7. Philo and Judaism

Only one chapter today of Reading Philo: A Handbook to Philo of Alexandria, edited by Torrey Seland. Three more chapters by the end of the week to go.

Introduction
Philo the Jew
Philo the Citizen
Philo the Interpreter of the Law and Educated Jew
Philo the Philosopher and how to study Philo
Philo and Society

1. Our next chapter moves on to the insights Philo might shed on Judaism, both locally and in the wider Jewish world of his day. None other than Ellen Birnbaum is our next author, "Philo's Relevance for the Study of Jews and Judaism in Antiquity."

She begins with all the cautionary tales. Is Philo typical of the Judaism of his day? Can we even speak of a common Judaism? With what other sources should Philo be compared?

She then proceeds to look at Philo in terms of practices, beliefs and ideas, community institutions, biblical interpretation, Jewish identity, interaction with non-Jews, and historical events pertaining to Jews.

2. For example, with regard to Passover, it is interesting that Philo does not focus on the "passing over" of the Israelites while the Egyptian firstborn die. For Philo, celebration of the Passover has to do with crossing the Red Sea. It's a crossing feast. In this case, she does not consider the evidence great enough to generalize that all Alexandrians had this view. She only muses whether the Therapeutae, a group in Egypt Philo mentions, might have.

She asks the same question of whether Alexandrians might have observed a kind of proto-Seder there. Did they offer their own sacrifices in Alexandria? Of course she mentions in this chapter the fact that Philo never mentions the temple at Leontopolis.

3. Next she treats how Philo might inform our understanding of Jewish beliefs and ideas at the time. For example, Philo's view of divine powers has enough similarity to later rabbinic views that we must surely think there is some common tradition here. For him, two names of God are "Lord" and "God," which represent his royal and creative powers respectively. The rabbis also correlated God's names with his merciful and punitive sides (but they flipped the names).

Covenant is not a major category for Philo. In this he is not alone among Jews of the time, which warns the E. P. Sanders' and N. T. Wright's of the world not to overgeneralize.

4. With regard to the temple, Philo shows that even a Diaspora Jew could be invested in its significance. He provides significant evidence for the ancient synagogue and house of prayer. We learn a bit about the gerousia at Alexandria, its Jewish ruling council.

Throughout the chapter, Ellen points out possibilities for further research, indeed one of the great strengths of this book.

5. Philo not only considered the Pentateuch inspired, but its Greek translation as well, like the Letter of Aristeas. She mentions some evidence that Philo at one point refers to the traditional Jewish division of Scripture into Torah, Prophets, and Writings (Contempl. 25). I have missed so far in the book Philo's reference to Jeremiah as also initiated in the mysteries (Cher. 48-49). I think the question of Philo's "canon" might have born more discussion.

 Philo's exegetical method has been deeply explored by scholars. It bears both similarities and differences with other interpreters. These aspects of Philo have of course been treated extensively already in the book in the chapters by Borgen (on the Jewish side) and Sterling (on the Hellenistic side).

6. Next we have a section on what insights Philo might bring to Jewish identity at the time. His mention of the Essenes and Therapeutae are here, as well as insights he might offer to our understanding of how one became a proselyte to Judaism. Ellen has some fun comments on "once-a-year" Jews in this section, Jews Philo bemoans as only observing their Judaism on the Day of Atonement. This sentence is worth quoting:

"Some have observed that Alexandria, with its remarkably varied range of Jews, calls to mind the similarly diverse Jewish population of a modern American city like New York, albeit twenty centuries later" (218).

7. Philo's views toward non-Jews is quite negative, especially in Alexandria. He despises Egyptians and most Alexandrians, although positive toward the Ptolemies of older days. Another area ripe for further research. Ellen mentions that he may have been educated in the gymnasium, harkening  back to the chapter by Koskenniemi.

The chapter ends with a hat tip to Philo's writings about historical events involving the Jews, the pogrom and attempt of Caligula to put a statue in the temple being the main suspects. She mentions that Philo does not mention the laographia or poll tax, one possible reason for tensions between Jews and the city at the time.

So there you have it, a taste of the kinds of issues involved in asking how Philo's writings might illuminate the Judaism of his day, common or otherwise.

6. Philo and Society

Only one chapter today of Reading Philo: A Handbook to Philo of Alexandria, edited by Torrey Seland. Three more chapters by the end of the week to go.

Introduction
Philo the Jew
Philo the Citizen
Philo the Interpreter of the Law and Educated Jew
Philo the Philosopher and how to study Philo

1. This was another excellent surprise by Adele Reinhartz. The actual name of the chapter is, "Philo's Exposition of the Law and Social History." To me this chapter seemed an area of emerging Philo studies and clearly a general field that would be of great interest for upcoming researchers.

Reinhartz, a Canadian scholar, is thus developing a method for a new area of Philonic research. She is interested in using Philo to explore the "social history" of Judaism in Alexandria at the time of Christ. Social history is "the study of 'people's relationships with each other in families, kinship groupings, status groupings, villages, urban neighborhoods, regions and politics" (180).

Of course it is not that researchers in Philo have not touched on these matters in an ad hoc way. But Reinhartz develops a cogent method for studying such elements of Philo's writings and then suggests some key conclusions one might reach. Absolutely fascinating stuff.

2. One key methodological obstacle is the fact that Philo's topoi are largely generated from the texts he is interpreting. So can we infer from Philo's strong stance against homosexual practice that there was significant homosexual practice in the Jewish community/Alexandria, or is it simply that the issue is raised by the biblical text he is interpreting (Spec. 2.50; 3.37-42)?

She gives a couple examples of comments by Roman outsiders like Strabo that indicate that non-Jewish sources are generally unreliable in this area. Are we really to believe that Jews practiced female circumcision like the Egyptians apparently did?

3. In the end, there are two views of Philo among scholars. One is that he had no real interest or involvement in the life of the Jewish community and was just an ivory tower blogger who had little interest in the real world (e.g., Samuel Sandmel). Others, like Borgen, believe he was squarely involved in both the Jewish and Alexandrian communities.

[By the way, there is a serious error in a quote of Samuel Belkin on p. 185. The word "no" was omitted, making the sentence sound like it says the opposite of what it was meant to say. Belkin wrote, "The general view prevalent among scholars that Philo had no interest in communal affairs and was, as is sometimes said, an 'individualist' by nature is open to doubt" (185).]

Reinhartz clearly takes the latter view. We can infer realia about Jewish community life in Alexandria from Philo.

4. So she sets down a method. True, Philo sometimes is just interpreting the text in front of him rather than addressing contemporary issues. BUT, she plausibly suggests, we can see hints of his contemporary situation in a) his rationales for the laws, especially when the text doesn't give them, b) his extensions of the laws to areas they do not directly address, c) his reinterpretations of laws that no longer applied to his day, and d) when he gives specifics to general formulations.

In the rest of the chapter, she applies these criteria to Philo's texts. She concludes that some of the realities of Philo's day included things like a) a strong patriarchal culture. She actually argues that b) infanticide may have been an issue among some Jews.

One of the things I appreciated about the chapter is her critique of dreamy descriptions of ancient Jews as obviously untouched by non-Jewish practices such as this. But she is a model of objectivity. Beware when someone in a group is giving the story of that group. There becomes a strong motivation to give a sugar coated version.

She finds evidence of c) monogamy as standard Jewish practice by this time and d) the difficulty of daughters inheriting when a father has deceased.

In general, a fascinating and another outstanding chapter in the book. Great stuff!

5. Philo the philosopher and more

Two more chapters today here of Reading Philo: A Handbook to Philo of Alexandria, edited by Torrey Seland. Four more chapters by Thursday to go.

Introduction
Philo the Jew
Philo the Citizen
Philo the Interpreter of the Law and Educated Jew

1. I have found Greg Sterling to be an imposing scholar. He was at Notre Dame for some twenty years before he recently went to be Dean of Yale Divinity School. How he has been able to produce the academic works he has while being Dean at Notre Dame and now Yale is incomprehensible to me.

His knowledge of the details of Hellenistic philosophy astounds me and thought of him when I read this sentence in the chapter: "Philo knew a good deal about Hellenistic philosophy, considerably more than all but a handful of scholars today" (147). Sterling is one among that handful, as are many of the scholars who make up the Philo guild.

