MegaChurch Seminaries

There was a piece today in Christianity Today online about the trend for some megachurches to start in house seminaries. Very interesting. I connect it with two other trends going on right now 1) the decentralization trend, away from centralized denominations and organizations and 2) the trend toward training in a ministry context.

Oops, the second one isn't actually a trend yet but I'm strongly predicting it will be. As far as I know, while other seminaries are increasingly making it possible to stay in ministry while going to seminary, we are the only ones actually capitalizing on it by requiring our MDIV students to be in ministry and fashioning our weekly assignments around it. I'm predicting that the real leaders in seminary education will soon follow our example. If any seminaries would like us to come consult with them, we'd be glad to :-)

The first, decentralizing trend is very interesting and I'm very curious to see where it ends up. However, in a very real sense, we are enabling decentralized seminary education more than a megachurch can. We have an IT, online infrastructure (about 6000 students taking classes online) that a megachurch would have difficulty matching. I suppose most seminaries end up serving subcultures anyway.

Mark Driscoll and John Piper clearly serve a different segment of the Christian scene than we will. While we would welcome anyone from their circles who will play nice, they would have trouble at their seminaries with anything but nominal Wesleyans. Someone with more than a superficial Wesleyan theology would feel like a major fish out of water in their programs, which are predestined to offer the most extreme form of Calvinist teaching. Remember when Piper, at Driscoll's church, urged truly evangelical colleges and seminaries to expunge any Arminian faculty they might have?

And since they don't believe a woman can be a senior pastor, no woman should even have a fleeting thought of going there.

Explanatory Notes: Philippians 4:1-3

A little late, these were started on Sunday...
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4:1 So that, my brothers, beloved and desired, my joy and crown, be standing in this way in the Lord.
This verse could either serve as a conclusion to what has gone before or the beginning of what follows. Since what immediately follows does not seem to spell out how to stand in a general way, we think it goes more naturally with what precedes than with what follows. The particular conjunction (hoste) also seems more often to continue what precedes than to initiate new trains of thought.

Accordingly, the sense would be Paul telling the Philippians to "stand" or to live as he has just instructed, following his example, having their citizenship in heaven, waiting for the redemption of our bodies. The Philippians are his joy because they are, for the most part, models of what it means to be a believer. They are his crown perhaps in the sense that they demonstrate the success of his ministry, for which he might in one sense receive honor in the great athletic contest of faith.

4:2 I urge Euodia and Syntyche to think the same in the Lord.
We do not know anything about these two women except what is said in this and the next verse. They were Paul's "coworkers" at Philippi in some way. The passage knows nothing about fixed roles for such women. Paul simply says that they worked with him as other men did.

We have seen the idea of "thinking the same" before in Philippians. Paul urged the Philippians in 2:2 to think the same and to be of one soul and mind. He then went on to give them the example of Christ, who although he had the status of God was willing to take on the role of a servant, even to the point of death.

4:3 Yes, I ask also you, genuine yokefellow, join in helping them, who worked together with me in the gospel, also with Clement and my other coworkers, whose names [are] in the book of life.
Paul's failure to give the name of the person in question is intriguing, leading some to suggestion that the word "yokefellow" itself is actually a person's name, Syzygos. However, what a happy coincidence that would be, that a person's name fit so nicely with his function! Since we are not persuaded that Christians received new names when they were baptized at this point, it seems more likely that Paul is referring to a specific person.

However, there is one other person from the church at Philippi who has been named thus far in the letter, the person who very likely delivered Philippians back to Philippi. This is of course Epaphroditus (2:25). Therefore, it seems more likely than not that Paul is addressing Epaphroditus here. Paul is urging Epaphroditus to help Euodia and Syntyche to get along.

We have no way of knowing who the Clement mentioned in this verse might be. It seems quite doubtful that it is the same Clement who would later become bishop of Rome at the end of the century.

This is the only time in Paul's writings, indeed the only time outside the book of Revelation, that the book of life is mentioned. In Revelation 17:8, this book includes the names of those who would be saved, known and at least figuratively written down in God's mind since the creation (cf. Dan. 12:1). The obscure reference is a reminder that much that is not mentioned in any New Testament writing, including the entirety of the Pauline corpus, is at least possibly assumed. At the same time, we have no secure basis to know what those things were.

The Wesleyan Spirit

Mark Schnell asked a good question about a comment I made in the last post--one particularly pertinent to him since he is doing MDIV work at Gordon Conwell. He/you asks, "Are you saying that you don't want the legitimate cohesion that takes place between Wesleyanism and Calvinism to happen at the new seminary?"

What I want is for more to take place at the Wesleyan seminary than just those possible cohesions. Let me be more specific.

1. What I don't want to typify this seminary is the very restrictive and combative boundary patrol that I think sometimes typifies some Calvinist institutions and still often surfaces in ETS. The tone is one of who doesn't belong here rather than what points of commonality can I find with those outside my tradition.

2. So to word it positively, we want a generous spirit toward people of non-Wesleyan traditions who want to study with us, including Calvinists themselves. I would like to think that Baptists will feel very welcome at our seminary. We have two Anglicans who have just started our MA program. We have a significant number of African American students in our MA program who are everything from Pentecostal to Baptist to African Methodist Episcopal (MDIV).

By contrast, I have known Wesleyan students at conservative Calvinist institutions to be asked very seriously why in the world they had come there.

This generous spirit and freedom to explore the boundaries means that we welcome cohesion between Calvin and Wesley for those who feel led in this direction. The difference I am pushing is not "no Calvin allowed." It is "much more than some Calvinized Wesley" allowed. Conservative Calvinists themselves are very welcome if they'll play nice. In my thinking, the difference between the kind of Calvinized Wesleyan I am thinking of and a more ideal Wesleyan has more to do with narrowness of mind rather than specific positions themselves.

3. So not only men, but women fully included. If you don't believe women can be senior pastors, you are welcome to come through our program, if you play nice. We will treat you with respect and let you have your full voice. But don't bother applying to teach here.

4. not only the original meaning, but the Christian one. We will teach the tools of reading the Bible in context to be sure. But we will focus more on the Bible as God's word to His Church today, and we will do it fully conscious of the fact that we may at times be reading the Bible theologically as well as historically. And we will be very open to the voice of the Spirit through Scripture, whether it has anything to do with what the text meant originally or not.

5. heart and life before ideas. We will emphasize heart and life change and a godly life first and then ideas. We are interested in ideas. We'll try to determine what the right ideas are and we will start with the assumption that the common understandings of Christians everywhere are right. But we'd rather you be faithful in your life than know for sure what the right stance on the precise nature of the atonement is.

6. not afraid of postmodern critique... We will welcome those who think they have it all figured out ideologically if they'll play nice. We believe in absolute truth and absolute morals. But we are open to those who have concluded we know far less than we think and that there is a lot more gray than others are comfortable with. Those who focus on (head) propositions more than a relationship with God and a godly life are welcome, if they play nice.

7. inerrancy, yes, but not rigidly defined. Those who insist on the narrowest interpretation of the Chicago statement are welcome if they play nice. I have no doubt that the majority of students and professors will operate with that as a default. But as David McKenna insisted as president of Asbury in the 80s, we will not get into the divisiveness of the particulars of this issue like so many Calvinist institutions have. And we welcome those who have a more liberal understanding as well, as long as they play nice too.

8. a broad understanding of atonement. Those who insist on a very narrow sense of penal substitution are welcome, as long as they play nice. But we will not ostracize or excommunicate those who understand Christ's representation and satisfaction of justice in a more general way or who focus more on other aspects of atonement like the victory of Christ over evil powers, the reconciliation of an alienated world, or the expression of God's love.

Basically, by the Wesleyan spirit I mean an optimistic, welcoming, loving spirit that puts a primacy on a relationship with God and our neighbor as the first order of business and getting our ideas sorted out second. Ideas? Yes, for sure. But first things first!

And of course it goes without saying that our professors will take those positions all Wesleyans have in common: a belief in the possibility that anyone might be saved, the importance of a godly life after conversion essential for final salvation, the possibility that God can give consistent even exceptionless victory over conscious temptation, and so forth.

The bullets above relate to those aspects of theology on which there is not a single Wesleyan position. On these, I am arguing it is more Wesleyan to allow for a spectrum of possibilities, while a more Calvinized Wesleyan might insist you can only take one of the positions and be legitimately Christian, let alone Wesleyan.

Monday update...

I've started several of my normal posts (Paul, explanatory notes...), but launching the seminary has been all consuming. See the seminary update on my seminary blog. We had our first seminary convocation yesterday (it was great!) and so I may have a little time to do some catch up this week.

It may sound strange, but I have been increasingly thankful to Asbury Seminary as we have continued designing the program. Because the Wesleyan Church has not had its own seminary, our leaders have inevitably gone to many different places for further training. John Wesley was only a hair's breadth from Calvin, and so there is a legitimate cohesion that can take place between elements of Calvinism and Wesleyanism, and there has been a good deal of grass roots cohesion between fundamentalism and Wesleyanism. I call this element in the Wesleyan Church "Calvino-Wesleyan" or "Calvinized Wesleyans."

I didn't get that at Asbury, and I doubt those who went to Nazarene Theological Seminary did either. We didn't read D. A. Carson or Grant Osborne there (of course Osborne hadn't written his book yet) but did pure inductive Bible. I had no sense at Asbury that I had any reason to want to join the Calvinist dominated Evangelical Theological Society.

I'm hoping we can keep to an Asbury-NTS trajectory at IWU's seminary... we'll see.

