- The greeting tells us this letter is being written to a cross-section of believers scattered throughout what is modern-day Turkey. It has a very large audience.
- 1 Peter 5:13 has the key for me to 1 Peter. It is being written "in Babylon." This is not the literal Babylon but a code word for Rome. It suggests that, whenever the letter was written, Rome has become a major oppressor of the Jews. Of course Rome destroyed Jerusalem in AD70, just as Babylon did in 586BC.
- "Beloved, I urge you as foreigners and aliens, stay away from fleshly desires, which war against your soul, having such a good way of life among the Gentiles that, even though they accuse you as a wrongdoer [now], they might glorify God on the Day of Oversight as they see your good works [then in retrospect]” (2:11-12, NRSV).
- The audience do not see themselves as belonging in the Roman empire. Rather, the empire is a foreign context. 1 Peter is a defensive strategy, how to live in hostile territory when your "host" is watching you and ready to pounce.
- “For it is time for The Judgment to begin with the with the household of God. And if it is first with us, what will the end of those who are disobeying the gospel of God?” (4:17)
- Both the church and the Jews are experiencing hard times. It won't end here.
Wednesday, September 16, 2015
Notes on 1 Peter (1)
Last week I began a Bible study at College Wesleyan on 1 Peter. I don't have time to flesh it out but here are some of my notes from the first week:
Tuesday, September 15, 2015
President Wright Looking at Year Three
In his post today, President Wright tackles the question of what he sees as his focus in his third year. Read it here: "Third Year Questions: Focus for Year Three."
Augustine's "On Teaching" 2:73-152
I have been working through Augustine's De doctrina christiana again. Here are my posts so far:
Preface and Book I
Book II, first post
Now here is the rest of Book II.
___________________________
1. Two kinds of learning in pagan society: 1) human made, 2) divine made. He then spends some time talking about human superstition, which is quite fun, for we catch a glimpse of superstitions in Roman culture in Augustine's day. He also includes some of what we might call astrology today.
He talks about how the fifth and sixth months (their year started in March) could be renamed after Julius and Augustus Caesar by imperial decree because there was no real god to offend. He disproves the validity of astrology by pointing out how completely different twins can be, even though they come out of the womb one right after the other without any significant interval. They are both born under the same constellations, but can be quite different in their life's outcome.
He also relays the notion that we find in some Jewish writings and that I think is reflected at some points in the NT that the wicked angels inhabit the lowest sky or heaven. Thus in the NT, Satan is called the "ruler and power of the air" (Eph. 2:2).
I suspect we see the antecedent of some twentieth century views on words as signs in Augustine, and hear I am thinking especially of de Saussure. Augustine indicates that many words have meaning because of agreed convention (that is the signs have no intrinsic meaning). He mentions lege, which means "read" in Latin but "speak" in Greek (93).
2. Having covered human learning that is superstitious, he turns to human learning that is not superstitious.
Medicine is different from superstition and is valid as a source of knowledge. Astronomy as it comes to the predictable motions of the planets and stars is valid, although it can be a waste of time. :-) Logic and arithmetic are valid sources of knowledge, including arguments like syllogisms and non sequitur arguments.
3. "Falsehood is the description of something which is not actually in the state in which it is asserted to be" (130). "There are two kinds of falsehood, one consisting of things which cannot possibly be true, another of things which are not true, but could be."
Here's a good quote: "The pleasure derived from the open display of truth is greater than the assistance gained from discussing or examining it, though indeed these things can sharpen the intellect, which is a good thing provided that they do not also make people more mischievous or conceited or, in other words, more inclined to deceive others by plausible talk and questioning, or to think that by learning these things they have done something marvelous or which entitles them to consider themselves superior to ordinary unsophisticated people" (135).
As he approaches the end of Book II, Augustine suggests that secular studies that do not contribute to our understanding of Scripture are more or less useless (140). Nothing in excess. However, he finds great use in Platonism (surprise).
Basically, pagan knowledge is like all the gold taken from Egypt in contrast to all the gold of Solomon's kingdom. "What a person learns independently of scripture is condemned there if it is harmful, but found there if it is useful" (151).
Of course, since he interprets much of Scripture figurally, he is wrong. He thinks he sees all truths in Scripture, but many he brings to the Scriptures. Scripture tells us all things necessary for life and salvation. It doesn't tell us how to build a watch. And that's okay.
Preface and Book I
Book II, first post
Now here is the rest of Book II.
___________________________
1. Two kinds of learning in pagan society: 1) human made, 2) divine made. He then spends some time talking about human superstition, which is quite fun, for we catch a glimpse of superstitions in Roman culture in Augustine's day. He also includes some of what we might call astrology today.
He talks about how the fifth and sixth months (their year started in March) could be renamed after Julius and Augustus Caesar by imperial decree because there was no real god to offend. He disproves the validity of astrology by pointing out how completely different twins can be, even though they come out of the womb one right after the other without any significant interval. They are both born under the same constellations, but can be quite different in their life's outcome.
He also relays the notion that we find in some Jewish writings and that I think is reflected at some points in the NT that the wicked angels inhabit the lowest sky or heaven. Thus in the NT, Satan is called the "ruler and power of the air" (Eph. 2:2).
I suspect we see the antecedent of some twentieth century views on words as signs in Augustine, and hear I am thinking especially of de Saussure. Augustine indicates that many words have meaning because of agreed convention (that is the signs have no intrinsic meaning). He mentions lege, which means "read" in Latin but "speak" in Greek (93).
2. Having covered human learning that is superstitious, he turns to human learning that is not superstitious.
- "Everyone aims at some degree of similarity when they use signs, making signs as similar as possible to the things which are signified" (98).
- "Nothing should be thought more peculiar to mankind than lies and falsehoods" (99).
- "For what has already gone into the past and cannot be undone must be considered part of the history of time, whose creator and controller is God" (56).
Medicine is different from superstition and is valid as a source of knowledge. Astronomy as it comes to the predictable motions of the planets and stars is valid, although it can be a waste of time. :-) Logic and arithmetic are valid sources of knowledge, including arguments like syllogisms and non sequitur arguments.
- "The validity of syllogisms is not something instituted by humans, but observed and recorded by them, so that the subject may be taught or learnt. It is built into the permanent and divinely instituted system of things" (121).
3. "Falsehood is the description of something which is not actually in the state in which it is asserted to be" (130). "There are two kinds of falsehood, one consisting of things which cannot possibly be true, another of things which are not true, but could be."
Here's a good quote: "The pleasure derived from the open display of truth is greater than the assistance gained from discussing or examining it, though indeed these things can sharpen the intellect, which is a good thing provided that they do not also make people more mischievous or conceited or, in other words, more inclined to deceive others by plausible talk and questioning, or to think that by learning these things they have done something marvelous or which entitles them to consider themselves superior to ordinary unsophisticated people" (135).
As he approaches the end of Book II, Augustine suggests that secular studies that do not contribute to our understanding of Scripture are more or less useless (140). Nothing in excess. However, he finds great use in Platonism (surprise).
Basically, pagan knowledge is like all the gold taken from Egypt in contrast to all the gold of Solomon's kingdom. "What a person learns independently of scripture is condemned there if it is harmful, but found there if it is useful" (151).
Of course, since he interprets much of Scripture figurally, he is wrong. He thinks he sees all truths in Scripture, but many he brings to the Scriptures. Scripture tells us all things necessary for life and salvation. It doesn't tell us how to build a watch. And that's okay.
Monday, September 14, 2015
Augustine's "On Teaching" 2.1-72
I'm working through Augustine's De Doctrina Christiana again as I teach an Honor's College class this fall called, "Foundations of Christian Tradition." I have already blogged through Book 3 on an earlier occasion. Thanks to those who gave feedback on Book I. By the way, here is an excellent version of this work online.
1. Augustine begins by giving the background to his sense that words are signs that point to things. This is what signs are--signifiers of things. Some signs are natural, like smoke that points to fire. But some signs are people made, including both non-verbal and verbal signs.
Some signs are natural--smoke points to fire. But others are "given" or "conventional." These are signs that human beings give to things. There are different ways that humans signify meanings to each other. Some are sounds. Some are picked up by the eyes. The most significant, perhaps, are words.
Scripture gives remedy to many diseases of the human will (9). Augustine believes that the human authors followed the will of God as they wrote. So by figuring out what these authors were trying to say, we can find out the will of God.
2. I don't want to get too far before I do some reflection. Augustine is often connected with what has been called a "picture theory" of language. Words are signs that point to things. The general sense is similar to Gottlob Frege's idea that words have a sense and a reference. The reference is what words point to.
It's true that things and references are often involved in language. But the notion of words as tools seems to express more closely how words work. "Words do stuff" (Wittgenstein, Austin, Searle) expresses how words work far more closely than "Words point to things."
I will have reason to consider Augustine unreflective in his sense that what he is doing in his interpretation is finding out what the human authors were saying. There's too much fiddling with the meaning to make it come out right for this sentiment to be a good description of what Augustine does. I have the same critique of some evangelical interpretation. When the text doesn't say what it needs to say, we downshift into reinterpretation.
3. Augustine speaks of men coming to the font of baptism, rising born again with the Holy Spirit, and then living with the double love of God and neighbor (11). His point is not this statement in itself but that it's much more pleasing to hear about this type of thing in the symbolic imagery of the Song of Songs. But the insight into his theology and the practice of the church in his day is interesting.
He speaks of a process toward knowing God's will. It starts with the fear of God (16), proceeds to holiness, then moves to knowledge. This is knowledge of our own need, of our own lack of love for God and neighbor. This knowledge leads to a fourth stage--fortitude or endurance, which leads to compassion. You wonder if Wesley was impacted by this section. Augustine speaks of becoming perfect in love (21). The sixth stage is a purified eye, which finally leads to wisdom.
4. Now Augustine returns to the third stage--knowledge--which leads him to think more about the Scriptures. A person seeking knowledge should have a knowledge of the content of the canonical Scriptures. And here Augustine gives us a helpful glimpse of the canon as it existed in the late 390s. There are two striking features.
The first is that the New Testament book list is exactly the same as our current one. This is striking because that precise list is no where listed until AD367 in a letter Athanasius sent out at Easter. It would be ratified in the West at the Council of Carthage in 398. But it is not yet official when Augustine was writing. Interestingly, he also says to go with what the "big churches" say on this matter, the renowned ones.
The second is the fact that he considers the Apocrypha to be part of the canon. Jerome at about the same time would put them in something like a second level canon (deuterocanonical). This speaks to my general claim that, in the Reformation, Luther downgraded the Apocrypha from their original status for Christianity, while the Council of Trent upgraded them then.
5. So the first rule of knowledge is to know these books and commit them to memory. Next, examine those matters that are clearly stated in them. You can find everything necessary for faith and the moral life in those parts that are clearly stated, and the greater a person's intellectual capacity, the more of these he or she will find.
I wonder if this paragraph is behind the notion of the perspicuity of Scripture, as well as the idea that the Scriptures contain "all things necessary for life and salvation."
Finally, from the clear passages, one should proceed to interpret the unclear ones.
Of course this is a pre-historical approach. Passages meant what they meant. Sometimes their original meaning is unclear. But Augustine as much refers to passages whose theology doesn't seem to fit, and he espouses a method of fiddling with those sorts of passages on the level of meaning, not on the level of application. This simply isn't appropriate from a historical perspective.
6. Passages can be unclear for two reasons--either the "thing" to which the sign points can be unknown or it can be ambiguous (32).
But Augustine steps back for a second as he builds a theory of language. Signs can either be literal or metaphorical. They are literal when "they signify the things for which they were invented." They are metaphorical when they are used to signify something else.
Augustine mentions some causes of ambiguity. Lack of knowledge of original languages, for example (he indicates that the first translations into Latin were pretty rough). Here's Augustine's position on proper Latin grammar, by the way: "What, then, is correctness of speech but the maintenance of the practice of others, as established by the authority of ancient speakers?" (45).
Then Augustine suggests that weak men are preoccupied with such things. "Their weakness stems from a desire to appear learned, not with a knowledge of things, by which we are edified, but with a knowledge of signs" (46). I completely agree. Shallow people are preoccupied with form rather than substance.
7. Augustine suggests we use multiple translations when we do not know the original languages of the Bible, as well as that we use multiple manuscripts--a sign of his time. Interestingly, he considers the Septuagint to be authoritative over the Hebrew Old Testament (53). This is because of a quasi-inspiration that many afforded to its translation. I believe the Greek Orthodox Church still holds to something similar. When manuscripts differ, he defers to the "more learned and diligent churches" (56).
He certainly believes in hidden, metaphorical meanings (57). He spends several paragraphs talking about such meanings in numbers and such. Ignorance of music can also be a hindrance to understanding.
I close with this quote from 72: "A person who is good and a true Christian should realize that truth belongs to the Lord, wherever it is found." So truth can be found even in pagan literature.
1. Augustine begins by giving the background to his sense that words are signs that point to things. This is what signs are--signifiers of things. Some signs are natural, like smoke that points to fire. But some signs are people made, including both non-verbal and verbal signs.
Some signs are natural--smoke points to fire. But others are "given" or "conventional." These are signs that human beings give to things. There are different ways that humans signify meanings to each other. Some are sounds. Some are picked up by the eyes. The most significant, perhaps, are words.
Scripture gives remedy to many diseases of the human will (9). Augustine believes that the human authors followed the will of God as they wrote. So by figuring out what these authors were trying to say, we can find out the will of God.
2. I don't want to get too far before I do some reflection. Augustine is often connected with what has been called a "picture theory" of language. Words are signs that point to things. The general sense is similar to Gottlob Frege's idea that words have a sense and a reference. The reference is what words point to.
