tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-51118029294604936922024-03-14T01:52:04.575-07:00Nailing it to the door. . .A virtual "Wittenburg Door" to which I am nailing some thoughts regarding the church and Christianity.Dan Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01635080266346679464noreply@blogger.comBlogger107125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5111802929460493692.post-21873627077230069182013-02-03T15:19:00.002-08:002013-02-03T15:19:18.993-08:00In Remembrance Of MeChurches vary widely in just how they practice the ritual meal of bread and wine, instituted (so we say) with Jesus' repurposing of elements of the Passover meal on the night before he was crucified. But while they disagree (sometimes to the point of mutual exclusion) over the ritual details, over whether the practice includes an element of the miraculous or merely material symbols of transcendent truths, and even over who is authorized to lead or conduct the ritual itself...despite all these disagreements, every church I know, in its own way, has made of "the Lord's Supper" a highly ceremonial practice, conducted in the context of a worship event, usually in a place set aside for such events.<br />
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Returning, as I contend we always ought, to the original words of Jesus, it seems to me that perhaps we've missed something vital here. I grant as previously stated, that Jesus' original institution of what we now call "The Lord's Supper" was in the context of another highly-ritualized meal, the Jewish Passover. It is not, therefore, as though Jesus was unfamiliar with, or hostile to, prescribed religious practice. Jesus certainly repurposed the broken bread to symbolize his body, and the cup of wine to represent his shed blood. Only Luke, and later Paul in 1 Corinthians, actually tell us that Jesus also told his disciples they should share the bread and the cup "in remembrance of me" (see Luke 22:14-20 and 1 Cor. 11:23-26). (note that this is a rare, if not the only, instance where Paul says what he's relating is something he directly "received from the Lord"). And it is Paul's account in which we learn that Jesus told the disciples to remember him in the bread and the cup "as often as you drink it."<br />
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This is not enough upon which to hang a doctrine or destroy somebody else's fondly-held belief. But I wonder if Paul had an insight we have lost in our ritual. Rather than creating a sacred, symbolic (or miraculous) meal to be received in the context of a sacrament, I wonder if in fact Jesus' intention was to take ordinary staples of life and imbue them with the sacred memory of himself...not so we would have a monthly, or quarterly, or weekly ritual "in a church," but so that as we break bread and drink wine together in loving fellowship, the memory of Christ is front-and-center.<br />
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This is certainly consistent with the way God instituted the teaching of his law even from old: to talk of it "when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise" (Deut. 6:4-8). God's intention was that there be no boundary between the sacred and the profane, but that every activity in which his people engage, be an opportunity to learn and remember his way.
It's also consistent with the character of Jesus. Though as I mentioned above, he was no stranger to ritual, Jesus was also the one who got in trouble--along with his disciples--for not keeping the Sabbath in the rigidly-prescribed manner of the Pharisees (Mark 2:23-27 and parallels). <br />
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More importantly, though, we learn in Luke 24:35 (the two disciples who met Jesus on the road to Emmaus) that Jesus was "known to them in the breaking of the bread" (Luke 24:35). Might we, by sacramentalizing the "breaking of the bread," have robbed ourselves of the opportunity to know Jesus each time we sit at the table?
C.S. Lewis <a href="http://nailtothedoor.blogspot.com/2009/07/miracle-of-vine-and-lords-supper.html" target="_blank">said something similar</a> about wine in his essay "Miracles," which is part of a collection entitled "God in the Dock." Lewis was talking about the miracle in which Jesus turned water into wine at Cana, and suggested we only really recognize the miracle when "if whenever we see a vineyard or drink a glass of wine we remember that here works He who sat at the wedding party in Cana." I find this strangely compelling, particularly if taken together with Jesus' own words in Mark 14:25 and parallels: "Truly, I say to you, I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God." Jesus, it seems to me, was inviting us to remember him, not only in a formalized ritual, but every time we lift a glass of wine.<br />
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So what does this mean and why do I care? I believe that by ritualizing the Lord's Supper, we may be missing the presence of Jesus in the everyday. Our ceremony has created--or at least heightened--a false dichotomy between the "sacred" and the "profane." <b><i>Jesus, in contrast, calls us (as God has since the Old Testament) to see the sacred in all of life...in particular the life of followers of Jesus in community--communion--with each other.</i></b> I do not (necessarily) advocate the abandonment of the sacramental ritual, for it has brought blessing and comfort to many for many years. But however necessary--or at least appropriate--our ritual is, it is not enough.
Buddhists have a concept they call "mindfulness." I'm no expert, but the best I understand, it involves disciplining oneself to be conscious of the present moment and all that it contains. I suggest we consider a different, perhaps more timeless form of mindfulness, in which <i><b>we recognize Jesus every time we break bread and look to his coming every time we share wine</b></i>.<br />
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In remembrance ... till he comes!Dan Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01635080266346679464noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5111802929460493692.post-82038586288562754312011-06-18T06:36:00.000-07:002011-06-18T06:36:44.635-07:00Check out our new site!Just a reminder to those of you who follow this blog, that we've established our own domain and moved Nailing it to the Door to <a href="http://nailtothedoor.com/">http://nailtothedoor.com</a>. There, you can follow us on Facebook and Twitter as well as just checking out our new posts.<br />
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Recent posts include:<br />
<ul><li> <a href="http://nailtothedoor.com/life-is-not-a-game-of-chess/">Life is Not a Game of Chess</a>, by Dan</li>
<li><a href="http://nailtothedoor.com/are-theology-debates-about-fear-or-faith/">Are Theology Debates about Fear or Faith</a>? by Ben</li>
<li><a href="http://nailtothedoor.com/why-you-should-practice-sabbath/">Why You Should Practice Sabbath</a>, by Ben</li>
<li><a href="http://nailtothedoor.com/the-church-virtual/">The Church Virtual</a>? by Dan</li>
<li><a href="http://nailtothedoor.com/the-bible-is-an-invitation-to/">The Bible is an Invitation to...</a> by Ben </li>
<li><a href="http://nailtothedoor.com/the-ten-commandments-american-style/">The Ten Commandments - American Style</a> (a graphical essay) by Dan</li>
</ul>We look forward to seeing you carry on with us as we continue Nailing it to the Door!<br />
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Grace & peace,<br />
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DanDan Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01635080266346679464noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5111802929460493692.post-34403986086741056722011-05-24T17:06:00.000-07:002011-05-24T17:06:56.500-07:00Nailing it to the Door has moved!As of May 24, 2011 we are moving the content of Nailing it to the Door... to a new location. Please find us now at <a href="http://nailtothedoor.com/">http://nailtothedoor.com</a>. Archived posts and comments have been moved as well; it is our hope that the new configuration will permit us to grow the site! Please come check us out!Dan Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01635080266346679464noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5111802929460493692.post-16480682768641961522011-05-22T05:54:00.000-07:002011-05-22T05:54:20.678-07:00For all of you who've been "Left Behind"I encourage you to pop over to my friend Kurt Willems' blog and read his post <a href="http://www.thepangeablog.com/2011/05/21/if-youre-reading-this-post-youve-been-left-behind/">If You're Reading This Post,</a> <a href="http://www.thepangeablog.com/2011/05/21/if-youre-reading-this-post-youve-been-left-behind/">You've Been "Left Behind."</a> Kurt does a beautiful job of casting what our role must be in the current "Tribulation" of this world. Borrowing nearly every catchphrase of an eschatology neither one of us can stand, he's got a masterful call to live as the Kingdom-of-God subversives we must be.Dan Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01635080266346679464noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5111802929460493692.post-35110144753205307172011-05-21T17:57:00.000-07:002011-05-21T17:57:20.543-07:00Nailing it to the Door is becoming a joint venture!I want to take this opportunity to introduce my readers to my dear friend Ben Bajarin. Ben and I have been spiritual relief valves for each other for the better part of three years now. Though we attended the same church for over a decade, it took nearly nine years before we met each other and discovered that God had stirred some common--though unusual--thoughts in both of us, and we've found great refreshment in exploring theology together. More than once, we've also encouraged each other when bashing up against entrenched doctrine and rhetoric that may be familiar to the church, but we believe flies in the face of the Biblical message.<br />
