Constructing a Biblical Theology

Not my best, but here's a vidcast on Constructing a Biblical Theology.

Intertestamental Summaries...

Test on Friday... here's a summary of where we've been so far:

• Destruction of Jerusalem, 586BC; Cyrus allows return, 538BC; Temple rebuilt, 516BC
• Persian period--539-332BC
• Elephantine papyri--oldest surviving Jewish documents (not including inscriptions), Aramaic papyri from the 400s, indicate a parallel temple existed there, including sacrifices; destroyed 410BC by Egyptian priests
• 1 Esdras, combination of Ezra material from 2 Chron., Ezra, and Nehemiah; not in Roman Catholic (RC) Bible but in Orthodox; extra story of dinner contest with Zerubbabel
• Tobit, maybe from Persian period, developing sense of angels and demons (with names), popular magic, has the Golden Rule, almsgiving has atoning value, no sense of afterlife or real return from exile, in RC Bible
• Hellenistic period--332-63BC, Ptolemies rule from Egypt till 198, then Seleucids from Syria... Romans took over in 63BC.
• Septuagint, Greek translation of the Law, made in Egypt around 250BC, first Scripture apparently to be translated into another language
• Letter of Aristeas, the story of the translation of the Law, dates to early 100s BC; 72 translators, considers God the same as Zeus, food laws are explained philosophically
• Egyptian Judaism around 200BC a bit "unorthodox": Artapanus has Moses inventing Egyptian animal cults; Ezekiel the Tragedian has Moses sitting on God's throne over Israel
• Competitive historiography in Egypt: Manetho in 200s BC, Egyptian, argues that the Israelites were forced out of Egypt because they were lepers; Demetrius the Chronographer defends Exodus--earliest datable Jew writing in Greek, earliest witness to the Septuagint
• Sirach (Ecclesiasticus) in Hebrew around 200BC, translated into Greek around 132BC in Egypt; in the RC Bible; poor view of women; no afterlife but how a person dies shows how they have truly lived; good works atone for sin; earliest testimony to the three-fold division of the Jewish canon; Matthew seems to draw on it to compare Jesus to divine wisdom, which Sirach compares to the Law; significant parallels between James and Sirach (slow to speak, slow to anger)
• Rapid Hellenization of Jerusalem prior to Maccabean crisis (Jason takes it from Onias III by bribing Antiochus IV Epiphanes, the Syrian king; Menelaus then does the same, but he is not even a hereditary priest). Onias III murdered. Onias IV goes to Egypt and builds a temple at Leontopolis.
• Maccabean crisis 167-164BC, thereafter Hasmonians (Maccabeans) rule, first as high priests (Jonathan the first in 152BC), then as kings (Aristobulus the first in 103BC)
• 1 Maccabees; in RC Bible; dates to early 1st century BC; most accurate source of Maccabean era, including the background of Hanukkah; no sense of afterlife; gives background to what "zeal for the Law" was, who the hasidim or "faithful ones" were; sense of waiting for a prophet to come
• 2 Maccabees; in RC Bible; dates to early 1st century BC; very theologized portrayal of the actual crisis, perhaps Pharisaic; very strong physical understanding of resurrection, intestines and all, probably not a general resurrection but resurrection of martyrs and unpunished wicked; Judas Maccabeus offers sacrifices so that certain fallen will be resurrected; many argue earliest instance of ex nihilo creation, although most probably date this development to second century AD in conflict with Gnosticism; idea that righteous deaths can satisfy God's wrath toward Israel, bring it to an end; sense that God punishes Israel differently from Gentiles (with Gentiles He stores up His wrath and then obliterates them, with Israel He punishes them as He goes)
• 4 Maccabees; not in RC Bible; focuses on the 7 righteous brothers story; very philosophical, Stoic; strong sense of substitutionary atonement; immortality of the soul
• Additions to Esther, 5 Greek expansions interspersed throughout, cleans up some theological issues (like the failure to mention God), fills in other details, Jerome put the expansions at the end of the Hebrew Esther
• Additions to Daniel: Susanna, Prayer of Azariah, Bel and the Dragon
• Two versions of Susanna, Bel and the Dragon has two stories--the catching of priest eating food for Bel and Daniel making a dragon explode (then he goes to lion's den again and gets a special visit from Habakkuk)
• Judith; in RC Bible; a bit of a parable, not meant to be taken literally; stereotypical view of women with allowance for significant exceptions
• Baruch; in RC Bible; sense of Israel still in exile
• Letter of Jeremiah; 6th chapter of Baruch in Vulgate and King James
• Pharisees: "separate ones," about 6000 at the time of John Hyrcanus, most popular group, strong belief in resurrection, "those who seek smooth things" according to Essenes at Qumran, strong sense of common identity, followed well developed "traditions of the elders"
• Sadducees: descendants of Zadok, possibly upper class, sometimes displaced priests, perhaps often high priests at time of New Testament, less sectarian, rejected Pharisaic traditions of elders and resurrection, had their own purity traditions
• Essenes: "doers" of the Law; lived communally; some married, most were celibate; Dead Sea community was one such; avoided oath taking; strictest in sabbath observance; rejected legitimacy of Jerusalem temple; multi-year entrance process; well developed angelology; deterministic; immortality of spirits?
• Revolutionaries: more ad hoc than an organized "philosophy"; Zealots and Sicarii probably came into existence around the time of the Jewish War (AD66-73); Judas the Galilean around 6AD; Theudas in AD45-46; the Egyptian
• Psalms of Solomon, late first century BC, chap. 17 a principal text on Jewish expectation of a military messiah who would restore the political fortunes of Israel, evokes images of the Roman take-over in 63BC.
• Josephus, late 1st century Jewish historian, Jewish general in War who surrendered to Romans and in Jewish War claims that God went over to the Jewish side, later Antiquites less worried about putting Romans in a good light. You have to read between the lines.
• Philo, Jewish commentator on the Law who heavily brought Middle Platonic philosophical ideas to bear on his interpretations

Who were the Sadducees?

A Christian children's song has a verse, "I don't want to be a Sadducee, because they're sad you see..." The song points out the key aspect of Sadducees that sticks out to us--they did not believe in any afterlife.

Your typical New Testament survey class usually suggests a few other characteristics: priestly types, didn't believe in angels or spirits, only believed the Law was Scripture, Roman collaborators. Some of these stock characteristics are actually highly debated once you enter scholarly circles. Several of them, for example, are based on single statements in single sources whose interpretation is highly debatable.

For example, the idea that Sadducees didn't believe in angels or spirits comes pretty much from a single statement in Acts 23:8: "The Sadducees do not believe in resurrection, neither of angel nor of spirit. But the Pharisees confess both." Needless to say, it sure sounds like angel and spirit here expand in some way on the word resurrection. Acts thus seems only to be saying that Sadducees did not believe in life after death.

The idea that the Sadducees only followed the Jewish Law and not the rest of the Jewish canon comes largely from a single statement in Josephus book 13: "the Pharisees have delivered to the people a great many observances by succession from their fathers, which are not written in the laws of Moses; and for that reason it is that the Sadducees reject them, and say that we are to esteem those observances to be obligatory which are in the written word, but are not to observe what are derived from the tradition of our forefathers. "

But this passage is not contrasting the Law with, say, the Prophets or the Writings. It is contrasting some alleged following of the Law alone versus following the Law as interpreted by the "traditions of the elders." In reality, of course, we know that there never is some following of the Law alone. This is simply the normal perception of a religious group that they are following the Bible alone while other groups are following human traditions. In reality we all are following interpretive traditions.

The passage above goes on to suggest that the main following of the Sadducees was among the rich, and Josephus' statements that they were not a cohesive group probably indicates that they were not so much idealogicalically bound as socially bound, that is, what defined them as a group was primarily the fact that they were from a certain, somewhat aristocratic, priestly class of family.

The name "Sadducee" is close enough to "Zadok" to suggest a theory, namely, that when the Syrian king Antiochus Epiphanes took the priesthood away from Onias III in the early 2nd century BC, and then later when the Maccabees took over the priesthood (152BC), the displaced priestly families who were the true "sons of Zadok" continued to exist disempowered, but still wealthy and still in connection with the temple. They would represent a somewhat older strand of thinking, a more "conservative" one in the sense of resisting new ways of thinking like the newly risen apocalyptic stream of thought that arose in the early second century. Their rejection of an afterlife was simply the perpetuation of a point of view that was long standing at the temple, as we find in the Psalms. Sirach also seems to come from this social strand at the turn of the second century and embodies a similar view.

When the Romans took power in 63BC and then in 37BC when Herod the Great took over Jerusalem, the Sadducees were able to reinsert themselves into priestly leadership. We thus take largely at face value Acts 5:17 at face value to indicate a close association between many high priests and the Sadducean sect. They were Roman collaborators only insofar as it is good to be in power and when you can only be in power by maintaining a good relationship with those who grant you power, you walk a fine line.

The relationship between the Sadducees and the Essenes is an interesting one, as in some places the Dead Sea Scrolls take positions more similar to the Sadducees than the Pharisees. My hypothesis, one I haven't published and please remember me when you come into your footnotes, is that the Teacher of Righteousness was one of those displaced priests (here following James VanderVam's suggestion that the TR might have been the anonymous high priest of the years 159-152BC). But the group that would become the Essenes, "Enochic Judaism," I would suggest, was already in existence as an apocalyptic group well prior to this point.

The group we call the Essenes was thus a hybrid mixture of apocalyptic Judaism with a highly charismatic Sadducee. Even here, we are not talking about the Dead Sea group, which itself was a later, ultra-conservative spin off of this group that did not settle at the Dead Sea until some 50 years after the "Covenant of Damascus" was made, the settlement not existing until around 100BC.

And those are Schenck's thoughts on the Sadducees and Essenes, not likely to be developed in publication any time soon.

What Colleges and Seminaries will survive?

I was talking to a seminary student on Friday who chose Wesley Seminary @IWU because of the online option. The competition was another seminary in the region that has no online programs. The President of the seminary has pretty much refused to look into it. I know of other colleges who are only now thinking about online. Some aren't interested in the name of principle.