Explanatory Notes: 1 Peter 2:11-17

I started this on Sunday since I preached on the text. Since I'm also teaching 1 Peter this Fall, it was hard to resist. Thought I'd finish it today.
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2:11 Beloved, I urge [you] as aliens and foreigners, to abstain from fleshly desires, which are warring against the soul,
With this verse 1 Peter begins a new section of the letter, a section that we believe continues through 4:11. This section generally has to do with living good lives in a society that is hostile toward the people of God. In general, we should read all of 1 Peter against the understanding that judgment has begun with the house of God (4:17) and will eventually lead to judgment on the rest of the world.

We have already discussed the description of the audience as "foreigners" in 1:1, and they were also called "aliens" in 1:17. The idea again is of someone who is not native or indigenous to a particular place, someone who is not a citizen of a location. There are connotations of being in the minority, of being in the "out" group. One always has a sense of not truly belonging because your true home is elsewhere. In the next verse, 1 Peter will distinguish the audience from the Gentiles, which adds an additional layer of foreignness, ironically despite the fact that most of the audience was probably Gentile by birth!

Since 1 Peter finishes the thought by telling the audience to refrain from giving in to the desires of the flesh, it would seem that the body (in its current weak state in relation to the power of Sin) is part of what is meant by being aliens and foreigners. Many interpreters have difficulty with this suggestion, as we alluded back in 1:1. But the idea that "in the body" we are in some ways in a context foreign to our truly "spiritual" identity would seem to be part of the imagery of 1 Peter. Such an understanding renders the train of thought here most intelligible and need not be forced further into some Gnostic or Platonic framework.

The similarity to Pauline thought here is striking. Indeed, it is at the very least intriguing to think that the flesh-spirit dichotomy would roll from Peter's categories as naturally as it did from Paul's. Certainly we do not have enough evidence to say how widespread such ways of thinking were among the early Christians. The similarity to Paul's categories does fit nicely with our hunch that Silas had as much to do with the writing of 1 Peter as Peter himself (cf. 1 Pet. 5:12).

Although it may not seem so at first, mention of "soul" is somewhat ambiguous. The idea of an immaterial soul largely arose in the 1600s. The idea of a detachable soul existed at the time of the New Testament, but the New Testament generally thinks more of a separable spirit. And those few places where the New Testament might refer to a separable soul are not actually very clear.

For example, 1 Peter 3:20 uses the word soul in its more normal Hebrew sense of a whole living person. Although nothing would keep this letter from using the same word in different ways, the usage later in the letter pushes us at least to try to understand the soul in 2:11 in reference to one's life. Fleshly passions war against one's life.

On the other hand, the use here does not seem quite the same as in 3:20. The mention of fleshly desires and alienation from one's true identity at least seem to fit better with the soul here as some part of a person. And the sense that we have an "inner person" in 3:4, along with the body-spirit dualism of 3:18-19, perhaps tip the scales toward soul here having to do with an inner, spiritual part of a person in some way.

2:12 ... having your good conduct among the Gentiles, so that--though they are slandering you as wrongdoers--looking on your good works, they might glorify God on the Day of Oversight.
This in our opinion is the key verse of the section that goes from 2:11 to 4:11. The instructions that follow are instructions on how slaves, wives, and those under Roman rule in general, might live respectable first century lives. The strategy is one of endurance under suffering, not one that looks to change the social structures of society. As in most of Paul's writings, there seems to be an underlying expectation that the Lord will return soon. 1 Peter takes no thought for changing social institutions but assumes them.

Given that the primary audience of 1 Peter would seem to be Gentile, it is striking that the audience is addressed as non-Gentiles. They are "foreigners" among Gentiles, with the connotation that they are no longer such. As 1:10 has indicated, they have gone from not being in the people of God to being in the people of God. Although it is not said that they have become a part of Israel, this is the underlying connotation. 1 Peter knows nothing of Christians as some "third race."

We best understand the thought assumptions of 1 Peter, then, if we think of the Gentile audience as transplants into the people of God in some sense. At the same time, this assumption comes through very weakly, far more weakly than in Paul's writings. While we are prone to miss this fact, it is a striking feature of the letter, especially if we are hearing Peter in his natural categories. On the other hand, it might fit better with a Silas as principal composer (5:12), especially if he were a Diaspora Jew who was raised with a much weaker sense of his Jewish identity.

As we have already seen, 1 Peter pictures widespread hostility in Asia Minor toward believers. And as we have mentioned, it is hard to infer concretely what accusations of wrongdoing or evildoing might have applied. The immediate mention of human authorities, including the empire, might suggest that Christians were perceived to be politically subversive. Certainly confessing a supreme Lord and king who was not Caesar would seem to fall into that category.

The later the writing of 1 Peter, the more likely that Christian Jews might be seen as politically subversive. It would be anachronistic, however, to think that the Roman Empire had some standing policy about Christianity being illegal. This was not even the case in the early second century. There was no official list of legal religions, nor was there a hard and fast understanding that Judaism was a religio licita, a "legal religion." Any persecution of Christians was situational and cultural, not official or empire wide.

The fact that 1 Peter goes on to give advice about slaves and wives bespeaks the possibility of persecution based on a sense that Christianity was socially subversive. Perhaps letters like Colossians, 1 Peter, Ephesians, and 1 Timothy all belong to a layer of early Christian tradition where an initial social freedom was undergoing a certain retrenchment because of the resultant social turmoil.

1 Peter does not anticipate that the surrounding society will be won over by good conduct. Rather, it is on the "Day of Overseeing," the day of judgment, that they will have to admit that they had no legitimate basis for accusation. If they follow 1 Peter's admonition, Christians will have respected all human authority; slaves will have submitted to their masters, and first century women will have obeyed their husbands.

2:13-14 Be subject to every human authority because of the Lord, whether to the king as ruler, or to governors as being sent by Him for the punishment of wrongdoers and for praise of those who do good,
Part of the "live good lives" theme is a life that gives no legitimate basis for emperors or governors to find cause for concern in Christians. It is quite possible that Paul has already died before Nero by the time these words were written, as well as that the persecution of Christians in Rome around 64-65 had already taken place. If 1 Peter were pseudonymous, written after Peter's death, then we would even have the ironic situation where Peter himself was put to death by the emperor. Mention of "Babylon" in 5:13 would then evoke the destruction of Jerusalem by Rome as well.

Whatever the answers to these questions, the admonitions to be good people under Roman rule have a richness because no Christian would have suffered under the illusion that it was always just and fair. 1 Peter urges submission to human authorities who do not as people merit such submission. At the same time, this instruction is still arguably part of the defensive strategy to fly as much as possible below the radar of hostile powers. The manner of Acts' presentation arguably also flows from this concern for Christians not to be seen as troublemakers or subversive.

These verses evoke a picture of government as one of rule to maintain social order (cf. Rom. 13:1-7). Those who do wrong, understood in general terms with which most in society would agree, must be restrained. Those who do right, again, apparently based on common understanding, should be rewarded. 1 Peter reinforces this kind of general sense of right and wrong without any apparent reference to the Jewish Law at this point.

2:15 ... because the will of God is thus: for those who do good to muzzle the ignorance of foolish people.
Such muzzling is not understood as the active pursuit of justice by God's people. Human authorities outside the household of God enact justice and reward. Rather, the message of this section seems more "passive aggressive." Those who ignorantly malign Christians will be shown to be ignorant because the good living of such believers will be beyond reproach. The good lives they live among the nations will "muzzle" the foolish slander of their detractors--if not in this life, on the Day of Overseeing.

2:16-17 As free individuals yet not using the freedom as a cover for wickedness, but as slaves of God, honor all people. Love the family [of Christian brothers and sisters]. Be fearing of God. Honor the king.
Wickedness and fleshly desires again in this section seem to be connected directly with matters of social order. Striking familiar Pauline themes, the audience is to live as free without that freedom leading to evil action (cf. Gal. 5:13). The difference from Paul is the fact that such statements do not engage the Jewish Law as Paul's do. This would be quite striking if we were only hearing Peter's voice in his most natural categories, since from all appearances he was more "conservative" than Paul on such matters. On the other hand, we might expect such an abstracted Paul from a Silas (cf. 5:12), whose categories were perhaps less concretely enmeshed in Palestinian Jewish thought.

Living as slaves of God ironically means to honor human authorities. It means to show respect for all people, even if they are unbelievers, and of course it implies loving the family of God. Once again, the injunction to honor the king is deeply ironic and/or profound, given that it was the emperor Nero who likely had Peter crucified. If 1 Peter were written after Peter's death, the implication of the injunction would be deeply profound. On the other hand, one might argue that 1 Peter would not so commend emperors as punishers of those who do wrong if in fact Peter had died at the hands of the emperor.

Membership Case Study: The Wesleyan Church

Thinking of how to set up a discussion for a seminary course that contrasts what churches require for membership and what God requires for a person to be in His Church. What do you think about this set up? ... thought it might be helpful to get feedback before it went any further.
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Protestant groups make a strong connection between their beliefs and the Bible. The sixth of the 39 articles of the Anglican Church (1563) reads that "Holy Scripture contains all things necessary to salvation, so that whatever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any one, that it should be believed as an article of the Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation." The Methodist tradition followed suit in its Disciplines (e.g., the Methodist Episcopal Church of 1784; the African Methodist Episcopal Church of 1816; etc.). And this statement made its way into the The Discipline of The Wesleyan Church as well.