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Today Ben joins me as a co-author of this blog, and as you can see from his first post on the Rapture-that-wasn't, his contributions are a valued addition.<br />
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Keep an eye out, as you're going to see a few changes in design and presentation soon...and hopefully an increase in the frequency of posts, which has never been my strong suit. Ben's also going to increase our visibility on Facebook with a fan page and a few other gadgets.<br />
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The result, we hope, is not primarily increased readership or statistics...those have never been the point. But Ben and I share the conviction that the church is in desperate need of a new reformation, and we hope in some small way to ignite those fires in a few of you. Come along for the ride!Dan Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01635080266346679464noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5111802929460493692.post-57755604917769881552011-05-21T16:27:00.000-07:002011-05-21T16:55:11.035-07:00Why The Rapture Didn’t Happen Today and it Probably Never Will<br>I suppose, because of my post title, the cat is out of the bag on my eschatology. So I’ll start this post right off the bat saying, it’s my conviction that there will be no rapture of the Church. I believe the overwhelming weight of biblical evidence in no way shape or form supports a phased approach of the coming of the Lord. Let me explain why.<br /><br><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1C36ZaZv1a6BpiCG0zS5Cwr8skVHZyfXqeMfXGgVIfdF8o1iOsyLxoRbXqUVibncjerJfl0o1M-gCGGoejV5ApQUgIiqfdR66P-Tx2S6jfDI2K6WNDM1K3s_b3K5bmR9zkphxq9DmqHo/s1600/the-rapture.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1C36ZaZv1a6BpiCG0zS5Cwr8skVHZyfXqeMfXGgVIfdF8o1iOsyLxoRbXqUVibncjerJfl0o1M-gCGGoejV5ApQUgIiqfdR66P-Tx2S6jfDI2K6WNDM1K3s_b3K5bmR9zkphxq9DmqHo/s320/the-rapture.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5609316601374564450" /></a><br /><br><br /><br />Firstly (I love that word) if we study the history of this idea we will find that this whole notion of the rapture is a relatively new idea, this fact alone should cause us to pause. <br /><br />There is some debate as to who came up with this idea originally but most credit it to John Darby. Darby revealed his eschatological view and outlined his idea on this so called “rapture” at the Powerscourt Conference in 1831.<br /> <br />It is <span style="font-weight:bold;">very difficult</span> to find any evidence of ”rapture” eschatology prior to Darby’s teaching it beginning in 1831. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">So why has it become mainstream?</span><br />Well the answer is simple. The Christian church has lost its foundation and connection to the roots of Judaism. Most of our modern Christianity has taken a direction influenced highly by the enlightenment age. Because of this the Christian story has been disconnected from the Jewish story. Something God never intended. <br /><br />So the challenge and the question we are faced with is, if for almost a thousand years after Jesus showed up not a single person believed in this “rapture” idea, why do so many believe it today?<br /><br />Again it goes back to the story. The bible has within its construct a meta-narrative. To highly summarize the meta-narrative within Judaism it’s this:<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">God created all things Good, Satan and the powers distorted that good, God in His grace and mercy has not abandoned His creation to destruction and chaos but instead put a plan in place that would eventually lead to the reconciliation and redemption of all things. That plan began with Abraham. </span><br /><br />In Judaism this is referred to as the <span style="font-weight:bold;">"Tikkun Olam" or the repair of the world</span>. <br /><br />Jesus and the Church flow out of this reality, which will end up with heaven coming to earth, the original place God intended to dwell. This was the goal from the very beginning. That God would dwell with man and the whole of creation would be a holy temple.<br /><br />So the flaw in Darby’s theology and the one this absurd end of the world talk is wrapped up in, is rooted in a non-biblical belief that all of reality is about somewhere else and not about this place, this earth, and this humanity. The idea that we will all go off to a distant spiritual reality is an idea we get from Plato not from the bible. <br /><br />We have a guarantee from the creator that he will put it all back together, or as N.T Wright states “put the world to rights.” He doesn’t need to exile his church to do this, in fact that would be counter to the way God has always done things. <br /><br />God uses “agents” to accomplish His purposes, to remove His followers and Kingdom agents would fly in the face of how he created things to work in this world. The way He created things to work was that His followers are His hands and feet in the world and the mechanisms by how his will gets done. His will is to reconcile and renew all things, this earth, this humanity not to destroy it. Therefore we have a job to do, participate in new creation, rush the future renewed world into the present anyway we can. Love Wins!<br /><br />The only thing that gives me concern, that I hope I am wrong about, is that in my thinking it would seem logical that the world is probably going to have to mess itself up quite a bit more. In essence things may have to become much worse before they get better. <br /><br />To quote Martin Luther “If I knew Jesus was coming back tomorrow I’d go plant a tree.” <br /><br />So let’s embrace the greater reality to participate in new creation, this Tikkun Olam, right now in this present reality. Let's let God worry about the future and more importantly let's make those people's lives around us better instead of worse.Ben Bajarinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07628098127142896725noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5111802929460493692.post-74360245672548901342011-05-02T18:09:00.000-07:002011-05-02T18:09:04.850-07:00Food for thought - Greg Boyd on why Determinism must be falseI've said before that Greg Boyd has produced some really good arguments on the Open View of God. Greg's got <a href="http://www.gregboyd.org/blog/three-arguments-against-determinism/">a great post</a> on his blog from about a month ago (OK, so I'm a little behind) briefly outlining three really good reasons why determinism (a la Calvinism) is logically untenable. Go check it out!<br />
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Greg is actually responding to a previous New York Times article entitled <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/22/science/22tier.html">Do You Have Free Will? Yes, It's the Only Choice</a>. This amusingly-titled report looks at some recent psychological experiments that suggest that people seem to believe in a moral responsibility for one's actions that only works if one had, at least at some level, a choice whether to do them or not. They have shown that people who are convinced they have free will, tend to behave better (that is, more socially-acceptably) than people who are convinced they have no choice. It's an interesting study.<br />
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Of course, my favorite summary of the whole argument is: "You have chosen to believe in predestination, and I am predestined to believe in free will." Drives my Calvinist friends nuts!Dan Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01635080266346679464noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5111802929460493692.post-38135655874932149452011-04-27T09:59:00.000-07:002011-04-27T10:03:00.899-07:00Does God Change? Part 2 of 2In <a href="http://nailtothedoor.blogspot.com/2010/07/does-god-change-part-1-of-2.html">my previous post</a> on this subject, I examined a number of Biblical references commonly used to promote the idea that God is unchanging. We saw in those scriptures, that the issue being addressed centered largely on the premise that God can be depended upon to keep his word...in other words, unlike humans or other gods of legend, he's not capricious or fickle.<br />
