Thanks to God

A quick entry before grading...

I had a pretty good week. I was in Philadelphia for the annual Society of Biblical Literature convention. I guess about 10,000 folk including the American Academy of Religion. I gave two presentations for the newly constituted Hebrews Consultation, which was delightful.

SBL (as we call it) is always a little discouraging to me and yet it usually drives me to write something or another. For all my writing, I haven't published too much yet on the doctoral level. This crowd doesn't talk for the lower shelf. One suggestion I gave to the Hebrews steering committee aimed at holding attention met with puzzled looks in deference to a full half hour of reading where a person could develop the full flow of their thought. I suggested we break the half hour of the three presenters into three ten minute segments where the contrasting methods could be seen side by side on each particular aspect. Perhaps they were right not to do this.

In another conversation in which I mentioned the benefits of humor in the classroom, another professor suggested that humor didn't go as far on the graduate level. All of these things are probably true.

So as always, I come back thinking, what book shall I write, what proposals should I make. I already had some ideas :) But I do not currently have any hard core contracts.

On the other hand, my Philo book sold really well at the convention exhibit hall. And I had greater name recognition this year than ever. I know it doesn't mean anything really, but the politics of knowledge make you seem more important when you're sitting next to someone who teaches at Yale and who's written a classic commentary on Hebrews.

It's always possible that one year I'll come back and chuck it all. I'm certainly pretty tired.

But not this year...

Thanks to God for all His blessings this year!

A Peek at Projects to Come...

If you want to take a peek at one of my projects for Thanksgiving break, check out www.kenschenck.com...

A Confession Using the 10 Commandments

I was pretty happy with the following opening confessional that we're using today in the Cathedral Service.

Preparation for Worship
Opening Sentence (sitting)
Let the words of our mouths and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer.

A Decalogue Confession (kneeling)
Officiant: God said these words: I am the LORD your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You will have no other gods but me.
All: Lord, have mercy on us. Incline our hearts to love you with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength.

Officiant: You will not make for yourselves any graven image, not the likeness of anything in heaven above or in earth beneath, or in the water under the earth. You will not bow down to them nor worship them.
All: Lord, have mercy on us. Incline our hearts to keep away from idols of our making.

Officiant: You will not take the Name of the LORD your God in vain.
All: Lord, have mercy on us. Incline our hearts to where our yes is yes and our no is no. Then we need not swear at all.

Officiant: Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.
All: Lord, have mercy on us. Incline our hearts that everything we do we do with faith, nothing doubting.

Officiant: Honor your father and your mother.
All: Lord, have mercy on us. Incline our hearts to thanksgiving for all that has been given to us.

Officiant: You will not murder.
All: Lord, have mercy on us. Incline our hearts to love our neighbor as ourselves and neither to think or speak that which is hate.

Officiant: You will not commit adultery.
All: Lord, have mercy on us. Incline our thoughts and actions to faithfulness to that which is our one flesh.

Officiant: You will not steal.
All: Lord, have mercy on us. Incline our hearts to be thankful for all you have given us.

Officiant: You will not bear false witness against your neighbor.
All: Lord, have mercy on us. Incline our hearts to truth and deliver us from the temptation to speak falsely to our advantage and the disadvantage of others.

Officiant: You will not covet.
All: Lord, have mercy on us. Incline our hearts to be content in whatever circumstances we may find ourselves.

Officiant: Lord, have mercy on us.
People: Christ, have mercy on us.
Officiant: Lord, have mercy on us.

Affirmation of Forgiveness
Officiant: The Almighty and merciful Lord grant you forgiveness and remission of all your sins, true repentance, amendment of life, and the grace and consolation of his Holy Spirit.
All: Amen

Bush's Approval Ratings 36%, 50% say dishonest

I thought I would finally make a quick comment on Bush's recent drop in polls.

First of all, I'm afraid I don't think much of these polls because I don't think much of the sense of the American people. I'm sure I'm one of them, but the American people seem so fickle and generally manipulable. My opinion of Bush has remained the same for ages, as you may know. I think he's been in over his head forever, misguided, not too bright, and himself manipulable by those around him (hmmm, Cheney, for example). I have not yet conceded that he's dirty or a liar. I tend to think of him more as a well intentioned incompetent.

So these polls may swing back to overwhelming popularity tomorrow, for all we know. My fleeting satisfaction is that for some mysterious reason unbeknowst to me, the masses have suddenly stopped responding to the monotonous "We're in a war against terrorism" line that Bush has used as an umbrella to connect unconnected things and to justify unrelated actions.

So Bush now has a strange befuddled look on his face. "What's wrong?" he keeps asking Laura at night. "Every other time something bad happened and I said something about us being in a war against terrorism, I went back up in the polls, even if it had nothing to do with terrorism."

Oh by the way, I never did post when Bush tried this with Katrina--it was absolutely amazing. Bush said something like, "Katrina did a lot of damage here. We Americans look at this damage and think, what a horrible thing. The terrorists would look at this damage and wish they had caused it. We are in a war against terror." Absolutely unbelievable!!!!

I actually felt a little sorry for Bush after Katrina because he couldn't blame it on terrorism--the above was his best shot to link the two. I thought to myself, "I bet the reason he didn't know what to do about Katrina was that he couldn't figure out who he should bomb in retailiation!" He's not any good at construction, only at attacking and making laws to outlaw what he thinks is wrong.

So now Bush says to Laura, "I'm saying the magic words Karl taught me, but they aren't working any more."

"Don't worry honey, go to sleep. It's too late now. The history's already been written and the Democrats will take over both houses next November and this one in three years with a vengeance. Thanks to you, in three years liberals will have as much power to do what they want as we conservatives had two years ago."

I say that as a matter of prophecy, not as a matter of wish. I'd be delighted for anyone who's both well intentioned and intelligent to be elected, Republican or Democrat. But for some reason, it seems you have to be extreme on either end of the scale to get anywhere with these parties these days. I wish I could start my own. Schenck for president (I do currently have a beard).

Fireside Romans Chats: Romans 3:21-31

These are some of the thickest and most difficult verses to interpret in the New Testament!

Paul has ended Romans 3:20 with an allusion to Psalm 143:2, which is in the psalm I just posted. If you look at the LXX translation in my last entry, God's righteousness features in it. While "David" recognizes that he does not merit God's "justification" or acquittal, he recognizes that it is in the nature of God's righteousness to rescue and have mercy on His servants. Richard Hays notes in Echoes that while the point of the Paul's quote from the psalm (in Rom. 3:20) is to highlight the fact that no one stands excused before God, the echoes of the psalm from which it comes carry overtones of God's mercy in the midst of helplessness. Neat!

So when Romans 3:21 commences with another reference to the righteousness of God, it almost certainly must refer to God's righteousness, because that is what the psalm is talking about and, as Kasemann argued, this is a phrase with a history--Jews would recognize the phrase as a reference to God's propensity both to be just and to save His people (of course I think the audience of Romans is predominantly "conservative" Gentiles). The law only brings a knowledge of sin (3:20), but it does nothing to justify us before God. If we could be perfect doers of the law (2:13), that would be a basis for justification, but no one is (3:19).

