Last year I blogged a 40 Day read through the New Testament. Then I blogged through Genesis. I'm thinking about doing another book. I thought I'd work through Psalms and Proverbs. So that's a chapter of Psalms a day (when I can) and six verses of Proverbs each post. Feel free to read with me!
Psalm 1
1. I suspect that Psalm 1 was added as an introduction when Psalms reached something like its final form. Psalms 1 could of course be an introduction to Book I of the Psalms. The Psalms are made up of five books. The first 41 psalms make up Book I.
Psalms is the lead off hitter to the third section of the Jewish Bible, the "Writings." At the time of Jesus, the Old Testament was grouped into three parts: The Law, the Prophets, and the Writings. In the Christian Bible, Job is the first of the "poetic books" (with Psalms second). But Psalms begins the Writings in the Jewish Bible (see Luke 24:44).
2. The first psalm is a wonderful presentation of two ways. There are those who delight in the Law of the LORD (1:1-3), and there are those who are wicked, who do not follow God's Law (1:4-6).
The blessed do not follow the advice of the wicked. They do not take the path of sinners. We should not read Pauline debates in here. Sinners are people who violate the Law, and the standard is such that the Law can be kept. The psalmist believes it is fully possible not to be a sinner and, indeed, we must not be.
The Law here is likely a reference to the Law of Moses, Genesis through Deuteronomy. That suggests that this psalm is post-exilic. The fact that the Psalms as a whole are in the Writings also suggests that they reached their final form after the exile.
3. The wicked will perish. The psalmist means in this life. This is deuteronomistic theology. The wicked generally face judgment and punishment in this world. Again, the psalmist fully believes it is possible not to be wicked. Indeed, we must not be.
The judgment in Psalm 1:5 was not originally the final judgment, although we are free to read it this way as well. There is no sense of a final judgment, not in context, anywhere in the Old Testament apart from Daniel 12:2.
Proverbs 1:1-7
Verse 7 is the key to the whole book of Proverbs: "The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge."
We are told that as we read the Proverbs, we will learn wise dealing, righteousness, justice, and equity. We will gain wisdom and insight. Read on!
Hard to know when 1:1 was added as the heading to the book. Since it tells us about Solomon, it is not likely Solomon who wrote Proverbs 1:1. Proverbs is clearly a collection of individual proverbs, not a book that was written in one sitting. And there are proverbs from individuals other than Solomon as well (e.g., Prov. 31).
Monday, November 16, 2015
Sunday, November 15, 2015
ET4. God calls us to respect authority in honor of his authority.
This is the fourth post on Christian ethics 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. The third set was on sacraments. This final section is on Christian ethics.
_______________________________
God calls us to respect authority in honor of his authority.
1. The authority of God is the universal assumption of Scripture. His will demands absolute conformity, even if he allows us to resist and disobey. We get a small taste of his holiness when Uzzah immediately dies when he tries to steady the ark (2 Sam. 6:6-7). Similarly, at Mt. Sinai, any person or animal that might touch the mountain was to be put to death while God presence was there (Exod. 19:12-13).
The ancient world was an honor/shame world. High premium was put on how highly you were regarded in relation to the values of your group. Such a world contrasts with our modern individualistic "guilt" culture, where high premium is put on being true to yourself and what you as an individual believe.
The command not to take the name of the LORD in vain was a command that had to do with taking oaths in the name of YHWH, the name of God. When one invoked YHWH's name, one put the honor of YHWH on the line in relation to a vow. To break the vow was to dishonor him. To break the vow was thus to incur the wrath of YHWH.
Jephthah gives us a picture of how important it was to keep a vow in Judges 11:30-31. He vows to YHWH that he will sacrifice the first living thing that comes out of his house if God gives him the victory in battle. It proves to be his daughter. So he gives his daughter two months to mourn her death as an unmarried virgin and then he keeps his vow (11:37-39).
Jesus undercuts this command when he says not to swear at all but to be a person who tells the truth (Matt. 5:33-37). If my "yes" really means "yes" and my "no" really means "no," then there is no need for me to take oaths. People will know that I am a person whose word is truth, a person who means what I say.
If God's people are truth-tellers, then God will get honor from us without us needing to take vows.
2. Vows of course have little meaning in the modern Western world today. People say, "I swear," all the time and it is practically meaningless. With Jesus Christ and the New Testament, we are also better aware of the compassionate forgiveness of God if someone were to make a bad vow like Jephthah's. We can now say that it would have been far more pleasing to God for Jephthah to ask God's forgiveness for a foolish vow and then to spare his daughter's life than to keep his foolish vow.
Cursing today doesn't have the same character as it did in other times and places. People say God or Jesus' name (or a derivative of them) as an exclamation rather than as a vow. The third commandment was not about cursing but about vow keeping. Nevertheless, Ephesians 5:4 and Colossians 3:8 tell us what we would have known otherwise--our speech should be honorable and uplifting. We can either honor or dishonor God with our language and, even more importantly, the attitude behind our language.
3. Almost every culture has some authority structure. Those few pockets of humanity that have not had a clear leader usually develop one or have one that is unacknowledged. Even if we were all in perfect submission to and communication with the Holy Spirit, there would still be a leader--the Holy Spirit.
So while it is ideal that, in any group, all the individuals would "honor one another above yourselves" (Rom. 12:10, NIV), it is likely that structures of authority will develop in any group of people of any size. Churches naturally have official leadership structures. Nations and people groups naturally have official leadership structures. "If the trumpet does not sound a clear call, who will get ready for battle?" (1 Cor. 14:8).
Paul told the Romans, "The authorities that exist have been established by God" (Rom. 13:1). The way most of us apply this idea is that we should show respect to our leaders, even if they are evil, even if they are incompetent. The classic example is when David does not take an opportunity to kill king Saul, even though Saul is trying to kill him. He does not do it, even though his men are urging him, because he will not touch the LORD's anointed (1 Sam. 24:6).
To be sure, God also is said to sanction coups in Scripture (e.g., 2 Kings 9:6-7). Elisha anoints Jehu to destroy the house of Ahab. Yet even here, Hosea considers Jehu's slaughter of all Ahab's house to be a matter for which God was going to destroy the house of Jehu (Hos. 1:4).
Clearly there is a great wisdom needed here. When do we submit and conform to what we consider to be bad leadership? When do we, respectfully, work for leadership change?
In the light of Christ, our bias must be toward respect and submission, even if there may be times for exception. It is fallen human nature to justify subversion for our own selfish advancement. It is more often the evil impulse that wants to fight and overthrow. Any exception must be for the good of others rather than ourselves, and we can hardly trust ourselves to make that judgment.
4. We are thus called to respect the authority of those over us as a way of honoring God and respecting his authority. Our default should be submission and respect for those in authority over us in whatever domain. We should treat those in office as God's anointed. There is a time to work for change, but it must never be for our selfish advancement, only the good of others and to honor God.
Next week: ET5. God calls us to respect our governments.
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. The third set was on sacraments. This final section is on Christian ethics.
_______________________________
God calls us to respect authority in honor of his authority.
1. The authority of God is the universal assumption of Scripture. His will demands absolute conformity, even if he allows us to resist and disobey. We get a small taste of his holiness when Uzzah immediately dies when he tries to steady the ark (2 Sam. 6:6-7). Similarly, at Mt. Sinai, any person or animal that might touch the mountain was to be put to death while God presence was there (Exod. 19:12-13).
The ancient world was an honor/shame world. High premium was put on how highly you were regarded in relation to the values of your group. Such a world contrasts with our modern individualistic "guilt" culture, where high premium is put on being true to yourself and what you as an individual believe.
The command not to take the name of the LORD in vain was a command that had to do with taking oaths in the name of YHWH, the name of God. When one invoked YHWH's name, one put the honor of YHWH on the line in relation to a vow. To break the vow was to dishonor him. To break the vow was thus to incur the wrath of YHWH.
Jephthah gives us a picture of how important it was to keep a vow in Judges 11:30-31. He vows to YHWH that he will sacrifice the first living thing that comes out of his house if God gives him the victory in battle. It proves to be his daughter. So he gives his daughter two months to mourn her death as an unmarried virgin and then he keeps his vow (11:37-39).
Jesus undercuts this command when he says not to swear at all but to be a person who tells the truth (Matt. 5:33-37). If my "yes" really means "yes" and my "no" really means "no," then there is no need for me to take oaths. People will know that I am a person whose word is truth, a person who means what I say.
If God's people are truth-tellers, then God will get honor from us without us needing to take vows.
2. Vows of course have little meaning in the modern Western world today. People say, "I swear," all the time and it is practically meaningless. With Jesus Christ and the New Testament, we are also better aware of the compassionate forgiveness of God if someone were to make a bad vow like Jephthah's. We can now say that it would have been far more pleasing to God for Jephthah to ask God's forgiveness for a foolish vow and then to spare his daughter's life than to keep his foolish vow.
Cursing today doesn't have the same character as it did in other times and places. People say God or Jesus' name (or a derivative of them) as an exclamation rather than as a vow. The third commandment was not about cursing but about vow keeping. Nevertheless, Ephesians 5:4 and Colossians 3:8 tell us what we would have known otherwise--our speech should be honorable and uplifting. We can either honor or dishonor God with our language and, even more importantly, the attitude behind our language.
3. Almost every culture has some authority structure. Those few pockets of humanity that have not had a clear leader usually develop one or have one that is unacknowledged. Even if we were all in perfect submission to and communication with the Holy Spirit, there would still be a leader--the Holy Spirit.
So while it is ideal that, in any group, all the individuals would "honor one another above yourselves" (Rom. 12:10, NIV), it is likely that structures of authority will develop in any group of people of any size. Churches naturally have official leadership structures. Nations and people groups naturally have official leadership structures. "If the trumpet does not sound a clear call, who will get ready for battle?" (1 Cor. 14:8).
Paul told the Romans, "The authorities that exist have been established by God" (Rom. 13:1). The way most of us apply this idea is that we should show respect to our leaders, even if they are evil, even if they are incompetent. The classic example is when David does not take an opportunity to kill king Saul, even though Saul is trying to kill him. He does not do it, even though his men are urging him, because he will not touch the LORD's anointed (1 Sam. 24:6).
To be sure, God also is said to sanction coups in Scripture (e.g., 2 Kings 9:6-7). Elisha anoints Jehu to destroy the house of Ahab. Yet even here, Hosea considers Jehu's slaughter of all Ahab's house to be a matter for which God was going to destroy the house of Jehu (Hos. 1:4).
Clearly there is a great wisdom needed here. When do we submit and conform to what we consider to be bad leadership? When do we, respectfully, work for leadership change?
In the light of Christ, our bias must be toward respect and submission, even if there may be times for exception. It is fallen human nature to justify subversion for our own selfish advancement. It is more often the evil impulse that wants to fight and overthrow. Any exception must be for the good of others rather than ourselves, and we can hardly trust ourselves to make that judgment.
