I came home last night to find my first print copies of the second of my Paul books: Paul: Solider of Peace.
The first was Paul: Messenger of Grace.
What excites me about this book is that I believe it is the first book that fully embodies the intersection between 1) developments in Pauline studies these last thirty years and 2) Wesleyan-Arminian theology.
This is a book for laypeople and pastors, not a book for scholars, but here are some of its key positions on issues:
1. Paul was a Jew, always remained a Jew, always thought of himself as an Israelite, believed eventually that all ethnic Israel would accept Jesus as Christ. Believing Gentiles were grafted in to Israel. The church does not replace Israel.
2. The audience is primarily Gentile in keeping with the fact that Paul is apostle to the Gentiles. There were "conservative Gentiles" such as we find in Galatians, perhaps Romans to some extent, and perhaps Hebrews.
3. The "righteousness of God" primarily refers to God's propensity to save his people and world, although Paul may very well exploit the polyvalence of the phrase to imply our right standing with God at a couple points.
4. Paul is primarily interested in our faith in God. Nevertheless, he does at a couple points speak of faith in Christ and I believe he does start off with a sense of the faithfulness of Jesus, his obedience to death.
5. The phrase "works of Law" does primarily focus on those parts of the Law that most separated Jew and Gentile ethnically. Nevertheless, he does set this concrete debate within a general framework of grace versus earning one's right standing with God.
6. Justification refers to God's declaration of a person being in right standing with him. This is triggered by faith initially apart from anything a person has done, but final justification will not take place without appropriate deeds following. The Gentile in Romans 2 who demostrates the Law written on the heart is a Gentile Christian who has the Spirit.
7. Paul does not have a rigid sense of penal substitution. He has a rather more loose sense that Christ's death demonstrates God's justice, no doubt accompanied with the rather more unarticulated ancient sense that sacrifices satisfy the order of things, including God's wrath.
8. Paul does not have a full blown theology of total depravity, original sin, or the Fall. Our fuller reading of these things comes more from Augustine and his heirs. A more careful reading of Paul points to a thorough sinfulness in humanity, a cosmic situation in which Sin has power over our flesh, and that this situation is a result of Adam's sin.
9. Paul does not see sin as compatible with the Spirit inside us. Romans 7 is not Paul's current struggle with Sin but the situation of a person who might want to keep the Law but who does not have the Spirit. I further do not think Paul is even remembering his previous struggle. I don't think Paul ever seriously felt like a moral failure at any point of his life. The Spirit empowers a person to keep the core of the Jewish Law, the love your neighbor part.
10. Paul does not connect his predestination language with the rest of his theology. It is a kind of "orphan" in his thought that he does not follow out logically. It's purpose is to affirm the sovereign right of God to let the Gentiles into the people of God if he wants whether unbelieving Jews like it or not. Nevertheless, the very ones who he has hardened currently can still be saved.
11. Romans 16 may actually have been a letter of recommendation for Phoebe to go to Ephesus rather than Rome. I fall off the log on this side.
So there you have it. The only treatment of Romans I know in existence that will bring a Wesleyan-Arminian up to date with the most recent discussions on Romans by scholars on a popular level in dialog with our faith tradition. As I've said before, these developments make it a great time to be Wesleyan-Arminian.
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Saturday, June 18, 2011
Are you an evangelical reject?
Funny list over at Jesus Creed. All but two or three apply to me. Although Scot didn't write the list, I'm getting the distinct impression that he's getting tired of the word "evangelical." Of course he's an Anabaptist, who, like Wesleyan-Arminians, has never entirely fit within the mold of the American evangelical hegemony.
At Conference End...
The conference has come and gone, and thankfully I'll be home for a while now. Interestingly, Monday after next begins the "Pedagogy of Science and Faith in the Classroom" conference at IWU. As I mentioned before, it is on pedagogy rather than positions or content.
I ended up really enjoying the Christian Scholars Conference. I got here too late to hear Polkinghorne, but nabbed a copy of his presentation to read. I heard Collins. The other plenary speakers spoke on the dangers of genetically-modified food and on the ethical landscape with regard to stem cell research. I was well prepared for this last talk because of a presentation Burt Webb gave at IWU a few years back.
And of course I gave my paper on Hebrews. Jerry Pattengale of IWU was hear talking about the Green Collection. And IWU's Wim Van de Merwe was here.
Pepperdine and the conference turn out to be Church of Christ (non-instrumental). It struck me as we finished singing three hymns at the end of a dinner/celebration of Thomas Olbricht that we were singing a cappella and that it had significance in context. I was reminded of our little enclaves as Christian groups, each with our own idiosyncrasies. Biblical scholarship is very important (on one level) to the children of the Stone-Campbell revivals like the Disciples and Churches of Christ. They are part of the Restorationist Movement that puts such a high premium on getting back to the early church.
And they have their quibbles like whether you should have instruments in church. I talked to a Christian minister working on his PhD in church history yesterday and he suggested that the reason Christian churches in the south went non-instrumental were because they were poorer and couldn't afford organs like the churches in the north, who won the Civil War.
The ideological debate was thus, as almost always, an epiphenomenon of social dynamics going on between people. The pretense is thus that there are no organs in the Bible. The reality is that we live in the South, are poor, and have slaves. You are wealthy abolitionists in the north.
And of course the scholars who grow up in these enclaves usually recognize the idiosyncrasies, but there is enough that is true or that they agree with to stay with their movement. I saw the same when I was at the Seventh Day Adventist Andrews University a few months back. And I experienced the same growing up Wesleyan, one of the many Methodist splinter groups.
There is a current in America that says education makes you liberal. I think it would be more accurate to say that education causes you to see the idiosyncrasies of your group, your starting point, which almost always broadens you in relation to your group. That means that education should also broaden those who grow up in "liberal" circles. ;-)
So it's not so much that truth tends toward the liberal. It's that education tends to unravel the simplistic assumptions of your starting point, whatever simplistic assumptions you may start out with. As Socrates once allegedly said, the wise person is the one who realizes at some point how much he or she does not know.
I ended up really enjoying the Christian Scholars Conference. I got here too late to hear Polkinghorne, but nabbed a copy of his presentation to read. I heard Collins. The other plenary speakers spoke on the dangers of genetically-modified food and on the ethical landscape with regard to stem cell research. I was well prepared for this last talk because of a presentation Burt Webb gave at IWU a few years back.
And of course I gave my paper on Hebrews. Jerry Pattengale of IWU was hear talking about the Green Collection. And IWU's Wim Van de Merwe was here.
Pepperdine and the conference turn out to be Church of Christ (non-instrumental). It struck me as we finished singing three hymns at the end of a dinner/celebration of Thomas Olbricht that we were singing a cappella and that it had significance in context. I was reminded of our little enclaves as Christian groups, each with our own idiosyncrasies. Biblical scholarship is very important (on one level) to the children of the Stone-Campbell revivals like the Disciples and Churches of Christ. They are part of the Restorationist Movement that puts such a high premium on getting back to the early church.
And they have their quibbles like whether you should have instruments in church. I talked to a Christian minister working on his PhD in church history yesterday and he suggested that the reason Christian churches in the south went non-instrumental were because they were poorer and couldn't afford organs like the churches in the north, who won the Civil War.
The ideological debate was thus, as almost always, an epiphenomenon of social dynamics going on between people. The pretense is thus that there are no organs in the Bible. The reality is that we live in the South, are poor, and have slaves. You are wealthy abolitionists in the north.
And of course the scholars who grow up in these enclaves usually recognize the idiosyncrasies, but there is enough that is true or that they agree with to stay with their movement. I saw the same when I was at the Seventh Day Adventist Andrews University a few months back. And I experienced the same growing up Wesleyan, one of the many Methodist splinter groups.
There is a current in America that says education makes you liberal. I think it would be more accurate to say that education causes you to see the idiosyncrasies of your group, your starting point, which almost always broadens you in relation to your group. That means that education should also broaden those who grow up in "liberal" circles. ;-)
So it's not so much that truth tends toward the liberal. It's that education tends to unravel the simplistic assumptions of your starting point, whatever simplistic assumptions you may start out with. As Socrates once allegedly said, the wise person is the one who realizes at some point how much he or she does not know.
Friday, June 17, 2011
Francis Collins on Adam
I heard Francis Collins yesterday here at Pepperdine. As you may know, he is author of The Language of God and co-author of The Language of Science and Faith. He was leader of the project that cracked the entirety of the human genome, a project that I believe will quickly result in curing most diseases like cancer, diabetes and other gene related illnesses. Obama appointed him to head the National Institutes of Health, an appointment new atheists like Sam Harris publicly opposed.
