3. Adventures in Jewelry

The series continues.

1. The Memory Verse Approach
2. Adventures in Interpretation

___________________
1. As holiness folk go, my parents really weren't legalistic. In fact, after my mother passed, I realized that she actually wanted to look nice in the 1950s. She and my father both had some stylish hats. While I had thought she had wrestled with putting knee socks on my sisters out of a desire to keep them warm, it turns out they were simpler (and more stylish) than full leggings.

In short, when my mother received Philippians 2:12 from the Lord -- "work out your salvation with fear and trembling" -- it truly was moving them in a direction that showed more leg.

I think I have observed some "young people" (they're less and less young) in holiness churches who follow the dress code but probably aren't too invested in it. They follow the norms because they go to holiness churches and it's the way. But it's really more culture for them than conviction. 

I've come to wonder if my mother and father were a little like that in their day in the 1950s. Don't get me wrong. It annoyed my father when our pastor in Florida mowed the lawn in shorts. My mother never wore sweats until she was in her eighties and -- even then -- my sister probably dressed her that way. She had a bun to her final day. (I might add it wasn't a standard issue bun. Her bun was more work than most "Wesleyan wads.")

2. One of my sisters felt a call to ministry and became ordained in the Wesleyan Church. She is by far my most conservative sister, a clear indication that conservatism in holiness circles doesn't cut the same way as conservatism in other churches. I do think that the broader conservative culture did have some impact on her. It seemed important to her in middle age for her husband to get ordained as well. There was a joke among the ordination council that perhaps she felt he was called more than he did.

The driving force on her, I believe, was the husband-headship passages in the New Testament. I believe she felt pressure for him to be ordained so that her ordination would not violate husband-headship. Of course, as I have written elsewhere, the Bible doesn't see any contradiction between husband headship and women in leadership and ministry. Deborah and Huldah are married and yet are higher leaders than their husbands.

When one of my nephews was married in a holiness church, I noticed that the ceremony made a point of the wife obeying her husband. This seemed new for me for a holiness church. The holiness churches of the early 1900s were full of female ministers, but there aren't many female ministers today in holiness circles, I don't believe. I attribute this to broader American fundamentalist influence on holiness denominations. 

I digress. My sister was the assistant pastor during some of my high school years. While "standards" of dress and such had always been in my general church environment, her ministry presence would bring them much more to the forefront. Standards and such became a new theme in preaching from time to time. For a very brief time, I even wore sweats to practice track rather than shorts.

Of course, the question of standards impacted women much more than men. If I ever worried about not wearing short sleaves, it was a very brief moment indeed. And I continued to wear shorts to run.

I did not worry too much about what other people did. I have yet to figure out that part of my psychology. My theology told me that others were endangering their eternal destiny if they did not obey God's laws, but it didn't seem to bother me. For whatever reason, I feared for myself, but the destiny of others didn't seem real to me. 

I remember at a Key Club convention that one of my high school acquaintances was allegedly in his hotel room with a girl. My theology should have been very concerned for him. But instead, I called his room and jokingly asked him what he was doing. "Are you out of breath, Chris?" I jokingly asked. I still don't quite understand how that part of my brain works.

3. Then I went to college. Being at a college where most everyone was somewhat like me was exhilirating. I had always felt like I was in a foreign land in high school. Although many of my high school classmates actually turned out to be rather serious Christians, they didn't fit my box at the time. I more or less assumed they were all hell-bound.

But the people at Central Wesleyan College (now Southern Wesleyan) were my people. It was like coming home or going to church camp. Of course, they weren't really holiness people. More on that in a moment.

Since no one at my high school was my kind of Christian, there was no one I thought I should date. I had crushes on various classmates, but in my narrow-minded world, I assumed they weren't Christians. But now at college, I could date. It was an incredibly terrifying thought, but my hormones would overcome.

There was a girl I had seen in a traveling singing group before I had gone to Central. I thought she was cute and -- in the most fearsome moment of my life to that date -- I asked her to the Christmas banquet. It was incredibly merciful of her to accept, given what an incredibly awkward, backward person I was. We would end up dating for about a year and a half.

But now all the neurotic tendencies that are Ken would ramp up. In general, it didn't bother me if the women on campus wore make-up, wore pants and slacks, wore jewelry, or cut their hair. Like I mentioned above, my psychology seemed singularly unconcerned about what others did.

However, I feared for my own soul if I were to date someone who did all those things. Would God be angry at me for marrying someone who wore makeup, wore slacks and plants, had earrings, and cut their hair? 

Meanwhile, my mother told me not to worry too much about it. God would take care of everything, she suggested. That didn't make sense to me. Dating at a small Christian college was serious -- "get a ring by spring," as the saying goes. I didn't think I should date someone that I wouldn't theoretically be able to marry. 

4. I should give some backstory here. When I was eleven, I woke up from a nap at camp meeting deathly afraid for my soul. It's like a switch was flipped in my conscience. I would have bouts of paralyzing fear for my soul for the next ten years. I don't suppose it helped that those where the years of Hal Lindsey and the reel to reel movies they showed in church about the rapture and the Tribulation (A Thief in the Night, A Distant Thunder).

No matter how many times I asked God to forgive my sins, I almost never had peace. There was one or two times when I had peace, and I pointed to those moments as my salvation. Most of the time, I couldn't think of anything I needed to ask God to forgive me for. But then I worried, "If I can't remember a sin to ask forgiveness for, can I ever be forgiven for it?" It was a quite neurotic time, and it would wreak havoc with my dating in college. I merely want to note that I had an overactive conscience in those days.

Given my fearfulness, I finally went to the girl I was dating and said (I'm sure it was unbelievable) that I thought I should stop dating her because she didn't do the things I was worried about. I was quite sincere. I was not expecting her to change, and I didn't mean to pressure her to change. I simply -- quite neurotically -- was worried for my own soul.

She said she prayed about it and that the Lord had told her to stop wearing jewelry and make up and to only wear dresses and skirts. Quite embarrassing to say, but it's important backstory for one of the most pivotal moments in my hermeneutical story. What a horrible thing I inflicted on her for over a year.

5. Wisely, she eventually broke up with me. You can imagine what a psycho of indecision I was. "Am I saved? I'm not sure I've ever been saved." "I love you." "Do I love you?" In all my Spock-like psychology, these are objective questions I needed to gather evidence about and form the most logical conclusions on. It was too much for anyone but a mother to bear.

On my way back to school after a Christmas break, I wrestled with whether I was entirely sanctified or not. I'm sure I had asked for it many times at every camp meeting and church service it was preached. I thought of the sermons on Jacob wrestling with the angel -- "I will not let you go until you bless me." 

"If you really wanted to serve God with your whole heart," a voice said in my head as I drove from Fort Lauderdale to Lakeland, "you wouldn't go any further back to school until you were entirely sanctified." So after some wrestling, I told the Lord that I wouldn't leave Lakeland for Central until I was entirely sanctified, even if I had to miss the spring semester.

In that moment, I felt a peace. When I got to Lakeland, I went into the sanctuary of the Wesleyan church there and thanked the Lord for sanctification. Then the next morning, I drove the rest of the way back to school.

Was that really the Lord? Was it the Devil torturing me? Was it some neurotic phase that I eventually grew out of? Perhaps the Lord was merciful and gave me peace despite my freakishness. Or maybe it was a predictable psychological release after a self-inflicted crisis.

6. After she broke up with me, she started wearing pants and make-up again. The earrings came back on. Good for her. It built to a crisis in me, though. At first I was hurt because it felt personal. Hadn't she said she prayed through on it? 

At one point, I met with the Resident Director of the girls' hall, Judy (then) Huffman. She suggested I might fit in better at Kentucky Mountain Bible Institute than at Central. Ouch. That hurt because, in my mind, I wasn't like the people at Hobe Sound or KMBI. I had a little condescension toward them, even though I was playing out their script.

I prayed with Judy. I said, "Lord, if I'm wrong on these standards, please show me." I had no expectation that he would, though. I know I'm right, I thought to myself.

At some point, I went to talk to Dr. Herb Dongell, one of the professors. I knew him to be one of the more conservative professors at CWC. I asked him about things like whether women should only wear dresses and skirts.

I was surprised by his answer. "If you look at the clothing that men and women wore in Bible times," he said, "it really wasn't that different." I suppose his point was that the clothing that is considered male or female changes over time and changes in particular with culture.

There was a verse in Deuteronomy that someone had pointed out to me. It was Deuteronomy 22:5 -- "It's an abomination for a woman to wear that which pertaineth to a man." But Dr. Dongell was indicating that these norms change over time.  

7. My wrestling finally came to a head one day in the library. I had run into my former girlfriend and saw that she had a ring back on her finger. In my agony over losing her, a tiny little explosion happened in my brain. "Aw, what does it matter???"

In the end, I really couldn't care less whether someone wore a ring or an earring or pants or a dress or make-up. They were the rules of my culture but, really, they all seemed rather silly things to worry about. For most women, wearing an earring is little different from combing your hair.

When I got married, I had a wedding ring. I had never worn any kind of ring before -- I didn't even get a class ring. I found it very uncomfortable and twisted it incessantly for the first few years of my marriage. Soon after my wedding, a more conservative acquaintance asked to see it. I shouldn't have taken it off but I gave it to them. They proceeded to dance around with it as if to portray the spirit with which I must surely wear it.

In retrospect, it is quite funny to me. The complete mistaking of my attitude toward the ring is quite hilarious, actually quite embarrassing for them. They made quite a fool of themselves jigging around. But this is how paradigms work.

In her paradigm, this person couldn't imagine that a person could wear jewelry without manifesting the most ungodly pridefulness. But this is not really true to the attitude of most women. Having a pair of nice shoes. Wearing a tie. Having a nice shirt or a nice jacket. These really are no different that putting on a little make-up or a nice pair of earrings or a necklace.

I was particularly struck my final year at one of the professor's daughters who broke all the rules of my holiness background. She had short hair, wore jeans, had earrings. Yet it seemed to me that she was the most spiritual student on campus. Here I was, the student body chaplain, and she had a joy in the Lord that I had never experienced. It was another bit of what I call "naughty data" that would eventually unravel my paradigm.

