Holiness Discussion on Bible Blog

Brian Russell has started a discussion of why holiness died, particularly as something preached from the Bible, on the Bible Forum blog: www.bibleforum.blogspot.com

Anyone is welcome to participate. If you just want to comment, anyone can do that. If you want to be a member to make primary posts, tell me and I will invite you to join.

Ken

Conclusion: Biblical Hermeneutics

6. The Table of Discernment and Inspiration

Although they would probably disagree with me on a few points, evangelical scholars by and large accept the hermeneutical situation as I have set it out. As they might lay it out, a healthy hermeneutical process is one that moves carefully from "that time" (the time of the original meaning) to "this time." We determine the original meaning. We identify timeless principles that we then reapply to today in our context.

Most evangelical scholars would also at least acknowledge development in thinking from the Old Testament to the New, particularly in terms of the impact of Christ's coming. However, they might feel uncomfortable with any suggestion of development beyond the New Testament, unless such development is in continuity with the New Testament and probably even in a seminal form in the New Testament.

Most evangelical scholars are modernist in philosophy, which means they feel a strong aversion to non-literal or out of context appropriations of Scripture. Their loyalty is to the original meaning and to the original text. Thus the Greek text behind the King James Version is not used because it is not as original, despite the fact that it was largely the text used by the church for 1600 years.

We wonder if this is not a good time in history to re-examine some of these biases. On the one hand, the way in which Scripture itself uses Scripture raises serious questions about evangelical priorities with regard to the original meaning. The New Testament authors by and large read the Old Testament text in terms of their own contemporary situations and values, not in terms of the original meaning. And even today, evangelical scholars sometimes smuggle in their contemporary situations and values into the meaning of the text. These are recognitions we feel more comfortable making in a period when the limitations of modernism are out in the open.

This also seems a good point in the history of the church to acknowledge that the Protestant Reformation probably went too far in its denial of the extent to which genuine, inspired Christian tradition plays a role in our appropriation of Scripture. For example, Western Christians "know" that it is wrong to be a polygamist or a slave owner today, even though the Bible never says anything of the sort. We "know" it is wrong to see Jesus as any less divine than God the Father, even though the New Testament actually subordinates him to the Father (1 Cor. 15:28).

How do we know these things? We know them because we are Christians in continuity with the church of the ages. The most unhealthy and bizarre forms of Christianity are those where groups have read the "text alone" in isolation from the continuity of the church of the ages. The text alone is susceptible to as many different meanings as there are contexts against which it is read.

So I would like to suggest what I consider a healthier process of appropriating Scripture, one that allows for the standard evangelical process but that is less myopic in its value system. I suggest that we think of finding God's will in terms of a dialog between several key players. This model is similar to what is sometimes called "Wesley's Quadrilateral." In Wesley's Quadrilateral, we give first place to Scripture and then process it in dialog with tradition, experience, and reason.

But reason and experience are always involved in our reflection on the world. Indeed, they are unavoidable elements in our apprehension of the Bible's meaning. And Scripture is actually a part of Christian tradition when we read the individual books in context as moments in the formation of the early church.

Let me suggest that discerning God's will bids us come to a table of discernment and inspiration. The original meaning of each book should be there with us at the table, as should the most venerated voices of the saints through the ages. These spiritual individuals have already wrestled before us with the proper appropriation of Scripture.

We should also bring with us the wisdom of spiritual individuals in the church today. If the Spirit of God lives in the body of Christ, which is the church everywhere in all times and all places, then surely we are most in contact with the Spirit when we are most in communion with the saints of the ages. Appropriating the Bible is something best done together, in communion, rather than as a lone individual.

Appropriating the Bible for today is a spiritual task. It is not something we can do by formula; it is a spiritual art. The way Jesus and Paul appropriated Scripture was not always literalist or always allegorical. It varied. Further, sometimes it was absolutist but more often than not it was contextual. It was spiritual and, to some extent, unpredictable. Its common denominator was the love ethic.

We discern two crucial principles in the appropriation of Scripture for today:

1. Any appropriation of Scripture that is driven by the hatred of others is unchristian and unworthy of Christ.

2. Any appropriation of Scripture that is out of continuity with the communion of saints through the ages is most unlikely to be of God.

Are there prophetic movements in the church, instances where God might lead in new directions out of continuity with prior Christian practice? If so, I would suggest such movements will not be out of continuity with the Spirit of the communion of the saints of the ages. But the burden of proof will always lie with the new. It is hardly possible to reject wholesale some two thousand years of Christian history without rejecting to some significant degree the God that they and the authors of the Bible worshipped.

The Bible as Scripture is thus much bigger than the original meaning. But it is also vastly bigger than the way the words might strike me on a given day. It is the Bible as read by the saints of all the ages, the canonical interpretation of the Bible, that is the most authoritative over us. It is the ongoing task of the universal church to determine what this meaning is and ever to apply and reapply it to the world today.

Corrections on Israel

Continued embarrasment as I try to finish my "graduate studies" in front of the world.

I've been trying to nail down some question marks I had about the final days of Jesus in Jerusalem. I've finally been able to check up on some things I had heard before I went to Israel but that had bounced off my teflon head in the absence of any frame of reference. This is my perennial problem--if I knew half the things I have tried to shove in my head... Most just bounce off on the floor.

First, Wilbur had mentioned the possibility that Jesus would have been tried in Herod's old palace rather than in the Fortress Antionia. However, I had no sense of how to make this call.

Now I do. Josephus mentions that the Roman governors took over Herod's palace after the death of Herod the Great. The Fortress was thus more of a barracks and would not likely have been a place where Pilate stayed. The current consensus thus seems to be that they would have tried Jesus at Herod's palace to the west. Unfortunately, that implies that the Via Dolorosa isn't the way of suffering after all. Jesus would have come from the other direction.

Second, there are many archaeological digs that have been conducted under the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. I had thought I had heard something about a tomb found around the Armenian quarter, but it wasn't a tomb. They have just found a lot of evidence that the area was a stone quarry at the time of Christ. This is true in the Armenian quarter.

Some of us went down to the lowest chapel in the Armenian quarter, which is where tradition says the Empress Helena found part of the cross. I hadn't noticed really, but there is stone quarry rock under the Armenian section. There is also a second century carving or such that some scholars think is an indication of pre-Constantine pilgrimage in that area. Others think it is a Roman picture.

Third, the story is that the Empress Helena dismantled a Temple of Aphrodite on the spot at the word of local Christians who said the spot was underneath. They did find tombs there, and the tombs we saw reputed of Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus are two. Who knows, one of these could have been the real one. They are in the Syrian section (I didn't realize it at the time).

They evidently removed the surrounding rock that had been around the tomb that was venerated as the tomb of Jesus in order to facilitate the building of a basilica church in 335. Some marauders apparently destroyed everything there in the 1000's, so there is apparently scarcely anything of the original.

Fourth, Golgotha as it currently exists would not have been wide enough for three crosses and would have been a difficult to "haul" people up on (it's like a jutting finger). However, it could have been wider at the time--after all, it was a quarry.

But a few scholars suggest Golgotha is the name for the general area rather than a specific rock, and think people would have been crucified along a gate that came out at that time. That way people could see them as they left the city. I forget the name (Haditha?). This would place the crucifixion about a hundred meters south somewhere around the current David Street.

Finally, it seems the unanimous conclusion of archaeologists that Gordon's Tomb is a first temple bench tomb. That means it pre-dates Jesus by over six hundred years and can't be the place where Jesus was lain. Oh well.

Updates from Israel--no wait, Marion, Indiana (a holy site in its own right)

My New Motto

I've finally decided what should go on my family crest.

Schenck
S.C.N.F.

Semper Cogitans, Numquam Faciens

"always thinking, never doing"

P.S. I never said it was something to emulate. It just seems to fit me.

Head Turner of the Day

I hate it when I come across things like this. I love them, but they make me feel so stupid. Maybe one day I'll deserve my doctorate in New Testament.

Here is a quote from Epictetus written about AD 100. I've highlighted the part that affects our understanding of Romans 2:

"Philosopher... why do you treat the weightiest matters as if you were playing a game of dice? For it is one thing to lay up bread and wine as in a storehouse, and another thing to eat. That which has been eaten, is digested, distributed, and is become sinews, flesh, bones, blood, healthy colour, healthy breath. Whatever is stored up, when you choose you can readily take and show it; but you have no other advantage from it except so far as to appear to possess it.

"For what is the difference between explaining these doctrines and those of men who have different opinions? Sit down now and explain according to the rules of art the opinions of Epicurus, and perhaps you will explain his opinions in a more useful manner than Epicurus himself.

