One of the best illustrations of what Jesus meant when he said to love our enemies is the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37). In this familiar story, a man is mugged on his way down from Jerusalem to Jericho. Both a priest and a Levite pass by him without helping. Finally, a Samaritan stops and helps the man, giving him medical attention, taking him somewhere safe, and paying for his recovery.
Jesus tells this story in the context of the question, "Who is my neighbor?" The lawyer type is apparently thinking in the same vein as Matthew 5:43: love your neighbor and hate your enemy. So he is willing to love his friends but perhaps wanting to exclude his enemies from those toward which he must show love. He sounds like he wants to be clever. "Ah, but who is my neighbor?"
Jesus' answer is topsy-turvy. First, he does not tell a story about someone helping a Samaritan, although in effect Jesus' answer is that Samaritans are his neighbors. But the story honors the Samaritan as the one who actually fulfills what God expects. Meanwhile, those like the lawyer--the priest and Levite--do not.
Samaritans were of course hated by many Jews at the time. They lived in the region between Galilee, where Jesus lived, and Judea, where Jerusalem was. While Galilee in the north had largely turned to follow the religious approach of the south in Jerusalem, Samaria remained both politically and religiously distinct. Samaria had a long history of resisting the advancement of Judea, and they had their own version of the Jewish Law that did not see the temple in Jerusalem as the legitimate temple. They had their own temple much of the time. They also tended not to worship Yahweh exclusively but to mix worship of him with other gods in the world like Zeus.
So for Jesus to make the Samaritan the good guy would have been grating, to say the least. Any lawyer of this sort would surely have found it insulting. What's even more subversive is the situation that Jesus creates. A priest or Levite would surely have wanted to avoid the mugged man for purity reasons. He would have been bloody, and contact with blood of this sort would make a person unclean, and purity was a major concern for a priest, whether they had just finished their priestly duties or not.
Some try to soften the startling nature of what Jesus is saying here by pointing out that the priest and Levite were headed away from Jerusalem. If they were working in the temple, they were done for the day. It is hard to know how significant the direction of travel is in the story. It does not change the fact that Jesus did not put a Pharisee in the story as the one who avoids the mugged man. Jesus chose two people for whom purity was a concern because of the Old Testament laws.
In other words, this is another story like the one where Jesus gets into conflict with Pharisees over his disciples picking heads of grain on the Sabbath. It is another story where he implies that people trump rules for their own sake, in this case a priestly concern for purity. Loving our neighbor or enemy takes priority over lesser laws and concerns.
Once again, we find that Jesus leaves no excuse for hating our enemy. When we have a concrete opportunity to help others in need, we'd better have a very good reason not to do it. Jesus does not show himself to be an "absolutist" in these stories. Quite the contrary! He regularly makes exceptions to the rules, even breaks the rules, when loving others is at stake.
Thursday, March 22, 2012
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
The soul that sinneth, it shall die.
As I wrote on my Jesus book this morning, I was reminded of some camp meeting preaching I heard as a child from Ezekiel 18:4: "The soul that sinneth, it shall die."
It's a great example of how the same words can be read differently by different people... and a good example of the focus on judgment I grew up with. The way I heard this passage preached was, "Don't think you're going to get away with anything. Be assured. If you sin, you will die. You're going to get it. There's no escaping God. He's going to come after you and send you to hell."
Ezekiel of course has no conception of hell, and this is not what the passage means if one pays any attention at all to the literary context of the verse. The context is the fact that the generation that went into captivity in Babylon was not the actual generation that had sinned. Rather, the sins of the fathers had been visited on the sons, even though the sons had cleaned up their act. "The fathers ate sour grapes but it's our teeth that hurt" (18:2).
Not so anymore, says Ezekiel 18 and Jeremiah 31. But rather, the person who actually does the sinning is the one who will get punished. The person who does the sinning, he or she will do the dying.
But we come to the words of Scripture with our own definitions and, no surprise, find meanings in the Bible that fit with what we already believe. So those camp meeting preachers had this dictionary:
soul: the part of me that survives death
die: eternal death
Ezekiel's sixth century BC Hebrew dictionary had these entries:
soul: a living being, the whole person not a separable part of a person
die: for your body to stop living, no conception of a meaningful afterlife
This "polyvalence" of language (susceptibility to multiple meanings) allows the Spirit to speak in ways the original authors never intended... and it also allows the burrito you had for lunch to write an entertaining sermon.
It's a great example of how the same words can be read differently by different people... and a good example of the focus on judgment I grew up with. The way I heard this passage preached was, "Don't think you're going to get away with anything. Be assured. If you sin, you will die. You're going to get it. There's no escaping God. He's going to come after you and send you to hell."
Ezekiel of course has no conception of hell, and this is not what the passage means if one pays any attention at all to the literary context of the verse. The context is the fact that the generation that went into captivity in Babylon was not the actual generation that had sinned. Rather, the sins of the fathers had been visited on the sons, even though the sons had cleaned up their act. "The fathers ate sour grapes but it's our teeth that hurt" (18:2).
Not so anymore, says Ezekiel 18 and Jeremiah 31. But rather, the person who actually does the sinning is the one who will get punished. The person who does the sinning, he or she will do the dying.
But we come to the words of Scripture with our own definitions and, no surprise, find meanings in the Bible that fit with what we already believe. So those camp meeting preachers had this dictionary:
soul: the part of me that survives death
die: eternal death
Ezekiel's sixth century BC Hebrew dictionary had these entries:
soul: a living being, the whole person not a separable part of a person
die: for your body to stop living, no conception of a meaningful afterlife
This "polyvalence" of language (susceptibility to multiple meanings) allows the Spirit to speak in ways the original authors never intended... and it also allows the burrito you had for lunch to write an entertaining sermon.
6.3 Transition from Collective Guilt in OT
Continued from yesterday
_______________
... Many Christians want to trump Jesus with the Old Testament, but there are two reasons why this is inappropriate. First, the judgment of the Old Testament falls in the category of God's action, not our orchestration. Paul says as much in the New Testament: "leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: 'It is mine to avenge; I will repay'" (Rom. 12:19). In other words, it is not normally our business as individuals to administer judgment. [1]
The second is because the Old Testament understanding of things is sometimes incomplete without the New Testament. Indeed, even within the space of the Old Testament itself we sometimes find a development of how God operates or how Israel understands things. For example, prior to Israel's captivity in Babylon, God is "punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me" (Deut. 5:9).
This pre-exile material has a sense of corporate guilt, such that the generation that the Babylonians destroy and take away is not actually the group of Israelites that did the sin. Thus Psalm 44:17 remarks that "All this came upon us, though we had not forgotten you; we had not been false to your covenant." Even though king Josiah is the most righteous king of Israel yet, his goodness does not counterbalance God's anger for the evil of his grandfather Manasseh (2 Kings 23:25-27).
If we find this sense of collective guilt difficult to fit with our Christian understanding of God, it is noteworthy that parts of the Old Testament itself had difficulty with it as well. Ezekiel 18 wrestles with Israel's destruction because of its parents' sins: "The parents eat sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge" (18:2). No longer, God says, will it work this way. Rather, from now on, "The one who sins is the one who will die" (18:4).
Christians who like the idea of God punishing all America because some group in America is doing wrong usually don't notice this passage or the similar passage in Jeremiah 31:29-30. Similarly, there is a real tension between the teaching of Jesus and anyone who would use parts of the Old Testament to support a lust for judgment on one's enemies.
What Jesus said was to "love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you" (Matt. 5:44). There's no wiggling out of it. If you don't like what Jesus says here, be honest about it. Don't pretend that Jesus said something different or try to use the Old Testament to trump Jesus. Any application of Scripture you use that tries to justify hatred of some person or group of people is simply not Christian. It's something else...
[1] That of course does not mean that there is not a place for governments to work for justice in the world, although such actions of governments are fraught with problems and prone to injustice themselves.
_______________
... Many Christians want to trump Jesus with the Old Testament, but there are two reasons why this is inappropriate. First, the judgment of the Old Testament falls in the category of God's action, not our orchestration. Paul says as much in the New Testament: "leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: 'It is mine to avenge; I will repay'" (Rom. 12:19). In other words, it is not normally our business as individuals to administer judgment. [1]
The second is because the Old Testament understanding of things is sometimes incomplete without the New Testament. Indeed, even within the space of the Old Testament itself we sometimes find a development of how God operates or how Israel understands things. For example, prior to Israel's captivity in Babylon, God is "punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me" (Deut. 5:9).
This pre-exile material has a sense of corporate guilt, such that the generation that the Babylonians destroy and take away is not actually the group of Israelites that did the sin. Thus Psalm 44:17 remarks that "All this came upon us, though we had not forgotten you; we had not been false to your covenant." Even though king Josiah is the most righteous king of Israel yet, his goodness does not counterbalance God's anger for the evil of his grandfather Manasseh (2 Kings 23:25-27).
If we find this sense of collective guilt difficult to fit with our Christian understanding of God, it is noteworthy that parts of the Old Testament itself had difficulty with it as well. Ezekiel 18 wrestles with Israel's destruction because of its parents' sins: "The parents eat sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge" (18:2). No longer, God says, will it work this way. Rather, from now on, "The one who sins is the one who will die" (18:4).
Christians who like the idea of God punishing all America because some group in America is doing wrong usually don't notice this passage or the similar passage in Jeremiah 31:29-30. Similarly, there is a real tension between the teaching of Jesus and anyone who would use parts of the Old Testament to support a lust for judgment on one's enemies.
What Jesus said was to "love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you" (Matt. 5:44). There's no wiggling out of it. If you don't like what Jesus says here, be honest about it. Don't pretend that Jesus said something different or try to use the Old Testament to trump Jesus. Any application of Scripture you use that tries to justify hatred of some person or group of people is simply not Christian. It's something else...
[1] That of course does not mean that there is not a place for governments to work for justice in the world, although such actions of governments are fraught with problems and prone to injustice themselves.
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
6.2 Loving Neighbor
What does it mean to love our neighbor? Jesus himself summed it up when he said, "do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets" (Matt. 7:12). This is of course the Golden Rule. To love your neighbor is to do things that benefit them and not to do things that harm or hurt them.
Love is a matter of intent even more than action. It means that you actually intend others well and act accordingly. It is a matter of the heart. Jesus says, "it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come" (Mark 7:21). And it is from the heart that truly good thoughts and actions come.
Jesus of course goes one step further. We are not only to love our friends, but our enemies as well (Matt. 5:44). No one is left. We are to love everyone, both our friends and our enemies. We will look at Matthew 5 a number of times in this chapter, but the overall point is summed up in its last paragraph (5:43-48).
You have heard to love your neighbor, but the general sense was also that we hate our enemies (Matt. 5:43). Indeed, if we are honest with ourselves, not a little of the Old Testament certainly feels hateful toward Israel's enemies. One psalmist says of the Babylonians, "Happy is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks" (Ps. 137:9). A whole collection of psalms, the "imprecatory psalms" call on God to destroy the enemies of Israel (e.g., Pss. 7, 58, 109). The prophets Nahum and Obadiah seem to rejoice in the impending doom of Assyria and Edom respectively.
Certainly these are not the only attitudes toward enemies in the Old Testament. The book of Jonah indicts the prophet Jonah for his unwillingness to abandon a prophecy like the book of Nahum. Jonah strikingly extends perhaps the core description of God in the Old Testament to the enemies of Israel: you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity" (Jonah 4:2). [1]
Jesus says that while they have heard it was okay to love their enemies, they must be complete as their Father in heaven is complete (Matt. 5:48). They must love not only their neighbors, but their enemies as well. Look at how God acts. He sends the precious rain that waters the earth not only to those who serve him but to the unrighteous as well (5:45). He gives the warmth and light of the sun not only on Israel, but on the Romans and other nations as well. So we are to love everyone, including our enemies.
When we are formulating a biblical theology on a topic, the New Testament provides a more complete understanding than the Old. And we don't have to decide between the message of Jesus and the rest of the New Testament, for the New Testament is unanimous in its teaching on loving one's enemies (e.g., Rom. 12:17-21). God will take care of judgment...
[1] This description of God appears across the Old Testament. Cf. Exod. 34:6; 2 Chron. 30:9; Neh. 9:17; Ps. 86:15, 103:8, 145:8; Joel 2:13; Jonah 4:2)
Love is a matter of intent even more than action. It means that you actually intend others well and act accordingly. It is a matter of the heart. Jesus says, "it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come" (Mark 7:21). And it is from the heart that truly good thoughts and actions come.
Jesus of course goes one step further. We are not only to love our friends, but our enemies as well (Matt. 5:44). No one is left. We are to love everyone, both our friends and our enemies. We will look at Matthew 5 a number of times in this chapter, but the overall point is summed up in its last paragraph (5:43-48).
You have heard to love your neighbor, but the general sense was also that we hate our enemies (Matt. 5:43). Indeed, if we are honest with ourselves, not a little of the Old Testament certainly feels hateful toward Israel's enemies. One psalmist says of the Babylonians, "Happy is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks" (Ps. 137:9). A whole collection of psalms, the "imprecatory psalms" call on God to destroy the enemies of Israel (e.g., Pss. 7, 58, 109). The prophets Nahum and Obadiah seem to rejoice in the impending doom of Assyria and Edom respectively.
Certainly these are not the only attitudes toward enemies in the Old Testament. The book of Jonah indicts the prophet Jonah for his unwillingness to abandon a prophecy like the book of Nahum. Jonah strikingly extends perhaps the core description of God in the Old Testament to the enemies of Israel: you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity" (Jonah 4:2). [1]
Jesus says that while they have heard it was okay to love their enemies, they must be complete as their Father in heaven is complete (Matt. 5:48). They must love not only their neighbors, but their enemies as well. Look at how God acts. He sends the precious rain that waters the earth not only to those who serve him but to the unrighteous as well (5:45). He gives the warmth and light of the sun not only on Israel, but on the Romans and other nations as well. So we are to love everyone, including our enemies.
When we are formulating a biblical theology on a topic, the New Testament provides a more complete understanding than the Old. And we don't have to decide between the message of Jesus and the rest of the New Testament, for the New Testament is unanimous in its teaching on loving one's enemies (e.g., Rom. 12:17-21). God will take care of judgment...
[1] This description of God appears across the Old Testament. Cf. Exod. 34:6; 2 Chron. 30:9; Neh. 9:17; Ps. 86:15, 103:8, 145:8; Joel 2:13; Jonah 4:2)
Monday, March 19, 2012
6.1 Loving God
I didn't quite finish the Jesus chapter on Jesus' followers but wanted to keep moving rather than go for days trying to get inspired to finish it. So I move on to the next chapter, on the Sermon on the Mount and some of Jesus' miscellaneous teaching.
____________
The three Synoptic Gospels all present a scene during the last week of Jesus' earthly mission when he is asked what the greatest commandment is. His answer, while not unheard of at the time, has provided the cornerstone of Christian ethics for the last two thousand years. "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments" (Matt 22:37-40).
It is indeed possible to see all the teaching Jesus gave while he was on earth as the working out of these principles into everyday life. These are the two great absolutes of Christian living. For almost any other specific guideline in the Bible, we can think of an exception, a situation where a higher principle can trump another one. But these are the highest values--love God and love neighbor. They never come into conflict with each other, and there is no situation where God would want us to make an exception to the rule.
What does it mean to love God or to love your neighbor? I proposed in the previous chapter that to follow Jesus means to submit to his will over any competing authority or interest. Loving God with all one's being means that God's will takes precedent over family or any other human authority.
But we must be careful not to trick ourselves into thinking God's will conflicts in any way with the love of our neighbor. Justice can actually be an expression of love, when we are trying to steer our children in the right direction or when we are protecting society from someone who is dangerous. In the end, most of us are not even in a position as individuals to administer justice. But we are constantly in a position to show love to others.
The danger is when we use the command to love God as an excuse not to love our neighbor. For example, some might say that loving God means to hate homosexuals and thus that in this instance the command to love God trumps the love of our "enemy." This is nothing less than a trick of the Devil, using the idea of God's will as an excuse to get out of doing God's will, which is to love even our enemy. Jesus would have none of it.
