Notes Along the Way -- Asbury 3.2 -- Theology Old and New

Continued from the previous post.
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1. My final year at Asbury was filled with theology. I had contemporary continental theology in the fall with Larry Wood. I had Wesleyan Theology Today with Steve Harper in the spring. I had biblical theology in the spring with Harold Kuhn (theology of the church). I feel privileged to say so.

I loved Harold Kuhn's biblical theology class. We used Hans Kung's The Church. as a text. Kung, a Roman Catholic scholar, was a brilliant scholar and orthodox in belief. Kuhn would never have used him otherwise. Kung was of course stripped of his right to teach by the RCC in 1979. Too many uncatholic elements.

I wouldn't learn until decades later that Kuhn had been instrumental in the scandal that led to resignation of Claude Thompson in 1950. I would like to think that he later had regrets about that incident. Misguided youthful zeal.

2. Steve Harper's class on Wesleyan theology was, in some respects, my first deep encounter with John Wesley's thought. This is an interesting fact. The Wesleyan Church is not Wesley-an. He was our great grandfather, but who knows what their great grandfather was like?

The Wesleyan Church is as much Baptist as Wesley-an. We were born of the nineteenth century holiness movement, a child of our grandmother Phoebe Palmer, who was only a shadow of Wesley. I don't think I ever heard a word about Wesley in all the holiness preaching of my youth. 

I learned Wesleyan theology from H. Orton Wiley's theology book, a twentieth century Nazarene scholar, with James Bross as professor (Bross didn't actually use Wiley). And of course, Bob Black gave us insights into Wesley in church history class. It was at Central that I learned that Wesley was not particularly gifted in his relationships with women.

I would say Chris Bounds had as much to do as anyone with a revival of interest in Wesley among Wesleyans during his years at IWU. That layer of Wesleyan pastors and thinkers have a love of Wesley that frankly was completely foreign to my youth. While I value Wesley, his foreigness to my formative years bequeathed me a complete freedom to critique him. I was always more of a "constructivist" Maddox type than a devotee like Ken Collins.

I remember then GS Earl Wilson saying at the first Wesleyan theological symposium that he had never heard of Bounds' breakdown of views of sanctification into longer, shorter, and a middle way. As holiness folk, we only knew Palmer's shorter way.

I always felt like Harper had a heart of gold. He would later direct the Asbury Orlando campus, which unfortunately has more or less been closed. I personally think that was a foolish mistake. But, then again, I don't know many academic institutions that know how to thrive. They seem wired for self-destruction.

Asbury's board would take away Harper's emeritus status in retirement because he published a book that was LGBTQ affirming.

3. Larry Wood was exactly the kind of quirky professor you love to have and tell stories about later. He would sit in front of the class and talk seemingly without ever actually looking at us. I wondered if it would matter if anyone was even sitting there. I seem to remember one day when he got confused about what class he was lecturing to and gave us a lecture for a different class.

For me, Larry's greatest bequeathing was his argument that Wesley knew John Fletcher's sense of Acts as baptisms in the Spirit and that Wesley assented to it. Wesley did not formulate Christian perfection in terms of Acts. That was the thinking of John Fletcher. So, it has been possible to say--and I have even said it--that you can believe in entire sanctification without thinking that the Spirit-fillings of Acts were such. After all, that's not how John Wesley preached it.

Wood has argued (in part in damage control for Bob Lyon's biblical argument against the Spirit-fillings of Acts being entire sanctification) that Wesley knew of Fletcher's approach and was ok with it. To me, that is a noble effort and probably true. However, it doesn't change the fact that Acts was not the way that Wesley preached it. To me, it is an example of an obscure argument to try to preserve a tradition.  

I am not trying to be hard on Wood at all. He has made a good argument, one very worthy of being made.

4. We used Paul Tillich's History of Christian Thought as a text for Contemporary Continental Theology. Of course Tillich was not an evangelical theologian in the slightest. But Asbury might be allowed to use his book to discuss theologians. Tillich saw God as the "ground of all being," which sounds great until you know what he meant by it. It's more existentialist language that sounds perfectly normal but means something else.

I'm sure we touched on Barth and Bultmann in that class, although I confess I don't remember all the details. I'm sure somewhere in here I learned about Emil Brunner, who was more to my liking than Barth. Brunner still believed in natural theology.

I know we touched on Jürgen Moltmann in this class. Moltmann never gelled with me. He probably sounded too social activist for my taste then, although he was more theoretical than activist. He saw Christian ethics in the present as a function of our hope for the future ("theology of hope"). Of course, I would have mocked things like social activism and liberation theology at that time. 

He also wrote a book called The Crucified God. In part to process the things that had happened during Nazism, he wrote about God identifying with human suffering on the cross. I'm not much into "patripassianism," which is what this sounded like--God the Father suffering. But I don't think Moltmann meant that God the Father literally suffered. I think he meant that God identified with our suffering.

One thing I learned is that my existing categories usually misinterpreted these theologians. I very much came with a foundationalist, even fundamentalist view of the world. I learned that these thinkers almost never meant what their words said to me. They were like poets to me who never meant what they said.

I would later joke that philosophers (and theologians) invent their own language and then call you stupid for not understanding them.

I would later find out that, while Moltmann was all the rage in America, he was hardly talked about in Germany.

5. Wolfhart Pannenberg was closer to my frequency. He was concerned about history. He was more evidentiary and modernist. For him, Christianity stands or falls on the historicity of its central claims--especially that of the resurrection. (Take that, Barth)

What seemed somewhat out of place to me at the time was that Pannenberg did not consider the virgin birth essential to Christian faith. This was very curious to me. Most of us consider the virgin birth essential to Jesus being divine. 

Of course, Jesus is not half-man, half-God. He is not a demigod. He is fully God and fully human. His DNA was not a splicing of Mary's chromosomes and Holy Spirit chromosomes. In other words, the virgin birth is not part of the mechanics of his divinity. N. T. Wright calls it a gift to us.

I believe in the virgin birth for sure, but in retrospect I think I get Pannenberg a little better now.

6. On a side note, I adjuncted some classes for Midway College (now university) while I was a Teaching Fellow at Asbury. Intriguingly, I was asked by Robert Miller to teach New Testament Survey to some nursing students. Bob was a member of the famous Jesus Seminar, so I was surprised he would ask someone from Asbury to teach for him.

The Jesus Seminar was the group started by Robert Funk that aimed to come up with a "true" red letter version of the Gospels. I used to make a lot of fun of this group, which voted with colored beads to decide what to print in their Bible (red, pink, grey, black). Perhaps I'll come back to the quest for the historical Jesus later.

Along with Harris' New Testament Survey text, they had a source book on literary parallels with the New Testament. It was interesting since I hadn't really come across some of the Greco-Roman (supposed) parallels.

But the reason I thought of this was because of an argument I used in class for the virgin birth. My argument went like this: "Paul believed in the virgin birth, and he would have known." As I looked back, I realized that Paul never really mentions the virgin birth one way or another. For all my studying, I was still to some extent a pre-modern interpreter. I saw the Bible as one book rather than 66 books written by dozens of authors over 1000 year period.

Quantum Physics, Cosmology, and God

David Higle and I were exchanging emails about sources on quantum physics and theology. He already knew everything I thought of, especially Polkinghorne's Quantum Physics and Theology. I'm on a slow train pursuing these things, but thought I would give a snapshot of musings.

1. Big Bang
Contrary to some rhetoric, I've long thought that the idea of a Big Bang plays right into Christian theology. Why? Because it suggests a beginning of sorts to the universe. If the universe had a beginning, then we can ask why it began. In other words, the Big Bang seems to play right into the cosmological argument for the existence of God.

The current theory is:

• The universe had a beginning--matter is not being eternally created somewhere (steady-state theory).
• It does not have enough mass to re-collapse, meaning it probably has not been banging in some eternal cycle (oscillating big bang).
• That suggests a beginning, which leads us to ask, "Why?" "What caused it?"