7. In my final year at Central, I asked someone to the Christmas banquet who was from Kentucky. She and her sister were sometimes called the "Hollywood girls" in their home church because they wore a little make-up. They only wore dresses, but they had shoulder-length hair rather than a bun.

They found the pastor's daughter at their home church a little annoying. From their perspective, she rolled out of bed without combing her hair. Her clothes were wrinkly and unkempt. AND, the church thought she was oh so holy. Their perspective might have been a little less than objective.

However, it struck me that a person can be just as proud about being homely as a person can be proud about how ornate they are. Pride was of course one of the worse sins for my background (Prov. 16:18). But pride is a matter of the heart, not of external appearance itself. A person can dress ornately and not be prideful in their heart. And a person can be proud in their slovenliness. 

Human nature truly is remarkable in its ability to twist things. I've seen some buns that were incredibly ornate to me.

I was not wired for such show. If the clothes make the man, I have generally been unmade most of my life. More than once, friends have mocked the state of my shoes. These are partially my personality and partially a hangover from my holiness childhood.

The above is the personal background now for the exegesis that will follow. You see, there are verses to go with these standards. How did I process through them as these changes were taking place in me?

Pauline Studies 4: Paul and the Spirit

Just to put a pulse through it, I am now beyond Kris Song's chapter on "Paul and the Spirit" in Gupta, Heim, and McKnight's The State of Pauline Studies. Previous posts:

• Paul and the Messiah
• Paul and Judaism 
• Paul and Salvation

I don't have much to say about this chapter 4. I did find interesting the discussion of various backgrounds that have been proposed for Paul's sense of the Holy Spirit. Stoicism is sometimes suggested. I could see it being one filter in Paul's paradigm of the person. I will also say that Dale Martin's The Corinthian Body was one of those studies that just completely exposed my unexamined assumptions about ancient psychology. One of the more transformative studies I've read even if extreme perhaps at some points.

I've long been struck by Paul's use of the phrase "Spirit of holiness" in Romans 1:4. It seems to reveal an earlier layer of Christian tradition and it's not lost on me that it is an expression we find in the Dead Sea Scrolls. So, my suggestion is that Paul's understanding of the Spirit starts with a very Jewish foundation. Then quite possibly it is filtered a smidge through some Hellenistic dynamics.

Sermon Starters: Sailing with the Wind

Preaching today at Trinity Wesleyan in Tipton.

Title: Sailing with the Wind

Text: John 3:1-8

Introduction

• My background with boats -- not much
• Idea for outline came from a recent sermon by Steve Deneff and Emily Vermilya at College Wesleyan Church in Marion, Indiana

1. The Row Boat
Whether as a church or in our individual lives, some of us try to do it all ourselves

• There's nothing wrong with effort. 
• Examples of stick-to-it-iveness. Battle of the Bulge. A recent talk I heard from the CEO of a Foundation. "If it is to be, it is up to me." 

BUT... we ultimately can't do it all ourselves:

1. Not as a church (Ephesians 4:12)
2. Not as individuals (Ephesians 2:8)

2. The Motor Boat
Systems and planning are important, but they can only get you so far. Sometimes, they can keep you going in the wrong direction.

• There's nothing wrong with having processes in place.
• Examples -- how UMC churches almost don't seem to need their pastors. having good software

BUT... what if you're headed in the wrong direction?

• Forrest Gump's boat. The pilot who lost his way. Beautiful products nobody wants.
• Values, Mission, Vision, strategic plan, but no one comes to church

3. The Sail Boat
You have a direction, but you're navigating adverse winds AND you're blown by the Spirit (John 3).

• Sometimes the wind of the Spirit isn't blowing where you think it is.
• Missional thinking -- discover what God is already doing and get on board with his mission (Joshua 5 and the angel of the LORD)
• Don't be a Pharisee in the Gospels -- had to know they were wrong but persisted anyway. Be open to course corrections.

The Bible gives us the big picture of how the wind blows.

• God won't tell you to have an affair. He won't tell you to set your neighbor's house on fire or mess up your neighbor's life. He won't tell you to let someone starve or freeze to death.
• The specifics take more discernment. Be attentive to the Wind (Isaiah 30:21). It's even better when you do it together.

Conclusion
Paul in Acts 27 -- There were the things the sailors thought were best. Then there were the things God told Paul were best. If we don't want our ships to be shattered, we need to sail with the Wind.

2. Adventures in Interpretation

Post, the second. Here, the first. 

2
Adventures in Interpretation
When I was in my late twenties and early thirties, I wondered if I would have had so many faith struggles if I had been born into a more mainstream Christian setting. Because my background was so pre-modern, we just didn't know how to read the Bible in context. So many interpretations seemed to evaporate with just a little bit of contextual light. This especially began to happen when I was learning inductive Bible study at Asbury Seminary.

For a while in seminary, I would get into arguments with my mother when I would come home on break (she insisted they were just discussions). At some point, I recognized it was unhealthy for me to argue with her. She would never change her mind, and I frankly didn't really want her to. I'm an F on the Myers-Briggs when it comes to people ("feeler"), a T when it comes to my own thoughts ("thinker"). That means I'm more interested in people being happy than being right. In my opinion, my mother used her mind to fit the evidence into her existing paradigms. But by mid-seminary, I had shifted to the goal of coming to the most likely conclusion given the evidence.

At one point, she thought me rebellious because she would feed me fundamentalist literature, but I would ultimately end up with the opposite conclusions. But I didn't experience myself as rebellious. Indeed, I loved my heritage and at least initially tried to fit my learning within those same frameworks. However, over time, many positions just unraveled in my mind -- often quite painfully. 

Standards
By the time I was born, Wesleyans in general were on a trajectory away from worrying so much about jewelry and how you dressed. But my family was still very connected to the older holiness "standards." In particular, many in my father's extended family still followed those rules extensively.

Predictably, most of the rules related to women. Women should not wear make-up or jewelry (cf. 1 Tim. 2:9-10; 1 Peter 3:3-4). So no earrings or finger rings. They should not wear pants or slacks -- only dresses and skirts (Deut. 22:5). They should not cut their hair but, preferably, wear it up in a bun as a covering (1 Cor. 11:5-6, 11-12).

But men should also be clean-shaven (Lev. 19:27). They should have short hair (1 Cor. 11:14). They shouldn't wear shorts -- hard to find a verse here other than not causing other people to lust after you. Some holiness men didn't even wear short sleeves so as not to tempt others with their sexy elbows. I once heard Exodus 28:42 quoted in regards to shorts. It's a bit funny since the verse is actually telling priests to wear something like shorts under their robes.

I should note that my mother and father were not particularly legalistic about such things. They tried to be respectful of my father's family. Keeping the peace was more the priority. On the Myers-Briggs, we were a "feeling" family. Some of my dad's family were "thinkers," meaning that if they thought something was right, they insisted that everyone else agree with them and follow their rules. This made for some tense moments from time to time.

For example, in 1968, my father decided to follow the merger of the Pilgrim Holiness Church into the Wesleyan Church. Some of his relatives thought this was wrong and strongly tried to persuade him to pull out with them. He didn't. One brother-in-law told him he would pray for his soul.

Sabbath
We had significant rules for keeping the Sabbath, the fourth of the Ten Commandments. As Exodus 20:8-11 says, there was to be no work done on the Sabbath. Over the years, my father would occasionally have opportunities to work overtime for GMAC on weekends -- for example, to assess hurricane damage on vehicles. But he would not work on Sunday.

This extended beyond us working to eating out where you were facilitating someone else working on Sunday. Following Nehemiah 10:31 and 13:15-22, we did not buy or sell on the Sabbath. My father extended this rule to watching television on Sunday. He feared he would spend all day watching football if he let himself watch TV on Sunday. So Sunday was a television free day in my house -- much to my disappointment when Star Wars and other movies debuted on TV. 

You see, we didn't go to movies either. Movies were associated with loose morals, especially when it came to relationships. People had affairs in movies. And the actors themselves were seen as being people of loose morals -- frequently divorced. My dad's family didn't even believe in having a TV, let alone watching one. For years, my dad suspected that his parents wouldn't visit our home because they thought he had a TV -- even though he didn't at that time.

There's a fun story about a family rule about violence on the television. Although my dad was in WW2, his mother originated in the Old German Baptist community, which was pacifist. So while my family was not pacifist, there was a strong aversion to violence. So, my older sisters were not supposed to watch television shows that had shooting in them.

To get around the rule, they would turn the volume down if it looked like someone was going to fire a gun. On one occasion, they were not quite fast enough. My sister Patricia shot down the hall to get to my father first. "It was in self-defense!!" she exclaimed.

You've probably picked up that Sunday was understood as the Sabbath, and all the Sabbath rules of the Old Testament were transferred to Sunday. I heard that one of the Bible teachers at Frankfort had a very clever Greek argument for this transfer of days based on the idiom, "first of sabbaths" for Sunday. Noting this expression in Luke 24:1 and John 20:1, the teacher suggested that, after the resurrection, Sunday had become the new Sabbath. Ingenious!

Sunday was thus to be set apart as holy. As a child, that equated to being the most boring day of the week. I supposed I would have taken it over going to school, but as an attention deficit boy, it was a bit painful to go to church twice and Sunday School on Sunday. That meant sitting still and listening to whoever was talking (more often, not listening). During revival, we went to church every night during the week too.

Then in the afternoons you did quiet type things, probably took a nap. We didn't play catch or play with friends really. I was once kicked off a playground on Sunday at Hobe Sound because Sunday is a serious day. 

The best part of the day was after church Sunday night, when we often cooked hamburgers and started to transition back to normal time. Sunday lunch was often a highlight too -- the best food of the week. When my brother-in-law and then my sister was pastor of the Fort Lauderdale church, there was usually a family meal with them doing the cooking. (My Depression-raised mother was not a particularly good cook.)

Dancing, Gambling, Drinking
We did not believe in dancing. Square dancing might be ok. Later, if it was choreographed, that might be ok. I went to a Sweet 16 party for Geni Clements in high school. She tried to get me to dance with her, but I just stood there, following the rules. I would have really liked to dance with her. I wasn't sure why we had that rule. But I dutifully resisted.