Others have a tendency to turn the love ethic into rules. Loving God means to follow a set of dos and don'ts and to follow them without exception. But to reduce loving God to a set of rules is to go against the very example of Jesus himself. It was not his style to treat rules as exceptionless absolutes, but to make exceptions to general rules because loving people in concrete ways was more important than always following the rules.
The best example is probably when his disciples were picking some grain on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath. Some Pharisees complained to Jesus that they were breaking the Ten Commandments, working on the Sabbath (Mark 2:23-24). What is interesting is that Jesus doesn't deny it. He doesn't say, "That's not working on the Sabbath." He doesn't say, "The Sabbath is about worship, not about working."
What he says is that there is a time to make exceptions to the rules because loving people concretely often trumps the rules, in this case the Sabbath rule. The example he gives is a time when one of the high priests gave David and his fighting men some of the sacred bread from the sanctuary, something that was completely inappropriate because it belonged only to the priests (Lev. 24:9). There is no wiggling out of this conclusion because Jesus himself said it was unlawful (Mark 2:26). Jesus' point is clear: in concrete situations, loving others will sometimes take precedence over keeping rules, even when we're talking about one of the Ten Commandments!
What does it mean to love our neighbor? ...
____________
The three Synoptic Gospels all present a scene during the last week of Jesus' earthly mission when he is asked what the greatest commandment is. His answer, while not unheard of at the time, has provided the cornerstone of Christian ethics for the last two thousand years. "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments" (Matt 22:37-40).
It is indeed possible to see all the teaching Jesus gave while he was on earth as the working out of these principles into everyday life. These are the two great absolutes of Christian living. For almost any other specific guideline in the Bible, we can think of an exception, a situation where a higher principle can trump another one. But these are the highest values--love God and love neighbor. They never come into conflict with each other, and there is no situation where God would want us to make an exception to the rule.
What does it mean to love God or to love your neighbor? I proposed in the previous chapter that to follow Jesus means to submit to his will over any competing authority or interest. Loving God with all one's being means that God's will takes precedent over family or any other human authority.
But we must be careful not to trick ourselves into thinking God's will conflicts in any way with the love of our neighbor. Justice can actually be an expression of love, when we are trying to steer our children in the right direction or when we are protecting society from someone who is dangerous. In the end, most of us are not even in a position as individuals to administer justice. But we are constantly in a position to show love to others.
The danger is when we use the command to love God as an excuse not to love our neighbor. For example, some might say that loving God means to hate homosexuals and thus that in this instance the command to love God trumps the love of our "enemy." This is nothing less than a trick of the Devil, using the idea of God's will as an excuse to get out of doing God's will, which is to love even our enemy. Jesus would have none of it.
Others have a tendency to turn the love ethic into rules. Loving God means to follow a set of dos and don'ts and to follow them without exception. But to reduce loving God to a set of rules is to go against the very example of Jesus himself. It was not his style to treat rules as exceptionless absolutes, but to make exceptions to general rules because loving people in concrete ways was more important than always following the rules.
The best example is probably when his disciples were picking some grain on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath. Some Pharisees complained to Jesus that they were breaking the Ten Commandments, working on the Sabbath (Mark 2:23-24). What is interesting is that Jesus doesn't deny it. He doesn't say, "That's not working on the Sabbath." He doesn't say, "The Sabbath is about worship, not about working."
What he says is that there is a time to make exceptions to the rules because loving people concretely often trumps the rules, in this case the Sabbath rule. The example he gives is a time when one of the high priests gave David and his fighting men some of the sacred bread from the sanctuary, something that was completely inappropriate because it belonged only to the priests (Lev. 24:9). There is no wiggling out of this conclusion because Jesus himself said it was unlawful (Mark 2:26). Jesus' point is clear: in concrete situations, loving others will sometimes take precedence over keeping rules, even when we're talking about one of the Ten Commandments!
What does it mean to love our neighbor? ...
Sunday, March 18, 2012
When a pastor should change churches...
I was thinking today about some signs, if I were pastoring, that might hint I should think about changing churches.
1. You sense that God is calling you elsewhere.
There should be at least one completely positive entry on this list. The ideal scenario is when you have had a fruitful ministry somewhere and you sense it is time for you to move on. Maybe there is a young leader you have been grooming to step into leadership. Maybe you are ready to retire. Maybe you sense God calling you to another ministry. Wouldn't it be great if all pastoral transitions were of this sort!
Now for the other side:
2. If most of my people have lost confidence in my leadership, and there is no clear way to get it back.
Certainly a congregation can be mistaken. Certainly there's a time to stick with it through a hard time. But there's also a time to recognize that my leadership capital is spent. It may not be my problem, or it may definitely be my problem. But to be a leader means for people to follow you, and if they're not following you, you're done.
3. When your people, including your best staff and lay leaders, are jumping ship in large numbers and those that haven’t jumped yet are looking.
Sometimes a church can benefit from certain people leaving, perennial trouble makers. Sometimes a sign of a church's health is when it sends out people to plant churches and further God's mission. But some pastors also deceive themselves about how much blame they should take over the departure. When some of your best leaders are going elsewhere, it can mean you have been stifling their gifts or taking the church in the wrong direction.
Good leaders get out of the way when those under them can do something better than them, and they facilitate the exercise of the gifts of those under them. Bad leaders can't let anyone under them be better than them. Inevitably, these subordinate leaders feel like their talents are being buried in the sand, and they go elsewhere. Meanwhile, the level of leadership in your church sinks to your level. A less gifted person can actually be a great leader if he or she enables and gets out of the way of those under her who have greater gifts in particular areas.
3. When you have lost a clear vision for your church and can't seem to get it back.
There will almost always be transition times when you and a church are trying to figure out where to go next. But if you go too long without a clear sense of direction, the church may be in trouble if you stay. Best step out of the way and let God call someone else with a vision for the church.
Of course, there are other situations. You can have a vision out of sync with the church's vision. Sometimes you will be right, and sometimes you will be wrong. There is a time to work around dead tissue. But there also is a time when you are the dead tissue. Wisdom is knowing the difference.
4. When the church is declining or has plateaued under your leadership, and needs a fresh perspective.
A church will have ups and downs, but you don't want it to stay in stagnant or down mode for too long. Sometimes fresh eyes and fresh enthusiasm are needed. There's no dishonor in recognizing that your time there is up.
What you don't want to happen is for the church to go into a spiral dive on a collision course with a major crisis. You want to leave before it's too late and your name becomes permanently associated with killing a church that may once have had great health and vitality. You want to leave before it will take a messiah to rescue it.
Have I missed anything?
1. You sense that God is calling you elsewhere.
There should be at least one completely positive entry on this list. The ideal scenario is when you have had a fruitful ministry somewhere and you sense it is time for you to move on. Maybe there is a young leader you have been grooming to step into leadership. Maybe you are ready to retire. Maybe you sense God calling you to another ministry. Wouldn't it be great if all pastoral transitions were of this sort!
Now for the other side:
2. If most of my people have lost confidence in my leadership, and there is no clear way to get it back.
Certainly a congregation can be mistaken. Certainly there's a time to stick with it through a hard time. But there's also a time to recognize that my leadership capital is spent. It may not be my problem, or it may definitely be my problem. But to be a leader means for people to follow you, and if they're not following you, you're done.
3. When your people, including your best staff and lay leaders, are jumping ship in large numbers and those that haven’t jumped yet are looking.
Sometimes a church can benefit from certain people leaving, perennial trouble makers. Sometimes a sign of a church's health is when it sends out people to plant churches and further God's mission. But some pastors also deceive themselves about how much blame they should take over the departure. When some of your best leaders are going elsewhere, it can mean you have been stifling their gifts or taking the church in the wrong direction.
Good leaders get out of the way when those under them can do something better than them, and they facilitate the exercise of the gifts of those under them. Bad leaders can't let anyone under them be better than them. Inevitably, these subordinate leaders feel like their talents are being buried in the sand, and they go elsewhere. Meanwhile, the level of leadership in your church sinks to your level. A less gifted person can actually be a great leader if he or she enables and gets out of the way of those under her who have greater gifts in particular areas.
3. When you have lost a clear vision for your church and can't seem to get it back.
There will almost always be transition times when you and a church are trying to figure out where to go next. But if you go too long without a clear sense of direction, the church may be in trouble if you stay. Best step out of the way and let God call someone else with a vision for the church.
Of course, there are other situations. You can have a vision out of sync with the church's vision. Sometimes you will be right, and sometimes you will be wrong. There is a time to work around dead tissue. But there also is a time when you are the dead tissue. Wisdom is knowing the difference.
4. When the church is declining or has plateaued under your leadership, and needs a fresh perspective.
A church will have ups and downs, but you don't want it to stay in stagnant or down mode for too long. Sometimes fresh eyes and fresh enthusiasm are needed. There's no dishonor in recognizing that your time there is up.
What you don't want to happen is for the church to go into a spiral dive on a collision course with a major crisis. You want to leave before it's too late and your name becomes permanently associated with killing a church that may once have had great health and vitality. You want to leave before it will take a messiah to rescue it.
Have I missed anything?
Living in the World (Wes Theo Series)
With this post I finish my outline of a Wesleyan theology.
1. Faith (Introduction)
2. God
3. Creation and Alienation
4. Revelation
5. Reconciliation
6. Restoration
7.1 Spirit and Church
The Wesleyan tradition has always emphasized the role of the Spirit as the administer of God's grace in the world. The Spirit goes before us (prevenient grace), makes us God's possession (justifying, redeeming grace), changes us to be like Christ (sanctifying, glorifying grace). Wesley was also an Anglican, so he did not downplay the role of the Church in administering the means of grace as well. Any Wesleyan sense of what it means to live as Christians in this world must have a robust sense of the Spirit's power and the legitimacy, indeed the necessity of the Church.
7.2 Love God and Neighbor
The fundamental Christian ethic is the love ethic: love God and love neighbor. Wesley did not see justice as contradicting these, but clearly a Wesleyan will emphasize God's love over his justice. We demonstrate our love for God through our love of our neighbor and the two do not contradict each other. God's laws are not for their own sake but for our benefit.
7.3 Evangelism
Evangelism has traditionally been equated with trying to get people saved and thus the "gospel" with the possibility of salvation. Biblically, this is too narrow a focus. The good news is the whole message that Jesus has arrived as king of God's restored kingdom in this world. Salvation is part of that much larger, Christ-centered good news, but it is not the focus.
This fits well with Wesleyan theology even if Wesley himself did not foresee it. As believers, we embody the kingdom of God in the world. And some of us are specifically called as its messengers.
While individual salvation is not the focus of the good news, it is certainly an incredibly important benefit. While many Wesleyans focus on a threshold event of conversion, it would fit just as well to focus on moving others and oneself further wherever one is on a spiritual trajectory that starts with the beginnings of God's tugging to glorification. The narrow sense of evangelism thus aims to move a person further in their relationship with God, past conversion and into discipleship. The key to salvation is the direction one is moving and how one responds to the grace he or she has.
7.3 Faithfulness
A major emphasis of the Wesleyan tradition is the importance of faithfulness in one's continuing relationship with God after one has experienced his initial justification and forgiveness. Like any relationship, faithlessness damages and can break the relationship. God of course is not only faithful but incredibly patient and merciful, but he will not reward infidelity. At some point our relationship with God can be broken.
7.4 Social Justice
What we have come to call "social justice" has always been a major concern of the Wesleyan tradition. In the tradition of the Old Testament prophets, God is concerned with the whole person: physical, psychological, social, and economic. Wesley was part of the social climate of England that led to child labor laws and the eventual abolition of slavery. In the United States, Wesleyan revivalists were involved in the anti-slavery movement and the women's rights movement.
Today, you continue to find Wesleyans in support of women in ministry. It is in the spirit of Wesley and Scripture to minister to those who face hardship in society. This means working to free those enslaved to addictions of all kinds, to try to move those in poverty toward self-sufficiency, to make sure that the "stranger in the land" is not oppressed. The Wesleyan tradition does not limit such ministry to an individual level but works for change in the very structures of society that perpetuate social disparity and injustice.
7.5 Creation Care
The Spirit of Wesley recognizes that the world is the Lord's and everything in it. We would be irresponsible stewards of God's creation if we supported practices that unduly pollute and destroy it. It is thus fitting with a Wesleyan theology to urge responsibility in the use of natural resources and in the waste produced by human activity.
1. Faith (Introduction)
2. God
3. Creation and Alienation
4. Revelation
5. Reconciliation
6. Restoration
7.1 Spirit and Church
The Wesleyan tradition has always emphasized the role of the Spirit as the administer of God's grace in the world. The Spirit goes before us (prevenient grace), makes us God's possession (justifying, redeeming grace), changes us to be like Christ (sanctifying, glorifying grace). Wesley was also an Anglican, so he did not downplay the role of the Church in administering the means of grace as well. Any Wesleyan sense of what it means to live as Christians in this world must have a robust sense of the Spirit's power and the legitimacy, indeed the necessity of the Church.
7.2 Love God and Neighbor
The fundamental Christian ethic is the love ethic: love God and love neighbor. Wesley did not see justice as contradicting these, but clearly a Wesleyan will emphasize God's love over his justice. We demonstrate our love for God through our love of our neighbor and the two do not contradict each other. God's laws are not for their own sake but for our benefit.
7.3 Evangelism
Evangelism has traditionally been equated with trying to get people saved and thus the "gospel" with the possibility of salvation. Biblically, this is too narrow a focus. The good news is the whole message that Jesus has arrived as king of God's restored kingdom in this world. Salvation is part of that much larger, Christ-centered good news, but it is not the focus.
This fits well with Wesleyan theology even if Wesley himself did not foresee it. As believers, we embody the kingdom of God in the world. And some of us are specifically called as its messengers.
While individual salvation is not the focus of the good news, it is certainly an incredibly important benefit. While many Wesleyans focus on a threshold event of conversion, it would fit just as well to focus on moving others and oneself further wherever one is on a spiritual trajectory that starts with the beginnings of God's tugging to glorification. The narrow sense of evangelism thus aims to move a person further in their relationship with God, past conversion and into discipleship. The key to salvation is the direction one is moving and how one responds to the grace he or she has.
7.3 Faithfulness
A major emphasis of the Wesleyan tradition is the importance of faithfulness in one's continuing relationship with God after one has experienced his initial justification and forgiveness. Like any relationship, faithlessness damages and can break the relationship. God of course is not only faithful but incredibly patient and merciful, but he will not reward infidelity. At some point our relationship with God can be broken.
7.4 Social Justice
What we have come to call "social justice" has always been a major concern of the Wesleyan tradition. In the tradition of the Old Testament prophets, God is concerned with the whole person: physical, psychological, social, and economic. Wesley was part of the social climate of England that led to child labor laws and the eventual abolition of slavery. In the United States, Wesleyan revivalists were involved in the anti-slavery movement and the women's rights movement.
Today, you continue to find Wesleyans in support of women in ministry. It is in the spirit of Wesley and Scripture to minister to those who face hardship in society. This means working to free those enslaved to addictions of all kinds, to try to move those in poverty toward self-sufficiency, to make sure that the "stranger in the land" is not oppressed. The Wesleyan tradition does not limit such ministry to an individual level but works for change in the very structures of society that perpetuate social disparity and injustice.
7.5 Creation Care
The Spirit of Wesley recognizes that the world is the Lord's and everything in it. We would be irresponsible stewards of God's creation if we supported practices that unduly pollute and destroy it. It is thus fitting with a Wesleyan theology to urge responsibility in the use of natural resources and in the waste produced by human activity.
Saturday, March 17, 2012
"To know the good is to do the good" - Socrates?
Off and on for the last several years, I have searched and searched in Plato for a quote, culminating in pretty much an all day search today as I'm dotting the jots and crossing the tittles of my philosophy book before publication.