Cosmological theory has developed significantly over the last couple decades, but I think it still more or less amounts to the same thing. At 10^-43 seconds, all the universe was in a ball the size of 1.6 x 10^-33 meters. In the next moment, it expanded astronomically to something much closer to its current size.

2. Quantum Uncertainty
In the 1600s, Newton reinforced a deterministic universe, where all the future could be predicted as the simple playing out of laws and objects in motion. It fit well with the theology of Calvin and Hobbes.

The quantum world is not a deterministic world. It is an indeterministic world. That is to say, you cannot predict the future at all on an individual scale. All you can predict are the averages. There are still some who think there may be "hidden variables" that would return us to determinism, but most do not agree.

This suggests that the universe on some level has a mind of its own. There is an unpredictability to the universe. You cannot predict what I will do (I can't either) because there is a fundamental uncertainty at the bottom of everything. It is not exactly free will as we once might have thought of it, but it is similar.

3. Quantum entanglement
Certain particles are entangled with each other after they part. They may be on opposite sides of the universe but if you know what the one is doing then you know what the other is. I'm not sure what the implications are for us. I once tweeted that God has been quantumly entangled with the whole universe since the creation, implying that he knows everything and is connected to everything. But is was really more of a poetic thought than something that actually makes sense. :-)

4. Time
It is not clear what time is. Each frame of reference has a certain internal clock of sorts, meaning that "time" moves at different rates for different things. From one perspective, time is merely the rate at which things change, with light as the ultimate speed limit.

Time is a puzzle on the quantum level. In one respect, there is no real difference between past and future on the quantum level. All processes are reversible.

On the macro-scale, entropy is what really tells time. The loss of heat in disorder seems to be the only truly irreversible aspect to this universe. It tells time.

What does this say about God? It does suggest that entropy is not a consequence of the Fall. There would be no past or future without it.

It doesn't help us figure out God's knowledge of the future. How do we know how God knows what he knows? He was "outside" the universe "before." Who knows what that means for during and after?

That's it. My attempt for today...

Seminary PL3: How does God lead?

This is the third post in the Pastoral Leadership stretch of my Seminary in a Nutshell series. The first two were:

• Categories of Leadership
• Styles and Traits of Leaders

1. Individuals and cultures have a tendency to "create God in their own image." So both in the way we read the Bible and in our theology of God, our natural tendency is to see God as we already think he should be, as we ourselves are or think we should be. As it were, we see what we want to see.

In fact, since God spoke to the authors of the Bible in their own languages and categories, the picture of God in the various books of the Bible may include elements of the cultures and contexts of the authors. This is why a "whole Bible" approach is so crucial. We need to see God in a truly "biblical" perspective and not just in the particularity of a single passage or biblical situation.

2. So just as there are individuals whose natural tendency is to be more autocratic or more laissez faire as a leader (see previous post), different people and traditions have a tendency to see God as more autocratic, democratic, or laissez faire. Similarly, different people and traditions have different formulas for the proper mix of human and divine will in life.

There are, as it were, four main perspectives:

• High determinism on God's part, fatalism on human part
• High determinism on God's part, but manifested through strong human action
• Selective determinism on God's part, cooperation with God's will
• Low determinism on God's part, high requirement of human action 

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3. It is very popular right now to think that everything happens for reason, and Rick Warren encapsulated the force of this trend with a book that sold like wildfire: Purpose Driven Life. This perspective is high determinism, with a high sense of fatalism. So we try to live our lives as the Bible tells us too, but we will fail miserably (in this perspective).

Nevertheless, this perspective holds that everything happens for a reason. The most deterministic version would say that even when I sin or do something bad, God has caused me to do it for a reason. Others might limit this sentiment to when bad things happen to me that I have not in some way caused by my actions.

There can be a kind of fatalism with this view. "When it's your time to go, it's your time to go." So it doesn't really matter what I choose to do, because if God wants me to die, he'll find a way to do it. Maybe it will be on this plane I'm about to get on or maybe I'll die in a car accident on my way home if I decide not to get on the plane.

4. What is the view of God expressed here? Most Christians who express this view see God as having a loving purpose behind his autocratic or "sovereign" leadership. He is the boss and as boss decides everything that happens in the world. We just go along with it.

You might expect that this view of determinism might manifest itself in a very laissez faire style leadership among pastors who hold it. God can almost seem distant in this view. He is mysteriously making everything happen that happens, but we do not always know the purpose. We often do not see him personally but experience him impersonally in the events of the world.

However, this laissez faire mentality is probably more common among non-ministers than ministers. After all, churches hire ministers to do stuff, and a church probably isn't going to keep you long if you do nothing because you are waiting for God and not doing anything yourself. Indeed, even non-ministers go about their lives as if they have free will, reserving the "God controls everything" view for the unexpected.

5. We do find parts of the Bible that embody this sort of approach to life. When calamities come on Job, his natural response is that "The LORD gives, and the LORD takes away, blessed be the name of the LORD" (Job 1:21). Job of course does not know what is going on in the skies between God and the Adversary. He does not know that God did not originate the idea to afflict him.

Job himself thus reflects the human perspective of much of the Old Testament--God directly causes everything that happens. But the book of Job itself suggests a more complex picture, where God allows some things to happen that are not part of any specific plan on his part. As James 1:13 will later say, no one should attribute their temptation, let alone their sin, to God.

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6. For many Christians, God is an autocrat, and they as ministers imitate the kind of leader they think he is. In the Calvinist tradition especially, which originated with John Calvin in the 1600s, we have often found this flavor of leadership. God is an autocrat, and we as his ministers should force the rest of the world to follow his will.

When John Calvin had the influence to mold the city of Geneva (in Switzerland today), he implemented what he saw to be biblical law on the people of the city. Similarly, Puritan New England expected civil law to mirror their understanding of biblical law. Today, there is a strong grass roots tendency among American fundamentalists to want to make American law mirror their understanding of the Bible on various issues. [1]

There is an implicit theological perspective at work here, one that sees God as autocratic, with us as his representative autocrats.

This perspective draws heavily on the relationship God had with Israel in the Old Testament, and it is no surprise that Jonathan Edwards saw the Puritan England of the 1700s as a kind of new Israel. Some parts of the Old Testament look at Israel before the monarchy as a kind of theocracy, a direct rule by God without a designated human leader. Some Calvinists see that type of arrangement as ideal for the world today as well.

However, the New Testament certainly has no view of this sort, since the notion of Christians having political control had no possibility whatsoever at that time. There is a sense both in the teaching of Jesus (Mark 12:17) and in the teaching of Paul (1 Cor. 5:12-13), 1 Peter (2:12-14), and elsewhere that the Roman Empire is part of the evil context in which the people of God are submerged as strangers and aliens (e.g., 1 Pet. 2:11; Heb. 11:13; Phil. 3:20). The New Testament has no thought whatsoever of imposing Christian values on the world around them. Rather, God and Christ will do that by force in the eschaton.

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7. The third position is one that looks for cooperation between God and human will and a "selective" determinism on God's part. [2] This is the dominant perspective held until the Protestant Reformation in the 1500s, and it continues to be the perspective of many Christians, especially in the Wesleyan-Arminian tradition.

Technically, Arminians believe that any "free will" we have in relation to God is God-empowered. That is to say, we cannot do good under our own power but only under God's power. That of course is all a matter of theology. In real life, we act as if we are free, while seeking God's direction.

The Quakers present one extreme form of seeking God's direction. Their approach has historically been, Do nothing until God speaks. Wait until the Spirit intervenes. The opposite extreme would say to move forward in action as if you are deciding everything--only stop if God steps in and redirects you. Act until God intervenes.

8. The most balanced position from a Wesleyan-Arminian perspective is one that 1) regularly seeks the Lord's guidance and direction but 2) moves forward under the collective wisdom of the body of Christ and its leaders. So God does direct, but at some points he leaves room for human freedom. Sometimes he mysteriously works through our wills. Sometimes he steps in and redirects our wills. Sometimes he lets us decide.