We did not gamble. In fact, playing with face cards itself had the "appearance of evil" (1 Thess. 5:22, KJV). It's actually a misinterpretation of the verse, but you weren't supposed to do anything that even looked like you might be doing bad things. No candy cigarettes, for example. So we could use Uno cards but no real cards. My dad's family even used a spinner to play Monopoly instead of dice.

Drinking was of course totally out. You could have NyQuil in later years. Definitely only grape juice for communion. Smoking was forbidden as well.

to be continued...

The Week in Review (1-25-25)

1. It was a cold week, with several days hovering around minus temperatures. I don't know if it's accurate, but I read somewhere that as the Arctic warms and melts, there is less containment of cold temperatures to the north, causing them to seep down further south. Reminds me of the movie The Day After Tomorrow (2004).

I ended up ordering another chicken coop, the third real one although we have two small coops and two I've tried to build. The problem with mine and the small ones is that they aren't particularly good in zero-degree weather. The result is that I have a number of more vulnerable chickens in my garage, which is far from ideal.

2. My work is always interesting. We have used AI to translate a number of Kingswood Learn microcourses into Spanish. It's fun to see Bud Bence or Dave Smith speaking fluent Spanish in manipulated videos.

Then of course there is my usual overseeing of the courses we offer -- and the ones I teach as well. There are student issues, helicopter parents. The usual.

3. I took my Wesleyan systematic theology and reformated it as a new iteration: What Christians Believe -- In Simple Terms. It had one sale on the day I put out a Facebook ad. But I took the ad down. I've done that several times. Create an ad. Be disappointed with the initial sales. Take it down. I continue to get a trickle of daily purchases of A Biblical Argument for Women in Ministry and Leadership.

My problem has always been having too many ideas. I probably have 10 books in progress right now. I drive my wife and kids crazy pitching ideas to them.

4. It has been the first week of the Trump administration. Here are some of the developments I've seen.

• He officially defined gender as male and female for the nation.
• He pulled out of the Paris accord in relation to climate change. He pulled out of the World Health Organization.
• Some of his nominees were approved, perhaps most notably Pete Hegseth at the DOD.
• He renamed the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America.
• He tried to purchase Greenland, but apparently it's not for sale.
• He is dismantling DEI progams. There have been extensive movements against any programs that are favorable to minorities. Here in Indiana, the new governor has defunded Martin College, the only primarily African-American college in the state.
• He has frozen foreign aid.
• He was very upset when the bishop at the National Cathedral asked him to show compassion toward immigrants and LGBTQ individuals. He blasted her on social media, as did many others.
• He declassified the files on the JFK assassination.
• The inauguration was taken indoors ostensibly because of the cold. The featured guests were billionaire social media moguls.
• He pardoned all the January 6 rioters, including those who harmed police officers.
• There's a proposed Constitution amendment in the House to allow Trump to have a third term. People are joking about Obama running if that's the case. I can't see it going the distance.
• Security details for people like Fauci have been revoked with words approving violence toward him. I saw some social media from prominent Christians calling for the hanging of Deborah Birx.
• Trump noted that while Biden had pre-emptively pardoned his family and others, he hadn't pardoned himself and thus, presumably, was fair game for prosecution.
• Trump revoked the security clearances of all the intelligence individuals (51 individuals) who thought that the Hunter Biden laptop story bore the hallmarks of a Russian information operation.

Some of these are predictable. Some are more significant than others. Here are some perhaps to watch more carefully.

• ICE has gone into action detaining undocumented immigrants. There are reports of citizens getting swept up with the undocumented with a kind of "guilty till proven innocent" approach. Trump has given the green light to detain at churches and schools. ICE agents can now show up at your worship service to detain whoever they suspect may be undocumented.
• The border was declared a national emergency, allowing the use of the military. The ease with which the military can be called up is a little disturbing.
• By executive order, there is an attempt to undo birthright citizenship. This of course is unconstitutional and probably won't stand, but we'll see what the Supreme Court does. 
• He has abolished rules against discrimination. If you don't want to hire a woman or a person of color just because they're a woman or person of color, you don't have to. The tone does not seem to be one of "everyone should be treated equal" but one of "let's go back to the good old days when white men did whatever they wanted." 
• I don't think most Americans realize how much good the federal government does in helping people in disasters and those on the edges. We take it for granted.  
• Many internal checks and balances are being removed. Last night, 12 independent inspectors were fired in the government. 
• Research on health-related problems like cancer and diabetes has been halted at the NIH.

The evangelical world is over the moon. Franklin Graham's prayer at the inauguration was incredibly celebratory, and I can see the absolute glee among many in my circles on Facebook as well. I've been mulling this over a lot. The only item above that seems overtly religious is the definition of gender. I know that some Bible colleges have struggled with Biden regulations relating to discrimination.

The only conclusion I can reach is that my fellow evangelicals have been convinced of many things that are not specifically Christian but evoke a concern for justice. For example, many Christians have been convinced that COVID was a hoax, that the deep state is nefariously controlling the country, that innocent people have been wrongly prosecuted, and that the government is evil. That would explain the sense of triumph over evil.

Notes Along the Way -- Bible

1 The Memory Verse Approach to the Bible
1. I grew up with what you might call a "pre-modern" view of the Bible. A better way to describe it might be an unreflective view of the Bible. I knew almost nothing about the historical or literary context of the words. I interpreted the words of each verse with the dictionary my church had given me and of course the English language as I knew it.

I used the King James Version (KJV), which listed each verse individually. This layout of the words is very significant. It programmed me to see each individual verse as a self-contained truth or proposition. It intrinsically pushed me away from reading each verse in the light of the verses that came before and after it. 

I remember one of my brothers-in-law -- who was also my childhood pastor for several years -- sharing his brief experience with the New King James Version (NKJV). He eventually went back to the KJV because he didn't like the way that it formatted the verses in paragraphs. I remember marveling at how clearly this reaction reflected his biblical paradigm -- and the paradigm of my childhood. We read the Bible to hear individual truth claims from individual verses more than to hear a message in a continuous literary context.

I should be clear. It is not that my brother-in-law or others completely ignored literary context, which refers to the words that come before and after a text. I merely mean that our primary orientation in reading was on the level of the individual verse. I call this a "memory verse approach" to reading the Bible. The meaning of the Bible is heavily atomized into short truths or axioms that can be quoted.

Individual verses can of course be quoted in context too. But perhaps more often, they can be made to mirror what we unconsciously anticipate they should say. Words are very flexible things. A verse ripped from its context can be made to say many more things than a verse in the flow of a paragraph. You might argue that the meaning of a verse is most ambiguous when it is isolated in this way. This is why I have come to say that the Bible is best applied as a whole rather than as individual verses.

By a "pre-modern" reading of Scripture, I mean one that largely is not context-oriented. Stereotypically, it may not be context-aware. It is typically "unreflective" about its own biases and the influences on why it interprets the text in the way it does. It reads the words in light of the "dictionary" in one's head without much awareness or interest in how an original author or audience might have meant or understood the words. 

Please don't take this as a condescending or judgmental remark. I am simply trying to analyze the ways in which a person might read the Bible -- called one's hermeneutic.

2. I want to illustrate this way of reading the Bible with the way Matthew typically uses the Old Testament. Jesus and his family go down to Egypt to escape Herod. Then they come back out of Egypt and return to Israel. Matthew hears an echo of Hosea 11:1, and he says this event "fulfilled what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet saying, 'Out of Egypt I called my son'" (Matt. 2:15).

I will share later how troubling I found this quote at one point. As it turns out, Hosea 11:1 is not a prediction about the Messiah at all but a reference to the exodus. Hosea was referring to how, hundreds of years earlier, God had brought his son Israel out of Egypt. But Israel had been faithless to him and gone after other gods. The verse is not a prediction -- and Jesus certainly didn't go after other gods.

Matthew probably did intend overtones of the exodus, but it seems clear that Matthew read the Old Testament not unlike my childhood reading of the Bible. He doesn't even focus on a whole verse but on a part of a verse that jumped out at him. After all, the whole verse in Hosea says, "When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son."

Two conclusions. First, I grew up with a way of reading the Bible -- a hermeneutic -- that felt free to isolate verses and even snippets of verses from their contexts and to hear them as individual truths or even to apply them to my personal situation. Second, this way of reading the Bible was actually modeled by Scripture itself at various points. That's why we can't be too judgmental about this approach -- it is modeled by the Bible itself.

3. I find a childhood example of this approach to reading Scripture very revealing. In 1971, my family was trying to decide if it was God's will for us to move to Florida. Not only did we pray, but we searched the Scriptures as well. Now, upon a little reflection, it should be clear that there are no verses in the Bible that directly tell the Schenck family whether they should move to Florida. But this is not the way we were programmed to read the Bible.

We were programmed to expect the Holy Spirit to make words jump out at us. The Bible was a living word on a personal level. So when one of my sisters was reading Judges 1 that week, verse 15 in the KJV jumped out at her: "thou hast given me a south land." She felt like the Holy Spirit was confirming to her that it was God's will for us to move to Florida.

Let me emphasize that this was a normal way for the church of my childhood to read Scripture. If you had asked my sister whether that was what the book of Judges had originally meant, I think she would have initially found the question disorienting. "What do you mean?" she might have responded. After some explanation, I suspect she might have easily agreed, "Well no, but the Holy Spirit spoke to me through the words directly about my life."

So, this unreflective or pre-modern way of reading Scripture 1) atomizes the biblical text, 2) sometimes hears general or universal truths in individual verses, 3) in some church traditions, can hear a direct, individualized, contemporary word from God in the words that is quite distinct from the original meaning, and 4) is modeled at times by the hermeneutic we find within Scripture itself.

4. It was really at college that I was exposed to the contextual interpretation of the Bible in a more thoroughgoing way. I'll call this contextual approach a "modernist" approach -- it aims at objective interpretation of the text in what we might call its historical and literary context. It focuses on evidence and reason to draw conclusions about meaning.

At some point around the beginning of my senior year of college at Southern Wesleyan University, I realized that my full tuition scholarship only covered a certain number of hours -- and I had come into college from high school with 28 hours of college credit. In short, I needed to finish in three years or my money would run out. It wouldn't be too hard to do, but I needed to test out of a couple requirements.