I strongly support small, quality programs. Hittite studies? Why not--even if you only have 2 students. But you had better have a whole lot of other programs that are making money. You can have any degree of quality with sufficient quantity, but you'll close if your priorities are some idea of quality with or without sufficient quantity. And thus I administer last rites to all those stubborn traditional faculties out there who would rather go down with the ship than take a lower rank among the crew. They're like that guy in Dr. Strangelove who proudly waves his cowboy hat as he rides a nuclear bomb down to the ground, about to start the annhiliation of the earth.

IWU would be struggling financially right there with all the other traditional colleges if it did not have online and extension programs. They say you don't close because of decisions you make today but because of decisions you made 7 years ago. It may already be too late, but my advice to other colleges and seminaries is to get into distance education right now if you're not into it. Otherwise, you may be signing your death warrant before the next decade is over. Don't make me a prophet.

P.S. I strongly disagree with the idea that you cannot learn as much in an online course as in an onsite one. I would strongly contend that the average learning of a well designed class online is greater than the average learning of most onsite classes.

Professors think they cover more content, but they only think this because they are transmitting more--standing up in front of the class enjoying themselves talk, usually. The students, on average, are not receiving more. The professor thinks the two or three students that engage them are representative? Not so. The rest are on Facebook.

A well designed online class, because all the students have to participate, not just only the two or three who will remember even having the professor, will end up with a greater average learning than the vast majority of onsite classes. Babbling doesn't equal learning.

15. The Text of the New Testament

The first of this series was Faith, Evidence, and Biblical Scholarship. Here is the second New Testament post.
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When we are talking about copies of the New Testament, a manuscript is a handwritten copy, most of which certainly date to the medieval period before the invention of the printing press in the late 1400s. As you would expect, we have fewer truly old manuscripts than we do later ones because of the wear and tear of time. We have none of the original manuscripts of any biblical writing and the vast majority date later than AD1000.

Some find this situation unnerving, but we are in a much better position when it comes to the New Testament than we are other ancient writings like those of Homer or Plato. We have a fragment of John that dates to about 30 years after it was written--almost unheard of. We have a collection of most of Paul's writings (minus the Pastorals) that dates to around AD200 (p46, one of the Chester Beatty papyri)--also quite amazing when it comes to such things.

The best introduction to the science of the textual criticism of the New Testament, the branch of biblical studies that studies manuscripts and tries to identify what the books of the Bible originally said, is Bruce Metzger's The Text of the New Testament. [1] Metzger is also responsible for the very helpful, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament. [2] This resource goes through the most significant variations among the thousands of manuscripts we have and explains why the editors of the standard Greek New Testament picked the particular options they did.

Another good introduction is Kurt Aland and Barbara Aland's, The Text of the New Testament. [3] Kurt Aland was instrumental in putting together the standard text of the Greek New Testament as it now stands. There are two primary versions, although both now have the same text. The "Aland" version is typically a red Bible with a "textual apparatus" at the bottom to tell the most significant variations from the text the editors have chosen. [4] The "Nestle" version is typically a blue Bible and has been around longer. [5] It now has the same text as the "Aland" version, but a much more extensive textual apparatus at the bottom.

The "external evidence" we have, the evidence from various manuscripts and writings, falls into about five different types. First are papyri, manuscripts written on scrolls made from papyrus strips. They are typically the oldest manuscripts and are written in all capital Greek letters without any breaks between words or punctuation. The punctuation we now find in our Bibles is thus entirely a matter of the judgment of interpreters. It is thus possible to argue from time to time that a statement should really be a question or that something is a quote from somewhere else rather than an author's claim or that a period should be put somewhere so that a new thought begins.

"Uncial" manuscripts tend to date from about the 300s to the 800s and are on animal hide or "vellum." Rather than scrolls, uncials are in book form (i.e., in codex form), making it possible to have the entire New Testament on them. Two of the most important uncial manuscripts date from the early 300s, Codex Sinaiticus (symbolized by the Hebrew letter א) and Codex Vaticanus (symbolized by B). Although the standard Greek text currently in use does not read exactly like these two, most textual scholars believe these two manuscripts are examples of the best tradition of manuscripts, usually called the Alexandrian tradition.

"Minuscule" manuscripts are written in lower case Greek cursive and are medieval copies, largely dating from a handful in the 900s to around 1500 when copies began to be made with the printing press. We have well over 5000 of these. By the Middle Ages, the text of the New Testament had become relatively standardized, so most of these fall into what scholars often call the Byzantine tradition. When people speak of the Majority Text, they are largely referring to this textual tradition. Most surviving manuscripts are medieval and most read very similarly.

We have two other very important witnesses to the text of the New Testament. One are the early church fathers, the quotations that various significant figures in Christianity made of the biblical text. These fathers are as old as the oldest manuscripts and thus give an important witness to the text of the New Testament, although we have to be careful because all we have of their writings are also copies of copies. We thus have to do textual criticism on manuscripts of them just as on manuscripts of the New Testament itself. It is understandable if some of their copyists may at times have harmonized their quotes with the text of the Bible as these copyists knew it in their own time.

A good example of the significance of quotations in the fathers is the ending of Mark, Mark 16:9-20. The manuscript evidence for this ending being original is not very good. The oldest copies we have of Mark do not have it. Several early Christians do not seem to know about it and two very important Christians from the 300s and 400s say that few manuscripts of Mark they knows have it. But at the same time, two very important witnesses of the late second century, Irenaeus and Tatian, seem to know of the ending. The strongest argument from the "external evidence" of manuscripts, therefore, comes from early church fathers.

A final major witness to the text of the New Testament are translations of it into other languages like Latin, Syriac, Coptic, Ethiopic, Armenian, and so forth. Again, some of these translations, like the Old Latin, can be as old as any Greek manuscript. While one may not always be able to tell the exact wording of the Greek original, they can help a person choose between known Greek options.

The science of textual criticism primarily developed over the last two hundred years. The 1800s in particular saw significant findings of old manuscripts that called into question the originality of the "received Greek text," what had come to be called the textus receptus. The origins of this particular edition of the Greek New Testament, which stands as the basis for the King James or Authorized Version, is quite interesting.

With the invention of the printing press, the humanist, Renaissance, Roman Catholic scholar Erasmus embarked on a race to be the first to put the Greek New Testament in movable type. Using a half dozen or so manuscripts, all of which were medieval, he quickly put together an edition of the Greek New Testament that understandably corresponded mostly to the Byzantine tradition. For his first edition, he did not have any copies of the last part of Revelation, so he actually created a Greek text by translating back from the Latin. The result was some readings that ironically appeared in not a single Greek manuscript!

By the 1551 edition of Stephanus, the Erasmus text had reached somewhat of a standard form. For the first time, chapters were divided into verses. These verse divisions remain the basis for the current numbering in the New Testament. [6] In a few instances, later findings of earlier manuscripts have suggested that a verse of Stephanus' text was not originally there. The result is a "missing verse" like Acts 8:37. But no one has taken this verse out. Rather, the earliest manuscripts suggest instead that the verse had been added in centuries after Acts was written.

In a few instances, the textus receptus has retained some of the peculiarities of Erasmus' venture. For example, the reading in Revelation 22:14 in the King James Version, "they that do his commandments" is a leftover from Erasmus initially translating back from Latin into Greek because he did not have any Greek manuscripts here. There are some Greek manuscripts that read this way, but we wonder if he would have gone with the more likely, "those who wash their robes" if he had initially had any Greek manuscripts of this verse at the time.

Perhaps the most famous Erasmus story has to do with 1 John 5:7. The full verse appears in only eight of the over 5000 known Greek manuscripts. It appears in the main text of no known Greek manuscript prior to Erasmus. If original, this wording of the verse would be the clearest statement of the Trinity in all of Scripture. Accordingly, Erasmus received some pressure to put it in a later edition of his text. He remarked that he would if a Greek manuscript could be shown to have it. His journal later suggested he believed the one he then received had been created for that very purpose. Since the verse has such incredibly weak support and in fact was unknown at the time of the great Trinitarian controversies of the 300s and 400s, it seems incomprehensible that they be original.

In the centuries after Erasmus, there was an increasing sense that his Greek text was not original at various places. J. J. Griesbach (1745-1812), for example, suggested that in general, the shorter of two variations (the lectio brevior) is more likely to be original. It is not always the case, but more often than not. He also recognized the very important principle that the more difficult reading (the lectio difficilior) is more likely to be original. The reason is that copyists were more likely to "fix" problems than to cause them when copying.

Hiding here is probably the most important principle of textual criticism of all, at least when it come to internal evidence, evidence based on the way the text reads rather than on what manuscripts have a certain reading. This is the rule that says the most likely original reading is the one that would best explain how the other variations came about. Because copyists were more inclined to add material to clarify things or to smooth out difficulties, the shorter readings and the more difficult readings most of the time are the more likely readings, and the older manuscripts tend to have these readings.

One of the greatest discoverers of manuscripts was Constantin von Tischendorf (1815-74), the "Indiana Jones" of manuscripts. His biggest discovery was Codex Sinaiticus, the oldest complete Greek manuscript of the entire Bible known at present. It dates from the early 300s. Tischendorf came across it while staying at St. Catherine's monastery on the Mt. Sinai peninsula, where it was in a bin of material destined to be burned for heat. He strongly suggested it should not be burned and, by way of politics, eventually managed to get the manuscript out of Egypt and to him in Germany.

Some of the most groundbreaking discoveries both of manuscripts and of method were thus in play by the late 1800s. But it was undoubtedly the work of Brooke Foss Westcott (1825-1901) and Fenton John Anthony Hort (1828-92) that finally established the current trajectory of New Testament textual criticism. In 1881, they published a critical edition of the Greek New Testament that incorporated the consensus of textual scholars as it had developed over time. Their second volume laid out the method currently in use of weighing variations against each other on the basis of both internal and external evidence. In terms of external evidence, they divided existing manuscripts into various traditions, the most important of which were the Alexandrian that they preferred (e.g., Sinaiticus and Vaticanus); a Western textual tradition whose principal representative was Codex Bezae (D) and some Old Latin manuscripts; and the Byzantine tradition that most surviving manuscripts exemplify.

