A Challenge

If you've read much of anything I've said, you'll know that I think humans are mostly irrational creatures. Our minds are finite and fallen, skewed in their view of the world. This includes our understanding of the Bible. We change our memories without knowing it. We rationalize events to fit the narrative we want deep down, the one that gives our life meaning and purpose. Often those who shout "truth" the loudest are actually the least interested in it. What they mean is "My view, my view."

There have been a lot of predictions of what the next few years will bring. Our natural inclination will be to make events fit our narrative (whatever it is), to rationalize anything that doesn't fit our assumptions, to change our memories of what we expected, even to change our values in terms of what is acceptable. If things are better than we expected, we may make excuses for why we were still right. If things are worse than we expected, we may subtly adjust our values to accommodate and justify our tribe.

All of that is to say, I suggest you take an hour or two to write down your expectations of the days ahead. The goal is for you to see yourself in the future, perhaps for you to have to argue with yourself. In the moment, we rewrite history. But if you have a record, you may have to argue with yourself. And that can be a wake up call you didn't expect.

If we are not willing to adjust our views given enough evidence, then we are not really interested in the truth. I commit myself to that openness. Will you?

Goals for the New Year 2025

The New Year is always a time of optimism and hope. Even though winter has barely begun, January 1 always feels like it is looking forward to spring, like the lights are coming back on. As I look back, I didn't do too badly with last year's goals. For example, here's my Shopify store.

This year may be different from other years. This will likely be a year of chaos. There's a fair chance that a lot of "little people" will get hurt in the process. Depending on the extent of the chaos, there could be hard times for everyone. You have to pray for the best and keep moving on.

Personal

• I'll hit the usual reset button on running. My youngest children are running now, and they have gotten me out a little over break. I'd like to run 3-4 times a week this year, and we plan to run a half-marathon together.
• Setting the measly goal of reading two chapters of something a week.
• Continue my weekly project schedule.  

Publishing

• Again, I'd like to get my Science and Scripture notes into a regularly published book.
• I have a contract for another book I'd like to finish by March 1.
• I probably will continue a trickle of self-published books. The first on the docket is a novel. I have another one in process that tells the story of the Bible through the eyes of its women.

YouTube

• A basic goal of 2-3 videos a week -- Hebrew of the Week and Greek of the Week. A Monday-Thursday schedule might work.

Udemy

• This year I'd like to put up a philosophy course that goes through Sophie's World, which I used to use as one of the textbooks at IWU.

Wishing us all a good year. There is so much potential for good in the world. We are our own worst enemy.

Pauline Studies 3: Paul and Salvation

I continue to read through Gupta, Heim, and McKnight's The State of Pauline Studies. Here are my previous posts:

• Paul and the Messiah
• Paul and Judaism 

The third chapter is by Ben Blackwell on Paul and Salvation. He had a difficult task -- to herd the cats of Pauline scholarship into distinct corrals. Pretty much all typologies of this sort are inevitably skewed.

Blackwell labels the main options as 1) Reformational, 2) New Perspective, 3) Paul within Judaism, 4) Apocalyptic, and 5) Participationist. The problem is that we are inevitably imposing categories on Paul. The occasional nature of his writings suggests that his language and approach may differ somewhat from letter to letter.

1. Reformational Perspective
We used to call this the "old" perspective, but several prominent Pauline scholars have retained key elements of high Protestant interpretations while making necessary adjustments in the light of late twentieth-century insights. Blackwell includes names like Francis Watson, John Barclay, and Mike Bird in this category, although Watson and Barclay are hard to categorize. Blackwell mentions some key trends under this umbrella: 1) justification as acquittal 2) based solely on divine agency, often formulated in terms of 3) penal substitution. 

I get that Blackwell is trying to move beyond the older "old" versus "new" approach. When I was coming through the ranks in the 90s, the "old" perspective saw Paul contrasting a "grace" approach with a "works righteousness" approach he was combatting in Judaism. In 1977, E. P. Sanders showed that this was a false dichotomy and that, in fact, Judaism was a religion of grace.

Based on Romans 4:8, I do indeed think that Paul's justification language in relation to humans is about forensic acquittal. However, I do not think the phrase "righteousness of God" in Romans 1:17 is about a right standing God imputes to believers (47). I'm not disappointed if I don't fall in this category. I don't see Paul as a monergist or an advocate of some mathematical version of penal substitution.

A key work however is John Barclay's 2017 Paul and the Gift. He argues that grace in Paul is characterized by incongruity and circularity. In it is "incongruous" in that it is disproportional to anything we might try to do to earn it. However, it is not completely unconditional. There are informal expectations ("circularity") that went along with ancient patronage.

However, Barclay (and Wright) are monergists in the end. They believe that God will make sure that the elect will produce the appropriate circular fruits by God's power. In other words, they smuggle in the perseverance of the saints in works clothing. But Paul did not believe that final salvation was assured to those in Christ (e.g. 1 Cor. 9:27; Phil. 3:11).

2. New Perspective
Since I studied under Dunn, you would expect me to fall into this category. I am indeed highly sympathetic to many of the interpretations of Stendahl, Sanders, Dunn, and Wright. On the one hand, I completely agree with this description Blackwell gives: "The NPP argues that Christianity is a fulfillment, albeit a surprising one, of the Jewish faith, not a response to it" (49).

However, I do not see justification language in terms of joining the covenant people of God. It's not that I disagree with this theology. I just don't think this is how Paul uses the dikaioo word group. I also think Paul's thought was more atomistic than Wright's metanarrative approach would see it. Paul can talk metanarrative, but I think it is just one of several rhetorical strategies. I also have never been convinced that Paul primarily functioned using the category of exile. I just think Wright glues too many things together with his brilliant mind.

3. Paul within Judaism Perspective
While I am sympathetic to many aspects of the "radical new perspective," in the end I think most of these interpreters go too far. Yes, "early Christianity was and remained a sect of Judaism for Paul" (51). Of course, it did. I do think that all Paul's letters were written primarily to Gentile audiences.

In Romans 11, Paul does speak of Gentiles being grafted into the Israelite tree. But he does not think that Jews can be justified by the Law. He radically reinterprets justification for Jews as well as Gentiles. He uses some language that is radical in relation to the Law even if he primarily remained Law-observant. He even speaks of Gentile believers keeping the Law (Rom. 2:14) even though they are uncircumcised.

So, again, I'm very sympathetic to many aspects, but Nanos, Fredricksen, and others go too far, IMO. A key work here is Matthew Thiessen's, Paul and the Gentile Problem (2016). I have his shorter A Jewish Paul (2023). 

4. Apocalyptic Perspective
Beverly Gaventa has just produced an important commentary on Romans. She would be a prominent representative of this category, along with Doug Campbell. This group emphasizes the discontinuity of the Christ-event with what came before and it actually uses language found in Paul to describe itself (e.g., Gal. 1:12).

One key dimension of this stream is a focus on Sin as a power in Paul, thus making the problem that Christ solves cosmic rather than merely individual or communal. Similarly, it has a more Christus Victor model of atonement, a more "singular" understanding of grace (without wrath), and a "faithfulness of Christ" approach to the pistis Christou debate. Blackwell sees a lot of Sanders' thinking belonging to this category. And of course, we should think of Käsemann, Beker, and Martyn.

Again, there is a lot I agree with here while thinking other aspects are out of focus. For me, the apocalyptic dimension of Paul fits nicely in the "surprising fulfillment" nature of the NPP. I do believe that, practically speaking, Paul did argue largely backward from plight to solution. Sin is a power for Paul in some of his key letters. And I think that the "faithfulness of Christ" was one feature of Paul's rhetoric.

Was Paul an apocalyptic thinker? Of course.

5. Participationist Perspective
Blackwell places himself in the final category along with Michael Gorman, Richard Hays, and others. Note his 2016 book Christosis. "Both the problem and the solution are related to participation in God's presence." Like the apocalyptic approach, there is much I like about how Blackwell describes this position. As Hays pointed out decades ago, "in Christ" is much more common in Paul's letters than justification by faith. 

Here is how Blackwell describes the participationist approach with regard to salvation: "In response to death from sin, salvation is focused on a reconstituted encounter with God that restores the human experience of (God's) life" (58). I like the sense that this approach features more of the Spirit and actual righteousness in the Christian life. As he puts it, "grace will be effective in creating change" (59).

