Ash Wednesday

Lent begins today, 40 days till Easter (not including the Sundays).  I have hardly been able to read anything other than my usual "skim quickly or die" reading relating to my obligations.  I'm ready to post another installment on Allison's Constructing Jesus if I find a half hour of brain space to do it.  But alas, it is time to go for the cross.

So my vain hope is to skip to Allison's chapter on the passion and Dunn's two chapters on the passion in Jesus Remembered.  40 days, about 140 pages--can he do it? ;-)

First Spanish MDIV

Yesterday we began a pilot group in what I think might be the first online, contexualized, fully Spanish-speaking MDIV in human history.  We are starting with nine great students, mostly Wesleyan, although we hope we will begin to serve a wide group of Spanish-speaking Christians from across the body of Christ.

I wish I could say my Spanish was ready for this momentous occasion, pero ¡ay! ...

Joanne Solis-Walker is our Directora of this initiative, and she is teaching this week's intensive: El Pastor, La Iglesia, y El Mundo.  Next week we are delighted to have Hugo Magallanes visiting to teach Contextos Culturales del Ministerio.  And all of this has come from the vision of one man, Wayne Schmidt, the head of our seminary.

What a privilege to be part of such incredible things as we wander through this life!

Scripture as Sacrament (10) (W)

Here endeth the reading...

Generous Tradition
Heart-Oriented Tradition
God is Love

Cross is Love
Human Freedom
Optimistic about Love
Loving the Whole Person
Loving into Societal Structures
The Importance of Faithfulness
_________
Wesleyans share with most other Christians a love for Scripture.  John Wesley once described himself as "a man of one book," in reference to the Bible.  At the same time, Wesley was also a student of Christian literature and further did not believe that God stopped speaking to his people after the books of the New Testament were finished.  Later students of Wesley described his method of finding God's will and God's truth as a "quadrilateral" consisting of Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience.  Certainly in Wesley's mind Scripture had first place among these potential channels of God's voice.

A great deal has happened since Wesley on this topic.  People have raised questions hardly anyone had ever thought to ask before.  Lines have been drawn, wars have been fought, leaving a landscape of charged emotions and burned over ideological ground.  The Wesleyan tradition potentially has something to contribute to this landscape, now that the ground has lay somewhat fallow for a few decades.  Our thoughts could come from other traditions as well, but they also come naturally from our history.

First and foremost, Scripture is a sacrament of transformation.  It is perhaps not surprising that most of the battles over the Bible have been fought in terms of what we might call propositional truth.  Does the Bible say things that are true or things that are false?  Certainly this question is part of the equation, but it misses the fundamental purpose of Scripture for Christians, which is to serve as an instrument of reconciliation.

More than to reveal truth about God, the purpose of Christian Scripture is to meet God, to encounter God, to be changed by God.  It is at least questionable whether our arguments over the historicity of this or that passage, about whether Genesis 1 is literal, or whether Isaiah wrote the last 27 chapters of Isaiah, have ever brought anyone on either side of the debate closer to God. To this extent, these are legitimate questions for us to take positions on--they may even be important in some way.  But they also may distract from what Scripture is really about, no matter which side you are on, namely, experiencing God's transformative power to make us more like him.

This is not to deny the legitimacy of the very complex historical method evangelical and non-evangelical scholar alike have developed over the years.  You can study at an evangelical college or seminary and learn Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic.  You can learn about literary context and how to follow a train of thought.  You can learn historical-cultural background in order to read the words of the Bible in context.  You can learn the gamut of hermeneutical perspectives on how to integrate the varied teaching of Scripture into a biblical theology and various approaches on how to move from "that time" to "this time."  Such courses of study are legitimate and will equip you to hear each book of the Bible on its own terms, the terms in which God first spoke through those words to some ancient audience.

 But you may or may not be changed.  For the Bible to be Christian Scripture, it must be your book.  The stories that appear throughout its books must become your story.  The way in which its commands, promises, teaching, and expressions become commands to you, promises to you, instruction to you, and your expressions is complex.  We could go passage by passage and analyze the complex ways in which not only common Christianity but specific denominations and individuals have experienced God appropriating these words for them.  No doubt at times they have heard him wrongly.  Arguably this is why there was a Protestant Reformation.

But the appropriation of Scripture is surely a spiritual task, another point where the Wesleyan tradition, along with its sister Pentecostal traditions, potentially has something to contribute.  Many other Christian traditions, in combating modernism, too quickly adopted its categories.  The Protestant Reformation also, in its reaction to medieval catholicism, perhaps too quickly rejected the possibility that the Spirit might speak beyond the "literal" meaning of the Bible.  In doing so, it seems to have missed the fact that the New Testament itself frequently reads the Old Testament in this sort of "spiritual" way.

As the Wesleyan tradition moves forward into the twenty-first century, it along with other like-minded traditions can suggest we begin to take a more "sacramental" and less mechanistic view of Scripture.  A sacrament is a divinely appointed means of God's grace, where God takes something that is ordinary--like bread or water--and meets us in an extraordinary way in it.  Is not the Bible like that?  These are ordinary words.  Indeed, they employ the categories and common language of the people to whom they were first written.

But the Bible is a special place to meet God and be transformed into his likeness both as individuals and as communities of faith.  Certainly it is a sacrament of revelation through which our thinking and understanding of truth is transformed to be sure.  We will want to study it for what it really meant, God's first moment of speaking through it.  But even after we have done all our homework, after we have done our best to understand its words in context, appropriating those words for today is a spiritual task.  Even more, it is a corporate task, for I am surely even more likely to know the Spirit's leading in a community of Spirit-filled individuals than I am alone.  

But as much as it is a place to meet God with my mind, it is even more a place for my heart and my actions to be changed.  It is a place for me to see myself in the stories and words and for us corporately to see ourselves.  It is a place for me to recognize the path I must take and the path we must take together.  God's leading through Scripture is not something we can set down in a formula or even a creed, although creeds rightly capture the corporate sense God has given Christians of the boundaries.  It is a spiritual leading that defies our desire for tidy answers and absolute clarity.

