Happy Saturday

Hard to do it, but I'm going to try to have a blog sabbath today.

Happy Saturday!
Ken

How to Write a Novel

So many of you have been asking how I go about writing my novels... NOT!

I reckon I have started over thirty novels over the last thirty years... never finished a one, although one is at 100 pages. But in the process I figure I've learned a thing or two about writing novels, not to mention the fact that my doctoral dissertation was on the story substructure of Hebrews.

My novel starting-but-not-finishing bible has long been How to Write a Movie in 21 Days. So here is how I would go about writing a novel if I were to finish one.

Viki King looks at a movie from the standpoint of the pivots. Here's my novelized version:

1. You have to start in a way that grabs attention. That means in medias res--start in the middle or at least in the middle of some action. This is especially the case with a first novel because you have to sell it to an agent or publisher.

By the way, the days of sending things to publishers are mostly over. You have to have an agent to get anywhere. It's a little better in the Christian world, but even that is closing up for open submissions. Best bet is to go to a writer's conference and pitch directly to someone there.

Basically, keep your day job at Starbucks.

2. I pulled some of my family's favorite novels off the shelf (not mine, of course). The later novels always seem to get longer so I'm just going with the first in the series. Hunger Games is 374 pages, Twilight 498. The first Harry Potter was 309. So 300 pages on your normal Microsoft Word format is reasonable.

Of course the publishing world thinks in terms of words rather than pages. I figure the first Harry Potter is about 85,000 words. No sweat. My dissertation was 104,000 (don't tell Durham... there was a 100,000 word limit). So let's aim for 100,000 words for the novel.

3. So, converting from Viki King's movie template to word count, here's how it might play out:

• Act I - the first fourth of the book, 25,000 words.
• Act II - the middle half, words 25,000 to 75,000.
• Act III - the final fourth, words 75,000 to 100,000.

Here's the way she lays out these acts:

• In this scenario, Act I sets up the story. Frankly, it might be less than a fourth of the story for a novel. King is only thinking of a two hour movie and a 30 minute set up.
• Act II then involves the protagonist overcoming obstacles that stand in the way of the plot reaching its appointed goal.
• Act III is then the resolution of the story, the achievement of the goal (comedy) or not (tragedy).

In the structuralist model of analyzing a story, a plot basically begins with an unfulfilled goal and ends with the achievement of that goal (or not). To achieve the goal, the hero of the story needs to overcome obstacles in the way. This three act model corresponds well to this model.

4. Within Act I King suggests several key phases to the set up. Here is my novelized version with some of my additions:

• Beginning: The first couple pages need to grab the reader's attention somehow. I prefer short first chapters to hold attention. 
• Keep reading: A key moment is at the end of the first chapter. Will the reader start the second chapter or not? You need to compel them to the second chapter. Each chapter at the beginning has to get them to the next. So it's best to leave something unresolved at the end of each of the beginning chapters.
• Direction: In the first 20 pages, the reader should have some sense of direction. Is this story going anywhere? They should at least feel like it's moving somewhere and they want to know more.
• Problem: By 10,000 words (35 pages), the reader should have a good sense of the problem that the story is trying to resolve... or they should at least think they do.
• Pivot 1: At 25,000 words (80 pages), the first major turning point should happen. A change of setting. The hero is majorly set back in some way. A secondary quest opens up that the hero or someone has to pursue to get back the main task.

5. Act II involves overcoming the obstacle(s) that arose at the end of Act I.

• Pivot 2: There might be some minor change around 38,000 words (130 pages). Perhaps the hero begins to grow in some way that opens up the possibility of forward movement, a change of heart, a change of mind, a new set of skills.
• Pivot 3: Around 50,000 words (170 pages), the hero is in trouble. Will he, she, or it be able to achieve the goal of the plot? But s/he emerges from the struggle successful and with resolve. 
• Major Crisis Pivot 4: At the end of Act II, around 75,000 words (240 pages), it looks like all is lost. Then, as King says, "something happens that changes everything" (43).

6. Act III then takes us down the final slide to the end, the resolution of the plot. The hero prevails (or not) and we all cry or shout.

7. So here's a process:

• Get a novel idea, a basic concept that you could describe in a few paragraphs.
• What is the problem and the solution, the beginning and the end? What's wrong at the beginning that drives the plot? What is the final conflict at the end that resolves the story?
• How does it start? What grabs the initial attention and keeps them going for the first 20 pages until they're into it and have a general sense of its direction?
• What is the end of Act I? What happens a fourth of the way through the novel that completely changes the setting and sets up the long haul of the story, trying to get back on track?
• What is the end of Act 2, the point when it looks like all is lost? What happens to resolve the middle section and enable the slide to the end?
• Early in Act 2, what change happens in the key characters' mindset or skill set that allows them to move forward with new force?
• Late in Act 2, what major crisis does the protagonist face that gives him or her the resolve to finish the main task of the story?
• Fill in the details.

Latin Sayings (Wheelock chaps 1-9)

Here are some famous Latin sayings based on the vocabulary of the chapters in Wheelock.

Chapter 1
ex nihilo - "out of nothing" (as in creation out of nothing)
quid pro quo - "something for something" (tit for tat; you scratch my back, I'll scratch back)
cogito, ergo sum - "I think; therefore, I am" (Descartes)
Ave atque vale - "Hail and farewell" (hello and goodbye)

Chapter 2
fama volat - "fame flies"
pro forma - "for good form" (due diligence in a proposal involving finances)
audentes fortuna iuvat - "fortune favors the bold"
dies irae - "day of wrath"
pro patria mori - "to die for one's country"
sub rosa - "under the rose" (secretly)
ars longa, vita brevis - "art is long, life is short"
Et tu, Brute - "and you, Brutus" (Shakespeare's Julius Caesar)
sine qua non - "without which, not" (that without which, something essential)
id est - "that is" (i.e.)

Chapter 3
vox populi - "the voice of the people"
de facto - "on the basis of this fact"
semper fidelis - "always faithful"
semper paratus - "always prepared"
sic semper tyrranus - "thus always a tyrant" (death to...)

Chapter 4
ante bellum - "before the war"
summum bonum - "the highest good"

Chapter 5
mea culpa - "my fault"
gloria Deo - "glory to God"
verbum Dei - "word of God"
pater noster - "our father"
gaudeamus igitur - "therefore, let us rejoice"
mens sana in corpore sano - "a sound mind in a sound body" (Stoic ideal for happiness)

Chapter 6
deus ex machina - "god on a machine" (in drama, when a god swoops in to save the day)
ex libris - "from the books [of so and so]"
quid nunc - "what now"

Chapter 7
amor vincit omnia - "love conquers all"
habeas corpus - "let you have a body" (law phrase, need to produce sufficient evidence)
corpus delecti - "body of what is desired" (need for proof that a crime has been committed)
corpus christi - "the body of Christ"
ad hominem - "against the person" (logical fallacy that attacks a person rather than an argument)
homo sapiens - "thinking man" (human species, as opposed to homo erectus or homo neanderthalis)
homo novus - "a new man"
nomina sacra - "the sacred names" (abbreviations in ancient manuscripts)
pax Romana - "the Roman peace" (ushered in by Augustus)
pax vobiscum - "peace be with you"
Oedipus Rex - Oedipus the King (play by Sophocles)
tyrannosaurus rex - "tyrant dinosaur king"
tempus fugit - "time flies"
terra firma - "solid ground" (sailor coming to shore)
post mortem - "after death"'
post meridiem - "after midday" (p.m.)

Chapter 8
fides nostra victoria - "faith is our victory"
ad nauseum - "to the point of nausea"
ad infinitum - "to infinity" (to talk on incessantly)
ex tempore - "on the spot" ("from the time")
ex post facto - "from after the fact" (retroactively)
quod erat demonstrandum - "what was to be demonstrated [has been]" (Q.E.D.)

Chapter 9
locus classicus - "a classic passage"
ad hoc - "to this " ("on the spot")
post hoc propter hoc - "after this, because of this" (logical fallacy)
alter ego - "another self"
sola fide - "by faith alone"
sola gratia - "by grace alone"
solus Christus - "Christ alone"
sola scriptura - "by Scripture alone"
soli Deo gloria - "glory to God alone"
e pluribus unum - "out of many, one"
homo unius libri - "a man of one book" (John Wesley on the Bible)

Book Review: The Epic of Eden (Introduction)

I'm not going to commit to finishing the reviews, but I finally cracked open The Epic of Eden by Sandra Richter over lunch yesterday. I don't think I've ever met Sandra in person but I first became aware of her at Asbury. Then I knew she had gone to Wesley Biblical and is now at Wheaton. Word on the street is that she is crazy smart, Harvard wile without the Harvard style.