In the end -- and this is a comment on the state of New Testament studies in general -- I think Christian theology and contemporary philosophy interfere more with exegesis than it should. "Let the text say what it says and then work out the tensions in your theology." As exegetes, we have to forget our Christian doctrine, our love of patristics, the fact that we've read Gadamer or Barth, or our sympathies to metanarratives. Objectivity is unattainable, but exegesis demands we do our best not to infect the text with our concerns.

Year in Review (12-28-24)

The days roll by without relenting. I have known for as long as I can remember that you need to enjoy the present, savor your family, be happy where you are. "Be here now." 

I just have rarely done it. It's not my personality and, just maybe, not my circumstances. I've always been in a mad dash, it seems. I don't know what I would or could do differently. My kids are successfully launched. We've had some amazing experiences as a family.

I lost my mother this year at 98. She had a wonderful life and a good death. I celebrated her life here on the blog. Still hope to publish a biography of my parents.

I'm in Erik Erickson's "Generativity vs. Stagnation." I suppose by external appearances, these years have been generative. I helped start a seminary. I've written over thirty peer-reviewed books and self-published as many. I had some great years of teaching and some great years in higher ed leadership at Indiana Wesleyan and Houghton. My years with Campus have brought extraordinary learning and continue to be very productive and exciting.

We can't choose when we leave this earth. I'd love to leave Notes Along the Way and Philosophical Pensees behind if I ever finish them. Whether anyone would ever read them is another thing.

2. The most successful book I wrote this year was A Biblical Argument for Women in Ministry, published in June. This clearly is scratching an itch as I've sold around 600 copies in a half year and continue to sell over a copy a day on average. It has a high-performing Facebook ad that was born of a viral set of tweets.

I've not been able to reproduce the success, although I have made several other attempts. My wife wants me to stop churning these out and write a more conventional book with a real publisher this year. I do have a contract for one with Cascade and will probably seek a contract for a book on Science and Scripture.

Late last year and early this, I took a course in self-publishing that was very informative. I haven't been able to fully reproduce the results, but I have learned a great deal. I continue to experiment with AI both for book covers and editing suggestions. 

Here are the books I churned out this year in the quest for a winning formula. The premise of all of them is solid. Admittedly, I didn't push the marketing too hard since there wasn't initial success. I also didn't fully follow the method I learned in the course.

• The Spiritual War for the World (February)
• Explanatory Notes on Mark's Passion Week (March)
• The Sun Will Grow Dark, the Moon Turn to Blood (April)
• Biblical Hebrew for the Novice (July)
• Thirty Days of Jesus' Birth (November)
• The Mystery of Jesus (December)

3. I continue to put Greek and Hebrew videos on YouTube. They have dedicated viewers. I still have some Patreon followers. It is a place to see video material that is both listed and sometimes unlisted. I started a philosophy series on Tik Tok, but I probably need to think more about how to approach it. 

4. In my work with Campus Edu, I feel like a super-dean. Instead of administrating one faculty and curriculum, I work with about ten colleges and coordinate curriculum and faculty with them. It is very interesting with lots of karma and punishment for my past sins as a profligate faculty. This next year suggests more adventures with courses of many kinds and more dabbling with AI.

I have so much intellectual property (for example, this blog has been going since 2004), that it would be interesting to create an "Ask Ken" AI interface. I don't think it would be too hard as I could already create a custom GPT of this kind. But I don't necessarily want to give Sam Altman all my stuff. With tools like HeyGen, I could even have an avatar of me give video responses. Not worth the investment without a clear market. Pondering and continuing to learn.

5. The election was quite a thing. We'll see how it plays out.

I'll leave it at that. A dream for this coming year is the ever-elusive peace in the moment.

Pauline Studies 2: Paul and Judaism

The second chapter of Gupta, Heim, and McKnight's The State of Pauline Studies is "Paul and Judaism," by Kent Yinger. Yinger wrote a nice little book on the new perspective on Paul a few years back. Then a couple years ago, he and Craig Evans teamed up to write a nice historical overview of the Pharisees.

I might add that in 2019, I had a book published with Lexington Books that examined Hebrews through the lens of these sorts of developments in recent decades (A New Perspective on Hebrews). It's a bit pricy but I was very proud of the first chapter because it set the groundwork for the book by synthesizing the kinds of discussions in Yinger's chapter. In particular, I tried to systematize previous discussions on the new perspective, the third quest, and the parting of the ways discussions of these last decades. I've uploaded that first chapter of that book to Academia.edu.

1. So the material in Yinger's chapter is very familiar. He begins by giving the older view that is now generally displaced -- the idea that Paul fully departed from Judaism. As Yinger says, "The momentum in Pauline scholarship is undoubtedly toward a Paul who is more comfortable in his Jewish skin than the older consensus allowed" (25). I wonder how much preaching is still in the mid-1900s on this score.

It's fair to say that the majority of scholars today do not think that Paul's mission saw itself as breaking from Israelite faith, although we can debate what the word Ioudaismos ("Judaism" or "Judeanness") might have meant. The gradations of perspectives among scholars is maddening, which is why I was so proud of the synthesis in my book that I mention above. 

To sum up, Paul did not see himself as founding a new religion. He saw his mission as nothing other than the true form of Israelite faith and in full continuity with the Scriptures of the first covenant.

On the other end of the spectrum are those who argue for Paul within Judaism. I find some of these views extreme -- for example, those who would say that Paul had two different systems of salvation, one for Jews and one for Gentile converts. In general, I think that Paul's language is in tension with itself across his writings, which is why there are so many different scholarly perspectives. 

The middle ground is Paul alongside a "reconfigured" Jewish identity. I think it is inevitable that this is what Paul's mission ended up doing whether he entirely saw the extent to which he was doing this. See the material on specific verses below.

2. The middle part of this chapter very briefly mentions some of the key debates. What does "Judaism" mean, for example? Its connection to Judean may indeed come into play in passages like 1 Thessalonians 2:14-16. At times Ioudaismos does seem to refer to a pattern of zeal for the Law that Paul rejects.

To what extent is the word conversion appropriate for Paul? I go with appropriate in the sense of shifting between Jewish sects. It really seems more a debate over an English word and thus a bit extraneous to Paul himself. 

How welcome were Gentiles into Jewish synagogues? I would say it varied but probably it was a common phenomenon in the Diaspora. 

How much did Christians remain in the synagogue? I would say it varied again. I think Acts' sense that Paul always started in synagogues very plausible, with him then only separating when the situation was too hostile. I side with the minority on Romans being addressed primarily to Gentile believers since I side with the older view that Romans 16 was originally for Ephesus.

What did Paul find wrong with Ioudaismos? I lean toward Sanders' sense that the starting point is Christ. Because most Jews rejected Jesus, Paul saw their version of Israelite faith problematic. But for Paul, grace through Christ was an alternative righteousing system to grace through Torah. Justification through Christ made it possible for Gentiles to be grafted into the Israelite tree without them keeping the Law. Judaism's problem was that it rejected this whole Christ-system.

3. Yinger helpfully ends the chapter with a quick pass through several key passages.

• Acts 21 -- Paul seems very Law-observant here, even offering sacrifices. I've argued with regard to Hebrews that most Christian Jews did continue to offer sacrifices and that it wasn't until the destruction of Jerusalem that Christians largely began to see the scope of Christ's death as extending beyond the sins of Israel and Gentile converts to all time. At the same time, one can easily see a lot of what Paul does in this passage as tactical -- "To the Jews I became a Jew."
• Romans 9-11 -- This is a passage that leans more on the continuity side of the Judaism debate. It sees Gentiles being grafted into the Jewish tree and sees a wholesale conversion of Israel to Jesus at the point of his return (I think). But this is Paul in one rhetorical mode.
• Romans 14-15 -- I think Paul's references to conservative Christian Jews is a little rhetorical here. He's trying to get his "Gentile Israelites" to behave a certain way and so the language is a little extreme -- he is siding more with the strong in his rhetoric than he really feels. When he says in effect "some don't observe the Sabbath and some do," this would largely fall along ethnic lines, although not entirely.
• 1 Corinthians 9 -- My own position on Paul is that he was largely Law-observant except when it came into conflict with mission. Like Jesus, I don't think he was scrupulously Law-observant when it came to the traditions of the elders. Paul extends this non-scrupulousness to purity laws that came into conflict with Gentile Christian interaction.
• Philippians 3 -- Here I side with Stendahl and others that Paul is not speaking of the utter worthlessness of his Jewish past but of the relative worthlessness of it in comparison to Christ.