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On the other hand, however, there are numerous accounts throughout the Old Testament, in which God is clearly stated to have changed his mind. One of these is the verse that first gave my good Calvinist friends heartburn and ignited this series: 1 Sam. 15:11, in which God states "I regret that I have made Saul king, for he has turned back from following me and has not performed my commandments." My friend stated that God could not possibly really regret having done something, because it all took place according to his will, and because regret would mean God was changing his mind. And yet this is what the passage says...God made Saul king, Saul did not live up to God's expectations, and now God is sorry that he chose Saul for a king.<br />
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This is not the only place we find this sort of language, either. In Genesis 6:5-6 we learn that God saw such evil in human behavior that he was "sorry" he'd ever made man. The clear sense of both texts is that God experiences genuine regret for the outcome of actions that he himself had originally done (these texts have impact on the Open View of God as well as his immutability, but that is another, though related, discussion). In both texts, God clearly changes his assessment of a man, or a group of people, about whom he previously had a different, more positive, opinion. And lest we think this is a translation error, the word in Hebrew that is translated "repented" or "was sorry" is the word <i>nacham</i>, which also appears in Job 42:6 when Job states "I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes," and in 1:Sam. 15:29 where it says "God is not a man that he should repent" (we addressed this verse in Part 1).<br />
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We find some interesting insights into how God does change his mind, in the story of the exodus and the Israelites' sojourn in the wilderness. A good example of this is found in Exodus 32, where God is prepared to destroy the Israelites for their idolatry with the golden calf, but Moses intercedes and convinces God to spare them. Exo. 32:14 says that God "relented" (both KJV and ASV say "repented"--it's <i>nacham</i> again) of the disaster he had said he'd bring on the people. But what's fascinating here is that God's change of heart or intention comes as a direct result of the intercession of Moses.<br />
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We begin to find some clarity in the confusion, however, when we look at Jeremiah 18. This is the prophecy that Jeremiah tells when God has prompted him to go observe the work of a potter:<br />
<blockquote style="color: #38761d;"><i>Then the word of the Lord came to me: “O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter has done? declares the Lord. Behold, like the clay in the potter's hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel. If at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, and if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will relent of the disaster that I intended to do to it. And if at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will build and plant it, and if it does evil in my sight, not listening to my voice, then I will relent of the good that I had intended to do to it. Now, therefore, say to the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem: ‘Thus says the Lord, Behold, I am shaping disaster against you and devising a plan against you. Return, every one from his evil way, and amend your ways and your deeds.’</i></blockquote>The meaning becomes perfectly clear in this passage. God's promise of both good and ill is conditional. When God says he's going to do something in punishment, if the cause of the punishment is remedied, God will relent (<i>nacham</i> again) of the punishment. Same with blessing. And why should this surprise us? God said as much in the blessings and curses that make up Deuteronomy 28-30. Simply, he said, "if you obey, you will be blessed. If you disobey, you will be cursed. If you return to me, you will again be blessed."<br />
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So, finally, we come to the summary answer to our question "Does God change?" Our answer has to be "of course, yes" and "of course, no." Yes, God changes his opinion of and behavior toward humans as their own behavior toward him changes...and God may further change his intent or behavior in response to his people's intercession. But God does not change his basic character, and God can certainly and always be counted upon to keep his promises...but don't forget, even those promises often come with conditions, they are seldom unilateral.Dan Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01635080266346679464noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5111802929460493692.post-89277132559739624022011-04-22T06:54:00.000-07:002011-04-22T06:54:36.621-07:00Did God really abandon Jesus on the cross?Today is Good Friday, the day we honor the supreme sacrifice Jesus Christ made when he went to his execution on the cross. While I have argued before that Christians tend to spend too much energy and emotion on Jesus’ death and too little on his resurrection, it is still right and good that we soberly and gratefully acknowledge the suffering Jesus voluntarily accepted on our behalf.<br />
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There is, however, an element of the typical story of Jesus’ death that needs to be re-examined. According to popular accounts—particularly fueled by the penal-substitutionary-atonement crowd—the stain of all our sin, heaped upon Jesus at his sacrificial death, was so horrible that holy God the Father, who in his holiness cannot look on sin, turned his back on his dying son. This, they say, is why Jesus cried out “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” as told in Matt. 27:46 and Mark 15:34.<br />
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Trouble is, they’re likely wrong.<br />
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First of all, the Bible doesn’t teach that God can’t look at sin. Preachers do, but the Bible doesn’t. God clearly looks on sinful people all the time, or he couldn’t see Earth at all. Secondly, Jesus is crying out in extreme suffering…he probably felt forsaken at that point (who wouldn’t?). But nowhere does scripture teach that God actually did forsake Jesus, just that he cried out in desperation while suffering a tortuous death.<br />
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Most compellingly, however, Jesus was probably quoting the beginning of Psalm 22, bits of which are associated with Jesus by the gospel writers on numerous occasions. Take a look, for example, at Ps. 22:16-18, which John the Evangelist clearly associates with Jesus (see John 19:24 and John 19:36-37). Whether Jesus was in fact tying this psalm to himself in a prophetic sense, or whether he was turning to a hymn of comfort in his affliction, we cannot know, although we do know that Psalm 22 ends with these words (vv. 28-31):<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: #38761d;"><em>For kingship belongs to the Lord,<br />
and he rules over the nations.<br />
All the prosperous of the earth eat and worship;<br />
before him shall bow all who go down to the dust,<br />
even the one who could not keep himself alive.<br />
Posterity shall serve him;<br />
it shall be told of the Lord to the coming generation;<br />
they shall come and proclaim his righteousness to a people yet unborn,<br />
that he has done it.</em></span></blockquote><br />
Not a bad declaration of the coming victory, for one who appears to be in the throes of defeat by the very powers who will yet be forced to acknowledge his rule!<br />
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But God saw it. He’s not in the habit of turning his back on anybody!<br />
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And don’t forget, in the words of the inimitable Tony Campolo, “it’s Friday, but Sunday’s a-comin’!”Dan Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01635080266346679464noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5111802929460493692.post-92072411654218885702011-04-18T10:57:00.000-07:002011-04-18T10:57:16.291-07:00Misplaced PassionIn recognition of holy week, I’m going to resurrect a piece I wrote five years ago at Easter, after I saw the film <i>The Passion of the Christ</i>. Released in 2006, the film itself is clearly not news; however, as recently as this month I’ve heard fellow Christians speaking positively—almost reverently—of the film and its portrayal of Jesus’ suffering. Notwithstanding the excellent work on Jesus’ resurrection by N.T. Wright (<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Surprised-Hope-Rethinking-Resurrection-Mission/dp/0061551821/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1303148978&sr=1-1">Surprised by Hope</a> – 2008), that subset of the church that I’ve seen still seems to be firmly in the grips of an affliction we might term hyperchristemia—an excess of Christ’s blood (or, more accurately, an obsessive focus on his blood). <br />