At the beginning of the chapter on Socrates in Sophie's World, Gaarder says that Socrates said, "He who knows what good is will do good." The heading of the section is, "The Right Insight Leads to the Right Action." Of course it's a bunch of bunk--humans are irrational animals far more than rational, in my estimation. But it's a key perspective and an idea a college graduate should have heard of so that they can later forget it.
Well I've done numerous Google searches. I can find these quotes on the web (especially in online study notes over Sophie's World). I even did a Google search in German thinking that some meticulous German would reference the quote. I did indeed find, "Wer weiss, was richtig ist, wird auch das Richtige tun." What I didn't find was a reference.
I did a number of Google searches on the complete works of Plato (who of course is the source for such Socrates quotes). "know good do good" "knowledge" "good" "virtue" "ignorance" ... I looked through the index of my own hardback collection of Plato's complete works.
Indeed, I found several stressed out students (both in English and German) trying to track down this quote, which is the main reason I am making this post... for posterity and the future desperate. And of course inviting thereby some elusive spirit from the ether who might disprove my conclusion.
My conclusion is that Socrates didn't give us a nice quote. These are all fair expressions of what he thought, but he wasn't particularly good at sound bites on this occasion. Here are some statements that come close:
1. "The man who has learned anything becomes in each case such as his knowledge makes him" (Gorgias 460b).
2. "No one voluntarily does wrong, but all who do wrong do so against their own will" (Gorgias 509e, but this is a question-the idea is that if a person truly knows what good is, he or she does it)
3. "Virtue is knowledge" (Meno 87c). This is what I'm going with. The title of my post is a paraphrase, "To know the good is to do the good." The problem is that at this point in the Meno, it is still a matter of debate and it isn't really Socrates' main point. Socrates does believe that knowledge is a guide to right action, but he doesn't believe it is the only guide. His final point is that virtue is ultimately a matter of divine inspiration--the gods give the knowledge or even right opinion that results in virtue.
4. "I never wrong anyone intentionally" (Apology 37a). Again, what is hiding behind this statement is Socrates' belief that all wrongdoing is based on ignorance because knowledge can only lead to right action.
So there you have it. Unless someone corrects me from the ether, there is no silver bullet on a quote here. Yes, this was Socrates' perspective. But he did not give us a nice, crisp quote to tweet.
At the beginning of the chapter on Socrates in Sophie's World, Gaarder says that Socrates said, "He who knows what good is will do good." The heading of the section is, "The Right Insight Leads to the Right Action." Of course it's a bunch of bunk--humans are irrational animals far more than rational, in my estimation. But it's a key perspective and an idea a college graduate should have heard of so that they can later forget it.
Well I've done numerous Google searches. I can find these quotes on the web (especially in online study notes over Sophie's World). I even did a Google search in German thinking that some meticulous German would reference the quote. I did indeed find, "Wer weiss, was richtig ist, wird auch das Richtige tun." What I didn't find was a reference.
I did a number of Google searches on the complete works of Plato (who of course is the source for such Socrates quotes). "know good do good" "knowledge" "good" "virtue" "ignorance" ... I looked through the index of my own hardback collection of Plato's complete works.
Indeed, I found several stressed out students (both in English and German) trying to track down this quote, which is the main reason I am making this post... for posterity and the future desperate. And of course inviting thereby some elusive spirit from the ether who might disprove my conclusion.
My conclusion is that Socrates didn't give us a nice quote. These are all fair expressions of what he thought, but he wasn't particularly good at sound bites on this occasion. Here are some statements that come close:
1. "The man who has learned anything becomes in each case such as his knowledge makes him" (Gorgias 460b).
2. "No one voluntarily does wrong, but all who do wrong do so against their own will" (Gorgias 509e, but this is a question-the idea is that if a person truly knows what good is, he or she does it)
3. "Virtue is knowledge" (Meno 87c). This is what I'm going with. The title of my post is a paraphrase, "To know the good is to do the good." The problem is that at this point in the Meno, it is still a matter of debate and it isn't really Socrates' main point. Socrates does believe that knowledge is a guide to right action, but he doesn't believe it is the only guide. His final point is that virtue is ultimately a matter of divine inspiration--the gods give the knowledge or even right opinion that results in virtue.
4. "I never wrong anyone intentionally" (Apology 37a). Again, what is hiding behind this statement is Socrates' belief that all wrongdoing is based on ignorance because knowledge can only lead to right action.
So there you have it. Unless someone corrects me from the ether, there is no silver bullet on a quote here. Yes, this was Socrates' perspective. But he did not give us a nice, crisp quote to tweet.
Good Questions: Jesus have a sin nature?
A friend sent me this question:
QUESTION: "I believe that Christ did not have a sinful nature. I believe he could not have sinned and would not have sinned. I believe he was tempted by Satan as an example to us. Christ would not have been tempted by the things satan had to offer. Those things were all earlthy pleasures and the things man would be tempted with. He only did it for our benefit and to teach us how to withstand temptation... We have several in our church that believe Jesus had a sin nature and that he could have sinned and that he simply chose not to. I think this would be contrary to His nature of Holiness. Christ gave up everything to come to earth except His holiness. Love to hear your thoughts or be pointed to some good material on this topic."
THOUGHTS: I'll start by putting on my Bounds' hat (the imaginary miter I where when I am trying to channel Dr. Chris Bounds and give the "orthodox" answer to a question). I've heard Bounds that Jesus could in theory have sinned but that the very structure of the universe would have fallen apart if he had.
As for my thoughts, I think the problem with the issue is that we have come to think of a sinful nature as something inside of us, something that is removed when we are entirely sanctified. We think of a sinful nature as something that makes us sin. Obviously if this is what a sinful nature is, then Jesus could not have had one.
But there are a couple reasons why this is not a good way of thinking about our "sin nature." First, Paul doesn't actually use any term like "sinful nature" and much to my delight the NIV2011 has gone back to the word that Paul did actually use, namely, "flesh." What we call the "sinful nature" is really human flesh under the power of Sin. To "have a sinful nature" is thus a metaphorical way of saying that a person's flesh is under the power of Sin (which is of course another metaphor but one that is more helpful).
To get even more literal, my human body is susceptible to any number of temptations, which are when something that is "good" on one level becomes a temptation to do "bad" in a specific context. So my temptation to have sex is good in itself, but it would be bad in the context of someone other than my wife.
Did Jesus have a sinful nature? The more accurate question is whether Jesus in his humanness was tempted to act out his desires in inappropriate contexts. That is of course what temptation is and since Jesus was tempted, the answer is yes. How did Adam sin when he didn't have a "sin nature"? He acted out his good desire to excel, grow, to "be all he could be" in relation to an inappropriate object.
So my answer would be, "Yes, Jesus could in theory have sinned, because temptation does not require a sinful nature" and "No, Jesus did not have a sinful nature, because his flesh was not under the power of sin."
QUESTION: "I believe that Christ did not have a sinful nature. I believe he could not have sinned and would not have sinned. I believe he was tempted by Satan as an example to us. Christ would not have been tempted by the things satan had to offer. Those things were all earlthy pleasures and the things man would be tempted with. He only did it for our benefit and to teach us how to withstand temptation... We have several in our church that believe Jesus had a sin nature and that he could have sinned and that he simply chose not to. I think this would be contrary to His nature of Holiness. Christ gave up everything to come to earth except His holiness. Love to hear your thoughts or be pointed to some good material on this topic."
THOUGHTS: I'll start by putting on my Bounds' hat (the imaginary miter I where when I am trying to channel Dr. Chris Bounds and give the "orthodox" answer to a question). I've heard Bounds that Jesus could in theory have sinned but that the very structure of the universe would have fallen apart if he had.
As for my thoughts, I think the problem with the issue is that we have come to think of a sinful nature as something inside of us, something that is removed when we are entirely sanctified. We think of a sinful nature as something that makes us sin. Obviously if this is what a sinful nature is, then Jesus could not have had one.
But there are a couple reasons why this is not a good way of thinking about our "sin nature." First, Paul doesn't actually use any term like "sinful nature" and much to my delight the NIV2011 has gone back to the word that Paul did actually use, namely, "flesh." What we call the "sinful nature" is really human flesh under the power of Sin. To "have a sinful nature" is thus a metaphorical way of saying that a person's flesh is under the power of Sin (which is of course another metaphor but one that is more helpful).
To get even more literal, my human body is susceptible to any number of temptations, which are when something that is "good" on one level becomes a temptation to do "bad" in a specific context. So my temptation to have sex is good in itself, but it would be bad in the context of someone other than my wife.
Did Jesus have a sinful nature? The more accurate question is whether Jesus in his humanness was tempted to act out his desires in inappropriate contexts. That is of course what temptation is and since Jesus was tempted, the answer is yes. How did Adam sin when he didn't have a "sin nature"? He acted out his good desire to excel, grow, to "be all he could be" in relation to an inappropriate object.
So my answer would be, "Yes, Jesus could in theory have sinned, because temptation does not require a sinful nature" and "No, Jesus did not have a sinful nature, because his flesh was not under the power of sin."
Philosophical Paraphrases 1: Socrates
I'm tidying up some paraphrases of philosophers. Here's the first from Plato's Apology, 37-38:
__________
Someone might say, “Surely if you leave the city, Socrates, you can spend the rest of your life in peace, minding your own business.”
It is really hard to make some of you understand my answer to this. If I tell you it would be disobedience to the god to do as you say, and therefore that I cannot mind my own business, you will not believe that I am serious. But if on the other hand I tell you to that the best thing you can do is to discuss virtue daily, along with the other subjects about which you hear me examining myself and others, if I tell you that the unexamined life is not worth living, you are even less likely to believe me.
Yet what I say is true, even if it is not easy to convince you.
__________
Someone might say, “Surely if you leave the city, Socrates, you can spend the rest of your life in peace, minding your own business.”
It is really hard to make some of you understand my answer to this. If I tell you it would be disobedience to the god to do as you say, and therefore that I cannot mind my own business, you will not believe that I am serious. But if on the other hand I tell you to that the best thing you can do is to discuss virtue daily, along with the other subjects about which you hear me examining myself and others, if I tell you that the unexamined life is not worth living, you are even less likely to believe me.
Yet what I say is true, even if it is not easy to convince you.
Restoration (Wes Theo Series)
This weekend I want to finish my sketch of what my outline/overview of a Wesleyan theology looks like. This is not the Wesleyan theology, but one that I think is forward looking. Here's ground that I have covered so far:
1. Faith (Introduction)
2. God
3. Creation and Alienation
4. Revelation
5. Reconciliation
In this second to last post, I look at Restoration.
7.1 Christ's Resurrection
The physical resurrection of Jesus points to the beginning of the end and to the restoration of humanity. In his full humanness, the resurrection body of Jesus points to the what humanity will be in the final resurrection. However, we do not have to wait for the resurrection to see the restoration process begin. Sanctification in its common sense refers to the work that the Spirit is already doing to restore us now, in this age and in this life. We are being transformed from glory to glory now (2 Cor. 3:18).
The resurrection indicates the power of Christ over death and demonic forces in this age, begun in Jesus' own exorcist ministry on earth. "We do not yet see everything under his feet," but the day is coming and the day is begun.
7.2 Second Coming
Christians have continued to believe throughout the centuries that Jesus will still literally return to earth at some point to save those who are his own and to judge the rest of the world. The notion of a rapture, that Christians will be removed from the earth to go to heaven, leaving everyone else behind, is a more recent twist. Biblically, it is more likely that eternity will be on a restored earth and that Christians will participate in the final judgment in some way (cf. 1 Cor. 6:2-3). We meet Jesus in the air to come back down for the final judgment (1 Thess. 4:17). Nevertheless, Wesley believed we would spend eternity in heaven.
7.3 Final Salvation
The salvation of the world is not historically limited to humanity but includes the created realm as well. For humanity, salvation means in the first instance an escape from the judgment coming on the rest of those on earth. Full salvation means the transformed body of the resurrection. For the creation, salvation means restoration from the forces of decay and corruption brought on by the Fall. If one accepts evolution, perhaps one might still look to some transformation of natural law in these areas at this time.
7.4 Final Judgment
Christians have historically believed in some sort of eternal punishment for those who are not in Christ. Traditionally, we have pictured an eternal burning. However, various Christians have seen some of these images as pictures rather than literal understanding. A significant strand sees hell as an eternal place without the presence of God and does not venture to say exactly what that looks like. Another looks to some sort of final annihilation of those who by their own decisions are not redeemable. Finally, some look to universal salvation or hold out the possibility that those in hell might switch destinations even there if they truly repent.
1. Faith (Introduction)
2. God
3. Creation and Alienation
4. Revelation
5. Reconciliation
In this second to last post, I look at Restoration.
7.1 Christ's Resurrection
The physical resurrection of Jesus points to the beginning of the end and to the restoration of humanity. In his full humanness, the resurrection body of Jesus points to the what humanity will be in the final resurrection. However, we do not have to wait for the resurrection to see the restoration process begin. Sanctification in its common sense refers to the work that the Spirit is already doing to restore us now, in this age and in this life. We are being transformed from glory to glory now (2 Cor. 3:18).
The resurrection indicates the power of Christ over death and demonic forces in this age, begun in Jesus' own exorcist ministry on earth. "We do not yet see everything under his feet," but the day is coming and the day is begun.
7.2 Second Coming
Christians have continued to believe throughout the centuries that Jesus will still literally return to earth at some point to save those who are his own and to judge the rest of the world. The notion of a rapture, that Christians will be removed from the earth to go to heaven, leaving everyone else behind, is a more recent twist. Biblically, it is more likely that eternity will be on a restored earth and that Christians will participate in the final judgment in some way (cf. 1 Cor. 6:2-3). We meet Jesus in the air to come back down for the final judgment (1 Thess. 4:17). Nevertheless, Wesley believed we would spend eternity in heaven.
7.3 Final Salvation
The salvation of the world is not historically limited to humanity but includes the created realm as well. For humanity, salvation means in the first instance an escape from the judgment coming on the rest of those on earth. Full salvation means the transformed body of the resurrection. For the creation, salvation means restoration from the forces of decay and corruption brought on by the Fall. If one accepts evolution, perhaps one might still look to some transformation of natural law in these areas at this time.
7.4 Final Judgment
Christians have historically believed in some sort of eternal punishment for those who are not in Christ. Traditionally, we have pictured an eternal burning. However, various Christians have seen some of these images as pictures rather than literal understanding. A significant strand sees hell as an eternal place without the presence of God and does not venture to say exactly what that looks like. Another looks to some sort of final annihilation of those who by their own decisions are not redeemable. Finally, some look to universal salvation or hold out the possibility that those in hell might switch destinations even there if they truly repent.
Wesley Seminary: FAQ
Wesley Seminary at IWU is about to graduate its first cohort of MDIV students. A lot has happened in these first three years. I'm drafting a quick FAQ sheet not so much for potential students--you have your own set of questions--but for other seminaries. Here are some questions I think some other institutions might be asking.
1. What is unique about your program?
In this first stage of our existence as a seminary, we are offering two degrees. The first is an MA in Ministry that we have offered for several decades, with concentrations in Leadership and Youth Ministry. The second is of course the MDIV.
Following the trend of several seminaries, Wesley's MDIV is a 75 hour degree with the possibility of doing two-thirds of the degree online. The curriculum has been carefully and collaboratively designed down to the level of every week to avoid accidental repetition and to ensure that all the desired outcomes of the degree are achieved. Students proceed through the degree together in a cohort and take a (1 credit hour) spiritual formation course every semester alongside a (6 credit hour) course on a key area of ministry. Meanwhile, they take core courses in Bible, theology, and church history, as well as many electives, in an intensive, one week format.
2. What kind of student are you attracting?
While we also attract the usual gamut of typical seminary students, our passion is to bring theological education to the silent majority of ministers in the world who will never darken the door of the traditional seminary. When you consider the tens of thousands of Christian denominations in the world, not to mention the rising dominance of two-thirds world Christianity, it is clear that the traditional model of seminary education is only serving the smallest portion of ministers in the world. In addition, since most denominations do not require seminary education, there are numerous ministers in North America who want to get into ministry immediately and, while not opposed to seminary education, will never move somewhere to study for three years.