Kudos to Yinger for giving such a good taste of the maddening debates of these last decades. It's not hard to see why there are so many books on Paul and Judaism/the Law. The gradations of perspectives can drive one to the cliffs of insanity, and they are driven by the fact that Paul's language is generally unsystematized and often has a rhetorical dimension. I suspect he would have to reflect to answer some of these questions for us.

The State of Pauline Studies: Paul and the Messiah

I am in my late fifties. It is interesting to locate myself among those scholars I observed when I was in my late twenties. I would read articles and books they had written and wonder where they were now. Some hadn't seemed to have written much for a while, and I wondered if they were still alive. Some sat in the back of the room at SBL while the young people presented. Some didn't bother going to SBL anymore.

I still buy the books. Some of my purchases these last months have of course included James McGrath's two books on John the Baptist (started). I bought the landmark New Testament in Color. You'll find Vanhoozer's Mere Christian Hermeneutics on my shelf as well as Brant Pitre's Jesus and Divine Christology among several others outside of biblical studies.

One I may persist through is The State of Pauline Studies. I'm grateful to Nijay Gupta and Scot McKnight for doing these volumes. They help me know how out of touch I may or may not be. It doesn't matter much to the church. In the current hyper-populism of America, expertise is a sign of evilness.

I've made it through the first chapter, whoop-tee-do. It's by one of the youngin's, Josh Jipp, on "Paul and the Messiah." I didn't feel too out of date. Here is a very brief run down.

1. Christos as a Title
Jipp sets out well the transition in consensus that has happened over the last hundred years from a generation that largely saw Christ as almost a proper name to a growing new consensus that it does indeed invoke a sense of the title Messiah. He presents the sharpest pivot taking place in the 2012 work of Matthew Novenson, Christ Among the Messiahs. Novenson argued that Christos would have been recognized as an honorific -- thus having a clear content without having to spell it out.

I should also note references throughout this chapter to Jipp's own work, chiefly Christ is King (2015) and The Messianic Theology of the New Testament (2020).

2. Messianic Exegesis
I'm not sure if this section had much of a debate point. Jipp catalogs various works of recent years that have explored one or another way in which Paul read the Old Testament with Jesus glasses on. This seems to be beyond question. He starts the section going back to Don Juel's classic on Messianic Exegesis. 

A key resource for me here was an old chapter by Richard Hays in a Festscrift titled, "Christ Prays the Psalms." Since Hays is now an old guy, Jipp cites instead another youngin', Matthew Bates, in his The Hermeneutics of the Apostolic Proclamation (2012). While I'm on the subject, another key recent work in the footnotes is Bates' Salvation by Allegiance Alone (2017).

3. Romans 1:3-4
Here Jipp pits an older reading of these two verses as a "two-step," "exaltation Christology" with adoptionist overtones with more recent readings that see Jesus' human messianic identity in full concert with his divine messianic identity. The trend of the last twenty-five years has clearly been toward a reading of Paul that is closer to the later creeds than the earlier Dunn generation that saw a longer development of Christology in the first century. At the moment, Hurtado and Bauckham have won the day among the younger generation of scholars.

4. Royal Christology
This section explores some suggested overtones for Jesus' kingship. Is it primarily Jewish messianism (Horbury)? To what extent does Paul present Jesus in contrast to Caesar (Wright)? Jipp himself sees some influence of ancient royal ideology.

I do think that there are overtones of Christ as a king in contrast to Caesar. I've generally thought however that Paul was careful not to be too explicit about these overtones for obvious reasons. But I do indeed see Paul's royal Christology as the very center of his Christology.

The Essence of Jesus' Earthly Mission

Over the last couple weeks, I've been posting through the early mission of Jesus on social media. Here is the whole series in one place:

_____________________

1. Jesus' earthly ministry started out of the ministry of John the Baptist. God's kingdom was coming. Repent. Give your allegiance to God. Wash away your sins both individual and corporate.

This is a re-orientation away from ourselves to God, a greater than ourselves. It is a surrender to a kingdom with its command and control in heaven. It is in preparation for the restoration of God's people.

This is the earthly context of Jesus' mission.

2. Before Jesus took over where John the Baptist left off, he underwent a time of turmoil in a deserted place. Matthew and Luke tell us he was tempted to exploit his power, to exploit his privilege, and to take his authority before its time. Rather, it was God's will for him to wait, to serve, and to put others first.

3. After John the Baptist was arrested, Jesus publicly began to preach the message John had started. The time had come for the kingdom of God to arrive on earth. The proper response of Israel was individual and corporate repentance as well as faith in this good news of the kingdom's arrival. But while John preached in the south near Jerusalem, Jesus focused his preaching in the north, in Galilee.

4. Jesus did not focus on everyone in his earthly ministry. He focused on the north, on Galilee. He did not focus on the "healthy," those who were allegedly keeping the covenant and who were socially on track. He focused on the "lost sheep," those off track and unwell on every level.

In his "inaugural address" in Luke 4, he reads Isaiah 61 to single out the poor, the captive, the blind, and the oppressed as those on whom his mission was focusing.

John the Baptist had preached to the mainstream of Israel. Jesus was filling in the edges in the restoration of God's people.

5. One group of Israelites on the edges were the sick and the disabled. One major feature of Jesus' restoration ministry involved healing. This is something John the Baptist didn't do. Jesus had compassion on the sick, the lame, the blind, the deaf, and he healed them according to their faith.

He came not into the world to condemn the world, but so that the world might have life more abundant.

6. Another group on the edges of Israel were the demon possessed. They were a concrete reminder of Satan's temporary sway over the earth. But Jesus restored these afflicted individuals to wholeness by.casting the demons out.

Every demon Jesus expelled was the arrival of the kingdom of God to the earth, the restoration of God's kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.

7. Jesus' mission brought conflict. Some of it was jealousy. Why do you have this power, authority, and popularity and we don't? Why are you hanging around *those* people (and not pandering to us)?

Some was fear of the kingdom. Why are you stirring up the people?

Jesus also made the pretenders look bad. Hey, you're calling our motives into question! You're not following the rules we hide our motives behind!

8. Matthew gives us a glimpse of Jesus' teaching in the Sermon on the Mount. It has perhaps three key themes. One seems the coming reversal of the kingdom. Blessed are you who mourn now because the day of comfort is coming. Remember they persecuted the prophets too.

Don't worry about clothing or food. God will take care of you. Those who are pure of heart now, those who make peace now, those who are meek now will inherit the earth soon enough. The kingdom is coming.

The wise person builds their house upon the rock. As for those who are comforted now, God will scatter the proud in the imaginations of their hearts.

9. A second theme of the Sermon on the Mount set the record straight on Jesus and Scripture. They accused him of being loose on the Law -- meaning their traditions of interpretation. Jesus makes it clear that he did not come to nullify the Scriptures (like the Sabbath).

Rather the sum of the Law is to love one's neighbor. It's not just not murdering. Hatred breaks the Law. It's not just adultery. It's lust and divorce to commit adultery legally. It's not just keeping oaths. It's truthfulness in general. God calls for full love that goes beyond the ones we like. It's loving completely, loving everyone, including our enemies (Matt. 5:48). Love is the fulfillment of Scripture (Matt. 22).

That leads to the third theme of the Sermon. Those who might criticize Jesus for not keeping the details of the Law are guilty of not keeping the heart of the Law. They are pretenders. They keep the letter of the Law for show. But they don't keep the Law truly because they do not love their neighbors. They project their own guilt on others.

10. Jesus did not shun those with power or wealth who might repent too and long for the kingdom like his other followers. He was glad to eat at the house of a Zacchaeus or meet a Nicodemus at night. He had some wealthy wives who supported his mission.

But most of the Jerusalem leaders were against him. Luke especially highlights Jesus' condemnation of the rich who do nothing with the vast resources they have. The rich man in the parable does little to help those like the beggar Lazarus at their gate.

He has little time for the religious scholars and teachers of the Law, although he is glad to eat with them too. He indicts their pretense and goes about his mission without giving them much thought.

