1. Socrates was an idiot.

This summer I am aiming to read some selections from the Great Ideas. To kick off the series, I read what I consider to be the beginning of the trail (at least in the Western tradition): Plato's Apology, which gives us the trial of Socrates. Here is a video version of this week's comments. I also have a Facebook group called "Summer Reading."

1. Socrates was sentenced to death in 399BCE. The charges against him were corrupting the youth and not believing in the Greek gods but coming up with his own. It was a mixed vote, with the citizens voting to put him to death. He willingly drank the hemlock, although he had options to escape.

He has been called the first martyr to philosophy. There are indeed very noteworthy things to consider in this piece, which of course is a "dialog" by Plato, not a transcript of the event. I'll get to the idiocy soon enough.

2. According to Socrates, it all began when a friend of his went to the oracle of Delphi and asked who the wisest person was. The oracle said it was he. So, as the story goes, he began to inquire of supposedly wise people in Athens. But what he found was that they were no wiser than him. Indeed, he at least knew he wasn't wise.

His final conclusion is thus that the oracle must, in a sense, have been correct. "The wisest of you is the one who has realized, like Socrates, that s/he is really worthless when it comes to wisdom" (23b). This is one of the great take-aways from this dialog. Wisdom means knowing not just what you know but how much you don't know.

Of course there are many circumstances where someone does know far more than others. Take the current pandemic we are in. I don't know as much as an epidemiologist. That doesn't necessarily mean that the epidemiologist is right on everything, but let's just say that Facebook and Twitter are filled with people who know almost nothing about pandemics and still are quite convinced they know what should be done.

3. I could be wrong (see what I did there), but I get the impression that Socrates was both right about Athenian leaders being ignorant and that he was a prat. There is a type of person that asks questions just to ask questions. There's really no point other than to show how smart they are. That's really the point.

And they may be. They may be smarter than most people. There are Christian "apologists" (defenders of the faith) whom I suspect are really this sort of prat. It's more about showing off than actually trying to lead anyone to faith. And of course there are atheist prats of this sort. In my opinion, Richard Dawkins is this sort of wise fool who is not nearly as wise on the subject of religion as he might think.

There is a time to be a "gadfly," something Socrates considers himself. There's a time to needle at the heels of power. There's a time for the whistle blower, the prophet, the warrior for truth and justice. There's also the prat who just likes telling people off. This sort of person may imagine that they are like Jesus or a prophet. But the argument came to Jesus. Most of the time he did not go looking for it.

Then there is the person who feeds on the conflict. Argument is sport for them. There is no point. "I assume you have prepared more insults for me?" This type of person, dare I say, is an idiot trying to disguise themselves as a smart person.

4. 399BCE was a bad time for Socrates. Athens had recently lost the Peloponnesian War to the Spartans. One of the people that had hung around Socrates at one point, Alcibiades, had turned traitor to Athens. You could see where people would be bitter about Socrates corrupting the youth, making them enemies of Athens.

And no doubt the politicians and "smart people" of Athens may have needed some push back. The Apology doesn't really give the impression that Socrates always approached this critique in a good way. Maybe he did. Maybe he was the media exposing their fakeness, and so they got rid of him.

For his part. you could see where he might be seen as corrupting the youth. He taught them to ask questions. One of the great quotes from the Apology is that "the unexamined life is not worth living." Now I'm not sure I totally agree with the statement in every circumstance for every person. For some people, "ignorance is bliss."

But I do, personally, prefer self-examination. I want to know my blind spots. I don't want to believe things that are false just because I don't want to be proved wrong.

We all grow up with unexamined assumptions. They are the water of the culture in which we swim. We learn them from our parents and families. We get them from media and movies. We get them from everyone around us. We largely do not even know we have these assumptions--they are unexamined.

So asking questions is a path toward reflectivity. It is a path toward seeing ourselves and our blind spots. We become aware that we are swimming in a certain water we didn't even know was there. Such education is a liberation, a moving out of ignorance. It is a move out of the cave (see Plato's Republic).

Now those who are unreflective will often find this movement dangerous. You begin to see traditions as traditions, not unexamined truths. There is a reason why education is often viewed with suspicion. Of course to be consistent, we must question our education as well.

5. We've mentioned a couple of the memorable quotes from the Apology: wisdom is knowing what you don't know and the unexamined life is not worth living. Socrates modeled what we call the Socratic method--learning by leading a person through a series of questions that leads them to discover the truth on their own. Plato's treatises are called "dialogs" because they follow this dialogical pattern.

The author of Acts arguably wanted his audience to think of Socrates in a couple of places. For one, Paul actually appears at the Areopagus before the Athenians in Acts 17. They accuse him, like Socrates, of inventing new gods. In Acts 4, when Peter and John appear before the ruling council, the Sanhedrin, Peter basically quotes Socrates--"You decide whether I should obey God or humanity." Acts arguably wants us to think of Socrates.

Plato's Apology is not the only ancient witness to Socrates. Xenophon was also there and has his own Apology. It of course is very similar to Plato's account, although with a few minor differences. Some thirty years earlier the playwright Aristophanes portrayed Socrates in a very negative light in the comedy The Clouds. Socrates is portrayed there very much like Anaxagoras, a natural philosopher who did believe that the sun was a stone and the moon a mass of earth. Plato may imply that the reputation Socrates acquired from this play contributed to his death.

6. I am grateful for the tradition of Socrates. I am grateful for the writings of Plato. Of course I think their brand of absolutism can be idiotic, even harmful. The number of issues on which we must never compromise is actually rather small. Those who champion, "no compromise"--on both liberal and conservative sides--sometimes harm society more than they help. They are good voices to have in the room. You really don't want to have one of them as the leader making decisions.

Socrates and Plato were also wrong in seeming to think that if we get our thinking straight, the rest will fall into place. "Right thinking leads to right action." This perspective seems to betray a glaring ignorance of human nature. There is a minority of people who aim to live by reason. It is not the majority of people and dare I say that those who most profess to live by reason often are those unwise about which Socrates warns. See Jonathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind.

So we honor Socrates for the good in him and for what he inspired, despite the possibility that he was quite idiotic at times. Platonism was inspired by him. Aristotelianism out of Platonism. The Stoics claimed him. The Cynics claimed him. The Skeptics claimed him. If he had avoided his death, philosophy as we know it might not even exist.

As an almost totally unrelated aside, my grandfather lived in Hemlock, Indiana in 1920.

Next week: Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy.

Ready for my Gospels Quiz?

1. Know the key themes of Mark. Be able to recognize a likely quote from Mark if it matches one of the following themes:

• The hiddenness of Jesus’ identity
• The disciples’ lack of understanding
• The connection between Jesus’ death and him being the Messiah 

2. Know the following possibilities of the Gospel of Mark’s situation

• That it was likely written primarily for Gentiles 
• That it was likely written around the time of the destruction of Jerusalem (AD70) 
• Know AD70 as that date. 

3. Know the key themes of Matthew. Be able to recognize a likely quote from Matthew if it matches one of the following themes:

• Jesus is the Son of David, the king 
• Jesus is the authoritative teacher/interpreter of the Law, the new Moses
• Jesus fulfills the Old Testament 
• Most Jewish Gospel—focused on Israel in his early mission (but also has the Great Commission) 
• Most apocalyptic Gospel
• Hardest on the Pharisees—and the unfaithful in the church 

4. Know the following possibilities of the Gospel of Matthew’s situation

• Primarily Jewish Christian audience 
• Used Mark as a source (maybe Q), so possibly 70s 
• Hardness on Pharisees may be because they were the primary alternative group at the time 

5. Know the key themes of Luke. Be able to recognize a likely quote from Luke if it matches one of the following themes:

• The gospel is for everyone. 
• Good news for the marginalized: the poor, widows, orphans, emphasis on the role of women, the lost sheep of Israel. 
• Emphasis on prayer and the Holy Spirit 
• More for Acts, but Christians aren’t troublemakers 

6. Know the following possibilities of the Gospel of Luke’s situation

• Probably a primarily Gentile audience—indeed author may be a Gentile 
• Used Mark as a source (maybe Q), maybe knew Matthew, so possibly 80s
• Written in honor of a patron, Theophilus, who may have been a Roman official 

7. Know the key themes of John. Be able to recognize a likely quote from John if it matches one of the following themes:

• Jesus pre-existed his time on earth. 
• Emphasis on the signs Jesus did 
• Importance of faith in Jesus in order to have eternal life 
• Use of “I am” sayings to show who Jesus is (bread of life, light of world, resurrection and life, I AM, way/truth/life, good shepherd…) 

8. Know the following possibilities of the Gospel of John’s situation

• Very different from the Synoptic Gospels, possibly very symbolic 
• Maybe Ephesus, engaging both early Gnostics and non-believing followers of John the Baptist 
• Source is the Beloved Disciple (uncertain identity), although possibly put in its current form by someone else
• Likely written in the 90s

Is this the flu?

There are some respects in which this current COVID-19 crisis does not seem like the flu to me.

1. I have never heard of them needing to bring refrigerator trucks to New York City hospitals because they have too many body bags to handle in the normal fashion. I have never known them to have to build temporary morgues. I have never known them to have to ship in ventilators.