Wesley set a great precedent here for the Wesleyan tradition and beyond.  He began with Scripture, as we all should.  But because he lived in the eighteenth century, he had a certain kind of freedom to read and connect the Scriptures to one another in a spiritual rather than mechanistic, historical way.  He drank deeply from the writings of Christians throughout the centuries, which gave him illumination that the Spirit had brought to Christians throughout the centuries, as well as the boundaries within which the Spirit moves.

But he was open to experiencing the Spirit freshly through the words of the Bible and to receiving specific guidance for our lives from them.  Scripture for him was about God changing us, about God moving us along on the path of salvation.  May it be so in our lives as we continue to come to Scripture as God's people, expecting to be changed.

The Importance of Faithfulness (9) (W)

Almost there!

Generous Tradition
Heart-Oriented Tradition
God is Love

Cross is Love
Human Freedom
Optimistic about Love
Loving the Whole Person
Loving into Societal Structures
_________
Protestantism was born in a debate over whether a person might gain favor with God by doing good "works."  Martin Luther, of course, argued that we were saved "by grace alone" (sola gratia) only because of God's undeserved favor.  This grace was triggered "by faith alone" (sola fidei), and even this faith was a gift from God.  Ever since the standard Protestant position on "faith versus works" is that we are saved by faith alone, but that once we are right with God, he will empower us so that "works" will follow.

Where Protestants have debated is if the way we live our Christian lives has an effect on our eternal destiny.  Once a person has become right with God, can a person thereafter become "un-right" with God again?  To many Protestants, to say our actions can affect our status with God is tantamount to saying that works are part of our salvation. Others might resolve the potential conflict by saying that if a person were to become a serial killer after "conversion," she probably had never really been a true Christian in the first place.

Jacob Arminius disagreed in the 1500 and 1600s, and John Wesley followed his lead.  To some it will be a weakness, but to Wesleyans it is a strength that Wesley was an Anglican, because the Anglican Church is a moderating tradition in the Catholic-Protestant debate.  One might argue that Anglicanism, along with the Methodism that flowed out of it, stands on a kind of middle ground between the extremes of the Protestant Reformation, with the medieval Roman Catholic Church on the one side and the high Protestantism of Luther and Calvin on the other.  The Wesleyan tradition is thus well-situated to incorporate the strengths of both Christian streams.

For Wesley's part, it was surely God who empowered us to have faith.  But that same empowerment to choose also enabled us to walk away from him.  Our "initial justification," our initial reconciliation to God might be by faith alone, regardless of our works.  To put it in current language, "all sin is sin" when we first come to God.  But Wesley rightly read Scripture to teach that "final justification" will take into account how we have lived, our "works," if you would. The Bible does not teach that "all sin is sin" after we believe.

Here we return to the Wesleyan orientation around the heart.  Our walk with God is a relationship.  In a relationship, our actions toward another person matter.  Of course what matters even more is our intentions toward another.  If you forget your spouse's birthday, you have sinned against him or her.  But this "sin" is quite different from having an affair.  It represents a whole different level of intention.  So also, our "works" have a varying effect on our relationship with God, depending on our heart.

The Wesleyan-Arminian position here is logical, but it does not come from logic.  It comes from Scripture.  Once again, scholarship on Paul has of late been coming to grips with statements like 2 Corinthians 5:10, a verse directed at Christians: "All of us must appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may receive recompense for what has been done in the body, whether good or evil" (NRSV).  Romans 2 says exactly the same thing: "He will repay according to each one’s deeds: to those who by patiently doing good seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; while for those who are self-seeking and who obey not the truth but wickedness, there will be wrath and fury" (2:6-8).

And the fact that Paul himself did not consider his eternal salvation assured confirms his thinking on this subject: "I do not run aimlessly, nor do I box as though beating the air; but I punish my body and enslave it, so that after proclaiming to others I myself should not be disqualified.(1 Cor. 9:26-27).  Similarly, he says in Philippians, "I want to know Christ... if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own" (3:10-12).

It also turns out that this way of thinking about the importance of faithfulness in the Christian life fits well with the meaning of "grace" in the New Testament world.  Grace was patron-client language, relating to informal arrangements where someone without resources (clients) received gifts from those having an abundance (patrons).  The recipient did not earn such grace, although it often came with certain expectations.  We could rightly say, though, that the gift was not earned and, in a sense, came without formal obligation.

But if a client were to behave badly toward the patron--if they dishonored the giver--you can rest assured that the grace would not continue. In the same way, we are not surprised that God's grace in the New Testament comes with certain expectations.  Nor are we surprised to find that one can insult God's grace (e.g., Heb. 10:29) such that it is "used up," in a sense (e.g., Heb. 10:26). Hebrews, as the rest of the New Testament, places an expectation that we continue in faithfulness to reach the goal of entering the land of “Canaan.” We have become partakers of Christ and remain partakers of Christ only if “we hold our first confidence firm to the end” (3:7, NRSV).

Wesleyans thus believe that God-empowered faithfulness is essential for the Christian life.  One cannot simply pray a prayer of half-hearted reconciliation and then think that God will shower blessings without accountability or recourse.  An eternal relationship with God requires the same elements that human relationships require.  And if human relationships often fail because of infidelity or neglect, we should not be surprised to find that neglect or unfaithfulness to God is a path toward separation as well.

The NIV 2011

I know I've posted on this before, but I got an email today asking, "Do you know anything about a new version of the NIV?"

Here's the state of my answer.  The NIV 2011 is two things:

1. an admission of political/economic defeat in relation to the TNIV
2. an updating of the NIV

So is it better than the NIV?  Yes.  If you are happy with the NIV, go ahead and upgrade with the NIV2011.  It is better.

Is it the best translation out there as a translation?  No, not in any category.  The NLT, CEV, and in some places CEB are better dynamic translations. The ESV, and in many places CEB and NRSV, are better formal translations, in my opinion.

Right now I'm using the NRSV and CEB in my writing.