"Why then do you call yourself a Stoic? Why do you deceive the many? Why do you deceive the many? Why do you act the part of a Jew, when you are a Greek? Do you not see how each is called a Jew, or a Syrian or an Egyptian? and when we see a man inclining to two sides, we are accustomed to say, "This man is not a Jew, but he acts as one." But when he has assumed the affects of one who has been imbued with Jewish doctrine and has adopted that sect, then he is in fact and he is named a Jew. Thus we too being falsely imbued, are in name Jews, but in fact we are something else. Our affects are inconsistent with our words; we are far from practicing what we say, and that of which we are proud, as if we knew it. Thus being, unable to fulfill even what the character of a man promises, we even add to it the profession of a philosopher, which is as heavy a burden, as if a man who is unable to bear ten pounds should attempt to raise the stone which Ajax lifted."

So is Paul addressing Jews when he says, "So you call yourself a Jew" in Romans 2:17? The customary saying mentioned above implies not. Apparently, Paul is addressing Gentiles who are conservative in their Law-keeping.

Chalk another example up to the fact that you can't just read the words and have any certainty that you know what they meant originally. It just wasn't written to us originally.

Snippet of the Day 8-6

The men rushed together to Aristarchus and began to push him around.

“You don’t think Artemis is real? Well, she’s about to kill you.”

“I believe in things that are real, Demetrius, not gods someone like you can make in a shop,” Aristarchus said, moving right into Demetrius’ face. Meanwhile, Gaius emerged from inside, hearing the commotion.

“You hear him, he doesn’t even think Artemis exists!” Demetrius roared. “You, Christ-slave.”

“I’d rather be a king’s slave than serve a piece of metal like you do, Demetrius. You had better wise up before God rains down fire and destroys this temple of yours.”

With that a man rushed on Aristarchus and starting beating him. It wasn’t long before the others had grabbed Gaius. The group was mostly metalworkers, so they were strong and could easily have killed the two. But the crowd around them thickened quickly and things got very confusing.

With hardly any room to move and fear of Roman intervention, Demetrius shouted, “To the Theater!” and a couple of his compatriots picked them up and began making their way down the street.

Novel Snippet 3

I enjoyed writing this paragraph:

"By the time Demetrius was finished talking to the guild, you could hear their voices getting increasingly louder outside their shops. The metalworkers of Ephesus were located in a series of shops just inside the northern portico of the Arcadian Way. This street ran east-west from the theater in the east (just under Mt. Pion) down to the harbor in the west. Ironically, the leather working shops were just a little further down this street toward the harbor, off the opposite, southern portico. It was there that Aquila and Paul both had leatherworking shops."

Book Review: Born of a Woman (Spong)

I thought I might review John Spong's Born of a Woman.

In the book, Spong argues against the traditional understanding of the virgin birth (more accurately deemed the virginal conception). He considers it mythological and thinks it contributes to an unhealthy perspective on women (identified in terms of their sexuality rather than individuality). I know that this book has disturbed the faith of a lot of people, so I thought I might review it.

First of all, let me say that Spong isn't completely whacko. Of course there are a few places where he might as well be writing a novel as commenting on history. But I would say that after finishing the book, the difference between him and me is mostly one of "cup half empty" versus "cup half full." I would not dispute a good deal of the "data" he discusses in this book. What I dispute is his dismissal of faith in the virgin birth as ignorant, irrational, or impossible given the evidence. By the way, I'll continue to use the phrase "virgin birth" in reference to the conception of Jesus apart from human sex, just because that's how we all use the term.

What is at stake in the virgin birth?
It seems to me that two things are at stake. One appears to be a view of the biblical texts as straightforwardly historical or as mostly historical. The other is that we would be rejecting something the church has believed for nearly two thousand years, a unanimous element in Christian belief that is a part of the Apostle's Creed. It seems to me that is pretty significant.

What is not at stake?
1. The divinity of Christ is not at stake. This is very important to note. Orthodox Christian faith believes that Jesus was fully human and fully divine. We don't believe that Jesus was a demi-god: half man, half God. Whatever the divine part is, it is not a matter of human sex. It is something different from his humanity. As far as I can tell, Jesus could have been just as divine if he had come by way of human sex as he was via the miraculous way God chose. The only difference is where the Y chromosome comes from. By human sex it would have come from Joseph. As it was, God made it ex nihilo, out of nothing.

2. The sinlessness of Jesus is not at stake. Surely no one who knows genetics today seriously thinks that sin is based in any simple way on a Y chromosome or interaction with a Y chromosome. Paul certainly did not process sin in this way. To him, sin was a power with a foothold in my flesh. However we might translate this concept into our worldview (with cerebral cortexes and such), the Y chromosome is certainly not to blame. Otherwise, all women would be without sin.

Spong may be correct that the early church saw a woman as an "incubator" and the man as the exclusive provider of seed. Certainly they did not process the virgin birth the way we do, and they did not understand genetics and "the flesh" the way we do. (By the way, I don't think that we necessarily consider the thought processes of the authors that did not make their way into the text to be inspired anyway. This statement raises a lot of fascinating issues about whether the original meaning of the text is the inspired meaning, but I'll let it go.)

Does that mean the virgin birth didn't happen? No, it just means the stakes were higher for them than they are for us. While I disagree with Wolfhart Pannenberg, I think he'll be in heaven. Pannenberg believes that Jesus rose from the dead and was God in the flesh. But he does not believe in the virgin birth.

Spong is probably correct when he implies that the virgin birth plays no significant theological role in the original meaning of the New Testament as a whole. It is never mentioned outside a few verses in Matthew 1 and Luke 1. In other words, the virgin birth does not affect any of the theological claims of Paul, Mark, John, and not really any of those even in Matthew or Luke (the significance of the birth narratives is borne out theologically by other parts of these gospels).

While I consider the virgin birth a core belief of Christianity, I do so because of the gospels and the long standing belief of the church. But Christianity does not rise or fall on this belief. It seems to me that historic Christianity rises or falls on the incarnation and the resurrection.

Spong's Half Empty Cup
As I moved through Spong's book, I found a lot of data that seems fairly clear from the New Testament (for example, that the focal point of calling Jesus Lord was the exaltation of Jesus to God's right hand). In these cases, the difference between Spong and me is the significance and implications of the data to each of us more than what the data actually is. He consistently takes the "half empty" conclusion. I take the "half full" one.

For example, it is very difficult to fit the two birth stories together. If all we had was Matthew, we would think Joseph and Mary were from Bethlehem and only went to Nazareth because of political circumstances. If all we had was Luke, we would think that they were from Nazareth and only went to Bethlehem because of a census.

Can we fit the two narratives together? There have of course been ingenious suggestions of how to do it. Can we fit the two together without violating one of the texts or the other, twisting it to say something it probably does not? That's a more difficult question.

But Spong himself mentions a significant overlap between the two accounts (page 47-48). Here's a point of choice. Spong sees the cup as half empty--because they disagree he assumes all of it is "myth." But you could also see the cup as half full: given the tensions between the two accounts, it seems all the more likely that their common points are historical.

What are these common points? The most important ones are that Jesus was born in Bethlehem before Joseph and Mary had marital relations and that Jesus then grew up in Nazareth. Note that this common data is adequate to support the virgin birth. Such a belief from our perspective requires faith in miracles and supernatural intervention, but the data allows for it. I conclude that belief in the virgin birth is rational, even if it requires faith.

Indeed, it is surely noteworthy that Spong himself acknowledges the historical possibility that Jesus' birth was scandalous in some way (e.g., 21, 181). Take the following comment: "Perhaps there was an early memory that supported the tradition that Jesus was born too soon after Mary and Joseph came together to live as husband and wife" (73). Without intending to do so, Spong here inescapably implies that the virgin birth is possible given the evidence.

Therefore, if he were fair, he would say that he finds the virgin birth unlikely, although theoretically possible given the evidence. This is the case even if one adopts his hyper-pessimistic reading of the data.

Spong's Tone
Spong is incredibly dismissive in this book. He has a kind of "everyone who disagrees with me is stupid" air about him. Take the following quote: "Is there any possibility that the narratives of our Lord's birth are historical? Of course not. Even to raise that question is to betray an ignorance about birth narratives" (59). Wow! What a statement! He so much as says, you'd have to be an uneducated ignoramus to believe in the virgin birth. I know Tom Wright cried for months after he read this quote and discovered how stupid he was.

On the one hand, I agree that "origin tales" were primarily "commentaries on adult meaning" (59). What this means is that ancient biographers told the stories about a great person's birth and childhood in such a way as to evoke who they were as adults.

However, if I might adopt Spong's tone, you'd have to be completely ignorant of how oral tradition is passed on in an oral culture to think traditions like these didn't usually have a core of historical basis to them. Spong's generation of thinkers, since they view these things through the eyes of a literary culture, assume that stories get completely messed up when things aren't written down for a few years.

Let me note the important differences between Jesus' virgin birth and the other virgin births Spong mentions on p. 56. First, most of these names are about gods who no one ever claimed to be humans (Krishna, Horus, Mithra...). Secondly, I have a strong feeling that the legends of these individuals' births arose centuries after they were supposed to have lived. I personally think that Spong is one to two decades too late in his dating of Matthew and Luke. For Matthew in particular, I think we're less than 10 years after Mark and less than fifty years of the resurrection. In an oral culture--and a document probably produced in or around Antioch--this is not much time.