One requirement I thought I might test out of was New Testament Survey. After all, hadn't I grown up going to church at least three times a week? Hadn't I read the Bible through? I was a good test taker. I would do what I always do -- cram and ace a test.

And I did pass the test and graduate in three years. (My daughter Sophie intentionally graduated from college in two and a half years both to beat me and graduate before her brother, who is a year older than her.) But there were a couple interesting insights that dawned on me as I studied to pass the New Testament exam.

First, I realized how much of my childhood preaching must have focused on the Old Testament and on the stories of the Bible. I really didn't know a fair amount of the teaching of Jesus. It would later seem to me that Protestants focus a lot on Paul and not as much on Jesus. Dare I say that evangelicals in particular do not focus a lot on the Gospels or Jesus, it seems to me. When I adjuncted for Notre Dame, it appeared to me that Roman Catholics have the opposite orientation -- more on Jesus, less on Paul.

In high school, I remember seeing a made-for-TV movie called Peter and Paul. I was able to get an exception from my parents to watch it because it debuted on a Sunday night, and we didn't watch TV on Sundays. There was a dramatized scene in the movie when Paul argued vehemently with Peter at Antioch over Jewish and Gentile Christians eating together. 

I remember being very annoyed. "That's not in the Bible!" I exclaimed to myself. For one thing, my holiness background didn't think getting angry and arguing was particularly "sanctified." It went against my holiness to think of these two holy men behaving like that.

Except it is in the Bible -- in Galatians 2. I just don't remember ever hearing anyone preach on that passage. And I didn't remember reading it. In my opinion, one of the drawbacks of having young people read the Bible in the KJV is that they won't know what the text is actually saying a lot of the time. It's just archaic language. In fact, some of the time you think you know what it's saying, you might not because the meaning of the English words may have changed. 

5. A second moment of reflection came when reading some excerpts from Merrill Tenney's New Testament Survey text. I remember reading him talking about where Thessalonica was located along the Egnatian Way. He was giving historical context for 1 Thessalonians. For example, it was a free city with some significant autonomy. Archaeology had confirmed that its leaders were called "politarchs," which Acts accurately represents (Acts 17:8).

The question I had was, "What's the point?" Why would I need to know any of these things in order to understand 1 Thessalonians? Although I couldn't have articulated it at the time, my pre-modern hermeneutic was beginning to encounter the modernist hermeneutic that was employed by all Bible scholars at that time -- both evangelical and non-evangelical. Merrill Tenney was certainly a conservative, Bible-believing evangelical. He was trained to read the Bible in context.

Indeed, the difference between evangelical and non-evangelical scholars in the 1980s was not a historical approach to the Bible but on whether the Bible was true or not. Evangelicals tried to read the Bible in context and insisted that its words were without error -- including both historical and theological errors. 

Non-evangelicals also tried to read the Bible in context but had no such boundaries. They felt free to conclude the Bible was either truthful or non-truthful, historical or non-historical at each point. But, at that point in time, both groups used a historical, contextual method to attempt to arrive at the originally intended meaning of the text.

Because I had grown up potentially hearing individual verses as individual truths, the question of historical context was somewhat foreign to me. It's not that historical context was not inconsistently introduced into interpretation in my church context. My childhood preachers did bring in historical factors at various points of interpretation -- especially when historical elements were obvious in the text. It's just that historical context was not the primary orientation.

6. As an aside, I might add that I experienced some paradigmatic tremors my senior year of high school as well when I took Mr. Stock's humanities class. For some reason, it was strange to me to discover that so much of the Bible overlapped with the history of the Ancient Near East. I had read about the Assyrians in the Bible, and now I was hearing about the Assyrians with Mr. Stock with no mention of the Bible. I had read about the Babylonians and Persians in the Bible, and now I was hearing about them in Mr. Stock's class.

I found it all very neat, but it was strange, for some reason. It was great, I thought, but for some reason it was weird.

In retrospect, I think it was the encounter of the pre-modern paradigm I used in church and the modernist paradigm I used at school. I loved science in high school. I knew and embraced the scientific method thoroughly in high school. I knew and embraced logic and good philosophical thinking in high school. I was a modernist thinker.

But my paradigm at church was completely different. It used the evidence to support faith assumptions, which were not evaluable. It was not programmed to read the biblical text in context but to hear revelations from God in the words. I was a pre-modern thinker who was unreflective about context.

These two paradigms intermingled in Mr. Stock's class, and it was a little disorienting. What was fascinating is that Mr. Stock's class completely supported the biblical text as far as I could see. I just wasn't used to thinking about the biblical text in that way. 

Once you have seen the biblical text in context, it is almost impossible to unsee it. You can move into what Paul Ricoeur called a "second naivete." That is to say, you can go on to be able to read the text both contextually and "spiritually," if you would. I have no problem with lectio divina or the "divine reading" of the Bible. You read small bits of the text. You chew on them. You open yourself up to God to speak to you through them. This is somewhat like the hermeneutic of my childhood, and I have no problem with it.

It just isn't necessarily reading the text in context or for what it originally meant. Lectio divina is only as contextual as you are. It is not "wired" to be a contextual meaning. For me, it is thus a "post-modern" reading. I can read the Bible in context. And I can read the Bible against a personal or spiritual context that is not bound by historical or literary context. I can do both.

7. A final note about that encounter with 1 Thessalonians in college. What should I do with a verse like 1 Thessalonians 5:26: "Greet all the brothers with a holy kiss"? I was raised to see every verse as a direct command of God to me. In truth, of course, there were numerous verses we didn't apply directly to ourselves. Our paradigm filtered the verses that stood out and the ones that didn't.

Still, there was a fellow in my church who stopped eating pork because of Leviticus 11:7-8. He took it as a direct word to us/him. Nevermind other verses in the New Testament like Mark 7:19 or Acts 10:15. The whole Bible was flattened into a single voice, and somehow it was missed that, from a Christian perspective, the New Testament provides the authoritative lens for reading the Old Testament.

But my study at that time raised the question. "Would God allow a verse to stand in Scripture that was not timeless and universal?" Sure, I now understood that this verse about the kissing greeting was written first to Thessalonians who lived two thousand years ago. But would God have let the verse be in Scripture if it were not a command to us as well?

These were the beginnings of my hermeneutical birth pains. I was beginning to see how to read in context. And once you see it, it is almost impossible to unsee it. 

Key Points to Watch

In my previous post, I suggested that you take a little time to make some predictions about the next few years. The idea was that, rather than be like the proverbial frog in the kettle, you would have a benchmark to look back at and see if you had been needlessly paranoid, had rationalized events or compromised your values -- particularly Christian values -- or perhaps you are a prophet!

I have made some predictions to myself privately. Here, I just want to share some of the key historical points to be on the lookout for:

1. Immigration -- We should expect some "shock and awe" when it comes to the deportation of undocumented immigrants. Note -- individuals who came legally but then overstayed their visas are not "illegal" immigrants. They are undocumented. 

There are also, of course, individuals who entered the country illegally. And, of course, there is a relatively small percentage of immigrants who have committed crimes after being here. The majority of undocumented immigrants would likely work to be documented if they could, but our system is apparently so broken that there might as well be no realistic pathway for most. Congress has refused to fix these problems for over a decade.

A number of things to watch. What happens to the individuals who have been "rounded up"? Are families split? Are individuals who have effectively been here since childhood deported? Is a line crossed to individuals who are actually here legally? Is the deportation even or are Democratic states targeted in a kind of vengeance on their economies (e.g., California, Chicago, New York City)?

2. Economy -- Everyone says that the incoming president was elected because of inflation, but most economists predict that the economy will get much worse if he keeps his promises. The deportation of undocumented workers could have serious economic consequences for the states in which they work, as well as to the American economy in general. It might significantly increase the price of certain foods and goods, for example.

Add to this the prevalent rhetoric on tariffs, which would also likely increase the cost on American goods. The goods that are costing more from Mexico, China, and Canada would result in higher cost in the grocery store. When you combine these two factors, are we headed for a significant economic crisis? To what extent is this just talk, or will these promises be kept?

3. Budget Cuts -- Elon Musk and others aim to make massive budget cuts. Much of these cuts will surely be aimed at services provided to the American people, especially the most needy American people. Will this result in significant suffering among those who do not have enough resources to subsist on their own? 

Will cuts to infrastructure actually make it difficult for certain departments of government to do what they are meant to do? FEMA? Will tax cuts cause the deficit to grow even more quickly? Will education become overwhelmingly tribal, where interest groups basically indoctrinate their audiences in whatever bias they want to?

My guess is that the incoming deciders are strongly of the economic philosophy that in post-Soviet Russia was known as "shock therapy." I know an economy professor with this philosophy. The idea is that, if things are fully deregulated, there will be a painful period that will then within a period of months reach a certain equilibrium. This is not of course what happened in Russia. Instead, it facilitated the rise of oligarchs who pretty much own everything.

Bottom line: What will the economic consequences be of some apparently enormous budgetary changes? Will these individuals actually be able to pull off the budget cuts?

4. Media and press impact -- It seems pretty clear to me that Musk took over Twitter to be able to control one powerful channel of influence over the American people. Current conversations over Tik Tok also involve the potential to control what the American people see. There was a joke about buying MSNBC and flipping it conservative. The Washington Post has quickly changed its approach to the news, and CNN has also noticeably shifted already a little to the right. Joe Scarborough met with the incoming president. Meta and Amazon have bowed before the new president.

All these developments will possibly have an impact on future elections and the national narrative. Will there be room for any "loyal opposition" in two or four years? Will current voices of protest largely go silent and dark? When you look at the amount of money Musk poured into Pennsylvania, how "free and fair" will the next elections actually be or will overwhelming financial resources effectively make the next elections a moot point? Will there be voter suppression or even actual voter fraud? 

5. Use of the Military -- The norm is for there to be a sharp line between the military and civilian affairs. It would be unprecedented if the American military were used on the American people. There has been rhetoric of firing all the top generals and replacing them with loyalists. Biden just this week urged the military to remember its oath to uphold the Constitution. Will any lines be crossed in this regard? Will the Justice department be used for personal vendettas?