Loving into Societal Structures (8) (W)

God has done an amazing thing these last few hundred years in the world.  We have witnessed the working of the love principle beyond the individual into the very fabric of society, into societal structures.  In Western society, we have seen a leveling in which the least in society has risen to have a say in her destiny.  We have seen the abolition of slavery and the empowerment of women to vote and set their own courses.  From time to time the default inequalities reassert themselves in various ways.  And these ideals have not yet penetrated to the entirety of the world. But they embody what we might call a "loving society" on a level that goes beyond the individual.

What we are looking at is a glimpse of the kingdom of God, in which there is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, and there is not "male and female" (Gal. 3:28).  Christianity was healthy for almost two millennia without making these changes.  Indeed it thrived.  God was content even in the New Testament to allow the earliest believers to continue owning slaves and to continue the subordination of wives to husbands.  But in these last two hundred years, God has decided not only to move the church but the world closer to the kingdom of God.

There are some crucial points of insight here.  In the early 1800s in the United States, the Bible was used heavily in support of slavery.  For example, in Colossians 3:22-4:1, slaves are told to obey their masters.  Colossians, Ephesians, 1 Peter all assume the institution of slavery.  Even a careful reading of Philemon reveals that Paul does not mention setting the slave Onesimus free.

So the "fundamentalists" of the early 1800s argued from the letter of Scripture that slavery should not be abolished, only reformed, and they had the letter of the Bible on their side.  What they did not have was the Spirit of Scripture.  Those who caught the Spirit of Scripture were groups like the Quakers and the Wesleyan Methodists. In other words, it was those with a more Pietist approach that focuses on the heart.

We are in a better position today to describe what was going on.  If we listen to what the books of the Bible say about themselves, they tell us they were written to God's people two and three thousand years ago.  Its original meaning has everything to do with the situations and categories of people in the ancient world.  The more we know about that world, the more we recognize how well the words of the Bible connected to that world so foreign to us.

Groups like the Quakers and the Wesleyans, because they focused on the big principle of loving your neighbor, were able to see beyond the ancient particulars of the Bible to the heart of the matter.  Other groups, because they focused so much on the letter of the Bible, were not able to distinguish between the structures of "that time" and the trajectory of God's kingdom.  So also today, the best of the Wesleyan tradition will continue to focus on changing the structures of the world following the principle of perfect love--love that extends to everyone equally.

So we are not surprised to find that the Wesleyan Methodist Church was born in 1843 over the issue of abolition.  We are not surprised to find that the movement to give women the right to vote started in a Wesleyan Methodist Church in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848.  One of the founders of the Wesleyan Methodist Church preached the sermon at the first ordination of a woman minister in 1852.  Long before it was trendy, the Wesleyan tradition--like the Quakers--had women pastors.  They saw that the coming of the Spirit inaugurated an age when "sons and daughters will prophecy" (Acts 2:17).

The fundamental insight is this: "God shows no partiality" (Acts 10:34).  He values people of all races and genders equally, and all people have equal access to the Spirit.  The rest is simply playing out the principle.  Wesleyans who were true to our tradition took the side of those who worked for equal rights for African-Americans in the civil rights era.  Wesleyans today will recognize that God values the illegal immigrant just as much as he values me.

The spiritual insight works its way into all sorts of areas where a focus on the letter of the biblical text can cloud hearing the more basic Spiritual principle. For example, just as with slavery, the New Testament assumes the ancient social structure of the home, with the husband as authority and the wife as subordinate.  We know it will not be that way in the kingdom.  So what keeps us from enacting God's ideal now instead of waiting for the kingdom of God?  The best of the Wesleyan tradition will follow the lead of its ancestors and see the wife as a true equal in the home.

Societal structures--often without any intent--also have a tendency to perpetuate inequalities of various kinds. Not just people, but structures can oppress.  The privileged of society often to do realize that they do not face the obstacles others do.  They do not know about the suspicious looks and demeaning assumptions others face simply by the way they look.

The Wesleyan tradition will be keen to level the playing field in all areas of life.  Working out the details is always complicated, and there will almost always be room for debating the best strategy or for avoiding unintended consequences.  But the principles are clear.  When social or economic structures put women or men at a disadvantage, when they disadvantage one people over another, the best of the Wesleyan tradition will be there to work toward the kingdom principle that God loves all people equally.

True love of neighbor moves beyond the level of the individual to try to influence the structural.  On this level, we face both impossibilities and uncertainties.  We will not be able to change some things, and we will not always agree on how best to change things.  But along with many other Christian traditions, the best of the Wesleyan tradition will try.

Loving the Whole Person (7) (W)

Getting closer...

 Generous Tradition
Heart-Oriented Tradition
God is Love

Cross is Love
Human Freedom
Optimistic about Love
_________
The Wesleyan tradition would not be unique in believing that love of our neighbors must go beyond an invitation to believe on Christ and reach to the needs of others in every area of their lives.  The idea of reaching out to those in need--the poor, the widow, the orphan--is a dominant theme of the Bible, and cannot legitimately be placed in competition with the call to evangelism.  The Bible from the Old Testament to Jesus to the letters pushes us to do both. Indeed, few will respond or consider the good news to be good news, if it comes as mere words without any demonstration of real love.

The idea of "social justice" originates in the Bible. When Job is describing his righteousness before God he describes it this way: "I delivered the poor who cried, and the orphan who had no helper. The blessing of the wretched came upon me, and I caused the widow’s heart to sing for joy. I put on righteousness, and it clothed me; my justice was like a robe and a turban. I was eyes to the blind, and feet to the lame. I was a father to the needy, and I championed the cause of the stranger" (Job 29:12-17, NRSV).  Job describes his righteousness, his justice in terms of reaching out to the material needs of others.

This core value of Israel reaches from the Law to the Prophets to the Writings.  In the Law, Israel is to leave food in its fields for the poor and the immigrant (Lev. 19:1-2).  When we look to the Prophets, we find that the theme of social injustice is a dominant concern, as much as any indictment of Israel for breaking its covenant with God. Isaiah 10 condemns a government that makes "iniquitous decrees, who write oppressive statutes, to turn aside the needy from justice and to rob the poor of my people of their right, that widows may be your spoil, and that you may make the orphans your prey" (10:1-2, NRSV).