4. We are thus called to respect the authority of those over us as a way of honoring God and respecting his authority. Our default should be submission and respect for those in authority over us in whatever domain. We should treat those in office as God's anointed. There is a time to work for change, but it must never be for our selfish advancement, only the good of others and to honor God.
Next week: ET5. God calls us to respect our governments.
Saturday, November 14, 2015
Some "That Time" Old Testament Verses
I always enjoy time with the Indy Benjamin MDIV group on Saturdays. They're in their final course of the MDIV praxis sequence. This morning we went through key passages on marriage, polygamy, adultery, divorce, and homosexual sex.
There are some fascinating OT verses on these subjects. They remind us that the world of the OT was quite different from ours. Most of the OT Law, including its civil law, was for "that time" and the people of Israel rather than "all time" and the "new covenant." As N. T. Wright says, "We are not members of Israel" (124).
Here are some examples:
There are some fascinating OT verses on these subjects. They remind us that the world of the OT was quite different from ours. Most of the OT Law, including its civil law, was for "that time" and the people of Israel rather than "all time" and the "new covenant." As N. T. Wright says, "We are not members of Israel" (124).
Here are some examples:
- "If a man has two wives, one of them loved and the other disliked, and if both the loved and the disliked have borne him sons, the firstborn being the son of the one who is disliked, then on the day when he wills his possessions to his sons, he is not permitted to treat the son of the loved as the firstborn in preference to the son of the disliked, who is the firstborn." (Deut. 21:15-16)
- "Suppose a man enters into marriage with a woman, but she does not please him because he finds something objectionable about her, and so he writes her a certificate of divorce, puts it in her hand, and sends her out of his house; she then leaves his house and goes off to become another man’s wife. Then suppose the second man dislikes her, writes her a bill of divorce, puts it in her hand, and sends her out of his house (or the second man who married her dies); her first husband, who sent her away, is not permitted to take her again to be his wife after she has been defiled; for that would be abhorrent to the Lord." (Deut. 24:1-4)
- "When brothers reside together, and one of them dies and has no son, the wife of the deceased shall not be married outside the family to a stranger. Her husband’s brother shall go in to her, taking her in marriage, and performing the duty of a husband’s brother to her, and the firstborn whom she bears shall succeed to the name of the deceased brother, so that his name may not be blotted out of Israel." (Deut. 25:5-6)
- "When a man seduces a virgin who is not engaged to be married, and lies with her, he shall give the bride-price for her and make her his wife. But if her father refuses to give her to him, he shall pay an amount equal to the bride-price for virgins." (Exod. 22:16-17)
Friday, November 13, 2015
The Question of Evil
1. I don't think the biggest question in relation to faith is science. Nor am I threatened by battles over the Bible. Christ has died; Christ has risen; Christ will come again. We're good. The evidence doesn't have to demand anything, but it is plausible. There is no body. Multiple people were strongly convinced they had seen Jesus alive in different places and at different times after he died. In the end, faith is not based in proof.
The biggest question in relation to faith is why a loving God allows evil and suffering to continue in the world. I find incredulous the hocus pocus of some who wave a magic wand and say, "Love is whatever God does by definition." God has already defined love just fine in Scripture numerous times. He has defined it in Christ, not least. It involves related words like "saving," "giving," "kind," "hopes."
2. By faith, we believe that God is love, defined in the normal ways. The world does not always look that way. But then again, I don't believe God directly wills every event that happens. In many cases, I believe God allows things to happen that would not be his preferred course. This is the question of how much freedom God has built into his creation and given to humanity.
Some believe God directly decides and causes every event that happens. The problem is that this view makes God into Satan, almost literally, for it would mean that God directs every action Satan takes. Then he would direct the action of every demon down to the last evil detail. God becomes the direct author of all evil. God would then direct every feeling of pleasure that the worst serial killer has.
No, that position more or less makes Christianity incoherent, a devilish religion much to be avoided.
3. Most of the time, we will not know why God allows specific events of evil and suffering. We only know that they fit in some way with God's love. We know that God is currently allowing evil to fight back against him, although its days are numbered. There are personal agents of evil in the world, ranging from Satan to lost human individuals needing to find their God.
We know that God's priorities are eternal rather than the temporary. We know that we do not always have a good sense of what is most important. We know that God can use suffering for good. There can also be times when the good weighs against the good, but we cannot discern the better because we do not know the big picture.
In the end, however, these answers are not likely to feel sufficient in the moment of pain. Ideas and head answers are always weak in the face of the heart. For our pains, God has given us each other as an answer. Brothers and sisters in Christ are God's immediate answers to the question of evil and suffering. And by faith we know that God is still in control.
4. What we know is that Christ cries with us. He remains fully human. In Christ, God embraced our suffering, and in Christ he embraces it still.
The biggest question in relation to faith is why a loving God allows evil and suffering to continue in the world. I find incredulous the hocus pocus of some who wave a magic wand and say, "Love is whatever God does by definition." God has already defined love just fine in Scripture numerous times. He has defined it in Christ, not least. It involves related words like "saving," "giving," "kind," "hopes."
2. By faith, we believe that God is love, defined in the normal ways. The world does not always look that way. But then again, I don't believe God directly wills every event that happens. In many cases, I believe God allows things to happen that would not be his preferred course. This is the question of how much freedom God has built into his creation and given to humanity.
Some believe God directly decides and causes every event that happens. The problem is that this view makes God into Satan, almost literally, for it would mean that God directs every action Satan takes. Then he would direct the action of every demon down to the last evil detail. God becomes the direct author of all evil. God would then direct every feeling of pleasure that the worst serial killer has.
No, that position more or less makes Christianity incoherent, a devilish religion much to be avoided.
3. Most of the time, we will not know why God allows specific events of evil and suffering. We only know that they fit in some way with God's love. We know that God is currently allowing evil to fight back against him, although its days are numbered. There are personal agents of evil in the world, ranging from Satan to lost human individuals needing to find their God.
We know that God's priorities are eternal rather than the temporary. We know that we do not always have a good sense of what is most important. We know that God can use suffering for good. There can also be times when the good weighs against the good, but we cannot discern the better because we do not know the big picture.
In the end, however, these answers are not likely to feel sufficient in the moment of pain. Ideas and head answers are always weak in the face of the heart. For our pains, God has given us each other as an answer. Brothers and sisters in Christ are God's immediate answers to the question of evil and suffering. And by faith we know that God is still in control.
4. What we know is that Christ cries with us. He remains fully human. In Christ, God embraced our suffering, and in Christ he embraces it still.
Thursday, November 12, 2015
Roger Olson on Nominalism
Don't have time today to develop a deep subject, but enjoyed Roger Olson's post yesterday on the "catastrophe of nominalism." Here's a memorable quote: "Nominalism is the ultimate poison of Western civilization that corrodes and erodes it. It lies at the top of the slippery slope down which we have slid into modern and now, increasingly, postmodern oblivion."
I hear what he's saying. If you deny that there is truth "in" the world or deny that the world in some way embodies a transcendent truth, then it is a short step to concluding finally that truth is entirely in the eye of the beholder.
This is a fairly common perspective. However, IMO, this same nominalist moment also stands at the root of the rise of modern science, economics, the rise of historical consciousness and the quest for objectivity, not to mention the Protestant Reformation. I think it would be a mistake to go back more or less to a choice between some form of Platonism or some form of Aristotelianism.
I hesitate to call myself a nominalist because I do believe in universals after my own idiom and I do believe in transcendentals after my own idiom. Yet, the situation of our human finitude and locatedness I think push us toward what I might call a "pragmatist nominalism" of sorts as a method of knowing. Most of what people see "in" things, whether beauty or whatever, is at least expressed through the eye of the beholder. And I more or less define pre-modernism as seeing things that aren't there but are really constructs of your own mind, without being able to tell the difference.
Time's up.
I hear what he's saying. If you deny that there is truth "in" the world or deny that the world in some way embodies a transcendent truth, then it is a short step to concluding finally that truth is entirely in the eye of the beholder.
This is a fairly common perspective. However, IMO, this same nominalist moment also stands at the root of the rise of modern science, economics, the rise of historical consciousness and the quest for objectivity, not to mention the Protestant Reformation. I think it would be a mistake to go back more or less to a choice between some form of Platonism or some form of Aristotelianism.
I hesitate to call myself a nominalist because I do believe in universals after my own idiom and I do believe in transcendentals after my own idiom. Yet, the situation of our human finitude and locatedness I think push us toward what I might call a "pragmatist nominalism" of sorts as a method of knowing. Most of what people see "in" things, whether beauty or whatever, is at least expressed through the eye of the beholder. And I more or less define pre-modernism as seeing things that aren't there but are really constructs of your own mind, without being able to tell the difference.
Time's up.
Wednesday, November 11, 2015
What's in a philosopher?
I enjoyed the side comments at philosophers last night in the GOP Presidential debate. Not entirely sure what Rubio was trying to say, but it does make me wonder if anti-philosophy is going to be a thing. There was that movie God's not Dead last year. :-)
Of course philosophers are notorious for not believing in God. They're notorious for being snarky and smug. Philosophy courses are the ones most notorious for being anti-faith at state schools.
Then again, it would be the fallacy of composition to suggest that all philosophy professors are godless just because some are. And it would be the fallacy of diversion to say that philosophy itself is anti-faith just because many people associated with it are anti-faith.
As I've said before, philosophy is ultimately the meta-subject to end all meta-subjects when it comes to truth claims. Dave Ward gave a paper last Monday arguing that theology is the heart of all knowledge, but he carefully indicated that he was talking about a way of being when he argued this, not a way of knowing. So I also have tried to make it clear that it is as a way of knowing that philosophy stands alongside all other knowing as the ultimate meta-discipline. When Dasein gets translated into knowing, philosophy lieth at the door.
Philosophy stands alongside science and asks what science is doing.
Philosophy stands alongside art and asks what art is doing.
Philosophy stands alongside psychology, history, religion, and asks what it is doing.
Philosophy can stand alongside theology and ask what it is doing, if it is allowed.
Philosophy stands alongside what we do, what we think, and who we are.
We are all philosophers, whether we admit it or not. Now, a shameless plug. :-)
Of course philosophers are notorious for not believing in God. They're notorious for being snarky and smug. Philosophy courses are the ones most notorious for being anti-faith at state schools.
Then again, it would be the fallacy of composition to suggest that all philosophy professors are godless just because some are. And it would be the fallacy of diversion to say that philosophy itself is anti-faith just because many people associated with it are anti-faith.
As I've said before, philosophy is ultimately the meta-subject to end all meta-subjects when it comes to truth claims. Dave Ward gave a paper last Monday arguing that theology is the heart of all knowledge, but he carefully indicated that he was talking about a way of being when he argued this, not a way of knowing. So I also have tried to make it clear that it is as a way of knowing that philosophy stands alongside all other knowing as the ultimate meta-discipline. When Dasein gets translated into knowing, philosophy lieth at the door.
