Notes Along the Way TF7 -- Diverse Traditions in the New Testament

continued from the previous post
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1. Knowing that I was going to Durham, I began to dive more into James Dunn's writing. I will have a hard time remembering when I learned which aspects of his thinking. When he passed in 2020, I did a series walking through his writings in twelve posts. That was when I still had an office at work and at home, and all my books were readily accessible. I have been living in book purgatory since 2021.

Sadly, my copy of Unity and Diversity in the New Testament seems to be in storage, along with Christology in the Making. I started working through the first in anticipation of Durham. I must have worked through the second at least by my first year there.

Unity and Diversity was eye-opening. For obvious reasons, Asbury focused extensively on the literary text of the Bible. Inductive Bible Study at Asbury excelled at the skill of observation of the text. I would tell my students for decades that these skills could enable them to critique world class scholars because of the attention to the text it cultivated.

Scholars sometimes fall into the trap of "parallelomania." You know a parallel from some obscure piece of ancient literature and you connect it to the biblical text. But of course it doesn't matter whether you know some obscure bit of text from the Talmud if it isn't likely to have had any connection with the biblical text.

Perhaps there has been an occasion or two in the past where a scholar has known too much. For example, Philo says in Embassy to Gaius that the emperor Caligula was mistaken to think that the "form of God" could so easily be counterfeited (110). Could Paul have known this when he said that Jesus emptied himself of the "form of God" (Phil. 2:6)? [1]

Probably not. But knowing these sorts of parallels has sparked many a creative theory.

Of course, with the internet, it has become more and more possible for individuals with no real sense of the relationships between documents to imagine completely impossible connections. The 1978 book, When God Was a Woman, is a good example of someone who knew a lot of parallels, but wasn't trained to be able to tell the difference between similarity and dependence.

2. So, while Asbury had done a spectacular job of teaching me how to observe the "world within the text," as Ricoeur put it, there was a tendency to flatten it. In other words, my background had been heavy on the unity of the text but not so strong on its diversity.

Dunn's book was quite the opposite. By the time he was "done," it felt like the unity he saw was fairly slim. But it was good to balance out the extremes of my own background. The biggest unity was the centrality of the death and resurrection of Jesus. 

To be frank, there is something suspicious about the fact that various groups have electric fences that forbid you from drawing certain conclusions. If we are really interested in the truth, if the truth is what God thinks, then we would want to follow the evidence to its most likely conclusion most of the time.

England was a breath of fresh air in that regard. All opinions were treated with respect (sometimes I thought outlandish ones). The point was whether you could argue cogently for your positions, not what your positions were.

3. I'll talk more about christology in a moment. What struck me was the concept of different social groups within the early church. Jewish Christianity. Hellenistic Christianity. Apocalyptic Christianity. Early Catholicism. I find these far too blunt of instruments now, but it was a fairly new concept to me then. [2]

I had never thought of there being creeds, hymns, and other traditions lurking in the New Testament. I had little sense of the tensions between the theologies of the Gospels or the other parts of the New Testament. And the sense that there were different ecclesiologies among different early Christian communities was a completely new thought. 

4. Christology in the Making was even more impactful. Basic understandings that I have of key Christological titles like "Son of God" and "Lord" flowed naturally from his thorough and "scientific" investigations of the text. Principally, he made it very clear that these titled found their locus in the resurrection of Jesus and were royal titles.

Dunn was not unusual for the 60s and 70s to see the development of early Christology as a movement from resurrection to incarnation, from Paul to John. In 1988, Larry Hurtado would start a trend that continues to this day among many if not most scholars. Hurtado argued that a "high" Christology was present before any of the New Testament writings were written, present there in Paul.

Perhaps Dunn's most controversial claim in Christology is that the Philippian hymn did not refer to the pre-existence of Jesus. On this interpretation, Dunn has definitely proved to be in the minority, although less so when he first proposed it. He argued that the Philippian hymn of 2:6-11 was an Adamic Christology. Like Adam, Dunn argued, Jesus was in the image of God. But unlike Adam, who grasped at equality with God, Christ did not grasp. [3]

Few have gone with Dunn for this interpretation. I remember a brief conversation with Bruce Longenecker about Dunn's Christology (Bruce also studied with Dunn). He said he didn't feel the need to follow Dunn on that score anymore. 

But I found most of the book persuasive. And, indeed, I suspect there is much less pre-esistence in Paul than many think. I always have found it refreshing when someone has been able to show me where I was unaware of the glasses I was wearing. Dunn opened my eyes to a third dimension to the Bible. 

What I'm talking about is the transition from reading the Bible from the standpoint of the story in the Bible to reading the books of the Bible in the story of history. This is basically what Hans Frei talked about in the first chapter of The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative. The pre-modern reader reads inside the text. The "modernist" reader sees the biblical texts as moments in history. 

It's the difference between thinking the Gospels must be first because they are about Jesus (who came first), to realizing that the Gospels were written after Paul's writings, probably in the order Mark, Matthew, Luke, John. It's realizing that, as far as its dating is concerned, it doesn't matter if Job pictures the patriarchal period. When a book is written has almost nothing to do with what it's written about.

This is more of learning how to read the Bible in context.

[1] Larry Hurtado explored this on his blog in 2017 before he passed.

[2] I later found John Meier and Raymond Brown's, Jerusalem and Antioch much more helpful (Paulist, 1983). They suggest four groups as I recall: Jerusalem Christianity, Pauline Christianity, Judaizers, and Libertines.

[3] N. T. Wright had what was to be a very confusing examination of the possibilities in a chapter of his The Climax of the Covenant. I was enamored with Wright in those days for a couple years. In retrospect, I would love to rewrite that chapter for him to make it clearer.

2.3 A Lasting Conversion (radical evangelicalism)

2.1 The State of Faith in America
2.2 Dunk and Run
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Lasting Conversion
8. So what is a lasting conversion, an eternal conversion? What is the conversion that ultimately matters?

Let me start by speaking practically rather than technically. The most imporrtant conversion is one that lasts to eternity. It is true that a person can be truly converted and yet fall away (Heb 6:3; Jude 24). But the end result is as if the person was never truly saved at all. They are like the seed along the path, scorched by the sun, or choked by weeds. They are Israelites that do not enter the promised land, "whose corpses fell in the desert" (Heb. 3:17).

9. How does a lasting conversion begin? It is ultimately a matter of the Holy Spirit. This is the repeated message of the New Testament. 

Repentance is a precursor to conversion. Faith is an essential lead up. All along the Holy Spirit has been involved, drawing you to Christ. Baptism is significant, an "outward sign" of God's working inside us.

But, according to the New Testament, the Spirit is the moment of conversion. "If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they are not his" (Rom. 8:9).

The Spirit is God's "seal" of ownership on us (2 Cor. 1:22). The Spirit is the "guarantee," the "downpayment" of our future inheritance (2 Cor. 1:22; Eph. 1:14). Without the Spirit in us, we are not yet truly and fully converted.

We see this in the book of Acts. In Acts 8, in Samaria, a group of individuals have been baptized, but they have not received the Holy Spirit. This is a problem because Acts 2:38 gives the clear pattern: Repent, be baptized, and you will receive the Holy Spirit. Something was wrong.

By the same token, conversion can happen without baptism. In Acts 10, Paul has hardly finished presenting the good news to Cornelius and his men before the Holy Spirit has come upon them. In that incident, baptism simply enacts what the Spirit has already done inside of them.

10. How do we know if we have received the Holy Spirit? I suspect that, for most of us, it will chiefly manifest itself as a "peace that passes understanding" (Phil. 4:7). [10] As the hymn goes, "blessed assurance, Jesus is mine; oh, what a foretaste of glory divine."

However, Paul tells us explicitly what the presence of the Holy Spirit looks like, and this is true not only in me as an individual but in the church collectively. He tells us that "the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control" (Gal. 5:22-23). 

Are these the characteristics that most would use to describe the American church? Not likely. In that respect, we have to wonder how much of the American church is actually truly converted.

The Parable of the Weeds makes it clear that not everyone in the church is actually part of the Church (Matt. 13:24-30). The true Church is "invisible." It does not coincide with the people who hold up a Bible or quote Scripture. Indeed, Satan has the entire Bible memorized (e.g., Matt. 4:6).

Matthew puts it sharply, "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven" (Matt. 7:21). The Parable of the Sheep and the Goats also puts it starkly. Those who did not use what God gave them in the service of those in need turn out to be goats rather than God's sheep. They find their end in eternal judgment (Matt. 25:45-46). [11]

11. We have to conclude that either a good deal of the American church is either not truly converted or not fully converted. My pastor used to put it this way. "Don't worry. You're all still going to heaven. You're just not fully converted yet." [12]

I would put it this way. Some in the American church are not truly converted. But many others are not fully converted. Like Paul's description in 1 Corinthians 3, their faith is mixed with hay and straw (1 Cor. 3:12). 

That is one of the main purposes of this book, to call the American church to a truer and deeper faith. It is a call to recognize where our faith has been corrupted. And for those with fake faith, it is a call to genuine faith.

[10] There are individuals whose "peace receptors" are damaged. While 1 John 3:20 probably was not psychologizing originally, there is great truth to the fact that, when our consciences are not working properly, God knows the real story. Once upon a time, I found David Seamands' book, The Healing of Memories (David C. Cook, 1986) very helpful on this score.

[11] Note that the Parable of the Talents immediately preceeds the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats. While this parable is often read as a capitalist manifesto, in context, the investment of talents would seem to be giving away what God has given us to those in need. We miss this context because of the glasses we are wearing when we read.