In the Gospel of Luke, the theme of Jesus' earthly ministry is to "bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor" (4:18-19, NRSV).  Jesus is quoting Isaiah 61 as a kind of inaugural address for his ministry, and concern for the disempowered is a dominant theme of Jesus' ministry.  In Matthew 25, helping those with material needs is the only criteria mentioned by which God assigns individuals their eternal destiny.

Certainly when we apply this core biblical value to today we must take into account our differing circumstances.  The situation of the poor today is not the same as the situation of the biblical poor.  As with all application of Scripture, we must take the general principles and apply them with a view to the points of continuity and discontinuity.  But there is no denying the principle.  Concern for those who are economically disempowered and loving one's neighbor in every dimension of his or her life is a core biblical and Christian value.  Indeed, these sorts of things stand at the very heart of what it means to love our neighbor.  As 1 John 3:17 says, "How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?" (NRSV), and this love extends beyond the Christian family (e.g., Gal. 6:10).

Again, the Wesleyan tradition is not unique in recognizing this core Christian value.  John Wesley himself left the normal confines of the church to preach to coal-miners and others who were disempowered in the English society of the day.  Many believe that the love he showed to the lower classes of British society was one of the reasons England did not have the bloody revolution that France did at the end of the 1700s.  He was part of the wave of empowerment that ended with the abolition of slavery and the enactment of child-labor laws in England.

The Wesleyan tradition at its best has followed Wesley's example.  For example, it is no coincidence that the Salvation Army is a church in the Wesleyan tradition.  It is a church whose concern for the material needs of others is so clear that many do not even realize that it is a denomination.  Wesleyans have almost always kept a food pantry in their parsonages for the needy who might stop by.  Concern for those in need is thus a core Wesleyan value, just as it is a core Christian value.

It is unfortunate that the early twentieth century pushed so many grass roots Christians away from this core Christian value.  At that time, conservative Christians distinguished themselves from what was called the "social gospel."  Those who advocated a social gospel at that time did not believe in things like the deity or resurrection of Christ.

But the fundamentalists who reacted to them threw out half of the gospel in their reaction.  The modernists' concern for the poor and needy was all that was left of their Christianity, not a sign of their opposition to historic Christian values.  It was perfectly appropriate for the fundamentalists to reject their disbelief of core items of Christian faith.  But in rejecting their concern for the poor, the fundamentalists themselves rejected core items of Christian faith.  The Wesleyan tradition in its core values rejects this aspect of American conservatism.

State Educators and Bad Punctuation

I'm embarrassed to say that I often find educators on every level who don't know some of the fundamentals of punctuation.  Here's one of the basics.  In America, commas and periods go inside final quotation marks.  Schenck pointed out that "commas and periods go inside final quotation marks."  See where I put the period.  That's how we do it in America.

Now mind you, the British way of doing it makes more sense.  In England, commas and periods go outside quote marks, unless of course you are quoting a whole sentence, then the period is part of the quote.  But, for whatever reason, we don't do that here. I'll confess that I have bad thoughts when a fellow professor messes up on such basics, but I won't tell you what they are.

So I was downright disgusted yesterday to find that whoever put together the sample ISTEP materials on the State of Indiana website--for the samples having to do with writing--messed up on this basic.  Have the rules changed, I asked myself?  Rules do change and, as I mentioned, the British way does make more sense.  But I don't think they have.  I suspect, rather, that the state of education is so bad in the US that some on the state level of education don't know what they're doing.

It's not that punctuation is a big deal in real life.  I'm talking about educators and the people who direct educators.  In this realm, this sort of flub calls into question your competency as an educator.

I leave you with a homework assignment my son brought home the other day asking which was more: 0.01 grams or 10 milligrams.  I was puzzled: gram, decigram, centigram, milligram.  0.01 grams is a centigram, which is 10 milligrams.  I double checked myself, went online.  Yep, they're the same.  I had him write, "They're equal."

The teacher marked it wrong.

Optimistic about Love (6) (W)

This attempt continues:

A Generous Tradition
Heart-Oriented Tradition
God is Love
Cross is Love
Human Freedom
_______________
Jesus set down two absolutes of the Christian life: love God and love neighbor (Matt. 22:36-40).  The two can never contradict each other when rightly understood.  In fact, love of neighbor is the primary way in which we demonstrate the love of God in our lives.  Love of neighbor includes love of all people.  Jesus in the Sermon and the Mount and his parables commanded not only love of our neighbor but love of our enemy.  He left no one that we are not obligated to love.

The Wesleyan tradition is not unique in coming to these conclusions.  They are the Christian understanding of ethics.  You cannot legitimately justify hatred toward people in any Christian tradition on any basis.  Justice is not unloving when it is dispensed to form or protect others, and there is a point beyond which a person's heart is so hardened that mercy does them no good and may in fact harm others.

Those who hide behind Christianity to justify hatred of others are thus at best fooling themselves. People who call themselves Christians--as those of other religions--have often pretended that Christianity justified their hatred of other races and people groups.  They have wanted to obliterate nations or destroy Muslims in God's name.  They have put others to death because they disagreed theologically.  They have lynched African-Americans and beaten homosexuals.  They have resisted giving women and African-Americans equal rights, they have justified hatred toward illegal immigrants in the name of punishing law-breakers.  It is not the Wesleyan tradition but Christ who indicts these attitudes pretending to be Christian.

So the Wesleyan tradition is not unique at all in its affirmation of love as the fulfillment of all God's ethical requirements of humanity.  Where the Wesleyan tradition has been unique is in its optimism about the extent to  which God wants to empower us to love.  Other traditions rightly affirm love as the fulfillment of God's law, but they are not optimistic about the possibility of achieving God's standard.  By contrast, John Wesley was bold enough to speak of "perfect love" as what God wants to equip us to do.

