Inspiration, Infallibility, and Inerrancy

1. Anna Gaiser asked me how I defined words like inspiration and inerrancy. [1] I have sometimes called these "power words" because they have been very important words to say in certain faith communities over the years. A more cynical person might call them "shibboleths" based in Judges 12. Those among Gideon's troops who were not able to say this word properly were killed as the enemy. In that regard, sometimes it has been less important what you mean by those words as to whether you could say them.

I had a professor in seminary who said being able to say the Bible was inerrant was important for him to be hired. Given the way he thought the word was defined, he told his interview committee that he couldn't in good conscience confess it. The response was, "What if we define it in this way..." The person then went on to give a different way of defining it. The candidate said, "Well, if you define it that way I can say it." They were satisfied and he taught there his whole teaching career.

There were great wars over these things in the seventies in evangelical circles. One thing I have noted is that I do not believe that these battles brought anyone to Christ. I would more guess the opposite. I have not found that one's spirituality or depth of faith maps to one's position. Those with a more "restrictive" view (notice I didn't say "higher" view) do not strike me as being more Christ-like than those with a more complicated view, nor do they strike me as more faithful to God.

When I was at Asbury Seminary, then president David McKenna told the faculty that Asbury simply wouldn't get into those debates, and I think rightly so. People like to argue. People like to define boundaries so they can say who is in and out. These debates don't really bring anyone closer to God. They represent a "bounded set" mentality rather than a "centered-set" one. I'm told that for a while there it seemed like the main item on the Evangelical Theological Society's agenda was to decide who they would try to kick out each year.

A key mistake in these debates is thinking that spirituality or salvation is primarily a matter of belief and the mind. This is neither biblical nor informed. The Bible repeatedly indicates that it is the orientation of one's heart that is the basis for one's virtue and relationship with God. David was not a man after God's own mind. It is not out of the mind that murder proceeds. Sound doctrine is not a fruit of the Spirit. Renewing of the mind in Romans 12 is primarily about our dispositions, as is seen in Romans 12-15.

What's more is that this sort of cognitive approach doesn't fit reality. People act from a deeper place than their intellect. In fact their intellect is usually just a puppet of deeper desires. Nor does intellect correlate with virtue. Don't get me wrong, I love intellect. I love learning. I love the life of the mind. I love ideas. But this is not where virtue or faith lies.

2. Well, I didn't plan on that preface. This was going to be a quick set of definitions. Here goes.

Inspiration evokes the image of breathing. God "breathed" the biblical text. And of course God continues to breathe through the biblical text.

The key verse here is 2 Timothy 3:16: "All Scripture is God-breathed and is beneficial for teaching, for correction, for redirection, for training in righteousness."

However, this verse has been used to say things it doesn't say. Paul of course did not always feel God's breath in the literal meaning of the Old Testament texts. This verse thus can't be used to police a literal interpretation of biblical passages, for example.

Since the books of the Bible have different literary styles, inspiration probably doesn't mean that the minds of the biblical authors went blank and that we are getting a divine writing style. Even those who hold to a "dictation" view of inspiration usually accept that the personalities and styles of individual authors were involved.

And they could use sources. Inspiration doesn't mean that Mark couldn't have been a source for Matthew and Luke. After all, the book of Joshua tells us it used the book of Jashar as a source.

Another verse often connected to inspiration is in 2 Peter 1:20-21 -- "No prophecy of Scripture comes into existence by one's own unloosing, for prophecy was not brought at some time by the will of a person but, being brought by the Holy Spirit, people spoke from God."

So when Amos spoke to the people at market in the northern kingdom, he was speaking for God. It does get complicated when the New Testament authors hear meanings that a prophet like Isaiah would not have understood--"fuller senses" of the same words (sensus plenior). Many of the words the New Testament applies to Christ are such spiritual readings that go beyond what the original speaker understood.

And of course Amos spoke oral oracles. Likely someone else put his words into a book form. Then that book form was passed down and translated. There were likely multiple, slightly different versions of Old Testament passages in circulation in the centuries before Christ.

All that is to say that it gets messy when you get into the details. God breathed words through prophets and priests and scribes. God breathed new meanings through those same words to various New Testament authors. God breathes through Scripture to people doing lectio divina today.

Yes, Scripture was, is, and will be inspired.

The hermeneutical dimension that may not be foreseen by everyone is that words take on their precise meanings in a specific context. Accordingly, the same words can mean significantly different things to different people. The meaning of the words of the Bible can change in the eyes of the reader. This is both a tool the Holy Spirit uses to keep Scripture a living word and also a reason why there is so much disagreement over what the Bible actually means. It had a first "breathed" meaning. It has arguably had many other "breathed" meanings since.

3. Scripture is authoritative. Authority implies that a posture of submission is implied. Submission pertains especially to commands and instruction. One can have a reverence for things that aren't commands, but of course we are not called to worship the Bible.

With regard to obedience, I must first make sure that I am understanding the nature of biblical instruction appropriately. After all, I am not the direct Y-O-U of any passage in the Bible. The Old Testament was written to ancient Israel, and I personally am not even Jewish. The New Testament says it was written to Romans, Thessalonians, Corinthians, seven churches in Asia Minor. None of those are me.

2 Thessalonians 2:5 captures this truth well--"Do you not remember that I told you these things when I was still with you?" Obviously he was not talking to me or anyone alive today.

So I must process the instruction of Scripture with a view to who its original audience was and how that instruction connects to me and us as a whole today. This is simply the hermeneutical situation. It may mean that God expects more restrictive behavior for us today (for example, I am not supposed to be polygamous like Abraham). In other cases it may imply less restriction (for example, a woman can have short hair today).

The process of discerning the way the authority of Scripture plays out for me/us can be complicated. For one, there is instruction in the Old Testament that the New Testament appropriates differently (e.g., eating pork). There are commands that were culture-specific (e.g., we should not start up slavery again). There were commands that were situation-specific (God probably doesn't expect everyone to sell all they have and give to the poor).

There is a lot of discernment involved in figuring out what God instructs us today. It is best done in a community of faith where you "work out y'alls salvation with fear and trembling" (Phil. 2:12). We take into account the flow of revelation in the Bible, since the understanding of some things becomes more precise as we move through its pages (e.g., on Satan, on the afterlife, on individual culpability...). We take into account what the kingdom of God will be like (e.g., there will be no subordination of wives to husbands in the kingdom). We take into account the character of God (which keeps us from using Scripture as a weapon in the manner of the biblical Pharisees).

Yes, the Bible is authoritative for believers.

The hermeneutical complication is the realization that the Bible was written to ancient audiences and that the meaning both of the words and the significance of the instruction was a function of what words and actions meant in those contexts. Doing what they did isn't doing what they did if it doesn't mean the same thing.

4. Scripture is infallible. That is to say, Scripture never fails to accomplish what God wants it to accomplish. The key verse here is Isaiah 55:11 -- "My word will not return to me empty but will accomplish what I intent and succeed in the purpose for which I sent it."

Of course "word" here is not limited to Scripture. In context this verse is referring as much to God's command, his will, as to any written word. Here is an example of the principle mentioned above, namely, that we tend to define the words of the Bible from our "dictionaries" rather than read them for what they actually meant originally.

The word infallible was anathema in some circles in the culture wars of the 70s. It was viewed as a second rate view of Scripture. The reason was that people used it to say that the Bible was only expected to be correct in matters of faith and practice, not in matters like history or science.

Such an approach seems to miss the point made above that all the language of Scripture was "incarnated" in the flesh of the categories of those to whom it was first written. Otherwise they wouldn't have understood it. The Bible operates with a geocentric view of the universe. Why wouldn't it? So the way matters of faith and practice are presented came in the language and paradigms of the original audiences.

Kevin Vanhoozer has suggested a much more profound and appropriate way to approach the notion of infallibility. First, there was a profoundly puzzling sense of some previous thinkers that the purpose of language was merely informative. This perspective is so wide of the obvious diverse uses of language it is dumbfounding. A work like J. L. Austin's How to Do Things with Words now seems so basic as to boggle the mind that anyone would even question its basic premise.

That premise is that words do things. Yes, they can inform. But they also promise, command, reassure, express emotion, etc. When you say, "I do" at a wedding, you are doing something much more than informing your spouse of your belief!

So God had and has many purposes with Scripture. God makes promises (which, by the way, are often conditional on our response). God makes commands (but he gives us the freedom to disobey). The psalms express praise, thanksgiving, anger, lament. It's not that we cannot learn things from the psalms, but this is not their primary purpose. It makes little sense to say that the purpose of God in Psalm 137:9 is to inform the Babylonians or Jews of something!

Scripture does not fail to accomplish God's purposes for it.

What is hermeneutically profound is to realize how varying these purposes are. Words do far more than merely inform.

5. Finally, Scripture is inerrant. In the words of one seminary, "It is without error in all that it affirms."

In the light of what it means for Scripture to be infallible, we can now put this more precisely, following Kevin Vanhoozer. When the purpose of Scripture is to convey information, that information is without error.

There are three important considerations here. The first is simply to reiterate what we said about infallibility. Not every word of Scripture is meant to affirm something. For example, Psalm 137:9 is not informing or commanding the Jews to kill Babylonian babies. Its function is expressive, expressing a combination of despair and anger. The word inerrant is a mismatch to this verse. To use it of this verse is to miss the point of the verse.

A second consideration is that a biblical point sometimes comes in ancient clothing. When Paul says he visited the third heaven, his point is not cosmological. He is saying that he was in the very presence of God. He is not making a point about the structure of the universe, as if the universe was simply a matter of going up through two layers of sky until you reached God in the highest sky.