In practice, however, the "reading" and "proving" of things in Scripture has resulted in an immense variety of beliefs and practices among Protestant groups. This last century has suggested some fundamental reasons why. The default mode of reading the Bible seems to be a strange mixture of anachronistic interpretation, failing to recognize differences between how the words strike us and how they would have struck their original audiences, and this largely without realizing it. A person might think they are simply believing or requiring things that can be "proved" from Scripture when in fact they may be "contemporizing" the meaning, seeing things in the text that were not originally there. Alternatively, they might apply Scriptures to today that arguably do not apply directly to our context.

The second potential misstep is one of application. For example, the Wesleyan Discipline has some general statements in relation to modesty. Although these are stated generally, fifty years ago they would have kept from Wesleyan membership a woman who did not wear long enough dresses or who cut her hair short. In conservative groups that separated from Wesleyan and other holiness churches, such requirements remain at least implicit and sometimes explicit membership requirements even today.

Can a requirement that a woman should not cut her hair or should not adorn herself with fine gold be required on the basis of Scripture? Yes, arguably they can, if one applies 1 Corinthians 11 or 1 Peter 3 directly to today. But does long hair on women or the absence of any jewelry mean the same thing today that it did in the first century? Most American and European Christians would say it does not, as is evident from the way most Christian women dress today. These are, then, potential instances where not taking into account the cultural distance between ourselves and the biblical texts has at least potentially led to misapplication of Scripture in relation to membership, even though requirements could in theory be "proved" from Scripture.

But far more requirements, ones that are considered very important to believe or do, are very difficult to prove from Scripture. The second potential misstep is one of interpretation. For example, the Wesleyan Church has struggled of late over the issue of whether to require all its members to abstain completely from alcohol. In years past, reading modern concerns into the ancient words, Wesleyans had argued that the Bible, properly understood, did not in fact allow for any drinking of alcohol. This is the dynamic we mentioned above, practiced by Christians throughout church history, of "contemporizing" the meaning of the biblical text to reinforce and embody what a particular group senses to be its identity at a particular point in time--or its sense of how the gospel plays out at a given place or time.

We do find verses that rail against the evils of drunkenness. So my forefathers and mothers extended such passages to the first drink. After all, you can never get drunk if you never take a first drink. Then they reinterpreted "naughty verses" that did not easily fit into their paradigm. We say that wine back then wasn't like the strong drink we have in our supermarkets. And maybe, just maybe, the Greek word oinos referred to unfermented wine. We find a group of people we consider scholars to go to work to see if they can finesse the evidence to support the conclusion we want them to reach.

When these sorts of dynamics first come into view, the first impulse is to adjust membership requirements to the real list, the boiled down, absolute list. So we will allow our women to cut their hair and follow their consciences as to what modesty might mean today. Perhaps we start a movement to allow our members to drink alcohol as long as they do so in moderation.

But perhaps we have still missed the underlying principle. Even if there were some bottom line set of principles that we can abstract from the concrete admonitions of Scripture, they would still have to be played out concretely in the varied contexts of today. We are often open to the idea that some biblical injunctions do not apply to today because of cultural differences--so our women may not veil themselves any more as in 1 Corinthians 11. But it is a virtual certainty that there will also be things we cannot do today that they could do in biblical times, playing out the cultural principle. It is thus possible that there are modern contexts where it is not appropriate for Christians to drink, even though believers could in Bible times. There will likely be things that Christians in New Zealand or Nicaragua should not do that American Christians can... and visa versa.

Our goal cannot be, in the end, to model church membership on all the exact specifics of the way some portion of those in the Bible looked or even believed! They differed from each other in how they looked and believed, in terms of all the specifics (not denying that we might find a common core among New Testament believers). By the same token, the transfer of biblical requirements to the many different contexts of today will also result in varied expectations, not only meaning the differences between Singapore, Moscow, and New York City, but also the differences between New York City and a place like Marion, Indiana.

No doubt some will object strongly to the notion of membership at all. Does not God decide who is in His Church? Who are we to put requirements on others once we recognize that any list we create is bound to be laden with the idiosyncrasies of passing culture?

In many respects, this is a great thought. Would we really turn away anyone from our doors who was truly seeking God with all their heart? Don't we want to recognize humbly that we do not have a corner on God's mind and, indeed, that our tradition may not be correct on everything?

On the other hand, whoever preaches, whoever teaches, whoever has a "word from the Lord" is going to make truth claims. At some point, we will find disagreement among those who call themselves God's children. Groups meet together because they have some common vision or understanding, something that binds them. A group that was non-committal on everything about which Christians disagree would be a truly bland group indeed, with little to teach and little to do. Church groupings embody a kind of vitality that a vanilla, boiled down core could never have.

And in practice, few of us are going to go start--or attend--a house church. That means we are stuck with existing churches and denominations. And even non-denominational churches stand within traditions. They will almost certainly baptize in a certain way, preach that you should or should not do certain things. Do they believe in speaking in tongues or not? Do they believe in eternal security or not? What do they think evangelism means? How is the church's leadership structured? Answers to these sorts of questions identify the influences of Christian traditions on a church, whether it is connected to other churches or not.

So if there are clear limits to the churches in which we find ourselves, then in practice we simply do not have the authority to decide fully who can be a member of our church and who cannot. These are more givens. The vast majority of believers are located in specific churches in specific denominations and traditions with specific understandings. This will never go away, no matter how much momentum the house church movement gains.

A second practicality has to do with leadership. It is a wonderful theory to consider anyone in your church a member who attends and makes some sort of confession of Christian faith. But who do you allow to lead the church? Who can bring a word to the congregation and who will steer those words when they seem to go off track? If a group holds certain beliefs or practices dear as central to their identity, how will they keep them from disappearing when individuals from other traditions start worshipping with them or broader cultural influences take hold? Should they even be worrying about such things?

The title of this piece proclaimed it a case study in local church membership, based on The Wesleyan Church. This church has been wrestling with these sorts of issues now for a couple decades. On the one hand, it was earlier a denomination of relatively small churches, and small churches hold their unique identities well. Membership requirements were extensive, delving into the minutia of a believer's life and playing out various artifacts of its nineteenth century origins, things like prohibitions on dancing or playing cards.

The last few decades have seen a pruning of some of these many particularities, sometimes because the general populace--including church leaders--had come to ignore them. What is the point of having a statement about not going to movies when your general officials themselves go to movies? It trivializes the instructions we do value. At some points changes were made because of increased maturity in biblical understanding. For example, the New Testament does not equate the Jewish Sabbath with Sunday, so there is no biblical basis for prohibiting a Christian from buying and selling on Sunday (though ironically we might have been justified in forbidding it on Saturday).

In recent times, however, a point of real growth has taken place because of the dynamics of our larger churches. These churches have attracted many believers from other traditions. They worship with us. They give tithes and offerings to us. They are clearly believers. Will we really tell them that they are not members of our church because they drink moderately, which is clearly allowed biblically? Will we keep them from voting on whether to start a Christian school because they believe a person cannot lose their salvation--especially when they want to give $10,000 toward that new wing?

This tension has caused some changes in the way The Wesleyan Church structures its membership. At the dawn of the twenty-first century, it is impossible to claim that only those who look, believe, and behave the way we do are truly Christians. Clearly there are many believers out there who are our brothers and sisters but who simply disagree with us on the particulars of our faith and practice. They are part of God's Church, but history has left it difficult for them to be members of my church. How can a tradition, embodied in a local church, remain true to its identity as a witness to a certain understanding, and yet acknowledge all those who truly confess faith within its halls to be Christians?

The Wesleyan Church has struggled with this tension. Its current solution is not perfect, but it is an honorable attempt to be faithful to these two principles. On the one hand, it has what it calls "community" membership. In theory, anyone who confesses faith in Christ and manifests the most basic common understandings of what that means in belief and practice, can be such a member. These individuals fully participate in the life of the local congregation as members.

On the other hand, we have another category called "covenant" membership. It is identification with the Wesleyan tradition and the conglomeration of churches that form The Wesleyan Church. It pertains to the highest level of leadership in the local church as well as representation to bodies beyond the local church.

The matter of alcohol is a case in point. There are many American Christians who have a vibrant faith yet drink moderately. The Wesleyan Church, however, has historically chosen to be abstinent as a statement against the consequences that often result from drinking in broken lives and uncontrolled actions. And so we now have community members who drink moderately, while Wesleyan leadership binds itself--beyond the biblical requirements--not to drink at all.

As the world "flattens," it becomes increasingly hard for Christian traditions to separate themselves from one another and go off to their own little enclaves. The result is that our children know Christians from other denominations and fellowships. Indeed, they know people from other religions. We will increasingly have to defend our specific identities in ways we did not fifty years ago. And each group will have to work out how to be who they are without denying that there are other believers out there with significantly different understandings and practices--with all of us looking at the same Bible.

MDIV Seminary Classes Begin!

July 1st was the legal beginning. October 2 is the public beginning. Today is the practical beginning! The first MDIV class begins today with 30 students, which was our goal for this first class.

The first class is called Pastor, Church, and World. It is, first of all, an orientation to the degree and the unique way we are going about the MDIV. On Wednesday morning, for example, several of us (Bible, theology, and church history profs) are going to dramatize the process for the iconic Integration Paper, which runs throughout each of the courses. You take a pastoral issue and run it through the Bible, theology, and church history to end up with a pastoral theology of the issue.

The course also includes a number of pastoral self-assessments and addresses the pastor as a person. They're reading books like

• William Willimon, Pastor: The Theology and practice of Ordained Ministry
• Henri Nouwen, In the Name of Jesus
• Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together
• Stephen Seamands, Ministry in the Image of God
• Reggie McNeal, Practicing Greatness

Sermon Starters: "Sticky Christians"

Preaching tomorrow. Here are some notes others can improve on, if they feel led.