A Point of Strong Disagreement
One point where I want to take strong exception to Spong is in his explanation of resurrection faith. He argues that the earliest Christians thought of Jesus being exalted to heaven, not resurrected in a way that would involve an empty tomb. Let me say that it is at this point that I find Spong's perspective highly problematic, even if many scholars continue to express this point of view.

Since this review is about the virgin birth rather than the resurrection, let me just make two points:

1. First, I find ludicrous Spong's suggestion that "Easter broke, I believe, not so much with a supernatural external miracle but with the dawning internal realization that this life of Jesus reflected a new image of God, an image that defied the conventional wisdom, an image that called into question the exalted king as the primary analogy by which God could be understood" (39). With due respect to this beautifully worded thought (not original to Spong), I find this "cause" entirely insufficient to account for the "effect" we find in the early church.

Let me explain further by recourse to the second point:

2. One cannot easily dismiss Paul's claims in 1 Corinthians 15 that Peter saw the risen Lord along with many others, nor Paul's insistence that Jesus was the first of the general resurrection. We cannot dismiss them because the Corinthians seem to know of Peter and his movements, not to mention Barnabas (e.g., 1 Cor. 9:5-6). Since Paul had opposition at Corinth and indeed since some of them didn't even believe in a resurrection, a lie about something like this would have made him a sitting duck. He would have been stupid on the highest level to make up something like a resurrection appearance to Peter.

And of course Dunn has recently debunked the whole "gap theory" that Spong, the Jesus Seminar and all of these "sixties seminarians" have long used to propose a complete difference between Jesus and Paul (it's actually a much older suggestion). The little book A New Perspective on Jesus is very helpful in this regard.

I personally believe that the best an atheist can really claim with integrity is that Peter only thought he saw the risen Christ. Whether you believe in the resurrection or not, Peter certainly thought that he had seen the risen Jesus, and he was willing to die for that convinction.

And so, for Spong's explanation of resurrection to work in reality, over time Peter would have had to mistake a "dawning internal realization" he had for having had an actual vision of the risen Jesus. Wow, I don't think I could do that.

Spong and Speculation
As someone who likes to play at novel-writing, there are points where Spong's book gets really "fun." So Spong wonders whether the story of the woman caught in adultery was placed where it was because people thought of Jesus' mother as an adulterer (170). Spong suggests that the accusations of Jewish leaders might imply Mary was raped (171). He wonders if Jesus' words about tying up a strong man were reminiscences of something that happened in his childhood (162). Of course I can't prove that the Jewish leaders didn't think such things, but we lack far from enough evidence even to argue for these kinds of things. It is Spong gone speculative.

One funny thing about all this speculation is that Spong pretty much assumes that John gives us straightforward historical portrayals of events and the things people said and did in Jesus' life. Remember, he called anyone ignorant who would do this with the birth narratives. He took great pains in previous chapters to argue that the gospels are not historical but "midrashic" (which he basically defines as imaginative retellings of stories in the light of the Old Testament). So why does he take John so historically--if he is consistent with his own method? Indeed, John is more often considered by scholars the least straightforwardly historical of the gospels!

For example, Spong says at one point that John "was written, as most scholars believe, by a disciple of John Zebedee" (192). Ha! Fine with me and many conservative scholars! Nice of Spong to side with us conservatives. It seems deeply ironic to me that Spong is uncritically literal with what "most scholars" take to be the most symbolic of all the gospels!

One feature of John that is very important when reading these texts is irony. Sometimes John tells of people saying something where the audience is meant to smile because they know something the people in the story don't.

So when Caiaphas says it is better for one man to die than for all the people to (John 11:50), the audience should smile--we know that the one man Jesus did die so that the whole world wouldn't. Similarly, when the crowds suggest that Jesus can't be the Christ because he isn't from Bethlehem (7:42), it is very likely that John means the audience to smile as well--we know that Jesus actually was born in Bethlehem.

By far the most entertaining part of the book to me are Spong's speculations about whether Mary Magdalene might have been Jesus' wife. This is a really popular idea today with the Da Vinci Code and what not. Spong suggests that the wedding at Cana was Jesus' own wedding because "I have never attended a wedding with my mother except when it was the wedding of a relative" (192). I'm having fun with Spong, but this is really the stuff of a novel.

On the one hand, I'm not sure it would affect any doctrine of the church or the inerrancy of the Bible if Jesus had been married. The Bible doesn't say he wasn't! And we only find out that the disciples were married because of a completely unnecessary side comment Paul makes (1 Cor. 9:5). If anything, we get the impression that the wives of these men were so irrelevant to the biblical writers that no one bothered to mention them. There is no conspiracy of suppression--only the possibility that these men undervalued their wives.

At the same time, I don't see why Luke wouldn't go ahead and say Mary was Jesus' wife if she was (I don't buy Spong's conspiracy theory of suppression here). And the scandal of an illegitimate birth would have played right into Luke's emphasis on Jesus' ministry to the poor and the oppressed. So why doesn't Luke go ahead and portray Jesus this way? Why does Luke present the virgin birth and refrain to tell us of a marital association with Mary Magdalene?

Could it be because Jesus was born of a virgin and wasn't married to Mary?

Closing Remarks
In closing, I didn't quite see the connection between the portrayal of Mary in the gospels and the ongoing oppression of women today. I will readily admit that the New Testament is often patriarchal in its assumptions. I am willing to admit that church history has often filtered the words of the Bible through a sexual lens that is inappropriate to the gospel. But I don't see how the virgin birth is to blame for all this. Just because someone abuses something doesn't mean that it isn't legitimate. "Abuse is no excuse.

In the end, Spong's argument is all too familiar. We have seen it in the eighteenth century Hume, the nineteenth century Renan, the twentieth century Bultmann. These individuals have come to the data with an antisupernaturalist presupposition. Clearly the data can be interpreted coherently in terms of such a presumption. But since none of these individuals have disproved that God exists and sometimes acts in history, the data can also be interpreted coherently with a supernaturalist presupposition as well.

It is the same data, but the interpretation is different in accordance with two different faiths.

Sermon Starters: Moving On

I almost gave a three-point devotional the other night (time constraints made it a four minute-er instead of a twenty, twenty-fiver. I'm sure they got the better deal). If I were to preach this, I would do it as a narrative sermon. I'd talk as if I were Paul (not in Wilbur Williams style--I'd use my own voice).

The point of view would be Romans 15, Paul's at Corinth at the end of his third missionary journey. He feels like his ministry in the east is done. He's now looking beyond Rome to Spain and in fact writes Romans as an introductory letter meant to present himself with a view to the ways some have criticized him while also hoping to secure a favorable base from which to begin a new mission (much as Antioch served for his first missionary journey).

Here were my three points from the devotional:

1. As Paul looked back, he had any number of successes to look back on. Philippians 3, as many of you know, is not primarily Paul looking back on his failures when he says, "forgetting what is behind and pressing to what is before." The first verses of Philippians 3 recount things he might boast about as a human being, including the fact that he was as blameless at keeping the Jewish law that a human could be (3:6).

Part of what Paul was leaving behind was anything that might be to his credit. We can't ride on our laurels to heaven. As you all would know that I don't find much room for eternal security in my understanding of the New Testament. The verse that weighs most heavily on my in favor of it is 1 Corinthians 5 where Paul wants to deliver a person over to Satan for the destruction of his body and salvation of his spirit on the Day of Judgment. Although I have not interpreted it this way, it seems at least conceivable that Paul, thinking the judgment would take place soon and within the near future, expect the man's body to be destroyed in the judgment while his spirit would be saved. This interpretation might reflect a kind of eternal security. I cannot imagine, however, that it is very attractive to anyone, including those who believe in eternal security.

In contrast, the vast majority of relevant passages--as well as the sociological context of the NT-- suggest a presumption and strong security for believers but not an absolute security. These passages suggest to me that the alternative interpretation of 1 Corinthians 5 is not correct.

The long and the short of this matter is that a) human accomplishments are but "dung" in the light of Christ and b) past spiritual victory is something God remembers and values (e.g. Heb. 6), but it does not provide absolute security in terms of ultimate salvation.

2. The main spark for the devotional was my current understanding of Paul's circumstances as he writes Romans. He has probably been imprisoned at Ephesus, during which he wrote Philippians. I suspect the governor expelled him from the city and forbade him to return. Many Jews in the city rejected him, perhaps even many who called themselves believers (Phil. 1).

We have no real sense of whether the Galatians accepted Paul's teaching that he wrote them. They might have, but we just don't know.

If indeed 2 Corinthians 10-13 give us the latest state of affairs before Paul came to the city and wrote Romans, then it is not at all clear that Paul had the full loyalty of the city when he was penning Romans. His last words to the community are anything but resolved from conflict.