[12] Steve Deneff, College Wesleyan Church.

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1. What is Evangelicalism?
1.1 Revivals of the 1700s and 1800s
1.2 The "New" Evangelicalism
1.3 The Poltical Takeover

2.2 Dunk and Run (radical evangelicalism series)

2.1 The State of Faith in America
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5. In the Parable of the Soils, Jesus talks about four different kinds of soil that the word can fall on (Mark 4). Some seed is immediately snatched by birds -- the word of the gopel goes in one ear and out the other. Then there is rocky soil. The wheat springs up immediately but lacks depth and is scorched by the sun. The seed that falls among weeds is choked by the cares of life. Finally, some seed falls on good soil and not only grows but multiplies.

It's fairly obvious that not everyone who "comes in the door" of the church ends up in the kingdom. Different Christian traditions deal with this phenomenon differently. A Calvinist might say such a person was never truly a believer to begin with. My own tradition can take the text pretty much like it is -- some people start off in Christian faith but do not endure to the end.

I already mentioned 1 Corinthians 9:24-27, where Paul suggests that even he might not make it into the kingdom if he does not continue disciplining himself as a spiritual "athlete." Hebrews presents the starkest imagery of this sort in the New Testament. Hebrews 6 suggests not only that it's possible to fall away, but that one cannot return if one does (6:3-6). Such a person is like a field that, despite constant watering, only yields thorns and thistels (6:7-8).

However one wants to process this phenomenon theologically, the long and the short of it is that not everyone who gets baptized will end up in the kingdom of God. We see this happen in Acts 8, where many Samaritans are baptized, but they have not yet been truly saved (8:4-25). One of them, Simon the sorceror, is remembered in Christian history as the earliest heretic of Christianity.

6. In America, Baptists are the largest Protestant group, and they have had enormous influence on American Christianity. Every tradition has its potential weaknesses, and the greatest danger from the Baptistic influences on Christianity  is what I might call "dunk and run." The majority of Baptists in America believe in "eternal security" or "once saved, always saved." It's the belief that, if you get truly saved, you will make it to heaven no matter what.

In a popular form, it can reduce to "Read the prayer on this card and you'll make it to heaven no matter what you do." This is not official Baptist belief, but it's how the doctrine can play out on a local level. The result has sometimes been an emphasis on baptism in American Christianity without nearly as much attention to what comes afterward.

This flavor has made its way into the culture of the American megachurch. Although many such churches call themselves non-denominational, many are functionally Baptist or Baptist with a charismatic twist. [8] Of late, we have seen more and more "baptisms on the spot" in these churches. Appealing to the book of Acts, they bring out the tubs and baptize people right there on the stage, sometimes with little or no preparation.

The danger has always been that there would be no follow up. This was an early critique of Billy Graham's crusades. Many people came forward to give their lives to Christ, but initially there was no system in place to get these individuals into the ongoing discipleship of a church. Thankfully, in the later decades of his crusades, a structure of follow-up by various area churches was put in place. [9]

Similarly, most mega-churches today have created systems to try to get the newly baptized into small groups. Still, it is hard not to get the impression that these streams of American Christianity are "front heavy" with inconsistent follow up. The danger is that someone who gets baptized might think they are fully cooked and that they need not worry too much about their walk with the Lord thereafter.

7. Paul himself ran into the problem of getting baptism out of perspective with the Corinthian church. A man named Apollos had followed him to Corinth. Because he had formerly been a follower of John the Baptist, baptism apparently played a more significant role in his teaching than it did for Paul. Paul is frustrated enough that he said he was glad he only baptized a handful of people there (1 Cor. 1:14-17).

Why? Because they were getting things out of focus. At Corinth, they had come to view who baptized them as a matter of prestige. They missed the point of baptism. It represented the cleansing of their past sins and their inclusion into the body of Christ. It was a beginning, not an end point.

One danger with the current climate of Christianity in America is that we focus so much on getting people wet that we miss the long haul of faith, which is actually the more crucial part in the end. We don't want to miss "running with patience the race that is set before us" (Heb. 12:1-2). Because it is not starting the race that ultimately matters. It is finishing it. To use an illustration from the book of Hebrews, all of Israel started off the journey in the wilderness. But they did not make it to the Promised Land (Heb. 3:16-19).

The danger of evangelical "conversionism" has long been a lack of discipleship. This is one area where John Wesley excelled, one of the earliest evangelicals in the 1700s. His rigorous system of discipleship made sure that a new believer did not simply evaporate away. George Whitefield, another evangelical of that day, once remarked that those who had been saved under his preaching were a rope of sand in contrast to those saved under Wesley. He had no system for discipleship.

[7] "Eternal security" is actually a mutation of two quite distinct theologies. Its base is Calvinism, which holds logically that if you are predestined, then you will endure into the kingdom. But Baptist belief mixed this idea with the later idea of the "assurance of salvation." This is the quite distinct tradition that you can know now whether you have truly become a child of God. Mix the two together and you have a theological Frankenstein: 1) if you know you are saved now then 2) you know you will make it to the end.

[8] Even the Assemblies of God church, which is one of the largest denominations in America, could be said to have the flavor of a Baptist church with tongues and other spiritual gifts added in.

[9] Bill Hybels also lamented this about his legacy at Willow Creek.

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1. What is Evangelicalism?

• Revivals of the 1700s and 1800s
• The "New" Evangelicalism
• The Poltical Takeover

2. The State of Faith in America (1)

1. What is Evangelicalism?

• Revivals of the 1700s and 1800s
• The "New" Evangelicalism
• The Poltical Takeover

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1. The big news in a recent Pew study was that the decline of Christian faith in America had paused. [1] The theme of previous years had been the "rise of the Nones," individuals who claimed not to have any specific faith at all. [2] A few years ago, that was the fastest growing religious demographic. In this more recent study, the percentage of young men in particular has held steady and was roughly equal to young women who professed faith.

The Devil is in the details, of course. What is this data really saying?

An intriguing theory is that the retention of male faith might have something to do with influencers like Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan, and Wes Huff. [3] There is much talk about recovering masculinity within Christian faith, and these voices seem to be having an impact among young men.

However, it does not seem that they are bringing young men at large toward faith. Whom they seem to be helping are young men with some sort of background in Christianity. That is, they are helping a small swath of young men retain faith by inspiring them to live responsible lives.

Meanwhile, the fastest decline in faith would seem to be among young women. One of the more striking findings of the study was that young men and women had evened out in their faith -- as opposed to earlier days when the faith of young women significantly outpaced that of young men.

2. At the same time, we can ask what faith they are retaining or are being converted to. Here, the exit of women from the church may give insights. Why are they leaving? Are they leaving, for example, because the church has largely ignored them -- even as their voice has been empowered more and more?

Just a few years ago, the #MeToo movement called attention to the pervasive bullying and abuse that women get in society. According to one study, 82% of women have experienced sexual harrasment or assault in their lifetime [4] According to another study, almost half of all women (45.1%) have experienced some form of contact sexual violence in their lifetimes. 21% reported completed or attempted rape, and 39% reported unwanted sexual contact. [5] 

Did the MeToo movement change anything? According to the Newcomb Institute at Tulane University, no. [6] The question for the church is not merely whether male behavior has changed in society (it hasn't). The question for us is whether the church has offered women any reason to believe the situation is any different among believers (it hasn't).

3. A person saved is a person saved. If I genuinely come to believe in God because I thought I saw a unicorn eating lunch at Denny's, that is still a soul saved. It's important to keep that in mind. If a man keeps his faith because of a skewed version of Christianity, that's still a soul saved if the conversion is genuine.

At the same time, it is not enough to dunk and run. Paul is quite clear, despite protests to the contrary. "Run that you might receive the prize... I discipline my body and make it my servant so that I might not be disqualified after myself having preached to others" (1 Cor. 9:24, 27).

What we don't want to happen is to "inoculate" people to faith. We don't want to give them a taste and then for them to spit it out of their mouths. We want them to partake of genuine faith and to stick around for eternity.

4. I thus consider this a fair summary of faith in America at the moment. While it may have experienced a slight uptick or plateau in the last couple years, we do not know how the graph will continue. The trendline for the faith of young women is in steep decline. What is holding the demographic is that some young men who grew up in a Christian context are returning to the faith of their childhood.

Will that be a permanent return? That is another good question and one that should cause us to make sure that the faith we are advertising is genuine Christian faith. We would hate these converts to be seed on rocky soil -- or seeds among weeds or bird food (Mark 4).

Are we converting these young men to a club (while losing the young women) or are we bringing them to a lasting, well-anchored faith? That is a key question for this chapter.

[1] Religious Landscape Study, Pew Research Center (February 8, 2025), conducted from July 17, 2023 to March 4, 2024.

[2] Ryan Burge, The Nones: Where They Came From, Who They Are, and Where They Are Going, 2nd ed. (Fortress, 2023).

[3] Cf. Anthony Delgato, "Comeback Christians."

[4] "Rates of sexual harassment and assault nationwide still high after #MeToo movement" (September 16, 2024).

[5] National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey: 2023/2024 Sexual Violence Data Brief.

[6] The study quoted in n.4 is found here: #MeToo 2024 Report.

