Docherty 4: Septuagintal Studies

Introduction
Chapter 2: Previous Scholarship
Chapter 3: Developments in the Study of Midrash

1. I found this chapter the most helpful so far. Docherty potentially challenges something I have said quite often, namely, that the New Testament authors felt free to modify the text of the Old Testament. Instead, she argues that the text of the Greek Old Testament was already pluriform and varied somewhat significantly. Thus, while New Testament authors may cite texts that differ from the Septuagintal text as it coalesced by the time of the great codices, she would imply that, at least as far as Hebrews is concerned, the author was probably not very innovative with the text.

First, she uses the word Septuagint in reference to "the whole transmitted tradition of Greek versions" (123). "Old Greek" thus refers to the earliest stage of Greek translation that can be reconstructed for any book. This follows Leonard Greenspoon's 1987 distinction.

Similarly, she follows with most scholars the sense of Paul de Lagarde that the Greek translations of each book likely began with an Urtext, a single individual translation of each biblical book. This is in contrast to the theory of Paul Kahle, who proposed multiple original translations that eventually coalesced. However, once the original text began to circulate, revisions began almost immediately.

2. The result is to see a lot of options in the mix from early on. Symmachus, Aquila, and Theodotion are no longer seen as new, late, and independent translations but continuations of previous revisions (125). Even some of the revisions of the Lucianic Recension of the 300s may actually be witnesses to the Old Greek (128). "The serious exegete can no longer be content with comparing the textual form of Old Testament citations in the New Testament with only the major Septuagint witnesses like Codices Alexandrinus and Vaticanus" (125). Even the NT itself serves "as a witness to textual plurality in the first century CE."

I must say that while I must be willing to swallow this pill, I want to see more evidence. For example, the last sentence is not evidence but could be a likely conclusion. She has me listening, but I'm not just going to take the word of the footnotes without further evidence.

3. She goes through some of the key psalm citations in Hebrews. She does convince that in most of these cases Hebrews is following some Greek text rather than freewheeling. One of the most interesting case studies is the use of Deuteronomy 32:43 in Hebrews 1:6. The Dead Sea Scrolls have, I think, shown that the author is following a form of the Greek that is actually more faithful to the original Hebrew than the Masoretic text.

The peculiarity is the subject "the angels of God" found only in the Odes and Ethiopic text, both of which are late (400s). Was this an invention of the author of Hebrews or another Greek tradition. I'm quite open to it being an alternative Greek tradition.

4. Aland's Greek New Testament has "like a garment" as an addition by the author. It is possible. It doesn't change the meaning. However, there is a DSS that has it (11QPs^a). This suggests to me that the author was following an exemplar here.

Docherty apparently didn't know that Philo quotes Genesis 2:2 exactly like Hebrews 4:4 does. (She would have heard me say it at SBL last fall though :-) I thus think that the author of Hebrews was following an exemplar here as well. Her mention of how the slight modification adding "God" to the verse could arise might just as well have been an Alexandrian modification.

In any case, her claim that Hebrews does not freewheel in its quotations is true. However, this does not prove her case that the author "held a very high view of the inspiration of scripture, scripture in its Greek as well as Hebrew form" (141). An atheist might be inclined to quote texts word for word.

She concludes: "The new research discussed in this chapter now places the burden of proof on those who would argue against a variant reading and for a definite theological alteration of a biblical source" (142).

I will mull this over. I will say that I would want to ponder beyond citations to allusions and echoes. She has just worked with quotations. She does mention in the chapter that she is just speaking of Hebrews and not the rest of the New Testament in this study.

Docherty 3: The Study of Midrash

Introduction
Chapter 2: Previous Scholarship

Chapter 3: Developments in the Study of Midrash
1. We now get to the good stuff, although I was a little disappointed. It has felt like Docherty was building up to our need to take on board recent developments in the study of midrash. But she does not go into great detail about its specific content. Maybe she will get into more detail when we get to her analyses of Hebrews. I feel like I keep waiting for what she's building up to.

I was eager to read this chapter because I am one of those NT people she mentions who is not greatly acquainted with rabbinic studies. I am also one of those who wonders whether it is anachronistic to bring too much of rabbinic Judaism into the study of the New Testament. The Mishnah dates to around AD200--nearly two centuries after Jesus walked the earth. Much of the rest of rabbinic literature is later... often by centuries.

I accept that there is likely tradition that goes back to the Tannaim of the second century, even to the time of Jesus. But it has surely been colored through the filters of later tradition in good Gadamerian fashion. And I do not personally think of the rabbis or church fathers for that matter as having a good deal of objectivity or historical consciousness in their processing of earlier material.

Let me attempt to record the scholars she catalogs:

• Renee Bloch - focus on the historical development of tradition from biblical times. She died in tragic plane crash on its way to Israel at about 30 years old, shot down over Bulgaria.
• Geza Vermes - over-played historical continuity, seeing it going even back into the Bible
• Isaac Heinemann - first theoretical description of midrash (1949). Focus on haggadah. Draws on middot (interpretive rules found in rabbinic literature, e.g., Hillel). Saw a creative element in rabbinic interpretation, as well as an awareness of the "plain sense" of Scripture. She critiques unquestioning use of the middot.
• Michael Fishbane - His classic is Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel. It deals with reinterpretation within the biblical texts themselves. Intertextuality. Creative exegesis - "exegetical imagination" involved.
• Daniel Boyarin - postmodern influence--rabbinic interpreters actualizing the polysemy of the texts. Midrash is "a radical intertextual reading of the canon, in which potentially every part refers to and is interpretable by every other part" (93). Midrashic exegesis both 'disrupts' and 'reconstructs' the meanings of biblical texts."
• Jacob Neusner - The authorship of midrashic documents involves a "coherent programme of themes which runs throughout the work" with consensual decisions about the organization of the material and its literary form. Neusner overreaches here. Too synchronic. Did contribute a good notation system.

Let me pause here because clearly Docherty means to promote the "Goldbergian School." The above scholars are preface.

• Arnold Goldberg - She likes him especially for his precise delineation and definitions of exegetical techniques as well as his interest in theological presuppositions inherent in those methods.
• A midrashic sentence is the fundamental unit. It involves a lemma (L) or small scriptural segment, on which a hermeneneutic operation is performed (o) producing a dictum (D).
• Because the same words can be employed to say different things in different contexts and arrangements, there is the expression itself (Aussage in German) in distinction from its meaning in a particular location (Bedeutung).
• "The editors of the rabbinic works were in fact not interested in what their citations were meant to say in their original contexts, but in what they can say now" (103). 
• Alexander Samely - pupil of Goldberg, introduced categories from linguistics. Identified over 100 different exegetical techniques in the Mishnah. The rabbis "privilege the linguistic signs above the meaning of the word as a whole" (110). "The presuppositions most important for rabbinic exegesis were an absolute belief in the relevance and consistency of scripture."
• Philip Alexander - Docherty's Doktor Vater. Has criticized the loose use of the word midrash among people like me. :-) Distinguishes between midrashic form and midrashic method. 
• "Midrashic texts always have the literary form lemma plus comment" in addition to other features like stringing numerous verses together, giving alternative interpretations, and quoting named authorities.
• Alexander has also catagorized other genres like rewritten Bible, pesher, and anthologies.
• With regard to underlying axioms, he has noted that midrashic interpretation is based on "the rabbinic belief that scripture as divine speech is polyvalent, containing innumerable latent meanings to be exposed by the authoritative interpreter, and that even apparent contradictions in scripture can be tolerated as they exist only at the human level and not in the mind of God" (113).

Helpful chapter in learning the lay of the land.

William Webb 6: Persuasive Extrascriptural Criteria

William Webb continues: Slaves, Women, and Homosexuals: Exploring the Hermeneutics of Cultural Analysis.

Previous chapters:
Chapter 1: The Christian and Culture
Chapter 2: A Redemptive-Movement Hermeneutic
Chapter 3: Persuasive Criteria
Chapter 4: Moderately Persuasive Criteria
Chapter 5: Inconclusive Criteria
Almost done. Now Chapter 6: Persuasive Extrascriptural Criteria
1. This chapter reminded me of the Wesleyan Quadrilateral. This material would relate to experience and reason. In it he gives his last two criteria.

Criterion 17: Pragmatic Basis Between Two Cultures
This criterion has to do with whether the pragmatic basis for instruction in the Bible can be sustained from one culture to another. "A component of a biblical imperative may be culturally relative if the pragmatic basis for the instruction cannot be sustained from one culture to another. The converse is that a biblical command is more likely to be transcultural in its articulated form to the extent that the pragmatic factors are themselves sustainable across various cultures" (209).

An important observation here is that "pragmatic factors played at least a limited role in shaping the biblical text." "Our discussion of a pragmatic basis needs to be clearly distinguished from the ultimate basis that underlies every biblical command and imperative" (210).

He gives as an example the instruction not to reap at the corners of a field to allow the poor to feed. This would not make sense in most contexts today. Therefore, we move up the "ladder of abstraction" and apply the principle in relation to making sure the poor get fed.