Lara Levicheva has been on me to read Epic for years now, so I have finally taken the dive and read the introduction during lunch yesterday. (Maybe Tuesdays will be epic lunches)

Introduction
I was not surprised to find that this is a book of biblical theology. That is to say, it is a book about reading the Bible as a unified whole, as a true canon with a unified message. I've argued here before such a biblical theology is completely appropriate--especially from a Christian perspective. I have also argued (cf. Gödel's incompleteness theorem) that such a theology cannot be done without some organizing metanarrative from outside the Bible.

There are several options that have been used to organize biblical material in this way, and Dr. Richter's is a very valid one, one that fits well with the Wesleyan tradition. Her organizing principle is the theme of redemption. For her, the Bible has "one very specific, completely essential and desperately necessary objective--to tell the epic tale of God's ongoing quest to ransom his creation" (15).

She suggests three reasons why so many Christians overlook the Old Testament...

[As an aside, let me say that growing up in an old holiness context, this was not my experience. In fact, going into college I knew far more stories from the OT than I did from the NT. A key here is that the old holiness preachers preached the OT typologically and allegorically. As such, the OT stories were a gold mine for preaching morality.]

... The three reasons are:

• a sense that the OT is not the Christian story but someone else's story
• the challenge to get past the historical, linguistic, cultural, and even geographical obstacles to understanding
• "the dysfunctional closet syndrome"

1. As far as the first point is concerned, she suggests that Christians have a kind of "Christian Alzheimer's disease" when it comes to the OT. She does not suggest this flippantly, as if to make light of a serious disease. Indeed, for her this loss of a sense that the OT story is our story is a very serious loss of memory of our past indeed. "The church does not know who she is, because she does not know who she was" (17).

I'm sure I must grate on some OT professors when they hear me say things like "The NT trumps the OT." I want to make it clear, however, that I completely agree with Sandra and Joel Green when they say that the OT is our story, not the story of some other people of God. From the NT perspective, we Gentiles are incorporated into true Israel (Rom. 11:17). It's not that the Church replaces Israel.

But they are flying up in metanarrative territory, with a theological reading of the canon. I fully approve of that reading. But I live in a fundamentalist world, not their Methodist world with its different struggles. I deal with a world where, sometimes, people still take to heart comments about not trimming the edges of your beard (Lev. 19:27) or not working on the (reinterpreted) Sabbath.

I can't imagine anyone who could successfully argue against my claim that, if Jesus in Mark says that God has declared all foods clean, then I can eat pork despite the fact that Leviticus says not to. The same goes for circumcision and Sabbath observance. When I say that the NT "trumps" the OT, I am speaking very concretely in the light of premoderns and fundamentalists who actually want to apply OT law to us today that the NT clearly says is not obligatory.

In fact, these practices stood at the very heart of what Paul meant when he said we are justified by faith and not works of Law, and he tells the Galatians that they will have lost their salvation if they get circumcised. So I agree on the metanarrative, but the concrete dynamic seems pretty obvious to me.

2. Dr. Richter sees the historical cultural context of the Bible as another obstacle, "the great barrier." This is certainly true from a modern perspective. The verses leading up to Isaiah 7:14 or Jeremiah 31:15 used to be completely incomprehensible to me.

Of course since I was raised with a memory verse hermeneutic to these sections, I thought I perfectly understood these island verses once I got to them. Not knowing the context was no obstacle to preaching holiness sermons about Isaiah 35:8. There's a reason why Fee and Stuart tell their readers not to read the OT stories as moral lessons (92). In my world, that's exactly what the premodern preachers of my world have always done.

But she is in a modernist world and trying to move beyond the limits of modernism. If your goal is to understand the OT at all in its historical-cultural context, there is going to be a learning curve about the Ancient Near East.

3. Her real target, though, is what she calls the "dysfunctional closet syndrome." By this she means the situation where you may know a lot of details from the OT, but they are in no particular order, like a messy college dorm room where the clothes are more or less in a random heap. "My goal in writing this book... is to deal a mortal blow to the dysfunctional closet syndrome" (19).

"Facts are stupid things until brought into connection with some general law" (19). What she is saying here is that she intends to give us a Christian metanarrative by which to read the OT texts. She is going to give us a Christian organizing principle by which to bring the individual texts of the OT into a coherent whole.

How to Build a Movement

There were some key elements to the civil religion I posted on yesterday. Why does the America cult have such staying power? Why does any movement have staying power?

In fact, the way I described civil religion fits with what N. T. Wright has called the elements of a worldview: story, ritual, symbol, and answers to basic questions. I don't want to go into all that. This post isn't about worldviews. It's about movements that have staying power and momentum.

Story
Organizations that have a founding story or key stories that express their identity and mission tend to draw people. It's not just about serving people in some obvious way. There's something about the human being that wants to belong to a group that has a destiny.

The Greeks and Romans understood this with their myths of the Trojan War and the founding of Rome. This is what we might call a founding myth. If you think a myth of this sort is just a fake story, you've missed something profound. We humans thrive on these sorts of identity-destiny-mission-giving stories.

I know of churches that people flock to because they have a founding story of this sort. Wesley Seminary has a story of its founding that makes people feel like they are joining something more than just an institution. These stories don't have to be false--in fact, the truer they are, the more powerful the sense of being part of something with a purpose.

Symbols
When we started the seminary, we thought it was important that it have a building--even though we knew it was destined primarily to be an online seminary. Sure, the faculty and administration needed offices. Sure, we needed to have a place for some classes. But it was more important for symbolic purposes. We wanted students to know that there was a place that was the seminary, that the seminary was a real seminary rather than an imaginary one.

This was one of the purposes that the temple served (in addition to that atonement thing ;-). God had an address on earth. It's not necessarily easy to make a symbol. Often the most powerful ones have to do with the founding stories. Take the cross, for example.

With that example, you can see that we're not just talking hokey here. Symbols are more powerful than words, if you have the right one.

Rituals
It is unfortunate that some Protestants so overreacted to medieval Catholicism that they tried to strip Christianity of its symbols and rituals. These are some of the most powerful elements of the human psyche.

Movements have rituals. Worshiping on Sundays is a ritual. "Sacred days" are symbols that also entail rituals. Every year at the seminary we come back together to start a new year in a service of worship. Churches can have unique rituals that are essential to who they are, in addition to the common rituals of Christianity.

Universities have rituals that can bind everyone together. IWU has its World Changer Convocation, its busts in the rotunda. Students at IWU long for the Friday Night Live comedy nights. Homecoming is a socially cohesive ritual event. Of course rituals have to have buy-in too. It has to be the right kind of ritual, one that resonates in some way.

Basic Perspectives
Surprising to some, the ideas we connect to these stories, symbols, and rituals are secondary to the power they have in themselves. Human beings are not "thinking things" at their core, but we use thought to conceptualize the significance of these more elemental forces of the human psyche.

So there will be words that go along with these more powerful elements. Slogans are more powerful than paragraphs--"We say yes."  "It's about the people." "If you don't look good, we don't look good."

These are really mission statements but packaged in their most effective human form. Again, if they don't resonate with people they become a joke or just fade away. But find the right one and you're moving.

It's not easy to manufacture these elements, although some people just have a knack for it. These are the people who lead movements. These are the politicians that move people. These are the pastors to whose churches people flock.

We like to spiritualize these things (which is part of the mythic quality) and I would never want to reduce movements to mere mechanics. But I suspect most people over-spiritualize them.

Some thoughts for a Tuesday morning...

What is "Civil Religion"?

Things that we value get mixed. Since all the mixing takes place in our heads, we often don't realize it. We look out at the world through one set of eyes, so we may not realize that we have apples and oranges all twisted up in our perceptions of the world.

Our religion and our nationalism VERY frequently get intertwined to where we can't tell where God ends and country begins. After all, they are both two things we love, so it is easy for them both to get mixed up together. (By the way, Keith Drury wrote on this 15 years ago).

It's often pretty innocent. So we celebrate July 4 in church. We have an American flag on the pulpit. In church we honor those who have lost their lives in war.  Maybe we even call Americans to repentance and to turn to the Lord. These are all fairly innocent mixings of our faith with our nationalism.

Of course it drives Christians who come here from Canada crazy. German Christians who visit us find it very alarming indeed. We have no idea how silly we look to faith-filled believers who aren't swimming in it like we are--a fish doesn't know it's wet. But as long as no one gets hurt, it's probably not worth fighting over.

How does it work? Here are some of the dynamics (thanks to the Facebook discussion for some of these):

1. The Founders become apostles and saints.
It becomes increasingly hard to view any of the founders of the country as normal people. "I cannot tell a lie. I chopped down the cherry tree." As great as these people may have been, they become more than superheroes. They become saints, and to say anything different evokes the same reaction as blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.

