my own soul if I were to date someone who did all those things. Would God be angry at me for marrying someone who wore makeup, wore slacks and plants, had earrings, and cut their hair? 

Meanwhile, my mother told me not to worry too much about it. God would take care of everything, she suggested. That didn't make sense to me. Dating at a small Christian college was serious -- "get a ring by spring," as the saying goes. I didn't think I should date someone that I wouldn't theoretically be able to marry. 

4. I should give some backstory here. When I was eleven, I woke up from a nap at camp meeting deathly afraid for my soul. It's like a switch was flipped in my conscience. I would have bouts of paralyzing fear for my soul for the next ten years. I don't suppose it helped that those where the years of Hal Lindsey and the reel to reel movies they showed in church about the rapture and the Tribulation (A Thief in the Night, A Distant Thunder).

No matter how many times I asked God to forgive my sins, I almost never had peace. There was one or two times when I had peace, and I pointed to those moments as my salvation. Most of the time, I couldn't think of anything I needed to ask God to forgive me for. But then I worried, "If I can't remember a sin to ask forgiveness for, can I ever be forgiven for it?" It was a quite neurotic time, and it would wreak havoc with my dating in college. I merely want to note that I had an overactive conscience in those days.

Given my fearfulness, I finally went to the girl I was dating and said (I'm sure it was unbelievable) that I thought I should stop dating her because she didn't do the things I was worried about. I was quite sincere. I was not expecting her to change, and I didn't mean to pressure her to change. I simply -- quite neurotically -- was worried for my own soul.

She said she prayed about it and that the Lord had told her to stop wearing jewelry and make up and to only wear dresses and skirts. Quite embarrassing to say, but it's important backstory for one of the most pivotal moments in my hermeneutical story. What a horrible thing I inflicted on her for over a year.

5. Wisely, she eventually broke up with me. You can imagine what a psycho of indecision I was. "Am I saved? I'm not sure I've ever been saved." "I love you." "Do I love you?" In all my Spock-like psychology, these are objective questions I needed to gather evidence about and form the most logical conclusions on. It was too much for anyone but a mother to bear.

On my way back to school after a Christmas break, I wrestled with whether I was entirely sanctified or not. I'm sure I had asked for it many times at every camp meeting and church service it was preached. I thought of the sermons on Jacob wrestling with the angel -- "I will not let you go until you bless me." 

"If you really wanted to serve God with your whole heart," a voice said in my head as I drove from Fort Lauderdale to Lakeland, "you wouldn't go any further back to school until you were entirely sanctified." So after some wrestling, I told the Lord that I wouldn't leave Lakeland for Central until I was entirely sanctified, even if I had to miss the spring semester.

In that moment, I felt a peace. When I got to Lakeland, I went into the sanctuary of the Wesleyan church there and thanked the Lord for sanctification. Then the next morning, I drove the rest of the way back to school.

Was that really the Lord? Was it the Devil torturing me? Was it some neurotic phase that I eventually grew out of? Perhaps the Lord was merciful and gave me peace despite my freakishness. Or maybe it was a predictable psychological release after a self-inflicted crisis.

6. After she broke up with me, she started wearing pants and make-up again. The earrings came back on. Good for her. It built to a crisis in me, though. At first I was hurt because it felt personal. Hadn't she said she prayed through on it? 

At one point, I met with the Resident Director of the girls' hall, Judy (then) Huffman. She suggested I might fit in better at Kentucky Mountain Bible Institute than at Central. Ouch. That hurt because, in my mind, I wasn't like the people at Hobe Sound or KMBI. I had a little condescension toward them, even though I was playing out their script.

I prayed with Judy. I said, "Lord, if I'm wrong on these standards, please show me." I had no expectation that he would, though. I know I'm right, I thought to myself.

At some point, I went to talk to Dr. Herb Dongell, one of the professors. I knew him to be one of the more conservative professors at CWC. I asked him about things like whether women should only wear dresses and skirts.

I was surprised by his answer. "If you look at the clothing that men and women wore in Bible times," he said, "it really wasn't that different." I suppose his point was that the clothing that is considered male or female changes over time and changes in particular with culture.

There was a verse in Deuteronomy that someone had pointed out to me. It was Deuteronomy 22:5 -- "It's an abomination for a woman to wear that which pertaineth to a man." But Dr. Dongell was indicating that these norms change over time.  

7. My wrestling finally came to a head one day in the library. I had run into my former girlfriend and saw that she had a ring back on her finger. In my agony over losing her, a tiny little explosion happened in my brain. "Aw, what does it matter???"

In the end, I really couldn't care less whether someone wore a ring or an earring or pants or a dress or make-up. They were the rules of my culture but, really, they all seemed rather silly things to worry about. For most women, wearing an earring is little different from combing your hair.

When I got married, I had a wedding ring. I had never worn any kind of ring before -- I didn't even get a class ring. I found it very uncomfortable and twisted it incessantly for the first few years of my marriage. Soon after my wedding, a more conservative acquaintance asked to see it. I shouldn't have taken it off but I gave it to them. They proceeded to dance around with it as if to portray the spirit with which I must surely wear it.

In retrospect, it is quite funny to me. The complete mistaking of my attitude toward the ring is quite hilarious, actually quite embarrassing for them. They made quite a fool of themselves jigging around. But this is how paradigms work.

In her paradigm, this person couldn't imagine that a person could wear jewelry without manifesting the most ungodly pridefulness. But this is not really true to the attitude of most women. Having a pair of nice shoes. Wearing a tie. Having a nice shirt or a nice jacket. These really are no different that putting on a little make-up or a nice pair of earrings or a necklace.

I was particularly struck my final year at one of the professor's daughters who broke all the rules of my holiness background. She had short hair, wore jeans, had earrings. Yet it seemed to me that she was the most spiritual student on campus. Here I was, the student body chaplain, and she had a joy in the Lord that I had never experienced. It was another bit of what I call "naughty data" that would eventually unravel my paradigm.

7. In my final year at Central, I asked someone to the Christmas banquet who was from Kentucky. She and her sister were sometimes called the "Hollywood girls" in their home church because they wore a little make-up. They only wore dresses, but they had shoulder-length hair rather than a bun.

They found the pastor's daughter at their home church a little annoying. From their perspective, she rolled out of bed without combing her hair. Her clothes were wrinkly and unkempt. AND, the church thought she was oh so holy. Their perspective might have been a little less than objective.

However, it struck me that a person can be just as proud about being homely as a person can be proud about how ornate they are. Pride was of course one of the worse sins for my background (Prov. 16:18). But pride is a matter of the heart, not of external appearance itself. A person can dress ornately and not be prideful in their heart. And a person can be proud in their slovenliness. 

Human nature truly is remarkable in its ability to twist things. I've seen some buns that were incredibly ornate to me.

I was not wired for such show. If the clothes make the man, I have generally been unmade most of my life. More than once, friends have mocked the state of my shoes. These are partially my personality and partially a hangover from my holiness childhood.