So now, apart from the Law, God's righteousness has become apparent (3:21a).
So the NIV is almost certainly wrong to translate this verse in reference to a righteousness we get from God. It is of course possible Paul has a double meaning in mind here--the mention of justification or being declared righteous in 3:20 makes this double meaning a possibility. It's not that this is bad theology, just that it doesn't seem to be what Paul had primarily in mind.

Even though the way in which this righteousness has become apparent is "apart from law," it is "witnessed by the Law and the Prophets," that is, the Scriptures. How has this righteousness been made apparent? It is the righteousness of God through the faith of Jesus Christ to all those who have faith (3:22).

Hays (Faith, "Pistis and Pauline Theology: What is at Stake?") has of course long argued that this verse is redundant if it is translated as most versions: "through faith [pistis] in Jesus Christ to all those who have faith [=pisteuo, usually translated "believe" here]." After over a decade of wrestling with this verse, I have conceded to Hays (Dunn is the principal counter to this reading). I have decided on this interpretation for three main reasons:

1. The flow between God's righteousness and Christ's faith is smoother than a flow between God's righteousness and our faith would be.

2. We find a similar train of thought in Romans 5:19: "Just as through the disobedience of one human many were confirmed as sinners, so also through the obedience of the one human many will be confirmed as righteous [dikaios, "innocent"]. Similarly, we find the glide from God's love to Christ's act in Romans 5:8: "God demonstrates His love for us because while we were still sinners, Christ died on our behalf."

3. In my opinion, the train of thought of 2 Corinthians 4:13 works best if Paul interprets Psalm 116:10 in terms of Jesus' faith that God would raise him from the dead. While this verse seems to refer to faith as trust rather than faith as obedience, and thus is slightly different from here (an issue I need to address), it demonstrates to me that Paul could think of Jesus as having faith.

So God has demonstrated His righteousness through Jesus' obedient act of faith in death (cf. Phil. 2:8).

Romans 3:23-24 thus repeats the same train of thought we have already seen in this chapter:

Compare:
1. Romans 3:22b:
All have sinned and lack the glory God intended them according to Psalm 8. There is no distinction

Romans 3:9
We charged all under sin

2. Romans 3:24a
And are justified freely by His grace

Romans 3:21
Now righteousness of God is revealed

3. Romans 3:24b
through the redemption in Christ Jesus

Romans 3:22
through the faith of Jesus Christ

This redemption through Christ Jesus has occured through his sacrifice, a sacrifice offered by God: "whom God offered as an atoning sacrifice, through [Christ's?] faith, by means of his blood" (3:25).

Most scholars believe that Paul here has incorporated a traditional, creedal type statement that existed before he wrote this letter. This idea makes sense because of the obvious shift in the "his" in reference to Christ in 3:25 followed by a "his"six words later that clearly refers to God: "to demonstrate His righteousness after he passed over sins that had previously taken place in God's forbearance" (3:26). A good writer would not shift the referent of the pronoun in such a small space without clear warning.

I suspect that the original statement was "God offered him as an atoning sacrifice by means of his blood." The "through faith" statement interupts the flow of the verse and thus is more likely to come from Paul than from the "creed." In terms of whose faith is in mind, a reference to Christ's faith fits the chain of "his-es" better and the context as I've presented it. So I'll go with a reference to Christ's faith here. On the other hand, if Romans 1:16 means "from God's faith to our faith," then it is possible that Paul means that God offered Jesus "through [His] faith" (cf. 3:3). In either case, a reference to our faith in this verse seems least likely.

The sins that God had passed over previously are either the sins of Israel, the sins of the Gentiles, or both. Given the "there is no distinction" comment in 3:22, perhaps it is most likely that Paul has the sins of "all" in mind again (cf. 1:18).

It seems important to Paul to "justify" God's delay in judging the sins of the world: to demonstrate His righteousness [dikaiosune] at this present time so that he is just [dikaios] and justifier [dikaioo] of the person 'from faith of Jesus' (3:26). God is showing through Jesus that He is just--He does in fact judge sin, and Jesus as a sacrifice assuaged His wrath (some debate here, Joel Green would disagree). And he justifies the person "from the faith of Jesus."

The idea of a person "from the faith of Jesus" is much debated. Does Paul mean "a person justified from faith in Jesus" or a person justified because they have faith like Jesus. Hays would say something like "from the faithful death of Jesus." The phrase "from faith" is a formula for Paul he uses over and over again and it comes ultimately from Habakkuk 2:4: "the righteous person on the basis of faith will live." So whatever the phrase "from faith" (ek pisteos) means, its meaning runs throughout Paul's use of the phrase in Galatians and Romans.

If I have identified the train of thought thus far correctly, then a reference to the faith of Jesus would be most appropriate in terms of this particular context. Hays and others indeed consider the matter beyond question because of the parallel statement in Romans 4:16, "to the one from the faith of Abraham." Similar structure to that statement there and clearly in reference to Abraham's faith. The use of Jesus in the phrase "the faith of Jesus" rather than Christ may also push us toward seeing a reference to Jesus' faith. However, for reasons I will mention later, I wonder if Paul has a double meaning in mind here, faith in Christ and the faith of Christ.

What does it mean, then, to be justified because a person is justified "from the faith of Jesus"? Part of the equation is believing in the efficacy of the atoning death of Jesus (Rom. 3:22, 24-25). But when we read it as a reference to Jesus' faith, it is less about our believing in Jesus as it is about what Jesus did objectively. In other words, God has done it; we just need to sign on. Probably there are overtones of Paul's theology of being incorporated "in Christ." Perhaps there are overtones of trusting in God like Jesus. The phase seems highly ambiguous in itself, and we wonder if Paul left it in this way because all the different nuances are part of the equation.

The text here leaves us hanging on some of these questions. We will have to take them up as we go further. My sense is that Paul is thinking something like the following, and I think this line of thought fits with his Jewish background:

1. No one can earn justification before God (see Psalm 143:2).

2. But God is righteous. He punishes sin but He also finds ways to save His people because of His mercy.

3. The way a person appropriates this mercy is by faith or trust in God (see Romans 4, the next chapter).

4. In this present time, indeed, as the climax of history, God's way of showing mercy is through Jesus Christ, who himself as a human demonstrated faith. In other words, Jesus' death has eschatological significance and is not just one among many demonstrations of God's righteousness. Here is where Paul's fellow Jew might differ with Paul.

Once we have reached 3:27, we can relax our exegetical muscles considerably.

3:27: Where then is boasting? It has been excluded. By what rule [nomos]? The rule of works? No, but the rule of faith [nomos].

Since it is all a matter of God's righteousness and mercy, there is no room for boasting. It is all God's mercy. By the way, Paul uses the word "law" in a funny way in this verse. It's a bad joke to play on us word study people, because he seems just to be lightheartedly using the word in a tongue and cheek kind of way that might make him smile, but not us in IBS class.

3:28: For we reckon that a person is justified by faith apart from works of law.
This is the general principle. It is faith (in God) that has always led to justification. Performing the law never in itself made a person right with God. Put in this way, I think any Jew would have agreed with Paul.

3:29-30: Or is God over the Jews alone? No, He is also over the Gentiles, since God is one, who will justify the circumcision on the basis of faith and the uncircumcision through faith.

