Integrating Scripture: Case Study in Matthew 25

After a person has interpreted a particular biblical text, the next step is to integrate it with the rest of Scripture, to find a Scriptural center, as it were. I've been working on a sample "advanced Bible study" for my classes at IWU. I've already created a sample "introduction" to Matthew of a couple pages (I'm aiming at Sunday School literature lengths) and a sample of the "interpretation" of Matthew 25:31-46 (Sheep and Goats).

Here is my sample integration section for the Bible study lesson:__________

We find the idea that God’s people should help those in need both explicitly and implicitly in both the Old Testament and the rest of the New Testament. For example, in the Old Testament, the prophetic idea of justice repeatedly centers on the failure of Israel to care for the downtrodden in its midst. In Isaiah 1 the LORD expresses His disinterest in the multitude of sacrifices brought to Him (1:11). What He wants is for Israel to “learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow” (1:17). Micah 6 similarly expresses the LORD’s apathy toward sacrifices—even the sacrifice of one’s firstborn child will not get His attention. What the LORD wants is for Israel to “do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God” (6:8).

The book of Deuteronomy roots such an attitude toward the disempowered and the stranger in part in the memory that the Israelites were also once slaves in Egypt. “You will not deprive a stranger in the land or an orphan of justice. You will not take a widow’s garment as a pledge. Remember that you were a slave in Egypt and the LORD your God redeemed you from there” (Deut. 24:17-18). As virtuous ancients, both Abraham (Gen. 18) and Lot (Gen. 19) take strangers into their homes and protect them from potential violence at the hands of others. By contrast, the Benjamites (Judg. 20), not to mention the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen. 19), experience severe penalty because of the way they treat strangers in their land.

The theology of Joshua and Ezra do stand in some tension with the bulk of Old Testament Scriptures in relation to the stranger in the land. For Joshua, all non-Israelites must be obliterated: women, children, and even animals (e.g., Judg. 6:21). From the point of view of the book, it is disgraceful that the Gibeonites trick Israel into making peace with them (Judg. 9). Similarly, Ezra enjoins Israel to divorce foreign wives and put away the children from such unions (Ezra 10). Yet even as we integrate the Old Testament teaching on the stranger—before we ever get to the New Testament—these passages at best relate to key transitions in Israel’s history. In terms of the Old Testament as a whole, they do not reflect the normal mode of Israel’s operation. They certainly cannot survive the universal scope of the gospel in the New Testament, where in terms of potential salvation there is “neither Jew nor Greek” (Gal. 3:28).

When we get to the New Testament, we find a unanimous verdict with regard to what a believer’s attitude should be toward those who are disempowered such as the poor, widows, and orphans. In this regard, certainly James stands in closest relation to Matthew and may in fact allude to the same Jesus material. James 2:14-17 ponders a person who would simply tell a naked or hungry “brother or sister” to “Go in peace; keep warm and be filled”—without actually doing anything about it. Such a person has as much faith as the demons have and, by implication, has as much reason to shudder as the demons do. James here seems to have believers in particular in mind. 1 John also emphasizes the need to “love” the Christian brother in a material way (2:10; 3:14-15): “Whoever has the materials of the world and sees his brother in need but turns off his compassion from him, how does the love of God remain in him?” (3:17).

Luke-Acts presents concern for individuals like the poor, the disempowered, and women as a major theme for both Jesus and the early believers. While Matthew and Mark tell of Jesus’ visit to Nazareth further on in his ministry, Luke presents a visit at the very beginning where Jesus gives a sort of “inaugural address” for his earthly ministry. He draws on Isaiah 61 to declare that “The Spirit of the Lord is on me because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to preach release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to send off those who have been oppressed in release, to preach the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18-19). With this statement at the inauguration of Jesus’ ministry, Luke has edited the rest of the gospel to bring this theme out with greater prominence than even Matthew and Mark do.

So Luke has a few parables on the topic of the rich, the poor, and women, that are not in the other gospels: The Rich Fool, The Rich Man and Lazarus, The Persistent Widow. We should probably see Luke’s noticeable attention to women in this same vein, since they were certainly among the disempowered of the ancient world. When John the Baptist sends some of his followers to Jesus to inquire if he was the Messiah, Jesus recaps the topics of Isaiah 61 again: the blind see, the lame walk, good news is proclaimed to the poor (Luke 7:18-23). And while Matthew’s version of the Beatitudes says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit” (Matt. 5:3), Luke bluntly has “Blessed are the poor” (Luke 6:20).

The book of Acts continues this theme in its portrayal of the early church. The Jerusalem believers hold their possessions in common and sell their possessions to help those who are in need (2:44-45). Peter and John, as well as Paul, continue the healing ministry of Jesus through the power of the Spirit (e.g., 3:1-10; 14:8-10). In Acts 6 we learn that the Jerusalem church has systems in place to take care of widows in its midst. When a problem in this distribution arises, the church moves to address the situation (6:3).

Even the apostle Paul, who arguably had more significant resources to draw on than most people in his day, pays attention to the poor. When he visits Peter and James for the second time, they encourage him to remember the poor (Gal. 2:10). Paul claims strongly that he was already inclined to do so. Indeed, Acts includes a story where he and Barnabas take famine relief down to Jerusalem from Antioch (Acts 11:27-30). Paul himself went to great pains to raise an offering for “poor among the saints in Jerusalem” (Rom. 16:26). This offering seems to have created a good deal of pain for Paul in his relations with the Corinthian church (2 Cor. chaps. 8-9; 12:17-18). But Paul articulates the general idea to them: “At this present time your abundance will supply what they are lacking so that their abundance might supply what you are lacking" (2 Cor. 8:14). Each in the church has something to share with the other parts, and we are obligated to do so.

The only potential wrinkle in this New Testament consensus comes in 1 Timothy, whose tone and teaching with regard to widows stands in significant tension with things Paul says in 1 Corinthians 7. 1 Timothy 5 draws a distinction between “true widows” and younger widows whom the church begins to support, only for them to remarry, apparently breaking a vow to remain unmarried for the rest of their lives (5:11-12). Yet even here, 1 Timothy does not negate the importance of their material needs being met. He simply shifts the responsibility to the families of younger widows until they remarry (5:8, 16). The fundamental need to care for “true widows” remains (5:3).

The unanimous concern of the New Testament for the impoverished within the Christian community does not surprise us when we remember that the love commandment stands as the central ethic of the New Testament. Jesus himself in Matthew 22:37-40 indicates that all the Law and the Prophets—in other words, the entire Old Testament—hangs on the commands to love God and one’s neighbor. Jesus commanded love of one’s neighbor. Yet he also commanded love of one’s enemy (e.g., Matt. 5:43-48). These two categories effectively cover all humanity, which is made in the image of God (cf. Jas. 3:9).

Paul also reduces the law to “one word: You will love your neighbor as yourself” (Rom. 13:8-10; cf. Gal. 5:14). James 2:8 refers to this command as the “kingdom law according to Scripture.” Although there is debate, James probably included the commands he then mentions—adultery, murder—as subheadings of this “law of freedom” (Jas. 2:12). 1 John similarly defines God as love (4:7-8) and indicates that the person who does not love by implication is someone who remains in death (3:14) and is not destined for eternal life (3:15). 1 John explicitly understands such love in terms of material assistance to brothers in need (3:17).

The command of believers to help Christian brothers and sisters in need is pervasive throughout both the Old and New Testament. Indeed, it is so pervasive that it is difficult to find any passages that might qualify or temper this injunction. While most of the biblical texts aim at helping either those within Israel or those within the community of faith, those texts that impinge on the topic of outsiders almost without exception point to the same course of action. We are not surprised at this fact, for love of one’s enemy would demand that we treat those outside our community with the same manifestations of love that we show toward those within our fellowship. In the case of Matthew 25 and the story of the sheep and goats, this need to show mercy to the needy in general is particularly clear.

Before we end our integration of Matthew 25:31-46 with the rest of Scripture, we should mention the matter of justification by faith versus works. The Gospel of Matthew often presents difficulties to those who have a certain understanding of Paul’s theology, particularly the idea of justification by faith. Certainly Matthew, like James, is far more concerned with human deeds than with faith--particularly faith as some belief that does not manifest itself in life (cf. Jas. 2:14-26). Yet it is important to realize that works play a role in justification for Paul as well—final justification. Believers may initially be justified before God strictly on the basis of faith, but Paul also has expectations of human works thereafter. On the Day of Judgment, “God will give to each person according to what they have done” (Rom. 2:6), and each will receive appropriately “for the things they have done in the body, whether good or bad” (2 Cor. 4:10). The conflict thus does not lie with Matthew’s theology so much as with a prevalent misunderstanding of Paul’s.

Friday Review: Jewish Christianity Reconsidered 2

I was able to read a couple more "chapters" this week. Let me stick to items of particular interest and/or relevance to my research.

Chapter 2: "The Jerusalem Church," by Craig Hill of Wesley Theological Seminary in DC

• "Early Christ believers in the Jerusalem church continued to regard themselves as Jews" (41, 56)--absolutely, not in doubt
• "Paul did not possess authority in the early church equal to that of either Peter or James" (43)--certainly
• "Nowhere in Paul's correspondence is there evidence of a disagreement with the Jerusalem church over christology" (44)--this is significant and often unnoticed
• Jerusalem believers might justly be called "Jewish Christians" if 1) they retained common and important elements of Judaism while 2) venerating Jesus in a way unparalleled elsewhere in Judaism.
• Hill singles out three "common and important elements of Judaism," namely 1) Israel, 2) the Law, and 3) the Temple. His argument is that the Jerusalem Christians still valued each as they did "BC."
• With regard to Israel, I agree with Hill that both Paul and Acts look to the eventual restoration of Israel as a nation.
• With regard to the Law, Hill rightly suggests that the Jerusalem church believed that, while Gentiles were only obligated to live up to the standard of "aliens" in the land, the Jerusalem believers continued to observe the Jewish law in its particulars. In my opinion, Paul only modified his law observance but probably did not abandon it entirely in its particulars.
• Although he does not flesh it out as much as I would like, I agree with Hill that the temple probably continued to function as normal in the lives of the Jerusalem believers. What I would add is my hypothesis that, regardless of how they understood Christ's death, they probably did not think it in any way negated the temple cultus.
• Hill clearly makes his bed with Larry Hurtado on the issue of Christ-devotion being early and unique in terms of Judaism. He believes both baptism and the Lord's Supper tradition originated in Jerusalem. Fair enough. On Christ-devotion, the question for me is whether it defied Jewish norms or was merely completely unique.