In fact, their words take on a Scriptural quality. Like memory verses in the Bible, we rip their words out of their historical context and quote them as inspired truth. So we forget that, in addition to being a brilliant thinker and inventor, Benjamin Franklin was also an adulterer who seriously doubted that Jesus was divine. Instead, we quote with pious devotion the words, "I believe in one God, Creator of the Universe. That He governs it by His Providence. That he ought to be worshipped." [With solemn music playing in the background]

2. The Constitution and Declaration become the Scriptures.
Not only do quotes become Scripture memory verses. But the founding documents take on a certain Scriptural quality. The right to bear arms, the freedom of religion, these become quasi-Ten Commandments. The founding stories become like the story of the Exodus. Our emotional commitment to these things is pretty much the same as our commitment to Scripture.

Like the biblical canon, we have the Genesis stories of Christopher Columbus and the Mayflower. We have the exodus stories of the Revolutionary War as we escape from the hands of Pharaoh (or King George as the case may be). The Boston Tea Party is like blood in the Nile. The stories of Lincoln and the Civil War are another book in the canon, a kind of New Testament that completes the Old.

We treat these stories as if they are as holy as the stories in the Bible. The emotions they raise and our devotion to them is incredibly similar, if not the same. So also is our hostility toward those "liberal scholars" who might question the historicity of some of our traditions. We show the same hostility we show toward "liberal" biblical scholars in relation to the stories of the Bible.

3. Patriotic songs take on a hymn-like quality.
I get stirred up singing about Christ. I get stirred up singing about America. So why not sing about America in church, since I get the same feeling? Even more, let's sing "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God" and "How Firm a Foundation" at a Fourth of July celebration of America. I get the same feeling singing both.

God judges the heart, so I imagine we're ok, but this is really almost blasphemous. How spooky would it be if a crowd of Wesleyans sang "How Firm a Foundation" about God's founding of The Wesleyan Church with Lutherans and Baptists sitting with us? Now imagine singing that about America, which isn't even a church, with Christians from Africa or England listening in.

4. America becomes Israel and the Church.
America isn't in the Bible. It certainly isn't Israel. 2 Chronicles 7:14 wasn't about America. Of course it's fine for Americans to repent, but America isn't the "my people" of this verse. Really pretty arrogant of us, when you think of it. We're not even saying that American Christians are better than "second rate" Christians in Iraq or Africa who haven't suffered like we have. We're saying that a nation filled with non-followers of Christ is something like the body of Christ.

Think about it. Not even earthly Israel has this status. Paul can say of his own people, "they are not all Israel who are descended from Israel" (Rom. 9:6). Yet we would somehow equate America with God's people? It would be ludicrously hilarious if it weren't so seriously misguided.

Still worse--again, really blasphemous--God overlooks our ignorance--1 Peter 2:9 should NEVER be applied to the United States. Peter is referring to the body of Christ here, the invisible Church.

Imagine if I applied this verse to The Wesleyan Church--"You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation..." Some might laugh at me--seriously a denomination? This relates to the universal Church, the invisible body of believers everywhere and spread throughout all time. I suspect more would be quite outraged that I would consider a denomination to be God's special people.

But then see how much FAR more inappropriate it is to connect a verse like this one to a nation like America. No nation is holy enough. It's really blasphemy of incredible proportions. Thankfully, God judges our hearts not our smarts.

4. Soldiers become martyrs.
Certainly I believe in honoring those who fight for America, but they are no more saints than the founders. You don't automatically go to heaven if you die in battle. You don't get years off purgatory for being wounded in battle. There are virtuous soldiers and there are wicked ones. You are not justified by works in battle. Nope, still faith in Jesus Christ.

5. We have holy days and holy rituals.
In many churches, July 4, Memorial Day, and Veteran's Day are as or more significant than Christmas or Easter. Those same churches perhaps have never heard of Advent or even think of Lent as evil, some Catholic perversity. To me it is perfectly acceptable to celebrate the blessings God has given us as a nation, as long as we don't actually think we are somehow more special in God's eyes because we were born here.

And that's actually an important point. God loves the illegal immigrant just as much as he loves the person who breaks the speed limit or cheats on income taxes.

6. The flag becomes a symbol like the cross.
I imagine that there may be as many American flags on the platforms of American churches as there are crosses. Indeed, there are probably a good many American churches that would be angry at the idea of having a cross because of some association of it with Catholic perversity.

But don't you dare question having an American flag there! For a sense of how bizarre this is, imagine seeing a British flag on the platform of a British church or a Russian flag in a Russian church or a German flag in a German church.

I know we don't mean anything by it. We're not seriously suggesting that loyalty to America is somehow as significant as submission to the Lordship of Jesus. We're not seriously suggesting that America is holy somehow like the Church is holy. We don't take our shoes off near the flag as if God somehow dwelt in it like the burning bush.

We just love our country and that's good. I believe God isn't offended at the inappropriateness of confusing what we do in church with what we do when we vote. He is very patient with us, I believe.

7. Those who question become heretics.
I hope I have been kind enough not to raise too much anger with this post. The indignation and wrath of those offended in relation to civil religion is often of the same intensity as that toward those who mess with traditions about Christian faith. That's because those who have a civil form of religion can't fully tell the difference between the two.

Again, I'm eternally grateful that God judges us by our hearts rather than by our smarts.

C1. Christ has been the Son of God from eternity past.

This is the first post in the beginning of the second set of articles in my ongoing series, theology in bullet points. The first set had to do with God and Creation. This second set has to do with Christ and Salvation.
_________________
1. In theology, the study of Christ is called Christology. It primarily concerns the "person of Christ," although it is sometimes difficult to discuss the "person" of Christ without also discussing the "work" of Christ. The early Christian debates of the 300s and 400s dealt extensively with questions about the person of Christ and how he related to God the Father. The creeds that came from these debates set down clear parameters for what Christians should believe.

These creeds, short though they are, reflect centuries of agonizing discussion in the early church. In the New Testament, we have some hints of things the early Christians said or "confessed" about Christ. We sometimes call these sorts of statements, credos, after the Latin for "I believe." One of the earliest was probably the simple affirmation, "Jesus is Lord" (e.g., Rom. 10:9; Phil. 2:11; 1 Cor. 12:3).

Some form of what would become the "Apostle's Creed" probably existed by the year AD200. Its statements about Jesus are in somewhat of a story or narrative form:

"I believe... in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried. He descended to the dead. On the third day, he rose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven and sits on the right hand of God the Father, Almighty. From there he will come to judge the living and the dead."

This is a good summary of the story of Jesus as we find it in the Gospels.

2. However, this story line did not answer the kinds of questions that arose after the New Testament period. Is Jesus the most exalted of God's creations, or is he God himself in some sense? If he is truly God, then how does his divinity fit with his humanity? Indeed, the New Testament itself is not entirely clear on these sorts of questions, arguably because the New Testament authors just weren't asking them.

There were faith-filled individuals in the early centuries of Christianity who argued both sides of these debates from Scripture, just as today different groups argue contradictory things from the same Scripture. This is a significant point. Some Christians who would be "heretics" now (individuals who disagree with core Christian dogmas) were not yet heretics when they argued for certain positions back then. That is because "orthodoxy," or right belief, was not yet established at that time.

For example, a faith-filled believer named Sabellius argued in the early 200s that Jesus was actually the same person as God the Father and the Holy Spirit. These were just three different faces or three different manifestations of one person changing roles and appearances. [1] In the Old Testament he appeared as God the Father. Then he came to earth as Jesus. Then he came back now as the Holy Spirit. To Sabellius, these were not three persons--as most Christians have always believed--but only one changing hats.

From the perspective of orthodoxy--the common consensus of Christians since the earliest centuries of Christianity--there are a couple positive aspects to what Sabellius suggested. First, he maintains what was essential even to Israelite faith in the Old Testament--there is only one God (e.g., Deut. 6:4; 1 Cor. 8:6). This position is the bottom layer of biblical confessions about God and was thus always the bedrock of this discussion in early Christianity. There is only one God, not three. [2]

Sabellius also believed that Jesus was fully and 100% God, which is the position the Church would eventually conclude in the 300s. No doubt Sabellius looked to verses like John 10:20 as the basis for this belief. There Jesus says, "I and the Father are one." There were those who interpreted this verse differently. After all, two people can be in complete agreement and say things of this sort. Two kings might be unified on a policy and say, "We are one on this question."