[Now it was yesterday. Here's the podcast if you're interested in listening]

Supporting Text: Genesis 41:1-16
Key Text: 1 Peter 2:11-17

Introduction

• People like me shouldn't be allowed to own houses.
• I don't mean that Christians should be irritating (several church members mentioned by name as examples... just kidding ;-).
• Larry Osborne's Sticky Church
• God made Joseph a sticky person of God.
• Key Text: "Live such good lives among the nations that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us" (mostly TNIV).

1. Not Everyone Sticks

• Context of 1 Peter: "though they accuse you"
• 3:15-16, not about apologetics but testifying to faith while on trial
• Scot McKnight: a "defensive strategy"
• Be careful about applying the specifics of 1 Peter to today.
• 1 Peter 4:17-19--judgment begun with the household of God...
• 1 Peter--slave masters who don't stick; husbands who don't stick
• Not everyone will stick, and it's a mystery why some do and some don't.
• Movies where it doesn't all work out...
• Our job is to be faithful.

2. Abstain from Sticky Wickets

• What in the world is a sticky wicket?
• "Abstain from fleshly desires" (2:11)
• DeNeff has been preaching on this topic, so I'd better not say much.
• Cover the pitch at night so it doesn't get wet in the first place (stay out of sticky situations)
• KJV of 1 Thess. 5:22 "abstain from all appearance of evil"--the old timers were wrong on the meaning of the verse but mostly right in the application--don't play with fire
• Pray!
• Practice Batting (just say no)
• Reset the wicket
• Practice Bowling (Virtue as a habit, practicing the virtue--footnotes to DeNeff)

3. How to Be Sticky

• Respect everyone (you know the drill)
• Love fellow believers (not necessarily "like")
• Fear God
• Submit to human authority (including the emperor)
• This last admonition is all the more striking since Peter died at the hands of the emperor.
• Pray!
• Practice batting
• Reset the wicket
• Practice bowling

4. Conclusion

• Jerry Falwell and Larry Flynt
• What am I going to do about it?

1 Faith, Evidence, and Biblical Scholarship

The potential beginning of this possible booklet is coming into view. Here's my thought for the first section. Drafts of subsequent sections include...

2. Biblical Hermeneutics
3. The Old Testament Canon
4. Genres in the Pentateuch
5. Critical Issues in the Pentateuch
6. Critical Issues in the Historical Books
7. The Poetic Sub-Genre
8. Critical Issues in the Psalms
9. Critical Issues in Wisdom Literature
10. Critical Issues in Isaiah
11. Critical Issues in the Other Prophets 1
12. Critical Issues in the Other Prophets 2
__________
The issues of this booklet have been the source of great controversy in the past. Interestingly, the controversy has died down quite a bit these last thirty years or so, even in evangelical circles. The focus among evangelicals turned much more to soul winning and growing the church in the eighties and nineties. Then this decade has seen a resurgence of interest in serving the world, ministering to the poor and needy worldwide.

To many of our youth, perhaps even our pastors, these issues may seem very foreign, things they've never heard about. In some ways, they seem so tangent to doing the work of the ministry. I personally find them largely tangential to hearing God speak through the Bible. It seems to me a minister should have heard of them, but should not spend too much time worrying about them. In those instances where these issues have come up, young ministry students often say things like, "Who cares who the author was--the message is true."

Hiatuses of this sort provide rare opportunities for reflection and potential reassessment. Was the fervor and zeal of past evangelicals warranted? If it was for its time, is it still warranted? Why did they respond so vigorously? What was going on historically and sociologically at the time? A few decades can potentially bring a clarity those in the middle of battle did not have at the time.

On the other hand, of late we have also seen a revived defense of traditional evangelical concerns in some circles as well. While evangelicalism was busy growing the church, some of its children went to seminary and got doctorates in a context where they were not as pressured to come to a particular conclusion on these issues. In the context of that freedom, some of them found ways to reconcile their faith with certain elements of broader biblical scholarship. Some traditional evangelicals have suddenly found scholars in their midst who are evangelicals but who do not draw as rigid boundaries as were sacrosant in some circles at one time.

My goal in this booklet, in addition to making sure ministers have at least heard of these issues, is to try to find a middle way of faith that respects both what the late Robert Webber called "traditional" and what he called "younger" evangelicals (The Younger Evangelicals 2002). Obviously there are many younger evangelicals with traditional views and there are older evangelicals who hold broader views than some of their contemporaries. Indeed, it is clear that these categories are biased toward the younger evangelicals, one of which I would consider myself.

But my goal is not to try to convert either "traditional" or "younger" evangelicals to a particular position on specific issues. The middle way I seek is not a particular position on these issues but a general attitude toward them in relation to faith. First, I am urging honesty in relation to the evidence. Most of us, including myself, usually think we are more objective than we actually are. Objectivity is often best found in the conflict of opposing views. Although the internet age has made it more and more difficult, it has often been easy enough for "conservative" and "liberal" alike to surround themselves with those who agree with some supposed party line. Objectivity is difficult to find in such enclaves.

Whatever we might disagree with in postmodern trends, the overall climate has drawn our attention to the fundamental role faith inevitably plays in our understanding of reality. X does not always mark the spot. In a world where we admit the evidence is less conclusive than the previous age assumed, we realize it is not irrational to take a faith position even when the evidence does not currently seem in our favor.

This situation potentially gives us great freedom. We do not need to skew the evidence in order to take a position that is more possible than probable. Although others may disagree, I have long felt that scholars of both conservative and liberal stripe sometimes confuse what it is possible to argue for and what is a more probable reading of the evidence. In a postmodern age, we can be up front about our presuppositions and need not pretend that the evidence is always in favor of the positions we take.

An even more important development in twentieth century thinking is the realization that, regardless of the origins and history of a text, meaning is ultimately a function of a person hearing or reading it. If we reflect on this phenomenon a while, it may eventually transform our perspective on these sorts of issues. Why has scholarship these last two centuries, both conservative and liberal alike, spent so much time arguing over meanings the text had in the past when in order for it to be God's word today, it must have an inspired meaning today?

What a tremendous irony! Certainly Christianity will not have much credibility if it claims the Bible was not also God's word in the past. New religions that claim to have timeless truth but that only started a few years ago have never been very credible. But it seems peculiar that we have expended so much time and energy questing after meanings of the past when we need a word from God today.

So we hope in the next few pages to cover some of the basic issues that have been raised these last two centuries in biblical scholarship. We believe a minister should at least be aware that they exist. We wish to respect those who take varied positions on them, while trying to be as honest as we can be about the way the issue seems to lie evidentially. We presuppose Christian faith, but do not insist that faith necessarily requires a specific position on every issue.

Again, we believe that what is important to hear the books of the Bible as Christian Scripture is to read them with Christian eyes. It is not necessarily to read them in their original meanings, although these meanings were also surely God's speakings to ancient peoples and situations too. It is thus Isaiah read through Christian eyes, assisted by the Holy Spirit, that is God's word for us today. The process by which Isaiah reached its current form, whatever it was, was surely filled with inspiration as well, perhaps with God speaking to more than one ancient individual along the way. But coming to a firm conclusion on these sorts of issues will not necessarily help us hear God's word in this text.

And so it is with a spirit of faith that we proceed through these issues. These sorts of issues have been called "critical" issues in the past. No doubt some in the past used this term to suggest that other scholarship was uncritical, that is, not objective. The historical critical method was thus promoted as an approach that was really interested in the truth, as opposed to those who disagreed. That sort of hostile bias was no doubt part of the reason fundamentalists and evangelicals fought so vehemently against such claims that very often were hostile to faith. As we said earlier, we hope that the current climate and hiatus from such battles might make it possible for us to be critical thinkers about these issues and full of faith, regardless of our specific conclusions.

11 Critical Issues in the Other Prophets 2

And now the second installment to finish out critical issues in the other prophets. Previous posts in this series include:

1. Faith, Evidence, and Biblical Scholarship
2. The Old Testament Canon
3. Genres in the Pentateuch
4. Critical Issues in the Pentateuch
5. Critical Issues in the Historical Books
6. The Poetic Sub-Genre
7. Critical Issues in the Psalms
8. Critical Issues in Wisdom Literature
9. Critical Issues in Isaiah
10. Critical Issues in the Other Prophets 1

And now, the other prophets, again...
_______
Christian Interpretation
From the time of the exile on, we are not surprised to find an increasing expectation that, one day, God would restore the fortunes of Israel. One day, a king from the line of David would rise again. Not all Jewish literature in the centuries after exile necessarily had such an expectation, but some of the post-exilic material in the prophets understandably does.

One critical issue in the prophets is material about such a coming king that appears in the writings of prophets who lived prior to the exile (e.g., Micah 5:2; Isa. 23:5-6). Some scholars see this material as part of the post-exilic editing of the prophet, since such predictions would have made little sense when there was actually a king ruling on the throne. Traditionally, of course, such statements have been read as centuries long anticipations of Jesus. Certainly one's presuppositions about the supernatural can come into play in one's conclusions--is it possible for a person to see the future so far in advance? At the same time, one might believe in prophecy and yet still conclude that it is more likely this material comes from after the exile.

The Christian belief that Jesus is enthroned as cosmic Lord at God's right hand in heaven is a significant upgrade from the prophetic sense that a great human king would once more assume Israel's throne. For example, Micah 5:2-4 predicts the return of a presumably human descendant of David who will restore the boundaries of Israel. It does not seem likely that anyone prior to the first century AD would have understood this verse in relation to a Messiah who had come to Bethlehem from heaven.