In this context Paul writes in Romans 15 that there is no more room for him to minister in the regions of the east. He says nothing of spending months at Ephesus or Corinth. He's done.

Forgetting what's behind and pressing on, means all that's in the past. Sins, failures, struggles, painful situations--there all past and left behind in the light of our future with Christ.

3. So what really counts most is not the past, either its successes, pains, or failures. What matters is the upward call in Christ Jesus, the call to make it to the resurrection. Paul mentions this in Philippians 3. He mentions it in 1 Corinthians 9. Paul doesn't want to fail to get the prize after he has worked so hard. So he presses on for the mark of the upward call, to make it to the end.

So Paul is not done, even as he writes Romans. He plans to go to Rome and then to Spain. We don't know if he actually made it to Spain, but he did make it to Rome. Are you still pressing on?

Change or Die?

I'm behind on my reading. So what else is new? But I thought I'd make a few comments on what I hear people like Spong and certain "emergent" voices are saying about Christianity today. These are just some thoughts I have, nothing like a systematic tackling of the problems they are addressing.

My main impression is, good luck. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the criticisms and observations these guys are making are correct. But I don't see the death of Christianity in its older forms anywhere on the horizon.

Why? Because the most traditional and entrenched forms of Christianity and the most childlike of faiths are only as far away as the Sunday School nearest you. Generations of "enlightened," liberal seminarians have been emerging for generations. And let us not forget the oft cited legend of Voltaire predicting the death of Christianity within a generation--made in the late 1700's.

I'm not saying that the emergents aren't on to some things. I'm just saying that the emerging twenty-somethings of the sixties and seventies were on to some things too, as were the emergents of the twenties, or of the 1890 Methodists who had returned from studying in Germany. (By the way, I'll bet you that a lot of the emergent writers today don't "know" some of the things those 1890 emergents knew a hundred years ago--talk about how enduring emergent knowledge is)

What little I've read of the "hot" emergent writers doesn't leave me thinking, "Wow, I need to rethink my theology completely." If anything it's surprise that these guys actually think they're on to something new. I mean, really, Honest to God was written in the 60's, and it didn't stop the conservative resurgence of the 80's that I lived through. If anything, the current emergents are a lot shallower than their predecessors, although they dress better and are certainly more hip.

And look at how powerful conservative evangelical politics are right now--way more powerful than I can ever remember before--even during the Reagan years when I was at Boy's State and we were voting in school prayer. And this comes after the enlightened sixties and seventies! Indeed, the once having ruled enlightened emergents of those days are completely at a loss today at how the "assured progress" of those days doesn't seem to have any support among grass roots people today. They lost to their "conservative" children.

So what am I really saying? First, I'm not dismissing everything the "emergent church" is saying. I think they probably have some insights that the "masses" don't. However, it's almost embarrassing that some of them would think they're the first ones ever to have some of these insights. Frankly, I'm not even sure some of the ones touting themselves as post-modern even understand what the word really means. I'm waiting for the profound new idea that really leaves me thinking, "Wow, I've never thought or heard of that before."

And I'm wishing them good luck on changing the world. But I'll take that bet against Spong that Christianity is about to die if it doesn't change. I've been to Sunday School, and those impressionable little minds have the same visions of Jesus loving the little children of the world that I had as a child in the 70's.

New Team Blog

I've created a new team blog where all members of the team can make regular postings on issues of the Bible in addition to the ability to comment on individual posts as usual.

You can check the site out at www.bibleforum.blogspot.com

Ken

Novel Snippet Time 2

I especially enjoyed this paragraph today:

"Along the streets we met the usual men on their way to the fields outside the city walls. Paul walked at such a fast clip that I struggled to keep up with him. He was over twenty years older than me, a man of over fifty years, but I still struggled to match his pace when he was at full speed. Paul was the first to reach the top of the hill, soon followed by me. Normally we would have sung some hymns, perhaps the one Apollos wrote that I had put in the letter to the Colossians. Then there was a lovely new one Apollos had written about Jesus taking the form of a servant. But Paul was single minded in his intention this morning, and as soon as Aquila and Priscilla reached the top, he began to pray."

Hermeneutics 5

5. Caution in the Direct Application of the Original Meaning
Most of our discussion so far has centered on the original meaning of the Bible. We have suggested that the pursuit of the original meaning is legitimate because 1) it is after all the first meaning God inspired, and 2) it provides depth and perspective in relation to any other meaning we might see in the words. But at the same time, a number of important considerations make it clear that we should not base our beliefs and practices today solely on the original meaning of a biblical passage.

First of all, we should admit up front that in a vast number of cases, we simply do not have enough information to conclude for certain even what the original meaning of a passage was in the first place. Consider 2 Thessalonians 2:5, where Paul reminds the Thessalonians of a discussion he had with them while he was still at Thessalonica: "Do you not remember that I used to say these things when I was still with you?" We would love to be privy to this information. But unfortunately, none of us are, for it was not written to us. We are not the "you" of this passage. 2 Thessalonians 2 remains an extremely difficult passage to interpret because we have insufficient data to determine its meaning with certainty. Basing the Bible's authority strictly on the original meaning is problematic in part because we do not know for certain what that meaning was.

Even more problematic than the information that we know we lack, is the information we do not know we lack. In other words, new discoveries have repeatedly cast new light on old questions in ways that revolutionize the way we look at certain biblical texts. For example, the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947 continues to transform our understanding of various parts of the Bible even today.

Further, with so many thousands of biblical scholars pouring over the text, the background literature, and the history of the Bible's interpretation, we constantly hear new perspectives on old questions. Occasionally, the waves of these discussions bring in new revolutions of insight--or at least trendy changes in interpretation. It is often difficult to know what trends will stand the test of time and which will pass quickly after they hit the shore. Thus while the original meaning is in theory a fairly stable meaning, we cannot always identify it with certainty. Surely we need some additional checks and balances in place as we try to appropriate it.

But secondly, even if we could know the original meaning with absolute certainty, a number of reasons exist for us not to assume that the original meaning will apply straightforwardly to today. Whether in terms of belief or practice, a direct application of the words to today can be inappropriate, even dangerous for several reasons.

1. The first is that simply doing what the ancient audiences of the Bible's words did, would not be "doing what they did" if its significance, connotations, and implications would be different today.

No one should assume that we are trying to "get out" of obeying the Bible with this observation. Indeed, in many respects working out the heart of biblical teaching today often requires us to be more exacting than the Bible itself was originally. Jesus' interpretations of the Old Testament in Matthew 5 often "fulfilled" the Old Testament by exacting a more thorough standard than the Old Testament itself. Yet it is equally clear that there are prohibitions and commands the Bible makes that would not make any sense in our context.

I mentioned some easy examples of this fact earlier. Take Paul's admonition to "greet the brothers with a holy kiss" in 1 Thessalonians 5:26 or his urging of the women at Corinth to have a sign of authority on their head when they prophesy "because of the angels" (1 Cor. 11:10). Greeting my fellow brothers at my home church just wouldn't do what it did two thousand years ago--the connotations are now vastly different in twenty-first century America.

And scholars do not even agree what Paul was talking about in 1 Corinthians 11:10. I personally think Paul meant a woman should cover her head (not her face) with a veil when entering the spiritual presence of putatively male beings like angels and God. The authority comes from the fact that she is honoring her "head," her husband, as she is entering the presence of other "men." If I am correct, then you can see how foreign the logic of this passage is to anything we can easily relate to today--even among those who wear prayer bonnets or hair buns in lieu of this passage.

In other instances, we will have to "fulfill" the heart of Scripture by a greater strictness than the Bible requires. Thus the Old Testament freely allows polygamy (e.g., Deut. 21:15-17). Indeed, no passage ever complains about David or Solomon's many wives (except that they are foreign). And it seems very unlikely that Ruth was Boaz's first wife. A wealthy, older man like him at that point in Israel's history probably had more than one wife long before Ruth came into the picture.

The New Testament does seem to assume that a person will have only one wife (e.g., 1 Cor. 7:2), but no passage in the New Testament explicitly prohibits polygamy for an ordinary person. 1 Timothy and Titus come the closest when they insist an overseer or deacon must be the husband of one wife (e.g., 1 Tim. 3:2, 12; Tit. 1:6). Indeed, these two books may mean something even stricter than monogamy--they may mean one wife during the course of a whole lifetime. But if we base our practices on the Bible alone, we have no clear prohibition of polygamy anywhere in the entire Bible.

However, in Western culture, polygamy seems to us incompatible with the very essence of Christianity. Some of the reasons for this sentiment actually come from cultural misunderstandings of the biblical text, like the presumption that a person can only become "one flesh" with one person. Presumably Jacob became one flesh with both his wives and his two concubines as well. And Paul speaks of becoming one flesh with a prostitute with no sense that one has thereby entered a marital or monogamous relationship with her (1 Cor. 6:16).

