... continued from Monday.
_____________
So the ethic Jesus taught in relation to secular authorities was an "interim ethic," not in the sense of an ethic only for while he was on earth but only for the time before Jesus returned. There would be a time for confrontation of the worldly powers. But God would take the lead and now was not the time.
Neither Jesus nor any of the New Testament authors were addressing a situation where it was at all likely that believers would be able to transform the structures of society. The presumption of both what Jesus and the New Testament says is that you will be in the position of the weak and disempowered. Jesus' ethic is thus an ethic for the oppressed and powerless in society.
Even then, we should not assume that the specifics of the approach Jesus took at a specific time and place in history is meant to be the approach for all times and all places. Jesus largely advocated non-violent conformity to the will of the Romans. "If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles" (Matt. 5:41). "If anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well" (5:40).
Walter Wink famously suggested that these were actually actions of non-violent resistance. [1] By responding in these sorts of ways, you shame the person. "If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also" (5:39). You thus force the person to strike you back-handed, an allegedly shameful way to hit someone.
Perhaps Wink captured a valid dimension of Jesus' rhetoric. But Matthew 5 puts these comments in the category of not getting revenge. The Old Testament Law says, "Show no pity: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot" (Deut. 19:21). But Jesus says, by contrast, "do not resist an evil person" (Matt. 5:39), and the next paragraph is about loving one's enemies. The attitude Jesus advocates here is not one of defiance--not even non-violent defiance--but conformity with loving hope toward one's oppressor.
By the way, it is revealing once again that Jesus has the authority to modify Old Testament Law. The sequence in Matthew 5--"you have heard but I say"--is not simply a deepening of the law, as we saw in the previous chapter. Jesus modifies the Law in a substantial way. The Law says "Show no pity." Jesus says in effect that his "fulfilling of the Law" (Matt. 5:17), using the love commandment as the guide, shuffles and changes some of the Law. Here is another example where, at least on an individual level, the normal practice of Deuteronomy is negated. [2]
Jesus addressed a specific context in Galilee, although the Gospel of Matthew presumably wanted its audience to see this teaching as applying to them as well. However, we at least have to ask the extent to which Jesus' teaching on non-violent conformity was local or timeless and universal...
[1] E.g., Engaging the Powers.
[2] However, a key distinction is that Deuteronomy primarily targets a "civil" context. This is the context of societal justice. Jesus is addressing an individual context.
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
Book Review: Wells and Fences
I was reading this week a little in Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch's The Shaping of Things to Come. I was especially interested in the section called "Wells and Fences" (47-51). This is the place where they talk about the difference between "bounded sets" and "centered sets."
I find this an incredibly fruitful image for Christian universities and denominations. I don't think many of us like the attitude of those who are preoccupied with where the fences go, where the boundary lines are. We don't like a preoccupation with who is "in" and who is "out." Frost and Hirsch see this as the way the "attractional" church is oriented, where the goal is to get people to come into the group.
The "centered-set" approach, in the minds of Frost and Hirsch, looks at people more in terms of how far they are from the center, which in a Christian setting is Jesus. Here's how they play this idea out:
I find this an incredibly fruitful image for Christian universities and denominations. I don't think many of us like the attitude of those who are preoccupied with where the fences go, where the boundary lines are. We don't like a preoccupation with who is "in" and who is "out." Frost and Hirsch see this as the way the "attractional" church is oriented, where the goal is to get people to come into the group.
The "centered-set" approach, in the minds of Frost and Hirsch, looks at people more in terms of how far they are from the center, which in a Christian setting is Jesus. Here's how they play this idea out:
- "We believe that a centered-set church must have a very clear set of beliefs, rooted in Christ and his teaching" (48).
- "In a centered-set church it is recognized that we are all sinners... The centered-set church will see everyone as equally fallen" (49).
- "In the incarnational mode the emphasis is well and truly on a cross-cultural Go-To-Them mentality" (49).
I'm way late to the game in thinking that there is a good deal of great stuff to build on here (the book came out in 2003). I'll only throw out a few reasons why a hybrid of sorts is in order:
- Historically, Christianity has been a bounded-set. From a Pietist perspective (and to a large extent a New Testament perspective), the Holy Spirit has been the primary boundary marker.
- A more sophisticated model thus has to take into account the distinction between the so called "visible" church and "invisible" church. From a historic standpoint, there are boundaries. We just are not in a good position to know precisely what they are in terms of who is in and who is out.
- The Frost-Hirsch model also needs serious revision on two counts: 1) beliefs are a very flimsy basis on which to formulate a center, since it is the "heart" that is the center of a person's moral being and actions flow from intentions as a second order of business. Beliefs are the most insubstantial element of a person's moral make-up.
- Additionally, 2) to build the centered-set approach off a sense that we are all sinners is wrong-headed in several respects. It is not only based on a blatant misreading of the biblical texts but it flows from a mistaken moral standard of perfection in action. Purity of intention is the moral standard, not performance.
- Finally, Christianity cannot be sustained merely by "going to them." This is in part the failure of the emerging church. Without some structured organization, movements fizzle over time. The house church movement is perfectly legitimate but Christianity will not persist without more structured organizations as well.
I'll stop there. I am interested in what a hybrid might look like, one that has very general and inclusive boundaries around a center that then has very fuzzy edges. Perhaps another day...
Monday, May 14, 2012
Conflict with the State 1
Thus far in this chapter we have looked at some of the conflicts Jesus had over his authority and some of the conflicts he had over differing values. In this final section, I want to look at the way Jesus engaged the secular authorities of his day, especially the Romans. Jesus really didn't get into conflict with the powers of the "state" until the end of his earthly mission, but he had some things to say along the way.
One of Jesus' most famous sayings on this topic comes in Mark 12, when some individuals are trying to trick Jesus. They ask Jesus "Is it right to pay the imperial tax to Caesar or not?" (12:14). If Jesus says "no," they can perhaps get him in trouble with the Romans. If Jesus says "yes," then perhaps they can get him in trouble with those who think he is the messiah, the king of the Jews.
Jesus' asks to see a coin and gives his well-known response, "Give back to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's" (12:17). The saying drives a strong wedge between matters of God and matters of the secular government, as if they are two distinct kingdoms that have nothing to do with each other. Unsurprisingly, different Christian groups have seen in this response slightly different models for how Christians should engage the culture around them. [1]
Some have taken Jesus to imply a kind of isolationist position, as if Christians should not get involved in broader culture or politics. The Amish would be an extreme example of this approach, but there are Christians who refuse to vote or engage political issues today. Some Christians have traditionally been "conscientious objectors" who do not participate in the wars of a country. Those things are the realm of Caesar and a Christian should stay out of them.
The Lutheran tradition has generally taken a different tact. Jesus seems to say to pay the tax. In a fascinating story in Matthew 17:24-27, Jesus indicates that they should not have to pay the temple tax. But so that they will not cause trouble, he has him go fishing. In the mouth of the fish he catches is a four drachma coin, with which Peter pays the tax for himself and Jesus.
So the Lutheran tradition has usually taken the approach that we are in these two kingdoms at the same time. They have nothing to do with each other, and they are in conflict with each other. It is impossible to reconcile the two to each other. So our lives are full of contradictions. The lives we live in the secular world don't fit with the lives we live in the spiritual realm.
Both of the above approaches seem extreme. If we look a little more closely at what Jesus might have meant, there is first the matter of coinage and money. The world of Galilee was primarily an agrarian world and a world of trade. In our world today, we cannot escape using money. But in Jesus' world, money might easily be seen more as a foreign element, the stuff of taxes and foreign powers. The coin with Caesar's face on it has nothing to do with God. Give it back to Caesar.
The words of John 19:11 to Pilate capture the situation well: "You would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above." In the background of Jesus' conformist approach was surely the belief that God was going to come and judge the Romans in due time. As Paul would later put it, "What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? ... God will judge those outside" (1 Cor. 5:12-13). [2]
So the ethic Jesus taught in relation to secular authorities was an "interim ethic," not in the sense of an ethic only for while he was on earth but only for the time before Jesus returned...
[1] The classic here is H. Richard Niebuhr's Christ and Culture. There have been a number of responses in recent days, including D. A. Carson and others***
[2] Interestingly, Paul goes on in 1 Corinthians 6:2-3 to indicate that, when Christ returns, we will take part in the judgment of the world. It's just not a function he saw Christians performing in the meantime.
One of Jesus' most famous sayings on this topic comes in Mark 12, when some individuals are trying to trick Jesus. They ask Jesus "Is it right to pay the imperial tax to Caesar or not?" (12:14). If Jesus says "no," they can perhaps get him in trouble with the Romans. If Jesus says "yes," then perhaps they can get him in trouble with those who think he is the messiah, the king of the Jews.
Jesus' asks to see a coin and gives his well-known response, "Give back to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's" (12:17). The saying drives a strong wedge between matters of God and matters of the secular government, as if they are two distinct kingdoms that have nothing to do with each other. Unsurprisingly, different Christian groups have seen in this response slightly different models for how Christians should engage the culture around them. [1]
Some have taken Jesus to imply a kind of isolationist position, as if Christians should not get involved in broader culture or politics. The Amish would be an extreme example of this approach, but there are Christians who refuse to vote or engage political issues today. Some Christians have traditionally been "conscientious objectors" who do not participate in the wars of a country. Those things are the realm of Caesar and a Christian should stay out of them.
The Lutheran tradition has generally taken a different tact. Jesus seems to say to pay the tax. In a fascinating story in Matthew 17:24-27, Jesus indicates that they should not have to pay the temple tax. But so that they will not cause trouble, he has him go fishing. In the mouth of the fish he catches is a four drachma coin, with which Peter pays the tax for himself and Jesus.
So the Lutheran tradition has usually taken the approach that we are in these two kingdoms at the same time. They have nothing to do with each other, and they are in conflict with each other. It is impossible to reconcile the two to each other. So our lives are full of contradictions. The lives we live in the secular world don't fit with the lives we live in the spiritual realm.
Both of the above approaches seem extreme. If we look a little more closely at what Jesus might have meant, there is first the matter of coinage and money. The world of Galilee was primarily an agrarian world and a world of trade. In our world today, we cannot escape using money. But in Jesus' world, money might easily be seen more as a foreign element, the stuff of taxes and foreign powers. The coin with Caesar's face on it has nothing to do with God. Give it back to Caesar.
The words of John 19:11 to Pilate capture the situation well: "You would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above." In the background of Jesus' conformist approach was surely the belief that God was going to come and judge the Romans in due time. As Paul would later put it, "What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? ... God will judge those outside" (1 Cor. 5:12-13). [2]
So the ethic Jesus taught in relation to secular authorities was an "interim ethic," not in the sense of an ethic only for while he was on earth but only for the time before Jesus returned...
[1] The classic here is H. Richard Niebuhr's Christ and Culture. There have been a number of responses in recent days, including D. A. Carson and others***
[2] Interestingly, Paul goes on in 1 Corinthians 6:2-3 to indicate that, when Christ returns, we will take part in the judgment of the world. It's just not a function he saw Christians performing in the meantime.
Sunday, May 13, 2012
Not Being Hypocrites 4
... continued from yesterday
_______________
Standing in the background of these sorts of judgments is our picture of what God is like. Is God's primary feature his justice, understood in the modern sense? Then perhaps punishment is his primary action in relation to humanity and the world. Then perhaps wrath toward wrongdoing is the primary lens through which to view him. [1]
This is not Jesus' understanding of God. For Jesus, God is like the father in the Parable of the Prodigal Son. He is yearning and longing for the return of his son who has gone astray. He demands nothing of the returning son. There is no legal process for his return; no forms have to be filled out. Instead, he throws him a party.
The God of Jesus does dispense final judgment, as I explore in chapter 8. But mercy is his more dominant mode of operation and justice understood in the sense of stopping those who oppress the weak. This is a key distinction. Many think of prophetic anger and divine justice in terms of punishing those who deviate from some abstract law or rule. By contrast, prophetic anger primarily had to do with those who oppress--it was about being for people more than being against sin in some abstract sense.
There are just a few key lessons to take away from Jesus' conflict with various leaders of Israel over values. The first is of course to have the right values. Justice, mercy, and faithfulness is the short list Jesus gives in Matthew 23. Justice is about standing up for those who are weak or oppressed. Mercy is about making exceptions to the rules because you see the possibility to grow and learn a lesson. Faithfulness is about living always with God and the greater good in view, not my own selfish good.
A second application is to "major on the major," not to "major on the minor," as the saying goes. What is really important? When you are focused on what is truly important, you will make exceptions when it is appropriate. You will see when it is appropriate to ignore purity rules or Sabbath laws. Jesus says at one point, "If any of you has a sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will you not take hold of it and lift it out?" (Matt. 12:11). The "rules" are meant for our good, and most of them are not absolute rules, meaning that there are exceptional situations.
Finally, it's bad to be a hypocrite. A hypocrite is someone who wants to look like she has Jesus' values but really is only putting on a show. The outside looks clean, but the heart is evil and full of the bones of the dead. Some of us don't even realize we are hypocrites. The human heart has an amazing capacity for self-deception. Often we cannot change ourselves, but coming clean with ourselves about our true motives is a first step. God and others can bring us the rest of the way.
[1] Sometimes this view is confused with a focus on God's sovereignty, his being in control. But this is a circular line of thinking--it assumes what God would want if he were in control. God can be in control and insist that justice is the primary focus, or God can be in control and insist that love is the primary focus.
_______________
Standing in the background of these sorts of judgments is our picture of what God is like. Is God's primary feature his justice, understood in the modern sense? Then perhaps punishment is his primary action in relation to humanity and the world. Then perhaps wrath toward wrongdoing is the primary lens through which to view him. [1]
This is not Jesus' understanding of God. For Jesus, God is like the father in the Parable of the Prodigal Son. He is yearning and longing for the return of his son who has gone astray. He demands nothing of the returning son. There is no legal process for his return; no forms have to be filled out. Instead, he throws him a party.
The God of Jesus does dispense final judgment, as I explore in chapter 8. But mercy is his more dominant mode of operation and justice understood in the sense of stopping those who oppress the weak. This is a key distinction. Many think of prophetic anger and divine justice in terms of punishing those who deviate from some abstract law or rule. By contrast, prophetic anger primarily had to do with those who oppress--it was about being for people more than being against sin in some abstract sense.
There are just a few key lessons to take away from Jesus' conflict with various leaders of Israel over values. The first is of course to have the right values. Justice, mercy, and faithfulness is the short list Jesus gives in Matthew 23. Justice is about standing up for those who are weak or oppressed. Mercy is about making exceptions to the rules because you see the possibility to grow and learn a lesson. Faithfulness is about living always with God and the greater good in view, not my own selfish good.
A second application is to "major on the major," not to "major on the minor," as the saying goes. What is really important? When you are focused on what is truly important, you will make exceptions when it is appropriate. You will see when it is appropriate to ignore purity rules or Sabbath laws. Jesus says at one point, "If any of you has a sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will you not take hold of it and lift it out?" (Matt. 12:11). The "rules" are meant for our good, and most of them are not absolute rules, meaning that there are exceptional situations.
Finally, it's bad to be a hypocrite. A hypocrite is someone who wants to look like she has Jesus' values but really is only putting on a show. The outside looks clean, but the heart is evil and full of the bones of the dead. Some of us don't even realize we are hypocrites. The human heart has an amazing capacity for self-deception. Often we cannot change ourselves, but coming clean with ourselves about our true motives is a first step. God and others can bring us the rest of the way.
[1] Sometimes this view is confused with a focus on God's sovereignty, his being in control. But this is a circular line of thinking--it assumes what God would want if he were in control. God can be in control and insist that justice is the primary focus, or God can be in control and insist that love is the primary focus.
Saturday, May 12, 2012
Standing for the Right Things 4
... continued from yesterday.
