Issues of my New Testament Survey Class

I just finished teaching New Testament Survey for May term. Keith Drury has eternally served as a goad to make it relevant to students required to take it who at most will teach a Sunday School class. What does a nursing student need to take away from this class?

One thought we have had is to teach the course around issues. I have always thought that students enjoy my course more once we get to Acts and start to dig into issues. But as I went through the class this time, I kept the question in the back of my mind--how could I pair up the whole New Testament to all kinds of Christian issues both practical and theological.

If you took my NT course, boiled the non-issue material I cover of, what would it look like? I think it could look something like this (following my May term syllabus):

• Why are there so many different interpretations of the Bible?
• How would a non-Christian Jew read the OT differently than a Christian?
• Why are there so many different translations of the Bible?
• What do the things Jesus did say about him?
• What kinds of people do we see in the Parable of the Soils?
• What does the Parable of the Good Samaritan say about Jesus' teaching?
• How does the Parable of the Prodigal Son capture the response to Jesus?
• How did we get the New Testament?
• Why does Jesus hide his identity in Mark?
• Why aren't the Apocrypha in most Protestant Bibles?
• Why did Jesus die on the cross?
• Do Christian Jews have to keep all the OT laws?
• Can a Christian do anything contrary to love of others?
• What should a Christian's attitude be toward money and the poor?
• Why are Matthew, Mark, and Luke so similar and John so different?
• Do the gospels give precise or artistic presentations of Jesus' ministry?
• What are the unique contributions of each gospel?
• What was the essence of Jesus message and mission before he went to Jerusalem?
• What is the baptism of the Holy Spirit in Acts?
• How important is water baptism? When should it be done and how?
• Was becoming a Christian a change of religion for a first century Jew?
• Was Paul tortured by a guilty conscience before he came to Christ?
• Did the early Christians believe more in resurrection or the immortality of the soul?
• How should a Christian view pre-marital sex, adultery, homosexuality, divorce, and remarriage?
• Should a Christian sue another Christian?
• What are the basic principles to follow when Christians disagree over issues?
• What is the Lord's Supper all about?
• What are tongues and how should they be practiced if at all?
• What arguments does the NT provide for Christ's resurrection?
• Should sin be a normal part of a Christian's life?
• Can a believer "lose" their salvation?
• What does the NT mean when it speaks of predestination?
• How cultural or universal are the household codes of the NT?
• Is it appropriate for women to be in ministry and leadership?
• Are there pseudonymous writings in the NT?
• How frequently is Jesus flat out called God and flat out worshipped in the NT?
• What is the role of works in a Christian's life?
• How do you fit together biblical teaching that seems to conflict with itself?
• How will it all end?

Most of them are surfing the web during class... but those who are both mentally and physically present discuss almost all of these in the course of a semester in my class.

Classroom Snippets: Septuagint

One of the things that you either love or hate about my classes are the tangents. I consider them relevant most of the time--they are often on the checklist of things I want to have covered by the end of the class. And I almost always return to the official outline or overhead when the tangent is over--I could outline what I have said after the class and it would make sense.

But I imagine my tangents are a nightmare as far as taking notes. Frankly I doubt most students take notes on my tangents.

So I thought I would for today's intertestamental lit. class. I'll email this post to the class.

1. The difference between evangelical and non-evangelical reconstructions of OT history do not get stuck on every point. For example, I don't see people getting fired over the dating of Job. Similarly, I can't imagine why someone would argue over the idea that some person other than Hosea may have edited his prophecies into their current form even after he was dead. I have no horse in that race as an evangelical.

2. There are some flash points, however. Many evangelicals would get hot over the idea that the narrative framework of the Pentateuch might have come from some epic produced in the period of the monarchy. This doesn't seem as big an issue to me for the reasons I mentioned in the last post, but this is a flash point for perhaps most evangelicals.

However, the non-evangelical sense that some of the distinct parts of the book of Deuteronomy date from the days of Josiah is a major sticking point probably for almost all evangelicals. For example, this would include the idea that it was perfectly appropriate before Josiah to worship Yahweh in places other than Jerusalem. As evangelicals, we would much rather say that Gideon, Samuel, Elijah, and Elisha were simply unaware of the rule only to sacrifice in the place where Yahweh would put his name. Also, we have great difficulty with the idea that the "prophet like me" of Deuteronomy is a reference to Josiah.