These all would be part of the reversal coming. "Woe to you who are well fed now, for you will go hungry."

11. Jesus did not engage the Romans. Famously, when asked about taxes, he asked for a Roman coin. After pointing out that Caesar's image was on the coin, he suggested it be given back to Caesar. "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's." In other words, the kingdom of this world is a different kingdom from our God's. Pay your taxes.

This is a "Christ against culture" approach. It is a separatist mindset, and the early church would follow. The gospel was for Roman governors like Sergius Paulus and Theophilus too, but Jesus did not engage the Roman world directly in his earthly ministry -- until it came to him.

Here we should point out two phases of Jesus' ministry. When he was on earth, he taught loving the enemy. "If [a Roman soldier] compels you to carry something one mile, carry it two." (Walter Wink has suggested this was a shaming technique of non-violent resistance.) Turn the other cheek (Wink would say shaming the other by forcing them to backhand you).

But God would bring justice to the Romans soon enough. God himself would do it. It was not for Jesus' disciples to do it. But Babylon would fall soon enough. God would do it. We remember that John of Patmos had been with Jesus, and his message of judgment for Rome was apocalyptic.

12. It was not until the very end of Jesus' earthly mission that he finally broached the question that had no doubt long been on his disciples' mind. "Who are people saying I am?" While people have been saying various things, Peter has the right answer: "You are the Messiah."

Jesus has kept such views quiet because the contemporary expectations of the Messiah would be counterproductive. They expect a conquering hero who will restore the kingdom to Israel then. That is rather the agenda for Christ's second coming.

No, at that time he was headed to Jerusalem to die. He rebukes Peter for only knowing half of the equation. Judas possibly tries to force God's hand, thinking God won't let Jesus lose to the leaders and the Romans. But unwittingly, he advances God's own plan.

Jesus dies on the cross for the sins of Israel and not only Israel. He dies for the sins of the whole world. It is the sacrifice to end all sacrifices. All the sacrifices before were not truly able to take away sins, and no sacrifice since is meaningful.

This was the one sacrifice for all time that did the deed for all time.

13. The disciples weren't expecting Jesus to die. Then when he had died, they weren't expecting him to come back to life. Their expectations were all off in their timing because, for them, it was all about the political restoration of Israel in their time (Acts 1:6).

Instead, Jesus is installed as Son of God in power with his resurrection from the dead (Rom. 1:3). God "superexalts" him as LORD after he humbled himself unto death (Phil. 2:9). God enthrones him as Lord and Messiah (Acts 2:36).

Now his disciples must take the good news of the kingdom to every people (Matt. 28:19). He has been training them throughout his earthly ministry. They have been his apprentices as fishers of people. He singled out twelve in particular to symbolize the restoration of Israel. He even sent them out on practice mission.

Now his followers must take the good news to the whole earth. It is natural that at first they thought the message was only for Jews. But the book of Acts shows the good news crossing boundary after unexpected boundary. First, it jumped language. Then, it broke barriers of purity. Then it fully expanded to the Gentiles.

And the Jesus who ascended to the skies will one day reappear and descend in the same way.

The Week in Review (12/7/24)

1. I went to the funeral of Herbert Mohler this week. He was probably my Dad's closest cousin, at least in the last decades of my Dad's life. I remember my Dad being very fond of his German Baptist cousin Mary Louise as well. I seem to remember "favorite cousin" being said of her at one point.

Herbert was just a good guy. Witty like my Dad's Miller cousins in general. Faithful. Calm. Accepting of his lot and fate. An unsung hero. Wild secretary skills -- again, like many of the Millers and my father and grandmother Esther included. I met Herbert for coffee at Richard's several times when I was working at IWU.

The funeral was well-attended for a 96-year-old man. Good old Indiana folk.

2. Anderson University was downgraded by Fitch to a B- last week. Sharply declining enrollment. Very significant deficits. Probably dramatic moves are in order. Rough days are ahead as we hit the demographic cliff of 2026 we've been talking about now for several years.

Campus Edu is a potential Hail Mary for institutions like these. They could effectively "insource" their gen eds through us. I don't know enough about their situation to do precise math, but I figure we could save Anderson over 2 million dollars a year.

3. I was thinking this week about the brief South Korean attempt to invoke martial law. I'm sure that was scary for the South Koreans. It reminded me of some ideas I remember floating around in my teens and early 20s.

After my mother died a couple months ago, we went through her library, and I was reminded of some of the books that were hot in certain circles in the late 80s/early 90s. The Unseen Hand in 1985. Constance Cumbey's, A Planned Deception in 1985. A little earlier in 1971, None Dare Call It Conspiracy. These books were a bit scary to me back in the day.

The idea was that there were elite groups secretly meeting behind the scenes plotting to take-over the country and the world. For example, I remember the idea of creating a crisis so they could call a new Constitutional convention to rewrite the Constitution. I remember hearing the concept of "change agents." You manufacture a crisis and then use the crisis to bring in your solution (that your cabal had preplanned).

Of course this wasn't a new concept. Hitler may have set fire to the Reichstag so he would have an excuse to accuse and arrest his opponents. Not too long thereafter, he effectively dismissed the Parliament. South Korean's failed move by the president this week reminded me of the conspiracy literature I grew up with.

Anyway, I'm glad none of those things actually happened so many decades ago. 

4. The CEO of United Health was assassinated this week. One theory is that he hired his own killer. The response has been intriguing. Let's just say there wasn't a lot of public sadness or sympathy.

The state of American culture is a matter of great sadness to me. We are being swept away by a river of hate, misinformation, and genuine malintent, and there seems like nothing a person like me can do about it. It feels like we are self-destructing from within. God will let us self-destruct.

8. Is the Big Bang theory compatible with Scripture and Christian faith?

When I went to Houghton, I revived an old Carl Schultz course called Science and Scripture and offered it online. The idea was to open it up to the public for auditing and possibly attract some students. Plus it was a Bible option for online students among a faculty that didn't really like online (what else is new). Since then, I've wanted to write a book on Science and Scripture that roughly covers the topics of the course. I floated a proposal a few years back but didn't get a bite.

In the meantime, especially in the light of AI developments, I've been thinking about self-publishing an intermediate work that could lead up to that ultimate goal. In training AI, you create snippet answers it seems. I've jotted down about 50 questions so far that might make for something like "Science and Scripture: Questions and Answers." Here's question 8: Is the Big Bang theory compatible with Scripture and Christian faith?

_____________________

Yes -- it is potentially compatible as long as one believes God is the one who caused the Big Bang.

The reason so many Christians assume the concept of a Big Bang conflicts with Christian faith and Scripture is because they assume it is atheistic. However, if one believes that God caused the Big Bang, then the theory actually supports faith in God. The Big Bang Theory itself says nothing about its cause. It simply says the universe started with a "bang." It is only about the how. It says nothing about the why. The only bone of contention, then, is how long ago it happened.

1. In the mid-1900s, the Big Bang Theory was the idea that the universe began in a hot dense state and then expanded rapidly from there to the vast cosmos we know today. As early as 1922, a Russian physicist named Alexander Friedmann recognized that Einstein's equations for general relativity could support an expanding rather than a static universe. In 1927, the Belgian priest Georges Lemaître (1894-1966) also suggested independently the idea of a "cosmic egg" or cosmic atom as a possible solution to Einstein's equations. Einstein disdained this possibility so much that he added a constant to his equation.

It is important to consider that many mid-twentieth-century cosmologists did not like this option precisely because it played so well into the idea of a Creator. After all, Lemaître himself was a Roman Catholic priest. One millennia-old argument for the existence of God was the cosmological argument, which argues that the universe must have had a cause. In the 300s BC, Aristotle suggested that the cosmos needed a "prime mover" to give it a first push. In the 1200s, Aquinas expanded this argument. 

The idea that the universe had a beginning raised the question, "Why did it begin? What was the cause?" And the cosmological argument stood ready to say that the best answer was a Creator, an intelligent Designer.

2. The very term "Big Bang Theory" was coined by Fred Hoyle (1915-2001) in the 1949 to make fun of the proposal. Hoyle favored an alternative known as the "Steady-State Theory." This was the idea that the universe may be constantly generating matter in some way somewhere as well as losing matter somewhere. Since it required no beginning to the universe, many cosmologists found it attractive.