2. Examples most would agree with:

• foot washing - we wear enclosed shoes now, so we don't have to follow concretely.
• children submission to parents - young children are still less developed in knowledge and intellectual capacity than most parents. Young children should in general continue to submit to parents... but probably not once they are adults. That was cultural.
• submission to the king -- a representational democracy is different, so the specifics are cultural, although we should respect those in authority
• congregations and church elders - some continuity, but our culture has a more "empower the laity" approach that fits our democratic context.

3. Women submission to men
The practicality here had to do with the lack of education of women, their general lack of exposure and experience and their lack of physical strength for agriculture. These practicalities do not apply today, suggesting that the instruction to submit to husbands was cultural rather than transcultural.

4. Homosexual prohibitions
He argues quite a bit against Walter Wink in this section. Wink suggests that the need for many children in the ancient world no longer applies--indeed that our problem is overpopulation--and thus that homosexuality should be promoted as an option. Webb shows fairly easily that this is a pretty weak argument in favor. Would the overpopulation argument validate every non-procreative form of sexuality?

Criterion 18: Scientific and Social-Scientific Evidence
5. Webb makes a distinction between two types of scientific/social scientific data--absolute scientific data that would hold true in any culture and time and relative scientific data that would only hold true within a particular culture.

Agreed upon examples:

• Scripture functions with a geocentric (earth-as-center) view of the world. He argues this was "phenomenological." It was the way the world appeared to them. "The geocentric component is cultural; the theological and phenomenological components are transcultural" (222).
• Flat earth -- "Scripture accommodated itself to the cosmology of its day" (223).

6. Now for the topics of the book:

• Women are not reproductive gardens. The understanding of reproduction, which underlies some biblical language, is no longer held. The woman is not just an incubator. She contributes just as much "data" to reproduction as the man, and infertility is often the man's fault.
• Women as poor leaders -- This simply is not true in our culture, even if it would have primarily been true in biblical times because of cultural conditions (but note that the Bible itself defies the culture in several instances).
• Women more easily deceived than men. This was probably generally true in ancient times, but it is certainly not true today. He takes Schreiner and others to task for skewing their interpretation of 1 Timothy 2:14 to make it more palatable while retaining complementarianism. Historically, Christian commentators have seen an innate intellectual capacity difference between men and women. Schreiner and Doriani reject this side to the interpretation of 1 Timothy 2:14 while retaining that women are less discerning than men because they are more relational. 
• In the end, he argues that the educational level of women in Paul's day has to be taken into account. 

Webb moves up the ladder of abstraction and summarizes the take away of 1 Timothy 2:14 as "seek teachers and leaders who are not easily deceived" (230).

7. With regard to homosexuality, he examines in this final section whether homosexual activity is determined behavior. He indicates that both environmental and biological factors can play a role in homosexuality. However, "the influence of nonvolitional forces upon any human action is no help in determining the ethical status of that action" (233).

This is quite true. The question whether homosexual activity is moral or not is not determined by the nature of the origins of such desires. "Environmental and biological factors are not sufficient grounds for assessment of any behavior" (234). Non-volitional factors in behavior "moderate the degree of personal culpability, but they do not change an assessment of the behavior itself" (234).

Docherty 2: Previous Scholarship

This weekend I'm trying to speed read Susan Docherty's book on the use of the OT in Hebrews. About two chapters to skim today.

Introduction

1. Chapter 2 is the predicable history of research chapter. We expect this chapter of any dissertation to conclude something like, "After looking at what everyone else has done, I conclude that my research project needs to be done." In that sense, this was an easy chapter to skim and mostly skip. However, it does provide a nice overview of some classic commentaries and works on Hebrews.

2. First she goes through major commentaries with a view to how they analyze Hebrews' use of the OT and how they engage the Greek text of the OT. Delizsch, Westcott, Moffatt, Windisch, Spicq, F. F. Bruce, Michel, Attridge, Lane, Ellingworth, deSilva, and Koester.

Then she goes through "theological and structural studies" of Hebrews. This begins with a claim that is not really defended. "It seems improbable that a valuable study of it [Hebrews] can be undertaken which does not engage seriously with the author's use of scripture" (51).

I'm rolling this section over in my head. Is she assuming that Hebrews' use of Scripture must play a role in its literary structure? Certainly some have proposed that, but it seems far from self-evident. And on that macro-level, I'm not sure it would play into her focal task. We shall see.

She then looks at Lehne, Nairne, Isaacs, Vanhoye, D'Angelo, Swetnam, I did not read this section although I know these names. Several of them are mentioned in my dissertation too. I'm not sure how this section contributes to her task.

3. The last section of the chapter gets down to business. This one is material to the project. "Studies of the Interpretation of the Old Testament in Hebrews." She looks at Caird, Markus Barth, Anthony Hanson, Kenneth Thomas, Friedrich Schröger, Cecil McCullough, Dale Leschert, Stephen Motyer, and George Guthrie.

I was struck in this chapter with the age of the sources. This dissertation was submitted in 2007 but its engagement with scholarship barely reaches into the 2000s.

One of the most important debates to surface in this section is whether Hebrews 1) feels free to intentionally alter the LXX text in front of the author (Kenneth Thomas), 2) sticks pretty closely to the Vorlage at hand (Cecil McCullough), or 3) perhaps chooses the exemplar before him that best fits his purposes (this could be her position).

A key feature of this debate, in my opinion, are the theological biases of the interpreter. For example, it is very difficult for some interpreters to handle anything but biblical authors who are as concerned to stick with the precise text and historical/contextual interpretation as they are. As someone from the holiness tradition, this is not a beef of mine and so I have long believed I am in a better position to be objective about such things than some others. You'll thus forgive me for completely ignoring the work of Dale Leschert.

4. She draws four trends from Guthrie's 2003 review important in concluding the chapter. First, more appreciation is needed for the complexity of the textual state of the Septuagint. Second, she believes the OT citations in Hebrews are the key to the structure of the letter. Third, more study needs to be done on the exegetical techniques used by Hebrews, and finally, the hermeneutical axioms of the author need to be identified.

Docherty's The Use of the OT in Hebrews 1

1. I have been in college administration for the last four years. One year teaching and then before that I had been Dean for six other years. In short, my focus for at least 10 of the last 11 years has been administration. That takes its toll on the scholar in me.

I don't know what the future holds: professor, pastor, administrative servant. But I have some scholarly work to do this month. To do it well, I really need to blow through some books. This weekend is the first.

2. Susan Docherty's work The Use of the Old Testament in Hebrews is pretty significant. It's also expensive but I bit the bullet. I want to read/skim it this weekend--206 pages. If I sleep 16 of those hours, go to church, eat at least 4, run twice. Well, let's say I potentially have 24 hours of reading (not going to happen, of course).

So let's say the goal is 10 pages an hour. Yeah, right.

3. In chapter 1, Docherty sets out her agenda. She believes NT studies has not kept up with research into Jewish exegetical techniques. She aims to bring Hebrews research up to speed. She also believes that NT study is behind in recent research on the text of the Greek Bible in the first century. Both of these aims make her book a significant read.

She then lays out the book. In chapter 2, she'll look at the last 150 years of Hebrews commentary work as it relates to the use of the OT. In chapter 3, she will introduce us to the Goldberg school of analyzing Jewish exegesis in relation to underlying assumptions about Scripture. Chapter 4 looks at recent studies on the Greek text of the OT in the first century. Chapter 5 applies Goldberg's method to Hebrews.

The game is on.

Do your fall semester at Houghton from home!

1. Like all the Wesleyan colleges, Houghton College is planning to have an on campus fall semester if it is at all possible. And it looks very much like it will be.

At the same time, Houghton professors have been preparing for the possibility that the pandemic might disrupt business as usual. Unlike the spring, where everyone went online within a week, we planned for anything.

2. This created an interesting possibility. What if we just planned to make these fall courses available in either format? By all means, come to campus! But if you aren't quite sure or want to try something new, we will bring the personal, relational touch of Houghton's campus to you wherever you are.



No doubt the vast majority of students will eagerly run back to a place where you can see people in the flesh. If you have just finished high school, these last months have to have been rough! I strongly suspect returning college students will also rush back to a place where you can talk to people face to face, walk in the woods, and of course eat cafeteria food. I have to imagine that, after being cooped up for so long, most students will yearn to be back on a campus.

3. On the other hand, life is complicated. Some international students may have difficulty getting back to the States. Some individuals may want to stay at home just a little longer. Or maybe you never even thought about the possibility that you could have the best of both worlds--the residential campus courses from the comfort of your home!

Houghton's Flexibility: Choose Your Own Path

There are lots of online programs out there. But the pandemic crisis has made the kinds of courses you can't normally take online available this fall. At how many places can you take a chemistry course mostly online, just coming to campus to complete your lab work? What about a studio art course where it's mostly online, except for a small segment of it? These are the kinds of options we are talking about for this fall.

Start Houghton Online this fall, come to campus later!

These types of courses are called "HyFlex" courses. You can take them completely online or you can come to campus and take them. You can even flex during a semester with them.

Exciting days are ahead!