Philosophy stands alongside science and asks what science is doing.
Philosophy stands alongside art and asks what art is doing.
Philosophy stands alongside psychology, history, religion, and asks what it is doing.
Philosophy can stand alongside theology and ask what it is doing, if it is allowed.
Philosophy stands alongside what we do, what we think, and who we are.
We are all philosophers, whether we admit it or not. Now, a shameless plug. :-)
Tuesday, November 10, 2015
Hermeneutics Slides
For whatever reason, I have a way of making PowerPoint slides that excite me sitting in my office, but when I go to present them, things suddenly seem vague and very controversial. Here are my latest slides:
Slide 1: The Default Hermeneutic
1. Pray
2. Do your exegetical work. (What did this text mean originally in context?)
[Exegetical work is quasi-scientific. It is an evidentiary process, even though it cannot be done without assumptions, bias, and presuppositions. By contrast, integration and appropriation are not a science. They are a spiritual task, a community task, and a convictional task. They are an "art."]
3. Ask integration questions
Slide 1: The Default Hermeneutic
- "God said it; I believe it; that settles it for me."
- Direct application of the text to my life and everyone else's with minimal consideration of context or genre.
- I become the "you" of the text.
- One text from God to me
- "Common sense" and ingenuity navigates "naughty verses"
- Absolutely
- It works if we have the Holy Spirit guiding us and if we have the right Christian intuitions, the right "common sense."
- The right common sense is the law of love and the rule of faith.
- Scripture, tradition, reason, experience (post-liberal Methodists tend to hate it, post-fundamentalist Wesleyans like me love it)
- Imbalances of experience: Pentecostal traditions can come to focus too much on “words from the Lord” without sufficient anchoring. But the Holy Spirit does seem to speak to people today in other ways than through Scripture.
- Imbalances of reason: Liberal traditions can focus so much on the historical meaning of the books of the Bible that they become a dead, dissected frog from the past, a matter of antiquarian interest. So the Bible is not merely history, but it happened in history, and it also seems problematic to think we can suspend normal historical inquiry.
- Imbalances of tradition: A lot of bizarre traditions have spun out over time. Luther pruned a number and sent us back ad fontes. But do we really want to rehash the Trinity or, for that matter, which books belong in the New Testament?
- Imbalances of Scripture: The idea of "Scripture only" is ultimately unreflective. To decide what the Bible means, you need "rules of engagement" that, de re, are outside the text. But Scripture is a God-instituted sacrament of transformation. It is the focal unpacking of Jesus, who is the final Word.
- Is anti-modern. It is a reaction against developments in science and history.
- Ironically, however, it uses quasi-scientific and historical methods to combat modernism.
- It tends to be anti-tradition, anti-reason, and anti-experience.
- What did it mean in that time?
- What are the points of continuity and discontinuity between "that time" and "our time"?
- Or, alternatively, what is the "all time" in the "that time"?
- Reapply points of continuity.
- Reapply principles in "our time."
- Recognizes the distance between "that time" and "all time." (positive)
- Accepts historical method, but often only applies it within certain artificial boundaries.
- Can miss the crucial role of integration (formulating a biblical theology before application rather than applying directly from individual passages)
- Can ignore the reality that orthodoxy requires some faith in developments after the NT in order to work fully
- What did it say? (observation)
- What did it mean? (interpretation)
- What does the whole Bible say? (integration)
- What does it mean to us? (appropriation)
1. Pray
2. Do your exegetical work. (What did this text mean originally in context?)
[Exegetical work is quasi-scientific. It is an evidentiary process, even though it cannot be done without assumptions, bias, and presuppositions. By contrast, integration and appropriation are not a science. They are a spiritual task, a community task, and a convictional task. They are an "art."]
3. Ask integration questions
- What does the rest of the Bible (in context) seem to say on this topic?
- Is there a (unforced) common thread throughout the books of the Bible?
- Consider matters of genre.
- If my passage is in the OT, does the NT in any way develop its content?
- How does the person of Jesus and the trajectory of the kingdom impact the topic?
- Is the subject “fully cooked” in Scripture?
- What are the points of contextual continuity and discontinuity between you and the text?
- Are there integration principles you can reapply?
- What has the Spirit said to others, the communion of saints past/present?
- What is the Spirit saying to you?
- Exegetical portion, with intro and conclusion
- Biblical Theology portion (OT/NT, Christ/kingdom lens)
- Appropriation portion (continuity/principles, Spirit, church)
The Sections of Isaiah
Breaking down the outline of Isaiah today in a class. You may have seen divisions of Isaiah into chapters 1-39, 40-55, 56-66. As with most outlines, this captures a truth. Chapters 1-39 are mostly about Isaiah's own time. Chapters 40-55 seem to picture a point right at the end of the exile when Cyrus, king of Persia, allows significant numbers of Jews to return to Jerusalem from Babylon. Then chapters 56-66 seem to picture a time after the return has taken place.
I would rather just divide Isaiah into two parts: 1) chapters 1-39 which relate mostly to the pre-exilic time of Isaiah and chapters 40-66 which relate to the time at the end and after the exile.
Here is a more detailed outline of the content:
Part I: Chapters 1-39
A. Prophecies of Isaiah
1. Isaiah 1-12
This is a concentrated collection of Isaiah's prophesies, including both condemnation for the sins of Israel in Isaiah's day and hope for a king who will restore righteousness. The fear of Assyria is in the background.
2. Isaiah 13-23
Next we have a series of prophecies against various nations, including Babylon, Moab, Damascus, Cush, Egypt, Tyre, and even Jerusalem itself.
3. Isaiah 24-35
These chapters may actually belong with 13-23 but I thought it was worth teasing them out because they deal more broadly with the situation of the world, God's judgment of all the nations, the faithlessness of the leadership of Israel and Judah, and the future restoration of God's people. There are some passages here that were ripe for later eschatological imagery (e.g., chap. 26).
B. Historical Interlude
4. Isaiah 36-39
These chapters are virtually word for word the same as 2 Kings 18-20. Using evidentiary reasoning, we would likely conclude that they were taken from 2 Kings. However, for various reasons, some would strongly want to argue that 2 Kings copied his chapters from Isaiah. These chapters deal with the latter reign of Hezekiah and the surrounding of Jerusalem by the Assyrian king Sennacherib.
Part II: Chapters 40-66
A. Preparing to Return
5. Isaiah 40-55
Suddenly, the context of Isaiah shoots forward two hundred years to the time when Cyrus, king of Persia, allows the Jews to return to Jerusalem from Babylon. Cyrus himself is mentioned in 45:1. Whatever one thinks about authorship of this section (Isaiah is not said to be speaking in these chapters), to understand them we must put ourselves around the year 539BC to read them in context.
B. Hope in Devastation
6. Isaiah 56-66
From a literary standpoint, I don't see as clear a break here inductively, but I haven't studied it thoroughly either. It does seem to me that the tone changes in the last chapters of Isaiah. Whereas 40-55 are hopeful and optimistic, these last chapters have a certain sadness to them at points. It's almost as if the exiles arrived in Jerusalem from Babylon, and found a land laid waste (e.g., 64:10; 61:4; 62:12).
I would rather just divide Isaiah into two parts: 1) chapters 1-39 which relate mostly to the pre-exilic time of Isaiah and chapters 40-66 which relate to the time at the end and after the exile.
Here is a more detailed outline of the content:
Part I: Chapters 1-39
A. Prophecies of Isaiah
1. Isaiah 1-12
This is a concentrated collection of Isaiah's prophesies, including both condemnation for the sins of Israel in Isaiah's day and hope for a king who will restore righteousness. The fear of Assyria is in the background.
2. Isaiah 13-23
Next we have a series of prophecies against various nations, including Babylon, Moab, Damascus, Cush, Egypt, Tyre, and even Jerusalem itself.
3. Isaiah 24-35
These chapters may actually belong with 13-23 but I thought it was worth teasing them out because they deal more broadly with the situation of the world, God's judgment of all the nations, the faithlessness of the leadership of Israel and Judah, and the future restoration of God's people. There are some passages here that were ripe for later eschatological imagery (e.g., chap. 26).
B. Historical Interlude
4. Isaiah 36-39
These chapters are virtually word for word the same as 2 Kings 18-20. Using evidentiary reasoning, we would likely conclude that they were taken from 2 Kings. However, for various reasons, some would strongly want to argue that 2 Kings copied his chapters from Isaiah. These chapters deal with the latter reign of Hezekiah and the surrounding of Jerusalem by the Assyrian king Sennacherib.
Part II: Chapters 40-66
A. Preparing to Return
5. Isaiah 40-55
Suddenly, the context of Isaiah shoots forward two hundred years to the time when Cyrus, king of Persia, allows the Jews to return to Jerusalem from Babylon. Cyrus himself is mentioned in 45:1. Whatever one thinks about authorship of this section (Isaiah is not said to be speaking in these chapters), to understand them we must put ourselves around the year 539BC to read them in context.
B. Hope in Devastation
6. Isaiah 56-66
From a literary standpoint, I don't see as clear a break here inductively, but I haven't studied it thoroughly either. It does seem to me that the tone changes in the last chapters of Isaiah. Whereas 40-55 are hopeful and optimistic, these last chapters have a certain sadness to them at points. It's almost as if the exiles arrived in Jerusalem from Babylon, and found a land laid waste (e.g., 64:10; 61:4; 62:12).
Monday, November 09, 2015
Sunday, November 08, 2015
ET3. We must not let any other thing take God's place in our life.
This is the third post on Christian ethics 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. The third set was on sacraments. This final section is on Christian ethics.
_______________________________
We must not let any other thing take God's place in our life.
1. The first four or five of the Ten Commandments relate mostly to the first of the two love commands: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might" (Deut. 6:5). [1] They give us specific examples of what it might mean to love God:
The worst sin of all is thus to consider something else more important than God or even as important as God. The command not to make idols also suggests that we must not mistake any part of the creation for him and that we should not mistake our attempts to picture him for who he literally is.
It is not that God is threatened by our misdirected worship. Indeed, we only show ourselves to be fools when we mistake something else for God. Scripture often uses the anthropomorphic image of God being angry or wrathful when we turn to other gods, but these are pictures meant to show us how serious and self-annihilating it is to do so. God does not literally throw tantrums, and any mistaking of this picture for God himself is to make yet another kind of image of him.
3. To say that nothing else is more important than God is to say that we must do everything to the glory of God (1 Cor. 10:31). This is the heart of all our deliberations and choices--which choice will honor God the most? We do not live for ourselves first. Indeed, part of honoring God is even to put others above our own interests (e.g., Phil. 2:3).
As human beings, we will always have competing interests tugging at our lives. Sometimes, our choice is between the bad and the good. At other times, the choice is between the good and the better. A life lived with God first is a life where all our choices are made with the desire to glorify God the most. "Nothing between my soul and the Savior," one hymn says.