The above is the personal background now for the exegesis that will follow. You see, there are verses to go with these standards. How did I process through them as these changes were taking place in me?

Pauline Studies 4: Paul and the Spirit

Just to put a pulse through it, I am now beyond Kris Song's chapter on "Paul and the Spirit" in Gupta, Heim, and McKnight's The State of Pauline Studies. Previous posts:

• Paul and the Messiah
• Paul and Judaism 
• Paul and Salvation

I don't have much to say about this chapter 4. I did find interesting the discussion of various backgrounds that have been proposed for Paul's sense of the Holy Spirit. Stoicism is sometimes suggested. I could see it being one filter in Paul's paradigm of the person. I will also say that Dale Martin's The Corinthian Body was one of those studies that just completely exposed my unexamined assumptions about ancient psychology. One of the more transformative studies I've read even if extreme perhaps at some points.

I've long been struck by Paul's use of the phrase "Spirit of holiness" in Romans 1:4. It seems to reveal an earlier layer of Christian tradition and it's not lost on me that it is an expression we find in the Dead Sea Scrolls. So, my suggestion is that Paul's understanding of the Spirit starts with a very Jewish foundation. Then quite possibly it is filtered a smidge through some Hellenistic dynamics.

Sermon Starters: Sailing with the Wind

Preaching today at Trinity Wesleyan in Tipton.

Title: Sailing with the Wind

Text: John 3:1-8

Introduction

• My background with boats -- not much
• Idea for outline came from a recent sermon by Steve Deneff and Emily Vermilya at College Wesleyan Church in Marion, Indiana

1. The Row Boat
Whether as a church or in our individual lives, some of us try to do it all ourselves

• There's nothing wrong with effort. 
• Examples of stick-to-it-iveness. Battle of the Bulge. A recent talk I heard from the CEO of a Foundation. "If it is to be, it is up to me." 

BUT... we ultimately can't do it all ourselves:

1. Not as a church (Ephesians 4:12)
2. Not as individuals (Ephesians 2:8)

2. The Motor Boat
Systems and planning are important, but they can only get you so far. Sometimes, they can keep you going in the wrong direction.

• There's nothing wrong with having processes in place.
• Examples -- how UMC churches almost don't seem to need their pastors. having good software

BUT... what if you're headed in the wrong direction?

• Forrest Gump's boat. The pilot who lost his way. Beautiful products nobody wants.
• Values, Mission, Vision, strategic plan, but no one comes to church

3. The Sail Boat
You have a direction, but you're navigating adverse winds AND you're blown by the Spirit (John 3).

• Sometimes the wind of the Spirit isn't blowing where you think it is.
• Missional thinking -- discover what God is already doing and get on board with his mission (Joshua 5 and the angel of the LORD)
• Don't be a Pharisee in the Gospels -- had to know they were wrong but persisted anyway. Be open to course corrections.

The Bible gives us the big picture of how the wind blows.

• God won't tell you to have an affair. He won't tell you to set your neighbor's house on fire or mess up your neighbor's life. He won't tell you to let someone starve or freeze to death.
• The specifics take more discernment. Be attentive to the Wind (Isaiah 30:21). It's even better when you do it together.

Conclusion
Paul in Acts 27 -- There were the things the sailors thought were best. Then there were the things God told Paul were best. If we don't want our ships to be shattered, we need to sail with the Wind.

2. Adventures in Interpretation

Post, the second. Here, the first. 

2
Adventures in Interpretation
When I was in my late twenties and early thirties, I wondered if I would have had so many faith struggles if I had been born into a more mainstream Christian setting. Because my background was so pre-modern, we just didn't know how to read the Bible in context. So many interpretations seemed to evaporate with just a little bit of contextual light. This especially began to happen when I was learning inductive Bible study at Asbury Seminary.

For a while in seminary, I would get into arguments with my mother when I would come home on break (she insisted they were just discussions). At some point, I recognized it was unhealthy for me to argue with her. She would never change her mind, and I frankly didn't really want her to. I'm an F on the Myers-Briggs when it comes to people ("feeler"), a T when it comes to my own thoughts ("thinker"). That means I'm more interested in people being happy than being right. In my opinion, my mother used her mind to fit the evidence into her existing paradigms. But by mid-seminary, I had shifted to the goal of coming to the most likely conclusion given the evidence.

At one point, she thought me rebellious because she would feed me fundamentalist literature, but I would ultimately end up with the opposite conclusions. But I didn't experience myself as rebellious. Indeed, I loved my heritage and at least initially tried to fit my learning within those same frameworks. However, over time, many positions just unraveled in my mind -- often quite painfully. 

Standards
By the time I was born, Wesleyans in general were on a trajectory away from worrying so much about jewelry and how you dressed. But my family was still very connected to the older holiness "standards." In particular, many in my father's extended family still followed those rules extensively.

Predictably, most of the rules related to women. Women should not wear make-up or jewelry (cf. 1 Tim. 2:9-10; 1 Peter 3:3-4). So no earrings or finger rings. They should not wear pants or slacks -- only dresses and skirts (Deut. 22:5). They should not cut their hair but, preferably, wear it up in a bun as a covering (1 Cor. 11:5-6, 11-12).

But men should also be clean-shaven (Lev. 19:27). They should have short hair (1 Cor. 11:14). They shouldn't wear shorts -- hard to find a verse here other than not causing other people to lust after you. Some holiness men didn't even wear short sleeves so as not to tempt others with their sexy elbows. I once heard Exodus 28:42 quoted in regards to shorts. It's a bit funny since the verse is actually telling priests to wear something like shorts under their robes.

I should note that my mother and father were not particularly legalistic about such things. They tried to be respectful of my father's family. Keeping the peace was more the priority. On the Myers-Briggs, we were a "feeling" family. Some of my dad's family were "thinkers," meaning that if they thought something was right, they insisted that everyone else agree with them and follow their rules. This made for some tense moments from time to time.

For example, in 1968, my father decided to follow the merger of the Pilgrim Holiness Church into the Wesleyan Church. Some of his relatives thought this was wrong and strongly tried to persuade him to pull out with them. He didn't. One brother-in-law told him he would pray for his soul.

Sabbath
We had significant rules for keeping the Sabbath, the fourth of the Ten Commandments. As Exodus 20:8-11 says, there was to be no work done on the Sabbath. Over the years, my father would occasionally have opportunities to work overtime for GMAC on weekends -- for example, to assess hurricane damage on vehicles. But he would not work on Sunday.

This extended beyond us working to eating out where you were facilitating someone else working on Sunday. Following Nehemiah 10:31 and 13:15-22, we did not buy or sell on the Sabbath. My father extended this rule to watching television on Sunday. He feared he would spend all day watching football if he let himself watch TV on Sunday. So Sunday was a television free day in my house -- much to my disappointment when Star Wars and other movies debuted on TV. 