His faith is very evident. Let's be clear about that. He has a spiritual autobiography something like C. S. Lewis where he started as an atheist but was driven to faith. It is also evident that he sees no contradiction between science and faith, and he was founder of BioLogos to that end.
I won't pretend that the question of evolution is not a difficult one at one point in particular, namely, our theology of Adam and the Fall. Genesis 1 is a piece of cake, since it seems rather easily read as a poetic rather than a literal presentation of creation. The problem is not even with Genesis 2-3. The problem is with what Paul does with Genesis 2-3 and what Augustine did with Paul and with what Calvin and Wesley did with Paul.
I might describe it like this:
1. The rest of the OT doesn't do anything with Genesis 2-3. Genesis 2-3 is not of major significance for the theology internal to the Old Testament. Further, Adam and Eve's sin only stop them from not dying. It does not seem to bring human death into the world except in that it prevents endless life.
2. The rest of the NT doesn't do anything with Genesis 2-3. Genesis 2-3 is not of major significance for the theology internal to the rest of the New Testament outside Paul. Adam is not mentioned elsewhere.
3. Adam in Romans and 1 Corinthians, however, provides Paul's explanation for where sin and death came from. Adam seems to play a central role in Paul's theology.
4. This became central to our Christian understanding because Augustine and Protestantism focused on Paul and Adam, and made him a centerpiece in the Christian reading of Scripture. When anyone reads Scripture, s/he must prioritize passages to form a coherent reading. Adam would not have to be a centerpiece of such a reading. He is central because we have inherited the readings of Augustine and the Protestant tradition.
The idea that death entered the world through Adam is one issue, since evolution requires lots of death. There are strategies you can make. Perhaps spiritual death entered through Adam. Perhaps we could go with Genesis--Adam stopped life rather than started death.
Collins presented a new problem yesterday I was not aware of. In his opinion, the human genome is too diverse to have come from one parent (remembering that Eve got her DNA from Adam). He thinks thousands would have been necessary (he also pointed out that the genome of homo neanderthalis, which they have also decoded in full, is very similar to homo sapiens, possibly implying continuity between the two species.
He presented several possibilities. One is that God created thousands of Adams and Eves. One is that God did something special with two of the newly evolved thousands and then retro-did the others or it spread to the others. Collins doesn't like the metaphorical route, that Adam and Eve are a story expressing the mystery of human identity and our condition before God, but not historical individuals.
Here is some exploration of Adam by RJS on Scott McKnight's blog, including a link to a recent CT article. I do not offer an answer. I do have two ground rules:
1. Having grown up with a fundamentalist view of the Bible and then feeling repeatedly stupid--indeed feeling like a complete ignoramus--as I studied the Bible in context, I reject the idea that the Christian position on these sorts of issues is a slam dunk. The interpretation of the Bible is often complicated and unclear, and its appropriation even more susceptible to debate.
2. I reject any glib dismissal of science by those who couldn't pass a science class to save their life and yet insist on using cell phones and surgeons. It is one and the same scientific method which has given us lap tops and evolution. I am not a scientist. I am not competent to judge the issue. But I fear basing my faith on the opposite side of the vast and overwhelming majority of those who are competent to judge the evidence, in a field where you make your reputation by coming up with new discoveries, when every single scientist against evolution does so because of a presupposition they start out with rather than because the evidence drove them to that conclusion.
So have at it. What do you think?
His faith is very evident. Let's be clear about that. He has a spiritual autobiography something like C. S. Lewis where he started as an atheist but was driven to faith. It is also evident that he sees no contradiction between science and faith, and he was founder of BioLogos to that end.
I won't pretend that the question of evolution is not a difficult one at one point in particular, namely, our theology of Adam and the Fall. Genesis 1 is a piece of cake, since it seems rather easily read as a poetic rather than a literal presentation of creation. The problem is not even with Genesis 2-3. The problem is with what Paul does with Genesis 2-3 and what Augustine did with Paul and with what Calvin and Wesley did with Paul.
I might describe it like this:
1. The rest of the OT doesn't do anything with Genesis 2-3. Genesis 2-3 is not of major significance for the theology internal to the Old Testament. Further, Adam and Eve's sin only stop them from not dying. It does not seem to bring human death into the world except in that it prevents endless life.
2. The rest of the NT doesn't do anything with Genesis 2-3. Genesis 2-3 is not of major significance for the theology internal to the rest of the New Testament outside Paul. Adam is not mentioned elsewhere.
3. Adam in Romans and 1 Corinthians, however, provides Paul's explanation for where sin and death came from. Adam seems to play a central role in Paul's theology.
4. This became central to our Christian understanding because Augustine and Protestantism focused on Paul and Adam, and made him a centerpiece in the Christian reading of Scripture. When anyone reads Scripture, s/he must prioritize passages to form a coherent reading. Adam would not have to be a centerpiece of such a reading. He is central because we have inherited the readings of Augustine and the Protestant tradition.
The idea that death entered the world through Adam is one issue, since evolution requires lots of death. There are strategies you can make. Perhaps spiritual death entered through Adam. Perhaps we could go with Genesis--Adam stopped life rather than started death.
Collins presented a new problem yesterday I was not aware of. In his opinion, the human genome is too diverse to have come from one parent (remembering that Eve got her DNA from Adam). He thinks thousands would have been necessary (he also pointed out that the genome of homo neanderthalis, which they have also decoded in full, is very similar to homo sapiens, possibly implying continuity between the two species.
He presented several possibilities. One is that God created thousands of Adams and Eves. One is that God did something special with two of the newly evolved thousands and then retro-did the others or it spread to the others. Collins doesn't like the metaphorical route, that Adam and Eve are a story expressing the mystery of human identity and our condition before God, but not historical individuals.
Here is some exploration of Adam by RJS on Scott McKnight's blog, including a link to a recent CT article. I do not offer an answer. I do have two ground rules:
1. Having grown up with a fundamentalist view of the Bible and then feeling repeatedly stupid--indeed feeling like a complete ignoramus--as I studied the Bible in context, I reject the idea that the Christian position on these sorts of issues is a slam dunk. The interpretation of the Bible is often complicated and unclear, and its appropriation even more susceptible to debate.
2. I reject any glib dismissal of science by those who couldn't pass a science class to save their life and yet insist on using cell phones and surgeons. It is one and the same scientific method which has given us lap tops and evolution. I am not a scientist. I am not competent to judge the issue. But I fear basing my faith on the opposite side of the vast and overwhelming majority of those who are competent to judge the evidence, in a field where you make your reputation by coming up with new discoveries, when every single scientist against evolution does so because of a presupposition they start out with rather than because the evidence drove them to that conclusion.
So have at it. What do you think?
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Progressive versus Emergence Christianity (Phyllis Tickle)
I'm sitting in an airport in Houston on my way to a Christian Scholar's conference at Pepperdine. I'm presenting my thoughts on Hebrews 12:27 from the other day in 20 minutes. The session I'm a part of is centered around James Thompson's recent commentary on Hebrews.
I don't have time to think through this post, but an online conference at Patheos on Progressive Christianity caught my eye, mainly because James McGrath is one of the blog presenters. As I quickly dug around, I was struck by Phyllis Tickle's piece, "Progressive versus Emergence Christianity."
My first reaction is to smile. People are always wanting to start movements. Yes, yes, I confess; I've dreamed of it too. My little sense of Tickle is that she has really overreached in her sense of emergence Christianity. She thinks its the thing and here to stay. There may indeed be some longstanding things that are emerging but she reminds me of how people confuse philosophical postmodernism with cultural postmodernism. The philosophy is hard core and must forever be engaged in the history of future discussion. People, on the other hand, ride waves that change with the wind and are weak caricatures of ideological discussions.
So I'm tired of talking about us being in a postmodern age unless you're talking the real deal idea discussion. Even then, postmodernism is not a thing--it is an anti-thing, an un-thing. It can't be the next thing.
Meanwhile, people are just going with the flow. I don't know Tickle's stuff well enough to know but I suspect she doesn't have this distinction firmly enough in mind.
As for "progressive Christianity," I suspect that might be a more real ideological group that is here for a good long while. Notice that the people at Patheos didn't create a category called "Emergence Christianity." They have one for evangelicals, one for progressives, and one for Catholics. ;-)
Just some quick thoughts before boarding...
I don't have time to think through this post, but an online conference at Patheos on Progressive Christianity caught my eye, mainly because James McGrath is one of the blog presenters. As I quickly dug around, I was struck by Phyllis Tickle's piece, "Progressive versus Emergence Christianity."
My first reaction is to smile. People are always wanting to start movements. Yes, yes, I confess; I've dreamed of it too. My little sense of Tickle is that she has really overreached in her sense of emergence Christianity. She thinks its the thing and here to stay. There may indeed be some longstanding things that are emerging but she reminds me of how people confuse philosophical postmodernism with cultural postmodernism. The philosophy is hard core and must forever be engaged in the history of future discussion. People, on the other hand, ride waves that change with the wind and are weak caricatures of ideological discussions.