Book Review: Thurman's Jesus and the Disinherited

These are posts I made on Facebook this week but wanted to preserve them here as well.
______________
On Monday I took Howard Thurman's 1949 book Jesus and the Disinherited and read the preface. This sentence stood out to me: "Why is it that Christianity seems impotent to deal radically, and therefore effectively, with the issues of discrimination and injustice on the basis of race, religion, and national origin?"

Chapter 1
"The masses of men [sic] live with their backs constantly against the wall."

In the first chapter of his 1949 book, Howard Thurman gives a brilliant typology of the different reactions those with their "backs against the wall," like first century Jews under Roman oppression, can have.

1. You can assimilate, like the Sadducees or Herod.
2. You can isolate, like the Pharisees. These are both non-resistant approaches.
3. You can resist violently, like the Zealots, and die trying.
4. You can have the Kingdom of God within you, like Jesus, and resist non-violently.

"Anyone who permits another to determine the quality of his inner life gives into the hands of the other the keys to his destiny."

Chapter 2: Fear
"The threat of violence... is a weapon by which the weak are held in check... Every member of the controller's group is in a sense a special deputy, authorized to enforce the pattern."

"The awareness that a man is a child of the God... who is at one and the same time the God of life, creates a profound faith in life that nothing can destroy."

Chapter 3
Chapter 3 is on Deception.
"Throughout the ages... the weak have survived by fooling the strong." If you speak the truth to those with overwhelming power over you, your life can be in danger. He believes that the prophecy against Tyre in Ezekiel 27 is really code for his captors in Babylon.

The disinherited then have three options:

1. Is to see no choice. You must accept that all of life is a lie. Honesty is not a choice if you are to survive.

2. A second is to compartmentalize and compromise as necessary. Be truthful in those areas you can and live the lie when you have to.

He considers both of these alternatives detrimental to the soul. "If a man continues to call a good thing bad, he will eventually lose his sense of moral distinctions." "The penalty of deception is to become a deception."

3. He advocates "complete and devastating sincerity," for this puts the powerful and the weak on equal terms. He believes Jesus modeled this approach. "The insistence of Jesus on genuineness is absolute." "A man is a man, no more, no less." [sic]
"I can sympathize only when I see myself in another's place."

Chapter 4
Chapter 4 of Howard Thurman's book is on hate. While it starts off talking about the hate the strong can have toward the weak, he spends most of the chapter warning about hatred from the weak toward the strong.

"Hatred destroys finally the core of the life of the hater." "Hatred cannot be controlled once set in motion." "Jesus rejected hatred... not because he lacked the incentive. Jesus rejected hatred because he saw that hatred meant death to the mind, death to the spirit, death to communion with his Father."

Chapter 5
The last chapter is on love, loving our enemies in particular. He mentions three levels of such love: 1) toward our peers, 2) toward those in our community with whom it is not going to be popular to befriend (e.g., tax collectors), 3) toward dominating, oppressive powers (e.g., Rome).

A first step is to undermine the enemy status of the other. Find a space where you are just one human in relation to another human. Love will also require forgiveness for injury perpetuated by another group.

One might object, "Can the mouse forgive the cat for eating him?" It is not easy. Perhaps it is impossible in our own power. But "it is clear that before love can operate, there is the necessity for forgiveness."

Forgiveness is necessary 1) because God forgives us again and again, 2) because no evil deed represents the full intent of the doer, and 3) no evildoer ultimately goes unpunished.

Finished Saturday morning

Top Ten Smartest Thoughts I've Had

I am fascinated by genius. Every once and a while, I'll have a thought that seems smart to me. It might not really be. Certainly a lot of people don't think my "smart thoughts" are smart.

I'm also quite stupid in some respects. Because of my stupid, I never really felt smart growing up. Looking back, I realize I really was much better at math, science, languages, and certain forms of imagination than a lot of other people. But I've long since been exposed to the world of real genius. I get to read their books slowly. Often I have to read them over and over. It's sure I would never have understood them in person. I've joked with my daughter that my epitaph should read, "Not Quite a Genius."

Nevertheless, I have occasionally had some thoughts I thought were quite clever. They might not be. I'm probably not the first to have them. But I don't remember getting them from someone else.

1. Creation out of nothing was creation out of empty set, not out of zero.
If Einstein's general theory of relativity is correct, then God created the very emptiness of space, not just the stuff in it. It seems to me that this fact has all sorts of implications that many theologians have not taken into account.

2. If God created the universe out of empty set, then God created all the rules of this universe, including the rules of logic. So we cannot say God is bound by logic outside this universe. We cannot speak of what is literal for God outside this creation (a little Barth here, a little Wittgenstein) because we have no point of reference, only analogy. A lot of what theologians say about God's nature and essence is likely "creatiomorphic" without them knowing it.

3. Accordingly, Divine Command Theory is likely true for God in the creation of this universe, from outside it. But since God has bound Godself to a particular set of commands within this universe, morality is consistent within it--morality is not arbitrary, as in Kierkegaard's version. We have no point of reference for moral systems outside this universe. Incidentally, I made this comment in a review of Pojman's ethics textbook, and he was intrigued.

4. The Trinity is a playing out of that which is ineffable across the metaphysics of this creation. Given what I have said above, then we must face the possibility that we have projected human perspectives onto our sense of the essence of the Trinity. We can affirm that the Trinity is real beyond this universe and yet acknowledge that our perspective on the Trinity may have a lot to do with the metaphysical echoes of God within this universe.

5. The idea that Hebrews was written to Gentile believers undergoing a crisis of faith because of the destruction of the Jerusalem temple. When this idea clicked, I wanted to rush to publish it because it seemed so revelatory and groundbreaking. But I don't know anyone who has followed me on it. :-)

6. The idea that the earliest Christians would not yet have understood the efficacy of Jesus' death in absolute terms but that they would have come to this conclusion in stages. Paul offers a sacrifice in the temple in Acts 21. Did even he and Luke yet fully understand the scope of Christ's atonement?

7. The idea that 2 Thessalonians is an "apocalyptic letter" written as a "nudge, nudge, wink, wink" to the church during the Jewish War. One of my most recent ideas. 2 Thessalonians as code. I have other ideas in biblical studies that likely will never see the light of page. I might have published them in a different life.

8. In spring 2009 I taught Hebrews in old College Church in Marion in a hybrid format using AdobeConnect, with some students in the room live, others around the world electronically, and others in their dorm room sleeping, who watched the recording later. There was a discussion forum on Facebook. A lot of colleges are going HyFlex this fall and I have lots of ideas here (e.g., doing chemistry online and doing experiments at a local high school), but I did it over ten years ago.

9. For good or ill, I'm probably the main one to blame for the initial design of integration in Wesley Seminary's curriculum, where you do Bible, theology, and church history as part of your practical courses. These courses initially had five distinct professors (practical, Bible, theology, church history, and integration paper professor), which was impractical. Before Riggs invented the special Honors College curriculum at IWU, I had a vision of a month long, pre-freshman summer course that was philosophy, history, literature, and fine arts all integrated with four different professors. I still have dreams of an integrated science curriculum, with calculus, physics, and chemistry all intertwined. I believe I could create a science/math curriculum that could bring a whole lot more students to mastery than the way they are currently taught. If I could write video games, that would be the context to build it.

10. The idea that eternal security and universalism could work if God resurrects us at the point when we were either right with God or had not reached the age of accountability. I don't actually believe this, but if God creates a body for us out of nothing, if there were no detachable soul, then resurrection would be like cloning, and God could clone us at any stage of our lives. I don't think this, but I thought it was a clever idea once upon a time.

William Webb 5: Inconclusive Criteria

William Webb continues: Slaves, Women, and Homosexuals: Exploring the Hermeneutics of Cultural Analysis.

Previous chapters:
Chapter 1: The Christian and Culture
Chapter 2: A Redemptive-Movement Hermeneutic
Chapter 3: Persuasive Criteria
Chapter 4: Moderately Persuasive Criteria

Now Chapter 5: Inconclusive Criteria
You can see that Webb is steadily moving from criteria that he finds very helpful to criteria that he finds less and less clear Criterion 14: Theological Analogy
The question here is whether, if God is described in a certain way, we would consider such descriptions as transcultural. Webb says that the answer is inconclusive, since God is sometimes described with cultural analogies.

For example, the following are transcultural:

• God is love; therefore, love is a transcultural value.
• God is holy; therefore, holiness is a transcultural value.
• God forgives; therefore, we should forgive.

However, on other occasions cultural analogies are used to describe God:

• God is master, we as slaves.
• God as king, we as subjects.
• Christ is the firstborn, thus primogeniture.
• Jesus is at God's right hand, the right hand is preferred. 

Webb then suggests that these are cultural analogies:

• Christ is a husband who loves his wife does mean husband-headship is transcultural.
• God disciplines his wife like a husband (e.g., Hosea). It is not transcultural for a husband to strip his wife and physically confine her.
• However, there is no theological analogy in relation to God and homosexuality.

Criterion 15: Comparisons in Collections
In this section Webb looks at various biblical collections of items. Does the transcultural nature of one item in the collection suggest the others are transcultural too?