No, the reason we should consider polygamy inappropriate for a Christian is because in our world it would inevitably bring an inequality between husband and wife that is ultimately unchristian. When the Sadducees tried to foil Jesus' understanding of resurrection, they presented him with a scenario in which a woman had become one flesh with seven brothers one after the other without having children (e.g., Mark 12:18-27). Whose wife would she then be in the kingdom? Jesus' answer was that there would not be marriage in the kingdom, and women will not be given to men then (Mark 12:25). The subordination of wives to husbands will not exist in heaven, and all individuals of both genders will stand on an equal footing.

It is possible that at various times and places on earth God has allowed Christians to be polygamous, but clearly such a practice is less "heavenly" than monogamy. In the same way, God has allowed Christians at times to consider wives subordinate to their husbands, but this set up is similarly less "heavenly" than marriages where both are on equal footing. Like God allowed for divorce in the old covenant, perhaps God has "winked" at less than the ideal at various times and places. But Westerners have no excuse to formulate the relationship between men and women on earth in these passing earthly terms--often based on certain conceptions of the body. And we should urge Christians from polygamous cultures to move in a monogamous direction. When it comes to issues like these, surely God expects a higher standard today in the relationship between husbands and wives than He has sometimes allowed at other times and places.

2. The second reason why we should be careful about applying the original meaning of the Bible directly to today is that God largely revealed the truths of the Bible within the paradigms and worldviews of the original audiences. The point was not the ancient paradigm, but what God was affirming by way of it.

We see that when Paul says he was taken up into the "third sky" in 2 Corinthians 12:2, the image is just like the Testament of Levi, where you go up through successive layers of heaven (or sky) until you get to where God is. When Paul says that every knee will one day bow before Christ, he formulates every knee in terms of how he pictured the world: "of those in the skies and on the earth and under the earth" (Phil. 2:10). When Genesis pictures the creation of the stars, it sees them in the sky (Gen. 1:14), which it also sees as an expanse between the waters of the earth and certain primordial waters above the sky (Gen. 1:6).

When Colossians discusses the respectable relationships of the household (Col. 3:18-4:1), it does so in the same terms that Aristotle did in his Politics. Paul and Timothy discuss relationships of husband and wife, fathers and children, masters and slaves--the three domains that Aristotle lays out as the relationships of the household. When Paul speaks of the husband as the head of the wife and calls for her submission to the husband, he says exactly what Aristotle laid out as the appropriate relationships of the home.

My point here is not to discount these passages, which I affirm as inspired, but to clarify exactly what the point of these passages was and what it was not. Paul's point in Philippians was not the structure of the cosmos, but the ultimate submission of the world to Christ. And Genesis 1 no doubt showed who God was in contrast to the gods of the other creation stories--more than giving us a slide show of the creation process. And the point of the household codes of Colossians, Ephesians, and 1 Peter may have been much more about "having such good conduct among the Gentiles that although they might speak badly of you as if you were doing evil, when they see your good deeds they will glorify God on the day of His visitation" (1 Pet. 2:12). Ironically, to fulfill the purpose of this verse we would need to allow our wives to have equal value and freedom today--the opposite course of action from what fulfilled it then!

Because the inspired message of the Bible's books came in the clothing of ancient paradigms and worldviews, much discernment is necessary when appropriating the biblical text. Thus the Bible was not meant to tell us about how the brain works. Indeed, various parts of the Bible conceptualize the human make-up differently (e.g., Genesis differs from Hebrews). The process of appropriating the original meaning of the Bible will require us to discern what the inspired point of each passage was and what the ancient clothing was in which it was dressed.

3. The third reason we should be careful about applying the Bible's words directly to today is because in some cases the New Testament had not yet reached a "final answer" on certain beliefs and practices.

We have already mentioned the matter of polygamy. We might add to that list slavery. For example, it is not at all clear that Paul is asking Philemon to give Onesimus his emancipation from slavery in Philemon. The text never says anything like this. Indeed, Colossians--probably sent to the same destination at the same time--instructs slaves to obey their earthly masters and says not a word to masters about setting their slaves free (Col. 3:22-4:1).

The New Testament does not spell out the specifics of the Trinity or exactly what the divinity of Christ is. God worked out these understandings in the church in the centuries that followed. Indeed, on several issues the books of the New Testament have not yet reached a "final answer." Take the issue of earthly sacrifice. According to Acts 21, Paul goes to the temple to offer animal sacrifices to release certain individuals from a vow (21:26). But Hebrews tells of the end of all animal sacrifice in the light of Christ's once and for all atonement (Heb. 10:14). While God has made it immensely clear to us Christians that an earthly temple would be irrelevant, it is not clear that all the New Testament authors had fully come to understand this fact yet. In this case we now know that Hebrews gives the final answer, but other books in the New Testament may not be quite as far along in unpacking this implication of Christ's death.

4. A fourth consideration is that since each book has its own individual meaning, these books do not tell us how to connect their teaching to each other. The activity of creating a "biblical theology"--determining the general thrust of the Bible on a particular topic or issue--is a matter of us looking in from the outside. It is an extra-biblical task. It is the same with the task of applying the words to today. Since the books were written to them, the Bible itself does not tell us how these words might relate to us. Determining this relation is also an extra-biblical task.

Thus, whether we like it or not, we are the determinative moment in the synthesis and application of biblical teaching to today. The Bible itself, Scripture alone, cannot tell us these things. They are activities--synthesizing teaching and connecting worlds--that we do from the outside looking in at the texts.

Before we apply a verse like 1 Timothy 2:12 to today--"I do not allow a woman to teach or take authority over a man"--we have to connect it with other biblical teaching relating to women teaching men. Thus we will also need to consider the implications of Acts 18:26: "When Priscilla and Aquila heard him [Apollos], they invited him to their home and [they] explained to him the way of God..." We will need to consider the prophetic role Acts 2:17-18 and 1 Corinthians 11:5 describe for women. To be careful, we should not apply any one of these individual passages directly to today until we have considered all the others.

And as we have already mentioned, once we have constructed a biblical theology on this topic, we will need to consider the relationship between the biblical world and our world. We must find points of continuity and discontinuity between the two worlds and identify the flow of revelation in the church since. Only then can we be certain that we are playing out the teaching of the original meaning with God's blessing today.

5. A fifth and final reason for caution relates to any expectation we might have that the original meaning of the Bible will give us all the answers we need for our questions today. Unfortunately, the New Testament simply does not directly address many of the issues that are most pressing for our time. Although the concept of an abortion existed at the time of the New Testament, the New Testament does not address the subject. Any verses we might produce on the topic are only indirectly relevant at best. And where will we find verses on stem cell research or on removing feeding tubes from bodies that are brain dead?

Indeed, we will not find passages that directly address so many of the issues on which we most want a word from God today. The verses brought to bear on these subjects are often those most read out of context. This is not a point of despair. It is a point for the church to pray and take the responsibility that it has always had, but has often not wanted to take. It has sometimes been easier to pretend like there is an easy answer in a verse taken out of context than to do the hard work of "working out your [plural] salvation with fear and trembling" (Phil. 2:12). God did not stop speaking when he inspired the books of the Bible. It is the church's job to listen to what He is saying.

Hermeneutics 4

4. Many Books, Many Contexts
One of Martin Luther's principles in determining the meaning of the Bible was that "Scripture interprets Scripture." We can now identify this notion as "pre-modern" in the sense that it does not really understand how to read the words of the Bible in context. These books were written by different authors who each used words differently, indeed who wrote in three different languages. We should weigh Scripture against Scripture, but you cannot usually interpret the original meaning of, say, Romans, by looking at a book like Matthew. Each author had his own vocabulary and way of putting things, and any conception of inspiration that cannot accommodate this fact is inadequate.

For example, in Mark 7:12, Jesus says, "Why does this generation seek a sign? Truly I say to you, [may I be accursed] if a sign [semeion] will be given to this generation." It is hard to find words in English to express the Aramaic expression that likely lies behind this statement in Mark. To say the least, it strongly denies that Jesus was willing to provide a sign to the crowds.

Now consider John 21:30: "Jesus did many other signs [semeion] before his disciples that are not written in this book." What are some of the signs recorded in John? Turning water into wine for a public wedding was the first (John 2). John mentions that Jesus did several signs in Jerusalem (2:23) before a second sign (4:54). In short, John tells us that Jesus not only performed signs; he performed so many miraculous deeds that "if every one was written, I do not think the world itself would have room for the books in which to write them" (John 21:25).

How do we fit these seemingly conflicting accounts together, if indeed we should try? Actually, while the flavor is in tension, these comments do not really contradict each other. Jesus clearly performed miraculous deeds in Mark as well as John. The principal difference is that Mark and John use the word sign differently. John used it of any miraculous indication that Jesus is the Christ. Mark used it as a kind of proof on demand, like jumping through hoops at the behest of those who doubt. In the end, it is only by taking the individual vocabulary and perspectives of the two authors into account that we are saved from a rather significant contradiction here.