I've never really liked the opinio communis that Philo was an exegete rather than a philosopher, despite Nikiprowetzky. I know what is being said, and it is true. Philo uses philosophy in the service of his exegesis. He is not a professional philosopher.

Yet it seems to me that this distinction may worry too much about modern categories and distinctions. Certainly many ancients thought of him as a philosopher, among other things. We may be preoccupied with the form of his writings, but that says more about us than Philo, I suspect.

2. Philo interpreted Moses by way of philosophy. Plato was his chief source, but he also draws on the Stoics, Pythagoreans, and even on Aristotle. He knows them all and draws on them in an eclectic fashion--"he drew on what he considered to be the best from each tradition and incorporated it into his own thought" (137). Sterling gives an impressive sweep of Philo's engagement with Greek philosophers.

3. Sterling also gives a very helpful overview of Jewish philosophical thinkers in Egypt prior to Philo--chiefly Aristobulus and pseudo-Aristeas. There were also the unnamed Jewish literalists and allegorists of Philo's world.

At the end of the chapter, we get an overview of the different types of work Philo wrote and how philosophy played in each. Interestingly, it is in the Allegorical Commentary that we get the most use of philosophy, namely, in Philo's allegorical interpretation.

Sterling is just an excellent writer. Clear, organized, comprehensive, insightful.

4. Now we arrive at the second half of the book, which has to do with how to study Philo, especially when you are coming to him from another discipline.

The next chapter, "Why Study Philo? How?" is another winner. This is really turning out to be the definitive bridge work for MA or PhD engagement with Philo, although an undergraduate course could easily work through the book as well. If you are just getting into Philo, I would recommend that you read this chapter first.

Seland does an excellent job in this chapter. Following in the tradition of Goodenough (and I might add my own book), Torrey suggests a good order in which to read through Philo's works. He gives David Runia's four recommendations for interpreting passages in Philo. He gives a definitive overview of the differing texts and translations of Philo in multiple languages. In a section that is indicative of our age, he even talks about Google Books, Google Scholar, and other electronic resources, such as his own well-known website.

The chapter is just a great catalog of resources on Philo, including my own book, about which he is kind. :-)

More tomorrow...

4. Philo, Educated Interpreter

Continuing my review of Reading Philo: A Handbook to Philo of Alexandria, edited by Torrey Seland. My goal is to finish this fine book before the end of the week, which means two chapters a day.

Introduction
Philo the Jew
Philo the Citizen

1. The first chapter to review today is by Peder Borgen, "Philo - An Interpreter of the Laws of Moses." Borgen is of course a major Philo player. He wrote somewhat of an overview of Philo himself almost twenty years ago. But his greatest contribution to Philo studies, IMO, is his index to Philo, a computer generated concordance to Philo's works. He is much to be revered.

I will say, though, that I have always found him to be somewhat of an "in the weeds" writer. It is perhaps a difference in our personalities, since I am a big picture person, but I always feel like I could use a map to his writing. I often feel like I am joining him in the middle of a conversation and it takes me a little effort to figure out what we are talking about. That does not negate his brilliance!

2. But there is an outline to the chapter. Without warning, we hit the ground running in one type of writing Philo engaged in--"expository writings." He wrote other things, like historical and philosophical treatises. (Just one paragraph putting this chapter into perspective would have been lovely. But as I said, this book is not entirely for the complete beginner.) But the preponderance of his writings were expositions of Scripture.

Borgen divides them into two categories: exegetical commentaries and something called "rewritten Scripture." The category of "rewritten Scripture" is widely used. I have never found that title very helpful. It basically refers to retellings of biblical stories by a later author.

So he overviews these two types of expository writing in Philo. Then he addresses Philo's hermeneutical presuppositions as he interprets. He describes some of the key elements we find in Philo's interpretation. He briefly compares Philo to other interpreters in his context. He covers some of the literary forms Philo employs. He briefly mentions Philo's interpretation in relation to the conflict around 38CE and then ends with an epilogue giving a taste of the impact of Philo's exegesis on early Christian literature.

The way I would describe this chapter is a smorgasbord of tastes. It gives you a wealth of specific detail on ways that Philo went about extracting meaning from the biblical texts.

3. The second chapter for today is "Philo and Classical Education," by Erkki Koskenniemi (hereafter EK). This chapter was a great surprise and very well written. EK is clearly up to date on the state of research on education in antiquity and I find his fundamental thesis highly plausible.

It is that classical education cannot be reduced to a single pattern or template. It varied from place to place and from time to time. He is particularly concerned with debate over the role of the gymnasion in antiquity. Was it purely for athletic purposes or for educational purposes as well. Who was allowed to participate in it?

Here is his summary statement: "The gymnasion was thus a significant institution in the Greek world, but it was certainly not identical in every place and time. the duration of the training varied greatly, as did apparently the percentage of non-Greeks involved as well. What preceded the gymnasion also varied, and unfortunately we know only little of it. Apparently, education prior to the gymnasion was mostly private, and uniformity among schools belongs to later times. Some Greek education was provided in the gymnasion, some outside of it, and non-Greeks may have imitated the gymnasions if they were excluded from this institution" (109-110).

4. There was thus no fixed pattern or content, and the older source of H. I. Marrou (1948) systematized and universalized a pattern of ancient education based on scanty evidence. He must thus be used with great caution. At the same time, Teresa Morgan's revision may go too far in the opposite direction (1998).

Nevertheless, we can easily imagine that Homer featured large as a source, that the skills of reading and writing were taught. We can imagine that geometry, astronomy, music, and logic were also common topics.

5. EK next examines evidence for education in Alexandria in particular. Here we have good evidence that the city underwent a transition after Roman occupation, for which we have two key sources. The first is a petition to the emperor from a Jew named Helenos to be a citizen of the city. His father was a citizen, but apparently his mother was not. He was denied.

The second is the letter of Claudius after the pogrom of 38 and the embassy of Philo to the previous emperor Caligula. Claudius indicates that the Jews are not citizens of the city and they cannot participate in the life of the gymnasion.

So Philo's own lifetime seems to have seen this transition take place and solidify. Philo himself probably had access to the best education that the city could offer. But by the time his nephew came through the ranks, it became necessary to pick sides. Either you could be a Jew or you could be a Roman who fully participated in the education of the city.

6. In the end, EK does not conclude that Philo attended a gymnasion in Alexandria as an ephebe at fourteen. Philo mentions the gymnasion more or less in relation to physical training at this stage of life. Clearly Philo had access to the gymnasion for events before the pogrom of 38.

But wherever Philo received his "soul" education, he received one fully as good as any formal Greek education. EK spends the last part of the chapter cataloging all the Greek literature with which Philo not only demonstrates awareness but facility. It is quite impressive.

E7. The Church is in the world but not of the world.

This is the seventh post on the Church in my ongoing series, theology in bullet points. The first unit in this series had to do with God and Creation (book here), and the second unit was on Christology and Atonement.

We are now in the third and final unit: The Holy Spirit and the Church. The first set of posts in this final unit on the Spirit and the Church was on the Holy Spirit.
_______________________________
The Church is in the world but not of the world.

1. If visible churches and denominations cannot be equated with the Church, still less can any earthly government or state be equated with the Church. The Church is an invisible Church, and cannot be equated with any particular visible organization.

In 1951, H. Richard Niebuhr presented a number of differing perspectives on how Christianity ideally relates to the culture in which it finds itself. [1] These ranged from those who accommodated Christianity to culture and gave culture the upper hand ("Christ in culture") to those who wanted Christianity to dominate the surrounding culture ("Christ over culture"). Two other points of view were those that saw Christ in culture in inevitable conflict ("Christ against culture") and those who simply saw these two as two different worlds with two different mindsets, both of which we have to live in ("Christ and culture in paradox"). The ideal, he believed, was for Christ to transform culture.