No one in New York City thinks that this is the flu.

2. The number may end up being similar to the flu each year... after excruciating sequestration. Now the severity hasn't hit everywhere the same. We have yet to see how it will fully pan out in rural areas. It is possible that many people have been asymptomatic or that it has been here for months. My neighbors had an incredibly serious bout of pneumonia in late November/early December.

My question though is why New York City has been hit so hard now. This should have hit the city in this way much earlier, it seems, if the virus was sweeping through the population in December. It's of course possible that the strain in New York City is different from the initial strain. These things mutate and get worse sometimes. That's what happened in 1918-20.

3. I've never seen Facebook light up with people in the hospital and dying from the flu. We have no immunity to this disease. If we let it have free reign, we know a lot of older people will die who would not have. "It's only people who have diabetes." "That black person already had heart disease." "That woman was overweight."

Listen to what you're saying. My mother is in her 90s. Should I adopt the thinking, "She's had a good life. It's ok for her to die"? I have family with diabetes. My father had diabetes. Should I adopt the thinking, "They have diabetes. It's ok for them to die." If you can save lives on a significant scale, social distancing and not gathering together seems reasonable at least for a period.

4. Yes, there is the trade off of the economy. A depression is a bad thing. A balance needs to be found. We will look back and figure out whether we should have focused on big cities and not the countryside.

Utilitarianism asks the question, "What course of action will bring about the greatest good for the greatest number?" So we weigh the potential loss in human life against the potential loss of a depression, not just in human life but in human despair.

What about freedom? It's a good question. Whether you lean Republican or Democrat, you can now see a possible future where Americans no longer vote for their future. I personally don't think this has happened because of some conspiracy to that end. Of course it could give someone an idea.

But it is not our individual freedom that we should fight for. It is our corporate freedom. Our corporate freedom is held in place by the Constitution. Our corporate freedom is held in place by holding our leaders accountable by checks and balances. Our corporate freedom is held in place by free elections.

Freedom has never been absolute. I am not free to kill someone. I am not free to indiscriminately spread an illness I have. My freedom of religion should not be able to kill my child because I won't let them treat him or her. My freedom of the press should not be able to incite mass violence. The majority is not free to vote in sharia law.

The space of a democratic republic is a negotiated space. We try to maximize freedoms in the tension between individuals. Inevitably, this requires mutual limitation.

2 Thessalonians 1 (Explanatory Notes)

I have a life goal of following in Wesley's steps and self-publishing Explanatory Notes on the whole Bible. I have a fair amount already on the New Testament and published Galatians some time ago. I've also had notes on 1 Thessalonians done for years.

I have a podcast/video series every week I call, "Through the Bible in Ten Years." My Thessalonians videos are in a playlist there. Thus far I've been through the Gospel of Mark and most of Acts. This week I begin 2 Thessalonians. But I've never done Explanatory Notes on 2 Thessalonians.

So here goes. I'll do the chapters first and the introduction at the end.
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Prescript (1:1-2)
1:1 Paul and Silas and Timothy to the church of the Thessalonians in God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ. 2. Grace to you and peace from God, the Father, and [the] Lord Jesus Christ.

The authors of 2 Thessalonians are the same as that of 1 Thessalonians, giving us the immediate impression that this letter was written in the same time frame as the earlier letter. Paul, Silas, and Timothy were together on Paul's second missionary journey. We do not see Silas mentioned on any later letters of Paul other than 1 and 2 Thessalonians. We would then guess that 2 Thessalonians was written from Corinth to Thessalonica around the years AD50-51. [1]

As we mentioned in the introduction, the order of the Thessalonian letters is open for discussion. 1 Thessalonians was put first because it is longer than 2 Thessalonians. It would thus be possible that 2 Thessalonians was written first, and it has been suggested. However, most scholars have concluded that this order is in fact the order in which they were written.

The same comments we made about the greeting of 1 Thessalonians thus apply here. This is the prescript, a standard letter greeting. The greeting of "grace and peace" potentially embodied the unity between Jew and Gentile that stood at the heart of Paul's mission theology.

A quick comparison between the greetings of 2 Thessalonians and 1 Thessalonians show a very strong similarity. In general, this is not surprising. However, the similarity may go beyond what we would expect unless there was some degree of copying going on. We will return to this question.

A singular church is addressed again. The default interpretation would thus suggest that there is one major house church in the city that consisted of perhaps 40-50 people. There may of course have been smaller cell groups within this overall "assembly."

[1] As we said in the introduction, if the implied setting of 2 Thessalonians were to differ noticeably from the Corinthian time frame, we might wonder if something more is going on here than what appears.

Thanksgiving
1:3 We ought to give thanks to God always concerning you, brothers [and sisters], just as is worthy, because your faith is exploding and the love of each one of all you multiplying toward one another, 4 with the result that we ourselves boast in you in the assemblies of God about your endurance and faith among all your persecutions and the tribulations that you are bearing.

Again, a thanksgiving section was common in ancient letters. We should not take the common features of Paul's thanksgiving sections as an argument against his genuine feeling for his churches or his actual prayers for them. He gives thanks for some of the same things mentioned in 1 Thessalonians 1--their faith and love.

As mentioned in the introduction, the similarity to 1 Thessalonians, although with some different words, is something to observe. We speculated in the introduction that perhaps Silas or Timothy had more to do with the writing of 2 Thessalonians than Paul. We speculated that perhaps one of them stuck closely to the content of 1 Thessalonians in keeping with the overall purpose of the letter. Whether this speculation is true or not, we note here the similarities between the two letters.

We get the impression that their faith and love have grown since the writing of 1 Thessalonians. They are on the same path and trajectory. Persecution has not diminished their faith and love, only increased it.

They have become a source of boasting for Paul, Silas, and Timothy. Paul had mentioned boasting in them in 2 Thessalonians 2:19. They bring him honor before Christ, like a parent is proud of one of their children.

We certainly get the feeling that the level of persecution has increased for the church at Thessalonica. No mention is made of what group might be doing so. Since the church was predominantly Gentile, we doubt that their persecution comes from Jews in the city. They probably have little to do with the synagogues of the city.

It seems more likely that they would encounter resistance from the city leadership in general, remembering that the Christian gospel was potentially subversive. It proclaimed a different king than Caesar and the immanent upheaval of the current world order! Paul himself apparently set the city on this trajectory, since it was the city not the Jews who had the power to force him to leave. 

The "churches of God" are the "assemblies of God." They are the collection of all the house churches meeting all over the world. There are as yet no church buildings.

5 [It is a] demonstration of the righteous judgment of God so that you might be deemed worthy of the kingdom of God, on behalf of which you also suffer, 6 since it is right for God to repay with oppression those who are oppressing us 

Persecution for Christ both confirms the impending judgment on those who do the persecution and confirms the righteousness of those who are persecuted. Note the importance throughout Paul's writings of the worthiness of God's people when Jesus returns. Paul insists that Jesus-followers live in a manner worthy of the gospel (e.g., Phil. 1:27).

There was no contradiction in Paul's mind between faith and works. Works might not be a basis for justification, but once you had received the Spirit, both faith and a worthy life were normative. The works that were impossible without the Spirit were now indicative of the Spirit.

We note that judgment is not contrary to God's character as love. In this case, judgment is the demonstration of God's love toward the persecuted. Loving judgment protects the innocent and restores order to the world by removing the instruments of evil. 

7 and relief to you who are being oppressed, along with us, at the revelation of the Lord Jesus from [the] sky with the angels of his power. 8 "with fire of flame, giving judgment to those who do not know God" [2] and to those who are not obedience to the gospel of our Lord Jesus, 

While 1 Thessalonians 1 speaks of the arrival, the "parousia" of Jesus, 2 Thessalonians speaks of the revelation of Jesus, the "apocalypse" of Jesus. Revelation of this sort is the unveiling of that which has been hidden. It is the unveiling of the heavenly, spiritual realm, the breaking in of heaven into earth.

1 Thessalonians 4-5 do not focus on the judgment of those on the earth but on the salvation of those in Christ. 1 Thessalonians 5:9 alluded to the judgment of those who are not "snatched up" to meet the Lord in the air (1 Thess. 4:17). But we indicated in our notes on that chapter that the saved were probably not joining Christ merely to go party forever. 1 Corinthians 6:2-3 suggest that the meeting in the air is in preparation for judgment.

These verses give greater clarity on what happens to the world after those in Christ are removed. King Jesus, his powerful angels, the dead in Christ, and the still alive in Christ will proceed to finalize the arrival of the kingdom of God. The kingdom that had come near and was inaugurated in Jesus's earthly ministry will now be consummated. God's kingdom will come on earth as it is in heaven.

Verse 8 alludes perhaps to two or three Scriptures in the Old Testament. Psalm 79:6 speaks of God pouring out his anger on those who do not know God. Jeremiah 10:25 also speaks of God coming in judgment on those who do not know him. Isaiah 66:15 speaks of the LORD coming back in fire, rebuking the earth with flames of fire.

The Isaiah passage is particularly interesting because it is in the context of the restoration of Jerusalem. Part of this restoration is the destruction of those that oppress it. This allusion may be significant as we move into 2 Thessalonians 2.