All of that was part of the outline of the class to give background to the intertestamental period both in traditional and secular mainstream versions.

3. The main tangent today was sparked by the simple words 1-2 Samuel, 1-2 Kings. The tangent was that these books were only Samuel and Kings until they were translated into Greek in the late 200's or early 100's BC. Hebrew has few vowels that are written, so translation into Greek doubles the length. Scrolls were not infinite in length, so double the length on this scale requires a second scroll.

This of course led into relevant tangents about the Septuagint. It is apparently the first Scripture translated from one language to another. Why?

• Because religions largely were not centered around writings at that time. The Hindu Upanishads may date from the 700's. There is Homer and the Enuma Elish and so forth. But these are not really normative texts in the way the Tanakh, the Bible, and the Koran are for the "peoples of the book." Indeed, as we saw above, the OT was not the center of Israelite religious life at all prior to the exile, whether by ignorance (evangelical) or because they didn't really exist at that time (mainstream).
• Because prior to Alexander the Great, religions tended to be local. In terms of the sharing of culture and ideas, we surely must divide all of human history into the time before Alexander and the time after. It is the spreading of ideas and religion beyond local language that begins to call for the translation of Scriptures.
• Of course the Jews in Egypt had been there since the 500's. They didn't know Hebrew any more. The Jews would not be able to read their own Scriptures unless they were translated.

I might add in closing that many purists only use the word Septuagint to refer to the translation of the Pentateuch into Greek as related in the Letter of Aristeas, a document we will read in the class (http://www.earlyjewishwritings.com/). Purists refer to the rest of the Greek Old Testament as the Old Greek translation.

Classroom Snippets: NT Referencing of the OT

One potential inconsistency in evangelical hermeneutics is that it differs from New Testament hermeneutics. So evangelical hermeneutics, following the canons of modernism, at least claims to be "inductive." Indiana Wesleyan, like countless other evangelical schools, has a "methods" or "skills" course of inductive Bible study in its curriculum.

And it seems completely appropriate for a Protestant institution to have these. The idea is to listen to the biblical text in context, to listen to what Paul or Isaiah was actually trying to say by looking at the historical and literary contexts of their words. If we are to look to the Bible as the source of our thinking, then surely listening to its words for what they meant originally would be the way to this source, right?

But this is not how NT authors read the OT. And we get into potentially sticky, even hermeneutically deconstructive wickets when our inductive listenings to the text come up with different interpretations than the NT authors had. One such place is with NT attributions of authorship.

For example, no inductive interpreter would conclude that Moses was the author of the Pentateuch. His name is nowhere mentioned in Genesis. Exodus through Deuteronomy talk about Moses in the third person--he did this, he said that--but are not worded as "I, Moses, wrote this..." The narration of Moses' death in Deuteronomy poignantly makes the point. Certainly God could have inspired Moses to write about his death... but if we read inductively and listen to the text, it just doesn't read like this. It reads as if someone is writing about Moses' death.

So what's the big deal? The big deal is that the NT speaks of Moses as the author of the Pentateuch. Now, I should point out that almost all the references Jesus makes in this regard are to Mosaic material within the Pentateuch rather than to Moses as the author of the whole Pentateuch. Most of the arguments I've read using Jesus to argue for Mosaic authorship fail to make this very important distinction. But there are a couple places where Jesus references the Pentateuch apparently in a way that connects the whole Pentateuch to Moses (Luke 24:27).

There are a number of possible explanations:
1. Somehow our inductive sense of the Pentateuch's authorship is wrong.
2. Jesus' and the NT attributions of authorship are simply ways of referencing the OT--the point is what they are saying by way of the Scripture rather than the author.
3. These are the assumptions of the gospel writers as they paraphrase Jesus rather than the way Jesus literally referred to the OT.
4. Jesus either was speaking in an incarnated way--using the categories of his audiences--or since he limited his omniscience while on earth, perhaps he was not aware that he was speaking culturally rather than historically.

Number 2 seems the most palatable all around. But let me end with a particularly difficult one.

If I approach Psalm 110:1 inductively, remembering, for example, that it is historically unlikely that David, the first king in his dynasty, looked to a time when Israel would long for a king. There do not seem to be any passages in the OT that, read inductively, expect a divine Messiah. Indeed the Jewish literature immediately prior to Christ seems to look mainly to a human Messiah rather than one from heaven.