So I'm tired of talking about us being in a postmodern age unless you're talking the real deal idea discussion. Even then, postmodernism is not a thing--it is an anti-thing, an un-thing. It can't be the next thing.
Meanwhile, people are just going with the flow. I don't know Tickle's stuff well enough to know but I suspect she doesn't have this distinction firmly enough in mind.
As for "progressive Christianity," I suspect that might be a more real ideological group that is here for a good long while. Notice that the people at Patheos didn't create a category called "Emergence Christianity." They have one for evangelicals, one for progressives, and one for Catholics. ;-)
Just some quick thoughts before boarding...
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Types of Leaders
One of the benefits of directing the curriculum at Wesley Seminary is that I get to learn a lot of things I wouldn't otherwise have had the time to. Yesterday I was looking at the second chapter of our own Bob Whitesel's book, Preparing for Change Reaction. There he was introducing the military distinction between strategic, tactical, and operational leaders. As simple as it is, I find this a very helpful distinction, and from his notes it is clearly a common distinction made with various terms.
Here's my own twist. From my own anecdotal experience, a whole lot of those who go into ministry think they are or want to be strategic leaders. This is the big picture visionary, the prophet who sees where things are going and where things need to go. It's arguably part of the preaching itch--you want to tell everyone what they need to be, what's wrong with society, etc. The problem is that, in my experience, very few people really are gifted strategic leaders.
On the other end of the spectrum are what Bob calls operational leaders. These are people who are good with accomplishing specific tasks and overcoming specific problems. These people because they get things done. Gibbs calls them "foremen." The military image Bob created in my mind is that of a sergeant who can lead a small cadre of troops up a hill. In a church, I have the picture of a person who can lead a group on a Habitat day or who organizes a pot-luck.
The big gap is what the military calls "tactical leaders." These are the administrators who can organize the specific operations needed to achieve strategic goals. These are detailed, precise people who aren't always the life of the party, but they know how to get from point A to point B. Without them, dreams evaporate and goals aren't reached.
Bob's advice for bringing about change in your church, university, or organization? Get your tactical leaders in place before you launch your new vision.
Here's my own twist. From my own anecdotal experience, a whole lot of those who go into ministry think they are or want to be strategic leaders. This is the big picture visionary, the prophet who sees where things are going and where things need to go. It's arguably part of the preaching itch--you want to tell everyone what they need to be, what's wrong with society, etc. The problem is that, in my experience, very few people really are gifted strategic leaders.
On the other end of the spectrum are what Bob calls operational leaders. These are people who are good with accomplishing specific tasks and overcoming specific problems. These people because they get things done. Gibbs calls them "foremen." The military image Bob created in my mind is that of a sergeant who can lead a small cadre of troops up a hill. In a church, I have the picture of a person who can lead a group on a Habitat day or who organizes a pot-luck.
The big gap is what the military calls "tactical leaders." These are the administrators who can organize the specific operations needed to achieve strategic goals. These are detailed, precise people who aren't always the life of the party, but they know how to get from point A to point B. Without them, dreams evaporate and goals aren't reached.
Bob's advice for bringing about change in your church, university, or organization? Get your tactical leaders in place before you launch your new vision.
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Contextualizing in Florida
I'm in Florida for a couple days as part of a team getting ready for our Fall seminary leadership course in Spanish. I'm here to share what we've been doing. Then a team of Hispanic leaders are filtering through what works and what doesn't, what Spanish resources are out there, and what needs to be written.
My Spanish is improving in a baptism by fire ;-)
My Spanish is improving in a baptism by fire ;-)
Monday, June 13, 2011
Hebrews 12:27
I've been reflecting on Hebrews 12:27 over the weekend. In this verse, the author of Hebrews says that God's shaking of the heavens and earth refers to the metathesis of the things being shaken--since they have been created--so that things that cannot be shaken might remain. The word metathesis can mean either transformation or removal, and certainly a meaning of "transformation" would be far more likely given the background of Jewish apocalyptic and the rest of the NT.
Every time I look at this verse, I waffle on exactly what is being said here and yet still come down with it speaking of the "removal" of the created realm. This is an unprecedented idea, one I find nowhere in any existing literature up to that point in history. I'm contemplating a new spin this time, but in the meantime, here are the reasons I conclude this:
1. It is the very createdness of the skies and earth that make them shakable. This is obviously not God's fault but the inherent instability of the materials themselves. It does not seem likely that belief in creation ex nihilo had arisen yet at this point, so the assumption would seem to be that God did not create the primordial materials of the world, only that he organized them, gave them order. So transformation in that sense does not fix the problem.
2. Hebrews seems to have a more pervasive dualism between heaven and earth than any other part of the New Testament. Although it uses the language and imagery of resurrection (e.g., 6:2; 13:20), it arguably does so in a way that clearly identifies spirit with the highest heaven and consistently/strongly contrasts the materials of this realm with the created realm.
3. We find hints of this position elsewhere. Although it is not clear, if the author equates the universe with a cosmological sanctuary, as I believe, then the removal of the "outer tent" of the true tent might allude to the removal of the creation as the outer room of a cosmic sanctuary whose Most Holy Place is the highest heaven (9:8).
More crucial is 1:10-12, which may provide significant insights. Here Christ may "change" the created realm like a garment. This obviously involves a removal. But if the imagery holds, it would also imply putting a new garment on. I'm contemplating this option today, which would give us a both/and. Yes, the created realm would be removed, but then God, as it were, would create a new one ex nihilo.
Could this be the first implied instance of ex nihilo in extant literature?
Every time I look at this verse, I waffle on exactly what is being said here and yet still come down with it speaking of the "removal" of the created realm. This is an unprecedented idea, one I find nowhere in any existing literature up to that point in history. I'm contemplating a new spin this time, but in the meantime, here are the reasons I conclude this:
1. It is the very createdness of the skies and earth that make them shakable. This is obviously not God's fault but the inherent instability of the materials themselves. It does not seem likely that belief in creation ex nihilo had arisen yet at this point, so the assumption would seem to be that God did not create the primordial materials of the world, only that he organized them, gave them order. So transformation in that sense does not fix the problem.
2. Hebrews seems to have a more pervasive dualism between heaven and earth than any other part of the New Testament. Although it uses the language and imagery of resurrection (e.g., 6:2; 13:20), it arguably does so in a way that clearly identifies spirit with the highest heaven and consistently/strongly contrasts the materials of this realm with the created realm.
3. We find hints of this position elsewhere. Although it is not clear, if the author equates the universe with a cosmological sanctuary, as I believe, then the removal of the "outer tent" of the true tent might allude to the removal of the creation as the outer room of a cosmic sanctuary whose Most Holy Place is the highest heaven (9:8).
More crucial is 1:10-12, which may provide significant insights. Here Christ may "change" the created realm like a garment. This obviously involves a removal. But if the imagery holds, it would also imply putting a new garment on. I'm contemplating this option today, which would give us a both/and. Yes, the created realm would be removed, but then God, as it were, would create a new one ex nihilo.
Could this be the first implied instance of ex nihilo in extant literature?
Saturday, June 11, 2011
Find The Errors 1
We're now in the second week of Hebrew for Ministry. One of the assignments for this week is to use their knowledge of Hebrew even this far in the course to find three errors in the following pretend snippet of a sermon based in Jeremiah 7:21-23.
Can you find the three errors? Use the Hebrew text in blueletterbible if you don't have an interlinear or don't know Hebrew.
Can you find the three errors? Use the Hebrew text in blueletterbible if you don't have an interlinear or don't know Hebrew.
OMT: Romans 10:14-21
Other translations:
Romans 1:1-7
Romans 1:8-10
Romans 1:11-15
Romans 1:16-17
Romans 5:12-17
Romans 7:13-25
Romans 8:1-8
Romans 9:1-5
Romans 9:6-18
Romans 9:19-29
Now, Romans 10:14-21:
14 How, therefore, might they call on him whom they have not believed? And how might they believe on him whom they have not heard? And how might they hear without [someone] preaching? 15 And how might they preach unless they should be sent? As it stands written, "How beautiful [are] the feet of those who proclaim the good news with regard to good things" (Isa. 52:7). 16 But did they not all hear the good news? For Isaiah says, "Lord, who has believed our message?" (Isa. 53:1) 17 Then faith [is] from a message, and the message through the word of Christ.
