Prima Scriptura by Clayton Croy

I ordered a copy of Clayton Croy's new Prima Scriptura: An Introduction to New Testament Interpretation.  I love it!!!  My only complaint is that it only addresses the New Testament.  I believe I will start using it in my Bible as Christian Scripture course as soon as possible!

McKnight on Wright on Scripture

Here's the link: http://www.patheos.com/community/jesuscreed/2011/06/01/tom-wright-scripture-and-gods-authority/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+PatheosJesusCreed+%28Jesus+Creed%29

OMT: Romans 9:6-18

Previous translations:

Romans 1:1-7
Romans 1:8-10
Romans 1:11-15
Romans 1:16-17
Romans 5:12-17
Romans 7:13-25
Romans 8:1-8
Romans 9:1-5

6But [it is] not such a case that the word of God has failed [till now].  For not all those from Israel are Israel. 7And [it is] not that all the children are seed of Abraham, but "From Isaac will your seed be called" (Gen. 21:12). 8That is, those children of the flesh [are] not the children of God but the children of promise are considered as seed. 9 For the word of promise is this: "According to this time I will come and a son will be to Sarah" (Gen. 18:10).

10But not only [Sarah], but [the promise relates] also [to] Rebecca, being pregnant from one [man], Isaac our father. 11For [the children] not yet having been born nor having done anything good or bad (so that the purpose of God according to election might remain, 12 not from works but from the one who calls), it was said to her that "The older will serve the younger" (Gen.25:23), 13 just as it stands written, "I love Jacob, but I hate Esau" (Mal. 1:2-3).

14What, therefore, will we say?  Unrighteousness is not with God, is it?  May it not be!  15 For to Moses he says, "I will show mercy on whomever I will show mercy and I will have compassion on whomever I will have compassion" (Ex. 33:19). 16 Therefore, then, it is not a matter of the one willing nor of the one running but of God who shows mercy.  17 For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, "I led you to this very [point] so that I might demonstrate my power in you and that I might proclaim my name in all the earth" (Ex. 9:16).  Therefore, then, he will show mercy on whom he wills, and he will harden whom he wills.

OMT: Romans 9:1-5

Previous translations include:

Romans 1:1-7
Romans 1:8-10
Romans 1:11-15
Romans 1:16-17
Romans 5:12-17
Romans 7:13-25
Romans 8:1-8

And now, Romans 9:1-5:
9:1 I speak the truth in Christ--I am not lying, as my conscience corroborates with me by the Holy Spirit 2--that it is a tremendous grief to me and a constant anguish in my heart. 3 For I would pray to be accursed, I myself, from the Messiah on behalf of my brothers, my relatives according to the flesh, 4 who are Israelites, to whom belong the adoption and the glory and the covenants and the giving of the Law and the sacrificial worship and the promises, 5 to whom belong the fathers and from whom [came] the Messiah in terms of the flesh.  [May] the God who is over all things [be] blessed forever.  Amen.

Remembering...

First, in the modified words of Paul, "What special honor do we give to our own who have served and died in our defense?  Much in every way!  They have preserved our life and way of life, often at a great price.  They have done it so that we did not have to."

Then a poem by John Donne for today, which summarizes the broader sense of homo sapiens (wise human, evolved human), as well as that of the Christian:

No man is an island entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe
is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as
well as a manor of thy friends or of thine
own were; any man's death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

Piper: Warren is my Home Boy

Thanks to Rachel Held Evans' blog and Keith Drury for pointing out this interview between John Piper and Rick Warren.  The interview makes it clear that Warren's beliefs are the same as Piper's, only that Warren has a more practical approach.

This is pretty much what I have said and why Purpose Driven Life is not really something a Wesleyan-Arminian would naturally espouse.  But in the general absence of any theological emphasis in the Wesleyan Church, it is no surprise that its pastors and leaders often unknowingly absorb these broader evangelical currents.

The big question 1

In a play about Job, Satan taunts, "If God is God, he is not good.  If God is good, he is not God." [1]  The play writer, Archibald MacLeish, poetically captures here what is often called the problem of evil.  If God is God--that is, if he is all powerful--then how is it that he allows so much evil to go on in the world, not to mention pain in general.  On the other hand, if God is good, then you would think he would want to put an end to evil and  suffering.  Perhaps he just is not powerful enough to do away with it.

It is not a new question.  It is a question that has come up whenever some people dared to think that their gods loved them.  It is implied in Old Testament stories like when Israel lost in battle to the city of Ai in Joshua 7.  How could they lose when Yahweh was powerful enough for them to win?  The Greek philosopher Epicurus raised the question hundreds of years before Jesus came to earth.