___________
Jesus calls this approach to morality hypocrisy, putting on a good show on the outside while having nothing of value on the inside. One of the most striking images Jesus gives in this chapter is that of a "whitewashed tomb" that is clean on the outside but inside is "full of the bones of the dead" (Matt. 23:27). So it is all too easy to give the appearance of doing all the right things--dotting all the i's, crossing all the t's, and filling out all the paperwork in triplicate--when in reality one's heart is far from God (cf. Isa. 29:13; Matt. 15:8).
In the end, it all boils down to the twin love commandments that the previous chapter explored: love God and love neighbor. We are faithful to God, centering our lives around his interests and values more than around ourselves. And we know that his values more than anything else are to love one another (1 John 4:7-8).
As I argued in chapter 3, justice in a Jewish context was not about making sure wrongdoers are punished. That's what we mean by the word "justice." In a Jewish context, justice was about making sure that those like widows, orphans, and the poor were taken care of. When Micah 6:8 says that the Lord requires Israel "to act justly," the prophet is thinking more than anything else about things like having "dishonest scales" (6:11). The prophet is thinking of the rich who cheat the people of Israel (6:12). It is from passages like this one in the Prophets that the phrase "social justice" comes.
The teachers of the Law that Jesus rails against were unjust in similar ways to those the prophets indicted. At one point, Jesus said that these people "devoured widow's houses" (Mark 12:40) at the same time that they make lengthy prayers and enjoy the most important seats in synagogues and in banquets (12:39). To clean the inside of their cup, Luke 11 says, they need to be generous to the poor (Luke 11:41).
One of the most fascinating parts of Matthew 23 is the fact that these Pharisees, although they acted exactly like those from the past who persecuted the prophets, somehow thought they were different from those who persecuted the prophets. "You say, 'If we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets'" (23:30). It's something we need to be careful about today, that we don't find ourselves opposing Jesus' values while thinking we are standing up for him.
For example, we can certainly debate about the best way truly to help the poor or to address those who are illegally in the country. But there is little room for debate about what Jesus' values would have been. He would have strongly advocated to help those who are in need in the most holistic sense. A lot of Americans earn plenty of money but are "poor" in the sense of being overwhelmingly in debt. Jesus would have advocated a course of action to heal their lives and habits every bit as much as to heal those in a cycle of generational poverty, unable to see a way of living that is not dependent on the government for help.
We can debate about the best specific course of action in each case. What is clear beyond any reasonable doubt is that Jesus would have pushed to help them in the most wholesome way. He would not have advocated an approach that says, "They've made their bed. Now they need to lie in it." Justice for Jesus was not about making sure those who messed up got their "just desserts." It was quite the opposite, actually.
That is not to say that experiencing consequences should not be part of the equation. The key is that the function of consequences is to teach a person how important it is to do better. The function for Jesus would not be to punish them because they have violated some rule or law. That is where some Christians end up making the rules the goal, like Jesus' opponents did, rather than the true underlying goal and value, which was to help those in trouble.
An important moment in my own spiritual pilgrimage was an Easter morning in 1987 when I read through the book of Galatians. It dawned on me that my "rule-oriented" approach to Christianity was not that of Paul and Jesus. Imagine my surprise to realize that my way of thinking about God was actually much more like that of Paul's opponents and Jesus' opponents than that of Paul and Jesus themselves!
So when my forebears criticized Martin Luther King Jr. for being a law-breaker, they were on the opposite side of Jesus. Jesus would have seen the injustice of making African-Americans being forced to sit at the back of a bus and would have eagerly broken human laws in favor of the divine principle. The example he has left us is of someone who followed the rules when they were innocuous, but of completely ignoring them when a matter of injustice was involved.
So whatever we think about laws of immigration or about securing our borders, there is no reasonable doubt about what Jesus' approach would be to a specific human in need in front of him. His approach would not be, "Sorry, Charlie, you broke the law and now you're going to starve to death." His first thought would be, "What is the most loving thing to do for this person in front of me," not "Now you're going to pay for breaking the law."
Standing in the background of these sorts of judgments is our picture of what God is like...
___________
Jesus calls this approach to morality hypocrisy, putting on a good show on the outside while having nothing of value on the inside. One of the most striking images Jesus gives in this chapter is that of a "whitewashed tomb" that is clean on the outside but inside is "full of the bones of the dead" (Matt. 23:27). So it is all too easy to give the appearance of doing all the right things--dotting all the i's, crossing all the t's, and filling out all the paperwork in triplicate--when in reality one's heart is far from God (cf. Isa. 29:13; Matt. 15:8).
In the end, it all boils down to the twin love commandments that the previous chapter explored: love God and love neighbor. We are faithful to God, centering our lives around his interests and values more than around ourselves. And we know that his values more than anything else are to love one another (1 John 4:7-8).
As I argued in chapter 3, justice in a Jewish context was not about making sure wrongdoers are punished. That's what we mean by the word "justice." In a Jewish context, justice was about making sure that those like widows, orphans, and the poor were taken care of. When Micah 6:8 says that the Lord requires Israel "to act justly," the prophet is thinking more than anything else about things like having "dishonest scales" (6:11). The prophet is thinking of the rich who cheat the people of Israel (6:12). It is from passages like this one in the Prophets that the phrase "social justice" comes.
The teachers of the Law that Jesus rails against were unjust in similar ways to those the prophets indicted. At one point, Jesus said that these people "devoured widow's houses" (Mark 12:40) at the same time that they make lengthy prayers and enjoy the most important seats in synagogues and in banquets (12:39). To clean the inside of their cup, Luke 11 says, they need to be generous to the poor (Luke 11:41).
One of the most fascinating parts of Matthew 23 is the fact that these Pharisees, although they acted exactly like those from the past who persecuted the prophets, somehow thought they were different from those who persecuted the prophets. "You say, 'If we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets'" (23:30). It's something we need to be careful about today, that we don't find ourselves opposing Jesus' values while thinking we are standing up for him.
For example, we can certainly debate about the best way truly to help the poor or to address those who are illegally in the country. But there is little room for debate about what Jesus' values would have been. He would have strongly advocated to help those who are in need in the most holistic sense. A lot of Americans earn plenty of money but are "poor" in the sense of being overwhelmingly in debt. Jesus would have advocated a course of action to heal their lives and habits every bit as much as to heal those in a cycle of generational poverty, unable to see a way of living that is not dependent on the government for help.
We can debate about the best specific course of action in each case. What is clear beyond any reasonable doubt is that Jesus would have pushed to help them in the most wholesome way. He would not have advocated an approach that says, "They've made their bed. Now they need to lie in it." Justice for Jesus was not about making sure those who messed up got their "just desserts." It was quite the opposite, actually.
That is not to say that experiencing consequences should not be part of the equation. The key is that the function of consequences is to teach a person how important it is to do better. The function for Jesus would not be to punish them because they have violated some rule or law. That is where some Christians end up making the rules the goal, like Jesus' opponents did, rather than the true underlying goal and value, which was to help those in trouble.
An important moment in my own spiritual pilgrimage was an Easter morning in 1987 when I read through the book of Galatians. It dawned on me that my "rule-oriented" approach to Christianity was not that of Paul and Jesus. Imagine my surprise to realize that my way of thinking about God was actually much more like that of Paul's opponents and Jesus' opponents than that of Paul and Jesus themselves!
So when my forebears criticized Martin Luther King Jr. for being a law-breaker, they were on the opposite side of Jesus. Jesus would have seen the injustice of making African-Americans being forced to sit at the back of a bus and would have eagerly broken human laws in favor of the divine principle. The example he has left us is of someone who followed the rules when they were innocuous, but of completely ignoring them when a matter of injustice was involved.
So whatever we think about laws of immigration or about securing our borders, there is no reasonable doubt about what Jesus' approach would be to a specific human in need in front of him. His approach would not be, "Sorry, Charlie, you broke the law and now you're going to starve to death." His first thought would be, "What is the most loving thing to do for this person in front of me," not "Now you're going to pay for breaking the law."
Standing in the background of these sorts of judgments is our picture of what God is like...
Friday, May 11, 2012
Intentions are the Key 3
... continued from Wednesday.
_______________
The problem is that the Scriptures inevitably have to be interpreted and, even once we interpret them, we constantly have to apply them to new kinds of situations. If the Law says, "you will not do any work on the Sabbath," then the next question is, "What exactly is work?" For example, how far would a person need to walk on the Sabbath before he or she had worked? Or does walking even fit in the category of work at all, or playing on a playground?
There is a certain personality that is driven to clarify these sorts of issues, to do away with ambiguities. If you tell me I must honor my father and mother, then what does that look like? What if my father is abusive? What if my mother is an alcoholic? It is always honoring to obey your parent? I don't want to disobey the commandment, so what exactly do I need to do in each circumstance?
If I am not to kill, then is capital punishment killing? What about war? Is killing in war a violation of the commandment? These are exactly the sorts of questions that the "traditions of the elders" tried to answer. Some Pharisees no doubt were strict because they wanted to make sure without a doubt that they were doing the right thing. Others no doubt enjoyed the rules a little too much and became legalists who lost sight of the point.
The kinds of personalities that are wired to answer these sorts of questions can be very helpful to us. They're the kinds of people we want to help us organize an event or keep our financial records. They're detailed people who can make the difference between a good idea that never happens and something great in the real world.
And we should not be too quick to criticize how many rules the Pharisees had. The Law in the Bible may have had 613 rules, according to popular count. But we have far more traffic rules. Does everyone in the car have to wear a seat belt? How far do I have to stay behind the car in front of me or turn off my brights because of oncoming traffic? Rules can come with good intentions, and they can also take over and strangle the life out of us and others.
It is at this point that Jesus turns to the question of attitude. Some Pharisees, like so many Christians, lost sight of the main point. It comes down to our hearts. Evil comes from the inside out, not from the outside in. What you eat can't really make you unclean in any meaningful sense. Uncleanness is a matter of a person's heart or intentions. Out of the heart come the evil things that truly defile us (Mark 7:21-23).
This is Ethics 101. Jesus here gives us the core fundamentals of what is important to God. Yes, the specifics of what we do can be important. If I kill someone, that is very significant, no matter why I did it. But God's evaluation of me is solely based on my intentions. Did I intentionally kill the person? Why did I do it? Was I trying to protect someone? Was I negligent?
Notice that what I know is the least important element in the moral equation. The implication would seem to be that my specific beliefs are the least important aspect of who I am as I stand before God. Paul also says that "everything that does not come from faith is sin" (Rom. 14:23). He is saying that far more important than what I believe is that I act with complete commitment to God in relation to whatever I believe.
Wrong beliefs can be harmful to myself and others, to be sure. It is important not to harm or wrong others--even with good intentions. But in the long run, my attitude is the first and most important order of business as far as morality is concerned.
This is the recurring critique of the Pharisees in the gospels. [1] They "strain out a gnat and swallow a camel." They may go to great lengths to keep a little gnat out of their cereal bowl while crunching on some rather large cockroaches. Jesus didn't criticize the Pharisees for being strict. He didn't have a problem with them tithing a tenth of various spices--a tenth of my mint to the temple, a tenth of my cummin, a tenth of my dill (Matt. 23:23). He didn't criticize them for straining out the gnats.
The problem was that they missed the really important aspects of the Law: justice, mercy, and faithfulness. In fact, the individuals in view here used the technicalities of the Law to get out of keeping these core values. While the purpose of taking an oath is to guarantee to someone else that you are telling the truth, some apparently swore by things they thought didn't count so that they could give the appearance of telling the truth while still lying. So they swore by the temple or altar instead of the gold in the temple or the sacrifice on the altar (Matt. 23:16-19).
Jesus calls this approach to morality hypocrisy, putting on a good show on the outside while having nothing of value on the inside...
[1] See chapter 3 for the important reminder that not all Pharisees were this way. For example, Nicodemus in John 3 is a Pharisee and some Pharisees became Christians and yet were able to remain Pharisees too (cf. Acts 15:5; 23:6).
_______________
The problem is that the Scriptures inevitably have to be interpreted and, even once we interpret them, we constantly have to apply them to new kinds of situations. If the Law says, "you will not do any work on the Sabbath," then the next question is, "What exactly is work?" For example, how far would a person need to walk on the Sabbath before he or she had worked? Or does walking even fit in the category of work at all, or playing on a playground?
There is a certain personality that is driven to clarify these sorts of issues, to do away with ambiguities. If you tell me I must honor my father and mother, then what does that look like? What if my father is abusive? What if my mother is an alcoholic? It is always honoring to obey your parent? I don't want to disobey the commandment, so what exactly do I need to do in each circumstance?
If I am not to kill, then is capital punishment killing? What about war? Is killing in war a violation of the commandment? These are exactly the sorts of questions that the "traditions of the elders" tried to answer. Some Pharisees no doubt were strict because they wanted to make sure without a doubt that they were doing the right thing. Others no doubt enjoyed the rules a little too much and became legalists who lost sight of the point.
The kinds of personalities that are wired to answer these sorts of questions can be very helpful to us. They're the kinds of people we want to help us organize an event or keep our financial records. They're detailed people who can make the difference between a good idea that never happens and something great in the real world.
And we should not be too quick to criticize how many rules the Pharisees had. The Law in the Bible may have had 613 rules, according to popular count. But we have far more traffic rules. Does everyone in the car have to wear a seat belt? How far do I have to stay behind the car in front of me or turn off my brights because of oncoming traffic? Rules can come with good intentions, and they can also take over and strangle the life out of us and others.
It is at this point that Jesus turns to the question of attitude. Some Pharisees, like so many Christians, lost sight of the main point. It comes down to our hearts. Evil comes from the inside out, not from the outside in. What you eat can't really make you unclean in any meaningful sense. Uncleanness is a matter of a person's heart or intentions. Out of the heart come the evil things that truly defile us (Mark 7:21-23).
This is Ethics 101. Jesus here gives us the core fundamentals of what is important to God. Yes, the specifics of what we do can be important. If I kill someone, that is very significant, no matter why I did it. But God's evaluation of me is solely based on my intentions. Did I intentionally kill the person? Why did I do it? Was I trying to protect someone? Was I negligent?
Notice that what I know is the least important element in the moral equation. The implication would seem to be that my specific beliefs are the least important aspect of who I am as I stand before God. Paul also says that "everything that does not come from faith is sin" (Rom. 14:23). He is saying that far more important than what I believe is that I act with complete commitment to God in relation to whatever I believe.
Wrong beliefs can be harmful to myself and others, to be sure. It is important not to harm or wrong others--even with good intentions. But in the long run, my attitude is the first and most important order of business as far as morality is concerned.
This is the recurring critique of the Pharisees in the gospels. [1] They "strain out a gnat and swallow a camel." They may go to great lengths to keep a little gnat out of their cereal bowl while crunching on some rather large cockroaches. Jesus didn't criticize the Pharisees for being strict. He didn't have a problem with them tithing a tenth of various spices--a tenth of my mint to the temple, a tenth of my cummin, a tenth of my dill (Matt. 23:23). He didn't criticize them for straining out the gnats.
The problem was that they missed the really important aspects of the Law: justice, mercy, and faithfulness. In fact, the individuals in view here used the technicalities of the Law to get out of keeping these core values. While the purpose of taking an oath is to guarantee to someone else that you are telling the truth, some apparently swore by things they thought didn't count so that they could give the appearance of telling the truth while still lying. So they swore by the temple or altar instead of the gold in the temple or the sacrifice on the altar (Matt. 23:16-19).
Jesus calls this approach to morality hypocrisy, putting on a good show on the outside while having nothing of value on the inside...
[1] See chapter 3 for the important reminder that not all Pharisees were this way. For example, Nicodemus in John 3 is a Pharisee and some Pharisees became Christians and yet were able to remain Pharisees too (cf. Acts 15:5; 23:6).
Wednesday, May 09, 2012
Traditions of the Elders 2
... continued from Sunday.
_____________
... But before we go any further, we should probably be a little more precise about exactly what "rules" we are talking about. It is common to call some of the rules Jesus didn't pay much attention to as the "traditions of the elders." For example, the Pharisees ask Jesus in Mark 7:5 why his followers ignore traditions about how they wash their hands. Jesus’ reaction is fairly typical. He points out that their priorities are out of whack. They pay a lot of attention to their own traditions and yet miss the blatant values of Scripture.