18 But I say, it isn't that they have not heard, is it? Yes indeed, "their voice has gone out into all the earth, and their words to the ends of the inhabited world" (Ps. 19:4). 19 But I say, it isn't that Israel hasn't known, is it? First Moses says, "I myself will make you jealous by those who are not a nation, by a nation without understanding I will make you angry" (Deut. 32:21). 20 But Isaiah dares and says, "I was found by those not seeking me. I became apparent to those not inquiring of me" (Isa. 65:1). 21 But to Israel he says, "The whole day I have held out my hands to a disobedient and contrary people" (Isa. 65:2).
Romans 1:1-7
Romans 1:8-10
Romans 1:11-15
Romans 1:16-17
Romans 5:12-17
Romans 7:13-25
Romans 8:1-8
Romans 9:1-5
Romans 9:6-18
Romans 9:19-29
Now, Romans 10:14-21:
14 How, therefore, might they call on him whom they have not believed? And how might they believe on him whom they have not heard? And how might they hear without [someone] preaching? 15 And how might they preach unless they should be sent? As it stands written, "How beautiful [are] the feet of those who proclaim the good news with regard to good things" (Isa. 52:7). 16 But did they not all hear the good news? For Isaiah says, "Lord, who has believed our message?" (Isa. 53:1) 17 Then faith [is] from a message, and the message through the word of Christ.
18 But I say, it isn't that they have not heard, is it? Yes indeed, "their voice has gone out into all the earth, and their words to the ends of the inhabited world" (Ps. 19:4). 19 But I say, it isn't that Israel hasn't known, is it? First Moses says, "I myself will make you jealous by those who are not a nation, by a nation without understanding I will make you angry" (Deut. 32:21). 20 But Isaiah dares and says, "I was found by those not seeking me. I became apparent to those not inquiring of me" (Isa. 65:1). 21 But to Israel he says, "The whole day I have held out my hands to a disobedient and contrary people" (Isa. 65:2).
Friday, June 10, 2011
The Tendency to Become What we Fight
I was reading a little of John Piper's story today. Interestingly, he started quite vigorously opposed to determinism, which he now interprets as being opposed to the sovereignty of God. He was a strong proponent of free will when he went to Fuller.
What often happens psychologically when someone is so zealous for one position is that s/he becomes over-aware of the weak points of his/her position. These have a way of eventually overcoming you to where those weak points become the centerpiece of a diametrically opposite you. So in Piper's case, the rather unusual and atypical verses in Romans 9 came to dominate his understanding.
So beware of zeal--some of the most ardent fundamentalist zealots end up being some of the most militant atheists. Moderation in all things is almost always the best policy.
What often happens psychologically when someone is so zealous for one position is that s/he becomes over-aware of the weak points of his/her position. These have a way of eventually overcoming you to where those weak points become the centerpiece of a diametrically opposite you. So in Piper's case, the rather unusual and atypical verses in Romans 9 came to dominate his understanding.
So beware of zeal--some of the most ardent fundamentalist zealots end up being some of the most militant atheists. Moderation in all things is almost always the best policy.
Thursday, June 09, 2011
Who is Ken Schenck?
I decided to update the link that takes people to a description of who I am. Nothing here is new, but occasionally people will link to me and I'll get a flurry of hits on the older version of this post.
Ken Schenck might self-describe himself in the following ways:
A Pietist of Sorts
I believe that what is most important about a person is not what you know but who you are, and by who you are I mean what your motives and intentions are. This makes your actions--as they flow from your motivations--the second most important aspect of a person. I love ideas--they are my life. But they are for me less important than who you are, understood as the most consistent intentions of a person as they lead to actions (=character).
A Seeker of Truth
I love truth, understood as the most likely interpretations of the data of life on the basis of sound logic and hypotheses that accommodate the most data with elegance and simplicity. As a Christian I embrace the age-old motto of fidens quaerens intellectam, "faith seeking understanding." We start with the understanding of Christian faith we have and then dialog with the data of life and history.
Because God's revelation is always "incarnated" in the thought categories of its audiences, our specific understandings of faith as they come mediated to us through Scripture and the Church are always subject to interpretation and critique. I thus reject the high presuppositionalism of the hyper-Reformed tradition.
I have a PhD in New Testament. I do not treat the "philosophy" element of this title lightly. I have been trained to interpret the New Testament in its original historical and cultural context. I appropriate the Bible as a Christian. I can justify ideological and "theological" interpretations as a hermeneutician. But my first course of action is always to let the contextual evidence of the original meaning fall where it lies, whether it is convenient to my faith or tradition or not. I can then deal with it in my theology.
Catholic in Spirit
In keeping with Wesley, I believe Christians share much more in common than they disagree on. We believe in the literal existence of God and Christ as the ultimate mediator between God and humanity. If I am Protestant, I am Protestant because I believe the medieval Catholic Church had wandered from some first principles. But in the words of Wesley, "if your heart is as my heart, then put your hand in mine."
However, as a Protestant in the Anglican-Methodist stream, I am not nearly as engaged with some of the high Protestant objections (come obsessions) of the Lutheran and Calvinist streams with Roman Catholicism. I reject the popular dismissal of Catholics as "not Christian." Indeed, it is quite possible that some Catholics come closer to Wesleyanism than some Lutherans do.
Wesley himself operated with a "quadrilateral" of inputs to understanding and decision making as a believer (Scripture, tradition, reason, experience). It would thus be more appropriate to speak of prima scriptura (Scripture first) as our motto than sola scriptura (Scripture only). Indeed, sola scriptura is not even a coherent concept when the Bible is read in context, because the formation of a biblical theology regularly requires organizing dynamics extrinsic to the texts themselves.
Wesleyan-Arminian in Tradition
I thus do not fill in the philosophical blanks in relation to human freedom or divine expectation in the same way as the Calvinist or Lutheran traditions. The idea of God as love becomes incoherent if he does not in some way give the possibility of salvation to all, including those who never hear the name of Christ. And it is both biblically and philosophically appropriate that God expect faithfulness from those he calls his own.
So I believe that God judges us according to the light we have, by our hearts rather than our heads. His justification is always through the mediation of Christ, but we do not have to know about Christ with our heads to receive that mediation if our hearts respond to God's prevenient empowerment appropriately. God empowers everyone at some point in their lives in this way--which is why I reject the Calvinist tradition at its core values.
But God as patron also expects that we continue to receive his empowerment to live righteous lives, where the basic definition of a righteous life is one consistently motivated by the love of others. The idea of someone claiming the name of Christ and yet living a life of hatred is ludicrous. This would thus distinguish me from the Lutheran tradition, which has so overreacted to the idea of boasting over works that it dares not speak of living good lives.
A Chastened Wesleyan
I am an ordained minister in The Wesleyan Church, a very small denomination in the Methodist tradition. I am currently academic Dean and teach at my denomination's only seminary. I thus not only have the values I mentioned above, but I also represent a denomination with a particular history. Obviously I would not be in my denomination if I did not think that the values I mentioned above fit well within my church.
I call myself a "chastened" Wesleyan because I recognize the location of any embodied part of the Church universal within the flow of time and culture. Denominational identities are a study in continuity and discontinuity over time. The values of my denomination currently are not the same as its values 100 years ago, and it is possible they will look different 50 years from now. Hopefully there is also much continuity.
As a small example, much of my denomination arguably lost its way in the second half of the twentieth century with regard to issues that had at one time been core values. A denomination whose very founding took place over abolition tended in spirit and in inaction to oppose the civil rights movement of the 1960s. A tradition whose founding namesake saw social justice as essential Christian practice found itself caught up in the fundamentalist leftovers against such values.
I believe we are regaining these core values as well as open-hearted spirit of Wesley I mentioned above. We do not fight over how to baptize or how to do communion. We do not fight over how the second coming is precisely going to play out. We do not fight over penal substitution or a precise understanding of inerrancy. If anything defines us right now it is action to bring the good news on every level to the world.
So I am Wesleyan by family, Wesleyan-Arminian by tradition, a catholic Christian by faith, and a warm-hearted thinker by commitment.
Ken Schenck might self-describe himself in the following ways:
A Pietist of Sorts
I believe that what is most important about a person is not what you know but who you are, and by who you are I mean what your motives and intentions are. This makes your actions--as they flow from your motivations--the second most important aspect of a person. I love ideas--they are my life. But they are for me less important than who you are, understood as the most consistent intentions of a person as they lead to actions (=character).
A Seeker of Truth
I love truth, understood as the most likely interpretations of the data of life on the basis of sound logic and hypotheses that accommodate the most data with elegance and simplicity. As a Christian I embrace the age-old motto of fidens quaerens intellectam, "faith seeking understanding." We start with the understanding of Christian faith we have and then dialog with the data of life and history.
Because God's revelation is always "incarnated" in the thought categories of its audiences, our specific understandings of faith as they come mediated to us through Scripture and the Church are always subject to interpretation and critique. I thus reject the high presuppositionalism of the hyper-Reformed tradition.