In terms of the original meaning, the context of an individual book is that book itself. When Revelation 22:18-19 says that "if someone should add to the words of the prophecy of this book, God will add to that person the plagues written in this book," it originally referred only to the book of Revelation rather than to the whole Bible. The books of the Bible were not placed in a single book at the time Revelation was written. At that time each book (or sometimes groups of smaller books) circulated on its own individual scroll.

Indeed, it is not until the year AD 367 that we hear of someone even suggesting that the current list of books in our New Testament was the right list. Revelation was one of the books that early Christians debated over, in terms of whether it was Scripture or not. It was not until the 300's that this debate became somewhat settled. Before then, godly Christians legitimately debated whether Revelation was as inspired as other books like Romans. This information is not meant to call into question the inspiration of Revelation, but to show that these books were originally written separately from each other and thus originally meant to be read on their own terms.

The more we listen to each book, the more we will see the variety of the circumstances and perspectives in the Bible. In the same way that you wouldn't give the same advice to a serial killer and someone with a hyperactive conscience, so each book delivers a message appropriate to its circumstances and place in the flow of revelation. Indeed, we probably listen best to the text when we see some of these books in dialog with each other, even taking different sides on the same issues in a great debate.

For example, Deuteronomy 24:1 freely allows a husband to divorce his wife because she becomes displeasing to him. In contrast Malachi 2:14-16 inveighs against any man who might divorce the wife of his youth. Jesus will reinforce Malachi's complaint by forbidding men to divorce their wives for any old reason (Matt. 19:1-12). In this passage, Jesus considers the allowances of Deuteronomy as contrary to God's original intention (19:8). Here we have Jesus telling us that God allowed something to be in Scripture that was not God's first preference.

Let us also consider books like Joshua, where non-Israelites must be obliterated regardless of their disposition to Israel or Yahweh (e.g., Josh. 6:21; 7:12; 9:24), and Ezra, where Israelites are commanded to divorce their foreign wives and the children from such marriages (Ezra 10:3). These books at least seem to be in dialog with books like Jonah, where God freely forgives the atrocious Assyrians (e.g., Jon. 3:10), and Ruth, where a Moabitess is welcomed into the lineage of David (and thus Jesus; Ruth 4:18-22). Indeed, Jonah himself seems to espouse a perspective similar to that of Joshua or Ezra, a perspective that the book of Jonah itself condemns.

Our point is that listening to the books of the Bible speak, rather than forcing them to fit together on our terms, presents us with a better understanding of the whole truth more than if the books of the Bible simply gave us a monotone voice. Reality is probably too complicated to be summed up in such a simple schema.

Beyond dialog, we also observe a "flow of revelation" within and beyond the pages of the Bible. In Genesis, we soon realize that someone like Jacob (e.g., Gen. 31:34; 32:30) did not have nearly as good an understanding of God as Moses would (e.g., Exod. 6:3). Further, God presented the idea of monotheism more precisely in Isaiah (e.g., Isa. 44:6-20) than he did to Moses (Deut. 5:6-7; 32:8) or one of the psalmists (Ps. 82). When we get to the New Testament, we now understand that Jesus must be fit within God's divinity as Lord in some way (1 Cor. 8:6; Titus 2:13). We observe a clear development in understanding even within the pages of the Bible.

But even the New Testament did not resolve all these issues. Is Jesus to be worshipped (proskuneo) in the same way we might "bow the knee" to a king (cf. Matt. 2:11)? What does 1 Corinthians 15:28 mean when it speaks of the ultimate subordination of Christ to God the Father? Does Hebrews 1:8-9 make a distinction between Christ as God and the God? Was the fourth century Arius interpreting Colossians correctly when he argued that the phrase "the firstborn of all creation" (Col. 1:15) meant Jesus was the first thing God created? Yet John 8:58 seems to say that Jesus was the very same Yahweh who appeared to Moses at the burning bush. And the Lamb of Revelation 5:14 is worshipped alongside the One on the throne.

Christians discussed these kinds of questions for four hundred years before our current understanding was finally settled. And the church ultimately found that they had to resort to categories outside the Bible to resolve these issues. The Nicene Creed (381), which gives the position Christians have taken ever since on the Trinity, includes a good dose of somewhat philosophical language that the early Christians used to make the necessary distinctions that we continue to use today.

What we find is that far more than just the Bible alone is involved in the way Christians use the Bible. On the one hand, we would not even have a "New Testament" if God had not led the church to identify these particular books as authoritative Scripture. Before there was a New Testament, each of these books circulated somewhat independently of each other. It was through a process of dialog among Christians over several hundred years that these particular books finally became the unanimous collection of Scriptures--the canon--that all Christians now affirm them to be. It was in the church of the 300s and 400s that this process finally came to completion. It was not the decision of a political body, but something that "bubbled up" in the church.

This is a good point in history to reiterate and clarify that the Bible as Scripture is ultimately the possession of the church. By church here, I do not mean a political body, but all those who are truly Christians everywhere. The original meaning is important because it was the meaning God first inspired, and we can only add depth to our understanding of God when we know something about it. Yet as will become clearer in the final section, it is the Bible as the church has read it that has really stood at the heart of the way Christians have heard God's voice in its words.

Here is a moment of immense clarity. Words take on meaning when they are placed in a specific context. The result is that words can potentially take on many, many meanings. It is for this reason above all that there are over 20,000 different Protestant churches who claim to get their beliefs from the Bible alone. Clearly, far more important than the question of whether the Bible is inspired is thus the question of what meaning of the Bible is authoritative.

On the one hand, we can certainly argue that the individual, original meanings of each book were inspired and authoritative for each particular original circumstance. But in practice, the original meaning is not really what Christians have meant when they have claimed the Bible to be inspired and authoritative. In practice, Christians read these words through the eyes of the church. This is the meaning you get when you read the words in light of the orthodox beliefs and practices of historic Christianity. And of course, each Christian group has added its own unique beliefs and traditions to the "dictionary" it uses to interpret the Bible's words. The final section will explore what this point of clarity might mean for how we appropriate the Bible today as Christians.

Novel Snippet Time

Believe or not, the novel has made it into double digits. Here's just a snippet to whet your appetite (and/or keep at me so I finish it):

From chapter 3
Priscilla entered the atrium just moments after I did, her hair covered with a veil down to her shoulders. Her face was serious, but beautiful as always.

“I covered my hair just for you, Timothy,” she said with a smile.

For the first time, I saw the hint of a grin on Paul’s face as well.

“You know I think Apollos is right, Timothy,” Aquila ventured this time. “Aristotle would be proud of you.”

Sermon Starters: To Judge or Not to Judge

I'm supposed to speak on this topic Sunday night at College Wesleyan in Marion.

Here are my power point slides with brief notes:

To Judge or Not to Judge: That is the Question for Tonight

1. Some well known verses
Matthew 7:1-2:
“Do not judge, so that you are not judged judged. For in the way you judge, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”

John 8:7:
“Let the one of you who is without sin throw a stone at her first.”

1 Corinthians 4:3-5:
“To me it is the least concern that I be judged by you or by a human day [of judgment]. I do not even judge myself. In myself I am conscious of no wrong, but I do not stand acquitted on this basis: the one who judges me is the Lord. Therefore, do not judge something before the right time, when the Lord comes. He will bring to light the hidden things of darkness and will make visible the motives of [people’s] hearts.”

What is the popular Christian conclusion:

You cannot make judgments about sin in the lives of others.
Assumption: Because all Christians have sinned and continue to sin, you cannot be critical of sin in the life of others without being a hypocrite.

2. Yet at the same time, consider these passages:
1 Corinthians 5:3-5:
“Although I am not present in body, I am present in spirit. I have already judged the one who has done this thing, as if I were present. In the name of our Lord Jesus, when you and my spirit are gathered, … deliver such a person to Satan…”

John 8:15-17:
“You judge according to the flesh; I do not judge anyone [now]. And when I judge, my judgment is true, because I am not alone. I judge with the Father who sent me.”

Look at how close these verses are to the very ones we saw above! How do we fit these statements together?

3. Making some important distinctions

First,
o The Bible teaches that all have sinned.
o It does not teach that we should expect Christians to sin.

Anyone who has read much of my writing knows the kinds of things I will share here.

Second,
Notice that while
o Truth exists and
o Some things are right; some things are wrong,

Truth is different from
o Our attitudes toward the truth and others

Third,
o There is also a difference between motives, which are not seen.
o And actions, which are seen.

4. What we must do
o Submit to God’s understanding of right and wrong
o Through the power of the Spirit, live above intentional, conscious sin
o Love others, which includes a desire for them to do what is right and avoid what is wrong

5. What we must not do
o Think that we are beyond sin or take for granted God’s forgiveness
o Talk about the sins or faults of others behind their back for kicks or self-promotion
o Talk about the sins or faults of others to their face for kicks or self-promotion

Some lessons in projection:

“Why do you look at the splinter in your brother’s eye and not recognize the beam in your own eye? How will you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the splinter out of your eye,’ when the beam is in your eye? Hypocrite! First take the beam out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly enough to take the splinter out of your brother’s eye” Matthew 7:3-5

“Therefore, you are without excuse, you who judge. For by the same standard you judge someone else, you condemn yourself, for you who are judging practice the same things.” Romans 2:1

6. Conclusions
1. God does not have a tolerant attitude toward intentional, willful sin. He is incredibly forgiving toward the repentant, but this fact does not negate his attitude toward sin.