It's true that things and references are often involved in language. But the notion of words as tools seems to express more closely how words work. "Words do stuff" (Wittgenstein, Austin, Searle) expresses how words work far more closely than "Words point to things."
I will have reason to consider Augustine unreflective in his sense that what he is doing in his interpretation is finding out what the human authors were saying. There's too much fiddling with the meaning to make it come out right for this sentiment to be a good description of what Augustine does. I have the same critique of some evangelical interpretation. When the text doesn't say what it needs to say, we downshift into reinterpretation.
3. Augustine speaks of men coming to the font of baptism, rising born again with the Holy Spirit, and then living with the double love of God and neighbor (11). His point is not this statement in itself but that it's much more pleasing to hear about this type of thing in the symbolic imagery of the Song of Songs. But the insight into his theology and the practice of the church in his day is interesting.
He speaks of a process toward knowing God's will. It starts with the fear of God (16), proceeds to holiness, then moves to knowledge. This is knowledge of our own need, of our own lack of love for God and neighbor. This knowledge leads to a fourth stage--fortitude or endurance, which leads to compassion. You wonder if Wesley was impacted by this section. Augustine speaks of becoming perfect in love (21). The sixth stage is a purified eye, which finally leads to wisdom.
4. Now Augustine returns to the third stage--knowledge--which leads him to think more about the Scriptures. A person seeking knowledge should have a knowledge of the content of the canonical Scriptures. And here Augustine gives us a helpful glimpse of the canon as it existed in the late 390s. There are two striking features.
The first is that the New Testament book list is exactly the same as our current one. This is striking because that precise list is no where listed until AD367 in a letter Athanasius sent out at Easter. It would be ratified in the West at the Council of Carthage in 398. But it is not yet official when Augustine was writing. Interestingly, he also says to go with what the "big churches" say on this matter, the renowned ones.
The second is the fact that he considers the Apocrypha to be part of the canon. Jerome at about the same time would put them in something like a second level canon (deuterocanonical). This speaks to my general claim that, in the Reformation, Luther downgraded the Apocrypha from their original status for Christianity, while the Council of Trent upgraded them then.
5. So the first rule of knowledge is to know these books and commit them to memory. Next, examine those matters that are clearly stated in them. You can find everything necessary for faith and the moral life in those parts that are clearly stated, and the greater a person's intellectual capacity, the more of these he or she will find.
I wonder if this paragraph is behind the notion of the perspicuity of Scripture, as well as the idea that the Scriptures contain "all things necessary for life and salvation."
Finally, from the clear passages, one should proceed to interpret the unclear ones.
Of course this is a pre-historical approach. Passages meant what they meant. Sometimes their original meaning is unclear. But Augustine as much refers to passages whose theology doesn't seem to fit, and he espouses a method of fiddling with those sorts of passages on the level of meaning, not on the level of application. This simply isn't appropriate from a historical perspective.
6. Passages can be unclear for two reasons--either the "thing" to which the sign points can be unknown or it can be ambiguous (32).
But Augustine steps back for a second as he builds a theory of language. Signs can either be literal or metaphorical. They are literal when "they signify the things for which they were invented." They are metaphorical when they are used to signify something else.
Augustine mentions some causes of ambiguity. Lack of knowledge of original languages, for example (he indicates that the first translations into Latin were pretty rough). Here's Augustine's position on proper Latin grammar, by the way: "What, then, is correctness of speech but the maintenance of the practice of others, as established by the authority of ancient speakers?" (45).
Then Augustine suggests that weak men are preoccupied with such things. "Their weakness stems from a desire to appear learned, not with a knowledge of things, by which we are edified, but with a knowledge of signs" (46). I completely agree. Shallow people are preoccupied with form rather than substance.
7. Augustine suggests we use multiple translations when we do not know the original languages of the Bible, as well as that we use multiple manuscripts--a sign of his time. Interestingly, he considers the Septuagint to be authoritative over the Hebrew Old Testament (53). This is because of a quasi-inspiration that many afforded to its translation. I believe the Greek Orthodox Church still holds to something similar. When manuscripts differ, he defers to the "more learned and diligent churches" (56).
He certainly believes in hidden, metaphorical meanings (57). He spends several paragraphs talking about such meanings in numbers and such. Ignorance of music can also be a hindrance to understanding.
I close with this quote from 72: "A person who is good and a true Christian should realize that truth belongs to the Lord, wherever it is found." So truth can be found even in pagan literature.
Sunday, September 13, 2015
SA5: Christians vary some in their perspectives on communion.
This is the fifth post on sacraments in my ongoing series, theology in bullet points. The first unit in this series had to do with God and Creation (book here), and the second unit was on Christology and Atonement.
We are now in the third and final unit: The Holy Spirit and the Church. The first set of posts in this final unit was on the Holy Spirit. The second set was on the Church. This third set is on sacraments.
_______________________________
Christians vary some in their perspectives on communion.
1. The precise nature of communion was one of the early debate points in the Protestant Reformation. Indeed, disagreement over communion may have ensured that Protestantism would never be a unified church over and against the Roman Catholic Church. In 1529 at the so called Marburg Colloquy, Martin Luther met with another key "protestant" named Huldrych Zwingli. Although they could agree on most items, they did not agree on communion, and this fact was a deal breaker.
Both disagreed, of course, with the Roman Catholic Church's sense of transubstantiation. Transubstantiation is the belief that the bread and wine of communion literally become the body and blood of Christ in communion. It is an idea that reached its maturity with Thomas Aquinas in the 1200s.
It is also an idea, it would seem, that is strongly based in Aristotle's view of reality as a matter of form and substance. The form is all that we can see. The underlying substance is not available to our view.
This perspective, while no longer one we share, did allow transubstantiation to survive into the Age of Science. Even when it could be determined that bread and wine do not physically transform into flesh and blood, the Catholic Church could see the transformation on the level of some unseen substance. There is thus no need for the bread and wine of communion to take on the cell structure of skin, hemoglobin, or platelets. These are the form, whereas it is the substance that literally becomes the body and blood of Christ.
While it is hard to come up with an objection to this belief, it is also difficult to come up with any reason to hold it other than tradition. No one today would retain Aristotle's view of reality in any straightforward way. And no biblical text has such a view, not when properly interpreted. [1]
2. Luther's own view was far more suitable for a world after Aristotle. Translating transubstantiation into his own view of the world, Luther believed that the "real presence" of Jesus was there in the elements of communion after they were consecrated. [2] His view is called "consubstantiation."
Again, it is difficult to find any serious objection to this view. Nor can we find any necessity of believing it. It would seem to fall into the category of "disputable issues," and what one believes can be a matter of individual conviction.
3. Zwingli's position is usually associated with a "memorialist" view. [3] In its extreme form, it sees communion merely as a remembering of Jesus' death and his Last Supper. This view thus seems to undersell the power of communion and the way God uses it to renew and spiritually empower those who come to the table in faith.
All traditions view communion as a memorial, but many see it as more than a mere memorial.
4. In Romans, Paul speaks of the spiritual significance of food. "Nothing is unclean in itself; but it is unclean for anyone who thinks it unclean" (Rom. 14:14). We might say the same of communion. The bread and wine are not intrinsically effective to empower, but to those who are truly and earnestly seeking God's grace, they can facilitate a great moment of spiritual empowerment.
John Calvin suggested that the partaker of communion was taken into the presence of Christ, not that the presence of Christ came to the bread. [4] However, we need not know such particulars. It is clear that many people experience Christ in communion and that they are empowered in the process.
To the one who has faith, to the one who does truly and earnestly repent of his or her sins, communion is a means of grace. It is a divinely appointed meeting place where, in a sacred moment, God's Spirit renews and empowers us to continue to walk in the Spirit. That is all we need to know.
Next Sunday: SA6: The Scriptures are a sacrament of God's transformation.
[1] A statement like, "This is my body," could be either literal or metaphorical. Given that Jesus was speaking of bread, the most natural way to take his words is metaphorical, that the bread in some way was like his body.
[2] The dominant philosophical force in Luther's world was nominalism rather than the metaphysics of Aristotle. In nominalism, things neither have some underlying universal substance (Aristotle) nor are they the material versions of ideas (Plato). Rather, each thing can have its own unique, independent existence and identity unconnected to the existence and identity of other things.
[3] In reality, Zwingli did in the end use some language of a spiritual presence in communion.
[4] In this way he avoided the objection of Zwingli and others that Jesus as truly human could not be present in more than one place at once.
We are now in the third and final unit: The Holy Spirit and the Church. The first set of posts in this final unit was on the Holy Spirit. The second set was on the Church. This third set is on sacraments.
_______________________________
Christians vary some in their perspectives on communion.
1. The precise nature of communion was one of the early debate points in the Protestant Reformation. Indeed, disagreement over communion may have ensured that Protestantism would never be a unified church over and against the Roman Catholic Church. In 1529 at the so called Marburg Colloquy, Martin Luther met with another key "protestant" named Huldrych Zwingli. Although they could agree on most items, they did not agree on communion, and this fact was a deal breaker.
Both disagreed, of course, with the Roman Catholic Church's sense of transubstantiation. Transubstantiation is the belief that the bread and wine of communion literally become the body and blood of Christ in communion. It is an idea that reached its maturity with Thomas Aquinas in the 1200s.
It is also an idea, it would seem, that is strongly based in Aristotle's view of reality as a matter of form and substance. The form is all that we can see. The underlying substance is not available to our view.
This perspective, while no longer one we share, did allow transubstantiation to survive into the Age of Science. Even when it could be determined that bread and wine do not physically transform into flesh and blood, the Catholic Church could see the transformation on the level of some unseen substance. There is thus no need for the bread and wine of communion to take on the cell structure of skin, hemoglobin, or platelets. These are the form, whereas it is the substance that literally becomes the body and blood of Christ.
While it is hard to come up with an objection to this belief, it is also difficult to come up with any reason to hold it other than tradition. No one today would retain Aristotle's view of reality in any straightforward way. And no biblical text has such a view, not when properly interpreted. [1]
2. Luther's own view was far more suitable for a world after Aristotle. Translating transubstantiation into his own view of the world, Luther believed that the "real presence" of Jesus was there in the elements of communion after they were consecrated. [2] His view is called "consubstantiation."
Again, it is difficult to find any serious objection to this view. Nor can we find any necessity of believing it. It would seem to fall into the category of "disputable issues," and what one believes can be a matter of individual conviction.
3. Zwingli's position is usually associated with a "memorialist" view. [3] In its extreme form, it sees communion merely as a remembering of Jesus' death and his Last Supper. This view thus seems to undersell the power of communion and the way God uses it to renew and spiritually empower those who come to the table in faith.
All traditions view communion as a memorial, but many see it as more than a mere memorial.
4. In Romans, Paul speaks of the spiritual significance of food. "Nothing is unclean in itself; but it is unclean for anyone who thinks it unclean" (Rom. 14:14). We might say the same of communion. The bread and wine are not intrinsically effective to empower, but to those who are truly and earnestly seeking God's grace, they can facilitate a great moment of spiritual empowerment.
John Calvin suggested that the partaker of communion was taken into the presence of Christ, not that the presence of Christ came to the bread. [4] However, we need not know such particulars. It is clear that many people experience Christ in communion and that they are empowered in the process.
To the one who has faith, to the one who does truly and earnestly repent of his or her sins, communion is a means of grace. It is a divinely appointed meeting place where, in a sacred moment, God's Spirit renews and empowers us to continue to walk in the Spirit. That is all we need to know.
Next Sunday: SA6: The Scriptures are a sacrament of God's transformation.
[1] A statement like, "This is my body," could be either literal or metaphorical. Given that Jesus was speaking of bread, the most natural way to take his words is metaphorical, that the bread in some way was like his body.
[2] The dominant philosophical force in Luther's world was nominalism rather than the metaphysics of Aristotle. In nominalism, things neither have some underlying universal substance (Aristotle) nor are they the material versions of ideas (Plato). Rather, each thing can have its own unique, independent existence and identity unconnected to the existence and identity of other things.
[3] In reality, Zwingli did in the end use some language of a spiritual presence in communion.
[4] In this way he avoided the objection of Zwingli and others that Jesus as truly human could not be present in more than one place at once.
Friday, September 11, 2015
Monday, then Friday, the first week
1. With the clock hitting 2:30, I finished my first full week back teaching. The thought I expressed to a couple people was that I was definitely back in my natural habitat. I am nowhere happier then when talking about the Bible, truth, and just about anything with people who at least pretend like they're interested.
It's also been an exhausting week. I don't remember it being this tiring! I am older, of course. I feel more like a Dad now than a buddy. Believe it or not, I used to feel like I was teaching my own age group even when I was in my early 40s. That's a little different now. I know Jim Lo feels it too.
2. I hate to say it, but I'm taking teaching a little more seriously now too. I think up until my Dad died, I still was playing a little at my job. I'm a little more sober and mature now than before, just maybe. I hope it doesn't hurt my teaching. :-)
Then there is that first impression thing. This is a generation than knew not Schenck and Lo. There's no money in the bank. Working hard to deposit some!
I will say that the College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) and the School of Theology and Ministry (STM) are greatly improved in many ways from when I was a teacher before. There are a lot more systems in place than before, for example. Dave Ward has done an incredible job at leading STM into a degree of excellence I don't think it had before. He's appointed David Vardaman and Brian Bernius as leaders of departments, and together they are really forming a world class School. On the level of CAS itself, Dave and a new leadership team are improving the systems of the College and Arts and Sciences in common sense ways almost daily, it seems.
3. I am of course tired in part because I'm teaching a lot. There seems to be some extra factor in almost every course I'm teaching. So I'm not just teaching New Testament survey, I'm teaching a first year experience version of it.