What is evangelicalism Part III (The Political Takeover)

1. What is Evangelicalism?

• Revivals of the 1700s and 1800s
• The "New" Evangelicalism
  

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The Political Takeover
9. Most religions have their "fundamentalists." A fundamentalist is somone who is zealous for what they see as the fundamentals of their religion. In itself, this sounds pretty good. In fact, it's something like what I'm arguing for in this book.

But the word has a tone -- words aren't just what they say. Their meaning is really in what they do, and this word has a tone.

As we currently use it, it has a militant tone. It's a fight tone. It's a rigid tone in the sense that it refuses to consider that it might be wrong about the way it understands the fundamentals. It's anti-modern in the sense that it fights to preserve its traditions and imagined past. [7]

10. In the 1950s, "new" evangelicals like Ockenga and C. F. H. Henry wanted to distance themselves from groups they deemed "fundamentalists." They regarded those groups as less intellectual. These were groups like holiness revivalists, dispensationalists, and Pentecostals. 

They also saw these groups as separatists, Christians in retreat, while they wanted to "engage" the culture. One might say that they were ambitious to have a seat at the public table.

Seventy-five years later, the groups they considered inferior have taken over their movement. Eventually, the majority of "traditional" Christians would rule over the intellectuals. If you flash forward to today, mainstream "evangelical" thinking has become thoroughly political and extensively loosed from its intellectual and "respectable" beginnings. In my view, politics has become more central to the movement than theology, opening the door for the rank blasphemy pictured at the beginning of the chapter.

11. Jerry Falwell in the 1980s is as good a place as any to begin tracing this shift. Originally, he would not have identified himself as an evangelical, nor would evangelicals of that time have identified themselves with him. He deemed his movement, "The Moral Majority."

He rose to national prominence through the anti-abortion movement. Before that, his original fight was to preserve tax exemptions for segregated Christian schools. Suffice it to say, that is a less powerful origin story.

The Reagan presidency saw the fusion of Republicanism with conservative Christianity. The result is that, even today, many evangelicals aren't sure that a Christian can vote for a Democrat. This has to be one of the most impactful developments in American religious history in its fusion of politics with religion. The result is that, as the Republican Party goes, so goes evangelicalism.

Here are some examples of issues where you might expect some spectrum of thought among evangelicals, but you don't really get it. Most evangelicals oppose gun control. The single most significant indicator of whether someone will be opposed to climate change is if someone is a white evangelical. Opposition to universal health care, pro-immigration? You could easily argue that these are biblical values.

Yet evangelical Christians not only tend to be monolithic on such issues. They tend to line up strongly on one side. Why? 

Arguably because of the fusion of Republican politics with evangelical Christian faith. 

The Latest Evangelical Pillars
12. Bebbington, in effect, has proposed evangelism, the authority of Scripture, the centrality of the cross, and engagement with the culture as the cornerstones of historical evangelicalism. Let me suggest that these have largely morphed into club, culture war, conquest, and control.

Of course, not all evangelicals fit these descriptions. My claim is that the flavor of evangelicalism has nevertheless shifted dramatically in these directions in the last few years.

Club. We see a big emphasis on getting people baptized, but how deep does the transformation go, and what are people being transformed into? Might the prophets call out some of our baptisms the way they called out sacrifices once upon a time (Micah 6:6-8)? To what extent have our efforts to convert become tribal inductions rather than heart conversions? We are getting people in the club, but are we getting them in the kingdom?

Culture War. We are witnessing an amazing thing in this moment. You can talk Bible all you want to evangelicals, but the values of their subculture trump the real Bible. There is still talk of the Bible, of course. But it is a banner, a symbol. Get into the actual values of the Bible, and shields go up. Ironically, after thinking for so long that evangelicalism was pushing back against ungodly culture in a culture war, it is unable to see that its own subculture is in the driver's seat -- not the Bible.

Conquest. Ironically, the cross showed that losing one's life could be gaining it. Suffering could be victory. Losing could be winning. But evangelicalism is presently at war. It has no interest in "milquetoast" Christianity. It wants Bonhoeffer the assassin, not the real Bonhoeffer, who the vast majority of the time was a pacifist.

Control. The activism of evangelicalism wants to take over the state. It rejects and hates the very notion of the separation of church and state. It wants a theocracy, a Christian nation of its imagination. It is no longer Niebuhr's "Christ the transformer of culture." It is pure "Christ over culture" -- as in take over the culture.

Not sure you agree? Keep reading. In the pages that follow, I want to call evangelicalism back from the brink to its roots. I want to call us beyond the club to true conversion. I want to pull the rug out from under the culture wars by going back to the Bible itself. I want to suggest that conquest and control are the opposite of Christ's values. We will transform the world by becoming its servants rather than its lords.

Won't you join me on this journey to the roots of the "evangel," the good news of Jesus Christ?

[7] I realize my approach to fundamentalism is in some tension with some prominent names in this area of history, namely, Mark Noll (see n.5) and George Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture (Oxford University, 1980). We'll have that conversation later. 

What is evangelicalism? Part II (New Evangelicalism)

continued from last week
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Neo-Evangelicalism
5. Jump forward to the 1950s. With great intentionality, "neo" evangelicalism is born. [3] It loosely combined these two previous streams. On the one hand, you have Billy Graham the conversionist. For over fifty years, he channeled D. L. Moody and Charles Finney in his crusades around the world. Millions came forward to accept Jesus. (The follow-up at first was less stellar.)

Representing the other stream were the likes of Harold Ockenga and C. F. H. Henry, watchdogs of evangelical orthodoxy. The century before had seen the rise of biblical criticism and evolution. Traditional Christianity was in defensive mode. These "new" evangelicals aimed to go on the offense.

Fuller Seminary was founded. Christianity Today was sent for free to pastors everywhere in America, financed by oil tycoon J. Howard Pew. The "National Association of Evangelicals" (NAE) was born. Graham took it on the road. A movement was born.

6. David Bebbington has tried to systematize evangelicalism over the centuries. [4] This is a somewhat artificial task, because the meaning of words changes over time, and groups change over time. The values of the Democratic Party in the 1850s were quite different from its values today. In that sense, his four pillars of evangelicalism run the risk of flattening and imposing a system on people and movements from different times. 

The four key emphases he identified were 1) conversionism, 2) biblicism, 3) crucicentrism, and 4) activism. The first was an emphasis on evangelism. The second referred to the authority of Scripture. The third was the centrality of the cross and the necessity of atonement. The final commitment was to change the world rather than withdraw.

We have already seen broadly how these played out over the last three centuries. Conversionism is probably the most longstanding characteristic. Then in the late 1800s and early 1900s, a focus on the authority of Scripture and the necessity of the cross became more important in reaction to modernism.

In the 1950s, activism was key to the neo-evangelical rise. People like Harold Ockenga strongly criticized those Christians whom he saw as retreating from the world. Soon they were calling these individuals "fundamentalists." Mark Noll later identified such "retreaters" as dispensationalists, holiness folk, and Pentecostals. [5]

I'll have some thoughts on that later.

Blind Spots
7. Neo-evangelicalism was mostly white and aspiring middle class. It was "color blind" in the sense that it didn't much see those who weren't white. Like so many of the day, Graham advised Martin Luther King Jr. to move slower and avoid disruption. Evangelicalism has never had a large black demographic, and most white evangelicals did not participate in the Civil Rights movement.

In fact, the ancestors of the evangelicals today in the South were known for their flight to "segregation academies" in the mid-twentieth century. The government said to integrate. So they left the public schools to stay with their own kind.

Perhaps it's no coincidence that evangelism "exploded" in the 1970s. [6] This seems to be a predictable pattern. When white evangelicals get uncomfortable with social critique, they shift hard into conversionism -- which has a heavy focus on our insides, distracting from social injustices. (The same pattern has arguably also taken place in the last few years.)

As a quick note, a number of evangelicals over the centuries have healthily combined both evangelism and social action. John Wesley certainly did in the 1700s. Many evangelical reformers of the mid-1800s certainly did, playing significant roles in the abolitionist and women's rights movements. There were evangelicals like Ron Sider who were deeply engaged in the civil rights movement. But it is more a feature of modern evangelicalism to sever the two.

8. Another critique of this neo-evangelical movement is that it used the tools of modernism to argue against it. To fight modernism, it largely adopted its rules. You might argue that this undermines the critique. It hardly seems a winning strategy. We can wonder if a number of young people have lost their faith over the years as a result.

There are other options, as we will see. 

[3] I found Mary Worthen very helpful here, Apostles of Reason: The Crisis of Authority in American Evangelicalism (Oxford University, 2013),

[4] Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1970s (Routledge, 2004).

[5] Mark Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (Eerdmans, 1994). Nevermind that a series of writings called The Fundamentals had been produced by intellectuals.

[6] Evangelism Explosion was the mantra of D. James Kennedy, pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The church would become an epicenter in the culture wars of the late 1900s.

Notes Along the Way TF6 -- A Dunn Deal

continued from the previous post
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1. I mentioned my college honor's project on holiness. I mentioned the independent study I did with Dr. Bauer on Hebrews. Since my fleece had turned toward teaching, my eyes were now set on where I might do my doctoral work.

My first year as Teaching Fellow, I presented an academic paper to a few people at Asbury. The title wasn't very clear: "Hebrews and the Rest of God." My friends were curious where the rest of God might be. Apparently it must be hiding in Hebrews.

That probably would have been a much more entertaining paper to listen to. I forget which friend it was who said they didn't understand a word I said. I would go on to present it at a regional SBL in Atlanta that spring, I think 1991. 

