Continuing my take-away from our Monday reading group going through the Roman Catholic Catechism to compare it with Wesleyan theology:
Week 1: Introduction and Revelation
This week's reading of the catechism was over Part 1, Section 2, chapter 1. This is over the first line of the Apostle's Creed: "I believe in God the Father."
I once again didn't see much in this section of 58 pages that stood out to me as horrendously problematic for Wesleyan theology. We would consider a few things strange. But in general, Roman Catholics would more have a problem with us than we with them. Here are some notes.
1. For the bulk of this section, Wesleyans would either strongly agree or not really care. For example, Wesleyans accept the Apostles, Nicene, and Athanasian Creeds (although not necessarily the anathemas at the end, 192-94). Wesleyans believe in the Trinity (232-67). Wesleyans believe that God's nature is love (221).
2. To be sure, a Wesleyan who quoted 2 Maccabees in defense of creation out of nothing would get a strange look. But Wesleyans do believe God created the world out of nothing. I actually don't think we have a clear statement on the topic, but I don't know any Wesleyans who don't think so, if they've even asked the question.
3. Wesleyans don't venerate angels (352). We don't think a lot about their names or ranks, by and large. As a reminder, veneration is not the same as worship for Roman Catholics. I suppose if a Wesleyan venerated angels, we would think they were weird and a little out of kilter.
4. Wesleyans don't have a dog in the filioque debate over which East and West divided (246). RCatholics believe the Spirit proceeds from the the Father and the Son, while the Orthodox believe the Spirit comes from the Father. Most Wesleyans have never even heard of the debate.
Indeed, there is both a blessing and a curse that I grew up with almost no sense of these Christian debates. The blessing was that I at least think I was less encumbered when studying the Bible to listen to it on its own terms. Wesleyans, for good or ill, have a lot of the Baptist "freedom of conscience" in their blood. The curse is of course that Wesleyans are probably "soft heretics" on a lot of issues without realizing it ;-) ... and susceptible to foreign influences.
5. One such issue is the question of free will. In practice, most Wesleyans may be "Pelagians" or at least "soft Pelagians" without realizing it. Technically, Wesley believed in total depravity like Calvin and the Reformed, meaning that none of us can do any good at all in our own power, nor are we morally free in any way by nature. Roman Catholics, by contrast, don't believe in total depravity.
However, RCatholics and Wesleyans have the same view practically in terms of how freedom ends up. Roman Catholics officially believe that original righteousness, something God added as a gift to original humanity (donum superadditum), was lost in the Fall, but that humanity remained partially free by nature. Wesleyans believe that, although we are technically depraved entirely by nature, God's prevenient grace empowers humanity to be able to "sign up" for more grace. We thus end up having free will.
Thus in the end, Wesleyans end up with the Catholics as "synergists," individuals who believe that human will and divine will work together toward moral choices. While we are closer to Calvinists in what's under the hood (in using the language of total depravity), when you close the hood the car looks far more like the RCatholics than the Calvinists on this question. Like I said, most Wesleyans in our history have pretty much looked like Roman Catholics on this issue.
By the way, my sense of Paul is that it is not human nature that is fallen but that the world as a whole--and the flesh which is a part of the world--is under the power of Sin since Adam. We thus do not sin genetically or naturally but because our flesh is weak and in our default situation we lack the power to overcome temptation. The Spirit, by contrast, gives us the power to overcome the power of Sin.
6. Most Wesleyans would look at you strange if you articulated even a Methodist view of original sin in relation to baptism. Methodists, along with the RCC, see infant baptism as cleansing the original sin of Adam. Wesleyans functionally don't associate any guilt or need for cleansing on our part because of Adam's sin.
7. Most Wesleyans also don't care whether you believe the soul is created at birth (RCatholics) or whether the soul is passed down genetically (Wesley). Some Wesleyan thinkers are even willing to explore the possibility that the soul is somewhat of a metaphor for the part of us that transcends death. We thus don't have an official dog in that race. Most Wesleyans do take the idea of the soul literally, but we have no official position on the issue.
8. Wesleyans find the idea that the Virgin Mary was born without sin (immaculate conception) weird (411). We believe Jesus was without sin and wonder why, if Mary had to be without sin for Jesus to be without sin, then why didn't all the women back to Eve have to be without sin too. Surely the RCC has an answer but our group doesn't know it.
So Mary was really, really cool. We're okay with that. But if she stole some cookies as a child and had to ask forgiveness for it, we're okay with that being true too (not with her stealing them, mind you ;-).
Tuesday, September 18, 2012
Monday, September 17, 2012
Roaring Holiness 20s: Black and Drury
Today chapters 10-11 are up in Bob Black and Keith Drury's, The Story of the Wesleyan Church. So far it's been:
Chaps 1-2 About Wesley and the origins of the Wesleyan Methodist Church in abolitionism
Chaps 3-4 About its activist early days that were low church, pro-women (and anti- some other things)
Chaps 5-6 The post-Civil War let down, when the best and brightest returned to the Methodists
Chaps 7-8 Birth of Pilgrim Holiness Church
Chapter 9 Multiple Ministries
_______________
Chapter 10: Firm Foundations
This chapter deals with the first two decades of the twentieth century. For the Wesleyan Methodists, the most important events were the founding of three more colleges--what would become Southern Wesleyan University where I went in South Carolina (1906) and the school in Miltonvale that eventually merged with what is now Oklahoma Wesleyan University. Finally, what is now Indiana Wesleyan University was founded in 1920.
The group that would become the Pilgrims was much more entrepreneurial, and thus a little chaotic. God's Bible School continued to serve them but it was non-denominational. As chapter 11 will say, "Starting a Bible college was something lie starting a camp meeting" (147). I counted 9 Bible schools that the "Pilgrims" started in the first 30 years of the decade, including Frankfort that my family was associated with (1927).
The International Apostolic Holiness Association (IAHC) that became the Pilgrim Holiness Church was an association of holiness churches until 1913, when they voted to become a denomination, an official church body. Interestingly, one of the factors may have been the desire for clergy to be able to get discounts on trains--which they couldn't do if they were just ministers in a movement (119).
This group grew from about 2744 members to 22, 444 by 1930, remembering that members were only those who were willing to keep all the rules, not those who attended. The Pilgrims didn't keep good records, unfortunately and predictably. Missions was a huge thing. They had two general leaders in the 1920s, both of whom had to raise their own salary of $2500. I smell big conflict coming. Finch, the missions general was raising lots of money for missions and his salary with ease. The other guy, not so much.
Chapter 11: Holiness and Roaring 20s
Mark Noll considers holiness and Pentecostal groups to be quientessential fundamentalist groups, with one of their defining characteristics being a sectarianism that led them to sequester themselves. I'm waiting for some church history PhD to give him a good academic slapping. The Fundamentals were written by people like J. Gresham Machen who left Princeton and founded Westminster. The origins of fundamentalism are in the Calvinist elite that trace their lineage in New England back through slavery sympathizers to Jonathan Edwards.
I reject this heritage, just as I only will wear the label "evangelical" uncomfortably as somewhat of a foreign term to my tradition. I have a strong hunch that some of this history is an attempt for more educated, higher socio-economic "evangelicals" of the 1940s to distance themselves from my admittedly less educated holiness and Pentecostal type. But we didn't start fundamentalism and it influenced us from the outside. By the way, Pentecostalism grew out of the holiness movement, initially adding tongues onto entire sanctification as a third work of grace.
It's not that the few Pilgrims and Wesleyans who were paying attention to the fundamentalist-modernist controversy didn't side with the fundamentalists. Timothy Smith in fact speaks of "the great reversal" where my tradition ignorantly moved a little away from social justice because of its association with the "social gospel" of that time (134), moving away from its roots. But in general, groups like the Pilgrims and Wesleyans "weren't directly involved because those battles were not being fought within their own communions" (130).
One interesting development was the prohibition of tobacco in the WM Church in 1927 (the Pilgrims had always prohibited it). Those who already smoked were given a grandfather clause allowing them to continue to smoke. I remember a pastor friend of mine from North Carolina talking about a member of his church that liked to boast that he could smoke outside the church under the grandfather clause. Another development was a strong ethos of "storehouse tithing." To help solve financial problems, a strong emphasis was put not only on giving 10% of your income to God, but specifically to your local church.
I close with some of my own history. Both sets of my grandparents were Pilgrim Holiness preachers. My mother's father married my grandmother in 1923. He had previously been a Quaker preacher but ended up with the Pilgrims. She would have been part of the Holiness Christian Church that joined the Pilgrims in 1919. I have a PDF of a handwritten history from her about the purchase of the Frankfort campground which became the location of Frankfort Pilgrim College. My grandfather, Harry Shepherd would teach there his whole life (more to come).
Similarly, my father's father and mother became converted at a tent meeting in Delphi, Indiana in 1921. He would plant and pastor Pilgrim churches his whole life, in fact not going with the merger in 1968.
Sunday, September 16, 2012
God's Speakings 2: the Old Testament
On Saturdays I've been critiquing Grudem's Systematic Theology. On Sundays I've been giving my own biblical theology. So far I've blogged:
Chapter 1
Introduction to Biblical Theology
Chapter 2: Revelation
2a From Text to Scripture
2b NT Understanding of Scripture
2c God's Speakings before Scripture
Now this post: God's Speakings in the Old Testament
________________
... At each point, God seems to refine the understanding. God reveals himself as YHWH, as the "I AM," at the burning bush to Moses. God gave the Law to Israel with Moses. How extensive that Law was in relation to the current contents of the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, is debated. Certainly the Historical Books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings do not indicate that much of the Pentateuch was followed (or mentioned) until almost the end of the monarchy under Josiah--some seven hundred years after Moses. Most think that the Book of the Law discovered in the temple at that time was some form of Deuteronomy.
Until the time of Josiah, YHWH seemed to be worshiped everywhere. Gideon, Samuel, Elijah, Elisha--they all make altars to YHWH all over Israel. Not until the time of Hezekiah and Josiah is there a real concerted effort to make sure that sacrifices are only offered to YHWH in the temple, as Deuteronomy implies. Elijah's zeal was that Israel not worship the other gods, but we have no record of him ever visiting Jerusalem. That emphasis came with Hezekiah and Josiah.
What was God's speaking in the Law? Yes, it codified certain basic moral expectations such as not murdering or stealing. The most important was to love YHWH and not other gods, as well as to love our neighbors. All the ethical rules of the Law boil down to these two, according to Jesus.
Of course there were many laws that had to do with God's unique relationship with Israel. As Christians, we believe that God did a special "case study" with Israel, that he piloted a relationship with it that embodied on a racial scale his desire to have a universal and individual relationship with humanity in general. Much of the Law was thus God meeting this particular people where they were at. Circumcision, a practice Israel did not invent, became symbolic of participation in the special relationship.
In those days everyone offered sacrifices. Perhaps there was some universal trace in that practice of humanity's sense of needing to address the disorder of the world and humanity's frequent "sinfulness" in before God, its tendency to do things that it knows aren't right. But perhaps laws such as those in Leviticus are even more so God meeting Israel where it was at. Hebrews in the New Testament will see all the sacrifices of the Old Testament as symbolic pointers toward the ultimate reordering of the universe in Christ.
Some of the laws--particularly the food laws--were reflections of Israel's sense of the order God had placed in the world. There were certain types of things in the sea and the air that reflected that order and were "clean." Others didn't fit the categories and were unclean. The prohibition not to eat pork probably, like circumcision, set Israel apart from the surrounding peoples who herded pigs. In the New Testament, when God was now more explicitly seeking a relationship with the whole world, these "works of Law" became obsolete, never having been able to make an Israelite truly right with God in the first place.
The evidence of the Historical Books leads us to believe that the Law as we know it was not fully known or much used until the time of Ezra in the 400s after the exile. At that point, what may have largely been oral tradition among the people and only known in some written form to certain elite becomes a real standard for the Jews of the south. Even then, perhaps it would not be until the rise of the synagogue and the democratization of Judaism in the Greek period that the Law would really trickle down to the people.
However, in the time of the kings God raised up the prophets of the Old Testament to make it clear to Israel what it meant to love YHWH and love one's neighbor. God's favor on the disempowered, the poor, widows, orphans--social justice--is a consistent theme. The tendency to think that sacrifices in themselves take care of things--with no necessary change of heart--is also indicted.
These "oracles" were delivered orally, but perhaps also written down (Isaiah 8:1, 16). At some point, perhaps even after the prophet was gone, they were collected and arranged. Many think that those who preserved these prophecies sometimes also continued the legacies of a prophet by extending his message to situations during and after the exile. It is often suggested that Isaiah 40-66, which never mention Isaiah or say he is their author, are an extension of Isaiah's legacy to the time just before and after the end of the exile.
By the time of Christ, the "Law and the Prophets" could be mentioned as a shorthand for what we think of as the Old Testament Scriptures. The precise content of the "Writings," the third section of the Jewish Bible, was not fixed at the time. The Writings begin with the Psalms (cf. Luke 24:44), which probably reached something like its current form in the worship of the second temple after the exile. Chronicles repeats much of the ground of Samuel and Kings but now from the perspective of a time well into the post-exilic period when the temple is the center of power and people.
We see certain developments in Israel's understanding of God in this phase of Israel's history. One of the most noticeable is a sense of "the Satan," one of the servants of God whose job is to test the loyalty of the earth. We see him behind the scenes in Job, given permission to test Job by bringing trials. If you compare 2 Samuel 24:1 and 1 Chronicles 21:1 you'll see that the second attributes the temptation of David to Satan, while the first attributes the temptation to God.
Even more significant is the rise of resurrection understanding in Daniel 12:2-3, the only undisputed reference to a meaningful afterlife in the Old Testament. While the dating of Daniel's prophecy is debated, the predicted context of Daniel 11 is the Maccabean crisis of 167-64BC. It was this crisis and the things that ensued in Israel that created the New Testament context of Jesus perhaps even more than the Old Testament books themselves.
So we see in the pages of the Old Testament a piloted relationship of God with a whole people that took many, many centuries. Although we now have the witness to that relationship at our fingertips in the books of the Old Testament, the relationship was experienced as much more slow moving and oral in nature. Much of the Old Testament reflects God meeting Israel where it was at. Some of it reflects Israel relating back to God in song and poetry. Meanwhile the prophets more than anyone served as reminders of God's core values, getting us ready for Christ...
Chapter 1
Introduction to Biblical Theology
Chapter 2: Revelation
2a From Text to Scripture
2b NT Understanding of Scripture
2c God's Speakings before Scripture
Now this post: God's Speakings in the Old Testament
________________
... At each point, God seems to refine the understanding. God reveals himself as YHWH, as the "I AM," at the burning bush to Moses. God gave the Law to Israel with Moses. How extensive that Law was in relation to the current contents of the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, is debated. Certainly the Historical Books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings do not indicate that much of the Pentateuch was followed (or mentioned) until almost the end of the monarchy under Josiah--some seven hundred years after Moses. Most think that the Book of the Law discovered in the temple at that time was some form of Deuteronomy.
Until the time of Josiah, YHWH seemed to be worshiped everywhere. Gideon, Samuel, Elijah, Elisha--they all make altars to YHWH all over Israel. Not until the time of Hezekiah and Josiah is there a real concerted effort to make sure that sacrifices are only offered to YHWH in the temple, as Deuteronomy implies. Elijah's zeal was that Israel not worship the other gods, but we have no record of him ever visiting Jerusalem. That emphasis came with Hezekiah and Josiah.
What was God's speaking in the Law? Yes, it codified certain basic moral expectations such as not murdering or stealing. The most important was to love YHWH and not other gods, as well as to love our neighbors. All the ethical rules of the Law boil down to these two, according to Jesus.
Of course there were many laws that had to do with God's unique relationship with Israel. As Christians, we believe that God did a special "case study" with Israel, that he piloted a relationship with it that embodied on a racial scale his desire to have a universal and individual relationship with humanity in general. Much of the Law was thus God meeting this particular people where they were at. Circumcision, a practice Israel did not invent, became symbolic of participation in the special relationship.
In those days everyone offered sacrifices. Perhaps there was some universal trace in that practice of humanity's sense of needing to address the disorder of the world and humanity's frequent "sinfulness" in before God, its tendency to do things that it knows aren't right. But perhaps laws such as those in Leviticus are even more so God meeting Israel where it was at. Hebrews in the New Testament will see all the sacrifices of the Old Testament as symbolic pointers toward the ultimate reordering of the universe in Christ.