Chapter 3: "Paul and Christ-believing Jews Whom He Opposes," by Jerry Sumney of Lexington Theological Seminary

• 2 Corinthians--Given Paul's counterarguments in 11-12, his opponents are Jewish persons in the Corinthian church but, according to Sumney, have a kind of "prosperity gospel" approach. If Paul were truly an apostle, God would prosper him and he would take support from them. Instead he suffered and did not take support.
• I'm not sure about Sumney's delineation of the opponents (and I may have skewed it a little), but the most interesting point to me here is Sumney's claim that a Jewish background was part of the credential mix--being Jewish was thought by the Corinthians to put you higher on the spiritual food chain!
• Galatians--The issue is whether Gentile believers should be circumcised. Sumney says that Paul's opponents are claiming that Paul himself teaches that believers need to be circumcised (5:11).
• Very interesting is Sumney's claim that the disagreement is not over the "work of Christ" and that Paul's argument for how the Galatian Gentile Christ-believers are to appropriate that saving work was not the only gospel that might bring someone into contact with that saving work. The issue was in the interfacing of Jewish and Gentile Christians, table fellowship in particular.
• Bottom line: Sumney doesn't see the controversy at Galatia so much over theology as over the association of Jewish and Gentile Christians and who can eat together. While I'll need to think more about the above, he I think is right when he suggests that Paul was redrawing the boundary lines of the people of God with "in Christ" being the primary boundary and Israel second. For James and others, Israel remains an intact boundary for Jews, with the "in Christ" playing out differently for the Gentiles.
• By the end of the chapter, Sumney has abandoned the term "Jewish Christianity," and I agree. The term is a poor one to refer to Jerusalem Christians since Paul and even some of his opponents at Corinth are Jewish Christians. "There is no single way--or even only two ways--of being a Christ-believer and Jewish in the first century" (78).

I had wanted to get through more of this book this week--there are interesting chapters on everything from James to the Ebionites. But I have to move on...

1, 2, 4 Maccabees and the New Testament

My intertestamental literature class approaches its first exam of the semester. I thought I would use the chance to collect my thoughts on how 1, 2, and 4 Maccabees potentially shed light on the meaning of the New Testament. 1 and 2 Maccabees are of course part of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox OT. 4 Maccabees is not a part of anyone's OT but is a kind of appendix to the Greek Old Testament. [Apocrypha quotes are from the NRSV translation]


1 Maccabees

• 1 Maccabees is our primary historical source for the Maccabean period from the Syrian king Antiochus IV and the events of Daniel 11 (167BC) to John Hyrcanus (ca. 104BC). It is clearly pro-Maccabean, but still seems a reasonably accurate historical source. Compare 1 Macc. 1:54 with Dan. 11:31 and Mark 13:14.


• It gives us a snapshot of what the NT understands by "zeal for the law" (e.g., Acts 21:20; Romans 10:2). So 1 Macc. 2:50: "my children, show zeal for the law, and give your lives for the covenant of our ancestors."


• One aspect of 1 Maccabees that was seriously misused by a previous generation is its sense that prophecy had ceased in Israel (9:27; 4:46). An older stream of thought used this comment to argue for why apocalyptic began, arguing that since there was no prophecy, people wrote through the voices of the past. I don't think anyone accepts this any more.


• The zealous Hasidim of 2:42 have long been suggested to be the forerunners of the Pharisees. This is seriously questioned by many today.

2 Maccabees

• No way to say for sure, but it has often been suggested that this book was written by a Pharisee. That's because it has a strong sense of physical resurrection, intestines and all.


• Surely the most relevant element to 2 Maccabees is its strong sense of resurrection for those who die a martyr's death (cf. chap. 7 and 14:37-46).


• Hebrews 11:35 probably alludes to the mother and 7 brothers of chap. 7: "Women received their dead by resurrection. Some were tortured, refusing to be released, that they might rise to a better life."


• 2 Maccabees does not necessarily have a sense of a general resurrection. In some sense it is the way the brothers die that secures their resurrection. So Paul only speaks of the resurrection of the dead in Christ, and perhaps echoes old ways of thinking when he connects the "fellowship" of Christ's sufferings with the possibility "if somehow I might attain to the resurrection for the dead" (Phil. 3:11; cf. 2 Cor. 4:10-11).


• Resurrection in 2 Maccabees is strongly physical, intestines and all (e.g., 2 Macc. 14:46). Presumably those who were raised would live out the life snatched from them and die again. Paul does not have such a view of the resurrection. Resurrection is corporeal (embodied) to be sure (1 Cor. 15:35). But it is a spiritual body that is not composed of flesh and blood (1 Cor. 15:50).
  
  It is possible, of course, that some of the gospel writers or even Jesus had a more fleshly idea about our resurrection bodies (cf. Luke 24:40). What does Jesus mean when he says it is better to enter into the kingdom with one eye rather than to be thrown into Gehenna with two?


• The biggest thorn in Luther's side was the sacrifice for the dead Judas makes in 2 Macc. 12:38-45. This sacrifice makes it possible for these sin-laden dead soldiers to rise from the dead in the resurrection. This passage gets my vote as the best explanation for the rationale behind baptism for the dead that Paul mentions in 1 Cor. 15:29.


• Connected to resurrection is the curious comment in 2 Macc. 7:28: "Look at the heaven and the earth and see everything that is in them, and recognize that God did not make them out of things that existed." Leaving Gen. 1:1-2 out of the discussion, this is the first candidate for the idea of ex nihilo creation in Jewish literature. I personally don't think that's what 7:28 is saying. It is rather affirming God's ability to reconstitute the bodies of the martyrs.


• Although it is debated, 2 Macc. 7:38 may imply that the death of a righteous individual can satisfy God's wrath toward his people, resulting in their restoration: "I, like my brothers, give up body and life for the laws of our ancestors, appealing to God to show mercy soon to our nation ... and through me and my brothers to bring to an end the wrath of the Almighty that has justly fallen on our whole nation."
  
  It makes a lot of sense that the disciples and early believers in the resurrection may have conceptualized Jesus' death in similar terms. They may have believed that Jesus' death would bring God's wrath toward Israel to an end and bring about the restoration of the nation. Certainly Acts 1:6 and Romans 11:26 seems to look for such an eventual restoration of Israel in the light of Christ's death. See 4 Maccabees below.


• 2 Maccabees 6:12-17 has the curious sense that God punishes the sins of Israel differently from the sins of the other nations. With Israel, he disciplines them as they go along (cf. Heb. 12). But with the Gentiles, he stores up his wrath until he absolutely obliterates them. Possible NT parallels include 1 Peter, where the judgment of the house of God is underway (1 Pet. 4:17). But watch out for what things will look like when the judgment gets to the rest of the world! Romans 3:25 also mentions the need for justice in relation to sins God has passed over. Some have argued, I think wrongly, that Paul only has in mind the sins of the Gentiles here.


• Strong emphasis on a noble death that leaves an example of zeal for the law for those who follow.


• N. T. Wright's sense that Israel has never really returned from exile (e.g., 2:7, 18).

4 Maccabees

• A philosophical version of 2 Maccabees 6:12-7:42


• Very Stoic in tone--(devout) reason over emotions, self-control


• controlling the passions of the flesh (7:18) reminds us of Paul in Romans 7:5 where Paul speaks of the person "in the flesh" as subject to the "passions of sins" in their "members." For Paul, the Spirit liberates us from the slavery of sin. For 4 Maccabees, it is a matter of reason giving a person control of such passions.


• 4 Maccabees goes beyond 2 Maccabees to see the deaths of the martyrs as having atoning value, even substitutionary value:
  
  "Be merciful to your people, and let our punishment suffice for them. Make my blood their purification, and take my life in exchange for theirs" (Eleazar, 6:28-29)
  
  "The tyrant was punished, and the homeland purified--they having become, as it were, a ransom for the sin of our nation. And through the blood of those devout ones and their death as an atoning sacrifice [ιλαστήριον], divine Providence preserved Israel that previously had been mistreated" (17:21-22)
  
• Compare these quotes to a couple verses in the NT:
  
  "The Son of Man has not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many" (Mark 10:45).
  
  "Whom God offered as an atoning sacrifice [ιλαστήριον], through faithfulness, by means of his blood, to demonstrate his righteousness."
  
• It doesn't seem far fetched to suggest that the earliest post-resurrection followers of Jesus might have conceptualized Jesus' death in this way. Of course it is then interesting to wonder if 1) they saw this as a death for the sins of Israel, leading to its political restoration and 2) we should note that the concept of "atonement" in such a case is neither universal nor comprehensive for all time. In other words, such martyr-effected atonement would not necessarily imply an end to the temple or of the need for its ongoing sacrifices. We have the benefit of Hebrews; they did not.