We can summarize these five perspectives as:

• Christ in culture - Christianity accommodates culture
• Christ over culture - Christianity dominates culture
• Christ against culture - Christianity will always be isolated from culture
• Christ and culture in paradox - We live in two worlds and obey the conflicting rules of both
• Christ transforms culture - Christianity influences culture for the better

While we would hope that Christianity is always having some positive, transformative effect on its surrounding culture, the dominant stance of Christianity at any one time and place has most to do with the prevailing attitude of the surrounding culture toward it. Similarly, sometimes it is understandable if different individuals take different positions toward the surrounding culture at the same time.

2. We can identify times in history when Christians have predictably taken one particular stance toward the surrounding culture. For example, there are clearly times when the surrounding culture is hostile to Christ and Christians understandably assume a "Christ against culture" stance. This was more or less the position in which the early church found itself.

So Paul tells the believers at Corinth that God will judge the world and they should leave it be (1 Cor. 5:12-13). They should not take conflicts within the church to the Roman authorities (1 Cor. 6:1-6). Instead, he takes an isolationist, "Christ against culture" stance. The church should take care of its own affairs and leave the affairs of the world to itself. As Jesus said, "Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor's, and to God the things that are God's." (Mark 12:17).

3. This may sound like "Christ and culture in paradox," but it is not. This second perspective is usually associated with the Lutheran tradition. It has the sense that we as Christians sometimes have to do unChristian things when we are in the world. So when we are in the world, we sin, but we have to.

We think of how Dietrich Bonhoeffer may have participated in the assassination attempt on Hitler even though he did not believe it was morally right to kill someone. [2] It is a paradox, but to him it was the nature of our current situation that we are both sinner and saint at the same time. The key, Luther said, is that we are always repenting.

This position, however, is neither biblical nor theologically sound. Not all ethical principles are absolutes. When two moral principles are in conflict, we must choose one and make an exception to the other. This choice does not inevitably involve sin. In other words, it could have been, in the situation of Hitler, morally right to make an exception to the principle not to kill another.

There have been times in history when various figures have done things that would normally be considered immoral or at least less than the ideal, but they have done so for the perpetuation of Christianity. Would there be a church in Russia today if its archbishop had not dirtied himself in the early days of communism?

This is a very shady zone, and one where a person is prone to make excuses. Should you have rather become a martyr ("Christ against culture") than act as you did? I find this perspective the most potentially problematic of them all.

4. Is there a point where Christianity is rightly shaped by the surrounding culture? It inevitably is, whether we like it or not. Much of 1 Peter arguably is the accommodation of early Christians to the social norms of the surrounding culture. Rather than the initially radical, "in Christ there is no longer male and female" (Gal. 3:28; Acts 2:17), 1 Peter tells Christians to hunker down and conform to the norms of the day to avoid unnecessary persecution. Slaves obey unjust masters (1 Pet. 2:18-19). Wives submit to unbelieving husbands (3:1).

Moral principles are always played out in context. The same moral principle in one context can play out in a contradictory way in another. Is it acting respectable for a husband to direct his wife's every move or to act with complete equality in authority? The culture determines which course of action is the respectable one.

5. At times Christianity has assumed a "Christ over culture" position of dominance. Obviously this position is only possible when a Christian group has enough power to exert its authority over the rest of the culture. This was the case throughout much of church history when the Roman Catholic Church held a power that was parallel to that of all worldly authority. It has been the case in countries or states where various forms of Protestant Christianity were able to exert their dominance.

In the United States, we call the Christ over culture position "civil religion." [3] It is a Christian culture that has difficulty distinguishing between patriotism, nationalism, and faith. Issues of nation become issues of Christianity, and issues of Christianity become issues of nation. Take, for example, the question of homosexuality in laws of state. Are there any aspects of this issue that make it a "secular" issue and an issue for a non-Christian environment? Civil religion will not see the distinction and see it as Christian to try to make the laws of state mirror Christian ethical principles.

Similarly, is it particularly Christian to support a country's military? One might rather suspect that Christians would more naturally be wary of a wing of state poised to enact violence and force. Yet the military is regularly celebrated in church across America. Here is an example where issues of the state have become issues of "faith." We put the American flag in our churches because we cannot see a distinction between God and country.

From a Wesleyan-Arminian standpoint, God desires individuals to choose him rather than to force people to serve him. This dynamic has direct implications for the ideal state. The ideal state would obviously be one in which believers can freely live out their faith. The ideal state would be one in which believers can freely and profitably conduct the mission of God. The ideal state is one that protects its citizens from harming themselves and each other, "love of neighbor" played out on a societal scale.

But the ideal state would also be a context in which individuals can choose God freely rather than being compelled to do so. Rather than fight to the death over issues of faith when it is clear that secular forces in broader society are against us, we "give them up" (Rom. 1:28). It is easy to forget that the Church is not the state and go on to make unnecessary enemies for the Church because we are convinced that our faith should dominate.

Whenever Christ and state overlap too much, Christ usually does not end up ruling the state but, rather, notions of Christ get infected with the world and the corruption of power. When Christianity is in power--or when any religion is in power--oppression seems to result inevitably. Those in power inevitably cannot distinguish their own ideas from God's. It is thus not Christianity that comes to be in power but one particular, cultural version of it.

6. Christianity is thus best "in the world, but not of it." Yes, there are times when Christians should fight for the concrete protection of others. Yes, there is a time to submit to something less than ideal. We should always be an influence for good and for the positive transformation of society.

This is a consistent theme in the New Testament, which found itself in a "Christ against culture" situation. We confess that we are "strangers and foreigners on the earth" (Heb. 11:13). We look to a coming homeland and city (11:14, 16). We are citizens of a different country (Phil. 3:20).

This fundamental reality is not an excuse for us to leave the world mentally. We are still here. There is good that can be done here. We cannot use our ultimate citizenship as a cop-out to do nothing or to disengage when we can be a transformative influence for good. There are clearly times when God does change the world now for good through Christian influence. It is simply to say that our level of engagement will differ depending on the nature of our context in history.

7. A related question is then the extent to which the visible church coincides with the true, invisible Church. Is the visible church a "hospital for sinners or a haven for saints"? [4] Certainly the true Church only consists of "saints" (that is, those who have been made holy through the blood of Christ). Yet the mission of God through the Church is to reconcile the world, and in that sense the Church had better be engaged in leading "sinners" to healing.

A visible church that only serves "saints" is not engaged in mission, while a church that only engages "sinners" is a doorway that leads to nowhere. [5] Its visible manifestation never gets off the porch and into the house.

Clearly as there are many different members in the body of Christ, there are some churches that are more engaged in mission and there are some churches that are more engaged in the other tasks of the Church (e.g., worship, discipleship, fellowship). If a visible church goes to either extreme, it faces dangers. The purely missional church may see its "saints" evaporate like a puddle of water under a hot sun. The ingrown church may see its "saints" die away like a plant that never bears seeds.

The healthy, visible church is both in the world and not of the world. It is in the world engaged in God's mission. But it is also not of the world in its worship and discipleship.

The church is in the world and is a transformative influence on its context as the opportunity for engagement arises. But it is ultimately not of the world and should not in any way be confused with the state or aspire to impose its will on the secular state.

Next Sunday: E8. The Church has worship as its most important task.

[1] H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ and Culture (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1951).

[2] Although see now Mark Theissen Nation, Anthony G. Siegrist, and Daniel P. Umbel, Bonhoeffer the Assassin? Challenging the Myth, Recovering his Call to Peacemaking (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2013). They argue that Bonhoeffer did not participate in the plot.

[3] The classic work here is an article by Robert Bellah, "Civil Religion in America," Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 96 (1): 1–21.

[4] Source unknown.

[5] The "seeker-sensitive" church does well as a doorway. Its services are something like the triage or emergency room of a hospital. But unless discipleship structures are also in place, the prognosis for long term healing and health is not good.

"Holy Jumpers" Batman!

Keith Drury and Bob Black are reading a book right now called Holy Jumpers, by Bill Kostlevy. Bill was librarian at Asbury when I was a student there. You might remember that Keith and Bob wrote a history of the Wesleyan Church, so this book is right up their alley.

1. This book is about "evangelicals and radicals in Progressive Era America," which was around the turn of the century 1900. Kostlevy seems especially to be tracing the story of a group called the Metropolitan Church Association (MCA), a radical holiness group that was in Chicago at that time. Their magazine was The Burning Bush. The group intersected heavily with the founders of the Pilgrim Holiness Church, one of the parent bodies of the Wesleyan Church, although they parted ways as the MCA got crazier.