6. World Configurations -- What happens if the US stops supporting Ukraine? What are we to make of the incoming president's comments about annexing Greenland, Canada, Mexico, and the Panama Canal? The president largely ran on a platform of non-interventionism, but the pre-office rhetoric has had more of the flavor of manifest destiny. Which will it be, and what will be the consequences?

7. Extreme weather -- Two weeks ago, 100 mile an hour winds foiled stopping a fire that destroyed 1000s of homes in California. Last year, unprecedented hurricane damage swept through North Carolina. There are more and more flight cancellations, more and more turbulence during flight. The majority position of climate scientists is that the planet is warmer than at any time in human history and that the increase in temperature has been too steep to be part of some rhythmic cycle of warming and cooling.

If these climate scientists are right, will we see more and more extreme weather with each passing year? If they are right, will the devastation be massive and incredibly expensive? Will these forces cause significant migration even within the States? 

8. Revival -- It is reasonable to say that if any of the worse case scenarios above were to materialize, we should expect people to do some searching for God. Chaos and uncertainty often drive people to God. So can a deep-down gnawing sense of guilt. Not wanting to face the world can result in an inward turn. Will we see some unprecedented revivals alongside a world gone amok? 

These are the kinds of things you might jot down some thoughts on in a journal. Then you can look back at it in a few years and have a laugh or a cry, as the case may be.

A Challenge

If you've read much of anything I've said, you'll know that I think humans are mostly irrational creatures. Our minds are finite and fallen, skewed in their view of the world. This includes our understanding of the Bible. We change our memories without knowing it. We rationalize events to fit the narrative we want deep down, the one that gives our life meaning and purpose. Often those who shout "truth" the loudest are actually the least interested in it. What they mean is "My view, my view."

There have been a lot of predictions of what the next few years will bring. Our natural inclination will be to make events fit our narrative (whatever it is), to rationalize anything that doesn't fit our assumptions, to change our memories of what we expected, even to change our values in terms of what is acceptable. If things are better than we expected, we may make excuses for why we were still right. If things are worse than we expected, we may subtly adjust our values to accommodate and justify our tribe.

All of that is to say, I suggest you take an hour or two to write down your expectations of the days ahead. The goal is for you to see yourself in the future, perhaps for you to have to argue with yourself. In the moment, we rewrite history. But if you have a record, you may have to argue with yourself. And that can be a wake up call you didn't expect.

If we are not willing to adjust our views given enough evidence, then we are not really interested in the truth. I commit myself to that openness. Will you?

Goals for the New Year 2025

The New Year is always a time of optimism and hope. Even though winter has barely begun, January 1 always feels like it is looking forward to spring, like the lights are coming back on. As I look back, I didn't do too badly with last year's goals. For example, here's my Shopify store.

This year may be different from other years. This will likely be a year of chaos. There's a fair chance that a lot of "little people" will get hurt in the process. Depending on the extent of the chaos, there could be hard times for everyone. You have to pray for the best and keep moving on.

Personal

• I'll hit the usual reset button on running. My youngest children are running now, and they have gotten me out a little over break. I'd like to run 3-4 times a week this year, and we plan to run a half-marathon together.
• Setting the measly goal of reading two chapters of something a week.
• Continue my weekly project schedule.  

Publishing

• Again, I'd like to get my Science and Scripture notes into a regularly published book.
• I have a contract for another book I'd like to finish by March 1.
• I probably will continue a trickle of self-published books. The first on the docket is a novel. I have another one in process that tells the story of the Bible through the eyes of its women.

YouTube

• A basic goal of 2-3 videos a week -- Hebrew of the Week and Greek of the Week. A Monday-Thursday schedule might work.

Udemy

• This year I'd like to put up a philosophy course that goes through Sophie's World, which I used to use as one of the textbooks at IWU.

Wishing us all a good year. There is so much potential for good in the world. We are our own worst enemy.

Pauline Studies 3: Paul and Salvation

I continue to read through Gupta, Heim, and McKnight's The State of Pauline Studies. Here are my previous posts:

• Paul and the Messiah
• Paul and Judaism 

The third chapter is by Ben Blackwell on Paul and Salvation. He had a difficult task -- to herd the cats of Pauline scholarship into distinct corrals. Pretty much all typologies of this sort are inevitably skewed.

Blackwell labels the main options as 1) Reformational, 2) New Perspective, 3) Paul within Judaism, 4) Apocalyptic, and 5) Participationist. The problem is that we are inevitably imposing categories on Paul. The occasional nature of his writings suggests that his language and approach may differ somewhat from letter to letter.

1. Reformational Perspective
We used to call this the "old" perspective, but several prominent Pauline scholars have retained key elements of high Protestant interpretations while making necessary adjustments in the light of late twentieth-century insights. Blackwell includes names like Francis Watson, John Barclay, and Mike Bird in this category, although Watson and Barclay are hard to categorize. Blackwell mentions some key trends under this umbrella: 1) justification as acquittal 2) based solely on divine agency, often formulated in terms of 3) penal substitution. 

I get that Blackwell is trying to move beyond the older "old" versus "new" approach. When I was coming through the ranks in the 90s, the "old" perspective saw Paul contrasting a "grace" approach with a "works righteousness" approach he was combatting in Judaism. In 1977, E. P. Sanders showed that this was a false dichotomy and that, in fact, Judaism was a religion of grace.

Based on Romans 4:8, I do indeed think that Paul's justification language in relation to humans is about forensic acquittal. However, I do not think the phrase "righteousness of God" in Romans 1:17 is about a right standing God imputes to believers (47). I'm not disappointed if I don't fall in this category. I don't see Paul as a monergist or an advocate of some mathematical version of penal substitution.

A key work however is John Barclay's 2017 Paul and the Gift. He argues that grace in Paul is characterized by incongruity and circularity. In it is "incongruous" in that it is disproportional to anything we might try to do to earn it. However, it is not completely unconditional. There are informal expectations ("circularity") that went along with ancient patronage.

However, Barclay (and Wright) are monergists in the end. They believe that God will make sure that the elect will produce the appropriate circular fruits by God's power. In other words, they smuggle in the perseverance of the saints in works clothing. But Paul did not believe that final salvation was assured to those in Christ (e.g. 1 Cor. 9:27; Phil. 3:11).

2. New Perspective
Since I studied under Dunn, you would expect me to fall into this category. I am indeed highly sympathetic to many of the interpretations of Stendahl, Sanders, Dunn, and Wright. On the one hand, I completely agree with this description Blackwell gives: "The NPP argues that Christianity is a fulfillment, albeit a surprising one, of the Jewish faith, not a response to it" (49).

However, I do not see justification language in terms of joining the covenant people of God. It's not that I disagree with this theology. I just don't think this is how Paul uses the dikaioo word group. I also think Paul's thought was more atomistic than Wright's metanarrative approach would see it. Paul can talk metanarrative, but I think it is just one of several rhetorical strategies. I also have never been convinced that Paul primarily functioned using the category of exile. I just think Wright glues too many things together with his brilliant mind.

3. Paul within Judaism Perspective
While I am sympathetic to many aspects of the "radical new perspective," in the end I think most of these interpreters go too far. Yes, "early Christianity was and remained a sect of Judaism for Paul" (51). Of course, it did. I do think that all Paul's letters were written primarily to Gentile audiences.

In Romans 11, Paul does speak of Gentiles being grafted into the Israelite tree. But he does not think that Jews can be justified by the Law. He radically reinterprets justification for Jews as well as Gentiles. He uses some language that is radical in relation to the Law even if he primarily remained Law-observant. He even speaks of Gentile believers keeping the Law (Rom. 2:14) even though they are uncircumcised.

So, again, I'm very sympathetic to many aspects, but Nanos, Fredricksen, and others go too far, IMO. A key work here is Matthew Thiessen's, Paul and the Gentile Problem (2016). I have his shorter A Jewish Paul (2023). 

4. Apocalyptic Perspective
Beverly Gaventa has just produced an important commentary on Romans. She would be a prominent representative of this category, along with Doug Campbell. This group emphasizes the discontinuity of the Christ-event with what came before and it actually uses language found in Paul to describe itself (e.g., Gal. 1:12).

One key dimension of this stream is a focus on Sin as a power in Paul, thus making the problem that Christ solves cosmic rather than merely individual or communal. Similarly, it has a more Christus Victor model of atonement, a more "singular" understanding of grace (without wrath), and a "faithfulness of Christ" approach to the pistis Christou debate. Blackwell sees a lot of Sanders' thinking belonging to this category. And of course, we should think of Käsemann, Beker, and Martyn.

Again, there is a lot I agree with here while thinking other aspects are out of focus. For me, the apocalyptic dimension of Paul fits nicely in the "surprising fulfillment" nature of the NPP. I do believe that, practically speaking, Paul did argue largely backward from plight to solution. Sin is a power for Paul in some of his key letters. And I think that the "faithfulness of Christ" was one feature of Paul's rhetoric.

Was Paul an apocalyptic thinker? Of course.

5. Participationist Perspective
Blackwell places himself in the final category along with Michael Gorman, Richard Hays, and others. Note his 2016 book Christosis. "Both the problem and the solution are related to participation in God's presence." Like the apocalyptic approach, there is much I like about how Blackwell describes this position. As Hays pointed out decades ago, "in Christ" is much more common in Paul's letters than justification by faith. 

Here is how Blackwell describes the participationist approach with regard to salvation: "In response to death from sin, salvation is focused on a reconstituted encounter with God that restores the human experience of (God's) life" (58). I like the sense that this approach features more of the Spirit and actual righteousness in the Christian life. As he puts it, "grace will be effective in creating change" (59).

In the end -- and this is a comment on the state of New Testament studies in general -- I think Christian theology and contemporary philosophy interfere more with exegesis than it should. "Let the text say what it says and then work out the tensions in your theology." As exegetes, we have to forget our Christian doctrine, our love of patristics, the fact that we've read Gadamer or Barth, or our sympathies to metanarratives. Objectivity is unattainable, but exegesis demands we do our best not to infect the text with our concerns.

Year in Review (12-28-24)

The days roll by without relenting. I have known for as long as I can remember that you need to enjoy the present, savor your family, be happy where you are. "Be here now." 