Since God is one, Paul argues (alluding to the Shema of Deuteronomy 6:4), He must be God of the Jews as well as the non-Jews, Paul argues. So presumably the faith that justifies the Jew must also justify the Gentiles. This statement is akin to Romans 2:14-16 and 2:26. The crucial factor is that faith in God now has a very important content: the atoning death of Jesus. Faith in God now involves faith in what God has done through Christ. The Jew is thus justified on the basis of faith even though that Jew keeps the law. The Gentile comes to God through faith even though they are not under the law.

3:31: Therefore, do we cancel law through faith? God forbid! But we establish law. It is possible to read the train of thought thus far and see no contradiction in this comment. In the line of interpretation we have made thus far, Paul's point has only been that the law does not justify anyone. He has not discarded the law for Jews in any comment he has made. He has simply argued that justification only comes through faith in God.

But taking into account only what Paul has said so far, we might still think that faith in God required law keeping for a Jew--not that such law-keeping in itself justified you before God, but that it was a part of showing genuine faith in God. It seems to me, however, in the light of other passages in Romans and elsewhere, that Paul does not believe Christians to be "under the law" in the same way they used to be, whether they be Jew or Gentile (e.g., Rom. 7:1-6 and 1 Cor. 9:19-23).

On the whole, it seems most likely to me that Paul is refering to the "righteous requirements of the law" in this comment, mentioned in 2:26 and 8:4, perhaps roughly equivalent to what Paul calls "Christ's law" in 1 Corinthians 9:21.

Canonical Version: Psalm 143 (142 LXX)

I wanted to translate this psalm from the Septuagint in conjunction with the interpretation of Romans and Galatians. I've highlighted lines of particular interest.

Psalm 142 LXX
A Psalm of David (when his son pursued him)

Lord, hear my prayer,
Hearken to my petition in your truth. [cf. Rom. 3:7]
Listen to me in your righteousness [cf. Rom. 3:21; 1:16]
And do not enter into judgment with your servant,
For nothing living will be justified before you [cf. Rom. 3:20; Gal. 2:16]

For my enemy has sought my life [psyche];
He has brought my life [zoe] low to the ground.
He has seated me in dark places as the dead of the ages.
And my spirit has lost courage over me,
My heart has become disturbed in me.

I remembered the ancient days
And I mediated on all your works,
Meditating on the deeds of your hands.
I spread out my hands to you,
My life as parched earth to you.

Hear me quickly, Lord,
My spirit has left.
Do not turn your face from me,
Or I will be like those who go down into the pit [lakkos]
Let me hear your mercy in the morning,
For I have hoped in you.
Make known to me, Lord, the way in which I will go,
Because I have lifted my life to you.
Deliver me from my enemies, Lord,
Because I have fled to you.

Teach me to do your will, because you are my God.
Your good spirit leads me on level ground.
Because of your name, Lord, you will make me live,
In your righteousness you will lead my life out of trouble.
And in your mercy you will devastate my enemies
And you will destroy all those who are troubling my life,
Because I am your servant.

Schenck Wednesday Great Ideas Lunch

I am planning to read something of classic literature Wednesdays at lunch in the IWU cafeteria. Anyone who can join me is welcome. My goal is to get around to reading all the things I've never gotten around to reading.

For my inaugural lunch, I'm planning on reading Plato's Timaeus, his most in depth cosmological work. You can find the text at the following links:

English: http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/timaeus.html

Greek: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0179:text=Tim.:section=17a

Next Wednesday I plan to read Philostratus' Life of Apolonias of Tyana, a famous miracle worker sometimes said to bear some similar characteristics to Jesus.

Fireside Romans Chats: Romans 3:1-20

3:1-20
The first twenty verses of Romans 3 end the preceding section. In Romans 2 Paul has argued that circumcision does not benefit a person in relation to justification before God unless a person practice [the] Law (2:25). On the other hand, if an uncircumcised person should watch the righteous requirements of the Law, that person may just as well be considered circumcised.

But this argument raises the question of what benefit there is then to being a Jew at all (3:1). Paul addresses this question in 3:1-8). [By the way, notice how Paul's style typically presents a point and then addresses questions that arise from that point.] If justification before God is simply a matter of the "righteous requirements of the Law," whatever that might be, then what benefit is there to circumcision at all?

Well, there is the honor of being those to whom God has entrusted the oracles of God (3:2). And if some were unfaithful, that doesn't negate God's faith with Israel (3:3).

Here Paul makes an important point for him. Some have accused him of teaching that we should do evil things so that good things will come (3:8). Paul is not arguing for sin--violation of the righteous requirements of the law. God's wrath is revealed against the ungodliness of humanity (1:18). And his arguments do not make void [the] law because justification is on the basis of faith (3:31).

The beginning of 3:9 has spawned much discussion. Should it be translated, "What then? Are we better off? Not at all"? Should it be, "What then? Are we worse off? Not at all"? Should it be translated, "What then should we plead in defense?" (Dahl, Dunn, Gaston)? Dunn then seems to take "Not at all" as an interpolation that was not in the original text. There is textual variance for this verse, but there are no readings that have this option, so this suggestion seems shaky from an evidentiary perspective.

The reading that makes best sense of the flow to me is the way it is usually rendered, "What then? Are we [Jews] better off? Not all all." Dunn suggests that Greek literature doesn't translate the word "to be better off" this way. I haven't pursued the matter to know if he's right on this idea. So barring further study, I'll go with this translation generally used in most English versions.

But then from a Jewish perspective, Paul's argument could be a little strange in the rest of 3:9. If he is saying that Jews are not okay with God because of their overall (with room for some failure) faithfulness to the covenant on the basis of God's grace, then he is departing radically from previous Jewish perspective and indeed, from the Old Testament. Perhaps he is saying more generally that justification involves God's grace for anyone, whether you are a Jew or not. Jews would have agreed with this idea.

No one is off the hook just for being a Jew. Both Jew and Greek are "under sin" (3:9). "Not even one person is righteous" (3:10). The law "stops the mouth" of all, so that all are under the judgment of God (3:19). The Law simply gives all a knowledge of sin but does not provide for justification before God. On the basis of "works of law," (3:20), no flesh will be justified before God (3:20). All have sinned, and as a result, no human has the glory God intended humanity to have in the creation (3:23; cf. Psalm 8).

This passage gives rise to several questions. For example, none of the verses that Paul cites here (with the possible exception of Ecclesiastes 7:20) refer to all humans or even all Jews. It is a pastiche of quotes from Psalms 14:1-3; 5:9; 140:3; 10:7; 36:1; and Isaiah 59:7-8, all of which refer to groups of wicked individuals rather than all humanity. I suspect Paul is again very generally presenting the sense that sin and wickedness is a universal phenomenon that is not just limited to non-Jews.

Another question arises in relation to what Paul means by "works of law" in Romans 3:20? He is quoting Psalm 143:2, but has added these words [by the way, anyone who has problems with dynamic equivalence translations has to give it up in the face of how drastically Paul and other NT authors rework the OT]. That question will have to wait until the next chat on Romans 3:21-31, one of the thickest and most argued over part of the New Testament.

Jimmy Carter's New Book

I'm at home in a situation not conducive to work, so I thought I would float some thoughts that don't require my brain to work too hard.

Jimmy Carter has a new book out. I can't remember what it's called, but it sounds interesting. Carter was on Larry King and (I think) Hardball, and I caught a few lines as I drifted into Netherland.