What they have done in the College of Arts and Sciences here is just spectacular! New students come in a week before the semester begins and they meet with a professor they're going to have that semester the week before, as well as with a "peer." So I felt really close to that class, even before the semester began.
And the Romans class I'm teaching is not just undergraduates, but the first master's group for STM's new residential Master of Christian Ministry. Paired with the right undergraduate courses, this program is an MDIV equivalent degree that both includes a year of internship at a church and an advanced theological training.
I'm also teaching two sections of the Foundations course for the Honor's College, which is a new prep. And I'm teaching Philippians in Greek. I'm back in the groove, I think, but on Monday I was trying to pull some endings I haven't looked at for a while out my ear.
4. Bottom line is that I am exactly where I am supposed to be! I am delighted to be working with my old friends in STM, who are all high quality scholars and teachers. I remain deeply grateful for their friendship, for their excellence, and especially for their warm welcome back. I know Jim Lo feels the same!
It's also been an exhausting week. I don't remember it being this tiring! I am older, of course. I feel more like a Dad now than a buddy. Believe it or not, I used to feel like I was teaching my own age group even when I was in my early 40s. That's a little different now. I know Jim Lo feels it too.
2. I hate to say it, but I'm taking teaching a little more seriously now too. I think up until my Dad died, I still was playing a little at my job. I'm a little more sober and mature now than before, just maybe. I hope it doesn't hurt my teaching. :-)
Then there is that first impression thing. This is a generation than knew not Schenck and Lo. There's no money in the bank. Working hard to deposit some!
I will say that the College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) and the School of Theology and Ministry (STM) are greatly improved in many ways from when I was a teacher before. There are a lot more systems in place than before, for example. Dave Ward has done an incredible job at leading STM into a degree of excellence I don't think it had before. He's appointed David Vardaman and Brian Bernius as leaders of departments, and together they are really forming a world class School. On the level of CAS itself, Dave and a new leadership team are improving the systems of the College and Arts and Sciences in common sense ways almost daily, it seems.
3. I am of course tired in part because I'm teaching a lot. There seems to be some extra factor in almost every course I'm teaching. So I'm not just teaching New Testament survey, I'm teaching a first year experience version of it.
 |
| Just a few of my First Year Experience students |
And the Romans class I'm teaching is not just undergraduates, but the first master's group for STM's new residential Master of Christian Ministry. Paired with the right undergraduate courses, this program is an MDIV equivalent degree that both includes a year of internship at a church and an advanced theological training.
I'm also teaching two sections of the Foundations course for the Honor's College, which is a new prep. And I'm teaching Philippians in Greek. I'm back in the groove, I think, but on Monday I was trying to pull some endings I haven't looked at for a while out my ear.
4. Bottom line is that I am exactly where I am supposed to be! I am delighted to be working with my old friends in STM, who are all high quality scholars and teachers. I remain deeply grateful for their friendship, for their excellence, and especially for their warm welcome back. I know Jim Lo feels the same!
President Wright Looking Back
Today Dr. Wright gave some thought on his presidential blog to this question: "You are now beginning your third year as President of IWU. How would you characterize the first two years of your presidency and what would you say will be your focus in this third year?"
See his answer here, "The Stuff Presidents Watch."
Post any questions you have on his blog!
See his answer here, "The Stuff Presidents Watch."
Post any questions you have on his blog!
Wednesday, September 09, 2015
President Wright's Third Year Questions
I was thinking back to when Jim Barnes and Henry Smith were President, and it seemed at times like their world was sometimes far removed from the day to day life of the residential campus. In the case of David, I know he has been pioneering a trail in the South Pacific, making possible global connections for IWU as a fully international university.
The thought emerged for him to blog through some questions about the beginning of his third year. I came up with some questions Monday night and sent them to him. He's decided to take them on at his presidential blog, which you might notice shows up in my feed to the right from time to time.
Here is his first post, which includes the questions I sent him. I'm looking forward to hearing his thoughts at the start of his third year! You can also ask him questions!
Tuesday, September 08, 2015
I (Still) Believe: Walter Moberly
Previous posts include:
Richard Bauckham
Walter Brueggemann
Ellen Davis
James Dunn
Gordon Fee
Beverly Roberts Gaventa
John Goldingay
Scot McKnight
1. I am constantly thankful to God for the privileged life I have led. I am not a naturally happy person. It's just not my nature. :-) But I hope that I am never ungrateful for the blessed life God has given me.
One of those blessings was being able to sit for three years in the Durham New Testament Research Seminar, with a number of world class scholars and emerging scholars always present. One faithful face in that seminar was Dr. Walter Moberly. Dr. Moberly is an Old Testament scholar. But as a Christian of deep faith, the whole Bible is of great interest to him. He is also a "theological interpreter," who is interested in the canon as a whole read from a Christian perspective.
2. As with some other scholars in this book, there is a thread of suffering in Dr. Moberly's story. For one, he struggles with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis. This is one reason why he ended up teaching theology rather than pastoring. He pastored for some time and hoped to do some pastoring along with his teaching, but his physical condition will not allow it.
I was at Durham when Dr. Moberly's first wife died of cancer less than four months after giving birth. It was not even known that she had cancer when she went in to give birth. The night of his son's birth was a night he likens to Jacob wrestling with the angel. It was filled with images of Abraham offering up his son Isaac and Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemene. He emerged with a confidence that both he and his first wife were in God's hands.
He says this: "My night as wrestling Jacob finally persuaded me that most kinds of theodicy, attempts to rationalize and/or justify the ways of God, are futile; the bottom line is that either you trust, or you don't" (205).
I'll let you read for yourself his other notes on his personal story, including his remarriage, which also happened while I was at Durham. It is no surprise that Genesis 22 has featured in his scholarship.
3. I have been particularly interested in Dr. Moberly's wrestling to fit his scholarship with his faith and especially his faith in Scripture. He clearly has a twin commitment. His first love is faith, but he is also committed to critical scholarship. The ongoing tension between the two was palpable to me in this chapter. It was a tension that emerged when he was training to be a minister and wrestled with the Pauline authorship of 1 Timothy.
He invokes an image that I also use in my own pilgrimage, namely, the idea of a second naivete. For myself--and my pilgrimage is not exactly the same as his--most Christians function to one degree or another with what you might call a pre-historical sense of the biblical text. This way of reading the Bible can be incredibly powerful and sacramental.
But there is also no legitimate way of denying history and context, which can be introduced in either positive or negative ways. All too often, history is introduced in a confrontative, faith-undermining way. Moberly is an example of someone who has been able to continue to experience God in the biblical texts without denying the fullness of historical study.
4. Read his chapter to hear more about his discovery of St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross, plus more!
Monday, September 07, 2015
When you leave your position...
... will everyone give a sigh of relief?
(BTW, before I start I trust no one will think that I am talking about anyone at IWU or any Wesleyan church leaders in this post.)
1. I thank the Lord that I didn't stay Dean of the seminary long enough for everyone to throw a party in celebration that I was leaving. I thank the Lord for that!
It's natural for there to be some grumbling about leaders. It would be a VERY rare leadership situation for EVERYONE to completely affirm everything you do. Hopefully most pastors don't get too upset when they get a few no votes. My Dad used to say that quote: "You can please some of the people all of the time. You can please all of the people some of the time. But you can't please all of the people all of the time."
But I've been around long enough now to see some situations where a pastor or leader just stayed too long. It's a tough situation. It can take years to get a weak leader transitioned out. You can imagine how hard it is to get a strong leader to move on.
It's even harder when boards or voters are Christ-like, because they will want the leader to have every possible chance to redeem themselves. Christ-like people don't have a "kick-them-out" attitude, which makes them putty in the hands of a strong-willed or crafty leader, who may actually enjoy crushing people.
I can't judge Mark Driscoll, so let me make it clear that I am only using his story as an illustration. But going with the stories, see how long it took to dislodge him. If the story is true, how many employees were mistreated before he was finally dislodged? There can be many noble casualties before a beach is finally taken.
Then everyone celebrates, and we finally hear the stories. When a leader who has overstayed is out, how everyone breathes a final sigh of relief. Hopefully an organization is not beyond recovery by then! And after the bad leader is gone, the people celebrate. When President Mobuto of Zaire was finally dead, how everyone rejoiced! This is a reminder to anyone drunk with their own power. There will come a time when they are powerless to control the story. Then how the truth will resound!
2. The autocrat rarely sees it him or herself. After all, it is a divine right to rule, right? But here are some signs that an organization needs to finally get up the courage to move a leader along:
(BTW, before I start I trust no one will think that I am talking about anyone at IWU or any Wesleyan church leaders in this post.)
1. I thank the Lord that I didn't stay Dean of the seminary long enough for everyone to throw a party in celebration that I was leaving. I thank the Lord for that!
It's natural for there to be some grumbling about leaders. It would be a VERY rare leadership situation for EVERYONE to completely affirm everything you do. Hopefully most pastors don't get too upset when they get a few no votes. My Dad used to say that quote: "You can please some of the people all of the time. You can please all of the people some of the time. But you can't please all of the people all of the time."
But I've been around long enough now to see some situations where a pastor or leader just stayed too long. It's a tough situation. It can take years to get a weak leader transitioned out. You can imagine how hard it is to get a strong leader to move on.
It's even harder when boards or voters are Christ-like, because they will want the leader to have every possible chance to redeem themselves. Christ-like people don't have a "kick-them-out" attitude, which makes them putty in the hands of a strong-willed or crafty leader, who may actually enjoy crushing people.
I can't judge Mark Driscoll, so let me make it clear that I am only using his story as an illustration. But going with the stories, see how long it took to dislodge him. If the story is true, how many employees were mistreated before he was finally dislodged? There can be many noble casualties before a beach is finally taken.
Then everyone celebrates, and we finally hear the stories. When a leader who has overstayed is out, how everyone breathes a final sigh of relief. Hopefully an organization is not beyond recovery by then! And after the bad leader is gone, the people celebrate. When President Mobuto of Zaire was finally dead, how everyone rejoiced! This is a reminder to anyone drunk with their own power. There will come a time when they are powerless to control the story. Then how the truth will resound!
2. The autocrat rarely sees it him or herself. After all, it is a divine right to rule, right? But here are some signs that an organization needs to finally get up the courage to move a leader along:
- There are stories of employees who were mistreated that stretch out over time. Especially of concern are those who tried to help the leader, to speak redemptively into their life, but who were then summarily fired or manipulated out. The extent of the abuse may only become painfully clear after the leader is gone.
- They cannot stomach disagreement. Everyone must either agree with them or hit the road. Even more, the bad leader may want to destroy the opposition with false accusations and slander. Think Haman. If Mordecai won't bow, he must be eliminated.
- They have a form of righteousness, but it is really about their own advancement. They may sound like they are standing up for the mission or the truth or the right, but it is really a subtle form of self-promotion. They use conflict and crises as an opportunity to thrust themselves into the spotlight.
- You may have heard the saying not to wrestle with a pig--you both get dirty but the pig likes it. Some autocrats love a fight. This is part of why they can last so long. The people or board know that the battle will be fierce, the mud will be thick, and there will be casualties. Every i must be dotted and every t crossed because there will be no surrender, submission, or relent until everything is wasted and Hitler takes his own life in a bunker.
- They are often ladder climbers. But if they are unable to climb any further, they may end up stuck on the rung they have reached--which is a real bummer for that organization! Now they not only cannot ascend, they will become frustrated at being stuck where they are. That is bad news for those who are stuck with them.
- There is a point where a bad leader puts an organization in jeopardy. All leaders have weaknesses. As a skilled leader, Wayne Schmidt surrounded me with a support team that could offset mine. But at some point, a leader's weakness can put a church or organization in danger. At that point, the people or the board must have the courage to exit the leader. Certainly with grace, but it must be done for love's sake.
Sunday, September 06, 2015
SA4: Communion is a sacrament of re-empowerment.
This is the fourth post on sacraments in my ongoing series, theology in bullet points. The first unit in this series had to do with God and Creation (book here), and the second unit was on Christology and Atonement.
We are now in the third and final unit: The Holy Spirit and the Church. The first set of posts in this final unit was on the Holy Spirit. The second set was on the Church. This third set is on sacraments.
_______________________________
Communion is a sacrament of re-empowerment.
1. Along with baptism, communion is the other practice that many Protestant churches consider to be a sacrament. It is the practice that remembers the Last Supper Jesus ate with his disciples before dying. Bread and wine (or juice) are consumed after the biblical words of that meal are spoken. It is often a time of reflection, even repentance, and the believer is renewed and strengthened to continue to walk with Christ and live a godly life through the power of the Holy Spirit.
The medium of communion is thus bread and wine. [1] The sacramental power of the Spirit is the power of renewal. The partaker is ideally renewed in faith and re-empowered by the Spirit.
2. On the one hand, communion is also a remembrance. The very first meal at the Last Supper of Jesus before his death was around the time of Passover. [2] It remembered the exodus and how God brought Israel out of slavery in Egypt.
For Christians, in this meal we especially "give thanks" for the fact that Jesus died for the sins of the world. Communion is often called the "Eucharist" or the "thanksgiving" for Jesus' death and the power it has made available for the believer. This is a power not only for salvation but also the power to defeat Sin.
Communion thus, in part, looks back. "Do this in remembrance of me," Jesus said on the night he was betrayed (e.g., 1 Cor. 11:24-25; Luke 22:19). In communion we remember Jesus' death on the cross.
The wine was the "new covenant" in Jesus' blood (1 Cor. 11:25; Luke 22:20). It remembers that his blood was "poured out for many" (Mark 14:24) and "for the forgiveness of sins" (Matt. 26:28). So also taking communion can be a time when any sins are forgiven again. It is a sacred moment ripe for any needed repentance and forgiveness.