You see, we didn't go to movies either. Movies were associated with loose morals, especially when it came to relationships. People had affairs in movies. And the actors themselves were seen as being people of loose morals -- frequently divorced. My dad's family didn't even believe in having a TV, let alone watching one. For years, my dad suspected that his parents wouldn't visit our home because they thought he had a TV -- even though he didn't at that time.

There's a fun story about a family rule about violence on the television. Although my dad was in WW2, his mother originated in the Old German Baptist community, which was pacifist. So while my family was not pacifist, there was a strong aversion to violence. So, my older sisters were not supposed to watch television shows that had shooting in them.

To get around the rule, they would turn the volume down if it looked like someone was going to fire a gun. On one occasion, they were not quite fast enough. My sister Patricia shot down the hall to get to my father first. "It was in self-defense!!" she exclaimed.

You've probably picked up that Sunday was understood as the Sabbath, and all the Sabbath rules of the Old Testament were transferred to Sunday. I heard that one of the Bible teachers at Frankfort had a very clever Greek argument for this transfer of days based on the idiom, "first of sabbaths" for Sunday. Noting this expression in Luke 24:1 and John 20:1, the teacher suggested that, after the resurrection, Sunday had become the new Sabbath. Ingenious!

Sunday was thus to be set apart as holy. As a child, that equated to being the most boring day of the week. I supposed I would have taken it over going to school, but as an attention deficit boy, it was a bit painful to go to church twice and Sunday School on Sunday. That meant sitting still and listening to whoever was talking (more often, not listening). During revival, we went to church every night during the week too.

Then in the afternoons you did quiet type things, probably took a nap. We didn't play catch or play with friends really. I was once kicked off a playground on Sunday at Hobe Sound because Sunday is a serious day. 

The best part of the day was after church Sunday night, when we often cooked hamburgers and started to transition back to normal time. Sunday lunch was often a highlight too -- the best food of the week. When my brother-in-law and then my sister was pastor of the Fort Lauderdale church, there was usually a family meal with them doing the cooking. (My Depression-raised mother was not a particularly good cook.)

Dancing, Gambling, Drinking
We did not believe in dancing. Square dancing might be ok. Later, if it was choreographed, that might be ok. I went to a Sweet 16 party for Geni Clements in high school. She tried to get me to dance with her, but I just stood there, following the rules. I would have really liked to dance with her. I wasn't sure why we had that rule. But I dutifully resisted.

We did not gamble. In fact, playing with face cards itself had the "appearance of evil" (1 Thess. 5:22, KJV). It's actually a misinterpretation of the verse, but you weren't supposed to do anything that even looked like you might be doing bad things. No candy cigarettes, for example. So we could use Uno cards but no real cards. My dad's family even used a spinner to play Monopoly instead of dice.

Drinking was of course totally out. You could have NyQuil in later years. Definitely only grape juice for communion. Smoking was forbidden as well.

to be continued...

The Week in Review (1-25-25)

1. It was a cold week, with several days hovering around minus temperatures. I don't know if it's accurate, but I read somewhere that as the Arctic warms and melts, there is less containment of cold temperatures to the north, causing them to seep down further south. Reminds me of the movie The Day After Tomorrow (2004).

I ended up ordering another chicken coop, the third real one although we have two small coops and two I've tried to build. The problem with mine and the small ones is that they aren't particularly good in zero-degree weather. The result is that I have a number of more vulnerable chickens in my garage, which is far from ideal.

2. My work is always interesting. We have used AI to translate a number of Kingswood Learn microcourses into Spanish. It's fun to see Bud Bence or Dave Smith speaking fluent Spanish in manipulated videos.

Then of course there is my usual overseeing of the courses we offer -- and the ones I teach as well. There are student issues, helicopter parents. The usual.

3. I took my Wesleyan systematic theology and reformated it as a new iteration: What Christians Believe -- In Simple Terms. It had one sale on the day I put out a Facebook ad. But I took the ad down. I've done that several times. Create an ad. Be disappointed with the initial sales. Take it down. I continue to get a trickle of daily purchases of A Biblical Argument for Women in Ministry and Leadership.

My problem has always been having too many ideas. I probably have 10 books in progress right now. I drive my wife and kids crazy pitching ideas to them.

4. It has been the first week of the Trump administration. Here are some of the developments I've seen.

• He officially defined gender as male and female for the nation.
• He pulled out of the Paris accord in relation to climate change. He pulled out of the World Health Organization.
• Some of his nominees were approved, perhaps most notably Pete Hegseth at the DOD.
• He renamed the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America.
• He tried to purchase Greenland, but apparently it's not for sale.
• He is dismantling DEI progams. There have been extensive movements against any programs that are favorable to minorities. Here in Indiana, the new governor has defunded Martin College, the only primarily African-American college in the state.
• He has frozen foreign aid.
• He was very upset when the bishop at the National Cathedral asked him to show compassion toward immigrants and LGBTQ individuals. He blasted her on social media, as did many others.
• He declassified the files on the JFK assassination.
• The inauguration was taken indoors ostensibly because of the cold. The featured guests were billionaire social media moguls.
• He pardoned all the January 6 rioters, including those who harmed police officers.
• There's a proposed Constitution amendment in the House to allow Trump to have a third term. People are joking about Obama running if that's the case. I can't see it going the distance.
• Security details for people like Fauci have been revoked with words approving violence toward him. I saw some social media from prominent Christians calling for the hanging of Deborah Birx.
• Trump noted that while Biden had pre-emptively pardoned his family and others, he hadn't pardoned himself and thus, presumably, was fair game for prosecution.
• Trump revoked the security clearances of all the intelligence individuals (51 individuals) who thought that the Hunter Biden laptop story bore the hallmarks of a Russian information operation.

Some of these are predictable. Some are more significant than others. Here are some perhaps to watch more carefully.

• ICE has gone into action detaining undocumented immigrants. There are reports of citizens getting swept up with the undocumented with a kind of "guilty till proven innocent" approach. Trump has given the green light to detain at churches and schools. ICE agents can now show up at your worship service to detain whoever they suspect may be undocumented.
• The border was declared a national emergency, allowing the use of the military. The ease with which the military can be called up is a little disturbing.
• By executive order, there is an attempt to undo birthright citizenship. This of course is unconstitutional and probably won't stand, but we'll see what the Supreme Court does. 
• He has abolished rules against discrimination. If you don't want to hire a woman or a person of color just because they're a woman or person of color, you don't have to. The tone does not seem to be one of "everyone should be treated equal" but one of "let's go back to the good old days when white men did whatever they wanted." 
• I don't think most Americans realize how much good the federal government does in helping people in disasters and those on the edges. We take it for granted.  
• Many internal checks and balances are being removed. Last night, 12 independent inspectors were fired in the government. 
• Research on health-related problems like cancer and diabetes has been halted at the NIH.