This view requires us to take responsibility for our actions. This view requires us to grow up. To be sure, God has not left us as orphans. We have the Holy Spirit as our guide to walk with us and guide us (John 14:15-18, 26). God is working in us collectively, to lead us to will and to do his purpose (Phil. 2:12-13). God does not make us sin, nor does the Devil.

But God does not dictate everything that happens or everything we do. God may even allow the creation some freedom, to where not everything that happens is predictable. And God allows the consequences of sin to play out (Rom. 1:28). Not everything happens for a micro-reason.

God is not a micro-manager, no matter how much comfort that may give us. When Romans 8:28 speaks of everything working out for good, it is talking about the redemption of the creation as a whole. In the eschaton, everything will work out for good. Collectively, God's people are predestined for a collective destiny of salvation. Romans 8:28 was never a promise that a person's individual circumstances would always bring a greater good for you as an individual.

9. So are good leaders today. They are selectively directive, when it is really important. They empower other leaders and the people to do the work of the ministry as God leads them too. Sometimes they let others make choices that they do not believe are the best ones. They cooperate and work together with those under their charge.

This is the most balanced theological view of God, and it is the most effective leadership style as well.

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10. Perhaps we should at least mention view 4, which from one point of view can become something like, "the Lord helps those who help themselves." This way of leading sees God as very laissez faire and may even approach Deism, where God created the world but is largely uninvolved with it right now.

By contrast, there are some like Thomas Oord who in an extreme form of Arminianism believe that God does not force anyone to do anything. He is very involved with the world, but only trying to convince the world to change. In Oord's view, God actually lacks the power to force anyone to do anything. His sense of ministerial leadership, accordingly, no doubt sees a minister as someone who passionately tries to influence others but who never uses an autocratic or authoritative style.

This is, however, neither an orthodox nor a biblical view of God.

Next week: Pastor as Leader 4: The mission, great and small

[1] The parallel between Geneva, Puritan New England, contemporary American civil religion, and the desire on the part of some Muslims to implement sharia law should be obvious. There is a tendency on the part of religious groups to want to make an entire culture conform to their religious understanding. It is exactly this impulse that the American Constitution protects the general populace against.

[2] It is possible to take this perspective "phenomenologically," meaning that it appears that human will is involved. Some Calvinists believe in "soft determinism," which is a sense that we perceive ourselves to act freely, even though our decisions are ultimately caused by God.

Ehrman Chapter 1: Divine Humans in the Ancient World

After reading the introduction to Ehrman's book, we move on to his first chapter, "Divine Humans in the Ancient World." I don't know how this chapter would strike someone hearing it for the first time. I'm trying to react to the book from the perspective of either a) a "none," especially a millennial with no religious identification, and b) a young Christian who has never heard of the sorts of things in this chapter.

So what is in this chapter? I would say there are two main aspects to this chapter. The one is to continue the point that divinity was on more of a sliding scale at the time of Christ and the second is to show the various models of "divine humans." Humans who were also or who might become divine.

Ehrman gives three models of the divine human: 1) gods who temporarily become human, 2) demigods born of a god and a human, and 3) humans who became divine. The rest of the chapter basically consists of examples of these.

There is nothing new here and this is something I hope readers will recognize. The story of Baucis and Philemon, where the gods Zeus and Hermes come down and do some home visits? It's a well known story you only don't know because high school isn't what it used to be. Have you seen Clash of the Titans or Hercules? Then the idea that Zeus gets around and has children living among us... nothing new to see here.

The idea that a human might become a god after death or even before, that might be more of a new one to some. But not everything in the ancient world took these stories seriously. There's a great legend of the emperor Vespasian on his death bed joked about how he felt like he was becoming a god. (I'm planning on that one too on my death bed) Ehrman goes through the well known list: Romulus (legendary founder of Rome), Julius Caesar, Augustus Caesar, the Roman emperor cult in general, and of course Apollonius. There is a story somewhere or another about all of these becoming or turning out to be a god.

So what are we to think of these parallels? How close are they?

A very important thing to keep in mind is that the books of the Bible were written in and for that world. Christians have a tendency to rip the Bible from its actual world and read its words as if they are timeless--which because most people have no sense of time basically means they think the Bible was a selfie taken with them in it. What they really mean without knowing it, when they say the Bible is timeless, is that they think it was written for them in their time and their place.

So it can be shocking to realize that the words of the Bible were written for the world that Ehrman is talking about. I remember when I went with a group to Greece and a pastor was a little troubled to find that the temple and sanctuary of the Bible was a little similar in structure to all the temples of the ancient world. I had an OT seminary professor who mentioned he had once had the same shock to find that Israel's temple was not completely unlike the Canaanite temples around them.

It shouldn't be shocking. Why? Because God was speaking to their world in the Bible, not directly to ours. We should expect parallels between the biblical world and the ancient world because it was written in and to their world, not directly to ours. The older I get, the more I feel like people in my circles need to be confronted more with the distance of the biblical world rather than (as might be needed in more liberal circles) confronted with the fact that the Bible is God's word for us too.

Is it possible that the imagery of the Bible has features drawn from the traditions of the ancient world? Absolutely. Here's the secret--that doesn't disprove God or Christianity. This is my word for the shallow ones who use things like this chapter to try to undermine faith. They are only undermining shallow versions of faith (and making themselves look stupid because they aren't aware of more profound versions that are more than aware of these sorts of parallels).

Also, as Michael Bird points out in his response book, the influence potentially goes both ways. When the story of Apollonius of Tyana is as much as a century later than the story of Jesus, it is quite possible that the story of Apollonius has been influenced by the story of Jesus, indeed even that it was modified to serve as a competing story to Jesus.

The way I look at it is this. Using sound historical method, even method that does not turn to the supernatural, there are certain likely core events to the Jesus story. It may be strange for a Christian to think in this way (and you don't have to), but if we look at the New Testament purely from a historical perspective and bracket the supernatural for a moment, I believe we will come up with certain core events as likely to the story of Jesus, including eyewitness reports to seeing him after his death and a likely empty tomb. These are concrete events with real people.

There is a big difference between legends that arise for political reasons (e.g., about emperors) or about the legendary past (Romulus) or at a distance (Apollonius) and Jesus. Jesus was crucified as a criminal. He was not an emperor where divinization was expected. Nor was he some remote figure begging for legends. He was a crucified "criminal" like many others, a concrete "revolutionary" like countless other crucified trouble makers. What was different about him, a nobody in that world, if Ehrman is correct?  What was it about his situation that gave rise to such stories?

Let's say, for the sake of argument, that some of the features of figures like this chapter accrued to the Jesus story as time went by. If so (and that remains to be seen), they arose as the shock waves of certain concrete events. If some of this imagery accrued to Jesus, it happened as Jesus' followers sought to explain unexpected, concrete events that took place before their very eyes.

This is a different situation from predictable legends about far off, distant heroes.

Next week: Divine Humans in Ancient Judaism

How real was Jesus' temptation--could he really have sinned?

Some people get really riled up over questions like these! A good friend of mine got into a bit of a tussle with someone else over the question of whether Jesus, although tempted as a human, could have really sinned or not. I hate these little vignettes, where someone feels really strongly about something that, well, most people don't spend a lot of time thinking about... and get into the kingdom just fine. On the other hand, people sometimes leave churches over disagreements like these...

Here is my thinking. The Bible, as far as I can tell, always treats Jesus' temptations as completely real temptations, meaning that it was humanly possible for Jesus to make the wrong choice.

But I believe my good friend Chris Bounds, systematic theologian extraordinaire, would say that while it was possible for Jesus' human nature to sin, Jesus' divine nature would ultimately have trumped his human nature if it had tilted in the wrong direction. Now, mind you, this is later Christian theology speaking, where the Spirit has helped iron out the details in later church history.  