2. So what are we talking about here? For one, we are talking about "demonstrative" preaching and worship, where there was shouting and jumping and crying. Martin Wells Knapp was the founder of God's Bible School, the starter of the magazine, God's Revivalist, and (without knowing it) co-founder of the Pilgrim Holiness Church. He once said that God would not tolerate fireless preachers. He died in 1901, before tongues came into the picture, but he approached having a sense that if you did not have some dramatic, demonstrable, loud experience, you simply were not really sanctified.

I grew up on the tail end of some of the aisle running at various camp meetings. But I haven't seen much of it for years now. The last time I had a taste was at my uncle Maurice's funeral, where there was both some shouting and a little holy laughter.

3. These were "against" people. At first they were not "comeouters," and then they were. Knapp described the Revivalist in negative terms: "In every age the true gospel-herald must 'root out' error, 'pull down' formality, worldliness, and sham religion, 'destroy' the works of the devil and 'throw down' all that persists in the way of revival truth" (27).

What did he have in mind? It included fancy dress, jewelry, and such. The original Free Methodists didn't wear ties. The MCA had problems with wedding rings and silk. They were "sabbatarians" who took a Scottish approach to things you couldn't do on Sundays. They debated whether you should take the train in to camp meeting on a Sunday. They were of course against liquor and the "evil" Catholic immigrant influence.

Ironically, some of what Seth Rees, co-founder of the Pilgrims, would have preached against included values that I consider the best of the Wesleyan tradition: "This sweet, sickish, sentimental gush about 'love and unity' which composes the stock and trade of a great many religious 'tongue-waggers' is producing a race of cringing, sensitive, puny, delicate Christians who wilt and curl under a hot sun" (29) The love of God for him included assault on worldliness.

4. One of the most interesting features is that many of them had a "communal" dimension to their thinking. One of the founders of the MCA, a wealthy businessman named E. L. Harvey, didn't get entirely sanctified until he submitted to give the Lord all his money except for what he needed to subsist on. He and his wife felt guilty about fancy clothes, wedding rings, and nice houses.

In other words, these early radical holiness had a socialist element to their thinking. They had many of the same goals as the socialist "Industrial Workers of the World" and competed for the same people. They just weren't violent like the IWW. They believed that Christians should share their possessions in common like Acts 2 and just keep enough to live on simply.

They had much in common with the social gospel movement in Chicago, although Kostlevy points out a very important difference: "The social gospel was never successful in either the socioeconomic integration of Christian communities or the establishment of churches among the poor. In abandoning, or more commonly minimizing, the evangelical message of personal salvation, Chicago Methodists were unintentionally replacing an experiential basis for unity, which allowed for a degree of cultural diversity, with a cultural and political understanding of Christian mission that saw the recipients as objects of charity and not brothers and sisters in Christ" (48).

5. We are also talking about a radical premillennarianism that seized this radical wing of the holiness movement in the 1890s. Prior to the 1890s, most holiness people--as most Christians in general--were postmillennial. It was in the last decade of the nineteenth century that there was a mass conversion of the radical holiness preachers to a "Left Behind" style eschatology.

These lines from W. B. Godbey in 1898 were fun: "What a wonderful flood of light on this subject is inundating the world! Only two years ago brother Carradine got light on it, and preached it, and Dr. Watson preached his first sermon on it, and there has been a regular revelation on the subject in the last few years. You do not find one sanctified man in a thousand who is not looking for the speedy coming of the lord" (26).

Of course that was well over 100 years ago, so apparently Godbey was off a little on his timing. But premillennialism was part and parcel of the Pilgrim Holiness Church, and most Wesleyans remain premillennial today. One of the debates at the merger of the Wesleyan Church was whether it would have a statement requiring belief in pre-millennialism, which thankfully didn't happen.

Today, we would consider Daniel Steele a much more appropriate holiness model from that era, along with the National Holiness Association (NHA). These were more balanced holiness people. They were not liberals or followers of the social gospel. Yet they were targets of Knapp's vitriol. They weren't radical enough for him. If he had continued living, the MCA probably would have become too radical for him.

When Daniel Steele pointed out to Knapp that premillennialism wasn't in the Apostle's Creed, Knapp more or less replied that the Apostle's Creed was just a man made document.

6. Divine healing was also very important to these more demonstrative strands of the holiness movement. You can see Melvin Dieter's thesis here that the holiness movement of the turn of the century and the Pentecostal movement of that time both grew out of the same fertile soil.

Wesleyans still believe in divine healing today, although we don't emphasize it the way they did 100 years ago. A. B. Simpson was founder of the CMA church about this time, who emphasized a four-fold gospel with which the founders of the Pilgrim church agreed 1) Christ as savior, 2) Christ as sanctifier, 3) Christ as healer, and 4) Christ as coming king.

There is an outline of their preaching. They preached for people to come forward to the altar to get saved and sanctified. They preached healing. And they preached a speedy second coming.

7. There's a little taste of the introduction and first two chapters. Stay tuned for more...

Liberal Arts at a Christian College 8

This is my eighth and final post in a series on the importance of the liberal arts for civilization. Previous posts include:

1. A Vision for the Liberal Arts
2. The Value of Philosophy
3. The Value of History
4. The Value of Music and Art
5. The Value of Literature, Writing, and Speech
6. The Value of Science and Math
7. The Value of Psychology and Sociology

1. The last thing I want to cover in this series is the intersection of the liberal arts with Christianity. What particularly Christian spin will these subject matters have at a Christian college? Indeed, are some of these subjects that Christians should reject (e.g., psychology, sociology)?

I would say a resounding, "No!" These subjects can all peacefully co-exist with Christianity. Indeed, I would say that they must.

2. The "integration of faith and learning" is often a BIG topic of conversation on Christian campuses and, believe it or not, there are debates and books on the subject. My friend Steve Lennox has given a paper several times that has gained some traction in my own circles, and now he has become President of Kingswood College in New Brunswick, Canada, where he can try to implement a sense of a Christian college in the Wesleyan tradition as a "sanctifying context."

He has presented what we might call a "formational" model of a Christian college, which fits very well with the most typical underlying goals of a liberal arts institution. The overall goal of such a Christian institution, beyond education itself, is to see students formed in faith, which includes seeing them redeemed and restored to the image of God. This eternal goal goes well beyond curriculum to the co-curriculum.

There are of course other dimensions of integration. Perhaps the most important is the person of the professor and administration. If the faculty themselves serve Christ, love God, and love others, that is perhaps the most important way in which a Christian college can be Christian.

3. I have not yet mentioned content integration, which reflects my sense of what the priorities are and should be in the integration of faith with learning at a Christian institution. The personal and contextual are the most important. But there are two very key ways in which the content of teaching is usually affected significantly by a Christian context.

The first is ethical or applicational. After presenting the mechanics of a subject, a Christian professor will be keenly interested in how to evaluate and apply those mechanics. So you can use physics to built a nuclear bomb. Should you? So economics work in a certain way if you poke it this way. Should you? This element of a Christian college does not greatly change the content of teaching but its application.

The second and most controversial is presuppositional. All interpretation of the world involves assumptions. For some Christian colleges, those assumptions are vast. In the current climate of retrenchment, the boards of Christian colleges have been drawing lines in the sand. "If you are to teach here, you cannot draw certain conclusions. Rather, you must more or less start with such and such a conclusion and work backward to find arguments to defend it."

Of course a better way is only to hire professors who, as scholars, freely hold the positions you want to be taught. You can see a potential tension here, though, with the purpose of the liberal arts in freeing students intellectually. If every option is not truly on the table for discussion, then Christian colleges themselves become enemies of civilization in the manner I have been discussing.

4. That is because truth is not just revealed. It is discovered as well. That is to say, God is "in on" the method of logic and evidence.