In any case, Psalm 110 never mentions David. Inductively, an anonymous voice speaks of the LORD's appointment of a king, a Lord, to rule as God's representative on earth. Psalm 110 reads as a blueprint of military victory over the king's enemies. He is a priest like Melchizedek, who is not from the line of Levi.

Now at the time of Christ, authorship of this psalm was assigned to David, even though the psalm itself does not mention David (the titles are later and usually not considered inspired). So Jesus uses this Psalm to stump his detractors in Mark 12 and parallels. We have no substantial reason to question the historicity of this debate.

When you take David as the author of the psalm, the LORD can no longer speak to a king like David as Lord. Rather, Jesus takes the second Lord of the psalm to be the Messiah. He stumps his debaters by asking them how the Messiah can be David's son when David calls him Lord.

This is quite a sticky one from an inductive standpoint. Here are a couple options I can come up with:

1. The inductive interpretation of Psalm 110 simply isn't what God had in mind--whether David was speaking prophetically in ways even he couldn't understand or whether God simply wasn't concerned that the ancients read the psalm in context.

2. Jesus was winking. He was interpreting the psalm within the worldview of his audiences and having a little fun with them.

What do you think?

Classroom Snippets: Biblical Genres and Interpretation

For the last part of the Inductive Bible Studies class this semester, we have gone through the final chapters of Duvall and Hays, which deal with some of the particulars of the various genres in the Bible. Since IWU's curriculum has no place where they are made aware of higher critical issues in each of these genres, I have also at least mentioned to them broader issues in the history of interpretation relating to these parts of the Bible.

Here is the final exam review of these chapters and issues:
___________________
How Genre Can Impact Interpretation

Letters
· Ancient letters had a format, knowing it can impact interpretation.
· For example, thanksgiving sections were a standard feature—the fact that Paul says similar things at this point of his letters does not imply insincerity.
· Expansions of prescripts were not typical. So Paul’s expansions imply meaning.
· Paul’s “grace and peace” embodies his theology—it is half Jewish (peace) and half Gentile (grace).
· Paul’s thanksgiving sections anticipate things he will say later in the letter.
· Non-evangelicals would consider several NT letters to be pseudonymous, that is, written under the name of, say, Paul or Peter although not actually by Paul or Peter. In this scenario, several decades after the deaths of Paul and Peter someone would have written what they believed God would have said to their generation through these individuals if they were still alive. The letters about which such discussions are held in scholarly circles include Ephesians (maj.), Colossians (min.), 2 Thessalonians (min.), 1-2 Timothy (maj.), Titus (maj.), James (50), 1 Peter (50), 2 Peter (maj.), Jude (50).

Biography
· Matthew, Mark, and John probably come closest to ancient biography.
· Ancient biographies focused on the character, the focal characteristics of a person (quote from Plutarch).
· Character was not thought to develop in some Freudian way but to be inherent in a person from birth. Thus the way a person was born often said something about who they were as an adult.
· Jesus seems to have used simile, metaphor, irony, and hyperbole extensively, not to mention parable, of course.
· Source criticism is the branch of biblical studies that asks what sources might stand behind a book or series of books.
· The majority of scholars currently believe that Mark was a source behind Matthew and Luke, and that Matthew and Luke also drew on another source, called “Q” for short.
· Redaction criticism asks how each individual gospel (in this case) has edited its sources in keeping with its own particular themes.
· The synoptic gospels do not seem to want to be read as minutely harmonizable. To harmonize them on the level of detail often requires the creation of a story that is so different from the original four gospels that the essential form of any of the original stories is lost.
· This is not error since the genre seems to have allowed for creativity in presentation.

History
· Luke-Acts seems to come closest to the ancient genre of history.
· Thucydides the Greek historian writes that he sometimes composed speeches when he could not remember exactly what had been said. This corroborates that the sense of precision for such writing was not exactly the same as ours and opens the possibility that the speeches of Acts might not be exactly what was said on those occasions. Yet this would not constitute an error.