Discerning the point can be a slippery thing, which is why again the Bible is best appropriated in communities of faith. One can say, "That isn't the point" to try to get away with things you shouldn't be able to justify. But the potential abuse of a truth does not negate the truth. The literal understanding of Genesis 1 is not necessarily the picture some are going for. Genesis 1 seems to picture the stars in a dome with the waters that came down in the Flood above it.

Genre also comes into play here. You would not fault a parable for not being historical. A parable is "fictional" in genre. So we must consider the parameters of ancient history when we interpret biblical histories. If in fact it should turn out that Esther or Job were meant to be read as novellas, that would not be in any way a statement that they were untrue.

Here is an important point. These modern shibboleths were probably in part meant to restrain interpretations of the Bible. The idea was, "If we force a person to say Genesis 1 is inerrant, then we can stop belief in evolution." But the shibboleths really don't pull it off. If you are saying some aspect of the biblical text was a matter of the intended genre, you are not accusing that text of an error. You are implying that the interpretation of the person who disagrees with you is in error, not the Bible.

A third consideration involves locating an individual passage within the flow of revelation. The idea of God sending an evil spirit on Saul is a less precise sense of temptation than 1 Chronicles 21:1's sense that it was more precisely Satan that tempted David or James 1:13 sense that God doesn't tempt people to do evil. We should never apply a verse directly to ourselves today without first locating it within the whole counsel of God in Scripture.

The Bible is without error in all that it affirms.

Now, let us pray and work together to discern what it affirms and how God would have us appropriate it in our contexts today as communities of faith.

[1] See my earlier post on Wesleyans and inerrancy.

Sermon Starters: The Prodigal Parent

Houghton Wesleyan Church

June 21, 2020, Father's Day

Text: Luke 15:11-32
Recording

Introduction

• Happy Father's Day. It's not technically part of the Christian calendar, but fathers are in the Bible.
• Reflected on a number of fathers... considered Eli in 1 Samuel. My son thought that would be interesting, but probably not uplifting.
• I finally felt peace about the story of the prodigal son. You'll notice I've titled the story of the Prodigal Parent. I'm not the first to notice that the father in this story may seem quite reckless in more than one way. More on that in a moment.
• A family had two sons. The daughters aren't mentioned. They must have been perfect.
• It is an ancient story, so the father had control over the property, and who inherited it.
• The elder son seemed perfect, although we will soon find not quite. He was the kind of child that you didn't have to ask if they had done their homework. You never worried about him getting a speeding ticket or getting drunk. They used to call him a "goody two-shoes" (and since I was once called that, there's nothing wrong with that :-)
• The younger son was quite different. He was the kind of child that gave you gray hairs prematurely. Notice how brown my hair is, a sign that I have perfect children. The younger son didn't do his homework. He was the kind of child that kept you up late at night worrying if he was ok. You might even get up and drive around looking for him, hoping that he was alright.

The Younger Son

• When I think of the younger son, I think of that first seed in the Parable of the Seeds, the one that falls on the path and the birds eat it up immediately. It doesn't have any time at all to take root. I call this sort of person a "spiritual Teflon head." Nothing spiritual sticks to them. They have no interest in God or spiritual things (and they're certainly not interested in the liberal arts).
• Kierkegaard considered this stage of development something like the "pleasure" stage. For those of you who grew up in the 80s as I did, you might call it the "girls just want to have fun" stage. You'll be glad to know I won't be singing it for you.
• So he comes to the father and says something like, "Dad, I noticed you're not dead. Could we pretend you are and give me my inheritance now?"
• It's quite an insolent thing to ask. I would be deeply hurt. Another father might be very angry.
• But the father in the story seems quite even-keeled about it. I was in a discussion with Houghton's Michael Jordan recently about the word confident. According to his definition, the father in the parable is a confident father who is not rattled by situations that would make other people melt in fear or blow up in anger.
• I will say that I am struck that the younger brother is receiving anything at all. You will remember the story of Jacob and Esau in the OT, where it seems pretty much all or nothing.
• This leads me to one of my first observations in this story: Our prodigal parent loves us all equally.
• By the way, I used the term "parent" in the title as a reminder that, while it is Father's Day and we are focusing on fathers, God (whisper) does not have a male anatomy. God's maleness is a picture, not literal. This story could just as well be about mothers as fathers and about two daughters as about two sons. 
• And the father gives it to him. This is quite remarkable. I don't think I would have. Somewhere we could tell another parable where the father says, "Son, it's not going to be good for you if I give this. You would later regret it if I did." Certainly the elder brother wouldn't have given it to him. 
• This brings me to another take-away from the story. Our prodigal parent doesn't always protect us from our own foolishness.
• The older brother no doubt thought this was a reckless decision. What a waste!
• You may know Cory Asbury's song that marvels at the "overwhelming, never-ending, reckless love of God." There are some who don't like this song (including my wife, so I have to be careful here). Mostly they don't like the idea of God's love being reckless. I've seen some heated Facebook debates about this concept (which is funny because nothing is ever heated on Facebook). The elder brother certainly didn't like that song. What kind of reckless father "leaves the 99"?
• As I reflected on the father giving him the money, a slightly different perspective did occur to me. What if the father had waited? What if the son had inherited the property and possessions after the father was gone? He would have still wasted it. But then, he would be dealing with his older brother, not his father. His older brother either would have flat out told him no or might have taken him up on his offer to become a servant. And he would have never let him forget it. By giving the inheritance now, the father leaves room for his full redemption.
• There are two reasons God lets us go. The one is the Romans 1 reason. There is nothing left to redeem in us because we have set our course and hardened our hearts. God lets us go, lets us spiral out of control, and the penalty is entailed within our own course.
• The other reason is redemptive. God wants us to wake up. This a third take-away I have from this story. Our prodigal parent is patient with our foolishness, and eagerly longs for us to wake up.
• We know the story. The younger brother goes to a far off country. He has truly left the building. I don't think we naturally get the level of offence that he does here. His world is an honor-shame world, not a world of individual guilt where it's all about being true to your principles. He insults and disgraces not only his father, not only his family, but he is an affront to his people and his God.
• The fact that he is in a place where they herd pigs is significant. I used just to think "Yuck, smelly pigs," but there is something more significant going on here. There were no pigs in ancient Israel. This is one of the ways that archaeologists can tell that an ancient site belonged to Israel and not, for example, to Philistines. There are no pig bones in ancient Israelite settlements.
• So this son has left Israel. And since the ancients lined up gods with peoples, he has left his God. He has insulted his father, his family, his village, his people, and his God.
• Finally, the son hits rock bottom. We know the story. The father takes him back, even throws him a party. What a reckless father!

The Older Son

• Most of you know the story. The older brother is not pleased at all. We might call him the "law and order" son. To him it just isn't fair. And of course it isn't.
• He seems to relate to Kierkegaard's second stage. If the younger son lived for pleasure, the younger son is oriented around duty. This is better than living for pleasure because you are living for something bigger than yourself. But because you are focused on rules rather than people, you can become oppressive to others.
• I find the Parable of the Prodigal Son deeply subversive. The father doesn't say, "Well, I'd love to take you back but first you need to find someone to pay. Maybe your older brother will do it."
• There is a kind of theology that looks at the atonement a little like this, like there is an angel accountant somewhere in heaven keeping track of the units of sin (maybe, "sin-ons") that Jesus has to mathematically atone for. Then on the cross, God calibrates the sun gun and zaps Jesus with exactly the right amount of penalty, as if Jesus has to dip his toe in Gehenna hell just long enough to pay for all that sin.
• But the parable knows nothing about this sort of necessity. The father is sovereign and has the authority simply to choose to forgive. Don't get me wrong. We need the cross even if God didn't. Perhaps C. S. Lewis gave us the best picture of Aslan's death working a deep magic. The sense that Christ's death satisfies the sense of justice God has built into the universe is also true.
• And Terry Paige would be upset with me if I didn't at some point give the original connotations of this story. It is of course a great story about how God will take us back if we leave him and how we should be happy when God forgives others we don't want to be forgiven.
• But the Prodigal Son represents the tax collectors, prostitutes, and sinners of Israel. They weren't even trying to keep the covenant. They weren't even trying to follow the Old Testament. They were the spiritual cast-aways of Israel... and of no interest to religious leaders.
• There is a shorter version of the Parable of the Prodigal Son in Matthew. There was a father who had two sons that he asked to go work in the field. One said he would but didn't. The other said he wouldn't but did in the end. These relate to the reactions to Jesus. The tax collectors and prostitutes are those who weren't even trying to be righteous, they they accept Jesus and go work in the field. 
• The Pharisees, scribes, rabbis, and religious leaders were the "healthy" that Jesus shouldn't have needed to minister to. They were voted "most likely to be righteous in high school." But the funny thing is, they don't accept Jesus' reckless love, and they don't accept Jesus.
• But our prodigal parent is God and isn't accountable to his law and order children.
• The elder brother also disgraces and insults his father, because he refuses to join the party for the sheep that was lost and now found. We don't feel his shame, in part because we identify him and in part because we don't get the shame dimension of the story.
• The older brother in story story reminds me of the priest and Levite in the Parable of the Good Samaritan. Some scholars say they didn't have a legitimate purity reason not to help (Amy Jill Levine), so that can't be the meaning. But since when have people not used Scripture as an excuse not to do the wrong thing. I think these two were hiding behind a purity argument not to help.
• Jesus makes a Samaritan the good guy. They certainly weren't thought to be "good." Pick the person you least want to love, the person you least want to be the good guy. That's who the Samaritan represents.
• But our prodigal parent is patient with children who think they know law and order better that our reckless father.