In the centuries since Wesley, some in the Wesleyan tradition have no doubt taken this fundamental insight not only to legalistic but probably bizarre extremes at times.  For example, in the twenty-first century, we can question how well the word "perfect" communicates Wesley's fundamental insight.  Not only those who followed Wesley, but Wesley himself often wasted needless time and energy in minute introspection.

The fundamental insight is this.  God does expect us to "be perfect" in love as God is perfect (Matt. 5:48).  The problem is that we have not read this verse well enough in context.  The context is not only loving our friends but our enemies as well.  God operates this way, Jesus says.  He gives much needed rain not only to the righteous but to the wicked as well.  He is "perfect"--or better yet, he is "complete."  He goes the whole way, not only loving his friends but his "enemies" as well.  So Jesus was not urging absolute perfection in the degree or purity of our love but completeness in the scope of who we love.

God has not set a standard for us that we cannot meet, or as 1 Corinthians 10:13 puts it, "No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it" (NRSV).  Failure in loving God and your neighbor should not and cannot be our default expectation.  God does not expect "perfection" in any absolute sense.  As we mentioned above, the standard for measuring sin in the New Testament is not absolute perfection.  The standard is our basic intent, amid all the conflicting impulses that are part and parcel of the human brain.

Here is a point of some distinctiveness among most Christian traditions.  Wesleyans do not believe that sin is the default state of the believer.  In theory, we believe that a person might, by God's power, go the whole rest of her life without ever intentionally doing wrong.  We are, again, not talking about the eddies and currents of human intent.  We are talking about a clear cut choice: I know God wants me to do A but I am tempted to do B.  The Wesleyan tradition is optimistic about the power of the Spirit to consistently empower you to choose A, even without fail for the rest of your life.  Indeed, we believe God can change you to where you do the loving thing with great delight.

It is a great time for the Wesleyan tradition in terms of biblical interpretation.  Most scholars now--even from traditions that believe differently--acknowledge that Paul was not talking about his current struggle with sin in Romans 7.  You would have to rip that chapter from its context to argue that Paul was saying he could not help but sin today.  The entire flow from Romans 6-8 is about how God's grace does not justify a life of sin, where love is the standard of sin (Rom. 13:10).  Most now have come to recognize that Paul is putting himself in the shoes of someone who wants to do good, but does not have the Spirit's power to do it.

Many other passages prove to be misread as well.  The rediscovery of Paul's Jewish context in these last few decades has drawn our attention not only to his optimism about keeping the Law before he believed on Christ (e.g., Phil. 3:6) but also on his optimism about being morally blameless after he believed (e.g., Phil. 1:10-11).  Romans 8 transcends the hopeless situation of Romans 7, so that "the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit" (8:4, NRSV).  "Walking" is about living, not some theoretical fulfillment in Christ that does not show up in our own lives.  As Paul puts it in Galatians 5:16, "walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh" (NASB).

This is perhaps the most distinctive aspect of the Wesleyan tradition, its optimism about the level of love that God wants to enable us to have in this life.  We have greeted with joy the rediscovery of the continuity between Paul and his Jewish context because it has demonstrated not only the importance of "works" in Paul's theology but also sin as a matter of basic intent rather than absolute perfection.  Cleared of these misreadings, we are free to see loving intent not only as God's standard of righteous, but as an attainable standard through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Human Freedom (5) (W)

This attempt to capture the distinctiveness of Wesleyan theology:

A Generous Tradition
Heart-Oriented Tradition
God is Love

Cross is Love
__________
You can see how central human free will is to a Wesleyan view of the world.  To be sure, Wesley did not believe in anything like absolute free will, where we have complete control over what we want and do.  Wesley believed that our ability to make moral choices was a gift from God, empowered by God's prevenient grace, a grace that finds us when we are not seeking it.

Indeed, if we have a spark of free will inside, it must surely be a miracle.  The more we understand the brain and human psychology, the more we realize the extent to which "who we are" is a function of the physical structure and chemistry of our brain, the harder the idea of human freedom becomes.  And the debate has moved beyond whether our actions are determined or free.  Quantum physics has pushed the issue beyond whether our desires are "determined or free," to the sense that they are random, chaotic, and unpredictable.

At the same time, more than Wesleyan thinking is at stake.  The greatest objection to the truth of Christianity is the problem of evil, why God allows evil to continue in the world.  The best answer, although it is not perfect, is that a world in which people have freedom to make moral choices is a better world than one in which they do not.  Christian traditions who do not believe in human freedom run the risk either of making God the direct author of evil or making him unjust himself, views which seem to render Christianity incoherent.

The belief that God has created a world where humans are free to follow or not follow him has implications for the way we live.  The Wesleyan tradition, when it is consistent with itself, is thus not oriented around forcing others to conform to Christian values.  To be sure, it has always been active in stopping the oppression of others.  But it is not like other traditions that view wrongdoing primarily through the lens of offending God.  It does not try to legislate Christian morality beyond the protection of others. Its prophetic voice to those outside the church is more for others than against sin.

We thus relate to others in a different way.  The parent does not get enraged because the child has disobeyed, an effrontery to authority.  The parent is concerned for what the child will become, and disciplines to try to steer the will of the child in the right direction.  Discipline is formative not summative.  It is about formation more than about punishment.  The best of the Wesleyan tradition will thus live out its sense of God empowered human freedom from a motivation of love.

Mayor Seybold and Poverty

The front page of the Marion Chronicle-Tribune featured a piece on a State of the City address Mayor Wayne Seybold gave yesterday.  The article featured especially some of his comments on poverty.  Here is an excerpt:
_________
"Seybold also said the city needs to continue a 'tough love' approach to poverty.  The mayor said jobs aren't the answer to ending poverty.  'We've brought a lot of jobs here,' Seabold said, 'and yet 44 percent of the Grant County population still receives some form of public assistance.

" 'Some people who have been unemployed for weeks and even months have learned they can survive without working,' he said.  He characterized poverty as 'big business,' saying federal funding for many programs is based in part by a community's poverty rate, and the definition of poverty keeps expanding.