The science of textual criticism has not stood still since the days of Westcott and Hort. It is generally agreed that they relied too heavily on the two manuscripts, Sinaiticus and Vaticanus. Nevertheless, older papyri have been discovered since them and these finds generally support the conclusions of Westcott and Hort. Certainly we have also seen a few scholars who have applied their intellect to finding ways to reinterpret the evidence. One such attempt focuses on the "Majority Text" of the Greek New Testament, considering the reading that most manuscripts have as more likely original than the reading favored by "weighing" the manuscripts by age, tradition, and internal features. However, by far the vast majority of textual scholars accept the dictum of Westcott and Hort that "manuscripts must be weighed, not counted" and would thus consider the text used in most modern translations of the Bible to be by far the most likely original wording of the New Testament books.

[1] (Oxford: Oxford University, 1964). The fourth edition has been revised by Bart Ehrman (2005).

[2] (London: United Bible Societies, 1971).

[3] Translated by Erroll F. Rhodes (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987).

[4] Put out by the United Bible Societies, now in its fourth, revised edition (2006).

[5] Put out by the American Bible Society, now in its 27th edition (2004).

[6] The chapter divisions had only been added in the early 1200s by a man named Stephen Langton.

Friday Paul: Life Beyond Death 2

Received my contract for this series as a book in the mail today! Previous posts include:

1a. Born at a Time and Place 1; 1b. Born at a Time and Place 2
2a. A Change in Life Direction; 2b A Change in Life Direction 2; 2c A Change in Life Direction 3
3a. The Unknown Years 1; 3b. The Unknown Years 2; 3c. The Unknown Years 3

They will of course be edited and filtered before publication.

The first post in the current chapter was Life Beyond Death 1. We now continue this chapter in progress...
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So it would seem to be either at Athens or, perhaps more likely, at Corinth that Paul penned 1 Thessalonians. We would agree with perhaps the majority of scholars in thinking that 1 Thessalonians was not only the first letter of Paul's that we have, but indeed the very first book of the New Testament to be written. This chapter focuses on 1 Thessalonians, one of whose main topics is the fate of those who die before Christ returns. Then we follow that theme through some of Paul's other letters too.

In the first three chapters of 1 Thessalonians, Paul largely recounts the story of his relationship with the Thessalonians. It is helpful to remember that only part of our conversations are about ideas and "logical" statements. In fact, probably more of our communication functions on a relational and emotional level than on a logical one. Teachers of ancient rhetoric fully took these other dimensions of persuasion into account. [1] Logical argument they called the logos mode of persuasion. Arguments that played on the emotions of the audience played on pathos. A final mode of persuasion build on ethos, persuasion based on trust toward the person doing the persuading.

The first three chapters of 1 Thessalonians are largely about establishing ethos between Paul and the Thessalonians. Paul builds on the common experiences he and the Thessalonians have shared, as well as the good will Timothy's recent visit to them has secured. He reassures them of his good motives and the broader struggle with God against evil that they have joined.

The form of 1 Thessalonians at its core is much like normal letters of the day. [2] The main difference is how long the letter is (longer than most letters) and the fact that Paul expands the typical greeting. Most letters began with a simple greeting, also called a prescript: x to y, greetings. 1 Thessalonians, perhaps because it is Paul's earliest letter, expands the greeting the least of any of Paul's writings, adding a little to the nature of the Thessalonian church and providing the characteristic Pauline "Grace and peace to you" instead of the normal "Greetings." The word for "grace" (charis) was a little like the word for "greetings" (chairein), to which Paul added the characteristic Jewish "peace" (cf. shalom).

Letters then usually had a "thanksgiving" or blessing section of some kind after the greeting. The letter writer might invoke the favor of the gods on the audience. 1 Thessalonians is no different. In 1:2-10, Paul thanks God for the Thessalonians and anticipates one of the key topics he will address later in the letter--Christ's coming back to earth (1:10). All of Paul's letters have something similar right after the greeting, that is, with the exception of Galatians, where Paul perhaps shames the audience by refraining from the usual thanksgiving. 1 Thessalonians also has some very brief closing remarks (5:12-24) and a "postscript" (5:25-28).

Although 1 Thessalonians does address some other issues, the topic that seems to be its most central has to do with the question of what happens to Christians who die before Christ returns (4:13-5:11). Before he gets to the big issue, Paul does urge the Thessalonians to avoid sexual immorality (4:3-8). He urges brotherly love (4:9-10) and for the Thessalonians to work diligently. Some have suggested that the Thessalonians were so focused on Christ coming back soon that they had stopped going about the business of their daily lives. It is a fun suggestion, although in the end we do not really have enough evidence to know for sure.

It can be hard at first to get into the heads of the Thessalonians. How could they not know what happened to Christians who died before Christ came back? Paul was not in Thessalonica long before he had to leave, to be sure. But would their eternal destiny not have come up even in his first meeting with them? These sorts of things are such obvious assumptions to us that it is hard to put ourselves in the shoes of someone for whom these were radically new ideas.

However, it may also be that some of our own assumptions are unexamined. For example, do we understand the difference between the idea of resurrection that Paul presents here and the idea of the immortality of the soul, which Paul does not discuss here. Resurrection here is not something that happens at death. For 1 Thessalonians, the only one who has ever been resurrected up to this point in history is Jesus Christ himself. For 1 Thessalonians, resurrection is an event that will take place as Jesus Christ returns to earth from heaven.

Resurrection for Paul also involves a body. This aspect of resurrection is particularly clear in 1 Corinthians 15, where Paul addresses similar issues with the Corinthians. "But someone will ask, 'How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?" (1 Cor. 15:35). Embodiment is so central to the idea of resurrection for Paul that the possibility that some sort of body might not be involved does not even occur to him.

For Paul, this body is not like our current bodies: "flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God" (15:50). Our body that dies is a natural body or perhaps better, an animal body (psychikos; 15:44). Our body that rises is, like Christ's, a "spiritual" body (pneumatikos). It is a body, so it is not just our spirit. It is a body with a glory, perhaps not unlike the glory of heavenly bodies like the stars, at least as they appear to us looking up from the earth (15:40-41). Obviously Paul was using the categories he had at his disposal to try to describe our heavenly bodies.

These bodies, perhaps surprisingly to some of us, will be just like Christ's resurrection body. "[J]ust as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the heavenly man" (1 Cor. 15:49). In Philippians, Paul also says that Christ "will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body" (Phil. 3:21).

But how could these things not have come up while Paul was there? Is it just that Paul thought they needed reminding? On the one hand, his audience does seem overwhelmingly Gentile. It is hard to imagine that a group of Jews would have turned to God "from idols" (1 Thess. 1:9). Accordingly, they might not have known much of anything about the distinctively Jewish notion of resurrection. Most non-Jews did not really have much anticipation of a meaningful afterlife at the time.

In the end, we can probably explain what is going on here if Paul's focus in preaching was on Christ's return to earth in judgment rather than on life after death. We tend to think we will die, even though Christ will return to earth one day. The order was probably reversed exactly in Paul's earliest preaching. Christ is coming back to earth very soon, and--oh, yes--if you die before it happens there is life after death...

[1] The best starting resource here, and one that deserves to be on our list of top fifty books to master Paul's writings, is George Kennedy's classic book, New Testament Interpretation through Rhetorical Criticism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1984). His book presents the categories of ancient rhetoric as someone like the author of Luke-Acts or Hebrews would have likely studied it. It is less certain that Paul would have formally studied rhetoric, although it is not impossible.

[2] Perhaps the best current book to get into things like what ancient letters looked like and what role secretaries played in writing letters is, E. Randolph Richards, Paul and First-Century Letter Writing: Secretaries, Composition and Collection (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2004), another book to add to the fifty some books by which you might master Paul's writings. Another resource is Jerome Murphy-O'Connor's Paul the Letter Writer (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical, 1995).

Obama wins Nobel Peace Prize?!

I imagine I was just as surprised as anyone to wake up to this news. I do admire many of Obama's goals, even if it is yet to be seen if any of them work in practice or not. I admire the idea of universal health care, although I'm nervous about putting it into practice. I admire a more diplomatic approach to foreign affairs, although I hope it doesn't compromise our security. I don't like nuclear bombs, but I'm not sure it's a good idea for us to get rid of all ours quite yet. I admire the greater emphasis on a cleaner environment, even if I'm not qualified to comment on the science.

But Obama's not really done anything yet, and it remains to be seen if he will accomplish any of his goals. Afghanistan may very well fall apart. All versions of a health care bill may fail. Israel has rejected any peace settlement in the near future. It seems inevitable that Iran and North Korea are going to be having nuclear bombs for the foreseeable future. We are massively in debt to China and it doesn't look like that's going to change any time soon.

So what do I make of all this? More than anything else, I think it is an affirmation of Obama's trajectory over that of the Bush administration. If there had been no Bush, Obama would not be getting this prize. It is an indication of how drastically the very election of Obama has, whether rightly or wrongly, improved the world's perception of the United States as their friend rather than as something to be scared of.

Not sure that this prize will have much of an impact on anything. Maybe it will. In the short, run, it will certainly cause a spike in those chain emails I get claiming Obama is the antichrist. ;-)

Another Wesley Quote: "Works of Law"

Very busy... thanks for thoughts on yesterday's quote. Here's another quote I found striking from the same sermon, "Means of Grace."

"What is seeking salvation by works? In the writings of St. Paul, it means, either seeking to be saved by observing the ritual works of the Mosaic law; or expecting salvation for the sake of our own works, by the merit of our own righteousness" (Vol. 5, p. 196, italics mine).

I'm not sure exactly what Wesley was thinking here, but this is exactly the way I interpret the phrase "works of Law" in Romans and Galatians--primarily a reference to the Jew-specific parts of the Law but also secondarily a reference to the question of whether any human could deserve God's favor purely on the basis of their right actions.

John Wesley quote--"Means of Grace"

Spiritual formation class this week is reading Wesley's 16th sermon: "The Means of Grace." In keeping with Wesleyan theology, Wesley's signature is a collection of standard sermons rather than a systematic theology--practice and formation oriented rather than theoretical and informational. Long made fun of by snobby modernist intellectuals, we wear it at the beginning of the twenty-first century with pride.

Came across this quote today: "We know that there is no inherent power in the words that are spoken in prayer, in the letter of Scripture read, the sound thereof heard, or the bread and wine received in the Lord's Supper; but that it is God alone who is the Giver of very good gift, the Author of all grace; that the whole power is of Him, whereby, through any of these, there is any blessing conveyed to our souls" (Vol. 5, 188).