Some of the laws--particularly the food laws--were reflections of Israel's sense of the order God had placed in the world. There were certain types of things in the sea and the air that reflected that order and were "clean." Others didn't fit the categories and were unclean. The prohibition not to eat pork probably, like circumcision, set Israel apart from the surrounding peoples who herded pigs. In the New Testament, when God was now more explicitly seeking a relationship with the whole world, these "works of Law" became obsolete, never having been able to make an Israelite truly right with God in the first place.
The evidence of the Historical Books leads us to believe that the Law as we know it was not fully known or much used until the time of Ezra in the 400s after the exile. At that point, what may have largely been oral tradition among the people and only known in some written form to certain elite becomes a real standard for the Jews of the south. Even then, perhaps it would not be until the rise of the synagogue and the democratization of Judaism in the Greek period that the Law would really trickle down to the people.
However, in the time of the kings God raised up the prophets of the Old Testament to make it clear to Israel what it meant to love YHWH and love one's neighbor. God's favor on the disempowered, the poor, widows, orphans--social justice--is a consistent theme. The tendency to think that sacrifices in themselves take care of things--with no necessary change of heart--is also indicted.
These "oracles" were delivered orally, but perhaps also written down (Isaiah 8:1, 16). At some point, perhaps even after the prophet was gone, they were collected and arranged. Many think that those who preserved these prophecies sometimes also continued the legacies of a prophet by extending his message to situations during and after the exile. It is often suggested that Isaiah 40-66, which never mention Isaiah or say he is their author, are an extension of Isaiah's legacy to the time just before and after the end of the exile.
By the time of Christ, the "Law and the Prophets" could be mentioned as a shorthand for what we think of as the Old Testament Scriptures. The precise content of the "Writings," the third section of the Jewish Bible, was not fixed at the time. The Writings begin with the Psalms (cf. Luke 24:44), which probably reached something like its current form in the worship of the second temple after the exile. Chronicles repeats much of the ground of Samuel and Kings but now from the perspective of a time well into the post-exilic period when the temple is the center of power and people.
We see certain developments in Israel's understanding of God in this phase of Israel's history. One of the most noticeable is a sense of "the Satan," one of the servants of God whose job is to test the loyalty of the earth. We see him behind the scenes in Job, given permission to test Job by bringing trials. If you compare 2 Samuel 24:1 and 1 Chronicles 21:1 you'll see that the second attributes the temptation of David to Satan, while the first attributes the temptation to God.
Even more significant is the rise of resurrection understanding in Daniel 12:2-3, the only undisputed reference to a meaningful afterlife in the Old Testament. While the dating of Daniel's prophecy is debated, the predicted context of Daniel 11 is the Maccabean crisis of 167-64BC. It was this crisis and the things that ensued in Israel that created the New Testament context of Jesus perhaps even more than the Old Testament books themselves.
So we see in the pages of the Old Testament a piloted relationship of God with a whole people that took many, many centuries. Although we now have the witness to that relationship at our fingertips in the books of the Old Testament, the relationship was experienced as much more slow moving and oral in nature. Much of the Old Testament reflects God meeting Israel where it was at. Some of it reflects Israel relating back to God in song and poetry. Meanwhile the prophets more than anyone served as reminders of God's core values, getting us ready for Christ...
Saturday, September 15, 2012
Grudem: The Clarity of Scripture
Continuing my weekly series reviewing Grudem's Systematic Theology: http://cafetutorials.blogspot.com/2012/07/christian-theology.html
This week is chapter 6, "The Clarity of Scripture."
_______________
Summary
Grudem builds to this definition of the clarity of Scripture (perspicuity is the more technical term): "The clarity of Scripture means that the Bible is written in such a way that its teachings are able to be understood by all who will read it seeking God's help and being willing to follow it" (108). He rejects a more limited understanding of clarity, one that believes that the Bible is primarily clear in relation to "all things necessary for our salvation and for our Christian life and growth." He doesn't think the Bible itself sees it this way or puts such a limitation on clarity.
Back up to the first section of the chapter. Here he quotes a few verses where some teaching seems clear. Deuteronomy 6:6-7--teach the commandments of the Law to children. Psalm 19:7--the testimony of the LORD makes the simple wise. Jesus talks to some of his enemies as if it is their problem that they don't understand, not the fact that Scripture is ambiguous. Paul writes to Gentiles about Jewish Scriptures and assumes they can understand. So on these paltry instances ripped from their contexts Grudem supposes that pretty much every word of the Bible is clear.
In a second section, he links the clarity of Scripture also to one's spirituality. So while the Bible itself is written clearly, "it will not be understood rightly by those who are unwilling to receive its teachings" (108). In his fourth section, he expands on reasons why people misunderstand. One is a lack of faith or hardness of heart. For certain, in his mind all disagreements are our problem, not a problem with clarity.
In the end, his fifth section suggests two reasons for disagreements: 1) we are trying to conclude on an issue on which Scripture does not take a position (and therefore on which we shouldn't) or 2) we have made a mistake in our interpretation (we left something out or we have a spiritual problem).
He ends the chapter by clarifying what role biblical scholars (i.e., people who know Greek and Hebrew for him) might then play:
Critique
The idea of the clarity of Scripture goes back to the Protestant Reformation and, indeed, Martin Luther himself. Luther debated Erasmus (the key figure behind the Greek text of the King James Version) over whether the Bible was clear enough for individual believers to understand it properly or whether people needed the Church to interpret it for them. Luther argued that Scripture was clear. Erasmus that it was not.
To hear the issue posed this way often evokes an immediate response--of course I don't need someone to tell me what the Bible means! But the actual history of the last 500 years tells a definitive answer. History smashes Grudem's wishful thinking to bits and gives the debate far more to Erasmus than to Luther. At least on the details, the Bible has been read in so many different ways that it's ridiculous. In fact there are somewhere between 20,000 and 30,000 distinct denominations. Either Grudem is embarrassingly wrong about the clarity of Scripture or perhaps only one of these tens of thousands of groups is God's favorite and the rest of us are hell bound.
I belong to a small church in the Methodist tradition and I did sincerely marvel once in my teens at how amazing it was that I just happened to be born into the church that had everything right. What were the odds, I thought. A year or two into seminary I shifted my perspective. I began to talk about how my tradition sees things, interprets the Bible, in contrast to other traditions. At one point such talk of tradition so annoyed a family member that she stopped me and said, "Stop talking about our tradition. We just read the Bible and do what it says!"
Grudem would disagree. Those who are predestined and are spiritual see the clarity of Scripture, even down to many details. Au contraire. I would assert that truly spiritual people will believe exactly the opposite. They will recognize that there are equally spiritual people in almost all if not all of these tens of thousands of groups.
There are Roman Catholics who are just as spiritual as Grudem. There are Methodists who are just as spiritual as the most spiritual Lutheran, who is just as spiritual as the most spiritual Baptist, who is just as spiritual as the most spiritual Assembly of God person. This is because God is primarily interested in people's hearts, not their understanding. Otherwise he would correct all the spiritual people who don't agree with me.
Grudem's handful of verses are pretty thin. The ones in Deuteronomy and Proverbs have to do with knowing and doing the laws that God gave to Israel. It's hard to know which laws in particular are in view. Certainly keeping commandments like not stealing, killing, or committing adultery could result in a not too insightful person living a wise life. But that's light years from what Grudem is arguing about the clarity of Scripture.
It highlights the "proof-texting" dimension of his entire theology--you rip some words out of context and read them in a way that seems clear to you (because of the tradition you're in and not acknowledging). Jesus does sometimes come across rather strongly in some of the passages Grudem mentions. But what we find is that we are not only hearing Jesus in the Gospels. We're also hearing the gospel writers' presentation of Jesus. It is at least possible, especially in Mark, that part of what we are hearing is not Jesus' harsh tones but the disciples' own frustration at themselves for not initially getting it.
So why do people disagree about what the Bible means? The main reason is that it was written to people who lived 2000-3000 years ago whose world was drastically different than ours. Indeed, someone from Africa is more likely to read the stories of the Bible with the right socio-cultural connotations than someone from North America. It is almost a joke that Grudem would think he's going to pick up on all that just out of the blue.
That's not to say that God can't and doesn't speak clearly to people through the Bible, especially godly people. But in such instances they're normally hearing a direct word from God, not necessarily what those words meant originally. I agree with his implication that a scholar is not necessarily more gifted to hear God in Scripture than anyone else. I agree with him that the church is where God helps us know how to apply the Bible to today.
Scholars are part of that equation, but being a scholar only means you're more likely to know the original meaning, not what God wants for the church today. To be a scholar of the original meaning of some part of the Bible, 1) you must know the original language of that part. 2) You must know the historical-socio-cultural background that informed the meaning of that part, the "language games" that gave meaning to those words at that time. 3) Certainly an expert should know the history of interpretation, because you would imagine after hundreds of years of scholarship, most of the possibilities are out there and a lot of non-starters have already been weeded out. 4) And of course, you need to know the rules of exegesis and how to read the Bible inductively. This involves how to do historical research and how to follow a literary text.
Grudem isn't such a scholar, period. In my opinion, he lacks spiritual discernment as well. It's possible he's a nice guy, just not someone who should be allowed to teach theology.
This week is chapter 6, "The Clarity of Scripture."
_______________
Summary
Grudem builds to this definition of the clarity of Scripture (perspicuity is the more technical term): "The clarity of Scripture means that the Bible is written in such a way that its teachings are able to be understood by all who will read it seeking God's help and being willing to follow it" (108). He rejects a more limited understanding of clarity, one that believes that the Bible is primarily clear in relation to "all things necessary for our salvation and for our Christian life and growth." He doesn't think the Bible itself sees it this way or puts such a limitation on clarity.
Back up to the first section of the chapter. Here he quotes a few verses where some teaching seems clear. Deuteronomy 6:6-7--teach the commandments of the Law to children. Psalm 19:7--the testimony of the LORD makes the simple wise. Jesus talks to some of his enemies as if it is their problem that they don't understand, not the fact that Scripture is ambiguous. Paul writes to Gentiles about Jewish Scriptures and assumes they can understand. So on these paltry instances ripped from their contexts Grudem supposes that pretty much every word of the Bible is clear.
In a second section, he links the clarity of Scripture also to one's spirituality. So while the Bible itself is written clearly, "it will not be understood rightly by those who are unwilling to receive its teachings" (108). In his fourth section, he expands on reasons why people misunderstand. One is a lack of faith or hardness of heart. For certain, in his mind all disagreements are our problem, not a problem with clarity.
In the end, his fifth section suggests two reasons for disagreements: 1) we are trying to conclude on an issue on which Scripture does not take a position (and therefore on which we shouldn't) or 2) we have made a mistake in our interpretation (we left something out or we have a spiritual problem).
He ends the chapter by clarifying what role biblical scholars (i.e., people who know Greek and Hebrew for him) might then play:
- They can teach.
- They can explore new areas because new issues arise.
- They can defend the Bible against attacks.
- They can supplement the Bible with other things like church history.
They don't have the right to decide for the church what is true and false doctrine. That's for the "officers of the church" (111).
Critique
The idea of the clarity of Scripture goes back to the Protestant Reformation and, indeed, Martin Luther himself. Luther debated Erasmus (the key figure behind the Greek text of the King James Version) over whether the Bible was clear enough for individual believers to understand it properly or whether people needed the Church to interpret it for them. Luther argued that Scripture was clear. Erasmus that it was not.
To hear the issue posed this way often evokes an immediate response--of course I don't need someone to tell me what the Bible means! But the actual history of the last 500 years tells a definitive answer. History smashes Grudem's wishful thinking to bits and gives the debate far more to Erasmus than to Luther. At least on the details, the Bible has been read in so many different ways that it's ridiculous. In fact there are somewhere between 20,000 and 30,000 distinct denominations. Either Grudem is embarrassingly wrong about the clarity of Scripture or perhaps only one of these tens of thousands of groups is God's favorite and the rest of us are hell bound.
I belong to a small church in the Methodist tradition and I did sincerely marvel once in my teens at how amazing it was that I just happened to be born into the church that had everything right. What were the odds, I thought. A year or two into seminary I shifted my perspective. I began to talk about how my tradition sees things, interprets the Bible, in contrast to other traditions. At one point such talk of tradition so annoyed a family member that she stopped me and said, "Stop talking about our tradition. We just read the Bible and do what it says!"
Grudem would disagree. Those who are predestined and are spiritual see the clarity of Scripture, even down to many details. Au contraire. I would assert that truly spiritual people will believe exactly the opposite. They will recognize that there are equally spiritual people in almost all if not all of these tens of thousands of groups.
There are Roman Catholics who are just as spiritual as Grudem. There are Methodists who are just as spiritual as the most spiritual Lutheran, who is just as spiritual as the most spiritual Baptist, who is just as spiritual as the most spiritual Assembly of God person. This is because God is primarily interested in people's hearts, not their understanding. Otherwise he would correct all the spiritual people who don't agree with me.
Grudem's handful of verses are pretty thin. The ones in Deuteronomy and Proverbs have to do with knowing and doing the laws that God gave to Israel. It's hard to know which laws in particular are in view. Certainly keeping commandments like not stealing, killing, or committing adultery could result in a not too insightful person living a wise life. But that's light years from what Grudem is arguing about the clarity of Scripture.
It highlights the "proof-texting" dimension of his entire theology--you rip some words out of context and read them in a way that seems clear to you (because of the tradition you're in and not acknowledging). Jesus does sometimes come across rather strongly in some of the passages Grudem mentions. But what we find is that we are not only hearing Jesus in the Gospels. We're also hearing the gospel writers' presentation of Jesus. It is at least possible, especially in Mark, that part of what we are hearing is not Jesus' harsh tones but the disciples' own frustration at themselves for not initially getting it.
So why do people disagree about what the Bible means? The main reason is that it was written to people who lived 2000-3000 years ago whose world was drastically different than ours. Indeed, someone from Africa is more likely to read the stories of the Bible with the right socio-cultural connotations than someone from North America. It is almost a joke that Grudem would think he's going to pick up on all that just out of the blue.
That's not to say that God can't and doesn't speak clearly to people through the Bible, especially godly people. But in such instances they're normally hearing a direct word from God, not necessarily what those words meant originally. I agree with his implication that a scholar is not necessarily more gifted to hear God in Scripture than anyone else. I agree with him that the church is where God helps us know how to apply the Bible to today.
Scholars are part of that equation, but being a scholar only means you're more likely to know the original meaning, not what God wants for the church today. To be a scholar of the original meaning of some part of the Bible, 1) you must know the original language of that part. 2) You must know the historical-socio-cultural background that informed the meaning of that part, the "language games" that gave meaning to those words at that time. 3) Certainly an expert should know the history of interpretation, because you would imagine after hundreds of years of scholarship, most of the possibilities are out there and a lot of non-starters have already been weeded out. 4) And of course, you need to know the rules of exegesis and how to read the Bible inductively. This involves how to do historical research and how to follow a literary text.
Grudem isn't such a scholar, period. In my opinion, he lacks spiritual discernment as well. It's possible he's a nice guy, just not someone who should be allowed to teach theology.
Friday, September 14, 2012
"You can't kill them all" and other foreign policy proverbs
Some thoughts as relevant now as 10 years ago when we were getting ready to launch the war on Iraq.
1. You can't kill them all.
Think Vietnam. They keep coming and coming and eventually you just have to go home.
2. Genocide isn't polite.
Don't find yourself celebrating at the bar with Satan after all the _____ are finally dead. Jesus certainly won't be celebrating with you. How many do you have to kill before you are the bad guy or at least as bad as the people you're trying to "punish"?
3. Pull out the plank.
Most of us don't set cars on fire. But I have to smile when I hear Americans wishing those Muslims would all die. Wait, isn't that what some of them are saying about us? Same heart.
4. Not everyone's stupid.
Most Egyptians went to work today. Educated Egyptians would like the idiots out in the streets to go home too.
5. Hit the right target.
Don't hit people that didn't hit you. Don't invade Iraq when a group hanging out in Afghanistan attacked you.
6. Don't stomp on an anthill.
It just makes the ants you didn't kill angry... and stirs up those who weren't. After 9-11 we had the sympathy of the world. After Iraq...
1. You can't kill them all.
Think Vietnam. They keep coming and coming and eventually you just have to go home.
2. Genocide isn't polite.
Don't find yourself celebrating at the bar with Satan after all the _____ are finally dead. Jesus certainly won't be celebrating with you. How many do you have to kill before you are the bad guy or at least as bad as the people you're trying to "punish"?
3. Pull out the plank.
Most of us don't set cars on fire. But I have to smile when I hear Americans wishing those Muslims would all die. Wait, isn't that what some of them are saying about us? Same heart.
4. Not everyone's stupid.
Most Egyptians went to work today. Educated Egyptians would like the idiots out in the streets to go home too.