" 'We no longer have money for those who abuse the system,' Seybold said. 'If we continue to allow abuse, we will not have the money to take care of those who really need help, love and support.  Tackling the issue will require hard, politically incorrect conversations,' he warned."
________
I do not completely disagree with Seybold, but it's hard for me to know what to make of these sorts of comments, so let me only give some of my thoughts and questions.

1. First, I do agree that the system can promote and enable dysfunction.  People frequently can get more by not working than they can by working.  I agree that the system does not motivate individuals to integrate into working society but seems to reinforce remaining in poverty.

2. I am not convinced, however, that Marion's job market does what Seybold suggests it does.  I do not believe that the jobs available for those in longstanding poverty could maintain a similar standard of living to what these individuals currently have on welfare.  I do not believe Marion has much of a "middle class" job market either.

3. The most troublesome thing about Seybold's words is the assumption that impoverished people think like middle class people think.  Normally, when a middle class person speaks of "those who really need help, love and support," what they mean is middle class people who have been displaced by the economy.  These are individuals who want to work, are oriented around working, but who suddenly find themselves in hard times.

4. But those he says need "tough love" are not oriented around working.  They almost certainly will not act like middle class people just because you cut off their supply.  They have to have support to retrain the way they think.  They may not know how to get a job.  Where would I go?  What would I do?  Get them a job--they might not show up.

Trying to empower a person without a home or a person in a cycle of poverty is like trying to help someone who is an alcoholic.  In fact, drugs are often in the mix of poverty.  My bottom line is that if by "tough love" he simply means cutting off unemployment or welfare without coming alongside them and retraining them, it's just "tough."

Cross is Love (4) (W)

This is the fourth of this attempt to capture the essence of the Wesleyan tradition...

A Generous Tradition
Heart-Oriented Tradition
God is Love
__________
When we say that God is just, we are saying there is a certain order to things.  God gives us freedom to choose our path, but some paths are destructive to ourselves and others.  God's justice is his protection of others, his attempt to steer us in the right direction, and at times, his abandonment of us to our own self-destructive freedom.  It is more formative than summative.  Its primary goal is to shape us more than to punish us.  It is discipline more than punishment.

Some Christian traditions emphasize God's justice as punitive, as penalty for offending God himself.  Their sense is that someone must pay when God's sovereignty has been undermined.  The best of the Wesleyan tradition questions the mechanical tone of this logic.  For example, it is not the logic of the Parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15, where the father has the authority simply to forgive his wayward son.  It is not the logic of the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant in Matthew 18, where the master has the authority simply to write off the servant's debt with no repayment whatsoever.  It is not the message of the prophets in Isaiah, Jeremiah, or Micah, who argue that God is ultimately uninterested in their countless animal sacrifices.

The cross does satisfy the order of things.  It is the ultimate embodiment of the cost of human freedom gone amok. It embodies the pain of our alienation from God.  It is the most powerful picture of God's justice.  It is the fulfillment of one stream of biblical pictures about God and humanity.

Could God, for his part, have reconciled humanity simply by his divine command?  The parables and prophets say yes, which ultimately makes the cross even more an embodiment of his love than his justice.  The cross is God making a choice to reconcile humanity.  The cross is God showing his willingness to identify with us, to enter into our pain and alienation.  The cross is God's invitation to us.

These are not the only valid pictures of the cross, but they are the ones most significant for the best of the Wesleyan tradition. The cross is God's love, his reaching out to us.  "[R]arely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us" (Rom. 5:7-8).

God is Love 3 (W)

This is the third of this attempt to capture the essence of the Wesleyan tradition...

A Generous Tradition
Heart-Oriented Tradition
________
God is Love
What we have been expressing is the way God relates to his creation, a creation that is alienated from him in its knowledge and being.  When we look to Scripture to tell us about what God is like, we find a number of pictures.  God is love.  God is just.  When we ask what God's dominant mode of operation toward the creation is, surely love is the dominant characteristic.

John 3:16 captures this characteristic well.  God's love stands behind his sending of Jesus into the world so that anyone might be reconciled to him.  Wesleyans do not believe that God has only chosen a select few to rescue, seemingly arbitrarily.  John Wesley himself taught that God had a "prevenient" grace that empowered us to move toward God long before we even know God is at work.  It is a grace that "goes ahead" of us, indeed, that was in action in some respects before God created the world.

The way we think about God has massive implications.  For example, the best of the Wesleyan tradition has always believed that God's judgment of humanity is a matter of "the light we have," rather than his measurement of us against an absolute standard.  The end result is that we may find individuals in the kingdom of God who had never heard the name of Jesus while they were alive but who had responded appropriately to the prevenient light God had brought to them.

At the same time, it is not clear that God extends this light to us indefinitely.  Perhaps we best take what the Bible calls the "hardening of the heart" as a rejection of God's light to the point that God abandons a person to his or her own destructive path.  And however we might understand eternal condemnation, it surely represents a path set by our own rejection of God's advances, resulting in a permanent separation from him that reflects our own hardened identity.

Some Christian traditions do not think God could have complete authority and be "sovereign" if humans could disobey or defy him.  But the Wesleyan tradition believes that God in his authority has every right to empower free will in humanity if he wants to do so.  The best of the Wesleyan tradition does not operate from a sense of God enraged by our destructive actions.  This is one picture we find in the Bible, but all such pictures are given to help us grasp a God who is beyond our understanding.  The more important and dominant picture in the New Testament is of a God grieved by our self-destructive patterns.  God demonstrates his love toward us in that even when we were his enemies, he sent his Son to die on our behalf (Rom. 5:8).

Again, the Wesleyan way of understanding God has implications that fit with what we find in the biblical witness.  For example, while some Christian groups emphasize ethical absolutes, the best of the Wesleyan tradition emphasizes a priority of values and the importance of exceptions.  By definition, an absolute has no exceptions.  For example, if you believe that keeping the Sabbath is an absolute, then you believe there is no circumstance in which it would be right not to keep the Sabbath.