Wesley is attracting this silent majority of Christian ministers. We come alongside them in their ministry setting and "learn by doing." On most weeks they do assignments that involve both research on their local ministry setting and strategies for improving their ministries there. Each "praxis" course on a key topic in ministry culminates with an "Application Paper" in which the students set out a multi-year strategy for their ministry in that area, and in the Capstone course they evaluate how well they are doing up to that point.
3. Where's the Bible, theology, church history in your curriculum?
Approximately 24 credit hours of the core requirements, about a third of the MDIV degree, is dedicated to the "foundational" disciplines of Bible, theology, and church history. This fact is often missed because we have woven half of these hours into the 6 large (6 credit hour) ministry courses in mission, leadership, worship, proclamation, congregational formation, and congregational relationships. However, these courses are team taught with a practitioner and an expert in one of the foundational disciplines (Bible, theology, church history). A third of the course (2 credit hours) is devoted to foundational assignments that in some way relate to the ministerial topic of the course.
With the degree now fully designed, it is satisfying to see how these assignments engage students across the whole canon, the whole gamut of systematic theology, and the whole of Christian history. Another key assignment in each of these six courses is what we call the "Integration Paper." In this sequence of assignments throughout the course, students pick a relevant pastoral issue and examine it from the standpoint of biblical theology, theological sources, and church historical precedents. The culmination of the project is a position paper in which they formulate a pastoral response to that issue.
4. Can you do spiritual formation online?
There is a prevailing intuition that spiritual formation cannot be done online. However, these intuitions often are based on a certain picture of online education that would not be true of our program. For example, the cohort model means that students get to know each other over the course of three years incredibly well. Because they start and end their program together onsite--and also come together once a year for two weeks of intensive classes--these cohorts develop close-knit community and take their face-to-face experience of each other with them into the intervening time online.
The courses themselves are sequenced in such a way as to lead students both individually and corporately through a process of change and development. Every other week involves an act of worship of some sort, so that they are growing affectively and spiritually in addition to the usual cognitive fare. If student testimony is any indication, spiritual formation can take place online.
5. How does Asbury feel about you?
The Wesleyan Church has and continues to enjoy a close relationship with Asbury Theological Seminary, which prior to the founding of Wesley was the primary place for Wesleyan ministers to get a seminary education. Asbury continues to serve Wesleyan students faithfully and indeed has a number of Wesleyan professors among its faculty. We anticipate that Asbury will continue to be the favorite seminary for Wesleyan students looking for a strongly residential program in the traditional model.
Accordingly, both Asbury and Wesley have come to recognize that we each focus on a different segment of the ministerial population. Wesley focuses primarily on those who are already in ministry or who want to learn how to do ministry "on the job." Asbury's program targets those who want to prepare for ministry in a setting where they can focus entirely on that preparation in a residential community.
Asbury also favors those who want to approach the foundational disciplines of Bible, theology, and church history for their own sake. While Wesley hopes to serve this group as well, our MDIV favors those who primarily want to study these disciplines with a view to their relevance for ministry. The two institutions thus serve complimentary roles for Wesleyan ministerial students.
1. What is unique about your program?
In this first stage of our existence as a seminary, we are offering two degrees. The first is an MA in Ministry that we have offered for several decades, with concentrations in Leadership and Youth Ministry. The second is of course the MDIV.
Following the trend of several seminaries, Wesley's MDIV is a 75 hour degree with the possibility of doing two-thirds of the degree online. The curriculum has been carefully and collaboratively designed down to the level of every week to avoid accidental repetition and to ensure that all the desired outcomes of the degree are achieved. Students proceed through the degree together in a cohort and take a (1 credit hour) spiritual formation course every semester alongside a (6 credit hour) course on a key area of ministry. Meanwhile, they take core courses in Bible, theology, and church history, as well as many electives, in an intensive, one week format.
2. What kind of student are you attracting?
While we also attract the usual gamut of typical seminary students, our passion is to bring theological education to the silent majority of ministers in the world who will never darken the door of the traditional seminary. When you consider the tens of thousands of Christian denominations in the world, not to mention the rising dominance of two-thirds world Christianity, it is clear that the traditional model of seminary education is only serving the smallest portion of ministers in the world. In addition, since most denominations do not require seminary education, there are numerous ministers in North America who want to get into ministry immediately and, while not opposed to seminary education, will never move somewhere to study for three years.
Wesley is attracting this silent majority of Christian ministers. We come alongside them in their ministry setting and "learn by doing." On most weeks they do assignments that involve both research on their local ministry setting and strategies for improving their ministries there. Each "praxis" course on a key topic in ministry culminates with an "Application Paper" in which the students set out a multi-year strategy for their ministry in that area, and in the Capstone course they evaluate how well they are doing up to that point.
3. Where's the Bible, theology, church history in your curriculum?
Approximately 24 credit hours of the core requirements, about a third of the MDIV degree, is dedicated to the "foundational" disciplines of Bible, theology, and church history. This fact is often missed because we have woven half of these hours into the 6 large (6 credit hour) ministry courses in mission, leadership, worship, proclamation, congregational formation, and congregational relationships. However, these courses are team taught with a practitioner and an expert in one of the foundational disciplines (Bible, theology, church history). A third of the course (2 credit hours) is devoted to foundational assignments that in some way relate to the ministerial topic of the course.
With the degree now fully designed, it is satisfying to see how these assignments engage students across the whole canon, the whole gamut of systematic theology, and the whole of Christian history. Another key assignment in each of these six courses is what we call the "Integration Paper." In this sequence of assignments throughout the course, students pick a relevant pastoral issue and examine it from the standpoint of biblical theology, theological sources, and church historical precedents. The culmination of the project is a position paper in which they formulate a pastoral response to that issue.
4. Can you do spiritual formation online?
There is a prevailing intuition that spiritual formation cannot be done online. However, these intuitions often are based on a certain picture of online education that would not be true of our program. For example, the cohort model means that students get to know each other over the course of three years incredibly well. Because they start and end their program together onsite--and also come together once a year for two weeks of intensive classes--these cohorts develop close-knit community and take their face-to-face experience of each other with them into the intervening time online.
The courses themselves are sequenced in such a way as to lead students both individually and corporately through a process of change and development. Every other week involves an act of worship of some sort, so that they are growing affectively and spiritually in addition to the usual cognitive fare. If student testimony is any indication, spiritual formation can take place online.
5. How does Asbury feel about you?
The Wesleyan Church has and continues to enjoy a close relationship with Asbury Theological Seminary, which prior to the founding of Wesley was the primary place for Wesleyan ministers to get a seminary education. Asbury continues to serve Wesleyan students faithfully and indeed has a number of Wesleyan professors among its faculty. We anticipate that Asbury will continue to be the favorite seminary for Wesleyan students looking for a strongly residential program in the traditional model.
Accordingly, both Asbury and Wesley have come to recognize that we each focus on a different segment of the ministerial population. Wesley focuses primarily on those who are already in ministry or who want to learn how to do ministry "on the job." Asbury's program targets those who want to prepare for ministry in a setting where they can focus entirely on that preparation in a residential community.
Asbury also favors those who want to approach the foundational disciplines of Bible, theology, and church history for their own sake. While Wesley hopes to serve this group as well, our MDIV favors those who primarily want to study these disciplines with a view to their relevance for ministry. The two institutions thus serve complimentary roles for Wesleyan ministerial students.
Thursday, March 15, 2012
The Christian Purpose of Judgment
Very busy week and no time for a full post. But I thought I would share the outline I'm currently using on how God's love and justice properly fit together. Here's my list.
1. First, God's justice is a function of his love. This is important because the two are usually seen in tension with each other, with justice being the primary. So someone might in effect say, "God finds a way to be loving within the framework of his justice." I disagree. "Mercy triumphs judgment."
2. Many biblical models people latch on to here are "not fully cooked." For example, the high point of Scripture on collective judgment is Ezekiel 18--"The person who sins is the one who will die"... not the people or group of the one who sins. That is not to negate corporate consequences or corporate correction. It is to say, however, that OT thinking that sees an entire people as defiled and worthy of direct punishment because of the sins of a few is incomplete biblical thinking. Any biblical theology of judgment must start with Ezekiel 18 and Jesus as the center point, "clear" scriptures.
Which leads me to the function of judgment as I see it:
1. To redeem the individual so judged.
That is to say, justice and judgment from a Christian standpoint is often intended to form and redirect the individual so judged. It is not for punishment but for training and discipline (Hebrews 12).
2. To protect or redeem a broader group of which an individual is a part.
I thought here of the man in 1 Corinthians 5 who is removed from the Corinthian church for two reasons: to try to drive him to repentance (number 1 above) and to protect the church from his corrupting influence. That is this second function of judgment.
3. As a final act of removal, when a person is not redeemable, with the accompanying terror of complete removal from God's presence.
This is what we call hell.
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Psalm 7 Translation
[Shiggayon (attributed) to David, which he sang to YHWH concerning the words of Cush of Benjamin]
7:1 YHWH, my God, in you I have fled;
rescue me from all those pursuing me and deliver me.
2 Lest he tear my soul like a lion,
ripping, and there is no deliverer.
3 YHWH, my God, if I did this,
if there is evil in my hands,
4 If I repaid evil to the one at peace with me
and turned [this person] over to my enemy without cause,
5 [Then] let the enemy pursue my soul and overtake [it],
and trample my life to the ground
and bring my honor down to the dust.
Music
6 Arise, YHWH in your nose [anger];
rise up at the arrogance of my enemies;
and stir up for me the justice you commanded.
7 And [then] the congregation of the peoples will surround you;
and for it, return to the height.
8 YHWH will render judgment [over] peoples;
judge me, YHWH, according to my righteousness,
and according to my innocence over me.
9 Let the evil of the wicked end
and establish the righteous one,
For God, the righteous one,
examines the hearts and bowels.
10 My shield is with God,
who saves the right of heart.
11 God is a righteous judge,
and God is angry every day.
12 If he does not turn,
[God] will sharpen his sword;
[God] has bent his bow and aimed it.
13 And for him he prepared instruments of death;
his arrows he has prepared against those who are burning.
14 Look, [the evil person] has birth pains with evil;
he conceived heavy trouble;
he gave birth to falsehood.
15 He lay open a pit and dug it
and fell into the grave hole he made.
16 His trouble making will return on his [own] head,
and on his [own] scalp his violence will come down.
17 I will praise YHWH according to his righteousness,
and I will sing the name of YHWH most high.
7:1 YHWH, my God, in you I have fled;
rescue me from all those pursuing me and deliver me.
2 Lest he tear my soul like a lion,
ripping, and there is no deliverer.
3 YHWH, my God, if I did this,
if there is evil in my hands,
4 If I repaid evil to the one at peace with me
and turned [this person] over to my enemy without cause,
5 [Then] let the enemy pursue my soul and overtake [it],
and trample my life to the ground
and bring my honor down to the dust.
Music
6 Arise, YHWH in your nose [anger];
rise up at the arrogance of my enemies;
and stir up for me the justice you commanded.
7 And [then] the congregation of the peoples will surround you;
and for it, return to the height.
8 YHWH will render judgment [over] peoples;
judge me, YHWH, according to my righteousness,
and according to my innocence over me.
9 Let the evil of the wicked end
and establish the righteous one,
For God, the righteous one,
examines the hearts and bowels.
10 My shield is with God,
who saves the right of heart.
11 God is a righteous judge,
and God is angry every day.
12 If he does not turn,
[God] will sharpen his sword;
[God] has bent his bow and aimed it.
13 And for him he prepared instruments of death;
his arrows he has prepared against those who are burning.
14 Look, [the evil person] has birth pains with evil;
he conceived heavy trouble;
he gave birth to falsehood.
15 He lay open a pit and dug it
and fell into the grave hole he made.
16 His trouble making will return on his [own] head,
and on his [own] scalp his violence will come down.
17 I will praise YHWH according to his righteousness,
and I will sing the name of YHWH most high.
5.6 Disciples Today
continued from yesterday
_________________
The Great Commission is directed at the eleven disciples. Did Jesus in Matthew mean it to apply to more than just these eleven? After all, Jesus specifically directs his instructions to the eleven in Matthew 28. He does not direct it to the other Jews who followed him around, listening to his teaching. He does not direct it to those who will later believe in him like you and me.
I think there is good reason to think that Matthew wanted his audience to see themselves as part of the Great Commission as well. For one, I suspect that most of the disciples were already dead by the time Matthew was written. If Matthew dates to the time after Jerusalem's destruction, as most experts think, then Peter and James were certainly dead already. Yet Matthew 28:20 says that Jesus will be with the disciples to the end of the age. The implication is that Jesus was still with the audience of Matthew, even if the disciples were passing.
The way that Matthew seems to blur the time before Jesus' death and after his resurrection gives us another reason to believe that Matthew was not written simply to record what Jesus did while he was on earth. It is not simply a history book written out of antiquarian interest but was meant to speak directly to an audience some forty to fifty years later. [1]The "mission sermon" of Matthew 10 seems to address not only the mission of the disciples while Jesus was on earth but the one they would conduct after his death. The way the Pharisees are treated probably speaks not only to Jesus' own interaction with them but to the period in the 70s when they were the primary authority left within Israel.
So if Matthew spoke so strongly to the Jewish Christians of its day, then presumably its climactic mission was also for them as well. Perhaps Matthew still has traces of the expectation that the end would come very soon (e.g., 10:23; 24:34). But it draws an arrow that points beyond the first mission to an ongoing mission that continues today, because it already points beyond the lives of the first disciples.
On the one hand, we have good reason to think that some early Christians saw the mission to all the nations largely finished in the first century. Sometimes Christians have pushed for taking the gospel to unreached people of the earth because of verses like Matthew 24:14: "this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come." The problem is that we are defining "whole world" on our terms rather than those when Matthew was written. Colossians 1:23 says that the gospel had already been preached "to every creature under heaven" way back in the first century. The "whole world" of that day was largely restricted to the lands surrounding the Mediterranean. [2]
Yet surely the spirit of these statements continues on, not least because the Christians of the first few centuries understood Matthew to be Christian Scripture. When the early Christians came to see Matthew as part of a new canon, a "New Testament," the church was saying through the continued inspiration of the Spirit that these words were not just words for the first century. They were not just words for the time when Jesus was on earth. They were not just historical record. But these words in some way continued to speak to Christians one hundred, two hundred, now two thousand years later.
So without even thinking about it, most of us today understand that we are included in that commission to the eleven disciples. We understand that the Spirit of Christ and the heavenly authority of Christ continue with us today. We understand that we are also in the business today of making disciples of all the nations and teaching them Christ's commandments. [3] We still baptize.
Our world is much bigger than theirs was. We are aware of many more nations to reach with the good news. So while Matthew and Paul may not have had New Guinea in mind, the way we have come to read these passages about the mission fits perfectly with the Spirit of their mission.
What was the good news of the kingdom again? ...
[1] This is an ironic by-product of viewing Matthew in modern historical terms. If we insist on viewing Matthew's primary goal as telling us only about what Jesus did and said for three years while he was on earth, then we have to justify applying it to the church that came afterwards. On the other hand, if Matthew writes a version of Jesus' life that "translates" him for Matthew's audience, then Jesus' words in Matthew transcended his earthly situation from the very start and applied directly to the church that followed.
[2] We are often rather unsophisticated in our ability to handle figurative language in our reading of the Bible. Human language is full of figures of speech, metaphors, hyperbole, and all sorts of idiomatic expressions. What a phrase like "every creature" means depends on how the person using the phrase means it, not on how it strikes me in my "dictionary."
[3] The phrase, "all nations" could also be translated as "all Gentiles." While it is hard to believe that Matthew 28 only has a Gentile mission in mind (surely the eleven were also meant to continue their mission to the Jews), the Great Commission probably did originally have a strong connotation of the mission to Gentiles after Jesus' earthly focus on the Jews.