It felt like a cattle trough. I went up. I read. I came down. Quite underwhelming. I hadn't really left any time for questions -- partially by intent. I threw in a couple German and Hebrew sentences to show I was scholar material. You know, fake it till you make it.

2. Bauer and Dongell had gone to Union Seminary. I wasn't too interested, but I considered it. Paul Achtemeier would have been the person to study with, since he was Paul and the more epistolary part of the New Testament. But as it turned out, he was retiring anyway.

I looked at Notre Dame, but I pulled a classic Ken move. Since their materials said the degree was in theology, I concluded that they didn't have a doctoral program in New Testament. That was before the internet, but I didn't ask anyone either. Even more significant was the fact that Harold Attridge decided to go to Yale.

It seems like I sent a letter to Richard Hays at Duke, but I don't think he was interested in supervising any dissertations on Hebrews at that time. (or maybe it was me)

3. I sent a letter to James Dunn at Durham. If I couldn't go to the Durham in the US, what about the one in England? I think I have mentioned that his Baptism in the Holy Spirit had come to me by way of Bob Lyon, and it had influenced my understanding of Acts fairly significantly. 

So I sent a letter. I mentioned that Baptism had been formative for me. I might have also picked up a copy of his new Parting of the Ways at Joseph Beth. In it, he suggests that perhaps Hebrews combines a Platonic cosmology with a Jewish eschatology. It seemed a kind of extension of Barrett's thesis. That was the angle I suggested I might explore. [1]

He was receptive.

He was a great advocate to have. By the time it was all done, I received an Overseas Research Scholarship (ORS) that brought my tuition down to British cost. He connected me with St. John's College, where I served as Residential Tutor (and fire alarm runner). That gave me free room and board when the dining hall was open. I taught Greek to university students, which gave me a little spending money as well.

As it turns out, if I had not gotten the ORS, teaching Greek would have granted me free tuition. That's quite annoying. It took me 20 years to pay off my loan debt for something that would have been free. Funny how no one mentioned that to me.

4. Dunn was invited to speak at Asbury Seminary during my final year in Wilmore, and I was invited to the dinner. The Q & A after his presentation was probably fairly typical. I remember one fellow being clearly disturbed by it. I don't remember what it was on, but I can imagine a couple areas where he might have been less than orthodox. My guess is that he made more room for a non-Christian Jew to be right with God than would be orthodox.

Dunn inhabited a curious space. He was frequently sought out to speak at evangelical institutions, even ETS. And yet he wasn't fully orthodox in those circles. He told me he didn't look at what he was signing when he signed the inerrancy statement to speak at ETS. He had come from a fairly evangelical Scottish background, I would say. Then he had done his doctoral work at Cambridge under Charlie Moule, I believe.

What I liked about him is that he was really interested in what was true. That doesn't mean he was always right. Not at all. But I loved his method. He really tried to let the chips fall where they would. He rigorously wanted to come to the most likely conclusion given the evidence and sound reason.

At that dinner, Joe Dongell sat next to him. Being a bit mischievious, Joe asked, "So, are there any positions you've taken over the years that you regret? Like, maybe your interpretation of Romans 7?"

Leave it to Joe. In Dunn's two volume Word commentary on Romans, he took what was at the time a traditional view of Romans 7 -- that it is a believer struggling with Sin. Of course, that was about the time that a pivot took place. A strong majority of Romans scholars today -- the consensus in fact -- believe that Romans 7 is a dramatization of a person who wants to keep the Law but doesn't have the Spirit to be able to do so.

But Paul goes on in Romans 8 (as he anticipated in Romans 6 and the beginning of 7) to talk about victory over the power of Sin through the Holy Spirit. The consensus interpretation, by the way, fits very well with Wesleyan theology. In that regard, Dunn's commentary was almost out of date on Romans 7 when it came off the press.

But his response to Joe was unsurprising. "No, I feel very comfortable with my conclusions on Romans 7."

5. I remember also having a side conversation with Joe at that dinner. (He was the beloved disciple next to Dunn. I was Peter having to ask him to ask Dunn questions.) I asked Joe about Matthew 24:34: "Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all is fulfilled." The context clearly indicates that the conversation is about the second temple, the one destroyed in AD70.

But the second coming has not happened yet -- not if it is the literal return of Jesus. I have yet to hear a completely satisfying answer to this conundrum. The best I have had to offer is that the near and the far sometimes blur when you are looking at them in a line of sight.

Joe did offer an answer. He suggested that there is a clear break in referent at 24:29. The first half of the chapter is about AD70. The second half about the second coming. I didn't find it completely satisfying. Bill Patrick and I sometimes mused about Joe's confidence. Things were increasingly complicated to us.

[1] I can't remember if it was purely providential or great luck that he had taken a similar position in Partings to Barrett. Did I realize the overlap or was it completely unintentional?

When God Seems Silent (2)

Possibly a series "For the Honest Seeker."

Introduction 
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1. I lived in England in the middle of the 1990s. While I was there, I read a book by John A. T. Robinson called Honest to God. [1] He had written the book in the 1960s, during a time when England was undergoing a sort of faith crisis in the decades after World War II. This was also around the time that some were beginning to talk about the "death of God" in America. In the book, Robinson recalled a time in seminary when he realized several students did not find prayer as eventful as they might have expected. That passage stood out to me. 

Throughout my teens and twenties, I had constantly prayed for experiences of God like the ones I saw at church camps and heard preached throughout the sermons of my childhood. I grew up in what you might call a "revivalist" tradition. We had regular "altar calls" where people went forward to pray as they felt led by the Spirit. The impression I had was that God zapped us all the time, almost like how God talked to Moses.

But aside from occasional moments of peace, I did not have many dramatic, emotional religious experiences in my teens. I am not a particularly emotional person. Indeed, growing up, I identified strongly with Mr. Spock from Star Trek, who thoroughly suppressed any emotion deep inside himself. During those years, living a life of constant and deep introspection, I did not have many experiences I had been led to believe should be commonplace.

To be frank, my teens were a time of torture for me. I was constantly seeking God's forgiveness for sins I couldn't even identify. Most of the time I did not feel peace, but I didn't know what sins I needed to confess. My intention to do the right thing was almost on the spectrum, and I could list on one hand the times I had deliberately done something I knew was wrong. In some ways, I envied the rebellious young people whose rebellion was so obvious that they experienced incredible release when they finally surrendered themselves to God.

As I matured, I began to experience more and more peace. But the lack of dramatic religious experience continued to haunt me. In my mid-twenties, I would cry out to God (inside) both during prayer and church prayer times, begging God to speak to me in some direct and undeniable way. Sometimes, I even begged him to punish me for asking, just so that I would know he was there.

In the end, the biggest faith struggles of my late 20s were not ultimately intellectual, although that was clearly part of them. But on a more fundamental level, they were personal. Why doesn't God talk to me like God talked to Moses and the other people in the Bible? The Christians around me sure seemed to think he should.

2. At some point, it struck me that Moses didn't have any of those dramatic experiences of God until he was 80 years old (Acts 7:30). It also dawned on me that I was not Moses. Somehow, the preaching of my youth had normalized dramatic religious experiences. Maybe I wasn't as special as I had been led to believe.

When I lived in England, I knew a young man who felt a call to ministry. I could see in him some of the anticipation I grew up with. Over the years, I've known more than one young man (and a woman or two) training for ministry who somehow thought they were going to be the next Moses. Some have undergone faith struggles when it turned out their emotional highs weren't backed up with the divine encounters they expected. 

I've always wondered if some had an inflated sense of their own calling. Some lost their faith, perhaps left empty at the realization of their normalcy. Then again, it seems to me that there are plenty of prominent leaders in the church who put on a good show, but you wonder how much spiritual substance they have. I've wondered if, when they hit a moment when they realized much of their spiritual life was hype, they just kept going.

On the other hand, I know other people who do experience God's voice regularly. Miracles seem to follow some of them around. Usually, they are not looking for followers or an audience. They are quietly going about their lives, and the world around them is always changing for the better.

Paul talks about spiritual gifts in some of his letters. For example, in 1 Corinthians 12:9, he talks about the gift of faith. I find this very helpful. We talk about being "justified" by faith, so everyone should have a certain baseline of faith. But there also seem to be some who have a gift of faith, the kind of faith that moves mountains.

3. What if some of us are more wired to have religious experiences than others? [2] I know this idea will get strong pushback from some of my friends in ministry. But I'm not writing for them. I'm writing for those of you who are puzzled because of what seems to be the silence of God.

Even the most devout experiential types can undergo something called "the dark night of the soul" where they may go through a long period without feeling God. [3] 

But what if the "silence" is more normal for many than the dramatic? What if it is the striking prayer experiences that are more unusual? If that were true, then we may be unnecessarily setting up a certain personality type for faith crisis -- and another for regular hallucination.

I want to be very careful here. My goal is not in any way to discourage a sense that God speaks to you. But for some, it might be more healthy to see those divine moments as unexpected joys. Otherwise, we may be setting some people up for regular disappointment.

I might add my suspicion that some people put their trust in other people's experiences, and that works. They think, "If I were more holy, I'd have those experiences too." Or maybe they think, "I don't have that kind of relationship with God, but so and so does." And they bank their faith on that. In that way, they are not troubled by their own "silence" because they trust that other people are regularly hearing from God.

4. In my college years, as I was trying to have the kind of devotional life I had heard promoted so often, I had a strange thought. Maybe I would feel more like I was having an actual conversation with God if I pictured that I was really talking to someone. This is a strange thought because, surely, that's what prayer should have been for me all along.