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<i>Passion </i>aroused no small amount of controversy when it was released. No shock there; the figure of Jesus Christ seems rarely to inspire indifference. I remain troubled, however, by precisely which subjects became the lightening rods of the controversy—and perhaps even more disturbed by those that did not. I shouldn’t have been surprised, I suppose. Public controversies rarely center around key issues, and this one was no different. A consideration of the person and history of Jesus should definitely arouse passions, but not—I submit—primarily because of his so-called "Passion."<br />
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I object to the content of the <i>Passion </i>movie, but not for the usual reasons. Not because of the graphic brutality, though the sadistic orgy of Jesus’ flogging is certainly disturbing. Nor do I consider the arguments over Mel’s perceived anti-Semitism, or the degree of historicity of his portrayal, to be issues of more than peripheral concern. I object, rather, to the very notion that Jesus' suffering and death comprise the central story at all. I object to the line on some of the <i>Passion </i>posters: "He lived to die." The message of the Christian gospel is nothing of the sort. It is Jesus' resurrection, not his death, which claims that central focus.<br />
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Though the film was neither unique nor original in this regard, <i>Passion’s </i>central message is that Jesus’ intense physical suffering and barbaric death comprise the ultimate climax of His life and redemptive work. The film opens with a quote from Isaiah 53: “He was wounded for our transgressions. . .by His stripes we are healed.” The remaining two-plus hours appear to me primarily to demonstrate just how many brutal stripes were required to effect that healing. Even the symbolic portrayal of Satan recognizing defeat comes at the very moment of Jesus’ death. This doctrine, while common in both Catholic and Protestant Christianity, is fundamentally at odds with the Scriptural portrayal of our redemption.<br />
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It's not Mel's fault—not entirely, anyhow. I do think that if he had embarked on this project of converting a book to a film script with anything like the care Peter Jackson lavished on "The Lord of the Rings," we would have seen a vitally different movie. Mel's portrayal is very likely a faithful representation of the dogmas he's been taught all his life, in churches where bloody crucifixes occupy a central point in the sanctuary, and where the ritual "sacrifice" of the Mass is observed daily. In fact, I saw in the film far more influence from extra-Biblical church traditions than from the actual gospel accounts. Several scenes portray events that led to the purported creation of certain famous relics (such as the cloth that purports to bear an imprint of Jesus’ bloody face) or the involvement of saints not mentioned at all in the New Testament account. Even the graphic—dare I say gratuitous?—portrayal of Jesus’ flogging, which figures prominently in the film, merits only the barest of mentions and almost no detail at all in the four gospels.<br />
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Lest I be tarred with an anti-Catholic brush at this point, let me hasten to add that Mel would have learned no better in an Evangelical or Protestant church. The standard definition of faith in nearly every church service I've ever attended involved acknowledging that "Jesus died for my sins." The core message of evangelistic crusades throughout the last century revolved entirely around the sinfulness of man and the atoning death of Jesus. When my children come home from Sunday School and tell me what they have learned, it is the death of Jesus on the cross that claims center stage. Even the traditional church calendar allots forty days to observe Lent—that period leading up to Jesus’ death—and only one Sunday to celebrate Easter.<br />
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Missing from all these traditions, nearly missing in the film, and—most tragically—missing from the meditations and dialogs of far too many Christians, is the most central element of the entire gospel—the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. Oh, we believe it. . .Catholics and Protestants, Evangelicals, liberals (well, many liberals) and conservatives: nearly all give assent that Jesus' resurrection took place. We all sing celebratory songs at Easter, and we all recite the traditional "He is risen indeed!" But it's not the part of the story on which we dwell. It is almost as though the resurrection were the happy ending God appended to the "important" drama of Jesus' suffering and death.<br />
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By contrast, the Christian scripture shows the resurrection to be central to the gospel—so much so that the apostle Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15 that if Jesus was not raised from the dead, our faith is useless and we are "still in (our) sins" (v. 14 & 17). In Romans 5:10 Paul states that it is Jesus' resurrected life which saves us: "For if, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, shall we be saved by his life."<br />
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The New Testament writers portray Jesus' resurrection as the cause of our justification (Rom. 4:25), evidence of God's power (Eph. 1:19), and a surety pledge against our own future resurrection (Acts 17:31). In Revelation 1:18, Jesus himself uses His death and resurrection as credentials certifying His identity.<br />
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The centrality of the resurrection is nowhere clearer than in the Scriptural definition of faith itself, Romans 9:14: "If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in your heart God raised him from the dead, you will be saved." Nothing about our sinfulness, nothing about Jesus' atoning sacrifice. . .<i><b>the defining elements of faith are Jesus' lordship and his resurrection</b></i>.<br />
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I am not for one moment attempting to devalue Jesus' incredible sacrifice. The mystery of "when God, the mighty Maker died for man, the creature's sin" is a paradox of unfathomable proportions. Scripture is full of references to the power of Jesus' death, as well, for that matter, as of his sinless life. Nor may we overlook the fact that, during his brief earthly life, Jesus taught a great deal in his own words. We must attend to all of these things, for without any one of them our faith is the less.<br />
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I am saying, however, that our language and our emphasis are desperately out of balance. Far too many Christian teachers throughout history have allowed the death of Jesus to attain a centrality of focus that has all but eclipsed either his life and teachings or his resurrection. This is why it has been so easy for Christians to embrace as gospel, a movie that portrays virtually nothing of Jesus' teachings, and only nods to his resurrection a scant few seconds before the credits begin to roll.<br />
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Christians of all stripes need to go on the offensive proclaiming the <i><b>living </b></i>Christ. Jesus' defeat of humanity's greatest enemy—death—is "good news" if anything ever can be. Through Jesus' death and resurrection we are provided the means to live here and now, without fear of death; and consequently without fear of those for whom death is their greatest weapon. In every worship service, in every evangelistic message—for that matter, in every interaction between two believers—we should proclaim from the housetops that our Lord died and lives again!<br />
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The forty days of Lent on the church calendar should be balanced, not with one Sunday to celebrate Easter, but with the entire remainder of the year exulting over the stunning victory of the empty tomb. We should have been those irritating people in the theater who spoil the plot because we can’t contain our excitement: we’ve “read the end of the book” and we know who wins! Only then will our passion truly honor the Lord Jesus.<br />