I just have rarely done it. It's not my personality and, just maybe, not my circumstances. I've always been in a mad dash, it seems. I don't know what I would or could do differently. My kids are successfully launched. We've had some amazing experiences as a family.

I lost my mother this year at 98. She had a wonderful life and a good death. I celebrated her life here on the blog. Still hope to publish a biography of my parents.

I'm in Erik Erickson's "Generativity vs. Stagnation." I suppose by external appearances, these years have been generative. I helped start a seminary. I've written over thirty peer-reviewed books and self-published as many. I had some great years of teaching and some great years in higher ed leadership at Indiana Wesleyan and Houghton. My years with Campus have brought extraordinary learning and continue to be very productive and exciting.

We can't choose when we leave this earth. I'd love to leave Notes Along the Way and Philosophical Pensees behind if I ever finish them. Whether anyone would ever read them is another thing.

2. The most successful book I wrote this year was A Biblical Argument for Women in Ministry, published in June. This clearly is scratching an itch as I've sold around 600 copies in a half year and continue to sell over a copy a day on average. It has a high-performing Facebook ad that was born of a viral set of tweets.

I've not been able to reproduce the success, although I have made several other attempts. My wife wants me to stop churning these out and write a more conventional book with a real publisher this year. I do have a contract for one with Cascade and will probably seek a contract for a book on Science and Scripture.

Late last year and early this, I took a course in self-publishing that was very informative. I haven't been able to fully reproduce the results, but I have learned a great deal. I continue to experiment with AI both for book covers and editing suggestions. 

Here are the books I churned out this year in the quest for a winning formula. The premise of all of them is solid. Admittedly, I didn't push the marketing too hard since there wasn't initial success. I also didn't fully follow the method I learned in the course.

• The Spiritual War for the World (February)
• Explanatory Notes on Mark's Passion Week (March)
• The Sun Will Grow Dark, the Moon Turn to Blood (April)
• Biblical Hebrew for the Novice (July)
• Thirty Days of Jesus' Birth (November)
• The Mystery of Jesus (December)

3. I continue to put Greek and Hebrew videos on YouTube. They have dedicated viewers. I still have some Patreon followers. It is a place to see video material that is both listed and sometimes unlisted. I started a philosophy series on Tik Tok, but I probably need to think more about how to approach it. 

4. In my work with Campus Edu, I feel like a super-dean. Instead of administrating one faculty and curriculum, I work with about ten colleges and coordinate curriculum and faculty with them. It is very interesting with lots of karma and punishment for my past sins as a profligate faculty. This next year suggests more adventures with courses of many kinds and more dabbling with AI.

I have so much intellectual property (for example, this blog has been going since 2004), that it would be interesting to create an "Ask Ken" AI interface. I don't think it would be too hard as I could already create a custom GPT of this kind. But I don't necessarily want to give Sam Altman all my stuff. With tools like HeyGen, I could even have an avatar of me give video responses. Not worth the investment without a clear market. Pondering and continuing to learn.

5. The election was quite a thing. We'll see how it plays out.

I'll leave it at that. A dream for this coming year is the ever-elusive peace in the moment.

Pauline Studies 2: Paul and Judaism

The second chapter of Gupta, Heim, and McKnight's The State of Pauline Studies is "Paul and Judaism," by Kent Yinger. Yinger wrote a nice little book on the new perspective on Paul a few years back. Then a couple years ago, he and Craig Evans teamed up to write a nice historical overview of the Pharisees.

I might add that in 2019, I had a book published with Lexington Books that examined Hebrews through the lens of these sorts of developments in recent decades (A New Perspective on Hebrews). It's a bit pricy but I was very proud of the first chapter because it set the groundwork for the book by synthesizing the kinds of discussions in Yinger's chapter. In particular, I tried to systematize previous discussions on the new perspective, the third quest, and the parting of the ways discussions of these last decades. I've uploaded that first chapter of that book to Academia.edu.

1. So the material in Yinger's chapter is very familiar. He begins by giving the older view that is now generally displaced -- the idea that Paul fully departed from Judaism. As Yinger says, "The momentum in Pauline scholarship is undoubtedly toward a Paul who is more comfortable in his Jewish skin than the older consensus allowed" (25). I wonder how much preaching is still in the mid-1900s on this score.

It's fair to say that the majority of scholars today do not think that Paul's mission saw itself as breaking from Israelite faith, although we can debate what the word Ioudaismos ("Judaism" or "Judeanness") might have meant. The gradations of perspectives among scholars is maddening, which is why I was so proud of the synthesis in my book that I mention above. 

To sum up, Paul did not see himself as founding a new religion. He saw his mission as nothing other than the true form of Israelite faith and in full continuity with the Scriptures of the first covenant.

On the other end of the spectrum are those who argue for Paul within Judaism. I find some of these views extreme -- for example, those who would say that Paul had two different systems of salvation, one for Jews and one for Gentile converts. In general, I think that Paul's language is in tension with itself across his writings, which is why there are so many different scholarly perspectives. 

The middle ground is Paul alongside a "reconfigured" Jewish identity. I think it is inevitable that this is what Paul's mission ended up doing whether he entirely saw the extent to which he was doing this. See the material on specific verses below.

2. The middle part of this chapter very briefly mentions some of the key debates. What does "Judaism" mean, for example? Its connection to Judean may indeed come into play in passages like 1 Thessalonians 2:14-16. At times Ioudaismos does seem to refer to a pattern of zeal for the Law that Paul rejects.

To what extent is the word conversion appropriate for Paul? I go with appropriate in the sense of shifting between Jewish sects. It really seems more a debate over an English word and thus a bit extraneous to Paul himself. 

How welcome were Gentiles into Jewish synagogues? I would say it varied but probably it was a common phenomenon in the Diaspora. 

How much did Christians remain in the synagogue? I would say it varied again. I think Acts' sense that Paul always started in synagogues very plausible, with him then only separating when the situation was too hostile. I side with the minority on Romans being addressed primarily to Gentile believers since I side with the older view that Romans 16 was originally for Ephesus.

What did Paul find wrong with Ioudaismos? I lean toward Sanders' sense that the starting point is Christ. Because most Jews rejected Jesus, Paul saw their version of Israelite faith problematic. But for Paul, grace through Christ was an alternative righteousing system to grace through Torah. Justification through Christ made it possible for Gentiles to be grafted into the Israelite tree without them keeping the Law. Judaism's problem was that it rejected this whole Christ-system.

3. Yinger helpfully ends the chapter with a quick pass through several key passages.

• Acts 21 -- Paul seems very Law-observant here, even offering sacrifices. I've argued with regard to Hebrews that most Christian Jews did continue to offer sacrifices and that it wasn't until the destruction of Jerusalem that Christians largely began to see the scope of Christ's death as extending beyond the sins of Israel and Gentile converts to all time. At the same time, one can easily see a lot of what Paul does in this passage as tactical -- "To the Jews I became a Jew."
• Romans 9-11 -- This is a passage that leans more on the continuity side of the Judaism debate. It sees Gentiles being grafted into the Jewish tree and sees a wholesale conversion of Israel to Jesus at the point of his return (I think). But this is Paul in one rhetorical mode.
• Romans 14-15 -- I think Paul's references to conservative Christian Jews is a little rhetorical here. He's trying to get his "Gentile Israelites" to behave a certain way and so the language is a little extreme -- he is siding more with the strong in his rhetoric than he really feels. When he says in effect "some don't observe the Sabbath and some do," this would largely fall along ethnic lines, although not entirely.
• 1 Corinthians 9 -- My own position on Paul is that he was largely Law-observant except when it came into conflict with mission. Like Jesus, I don't think he was scrupulously Law-observant when it came to the traditions of the elders. Paul extends this non-scrupulousness to purity laws that came into conflict with Gentile Christian interaction.
• Philippians 3 -- Here I side with Stendahl and others that Paul is not speaking of the utter worthlessness of his Jewish past but of the relative worthlessness of it in comparison to Christ.

Kudos to Yinger for giving such a good taste of the maddening debates of these last decades. It's not hard to see why there are so many books on Paul and Judaism/the Law. The gradations of perspectives can drive one to the cliffs of insanity, and they are driven by the fact that Paul's language is generally unsystematized and often has a rhetorical dimension. I suspect he would have to reflect to answer some of these questions for us.

The State of Pauline Studies: Paul and the Messiah

I am in my late fifties. It is interesting to locate myself among those scholars I observed when I was in my late twenties. I would read articles and books they had written and wonder where they were now. Some hadn't seemed to have written much for a while, and I wondered if they were still alive. Some sat in the back of the room at SBL while the young people presented. Some didn't bother going to SBL anymore.

I still buy the books. Some of my purchases these last months have of course included James McGrath's two books on John the Baptist (started). I bought the landmark New Testament in Color. You'll find Vanhoozer's Mere Christian Hermeneutics on my shelf as well as Brant Pitre's Jesus and Divine Christology among several others outside of biblical studies.

One I may persist through is The State of Pauline Studies. I'm grateful to Nijay Gupta and Scot McKnight for doing these volumes. They help me know how out of touch I may or may not be. It doesn't matter much to the church. In the current hyper-populism of America, expertise is a sign of evilness.

I've made it through the first chapter, whoop-tee-do. It's by one of the youngin's, Josh Jipp, on "Paul and the Messiah." I didn't feel too out of date. Here is a very brief run down.

1. Christos as a Title
Jipp sets out well the transition in consensus that has happened over the last hundred years from a generation that largely saw Christ as almost a proper name to a growing new consensus that it does indeed invoke a sense of the title Messiah. He presents the sharpest pivot taking place in the 2012 work of Matthew Novenson, Christ Among the Messiahs. Novenson argued that Christos would have been recognized as an honorific -- thus having a clear content without having to spell it out.

I should also note references throughout this chapter to Jipp's own work, chiefly Christ is King (2015) and The Messianic Theology of the New Testament (2020).

2. Messianic Exegesis
I'm not sure if this section had much of a debate point. Jipp catalogs various works of recent years that have explored one or another way in which Paul read the Old Testament with Jesus glasses on. This seems to be beyond question. He starts the section going back to Don Juel's classic on Messianic Exegesis. 