Indeed, there appear to have been some forms of Jewish Christianity in the 100s who believed that Jesus was the Messiah but not that he was God in any sense like God the Father was God. There was a group known as the Ebionites, for example, and another called the Nasarenes, which was still in existence in the 400s. [3] And here we also need to remember that the Roman emperors were known as divine as well. The memoir of the first emperor, Augustus, is titled, "The Story of the Divine Augustus."

So Sabellius was orthodox in his belief in one God, and he sided with what would become the orthodox belief that Jesus was fully God. Where he would later be considered unorthodox is in his sense that Jesus and God the Father were not two distinct persons but the same person.

3. Another position that would be considered wrong by the end of the 300s is that of a church leader named Arius. [4] Arius correctly taught that there was only one God, but he did not include Jesus within him. On the one hand, Arius did believe that Jesus had existed before he came to earth. That is to say, Arius believed in the pre-existence of Jesus.

There are a number of passages in the New Testament that have led most scholars to conclude that Paul and certainly John believed that Jesus had existed before he came to earth. [5] John of course clearly states this position in statements like John 17:5: "Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began." [6] In Paul's writings, Philippians 2:6-8 are usually taken to refer to Jesus coming to earth from heaven: "Though he was in the form of God... he emptied himself... being born in human likeness (NRSV)."

Arius believed all this. Indeed, Arius affirmed strongly on the basis of Scripture that Jesus was the "firstborn of all creation" (Col. 1:15, NASB). He believed that Jesus was Lord over all creation, much higher than the angels. He believed that he could affirm everything said about Jesus in Scripture.

But Arius placed Jesus on the creation side of the dividing line. Jesus was the most exalted of all God's creation but still a creation. He taught that, "There was a point when the Son did not exist," a point before time. He might have said about Christ something like what the Jewish thinker Philo said about the Word of God--"I am neither uncreated like God nor created like you, but midway between the two extremes" (Heir 206).

The debate came to a head at the Council of Nicaea in AD325, the first universal council of Christianity. It was called by the Roman emperor Constantine, who had just finally declared Christianity a legal religion in AD313. It was important to him that Christians not fight among themselves but come to some point of agreement on this question.

The champion of the other side, the side that would eventually prevail by the end of the 300s, was Athanasius. The doctrine of the Trinity is the orthodox position of Christianity in large part because of his doggedness on the issue. No compromise position was accepted, such as the suggestion that Jesus was of similar substance to God the Father (homoiousios). Athanasius was insistent: Jesus was of the same substance as God the Father (homoousios).

Athanasius won at the Council, but it would take the better part of the 300s for his position to win in the churches of the empire. Nevertheless, in 381, the second "ecumenical" or worldwide council produced the Nicene Creed at Constantinople, which gives the position that Christians have generally held ever since:

"I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all ages. God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one substance with the Father..."

4. So we finally get to the claim of this article. Christians believe that Christ has been God since eternity past. He is "of one substance" (homoousios) with God the Father. He is not like God; he is God.

He is "begotten, not made." Arius argued that Jesus was made, part of the creation. Athanasius pointed to language in John of Jesus being "begotten." There is a difference, Athanasius argued. "Made" seems to imply that Jesus came into existence at some point. But Jesus was "eternally begotten." He has always been the Son who comes from the Father. They have always existed in this relationship.

A later creed from the 500s called the Athanasian Creed spells it out even more clearly:

"We worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; neither confusing the persons nor dividing the substance. For there is one person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Spirit. But the Godness of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit is all one, the glory equal, the majesty coeternal. ..

"The Father is eternal, the Son eternal, and the Holy Spirit eternal. And yet they are not three eternals but one eternal. So similarly the Father is almighty, the Son almighty, and the Holy Spirit almighty. And yet they are not three almighties, but one almighty. So the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God; and yet they are not three Gods, but one God...

"The Father is made of none, neither created nor begotten. The Son is of the Father alone; not made nor created, but begotten. The Holy Spirit is of the Father and of the Son; neither made, nor created, nor begotten, but proceeding. So there is one Father, not three Fathers; one Son, not three Sons; one Holy Spirit, not three Holy Spirits. And in this Trinity none is before or after another; none is greater or less than another."

So common Christianity affirms that there are three distinct persons who constitute the one God. This is a mystery. It affirms everything that needs to be affirmed and leaves the rest unsaid, for any attempt to clarify more seems to end in a position that the early Christians rejected.

5. So Christians historically believe that Jesus Christ is a distinct person from God the Father but they both are the one God. They have existed eternally in the relationship of Father and Son. [7] According to historic Christianity, Jesus is not even subordinate to God the Father, as you can see in the final line above from the Athanasian Creed. They are "of one substance."

Christians believe that Christ has been true God, of one substance with God the Father, although a distinct person in the Trinity, from eternity past.

Next week: C2. Jesus is God's Word become flesh.

[1] In addition to the name "Sabellianism," this approach is also called "modalism" or "monarchical modalism," because God is just appearing in different "modes" in history, even though it is just the same person. In the church today, "Oneness Pentecostals," who do things in the name of "Jesus only" are modalists of this sort (e.g., the United Pentecostal Church). They do not believe in the Trinity.

[2] Belief in more than one god is called polytheism, and it has never been a serious option within Christianity, although it no doubt took place on a popular level after Christianity became the only legal religion of the Roman Empire in 380 under Theodosius I. Polytheism then went underground for some time among people who officially had to call themselves Christians.

[3] The Nasorenes (which I spell this way from Jerome, Epistle 19, so as not to confuse them with modern day Nazarenes, another spelling) even believed in the Virgin Birth.

[4] His thinking is thus called, "Arianism."

[5] There is surprisingly more debate on these issues among New Testament scholars than you might think. For example, it was nearly the consensus in the 1970s among New Testament scholars that Paul did not teach the pre-existence of Jesus. See James D. G. Dunn, Christology in the Making: A New Testament Inquiry into the Doctrine of the Incarnation, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996).

[6] John is unique among the Gospels in having statements like this one. The other three Gospels, usually called the "Synoptic" Gospels because they give such similar presentations of Jesus' earthly ministry, do not explicitly say anything about Jesus' pre-existence. We might easily miss the fact, for example, that while Matthew and Luke tell of the Virgin Birth, they say nothing explicitly about Jesus before his birth. For an argument that the Synoptics imply Jesus' pre-existence, see Simon Gathercole, The Pre-Existent Son: Recovering the Christologies of Matthew, Mark, and Luke (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006).

[7] Remembering that these genders are metaphorical. No genitalia is involved, meaning that God is not literally gendered.

A Biblical Worldview

I am not opposed to using worldview language. There are important cautions that need to go along with it, to be sure.

1. For example, the relation between people's thinking and action is far more complex than some consistent movement from thought to action. Our professed ideas often aren't the real reason for what we do. And most of what passes for a "worldview" is a gross oversimplification, like goo-goo ga-ga talk. It's embarrassing to think of a college class calling something "faith integration" that takes a doctoral level understanding of one field and tries to "integrate" it awkwardly with some kindergartenish worldview concept. In many, perhaps most cases, it would be better for the professor not even to try and just be a person with faith teaching a subject they are actually an expert on.

Still more problematic is language of "biblical" worldview. I will use this language below but most of those who use this language are pre-modern, unreflective interpreters. That is, they are Bible readers who define the words of the Bible by the definitions of their tradition. They read the Bible like a mirror and rip a selection of key mirror verses to express what their community already thinks.

It is somewhat difficult to speak of a biblical worldview if you know how to read the Bible in context. For example, the way the Israelites who wrote down the books of the OT viewed God among the gods was arguably not exactly the same as the way Jews viewed God by the time Paul came around. You will not find the best original meaning Bible scholars even speaking much of biblical theology in relation to the whole Bible, let alone the more simplistic biblical worldview construct.

But it is now potentially a "post" modern time. That is to say, I am open to speaking reflectively of a biblical worldview in a way that is aware that it is loosening the original meanings of the biblical texts and organizing them by an outside organizing principle.

I believe for Christendom, that organizing principle is best some form of common Christianity or orthodoxy. For me, that pattern also might involve the Wesleyan-Arminian tradition, which I believe is the best "constructive" version of Christian tradition in relation to the modern world. (We all at least partially construct our theologies in dialog with modern issues of thought. We just don't always admit it to ourselves.)