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<i style="color: #38761d;"><b>He is risen indeed!</b></i>Dan Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01635080266346679464noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5111802929460493692.post-77388806025719274262011-04-08T08:39:00.000-07:002011-04-08T08:39:27.210-07:00Recommended reading on nationalism and peaceI just learned of a fellow who goes to my folks' church in North Carolina, who has written some interesting stuff on the flag in church, the Kingdom of God, and related topics. I encourage you to take a look at his site, <a href="http://www.kingdomofgodflag.info/index.html">www.kingdomofgodflag.info</a>. In particular, I was intrigued by this comment in his post on "Patriotism:"<br />
<blockquote style="color: #0b5394;">When people say “<strong>Freedom isn’t Free,</strong>” what they’re actually saying is: “Freedom isn’t free - it requires killing and dying, human sacrifice, as if to the gods of old. It is not a gift from God. Gifts are free. Grace is a gift. <strong>Freedom</strong>, on the other hand, <strong>is earned</strong>. And because freedom is earned, <strong>we deserve it</strong>. We bought it (and continue to pay for it) with our blood, fair and square. We need thank no one but ourselves. Our perseverance and superiority over others have given us a reward worthy of a great people.”</blockquote><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7_hzxoRYJVeGr5NGfBnHhJNLi3i8PjOzrs8peKMbg_Fjg99t_ryLDYCbCDHC8zflvMSDZH6R0Kn4Gs2HCTRGhgOhUl3455DHh_1N3aLY-Vx-UAR9leS03NcepZH4bOcvJQsJ-nA-ozPHp/s1600/kofgflag.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="202" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7_hzxoRYJVeGr5NGfBnHhJNLi3i8PjOzrs8peKMbg_Fjg99t_ryLDYCbCDHC8zflvMSDZH6R0Kn4Gs2HCTRGhgOhUl3455DHh_1N3aLY-Vx-UAR9leS03NcepZH4bOcvJQsJ-nA-ozPHp/s320/kofgflag.jpg" width="320" /></a>Scott has actually developed a proposed "Kingdom of God flag" to use in lieu of the current "Christian flag" when one wishes to symbolize the universal nature of the Kingdom. He has, I think, put some serious thought into the meaning of the symbolic elements of that flag, and this, too, is worth a read.<br />
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Check it out!Dan Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01635080266346679464noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5111802929460493692.post-81876011615230326942011-03-21T16:02:00.000-07:002011-03-21T16:06:23.404-07:00Sola Scriptura -- Really!<i>Sola Scriptura</i> (Scripture alone). It's a phrase originally made famous by the reformer Martin Luther. I'm not clear on the historical precedent, but today I hear it most often from those who consider themselves part of the Reformed tradition--which now seems largely to mean modern Calvinism--when they recite it as one of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_solas">Five Solas</a>. Aside from the irony of having five "onlys" in anything, the claim of Sola Scriptura is that only the Biblical texts are authoritative for matters of doctrine/dogma in the church.<br />
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Sola Scriptura. Not "Scriptura et magisterium," scripture plus the authority of the church. Not "scriptura et patres," scripture plus the authority of the early church fathers. Not "Scriptura et Aquinas," "Scriptura et Augustine," not "Scriptura et Calvin" (and sorry, I don't know how to make those names properly Latin). Not Scripture plus John MacArthur or John Piper or Mark Driscoll or N.T. Wright or Rob Bell or Greg Boyd either (and I hope I have enough "liberals" and "conservatives" to satisfy the reader that I'm not taking aim at a "side" here). And not "Scripture and my pastor or my bishop or my elders," for these are merely a part of the local incarnation of the Body of Christ, and while we should seek to understand Scripture together in the local body, there is no valid hierarchy or authority among human leaders in biblical interpretation. To the contrary, these and all of the body should have their words evaluated over against Scripture, by all their hearers.<br />
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<b style="color: red;">Sola. Scriptura.</b><br />
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No doctrine or dogma or teaching or credal test dare be claimed with certainty, that is not clearly derivable solely from the properly-exegeted text of the Bible. My choice of the word "derivable" is deliberate. It's not enough to determine that a doctrine is not inconsistent with scripture. It's not even enough that the doctrine, once framed, can be supported by scripture, although in reality I find such claims often fail to withstand careful scrutiny anyhow. I suggest rather that any doctrinal claim should be subjected to the following thought experiment:<br />
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<blockquote>Imagine we could find a reader who knew nothing about church history or dogma...one who had never heard of the various heresies and controversies and schisms of the church throughout the century. Imagine further that, though ignorant of the faith, this reader was fluent in Biblical Hebrew and Greek, and was able to read the texts and study them carefully. Would this hypothetical reader be able to come up--solely from studying the biblical texts--with the doctrine at hand? If yes, then we can and should ascribe it serious weight. If no, then however helpful it may be in understanding a difficult passage or concept, it must be considered optional and not core to the faith.</blockquote><br />
(Even with "core" doctrine, I caution the reader with <a href="http://nailtothedoor.blogspot.com/2008/09/word-about-creeds.html">my previous warning about creeds</a>).<br />
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Though it may seem counterintuitive, it is precisely this approach that has led me to dispute the common doctrine of biblical inspiration. Among the areas where I believe scripture must have sole and unchallenged authority, is over the texts' characterization of themselves. So when the text states "thus saith the LORD," we take it seriously as the word of God, but conversely when it says "this is a praise song written by King David," we accept it as a praise song and don't extract doctrine from it any more than we do (or ought) from a hymn by Watts or Wesley, or a chorus by Michael W. Smith or David Crowder.<br />
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It's also why I reject credal definitions of the Trinity, eschatology, and many of the other contentious issues that have been used to draw lines and divide people over the stained history of the church. I contend that these dogmas cannot be derived without significant reliance upon extrabiblical authority, and<i style="color: black;"><b> in matters of dogma, there must be no such thing as an extrabiblical authority.</b></i> Sola Scriptura, taken seriously, leaves one with far fewer certainties and "essentials" than most statements of faith will countenance. And if that makes me another in a long line of church-defined "heretics," well then, I'll just quote Luther again:<br />
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"Here I stand. I can do nothing else, so help me God."Dan Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01635080266346679464noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5111802929460493692.post-39665364416533603342011-03-03T14:56:00.000-08:002011-03-03T14:56:49.236-08:00So, do you trust the Holy Spirit, or not?The recent debate around the blogosphere as to whether or not Rob Bell is a universalist, has got me to thinking. There seems to be a substantial contingent within conservative Christianity, that is extremely dedicated to the notion of a hell where those who do not "believe" will suffer unending, conscious torment. Many of these people--dear friends of mine, some of them--are not angry, vindictive people in real life; in fact some of them are downright compassionate. So why, I wonder, do they get so upset about the suggestion that there might NOT be eternal torture awaiting those who do not believe the right things about Jesus?<br />
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The simplistic answer, of course, is that they are passionate about the literal truth of the Bible, and since the Bible speaks of a literal hell, to discount it is to disrespect the rest of Biblical truth as well. As <a href="http://nailtothedoor.blogspot.com/search?q=eternal+destiny">I've pointed out before</a>, however, the scriptural case for eternal, conscious torment is far too thin to support a dogmatic claim, and in fact a legitimate case can be made in scripture for annihilation or conditional immortality (a term I only recently encountered, but which accurately characterizes a perspective I found in the gospels). The same can be said for the <i><b>other </b></i>simplistic answer: "that's what the church has always taught," because in fact a survey of church fathers reveals a far more nuanced and diverse perspective than that on display today.<br />