We love God by worshiping him regularly, ascribing to him the praise of which he is worthy. We remember his greatness and his attributes. We remember that he is the only necessary thing. We thank him for what he has done. We thank him for his loving wisdom, even when he has not done what we thought that we preferred.
We keep him in mind every day as we go about our lives. We "pray without ceasing" (1 Thess. 5:17). God is not jealous of the time we spend doing good in the world or doing what is necessary for life. It is not that he demands all of our time exclusively, although we should set aside regular time for him exclusively each week, ideally every day.
4. We demonstrate our love for God by loving our neighbors as ourselves. Loving our neighbor never contradicts loving God in the same way that God's justice does not contradict his love. Loving our neighbor glorifies God and so is one of the chief ways God has designed for us to love him.
We demonstrate our love of God by treating ourselves with respect. When we do not show proper regard for ourselves as one of God's creations, we dishonor God. We should not think of ourselves more highly than we are in God's sight (Rom. 12:3), but we should not think of ourselves as less than we are in God's sight.
We demonstrate our love for God by being good stewards of his creation. This is my Father's world. I do not treat others or God's creation as trivial or junk. They are God's possessions and to be treated with honor.
5. We cannot fathom God. We will thus always have to fight confusing the pictures of God in our understanding for God himself. We know that God is love and we trust in his love, but we do not always know how each action or inaction on his part is love. We know that God acts with justice and we trust in his loving justice, but we do not always know how each action or inaction on his part is justice.
Our impulse is to think we know what he is doing, but we must always leave room for our limitation and our tendency to confuse the image of God, which is what an idol is, for God himself.
It is crucial that we recognize that even the picture of God in the Bible is a picture, an instance of God stooping to our weakness and the weaknesses of each individual author and audience. The Bible gives us an image of God in words, an image that we must not confuse with God as he is on his own terms. The Bible gives us God in terms we humans can understand and grasp. God himself is beyond understanding. The Bible must always be read to point toward God, not to be God. We must never confuse the image of God for God himself.
6. The commandment to remember the Sabbath both honored God by commemorating the day that he rested from creation and honored God by respect for ourselves and others. God created the world. The Jews honored him as creator by resting on Saturday, the seventh day (Exod. 20:11). [2] God brought Israel out of Egypt. Israel rested in honor of his release of them from slavery and gave their servants a day of rest (Deut. 5:15).
Yet the day was not primarily a day of worship in the Old Testament, although there is some evidence of convocation on the Sabbath (e.g., Isa. 1:13; 66:23). The priests, however, did their service on the Sabbath (e.g., Num. 28:8-10; Ezek. 46:3). The primary emphasis was on rest and the cessation of work. Nehemiah strongly opposed buying and selling on the Sabbath (Neh. 13:15-17), and a man is stoned in Numbers for gathering wood for a fire on the Sabbath (Num. 15:32-36).
The significance of sabbath is strongly recognized today. The human mind and body will function much better if it has regular rest than if a person tries to work unendingly. More work will actually be accomplished with regular rest. The idea of a day of rest and worship is thus not only honoring to God, it is beneficial for humanity.
Christians traditionally have combined these twin functions into the Lord's Day, Sunday. On Sundays, Christians remember that Jesus rose from the dead. Each Sunday is a little Easter, a small remembrance of the resurrection. Sunday can also become a sacrament, a means of God's grace. Not only do we meet together to worship and experience God's presence, but it is wise for us to rest as Israel did on its Sabbaths.
Taking a day to rest is not, however, a matter of law under the new covenant. It is a matter of grace. It is a matter of wisdom. But the apostle Paul frees Gentile believers from any obligation to keep the Jewish Sabbath. "Do not let anyone condemn you in matters of food and drink or of observing festivals, new moons, or sabbaths" (Col. 2:16). "Some judge one day to be better than another, while others judge all days to be alike. Let all be fully convinced in their own minds" (Rom. 14:5).
In the flow of revelation, the new covenant takes precedence over the old. Therefore, the Jewish Sabbath is not binding on Gentile Christians. It is a matter of conviction. So while it is wise to set aside a day of rest and it is foolish not to take time to rest, it is a matter of grace and not of law.
7. We must not let any other thing take God's place in our life. We must do everything we do in the name of the Lord Jesus, to the glory of God the Father. We must set aside time for God alone. Yet for most of our time, we will show our love for God through our love for others, our respect for ourselves, and our respect for God's creation.
Next Sunday: ET4. God calls us to respect authority in honor of his authority.
[1] Different faith traditions number the 10 commandments differently. The Jewish conception takes the verse, "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery" as the first of the Ten Words (Exod. 20:2). Then the command to covet is split into two parts: not to covet your neighbor's house is the ninth (Exod. 20:17), while the command not to covet your neighbor's wife and possessions is the tenth. The Catholic and Lutheran traditions combine the commandment not to have other gods before Yahweh with the command not to make idols. Then the commandment not to covet is divided out as in the Jewish tradition.
[2] Technically, they rested from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday, in keeping with the pattern of days in Genesis 1--"and there was evening and there was morning, the first day" (Gen. 1:5).
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. The third set was on sacraments. This final section is on Christian ethics.
_______________________________
We must not let any other thing take God's place in our life.
1. The first four or five of the Ten Commandments relate mostly to the first of the two love commands: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might" (Deut. 6:5). [1] They give us specific examples of what it might mean to love God:
- "You shall have no other gods before me" (Exod. 20:3).
- "You shall not make for yourself an idol" (Exod. 20:4).
- "You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God" (Exod. 20:7).
- "Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy." (Exod. 20:8).
- And perhaps even, "Honor your father and your mother" (Exod. 20:12).
The worst sin of all is thus to consider something else more important than God or even as important as God. The command not to make idols also suggests that we must not mistake any part of the creation for him and that we should not mistake our attempts to picture him for who he literally is.
It is not that God is threatened by our misdirected worship. Indeed, we only show ourselves to be fools when we mistake something else for God. Scripture often uses the anthropomorphic image of God being angry or wrathful when we turn to other gods, but these are pictures meant to show us how serious and self-annihilating it is to do so. God does not literally throw tantrums, and any mistaking of this picture for God himself is to make yet another kind of image of him.
3. To say that nothing else is more important than God is to say that we must do everything to the glory of God (1 Cor. 10:31). This is the heart of all our deliberations and choices--which choice will honor God the most? We do not live for ourselves first. Indeed, part of honoring God is even to put others above our own interests (e.g., Phil. 2:3).
As human beings, we will always have competing interests tugging at our lives. Sometimes, our choice is between the bad and the good. At other times, the choice is between the good and the better. A life lived with God first is a life where all our choices are made with the desire to glorify God the most. "Nothing between my soul and the Savior," one hymn says.
We love God by worshiping him regularly, ascribing to him the praise of which he is worthy. We remember his greatness and his attributes. We remember that he is the only necessary thing. We thank him for what he has done. We thank him for his loving wisdom, even when he has not done what we thought that we preferred.
We keep him in mind every day as we go about our lives. We "pray without ceasing" (1 Thess. 5:17). God is not jealous of the time we spend doing good in the world or doing what is necessary for life. It is not that he demands all of our time exclusively, although we should set aside regular time for him exclusively each week, ideally every day.
4. We demonstrate our love for God by loving our neighbors as ourselves. Loving our neighbor never contradicts loving God in the same way that God's justice does not contradict his love. Loving our neighbor glorifies God and so is one of the chief ways God has designed for us to love him.
We demonstrate our love of God by treating ourselves with respect. When we do not show proper regard for ourselves as one of God's creations, we dishonor God. We should not think of ourselves more highly than we are in God's sight (Rom. 12:3), but we should not think of ourselves as less than we are in God's sight.
We demonstrate our love for God by being good stewards of his creation. This is my Father's world. I do not treat others or God's creation as trivial or junk. They are God's possessions and to be treated with honor.
5. We cannot fathom God. We will thus always have to fight confusing the pictures of God in our understanding for God himself. We know that God is love and we trust in his love, but we do not always know how each action or inaction on his part is love. We know that God acts with justice and we trust in his loving justice, but we do not always know how each action or inaction on his part is justice.
Our impulse is to think we know what he is doing, but we must always leave room for our limitation and our tendency to confuse the image of God, which is what an idol is, for God himself.
It is crucial that we recognize that even the picture of God in the Bible is a picture, an instance of God stooping to our weakness and the weaknesses of each individual author and audience. The Bible gives us an image of God in words, an image that we must not confuse with God as he is on his own terms. The Bible gives us God in terms we humans can understand and grasp. God himself is beyond understanding. The Bible must always be read to point toward God, not to be God. We must never confuse the image of God for God himself.
6. The commandment to remember the Sabbath both honored God by commemorating the day that he rested from creation and honored God by respect for ourselves and others. God created the world. The Jews honored him as creator by resting on Saturday, the seventh day (Exod. 20:11). [2] God brought Israel out of Egypt. Israel rested in honor of his release of them from slavery and gave their servants a day of rest (Deut. 5:15).
Yet the day was not primarily a day of worship in the Old Testament, although there is some evidence of convocation on the Sabbath (e.g., Isa. 1:13; 66:23). The priests, however, did their service on the Sabbath (e.g., Num. 28:8-10; Ezek. 46:3). The primary emphasis was on rest and the cessation of work. Nehemiah strongly opposed buying and selling on the Sabbath (Neh. 13:15-17), and a man is stoned in Numbers for gathering wood for a fire on the Sabbath (Num. 15:32-36).
The significance of sabbath is strongly recognized today. The human mind and body will function much better if it has regular rest than if a person tries to work unendingly. More work will actually be accomplished with regular rest. The idea of a day of rest and worship is thus not only honoring to God, it is beneficial for humanity.
Christians traditionally have combined these twin functions into the Lord's Day, Sunday. On Sundays, Christians remember that Jesus rose from the dead. Each Sunday is a little Easter, a small remembrance of the resurrection. Sunday can also become a sacrament, a means of God's grace. Not only do we meet together to worship and experience God's presence, but it is wise for us to rest as Israel did on its Sabbaths.
Taking a day to rest is not, however, a matter of law under the new covenant. It is a matter of grace. It is a matter of wisdom. But the apostle Paul frees Gentile believers from any obligation to keep the Jewish Sabbath. "Do not let anyone condemn you in matters of food and drink or of observing festivals, new moons, or sabbaths" (Col. 2:16). "Some judge one day to be better than another, while others judge all days to be alike. Let all be fully convinced in their own minds" (Rom. 14:5).
In the flow of revelation, the new covenant takes precedence over the old. Therefore, the Jewish Sabbath is not binding on Gentile Christians. It is a matter of conviction. So while it is wise to set aside a day of rest and it is foolish not to take time to rest, it is a matter of grace and not of law.
7. We must not let any other thing take God's place in our life. We must do everything we do in the name of the Lord Jesus, to the glory of God the Father. We must set aside time for God alone. Yet for most of our time, we will show our love for God through our love for others, our respect for ourselves, and our respect for God's creation.