Hoyle would have to swallow his mockery in 1964 with the discovery of a cosmic background radiation that confirmed that the universe had a beginning. Since this radiation was steadily in decline all over the universe, it served as a kind of timer since an early cosmic event. If the universe were infinitely old, it would have already dissipated.

Further, Edwin Hubble (1889-1953) had shown in 1927 that the universe was expanding. If you are acquainted with the Doppler effect, wavelengths stretch out if an object emitting them is moving away from you. With light, this effect produces a "red shift." Hubble observed this shift everywhere in the universe. Everything is moving away from everything else.

All these data points and more have led to the current sense that the universe began in a singularity -- a point of the smallest possible dimensions. It then rapidly expanded some 13.8 billion years ago into the massive space we now know. [1] The Big Bang that Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson discovered in 1964 is now thought to be a "cosmic microwave background" (CMB) that emerged as the early universe cooled enough to release photons all over the universe when the universe was about 380,000 years after the universe began.

3. An alternative proposal was the so-called "Oscillating Big Bang Theory." In this proposal, the universe explodes from a singularity but then collapses again into a singularity because of the gravitational pull of the universe's mass. Like the Steady State Theory, this approach would allow for a universe that was infinitely old and did not require a Creator.

However, there does not seem to be enough mass in the universe for this theory to work. The so-called "critical density parameter" (Ω) would seem to be less than 1. This observation suggests that the universe will expand forever. Once again, we are left with a unique beginning event, which leads to the question, "Why did the universe begin? What was the cause?" 

The existence of a Creator God remains a perfectly coherent answer. We might add that the frequent retort, "Then where did God come from?" is a non sequitur. It does not follow. It actually is circular because it assumes that God is part of the creation. We observe that events within the universe require a cause. We have no point of reference to say whether entities outside the universe need a cause.

4. The main bone of contention is then the length of time. Many Christians would consider 13.8 million years ago to be too long ago to fit with the Bible. We will explore the age of the earth and the universe in another chapter. There are however varying interpretations. For example, some would see Genesis 1 specifically in relation to the creation of the earth, not the universe. Some might suggest an apparent age theory where God created the universe to look like it's 13.8 billion years old. Some might view the days of Genesis 1 as ages rather than 24 hour periods.

In the end, however, the notion that the universe started with a bang supports rather than conflicts with the notion of God as Creator.

[1] Some key aspects of the current understanding emerged from the work of Alan Guth in 1980.

The Week in Review (11-30-24)

Thanksgiving has come and gone. Always nice for a little reprieve from the normal grind, although family fellowship tends to bring its own extras too. 

I had an idea last weekend with a book I wrote a couple years ago -- Explanatory Notes on Jesus' Birth. I reformatted into the thirty-one days of December and published it as Thirty Days of Jesus' Birth. Unfortunately, I went a little Philo crazy on John 1, so I regret not editing some of that out. But it has color images and covers John 1, Matthew 1-2, and Luke 1-2.

I thought this might actually might be a good way for me to remotivate myself to finish my Explanatory Notes on the New Testament. However, it really didn't garner many sales anyway. Most of the sales were people who know me. The two or three days of Facebook ads I did went nowhere.

But the thought was to work toward March for something like "Fifty Days of Jesus' Passion and Resurrection." I've already done Explanatory Notes on Mark 12-16, Matthew 28, Luke 24, and John 20-21. I would need to complete Matthew 21-27, Luke 19-23, and John 11-19 by March. Next year, I would fill in the blanks and have all the Gospels done.

Eventually, it would be a "Through the New Testament in a Year." It would start in December with the birth stories. Then January-February would go through Matthew 3-20, Mark 1-11, Luke 3-18, and John 2-10. Then Lent and the beginning of Easter would finish the Gospels. Then fifty days in Acts covering Pentecost. Then about a chapter a day to finish up the New Testament by the end of November.

The Week in Review (11-23-24)

It's been a pretty solid week. Mostly fixed a leak under the kitchen sink (I hate plumbing). Had to call in help for our downstairs heat (simple fix I somehow wasn't pulling off). First snow of the season. We've been enjoying "very unusual" warm weather in late November.

I continue to waver between annoyance and despair that people are so suspicious of expertise, including scientific expertise. It works so extremely well. We love our gadgets. AI is dumbfounding. But we've been trained to mock the consensuses of experts in general. We think ourselves possessed of secret knowledge as we've been fed smart-sounding talking points against the most likely reality. I've even heard conspiracies that we never landed on the moon resurfacing.

I don't know what will happen to us. The young are so easily manipulated. I sense that YouTube shorts, Instagram reels, Tik Tok, maybe Twitter are the tools of indoctrination. Whatever you think of his theology, Dan McClellan is the path for those who want to influence in this moment. I've started philosophy shorts on Thursdays, although I just don't have the punch that others do. A generation can easily be lost, and the winners write the history books.

Subjectivity can explain so much away. It often takes a splat to shake us to reality, but it's a final thought.

The Week in Review (11-16-24)

I haven't posted for a couple weeks. The biggest event of course in the interim was the re-election of Donald Trump as president. He promised a lot of things on the campaign trail. I suspect a lot of people either weren't listening or don't believe he'll actually do them. We're about to find out.

We are in an experiment, so to speak. There seem to be three broad possible outcomes: 1) America will experience great benefit as a result ("make America great again"), 2) it will be much as the last presidency, or 3) we're in for a major crisis/crises. I've heard a lot of #2 from what I might call ordinary American people. They're not entirely thrilled about Trump but figure it will be like the last time.

Then there are the MAGA supporters who sound almost messianic in their love of the president. One meme comparing him to King David circulated the week of the election. Then there are those who think that the Constitution is about to be unraveled along with our representational democracy. Will there ever be a fair election again? 

The data collection is about to begin on the experiment. This week we have heard names for cabinet picks: Matt Gaetz, Tulsi Gabbard, RFK Jr., Pete Hegseth, Elon Musk, and Marco Rubio. Of these, Rubio is the only "normal" pick. Gaetz is under House investigation on the possibility of activities with a minor. The idea of him as Attorney General has raised a number of eyebrows. Gabbard has been accused of being too chummy with Russia, and she is nominated for director of National Intelligence.

Musk wants to cut trillions from the budget, possibly cutting the Department of Education. I've heard the CIA mentioned too. RFK Jr. is not only pro-abortion (over Health and Human Services) but is also anti-vaccine.

It remains to be seen what will happen. Let the experiment begin.

A Tale of Two Christians

As we approach the November election, Christians are divided once again. It would seem that, for both sides, those who would vote for the other candidate are almost incomprehensible. "How can you even be a Christian?"

Let me see if I can tease out the thinking of both sides. Feel free to correct me if I have misunderstood or misrepresented anything. Certainly, feel free to disagree. I suspect there are many Christians whose consciences simply won't allow them to vote at all in this election.

Abortion and Transgenders
I suspect that for those Christians who support Trump, abortion remains the central issue. Harris will no doubt do everything she can to make abortion widely available again. She would also appoint Supreme Court judges who, eventually, might at some point reverse the recent reversal of Roe v. Wade. Harris' support for transgender rights is also troubling.

Those voting for Harris might respond that it is unlikely that she can deliver on her rhetoric to make Roe v. Wade the law of the land. What has Biden been able to do to reverse it? They might also argue that more fundamental issues are at stake in this election. If the house burns down, all the children may die.

Democracy and Chaos
I suspect that for many Christians who will vote for Harris, the very stability of America and its Constitution are endangered by Trump. Why else would an unprecedented number of conservative Republicans support her, including many previous members of Trump's administration? Mike Pence, Dan Coats, John Bolton, H. R. McMaster, John Kelly -- and more from his previous administration oppose a second Trump presidency. The January 6 riots would be mentioned as an argument that Trump is a threat to the Constitution and the entire American system.

Those voting for Trump might respond that this is just hype and exaggerating him as a threat. He just talks that way. The system survived him before. Some would say that Trump was not responsible for January 6 or that no one/nothing was hurt.

Dangerous Immigration 
There is disagreement over the threat posed to America by the influx of undocumented (and documented) immigrants to America. Those voting for Trump likely see a picture of dangerous criminals flowing into the country. There are claims of child trafficking at the border. Others might say that these immigrants are taking the jobs of those who are already here.