A key resource for me here was an old chapter by Richard Hays in a Festscrift titled, "Christ Prays the Psalms." Since Hays is now an old guy, Jipp cites instead another youngin', Matthew Bates, in his The Hermeneutics of the Apostolic Proclamation (2012). While I'm on the subject, another key recent work in the footnotes is Bates' Salvation by Allegiance Alone (2017).

3. Romans 1:3-4
Here Jipp pits an older reading of these two verses as a "two-step," "exaltation Christology" with adoptionist overtones with more recent readings that see Jesus' human messianic identity in full concert with his divine messianic identity. The trend of the last twenty-five years has clearly been toward a reading of Paul that is closer to the later creeds than the earlier Dunn generation that saw a longer development of Christology in the first century. At the moment, Hurtado and Bauckham have won the day among the younger generation of scholars.

4. Royal Christology
This section explores some suggested overtones for Jesus' kingship. Is it primarily Jewish messianism (Horbury)? To what extent does Paul present Jesus in contrast to Caesar (Wright)? Jipp himself sees some influence of ancient royal ideology.

I do think that there are overtones of Christ as a king in contrast to Caesar. I've generally thought however that Paul was careful not to be too explicit about these overtones for obvious reasons. But I do indeed see Paul's royal Christology as the very center of his Christology.

The Essence of Jesus' Earthly Mission

Over the last couple weeks, I've been posting through the early mission of Jesus on social media. Here is the whole series in one place:

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1. Jesus' earthly ministry started out of the ministry of John the Baptist. God's kingdom was coming. Repent. Give your allegiance to God. Wash away your sins both individual and corporate.

This is a re-orientation away from ourselves to God, a greater than ourselves. It is a surrender to a kingdom with its command and control in heaven. It is in preparation for the restoration of God's people.

This is the earthly context of Jesus' mission.

2. Before Jesus took over where John the Baptist left off, he underwent a time of turmoil in a deserted place. Matthew and Luke tell us he was tempted to exploit his power, to exploit his privilege, and to take his authority before its time. Rather, it was God's will for him to wait, to serve, and to put others first.

3. After John the Baptist was arrested, Jesus publicly began to preach the message John had started. The time had come for the kingdom of God to arrive on earth. The proper response of Israel was individual and corporate repentance as well as faith in this good news of the kingdom's arrival. But while John preached in the south near Jerusalem, Jesus focused his preaching in the north, in Galilee.

4. Jesus did not focus on everyone in his earthly ministry. He focused on the north, on Galilee. He did not focus on the "healthy," those who were allegedly keeping the covenant and who were socially on track. He focused on the "lost sheep," those off track and unwell on every level.

In his "inaugural address" in Luke 4, he reads Isaiah 61 to single out the poor, the captive, the blind, and the oppressed as those on whom his mission was focusing.

John the Baptist had preached to the mainstream of Israel. Jesus was filling in the edges in the restoration of God's people.

5. One group of Israelites on the edges were the sick and the disabled. One major feature of Jesus' restoration ministry involved healing. This is something John the Baptist didn't do. Jesus had compassion on the sick, the lame, the blind, the deaf, and he healed them according to their faith.

He came not into the world to condemn the world, but so that the world might have life more abundant.

6. Another group on the edges of Israel were the demon possessed. They were a concrete reminder of Satan's temporary sway over the earth. But Jesus restored these afflicted individuals to wholeness by.casting the demons out.

Every demon Jesus expelled was the arrival of the kingdom of God to the earth, the restoration of God's kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.

7. Jesus' mission brought conflict. Some of it was jealousy. Why do you have this power, authority, and popularity and we don't? Why are you hanging around *those* people (and not pandering to us)?

Some was fear of the kingdom. Why are you stirring up the people?

Jesus also made the pretenders look bad. Hey, you're calling our motives into question! You're not following the rules we hide our motives behind!

8. Matthew gives us a glimpse of Jesus' teaching in the Sermon on the Mount. It has perhaps three key themes. One seems the coming reversal of the kingdom. Blessed are you who mourn now because the day of comfort is coming. Remember they persecuted the prophets too.

Don't worry about clothing or food. God will take care of you. Those who are pure of heart now, those who make peace now, those who are meek now will inherit the earth soon enough. The kingdom is coming.

The wise person builds their house upon the rock. As for those who are comforted now, God will scatter the proud in the imaginations of their hearts.

9. A second theme of the Sermon on the Mount set the record straight on Jesus and Scripture. They accused him of being loose on the Law -- meaning their traditions of interpretation. Jesus makes it clear that he did not come to nullify the Scriptures (like the Sabbath).

Rather the sum of the Law is to love one's neighbor. It's not just not murdering. Hatred breaks the Law. It's not just adultery. It's lust and divorce to commit adultery legally. It's not just keeping oaths. It's truthfulness in general. God calls for full love that goes beyond the ones we like. It's loving completely, loving everyone, including our enemies (Matt. 5:48). Love is the fulfillment of Scripture (Matt. 22).

That leads to the third theme of the Sermon. Those who might criticize Jesus for not keeping the details of the Law are guilty of not keeping the heart of the Law. They are pretenders. They keep the letter of the Law for show. But they don't keep the Law truly because they do not love their neighbors. They project their own guilt on others.

10. Jesus did not shun those with power or wealth who might repent too and long for the kingdom like his other followers. He was glad to eat at the house of a Zacchaeus or meet a Nicodemus at night. He had some wealthy wives who supported his mission.

But most of the Jerusalem leaders were against him. Luke especially highlights Jesus' condemnation of the rich who do nothing with the vast resources they have. The rich man in the parable does little to help those like the beggar Lazarus at their gate.

He has little time for the religious scholars and teachers of the Law, although he is glad to eat with them too. He indicts their pretense and goes about his mission without giving them much thought.

These all would be part of the reversal coming. "Woe to you who are well fed now, for you will go hungry."

11. Jesus did not engage the Romans. Famously, when asked about taxes, he asked for a Roman coin. After pointing out that Caesar's image was on the coin, he suggested it be given back to Caesar. "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's." In other words, the kingdom of this world is a different kingdom from our God's. Pay your taxes.

This is a "Christ against culture" approach. It is a separatist mindset, and the early church would follow. The gospel was for Roman governors like Sergius Paulus and Theophilus too, but Jesus did not engage the Roman world directly in his earthly ministry -- until it came to him.

Here we should point out two phases of Jesus' ministry. When he was on earth, he taught loving the enemy. "If [a Roman soldier] compels you to carry something one mile, carry it two." (Walter Wink has suggested this was a shaming technique of non-violent resistance.) Turn the other cheek (Wink would say shaming the other by forcing them to backhand you).

But God would bring justice to the Romans soon enough. God himself would do it. It was not for Jesus' disciples to do it. But Babylon would fall soon enough. God would do it. We remember that John of Patmos had been with Jesus, and his message of judgment for Rome was apocalyptic.

12. It was not until the very end of Jesus' earthly mission that he finally broached the question that had no doubt long been on his disciples' mind. "Who are people saying I am?" While people have been saying various things, Peter has the right answer: "You are the Messiah."

Jesus has kept such views quiet because the contemporary expectations of the Messiah would be counterproductive. They expect a conquering hero who will restore the kingdom to Israel then. That is rather the agenda for Christ's second coming.

No, at that time he was headed to Jerusalem to die. He rebukes Peter for only knowing half of the equation. Judas possibly tries to force God's hand, thinking God won't let Jesus lose to the leaders and the Romans. But unwittingly, he advances God's own plan.

Jesus dies on the cross for the sins of Israel and not only Israel. He dies for the sins of the whole world. It is the sacrifice to end all sacrifices. All the sacrifices before were not truly able to take away sins, and no sacrifice since is meaningful.

This was the one sacrifice for all time that did the deed for all time.

13. The disciples weren't expecting Jesus to die. Then when he had died, they weren't expecting him to come back to life. Their expectations were all off in their timing because, for them, it was all about the political restoration of Israel in their time (Acts 1:6).

Instead, Jesus is installed as Son of God in power with his resurrection from the dead (Rom. 1:3). God "superexalts" him as LORD after he humbled himself unto death (Phil. 2:9). God enthrones him as Lord and Messiah (Acts 2:36).

Now his disciples must take the good news of the kingdom to every people (Matt. 28:19). He has been training them throughout his earthly ministry. They have been his apprentices as fishers of people. He singled out twelve in particular to symbolize the restoration of Israel. He even sent them out on practice mission.

Now his followers must take the good news to the whole earth. It is natural that at first they thought the message was only for Jews. But the book of Acts shows the good news crossing boundary after unexpected boundary. First, it jumped language. Then, it broke barriers of purity. Then it fully expanded to the Gentiles.

And the Jesus who ascended to the skies will one day reappear and descend in the same way.

The Week in Review (12/7/24)

1. I went to the funeral of Herbert Mohler this week. He was probably my Dad's closest cousin, at least in the last decades of my Dad's life. I remember my Dad being very fond of his German Baptist cousin Mary Louise as well. I seem to remember "favorite cousin" being said of her at one point.

Herbert was just a good guy. Witty like my Dad's Miller cousins in general. Faithful. Calm. Accepting of his lot and fate. An unsung hero. Wild secretary skills -- again, like many of the Millers and my father and grandmother Esther included. I met Herbert for coffee at Richard's several times when I was working at IWU.

The funeral was well-attended for a 96-year-old man. Good old Indiana folk.

2. Anderson University was downgraded by Fitch to a B- last week. Sharply declining enrollment. Very significant deficits. Probably dramatic moves are in order. Rough days are ahead as we hit the demographic cliff of 2026 we've been talking about now for several years.

Campus Edu is a potential Hail Mary for institutions like these. They could effectively "insource" their gen eds through us. I don't know enough about their situation to do precise math, but I figure we could save Anderson over 2 million dollars a year.

3. I was thinking this week about the brief South Korean attempt to invoke martial law. I'm sure that was scary for the South Koreans. It reminded me of some ideas I remember floating around in my teens and early 20s.

After my mother died a couple months ago, we went through her library, and I was reminded of some of the books that were hot in certain circles in the late 80s/early 90s. The Unseen Hand in 1985. Constance Cumbey's, A Planned Deception in 1985. A little earlier in 1971, None Dare Call It Conspiracy. These books were a bit scary to me back in the day.