9 who will suffer justice, eternal destruction "from the face of the Lord and from the glory of his strength" [3] 10 whenever he should come to be glorified among his holy ones and to be marveled at among all who have faith, because, on that day, our witness was believed among you. 

1:9 does not specify the nature of eternal destruction. Indeed, Paul has almost nothing to say about the fate of those who are not in Christ. Eternal destruction could of course refer to eternal punishment, but it could also in theory refer to eternal annihilation. If the allusion to Isaiah 66 continues here, it is noteworthy that Isaiah 66:24 speaks of the worm not dying and the flame not being quenched among the dead bodies of those who rebelled against God. [3]

Paul also seems to allude to Isaiah 2 here. Isaiah 2:19 and 21 both speak of running from the glory of God's majesty. People hide in the crags of rocks and in caves trying to get away from judgment. His holy ones or "saints" are those who have faith. They are holy because they are set apart to God. It all started when they believed (had faith in, trusted in) the witness that Paul brought to King Jesus.

In my opinion, any image of vindictiveness is anthropomorphic. It is uses human anger in justice to picture the finality and definitiveness of judgment. It is the end of all that opposes God. It is the removal of that which harms the righteous because of God's love for them. It is the protection of the innocent. It is the setting of everything right in the world.

[3] This image from Isaiah 66 is also used in Mark 9:48.

11 For which also we pray always concerning you in order that our God might might deem you worthy of election and might fulfill every good pleasure of goodness and work of faith with power, 12 so that the name of our Lord Jesus might be glorified among you and you in him, according to the grace of our God and [the] Lord Jesus Christ.

The Thanksgiving section continues. The theme of worthiness also continues, although there is no hint at all that the Thessalonians have been unworthy. It is simply the case that Paul, Silas, and Timothy believe that a person must be worthy when Christ returns in judgment.

Notice that one must be worthy of election (cf. 2 Peter 1:10). This is not what we would expect Paul to say if election implied worthiness. That is to say, in the system of John Calvin, those who are elect will certainly prove to be worthy, for it is completely a matter of God's choosing. Paul's wording suggests that it is exactly the opposite. Election is conditional upon our faithfulness. This faithfulness is God-empowered, but it requires an act of our will.

The phrase, "work of faith" also appeared in 1 Thessalonians. It once again demonstrates that Paul knows no dichotomy between these two concepts. Our worthiness brings honor and glory to God even though it is empowered by his grace. The power is God's unmerited gift, although it requires our act of faith.

Introduction to 1 Thessalonians

I did explanatory notes on 1 Thessalonians about 12 years ago, but I didn't do an introduction. Thought I would write the introduction.
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1. First Thessalonians is one of those few books in the Bible whose historical origins are a matter of widespread agreement. The first few chapters of the letter give a clear sense of its origins in a way that fits fairly neatly into the story of Acts. They suggest that the apostle Paul wrote 1 Thessalonians while he was at Corinth somewhere around AD50 or 51.

The author is Paul. Over the years, there has been no real doubt of this likelihood. The audience are the Thessalonians. Acts tells us that Paul founded this church on his second missionary journey. He was not able to stay there long, perhaps less than two months, before he was forced to leave the city. [1]

Thessalonica was a large ancient city, the Roman capital of the region of Macedon. It was located on the Egnatian Way, the primary Roman road that continued on west toward Rome itself. Paul's interest in the city reflects his general mission philosophy to target large urban centers.

From the letter we can infer that the church there was primarily Gentile, non-Jewish in composition. They had "turned from idols to serve the living God" (1 Thess. 1:9). The fact that Paul refers to the church in the singular suggests that it primarily consisted of one house church and that all the believers in the city could likely fit in one large house. The church thus was probably forty people or less in size.

2. Paul's time in Corinth is perhaps the most datable moment in his ministry. The book of Acts mentions an encounter he had there with the proconsul Gallio, and Gallio's time in Corinth can be dated with some accuracy to 51-52AD. Since Gallio may not have finished his full time as proconsul, and since he came near the end of Paul's time there, we can suggest that Paul may have written 1 Thessalonians around the year AD50.

Acts gives us a picture of Paul moving from Thessalonica to Berea to Athens to Corinth. 1 Thessalonians confirms that Paul went to Athens at some point after being in Thessalonica (1 Thess. 3:3). In 1 Thessalonians 3, Paul indicates that he, Silas, and Timothy had arrived at some point in Athens after they had left Thessalonica. Paul and Silas send Timothy back to the city to check on their progress in faith.

Then Timothy returns to them. Although it is possible Paul and Silas were still in Athens when Timothy returned, 3:3 sounds more like they had moved on. Acts 17 gives us the impression that Paul did not stay long there or at least did not have a substantial ministry in the city. [2] For this reason, it seems likely that Paul was in Corinth when Timothy returned and thus that Paul wrote 1 Thessalonians from Corinth.

3. Paul writes 1 Thessalonians in response. Many, perhaps most scholars would consider 1 Thessalonians to be the first of Paul's writings. [3] In this letter we are thus perhaps seeing the beginning of Paul's letter writing as a ministry tool. Paul preferred to minister in person. His letters were a practical substitute for his presence.

There is thus a sense in which Paul's letters are filling in the gaps of the ministries he started when he was present. We are thus only indirectly getting the heart of his preaching. We are more getting the edges, the "clean up" of remaining issues. This is not entirely the case, but it is an important factor to keep in mind.

In the case of the Thessalonians, the primary issues that remained with the Thessalonian church had to do with eschatology--matters regarding the "end times," the "last days." Here we refer to the return of Christ from heaven to judge the world and set up the kingdom of God on earth. Paul's preaching on such things had presumably focused on the return of Christ to set up God's kingdom.

He does not seem to have spent as much time talking about the resurrection. Judging from 1 Thessalonians 4 and 5, the once pagan congregation either had little sense of life after death. At the very least, they did not think those who died would be part of Jesus' coming kingdom on earth.

It is interesting that Paul only discusses the dead "in Christ." In other words, he is not obviously discussing the dead saints of the Old Testament. Indeed, in his writings Paul is almost entirely silent about the fate of any group of the dead except those who have died in Christ.

4. Timothy would seem to be the carrier of the letter. We can imagine that he took it back from Corinth to Thessalonica. We can imagine that he read the letter aloud to the assembly and fielded any questions they might have. We remember that most people in the ancient world were illiterate, so they would not have been able to take home a copy to read at home. They would have likely heard it read enough times in their house church until they had its content firmly in mind.

[1] Philippians 4:16 indicates that he was there long enough to receive support at least twice from the church at Philippi. We balance this comment with the three sabbaths that Acts 17:2 mentions and conclude that Paul was not in Thessalonica long but likely more than two weeks. Somewhere in between one and two months seems likely.

[2] 1 Thessalonians gives us a slightly different impression of events. In Acts, Paul leaves Silas and Timothy at Berea and does not see them again until Corinth (Acts 17:14; 18:5). However, 1 Thessalonians indicates that all three were in Athens, and that it was only Timothy who was separated from Paul. There may be some way to fit these accounts together, but such speculation probably is not helpful, especially since ancient history writing was more flexible than modern historiography. Clearly Paul's account, as the first-hand witness, should be given emphasis.

[3] Galatians is the principle alternative.

Is COVID-19 God's Judgment?

1. Whenever there is a disaster, it is natural for us to ask why, especially when we believe in a God whose has a defining characteristic of love. We find the same question in the Bible in more than one place. In Luke 13, Jesus addresses some Galileans that Pilate had killed and some people who had a tower fall on them in Siloam (Luke 13:1-5). Was it a punishment for their sin? What about the young man who had been born blind? Had his parents sinned or had he sinned to bring it on (John 9:2)?

The Bible does indicate that events can be a consequence of sin. Israel loses a battle with Ai because of Achan's sin (Joshua 7). The northern and southern kingdoms both meet their demise as a consequence of their sin (2 Kings 17, 24:3). And it is not just the Old Testament. Ananias and Sapphira die in Acts 5 as a result of their sin, and need we merely mention the book of Revelation.

2. It is important to have a "whole Bible" theology of such questions. Once we begin to read the Bible in context, we realize that we get different angles on these questions from different books. I have hypothesized often that there is a growing precision on some subjects in the course of the Bible. The afterlife seems to be an example of this dynamic.

Another example is what we might call Deuteronomistic theology. Deuteronomistic theology gives us a basic principle--obedience to God leads to blessing, disobedience leads to disaster. However, Deuteronomy and the historical books that follow it (Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings) only look at this question from the standpoint of this life. Those who teach a prosperity gospel tend to focus on these parts of the Bible while ignoring others.

However, it is clear that not all suffering is a consequence of sin and disobedience. Jesus denies it in John 9 mentioned above. Indeed, Isaiah 53 and Jesus himself illustrate that a righteous person can be persecuted unjustly. Ecclesiastes is rife with the sense that, from all appearances, it often looks like the wicked sometimes prosper and the "good die young."

Ironically, the most righteous king in 2 Kings, Josiah, dies prematurely in battle. The most evil king of Judah, Manasseh, has a long and prosperous reign and dies peacefully in bed. The situation deeply troubled many at the time. The generation that went into captivity felt like they were being punished for the sins of their parents' generation.