Sunday Explanatory Notes: Hebrews 2:9-18

And now, Hebrews continues. For what preceded, see this summative post.
__________
2:9 But we do see one who was made a little lower than the angels--Jesus--who was crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for every [mortal].
The author unfolds the solution to the human problem artfully, suspensefully. Humanity was unable to attain God's intended glory. But one who became lower than the angels did for us. By the grace of God, we no longer need be defeated by death.

Jesus thus troubleshoots the human problem. God brings Jesus into the same situation as he brought humanity: "You made him lower than the angels for a little while." But because Jesus has no sin (4:15) he is actually able to be "crowned with glory and honor" in a way humanity was not. Instead, because of sin, humanity suffers death. Now Jesus has suffered death in place of humanity and so humanity might attain to its originally intended glory and not taste (ultimate) death.

2:10 For it was fitting for Him, for whom all things are and through whom all things are, when leading many sons to glory, to perfect the pioneer of their salvation through sufferings.
Very interestingly, while 1:3 speaks of Jesus as the one "through whom all things" came to be, this verse clearly refers to God (in a context that distinguishes Him from Jesus) as the agent of creation. Since 1:3 was in a poetic context and this verse more prose, we suspect this verse gives the author's more literal way of thinking about creation. 1:3 is thus a more exalted, poetic, somewhat figurative reference to Jesus as the one through whom God "recreates" the world or brings creation to its originally intended state. This coheres with all the other places in the New Testament where Jesus is spoken of as the one "through whom" the world comes to exist (e.g., 1 Cor. 8:6; Col. 1:16; John 1:3).

But the point of the verse is to indicate the fittingness of Jesus' suffering. Jesus suffering to death makes him "perfect" or "complete" in relation to his role as pioneer of salvation. He tastes death for everyone--humanity's more appropriate end point--and now can lead "many sons," including daughters, to the glory originally intended for them in the creation as in Psalm 8. Perfection in Hebrews in relation to Christ has to do with him fully equipped to serve as Christ and high priest, a state he only reaches in death.

Salvation here has to do with escape from the coming judgment and rescue from the death slated for all humanity.

2:11-12 For both the one who makes holy and those are are made holy are from One [Father], for which reason he is not ashamed to call them brothers, saying, "I will proclaim your name to my brothers, in the middle of the assembly I will sing to you,"
Christ can lead many sons to glory and can author their salvation because Christ is human like we are. We are both "from one," presumably meaning from one source or from one Father. We are brothers with Jesus. "Sanctify" or "make holy" here likely has a strong connection to purification in relation to sins.

The three Old Testament quotes that follow are an interesting even if somewhat random collection of words interpreted in the light of Christ. The first is from Psalm 22:22. We have clear evidence from elsewhere in the New Testament that some early Christians read this psalm in the light of Jesus. Indeed, Matthew and Mark both have Jesus quote the first verse from the cross and all the gospels tell the story of Christ's passion in dialog with various verses in this psalm. The quotation of the verse is thus probably meant to evoke images of Jesus' suffering of death for the rest of humanity.

The word "assembly" or "congregation" here in the Greek Old Testament is "church." Perhaps from the very beginning of the Christ movement, this word had the connotation of the end time community, the qahal or assembly of God. In Paul's writings the word ekklesia usually had the sense of a local gathering or assembly but here probably a more universal connotation.

2:13 ... and again, "I have placed my trust on Him," and again, "Behold, I and the children God gave to me."
Hebrews strings together three quotations here just as it did in chapter 1, all of which reiterate a similar point. These two come from a series of verses in Isaiah 8, verses 17 and 18. How the author would have interpreted these verses in the light of the verses immediately surrounding them is difficult to say, but clearly verses from the preceding and following chapter were interpreted messianically by some early Christians. Matthew read Isaiah 7:14 in relation to Jesus' conception by a virgin (Matt. 1:23), and it took 9:1-2 in terms of Jesus' earthly ministry (Matt. 4:15-16). Luke 2:11 also may echo the "Wonderful, Counselor" passage of Isaiah 9:6, although the New Testament perhaps surprisingly makes little of this passage.

Thus although it is somewhat difficult to know exactly how the author of Hebrews understood this passage, it seems reasonable to think that some early Christians understood this part of Isaiah to be filled with resonances of the life of Jesus. Isaiah 8:17 speaks of the prophet waiting for the LORD to deliver His people and 8:18 speaks of Isaiah and his followers being signs of faithfulness to the LORD in a time of faithlessness. It is unclear whether this context played any role at all in Hebrews' use of these words.

In Hebrews, the words imply the faith of Jesus Christ in God, arguably a theme we also find in Paul (e.g., 2 Cor. 4:13; cf. Rom. 3:22; Gal. 2:16), coupled with his leadership of God's other children to salvation. Presumably, therefore, the two quotes are meant to reiterate that Jesus faithfully executed the human equation so that he could lead many sons to glory as they were originally intended to enjoy.

2:14-15 Therefore, since the children have partaken of blood and flesh, he himself also partook of them similarly, so that he might destroy the one who holds the power of death, the Devil and might change these, who in fear of death were subject to slavery their whole life.
The first verse is often taken in relation to the incarnation, since it speaks of Christ partaking of flesh and blood with intentionality. It is unclear whether the author was thinking this much, however, since the children also partake of flesh and blood and the intentionality could merely be God's rather than Christ's (cf. also, however, Heb. 10:5). The connection between human flesh and the power of the Devil is clear, reflecting somewhat of a dualism we will find even more explicitly in later chapters like chapter 9.

At the same time, we should not overread the dualism. The power of the Devil over flesh here has to do with the power of death. It is possible that there is an allusion to Wisdom 2:24 here, which mentions that death entered the world through the Devil's envy. In the Life of Adam and Eve, it is Satan's jealousy of the status God gave to Adam that leads to his trickery of Adam and the subsequent entrance of death. Although Hebrews does not mention Adam, it is thus possible that a somewhat Pauline understanding of death's origins stands behind the author's comments here.

Death is thus the principal manifestation of the failure of humanity to attain to the glory of God. Instead, humans live in fear of death their entire lives. But Christ has now tasted death for everyone, making it again possible for humanity to attain to their God-intended glory.

2:16 For clearly he is not helping angels but he is helping the seed of Abraham.
This verse begins to close the loop with 2:5, forming a kind of inclusio. It is not to angels that God has subjected the coming world but humanity. Christ did not come to help angels rule and the coming world is not destined for angelic rule. Rather the coming world will be subjected to both the rule of Christ and of humanity.

Some have suggested that this verse counters an angel-Christology. Christ did not assume the form of angels but he partook of flesh and blood. Thus the strong contrast of Christ with the angels is also explained as an attempt to counter the notion that Christ was an angel of some sort. But this line of interpretation does not seem likely, nor is it clear that the audience struggled with too high a view of angels. The vast majority of the imagery in Hebrews 1 and 2 can be explained eschatologically--the angels are associated with guardianship of the creation in the old age, but the new age is one in which Christ and humanity rule.

Although the author refers to the "seed of Abraham," there is no hint that he is only thinking of Jews. The train of thought fairly clearly refers to all humanity without distinction between Jew and Gentile. The author thus would seem to include all those who have partaken of the Christ (cf. 3:14) as seed of Abraham, whether Jew or Gentile. This is a very Pauline understanding (e.g., Gal. 3:25). On the whole, the absence of any defense or explanation of this dynamic--indeed, the thoroughgoing assumption of the inclusion of the Gentiles without ever so much as using the word "Jew" or "Gentile"--bespeaks a later rather than an earlier date for the sermon.

2:17 Therefore, he needed to be made like [his] brothers in every way, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in relation to the things of God, so he could atone for the sins of the people.
Verses 2:17-18 capture the argument that has preceded in an apt general statement. Indeed, many interpreters believe that these verses anticipate most of Hebrews' argument yet to come, constituting "key verses" of a sort for the sermon. The point is that Jesus fully assumed the human condition, became lower than the angels for a little while, as them, so that he might become an appropriate high priest.

This is the first point in the sermon where Christ's high priesthood is mentioned. 3:1 will then pick up this new thread and eventually lead to 4:14, where the priestly argument will come out in full force. Prior to Hebrews, Christians clearly believed that Christ's death was a sacrifice for sins. With Hebrews, however, Christ becomes both sacrifice and sacrificer. By showing Christ not only to be the consummate sacrifice, but indeed the ultimate priest in the true sanctuary, Hebrews removes all need for any earthy cultus at all.

2:18 For in that he himself has suffered and been tested, he is able to help those being tested.
The solidarity of Christ with humanity is a major theme of 2:5-18, and it will return in 4:14-16. There the author will remind the audience that Christ was tempted like them yet he did not sin. The rhetorical point would seem to be that they also can endure temptation and not sin. The temptation would seem to be to abandon faith because of hard times. Christ did not abandon faith and sin when he was undergoing suffering. He kept his trust in God (2:13) and thus can show them the way.

So they are learning obedience through the things that they are suffering just like Christ did (5:8). He is a high priest who can help those who undergo such tests not least because he himself also underwent those tests of faithfulness when he partook of flesh and blood.

WESLEY SEMINARY at Indiana Wesleyan University

I'm excited to announce the name and new leader of the new seminary: Wesley Seminary at Indiana Wesleyan University.

We've designed the curriculum, we've hired our first faculty, we've been delighted with our first two cohorts of students. Now we have an official name and official leadership to begin January 1.

Our first full time head will be none other than Wayne Schmidt, who has just finished up thirty years as pastor of Kentwood Community Church in Michigan. He is a church planter, whose church has "great grandchildren." And very exciting to me is his passion for bringing diversity into churches.

We can now officially launch the seminary website, where you can see just a little of what is currently going on.

Last night we had a nice dinner out with just a few of the key players thus far. You can see in the picture from left to write

1) Charles Arn, well known church health expert who has been teaching online, 2) myself, 3) then Wayne Schmidt, 4) then Russ Gunsalus who has been serving as Acting head of the seminary and will continue to do so till January, 5) Bob Whitesel, well known church growth expert who has been teaching onsite and online, and 6) Nate Lamb, the best recruiter a seminary could have in the world!