• Interestingly, 4 Maccabees no longer looks at the afterlife in terms of resurrection but in terms of the immortality of the soul: "Although the ligaments joining his bones were already severed, the courageous youth, worthy of Abraham, did not groan, but as though transformed by fire into immortality, he nobly endured the rackings" (9:22).


• Death thus brings perfection (7:15), a statement that reminds me of Romans 6:7!


• Because the interrogation seems to take place at Antioch, because Antioch early on had a cult venerating the seven brothers, it is often suggested that 4 Maccabees was written at Antioch. Also, since the territory of Antioch is joined to Cilicia (4:2--compare 2 Macc. 3:5), it is often suggested that this treatise was written AD20-72, during which time the Roman provinces were joined. Given that Antioch was the center of the Hellenistic mission of the early church, it is not ridiculous to suggest that some early Christians like Paul might have known of it.

Monday Thoughts: Worthless Servants

Using the Methodist Lectionary yesterday, I read Luke 17:5-10 from the NRSV for College Wesleyan's "Liturgical Service":

The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!”

The Lord replied, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.

“Who among you would say to your slave who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, ‘Come here at once and take your place at the table’? Would you not rather say to him, ‘Prepare supper for me, put on your apron and serve me while I eat and drink; later you may eat and drink’? Do you thank the slave for doing what was commanded? So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, ‘We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!’”

This is both a puzzling and startling passage for me. It is puzzling in seeing the connection between the second paragraph and the disciple's question. The first answer makes sense. The disciples ask Jesus to increase their faith and Jesus tells them what the power of increased faith (as trust in God) can do.

But how does the second paragraph, almost a parable, increase the disciples' faith. Of course no doubt many sermons could be preached and probably have been. The gap this juxtaposition is exactly the stuff of spectacular sermons where the Spirit works through the wisdom of the speaker to create some "aha" moment of truth.

For instance, might Jesus be addressing the wrong motives in asking for more faith and Jesus basically tells them they are slaves who need to obey rather than be seeking the glory you get when you can work the miraculous? Or maybe the nuance of faith Jesus addresses here is faithfulness, in which case the sense of servanthood would make sense. Jesus would be telling them how to be good and faithful servants.

I don't find either of these really satisfying. There probably are some really good explanations out there. I wonder if this is simply the problem we occasionally encounter of free floating Jesus' sayings that have been incorporated into the gospel as somewhat random places.

But what really startled me this morning was not the sequence of the narrative, but the teaching of 17:7-10. Can't you just imagine Christian slave owners in the 1700's and 1800's using this passage?! See, I can hear them, Jesus assumes the absolute mastery of a master over slave.

This is not my disposition. I feel guilty if others are serving me. What Jesus assumes, "Duh, everyone would do this," is not at all what I would do. If someone had been working all day for me in the field and I had been inside enjoying myself, I would have wanted them to "take a load off" and be rewarded.

I don't think this attitude will stand anymore between humans. I don't think we can be Christ-like in our day and have such an attitude toward our neighbor. However, we do have a master to which this passage seems a wake-up call--God.

In comparison to God, we remain "worthless servants" even today. In the household of God, He does remain the center of attention, the One who deserves to be served no matter how hard we have been working for Him. He is the reality of which we are only the image. We have no value apart from Him.

If we truly understand this concept, then we will "keep faith" with God on a whole new level.

Lectionary Thoughts: Philippians 3:14-21

Today's epistle reading in the BCP is Philippians 3:14-21.

I pursue [with my eye] on the goal for the prize of the upward calling of God in Christ Jesus.

The division of the reading is a bit strange, starting here in the middle of a train of thought. Paul has been talking about the fact that he is not yet assured of the resurrection. He has not yet attained to it. So he lives his life in pursuit of the resurrection.

Therefore, as many as are mature, think this way. And if you think something different, God will also reveal this to you. But [let us be sure to live] to the level we have [already] attained.

Although this entire passage is often taken to be about progressive sanctification or growth in grace, it is really only this part of the passage that actually is. Although Paul earlier had used the word "to perfect" in relation to the resurrection, he now shifts to another meaning of the word group, "mature."

Become imitators of me, brothers [and sisters] and watch those who walk similarly, since you have us as an example [to follow].

Stendahl noted long ago that passages like this one work against the idea that Paul felt like a miserable sinner. Rather he felt free to tell others to look at him as an example to follow. Do we? We should be confident enough in our commitment to God that we don't mind others following our lead, even if in our day we probably wouldn't suggest it to others.

For many live as enemies of the cross of Christ (with regard to whom we have often spoken to you and even now I speak with tears). Their end is destruction. Their god is their stomach. Their glory is in their shame. They think on earthly things.

These are puzzling verses as it is difficult to know to whom exactly Paul refers. Since Paul started off the chapter speaking of "the dogs," it is at least possible that he refers to Jewish opponents to the gospel. The reference to the stomach might then refer to food laws.

It is also possible that he refers to the Romans and those who have currently put him in prison. Since Paul is in prison as he writes, surely he refers to some of those involved in bringing him to his current state. This could once again be either the Romans or a certain type of Jewish opponent.

For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform the body of our humiliation to a form like the body of his glory, according to the working of He who is also able to subject everything to him.

The mention of citizenship may push us more toward a Roman sense to those who are the enemies of the cross of Christ, since the idea of citizenship really applies more to the Roman world than to, say, Jerusalem. We also remember that Philippi was a Roman colony and thus that its citizens enjoyed Roman citizenship as well. The word savior itself was a word applied to Roman emperors like Augustus and was more of a Greco-Roman word.

The passage ends with what is surprising to many believers today, namely, that our resurrection bodies will be like Christ's resurrection body. And the political powers of this age, the ones that alienate us now, will be subject at Christ's coming to his rule.

Collect of the Day: Almighty and everlasting God, who are always more ready to hear than we to pray, and to give more than either desire or deserve: Pour on us the abundance of your mercy, forgiving us those things whereof our conscience is afraid, and giving us those good things which we are not worthy to ask, but through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ your Son our Lord; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Friday Review: Jewish Christianity Reconsidered

I'm writing a paper for SBL, the official title of which is "Hebrews and the Parting of the Ways." Don't worry, I'm not going to blog the paper. But I am doing some reading this month in relation to writing it, so my Friday Book Reviews this month will likely feature material from some of the resources I'm reading.

The chair of the SBL group, "Jewish Christianity," is also the editor of a book called Jewish Christianity Reconsidered--Matt Jackson-McCabe. This week I read his chapter entitled "What's in a Name? The Problem of 'Jewish Christianity.'" In this chapter he overviews the question of what exactly scholars mean by the term, "Jewish Christianity." Here is a review of the players:

Johannes Munck (1959-60)
Although later than most of the figures below, Munck uses "Jewish Christianity" in reference to to the Jerusalem community associated with James, Peter, and John (13). McCabe pin points one difficulty with this approach when he says, "there is presently no single text that a general consensus of scholars would attribute to the early Jerusalem community" (12).

F. C. Baur (1878) and the Tübingen School
For Baur, Jewish Christianity referred to those early followers of Jesus in Jerusalem like Peter, John, and James who did not recognize the universal scope of Jesus' message but limited it to the Jews. So they followed "simply a new and stronger form of the old Messianic expectations" (16, McCabe quoting Baur). So for Baur, Paul was the real beginning of Christianity, and following Hegel's dialectic, the synthesis of Jewish Christianity with Pauline Christianity was "catholic Christianity."

Adolf von Harnack (1896)
For Harnack, Jewish Christianity was not really Christianity at all but those Jews who never recognized the universal scope of Christianity but retained a "national" focus on Israel (18). Unlike Baur, Harnack believed that Peter eventually came to agree with Paul and at that point "ceased to be a Jewish Christian" (19, McCabe quoting Harnack). Harnack did not believe that there are any surviving texts from the category of "Jewish Christian." I'm not sure what he would do with the Gospel of the Ebionites.

Albrecht Ritschl (1857)
In contrast to Baur and Harnack, Ritschl's approach was much more nuanced and, in my opinion, was more helpful. Take the following terms:

Jüdische Christenthum--"Jewish Christianity"--any text or group at the intersection of Christian faith and Jewish practice--a very general term that covers most of early Christianity, including Paul

Judenchristenthum--"Judaeo-Christianity"--Christians who believed that the Mosaic law was the essence of Christianity, thus a law observant form of early Christianity more "conservative" than Paul

judaistisch--"Judaic"--anything influenced in a general way by Judaism in the Second Temple Period--like apocalyptic material in the gospels

alttestamentlich--"Old Testament-ish"--things influenced not by Second Temple Judaism but by the Old Testament in the Protestant sense, thus in distinction from judaistisch.

In my opinion, Ritschl's description of what he called Judenchristenthum stands closest to what most contemporary scholars mean when they refer to Jewish Christianity. "Jewish Christianity" thus refers to Christian Jews who observed the Jewish Law more carefully than Paul, as typified by Peter, James, and Jerusalem Christianity (I regret that I'm at home and don't have Dunn's Unity and Diversity in the New Testament handy to give you his definition with the usual caveats).

As McCabe puts it, "the use of the term 'Jewish Christianity' to denote groups or texts that combine veneration of Jesus with practice of Jewish law remains very common" (22).

Hans Joachim Schoeps (1949)
Schoeps used Christology as a dividing line between "Great Church" Jewish Christians and "extremist" Pharisaic Jewish Christians who would become the Ebionites of the second century, for whom Jesus was only a prophet and messiah (23-24).

For me Christology is the primary issue when considering the "parting of the ways" between Judaism and Christianity as distinct religions. Larry Hurtado, for example, sees the worship of Jesus in a manner that is heterodox for Judaism very early. As such, he would seem to date the parting of the ways very early also. I generally think that it is probably not until the Gospel of John that we are beginning to see a form of Christianity that is coming very close to crossing this line. In any case, I am arguing that Hebrews doesn't cross that line yet.