Kierkegaard's Third Stage

• I'm not a full blown Kierkegaardian. His third stage is a blind leap of faith. But there is a stage beyond pleasure and duty. A stage of surrender to God as our reckless parent.
• The younger son in the pleasure stage only lives for himself and eventually crashes in self-defeat.
• The older son in the duty stages does live for something bigger than himself, but it is not the person of God. It is the rules, and those rules are unforgiving and rigid. 
• Our higher calling is to be like the prodigal father. We submit ourselves to our reckless Parent, who loves even those who are foolish and stubborn.

Blessing

• Now may the God who is patient with foolish prodigals and stubborn older brothers, receive you into his kingdom of reckless love and welcome you with open arms into the eternal celebration. Amen.

Book Review: The Cross and the Lynching Tree

I went through James Cone's classic book this last week posting summaries on Facebook. Here are those notes.

First Post
A while back I read about half of James Cone's The Cross and the Lynching Tree. Seems like a good time to finish it. I used the connection last night in class to try to get a sense of the dynamics of a Roman crucifixion.

First, crucifixion was about power. It showed Jews who was boss, and it wasn't them. Cone says of growing up in Arkansas, "White people were virtually free to do anything to blacks with impunity."

Second, a cross was about shame and disgrace. The Romans crucified people along a main route to enter a city like Jerusalem. The victim was naked, completely exposed. People watched, just as in the 1930 picture of the lynching in Marion, Indiana.

If this comparison angers some, we begin to understand what Paul meant in 1 Corinthians 1:23 when he said that the cross was a stumbling block to Jews.

Chapter 1
I reviewed the first chapter of James Cone's book The Cross and the Lynching Tree this morning. It gives a small taste of the slavery and post-slavery struggles of African-Americans in the south. As the great-grandson of an Union soldier whose roots are in Indiana, these were not my struggles.

(I might add that my great-grandfather and his generation would be infuriated to see confederate flags in Indiana and the north. In the comments I made it clear that the north was full of its own hypocrisy, with the KKK, redlining, and other racist features.)

I grew up with little sense of how the lives of others with a different color skin are usually more complicated (which is what is meant by the phrase "white privilege," something you don't even know you have--it is more about subtractions that are not added to your life than additions of negatives of which you are aware).

The sentences I want to quote from chapter 1 are these:

"They found in the cross the spiritual power to resist the violence they so often suffered."

"Faith was the one thing white people could not control or take away."

Chapter 2
"Between 1880 and 1940, white Christians lynched nearly five thousand black men and women in a manner with obvious echoes of the Roman crucifixion of Jesus."
______________
Cone spends this chapter reflecting on Rienhold Niebuhr, who had much to commend him but was still not a perfect man when it came to race.

"Man's [sic] capacity for justice makes democracy possible; but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary." Niebuhr

"Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime." N

"People without imagination really have no right to write about ultimate things." N

Niebuhr was a gradualist when it came to matters of race.

Cone concludes: "Niebuhr had 'eyes to see' black suffering, but I believe he lacked the 'heart to feel' it as his own." "Niebuhr took no risks for blacks."
______________
MLK disagreed with Niebuhr's gradualist approach.

"It is hardly a moral act to encourage others patiently to accept injustice which he himself does not endure." MLK

"It has always been difficult for white people to empathize fully with the experience of black people." Cone

"There is no justice without power."

"There is very little justice in any educational institution where black presence is less than 20 percent of the faculty, students, and board members."

This was an interesting and convicting chapter.

Chapter 3
Chapter 3 of Cone's book focuses on MLK.

The chapter begins with the story of Emmett Till, who visited Mississippi in 1955 and was killed for whistling at a white girl. This would be something like the last straw. "If lynching was intended to instill silence and passivity, this event had the opposite effect."

Much of the chapter sketches MLK's relation to his fears and potential death. His home was bombed early on in 1956. And of course he was assassinated in Memphis. One theme he both inherited and continued was that the cross is the answer to the lynching tree.

Here are some quotes:

"Suffering always poses the deepest test of faith."

"We do not know what we truly believe or what our theology is worth until 'our highest hopes are turned into shambles of despair.'"

"In the end there was no way to prevent someone from killing him." "Suffering is the inevitable fate of those who stand up to the forces of hatred."

"He did believe that his suffering and that of African Americans and their supporters would in some mysterious way redeem America from the sin of white supremacy."

Benjamin Mays said of Jesus -- "The chief trouble with Jesus: He was a troublemaker."

Chapter 4
Chapter 4 of Cone's book was difficult because within it you could see the faith crisis that white ("Christian") violence caused in African-Americans of the early 1900s and even to today. To see a lynched individual as a "recrucified Christ" helped because in this image Jesus identifies with suffering rather than being the perpetrator of it.

One startling aside is that I grew up in Fort Lauderdale, Florida without (as far as I remember) ever hearing of Rubin Stacey, who was lynched there in 1935.

The chapter addresses the way black artists like W. E. B. DuBois and Langston Hughes interplayed the cross and the lynching tree. It was hard for both of them to detach Christianity from the white oppressors who so strongly espoused it.

"The church to-day is the strongest seat of racial and color prejudice," DuBois wrote. He also wrote, "If Jesus Christ came to America, He would associate with Negros and Italians and working people."

Thinking of Langston Hughes, Cone wrote, "It was not easy for blacks to find a language to talk about Christianity publicly because the Jesus they embraced was also, at least in name, embraced by whites who lynched black people."

A final note is the irony that it was only last Wednesday that Congress finally passed an anti-lynching bill. Such a bill was first introduced into Congress 120 years ago. Imagine that. Cone mentioned its failure to pass over the years when he wrote this book 15 years ago.

What is wrong with this picture?

Chapter 5
Chapter 5 of Cone's book looks at the struggles and contributions of black women toward the achievement of the Golden Rule in American society and thus the realization of a truly Christian nation.

Langston Hughes put it this way: "Let America be America again... America never was America to me." MLK also sought "to redeem the soul of America."

Black women made up about 2 percent of blacks killed by lynching. On the other hand, there were those individuals who did not believe a black woman could be raped by definition.

Women played key roles in voicing the need to see the Golden Rule played out for all America. Ida B. Wells was so vocal that she was often marginalized even within the black community. Here are some of her words: "The nation cannot profess Christianity, which makes the golden rule its foundation stone, and continue to deny equal opportunity for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to the black race."

She was critical of D. L. Moody, who segregated his revivals to appease whites in the South. "Our American Christians are too busy saving the souls of white Christians from burning in hellfire to save the lives of black ones from present burning in fires kindled by white Christians." In this chapter Cone is critical of liberal theologians like Rauschenbusch who said nothing.

Billie Holiday's song Strange Fruit is an example of black women using song to draw attention to the evil of lynching. The words to the song were written by a Jewish man in New York after seeing the famous picture of the lynching in Marion, Indiana in 1930. At the 1964 Democratic convention Fannie Lou Hamer gave a speech called, "Is this America?" LBJ was not pleased, but the Voting Rights Act would be passed the next year.

Conclusion
Finished the conclusion of James Cone's The Cross and the Lynching Tree. Cone was born in 1938 (recently died in 2018). His childhood memories stretched back into the time before the civil rights movement, to a time when he could be nervous if his father did not come home on time.

Clearly, although Cone was a Christian and taught at a Christian seminary, he wrestled with Christian faith because of its close association in his world with lynching and white supremacy. But he had an experience of God's transcendence in worship. As Mircea Eliade has said, "once contact with the transcendent is found, a new existence in the world becomes possible."

"God was also present at every lynching in the United States." "Every time a white mob lynched a black person, they lynched Jesus." "As I see it, the lynching tree frees the cross from the false pieties of well-meaning Christians."

"Blacks and whites are bound together in Christ by their brutal and beautiful encounter in this land."

Docherty 4: Septuagintal Studies

Introduction
Chapter 2: Previous Scholarship
Chapter 3: Developments in the Study of Midrash

1. I found this chapter the most helpful so far. Docherty potentially challenges something I have said quite often, namely, that the New Testament authors felt free to modify the text of the Old Testament. Instead, she argues that the text of the Greek Old Testament was already pluriform and varied somewhat significantly. Thus, while New Testament authors may cite texts that differ from the Septuagintal text as it coalesced by the time of the great codices, she would imply that, at least as far as Hebrews is concerned, the author was probably not very innovative with the text.

First, she uses the word Septuagint in reference to "the whole transmitted tradition of Greek versions" (123). "Old Greek" thus refers to the earliest stage of Greek translation that can be reconstructed for any book. This follows Leonard Greenspoon's 1987 distinction.

Similarly, she follows with most scholars the sense of Paul de Lagarde that the Greek translations of each book likely began with an Urtext, a single individual translation of each biblical book. This is in contrast to the theory of Paul Kahle, who proposed multiple original translations that eventually coalesced. However, once the original text began to circulate, revisions began almost immediately.

2. The result is to see a lot of options in the mix from early on. Symmachus, Aquila, and Theodotion are no longer seen as new, late, and independent translations but continuations of previous revisions (125). Even some of the revisions of the Lucianic Recension of the 300s may actually be witnesses to the Old Greek (128). "The serious exegete can no longer be content with comparing the textual form of Old Testament citations in the New Testament with only the major Septuagint witnesses like Codices Alexandrinus and Vaticanus" (125). Even the NT itself serves "as a witness to textual plurality in the first century CE."

I must say that while I must be willing to swallow this pill, I want to see more evidence. For example, the last sentence is not evidence but could be a likely conclusion. She has me listening, but I'm not just going to take the word of the footnotes without further evidence.

3. She goes through some of the key psalm citations in Hebrews. She does convince that in most of these cases Hebrews is following some Greek text rather than freewheeling. One of the most interesting case studies is the use of Deuteronomy 32:43 in Hebrews 1:6. The Dead Sea Scrolls have, I think, shown that the author is following a form of the Greek that is actually more faithful to the original Hebrew than the Masoretic text.