The main thought I had was that I like this man. I don't agree with everything he thinks, but I agreed with most of what he said. I don't know how effective a president he made, but I wonder if he is the most Christ-like president we've ever had. Almost everything he said, he said in relation to his faith, and questioning his honesty seems about as silly as questioning Mr. Rodger's honesty (in fact, I wonder if he really is Mr. Rodgers).

For example, I am far more sympathetic to the death penalty than Carter is, but he put it this way: "I can't see Jesus being in favor of the death penalty." In other words, he formulated his arguments by way of WWJD.

He does think formal religion and politics should be completely separate, using the old "Render to Caesar" argument. I largely but not totally agree with him on that. I don't think it's a straight separation of church and state. But he clearly believes that there is a place for morality in law. And I agree with him that the more specifically religion gets involved in the state, the more likely the situation is to go sour.

He believed that late term abortions should be outlawed and that there were many ways even with R v W to diminish abortions drastically. He mentioned how much lower abortions were proportionately under his administration than today because his administration addressed the reason 2/3 of women have abortions--the inability to support another child. I could be wrong, but I've heard that there have been far more abortions during the current Bush's tenure than there were under Clinton.

On the whole, the word "character" was what kept coming to mind. This man has character, even if you disagree with him. The second word that came to mind was "intelligence." Here is a man whose degree was in nuclear physics. Again, I may not agree with him on every subject, but somehow the current Bush seems rather small next to him in every category.

But I do want to commend the current Bush on his recent initiative to stockpile flu vaccine. He's getting some flack on the money part, but I think it's something that needs to be done. The same people who are criticizing for this particular expenditure were roasting him a couple weeks ago for not planning ahead enough on the same subject. And you can be sure that those who are criticizing him now for getting it would have absolutely fried him if he hadn't and a pandemic had arisen.

I think this expenditure is a good expenditure. The problem I find with Bush's spending habits is the money we've spent in Iraq that we shouldn't have spent. Oops to the tune of endless billions.

Why it begins, but doesn't end, with the Bible

In my wishful summary of the Wesleyan Church, one of the characteristics I mentioned was "catholic in spirit, but all discussions begin with the Bible." The inference was that while they begin with the Bible, they can't end with the Bible.

At first hearing, this statement sounds wrong, even heretical. But it is not a matter of should, it's a matter of "can only be this way."

The only way that a discussion could end with the Bible was if we were only talking of one statement in the Bible. For example, Leviticus 19;19 says not to wear cloth of mixed thread. It is conceivable that you might begin and end the discussion of cloth-wearing right there.

But when we are talking about the Bible as a whole--and that's the way people refer to the Bible in these contexts, "What does the Bible say...?"--it is impossible for the discussion to end with a single verse unless that single verse is the only statement on that topic. In this case, I think Leviticus 19:19 may very well be the only verse on wearing mixed threads. Yet do we really think God forbids us from wearing polyester? There must be something beyond Leviticus.

In the end, there are two reasons why reading the Bible in context demands that discussions do not end with the Bible:

1. Because the task of fitting together teaching in the Bible is something we do from the outside looking in. The Bible itself does not tell us how to fit James and Romans together. We must therefore settle the question of justification by faith or works beyond the pages of the Bible as we look on both of these books.

2. Because the task of relating what God said to various ancient contexts to what God would say to our context is something we do from the outside looking in. The Bible itself does not tell us what a "holy kiss" might look like in our world or for that matter whether "living good lives among the pagans" today would involve wives calling their husbands masters (1 Pet. 3).

Of course most Christians mistake the joining together and time bridging activities they do--sometimes as individual thinkers, sometimes as a part of a particular Christian tradition--for the Bible itself. They dub something the "biblical view" when it is in fact a product of their own paradigms. In either case, whether a person is conscious of it or not, the discussion rarely if ever really ends with the Bible.

But all discussions should begin with the Bible, for it is a sacrament of revelation and the "deposit" of the foundation of the apostles and prophets. It gets the greatest weight in the great discussion, even if the final touches were and are being put on in the church of the ages. We are simply suggesting something akin to what has been called Wesley's quadrilateral, which takes tradition, experience, and reason into the equation.

This is a call for greater maturity for modern evangelicalism. Rightly recognizing developments in the medieval Roman Catholic Church that had little to do with the foundations, the reformers rightly championed a movement "back to scripture." But in the end, the idea of sola scriptura ultimately threatens orthodoxy by denying authentic developments in the church of the ages. It is a recipe for cults and 10,000's of Protestant denominations as each group sews Scripture together and proclaims their own Frankenstein the meaning of the text alone.

I cannot predict what will happen to evangelicalism in the future--religious belief is persistent and generally ignores truth when it is paradigmatically inconvenient. On the other hand, I see strong signs that many evangelical thinkers are becoming more honest in their exegesis. And as they are, they recognize that we will need a bit of the church beyond the Bible to remain orthodox. This is the "catholic in spirit, while all discussions begin with the Bible" that I mentioned in that previous post.

At least that's the way I see it...

Fireside Romans Chats: Romans 2

I did a little analysis on Romans 1:18-32 in conjunction with my exploration of homosexuality and the Bible, so I will skip it here and move to Romans 2 (these fireside chats are all making their way slowly to my other website, kenschenck.com).

Romans 2 presents two big questions to me:

I. What does Paul mean when he says that "The hearers of Law are not justified before God but the doers of Law will be justified. For whenever Gentiles who do not have Law do by nature the things of the Law, these although they do not have Law are Law for themselves, who demonstrate the work of the Law written on their hearts, and their conscience gives the same witness and either condemns or defends between their own reasonings on the day when God judges the hidden things of mortals according to my gospel through Christ Jesus.

This is a puzzling statement, for Paul seems to imply that a Gentile might be found right on the Day of Judgment because they keep the Law adequately "by nature." On the one hand, it is clear enough that Paul is telling a person who might be self-righteous because they know the Jewish Law that they have no more leg to stand on than a Gentile who is good by nature. But does Paul really mean to say that a person might be justified because they keep the Law by nature? Isn't this the same Paul who will conclude both Jew and Gentile under sin in 3:9? Isn't this the same Paul who concludes both Jew and Gentile under a curse in Galatians 3:10-11?

We can find at least four answers to this question out there:

1. Paul is talking about a Gentile Christian, not a Gentile in general.
This is an attractive solution but not one that really fits Paul's comments. Paul is talking about a person who would do "by nature" the things of the Law without knowing the Law. In Romans 8 Paul will talk about a person doing the things of the Law by the Spirit but not by nature.

2. When Paul says all have sinned, he doesn't mean all individuals but all races: both Jew and Gentile.
This is the Krister Stendahl argument. Stendahl believes that Paul thought some Jews and Gentiles did keep the Law adequatedly enough in the face of God's grace to be justified.

Certainly this is the view that fits best with Judaism at the time. Indeed, I have expressed elsewhere here that Paul's view that all have sinned and are sunk is peculiar in Judaism, leading some scholars to suggest he either misunderstood Judaism or deliberately misrepresented it. The Jews believed that all had sinned and that it was only by the grace of God that justification was possible, but God's grace had made provisions for sin in repentance, the sacrificial system, acts of righteousness, etc... And for Jews, it was not a matter of "getting in" or earning salvation of some sort (when there was a belief that something was coming from which to be saved--not all Jews expected a soon coming cataclysm). For Jews being the people of God was a matter of staying in, not getting in (E. P. Sanders' famous description).