Jean Daniélou (1964)
From the standpoint of Christian faith, Daniélou's use of the term "Jewish Christianity" is just fine. For him it is "a category of Christian groups and texts marked simply by a recognizably Jewish discourse" (24, McCabe's description). In other words, it is basically "phase one" of Christianity that ends mid-second century. The Hellenistic is the second phase and the Latin phase is of course the lead up to Nicaea.

Daniélou's use of the term is very loose. It does not, for example, help us to distinguish between "Judaizers," James and Peter, Paul, and antinomians in the early church.

Gabrielle Boccaccini (1991), Anthony Saldarini (1994), Daniel Boyarin (1999)
A number of recent scholars, including myself (forthcoming book on Hebrews), have returned to an old phrase in the light of recent discussions of the "parting of the ways" between Judaism and Christianity: "Christian Judaism."

This phrase had been used a century ago by people like Harnack and Fenton J. A. Hort (1894) in reference to the Judaizing "Christians" with whom Paul sparred--in other words, individuals who were not "truly" Christians. I do not, however, use the phrase in this way. Nor do I use it in the manner of Boccaccini and Boyarin. For Boccaccini, Christianity has never stopped being a form of Judaism.

For Boyarin, "Christian Judaism" refers to Christianity up until the fourth century (i.e., Nicaea). I'm not sure I could go with Boyarin here, as the rhetoric of Ignatius and Justin Martyr in the second century seems so anti-Jewish that I can scarcely use the phrase of them. But I hear what Boyarin is saying, and I will likely be reviewing some material from his book, Border Lines (2004), later this month.

McCabe of course does not define "Jewish Christianity" by the end of the chapter, for that is what the book is all about. Next Friday I plan to mention the most interesting points of the rest of the book.

But I will give you my position on this issue in relation to Hebrews:

• I refer to the form of Christianity of all the NT books, with the possible exception of John and Revelation, as "Christian Judaism."
• There are two primary factors in this distinction for me. The first is of course Jewish ethnicity. The leaders of this "Jesus movement" were Jews. I have somewhat awkwardly referred to Gentile converts to this movement as Gentile "Jews." In any case, I find it less problematic to call them "Gentile Christians" since such a description is less likely to import the false assumptions that the phrase "Jewish Christians" usually does--namely, that they belonged to a new religion.
  
  By this definition, like Daniélou, I don't make distinctions between Judaizers, James, Paul, and others in the early church (although I do distinguish Jew from Gentile). It's not that I don't feel free to make such distinctions. I simply do not use the phrase "Jewish Christianity" or "Christian Judaism" to do so.
  
• The more important criterion is the matter of Christology. To me, monotheism is the ultimate dividing line between Jewish faith and "other." I don't think any of the NT books, with the possible exception of John and Revelation, violate orthodox Jewish monotheism. In my opinion, however, Nicaea does. The reason why I "hear" Boyarin is the fact that, in some respects, Arius does not yet seem to "violate" Jewish monotheism. But to call him a "Christian Jew" seems ridiculous to me.

McCabe's chapter provides an excellent conceptual framework for sifting through 150 years of scholarly literature. The summary I've given above would not have been possible apart from his very helpful sorting.

Summarizing the Book of James

The teaching of James is notoriously difficult to organize or systematize--even to outline the book is difficult. This led Martin Dibelius to consider the book a somewhat random collection of diverse teaching, "paraenesis."

I resist this idea, and I don't think it's just because I went to Asbury :-) For example, I don't think that the Book of Proverbs has a clear structure but that it often is somewhat loosely connected wisdom material. But I think James has a number of interlocking themes that run throughout the book. My goal in this post is to try to show some of these relationships, to map them in relation to each other.

Divided Loyalties
I think the best place to begin describing the thought of James is with the concept of "double mindedness" (e.g., 1:6-8):

"Let him [or her] ask in faith, doubting nothing. For the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, driven by the wind and tossed. Do not let that person think that he [or she] will receive something from the Lord--a man with two souls, unstable in all his ways."

We shouldn't think of this as honest doubt. This is a person whose loyalties are divided between God and the world. In other words, maybe we should read James 4:1-10 first before we reach our final understanding of 1:6-8:

4:4--"Adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is to be an enemy of God? Therefore, whoever wants to be a friend of the world constitutes an enemy of God."

4:8--"Purify your hearts, two souled ones."

Who are these "two souled ones," these "double minded"? They are those whose "battles" and "warings" come from "your passions waring in your members" (4:2). "You ask and you do not receive because you ask wrongly, so that you might spend [the answers] on your pleasures" (4:3).

Clearly James does not view this situation as a hopeless situation. Indeed, the double minded person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord, except perhaps to lose their "life" in death (5:20). We would thus be wrong to connect this language with 3:2--"we all stumble much."

But we should connect these comments with 1:13--

"let no one being tempted say, 'I am tempted by God' ... Each person is tempted when he [or she] is dragged off and enticed by his [or her] own desire. Then when desire has conceived it bears sin..."

We should not think of this as inevitable in James' thought. This is still the person whose passions, whose desires indicate a divided loyalty between God and the world.

Double-mindedness underlies James' teaching on all the other major themes in the epistle. So the double-minded person praises God and curses others from the same mouth (3:9). The double-minded person takes his or her wisdom from below rather than above (3:15). The double-minded person is tempted to rely on the rich for his or her patronage rather than from God above, the giver of every good and perfect gift (1:17). This person's "faith" is little different from that of the demons--it does not issue in action (2:19).

The Rich
A significant amount of Jesus material seems to underlie James. One such teaching, although James does not mention it, is Jesus' saying that "You cannot serve God and wealth." James has very strong words to say against the rich.

1:9-11--"Let the humble brother boast in his exaltation. But the rich person in his humilitation, for like a flower of grass he will pass away. For the sun rises with heat and dries out the grass and its flower falls off and the beauty of its face perishes."

As with the introductory comment on double-mindedness, we best understand what this opening comment on the rich is about by turning to later comments in the epistle:

2:6-7--"But you have dishonored the poor. Are not the rich the ones exploiting you and dragging you into court? Are they not the ones who are blaspheming the good name which was invoked over you?"

These comments remind me 1 Corinthians 6 and Romans 2:24. It of course seems unlikely that James would have known of 1 Corinthians unless the epistle is pseudonymous. Was it really widespread that the rich dragged Christians into court? Or perhaps this is more a statement of James' experiences in Jerusalem than of widespread practices in the Diaspora?

In any case, we see in this comment the connection between double-mindedness and the trials of which James speaks in 1:2. The trials that James primarily seems to have in mind are trials brought on by the wealthy and the double-mindedness he primarily has in mind is the temptation to rely on them, the earthly rather than on our true Patron, God:

1:16-17--"Do not err, my beloved brothers, every good giving and every perfect gift is from above, descending from the Father of lights, in whom there is no variableness or shadow of turning."

The double-minded person is not true to the "word of truth" that God has implanted within them (e.g., 1:18, 21). This seems to be Stoic imagery of the logos seeds in each one of us (probably an indication that at the very least, James has had some significant help in drafting this Greek epistle).

The rest of James of course has nothing good to say about the rich. 2:1-13 is about showing favoritism to the rich over the poor. The double-minded person does not have their priorities right. They should rather be following the kingdom law of loving their neighbor (2:8), showing mercy (1:13), helping poor, widows, and orphans (1:27), not judging (11-12), quarreling and warring (4:1), or grumbling against each other (5:9).

Rich merchants do not rely on God. They do not have an attitude that says, "If the Lord wills, I will do such and such." Rather they make their own plans and think their life is in their own power (4:13-16). Here we think of some Jesus material like Luke 12:13-21. Hopefully, James does not have Paul in mind, who was a merchant who went and spent a year in such and such a city!

Rich landowners abuse those who work for them, failing to pay them their wages (5:1-6). Here James surely alludes to situations in Palestine in particular. I suspect that the leaders of Jerusalem are most in his mind, and the killing of the "righteous one" is either an allusion to Jesus or, if pseudonymous, perhaps even an allusion to the murder of James himself by the high priest (which of course would also imply that deception was not involved).

There is hope for the double-minded person who errs by relying on the earthly, the animal, the devilish (cf. 3:15). Brothers can bring back the sinner who wanders from the truth in these ways, save them from death, and cover their sins (5:19-20). 5:13-18 point out that prayer and the fellowship of the synagogue are means for restoration from sin and sickness that comes from sin.

Trials
From 2:6-7 above we can infer that the primary source of trial in James' mind is oppression by the rich. Although James 1:3 is valid no matter what the source of external hardship or persecution, the epistle of James seems to have oppression by the rich particularly in view.

1:3-4--"Consider it all joy, my brothers, whenever you fall into various testings, since you know that the proving of your faith produces endurance."

This opening theme peeks out at 2:6-7, as we mentioned, and then returns near the close of the letter just as it appeared at the beginning. 5:10-11 returns to the topic of suffering and uses Job as an example (some suggest the Testament of Job might have influenced James' picture of Job, since in Job itself Job does grumble a bit about his suffering).

Wisdom from Above
The person in trial can seek wisdom, true wisdom, to endure:

1:5--"If someone of you lacks wisdom, let him/her ask from God who gives to all genuinely and does not reproach [for asking] and it will be given to him."

The context of the double-minded person is invoked in the next verse of the person who doesn't really what true wisdom or God's patronage but tries to be friends with the world and its patronage as well (cf. 4:4). The double-minded person envies and has worldly ambition (3:14). That is earthly wisdom, not true wisdom.

3:15-18--"This is not the wisdom coming down from above but is earthly, animal, demonic. For where there is jealousy and discord, there is disorder and every wicked deed. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial, genuine. And the fruit of righteousness sows in peace to those who make peace."