I have a PhD in New Testament. I do not treat the "philosophy" element of this title lightly. I have been trained to interpret the New Testament in its original historical and cultural context. I appropriate the Bible as a Christian. I can justify ideological and "theological" interpretations as a hermeneutician. But my first course of action is always to let the contextual evidence of the original meaning fall where it lies, whether it is convenient to my faith or tradition or not. I can then deal with it in my theology.
Catholic in Spirit
In keeping with Wesley, I believe Christians share much more in common than they disagree on. We believe in the literal existence of God and Christ as the ultimate mediator between God and humanity. If I am Protestant, I am Protestant because I believe the medieval Catholic Church had wandered from some first principles. But in the words of Wesley, "if your heart is as my heart, then put your hand in mine."
However, as a Protestant in the Anglican-Methodist stream, I am not nearly as engaged with some of the high Protestant objections (come obsessions) of the Lutheran and Calvinist streams with Roman Catholicism. I reject the popular dismissal of Catholics as "not Christian." Indeed, it is quite possible that some Catholics come closer to Wesleyanism than some Lutherans do.
Wesley himself operated with a "quadrilateral" of inputs to understanding and decision making as a believer (Scripture, tradition, reason, experience). It would thus be more appropriate to speak of prima scriptura (Scripture first) as our motto than sola scriptura (Scripture only). Indeed, sola scriptura is not even a coherent concept when the Bible is read in context, because the formation of a biblical theology regularly requires organizing dynamics extrinsic to the texts themselves.
Wesleyan-Arminian in Tradition
I thus do not fill in the philosophical blanks in relation to human freedom or divine expectation in the same way as the Calvinist or Lutheran traditions. The idea of God as love becomes incoherent if he does not in some way give the possibility of salvation to all, including those who never hear the name of Christ. And it is both biblically and philosophically appropriate that God expect faithfulness from those he calls his own.
So I believe that God judges us according to the light we have, by our hearts rather than our heads. His justification is always through the mediation of Christ, but we do not have to know about Christ with our heads to receive that mediation if our hearts respond to God's prevenient empowerment appropriately. God empowers everyone at some point in their lives in this way--which is why I reject the Calvinist tradition at its core values.
But God as patron also expects that we continue to receive his empowerment to live righteous lives, where the basic definition of a righteous life is one consistently motivated by the love of others. The idea of someone claiming the name of Christ and yet living a life of hatred is ludicrous. This would thus distinguish me from the Lutheran tradition, which has so overreacted to the idea of boasting over works that it dares not speak of living good lives.
A Chastened Wesleyan
I am an ordained minister in The Wesleyan Church, a very small denomination in the Methodist tradition. I am currently academic Dean and teach at my denomination's only seminary. I thus not only have the values I mentioned above, but I also represent a denomination with a particular history. Obviously I would not be in my denomination if I did not think that the values I mentioned above fit well within my church.
I call myself a "chastened" Wesleyan because I recognize the location of any embodied part of the Church universal within the flow of time and culture. Denominational identities are a study in continuity and discontinuity over time. The values of my denomination currently are not the same as its values 100 years ago, and it is possible they will look different 50 years from now. Hopefully there is also much continuity.
As a small example, much of my denomination arguably lost its way in the second half of the twentieth century with regard to issues that had at one time been core values. A denomination whose very founding took place over abolition tended in spirit and in inaction to oppose the civil rights movement of the 1960s. A tradition whose founding namesake saw social justice as essential Christian practice found itself caught up in the fundamentalist leftovers against such values.
I believe we are regaining these core values as well as open-hearted spirit of Wesley I mentioned above. We do not fight over how to baptize or how to do communion. We do not fight over how the second coming is precisely going to play out. We do not fight over penal substitution or a precise understanding of inerrancy. If anything defines us right now it is action to bring the good news on every level to the world.
So I am Wesleyan by family, Wesleyan-Arminian by tradition, a catholic Christian by faith, and a warm-hearted thinker by commitment.
Roger Olson on true Arminianism
Roger Olson is a Baptist at Baylor who has written a number of things, but the most significant for those in my circles is Arminian Theology: Myths and Realities. He has been debating over another new book by Allen and Lemke called, Whosoever Wills, a book claiming to be a middle way between Arminianism and Calvinism. Both books have the current forcefulness of 5 point Calvinism in their cross-hairs.
However, as you might expect, Olson is quite concerned that Lemke is mis-defining Arminianism in terms of those edges of Arminianism that do not represent all Arminians. For example, most open theists are Arminian, but it would not be true to say that most Arminians are open theists.
I suppose at this point most of you get a little frustrated with all the labels and fighting over terms. Believe it or not, I really don't care much for these labels on this level either. They are just tools to discuss things, not ends in themselves.
However, as you might expect, Olson is quite concerned that Lemke is mis-defining Arminianism in terms of those edges of Arminianism that do not represent all Arminians. For example, most open theists are Arminian, but it would not be true to say that most Arminians are open theists.
I suppose at this point most of you get a little frustrated with all the labels and fighting over terms. Believe it or not, I really don't care much for these labels on this level either. They are just tools to discuss things, not ends in themselves.
- So I'm Wesleyan, but I don't think Wesley was right on everything.
- I'm Arminian, but all this really means to me is that I believe anyone could in theory be saved.
- I'm Evangelical because the denomination to which I belong signed up, but my tradition really doesn't get worked up about the things most in this post WW2 movement get worked up about (penal substitution, a particular kind of use of the Bible, whether God judges us according to the light we have, a particular kind of social activism).
- I'm Protestant, but through the Anglican-Methodist stream, which doesn't get as worked up as Luther did on a number of issues, can be considered somewhat of a mediating tradition with catholicism, and is often accused of not being solidly Protestant enough.
- I'm Pietist, but at least believe I can articulate a coherent and systematic theology.
So here's to labels... ;-)
OMT: Romans 9:19-29
Previous translations include:
Romans 1:1-7
Romans 1:8-10
Romans 1:11-15
Romans 1:16-17
Romans 5:12-17
Romans 7:13-25
Romans 8:1-8
Romans 9:1-5
Romans 9:6-18
Now Romans 9:19-29:
19 Therefore, you will say to me, "Why is he still finding fault? For who has resisted his plan?" 20 O mortal, yes indeed, who are you, who are passing judgment on God? The thing formed will not say to the one forming it, "Why have you made me this way?" will it? 21 Or does not the potter of the clay have the authority to make from the same lump one thing as a vessel for honor and another for dishonor? 22 And [what] if God, wanting to demonstrate [his] fury and to make known his power, bore with much patience vessels of wrath created for destruction 23 and in order to make known the wealth of his glory on the vessels of mercy that he prepared for glory? 24 who [are] we, whom he also called, not only from Jews but also from Gentiles, 25 as it also says in Hosea, "I will call those who are not my people, 'my people,' and those who have not been beloved, 'beloved'" (Hos. 2:23), 26 "and there will be in place of where it was said to them, 'You are not my people,' there they will be called 'sons of the living God'" (Hos. 1:10).
27 And Isaiah cries out for Israel, "[Even] if the number of the sons of Israel should be as the sand of the sea, the remnant will be saved" (Isa. 10:22-23). 28 "For carrying out and accomplishing [his] word, the Lord will do [it] on the earth" (Isa. 1:9). 29 And as Isaiah has said previously, "If the Lord Sabaoth had not left seed for us, we would have become as Sodom and we would have been like Gomorrah" (Isa. 8:14).
Romans 1:1-7
Romans 1:8-10
Romans 1:11-15
Romans 1:16-17
Romans 5:12-17
Romans 7:13-25
Romans 8:1-8
Romans 9:1-5
Romans 9:6-18
Now Romans 9:19-29:
19 Therefore, you will say to me, "Why is he still finding fault? For who has resisted his plan?" 20 O mortal, yes indeed, who are you, who are passing judgment on God? The thing formed will not say to the one forming it, "Why have you made me this way?" will it? 21 Or does not the potter of the clay have the authority to make from the same lump one thing as a vessel for honor and another for dishonor? 22 And [what] if God, wanting to demonstrate [his] fury and to make known his power, bore with much patience vessels of wrath created for destruction 23 and in order to make known the wealth of his glory on the vessels of mercy that he prepared for glory? 24 who [are] we, whom he also called, not only from Jews but also from Gentiles, 25 as it also says in Hosea, "I will call those who are not my people, 'my people,' and those who have not been beloved, 'beloved'" (Hos. 2:23), 26 "and there will be in place of where it was said to them, 'You are not my people,' there they will be called 'sons of the living God'" (Hos. 1:10).