• "mixture texts" -- don't wear clothing of mixed thread, don't plow with donkey and ox together.  Most of these texts are considered cultural. I call this "Levitical kind theology," part of the Levitical worldview that believed that different kinds of things should not be mixed. Following Mary Douglas, I believe this worldview ultimately stood behind the food laws (ostrich, eel, and snake did not fit the "kind" of thing they were).
• virtue and vice lists -- Webb believes these lists lean heavily toward the transcultural (including, for example, 1 Corinthians 6:9-10.
• household codes -- He considers these texts mixed in relation to their transcultural import. So the instruction on children/parents and congregations/elders are transcultural, while the material on slaves/masters and husbands/wives is cultural.
• sexual taboo lists -- He considers most of the items on these lists in Leviticus 18 and 20 to be transcultural, although not necessarily in their punishment. He has also mentioned elsewhere that he does not consider rules on sex during menstruation to be transcultural. I'm not sure he has provided a good rationale here.
• He argues that the unusual mention of Molech in Leviticus 18:21 is a transition between heterosexual sex and non-heterosexual sex, implying that heterosexual sex is a key value implicit in the structure of the chapter. He does mention the possibility that the fact that the prohibition on homosexual sex comes after a mention of Molech could imply that the prohibition is about homosexual temple prostitution but indicates there is not enough contextual evidence to conclude that.  

Criterion 16: Continuity with Old Testament
He words this one in a funny way to me. For me, a key factor in these discussions is whether a teaching in the Old Testament is continued into the New Testament. For example, the command not to wear clothing of mixed thread is not mentioned in the New Testament, but the prohibition against homosexual sex is continued. By contrast, he considers such continuity inconclusive in general.

Here is his summary: "Discontinuity between epochs in salvation history does provide a reliable basis for assessment" (206). So because Jesus explicitly declares all foods clean, we can eat pork now (Mark 7:19). However, "continuity between Testaments, whether by ideological precedence or verbal appeal, is not a reliable indicator for discovering that which [is] transcultural."

Examples of discontinuation:

• sacrifices - fulfilled in Christ, not continued, no longer in effect
• food laws - clearly discontinued in the NT
• circumcision - clearly not required according to Galatians and Acts 15
• slaves and masters - although continued between OT and NT, cultural, thus 

Example of continuance that is cultural:

• slavery - continued between OT and NT but cultural
• kings and subjects - continued between OT and NT but cultural
• lifting up holy hands - continued between OT and NT but cultural
• holy kiss - continued between OT and NT but cultural
• foot washing traditions - continued between OT and NT but cultural

I'll end this summary with an interesting comment about Lutherans and the Reformed tradition:

• Fallacy #1 (a tendency of the Lutheran tradition): "Only those particulars of the Mosaic law that the New Testament expressly sanctions apply to New Testament believers"  (205).
• Fallacy #2 (a tendency of the Reformed tradition): "Christians are bound to obey all those particulars in the Mosaic law that the New Testament does not expressly abrogate."

He would say we have to look at the particular commands of the OT in the light of all these criteria.

William Webb 4: Moderately Persuasive Criteria

I continue my review of William Webb's Slaves, Women, and Homosexuals: Exploring the Hermeneutics of Cultural Analysis.

Previous chapters:
Chapter 1: The Christian and Culture
Chapter 2: A Redemptive-Movement Hermeneutic
Chapter 3: Persuasive Criteria

Now on to Chapter 4: Moderately Persuasive Criteria
Webb finds these criteria helpful in the discussion, but not as definitive as those in the previous chapter.

Criterion 6: Patterns of the Original Creation
The basic question of this criterion and the next two relates to whether the way God originally created humanity was an absolute ideal. Were there cultural dimensions even to the original creation? Will the new creation go even further than the original creation?

Generally, Webb starts with what he considers "neutral" examples. Here I note as before that today's common sense may need to be defended in the next generation. I remember I felt similarly in 2001. It seemed obvious to me that everyone would agree slavery should have been abolished. But people be crazy.

His thesis in these first two criteria is that "one cannot automatically assign a transcultural status to all that is found within the garden" (124). Here is a list of various items relating to the garden:

• Divorce -- Jesus appeals to the Genesis creation text to argue against divorce.
• Polygamy -- Here I am not sure I agree with him. I am doubtful that Genesis saw polygamy as a contradiction of the "one flesh" passage in Genesis 2:24. In the Ancient Near East, a man could become one flesh with many wives. This is thus a culturally unreflective reading on Webb's part, IMO.
• Singleness -- Webb rightly notes that we might prohibit singleness if the original creation was absolute.
• Farming as an occupation -- clearly not all men are farmers, although this seems a near assumption of the biblical text
• Ground transportation -- we don't insist on walking today, although this was possibly an assumption of the original creation
• Procreation command -- although some do, we do not consider procreation a command today
• Vegetarian diet -- The diet seems to shift after the Flood, but should we go back to being vegetarians as in the Garden?
• Sabbath -- Christians have certainly modified sabbath observance. We observe Sunday rather than Saturday. I would add that the New Testament explicitly does not consider the Jewish Sabbath binding for Gentile Christians, even though it is modeled in creation (Rom 14:5; Col. 2:16).
•  Length of a work week -- We get Saturday and Sunday.

Women
He then looks at the somewhat mixed nature of the original creation in relation to women:

• God's image - Both male and female are created in it.
• Ruling together - Both man and woman are to rule
• Helpmate - He thinks the evidence is indeterminate. 72% of the instances of this word are a superior like God helping and inferior (e.g., Ps. 54:4). But in 10% of the uses the helper is inferior.
• Adam's rib - He finds any rhetoric here unhelpful. It can be argued both ways.
• Man naming the woman - already discussed

I want to separate off the last three. Webb suggests there may be some patriarchy in the creation account. He will especially address this question under the next criterion, so see below.

• man leaves and cleaves - We don't apply this literally today, so it's hypocritical to make a big deal out of taking it literally. 
• God addresses man first - "quiet whisper of patriarchy"?
• Creation order: God makes the man first - 1 Timothy 2:13 seems to use this logic. See below.

Homosexuality
Webb argues that "the author of Genesis understood the creation story as a statement about normative sexual patterns being heterosexual" (133). On the other hand, he also notes that the creation story does not mention contrary situations. For example, it does not say anything about singleness. It must thus be acknowledged that homosexual relationships are not addressed one way or another. However, Webb argues that abstinence from sex limits while homosexual sex would broaden. He thus argues that abstinence from marriage is a different kind of situation than a different kind of marriage.

To put it another way, "God made Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve," is only a partial argument, not an absolute argument. The Garden no doubt presents the norm, but it does not actually argue against other variations like singleness. God made Adam and Eve to have children is not an argument that it is wrong not to have children. Description is not prescription.

Criterion 7: Basis in the Original Creation: Primogeniture
This criterion focuses in on the created order. We already mentioned that 1 Timothy 2:13 seems to argue in this way "Adam was formed first, then Eve." I've heard David Ward poke at this logic a little, since trees and animals were made before Adam. Must we thus submit to the will of goats?

Here is where Webb raises an important question: "Eden's quiet echoes of patriarchy might be a way of describing the past through present categories" (143). "Given the agrarian base to primogeniture logic, the patriarchy of the garden may reflect God's anticipation of the social context into which Adam and Eve were about to venture" (144). Here we remember that Genesis was written in the Ancient Near East. It is not simply a dictation in heavenly categories. The story of the time before the fall is told in a document written after the fall.

Webb points out the inconsistencies of someone who would argue that these features of the original creation are transcultural.

• Scripture often overturns primogeniture.
• Christians no longer apply primogeniture today.
• Primogeniture was linked to ancient culture, which was agrarian based with short life expectancy and great potential for feuding and fighting over land. 

In the end he suggests that the best way to appropriate 1 Timothy 2 today is something like, "Choose teachers/leaders who are worthy of high honor in the congregation" (145).

Criterion 8: Basis in the New Creation
This criterion is similar to when I talk about the kingdom trajectory and it also relates to his previous criterion of "breakout verses." For example, Galatians 3:28 points to the new creation. See the previous post.

I might add some features he does not mention and might not agree with. The wording of Galatians 3:28 is curious: "In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek. There is neither slave nor free. There is not 'male and female.'" I think it is quite possible that this verse alludes back to Genesis 1:27, where God creates them "male and female." Poetically, something even of the creation order is undone in Christ.

In short, I agree with him that the consummation of the creation goes one step further than the creation itself. This is solid Christian doctrine I learned once upon a time from Chris Bounds. Indeed, it is not clear that our glorified bodies will be sexual at all. In the kingdom, there is no marriage (Mark 12:25). We are like the angels.

"Original-creation patterns are far more likely to have culture-locked components with them" (148). They "simply do not have the same potential for reflecting transcultural features as do new-creation patterns."

Criterion 9: Competing Options in the Original Culture
His concept here is that if the Bible picks an option among many different cultural options, then that choice is more likely transcultural. On the other hand, if there was only one basic option at the time, then that instruction is quite possibly cultural.