This verse reminds us of the beatitude about peacemakers, as well as of 1:20, which has already warned that anger does not produce the righteousness of God. So wisdom here is about a certain kind of behavior more than a particular kind of understanding. Wisdom from above is about loving one's brother and not about worldly ambition or favoritism to the wealthy.

Words and Deeds
Finally, all of the themes we have mentioned above connect to perhaps the best known feature of James--its emphasis on deeds that live out a person's words. The double-minded theme again lies in the background here. The double-minded person says that they are serving God but in fact his or her true loyalty actually lies with the world. They are hearers of the word implanted in them but not doers (1:22).

Their wisdom is like the wisdom of the demons (cf. 3:15), who believe in one God, but are still scared of the judgment that is to come for them (2:19). The double-minded person may say praises to God with his or her tongue, but the "cursing" of their brothers and sisters shows that they are not fully loyal to God (3:10).

2:14-26 thus has the famous teaching of James on the importance of our deeds matching our words. It is not enough to "say" the right content of faith but faith that counts is faith that leads to action. Luther's sparring with James over justification by faith has unfortunately made it difficult for us to hear these verses in the context of James itself. It does seem likely that Paul stands somehow in the background of these words (are we really do suppose that James and Paul both came to use Genesis 15:6 to make opposite points by coincidence?).

But James' point is not primarily to spar against Paul or, more accurately, a perverted version of Paul. James' point is that it is a person who is double-minded and friends with the world for whom deeds of concrete love do not follow from faith. The person for whom this is not true is not justified in God's "court." This is a soul headed for death (5:20).

James' teaching on the tongue in 3:1-12 takes us one step further. If 2:14-26 is about our deeds matching our words, James 3 takes us the rest of the way in critique of our words themselves. We can suspect that the double-minded person's words are not even so right as they might think.

So all these themes--trials from the rich, the need for heavenly wisdom to face them properly, the need for a faith that leads to concrete, loving action toward brothers and sisters in need rather than envy and selfish ambition--all these themes relate to the danger of double-mindedness and divided loyalties, friendship with the world and living out of our passions and desires rather than from the word implanted within us. Far from a random collection of unrelated wisdom sayings, the book of James presents us with layers of interrelated themes.

Monday Thoughts: Did James Use Sirach?

There are a few striking parallels between the book of James and passages in the book of Sirach.

1. For example, take James 1:13: "Let no one say when they are tempted, 'God is tempting me.' God cannot be tempted by evil and he does not tempt anyone himself."

Now look at Sirach 15:11-12: "Do not say, 'It was the Lord's doing that I fell away,' for he does not do what he hates. Do not say, 'It was he who led me astray,' for he has no need of the sinful" (NRSV).

2. Here's another set of parallels:

James 1:19: "Let each person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger."

And Sirach 5:11: "Be quick to hear, but deliberate in answering."

3. Next: James 3:10: "From the same mouth comes out blessing and cursing. It is not right, my brothers, for these things to be so."

And Sirach 5:13-14: "Honor and dishonor come from speaking... Do not be called double-tongued..."

4. James 1:2-15 in general covers many of the same topics as Sirach 2:1-18 and 15:11-20, topics like trials, double-paths, humbling ourselves before the Lord, the Lord's mercy, and God doesn't cause us to do evil.

These parallels are not so close as to prove dependence, but it certainly would not be far fetched to suppose that James' wording has been influenced by Sirach at these points.

Of course Matthew 11:28-39 also seems to echo images of Wisdom in Sirach 6 and 51:

Matthew 11:28: Come to me, all you that are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.

Sirach 6:26-28: “Come to her [wisdom] with all your soul…for at last you will find the rest she gives.

Matthew 11:29: “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me…”

Sirach 6:30, 33: “Her yoke is a golden ornament… If you love to listen you will gain knowledge…”

Sirach 51:23: “Put your neck under her yoke... See with your own eyes that I have labored but little and found for myself much serenity.”

In my opinion, only Protestant biases would lead us not to conclude that Matthew is drawing images from Sirach at these points. He does not quote Sirach, but he draws on it.

None of this proves that Matthew and James considered Sirach to be Scripture. And frankly, I have no desire to consider Sirach Scripture, given its horrific attitude toward women (e.g., 42:14) and its faulty view of God's justice in relation to suffering (e.g., 11:26-28). But I believe it was a significant book for many early Christians, at least "deuterocanonical," if not considered Scripture.

If you want to take a gander (it's a long book): here it is.

Lectionary Thoughts: Philippians 2:1-13

The BCP epistle reading for today is Philippians 2:1-13:

Therefore, if you find any encouragement in Christ, if you find any motivation by love, if you have any fellowship because of the Spirit, if you have compassion and good will toward me, make my joy complete because you have the same perspective and the same love. Be one in your spirit and attitude. Consider the welfare of others above your own, rather than operating with selfishness or arrogance. Operate with humility instead. Each person should consider the interests of others above their own interests.

Here is the attitude you should have--the attitude Jesus had.

Although he had the authority of God,
He did not exploit equality with God.
But he emptied himself,
And took on the status of a servant.

He became like ordinary mortals,
And when he had the shape of a man,
He humbled himself
And obeyed even until they killed him--on a cross no less.

Therefore, God exalted him even more,
And conferred on him the highest Name of all.
One day, at the Name this Jesus now has,
Every knee will bow... (those of heavenly beings, earthly beings, and the dead)
... and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
(which will bring glory to God the Father).

So, my beloved ones, just as you have always obeyed in the past--not only when I have been there but even more now that I am away--with fear and trembling, work together to make sure you all are saved in the end. For God is the one who is working among you to accomplish his will and what pleases him.

This is truly one of the greatest passages in Scripture! And while the "hymn" itself is a treasure mine of Christology, Paul's point is that Christians are to live together in the church with the same sacrificial mentality that Jesus showed when he was willing to lower himself to the status of a slave and to die on a cross.

Believers are to have this same attitude of love toward one another as well and are to work together to make sure that no one among us is lost in the end.

Collect of the Day:
O God, you declare your almighty power chiefly in showing mercy and pity: Mercifully grant to us such a measure of thy grace, that we, running to obtain your promises, may be made partakers of your heavenly treasure; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Friday Review: Seized by Truth

And so we reach the final chapter of Joel Green's book, Seized by Truth. This chapter deals with the question of the authority of Scripture.

He introduces the chapter expressing legitimate questions about Wesley's Quadrilateral--whether in fact it is an accurate description of Wesley's hermeneutic. In this chapter Green means to articulate an appropriate expression of the authority of Scripture at the beginning of the third millennium.

First he unfolds three crises in the use of Scripture in the church. The first is a crisis of function. Although gobs of people affirm the authority of Scripture, that affirmation seems to have little impact on life. Among his observations, he notes that "Affirmations of the trustworthiness of the Bible (a) entail no guarantees regarding the faithful interpretation of Scripture, (b) extract no commitments from persons regarding fidelity to the witness of the Bible..." (147).

A third aspect of the drive to affirm statements (like inerrant) is a tendency to "reduce the witness of Scripture to its propositional content" (148), which is a serious impoverishment of the more dominant narrative and poetic dimensions to Scripture. In this section Green dialogs briefly with the hermeneuticians Gadamer, Hirsch, Ricoeur, and Vanhoozer. From these four Green distills that "the stable factor in the alchemy of interpretation is the text, but, rather than grasping the text 'as it really is,' we construe texts always in relationship to the person engaged in the process of reading" (153).

A second crisis is a crisis of relevance. The biblical guild seems to inevitably get enmeshed in description of the original meaning when what God's people want is a prescription (154). Here Green refers to Barth's phrase of the "strange new world of the Bible." But Barth of course did not mean the historical foreignness of the text. He meant its theological authority over us.

The final crisis is a crisis of authority, the tendency of our culture to resist any authority over ourselves as autonomous individuals. We are in control of our destiny and the idea that Scripture stands in authority over us is difficult for us.

As a remedy for these crises, Green suggests three further things.

1. The first is a recognition of the intrinsic authority of Scripture.
Green notes that the Bible rarely makes the kinds of claims to "truthfulness" and such that seem the centerpieces of our conceptions of biblical authority. The authority that Scripture intrinsically claims for itself is the authority to show us the "way to heaven," to use a phrase of Wesley's. Further, the normal operating mode of the Bible is generally to persuade rather than command us categorically.

2. The second is a recognition of the authority of the biblical narrative.
Here Green reiterates that far more of the biblical witness is in narrative rather than prose. Even the non-narrative portions of Scripture participate "in a more extensive, overarching narrative (or meta-narrative)" (165).

Of course Green is right here, and I have pointed this out on other occasions. What Green has not said is that this overarching narrative is not strictly a matter of the text but of us as individuals and communities of readers. The effect is to shift the determinative aspects of the Bible's authority to factors outside the Bible, something Green does not state.

Two final points are that biblical authority is invitation and grace. We are invited to become a part of the grand narrative of salvation as a gracious gift from God.

At the end of these five chapters, I find us much where we were when we started. The waters in which Green is swimming are the same as the ones I am. If I were to summarize Green's hermeneutic, I would describe it as.

1. The text of the Bible is the most stable factor in the equation of the world behind the text, the world in the text, and the world in front of the text.

2. This text, as a text, is characterized by polysemy, by a surplus of potential meaning.

3. We can practice all the existing tools of biblical studies, but to read the text of the Bible as Christian Scripture requires a conversion of our imaginations. We see the people of God in the Bible as the same people of God that we are. The Old Testament is our Scripture. The brothers and sisters of the NT are our brothers and sisters.