Communion also looks forward to the "wedding banquet" that we will eat with Jesus when he returns and the kingdom of God fully comes to the earth as it is in heaven. Mark remembers Jesus telling his followers that night, "I will never again drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God" (Mark 14:25). When we eat the bread and drink the cup, we thus look forward to the day when we will be with Christ in the kingdom of God on earth.
3. Like the Passover meal and the Last Supper meal, communion was probably a meal originally. 1 Corinthians 11 tells us of problems the Corinthian church had when they ate the Lord's Supper (1 Cor. 11:20). Enough wine was consumed by some that they became drunk, while others ended up hungry (11:21). This suggests that the meal was a full meal.
Jude 12 similarly mentions an agape or love-feast that was apparently customary for Christians. Likely this is another reference to the Lord's Supper as a meal. However, the solemnity of the event increased quickly, perhaps in part from the circulation of Paul's letter to the Corinthians. By the time of the Didache in the early second century, only those who are baptized are allowed to participate in this meal (9.5). [3] Eventually it would become a smaller ritual embedded within a worship service.
4. The word communion suggests one significance of the event, namely, the unity of the Church. This was the problem at Corinth. The wealthy and those with status in the community were eating their full and getting drunk, while slaves and those with little status presumably were those who went hungry (1 Cor. 11:21). [4] Paul even suggests that some have become sick and died in the community because of such contempt toward others (1 Cor. 11:30).
The unity of the body of Christ is thus a major connotation of "communion." Paul says words that are sometimes spoken during communion: "Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread" (1 Cor. 10:17). This meaning of communion is sometimes obscured in the American church when individual wafers and cups are used for communion. The older, historic practice is for there to be one cup and one loaf of bread to signify the unity of the body of Christ. So also at the Last Supper, they passed the same cup and loaf around (e.g., Luke 22:19)
5. Paul urged the Corinthian church to examine themselves before they ate the bread and drank the cup of thanksgiving (1 Cor. 11:28). Some have found this admonition terrifying, especially since it is accompanied by a statement that some have died for eating unworthily. In some places, individuals will actually skip a church service if they know that communion will be served.
But Paul is not saying that one must have repented of all sin before taking communion. He was targeting the divisive way in which those at Corinth with high status were scorning those of low status in the communion meal. In truth, the act of communion is itself a highly appropriate moment during which one can repent of any sin and receive forgiveness. It is ripe for this renewal and re-empowerment for service and victory over temptation.
It seems likely that the earliest Christians came together to eat this agape at least once a week. We have good reason to believe that many Christians gathered early on Sunday morning, the "Lord's Day," to celebrate the resurrection. Pliny the Younger in the early second century mentions that Christians in northern Turkey met before dawn on a certain day, presumably Sunday, and then gathered together later to partake of a meal. (Letters 10.97). It thus seems likely that Christians ate the Lord's Supper every Sunday.
6. It is good for believers to eat together. Eating is a common human practice. In the first century, you ate together with those with whom you considered yourself one, whether family or the groups to which you belonged. This is why table fellowship was such a controversial issue. The Pharisees would only eat with those who were pure.
And so in Galatians 2, the dispute over Jewish believers eating with Gentile believers was likely a question of eating the communion meal together (Gal. 2:12). Paul saw the need for unity especially crucial here, for it was a question of being covered by the blood of Christ. Jew and Gentile believer both stood equally before the blood of Christ. Both should eat together.
When we celebrate the Lord's Supper as a church, when we "give thanks" in the Eucharist, we both remember what Christ has done and look forward to what he will do. "Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again." But the Eucharist is more than a remembrance and an anticipation. It is "strength for today," as well as "bright hope for tomorrow."
Communion is a sacrament of renewal and re-empowerment. It is a wonderful time to repent of any sin and trust in God for the power to face another week in his name.
Next Sunday: SA5: Christians vary some in their perspectives on communion.
[1] The use of grape juice instead of wine rose within Methodism in the late 1800s. A Methodist named Thomas Bramwell Welch invented a process of stopping the fermentation of the juice and his son created the business of Welch's Grape Juice. By the mid-1860s, Methodist churches insisted on using unfermented juice in communion, and most low-church denominations followed suit.
[2] The Gospels give differing impressions on whether the Last Supper was the actual Passover meal or not. In the Synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, we get the impression that the Last Supper was indeed a Passover meal. In John, however, we get the impression that Jesus dies on the cross at about the time that the Passover lambs are being slaughtered for supper than night (e.g., John 18:28; 19:14, 31).
[3] At Corinth, it is overwhelmingly likely that children participated in the meal. It is not clear from the Didache whether children participated in the eucharistic meal, but it does seem to be a meal, since it mentions being full (10.1).
[4] We can infer this social status dynamic by what we know about the nature of ancient dining and how even menus were often differentiated on the basis of status at the same meal. See Pliny the Younger, Letters 11.
We are now in the third and final unit: The Holy Spirit and the Church. The first set of posts in this final unit was on the Holy Spirit. The second set was on the Church. This third set is on sacraments.
_______________________________
Communion is a sacrament of re-empowerment.
1. Along with baptism, communion is the other practice that many Protestant churches consider to be a sacrament. It is the practice that remembers the Last Supper Jesus ate with his disciples before dying. Bread and wine (or juice) are consumed after the biblical words of that meal are spoken. It is often a time of reflection, even repentance, and the believer is renewed and strengthened to continue to walk with Christ and live a godly life through the power of the Holy Spirit.
The medium of communion is thus bread and wine. [1] The sacramental power of the Spirit is the power of renewal. The partaker is ideally renewed in faith and re-empowered by the Spirit.
2. On the one hand, communion is also a remembrance. The very first meal at the Last Supper of Jesus before his death was around the time of Passover. [2] It remembered the exodus and how God brought Israel out of slavery in Egypt.
For Christians, in this meal we especially "give thanks" for the fact that Jesus died for the sins of the world. Communion is often called the "Eucharist" or the "thanksgiving" for Jesus' death and the power it has made available for the believer. This is a power not only for salvation but also the power to defeat Sin.
Communion thus, in part, looks back. "Do this in remembrance of me," Jesus said on the night he was betrayed (e.g., 1 Cor. 11:24-25; Luke 22:19). In communion we remember Jesus' death on the cross.
The wine was the "new covenant" in Jesus' blood (1 Cor. 11:25; Luke 22:20). It remembers that his blood was "poured out for many" (Mark 14:24) and "for the forgiveness of sins" (Matt. 26:28). So also taking communion can be a time when any sins are forgiven again. It is a sacred moment ripe for any needed repentance and forgiveness.
Communion also looks forward to the "wedding banquet" that we will eat with Jesus when he returns and the kingdom of God fully comes to the earth as it is in heaven. Mark remembers Jesus telling his followers that night, "I will never again drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God" (Mark 14:25). When we eat the bread and drink the cup, we thus look forward to the day when we will be with Christ in the kingdom of God on earth.
3. Like the Passover meal and the Last Supper meal, communion was probably a meal originally. 1 Corinthians 11 tells us of problems the Corinthian church had when they ate the Lord's Supper (1 Cor. 11:20). Enough wine was consumed by some that they became drunk, while others ended up hungry (11:21). This suggests that the meal was a full meal.
Jude 12 similarly mentions an agape or love-feast that was apparently customary for Christians. Likely this is another reference to the Lord's Supper as a meal. However, the solemnity of the event increased quickly, perhaps in part from the circulation of Paul's letter to the Corinthians. By the time of the Didache in the early second century, only those who are baptized are allowed to participate in this meal (9.5). [3] Eventually it would become a smaller ritual embedded within a worship service.
4. The word communion suggests one significance of the event, namely, the unity of the Church. This was the problem at Corinth. The wealthy and those with status in the community were eating their full and getting drunk, while slaves and those with little status presumably were those who went hungry (1 Cor. 11:21). [4] Paul even suggests that some have become sick and died in the community because of such contempt toward others (1 Cor. 11:30).
The unity of the body of Christ is thus a major connotation of "communion." Paul says words that are sometimes spoken during communion: "Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread" (1 Cor. 10:17). This meaning of communion is sometimes obscured in the American church when individual wafers and cups are used for communion. The older, historic practice is for there to be one cup and one loaf of bread to signify the unity of the body of Christ. So also at the Last Supper, they passed the same cup and loaf around (e.g., Luke 22:19)
5. Paul urged the Corinthian church to examine themselves before they ate the bread and drank the cup of thanksgiving (1 Cor. 11:28). Some have found this admonition terrifying, especially since it is accompanied by a statement that some have died for eating unworthily. In some places, individuals will actually skip a church service if they know that communion will be served.
But Paul is not saying that one must have repented of all sin before taking communion. He was targeting the divisive way in which those at Corinth with high status were scorning those of low status in the communion meal. In truth, the act of communion is itself a highly appropriate moment during which one can repent of any sin and receive forgiveness. It is ripe for this renewal and re-empowerment for service and victory over temptation.
It seems likely that the earliest Christians came together to eat this agape at least once a week. We have good reason to believe that many Christians gathered early on Sunday morning, the "Lord's Day," to celebrate the resurrection. Pliny the Younger in the early second century mentions that Christians in northern Turkey met before dawn on a certain day, presumably Sunday, and then gathered together later to partake of a meal. (Letters 10.97). It thus seems likely that Christians ate the Lord's Supper every Sunday.
6. It is good for believers to eat together. Eating is a common human practice. In the first century, you ate together with those with whom you considered yourself one, whether family or the groups to which you belonged. This is why table fellowship was such a controversial issue. The Pharisees would only eat with those who were pure.
And so in Galatians 2, the dispute over Jewish believers eating with Gentile believers was likely a question of eating the communion meal together (Gal. 2:12). Paul saw the need for unity especially crucial here, for it was a question of being covered by the blood of Christ. Jew and Gentile believer both stood equally before the blood of Christ. Both should eat together.
When we celebrate the Lord's Supper as a church, when we "give thanks" in the Eucharist, we both remember what Christ has done and look forward to what he will do. "Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again." But the Eucharist is more than a remembrance and an anticipation. It is "strength for today," as well as "bright hope for tomorrow."
Communion is a sacrament of renewal and re-empowerment. It is a wonderful time to repent of any sin and trust in God for the power to face another week in his name.
Next Sunday: SA5: Christians vary some in their perspectives on communion.
[1] The use of grape juice instead of wine rose within Methodism in the late 1800s. A Methodist named Thomas Bramwell Welch invented a process of stopping the fermentation of the juice and his son created the business of Welch's Grape Juice. By the mid-1860s, Methodist churches insisted on using unfermented juice in communion, and most low-church denominations followed suit.
[2] The Gospels give differing impressions on whether the Last Supper was the actual Passover meal or not. In the Synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, we get the impression that the Last Supper was indeed a Passover meal. In John, however, we get the impression that Jesus dies on the cross at about the time that the Passover lambs are being slaughtered for supper than night (e.g., John 18:28; 19:14, 31).
[3] At Corinth, it is overwhelmingly likely that children participated in the meal. It is not clear from the Didache whether children participated in the eucharistic meal, but it does seem to be a meal, since it mentions being full (10.1).
[4] We can infer this social status dynamic by what we know about the nature of ancient dining and how even menus were often differentiated on the basis of status at the same meal. See Pliny the Younger, Letters 11.
Thursday, September 03, 2015
The Separatist Spirit
1. Family is a funny thing. I don't have any sisters that annoy me (no doubt I was an annoying child). But I do know families where some of the siblings love each other but don't really enjoy being around each other very much.
I say that to make it clear that, although I was only eight when he died, I loved my grandfather. He was a bit scary to me--I knew better than to go into his office in the back of his house. But he let me shoot his B-B gun (I shot out a light rather than hitting the target), and I believe he loved his grandchildren.
2. As I've learned more about him, there is much that I admire about him. He was a church planter, an entrepreneur of sorts. At various times he owned a grocery store. He worked as a butcher sometimes. He could fix cars.
As I said, he was also a little rough. He came from the old school where you preached against stuff. You preached against hellovision, going to the moving picture theater, and you made sure that people knew that they were to dress a certain way. You preached against wedding rings and buying on Sunday.
He was an "against" kind of guy. He believed in shunning and shaming, in giving people a "good letting alone." As Freud would have it, one of my aunts married someone very similar who once told my father that he would pray for his soul if he stayed with the Wesleyan Church when it was merging in 1968. Even my Dad once asked me what I was against--a revealing artifact of his upbringing.
3. My grandfather was thus a "come-outer." I've blogged through a book on the holiness movement at the turn of the twentieth century. There were a lot of come-outers in that gang. There's a certain personality that gets an adrenaline rush from shouting at what's wrong with, whatever, and then walking out of the room. Although I hate to say it, there were LOTS of those types in the holiness movement of early twentieth century.
Mind you, they weren't the part of the holiness movement that grew. They were the part that split and split and frequently died. One thing I learned from that book was that the more even-tempered Nazarenes--often a target of the separatists--were the part of the holiness movement that really grew. It is the largest holiness denomination still today.
I have some of that fire in my veins. I can feel it. I'm channeling a little of my grandfather in this post. But it's not the part of me that "grows Ken."
I loved my grandfather. But I have little admiration for splitters as splitters. We all like to think ourselves prophets, but how many of us really are? The Prophets preached more for people than against sin as a violation of the rules. Could it be that a certain kind of person hides behind the prophets as an excuse to express anger at... whatever they can justify being angry at?
I have little admiration for those with a separatist spirit. The spirit of Christ is more a spirit of reconciliation (2 Cor. 5), at least until the very end when it's clear there will be no reconciliation. The Wesley way is to see mercy as the primary over judgment (Jas. 2:13). The Wesley way seeks for points of agreement to build on far more than excuses to rent their clothes over the disagreements.