Psalm 44:17 captures this lament well: "All this came upon us although we had not forgotten you. We had not been false to your covenant." There was a saying that circulated around Israel: "Our fathers ate sour grapes, but it is our teeth that hurt" (Jer. 31:29; Ezek. 18:2). God says he is going to change the policy. From now on it will be the person who does the sin who will die, not their children or grandchildren (Ezek 18:4).

2. Here is a good illustration of growing precision within the pages of the Old Testament. "God has no grandchildren"--our eternal fate is a matter of our individual relationship to God, not that of our parents. It goes the other way as well--our eternal judgment is not a matter of our parents either.

There are still consequences to sin in this life, of course. If a mother takes drugs while pregnant, God may not intervene to protect the unborn child from the consequences. The child of an alcoholic parent may still have to deal with the psychological consequences of growing up in that environment.

The book of Job brings out the complexity of the situation. Job suffers even though he has not sinned. He never finds out why in the pages of the book. God comes to him at the end and basically tells him that understanding the situation is above his pay grade. Here is the final answer to the problem of suffering. God is in control. God is good and knows what is happening. We will never fully understand. We must simply have faith that "the judge of all the earth will do what is right" (Gen. 18:25).

Of course we know that Satan has made a wager with God from Job 1-2. Job never finds this out. In my Wesleyan theology, this is a good example of the fact that much of the suffering that happens in the world is a matter of God's permissive will rather than his directive will. That is to say, God does not directly order everything that happens.

God is sovereign. Nothing happens without God's permission. God is in control. God signs off on everything. But God gives some degree of freedom to the creation. God gives some degree of freedom to humanity and to the natural order. God knows what will happen, but he does not dictate everything that will happen.

There is of course a competing view, the idea that "everything happens for a reason." There is the Calvinist view that God specifically directs everything that happens. In my view, this makes God the author of evil. It makes the statement that God is love meaningless.

3. An important observation here is that the understanding of Satan is not present in the earliest parts of the Old Testament. Satan only appears in Job 1-2, 1 Chronicles 21, and Zechariah 3. It is common to think of Job as one of the earliest books of the Old Testament but in my view this is the common confusion of the subject matter of a book with the circumstances of its writing.

This is another example of growing precision in understanding as we move through the Bible. The earliest parts of the Bible simply ascribe all spiritual activity to God. This is not untrue, since God approves of everything that happens.

But it is not as precise as an awareness of Satan. Does God really directly send evil spirits on King Saul (1 Sam. 16:14)? Does God directly command that a person be born blind or deaf (Exod. 4:11)? These are true but imprecise statements. God signs off on everything that happens. But we now know that Satan is often the more direct instigator.

Nowhere is this more clearly seen than in comparing 2 Samuel 24:1 with 1 Chronicles 21:1 The first says that God tempted David to sin. The second says that Satan did it. If we have no sense of a developing precision in understanding, these two passages will certainly seem to contradict each other. In the end, James gives us the final word: "Let no one say when tempted that God is tempting me. For God is not tempted with evil nor does he tempt anyone" (Jas. 1:13).

4. All of that is background to the question at hand. Is COVID-19 God's judgment in some way?

We can say with certainty that God has allowed COVID-19 to happen. God is in control. But we cannot say with any certainty whether God is judging certain people. That is above our pay grade. We have an urge to speculate on such questions, but Job tells us we must trust that God is in control and resist matters that are beyond our understanding. We are not competent to fish for Leviathan with a fish hook (Job 41:1)!

We can say that Christians will die. Indeed, some American Christians have been very resistant to believe in the current crisis. What if they had died in higher numbers as a result? Even if that had happened, Job would implore us not to conclude that such an eventuality would have been God's judgment on us in some way.

We can conclude that God has and will likely allow people to experience the consequences of their choices. We do not know the intentions or detailed actions of the Chinese government. But God has allowed China and the world to experience the consequences. I do not know whether the United States has mishandled the lead up to the crisis here. But God may very well let the rest of us experience the consequences.

In all this I remember that death is not so powerful in the face of Christ. Death has no victory over us! In my own journey with the problem of evil and suffering, a key conclusion has been that I give too much credit to death and suffering, as if they are a big deal.

God is a big deal. I am only a big deal because God loves me. My death is only a big deal because I am one of the sparrows God watches over.

So I will take precautions. I will be vigilant. I will heed the advice of experts. I will pray for my leaders. I will pray for others.

But in the end, "The LORD is with me. I will not be afraid what a mortal [or a virus] might do to me."

What's a heresy?

Someone recently asked what a heresy was. Here is my answer.
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1. First, heresy has to do with the beliefs of our head. In that sense:

• Heresy is not about ethics. The Church in its earliest centuries did not largely fight over ethics but over beliefs. In that sense, it can be wrong do do something but it is not heresy to do something.
• Heresy is not about salvation. God judges us according to our "heart," that is, our faith in him. Our decisions and actions flow from our heart toward God. Out of the heart thus comes forth sin and death. God does not judge us according to our beliefs except insofar as our beliefs are an expression of our hearts. This is the direction with which God is ultimately concerned--heart to action, heart to belief (not belief to action, not action in itself).

2. Heresy, properly so called, has to do with deviance from the ecumenical creeds (and thus dogmas) of Christendom.

• Deviation with regard to the Trinity.
• Deviation with regard to the resurrection.
• Note that such heresies only became heresies after the ecumenical councils that finally brought those debates to conclusion. The author of Ecclesiastes was not a heretic for not understanding the fullness of life after death. Arius was not a heretic until after 381, after his death, when the Nicene Creed was finalized.

3. There are informal heresies, which approach heresies because they relate to the general consensus of the church (and thus to doctrines) but which are not addressed in the creeds.

•  Open theism denies the absolute foreknowledge of God. This a "heresy light" because Christians everywhere have long affirmed the full foreknowledge of God. But the issue is not addressed in the creeds.
• The inspiration of Scripture is the common belief of Christendom, but it has never been affirmed in an ecumenical creed nor has its precise nature ever been spelled out by the Church at large.
• The belief that homosexual practice is acceptable in a monogamous relationship falls outside the consensus of Christianity throughout the ages. While the practice is a question of orthopraxy rather than orthodoxy, the belief stands outside the consensus of the Church.

4. Deviation from the particular beliefs of one's church or one's tradition stands outside debates over heresy, although it does relate to one's participation in a particular Christian community.

• One's position on the nature of predestination, individual will, or eternal security
• One's position on particular atonement theories or a teaching like eternal security.
• One's position on the inerrancy of Scripture

5. There is a host of issues where one may have Christian convictions on an issue. This is where you believe God has bound you to a particular perspective and practice, but you do not see them as binding on others.

Discerning God's Will for Action

Here is the outline of a presentation I gave February 20 to a leadership development group of pastors in Western New York.
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Discernment: To Go or Stay

1. Two Personalities/Biases I've seen:

• Wait, don't act until the Lord tells you what to do. 
• Move forward and the Lord will stop you if you go in the wrong direction.

Scriptures to support both:

• "Wait on the Lord. Be strong and let your heart take courage. Wait, I say, on the Lord." Ps 27:14
• "You will hear a voice behind you when you turn to the right or the left" (Isa 30:21)

One instance when we are probably hearing God is when we are impressed in a different direction than our natural tendencies.

2. I shared my process in coming to Houghton.

• I had an impression of a change coming. It was both a push and a pull.
• Outside factors included an empty nest, a sense that I was not as aligned with the direction of my situation as I used to be.
• Inside was a sense that I either needed to return to teaching or move into more advanced leadership.
• Doors opened.
• There were a striking number of benefits to walking through the door.
• I had an unusual peace about it.

3. There is not one answer for every situation.

• Sometimes we have to wait because there is nothing we can do but pray. (Of course we should always be praying. We should always sit with a choice in silence before the Lord.)
• Sometimes God wants us to wait on him when we could act but it is not his will.
• Sometimes God makes it clear what we are to do and when we are to do it.
• Sometimes we need to step out in faith without knowing for sure where we are going.

4. Impressions by Martin Wells Knapp

• Scripture - "Impressions from above are always in harmony with the teachings of the Word."
• conscience - Does the impression cohere with our core Christian values (love God, love neighbor)? (I have modified Knapp here)
• providence - "If a leading is of God, the way will always open for it."
• reason - God's leading usually makes sense.

5. An impression can begin with an outside push or a pull.

• Your situation can get rough (a push).
• Your situation can change in a way that requires choices.
• A door can open and a new possibility present itself (a pull).
• There's a time to stick it out. There is a time to shake the dust off your feet.
• There can also be a time when you are ready to continue, but your influence is spent. You may want to stay but it would benefit the situation for someone else to take over.
• There's a time to step out in faith. There's a time to wait for a door to open.

6. An impression can begin with something inside.

• A "holy discontent" (but beware a personality always looking for greener grass)
• A person can have a sense of release or a sense of ongoing burden.
• God often gives us choices, gives us a say in what to choose. There isn't always just one will of God.
• God interacts with our choices. He sometimes "changes his mind about judgment" (Jonah). He gives Hezekiah an extra 15 years. Sometimes he turns toward the negative (Saul, destruction of Jerusalem). 