Apocalypse
· The NT book of Revelation partakes of several genres: it is a letter to seven churches, a prophetic writing, and an apocalypse.
· There are four different approaches to Revelation as prophecy: the preterist (about John’s time), the futurist (still to come yet), the historicist (events fulfilled throughout history), and the idealist (symbolic in a more general, all time kind of way).
· An apocalypse of Revelation’s type involved a visit to an important earthly figure by a heavenly one in which the earthly person sees a “revelation” of what is going on behind the scenes in the heavenly realm and what is soon to happen on earth (this pushes Revelation in the preterist direction).
· This can imply things for interpretation as well. So the fact that Jesus does not tell John to get up and not worship him would have been noticeable and mean that Jesus is worthy of worship. We also have to wonder if some of the angelic appearance is more following the form of the genre rather than a literal blow by blow.

Narratives
· Narratives can be analyzed by looking for key events, characters, and settings. This is true of any kind of narrative, whether historical or fictional.
· Narratives have an “evaluative point of view,” which is the point of view that allows you to evaluate the other points of view of other characters. In biblical stories, God’s point of view or that of Jesus is the evaluative point of view.
· So in Job, God’s perspective at the end allows us to put in proper perspective the points of views expressed of Job and his comforters. Job’s perspective is mostly, though not completely correct, and that of his comforters is quite wrong.
· Many scholars believe that the Pentateuch was also based on source material as well. The theory in its late 1800’s version was called JEDP.

Law
· From a standpoint of our appropriation today, we can divide the legal material of the OT into moral, ceremonial, and civil material, although neither the OT nor NT used such distinctions.
· The civil material, which was a matter of Israel’s governance is variously applied. No one applies the specific punishments today, but some streams of Christian thinking would replace the general spirit of these laws with the Sermon on the Mount (Yoder), while others would set up similar theocratic structures in society if they could (e.g., Calvin).
· Hebrews implies that the sacrificial codes are no longer valid. Paul dismisses the necessity of many other “ceremonial” codes for at least Gentiles. What is left is most of the Ten Commandments, the love command, and the sexual prohibitions of Leviticus 18.
· Several OT books are a mixture of legal and narrative material (e.g., Numbers).

Prophets (Former)
· The Former Prophets (Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings) are sometimes called the Deuteronomistic history, not least because they seem to embody the theology of the book of Deuteronomy, which was arguably that to which the phrase “the Book of the Law” referred in these books.

Prophets (Latter)
· We should not think of prophetic collections as written down in the order in which the prophecies came. Nor is it necessarily the case that the prophets themselves put their prophecies in their current form. We know, for example, in the case of Jeremiah that Baruch edited some of his material. Several of these prophets prophesied over long periods of time.
· Many scholars believe that the prophetic traditions of some authors continued long after their deaths. So for example many believe that Isaiah reflects continued prophecies both from the time of the exile (chaps. 40-54) and after (55-66).
· Prophecy was not mainly directed at the distant future but at the present. Common topics included idolatry, social injustice, particularly while emphasizing cultic practices at the same time. In response Israel was told to repent or be judged. If in the process of judgment, restoration was promised on repentance.
· Some prophecies push us toward having a sense of a near and a far fulfillment. Many of the prophecies the NT takes to be about its own time (far) were also about the prophet’s own day (near). The prediction of the virgin birth is a good example.

Wisdom/Poetry
· Hebrew poetry functioned by way of parallelism rather than auditory rhyme: synonymous, antithetical, and synthetic. Hays and Duvall add illustrative and formal.
· Some figures of speech mentioned by Hays and Duvall include simile, metaphor, hyperbole, anthropomorphism, zoomorphism, metonymy, synecdoche, apostrophe, etc.

Classroom Snippets: Thessalonians/Corinthians

As final exams approach, I wrote out for a class something like what I would have written for the short answer questions on a previous exam. Here they are:

Summarize the content of 1 Corinthians 15.
The chapter basically divides up into three parts. In the first part, Paul presents the earliest tradition about the appearances of Jesus after the resurrection, starting with Peter and ending with him. In the second part, Paul defends the idea that there will be a resurrection. His basic argument is a contrary to fact—if there is no resurrection, Christ has not been raised, you are still in your sins, people who are baptized for the dead would be stupid, etc. In the third part, Paul addresses those who would object to the resurrection over what kind of a body it would entail. He argues that it is not a body made of flesh and blood like we currently have but a spiritual body, a heavenly one.

Summarize the eschatology of 1 Thessalonians 4-5.
In these chapters Paul addresses uncertainty on the Thessalonian’s part concerning what will happen to believers who have died. Paul indicates that they will in fact be the first to go out to meet Christ as he returns to earth. Then we who are alive at the time will also be snatched up to meet them in the air. These events should not surprise those of us who are awake because we are ready.