27 And Isaiah cries out for Israel, "[Even] if the number of the sons of Israel should be as the sand of the sea, the remnant will be saved" (Isa. 10:22-23). 28 "For carrying out and accomplishing [his] word, the Lord will do [it] on the earth" (Isa. 1:9). 29 And as Isaiah has said previously, "If the Lord Sabaoth had not left seed for us, we would have become as Sodom and we would have been like Gomorrah" (Isa. 8:14).
Wednesday, June 08, 2011
Years of Silence?
I have often found that a lot of the "background to the Bible" stories we tell ourselves are gross oversimplifications, even misrepresentations of things. They're like two dimensional flannel graph pictures. Were the Pharisees all legalistic hypocrites? Was Judaism a religion of works righteousness?
One I came across again yesterday was the idea of "years of silence" between Malachi and Jesus. This seems a particularly Protestant story meant to exclude the Apocrypha from the canon. A book I was reading pinned it to Zechariah 13, where it talks about a time when there will be no prophets. But this is a very ambiguous passage indeed. To connect it to the four hundred year period before Jesus seems very dubious indeed.
Yes, there may have been a sense in the post-exilic period that Israel didn't have prophets like in the "good old days" of Isaiah. But I feel the same way--boy, I wish we had stuff going on like when Jesus and Paul were around. So have we been living in a period of silence since the NT was finished? Certainly a lot of Protestants treat the period from the NT to Martin Luther in exactly the same way.
In the end, the idea of a period of silence probably says more about us than it does the people who lived during this period. We don't know about this period. We may not know that a flurry of writing emerged in the 100s BC, books like 1 Enoch that Jude quotes and some of whose stories may stand in the background of 1 Peter. We may not know of the wealth of prophetic type writing that emerged among the Essenes of the first century BC.
Or in hindsight we dismiss this writing as not truly prophetic. Those groups died out. They are certainly not my group. Evangelicals by and large don't accept the dating of Daniel to the mid-160s BC or the late dating of other OT strands. Frankly, not much literature has survived from the Persian or early Greek period of Israel's history. There is a kind of "silence" of surviving literature from 400-200BC.
We don't see it. We don't know it. The Catholics have books from it. So it's the period of silence. It doesn't fit our scheme of what is important.
But there were high priests carrying out the sacrificial cultus of Leviticus throughout this period. They probably observed the temple festivals more than through the entire period of the Kings. Indeed, everything we read in Judges, Samuel, and Kings pushes us to suspect that the Law as we have it was followed much more in these "years of silence" than throughout the pre-exilic period. It just wasn't filled with ideological sects like those that emerged around the time of the Maccabean crisis of the 160s BC.
Bottom line: Yes, we do not have prophetic material in our Bible from around the years 400BC to AD50, and Protestants do not have much if any material in their canon from this period. But to call these years a period of silence seems about as skewed as saying that God hasn't spoken since the last book of the NT was written.
One I came across again yesterday was the idea of "years of silence" between Malachi and Jesus. This seems a particularly Protestant story meant to exclude the Apocrypha from the canon. A book I was reading pinned it to Zechariah 13, where it talks about a time when there will be no prophets. But this is a very ambiguous passage indeed. To connect it to the four hundred year period before Jesus seems very dubious indeed.
Yes, there may have been a sense in the post-exilic period that Israel didn't have prophets like in the "good old days" of Isaiah. But I feel the same way--boy, I wish we had stuff going on like when Jesus and Paul were around. So have we been living in a period of silence since the NT was finished? Certainly a lot of Protestants treat the period from the NT to Martin Luther in exactly the same way.
In the end, the idea of a period of silence probably says more about us than it does the people who lived during this period. We don't know about this period. We may not know that a flurry of writing emerged in the 100s BC, books like 1 Enoch that Jude quotes and some of whose stories may stand in the background of 1 Peter. We may not know of the wealth of prophetic type writing that emerged among the Essenes of the first century BC.
Or in hindsight we dismiss this writing as not truly prophetic. Those groups died out. They are certainly not my group. Evangelicals by and large don't accept the dating of Daniel to the mid-160s BC or the late dating of other OT strands. Frankly, not much literature has survived from the Persian or early Greek period of Israel's history. There is a kind of "silence" of surviving literature from 400-200BC.
We don't see it. We don't know it. The Catholics have books from it. So it's the period of silence. It doesn't fit our scheme of what is important.
But there were high priests carrying out the sacrificial cultus of Leviticus throughout this period. They probably observed the temple festivals more than through the entire period of the Kings. Indeed, everything we read in Judges, Samuel, and Kings pushes us to suspect that the Law as we have it was followed much more in these "years of silence" than throughout the pre-exilic period. It just wasn't filled with ideological sects like those that emerged around the time of the Maccabean crisis of the 160s BC.
Bottom line: Yes, we do not have prophetic material in our Bible from around the years 400BC to AD50, and Protestants do not have much if any material in their canon from this period. But to call these years a period of silence seems about as skewed as saying that God hasn't spoken since the last book of the NT was written.
Tuesday, June 07, 2011
The Crisis of Epistemology
Much of the conflict of ideas relating to religion in America can be depicted as a conflict of epistemologies, namely, of an inductive approach to truth versus a deductive approach. Call it science versus religion. Call it natural versus revealed revelation. Call it open-mindedness versus presuppositionalism. Call it rationalism versus empiricism. Call it "philosophy" versus "theology."
The one approach starts with certain assumptions and proceeds to integrate experience with those assumptions. The other starts with experience and builds general conclusions from there. Of course Kant pointed out that we inevitably use both. We have certain "innate" frameworks through which we filter experience (cause-effect, for example).
So what may seem like obvious choices turn out to be rather muddy in reality. Yes, we all process reality by way of certain presuppositions. But how big should these be? Some presuppositionalists see these as huge macro-systems where if you accept one thing as a presupposition, you must then accept the entire system. This is nothing but lunacy that blows away like a puff of smoke against the smallest stepping out of doors.
Then again, some empiricists pretend like they are completely objective and have no intrinsic biases or starting points. Once again, this is lunacy that evaporates on the smallest peak of light.
In a perfect world, these two would coincide precisely--the general conclusions to which our experiences build would coincide with the general presuppositions from which we start. In life, of course, these often conflict. We get out of our birth zone and find other personalities and other cultures out there. Those who come out of the cave recognize that some of their assumptions were options rather than absolutes and that some of their assumptions were just wrong.
Since presuppositions are only subject to revision--they are assumptions rather than evidentiary in nature, they can be tricky. There is a tendency for various epistemological tribes to treat them as unfalsifiable. This of course means that those who do not share the same assumptions cannot really have a conversation with them. Those who have the assumptions are, in a sense, the "elect" and that is that.
However, at some point the common sense "tests" for truth may become overwhelming. Presuppositions may come into conflict with experience. Presuppositions may shout of incoherence. Presuppositions may fail to "work" in life. For most there will be a breaking point, where epistemological stubbornness yields to a gush of reality.
Let me skip to the end. The two kingdoms of deduction and induction best work together. We need a core set of micro-assumptions to think at all. The micro-assumptions of deduction are logic. The micro-assumptions of induction are a generalized form of the scientific method.
The best epistemological model for the Christian is "faith seeking understanding." In my opinion, faith must in theory be falsifiable or else our claims to be a people of truth are meaningless. To pass muster as claims about truth, faith must be modifiable and subject to critique.
And we must also recognize that easy answers like the church or the Bible are not as easy as you might think on more detailed examination. For example, not only is the interpretation of the Bible subject to significant debate at countless points, but even when we feel relatively certain about its original meaning, we must then determine how God wants us to apply it today in varied contexts. Protestants by historic definition reject any absoluteness to the trajectory of the church.
This is not to say, however, that evidence is absolutely determinative. It can be coherent to have faith despite the appearance of the evidentiary landscape, because all data is subject to interpretation. In that case, however, one should be honest about the lay of the evidence and invoke some degree of blind faith. To be coherent, the invocation of blind faith may require one to modify basic common sense understandings of the world. Few of those who would invoke blind faith in this way can thus be consistent with the way they live the rest of their lives.
Some thoughts I've shared before...
The one approach starts with certain assumptions and proceeds to integrate experience with those assumptions. The other starts with experience and builds general conclusions from there. Of course Kant pointed out that we inevitably use both. We have certain "innate" frameworks through which we filter experience (cause-effect, for example).
So what may seem like obvious choices turn out to be rather muddy in reality. Yes, we all process reality by way of certain presuppositions. But how big should these be? Some presuppositionalists see these as huge macro-systems where if you accept one thing as a presupposition, you must then accept the entire system. This is nothing but lunacy that blows away like a puff of smoke against the smallest stepping out of doors.
Then again, some empiricists pretend like they are completely objective and have no intrinsic biases or starting points. Once again, this is lunacy that evaporates on the smallest peak of light.