The peculiarity is the subject "the angels of God" found only in the Odes and Ethiopic text, both of which are late (400s). Was this an invention of the author of Hebrews or another Greek tradition. I'm quite open to it being an alternative Greek tradition.

4. Aland's Greek New Testament has "like a garment" as an addition by the author. It is possible. It doesn't change the meaning. However, there is a DSS that has it (11QPs^a). This suggests to me that the author was following an exemplar here.

Docherty apparently didn't know that Philo quotes Genesis 2:2 exactly like Hebrews 4:4 does. (She would have heard me say it at SBL last fall though :-) I thus think that the author of Hebrews was following an exemplar here as well. Her mention of how the slight modification adding "God" to the verse could arise might just as well have been an Alexandrian modification.

In any case, her claim that Hebrews does not freewheel in its quotations is true. However, this does not prove her case that the author "held a very high view of the inspiration of scripture, scripture in its Greek as well as Hebrew form" (141). An atheist might be inclined to quote texts word for word.

She concludes: "The new research discussed in this chapter now places the burden of proof on those who would argue against a variant reading and for a definite theological alteration of a biblical source" (142).

I will mull this over. I will say that I would want to ponder beyond citations to allusions and echoes. She has just worked with quotations. She does mention in the chapter that she is just speaking of Hebrews and not the rest of the New Testament in this study.

Docherty 3: The Study of Midrash

Introduction
Chapter 2: Previous Scholarship

Chapter 3: Developments in the Study of Midrash
1. We now get to the good stuff, although I was a little disappointed. It has felt like Docherty was building up to our need to take on board recent developments in the study of midrash. But she does not go into great detail about its specific content. Maybe she will get into more detail when we get to her analyses of Hebrews. I feel like I keep waiting for what she's building up to.

I was eager to read this chapter because I am one of those NT people she mentions who is not greatly acquainted with rabbinic studies. I am also one of those who wonders whether it is anachronistic to bring too much of rabbinic Judaism into the study of the New Testament. The Mishnah dates to around AD200--nearly two centuries after Jesus walked the earth. Much of the rest of rabbinic literature is later... often by centuries.

I accept that there is likely tradition that goes back to the Tannaim of the second century, even to the time of Jesus. But it has surely been colored through the filters of later tradition in good Gadamerian fashion. And I do not personally think of the rabbis or church fathers for that matter as having a good deal of objectivity or historical consciousness in their processing of earlier material.

Let me attempt to record the scholars she catalogs:

• Renee Bloch - focus on the historical development of tradition from biblical times. She died in tragic plane crash on its way to Israel at about 30 years old, shot down over Bulgaria.
• Geza Vermes - over-played historical continuity, seeing it going even back into the Bible
• Isaac Heinemann - first theoretical description of midrash (1949). Focus on haggadah. Draws on middot (interpretive rules found in rabbinic literature, e.g., Hillel). Saw a creative element in rabbinic interpretation, as well as an awareness of the "plain sense" of Scripture. She critiques unquestioning use of the middot.
• Michael Fishbane - His classic is Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel. It deals with reinterpretation within the biblical texts themselves. Intertextuality. Creative exegesis - "exegetical imagination" involved.
• Daniel Boyarin - postmodern influence--rabbinic interpreters actualizing the polysemy of the texts. Midrash is "a radical intertextual reading of the canon, in which potentially every part refers to and is interpretable by every other part" (93). Midrashic exegesis both 'disrupts' and 'reconstructs' the meanings of biblical texts."
• Jacob Neusner - The authorship of midrashic documents involves a "coherent programme of themes which runs throughout the work" with consensual decisions about the organization of the material and its literary form. Neusner overreaches here. Too synchronic. Did contribute a good notation system.

Let me pause here because clearly Docherty means to promote the "Goldbergian School." The above scholars are preface.

• Arnold Goldberg - She likes him especially for his precise delineation and definitions of exegetical techniques as well as his interest in theological presuppositions inherent in those methods.
• A midrashic sentence is the fundamental unit. It involves a lemma (L) or small scriptural segment, on which a hermeneneutic operation is performed (o) producing a dictum (D).
• Because the same words can be employed to say different things in different contexts and arrangements, there is the expression itself (Aussage in German) in distinction from its meaning in a particular location (Bedeutung).
• "The editors of the rabbinic works were in fact not interested in what their citations were meant to say in their original contexts, but in what they can say now" (103). 
• Alexander Samely - pupil of Goldberg, introduced categories from linguistics. Identified over 100 different exegetical techniques in the Mishnah. The rabbis "privilege the linguistic signs above the meaning of the word as a whole" (110). "The presuppositions most important for rabbinic exegesis were an absolute belief in the relevance and consistency of scripture."
• Philip Alexander - Docherty's Doktor Vater. Has criticized the loose use of the word midrash among people like me. :-) Distinguishes between midrashic form and midrashic method. 
• "Midrashic texts always have the literary form lemma plus comment" in addition to other features like stringing numerous verses together, giving alternative interpretations, and quoting named authorities.
• Alexander has also catagorized other genres like rewritten Bible, pesher, and anthologies.
• With regard to underlying axioms, he has noted that midrashic interpretation is based on "the rabbinic belief that scripture as divine speech is polyvalent, containing innumerable latent meanings to be exposed by the authoritative interpreter, and that even apparent contradictions in scripture can be tolerated as they exist only at the human level and not in the mind of God" (113).

Helpful chapter in learning the lay of the land.

William Webb 6: Persuasive Extrascriptural Criteria

William Webb continues: Slaves, Women, and Homosexuals: Exploring the Hermeneutics of Cultural Analysis.

Previous chapters:
Chapter 1: The Christian and Culture
Chapter 2: A Redemptive-Movement Hermeneutic
Chapter 3: Persuasive Criteria
Chapter 4: Moderately Persuasive Criteria
Chapter 5: Inconclusive Criteria
Almost done. Now Chapter 6: Persuasive Extrascriptural Criteria
1. This chapter reminded me of the Wesleyan Quadrilateral. This material would relate to experience and reason. In it he gives his last two criteria.

Criterion 17: Pragmatic Basis Between Two Cultures
This criterion has to do with whether the pragmatic basis for instruction in the Bible can be sustained from one culture to another. "A component of a biblical imperative may be culturally relative if the pragmatic basis for the instruction cannot be sustained from one culture to another. The converse is that a biblical command is more likely to be transcultural in its articulated form to the extent that the pragmatic factors are themselves sustainable across various cultures" (209).

An important observation here is that "pragmatic factors played at least a limited role in shaping the biblical text." "Our discussion of a pragmatic basis needs to be clearly distinguished from the ultimate basis that underlies every biblical command and imperative" (210).

He gives as an example the instruction not to reap at the corners of a field to allow the poor to feed. This would not make sense in most contexts today. Therefore, we move up the "ladder of abstraction" and apply the principle in relation to making sure the poor get fed.

2. Examples most would agree with:

• foot washing - we wear enclosed shoes now, so we don't have to follow concretely.
• children submission to parents - young children are still less developed in knowledge and intellectual capacity than most parents. Young children should in general continue to submit to parents... but probably not once they are adults. That was cultural.
• submission to the king -- a representational democracy is different, so the specifics are cultural, although we should respect those in authority
• congregations and church elders - some continuity, but our culture has a more "empower the laity" approach that fits our democratic context.

3. Women submission to men
The practicality here had to do with the lack of education of women, their general lack of exposure and experience and their lack of physical strength for agriculture. These practicalities do not apply today, suggesting that the instruction to submit to husbands was cultural rather than transcultural.

4. Homosexual prohibitions
He argues quite a bit against Walter Wink in this section. Wink suggests that the need for many children in the ancient world no longer applies--indeed that our problem is overpopulation--and thus that homosexuality should be promoted as an option. Webb shows fairly easily that this is a pretty weak argument in favor. Would the overpopulation argument validate every non-procreative form of sexuality?

Criterion 18: Scientific and Social-Scientific Evidence
5. Webb makes a distinction between two types of scientific/social scientific data--absolute scientific data that would hold true in any culture and time and relative scientific data that would only hold true within a particular culture.

Agreed upon examples:

• Scripture functions with a geocentric (earth-as-center) view of the world. He argues this was "phenomenological." It was the way the world appeared to them. "The geocentric component is cultural; the theological and phenomenological components are transcultural" (222).
• Flat earth -- "Scripture accommodated itself to the cosmology of its day" (223).

6. Now for the topics of the book:

• Women are not reproductive gardens. The understanding of reproduction, which underlies some biblical language, is no longer held. The woman is not just an incubator. She contributes just as much "data" to reproduction as the man, and infertility is often the man's fault.
• Women as poor leaders -- This simply is not true in our culture, even if it would have primarily been true in biblical times because of cultural conditions (but note that the Bible itself defies the culture in several instances).
• Women more easily deceived than men. This was probably generally true in ancient times, but it is certainly not true today. He takes Schreiner and others to task for skewing their interpretation of 1 Timothy 2:14 to make it more palatable while retaining complementarianism. Historically, Christian commentators have seen an innate intellectual capacity difference between men and women. Schreiner and Doriani reject this side to the interpretation of 1 Timothy 2:14 while retaining that women are less discerning than men because they are more relational. 
• In the end, he argues that the educational level of women in Paul's day has to be taken into account. 

Webb moves up the ladder of abstraction and summarizes the take away of 1 Timothy 2:14 as "seek teachers and leaders who are not easily deceived" (230).

7. With regard to homosexuality, he examines in this final section whether homosexual activity is determined behavior. He indicates that both environmental and biological factors can play a role in homosexuality. However, "the influence of nonvolitional forces upon any human action is no help in determining the ethical status of that action" (233).