Indeed, if you look at the crazy variety of Christian belief that exists, tens of thousands of little splinter groups who believe LOTS of idiosyncratic things, the content of revealed truth gets rather murky rather quickly. I would identify the following at least as key to a Christian worldview, although even here you will find nuances among the many Christian groups:

• God exists as a person and is involved with the world.
• The world is not as it could be. All around us is a need for redemption.
• God has and is reconciling the world to himself through Jesus Christ.
• Every human being has intrinsic value because we are created in the image of God.
• There are two great ethical absolutes--love of God and love of others.

Different Christians and Christian groups will play these out in different ways. For some Christian colleges, being Christian means filling in a whole lot more details to these presuppositions down into the content of specific courses. At some, discussing any of these options is part of the education. At others, these and other details are not really open for discussion. At them, the goal is to indoctrinate the students in the specifics of belief, and that is what they mean by integrating faith with learning.

5. This latter type of Christian institution is ultimately an enemy to civilization and by their very approach cannot really be said to be liberal arts institutions. They are enslaving arts institutions. They are brainwashing arts institutions. Truth is both revealed and discovered. The true alternative is not "Truth is only revealed."

After my first year of seminary, I became troubled with the way Matthew 2 interprets Hosea 11:1: "Out of Egypt I have called my son." I had a lovely chart in the back of my Thompson Chain Reference King James Bible as a teenager that gave all the prophecies in the OT that were fulfilled in Jesus. But I had never really gone back to the OT and read them.

Then in college we did. I had expected to find clear cut predictions. So with regard to Matthew 2, I had expected to find Hosea 11 to say something like, "When Messiah comes, he will be pursued by an evil man and will go down to Egypt for a time. Then out of Egypt I will call my Son."

But that is not what we find in Hosea 11. Hosea 11 says that when Israel was a child, God brought them out of Egypt in the exodus. But then instead of serving him, they pursued other gods and idols and did not worship him.

Woah! That was very troubling to me. It shouldn't have been, mind you. It was the Christian teaching of my context that set me up by making me think this would be a straightforward prediction. That is the problem with an overwhelming amount of Christian teaching today. It makes a lot of people feel wonderful as long as they don't go poking around to see if it actually matches up with the truth. Then Christian professors are made out to be the enemy when the problem was the "feel good" ignorance of popular Christian rhetoric.

For me I found myself asking horrible questions like, "Is this a test?" "Does God want to see if I'm willing to submit my intellect to him by willing myself to believe things that he has made to look false?" In other words, does God want me to believe lies as an act of submission?

6. What a horrible position the ignorant teaching of my Christian context had put me in!

But God is not a God of lies. He is a God of truth. God has not made the world irrational to test our faith when all the evidence is screaming, "This is false!" That was my final conclusion after much angst. Mind you, I don't think having our understanding right is God's first order of business. I don't believe he is troubled by those with the right heart but kind of messed up understandings.

But God does not demand that I be irrational to be a Christian. God is complicit in the discovery of truth. God has set up logic to work. God has made a world were the preponderance of evidence tends to point toward the right verdict. And if we get it wrong intellectually, that also is not greatly worrying to God.

7. My point is that we need not fear the open pursuit of faith seeking understanding. We can consider all the options fairly, even if we favor certain ones over others. All the disciplines of the liberal arts and general education have the values we have been discussing, even in Christian contexts.

They have those values because truth is both revealed and discovered, and the two do not normally conflict with each other. If they do, then we have made a mistake in one or the other. Science changes. The twentieth century corrected even the great Isaac Newton, even the great Euclid was modified. Science is open-ended; it is not finalized.

But it is also immensely true that Christians disagree massively on the interpretation of revelation. It is not as though the meaning and implications of the Bible are agreed on by all. They soundly are not. So it can also be possible that the problem in conflict between revelation and discovery is our misinterpretations of revelation.

I believe in the liberal arts because I believe truth is both revealed and discovered. God is complicit in this framework. A Christian need not fear the liberal arts. And the liberal arts need not fear the Christian.

And least that's where I am at on my own journey, at 7:10am on July 17, 2015.

Liberal Arts 7: Psychology and Sociology

The seventh post in my series on the importance of the liberal arts for civilization, finishing up the usual general education curriculum at a non-Christian school. Previous posts include:

1. A Vision for the Liberal Arts
2. The Value of Philosophy
3. The Value of History
4. The Value of Music and Art
5. The Value of Literature, Writing, and Speech
6. The Value of Science and Math

1. We've covered literature, philosophy, art, music, history, writing and (indirectly) speech, science and math. With those we have covered the classical liberal arts. Two more courses often fill out a general education curriculum: psychology and sociology.

Psychology has to do with our human minds, how we think, our personalities, why we behave the way we do. Sociology has to do with how people behave as groups, how different groups interact, and the various layers of a society. These are incredibly significant concepts that potentially help us understand ourselves and others more clearly.

I would argue that these are areas of a vast lack of self-awareness in American culture. We do not understand ourselves and why we behave the way we do. We do not understand what it's like to grow up in a different place in a different social setting. So we evaluate others on the basis of our norms and possibilities rather than having a realistic sense of what the lives of others are truly like.

These courses are thus of potentially immense value for individuals, groups, and nations. If we understand ourselves and others, we can potentially get along better with each other. We can potentially build a better society. So these courses are of immense value to the advancement of civilization.

2. In psychology, we get to know ourselves and how we are different from others. How did the events of my childhood help make me what I am today? What is my personality type and how is it different from people with other personality types? Ideally, I stop considering other people weird, abnormal, or inferior because they do not think the way I do or act the way I do. I realize they're just different.

From a Christian standpoint, I become less judgmental of others. I realize that I have weaknesses others do not have, and others have strengths I don't have. Young individuals can catch a glimpse of what it is like to be older. Hopefully, students develop some empathy for others.

In psychology, we hopefully can see our own bad habits and move toward healthier ones. Do I make excuses for my bad behavior? Do I vent my frustrations in a healthy way? Do I have any unhealthy ways of relating to other people? Do I have any bad habits or addictions? How can I change?

How do emotions work? How does memory work? These are all incredibly useful things to know. They give you an advantage in almost any field because they help you understand and relate to others more effectively.

3. Sociology tends to be more controversial, because it gets at some of the most unreflective assumptions of our herd. These are assumptions that give us a sense of meaning and belonging in the world, so we can become incredibly defensive, angry, even violent when they are exposed.

What if a very male-oriented society comes to find out that women are just as smart as men? What if it turns out that black people are just as smart as white people? Sociology exposes prejudices and privileges we either don't think we have or we mistakenly think are true.

So sociology can be very controversial to the group it is analyzing. A white person may not like being shown that a black person faces more traffic stops, more scrutiny and suspicion, more obstacles in day to day living than he or she does. A religious person may not like his or her prized religious experience being described as a predictable experience typical in certain cultures or subcultures.

But these insights, hard though they are, can help diverse groups get along together. They can help us check ourselves and correct our course. Why is it that one person sees only good in President Obama but someone else sees only bad? Why would someone associate being against abortion with being against gun control? Group behavior is very predictable and is the stuff of sociology.

4. If taught right, you can see that sociology is especially an important course for a healthy society. You could argue that homo sapiens is at root a herd animal. We survived in the past by forming clans that made alliances and fought together against others.

But civilization moves beyond the level of the clan, just as Christianity does. Christianity calls us to love our enemy and not just our herd. As such, an understanding of sociology is an incredible tool for the advancement of civilization.

Liberal Arts 6: In Honor of Pluto

Sixth post in my series on the importance of the liberal arts for civilization. Previous posts include:

A Vision for the Liberal Arts
The Value of Philosophy
The Value of History
The Value of Music and Art
The Value of Literature, Writing, and Speech

1. Last evening, something happened that hasn't happened in the history of the universe. A probe launched in January 2006 passed less than 8000 miles from the cold dwarf planet we call Pluto. It carried some of the ashes of Clyde Tombaugh with it, the man who discovered Pluto in 1930. He died in 1997.

It is a truly remarkable thing, that we could throw a baseball from a pitcher's mound spinning at 1000 miles per hour while moving at over 66,000 miles an hour around the sun accurately enough that would hit Pluto nine years later 3 billion miles away. I thank God, who deigns to let mere mortals know such things.

And he has let them know these things, not through the Bible in this instance, not through a special revelation given to a prophet in a congregation. But God has deigned to let us discover such things through science. Math and science are also the language of God.