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So why the obsession with hell? Although I have absolutely no proof for this speculation, I wonder if it really comes down to salesmanship. I have known a number of "believers" whose initial entree to Christianity was a fear of the condemnation they believed awaited them if they did not believe. I still remember the first time a Christian (this one was a Baptist missionary in Honduras) explicitly told me "If I did not believe there was a hell, I wouldn't be a Christian." Combined with the definition of faith as assenting to certain truths, and the doctrine of eternal security to keep those who have "believed" in the "saved" column, it becomes reasonable to try to convince people to "believe," as Malcolm X said of a very different struggle, "by any means necessary."<br />
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The paradox in all of this is that those who most vociferously insist on the doctrine of hell tend also to be Calvinist in their broader perspective, and often believe something to the effect that only those to whom God gives the gift of faith are even capable of believing. Here my comprehension starts to break down: if faith only exists as a gift from God, then why do we have to worry about the particulars of the sales pitch? Even more, if those who are predestined for heaven or hell are already determined, what's the point in trumpeting a hell that's irrelevant to those predestined for salvation, and the hopeless-but-inevitable destination of those who aren't?<br />
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And for those who <i><b>aren't</b></i> Calvinist predestinarians (emphatically including me), the question still stands. Jesus called us to make disciples, not to rescue hellbound infidels. He called people to follow him in an active life of love and service, not to rearrange their thoughts so they had the right concepts about him. Certainly we all have plenty of screwed-up thoughts that need to be straightened out--no denying that--but the place and time to get those straightened is (and in fact can only be) <b><i>AFTER </i></b>we have joined ourselves to Jesus and his church, not before!<br />
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Jesus calls anyone who is thirsty to come. When we come, he does invite us to take on his yoke, and elsewhere to take up our cross. There's plenty to be corrected and redeemed and saved in all of us. But that is the work of the Holy Spirit--and the fellowship of believers--to be accomplished in and upon and through us once we have believed. It's certainly not a precondition of salvation.<br />
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So, do you trust the Holy Spirit to work in the lives of confused, mixed-up, doctrinally-heterodox people who've nonetheless dedicated themselves to Christ and his church? Or do you think God is not up to the job of handling our doctrinal sloppiness? <i style="color: red;"><b>Do you trust the Holy Spirit, or not?</b></i>Dan Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01635080266346679464noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5111802929460493692.post-50292241242422311952011-02-28T16:08:00.000-08:002011-02-28T16:11:32.932-08:00No one comes to the Father but by me...<i style="color: #38761d;"><b>I am the way , and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me</b></i>.<br />
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There are, I suppose, a variety of possible candidates, but today I submit John 14:6 as the single most blatantly misquoted saying from Jesus' entire ministry. Lifted completely out of context, Jesus' statement is usually presented as "Exhibit A" for Jesus' establishment of the exclusive religion of Christianity as the sole route out of hell...and the reason everyone who doesn't acknowledge the speaker's version of orthodoxy is clearly hellbound.<br />
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Someone once said "a text out of context is merely a pretext," and nowhere does this statement apply more forcefully than to John 14:6. The context is a long heart-to-heart that Jesus had with his disciples at the Last Supper (see the beginning of John 13), on the subject of his impending crucifixion. This particular discourse actually begins at John 13:31 and continues unbroken through chapter 17. In it, Jesus is talking about his death and encouraging his disciples to stay strong, faithful, and together through the trials that are coming. His disciples aren't exactly tracking with his message, though...at least not at the beginning of chapter 14. Having just told the disciples he's going to prepare a place for them, Jesus reminds them that they know where he's going and how to get there (John 14:3-4). Thomas, not so much "the doubter" as the guy who's willing to admit his lack of clue, blurts out that he has absolutely no idea what Jesus is talking about: "Lord, we haven't a clue where you're going, how could we possibly know the way?" It is in response to Thomas' spoken (and, I supect, the others' unspoken) question that Jesus states "I AM the way..."<br />
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Jesus did NOT say "I am starting a new religion with you guys, and this religion is the only way to avoid hell." Hell's not even part of the discussion. Nor did Jesus say "no one can be saved unless he thinks in his mind that I am the son of God and I am dying for his sins." No, Jesus says "I AM the way" directly in the context of his having just told his disciples "you know the way." The life they have lived with Jesus during the past three-plus years of his earthly ministry, the jobs he has set them to do, the miracles they have witnessed, the teaching they have absorbed; all these things wrapped together have taught them "the way" to the Father, which is the person of Jesus himself. When Jesus goes on in John 14:11-14 to encourage the disciples to believe that the Father is in him, even this is not for "salvation" the way we think of it...it's so they can <b><i>do</i></b> what they've seen him do and more, "so that the Father may be glorified in the Son."<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><i><b>Jesus' words in John 14 (really, all the way through John 17) were spoken not as a warning to unbelievers, but as a comfort to those who already believe! </b></i></div><br />
When Christians loudly proclaim "no man cometh to the Father but by me," they are not talking about following Jesus. They're not talking about obeying Jesus. They're certainly not talking about staying faithful under hardship and persecution. No, they're talking about how wrong Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Liberal Christians, Humanists, and sundry other "infidels" are. They're usually talking about their certainty that all of the above are destined to burn forever in hell. (For a current example, take a look at the discussion on <a href="http://thepangeablog.com/2011/02/26/if-rob-bell-is-a-universalist-then-maybe-i-am-along-with-many-prominent-evangelicals/">my friend Kurt's blog</a> today!)<br />
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The gospel of Jesus Christ claims things about him that are true of no one else. Nobody else is Jesus, and no other teaching holds the stunning uniqueness of the One who rose from the dead. I am not advocating for the feel-good universalist straw man so often the target of the self-righteous quoters of John 14:6. But to properly frame those places where Jesus' words confront society, or other faiths, or the Christian church, we have got to start by representing Jesus' own words faithfully. Using John 14:6 to club "unbelievers" and universalists over the head is categorically NOT faithful to Jesus' message.Dan Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01635080266346679464noreply@blogger.com26tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5111802929460493692.post-18116859320110317102011-02-23T14:56:00.000-08:002011-02-23T15:00:00.735-08:00Every Christian ought to be a muslim (but not the way you think)!OK, take a deep breath. Trust me when I say I'm not asking anybody to throw away their Bible and start planning their pilgrimage to Mecca. I am, however, going to attack some truly damaging language that I hear from many of my fellow Christians on the subject of Islam...language that I maintain is neither edifying nor honoring to God, and actually flat-out wrong. There are many issues that need to be addressed in Christian attitudes toward Muslims (and, I'm sure, vice-versa), but one of the first we need to face is our sloppy language.<br />
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So I repeat my title statement: <i style="color: red;"><b>Every Christian ought to be a muslim</b></i>. Note, first of all, that I used a lower-case "m" in the word "muslim." I am not suggesting that any follower of Jesus should change faiths. In fact, I hope it's clear to any reader of my blog that I wish for more, not fewer, people to follow Jesus. But while capital M "Muslim" is the name for a follower of the organized religion of Islam, lower-case m "muslim" means simply "one who submits;" by implication, one who submits to God.<br />