5. Hit the right target.
Don't hit people that didn't hit you. Don't invade Iraq when a group hanging out in Afghanistan attacked you.
6. Don't stomp on an anthill.
It just makes the ants you didn't kill angry... and stirs up those who weren't. After 9-11 we had the sympathy of the world. After Iraq...
Mark's Themes 2
continued from Wednesday
_______________
... Although we have to remember that Papias himself may have his own agenda in the way he presents this information, it is striking that this statement probably comes within 50 years of Mark's writing.
We get the impression that Mark doesn't necessarily present all the events of Jesus' ministry in order. We wonder if Mark is, in part, a collection of individual stories that were circulating especially in early Christian preaching, including the preaching of Peter. Of course we should also be very careful to let the Gospel of Mark itself have the deciding vote. If this tradition seems to fit, great. But if it doesn't, Mark itself should have the upper hand.
However, in my opinion, the above description seems to fit Mark's structure fairly well. We can discern a basic outline to the book. There is some structure to some smaller collections of stories. But much of Mark seems to be one story after another. If all we had were Mark, we would probably think that Jesus' ministry took place within the space of about a year, since only one Passover is mentioned. John, of course, gives us the impression it was more like three years.
Despite this somewhat loose structure, we can discern some clear themes that run throughout Mark. One is the sense that Jesus kept his identity as messiah somewhat hidden during his time on earth. The second is that the disciples didn't really get the nature of his mission. The third is then that Jesus' mission on earth was to suffer and die for the world.
The Hiddenness of Jesus' Identity
One of the distinctive features of Mark is the extent to which Jesus tries to contain his fame. For example, in Mark 1:44 Jesus tells a leper he healed not to tell anyone. It doesn't work, of course. The leper tells everyone, and Jesus soon can't enter villages publicly because of the crowds. In chapter 2, a crowd is so thick in a house in Capernaum that some people actually dig out a hole in the roof to let a paralytic down for Jesus to heal.
It makes sense that Jesus would try to keep his healing activities under wraps. After all, we see happen in the Gospels exactly what Jesus was trying to avoid. He is mobbed and has to spend most of his time out in the countryside. By the way, this is a reminder that Jesus played it by the human rules while he was on earth. He did not use divine omnipotence to get everything he wanted. Indeed, he may not yet have known how much power he actually had...
_______________
... Although we have to remember that Papias himself may have his own agenda in the way he presents this information, it is striking that this statement probably comes within 50 years of Mark's writing.
We get the impression that Mark doesn't necessarily present all the events of Jesus' ministry in order. We wonder if Mark is, in part, a collection of individual stories that were circulating especially in early Christian preaching, including the preaching of Peter. Of course we should also be very careful to let the Gospel of Mark itself have the deciding vote. If this tradition seems to fit, great. But if it doesn't, Mark itself should have the upper hand.
However, in my opinion, the above description seems to fit Mark's structure fairly well. We can discern a basic outline to the book. There is some structure to some smaller collections of stories. But much of Mark seems to be one story after another. If all we had were Mark, we would probably think that Jesus' ministry took place within the space of about a year, since only one Passover is mentioned. John, of course, gives us the impression it was more like three years.
Despite this somewhat loose structure, we can discern some clear themes that run throughout Mark. One is the sense that Jesus kept his identity as messiah somewhat hidden during his time on earth. The second is that the disciples didn't really get the nature of his mission. The third is then that Jesus' mission on earth was to suffer and die for the world.
The Hiddenness of Jesus' Identity
One of the distinctive features of Mark is the extent to which Jesus tries to contain his fame. For example, in Mark 1:44 Jesus tells a leper he healed not to tell anyone. It doesn't work, of course. The leper tells everyone, and Jesus soon can't enter villages publicly because of the crowds. In chapter 2, a crowd is so thick in a house in Capernaum that some people actually dig out a hole in the roof to let a paralytic down for Jesus to heal.
It makes sense that Jesus would try to keep his healing activities under wraps. After all, we see happen in the Gospels exactly what Jesus was trying to avoid. He is mobbed and has to spend most of his time out in the countryside. By the way, this is a reminder that Jesus played it by the human rules while he was on earth. He did not use divine omnipotence to get everything he wanted. Indeed, he may not yet have known how much power he actually had...
Thursday, September 13, 2012
Paul's Old Testament
I thought I would give a "Tale of Two Old Testaments" by posting the version Paul might say with historical footnotes. What do you think?
_____________________
God created the world in such a way that his eternal power and divinity should have been apparent to everyone, even now (Rom. 1). [1] However, when Adam sinned, the power of Sin entered the world. The creation became a slave to corruption (Rom. 8). Death entered the human race because of Adam's sin (1 Cor. 15). We all sin now like Adam did and we all die now like Adam did because of the power of Sin over the world (Rom. 5). [2]
God called Abraham to begin the salvation of the world. Abraham is the father of the circumcised and the uncircumcised, of the Jew and the Gentile (Rom. 4). Before he was circumcised, Abraham is the father of the Gentiles who become right with God on the basis of their faith in him. After he was circumcised, he is the father of Israel who remains true Israel when they have faith in God. Their "works of Law," meaning the things they do that separate them from Gentiles (circumcision, food laws, sabbath observance) cannot earn them a right status before God on the Day of Judgment.
Great honor is due the Jews because God gave them the covenants, the temple, the promises (Rom. 9). The revelations of the Scriptures were given to them (Rom. 3). But none of these things in themselves are sufficient to give them a right status with God on the Day of Judgment, which is a matter of God's grace.
The Scriptures witness to these truths, both the Law and the Prophets (Rom. 3). [3] From Habakkuk 2:4 we learn that "the person who is righteous on the basis of faith will live." Joel 2 tells us that whoever calls on the name of the Lord (Jesus) will be saved. [4] We've already mentioned key texts about Abraham in Genesis.
God gave the Law to be a guardian to point Jews to Christ (Gal. 4), like a slave that watches over a child until it comes of age. Israel was under that guardian until Christ came. The Law told Israel what God's righteous standard was, basically love. But Jews could not keep that standard because they did not have the Spirit. [5]
David is significant because he began the royal line that would lead to the Christ. Jesus is the seed of David in fleshly terms. Scriptures foresaw that he would become Son of God also, passages like Psalm 110:1.
Other parts of the New Testament emphasize parts of the Old Testament that Paul does not so much focus on. For example, the Gospels locate the ministries of Jesus and John the Baptist against the backdrop of the exile. John the Baptist is like the voice of one calling the wilderness to come home from the Babylonian captivity (Isaiah 40), although John is preparing the way for Jesus.
The very idea of the kingdom of God and the gospel news presumably come from Isaiah 52, which was also originally about the return from exile. Isaiah 53 shows up in Acts 8 as a text foretelling the redemptive suffering of Jesus. Matthew 2 alludes to the exodus in relation to one event in the life of Jesus and, like Joshua, Jesus does save his people. He is the Passover lamb (1 Cor. 5). He is a priest to end all priests (Heb. 7).
[1] Given what Jews likely believed at the time, Paul probably would have assumed that the world was created out of chaotic, pre-existing waters. But he doesn't say this anywhere.
[2] This is an expansion of the Genesis story. In Genesis, Adam and Eve would have died anyway if they had not had access to the Tree of Life. In that sense, death was not caused by Adam's sin but it was not prevented because of Adam's sin. The ground is cursed because of Adam's sin in Genesis, but there is no mention of the creation being corrupted because of it.
The curse of Adam plays no role in the rest of the Old Testament. In inductive terms, Genesis 4 through Malachi say nothing of this sin or its consequences. If we did not have Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15, Christian theology would look significantly different in relation to Adam.
[3] Interpreted spiritually rather than literally.
[4] Originally a reference to YHWH, now strikingly applied to Jesus.
[5] This seems to be a rather unique perspective for a Jew to have. The default Jewish understanding was probably that it was quite possible to keep the Law to the standard God expected despite the fact that all humans had sin and needed God's grace and atonement in general.
_____________________
God created the world in such a way that his eternal power and divinity should have been apparent to everyone, even now (Rom. 1). [1] However, when Adam sinned, the power of Sin entered the world. The creation became a slave to corruption (Rom. 8). Death entered the human race because of Adam's sin (1 Cor. 15). We all sin now like Adam did and we all die now like Adam did because of the power of Sin over the world (Rom. 5). [2]
God called Abraham to begin the salvation of the world. Abraham is the father of the circumcised and the uncircumcised, of the Jew and the Gentile (Rom. 4). Before he was circumcised, Abraham is the father of the Gentiles who become right with God on the basis of their faith in him. After he was circumcised, he is the father of Israel who remains true Israel when they have faith in God. Their "works of Law," meaning the things they do that separate them from Gentiles (circumcision, food laws, sabbath observance) cannot earn them a right status before God on the Day of Judgment.
Great honor is due the Jews because God gave them the covenants, the temple, the promises (Rom. 9). The revelations of the Scriptures were given to them (Rom. 3). But none of these things in themselves are sufficient to give them a right status with God on the Day of Judgment, which is a matter of God's grace.
The Scriptures witness to these truths, both the Law and the Prophets (Rom. 3). [3] From Habakkuk 2:4 we learn that "the person who is righteous on the basis of faith will live." Joel 2 tells us that whoever calls on the name of the Lord (Jesus) will be saved. [4] We've already mentioned key texts about Abraham in Genesis.
God gave the Law to be a guardian to point Jews to Christ (Gal. 4), like a slave that watches over a child until it comes of age. Israel was under that guardian until Christ came. The Law told Israel what God's righteous standard was, basically love. But Jews could not keep that standard because they did not have the Spirit. [5]
David is significant because he began the royal line that would lead to the Christ. Jesus is the seed of David in fleshly terms. Scriptures foresaw that he would become Son of God also, passages like Psalm 110:1.
Other parts of the New Testament emphasize parts of the Old Testament that Paul does not so much focus on. For example, the Gospels locate the ministries of Jesus and John the Baptist against the backdrop of the exile. John the Baptist is like the voice of one calling the wilderness to come home from the Babylonian captivity (Isaiah 40), although John is preparing the way for Jesus.
The very idea of the kingdom of God and the gospel news presumably come from Isaiah 52, which was also originally about the return from exile. Isaiah 53 shows up in Acts 8 as a text foretelling the redemptive suffering of Jesus. Matthew 2 alludes to the exodus in relation to one event in the life of Jesus and, like Joshua, Jesus does save his people. He is the Passover lamb (1 Cor. 5). He is a priest to end all priests (Heb. 7).
[1] Given what Jews likely believed at the time, Paul probably would have assumed that the world was created out of chaotic, pre-existing waters. But he doesn't say this anywhere.
[2] This is an expansion of the Genesis story. In Genesis, Adam and Eve would have died anyway if they had not had access to the Tree of Life. In that sense, death was not caused by Adam's sin but it was not prevented because of Adam's sin. The ground is cursed because of Adam's sin in Genesis, but there is no mention of the creation being corrupted because of it.
The curse of Adam plays no role in the rest of the Old Testament. In inductive terms, Genesis 4 through Malachi say nothing of this sin or its consequences. If we did not have Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15, Christian theology would look significantly different in relation to Adam.
[3] Interpreted spiritually rather than literally.
[4] Originally a reference to YHWH, now strikingly applied to Jesus.
[5] This seems to be a rather unique perspective for a Jew to have. The default Jewish understanding was probably that it was quite possible to keep the Law to the standard God expected despite the fact that all humans had sin and needed God's grace and atonement in general.
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
Gospel Writers on Street Corners? 1
Jumping to the second chapter of my Jesus in the Gospels book. This is on the special themes in Mark.
______________
A Difference of Eyewitness Perspective?
Each of the four Gospels tells the story of Jesus in a distinctive way, although the first three gospels tell the story similarly enough to be called "synoptic" gospels, gospels similar enough that you could put them side by side and compare them. But from early on it was recognized that John went its own way. A Christian in the late 100s called it a "spiritual" gospel. [1] It is interesting to wonder how our picture of Jesus might be different if we didn't have John.
Sometimes people make sense of the distinct presentations of the Gospels with the picture of four people standing on four different corners of an intersection, describing what happened to cause an accident. In this common sense scenario, each person sees something a little different because they are looking on from a different angle. They are all describing the same thing, but their narratives are each going to be distinct.
There may be some truth to this scenario, but things probably are also a little more complicated. [2] It's true that, traditionally, Matthew and John were thought to be written by the disciples with those names. Mark's Gospel is traditionally linked to Peter, and it is often suggested that Luke did some serious eyewitness research, perhaps including Mary herself. I personally think that traditions like these have to be taken more seriously than many do, but I also acknowledge that such traditions regularly get a little mangled in process. [2]
As we will see throughout our journey, Matthew and Luke probably used Mark as their main source. The places where they differ from Mark are thus probably intentional and reflect special emphases they wanted to bring out more than differences in eyewitness perspective. Matthew and Luke are then thought to have relied on yet another written source as well. So while eyewitness testimony may very well underlie the foundations of the Gospels, most of the differences more come from the editing of the Gospel writers in order to bring out special themes.
Although we don't know Mark's sources for sure, it's likely that he also is telling the stories of Jesus in such a way as to bring out some special themes. The earliest tradition, about Mark, from the early part of the 100s, is that
"Mark having become the interpreter of Peter, wrote down accurately whatsoever he remembered. It was not, however, in exact order that he related the sayings or deeds of Christ. For he neither heard the Lord nor accompanied Him. But afterwards, as I said, he accompanied Peter, who accommodated his instructions to the necessities [of his hearers], but with no intention of giving a regular narrative of the Lord's sayings. Wherefore Mark made no mistake in thus writing some things as he remembered them. For of one thing he took especial care, not to omit anything he had heard, and not to put anything fictitious into the statements." [3]
The sense here is that the stories of Mark aren't necessarily in the order they happened. There is also the sense that Peter presented the stories in such a way that they would speak optimally to his audiences. Although we have to remember that Papias himself may have his own agenda in the way he presents this information, it is striking that this statement probably comes within 50 years of Mark's writing...
[1] Clement of Alexandria
[2] For a strong defense of the eyewitness basis for the Gospels, see Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses.
[3] Roberts-Donaldson translation currently, fragment VI.
______________
A Difference of Eyewitness Perspective?
Each of the four Gospels tells the story of Jesus in a distinctive way, although the first three gospels tell the story similarly enough to be called "synoptic" gospels, gospels similar enough that you could put them side by side and compare them. But from early on it was recognized that John went its own way. A Christian in the late 100s called it a "spiritual" gospel. [1] It is interesting to wonder how our picture of Jesus might be different if we didn't have John.
Sometimes people make sense of the distinct presentations of the Gospels with the picture of four people standing on four different corners of an intersection, describing what happened to cause an accident. In this common sense scenario, each person sees something a little different because they are looking on from a different angle. They are all describing the same thing, but their narratives are each going to be distinct.
There may be some truth to this scenario, but things probably are also a little more complicated. [2] It's true that, traditionally, Matthew and John were thought to be written by the disciples with those names. Mark's Gospel is traditionally linked to Peter, and it is often suggested that Luke did some serious eyewitness research, perhaps including Mary herself. I personally think that traditions like these have to be taken more seriously than many do, but I also acknowledge that such traditions regularly get a little mangled in process. [2]
As we will see throughout our journey, Matthew and Luke probably used Mark as their main source. The places where they differ from Mark are thus probably intentional and reflect special emphases they wanted to bring out more than differences in eyewitness perspective. Matthew and Luke are then thought to have relied on yet another written source as well. So while eyewitness testimony may very well underlie the foundations of the Gospels, most of the differences more come from the editing of the Gospel writers in order to bring out special themes.
Although we don't know Mark's sources for sure, it's likely that he also is telling the stories of Jesus in such a way as to bring out some special themes. The earliest tradition, about Mark, from the early part of the 100s, is that
"Mark having become the interpreter of Peter, wrote down accurately whatsoever he remembered. It was not, however, in exact order that he related the sayings or deeds of Christ. For he neither heard the Lord nor accompanied Him. But afterwards, as I said, he accompanied Peter, who accommodated his instructions to the necessities [of his hearers], but with no intention of giving a regular narrative of the Lord's sayings. Wherefore Mark made no mistake in thus writing some things as he remembered them. For of one thing he took especial care, not to omit anything he had heard, and not to put anything fictitious into the statements." [3]
The sense here is that the stories of Mark aren't necessarily in the order they happened. There is also the sense that Peter presented the stories in such a way that they would speak optimally to his audiences. Although we have to remember that Papias himself may have his own agenda in the way he presents this information, it is striking that this statement probably comes within 50 years of Mark's writing...