As an example, Jesus points out how some individuals use traditions about dedicating things to God in order to get out of taking care of their parents. They simply say, "all the resources I would have used to take care of my parents belong to the Lord," and then they can't take care of their parents (7:11-13). "Sorry, Dad and Mom. I gave away all your food and clothes to God."
This sort of legal maneuvering in the service of injustice is exactly the kind of thing that really angers us today. A person may know how to use the technicalities of the rules to get out of doing the heart of why the rules are there in the first place. Some institutions get bogged down with bureaucratic nonsense and process, and never actually accomplish anything. We hate it in government, when it seems like nothing ever gets done or when a criminal gets off on some technicality.
It is easy to place the blame on the fact that these Pharisees were following human traditions rather than the Bible itself. That is indeed an element of the passage. They are following "merely human rules." What is harder is to see how often we do exactly the same thing.
For example, once when I was a boy and visiting a worship center, I was told that I could not swing on the playground because it was Sunday. The logic went something like this. We are to "remember the Sabbath by keeping it holy" (Exod. 20:8). According to Exodus 20:9-11 and other places in the Old Testament (e.g., Neh. 13:15-21), what this means is not to do work on Saturday.
But in the interpretation of this person, Sunday is now the Christian Sabbath, so a Christian shouldn't work on Sunday. Further, what is the work of a child? Is not playing on a playground the work of a child? Therefore, children should not play on a playground on Sunday.
Now it didn't harm me to have to leave the playground. But it is helpful to realize that it was exactly this sort of logic that led the Pharisees to insist people wash their hands before eating. It had nothing to do with hygiene. It had to do with the purity rules of Leviticus. They were trying to make sure that you didn't inadvertently make yourself unclean because of accidentally touching something unclean. They were being extra-holy.
Some Protestant traditions have built this warning into their core statements. The Methodist tradition drew from the Anglican tradition a statement that the Scriptures "contain all things necessary to salvation; so that whatever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man or woman that it should be believed as an article of faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation." [1] It reminds us immediately of Jesus' criticism of the Pharisees in Mark 7.
The problem is that the Scriptures inevitably have to be interpreted and, even once we interpret them, we constantly have to apply them to new kinds of situations...
[1] Taken from the Discipline of the Wesleyan Church (2008). However, the Wesleyan is simply drawing from Wesley and the Methodist tradition, and Wesley took the statement from the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Anglican Church?
_____________
... But before we go any further, we should probably be a little more precise about exactly what "rules" we are talking about. It is common to call some of the rules Jesus didn't pay much attention to as the "traditions of the elders." For example, the Pharisees ask Jesus in Mark 7:5 why his followers ignore traditions about how they wash their hands. Jesus’ reaction is fairly typical. He points out that their priorities are out of whack. They pay a lot of attention to their own traditions and yet miss the blatant values of Scripture.
As an example, Jesus points out how some individuals use traditions about dedicating things to God in order to get out of taking care of their parents. They simply say, "all the resources I would have used to take care of my parents belong to the Lord," and then they can't take care of their parents (7:11-13). "Sorry, Dad and Mom. I gave away all your food and clothes to God."
This sort of legal maneuvering in the service of injustice is exactly the kind of thing that really angers us today. A person may know how to use the technicalities of the rules to get out of doing the heart of why the rules are there in the first place. Some institutions get bogged down with bureaucratic nonsense and process, and never actually accomplish anything. We hate it in government, when it seems like nothing ever gets done or when a criminal gets off on some technicality.
It is easy to place the blame on the fact that these Pharisees were following human traditions rather than the Bible itself. That is indeed an element of the passage. They are following "merely human rules." What is harder is to see how often we do exactly the same thing.
For example, once when I was a boy and visiting a worship center, I was told that I could not swing on the playground because it was Sunday. The logic went something like this. We are to "remember the Sabbath by keeping it holy" (Exod. 20:8). According to Exodus 20:9-11 and other places in the Old Testament (e.g., Neh. 13:15-21), what this means is not to do work on Saturday.
But in the interpretation of this person, Sunday is now the Christian Sabbath, so a Christian shouldn't work on Sunday. Further, what is the work of a child? Is not playing on a playground the work of a child? Therefore, children should not play on a playground on Sunday.
Now it didn't harm me to have to leave the playground. But it is helpful to realize that it was exactly this sort of logic that led the Pharisees to insist people wash their hands before eating. It had nothing to do with hygiene. It had to do with the purity rules of Leviticus. They were trying to make sure that you didn't inadvertently make yourself unclean because of accidentally touching something unclean. They were being extra-holy.
Some Protestant traditions have built this warning into their core statements. The Methodist tradition drew from the Anglican tradition a statement that the Scriptures "contain all things necessary to salvation; so that whatever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man or woman that it should be believed as an article of faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation." [1] It reminds us immediately of Jesus' criticism of the Pharisees in Mark 7.
The problem is that the Scriptures inevitably have to be interpreted and, even once we interpret them, we constantly have to apply them to new kinds of situations...
[1] Taken from the Discipline of the Wesleyan Church (2008). However, the Wesleyan is simply drawing from Wesley and the Methodist tradition, and Wesley took the statement from the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Anglican Church?
Tuesday, May 08, 2012
Generous Sovereignty
I'm at a retreat as part of the formation of the new Misio Alliance, meant to be another option for evangelical-minded individuals that is not the Gospel Alliance or Emergent Village. How to frame the alliance is one of many topics of discussion.
It occurred to me today that one dimension of the distinction this group is trying to frame might be a phrase like "generous sovereignty." A lot of us are often criticized for not believing in the sovereignty of God, but that's completely off. What we believe is that God, in his sovereignty, loves everyone in the world and wants everyone in the world to be restored. We don't believe that God fixed the deck before dealing His hand in creation.
In His generous sovereignty, God gave choice to humanity. In His generous sovereignty, he reaches out and gives light "to everyone coming into the world." His discipline is restorative rather than punitive. "God is love" is the verse in 1 John 4:8, not "God is justice."
It occurred to me today that one dimension of the distinction this group is trying to frame might be a phrase like "generous sovereignty." A lot of us are often criticized for not believing in the sovereignty of God, but that's completely off. What we believe is that God, in his sovereignty, loves everyone in the world and wants everyone in the world to be restored. We don't believe that God fixed the deck before dealing His hand in creation.
In His generous sovereignty, God gave choice to humanity. In His generous sovereignty, he reaches out and gives light "to everyone coming into the world." His discipline is restorative rather than punitive. "God is love" is the verse in 1 John 4:8, not "God is justice."
Sunday, May 06, 2012
Conflict over Values 1
I've been dripping through a chapter on the conflict Jesus got into with various leaders around him. My last post on the subject finished a section I'm calling "Conflict over Authority." Now I want to start a second section called "Conflict over Values."
___________
Jesus' first conflict in Mark is about whether he has the authority to forgive sins. His second conflict follows almost immediately. Some scribes and Pharisees have problems with the fact that Jesus accepts an invitation to eat with many tax collectors and sinners (Mark 2:14-17).
I've already explored Jesus' interest in the lost sheep of Israel in chapter 3. In this one, I'm interested in the fact that Jesus' values got him into conflict. One of Jesus' values was that people trump rules for their own sake. So it was more important to Jesus to reclaim the tax collectors and others of Israel who had gone astray than to worry about Levitical purity rules. The Parable of the Good Samaritan illustrates these priorities as well--saving a life trumps purity rules.
Another story in Mark 2 takes it even further. If redeeming the lost trumped the rules and saving a life trumped the rules, Jesus interaction over plucking grain showed that even basic hunger could trump the rules for him. In Mark 2:23-28, he and his disciples are passing through some grain fields on the Sabbath, on Saturday. Some Pharisees criticize this followers for violating the fourth commandment, "Remember the Sabbath day by keeping in holy" (Exod. 20:8).
What is truly interesting about Jesus' response is that he does not say what we might expect. He does not say, "You Pharisees don't understand what this commandment is really about." What he does is tell about an incident where a high priest gave holy food to David and his men to eat, something that was only lawful for priests to eat (Mark 2:26). His point is that it was appropriate on that occasion to make an exception to the rule.
We should probably keep in mind that there is an implicit comparison here between David the king and Jesus the messiah. Jesus may not be saying that just anyone is allowed to pluck grain on the Sabbath. He may be saying that he is about to be king just as David was about to be king, and therefore it is appropriate to make an exception. Jesus is "Lord even of the Sabbath" (2:27). His authority trumps even that of Scripture and the Ten Commandments.
But before we go any further, we should probably be a little more precise about exactly what "rules" we are talking about...
___________
Jesus' first conflict in Mark is about whether he has the authority to forgive sins. His second conflict follows almost immediately. Some scribes and Pharisees have problems with the fact that Jesus accepts an invitation to eat with many tax collectors and sinners (Mark 2:14-17).
I've already explored Jesus' interest in the lost sheep of Israel in chapter 3. In this one, I'm interested in the fact that Jesus' values got him into conflict. One of Jesus' values was that people trump rules for their own sake. So it was more important to Jesus to reclaim the tax collectors and others of Israel who had gone astray than to worry about Levitical purity rules. The Parable of the Good Samaritan illustrates these priorities as well--saving a life trumps purity rules.
Another story in Mark 2 takes it even further. If redeeming the lost trumped the rules and saving a life trumped the rules, Jesus interaction over plucking grain showed that even basic hunger could trump the rules for him. In Mark 2:23-28, he and his disciples are passing through some grain fields on the Sabbath, on Saturday. Some Pharisees criticize this followers for violating the fourth commandment, "Remember the Sabbath day by keeping in holy" (Exod. 20:8).
What is truly interesting about Jesus' response is that he does not say what we might expect. He does not say, "You Pharisees don't understand what this commandment is really about." What he does is tell about an incident where a high priest gave holy food to David and his men to eat, something that was only lawful for priests to eat (Mark 2:26). His point is that it was appropriate on that occasion to make an exception to the rule.
We should probably keep in mind that there is an implicit comparison here between David the king and Jesus the messiah. Jesus may not be saying that just anyone is allowed to pluck grain on the Sabbath. He may be saying that he is about to be king just as David was about to be king, and therefore it is appropriate to make an exception. Jesus is "Lord even of the Sabbath" (2:27). His authority trumps even that of Scripture and the Ten Commandments.
But before we go any further, we should probably be a little more precise about exactly what "rules" we are talking about...
Saturday, May 05, 2012
Book Review: Peter Enns 2
Way back in January, I blogged on the introduction to Peter Enns' recent book, The Evolution of Adam. I've finally finished reading the first two chapters. The second chapter is called, "When Was Genesis Written?" and Enns' purpose is to build to answer the basic question of the original, intended meaning of Genesis 1. By the way, I saw earlier in the week that James K. A. Smith of Calvin College had written a response to Enns' book.
To determine the original meaning of Genesis, Enns first asks when Genesis was written. His basic conclusion is that "the Old Testament as a whole is fundamentally a postexilic document" (32). In this age when Israel had been shaken to the core by the destruction of Jerusalem, "The Old Testament is not a treatise on Israel's history for the sake of history, but a document of self-definition and spiritual encouragement." Or as he says elsewhere, "The creation of the Hebrew Bible... is an exercise in national self-definition in response to the Babylonian exile" (28).
In terms of scholarship, these are not controversial claims. Of course Enns is probably wishful when he uses phrases like, "virtually unanimous" and "virtual scholarly consensus." In many circles, especially popular circles, the conclusions seem very controversial. It gets to the question of "What is a scholar?" Is it a person with a PhD? Is it knowing and understanding the arguments on all sides of an issue? Are there certain issues where an evidentiarily based conclusion is so inevitable that to hold a different position automatically disqualifies you from being considered a scholar--or at least an evidence based scholar?
So Enns presents the inductive evidence pointing away from Moses as the author:
Enns does not in any way deny that much of the material within the Pentateuch might go back to Moses. He also does not deal much with the main reason why this is an issue, namely, NT instances where Moses is implied to be the author, including instances where Jesus seems to imply that Moses is the author (e.g., John 5:46-47). Interestingly, there are only a few times where the NT implies that the author of the Pentateuch is Moses. Most of the attributions to Moses are attributions to the material in the Pentateuch, not to Moses as author of the whole sha-bang.
Enns doesn't spend much time on this issue. He pretty much only addresses it in a footnote: "Jesus here reflects the tradition that he himself inherited as a first-century Jew and that his hearers assumed to be the case" (153 n.19). So our question is whether Jesus taught in the categories of his day or in these sorts of references intended to give answers to these sorts of questions.
While this debate is very old, there were some things in the chapter that I learned. Enns presented some of the ways in which Chronicles differs from Samuel. He does this to argue for how the exile affected the self-understanding of Israel--and thus setting up his argument for the overall purpose of the Pentateuch. In 2 Samuel 7:16 God tells David that he will set up his, David's, kingdom forever. In 1 Chronicles 17:14, the same passage, God tells him he will set up my, God's, kingdom in my, God's house, the temple. So this is arguably a reorientation away from David's dynasty (since it would not be in place at the time of Chronicles) to the temple and God's kingdom.
We are of course free to disagree with Enns. I do think, however, that there is not much to object to here in terms of inductive scholarship. Smith is perhaps right that there is a more fundamental question we will have to address if we are ever going to move past these sorts of debates. Are these things a matter of gathering evidence, forming hypotheses, testing the hypotheses, and reaching evidentiary consensus? If so, then there won't be much debate about Enns conclusion. The scholarly consensus will be "virtually unanimous."
But there is another approach, one that comes to the Pentateuch with its conclusion in hand. It assumes it must take the references of the NT as bindingly literal attributions of authorship. So it applies its intellect to finding ways to argue around what it considers to be the apparent evidence. So Moses' death was added later or God told him ahead of time and he wrote it down as prophecy. So the references that sound later are updates to the original Mosaic text. Or perhaps differing strands of source material were combined by none other than Moses himself.
There can be no rapprochement of these two approaches. They involve decisions one intentionally or unintentionally makes prior to interpretation. I fear, however, that to insist that only the second approach is valid will lead many of our children, especially those that look into these issues in detail, to lose their faith.
I recommend we not focus on these sorts of things and go spread the good news instead.
To determine the original meaning of Genesis, Enns first asks when Genesis was written. His basic conclusion is that "the Old Testament as a whole is fundamentally a postexilic document" (32). In this age when Israel had been shaken to the core by the destruction of Jerusalem, "The Old Testament is not a treatise on Israel's history for the sake of history, but a document of self-definition and spiritual encouragement." Or as he says elsewhere, "The creation of the Hebrew Bible... is an exercise in national self-definition in response to the Babylonian exile" (28).
In terms of scholarship, these are not controversial claims. Of course Enns is probably wishful when he uses phrases like, "virtually unanimous" and "virtual scholarly consensus." In many circles, especially popular circles, the conclusions seem very controversial. It gets to the question of "What is a scholar?" Is it a person with a PhD? Is it knowing and understanding the arguments on all sides of an issue? Are there certain issues where an evidentiarily based conclusion is so inevitable that to hold a different position automatically disqualifies you from being considered a scholar--or at least an evidence based scholar?
So Enns presents the inductive evidence pointing away from Moses as the author:
- Genesis never mentions Moses or says he is its author.
- Moses is always referred to in the third person throughout the Pentateuch: "he did this," "he said that," "Moses wrote down this law" (Deut. 31:9), and of course Moses went up into the mountain and no one knows where he's buried till this day (which sounds like it's being written a bit later).
- More references that sound like the events of these books took place in the very distant past--the bed of Og can still be seen in Rabbah (Deut. 3:11); at that time the Canaanites were still in the land (Gen. 12:6), a situation that continued until the time of David.
Enns does not in any way deny that much of the material within the Pentateuch might go back to Moses. He also does not deal much with the main reason why this is an issue, namely, NT instances where Moses is implied to be the author, including instances where Jesus seems to imply that Moses is the author (e.g., John 5:46-47). Interestingly, there are only a few times where the NT implies that the author of the Pentateuch is Moses. Most of the attributions to Moses are attributions to the material in the Pentateuch, not to Moses as author of the whole sha-bang.