4. Aren't there verses about separating? Of course there are. I'm sure my grandfather knew them all. He liked them. Separatists love them. They hide behind them. Did you know that you can use the Bible as an excuse to kick against Christ?
If you put all the verses on reconciling and separating on the scales, which has the greater weight in God's eyes? I fear that some people are delighted when they have an excuse to excommunicate. I have little respect for such people. I had no respect for the Evangelical Theological Society in those years that they seemed to delight in figuring out who they could vote out next year. College presidents that delight in kicking faculty out leave most people with a bitter taste in their mouths.
Worst of all is the grandstander, the person who isn't even condemning primarily for cause but as an opportunity to draw attention to themselves. Clever politicians do that from time to time. They use a moment of protest to shove themselves into the spotlight and gain attention and power. Many would say that MacCarthy did that with regard to communism, that he saw the issue as a way to thrust himself into the spotlight. The best thing to do is to ignore them. That type feeds off conflict.
The most noble separations I know of--Luther and Wesley--happened because the parent body they were trying to reform kicked them out. Even with regard to the Wesleyan Methodist Church, I've always respected the fact that Luther Lee went back into the Methodist Episcopal Church, after the Civil War was over and the issue of slavery was over. I'm proud of the fact that the Pilgrim Holiness Church resulted from a series of mergers, as did the Wesleyan Church.
5. This is the spirit of Christ. The spirit of Christ is the spirit of reconciliation. In the new covenant, we don't get unclean by touching a sinner. There's a fair amount of old covenant thinking involved here, the same traditions that led the old separatists to fight over new moons and sabbaths, over women wearing that which pertaineth to a man or trimming the edges of a beard. We're not touching the unclean thing. We're stoning Achan's children and livestock because Achan has touched them.
Are there times when we need to separate ourselves? Absolutely. We need to separate ourselves when we need to protect ourselves from bad influences. There is also a point where two parties disagree so much that they are hindering each other's mission and work. That is a good time to part company as Paul and Barnabas did, to agree to disagree and part amicably. But that's different from renting our clothes and putting ashes on our heads. "I thank God that I'm not like other men."
I doubt there will be a split in the Methodist church at this point. I suspect at this point we will more see individual churches leave. But if there had been a separation, I hope it would have happened by the one side simply saying that they believed the disagreement was just too significant for the two to work profitably together. Not storming from the room in "righteous indignation," but separating in peace because it had become clear that the two parts just had significantly different missions that worked against each other. I hope the churches that end up leaving will do it that way. We agree to disagree and withdraw to better accomplish our sense of the mission.
Hindsight will tell, but I actually respect the fact that there wasn't a split. That's the side I believe Christ would err on, if he could err. If they had split, I would have had to think long and hard about whether I favored my church joining with them. You can believe the same things and yet be of a different spirit, a different flavor. I want to be with the unifiers, not the come-outers.
The peaceful departer is not what I mean by the separatist spirit. I have in mind the church splitter, who didn't get his or her way. There's the Zwingli, who will not be satisfied unless Luther sees every last thing his way. There's the grandstander and the Pharisee, who is purer than other men. And of course there's the ignoramus who thinks he or she has a new revelation from God and is upset that no one agrees with him. Nothing new to see here. 1 Corinthians has a few words to say about the divisive in heart.
6. I'm convinced that most Christians agree with me. The problem, I believe, is that those who don't are usually the most vocal. May the fight in my blood be of some service to the more Christ-like souls who hold their tongues--the peacemakers, the meek, and the pure in heart. Blessed are they... at least Jesus thought so.
I say that to make it clear that, although I was only eight when he died, I loved my grandfather. He was a bit scary to me--I knew better than to go into his office in the back of his house. But he let me shoot his B-B gun (I shot out a light rather than hitting the target), and I believe he loved his grandchildren.
2. As I've learned more about him, there is much that I admire about him. He was a church planter, an entrepreneur of sorts. At various times he owned a grocery store. He worked as a butcher sometimes. He could fix cars.
As I said, he was also a little rough. He came from the old school where you preached against stuff. You preached against hellovision, going to the moving picture theater, and you made sure that people knew that they were to dress a certain way. You preached against wedding rings and buying on Sunday.
He was an "against" kind of guy. He believed in shunning and shaming, in giving people a "good letting alone." As Freud would have it, one of my aunts married someone very similar who once told my father that he would pray for his soul if he stayed with the Wesleyan Church when it was merging in 1968. Even my Dad once asked me what I was against--a revealing artifact of his upbringing.
3. My grandfather was thus a "come-outer." I've blogged through a book on the holiness movement at the turn of the twentieth century. There were a lot of come-outers in that gang. There's a certain personality that gets an adrenaline rush from shouting at what's wrong with, whatever, and then walking out of the room. Although I hate to say it, there were LOTS of those types in the holiness movement of early twentieth century.
Mind you, they weren't the part of the holiness movement that grew. They were the part that split and split and frequently died. One thing I learned from that book was that the more even-tempered Nazarenes--often a target of the separatists--were the part of the holiness movement that really grew. It is the largest holiness denomination still today.
I have some of that fire in my veins. I can feel it. I'm channeling a little of my grandfather in this post. But it's not the part of me that "grows Ken."
I loved my grandfather. But I have little admiration for splitters as splitters. We all like to think ourselves prophets, but how many of us really are? The Prophets preached more for people than against sin as a violation of the rules. Could it be that a certain kind of person hides behind the prophets as an excuse to express anger at... whatever they can justify being angry at?
I have little admiration for those with a separatist spirit. The spirit of Christ is more a spirit of reconciliation (2 Cor. 5), at least until the very end when it's clear there will be no reconciliation. The Wesley way is to see mercy as the primary over judgment (Jas. 2:13). The Wesley way seeks for points of agreement to build on far more than excuses to rent their clothes over the disagreements.
4. Aren't there verses about separating? Of course there are. I'm sure my grandfather knew them all. He liked them. Separatists love them. They hide behind them. Did you know that you can use the Bible as an excuse to kick against Christ?
If you put all the verses on reconciling and separating on the scales, which has the greater weight in God's eyes? I fear that some people are delighted when they have an excuse to excommunicate. I have little respect for such people. I had no respect for the Evangelical Theological Society in those years that they seemed to delight in figuring out who they could vote out next year. College presidents that delight in kicking faculty out leave most people with a bitter taste in their mouths.
Worst of all is the grandstander, the person who isn't even condemning primarily for cause but as an opportunity to draw attention to themselves. Clever politicians do that from time to time. They use a moment of protest to shove themselves into the spotlight and gain attention and power. Many would say that MacCarthy did that with regard to communism, that he saw the issue as a way to thrust himself into the spotlight. The best thing to do is to ignore them. That type feeds off conflict.
The most noble separations I know of--Luther and Wesley--happened because the parent body they were trying to reform kicked them out. Even with regard to the Wesleyan Methodist Church, I've always respected the fact that Luther Lee went back into the Methodist Episcopal Church, after the Civil War was over and the issue of slavery was over. I'm proud of the fact that the Pilgrim Holiness Church resulted from a series of mergers, as did the Wesleyan Church.
5. This is the spirit of Christ. The spirit of Christ is the spirit of reconciliation. In the new covenant, we don't get unclean by touching a sinner. There's a fair amount of old covenant thinking involved here, the same traditions that led the old separatists to fight over new moons and sabbaths, over women wearing that which pertaineth to a man or trimming the edges of a beard. We're not touching the unclean thing. We're stoning Achan's children and livestock because Achan has touched them.
Are there times when we need to separate ourselves? Absolutely. We need to separate ourselves when we need to protect ourselves from bad influences. There is also a point where two parties disagree so much that they are hindering each other's mission and work. That is a good time to part company as Paul and Barnabas did, to agree to disagree and part amicably. But that's different from renting our clothes and putting ashes on our heads. "I thank God that I'm not like other men."
I doubt there will be a split in the Methodist church at this point. I suspect at this point we will more see individual churches leave. But if there had been a separation, I hope it would have happened by the one side simply saying that they believed the disagreement was just too significant for the two to work profitably together. Not storming from the room in "righteous indignation," but separating in peace because it had become clear that the two parts just had significantly different missions that worked against each other. I hope the churches that end up leaving will do it that way. We agree to disagree and withdraw to better accomplish our sense of the mission.
Hindsight will tell, but I actually respect the fact that there wasn't a split. That's the side I believe Christ would err on, if he could err. If they had split, I would have had to think long and hard about whether I favored my church joining with them. You can believe the same things and yet be of a different spirit, a different flavor. I want to be with the unifiers, not the come-outers.
The peaceful departer is not what I mean by the separatist spirit. I have in mind the church splitter, who didn't get his or her way. There's the Zwingli, who will not be satisfied unless Luther sees every last thing his way. There's the grandstander and the Pharisee, who is purer than other men. And of course there's the ignoramus who thinks he or she has a new revelation from God and is upset that no one agrees with him. Nothing new to see here. 1 Corinthians has a few words to say about the divisive in heart.
6. I'm convinced that most Christians agree with me. The problem, I believe, is that those who don't are usually the most vocal. May the fight in my blood be of some service to the more Christ-like souls who hold their tongues--the peacemakers, the meek, and the pure in heart. Blessed are they... at least Jesus thought so.
Wednesday, September 02, 2015
I (Still) Believe: Scot McKnight
Previous posts include:
Richard Bauckham
Walter Brueggemann
Ellen Davis
James Dunn
Gordon Fee
Beverly Roberts Gaventa
John Goldingay
1. I have always known that Scot likes sports, and that is clear from this chapter as well. He traded in a sports destiny for a teaching one, though, when he was injured his senior year of high school. There's no question in my mind that Scot has had a blessed life. I'm sure he has had pains as well, but his life gives off a strong aroma of peace.
He married his childhood sweetheart before he was even out of college. They have a model marriage, indeed a dream marriage. He is obviously a greatly intelligent scholar. You can see his appetite to learn everywhere in this chapter. Unlike myself, who mostly wanted to read, read, read, Scot was actually able to do it.
He was one of Dunn's students when he was still at Nottingham. He ended up teaching at Trinity. His taking of Wayne Grudem's place is ironic, as he mentions. He pitched to Walter Kaiser (then Dean) that they needed an Arminian who favored women in ministry to balance out the department. I have never heard a negative word from Scot about Trinity, but it is also clear that he is now finally in his sweet spot at Northern (with a good run at North Park in the meantime).
Northern is an amazing seminary in Chicago with an amazing team. Important for him is the unified support for women in ministry there. This is also a value of Wesley Seminary and Indiana Wesleyan University. Last week a prospective student at Wesley Seminary asked if she would only be allowed to take certain courses because she is a woman. That's the way it is at some seminaries. Why would a woman go there??? Come to Northern or Wesley or IWU's School of Theology and Ministry!
2. He has some nice stories of his interactions with students over the years. A key insight he shares is that "I was not teaching subjects to students... but teaching students about a subject" (166).
In college Scot transitioned from fundamentalism to evangelicalism. A class on the Synoptic Gospels made him what he is. In particular, over the next years his detailed study of the Gospels would convince him that they used sources and edited them in keeping with their theologies.
The end point of this journey was a sense that the Bible "is not one self-contained text added to the previous but one text interacting with--sometimes agreeing, sometimes even disagreeing, but often expanding and adjusting and renewing--the previous texts" (167). "God's inspiration then is at work in a history and a community as expressed by an author for a given moment."
He concludes that "the Bible is God's true and living Word is far more in line with the realities of the Bible itself than the political terms that have arisen among evangelicals in the twentieth century" (168). And here he refers to the term inerrancy.
I'll let you buy the book and read the rest, including some controversial comments on historical Jesus studies.
Scot's the man!
Monday, August 31, 2015
Political Correctness
As a Christian who takes James 3 seriously, I believe it's important for us to be mindful of the way we talk to others. My sense is that this message is the more relevant one for the typical person who would read my blog. So I try to be conscious of who is in my class or audience so that I don't accidentally say something offensive.
BUT there is an opposite extreme, where the word police themselves become the oppressors. A colleague of mine drew our attention to this piece in The Atlantic yesterday. Like I said, the problem at hand seems to apply especially right now to "liberal" institutions.
Employees at IWU went through various training sessions this past summer. I was glad to see that we were following the "reasonable person" standard mentioned in this piece. We want diversity. We want to be loving in all our words and policies. But it would be just as wrong to create an environment where overly sensitive people set the standard.
Here are two quotes that most stood out to me:
Even more the need for us to return to a sense of truth that is not primarily oriented around the subjective. We have lost any sense of objective truth. "Emotional reasoning" is one of the very first fallacies we cover in philosophy--something isn't true just because it feels that way to you. Yes, it means it may be real for you (if you are truly in touch with your feelings), but that doesn't make it true for anyone else. And it certainly does not make it a public truth.
Some people are just over-sensitive. And if we make them the standard for our words and behavior, then society is about to become something akin to living with the Gestapo. There will be no more laughing.
BUT there is an opposite extreme, where the word police themselves become the oppressors. A colleague of mine drew our attention to this piece in The Atlantic yesterday. Like I said, the problem at hand seems to apply especially right now to "liberal" institutions.
Employees at IWU went through various training sessions this past summer. I was glad to see that we were following the "reasonable person" standard mentioned in this piece. We want diversity. We want to be loving in all our words and policies. But it would be just as wrong to create an environment where overly sensitive people set the standard.
Here are two quotes that most stood out to me:
- "According to the most-basic tenets of psychology, helping people with anxiety disorders avoid the things they fear is misguided."
- "Congress should define peer-on-peer harassment according to the Supreme Court’s definition in the 1999 case Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education. The Davis standard holds that a single comment or thoughtless remark by a student does not equal harassment; harassment requires a pattern of objectively offensive behavior by one student that interferes with another student’s access to education. Establishing the Davis standard would help eliminate universities’ impulse to police their students’ speech so carefully."