[1] Clement of Alexandria
[2] For a strong defense of the eyewitness basis for the Gospels, see Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses.
[3] Roberts-Donaldson translation currently, fragment VI.
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
Roman Catholic Catechism 1
The notorious Monday reading group decided to read through selections of the Roman Catholic Catechism this semester with a very interesting question--just how different is Roman Catholic belief than Wesleyan? The hunch is that Wesleyans and Catholics agree on far more than most Wesleyans think. I'm not sure what will come of it, but it's possible that Keith Drury will take the collective take-away and make it public in some form. I don't want to distract from that, but I may post some of my own thoughts as we go through, trying not to distract from any final product that may come out of it.
Yesterday we read Section One of Part One (see the link above). Out of 47 pages, I only saw five disagreements, and I don't even consider most of these very significant (although they might be for a Roman Catholic, admittedly):
Yesterday we read Section One of Part One (see the link above). Out of 47 pages, I only saw five disagreements, and I don't even consider most of these very significant (although they might be for a Roman Catholic, admittedly):
- The Wesleyan tradition doesn't worry about apostolic succession (77), although Wesley would no doubt have preferred it.
- The Wesleyan tradition would not consider Scripture and Tradition of "equal" value (82), understanding that for RCatholics, Scripture is part of Tradition.
- We wouldn't ascribe any special privilege to the Pope or bishops of the Roman Catholic Church in interpreting the Bible (100), although they are free to work out their salvation with the rest of us ;-) To me, this is the most significant difference.
- Wesleyans don't consider the Apocrypha to be part of Scripture. It's not that we consider them evil. We just don't consider them Scripture.
- Wesleyans don't have anything against Mary, but don't generally think she remained a virgin after Jesus was born and don't have a dog in the race that sees her as the most perfect embodiment of the obedience of faith (148).
- I liked the fact that the purpose of doctrine was said to be love, not head knowledge for its own sake (25).
- I like the sense that Christ is the supreme Revelation of God and that the Revelation has been unpacking ever sense (65-66). Protestants and Catholics tend to disagree on the unpacking of that final Revelation. Protestants tend to see Scripture as a somewhat definitive unpacking of that Revelation. Catholics see big T "Tradition" as the unpacking of Christ, with Scripture as the fountainhead and beginning of that Tradition (see above).
- I like the openness to private revelation, with the distinction that it is not part of the "deposit of faith."
- What do you think about this??? "All that the inspired authors or sacred writers affirm should be regarded as affirmed by the Holy Spirit, we must acknowledge that the books of Scripture firmly, faithfully, and without error teach that truth which God, for the sake of our salvation, wished to see confided to the Sacred Scriptures" (107).
- I enjoyed the four fold sense of Scripture, although it was made clear that spiritual senses don't contradict the literal (115-117). Of course many evangelicals insist on the literal or plain sense only, but the holiness tradition has generally been more open to "spiritual" readings, like charismatics and unlike mainstream Protestants.
- Faith is a "free assent" (150, 160), so Wesleyans are closer to Catholics on this one than they are to Calvinists.
- Faith is both a gift and a human act--human will and divine will cooperate (155). Again, Wesleyans are closer to Catholics on this one than to Calvinists.
- Faith is necessary for justification (161).
- I love this: "Faith is a personal act... But faith is not an isolated act" (166).
Monday, September 10, 2012
Multiple Ministries: Black and Drury
I only read one chapter this week in Bob Black and Keith Drury's, The Story of the Wesleyan Church. So far it's been:
Chaps 1-2 About Wesley and the origins of the Wesleyan Methodist Church in abolitionism
Chaps 3-4 About its activist early days that were low church, pro-women (and anti- some other things)
Chaps 5-6 The post-Civil War let down, when the best and brightest returned to the Methodists
Chaps 7-8 Birth of Pilgrim Holiness Church
Today, chapter 9
________________
I'll confess that I'm not 100% sure what to make of this chapter, mainly because I can't see beyond my own life's interaction with God's Bible School in Cincinnati, Ohio. I grew up with quite a positive view of GBS, having a brother-in-law who taught there, as well as some extended family who attended there. Then I went through a period of thinking it rather separatist and legalistic. More recently I've picked up on a spirit of brotherhood and desire for broader engagement.
All that is to say that I'm not sure what to make of Seth C. Rees leaving the early version of the Pilgrim Holiness Church, soon for the Nazarenes, just as I'm not quite sure what to make of Luther Lee going back to the Methodists. And how stupid of Martin Wells Knapp to deed GBS to God, creating legal problems after his premature death! But what should we make of the fact that a number of very well known figures wandered through but didn't stay: Oswald Chambers, Lettie Cowman (Streams in the Desert)? The Cowman's founded OMS.
Nevertheless, I resonate with the spirit of innovation that seemed to characterize the proto-Pilgrims. They advertised revivals on umbrellas when the city told them they couldn't advertise. They were quite disobedient to the city of Cincinnati--Eleanor Roosevelt stepped in at one point so they could bus in 30,000 poor children to a Thanksgiving dinner. The Pilgrims knew no division between helping the poor and downtrodden and evangelism.
Some familiar Wesleyan Methodist features emerged around the turn of the century as well. The YMWB I grew up with is one example--kids giving a penny a week for missions. WMS, the Women's Missionary Society started about this time. Both these elements of my childhood have been changed over time. Predictably, the Wesleyan Methodists were strong supporters of Prohibition--along with most Protestants. The anti-catholic/anti-immigration dimension to the movement thus peeks its head here.
Chaps 1-2 About Wesley and the origins of the Wesleyan Methodist Church in abolitionism
Chaps 3-4 About its activist early days that were low church, pro-women (and anti- some other things)
Chaps 5-6 The post-Civil War let down, when the best and brightest returned to the Methodists
Chaps 7-8 Birth of Pilgrim Holiness Church
Today, chapter 9
________________
I'll confess that I'm not 100% sure what to make of this chapter, mainly because I can't see beyond my own life's interaction with God's Bible School in Cincinnati, Ohio. I grew up with quite a positive view of GBS, having a brother-in-law who taught there, as well as some extended family who attended there. Then I went through a period of thinking it rather separatist and legalistic. More recently I've picked up on a spirit of brotherhood and desire for broader engagement.
All that is to say that I'm not sure what to make of Seth C. Rees leaving the early version of the Pilgrim Holiness Church, soon for the Nazarenes, just as I'm not quite sure what to make of Luther Lee going back to the Methodists. And how stupid of Martin Wells Knapp to deed GBS to God, creating legal problems after his premature death! But what should we make of the fact that a number of very well known figures wandered through but didn't stay: Oswald Chambers, Lettie Cowman (Streams in the Desert)? The Cowman's founded OMS.
Nevertheless, I resonate with the spirit of innovation that seemed to characterize the proto-Pilgrims. They advertised revivals on umbrellas when the city told them they couldn't advertise. They were quite disobedient to the city of Cincinnati--Eleanor Roosevelt stepped in at one point so they could bus in 30,000 poor children to a Thanksgiving dinner. The Pilgrims knew no division between helping the poor and downtrodden and evangelism.
Some familiar Wesleyan Methodist features emerged around the turn of the century as well. The YMWB I grew up with is one example--kids giving a penny a week for missions. WMS, the Women's Missionary Society started about this time. Both these elements of my childhood have been changed over time. Predictably, the Wesleyan Methodists were strong supporters of Prohibition--along with most Protestants. The anti-catholic/anti-immigration dimension to the movement thus peeks its head here.
Sunday, September 09, 2012
2c God's Speakings 1
Last week I didn't have time to post my own biblical theology thoughts to go alongside my review of Grudem's Systematic Theology. Here is more from my second section on "Revelation."
2a Revelation (From Text to Scripture)
2b Revelation (NT Understanding of Scripture)
So here goes...
_________
God's Speakings
First, we must recognize that while Scripture is the first and best place for us to begin when we are looking to hear God's voice, God's revelation did not begin with Genesis and it did not end with Revelation. On any reckoning, written Scriptures have existed for less than half of humanity's existence, and by most reckonings far less. Christ, God's fullest revelation came even more recently.
Even then, this written revelation has only been available to the smallest portion of the world until recent times--most humans in history never heard of Christ. And when you consider that the vast majority of people throughout history have been illiterate, the details of written Scripture have scarcely been available even to believers until recently. In short, if written Scripture is the only path to God, then the overwhelmingly majority of humanity has not known him.
Many Christians would reject the notion that God determines who will be saved and who will be damned. Those Christians usually also reject the fall back position that God only determines who will be saved and that the damned are damned already. Yet to believe that those who have never heard are inevitably damned is simply another form of that idea. To be consistent, those who reject these forms of predestination should reject the idea that those who have never heard cannot possibly be saved.
The key is two-fold. First, one can be saved through Christ without knowing the source of one's salvation. Secondly, God is far more interested in what is going on in our hearts than what is going on in our heads. If God empowers those who have heard to be able to believe on him, then he can also empower those who have never heard to be able to respond appropriately to the light they have.
Revelation is not merely a matter of the understanding. It is primarily a matter of the heart. It is knowing God relationally far more than knowing God cognitively. A person can respond appropriately with his or her heart even if the head lacks accurate understanding.
Creation is the first revelation of God. "And God said," Genesis 1:3 begins. The result is that "The heavens are telling the glory of God" (Ps. 19:1). Paul suggests that God's power and divinity are obvious to the world (Rom. 1:20). Paul's sermon in Acts 17 implies that it is at least possible to find God through the stars and order of the creation (Acts 17:27-28).
We should not imagine that such knowledge of God is extensive from a cognitive point of view. We are not really talking about the philosophical argument from design here. We are talking about the awe of God captured so well as the psalmist is amazed, "when I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and stars that you have established" (Ps. 8:3).
The stories of Genesis tell of God walking with various individuals who had no written word from God. Indeed, they had little from God orally either. We hear of Noah, then of Abram called from a foreign country. Abram came from a situation in which many gods were worshiped (Josh. 24:2). Presumably God spoke to more people and more often than the sparse indications of Genesis. Regardless of when it was written, Job is often thought to picture someone who was not an Israelite but who worshiped God rightly in his heart in the patriarchal period.
Abram knew God as El-Shaddai, "God Almighty," according to one strand of the Pentateuch (Exod. 6:3). He did not know God as YHWH. El was the king of the gods in the Canaanite pantheon, like Zeus in Greece. Is it therefore possible that God met Abraham within his understanding, asking him to worship the highest God, without correcting his sense of the other gods (cf. Ps. 82)? Melchizedek was also a priest of "God Most High," El-Elyon. So here is God, long before written revelation, meeting godly people where they were at in their understanding.
At each point, God seems to refine the understanding. God reveals himself as YHWH, as the "I AM," at the burning bush...
2a Revelation (From Text to Scripture)
2b Revelation (NT Understanding of Scripture)
So here goes...
_________
God's Speakings
First, we must recognize that while Scripture is the first and best place for us to begin when we are looking to hear God's voice, God's revelation did not begin with Genesis and it did not end with Revelation. On any reckoning, written Scriptures have existed for less than half of humanity's existence, and by most reckonings far less. Christ, God's fullest revelation came even more recently.
Even then, this written revelation has only been available to the smallest portion of the world until recent times--most humans in history never heard of Christ. And when you consider that the vast majority of people throughout history have been illiterate, the details of written Scripture have scarcely been available even to believers until recently. In short, if written Scripture is the only path to God, then the overwhelmingly majority of humanity has not known him.
Many Christians would reject the notion that God determines who will be saved and who will be damned. Those Christians usually also reject the fall back position that God only determines who will be saved and that the damned are damned already. Yet to believe that those who have never heard are inevitably damned is simply another form of that idea. To be consistent, those who reject these forms of predestination should reject the idea that those who have never heard cannot possibly be saved.
The key is two-fold. First, one can be saved through Christ without knowing the source of one's salvation. Secondly, God is far more interested in what is going on in our hearts than what is going on in our heads. If God empowers those who have heard to be able to believe on him, then he can also empower those who have never heard to be able to respond appropriately to the light they have.
Revelation is not merely a matter of the understanding. It is primarily a matter of the heart. It is knowing God relationally far more than knowing God cognitively. A person can respond appropriately with his or her heart even if the head lacks accurate understanding.
Creation is the first revelation of God. "And God said," Genesis 1:3 begins. The result is that "The heavens are telling the glory of God" (Ps. 19:1). Paul suggests that God's power and divinity are obvious to the world (Rom. 1:20). Paul's sermon in Acts 17 implies that it is at least possible to find God through the stars and order of the creation (Acts 17:27-28).
We should not imagine that such knowledge of God is extensive from a cognitive point of view. We are not really talking about the philosophical argument from design here. We are talking about the awe of God captured so well as the psalmist is amazed, "when I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and stars that you have established" (Ps. 8:3).
The stories of Genesis tell of God walking with various individuals who had no written word from God. Indeed, they had little from God orally either. We hear of Noah, then of Abram called from a foreign country. Abram came from a situation in which many gods were worshiped (Josh. 24:2). Presumably God spoke to more people and more often than the sparse indications of Genesis. Regardless of when it was written, Job is often thought to picture someone who was not an Israelite but who worshiped God rightly in his heart in the patriarchal period.
Abram knew God as El-Shaddai, "God Almighty," according to one strand of the Pentateuch (Exod. 6:3). He did not know God as YHWH. El was the king of the gods in the Canaanite pantheon, like Zeus in Greece. Is it therefore possible that God met Abraham within his understanding, asking him to worship the highest God, without correcting his sense of the other gods (cf. Ps. 82)? Melchizedek was also a priest of "God Most High," El-Elyon. So here is God, long before written revelation, meeting godly people where they were at in their understanding.
At each point, God seems to refine the understanding. God reveals himself as YHWH, as the "I AM," at the burning bush...
Saturday, September 08, 2012
Grudem: The Inerrancy of Scripture
Continuing my series reviewing Wayne Grudem's Systematic Theology: http://cafetutorials.blogspot.com/2012/07/christian-theology.html
Chapter 5 is entitled: "The Inerrancy of Scripture"
____________
Summary
Grudem begins by referring back to one of his arguments in chapter 4 (82, n. 13):
1. The Bible is God's words.
2. God never lies.
3. Therefore, the Bible never lies.
He extends this in chapter 6 on inerrancy. "The inerrancy of Scripture means that Scripture in the original manuscripts does not affirm anything that is contrary to fact" (91). What does he mean by this? He does not say so but he implicitly is referring to the Bible taken in its plain sense (usually its literal sense, although sometimes the plain sense can be figurative). And he means "everything it talks about," every detail (93). "The Bible itself does not make any restriction on the kinds of subjects to which it speaks truthfully" (93). He is ultimately referring to things like historical details, scientific implications, attributions of authorship, etc...
He gives three further clarifications:
1. The Bible can be inerrant and still speak in the ordinary language of everyday speech.
2. Loose or free quotations are not errors.
3. Unusual or uncommon grammatical constructions aren't errors.
He also addresses some challenges to his (Chicago Statement) understanding of inerrancy:
1. Some say the Bible is only authoritative in areas of faith and practice.
Some groups from the late 1960s started to distinguish the word "infallible" from the word "inerrancy," where infallible meant that the authority of the Bible only extended to matters of faith and practice. I suspect that he rightly describes the way the language evolved (93 n. 2). He has a long paragraph on pages 93-94 where he argues that "the New Testament writers were willing to rely on the truthfulness of any part of the historical narratives of the Old Testament."
2. Some say the term inerrancy is a poor term.
His rejoinder is that "we often use nonbiblical terms to summarize a biblical teaching" (95).
3. Some say it's misleading to speak of inerrancy in the original manuscripts since we don't have them.
But their content is 99% assured. Basically, "the current published scholarly texts of the Hebrew Old Testament and Greek New Testament are the same as the original manuscripts" (96).
4. Some say the biblical writers accommodated their messages in minor details to the false ideas current in their day or taught those ideas in an incidental way.
So, he says, doesn't that imply that God is a lying God? What kind of a role model does that make God, a God who makes "white lies" (97). Can't God use human language to communicate perfectly without having to affirm any false ideas.
5. Some say this overlooks the human side of Scripture, overemphasizing the divine aspect.
6. Some say there are clear errors in the Bible.
"There are many evangelical Bible scholars today who will say that they do not presently know of any problem texts for which there is no satisfactory solution" (99).
The chapter ends with some problems Grudem thinks follow from denying inerrancy:
1. It creates moral problems--should we imitate God and lie in small matters too?
2. If we deny inerrancy, can we really trust anything God says?
3. If we deny inerrancy, we make our own human minds a higher standard of truth that God's word itself.
4. If we think the Bible is wrong on some minor details, then we must also say it is wrong in some of its doctrines as well.