Thanks to God for His gracious smile thus far on the undertaking. We do not deserve it nor do we take it for granted.

Ramping up Hebrews Explanatory Notes Again!

I've now finished Explanatory Notes on Galatians, Philippians, and 1 Thessalonians. I had mostly finished Hebrews some time ago, but had never got back to it. Sundays for the next few weeks I hope to finish up explanatory notes on Hebrews.

Here are the previous posts as I prepare to continue the series on Sunday...

Hebrews 1:1-4
Hebrews 1:5-14
Hebrews 2:1-4
Hebrews 2:5-9

Hebrews 2:10-18

Hebrews 3:1-6
Hebrews 3:7-19
Hebrews 4:1-13
Hebrews 4:14-5:10
Hebrews 5:11-6:8
Hebrews 6:9-20
Hebrews 7:1-10
Hebrews 7:11-28
Hebrews 8
Hebrews 9:1-14
Hebrews 9:15-28

...

Hebrews 13:1-8
Hebrews 13:9-16
Hebrews 13:17-25

So basically there's a bit from chapter 2, then chapters 10, 11, and 12 and we're done.

Explanatory Notes: James 2:14-26

2:14 What is the benefit, my brothers, if someone should say to have faith but should not have works? The faith is not able to save him, is it?
Works for James, as we have already seen, have to do with what we traditionally think of as "good works," helping those in need like the poor, widows, and orphans (1:27). We have seen thus far a significant concern on James' part that leaders not pander to wealthy patrons but that they instead love their neighbor who is in need, the poor in their community. In this well known section, James continues the theme of hearing and not doing that he began in chapter 1:22-27.

Those who say they have faith but no works to prove it are like those who are hearers of the word but not doers. James here makes it clear that such a person will not be saved, will not escape condemnation on the day of judgment. Faith alone, understood as a mere assent to certain beliefs, is inadequate to save.

2:15-17 If a brother or sister is naked and lacking daily food and someone of you should say to them, "Go in peace. Be warm and fed," and you do not give them the needs of the body, what is the benefit? So also faith, if it should not have works, is dead by itself.
Here we see by example what James understands by "works." Works are the kinds of things that Matthew mentions in the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats (Matt. 25:31-46): welcoming strangers, clothing the naked, feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty. The rich person James has mentioned in 1:9-11 and 2:2-7 has the resources to help those in need but does not do so. Leaders in the community might be able to help those in need, and James' exhortation is surely directed primarily at them.

Faith without works is dead, like a body without a spirit. It is of no use. It does not do anything.

2:18 But someone will say, "You have faith, and I have works." Show me your faith without works, and I will show you my faith by my works.
The original Greek of this verse presents some complications. Ancient Greek largely did not use punctuation, including quotation marks, so scholars debate exactly where the quote ends and what the precise nature of the question is. By far we believe the above punctuation is most likely.

James' imaginary conversation partner simply claims to be a different person, one that has faith but who does not do works. James is a different type of person, one who does works. James somewhat mockingly, without completely denying the other person's "faith," points out the ironic that his faith shows in his works. The other person's faith, on the other hand, is dead faith.

2:19 You have faith that God is one. You are doing well. The demons also have faith and they tremble.
One disadvantage of reading the Bible in English is that you cannot see the similarities between various words. In English, the word faith and the word believe look quite different, and we might strongly distinguish them. But in Greek, these are varying meanings of the same word, the pist- root. Since we believe James is talking here about an inadequate faith rather than something that is not faith at all, we have chosen to translate accordingly.

The person James is indicting says that they have faith without works. The demons, James points out, have this level of faith. This is a mere belief that does not impact one's life. It is a mere assent with one's head without any real investment with one's heart. You believe that God is one, the affirmation of the Jewish Shema. Any mainstream Jew might affirm such a thing. The rich Jewish patron visiting your small Christian Jewish gathering would.

But this level of faith is no different than the amount of faith that the demons have, and they are still facing the judgment. And so will those within the community whose faith goes no further than mere assent to certain beliefs.

2:20 Do you want to know, O foolish person, that faith without works is ineffective?
This verse repeats the idea that faith without works is dead from 2:17 in a slightly different way. James uses a word play difficult to translate into English--faith without works (erga) is useless (arga). Those who think they are okay simply because they believe with their heads are foolish.

2:21 Was not Abraham, our father, justified by works after he offered his son Isaac on the altar?
From this point on in the chapter, we increasingly begin to sense that James is interacting with Pauline tradition in some form. We do not believe that James' thinking here actually contradicts Paul's thought, even though on some levels it may sound as if it does. Indeed, Paul and James did likely disagree on some issues as we play out the principles of their comments. Even further, they probably thought they disagreed! But nothing that has made it into the biblical text itself seems irreconcilable between the two.

James is still arguing that the faith that counts before God is a faith that issues forth in obedience and action. Paul certainly agreed with this idea as well. Here James brings up the well known story of Genesis 22 in which God tells Abraham to offer Isaac as a sacrifice, and Abraham obeys until God releases him.

2:22 You see that faith was working together with his works and faith was completed through works.
Again, this statement does not seem to contradict Paul's theology. Paul knew nothing of a faith in Jesus as Lord that did not result in the fruit of the Spirit--love, joy, peace, and so forth (Gal. 5:22-23). Ephesians 2:8, the classic "justification by grace through faith" verse, is immediately followed in 2:9 with the observation that "we were created for good works in Christ." Paul's theology may be more precise in the mechanism of justification, but the "product," what real faith looks like, is the same for both. Both faith and works are necessary to have the full package. They go together.

2:23 And the Scripture was fulfilled that says, "And Abraham had faith in God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness," and he was called "a friend of God."
It is this verse more than any other that makes it very difficult to argue that James is not interacting with some type of Pauline tradition. This verse in Genesis 15:6 is a key passage in Paul's arguments for justification by faith (e.g., Gal. 3:6; Rom. 4:3). James is clearly responding to a "faith only" position of some kind, although not really to Paul's actual position on these issues.

Some have thus argued that James is writing very early, perhaps even earliest of any New Testament writing. In this scenario, James has only heard rumors of Paul's teaching and so does not quite have him right. One might note that James urges Paul to remember the poor in Galatians 2:10 when they finally did have a chance to talk at length.

Alternatively, one might argue that James is late, a generalized version of the historical James' own emphases in response to a perversion of Paul's teaching that arose after his death. While it is true that Paul did at points seem to point out that all justification is a matter of grace--that no one could truly earn God's favor--most of Paul's discussion of justification centers around works of Law rather than works in general. That is to say, when Paul argued against justification by works of Law, he was primarily arguing that matters like circumcision, food laws, and sabbath observance could not make a Jew right with God in themselves. Only the faithful death of Christ could bring about true justification.

In either case, James is not addressing the real point of debate between Paul and James during the central time of their disagreement. Their real point of disagreement centered on whether Jewish Christians were justified both by the faithful and necessary death of Christ and by their faithfulness to God's covenant with Israel, which of course included keeping the Jewish particulars we mentioned above. They also disagreed apparently on what Jewish and Gentile believers needed to do to eat with each other.

But none of these issues are at all in view in this section of James, probably implying that James as it stands is either very early or that it embodies the carrying forth of James' voice to address a post-Pauline situation. In either case, there is no substantial disagreement between the theology of the two as it is found in the New Testament.

2:24 See that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.
It was no doubt this verse more than any other that got Luther's goat, seeing that for him Paul was the champion of justification by faith alone. We now recognize that this was a slight misunderstanding of Paul's own teaching. Paul nowhere say that justification is by faith alone. Romans 3:28 comes closest with its very close statement that "a person is justified by faith and not by works of Law." But even though the wording is so close as to make one wonder if James 2:24 is a direct response to Romans 3:28, the two statements are quite different in sense and do not contradict.

First, as we have mentioned above, works in this section of Romans primarily has in view those aspects of the Jewish Law that distinguished Jew from Gentile--circumcision, food laws, etc. James, on the other hand, has works like helping the poor and needy. Paul believes that authentic faith results in these sorts of concerns as well. Indeed, in some ways, the empty faith James is targeting is much like the "teacher of the Law" Paul also targets in Romans 2:21-23. This person is also a hearer of the Law who is not a doer.

A second observation is that justification by faith for Paul may very well focus firstly on the faith of Jesus himself, his faithfulness to the point of death. In that sense, justification by faith for Paul is in the first instance justification by the faith that Jesus showed to the point of dying on the cross to atone for sins.

Finally, works do play a role for Paul as well in final justification before God on the Day of Judgment (e.g., Rom. 2:6-10; 2 Cor. 5:10). One cannot earn a righteous status before God (Gal. 2:16; Rom. 3:20), but once one has been justified from past sins, works are required of a believer in order for a person to be justified finally (e.g., Rom. 3:31). These works are brought forth in Paul's thought by the power of the Holy Spirit (e.g., Rom. 8:1-11).

Biblical theologians have worked hard to work out a consistency in Paul's thought here. The nicest option is of course to say that for Paul, works result after justification by faith so that one is not strictly justified finally by works at all but that authentic faith will have works. Nevertheless, the basic points in Paul's thinking remain. There will be some evaluation of believers' works on the Day of Judgment, with the possibility of judgment. It is apparently even possible not to get the prize of eternal life after having been earlier justified through the blood of Christ (e.g., 1 Cor. 9:27; Phil. 3:10-14). Yet despite these necessities, one cannot be good enough to earn acceptance before God. Christ's faithful death is the essential prerequisite.

Paul never says that we are justified by faith alone. This is a slight modification of Paul's own view. James therefore does not in any way contradict Paul himself, although it might contradict Luther and Calvin's understanding of Paul.

2:25 And similarly was not Rahab the prostitute also justified because she welcomed the messengers and sent them out a different way?
It is not clear why James would use Rahab as an example of justification by works. Perhaps it is because Rahab was a person whose "faith" in itself might be questioned. Rahab, in that sense, might very well serve as an example of the justification of a non-Jew. She perhaps did not start out with the faith that "God is one," but she treated Israel properly. Is this a thinly veiled exhortation to Gentile believers to show kindness toward lesser fortunate Jewish believers?