The evangelical world is over the moon. Franklin Graham's prayer at the inauguration was incredibly celebratory, and I can see the absolute glee among many in my circles on Facebook as well. I've been mulling this over a lot. The only item above that seems overtly religious is the definition of gender. I know that some Bible colleges have struggled with Biden regulations relating to discrimination.

The only conclusion I can reach is that my fellow evangelicals have been convinced of many things that are not specifically Christian but evoke a concern for justice. For example, many Christians have been convinced that COVID was a hoax, that the deep state is nefariously controlling the country, that innocent people have been wrongly prosecuted, and that the government is evil. That would explain the sense of triumph over evil.

Notes Along the Way -- Bible

1 The Memory Verse Approach to the Bible
1. I grew up with what you might call a "pre-modern" view of the Bible. A better way to describe it might be an unreflective view of the Bible. I knew almost nothing about the historical or literary context of the words. I interpreted the words of each verse with the dictionary my church had given me and of course the English language as I knew it.

I used the King James Version (KJV), which listed each verse individually. This layout of the words is very significant. It programmed me to see each individual verse as a self-contained truth or proposition. It intrinsically pushed me away from reading each verse in the light of the verses that came before and after it. 

I remember one of my brothers-in-law -- who was also my childhood pastor for several years -- sharing his brief experience with the New King James Version (NKJV). He eventually went back to the KJV because he didn't like the way that it formatted the verses in paragraphs. I remember marveling at how clearly this reaction reflected his biblical paradigm -- and the paradigm of my childhood. We read the Bible to hear individual truth claims from individual verses more than to hear a message in a continuous literary context.

I should be clear. It is not that my brother-in-law or others completely ignored literary context, which refers to the words that come before and after a text. I merely mean that our primary orientation in reading was on the level of the individual verse. I call this a "memory verse approach" to reading the Bible. The meaning of the Bible is heavily atomized into short truths or axioms that can be quoted.

Individual verses can of course be quoted in context too. But perhaps more often, they can be made to mirror what we unconsciously anticipate they should say. Words are very flexible things. A verse ripped from its context can be made to say many more things than a verse in the flow of a paragraph. You might argue that the meaning of a verse is most ambiguous when it is isolated in this way. This is why I have come to say that the Bible is best applied as a whole rather than as individual verses.

By a "pre-modern" reading of Scripture, I mean one that largely is not context-oriented. Stereotypically, it may not be context-aware. It is typically "unreflective" about its own biases and the influences on why it interprets the text in the way it does. It reads the words in light of the "dictionary" in one's head without much awareness or interest in how an original author or audience might have meant or understood the words. 

Please don't take this as a condescending or judgmental remark. I am simply trying to analyze the ways in which a person might read the Bible -- called one's hermeneutic.

2. I want to illustrate this way of reading the Bible with the way Matthew typically uses the Old Testament. Jesus and his family go down to Egypt to escape Herod. Then they come back out of Egypt and return to Israel. Matthew hears an echo of Hosea 11:1, and he says this event "fulfilled what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet saying, 'Out of Egypt I called my son'" (Matt. 2:15).

I will share later how troubling I found this quote at one point. As it turns out, Hosea 11:1 is not a prediction about the Messiah at all but a reference to the exodus. Hosea was referring to how, hundreds of years earlier, God had brought his son Israel out of Egypt. But Israel had been faithless to him and gone after other gods. The verse is not a prediction -- and Jesus certainly didn't go after other gods.

Matthew probably did intend overtones of the exodus, but it seems clear that Matthew read the Old Testament not unlike my childhood reading of the Bible. He doesn't even focus on a whole verse but on a part of a verse that jumped out at him. After all, the whole verse in Hosea says, "When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son."

Two conclusions. First, I grew up with a way of reading the Bible -- a hermeneutic -- that felt free to isolate verses and even snippets of verses from their contexts and to hear them as individual truths or even to apply them to my personal situation. Second, this way of reading the Bible was actually modeled by Scripture itself at various points. That's why we can't be too judgmental about this approach -- it is modeled by the Bible itself.

3. I find a childhood example of this approach to reading Scripture very revealing. In 1971, my family was trying to decide if it was God's will for us to move to Florida. Not only did we pray, but we searched the Scriptures as well. Now, upon a little reflection, it should be clear that there are no verses in the Bible that directly tell the Schenck family whether they should move to Florida. But this is not the way we were programmed to read the Bible.

We were programmed to expect the Holy Spirit to make words jump out at us. The Bible was a living word on a personal level. So when one of my sisters was reading Judges 1 that week, verse 15 in the KJV jumped out at her: "thou hast given me a south land." She felt like the Holy Spirit was confirming to her that it was God's will for us to move to Florida.

Let me emphasize that this was a normal way for the church of my childhood to read Scripture. If you had asked my sister whether that was what the book of Judges had originally meant, I think she would have initially found the question disorienting. "What do you mean?" she might have responded. After some explanation, I suspect she might have easily agreed, "Well no, but the Holy Spirit spoke to me through the words directly about my life."

So, this unreflective or pre-modern way of reading Scripture 1) atomizes the biblical text, 2) sometimes hears general or universal truths in individual verses, 3) in some church traditions, can hear a direct, individualized, contemporary word from God in the words that is quite distinct from the original meaning, and 4) is modeled at times by the hermeneutic we find within Scripture itself.

4. It was really at college that I was exposed to the contextual interpretation of the Bible in a more thoroughgoing way. I'll call this contextual approach a "modernist" approach -- it aims at objective interpretation of the text in what we might call its historical and literary context. It focuses on evidence and reason to draw conclusions about meaning.

At some point around the beginning of my senior year of college at Southern Wesleyan University, I realized that my full tuition scholarship only covered a certain number of hours -- and I had come into college from high school with 28 hours of college credit. In short, I needed to finish in three years or my money would run out. It wouldn't be too hard to do, but I needed to test out of a couple requirements.

One requirement I thought I might test out of was New Testament Survey. After all, hadn't I grown up going to church at least three times a week? Hadn't I read the Bible through? I was a good test taker. I would do what I always do -- cram and ace a test.

And I did pass the test and graduate in three years. (My daughter Sophie intentionally graduated from college in two and a half years both to beat me and graduate before her brother, who is a year older than her.) But there were a couple interesting insights that dawned on me as I studied to pass the New Testament exam.

First, I realized how much of my childhood preaching must have focused on the Old Testament and on the stories of the Bible. I really didn't know a fair amount of the teaching of Jesus. It would later seem to me that Protestants focus a lot on Paul and not as much on Jesus. Dare I say that evangelicals in particular do not focus a lot on the Gospels or Jesus, it seems to me. When I adjuncted for Notre Dame, it appeared to me that Roman Catholics have the opposite orientation -- more on Jesus, less on Paul.

In high school, I remember seeing a made-for-TV movie called Peter and Paul. I was able to get an exception from my parents to watch it because it debuted on a Sunday night, and we didn't watch TV on Sundays. There was a dramatized scene in the movie when Paul argued vehemently with Peter at Antioch over Jewish and Gentile Christians eating together. 