How would you interpret the following terms from 2 Thessalonians 2: the rebellion/apostasy, the man of lawlessness, what/who is holding him back, sets himself up in the temple?

Very difficult to know. In terms of what was likely to be going on in Paul’s mind, the temple to which he would likely have referred was the Jerusalem temple that was destroyed in AD70 (although he does tell the Corinthians that they are the temple of the Lord). Caligula had already tried to set up an image of himself there around AD40. But of course there is no literal temple today, so if this is meant to be fulfilled literally, one will have to be rebuilt.

Paul says that a “man of lawlessness” will set himself up in the temple as God. Surely any of Paul’s listeners hearing such a thing would have thought of the Caligula incident. Paul says nothing here about such an individual claiming to be the Christ, and the emperors were worshipped as gods. It is thus quite possible that Paul would have pictured a Roman emperor as he wrote this. Of course we’re fresh out of Roman emperors, so if it is to be fulfilled literally today, some similar figure will have to rise.

The rebellion perhaps relates to opposition against the true God and in favor of the “lie” in this passage, which seems to be that this lawless one is a god. The “Left Behind” scenario of Christians who believe an Antichrist to be God would work if we are headed for a literal fulfillment.

What is holding him back is even more difficult. Was it Paul himself—while he is still alive this won’t happen? Is it the Holy Spirit, which is a neuter word but also a “He”? Hard to know. Paul frustratingly told the Thessalonians, "you know what is holding him back." Unfortunately, though, none of us where there to know!

Classroom Snippets: Applying OT Law

With one more class to go, we looked briefly at the genre of Old Testament Law in Inductive Bible Study today. The textbook, Hays and Duvall, wants to take a covenantal approach to the topic--the Law of Moses no longer applies in the new covenant. See the NT for ethics. They find the "moral," "ceremonial," "civil" partition of the Law arbitrary and unhelpful.

Of course they are right that it is doubtful Paul or any Jew of his day would have divided the law into these categories. Philo treats all the smaller laws of the Law as subheadings within the Ten Commandments. The Ten commandments also divide roughly into duties toward God and duties toward fellow humanity.

Having said that, I wonder if Paul's way of dividing up the law did appear somewhat arbitrary to some of his fellow Jews. We can say "new covenant" in hindsight. But when the rubber hits the road, Paul retains certain ethical requirements and doesn't retain others.

First there is what Justin Martyr (I believe) called the moral law. These are elements of OT law that are fully retained in the NT. If we piece together comments in the NT, this includes:

1. The Ten Commandments (Exod. 20; Deut. 6; with the exception of the Sabbath legislation, at least for Gentiles)
2. Love your neighbor as yourself (Leviticus; understood as a general summation of human to human ethics)
3. The sexual prohibitions of Leviticus 18 (at least insofar as they are mentioned in the NT)

From our later perspective, this list makes sense, although I'm not sure we could articulate why. One of the natural aspects to the lists is that these are things that apply easily to everyone, Jew and Gentile.

A second category that makes sense to us (but wouldn't have to Jews of Paul's day) is the category of ceremonial law. This list basically amounts to things that Paul does not retain for Gentiles (and they are largely things that separated Jew from Gentile).

1. circumcision (Galatians)
2. food laws (Mark 7; Acts 10; Colossians 2)
3. Sabbath observance (Romans 14; Colossians 2)
4. sacrificial laws (Hebrews)

A final category that is logically distinct is that of civil law. These are laws that relate to the governance of Israel as a nation.

For example,
1. laws of punishment for crimes
2. property issues, land distribution
3. "Eye for eye; tooth for tooth" (Matthew 5)

Christians debate in some respects the appropriateness of applying Israel's civil law to our contemporary world. Few would of course advocate stoning a disobedient son or stoning a person who engages in homosexual sex--indeed, few would think Jesus would advocate such a thing. But we can distinguish among Christians those who think the Sermon on the Mount decisively replaces the approach of OT law on these points (e.g., Yoder) to those who would take a very OT approach to governance if they could (Calvin, and he could ;-).

A snippet of IBS today.

Classroom Snippets: porneia and text criticism

Had an interesting conversation with a student yesterday afternoon. He's doing the word study for his final exegesis project on the Greek word porneia, which I would generally translate as "sexual immorality." But the student had heard some interesting arguments that porneia only referred to "extreme" sexual sin, not including adultery.