2:26 For just as the body is dead without spirit, so also faith without works is dead.
And thus James ends this section with a generalization of what he has been discussing. Faith without works is not living faith. It is dead faith, like a corpse. Faith that is worth anything is faith that issues in material help for those in need.

Scholarship Starters: James 2:6

If I were a different person in a different life, I would try to publish these ideas, but alas, it takes so much work to write and article and my life is overfull.

I don't know if anyone has seriously suggested what I did in my explanatory notes Tuesday, that the situation in the first part of James 2 is a Christian Jewish subgroup of a larger synagogue and that the rich person is a wealthy Jewish patron from the larger Jewish community. The idea holds a lot of promise as it reflects new perspectives on Judaism and integrates new social scientific perspectives on the Mediterranean world. It would be a lovely contribution to scholarship on James.

If you beat me to it, which alas almost anyone could, remember me when you come into your footnotes. You can say you got the idea from Ken Schenck in private conversation, to save you the embarrassment of trying to publish something scholarly with a footnote referencing a blog :-) And of course if you'd like to have a private conversation, you know how to get hold of me...

Spinoza Quote...

Quoted in Moo's James commentary: "I have often wondered that persons who make boast of professing the Christian religion -- namely love, joy, peace, temperance, and charity to all men (sic) -- should quarrel with such rancorous animosity and display daily towards one another such bitter hatred, that this, rather than the virtues which they profess, is the readiest criteria of their faith."

Spinoza lived in the 1600s and was a Jewish philosopher.

Explanatory Notes: James 2:1-13

We now have finished going through James 2 in General Epistles class... some notes on the first part:
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2:1 My brothers, do not hold the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ of glory with favoritism.
If "faith" in this verse has anything like the meaning it will have later in the chapter, it probably refers to a set of beliefs relating to Jesus Christ, presumably having to do with the fact that he is the glorious Lord, the king of the Jews. This faith regarding Jesus entails significant consequences for life, one of which is not to show favoritism toward others, particularly because of their wealth or poverty. James will get to the royal law of love later in this section, a law that favoritism directly contradicts.

2:2-4 For if a gold-ringed man with splendid clothing should come into your gathering (synagoge), and a poor [person] should also enter with dirty clothes, and you should look on the one wearing the splendid clothing and should say, "You, sit here well," and to the poor [person] you should say, "You, stand there or sit at my feet," have you not discriminated among yourselves and become enacters (kritai) of evil thoughts?
The situation James has in mind is at first glance fairly easy to picture. A group of believers are gathered and two individuals enter the gathering. A fine seat is given to a wealthy person while a poor person is made subservient even to the seater. Such a practice, while natural enough in terms of typical human favoritism toward wealthy patrons, is to be rejected by those with faith in Jesus as Lord, who follow the kingdom law of love.

However, beyond this basic understanding, questions arise. Exactly what kind of a gathering is pictured and is this rich person a part of it? James calls the meeting a "synagoge," which need not refer to a synagogue building as we think of synagogues, but could simply mean a worship meeting. Since James is writing to "the twelve tribes in the Diaspora" (1:1) and James is usually associated with Jewish Christianity, it is reasonable to see a largely Christian Jewish gathering or "synagogue" in view here, perhaps even a "cell group" that is part of a larger Jewish gathering/synagogue.

It is thus reasonable to see the rich person in question as a wealthy Jew, a patron of a larger Jewish community and somewhat of an outsider to the Christian Jews in mind. This person would be like the wealthy person of 1:10, ambiguous in relation to the "brotherhood" and more likely destined to pass away like the grass of the field.

Regardless of whether we understand James himself writing this letter, the letter as a collection of James' general teaching, or a pseudonymous conveyance of James' authority to a later context, we surely must see the situation here as one that was all to common throughout Greek-speaking Jewish Christian communities in the Mediterranean as subsets of broader Jewish communities established their own Christian identity within Judaism. It seems much more difficult to think that James has some more specific context in mind, since the letter does not present itself in that way. One way or another, James presents itself as the voice of James to the broader Greek-speaking Jewish Christian world.

2:5 Hear, my beloved brothers. Has God not chosen the poor in the world [to be] rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom that He promised to those who love Him?
We are reminded of the teaching of Jesus presented in Luke's Sermon on the Plain--"Blessed are you poor... woe to you rich" (Luke 6:20, 24)--and in Matthew's more spiritualized Sermon on the Mount--"Blessed are the poor in spirit" (Matt. 5:3). Matthew, Luke, and James alike have little good to say about the rich and little hope to hold out to them. Here it is important to keep in mind that the ancient world was not a monetary economy but primarily an agrarian one with a sense of "limited good."

The idea of limited good is that there is a finite amount of goods in the world. Prosperity is thus a "zero-sum" game. There are only so many olives in the world and if one person has more then it follows naturally that someone else has less. There are only so many to go around. We can thus understand the later Arab proverb, "Every rich person is either a thief or the son of a thief."

In the world of Jesus and James, therefore, those who are wealthy in the Jewish community have almost certainly come to such wealth by depriving others of what should be theirs. One has become richer with the consequence that another has become poorer. Divine justice thus entails that the rich will be brought low and the poor will be restored.

The kingdom thus involves a reversal of fortune. "You cannot serve God and wealth" (Matt. 6:24). The kingdom is thus for those who love God, which by its very nature implies that one does not love worldly possessions.

2:6-7 But you dishonor the poor [person]. Are not the rich oppressing you and they themselves dragging you into court? Do not they themselves blaspheme the good name that has been invoked over you?
The audience seems to be located somewhere in the middle, neither displaced from its inherited place in the world to become poor or inflated beyond its inherited place to become rich. While James thus applies to all believers, it seems directed as much at the leaders and teachers of 3:1 who can make decisions, as to everyone in a gathering. James is primarily directed at those in a Jewish Christian gathering who can do the seating!

The picture of these wealthy visitors blaspheming the name of Christ (presumably) confirms that they are not truly believers. Again, the most plausible scenario is that these are wealthy patrons within broader Jewish communities who retain significant influence over Christian Jews who are a subset of the community. The possibility of dragging them into court may speak of financial obligations.

The question of Christ's name being invoked over a person would naturally apply either to a baptismal setting or the laying on of hands. The former would presumably apply to all believers, while the latter would apply more to leaders set apart. It seems impossible to know for certain which James might have in mind.

2:8-9 If indeed you complete the royal law according to the Scripture--"You will love your neighbor as yourself"--you are doing well. But if you show favoritism, you are doing sin, being proven by the Law as transgressors.
It is striking that in such diverse New Testament writings as Matthew 22, Romans 13, Galatians 3, James 2, and 1 John 4, we find the recurring sense that "love of neighbor" summarizes the Christian ethic of behavior toward our fellow human on earth. This common tradition thus very likely goes back to Jesus himself.

The fact that James does not engage in the concrete particulars of the Jewish Law is sometimes used to argue for a setting after the historical James' lifetime for the letter. The argument is that discussions of the Law would surely have a more concrete Jewish flavor, especially given the picture of James in Galatians 2 and James' apparent engagement with Pauline teaching later in this chapter. Nevertheless, such an essential focus is highly appropriate for such a general, catholic letter, especially one aimed at Greek-speaking Christian Jews scattered throughout the world. The concerns of James seem not unlike those of other books like Sirach or Tobit that are not focused on the kinds of purity issues that separated Jew and Gentile. Those concerns may have dominated a particular window of time in the Jerusalem church, but probably were not major concerns for Diaspora Christian Jews at large.

James agrees that the essence of kingdom law, the "royal" law, is not that which separates Jew from Gentile but the very heart of the Law: love of one's neighbor. We have every reason to beleive that James and Paul fundamentally agreed on this point, despite any differences they might have had around the edges of the expanding church. If sin is violation of the Law, then the person who shows favoritism is a transgressor, a law-breaker, no matter how well they might follow the Law's Jewish particulars.

2:10=11 For whoever should keep the whole Law but fail in one [area] has become guilty of all [parts]. For the one who said, "Do not commit adultery," also said, "Do not murder." And if you do not commit adultery but you murder, you have become a transgressor of law.
These statements sound strangely Pauline. Underlying these statements would seem to be the idea that the entire Law is summed up in "Love your neighbor as yourself." The prohibition of adultery is a playing out of that kingdom law no less than the prohibition of murder. Those who do any one of these things is thus guilty of the entire Law for they have not loved their neighbor.

2:12-13 So be speaking and so be doing as [those] about to be judged by the law of freedom, for judgment is without mercy for those who do not show mercy. Mercy has a boast over judgment.
Once again, we might rather expect such statements to come from the mouth of Paul as from the mouth of James. The "law of freedom" is presumably the law of the kingdom of God, a law that focuses on the essentials of loving one's neighbor rather than the bondage some Jews laid on other Jews in that day. The law of freedom is the law of love and it is a law oriented around mercy rather than judgment. We are reminded again of Jesus' teaching, "Blessed are the merciful, for they will obtain mercy" (Matt. 5:7), and the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant (Matt. 18). In terms of how humans are to relate to each other on earth, mercy is always preferable to justice or condemnation.

Smith's Desiring the Kingdom 1

I did a post on the Introduction of James K. A. Smith's new book, Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation over at my seminary blog. But here let me add this oh-so-true quote:

"Our imaginations get stuck in a rut, and it becomes difficult to get out of them to imagine things differently. When that happens, theoretical dissertations aren't effective in destabilizing these habits of imagination... To jolt the imagination, we need more affective pictures..." (28-29)

Now on p. 30 quoting a book of George Orwell's about an illustrative topic of social class:

"The real secret of class distinctions in the West" can be "summed up in four frightful words" that are often left unuttered: The lower classes smell... "no feeling of like or dislike is quite so fundamental as a physical feeling." Almost every other kind of discrimination could be countered theoretically, with the weapons of facts, ideas, and information, "but physical repulsion cannot."

Smith's books is one of those books that expresses so well the conclusions you have already reached that you read the pages with delight.