Even more the need for us to return to a sense of truth that is not primarily oriented around the subjective. We have lost any sense of objective truth. "Emotional reasoning" is one of the very first fallacies we cover in philosophy--something isn't true just because it feels that way to you. Yes, it means it may be real for you (if you are truly in touch with your feelings), but that doesn't make it true for anyone else. And it certainly does not make it a public truth.
Some people are just over-sensitive. And if we make them the standard for our words and behavior, then society is about to become something akin to living with the Gestapo. There will be no more laughing.
Sunday, August 30, 2015
SA3. Christians have varying perspectives on baptism.
This is the third post on sacraments in my ongoing series, theology in bullet points. The first unit in this series had to do with God and Creation (book here), and the second unit was on Christology and Atonement.
We are now in the third and final unit: The Holy Spirit and the Church. The first set of posts in this final unit was on the Holy Spirit. The second set was on the Church. This third set is on sacraments.
_______________________________
Christians have varying perspectives on baptism.
1. Baptism is an area where Christians have disagreed strongly in the days since the Protestant Reformation in the 1500s. But while baptism has arguably been a common feature of Christianity since its beginnings, a person can be saved without being baptized. Accordingly, neither the mode nor the timing of baptism is essential to salvation. This observation puts debates over baptism into the category of "disputable matters" (cf. Rom. 14-15, 1 Cor. 8, 10), and Christians should accordingly be charitable toward each other when it comes to such disagreements.
2. The New Testament records few debates over baptism. The problem in Acts 19:1-7 was that these individuals had only an understanding of John the Baptist. They did not know that Jesus was the Messiah and so had not experienced baptism in the name of Christ. This issue thus does not speak to debates over re-baptism or whether tongues authenticates baptism or over what name/names should be invoked in baptism. [1]
At Corinth, various parties in the community boasted that their baptism was more significant because of who had led them to believe, including who had baptized them (1 Cor. 1:10-17). These verses seem to indicate, first, that baptism was not a central element in Paul's ministry, at least not at this stage of it. They also indicate what would become clear about three hundred years later in the Donatist controversy of the 300s and 400s: baptism gains no significance from the person who baptizes you.
Christians commonly believe this fact of all the ministries of the Church. The validity and power of God's grace do not depend on the righteousness of the minister. Baptism takes its validity and power from the Holy Spirit and the faith of those involved. If it would turn out that the person administrating baptism is not a believer or if that person is wholly unrighteous, the baptism is still valid because the power comes from God.
3. It is commonly assumed that the earliest church baptized by immersion. This is a reasonable position, given the nature of Jewish miqvaot, the cleansing pools that one finds archaeologically in Jerusalem and its environs. Paul's imagery in Romans 6:4 seems to suggest as much. We are "buried" with Christ in baptism.
However, it is surely significant that the New Testament never makes a point of the method of baptism. Indeed, while baptism is a common feature of the New Testament, the manner by which a person is baptized is never a matter of contention. It thus goes well beyond Scripture to demand that a person must be baptized in a certain way. There are points where we have to address issues that were not raised in the Bible. There are points where biblical teaching is only in a seminal form that can be fleshed out. But the issue of baptism does not seem to be one that we should fight over.
Around the year AD100, someone put together the Didache, a collection of teachings reported to summarize the teaching of the apostles. Although we cannot at all be sure of that claim, it is surely significant that this text is very practical when it comes to baptism. Ideal is a baptism involving immersion in cold, running water (7.2-5). But if it is not possible, then pouring even with warm water is a valid alternative. [2] Baptisands are also asked to fast for a day or two before undergoing baptism.
Immersion captures the imagery of dying with Christ and complete coverage of one's sins. Sprinkling captures the Old Testament imagery of the altar being sprinkled with blood (e.g., Lev. 16:18-20). But while the Bible may describe various practices, it never prescribes one in relation to baptism. [3] It is thus not only foolish but unbiblical and counter-Christ to engage in divisive conflict over the mode of baptism.
4. Throughout the vast majority of Christian history, Christians baptized their children as infants. Infant baptism is not explicitly mentioned in the New Testament, although it may very well be inferred in a few passages. In Acts 16:15, Lydia's household is baptized when she believes. Similarly, the whole family of the Philippian jailer is baptized in Acts 16:33. No qualification is given about the age of those baptized. Indeed, no qualification is made about the faith of each individual in the house.
Here we must reckon with the fact that the ancient world consisted of collectivist cultures. That is to say, identity was group-embedded rather than individualistic. This is arguably the default human societal pattern. Homo sapiens is a herd animal. As such, it would be understandable if the decision of a head of household was assumed to be binding on the rest of the household, which would include family members beyond what we call the "nuclear" family, extending even to any slaves in the house.
None of the primary reformers questioned infant baptism. [4] Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin (not to mention Wesley) all supported infant baptism. Yet it was inevitable that a movement that emphasized justification by individual faith would eventually have some who would argue that baptism should thus take place when a person is old enough to make an individual confession. [5] This was not a problem for the high Reformers because individuals still expressed their personal faith in confirmation.
Confirmation is the practice of undergoing teaching that leads to an individual confession of faith that "confirms" the faith the Church had for you in baptism. It is a reminder that, even in those traditions which practice infant baptism, that baptism is not sufficient to "save" a person. There must also be a personal confession and owning of faith.
This is the most historic and, perhaps, the preferred approach to Christian baptism. A child is baptized soon after birth, claiming the child for Christ, invoking the faith of the community that surrounds him or her. The child is "in" the Church, and belonging is his or hers to lose. Then when the child is of age, he or she undergoes discipleship in Christian faith and practice, leading to a formal and personal confession of faith before the Church, which can then also be a means of God's grace.
5. However, it is understandable that individualistic cultures would tend to prefer "believer's baptism." Since individualistic cultures emphasize that each individual determines his or her own identity and destiny, it is predictable that they would emphasize a form of baptism that focuses on an individual's confession of faith. Since the New Testament records the first generation of believers, it is understandable that the overwhelming majority of baptisms in the New Testament are adult baptisms. These adult baptisms in Acts easily became the model for baptism in the Americas.
Christians should not de-Christianize each other over such things. It is clear that believer's baptism fit the context of a democratic culture astoundingly well, which is why forms of Baptist Christianity have prevailed in the United States. They did not do so well at first, when in Zurich in the 1500s, some individuals came to Huldrych Zwingli arguing that he had not gone far enough in his reformation. He "baptized" them by drowning in a river. Such de-Christianization of those who practice credobaptism, "believer's baptism" is to be condemned.
Yet, the words of Paul echo toward those who would de-Christianize groups that practice infant baptism as well. "I thank God that I baptized none of you... For Christ did not send me to baptize but to proclaim the gospel" (1 Cor. 1:14, 17). Baptism is thus a disputable matter, one in which the most important thing is charity toward each other, not the timing or mode of the act.
6. Some groups, reacting against the ritualism of the Roman Catholic Church, went so far as to stop the practice of baptism altogether. The chief examples of this, arguably over-reaction are the Quakers and the Salvation Army, which is a branch of Methodism.
On the one hand, we must agree with them that a person can be saved without being baptized. The essential element in crossing from death to life is the working of the Holy Spirit, not baptism. While the thief on the cross was technically still before Christian baptism or the age of the Spirit, Jesus' promise that the thief would join him in Paradise exemplifies well the hope of those who place their faith in Jesus even if they are not baptized.
Yet we argued in the previous article that God uses baptism as a means of grace and that it is the primary act that signifies the inclusion of a person into the community of faith. Why then would we deprive anyone of such blessings? The ritual of non-baptism has itself thus become a "vain ritual" that continues only because of a tradition. It has been five hundred years. There is no more need to protest! Why deprive a part of the body of Christ of a blessing?
Hopefully it is clear that rituals are a key element of human existence. Symbolic acts that we repeat on key occasions are far from empty. They are usually the richest and most powerful memories that we have. Movements that have them will always be exponentially more powerful than those that do not, and we deprive ourselves of such power to our own loss.
Nevertheless, we should not in any way de-Christianize those who do not practice baptism at all.
7. Most importantly, we should receive into our fellowship those who have been baptized in other groups. There is New Testament precedent for baptism in Jesus' name (e.g., Acts 19:5) and in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (e.g., Matt. 28:19). Both should be accepted.
Whether a person has been immersed, sprinkled, or poured, we should respect their own conscience and, in a perfect world, we would accept them into our fellowship on the basis of their individual confession of faith, not the particulars of their baptism. To be sure, it is acceptable for individual Christian traditions to baptize in a preferred way. There are enough choices, at least in the West, that we as individuals can worship in a community that baptizes in our preferred way.
The question of re-baptism is a sensitive one. There is no need for a person who was baptized as an infant to be re-baptized. However, Paul would urge us to have our own convictions before God (Rom. 14:22). If it would help a person's faith to be re-baptized, it is in the spirit of Paul to indulge them. We do not want to be a cause of stumbling to anyone, so why would we refuse anyone an opportunity for more grace and an easing of conscience?
What would be far worse is if we sowed seeds of doubt about a person's past baptism. In this case, we are the potential source of the stumbling block. In this case, it is not the individual Christian that needs assurance but it is we who are sowing the seeds of doubt! This is much to be opposed. While the New Testament never fights over the timing or mode of baptism, it strongly opposes any believer who de-Christianizes another over disputable (and in this case even unbiblical) matters such as these.
Ideally, we should think of baptism as a one time act of inclusion. Re-baptism should thus be the exception rather than the rule. And we should not think that a person needs to be re-included into the body of Christ over and over again. True, a person can walk away from Christ. If the break was strong enough, perhaps it could be meaningful to be re-baptized.
What we should not encourage is a sense that a person will move in and out of the family of God repeatedly in their Christian life. Belonging to Christ is not a "one sin you're out" type of situation. Leaving the family of God is possible, but it is not something that happens by chance or casually. We may wrong others in our family and still remain in the family. In the same way, if we practice re-baptism at all, it should be reserved for the most striking of re-entrances.
8. Baptism is a means of grace. It is a sacrament of inclusion, of filling with the Spirit. Christians have practiced baptism since its very beginnings, and it remains a foundational practice today. While we believe it is not necessary for salvation and respect those few traditions that do not practice it, it is a core Christian practice. Let's do it!
However, it is not a practice over which we should de-Christianize others. Its particulars fall, ultimately, into the category of disputable matters. Immersion was perhaps the default New Testament practice, but it was not an absolute. Infant baptism has been the dominant mode throughout Christian history, but credobaptism has obviously been most meaningful to the majority in the individualist West.
Baptism is a sacrament of inclusion into the community of faith, but Christians have varying perspective on its particulars. "Let all be fully convinced in their own minds" (Rom. 14:6). Do not let how you baptize "cause the ruin of one for whom Christ died" (14:15).
Next week: SA4: Communion is a sacrament of re-empowerment.
[1] Oneness Pentecostals see tongues as a sign of receiving the Holy Spirit and thus question whether someone who has never spoken in tongues is truly saved. Suffice it to say that tongues are not mentioned in every instance of conversion in Acts (e.g., Paul's in Acts 8). How much less, then, is tongues a necessary validation of baptism!
[2] In the Didache, such pouring is done three times in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
[3] The lexical fallacy is sometimes committed in arguments over baptism. This fallacy presumes that words have root meanings that are in play in every instance of a word's use. So, someone might argue, that the root bapt- has a connotation of dipping. This may be true in the dark origins of the word group centuries before Christ.
However, words change meanings and develop in their meanings over time. It is fallacious to assume that some root meaning to a word (or original meaning to a word--the etymological fallacy) will always be part of a word's meaning no matter its context. Words just do not work like that.
So in Mark 7:3, it is not clear that the word baptizo has any connotation of how the Pharisees washed their hands. It would seem in this context that the word simply means that they "washed" their hands. A valid translation of baptizo, it would then seem, is "to wash," with no clear connotation of the manner of washing. In the end, since the Didache could speak of a baptisma that involved pouring, it is clear that the word baptism did not include the manner of baptism in its definition at a very early point in Christian history indeed.
[4] The rise of individualism is indeed part of the rise of Protestantism, and Protestantism fostered the rise of individualism. The two naturally fed off of each other.
[5] Or, as it is sometimes called, pedobaptism, from the Greek word for child. This contrasts with credobaptism, or "believer's baptism."
We are now in the third and final unit: The Holy Spirit and the Church. The first set of posts in this final unit was on the Holy Spirit. The second set was on the Church. This third set is on sacraments.
_______________________________
Christians have varying perspectives on baptism.
1. Baptism is an area where Christians have disagreed strongly in the days since the Protestant Reformation in the 1500s. But while baptism has arguably been a common feature of Christianity since its beginnings, a person can be saved without being baptized. Accordingly, neither the mode nor the timing of baptism is essential to salvation. This observation puts debates over baptism into the category of "disputable matters" (cf. Rom. 14-15, 1 Cor. 8, 10), and Christians should accordingly be charitable toward each other when it comes to such disagreements.
2. The New Testament records few debates over baptism. The problem in Acts 19:1-7 was that these individuals had only an understanding of John the Baptist. They did not know that Jesus was the Messiah and so had not experienced baptism in the name of Christ. This issue thus does not speak to debates over re-baptism or whether tongues authenticates baptism or over what name/names should be invoked in baptism. [1]
At Corinth, various parties in the community boasted that their baptism was more significant because of who had led them to believe, including who had baptized them (1 Cor. 1:10-17). These verses seem to indicate, first, that baptism was not a central element in Paul's ministry, at least not at this stage of it. They also indicate what would become clear about three hundred years later in the Donatist controversy of the 300s and 400s: baptism gains no significance from the person who baptizes you.