Enns doesn't spend much time on this issue. He pretty much only addresses it in a footnote: "Jesus here reflects the tradition that he himself inherited as a first-century Jew and that his hearers assumed to be the case" (153 n.19). So our question is whether Jesus taught in the categories of his day or in these sorts of references intended to give answers to these sorts of questions.
While this debate is very old, there were some things in the chapter that I learned. Enns presented some of the ways in which Chronicles differs from Samuel. He does this to argue for how the exile affected the self-understanding of Israel--and thus setting up his argument for the overall purpose of the Pentateuch. In 2 Samuel 7:16 God tells David that he will set up his, David's, kingdom forever. In 1 Chronicles 17:14, the same passage, God tells him he will set up my, God's, kingdom in my, God's house, the temple. So this is arguably a reorientation away from David's dynasty (since it would not be in place at the time of Chronicles) to the temple and God's kingdom.
We are of course free to disagree with Enns. I do think, however, that there is not much to object to here in terms of inductive scholarship. Smith is perhaps right that there is a more fundamental question we will have to address if we are ever going to move past these sorts of debates. Are these things a matter of gathering evidence, forming hypotheses, testing the hypotheses, and reaching evidentiary consensus? If so, then there won't be much debate about Enns conclusion. The scholarly consensus will be "virtually unanimous."
But there is another approach, one that comes to the Pentateuch with its conclusion in hand. It assumes it must take the references of the NT as bindingly literal attributions of authorship. So it applies its intellect to finding ways to argue around what it considers to be the apparent evidence. So Moses' death was added later or God told him ahead of time and he wrote it down as prophecy. So the references that sound later are updates to the original Mosaic text. Or perhaps differing strands of source material were combined by none other than Moses himself.
There can be no rapprochement of these two approaches. They involve decisions one intentionally or unintentionally makes prior to interpretation. I fear, however, that to insist that only the second approach is valid will lead many of our children, especially those that look into these issues in detail, to lose their faith.
I recommend we not focus on these sorts of things and go spread the good news instead.
Friday, May 04, 2012
Schenck University
I have an idea for this summer I thought I would share and get input from the great cloud (i.e., you, whoever might be reading this). Here's the essence:
Hebrews
1. Using some medium (Google Hangouts, Vimeo, etc...), I would record a programmed series of lectures on Hebrews over the course of the summer, probably two a week. It would be a kind of video commentary that could be packaged and sold as a DVD at the end, maybe with some edited version of the "Explanatory Notes" I've done in the past.
2. I would roll these out in conjunction with some chat or interaction time, perhaps on this blog, perhaps on Facebook.
3. I would store them on a site I have called "cafetutor.com," which I just noticed is down for some reason. The videos and explanatory notes would be free (but of course I'd put up a Pay Pal link on the side just in case someone wanted to waste their money ;-).
4. I would also offer a sample undergraduate and graduate syllabus for what a Hebrews course might look like. For some appropriate fee (significantly less than taking a course somewhere), if a person wanted actually to produce the papers and artifacts from these syllabi (and including a final, recorded interaction between me and the person), a person would have the kind of artifacts that could be brought to an accredited institution and evaluated for "credit by assessment." In other words, a person might be able to get undergraduate or graduate credit if they presented the artifacts to a college or seminary, including my feedback and recorded final interview. This is an extension of the open course ware out there right now.
Independent Studies
The same thing I've suggested above for Hebrews could, in theory, be done with anything I would be qualified to supervise given my academic credentials. I can't promise what an academic institution would accept for credit by assessment, but most institutions have this possibility tucked away in their catalogs. If a person wanted to "do a course" with me, we could design one together for an appropriate amount and produce artifacts for that university or seminary. We might even clear it with the university or seminary ahead of time.
Classic Book Reviews
If I might do the above in the summers, throughout the year I might video or audio record book reviews of classics, chapter by chapter. For example, I'm looking at Varieties of Religious Experience and The Origin of Species right now in conjunction with more contemporary things I'm
Any feedback or suggestions?
Hebrews
1. Using some medium (Google Hangouts, Vimeo, etc...), I would record a programmed series of lectures on Hebrews over the course of the summer, probably two a week. It would be a kind of video commentary that could be packaged and sold as a DVD at the end, maybe with some edited version of the "Explanatory Notes" I've done in the past.
2. I would roll these out in conjunction with some chat or interaction time, perhaps on this blog, perhaps on Facebook.
3. I would store them on a site I have called "cafetutor.com," which I just noticed is down for some reason. The videos and explanatory notes would be free (but of course I'd put up a Pay Pal link on the side just in case someone wanted to waste their money ;-).
4. I would also offer a sample undergraduate and graduate syllabus for what a Hebrews course might look like. For some appropriate fee (significantly less than taking a course somewhere), if a person wanted actually to produce the papers and artifacts from these syllabi (and including a final, recorded interaction between me and the person), a person would have the kind of artifacts that could be brought to an accredited institution and evaluated for "credit by assessment." In other words, a person might be able to get undergraduate or graduate credit if they presented the artifacts to a college or seminary, including my feedback and recorded final interview. This is an extension of the open course ware out there right now.
Independent Studies
The same thing I've suggested above for Hebrews could, in theory, be done with anything I would be qualified to supervise given my academic credentials. I can't promise what an academic institution would accept for credit by assessment, but most institutions have this possibility tucked away in their catalogs. If a person wanted to "do a course" with me, we could design one together for an appropriate amount and produce artifacts for that university or seminary. We might even clear it with the university or seminary ahead of time.
Classic Book Reviews
If I might do the above in the summers, throughout the year I might video or audio record book reviews of classics, chapter by chapter. For example, I'm looking at Varieties of Religious Experience and The Origin of Species right now in conjunction with more contemporary things I'm
Any feedback or suggestions?
Forgive Sins 5
... continued from before
_______________
A final issue raised by Jesus' healing of the paralytic in Mark 2 is the authority to forgive sins. Given the association between sin and sickness in their minds, perhaps these teachers of the law had the mindset that the paralytic's condition was God's judgment on him or his family for something he or they had done. In that sense, what authority did Jesus have to pronounce forgiveness if healing did not accompany? Perhaps in their minds, if God forgave the man, God would heal the man. Of course Jesus made his line of questioning moot when he went on to heal him.
We might leave the issue there if we did not find an intriguing charge by Jesus to his disciples in John 20. It is the evening of Easter Sunday. Jesus appears to ten of the disciples (minus Thomas). He breathes on them and invites them to receive the Holy Spirit, perhaps John's equivalent of the Day of Pentecost in Acts 2. Then comes Jesus' startling pronouncement: "If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven."
This statement would not be shocking if Jesus were merely saying, "When you know I've forgiven someone, feel free to announce it to them." It then becomes an empty statement. "If you make it through the traffic light, you have made it through the traffic light." Yeah? So what?
What is shocking is that Jesus seems to be saying one or both of two things. First, someone may want to have their sins forgiven and I am giving you the authority to keep them from being forgiven. Secondly, there may be people who do not want their sins forgiven that you can forgive anyway. The first is problematic because it implies an unloving, unchristlike attitude to the point of causing someone's condemnation. The second is problematic because it implies that we can dispense out salvation to those who have not made an act of faith.
It would be nice if this were merely a statement about healing. Jesus would be giving the authority to heal and thus, by implication, to repair the consequences of sins in some situations. Surely at least we can take the statement that far. Jesus has given the church authority to administer discipline and, if you would, penance in consequence of sin. Penance is a sacrament in the catholic tradition that helps a person work through their guilt by doing some act of repentance. Afterward, that person's sin is considered forgiven.
While Protestants generally have strong reservations about such things, perhaps there are elements of such practices that are not only biblical but healthy. In my tradition, the Wesleyan tradition, we used to talk about doing restitution for a wrong you had done. In effect, it amounted to a kind of penance for a wrong you had done. You "made up" for something you had done by doing something.
The high Protestant traditions, especially the Lutheran tradition, has rightly suggested that we cannot earn God's forgiveness by any amount of "work" of this sort. That must remain our core theological position. Forgiveness for sins is given to all who genuinely seek God and repent, who turn in their hearts in a new direction. This is a matter between them and God into which no human can interfere. I cannot stop someone from coming to God and, ultimately, I cannot help someone come to God beyond a certain point if it is ultimately his or her choice.
But I can be a channel for them to feel God's forgiveness. Restitution and penance resonate with the human psyche, with the way we are built. We may not be able to "feel" forgiven without action of some sort. I'm reminded of a famous scene in an old movie called The Mission, where a notoriously wicked man cannot feel forgiven for killing his brother. [1] Although it is unnecessary, the priest finally charges him to carry a large load of armor on his back through the jungles of the Amazon.
At one point, he struggles to the top of a waterfall with the tremendous load on his back. He is almost to the top but then, in his weakness, is pulled back by the load. He is in danger of falling back down to his death. The priest comes and cuts the rope holding it and the weight falls to the bottom of the waterfall. Suddenly the man starts crying uncontrollably. The load is lifted. He feels forgiven.
As a Protestant, I do not believe that penance or restitution is necessary to have God's forgiveness for sins, nor do I believe that anyone can keep someone from forgiveness if he or she genuinely is seeking it from God. But I do believe that God has given the church the authority to discipline those who do wrong and that the church can require a person to do certain acts to demonstrate repentance and feel forgiveness. This authority has been abused in the past and is a sacred charge, but it is the best way for us to apply these striking words of John 20.
One additional word on this verse seems appropriate. There are times when we can experience doubt or uncertainty about God. Particularly in this day and age, there are many challenges to old ways of thinking that can confuse and cause doubt. Some are not bothered. They have the mixed blessing of not being troubled with ideas that don't fit the ideas with which they start out. [2]
However, most of us at some point have questions. A growing phenomenon today is when older saints in the church begin to have questions near the ends of their lives. Similarly, it is quite normal these days for those in their late twenties to experience serious questions about matters of faith.
In those instances, fellow believers can play a significant role in having faith for those who are doubting. I've heard of ministers having faith for older saints, even for former church leaders, on their death beds. And I've heard of younger believers having faith for fellow Christians questioning in their twenties. I remain firmly a Protestant in my sense that faith is a personal and individual matter. But perhaps we have also missed out on the role that the body of Christ can play as channels of God's grace and forgiveness to one another, as well as a means of grace through discipline.
[1] info***
[2] It's a mixed blessing because it is overwhelmingly unlikely that any one person starts out with all the right ideas. Those who are blissfully unchanged by any new thought are people who inevitably spend their lives in ignorance about many things.
_______________
A final issue raised by Jesus' healing of the paralytic in Mark 2 is the authority to forgive sins. Given the association between sin and sickness in their minds, perhaps these teachers of the law had the mindset that the paralytic's condition was God's judgment on him or his family for something he or they had done. In that sense, what authority did Jesus have to pronounce forgiveness if healing did not accompany? Perhaps in their minds, if God forgave the man, God would heal the man. Of course Jesus made his line of questioning moot when he went on to heal him.
We might leave the issue there if we did not find an intriguing charge by Jesus to his disciples in John 20. It is the evening of Easter Sunday. Jesus appears to ten of the disciples (minus Thomas). He breathes on them and invites them to receive the Holy Spirit, perhaps John's equivalent of the Day of Pentecost in Acts 2. Then comes Jesus' startling pronouncement: "If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven."
This statement would not be shocking if Jesus were merely saying, "When you know I've forgiven someone, feel free to announce it to them." It then becomes an empty statement. "If you make it through the traffic light, you have made it through the traffic light." Yeah? So what?
What is shocking is that Jesus seems to be saying one or both of two things. First, someone may want to have their sins forgiven and I am giving you the authority to keep them from being forgiven. Secondly, there may be people who do not want their sins forgiven that you can forgive anyway. The first is problematic because it implies an unloving, unchristlike attitude to the point of causing someone's condemnation. The second is problematic because it implies that we can dispense out salvation to those who have not made an act of faith.
It would be nice if this were merely a statement about healing. Jesus would be giving the authority to heal and thus, by implication, to repair the consequences of sins in some situations. Surely at least we can take the statement that far. Jesus has given the church authority to administer discipline and, if you would, penance in consequence of sin. Penance is a sacrament in the catholic tradition that helps a person work through their guilt by doing some act of repentance. Afterward, that person's sin is considered forgiven.
While Protestants generally have strong reservations about such things, perhaps there are elements of such practices that are not only biblical but healthy. In my tradition, the Wesleyan tradition, we used to talk about doing restitution for a wrong you had done. In effect, it amounted to a kind of penance for a wrong you had done. You "made up" for something you had done by doing something.
The high Protestant traditions, especially the Lutheran tradition, has rightly suggested that we cannot earn God's forgiveness by any amount of "work" of this sort. That must remain our core theological position. Forgiveness for sins is given to all who genuinely seek God and repent, who turn in their hearts in a new direction. This is a matter between them and God into which no human can interfere. I cannot stop someone from coming to God and, ultimately, I cannot help someone come to God beyond a certain point if it is ultimately his or her choice.
But I can be a channel for them to feel God's forgiveness. Restitution and penance resonate with the human psyche, with the way we are built. We may not be able to "feel" forgiven without action of some sort. I'm reminded of a famous scene in an old movie called The Mission, where a notoriously wicked man cannot feel forgiven for killing his brother. [1] Although it is unnecessary, the priest finally charges him to carry a large load of armor on his back through the jungles of the Amazon.
At one point, he struggles to the top of a waterfall with the tremendous load on his back. He is almost to the top but then, in his weakness, is pulled back by the load. He is in danger of falling back down to his death. The priest comes and cuts the rope holding it and the weight falls to the bottom of the waterfall. Suddenly the man starts crying uncontrollably. The load is lifted. He feels forgiven.
As a Protestant, I do not believe that penance or restitution is necessary to have God's forgiveness for sins, nor do I believe that anyone can keep someone from forgiveness if he or she genuinely is seeking it from God. But I do believe that God has given the church the authority to discipline those who do wrong and that the church can require a person to do certain acts to demonstrate repentance and feel forgiveness. This authority has been abused in the past and is a sacred charge, but it is the best way for us to apply these striking words of John 20.
One additional word on this verse seems appropriate. There are times when we can experience doubt or uncertainty about God. Particularly in this day and age, there are many challenges to old ways of thinking that can confuse and cause doubt. Some are not bothered. They have the mixed blessing of not being troubled with ideas that don't fit the ideas with which they start out. [2]
However, most of us at some point have questions. A growing phenomenon today is when older saints in the church begin to have questions near the ends of their lives. Similarly, it is quite normal these days for those in their late twenties to experience serious questions about matters of faith.
In those instances, fellow believers can play a significant role in having faith for those who are doubting. I've heard of ministers having faith for older saints, even for former church leaders, on their death beds. And I've heard of younger believers having faith for fellow Christians questioning in their twenties. I remain firmly a Protestant in my sense that faith is a personal and individual matter. But perhaps we have also missed out on the role that the body of Christ can play as channels of God's grace and forgiveness to one another, as well as a means of grace through discipline.
[1] info***
[2] It's a mixed blessing because it is overwhelmingly unlikely that any one person starts out with all the right ideas. Those who are blissfully unchanged by any new thought are people who inevitably spend their lives in ignorance about many things.
Thursday, May 03, 2012
Prophets versus Priests
I'm close to climbing out from under the mountain of grading. In the meantime I was reminded while reading a paper of the never-ending tension between institution and charisma. Both are legitimate. Both are important. At any one time one or the other may be more crucial. The pendulum constantly swings between them.
The priests in this typology represent the institution. They represent appointed roles and set rituals. They represent stability and perpetuity. The prophets are ad hoc. They arise to need. They stand outside the appointed order. We see both types throughout history and throughout healthy organizations.