Often there are underlying reasons behind why people work toward certain interpretations--no one is immune (yes, I know, that includes me too). But I have a hunch in this case that the driving force behind this interpretation is so that adultery is not considered a legitimate basis for divorce. Matthew 5 and 19 only mention porneia as a legitimate basis for divorce.

But that is not to say that the arguments aren't interesting. For example, one of the arguments is the fact that in 1 Cor. 6:9, pornoi (sexually immoral people?) are mentioned in addition to moichoi (adulterers)... thus the argument that adultery is different from porneia. Also in Mark 7:21-22, porneiai (sexual immoralities) and moicheiai (adulteries) are both on the list... thus the argument that porneia does not include adultery.

I'm open, but wonder if this is as if someone put "violence" and "murder" in the same list. Certainly murder is violence, but the word violence includes more than murder.

Anyway, one interesting thing that I had never noticed before is the lay of the manuscripts on Romans 1:29. Most modern translations have something like "filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness (poneria), coveteousness, evil..." But some manuscripts in the Western tradition have "evil, sexual immorality (porneia), coveteousness."

As Westcott and Hort so well described, the "church text" (the parent of the King James) "conflates" the two readings. Some copyist, uncertain whether to go with wickedness (poneria) or sexual immorality (porneia) put them both down, so the KJV has both: "fornication (porneia), wickedness (poneria)."

What happened here is pretty clear. One or the other of these was mistaken by some copyist for the other and from then on one manuscript stream had one; another manuscript stream had the other. Then when the text "normalized," both were kept. The reason modern translations go with "wickedness" is because Vaticanus (300's) has it and this manuscript (in the so called "Alexandrian" tradition) seems generally more reliable than the Western tradition.

Classroom Snippets: Paul from Early to Late

Today in 1 Corinthians we read through chapters 12 and 13 together. I enjoyed it much (although I've decided that yesterday was the low day of the entire semester--it's only up from here to the end).

One point of interest was 1 Cor. 12:13:

"For by one Spirit we all were baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, even all were given one Spirit to drink."

This verse is of course reminiscent of Galatians 3:28, which is also in a baptismal setting. And it is similar to Colossians 3:11, which is in the context of putting on the new person. The evidence is not conclusive, but we can understand why some think some comment of this sort was made as part of the baptismal ceremony.

But what is missing here and in Colossians: "not male and female"! I actually date 1 Corinthians to around the same time as Galatians. But regardless of dating, the question quickly arises, "Why does Paul leave this line out, especially if it is a formula?"

One suggestion, and of course not one we can prove or disprove, is that some of the problems at Corinth have come from women exploiting their new found equality with men in Christ. Perhaps some of the rhetoric in Corinthians, which seems to "put women in their place," is actually Paul's response to a particular problem at Corinth. This is of course the danger of absolutizing the text as it stands and appears to us--we sometimes lack critical information to let us know the proper tone and trajectory behind the text.

So in class I did my usual dual pictures of bodies on the board, one representing the early Paul and the other representing the Paul of Ephesians. The first body is the body of Christ. The second is the body, the church, with Christ as the head. In the early Paul, women are more involved in ministry, there is more prophecy, more charismatic operation. In the Paul of Ephesians and the Paul of 1 Timothy, there is institutionalization and the establishment of a "deposit" of teaching.

These are of course interpretive constructs, but we all have them. These are the theological structures we build alongside the text, particularly as we move toward appropriation of the text.

Classroom Snippets: Bentham and Smith

We discussed Jeremy Bentham and utilitarianism a bit today. Pointed out that he had his body stuffed to be present at U of London board meetings (he thought people were too superstitious and needed an object lesson).

On the positive side, he really was trying to level out the playing field so that everyone counted in society, not just the privileged. The pleasure of Willy child coal miner counted as much as that of King George.

Aside from the picture of Bentham's stuffed head I was able to bring up on Google images, the most interesting idea to me was putting Adam Smith's agenda into perspective. Along with Bentham, the idea of capitalism was not to make a few very lucky people filthy rich but to empower everyone in society to be able to have a pleasurable economic life.

In other words, I don't think Adam Smith would have liked at all the unbridled capitalism of the late 1800's, where the worker was as disempowered as ever.