Next Sunday: ET4. God calls us to respect authority in honor of his authority.
[1] Different faith traditions number the 10 commandments differently. The Jewish conception takes the verse, "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery" as the first of the Ten Words (Exod. 20:2). Then the command to covet is split into two parts: not to covet your neighbor's house is the ninth (Exod. 20:17), while the command not to covet your neighbor's wife and possessions is the tenth. The Catholic and Lutheran traditions combine the commandment not to have other gods before Yahweh with the command not to make idols. Then the commandment not to covet is divided out as in the Jewish tradition.
[2] Technically, they rested from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday, in keeping with the pattern of days in Genesis 1--"and there was evening and there was morning, the first day" (Gen. 1:5).
Friday, November 06, 2015
Wesley Hill and Celibate Homosexuality
Wesley Hill was in Marion last night to give a interview/talk back session with any students who might want to hear his testimony and thoughts on a book he has written on Spiritual Friendship. A faculty group read through this book and then anyone who was interested came to hear the interview at College Wesleyan Church last night. I would say there were several hundred in attendance.
1. Hill gets critique from both sides of the spectrum. There are Christians who believe that, if he is attracted to the same sex, then it isn't appropriate for him to be celibate. Then there are Christians who believe that he should be moving toward opposite-sex attraction and not accepting as permanent the desires he has.
I thought there was a healthy atmosphere last night. There was no sarcasm on anyone's part. Hill was extremely judicious in all his comments, almost contemplative. One person leaned over to me during the session and said something like, "It may seem strange to say it but there seems to be a spiritual atmosphere here." From what I could tell, those there concluded that Hill's testimony was authentic and that his convictions and faith all around were genuine.
2. I did have two students ask me earlier about IWU having the session. Was this advocating for homosexuality? Did Hill believe it was okay to stay gay?
Never having met Hill or read his book, I guess at an answer to the second question. I presume Hill would say that, for whatever reason, most Christian individuals who discover they are attracted to the same sex ask God to take away those desires at some point. Most gay individuals who grow up in a Christian context struggle significantly with their desires.
But, I think he would say, very few if any find that God takes away those desires. Instead, they eventually find a way to be Christian while being attracted to the same sex. Of course the church is typically hostile toward such individuals. Many end up leaving the church. Some end up marrying which is usually disastrous (it would be interested to know what percentage of Christian divorces come from gay individuals marrying because they think it is the right thing to do).
So to one student I suggested that Hill was not advocating staying gay. I assume he has concluded that same-sex attraction just usually isn't something that God takes away from a person, for whatever reason.
3. To the question of advocacy, neither Hill nor IWU was advocating homosexuality. The Wesleyan position is that homosexual sex is sinful, but that there will be Christians in the church who are attracted to the same sex. Temptations are not sinful, choices are. Hill's commitment to celibacy is what the Wesleyan Church advocates.
It seems inevitable that there will be individuals attracted to the same-sex in our midst in the church and certainly at a university as large at IWU. Our tendency in the past has been to ignore such individuals and let them wrestle with these issues in secret, meaning that they probably floundered at some point in relation to Christianity. In our current context, it seems much more Christ-like to offer counsel and to cultivate Christ-like attitudes toward individuals like Hill in our midst.
4. Let me close by giving background to the Wesleyan position:
Hill has chosen to follow the monastic tradition of celibacy. Following Aelred in the Middle Ages, he has written a book about the importance of friendship without a sexual component. It applies to married men who have female friends and married women who have male friends. It applies to all singles who have friendships without sex. Hill would include himself within this latter category.
1. Hill gets critique from both sides of the spectrum. There are Christians who believe that, if he is attracted to the same sex, then it isn't appropriate for him to be celibate. Then there are Christians who believe that he should be moving toward opposite-sex attraction and not accepting as permanent the desires he has.
I thought there was a healthy atmosphere last night. There was no sarcasm on anyone's part. Hill was extremely judicious in all his comments, almost contemplative. One person leaned over to me during the session and said something like, "It may seem strange to say it but there seems to be a spiritual atmosphere here." From what I could tell, those there concluded that Hill's testimony was authentic and that his convictions and faith all around were genuine.
2. I did have two students ask me earlier about IWU having the session. Was this advocating for homosexuality? Did Hill believe it was okay to stay gay?
Never having met Hill or read his book, I guess at an answer to the second question. I presume Hill would say that, for whatever reason, most Christian individuals who discover they are attracted to the same sex ask God to take away those desires at some point. Most gay individuals who grow up in a Christian context struggle significantly with their desires.
But, I think he would say, very few if any find that God takes away those desires. Instead, they eventually find a way to be Christian while being attracted to the same sex. Of course the church is typically hostile toward such individuals. Many end up leaving the church. Some end up marrying which is usually disastrous (it would be interested to know what percentage of Christian divorces come from gay individuals marrying because they think it is the right thing to do).
So to one student I suggested that Hill was not advocating staying gay. I assume he has concluded that same-sex attraction just usually isn't something that God takes away from a person, for whatever reason.
3. To the question of advocacy, neither Hill nor IWU was advocating homosexuality. The Wesleyan position is that homosexual sex is sinful, but that there will be Christians in the church who are attracted to the same sex. Temptations are not sinful, choices are. Hill's commitment to celibacy is what the Wesleyan Church advocates.
It seems inevitable that there will be individuals attracted to the same-sex in our midst in the church and certainly at a university as large at IWU. Our tendency in the past has been to ignore such individuals and let them wrestle with these issues in secret, meaning that they probably floundered at some point in relation to Christianity. In our current context, it seems much more Christ-like to offer counsel and to cultivate Christ-like attitudes toward individuals like Hill in our midst.
4. Let me close by giving background to the Wesleyan position:
- The notion that someone might be gay and never have gay sex is a fairly recent paradigm shift in history. Even not too many decades ago, a homosexual would have been defined as someone who has homosexual sex. I don't think that in the 1920s, for example, a person would have been considered homosexual if they never had gay sex.
- So it is with the Bible. All references to homosexuality are references to people who have homosexual sex. None of the references have to do with some orientation abstracted from the practice of gay sex. The notion of orientation is a fairly recent one.
- So Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 refer to gay sex acts. I would argue the same for 1 Corinthians 6:9 and 1 Timothy 1:10. These do not refer to individuals like Hill who are celibate.
- The Sodom and Gomorrah story is about attempted same-sex rape. In cultural context, these would have been married men with children trying to do an act similar to what is notoriously said to take place in prison. A similar event is found in Judges 19 where the men of the city go on to rape a woman to death when they can't violate the man.
- Romans 1 is also about homosexual sex acts. It talks about "natural use" and "doing."
- Temptation is not sin. Action on temptation--mental or physical--is sin (James 1:15). We all face different temptations. For some it is pride. For some it is women.
- We hopefully do not struggle to the same degree with the same temptations our whole lives. But entire sanctification is not a state beyond temptation either.
Hill has chosen to follow the monastic tradition of celibacy. Following Aelred in the Middle Ages, he has written a book about the importance of friendship without a sexual component. It applies to married men who have female friends and married women who have male friends. It applies to all singles who have friendships without sex. Hill would include himself within this latter category.
Thursday, November 05, 2015
One Time = That Time
One of the hermeneutical problems of our day, I increasingly believe, is that American Christianity has gravitated toward focusing so much on individual verses that bigger principles can be undermined (cf. Matt. 23:23). I've explored this topic a little here.
It is on the level of an individual verse that a truth is most likely to be 1) ambiguous and 2) most contextual. We understand the broader principles of Scripture more clearly because they appear over and over. And individual verses are much more likely to be "that time" rather than "all time" or "one time" even, for the specific moment in history of the biblical writing in question.
Rather than rehash the overall idea and rehash my criticism of American fundamentalism, let me present two examples that have recently come home to me.
1. How do we decide what in Revelation is hyper-symbolic and what we should take as a symbolism that corresponds more closely to specific events or characters? One possibility is to use the "one time" rule. If a concept in Revelation is relatively unique in the whole Bible, then it should probably be taken as hyper-symbolic.
The millennium comes to mind. As far as I can think, there is nowhere else in the Bible that divides a period with the Messiah ruling with resurrected martyrs from a more general resurrection and judgment that happens when Christ returns. The "one time" nature of the millennium might suggest that it is a hyper-symbol of the reign of Christ rather than a literal 1000 year period.
2. If 1 Timothy 2:12 refers to women teaching men (which I don't actually think it is. I think it is another husband-wife passage), then it is the only passage in the Bible that says anything like this. 1 Corinthians 14 has to be about disruptive speech (because women pray and prophesy in worship in 1 Corinthians 11). There are other headship passages, but they don't say anything about women not teaching other men.
Given that Priscilla does teach Apollos in Acts 18 and Acts 2:17 predicts that women will prophesy in the new age, 1 Timothy 2:12 is a highly odd verse, the only verse of its kind in the whole Bible. If it even refers to women teaching men in general (which I don't think it is), it is entirely unique in the Bible.
So as we try to peal back the fundamentalist era of the twentieth century, here is a crucial element in that equation. This individual verse impulse was used in the 1800s to argue for slavery, where individual verses were used to trump more important kingdom principles. Like the Pharisees, its tendency is to undermine bigger principles with "clobber verses." It's not the Jesus or Paul approach to Scripture.
It is on the level of an individual verse that a truth is most likely to be 1) ambiguous and 2) most contextual. We understand the broader principles of Scripture more clearly because they appear over and over. And individual verses are much more likely to be "that time" rather than "all time" or "one time" even, for the specific moment in history of the biblical writing in question.
Rather than rehash the overall idea and rehash my criticism of American fundamentalism, let me present two examples that have recently come home to me.
1. How do we decide what in Revelation is hyper-symbolic and what we should take as a symbolism that corresponds more closely to specific events or characters? One possibility is to use the "one time" rule. If a concept in Revelation is relatively unique in the whole Bible, then it should probably be taken as hyper-symbolic.
The millennium comes to mind. As far as I can think, there is nowhere else in the Bible that divides a period with the Messiah ruling with resurrected martyrs from a more general resurrection and judgment that happens when Christ returns. The "one time" nature of the millennium might suggest that it is a hyper-symbol of the reign of Christ rather than a literal 1000 year period.
2. If 1 Timothy 2:12 refers to women teaching men (which I don't actually think it is. I think it is another husband-wife passage), then it is the only passage in the Bible that says anything like this. 1 Corinthians 14 has to be about disruptive speech (because women pray and prophesy in worship in 1 Corinthians 11). There are other headship passages, but they don't say anything about women not teaching other men.
Given that Priscilla does teach Apollos in Acts 18 and Acts 2:17 predicts that women will prophesy in the new age, 1 Timothy 2:12 is a highly odd verse, the only verse of its kind in the whole Bible. If it even refers to women teaching men in general (which I don't think it is), it is entirely unique in the Bible.