2. God has already pronounced judgment on any number of sins (e.g., adultery). When the church disciplines such individuals (and it should be the church rather than individuals), it is not really making the judgment, but enacting God's judgment. It is standing with God. Such judgment is always done with the hope of redemption, not out of vindictiveness.

3. Christians and the church are not in a position to judge or discipline motives that cannot be seen in the light of clear action.

4. Any judgment passed by the church or Christian individuals that is not concordant with love is not Christian and is a problem in itself.

Hermeneutics 3

3. Different Kinds of Contexts
If context is everything, then it will be helpful to get some sense of the different kinds of contexts in which words appear and take on different meanings.

The Literary Context
One of the main contexts to consider when you are reading words is the "literary" context. The "immediate" literary context is a matter of the words that come before and after the verse or verses you want to interpret. Matthew 2:15 gives us a great case study both in what it means to read words in context and out of context.

In the literary context of Matthew 2, Jesus' family has gone down to Egypt to escape the persecution of Herod the Great. Then after Herod's death, they return to Israel. Matthew 2:15 says that these events happened "so that it might be fulfilled that which was spoken by the prophet, 'Out of Egypt I called my son.'" The literary context of Matthew leads us to believe that this event in the life of Jesus is the fulfillment of a prophecy from the Scriptures (which for Matthew are what Christians call the Old Testament). This is the meaning of Matthew 2:15 as we read it in its literary context.

What is so interesting about Matthew's statement is that he himself was reading Hosea 11:1 out of context. Hosea 11:1-2, the passage that Matthew quotes, reads "When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. But the more I called them, the more they went away from me. They sacrificed to the Baals." When we read Hosea 11:1 "in context" by paying attention to the words that come before and after, we see that Hosea was talking about the exodus of Israel from Egypt rather than Jesus. Further, the words that follow 11:1 talk about how Israel disobeyed God by serving other gods--certainly nothing that could apply to Jesus.

Here we find the question of reading the Bible in context in one of its starkest forms. On the one hand, surely we value what God might have said through both Hosea and Matthew to their original audiences. After all, both books appear in a collection of writings Christians consider authoritative: the Bible. Yet at the same time, Matthew implies God can also speak through what we might call "spiritual meanings" the Holy Spirit might lead us to see in the words. Clearly such meanings may not necessarily have any real relation to what those words meant originally. Of course such meanings are only as valid as the spiritual insight of the person who hears them. Christians believe Matthew was inspired. The inspiration of other individuals today is less assured.

Beyond the immediate literary context is the broader literary context of a verse or passage, including the book as a whole. For example, some Christians take 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 to mean that women cannot preach in church: "Let women be silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must remain in submission, as the law says. If they want to ask about something, they should ask their own husbands at home, for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church."

But the broader context of 1 Corinthians makes it clear that whatever these verses might refer to, it cannot be spiritual speech like preaching. If anything, it must mean normal chatter or disruptive question-raising in the middle of worship. We know this because Paul assumes in 1 Corinthians 11:5 without even arguing it that women do pray and prophesy in church: "Any woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head." Since Christian prophecy is something you do in public worship, the broader context of the verses in 1 Corinthians 14 cannot refer to spiritual speech but to disruptive ordinary speech.

Genre
Another important literary context is the genre of the book we are reading. For example, the book of Revelation is an apocalypse, an ancient genre that no longer exists. When we compare Revelation to other ancient apocalypses, we realize that it both follows and differs from them in interesting ways.

In other apocalypses, a heavenly figure usually comes down to the person having the vision. The same is true of Revelation: Jesus appears to John. In response to the heavenly figure, the visionary usually falls on his face. Again, this is what happens at the beginning of Revelation. Even knowing this much about the apocalyptic genre raises the question of whether the scene at the beginning of Revelation is meant to be symbolic--a standard feature of the genre--or a blow by blow account of John's actual experiences.

What is interesting is that in the other apocalypses, the heavenly figure then tells the visionary to get up because only God is worthy of worship. In Revelation, Jesus does not tell John to stop worshipping him. Knowing this feature of the apocalyptic genre makes us immediately recognize one of the most important elements in the theology of Revelation: the worship of Jesus alongside God. Knowing the genre of Revelation immediately clues us in to this fact.

As you pursue the various genres of the Bible further, you will begin to see how the matter of genre might affect your perspective on any number of issues. To what extent, for example, were ancient biographies and histories exact in their presentations? Were authors permitted some license in the way they arranged and presented events? Should we even compare the gospels or biblical histories to the ancient genres to which they come closest?

How does the standard format of an ancient letter shed light on the meaning of the letters in the New Testament? Are there pseudonymous writings in the Bible, written under the authority of key figures decades or even centuries after their deaths? Reading 2 Peter as a testament meant to convey the aegis of Peter to a situation decades after his death will yield a different sense of its meaning than if you take it as a letter dictated by Peter himself in the late sixties of the first century.

Historical Context
The historical context is of course a knowledge of the historical background necessary to understand the original meaning of the words. As with the literary context, we might distinguish the immediate historical context or situation behind a book from broader historical background.

Thus the immediate situation behind the letter to Philemon is a slave trying to be reconciled to his master. Apparently Onesimus did something that greatly offended his master, Philemon. As was often the case, Onesimus sought out a go between: in this case Paul. Paul writes Philemon urging him to forgive and receive Onesimus back, while offering to reimburse Philemon for any money Onesimus might have cost him.

Yet we can also speak of much broader historical background. Thus Ezra was written in the Persian period of Israel's history, several centuries after the Assyrians had destroyed the northern kingdom. It was over a century after Babylon defeated the southern kingdom, destroyed the first temple, and took its intelligensia captive to Babylon. It was a half a century after the Persians defeated the Babylonians and allowed Jews to return to Jerusalem. It is against the backdrop of this broader historical background that Ezra himself comes to Jerusalem.

We can also speak of the social setting of a writing, which includes matters like whether the author and audience were likely rich or poor, educated or illiterate. We can speak of cultural matters like how marriage worked and whether people thought of themselves as individuals or formulated their identity more in terms of the groups to which they belonged. Did they think more in terms of honor and shame or in terms of individual guilt? All these factors affect the way we take the words of the Bible's books.

Take Jesus' answer to those who questioned him about paying taxes: "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's." We probably cannot understand what Jesus meant if we assume that money was as typical of Jesus' world as it is of ours. In rural Galilee, a village like Nazareth didn't even trade goods very much. They did everything themselves from making clothing to harvesting to making pots. The only reason they might need money was thus to pay some foreign power taxes, which must have been oppressive under Herod Antipas in Jesus' day.

So Jesus was not really saying, you should pay what you owe to Caesar and be a good citizen. Nor was Jesus dividing the world into things regarding citizenship and things relating to religion. Jesus was dismissing Roman coinage itself as irrelevant to God--what did a follower of God in Palestine have to do with such things. Caesar has lost his coin; give it back to him.

These are some of the dimensions that the question of context can have. When we are trying to read the books of the Bible for their original meaning, we will need to consider these kinds of factors. The more we dig into context, the more we become aware at how different these same words must have struck their original audiences from the way they tend to strike us. This fact does not mean God has not spoken or does not speak to us out of context. But surely our understanding will only gain in depth when we can better hear the words as well for what they actually meant when they were first inspired.

Dead Rover, Dead Rover

I have long thought that Karl Rove is a genius. I say that with admiration of his intellect, not his character. I say that with the admiration you might have for a clever adversary who outwits you.

Actually, I don't know for sure what I think about Karl Rove's intentions. I don't have a good impression of him at all, but I concede he might actually think he is acting for the good of the U.S.

I read a poll tonight that says about half the American people question Bush's honesty about now. I actually don't. I think he's incredibly honest, but incredibly misguided and naive. It's Cheney that I think of as a lying, manipulative snake.

I don't know to what extent Rove is a liar, but I do think of him as the most Nixonesk person I've seen in recent politics. Wasn't it Rove who in an act of true genius arranged to put homosexual unions on the ballot in states crucial to Bush's reelection. Because most people have trouble making distinctions, he knew the fervor against homosexuality would add momentum to Bush. In the free floating matching that is American think, Kerry automatically lines up with the pro-homosexual feeling regardless of what he did or didn't say about it.

What I find irritating about the Roves, Cheney's, and Clinton types is that they play the American audience as if we're stupid and Americans prove them right every time. With Clinton it was the numbers game. If I mention about thirty different statistics and throw a few thoughtful hmms in there, they'll buy it. Gore tried it, but he just didn't have the panash Clinton did.