_________________
The Great Commission is directed at the eleven disciples. Did Jesus in Matthew mean it to apply to more than just these eleven? After all, Jesus specifically directs his instructions to the eleven in Matthew 28. He does not direct it to the other Jews who followed him around, listening to his teaching. He does not direct it to those who will later believe in him like you and me.
I think there is good reason to think that Matthew wanted his audience to see themselves as part of the Great Commission as well. For one, I suspect that most of the disciples were already dead by the time Matthew was written. If Matthew dates to the time after Jerusalem's destruction, as most experts think, then Peter and James were certainly dead already. Yet Matthew 28:20 says that Jesus will be with the disciples to the end of the age. The implication is that Jesus was still with the audience of Matthew, even if the disciples were passing.
The way that Matthew seems to blur the time before Jesus' death and after his resurrection gives us another reason to believe that Matthew was not written simply to record what Jesus did while he was on earth. It is not simply a history book written out of antiquarian interest but was meant to speak directly to an audience some forty to fifty years later. [1]The "mission sermon" of Matthew 10 seems to address not only the mission of the disciples while Jesus was on earth but the one they would conduct after his death. The way the Pharisees are treated probably speaks not only to Jesus' own interaction with them but to the period in the 70s when they were the primary authority left within Israel.
So if Matthew spoke so strongly to the Jewish Christians of its day, then presumably its climactic mission was also for them as well. Perhaps Matthew still has traces of the expectation that the end would come very soon (e.g., 10:23; 24:34). But it draws an arrow that points beyond the first mission to an ongoing mission that continues today, because it already points beyond the lives of the first disciples.
On the one hand, we have good reason to think that some early Christians saw the mission to all the nations largely finished in the first century. Sometimes Christians have pushed for taking the gospel to unreached people of the earth because of verses like Matthew 24:14: "this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come." The problem is that we are defining "whole world" on our terms rather than those when Matthew was written. Colossians 1:23 says that the gospel had already been preached "to every creature under heaven" way back in the first century. The "whole world" of that day was largely restricted to the lands surrounding the Mediterranean. [2]
Yet surely the spirit of these statements continues on, not least because the Christians of the first few centuries understood Matthew to be Christian Scripture. When the early Christians came to see Matthew as part of a new canon, a "New Testament," the church was saying through the continued inspiration of the Spirit that these words were not just words for the first century. They were not just words for the time when Jesus was on earth. They were not just historical record. But these words in some way continued to speak to Christians one hundred, two hundred, now two thousand years later.
So without even thinking about it, most of us today understand that we are included in that commission to the eleven disciples. We understand that the Spirit of Christ and the heavenly authority of Christ continue with us today. We understand that we are also in the business today of making disciples of all the nations and teaching them Christ's commandments. [3] We still baptize.
Our world is much bigger than theirs was. We are aware of many more nations to reach with the good news. So while Matthew and Paul may not have had New Guinea in mind, the way we have come to read these passages about the mission fits perfectly with the Spirit of their mission.
What was the good news of the kingdom again? ...
[1] This is an ironic by-product of viewing Matthew in modern historical terms. If we insist on viewing Matthew's primary goal as telling us only about what Jesus did and said for three years while he was on earth, then we have to justify applying it to the church that came afterwards. On the other hand, if Matthew writes a version of Jesus' life that "translates" him for Matthew's audience, then Jesus' words in Matthew transcended his earthly situation from the very start and applied directly to the church that followed.
[2] We are often rather unsophisticated in our ability to handle figurative language in our reading of the Bible. Human language is full of figures of speech, metaphors, hyperbole, and all sorts of idiomatic expressions. What a phrase like "every creature" means depends on how the person using the phrase means it, not on how it strikes me in my "dictionary."
[3] The phrase, "all nations" could also be translated as "all Gentiles." While it is hard to believe that Matthew 28 only has a Gentile mission in mind (surely the eleven were also meant to continue their mission to the Jews), the Great Commission probably did originally have a strong connotation of the mission to Gentiles after Jesus' earthly focus on the Jews.
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
5.5 The Great Commission
continued from last week
__________
... Unfortunately, the final memory of the mission in Galilee is one in which these villages ultimately rejected Jesus as king.
The ultimate mission for the disciples in Matthew comes of course in the Great Commission in Matthew 28. This is the climax of Matthew's presentation and it points to the continuation of Jesus' mission after he has departed from the earth after his resurrection. We call it a commission because the eleven remaining disciples are sent into all the nations to continue what Jesus has started while he was on earth.
Sometimes you hear people point out that the word "go" is actually a participle in the original Greek: "Having gone" (Matt. 28:19). The emphasis is thus not on going but on making disciples, which is the main verb. Some then argue that going is an assumption rather than a command--in other words, there is no question that they would go. Probably, we shouldn't try make any major point from the word at all. Matthew uses a similar construction elsewhere where there is no emphasis on going (e.g., Matt. 11:4). [1]
So the focus here is not on going but on the eleven "making disciples." The eleven go under the authority of Jesus (28:18). Jesus certainly had authority before his resurrection (e.g., 9:6), but quite possibly Matthew thinks of Jesus now gaining all authority and not only on earth but in heaven now as well. He has been enthroned as cosmic king and thus all must now "bow the knee" and worship him (28:16). They carry his authority with them in part because he will be with them to the end of the age (28:20).
How are they to make further disciples? First, they are to baptize wherever they go. This is presumably a baptism associated with repentance, a physical cleansing that represented the spiritual cleansing and forgiveness of sins. Interestingly, Matthew speaks of baptism "in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." This may reflect the extent to which Christian understanding had developed by the time of Matthew's writing, probably after the destruction of Jerusalem in AD70. [2] Acts (e.g., 2:38) and probably Paul (1 Cor. 1:13) baptized in the name of Jesus and probably reflect the earliest sense of baptism.
The second element of discipling that the Great Commission mentions is teaching future Jesus followers to do the things that Jesus commanded. Jesus' love commandment in Matthew 22:37-40 is of course the very heart of what Jesus commanded while he was on earth. He boiled all his teaching down to love of God and love of neighbor. In the next chapter, we'll also look at the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7, arguably the central presentation of Jesus' teaching in Matthew.
The Great Commission is directed at the eleven disciples. Did Jesus in Matthew mean it to apply to more than just these eleven? ...
[1] Probably, "go and make disciples" is the best translation, since a participle can be used as a light command when associated with another central command.
[2] The reason Matthew probably dates to the time after the destruction of Jerusalem is at least two-fold. First, there is the likelihood that Matthew used Mark, which would place it later. But more centrally, there is the way Matthew may have edited the parable about a banquet. Compare Matthew 22:7 with Luke 14:15-23.
__________
... Unfortunately, the final memory of the mission in Galilee is one in which these villages ultimately rejected Jesus as king.
The ultimate mission for the disciples in Matthew comes of course in the Great Commission in Matthew 28. This is the climax of Matthew's presentation and it points to the continuation of Jesus' mission after he has departed from the earth after his resurrection. We call it a commission because the eleven remaining disciples are sent into all the nations to continue what Jesus has started while he was on earth.
Sometimes you hear people point out that the word "go" is actually a participle in the original Greek: "Having gone" (Matt. 28:19). The emphasis is thus not on going but on making disciples, which is the main verb. Some then argue that going is an assumption rather than a command--in other words, there is no question that they would go. Probably, we shouldn't try make any major point from the word at all. Matthew uses a similar construction elsewhere where there is no emphasis on going (e.g., Matt. 11:4). [1]
So the focus here is not on going but on the eleven "making disciples." The eleven go under the authority of Jesus (28:18). Jesus certainly had authority before his resurrection (e.g., 9:6), but quite possibly Matthew thinks of Jesus now gaining all authority and not only on earth but in heaven now as well. He has been enthroned as cosmic king and thus all must now "bow the knee" and worship him (28:16). They carry his authority with them in part because he will be with them to the end of the age (28:20).
How are they to make further disciples? First, they are to baptize wherever they go. This is presumably a baptism associated with repentance, a physical cleansing that represented the spiritual cleansing and forgiveness of sins. Interestingly, Matthew speaks of baptism "in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." This may reflect the extent to which Christian understanding had developed by the time of Matthew's writing, probably after the destruction of Jerusalem in AD70. [2] Acts (e.g., 2:38) and probably Paul (1 Cor. 1:13) baptized in the name of Jesus and probably reflect the earliest sense of baptism.
The second element of discipling that the Great Commission mentions is teaching future Jesus followers to do the things that Jesus commanded. Jesus' love commandment in Matthew 22:37-40 is of course the very heart of what Jesus commanded while he was on earth. He boiled all his teaching down to love of God and love of neighbor. In the next chapter, we'll also look at the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7, arguably the central presentation of Jesus' teaching in Matthew.
The Great Commission is directed at the eleven disciples. Did Jesus in Matthew mean it to apply to more than just these eleven? ...
[1] Probably, "go and make disciples" is the best translation, since a participle can be used as a light command when associated with another central command.
[2] The reason Matthew probably dates to the time after the destruction of Jerusalem is at least two-fold. First, there is the likelihood that Matthew used Mark, which would place it later. But more centrally, there is the way Matthew may have edited the parable about a banquet. Compare Matthew 22:7 with Luke 14:15-23.
Sunday, March 11, 2012
Reconciliation (Wes Theo Series)
Outline/overview of Wesleyan theology. More detailed posts:
1. Faith (Introduction)
2. God
3. Creation and Alienation
4. Revelation
5.1 Incarnation
Christians have long viewed Christ taking on flesh as the first step in the reconciliation of the world. God becomes one of us. He not only comes to us. He identifies with us. He assumes our situation and our problem, to some extent. He is tempted as us. His earthly life is part of the reconciliation.
5.2 Christ's Death
Christians of the ages have used a number of pictures to describe how Christ's death serves as a mechanism for our reconciliation. Christ's death satisfies God's anger toward sin or satisfies the need for justice and order in the world. It is an atoning sacrifice. Christ takes our punishment and substitutes for us. Christ shows us God's love and thus woos us back to him. Christ redeems us from slavery or defeats the power of Satan over us.
These are all pictures of atonement and Wesleyans can ascribe to all of them. The Wesleyan emphasis on God as love, however, sometimes shifts the focus. So Wesleyans often resist rigid views of penal substitution, where some mathematical sense of punishment had to be assumed for it to work. A Wesleyan may lean toward seeing Christ's death ultimately as a matter of God's choice in reconciliation rather than some inevitable path he would have to take. Would not God have the authority to forgive us outright if he wanted?
A Wesleyan might see the picture of God's wrath as one of the least literal of the pictures, though one with which we may most identify. Anger involves emotion and emotion involves new stimulus, but God knows all things equally from all eternity. A fuller picture is of God's love in action. We understand and identify with sacrifice for us. There is a certain order to things that Christ's death embodies. We are enslaved and we understand the defeat of our enslaver.
5.3 The Spirit and the Church
Christ's presence in the world continues through the Spirit and the Church. The Spirit inside us marks us as God's possession and empowers us to live reconciled lives. We are a new creation. We are an island of heaven in a fallen world.
God also uses his Church as a means of reconciliation. The invisible Church consists of all those with the Spirit in all times and all places, despite what visible Church they may attend. But the Church is also physical, visible entity that gathers together to proclaim God's word and participate in means of grace. Baptism is the image of entrance into the Church, although the Spirit is the more important threshold. Communion is the image of atonement, reminding and catalyzing our continued reconciliation with God.
5.4 Justification and Sanctification
Protestants think of justification as our legal acquittal of the charges against us for our past sins. Through Christ, all charges are dropped against us. Sanctification then positively empowers us to do what is right. Wesley largely adopted Luther's understanding of (initial) justification. A difference comes in his sense of final justification.
For Wesley, final justification is dependent on a continued relationship with God that manifests itself in right living. Lutherans fear such talk, because it seems to give too much importance to "works" in the equation of justification. Calvinists agree with Wesley that works must follow, but see no element of human will involved in the process and affirm the persistence of the elect from beginning to end.
Wesleyans do not believe in "eternal security" but see right relationship with God as breakable. A person must continue in faithfulness to that relationship after initial justification.
Calvinists and Wesleyans also disagree on the extent to which God makes us righteous in this life. Wesley even taught a crisis experience where one was freed from the power of sin, to be able to love God with all one's heart, mind, soul, and strength. Wesleyans do not believe that the fight against sin in this life must always be a struggle, and especially not a losing struggle.
5.5 Society
Wesleyans have historically been activists for change in society where possible. An emphasis on helping those in need has been core to Wesleyan identity since Wesley himself. Many in the Wesleyan tradition were strong supporters of abolition and women's rights. Today, the best Wesleyan voices speak out against those who would intentionally or unintentionally oppress the disempowered of society. Even when someone has done wrong, the best Wesleyan attitude is one that looks to redemption and insists on love as the primary value.
5.6 Creation
A view of reconciliation that does not include the entire cosmos is an incomplete view. The best Wesleyan voices will be conscious of God's creation and strive to be good stewards of it. Paul says that the creation too is enslaved to sin and slated for redemption. It is the Wesleyan way to be optimistic about how much redemption we can see now on every level, without waiting for Christ's return.
1. Faith (Introduction)
2. God
3. Creation and Alienation
4. Revelation
5.1 Incarnation
Christians have long viewed Christ taking on flesh as the first step in the reconciliation of the world. God becomes one of us. He not only comes to us. He identifies with us. He assumes our situation and our problem, to some extent. He is tempted as us. His earthly life is part of the reconciliation.
5.2 Christ's Death
Christians of the ages have used a number of pictures to describe how Christ's death serves as a mechanism for our reconciliation. Christ's death satisfies God's anger toward sin or satisfies the need for justice and order in the world. It is an atoning sacrifice. Christ takes our punishment and substitutes for us. Christ shows us God's love and thus woos us back to him. Christ redeems us from slavery or defeats the power of Satan over us.
These are all pictures of atonement and Wesleyans can ascribe to all of them. The Wesleyan emphasis on God as love, however, sometimes shifts the focus. So Wesleyans often resist rigid views of penal substitution, where some mathematical sense of punishment had to be assumed for it to work. A Wesleyan may lean toward seeing Christ's death ultimately as a matter of God's choice in reconciliation rather than some inevitable path he would have to take. Would not God have the authority to forgive us outright if he wanted?
A Wesleyan might see the picture of God's wrath as one of the least literal of the pictures, though one with which we may most identify. Anger involves emotion and emotion involves new stimulus, but God knows all things equally from all eternity. A fuller picture is of God's love in action. We understand and identify with sacrifice for us. There is a certain order to things that Christ's death embodies. We are enslaved and we understand the defeat of our enslaver.
5.3 The Spirit and the Church
Christ's presence in the world continues through the Spirit and the Church. The Spirit inside us marks us as God's possession and empowers us to live reconciled lives. We are a new creation. We are an island of heaven in a fallen world.
God also uses his Church as a means of reconciliation. The invisible Church consists of all those with the Spirit in all times and all places, despite what visible Church they may attend. But the Church is also physical, visible entity that gathers together to proclaim God's word and participate in means of grace. Baptism is the image of entrance into the Church, although the Spirit is the more important threshold. Communion is the image of atonement, reminding and catalyzing our continued reconciliation with God.
5.4 Justification and Sanctification
Protestants think of justification as our legal acquittal of the charges against us for our past sins. Through Christ, all charges are dropped against us. Sanctification then positively empowers us to do what is right. Wesley largely adopted Luther's understanding of (initial) justification. A difference comes in his sense of final justification.
For Wesley, final justification is dependent on a continued relationship with God that manifests itself in right living. Lutherans fear such talk, because it seems to give too much importance to "works" in the equation of justification. Calvinists agree with Wesley that works must follow, but see no element of human will involved in the process and affirm the persistence of the elect from beginning to end.
Wesleyans do not believe in "eternal security" but see right relationship with God as breakable. A person must continue in faithfulness to that relationship after initial justification.