It is a question that knocks on the door of the modern world more than ever before, because individuals are more empowered than ever before.  In the ancient world, in the two-thirds world, powerlessness in the face of the wicked is such a given that it is often easier to accept.  A sense of fatalism--that the world just is what it is--often is the name of the game.  Death is an ever present reality you just accept.

But the democratic, Western world at least in theory has given everyone a voice.  And science has allowed us to beat death far more than ever before.  Never before has so much seemed possible.  Never before have we seemed more empowered to say "no" to evil and suffering than before.

So perhaps never before have the impossibilities of this world seemed more anomalous, more angering.  When we are so motivated to change the world, why does God seem to let "the nations rage" (Ps. 2:1)?  When we are now noticing the forgotten of the world, why does God continue to let them suffer?  When we now pass laws that look out for those with disabilities and provide health care for the impoverished, why does God not put an end to such things?  These are the problems of evil and suffering.

[1] JB, by Archibald MacLeish.

Again, Paul the Arminian...

Romans 8:13, addressed to Roman believers:

"If you are living according to flesh, you are about to die."

I guess this "works righteousness" aspect of Judaism that Luther and Calvin decried--and that Arminians are now criticized for--turns out be what Paul himself taught.  Oops.

So let's keep a list: Paul the Jew, Paul the Arminian, Paul the nominalist...

Original Meaning Translation: Romans 8:1-8

I don't know if anyone likes these translations enough for me to do much more than the spot translations I've done to help myself, but here's another one.

Previous ones include:
Romans 1:1-7
Romans 1:8-10
Romans 1:11-15
Romans 1:16-17
Romans 5:12-17
Romans 7:13-25

And now, Romans 8:1-8:

8:1 Then now [there is] no condemnation to those in Christ Jesus, 2 for the "law" of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has freed you from the "law" of Sin and death. 3 For with regard to the impossibility of the Law (in that it was weak through the flesh), God condemned Sin in the flesh when he sent his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh as a sin offering* 4 so that the righteous expectation of the Law might be fulfilled in us who are walking not according to flesh but according to Spirit.

5 For those who are in the category of flesh are minded toward the things of the flesh, but those who are in the category of Spirit [are minded toward] the things of the Spirit. 6 For the mindedness of the flesh [is] death, but the mindedness of the Spirit [is] life and peace. 7 Therefore the mindedness of the flesh [is] hostile toward God, for it is not subject to the law of God, for [that] is not even possible. 8 And those who are in the flesh are not able to please God.

Original Meaning Translation: Romans 7:13-8:2

For previous parts of Romans.

13 Therefore, has the good become death?  May it not be!  But Sin, so that it might appear as sin, was working death in me through the good, so that Sin might become incredibly sinful through the commandment.  14 For I know that the Law is spiritual, but I am fleshly, having been enslaved under Sin. 15 For I do not know what I am doing. 16 But if I am doing what I do not want [to do], I agree with the Law, that [it is] good. 17 But now I am no longer doing it, but the Sin that dwells in me. 18 For I know that good does not dwell in me--that is, in my flesh.  For the will is present in me, but to do the good is not. 19 For I am not doing the good that I want [to do], but I am practicing that bad that I do not want [to do]. 20 But if I am not doing that which I want [to do], it is no longer I doing it but the Sin that dwells in me.


21 Then, I am finding the "law" in me--the one wanting to do the good--that the bad is present in me.  For I delight in the law of God in my inner person, 23 but I am seeing a different "law" in my [body] parts, warring against the "law" of my mind and subjugating me with the "law" of Sin which is in my [body] parts. 24 A wretched person [am] I!  Who will rescue me from the body of this death?  25 But thanks [be] to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!  


Therefore then, [to summarize the default state of the good-desiring Jew], I myself am serving the law of God with the mind, but the "law" of Sin with the flesh.

8:1 Then now [there is] no condemnation to those in Christ Jesus, 2 for the "law" of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has freed you from the "law" of Sin and death...

Wages of Sin...

I finished the Romans 6 section of the devotional I'm writing on Romans 1-8, to go with Paul: Soldier of Peace, which is scheduled to come out in July.  I was reflecting on the well known verse, Romans 6:23: "The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord."

Although Paul here primarily has in mind the time prior to being baptizing into Christ, dying with Christ, dying to law, it struck me that the context might easily push us to see this comment also in relation to the believer.  When the Romans used to be slaves to sin, they used to surrender the parts of their bodies as instruments of Sin.  "The end of those things is death" (6:21).