Classroom Snippets: Romans 8-9

In Greek Bible, Romans, today, we read Romans 9, as well as the last part of chapter 8. The primary goal was to improve our skills at reading the Greek NT. But of course these are also the verses where Paul talks the most baldly about predestination.

One of the questions I perennially ask myself of Romans 8:29 is what the relationship was in Paul's mind between foreknowledge and predestination. Paul presents it in a foreknowledge then predestination format, but what is being foreknown and what is being predestined.

1. I do feel relative clarity that what is being predestined is resurrection. The expression "conformed to the image of His Son" evokes images of other passages like Philippians 3:10-11--

"I want to know the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, being conformed to his death if somehow I might attain the resurrection of the dead."

also 1 Corinthians 15:49--

"Just as we have born the image of the earthly man [Adam], we also will bear the image of the heavenly man [Christ]"

The context of Romans 8 in the lead up to this verse is about how the sufferings of this present time don't hold a candle to the glory that is coming (8:18). And Paul has been talking about how we await the redemption of our bodies (8:23). And of course Jesus is the firstborn from the dead (1 Cor. 15; Col. 1), imagery that echoes in Rom. 8:29 when it says that our [later] conforming to his image makes him the firstborn among many brothers [and sisters].

So I feel a high degree of confidence that what God has predestined here is the resurrection of those He foreknew.

2. Of course he has also called, justified, and will eventually "glorify" these as well.

I presented the problematic syllogism:

1. If God completely determines who will be saved.
2. And God wants everyone to be saved, then
3. Everyone will be saved.

The typical Wesleyan and Calvinist both deny 3, which is universalism--everyone will, in the end, be saved. But using the logic of this universe, that means that they must deny either 1 or 2. The Wesleyan-Arminian denies the first. The multi-point Calvinist denies the 2nd.

I did not mention it in this class, but I have suggested as a possibility at other times another option, which I do not embrace but at least consider a possibility. That is that God might be able to reconcile outside this universe what is logically impossible within this universe. When I have drawn this picture, I draw a universe and a horizon above the earth. One dotted line I draw going up at an angle is that of predestination. Another dotted line going up at the opposite angle is free will. Then I draw the two dotted lines meeting above and outside the circle of this universe in God.

Of course we haven't got there, but we will see in Romans 11 that those who were "hardened" in Romans 9 can still be saved in Romans 11.

Greek Romans class, Friday, March 23, 2007

Classroom Snippets: Holman Christian Standard Bible

Today in Inductive Bible Study class we were discussing different approaches to Bible translations and deciding what the original manuscripts said. Of course I favor the standard process of weighing manuscripts and following the common sense rules of internal evidence, which yields a NT text that looks like the vast majority of modern Bible translations.

We also mentioned the difference between the so called "Textus Receptus" and what we might call the "Majority Text." The Textus Receptus is the "received text" which more or less was the basis for the King James version. Its lineage goes back to the Greek NT that Erasmus edited. Most of the time, it is the same as what we might call the Majority Text, which is the what the majority of Greek manuscripts say.

Just this semester, the Holman Christian Standard Bible has come onto my radar screen. It puts debated passages like Mark 16:9-20 and John 8 into the main text in brackets. Only if you look at the notes do you hear that some manuscripts don't have these verses. In other words, despite its preface, the reader gets the impression that these verses were original.

At the same time, the HCSB doesn't have the Trinitarian formula of 1 John 5:7 in the main text. Erasmus only put the Trinitarian formula into the Textus Receptus of 1 John 5:7 under pressure, but it only appears in about 8 very, very late medieval Greek manuscripts.

And the HCSB also interestingly does not follow the "KJV" reading of Revelation 22:14: "blessed are those who do his commandments." This reading is only in the Textus Receptus because Erasmus did not have any Greek copies of this part of Revelation, so he made up his own, working back from the Latin. Almost no Greek manuscripts read this way.

The result of all this is that the Holman translation looks an aweful lot like a translation of the Majority Text, but not the Textus Receptus. It looks like a new alternative to the NKJV, and there are only a couple places where the difference will fly beneath most people's radar.

Classroom Snippets: Absolutism/Relativism

We started ethics today in philosophy. Here are some of the distinctions I presented to give greater precision to the way we talk about these things.