In a perfect world, these two would coincide precisely--the general conclusions to which our experiences build would coincide with the general presuppositions from which we start. In life, of course, these often conflict. We get out of our birth zone and find other personalities and other cultures out there. Those who come out of the cave recognize that some of their assumptions were options rather than absolutes and that some of their assumptions were just wrong.
Since presuppositions are only subject to revision--they are assumptions rather than evidentiary in nature, they can be tricky. There is a tendency for various epistemological tribes to treat them as unfalsifiable. This of course means that those who do not share the same assumptions cannot really have a conversation with them. Those who have the assumptions are, in a sense, the "elect" and that is that.
However, at some point the common sense "tests" for truth may become overwhelming. Presuppositions may come into conflict with experience. Presuppositions may shout of incoherence. Presuppositions may fail to "work" in life. For most there will be a breaking point, where epistemological stubbornness yields to a gush of reality.
Let me skip to the end. The two kingdoms of deduction and induction best work together. We need a core set of micro-assumptions to think at all. The micro-assumptions of deduction are logic. The micro-assumptions of induction are a generalized form of the scientific method.
The best epistemological model for the Christian is "faith seeking understanding." In my opinion, faith must in theory be falsifiable or else our claims to be a people of truth are meaningless. To pass muster as claims about truth, faith must be modifiable and subject to critique.
And we must also recognize that easy answers like the church or the Bible are not as easy as you might think on more detailed examination. For example, not only is the interpretation of the Bible subject to significant debate at countless points, but even when we feel relatively certain about its original meaning, we must then determine how God wants us to apply it today in varied contexts. Protestants by historic definition reject any absoluteness to the trajectory of the church.
This is not to say, however, that evidence is absolutely determinative. It can be coherent to have faith despite the appearance of the evidentiary landscape, because all data is subject to interpretation. In that case, however, one should be honest about the lay of the evidence and invoke some degree of blind faith. To be coherent, the invocation of blind faith may require one to modify basic common sense understandings of the world. Few of those who would invoke blind faith in this way can thus be consistent with the way they live the rest of their lives.
Some thoughts I've shared before...
Monday, June 06, 2011
Getting ourselves to change...
I posted this today on the seminary blog.
A few years back one of our MA students did a capstone project on a frustrating phenomenon he was observing. The kids from his youth group were dropping like flies out of church after they graduated from high school. This was true even of some who were going to Christian colleges. What was even more puzzling was the fact that some of them re-emerged in the church after they got married. His project documented the phenomenon and strategized ways to overcome it.
Now I am not a psychologist nor an expert on theories of change or changing like others in the seminary faculty, but I am a philosopher of sorts. Cobbling together various elements from ethics, I would suggest that people are motivated for four basic reasons: 1) basic drives and desires, not least for pleasure, 2) a sense of obligation, 3) perceptions of potential consequences, and 4) the randomness of the human mind.
I suspect that the default approach of so many when it comes to getting people to change is to preach at them. For example, the research the MA student did suggested to me that sex was by far the major reason these youth dropped out of church. The church told them they couldn’t have it. Their basic drives told them they wanted it. Words of obligation don’t stand a chance in this duel. ”You shouldn’t do that.” ”You should do this.”
Of course one of the primary tasks of “raising our children in the way they should go” is instilling a sense of virtue and vice in them–which impacts their long term sense of obligation. Rarely can a reasoned approach to right and wrong compete with the values instilled in a child growing up–values more “caught” than “taught.” But even such values face hard competition against the primal drives toward pleasure of all kinds–the pleasure of power, the pleasure of sex, the pleasure of wealth.
Potential consequences can deter certain courses of action. We have police and courts to keep us from killing each other when it would be in our own advantage. Another way of saying that we have a sinful nature is to say that most humans are by nature more selfish than they are loving. When my pursuit of pleasure beyond my needs creates displeasure beyond normal for you, most of us are prone to go for pleasure unless there are significantly negative potential consequences.
However, many if not most of us do not follow our heads in these sorts of decisions. Another way of saying we have a sinful nature is to say that we are prone to choose “the pleasures of sin for a short time” over and against what we know is a better course of action. Nevertheless, it would seem likely that most of what God asks of us he asks because he loves us and thus shapes our lives in relation to the potential consequences both for ourselves and others. If a person has not inherited a sense of duty from their childhood, clarifying the consequences of our actions is a more powerful motivation than simply telling us something is wrong.
But in the end, it is “out of the heart” that decisions come, from our most basic drives and desires. Different Christian traditions have conceptualized the situation of the heart differently. Certainly we will always have drives for sex and to excel. When the Wesleyan tradition used to speak of “eradicating” the sinful nature, some probably lost sight of what we are actually talking about here, namely, the fact that the desires of our bodies can be directed at both appropriate and inappropriate targets. We will have these drives as long as we have bodies and so we will never move beyond temptation or the potential for our desires to target the wrong thing.
But at the same time, many other Christian traditions underestimate the power of the Holy Spirit to give us greater desires for the good than our basal desires when they target the wrong things. Many Christians also underestimate the power of developing habits of virtue, grooves in our wills that make it more easy to do the good than to do the bad. Changing our hearts is ultimately a matter for God, but there are time-proven ways to help change our desires in the spirit of “I want to change, Lord. Help my inability to change.”
First, we must get a clear sense of what God desires. If we are uncertain about what God wants us to do in a certain area, then our basal desires will win easily over the good. Clarity of God’s will comes from the community of faith reflecting on Scripture in the light of the wisdom of the Christians of the centuries in dialog with our current context and the potential consequences of our actions.
But once we have a clear sense of God’s will, we can cooperate with the Holy Spirit in forming our desires. We create habits of virtue in the context of Christian community. Habits of virtue are when we practice making the right choices. We start little and we build to the big. Habits require repetition, so we practice making the right choices daily in our greatest areas of need.
And we form these habits in Christian community. Most important is the accountability of the Holy Spirit. We must build the habit of the Spirit’s presence in every moment of our lives. We must not allow our minds to think that the Holy Spirit is not present with us at every moment of every day. How much less are we to make the wrong decision if we have taken the Holy Spirit with us into the room where we are making the decision. ”Practicing the presence of God” surely will make it harder for us to make the wrong choice than if our mother or father–or someone we strongly would not want to disappoint–were standing in the room with us.
Then there is the accountability of the Christian community. If we are with others who are holding us accountable–as we are holding them accountable–then we are less likely to make the wrong choice. They will sense that we are not as open next week as we were the week before. They will know that we have not followed through on our professed love of God, and we will not want to confess a failure.
Ultimately, we cannot change others. So many of us think we can, but if someone does not want to change, they will not change. Unfortunately, most of us are lost even at the thought of changing ourselves. As Christians, we believe this is a task only the Holy Spirit can pull off. But God’s strength is made complete in our weakness, and we need not live a life of constant defeat. We can do the good we want to do–which is the real point Romans 7 builds toward in Romans 8.
A few years back one of our MA students did a capstone project on a frustrating phenomenon he was observing. The kids from his youth group were dropping like flies out of church after they graduated from high school. This was true even of some who were going to Christian colleges. What was even more puzzling was the fact that some of them re-emerged in the church after they got married. His project documented the phenomenon and strategized ways to overcome it.
Now I am not a psychologist nor an expert on theories of change or changing like others in the seminary faculty, but I am a philosopher of sorts. Cobbling together various elements from ethics, I would suggest that people are motivated for four basic reasons: 1) basic drives and desires, not least for pleasure, 2) a sense of obligation, 3) perceptions of potential consequences, and 4) the randomness of the human mind.
I suspect that the default approach of so many when it comes to getting people to change is to preach at them. For example, the research the MA student did suggested to me that sex was by far the major reason these youth dropped out of church. The church told them they couldn’t have it. Their basic drives told them they wanted it. Words of obligation don’t stand a chance in this duel. ”You shouldn’t do that.” ”You should do this.”
Of course one of the primary tasks of “raising our children in the way they should go” is instilling a sense of virtue and vice in them–which impacts their long term sense of obligation. Rarely can a reasoned approach to right and wrong compete with the values instilled in a child growing up–values more “caught” than “taught.” But even such values face hard competition against the primal drives toward pleasure of all kinds–the pleasure of power, the pleasure of sex, the pleasure of wealth.
Potential consequences can deter certain courses of action. We have police and courts to keep us from killing each other when it would be in our own advantage. Another way of saying that we have a sinful nature is to say that most humans are by nature more selfish than they are loving. When my pursuit of pleasure beyond my needs creates displeasure beyond normal for you, most of us are prone to go for pleasure unless there are significantly negative potential consequences.