2. I am truly amazed that so many Christians mock science. Do they mock the planes they fly on, the GPS devices they steer by, the cell phones they call and text by? Do they mock the medicines they are cured by, the computers they write by, the flat screen TVs they spend most of their time by?

No. I strongly believe that Christianity can co-exist peacefully with science. I shudder to think of the other alternative. I do not hold to the other alternative.

3. Science gets at one of the most important foundations of Western civilization--evidentiary thinking rooted in a quest for objectivity. Science tries to proceed with as few presuppositions as necessary. It proceeds to make hypotheses that it then tests until it arrives at one that works well enough to be called a theory. But even then, it does not rest on theories past. Theories are always open to revision or even abandonment, especially if new data arises that points in another direction.

This is the scientific method. It asks what the most likely interpretation of the evidence is. We all have biases. Scientists have biases. But evidentiary thinking requires us to suspend our desires for the truth to be a certain way in order that we can move toward what is more likely to be the truth, toward the best explanations of the data we have.

Many of us pretend to operate on the basis of evidence. We talk the language of evidence. But what we are really doing is trying to find a possible way to make the evidence fit our preconceived notions or desired theory. Science teaches us to determine what the most probable interpretation of the evidence is and to modify our preconceived notions accordingly. Again, I shudder to think of what the implications would be if Christianity could not survive such a method. I firmly reject that suggestion.

This quest for objectivity is the great hope for a democratic nation, indeed for a civilized world. Along with its companion, logic, it is essential for the success of civilization. Without it, society disintegrates into tribes and interest groups whose only common ground is the fact that they are all out for their own interests. Those who cannot think in an evidentiary way are liabilities to civilization.

4. Science and math play an important personal function for most of us. They humble us. At least they should. Dare we think we understand the thoughts of God when we cannot understand algebra? God is greater than algebra. Yet every yahoo thinks he or she knows what the Bible teaches. The evidence suggests they are hilariously wrong.

I am not, of course, suggesting that mathematicians and scientists should be leading society and making all the decisions. The gifts that enable a person to think in these ways can produce glaring blind spots in other ways of thinking. There are other inabilities that should humble the scientists of the world. Scientists need the other liberal arts to balance them out, including a sense of religion, as much as we need math and science to balance us out.

Nevertheless, if philosophy did not teach the student that the wise person is the one who realizes how little he actually knows, science and math are always around to help--if we listen.

5. It would be wise for all college-educated individuals to have some basic knowledge of the conclusions of science. Everything is made out of atoms. Space is expanding. Trees and humans exchange oxygen and carbon dioxide with each other. All living things have DNA that maps out what they will look and be like.

These things are so basic to me that I can't imagine the view of the world people have when they don't know them. I seriously knew someone once who questioned whether we had really gone to the moon. I shudder to think about how that person decides how to vote. And woe to the person on trial who might have someone like that in the jury.

Everyone today seems to have an opinion on climate change, evolution, pollution, and so forth. But few get their opinions from science. They get their opinions from cable news. An educated person should be exposed to arguments on these subjects from someone trying to be objective who is an expert in science and hasn't been handpicked by a certain channel because of their target audience.

6. Most people do use some math in their lives. They have bank accounts. They submit taxes. THEY BUY LOTS OF STUFF. Perhaps not everyone needs to know algebra, but how to make a budget? Yes. Math can be taught in a relevant way.

7. Learning math and science can actually make a person a better thinker. Math is closely related to logic. Geometry teaches inference and proof. Algebra involves deduction.

When people ask, "When am I ever going to use this stuff?" The answer is that your brain will use these skills every day if you are a person who thinks clearly and reads the world around them well. Math expands your mental capacity. Becoming better thinkers is always a benefit to you as an individual and to society as whole.

8. Most people have such a narrow view of the world, yet everyone thinks they know everything about everything. If they are taught well, math and science expand our horizons beyond ourselves and our experiences to things we could not have imagined. They expand our "common sense" beyond what's true in Marion, Indiana, to what is true in the universe. They point us to God.

The Coming, "Remnant" Christian College

1. I started this post on Friday when I heard that Jim Stump had resigned from Bethel College in Mishawaka because its Board had decided now to require faculty to sign a very specific faith statement involving the special creation of Adam. That is entirely their right, but with so many of these incidents recently, it prompts us to ask what exactly is going on right now in Christian higher education.

In just the last month we have seen Tom Oord leaving NNU and Daniel Kirk leaving Fuller. Now Jim Stumps. Others could be mentioned from recent years. I fear this is just the beginning.

2. I don't think it is just a matter of faculty types not getting the political context of the educational institution. There is some of that, of course. Faculty tend to think of academic freedom as an absolute, when it isn't at any institution. Every institution has things you can and cannot say. The goal is to work at a place where you can say what you want to say and don't mind keeping your mouth shut if there are things you just can't say there (especially when you don't have tenure yet).

Take Brandon Withrow. We should deeply respect him for realizing that he just can't teach at a Christian seminary if he has stopped believing. Good for him. I have the same respect for Jim Stumps, who realized it wasn't worth it to sign a statement that forbade him from exploring an aspect of faith that was central to his work as a scholar.

3. But I think something bigger is going on here. I thought of two or three possible factors that might be driving this increasing trend. And I suspect it is headed in a certain direction, at least in the short term.

First, I believe there was a predictable, conservative backlash after 9-11. No one was saying the stuff you hear on Fox News today in 2000. In the year 2000, it seemed like no one cared about inerrancy as an issue any more. All the college students I knew at the time were completely on board with social justice. I remember when I asked now President David Wright if he would write a chapter on "Communism versus Capitalism" for a philosophy textbook and he wondered if anyone was still talking about that issue any more.

Second, the majority position on homosexuality and gay marriage has dramatically shifted so quickly that many, many Christians are in a state of complete disequilibrium and instability. What is happening to a country where, just a decade ago, we seemed in control of the White House?

Coupled with this sense of societal vertigo is the rise of the nones, those who no longer identify with Christianity. This trend relates especially to the 20 somethings. Ed Stetzer has plausibly argued that "convictional" Christianity is not actually on the decline at all, but that it is nominal Christianity that is quickly converting to the "no religion" category.

4. Here's what I'm wondering. What happens when you feel like you are being routed in battle is retreat, retrenchment, regrouping. You get inside the fort. The coach calls a time out and you huddle on the sidelines.

For a long time now, civil religion has been the name of the game, what Richard Niebuhr called "Christ over culture." This is rapidly, predictably, converting to a "Christ against culture" posture. (The Anabaptists will be glad to welcome us all. They've been trying to tell us no nation can be Christian for 500 years.)

You can already see it. Just this past Sunday my own pastor was preaching about how Moses, despite the fact that he had a very comfortable life in Egypt, eventually had to face the fact that he belonged to a different homeland. This is all very predictable. This is righteous remnant theology. For the near future, convictional Christians will see themselves as something like a remnant in exile.

5. In a time of insecurity, we can expect many "convictional" Christian colleges to clamp down on what their faculty teach. They will go into protectionist mode. Many of those who still want a Christian college will want an island of protection from the world more than ever, defined in whatever way that particular tradition defines it.

To the degree that nominal Christians have been open to a Christian college, we should expect them increasingly to avoid colleges where Christian faith is front and center. I have reason to believe such colleges may even disgust them, repulse them. So the pool of potential students will decline. Some Christian colleges will probably have to close--and not because of the government. They will close because there just won't be enough Christian students to go around.

Meanwhile, many of these campuses will develop a remnant mentality. Boards will exert ever stricter standards on who is hired and what they can teach on these islands. New, stricter yard sticks will force existing faculty to leave.

These actions in turn will disgust a lot of students, even as it may delight some parents. According to Kyle Roberts, the Southern Baptist Church lost 200,000 people last year, the most ever in a single year. And less than half of its churches baptized any millennials at all last year.

6. Is there another option? I suspect there is. There is the "influence" model I experienced at St. John's College at the University of Durham in England. The leadership of the school were all Christians. Christian worship was readily available to those who wished to avail themselves. But there were plenty of atheists around too and none of them felt one bit uncomfortable there, as far as I could tell.