2. So what might such a "biblical worldview" look like?

• It believes in a loving, powerful, knowing God who exists apart from the world but is involved in the world. 
• But God does not determine everything that happens, even though nothing happens apart from his permission and will. We have a responsibility to choose the good and can choose the good.
• God speaks. He has spoken through Scripture and he continues to speak to people today, especially those among his people. The Spirit helps us arbitrate between what is his speaking and what isn't.
• But there is much truth we can know without a special word from the Lord.
• It believes that the world needs to be reconciled to God. The world is alienated from God. Although God is working everywhere--there is hope for goodness everywhere--humanity's default state is one of disempowerment and degradation everywhere. We need rescued.
• The key to the restoration of fallen humanity is Jesus. He is the means of restoration and reconciliation. He is also the Lord and master of all the earth.
• History is moving toward an ultimate restoration. We are eternally accountable to God for our lives, although his disposition is one of mercy toward those who trust in his mercy.
• There are two great ethical requirements of humanity by God. The first is to submit to his absolute rulership, a submission that is not onerous because he is a loving Sovereign. The second is for us to live lives of love toward one another.

3. A sound "biblical worldview" has implications for the specific issues of our world (e.g., abortion, poverty) but flies more at a "meta" level. For example, I do not believe that it makes sense to speak of a "biblical" perspective on abortion unless you are a pre-modern reader who is simply seeing the Bible as a mirror of what you already believe. There is rather a biblical perspective on murder, especially on the basis of the love ethic. Our position on abortion then tries to play out that worldview perspective in the specific case of an unborn child.

But the Bible read in context, either on the whole (which is where "biblical worldview" comes into play) or in some particular verse (which then is not usually flying on the level of worldview but more on the level of ancient situation), does not take a position on human identity in relation to human development. This is a question from our world, not theirs. What we do as communities of faith is apply the basic principles of our Christian worldview to specific situations like these in our contemporary world.

The freedom of speech and our democratic worldview enables those in America with means to speak our minds loudly and with great vigor in the public forum. I'm afraid that, much of the time, we more or less embarrass ourselves when we speak of a biblical or Christian worldview and turn off intelligent outsiders to faith. We are a people of easy answers where, in the name of our religious tradition but invoking the Bible, a person of mediocre thinking ability can speak with the authority of God.

Elizabeth Dole, World Changer at IWU!

I was delighted to see Elizabeth Dole inducted as this year's IWU World Changer. To me, she is something like a model of what a world changer should be. She was humble. She was thoroughly Christ-like in her perspective on life. And what a life of service to the world!

She spent most of her time talking about the godliness of her mother and grandmother. What stood out to me is her statement that she never heard a bad word about someone come out of her mother's lips. She never heard a complaint from her husband's lips about his injury from WW2 (he was the 1996 Republican presidential candidate).

In her service as Secretary of Transportation and Secretary of Labor, she championed people--how many lives did the seat beat and air bag laws save? She was President of the Red Cross. She is currently working with disabled veterans. As I sat there, I thought to myself, "She would truly have made a wonderful President" (she ran in 2000). I also thought, "I miss this Republican Party."

Kudos to IWU for an excellent World Changer this year, IMO!

RIP: Nazarene Publishing House

News is slowly trickling out about the shocking demise of Nazarene Publishing House (NPH) yesterday. Here are some articles:

• Earlier rumblings
• Background
• Taken over by Nazarene Board of General Superintendents
• Building emptied

At the center of the controversy seems to be a "gift" to NPH by the previous president of the publishing house elected in 2012. He did not seek re-election earlier this year in February, but the strong impression I get is that this was polite speak for "don't even think of seeking re-election because you don't stand a chance."

It looks like this "gift" in particular involved about 1.4 million dollars of debt and a commitment to pay $36,000 a month for the "gift" property. So the Kansas City Star compares the gift to the Trojan horse of Homeric fame.

The rumor is that all the employees were given a month's notice and varied severance packages. VERY sad for them by all appearances. I hope the Nazarenes will rally around these individuals. The ones I know are really good people.

Lessons:
1. I'm reminded of something said to me in relation to academic institutions about a year ago. In this climate, one false move can take a solid institution and tank it. NPH was not on good financial ground anyway but this seems to illustrate the point. The money apparently runs out by the beginning of next year.

2. Everyone knows that the traditional way of doing publishing business is pretty much over. Church publishers need to shift to a print-on-demand model with mostly outsourced editing. I sense that drastic measures were needed to turn NPH around anyway, even if they hadn't been torpedoed. Now this is REALLY drastic. The new model is, "has to break even with only one copy."

Thoughts:
1. First, a lament. NPH has been the flagship for resources in the Wesleyan-Arminian tradition. The Beacon Hill commentary series is the most significant commentary series for the Wesleyan-Arminian tradition by far, indeed practically the only one. The Nazarenes are the ones who produced the Wileys and their most significant successors in theology. They are pretty much the last man standing with Wesleyan-Arminian Sunday School literature.

Although I've always hated to admit it, NPH is really the only Wesleyan-Arminian contender against the Calvinist hegemony of Christian publishing. They are about the only ones putting out serious Wesleyan-Arminian scholarship. [However, I might add that I am involved with a project that seems likely to happen and will be dedicated to publishing scholarship in the Wesleyan-Arminian tradition and to resourcing Wesleyan-Arminians in areas like theology, Bible, and church history. I have jokingly said that it will be dedicated only to publishing the irrelevant.]

2. Second, I firmly believe that a phoenix will rise from the ashes. I have no doubt that the General Board of the Nazarene Church will maintain key pieces of NPH. But they will re-establish them on a basis that gives them a long term sustainability. In the meantime, I doubt there will be any break in our ability to purchase books from the Nazarenes. I actually received Romans 1-8 in the mail yesterday from NPH. But I fully believe that I will still be able to purchase Romans 9-16 whenever I'm ready.

I hope they will finish this series. It is really the only thing we have in the Wesleyan-Arminian tradition that is a serious alternative to the sea of Calvinist-leaning evangelical commentaries out there on the market.

Sermon Starters: Who Is Your Audience? (Matthew 6:5-14)

I'm writing six sermon starters to make a sermon series based on the Sermon on the Mount. The first two are:

Week 1: "The Winner Isn't Who You Think" (Beatitudes, Matthew 5:3-12)
Week 2: "Love the Whole Way" (Matt. 5:43-48)

And now a sermon for Week 3: "Who Is Your Audience?" (Matthew 6:5-14)

Introduction
I might start with an illustration where someone appears to be talking to you but is obviously really talking to someone else. Do you have a personal story or know one about, say, a young woman talking to another woman, but really is wanting a young man to overhear that she is not doing anything Friday night? You could use a story from history, literature, or the Bible.

Perhaps there is a scene from a movie. In Harry Potter: The Chamber of Secrets, Harry Potter is invisible and Hagrid says loudly, "If anyone wanted to find some stuff, all they would need to do is follow the spiders." The other people in the room can't figure out what he's talking about because he's not talking to them. You could even start the sermon with this clip. Another possibility is to begin with a funny skit.

Now give the context of Matthew 6. You will find background material in this week's devotional in of The Wisdom of Jesus (pp. 30-41), as well as pp. 67-71 in Jesus: Portraits from the Gospels.

Body
1. We get authenticity today.
... especially people under 40. Our parents and grandparents more or less trusted politicians, pastors, and important people. You can no doubt find many examples of this fact to introduce the concept.

For example, there was incredible outrage among the American public in the late 60s and early 70s at vets who protested the war, even though they were the ones who had actually experienced what was going on. To find that Richard Nixon had lied and actually done the things of which he was accused was a horrible shock to the American people.

Now, it seems like the opposite party wants to impeach every President. We have come to expect scandal. We assume that the squeaky clean exterior of public officials--including pastors--is not what it seems. We are cynical. We almost assume that what you see is not what you get when it comes to people in the public eye. This is a change in our culture.

Matthew 5:20 is key literary background to our passage today: "Unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven." This would have terrified a first century Jewish audience. Today, we assume the Pharisees were unrighteous hypocrites. They would have assumed they were the ones most righteous and closest to God. For background on the Pharisees and Jesus' opponents, see Jesus: The Mission, pages 105-22.

2. Who are you praying to in prayer?
Have you ever heard someone praying and they said things that wouldn't make much sense if they were talking to God? Have you ever heard a pastor give a lesson to the congregation in a prayer? "Lord, we know that..."

I was in a service recently when the background music cut out in the middle of the prayer and the person said, "And, Lord, we know it's distracting when the background music cuts out in the middle of prayer." Everyone laughed. It's not necessarily bad to do these things--prayer in those situations is a corporate prayer, so it is reasonable that the pray-er help facilitate bringing the prayers of everyone there to God.

But I realized at one point that most of my prayers were self-talk, that I was more talking to myself than to God. And there are those who still are trying to impress others when they pray publicly rather than talk to God. Who are you praying to in prayer?

I'm assuming that the preacher will flesh out this concept with examples that would be meaningful to the local context.

Matthew 6 gives several examples of individuals who did religious things for show rather than for God. First there is the religious person who gives so that he or she can be seen giving (Matt. 6:1-4). We are most honored by God (blessed) when we give without anyone knowing. Also in the chapter is the person who fasts or sacrifices so that others will see and they will get "street credit" (Matt. 6:16-18). But the key instance has to do with prayer (Matt. 6:5-15).