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I don't speak Arabic. I do, however, speak Swahili, which has significant Arabic roots, and while I'm going to explain in terms of the language I actually know, friends of mine who do speak Arabic have confirmed the truth of what I'm about to say. In Swahili and in Arabic, if you take a verb and put either an "m" or "mu" prefix onto the front of it, the resulting word is a noun that means "a person or creature who does that verb." So for example, the Swahili word "ku<u>zungu</u>ka" means "to spin or turn around," so "mzungu" means "one who spins around" (which hilariously is the term Africans coined to describe white Europeans and Americans). In Arabic, the word "islam" simply means "submission." A "muslim" is just a person who does "islam," that is, a person who submits.<br />
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Islam is, of course, not the only faith that calls its followers to submit to God. In the Jewish and Christian scriptures, the original temptation and sin of Adam was not the fact of eating the forbidden fruit, it was the desire to "...be like God, knowing good and evil." (Gen. 3:5) In deliberate contrast to the human desire to usurp God's position in Genesis, followers of Jesus are exhorted to "Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped" (Phil. 2:5-6). Jesus' example is further illuminated in Phil. 2:8 to be his humility and obedience even "unto death on a cross." <i><b>Jesus is our ultimate example of submission, "islam," to God</b></i>.<br />
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Of course, the objection many Christians will immediately raise leads me to my second point of language: submission to WHICH God? While this may be a hard truth for some to grasp, the answer is "<i style="color: red;"><b>the God of Abraham, Jesus, and Mohammad</b></i>." <br />
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Time for another deep breath, folks. Please note that I have not said that Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are all equal, identical, one religion, or anything of the sort. There are plenty of places where Jews, Christians, and Muslims disagree, and some of them are highly significant. But Christians have got to get off their pigheaded high horse (dare I mix animal metaphors?) and face the reality that, whatever other important differences exist, the God of Islam is NOT a different God than that of Christians and Jews. He is the God of Abraham; among his names are Elohim, YHWH, Father, and Allah. Do you notice that "Elohim" (a plural of "El") and "Allah" actually have a similar sound? There is a reason for that...both Hebrew and Arabic are Semitic languages; that is, they come from a common ancient root. The names "El" and "Allah" are the same. Furthermore, Arabic-speaking Christians (at least those who haven't been corrupted by fundamentalist American ideologues) have been using the name "Allah" to refer to the Father for many centuries. When Christians in America make the claim (and I heard this in a church as recently as a month ago) that "Allah is an idol and a false God," they are at best displaying breathtaking ignorance, and at worst blaspheming the very God they claim to worship.<br />
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Many Christians will raise the objection at this point "well, Muslims say Allah is not the Father of Jesus, so he must be a false god." Funny thing about that claim, it doesn't seem to apply to Jews, who also do not believe that God is Jesus' father (unless they're what we call "Messianic Jews"). If that criterion renders Islam a false religion, it must do the same for Judaism. You can't have it both ways...and yet the most conservative Christians do not doubt that Israel in particular and Jews in general are still God's special, chosen people. That's another discussion, and not for this time, but for now, accepting the deity of Christ cannot be a criterion for otherwise worshiping the "right" God unless the same criterion is applied equally to both of the other Abrahamic faiths.<br />
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There is much more to say with regard to Muslim-Christian relations, and I expect some day to take on more of it. But at the very least, let us please acknowledge that Allah is the God we Christians also worship, and may we all strive to be small-m "muslims" to Him.<br />
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Peace/Shalom/Salaam!Dan Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01635080266346679464noreply@blogger.com26tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5111802929460493692.post-65177820917685856682011-01-25T16:03:00.000-08:002011-01-25T16:03:31.520-08:00Tempted as we are?A study group I've been meeting with has been asked to memorize Hebrews 4:14-16, and it's dug up an old, nagging irritation for me. The writer of Hebrews states that our High Priest, Jesus, "in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin." I'll come right to the point: at least as that sentence reads in English, I cannot accept it as true (please read to the end of this post before freaking!).<br />
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I accept the teaching of scripture that Jesus lived a sinless life. There are many witnesses to back up this claim, and frankly no serious evidence to challenge it. But I am unable to reconcile the notion of a sinless life with the Hebrew writer's claim that Jesus was tempted in every way as we are. There are too many ways in which "missing the mark" (<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype; font-size: small;"><span id="word" onclick="l('a(marti/a_n-----gsf-_p');">ἁμαρτία, "h</span></span>amartia") in one area is simply not a temptation unless one has well and truly screwed it up in a related way already. No one can be tempted to theft, who is not already guilty of covetousness. No one is tempted to adultery or sexual misconduct, who is not already guilty of lust.<br />
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One might attempt to parse the desire from the deed, and say that only the latter is sin. To do so would be downright comforting, and frankly, to some extent I think most of us believe it (and those who don't, are likely burdened with massive guilt or depression). Unfortunately, Jesus himself demolished this particular rationale pretty decisively in Matt. 5:27-28. And if looking lustfully at a woman not one's wife is adultery, then the vast majority of straight men I've ever known, are adulterers (I do not therefore suggest we should just give up and do the deed). And if, by his own definition, Jesus wasn't guilty of mental adultery, than he certainly wasn't tempted in all respects as we ordinary males are.<br />
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OK, so what do we do with this apparent contradiction? I see three possibilities:<br />
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1) The writer of Hebrews may be wrong. The notion of Jesus' sinlessness is indispensable to a substionary atonement doctrine, but it's also pretty important in any understanding of the incarnation. But the idea that he was tempted just as we, though it could be a comfort, is not so central. Maybe in his quest for an appropriate simile the Hebrew author went overboard and misrepresented Jesus' earthly experience.<br />
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2) The Hebrew writer could be right, with the proviso that he was talking about Jesus' actions, not what might have gone on in his head--that is, for example, Jesus may have gotten an eyeful of a pretty girl as much as any guy, but never given in to that temptation by making an advance (or worse) on her. This is more palatable, for sure, but in order to swallow this interpretation, we are then stuck with Jesus' own statements referenced above. Although Jesus' standard is the harder one to handle, it IS the words of Jesus over against those of the author of Hebrews, and if I have to choose which to accept, Jesus' own words have to take precedence.<br />
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Either of these two options slam squarely into the notion of Biblical inspiration. Readers of this blog already know I do not accept a flat-book dogma of verbal inspiration, but many Christians hold this teaching dear. Is this one of those cases where God deliberately put a paradox in place to test whether we'd trust him over the brains he gave us? (for the record, I don't believe God plays this sort of "belief trick," but some folks seem to give the idea credence--think young-earth creation vs. the fossil record).<br />