Calvinists and Wesleyans also disagree on the extent to which God makes us righteous in this life. Wesley even taught a crisis experience where one was freed from the power of sin, to be able to love God with all one's heart, mind, soul, and strength. Wesleyans do not believe that the fight against sin in this life must always be a struggle, and especially not a losing struggle.
5.5 Society
Wesleyans have historically been activists for change in society where possible. An emphasis on helping those in need has been core to Wesleyan identity since Wesley himself. Many in the Wesleyan tradition were strong supporters of abolition and women's rights. Today, the best Wesleyan voices speak out against those who would intentionally or unintentionally oppress the disempowered of society. Even when someone has done wrong, the best Wesleyan attitude is one that looks to redemption and insists on love as the primary value.
5.6 Creation
A view of reconciliation that does not include the entire cosmos is an incomplete view. The best Wesleyan voices will be conscious of God's creation and strive to be good stewards of it. Paul says that the creation too is enslaved to sin and slated for redemption. It is the Wesleyan way to be optimistic about how much redemption we can see now on every level, without waiting for Christ's return.
Saturday, March 10, 2012
Revelation (Wes. Theo. series)
For the last few weekends, I've been spinning out what kinds of things I might write if I did a small book overviewing Wesleyan theology. The brainstorms I've done include:
Faith (Introduction)
God
Creation and Alienation
There is so much of me in these posts that it really should be called a Wesleyan theology rather than anything like an overview from a historical perspective. It seems to me the last two hundred years push us to broaden our consideration, not least because we now have a better understanding of how to read the biblical texts on their own terms. A re-presentation seems necessary to speak with full power to today, and a mere repetition of historical categories seems two dimensional to me.
Today's overview is Revelation.
4.1 Natural Grace
John Calvin had a sense of grace built into nature, and I personally believe it is healthy for us to believe that there is a great deal of goodness in nature still that remains an embodiment of God's love for us. The Stoics spoke of "logos seeds" in all of us, which some parts of the New Testament call "the implanted word" (e.g., James 1:21). These are bits of the truth of God's will in all of us. Perhaps we want to call this "natural revelation," elements of the creation that point to God.
Dare we believe that God reaches out to the non-human parts of his creation as well, both in salvation and in goodness?
4.2 Prevenient Grace
Wesley and Wesleyans have traditionally gone one step forward to speak of God's prevenient grace, his "lightening" of everyone who comes into the world (cf. John 1:9). In my opinion, the most coherent Wesleyan theology today will believe that God reaches out to everyone who ever lives in this world. This is a reaching out not with the head, since clearly most of those who have lived on the earth have never heard of Christ. It is a reaching out with the heart.
Similarly, the response God is looking for is surely not a response with the head, some hollow assent to certain beliefs, but an assent with the heart. But that is for tomorrow.
4.3 Israel
Christians believe that God reached out to humanity through a people. Surely he must have been reaching out to humanity long before Abraham. Egyptian culture had flourished for well over a 1000 years before then. Even by Bishop Ussher's standards, humanity had lived for over 2000 years before then, and science would say a massively greater time than this. From Abraham to the Christian age, the overwhelming majority of the world knew nothing of Israel's faith.
So once more we must either believe that God cared nothing for these poor souls or that he was reaching out to their hearts long before he came with matters of the head. Christians believe that his coming to Israel was the beginning of a coming with the head. But even here, he reveals by building a relationship with a people. He meets them where they are at.
It is not a full revelation of himself. He meets them with their understanding. A fuller truth is "concealed" or, better, it is partial. He lets them do things that are not his perfect will. Jesus includes divorce in this category. I would include the attempted annihilation of whole peoples in Canaan.
4.4 Scripture
The texts that we now call Scripture accumulated over a 1000 year period or so. So we once again see that God's revelation is vastly larger than these written texts. But these written texts are the fullest witness of the head to God and his relationship with his creation. They give us the story of God's focal reaching out to the world through Israel and then ultimately, through Christ. They are the playing field on which Christians wrestle together to find God's will, to work out our salvation together with fear and trembling.
4.5 Christ as Revelation
The Word of God is Jesus Christ (John 1:14). No other word compares to the fullness of God's reaching out to reveal himself, and any confusion on that matter bespeaks a tendency to idolatry. It is in Jesus Christ that God has most fully revealed himself, once again showing that reaching out in relationship and not knowledge is the center of revelation.
4.6 The Spirit and the Church
God has not stopped revealing himself. New issues arise. Further, the Christians of the first centuries systematized their understanding of Scripture in the time after Christ. If we are to believe the historic doctrines of Christian faith and accept the canon of Christian Scripture, we must believe that God continued to reveal himself to them even after the time of the New Testament.
The tension between the pneumatic and the traditional in knowing and doing God's will remains present with us today. Surely God still speaks to individuals through the Spirit. Yet much individual revelation is none of the sort, and traditional structures help sift through such matters. This tension is already present within the witness of the New Testament in the contrast between the prophets of the early church and structures that included overseers and deacons.
Faith (Introduction)
God
Creation and Alienation
There is so much of me in these posts that it really should be called a Wesleyan theology rather than anything like an overview from a historical perspective. It seems to me the last two hundred years push us to broaden our consideration, not least because we now have a better understanding of how to read the biblical texts on their own terms. A re-presentation seems necessary to speak with full power to today, and a mere repetition of historical categories seems two dimensional to me.
Today's overview is Revelation.
4.1 Natural Grace
John Calvin had a sense of grace built into nature, and I personally believe it is healthy for us to believe that there is a great deal of goodness in nature still that remains an embodiment of God's love for us. The Stoics spoke of "logos seeds" in all of us, which some parts of the New Testament call "the implanted word" (e.g., James 1:21). These are bits of the truth of God's will in all of us. Perhaps we want to call this "natural revelation," elements of the creation that point to God.
Dare we believe that God reaches out to the non-human parts of his creation as well, both in salvation and in goodness?
4.2 Prevenient Grace
Wesley and Wesleyans have traditionally gone one step forward to speak of God's prevenient grace, his "lightening" of everyone who comes into the world (cf. John 1:9). In my opinion, the most coherent Wesleyan theology today will believe that God reaches out to everyone who ever lives in this world. This is a reaching out not with the head, since clearly most of those who have lived on the earth have never heard of Christ. It is a reaching out with the heart.
Similarly, the response God is looking for is surely not a response with the head, some hollow assent to certain beliefs, but an assent with the heart. But that is for tomorrow.
4.3 Israel
Christians believe that God reached out to humanity through a people. Surely he must have been reaching out to humanity long before Abraham. Egyptian culture had flourished for well over a 1000 years before then. Even by Bishop Ussher's standards, humanity had lived for over 2000 years before then, and science would say a massively greater time than this. From Abraham to the Christian age, the overwhelming majority of the world knew nothing of Israel's faith.
So once more we must either believe that God cared nothing for these poor souls or that he was reaching out to their hearts long before he came with matters of the head. Christians believe that his coming to Israel was the beginning of a coming with the head. But even here, he reveals by building a relationship with a people. He meets them where they are at.
It is not a full revelation of himself. He meets them with their understanding. A fuller truth is "concealed" or, better, it is partial. He lets them do things that are not his perfect will. Jesus includes divorce in this category. I would include the attempted annihilation of whole peoples in Canaan.
4.4 Scripture
The texts that we now call Scripture accumulated over a 1000 year period or so. So we once again see that God's revelation is vastly larger than these written texts. But these written texts are the fullest witness of the head to God and his relationship with his creation. They give us the story of God's focal reaching out to the world through Israel and then ultimately, through Christ. They are the playing field on which Christians wrestle together to find God's will, to work out our salvation together with fear and trembling.
4.5 Christ as Revelation
The Word of God is Jesus Christ (John 1:14). No other word compares to the fullness of God's reaching out to reveal himself, and any confusion on that matter bespeaks a tendency to idolatry. It is in Jesus Christ that God has most fully revealed himself, once again showing that reaching out in relationship and not knowledge is the center of revelation.
4.6 The Spirit and the Church
God has not stopped revealing himself. New issues arise. Further, the Christians of the first centuries systematized their understanding of Scripture in the time after Christ. If we are to believe the historic doctrines of Christian faith and accept the canon of Christian Scripture, we must believe that God continued to reveal himself to them even after the time of the New Testament.
The tension between the pneumatic and the traditional in knowing and doing God's will remains present with us today. Surely God still speaks to individuals through the Spirit. Yet much individual revelation is none of the sort, and traditional structures help sift through such matters. This tension is already present within the witness of the New Testament in the contrast between the prophets of the early church and structures that included overseers and deacons.
Thursday, March 08, 2012
Manuscripts and rumors of manuscripts...
I haven't had much to say about the buzz around the bibliosphere about rumored fragments. The two most rumored are:
1. A fragment of Romans, reputed to be from the second century, which would make it the oldest fragment of Romans yet. It's initial dating may have been done by Scott Carroll who is with the Green collection. The Green collection has connections with Baylor, IWU, and others.
2. A fragment of Mark, alleged to date to the first century. The source of this rumor is some comments by Dan Wallace of Dallas Seminary. Dan has said:
There's nothing impossible about finding second century manuscripts of Paul or Hebrews. It's also not impossible that someone would find a first century fragment of Mark, although I'll wait to see on that one. Whatever date ends up being ascribed--and manuscripts from this period can only be dated to within a 50 year window--I doubt anyone will be forced to change their dating of Mark.
So it's exciting because these fragments would be so early and so close to the time of writing. Let's just enjoy them, whatever they turn out to be in a year or so, early or late, authentic or hype.
1. A fragment of Romans, reputed to be from the second century, which would make it the oldest fragment of Romans yet. It's initial dating may have been done by Scott Carroll who is with the Green collection. The Green collection has connections with Baylor, IWU, and others.
2. A fragment of Mark, alleged to date to the first century. The source of this rumor is some comments by Dan Wallace of Dallas Seminary. Dan has said:
- A top paleographer is working on the dating of the Mark fragment.
- The collection includes 1) small fragment of Mark, 2) something from Luke, 3) three from Paul, 4) an early sermon on Hebrews 11. The Paul and Hebrews one are apparently being dated to the second century.
There's nothing impossible about finding second century manuscripts of Paul or Hebrews. It's also not impossible that someone would find a first century fragment of Mark, although I'll wait to see on that one. Whatever date ends up being ascribed--and manuscripts from this period can only be dated to within a 50 year window--I doubt anyone will be forced to change their dating of Mark.
So it's exciting because these fragments would be so early and so close to the time of writing. Let's just enjoy them, whatever they turn out to be in a year or so, early or late, authentic or hype.
Roger Olsen on Piper as usual...
I think most are probably glad that I've become tired of responding to things like Piper's recent post on the tornadoes in Kentucky and southern Indiana. Pretty much everyone knows what I think, and I've said it all before.
But here's what Roger Olsen has to say:
My response to John Piper’s Recent Statements about God and Tornadoes
But here's what Roger Olsen has to say:
My response to John Piper’s Recent Statements about God and Tornadoes
An Evangelical and Critical Approach to the Gospels (by Michael Bird)
Might Mike Bird's approach be a step toward maturation for my circles? Here is yet another example of, in my opinion, how evangelical biblical scholarship overseas is more mature than what we find in ETS in America.
An Evangelical and Critical Approach to the Gospels
An Evangelical and Critical Approach to the Gospels
Scripture necessary for sermons?
It occurred to me that Paul uses no Scripture in the Acts 17 sermon to the Athenians. He does, however, quote a Stoic poet. Similarly, 1 Thessalonians, which probably was read as a sermon, quotes no Scripture either.
What are some possible reactions to these instances?
1. Paul and the author of Acts were inspired, you're not.
Fair enough. You can probably hammer a nail with a crowbar, but why not use a hammer?
2. This shows that the word of God is more than just the written text.
I don't see how anyone can even question this. The truths contained in Scripture can surely be presented in a different form than they appear in the biblical text.
3. It's dangerous to preach too much from what you think the truth is without referencing Scripture.
In other words, is repeated "topical" preaching without recourse to Scripture just begging for trouble at some point? Do you almost doom yourself at some point to substitute your thoughts for God's? Of course, I would say we substitute our own thoughts for God's even when we're using the text.
But what are your thoughts?
What are some possible reactions to these instances?
1. Paul and the author of Acts were inspired, you're not.
Fair enough. You can probably hammer a nail with a crowbar, but why not use a hammer?
2. This shows that the word of God is more than just the written text.
I don't see how anyone can even question this. The truths contained in Scripture can surely be presented in a different form than they appear in the biblical text.
3. It's dangerous to preach too much from what you think the truth is without referencing Scripture.
In other words, is repeated "topical" preaching without recourse to Scripture just begging for trouble at some point? Do you almost doom yourself at some point to substitute your thoughts for God's? Of course, I would say we substitute our own thoughts for God's even when we're using the text.
But what are your thoughts?
Wednesday, March 07, 2012
5.4 Mission within a Mission
... continued from Monday
____________
From these observations in Mark, probably the earliest gospel, we conclude that the bulk of Jesus' message and proclamation of the good news was not about him. It was about what God the Father was doing. It was about the kingdom of God, as I argued back in chapter 2.
At one point, Jesus seems to have sent his core disciples out to spread the word as well. In Mark 6:12-13, they go out preaching that people needed to repent, as well as healing and casting out demons. In other words, their ministry mirrored that of Jesus. They were spreading the word that God was soon coming in judgment of the world and the faithless within Israel. God was reclaiming the earth from demonic powers. God was restoring the lost sheep among his people.
Jesus instructs them not to take food or a bag for begging (6:8-9). The villages to which they preach are to support them but they are to take nothing extra away. They take sandals to protect their feet and a staff for protection, but not an extra shirt. Their visit to a village was a test of that village's faith. It was the duty of the village to welcome and support the disciple and, if it would not, the disciples were to "shake the dust off" their feet and move on (6:11).
Matthew's version does not actually tell of them going out and arguably blurs the mission the disciples went on during Jesus' earthly mission with the mission after Jesus rose from the dead. On the one hand, they are only to go to the cities of Israel. They are not to go either to Samaria or the Gentiles (10:5). They are going only to the "lost sheep of Israel" (10:5). Because the Great Commission clearly involves all the nations (28:19), these instructions surely relate to the time while Jesus was still on earth.
Other parts of the instruction seem to relate to the time after Jesus' resurrection. It does not seem likely that any of the disciples were handed over to local councils or synagogues while Jesus was on earth (10:17). And they did not appear before Roman governors and kings until decades later (10:18). The coming of the Son of Man before the end of their mission is puzzling (10:23), but reminds us of statements we find in Mark 9:1, 13:30 and elsewhere that speak of the kingdom coming in some way before the disciples' death.
The statement of taking up their cross also would have been quite puzzling before Jesus' death but would have been deeply appropriate afterwards. Matthew 10 thus seems to combine instructions both appropriate to the initial mission of the disciples during Jesus' earthly ministry and instructions that apply to the decades after Jesus' rising from the dead.
Luke remembers the mission of the disciples having some success. Luke 10:1-24 tells of a slightly different mission, a mission involving 72. The number 72 was probably symbolic of the nations and so hints of the mission to the whole world that would take place after Jesus' resurrection. But during Jesus' life, the disciples are amazed that the demons even have to obey them (10:17). Jesus tells them that this fact points to the demise of Satan's power over this world. He was falling from the sky like lightning (10:18).
Mark remembers the disciples having some failures. They are unable to cast out one demon in particular in Mark 9:18. Jesus indicts them for a lack of faith.
If the mission instructions of Jesus in Matthew 10 seem to blur the mission both before and after Jesus' resurrection, it is possible that the gospels also blur the rejection of the cities where that mission was carried out. The tone of Jesus' approach to Jerusalem is victorious. He enters Jerusalem to a crowd that celebrates him as king.
But the memory of the cities around Galilee is one of rejection. "Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes" (Matt. 11:21). Similarly, Jesus says of Capernaum, "Will you be lifted to the heavens? No, you will go down to Hades" (11:23). Unfortunately, the final memory of the mission in Galilee is one in which these villages ultimately rejected Jesus as king.