Explanatory Notes: Philippians 2:25-3:1

OK, now I believe I have finished Philippians. You can see the entire Explanatory Notes on Philippians here. Also finished are Explanatory Notes on Galatians, and on 1 Thessalonians.
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2:25-26 Now I considered it necessary to send to you Epaphroditus, my brother and coworker and fellow soldier, as well as your messenger and minister of my need, since he was desiring you all and was distressed, because you heard that he was sick.
Epaphroditus perhaps served some ministry role in the Philippian church and was probably the one who delivered the letter of Philippians back to the assembly there. Was he one of the overseer/elders or perhaps a deacon? It seems impossible to know. Paul calls him a "coworker," probably implying that he at least assisted Paul in ministry in some way. He was in any case the one with whom the Philippians entrusted the material support they sent to Paul.

The logistics of Epaphroditus' travel are often mentioned in the attempt to decide where Paul was when he wrote the letter. News of Paul's imprisonment must first have travelled to Philippi from wherever Paul was. Then after support was collected, Epaphroditus would need to travel to Paul's place of imprisonment with it. Then time would have to pass for news of Epaphroditus' sickness to travel back to Philippi and for news of the Philippian reaction to it to travel back to Paul again still and the letter of Philippians be written.

This sequence of at least four back and forths from Philippi to Paul is often taken as support for an Ephesian location. This back and forth with Rome would take a lot longer, while it would take place naturally with Ephesus. Nevertheless, Acts mentions Paul being at Rome for about two years, so while it is easy to picture such a back and forth with Ephesus, there was enough time for it to take place with Rome as well.

The mention of Epaphroditus as a "fellow soldier" is curious. It probably has something to do with Paul being in prison and no doubt surrounded by Roman soldiers.

2:27 For he was sick nearly to death. But God showed mercy to him, and not only to him but also to me so that I might not have grief on grief.
Epaphroditus' sickness was apparently a matter of great concern to the Philippians. We certainly get the impression that he was highly loved on both sides, both by the Philippians and by Paul. Thankfully, he had recovered. Paul is already in a difficult setting. Epaphroditus' death would have been doubly hard, perhaps in part because he probably would not have become sick if he had not come to visit Paul.

2:28 Therefore, I have sent him more eagerly, so that when you have seen him you might rejoice again and I might be less grieved.
It is one thing to hear someone is doing better, but one might still not know exactly how well the person is. To what extent am I being told not to worry when in fact the person is still struggling. Epaphroditus is not only better, but well enough to travel--which says something in a world without cars, planes, or trains. And whether it is in Paul's mind or not, it might at least in theory create tensions between Paul and the church of Philippi if Epaphroditus died in part because of Paul. It might create a negative in the "who owes who" category.

2:29-30 Therefore, receive him in the Lord with all joy and consider such individuals precious, because he was near death because of the work of Christ, risking his soul in order that he might fulfill your lacking in relation to ministry toward me.
Here Paul at least makes it clear that if Epaphroditus would have died, he would not have died for Paul but for Christ. Epaphroditus was fulfilling a responsibility of the gospel. He was not doing something for Paul that Paul was desperate to have, as Paul will make clear again at the end of the letter. The service thus does not create a debt on Paul's part but was an appropriate service for Christ and one that the Philippians should have provided because of Paul's ministry to them.

3:1 The rest, my brothers, be rejoicing in the Lord. To write the same things to you is not burdensome to me, and for you it is a safe thing.
Here another major section of the letter, the second half of the letter body, seems to begin. The theme of rejoicing will be temporarily interrupted in 3:2, but Paul will then return to it again by the time he gets to 4:4. It is significant that Paul emphasizes this theme of rejoicing while he is in prison. And it is not burdensome for him to wish the Philippians well while he himself is not doing well. It is an expression of Christian love and his friendship with them. And it is safe to rejoice on earth despite the potential trouble in this world of serving Christ, because the days to come will be filled with a certain hope.

Friday Paul: Life Beyond Death

The previous posts in this series were:

1a. Born at a Time and Place 1; 1b. Born at a Time and Place 2

2a. A Change in Life Direction; 2b A Change in Life Direction 2; 2c A Change in Life Direction 3

3a. The Unknown Years 1; 3b. The Unknown Years 2; 3c. The Unknown Years 3

Acts 18 is very specific about the Roman governor at Corinth at the end of Paul's almost two years there. It was a man named Gallio. By happy archaeological fortune, we can date Gallio's governorship in Corinth to around AD51-52. All in all, it fits very well with Acts to think that Paul was in Corinth from around AD50-52.

We left Paul in the last chapter around the year AD49. Around that year Paul was in Jerusalem over the issue of whether Gentiles needed to convert fully to Judaism to be saved. [1] So the chronology of Acts here works very well with what we know from elsewhere. Paul has an argument with Barnabas over going on a second missionary journey together in AD49. Barnabas and his cousin John Mark head off for Cyprus again. Paul picks up another man named Silas and heads off toward his home region of Cilicia, where Tarsus was.

So Paul and Barnabas effectively split up the territory of the earlier journey they took together. Paul and Silas go back to the northern half. They visit cities like Derbe, Lystra, Iconium, and another city in the region with the same name of Antioch like the place they launched from. Perhaps most scholars think that this is the region to which Paul would write the book of Galatians a little bit later. Many other conservative scholars think Paul had already written Galatians to this region by now. We will later fly a less popular suggestion, although the one that was the majority position throughout church history, namely, that Paul wrote Galatians to the area just north of these cities.

At Lystra, Acts 16 tells us Paul and Silas pick up a young man named Timothy. Acts also surprisingly tells us that Paul has him circumcised. We have no basis to doubt Acts about this claim, although it is curious. Paul in Galatians will argue that these Gentiles will fall from grace if they become circumcised (Gal. 5:2-4). So why would he circumcise Timothy?

If as we think Galatians came later, Paul might still have been working through his "policies" on these things at the time. Nevertheless, Acts implies Paul did so because Timothy's mother was Jewish (cf. Acts 16:1). In the case of Titus, the argument goes, Titus was fully Gentile, so Paul did not have him circumcised (cf. Gal. 2:3). This seems a very plausible explanation to us. Perhaps Paul is thinking that a circumcised Timothy might help him liaise with Jews, while an uncircumcised Timothy would simply be unused potential.

Whatever practical advantages circumcising Timothy brought Paul, his opponents apparently would later use it against him. Assuming that Paul wrote Galatians later than this point in time, some of Paul's opponents may very well have used the fact that Paul circumcised Timothy to claim that even Paul had been won over to the idea that circumcision was preferable (cf. Gal. 5:11). And so Paul reassured them that he was not still preaching circumcision.

Acts 16 tells us that Paul then went through the region of Galatia and Phrygia with Silas (Acts 16:6). Interestingly, Acts apparently does not include the region of Iconium, Lystra, and Derbe in "Galatia" here, which presents a minor objection to the idea that these are the churches to which Galatians is written. We would go with what most interpreters thought throughout church history, namely, that it was at this point that Paul founded some churches in the north. This was the region that had properly been known as Galatia before the Romans consolidated north and south. So in our theory, Paul founds some churches in north Galatia, which becomes the primary audience of the letter to the Galatians. These would be churches in the vicinity of Ancyra in modern day Turkey, churches about which Acts does not give us any details.

Paul would eventually follow the Roman roads north to Troas and then would sense God calling him to jump the Bosphorus into Macedonia. The rest is history. Paul founds the church at Philippi, apparently one of his favorite churches. He will found the church at Thessalonica. Acts tells us he and Silas found a church in Berea, heading south into Greece proper. He will stop shortly in Athens, but then will move on to Corinth. At Corinth he will find his groove and stay for almost two years.

Paul's writings themselves tell us little of his time in Philippi and Thessalonica, and nothing of his time in Berea. Acts tells us he was jailed for a night in Philippi, that an earthquake hits the jail, and that he is freed to go the next day. The letter of 1 Clement, probably written at the end of the first century, mentions seven imprisonments of Paul. If this number is not symbolic, perhaps Philippi was the first or second time, although it is of course possible Paul encountered the Roman governor of Cyprus after a similar night in the brig (cf. Acts 13:7).

Paul does not stay long at all at Thessalonica. Acts gives us the impression it might have been as little as three Saturdays, but it was probably at least a little longer. Philippians 4 indicates that the church at Philippi sent him material support more than once while he was there. Also, while Acts as it usually does focuses on the Jews and their opposition to Paul, 1 Thessalonians is overwhelmingy directed at Gentiles, implying that Paul's most fruitful ministry in the city was not in the synagogue. Perhaps Paul was there a couple months, just long enough to get the plane headed down the runway, although he is forced to leave before he can see the plane take off (cf. 1 Thess. 1:17).

For whatever reason, Paul does not stay long in Athens. According to 1 Thessalonians 3:1-2, Paul and Silas send Timothy back to Thessalonica from there. [2] They are worried about whether the church has successfully launched. Paul does not write 1 Thessalonians until Timothy has returned with news of the church. We cannot tell whether Paul has already moved on to Corinth by that point, but it seems reasonable, assuming Paul did not stay long in Athens.

Acts 17 gives us a brilliant speech by Paul to the Areopagus, the ruling council of the city. It is thus possible that Paul spent yet another night or two in jail there before seeing the council, perhaps making the second or third of his supposed imprisonments. The impression we get is that Paul's charge has to do with promoting a unfamiliar cult, something that concerned the Romans then as Homeland Security might today. As in Thessalonica, the city seemed to be content with telling Paul to move on...

[1] Whether you think this event was more like a private visit as in Galatians 2, a public Jerusalem Council as in Acts 15, or something in between the two.

[2] The scenario of 1 Thessalonians is in minor tension with the account in Acts. In Acts 17:15, Paul goes on to Athens from Berea alone and both Silas and Timothy stay in Berea. Then Paul continues on to Corinth still alone from Athens (18:5). But in 1 Thessalonians, Paul, Silas, and Timothy have all gone to Athens, and it is from there that Timothy alone returns to Thessalonica.

Explanatory Notes: James 1:5-27

I probably shouldn't have spent the time to do this, but here are some notes from this time through James 1 in my General Epistles class.
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1:5 And if someone of you lacks wisdom, let [that one] ask from the God who gives to all generously and who does not reproach and it will be given to him.
Because this verse follows right on the heals of endurance in trial, it seems likely that the wisdom in question is wisdom when one is undergoing trial. We can certainly imagine that God offers wisdom freely in general as well, and some do think James gives disconnected proverbs such that we should not necessarily connect this verse with the one that precedes. But all in all, such a connection seems likely.