Wesleyans, as all Christians, do indeed believe in the two great absolutes that Jesus reiterated from the Old Testament: love God and love neighbor (e.g., Matt. 22:36-40).  There is no situation that could ever arise when it would be appropriate to make an exception to these two principles.  But the ethic of both Jesus and Paul focused on making exceptions to the "Law" when a higher value was at stake.  People trump rules for their own sake.

Jesus does not come into conflict with religious leaders in Mark 2 because of his absolutism.  On the contrary, it is his opponents who take an absolutist perspective on the Sabbath.  Paul did not come into conflict with other Christians because of his absolutism, but because he set aside parts of the Law that were hindering the gospel.  The normal level of Christian ethics is universal in scope, but not absolute in practice.

The Parable of the Good Samaritan captures this principle well.  In this story, the Levite and priest ignore the love of their neighbor because of the purity standards of Leviticus.  By contrast, the picture we get of God's character--and of his ideal for us is--is of a love that prizes people over rules.  Jesus never agrees with the Samaritan over theology and practice.  He just demonstrates that such things do not trump the love of one's "enemy."  The best of the Wesleyan tradition sees God in these terms and believes that in his relationship to humanity, "mercy triumphs over judgment" (Jas. 2:13).

Scot McKnight's new James commentary

My first, unthinking thought was, "Yeah, I can use that when I teach General Epistles..."



My next thought was... "Oh, that's right, I'm an administrator now." ;-)

Heart-Oriented Tradition 2 (W)

This is the second of the umpteenth attempt...

A Generous Tradition
________
Heart-Oriented Tradition
Is it possible that a person’s “head” could be wrong on very many things, and yet that person be right with God? By the same token, could a person have all the right beliefs and yet be as far away from God as the most violent criminal? The best of the Wesleyan tradition says “yes.” In a very different context, 1 Samuel 16:7 puts it memorably: “the LORD does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart” (NRSV).

We can put it another way. Could a person “mess up” in very many ways for various reasons, and yet that person be right with God? Similarly, could a person’s outward actions appear virtuous and honorable and yet her heart be far from God? The best of the Wesleyan tradition says “yes.” God is able to divide “soul from spirit” and to “judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Heb. 4:12).

Let us ask the question one more time. Is it possible that a person be right with God because their heart is rightly oriented toward him, even if their understanding is thoroughly mistaken and their actions far from God’s ideal? The best of the Wesleyan tradition says “yes.” This sense of the heart as the focal point of God’s concern, more than your ideas or actions, reflects the Pietist influence on Wesley and, of course, ultimately traces its origins to Scripture.

One’s beliefs were certainly important to Wesley. And actions were even more important to Wesley than one’s beliefs. Certainly we will have great difficulty maintaining a good relationship with God for long outside of the community of faith. But the best of the Wesleyan tradition has always recognized that, for me as an individual, my heart is God’s focal concern. "It is what comes out of a person that defiles. For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come” (Mark 7:20-21, NRSV).

This heart orientation manifested itself in Wesley’s definition of sin as a “voluntary transgression of the law.” Is it possible to sin unintentionally? Certainly it is—we can wrong others without meaning to do so. We can also do wrong without even realizing it. It is not incorrect to call such wrongdoing “sin,” because it is this sort of sin that is the primary interest of the Levitical law—“high handed,” intentional sins left little room for forgiveness (e.g., Num. 15).

But the New Testament says almost nothing about unintentional sin. And it would be quite mistaken to think that God’s standard for sin in the New Testament is absolute perfection. Paul came closest to giving us a New Testament definition when he said that “whatever does not proceed from faith is sin” (Rom. 14:23, NRSV). This is the standard God has set for our relationship with him. It is not, “whoever does not believe the right things has sinned.” It is not even “whoever does not do the right things has sinned.” It is “the one whose thoughts and actions come from the wrong motivations has sinned.”

Some Christian traditions have struggled more than others with the postmodern challenge of these last decades. The postmodern critique pointed out how ambiguous language can be. The postmodern critique pointed out how often politics and power are involved in what we call truth. The postmodern critique exposed how unaware we often are of the cultural and historical influences on our paradigms, and how paradigms tend to change over time. We can learn from these critiques without abandoning our confidence that truth exists.

Indeed, somewhat ironically, the postmodern critique has actually reinforced the theological values the Wesleyan tradition has always had. We have always known the limitations of knowledge, even when it comes in Christian garb. Wesley was certainly a thinker, but he was also a pragmatist, the direction in which the postmodern critique pushes us. And our emphasis on transformation and divine encounter is completely unaffected. The best of the Wesleyan tradition has always known that truth is far more a matter of what is going on deep inside us than the relatively superficial thoughts we have with our conscious minds.

Why I Am a Wesleyan 1 (W)

Again, I apologize to those who don't care or have heard it all before.  Maybe the muse will help me get it just right this time for some sort of booklet.
____________
A Generous Tradition
I appreciate aspects of all Christian traditions.  I appreciate the sense of security in God that Baptist traditions have. I appreciate the emphases on grace and freedom in the Lutheran tradition.  I appreciate the depth of the Roman Catholic tradition. Surely no Christian tradition has everything right, and surely we can agree on many things in almost all Christian traditions.

I personally come from the Wesleyan tradition, a tradition that traces its origins ultimately back to an eighteenth century Anglican minister named John Wesley.  I do not think for one moment that he--or I--have everything all figured out.  Indeed, like almost all Christian traditions in North America, the Wesleyan tradition today includes numerous little groups that spun off from their original Methodist roots.

In our current setting, you would not have to pick a "denomination," a group of churches that join together on the basis of some commonality. In fact, some churches have banded together on the common ground of opposition to denominations.  The current climate includes a multitude of non-denominational churches and even the house church movement is going strong.

But a quick look at the beliefs and practices of the most virulently non-denominational church will almost always reveal the influence of historical Christian traditions.  How to they baptize?  What do they believe about particular issues?  The answers to these questions almost always will reflect the influence of particular Christian traditions.

So I come from the Wesleyan tradition and have stayed with my tradition despite growing up, studying, and formulating my own personal understandings and practices of faith.  I could no doubt express my faith and be enriched in almost any church.  Why, then, am I a Wesleyan?