This is quite true. The question whether homosexual activity is moral or not is not determined by the nature of the origins of such desires. "Environmental and biological factors are not sufficient grounds for assessment of any behavior" (234). Non-volitional factors in behavior "moderate the degree of personal culpability, but they do not change an assessment of the behavior itself" (234).

Docherty 2: Previous Scholarship

This weekend I'm trying to speed read Susan Docherty's book on the use of the OT in Hebrews. About two chapters to skim today.

Introduction

1. Chapter 2 is the predicable history of research chapter. We expect this chapter of any dissertation to conclude something like, "After looking at what everyone else has done, I conclude that my research project needs to be done." In that sense, this was an easy chapter to skim and mostly skip. However, it does provide a nice overview of some classic commentaries and works on Hebrews.

2. First she goes through major commentaries with a view to how they analyze Hebrews' use of the OT and how they engage the Greek text of the OT. Delizsch, Westcott, Moffatt, Windisch, Spicq, F. F. Bruce, Michel, Attridge, Lane, Ellingworth, deSilva, and Koester.

Then she goes through "theological and structural studies" of Hebrews. This begins with a claim that is not really defended. "It seems improbable that a valuable study of it [Hebrews] can be undertaken which does not engage seriously with the author's use of scripture" (51).

I'm rolling this section over in my head. Is she assuming that Hebrews' use of Scripture must play a role in its literary structure? Certainly some have proposed that, but it seems far from self-evident. And on that macro-level, I'm not sure it would play into her focal task. We shall see.

She then looks at Lehne, Nairne, Isaacs, Vanhoye, D'Angelo, Swetnam, I did not read this section although I know these names. Several of them are mentioned in my dissertation too. I'm not sure how this section contributes to her task.

3. The last section of the chapter gets down to business. This one is material to the project. "Studies of the Interpretation of the Old Testament in Hebrews." She looks at Caird, Markus Barth, Anthony Hanson, Kenneth Thomas, Friedrich Schröger, Cecil McCullough, Dale Leschert, Stephen Motyer, and George Guthrie.

I was struck in this chapter with the age of the sources. This dissertation was submitted in 2007 but its engagement with scholarship barely reaches into the 2000s.

One of the most important debates to surface in this section is whether Hebrews 1) feels free to intentionally alter the LXX text in front of the author (Kenneth Thomas), 2) sticks pretty closely to the Vorlage at hand (Cecil McCullough), or 3) perhaps chooses the exemplar before him that best fits his purposes (this could be her position).

A key feature of this debate, in my opinion, are the theological biases of the interpreter. For example, it is very difficult for some interpreters to handle anything but biblical authors who are as concerned to stick with the precise text and historical/contextual interpretation as they are. As someone from the holiness tradition, this is not a beef of mine and so I have long believed I am in a better position to be objective about such things than some others. You'll thus forgive me for completely ignoring the work of Dale Leschert.

4. She draws four trends from Guthrie's 2003 review important in concluding the chapter. First, more appreciation is needed for the complexity of the textual state of the Septuagint. Second, she believes the OT citations in Hebrews are the key to the structure of the letter. Third, more study needs to be done on the exegetical techniques used by Hebrews, and finally, the hermeneutical axioms of the author need to be identified.

Docherty's The Use of the OT in Hebrews 1

1. I have been in college administration for the last four years. One year teaching and then before that I had been Dean for six other years. In short, my focus for at least 10 of the last 11 years has been administration. That takes its toll on the scholar in me.

I don't know what the future holds: professor, pastor, administrative servant. But I have some scholarly work to do this month. To do it well, I really need to blow through some books. This weekend is the first.

2. Susan Docherty's work The Use of the Old Testament in Hebrews is pretty significant. It's also expensive but I bit the bullet. I want to read/skim it this weekend--206 pages. If I sleep 16 of those hours, go to church, eat at least 4, run twice. Well, let's say I potentially have 24 hours of reading (not going to happen, of course).

So let's say the goal is 10 pages an hour. Yeah, right.

3. In chapter 1, Docherty sets out her agenda. She believes NT studies has not kept up with research into Jewish exegetical techniques. She aims to bring Hebrews research up to speed. She also believes that NT study is behind in recent research on the text of the Greek Bible in the first century. Both of these aims make her book a significant read.

She then lays out the book. In chapter 2, she'll look at the last 150 years of Hebrews commentary work as it relates to the use of the OT. In chapter 3, she will introduce us to the Goldberg school of analyzing Jewish exegesis in relation to underlying assumptions about Scripture. Chapter 4 looks at recent studies on the Greek text of the OT in the first century. Chapter 5 applies Goldberg's method to Hebrews.

The game is on.

Do your fall semester at Houghton from home!

1. Like all the Wesleyan colleges, Houghton College is planning to have an on campus fall semester if it is at all possible. And it looks very much like it will be.

At the same time, Houghton professors have been preparing for the possibility that the pandemic might disrupt business as usual. Unlike the spring, where everyone went online within a week, we planned for anything.

2. This created an interesting possibility. What if we just planned to make these fall courses available in either format? By all means, come to campus! But if you aren't quite sure or want to try something new, we will bring the personal, relational touch of Houghton's campus to you wherever you are.



No doubt the vast majority of students will eagerly run back to a place where you can see people in the flesh. If you have just finished high school, these last months have to have been rough! I strongly suspect returning college students will also rush back to a place where you can talk to people face to face, walk in the woods, and of course eat cafeteria food. I have to imagine that, after being cooped up for so long, most students will yearn to be back on a campus.

3. On the other hand, life is complicated. Some international students may have difficulty getting back to the States. Some individuals may want to stay at home just a little longer. Or maybe you never even thought about the possibility that you could have the best of both worlds--the residential campus courses from the comfort of your home!

Houghton's Flexibility: Choose Your Own Path

There are lots of online programs out there. But the pandemic crisis has made the kinds of courses you can't normally take online available this fall. At how many places can you take a chemistry course mostly online, just coming to campus to complete your lab work? What about a studio art course where it's mostly online, except for a small segment of it? These are the kinds of options we are talking about for this fall.

Start Houghton Online this fall, come to campus later!

These types of courses are called "HyFlex" courses. You can take them completely online or you can come to campus and take them. You can even flex during a semester with them.

Exciting days are ahead!

Book Review: Thurman's Jesus and the Disinherited

These are posts I made on Facebook this week but wanted to preserve them here as well.
______________
On Monday I took Howard Thurman's 1949 book Jesus and the Disinherited and read the preface. This sentence stood out to me: "Why is it that Christianity seems impotent to deal radically, and therefore effectively, with the issues of discrimination and injustice on the basis of race, religion, and national origin?"

Chapter 1
"The masses of men [sic] live with their backs constantly against the wall."

In the first chapter of his 1949 book, Howard Thurman gives a brilliant typology of the different reactions those with their "backs against the wall," like first century Jews under Roman oppression, can have.

1. You can assimilate, like the Sadducees or Herod.
2. You can isolate, like the Pharisees. These are both non-resistant approaches.
3. You can resist violently, like the Zealots, and die trying.
4. You can have the Kingdom of God within you, like Jesus, and resist non-violently.

"Anyone who permits another to determine the quality of his inner life gives into the hands of the other the keys to his destiny."

Chapter 2: Fear
"The threat of violence... is a weapon by which the weak are held in check... Every member of the controller's group is in a sense a special deputy, authorized to enforce the pattern."

"The awareness that a man is a child of the God... who is at one and the same time the God of life, creates a profound faith in life that nothing can destroy."

Chapter 3
Chapter 3 is on Deception.
"Throughout the ages... the weak have survived by fooling the strong." If you speak the truth to those with overwhelming power over you, your life can be in danger. He believes that the prophecy against Tyre in Ezekiel 27 is really code for his captors in Babylon.

The disinherited then have three options:

1. Is to see no choice. You must accept that all of life is a lie. Honesty is not a choice if you are to survive.

2. A second is to compartmentalize and compromise as necessary. Be truthful in those areas you can and live the lie when you have to.

He considers both of these alternatives detrimental to the soul. "If a man continues to call a good thing bad, he will eventually lose his sense of moral distinctions." "The penalty of deception is to become a deception."

3. He advocates "complete and devastating sincerity," for this puts the powerful and the weak on equal terms. He believes Jesus modeled this approach. "The insistence of Jesus on genuineness is absolute." "A man is a man, no more, no less." [sic]
"I can sympathize only when I see myself in another's place."

Chapter 4
Chapter 4 of Howard Thurman's book is on hate. While it starts off talking about the hate the strong can have toward the weak, he spends most of the chapter warning about hatred from the weak toward the strong.

"Hatred destroys finally the core of the life of the hater." "Hatred cannot be controlled once set in motion." "Jesus rejected hatred... not because he lacked the incentive. Jesus rejected hatred because he saw that hatred meant death to the mind, death to the spirit, death to communion with his Father."

Chapter 5
The last chapter is on love, loving our enemies in particular. He mentions three levels of such love: 1) toward our peers, 2) toward those in our community with whom it is not going to be popular to befriend (e.g., tax collectors), 3) toward dominating, oppressive powers (e.g., Rome).

A first step is to undermine the enemy status of the other. Find a space where you are just one human in relation to another human. Love will also require forgiveness for injury perpetuated by another group.

One might object, "Can the mouse forgive the cat for eating him?" It is not easy. Perhaps it is impossible in our own power. But "it is clear that before love can operate, there is the necessity for forgiveness."

Forgiveness is necessary 1) because God forgives us again and again, 2) because no evil deed represents the full intent of the doer, and 3) no evildoer ultimately goes unpunished.