3. How to pray.
As the background material indicates,

• We do not pray to inform God. He already knows everything.
• We are incompetent pray-ers. The Holy Spirit has to help us out (Rom. 8:26).
• Praying helps us. It is more for us than for God, although we owe God our praise.
• Just maybe, God sometimes lets our prayers determine how he acts in history, how he interrupts the flow of time.

So how should we pray? Jesus gives us the Lord's Prayer as a model prayer in Matthew 6:9-13 (it is not the only model but our most prized one). I grew up with A-C-T-S:

• Adoration ("hallowed be your name" - holy, sanctified, mega-special and terrifying is the sovereign God of the universe, who could squash us like an mammoth and an ant; all our prayers must be done in submission to his will--"your will be done.")
• Confession ("forgive us this day" - remembering that we need to forgive the sins of others if we expect God to forgive our sins)
• Thanksgiving (how much daily bread has he given us--every day of our whole lives for most of us. What ingrates we would be if we asked him for things and did not thank him for what he has already given!)
• Supplication (it only makes sense that our requests would come last--"give us daily bread"; "deliver us from temptation"; even these are very important requests, requests that relate to our most basic physical and spiritual needs; we should ask for our wants last of all! God does want to give us good gifts.)

Conclusion
Who is your true audience? Are you mostly interested in what other people around you think or with what God thinks? To whom do you pray? God or those listening in? Who do you sacrifice for--to serve God or to get street credit?

You might challenge them to pray more authentically than ever--to adore God more than ever in prayer... to be honest with God about our failings and pray for the power to change... to thank God for all the good things in our lives and for the bad that hasn't happened, not to take the credit ourselves... then humbly to ask for his help in our needs and desires.

Sermon Starters: The Winner Isn't Who You Think

I'm creating six sermon outlines to go along with a devotional I wrote called, The Wisdom of Jesus on the Sermon on the Mount. These also go along with a book I wrote on the special themes of the Gospels.  I already wrote one on the "Be perfect" section of the Sermon.

So here is a sermon starter on the Beatitudes: Matthew 5:3-12.

Introduction
Start with an example where the winner was unexpected. It could be a personal story, an interesting story from  history. It could be a clip or snippet from a movie. I like the story of the Tortoise and the Hare. You would think the rabbit would win because it is faster, but the turtle wins by steady persistence. I have a personal story of running with my son just before he started high school. Although he was able to run a mile faster, I would pass him by the second mile because of steady persistence.

Now give a little context to the Beatitudes. Week 1 of The Wisdom of Jesus is on the Beatitudes (pp. 6-17), as well as pp. 61-63 in Jesus: Portraits from the Gospels. Being "blessed" is honor-shame language. It has to do with being honored more than being happy. And where we will most be honored is in the Kingdom of God, which is already started but will arrive fully after Jesus returns (See Jesus: The Mission, pp. 21-33).

The Beatitudes turn everything upside down. Those who would seem honored now (the wealthy, those with power and prestige) will not necessarily be those "on top" in the coming Kingdom of God. Rather, those who suffer now, will be most honored then, when Jesus comes as King.

Body
1. The Poor are Rich
Several of the Beatitudes indicate a reversal of fortunes in the Kingdom of God. Those whose situations make them mourn now, will find themselves comforted in the kingdom (Matt. 5:4).

In Luke's version of the Sermon on the Mount (called the Sermon on the Plain), Jesus boldly states that those who are poor now will be blessed then, while those who are rich now will not be comforted then (Luke 6:20 and 6:24). Similarly, he baldly states that those who are hungry now will be fed then, while those who are full now will be hungry then (Luke 6:21 and 6:25).

Matthew gives the spiritual version: blessed are the poor in spirit (Matt. 5:3) and who hunger for righteousness (Matt. 5:6). In both, those who seem to be "on top" now, because their values are the values of the world now, will not be the winners then in the Kingdom of God. The ultimate winners are those who are part of God's kingdom, those who have a spirit of dependence on him rather than on the world.

Illustration: Bring the point home with an illustration that concretely shows how being on the right team in the long run is more important than being on the team that seems to be winning now. You might give an example of someone who took a chance on a job that involved a pay cut now or a loss of prestige now but that in the long run ended in security. I have a couple illustrations from my father's life, one about changing jobs, another from his army days. You might also use the biblical story of Joseph in Genesis. He endured some hard years of "poverty" but in the end he saved his family and the kingdom of Egypt (Gen. 50:20).

2. The Meek Excel
It is counterintuitive in the world to think that the winners will be those who do not strive to win. Yet Jesus consistently taught that "the last will be first" (e.g., Matt. 19:30). Several of the Beatitudes fall into the category of "those who do not fight to win will win in the end."

• The meek will inherit the earth (those who are not pushy will end owning the whole thing, 5:5).
• The peacemakers are like God (instead of those who fight to win, 5:9).
• The merciful obtain mercy (while those who have to inflict defeat will lose, 5:9).
• The pure in heart get to see God (while those with a heart for the world go down with it, 5:8).

You can go any number of ways with these, depending on which one you want to spend the most time on. You won't have enough time in one sermon to linger on all of them. There are any number of illustrations from movies or pop culture, from history or the business world.  You can use an illustration from relationships or politics.

American culture tells us that you have to be assertive to get ahead, that you have to promote yourself to win. There is certainly truth to this. But in God's eyes, winning isn't everything. In fact, winning in this world is nothing. Christianity is primarily about promoting others rather than ourselves.

3. The Persecuted Win
A final theme in the Beatitudes is that those who are persecuted and mocked today will be "on top" in the Kingdom of God. Victor Frankl, a Jew who was in a concentration camp in World War II, came to realize that a person can live with any "how" if he or she has a "why" to live. This makes an excellent illustration or you can come up with another one about someone in the Bible, history, movies, or your experience who endured a period of suffering and persecution only to emerge with honor at the end. For Frankl, he did not give up hope under the Nazis, and he survived his experience where others gave up.

In the same way, while we do not want to ignore the opportunities of the present, we are ultimately living for another time and another kingdom. At times we may feel like we are foreigners in our own country (cf. Heb. 11:13-16).

Conclusion
I was thinking of the Capital One commercial that ends with the tag line, "What's in your wallet?" What are you depending on in this life? What kingdom are you living in? Are you living in the one that is destined to end soon enough? Or are you living in the one that is going to last?

If you started with a particular illustration, you might return to it here as part of the closing and complete the loop. Also you will want to call the congregation to commitment to live as citizens of the kingdom.

Introduction to Christian Theology (the series so far)

I have now completed the introductory posts to my series on Christian theology from one Wesleyan-Arminian perspective. This series is fleshing out a post I did back in March called, "My Theology in Bullet Points." All the posts I've done so far are below.

I've decided to edit and self-publish all the posts below as a book called God and Creation: Wesleyan-Arminian Reflections. In this plan, I will go on to self-publish two other small volumes, Christ and Salvation and The Spirit and the Church. Then when all is finished, I will publish the whole series.

Since it's taken six months to do the shortest of the three volumes, this will take some time to finish...
________________
Introduction to Christian Theology
1. What is Christian theology?
2. Start with the faith you have.
3. All truth is God's truth.
4. God has revealed himself in nature.
5. God reveals himself in events apart from nature.
6. There is a spectrum of Christian thinking on many issues.

The Doctrine of God (theology proper)
1. God didn't need to create. (God's self-sufficiency)
2. God isn't literally a guy.
3. God has the power to do anything. (God's omnipotence)
4. God is present in all places and all times. (God's omnipresence)
5. God knows every possible thing to know.
6. God knows every actual thing to know. (God's omniscience)
7. God can do whatever he wants. (God's sovereignty)
8. God loves everything he has created. (God is love)
9. God's justice fits within the context of his love. (God is just)
10. To say God is holy is to say God is God. (God is holy)
11. There is only one God, but God is three persons. (God is a Trinity)

The Doctrine of Creation (cosmology)
1. God created everything that exists out of nothing.
2. Everything God created was good.
3. God is in control of everything that happens.
4. There are good and evil spiritual beings at work in the world.
5. Human beings were created in the image of God.
6. God intended us to live forever.
7. All humanity is of equal value to God.

The Doctrine of Sin (hamartiology)
1. Evil is a matter of choice, intention, and desire.
2. God created the possibility of evil choices.
3. Suffering in itself is not evil.
4. The current bent of humanity is toward evil.
5. All have sinned.
6. There is such a thing as corporate and structural sin.

F0. What is Christian theology?