However, many if not most of us do not follow our heads in these sorts of decisions. Another way of saying we have a sinful nature is to say that we are prone to choose “the pleasures of sin for a short time” over and against what we know is a better course of action. Nevertheless, it would seem likely that most of what God asks of us he asks because he loves us and thus shapes our lives in relation to the potential consequences both for ourselves and others. If a person has not inherited a sense of duty from their childhood, clarifying the consequences of our actions is a more powerful motivation than simply telling us something is wrong.
But in the end, it is “out of the heart” that decisions come, from our most basic drives and desires. Different Christian traditions have conceptualized the situation of the heart differently. Certainly we will always have drives for sex and to excel. When the Wesleyan tradition used to speak of “eradicating” the sinful nature, some probably lost sight of what we are actually talking about here, namely, the fact that the desires of our bodies can be directed at both appropriate and inappropriate targets. We will have these drives as long as we have bodies and so we will never move beyond temptation or the potential for our desires to target the wrong thing.
But at the same time, many other Christian traditions underestimate the power of the Holy Spirit to give us greater desires for the good than our basal desires when they target the wrong things. Many Christians also underestimate the power of developing habits of virtue, grooves in our wills that make it more easy to do the good than to do the bad. Changing our hearts is ultimately a matter for God, but there are time-proven ways to help change our desires in the spirit of “I want to change, Lord. Help my inability to change.”
First, we must get a clear sense of what God desires. If we are uncertain about what God wants us to do in a certain area, then our basal desires will win easily over the good. Clarity of God’s will comes from the community of faith reflecting on Scripture in the light of the wisdom of the Christians of the centuries in dialog with our current context and the potential consequences of our actions.
But once we have a clear sense of God’s will, we can cooperate with the Holy Spirit in forming our desires. We create habits of virtue in the context of Christian community. Habits of virtue are when we practice making the right choices. We start little and we build to the big. Habits require repetition, so we practice making the right choices daily in our greatest areas of need.
And we form these habits in Christian community. Most important is the accountability of the Holy Spirit. We must build the habit of the Spirit’s presence in every moment of our lives. We must not allow our minds to think that the Holy Spirit is not present with us at every moment of every day. How much less are we to make the wrong decision if we have taken the Holy Spirit with us into the room where we are making the decision. ”Practicing the presence of God” surely will make it harder for us to make the wrong choice than if our mother or father–or someone we strongly would not want to disappoint–were standing in the room with us.
Then there is the accountability of the Christian community. If we are with others who are holding us accountable–as we are holding them accountable–then we are less likely to make the wrong choice. They will sense that we are not as open next week as we were the week before. They will know that we have not followed through on our professed love of God, and we will not want to confess a failure.
Ultimately, we cannot change others. So many of us think we can, but if someone does not want to change, they will not change. Unfortunately, most of us are lost even at the thought of changing ourselves. As Christians, we believe this is a task only the Holy Spirit can pull off. But God’s strength is made complete in our weakness, and we need not live a life of constant defeat. We can do the good we want to do–which is the real point Romans 7 builds toward in Romans 8.
Saturday, June 04, 2011
A Taste of Hebrew for Ministry
We're in the middle of the first week of "Hebrew for Ministry," a summer course at Wesley Seminary. We alternate summers, Greek for Ministry, Hebrew for Ministry and so forth. The goal is to be able to use the tools without having memorized all the forms.
Anyway, here's a 10ish minute taste of the first week: Transliterating the Shema
Anyway, here's a 10ish minute taste of the first week: Transliterating the Shema
Friday, June 03, 2011
Who are you listening to?
I was reminded last night how much there is right now to listen to and how formative your "source" is. Someone showed me some prophecy literature with a strong KJV only tendency talking about how heretical the NIV2011 is. Whaaaaat?
But it could be that you're doing a web search on sabbath... what perspective are you going to get from the overwhelming number of sites? The Seventh Day Adventist perspective. Why? Because they're the ones most interested in the topic.
Do you listen to Rachel Madow on msnbc or Rush Limbaugh? What email lists are you on? Do you read blogs by Ken Schenck.
What's the solution to the way this feast of information threatens to entrench existing tribalisms? I suppose education in everything--let's all go get doctorates in every field of knowledge. Or, since that won't do, we have to develop a "hermeneutics of suspicion"--question everything and develop massive critical thinking skills. We develop a tentativity about new info, especially in areas where we're not experts.
But it could be that you're doing a web search on sabbath... what perspective are you going to get from the overwhelming number of sites? The Seventh Day Adventist perspective. Why? Because they're the ones most interested in the topic.
Do you listen to Rachel Madow on msnbc or Rush Limbaugh? What email lists are you on? Do you read blogs by Ken Schenck.
What's the solution to the way this feast of information threatens to entrench existing tribalisms? I suppose education in everything--let's all go get doctorates in every field of knowledge. Or, since that won't do, we have to develop a "hermeneutics of suspicion"--question everything and develop massive critical thinking skills. We develop a tentativity about new info, especially in areas where we're not experts.
Thursday, June 02, 2011
Suffering and Sovereignty 1
I'm trying to skim a book this week as part of a potential writing project on the side this summer. The book is Suffering and the Sovereignty of God, an edited collection with John Piper and Justin Taylor as authors. Today I skimmed the first chapter by John Piper himself: "Suffering and the Sovereignty of God: Ten Aspects of God's Sovereignty Over Suffering and Satan's Hand in It."
I agree theologically with almost everything Piper says in this chapter--it's more his understanding behind what he says that I disagree with. Here are his ten points in my words:
1. Satan's rule over the world is delegated.
2. God is sovereign over Satan's angels and demons.
3. God is sovereign over Satan's hand in persecution.
4. God is sovereign over Satan's taking of life.
5. God is sovereign over Satan's hand in natural disasters.
6. God is sovereign over Satan causing sickness.
7. God is sovereign over Satan's use of animals and plants.
8. God is sovereign over Satan's causing of temptation.
9. God is sovereign over Satan's ability to blind our understanding.
10. God is sovereign over the spiritual bondage Satan causes.
So I agree theologically with these comments, as well as with Piper's opening gambit: "God himself is the supreme value" (17).
Where do I disagree? I disagree with what stands behind this comment: "In the academic classroom and in the apologetics discussion, the agency of Satan in our suffering may lift a little the burden of God's sovereignty for some; but for others... there is more security and more relief and more hope and more support and more glorious truth in... looking... to Go for the cause..." (23).
In other words, God is telling Satan what to do. On the contrary, I believe that if this is the case, then Christianity becomes incoherent. No meaningful understanding of God as love is compatible with him directly ordering Satan to do all the things above. Only if God has given authority to creation to do less than his perfect will can the concept of God as love be coherent.
This comment brings me to a second disagreement with Piper. Piper insinuates that intentional agency is involved with everything that happens, both in terms of moral agents like Satan and humans and in terms of plants, animals and the creation. He thus has no room in his worldview for a creation that operates according to certain "laws" that generate events of pain and suffering apart from someone's will--in his case Satan.
I contend, by contrast, that Satan himself may or may not be directly responsible for all the pain and suffering that happens in the world.
I agree theologically with almost everything Piper says in this chapter--it's more his understanding behind what he says that I disagree with. Here are his ten points in my words:
1. Satan's rule over the world is delegated.
2. God is sovereign over Satan's angels and demons.
3. God is sovereign over Satan's hand in persecution.
4. God is sovereign over Satan's taking of life.
5. God is sovereign over Satan's hand in natural disasters.
6. God is sovereign over Satan causing sickness.
7. God is sovereign over Satan's use of animals and plants.
8. God is sovereign over Satan's causing of temptation.
9. God is sovereign over Satan's ability to blind our understanding.
10. God is sovereign over the spiritual bondage Satan causes.
So I agree theologically with these comments, as well as with Piper's opening gambit: "God himself is the supreme value" (17).
Where do I disagree? I disagree with what stands behind this comment: "In the academic classroom and in the apologetics discussion, the agency of Satan in our suffering may lift a little the burden of God's sovereignty for some; but for others... there is more security and more relief and more hope and more support and more glorious truth in... looking... to Go for the cause..." (23).
In other words, God is telling Satan what to do. On the contrary, I believe that if this is the case, then Christianity becomes incoherent. No meaningful understanding of God as love is compatible with him directly ordering Satan to do all the things above. Only if God has given authority to creation to do less than his perfect will can the concept of God as love be coherent.
This comment brings me to a second disagreement with Piper. Piper insinuates that intentional agency is involved with everything that happens, both in terms of moral agents like Satan and humans and in terms of plants, animals and the creation. He thus has no room in his worldview for a creation that operates according to certain "laws" that generate events of pain and suffering apart from someone's will--in his case Satan.
I contend, by contrast, that Satan himself may or may not be directly responsible for all the pain and suffering that happens in the world.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