Finished Saturday morning

Top Ten Smartest Thoughts I've Had

I am fascinated by genius. Every once and a while, I'll have a thought that seems smart to me. It might not really be. Certainly a lot of people don't think my "smart thoughts" are smart.

I'm also quite stupid in some respects. Because of my stupid, I never really felt smart growing up. Looking back, I realize I really was much better at math, science, languages, and certain forms of imagination than a lot of other people. But I've long since been exposed to the world of real genius. I get to read their books slowly. Often I have to read them over and over. It's sure I would never have understood them in person. I've joked with my daughter that my epitaph should read, "Not Quite a Genius."

Nevertheless, I have occasionally had some thoughts I thought were quite clever. They might not be. I'm probably not the first to have them. But I don't remember getting them from someone else.

1. Creation out of nothing was creation out of empty set, not out of zero.
If Einstein's general theory of relativity is correct, then God created the very emptiness of space, not just the stuff in it. It seems to me that this fact has all sorts of implications that many theologians have not taken into account.

2. If God created the universe out of empty set, then God created all the rules of this universe, including the rules of logic. So we cannot say God is bound by logic outside this universe. We cannot speak of what is literal for God outside this creation (a little Barth here, a little Wittgenstein) because we have no point of reference, only analogy. A lot of what theologians say about God's nature and essence is likely "creatiomorphic" without them knowing it.

3. Accordingly, Divine Command Theory is likely true for God in the creation of this universe, from outside it. But since God has bound Godself to a particular set of commands within this universe, morality is consistent within it--morality is not arbitrary, as in Kierkegaard's version. We have no point of reference for moral systems outside this universe. Incidentally, I made this comment in a review of Pojman's ethics textbook, and he was intrigued.

4. The Trinity is a playing out of that which is ineffable across the metaphysics of this creation. Given what I have said above, then we must face the possibility that we have projected human perspectives onto our sense of the essence of the Trinity. We can affirm that the Trinity is real beyond this universe and yet acknowledge that our perspective on the Trinity may have a lot to do with the metaphysical echoes of God within this universe.

5. The idea that Hebrews was written to Gentile believers undergoing a crisis of faith because of the destruction of the Jerusalem temple. When this idea clicked, I wanted to rush to publish it because it seemed so revelatory and groundbreaking. But I don't know anyone who has followed me on it. :-)

6. The idea that the earliest Christians would not yet have understood the efficacy of Jesus' death in absolute terms but that they would have come to this conclusion in stages. Paul offers a sacrifice in the temple in Acts 21. Did even he and Luke yet fully understand the scope of Christ's atonement?

7. The idea that 2 Thessalonians is an "apocalyptic letter" written as a "nudge, nudge, wink, wink" to the church during the Jewish War. One of my most recent ideas. 2 Thessalonians as code. I have other ideas in biblical studies that likely will never see the light of page. I might have published them in a different life.

8. In spring 2009 I taught Hebrews in old College Church in Marion in a hybrid format using AdobeConnect, with some students in the room live, others around the world electronically, and others in their dorm room sleeping, who watched the recording later. There was a discussion forum on Facebook. A lot of colleges are going HyFlex this fall and I have lots of ideas here (e.g., doing chemistry online and doing experiments at a local high school), but I did it over ten years ago.

9. For good or ill, I'm probably the main one to blame for the initial design of integration in Wesley Seminary's curriculum, where you do Bible, theology, and church history as part of your practical courses. These courses initially had five distinct professors (practical, Bible, theology, church history, and integration paper professor), which was impractical. Before Riggs invented the special Honors College curriculum at IWU, I had a vision of a month long, pre-freshman summer course that was philosophy, history, literature, and fine arts all integrated with four different professors. I still have dreams of an integrated science curriculum, with calculus, physics, and chemistry all intertwined. I believe I could create a science/math curriculum that could bring a whole lot more students to mastery than the way they are currently taught. If I could write video games, that would be the context to build it.

10. The idea that eternal security and universalism could work if God resurrects us at the point when we were either right with God or had not reached the age of accountability. I don't actually believe this, but if God creates a body for us out of nothing, if there were no detachable soul, then resurrection would be like cloning, and God could clone us at any stage of our lives. I don't think this, but I thought it was a clever idea once upon a time.

William Webb 5: Inconclusive Criteria

William Webb continues: Slaves, Women, and Homosexuals: Exploring the Hermeneutics of Cultural Analysis.

Previous chapters:
Chapter 1: The Christian and Culture
Chapter 2: A Redemptive-Movement Hermeneutic
Chapter 3: Persuasive Criteria
Chapter 4: Moderately Persuasive Criteria

Now Chapter 5: Inconclusive Criteria
You can see that Webb is steadily moving from criteria that he finds very helpful to criteria that he finds less and less clear Criterion 14: Theological Analogy
The question here is whether, if God is described in a certain way, we would consider such descriptions as transcultural. Webb says that the answer is inconclusive, since God is sometimes described with cultural analogies.

For example, the following are transcultural:

• God is love; therefore, love is a transcultural value.
• God is holy; therefore, holiness is a transcultural value.
• God forgives; therefore, we should forgive.

However, on other occasions cultural analogies are used to describe God:

• God is master, we as slaves.
• God as king, we as subjects.
• Christ is the firstborn, thus primogeniture.
• Jesus is at God's right hand, the right hand is preferred. 

Webb then suggests that these are cultural analogies:

• Christ is a husband who loves his wife does mean husband-headship is transcultural.
• God disciplines his wife like a husband (e.g., Hosea). It is not transcultural for a husband to strip his wife and physically confine her.
• However, there is no theological analogy in relation to God and homosexuality.

Criterion 15: Comparisons in Collections
In this section Webb looks at various biblical collections of items. Does the transcultural nature of one item in the collection suggest the others are transcultural too?

• "mixture texts" -- don't wear clothing of mixed thread, don't plow with donkey and ox together.  Most of these texts are considered cultural. I call this "Levitical kind theology," part of the Levitical worldview that believed that different kinds of things should not be mixed. Following Mary Douglas, I believe this worldview ultimately stood behind the food laws (ostrich, eel, and snake did not fit the "kind" of thing they were).
• virtue and vice lists -- Webb believes these lists lean heavily toward the transcultural (including, for example, 1 Corinthians 6:9-10.
• household codes -- He considers these texts mixed in relation to their transcultural import. So the instruction on children/parents and congregations/elders are transcultural, while the material on slaves/masters and husbands/wives is cultural.
• sexual taboo lists -- He considers most of the items on these lists in Leviticus 18 and 20 to be transcultural, although not necessarily in their punishment. He has also mentioned elsewhere that he does not consider rules on sex during menstruation to be transcultural. I'm not sure he has provided a good rationale here.
• He argues that the unusual mention of Molech in Leviticus 18:21 is a transition between heterosexual sex and non-heterosexual sex, implying that heterosexual sex is a key value implicit in the structure of the chapter. He does mention the possibility that the fact that the prohibition on homosexual sex comes after a mention of Molech could imply that the prohibition is about homosexual temple prostitution but indicates there is not enough contextual evidence to conclude that.  

Criterion 16: Continuity with Old Testament
He words this one in a funny way to me. For me, a key factor in these discussions is whether a teaching in the Old Testament is continued into the New Testament. For example, the command not to wear clothing of mixed thread is not mentioned in the New Testament, but the prohibition against homosexual sex is continued. By contrast, he considers such continuity inconclusive in general.

Here is his summary: "Discontinuity between epochs in salvation history does provide a reliable basis for assessment" (206). So because Jesus explicitly declares all foods clean, we can eat pork now (Mark 7:19). However, "continuity between Testaments, whether by ideological precedence or verbal appeal, is not a reliable indicator for discovering that which [is] transcultural."

Examples of discontinuation:

• sacrifices - fulfilled in Christ, not continued, no longer in effect
• food laws - clearly discontinued in the NT
• circumcision - clearly not required according to Galatians and Acts 15
• slaves and masters - although continued between OT and NT, cultural, thus 

Example of continuance that is cultural:

• slavery - continued between OT and NT but cultural
• kings and subjects - continued between OT and NT but cultural
• lifting up holy hands - continued between OT and NT but cultural
• holy kiss - continued between OT and NT but cultural
• foot washing traditions - continued between OT and NT but cultural

I'll end this summary with an interesting comment about Lutherans and the Reformed tradition:

• Fallacy #1 (a tendency of the Lutheran tradition): "Only those particulars of the Mosaic law that the New Testament expressly sanctions apply to New Testament believers"  (205).
• Fallacy #2 (a tendency of the Reformed tradition): "Christians are bound to obey all those particulars in the Mosaic law that the New Testament does not expressly abrogate."

He would say we have to look at the particular commands of the OT in the light of all these criteria.

William Webb 4: Moderately Persuasive Criteria

I continue my review of William Webb's Slaves, Women, and Homosexuals: Exploring the Hermeneutics of Cultural Analysis.

Previous chapters:
Chapter 1: The Christian and Culture
Chapter 2: A Redemptive-Movement Hermeneutic
Chapter 3: Persuasive Criteria

Now on to Chapter 4: Moderately Persuasive Criteria
Webb finds these criteria helpful in the discussion, but not as definitive as those in the previous chapter.

Criterion 6: Patterns of the Original Creation
The basic question of this criterion and the next two relates to whether the way God originally created humanity was an absolute ideal. Were there cultural dimensions even to the original creation? Will the new creation go even further than the original creation?

Generally, Webb starts with what he considers "neutral" examples. Here I note as before that today's common sense may need to be defended in the next generation. I remember I felt similarly in 2001. It seemed obvious to me that everyone would agree slavery should have been abolished. But people be crazy.