In that sense, Paul's discussion of righteousness in Romans 2 is closer to mainstream Jewish understandings in some ways than Romans 3 is. I like to call the standard of justification in Romans 2 "Jewish Standard Righteousness," and it was something a person might theoretically attain.

But in Romans 3, the measure is "Absolute Standard Righteousness," a measure by which no human could possibly stand before God. It is by this standard that Paul says "by works of law no flesh will be justified before God" (3:20). So taken straightforwardly, the comments in 3:20 and 2:14-16 seem to contradict each other.

3. And so some scholars believe that Paul does in fact contradict himself.
Some would say that in Romans 2 Paul is talking like a normal Jew, but in Romans 3 he has upped the standard so he can argue that justification only comes through Christ. Sanders argues that Paul basically knew that Christ was the only way, and so finds a way to argue why Christ is the only way. But Sanders doesn't think Paul's arguments proved convincing.

4. In Romans 2, Paul is building an argument that is not finished until we get to chapter 3.
By far the most plausible interpretation to me is that in Romans 2 Paul is simply not finished with the argument. In Romans 2 he is talking street level, on terms everyone agrees. He is exposing a basic hypocrisy among Judaizers, those who insist Gentiles keep the Law in order to be justified. Paul's argument is that there are plenty of Gentiles who are as righteous as any Jew.

But in Romans 3 we will find that God has introduced into the equation a factor much more important than law-keeping. The argument is not complete until we get there.


II. A second and more minor question is who the individual is of whom Paul says, "If you call yourself a Jew..." (2:17)? Is this an ethnic Jew or a "conservative" Gentile?

The most obvious answer to us is that it refers to a person who is an ethnic Jew. I think that 2:25 does indicate that even if such a person started out as a Gentile, he has now been circumcised. But there are questions like this one in various Roman writings that lead us to believe that this phrase could be used of Gentiles who were sympathetic to Judaism (e.g., Epictetus), and we know from Dio Cassius the historian that some wealthy Romans dabbled in Judaism. If Paul is picturing a Gentile proselyte to Judaism as he says these things, perhaps the enigmatic, "robbing of temples" will prove to make more sense.

What I want Wesleyans to Emerge As...

You can't really boil a church like mine, the Wesleyan Church, into a simple list of characteristics. There's far too much variety. So when I put down three characteristics I hope will be true of the Wesleyan Church of the future, I am neither giving you anything like a full picture of what we currently are or of what we will certainly be. I am pointing out some elements that are in the mix of our background that I think are key strengths and that, if I could create a self-fulfilling prophecy, is what we will look like in the days to come.

The three things I love about the Wesleyan Church:

1. We are pietist, not fundamentalist.

We are not really a church that feels like it has to resolve all the tensions in our faith or nail down all the details of the "right" way to do things. We follow the Spirit in the Bible far more than the letter in our interpretations. We don't argue over baptism, communion, or inerrancy, and we take as our watchword and song the words of John Wesley, "If your heart is as my heart, then put your hand in mine." Bottom line: Faith first, truth second. Don't get the wrong impression--we do believe in truth and we are interested in it. But it's more important to us that you have your heart straightened out than your head.

There's room for mystery in the Wesleyan world because, let's face it, God's really bigger than anything our feeble minds could capture or fully nail down.

Quote to hang it on: "If your heart is as my heart, give me your hand."


2. We are catholic in spirit, even though we start every discussion with the Bible
We didn't come into the world through a pure Protestant lineage. At the beginning, most Anglicans did not consider themselves part of the Protestant movement, and the Methodists from whom we emerged, emerged themselves from the Anglicans. And who wants to be defined by being a "protester" anyway? The protest is over already.

It's true that we are not Roman Catholic. We don't feel bound to later developments in the Roman church like the celebacy of clergy, purgatory, the infallibility of the pope, or abstinence from birth control. But we don't hate or fear Roman Catholics either. Every tradition has its blind spots, and the Roman Catholic tradition is no exception. But if we take into account the sheer numbers of Roman Catholics, surely there are way more "born again" Roman Catholics with a personal relationship with Jesus Christ than there are people who attend a Wesleyan Church somewhere.

I would like us to say we're more truly catholic than the Roman Catholics! We're radical catholics! For example, on baptism, most Wesleyan Churches baptize like the Baptists. But we're catholic, "universal" enough to allow for every other way of baptizing except one that would say you are automatically saved with baptism or automatically not saved if you're not baptized.

And we say, "The body of Christ" in communion and let you decide whether you believe it's just a remembrance or actually becoming the literal body of Jesus in some mysterious way. The only views we don't allow are those that would say you are automatically saved by taking communion or automatically not saved if you don't take it.

I suppose you might call such a catholic spirit a "generous orthodoxy" that emphasizes the core of the apostle's creed and is very flexible on most of the things that divide the body of Christ into denominations.

We also affirm a lot of things that aren't clear in the original meaning of the Bible. For example, the existence of a New Testament as a collection of authoritative texts came hundreds of years after the books were actually written--and we accept the New Testament. We believe in the Trinity and the dual nature of Christ even though these positions weren't fully hammered out and agreed on until the fourth and fifth centuries. We believe you are conscious between death and resurrection and that Christ's death was the end of all animal sacrifice--we believe these things even though these views are only expressed in a small part of the New Testament. They were solidified in the church that followed. And we affirm most those parts of the Bible that looked to the day when there would be neither male nor female. And that's where the church is headed too, even though some parts are stubbornly resisting :) But I know where God is taking it...

After we have noticed these things, all such discussions begin for Wesleyans with the Bible. They do not end there because the message of the books must be joined together (something we have to do from the outside looking in) and the gap must be bridged between that time and our time (something we have to do from the outside looking in). Wesley's hermeneutic was a kind of "quadrilateral" that took into account tradition, reason, and experience after starting from the Bible. But we are a people of the Book and we cherish it as a sacrament of revelation, the place God has deigned to speak, God's Word.

Quote to hang it on (the Pilgrim Holiness motto): "In essentials unity, in non-essentials charity."


3. We are Wesley-an.
Wesleyans do not worship John Wesley by any means, and we don't we limit ourselves to the boundaries of his way of thinking. But at the same time, we recognize that God said a lot of true things through this man. There are things Wesley understood that the church could sure benefit from. Here's a couple important ones:

1. prevenient grace: God's interested in you before you even know He's there. He's working on your behalf even when you couldn't care less.

2. victory over temptation: Wesley rightly understood the biblical texts to affirm victory over sin and temptation. Like the New Testament, we recognize that it is possible to "fall away," "become a cast away," etc. The New Testament affirms the importance of faithfulness to God and His holiness.

3. God wants everyone to be saved and gives everyone a chance. By God's power, everyone could in theory come to Christ. Not all will, but in some way God gives everyone a chance.

4. Holistic mission. God calls the church to work for the salvation of the world on every level. This commision includes not only the spiritual salvation of all but ministry to the poor and disempowered of the world.

Quote to hang it on: "To spread scriptural holiness throughout the land."