So as we try to peal back the fundamentalist era of the twentieth century, here is a crucial element in that equation. This individual verse impulse was used in the 1800s to argue for slavery, where individual verses were used to trump more important kingdom principles. Like the Pharisees, its tendency is to undermine bigger principles with "clobber verses." It's not the Jesus or Paul approach to Scripture.
Wednesday, November 04, 2015
Sermon Starters: The Right Stuff
Came up with a three point outline this morning that could be used as a sermon starter for a sermon based in the first couple chapters of 1 Corinthians. Don't have time to fill in the blanks but...
Paul has true wisdom, not the worldly wisdom of some Corinthians.
Paul has the right priorities. He is not out for his own freedom or rights. He is not out for self-promotion. He is not out to show his strength. But God's strength is made perfect in his weakness (see 2 Corinthians 12).
Paul has effective methods. Given the basic goal of winning people for Christ, Paul can only be described as pragmatic when it comes to his methods. To the Jews he becomes like Jews. To non-Jews he becomes like non-Jews. This is of course within certain basic limits but he is extremely flexible in his methods within those. "I am all things to all people so that I might by all means save some" (1 Cor. 9).
Paul has true wisdom, not the worldly wisdom of some Corinthians.
Paul has the right priorities. He is not out for his own freedom or rights. He is not out for self-promotion. He is not out to show his strength. But God's strength is made perfect in his weakness (see 2 Corinthians 12).
Paul has effective methods. Given the basic goal of winning people for Christ, Paul can only be described as pragmatic when it comes to his methods. To the Jews he becomes like Jews. To non-Jews he becomes like non-Jews. This is of course within certain basic limits but he is extremely flexible in his methods within those. "I am all things to all people so that I might by all means save some" (1 Cor. 9).
Tuesday, November 03, 2015
Tom Oord's forthcoming book
I will be reviewing Tom Oord's forthcoming book when it comes out in about a month: The Uncontrolling Love of God: An Open and Relational View of Providence. He has produced a video teaser.
God is Love - what does it mean?
1. I did a quick search to try to find a crisp definition or description of God's love somewhere in John Piper's online footprint. This article seemed to come close.
Piper notes some strong statements by George MacDonald and a former professor named Thomas Talbott against the conception of God that Jonathan Edwards and Piper himself have. I've made similar strong statements in the past and I've heard Chris Bounds do the same.
Why does this conception of God so disgust Arminians? Because it makes God look evil. It seems to deconstruct the key aspect of God's character revealed in Jesus Christ and in the New Testament. It undermines his character as love (1 John 4:8).
"God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that whoever believes in him will not perish but have never-ending life." The meaning of love in this verse seems pretty self-evident. God wants to save people. No problems here.
"Whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved" (Rom. 10:13). That fits. God wants to save. "In the good news, the God's righteousness is revealed... the good news is the power of God for salvation..." (Rom. 1:17, 16). "In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them" (2 Cor. 5:19). That all fits. God is love.
2. There is no problem for Piper when it comes to understanding what it means to say God is love when we are talking about those who are going to be saved from God's wrath. The problem comes with regard to those who aren't going to be saved, namely, 1) those who never had a chance because of lack of knowledge and 2) those who, in Piper's understanding, were predetermined to be damned.
In any normal definition of love, sending the majority of people to hell for eternity, when they never had any chance whatsoever to be saved, is discordant. This is not a disobedient spirit. This is not an attempt to get out of what Scripture says. Indeed, this is taking the central point of the New Testament literally and seriously. The verses that lead Piper to modify the normal understanding of love are not the central verses of the New Testament (e.g., Rom. 9). The verses that present God in terms of the normal understanding of love are the central verses (John 3:16).
Piper and others make a number of moves here that, while clever, ultimately seem to deconstruct any meaningful sense of God's character as loving. Here are some examples:
To make justice God's key characteristic and love the secondary is to skew the New Testament priorities. Justice is the background against which the more central feature of love is featured. God's justice fits within the context of his love, not the other way around. This is the priority of the New Testament. Mercy triumphs over judgment (Jas. 2:13). God has the authority to show mercy because he is God. He doesn't have to fill out paper work to explain to some still higher power how he can justify it.
In the end, Piper's approach tends to skew Christian values in the church. It not so subtly teaches people to be just before they are loving. It fosters an attitude of "making sure people get what they have coming to them" over "mercy triumphs over judgment." It fosters an attitude of law over grace. This is deeply ironic, because God himself becomes the ultimate legalist at the same time that the New Testament is emphasizing God's grace.
4. But the intent of this post was not to rehash these reasons why Piper's theology infuriates so many Wesleyan-Arminians. It infuriates us because it undermines the revealed character of God in the name of logic and difficult verses. [It reminds me of the Seventh Day Adventists who see one verse saying not to eat pork and another that says all foods are clean and they pick the wrong verse as their base camp.]
The spark for this post was the fact that the New Testament doesn't have a different definition of love when it comes to God than it has for us. Where did the default definition of the word agape in the Bible come from, after all? God did not inspire the Bible in a completely new language that only believers could understand. The Bible was revealed in words that were being used at the time of the New Testament.
[Anyone who wants to argue that agape was some new, specifically minted Christian word needs to look at this use of agapao in the Greek Bible of 2 Samuel 13:1, just before Amnon goes on to rape Tamar.]
God might steer the concept of love with this word, but the starting point was a function of how the word was being used in the broader culture at the time of the New Testament.
5. So how does the NT understand love in relation to God? Let's start with John 3:16--God's love leads him to save. Romans 1:17 says the same--God demonstrates his righteousness by making a way of salvation. Both Paul and Acts emphasize that God is reaching out to everyone. He is expanding his reach beyond the Jews to non-Jews. The Lord does not want anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance (2 Pet. 3:9). God wants everyone to be saved (1 Tim. 2:4).
This is the primary theme. God wants to save and he wants to save everyone.
But there is a secondary theme. Not everyone will be saved. This is also a dominant reality of the New Testament and this is where the logical problem arises:
1. God wants everyone to be saved.
2. God is all powerful.
The logical conclusion would be universalism, that 3. Everyone will be saved.
So where is the logical problem?
a. True, there are some Christian universalists and "hopeful" universalists (people who can't entirely justify universalism in their minds but hope God can). But this is not a position most of us feel like we can take biblically or theologically. Justice does matter even if it is not absolute.
b. Few of us would consciously fiddle with #2. There are some voices who would argue that the NT authors did not yet fully understand the omnipotence and omniscience of God, but this is not a path most of us want to take.
c. So we are left to qualify #1. Piper in effect negates #1. God simply doesn't want everyone to be saved. Indeed, he has determined himself that most will go to hell for all eternity. He determines everything that happens and has thus set up the system to send almost everyone to eternal damnation.
This wreaks havoc with the overwhelming emphasis and thrust of the New Testament. It undermines the central message of God's love. It does not modify or expand the meaning of the word love. It subverts it, changes it into is virtual opposite.
d. Arminians suggest that there is another principle in play here. That is to say, #1 is not absolute. This is infinitely more preferable a move both logically and biblically to Piper's virtual negation.
So Arminians suggest that there is another premise that makes the logic go something like the following.
1. God prefers everyone to be saved.
2. God wants even more for individuals to choose for him to save them.
3. God is able to save.
4. Those who choose him will be saved.
This is not only more logical than Piper's scheme. It fits the overall tenor of the New Testament much more naturally. [Piper also does not operate as if the NT gives a more precise understanding of God than the OT. He flattens out the understanding of God in the biblical texts.]
I'll leave it there for today. But let me emphasize again, the Arminian scheme stays fairly close to the surface meaning of the biblical texts. It takes the words in their most natural sense. Piper's scheme requires us to redefine the meaning of central passages in the name of difficult passages. He uses the "naughty verses" to reinterpret the central ones and thus gets the biblical priorities out of order.
The unintended consequence is often a Christian whose values are out of whack, a Christian who sees justice as more important than mercy.
Piper notes some strong statements by George MacDonald and a former professor named Thomas Talbott against the conception of God that Jonathan Edwards and Piper himself have. I've made similar strong statements in the past and I've heard Chris Bounds do the same.
Why does this conception of God so disgust Arminians? Because it makes God look evil. It seems to deconstruct the key aspect of God's character revealed in Jesus Christ and in the New Testament. It undermines his character as love (1 John 4:8).
"God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that whoever believes in him will not perish but have never-ending life." The meaning of love in this verse seems pretty self-evident. God wants to save people. No problems here.
"Whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved" (Rom. 10:13). That fits. God wants to save. "In the good news, the God's righteousness is revealed... the good news is the power of God for salvation..." (Rom. 1:17, 16). "In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them" (2 Cor. 5:19). That all fits. God is love.
2. There is no problem for Piper when it comes to understanding what it means to say God is love when we are talking about those who are going to be saved from God's wrath. The problem comes with regard to those who aren't going to be saved, namely, 1) those who never had a chance because of lack of knowledge and 2) those who, in Piper's understanding, were predetermined to be damned.
In any normal definition of love, sending the majority of people to hell for eternity, when they never had any chance whatsoever to be saved, is discordant. This is not a disobedient spirit. This is not an attempt to get out of what Scripture says. Indeed, this is taking the central point of the New Testament literally and seriously. The verses that lead Piper to modify the normal understanding of love are not the central verses of the New Testament (e.g., Rom. 9). The verses that present God in terms of the normal understanding of love are the central verses (John 3:16).
Piper and others make a number of moves here that, while clever, ultimately seem to deconstruct any meaningful sense of God's character as loving. Here are some examples:
- For God, love means something different than it means for us, at least when it comes to the damned.
- Even one sin against God is so heinous that it deserves an eternity of fiery punishment.
- We can't say that God "arbitrarily" chooses who will be saved and who will be damned. We can't know God's reasons.
To make justice God's key characteristic and love the secondary is to skew the New Testament priorities. Justice is the background against which the more central feature of love is featured. God's justice fits within the context of his love, not the other way around. This is the priority of the New Testament. Mercy triumphs over judgment (Jas. 2:13). God has the authority to show mercy because he is God. He doesn't have to fill out paper work to explain to some still higher power how he can justify it.
In the end, Piper's approach tends to skew Christian values in the church. It not so subtly teaches people to be just before they are loving. It fosters an attitude of "making sure people get what they have coming to them" over "mercy triumphs over judgment." It fosters an attitude of law over grace. This is deeply ironic, because God himself becomes the ultimate legalist at the same time that the New Testament is emphasizing God's grace.
4. But the intent of this post was not to rehash these reasons why Piper's theology infuriates so many Wesleyan-Arminians. It infuriates us because it undermines the revealed character of God in the name of logic and difficult verses. [It reminds me of the Seventh Day Adventists who see one verse saying not to eat pork and another that says all foods are clean and they pick the wrong verse as their base camp.]