Indeed, the imagery in Micah of a ruler arising from Bethlehem need not even be taken originally in reference to the location of the king's birthplace. One might easily read it as a statement of the lineage of the king. In that case we find at least two possible shifts in the Christian reading of this passage in Matthew 2:6 from its original meaning. The one is its application to Jesus, who at least initially is a far different kind of king that Micah had in mind (suffering, cosmic). The second is taking the verse as an indication of birth location rather than general lineage.

Those New Testament authors who quote from the prophetic writings thus continue to read verses at varying removes from their original contexts. One of the easiest examples of this dynamic is Matthew 2:15's use of Hosea 11:1. Hosea 11:1 in its original context talks about how God brought Israel out of Egypt in the Exodus but that Israel then turned to other gods and did not serve Yahweh. Matthew strikingly lifts the words "out of Egypt I called my son" out of the verse and reads it in relation to Jesus returning from Egypt as a child after those seeking to kill him had died.

A reading of prophetic texts in greater continuity with the original meaning is Hebrews' and Paul's use of the new covenant concept in Jeremiah 31:31-34 (38:31-34 in the Greek Old Testament). The passage originally is a somewhat poetic prediction of the eventual restoration of Israel after its captivity in Babylon. Hebrews and Paul's understanding is in continuity with this anticipation but it is also "fuller" and richer. For Hebrews, the law written on our hearts is mediated by the Holy Spirit dwelling inside us, and in Paul and Luke the new covenant is inaugurated by Jesus' blood. Jeremiah knows none of these specifics, but provides a general framework into which the "fuller sense" of these early Christians fit easily.

Composition
We encounter the same sorts of issues with sources and editing in the other prophets as we do in Isaiah and other books. Did, for example, Jeremiah undergo some editing by "Deuteronomists," similar hands that supposedly edited Deuteronomy and the historical books? Did Amos and Hosea get edited in the southern kingdom after being directed toward the northern kingom? The reasoning behind such suggestions, whether they be true or not, are tensions between material that obviously fits the situation of the prophet and then other material that seems anachronistic or in tension with other things the prophet says.

For example, some scholars suggest that Micah 4-5 date to the period after the exile and 6-7 even later. Micah himself lived in the 700s BC. Zechariah 1-8 are sometimes called "First Zechariah," since it seems to go together as a coherent book. Then the tone and subject matter changes significantly in chapters 7-8, again leading some scholars to consider it from a different setting. Each individual will have to decide what they think of such suggestions.

Zechariah 9-14 and Malachi seem to be in a slightly different situation from other suggestions about sources and such. This material appeared at the end of scrolls of "The Twelve," which we think of as the Minor Prophets. But it is debated whether the name of a prophet actually appears in any of these chapters. Malachi in Hebrew simply means "my messenger," and Zechariah is not mentioned anywhere in what now appears as Zechariah 9-14.

Some scholars thus suggest that the prophecies from Zechariah 9 to Malachi 4 were originally a somewhat miscellaneous collection of prophecies at the end of scrolls containing the so called minor prophets. At the same time, the material of Malachi does hang together under the heading "oracle of the Lord to Israel through my messenger" (or through Malachi). Since the New Testament never references any of this material by the names Zechariah or Malachi, it would seem as if nothing would keep a person from any of these options if one so concluded, except for tradition.

Historical Issues
One of the big issues in the prophets is whether one believes that God exists and tells people the distant future. One of the criticisms that has often been made of scholarship on the Old Testament is that some scholars do not even believe prophecy is possible. In such cases, it is little surprise they think material is late, since they do not believe someone can predict the future in the first place. Undoubtedly there is truth to this criticism. At the same time, a person might believe in the possibility of true prophecy and yet still conclude it most likely that certain material was written much later.

Another historical issue in prophecy has to do with predictions that, at least on the surface, do not seem to have come true. On the one hand, the Jews would scarcely have preserved the prophetic writings if they did not believe they had largely turned out to come to pass. Most prophetic material had to do with the immediate situation of the prophet. So in those instances when predictions were made, they were soon either verified or discounted, and Jeremiah indicates that this is the way one distinguishes a true prophet from a false one (cf. Jer. 28:8-9; Deut. 18:22). Of course, not all prophecy was predictive--much of it indicted current practices like idolatry and mistreatment of the poor, orphans, widows, and so forth.

At the same time, we do encounter instances that seem hard to reconcile with other historical material from the ancient world. Such circumstances sometimes led later interpreters to take predictions allegorically or figuratively. Another possibility is to take such predictions in relation to an age yet to come, the "end times." For example, it is difficult to reconcile Ezekiel's prediction of the fall of Tyre or that Nebuchadnezzar would conquer Egypt (Ezek. 29:8-12) with the evidence from elsewhere. Haggai 2 seems to adjust the prophecy about the splendor of the rebuilt temple in light of the fact that the temple did not turn out to be as grand as pictured in Haggai 1.

Ezekiel 40 and following similarly looks to a wondrously rebuilt temple, a prediction that we presumably need to take symbolically if we consider it still in force. The temple rebuilt in 516BC was nothing of this caliber, nor was Herod's refurbishment that began in 20BC. Given Hebrews' sense that no more animal sacrifice should take place and that the true tabernacle is in heaven, it is difficult for us as Christians now to believe that God's glory could again return to an earthly temple (cf. Ezek. 43:1-5) and thus that this prophecy could come to pass in a literal sense. Daniel 11 reads like a history of the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes IV until verse 40, where his downfall and death in the land of Israel is seemingly predicted. Again, all the indications from elsewhere are that he died elsewhere under different circumstances. Some interpreters thus relate that part of the chapter to the end times and an "antichrist" of a different age.

These are difficult issues and no doubt ingenious solutions have been offered to explain them. They raise the possibility not least that God might change His mind in response to human action, such as we see in Jonah 3-4 when Nineveh repents. However, many of these instances seem much less profound. One must either simply take by faith that there are explanations for the seeming anomalies or adjust one's sense of what inspiration entails or what the inspired meaning of Scripture is.

Jonah presents its own issues. Many interpreters suggest the story of Jonah itself was a parable or novella that was never meant to be taken as a depiction of history. At first glance it is hard to object to this suggestion, since no one would then be accusing Jonah of lying or being wrong. Jesus never suggests that the prodigal of his parable was ever a real person or that he really knew of an incident with a Samaritan near Jericho. This approach to Jonah would put it in a similar category, true but not historical

There are features of Jonah's story that are difficult from a historical standpoint. We have no record of a mass repentance and turn to Yahweh in the extensive annals and records of Nineveh from this period, capital of the Assyrian empire at the time (the same kingdom that destroyed the northern kingdom in 722BC). The idea that it would take three days to cross Nineveh also seems quite a shocking claim from an archaeological perspective (Jonah 3:3). Again, if we believe we must take Jonah historically, we are justified in believing by faith that there are explanations for such things, even if we do not know them at this point. No doubt many ingenious explanations have already been offered.

On the other hand, if a person is inclined to take the story as a parable of sorts, we have once again to deal with the fact that Jesus seems to refer to the story as historical event. Jesus in Matthew and Luke offers the sign of Jonah as the principal sign he had to offer to his detractors. Matthew 12:38-41 and Luke 11:29-32 both seem to take the Jonah story literally and historically. We thus face the same issue with Jonah that we face with the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, the Davidic authorship of the Psalms, and the Isaianic authorship of chapters 40-66. Of course even if Jonah were novelistic in nature, it is possible that the historical Jonah did have a tussle with a fish and preached with success in Nineveh.

Lamentations
Although Lamentations appears in the Writings of the Hebrew Bible (among the "five scrolls" or Tefillim), it is couched between Jeremiah and Ezekiel in the Christian Bible. It is traditionally ascribed to Jeremiah, although technically it is anonymous. Lamentations never mentions its author, although it is clearly a lament over the destruction of Jerusalem. Confer with 2 Chronicles 35:25 for the possible connection between Lamentations and the prophet Jeremiah.

Lamentations is a lovely example of artfulness in the Bible. It consists of five poems, each of which is shaped by the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. The first, second, and fourth poems are acrostics with twenty-two stanzas, each of which begins with the next letter of the Hebrew alphabet (which has 22 letters). The third has three stanzas per letter. The fifth has twenty-two stanzas, but they are not alphabetical. Psalm 119 is also an acrostic psalm.

Elmer Towns here at IWU's seminary

I can now say it! The seminary at IWU has Elmer Towns here this week teaching a class of 45 students. We now have over 200 students in the new seminary. I think the median number of students in the Association of Theological Schools is 176 or so.

He's teaching the class on, you guessed it, prayer. Lesser known is the fact that he was one of the founders of Liberty Baptist Seminary, now one of the largest seminaries in the world. A couple of side comments of advice from him were funny but that I should probably soften a bit. Basically, he said not to let traditional academics run the thing. :-)

Book Review: Richard Peace's Conversion in NT

Peace, Richard, Conversion in the New Testament: Paul and the Twelve (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999).

In this clearly written book, Richard Peace basically argues two things. First, he argues that Paul's "conversion" in Acts provides us with a basic model of the core elements in Christian conversion (11-12, 19), of truly becoming a Christian. Secondly, he argues that while the conversion of the twelve disciples involved these same elements, the dynamics of their change involved much more time and took place much more gradually (12-13). When Peace draws the implications for evangelism at the end of the book, he thus presents two models: 1) encounter evangelism, based on Paul's conversion, and 2) process evangelism, based on his sense of the conversion of the Twelve.