So this is the Wesleyan Church I belong to:

1. Pietist, not fundamentalist
2. Catholic in spirit, starting with the Bible
3. Wesley-an

Non-Afterlife in Intertestament: Tobit and 1 Esdras

It is my sense that either Tobit or 1 Esdras was the first book of the Apocrypha to be written (1 Esdras is actually not considered Scripture by the Roman Catholics, although it is by the Orthodox tradition).

1 Esdras
The circumstances behind the creation of 1 Esdras are unknown, although I find attractive the idea that it may have been some form of early, abbreviated translation into Greek of the end of 2 Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah. For those of you who aren't acquainted with this book, it is basically a Reader's Digest version of Ezra and Nehemiah that has survived because of an extra story about Zerubbabel in Persia, a contest among body guards about what the greatest thing is. By and large it is a straight translation (with a little rearrangement) of the end of 2 Chronicles, the bulk of Ezra, and a brief extract from Nehemiah.

So this dates 1 Esdras at the earliest to the second century BC or perhaps even later when the Writings portion of the Jewish Scriptures were being translated into Greek. Like Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah, 1 Esdras has no mention of the afterlife. The addition of the story of the three bodyguards does not include any such mention.

Tobit
Tobit was written in either Hebrew or Aramaic (Aramaic fragments dating to about 100BC have been discovered at Qumran). It gives us no indication of the Maccabean crisis, so was probably written before 167 BC. I believe it the earliest book of the Apocrypha and would date it to the third century BC (200's).

While Tobit places an emphasis on the importance of burying the dead (cf. Antigone), it is doubtful that it envisages any substantial life after death. It rather seems somewhat "Greek" in its conceptions.

Thus Tobit 5:10 (does not survive in the five Qumran fragments, so the following is from the Greek of Sinaiticus, the longer version of Tobit generally thought to be more original. The manuscripts Vaticanus and Alexandrinus to not have the majority of this verse). This is Tobit speaking to the angel Raphael, although he doesn't know it's Raphael.

"I lie in the darkness as the dead who no longer behold the light."

Although Tobit is not entirely consistent, the book has a roughly "deuteronomistic" conception of justice: "Those who practice truth will be prospered in their works" (4:6: Aleph, B and A are similar)... "almsgiving saves from death and by it one does not enter into the darkness" (4:10: B and A, Aleph has a lacuna here).

Another relevant comment is made in 3:6, where one Hebrew fragment of Qumran preserves the word aleph-pe-resh, "dust." The Greek reads, "command my breath [pneuma] from me so that I may be released from the face of the earth and I might become earth... release me into the eternal place" (Aleph, B and A agree). Overtones of Job in this passage. Eternal place here probably does not mean heaven, for Tobit knows nothing of it. It seems a metaphor for the end of conscious existence.

There is nothing in the above passages to lead us to believe that Tobit believes in a personal, conscious afterlife. The emphasis of Tobit on the burial of the dead could suggest some mindless lack of peace in the underworld if one is not buried, but this idea is nowhere articulated. It is equally possible that it is a matter of shame--how shameful to allow a person's dead body to lie unburied and what a shame to you for your parents or kin to lie unburied. By constrast, how honorable to bury the dead. When the honor shame dimension is taken into account, the burial of the dead element does not clearly point to any real conception of the afterlife.

The biggest candidate for a reference to the afterlife appears in 13:2 (Greek texts mostly agree):

"Blessed be the living God forever and His kingdom, for he afflicts and shows mercy. He takes down to Hades below the earth and He himself leads up from the great destruction."

This passage actually appears in one Qumran fragment (4Q200) in which the reference is to Sheol and mention is made in the next verse to the "deep" (tehom). In my opinion, however, this passage is like I see Isaiah 26. The idea of coming back from the dead is a metaphor for the return of Israel from the "dead" as a nation. It is a resurrection of the nation rather than of individuals. In my opinion, imagery of this sort may very well have served as the seeds of later, personal understandings of resurrection. In any case, the verses right before and after point toward this interpretation. It is only because we have resurrection so firmly ingrained in our worldview that we would think this verse is about personal resurrection. The image of return from the dead here seems once again reflective of Greek myths such as those relating to Orpheus or Hercules. I would therefore date Tobit to the Hellenistic era.

Thus, if these interpretations are correct, then neither Tobit nor 1 Esdras reflect any belief in the afterlife. Tobit seems not to hold to a personal, conscious afterlife, while 1 Esdras simply makes no comment on the subject.

Non-Afterlife Odds and Ends

My intention is for this entry to serve as a running list of psalm references that may seem relevant or come close to being relevant to the discussion, but that do not contribute much or do not contribute anything to our understanding of the afterlife in the psalms.


Psalms 7:5
Hebrew (7:6): "... let the enemy pursue my life [nephesh] and overtake [it]. And let him trample my life [chay] to the ground and let him cause my glory to lie in the dust."

LXX (7:6): "then may the enemy pursue my life [psyche] and overtake [it] [Greek lovers, two juicy optatives of wish here] and may he trample my life [zoe] into the ground and let him lodge my glory into the dust."

Not really relevant, except that it has overtones of "dust to dust" (cf. Eccl. 3:20). No sense of afterlife is herein indicated, but none is clearly denied either.

Afterlife: Psalm 6

Psalm 6:4-5:

Hebrew (5-6): "Turn, LORD; deliver my life [nephesh]. Help me because of your faithfulness [chesed]. For in death there is no remembrance of you, in Sheol who will praise you?" [the last phrase is really neat--who will "throw" to you, an idiom for giving God thanks and praise]

LXX (5-6): "Turn, Lord, rescue my life [psyche]. Save me because of your mercy. For in death there is no one who remembers you, and in Hades who will confess you?"

It seems impossible to know the original context, date, and other particulars of this psalm. Many commentators think of it as a "psalm of sickness" (although it is one of seven penitential psalms of Christian liturgy). Yet to me the psalm seems more about fear because of enemies than sickness.

While some argue for a dependence of the psalm on Jeremiah, others argue that the turns of phrase are traditional enough formulations that no literary dependence can be proved. The author of the psalm clearly connects his (likely a he) sickness with God's anger.

By the way, I do not personally believe we have enough evidence to know whether David himself authored a psalm such as this one. The titles came later than the composition of the psalms themselves, and the expression they use ("mizmor ledavid") is itself a bit odd. I'm sure it can be translated something like "a psalm [attributed] to David." But it does not seem to me the most natural way to say a psalm of David.

In the end, it does not seem that we can date this psalm with any certainty to before or after the exile or or link it to the temple or determine any of these things we would like to know. Its presence in Book 1 of the Psalms may indicate an earlier rather than later date and in principle I am not opposed to it coming from David's mouth.

The most straightforward way to take this verse is that the psalmist does not believe that the dead are conscious of their shadowy existence. The dead do not "remember" God, and they do not "throw praise" His way. So the author asks God to rescue him from death, and affirms in faith that he will (6:9).

Afterlife Snippets: Introduction

I'll try to post a more interesting entry by Monday, but you may find me doing some sketches on the afterlife here for a little while. I have a proposal for a book in relation to my Fulbright research that I have floated with a couple publishers. Both felt I would find a publisher for it, but claimed their dockets were full. Perhaps they were being straight with me.