His thesis in these first two criteria is that "one cannot automatically assign a transcultural status to all that is found within the garden" (124). Here is a list of various items relating to the garden:

• Divorce -- Jesus appeals to the Genesis creation text to argue against divorce.
• Polygamy -- Here I am not sure I agree with him. I am doubtful that Genesis saw polygamy as a contradiction of the "one flesh" passage in Genesis 2:24. In the Ancient Near East, a man could become one flesh with many wives. This is thus a culturally unreflective reading on Webb's part, IMO.
• Singleness -- Webb rightly notes that we might prohibit singleness if the original creation was absolute.
• Farming as an occupation -- clearly not all men are farmers, although this seems a near assumption of the biblical text
• Ground transportation -- we don't insist on walking today, although this was possibly an assumption of the original creation
• Procreation command -- although some do, we do not consider procreation a command today
• Vegetarian diet -- The diet seems to shift after the Flood, but should we go back to being vegetarians as in the Garden?
• Sabbath -- Christians have certainly modified sabbath observance. We observe Sunday rather than Saturday. I would add that the New Testament explicitly does not consider the Jewish Sabbath binding for Gentile Christians, even though it is modeled in creation (Rom 14:5; Col. 2:16).
•  Length of a work week -- We get Saturday and Sunday.

Women
He then looks at the somewhat mixed nature of the original creation in relation to women:

• God's image - Both male and female are created in it.
• Ruling together - Both man and woman are to rule
• Helpmate - He thinks the evidence is indeterminate. 72% of the instances of this word are a superior like God helping and inferior (e.g., Ps. 54:4). But in 10% of the uses the helper is inferior.
• Adam's rib - He finds any rhetoric here unhelpful. It can be argued both ways.
• Man naming the woman - already discussed

I want to separate off the last three. Webb suggests there may be some patriarchy in the creation account. He will especially address this question under the next criterion, so see below.

• man leaves and cleaves - We don't apply this literally today, so it's hypocritical to make a big deal out of taking it literally. 
• God addresses man first - "quiet whisper of patriarchy"?
• Creation order: God makes the man first - 1 Timothy 2:13 seems to use this logic. See below.

Homosexuality
Webb argues that "the author of Genesis understood the creation story as a statement about normative sexual patterns being heterosexual" (133). On the other hand, he also notes that the creation story does not mention contrary situations. For example, it does not say anything about singleness. It must thus be acknowledged that homosexual relationships are not addressed one way or another. However, Webb argues that abstinence from sex limits while homosexual sex would broaden. He thus argues that abstinence from marriage is a different kind of situation than a different kind of marriage.

To put it another way, "God made Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve," is only a partial argument, not an absolute argument. The Garden no doubt presents the norm, but it does not actually argue against other variations like singleness. God made Adam and Eve to have children is not an argument that it is wrong not to have children. Description is not prescription.

Criterion 7: Basis in the Original Creation: Primogeniture
This criterion focuses in on the created order. We already mentioned that 1 Timothy 2:13 seems to argue in this way "Adam was formed first, then Eve." I've heard David Ward poke at this logic a little, since trees and animals were made before Adam. Must we thus submit to the will of goats?

Here is where Webb raises an important question: "Eden's quiet echoes of patriarchy might be a way of describing the past through present categories" (143). "Given the agrarian base to primogeniture logic, the patriarchy of the garden may reflect God's anticipation of the social context into which Adam and Eve were about to venture" (144). Here we remember that Genesis was written in the Ancient Near East. It is not simply a dictation in heavenly categories. The story of the time before the fall is told in a document written after the fall.

Webb points out the inconsistencies of someone who would argue that these features of the original creation are transcultural.

• Scripture often overturns primogeniture.
• Christians no longer apply primogeniture today.
• Primogeniture was linked to ancient culture, which was agrarian based with short life expectancy and great potential for feuding and fighting over land. 

In the end he suggests that the best way to appropriate 1 Timothy 2 today is something like, "Choose teachers/leaders who are worthy of high honor in the congregation" (145).

Criterion 8: Basis in the New Creation
This criterion is similar to when I talk about the kingdom trajectory and it also relates to his previous criterion of "breakout verses." For example, Galatians 3:28 points to the new creation. See the previous post.

I might add some features he does not mention and might not agree with. The wording of Galatians 3:28 is curious: "In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek. There is neither slave nor free. There is not 'male and female.'" I think it is quite possible that this verse alludes back to Genesis 1:27, where God creates them "male and female." Poetically, something even of the creation order is undone in Christ.

In short, I agree with him that the consummation of the creation goes one step further than the creation itself. This is solid Christian doctrine I learned once upon a time from Chris Bounds. Indeed, it is not clear that our glorified bodies will be sexual at all. In the kingdom, there is no marriage (Mark 12:25). We are like the angels.

"Original-creation patterns are far more likely to have culture-locked components with them" (148). They "simply do not have the same potential for reflecting transcultural features as do new-creation patterns."

Criterion 9: Competing Options in the Original Culture
His concept here is that if the Bible picks an option among many different cultural options, then that choice is more likely transcultural. On the other hand, if there was only one basic option at the time, then that instruction is quite possibly cultural.

• Slavery versus abolition - Abolition wasn't really an ancient option. "The lack of alternatives increases the likelihood that biblical interaction with slavery addressed this limited (culture-bound) horizon."
• Geocentric cosmology - the cosmology of the Bible assumed the earth was the center of the universe. There just wasn't another option.
• Monarchy - Democracy wasn't really an option in biblical times. The monarchic assumptions of the Bible are therefore likely to be cultural rather than timeless.

With regard to women, pretty much all the cultures of the ancient world were patriarchal. Even today, matriarchy is not really a thing when you dig deep. [Interestingly, I remember David Wright telling me this several years ago.] Accordingly, the role of women displayed in the Bible may very well be cultural since there weren't really any other options at the time.

The situation with homosexual practice is different. Homosexual practice was a known quantity in the ancient world. He does raise the question of whether "covenant" homosexual relationships were present in the ancient world, like gay marriage today. He says the ancient evidence is not agreed on, but he thinks it was an option (not marriage, but committed relationships).

So here and elsewhere he eliminates casual homosexual relationships from moral behavior because the Bible chooses against that option in its cultural world. He is not entirely certain whether married homosexual relationships are a phenomenon different enough from the options of the ancient world that they would not be covered under the biblical mandates. But he certainly leans in the direction that they would be covered.

Criterion 10: Opposition to the Original Culture
This criterion is closely related to the previous one. The previous one simply asked whether other options existed. This one asks whether the Bible actually argues against those other options. In that sense we have already started talking about this one.

Here are some extensions from his discussion of the previous criterion:

• Slavery: Although the Bible assumes slavery, it does challenge aspects of its cultural practice (see criterion 1, preliminary movement).
• Cosmology: Although the Bible assumes a geocentric cosmology, it argues against the worship of heavenly luminaries.
• Worshiping other gods: While the sanctuaries of Israel resembled those of other gods, while Israel offered sacrifices like other religions offered sacrifices, Israel was only to worship Yahweh. I would add that the Israelites probably believed those other deities were real entities (Paul calls them demons), but God did not allow their worship.
• Bestiality and transvestite activities - I have found the revival of Deuteronomy 22:5 interesting in recent days in relation to transvestitism. When I was a boy, this verse was used to argue that women should only wear dresses, not pants or slacks. I spent a couple years tortured over whether I should date a girl who wore pants. So let's just say I'm not too keen about the sudden "clarity" this verse has all of a sudden again. I don't understand transvestitism. I find it highly unusual, shall we say. But I get really annoyed by Boomers who would have mocked their parents for using this verse against pants now suddenly touting this verse loudly and widely as a proof text.
• Non-retaliation/love of enemies - This is the big one. Love of enemies makes no sense whatsoever from a worldly perspective. This is the distinctive biblical ethic above all.

Webb quotes Grant Osborne to sum up this criterion (from The Hermeneutical Spiral): "Teaching that transcends the cultural biases of the author and his readers will be normative" (161). Here is how Webb adds: "The countercultural side to the criterion is almost always accurate in detecting something of transcultural value, whereas the converse expression simply increases the probability of something being cultural" (162). In other words, if the Bible argues against something in the culture, that is likely transcultural. However, if the Bible doesn't argue against something in the culture, that doesn't mean that cultural feature is transcultural.

Criterion 11: Biblical Treatment of Closely-Related Issues
If we see that the kingdom moves beyond the Bible on an issue closely related to another, then it is at least possible that the kingdom would move beyond the Bible on that issue too.

Slavery as a closely related issue where we have a sense that we need to move beyond the Bible:

• viewing slaves as property
• releasing Hebrew slaves after 7 years (although not foreign slaves)
• using slaves for reproductive purposes (like Hagar)
• different penalties for rape of slave women and free women
• physical beating of a slave
• value of slave's life versus a free life

So on the question of women, Christians have also already moved beyond the Bible in many respects:

• Women are no longer viewed as property, as they are in much of the Old Testament.
• Wives are no longer transferred from father to husband.
• Women can now inherit property.
• We now would argue for consistent virginity for both men and women, while the Bible is largely only concerned about the women's virginity going into a marriage.
• Adultery legislation was much stronger in the Bible toward the woman than the man.
• Divorce legislation in Scripture was much more strongly directed against the woman.
• Other issues where the kingdom seems to move beyond things said somewhere in the Bible: polygamy, concubines, levirate marriage.

However, he argues that homosexual sex is in a different category than, for example, the fact that we do not enforce legislation on having sex during menstruation or the abandonment of polygamy or concubinage. [Interestingly--and uncomfortably--he is not sure that the Bible implies a prohibition of anal sex within a heterosexual marriage]

Here are some of the arguments for homosexual sex being in a different category. 1) The prohibition of homosexual sex is not tied to ceremonial impurity, 2) The New Testament retains the Old Testament prohibition of homosexual sex. 3) There is no intrinsic or logical connection between the rules on sex during menstruation and homosexual sex.