One reason is because the Wesleyan tradition is a heart-oriented tradition that, because it is focused primarily on our intentions and character, can be generous toward differing ideas and practices. It is not that the Wesleyan tradition is unconcerned with ideas or has no interest in the pursuit of truth.  It is only that its focus on virtue and pure intentions make those concerns a second or even third order of business.

John Wesley, like most great thinkers, has left us with several memorable sayings that capture key truths.  One of Wesley's was that "if your heart is as my heart, then put your hand in mind."  I am a Wesleyan because the Wesleyan tradition is a generous tradition toward others.  When we are at our best, we are more about finding what we have in common with others than with separating from others because of our differences.

Indeed, because of this heart-orientation, many churches in the Wesleyan tradition have developed a great freedom in church practice.  For example, you will find almost every form of baptism in my own Wesleyan denomination, everything from believer's baptism to infant baptism to no baptism at all.  While I have my own preferences, I delight in a tradition that does not fight over baptism, communion, or so many of the Christian practices that have so often divided Christian churches.

I am a Wesleyan because the Wesleyan tradition at its best is a generous tradition toward other traditions.  Generosity in this sense is not the same as thinking all beliefs and practices are equally valid.  It is simply an orientation toward others that sees the most important common ground as a matter of our intentions and character, not whether we all think or act the same way.

Not Again: What is a Wesleyan?

Sorry to do this again!!!

You may not know how big Indiana Wesleyan University is, but we have about 16,000 students now.  I just found out yesterday that we have more graduate students in education that IU or any other institution in the State of Indiana.  Our Adult and Professional Studies college is where most of these numbers are and they are all keen on our mission as a Christian institution.  The problem is that I don't think they have a clue what it means to be Wesleyan--certainly not what the undergraduate School or seminary thinks it means to be Wesleyan.

So I find myself once again wanting to capture the identity of our brand of Wesleyanism in about 15 pages of writing that could be printed in a booklet like my little piece on women in ministry.  My last attempt ended up 44 pages long--too long for a booklet, too short for a book.  What's worse is that I wrote it with "audience drift," meaning that I did not consistently have one audience in view as I wrote.  There's also a tightrope to walk between a sense of openness and generosity and being proud of certain identity features.  I do fine in front of one audience or another, but I struggle to do justice to both at the same time.

I thought I would just try an outline today.  Things to say with no more than one or two pages in each instance to say it.

1. Generous tradition toward other traditions (gen. orthodoxy, identity among diversity, flexibility in practice)
2. Heart oriented tradition (not afraid of postmodernism, pietist, revivalist, heart more than hands or head)
3. God as heart oriented (according to light, wanting to save everyone, not absolutist)
4. The cross as love and wooing (not primarily as justice)
5. Free will (which affects our politics, our parenting, our discipline)
6. Love as the law (and optimistic about it, our sense of sin as intent, as defeatable)
7. Love beyond spiritual (beyond evangelism to material needs, social justice)
8. Love into the structural (past on slavery and women, present, not fundamentalist)
9. Importance of faithfulness (works part of the equation, nature of grace)
10. Scripture as sacrament (of transformation, of divine encounter)
11. Scripture as story (of our identity, of God's walk with humanity and his people)

Any thoughts?

Appropriating Scripture: Any thoughts?

I wrote this summary of "original meaning" appropriation (the third of three Christian methods of appropriating Scripture: 1) pneumatic, 2) theological, and 3) original meaning.  Any additions or corrections?
____________
"We might thus suggest three key factors in appropriating the original meaning of a biblical book to today. First, there is the question of genre. What are the dynamics of each type of literature that come into play when appropriating that type.

Second, there is the question of continuity and discontinuity between “that time” and “this time.” The notion of continuity and discontinuity is arguably a little more sophisticated than talking about “all time” principles because, whether we like it or not, our sense of what those “all time” principles are is a function of “our time”—because we are the ones conceptualizing those principles! But in the end, what we may find is that there are some things we would not be able to do today that they could in biblical times (e.g., have slaves) and there may be some things that we can do today that they could not (e.g., have goatees).

Finally, there is the question of integrating biblical teaching. How does one Scripture connect to the other pieces of Scripture? Where does an individual passage stand in the flow of revelation? This rigorous method is surely not necessary to hear God’s voice in Scripture, but it is sound nonetheless and, in many respects, safer than the pneumatic method we mentioned above."

OT Law in the New Testament: fair summary?

I've written this summary for a class.  Is it fair?  Have I missed an option?


"Some traditions pay more attention to Old Testament Law than others.  Some American churches formed in nineteenth century dispensationalism have a tendency to see Old Testament Law in more continuity with the New Testament than other Christian traditions do (e.g., Seventh Day Adventists).  High Protestant traditions like Lutherans and the Reformed like to see the Law as completely fulfilled in Christ, to where we are not bound by anything in the Old Testament except the law to love God and love our neighbor.  A more partitioned approach is also possible, asking which Old Testament laws the New Testament retains, which ones the New Testament considers fulfilled, and which ones the New Testament abandons."

Three Obstacles to Vision

I found some comments interesting yesterday in Carson Pue's book, Mentoring Leaders.  He mentions three characteristics that sometimes blur a young leader's sense of vision (82).  Putting them in my words:

1. Too many things they are able to do.
If a person only has one gift or area of interest, it's pretty easy to have a clear sense of direction.

2. Too many things they are doing.
The more involved you get, the more your life runs on autopilot and you don't stop to focus on a vision.

3. They proceed without self-awareness.
So they do not eliminate things that hold them back or mistake personality for God, etc...

P.S. I think Pue's preface is a cop-out.  Alternating between masculine and feminine pronouns is only "distracting and confusing" (12) if you do not fully see them as interchangeable.  Masculine pronouns are no longer generic to modern readers.  When I see "he," I think "he" and not "she."  If you really believe women can be leaders, it hurts nothing to vary your pronouns.  It's hard for me not to think his decision to go with all masculine pronouns is simply a move to placate the typical reader of this sort of book, despite his preface comments to the contrary.