But the thought revealed to me what I had been doing all along when I prayed. It had actually been a monolog. In other words, prayer for me had really been talking to myself. (Mind you, I'm sure God was listening.) Then it dawned on me. How many prayers had I heard in the church -- including many from the pulpit -- that had actually been self-talk or, in some cases, subtle sermons?

"Lord, we know that you hear our prayers when we call." Who are you talking to? Of course, the Lord hears. How many a pastoral prayer is actually a secret sermon to the congregation. "Lord, we know there are people out there who are asking whether they should come forward to the altar." Who are you talking to? God or the congregation?

I was also impressed at one time by David Seamands' book, The Healing of Memories. [4] As I continued to struggle with the lack of clear response from God in prayer, Seamands' claim was that some of us, often because of previous trauma, might have difficulty hearing directly from God. He talked about "damaged love receptors" and broken love antennae. 

The idea is that God may be beaming the signal of his love to you, but you may not be able to receive it because your antenna is down. (Clearly this metaphor worked better before our current Wifi and Starlink.) In such cases, Seamands argued, God more typically works through other people to help fix your antennae. He doesn't usually fix it directly.

5. All these things may be true, and I've found them helpful. But I've come to think of God's presence much more as a peace and a "still, small voice" than the dramatic experiences I thought I was supposed to have as a boy.

For some of my friends, this will seem to undersell God. I can hear one friend as I write saying, "But Ken, God wants to give so much more!"

I hope so. But if you are having questions because that isn't you, it probably isn't what you need to hear right now. Maybe what you need is a recalibration of your expectations.

What if, for most people, the norm is what I call peaceful prayer -- without getting zapped back? This really isn't the silence of God because I've come to view peace as the presence of God. It wasn't what I was primed to experience growing up, but I wonder if it is more the norm.

You can of course see God's hand everywhere if you have faith that God is always working, always giving, always blessing. "In everything, give thanks," Paul says (1 Thess. 5:18).

To me, this is something different from expecting to be zapped with special messages from God all the time. It is a quiet thankfulness. It is a quiet conversation that doesn't expect an audible voice in return. It is an attitude of mystery and trust. 

It is an attitude of faith that doesn't ask for return. And when the return comes, it is an attitude of gratitude.

[1] John A. T. Robinson, Honest to God (SCM, 1963).

[2] I used to have a colleague in the psychology department whose research showed which part of the brain "lights up" when a person is having a religious experience. He was not suggesting that religious experiencces were merely psychological. But he did think it might be possible to "counterfeit" them biochemically. If he was right, then some religious experiences may be genuine, and others may be hallucinations.

[3] The phrase was coined in a poem by St. John of the Cross in the 1500s. He was a Spanish mystic.

[4] David Seamands, The Healing of Memories (David C. Cook, 1986).

For the Honest Seeker 1

If you're reading this, you are probably what I would call a "seeker." Perhaps you were raised as a Christian, but you are having doubts. You have questions. Maybe the answers you are getting ring hollow. Perhaps they seem like the easy responses people give when they aren't really looking for real answers. You may be thinking, "They don't even get the question."

Alternatively, perhaps something is drawing you to look into the Christian faith more. Maybe you come as an outsider. You are intrigued but still skeptical. Perhaps you have never given it much thought or have been dismissive. But you are curious. You are investigating further.

This book is for the honest seeker. It's not looking for pat answers or dodging hard questions. If your faith feels settled or uncomplicated, this book may not be for you. It might introduce questions you've never considered. This is a book for those with hard questions looking for honest dialogue about them. 

I've come to see three basic approaches to this sort of quest for faith. On one end of the spectrum are those who think the answers are pretty obvious. This is the crusader, the apologist, the person who thinks the "evidence demands a verdict" in a fairly straightforward way. Often, this person likes to debate to win -- maybe even more than to have deep understanding.

My guess is that, if you're reading this book, the answers this approach gives have not been entirely satisfying. Maybe it feels like they are mostly speaking to the already convinced. In this book, we'll give some of their answers, but we'll look at them as honestly as possible, recognizing that some of them may make more sense to you than others.

On the other end of the spectrum are those who think these questions are pointless and possibly counterproductive. These are the "blind faith" people. They might think that faith is a gift that makes no sense -- either you have the gift or you don't.

You're probably not one of those people either. If you were, you wouldn't be looking for answers. This approach doesn't look for answers. It speaks of taking a "leap of faith" that doesn't necessarily make sense.

No, this book is for those of you who think faith should generally make sense, but recognize that the questions aren't always easy. On some issues, the answers may seem relatively easy. On others, we may have to resort to a leap of faith. On still other questions, you may want to dig deeper for answers that make sense to you but are troubling to others.

Our motto in this book is "faith seeking understanding." Either "I want to believe; help my unbelief" or "I'm open to faith, but I cannot see it clearly." Perhaps you will resonate with a poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson: "There lives more faith in honest doubt, Believe me, than in half the creeds."

Some doubt too much. Others don't doubt enough. Let our quest for faith begin.

Confessions #4: Paul made Sabbath-keeping optional.

Number 4 in my new series, Confessions of a Bible Know-It-All: 25 Ways I Changed My Mind.

1. I am not the "you" of the Bible. 
2. Try reading the verse before your favorite verse. 
3. Then I read the verses before the prophecies.
x. Resurrection isn't going to heaven when you die.
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1. I grew up with a lot of Sabbath rules. I wasn't rebellious, although it did make Sundays pretty boring for me. We went to church at least twice. As an attention-deficit boy, that was a little torturous, if I am honest.

We didn't "buy or sell" on Sundays, which meant we didn't go out to eat or to the store. Part of why we didn't go to restaurants on Sunday is so that someone else didn't have to work. My dad occaionally got the opportunity to work overtime on weekends. He'd do the Saturdays but not the Sundays as a matter of conviction.

We didn't watch TV on Sundays. My dad felt like he would end up watching football all day if that door was open. So we set the day aside for worship. When Star Wars and E.T. premiered on TV on Sunday nights, I missed them. (I had already missed them at the movies because we didn't go to movies either.)

Sunday was serious, solemn. It was a holy day, set aside, sanctified. That means we didn't throw a football or baseball. I was kicked off a playground at a holiness camp ground once because Sunday was too serious for play.

This was all very normal for me. It was one of many practices that set my family apart from other people. We knew we were a "peculiar people," as Deuteronomy 7:6 in the King James Version says.

There's nothing wrong with any of the practices I mentioned above. As I studied the Bible more and more, though, I realized that these things were really a matter of personal conviction. A deep reading of Scripture won't see them as practices that God requires of his people.

2. Two things began to change my mind on these practices. One is an increasing ability to read the Bible in context, and the second was an openness to listen to the Bible over my tradition.

For example, the most glaring insight is that Sunday isn't the Sabbath. Saturday is and was. There's not a verse in the entire Bible that refers to Sunday as a Sabbath. [1] Sunday is the "Lord's Day," not the Sabbath. In the Bible as in Judaism still today, the Sabbath referred to the period from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday.

There are groups like Seventh Day Adventists and Seventh Day Baptists that have recognized this fact and they do keep Saturday as the Sabbath even today.

Of course, many Christians recognize this fact and will immediately respond, "The specific day is not what's important. What's important is that you set aside a day as your Sabbath." For example, many pastors set aside Monday or another day as their day of rest.

Many other Christians have blurred the Sabbath into a day of worship. So what becomes important is going to church to worship on Sunday. If you do that, they believe, then you have kept the Sabbath.

These are all very interesting (and practical) traditions. There's just one thing about them They're not in the Bible. They are like the traditions of the elders of the Pharisees in Mark 7:1. They are oral traditions that Christians have come up with to explain how they keep the law without exactly keeping the law.

And that's ok. It is fantastic to set aside a day of rest. It is very healthy! It is spectacular to set aside a day of worship! The Lord deserves our worship every moment of every day, and setting aside a day to gather together to worship him is VERY biblical (cf. Heb. 10:25; Rev. 1:10).

3. Here's the thing though. The farther I went into my study of the Bible, the more I let each passage say what it wanted to say. I didn't let myself continue to say, "OK, this verse sounds like it says x, but I can't let it say that because of passage y." I tried to stop "cooking the books," so to speak.

So, consider Colossians 2:16: "Do not let anyone judge you because of food or because of drink or in respect to a feast or a new moon or a Sabbath." What is this verse saying?

If I let the verse speak, it seems to say that the non-Jewish Colossians (Gentile Christians, in other words) should not feel pressure from anyone in the city to observe the Jewish food laws, festival days, or Sabbaths. That is to say, Colossians does not consider Sabbath-observance binding on Gentile believers!

If you were in doubt, let's go to Romans 14, a chapter that was very important to me on my spiritual pilgrimage. It says, "There is the one who considers one day above another and another who considers every day [the same]. Let each person be fully convinced in his or her own mind. The one who observes the day observes it for the Lord" (Rom. 14:5-6).

Verses like these are sometimes difficult for us, not because they are hard to understand, but because they wreak havoc with what we think we know. Paul here indicates that keeping the Jewish Sabbath was a matter of personal conviction, not a universal requirement. Some Christians would believe God requires it of them. Others would not.

Why is this so striking? It is striking for several reasons. For example, this is one of the Ten Commandments. "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy" (Exod. 20:8). And Paul says you don't have to keep it. I think he especially had Gentile Christians in mind. I suspect he and other Jewish Christians continued to observe Saturday as a Sabbath.