I remember being very annoyed. "That's not in the Bible!" I exclaimed to myself. For one thing, my holiness background didn't think getting angry and arguing was particularly "sanctified." It went against my holiness to think of these two holy men behaving like that.

Except it is in the Bible -- in Galatians 2. I just don't remember ever hearing anyone preach on that passage. And I didn't remember reading it. In my opinion, one of the drawbacks of having young people read the Bible in the KJV is that they won't know what the text is actually saying a lot of the time. It's just archaic language. In fact, some of the time you think you know what it's saying, you might not because the meaning of the English words may have changed. 

5. A second moment of reflection came when reading some excerpts from Merrill Tenney's New Testament Survey text. I remember reading him talking about where Thessalonica was located along the Egnatian Way. He was giving historical context for 1 Thessalonians. For example, it was a free city with some significant autonomy. Archaeology had confirmed that its leaders were called "politarchs," which Acts accurately represents (Acts 17:8).

The question I had was, "What's the point?" Why would I need to know any of these things in order to understand 1 Thessalonians? Although I couldn't have articulated it at the time, my pre-modern hermeneutic was beginning to encounter the modernist hermeneutic that was employed by all Bible scholars at that time -- both evangelical and non-evangelical. Merrill Tenney was certainly a conservative, Bible-believing evangelical. He was trained to read the Bible in context.

Indeed, the difference between evangelical and non-evangelical scholars in the 1980s was not a historical approach to the Bible but on whether the Bible was true or not. Evangelicals tried to read the Bible in context and insisted that its words were without error -- including both historical and theological errors. 

Non-evangelicals also tried to read the Bible in context but had no such boundaries. They felt free to conclude the Bible was either truthful or non-truthful, historical or non-historical at each point. But, at that point in time, both groups used a historical, contextual method to attempt to arrive at the originally intended meaning of the text.

Because I had grown up potentially hearing individual verses as individual truths, the question of historical context was somewhat foreign to me. It's not that historical context was not inconsistently introduced into interpretation in my church context. My childhood preachers did bring in historical factors at various points of interpretation -- especially when historical elements were obvious in the text. It's just that historical context was not the primary orientation.

6. As an aside, I might add that I experienced some paradigmatic tremors my senior year of high school as well when I took Mr. Stock's humanities class. For some reason, it was strange to me to discover that so much of the Bible overlapped with the history of the Ancient Near East. I had read about the Assyrians in the Bible, and now I was hearing about the Assyrians with Mr. Stock with no mention of the Bible. I had read about the Babylonians and Persians in the Bible, and now I was hearing about them in Mr. Stock's class.

I found it all very neat, but it was strange, for some reason. It was great, I thought, but for some reason it was weird.

In retrospect, I think it was the encounter of the pre-modern paradigm I used in church and the modernist paradigm I used at school. I loved science in high school. I knew and embraced the scientific method thoroughly in high school. I knew and embraced logic and good philosophical thinking in high school. I was a modernist thinker.

But my paradigm at church was completely different. It used the evidence to support faith assumptions, which were not evaluable. It was not programmed to read the biblical text in context but to hear revelations from God in the words. I was a pre-modern thinker who was unreflective about context.

These two paradigms intermingled in Mr. Stock's class, and it was a little disorienting. What was fascinating is that Mr. Stock's class completely supported the biblical text as far as I could see. I just wasn't used to thinking about the biblical text in that way. 

Once you have seen the biblical text in context, it is almost impossible to unsee it. You can move into what Paul Ricoeur called a "second naivete." That is to say, you can go on to be able to read the text both contextually and "spiritually," if you would. I have no problem with lectio divina or the "divine reading" of the Bible. You read small bits of the text. You chew on them. You open yourself up to God to speak to you through them. This is somewhat like the hermeneutic of my childhood, and I have no problem with it.

It just isn't necessarily reading the text in context or for what it originally meant. Lectio divina is only as contextual as you are. It is not "wired" to be a contextual meaning. For me, it is thus a "post-modern" reading. I can read the Bible in context. And I can read the Bible against a personal or spiritual context that is not bound by historical or literary context. I can do both.

7. A final note about that encounter with 1 Thessalonians in college. What should I do with a verse like 1 Thessalonians 5:26: "Greet all the brothers with a holy kiss"? I was raised to see every verse as a direct command of God to me. In truth, of course, there were numerous verses we didn't apply directly to ourselves. Our paradigm filtered the verses that stood out and the ones that didn't.

Still, there was a fellow in my church who stopped eating pork because of Leviticus 11:7-8. He took it as a direct word to us/him. Nevermind other verses in the New Testament like Mark 7:19 or Acts 10:15. The whole Bible was flattened into a single voice, and somehow it was missed that, from a Christian perspective, the New Testament provides the authoritative lens for reading the Old Testament.

But my study at that time raised the question. "Would God allow a verse to stand in Scripture that was not timeless and universal?" Sure, I now understood that this verse about the kissing greeting was written first to Thessalonians who lived two thousand years ago. But would God have let the verse be in Scripture if it were not a command to us as well?

These were the beginnings of my hermeneutical birth pains. I was beginning to see how to read in context. And once you see it, it is almost impossible to unsee it. 

Key Points to Watch

In my previous post, I suggested that you take a little time to make some predictions about the next few years. The idea was that, rather than be like the proverbial frog in the kettle, you would have a benchmark to look back at and see if you had been needlessly paranoid, had rationalized events or compromised your values -- particularly Christian values -- or perhaps you are a prophet!

I have made some predictions to myself privately. Here, I just want to share some of the key historical points to be on the lookout for:

1. Immigration -- We should expect some "shock and awe" when it comes to the deportation of undocumented immigrants. Note -- individuals who came legally but then overstayed their visas are not "illegal" immigrants. They are undocumented. 

There are also, of course, individuals who entered the country illegally. And, of course, there is a relatively small percentage of immigrants who have committed crimes after being here. The majority of undocumented immigrants would likely work to be documented if they could, but our system is apparently so broken that there might as well be no realistic pathway for most. Congress has refused to fix these problems for over a decade.

A number of things to watch. What happens to the individuals who have been "rounded up"? Are families split? Are individuals who have effectively been here since childhood deported? Is a line crossed to individuals who are actually here legally? Is the deportation even or are Democratic states targeted in a kind of vengeance on their economies (e.g., California, Chicago, New York City)?

2. Economy -- Everyone says that the incoming president was elected because of inflation, but most economists predict that the economy will get much worse if he keeps his promises. The deportation of undocumented workers could have serious economic consequences for the states in which they work, as well as to the American economy in general. It might significantly increase the price of certain foods and goods, for example.

Add to this the prevalent rhetoric on tariffs, which would also likely increase the cost on American goods. The goods that are costing more from Mexico, China, and Canada would result in higher cost in the grocery store. When you combine these two factors, are we headed for a significant economic crisis? To what extent is this just talk, or will these promises be kept?