So I think the more or less official Christian answer is that, while Jesus' human nature could have theoretically tilted toward sinning, his divine nature would have inevitably have trumped it, if his human side had tilted the wrong direction.

Thankfully, though, his human side didn't tilt. Cosmic crisis averted!

My thoughts on a question the biblical authors probably never thought about...

1 What is theology?

I did an introductory video to Christian theology, for anyone interested, the second in this stream that I have made:



Here's a link to the second in the series: 2 Revelation: All Truth is God's Truth

Roman Catholic Catechism 1

The notorious Monday reading group decided to read through selections of the Roman Catholic Catechism this semester with a very interesting question--just how different is Roman Catholic belief than Wesleyan?  The hunch is that Wesleyans and Catholics agree on far more than most Wesleyans think.  I'm not sure what will come of it, but it's possible that Keith Drury will take the collective take-away and make it public in some form. I don't want to distract from that, but I may post some of my own thoughts as we go through, trying not to distract from any final product that may come out of it.

Yesterday we read Section One of Part One (see the link above).  Out of 47 pages, I only saw five disagreements, and I don't even consider most of these very significant (although they might be for a Roman Catholic, admittedly):

• The Wesleyan tradition doesn't worry about apostolic succession (77), although Wesley would no doubt have preferred it. 
• The Wesleyan tradition would not consider Scripture and Tradition of "equal" value (82), understanding that for RCatholics, Scripture is part of Tradition.
• We wouldn't ascribe any special privilege to the Pope or bishops of the Roman Catholic Church in interpreting the Bible (100), although they are free to work out their salvation with the rest of us ;-)  To me, this is the most significant difference.
• Wesleyans don't consider the Apocrypha to be part of Scripture. It's not that we consider them evil.  We just don't consider them Scripture.
• Wesleyans don't have anything against Mary, but don't generally think she remained a virgin after Jesus was born and don't have a dog in the race that sees her as the most perfect embodiment of the obedience of faith (148).

The agreements and "likes" were much greater--basically everything else.  Here are some of the agreements that especially stood out to me:

• I liked the fact that the purpose of doctrine was said to be love, not head knowledge for its own sake (25).
• I like the sense that Christ is the supreme Revelation of God and that the Revelation has been unpacking ever sense (65-66).  Protestants and Catholics tend to disagree on the unpacking of that final Revelation.  Protestants tend to see Scripture as a somewhat definitive unpacking of that Revelation. Catholics see big T "Tradition" as the unpacking of Christ, with Scripture as the fountainhead and beginning of that Tradition (see above).
• I like the openness to private revelation, with the distinction that it is not part of the "deposit of faith."
• What do you think about this??? "All that the inspired authors or sacred writers affirm should be regarded as affirmed by the Holy Spirit, we must acknowledge that the books of Scripture firmly, faithfully, and without error teach that truth which God, for the sake of our salvation, wished to see confided to the Sacred Scriptures" (107).
• I enjoyed the four fold sense of Scripture, although it was made clear that spiritual senses don't contradict the literal (115-117). Of course many evangelicals insist on the literal or plain sense only, but the holiness tradition has generally been more open to "spiritual" readings, like charismatics and unlike mainstream Protestants. 
• Faith is a "free assent" (150, 160), so Wesleyans are closer to Catholics on this one than they are to Calvinists.
• Faith is both a gift and a human act--human will and divine will cooperate (155). Again, Wesleyans are closer to Catholics on this one than to Calvinists.
• Faith is necessary for justification (161).
• I love this: "Faith is a personal act... But faith is not an isolated act" (166).

1.1 Grudem: Definitions in Theology

My series begins, summarizing and evaluating Wayne Grudem's Systematic Theology from a "biblical" and WA (Wesleyan-Arminian) standpoint.

0 Reasons for the Review
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Review of Chapter 1: Introduction to Systematic Theology
Definitions
As you would expect of an introduction, this chapter involves basic definitions, assumptions behind, rationale for, objections to, and preparations for the study of systematic theology. Grudem's definition of systematic theology is "any study that answers the question, 'What does the whole Bible teach us today?" about any given topic" (21). I personally would much rather call such things a "biblical theology" and thus think that Grudem is off to a dubious start.

Systematic theology is the organization of Christian belief into an overall system according to some ideological organizing principle. Since the Bible is not arranged ideologically, the organizing principle inevitably is governed from outside the Bible. The closest one might come to an organizing principle that correlates roughly to the biblical structure would be a narrative theology that organizes Christian belief in terms of the general flow of the biblical story as it appears to us. However even here, since the books were organized not by the biblical authors themselves but by later Jews and Christians, even this narrative organization is governed from outside the Bible itself.

Systematic theology is a broad category with different possible ideological organizing principles. I suppose the elements of a narrative can be treated ideologically, but narrative theology is probably best thought of as something different. The way Grudem speaks of philosophical theology makes it sound secular and "other" (21), although it seems that any system that is ideological will inevitably be philosophical in nature.  Nevertheless, I suppose there is use for a category that uses a philosophical organizing principle that is not traditionally Christian.  Constructive theology is similar to philosophical theology understood in this way since it especially engages and attempts to synthesize the insights and challenges of contemporary thought with traditional Christian thinking.

What I call a biblical theology can also be organized systematically, so that you have a systematic biblical theology. This is what Grudem wants to be. He also equates systematic theology with dogmatic theology (25, n.7), although I would rather say that dogmatic theology is a form of systematic theology that is organized in accordance with some Christian authority, such as the Roman Catholic Church.

Historical theology is something different, a presentation of theology in terms of his historical development. Grudem correctly relates that biblical theology is currently used in the guild of individual biblical authors: Pauline theology, Matthean theology, Lukan theology, and so forth. I prefer, however, to buck this trend and use the term biblical theology to refer to canonical theology on some level. The Bible is not one book, and thus any "biblical" theology inevitably involves a move away from the theology of individual biblical authors into some organizing principle governed from outside of the texts themselves. Accordingly, an Old or New Testament theology must inevitably move beyond the theology of individual authors and thus beyond the texts themselves.

Grudem defines a doctrine as "what the whole Bible teaches today about some particular topic" (25). Inherent in this definition are some of Grudem's fundamental confusions. The books of the Bible were not written to today but to ancient audiences. "The Bible" is thus an understanding of the individual books that someone (he, me, the church) constructs or has constructed out of diverse texts.  Hopefully this task is done in a way that respects and fits with the biblical texts themselves but it is an extra-biblical task.  Grudem's definition thus amounts to "doctrine is a Christian position on a particular topic formulated in dialog with the individual texts of the Bible with a view to living in the world today."

This reformulated definition seems a fine way of thinking of doctrine, especially if we recognize the role the church and the Spirit have played in that dialog with Scripture.  A doctrine is a Christian belief on a key topic of faith.  By calling it a "Christian belief," I'm suggesting that it is something with more weight than a specific individual and should have more weight even than a particular group at a particular point in time. When we speak of doctrine, we are hopefully dealing with central beliefs held by large numbers of Christians over some period of time. Some would go further to define a dogma as a belief that has, at the very least, been held by most Christians over most of church history...

Why we need theology...

I'm writing a piece for some Sunday School literature titled, "Why we need theology?"  Here's what I'm thinking.

1. Theology gives us a starting point.
A college freshmen once came to me, completely enamored with the excitement of the new thoughts filling his head. He was seeing new ways to look at issues that had never occurred to him. In his enthusiasm, he exclaimed that he wanted to start all over from scratch in what he believed. He was going to throw everything out the window and make no assumptions about anything.

I suggested that this was not only a bad idea. It was impossible. Understanding the world is a circle that starts with certain assumptions and then goes to pondering things in dialog with the world. We find out some of our assumptions are inconsistent. We find some of them may not match up. We revise them. Then we do it all over again.