7. Making decisions

• An impression - peace? discontent? excitement? a possible word from the Lord?
• What does Scripture and my conscience say? 
• What doors are open and closed?
• What are the pros and cons (reason)? Does it make sense?
• What do others say, whose wisdom I recognize? Don't ignore the prophets you don't like!
• Listen to the voice behind you.

8. A prayer
Lord, grant me the peace to wait on you when I cannot or should not act…
Lord, grant me the courage to act when it is time, even if I am uncertain of the direction…
Lord, grant me the wisdom to know the difference!

Through the Bible - The Book of Acts

Last year (2019) in March, I began a series on YouTube and Patreon called "Through the Bible in Ten Years." From March to the end of July, I did both video and podcast "Explanatory Notes" on the Gospel of Mark.

Beginning then on August 4, I began doing Explanatory Notes on the Book of Acts. Here are the links to the videos and podcasts in this series.

2.1 Introduction to Acts

• podcast
• video

2.2 Acts 1

• podcast
• video

2.3 Acts 2

• podcast
• video

2.4 Acts 3

• podcast
• video

2.5 Acts 4

• podcast
• video

2.6 Acts 5

• podcast
• video

2.7 Acts 6

• podcast
• video

2.8 Acts 7

• podcast
• video

2.9 Acts 8

• podcast
• video

2.10 Acts 9

• podcast
• video

2.11 Acts 10

• podcast
• video

2.12 Acts 11

• podcast
• video

2.13 Acts 12

• podcast
• video

2.14 Acts 13

• podcast
• video

2.15 Acts 14

• podcast
• video

2.16 Acts 15

• podcast
• video

7.2 Sidetrip to Galatians 1

• podcast
• video

7.3 Sidetrip to Galatians 2

• podcast
• video

2.17 Acts 16

• podcast
• video

2.18 Acts 17

• podcast
• video

Finis - and the rest

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1. I have now blogged through the first thirty years of my life in great detail. My memories are now eternal. I feel like I now need to divert the extra space of my attention to other things that have been crying out to me. I also have already blogged extensively about my remaining years.

As I was getting ready to depart Indiana Wesleyan last year, I blogged through my time there. That series started with the year 1996-97, when I was looking for a teaching position. There are more things to be remembered of a personal nature and I may return to fill those in at some point.

So here are the key personal points of the years 1996-2009:

• Hired in 1997 by IWU to teach philosophy for a year
• Continued on in 1998, first to teach philosophy but then as professor of New Testament
• Married in 1998 to Angie with daughters Stefanie and Stacy - trips that year to England, Scotland, and Greece (for honeymoon)
• Son Thomas born in 1999.
• Daughter Sophie born in 2000.
• Family trip to England, Scotland, and Paris in summer 2001, before 9-11
• Angie's mom died in 2003. We had just returned from a cruise to celebrate five years of marriage.
• Fulbright sabbatical to Tübingen in 2004. We lived in Bühl. Fulbright trip to Berlin. Methodistische Gemeinde (Iraq War)
• Angie's father lived with us in Bühl the first half of the trip (bakery; Sportheim; gymnasium, stupid light). My parents came over. We went to Munich and visited Dachau again. My parents and I drove north to Nuremberg. Went through Oberammergau, drove to Neuschwanstein. They went to see the Grunewald altarpiece in Isenheim while I watched Tom.
• Family trip to Milan as the basecamp (Last Supper by da Vinci), with trips to Venice and down to Florence (fantastic carbonara). Angie's dad went home. We spent a week in Mougins, France (pesky train porter)
• Trips by Wilbur to Israel and Greece
• Books published, papers presented

2. In 2009, Wesley Seminary was founded. These were incredible years of learning and creating. I have already self-published my thoughts on my six years as Dean. Again, that piece did not focus on my personal life:

• Stefanie graduated from high school in 2010, went to Indiana University. Her quinceñera was in 2006.
• Stacy graduated in 2011, also went to IU. Her quinceñera was in 2008.
• Another Fulbright in 2011 to Munich, with Knut Backhaus as host. Fulbright orientation was in Göttingen, after which we went on up to Berlin. 
• We took trips to Rome, Pisa, Venice, and Florence again (as basecamp). We went to Vienna and on to Budapest, as well as Prague in the Czech Republic. Angie wanted to visit a Medieval Crime Museum in Rothenburg ob der Tauber as our departure approached. 
• Stefanie, her friend Spencer, and Stacy came over for Christmas. We visited Tübingen and Bühl again, having supper with the Bisingers. 
• My father died within a couple months of our return in 2012. This probably marks the end of the first half of my life.
• Books and papers presented

3. At the beginning of 2015, I felt like it was time to let the seminary faculty create the seminary of their own choosing. I returned to teaching undergraduate New Testament on the undergraduate side in the fall of 2015. Here is the general flow of the last five years of my life:

• Taught for the undergraduate School of Theology and Ministry 2015-2016. A year of self-discovery.
• From 2016-2019 I became first the Interim and then the full Dean of the School of Theology and Ministry. These were definitely years of learning as I felt like my intuitions would have taken IWU in different directions than it was going.
• Tom graduated from high school in 2018, got a full tuition ROTC scholarship for three years to Purdue.
• Sophie graduated from high school in 2019, went to Pepperdine University.
• In 2019 I felt like a change was approaching, either to go back to teaching or to move into a more significant leadership position. Houghton College stepped into that space.
• Since August 15, 2019 I have been Vice President of Planning and Innovation at Houghton. Exciting times!

Durham - Final Year 14

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93. My last year in Durham focused of course on my dissertation. I wrote the last chapter on the heavenly tabernacle, the aspect of Hebrews I found most intriguing. It involved some minute exegetical work on Hebrews 8-10. I had a big stack of books from the library next to my computer for footnotes.

I seem to remember Rachel Leonard saying that footnotes were pointless. She was doing psychology, so the footnotes did nothing but credit sources. However, in biblical studies the footnotes can be some of the most interesting side notes. In them we spar with our opponents and make interesting tangents. Of course many of them are mere catalogs.

I called some footnote work "footnote chasing." The footnotes helped me know who all the significant players were and what the significant positions were. A footnote in one book led to another book with its own footnotes, which led to other books.

Some scholars seem always to know what books have just come out. I'm not sure how they do it. Bill Patrick was that way. Dave Smith is that way. I know others like that, Brian Small, Scott Mackie. I always felt like I was behind on this one. I would use the library at Notre Dame or the book hall at the Society of Biblical Literature to try to catch up.

94. I did two appendices. One over-viewed the story world of Hebrews as a whole, the other tried to infer aspects of Hebrews' background from the work I had done.

I was struck by how short the first appendix was. It reflects an insight I have gained over the years. In the last few years, Indiana Wesleyan added a theology course to its general education requirements. However, I'm not sure if it really does what its framers thought it would. Much of theology does not directly impact Christian life. It may not make a person love God or their neighbor more.

Arguably, orthopraxy ("right practice") is of far more immediate and eternal importance than orthodoxy ("right belief"). [1] And the two aren't always closely connected. This is what I discovered with the story world of Hebrews. The same underlying story not only could have been discoursed in multiple ways. The same story could be argued from in many ways. The story itself potentially gives rise to many different realities. [2]

For this reason, a course on ethics--which was in harmony and dialog with theology and Scripture--would be much more powerful for students than one focused on theological ideas. And it would be very controversial. There are Christians who believe the right things who would view the current political situation in diametrically opposing ways. We return again to the Platonic fallacy. Right belief does not clearly lead to right action. Rather, humans tend to retrofit their ideas to fit their sense of action. Ideas are often "epiphenomena" of our social worlds. [3]

When I edited the dissertation into a monograph, I felt the need to add another chapter on the rhetorical strategy of Hebrews. Without a sense of the rhetorical situation arguing from the story, the story lies pretty facile and polyvalent. The substance of meaning comes as the story is discoursed.

The appendix on the background of Hebrews was indulgent. Narrative criticism brackets questions of historical background. But of course I was not exactly practicing narrative criticism. I was only using some of its tools. Still, I had tried to be exegetically disciplined in the study, not speculating on the key questions of background. Part of the introduction suggested that a disciplined approach that did not fill in gaps might result in an interpretation that would eventually help with background.

95. I discovered Craig Koester's The Dwelling of God in my final year. It had come out some seven years earlier. For a little bit, I was afraid he had already carved out the positions I was taking in my dissertation. It is of course death to find that you are not in fact doing something original. My narrative approach would have made it ok anyway. As I read through the work I found enough light between the two of us anyway.

I largely see the tabernacle in Hebrews as a metaphorical way of referring to the highest heaven where God dwells. I do not think Hebrews actually envisages an actual structure in heaven. I argue that Hebrews never pictures there being an outer room to the heavenly sanctuary. At best, one might consider the lower skies the outer room of a cosmological sanctuary but Hebrews never explicitly says this either.

96. Dunn's commentary on Colossians and Philemon came out in the spring of 1996. I can't remember if we spent a whole semester on Colossians, but I do remember us discussing Colossians 2 extensively. Dunn took the position that "worship of angels" in 2:18 did not refer to worshipping angels but to worshipping with angels. James McGrath and B. J. Oropeza were also there my final year.