3. Budget Cuts -- Elon Musk and others aim to make massive budget cuts. Much of these cuts will surely be aimed at services provided to the American people, especially the most needy American people. Will this result in significant suffering among those who do not have enough resources to subsist on their own? 

Will cuts to infrastructure actually make it difficult for certain departments of government to do what they are meant to do? FEMA? Will tax cuts cause the deficit to grow even more quickly? Will education become overwhelmingly tribal, where interest groups basically indoctrinate their audiences in whatever bias they want to?

My guess is that the incoming deciders are strongly of the economic philosophy that in post-Soviet Russia was known as "shock therapy." I know an economy professor with this philosophy. The idea is that, if things are fully deregulated, there will be a painful period that will then within a period of months reach a certain equilibrium. This is not of course what happened in Russia. Instead, it facilitated the rise of oligarchs who pretty much own everything.

Bottom line: What will the economic consequences be of some apparently enormous budgetary changes? Will these individuals actually be able to pull off the budget cuts?

4. Media and press impact -- It seems pretty clear to me that Musk took over Twitter to be able to control one powerful channel of influence over the American people. Current conversations over Tik Tok also involve the potential to control what the American people see. There was a joke about buying MSNBC and flipping it conservative. The Washington Post has quickly changed its approach to the news, and CNN has also noticeably shifted already a little to the right. Joe Scarborough met with the incoming president. Meta and Amazon have bowed before the new president.

All these developments will possibly have an impact on future elections and the national narrative. Will there be room for any "loyal opposition" in two or four years? Will current voices of protest largely go silent and dark? When you look at the amount of money Musk poured into Pennsylvania, how "free and fair" will the next elections actually be or will overwhelming financial resources effectively make the next elections a moot point? Will there be voter suppression or even actual voter fraud? 

5. Use of the Military -- The norm is for there to be a sharp line between the military and civilian affairs. It would be unprecedented if the American military were used on the American people. There has been rhetoric of firing all the top generals and replacing them with loyalists. Biden just this week urged the military to remember its oath to uphold the Constitution. Will any lines be crossed in this regard? Will the Justice department be used for personal vendettas?

6. World Configurations -- What happens if the US stops supporting Ukraine? What are we to make of the incoming president's comments about annexing Greenland, Canada, Mexico, and the Panama Canal? The president largely ran on a platform of non-interventionism, but the pre-office rhetoric has had more of the flavor of manifest destiny. Which will it be, and what will be the consequences?

7. Extreme weather -- Two weeks ago, 100 mile an hour winds foiled stopping a fire that destroyed 1000s of homes in California. Last year, unprecedented hurricane damage swept through North Carolina. There are more and more flight cancellations, more and more turbulence during flight. The majority position of climate scientists is that the planet is warmer than at any time in human history and that the increase in temperature has been too steep to be part of some rhythmic cycle of warming and cooling.

If these climate scientists are right, will we see more and more extreme weather with each passing year? If they are right, will the devastation be massive and incredibly expensive? Will these forces cause significant migration even within the States? 

8. Revival -- It is reasonable to say that if any of the worse case scenarios above were to materialize, we should expect people to do some searching for God. Chaos and uncertainty often drive people to God. So can a deep-down gnawing sense of guilt. Not wanting to face the world can result in an inward turn. Will we see some unprecedented revivals alongside a world gone amok? 

These are the kinds of things you might jot down some thoughts on in a journal. Then you can look back at it in a few years and have a laugh or a cry, as the case may be.

A Challenge

If you've read much of anything I've said, you'll know that I think humans are mostly irrational creatures. Our minds are finite and fallen, skewed in their view of the world. This includes our understanding of the Bible. We change our memories without knowing it. We rationalize events to fit the narrative we want deep down, the one that gives our life meaning and purpose. Often those who shout "truth" the loudest are actually the least interested in it. What they mean is "My view, my view."

There have been a lot of predictions of what the next few years will bring. Our natural inclination will be to make events fit our narrative (whatever it is), to rationalize anything that doesn't fit our assumptions, to change our memories of what we expected, even to change our values in terms of what is acceptable. If things are better than we expected, we may make excuses for why we were still right. If things are worse than we expected, we may subtly adjust our values to accommodate and justify our tribe.

All of that is to say, I suggest you take an hour or two to write down your expectations of the days ahead. The goal is for you to see yourself in the future, perhaps for you to have to argue with yourself. In the moment, we rewrite history. But if you have a record, you may have to argue with yourself. And that can be a wake up call you didn't expect.

If we are not willing to adjust our views given enough evidence, then we are not really interested in the truth. I commit myself to that openness. Will you?

Goals for the New Year 2025

The New Year is always a time of optimism and hope. Even though winter has barely begun, January 1 always feels like it is looking forward to spring, like the lights are coming back on. As I look back, I didn't do too badly with last year's goals. For example, here's my Shopify store.

This year may be different from other years. This will likely be a year of chaos. There's a fair chance that a lot of "little people" will get hurt in the process. Depending on the extent of the chaos, there could be hard times for everyone. You have to pray for the best and keep moving on.

Personal

• I'll hit the usual reset button on running. My youngest children are running now, and they have gotten me out a little over break. I'd like to run 3-4 times a week this year, and we plan to run a half-marathon together.
• Setting the measly goal of reading two chapters of something a week.
• Continue my weekly project schedule.  

Publishing

• Again, I'd like to get my Science and Scripture notes into a regularly published book.
• I have a contract for another book I'd like to finish by March 1.
• I probably will continue a trickle of self-published books. The first on the docket is a novel. I have another one in process that tells the story of the Bible through the eyes of its women.

YouTube

• A basic goal of 2-3 videos a week -- Hebrew of the Week and Greek of the Week. A Monday-Thursday schedule might work.

Udemy

• This year I'd like to put up a philosophy course that goes through Sophie's World, which I used to use as one of the textbooks at IWU.

Wishing us all a good year. There is so much potential for good in the world. We are our own worst enemy.

Pauline Studies 3: Paul and Salvation

I continue to read through Gupta, Heim, and McKnight's The State of Pauline Studies. Here are my previous posts:

• Paul and the Messiah
• Paul and Judaism 

The third chapter is by Ben Blackwell on Paul and Salvation. He had a difficult task -- to herd the cats of Pauline scholarship into distinct corrals. Pretty much all typologies of this sort are inevitably skewed.

Blackwell labels the main options as 1) Reformational, 2) New Perspective, 3) Paul within Judaism, 4) Apocalyptic, and 5) Participationist. The problem is that we are inevitably imposing categories on Paul. The occasional nature of his writings suggests that his language and approach may differ somewhat from letter to letter.

1. Reformational Perspective
We used to call this the "old" perspective, but several prominent Pauline scholars have retained key elements of high Protestant interpretations while making necessary adjustments in the light of late twentieth-century insights. Blackwell includes names like Francis Watson, John Barclay, and Mike Bird in this category, although Watson and Barclay are hard to categorize. Blackwell mentions some key trends under this umbrella: 1) justification as acquittal 2) based solely on divine agency, often formulated in terms of 3) penal substitution. 