These are the things Paul is telling them believers cannot continue to do after dying with Christ.  "Should we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means!" (6:15).  The climax of the chapter is then the last verse.  The wages of sin is death.  The end of these actions is death.  Don't do them.

On balance, the trajectory of the chapter pushes us to conclude that the wages of sin could become death for a believer as well.

Fixed Points in Relative Meaning

In physics, you sometimes map one frame of reference to another.  So a train may be moving at a certain velocity in a certain direction.  Meanwhile, let's say a plane is flying overhead in a different direction.

For the moment, let's forget the ground.  It is quite possible in physics, to figure out the motion of the plane relative to the train or the train relative the plane.

The point is, to say that the meaning of events and actions is relative to a culture is not to say that meaning is random, nor is it necessarily to say that it cannot be mapped to the meanings of events and actions in other cultures.  It is to say, however, that the connections must be mapped.

One person might say, "You have thrown out the window the possibility of speaking of definite rights and wrongs." No, the certainty is in the relationship between the relative frames of reference.  It is a more complex fixity and requires one to realize that you are located on only one frame of reference, but there is fixity in the coordination of the frames.

But what of the ground, you ask?  Is not God's frame of reference the ground, by which we might coordinate both the movement of the plane and the train?

Yes, I do consider God's point of view to be the ground.  But inevitably the person who has just discovered their own frame of reference somehow thinks they can jump on God's frame of reference.  But God's way is not to teach us his point of reference but to meet us in ours.

Or they might invoke the Bible as God's frame of reference.  But the Bible is actually dozens of frames of reference as well--the frame of Paul, the frame of Matthew, the frame of Isaiah, etc.  Mature biblical interpretation maps the frames of each to each other and also to your frame of reference today.

We cannot get off our frame of reference in this life--ever.  We can only map other frames of reference to ours.

Bobby Clinton and Bible Characters

I want to be a little more positive to begin with towards Boby clinto's use of biblical characters than I was in the last post on him.  Despite the annoying rigidity of his system, despite his annoying determinism, despite his hermeneutical obliviousness, he obviously knows an aweful lot about the kinds of experiences emerging leaders often undergo.  He just needs someone to remove the annoying clothing in which he dresses thse components and all would be well.

What he sees in the various characters of the Bible often works because 1) he knows what he's looking for and 2) there are indeed some traces of common human lessons in these stories to be learned.  Much of what we say we are getting from the Bible often turns out to be a mirror of our own God-given wisdom rather than a true drawing from the text.  This is why ten different preachers can give ten different helpful messages from the same passage and a hundred members of these different congregations hear a hundred still different helpful unintended messages.

But here are three clear problems with Clinton's use of biblical characters:

1. He confuses description with prescription.  We cannot assume that God wants us to imitate the actions of any biblical narrative just because someone is described as doing something.  Fee and Stuart say we have to find a clear statement in the non-narrative portions of Scripture to know what to imitate in the narratives.  I think we can do more than this, because narratives often have an implied "evaluative point of view."  But even so we must take into account...

2. Individual books of Scripture speak to us in relation to the whole of Scripture.  Any individual book may give us a misleading sense of direction if we do not take into account the rest.  If we only had Ecclesiastes, we would not believe in the afterlife.  If we only had Joshua, we would think that misfortune is always a consequence of sin.  We do not technically move from any one passage to today, but through the whole council of Scripture to today.

So Elijah built high places to Yahweh all over the place, never went to Jerusalem to worship as far as we know, believed Baal was a real god, and more or less commissioned Jehu to assassinate Ahab.  He was a scary dude.  There may be lessons about modern leadership we can learn from him, but I bet Clinton would be taken aback if he had actually met him.

3. Leadership in one culture will not be the same in another.  If you just look at my description of Elijah above, you can see his sense of leadership would not be advised in a North American church.  Because Jesus ministered at a different time and place, it is not even clear that he gives us the paradigm for leadership in our time in terms of specifics.

4. Biblical narratives do not seem to be exact videotapes.  These characters in real life were almost certainly more complex than in the biblical narratives.

Our Fallen World

Yesterday morning a popular boy whom we knew from the neighborhood we used to live in was shot five times and killed here in Marion.  What a waste.  You can tell from the response on his Facebook page that he was well loved.

My sense is that he was on a typical trajectory.  Easy going kid hanging out with friends, having a good time, living for pleasure.  No sense of anything greater than doing the next thing.  No sense of how his next thing might come into conflict with someone else's next thing.

The church is not having much impact this age group--high school and just after who aren't headed to college.  Those who try mostly just come off as preachy.  The trajectory of the government toward his demographic is either to reinforce the status quo (Democrats) or to worsen it (Republicans).  I have heard of some Christians who move into neighborhoods without meaningful trajectories and actually live out good news, give hope, give healthy distraction.