In the spring, I think the research seminar looked at the Dead Sea Scrolls. Florentino Garcia's The Dead Sea Scrolls Translated came out early 1996. The whole Dead Sea corpus had only really come out around 1991. They had been hoarded since the 1940s by scholars who had divided the spoils and hoped to publish everything they could on their little fragment. But in 1991, the Biblical Archaeology Society published two volumes of photographs of the scrolls, mysteriously obtained by Robert Eisenman. The game was over.

I got into an argument with someone visiting John's over the Dead Sea Scrolls. She was convinced that the Roman Catholic Church had been hiding them because they proved that Jesus wasn't the messiah. It was completely ludicrous. But she wasn't having it. I think it was the first time I ever really lost my cool in a discussion.

91. I applied to teach at a college in southern England. I actually skipped coming home in the summer to interview. I missed a major family gathering honoring my parents in the lead up to their fiftieth wedding anniversary.

It was a bad decision. In those days, I sometimes felt like I made the wrong decisions when faced with two alternatives. I didn't get the job. It was a catholic college that ended up closing a couple years later anyway. Then over Christmas I skipped out on an interview that I might otherwise have got. It was in Manchester, seems like it was the Nazarene Theological College.

So I went to one I should have skipped and skipped one I should have gone to. My daughter Sophie reminds me that if I had stayed in England, she would never have been born. So there's the paradox of life. Good things can come out of bad choices. That doesn't make the choices good. But God can redeem anything.

92. The summer before my final year, Principal David Day had the idea of a dictionary of theological figures of sorts. I was to write four entrees: Nietzsche, Feuerbach, and two others I don't remember. So after returning from Germany, I spent the end of the summer reading through a good deal of Nietzsche: Thus Spake Zarathustra, Beyond Good and Evil, Ecce Homo, and others. As far as I know, the dictionary was never published.

93. I remember three major trips my last year. I've already mentioned the trip to Ireland with David Fox and Rachel Leonard in early 1996. Neil Evans graciously drove around Scotland with me. We went all the way to the tip of Scotland at John O'Groats. We briefly touched on St. Andrews and Aberdeen. We hit Inverness and came down the west side to Fort William, passing Loch Ness on the way.

I also met up with my old friend Todd Thompson at Sheffield. He was trying to do the same thing in philosophy that I did with New Testament. We headed south to Stonehenge and down as far as Cheddar. I had hoped to get to Cornwall, but it was just too far.

I remember thinking about the soul sometime that year. For the next few years, it seems like a lot of people were discussing the contrast between Christian resurrection belief and the Greek idea of the immortality of the soul. They are not the same. Resurrection is about the transformation and/or re-creation of our bodies for the kingdom of God. Immortality of the soul is not the primary mode of afterlife belief in the New Testament, although it is not incompatible with New Testament belief.

My question was this. If resurrection does not involve a soul, then how is it different from cloning a person and giving the clone the memories and personality of the original person. Where is the continuity of personhood? A computer might have all my memories and personality, but would that make it me? The convenience of belief in the soul provides continuity of personhood.

There's plenty of discontinuity even in our own lives. "Each man in his time plays many roles." There is some continuity of the person who grew up in Wilton Manors, but a lot has certainly changed. Am I the same person in the morning who went to sleep. "Sleep is a kind of dying." [4]

94. I had my dissertation done by the beginning of summer, 1996. I had missed the deadline for submission to graduate in August, so my parents and I flew back for the December graduation. We had lunch with Dunn thereafter in a restaurant this side of the Silver Street Bridge.

Before I left in the summer, Frances Young was my external examiner and Loren Stuckenbruck my internal. They passed me with only a few grammatical pointers. She did have some questions about my hermeneutics. I don't think she and Jimmy were exactly on the same page hermeneutically.

I don't remember on exactly what, but she did push quite hard on some issue. I thought I was going to have to do major revisions. I finally conceded and said something like, "I will have to look into that." Then she eased off and said, "I want you to know that we are pretty positive about your dissertation." So that was nice. It's not a "viva" unless you sweat a little, I guess.

I had hoped to have a teaching job lined up for the next year. I figured that, if I could get an interview, I would be able to move them in my direction. But I didn't even get an interview in the US. Seems like I applied to several. I remember the University of Louisiana being one of them. I wondered if I would have more contacts in the US if I had studied at a US school.

I often thought to myself in those days, "Everyone's happy to take your money but then it all dries up when you want a job." I was looking for a teaching job at a research institution. It was not to be.

[1] Ortho-volition is of the most eternal importance. With regard to the primary of choices over beliefs per se, Kierkegaard put it well: "What I really need is to become clear in my own mind what I must do, not what I must know… except in so far as a knowing must precede every action." It is amazingly possible to believe all the right theological ideas in general and yet do atrocious things.

[2] The underlying Christian story behind the New Testament is largely the same. What makes the theologies and ethics of the New Testament authors distinct is how they argue from that story. Indeed, this was one of the key insights of Richard Hays' work on Galatians--Paul and his opponents were largely arguing over the interpretation of the same story.

At some point the historical story lies in some relation to the theological story. The relationship could be close or tangential. For Bultmann, the historical Jesus was tangential to the theological story beneath the New Testament. For me, of course, it is much more closely related.

[3] An "epiphenomenon" is something that is a by-product of something, rather than part of its substance. Might we say that the beauty of a rainbow is not part of the substance of rainbow creation but we enjoy it all the same.

[4] At some point I had the fun thought of how eternal security could work. All God would need to do is resurrect a person at a point before he or she fell away.

Tübingen - Trips 13

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89. I was able to do a few trips while I was in Germany to finish out the days on my Eurail pass. I drove with someone, I think Reinhard, to the Bodensee for a day (Lake Constance). On the way we passed by the castle Hohenzollern.

Over the years, I have had a hard time getting my head around the way Germany has been structured politically. My main stumbling block was in fact thinking of this region as being "Germany" in the first place. Germany really was not an entity until 1871 when the Hohenzollern family became monarchs, and even then it wasn't exactly the same region as today. Before then, this region was a collection of little territories, little kingdoms of a sort. They were all German, but they weren't Germany.

You see castles all over Germany. These were all domains of various sizes, fiefdoms, all under the Holy Roman Empire, mostly the Hapsburgs in what we would call Austria today. Napoleon's conquest ended the Holy Roman Empire in 1806. These were more independent than the states we have today in the US. So there is a lot of local flavor, especially in those areas like Bavaria that were once their own kingdom.

I'm pretty sure I took a train out to Vienna. Quite a Ken thing to do. Vienna is way on the east side of Austria. I didn't spend the night. I basically rode all day on a train so I could spend just a few hours at the palace in Vienna. Even then, I found the Baroque colors of gaudy yellow and puke green unpleasant. I didn't even get off at Salzburg. It did look pretty from the train.

90. I went to the Black Forest with someone at one time to Bebenhausen, a cloister that had not been bombed in World War II. The region in general in which Tübingen is located is called Swabia. It's actually in the state of Baden-Württemberg.

The Swabians, like the Bavarians to the east, had their own dialect of a sort. Alex Jensen (from Hamburg in the north) used to joke about not being able to understand the Swabians. They might say, "I muss schaffe gange" instead of "Ich muss gehen zum arbeiten."

I had a radio of some sort in the Kellar of the Michelhaus. I learned more fifties and sixties American music there than I had ever learned in the States. "Neckar Altradio" (Neckar is the river that runs across Tübingen).

I'm sure I visited Stuttgart on one or two occasions. There wasn't really much for me to do there other than eat. Nevertheless, it was the passing through point in and out of Tübingen.

91. Another very typical Ken trip was a one day turn around to Berlin. I only had one day to spare on my Eurail pass, so I left on the earliest train to Berlin of the day, around 4am. I arrived in Berlin around 11am. I walked from one end of Berlin to the other in about three hours. Then I ate and hopped on another train back to Tübingen, arriving about 10pm.

I took the subway all the way to the Fernsehturm on the east side and walked all the way back. The Fernsehturm at Alexanderplatz is the television tower in east Berlin that you see in the first Jason Bourne movie. At that time, we were only six years out from the fall of the Berlin wall. Let me say again that the stark difference between bleak east Berlin and vibrant west Berlin was obvious.

I walked to the Bundesreich, which at that time was still not yet in use. Then there was the Brandenberger Tur which stood at the cusp of "no man's land." I had to go a little bit to the north to find a little chunk of the Berlin wall, since most of it had been demolished. On to the Victory Column in the middle of the Tiergarten. Yes, there were nude sunbathers there. [1]

Soon I was back at the Gedächtniskirche, the "church of remembrance." They left the bombed old church standing next to a not so attractive new cube church to remember WW2. This is not a remembrance like Civil War statues in the south seem to be. Civil War statues in the south seem to function as "we were right and shouldn't have lost" memorials. The Gedächtniskirche is a reminder of what happens when you let fascism and hate take over. It's a reminder never to let things like the Holocaust happen again.

Germany only had republican democracy for about fifteen years from 1918-1933, the Weimar Republic. Only after WW2 did representational democracy take hold. At the moment, Germany is one of the most successful democracies in the world. You can never take such things for granted of course. The temptation to protect your perceived herd at the expense of all others is always lying at the door. This herd mentality always threatens to overthrow an egalitarian society.