First, Peace looks at the accounts of Paul coming to Christ in Acts and abstracts three basic elements: 1) insight (seeing one's true state before God and who Jesus really is); 2) turning (from before to after); and 3) transformation (25-26). His chapters two through four unpack these three elements of Paul's conversion in Acts one by one. Peace considers these three elements essential to all true conversions to Christ. [1]

However, he does not believe that the way they unfold need always be the same. In the case of Paul, his conversion was an event that largely took place all at once. By contrast, Peace argues, the conversion of the disciples "took place in fits and starts over the course of their years with Jesus" (106). He spends the next six chapters analyzing the Gospel of Mark as a story showing the gradual conversion of the twelve disciples. He presents his understanding of the structure of Mark's gospel and of how the understanding of Jesus progresses as the gospel moves along.

In this review, it is these first ten chapters we want to look at. On the one hand, surely Peace has done well to outline what most will agree are usually central elements and dynamics to Christian conversion. Repentance born of insight leading to transformation seems an excellent way to conceptualize key elements you will usually observe in a human in the process of conversion.

Further, Peace's contrast between event and process will also be familiar. We observe some people who undergo some sort of dramatic turn around in a moment's time. Yet we also observe other people whose lives have changed over a much longer period. After a long and gradual process of change, they wake up one morning and say to themselves, "Wow, I'm a Christian."

What is deeply problematic about Peace's treatment is that he has almost completely overlooked the most important element in "conversion" in the New Testament, the one that stands at the very heart of Paul's own understanding of becoming a "Christian." And this element holds the potential of significantly revising Peace's presentation of the Twelve's conversion. Here we are speaking of the Holy Spirit.

At least for Paul, Acts, and Hebrews, the critical moment of getting "in" to Christ is receiving the Holy Spirit. Peace does mention transformation as a key element in conversion. And buried deep in another section of some 353 pages of text we do find a comment that comes out of the blue and disappears just as quickly, "The Holy Spirit is a key agent in conversion" (219). But Peace does not speak of the Holy Spirit in his material on transformation. And the Holy Spirit is not just a key agent in conversion. Reception of the Holy Spirit, for Paul and Luke-Acts is the defining element of conversion. [2]

Paul says in Romans 8:9 that "if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ" (TNIV). Paul calls the Holy Spirit in 2 Corinthians 5:5 an "earnest" of what is to come, just as Ephesians 1:14 calls Him an "earnest" of our inheritance. Most modern translations unpack what an "earnest" is, such as when the TNIV says the Holy Spirit is "a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come." Anyone who has purchased a house will be familiar with "earnest money," money that guarantees you are the one getting the house and that serves as a downpayment toward that purchase. The Holy Spirit thus guarantees our coming salvation from God's judgment because the Spirit is God's "seal of ownership on us" (2 Cor. 1:22). And since spirit is the "stuff" of heaven, the Holy Spirit is a "foretaste of glory divine."

The book of Acts is even starker in its Spirit-theology of conversion. The incident in Samaria in Acts 8 makes the point most clearly. Here is a group of individuals who have believed and have even been baptized in the name of Jesus (8:12). But there is a problem. They have not received the Holy Spirit and are thus not "in" yet. Peter and John come up to Samaria and lay hands on them so that they will receive the Holy Spirit. A person can receive the Spirit before they have even been baptized (Acts 10:44). A person can receive the Spirit after baptism (8:17). But unless the Holy Spirit has come, the person is not yet "converted."

From the standpoint of Acts, then, the key ingredient in conversion is neither insight, nor turning, but the transforming work of the Holy Spirit. We might speak of longer and shorter lead ups to that moment of receiving the Holy Spirit. But the book of Acts and Paul know nothing of anything but a moment of instantaneous reception of the Spirit. In the world of Luke-Acts, the disciples may be learning over the course of Jesus' ministry. But until Jesus has ascended and sent the Holy Spirit, they are not yet Christians. They are not truly "converted."

In the world of Luke-Acts, the Day of Pentecost is the beginning of all conversions. The lives of the Twelve during Jesus' earthly ministry are in that sense much like the lives of any Old Testament prophets. Until the Spirit comes on them in Acts 2, they are not yet "in" the new age. Whether Matthew and Mark have such an understanding of the disciple's pilgrimage is difficult to know, since they are largely silent on the issue. Certainly if one takes Acts 2 as a reference to a real, historical event on the Day of Pentecost, then one will adopt this view in relation to the other gospels as well. And Matthew and Mark do anticipate that Jesus will baptize with the Holy Spirit (Matt. 3:11; Mark 1:8).

I am reminded of the difference between the way we make different sounds with our mouths. There are some, like the letters r and l, that are like liquids that will continue to flow as long as you have breath. But there are others that are called "stops." These are letters like b or d. You can take as long as you like getting ready to say the letter. But you can only say it in a moment, and then it is said and done.

God can do more with His people than He did with the small portion of early Christian believers we hear about in the New Testament. To clarify the nature of conversion in the New Testament does not in itself end our discussion of how God converts people today. But it is worthwhile at least to listen to what the New Testament has to say on the topic. And for a significant portion of those writings, over half the New Testament, conversion is ultimately a matter of a moment when God's Spirit comes to inhabit that new member of the people of God.

[1] There is an important caveat in this entire discussion, one that Peace himself at least partially recognizes, and that is that the entire notion of conversion is ripe for anachronism. The very term conversion is not a New Testament one in the sense we are using it here, yet it is a major category for us. That is a recipe for reading things into the text that were not actually a part of the original meaning. Such things may be true, but we are not really getting them from the text.

Since Krister Stendahl's 1963 lectures, a vigorous debate has ensued over whether it is appropriate to call Paul's encounter with Christ a "conversion" (See Paul among Jews and Gentiles [Minneapolis: Fortress, 1976], 7-23). The general consensus, which with Peace agrees, is that the word conversion is appropriate if one is speaking of a radical change of direction or change from one group to another. However, it is highly inappropriate if one is thinking of Paul changing from one religion to another. Christianity remained a subset of Judaism throughout the period when the New Testament books were written.

[2] The only way that Peace can consider "turning," repentance, an important element of conversion for Paul is to base his camp in Acts. In terms of Paul himself, repentance is not a major category in his writings. We cannot know, of course, to what extent he may have emphasized it in his preaching, but it does not function prominently in his letters in the New Testament. Repentance is thus a very important element in the theology of Luke-Acts, but not of Paul's letters.

Monday Blog Report

Another week, another set of blog, writing, and seminary goals.

The seminary update this week overviews spiritual formation in the MDIV curriculum at the new seminary at IWU.

For the novel in progress, now beginning chapter 4, see Fragmented Chaos. All four chapters can be bought in a Word file at CafeTutor.com for 99 cents through PayPal.

Post goals for this week are:
Tuesday--Ordination and Training (Generous Ecclesiology)
Wednesday--The Rise of the Individual (philosophy)
Friday--A Change in Direction 2 (Paul)
Saturday--Critical Issues in Daniel
Sunday--Explanatory Notes (Philippians 4:1-7)

Sunday Explanatory Notes: Philippians 3:17-21

Somewhere, scattered throughout the blog, are posts on Philippians up though 3:16. I'll gather them all together when I'm done as I have with 1 Thessalonians and Galatians.
________
3:17 Become fellow imitators of me, brothers, and be watching those who walk thus, just as you have us as a model.
It is jarring to some popular conceptions of Paul to hear the confidence he had in putting himself forward as an example of how to live. Not only does good exegesis undermine the idea that Romans 7 gives Paul's ongoing struggle with Sin. Verses such as this one show definitively that Paul considered his own pattern of life a model for his churches to emulate. "Do as I do" invites a striking examination of his own "walking" in the world.

3:18-19 for many walk with regard to whom I used to say often to you--and now I also am saying, crying--[they walk as] enemies of the cross of the Christ, whose end is destruction, whose God is the belly and [whose] glory [is] in their shame, who think earthly things.
The referent of these verses is somewhat obscure. Does Paul refer to 1) Gentile opponents to the Christ movement, 2) non-believing Jews who oppose faith in Christ, or 3) Christian Jews who disagree with Paul's way of thinking? The following verse implies that such individuals prize in some way "citizenship" on earth. This could refer to Roman citizenship or citizenship in a particular city, which would make sense given that Philippi was a Roman colony whose citizens were automatically citizens of Rome. But it might also be a dig at Jews, Christian or otherwise, who Paul sarcastically implies are too attached to the earthy Jerusalem.

On the one hand, it is easier to see Paul "crying" in relation to his own brothers in Israel than about Romans, per se (cf. Rom. 9:2-5), unless we mean to say he cries over his own difficulties. But this latter thoughts seems less likely. The mention of the "cross" of Christ reminds us of Paul's accusations of other Christians who argue over keeping the Jewish Law. Paul considers such believers to "boast in flesh" (Gal. 6:13) and want a "good showing in flesh (6:12). They do not want to be persecuted for the "cross of Christ" (6:12).

In our dating of Galatians and Philippians, Paul writes Galatians just after 1 Corinthians and only a year or two before Philippians, all while ministering in and around Ephesus. The conglomeration of themes thus would relate to considers he had particularly in this period. The fact that Philippians 3 begins with reference to the "mutilators," which we take as Christian Jews who insist on circumcision and full conversion to Judaism, it is reasonable to think at the end of the chapter that he is closing the page on this discussion.

Paul thus reasonably has Jews, Christian or otherwise, who oppose the Christ movement as he once did as a corruption of Jewish faith. The reference to the belly is opaque. Is it too far of a stretch to think of things like circumcision as part of the realm of the "belly"? Certainly it could be an allusion to food laws and table fellowship, an issue that caused significant conflict for Paul at Antioch (cf. Gal. 2).