The other side would claim that most of this is misinformation. That immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than those who are already here. That an allowance for unaccompanied minors is not child trafficking. And Christians believe all people are equally valuable in God's eyes, created in his image. The rhetoric is seen as thinly veiled racism. It is often argued that it was Trump that effectively stopped a bi-partisan immigration bill.

Hatred
Those voting for Harris likely consider Trump's rhetoric to be hateful and vile, disqualifying in itself. From his early comments about grabbing women by the p** to recent comments about the size of Arnold Palmer's male organ to hateful comments that flow daily about people being animals and vermin or "black jobs" or "eating the pets" in Springfield or "the enemies within" in reference to Democrats that should be rounded up by the National Guard or military. We would use euphemisms to convey some of the things he says because they make us feel uncomfortable.

The response is generally that he is a little rough around the edges but it is superficial. In 2016, it was said he was a baby Christian. Probably, all Christians would admit that this is less than preferable in a neighbor or relative at Christmas, let alone a president.

Economics
A major contention exists over who gets the blame for the current economic situation. Those who support Trump would primarily blame Biden-Harris for inflation, perhaps pointing to his Infrastructure Investment Act or aid to Ukraine. "Are you better off now than you were four years ago?" A large number of people would say they are worse off.

The response from Harris voters might be that inflation was primarily a consequence of the pandemic and was worldwide, thus not a product of Biden's presidency. For debates over aid to Ukraine, see below. Some might also claim that the economy is actually healthier now than it was four years ago with unemployment down and the stock market up. Most economists see Trump's tariffs as ultimately harmful to the American consumer and the economy.

Israel
There is no doubt that Trump will be more pro-Israel than Harris. As before, Trump would likely support Netanyahu in whatever he might do.

Biden-Harris have pleased neither side in the current conflict. An apparently Elon-Musk-supported group has in fact run opposite ads in Michigan and Pennsylvania. In Michigan, they have painted Harris as a pro-Israel person who has opposed the Palestinians. In Pennsylvania, they have painted her as a pro-Palestinian person who has opposed Israel. In any case, the official response is that they have (unsuccessfully) been trying to get aid into Gaza, secure the release of any remaining hostages, and end the conflict.

Socialism
Harris is likely seen as an advocate for any number of policies that are further on the socialist scale than is desirable. The continuance/strengthening of Obamacare. More regulations on business. Strengthening of central government services. Attempts to strengthen Social Security and Medicare. More climate change regulation. More oversight of education and drag on private education/voucher systems. Attempts at gun control. 

The opposite side might argue that she will not be able to do any more than Biden has been able to do, given the normal grind of government and a divided Congress. Republicans may even retake the Senate, in which case she will probably get little done at all of her own agenda. Others might say that some of these initiatives actually align with biblical values.

Ukraine
Those voting for Harris might claim that Trump would have simply let Putin take over Ukraine and then go on to take over who knows what else. Trump's claim to end the war on Day 1 is seen as him as likely handing it over to Russia. To Harris supporters, this makes Trump incredibly dangerous for world stability. They might argue that Trump actually worsened the Middle East situation considerably by withdrawing from the Iran agreement.

Trump supporters deny that Trump has any sympathy for Putin and in fact supported sanctions on him that Congress passed when he was president. Others might even see Ukraine as the bad guy and Putin as a positive force in the region. Trump supporters see Trump's withdrawal from the Iran deal as a positive -- being strong with our enemies. Others might say that America needs to get out of foreign affairs even more and focus on those at home. 

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This is an attempt to present the two Christian perspectives somewhat fairly. I would sum up the two sides in this way. 

• One side sees Trump as a danger to the fundamentals of the country and the stability of the world. It sees hateful vitriol toward immigrants, opponents, and minorities as disqualifying. 
• The other side believes that abortion remains the central issue for a Christian in this election. Harris has made it clear that she wants to make abortion the law of the land. They might also argue that the appraisal of Trump's danger is overstated. 
• On the other issues, there is disagreement on whether various information is true or false and what the core Christian values are.
• Many Christians will choose not to vote at all, concluding that both sides are too unthinkable to support.

Feel free to point out any flaws in this presentation, to augment it, and of course, feel free to disagree.

5.1 (Jesus would vote) ... To Restrain Evil

In chapter 3, we said that loving your neighbor on a societal level would involve at least three components: 1) working for the greatest good for the greatest number (chapter 3), 2) ... without hurting the rest (chapter 4), and 3) restraining those forces that work against both. In this chapter, we want to explore what it might mean to say that at least in some cases, Jesus would "vote" to restrain the forces of evil.

What Would Jesus Do? (WWJD)
1. From the very beginning, I noted that Jesus came to a specific time and place in history. I argued that some of his teaching reflected that context. For example, he didn't tell his followers to vote in the next Roman election because, well, there weren't any elections.

Jesus took a "Christ against culture" stance because it was not appropriate at that time either to give in to the world ("Christ in culture") or to try to take over the world ("Christ over culture"). [1] His disciples, I would argue, wanted to take over the world (Acts 1:6). By contrast, he and the other New Testament authors advocated living separately from the culture as exiles and strangers -- foreign immigrants in the empire. They lived as part of another kingdom: the kingdom of God. They were in the world but not of the world.

Accordingly, when we ask, "WWJD?" there are times when we are asking something that does not relate directly to our world. Jesus might give slightly different instructions to us today in our context. The principles would be the same, but the precise way those principles play out might be a little different.

For example, Jesus submitted to injustice. He had Peter put his sword away in the Garden of Gethsemane (John 18:11). Depending on your interpretation of Matthew 5:38-42, Jesus either advocated submission to oppressors or passive resistance. [2] What is clear is that he did not instruct his disciples to fight.

The Gospels do seem to indicate a significant conflict between the forces of God and evil on the Day of the Lord. For example, the book of Revelation, there is a final battle between the forces of God and the forces of the world at the battle of Armageddon (16:14). It is not a long battle.

However, it is difficult to find any place in the New Testament where believers are encouraged or expected to fight. Some metaphorical imagery is used -- fight the good fight (1 Tim. 6:12), put on the armor of God (Eph. 6:10-18). At one point Jesus does tell his disciples to go buy a sword (Luke 22:36). But he is not likely being literal here. When they say they already have two swords, he says, "It's enough" (22:38). 

In fact, in the parallel passage in Matthew 26:52, he tells the one who cut the ear of the servant off to put his sword away. "He who lives by the sword, dies by the sword." The bottom line is that we nowhere find Jesus promoting or expecting his followers to fight. It is quite the opposite. In Luke 22:36, is likely that Jesus is warning them about upcoming conflict and persecution, not literally telling them to fight. 

I do not personally think that this is full pacifism. Why then would his disciples have any swords at all? They likely had them to defend themselves in case someone tried to rob or hurt them. My sense is that Jesus had a strong bias toward peace, even a bias to suffer personally rather than to strive for personal justice. That's what he modeled and what his words emphasize. Indeed, the burden of proof is on me to show that Jesus sometimes thought fighting could be appropriate. Nevertheless, I doubt that Jesus was an absolutist on his advocacy for personal pacifism.

What Would God Do? (WWGD)
2. The New Testament seems to have a different view of government. Unlike the individual, to whom Jesus advocates a bias toward suffering over fighting, the New Testament expects government to restrain evil, including the use of force. We should note that the New Testament assumes the government is not Christian.

The clearest example of this assumption is Romans 13. Here is the key verse in this regard:

Textbox: "For it is a servant of God for your good, and be afraid if you should do evil, for it does not bear the sword in vain. It is a servant of God for wrath toward the one doing evil" (13:4).

This text not only assumes that the state will use force to enact justice -- it seems to assume capital punishment as one of the options! We will return to that question later in the book.

We have already argued that Paul is idealizing the Roman government here. He knows it frequently does not turn out like the ideal. We know that governments are not always just in their decisions -- even in Paul's own case. He is instructing the Roman church to be ideal citizens and perhaps also giving them a brief in their favor if they get in trouble with the Romans again.

Nevertheless, what I would argue is that, if we were to form an earthly government, the more fitting biblical model to follow is God the Father. Jesus was a model for us as individual believers, especially in a context hostile to us and where we are oppressed or isolated in society. For governance, the more fitting model in Scripture is that of God the Father. In other words, we should ask "What would God do?" (WWGD) more than "What would Jesus do?" (WWJD).