I get that Blackwell is trying to move beyond the older "old" versus "new" approach. When I was coming through the ranks in the 90s, the "old" perspective saw Paul contrasting a "grace" approach with a "works righteousness" approach he was combatting in Judaism. In 1977, E. P. Sanders showed that this was a false dichotomy and that, in fact, Judaism was a religion of grace.

Based on Romans 4:8, I do indeed think that Paul's justification language in relation to humans is about forensic acquittal. However, I do not think the phrase "righteousness of God" in Romans 1:17 is about a right standing God imputes to believers (47). I'm not disappointed if I don't fall in this category. I don't see Paul as a monergist or an advocate of some mathematical version of penal substitution.

A key work however is John Barclay's 2017 Paul and the Gift. He argues that grace in Paul is characterized by incongruity and circularity. In it is "incongruous" in that it is disproportional to anything we might try to do to earn it. However, it is not completely unconditional. There are informal expectations ("circularity") that went along with ancient patronage.

However, Barclay (and Wright) are monergists in the end. They believe that God will make sure that the elect will produce the appropriate circular fruits by God's power. In other words, they smuggle in the perseverance of the saints in works clothing. But Paul did not believe that final salvation was assured to those in Christ (e.g. 1 Cor. 9:27; Phil. 3:11).

2. New Perspective
Since I studied under Dunn, you would expect me to fall into this category. I am indeed highly sympathetic to many of the interpretations of Stendahl, Sanders, Dunn, and Wright. On the one hand, I completely agree with this description Blackwell gives: "The NPP argues that Christianity is a fulfillment, albeit a surprising one, of the Jewish faith, not a response to it" (49).

However, I do not see justification language in terms of joining the covenant people of God. It's not that I disagree with this theology. I just don't think this is how Paul uses the dikaioo word group. I also think Paul's thought was more atomistic than Wright's metanarrative approach would see it. Paul can talk metanarrative, but I think it is just one of several rhetorical strategies. I also have never been convinced that Paul primarily functioned using the category of exile. I just think Wright glues too many things together with his brilliant mind.

3. Paul within Judaism Perspective
While I am sympathetic to many aspects of the "radical new perspective," in the end I think most of these interpreters go too far. Yes, "early Christianity was and remained a sect of Judaism for Paul" (51). Of course, it did. I do think that all Paul's letters were written primarily to Gentile audiences.

In Romans 11, Paul does speak of Gentiles being grafted into the Israelite tree. But he does not think that Jews can be justified by the Law. He radically reinterprets justification for Jews as well as Gentiles. He uses some language that is radical in relation to the Law even if he primarily remained Law-observant. He even speaks of Gentile believers keeping the Law (Rom. 2:14) even though they are uncircumcised.

So, again, I'm very sympathetic to many aspects, but Nanos, Fredricksen, and others go too far, IMO. A key work here is Matthew Thiessen's, Paul and the Gentile Problem (2016). I have his shorter A Jewish Paul (2023). 

4. Apocalyptic Perspective
Beverly Gaventa has just produced an important commentary on Romans. She would be a prominent representative of this category, along with Doug Campbell. This group emphasizes the discontinuity of the Christ-event with what came before and it actually uses language found in Paul to describe itself (e.g., Gal. 1:12).

One key dimension of this stream is a focus on Sin as a power in Paul, thus making the problem that Christ solves cosmic rather than merely individual or communal. Similarly, it has a more Christus Victor model of atonement, a more "singular" understanding of grace (without wrath), and a "faithfulness of Christ" approach to the pistis Christou debate. Blackwell sees a lot of Sanders' thinking belonging to this category. And of course, we should think of Käsemann, Beker, and Martyn.

Again, there is a lot I agree with here while thinking other aspects are out of focus. For me, the apocalyptic dimension of Paul fits nicely in the "surprising fulfillment" nature of the NPP. I do believe that, practically speaking, Paul did argue largely backward from plight to solution. Sin is a power for Paul in some of his key letters. And I think that the "faithfulness of Christ" was one feature of Paul's rhetoric.

Was Paul an apocalyptic thinker? Of course.

5. Participationist Perspective
Blackwell places himself in the final category along with Michael Gorman, Richard Hays, and others. Note his 2016 book Christosis. "Both the problem and the solution are related to participation in God's presence." Like the apocalyptic approach, there is much I like about how Blackwell describes this position. As Hays pointed out decades ago, "in Christ" is much more common in Paul's letters than justification by faith. 

Here is how Blackwell describes the participationist approach with regard to salvation: "In response to death from sin, salvation is focused on a reconstituted encounter with God that restores the human experience of (God's) life" (58). I like the sense that this approach features more of the Spirit and actual righteousness in the Christian life. As he puts it, "grace will be effective in creating change" (59).

In the end -- and this is a comment on the state of New Testament studies in general -- I think Christian theology and contemporary philosophy interfere more with exegesis than it should. "Let the text say what it says and then work out the tensions in your theology." As exegetes, we have to forget our Christian doctrine, our love of patristics, the fact that we've read Gadamer or Barth, or our sympathies to metanarratives. Objectivity is unattainable, but exegesis demands we do our best not to infect the text with our concerns.

Year in Review (12-28-24)

The days roll by without relenting. I have known for as long as I can remember that you need to enjoy the present, savor your family, be happy where you are. "Be here now." 

I just have rarely done it. It's not my personality and, just maybe, not my circumstances. I've always been in a mad dash, it seems. I don't know what I would or could do differently. My kids are successfully launched. We've had some amazing experiences as a family.

I lost my mother this year at 98. She had a wonderful life and a good death. I celebrated her life here on the blog. Still hope to publish a biography of my parents.

I'm in Erik Erickson's "Generativity vs. Stagnation." I suppose by external appearances, these years have been generative. I helped start a seminary. I've written over thirty peer-reviewed books and self-published as many. I had some great years of teaching and some great years in higher ed leadership at Indiana Wesleyan and Houghton. My years with Campus have brought extraordinary learning and continue to be very productive and exciting.

We can't choose when we leave this earth. I'd love to leave Notes Along the Way and Philosophical Pensees behind if I ever finish them. Whether anyone would ever read them is another thing.

2. The most successful book I wrote this year was A Biblical Argument for Women in Ministry, published in June. This clearly is scratching an itch as I've sold around 600 copies in a half year and continue to sell over a copy a day on average. It has a high-performing Facebook ad that was born of a viral set of tweets.

I've not been able to reproduce the success, although I have made several other attempts. My wife wants me to stop churning these out and write a more conventional book with a real publisher this year. I do have a contract for one with Cascade and will probably seek a contract for a book on Science and Scripture.