So the overseers and deacons represent order and structure. The New Testament prophets represent the Spirit and innovation. Constantine, rightly or wrongly, has come to represent institutional Christianity. The figure of the house church represents spiritual Christianity. There's Whitefield the preacher and Wesley the "method-ist." There's the Episcopalian and the charismatic. In organizations there's the innovator and ground breaker, then there's the administrator and process-creator.
It's not one or the other. It's both/and--and sometimes one more than the other. Structure perpetuates. Charisma keeps things fresh...
The priests in this typology represent the institution. They represent appointed roles and set rituals. They represent stability and perpetuity. The prophets are ad hoc. They arise to need. They stand outside the appointed order. We see both types throughout history and throughout healthy organizations.
So the overseers and deacons represent order and structure. The New Testament prophets represent the Spirit and innovation. Constantine, rightly or wrongly, has come to represent institutional Christianity. The figure of the house church represents spiritual Christianity. There's Whitefield the preacher and Wesley the "method-ist." There's the Episcopalian and the charismatic. In organizations there's the innovator and ground breaker, then there's the administrator and process-creator.
It's not one or the other. It's both/and--and sometimes one more than the other. Structure perpetuates. Charisma keeps things fresh...
Wednesday, May 02, 2012
The Lethargy of Grief
The day drags on, we trudge along,
The daze of nothingness our song.
One task is done, another comes,
Mindless motion, brain is numb.
The facts are clear, their value not,
We watch without a sense of plot.
We go to sleep, we come awake,
We move our feet, for motion's sake.
The picture's there, we grab the phone.
We then remember that they're gone.
The crying's stopped, that part is past,
Now strangeness joins the acting cast.
A moment in, a moment out,
A mystery, without a doubt.
Perplexing incongruity,
Unreason near insanity.
"Vanity of vanities," the preacher says,
And glances at the stoppéd clock.
The daze of nothingness our song.
One task is done, another comes,
Mindless motion, brain is numb.
The facts are clear, their value not,
We watch without a sense of plot.
We go to sleep, we come awake,
We move our feet, for motion's sake.
The picture's there, we grab the phone.
We then remember that they're gone.
The crying's stopped, that part is past,
Now strangeness joins the acting cast.
A moment in, a moment out,
A mystery, without a doubt.
Perplexing incongruity,
Unreason near insanity.
"Vanity of vanities," the preacher says,
And glances at the stoppéd clock.
Tuesday, May 01, 2012
My third Paul book...
I noticed that the third and final book in my Paul series is now available through Amazon. It is called Paul: Prisoner of Hope and covers Ephesians, Colossians, 2 Thessalonians, Philemon and the Pastoral Epistles. Two devotional books are also written and on the way.
The earlier two volumes are, first of all, Paul: Messenger of Grace, which covers 1 Thessalonians, Philippians, 1 and 2 Corinthians, and Galatians.
Two devotional Bible study books go with it (one on 1 Thessalonians, one on Philippians).
Finally, there is my book on Romans, unfortunately named Paul: Soldier of Peace. It has been selling pretty well so seems to have scratched an itch somewhere.
Two devotional Bible study books go with it (one on the first 8 chapters, the second on the rest).
The Jesus series is up to bat now. Immense thanks to Wesleyan Publishing House for doing this series with me!
The earlier two volumes are, first of all, Paul: Messenger of Grace, which covers 1 Thessalonians, Philippians, 1 and 2 Corinthians, and Galatians.
Two devotional Bible study books go with it (one on 1 Thessalonians, one on Philippians).
Finally, there is my book on Romans, unfortunately named Paul: Soldier of Peace. It has been selling pretty well so seems to have scratched an itch somewhere.
Two devotional Bible study books go with it (one on the first 8 chapters, the second on the rest).
The Jesus series is up to bat now. Immense thanks to Wesleyan Publishing House for doing this series with me!
Monday, April 30, 2012
Poem by my grandfather...
... Harry A. Shepherd, thinking back on the death of his mother, who died when he was six (1890). He himself died before I was born, in 1963.
Maternal Tho'ts
1
When I think of home and mother,
And the time she passed away,
Both recall a recollection
Of the sadness of that day
When we stood around the coffin
With our eyes bedimmed with tears,
Thinking that was gone forever
Consolations of future years.
2
Yet we mourned our loss, in sorrow.
Meekly submitting to will divine,
Thinking that upon the morrow
We'd prepare for the judgement time
When with her we'd be reunited,
And our sorrow would be o'er
Then our souls would be delighted
And our loss we'd mourn no more.
3
Years have passed and memories have flown,
But to our vow we've been untrue,
And some sorrows we have known,
And the past we sincerely rue,
But if our lives we'd have consecrated
To a tho't so truely sublime,
Over sorrows we'd have been elated,
And found reward in a heavenly clime.
Maternal Tho'ts
1
When I think of home and mother,
And the time she passed away,
Both recall a recollection
Of the sadness of that day
When we stood around the coffin
With our eyes bedimmed with tears,
Thinking that was gone forever
Consolations of future years.
2
Yet we mourned our loss, in sorrow.
Meekly submitting to will divine,
Thinking that upon the morrow
We'd prepare for the judgement time
When with her we'd be reunited,
And our sorrow would be o'er
Then our souls would be delighted
And our loss we'd mourn no more.
3
Years have passed and memories have flown,
But to our vow we've been untrue,
And some sorrows we have known,
And the past we sincerely rue,
But if our lives we'd have consecrated
To a tho't so truely sublime,
Over sorrows we'd have been elated,
And found reward in a heavenly clime.
Preaching the Law and the Gospel
Saturday I started outlining some material relating to preaching from various literary forms in Scripture. I started with preaching from the narratives of the Bible (after looking at Long yesterday, I see I missed a relevant sub-category of narrative, namely, Jesus' parables). This morning I want to outline briefly what a piece on Preaching from the OT Law might look like.
Law in the Old Testament
The piece might begin by setting forth 1) the Law as a literary unit within the Jewish and Christian canon, namely, the first five books of the OT, the Torah, the Pentateuch. This is a layer of "original" literary context in the sense that these books were brought together and edited together into one unit at some point. However, 2) there are several sub-genres within the "Law." There are narratives, such as Genesis, much of Exodus and Numbers, etc.
But what this article is concerned with is primarily the legal material in the Pentateuch. How might a Christian preach from the "apodictic" and "casuistic" laws of the Torah? For that matter, how might a Christian preach from any of the prescriptive material of the Old Testament?
Differing Hermeneutics
It might be worthwhile to sketch some of the different (Protestant) approaches to how "Law and Gospel" fit together. For example, both Lutheran and Reformed traditions generally have a three-fold sense of the Law's purpose: 1) curb the sin of the wicked, 2) show us our sinfulness, 3) a guide of what righteousness is. However, the Devil is in the details, especially in arguments over exactly how the Law might apply as a guide.
Much of popular nineteenth century Christianity, however, found itself applying a great deal of the Law directly to today. The rise of the Seventh Day Adventists is a case in point. Many of the holiness and Pentecostal traditions also had a tendency to consider much of the legal material of the Law still very much applicable to today. Meanwhile, the Lutheran tradition in particular has sometimes emphasized strong discontinuity with OT law.
Categories of Application
Christians since long before the Reformation divided Old Testament legal material into three categories: moral, ceremonial, and civil. These are not of course the original categories by which either the Old or New Testaments classified laws. We might reasonably divide the Law into case law (casuistic, that comes in the form of "if this happens then the consequence will be that") and law in the form of a kind of decree (apodictic, thou shalt not, following the form of ancient suzerainty treaties between kings and subjects).
Nevertheless, the three fold categorization is not an entirely inappropriate way of approaching what the NT does with OT law. We might finesse the categories a little to give a largely Pauline hermeneutic for appropriating (and thus preaching) from the OT Law:
1. "ceremonial" category
The NT does not consider a good deal of Old Testament legal material to be binding on Gentile believers. This category especially relates to boundary issues that separated Jew and Gentile ethnically. Thus Paul does not consider circumcision or Sabbath laws binding on Gentile believers. Mark and Acts clearly do not consider food or OT purity laws to be binding on believers.
Christians usually include in this category also sacrificial or "cultic" laws relating to the Levitical system. The book of Hebrews indicates these laws no longer apply. Thus we have laws that some part of the NT considers to be fulfilled in Christ in such a way as that believers no longer need to keep them. These laws can be preached as figures or types of Christ, although certainly they were not perceived that way by Israel originally.
This is the "does not literally apply" but "can be preached as figures" category of OT law.
2. "moral" category
All the legal material that the NT does carry forward fits here. These are those parts of the Ten Commandments that the NT considers still in force (remembering that the NT does not carry forward the Jewish Sabbath rule). In particular, the NT generally considers all the sexual prohibitions of the OT to apply.
3. "civil" category
Christians debate to what extent the rules relating to the political operation of Israel according to law might apply to today. Should we stone criminals? Interestingly, no one these days seems to argue we should set up a monarchy. In general, immense care and hermeneutical sophistication should be used when trying to apply such laws to today, a quite different context. Such laws must be filtered through a NT lens, as with all the OT.
Law in the Old Testament
The piece might begin by setting forth 1) the Law as a literary unit within the Jewish and Christian canon, namely, the first five books of the OT, the Torah, the Pentateuch. This is a layer of "original" literary context in the sense that these books were brought together and edited together into one unit at some point. However, 2) there are several sub-genres within the "Law." There are narratives, such as Genesis, much of Exodus and Numbers, etc.
But what this article is concerned with is primarily the legal material in the Pentateuch. How might a Christian preach from the "apodictic" and "casuistic" laws of the Torah? For that matter, how might a Christian preach from any of the prescriptive material of the Old Testament?
Differing Hermeneutics
It might be worthwhile to sketch some of the different (Protestant) approaches to how "Law and Gospel" fit together. For example, both Lutheran and Reformed traditions generally have a three-fold sense of the Law's purpose: 1) curb the sin of the wicked, 2) show us our sinfulness, 3) a guide of what righteousness is. However, the Devil is in the details, especially in arguments over exactly how the Law might apply as a guide.
Much of popular nineteenth century Christianity, however, found itself applying a great deal of the Law directly to today. The rise of the Seventh Day Adventists is a case in point. Many of the holiness and Pentecostal traditions also had a tendency to consider much of the legal material of the Law still very much applicable to today. Meanwhile, the Lutheran tradition in particular has sometimes emphasized strong discontinuity with OT law.
Categories of Application
Christians since long before the Reformation divided Old Testament legal material into three categories: moral, ceremonial, and civil. These are not of course the original categories by which either the Old or New Testaments classified laws. We might reasonably divide the Law into case law (casuistic, that comes in the form of "if this happens then the consequence will be that") and law in the form of a kind of decree (apodictic, thou shalt not, following the form of ancient suzerainty treaties between kings and subjects).
Nevertheless, the three fold categorization is not an entirely inappropriate way of approaching what the NT does with OT law. We might finesse the categories a little to give a largely Pauline hermeneutic for appropriating (and thus preaching) from the OT Law:
1. "ceremonial" category
The NT does not consider a good deal of Old Testament legal material to be binding on Gentile believers. This category especially relates to boundary issues that separated Jew and Gentile ethnically. Thus Paul does not consider circumcision or Sabbath laws binding on Gentile believers. Mark and Acts clearly do not consider food or OT purity laws to be binding on believers.
Christians usually include in this category also sacrificial or "cultic" laws relating to the Levitical system. The book of Hebrews indicates these laws no longer apply. Thus we have laws that some part of the NT considers to be fulfilled in Christ in such a way as that believers no longer need to keep them. These laws can be preached as figures or types of Christ, although certainly they were not perceived that way by Israel originally.
This is the "does not literally apply" but "can be preached as figures" category of OT law.
2. "moral" category
All the legal material that the NT does carry forward fits here. These are those parts of the Ten Commandments that the NT considers still in force (remembering that the NT does not carry forward the Jewish Sabbath rule). In particular, the NT generally considers all the sexual prohibitions of the OT to apply.
3. "civil" category
Christians debate to what extent the rules relating to the political operation of Israel according to law might apply to today. Should we stone criminals? Interestingly, no one these days seems to argue we should set up a monarchy. In general, immense care and hermeneutical sophistication should be used when trying to apply such laws to today, a quite different context. Such laws must be filtered through a NT lens, as with all the OT.
Sunday, April 29, 2012
Polygenism versus Darwin
Came across an interesting tidbit as I'm moping through The Metaphysical Club: A History of Ideas in America. I'm in the middle of the chapters on William James, and it's talking about the impact of Louis Agassiz on his life. I'd never heard of Agassiz before, but apparently he was hot stuff in the mid-1800s.
He taught deplorable things with a smile and a catchy French accent. He believed that the skulls of different races corresponded to their relative intelligence and followed the skewed report of a colleague who managed to argue that the European skull was bigger than that of Africans or Mexicans. Accordingly, he strongly opposed interracial breeding.
He also taught "polygenism." For him, this meant that God created each of the races in a different part of the globe. He believed God did this over and over again. God created animals and then destroyed them with things like floods or, more recently, an Ice Age all over the planet. Then he created new species all over again.
Of course this doesn't fit with the Adam story either, which implies "monogenism" for the origin of humanity, a single origin. Of course Agassiz might have thought Adam was only the father of the generally European race. I'm not sure.
By contrast, Darwin believed that humanity originated from a single point and, in that sense, some Christians in the late 1800s simply believed that Adam was the first human to evolve. That has been a position theistic evolutionists have taken up to the present.
But this is all background to what was interesting to me as I read. The contrast between the two that is of real interest to me is that, for all his peculiarity, Agassiz still thought in terms of "kinds" of animals. The species came first and variety came within the overarching category. As Genesis 1 puts it, God created animals and vegetables, "after their own kind."
By contrast, Darwin's approach focused on individuals and built up to species. Menand quotes Darwin, "I look at the term species as one arbitrarily given for the sake of convenience to a set of individuals closely resembling each other" (123). For Agassiz, the general kind comes first. The individuals are subsumed within the general category.
Darwin's approach builds the other way. An individual evolves and we as on-lookers create the category, so to speak. I suspect I can see where Menand is heading with this analysis, namely, that the late 1800s saw a general shift from the direction of "univerals to particulars" to the direction of "particulars to universals."
He taught deplorable things with a smile and a catchy French accent. He believed that the skulls of different races corresponded to their relative intelligence and followed the skewed report of a colleague who managed to argue that the European skull was bigger than that of Africans or Mexicans. Accordingly, he strongly opposed interracial breeding.
He also taught "polygenism." For him, this meant that God created each of the races in a different part of the globe. He believed God did this over and over again. God created animals and then destroyed them with things like floods or, more recently, an Ice Age all over the planet. Then he created new species all over again.
Of course this doesn't fit with the Adam story either, which implies "monogenism" for the origin of humanity, a single origin. Of course Agassiz might have thought Adam was only the father of the generally European race. I'm not sure.
By contrast, Darwin believed that humanity originated from a single point and, in that sense, some Christians in the late 1800s simply believed that Adam was the first human to evolve. That has been a position theistic evolutionists have taken up to the present.
But this is all background to what was interesting to me as I read. The contrast between the two that is of real interest to me is that, for all his peculiarity, Agassiz still thought in terms of "kinds" of animals. The species came first and variety came within the overarching category. As Genesis 1 puts it, God created animals and vegetables, "after their own kind."
By contrast, Darwin's approach focused on individuals and built up to species. Menand quotes Darwin, "I look at the term species as one arbitrarily given for the sake of convenience to a set of individuals closely resembling each other" (123). For Agassiz, the general kind comes first. The individuals are subsumed within the general category.
Darwin's approach builds the other way. An individual evolves and we as on-lookers create the category, so to speak. I suspect I can see where Menand is heading with this analysis, namely, that the late 1800s saw a general shift from the direction of "univerals to particulars" to the direction of "particulars to universals."
Saturday, April 28, 2012
Preaching the Narratives of the Bible
One of the challenges of theological education in Spanish right now is that resources are not as readily available. To service our Spanish MDIV, we have sought out as much as is available in Spanish (a lot of it goes out of print quickly or comes from hard to access presses). We have translated or summarized some English resources. We will eventually try to create some Spanish resources.