At St. John's, Christianity was host to the students, who took their classes at the broader university. We would say it was co-curricular. It did not wear its faith on its sleeves or push faith on the students. But it invited whosoever willed. It provided a context.

There is something different about Tom Oord and Jim Stump than some others who have left institutions. It is clear to me that their faith actually stands at the center of their outside-the-box thinking. IWU's President once described faith statements more as the fertile soil from which academic inquiry grows rather than a fence to keep faith from going outside. By that standard, Oord and Stumps would be able to continue teaching at a Christian college that feels secure about itself.

I wonder how a Christian college would do in the days ahead if only professors like Oord and Stumps were allowed to teach there. Would there be a market for a Christian college like that, where faith defined the starting point but not so much the ending, faith seeking understanding? A kind of L'Abri 2.0?

7. Part of me says this is just a transitional moment in history. The disequilibrium of the moment will pass. There will be a new equilibrium. After the smoke clears, there will still be convictional Christian colleges. The question is what they will look like.

Liberal Arts 5: The Value of Literature and Writing

Fifth post in my series on the importance of the liberal arts for civilization. Previous posts include:

A Vision for the Liberal Arts
The Value of Philosophy
The Value of History
The Value of Music and Art

1. Philosophy reflects on all things. History encompasses all things. Literature can cover all these things, to the extent that they can be encapsulated in words.

Many animals communicate. But humans have a unique capacity to communicate in writing.

2. Writing and rhetorical skills are of course of great utilitarian value. Written communication is one of the core 30 values for the State of Indiana. Grammar and rhetoric were part of the original medieval triviuum (along with logic, which is part of philosophy).

A person who can communicate and persuade is a person who has leadership skills. A person who can communicate has business skills. A person with poor writing skills or poor communication skills is someone who will create unnecessary obstacles for him or herself in a job and frankly in relationships.

So we are agreed. Writing is one of the "three Rs" that needs to be learned somewhere.

2. The public schools do not appear to be doing a particularly good job of this learning goal, at least not if what we're seeing in college is any reflection. Frankly, even the writing we get in the seminary is sometimes atrocious, and it's supposed to be graduate level.

The trend right now is to push college gen eds down into high school, to shorten college by counting some of what students do in high school for gen eds (or perhaps bringing college down into high school, better, although we'll see how many students can actually succeed). Society will do what society will do. But high schools are producing a less competent product than ever across the board. I don't blame the high schools, mind you. I blame the homes and society from which those students are coming.

So take away college general education requirements in the name of debt if you must. You will just create a more stupid society than it already is, and it's not particularly good now.

3. So I come to the value of literature in general. "Reading" is of course another of the three Rs. I believe high schools are doing a fair job of producing students who are able to read. We shouldn't have to deal with that task in college.

So by "the value of literature" I mean the value of knowing some of the great literature of human history, including the present. Literature is related to art and music as expressions of humanity. There are inherent limitations to writing. You could argue that art and music are more powerful in one respect because they are less tied down to words.

But literature creates worlds. Literature can lasso the power of human experience and emotion. Literature can capture the struggles, excitements, and fears of an age or a moment in time. Poetry, like music or art, can channel human experience in the most powerful of ways.

Again, not all eyes can see or ears hear. But all who are fully human should at least have a taste to see. Even the tone deaf can appreciate a well-placed poem at a funeral. Those who can't are the hardened, those for whom the coldness of life has frozen off an essential part of their true humanity.

4. Poetry and fiction can be far more powerful than the literal and prosaic. An ignorant generation of mid-twentieth century fundamentalists supposed that the Bible is all meant to be taken literally. What then of the "trees shall clap their hands" (Isa. 55:12)? What power does some literal version of this poetic metaphor have--"it's going to be really great" just doesn't cut it.

And what of the mythical imagery of Psalm 74:13-14? "You divided the sea by your might; you broke the heads of the dragons in the waters. You crushed the heads of Leviathan; you gave him as food for the creatures of the wilderness." Parables are fictional stories that are not one bit less true for not being stories of things that actually happened in history. Rather, their truth is more focused.

A lot of Christians don't get genres in the Bible, and the result is a whole lot of needless fights. An understanding and appreciation of literature would go a long way.

5. To understand how literature works is to understand how movies and television work, and these are some of the most powerful influencers of our day. Good literature creates a world. A whole generation was formed by Harry Potter. Was that generation as impacted by the Bible? Probably not, if we are honest with ourselves.

Times have changed. The West stopped being an oral culture around the year 1500. We are perhaps in the process of ceasing to be a literary culture and becoming a media culture. But story is still fundamental and common to the human psyche.

When we talk about the value of literature, we mean the importance of story and verbal form for humanity. The forms are changing, so no doubt the approach to literature will change too. But the place of these quintessentially human ways of expressing the world are part of civilization. How do we preserve in verbal form who we are and how we feel?

That is the provenance of "literature."

Sermon Starters: God is greater than our hearts.

Did a short sermon for the SAGE evening service at College Wesleyan tonight. Here's the outline if it sparks some ideas for anyone.

Text: 1 John 3:18-24
"If our hearts condemn us, God is greater than our hearts."

Introduction
I've always had a hunch that this verse didn't exactly mean what it meant to me. But I'm also convinced that God speaks to us most of the time this way through Scripture whether we really understand it or not.

As someone who grew up going to camp meetings two or three times a year, whose regular preachers were basically camp meeting style preachers, I spent a lot of my youth in endless introspection. I didn't have a lot of peace in those years.

This verse stood out to me--my "heart" seemed to repeatedly condemn me. But the verse held out hope to me. Even though I didn't feel peace, God was greater than my heart.

Point 1: God is greater than our heads.
It's difficult for us not to be in control. In America, many Americans feel completely out of control of what is happening in the country.

It is always an illusion when we think we are in control. The young often have great zeal, because they have the energy to fight every foe. I used Zwingli as an example of someone who thought everyone else was wrong but him, and he finally died in battle against the Roman Catholics. Paul himself was zealous like that before Jesus gently tapped him on the shoulder and redirected him.

Older people try to control by rules. They might even use the Bible to try to control things and make things certain. We often worry about people getting around the rules. We want to make sure there's no room in the rules for them to wiggle out.

But no one is fooling God. God knows all things. God knows what's really going on.

1 Samuel 16 - People look on what's happening on the outside. God looks on the inside.

Faith is the key. Faith is what truly defines sin (Rom. 14) and faith is what truly defines righteousness (Rom. 4). Not knowledge.

Point 2: God is greater than our hands.
Certainly God is greater than our sins (e.g., Prodigal Son). This is really what 1 John 3 meant here originally. If our hearts condemn us because we have not loved our brothers and sisters in the past, God is greater than our hearts. God has made a way for us to find atonement and forgiveness. God is greater than our sins.

But God is also greater than our weaknesses and imperfections. We in the holiness movement sometimes act like entire sanctification brings an Adamic perfection, as if we will make no mistakes or God condemns us for our mistakes.

But God is not looking for absolute perfection from us. God wants us to get an A in his class. He is not looking to fail us.

Mark 7 - God is not so much interested in what we touch on the outside. He's interested in what's going on in our motives and intentions.

Point 3: God is greater than our "hearts."
What I really heard in this verse was that God was greater than what I was feeling. Of course this is not what "heart" means in the Bible. The heart in the Bible is the seat of our true intentions and motives.

But it is certainly true that God is greater than our feelings. You might remember the old train from Campus Crusade: fact - faith - feeling. The idea was that even when we don't have feelings, the facts of the Bible stand.

In reality these all get mixed up. We don't actually have access to the facts without faith, and faith is a confidence in God, not merely a set of beliefs. Confidence is ultimately a choice, but it sure helps to have feelings behind it.

But when you are experiencing doubts:

• It's true, read the Scriptures. Read the prayers of the psalms. Trust in the facts of God's love for you.
• Prepare for times when you are not feeling the facts by creating a milestone journal. Write down your memories of those times when you experienced God the most. If your feelings ever begin to cloud the facts, read your milestone journal.
• If your feelings ever so cloud the facts and your past victories, remember that God often uses the body of Christ to have faith for us.