• Slavery versus abolition - Abolition wasn't really an ancient option. "The lack of alternatives increases the likelihood that biblical interaction with slavery addressed this limited (culture-bound) horizon."
• Geocentric cosmology - the cosmology of the Bible assumed the earth was the center of the universe. There just wasn't another option.
• Monarchy - Democracy wasn't really an option in biblical times. The monarchic assumptions of the Bible are therefore likely to be cultural rather than timeless.

With regard to women, pretty much all the cultures of the ancient world were patriarchal. Even today, matriarchy is not really a thing when you dig deep. [Interestingly, I remember David Wright telling me this several years ago.] Accordingly, the role of women displayed in the Bible may very well be cultural since there weren't really any other options at the time.

The situation with homosexual practice is different. Homosexual practice was a known quantity in the ancient world. He does raise the question of whether "covenant" homosexual relationships were present in the ancient world, like gay marriage today. He says the ancient evidence is not agreed on, but he thinks it was an option (not marriage, but committed relationships).

So here and elsewhere he eliminates casual homosexual relationships from moral behavior because the Bible chooses against that option in its cultural world. He is not entirely certain whether married homosexual relationships are a phenomenon different enough from the options of the ancient world that they would not be covered under the biblical mandates. But he certainly leans in the direction that they would be covered.

Criterion 10: Opposition to the Original Culture
This criterion is closely related to the previous one. The previous one simply asked whether other options existed. This one asks whether the Bible actually argues against those other options. In that sense we have already started talking about this one.

Here are some extensions from his discussion of the previous criterion:

• Slavery: Although the Bible assumes slavery, it does challenge aspects of its cultural practice (see criterion 1, preliminary movement).
• Cosmology: Although the Bible assumes a geocentric cosmology, it argues against the worship of heavenly luminaries.
• Worshiping other gods: While the sanctuaries of Israel resembled those of other gods, while Israel offered sacrifices like other religions offered sacrifices, Israel was only to worship Yahweh. I would add that the Israelites probably believed those other deities were real entities (Paul calls them demons), but God did not allow their worship.
• Bestiality and transvestite activities - I have found the revival of Deuteronomy 22:5 interesting in recent days in relation to transvestitism. When I was a boy, this verse was used to argue that women should only wear dresses, not pants or slacks. I spent a couple years tortured over whether I should date a girl who wore pants. So let's just say I'm not too keen about the sudden "clarity" this verse has all of a sudden again. I don't understand transvestitism. I find it highly unusual, shall we say. But I get really annoyed by Boomers who would have mocked their parents for using this verse against pants now suddenly touting this verse loudly and widely as a proof text.
• Non-retaliation/love of enemies - This is the big one. Love of enemies makes no sense whatsoever from a worldly perspective. This is the distinctive biblical ethic above all.

Webb quotes Grant Osborne to sum up this criterion (from The Hermeneutical Spiral): "Teaching that transcends the cultural biases of the author and his readers will be normative" (161). Here is how Webb adds: "The countercultural side to the criterion is almost always accurate in detecting something of transcultural value, whereas the converse expression simply increases the probability of something being cultural" (162). In other words, if the Bible argues against something in the culture, that is likely transcultural. However, if the Bible doesn't argue against something in the culture, that doesn't mean that cultural feature is transcultural.

Criterion 11: Biblical Treatment of Closely-Related Issues
If we see that the kingdom moves beyond the Bible on an issue closely related to another, then it is at least possible that the kingdom would move beyond the Bible on that issue too.

Slavery as a closely related issue where we have a sense that we need to move beyond the Bible:

• viewing slaves as property
• releasing Hebrew slaves after 7 years (although not foreign slaves)
• using slaves for reproductive purposes (like Hagar)
• different penalties for rape of slave women and free women
• physical beating of a slave
• value of slave's life versus a free life

So on the question of women, Christians have also already moved beyond the Bible in many respects:

• Women are no longer viewed as property, as they are in much of the Old Testament.
• Wives are no longer transferred from father to husband.
• Women can now inherit property.
• We now would argue for consistent virginity for both men and women, while the Bible is largely only concerned about the women's virginity going into a marriage.
• Adultery legislation was much stronger in the Bible toward the woman than the man.
• Divorce legislation in Scripture was much more strongly directed against the woman.
• Other issues where the kingdom seems to move beyond things said somewhere in the Bible: polygamy, concubines, levirate marriage.

However, he argues that homosexual sex is in a different category than, for example, the fact that we do not enforce legislation on having sex during menstruation or the abandonment of polygamy or concubinage. [Interestingly--and uncomfortably--he is not sure that the Bible implies a prohibition of anal sex within a heterosexual marriage]

Here are some of the arguments for homosexual sex being in a different category. 1) The prohibition of homosexual sex is not tied to ceremonial impurity, 2) The New Testament retains the Old Testament prohibition of homosexual sex. 3) There is no intrinsic or logical connection between the rules on sex during menstruation and homosexual sex.

The second argument is the one that I have found most persuasive. Unlike other laws that the New Testament explicitly does not continue from the Old Testament, the prohibition on homosexual sex is explicitly retained.

I might add that the distinction between ceremonial law and moral law is really anachronistic. It is an overlay that makes sense to us but wouldn't have made any sense to, say, the apostle Paul. The Bible does not divide up the Old Testament Law in this way. What we have is 1) laws that related to Israel as a people distinct from their surrounding peoples, 2) laws of Israel that overlap with the laws of the Ancient Near East, and 3) laws that transcended Israel's Ancient Near Eastern context into the New Testament and beyond.

Criterion 12: Severity of the Penal Code
The criterion here looks at how severely various actions were punished in the Old Testament as an indicator. "The less severe the penalty for a particular action, the more likely it is of having culturally bound components" (172).

So some actions had the death penalty. Some might result in expulsion from Israel. Others involved punitive consequences that were less severe. Finally, some resulted in being impure for a time. Webb argues that we have a sliding scale here, with the final category being the least transcultural.

He notes that homosexual activity held a result of a death penalty. On the other hand, the law tells of no punishments for the insubordination of a wife or slave.

He anticipates a later criterion here as well--pragmatic considerations. For example, it is simply impractical to give young children the same vote in the family as a parent. They simply are not mentally equipped to make many important decisions. It is thus appropriate to retain the hierarchy of parents to children even though it no longer makes sense to retain the hierarchy of husband over wife.

I might add that there is some debate about how active ancient near eastern penal codes were. One line of thinking sees them more as "position papers" than actual practices. For example, how often in ancient Israel was a disobedient son actually stoned to death?

Criterion 13: Tension with General Principles
The final criterion of this chapter deals with a situation where a specific statement of Scripture seems to be in tension with an overarching principle. "Specific statements within Scripture are more likely to be culturally confined in some aspect than general statements" (179).

I have expressed a similar idea. Individual verses are most likely to be ambiguous and situational/time-conditioned. Therefore, it is important to focus more on the overall themes of Scripture than on individual verses. We should be cautious about how we apply any idea that is only expressed once in Scripture

He mentions gleaning laws as an example, leaving the edges of a field for the poor to eat from. Compassion toward the poor is timeless, but this particular way of showing compassion is not likely binding on modern farmers. Doing what they did doesn't do what it did.

In general, the principle of loving one's neighbor is the macro-ethic that should guide our approach to human relationships. We of course need to be careful not to have a myopic sense of love. Sometimes, "love must be tough." Love does not contradict discipline or the protection of one group by acting restrictively toward another.

However, we would be enacting kingdom values the most in culture if we could make the structures of society be equally "loving" toward all its members.

The Kingdom of God 2

This is the second post in my series, "What is a Christian?' The first post asked:

1. What is a human being?

The Kingdom of God
1. There is a danger in posing the question, "What is a Christian?" The danger is that we fall into the trap of individualism and subjectivism. These are the waters in which the typical Western Protestant swims, so I may gravitate toward an individual description without thinking.

However, the focal point of Christianity is not me. It is not even us. The focal point is God, who looks at us first before we ever look back.

This is a danger in thinking about the gospel in Western Protestantism. We easily assume, unthinkingly, that the heart of the gospel is about getting saved and salvation. But Christ is the center of the good news. [1] The good news is the gospel of Jesus Christ, God's royal Son, who was designated Son of God in power by the resurrection of the dead (Rom. 1:3). My salvation is good news, but it is only part of the good news.

2. A Christian is a servant in the kingdom of God. A Christian is also part of the family of God, a member of the people of God. But the kingdom of God was the language that Jesus used primarily in his preaching when he was on earth.

In the kingdom of God, God is king and the creation are God's servants. As Christians we are more than God's servants, but we are also God's servants. Jesus is also king Jesus, the anointed one, the Messiah, the Christ. We are co-heirs with Jesus of the kingdom, which puts us as Christians in a special place in the kingdom indeed.

3. Within the kingdom, the primary posture of the Christian is that of faith. This is not faith as in belief, although belief in the king and the kingdom is clearly an assumption. It is faith as in allegiance to the Lord and to the King. [2]

"If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and have faith in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved" (Rom. 10:9).

When you confess someone as Lord, it is not a mere mental assent. It is a commitment. Faith is not merely belief but we must "keep faith" with our Lord. Someone is not a Lord simply on a quiz. "Check yes or no." Someone is a Lord if we obey them, if we serve them, if we surrender to them.