Those Jews who glory in such "works of Law," elements of Jewish separation and distinction, were in fact glorying in things that were to their shame, in Paul's view. These individuals were rather headed for destruction, by which Paul may be thinking the judgment that will come to the living who are not in Christ when he returns to judge the world. Such individuals are thinking "earthly" rather than heavenly, or as Paul puts it in Galatians, they are enslaved to the elements of the world (e.g., Gal. 4:3, 9).

3:20 For our citizenship is in the heavens, from which also we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ,
If this line of thinking is correct, then Paul is contrasting citizenship in the heavens with those who overly prize the earthly Jerusalem. Again, we find in Galatians a similar theme as Paul contrasts the heavenly and the earthly Jerusalem (Gal. 4:25-26). At the same time, the imagery of citizenship would have been readily understood by the Philippians, for the city of Philippi was a Roman colony. Roman colonies had the highest status of any cities in the Roman world. Their citizens were automatically citizens of Rome, although not everyone that lived in a city was considered a city of it. The official language of the city was Latin, even though Paul easily can write to them in Greek.

The model of living in a city at somewhat remove from the place of citizenship is apt here. Roman citizens might not live in Rome and yet have citizenship based there. In another way, Jews might in a sense be citizens of Jerusalem, even though they live in the Diaspora. So believers are citizens of heaven, even though they are located on earth.

The notion of a Savior coming from the place of citizenship might also easily have Roman overtones. The Roman emperor Augustus, for example, was fashioned as the Savior of the Roman world. Whether Paul's eschatology has undergone any modifications in Philippians or not, he still expects Christ to return to earth at some point bringing salvation to those who believe and destruction to those who do not.

The question of whether Paul also implies that we will at some point go to our "home city" in heaven is a matter of some debate. Some scholars would argue quite strongly that Paul does not in any way picture believers "going to heaven" in some way. However, it is hard to imagine what it might mean to die and go to be with Christ (Phil. 1:23-24) if it does not picture going to heaven in some way, at least in the time prior to the resurrection, assuming Paul still has a conventional understanding of resurrection as something that takes place at some point in the future rather than at death.

3:21 ... who will transform the body of our humility into the same form as the body of his glory according to the working that makes him able even to subject all things to himself.
The time that Paul has in mind is apparently the point when Christ as Savior returns from heaven in salvation and destruction. The verse thus speaks directly of the transformation that will happen to the earthy bodies of those believers who are alive at the point of Christ's arrival or parousia. This is the sort of transformation Paul discusses in 1 Corinthians 15 that there will happen to the dead in Christ. Whether 2 Corinthians 5 implies Paul developed to come to see this transformation taking place at death is a matter of debate.

Our current earthly bodies are thus "bodies of humility" or perhaps even humilation, thus reinforcing the sense that it is foolish to focus on matters of the "belly" or the foreskin. The verse also implies that the glorified body of believers will be the same as the glorified body that Christ received at the point of his resurrection. It is in this glorified state that Christ will eventually see everything subjected to him (e.g., 1 Cor. 15:25-28).

10 Critical Issues in the Other Prophets 1

Previous posts in this series include:

1. Faith, Evidence, and Biblical Scholarship
2. The Old Testament Canon
3. Genres in the Pentateuch
4. Critical Issues in the Pentateuch
5. Critical Issues in the Historical Books
6. The Poetic Sub-Genre
7. Critical Issues in the Psalms
8. Critical Issues in Wisdom Literature
9. Critical Issues in Isaiah

Too much involved in this one for me to crank it all out at once, so here's the first installment.
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We best begin to locate the prophetic writings of the Old Testament by dividing them into those prophets who lived before the exile of Judah to Babylon (586BC), those who date from the time of the exile, and those who were "post-exilic," who prophesied after the exile. Here we are speaking of the time when the prophet himself lived, in distinction from when the books we now have in the Old Testament were written or reached something like their "canonical" form, the way they appear in the Bible.

Amos and Hosea prophecied not only before the exile of the southern kingdom, but before the destruction of the northern kingdom in 722BC. They are almost unique among the prophets because they prophesied to the northern kingdom, although their prophesies were preserved in the southern kingdom. Some scholars argue that the form of Amos and Hosea we now have shows the hands of editors in the southern kingdom. Jonah was also prophet in the northern kingdom who lived before the exile (cf. 2 Kings 14:25). However, the book of Jonah itself does not include any prophecy to the northern kingdom, since it concerns prophecy to Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrian kingdom.

Isaiah, Micah, Nahum, and Zephaniah prophesied around the time when the Assyrians destroyed the northern kingdom of Israel (722BC). Nahum in particular celebrates the justice of the northern kingdom's destruction. Habakkuk and Jeremiah then lived just before the time of the Babylonian invasion. The first wave of captives were taken to Babylon in 597BC.

Ezekiel and Obadiah then lived and prophesied at the beginning of the exile. Ezekiel and Daniel are both figures located not in Jerusalem or Judea, but prophesying in Babylon itself. The book of Daniel appears in the Writings rather than the prophets, and we will cover its issues in a later section. If one accepts the "three" Isaiah hypothesis, then the middle chapters of Isaiah (40-55) would also date from the last part of the exile in Babylon.

Haggai and Zechariah lived in the time just after return from exile (538BC) and urged the rebuilding of the temple, which took place in 516BC. If one accepts the three Isaiah hypothesis, Isaiah 56-66 would also date to this period. Then Malachi and perhaps Joel would date from the 400s BC.

Textual Criticism of the Old Testament
The branch of biblical studies that tries to determine the way the original texts of the Bible were worded is called textual criticism. It is surprising, even disturbing sometimes to some the first time they hear that we have none of the original documents of the Bible. For those who deal in ancient documents, however, it is exciting to know how many ancient copies of the biblical books that have actually survived. Things fall apart, and we thankfully have a wealth of copies of the Bible in comparison to what has survived of all other ancient writings.

Over a hundred years ago when archaeologists began to discover very old copies of the New Testament, many Christians were disturbed to find significant differences at some points, like the fact that the oldest copies of Mark did not have Mark 16:9-20. But these differences did not call into question the vast majority of the way the Bible had been printed over the years. As we would expect, there were those who reacted vehemently against these discoveries because it raised questions where all had previously been assumption. [1] They were caught off guard and, indeed, many of the scholars who raised such issues were hostile to faith.

But by the time the Dead Sea Scrolls came around in the late 1940s, the idea that the original text of the Old Testament might have differed a little from the text Christians bought in the Christian book store was not as shocking. These scrolls, which mostly date to the century before Christ, were about a thousand years older than any copies of the Old Testament we had at the time. For the most part, they confirmed the way the Old Testament had been printed in the Bibles of the day. In some other cases, the Dead Sea Scrolls pointed to alternative wordings we had known about, but had not used.

For example, the Old Testament was translated into Greek in the Egyptian city of Alexandria from around 250BC to just before the time of Christ. We informally call this Greek translation, the Septuagint, based on a legend about 70 Jews who translated the Pentateuch. We had known for years that this Greek translation sometimes was worded differently than the Masoretic text, the medieval text from about AD900 that had been used as the basis for printed Bibles since the invention of the printing press. In some places, the Dead Sea Scrolls have confirmed that the Septuagint was actually more original than the Hebrew text that stood behind our Bibles at the time.

For example, the King James Version of Deuteronomy 32:8 reads, "When the most High divided to the nations their inheritance... he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel." Yet we had always known that the Greek Old Testament of this verse said that God set the boundaries according to the "sons of God" rather than of Israel. The Dead Sea Scrolls confirm that the original reading of Deuteronomy was likely "sons of God," referring to the spiritual powers worshipped by other nations. We have already mentioned the likely henotheism of ancient Israel in passages like Psalm 82. In any case, we can see why some rabbinic Jews might have wanted to alter the text.

In a few rare cases, the Dead Sea Scrolls have presented us with texts we had never known before. For example, the transition from 1 Samuel 10:27 and chapter 11 had often puzzled interpreters. Where did this Nahash the Ammonite come from in 1 Samuel 11, showing up unannounced. The Dead Sea Scrolls have a paragraph after 10:27 that helps explain, now included in the New Revised Standard Version:

"Now Nahash, king of the Ammonites, had been grievously oppressing the Gadites and the Reubenites. He would gouge out the right eye of each of them and would not grant Israel a deliverer. No one was left of the Israelites across the Jordan whose right eye Nahash, king of the Ammonites, had not gouged out. But there were seven thousand men who had escaped from the Ammonites and had entered Jabesh-gilead."

If this paragraph is original, it would fill a gap in the existing storyline.

The reason we are addressing the textual criticism of the Old Testament in this section is the fact that the Greek text of Jeremiah presents some very interesting and significant variations from the Hebrew. The Greek text is about an eighth shorter than the Hebrew text as we have it. Several passages are missing. Also interestingly, the oracles against the nations, which appear in chapters 46-51 in our Bibles, are inserted after 25:13 in the Greek. One of the fragments of Jeremiah found at Qumran seems to confirm at long last that the Greek is probably the more original version.

These sorts of findings cause us to sit back and reflect on the way we approach the biblical text. The initial reaction in such cases is often to deny a new idea without truly examining it. Significant intellectual energy might be applied to finding ways to finesse the evidence to make a different interpretation plausible. And maybe in some cases, these alternative explanations are correct. It is telling, however, that what is initially troubling to one generation often poses no issues to the next, implying that the initial reaction had more to do with emotion and perceived insecurity rather than substance. Textual criticism, which was a big issue to some in the late 1800s was not a big issue for their grandchildren in the 1900s.