Theology is the "study of God," and Christian theology is the study of God from a Christian perspective.

1. There are, perhaps surprisingly, many different ways to approach the study of God. Perhaps the most common is called systematic theology. Systematic theology is when you study God in an orderly, logical way that covers the key dimensions of Christian belief and practice.

For example, the articles that follow in this series engage topics like:

• Theology proper--topics (or "doctrines") that relate to God the Father in particular
• Christology--topics that relate to the person and work of Jesus Christ
• Pneumatology--topics that relate to the person and work of the Holy Spirit
• Anthropology--topics that have to do with humanity in relation to God
• Cosmology--topics that have to do with the creation in relation to God
• Hamartiology--topics that relate to the subject of evil and sin
• Soteriology--topics that have to do with atonement and salvation
• Ecclesiology--topics that have to do with the Church
• Eschatology--topics that have to do with the direction in which God is moving history
• Revelation--the means by which God makes himself known
• Ethics and Practical Theology--the study of God as it relates to how we live in this world

Different "systematic theologies" may engage these topics in a different order, but you will no doubt find most if not all of them covered before each treatment is done. The key to a systematic theology is simply that topics relating to Christian faith are covered in some orderly, systematic way.

2. There are other ways to organize theology. Perhaps the most important is what is called biblical theology. In recent times, biblical theologies tend to organize the various theologies of the individual biblical authors. So there might be a section on Pauline theology, another on Matthean or Johannine theology.

These biblical theologies recognize that the Bible is not systematically organized. For example, God did not inspire the authors of Scripture to write theological or philosophical treatises. He inspired them to write stories, poetry, letters, and in other genres. Those who see the Bible as an answer book or book of ideas are not reading it the way it was written.

Similarly, God did not inspire them to write in generic truths but mostly in concrete language that applied directly to those to whom these books actually say they were written. In that sense. to convert the contextual words of the Bible into a universal form requires some system of organization that comes to the biblical texts from the outside.

I believe it is legitimate to re-present the biblical material in a systematic form. In many respects, the series of articles that I am introducing now draws as much on the biblical material for its content as it does the great Christian thinkers of the centuries. So this "systematic theology" is not far from being a "biblical theology."

3. There are other approaches to theology that I might briefly mention in case you encounter them somewhere:

• Narrative theology looks at theology from the standpoint of the story of God, creation, and redemption.
• Historical theology looks at how Christian theology has developed over the centuries.
• Dogmatic theology is a form of systematic theology that looks especially at the core, essential beliefs of the faith.
• Philosophical theology looks at Christian theology especially from the standpoint of philosophical categories like epistemology, metaphysics, and ethics.
• Constructive theology especially engages those aspects of our current world that call into question the historical beliefs and categories of past Christian faith.

All of these approaches more or less engage the same basic theological topics but from slightly different perspectives.

The series of articles that follow engage the key topics of Christian thought and practice from a systematic perspective. They especially engage the content of the Bible as the primary source of the content of Christian thinking and practice. But they also recognize that the Holy Spirit of God has unfolded the primary organizing principles of this content over the centuries in the Church. [1]

[1] Those who know a little about the history of philosophy might see a glimpse of Immanuel Kant here (1724-1804). Some of the thinking of his time shook him into realizing that the content of our experiences does not just come into our heads in some straightforward way, but our minds "interpret" everything we experience. We process the world with our "mind software," so to speak.

So we do not straightforwardly just experience the content of the Bible as it is. Our minds interpret and organize the material of the Bible. This is why there are tens of thousands of different interpretations of the Bible, even though we are all looking at the same texts. Ideally, we all have a kind of "spiritual common sense" as we read that is actually a product of historic Christianity.

F5. There is a spectrum of Christian thinking on many issues.

This is the final post in the first section in my series, a theology in bullet points. (Here are three of the later sections that I've already done).
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There is a spectrum of Christian thinking on many issues.

1. In Romans 14, Paul tackles the never-ending situation when two groups of Christians do not agree on how a Christian should live. The issue there was meat that had been sacrificed to a pagan god. Paul adopts a "don't ask" perspective. Since everything belongs to God anyway, eat meat set before you with thanksgiving and don't ask where it came from (1 Cor. 10:25-27).

He alludes to other issues in Romans too. So what about observing the Jewish Sabbath, do Gentiles need to do that? "One person considers one day more sacred than another; another considers every day alike. Each of them should be fully convinced in their own mind" (Rom. 14:5). A Gentile whose conscience is clear should not let someone judge them if he or she does not observe the Jewish Sabbath (cf. Col. 2:16).

These are examples of the apostle Paul writing at the very beginning of Christianity. Since then we have had two thousand years for Christians to disagree and split time and time again. Paul did not feel so flexible on other issues. When it came to sleeping with your father's wife, there was no debate for him (cf. 1 Cor. 5).

So apparently there are essentials and there are non-essentials. In the essentials, there is no room for variation. In the non-essentials, we need to allow for freedom of conscience. There is a well known quote that sums it up nicely: "In essentials unity; in non-essentials liberty; in all things, charity." [1]

The same goes for Christian beliefs as well as practices. There are essential Christian practices, namely, those that come from a love of God and others (cf. Matt. 22:34-40). So there are essential Christian beliefs. Paul mentions one in 1 Corinthians 8:6, our belief in one God and one Lord.

For Jesus and the early Christians, beliefs were not the primary focus. How we behaved toward one another was more important, as you would expect for a movement that flowed from Judaism. The focus on belief would rise in the centuries after Jesus when Christians began to debate the details of who Jesus was and how he and the Spirit fit together with God the Father as one God.

Yet even for Jesus, the heart that led to action was more important than the action itself. We see this dynamic in his argument with the Pharisees over his disciples washing their hands. It's not the things that go in a person that make them unclean, he says. Rather, clean or unclean comes from the inside out (e.g., Mark 7:20-23). Paul implies as much in Romans 14 when he says that it is whatever we do that we do not do from a heart of faith that is truly sin (14:23).

So the Christian priorities are: heart first, then action, then belief. Our attitudes and character are of the most importance, our intentions. Then how we play those out in our actions toward God and others is of secondary importance. Finally, the beliefs we have are the third order of business (cf. Jas. 2:19).

In this series, we will discuss the centrality of intention in our section on sin. We will discuss the question of action and living in our section on Christian ethics. The rest of this series focuses on Christian beliefs. As we embark on this journey, it is important to keep in perspective that these beliefs are the least important of the three: heart, hands, head. Yet what we believe can be important, especially as it leads to action or reflects our heart.

2. The two words, dogma and doctrine, are usually used to distinguish two levels of importance in belief, where dogma refers to the absolutely essential Christian beliefs and doctrines to areas of belief where there is more disagreement among Christians.

Dogma relates more directly to the creeds of Christianity. The earliest centuries involved debates over questions like whether Jesus was as God as God the Father or whether he was fully human. These debates ended with various creeds and confessions. One of the earliest was a form of the Apostle's Creed.

"I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth.

"And in Jesus Christ his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived of the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried. He descended to the dead. On the third day he rose again from the dead and is seated on the right hand of God the Father Almighty. From there he will come to judge the living and the dead.

"I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting."

Given how ancient these affirmations are and how commonly held they are, they would seem good candidates for Christian dogma--absolutely essential Christian beliefs. For example, we have the fact that God created everything. We have the belief that Jesus rose from the dead. He is in heaven now and will come again. There is a Holy Spirit that works in the world and in the Church. We have the possibility that our sins can be forgiven and that we might participate in the resurrection of the dead.

The earliest form of the "Apostle's Creed" dates from as early as AD200. But Christians continued to work on the details of basic Christian belief in the centuries that followed. Was Jesus completely human? Is he still? The Council of Chalcedon in AD451 finally concluded that Jesus was and is both fully human and fully divine.

A little more than a hundred years earlier, Christians had come to a conclusion on the question of whether Jesus was the most important of God's creations or whether he was God himself. The Council of Nicaea in AD325 famously decided that there was only one God with one substance, but that the one God also had existed from eternity past as three persons: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. The Nicene Creed captured these conclusions about sixty years later. It spelled out what Christians have generally believed about the "Trinity" ever since.

Creeds like the Apostle's and Nicene Creed give us the basic dogmas of Christianity. For example, the Nicene Creed records the dogma that God is the Creator both of everything that is seen and unseen. Beliefs like Jesus' birth from Mary before she had sex and that he rose physically from the dead have been essential beliefs of historic Christianity since its earliest centuries. Some call these essential beliefs, "Christian dogmas."