A Christian is someone who has confessed allegiance to Christ as Lord.

4. The posture of surrender is difficult. We are more accustomed to seek our own power, our own freedom, our own rights and what we have coming to us. We can even use God as an excuse not to submit. "I defy you because God told me to," when I get to decide what God thinks.

Yet as a servant of God my primary posture is one of submission. When my life outside of the kingdom first comes into contact with the kingdom, acts of confession and repentance are natural. I confess that I have not lived in loyalty to the king. I repent of my past misdirection and turn toward the King.

Then I make another confession, this time not a confession of sin but a confession of faith. I swear allegiance to the King and to the Anointed One. I become part of the kingdom, part of the people of God. From then on I am a loyal servant. I am more than a servant, but I am a servant.

5. It is gracious of my Lord to grant me entrance to the kingdom, after living outside in rebellion. It is a gift I cannot merit. Entrance comes with the power to live as a loyal subject. I am not left to flail on my own as a miserable failure to live up to the expectations of all citizens of the new Jerusalem.

Nevertheless, allegiance remains a requirement of the kingdom. It would have made no sense in biblical times to say, "I am in the kingdom though I act with regular defiance of the King." The expectation of faithfulness remains. "If we continue sinning willfully after receiving a knowledge of the truth, there remains no more sacrifice for sins" (Heb. 10:26). The King does not eject us for any failing, but it is absurd to think we can remain in a kingdom to which we have no true allegiance. This is simply not the way grace worked in the New Testament world. [3]

6. God's kingdom is an exclusive kingdom. God will not suffer any other lords but God alone and his Christ. "A double-minded person is unstable in all their ways. That person should not think they will receive anything from the Lord" (James 1:8). The path of the person with divided loyalties to the kingdom is a path toward expulsion from the kingdom. "Throw this worthless servant into outer darkness, where there will be weeping and wailing and the gnashing of teeth" (Matt. 25:30).

Many of us do not realize our divided loyalties. They can lead us outside of the kingdom before we hardly even realize it. "You cannot serve God and wealth." The American church often cannot tell the difference between Christ and capitalism. But rest assured, God and the New Testament couldn't care less how much money you have.

Syncretism is the mixture of elements into our faith that do not belong, in fact that are contrary to its essence. The love of money is a potential syncretistic element. Though Scripture says that the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil (1 Tim. 6:10), we somehow baptize the economic system of capitalism, which is based on self-interest.

But rest assured, whatever good there is in capitalism, it is only insofar as it leads to overall human thriving. This is a much different purpose than the goal of individual, personal wealth or my own acquisition of material goods. The latter goals have nothing to do with the kingdom of God.

7. Nationalism and racism are also syncretistic elements. There is nothing wrong with loving your country (patriotism) or loving your ethnic heritage. But there is no place in God's kingdom for someone who exalts their people over other peoples. "In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek" (Gal. 3:28).

No earthly kingdom is righteous enough to be confused with the kingdom of God. Although God is merciful in the face of our blind spots, the flag of no human kingdom has a place in God's sanctuary. God is merciful, but it is intrinsically blasphemous to confuse any earthly polity with the divine polity.

God is not a Republican. God is not a Democrat. Even to think so suggests blindness and a syncretism of human thinking with kingdom thinking. The same impulse in Jesus' day that confused the tradition of the elders with God's values is present in the confusion of conservatism with the kingdom. By the same token, the world's idea of progress is just as beset with confusion and blindness.

God's kingdom is not of this world, although it will come to this world. It is inaugurated in this world but not consummated. Our blindness to our own culture will always threaten a syncretism of worldly values with heavenly ones.

8. God loves the immigrant as much as the natural-born citizen. God loves the Iranian as much as the person of European descent. The law-breaker who breaks the speed limit and the law-breaker who crosses a border are no different in God's eyes. "All have sinned and are lacking the glory of God" (Rom. 3:23).

God sees through our excuses. We divert. But what about this other kingdom issue? Yes, your eyes are open to that issue. That issue is easy for you to talk about because it is not a temptation for you. But at this moment God is talking to you about something else, something that is not easy for you. Right now God is speaking to you about something that you do not want to open your eyes about.

God is not fooled by our diversions. Nor can you talk God out of the values of the kingdom. You can fool yourself. You can fool others. You cannot fool God. God is not elected. God grants you the freedom to rebel against the kingdom for now. But a Day is coming when "every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord" (Phil. 2:10-11).

On that day the true motives of our hearts will be laid bare (Heb. 4:13). There will be no negotiations. There will be no rationalization or excuses. All the excuses not to love our neighbors and enemies will be exposed without rejoinder. Anything that conflicted with our love of God will be seen for what it was.

A Christian is a servant in God's kingdom. We are more than servants. But we cannot be Christians for long if we are not surrendered to our Lord.

[1] Cf. Scot McKnight, King Jesus Gospel: The Original Good News Revisited (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2016).

[2] Cf. Matthew Bates, Salvation by Allegiance Alone: Rethinking Faith, Works, and the Gospel of Jesus the King (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2017).

[3] Cf. John Barclay, Paul and the Gift (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2017).

William Webb 3: Persuasive Criteria

My review continues of William Webb's Slaves, Women, and Homosexuals: Exploring the Hermeneutics of Cultural Analysis.

Previous chapters:
Chapter 1: The Christian and Culture
Chapter 2: A Redemptive-Movement Hermeneutic

Now Chapter 3: Persuasive Criteria
In this chapter Webb sets down five of his 18 criteria for determining the extent to which biblical instruction on slaves, women, and homosexual acts relate to today. This chapter gives the five that he considers most persuasive.

Criterion 1: Preliminary Movement
The basic concept of this criterion is the direction in which biblical instruction is moving relative to the culture of its day. Another question that this criterion does not in itself answer is whether that movement is "preliminary" or "absolute."

The concept here is that sometimes Scripture differs from its surrounding culture in a way that reaches a final destination, what I would call the kingdom ideal. This is like scoring the touchdown on this issue. At other times, I think Webb rightly observes, Scripture demonstrates a movement toward the kingdom that is not fully reached. This is like moving the scrimmage line toward the goal.

Slavery
He mentions 8 ways in which the practice of slavery in Scripture reflects movement in relation to the culture of its day:

• generous number of days off work
• elevated status in worship setting
• release of Hebrew slaves after six years
• provisions given to slaves upon release
• limitations on physical beatings/freedom for damaged slaves
• admonitions toward genuine care
• condemnation of trading stolen slaves/people
• refuge and safety for runaway slaves

So Scripture does not fully move to the absolute destination where "in Christ there is neither slave nor free" (Gal 3:28), but it is moving in that direction.

Women
He mentions nine ways in which Scripture shows preliminary movement in relation to the status and empowerment of women:

• improved rights for female slaves and concubines
• no bodily punishment of a wife
• women's gain of (limited) inheritance rights
• the right of women to initiate divorce
• greater rights in divorce cases
• fairer treatment of women suspected of adultery
• elevation of female sexuality
• improved rape laws
• softening the husband side of the household codes

Several of these are of particular interest to me. I smiled at "the right of women to initiate divorce." I don't think his argument is quite right here but I agree with where he is headed so I won't say more. I have long taught that Paul's concern for the woman's sexuality in 1 Corinthians 7 would have been striking in that day.

Similarly, I have long argued his position on the household codes. I regularly read from Aristotle's Politics when we get to Colossians and Ephesians in a New Testament Survey class. There is nothing distinctively Christian about what Paul says to wives in these codes. It is rather what he says to the men that is striking.

Homosexuality
I note throughout the anachronism of his references to "homosexuality" and "homosexuals." This is a modern paradigm. There was no concept of sexual-ity or sexual orientation in the ancient world. The Bible refers to acts of men having sex with men and once to women having sex with women. It speaks of passion toward the same sex. It has no category for a person with a homosexual orientation.

The story of Sodom and Gomorrah is not about homosex-uals. It is a story about attempted same-sex rape.

We can thus recalibrate and note his three movements of the Bible in relation to culture on the question of homosexual acts:

• challenging the portrait of ancient gods (the Bible does not depict God having homosexual sex)
• removing homosexual practices of the temple cult
• legislating against homosexual practices within community life

The last one has the most force since the first two would also apply to heterosexual sex. Homosexual acts were practiced to varying degrees among the nations around Israel. Leviticus makes a broad-sweeping ban of such practices in Israel.

Criterion 2: Seed Ideas
This criterion looks at statements in Scripture that seem to point the way in a redemptive direction even though that path is not fully developed within the pages of Scripture. Perhaps the most obvious verse of this kind is Galatians 3:28--"In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek; there is neither slave nor free; there is not male and female." Patriarchalists note that Paul is primarily speaking of salvation here rather than social equality.

What Webb argues is that it is clear from other criteria that these liberations sow the seeds of a social direction. Because the Jew-Gentile distinction was crucial to the spread of the gospel in the first century, it is in this area that Paul most fully works out the implications. Once other criteria are brought into play it seems clear that the trajectory is a kingdom without hierarchy in relation to slaves or women either.