One topic on which we have not found ready materials in Spanish is that of Thomas Long's Preaching and the Literary Forms of the Bible. Thus far we have no plans to get permission to translate it. We might summarize parts of it and translate them. Since I have significant interest in this topic, I thought I would sketch this weekend what I consider to be the most important points on this topic, starting with preaching from the narratives of the Bible. Here is an outline:
What Is a Narrative?
A piece on preaching from biblical narratives should first identify what a narrative is. The three core components are events, characters, and settings, which together constitute plot. A plot has a beginning, a middle, and an end that involves some tension trying to move toward resolution. This plot is told from a certain point of view, sometimes through the voice of a narrator. Meanwhile, the author of a narrative arranges the story in a certain order, and the time spent on certain aspects (narrative time) can differ dramatically from the temporal proportions of real time (story time).
Biblical Narratives
Scholarship on the biblical narratives has raised unique issues relating both to the process by which various biblical narratives were created as well as the parameters of ancient narratives. While different Christians take different positions on these issues, it does a preacher well to be aware of them.
Evaluative Point of View
Key to appropriating a narrative is to ascertain its "evaluative point of view." This is inevitably God's point of view. More than anything else, including history, God's point of view in a biblical narrative is the main take-away from a narrative. Job is an excellent case in point, where the points of view of Job's comforters is less correct than Job's which is less correct than God's. Then within the canon as a whole, it must be recognized that Job itself represents a point in a developing understanding of God that culminates in the New Testament. With this in mind, the evaluative point of view of a narrative will preach.
Identifying with Events
The way a narrative flows usually involves significant meaning that will preach. Narratives often have turning points which by their very nature involve contrast between what is before and what is after. Narratives often climax, which implies significance. We can identify with the unfolding of events, which often mirror the unfolding of events today and are full of lessons. There are lessons of wisdom and foolishness, choices to avoid and choices to emulate.
Identifying with Characters
Similarly, we often see ourselves in the characters of a narrative. Once we know God's point of view on those characters, we see what is virtuous and what is full of vice. We adjust ourselves accordingly. We find ourselves in the story and look around, then return to our own lives and move.
Identifying with Settings
We can also find situations analogous to ours in a narrative. There are settings in space, time, and ideology. These "places" may be analogous to ours and our attention is piqued.
One topic on which we have not found ready materials in Spanish is that of Thomas Long's Preaching and the Literary Forms of the Bible. Thus far we have no plans to get permission to translate it. We might summarize parts of it and translate them. Since I have significant interest in this topic, I thought I would sketch this weekend what I consider to be the most important points on this topic, starting with preaching from the narratives of the Bible. Here is an outline:
What Is a Narrative?
A piece on preaching from biblical narratives should first identify what a narrative is. The three core components are events, characters, and settings, which together constitute plot. A plot has a beginning, a middle, and an end that involves some tension trying to move toward resolution. This plot is told from a certain point of view, sometimes through the voice of a narrator. Meanwhile, the author of a narrative arranges the story in a certain order, and the time spent on certain aspects (narrative time) can differ dramatically from the temporal proportions of real time (story time).
Biblical Narratives
Scholarship on the biblical narratives has raised unique issues relating both to the process by which various biblical narratives were created as well as the parameters of ancient narratives. While different Christians take different positions on these issues, it does a preacher well to be aware of them.
- unintended meanings created by the juxtaposition of diverse source material
- assumptions that biblical stories are straightforward history
- filling in narrative gaps with modern psychological or socio-cultural assumptions
Evaluative Point of View
Key to appropriating a narrative is to ascertain its "evaluative point of view." This is inevitably God's point of view. More than anything else, including history, God's point of view in a biblical narrative is the main take-away from a narrative. Job is an excellent case in point, where the points of view of Job's comforters is less correct than Job's which is less correct than God's. Then within the canon as a whole, it must be recognized that Job itself represents a point in a developing understanding of God that culminates in the New Testament. With this in mind, the evaluative point of view of a narrative will preach.
Identifying with Events
The way a narrative flows usually involves significant meaning that will preach. Narratives often have turning points which by their very nature involve contrast between what is before and what is after. Narratives often climax, which implies significance. We can identify with the unfolding of events, which often mirror the unfolding of events today and are full of lessons. There are lessons of wisdom and foolishness, choices to avoid and choices to emulate.
Identifying with Characters
Similarly, we often see ourselves in the characters of a narrative. Once we know God's point of view on those characters, we see what is virtuous and what is full of vice. We adjust ourselves accordingly. We find ourselves in the story and look around, then return to our own lives and move.
Identifying with Settings
We can also find situations analogous to ours in a narrative. There are settings in space, time, and ideology. These "places" may be analogous to ours and our attention is piqued.
Friday, April 27, 2012
Psalm 9 Translation
Psalm 9
[To the musician leading on the death of a son, a psalm (attributed) to David]
9:1 I will praise YHWH with all my heart.
Let me tell of all the marvelous things you have done.
2 Let me rejoice and let me exult in you.
Let me make music to your name, O Most High.
3 When my enemies turn back,
they will fall and perish before your face.
4 For you bring justice
and my case you take on the high seat,
judging in righteousness.
5 You rebuked the nations;
you destroyed the wicked;
their name you wiped out forever and ever.
6 O enemy, [your] devastations have come to an end in perpetuity.
And you have destroyed cities.
Their memory perished [with] them.
7 But YHWH remains forever,
establishing his throne for justice.
8 But he will judge the inhabited world with righteousness;
he will pronounce judgment on peoples with equity.
9 YHWH will be a refuge for the crushed;
a refuge for times in distress.
10 And those who know your name will trust in you,
for you do not abandon those who seek you, YHWH.
11 Sing to YHWH, the one dwelling in Zion.
Make known among the peoples his doings.
12 For the one seeking bloods, them he [God] remembers;
he does not forget the cry of the poor.
13 Be gracious to me, YHWH;
look on my misery from those who hate me,
you who raise me up from the gates of death.
14 So that I might recount all your praises in the gates of the daughter of Zion.
I will rejoice in your salvation.
15 Nations have fallen into the pits they made;
in the net that they concealed,
[their] foot was caught.
16 YHWH is known [by] the judgment he does;
by the deed of his palms the wicked is snared.
(Higgion music)
17 The wicked turn to Sheol,
all the nations who forget God.
18 For not for eternity will the needy be forgotten;
the hope of the poor will not perish forever.
19 Arise, YHWH. Do not let man be strong;
let the nations be judged before your face.
20 Place, YHWH, fear on them;
let the nations know [that] they are man.
Music.
[To the musician leading on the death of a son, a psalm (attributed) to David]
9:1 I will praise YHWH with all my heart.
Let me tell of all the marvelous things you have done.
2 Let me rejoice and let me exult in you.
Let me make music to your name, O Most High.
3 When my enemies turn back,
they will fall and perish before your face.
4 For you bring justice
and my case you take on the high seat,
judging in righteousness.
5 You rebuked the nations;
you destroyed the wicked;
their name you wiped out forever and ever.
6 O enemy, [your] devastations have come to an end in perpetuity.
And you have destroyed cities.
Their memory perished [with] them.
7 But YHWH remains forever,
establishing his throne for justice.
8 But he will judge the inhabited world with righteousness;
he will pronounce judgment on peoples with equity.
9 YHWH will be a refuge for the crushed;
a refuge for times in distress.
10 And those who know your name will trust in you,
for you do not abandon those who seek you, YHWH.
11 Sing to YHWH, the one dwelling in Zion.
Make known among the peoples his doings.
12 For the one seeking bloods, them he [God] remembers;
he does not forget the cry of the poor.
13 Be gracious to me, YHWH;
look on my misery from those who hate me,
you who raise me up from the gates of death.
14 So that I might recount all your praises in the gates of the daughter of Zion.
I will rejoice in your salvation.
15 Nations have fallen into the pits they made;
in the net that they concealed,
[their] foot was caught.
16 YHWH is known [by] the judgment he does;
by the deed of his palms the wicked is snared.
(Higgion music)
17 The wicked turn to Sheol,
all the nations who forget God.
18 For not for eternity will the needy be forgotten;
the hope of the poor will not perish forever.
19 Arise, YHWH. Do not let man be strong;
let the nations be judged before your face.
20 Place, YHWH, fear on them;
let the nations know [that] they are man.
Music.
Unpardonable Sin 4
... continued from yesterday
_______________
A couple features of this issue have caused great discussion over the years. One is the question of the unpardonable sin. When Jesus' opponents suggest he performed miracles by the power of Satan, Jesus warns them starkly. Attributing the work of the Holy Spirit to Satan is serious business, a sin that will not be forgiven.
Many a sensitive soul has struggled with this concept in self-doubt. Have I committed this sin? I heard of a man once who participated more faithfully in a church than anyone else and yet was convinced there was no hope for him. In his mind he had committed the sin from which no one can return.
In that light, a bottom line is in order. If it is the Holy Spirit that draws us to God in the first place, then anyone who truly is seeking God cannot have committed such a sin. In other words, anyone who has committed this sin will not want to come back to God. If you are truly seeking God, you are good to go.
Of course what does it mean to seek God truly? Many a child is sorry she got caught rather than truly remorseful for doing something bad. Perhaps it is not exactly what Hebrews 12:17 means, but the wording is interesting when it says that Esau, "found no place for repentance, though he sought for it with tears" (NASB). A truly repentant heart is something deeper that realizing you're in trouble.
But the person who thinks God is always hiding around the corner, waiting to give you a "sinning ticket," has a false picture of God. God is standing out in the open, looking for any chance to reconcile and welcome you. The other picture is unhealthy and often leads us to pass on legalistic judgment to others as well.
The take-away from the unpardonable sin is for us to be careful not to miss the working of the Spirit in others. For example, for years many people in my church wondered if those who spoke in tongues were demon-possessed. I hope that for most it was a sincere question rather than an accusation. Why even take a chance on such a thing? If speaking in tongues can be from the Holy Spirit, then attributing it to Satan is very similar to the unpardonable sin of Mark 3:28-29. [1]
In general, we should be very careful about judging others (Matt. 7:1) or assuming that God can't work in others in ways he doesn't work with us. It's not just that it is the wrong attitude on our part. It's that we ourselves may miss out on a blessing by way of others.
Another issue raised by Jesus' healing of the paralytic in Mark 2 is the authority to forgive sins...
[1] There is of course a third option, that some speaking of tongues can be a psychological phenomenon that some human brains are wired for. In fact, the gift of tongues could be the Holy Spirit blessing individuals with this sort of wiring. This would explain why we sometimes find tongues-speaking in other religions.
_______________
A couple features of this issue have caused great discussion over the years. One is the question of the unpardonable sin. When Jesus' opponents suggest he performed miracles by the power of Satan, Jesus warns them starkly. Attributing the work of the Holy Spirit to Satan is serious business, a sin that will not be forgiven.
Many a sensitive soul has struggled with this concept in self-doubt. Have I committed this sin? I heard of a man once who participated more faithfully in a church than anyone else and yet was convinced there was no hope for him. In his mind he had committed the sin from which no one can return.
In that light, a bottom line is in order. If it is the Holy Spirit that draws us to God in the first place, then anyone who truly is seeking God cannot have committed such a sin. In other words, anyone who has committed this sin will not want to come back to God. If you are truly seeking God, you are good to go.
Of course what does it mean to seek God truly? Many a child is sorry she got caught rather than truly remorseful for doing something bad. Perhaps it is not exactly what Hebrews 12:17 means, but the wording is interesting when it says that Esau, "found no place for repentance, though he sought for it with tears" (NASB). A truly repentant heart is something deeper that realizing you're in trouble.
But the person who thinks God is always hiding around the corner, waiting to give you a "sinning ticket," has a false picture of God. God is standing out in the open, looking for any chance to reconcile and welcome you. The other picture is unhealthy and often leads us to pass on legalistic judgment to others as well.
The take-away from the unpardonable sin is for us to be careful not to miss the working of the Spirit in others. For example, for years many people in my church wondered if those who spoke in tongues were demon-possessed. I hope that for most it was a sincere question rather than an accusation. Why even take a chance on such a thing? If speaking in tongues can be from the Holy Spirit, then attributing it to Satan is very similar to the unpardonable sin of Mark 3:28-29. [1]
In general, we should be very careful about judging others (Matt. 7:1) or assuming that God can't work in others in ways he doesn't work with us. It's not just that it is the wrong attitude on our part. It's that we ourselves may miss out on a blessing by way of others.
Another issue raised by Jesus' healing of the paralytic in Mark 2 is the authority to forgive sins...
[1] There is of course a third option, that some speaking of tongues can be a psychological phenomenon that some human brains are wired for. In fact, the gift of tongues could be the Holy Spirit blessing individuals with this sort of wiring. This would explain why we sometimes find tongues-speaking in other religions.
Thursday, April 26, 2012
Handling Conflict on the Mission
I just wrote informally on conflict in the context of Jesus' ministry, but I thought it might be worthwhile to formalize my sense of how to handle conflict when you're on God's mission.
When you are on God's mission and you face opposition, you should:
1. Examine yourself.
This involves prayer. It involves reflection and introspection. It can involve seeking out the counsel of others. Are my motives pure? Is my understanding right?
2. What are the costs of moving forward?
God doesn't usually force others to do his will. He allows us to resist his will. He often lets others stop his best plan because they have the human power to do so. And the cost of moving forward with God's best plan can be too great to move forward. What will it take to move forward?
3. Make a decision.
There is a time to force God's hand on others. This is especially true when the human cost of not moving forward is extreme. There is a time when the opposition is "fleshly" and we plow on through. There is a time when the cost is greater than the benefit, and we concede or compromise or "shake the dust off our feet" and move on. There is a time when we wait, sensing that a door will open at a later time.
4. Implement purely.
We should move forward with God's will in a loving way. We respect those who sincerely disagree and treat them with love. We act without spite for those whose opposition is not pure, looking to their redemption. We pray for those who resist God's will and pray for our own understanding and purity of motive.
When you are on God's mission and you face opposition, you should:
1. Examine yourself.
This involves prayer. It involves reflection and introspection. It can involve seeking out the counsel of others. Are my motives pure? Is my understanding right?
2. What are the costs of moving forward?
God doesn't usually force others to do his will. He allows us to resist his will. He often lets others stop his best plan because they have the human power to do so. And the cost of moving forward with God's best plan can be too great to move forward. What will it take to move forward?
3. Make a decision.
There is a time to force God's hand on others. This is especially true when the human cost of not moving forward is extreme. There is a time when the opposition is "fleshly" and we plow on through. There is a time when the cost is greater than the benefit, and we concede or compromise or "shake the dust off our feet" and move on. There is a time when we wait, sensing that a door will open at a later time.
4. Implement purely.
We should move forward with God's will in a loving way. We respect those who sincerely disagree and treat them with love. We act without spite for those whose opposition is not pure, looking to their redemption. We pray for those who resist God's will and pray for our own understanding and purity of motive.
Opposition to us today 3
... continued from Saturday
______________
... Who were these teachers of the law? Mark doesn't identify them as Pharisees and this is just as well, since the Pharisees were primarily located in Jerusalem. [1] Jesus also is not in a big city, just in the seaside village of Capernaum. Most likely, then, these are very local individuals who play some official teaching role in the synagogue.
We can't know if there was an actual synagogue building in Capernaum. The building there now that pilgrims visit comes from over a hundred years later. In general, synagogues at this time were gatherings that usually did not have devoted buildings. [2] We have few archaeological examples of actual synagogue buildings at this point in history. Some did exist, but not in the prevalent way we now assume. Perhaps these gatherings were in homes, as the gathering in this story.