1. Act based ethics is only one approach to ethics, namely, the one that focuses most on what we do, do's and don'ts. The other main approach is virtue based ethics, which of course involves actions but focuses more on character and being, what we are. I didn't mention it today, but of course the ancient Mediterranean world, as the New Testament, formulated ethics more in terms of a virtue based than an act based ethic.

2. We made the important distinction between absolutism in ethics and absolutism in epistemology. These are related, but often blurred together. An absolute truth is a truth that is always true everywhere under all circumstances. An absolute moral requirement, on the other hand, is something that is always right or always wrong everywhere under all circumstances, no exceptions.

I suggested that among others, there were two foundational moral absolutes laid down by Christ: love God and love neighbor. There is no exceptional circumstance where it would be appropriate not to love God or not to love one's neighbor.

3. To make a distinction that is often lost, we discussed the fact that a person who believed abortion was wrong unless the life of the mother is in danger is not an absolutist on the issue of abortion. Similarly, if someone believed it was wrong to lie except, say, if a Nazi at your door is asking if you are hiding Jews upstairs (and you are), then this person is not an absolutist on this issue.

I labeled this position "universal rights and wrongs" (but with exceptions). I pointed out at least one area where this was the appropriate scope for a Christian ethic, namely, obeying those in authority over you. The right thing to do in all places is to obey those in authority over you except when it conflicts with your obedience to God. So Peter and John disobey the Sanhedrin's command not to preach in the name of Jesus. They made an exception to the rule.

4. We didn't get to the next position on my overhead, relativism, but we did mention it. We mentioned head coverings and possibly drinking alcohol as matters of Christian conviction. We then pointed out that convictions are, by definition, points of relativism that are appropriate to Christian life. God might require me not to drink, while God having no such requirement of a Christian in Australia.

This led to a challenge. We cannot dismiss various ethical positions simply by labeling them as "not absolute" or "relativist." There are issues where God's position is apparently not absolute or even relativist. So when a person might say, "Well, abortion is wrong for me, but I can't say it would be wrong for someone else," we have to show that it is wrong to be relativist on this issue. But we can't dismiss the comment because it is relativist. We have to argue that this is not an issue on which God is relativist.

But God is a relativist on some issues, according to the Bible. So Paul: "I am convinced that no food is unclean of itself, but if someone thinks it is unclean, then it is unclean"--Rom. 14:14.

A snippet from philosophy class on Wednesday, March 21, 2007.

Classroom Snippets: 1 Corinthians 10

I think I'm going to start a new category called classroom snippets. The title will make them easy to look for or skip over as desired. For former students, they might bring back memories. For prospective students and outsiders, they will give you a small snapshot of just one prof at IWU.

My choice today (don't worry... I'm not necessarily planning on doing this every day) is 1 Corinthians 10, very relevant of course to our recent discussion. We started by looking back at 9:24-27. We remembered that there were no chapter divisions when Paul wrote 1 Corinthians. I argued that, in my opinion, the section that begins at 9:1 goes through 10:13.

At the beginning of the course, I gave the students a choice of reading through Craig Blomberg's commentary (NIV Application Commentary) or mine in conjunction with the class. Blomberg of course is a Calvinist and writes of 9:27: "Paul says God will 'test' (dokimasei; v.13) believers' works and give out corresponding praise or censure... But neither one's salvation nor eternal status in heaven is at stake" (185).

But of course we continued to read into 1 Corinthians 10, where Paul compares believers to Israel on their journey to Canaan. The similarity to Hebrews 3 is striking and I suggested that the author of Hebrews drew the picture either from 1 Corinthians or from being around Paul himself and his preaching.

Here Paul likens passing through the Red Sea as baptism, the visible Christian initiatory rite. The most natural way of taking this imagery is thus that the people Paul is talking about are Christians. For eternal securitists in the class I suggested they might want to argue that these individuals were only baptized, not truly converted.

But of course Paul warns that most of these "baptized" Israelites of the story were struck down in the desert. The allegory Paul is constructing here is pretty clear. Some of the Israelites were idolatrous; some of the Corinthians are wanting to eat at idol's temples. Some of the Israelites were sexually immoral; some of the Corinthians are being sexually immoral. Some of the Israelities grumbled; some of the Corinthians were protesting Paul's apostleship.

We should hear an echo of 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 here: "Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God... neither ... will inherit the kingdom of God." Paul is thus warning the Corinthians that some of their behavior is putting their inheritance in danger.

A snippet from one of my classes on Tuesday.