Christians have always believed that at least some key truths are a matter of revelation rather than discovery. We may vary in what the precise formula is.  Some have thought truth is so much a matter of God revealing himself to us in the Bible that we could never discover half the truth if we tried to go find it in the world itself. Others have thought we can discover most Christian truth just by good thinking on the evidence out there in the world.

Whatever the precise formula, Christian theology gives the believer a place to begin when it comes to the question of what is right and what is true. Some elements of theology are more negotiable than others, but it would be foolish to try to start from scratch when God has been helping humanity find its way from the very beginning. Christians believe that he especially started helping us find our way through ancient Israel and then definitively helped us find our way through Christ and the church that followed. Human understanding is never infallible, but it would be foolish to try to start our quest for truth from scratch. For Christians, Christian theology is by far the best place to start.

2. Theology helps us know what is important.
We have a lot of things we believe and a lot of ways we do things in the world. For example, I personally believe that the front of my house looked better with the pine trees my wife cut down than it does without them. I also believe that it is wrong to murder innocent people you happen to meet on the sidewalk. These two beliefs are not of the same importance at all. The second belief is quite important. The first is rather insignificant.

We have to prioritize our beliefs and practices in this way because they inevitably come into conflict with each other. Despite some popular rhetoric, right and wrong cannot simply be a matter of absolutes because situations arise in which we have to choose between our principles, when we have to make exceptions. "Should I obey God or human authority in this situation?" Both are Christian values, but when they come into conflict, we have to obey God and disobey human authority.

Christian theology is what helps me set these priorities. Which is more important, what I think or how I live? Which Christian beliefs are the absolute core and which ones are a matter of personal conviction? When should I make an exception to a rule or practice and when must I stand firm to the death? We all would answer these questions with our actions in certain situations. We all would have a "theology" when the moment of decision came. The question is whether it would be a good theology.

3. Theology helps us appropriate the Bible.
This is an extremely important point because so many think that they simply read the Bible and do what it says. It is exactly this misunderstanding that stands behind the tens of thousands of different Christian groups who think they are all just believing and doing what the Bible says. It is, in short, a self-deception that is innocent enough in most cases but that can lead to catastrophe in others.

For example, it is not really troublesome that Seventh Day Adventists do not eat pork. Now of course it might be rather annoying to someone who absolutely loves pork, but no great harm is done in general. Underlying this practice is a Seventh Day Adventist theology that does not read the Old Testament prohibitions on pork in the light of New Testament comments on God declaring all foods clean. This is a theological decision between comments in the Bible that say different things. Leviticus says not to eat pork. Mark 7:19 and other passages seem to abolish the Old Testament food laws. Our theology is what helps us arbitrate between such passages.

Most Christians find the issue of pork rather straightforward, but there are countless other issues where we do not agree. Can women be senior pastors? One segment of the church says no and points to certain passages. Another segment says yes and points to other passages. Another segment says it is not just about passages but about the difference between our time and the time God was addressing at the time of the Bible.

On many issues, we disagree on what individual passages meant as well as on how to map individual passages to each other. The Bible ultimately cannot make some of these decisions for us. James does not tell us how to fit its comments with Paul. Paul may have told the Thessalonians all about the man of lawlessness when he was there (2 Thess. 2:5), but he did not write it down and the rest of Bible does not fill in the blank.

The Bible gives us the starting material for our beliefs and practices, but whether we admit it to ourselves or not, it is far more our theology that organizes the biblical material and appropriates it in our lives. Individuals who do not realize this fact are prone to float adrift on whatever tide happens to catch them. This is how cults form and gain followers. If we are not conscious of the theology at work in our use of the Bible, then we are inevitably driven and tossed about by whatever wind catches our sail. We think we are following the Bible when we are just as likely riding the wave of some subculture.

4. Theology clarifies the boundaries of Christian faith and action.
Whether we are fully conscious of the ambiguities of the biblical text, our theology is always with us, setting the boundaries of our thinking and action, steering us in the right (or wrong) direction. The early Christians spoke of something they called the "rule of faith," the most fundamental Christian principles drawn from the Bible boiled down as guidelines. It is a basic theology and we all function with one.

The most important of these sorts of guidelines are the core beliefs and practices that the Holy Spirit has unfolded and clarified in the church these last two thousand years, the "faith once delivered to the saints" (Jude 1:3). They are in the creeds of historic Christianity and generally held in common by Christians across denominations and traditions, Catholic or Protestant.  "I believe in God the Father Almighty..." The core Christian ethic is the "law of love," the absolute principle of loving your neighbor as yourself.

Beyond these basics our theology also determines to a high degree which passages of Scripture we will find "clear" and which ones we will find "unclear." We read a verse about bashing Babylonian babies and immediately sense that this is not something I should do (Ps. 137:9). Of course there are countless other issues in life today that the Bible does not directly address. Who should I vote for in the next election? What should I think about stem cell research or a contraceptive that stops a fertilized egg from implanting itself in the uterine wall?

On many such issues we act or think inconsistently with our theology, which either means that our theology is wrong or our thoughts and actions on that particular theology is wrong. Our lives are full of such contradictions and they are often harmless, but they can also be very dangerous. I may say I love my neighbor and yet act or vote in ways that contradicts what I say my theology is. In this particular case my theology is absolute, and I am bound to make my life conform to it. When good theology is doing what it is supposed to do, it will help me live a life that is truly pleasing to God.

5. Truth is beautiful in itself.
Theology has a bad reputation among some. To some, theology is mostly irrelevant nonsense, "How many angels can fit on the head of a pin?" Hopefully, what we have said so far makes it clear that theology at its best is not only relevant, it is essential. We can debate the stereotype some theologians have of being fascinated by aspects of theology that are not as obviously relevant, but we cannot do away with theology. It is there whether we realize it or not.

At the same time, truth is beautiful for its own sake. The most significant truths may be the ones that have the most impact and relevance, but truth for its own sake is beautiful because it is a reflection of God's mind. We do not all have to love truth for its own sake, but it is perfectly legitimate for those who love it.

The relevance of such truths may not always seem immediately relevant, but they often become relevant over time.  Ongoing reflection about truth can form patterns of thinking that help us mature. We may eventually find ourselves with the right intuitions because we have meditated on truth over time. Truth gets into our bones even when it is not fully in our conscious minds. This is some of the best theology we can have.

Protestant Liberal Thinking

Working on a textbox in conjunction with a section in the philosophy book on Leo Tolstoy's view of art.
___________
Protestant Liberal Thinking
Although many speak today generally of something being "liberal" in a very broad sense, "Liberal theology" was the formal name of a stream of Protestant thinking especially in the late 1800's and early 1900's (not to be confused with the economic liberalism of the previous chapter).  Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834) was the "father" of liberal theology when he sought to protect Christianity from the challenges of the Enlightenment by defining religion in terms of religious experience: "Religion is neither thinking nor acting but intuition and feeling" (On Religion).  In this regard the influence of the Romantic Era on him is unmistakable.

However, the height of Protestant liberal theology came in the optimistic spirit of the late 1800's and early 1900's prior to World War 1.  Albrecht Ritschl (1822-89) built on Schleiermacher's sense that religion was about experience rather than knowledge, but he sought to give that experience a more objective basis in the origins and history of Christianity.  He also saw it more as a lived out experience in community (ethics) rather than Scheiermacher's focus on an experience of complete dependence on God.

Ritschl found part of his objective basis for Christian experience in his idealized picture of Jesus as the supreme moral example of all history, a demonstration of the perfect human relationship with God lived out in community.  He did not actually believe Jesus was divine, even if in a unique class by himself.  Part of the job of the theologian for him was to strip the authentic substance of Christianity from its later accretions, such as the later creeds of Christianity.