God does not rebuke a person for asking for such wisdom, but generously provides it to each who asks, that is, given the caveat that follows.

1:6-8 But let [that one] ask in faith, doubting not at all, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea being blown and tossed. For do not let that person think s/he will receive something from the Lord--a "two souled" person, unstable in all his ways.
We should not take doubting here in some modern, highly introspective sense. James is referring to a person of divided loyalties who does not entirely want God's wisdom to endure trial. This person has not fully made up his or her mind to serve the "Lord," which may possibly refer to God rather than Jesus, given that God has been the referrent in the immediately preceding verses and 1:17 will speak of God as the giver of every perfect gift.

God thus does not grant wisdom in trial to those who are not committed to enduring trial for the Lord. This is an unstable person, a person of "two souls," two minds

1:9-10 Now let the humble brother boast in his height and the rich [person] in his humiliation, because as a blade of grass [he] will disappear.
We can debate over whether the rich person pictured here is a brother or not. Certainly the parallel between the first line, where the poor or humble person is a brother might lead in this direction. However, perhaps it is significant that James does not specify what kind of rich individual this is. Perhaps, as in chapter 2, James has in mind a person associated with a believing community but about whom it can be questioned whether they are truly brothers.

James has nothing positive to say about a rich person whatsoever and looks to an eventual reversal of fortune. The lowly person today who is in troubled circumstances and trials, will find themselves eventually find themselves blessed. Meanwhile, the rich person who appears to have power and good circumstances today will find their status and comfort pass away on the day of judgment.

1:11 For the sun rises with heat and it dries the grass and its blade falls off and the beauty of its face perishes--so also the rich person will wither away in his pursuits.
The verbs in this verse are in the aorist tense, which we have long thought of as normally referring to events in the past. Stanley Porter has argued that these aorists show that aorist tense is not about past time but about undefined action. On the other hand, perhaps the influence of Aramaic is in play here.

Such statements seem to fit well a Palestinian agrarian setting and seem very fitting on the lips of a James, whether James directly writes them or they are James tradition being passed along in Greek by someone else. The statement on the rich person withering away in his pursuits reminds us of the indictment of the rich James makes at the end of chapter 4 and the beginning of chapter 5. We are also reminded of the parable of Luke about the rich person who has big plans but whose life is taken before he can see them through.

1:12 Blessed is the person who endures trial, because having become approved, [that person] will receive a crown of life which [God] promised to those who love Him.
This verse reveals that the idea of perseverence during trial has never left James' mind. Here we find some of the specifics of what endurance actually leads to. 1:4 had mentioned that trials built to endurance, but it did not say what the reward of endurance was. Here we see that the reward is a crown of life, presumably eternal life. James does not say here exactly where believers will enjoy that life but it is promised to those who love God.

1:13 Let no one say when being tried, "I am being tempted by God." For God is untemptable with evil and He himself tempts no one.
James shifts at some point from talking about trials to talking about temptations, perhaps temptations in particular that are brought on through trials. The previous verse clearly is talking about trials. But the same word can also mean "temptation," and at least by the second use of the word in this verse, James has shifted to the topic of temptation.

When we are speaking in ordinary language, we shift between various meanings of a word with ease, often without even noticing we are doing it. The context usually makes it clear what meaning we have in mind. Good English translations of the Bible do the same for us. They translate the same word differently as appropriate so that we do not even realize we are dealing with the same word in Greek.

We have translated the first instance of peirazo in 1:13 as "being tried" to keep continuity with the previous verse. An audience would as yet have had no reason to think of a different sense of the word. But the second instance begins to blur into "being tempted," a sense that is clear by the end of the verse and in the verse that follows below.

James represents movement in thought from early parts of the Old Testament where God is actually said to send evil spirits on people like Saul (1 Sam. 16:14). But James holds that God does not tempt people to do evil in addition to the fact that God himself is not tempted by evil.

1:14-15 But each person is tempted, being dragged away and enticed by his/her own desire. Then desire, having conceived, bears sin, and sin, when it is full grown, gives birth to death.
Although in other contexts one might speak of Satan tempting a person, in James temptation is discussed in terms of one's desires. One desires something that one should not have. Interestingly, James does not equate this desire with sin. Sin is what results when one pursues that desire or lets that desire take its course. Similarly, when sin has run its full course, it will lead to death. James does not specify whether spiritual or physical death is in view, so it is best to leave the nature of such death unspecified.

1:16-17 Do not err, my beloved brothers. Every good gift and every complete gift is from above, descending from the Father of lights, in whom there is no variation or turning shadow.
If we are to see some continuity in the train of thought, we can connect the trials that were first mentioned in 1:2 with the rich of verse 10 and 11, with the need for wisdom on the part of the troubled and distressed (1:5) and the temptation of 1:13-14. One temptation in such circumstances, as we will see in chapter 2, is to rely on the patronage of the rich. One desires what material resources can offer and is tempted under trial.

But in what is at least a key verse for James, James makes clear who the real and ultimate Patron for the believer is. It is God, the Father, from whom every good and perfect gift truly comes. Such gifts do not come from earthly patrons or the earthly rich. Such individuals not only vary with their own whim and fancy, not only turn like the shadow on a sundial. Such individuals will soon pass away, and those who depend on their patronage will only die.

In some ways, therefore, 1:17 plays itself out in much of the rest of James.

1:18 Having been wanted, He gave birth to us through the word of truth in order that we might might be a certain first fruit of His creations.
Whether James is conscious of it or not, the use of logos or "word" imagery in this verse in the next bears significant Stoic overtones. If so, such Hellenistic imagery generally points away from James himself as the person responsible for the current wording of the book. However, such language would not disprove that James coined these particular words. It is impossible to say what currents in language made their way where and at what time. Language can come from a particular tradition without the user of that language even knowing where it came from.

In Stoic thought, there is a close connection between God's word inside of us and seed imagery. The Stoics believed that we all had word implanted in us, logos seeds. The wise person lived in accordance with that word, for the word inside us was in sync with the divine Word or Reason that governed all things.

The idea that James' audience might be the first fruits of God's creation implies some sort of theology of new creation. The audience would be part of the first generation, in effect, because the word of truth had only of late come and been implanted.

1:19-20 Look, my beloved brothers, even let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger, for the anger of a person does not bring about the righteousness of God.
If 1:17 serves in some ways as a general statement that plays out in the rest of James, 1:19 does as well. Many scholars would suggest that the introduction of James ends with 1:18 and that 1:19 actually begins the body of the letter. The vocative, "my beloved brothers" might thus serve as an indicator that a new section of the letter is beginning. 1:19 does not of course play out neatly in the rest of the letter, and we are reminded that many think that James has no clear literary structure.

The idea of being quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger would apply particularly to leaders of Christian gatherings, as is played out especially in chapter 3. It might also apply to the rich, although throughout James such individuals are spoken of as outsiders. The letter is thus directed more at Christian Jewish leaders and the poor.

Anger does not bring about righteousness, the righteousness that typifies God. The phrase, "the righteousness of God" sometimes in Judaism seems to have referred to the fact that God is righteous. This is the sense it primarily seems to have in writings of Paul like Romans. However, its sense here seems to be righteous acts that God expects such as helping those in need such as the poor, orphans, and widows. Anger toward others does not naturally lead to these sorts of righteous acts, a warning perhaps to leaders.

1:21 Therefore, putting off all filth and the abundance of wickedness, with humility, receive the implanted word that is able to save your lives.
In contrast to those who are quick to speak and to anger at the actions of others, James tells Christian leaders and believers in general to put off their own filth and wickedness. To let the word, the logos seed that is implanted within them, to bring forth the appropriate fruit, the righteousness of God. Heeding this word will end in salvation on the Day of Judgment and their lives will be saved.

The word we translate here as "lives" can at times be translated as "souls." However, that word has particular somewhat Platonic connotations for us that are not the prevalent way the word is used in the New Testament. It would seem more appropriate to go with the more Semitic use of the word in reference to a life.

1:22-24 Become doers of the word and not only hearers, deceiving yourselves, because if someone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, this person is like a person looking at his birth face in a mirror, for he observes himself and goes away and immediately forgets of what sort he was.
This theme of being leading to doing will strongly occupy the second half of James 2. The problem James addressed 2000 years ago is somehow strangely familiar, the person who hears God's word but who somehow manages to go forth unaffected, the teacher who is quite good at talking but does not live what they teach, the person who believes the right things but whose beliefs somehow do not make it to life. The imagery of a mirror is not entirely clear, but the overall sense seems once again to be a person who can see what they are--or at least are supposed to be--but who does not live in accordance to their birth.

1:25 But the one who looks into the complete law of freedom and who remains [in it], having become not a hearer of forgetfulness but a doer of work, this person will be blessed in his doing.
The parallel seems to be between the mirror that shows us what we should be according to the word of God and the perfect law of freedom. In other words, the law of freedom is indeed who we are in accordance with the word of God. The next chapter will speak of the "royal law of love," and it is reasonable to think this is what James has in mind here as well.

The doing that we are to do in accordance with who we are is thus love in action, which of course constitutes the righteous acts of God, whose content will become particularly apparent in 1:27.

1:26 If someone seems to be religious while not bridling his tongue but deceiving his heart, the religion of this one is foolish.
This verse returns to the theme of being slow to speak and anticipates James 3. Certainly this "proverb" is true in its own right. But if we are to read it somehow in the context, perhaps we should best take it of someone who is a leader or teacher but whose words do not match his or her actions. This person's talk does not match their walk. Their faith does not match their action.

1:27 Religion that is pure and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to look over orphans and widows in their trouble, to keep himself unspotted from the world.
Here is James as it is best known, a letter about the gospel with feet. What is true worship of God? Religion here does not have the sense of a system of faith or belief but more what some used to mean when they talked about "getting religion." True religion takes care of those in need.

Orphans and widows would have especially fit into this category in the ancient world. There was no social security or welfare system to take care of such people, no jobs for a widow to get to support her children. Such groups were entirely dependent on the generosity of others. By contrast, the world here likely has the same connotations of wealth and those comforts an orientation around such things might afford.