The spark for this post was the fact that the New Testament doesn't have a different definition of love when it comes to God than it has for us. Where did the default definition of the word agape in the Bible come from, after all? God did not inspire the Bible in a completely new language that only believers could understand. The Bible was revealed in words that were being used at the time of the New Testament.
[Anyone who wants to argue that agape was some new, specifically minted Christian word needs to look at this use of agapao in the Greek Bible of 2 Samuel 13:1, just before Amnon goes on to rape Tamar.]
God might steer the concept of love with this word, but the starting point was a function of how the word was being used in the broader culture at the time of the New Testament.
5. So how does the NT understand love in relation to God? Let's start with John 3:16--God's love leads him to save. Romans 1:17 says the same--God demonstrates his righteousness by making a way of salvation. Both Paul and Acts emphasize that God is reaching out to everyone. He is expanding his reach beyond the Jews to non-Jews. The Lord does not want anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance (2 Pet. 3:9). God wants everyone to be saved (1 Tim. 2:4).
This is the primary theme. God wants to save and he wants to save everyone.
But there is a secondary theme. Not everyone will be saved. This is also a dominant reality of the New Testament and this is where the logical problem arises:
1. God wants everyone to be saved.
2. God is all powerful.
The logical conclusion would be universalism, that 3. Everyone will be saved.
So where is the logical problem?
a. True, there are some Christian universalists and "hopeful" universalists (people who can't entirely justify universalism in their minds but hope God can). But this is not a position most of us feel like we can take biblically or theologically. Justice does matter even if it is not absolute.
b. Few of us would consciously fiddle with #2. There are some voices who would argue that the NT authors did not yet fully understand the omnipotence and omniscience of God, but this is not a path most of us want to take.
c. So we are left to qualify #1. Piper in effect negates #1. God simply doesn't want everyone to be saved. Indeed, he has determined himself that most will go to hell for all eternity. He determines everything that happens and has thus set up the system to send almost everyone to eternal damnation.
This wreaks havoc with the overwhelming emphasis and thrust of the New Testament. It undermines the central message of God's love. It does not modify or expand the meaning of the word love. It subverts it, changes it into is virtual opposite.
d. Arminians suggest that there is another principle in play here. That is to say, #1 is not absolute. This is infinitely more preferable a move both logically and biblically to Piper's virtual negation.
So Arminians suggest that there is another premise that makes the logic go something like the following.
1. God prefers everyone to be saved.
2. God wants even more for individuals to choose for him to save them.
3. God is able to save.
4. Those who choose him will be saved.
This is not only more logical than Piper's scheme. It fits the overall tenor of the New Testament much more naturally. [Piper also does not operate as if the NT gives a more precise understanding of God than the OT. He flattens out the understanding of God in the biblical texts.]
I'll leave it there for today. But let me emphasize again, the Arminian scheme stays fairly close to the surface meaning of the biblical texts. It takes the words in their most natural sense. Piper's scheme requires us to redefine the meaning of central passages in the name of difficult passages. He uses the "naughty verses" to reinterpret the central ones and thus gets the biblical priorities out of order.
The unintended consequence is often a Christian whose values are out of whack, a Christian who sees justice as more important than mercy.
Monday, November 02, 2015
Walking Dead and Aikido
I generally blame my wife for the fact that I know a little bit about The Walking Dead. It is an intriguing series that raises serious philosophical questions about life and death, about what it means to be alive and about the meaning of life. The characters live in a liminal zone between life and death, neither being truly alive or fully dead. Every moment of their existence begs the existential question--what do I have to live for?
Last night's episode (November 1, 2015) provided a single character back story, a brilliant piece of background to a character who was in earlier seasons of the series and then reintroduced recently. He has changed since we last saw him, and this episode explains why.
As with so many of the characters, Morgan would be a highly noble person in the normal world. However, his principles in this liminal zone make him a potential liability. Following the philosophy of Aikido, Morgan refuses to take a life. He will end the undead. He will fight in self-defense. But he will not kill another human being.
I am not a pacifist, but I found something very Christian about Morgan's morals. I always find it sad when non-Christian systems come off more Christ-like than some Christian ideologies. Morgan has come to treat every life as sacred. He not only insists on burying humans who die. He buries zombies he terminates too. At one point, he puts the names of the dead zombies on crosses if he can ascertain them.
Every life is sacred. Every human life is worthwhile, no matter how far astray he or she has gone. It is always sorrowful to have to take a life. I'm reinvigorated in my affirmation of these Christian values because of a zombie show last night. Every human is created in the image of God.
Last night's episode (November 1, 2015) provided a single character back story, a brilliant piece of background to a character who was in earlier seasons of the series and then reintroduced recently. He has changed since we last saw him, and this episode explains why.
As with so many of the characters, Morgan would be a highly noble person in the normal world. However, his principles in this liminal zone make him a potential liability. Following the philosophy of Aikido, Morgan refuses to take a life. He will end the undead. He will fight in self-defense. But he will not kill another human being.
I am not a pacifist, but I found something very Christian about Morgan's morals. I always find it sad when non-Christian systems come off more Christ-like than some Christian ideologies. Morgan has come to treat every life as sacred. He not only insists on burying humans who die. He buries zombies he terminates too. At one point, he puts the names of the dead zombies on crosses if he can ascertain them.
Every life is sacred. Every human life is worthwhile, no matter how far astray he or she has gone. It is always sorrowful to have to take a life. I'm reinvigorated in my affirmation of these Christian values because of a zombie show last night. Every human is created in the image of God.
Disagree with Schenck Day!
I had a fun idea yesterday (although we'll see how fun it actually turns out). Why don't I invite everyone to mention some issue they disagree with me on. I'm not looking for a fight (and I hope you don't fight with each other). I just think it would be interesting to know what percentage of the time people actually like or agree with what I post here.
So how about it? Are there some positions I've sketched out here over the years that you don't like? What percentage of the time would you say you like what I post?
Again, I hope we won't end up with food fights. Talk to me rather than to each other. :-)
So how about it? Are there some positions I've sketched out here over the years that you don't like? What percentage of the time would you say you like what I post?
Again, I hope we won't end up with food fights. Talk to me rather than to each other. :-)
Sunday, November 01, 2015
ET2. The foundational value of a Christian ethic is love.
This is the second post on Christian ethics 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. The third set was on sacraments. This final section is on Christian ethics.
_______________________________
The foundational value of a Christian ethic is love.
1. In Matthew 22:34-40, when Jesus is asked what the greatest commandment is, his response is, "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."
The rest of the New Testament confirms this truth. In Romans 13:8-10, Paul says, "Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. The commandments, 'You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not covet'; and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law."
All the commands of the Bible, wherever they may be found, are summed up in these two ethical injunctions. If at any time someone thinks God wants them to do something that contradicts love of neighbor, they are mistaken. Any application of Scripture that contradicts love of God, neighbor, and self, is a misapplication. The Bible cannot be used to contradict Jesus or this cornerstone of New Testament ethics.
No matter how pious sounding the argument may be, an ethical maxim is simply wrong if it truly contradicts love of God, neighbor, or self. These are the ethical absolutes of the Christian faith, to which there are no exceptions.
In Luke 10:25-37, a lawyer tries to find an exception to whom he should love by supposing that not every person might be his neighbor. Jesus responds with the Parable of the Good Samaritan, in which someone the lawyer might not want to love--a Samaritan--proves to be the one who acts lovingly toward his neighbor. At least part of Jesus' point is that everyone is our neighbor, not just our friends but our enemies as well.
Jesus captures this truth best in Matthew 5:43-48. Here he tells his followers that they must love completely, as God the Father loves completely. They are not only to love their friends--do not even disreputable people love that much. No, they are to love their enemies, as God does when he sends the sun and rain on everyone. Therefore, the love of neighbor means the love of everyone, friend and enemy. We must love every human being.
2. It is important to say that love must be carefully defined. When we were considering what it means to say that God is love, we saw that Jesus describes love very practically in Matthew 7:12: "In everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets." Love here is not a feeling. It is a choice. Love is the choice to act in a way that is for the good or benefit of others.
You can thus "love" another person when in fact you really do not like the other person. You can choose to act in a loving way when you do not feel like it at all. You can do for them what you would want them to do for you, assuming you have a healthy sense of yourself.
There are important considerations. You can be mistaken in what you think is for the benefit of others. Love is not about the real consequences of your action but your motivations for doing them.
Another very important consideration is that the benefit of others often means not making them happy in the short term. Sometimes the loving thing to do is to discipline another person in hope that he or she will grow to become a better person. It is not loving to help a person do wrong or do evil, which is ultimately harmful to their soul and destiny.
Further, there is a love of the many that may require justice to the individual. Love of the many never justifies wrongdoing to the few or the one, but there may be a time when the love of the many requires us to discipline the individual or let them experience pain. The administration of justice need not be unloving.
Justice may protect the many from the few. In war or extremely unusual circumstances, choices may have to be made that result in the death or harm of an individual. These choices, however, are made for the greater good under unusual circumstances and are not preferred but necessary. They are a choice for the greater good, not a choice for individual harm. There should always be regret when a life must be taken, for every individual is created in the image of God.
3. We are also assuming a healthy sense of self-worth when we say to love your neighbor as yourself or when we say to do to others as you would have them do to you. There are individuals who harm themselves. There are individuals who do not have a healthy sense of their own worth.
Most people have the opposite problem. They are too focused on their own advantage and not that of others. When Jesus says these things, he is assuming that we have a healthy sense of our self-worth. We are created in the image of God, therefore all human life is valuable. Every individual is precious in God's sight, even the vilest of sinners. Indeed, God grieves even at Satan's impending destruction.
4. Love of God never contradicts love of others or love of ourselves. When we love ourselves properly, we love ourselves in the context of our love of God. God has made us, so we love ourselves as individuals loved by God. We do not love ourselves as more important than God, for we are not. There may be decisions of self-sacrifice we make that are not unloving toward ourselves but love ourselves as honored--and thus benefited greatly--to serve the Lord and others in our sacrifice.
Love of others never contradicts the love of God both because we love others as individuals loved by God and, even more significantly, realizing that to a very large extent we fulfill our love of God by loving others. God never calls us to wrong or truly harm others; therefore, the love of God never requires hatred toward others.
5. We love God by recognizing him as the King, the most significant thing that exists. We recognize his will as the supreme will of the universe. We love God by aligning our will to his will. What is sin but when our wills are in conflict with his will?
Paul well captures what it means to love God when he says that, "Whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God" (1 Cor. 10:31). Similarly, Colossians 3:17 says, "Whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him." We love God by giving him his appropriate place in the universe.
We act as if we truly believe that he is the most significant Being that exists. We act as if his will is the final answer for the universe. We see our choices as messengers of his will in the world. We have to make them, for that is how God has made us, but we make those choices as we believe he would make them.
The foundational value of a Christian ethic is love--love of God, love of our neighbors and enemies, and a healthy valuing of ourselves.
Next Sunday: ET3. We must not let any other thing take God's place in our life.