Protestant Liberalism would then reach its peak at the beginning of the twentieth century, before World War 1 dashed its optimistic view of humanity to pieces.  Adolf Harnack (1850-1930) saw the essence of Christianity as "the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of humanity."  The essence of Christianity was thus to love your neighbor and what came to be known as the "social gospel," where the overwhelming focus of Christian faith is on helping others rather than on saving souls from damnation.

In many (though not all cases), the key figures in Protestant Liberalism did not view Jesus as truly divine. Even the pastor who started the slogan, "What would Jesus do?" (Charles Sheldon) saw Jesus more as a  moral example rather than as divine or as Savior.  Nevertheless, it is important to recognize that what was defective in the Protestant Liberalism of that time (or of the neo-liberalism of our own day) is not the focus on loving our neighbor, imitating Jesus, or promoting social justice.  What was defective was what they did not teach, rather than what they did.

Sunday Oden 5: The Trinity

The previous post in this series is here.

I only got through one chapter this week, chapter 5, "Whether God is Triune."

Oden repeatedly says that theology is simply an explanation of baptism, very interesting even though I wait to be fully convinced. I continue to be bothered by the way he handles the "fathers." Bounds has indicated to me that his sense of "original meaning" is more subtle than one might at first think, that in fact the end of the first part on the Father will lay down some of his hermeneutical cards.

But in general, the early fathers were no more wired to read the New Testament or Old Testament texts in their literary and historical contexts than the New Testament authors were in their readings of the Old. We presume their trinitarian readings of Scripture were on the right theological track. But a clever student who has taken inductive Bible study will be a better contextual interpreter than any of them.

The Bible scholar in me thus chafes when Oden says silly things like, "The unique phrase 'O God, thy God" makes no sense without a triune premise" (113). I have no objection to reading this psalm and Hebrews that quotes it with trinitarian lenses. But the psalm made perfect sense against its ancient near eastern context, a place where human kings were thought of as God's sons and where the king as godlike and God's representative in no way contradicted God as God. We should see these statements as stones on a revelatory path toward trinitarianism and we can read them in the light of later trinitarianism. But this is not the same as reading them in their original contexts.

Still, this chapter is a gold mine of the biblical texts in which the earliest Christians were inspired to hear reference to the Trinity. "The triune teaching has become incrementally clarified as established teaching by passing through successive stages: preindications in the Old Testament; the central disclosure of God as Father, Son, and Spirit in the New Testament; and the full development of church teaching in the Nicene definition and its subsequent interpretations" (109-110).

In the Old Testament, he mentions the plural form of Elohim, the threefold repetition of "holy" in Isaiah. The plural form in "remember your creators." I'm not sure if Oden really thinks these things originally had anything to do with the Trinity, which is highly doubtful--it would require us to assume such things made no sense to the people they were actually written for. But they are passages in which later Christians have heard inklings of the Trinity.

He mentions that Father, Son, and Spirit in the NT all are called God. All display the attributes of God. All do the same works. All are worshipped.

Finally, he mentions 12 NT passages that include all three persons: 1) the baptismal formula of the Great Commission; 2) Jesus' baptism; 3) Paul's benediction in 2 Cor. 13:13; 4) the Ephesian formula of 2:18; 5) Jude's summary call to prayer; 6) the Johannine farewell discourses; 7) John's prologue; 8) the Johannine letters; 9) Revelation's salutation; 10) Philippian hymn; 11) Colossians 1; 12) Hebrews introduction.

On the whole, I've found all the chapters of Oden disappointing thus far. It's because he has kept his promise. He is saying nothing new. He isn't even really clarifying the old.

Sunday Oden 4: Whether God Exists

For previous posts in this series, see here.

After two chapters about God's attributes, Oden now shifts to the question of whether God exists. This order of proceding is important to him, even though he seems quite convinced that these arguments are persuasive. He does not believe God's existence can be proved beyond doubt (83).

I want to make it very clear that it is not necessary for all these arguments to work for us to believe in God. Indeed, some would argue that the proper approach is blind faith rather than "evidence that demands a verdict."

In the end, he presents five kinds of argument that have been made:

1. Arguments from order and design (teleological arguments)

The argument from order is that the order of the universe is such that it begs for us to conclude an intelligence created it with purpose, that there is an Orderer of some kind behind it. The argument from design is similar, but slightly different. It argues that the complexity of the universe argues for an intelligent designer, much as a watch would.

Many will find this argument convincing. Evolution was often thought to have dethroned it, but even the theory of evolution involves patterns of order. Why does nature behave one way and not another? I wonder if in a quantum age, the argument from design collapses into the cosmological argument.

2. Arguments from humanity

The first of these is the argument of mind--how can we have minds by chance? How could nature produce something greater than itself? Not sure this argument makes sense to me. A couple of other arguments here that have been used in the past don't make a lot of sense to me. For example, God may very well have implanted in the human mind an awareness of Him, but it would be circular to argue that this fact alone argues that He exists.

More convincing is the argument that the existence of the divine is the general consensus of human culture. It is striking that humans seem universally to have some sense of the existence of gods. There must be some very strong reality driving this indeed!

3. Arguments from change, causality, contingency, and degrees of being

These are the standard cosmological arguments and although they do not prove the existence of the Christian God, I find them very impactful arguments. What caused the universe to explode into existence? Could it be possible that everything in the universe only existed contingently? If so, then it would be possible that nothing would exist. But if nothing could exist, there could not thereafter be anything. So it does seem like there must be some Thing or things that exist necessarily.

I'm not sure how helpful the arguments from motion and degrees of being are. In our world, I think the argument from motion collapses into the argument from cause. The degrees of being argument is that there must be a highest degree of being if we can conceive of lower ones. Not sure this makes any sense today.

Here again is where I respect the fathers but know way more about the world than they did. That makes this chapter seem really off to me at points.

4. Arguments from conscience, beauty, pragmatic results and congruity

I do not find these particular arguments very compelling myself. For example, the moral argument goes something like this: "The existence of absolute moral obligation establishes the existence of God as the cause of the moral order" (94). The problem is that the existence of absolute moral obligation is not at all obvious in the world, even though I believe in it.

Similarly, Kant's arguments for freedom, immortality, and God were based on certain things that seemed obvious to him about the world. Cultural anthropology far from vindicates his sense that everybody experiences such things the way he did. The arguments from conscience and beauty again seem far removed from the universal sense of those in this messed up world. The pragmatic argument is a reason why it might be advantageous to believe but it is not really an argument for the truth of such belief.

5. argument from the idea of perfect being

We end with the ontological argument. Oden clearly thinks he has hit pay dirt here, and there was a time when I tried to meditate on it to grasp its profundity. In the end, I find myself unable to say whether it has any truth to it or not. On one level it is logically incoherent. But there may be a subtle truth to it that I have not fully grasped.

The argument basically is that we could not conceive of God unless God actually existed, that the very idea of God implies within it the existence of God. The logical problem with the argument is that it mixes apples and oranges. The conception of God is a matter of our thoughts. The existence of God is a matter of the reality outside our mind. The argument as classically presented by Anselm and Descartes crosses this boundary between conception and world.

Certainly the greatest possible Being can exist in my conception. But if that fact in itself implies God exists in the real world, I have not yet been able to discern why.

So I find this chapter disappointing. Oden seems to treat all the classic arguments as if they are still fully convincing. Most of them to me, however, seem based on a pre-Cartesian view of the world. Nevertheless, God will continue to exist just fine with or without any of them. :-)

Sunday Oden 3: Nature and Character of God

Not Sunday, but alas...

Oden divides the attributes of God into three categories. Chapter 2 is about God's intrinsic attributes and His relational attributes. Chapter 3 is about His personal attributes, those similar to human character. Parentheses are Oden, brackets are me talking...