God save us from ourselves and send us some true prophets...

Original Meaning Translation: Romans 5:12-17

OK, I'm going to translate this section.  For when I started: http://kenschenck.blogspot.com/2011/02/original-meaning-translation-romans-116.html

12 For this [reason], just as through one person Sin entered into the world and through Sin, death, and so death passed to all people because everyone sinned--13 (for Sin was in the world before the Law, but sin is not added up when there is no law. 14 But Sin ruled from Adam to Moses and over those who did not sin in a similar way to Adam's transgression, who is a type of the one who was coming.

15 But even the act of grace is not like the transgression.  For if many people died because of the transgression of the one person, how much more did the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one person Jesus Christ abound to the many.  16 And the gift dispensed [is] also not like [what came] through the one who sinned.  For the judgment from the one [resulted] in condemnation, but the act of grace [resulted] in being righteous out of many transgressions. 17 For if death ruled through the one person because of the transgression of the one person, how much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness rule through the one person, Jesus Messiah.)

CEB on Romans 5:18

I find this a peculiar translation:

"So now the righteous requirements necessary for life are met for everyone through the righteous act of one person, just as judgment fell on everyone through the failure of one person."

Here is a wooden translation:

"Therefore, as through one transgression to all people into condemnation, so also through one righteous act to all people to the justification of life."

I smell someone's theology tweaking the translation...

Invitation to you and your "family"

My wife Angela just addressed a graduation invitation to one of her cousin's children, but she unthinkingly put:

Mr. and Mrs. *** and "family"

We were wondering if she was saying something about their children.  Does she think they're not really their children.  Does she think they're her fake family?  You're not foolin' anyone you know...

;-)

After the Rapture...

Christians have generally believed for 2000 years that Christ will return to judge the earth at some point (e.g., Heb. 9:28).  Of course I do not think that an informed biblical theology will include a seven year tribulation or a rapture that is somehow separated from the judgment in time.  Indeed, it seems likely to me that in 1 Thessalonians 4 believers meet Jesus in the air only to return to the earth for the judgment.

Unless Harold Camping is the greatest prophet since John the Revelator, I doubt very seriously there will be a rapture today.  I will continue grading.  He has no clue how to read the Bible in context, and he falls into a predictable pattern.  On Sunday he will either recalculate or say the rapture happened in some spiritual way.  It's all been done before... many times... especially in America.

And once again, people will associate Christianity with stupidity.  Christianity will take another knock this week.  Those with the signs this week, they should be silent for a while.  They should take stock, realizing that they have made God look bad... again.  

James McGrath on Tom McCall

I'm glad to call both of these gentlemen my friends.  James McGrath has just reviewed Tom McCall's new book, Which Trinity? Whose Monotheism.

Bobby Clinton's Leadership Emergence Theory

Let me just say that the way Bobby Clinton formulated his "Leadership Emergence Theory" back in the 80s really grates on me.  Lots of important elements of leadership development.  But he presents it in a Calvinist framework of "I fell down the stairs," what is God trying to teach me today.  And of course I'm sure the Bible professors at Fuller used to make fun of him for having no clue how to read the Bible in its socio-cultural contexts.

Here's a sample:

Integrity checks: “An integrity check is a test that God uses to evaluate intentions in order to shape character” (58).  A biblical text that embodies for Clinton this sort of check is the story of Daniel 1 where Daniel has to decide whether to keep Israel’s food purity laws or to participate in the food of Babylon.  In Clinton’s view, “God won’t use a leader who lacks integrity” (63).

Clinton has several assumptions here.  For example, there is the question of whether God micro-manages our development in such an orchestrated way or whether we should more think of these kinds of events as opportunities for development as leaders that we are bound to face.  Another question is Clinton’s penchant to see things as almost having to occur in a particular order. 

Further, if God can use the Babylonians and Persians (e.g., Hab. 1:6; Isa. 45:1), then surely God can use anyone, even a leader who lacks integrity.  Indeed, Christians reached this conclusion in the 300s during the Donatist controversy, where the church concluded that God's work in a church was not dependent on the integrity of the minister.  Obviously God would rather use a leader with integrity.  Presumably the days of a leader without integrity are numbered.  On the other hand, some of the most wicked kings of Israel and Judah had the longest reigns and died peacefully in their beds (e.g., Jeroboam II and Manasseh).

None of these questions are meant to deny that our integrity as leaders will be checked, that it is important and formative for us to pass these checks with integrity, or that God will not use those checks to help us grow.