Let that sink it. Not only does he not consider it an absolute. He does not even consider it a universal requirement. By definition, he puts it in the category of the relative, a "relativist" categorization. That's really the category in which personal convictions go. It's wrong for me, but it might not be wrong for someone else. Paul says that, on this issue, what is important is that you are fully convinced in your own mind (Rom. 14:5).

There's no way around it. That's what he says.

I was talking to a family member about this once and the response was, "But Exodus 20:11 bases the Sabbath law in creation" (cf. Gen. 2:2-3). 

"I know," I responded. "But it doesn't seem to matter to Paul."

4. Let me give it to you straight. Despite our traditions, despite what makes sense to us, despite the fact that it is one of Ten Commandments, rooted in the creation story, despite all these things... the New Testament does not consider the Sabbath to be binding on Christians.

That was a huge admission for me as a Bible know-it-all. When you listen to the biblical text, it often doesn't want to be read the way my tradition wants it to be read. Then I have to decide whether my idea of the Bible is more important to me than the real Bible itself.

[1] I did hear an ingenious argument that the Greek of verses like Matthew 28:1 changed the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday. A wooden reading of the Greek is "Now after the sabbaths, at the dawning of the first of sabbaths." Some have argued that this verse changed the old Sabbath to Sunday as the first of the new Sabbaths. Brilliant!

But of course it is this sort of game-playing with truth that caused me to have a bit of a faith crisis. The expression "first of sabbaths" was an idiom for "first day of the week." It existed before Easter, and it existed after Easter. This interpretation is just a very sophisticated version of ripping a phrase out of its historical context. The meaning of these phrases was "Now after the Sabbath, at the dawning of the first day of the week," which is how pretty much every version translates it.

What is evangelicalism? Part I

1. The thing about words is -- they change their meaning over time. 

Take the word woke. For most of my life, it simply meant that someone was awake. Not sleeping, in other words. Then, about fifteen years ago, it began to be used in certain circles to refer to someone who had become aware of their own privilege in society and the challenges of others who are largely unseen to them.

Now, it has become a strongly negative term without much content, largely a nickname to mock liberal or progressive individuals. If it has any content at all, it mocks those with social concerns in relation to people of color or women.

Same word. Changing meanings and connotations.

This is how words work. The same word can mean significantly different things over time. A word can flip from being positive to negative or negative to positive. In the 1980s, Michael Jackson came out with a song called "Bad" in which the word bad came to mean really, really cool. In the early 2000s, a "googol" (1 with 100 zeros) became Google, and "to google" something became a verb.

2. The same is true of the word evangelical. It has not always meant exactly the same thing. 

In German, evangelisch simply means Protestant. Preachers of the 1700s like John Wesley, George Whitefield, and Jonathan Edwards used the word to describe an approach to salvation that, like Martin Luther, emphasized salvation by grace through faith. That was "evangelical" faith and "evangelical" religion.

So we largely call these individuals "evangelical" in hindsight. In their own time, the word described a kind of Christianity more than it named a distinct group.

As the 1800s progress, two streams of "evangelical" Christians begin to emerge. On the one hand, you have those like Charles Finney who continue to emphasize the "conversion" sense of the word that Wesley and Whitefield did. These are the revivalists of the 1800s. [1]

The other stream is foreshadowed by William Wilberforce, who begins to use the word evangelical to contrast the "alive" part of Anglicanism from the "nominal" part that, from his perspective, is Christian in name only. The evangelical part of Anglicanism is still orthodox. It still believes in sin and salvation. It sees faith as personal. The other is respectable and formal, perhaps a little too influenced by the Enlightenment. [2]

By the end of the 1800s, you have two distinct centers of gravity in what we would call evangelical Christianity in America. The one is the revivalist wing that, like D. L. Moody, emphasized conversion and the experience of salvation. They are evangelically "orthodox," but that is not their focus. 

The other includes academics like Charles Hodge and B. B. Warfield, whose center of gravity is the more doctrinal aspects of faith. They are Calvinists who focus evangelical faith on a particular understanding of sin and salvation. For them, an evangelical especially has the right beliefs about the Bible and salvation.

3. In the mid-1900s, the word evangelical would emerge now as a clear sociological movement after World War II. Now, it is very intentionally defined by a group calling themselves "neo-evangelicals." And both streams loosely rejoin in this new coalition.

On the one hand, you have Billy Graham...

[1] For an excellent survey of this stream, see Donald W. Dayton, Rediscovering an Evangelical Heritage: A Tradition and Trajectory of Integrating Piety and Justice (Baker Academic, 2014).  

[2] David W. Bebbington, as we will see, commits the root fallacy by mixing these two distinct streams together.

Notes Along the Way TF5 -- Teaching at Asbury College

continued from last week
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1. Back in the day, Mike Harstad was a legend at Asbury College. (I don't know the details of his departure so I'll leave it at that.) He was known for teaching Greek the old school way -- by which I mean the way my mother learned it at Frankfort Bible College in the early 1940s. You learned Attic Greek first. Then you downshifted into Koine Greek, the "merchant Greek" of the New Testament.

Brian Small learned Greek from him that way and, as I recall, first introduced me to Smyth's classical Greek grammar. In my seminary years, Greek resources featured high on my list of birthday and Christmas requests. My parents obliged and I filled in some details. I believe Joseph Beth was helpful.

Dr. Harstad thought that Philo was the author of Hebrews, or at least could have been.

Bauer-Arndt-Gingrich-Danker, Liddle Scott, Moulton and Geden, Blass-Debrunner. My parents gave me Kittle's 10 volume Theological Dictionary one Christmas. Of course, it turned out to be riddled with language fallacies, not to mention the fact that it was put together by Nazi Bible scholars. Oh well.

In the 1992-1993 academic year, Harstad was on a sabbatical. The whole year. And, since I was now finishing up my MA in Classical Languages and Literature at the University of Kentucky (UK), I seemed like a good pick to do some of the fill in while he was gone. 

So I taught second year Latin at Asbury College that year, one class each semester. He used Robert Ball's Reading Classical Latin text, which used simple texts from Julius Caesar, Ovid, Cicero, and the like. It was nice. If only I could have started out with those beginning texts instead of being thrown into poetry again at UK.

I can't say that I remember any students except for Jerald Walz, who has occasionally stayed in touch.

2. We used to joke that a great gulf separated Asbury College from the Seminary, as in the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus. Seminary men were known to go over to hang out at the Grill in hopes of finding girls who might date them. It was a little embarrassing, and I joined the ranks of the embarrassing for a short time.

Some of my college friends were RD's at Kresge. We would go over to visit them. That's when I first met Cindy Gunsalus and then Vicki Gibson, who was a close friend in those years. My roomate at the time was Brian Matherlee, now well known Wesleyan pastor in North Carolina. He introduced me to the Braves and the Tarheels. 

He was much more of an extrovert than me and quite cool for a seminary guy. A brief story will capture our respective personalities. Two of the most popular female seminary students came to our apartment to visit him. I was there -- or at least I thought I was. As he showed them around the apartment, he pointed to my room and mentioned that it was Ken's room. Mind you, I was standing right there behind them.

"Who?" they asked.

"Ken," he said. And then as the look of perplexity continued on their faces, he added, "He's standing right behind you."

Ah, such is life.

3. I was a Greek and Hebrew Teaching Fellow at Asbury Seminary from the fall of 1990 to the spring of 1992, going to UK part time. Then from 1992-1993, I went full time to UK and finished my degree.

This involved of course going headlong into Latin. I've mentioned that I took 2.5 years of it in high school. Then I spent the summer of 1991 going through Wheelock.

The first class I finally took was, by some freak act, another poetry class: Juvenal, Martial, and Statius. It wasn't too bad. Juvenal was a satirist. So we read the famous quote that all the people want are bread and circuses. Martial, as I recall, was ronchy. So for a brief moment I knew some Latin bad words and sex terms. I had Dr. Jane Phillips for that class. She was quite reasonable. I had her for Cicero as well.

She was Roman Catholic, and I think may have been a nun at one time. Not entirely sure. I remember her being perplexed that I didn't know the term "fracture" for when the priest breaks the wafer when consecrating the elements. She was trying to prompt my memory for the fourth principal part of frango -- "fractus."

I had two semesters of Latin Composition with her my final year. I can't say that I learned as much as I would have liked, but that has always been my story.

4. I took Virgil's Aeneid with Lewis Swift. He was Dean of Undergraduate Studies and for some reason I was surprised that he actually would teach a class. He passed away a few years ago. I remember a brief exchange we had at a social for the master's students in classics. It was at Robert Rabel's house, as I remember. I dutifully abstained from the wine that was on offer. He had a very nice wine stock, as I recall.

Somehow, we had a brief chat about the imprecatory psalms. Dr. Swift said something like, "I was never quite able to figure out what to do with the imprecatory psalms. You know, praying down God's wrath on your enemies." He had actually studied for ministry as a Roman Catholic at one point, I believe.

I responded that I had always taken them somewhat metaphorically. Praying for God to end evil and various vices rather than people. He seemed intrigued.

He was a great teacher of the Aeneid and, although I continued my multi-hour pre-class Arby's ritual, I regularly found myself trying to guess when I would be asked to read to make sure I had something to say once we got there. A trick I tried with varying success was to volunteer early and then have pockets of text translated so I could volunteer throughout the class and just maybe give the appearance of having it all done. 

Sometimes it worked. Sometimes I missed the Battleship.