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. The third set was on sacraments. This final section is on Christian ethics.
_______________________________
The foundational value of a Christian ethic is love.
1. In Matthew 22:34-40, when Jesus is asked what the greatest commandment is, his response is, "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."
The rest of the New Testament confirms this truth. In Romans 13:8-10, Paul says, "Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. The commandments, 'You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not covet'; and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law."
All the commands of the Bible, wherever they may be found, are summed up in these two ethical injunctions. If at any time someone thinks God wants them to do something that contradicts love of neighbor, they are mistaken. Any application of Scripture that contradicts love of God, neighbor, and self, is a misapplication. The Bible cannot be used to contradict Jesus or this cornerstone of New Testament ethics.
No matter how pious sounding the argument may be, an ethical maxim is simply wrong if it truly contradicts love of God, neighbor, or self. These are the ethical absolutes of the Christian faith, to which there are no exceptions.
In Luke 10:25-37, a lawyer tries to find an exception to whom he should love by supposing that not every person might be his neighbor. Jesus responds with the Parable of the Good Samaritan, in which someone the lawyer might not want to love--a Samaritan--proves to be the one who acts lovingly toward his neighbor. At least part of Jesus' point is that everyone is our neighbor, not just our friends but our enemies as well.
Jesus captures this truth best in Matthew 5:43-48. Here he tells his followers that they must love completely, as God the Father loves completely. They are not only to love their friends--do not even disreputable people love that much. No, they are to love their enemies, as God does when he sends the sun and rain on everyone. Therefore, the love of neighbor means the love of everyone, friend and enemy. We must love every human being.
2. It is important to say that love must be carefully defined. When we were considering what it means to say that God is love, we saw that Jesus describes love very practically in Matthew 7:12: "In everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets." Love here is not a feeling. It is a choice. Love is the choice to act in a way that is for the good or benefit of others.
You can thus "love" another person when in fact you really do not like the other person. You can choose to act in a loving way when you do not feel like it at all. You can do for them what you would want them to do for you, assuming you have a healthy sense of yourself.
There are important considerations. You can be mistaken in what you think is for the benefit of others. Love is not about the real consequences of your action but your motivations for doing them.
Another very important consideration is that the benefit of others often means not making them happy in the short term. Sometimes the loving thing to do is to discipline another person in hope that he or she will grow to become a better person. It is not loving to help a person do wrong or do evil, which is ultimately harmful to their soul and destiny.
Further, there is a love of the many that may require justice to the individual. Love of the many never justifies wrongdoing to the few or the one, but there may be a time when the love of the many requires us to discipline the individual or let them experience pain. The administration of justice need not be unloving.
Justice may protect the many from the few. In war or extremely unusual circumstances, choices may have to be made that result in the death or harm of an individual. These choices, however, are made for the greater good under unusual circumstances and are not preferred but necessary. They are a choice for the greater good, not a choice for individual harm. There should always be regret when a life must be taken, for every individual is created in the image of God.
3. We are also assuming a healthy sense of self-worth when we say to love your neighbor as yourself or when we say to do to others as you would have them do to you. There are individuals who harm themselves. There are individuals who do not have a healthy sense of their own worth.
Most people have the opposite problem. They are too focused on their own advantage and not that of others. When Jesus says these things, he is assuming that we have a healthy sense of our self-worth. We are created in the image of God, therefore all human life is valuable. Every individual is precious in God's sight, even the vilest of sinners. Indeed, God grieves even at Satan's impending destruction.
4. Love of God never contradicts love of others or love of ourselves. When we love ourselves properly, we love ourselves in the context of our love of God. God has made us, so we love ourselves as individuals loved by God. We do not love ourselves as more important than God, for we are not. There may be decisions of self-sacrifice we make that are not unloving toward ourselves but love ourselves as honored--and thus benefited greatly--to serve the Lord and others in our sacrifice.
Love of others never contradicts the love of God both because we love others as individuals loved by God and, even more significantly, realizing that to a very large extent we fulfill our love of God by loving others. God never calls us to wrong or truly harm others; therefore, the love of God never requires hatred toward others.
5. We love God by recognizing him as the King, the most significant thing that exists. We recognize his will as the supreme will of the universe. We love God by aligning our will to his will. What is sin but when our wills are in conflict with his will?
Paul well captures what it means to love God when he says that, "Whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God" (1 Cor. 10:31). Similarly, Colossians 3:17 says, "Whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him." We love God by giving him his appropriate place in the universe.
We act as if we truly believe that he is the most significant Being that exists. We act as if his will is the final answer for the universe. We see our choices as messengers of his will in the world. We have to make them, for that is how God has made us, but we make those choices as we believe he would make them.
The foundational value of a Christian ethic is love--love of God, love of our neighbors and enemies, and a healthy valuing of ourselves.
Next Sunday: ET3. We must not let any other thing take God's place in our life.
Thursday, October 29, 2015
The Cardboard Paul
There is a very simple and tidy version of Paul that is easy to understand and explain. What's nice about it is that it can be taught from children's church to the pulpit. You can't get to heaven by being good enough. No one can earn their way. All we need to do is believe in Jesus and we'll go to heaven.
It's not that there's anything particularly wrong with that theology. But there are a number of scholarly consensuses that may surprise even many pastors. These are places where most Pauline experts pretty much agree that Paul was saying something a little different from popular interpretations. Here are some examples:
It's not that there's anything particularly wrong with that theology. But there are a number of scholarly consensuses that may surprise even many pastors. These are places where most Pauline experts pretty much agree that Paul was saying something a little different from popular interpretations. Here are some examples:
- "Paul" was not Paul's Christian name. Acts calls him "Saul" for about 10 years after he believed. He did not see his faith in Jesus as a changing of religions. He remained an Israelite to his death. The name "Paul" probably relates to his Roman identity.
- Paul's opponents in Galatia were not non-believing Jews but other Christians.
- The starting point for all Paul's language of law is the Jewish law. Paul never uses a phrase like "the moral law." Our starting point for all Paul's language of law should be the Jewish Law.
- The phrase, "the righteousness of God" in Romans 1:17 is now generally taken in reference to God's righteousness, his faithfulness to save, not to a righteous standing from God (although that idea is also in Paul). The OT evidence for this reading is overwhelming.
- When Paul says, "all have sinned," he was thinking in terms of Jews and Gentiles, both groups, even though he held this of all individuals too.
- Romans 7 is not about the inability of a Christian or Paul himself to do good. In the overall context, Paul is vividly picturing the struggle of someone who wants to serve God, but is not yet in Christ.
- Paul doesn't really talk about heaven as our eternal destiny but about a future resurrection to a restored and liberated earth.
- Romans 9-11 are not primarily about individual predestination but about God's plan to bring the Gentiles into the people of God while most of Israel disbelieved.
- Paul's ministry focused on non-Jews. He did not primarily minister to Jews nor did he see his mission as ministering in established churches. He started churches where there weren't any and he primarily focused on Gentiles. All his churches were primarily Gentile churches.
- Paul did not see himself as a horrible, miserable failure at keeping the Law before he believed. Quite the contrary. He probably thought he was the best Pharisee since sliced bread (Phil. 3:6).
- Gospel certainly means "good news," but the focus of the good news for Paul was not on salvation but on the inaugurated reign of Jesus. Salvation may be an implication of the good news, but it is not the center of the good news.
- "Justification by faith" was not really the center of Paul's theology but a theme that emerged primarily when he was debating with his Christian opponents (e.g., in Galatians and Romans).
- The expression, the "faith of Jesus Christ" in Romans 3:22 and Galatians 2:16 is probably a reference to the "faithfulness of Jesus Christ" to death, although I think most of Paul's references to faith have to do with human faith in God. Paul's theology was thus more theo-centric than Christo-centric.
- The expression "works of Law" especially had in mind those parts of the Jewish Law that distinguished Jew from Gentile (e.g., circumcision). Paul was not talking so much about faith versus works in the abstract.
- In Romans 2, Paul refers to Gentile Christians when he speaks of Gentiles who demonstrate the law written on their heart. This means they have transformed minds, walk in the Spirit, love their neighbor, etc.
- Paul teaches a thorough depravity in Romans 3 rather than an absolute depravity.
- Paul overwhelmingly understands salvation in the future tense. We will be saved from wrath (Rom. 5:9). Any present tense language is proleptic, anticipatory.
- Paul does not have a doctrine of inherited sin or a sin nature. This is a bad translation in the NIV1984. Paul speaks of "flesh," which is not inherently sinful but inherently weak. When Sin entered the world, the default human state became sinful, not because we have a sin nature but because our flesh exists in a world in which Sin reigns. We cannot help but sin without the power of the Spirit. But we did not sin "in" Adam (Augustine's misinterpretation of Rom. 5:12). We sin like Adam.
- The transformed mind of Romans 12:2 is not about ideas but about our mindset toward how to live, especially to love our neighbor as ourselves.
- Paul probably lost the debate at Antioch in Galatians 2 and spent most of his ministry in some tension with the Jerusalem church, including James and Peter.
- I don't think Galatians was Paul's first letter, but a letter written closer to the time of Romans, perhaps while Paul was in Ephesus on his third missionary journey. Corinth has also been suggested on his second.
- Both Philippians and Philemon may have been written during jail times at Ephesus. It seems quite possible that Paul was jailed for a time at Ephesus around the time of Acts 19 and that he may have been kicked out of the city and told not to return.
- I'm sympathetic to the interpretation that sees the "worship of angels" in Colossians 2 as a reference to worship with angels rather than worshiping angels.
- Many more...
Wednesday, October 28, 2015
A Practical Theology of Baptism
Today my Romans class reached Romans 6:4 and we ended up spending most of the class discussing the practical theology of baptism. I consider myself very wesleyan when it comes to the topic (in contrast to Wesley-an). Of course I don't expect anyone to agree with me but here were my positions:
- Baptism is normative (although not essential for salvation... Salvationists and Friends can still go to heaven). Baptism does not "save" you, nor does it cleanse "original sin."
- Baptism is a means of grace, but the specifics of the grace dispensed varies somewhat depending on the point when a person is being baptized (e.g., infant versus child versus adult, etc).
- The earliest church probably baptized primarily by immersion, but the word baptizo does not necessarily mean "to immerse." It's not a point to fight over, although immersion probably has the strongest symbolism of death to our former self.
- There are advantages both to infant and believer's baptism. The advantage for infant baptism is the strong claim on the child for Christ by the community from the very beginning. It does not "save" the child, who will need to confess faith subsequently and receive the Holy Spirit. But it strongly affirms inclusion in the community of faith and makes faith the assumption of the future.
- The advantage of believer's baptism is the power of conscious, individual choice. It strongly affirms the individual faith decision for Christ, although it suggests the person is in a kind of limbo up to that point (the child is a stranger in the church's midst).
- Rebaptism is not ideal or necessary, but is a pastoral call--would rebaptism significantly invigorate the person spiritually.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