He also points out that the principle does not obviously apply to "gay and straight." As I argued above, it is doubtful that Paul would even recognize these categories. The issue seems one of homosexual activity not personal identity. Even in 1 Corinthians 6:9 he formulates the prohibition in terms of individuals in the active homosexual role and those in the passive homosexual role.

Criterion 3: Breakouts
It seems to me that this section largely presented individuals who did not fit the cultural norms of the ancient context despite the Bible often conforming to those norms. Some of Webb's examples are easy for us because our culture has already "broken free" of those cultural norms and those issues are not debated in the church. For example:

• Left handed people are not devious.
• Long hair is usually not an issue for guys any more.
• Firstborn children don't always get more of the inheritance.
• We are affirming of there not being slavery.

I do think he glosses over some of these too quickly. My father was conscious of hair length on men his whole life, and my mother would comment on my hair if I visited her right now. Webb finds exceptions to these rules in Scripture and dubs them "breakouts," pointing to the fact that they were merely cultural not absolute.

I agree with his conclusion that they were culture-bound, but I'm not sure his argument would be felt sufficient by someone who disagreed. My criteria has much more to do with the "Love God, love neighbor" criterion. There is nothing intrinsic about hair length that seems to violate the love of God or the love of neighbor in absolute terms.

Meanwhile, it is simply false to say that all left-handed people cannot be trusted. In fact, that common cultural view is based on ignorance. Behaving differently toward left-handed people than right-handed people violates the core principle that God does not show favoritism and loves all people equally, including his enemies.

Meat offered to idols
I find his argument here muddy. The fact of the matter is, there was disagreement in the early church on how to handle this issue. We can discern three different positions. First, James and the Jerusalem church took an "avoid at all costs" position. If in doubt, don't eat. Paul took a medial position: "Don't ask where it came from." Eat according to your conscience. If you don't know, feel free to eat. Then there was the Corinthian position--"You have knowledge, eat it anywhere."

Because Paul's writings have pride of place in the canon--and because his position embodies the full inclusion of the Gentiles--it seems to be the position that wins in the canon. Is that a breakout? Sure. I suppose it is.

Women
In this section Webb points to a number of women leaders of both political and spiritual kinds in Scripture. There is Deborah, Huldah, Priscilla, Junia. He argues that these are "breakouts" that point the way rather than mere exceptions to the rule.

On the one hand, these examples do clearly demonstrate that male leadership is not an absolute. That means that no one can claim biblically that a woman can never lead. God does call women to lead, clearly. Deborah is the supreme political and military leader of Israel--so a woman could be president of a Christian nation. Huldah is sought for a spiritual decision by the high priest and the king. So a woman can be a general superindentent or bishop.

What the Day of Pentecost does is make this normative. Now sons and daughters will prophecy (Acts 2:17). Everyone has equal access to the Spirit now. And while women may have been generally uneducated in biblical times, that is simply not the case. Any claim that women are somehow inherently worse leaders or thinkers than men is simply an ignorant claim in itself, suggesting the person who says such things lacks the wisdom to lead themselves.

He also mentions the equal consideration of women in sexual rights (1 Cor. 7:3-5) ultimately undermines any principle other than mutual submission. Although Paul only speaks of it in the sexual arena, Webb argues that this cultural breakout points toward its extension into to all areas of the marital relationship.

Homosexuality
Webb indicates that there are no breakout instances in relation to homosexuality in Scripture. He rightly concludes that there is nothing about the Jonathan/David or Ruth/Naomi stories that indicates a homosexual relationship. Here is an instance where our culture may make it difficult for us to see that men and women can have strong and affectionate relationships that are not sexual. Indeed, a professor I knew in England argued that our fear of appearing gay has at times made it difficult for men to have the kinds of non-sexual intimate relationships that they used to have.

Criterion 4: Purpose/Intent Statements
The idea of this criterion is that when Scripture links instruction to a purpose that doing that instruction would not accomplish today, then that instruction was cultural and should not be practiced. I generally agree, although I don't think it is always obvious what the actual function was. But as I have said before, "Doing what they did isn't doing what they did if it does not have the same significance it had in the ancient world."

So the holy kiss would not produce today the same result it did then. It would be offensive and troubling in our context. So a handshake will suffice today. Or in the days of COVID-19, jazz hands. "If we obey the text, we may violate the purpose of making people within the Christian community feel a warm welcome and a special bond" (105).

Webb argues that the submission of slaves to masters or wives to husbands similarly does not accomplish its original function of Christian witness and evangelism. Rather, a strong subordination of wife to husband would turn off a lot of people in the United States today. It would not accomplish one of its original functions, which was evangelistic. "Only deference and respect in a mutual-submission framework allows for the evangelistic or winsome gospel purpose statements to be realized in our social context" (108).

With regard to homosexuality, Webb argues that, by contrast, the purpose of the instructions against homosexual practice remains the same as it was originally. For example, the purpose of this instruction had nothing to do with evangelistic witness, in contrast to the submission of wives to husbands and slaves to masters. "The prohibitions against homosexuality are related to purposes such as the appropriateness of sexual intercourse within the male-female physical relationship... sexual intercourse was intended for a male-female relationship."

I might note here that the Bible isn't actually very clear about the reasons why homosexual sex is thoroughly prohibited. It is an abomination in Leviticus 18 and 20. Along with various practices of incest and bestiality, it seems to be something that the Canaanites did. My guess is that it might have been difficult for an ancient Israelite or Christian to explain why homosexual sex was wrong.

Criterion 5: Basis in Fall or Curse
My sense is that he has put this criterion in for those who would actually argue against egalitarianism. He has another criterion in the next chapter called, "basis in original creation." However, this section foreshadows the important point of the next chapter that I have said often--if we can enact the redemption of Christ on a societal level now, why would we artificially wait for the kingdom? If we can do away with slavery now, why wouldn't we? If we can restore the balance of full equality within marriage now, why wouldn't we?

But this section asks, are there omni-cultural (he says transcultural) factors that are a consequence of the fall? Yes, there are:

• childbirth pain
• weeds
• death

Still, it would be perverse to prohibit the advance of medicine because death is human punishment. We would not prohibit modern farming equipment or weed-killing chemicals because farming is supposed to be hard. It would be devilish to prohibit a woman from having an epidural because of the fall.

So, as Webb says, "It is not part of Christian mission to perpetuate the curse; it is our mission to fight the curse" (111). He rightly ends the section by saying this is not an argument for nudity. Clothing is actually a fight against the curse.

Prescriptive or Descriptive?
Here we get to an issue I have mentioned when I have taught from Genesis. We should view the consequences of the fall as more descriptive than prescriptive. Since salvation and redemption are the ultimate goals of God in Scripture, it is clear that God's own ultimate goal is to undo the Fall. Therefore it works against God's purposes to view the consequences of the Fall as prescriptive. The curse "should not carry any imperative implications" (112).

A couple other horses are head off at the path. One is that the order in which Adam and Eve sinned plays no role in Scripture. The fact that Eve ate first never is even pointed out in the Bible as a thing.

The nature of Eve's sin in 1 Timothy 2:14 seems to be that she was more easily deceived than Adam. This has been the most typical interpretation of the verse throughout church history (his Appendix B). But women are not intrinsically more deceivable than men (Appendix C). We thus find ourselves explaining this aspect of 1 Timothy 2 as either 1) a matter of the situation at Ephesus or 2) an aspect of the culture of the day (that women were less educated). Either way, the deceivability of women is not an omni-cultural data point.

Origins of Hierarchy
Another question is whether hierarchy was a consequence of the fall or baked into the creation. Webb states, "There are no clear or explicit statements formulating a hierarchical relationship between man and woman until after the Fall" (115). He argues for a post-Fall introduction of hierarchy based on the following factors:

• There are explicit statements of hierarchy between humanity and animals pre-Fall, but only after the Fall for men and women.
• The way the man names the woman is different from how he names the animals--she is like me. [As a side-note, it is often noted that "helper" does not imply hierarchy, since God is our helper in the psalms.]
• Finally, blessing and cursing formulas often involve a change in status, so it would be natural if the curse of Eve involved a reduction of status.

Long chapter with a lot of content!

What is a Christian? 1

What is a Human Being?
We human beings have multiple dimensions. I am not certain how these categories all play out inside me. I am not sure whether they are in the world itself or whether they are just helpful for us to process the world. But they are useful categories. They help us discuss matters that are true about us in the world.

1. There is our thinking, reasoning capacity. This is the part of us that has to do with ideas. We draw conclusions from premises. We make hypotheses about the world by gathering data. We reflect using certain rules like 1) if a is completely true and 2) b is fully entailed within a, then 3) b is also completely true. No one has ever shown an instance where such rules of logic are not true.

2. We have emotions and feelings. These are typically reactions to the world mediated by our personalities and brain chemistry. We are angered by something or saddened by something. We are motivated to "fight for freedom" or demotivated from doing anything. They can also churn within us without clear external cause. We can have moods and chemical imbalances.

Our emotions often connect our perception of the world to action. Emotions are neither about truth nor morality, but they can move us toward or away from them. Temptations often come in the form of emotions, but it is our choices that most fully reveal who we are.