92. So my two months in Germany in 1995 came to an end. It was Tübingen to Stuttgart to Karlsruhe to Paris with a mess of luggage. A lovely overnight in Paris at the Hôtel Régyn. Eurostar at Gare du Nord to Waterloo Station London, sitting next to the older Russian woman I mentioned earlier. Kings Cross to Durham.

[1] Nude bathing was certainly something different to see in Germany. There was nothing really sensual to the nude sunbathers in Berlin as far as I could tell. Let's just say there weren't any models sunbathing in the park.

Tübingen - Dissertation 12

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86. I believe I wrote the chapter of my dissertation on dualism in Hebrews while I was in Germany. It is not the best chapter. I had a sneaking suspicion that there was a deeper background understanding of the Greco-Roman world that I was missing and that I was being reductionistic.

On the other hand, I often had that feeling when I shouldn't have. In my first few years at IWU I had a chance conversation with Greg Sterling in the stacks of the Notre Dame Hesburgh library. I asked him whether he knew some great resources on this very question. I had read some of the ones he mentioned in my first year in England. I left the conversation feeling like I was more on top of things than I feared.

When I returned to Tübingen on sabbatical in 2004, I would extensively use the Theologicum, the fantastic theological library of the university. I don't remember using it quite as much my first time there. The library of Durham somehow did not seem to have as much, and often when I wanted a book there, it seemed to be checked out.

One of the big questions was whether Hebrews pictured the full removal of the created realm in Hebrews 12:27. I had read something in Thompson's Beginnings that gave me that inkling and it seemed to fit with the overall pattern of dualism I was observing. This was a dualism not so much between matter and non-matter but between that which is created and the heavenly realm that is not created.

However, these were the days before I had really explored the topic of creation ex nihilo. When I later worked on Philo and other projects, I would more fully realize that this idea did not really become solidified in Jewish and Christian thinking until around AD200. [1] I remember that, when I taught for Notre Dame in my early days at IWU, I was thinking that 2 Maccabees 7:28 was the first instance of ex nihilo belief.

But what I came to understand is that I was reading verses like Gen. 1:1-2, 2 Macc. 7:28, and Heb. 11:3 with later theological glasses. The underlying assumption of the ancient world was that existence was not conceived so much in the ontological way of my modern worldview but in the sense of order and functionality. In the ancient worldview, when God created, he took orderless chaos and made things to exist. It is currently the consensus that the Gnostic controversies are what solidified the ex nihilo perspective.

But if creation in Hebrews is the ordering of chaos, not creation ex nihilo, then it would make sense to say that the removal of the creation is not annihilation, but reformation.

I do therefore believe that I was wrong on one of the key ideas in Hebrews for which I am known--the annihilation of the cosmos. I presented a tentative paper to this end at Pepperdine a few years ago in honor of James Thompson. Sometime soon I need to publish the error of my way in a journal somewhere. I saw Thompson in November and he welcomed my submission.

87. My dissertation had two main sections after the introduction. There were two chapters on the setting of Hebrews' story in time and two on the settings of Hebrews in space. By the time I went to Germany, the two chapters on time were drafted. One addressed the overall division of time into old and new covenant. [2] The second looked more at the trajectory of time, the destiny of humanity. Originally I had thought to do the entire narrative substructure of Hebrews, but it was too much.

I'm quite sure I had also produced a draft of the introduction in my first year. The introduction of course either has to be modified after the whole book is written or perhaps even should be written entirely at the end. Almost all dissertations grow and evolve in the process of writing, so you don't entirely know what you are introducing until it is finished.

Of course one almost always writes material that doesn't get in the final piece. I think I wrote a chapter on the structure of Hebrews in my first year. I read through George Guthrie's The Structure of Hebrews, which had just come out.

However, I was also taken with Walter Überlacker's rhetorical approach (Der Hebräerbrief als Appell), which saw the first two chapters of Hebrews as a kind of narratio, with 2:17-18 as the propositio. When I was at the University of Kentucky, I had done a paper on George Kennedy's New Testament Interpretation through Rhetorical Criticism and was fascinated with the application of insights from ancient rhetoric to the New Testament.

88. I had the opportunity to go to lectures but my German wasn't good enough to get much out of them. I think I did go with Christoph to one in the later part of my stay. It was on Karl Rahner and the idea of "anonymous Christians." Rahner is a Roman Catholic who has argued that there are individuals who have a heart of faith but their head does not know Christ. The lecturer was arguing against the idea.

One application of this concept would deal with individuals who have never heard about Jesus. Picture a Native American in the year 1200. Picture someone in a remote part of South America. If they must confess Christ with their head, they are doomed to hell. They have never heard of Christ. It is simply not possible.

Now some have testified to an appearance to them before they heard the name of Christ. I have found people to be very sympathetic to the idea that, if Jesus appears to someone and they don't know what to call him, they can still be saved by faith even though they do not know his name.

The harder suggestion of Rahner is with a person who, because of where they were born, might think that Christianity is evil. Is it possible for there to be a person who, with their head, thinks that Christianity is evil, and yet has a heart of faith toward God? [3] Can one actually have faith in their heart even though they do not with their head?

I think broader evangelicalism would tend to say no to this question. However, Wesleyans tend to be more pietistic than high Protestantism. I remember growing up with the concept of God judging us according to the light we have, a Quaker idea. I grew up with the idea that God "lightens everyone coming into the world" and that, as Romans 1 puts it, God's divine power is known by all so that they are without excuse (Rom. 1:20).

I thus consider it within the scope of Wesleyan thinking to entertain Rahner's thought as a possibility. Certainly it is in keeping with Wesleyan theology to believe that God does indeed give every human a chance to be saved. Although I am not certain if Wesley took this step, the very idea of prevenient grace is that the Spirit reaches out to everyone and gives them the opportunity to be saved.

By contrast, the idea that God only chooses some--and thus that those who have not heard are just some of those not predestined to be saved--is not in keeping with Wesleyan thought. I cannot answer the problem of suffering and evil if you must have knowledge to be saved. The idea does not cohere with the character of God if we believe that all will face eternity and judgment. [4]

I sit loosely to these ideas, knowing they are controversial. I also know that they could be used to undermine evangelism. My response to this charge developed when I self-published a little booklet, The True Wesleyan. My hypothesis is that there is a threshold of light God gives to all. But a person can have much more light. Is it possible that our prayers, a Christian home, and other opportunities make it even more likely that we will believe?

If so, then our opportunity for faith is not equal but it is fair. Evangelism, unless it is done counterproductively, thus only increases the likelihood of faith.

[1] I think a chapter by David Winston in the Studia Philonica Annual was instrumental here.

[2] When I was working on Understanding the Book of Hebrews (a more general overview of Hebrews from the perspective of story), Carey Newman suggested I look at the story of Hebrews from a more global perspective (he was my publisher at Westminster John Knox). Something like creation-fall-redemption-salvation-consummation. My response was that this was a broader theological perspective on time and that I was interested in the way Hebrews itself conceptualized time.

[3] I say Christianity rather than Jesus, since for example Muslims have a generally positive view of Jesus, although not as God.

[4] If one were an annihilationist rather than believing in eternal punishment, the idea would be more theologically coherent.

Tübingen - Speaking German 11

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80. I remarked as I left my two months in Germany that my German friends knew more about my visit than I did. I considered myself quite fortunate to have Christoph Lorentz as my friend as I came to stay in Tübingen. I arrived in either May or the first of June. Soon I met his close friends Reinhard Schmoltz and Gottfried Eberspeicher.

The rules were that they were not allowed to talk to me in English until I had a total language breakdown. That pretty much took place every sentence at first. I had not trained to speak German. I had studied to read German--biblical studies in German in particular.

It must have seemed to them that I didn't know any German at all. I have sometimes had the impression that some students from Asia I've known must have learned English the way I learned German. Sure, I did some records and tapes. But I learned German and French primarily from a grammatical point of view. I knew some vocabulary. I knew some sentence structure.

But words did not flow from my subconscious. Every sentence was like a homework exercise. Subject... auxiliary verb in the right form... direct object... participle... It was horrible. Christoph and the others were so patient. Reinhard and Gottfried used it as a chance to practice their English.

81. Most people in Western Germany also spoke English. They had a pretty positive, friendly view of the US in those days. It was very typical for people to want to try to practice English with me.

I met Frau Michel's son-in-law once, I believe it was. He was raised in east Germany. While the west Germans learned English as a second language, he had learned Russian as a second language. I remember him saying something like, "Die deutsche Zunge war nicht gemacht, russisch zu tonen." "The German tongue was not made to make the sounds of Russian."

I might add that I was in Germany five years after its reunification and six years after the Berlin War fell. It created quite a financial burden on west Germany. Make no mistakes, the communist economic system was and is a complete failure. I have a German friend whose father committed suicide in the 90s, I believe, because of the financial loss that followed reunification. Unification was the right thing to do, but the capitalism of west Germany had to absorb the economic wasteland of the east.