4. We read the Bible not so much for truth propositions but to hear God's gracious invitation to us. That is an invitation to see ourselves as a part of the same grand story of salvation of which the biblical individuals were also a part.

My critique of Green may not disagree too much with him, although perhaps by saying these things I work against the conversion of the imagination that he seeks.

1. I am more optimistic at our ability to approach the original meaning of biblical texts. I don't think that such a "converted mind" should ignore places where the original meaning differs from appropriate Christian ways of reading the text. These two should not be collapsed together.

2. The recognition that there is a metanarrative into which the biblical narratives and prose fits is to acknowledge that, ultimately, the text is not the locus of biblical authority after all. From a historical standpoint, we have a fragmented original meaning authority that an interpretive mind has to integrate before some sort of uniform authoritative voice can be heard. From a spiritual standpoint, it is the Spirit breathing through the text that speaks authoritatively. From the standpoint of the community of faith, it is the community of authoritative readers who steer the authority of the text. In each case, the locus of authority is some entity outside the text in dialog with the text rather than in the text itself.

In conclusion, this book is both 1) a great dialog with key hermeneutical trajectories at present and 2) it is indeed at the front of the wave. This book is more where hermeneutics is headed than most! It stops short, however, of where I believe things are headed, namely, to the rapprochement of Protestant and Catholic hermeneutics.

Philosophy in a Christian Liberal Arts Curriculum

IWU faces its 10 year accreditation visit in three years, so we are doing the usual revisiting and reassessment of our general education curriculum. Here there are a number of terms and concepts that are often thrown around as if they are synonymous. But are they?

Is a general education curriculum the same as a "liberal arts" curriculum? Does a liberal arts curriculum constitute a "foundation for all the majors"? Is a liberal arts curriculum about being an "educated" person? a "cultured" person? To what extent does it have to do with life skills (instrumental value) and to what extent is it about truth as an end in itself (intrinsic value)? Are the liberal arts necessarily connected to the traditional subjects of the medieval trivium (grammar, logic, rhetoric) and quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music)?

Here are my working categories for the components of the "general education" core curriculum at a college grounded in the liberal arts:

1. components relating to "liberating pursuits"--this is the way IWU's own David Riggs has described the essence of a liberal arts approach to learning. The idea is that such learning "liberates" us from the shackles of ignorance, vice, delusion, and so forth. It enables us to be fully human.

2. components relating to "a cultured, college educated" person--this relates to knowledge valued particularly in the "Western" tradition without which a person in the West would not historically be considered an educated person.

3. the broad equipping of a person to function effectively in the 21st century world--this relates to awareness of the world beyond the Western world, a person who is generally based in such a way that they could function effectively in any other discipline, a base from which all other learning might proceed.

It is my contention that while there is significant overlap between these three centers, they each represent distinct aspects of a general education curriculum that is grounded in the liberal arts. The introduction of the adjective "Christian" to the equation presents a new dynamic that significantly modifies and redirects the centers above.

My purpose in this post is to ask the place of philosophy in such a Christian general education curriculum grounded in the liberal arts.

1. In a non-Christian environment, philosophy stands at the very center of all "liberating pursuits." This is because philosophy asks the most fundamental questions without which the other disciplines never emerge from "the cave."

Without some sense of a philosophy of science, the sciences proceed without any sense of what they are really doing, like mice who do not know they are in an experiment of their own making. Without some sense of themselves, humans operate little differently from other unreflective animals. We do not fully exist until we define ourselves. And without an awareness that the world might be understood differently than we understand it, no one is truly free. The unexamined life is the life of one who is a slave to forces of which they are not even aware, forces that have mindlessly manipulated them into the blind positions in which they (don't) find themselves.

Philosophy thus stands at the center of the idea of "liberating pursuits."

The idea of Christian liberating pursuits introduces new dynamics that potentially challenge the place of philosophy at the center of human liberation. Now the motto must surely become "faith seeking understanding," and our sense of what constitutes meaning and individual significance takes on a particular form. A whole set of axioms and theorems are added to the operation of logic.

But the questions philosophy asks have not changed. It is only the presuppositions that inform the pursuit of the answers. And maybe, just maybe, God has already revealed some of the answers.

2. Certainly from a historic standpoint, there are any number of ideas and movements that should be a part of any curriculum informed by the liberal arts. An educated, cultured individual in the West should know who Socrates, Plato, and Nietzsche were and what their most signature ideas were. A college educated person should have heard of Kant's categorical imperative and should know what a utilitarian approach to ethics is.

Someone might object: "The importance we have placed on these names and ideas is an accident of history, even a construct of a particular time and place." No doubt there is an element of truth to this claim. However, if we are to follow through on this argument, then why even speak of "liberal arts," since the notion derives from the Greco-Roman world and has historically been the province of European civilizations? The very word "renaissance" implied the intention to return to the pursuits of this world, and the great universities of the late middle ages were founded under these ideas.

It is certainly in keeping with the fundamental ideas of "liberating pursuits" to move well beyond European interests (#3). To allow ourselves to be enslaved to a particular cultural tradition would be to deconstruct the fundamental idea. However, it would be equally myopic to claim that any other cultural milieu has had a greater effect on the overall look of the world today, for good or ill.

The scientific revolution that has made the world into what it is today came from Europe, and it developed in conjunction with the ideas of the liberal tradition. Democracy is not the dominant mode of human culture. It was the European Enlightenment that brought this form of government into contemporary dominance. Similarly, it is the "Western" world that has brought into dominance a focus on the rights of individuals, an orientation around equal justice for all, and a sense that truth should not be truth for groups but for individuals. These ideas are ironically in peril even in American culture today. We ironically have followed the rightful idea of tolerance and openness to the ideas of others to the point where we run the risk of abandoning ideas that have made the modern world thrive.

Awareness of the persons and key ideas of this "Western" tradition is thus engagement in the most thorough engagement with the questions of humanity available to us. We run the risk of repeating the pitfalls of the past and missing out on the blessings of the present if we do not know these things and educate our successors in them.

3. Finally, as we have already said, we cannot limit ourselves to a knowledge of the European philosophical tradition if we want to rid ourselves of blind spots. Every true human is a philosopher, and it would be ludicrous to suggest that the ancient Greek Thales was truly the "father of philosophy." Any full pursuit of truth and true liberation must ask how other cultures throughout history have done philosophy and learn from them as well.

So what should a Christian general education curriculum that is grounded in the liberal arts tradition look like in relation to philosophy? Clearly there can be no such thing as a liberal arts education without addressing the questions of philosophy. To remove it from such a curriculum is immediately to disbar the term liberal arts from use. Liberal arts without philosophy is not liberal arts.

However, Christianity clearly impacts the nature of philosophy on a fundamental level. My suggestion is a course something like, "Philosophy and Christian Thought." Courses in Bible and Christian theology probably stand even more centrally in a Christian liberal arts curriculum. But as far as a Christian liberal arts curriculum, "philosophy and Christian thought" would stand more centrally.

Is "Inductive Bible Study" Appropriate for Scripture?

I value the tools of inductive Bible study. I believe that I am a competent scholar of the original meaning of the Bible because Asbury Seminary equipped me with the tools of inductive study. Inductive Bible Study is the evangelical method of choice in relation to the Bible. Grant Osborne's The Hermeneutical Spiral is now a classic evangelical Bible method book, and its first section is straight inductive Bible study.

What is inductive Bible study? It is a "scientific" method for determining the meaning of a text. It asks, "What is the most probable original meaning of this passage given the way words work in historical and literary contexts?"

So what is the problem? It is three-fold:

1. We can observe that evangelical scholars do not actually practice what they preach with regard to inductive method. They regularly go through the motions of the inductive method. But when the data approaches certain "boundaries" (pre-suppositions, Hays and Duvall would say), they shift from the most probable interpretation of the data to a possible interpretation that fits with their evangelical faith.

Of course many evangelical scholars might deny this practice, but I observe it time and time again. Even Osborne's book exemplifies this practice. His presentation of inductive method in the first 180 is highly technical and scholarly. But as soon as he gets to biblical genres, his theological beliefs begin to color his presentation in a noticeable way.

2. The Protestant drive to read "the Bible alone," led, in the modern era, to an emphasis on the original, historic, literal meaning of the Bible as the locus of God's word in the Bible. Ironically, however, attention to the literal meaning of the New Testament leads us to the realization that the New Testament authors themselves did not practice inductive Bible study method. Rather, the NT authors regularly read the OT texts to various degrees metaphorically, allegorically, in short, not in terms of what it actually meant originally.

There is a kind of crisis in "biblical theology," which has historically been oriented around the original meaning. The book by Joel Green I've been reviewing is moving in the right direction (final installment on Friday). The driving forces behind his argument are 1) the polysemy of textual meaning coupled with 2) the impossibility of objectivity anyway, and 3) a conversion of ways of thinking to an orientation to hearing/seeing Christian meanings. His result is to argue that it is not necessarily the original meaning of the biblical text, arrived at by objective inductive study, that is the meaning of the Bible of interest to us as Christians.

But the question I find myself asking even after Green's book is whether he would allow that the most likely original meaning might find itself in serious tension with the "converted mind" of the Christian reader. I must admit that I ultimately find myself drawn back to the medieval multiple senses of Scripture--literal, figurative, allegorical, anagogical. I cannot deny the validity of inductive Bible study as a method for determining the most probable original meaning of a text. Yet I cannot deny with Green that this is not at all necessarily the meaning most important for the believer.

Reading the Bible as Scripture does involve a mind converted and oriented around Christian meanings, but there is no set rule as to what level of meaning it turns out to be. The IBS meaning is a valid meaning, and it is an important meaning in the "flow of revelation." But it is not necessarily the most important meaning for believers. This is a meaning that comes from a converted mind and the mind of the Spirit.