Late last year and early this, I took a course in self-publishing that was very informative. I haven't been able to fully reproduce the results, but I have learned a great deal. I continue to experiment with AI both for book covers and editing suggestions. 

Here are the books I churned out this year in the quest for a winning formula. The premise of all of them is solid. Admittedly, I didn't push the marketing too hard since there wasn't initial success. I also didn't fully follow the method I learned in the course.

• The Spiritual War for the World (February)
• Explanatory Notes on Mark's Passion Week (March)
• The Sun Will Grow Dark, the Moon Turn to Blood (April)
• Biblical Hebrew for the Novice (July)
• Thirty Days of Jesus' Birth (November)
• The Mystery of Jesus (December)

3. I continue to put Greek and Hebrew videos on YouTube. They have dedicated viewers. I still have some Patreon followers. It is a place to see video material that is both listed and sometimes unlisted. I started a philosophy series on Tik Tok, but I probably need to think more about how to approach it. 

4. In my work with Campus Edu, I feel like a super-dean. Instead of administrating one faculty and curriculum, I work with about ten colleges and coordinate curriculum and faculty with them. It is very interesting with lots of karma and punishment for my past sins as a profligate faculty. This next year suggests more adventures with courses of many kinds and more dabbling with AI.

I have so much intellectual property (for example, this blog has been going since 2004), that it would be interesting to create an "Ask Ken" AI interface. I don't think it would be too hard as I could already create a custom GPT of this kind. But I don't necessarily want to give Sam Altman all my stuff. With tools like HeyGen, I could even have an avatar of me give video responses. Not worth the investment without a clear market. Pondering and continuing to learn.

5. The election was quite a thing. We'll see how it plays out.

I'll leave it at that. A dream for this coming year is the ever-elusive peace in the moment.

Pauline Studies 2: Paul and Judaism

The second chapter of Gupta, Heim, and McKnight's The State of Pauline Studies is "Paul and Judaism," by Kent Yinger. Yinger wrote a nice little book on the new perspective on Paul a few years back. Then a couple years ago, he and Craig Evans teamed up to write a nice historical overview of the Pharisees.

I might add that in 2019, I had a book published with Lexington Books that examined Hebrews through the lens of these sorts of developments in recent decades (A New Perspective on Hebrews). It's a bit pricy but I was very proud of the first chapter because it set the groundwork for the book by synthesizing the kinds of discussions in Yinger's chapter. In particular, I tried to systematize previous discussions on the new perspective, the third quest, and the parting of the ways discussions of these last decades. I've uploaded that first chapter of that book to Academia.edu.

1. So the material in Yinger's chapter is very familiar. He begins by giving the older view that is now generally displaced -- the idea that Paul fully departed from Judaism. As Yinger says, "The momentum in Pauline scholarship is undoubtedly toward a Paul who is more comfortable in his Jewish skin than the older consensus allowed" (25). I wonder how much preaching is still in the mid-1900s on this score.

It's fair to say that the majority of scholars today do not think that Paul's mission saw itself as breaking from Israelite faith, although we can debate what the word Ioudaismos ("Judaism" or "Judeanness") might have meant. The gradations of perspectives among scholars is maddening, which is why I was so proud of the synthesis in my book that I mention above. 

To sum up, Paul did not see himself as founding a new religion. He saw his mission as nothing other than the true form of Israelite faith and in full continuity with the Scriptures of the first covenant.

On the other end of the spectrum are those who argue for Paul within Judaism. I find some of these views extreme -- for example, those who would say that Paul had two different systems of salvation, one for Jews and one for Gentile converts. In general, I think that Paul's language is in tension with itself across his writings, which is why there are so many different scholarly perspectives. 

The middle ground is Paul alongside a "reconfigured" Jewish identity. I think it is inevitable that this is what Paul's mission ended up doing whether he entirely saw the extent to which he was doing this. See the material on specific verses below.

2. The middle part of this chapter very briefly mentions some of the key debates. What does "Judaism" mean, for example? Its connection to Judean may indeed come into play in passages like 1 Thessalonians 2:14-16. At times Ioudaismos does seem to refer to a pattern of zeal for the Law that Paul rejects.

To what extent is the word conversion appropriate for Paul? I go with appropriate in the sense of shifting between Jewish sects. It really seems more a debate over an English word and thus a bit extraneous to Paul himself. 

How welcome were Gentiles into Jewish synagogues? I would say it varied but probably it was a common phenomenon in the Diaspora. 

How much did Christians remain in the synagogue? I would say it varied again. I think Acts' sense that Paul always started in synagogues very plausible, with him then only separating when the situation was too hostile. I side with the minority on Romans being addressed primarily to Gentile believers since I side with the older view that Romans 16 was originally for Ephesus.

What did Paul find wrong with Ioudaismos? I lean toward Sanders' sense that the starting point is Christ. Because most Jews rejected Jesus, Paul saw their version of Israelite faith problematic. But for Paul, grace through Christ was an alternative righteousing system to grace through Torah. Justification through Christ made it possible for Gentiles to be grafted into the Israelite tree without them keeping the Law. Judaism's problem was that it rejected this whole Christ-system.

3. Yinger helpfully ends the chapter with a quick pass through several key passages.

• Acts 21 -- Paul seems very Law-observant here, even offering sacrifices. I've argued with regard to Hebrews that most Christian Jews did continue to offer sacrifices and that it wasn't until the destruction of Jerusalem that Christians largely began to see the scope of Christ's death as extending beyond the sins of Israel and Gentile converts to all time. At the same time, one can easily see a lot of what Paul does in this passage as tactical -- "To the Jews I became a Jew."
• Romans 9-11 -- This is a passage that leans more on the continuity side of the Judaism debate. It sees Gentiles being grafted into the Jewish tree and sees a wholesale conversion of Israel to Jesus at the point of his return (I think). But this is Paul in one rhetorical mode.
• Romans 14-15 -- I think Paul's references to conservative Christian Jews is a little rhetorical here. He's trying to get his "Gentile Israelites" to behave a certain way and so the language is a little extreme -- he is siding more with the strong in his rhetoric than he really feels. When he says in effect "some don't observe the Sabbath and some do," this would largely fall along ethnic lines, although not entirely.
• 1 Corinthians 9 -- My own position on Paul is that he was largely Law-observant except when it came into conflict with mission. Like Jesus, I don't think he was scrupulously Law-observant when it came to the traditions of the elders. Paul extends this non-scrupulousness to purity laws that came into conflict with Gentile Christian interaction.
• Philippians 3 -- Here I side with Stendahl and others that Paul is not speaking of the utter worthlessness of his Jewish past but of the relative worthlessness of it in comparison to Christ.

Kudos to Yinger for giving such a good taste of the maddening debates of these last decades. It's not hard to see why there are so many books on Paul and Judaism/the Law. The gradations of perspectives can drive one to the cliffs of insanity, and they are driven by the fact that Paul's language is generally unsystematized and often has a rhetorical dimension. I suspect he would have to reflect to answer some of these questions for us.