Christians commonly believe this fact of all the ministries of the Church. The validity and power of God's grace do not depend on the righteousness of the minister. Baptism takes its validity and power from the Holy Spirit and the faith of those involved. If it would turn out that the person administrating baptism is not a believer or if that person is wholly unrighteous, the baptism is still valid because the power comes from God.
3. It is commonly assumed that the earliest church baptized by immersion. This is a reasonable position, given the nature of Jewish miqvaot, the cleansing pools that one finds archaeologically in Jerusalem and its environs. Paul's imagery in Romans 6:4 seems to suggest as much. We are "buried" with Christ in baptism.
However, it is surely significant that the New Testament never makes a point of the method of baptism. Indeed, while baptism is a common feature of the New Testament, the manner by which a person is baptized is never a matter of contention. It thus goes well beyond Scripture to demand that a person must be baptized in a certain way. There are points where we have to address issues that were not raised in the Bible. There are points where biblical teaching is only in a seminal form that can be fleshed out. But the issue of baptism does not seem to be one that we should fight over.
Around the year AD100, someone put together the Didache, a collection of teachings reported to summarize the teaching of the apostles. Although we cannot at all be sure of that claim, it is surely significant that this text is very practical when it comes to baptism. Ideal is a baptism involving immersion in cold, running water (7.2-5). But if it is not possible, then pouring even with warm water is a valid alternative. [2] Baptisands are also asked to fast for a day or two before undergoing baptism.
Immersion captures the imagery of dying with Christ and complete coverage of one's sins. Sprinkling captures the Old Testament imagery of the altar being sprinkled with blood (e.g., Lev. 16:18-20). But while the Bible may describe various practices, it never prescribes one in relation to baptism. [3] It is thus not only foolish but unbiblical and counter-Christ to engage in divisive conflict over the mode of baptism.
4. Throughout the vast majority of Christian history, Christians baptized their children as infants. Infant baptism is not explicitly mentioned in the New Testament, although it may very well be inferred in a few passages. In Acts 16:15, Lydia's household is baptized when she believes. Similarly, the whole family of the Philippian jailer is baptized in Acts 16:33. No qualification is given about the age of those baptized. Indeed, no qualification is made about the faith of each individual in the house.
Here we must reckon with the fact that the ancient world consisted of collectivist cultures. That is to say, identity was group-embedded rather than individualistic. This is arguably the default human societal pattern. Homo sapiens is a herd animal. As such, it would be understandable if the decision of a head of household was assumed to be binding on the rest of the household, which would include family members beyond what we call the "nuclear" family, extending even to any slaves in the house.
None of the primary reformers questioned infant baptism. [4] Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin (not to mention Wesley) all supported infant baptism. Yet it was inevitable that a movement that emphasized justification by individual faith would eventually have some who would argue that baptism should thus take place when a person is old enough to make an individual confession. [5] This was not a problem for the high Reformers because individuals still expressed their personal faith in confirmation.
Confirmation is the practice of undergoing teaching that leads to an individual confession of faith that "confirms" the faith the Church had for you in baptism. It is a reminder that, even in those traditions which practice infant baptism, that baptism is not sufficient to "save" a person. There must also be a personal confession and owning of faith.
This is the most historic and, perhaps, the preferred approach to Christian baptism. A child is baptized soon after birth, claiming the child for Christ, invoking the faith of the community that surrounds him or her. The child is "in" the Church, and belonging is his or hers to lose. Then when the child is of age, he or she undergoes discipleship in Christian faith and practice, leading to a formal and personal confession of faith before the Church, which can then also be a means of God's grace.
5. However, it is understandable that individualistic cultures would tend to prefer "believer's baptism." Since individualistic cultures emphasize that each individual determines his or her own identity and destiny, it is predictable that they would emphasize a form of baptism that focuses on an individual's confession of faith. Since the New Testament records the first generation of believers, it is understandable that the overwhelming majority of baptisms in the New Testament are adult baptisms. These adult baptisms in Acts easily became the model for baptism in the Americas.
Christians should not de-Christianize each other over such things. It is clear that believer's baptism fit the context of a democratic culture astoundingly well, which is why forms of Baptist Christianity have prevailed in the United States. They did not do so well at first, when in Zurich in the 1500s, some individuals came to Huldrych Zwingli arguing that he had not gone far enough in his reformation. He "baptized" them by drowning in a river. Such de-Christianization of those who practice credobaptism, "believer's baptism" is to be condemned.
Yet, the words of Paul echo toward those who would de-Christianize groups that practice infant baptism as well. "I thank God that I baptized none of you... For Christ did not send me to baptize but to proclaim the gospel" (1 Cor. 1:14, 17). Baptism is thus a disputable matter, one in which the most important thing is charity toward each other, not the timing or mode of the act.
6. Some groups, reacting against the ritualism of the Roman Catholic Church, went so far as to stop the practice of baptism altogether. The chief examples of this, arguably over-reaction are the Quakers and the Salvation Army, which is a branch of Methodism.
On the one hand, we must agree with them that a person can be saved without being baptized. The essential element in crossing from death to life is the working of the Holy Spirit, not baptism. While the thief on the cross was technically still before Christian baptism or the age of the Spirit, Jesus' promise that the thief would join him in Paradise exemplifies well the hope of those who place their faith in Jesus even if they are not baptized.
Yet we argued in the previous article that God uses baptism as a means of grace and that it is the primary act that signifies the inclusion of a person into the community of faith. Why then would we deprive anyone of such blessings? The ritual of non-baptism has itself thus become a "vain ritual" that continues only because of a tradition. It has been five hundred years. There is no more need to protest! Why deprive a part of the body of Christ of a blessing?
Hopefully it is clear that rituals are a key element of human existence. Symbolic acts that we repeat on key occasions are far from empty. They are usually the richest and most powerful memories that we have. Movements that have them will always be exponentially more powerful than those that do not, and we deprive ourselves of such power to our own loss.
Nevertheless, we should not in any way de-Christianize those who do not practice baptism at all.
7. Most importantly, we should receive into our fellowship those who have been baptized in other groups. There is New Testament precedent for baptism in Jesus' name (e.g., Acts 19:5) and in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (e.g., Matt. 28:19). Both should be accepted.
Whether a person has been immersed, sprinkled, or poured, we should respect their own conscience and, in a perfect world, we would accept them into our fellowship on the basis of their individual confession of faith, not the particulars of their baptism. To be sure, it is acceptable for individual Christian traditions to baptize in a preferred way. There are enough choices, at least in the West, that we as individuals can worship in a community that baptizes in our preferred way.
The question of re-baptism is a sensitive one. There is no need for a person who was baptized as an infant to be re-baptized. However, Paul would urge us to have our own convictions before God (Rom. 14:22). If it would help a person's faith to be re-baptized, it is in the spirit of Paul to indulge them. We do not want to be a cause of stumbling to anyone, so why would we refuse anyone an opportunity for more grace and an easing of conscience?
What would be far worse is if we sowed seeds of doubt about a person's past baptism. In this case, we are the potential source of the stumbling block. In this case, it is not the individual Christian that needs assurance but it is we who are sowing the seeds of doubt! This is much to be opposed. While the New Testament never fights over the timing or mode of baptism, it strongly opposes any believer who de-Christianizes another over disputable (and in this case even unbiblical) matters such as these.
Ideally, we should think of baptism as a one time act of inclusion. Re-baptism should thus be the exception rather than the rule. And we should not think that a person needs to be re-included into the body of Christ over and over again. True, a person can walk away from Christ. If the break was strong enough, perhaps it could be meaningful to be re-baptized.
What we should not encourage is a sense that a person will move in and out of the family of God repeatedly in their Christian life. Belonging to Christ is not a "one sin you're out" type of situation. Leaving the family of God is possible, but it is not something that happens by chance or casually. We may wrong others in our family and still remain in the family. In the same way, if we practice re-baptism at all, it should be reserved for the most striking of re-entrances.
8. Baptism is a means of grace. It is a sacrament of inclusion, of filling with the Spirit. Christians have practiced baptism since its very beginnings, and it remains a foundational practice today. While we believe it is not necessary for salvation and respect those few traditions that do not practice it, it is a core Christian practice. Let's do it!
However, it is not a practice over which we should de-Christianize others. Its particulars fall, ultimately, into the category of disputable matters. Immersion was perhaps the default New Testament practice, but it was not an absolute. Infant baptism has been the dominant mode throughout Christian history, but credobaptism has obviously been most meaningful to the majority in the individualist West.
Baptism is a sacrament of inclusion into the community of faith, but Christians have varying perspective on its particulars. "Let all be fully convinced in their own minds" (Rom. 14:6). Do not let how you baptize "cause the ruin of one for whom Christ died" (14:15).
Next week: SA4: Communion is a sacrament of re-empowerment.
[1] Oneness Pentecostals see tongues as a sign of receiving the Holy Spirit and thus question whether someone who has never spoken in tongues is truly saved. Suffice it to say that tongues are not mentioned in every instance of conversion in Acts (e.g., Paul's in Acts 8). How much less, then, is tongues a necessary validation of baptism!
[2] In the Didache, such pouring is done three times in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
[3] The lexical fallacy is sometimes committed in arguments over baptism. This fallacy presumes that words have root meanings that are in play in every instance of a word's use. So, someone might argue, that the root bapt- has a connotation of dipping. This may be true in the dark origins of the word group centuries before Christ.
However, words change meanings and develop in their meanings over time. It is fallacious to assume that some root meaning to a word (or original meaning to a word--the etymological fallacy) will always be part of a word's meaning no matter its context. Words just do not work like that.
So in Mark 7:3, it is not clear that the word baptizo has any connotation of how the Pharisees washed their hands. It would seem in this context that the word simply means that they "washed" their hands. A valid translation of baptizo, it would then seem, is "to wash," with no clear connotation of the manner of washing. In the end, since the Didache could speak of a baptisma that involved pouring, it is clear that the word baptism did not include the manner of baptism in its definition at a very early point in Christian history indeed.
[4] The rise of individualism is indeed part of the rise of Protestantism, and Protestantism fostered the rise of individualism. The two naturally fed off of each other.
[5] Or, as it is sometimes called, pedobaptism, from the Greek word for child. This contrasts with credobaptism, or "believer's baptism."
Friday, August 28, 2015
Friday Science: Fabric of Cosmos 1
So I've switched to another book on the current state of physics: Brian Greene's The Fabric of the Cosmos. Now he is also speculative. He obviously likes string theory and the idea of multiple universes. I'm not real fond of either but at least these are well-trodden paths.
So I thought I'd dawdle through this book for a few Fridays. Chapter one is called "Roads to Reality: Space, Time, and Why Things Are as They Are."
2. The progression of the chapter is roughly:
- Classical Reality
- Relativistic Reality
- Quantum Reality
- Cosmological Reality
- Past and Future Reality
Entering the quantum reality apparently requires us to throw all our intuitions out the window. Here we encounter an idea I believe I first saw in Richard Feynman. Human intuitions were formed to help us survive and thrive in the macro-world. (I think you might say so whether you are speaking of how God made us or of how evolution developed us). The implication is that our "common sense" and our intuitions have no point of reference for the quantum world.
So the math seems to work, but no one really knows what it means. There are aspects of math itself that are are like this. Take Euler's famous equation from the 1700s: eiπ - 1 = 0. What does it mean to raise something to the power of the square root of negative 1? I don't have a clue, but it works.
In the quantum world, at least so far, you cannot predict things. Rather, each event has a probability of happening. The universe is not determined. It is a game of chance.
3. When Greene gets to his section on cosmological reality, he covers some of the bases that I had been reading in Tegmark. One cosmological reality is the fact that the arrow of time only points in one direction. In theory, it would not have to be so. But the current sense of things is that something that happened very early in the history of the universe flipped the switch that makes time unidirectional.
Then he covers the big bang, the idea that the universe expanded rapidly into something like its current form from a much smaller version. He also mentions ideas new to me from Tegmark, which apparently have been around since the 70s and 80s--inflationary cosmology. This is a supposed period before the big bang when space itself expanded a million trillion trillion times in less than a millionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second.
4. What's missing is a grand unified theory that can reconcile both quantum mechanics and relativity. He seems to like Superstring theory and M theory. I sense increasing disgruntlement with these theories because there is no experimental data to suggest them whatsoever. They are completely hypothetical. Even Sheldon has given up on string theory. :-)
Thursday, August 27, 2015
I (Still) Believe: John Goldingay
Previous posts include:
Richard Bauckham
Walter Brueggemann
Ellen Davis
James Dunn
Gordon Fee
Beverly Roberts Gaventa
1. Today is John Goldingay. I enjoyed this chapter. I don't know Goldingay personally, but I can see that he is probably, as he implies of himself, a little eccentric. He is English, and he notes early in the book that people think of England as a nation known for eccentrics. But he claims that even the English thought him weird. He's obviously a kindred spirit. :-)
I was reminded of Ellen Davis' chapter when Goldingay suggests that he doesn't know why he believed and others didn't. He just did and does. He mentions the notion of election whimsically (94).
I knew a former Wesleyan who ended up Calvinist for similar reasons. He couldn't explain why he ended up believing while his friends around him didn't. I obviously find it hard to subscribe to such constructs, although I certainly am appreciative of them. There's a line in a Woody Allen movie where a Jewish woman says something along those lines: "Faith is a gift. Either you have it or you don't."
2. "I haven't really questioned God's reality" (98). The questions that Goldingay has faced about faith have not come from biblical studies, but from his wife's some forty plus years of struggling with MS, if I read him correctly. She died in 2009. I have a friend with MS, so I felt not a little empathy for him in these pages. It is clear that he struggled, especially since it affected her mind from early on.