It will be interesting to see what happens to IBS in the days to come and what happens to evangelical hermeneutics.

James 4

Where are the battles and wars among you coming from? From here: from your passions that battle inside you! You desire and you do not have, so you murder. You are ambitious and you are not able to succeed, so you war and battle. You do not have because you do not seek. You ask and you do not receive because you do not seek with the right desires--you ask so you can spend what you get on your passions.

Adulterers, do you not know that to be friends with the world is to be enemies of God! So whoever wants to be a friend of the world has proved they are an enemy of God. Or do you think that it is for no reason that the Scripture says, "The Spirit that dwells among us yearns with jealousy."

But he gives more grace. Therefore, it says,

God opposes the proud
But he gives grace to the humble.

Therefore, be subject to God. Oppose the Devil, and he will run away from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you. Cleanse your hands, sinners. Purify your hearts, those who have divided loyalties. Lament, mourn, and cry. Let your laughter turn into sorrow and your joy into gloom. Be humble before the Lord and he will exalt you.

Brothers and sisters, stop slandering one another. The person who slanders or is critical of his brother or sister slanders and is critical of the Law. And if you are critical of the Law, you are not someone who keeps the Law but a judge. There is only one Law-giver and Judge who is able to declare salvation and destruction. Yet you think you are someone who can pronounce judgment on your neighbor?

Hear now, you who say, "Tomorrow and the next day we will go to this city and stay there a year, do business, and make a profit." You do not know what your life will be like from one day to the next. You are a mist that appears briefly and then vanishes.

On the contrary, what you should say is "If the Lord wishes, we will live and do this or that." But now you are boasting in your arrogance. All boasting of this sort is wicked. Pay attention: if someone knows the good they ought to do and does not do it, that is sin.

Monday Thoughts: What Makes for Good Preaching?

Steve deNeff gave a great sermon again yesterday. The text was David and Goliath. Here are a few of the more striking thoughts I took from the sermon:

• We all tend to identify with David, but most of us operate with an orientation to Goliath's standard of strength.


• We often think we are David fighting in the kingdom of Saul when we fight like Goliath in the kingdom of David.


• Goliath was not fighting David. He was fighting God.


• Saul wanted David to fight with Goliath's type armor. David fought with God's type of armor.


• What's in your armory? What are your rules of engagement?

Now here is the meta-question I want to ask. Did deNeff get this wisdom from the biblical text or did the Holy Spirit bring it to him as a wise person as he read the biblical text?

I think it is clearly the latter. No doubt thousands of sermons have been preached on this text and hundreds of them have been sound. Yet I wonder how many of them drew out what deNeff brought this morning.

The Bible is a divinely appointed meeting place for us to hear God speaking. It is a sacrament of revelation. But it takes more than the words and stories of the Bible alone for the word of God to be preached and heard in Scripture.

1. It takes the Holy Spirit.
We used to call this God's anointing. The inspiration of the text will not reach the congregation unless the preacher and/or audience also receives inspiration from the Spirit. The Spirit can anoint anyone, and the Spirit can anoint the ears of anyone to hear a word from the most foolish of speakers.

However, I would argue that most of the time the Holy Spirit works closely with the natural gifts and wisdom of the human speaker. The Holy Spirit can speak through a donkey, yes, but usually He speaks through people like Paul who could speak even before they believed.

2. It takes wisdom on the part of the preacher.
God has simply blessed deNeff with great wisdom above so many of his contemporaries. Every Sunday morning God sanctifies those gifts and brings forth a word from the LORD. Certainly "out of the mouths of infants God perfects truth," but most of the time preachers are born rather than made (so also Augustine).

Most pastors will never be great preachers. They can improve to be sure. They can deliver God's word to be sure. But God has simply blessed some individuals with more wisdom than others. Without wisdom in the preacher, the Bible usually does not become Scripture in the mouth of the speaker.

If the preacher does not have wisdom by God's gracious gift, then the preacher must seek it out from others. God did not give us Scripture as an end in itself but as a sacrament in which we might hear God's voice through the Holy Spirit and His anointing of those to whom He has granted the gift of wisdom.

But the words of the Bible alone ensure that God's word is heard no more than if you were simply to read the words and sit down. Often doing so would not be too shabby in itself! But wisdom is a crucial thing--seek wisdom.

Lectionary Thoughts: Matthew 20:1-16

The gospel reading for this Sunday in the Book of Common Prayer is the Parable of the Day Laborers. A man hires workers for a vineyard at various points throughout the day. He agrees on a wage with each before they work, the same wage.

At the end of the day, there are some who have only worked since late in the day, but they are given the same as those who have worked all day. Those who worked since the morning cry foul.

This is a parable that seems very unfair to Western sensibilities. We believe that a person should be paid according to the amount of work they do. In the parable, those who worked all day are paid according to the amount of work they do, but the landowner gives the other workers more than they have worked for. In short, this is a parable about God's mercy.

It is actually not too different from the Parable of the Prodigal Son. The older brother in that story is upset because the prodigal son is getting much more than he deserves. In terms of Jesus' ministry, the Pharisees might have leveled this charge at Jesus for proclaiming God's forgiveness of toll collectors and prostitutes. The Pharisees had actually been following the Law for a long time. And now the wicked of Israel could just repent and join God's blessing on an equal footing with all those who had been striving hard for God's favor all this time?

These parables are all good news to the sinner. Indeed, according to Paul, the metaphor of working for our reward from God ultimately breaks down. We are all laborers who join in the work well late in the day. God has not been "fair" or "just" with us but has shown us great mercy in the pay He will give us on the Day of Salvation.

What is surprising is how prevalent it is that the human animal begrudges God's mercy and blessing to others. It is not enough for us to enjoy God's grace--we want it more than others. If we are not enjoying the prosperity of God's grace, we don't want anyone else to.

The Parable of the Day Laborers is comparatively kind to these "elder brothers" among us. But a quick look at Matthew 23:33 should sober us lest we suddenly realize that we have stopped working and may not even get our wage!

Collect of the Day
Grant us, Lord, not to mind earthly things, but to love things heavenly; and even now, while we are placed among things that are passing away, to cleave to those that will abide; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

What Wesleyans Mean by "Inerrant"

I thought I would repost this edited position piece I wrote a while back.
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The Wesleyan Church has a number of reasons to celebrate its theological identity beyond its Wesleyan theology in general. For example, Wesleyans have never fought over which way you should baptize. You can immerse, sprinkle, pour, baptize an infant, baptize an adult, or even not baptize at all in a few cases. We were opposed to slavery when most other Christian groups were riding the fence, and many other preachers were members of the KKK. We were in favor of women voting and taking all roles in ministry a hundred years before secular feminism and long before it was the “in” thing to teach in American society—or even in broader Methodism!

On many issues, the typical Wesleyan looks a lot like conservative (even fundamentalist) believers in other churches. But there are some very significant differences in our attitudes on these same issues. For example, it is true that most of our churches only practice adult baptism by immersion. So imagine the surprise of some visitors in our midst to find out that we can also practice infant baptism if someone in our congregations desires it. Similarly, most Wesleyans do take the standard fundamentalist positions on political issues. But you will also find that our Methodist roots peek out here and there, leading some Wesleyans also to emphasize social justice over the issues on which fundamentalists tend to focus. Unlike many other denominations to which we are superficially similar, The Wesleyan Church is more generous in the spirit of its orthodoxy.

The Wesleyan Church’s attitude toward inerrancy stands in a similar vein. Certainly we have within our number individuals who have joined us from fundamentalist denominations with very specific understandings of this term. It would be easy to assume that we mean exactly the same thing that the Southern Baptists or the renowned “Chicago statement” means by the word. But as with other issues, our historic flavor is quite different from churches where this term has been very divisive.

The main difference between The Wesleyan Church and so many other fundamentalist denominations is the “flavor” of our spirit. In our history we have rankled mostly over how to live, things we used to call “standards.” Should women wear jewelry? Should you have a job on Sunday? At the same time, we have rarely rankled over the same ideas that have been hot issues for other groups. The biggest idea that we have rankled over is holiness, a topic scarcely noticed by most other traditions.

In reality, Wesleyans have neither the flavor of fundamentalism nor even broader evangelicalism. Rather, we are historically a revivalist tradition. Revivalism is an approach to Christianity that is far more interested in a person’s spirit than their positions. We did not join the battles of the fundamentalist-modernist controversy of the early 1900’s. Those were the battles from which the term inerrancy arose. Churches like the Southern Baptists or the Missionary Church have a very specific understanding of inerrancy that has come from these debates. For them, the word evokes debates over whether the Bible contradicts itself on matters of history and science.

Wesleyans have never had these debates. It is insightful to trace the history of the word inerrancy in the two parent denominations from which we come. One of these parent groups, the Pilgrim Holiness Church, did not have this word in their faith statements. The other group, the Wesleyan Methodist Church, had only introduced the term into its statement in the 1950’s, mostly at the urging of a man by the name of Stephen Paine. He was a scholar from Houghton College in New York who was tracking the fundamentalist-modernist issues.

As they came to the merging conference, the Pilgrims had not been tracking the fundamentalist debate over inerrancy. They were far more interested in faith statements on the end times. Here is another issue where restraint won out. The Wesleyan Church does not have a specific position on how the end times will take place. Again, most Wesleyans are pre-millennial and believe in a seven year tribulation. But within the limits of basic Christian orthodoxy, all positions on the end times are allowed.

When it came to inerrancy, the Pilgrims certainly did not want to vote in favor of error in the Bible! So they voted with the Wesleyan Methodists for the word to be in the new Discipline as a vote of confidence in the inspiration, truthfulness, and authority of the Bible. But we have never defined what inerrancy might specifically entail on the issues that gave the term birth. It is for us a very broad affirmation that God never makes mistakes and God inspired the whole Bible.