Textbox: Jesus is a model for us as individual believers (WWJD). However, God the Father is the more likely model for biblical governance (WWGD).

3. Once again, one's sense of God comes massively into play. In the previous chapter, we presented a contrast between how Calvinist approaches to God and how Arminian theology tends to see his governance. Deterministic approaches to God tend to have a "take over governance" approach while Arminian theology tends to have a "let them go" approach. 

In the previous chapter, we suggested that the US Constitution overlaps considerably with the Arminian model. God gives us the freedom to disobey him just as the US Constitution allows people of multiple faiths to freely practice their faith as long as they do not hurt anyone. We argued that the US Constitution uses the concept of a social contract to enact laws for the common good. These "common good laws" justify prohibitions on murder, stealing, and so forth without resorting to specifically religious assumptions.  

Interestingly, the biblical expectation for governmental justice is actually more restrictive than the way God governs the world much of the time. God allows people to murder all the time -- often without immediate consequence. God allows people to steal and do all manner of evil all the time. God frequently does not restrain evil at this moment, although we believe there will be a judgment eventually. And sometimes God does intervene in judgment now in history.

We will talk about God and justice in the next section. For the moment, what does the Bible expect governments to do in regard to civil justice?

4. While much of specific Old Testament Law related to an Ancient Near Eastern context, the basic categories of enforcement are largely timeless. [3] For millennia, the specific commandments of the Jewish Law have been categorized in relation to the Ten Commandments. [4] There are thus laws in relation to violence toward others. There are laws relating to sexual behavior. There are laws relating to property. There are laws relating to the justice process itself.

Given the parameters of the social contract in the Constitution, only common good laws can be applied to US law, not religiously-specific law. Again, we have argued this fits with an Arminian sense of how God governs the world. When we apply this lens, laws relating to the sole worship of Yahweh, not working on the Sabbath, and sexual ethics (as long as harm is not brought to another) seem to fall under the category of "religiously-specific law."

Of course, the US in the past has had laws that applied such laws to its general populace. Blue laws prohibited certain activities on Sunday, which of course is not the Old Testament Sabbath. Laws against adultery and homosexuality used to be on the books and, in some cases, still are, although generally they are not enforced. You could argue that the Constitution -- when practiced strictly -- should not allow for laws that are solely based on a Christian perspective.

On the other hand, laws against murder, rape, assault, and theft seem to fall in the category of "common good" or "social contract" law. The commandment not to bear false witness seems to have related to the equivalent of ancient court. Laws thus that set up and maintain justice are thus both biblical and fit under the category of "common law."

5. In these broad ways, therefore, both the biblical and American approach to governance anticipate that the state will play a role in the restraining of evil. The case of ancient Israel was different from that of America, because the leaders of Israel were expected not only to guard against common injustice but also to lead the people of Israel to keep Yahweh's specific covenant with them. This covenant did include everything from Sabbath observance to the exclusive worship of Yahweh.

Yet this is not the situation in America and there obviously is no biblical basis for considering America to be a new Israel. America is not mentioned in the Bible. [5] Even if some group believed it was Christian to try to take over America, the objective position of the United States Constitution would consider any attempt to enforce religiously-specific law as contrary to America's founding principles -- as "unAmerican."

The common ground is that the United States government will restrain "common good" evil. That is to say, it will restrain violence toward others, the damaging and theft of the property of others, and other harms or impingements on the "rights" of others. It will maintain a system of justice to make sure the social contract is implemented.

The state thus has a justice system and a police force to maintain the social contract. Romans 13 assumes that these will be state-administered. Does the state run these things perfectly? Of course not. Is it a "socialism" that needs to be undone? Certainly not. It does not always work, and it certainly has not always worked in the past. However, when you look back through history, it is an amazing privilege. We work to perfect it. We dare not try to dismantle it.

[1] Once again, I'm using the categories of H. Richard Niebuhr in Christ and Culture (Harper & Brothers, 1951).

[2] Walter Wink has argued that all of the responses Jesus gives in these verses would have brought shame to the oppressor. They would thus be non-violent resistance. See Wink, Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination (Fortress, 1992). 

[3] R. J. Rushdoony's "theonomic" approach fails to read those laws not only in their biblical context but in their historical-cultural context. He tries to apply the concrete specifics of Old Testament Law to today in The Institutes of Biblical Law (Chalcedon, 1973).

[4] See my own attempt to do so in Christian Ethics: Wesleyan-Arminian Reflections (2023).

[5] In context, Old Testament references to the "islands of the sea" were not about America (Isa. 42:4).

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Here is the series so far:

1. Would Jesus Even Vote?

2.1 (He would vote) As a Kingdom Citizen
2.2 We're citizens in two kingdoms

3.1 (He would vote) for love of neighbor and enemy
3.2 (He would vote) for the greater good
Test Case: Health Care (under revision)

4.1 (For the greater good) ... Without Hurting the Rest
4.2 The Separation of Church and State
Test Case: Education

Test Case: Education

Links to previous posts are now at the bottom. Chapter 4 continues in the series, "What Would Jesus Vote?" with the test case of education.

_____________________________________________

Jesus Principles
1. So what core principles might Jesus bring to bear in relation to the education of a people. What is the purpose of education? I believe he would have prioritized faith education.

Deuteronomy 6:6-7 tells the parents of Israel to teach the commandments of the Law to their children. Similarly, Deuteronomy 4:9-10 instructs parents to pass stories about God's mighty works on to their children. No doubt this teaching is part of the training of children that Proverbs 22:6 talks about.

Textbook: Proverbs 22:6

The New Testament assumes this training took place for Jewish children. 2 Timothy 3:15 indicates that Timothy had been trained in the Scriptures from childhood. Christian fathers (and mothers) are expected to raise up their children in the instruction of the Lord (Eph. 6:4). It is no surprise that, in late 1700s England, the "Sunday School" movement began with the goal of systematically teaching the children of England about God and the Bible. The movement would jump the pond to America as well.

Surely, then, Jesus would have been in favor of children being taught the scriptures. Why was this important? It was important because God is the most important thing. All other importance is derivative from God's importance. More than anything else, Scripture teaches us about God. Scripture teaches us the stories of God and, thereby, the nature of God. Scripture reveals God as holy, God as love, and God as just.

Textbox: Jesus would have prioritized faith education.

2. From a psychological standpoint, a child is not yet mentally capable of abstract or critical thinking on a high level. Teaching at this age is an important kind of imprinting of values and beliefs. The values that are instilled at a young age will be hard to shake. They are intuitive and unthinking. We default to them without even knowing why. They are in our "guts."

C. S. Lewis went through a period of time when he was an atheist. What brought him back to God, kicking and screaming? It did involve an intellectual argument. But even more, it was the fact that good and evil were concepts in his bones. He just couldn't bring himself to believe that good wasn't real, and it was this sense of the reality of good and evil that eventually brought him back to God.

It is much more difficult to instill values with such depth once a person gets older. I would say it is almost impossible to do by way of reason. Dramatic experiences have the best chance, I would say -- experiences of God or personal experiences. The bottom line is that faith education is extremely important for children from a Christian perspective.

3. Is faith education something for the government to do or something for the church to do? For example, should the Ten Commandments and the Bible be taught in public schools?

On the one hand, I personally don't think that it would contradict the "non-establishment clause" of the Constitution to teach the Ten Commandments or the Bible in school. These can and often are taught in a non-partisan way -- for example, the Bible as literature, the Ten Commandments as a historical legal text, etc. Might God speak to children through the text itself even if the teacher was not using the Bible to promote Jewish or Christian faith?

We also have to consider the opposite possibility. When the State of Oklahoma requires the Bible to be taught in its public schools, how will it be taught? I imagine that many public school teachers in Oklahoma are Christians and would teach the Bible quite positively. But could there also be instances where the Bible would be taught in such a way that children would think of Bible stories like Greek and Roman myths? State standards probably cannot constitutionally treat the Bible as inspired Scripture. What would it look like?

Would some places then feel the need to introduce students to the Quran, the Bhagavad Gita, etc so as not to "establish" a religion? Would Indiana kids be pushed toward Christianity and California kids away from it?