Evaluation
These are very unfortunate chapters to me. They're unfortunate because we could have a much more helpful discussion of how God speaks through the Bible without all the misunderstandings that are "fundamental" to Grudem and his fundamentalism. We could have talked about the spiritual and sacramental quality of Scripture, whereby God mysteriously speaks to us and changes us. We could have talked about how God met the authors and audiences where they were at.
Instead, we're forced to get under the hood to see why his engine doesn't run so well sometimes. He's not wired the thing correctly. It runs... it just doesn't run well.
Grudem's already acknowledged that his argument is circular--he assumes certain things and goes from there. He also warns us about making our own human minds a higher standard of truth than the Bible. But since his argument is circular, he starts with the assumptions of his own mind as well, as I've already said repeatedly. In fact, because he doesn't dig into the probable assumptions of the texts themselves, his assumptions are far more his than those of the texts themselves.
This is a problem with his sort of inerrantist. He thinks he has a high view of the text but isn't willing to let the texts themselves set their own agenda. So it turns out their high idea is what is important to them, not the texts themselves. In practice, his method actually rapes and violates these texts repeatedly in the name of a so called "high idea."
What if the real situation, the one that actually listens to the biblical texts--rather than shoving preconceived definitions down their throat--goes like this:
1. God spoke to the people of the Bible mostly in their own categories, in their own thought categories.
2. God's speaking was more about changing their heart than giving them perfect understanding.
3. God has given us the Bible as a place to meet him and be changed by him, and his Spirit continues to walk with us today as we work out our salvation with fear and trembling.
We can still affirm that the Bible is inerrant in all that God affirms through it, infallible in all that God tries to do through it, authoritative in all that God commands through it. Grudem doesn't accept the incarnation principle fully. He'll accept that a phrase like "the sun rises" is simply putting things in the perspective of the author. But he won't accept that "As David said" could be exactly the same thing. There are arbitrary boundaries to his own rules.
I'm also emphasizing in my wording that God is the authority behind the Bible. The words themselves, as all words, are capable of all sorts of meaning. The meaning that is inerrant, infallible, and authoritative is the meaning God wanted and wants them to have. But it's all about God--the text is a means to an end, not an end in itself. Grudem arguably makes the Bible into a barrier between us and God and his god is the pop-up God he splices together from his out-of-context readings of the Bible rather than the immortal, invisible, real God-only-wise that stands behind it.
I said there are arbitrary boundaries to his rules. So I'm with him that grammatical infelicities, loose quotations, and street Greek aren't errors. But why stop there. What if some creative license was acceptable in ancient biography or history writing? What if Genesis 1 is more poetic than literal? Why would those be errors if they were perfectly acceptable at the time of writing?
And why only inerrant in the original manuscripts? Because your sense of God's speaking is so limited that you have to have a strong demarcation of what is in and what is out, of which text is the right one? Funny, God doesn't seem to have been so concerned. If God is really that concerned with the precise contents why didn't he reveal the list? Why didn't God reveal a list of the authoritative OT books in the gospels or Paul? Why doesn't Revelation include a list of the NT books that are authoritative? Why did God let the church debate such things for 400 years? Why didn't he preserve the original manuscripts? Why did he let the church, on your admission, overwhelmingly use the less original text for 1500 years?
The best answer is that God isn't nearly as concerned about these sorts of things as Grudem is. That God is primarily interested in a relationship with us, not having us memorize and regurgitate head knowledge. God meets us where we are at with our understanding and moves us along in our hearts and lives.
So let's quickly go through some of Grudem's claims. First, there is a difference between what might cause me doubt and what is true. Let's say there was only one blind man that Jesus healed around Jericho, does that make it untrue that "in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth"? Not at all. The truth in one part of Scripture is not contingent on the truthfulness of another part. Truth is truth, no matter where it comes.
I actually agree with Grudem that the distinction made in the last part of the twentieth century between inerrant and infallible was somewhat of a false distinction, but not for the same reason. Every word of the Bible was revealed in the language and categories of its audiences. That means that even in matters of faith and practice we have to do some translation.
For example, the OT does not deny the existence of other gods like Dagon and Ba'al. It is henotheist rather than technically monotheist. We call them demons in the New Testament. The understanding of God's relationship to evil develops in the pages of the Bible as well. In Samuel, God sends evil spirits and tempts people. In Chronicles, Satan tempts and in James, God certainly doesn't tempt. So even in matters of faith and practice, we need to consider God's continuing relationship with his people to have a full picture of who he is. Matters of faith and practice in the Bible are also incarnated truths.
There is also something quite Victorian about Grudem's assumptions about lying. There is lying in a military context in the Bible (Rahab). If John 7:8-10 were not telling us about Jesus, I'm quite sure Grudem would consider it wrongful lying. Grudem's preoccupations with precise history and such are part of his own sub-cultural assumptions. Think more in terms of teaching a child. It's more important to move them in the right direction than for them to understand everything.
So inerrancy is probably a poor term today, given the way it is used by fundamentalists like Grudem. But it is usable, if we use it more generally and not as Grudem himself or the Chicago Statement does. Obviously anything God taught or teaches through Scripture is without error if we understand it in context. Obviously anything God commanded or commands through Scripture is absolutely authoritative. Obviously anything God intended and intends to do (e.g., to promise) through Scripture will not fail.
As Asbury Seminary puts it, "The Bible is without error in all it affirms." Then we get to work together to figure out what that is.
A key insight in all of this is to realize that the same words can be taken by different people to teach, command, or promise different things. The God-breathed interpretation at any time is arguably a Spiritual one, and that is a key insight into understanding 2 Peter 1:20-21. Indeed, this has been a previous critique of mine in this series. Grudem assumes that the teaching, commanding, and promising of Scripture will always take place with the plain or literal sense of a text.
But this is not what the Bible itself actually does. More complicated? Yes. More accurate? Yes. Grudem's wiring can work a good deal of the time, on the simple things. But his wiring will lead us to fight against God when things get more complicated.
Chapter 5 is entitled: "The Inerrancy of Scripture"
____________
Summary
Grudem begins by referring back to one of his arguments in chapter 4 (82, n. 13):
1. The Bible is God's words.
2. God never lies.
3. Therefore, the Bible never lies.
He extends this in chapter 6 on inerrancy. "The inerrancy of Scripture means that Scripture in the original manuscripts does not affirm anything that is contrary to fact" (91). What does he mean by this? He does not say so but he implicitly is referring to the Bible taken in its plain sense (usually its literal sense, although sometimes the plain sense can be figurative). And he means "everything it talks about," every detail (93). "The Bible itself does not make any restriction on the kinds of subjects to which it speaks truthfully" (93). He is ultimately referring to things like historical details, scientific implications, attributions of authorship, etc...
He gives three further clarifications:
1. The Bible can be inerrant and still speak in the ordinary language of everyday speech.
2. Loose or free quotations are not errors.
3. Unusual or uncommon grammatical constructions aren't errors.
He also addresses some challenges to his (Chicago Statement) understanding of inerrancy:
1. Some say the Bible is only authoritative in areas of faith and practice.
Some groups from the late 1960s started to distinguish the word "infallible" from the word "inerrancy," where infallible meant that the authority of the Bible only extended to matters of faith and practice. I suspect that he rightly describes the way the language evolved (93 n. 2). He has a long paragraph on pages 93-94 where he argues that "the New Testament writers were willing to rely on the truthfulness of any part of the historical narratives of the Old Testament."
2. Some say the term inerrancy is a poor term.
His rejoinder is that "we often use nonbiblical terms to summarize a biblical teaching" (95).
3. Some say it's misleading to speak of inerrancy in the original manuscripts since we don't have them.
But their content is 99% assured. Basically, "the current published scholarly texts of the Hebrew Old Testament and Greek New Testament are the same as the original manuscripts" (96).
4. Some say the biblical writers accommodated their messages in minor details to the false ideas current in their day or taught those ideas in an incidental way.
So, he says, doesn't that imply that God is a lying God? What kind of a role model does that make God, a God who makes "white lies" (97). Can't God use human language to communicate perfectly without having to affirm any false ideas.
5. Some say this overlooks the human side of Scripture, overemphasizing the divine aspect.
6. Some say there are clear errors in the Bible.
"There are many evangelical Bible scholars today who will say that they do not presently know of any problem texts for which there is no satisfactory solution" (99).
The chapter ends with some problems Grudem thinks follow from denying inerrancy:
1. It creates moral problems--should we imitate God and lie in small matters too?
2. If we deny inerrancy, can we really trust anything God says?
3. If we deny inerrancy, we make our own human minds a higher standard of truth that God's word itself.
4. If we think the Bible is wrong on some minor details, then we must also say it is wrong in some of its doctrines as well.
Evaluation
These are very unfortunate chapters to me. They're unfortunate because we could have a much more helpful discussion of how God speaks through the Bible without all the misunderstandings that are "fundamental" to Grudem and his fundamentalism. We could have talked about the spiritual and sacramental quality of Scripture, whereby God mysteriously speaks to us and changes us. We could have talked about how God met the authors and audiences where they were at.
Instead, we're forced to get under the hood to see why his engine doesn't run so well sometimes. He's not wired the thing correctly. It runs... it just doesn't run well.
Grudem's already acknowledged that his argument is circular--he assumes certain things and goes from there. He also warns us about making our own human minds a higher standard of truth than the Bible. But since his argument is circular, he starts with the assumptions of his own mind as well, as I've already said repeatedly. In fact, because he doesn't dig into the probable assumptions of the texts themselves, his assumptions are far more his than those of the texts themselves.
This is a problem with his sort of inerrantist. He thinks he has a high view of the text but isn't willing to let the texts themselves set their own agenda. So it turns out their high idea is what is important to them, not the texts themselves. In practice, his method actually rapes and violates these texts repeatedly in the name of a so called "high idea."
What if the real situation, the one that actually listens to the biblical texts--rather than shoving preconceived definitions down their throat--goes like this:
1. God spoke to the people of the Bible mostly in their own categories, in their own thought categories.
2. God's speaking was more about changing their heart than giving them perfect understanding.
3. God has given us the Bible as a place to meet him and be changed by him, and his Spirit continues to walk with us today as we work out our salvation with fear and trembling.
We can still affirm that the Bible is inerrant in all that God affirms through it, infallible in all that God tries to do through it, authoritative in all that God commands through it. Grudem doesn't accept the incarnation principle fully. He'll accept that a phrase like "the sun rises" is simply putting things in the perspective of the author. But he won't accept that "As David said" could be exactly the same thing. There are arbitrary boundaries to his own rules.
I'm also emphasizing in my wording that God is the authority behind the Bible. The words themselves, as all words, are capable of all sorts of meaning. The meaning that is inerrant, infallible, and authoritative is the meaning God wanted and wants them to have. But it's all about God--the text is a means to an end, not an end in itself. Grudem arguably makes the Bible into a barrier between us and God and his god is the pop-up God he splices together from his out-of-context readings of the Bible rather than the immortal, invisible, real God-only-wise that stands behind it.
I said there are arbitrary boundaries to his rules. So I'm with him that grammatical infelicities, loose quotations, and street Greek aren't errors. But why stop there. What if some creative license was acceptable in ancient biography or history writing? What if Genesis 1 is more poetic than literal? Why would those be errors if they were perfectly acceptable at the time of writing?
And why only inerrant in the original manuscripts? Because your sense of God's speaking is so limited that you have to have a strong demarcation of what is in and what is out, of which text is the right one? Funny, God doesn't seem to have been so concerned. If God is really that concerned with the precise contents why didn't he reveal the list? Why didn't God reveal a list of the authoritative OT books in the gospels or Paul? Why doesn't Revelation include a list of the NT books that are authoritative? Why did God let the church debate such things for 400 years? Why didn't he preserve the original manuscripts? Why did he let the church, on your admission, overwhelmingly use the less original text for 1500 years?
The best answer is that God isn't nearly as concerned about these sorts of things as Grudem is. That God is primarily interested in a relationship with us, not having us memorize and regurgitate head knowledge. God meets us where we are at with our understanding and moves us along in our hearts and lives.
So let's quickly go through some of Grudem's claims. First, there is a difference between what might cause me doubt and what is true. Let's say there was only one blind man that Jesus healed around Jericho, does that make it untrue that "in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth"? Not at all. The truth in one part of Scripture is not contingent on the truthfulness of another part. Truth is truth, no matter where it comes.
I actually agree with Grudem that the distinction made in the last part of the twentieth century between inerrant and infallible was somewhat of a false distinction, but not for the same reason. Every word of the Bible was revealed in the language and categories of its audiences. That means that even in matters of faith and practice we have to do some translation.
For example, the OT does not deny the existence of other gods like Dagon and Ba'al. It is henotheist rather than technically monotheist. We call them demons in the New Testament. The understanding of God's relationship to evil develops in the pages of the Bible as well. In Samuel, God sends evil spirits and tempts people. In Chronicles, Satan tempts and in James, God certainly doesn't tempt. So even in matters of faith and practice, we need to consider God's continuing relationship with his people to have a full picture of who he is. Matters of faith and practice in the Bible are also incarnated truths.
There is also something quite Victorian about Grudem's assumptions about lying. There is lying in a military context in the Bible (Rahab). If John 7:8-10 were not telling us about Jesus, I'm quite sure Grudem would consider it wrongful lying. Grudem's preoccupations with precise history and such are part of his own sub-cultural assumptions. Think more in terms of teaching a child. It's more important to move them in the right direction than for them to understand everything.
So inerrancy is probably a poor term today, given the way it is used by fundamentalists like Grudem. But it is usable, if we use it more generally and not as Grudem himself or the Chicago Statement does. Obviously anything God taught or teaches through Scripture is without error if we understand it in context. Obviously anything God commanded or commands through Scripture is absolutely authoritative. Obviously anything God intended and intends to do (e.g., to promise) through Scripture will not fail.
As Asbury Seminary puts it, "The Bible is without error in all it affirms." Then we get to work together to figure out what that is.
A key insight in all of this is to realize that the same words can be taken by different people to teach, command, or promise different things. The God-breathed interpretation at any time is arguably a Spiritual one, and that is a key insight into understanding 2 Peter 1:20-21. Indeed, this has been a previous critique of mine in this series. Grudem assumes that the teaching, commanding, and promising of Scripture will always take place with the plain or literal sense of a text.
But this is not what the Bible itself actually does. More complicated? Yes. More accurate? Yes. Grudem's wiring can work a good deal of the time, on the simple things. But his wiring will lead us to fight against God when things get more complicated.
Friday, September 07, 2012
Educational Microevolution
It occurred to me the other day that the current changes underway in education are a little like the peppered moth in England in the 17 and 1800s. In the 1700s, before the Industrial Revolution, white peppered moths thrived because they blended into the trees. Black peppered moths, on the other hand, were easily seen by birds and so were much lower in population.
Enter the Industrial Revolution and the burning of coal all over England. The trees became sooted and now, the population of black peppered moth began to thrive and the population of the white peppered moth took a nose dive. In biology this is called natural selection--nature "selects" for survival the species that are most suited to adapt to a particular environment.
It occurred to me that we are seeing a similar shift in college education right now, especially in the online environment. The professor who nature will select tends to be more administratively gifted, one who gives relatively quick feedback and can manage more and more moving parts. This is especially true for online courses.
Relevance is another element. Somehow, a lot of colleges and universities have been able to get by with a frequent focus on truth for its own sake. With the availability of online classes and the rise of community colleges, the stationery "come live here for 4 years" college won't be able to compete unless their greater value is somehow apparent, especially if they remain exorbitantly more expensive.
So the old professor who just lectures and talks about whatever research s/he's doing, of no interest or relevance to the student is a white peppered moth in an Educational Revolution. The ponderous, absent minded professor, the foreign grad student that no one can understand, they're not going to be selected. The deep professor who leaves the student thinking, "It sure sounds like English but I haven't a clue what she's saying"... crow feed.
The college that specializes in the liberal arts, unless they're high end or have other programs to keep that sinking consumer ship afloat... bird prey.
Enter the Industrial Revolution and the burning of coal all over England. The trees became sooted and now, the population of black peppered moth began to thrive and the population of the white peppered moth took a nose dive. In biology this is called natural selection--nature "selects" for survival the species that are most suited to adapt to a particular environment.
It occurred to me that we are seeing a similar shift in college education right now, especially in the online environment. The professor who nature will select tends to be more administratively gifted, one who gives relatively quick feedback and can manage more and more moving parts. This is especially true for online courses.
Relevance is another element. Somehow, a lot of colleges and universities have been able to get by with a frequent focus on truth for its own sake. With the availability of online classes and the rise of community colleges, the stationery "come live here for 4 years" college won't be able to compete unless their greater value is somehow apparent, especially if they remain exorbitantly more expensive.