3. We make choices. We have volition or "will." Sin properly so called is a matter of our choices. We cannot fully control what goes through our head. Indeed, there are situations of addiction where we cannot control our choices. However, under normal circumstances, it is our choices that most indicate who we are, who we choose to be.

Many aspects of who we are fall outside our control, at least initially in life. We cannot control who our parents are. We cannot control whether we are born with a male or female body. We cannot control the socio-economic status with which we come into life. From a Christian standpoint, these are relatively trivial characteristics.

It is our choices that reveal who we truly are. We start out in life a slave to fallen impulses. We do not have control over what we choose. The draw of temptation is with us our whole life. But a Christian has a power source beyond the world that we see. The Holy Spirit can empower our volition to be able to choose the good.

For heuristic purposes, let us call these three aspects of a person the main constituents of the mind--reason, emotion, and volition. Let us call the general tendencies of our mind--our ways of thinking, feeling, and acting--our personalities.

4. We also have bodies. Our brains are part of our bodies and thus there is clearly a physical component to our reason, emotions, and will, to our minds. We experience our minds as more than our bodies, whatever the underlying reality might be. As Christians we often speak also of a spiritual dimension of a human being. This is human identity as it relates to God and matters of virtue.

To distinguish spirit here is to say nothing of the metaphysics. These categories are heuristic. They allow us to talk about the world without committing to a particular configuration of the world in itself, das Ding an sich in Kantian terms. [1]

We will resist calling the spiritual realm, "supernatural." To call that realm "supernatural" may be to smuggle in a distinction from Descartes and the seventeenth century. [2] We are not committing to any ontology here, to any actual configuration of existence. We are not committing to dualism and certainly not to any Gnosticism. It is simply the case that we can talk about spiritual things as a category that reflects an aspect of humanity.

5. One might think of the human mind as an intersection between our brains and our "spirit," from one perspective what we might call our souls. From another perspective, we might call our "living souls" the essence of us that continues into eternity in whatever form our glorified bodies might take (cf. 1 Corinthians 15). [3] The part of our mind that relates most directly to the spiritual is our volition. The choices we make reflect most directly our connection to God.

The pattern of our choices over time is our character. Some of us are as consistent inside and out as an arrow flies. Some of us have a churning of conflicting impulses within us but still shoot like an arrow in the choices we make. In one sense, the latter person shows greater strength of character, greater virtue, because their choices are made with greater intentionality.

While there is an external virtue to the person who does the right thing every time without turmoil or conflict, there is perhaps a greater virtue for the person who does the right thing every time despite conflicting impulses. Morality is most meaningful as a function of intentionality.

In the end we are not simple beings. Despite Descartes' belief that my "I," my "soul," was a unitary, simple entity, I am a swirling mixture of factors. I do not always know who I will be in a particular moment until that moment comes and a choice is made. I am not one desire. I am many conflicting desires.

5. Thus far we have focused on who we are as individuals. Thus far we have potentially followed a course of Western individualism and Cartesian subjectivism. By contrast, part of human identity is social and relational. Further, more important than me looking out at the world is God looking in at it.

Being a Christian certainly relates to my internal world. But who I am is not primarily a matter of my choices toward myself. Scripture formulates who I am more in terms of my choices in relation to God and others, my external world. The fundamental Christian ethic is to love God and love neighbor.

So as an individual I may be body, mind, and spirit. However, God is focused especially on how I interact with "him" and others. [4] Indeed, our spiritual dimension is more a matter of our relationship with God and others--movement beyond ourselves--than an internal matter, although we may experience the spiritual as an internal matter.

6. Our identity is thus bigger than being the mere "thinking things" that Descartes thought we were in the early 1600s. We are creatures who live in community, in culture. We are communities of practice. We have cultural rituals that also define us. We share common symbols that embody our collective identity (e.g., a Bible, a flag, a Steeler's sweatshirt). We have community stories that tell us who we are. [5]

The biblical cultures were "collectivist" cultures where identity was much more a matter of the groups to which one belonged than a matter of how an individual might have defined him or herself. Bruce Malina has helpfully summarized human identity in such cultures as a matter of gender, genealogy, and geography. [6] However, we should neither endorse group or individualist culture as the proper one. Both have strengths and weaknesses.

Who we are is both a matter of the subjective (internal, tending toward the individualistic) and the objective (external).

7. God's perspective is of course the truly "objective" perspective. God sees das Ding an sich. God knows all the facts of the universe in all their proper relationships to all other facts. This is what absolute truth is, the God's eye view.

We have only fractional access to God's view. Even Scripture was revealed within the categories of those to whom God was speaking initially. The Bible is thus incarnated truth, truth revealed "in the flesh" of those to whom God wanted to communicate. Otherwise, no one would understand.

There is a subtle narcissism when we think our understanding of the Bible is absolute truth. Those who think such things are unaware that they have a particular worldview and particular paradigms, which are functions of their culture. [7] They are like fish who do not realize they are swimming in water. If they would say, "the Bible is absolute not incarnated truth," what they really mean is, "My understanding of the Bible is absolute truth." They thus imply that their worldview and their culture has finally arrived, not knowing how to read the Bible in its own original cultural contexts.

However, a real understanding of the Bible reveals that the Bible made sense to all those to whom it was first revealed. The words of the Bible made sense to them. They had paradigms. They had worldviews. The vast majority of the words of the Bible, perhaps even every word, made sense within the cultural frameworks of their original audiences. Since my/our paradigms and worldviews are different from theirs in many respects, reading the Bible in context is like an intercultural experience, reading someone else's mail from another time and place. The Bible is for us as Scripture, but its books were not written directly to us.

We can thus take the stance of critical realism. Truth about the world exists. It is what God "thinks." But our apprehension of that truth is overwhelmingly colored and skewed by our finitude and fallenness. We do not see the world as it but through a glass darkly. A former professor at Indiana Wesleyan University also used to say rightly, "but we do see." [8]

8. From God's perspective, humanity is created "in the image of God" (Gen. 1:26-27). The people of God both within Scripture and history have long reflected on what this image might be. In Genesis, it is first the position of humanity within the creation (the "political" image). However, it has been extended to refer to other aspects of a human such as our ability to reason and the eternality of our souls (natural image). Wesley also refer to our moral image as that part of us that could become righteous and holy. [9]

The above musings on the image of God all reflect to one degree or another the culture of the thinker, and they all point to truth. Genesis comes from a collective culture and so is focused on humanity's identity as a group within the groups of the creation. Wesley was a child of the Enlightenment and focused on individualistic features like personal morality and will.

Perhaps most helpful is to think of humanity in the image of God as a reflection of human value. Human life is sacred because we are reflections of God. No human life can be treated casually or trivially, even when we are speaking of morally reprehensible individuals. It is not that we have inherent rights, as if I am intrinsically valuable apart from God--more on this subject to come. It is rather the fact that we are loved by God that makes us valuable. We are valuable because we are reflections of God.

9. What is a human being? We are the image of God in some state of relation to God. We are "spirits in bodies." We are social, relational beings that live in communities of storied identity and practice. We are thinking, feeling, choosing things.

[1] Kant argued in The Critique of Pure Reason that we cannot know the world as it is in itself, the "thing in itself" (das Ding an sich). We can only know the world as it appears to us, the "phenomenological" world.

[2] Descartes sharply distinguished the natural world of our bodies from the spiritual world of our souls. This created a sharper dichotomy than had existed before. Prior to Descartes, existence was more of a continuum of being, and the ancient Greeks could think of the soul or life-force as thin material.

Descartes thus creates a distinction between the natural and the "supernatural" realm. Both become entirely separate modes of existence with completely different rules. Modern science can now treat the world as a machine that follows laws. Deism can emerge as a perspective that sees God as creator but not as involved in the world. The spiritual becomes something entirely different than the natural. See especially Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1992).

[3] The Bible has more than one picture of the soul, all of which give truths about human identity. These reflected the "psychological" paradigms of the various cultures within the Bible. Treating the eschatological whole of an individual as a person's soul leans toward the Hebrew construct that talked of the human nephesh as the whole living being. Treating it as a part of a person leans toward the Platonic detachable soul. Both images can be useful.

[4] God has no sexual organs. God is thus not literally male. This is a metaphor, an anthropomorphism, a portrayal of God in human terms to help us capture a glimpse of God in one aspect.

[5] While the term worldview is often limited to ideological systems, N. T. Wright helpfully expands it also to include core practices and rituals, key symbols, and common narratives. See N. T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992).

[6] Cf. especially, Portraits of Paul: An Archaeology of Ancient Personality (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1992).

[7] Paradigms are particular patterns and systems of understanding by which people at a particular time and place process the data of the world. These change over time and are an element of culture. See Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions 4th ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2012). A worldview is a collection of paradigms that show coherent patterns. As mentioned in n.5, a more holistic understanding of worldview moves beyond the ideological to the cultural.

[8] Dr. Glenn Martin. I generally disagreed with Dr. Martin's overall perspective, which I considered unreflective in its foundations. However, I agreed with him on this point.

[9] E.g., in his sermon "On the New Birth."