I personally think the responsibility for teaching the Bible should primarily lie with churches. Whether it be a children's church or Sunday School, churches should intentionally teach students both the content of the Bible as well as the proper theology, ethics, and values that come from its proper interpretation. That means an intentional curriculum and the best practices of teaching. 

4. The Gospels don't give us any teaching from Jesus on the general education of children or youth that was not faith-related. Jesus did of course value children -- more than his disciples did (Matt. 19:13-15). So it is clear that Jesus would want the best possible upbringing for children that is possible. That plays into the second part of our journey -- the greatest good for our children. 

For the Public Good
5. Where did American public education come from? Public education itself began in New England where the Puritans rightfully wanted to make sure that young people knew the Bible (more accurately, their understanding of the Bible). Then the American public school system arose in the 1800s. 

In keeping with the "neutral zone" concept, individuals like Horace Mann (1796-1859) started a "common school movement." The goal was to provide universal, free, non-sectarian public education with a professional guild of teachers. 

If we dig back into the background of utilitarianism and capitalism, both assumed that these systems would not work properly without an educated populace. Jeremy Bentham, the founder of modern utilitarianism, was emphatic on the need for the people to be educated so that they would know what the greater good actually is. He viewed misinformation as a major potential problem that could prevent the greater good from happening. 

So he was a major influence in the founding of University College London, and he donated his body to the university upon his death. The remnants of his body were prominently displayed there to help fight what he thought were superstitions about death.

Similarly, Adam Smith's concept of capitalism assumed that the consumer knew what product was in his or her best interest. I believe he would strongly approve of something like the Better Business Bureau to help us know when we are being scammed. The bottom line is that democracy just doesn't work if those who are voting are not informed or are susceptible to deception and manipulation. The current susceptibility of the American populace to conspiracies, misinformation, and media manipulation is a major danger to democracy.

6. Certainly, Horace Mann's "non-sectarian" education did not mean "moral free" or value free. Morality was a key feature of public school teaching in the 1800s, and Judeo-Christian values as understood by the culture of that day were the name of the game. 

From the "separation of church and state" perspective, the teaching of values in public school is a little tricky. But I believe it is still very possible and actually quite important. What are we talking about here? 

We are talking about things like respect for life and believing in the equal value of others. Looking down on the "other" is (fallen) human nature. We are herd animals and naturally (after the Fall) devalue other herds. Prejudice, racism, sexism -- these are all predictable human patterns and behaviors since Adam.

It will take some work to teach our children to value those who are not like them. Ideally, we drill the value of others into our children. Once they leave our schools, they will be free to hate whomever they want -- and they regularly do. But just maybe we can instill into their consciences something deep down that will work against these forces within ourselves and human society once they grow up.

Respect for the property of others is another common value both in Christianity and the American social contract. Honesty and integrity are important for human thriving. These values and others can be taught without privileging a particular religious perspective.

7. However, some argue to the contrary that the danger that public schools will "mis-form" our children is very real. Fearing that their children would be taught everything from evolution to the normalcy of LGBTQ lifestyles, many parents have turned to homeschooling or private Christian schools. The reality of such fears no doubt will vary from place to place. 

At the beginning of this school year, there was a rumor going around my own town that the public schools were putting kitty litter in middle school bathrooms for students who identified as "cats." This was quite a hilarious (and ludicrous) claim. But many Americans seem very susceptible to these sorts of rumors. Most American teachers take their jobs very seriously and are committed to a quite normal -- even at times boring -- education.

There are countries where homeschooling is against the law out of the opposite fear, namely, that families will promote ideas and values that are harmful to children and the country. The two times that my family lived in Germany for several months, our children were required to attend public school even though we were Americans only temporarily in the country. The Germans fear that something like the Nazism of the past might rise again if homeschooling were allowed.

America tries to balance the freedom of individuals and families to educate their children their own way with the public concern that its children don't grow up to be terrorists. An alleged attempt is made to educate our children neutrally in public schools while individual families are allowed to homeschool and private schools are also fully allowed. Very broad, non-sectarian state standards are meant to provide a baseline standard for all these venues. 

In theory, public education is meant to be non-sectarian. That would generally mean teaching widely accepted, evidence-based knowledge that reflects expert consensus. In 1987, the Supreme Court ruled in Edwards v. Aguillard that teaching creationism in public schools violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment because creationism was religious in nature. In the 2005 federal district court case Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, the judge ruled that intelligent design was also a form of religious teaching and could not be required in public schools alongside evolution.

Many Christians believe that such teaching is actually anti-Christian bias rather than "non-sectarian." Accordingly, many Christians have turned away from the public school system. Nevertheless, many public school teachers are Christians and do not teach with an anti-Christian bias. In other places, there probably are teachers who promote values in conflict with Christianity. It really depends on where you are and who the teacher is.

8. What would Jesus "vote" with regard to public education? I believe he would want every child to have an opportunity to thrive, and a good education plays a major role in that possibility. In theory, we could completely privatize education. This might lose the value of the public school system as (at least in theory) a neutral zone. In general, the public system seems like a good default that fits with the non-establishment clause of the Constitution. 

It is not without its problems and challenges. For example, public schools have a reputation for ever-changing standards and methods. It can seem that the state is trying something new all the time, jerking teachers and students around every year. Then there is the politics of education, where teachers and students get caught in the cross-hairs of politicians at the state house beating their chests over some alleged atrocity, trying to score points with various voters. Meanwhile, the teachers just want to do their jobs.

The bureaucratization of public teaching is also real. I heard recently of an eighth-grade math teacher who was required by the state to teach exponents when her students couldn't even multiply yet and, in one case, didn't even know all the numbers. So there is the idealism of the state house versus the on-the-ground reality of the students sitting in front of you (if they are sitting). Unfortunately, it is usually the lower socio-economic student who ends up in the worst schools with the least resources and the largest challenges. The difficulties come from the students' home environment and rarely have anything to do with the tireless teachers, whose burnout rates can be astounding.

I see the public school system especially as an educational safety net for "the least of these" (Matt. 25:45). The wealthy and privileged will always get the education they want. If for no other reason, public education is there for those who otherwise wouldn't get much education. And education is still the best path out of an impoverished context. At this point, public education seems to overlap strongly with the values of Jesus.

In my view, the challenges of public education shouldn't lead us to throw the baby out with the bath water. Private schools and homeschooling have their own potential challenges. For example, the number of private schools rose dramatically during the time of desegregation ("segregation academies"). Although it was not the only factor, it seems incontestable that racism was a factor in the spike in private schools in the late 60s and 70s. For a long time, homeschooling was largely done by white, middle-class, Christian families. However, this is increasingly changing.

America also is not immune to the fears that have led Germany to prohibit homeschooling. When you think of some polygamist Mormon groups, they homeschooled their children to indoctrinate them in the particular beliefs of their sect. From a secular or Christian perspective, these were not healthy situations. Similarly, the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas did not let their children attend public school, but children received whatever little education they had there at the compound.

I personally believe that we can continue to support both public and private education while doing everything we can to overcome their challenges. On the one hand, public education seems like an appropriate use of our taxes -- especially for the "least of these." As we argued in relation to health care, a properly Christian perspective is not just concerned with what I get for my taxes but with what others get as well. At least in theory, public education is for the common good.

At first glance, voucher programs make sense because the parents of those students are paying taxes for their children's education. Shouldn't they be able to use their tax money for education however they want? At the same time, it seems important not to "starve" public education. It makes sense that public education would be the first priority of the state since it is meant to provide a baseline for an educated citizenry. 

As we get into the details, the voices of C. F. H. Henry and Richard Mouw are in my head, warning me about wading too deep into controversies on which I am not an expert and on which authentic Christians disagree. My primary goal was to identify what Jesus' values would be in relation to education. Here, I believe that 1) Jesus would want everyone to have access to a quality education. 2) I believe Jesus would strongly reject any system that devalued any "lost sheep" while privileging those with means. Finally, 3) Jesus would not want to empower forces that work against the good. Then begins the debate over what those forces are.

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Here is the series so far:

1. Would Jesus Even Vote?

2.1 (He would vote) As a Kingdom Citizen
2.2 We're citizens in two kingdoms

3.1 (He would vote) for love of neighbor and enemy
3.2 (He would vote) for the greater good
Test Case: Health Care (under revision)

4.1 (For the greater good) ... Without Hurting the Rest
4.2 The Separation of Church and State