So evangelicals came to grips with textual criticism long ago. Anyone who uses the New International Version or the English Standard Version implicitly accepts the science of textual criticism as valid. But as one person said, we have to wonder about an approach to the Bible that puts a premium on an inerrant text we do not have and has no problem with an "errant" text we do have! [2] Apparently God was not concerned to correct anyone about the order of the text of Jeremiah these last few thousand years, which implies that He is not as concerned with the minute details of the biblical text as some think He is.

There are popular legends you sometimes hear about the care with which the Bible was copied. But these stories come from the medieval period and do not seem to apply to the time of Christ or Old Testament times. All the evidence from the first three centuries of Christianity, as well as the formative period of the Hebrew Bible, seems to point rather to a kind of fluidity to these texts. Indeed, it is difficult to decide what it might mean to speak of the "original manuscript" of a text like Isaiah or Jeremiah. A good argument can be made that they were more like living oracles, snowballs that started rolling through Israel's history with core prophetic material from the prophets themselves, then gathering material for a century or two after the prophet himself had passed from the scene.

A good argument can be made that God inspired reinterpretations and expansions of them for later generations. Then at some point they reached certain roughly fixed forms that were passed along as somewhat independent traditions of how the texts read. Some would strongly object to this model. For them it is very important to think that Jeremiah himself either wrote the book in its current form or that he was still alive to approve most of it in this form even if someone else might have edited the material together. Each will have to make up his or her own mind.

However, as we mentioned in the Introduction, regardless of what the biblical texts meant in the past, the crucial moment for them as Scripture for me and for you is now, as I read it. Do I need to know the original meaning of Jeremiah to hear God speak throught it? Do I even need to know the textual history or the original wording of Jeremiah to hear God speak through it? Surely the answer to these questions is a resounding "No!" From a pragmatic perspective, very few people have heard God's word through these texts if we can only hear God through the original meaning.

This is why I do not think it should bother us if in fact we have been looking at a "less than original" form of Jeremiah--or the ending of Mark--all these centuries. God did not and does not need the original wording to speak to us. And it is why I believe on a broader scale that we should be open to any scholarship that is honestly trying to hear these texts in their original contexts, even if some of their suggestions are initially unnerving. A case can be made that some evangelicals have made a cottage industry out of trying to put out perceived fires set by new evidence, a kind of well established coping mechanism. In an age that emphasizes authenticity, this type of scholarship may not yield much fruit among those who might otherwise believe.

If we accept that we can read the text Christianly, regardless of its so called original meaning, the preoccupations of twentieth century evangelical scholarship become largely tangential. Again, this is not to say evangelical scholarship has been wrong all the time, only that it has often seemed blatantly biased in its treatment of evidence rather than even attempting transparency in its motivations. God has and does speak through the biblical text whether a person has studied these issues or not. The New Testament itself models this approach, as we have seen, for its authors heard God speaking in the Old Testament text often despite its original contexts.

[1] Even today, there are a few Christians who might call themselves "King James only," an artifact of a century ago.

[2] Although I personally object to using the word "errant" of the text we do have. It is no error when something attains its intended standard.

Friday Paul: A Change in Life Direction 1

So Paul was a Jew, a descendant of Abraham. He tells us he was from the tribe of Benjamin and a "Hebrew of the Hebrews" (Phil. 3:5). By this expression he meant to say not only that Aramaic was a first language for him, but that he was raised on the values of "purist" Jerusalem society. These were the ones who thought they did Judaism the right way, not like those "Diaspora," scattered Jews. They spoke Greek at best and at worst spoke whatever obscure local language was the native tongue where they lived. [1]

In Philippians 3:5, he goes on to say that he had a Pharisaic approach to the Jewish Law before he believed. [2] Indeed, he says in 3:6 that he was faultless when it came to the kind of righteousness you could have in relation to the Jewish Law. This is a statement we are generally programmed to skip over. What? Paul says he was blameless in some way in relation to his Law-keeping before he believed on Christ? Never noticed that before!

If we can get beyond the kinds of things people say so often about Paul and actually listen to what he has to say, we will soon be struck by a number of things. If we let him construct his sense of himself, both before and after he believed, we will not likely conclude that he was the kind of guy who likely felt like a moral failure before he turned to Christ. Nor did he think of himself as a slave to sin after he followed Jesus. [3]

For example, in Philippians 3, as in 2 Corinthians 11, Paul does not discuss his past as a time of failure. Instead, he says that "whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ" (3:7, TNIV). He calls his Jewish badges of honor matters of potential "gain," not illustrations of his past sinfulness or moral failure.

So a little bit later on, when he says, "forgetting what is behind," he is not forgetting all his past failures. He has said nothing of the sort. He is forgetting things that, from a certain human perspective, might have been quite impressive indeed! The problem is that these things did not make him righteous enough to demand God's favor. And besides, they paled next to the power of Christ's faithful death and resurrection.

Romans 7:14-25 is often taken as an obvious indication not only of Paul's past moral struggle, but indeed of the struggle he continued to have with sin as a Christian. Does not Paul use the present tense when he says, "the evil I do not want to do--this I keep on doing" (7:19)? And after all, don't so many of us Christians identify with Paul's alleged struggle with sin? Do we not find ourselves often struggle to do the right thing, even though on some level we truly want to?

But our identification with these words applied to our own lives does not change what Paul meant two thousand years ago. And the broader context of Romans 7 demands we not take these words of Paul's current struggle. In the chapter before (e.g., Rom. 6:17-18), the chapter itself (e.g., Rom. 7:5-6), and in the chapter after (e.g., Rom. 8:1-4) Paul urges that Christians are no longer slaves to sin but are now slaves to righteousness.

The majority of Pauline scholars thus now acknowledge that Paul is giving a dramatic portrayal in Romans 7:14-25 of those who want to do the good of the Jewish Law but are unable because they do not have the Holy Spirit to empower them. It is irrelevant that he is speaking in the present tense, since you would expect a person to use the present tense when playing out a hypothetical. In short, you would have to rip this chapter from its context to make of it what so many Christian readers today do.

Some scholars have acknowledged that Paul is not talking about his present in these verses, but suggested he is remembering the struggle of his past. All we can say is that Paul almost never gives off that sort of message when he talks about his past. We find nothing of this tone in Philippians 3 or 2 Corinthians 11. Words like "repentance" and "forgiveness" do not show up much at all in Paul's writings, as some fossil of former worries. At the same time, from his earliest letters he urges his churches to be blameless in their lives (e.g., 1 Thess. 5:23; Phil. 1:10-11) and is completely comfortable to suggest they follow his example (e.g., 1 Thess. 1:6-7; Phil. 3:17). [4]

No, if we want a picture of what Paul was like before he believed on Christ, we would more profitably read the Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector in Luke 18:9-14. It is not hard to hear the same Paul who exerted such strong authority over his churches saying in his former life, "God, I thank you that I am not like other people--robbers, evildoers, adulterers"--and these lawless Christians. Is not his, "Hebrew of the Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; ... as for righteousness based on law, faultless" similar to the Pharisee in Luke who says, "I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get" (Luke 18:12).

At the same time, we must be very careful not to make blanket assumptions about Judaism or even about Pharisees in Jesus' day. The caricatures that work so well in popular preaching have also fed holocausts and crusades from time to time in history. We are so used today to Christianity and Judaism being separate religions that it is easy to forget that the earliest Christians were Jews and almost certainly would have continued to identify themselves as Jews to their deaths. Paul speaks of Gentile believers being "grafted into" the tree whose "natural branches remained ethnic Jews (Rom. 11:17-21). And he believes that around the time of Christ's return, the bulk of non-believing Israel will believe (Rom. 11:26).

There is a popular fiction you sometimes hear out there in preaching, that Saul was Paul's Jewish name and Paul his Christian name. But the most superficial glance at Acts dispels this idea. The book of Acts continues to call him Saul some fifteen years into his life as a Christian, only suddenly to switch to Paul while Paul is on the island of Cyprus (Acts 13:9). The best answer to the question of Paul's dual names is that one of these is his nickname, and the other part of his name as a Roman citizen.

[to be continued next Friday..., d.v.]

[1] All the while we remember that Paul was from Tarsus in the Diaspora, that he was fluent in Greek, and, indeed, that as often as not he quotes Scripture from the Greek translation even when it differs somewhat from the Hebrew.

[2] In Acts 23:6, Paul identifies himself to the Jewish ruling council, the Sandhedrin as a Pharisee in the present tense, almost thirty years after he believed in Jesus. It was acceptable for historians of the day to compose such speeches (e.g., Thucydides tells his readers as much in Pelopponesian War 1.22), so we cannot be completely sure that Paul said exactly these words. Even if he did, he was surely saying it for rhetorical effect. The position Paul takes in writings like Galatians and Romans is light years away from anything a normal Pharisee would say.

[3] In the first chapter, n.1, I mentioned that I will be mentioning the fifty or so works on Paul that a person might read to master his writings. Here we should mention one of the most important of all, in my opinion. Other than reading Paul's writings themselves, you would do well to start the quest to master Paul with the late Krister Stendahl's, "Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West," conveniently reprinted in his book, Paul among Jews and Gentiles (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1976), 78-96.

[4] The only real candidate for this argument is 1 Timothy 1:16, which calls Paul the "worst of sinners" before he believed. But as we will see in the companion volume to this book, 1 Timothy differs so significantly from Paul's earlier letters that one should not use it as the starting place or the "base camp" for understanding any aspect of Paul or his writings. And, in any case, calling oneself the worst at some point in the past, can actually serve as a badge of honor in the present, as anyone who grew up listening to conversion testimonies knows.