So the decision had already been made to relocate the German capital in Berlin. The capital of west Germany, the Bundesrepublik Deutschland (BRD) had been in Bonn. Berlin had been a divided city, half BRD and half DDR (Deutsche Demokratische Republik)

82. German gradually moved into my subconscious. I used to view fluency in a language as an all or nothing thing. Either you are fluent or you aren't. I have come to view it as a continuum, a sliding scale.

So I became fluent in certain conversations. I became very good at the "first meeting" conversation. The first minute of a conversation with a new person often goes very much the same. "Ich heisse Ken." "My name is Ken." I'm told my pronunciation was pretty good. So a person might think me fluent for a minute or so.

But I was not fluent in, say, getting a car wash.

We ate at one of the dining courts ("Mensa") on Wilhelmstrasse. There I was introduced to the Kirsch-Banane drink, a cherry-banana drink. Wunderbar!

In the Zentrum, the Marktplatz, the old part of the city, there was the opportunity for Wurst--Bratwurst, Currywurst, and Rotwurst. The Pommes frittes (french fries) with mayonnaise were good too. There was also a chance for Doner kebab. Das schmeckt gut! (that tastes good).

Then I might sit on the stairs of the Stiftskirche (the "pen church") and eat a kebab. Once I did this and Martin Hengel casually and somewhat absentmindedly wandered by. I didn't say anything to him, just smiled.

83. Lichtenberger inevitably had to speak English to me. I got a little better over my time with him but not good enough.

Even when I returned in 2004, my German was still quite lacking. A funny moment in that stay--I'm quite sure--was a paper I gave at a methodische Seminar in Reutlingen. I wrote the paper and tried to translate it into German. I'm sure it was half hilarious and half incomprehensible. I think I titled it something like, "Weltraum und Zeit in Hebräerbrief." I was going for "Space and Time in Hebrews," but Weltraum is more like outer space rather than the kind of space I had in mind.

During my first stay, I remember a man asking me how to get to the train station. I said, "Über die Brücke und geradeaus." My accent must have betrayed me. The man responded in English with a smile, "Over the bridge and straight ahead."

84. I wasn't able to speak much with Frau Michel until near the end. My main responsibility, in addition to rent, was Kehrwoche or Kehrstrasse. On Saturdays, I was expected to sweep the small sidewalk in front of the house. It took about five minutes.

I did meet with her, a young woman who took care of her, and one other person near the end of my stay. I hated that my German was no better than it was. There is so much I could have asked and learned.

In that conversation I learned that she had three sons that died in WW2. One died in a car accident, I believe. One died in battle. The third somehow was killed by a plane propeller.

Of her husband, Otto Michel, she spoke in understatement with a sly grin. I think she said something like, "Es ist manchmal schwierig zu wohnen mit jemandem der immer richtig ist." "It is sometimes difficult to live with someone who is always right." I think her children were somehow part of the comment as well.

At another point the question of Bultmann came up. Perhaps I asked her if she had known him. She said something like, "Er hat einmal in unserem Haus geblieben, aber er war natürlich ganz anders von uns." "He stayed in our house once, but he was of course completely different from us."

She gave me a copy of Michel's commentary on Hebrews as a parting gift. She even signed and dated it. It was quite lovely to stay with her. I think her house was something like Hauffstrasse 14 or 16.

85. For worship, I attended an English speaking fellowship run by Scott Caulley. At that time, he was in charge of the Institut for Christian Studies founded by Loren Stuckenbruck's father. That was a  nice, small worship opportunity in the Disciples of Christ tradition.

Near the end of my stay, Reinhard thought I had become good enough at my German for him to begin to practice his English. It was quite good. When I was on sabbatical in 2004, he was just barely still in town. He was just about to move, as was Christoph. My children called him "reindeer."

Paris to Germany 10

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76. The main reason I am writing these memories is my realization that they will only drift away more and more as I get older. My memories are not important, but it pains me to think of losing them. With every death, a chunk of history is lost, and I am an ideological hoarder.

I was not caught off guard, but it was still sobering to think of the loss of memory that happened when my father died. There are things I could have asked him the week before he died that will never be answered now. Even though they are insignificant, the web allows my memories to live forever.

77. I don't remember all the details of how I ended up going to Germany. I imagine that I got the idea from Christoph and Alex. I had of course heard of Tübingen at least since seminary. It was the place where Julius Wellhausen had developed JEDP. It was the place where F. C. Baur had applied Hegel's dialectic to the evolution of early Christianity. In fact Hegel himself had studied there.

I must have inquired with Dunn, and in typical form he made things happen. He arranged for me to meet with Hermann Lichtenberger while I was there. Then perhaps Lichtenberger arranged for me to stay with Frau Michel, whose husband had just passed in 1993. [1]

I stayed in Tübingen in June and July of 1995. I believe my parents came over just before to spy out the land. My dad had not been to England or Europe since World War II, and my mother had never been. We drove to Cheltenham, where he had been stationed when he first shipped to Europe. Perhaps we drove to Paris. [2] My dad had gone on leave at least once to Paris during the war, of course after it was liberated.

When we heard there was going to be a strike, we left early on a Sunday morning from Gare de l'Est. I wish I could remember our precise path. I know we took a train from Paris to Germany. It makes sense that we would go first to Mannheim, where my dad was stationed just after the war ended. On the way, the train passed Nancy, France, where my dad was I believe when the war ended. The factory in Mannheim where he had been stationed was now a Mercedes plant, I believe. [3]

I will say that in Germany there was a tinge of my Dad having to adjust his thinking from fifty years earlier. When he had been there before, the Americans were in charge. Now the Germans were equals. Another interesting thing I noticed in Germany were buildings with one year for the first floor and another year and style for the upper floors. Clearly most of Germany had been blasted to bits during the war.

It makes sense that we would go to Tübingen next to meet Frau Michel. I would live in her basement for two months (Keller). Some other scholar had just left, maybe Robert Jewett.

I believe we then continued on to Munich for the night. We visited Dachau the next day. From Munich we went to Zurich and on to Bern. We had something like a three country pass in five days, so our intention was to do France, Germany, and Switzerland. In typical Ken fashion, I did not anticipate that the train went very briefly through Austria. It was something like 20 miles or so. My dad had to cough up train fare through Austria for three people.

My dad had taken leave in Bern once while he was stationed in Mannheim. That was the attraction to go there. I believe it was not entirely different from what he remembered. Then it was back to Paris, back to London, and my parents returned home.

78. I think I stayed in Paris three more times that summer. It's hard to believe that I would go back to England in the middle of my stay in Germany but it seems like I did for some reason. Here are the fragments of my memory.

There was no internet in those days, no Google, so I made my plans by way of travel books. [4]  That's how I found hotels. My front weapons were thus a small French or German pocket dictionary and a travel book for either Britain, France, or Germany.

Back in my room were books on conversational French and German. I always tried to prepare myself in advance for such trips. I always wanted to speak the language. The idea of using English was anathema to me. I have never understood the presumptuousness of Americans who expect everyone else to speak English when you're in their country. I find this quite angering, to be honest.

When I first headed for Tübingen, I stayed in a hotel I found in a book in Montmarte. I believe it was called the Hôtel Régyn, just outside the Abbesses stop on the Métro. It is in Montmarte, just south of Sacré Coeur. There was also a small place to eat just across the street, I think Le Saint Jean.

I believe I took a Hovercraft across the channel the first time. It was the usual struggle with a box full of books and my rucksack full enough to break my back. I arrived in Paris with just barely enough time to get to the Louvre and see the Mona Lisa. I was never able to get back. It was always closed by the time I arrived in Paris.

I had arranged though to have a day to look around. I saw Notre Dame and the Champs-Élysées. I did not go up the Tour Eiffel, but I went to see it. I went out to Versailles. I actually found the city quite sewery in general, but I have good memories of it.

Then it was from Gare du Nord to Stuttgart, Stuttgart to Tübingen. Train station to Frau Michel's house.

79. I'll mention my intermittent trip here now. I wanted to get to Hamburg, where Alex was from, so I took a ferry back to Durham from Hamburg to somewhere like Hull. When I returned to Tübingen, I took the Eurostar from London to Paris through the chunnel. I booked a round trip ticket for my final return in July. I've already mentioned that I sat next to someone who had seen Anastasia before she was executed.

When I called the Hôtel Régyn for my final stay, I tried to speak to the hotel in French. But by that time, every time I tried to speak French, it came out German. The hotel person was not amused. He did not speak German. Finally, I spoke English and he was fine again.

[1] It is fascinating how easy it is for me to find out such things now that Google exists. I did not realize how recently Otto Michel had passed when I was there. I certainly knew nothing of his past with the SA and such. No one really did at that time.

[2] We must have driven at some point in Paris because we have a picture of my mother stuck in the car in Paris. She had put her coat on in the car after her seat belt and so found herself initially unable to get out of the car.

[3] Every time we drove south of Gainesville, Florida on 1-95 in Florida my dad would mention coming down to the plains of Westphalia into Germany from France. That's a bit north of where we were. I remember my dad saying that there had been a sniper in the plant when it had been cleared out, not long before he arrived in Mannheim.

[4] Durham had just gotten email. My mother, who hardly ever had received a letter from me, now could expect to hear from me more regularly.