The idea was that there were elite groups secretly meeting behind the scenes plotting to take-over the country and the world. For example, I remember the idea of creating a crisis so they could call a new Constitutional convention to rewrite the Constitution. I remember hearing the concept of "change agents." You manufacture a crisis and then use the crisis to bring in your solution (that your cabal had preplanned).

Of course this wasn't a new concept. Hitler may have set fire to the Reichstag so he would have an excuse to accuse and arrest his opponents. Not too long thereafter, he effectively dismissed the Parliament. South Korean's failed move by the president this week reminded me of the conspiracy literature I grew up with.

Anyway, I'm glad none of those things actually happened so many decades ago. 

4. The CEO of United Health was assassinated this week. One theory is that he hired his own killer. The response has been intriguing. Let's just say there wasn't a lot of public sadness or sympathy.

The state of American culture is a matter of great sadness to me. We are being swept away by a river of hate, misinformation, and genuine malintent, and there seems like nothing a person like me can do about it. It feels like we are self-destructing from within. God will let us self-destruct.

8. Is the Big Bang theory compatible with Scripture and Christian faith?

When I went to Houghton, I revived an old Carl Schultz course called Science and Scripture and offered it online. The idea was to open it up to the public for auditing and possibly attract some students. Plus it was a Bible option for online students among a faculty that didn't really like online (what else is new). Since then, I've wanted to write a book on Science and Scripture that roughly covers the topics of the course. I floated a proposal a few years back but didn't get a bite.

In the meantime, especially in the light of AI developments, I've been thinking about self-publishing an intermediate work that could lead up to that ultimate goal. In training AI, you create snippet answers it seems. I've jotted down about 50 questions so far that might make for something like "Science and Scripture: Questions and Answers." Here's question 8: Is the Big Bang theory compatible with Scripture and Christian faith?

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Yes -- it is potentially compatible as long as one believes God is the one who caused the Big Bang.

The reason so many Christians assume the concept of a Big Bang conflicts with Christian faith and Scripture is because they assume it is atheistic. However, if one believes that God caused the Big Bang, then the theory actually supports faith in God. The Big Bang Theory itself says nothing about its cause. It simply says the universe started with a "bang." It is only about the how. It says nothing about the why. The only bone of contention, then, is how long ago it happened.

1. In the mid-1900s, the Big Bang Theory was the idea that the universe began in a hot dense state and then expanded rapidly from there to the vast cosmos we know today. As early as 1922, a Russian physicist named Alexander Friedmann recognized that Einstein's equations for general relativity could support an expanding rather than a static universe. In 1927, the Belgian priest Georges Lemaître (1894-1966) also suggested independently the idea of a "cosmic egg" or cosmic atom as a possible solution to Einstein's equations. Einstein disdained this possibility so much that he added a constant to his equation.

It is important to consider that many mid-twentieth-century cosmologists did not like this option precisely because it played so well into the idea of a Creator. After all, Lemaître himself was a Roman Catholic priest. One millennia-old argument for the existence of God was the cosmological argument, which argues that the universe must have had a cause. In the 300s BC, Aristotle suggested that the cosmos needed a "prime mover" to give it a first push. In the 1200s, Aquinas expanded this argument. 

The idea that the universe had a beginning raised the question, "Why did it begin? What was the cause?" And the cosmological argument stood ready to say that the best answer was a Creator, an intelligent Designer.

2. The very term "Big Bang Theory" was coined by Fred Hoyle (1915-2001) in the 1949 to make fun of the proposal. Hoyle favored an alternative known as the "Steady-State Theory." This was the idea that the universe may be constantly generating matter in some way somewhere as well as losing matter somewhere. Since it required no beginning to the universe, many cosmologists found it attractive.

Hoyle would have to swallow his mockery in 1964 with the discovery of a cosmic background radiation that confirmed that the universe had a beginning. Since this radiation was steadily in decline all over the universe, it served as a kind of timer since an early cosmic event. If the universe were infinitely old, it would have already dissipated.

Further, Edwin Hubble (1889-1953) had shown in 1927 that the universe was expanding. If you are acquainted with the Doppler effect, wavelengths stretch out if an object emitting them is moving away from you. With light, this effect produces a "red shift." Hubble observed this shift everywhere in the universe. Everything is moving away from everything else.

All these data points and more have led to the current sense that the universe began in a singularity -- a point of the smallest possible dimensions. It then rapidly expanded some 13.8 billion years ago into the massive space we now know. [1] The Big Bang that Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson discovered in 1964 is now thought to be a "cosmic microwave background" (CMB) that emerged as the early universe cooled enough to release photons all over the universe when the universe was about 380,000 years after the universe began.

3. An alternative proposal was the so-called "Oscillating Big Bang Theory." In this proposal, the universe explodes from a singularity but then collapses again into a singularity because of the gravitational pull of the universe's mass. Like the Steady State Theory, this approach would allow for a universe that was infinitely old and did not require a Creator.

However, there does not seem to be enough mass in the universe for this theory to work. The so-called "critical density parameter" (Ω) would seem to be less than 1. This observation suggests that the universe will expand forever. Once again, we are left with a unique beginning event, which leads to the question, "Why did the universe begin? What was the cause?" 

The existence of a Creator God remains a perfectly coherent answer. We might add that the frequent retort, "Then where did God come from?" is a non sequitur. It does not follow. It actually is circular because it assumes that God is part of the creation. We observe that events within the universe require a cause. We have no point of reference to say whether entities outside the universe need a cause.

4. The main bone of contention is then the length of time. Many Christians would consider 13.8 million years ago to be too long ago to fit with the Bible. We will explore the age of the earth and the universe in another chapter. There are however varying interpretations. For example, some would see Genesis 1 specifically in relation to the creation of the earth, not the universe. Some might suggest an apparent age theory where God created the universe to look like it's 13.8 billion years old. Some might view the days of Genesis 1 as ages rather than 24 hour periods.

In the end, however, the notion that the universe started with a bang supports rather than conflicts with the notion of God as Creator.

[1] Some key aspects of the current understanding emerged from the work of Alan Guth in 1980.

The Week in Review (11-30-24)

Thanksgiving has come and gone. Always nice for a little reprieve from the normal grind, although family fellowship tends to bring its own extras too. 

I had an idea last weekend with a book I wrote a couple years ago -- Explanatory Notes on Jesus' Birth. I reformatted into the thirty-one days of December and published it as Thirty Days of Jesus' Birth. Unfortunately, I went a little Philo crazy on John 1, so I regret not editing some of that out. But it has color images and covers John 1, Matthew 1-2, and Luke 1-2.

I thought this might actually might be a good way for me to remotivate myself to finish my Explanatory Notes on the New Testament. However, it really didn't garner many sales anyway. Most of the sales were people who know me. The two or three days of Facebook ads I did went nowhere.

But the thought was to work toward March for something like "Fifty Days of Jesus' Passion and Resurrection." I've already done Explanatory Notes on Mark 12-16, Matthew 28, Luke 24, and John 20-21. I would need to complete Matthew 21-27, Luke 19-23, and John 11-19 by March. Next year, I would fill in the blanks and have all the Gospels done.

Eventually, it would be a "Through the New Testament in a Year." It would start in December with the birth stories. Then January-February would go through Matthew 3-20, Mark 1-11, Luke 3-18, and John 2-10. Then Lent and the beginning of Easter would finish the Gospels. Then fifty days in Acts covering Pentecost. Then about a chapter a day to finish up the New Testament by the end of November.

The Week in Review (11-23-24)

It's been a pretty solid week. Mostly fixed a leak under the kitchen sink (I hate plumbing). Had to call in help for our downstairs heat (simple fix I somehow wasn't pulling off). First snow of the season. We've been enjoying "very unusual" warm weather in late November.

I continue to waver between annoyance and despair that people are so suspicious of expertise, including scientific expertise. It works so extremely well. We love our gadgets. AI is dumbfounding. But we've been trained to mock the consensuses of experts in general. We think ourselves possessed of secret knowledge as we've been fed smart-sounding talking points against the most likely reality. I've even heard conspiracies that we never landed on the moon resurfacing.

I don't know what will happen to us. The young are so easily manipulated. I sense that YouTube shorts, Instagram reels, Tik Tok, maybe Twitter are the tools of indoctrination. Whatever you think of his theology, Dan McClellan is the path for those who want to influence in this moment. I've started philosophy shorts on Thursdays, although I just don't have the punch that others do. A generation can easily be lost, and the winners write the history books.

Subjectivity can explain so much away. It often takes a splat to shake us to reality, but it's a final thought.

The Week in Review (11-16-24)

I haven't posted for a couple weeks. The biggest event of course in the interim was the re-election of Donald Trump as president. He promised a lot of things on the campaign trail. I suspect a lot of people either weren't listening or don't believe he'll actually do them. We're about to find out.

We are in an experiment, so to speak. There seem to be three broad possible outcomes: 1) America will experience great benefit as a result ("make America great again"), 2) it will be much as the last presidency, or 3) we're in for a major crisis/crises. I've heard a lot of #2 from what I might call ordinary American people. They're not entirely thrilled about Trump but figure it will be like the last time.

Then there are the MAGA supporters who sound almost messianic in their love of the president. One meme comparing him to King David circulated the week of the election. Then there are those who think that the Constitution is about to be unraveled along with our representational democracy. Will there ever be a fair election again? 

The data collection is about to begin on the experiment. This week we have heard names for cabinet picks: Matt Gaetz, Tulsi Gabbard, RFK Jr., Pete Hegseth, Elon Musk, and Marco Rubio. Of these, Rubio is the only "normal" pick. Gaetz is under House investigation on the possibility of activities with a minor. The idea of him as Attorney General has raised a number of eyebrows. Gabbard has been accused of being too chummy with Russia, and she is nominated for director of National Intelligence.

Musk wants to cut trillions from the budget, possibly cutting the Department of Education. I've heard the CIA mentioned too. RFK Jr. is not only pro-abortion (over Health and Human Services) but is also anti-vaccine.

It remains to be seen what will happen. Let the experiment begin.