The vast majority of Bible teachers in the Wesleyan Church think this generality is a good thing. In retrospect, history has helped us to see certain aspects of the fundamentalist-modernist controversies of the early twentieth century with greater clarity than the participants in it did at the time. For example, in the process of opposing certain modernist positions, fundamentalists inadvertently adopted the same modernist categories as their opponents. They defined errors in terms of modernist definitions of science and history, when the Bible was not written for modernists. It was an anachronistic standard by which to define errors. Thankfully, our lack of engagement with these controversies largely kept us immune to this side effect at the same time that we had full confidence in the Bible.

Harold Lindsell, author of The Battle for the Bible, has inadvertently given us some great examples of this side effect while in fact defending a fundamentalist understanding of inerrancy. At one point he tries to harmonize the various gospel accounts of Peter’s denial of Jesus. In the end, to get all the denials of the gospels in, he suggests that maybe Peter denied Jesus six times—three before the cock crowed once and three before it crowed the second time.

This is ingenious, but notice that Lindsell’s suggestion does not actually match any of the gospels. Fundamentalists regularly end up making up their own, strange versions of the Bible’s meaning in an attempt to fit things together. The problem for Wesleyans is that Lindsell has created a fifth gospel that is none of the four that are actually inspired. His intentions are wonderful, but his effort and end product misguided. His “high view” of inerrancy ironically leads him to disrespect what the Bible actually says, to change all the gospels to something that fits with his idea. The fundamentalist understanding of inerrancy tends to pay more attention to the letter than to the spirit of the text.

A Wesleyan would not usually worry about working out inerrancy in this kind of detail. Peter denied Jesus three times. Perhaps there is some way of fitting the specific denials together. But the point of the incidence was not about the exact way in which the denials took place. It was the fact that Peter denied him three times.

Asbury Theological Seminary, which is one of the preferred seminaries of The Wesleyan Church, has a helpful statement on inerrancy: “the Bible is inerrant in all that it affirms.” The important question is thus, “What was God affirming when He inspired this particular passage?” For example, was the point of Philippians 2:10 that the earth is flat and that there are beings under and above the earth: “that at the name of Jesus every knee might bow—of those in the skies and on the earth and under the earth”?

No, this was not the point Paul was affirming in this passage. The way he pictures the world here is the way Jews in Paul’s day pictured the world. The point God was making was not cosmology, but the fact that every living being that exists will bow before Christ. We should not be surprised or disappointed in any way that God revealed this truth in terms that Paul and the Philippians readily understood. To do otherwise is to assume that God had to reveal on my terms, even though He spoke this word originally to them. Rather, we celebrate that God is a God who speaks, not above our heads, but in terms we can understand.

The fundamentalist understanding of inerrancy uses the lens of our modern debates over science and history to interpret truth that God revealed in the categories of its ancient audiences. Rather than tell the modernists of the early twentieth century that they were applying the wrong standard to the Bible—an anachronistic one—fundamentalists of the day tried to read modern categories into the biblical text. These were concerns that did not even exist at the time the books of the Bible were written.

Meanwhile, our Wesleyan forebears were still reading the Bible in a “spiritual” way. This is the way that most Christians throughout the centuries have read Scripture and, indeed, is the way the New Testament authors read the Old Testament. Without even realizing it, they did not pay much attention to the differences between the biblical world and ours. They were interested in the spiritual message God intended the words to have for us. They were not focused on fitting stories together or making sure the words of the Bible could be defended in the light of modern scientific theories.

The distinction between the original revelation to the ancient audiences and how God wants us to hear Him speaking to us through Scripture today is an important distinction when defining what inerrancy might mean. The original meaning of the Bible is rarely exactly the same as the way we read the Bible today, for we do not view the world the way the original audiences did. If the words were in our categories today, they would not have made sense in the categories back then. And since the Bible literally tells us these books were first written to them, we should expect the biblical categories to reflect those of ancient times more than they reflect ours. The fundamentalist approach to inerrancy thus tries inadvertently to have a meaning that fits equally well within both ancient and modern categories.

The idea that the Bible is inerrant in all that it affirms captures the Wesleyan sense of inerrancy well. Certainly God’s word could never be in error. The challenge is in determining what the Bible affirms rather than in acknowledging its inerrancy. Certainly when God’s Spirit truly reveals something to an individual through the words of Scripture, this affirmation will be without error. And anything that God has authentically revealed to the Church, to a specific church group or specific individuals, is an affirmation without error.

The situation is a little more involved when it comes to the original meanings of the Bible’s words. Wesleyans view all the books of the Bible as individual instances of inspired, inerrant revelation. The points that God was making in each case were without error for each particular context within a scope appropriate for their times and situations. The more we understand these moments of revelation in historical context, we realize that these moments are in a flow of revelation. God’s message in Deuteronomy freely allowed for divorce and polygamy. There was no error made for that context. But Deuteronomy does not give us the final word on these subjects. We must thus understand inerrancy in terms of the place of each book in the flow of salvation history.

Further, much of the instruction of the Bible addressed specific situations and contexts. The passage of 1 Corinthians 11 on women’s head coverings is so foreign to our contemporary context that even scholars can scarcely reach a consensus on exactly what Paul meant. And greeting the brothers with a holy kiss just would not come across the same way in our churches as it did in ancient Thessalonica. We must therefore understand inerrancy also in terms of the specific contexts and situations that each book originally addressed.

God is a God who takes on the flesh of those to whom He speaks. He did it as Jesus; He did it in the original meaning of the Bible. Each book of the Bible in its original meaning is an instance of God meeting a particular group of people with just what they needed, meeting them where they were in their contexts and understandings, stooping to their weakness to move them in the right direction.

Wesleyans welcome all those who feel drawn to us and find in our congregations a kindred spirit. But you may also find some Wesleyan flavors that surprise you from time to time. A fundamentalist Baptist will feel very comfortable worshipping with us most of the time. But occasionally it shows through that our roots are revivalist rather than fundamentalist. We use some of the same words as fundamentalist groups. But they do not always have the same connotations they do in other traditions. The end result often looks similar, but it is a different spirit that is much more generous on matters like these. As John Wesley once said, “If your heart is as my heart, then give me your hand.”

Appropriating the Bible

For what it's worth, I cranked out a few posts for a graduate class on appropriating the Bible.

http://biblicalappropriation.blogspot.com.

If you would, wait about a week before you comment there, if you are inclined to comment. Let the class post this week. But feel free to post here this week. Next week, I'll slip the material back here by predating it and then delete the other blog.

There's much about these posts to debate. I would especially like to know what Green thinks of these entries, given our discussion of his book.

Ken

Grant Osborne on Inclusive Language

I continue reading in Grant Osborne's Hermeneutical Spiral for the advanced topics class I am teaching this semester. The chapter on syntax has a new section on the "inclusive language debate," particularly in relation to the TNIV. Apparently Osborne served on the committees that created the NLT, so he is very open to "functional equivalence" translation like these, although clearly he is okay with formal equivalence translations as well. He sees a role for both and passes on a nice spectrum chart created by D. A. Carson:

ASV-NASB-KJV-NKJV-RSV/ESV-NRSV-NJB-NIV-TNIV-NLT-CEV-Message-LB

Of course the last two aren't really translations but paraphrases of the English.

The name that shows up over and over in this "excursus" is Wayne Grudem, who led a good deal of the charge against the TNIV. Osborne does not attack him at all, but by the time I was done reading this section, the magnitude of Grudem's lack of understanding of how language works was quite noticeable. This would then also include others who led the charge against the TNIV: R. C. Sproul, John Piper, James Dobson, etc... By the way, anyone who questions Grant Osborne or D. A. Carson's conservative credentials is psycho.

Here are some quotes from this section of Osborne:

"Spirit is feminine in Hebrew and neuter in Greek--should we translate 'she' in the Old Testament and 'it' in the New Testament? No one does so" (155).

"Do we 'change God's words' when we translate he as 'they' (so Grudem 1997:30-32)? If that were true, it would entail retaining every original word and syntax from the Hebrew or Greek, and the translation would be unreadable" (156).

"In terms of lexical [meaning] correspondence, we must realize that words do not have individual meaning but collational meaning, that is, they draw meaning from their relationship to other words in the sentence (e.g. make pancakes, make sense, make friends, make a place)" (156).

"Changing from the individual to the group or from the inclusive 'he' to a plural does not change the meaning in any way" (154).

The response of Craig Blomberg, another conservative evangelical, is also mentioned in an endnote. He mentions among other points that it is increasingly becoming correct grammatically to write, "anyone bringing their textbooks." I know I find myself writing this increasingly, although I usually then undo it since a colleague corrected me publically once for it in something I had written for a committee.

But of course English teachers do not create the rules and can only enforce them in their classes. "[S]tylistic conventions are determined by current consensus" (526, n.29).

I have put it this way--if we have to have the level of verbal accuracy in translation that Grudem, World magazine and others require, then shame on anyone for using English at all. To be consistent, we will have to ban all translations from use as the Muslims do the Quran. No translation can measure up.

Frankly, since all manuscripts differ from each other in some respect, we are lost if this is the case. We will all have to go back to the Greek tradition behind the KJV too on faith that somehow it was the Bible of the earliest Christians despite the evidence to the contrary. Surely God wouldn't have allowed the majority of Christians throughout the medieval period to follow a text that differed by as much as 5% from the original in its wording. And then we will all have to become Roman Catholic, for surely God would not have allowed the beliefs of the church to differ from the original for 1000 years either.

Or maybe the problem here doesn't have anything to do with the Bible but with typical resistance to the advance of God's kingdom because of deeply ingrained biases mistaken for God.