But I feel a weakness of the proposal as it stands is the fact that the sample chapter is merely the introduction rather than one of the more substantive chapters. I find myself unhappy with the material I wrote in Germany (I actually spent half my time there finishing the Philo book, frankly). So I need to carve out a little time to write a more substantive chapter that I'm happy with before I send the proposal to another publisher--at least that's how I feel. And this blog is the place where I find it easiest for me to write small pieces that quickly add up.

The sample chapter I have chosen is tentatively titled, "From the Psalms to the Sadducees," and its unifying feature is a tradition in Second Temple Judaism that does not envisage any personal, conscious afterlife. My goal for these snippets is to write or proto-write (since I am at home and can't footnote very well) portions of this chapter that in a month or two I can combine to become the sample chapter. Routledge is currently my next publisher target.

Fireside Romans Chats: Romans 1:16-17

More on Romans:

To me these are the key verses of Romans that are particularized at least in the first 11 chapters.

"For I am not ashamed"--honor/shame language we often pass over but that meant something in the first century. Hays thinks Paul may be echoing some OT passage like Isaiah 50:7-8 where the prophet says "I know that I shall not be ashamed because the one who justifies me is near" (Echoes)

"of the gospel"--the good news, as Wright points out, is the good news about what God has been doing for Israel and the world through Christ (What Saint Paul Really Said).

"for it is the power of God to salvation"--Salvation for Paul primarily refers to something that will happen most literally on the Day of Judgment when we escape God's wrath revealed against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of humanity (cf. Rom. 5:9)

"to everyone who has faith, the Jew first and also to the Greek"--We remember that the verb to believe, (pisteuo), is simply the verb form of "faith," (pistis). The Jew first and also to the Greek reminds us that Romans is all about Paul's defense of God justifying the Gentiles by faith. His basic argument is, that's how Jews are justified too.

Therefore, Romans 9-11, which talk about the ultimate salvation of the Jews vis-a-vis the Gentiles, are not a diversion but the very climax of the first part of the letter and the playing out of this principle.

"For in it the righteousness of God is revealed"--the overwhelming majority of Romans scholars now see the righteousness of God in reference to God's righteousness in this phrase, although some connect it more to God's covenant faithfulness to Israel (Wright, Hays) and others to God's universal action to justify the world (Kaesemann, dead now about seven years or so). I've mentioned at least one Psalm Hays thinks Paul may have in mind. The second half of Isaiah is also replete with parallels between God's righteousness and His salvation (e.g., 42:6-7; 46:13; 51:6; 56:1; 59:16; etc...).

This doesn't mean that righteousness for humans isn't a part of Paul's thought or even less does it mean that righteousness for humans isn't a part of the Christian theological equation. Here we are merely asking what Paul is likely to have meant by this phrase, and here the case seems fairly well stacked toward God's righteousness.

"out of faith into faith"--difficult phrase. There seem to be two main interpretations: 1) that it is intensive a la NIV: "by faith from first to last"; 2) that there is some sort of progression here, from x's faith leading to y's faith. The majority position here is "starting from God's faithfulness and leading to our response in faith" (Dunn, Hays, etc...). Here we reference the first part of Romans 3 and the faithfulness of God mentioned there (e.g., 3:3), along with the sense that the righteousness of God is related to His faithfulness.

Some, however, (e.g., Douglas Campbell) would argue that it is "from Christ's faithfulness to our faith response." Possible, but I'll leave it at that.

"As it is written, 'The one who is righteous on the basis of faith will live.'"--Habakkuk 2:4. Hays thinks Paul may have understood this as a prophecy about the Messiah: "The Righteous One will be resurrected on the basis of His faithfulness." It just doesn't seem to me that we have enough evidence to conclude this idea with any certainty at all, although it is possible. I personally take the "on the basis of faith" passages more with Dunn in Romans and Galatians as references to the basis by which humans are justified before God.

An Interesting Distinction

I had one of those "aha" moments while reading a response from my Asbury Romans class. I know that at some point during my education I started reading the words of the Bible differently, trying to read them in context, but I can't fully remember how I read them before. Sometimes I find words to express the difference.

A couple of conversations with students both at IWU and at Asbury have clarified yet another way to conceptualize the difference between:

pre-modern vs. modern
as Scripture vs. as contextual texts
with universal application vs. with local application

Here it is: my students at Asbury and some here come to the text asking "What is true?" not "What did Paul mean here?" For example, when it comes to a question like, what did Paul mean by the phrase "the righteousness of God" in Romans. 1:16, I ask, "What specific meaning or meanings did Paul understand by these words?" But my students come to the phrase asking, "what is true about the righteousness of God?" So I say something like, "Given the background of this phrase in Judaism, Paul was almost certainly thinking about God's righteousness rather than human righteousness when he used this phrase." The student says, "Both are true, maybe the text means both: God's righteousness and a righteousness from God."

I'm not sure I'm presenting the distinction very clearly. I've been working with an anonymous IWU student (you know who you are) on N. T. Wright's view of justification in Paul. The student frequently wants to approach this question as "What do Christians believe about justification?" But that's not the original meaning question and that's not how Wright is approaching Paul. The question Wright is asking is how did Paul use this word, with the question of what we should believe about justification being a slightly different one. We find many theological meanings that are fine theology, but they're not the way Paul put it. They may not contradict Paul, but they are not Paul in the same way James is not Paul.

So I find the way IWU professors and the evangelical milieu uses Scripture is in this pre-modern way. They are looking for absolute truth in the words--the "biblical" perspective on whatever issue. I am not saying that this is bad. What I'm pointing out that Paul did not originally understand himself to be writing for all times and all places. Originally, his words had specific meanings in the light of specific situations... When Christian communities use the words of the Bible as the source of their beliefs, most of the time they are working out modern theology and speaking far afield of what Paul originally had in mind.

Well, enough of that...

Wesleyan View of Communion

Sunday night the 16th I'm supposed to give a brief summary of the Wesleyan view of communion. My first thought was, "What is the Wesleyan view of communion?" And, after all, there are all kinds of ways you could approach it: a) what is in the Wesleyan Discipline, our manual of identity, 2) what was John Wesley's view, 3) what view do the people in the Wesleyan pews have of communion, or even 4) what view do I want the Wesleyans to have (my view) and how can I manipulate the church into adopting it by presenting it as our position to people who don't know what it is :) Of course that's not my style... (until they elect me to some office--just kidding).

Wesleyan Discipline
If we have an official view, it should be found here. Here's what we find:

"We believe that the Lord's Supper is a sacrament of our redemption by Christ's death and of our hope in His victorious return, as well as a sign of the love that Christians have for each other. To such as receive it humbly, with a proper spirit and by faith, the Lord's Supper is made a means through which God communicates grace to the heart" (paragraph 242).

Here are instructions to ministers (aside from how often it is to be done [3 months] and that you can't use fermented wine :):

"It is expected that Wesleyan ministers shall carefully admonish the people that only those who are in right relations with God and with their neighbors should come to the Lord's table, and that others should come only if in so doing they are expressing repentance and seeking forgiveness" (para. 5605).

Let me mention some scattered comments in the Wesleyan liturgy (Ha--don't shudder, ye Wesleyans, for that is what it is!) that seem pertinent:

"You who are walking in fellowship with God, and are in love and harmony with your neighbors; and you who do truly and earnestly repent of your sin and intend to lead a new life, following the commandments of God, and walking from this time in His holy ways, draw near with faith and take this holy sacrament to your comfort; and meekly make your confession to Almighty God (para. 5615)."