My professor David Seamands in seminary talked out how sometimes our antennae are not working. Somehow we've been knocked off the station. God often uses other Christians to fix the antenna, to get us back in tune.

Conclusion
I was surprised once to hear a story about a church leader I had considered a super-spiritual-hero as a child. I heard that at one point when he was very old, he lost his feeling of faith for a time. Another believer told the spiritual giant that he would have faith for him. This is a mystery. There are even times when God calls us to have faith for others.

There may be times in your spiritual life when your heart "condemns" you. In those times, remember that God is greater than your heart. He is greater than your head, your understanding. He is greater than your weaknesses. He is greater than your doubt.

He can even have faith for you.

E6. There are likely elements to church governance.

This is the sixth post on the Church in my ongoing series, theology in bullet points. The first unit in this series had to do with God and Creation (book here), and the second unit was on Christology and Atonement.

We are now in the third and final unit: The Holy Spirit and the Church. The first set of posts in this final unit on the Spirit and the Church was on the Holy Spirit.
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Even though there is no one right form of church governance, there are some likely elements that different churches will have in common.

1. We want to emphasize that the Church is not bound to the specific names or structures of leadership in the earliest church or the churches of Christian tradition. This is a fundamental hermeneutical mistake. Just because many churches in the New Testament had a role they called a "diakonos" does not bind any church today to have a role they call a "deacon."

Why? First, because description in the Bible is not the same as prescription. The fact that Judas went out and hanged himself is not a suggestion that all who betray Christ should go out and hang themselves. It is a description of what happened.

More fundamentally, while Scripture is for us, it was not written at the first to us. When everything is working correctly, this distinction is not important. When we read Scripture through the eyes of the Spirit, we see what we should see.

The danger of the nominal church of today is that it does not read Scripture as "for" it. But the danger of the convictional church today is that it reads the Bible too much as "to" it. If Ephesians 4:11 says that God gave the church apostles, then the assumption many will have is that there must be apostles today, because they think Ephesians was written "to" us.

But there are no apostles today of the sort that Peter was. And there are no apostles today of the sort that Paul was. They were apostles because they were witnesses to the resurrection of Christ in his body and specifically sent to witness to his resurrection as eyewitnesses. There may have been apostles for the Ephesians, but there are no apostles of that sort for us today, except as we hear their voices in the Bible.

A third reason follows on the other two. It is the nature of culture and context that the "how" of accomplishing goals will vary. A tactic that will work in one context will fail hilariously in another. In that sense, we would be foolish to look to the Bible for specific commands on how to do things today. Rather, we better look to the Bible for more fundamental principles, which we then best play out specifically in ways that fit our culture and context.

Why then does the "how to" use of the Bible sometimes work? It works because of two other dynamics. First, there is the dynamic of our own common sense. When someone who is insightful about money reads the Bible as a how-to book about financial resources, he or she will inevitably see in that mirror principles that he or she knows will work in our world. When a skilled practitioner reads the Bible as a how-to book about doing something, he or she will inevitably see in that mirror principles that he or she knows will work in our world.

They see valuable how-to insights because they are already insightful how-to people.

It also works because often when we do not really understand the Bible, the Holy Spirit steps in the gap. The Holy Spirit can give us insights for our contexts and cultures that perhaps had little or nothing to do with what the biblical text actually meant. But the Spirit can make the text "become" the word of God to us directly.

2. The preceding is meant to keep what follows in context. There do seem to have been common problems and elements in the governance of the early church. These are not prescriptive for the church today in their specifics, but they provide us with insights all the same.

We perhaps understand the power structure of the earliest church best if we view it through the twin poles of structure and charisma. These two poles stand in tension, as they do in the church today. By "structure" we refer to individuals with formal authority of some sort, an "office." By "charisma" we refer to individuals with informal authority of some sort, individuals who had followers without having a specific position of authority.

3. We have now clear traditions about the origins of formal authority in the Church. Jesus appointed twelve. [1] The apostles were thus the bedrock of formal authority in the early church.

But even here, the risen Jesus called other apostles through a more charismatic channel. Paul was not appointed by any apostle. James, the Lord's brother, was not appointed by any apostle. We thus find that the earliest layer of apostle in the early church was heavily created through charismatic channels.

Christians disagree today, arguably, over how this level of apostolic authority comes to us today. There are certainly charismatic parts to the Church that believe that God still calls people with this level of authority. They even call such individuals "apostles" today.

For the Roman Catholic Church, we might say that this level of apostolic authority resides in the Pope and the cardinals of the church (they might not say this). For Protestants, the apostolic level of authority is encapsulated in the New Testament. We like to think of that authority thus as fixed and set in the biblical text.

4. Yet it seems very difficult to dismiss the existence of charismatic authority in the Church today either. Some traditions recognize this authority differently than others, but it is arguably there just the same. Charismatic traditions tend to normalize spiritual charisma. The Spirit can speak authoritatively through a random individual in a congregation. Then again, the charisma of such an individual is only as authoritative as it is received by that congregation.

The prophets of the earliest church reflect charismatic authority in the earliest church. Over time, church structure tended to try to squash prophetic authority or at least channel it through official roles. But the "prophets" Ephesians includes in the foundation of the Church were almost certainly New Testament prophets (Eph. 2:20).

The clergy of churches today relate in various ways to the prophets of the earliest church. In many respects, the role of preaching today can function as a prophetic role. Some traditions conceptualize the preacher as someone who has a word from the Lord to deliver to a congregation on a specific day or occasion.

The very calling of a minister is conceived in some traditions in prophetic or even apostolic terms. The Holy Spirit speaks to a person and calls them to his mission in a specific way. Perhaps he calls them to go as a planter or a missionary. These roles tended to be normalized as history continued to ward off the chaos of the charismatic.

5. Meanwhile, the structure of authority in the local churches of the early church seem to have revolved around twin roles--that of elder and that of deacon. Local house churches and then perhaps the churches of a city were probably directed by a group of elders, who would literally have been old and probably mostly men. [2]

The role of "overseer" (episkopos), which would later be translated as "bishop," was probably simply a name for the function that elders performed in the early church. So the elders of a local congregation were the overseers of that congregation. [3] It seems more than likely that within this group, there was a single individual who "chaired," as it were, this council of elders.

On the other end are deacons. The word can mean "ministers" or "servants." They could be either men or women, as Phoebe at Corinth demonstrates (Rom. 16:1). It is at least possible that Timothy is called one in 1 Timothy 4:6, opening up the door that the councils of elders in local congregations sometimes laid hands on individuals in their midst on whom they recognized the gifting of God for ministry (cf. 1 Tim. 4:14). In 1 Timothy 4, we see the "young" Timothy performing ministerial functions at Ephesus like reading Scripture, exhorting, and teaching (4:13).

6. While it is thus inappropriate to say, "the structure of a church should look like this," there do seem to be some common features to church authority, even if they play themselves out in different ways in different traditions.

First, there should be some formal authority. It can be mostly local under the apostolic authority of Scripture (e.g., congregational) or it can be more global in nature (e.g., episcopal, presbyterian). There needs to be a way for church discipline to take place.

Second, there should be room for a prophetic word. This can take place through formalized roles such as that of a minister or priest, or there can be an allowance for charismatic authority to arise from within a congregation.

Finally, there should be individuals performing functions of leadership and service within a local congregation. Most churches in history have opted for a lead minister, a council of elders, and individuals who do more mundane service along the lines of Acts 6. This is the minister-elders-deacons structure of many churches today.

But what is important is not the names we give these roles, and there is no "right" way of structuring a church or denomination. There are rather common functions and likely elements to church governance.

Next Sunday: The Church is in the world but not of the world.

[1] From the standpoint of Israel, Jesus was the ultimate in informal, charismatic authority. We of course think of him now as having the ultimate formal authority, being God the Son from eternity past appointed as Messiah of Israel by God the Father. But on the countryside, from the human vantage point, his authority did not come through any normal structural authority.

[2] Given the culture of the day, this is not surprising. We cannot say for certain, however, that no women held such roles and, in any case, there were clearly women in the earliest church with charismatic authority, which always tends to surpass structural authority.

[3] The two roles are treated synonomously in Titus 1:5-7.