So the old professor who just lectures and talks about whatever research s/he's doing, of no interest or relevance to the student is a white peppered moth in an Educational Revolution. The ponderous, absent minded professor, the foreign grad student that no one can understand, they're not going to be selected. The deep professor who leaves the student thinking, "It sure sounds like English but I haven't a clue what she's saying"... crow feed.
The college that specializes in the liberal arts, unless they're high end or have other programs to keep that sinking consumer ship afloat... bird prey.
Thursday, September 06, 2012
A Robust Sense of Evangelism
Scot McKnight, in King Jesus Gospel has, along with N. T. Wright, refocused us on what the gospel actually is in the New Testament. Despite the embarrassment of the Gospel Coalition, whose key players for some time have been trying their hardest to plug the leaks in their sinking ship.
Sorry, the truth doesn't care. The gospel is the good news that 1) our God reigns (Gospels) and that 2) Jesus is king (Paul), 3) along with all the good stuff that entails (Acts). It's not about how to get saved and, although our salvation is part of the good news, it is a minor part. It is more an implication of the gospel than the focus of the gospel. In Luke, the gospel is primarily good news to the poor and the disempowered (thus the GC conference this year where they will apply all their intellect to argue that the earth is flat).
Here's the next step. Since the gospel is God and Jesus focused--not me focused, not my salvation focused--this has implications for what it means to "evangelize" and what "evangelism" is (since it is the verb, "to proclaim the good news") and what an "evangelist" is ("someone who proclaims the good news").
An evangelist is someone who proclaims the good news that our God reigns (Gospels) and that Jesus is king (Paul), along with all the good stuff that entails (Acts). To evangelize is to proclaim to others the good news that our God reigns, that his kingdom made its Normandy landing in the ministry of Jesus (Gospels), that Jesus is God's king over the cosmos (Paul). That proclamation is evangelism.
True, going would seem to be part of this evangelism and, yes, such preaching aims at a response. What response? Confession of the lordship of Jesus, of course, since he is king (Romans 10). Repentance and submission to the rule of God, of course (Gospels). Such a response of course means you will be saved, but that is a consequence. The focus is on the reign of God and his Christ, not on me.
A final word on the Great Commission. The Great Commission is about making disciples. Nothing is mentioned about evangelism, although evangelism certainly fits with the Great Commission. But evangelism is not mentioned. You make disciples by 1) baptizing them and 2) teaching them. Baptizing does get them in, but involved a confession of Jesus as Lord and thus submission to his kingship. Becoming a follower was thus not a matter of praying a sinner's prayer or a moment of justification.
Once we have a more accurate understanding of the gospel, then we'll have to have a more robust sense of evangelism too.
Sorry, the truth doesn't care. The gospel is the good news that 1) our God reigns (Gospels) and that 2) Jesus is king (Paul), 3) along with all the good stuff that entails (Acts). It's not about how to get saved and, although our salvation is part of the good news, it is a minor part. It is more an implication of the gospel than the focus of the gospel. In Luke, the gospel is primarily good news to the poor and the disempowered (thus the GC conference this year where they will apply all their intellect to argue that the earth is flat).
Here's the next step. Since the gospel is God and Jesus focused--not me focused, not my salvation focused--this has implications for what it means to "evangelize" and what "evangelism" is (since it is the verb, "to proclaim the good news") and what an "evangelist" is ("someone who proclaims the good news").
An evangelist is someone who proclaims the good news that our God reigns (Gospels) and that Jesus is king (Paul), along with all the good stuff that entails (Acts). To evangelize is to proclaim to others the good news that our God reigns, that his kingdom made its Normandy landing in the ministry of Jesus (Gospels), that Jesus is God's king over the cosmos (Paul). That proclamation is evangelism.
True, going would seem to be part of this evangelism and, yes, such preaching aims at a response. What response? Confession of the lordship of Jesus, of course, since he is king (Romans 10). Repentance and submission to the rule of God, of course (Gospels). Such a response of course means you will be saved, but that is a consequence. The focus is on the reign of God and his Christ, not on me.
A final word on the Great Commission. The Great Commission is about making disciples. Nothing is mentioned about evangelism, although evangelism certainly fits with the Great Commission. But evangelism is not mentioned. You make disciples by 1) baptizing them and 2) teaching them. Baptizing does get them in, but involved a confession of Jesus as Lord and thus submission to his kingship. Becoming a follower was thus not a matter of praying a sinner's prayer or a moment of justification.
Once we have a more accurate understanding of the gospel, then we'll have to have a more robust sense of evangelism too.
Wednesday, September 05, 2012
1.5 Mark Part 2
continued from yesterday
_______________
... It is easy for us to forget that Jesus participated fully in humanity. He suspended his knowledge of all things while he was on earth (e.g., Mark 13:32). Even though we believe he was God, on earth he had to learn who he was, and he had to learn God's will, just as we do.
Jesus taught, and he taught primarily in stories and riddles. The primary example Mark gives us is Jesus' parable of the soils in Mark 4. A farmer throws seed on four different kinds of soil: the path, rocky soil, soil where there were weeds, and good soil. Birds snatch the first. The second has no root and so gets scorched by the sun. The third gets choked by weeds, and only the seed on the fourth soil thrives.
Jesus' point is that not everyone will respond appropriately to his news of the kingdom. Only the one who "has ears to hear" will hear and follow (4:9). Ironically, Jesus' own followers don't understand this riddle, a fact to which we will return in the next chapter. Jesus' own disciples don't understand the parable whose point is that only those with faith will understand his riddles!
Inevitably, Jesus got into conflict. He didn't go looking for it. It inevitably came looking for him. When you are making as big an impact as Jesus was, some people are going to feel threatened. They're going to get jealous. Some are just going to flat disagree with you. Jesus had his share of that, and eventually it grew so great that they put him to death.
Mark, Part 2
The turning point of Mark, as is often said, comes after Jesus acknowledges to Peter that he is the Christ, the expected anointed one of Israel (Mark 8:27-30). The tone and direction of Mark changes from that point on. Up to this point, everything has been, "go, go, go!" Jesus has healed, he has cast out demons, crowds of immense proportions have followed him.
But now the tone changes. Three times Jesus will tell his disciples that he is going to Jerusalem to die. There is a sense of foreboding and destiny. Although Jesus does still heal and the crowds still follows, he seems to spend more time privately with his key followers.
Mark 9 records the curious event of the Transfiguration, where Peter and James and John see Elijah and Moses appear with Jesus. They will emerge as a core group of disciples within the larger group of the Twelve, even after the resurrection. Unfortunately, James and John seemed to want such privileged roles. They got into conflict with the other disciples over their desire to have the highest roles in the coming kingdom (10:35-40).
Indeed, at another point the whole group of disciples were arguing over who would be the greatest when the kingdom would come (9:34). They must have thought that they were going to Jerusalem for Jesus to become king, not to die. We will return to the disciples' lack of understanding in the next chapter, a key theme of Mark...
_______________
... It is easy for us to forget that Jesus participated fully in humanity. He suspended his knowledge of all things while he was on earth (e.g., Mark 13:32). Even though we believe he was God, on earth he had to learn who he was, and he had to learn God's will, just as we do.
Jesus taught, and he taught primarily in stories and riddles. The primary example Mark gives us is Jesus' parable of the soils in Mark 4. A farmer throws seed on four different kinds of soil: the path, rocky soil, soil where there were weeds, and good soil. Birds snatch the first. The second has no root and so gets scorched by the sun. The third gets choked by weeds, and only the seed on the fourth soil thrives.
Jesus' point is that not everyone will respond appropriately to his news of the kingdom. Only the one who "has ears to hear" will hear and follow (4:9). Ironically, Jesus' own followers don't understand this riddle, a fact to which we will return in the next chapter. Jesus' own disciples don't understand the parable whose point is that only those with faith will understand his riddles!
Inevitably, Jesus got into conflict. He didn't go looking for it. It inevitably came looking for him. When you are making as big an impact as Jesus was, some people are going to feel threatened. They're going to get jealous. Some are just going to flat disagree with you. Jesus had his share of that, and eventually it grew so great that they put him to death.
Mark, Part 2
The turning point of Mark, as is often said, comes after Jesus acknowledges to Peter that he is the Christ, the expected anointed one of Israel (Mark 8:27-30). The tone and direction of Mark changes from that point on. Up to this point, everything has been, "go, go, go!" Jesus has healed, he has cast out demons, crowds of immense proportions have followed him.
But now the tone changes. Three times Jesus will tell his disciples that he is going to Jerusalem to die. There is a sense of foreboding and destiny. Although Jesus does still heal and the crowds still follows, he seems to spend more time privately with his key followers.
Mark 9 records the curious event of the Transfiguration, where Peter and James and John see Elijah and Moses appear with Jesus. They will emerge as a core group of disciples within the larger group of the Twelve, even after the resurrection. Unfortunately, James and John seemed to want such privileged roles. They got into conflict with the other disciples over their desire to have the highest roles in the coming kingdom (10:35-40).
Indeed, at another point the whole group of disciples were arguing over who would be the greatest when the kingdom would come (9:34). They must have thought that they were going to Jerusalem for Jesus to become king, not to die. We will return to the disciples' lack of understanding in the next chapter, a key theme of Mark...
Tuesday, September 04, 2012
The True Wesleyan ;-)
I decided to take some old blog posts from a while back and self-publish them. The result is a short 48 page, $6.99 book called, The True Wesleyan.
I also Kindle-fied it ($2.99):
Here are the (very short) chapters:
1. The True Wesleyan
2. A Generous Tradition
3. A Heart-Oriented Tradition
4. God Is Love
5. The Cross as Love
6. Human Freedom
7. Optimistic about Love
8. Loving the Whole Person
9. Loving into Social Structures
10. The Importance of Faithfulness
11. Scripture as Sacrament
12. Looking Ahead
By the way, I can self-publish any of my blog series anyone likes ;-) "The Antichrist," anyone?
I also Kindle-fied it ($2.99):
Here are the (very short) chapters:
1. The True Wesleyan
2. A Generous Tradition
3. A Heart-Oriented Tradition
4. God Is Love
5. The Cross as Love
6. Human Freedom
7. Optimistic about Love
8. Loving the Whole Person
9. Loving into Social Structures
10. The Importance of Faithfulness
11. Scripture as Sacrament
12. Looking Ahead
By the way, I can self-publish any of my blog series anyone likes ;-) "The Antichrist," anyone?
1.4 More Mark
continued from here. I've had a writer's block on moving forward. Like a knot in a muscle, you just have to rub it out.
_________
The first 13 verses of Mark set the stage for Jesus' ministry. We meet John the Baptist, and Jesus is baptized by John. Jesus is driven to the desert where he is tempted in preparation for his mission.
Then 1:14-15 arguably give us the key verses of Mark. This begins the first half of the gospel in earnest (1:14-8:30). What did Jesus preach? He preached that the kingdom of God was arriving. The climax of this section is arguably in 8:27-30 where Peter acknowledges for the first time that Jesus himself is the Christ, the earthly king of the kingdom. [1]
So we have the announcement of the kingdom at the beginning of this section, but the disciples do not yet fully know Jesus' role in that kingdom. He is simply its chief proponent, now that John the Baptist has been arrested. But by the end of the section they acknowledge that he is in fact the Christ of that kingdom.
Jesus does several different kinds of things in the intervening verses. He recruits and trains followers. In Mark, recruiting Peter, Andrew, James, and John is the first thing he does after he starts preaching the kingdom (1:16-20). [2] Later he will call a tax collector named Levi (2:13-17). [3] Still later Jesus' followers will coalesce into 12 key individuals (3:13-19), probably symbolizing the restoration of the 12 tribes of Israel. Then Jesus sends them out to preach just as he has (6:6-13).
These 12 only scratch the surface of those who followed Jesus in Galilee. The story of Jesus feeding 5000 people one day alone points to a much larger group of Jesus-followers. The early church understood these twelve to be unique in a way that none since have been or could be (e.g., Acts 1:25; 1 Cor. 15:5). And while Paul understood himself and others to be apostles as well, witnesses to the resurrection (1 Cor. 9:1), he also likely understood himself to be the last of this group (1 Cor. 15:8).
Nevertheless, the Great Commission tells us that making disciples of Jesus didn't stop here. Jesus sends his disciples to go make other disciples. In Mark 6, Jesus sends out his disciples to assist in throwing demons out of power and in preparing people for the arrival of God's kingdom. In Matthew 28, his core followers are to teach his commandments to all the nations and to baptize them.
In recent times, we have tended to limit the Great Commission to convincing others to become Christians, but there is nothing so narrow in Matthew 28. Becoming a follower of Jesus in Matthew is more than getting baptized. It is even more than a process of learning Jesus' teachings. Becoming a follower of Jesus in Matthew means taking on Jesus' yoke (Matt. 11:28-30). It involves being willing to be persecuted, even crucified because of following Jesus (Matt. 10:38).
A second thing that Jesus did was cast out demons. When Jesus did so, he was doing something much bigger than just helping one person out, although Jesus' exorcist ministry was a clear example of his compassion toward others. Rather, many Jews at the time believed that the earthly realm had come to be in the control of demonic forces since the earliest days of humanity. Therefore, when Jesus cast out demons, he was reclaiming the earth for God--the rule of God was returning to the land once more (cf. Luke 11:20). And he sent his own followers out to participate in this sign of God's approaching kingdom.
Certainly Jesus heals many people in the first half of Mark, perhaps the most obvious example of his compassion. He heals Peter's mother-in-law (Mark 1:29-31). [4] He heals a leper (1:40-45) and a paralytic (2:1-12). He heals a man with a disabled hand (3:1-6) and someone who cannot speak or hear (7:32-37). He heals a woman with a hemorrhage (5:35-43) and even raises a girl from the dead (5:25-34).
Some of the miracles he did transcended human healing. On one occasion he multiples food to feed 5000 (6:33-44), on another 4000 (8:1-9). He calms the sea (4:35-41) and walks on water (6:47-53). These events speak of a power from God that we would call supernatural today, transcending the laws of nature.
Jesus prayed. Mark gives us only two verses on Jesus' temptation in the desert (1:12-13), but tells us elsewhere that Jesus sought on deserted places to pray (1:35). He would increasingly find it difficult to get alone for such things. If it wasn't the crowds seeking him out, then it was his followers seeking him out for the crowds. We can presume that this time alone with God not only recharged Jesus but also clarified for him his sense of God's will.
It is easy for us to forget that Jesus fully participated in humanity...
[1] In Mark's language, the kingdom of God is the kingdom of God, and thus God the Father remains the ultimate king of the kingdom.
[2]See chapter 5 of The Essential Jesus for more about the followers of Jesus.
[3] Our impulse to harmonize makes us want to equate Levi with the disciple Matthew. After all, in Matthew's version of this story, the name of this tax-collector is named Matthew. At the same time, there are some questions about this identification. So a disciple Matthew is mentioned in Mark 3:18. If it was the same person as Levi, why wasn't he called Levi there as well. Mark 2:14 says that Levi's father was Alphaeus, but Mark 3:18 identifies a James as the son of Alphaeus. None of these observations preclude the possibility that Levi is another name for Matthew.
[4] It is important for some Christian traditions that the apostles not marry, but the most obvious reading of the New Testament is that almost all the apostles had wives. Cf. 1 Cor. 9:5.
_________
The first 13 verses of Mark set the stage for Jesus' ministry. We meet John the Baptist, and Jesus is baptized by John. Jesus is driven to the desert where he is tempted in preparation for his mission.
Then 1:14-15 arguably give us the key verses of Mark. This begins the first half of the gospel in earnest (1:14-8:30). What did Jesus preach? He preached that the kingdom of God was arriving. The climax of this section is arguably in 8:27-30 where Peter acknowledges for the first time that Jesus himself is the Christ, the earthly king of the kingdom. [1]
So we have the announcement of the kingdom at the beginning of this section, but the disciples do not yet fully know Jesus' role in that kingdom. He is simply its chief proponent, now that John the Baptist has been arrested. But by the end of the section they acknowledge that he is in fact the Christ of that kingdom.
Jesus does several different kinds of things in the intervening verses. He recruits and trains followers. In Mark, recruiting Peter, Andrew, James, and John is the first thing he does after he starts preaching the kingdom (1:16-20). [2] Later he will call a tax collector named Levi (2:13-17). [3] Still later Jesus' followers will coalesce into 12 key individuals (3:13-19), probably symbolizing the restoration of the 12 tribes of Israel. Then Jesus sends them out to preach just as he has (6:6-13).