5. There were classes I wanted to take but it just didn't work out. I missed Plato. That hurt. I went the first day but conceded I just didn't have the time. I did catch Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics with Robert Rabel (Books I and X, I believe). I missed Homer, which sucked. I mentioned that I had a year of Sanskrit with Greg Stump.

I had to pass a reading French competency. This was while I was still a teaching fellow. The problem is that the class I signed up for was at 8am. And at that time I certainly was not a morning person. That didn't happen until I was married. I couldn't get myself up. And it's not like there was an attendance requirement. Everything stood or fell on whether you passed the competency exam at the end.

I went the first day. I went a random day in the middle. I went to the class before the exam, I believe. And I studied reading French on my own.

I got an A in the class.

Confessions x: Resurrection isn't going to heaven when you die.

Just for Easter, number x in my series, Confessions of a Bible Know-It-All: 25 Ways I Changed My Mind.

1. I am not the "you" of the Bible. 
2. Try reading the verse before your favorite verse.
3. Then I read the verses before the prophecies
_______________________________
Confession #n: Resurrection isn't going to heaven when you die.
1. I grew up with two beliefs that I never really tried to fit together. The first was that, when you die, you go to heaven or hell. The second was that the dead would rise from their graves when Jesus came back to earth.

Later on, I tried to make them fit. When you die, you are in some sort of intermediate state. Perhaps your soul is in "Abraham's Bosom" (Luke 16) or Paradise (Luke 23:43). On the other hand, you may find yourself in torment (Luke 16 again).

Then when Christ returns, your soul is reunited with your body, like Iron Man calling his suit from afar. The soul of the Christian is reunited with an upgraded body. And, on the Day of Judgment, the damned are also reunited with their bodies before going to eternal torment.

2. There are many Christians who, perhaps without even realizing it, simply do away with the resurrection part. A few years ago, when an ossuary with the name James on it was discovered, there was speculation about what would happen if the bones of Jesus were found. A colleague of mine -- teaching at a Christian college, no less -- didn't think it would make any difference if they found the bones of Jesus. Apparently, he thought the afterlife was purely spiritual. Our physical bodies didn't matter, as far as he was concerned.

Some of us were stunned. Admittedly, the person didn't teach in the religion department. They taught in a completely different field and really didn't know any better. They didn't realize that resurrection in the Bible is an embodied resurrection. Jesus' tomb is empty -- and that matters.

When I was growing up, I didn't realize how important our bodies are in the Bible for eternity. But 1 Corinthians 15 makes it very clear. When Paul talks about resurrection, he isn’t imagining a disembodied existence. He can’t even conceive of an afterlife without a body (cf. 1 Cor. 15:35). For Paul, salvation isn’t escape from the body. It’s the transformation of it. 

For Paul, the alternative to resurrection isn’t “your soul goes to heaven.” It's no future at all.

3. Come to find out, our popular notions of the immortality of the soul are more Greek than biblical. It's not that we can't make them fit. There are several hints of something similar. "Into your hands, I put forth my spirit" (Luke 23:46). There are martyred "souls" under the altar in Revelation 6:9.

But Jesus' resurrection is a bodily resurrection. Luke and John make a big deal of this fact. In Luke, the risen Jesus asks for fish to show he is not a ghost (Luke 24:39-43). In John, he offers the marks in his hands, feet, and side for Thomas to touch to know it is him (John 20:27).

And I've already mentioned the apostle Paul, who apparently can't understand what the Corinthians are thinking about resurrection. He doesn't understand how they can believe Jesus is alive and yet not believe in resurrection. As a former Pharisee, resurrection for him obviously means that our corpses rise from the dead. [1] "Someone will say, 'How will the corpses be raised?' and 'With what sort of body are they coming?' (15:35). 

He just assumes everyone knows that resurrection involves our bodies. It doesn't even occur to him there might be another view like, "You die your soul is freed." In this part of his ministry, he even talks about the time between death and resurrection as "sleep" (1 Thess. 4:13; 1 Cor. 15:51).

Resurrection of the dead is the rising of dead corpses. The Greek story said, "Your soul escapes your body." The biblical story says, "God raises your body."

4. But the biggest shift came when I realized that this embodied eternity in the New Testament is almost certainly on earth. The kingdom of God in the Bible is God's kingdom come to earth.

This seemed heretical to me as a young man studying for ministry. And I know I wasn't the only one. I know a church leader who was shocked to hear a professor at my seminary point out that this is exactly what Revelation 21 describes. Somehow, while we took all the rest of Revelation literally -- the parts that probably weren't meant to be taken literally -- we took this part figuratively. We took the descent of the heavenly Jerusalem as a poetic expression of the future rather than something that might literally happen.

Yet, when I became a professor, my theology colleagues would assure me that historic Christianity has always believed that eternity is on a new earth, the redeemed earth of Romans 8:18-23. That was news to me. "Orthodoxy" in my low church background meant an eternity in heaven.

But it's all there in the New Testament. I just mentioned Romans 8 and Revelation 21. But Jesus too talks of people coming from north, south, east, and west to feast with him in the kingdom of God (Luke 13:29). I had just always ignored the clear implication that this was on earth somehow. But it's strange verses like that one that lead to paradigm shifts.

I still believe we are conscious between death and resurrection, somewhere, in some form. The details are above my pay grade. I believe in spending eternity with Jesus.

But I now believe it will be in a glorified body. And I believe the kingdom of God will be right here, on a new earth. Christianity isn’t about leaving earth for heaven. It’s about heaven coming to earth.

[1] N.T. Wright emphasized this fact in his book, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church (HarperOne, 2008).

Confessions 3 -- Then I read the verses before the prophecies

Number 3 in my new series, Confessions of a Bible Know-It-All: 25 Ways I Changed My Mind.

1. I am not the "you" of the Bible. 
2. Try reading the verse before your favorite verse.
_______________________________
Confession #3: Then I read the verses before the prophecies 
1. My parents gave me a Thompson Chain Reference King James Bible when I graduated from high school. Aside from the Bible itself, my favorite page was a chart in the back that told the key Old Testament prophecies that were fulfilled in Jesus.

You have probably heard the argument: "It's impossible that all these predictions could be fulfilled in the same person by coincidence." It's an argument used to defend the inspiration of Scripture, the existence of God, and the divine identity of Jesus. Now I believe all those things. But I also feel like I was set up for a bit of an unnecessary crisis because of those arguments. 

It's not the Bible's fault. It's a casualty of that "first naivete" I mentioned in the last chapter.

2. The first hint of this came in a college class. The professor showed us Matthew 2:15: Jesus went down to Egypt as a child "that it might be fulfilled that which was spoken by the prophet, 'Out of Egypt I called my Son.'" 

Now, I had that chart in the back of my Bible. But I had never actually gone back to those passages to read the verses that came before and after them. I had just assumed they were straightforward predictions. I expected that, if I went back to Hosea 11:1, I would find something like, "When the Messiah comes, he will go down to Egypt, and then he will return so I can say that out of Egypt I called my son." Or something like that.

Then the professor had us go back to Hosea 11. It wasn't what I expected. It wasn't a prediction at all. And it certainly wasn't about the Messiah. Here's what the verse and the one after it say: "When Israel was a boy, I loved him, and from Egypt I called my son. The more they called to them, the more they went from their face. They sacrificed to Ba'als, and to idols they offered incense."

That was a surprise. The verse is about the Exodus -- in the past -- not about the Messiah in the future. And Jesus certainly didn't sacrifice to Ba'al or offer incense to idols. Clearly, the verse in context was not about Jesus at all.

This was a puzzle! I smiled at the time -- being the Bible know-it-all I was. I'll figure this out.

Except I didn't -- at least not in terms that fit the chart in the back of my Thompson Chain Reference Bible.

3. After my first year of seminary, this seeming discrepancy began to wear on me. In fact, as I was learning to read verses in the light of what came before and after them, I was finding more and more of a difference between how the New Testament used these verses and what they seemed to mean in their original books. It seemed like Matthew was reading Hosea incorrectly, and I didn't believe the Bible could have errors.

Spoiler alert: I don't think Matthew was in error. I think my expectations were in error. I expected these to be prediction-fulfillments. And it turned out they were instances of the New Testament authors reading the Old Testament in a "spiritual" or more-than-literal way. In other words, they were reading verses or segments of verses somewhat like I grew up reading memory verses. 

Let me explain. In the last chapter, I mentioned that, once words are uttered, they become distanced from the meanings their authors intended. [1] We can see meanings in emails, text messages, conversations that weren't what the writer or speaker intended. Relationships regularly get into conflict over these sorts of misinterpretations.

Growing up, my family expected the Holy Spirit to speak to us in the words of the Bible. Many American Christians read the Bible this way, expecting to hear a word from the Lord -- to get zapped by the Spirit while reading. We didn't think about the fact that we weren't reading the Bible in context for what it actually had meant. This unreflective reading is what we might call a "first naivete."

Ancient Jewish interpretation of the Bible often read its words in a similar way. Something about the biblical text triggered a truth in the reader's mind. In some ancient examples, they read the words of the prophets in relation to their current situation, much like Bible prophecy teachers still do today. [2]

Some Bible scholars of the early 1900s called this seeing a "fuller sense" in the text (sensus plenior in Latin). Even though Hosea 11:1 wasn't a prediction about Jesus, there is a parallel between Jesus and Moses in Matthew. Moses led Israel out of bondage in Egypt. Jesus leads us out of the bondage of our sin. You can see where, while Hosea 11:1 wasn't originally about the Messiah, there is a rough parallel.