____________
From these observations in Mark, probably the earliest gospel, we conclude that the bulk of Jesus' message and proclamation of the good news was not about him. It was about what God the Father was doing. It was about the kingdom of God, as I argued back in chapter 2.
At one point, Jesus seems to have sent his core disciples out to spread the word as well. In Mark 6:12-13, they go out preaching that people needed to repent, as well as healing and casting out demons. In other words, their ministry mirrored that of Jesus. They were spreading the word that God was soon coming in judgment of the world and the faithless within Israel. God was reclaiming the earth from demonic powers. God was restoring the lost sheep among his people.
Jesus instructs them not to take food or a bag for begging (6:8-9). The villages to which they preach are to support them but they are to take nothing extra away. They take sandals to protect their feet and a staff for protection, but not an extra shirt. Their visit to a village was a test of that village's faith. It was the duty of the village to welcome and support the disciple and, if it would not, the disciples were to "shake the dust off" their feet and move on (6:11).
Matthew's version does not actually tell of them going out and arguably blurs the mission the disciples went on during Jesus' earthly mission with the mission after Jesus rose from the dead. On the one hand, they are only to go to the cities of Israel. They are not to go either to Samaria or the Gentiles (10:5). They are going only to the "lost sheep of Israel" (10:5). Because the Great Commission clearly involves all the nations (28:19), these instructions surely relate to the time while Jesus was still on earth.
Other parts of the instruction seem to relate to the time after Jesus' resurrection. It does not seem likely that any of the disciples were handed over to local councils or synagogues while Jesus was on earth (10:17). And they did not appear before Roman governors and kings until decades later (10:18). The coming of the Son of Man before the end of their mission is puzzling (10:23), but reminds us of statements we find in Mark 9:1, 13:30 and elsewhere that speak of the kingdom coming in some way before the disciples' death.
The statement of taking up their cross also would have been quite puzzling before Jesus' death but would have been deeply appropriate afterwards. Matthew 10 thus seems to combine instructions both appropriate to the initial mission of the disciples during Jesus' earthly ministry and instructions that apply to the decades after Jesus' rising from the dead.
Luke remembers the mission of the disciples having some success. Luke 10:1-24 tells of a slightly different mission, a mission involving 72. The number 72 was probably symbolic of the nations and so hints of the mission to the whole world that would take place after Jesus' resurrection. But during Jesus' life, the disciples are amazed that the demons even have to obey them (10:17). Jesus tells them that this fact points to the demise of Satan's power over this world. He was falling from the sky like lightning (10:18).
Mark remembers the disciples having some failures. They are unable to cast out one demon in particular in Mark 9:18. Jesus indicts them for a lack of faith.
If the mission instructions of Jesus in Matthew 10 seem to blur the mission both before and after Jesus' resurrection, it is possible that the gospels also blur the rejection of the cities where that mission was carried out. The tone of Jesus' approach to Jerusalem is victorious. He enters Jerusalem to a crowd that celebrates him as king.
But the memory of the cities around Galilee is one of rejection. "Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes" (Matt. 11:21). Similarly, Jesus says of Capernaum, "Will you be lifted to the heavens? No, you will go down to Hades" (11:23). Unfortunately, the final memory of the mission in Galilee is one in which these villages ultimately rejected Jesus as king.
Tuesday, March 06, 2012
Yoder's Politics of Jesus
I skipped through Yoder's famous book today and have been discussing it in broad strokes in a couple classes. Many who come across this post may know much more about Yoder's thinking than I so I welcome refinement and correction.
I would summarize Yoder as follows. God is the one who fights for us; followers of Jesus do not fight for themselves, especially not through violence. Violence is never appropriate for a Jesus-follower. The structures of the world, the powers of the world, are usually full of evil. Our task as Christians is not to fight against the worldly powers but to give a witness by our voluntary submission to the hierarchies of a fallen world.
Yoder answers a number of objections to using the model of Jesus as a model for us to follow. He of course also argues for a certain model of Jesus (thus Jesus didn't use his whip against the money changers but to drive the animals out of the temple).
But what do you think?
I would summarize Yoder as follows. God is the one who fights for us; followers of Jesus do not fight for themselves, especially not through violence. Violence is never appropriate for a Jesus-follower. The structures of the world, the powers of the world, are usually full of evil. Our task as Christians is not to fight against the worldly powers but to give a witness by our voluntary submission to the hierarchies of a fallen world.
Yoder answers a number of objections to using the model of Jesus as a model for us to follow. He of course also argues for a certain model of Jesus (thus Jesus didn't use his whip against the money changers but to drive the animals out of the temple).
- The objection that Jesus' ethic was limited to his years on earth, an "interim" ethic before a kingdom that was going to come in force later.
- The objection that Jesus' model was for a situation in which it was not conceivable to change the system.
- The objection that Jesus only provides a model for individual response, not for government, which more appropriately turns to God the Father as a model.
- I accept the basic principles of Just War theory laid out by Augustine.
- I believe that Jesus' earthly ministry was phase one and that in the second coming phase he will not be so meek and mild
- I do believe we should work for change more vigorously and engagedly with worldly powers when we can, although not usually with violence (I support Bonhoeffer's deviation in regard to Hitler). I do accept reasonable force to protect the lives of others and, in some cases, in self-defense.
- I do think that God the Father provides a better model for governance and justice rather than Jesus when he was on earth.
But what do you think?
Monday, March 05, 2012
5.3 Disciples Don't Get It
... continued from Friday
_____________
We have some significant clues that there was somewhat of a disconnect between the expectations of Jesus' disciples and followers and how things actually played out. For example, the Synoptic Gospels show us that Jesus' audiences expected the kingdom to come almost right away. They believed that Jesus' earthly ministry would culminate right then in his earthly kingship and the restoration of Israel (e.g., Acts 1:6). So Jesus' disciples probably did not know at first that they would live out the rest of their lives on the mission without Jesus on earth. Mark shows them repeatedly asking Jesus about their roles in the coming kingdom with no sense at all that Jesus was about to die.
First, it is apparently not until the end of Jesus' earthly ministry that his identity as messiah comes out into the open with his disciples. It seems to be just before Jesus finally heads for Jerusalem that Jesus really raises with them the question of his identity and his explicit role in the kingdom (Mark 8:27-33). It is at this point that Peter for the first time confesses openly what he no doubt had suspected for a long time, that Jesus is the messiah.
Jesus agrees with them. He is the "anointed one," the messiah--"christos in Greek." To everyone's ears, this means he will become king and will rule over Israel.
But then Jesus shocks them. He is going to Jerusalem to die (Mark 8:31). Peter immediately rejects this suggestion. That's not what the "anointed one" does, Peter is thinking. The messiah doesn't die; he becomes king. Peter has no sense of Jesus' impending death, let alone a two thousand year lag in time between Jesus' earthly ministry and the coming kingdom on earth.
Two more times in Mark Jesus tells his disciples that he is going to die amid their complete lack of understanding. Just after Jesus tells them a second time that he is going to die, they argue over who will have the most prominent role in the coming restored kingdom of Israel (Mark 9:34). This happens even a third time. Jesus tells them what is coming and immediately thereafter, James and John ask Jesus for the most prominent seats next to Jesus in his coming kingdom on earth (Mark 10:35-40).
It seems a fair enough conclusion that the disciples might have thought Jesus' triumphal entry to Jerusalem was going to be the beginning of his rule on earth. Peter's denials were surely more about his complete confusion than any cowardice on his part. He was probably ready to fight for Jesus, just not prepared for Jesus to surrender himself and be arrested. They apparently did not expect Jesus to die.
His resurrection also seems to have taken them by surprise. The women at the tomb are so flustered and confused by the absence of his body, they don't tell anyone at first (Mark 16:8). And once the disciples are convinced, they resume thinking that Jesus is about to restore the earthly kingdom to Israel (Acts 1:6). So Jesus' death and resurrection seem completely off the radar of Jesus' closest followers.
From these observations in Mark, probably the earliest gospel, we conclude that the bulk of Jesus' message and proclamation of the good news was not about him. It was about what God the Father was doing...
_____________
We have some significant clues that there was somewhat of a disconnect between the expectations of Jesus' disciples and followers and how things actually played out. For example, the Synoptic Gospels show us that Jesus' audiences expected the kingdom to come almost right away. They believed that Jesus' earthly ministry would culminate right then in his earthly kingship and the restoration of Israel (e.g., Acts 1:6). So Jesus' disciples probably did not know at first that they would live out the rest of their lives on the mission without Jesus on earth. Mark shows them repeatedly asking Jesus about their roles in the coming kingdom with no sense at all that Jesus was about to die.
First, it is apparently not until the end of Jesus' earthly ministry that his identity as messiah comes out into the open with his disciples. It seems to be just before Jesus finally heads for Jerusalem that Jesus really raises with them the question of his identity and his explicit role in the kingdom (Mark 8:27-33). It is at this point that Peter for the first time confesses openly what he no doubt had suspected for a long time, that Jesus is the messiah.
Jesus agrees with them. He is the "anointed one," the messiah--"christos in Greek." To everyone's ears, this means he will become king and will rule over Israel.
But then Jesus shocks them. He is going to Jerusalem to die (Mark 8:31). Peter immediately rejects this suggestion. That's not what the "anointed one" does, Peter is thinking. The messiah doesn't die; he becomes king. Peter has no sense of Jesus' impending death, let alone a two thousand year lag in time between Jesus' earthly ministry and the coming kingdom on earth.
Two more times in Mark Jesus tells his disciples that he is going to die amid their complete lack of understanding. Just after Jesus tells them a second time that he is going to die, they argue over who will have the most prominent role in the coming restored kingdom of Israel (Mark 9:34). This happens even a third time. Jesus tells them what is coming and immediately thereafter, James and John ask Jesus for the most prominent seats next to Jesus in his coming kingdom on earth (Mark 10:35-40).
It seems a fair enough conclusion that the disciples might have thought Jesus' triumphal entry to Jerusalem was going to be the beginning of his rule on earth. Peter's denials were surely more about his complete confusion than any cowardice on his part. He was probably ready to fight for Jesus, just not prepared for Jesus to surrender himself and be arrested. They apparently did not expect Jesus to die.
His resurrection also seems to have taken them by surprise. The women at the tomb are so flustered and confused by the absence of his body, they don't tell anyone at first (Mark 16:8). And once the disciples are convinced, they resume thinking that Jesus is about to restore the earthly kingdom to Israel (Acts 1:6). So Jesus' death and resurrection seem completely off the radar of Jesus' closest followers.
From these observations in Mark, probably the earliest gospel, we conclude that the bulk of Jesus' message and proclamation of the good news was not about him. It was about what God the Father was doing...
Sunday, March 04, 2012
Creation and Alienation
... continuing the outline of a brief overview of Wesleyan theology... less unique in this section...
______________
3.1 The Story
I think I would start this chapter with the Christian story. God created the earth, and it was good. God created humanity in his image, and it was good. Adam and Eve sinned and not only did human nature "fall" but the creation as well.
The interpretation of the relevant biblical passages has not remained static over time. For example, what is the image of God in Genesis? In the original meaning, it was a kind of governmental or functional image. Adam and Eve were the image of God because they ruled the land as God rules all things.
In Christian history, including Wesley, the image developed to be seen in terms of human characteristics like moral capacity or free will. These were things Christians had in common with God that on the other hand distinguished them from other animals. The capacity for relationships is a more recent trend in the way in which humans are seen to be in the image of God, one that fits well also with the Wesleyan tradition. Christian tradition sees the image of God as marred to varying degrees within humanity because of sin.
3.2 The Condition
The Fall has been interpreted in the Augustinian-Calvinist stream of Protestantism as a matter of total depravity apart from the grace of God, and the Wesleyan tradition has historically stood in this stream. Perhaps constructively I would rather say that any goodness in the creation is completely derivative from God and that the world currently is thoroughly alienated from him.
Purely from a look around us, it is clear enough that the world is alienated from God and in need of redemption and reconciliation. We call it sin. How did we come to be in this state? Augustine and the Christian tradition in general, including Wesley and the Wesleyan tradition, has pointed to Adam, the first human.
Evolution has presented a significant challenge to the Augustinian tradition of the Fall, especially recent genetic challenges to the idea that all the genetic variation among humans could come from two individuals. This is a major issue for Christian understanding. What does Christian theology do with evolution? Are there models of Christianity today that can both remain orthodox and accept some form of evolution?
These are questions of where the current alienation of the world came from and our answers to them have implications for where the world is going to. Nevertheless, the fallenness and alienation of the world from God is clear enough. Whether we agree on the precise cause of the current situation, the situation exists and longs for a solution.
The Wesleyan tradition has generally thought of humanity having a "carnal" or "sinful" nature linked to Adam's "original sin." I consider these to be pictures of the human condition more than literal descriptions. Perhaps a more helpful approach is to think of us as spiritually dis-empowered because our default condition is disconnected from God. Our alienated state thus becomes more a matter of what we lack rather than some presence of evil within us.
______________
3.1 The Story
I think I would start this chapter with the Christian story. God created the earth, and it was good. God created humanity in his image, and it was good. Adam and Eve sinned and not only did human nature "fall" but the creation as well.
The interpretation of the relevant biblical passages has not remained static over time. For example, what is the image of God in Genesis? In the original meaning, it was a kind of governmental or functional image. Adam and Eve were the image of God because they ruled the land as God rules all things.
In Christian history, including Wesley, the image developed to be seen in terms of human characteristics like moral capacity or free will. These were things Christians had in common with God that on the other hand distinguished them from other animals. The capacity for relationships is a more recent trend in the way in which humans are seen to be in the image of God, one that fits well also with the Wesleyan tradition. Christian tradition sees the image of God as marred to varying degrees within humanity because of sin.
3.2 The Condition
The Fall has been interpreted in the Augustinian-Calvinist stream of Protestantism as a matter of total depravity apart from the grace of God, and the Wesleyan tradition has historically stood in this stream. Perhaps constructively I would rather say that any goodness in the creation is completely derivative from God and that the world currently is thoroughly alienated from him.
Purely from a look around us, it is clear enough that the world is alienated from God and in need of redemption and reconciliation. We call it sin. How did we come to be in this state? Augustine and the Christian tradition in general, including Wesley and the Wesleyan tradition, has pointed to Adam, the first human.
Evolution has presented a significant challenge to the Augustinian tradition of the Fall, especially recent genetic challenges to the idea that all the genetic variation among humans could come from two individuals. This is a major issue for Christian understanding. What does Christian theology do with evolution? Are there models of Christianity today that can both remain orthodox and accept some form of evolution?
These are questions of where the current alienation of the world came from and our answers to them have implications for where the world is going to. Nevertheless, the fallenness and alienation of the world from God is clear enough. Whether we agree on the precise cause of the current situation, the situation exists and longs for a solution.
The Wesleyan tradition has generally thought of humanity having a "carnal" or "sinful" nature linked to Adam's "original sin." I consider these to be pictures of the human condition more than literal descriptions. Perhaps a more helpful approach is to think of us as spiritually dis-empowered because our default condition is disconnected from God. Our alienated state thus becomes more a matter of what we lack rather than some presence of evil within us.
Saturday, March 03, 2012
God in Wesleyan Theology
Last Saturday, I threw out an outline of what a short overview of Wesleyan theology might look like if I wrote one. On Sunday, I spun out the outline of a possible introductory chapter. Today I thought I would brainstorm the outline of a second chapter on God. By the way, I guess Chris Bounds does have the workings of a short book of this sort. My "Wesleyan" theology is much more "constructive," while Chris' is much more "dogmatic." [1]
______
2.1 Trinity
A Wesleyan theology might emphasize the relational dimension of the Trinity over individualism. In particular, it might see love as fundamental to the nature of God, as a fundamental aspect of the Trinity's inner identity. These might not be uniquely Wesleyan, but they are probable emphases of a Wesleyan theology of the Trinity.