Intrinsic Attributes (incommunicable, primary, essential attributes)

• God is before time. [understandably, we can't quite be sure what this means]
• God is self-sufficient (aseity). [I think I disagree with where Oden will take this, namely, when he claims that God's self-sufficiency does not imply He could have been as happy without the creation. I personally think God was just fine without it. Maybe I misunderstand Oden]
• God is one.
• God is not composed of parts (simplicity). [I never understood this one--I suspect it is a pre-modern left-over that has more to do with the way God looks to us within the creation rather than the mysterious ineffable of God beyond the creation]
• God is infinite.
• God is immeasurable.
• God is eternal.
• God has no impulse to suicide. :-)
• God is incomparibly alive.

Relational Attributes

• omnipresent
• omniscient (Oden claims that the Arminian position on foreknowledge is the consensual one, and thus that Augustine and Calvin are the exception rather than the rule)
• omnipotence (God can do anything consistent with who He is; He allows for secondary causes and thus does not directly cause everything that happens; He is transcendent)

Personal Attributes (chapter 3)

• Scripture represents God with personal characteristics [although we always have to be careful about anthropomorphism] God can say "I."
• God has a name.
• Impersonal terms inadequate
• God is Spirit.
• God has a free will. [classically, His freedom is connected to His nature, meaning that in a very real sense, God is not free to tell someone to murder their child... oops. I am slightly unorthodox here in that I see God's freedom as more extensive than what we think of as His nature]
• "God deals with human beings not coersively but persuasively" (61).
• Among God's chief moral characteristics are holiness and love, where Oden defines holiness as perfect goodness [I personally don't think that this is the primary meaning of holiness in the Old Testament. I think it imposes a much later understanding of goodness on an Ancient Near Eastern world]
• God is love--1 John defines God most succinctly [technically not a definition but a metonymy where something associated with something else is metaphorically used to describe it. The standard distinction between types of loves is also an overreading, although we can probably see a distinction between eros and agape far more than between agape and filos]

Divine happiness brings together all His attributes.

Sunday Oden 2: Name of God

Each Sunday, I am trying to summarize a chapter of Tom Oden's Classic Christianity. For some thoughts on the Preface, see here.

First there is the Introduction to Book One: "The Living God" (3-11). Oden expresses ambivalence at the personal pronouns "he" and "she," since God is not literally a particular gender. Indeed, part of the scandal of particularity is the specificity with which Christ had to come to earth. So he was a Jew and not a Greek. He was a man and not a woman. "It" doesn't adequately convey God's personhood.

The intro distinguishes "natural" and "revealed" theology, a distinction most will know.

Chapter 1 is called "The Name of God" (15-37). "Christian revelation refers to the disclosure of God in the person and work of Christ" (18). This is a crucial point. To speak in general of a divine Being is not to speak of God in a Christian way. Christ is the focal point of talking about God for Christians historically. "The Christian study of God is faith seeking understanding" (21).

Here is Oden's understanding of the "consensual" definition of God: "God is the uncreated source and end of all things; one; incomparibly alive; insurmountable in presence, knowledge, and power; personal, eternal spirit, who in holy love freely creates, sustains, and governs all things" (23).

Oden mentions five ways of knowing God's character:

1. revelation
2. inferred through causality
3. what God is not (via negativa)
4. God as greater than (say of heightening characteristics--via eminentiae)
5. a priori sense of God, inferred from the very idea of God

He then sets us up for the next two chapters, which deal with attributes of God. Attributes first, then he will look at arguments for God's existence.

One thought that struck me is a potential critique in the making with regard to Oden's "consensual approach." It comes from the fact that almost all his sources are pre-modern, pre-Cartesian. The pre-modern way of looking at the world is essentially reflexive. It reads an order to the world out there that is possibly subject to Feuerbach's claim that God is simply a projection of the best collective traits of humanity. When we say God is the greatest possible Being, for example, are we setting up a portrait of God that is unthinkingly based on our perspective of the world?

I would thus modify Oden's list in this way:

1. God has revealed a nature in relation to this universe. We have no point of reference to say much of what God is outside this universe.

The consensual tradition is pre-Cartesian and so was unable to think in these terms. The order it read "out there" was largely a reflection of an order within its own understanding, not an order that would really correspond to a universe created out of nothing. Its picture of God was thus in many respects simply an extension of this universe rather than the other way around, as it must be.

In this respect, I suspect the consensual tradition must be translated in a post-Cartesian world. Oden's fundamental enterprise--not to say anything new--thus potentially consigns his theology to the pre-modern domain. To continue to view the world in this way is to hobble theology from the very start. The fathers and mothers are crucial, but we have an immensely better understanding of the world than they did and this does matter.

2. inferred through causality
This remains a key way to think about God, and we can do it much better than the consensual tradition could because of our immensely improved understanding of creation. Certainly we may be way off still.

3-4. via negativa and via eminentia
Again, these seem to work well in relation to this universe. I am unsure what if anything they might tell us about God outside this universe, but I look forward to reading on.

5. Being itself
I am less confident that we can know much of God through this path. I suspect in our modern paradigm, this collapses into #2.

These are musings, not claims. I have mused over them for years. Charles Taylor has helped me conceptualize them a further step.

Sunday Oden: Preface

This is the first of what I hope will be about three months of Sundays working through Thomas Oden's Classic Christianity.

Preface (xiii-xxvi)
I haven't known whether to smile or get annoyed when Oden proudly announces that he aims "to make no new contribution to theology" (xiv) and that the "only promise I intend to make... is that of unoriginality" (xv). Oden's systematic theology is about the consensus of Christendom, the beliefs that all Christians hold together in common. He mentions Vincent of Lerins sense of the core as "that which has always, everywhere, and by all Christians been believed about God's self-disclosure" (xv).

He gives the ecumenical Doctors of the Church in the east as 1) Athanasius, 2) Basil, 3) Gregory of Nazianzus, and 4) Chrysostum, and the Church in the west as 1) Ambrose, 2) Augustine, 3) Jerome, and 4) Gregory the Great. Meanwhile, consensual documents are more important than individuals (xvi).

Of course all of these are secondary for Oden to Scripture. He is interested in the common understanding of faith these individuals and other consensual documents have as they have interpreted Scripture. Oden makes it clear that he does not, however, have a fundamentalist understanding of Scripture. xxiv-xxv lay out 10 ways in which his approach differs from fundamentalism.

For example, the consensual approach focuses on the meaning of the resurrection while fundamentalism focuses on the historicity of the resurrection. (To be sure, Oden believes in the historicity of the resurrection too). Another is that the consensual tradition recognizes metaphor and varieties of expression of inspired doctrine in Scripture, while fundamentalism focuses on a single legitimate interpretation of each text.

Gregory of Nyssa put it this way: "Those who handle the text in too literal a manner have a veil cast over their eyes, whereas those who contemplate the God of whom the Scriptures speak receive the revelation of divine glory which lies behind the letter of the text" (xxv).

For next Sunday, d.v. the introduction to The Living God and chapter 1, "The Name of God."

Chris Bounds: The Topics of Theology

This week Wesley Seminary students have been running their chosen pastoral issue of the semester through the lens of theology. To help, Chris Bounds has recorded a short vidcast overviewing the general topics of theology. You can watch the 27 minute vidcast here.

Why we need theologians...

A few weeks ago I slipped in a few explanatory notes on 2 Corinthians 4:16-5:10. This is a passage that intrigues me and one that has been discussed frequently as a place where Paul's thought might have developed from 1 Corinthians.

I thought I might catalog today several of the interpretations of this passage. All of the following suggestions were made by card carrying PhD's in New Testament who not only know Greek--they likely know/knew it better than anyone you've ever met. Not only that, they probably know/knew ancient Greek literature better than anyone you've ever met.

In short, each of these positions have been held by people who know/knew how to interpret the Bible in context better than you or me, hands down. I say that so that no one says, "I clearly know more about the Bible than the person who said that does/did."