We should not be too quick to condemn these teachers. We know so much about Jesus in hindsight. To them, Jesus was a miracle worker that they definitely needed to check out. But he probably didn't fit their preconceptions of the kind of man God would choose. Wasn't he born under suspicious circumstances? Isn't he an artisan who works in wood and such--on the lower end of society to be sure? [3]
Some opposition is sincere and some comes for dubious reasons. Perhaps these teachers were completely sincere in their opposition to Jesus. Admittedly, it doesn't feel that way as we continue to read the gospel texts. It feels like they were intimidated by someone whose authority called their knowledge and authority into question. And rather than step back and submit to someone greater than them, they used their energies to oppose him.
Opposition usually involves more than just disagreement over the issues. There are usually personal dimensions involved. Sometimes we are jealous of others and what we perceive as their advantages or good fortune. Sometimes we feel embarrassed by them because their strengths seem to expose our weaknesses. Sometimes they make us feel insecure in our position or habits of living. Sometimes such insecurity is real and sometimes it is imagined.
Of course others are wired to enjoy opposing others. Some people have a lust for power and opposing others is their way of gaining more. No one must stand in the way of their ambition. It's not clear to me that the teachers of the law in Mark were of this sort.
Finally, there are a few people who genuinely oppose others because they believe the ideas or actions of another person are dangerous. They of course can be right or they can have a zeal not based on knowledge (Rom. 10:2). At least some of Jesus' opposition probably was sincere, but a great deal more probably was not.
Much of the time, the opposition doesn't seem to bother Jesus. By and large, Jesus doesn't go looking for opposition, it comes to him. He simply conducts his mission and moves on. He doesn't feel threatened by the opposition. He is confident in what he does. In the case of the paralytic, he substantiates his claim to forgive sins by healing the man.
We may very well also face opposition and conflict today as we try to do God's will in this world. Unlike Jesus, we may sometimes be in the wrong. There is a time for us to examine ourselves and see if we are on the right path. Are my motives pure or am I on a self-serving mission? Do I genuinely understand God's will or is my own zeal not based on knowledge? I may not be able to see myself clearly. I may need to seek out someone else who I trust to be honest with me.
But we should not always second guess ourselves either. When we have done our best to know God's will, we should move forward with it as best we can. We should not do so with an attitude. Looking down on those who disagree with us is itself a sign that our motives are not pure. Rather, we should have a peace that is not distracted by opposition.
If those who oppose us are praying for us, we should welcome that. How can prayer ever be a bad thing if we are aligned with God's will? If opposition is self-serving or ambitious, we should beware and be wise as serpents. We usually cannot make others do what is right. We can only make sure that our own motives are pure and that we are walking circumspectly. We may need to seek out allies or counsel.
There was a time when Jesus counselled his disciples to "shake the dust off your feet" and move on (Matt. 10:14). You cannot change someone else's heart. God usually allows them to resist. It is not about winning but about being faithful. We cannot always get everyone on the same page. There is a time to move forward with those who are with us and a time when enough are against us that we should move on and shake the dust off our feet...
[1] So much so, in fact, that E. P. Sanders questions whether Jesus ever even had direct contact with Pharisees proper outside of Jerusalem.
[2] See Lee Levine, The Ancient Synagogue.
[3] Although most of his work is highly questionable, J. D. Crossan has looked at some of these social dynamics. ***
______________
... Who were these teachers of the law? Mark doesn't identify them as Pharisees and this is just as well, since the Pharisees were primarily located in Jerusalem. [1] Jesus also is not in a big city, just in the seaside village of Capernaum. Most likely, then, these are very local individuals who play some official teaching role in the synagogue.
We can't know if there was an actual synagogue building in Capernaum. The building there now that pilgrims visit comes from over a hundred years later. In general, synagogues at this time were gatherings that usually did not have devoted buildings. [2] We have few archaeological examples of actual synagogue buildings at this point in history. Some did exist, but not in the prevalent way we now assume. Perhaps these gatherings were in homes, as the gathering in this story.
We should not be too quick to condemn these teachers. We know so much about Jesus in hindsight. To them, Jesus was a miracle worker that they definitely needed to check out. But he probably didn't fit their preconceptions of the kind of man God would choose. Wasn't he born under suspicious circumstances? Isn't he an artisan who works in wood and such--on the lower end of society to be sure? [3]
Some opposition is sincere and some comes for dubious reasons. Perhaps these teachers were completely sincere in their opposition to Jesus. Admittedly, it doesn't feel that way as we continue to read the gospel texts. It feels like they were intimidated by someone whose authority called their knowledge and authority into question. And rather than step back and submit to someone greater than them, they used their energies to oppose him.
Opposition usually involves more than just disagreement over the issues. There are usually personal dimensions involved. Sometimes we are jealous of others and what we perceive as their advantages or good fortune. Sometimes we feel embarrassed by them because their strengths seem to expose our weaknesses. Sometimes they make us feel insecure in our position or habits of living. Sometimes such insecurity is real and sometimes it is imagined.
Of course others are wired to enjoy opposing others. Some people have a lust for power and opposing others is their way of gaining more. No one must stand in the way of their ambition. It's not clear to me that the teachers of the law in Mark were of this sort.
Finally, there are a few people who genuinely oppose others because they believe the ideas or actions of another person are dangerous. They of course can be right or they can have a zeal not based on knowledge (Rom. 10:2). At least some of Jesus' opposition probably was sincere, but a great deal more probably was not.
Much of the time, the opposition doesn't seem to bother Jesus. By and large, Jesus doesn't go looking for opposition, it comes to him. He simply conducts his mission and moves on. He doesn't feel threatened by the opposition. He is confident in what he does. In the case of the paralytic, he substantiates his claim to forgive sins by healing the man.
We may very well also face opposition and conflict today as we try to do God's will in this world. Unlike Jesus, we may sometimes be in the wrong. There is a time for us to examine ourselves and see if we are on the right path. Are my motives pure or am I on a self-serving mission? Do I genuinely understand God's will or is my own zeal not based on knowledge? I may not be able to see myself clearly. I may need to seek out someone else who I trust to be honest with me.
But we should not always second guess ourselves either. When we have done our best to know God's will, we should move forward with it as best we can. We should not do so with an attitude. Looking down on those who disagree with us is itself a sign that our motives are not pure. Rather, we should have a peace that is not distracted by opposition.
If those who oppose us are praying for us, we should welcome that. How can prayer ever be a bad thing if we are aligned with God's will? If opposition is self-serving or ambitious, we should beware and be wise as serpents. We usually cannot make others do what is right. We can only make sure that our own motives are pure and that we are walking circumspectly. We may need to seek out allies or counsel.
There was a time when Jesus counselled his disciples to "shake the dust off your feet" and move on (Matt. 10:14). You cannot change someone else's heart. God usually allows them to resist. It is not about winning but about being faithful. We cannot always get everyone on the same page. There is a time to move forward with those who are with us and a time when enough are against us that we should move on and shake the dust off our feet...
[1] So much so, in fact, that E. P. Sanders questions whether Jesus ever even had direct contact with Pharisees proper outside of Jerusalem.
[2] See Lee Levine, The Ancient Synagogue.
[3] Although most of his work is highly questionable, J. D. Crossan has looked at some of these social dynamics. ***
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Language that Includes
I was trying to draft some sort of a statement that didn't come across as militant but expressed the bottom line of the issue. Here's my first draft. What do you think?
_________
Sometimes we use language that we do not realize makes others feel like outsiders. Ironically, we can do this when we are actually trying to reach a group that is in the minority or is not dominant in our context. We can do this in our language when we only use illustrations about how “he” does something. I may not only have men in mind, but many at this point of history will hear it that way. In the spirit of not wanting to put any stumbling block in the way of the good news, we should strive to speak and write in such a way as to include everyone we mean to include and speak with a clear voice. If we mean both men and women in what we are saying, then we should consciously include both in our language. If we mean to say that a less dominant group is included, then we should say “we” instead of “they.”
_________
Sometimes we use language that we do not realize makes others feel like outsiders. Ironically, we can do this when we are actually trying to reach a group that is in the minority or is not dominant in our context. We can do this in our language when we only use illustrations about how “he” does something. I may not only have men in mind, but many at this point of history will hear it that way. In the spirit of not wanting to put any stumbling block in the way of the good news, we should strive to speak and write in such a way as to include everyone we mean to include and speak with a clear voice. If we mean both men and women in what we are saying, then we should consciously include both in our language. If we mean to say that a less dominant group is included, then we should say “we” instead of “they.”
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Wesley, Soterianism, and Oliver Wendell Holmes...
... No, these don't all go together, but I thought it would peak your curiosity more than "Thoughts I've Had Today."
Wesley and Soterianism
I was reflecting today in class about the fact that the ordo salutis ("order of salvation") was the defining feature of Wesley's theology, and I was connecting this fact to my take-away from Scot McKnight's recent King Jesus Gospel that the very terms of the Reformation got us out of focus on the gospel in the process of correcting an overemphasis on the church as the agent of salvation.
Let me put it in my own terms. The focal point of the Reformation was the argument over the role of works in salvation, indulgences in particular. (The other emphases of the Reformation followed naturally on this focal issue. The argument over Scripture was about the ground rules of the debate. The foci on Christ and grace had to do with the theological framework of the question of works)
The result is that Protestantism has always tended to overemphasize Paul and overemphasize anthropology at the center of theology. That is to say, the terms of Luther's debate inevitably has led us to focus on the human problem and its solution as the center of theology. Rather, God should be the center of theology.
Wesley was simply playing out the terms of the Reformation on the details. So he took justification from Luther, extended sanctification from Calvin, appropriated the Arminian wing of the Calvinist tree, and threw in some assurance of salvation from the Moravians for good measure. Since he was Anglican, he remained closer to Roman Catholicism than Luther or Calvin.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Finished the second and third chapters of The Metaphysical Club on the plane home yesterday. Felt quite sorry for Holmes in chapter 2 as the naive "all or nothing" abolitionist/idealist got a real life lesson in the absurd violence of the Civil War. It is a good reminder for anyone who is excited about war. War should always, always be a last resort when everything else has failed.
But I didn't like the post-Civil War Holmes. He came to consider individual lives as generally unimportant in comparison to society doing its thing. Rules became simply conventional for him and his big deal was simply following them, no matter who got run over in the process.
Having started quite interested in the man, I ended that section with little identification with him at all.
Wesley and Soterianism
I was reflecting today in class about the fact that the ordo salutis ("order of salvation") was the defining feature of Wesley's theology, and I was connecting this fact to my take-away from Scot McKnight's recent King Jesus Gospel that the very terms of the Reformation got us out of focus on the gospel in the process of correcting an overemphasis on the church as the agent of salvation.
Let me put it in my own terms. The focal point of the Reformation was the argument over the role of works in salvation, indulgences in particular. (The other emphases of the Reformation followed naturally on this focal issue. The argument over Scripture was about the ground rules of the debate. The foci on Christ and grace had to do with the theological framework of the question of works)
The result is that Protestantism has always tended to overemphasize Paul and overemphasize anthropology at the center of theology. That is to say, the terms of Luther's debate inevitably has led us to focus on the human problem and its solution as the center of theology. Rather, God should be the center of theology.
Wesley was simply playing out the terms of the Reformation on the details. So he took justification from Luther, extended sanctification from Calvin, appropriated the Arminian wing of the Calvinist tree, and threw in some assurance of salvation from the Moravians for good measure. Since he was Anglican, he remained closer to Roman Catholicism than Luther or Calvin.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Finished the second and third chapters of The Metaphysical Club on the plane home yesterday. Felt quite sorry for Holmes in chapter 2 as the naive "all or nothing" abolitionist/idealist got a real life lesson in the absurd violence of the Civil War. It is a good reminder for anyone who is excited about war. War should always, always be a last resort when everything else has failed.
But I didn't like the post-Civil War Holmes. He came to consider individual lives as generally unimportant in comparison to society doing its thing. Rules became simply conventional for him and his big deal was simply following them, no matter who got run over in the process.
Having started quite interested in the man, I ended that section with little identification with him at all.
Nashotah House Theological Seminary
Yesterday I was at Nashotah House Theological Seminary near Milwaukee helping with a faculty evaluation. Let me just say that this place is one of theological education's best kept secrets.
[here are some more pictures]
It is an Anglican/Episcopal seminary, quite the opposite in style from Wesley where I am, but our common heritage popped up time and time again. It also reminded me of my days at St. John's College at the University of Durham.
Here's why Nashotah is an incredible place to study for a large number of future ministers:
Great place!
It is an Anglican/Episcopal seminary, quite the opposite in style from Wesley where I am, but our common heritage popped up time and time again. It also reminded me of my days at St. John's College at the University of Durham.
Here's why Nashotah is an incredible place to study for a large number of future ministers:
- It is a cross between a monastic community and a seminary. All students begin the day together in the Anglo-Catholic chapel with morning prayer and Eucharist and they end the day with evensong together. They break bread together. All MDIV students must live on campus, whether married or single. Faculty do all these things with them all day and the seminary even owns the houses the faculty live in.
- It is a beautiful location in Wisconsin, full of hills, lakes, and trees.
- It is a safe zone for Anglicans and Episcopals of all kinds. It is Anglo-Catholic in emphasis, but students on both ends of the Episcopal spectrum are safe here. It remains affiliated with the mainstream Episcopal Church and most of its faculty are still in the Episcopal Church. But Anglicans who have separated from the Episcopal Church will find it the most attractive option to get their education.
- It is a place for the increasing number of evangelicals who are looking for something more than just the cognitive--the student drawn to the sensibilities of the ancient-future movement. There is a clear path right now from Wheaton to Nashota for students who are looking for something affective to add to a heady start.
- They will stay relatively small in their on campus ministry as a matter of ethos in order to maintain the intimate feel. They have several distance programs (MA, STM, DMIN), but the on campus MDIV is around 50 students. They'd be happy to grow to 100, but wouldn't want to go much more than that on campus.
Great place!
Monday, April 23, 2012
Book Review: The Metaphysical Club
I am in Nashota, Wisconsin today... flew last night from Indianapolis to Milwaukee by way of Minneapolis (huh?). I spent some of the plane ride reading the first chapter of a book John Drury recommended called The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America. From what I gather so far, it is a tale of the most formative influence on American thinking in the second half of the 1800's, namely, pragmatism.
The reason why John and I find this subject so interesting is because it seems that a lot of the genius of the IWU Religion Division in the first decade of this century. as well as the founding genius of Wesley Seminary, can be summed up under the heading of pragmatism in the philosophical sense. The term has a negative connotation to some, but there is also a rather profound side to it.
In any case, I read the first chapter, "The Politics of Slavery." It means to show what pre-Civil War Boston was like and what the father of the famous Oliver Wendell Holmes was like in that era. I'll confess that the chapter created some inner turmoil in me, because of my pragmatic sympathies.
We sometimes say things like, "If so and so were here today, he or she would..." Likewise, we sometimes try to project ourselves into the past. "If I had been born in 1830, I would have taken this position on slavery." But of course it is impossible to say who we would have been if we had grown up in a different time and place. Without our memories and formative experiences, we probably can say little other than what our fundamental personality might have been.
No, time travel of this sort only makes sense if we transport ourselves at a certain age and wipe our memory of the future clean, an age after our identities now were largely formed. We're probably talking at least our early twenties. For me, you would perhaps want to send me back in time at about the age of 30, maybe even 40.
Would I have been an abolitionist? Yes, I would have been strongly in favor of abolition. I would have been in favor of helping runaway slaves continue on their way to Canada or to some place of safety. I would have disobeyed the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 if I could get away with it.
But I would also have been in favor of the union, a unionist. And many abolitionists--according to Louis Menand--didn't give a rip about the union. I was reminded of the Stoics: "Let justice be done though the heavens fall." That is to say, most abolitionists were idealists who largely didn't care about the practical consequences of how they went about getting abolition. Many were "all or nothing" type people, a way of thinking I find absurd in most cases. It often does an equal or greater amount of harm for the good it accomplishes--that is, when it even wins out. I suspect it usually loses.
No, I can see what course I would have supported. I would have supported a course of gradual abolition, following a political path. I look at the Missouri Compromise and I see the masterful art of compromise, turning the trajectory of the nation away from slavery. As a matter of principle, no abolitionist would have voted for it (Menand indicates they didn't hardly vote at all so as not to taint themselves, let alone run for office). And yet I shudder to think what might have happened if the Missouri Compromise had not passed.