I thought Cheney's false hurt over mention of his daughter's homosexuality was devious. He's not ashamed of her lifestyle and neither is she. What genius, though! Act like you're offended and all the parents out there who would be embarrassed to have the orientation of their child mentioned on public television will sympathize with you. Incredibly clever! It's the Rove maneuver. If the heat lamp is on you, create a diversion (heh, heh, Cheney did that with John Edwards so well, the snake--"here at this debate is the first time I've ever met you..." A bold faced lie)

And now, surprise, surprise, we find out that Rove "outted" Wilson's wife. Republicans are defending him as not having done anything illegal. I don't know whether he did or not and, really, that's not the issue. It's a diversion. Did he mess up her career and potentially endanger others for political gain? Yes.

What a clever beast! Wilson's wife was exposing the complete sham Bush's idea of Iraq getting uranium from Niger was. So Rove leaks (or draws attention to, if you want to go with one defense that he did nothing illegal) her identity to the news. I don't care whether it was illegal or not, it was unethical and dirty politics--especially when it turns out she was correct and Bush was absolutely wrong on the uranium deal. I remember thinking this was a stretch at the time, and I don't get daily briefings from the CIA. Maybe I should be president.

So hats off to you, Rove, for being a political genius. I'm not out for your blood, but you are a shameful man, a disgrace to President Bush. You're a man after Nixon's own heart.

Hermeneutics 2

This was originally posted on July 1, but I've moved it up to get the sequence.

2. Context is Everything
Words are incredibly flexible things. What I mean is that they can mean so many different things in so many different situations. What makes being fired different from getting fired up or firing a gun or lighting a fire? The context! To know what the word "fire" means, you have to know whether you are talking about your job, enthusiasm, a gun range, or camping.

The words of the Bible are no different in this regard. Why are there over 20,000 different Protestant denominations that disagree with each other yet claim to get their core beliefs from the Bible? It is this incredible flexibility that words have. If we are not aware of it, then we are bound to assume that the way we see the words is the only way to see the words.

An important distinction to make in this regard is the different between the original meaning of the words of the Bible and any other meanings we might find. The original meaning is the meaning these words had to the original authors and audiences of the books of the Bible.

What did Paul mean when he said a non-Christian might think people speaking in tongues were "out of their mind" (1 Cor. 14:23)? The word Paul used may have referred to the kind of things people were said to experience in a type of religion called a mystery religion. This example draws our attention to certain aspects of the Bible's original meaning. The original meaning of the Bible has to do with ancient audiences, and we do not automatically come equipped with anywhere near the necessary background knowledge to understand the words of the Bible as they were originally understood.

The idea itself of an "original meaning" is not without its complications. There were no doubt times when the original author of a book of the Bible had a different understanding than his audiences (all of the biblical authors were likely men). Further, some of the words of the Bible were spoken orally and only later written down. The words of Jesus can thus have slightly different meanings depending on whether we are thinking of 1) what he originally meant in whatever specific contexts he first spoke them and 2) the various connotations his words take on in individual gospel accounts. Further, it is certainly possible that God had meanings in mind for the words of which the original authors were not aware.

But in general, the difference between how the words might strike us and what the words originally meant is a valid distinction. For example, Judas was not the hero of the gospels, although someone might choose to read the story this way. I have heard of a certain tribe in Papua New Guinea that initially responded to the story of Jesus in this way.

Once we have established what the "original meaning" was, there are any number of interpretations of the Bible's words that differ from it. These other meanings vary from interpretations that are quite similar to the original meaning to interpretations that have little to do with anything the original audiences would have recognized.

For example, when I read about loving my neighbor, I am probably thinking things that are similar in spirit to the original meaning. But I have a strong hunch the specifics of loving my neighbor can be quite different today than when Leviticus or Jesus spoke of it (Lev. 19:18; Luke 10:27). On the other hand, countless sermons every Sunday morning do things with the Bible that may be true but have nothing to do with anything Moses or Isaiah or Paul would recognize. Indeed, you could argue that the most relevant of sermons often deviate the most from the original meaning, for the original meaning was most relevant to the ancient audiences--more than to us.

I submit to you three incontrovertible aspects of reading the Bible in context.

1. If we read the Bible for what it originally meant, it tells us it was written to someone else. The literal meaning of Deuteronomy or Romans or 1 Thessalonians requires us to recognize that none of the books of the Bible was strictly written to us. As Christians we believe these books are for us. But they were not written to us. Deuteronomy says, "Hear, O Israel" (Deut. 6:4). Romans says it was written to individuals in Rome (Rom. 1:7). 1 Thessalonians says it was written to the church at Thessalonica (1 Thess. 1:1). No one alive today is one of those Romans or 1 Thessalonians originally addressed. Even modern Israel is not really the Israel of Deuteronomy 6.

2. The way the original audiences understood the literal meaning was a function of the way they used and understood words. When Jesus said that God sends rain on the just and the unjust in Matthew 5:45, the Galilean peasants understood rain as a very positive thing. Further, they had clear ideas of what it might mean to be just or unjust--definitions that came from their world.

When Genesis 1 speaks of waters above the sky (Gen. 1:6-8) and stars put in the sky (Gen. 1:14-15, it pictures a universe in which you go up through a layer of stars before reaching primordial waters above them. When Paul speaks of three heavens (2 Cor. 12:2), he thinks of three layers of sky as you go straight up toward God. These should not be problems for our faith in the Bible. It simply confirms that God is a God who speaks to us in ways we can understand. He does the same to us today in our categories, not in the categories through which our great grandchildren will view the world.

3. The ancient audiences of the Bible's words did not understand words or look at the world the same way we do. Indeed, they differed from each other in this regard.

The preceding examples make this point clear. I might return to the example of rain to make the point again (Matt. 5:45). For many years I did not understand the original meaning of God sending rain on the just because rain in my "dictionary" is not a good thing. "Rain, rain, go away. Please come back another day." I thought the verse meant that God even allowed bad things to happen to good people.

But attention to the words around Matthew's statement (the literary context) as well as to ancient Galilean culture (the social context) at this point in history (the historical context) shows me that this interpretation differs from the original meaning. Rain was a very good thing to farmers in a land that sometimes went without rain. The verse is about how God gives good things even to bad people. We read the Bible differently from the original meaning all the time in subtle ways like this all the time.

We should probably not assume that all the new meanings we see in the words today are necessarily less from God than the original meanings were. Indeed, unless God speaks through the words beyond the original meaning, most of us are in trouble a good deal of the time. Even scholars often disagree on the original meaning. Nevertheless, the first step toward a deeper and more mature understanding of the Bible is to recognize the crucial and determinative role that context plays in the meaning we see in it.

A Brief Guide to Biblical Hermeneutics

Well, I thought I might spin out a 25 page booklet or so on biblical hermeneutics. I don't know if it will go anywhere. This was originally posted June 26, but I've moved it up so that the sequence is together.

1. Before You Apply
"God said it; I believe it; that settles it for me!"

The spirit with which this statement is often uttered is right on target. If something is God's will and God's position on an issue, no human being can dispute it. The Bible allows for questioning, but if God has spoken about something, his answer is the final answer.

"I, the LORD, do not change!" (Malachi 3:6).

Again, the spirit with which I have sometimes heard this verse quoted is right. In a culture where change is often seen as progress and we see science and technology getting better and better, we can tend to dismiss the old as irrelevant or ignorant. Christianity bids us believe that God has known everything from the very beginning. He is not growing up or getting better and better. God has always been an omniscient authority.

At the same time, these verses are often quoted to reinforce biblical ignorance and to support positions that are not God's. For example, you do not really know exactly what God has said, unless you know why he said it. To take a good number of the Bible's statements as timeless absolutes is to ignore the meaning God originally meant for those words, and thus to ignore the true message God was trying to get across.

And while God remains the same, humanity does not and has not. The Bible reveals that part of the unchanging "nature" of God is to communicate and relate to the world in terms it can understand. We cannot listen to the Bible and not see God meeting different people and groups in differing ways over time. The same Bible that allowed divorce in Deuteronomy 24:1-4 prohibits it in Matthew 19:7-9. The same Bible that involves stoning a man for violating the Sabbath (Numbers 15:32-36) tells a different group not to let anyone judge them because they do not keep it (Colossians 2:16-17).

God is an "incarnational" God, a God who takes on the flesh of those to whom he wishes to reveal himself. The story of revelation is the story of God meeting people where they are, using categories they understand, "stooping to their weakness." It is why Solomon's temple was structured just like the other pagan temples of his day--God was saying something to Israel in terms they could understand.

I suspect that discerning God's voice is ultimately as simple as becoming a person "after God's own heart" and being in the center of his will. But a deeper understanding of the process of hearing God's voice through the Bible is surely nothing to scorn, and it may just save us from mistaking our thoughts for God's thoughts.

Hermeneutics is the study of interpretation. With regard to the Bible, it asks how we get from text to life. This is our topic of conversation in the following pages.