These 12 only scratch the surface of those who followed Jesus in Galilee. The story of Jesus feeding 5000 people one day alone points to a much larger group of Jesus-followers. The early church understood these twelve to be unique in a way that none since have been or could be (e.g., Acts 1:25; 1 Cor. 15:5). And while Paul understood himself and others to be apostles as well, witnesses to the resurrection (1 Cor. 9:1), he also likely understood himself to be the last of this group (1 Cor. 15:8).
Nevertheless, the Great Commission tells us that making disciples of Jesus didn't stop here. Jesus sends his disciples to go make other disciples. In Mark 6, Jesus sends out his disciples to assist in throwing demons out of power and in preparing people for the arrival of God's kingdom. In Matthew 28, his core followers are to teach his commandments to all the nations and to baptize them.
In recent times, we have tended to limit the Great Commission to convincing others to become Christians, but there is nothing so narrow in Matthew 28. Becoming a follower of Jesus in Matthew is more than getting baptized. It is even more than a process of learning Jesus' teachings. Becoming a follower of Jesus in Matthew means taking on Jesus' yoke (Matt. 11:28-30). It involves being willing to be persecuted, even crucified because of following Jesus (Matt. 10:38).
A second thing that Jesus did was cast out demons. When Jesus did so, he was doing something much bigger than just helping one person out, although Jesus' exorcist ministry was a clear example of his compassion toward others. Rather, many Jews at the time believed that the earthly realm had come to be in the control of demonic forces since the earliest days of humanity. Therefore, when Jesus cast out demons, he was reclaiming the earth for God--the rule of God was returning to the land once more (cf. Luke 11:20). And he sent his own followers out to participate in this sign of God's approaching kingdom.
Certainly Jesus heals many people in the first half of Mark, perhaps the most obvious example of his compassion. He heals Peter's mother-in-law (Mark 1:29-31). [4] He heals a leper (1:40-45) and a paralytic (2:1-12). He heals a man with a disabled hand (3:1-6) and someone who cannot speak or hear (7:32-37). He heals a woman with a hemorrhage (5:35-43) and even raises a girl from the dead (5:25-34).
Some of the miracles he did transcended human healing. On one occasion he multiples food to feed 5000 (6:33-44), on another 4000 (8:1-9). He calms the sea (4:35-41) and walks on water (6:47-53). These events speak of a power from God that we would call supernatural today, transcending the laws of nature.
Jesus prayed. Mark gives us only two verses on Jesus' temptation in the desert (1:12-13), but tells us elsewhere that Jesus sought on deserted places to pray (1:35). He would increasingly find it difficult to get alone for such things. If it wasn't the crowds seeking him out, then it was his followers seeking him out for the crowds. We can presume that this time alone with God not only recharged Jesus but also clarified for him his sense of God's will.
It is easy for us to forget that Jesus fully participated in humanity...
[1] In Mark's language, the kingdom of God is the kingdom of God, and thus God the Father remains the ultimate king of the kingdom.
[2]See chapter 5 of The Essential Jesus for more about the followers of Jesus.
[3] Our impulse to harmonize makes us want to equate Levi with the disciple Matthew. After all, in Matthew's version of this story, the name of this tax-collector is named Matthew. At the same time, there are some questions about this identification. So a disciple Matthew is mentioned in Mark 3:18. If it was the same person as Levi, why wasn't he called Levi there as well. Mark 2:14 says that Levi's father was Alphaeus, but Mark 3:18 identifies a James as the son of Alphaeus. None of these observations preclude the possibility that Levi is another name for Matthew.
[4] It is important for some Christian traditions that the apostles not marry, but the most obvious reading of the New Testament is that almost all the apostles had wives. Cf. 1 Cor. 9:5.
Monday, September 03, 2012
The Turn of the Century WC: Black and Drury
For the last three weeks I've been reading through Black and Drury's, The Story of the Wesleyan Church So far:
Chaps 1-2 About Wesley and the origins of the Wesleyan Methodist Church in abolitionism
Chaps 3-4 About its activist early days that were low church, pro-women (and anti- some other things)
Chaps 5-6 The post-Civil War let down, when the best and brightest returned to the Methodists
Today, I'm looking at chapter 7, which brought the Wesleyan Methodists to the end of the 1800s and chapter 8, the birth of what would snowball into the Pilgrim Holiness Church.
___________
End of the Century Wesleyan Methodism
Three elements in this chapter seem to point to the most important events just before the turn of the century within the WM Church. The first is that they finally called it a "church" instead of a "connection" in 1891. The second was the founding of Houghton College, the first college venture that really stuck within the denomination. The third was the beginning of significant missions, in particular the sending of the Johnston's to Sierra Leone, West Africa in 1889. Father and son would die within five years.
Of great interest was also the founding of African-American conferences that were separate from the white conferences. This was not forced on these Wesleyans--they wanted to have their own districts--but it seems a defeat and that is how Black and Drury take it. Surely there was another way to allow them to have their own connection while being full members of integrated districts.
Also of interest in this chapter is the move toward "pre-millennialism." At the turn of the century, dispensationalism was becoming a strong force in America with its sense of a rapture, tribulation, and anti-Christ. Up to that point, Black and Drury argue, Wesleyan Methodism had been "post-millennial," optimistic about the possibility of changing the world. Enter the gloom of impending crisis, where things would get worse and worse until the second coming.
By the way, they were all wrong, weren't they? Over a hundred years ago the Left Behind types were preaching it was all going to happen ASAP and it didn't. SO STOP IT! Dispensationalism has only survived because of short term memory.
Birth of the Pilgrim Holiness Church
Well, not exactly. There were a number of holiness associations that rose in the late 1800s, several of which would later snowball into the Pilgrim Holiness Church. But the one later Pilgrims have always pointed to is the formation of the International Holiness Union and Prayer League that took place in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1897 in the home of Martin Wells Knapp. That location would become God's Bible School. Both the school and the paper he founded, The Revivalist, are still going strong. Knapp would die before he realized he had founded a church.
His co-founder was Seth C. Rees. Rees was a Quaker, and I have occasionally mentioned elements of Quaker thought that I consider strengths of the Pilgrim heritage of the Wesleyan Church. Holiness was the key basis for the new group. This is the doctrine of a second experience that empowers a person not only to do the right thing but to do so gladly and easily. They were, in short, Pentecostals before tongues got mixed into the equation.
They were fiery preachers. They were entrepreneurial with a very loose organizational structure. "For decades, Pilgrims were more like a ragtag band than an orderly denomination" (104). Their motto was "In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things charity." Of course they saw a lot of non-essential things as essential, no doubt.
One thing they didn't know was the later wall fundamentalism created between social ministry and evangelism. They preached getting saved, getting sanctified, the possibility of healing, and the soon return of Christ (the "fourfold gospel")... and they ministered in the slums, in prisons, started city missions, went to hospitals... Like the Salvation Army, the Pilgrims were full blown "social" alongside their full blown "gospel."
Chaps 1-2 About Wesley and the origins of the Wesleyan Methodist Church in abolitionism
Chaps 3-4 About its activist early days that were low church, pro-women (and anti- some other things)
Chaps 5-6 The post-Civil War let down, when the best and brightest returned to the Methodists
Today, I'm looking at chapter 7, which brought the Wesleyan Methodists to the end of the 1800s and chapter 8, the birth of what would snowball into the Pilgrim Holiness Church.
___________
End of the Century Wesleyan Methodism
Three elements in this chapter seem to point to the most important events just before the turn of the century within the WM Church. The first is that they finally called it a "church" instead of a "connection" in 1891. The second was the founding of Houghton College, the first college venture that really stuck within the denomination. The third was the beginning of significant missions, in particular the sending of the Johnston's to Sierra Leone, West Africa in 1889. Father and son would die within five years.
Of great interest was also the founding of African-American conferences that were separate from the white conferences. This was not forced on these Wesleyans--they wanted to have their own districts--but it seems a defeat and that is how Black and Drury take it. Surely there was another way to allow them to have their own connection while being full members of integrated districts.
Also of interest in this chapter is the move toward "pre-millennialism." At the turn of the century, dispensationalism was becoming a strong force in America with its sense of a rapture, tribulation, and anti-Christ. Up to that point, Black and Drury argue, Wesleyan Methodism had been "post-millennial," optimistic about the possibility of changing the world. Enter the gloom of impending crisis, where things would get worse and worse until the second coming.
By the way, they were all wrong, weren't they? Over a hundred years ago the Left Behind types were preaching it was all going to happen ASAP and it didn't. SO STOP IT! Dispensationalism has only survived because of short term memory.
Birth of the Pilgrim Holiness Church
Well, not exactly. There were a number of holiness associations that rose in the late 1800s, several of which would later snowball into the Pilgrim Holiness Church. But the one later Pilgrims have always pointed to is the formation of the International Holiness Union and Prayer League that took place in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1897 in the home of Martin Wells Knapp. That location would become God's Bible School. Both the school and the paper he founded, The Revivalist, are still going strong. Knapp would die before he realized he had founded a church.
His co-founder was Seth C. Rees. Rees was a Quaker, and I have occasionally mentioned elements of Quaker thought that I consider strengths of the Pilgrim heritage of the Wesleyan Church. Holiness was the key basis for the new group. This is the doctrine of a second experience that empowers a person not only to do the right thing but to do so gladly and easily. They were, in short, Pentecostals before tongues got mixed into the equation.
They were fiery preachers. They were entrepreneurial with a very loose organizational structure. "For decades, Pilgrims were more like a ragtag band than an orderly denomination" (104). Their motto was "In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things charity." Of course they saw a lot of non-essential things as essential, no doubt.
One thing they didn't know was the later wall fundamentalism created between social ministry and evangelism. They preached getting saved, getting sanctified, the possibility of healing, and the soon return of Christ (the "fourfold gospel")... and they ministered in the slums, in prisons, started city missions, went to hospitals... Like the Salvation Army, the Pilgrims were full blown "social" alongside their full blown "gospel."
Sunday, September 02, 2012
Grudem: Authority of Scripture 2
... continued from yesterday
__________
So what is the authority of Scripture? It is, first of all, the authority of God. Any authority the Bible has, it has because God stands behind it as the speaker/transformer. When I read Grudem, I begin to fear that he has made the Bible into an idol, as if the Bible were now detached from God and could be worshiped as an end-in-itself. But the Bible is a means to an end, to bring us to God and Christ. The Bible does not exhaust God and God can speak to us/change us in other ways too.
The Bible is thus the mediated authority of God, and it was mediated through people who lived in other times and places in "many and various ways," but chiefly through his Son (Heb. 1:1-2). One of the greatest ironies of Grudem's approach, a fundamentalist approach to Scripture, is that it has a hidden agenda for how Scripture can speak. It does not come to the Bible with a blank sheet of paper but with its own questions for the Bible to answer, not letting the Bible say what questions it wants to answer. How you pose a question has everything to do with the answer you get.
So while Grudem quotes many verses, he has already decided what it means for the Bible to be truthful or what a "writing" is without realizing how deeply these sorts of categories lie in our cultural assumptions. For example, it is true that the word "scripture" means "writing," but Grudem just assumes that this means a writing in the ancient world had the basic functions and characteristics of writing for him today, a literate, post-printing press, educated individual.
But those who actually try to come to the ancient world would say that the ancient world was an oral culture such that even writings were read aloud and with an oral mindset. This is probably why the early copyists of both the OT and NT documents seemed free to paraphrase the wording. This is probably why the NT authors felt free to adjust the wording of OT texts. As a typical unreflective pre-modern, Grudem reads his own assumptions into the biblical text thinking and calls it the timeless meaning.
God can indeed speak directly to us through the words of Scripture, but the original revelations were written to people who have been dead for 2000 years and more. That's what the texts actually say. You and I are not the initial audience of the "thus saith LORD" of the prophets. Not only are we not the audience but the genres are not uniform. Grudem acts like the primary purpose of a psalm or a narrative is to give us truth--thus a narrative's primary purpose would be to tell us what happened. This is an impoverished approach to such genres.
So apart from when the Spirit speaks to us directly through the words of the Bible, the books themselves want to be read as indirect revelation--words we can learn about God from by the way he spoke to and through others in various ways. God can certainly transform us through Scripture directly as well, but this is less of a matter of understanding as a matter of changing who we are. The more direct the change in understanding, the less we are reading the words for what they originally meant.
Third, the authority of Scripture is an incarnated authority. This follows directly from the fact that it is a mediated authority. Once you have a deep understanding of how meaning works, you will recognize how wide the gulf is at times between us and the original audiences. Our default sense of meaning (and Grudem's) is that words point to this timeless bank of meanings that all humans share in common. Not so.
Meaning is always local. The bank from which the meaning of words is drawn on any occasion is the local bank, and universal meaning only takes place when all locations have the same meaning in their banks. The deep sense of "sacrifice" in the ancient socio-cultural environment, for example, is not in the North American dictionary. We can read about what they did when they offered sacrifices but truly understanding how sacrifices worked in the psyche of an ancient, that's going to take a lot of doing for you and me.
In good pre-modern fashion, Grudem doesn't seem to realize how variable the meaning of words can be or, rather, he is overconfident that people with the Spirit will see the same meaning. This is why I have described his understanding of the Bible as two-dimensional. It is superficial because he has no idea how differently he sees the world than the biblical writers did.
Because the authority of Scripture is mediated and incarnated, the authority of Scripture is the all-time of Scripture, and the "all time" of Scripture is the import of the whole of Scripture. A "one-time" command of Scripture can teach me something, but it is not directly demanding something of me ("go and sell everything to the poor," spoken to one person). A "that time" command of Scripture ("cover your head because of the angels") is not directly demanding something of me. The ultimately authority of Scripture over me is the authority of the timeless take-away of the Bible, which is a function of the Bible taken as a whole, its varied pieces directed to different audiences integrated into a singular theology and ethic. This takes place more on the level of principle than of individual precept.
All of that is looking under the hood. In practice, when it happens right, I love when Grudem says that, "the Holy Spirit speaks in and through the words of the Bible to our hearts and gives us an inner assurance that these are the words of our Creator speaking to us" (77). When the Bible is functioning as Scripture, we don't need to know all the "below the surface" talk above. God speaks to us. God transforms us.
So why do I find fault with Grudem? Because I do not believe he rightly hears the Spirit at many points. So if his spiritual engine isn't working right, then it makes sense to get under the hood and get clarity on where his machine isn't working right. Ultimately, the fundamentalist approach to Scripture inadvertently makes the Bible into a barrier between us and God. It results in a Bible that, rather than pointing beyond itself to the real God, creates a skewed picture of God, flattened by its false rules for what the Bible can and cannot say. It makes the Bible an end-in-itself rather than a sacrament of God's speaking and transformation.
__________
So what is the authority of Scripture? It is, first of all, the authority of God. Any authority the Bible has, it has because God stands behind it as the speaker/transformer. When I read Grudem, I begin to fear that he has made the Bible into an idol, as if the Bible were now detached from God and could be worshiped as an end-in-itself. But the Bible is a means to an end, to bring us to God and Christ. The Bible does not exhaust God and God can speak to us/change us in other ways too.
The Bible is thus the mediated authority of God, and it was mediated through people who lived in other times and places in "many and various ways," but chiefly through his Son (Heb. 1:1-2). One of the greatest ironies of Grudem's approach, a fundamentalist approach to Scripture, is that it has a hidden agenda for how Scripture can speak. It does not come to the Bible with a blank sheet of paper but with its own questions for the Bible to answer, not letting the Bible say what questions it wants to answer. How you pose a question has everything to do with the answer you get.
So while Grudem quotes many verses, he has already decided what it means for the Bible to be truthful or what a "writing" is without realizing how deeply these sorts of categories lie in our cultural assumptions. For example, it is true that the word "scripture" means "writing," but Grudem just assumes that this means a writing in the ancient world had the basic functions and characteristics of writing for him today, a literate, post-printing press, educated individual.
But those who actually try to come to the ancient world would say that the ancient world was an oral culture such that even writings were read aloud and with an oral mindset. This is probably why the early copyists of both the OT and NT documents seemed free to paraphrase the wording. This is probably why the NT authors felt free to adjust the wording of OT texts. As a typical unreflective pre-modern, Grudem reads his own assumptions into the biblical text thinking and calls it the timeless meaning.
God can indeed speak directly to us through the words of Scripture, but the original revelations were written to people who have been dead for 2000 years and more. That's what the texts actually say. You and I are not the initial audience of the "thus saith LORD" of the prophets. Not only are we not the audience but the genres are not uniform. Grudem acts like the primary purpose of a psalm or a narrative is to give us truth--thus a narrative's primary purpose would be to tell us what happened. This is an impoverished approach to such genres.