The second argument is the one that I have found most persuasive. Unlike other laws that the New Testament explicitly does not continue from the Old Testament, the prohibition on homosexual sex is explicitly retained.

I might add that the distinction between ceremonial law and moral law is really anachronistic. It is an overlay that makes sense to us but wouldn't have made any sense to, say, the apostle Paul. The Bible does not divide up the Old Testament Law in this way. What we have is 1) laws that related to Israel as a people distinct from their surrounding peoples, 2) laws of Israel that overlap with the laws of the Ancient Near East, and 3) laws that transcended Israel's Ancient Near Eastern context into the New Testament and beyond.

Criterion 12: Severity of the Penal Code
The criterion here looks at how severely various actions were punished in the Old Testament as an indicator. "The less severe the penalty for a particular action, the more likely it is of having culturally bound components" (172).

So some actions had the death penalty. Some might result in expulsion from Israel. Others involved punitive consequences that were less severe. Finally, some resulted in being impure for a time. Webb argues that we have a sliding scale here, with the final category being the least transcultural.

He notes that homosexual activity held a result of a death penalty. On the other hand, the law tells of no punishments for the insubordination of a wife or slave.

He anticipates a later criterion here as well--pragmatic considerations. For example, it is simply impractical to give young children the same vote in the family as a parent. They simply are not mentally equipped to make many important decisions. It is thus appropriate to retain the hierarchy of parents to children even though it no longer makes sense to retain the hierarchy of husband over wife.

I might add that there is some debate about how active ancient near eastern penal codes were. One line of thinking sees them more as "position papers" than actual practices. For example, how often in ancient Israel was a disobedient son actually stoned to death?

Criterion 13: Tension with General Principles
The final criterion of this chapter deals with a situation where a specific statement of Scripture seems to be in tension with an overarching principle. "Specific statements within Scripture are more likely to be culturally confined in some aspect than general statements" (179).

I have expressed a similar idea. Individual verses are most likely to be ambiguous and situational/time-conditioned. Therefore, it is important to focus more on the overall themes of Scripture than on individual verses. We should be cautious about how we apply any idea that is only expressed once in Scripture

He mentions gleaning laws as an example, leaving the edges of a field for the poor to eat from. Compassion toward the poor is timeless, but this particular way of showing compassion is not likely binding on modern farmers. Doing what they did doesn't do what it did.

In general, the principle of loving one's neighbor is the macro-ethic that should guide our approach to human relationships. We of course need to be careful not to have a myopic sense of love. Sometimes, "love must be tough." Love does not contradict discipline or the protection of one group by acting restrictively toward another.

However, we would be enacting kingdom values the most in culture if we could make the structures of society be equally "loving" toward all its members.

The Kingdom of God 2

This is the second post in my series, "What is a Christian?' The first post asked:

1. What is a human being?

The Kingdom of God
1. There is a danger in posing the question, "What is a Christian?" The danger is that we fall into the trap of individualism and subjectivism. These are the waters in which the typical Western Protestant swims, so I may gravitate toward an individual description without thinking.

However, the focal point of Christianity is not me. It is not even us. The focal point is God, who looks at us first before we ever look back.

This is a danger in thinking about the gospel in Western Protestantism. We easily assume, unthinkingly, that the heart of the gospel is about getting saved and salvation. But Christ is the center of the good news. [1] The good news is the gospel of Jesus Christ, God's royal Son, who was designated Son of God in power by the resurrection of the dead (Rom. 1:3). My salvation is good news, but it is only part of the good news.

2. A Christian is a servant in the kingdom of God. A Christian is also part of the family of God, a member of the people of God. But the kingdom of God was the language that Jesus used primarily in his preaching when he was on earth.

In the kingdom of God, God is king and the creation are God's servants. As Christians we are more than God's servants, but we are also God's servants. Jesus is also king Jesus, the anointed one, the Messiah, the Christ. We are co-heirs with Jesus of the kingdom, which puts us as Christians in a special place in the kingdom indeed.

3. Within the kingdom, the primary posture of the Christian is that of faith. This is not faith as in belief, although belief in the king and the kingdom is clearly an assumption. It is faith as in allegiance to the Lord and to the King. [2]

"If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and have faith in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved" (Rom. 10:9).

When you confess someone as Lord, it is not a mere mental assent. It is a commitment. Faith is not merely belief but we must "keep faith" with our Lord. Someone is not a Lord simply on a quiz. "Check yes or no." Someone is a Lord if we obey them, if we serve them, if we surrender to them.

A Christian is someone who has confessed allegiance to Christ as Lord.

4. The posture of surrender is difficult. We are more accustomed to seek our own power, our own freedom, our own rights and what we have coming to us. We can even use God as an excuse not to submit. "I defy you because God told me to," when I get to decide what God thinks.

Yet as a servant of God my primary posture is one of submission. When my life outside of the kingdom first comes into contact with the kingdom, acts of confession and repentance are natural. I confess that I have not lived in loyalty to the king. I repent of my past misdirection and turn toward the King.

Then I make another confession, this time not a confession of sin but a confession of faith. I swear allegiance to the King and to the Anointed One. I become part of the kingdom, part of the people of God. From then on I am a loyal servant. I am more than a servant, but I am a servant.

5. It is gracious of my Lord to grant me entrance to the kingdom, after living outside in rebellion. It is a gift I cannot merit. Entrance comes with the power to live as a loyal subject. I am not left to flail on my own as a miserable failure to live up to the expectations of all citizens of the new Jerusalem.

Nevertheless, allegiance remains a requirement of the kingdom. It would have made no sense in biblical times to say, "I am in the kingdom though I act with regular defiance of the King." The expectation of faithfulness remains. "If we continue sinning willfully after receiving a knowledge of the truth, there remains no more sacrifice for sins" (Heb. 10:26). The King does not eject us for any failing, but it is absurd to think we can remain in a kingdom to which we have no true allegiance. This is simply not the way grace worked in the New Testament world. [3]

6. God's kingdom is an exclusive kingdom. God will not suffer any other lords but God alone and his Christ. "A double-minded person is unstable in all their ways. That person should not think they will receive anything from the Lord" (James 1:8). The path of the person with divided loyalties to the kingdom is a path toward expulsion from the kingdom. "Throw this worthless servant into outer darkness, where there will be weeping and wailing and the gnashing of teeth" (Matt. 25:30).

Many of us do not realize our divided loyalties. They can lead us outside of the kingdom before we hardly even realize it. "You cannot serve God and wealth." The American church often cannot tell the difference between Christ and capitalism. But rest assured, God and the New Testament couldn't care less how much money you have.

Syncretism is the mixture of elements into our faith that do not belong, in fact that are contrary to its essence. The love of money is a potential syncretistic element. Though Scripture says that the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil (1 Tim. 6:10), we somehow baptize the economic system of capitalism, which is based on self-interest.

But rest assured, whatever good there is in capitalism, it is only insofar as it leads to overall human thriving. This is a much different purpose than the goal of individual, personal wealth or my own acquisition of material goods. The latter goals have nothing to do with the kingdom of God.

7. Nationalism and racism are also syncretistic elements. There is nothing wrong with loving your country (patriotism) or loving your ethnic heritage. But there is no place in God's kingdom for someone who exalts their people over other peoples. "In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek" (Gal. 3:28).

No earthly kingdom is righteous enough to be confused with the kingdom of God. Although God is merciful in the face of our blind spots, the flag of no human kingdom has a place in God's sanctuary. God is merciful, but it is intrinsically blasphemous to confuse any earthly polity with the divine polity.

God is not a Republican. God is not a Democrat. Even to think so suggests blindness and a syncretism of human thinking with kingdom thinking. The same impulse in Jesus' day that confused the tradition of the elders with God's values is present in the confusion of conservatism with the kingdom. By the same token, the world's idea of progress is just as beset with confusion and blindness.

God's kingdom is not of this world, although it will come to this world. It is inaugurated in this world but not consummated. Our blindness to our own culture will always threaten a syncretism of worldly values with heavenly ones.

8. God loves the immigrant as much as the natural-born citizen. God loves the Iranian as much as the person of European descent. The law-breaker who breaks the speed limit and the law-breaker who crosses a border are no different in God's eyes. "All have sinned and are lacking the glory of God" (Rom. 3:23).

God sees through our excuses. We divert. But what about this other kingdom issue? Yes, your eyes are open to that issue. That issue is easy for you to talk about because it is not a temptation for you. But at this moment God is talking to you about something else, something that is not easy for you. Right now God is speaking to you about something that you do not want to open your eyes about.

God is not fooled by our diversions. Nor can you talk God out of the values of the kingdom. You can fool yourself. You can fool others. You cannot fool God. God is not elected. God grants you the freedom to rebel against the kingdom for now. But a Day is coming when "every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord" (Phil. 2:10-11).

On that day the true motives of our hearts will be laid bare (Heb. 4:13). There will be no negotiations. There will be no rationalization or excuses. All the excuses not to love our neighbors and enemies will be exposed without rejoinder. Anything that conflicted with our love of God will be seen for what it was.

A Christian is a servant in God's kingdom. We are more than servants. But we cannot be Christians for long if we are not surrendered to our Lord.

[1] Cf. Scot McKnight, King Jesus Gospel: The Original Good News Revisited (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2016).

[2] Cf. Matthew Bates, Salvation by Allegiance Alone: Rethinking Faith, Works, and the Gospel of Jesus the King (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2017).

[3] Cf. John Barclay, Paul and the Gift (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2017).