1. Between 1 and 2 Corinthians Paul has changed his mind on whether he will still be alive at the second coming. In 1 Corinthians he thinks he'll still be alive. In 2 Corinthians/Philippians he thinks he'll probably die first. (C. H. Dodd)

2. Between 1 and 2 Corinthians Paul has changed his mind on when resurrection will take place. In 1 Corinthians he thinks it will happen at the second coming. In 2 Corinthians he thinks it will be at death. (F. F. Bruce)

3. Between 1 and 2 Corinthians Paul has changed his mind on what the state of a person is in between death and future resurrection. In 1 Corinthians it is a sleepy, shadowy existence. In 2 Corinthians it is a more blessed state of union with Christ.

4. Between 1 and 2 Corinthians Paul has changed his mind on what the nature of the resurrection will be like. In 1 Corinthians he still has the Jewish idea of an embodied resurrection. In 2 Corinthians he has a more Platonic sense of immortality. (C. F. D. Moule)

5. 1 and 2 Corinthians are about two different things. 1 Corinthians is about individual resurrection, while 2 Corinthians is about the body of Christ as a group reality. (Victor Furnish).

6. There is no difference between 1 and 2 Corinthians. Although 1 Corinthians uses the imagery of sleep for death, Paul has in mind the same thing as what he means by nakedness in 2 Corinthians (a disembodied intermediate state). (N. T. Wright)

Now here's the punchline. It is not likely that many if any people reading this post, including myself, is anywhere near as qualified as any of the scholars I mention above to interpret this passage in context. Yet they have all come to different interpretations.

This is why we need theologians. The more you dig into the possible interpretations of these words--especially if you're honest and don't pretend like anyone who disagrees with you must be evil or stupid--the more ambiguous passages like this one seem.

The thing is, though, Christians throughout the ages have dug into these issues and on many many of them, they have hammered out points of agreement on the meaning we find in these words (whether they are the original meanings or not). For each individual to go back to the drawing board and ignore 2000 years of Christian theology is the heighth of foolishness. Here's what Christian theology has to say:

Christians believe in a future, bodily resurrection. We also believe that we will be conscious in between our deaths (should we die before Christ's return) and our resurrections--we will be "with Christ."

That's what we Christians believe, whether it was what Paul was thinking or not.

Monday Thoughts: Dispensationalism versus Covenantalism

Occasionally you catch wind of entire conversations and debates that are pretty foreign to you, just as your debates may be foreign to others. I've been picking up on a big debate between, say, Baptists and the Presbyterian/Reformed, that I wasn't really aware of.

I've noticed from time to time some rather strong statements on the covenant among certain biblical scholars. For example, Grant Osborne's Hermeneutical Spiral makes a pretty big deal of the idea that every bit of the OT still applies--it's just fulfilled through Jesus.

In chapter 7 of Vanhoozer's Is There a Meaning in This Text, he distances himself fairly strongly from fundamentalism. One of his examples is an "insistence that passages about Israel concern the physical nation Israel and never the church" (429). He then mentions the hermeneutics of dispensationalism.

A new book by Todd Magnum, The Dispensational-Covenantal Rift, apparently tells the historical roots of this conflict, going back to a rift between Dallas Theological Seminary and places like Westminster Theological Seminary. I picture the Presbyterians and Reformed looking down their noses at "less sophisticated" Baptists.

Dispensationalism tends to view history as a series of dispensations in which God runs things differently. I remember hearing of seven dispensations as a child--the Pilgrim Holiness side of Wesleyan background was significantly impacted by dispensationalism. I was raised a pre-trib. rapture, premillennial.

Of course I now consider the very idea of a seven year tribulation dubious from a biblical perspective. Paul knows nothing of anything like this. Jesus will return and the judgment will ensue. Revelation is highly symbolic, and we'll know what God was thinking after it happens. In any case, it doesn't have a seven year tribulation, in my opinion. It mentions a "great tribulation," but nowhere connects it to a number of years.

All that's really a tangent. I wonder if some of the negative response to my hermeneutic is because it sounded a tinge dispensational to some of the publishers who looked at it. Of course I didn't come up with this hermeneutic because I started with a particular theological vantage point like dispensationalism. It is my attempt to let the Bible say what it says while coming out with orthodox Christian belief on the other side.

When it comes to the relationship between the OT and the NT, I end up with a couple conclusions that rub the current evangelical consensus the wrong way:

1. The NT surprisingly disregards a number of OT ethics in a way that is mostly explicable in terms of a) the expansion of the people of God to include the Gentiles and b) injunctions that simply didn't fit the Mediterranean world in the way they fit the ancient near east.

This is not the theologically neat fulfillment of all the OT in the NT that covenantal scholars envisage. Even Jesus' fulfillment of every jot and tittle in Matthew 5 dispenses with parts of the OT, like an "eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." And Jesus' command to love one's enemy stands in serious tension with significant portions of the OT when read in context.

2. The NT doesn't follow Vanhoozer or Osborne's rules for how to read texts in context in its reading of the OT. The whole "the NT reads typologically, not allegorically or with disregard to context" is just plain wrong. The NT doesn't care about this scruple of evangelical scholarship past. This deconstructs Vanhoozer's entire hermeneutical project, by the way.

So the result looks a little like one form of dispensationalism, where God has one set of rules for Israel and then changes the rules in the NT.

Just for Chris Bounds

This is a must see for you theologians out there:

"John Piper is Bad"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhLCus0tsmw&NR

Augustine Shifts 1

Now that I'm 40, I want to make this decade count as a scholar. I've piddled with topics here and there. It looks like my dissertation will be published with Cambridge on Hebrews. I'm in the proposal writing stage of what I hope will be my next book on a generally scholarly level.

So I need to get a little focused. In short, I may only post here once a week, usually on Mondays (sometimes sneaking it in on Sunday). Of course if the Spirit moves, I doubt I'll stop myself.

For the next few Mondays, I thought I'd mention a few shifts in our understanding of Paul that Augustine has contributed to us. The first--a shift from speaking of our flesh as the foothold of sin over us to the idea that we have a sinful nature.

The NIV regularly translates the Greek word flesh as "sinful nature." It is one of many, many rabbit trails of the NIV, in my opinion. For Paul the starting point for understanding flesh is, well, skin. There is a natural glide in his arguments in Romans from the flesh to our mortal bodies and our physical members.

"Do not let sin continue to reign in your mortal body" (6:12).

"nor continue to present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin" (6:13).

"for when we were in the flesh..." (6:5)

As usual, the good old NIV obscures Paul's logic.

At the same time, flesh easily becomes a metaphor for the part of us that sin holds power over. So just as we can die with Christ (and yet still be physically alive), we can get out of our flesh (even though we're still in our skin). "Those who are in the flesh are not able to please God" (8:8).

Paul can speak about sin dwelling in my flesh (7:18). But we should not take this as a statement of literal nature. Why? First, because flesh is not intrinsically sinful--Jesus came in the likeness of sinful flesh (8:3). Now it's not that Jesus' flesh was any different from ours literally. Sin just didn't have power over his flesh as it does ours. Secondly, because Paul indicates we can get out of this flesh in 8:8.

So what rabbit trails has Augustine sent us down in this instance. Questions of eradication or suppression are immediately seen to be arguments over a metaphor taken too literally. But eradication comes closest to what Paul does with the metaphor.

Is the sin nature passed down genetically? Is this why Jesus was born of a virgin? Paul knows nothing of these questions. It seems more likely that we should connect Paul's statement that the creation was subjected to futility (8:20) to this discussion. The entire creation is enslaved, and our physical bodies are a part of that creation. Sin is thus a power that holds over the physical realm in general, one for which Spirit is an antidote.

I think we should see this same general way of thinking behind Paul's enigmatic comments about the elements in Galatians 4:9: "now that you have known God (or rather are known by God) how are you turning again to the weak and impoverished elements, which you wish to serve again anew?" Colossians will develop this strange way of thinking that equates keeping certain parts of the Jewish law with enslavement to sin.

So we have no reason to think that the virgin birth had anything to do with Christ not having a sin nature. It's one of several rabbit trails of church history brought to you by Augustine.