"we commemorate the suffering of our Lord"

The above are if communion is part of a service. What follows pertains to if it is the whole service:

"giving it to his disciples as a means of remembering Him until He comes again, and as the seal of the new covenant between God and man" (sic: 5635)... more comments on contrition.

"We come today to remember once again how Christ obtained our salvation. And as we do, we ask that the Holy Spirit shall search our hearts..." [more comments on contrition]

"You who are walking in fellowship with God, and are in love and harmony with your neighbors; and you who do truly and earnestly repent of your sin and intend to live a new life, following the commandments of God, and walking from this time in His holy ways, draw near to God..."

"we may become partakers of His body and blood..."

So what is the Wesleyan position on communion? I discern two main functions here:j

1. Rememberance of Christ's atoning death and

2. "means through which God communicates grace to the heart"

As far as I can tell, there's a strong element of "penance" in the Wesleyan liturgy, probably the only place in our worship that targets this part of Christian worship and life. Functionally, the Discipline gives the impression that this is the primary function of communion for us--a time to hit the reset button on your relationship with God.

This is the way I remember communion. Ironically, some people don't even come to communion because they aren't sure they're right enough with God to escape His wrath (now I'm talking more about things I heard about in college). They think of 1 Corinthians 11 and Paul's comments that some people had died from partaking of the Lord's Supper unworthily. But these mis-impressions of the Lord's Supper are dreadfully unfortunately, for the better view of the Lord's Supper is that of the second, namely, as a means of grace.

Of course not all Wesleyans experience communion this way. Coach Drury remembers thinking of it as a kind of "passion play," retelling the story of Christ's death and celebrating our atonement. That's a whole lot better! And yet, is there even more....

John Wesley
No one would be surprised that in addition to the rememberance, Wesley considers communion a means of grace. The language of the shorter service in the Discipline reflects this idea too, but I would suggest the idea is underdeveloped in actual practice. If we really believe that communion is a sacrament, then we believe it actually can do something to you. In some mysterious way--not just some banal you think about it, you repent, you commit more--but in some mysterious way, partaking of this spiritual food makes it more likely that you will come closer to God than you were before.

The Wesleyan View
So let me declare by fiat :) the Wesleyan view of communion. It seems to me it is two-fold.

1. In remembrance, we watch the passion of Jesus played out before us. We focus on its atoning significance and thus appropriately reflect on our own sin. Taking communion is thus a declaration of our desire to be in communion with God and our neighbor. We repent of our sins and hit the "reset button" on our justification.

2. It is a means of grace, by which God mysteriously draws us closer to Him and makes His prescence and grace known to us. The person seeking God should "put themselves in the way of the means of grace," and this is the most significant one on this score.

What I'll Say:
1. Introduction (what is the Wesleyan view...)

2. The two functions mentioned above

3. How often: "at least" once each three months, the Discipline says. We do it every week in the "cathedral service" at College Wesleyan.

Then I'll try to challenge them that these kinds of services don't have to be "empty" ritual or "vain repetition" any more than the "liturgies" they do three times a week at the PAC or the "old fashioned fifties liturgies" they do at some of the Wesleyan churches in the countryside. The Nicene Creed can bless someone as much as singing the hymn "Hallelujah, I have found Him."

Fireside Romans Chats: Romans 1:3-4

I'm writing a few short snippets on Romans for an Asbury online class and thought I would share some of them with you. The following are some comments on the meaning of Romans 1:3-4:

For a number of reasons, scholars generally believe that Paul is alluding to earlier Christian tradition in Romans 1:3-4. One reason for thinking Paul is citing earlier tradition is the odd vocabulary and turns of phrase he uses that he uses nowhere else even when he is saying similar things:

1. Except for 2 Timothy (which rightly or wrongly most argue to be pseudonymous), Paul nowhere else refers to Jesus as the Son of David.

2. This use of flesh is not his most usual--more often than not he speaks of flesh as the foothold of sin in a person's body, especially when it is in contrast to spirit.

3. He nowhere else uses "appointed" or "Son of God in power" in this way, although he makes analogous comments elsewhere in relation to Jesus getting the title "Lord."

4. "Spirit of holiness" is completely unique to this passage, as he simply says "Holy Spirit" elsewhere. This seems to be a Hebraism found in the Hebrew of Isaiah and certain Psalms.

When you add to some of these verbal aspects the structure of the statement (relative clauses with parallel affirmations, etc...), it seems more likely than not that Paul is alluding to something he didn't compose but that the original audience knew.

The parallel between body and spirit seems to form the heart of the contrast between verses 3 and 4. Verse 3 presents Jesus according to the flesh; verse 4 presents Jesus in spiritual terms. The parallel is not exact, for the Spirit of holiness is surely a reference to the Holy Spirit rather than Jesus' spirit (and it seems highly anachronistic to see this in some Trinitarian sense since Christians would not start thinking of these issues for at least another hundred years later).

Dunn and perhaps most would see in these verses reflections of a "two stage Christology." The first is the earthly phase: "Son of David." But when Christ rises from the dead, he is enthroned "Son of God in power." The normal use of "appointed" implies that Christ attains a new "state" that he did not have in the "Son of David" phase. However, the qualification "in power" may imply that he was Son of God before--just not Son of God in power.

In NT Survey classes I sometimes point out that the early Jewish Christians got a lot more in a Messiah than they bargained for. They would have been content with a human Messiah who kicked the Romans out of Israel and restored their kingdom. What they got was a cosmic Lord of the universe who reigns over the cosmos.

The appointment/enthronement of Jesus as Son of God in power is attested at several points in the New Testament. Acts 13:33 is a noteable parallel where a sermon considers Christ's exaltation to God's right hand to be the place where God declares Christ "Son." Hebrews similarly at 1:5 locates the designation of Jesus as Son of God to the point of his exaltation. We find also in Acts and Paul indicates that Jesus most meaningfully receives the title "Lord" at his resurrection (e.g., Acts 2:35; Phil. 2 in the hymn; Rom. 10:9).

Some scholars think that the phrase "in power" is a Pauline addition to the pre-existing formula (e.g., Fitzmeyer). Others disagree (e.g., Dunn). I can accept it as original and pre-Pauline because the two statements are not exactly parallel anyway.

Dunn argues that the way the comment "on the basis of the resurrection of the dead" is worded points to a pre-Pauline origin, because it is worded in terms of the general resurrection rather than Christ's specific resurrection. Paul connects Christ's resurrection to the general resurrection of all as well, but by his time they are clearly understood to occur in at least two distinct phases (see 1 Cor.). Originally, Dunn suggests, the first Christians would have seen Christ's resurrection as the immediate or at least very near commencement of the full blown final resurrection of the dead. The pre-Pauline formula would thus embody what we find in Matthew 27 where the resurrection of certain saints of renown occurs in the context of Christ's death--an indication of the beginning of the general resurrection.

But other commentators (e.g., Fitzmeyer) think that this phrase is similarly a Pauline addition to the formula on the basis of Paul's focus on resurrection. If forced to conclude, I would go with Dunn, since the expression does not seem to be Paul's normal way of referring to the resurrection.

This has been a brief fireside chat on Romans.