So apart from when the Spirit speaks to us directly through the words of the Bible, the books themselves want to be read as indirect revelation--words we can learn about God from by the way he spoke to and through others in various ways. God can certainly transform us through Scripture directly as well, but this is less of a matter of understanding as a matter of changing who we are. The more direct the change in understanding, the less we are reading the words for what they originally meant.
Third, the authority of Scripture is an incarnated authority. This follows directly from the fact that it is a mediated authority. Once you have a deep understanding of how meaning works, you will recognize how wide the gulf is at times between us and the original audiences. Our default sense of meaning (and Grudem's) is that words point to this timeless bank of meanings that all humans share in common. Not so.
Meaning is always local. The bank from which the meaning of words is drawn on any occasion is the local bank, and universal meaning only takes place when all locations have the same meaning in their banks. The deep sense of "sacrifice" in the ancient socio-cultural environment, for example, is not in the North American dictionary. We can read about what they did when they offered sacrifices but truly understanding how sacrifices worked in the psyche of an ancient, that's going to take a lot of doing for you and me.
In good pre-modern fashion, Grudem doesn't seem to realize how variable the meaning of words can be or, rather, he is overconfident that people with the Spirit will see the same meaning. This is why I have described his understanding of the Bible as two-dimensional. It is superficial because he has no idea how differently he sees the world than the biblical writers did.
Because the authority of Scripture is mediated and incarnated, the authority of Scripture is the all-time of Scripture, and the "all time" of Scripture is the import of the whole of Scripture. A "one-time" command of Scripture can teach me something, but it is not directly demanding something of me ("go and sell everything to the poor," spoken to one person). A "that time" command of Scripture ("cover your head because of the angels") is not directly demanding something of me. The ultimately authority of Scripture over me is the authority of the timeless take-away of the Bible, which is a function of the Bible taken as a whole, its varied pieces directed to different audiences integrated into a singular theology and ethic. This takes place more on the level of principle than of individual precept.
All of that is looking under the hood. In practice, when it happens right, I love when Grudem says that, "the Holy Spirit speaks in and through the words of the Bible to our hearts and gives us an inner assurance that these are the words of our Creator speaking to us" (77). When the Bible is functioning as Scripture, we don't need to know all the "below the surface" talk above. God speaks to us. God transforms us.
So why do I find fault with Grudem? Because I do not believe he rightly hears the Spirit at many points. So if his spiritual engine isn't working right, then it makes sense to get under the hood and get clarity on where his machine isn't working right. Ultimately, the fundamentalist approach to Scripture inadvertently makes the Bible into a barrier between us and God. It results in a Bible that, rather than pointing beyond itself to the real God, creates a skewed picture of God, flattened by its false rules for what the Bible can and cannot say. It makes the Bible an end-in-itself rather than a sacrament of God's speaking and transformation.
Saturday, September 01, 2012
Grudem: Authority of Scripture
Now continuing my review of Wayne Grudem's Systematic Theology: http://cafetutorials.blogspot.com/2012/07/christian-theology.html
___________________
It is fascinating to read Grudem's footnotes, because in them you can probably see the critiques of the years since this book first came out. It is also important to realize that these critiques surely have not come from the faithless. After all, this is not the sort of book a person without Christian faith would even read. The critiques have almost certainly come from other Christians, people like me who see in Grudem's theology a well-intentioned disaster.
For example, there is a revealing section in this chapter where Grudem responds to the objection that his version of the authority of Scripture is a circular argument. A circular argument is an argument that assumes its conclusion as it tries to make its conclusion. For example, what if I were to say something like, "You can trust everything I say because I never lie."
Grudem's response: Of course it's circular, just like all appeals to an ultimate authority (78-79). This at least seems very clever on the surface. What he is saying, very badly, is that ultimate starting points are generally assumptions rather than premises that can be proven. And that is true. We use basic reason without really being able to prove it. We expect ideas to cohere with each other without being able to prove that coherence is an indicator of truth. Postmodernism has emphasized our uncertainty about such things and basically said that life "works" when we operate on these sorts of assumptions.
But then we make some observations. First, the Bible isn't really the same sort of "ultimate authority" as the ultimate assumptions he compares it to--things like reason, logical consistency, or empirical data (79). He's not comparing "like" things. In fact, Grudem's very assumptions about what it means for the Bible to be true are based on the sort of ultimate assumptions he is contrasting the Bible with! The basic reasoning and coherency he implies are not the ultimate authorities for him--he uses them in every sentence. In fact, they stand at the heart of his definition of the truthfulness of Scripture.
So what does he really mean when he says the Bible s an ultimate authority? Surely he means the set of specific truth claims he thinks he is getting from Scripture are assumptions without need for proof. But this is something different from ultimate criteria for truth, which turn out to be the same as those he is trying to defend himself against. He still assumes that if the Bible is true, the world will correspond to it. And he still claims that for the Bible to be true, its parts will cohere with one another. And he claims that the truths he finds in Scripture will work in the real world. He still operates with the same criteria of truth we learn about in philosophy: correspondence, coherence, pragmatism.
The Bible is thus not the same kind of "ultimate authority" as the tests for truth we have just mentioned. The Bible for Grudem rather provides the content of truth. But these truth claims are not "necessary truths." They are assertions that could in theory be true or false. Not so with basic reasoning. If we do not assume basic reasoning, we cannot talk meaningfully at all about anything. Communication of any kind disintegrates.
So Grudem is right to say (badly) that the ultimate foundations of truth will involve unprovable assumptions. However, the content of the Bible largely does not involve that kind of assumption. The claims Grudem thinks he gets from the Bible do not have the nature of unprovable assumptions. You know the child's game. I say something. You say "Why?" I give a more basic answer. You say, "Why?" We keep this game going until I say something like, "Just because" or "Because I said so."
When you get to a "Just because" answer, you've hit assumption (which, again, Grudem clumsily calls an ultimate "authority"). Certainly some of the assumptions of the Bible may fit into this category. The philosopher Alvin Plantinga thinks that the existence of God is such a "warranted Christian belief." But "Jesus healed a blind man on his way to Jericho" is hardly a claim of that sort. So what sounded very clever at first, a snappy come back, actually doesn't make sense in the way he has posed it.
Even more clever than Grudem's resort to "all ultimate authorities are circular" is his fail safe device. Since everyone with the Holy Spirit recognizes his understanding of the Bible, anyone who disagrees with him obviously doesn't have the Holy Spirit. It's incredibly convenient and fitting for a 5 point Calvinist to say something of this sort. No doubt if I were predestined, I would immediately recognize that he's right. So much pressure!
Of course I could use this same argument to claim that the world is run by little green men that only the enlightened see. That's how cars run, you know. There's one green man on the top of each piston and another one on the bottom. What looks like gas exploding is really these little green men farting back and forth. Don't believe me? It's because you're evil and God hasn't revealed it to you.
I'm not discounting the need for faith--not at all. There are much more intelligent versions of "truth is revealed" than the one Grudem seems to assume here. For example, Kierkegaard believed that the most important truths in life were subjective, a matter of blind faith. Karl Barth's Dogmatics and the movement for radical Christian orthodoxy see basic Christian faith as matters we should be "unapologetic" about, where "apologetics" is the attempt to prove Christian claims using "evidence that demands a verdict." Rather, they would say, they are things we believe by faith.
But, again, the Bible isn't really the same kind of literature as Barth's Dogmatics or the kinds of truths that Kierkegaard takes a leap of faith over. Barth writes in a somewhat poetic way as if to say, "The truth of God is beyond what can be captured in simple propositions. We try to point to it in human language in analogical terms." Kierkegaard's leaps of faith are not so much leaps about truth-claims but about deep existential truths.
In the end, Grudem's way of reading the Bible doesn't fit with the Bible itself. He reads certain words in the Bible in a certain way and concludes that the Bible teaches certain things about itself. But when it turns out that the way he is reading it is untrue to its own nature, the entire foundation for his theological enterprise crumbles. That is not to say that there is not truth in his thinking. Truth is bigger than the method by which we arrive at it.
But Grudem's method and his way of using the Bible disintegrate. First, as we already showed above, he uses the very tools of correspondence and coherence he wants to trump with the Bible, Second, he uses all sorts of non-biblical tools like textual criticism and of course his chapter on canon must thoroughly rely on factors outside the Bible. Third, he does not understand how genre impacts meaning--the Bible does not present itself as a set of truth claims. Fourth, he has a naive understanding of language, as if words have something like fixed meanings, which means, fifth, that he doesn't understand how context determines meaning, as I have said previously. We see this in his "proof-texting," ripping words from the Bible and reading them in a way that makes sense in his context, rather than listening to their full meaning in their original context.
2 Timothy 3:16 is an excellent illustration of 1) the fact that his ultimate assumptions come from outside the Bible and 2) that he is not self-aware in his use of them. All Scripture is God-breathed and beneficial for teaching, correction, discipline, and moral training. Because of Grudem's assumptions, he assumes such functions will come from the literal meaning of the OT text. He would not have to, by the way, he could see the Spirit-illumined meaning of the text as something different from what it seems to mean literally to him.
But ultimately, the inspired meaning that NT authors often saw was a different meaning than the original one. Paul for example finds it hard to believe that God would be concerned with oxen (1 Cor. 9:9). No, wasn't Deuteronomy 25:4 "entirely" referring to the Christian mission, and how those who work for the sake of the gospel should be materially supported by those to whom they minister. In other words, the God-breathed meaning is an allegorical one, not a literal one.
You run the risk of losing your faith if you try to maintain Grudem's hermeneutic and are exposed to any true expert on the meaning of the Bible. For most people blind faith does not work well when reality pummels you, and if faith is not at least minimally reasonable, what would that say about God's desire for us to put our faith in him? It works fine, of course, if you think God has predestined certain people to see it. Indeed, irrationality becomes a badge of honor.
So what is the authority of Scripture...
___________________
It is fascinating to read Grudem's footnotes, because in them you can probably see the critiques of the years since this book first came out. It is also important to realize that these critiques surely have not come from the faithless. After all, this is not the sort of book a person without Christian faith would even read. The critiques have almost certainly come from other Christians, people like me who see in Grudem's theology a well-intentioned disaster.
For example, there is a revealing section in this chapter where Grudem responds to the objection that his version of the authority of Scripture is a circular argument. A circular argument is an argument that assumes its conclusion as it tries to make its conclusion. For example, what if I were to say something like, "You can trust everything I say because I never lie."
Grudem's response: Of course it's circular, just like all appeals to an ultimate authority (78-79). This at least seems very clever on the surface. What he is saying, very badly, is that ultimate starting points are generally assumptions rather than premises that can be proven. And that is true. We use basic reason without really being able to prove it. We expect ideas to cohere with each other without being able to prove that coherence is an indicator of truth. Postmodernism has emphasized our uncertainty about such things and basically said that life "works" when we operate on these sorts of assumptions.
But then we make some observations. First, the Bible isn't really the same sort of "ultimate authority" as the ultimate assumptions he compares it to--things like reason, logical consistency, or empirical data (79). He's not comparing "like" things. In fact, Grudem's very assumptions about what it means for the Bible to be true are based on the sort of ultimate assumptions he is contrasting the Bible with! The basic reasoning and coherency he implies are not the ultimate authorities for him--he uses them in every sentence. In fact, they stand at the heart of his definition of the truthfulness of Scripture.
So what does he really mean when he says the Bible s an ultimate authority? Surely he means the set of specific truth claims he thinks he is getting from Scripture are assumptions without need for proof. But this is something different from ultimate criteria for truth, which turn out to be the same as those he is trying to defend himself against. He still assumes that if the Bible is true, the world will correspond to it. And he still claims that for the Bible to be true, its parts will cohere with one another. And he claims that the truths he finds in Scripture will work in the real world. He still operates with the same criteria of truth we learn about in philosophy: correspondence, coherence, pragmatism.
The Bible is thus not the same kind of "ultimate authority" as the tests for truth we have just mentioned. The Bible for Grudem rather provides the content of truth. But these truth claims are not "necessary truths." They are assertions that could in theory be true or false. Not so with basic reasoning. If we do not assume basic reasoning, we cannot talk meaningfully at all about anything. Communication of any kind disintegrates.
So Grudem is right to say (badly) that the ultimate foundations of truth will involve unprovable assumptions. However, the content of the Bible largely does not involve that kind of assumption. The claims Grudem thinks he gets from the Bible do not have the nature of unprovable assumptions. You know the child's game. I say something. You say "Why?" I give a more basic answer. You say, "Why?" We keep this game going until I say something like, "Just because" or "Because I said so."
When you get to a "Just because" answer, you've hit assumption (which, again, Grudem clumsily calls an ultimate "authority"). Certainly some of the assumptions of the Bible may fit into this category. The philosopher Alvin Plantinga thinks that the existence of God is such a "warranted Christian belief." But "Jesus healed a blind man on his way to Jericho" is hardly a claim of that sort. So what sounded very clever at first, a snappy come back, actually doesn't make sense in the way he has posed it.
Even more clever than Grudem's resort to "all ultimate authorities are circular" is his fail safe device. Since everyone with the Holy Spirit recognizes his understanding of the Bible, anyone who disagrees with him obviously doesn't have the Holy Spirit. It's incredibly convenient and fitting for a 5 point Calvinist to say something of this sort. No doubt if I were predestined, I would immediately recognize that he's right. So much pressure!
Of course I could use this same argument to claim that the world is run by little green men that only the enlightened see. That's how cars run, you know. There's one green man on the top of each piston and another one on the bottom. What looks like gas exploding is really these little green men farting back and forth. Don't believe me? It's because you're evil and God hasn't revealed it to you.
I'm not discounting the need for faith--not at all. There are much more intelligent versions of "truth is revealed" than the one Grudem seems to assume here. For example, Kierkegaard believed that the most important truths in life were subjective, a matter of blind faith. Karl Barth's Dogmatics and the movement for radical Christian orthodoxy see basic Christian faith as matters we should be "unapologetic" about, where "apologetics" is the attempt to prove Christian claims using "evidence that demands a verdict." Rather, they would say, they are things we believe by faith.
But, again, the Bible isn't really the same kind of literature as Barth's Dogmatics or the kinds of truths that Kierkegaard takes a leap of faith over. Barth writes in a somewhat poetic way as if to say, "The truth of God is beyond what can be captured in simple propositions. We try to point to it in human language in analogical terms." Kierkegaard's leaps of faith are not so much leaps about truth-claims but about deep existential truths.
In the end, Grudem's way of reading the Bible doesn't fit with the Bible itself. He reads certain words in the Bible in a certain way and concludes that the Bible teaches certain things about itself. But when it turns out that the way he is reading it is untrue to its own nature, the entire foundation for his theological enterprise crumbles. That is not to say that there is not truth in his thinking. Truth is bigger than the method by which we arrive at it.
But Grudem's method and his way of using the Bible disintegrate. First, as we already showed above, he uses the very tools of correspondence and coherence he wants to trump with the Bible, Second, he uses all sorts of non-biblical tools like textual criticism and of course his chapter on canon must thoroughly rely on factors outside the Bible. Third, he does not understand how genre impacts meaning--the Bible does not present itself as a set of truth claims. Fourth, he has a naive understanding of language, as if words have something like fixed meanings, which means, fifth, that he doesn't understand how context determines meaning, as I have said previously. We see this in his "proof-texting," ripping words from the Bible and reading them in a way that makes sense in his context, rather than listening to their full meaning in their original context.
2 Timothy 3:16 is an excellent illustration of 1) the fact that his ultimate assumptions come from outside the Bible and 2) that he is not self-aware in his use of them. All Scripture is God-breathed and beneficial for teaching, correction, discipline, and moral training. Because of Grudem's assumptions, he assumes such functions will come from the literal meaning of the OT text. He would not have to, by the way, he could see the Spirit-illumined meaning of the text as something different from what it seems to mean literally to him.
But ultimately, the inspired meaning that NT authors often saw was a different meaning than the original one. Paul for example finds it hard to believe that God would be concerned with oxen (1 Cor. 9:9). No, wasn't Deuteronomy 25:4 "entirely" referring to the Christian mission, and how those who work for the sake of the gospel should be materially supported by those to whom they minister. In other words, the God-breathed meaning is an allegorical one, not a literal one.
You run the risk of losing your faith if you try to maintain Grudem's hermeneutic and are exposed to any true expert on the meaning of the Bible. For most people blind faith does not work well when reality pummels you, and if faith is not at least minimally reasonable, what would that say about God's desire for us to put our faith in him? It works fine, of course, if you think God has predestined certain people to see it. Indeed, irrationality becomes a badge of honor.
So what is the authority of Scripture...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