He had some very interesting musings here and I hope you'll buy the book to read them. One of his most striking lines is this one: "The world does not revolve around me" (96).
He also has some difficult lines to say about God's plan for our lives. I completely agree with him, although it is not at all popular to say these days. "There is no indication in Scripture that God has a plan for the life of each individual. God has a plan that we should come to maturity in Christ and to holiness... It isn't surprising; wise and loving fathers don't have plans for their children" (99). Good theology in that section.
3. Goldingay's struggle with his wife led him to a robust view of resurrection. Interestingly, he wasn't initially concerned in the 70s whether it was literal or not. Most of the OT has no sense of a future resurrection. But Jesus' resurrection demonstrates it and it became important for him to believe that, one day, his wife's body would be restored to her.
I thought his advice and comments on higher critical issues were helpful. He sees the possibility of "believing criticism." "One doesn't accept theories that seem simply based on unfaith--e.g., that prophecy is impossible. But neither does one accept theories that seem simply based on tradition--e.g., that Moses wrote the Pentateuch or that all of Isaiah must have been written by Isaiah" (96).
Here again we see that British evangelicalism is more balanced than American evangelicalism. Indeed, Fuller seems to have it right, from Goldingay's description: "Fuller is an interdenominational seminary but it has a clear theological ethos in its commitment to the kind of Christian faith that in England we call open evangelicalism: it maintains evangelicalism's traditional stress on the death and resurrection of Christ, the centrality of scripture, and a commitment to evangelism, but combines these emphases with an interest in learning from people of other theological beliefs, a comfort with biblical criticism, and a commitment to social and cultural involvement" (100).
Sounds about right to me.
4. Buy the book to hear more. Find out what happened his first July 4th when he put up a Union Jack for fun. Did he ever get remarried? Has he pastored any here in the States?
Wednesday, August 26, 2015
Wesley's Class Meetings (at first)
1. I had a fascinating conversation with Patrick Eby, Wesley Seminary's church history professor, on the way a lot of AME churches do class meetings and the way they started with John Wesley himself. If I understand correctly, AME churches (African Methodist Episcopal) have classes and class leaders...
[Wesley's classes were small accountability groups that met to help encourage each other to do right and resist temptation.]
... But, interestingly, in some AME churches, the classes don't actually meet in small groups. Rather, the class leader contacts the members of the small group one-to-one.
When I first heard this fact, I thought maybe that was an effective variation on Wesley for our current context. How many people will sign up to be asked about their temptations in a group setting these days? But one-on-one, with a leader they trusted and respected, maybe that would work for accountability better. Then maybe the group could get together regularly for Bible study and more social functions.
2. Upon telling this to Patrick (who I would argue is the number 2 Charles Wesley expert in the world after his doctoral advisor John Tyson), he told me that this is actually how John Wesley's classes worked in the beginning. Interestingly, he said that the classes started when Wesley would send leaders to individuals to collect a penny for, I believe, the New Room chapel in Bristol.
Then, with Wesley's characteristic genius, he saw that this was an opportunity for spiritual formation as well. The leader began to inquire of their spiritual state as well as to collect an offering. Only those with some resources did this so that they might serve as a model.
But eventually, they began to meet in accountability groups. This is often the case. Something develops organically into something special, and we forget how they developed almost coincidentally (or shall we say providentially?).
Fascinating!
[Wesley's classes were small accountability groups that met to help encourage each other to do right and resist temptation.]
... But, interestingly, in some AME churches, the classes don't actually meet in small groups. Rather, the class leader contacts the members of the small group one-to-one.
When I first heard this fact, I thought maybe that was an effective variation on Wesley for our current context. How many people will sign up to be asked about their temptations in a group setting these days? But one-on-one, with a leader they trusted and respected, maybe that would work for accountability better. Then maybe the group could get together regularly for Bible study and more social functions.
2. Upon telling this to Patrick (who I would argue is the number 2 Charles Wesley expert in the world after his doctoral advisor John Tyson), he told me that this is actually how John Wesley's classes worked in the beginning. Interestingly, he said that the classes started when Wesley would send leaders to individuals to collect a penny for, I believe, the New Room chapel in Bristol.
Then, with Wesley's characteristic genius, he saw that this was an opportunity for spiritual formation as well. The leader began to inquire of their spiritual state as well as to collect an offering. Only those with some resources did this so that they might serve as a model.
But eventually, they began to meet in accountability groups. This is often the case. Something develops organically into something special, and we forget how they developed almost coincidentally (or shall we say providentially?).
Fascinating!
The Weekly Wright: Stories of the Second Temple
Two weeks ago I re-started reading through N. T. Wright's Paul and the Faithfulness of God. I'm in the middle of the horrendously long chapter 2. Today I want to review pp. 108-39. I apologize for how boring this post is.
1. I'm beginning to see the structure of chapter 2. Wright is reconstructing a Jewish worldview (and especially what he sees as a Pharisaic worldview) in the categories that he developed in The New Testament and the People of God. There he suggested four components to a worldview. Pages 90-108 cover two of them--praxis and symbol. Now in pages 108-79 he covers the other two--story and basic questions.
So in the pages I've covering today, we have his basic introduction to the analysis of story (108-14) and his analysis of the basic Jewish story (114-39).
2. "Despite the danger of generalization, we can and must say that most Jews of Paul's day perceived themselves, at a deep, worldview level, as living in a story in search of an ending" (109). "Any narrative analysis of the letters he would write as Paul the apostle... has to begin with a proper understanding of the stories in which he had lived all his life."
I think I would have really liked these statements twenty-five years ago, but they drive me a little crazy today because of how far Wright takes them. He just seems to generalize too much for me.
So, given the last 100 years, you might think that the second coming has dominated the thinking of Christians for the last 2000 years. But in reality, it was only in the late 1800s that the imminent second coming of Jesus became a central feature of much Christian thinking, perhaps even since the time of the New Testament itself.
You can create a metanarrative out of specific texts that you stretch out for all of history and it can make a lot of sense in terms of ideas. But it may not match what real people thought at real times and places.
Does it make sense, in terms of an idea system, to think that all Jews were waiting for Messiah to come, that they were waiting to return from exile. It makes perfect sense as a set of ideas. And we do have evidence of some messianic expectation here and there. Some Jews probably were thinking these sorts of things. Wright has convinced me of some things.
But his sweeping, two-dimensional metanarrative is the stuff of the classroom, not of real people (especially real ancient people) with their inconsistencies and practical existences. Wright's ideological balloon too easily becomes un-tethered, and that massive genius of his gets carried away into some Platonic realm.
He's responded and will no doubt continue to respond to this critique. But I suspect the critique will continue to be true, no matter how much more he writes, digging in his heals.
3. So his introduction plays out the basic Jewish story using Greimas' actantial model. I've used it myself, so I don't oppose the model. He makes three claims at the end of the introduction to this section:
I am quite willing to believe that some Jews saw themselves currently in a kind of exile, but I don't think we have nearly enough evidence to say that Pharisees did. Frankly, I think we can make a better case that many Essenes felt that way. I think many Jews did expect a royal figure to rise soon, but perhaps not necessarily in a way that was well-connected to Abraham or Adam. I see these more as separate mini-narratives that weren't necessarily well connected to each other.
The first one is Wright once again going metanarrative. It is hard enough to say that Paul himself thought in terms of a single narrative, so that makes the idea of a single proto-Pharisaic narrative all the more problematic.
4. So on page 114 he gets down to business with his single story. He reminded me a little of the method Bultmann used to come up with a Gnostic Redeemer myth. Wright sees pieces of the overall story popping up here and there. Now mind you, it is hard to find the whole story in any one place. :-) But he is just sure it is there below the surface. Everyone's thinking it, even though they don't really come right out and say it. "They were, in other words, snatching items at random as miscellaneous examples or warnings" (117). Classic.
But, alas, I do agree that the backdrop at least to some of the earliest forms of Christian faith was some limited version of what Wright is saying, and that he does see patterns, even if his personality can't help but over-systematize them.
Here are his concluding points to this section:
5. I just finished a section of a chapter on Jewish views of the temple at the time of the NT, especially Philo and Essenes. In the case of Philo, I had several passages where I could draw evidence about him. I knew of events in his life that arguably could have altered the intensity of his attachment to the temple as well as other Jews. We know when he lived and that it was about the time of Jesus.
As far as the Essenes, we again have several texts that mention the temple, including a Temple Scroll. We have solid hypotheses about the Dead Sea Scrolls and can locate them in time in relation to the NT. We don't view even them as a single point of view but recognize them as a set of documents that covers as much as a century, with various events potentially altering their circumstances during that period.
My point is that we can talk reasonably about the point of view of these specific people toward the temple around the time of Christ. What Wright does is abstract the question of story from real people at specific times and places under specific circumstances. As such, his overarching narrative becomes detached from history and becomes something else, something abstract and theological.
The balloon becomes untethered from history, IMO, and becomes somewhat of a two-dimensional caricature.
1. I'm beginning to see the structure of chapter 2. Wright is reconstructing a Jewish worldview (and especially what he sees as a Pharisaic worldview) in the categories that he developed in The New Testament and the People of God. There he suggested four components to a worldview. Pages 90-108 cover two of them--praxis and symbol. Now in pages 108-79 he covers the other two--story and basic questions.
So in the pages I've covering today, we have his basic introduction to the analysis of story (108-14) and his analysis of the basic Jewish story (114-39).
2. "Despite the danger of generalization, we can and must say that most Jews of Paul's day perceived themselves, at a deep, worldview level, as living in a story in search of an ending" (109). "Any narrative analysis of the letters he would write as Paul the apostle... has to begin with a proper understanding of the stories in which he had lived all his life."
I think I would have really liked these statements twenty-five years ago, but they drive me a little crazy today because of how far Wright takes them. He just seems to generalize too much for me.
So, given the last 100 years, you might think that the second coming has dominated the thinking of Christians for the last 2000 years. But in reality, it was only in the late 1800s that the imminent second coming of Jesus became a central feature of much Christian thinking, perhaps even since the time of the New Testament itself.
You can create a metanarrative out of specific texts that you stretch out for all of history and it can make a lot of sense in terms of ideas. But it may not match what real people thought at real times and places.
Does it make sense, in terms of an idea system, to think that all Jews were waiting for Messiah to come, that they were waiting to return from exile. It makes perfect sense as a set of ideas. And we do have evidence of some messianic expectation here and there. Some Jews probably were thinking these sorts of things. Wright has convinced me of some things.
But his sweeping, two-dimensional metanarrative is the stuff of the classroom, not of real people (especially real ancient people) with their inconsistencies and practical existences. Wright's ideological balloon too easily becomes un-tethered, and that massive genius of his gets carried away into some Platonic realm.
He's responded and will no doubt continue to respond to this critique. But I suspect the critique will continue to be true, no matter how much more he writes, digging in his heals.
3. So his introduction plays out the basic Jewish story using Greimas' actantial model. I've used it myself, so I don't oppose the model. He makes three claims at the end of the introduction to this section:
- "There is every indication that the kind of Jew who became a Pharisee was implicitly aware of living in a continuous story going back to Abraham, perhaps even to Adam, and on to the great coming day" (113).
- They did not expect the decisive moment to come "to involve the collapse or disappearance of the universe of space, time, and matter" (114).
- The Pharisees saw their current time as being one of continuing exile.
I am quite willing to believe that some Jews saw themselves currently in a kind of exile, but I don't think we have nearly enough evidence to say that Pharisees did. Frankly, I think we can make a better case that many Essenes felt that way. I think many Jews did expect a royal figure to rise soon, but perhaps not necessarily in a way that was well-connected to Abraham or Adam. I see these more as separate mini-narratives that weren't necessarily well connected to each other.
The first one is Wright once again going metanarrative. It is hard enough to say that Paul himself thought in terms of a single narrative, so that makes the idea of a single proto-Pharisaic narrative all the more problematic.
4. So on page 114 he gets down to business with his single story. He reminded me a little of the method Bultmann used to come up with a Gnostic Redeemer myth. Wright sees pieces of the overall story popping up here and there. Now mind you, it is hard to find the whole story in any one place. :-) But he is just sure it is there below the surface. Everyone's thinking it, even though they don't really come right out and say it. "They were, in other words, snatching items at random as miscellaneous examples or warnings" (117). Classic.
But, alas, I do agree that the backdrop at least to some of the earliest forms of Christian faith was some limited version of what Wright is saying, and that he does see patterns, even if his personality can't help but over-systematize them.
Here are his concluding points to this section:
- "There are considerable and obvious differences between the examples we have studied" (135). Great!
- "Despite the considerable differences there are also remarkable commonalities."
- "In more or less all cases the story being told is a story in which the writer believes that he and his readers are still participants" (136).
- "Most of these long and varied accounts of Israel's history are the very opposite of success stories" (137).
- "The Messiah will precisely bring the story of Israel to its goal" (138).
5. I just finished a section of a chapter on Jewish views of the temple at the time of the NT, especially Philo and Essenes. In the case of Philo, I had several passages where I could draw evidence about him. I knew of events in his life that arguably could have altered the intensity of his attachment to the temple as well as other Jews. We know when he lived and that it was about the time of Jesus.
As far as the Essenes, we again have several texts that mention the temple, including a Temple Scroll. We have solid hypotheses about the Dead Sea Scrolls and can locate them in time in relation to the NT. We don't view even them as a single point of view but recognize them as a set of documents that covers as much as a century, with various events potentially altering their circumstances during that period.
My point is that we can talk reasonably about the point of view of these specific people toward the temple around the time of Christ. What Wright does is abstract the question of story from real people at specific times and places under specific circumstances. As such, his overarching narrative becomes detached from history and becomes something else, something abstract and theological.
The balloon becomes untethered from history, IMO, and becomes somewhat of a two-dimensional caricature.
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