Of course many of those opposed to slavery in the North were just as racist as anyone else. Ulysses S. Grant even wrote later that, "The great majority of the people of the North had no particular quarrel with slavery, so long as they were not forced to have it themselves. But they were not willing to play the role of police for the South in the protection of this particular institution" (11).
The tension between the principle of abolition and the principle of union is fascinating. I would have opposed the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 because I didn't believe in slavery. But I would have to support the authority of the federal government to prevail over the laws of individual states in such matters. So we have civil disobedience against a specific law but acceptance of federal authority in principle.
I have a hunch where the book might be headed. The "all or nothing," "do away with slavery or die" approach of some abolitionists was a path to war, a war that cost more American lives than any war since. And of course the post-Civil War South was a mess for both former slaves and former slave owners. The trajectory of the purist and the anarchist is not entirely dissimilar, the purist just doesn't know it.
I hope I can find the time to continue reading...
The reason why John and I find this subject so interesting is because it seems that a lot of the genius of the IWU Religion Division in the first decade of this century. as well as the founding genius of Wesley Seminary, can be summed up under the heading of pragmatism in the philosophical sense. The term has a negative connotation to some, but there is also a rather profound side to it.
In any case, I read the first chapter, "The Politics of Slavery." It means to show what pre-Civil War Boston was like and what the father of the famous Oliver Wendell Holmes was like in that era. I'll confess that the chapter created some inner turmoil in me, because of my pragmatic sympathies.
We sometimes say things like, "If so and so were here today, he or she would..." Likewise, we sometimes try to project ourselves into the past. "If I had been born in 1830, I would have taken this position on slavery." But of course it is impossible to say who we would have been if we had grown up in a different time and place. Without our memories and formative experiences, we probably can say little other than what our fundamental personality might have been.
No, time travel of this sort only makes sense if we transport ourselves at a certain age and wipe our memory of the future clean, an age after our identities now were largely formed. We're probably talking at least our early twenties. For me, you would perhaps want to send me back in time at about the age of 30, maybe even 40.
Would I have been an abolitionist? Yes, I would have been strongly in favor of abolition. I would have been in favor of helping runaway slaves continue on their way to Canada or to some place of safety. I would have disobeyed the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 if I could get away with it.
But I would also have been in favor of the union, a unionist. And many abolitionists--according to Louis Menand--didn't give a rip about the union. I was reminded of the Stoics: "Let justice be done though the heavens fall." That is to say, most abolitionists were idealists who largely didn't care about the practical consequences of how they went about getting abolition. Many were "all or nothing" type people, a way of thinking I find absurd in most cases. It often does an equal or greater amount of harm for the good it accomplishes--that is, when it even wins out. I suspect it usually loses.
No, I can see what course I would have supported. I would have supported a course of gradual abolition, following a political path. I look at the Missouri Compromise and I see the masterful art of compromise, turning the trajectory of the nation away from slavery. As a matter of principle, no abolitionist would have voted for it (Menand indicates they didn't hardly vote at all so as not to taint themselves, let alone run for office). And yet I shudder to think what might have happened if the Missouri Compromise had not passed.
Of course many of those opposed to slavery in the North were just as racist as anyone else. Ulysses S. Grant even wrote later that, "The great majority of the people of the North had no particular quarrel with slavery, so long as they were not forced to have it themselves. But they were not willing to play the role of police for the South in the protection of this particular institution" (11).
The tension between the principle of abolition and the principle of union is fascinating. I would have opposed the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 because I didn't believe in slavery. But I would have to support the authority of the federal government to prevail over the laws of individual states in such matters. So we have civil disobedience against a specific law but acceptance of federal authority in principle.
I have a hunch where the book might be headed. The "all or nothing," "do away with slavery or die" approach of some abolitionists was a path to war, a war that cost more American lives than any war since. And of course the post-Civil War South was a mess for both former slaves and former slave owners. The trajectory of the purist and the anarchist is not entirely dissimilar, the purist just doesn't know it.
I hope I can find the time to continue reading...
Saturday, April 21, 2012
Conflict over Spiritual Authority 2
... continued from yesterday.
______________
Jesus' ministry in Galilee starts in Mark 1 with a barrage of miracles. After he is baptized and tempted, he calls followers and begins to heal and cast out demons. He heals Peter's mother-in-law and a man with leprosy. He casts out an unclean spirit on the Sabbath and goes off alone to pray.
Perhaps it is no surprise that Mark 2 then records a number of conflicts that come to Jesus. We want to be careful how we analyze and apply the way these conflicts arise, but there are certainly important lessons to learn from them. As Jesus exercises his spiritual power and authority, it is only to be expected that it would cause some problems with those who were in formal positions of spiritual authority.
The first conflict in Mark comes when Jesus declares that the sins of a paralyzed man are forgiven (Mark 2:1-11). Certain teachers of the Law who have come to hear him don't think this is appropriate. Only God alone can pronounce sins forgiven. The wording is quite interesting because it probably alludes to the cornerstone of Jewish faith, the Shema: "Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one" (Deut. 6:4).
Some aspects of this conflict seem puzzling to me. Didn't the priests at the temple regularly pronounce sins as forgiven after people offered their sacrifices? Wasn't John's baptism for the forgiveness of sins, with the expectation that those who were baptized would be forgiven? Even today, when people truly pray for God's forgiveness, wouldn't most pastors have confidence to say that their sins are now forgiven?
At the very least, Mark was implying that Jesus had the authority of God. And of course Jesus backs it up by healing the paralytic. He shows that he is not only saying the man is forgiven. He is showing he has the spiritual power to substantiate his authority. [1]
The Jews had a place in their view of the world for a prophet, individuals with authority from God even though they are not in official positions of power. Prophets brought words from God that spoke to current situations. The teachers of the law were already in the house listening to Jesus. We don't know if they were there as skeptics or if they were genuinely curious about whether Jesus was truly a prophet.
What we know is that Jesus did something that did not fit with their understanding. They thought he was blaspheming. He was associating himself too closely with the functions of God himself. Perhaps they genuinely didn't think humans could do such things. Or maybe they thought Jesus was the wrong human to be pronouncing such things.
They were faced with the choice either to alter their understanding or to find some way to continue believing what they already believed. The clear impression we get is that most teachers of this sort were not ultimately interested in accepting Jesus' authority. That left them needing to explain how Jesus could do the miracles he did. The answer was to attribute his spiritual power to Satan himself.
"By the prince of demons he is driving out demons" (3:22). The teachers of the law cannot deny his power, so they deny the source of his power. Jesus indicates that this is a very serious accusation indeed, for they are saying that the power of God is actually the power of Beelzebul. Jesus describes such a thing as an unpardonable sin. It's not a sin against Jesus but a sin against the Holy Spirit (3:28-29).
Jesus tells them that it doesn't work that way. Satan can't cast out Satan without diminishing his own paper. "If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand" (3:25). The problem is not with Jesus. It is with them...
[1] It's hard to know if there is an implicit connection in this story between the need for healing and the sin of the paralytic. Sometimes sickness was understood to be a consequence of sin, so that healing would be the natural companion of forgiveness. Again, this passage doesn't explicitly make such a connection.
______________
Jesus' ministry in Galilee starts in Mark 1 with a barrage of miracles. After he is baptized and tempted, he calls followers and begins to heal and cast out demons. He heals Peter's mother-in-law and a man with leprosy. He casts out an unclean spirit on the Sabbath and goes off alone to pray.
Perhaps it is no surprise that Mark 2 then records a number of conflicts that come to Jesus. We want to be careful how we analyze and apply the way these conflicts arise, but there are certainly important lessons to learn from them. As Jesus exercises his spiritual power and authority, it is only to be expected that it would cause some problems with those who were in formal positions of spiritual authority.
The first conflict in Mark comes when Jesus declares that the sins of a paralyzed man are forgiven (Mark 2:1-11). Certain teachers of the Law who have come to hear him don't think this is appropriate. Only God alone can pronounce sins forgiven. The wording is quite interesting because it probably alludes to the cornerstone of Jewish faith, the Shema: "Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one" (Deut. 6:4).
Some aspects of this conflict seem puzzling to me. Didn't the priests at the temple regularly pronounce sins as forgiven after people offered their sacrifices? Wasn't John's baptism for the forgiveness of sins, with the expectation that those who were baptized would be forgiven? Even today, when people truly pray for God's forgiveness, wouldn't most pastors have confidence to say that their sins are now forgiven?
At the very least, Mark was implying that Jesus had the authority of God. And of course Jesus backs it up by healing the paralytic. He shows that he is not only saying the man is forgiven. He is showing he has the spiritual power to substantiate his authority. [1]
The Jews had a place in their view of the world for a prophet, individuals with authority from God even though they are not in official positions of power. Prophets brought words from God that spoke to current situations. The teachers of the law were already in the house listening to Jesus. We don't know if they were there as skeptics or if they were genuinely curious about whether Jesus was truly a prophet.
What we know is that Jesus did something that did not fit with their understanding. They thought he was blaspheming. He was associating himself too closely with the functions of God himself. Perhaps they genuinely didn't think humans could do such things. Or maybe they thought Jesus was the wrong human to be pronouncing such things.
They were faced with the choice either to alter their understanding or to find some way to continue believing what they already believed. The clear impression we get is that most teachers of this sort were not ultimately interested in accepting Jesus' authority. That left them needing to explain how Jesus could do the miracles he did. The answer was to attribute his spiritual power to Satan himself.
"By the prince of demons he is driving out demons" (3:22). The teachers of the law cannot deny his power, so they deny the source of his power. Jesus indicates that this is a very serious accusation indeed, for they are saying that the power of God is actually the power of Beelzebul. Jesus describes such a thing as an unpardonable sin. It's not a sin against Jesus but a sin against the Holy Spirit (3:28-29).
Jesus tells them that it doesn't work that way. Satan can't cast out Satan without diminishing his own paper. "If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand" (3:25). The problem is not with Jesus. It is with them...
[1] It's hard to know if there is an implicit connection in this story between the need for healing and the sin of the paralytic. Sometimes sickness was understood to be a consequence of sin, so that healing would be the natural companion of forgiveness. Again, this passage doesn't explicitly make such a connection.
Friday, April 20, 2012
An Arminian View of Prayer...
... is basically the view with which most people operate. It is the belief that prayer changes things.
I don't personally believe that prayer can lead someone to become a Christian. That must ultimately be a matter of each individual. Can prayer make it more likely that someone will believe? I have serious questions about the goodness of such a possibility.
And to be sure, there are some bizarre features of prayer. God already knows what we need before we ask it (Matt. 6:8). In fact, we don't know exactly what we should pray for (Rom. 8:26). Why should we even pray?
The Calvinist view of prayer is that God has already determined the outcome of events before the foundation of the world. Prayer is simply one move in a chess game God is playing with himself. He causes us to pray as part of his predetermined plan to do something.
But an Arminian will probably see the "laws of prayer" as an opportunity God has given us to impact the flow of human events. It occurred to me this week that an Arminian might view prayer a little like I view God's relationship to the laws of physics. Sometimes two bits of metal are on certain trajectories at certain velocities and they crash into each other... and maybe I go to the hospital.
I don't see God always directing such events, although I believe he allows them. In the same way, perhaps God allows prayers or lack of prayers to affect the course of human events.
So perhaps sometimes God will do some things whether we pray or not. Perhaps sometimes God "quickens" some people to pray because he wants to give them an opportunity to catalyze the changing of things. And finally, God gives us the privilege to pray for our yearnings and requests in prayer. Perhaps sometimes he chooses to do such things, where otherwise he would not have.
I don't personally believe that prayer can lead someone to become a Christian. That must ultimately be a matter of each individual. Can prayer make it more likely that someone will believe? I have serious questions about the goodness of such a possibility.
And to be sure, there are some bizarre features of prayer. God already knows what we need before we ask it (Matt. 6:8). In fact, we don't know exactly what we should pray for (Rom. 8:26). Why should we even pray?
The Calvinist view of prayer is that God has already determined the outcome of events before the foundation of the world. Prayer is simply one move in a chess game God is playing with himself. He causes us to pray as part of his predetermined plan to do something.
But an Arminian will probably see the "laws of prayer" as an opportunity God has given us to impact the flow of human events. It occurred to me this week that an Arminian might view prayer a little like I view God's relationship to the laws of physics. Sometimes two bits of metal are on certain trajectories at certain velocities and they crash into each other... and maybe I go to the hospital.
I don't see God always directing such events, although I believe he allows them. In the same way, perhaps God allows prayers or lack of prayers to affect the course of human events.
So perhaps sometimes God will do some things whether we pray or not. Perhaps sometimes God "quickens" some people to pray because he wants to give them an opportunity to catalyze the changing of things. And finally, God gives us the privilege to pray for our yearnings and requests in prayer. Perhaps sometimes he chooses to do such things, where otherwise he would not have.
Thursday, April 19, 2012
The Kerygma in Acts 2
I'm so behind in teaching that I had to skip posting today, but here's a short 11 minute vidcast I did for one class.
http://www.screencast.com/t/OkV3X2SfvxK8
So much to say about the sermon in Acts 2. I hope I can do a book on Acts after I finish my writing on Jesus and the Gospels.
http://www.screencast.com/t/OkV3X2SfvxK8
So much to say about the sermon in Acts 2. I hope I can do a book on Acts after I finish my writing on Jesus and the Gospels.
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Conflict with Leaders 1
Conflict seems an almost inevitable part of human life. Even those who try to please everyone eventually get into conflict when the people they want to please are pulling in different directions. "You can't please all the people all the time." Sometimes no matter what choice you make, you're going to upset someone--even if you make no choice at all.
Jesus got into conflict. Most of the time, Jesus didn't go looking for the conflict. It came to him. In that sense, Jesus is not a model for "in your face" zealotry. Conflict seems inevitable, but the only time Jesus sought out conflict was when he threw over the tables in the temple.
Nevertheless, those who like conflict sometimes think they are simply following Jesus' example. For example, there is the rebel, who uses Jesus as a model for being anti-establishment. Jesus "stuck it to the man." But perhaps they miss that Jesus ate with "the man" for a while until "the man" decided he didn't like Jesus.
Others use Jesus as a model of being against liberalism. It's hard to know even how to make sense of this one. The Pharisees were far more conservative than Jesus was. And Jesus' objection to religious leaders largely had to do with their neglect of the poor and disempowered--hardly a position we associate with conservatism today.
When John the Baptist was arrested, it was Jesus' time to take over the mission of proclaiming the kingdom of God. Obviously the crowds liked most of what he had to say. But he also came into conflict with others as he furthered the mission. He came into conflict with those who wanted to follow the letter of the law. He came into conflict with the leaders of Israel. He eventually came into conflict with the state. In this chapter I want to look at Jesus as a model for conflict.
Jesus got into conflict. Most of the time, Jesus didn't go looking for the conflict. It came to him. In that sense, Jesus is not a model for "in your face" zealotry. Conflict seems inevitable, but the only time Jesus sought out conflict was when he threw over the tables in the temple.
Nevertheless, those who like conflict sometimes think they are simply following Jesus' example. For example, there is the rebel, who uses Jesus as a model for being anti-establishment. Jesus "stuck it to the man." But perhaps they miss that Jesus ate with "the man" for a while until "the man" decided he didn't like Jesus.
Others use Jesus as a model of being against liberalism. It's hard to know even how to make sense of this one. The Pharisees were far more conservative than Jesus was. And Jesus' objection to religious leaders largely had to do with their neglect of the poor and disempowered--hardly a position we associate with conservatism today.
When John the Baptist was arrested, it was Jesus' time to take over the mission of proclaiming the kingdom of God. Obviously the crowds liked most of what he had to say. But he also came into conflict with others as he furthered the mission. He came into conflict with those who wanted to follow the letter of the law. He came into conflict with the leaders of Israel. He eventually came into conflict with the state. In this chapter I want to look at Jesus as a model for conflict.
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