3. There are obviously many, many other issues that Christians have discussed throughout the centuries. And as you might expect, there are different answers they have given in relation to these questions. When we move beyond dogma to these individual "doctrines"--or beliefs about key areas of Christian faith--we often find more variety in what different groups of Christians think. Doctrines are important areas of belief where we find a lot of common ground among Christians, but we also find a little more variety of belief than we find with what we have called dogmas.

For example, take the "doctrine of God." Some Christians believe that God's authority does not allow for any creature to truly disagree with him. These Christians would suggest that God decides every single thing that happens. Indeed, they would argue that God is the one that even causes individual believers and unbelievers to disobey him. In other words, some would say that God in his authority even decides who will disobey him.

By contrast, there are other groups of Christians, such as mine, who believe that God, in his authority, has allowed individuals to disagree with him. What we see is that there is not just one position on this particular doctrine.

The articles that follow address the central doctrines of Christianity. They include topics like the doctrine of God, the doctrine of creation, the doctrine of sin, the doctrine of salvation, and more. In all of these areas, there are both some commonly held Christian positions and have been some variations among Christians throughout history. Sometimes Christian thinking has even developed over time. Ideas that at first were debated eventually became firm and solidified.

We call those ideas that are commonly held by Christians since the earliest centuries of Christianity, orthodoxy or "right belief." When someone has ideas that disagree with the core dogmas of Christianity, we call that, heresy. Another word sometimes used is "heterodoxy," which also refers to thinking stands outside of the usual norms of Christian thinking.

Some Christian groups draw the lines between acceptable and unacceptable belief very narrowly. In many respects, this seems unwise. On the one hand, it is perfectly acceptable for smaller communities of faith to have specific understandings of things. However, it is a different thing entirely to say that those who disagree with these specific "takes" on things are not truly Christian--especially when we are talking about ideas where there is no commonly held position among the vast majority of Christians.

It is also significant to realize that in many cases the lines that are now drawn clearly were not always so firm at one time. Take an issue as basic as the Trinity. There was a time when belief in the Trinity was not firmly established and there were faithful Christians who believed Jesus was the first and most important of God's creations (e.g., a man named Arius). Since the issue was not fully decided and commonly agreed on within the Church until the 400s, we cannot really consider anyone a heretic on this subject until after that time. Now 1600 years later, it is a matter of common agreement that has stood the test of time, including the test of the Protestant Reformation in the 1500s when many issues were revisited.

Some Christians take as their motto, "No creed but the Bible." This sentiment builds upon the kinds of dynamics in the Protestant Reformation, when many Christians went back to basics and went to the Bible to find them. As noble as these intentions are, the interpretation of the Bible simply does not work this way. The Bible was not written in the form of a systematic theology. It was written as dozens of different books in several different forms to address the specific issues of many different audiences at different times in their own categories. Those who think of the Bible in creedal terms inevitably impose some system onto the Bible from the outside. And what is dangerous is that they may not know they are doing it, which means they are inevitably confusing their mind with God's.

It seems best for individual Christian groups to show what John Wesley called a "catholic spirit" toward other groups that agree on the basics but have different understandings of specific Christian doctrines. That does not mean that any group has to give up on their particular understanding. It's just that we do not have to de-Christianize other groups because they see things differently.

4. So we might see concentric circles of Christian belief. In the center circle are the absolutely essential dogmas. Then in the circle outside of it are the basic doctrines with a good deal of agreement but also some variations among Christians. Finally on the outside are the areas where there is now official answer. These are issues where we are welcome to have our own individual opinions on those questions.

This last category is sometimes called adiaphora. These are areas where Christianity does not have a final answer or a commonly accepted one on a particular question.

There is a spectrum of Christian thinking on various issues, and we should not de-Christianize each other over them. God is primarily interested in our heart and our actions. There is room for much disagreement with our heads. Indeed, we may find many people in the kingdom of God whose ideas were quite mistaken on many things.

Next week: C1. The earthly Jesus was a prophet of the kingdom of God.

[1] The saying comes from a Lutheran named Rupertus Meldenius in the 1600s.

WSPK 8: Summary of Hermeneutics

For what it's worth, here are the points I've tried to make these past days, with a couple added on.

In Ken's perfect world:

• The pastor is the local expert on the original meaning of the Bible.
• But the pastor realizes that God uses the Bible far more to transform than to inform.
• The pastor is humble in relation to what the text meant originally, confident in preaching the love of God and neighbor, open to the Spirit's speaking through the word, and a facilitator of the congregation's transformation as it listens for the Spirit through the word.

Original Meaning
1. In terms of the original meaning of the Bible, I would like a pastor to consider,

First, some basic hermeneutics:

• The words of the Bible in themselves, like all words, are susceptible to multiple interpretations.
• Meaning is always understood locally (i.e., in the mind of the interpreter).
• We are always unaware to some extent of how much of "us" is in our reading of the Bible. 
• My default interpretations of the words are not timeless, universal meanings. Rather, my default interpretations of their words are a function of the way words are used in my time and place, and the meanings I see are largely if not entirely a function of my modern worldview.
• There is usually some degree of difference between the default way the words of the Bible strike us and the way they would have struck the original audiences.
• There are meanings the words of the Bible had that do not correspond to any words in English or concepts in our world.

Next, some basic features of context:

• The first meanings of the books of the Bible was a function of the way words were used at the times and places when those books were written, and those meanings were largely if not entirely a function of their ancient worldviews.
• Every single word of the Bible was cultural. That is to say, it took on meaning within the historical-cultural matrix in which it was written, just as every word we say has meaning in our own historical-cultural framework.
• The books of the Bible say they were written to ancient Israelites, Thessalonians, Corinthians, etc. That means their first meanings were meanings that made sense to these ancient people in the way they used words at their times and their places.
• In that sense, to read the Bible literally is pretty much to read it as someone else's mail.
• The Bible was not one book originally. It was dozens of books written over many centuries in at least three different languages (Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek).
• They were originally written to audiences at different times and places. That is to say, the "yous" in the Bible were, in the first place, no one alive today. "YOU shall have no other gods before me" was first spoken to ancient Israelites (Exod. 20:3) who lived over 3000 years ago. 
• For the most part, therefore, each book of the Bible was originally a stand-alone book. For the most part, they were first written to be read separately, not as a collection.

Some conclusions that apply to the "literal" meaning of the biblical texts:

• We should not simply apply biblical instruction in its specifics blindly to today. It is essential that we know why that instruction was given in the first place, which had everything to do with the context in which that instruction was given.
• Doing the specifics of what the biblical authors instructed may not have the same meaning that they had. "Doing what they did isn't always doing what they did," especially if doing it in our context doesn't have the same significance today that it had in their context.
• Since the ideas of the Bible were "incarnated" in the worldview categories of their ancient contexts, they have to be organized from the standpoint of a Christian metanarrative. The Bible provides the content of that metanarrative, the Spirit speaking through the Christians of the centuries have bequeathed us with the organizing principles.
• We need to be somewhat tentative when it comes to the details of the original meaning and focus mostly on the broader themes and trajectories of Scripture.

Extending the Meaning

2. Here are some techniques that the Christians of the centuries have legitimately and illegitimately used over the centuries to extend the literal meaning of the biblical texts:

• Biblical scholarship is essential to an informational approach to the minutia of the original meaning of the Bible, but it is neither essential nor intrinsically capable of reading the Bible as Scripture.
• When we read the Bible as Christian Scripture, we often "extend" the literal meaning so that it speaks to us today.
• We often put individual stories that were self-contained into an overarching metanarrative starting with the pre-existent Trinity and extending beyond the eschaton.
• We often generalize or even univeralize words that originally had a limited scope.
• We often substitute our context for their context. We become the y-o-u. This process sometimes works when it is guided by spiritual common sense but at other times it can result in the idiosyncratic and anachronistic.
• Sometimes we redefine the words in ways that fit with our spiritual common sense.
• Sometimes we knowingly or unknowingly deselect passages that do not fit with our spiritual common sense.

In terms of the sacramental function of the Bible:

• There is an existential difference when we read the Bible as Scripture. I do not read these books as mere artifacts of history. These are my books. These books tell the story of my family. These are not curious stories of other peoples from other places. These are the stories of my people. They are stories that provide a framework for identifying who I am.
• I read these books from a perspective of faith. If I am reading these books as Christian Scripture, then I read them from a Christian faith perspective. In philosophical terms, I place the content of these texts into a Christian "metanarrative." 
• This perspective provides the rules by which the original meaning of these texts can be expanded.
• When I read them as Scripture, I see them as mediating God's authority over me in some way.
• We are open to the Spirit speaking to individuals and communities through the words, but recognize that the community and the Church must test the spirits.
• We are always secure to preach the rule of faith and the law of love. The rule of faith is the consensus of common Christianity. The law of love is submission to God and the love of all.
• We let God change us through the text.