2.2 God as Creator
I'm not sure that a Wesleyan theology of God as creator would differ much from any other orthodox view. I personally see features like omnipotence and omniscience as functions of creation. For me, they primarily define God in relation to what he has created (this is part of my theology rather than a distinctively Wesleyan theology). Omnipresence also is a feature of God in relation to the creation.
Where I personally would be perhaps a little unique is to see holiness primarily as a function of God as creator. Holiness is, in its fundamental sense, God-ness. It is sacredness. In a fallen world, holiness can take on an added sense of purity. But is it possible that, even if the world were not fallen, there would be the distinction between sacred space/time and the ordinary?
2.3 God as Love
Any Wesleyan theology will emphasize God's nature as love. Mercy takes priority over justice. God's justice is formative in making people better. It is protective in keeping the righteous safe from the unrighteous. And it is final when there is no hope of redemption. God's goodness is another way of saying that he always acts in love toward his creation, with his justice providing a loving framework for the creation.
I would say that my thinking on these things is more a working out of a particular Wesleyan perspective than anything like the Wesleyan perspective.
[1] These are technical terms. "Dogmatic" theology is much more a matter of presenting a "deposit" of theology from the past. "Constructive" theology tries to re-present and synthesize theology in the light of new elements in a never-ending discussion. The former is more a given, the latter more dynamic.
______
2.1 Trinity
A Wesleyan theology might emphasize the relational dimension of the Trinity over individualism. In particular, it might see love as fundamental to the nature of God, as a fundamental aspect of the Trinity's inner identity. These might not be uniquely Wesleyan, but they are probable emphases of a Wesleyan theology of the Trinity.
2.2 God as Creator
I'm not sure that a Wesleyan theology of God as creator would differ much from any other orthodox view. I personally see features like omnipotence and omniscience as functions of creation. For me, they primarily define God in relation to what he has created (this is part of my theology rather than a distinctively Wesleyan theology). Omnipresence also is a feature of God in relation to the creation.
Where I personally would be perhaps a little unique is to see holiness primarily as a function of God as creator. Holiness is, in its fundamental sense, God-ness. It is sacredness. In a fallen world, holiness can take on an added sense of purity. But is it possible that, even if the world were not fallen, there would be the distinction between sacred space/time and the ordinary?
2.3 God as Love
Any Wesleyan theology will emphasize God's nature as love. Mercy takes priority over justice. God's justice is formative in making people better. It is protective in keeping the righteous safe from the unrighteous. And it is final when there is no hope of redemption. God's goodness is another way of saying that he always acts in love toward his creation, with his justice providing a loving framework for the creation.
I would say that my thinking on these things is more a working out of a particular Wesleyan perspective than anything like the Wesleyan perspective.
[1] These are technical terms. "Dogmatic" theology is much more a matter of presenting a "deposit" of theology from the past. "Constructive" theology tries to re-present and synthesize theology in the light of new elements in a never-ending discussion. The former is more a given, the latter more dynamic.
The ends usually trump the means...
If you've heard the expression, "The ends justify the means," you've probably heard it in a negative context. That is, "The ends don't justify the means." This reaction is completely appropriate to the situation to which this saying is usually applied. You are trying to help poor Joe get out of foreclosure so you break into rich Sally's house to steal some money.
These sorts of situations do pop up from time to time, but it occurred to me that most of the time, the means aren't the important thing, but the end. That is, the most effective person (and usually the smartest person) is the one who is focused on the outcome rather than the process of getting to the outcome.
There are two important caveats here. One is that there are immoral ways of getting to a goal. That's where the saying, "The end doesn't justify the means," comes in.
A second important caveat is that process can be very important in effectively reaching a goal. In fact, the real purpose of good process is to make it easier to reach the goal. The larger a goal, the larger an organization, the more important it becomes to have good processes in place. There are certain small church pastors whose churches will never get much beyond 100, if that much, because they are unable to set up processes that do not involve them at the center of everything.
But the bane of traditional institutions is not individual initiative and creativity. Institutions--especially academic institutions--are notorious for loving process, for loving the means and never getting to the ends. It's the all too familiar enjoyment of loving to talk about things without ever making a decision or implementing anything. I have a saying, "Only people who don't like meetings should be allowed to lead meetings."
(I was in a meeting at a Christian college in Pennsylvania once and was fascinated that the President seemed to be an entrepreneur and the Academic Dean was a "process" type person--probably a good combination. The President there, as I recall, was making the college move into the online arena. Meanwhile, the Dean was dotting the i's and crossing the academic t's--it was fascinating to me.)
Process is only valuable if it gets us more quickly or efficiently to the goal. Focus on process for its own sake is stupidity. Most of the time, it doesn't matter whether you take Nebraska St. or Baldwin Ave. But the person who cuts across the grass path will get there faster than the one who takes the pretty sidewalk that winds around. The ends usually trump the means in our day to day decision making.
P.S. I like to think that Hitler's early successes were because he was a good planner... and I would like to think that the ultimate Allied victory was because we were good improvisers.
These sorts of situations do pop up from time to time, but it occurred to me that most of the time, the means aren't the important thing, but the end. That is, the most effective person (and usually the smartest person) is the one who is focused on the outcome rather than the process of getting to the outcome.
There are two important caveats here. One is that there are immoral ways of getting to a goal. That's where the saying, "The end doesn't justify the means," comes in.
A second important caveat is that process can be very important in effectively reaching a goal. In fact, the real purpose of good process is to make it easier to reach the goal. The larger a goal, the larger an organization, the more important it becomes to have good processes in place. There are certain small church pastors whose churches will never get much beyond 100, if that much, because they are unable to set up processes that do not involve them at the center of everything.
But the bane of traditional institutions is not individual initiative and creativity. Institutions--especially academic institutions--are notorious for loving process, for loving the means and never getting to the ends. It's the all too familiar enjoyment of loving to talk about things without ever making a decision or implementing anything. I have a saying, "Only people who don't like meetings should be allowed to lead meetings."
(I was in a meeting at a Christian college in Pennsylvania once and was fascinated that the President seemed to be an entrepreneur and the Academic Dean was a "process" type person--probably a good combination. The President there, as I recall, was making the college move into the online arena. Meanwhile, the Dean was dotting the i's and crossing the academic t's--it was fascinating to me.)
Process is only valuable if it gets us more quickly or efficiently to the goal. Focus on process for its own sake is stupidity. Most of the time, it doesn't matter whether you take Nebraska St. or Baldwin Ave. But the person who cuts across the grass path will get there faster than the one who takes the pretty sidewalk that winds around. The ends usually trump the means in our day to day decision making.
P.S. I like to think that Hitler's early successes were because he was a good planner... and I would like to think that the ultimate Allied victory was because we were good improvisers.
Friday, March 02, 2012
Science Friday: Atomic Construction
... She also noticed that the atomic weight was written under each elements' symbol in the Periodic Table. Each box had the atomic number at the top center of the box--so 6 at the top of carbon. Then in the middle of the box was the symbol for the element--so a C for carbon. Then at the bottom middle was the atomic weight.
So the number at the bottom of carbon on the Periodic Table was 12.0107 because almost all the carbon on the earth is carbon 12, with its 6 protons and 6 neutrons. There's much less carbon 14, with 8 neutrons. She remembered that the book also wrote it slightly different some times. Sometimes the C had two numbers written just to its left, the mass number on the top (like 12 for carbon 12) and the atomic number on the bottom (like 6 for carbon).
She got it. It wasn't interesting in the slightest, but she got it. It was certainly enough to earn her a good night's sleep. Hopefully she wouldn't have any dreams about chemistry this time.
No such luck. She didn't actually realize she had fallen asleep. She had laid her head down on the desk in her room and nodded off. When she lifted her head back up, she thought she had re-awoken.
In reality, she was still asleep, her head still laying down on the desk. So it didn't seem unreasonable that she started to shrink, smaller, smaller, smaller. Soon the seat of her chair was a vast brown plain. Then she was seeing what must have been the cells of the trees from which the chair was made.
Down, down, down, she fell into the nucleus of a wood cell, then into its chromosomes and DNA. Then she was just falling. It was a vast empty space until finally she spied a huge ball of some sort directly beneath her. She bounced a couple times and finally was just sitting on top like she was on a bean bag.
"It's a proton," Spruce yelled up at her from a platform off to the side. It didn't occur to her in the dream to ask how he got there.
"Yeah?" she asked.
"Yeah. They're building a hydrogen atom. Want to help?"
"OK," she said. "What'll we do?"
"We need an electron. Hydrogen. Atomic number one. One proton, one electron."
"Any neutrons?" Stefanie asked.
"Nope. Just one and one. Well, there is..."
"Here are some," she interrupted. She had found a set of shelves with small balls in them, and with that, she lobbed one of them toward the big proton ball she had been sitting on. The small electron immediately started swirling in a sphere around the proton nucleus.
"And that's how it's done," she continued. "Hydrogen. Next!"
"OK," Spruce said and looked down at his chemistry book. "Looks like helium is next, atomic number 2."
"Isn't that the stuff you put in balloons for birthday parties, that makes your voice go high and squeaky?"
"Yeah," he answered. "It's two protons, two neutrons, and two electrons."
"I didn't notice that panel before," Stef said. Sure enough, there was a panel with a button for protons and a button for neutrons on it. She pressed the proton button twice, then the neutron button twice and the four particles appeared. "So now we just need two electrons."
Spruce picked two of the small electrons from the shelf and lobbed the one and then the other. Both of them swirled together in a sphere around the four particles in the nucleus...
The curse of the blessed books...
My desk is wall to wall with books I have bought these last couple years as Dean of the seminary. They are great books! The books our students are reading are wonderful, and the ones we can only summarize are tremendous too.
What a curse for me! I'm sitting here looking at some incredible stuff (just today I ordered the new Bonhoeffer biography by Metaxas and Yoder's Politics of Jesus, which I've never read but should have years ago).
I close with a poem by Walt Whitman, first introduced to me by my good friend Bill Patrick. It's not particularly Christian, but I feel this way sometimes...
______________
Oh me! Oh life! of the questions of these recurring,
Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish,
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew’d,
Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me,
Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest of me intertwined,
The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?
Answer. That you are here—that life exists and identity,
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.
What a curse for me! I'm sitting here looking at some incredible stuff (just today I ordered the new Bonhoeffer biography by Metaxas and Yoder's Politics of Jesus, which I've never read but should have years ago).
I close with a poem by Walt Whitman, first introduced to me by my good friend Bill Patrick. It's not particularly Christian, but I feel this way sometimes...
______________
Oh me! Oh life! of the questions of these recurring,
Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish,
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew’d,
Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me,
Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest of me intertwined,
The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?
Answer. That you are here—that life exists and identity,
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.
5.2 Fishing for People
... continued from Wednesday
_________________
... It is less important to know the precise twelve as to notice the significance of the number twelve itself. ... the number twelve links Jesus' followers to the restoration of Israel...
Who were these individuals? They were ordinary guys, the "salt of the earth." The core disciples seem to be fishermen--Peter and his brother Andrew, James and his brother John (Mark 1:16-20). They may even have been part of a fishing guild in Capernaum, directly on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee. Jesus tells them he is going to show them how to fish for people. By this Jesus presumably means their mission is going to be to prepare the Jews in Galilee for the arrival of God's kingdom and the restoration of Israel.
John 1 remembers Jesus' first encounter with Andrew, Peter, and Philip being at the river Jordan, as they had all come down from Galilee to see John the Baptist. John says they were from Bethsaida, just north of the Sea of Galilee (John 1:44) and also mentions another follower called Nathaniel. [1] But Mark seems to picture Peter and Andrew living in Capernaum. It is possible to harmonize these two accounts, but we cannot know for sure. Generally we shouldn't try to mix the gospel accounts because we often end up creating our own story that is different from all the gospel stories themselves.
Matthew is said to be a tax collector. There were different kinds of tax collectors. For example, it is possible that Levi, mentioned in such close proximity to fishing in Mark 1, may have been someone who collected taxes on the fish that the fishermen of Capernaum took in. Alternatively, such men could have been toll collectors, who took money from those traveling from one tax area to another.
These individuals were obviously not liked and everything about the gospel portraits of them supports the notion that they accumulated wealth at the people's expense (e.g., Luke 3:13). They were responsible to give so much to those above them, but they also took their own cut for themselves. Jesus does not resist taxes--that's Caesar's business (Mark 12:17). But he opposed tax collectors getting rich off the people's backs.
We don't know much about the other core followers of Jesus. James the son of Alphaeus, "James the Less" in contrast to James the son of Zebedee, seems to have the same father as the tax collector Levi (cf. Mark 2:14). Perhaps tax collecting was the family business. We think of Thomas because of the tradition in John that he initially doubted Jesus' resurrection (John 20:24-29; cf. Matt. 28:17), but we don't know much more. One named Simon is called "Simon the Zealot" (e.g., Matt. 10:4), which at least raises the possibility that he later participated in the Jewish revolt.
Judas Iscariot is of course the follower of Jesus that betrayed him by telling the leaders of Jerusalem where to find him at night. There is no certainty about the meaning of Iscariot. It may refer in some way to the village or area that his family was from, but we do not know for certain where that was. It is at least possible that it was in the very south, which might suggest Judas also met Jesus as he went to see John the Baptist...
[1] Later Christian tradition equated him with Bartholomew, but this may simply be the pervasive urge of later interpreters to try to harmonize the biblical accounts, usually done rather credulously.
_________________
... It is less important to know the precise twelve as to notice the significance of the number twelve itself. ... the number twelve links Jesus' followers to the restoration of Israel...
Who were these individuals? They were ordinary guys, the "salt of the earth." The core disciples seem to be fishermen--Peter and his brother Andrew, James and his brother John (Mark 1:16-20). They may even have been part of a fishing guild in Capernaum, directly on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee. Jesus tells them he is going to show them how to fish for people. By this Jesus presumably means their mission is going to be to prepare the Jews in Galilee for the arrival of God's kingdom and the restoration of Israel.
John 1 remembers Jesus' first encounter with Andrew, Peter, and Philip being at the river Jordan, as they had all come down from Galilee to see John the Baptist. John says they were from Bethsaida, just north of the Sea of Galilee (John 1:44) and also mentions another follower called Nathaniel. [1] But Mark seems to picture Peter and Andrew living in Capernaum. It is possible to harmonize these two accounts, but we cannot know for sure. Generally we shouldn't try to mix the gospel accounts because we often end up creating our own story that is different from all the gospel stories themselves.
Matthew is said to be a tax collector. There were different kinds of tax collectors. For example, it is possible that Levi, mentioned in such close proximity to fishing in Mark 1, may have been someone who collected taxes on the fish that the fishermen of Capernaum took in. Alternatively, such men could have been toll collectors, who took money from those traveling from one tax area to another.
These individuals were obviously not liked and everything about the gospel portraits of them supports the notion that they accumulated wealth at the people's expense (e.g., Luke 3:13). They were responsible to give so much to those above them, but they also took their own cut for themselves. Jesus does not resist taxes--that's Caesar's business (Mark 12:17). But he opposed tax collectors getting rich off the people's backs.
We don't know much about the other core followers of Jesus. James the son of Alphaeus, "James the Less" in contrast to James the son of Zebedee, seems to have the same father as the tax collector Levi (cf. Mark 2:14). Perhaps tax collecting was the family business. We think of Thomas because of the tradition in John that he initially doubted Jesus' resurrection (John 20:24-29; cf. Matt. 28:17), but we don't know much more. One named Simon is called "Simon the Zealot" (e.g., Matt. 10:4), which at least raises the possibility that he later participated in the Jewish revolt.
Judas Iscariot is of course the follower of Jesus that betrayed him by telling the leaders of Jerusalem where to find him at night. There is no certainty about the meaning of Iscariot. It may refer in some way to the village or area that his family was from, but we do not know for certain where that was. It is at least possible that it was in the very south, which might suggest Judas also met Jesus as he went to see John the Baptist...
[1] Later Christian tradition equated him with Bartholomew, but this may simply be the pervasive urge of later interpreters to try to harmonize the biblical accounts, usually done rather credulously.
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