4. Over time, I began to "change my mind" on how to see the way the New Testament read the Old Testament. The New Testament was not in error. It just used a different hermeneutic than the way I was learning to read the Bible in school. A hermeneutic is a way of interpreting something. 

In college and seminary, I was learning "inductive Bible study" or how to listen to the biblical text to let it tell me what it meant. That's also called exegesis, where you draw meaning out of the text. The biblical authors and I, growing up, often read the Bible "eisegetically." We read meanings into the text based on our traditions and theology. [3]

If your theology is good, it's not too bad to read the Bible this way. For one, the vast majority of Christians do and always have. We read the words using the Christian "dictionary" in our heads (as well as the dictionaries of the churches we go to). It's just not how to read the Bible if you want to know what it actually meant originally. 

As a side note, I had a Bible colleague who would tell students, "Matthew was inspired. He was allowed to read the Old Testament this way. You aren't." But, I think he has actually softened a little on this point over the years.

5. I end this chapter with a potentially shocking example. Isaiah 7:14. You probably know the verse because Matthew 1:23 reads it in relation to the virgin birth: "A virgin will become pregnant and will bear a son, and they will call his name Immanuel, which being interpreted is 'God is with us.'"

Again, I expected to go back to Isaiah 7:14 and find a prediction that the Messiah will be born of a virgin. As a memory verse, it can be read that way: "Therefore, the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, a young maiden has become pregnant, and she gave birth to a son. And she called his name Immanuel."

Hebrew tenses are not entirely about time, so the timing could be translated differently. However, the most natural way to take the verse is in relation to something that has already happened. Some modern translations have "virgin." Others have "young woman" (e.g., the RSV). At the time, I assumed these were the evil translations.

But who is this sign to? Eventually, I looked at the verses that came before and after 7:14. To be honest, there were names and places I didn't really know anything about. Who was Ahaz? Who was Rezin? Who was "Pekah the son of Remaliah"? Where was Syria? What was Ephraim?

Because I didn't know who and what these things were, it was easy to hear "blah blah blah" virgin birth "blah blah blah." And this was especially true in the King James Version, which printed each verse separately anyway.

6. So what is the context? 

This is the late 700s BC. The big threat to this region is Assyria, which will end up destroying the northern kingdom of Israel in 722 BC. Isaiah is a prophet in the southern kingdom of Judah.

The word from the Lord comes to the king of Judah, Ahaz, through the prophet Isaiah. Two kings from the north -- who will soon be obliterated -- are trying to force Ahaz to fight with them. From a human perspective, it makes some sense.

But Isaiah's word from God is not to do it. Ahaz doesn't want to listen. He makes up an excuse, something like, "I don't want to bother God."

But Isaiah insists. The Lord is going to give you a sign whether you want one or not. A young woman has become pregnant and given birth to a son. Verse 16 -- "before the boy knows how to refuse evil and choose the good, the land that you dread will be forsaken by the two kings."

Suffice it to say, I found this train of thought confusing when I was reading the verse in relation to the virgin birth. For one thing, Jesus' birth was 700 some years later. If this verse was a sign to King Ahaz, it wasn't a very good one. What good is a sign to you if it only happens 700 years after you're dead?

But, thought I, how could there have been another virgin birth in Isaiah's day?

Let me share the rest of the story. Virgins get pregnant all the time if they get pregnant the first time they have sex. Also, it isn't entirely clear that the Hebrew word 'almah here only refers to a virgin, although it's possible. So, it was possible that the verse referred to a perfectly natural birth originally.

Second, there are a couple young male children mentioned in these chapters of Isaiah. Isaiah has a son, for example, Maher-shalal-hash-baz (Isa. 8:3-4). Isaiah 8:4 sounds very much like the prophecy in Isaiah 7:16.

7. Get to the point, Ken. The point is that, in context, this was a prediction to King Ahaz. It was a prediction about a child who was born during his reign. That child was a sign to him. Before that child was old enough to tell the difference between good and evil, Ahaz's problem was taken care of.

This does not mean Matthew was in error, as I would have once thought. It means that Matthew was reading the verse in a fuller sense. He was reading the words in relation to Jesus in a "spiritual" way. And that's ok.

After being jolted out of my first naivete into reading these verses more in context, I eventually reached a "second naivete." I can accept that Matthew was inspired to read Isaiah the way he was. AND, I can accept that Isaiah was inspired to give the prophecy to Ahaz too with the verse's original meaning.

After all, it actually happened in the late 700s BC.

[1] The philosopher Paul Ricoeur called this dynamic, the "autonomous text" in Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning.

[2] For example, the Habakkuk commentary (1QpHab) among the Dead Sea Scrolls reads the words of Habakkuk in relation to the rise of Roman rule and influence in the region.

[3] Although they would likely deny it, there's a school of hermeneutics called "theological interpretation" that arguably does this. It tries to have its cake and eat it too, claiming to read the Bible in context while instead reading it in the light of its theology. Both readings are valid, but they are different interpretations.

Confessions 2 -- Try reading the verse before your favorite verse.

Number 2 in my new series, Confessions of a Bible Know-It-All: 25 Ways I Changed My Mind.

1. I am not the "you" of the Bible. 
_______________________________
Confession #2: Try reading the verse before your favorite verse.
1. I grew up with memory verses. Love them. Was taught them in Sunday School. Still quote them regularly.

I realized something as I started taking Bible classes in college. I didn't pay much attention to the verses that came before and after them. Sometimes I still caught the right general sense. Other times, I realized I didn't have a clue what those verses actually meant in context.

Again, by "in context" I mean hearing what the words actually meant. I'll get there eventually, but words are always locked in a context when someone reads them. It's true when someone utters words--the words are a function of what words mean in their context. 

And it's true when I hear or read words. When I read them, I'm the one that assigns the meaning to the words, inevitably. Once an author utters words, he or she loses control over what someone hears in them... unless they're still around to correct the misinterpreter.

I grew up on the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible. I have a family member who tried the New King James (NKJV) for a short while. But he ended up going back to the KJV because he didn't like the paragraphs of the NKJV. In other words, he preferred to read each verse individually.

2. But, of course, the words before and after a verse help you know what the verse was actually saying. So, you're less likely to know what the verse means if you don't read what comes before and after it. We saw this in the first article. Jeremiah 29:11 was not a verse about me or you. It was a verse to a specific group of people in Babylon in the early 500s BC.

Read the verse right before it: "When seventy years are completed in Babylon, I will visit you, and I will fulfill for you my good word to return you to this place" (Jer. 29:10). 

Why do we think 29:11 is about us? Only because we've been taught to memorize the verse that way. The Bible as a whole does indicate God has good plans for those who love him (Rom. 8:28), but that doesn't mean your life won't be rough now. It's not a promise that you won't be murdered or martyred. And it's certainly not a promise for serial killers or dictators.

What I changed my mind on was about just ripping verses out of context. It's not that God doesn't still "zap me" from time to time. But now I know I'm not hearing the words for what they actually meant. What they really meant is locked up in the context when they were first written.

3. While we're talking about Romans 8:28, it's another one that people tend to rip out of its context. "We know that, to those who love God, all things are working together for good to those who are called according to [his] purpose." There's a tendency to translate this into the slogan, "Everything happens for a reason."

But what do the verses before and after it say?

From Romans 8:18 on, Paul is talking about the glory that we all can look forward to when Christ returns. Not only will our bodies be transformed but the creation itself. Currently, the creation is in bondage to the power of Sin, so that our flesh prevents us from doing the good even when we want to (that is, unless we have the Spirit to help us).

So, we are awaiting the redemption of our bodies (8:23). We are awaiting either the resurrection if we die or our transformation if we are still alive when Christ returns. 1 Corinthians 15 gives us a good deal more detail about these events to come.

Meanwhile, the Spirit helps us as we wait (8:26). This is the context of Romans 8:28. It's all going to work out for good. It is not a statement focused on individuals, although of course as Western individualists we are bound to read it that way. And it seems to point to the end when all the things Paul has been talking about take place.

What were these things again? They were our resurrection and the transformation of our bodies.

In other words, the verse is not saying that your infected toe will work out for the better. It's not saying that everything happens for a reason. It's not saying God will not let you suffer. It's saying that no matter what "groanings" we may undergo now, we will eventually find ourselves transformed in the kingdom of God.

4. I started out not being programmed to read verses in context. I had a family member who had a verse jump out at her that made her think God wanted us to move to Florida. Maybe he did! But I guarantee you that is not what Judges 1:15 meant originally.

I would later read a philosopher who called this a "first naivete." I didn't know what I didn't know.

So, I learned to read the verses before and after. I began to hear verses differently. I could see that some of my readings of Scripture had been wrong--at least as far as context is concerned. I changed my mind on their meanings.

But you know, that same philosopher talked about a second naivete. That's when you know it isn't what the verse meant but you can see a truth in the first way you read it.

My grandfather used to preach a sermon from the KJV of Isaiah 35:8 from the line, "though fools shall not err therein." His sermon preached that you didn't have to be smart to be holy.

He was right of course. It's just not what that verse meant. A fool in Hebrew is not a person who isn't smart. It's a wicked person. And to err in older English is to wander. The verse is saying that wicked people won't accidentally find their way onto the holy highway.

I suspect the Spirit speaks this way all the time. He spoke originally with what the words actually meant in context. And yes, because we are all fools in the modern sense, he meets us in the words still today, however we are able to understand them.