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3) There is, of course, a third option. We could take a look at what "temptation" actually means. The usual working definition of "enticement or desire to sin" may be our real problem here, and actually, I think this is the case. According to <i>Young's Analytical Concordance</i>, the original word here (<span style="font-family: Palatino Linotype; font-size: small;">πειράζω</span><span style="font-size: small;">,</span> peirazw) occurs in some form about 38 times in the New Testament. Twenty-eight of those times it's translated "tempt" or "temptation" in the King James version (I don't have statistics for other versions), but in several others it's translated something like "test" or "prove." It's actually easier to understand if we think of the old English metallurgist's concept of "trying" an ore; that is, applying heat to it in order to see how much gold comes out. This idea of "trying" can be described as applying difficulty in order to reveal the content, or character, or purity of a substance. It's no leap of logic to go from assaying an ore ("assay" is another way peirazw can be translated), to assaying human character, and in fact that's what is often meant.<br />
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For example, the same word peirazw is used in John 6:6, where Jesus suggested to Phillip that he procure bread to feed the five thousand. John tells us he did this to "try" Phillip...Jesus already knew what he intended to do. 2 Corinthians 13:5 is another example, where Paul exhorts believers to "examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith." The word translated "examine" is the same word as the one in Hebrews 4! I hope no one thinks Paul is suggesting that it's healthy to put ourselves in a position where we could be induced to sin, just to see how strong our faith is!<br />
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To wrap it up, then, the Hebrew writer is not suggesting that Jesus had the same problems of temptation humans wrestle with to varying degrees. What he <i><b>is</b></i> saying is that Jesus understands the tests and discouragements of life, because he went through them too. This is why the first half of the same verse states that we "...do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin (NRSV)." Change "without sin" to "without failing the test" and we're probably closer to the actual meaning of the text. Or as <a href="http://pioneernt.wordpress.com/2009/06/24/word-study-11-test-trial-temptation-dont-blame-god/">my Mom put it</a> last year, "he didn't flunk!"<br />
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This, of course, fits nicely with Philippians 2:5-11. It was because Jesus remained faithful--obedient--to death, that God has highly exalted him. The glory follows the passing of the test...and that's why he's now our High Priest. This, I have no trouble believing.Dan Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01635080266346679464noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5111802929460493692.post-37632180377637461232010-12-06T17:50:00.000-08:002011-01-25T04:28:48.096-08:00If Spirit = Breath, what of Theopneustos?Those who know me well may have seen this coming...but now that we've looked at the Holy Spirit, not as a "being" but as the Wind/Breath of God (<a href="http://nailtothedoor.blogspot.com/2010/11/holy-spirit-breath-of-god.html">see this post</a> if you haven't already read it), it's time to take another look at an old friend. I refer, of course, to θεόπνευστος ("theopneustos") from 2 Tim. 3:16. Those who already know Greek will know, and the perceptive among the rest of you may notice, that this is a compound of θεός ("theos," god--not necessarily the Christian one) and a form of πνεῦμα ("pneuma", wind or breath or spirit as previously discussed).<br />
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The usual translation of θεόπνευστος, as nearly everybody knows, is "inspired" or "God-breathed," and is the source of the common notion that what Paul was saying to Timothy was that the scriptural canon was breathed out by God...that is, that God is the <i><b>source</b></i> of "all scripture" (I've previously argued--<a href="http://nailtothedoor.blogspot.com/2008/07/biblical-inspiration-part-3-but-what.html">1</a> & <a href="http://nailtothedoor.blogspot.com/2009/07/2-tim-316-redux-correction-and-further.html">2</a>--that this statement cannot legitimately be<b> </b>read as an imprimatur on the entirety of our current canon). Unfortunately, it appears that Paul coined a word that has no antecedent in classical Greek literature and only occurs once in the entire biblical text. We are therefore stuck with the task of deducing what he meant by taking the word apart into its constituent parts, and one possibility (of course) is that the translators are right, that equivalents of "breathed out by God" are in fact correct and that Paul is saying that those scriptures which "are able to make you wise unto salvation" (v. 17) actually come from God.<br />
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But what if θεόπνευστος is not "breathed out," but rather "breathed upon" or "breathed into?" Might Paul be suggesting that the written words, lifeless in and of themselves, become profitable--even powerful--when they are infused with the life-giving Breath of the Father? Perhaps it's not an issue of writings being "inspired" at all, but rather what happens when these writings become "in-spirited" in the context of believers individually and collectively seeking God through them. It stands to reason that any writing, whether by the canonical authors, by modern believers, or even by secular writers, becomes highly profitable if and when it's enlivened by the Breath of Life.<br />
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This is not to suggest that God is not the actual source of any of the biblical writings. 2 Pet. 2:20-21 is one good example of how God clearly and specifically moved prophets to write and speak specific words to his people. Our task as believers is to discern those words--and the spirit within them--and to pray that God will yet again breathe upon us as we seek to be equipped for his work.Dan Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01635080266346679464noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5111802929460493692.post-46124000371532222452010-12-05T13:38:00.000-08:002011-01-25T04:29:09.971-08:00The Holy Spirit - Part 2: When and Where?In <a href="http://nailtothedoor.blogspot.com/2010/11/holy-spirit-breath-of-god.html">my last post</a> I took issue with common Christian creeds' trinitarian characterization of the Holy Spirit. This time I'm going to take a look at another element of common Evangelical statements of faith: the claim that the Holy Spirit "indwells every believer." This teaching makes the claim that the Holy Spirit is bestowed upon everyone who "believes in Christ" (a phrase fraught with its own baggage), and essentially dwells in the believer for life.<br />
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As with most required doctrines, this one doesn't stand up well to comparison with what scripture actually says. Let's start with the most obvious evidence, two historical accounts in Acts. Acts 8:14-17 relates how Peter and John were sent to Samaria, to a group who had believed in Jesus, who were even "baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus," but who did not receive the Holy Spirit until the prayer of Peter and John. The second account is Acts 19:1-7, in which a group of "disciples" had already received the baptism of John (and given the use of the term "disciples," one would believe already accepted the message of Jesus' lordship), but who had not even heard of the Holy Spirit, which was given to them when Paul laid his hands on them after baptism. The evidence is pretty straightforward: unless we accept a dispensational interpretation nowhere supported in the New Testament, it is possible both to believe in Jesus and to be baptised in his name, and yet not have received the Holy Spirit.<br />
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The second part of this doctrine is the implicit notion that whatever receiving the Holy Spirit means, it's a once-and-done event. Here, too, the scriptural evidence would suggest otherwise. There are, of course, numerous accounts in the Old Testament (particularly the books of Samuel and Kings) where the Spirit of God seems to come and go from the same individuals...usually kings or minor prophets. But even in Acts, it is interesting to note that the same people are shown to have been "filled with the Holy Spirit" at least twice: see Acts 2:4 and Acts 4:31. Furthermore, we learn in Acts 6:3-5 that a condition for selecting the men to serve as the first deacons (this is when Stephen was ordained), was that these be men "full of the Spirit." This requirement is nonsensical, unless there is either (1) such a thing as a believer who has not received the Spirit at all, or (2) at least varying degrees of "filledness" with the Holy Spirit.<br />
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Perhaps as intriguing as anything, though, is Paul's statement in 1 Cor. 7:40 that, in relation to a command he's just given, "I think I, too, have the Spirit of God." This claim truly makes no sense if every believer is always-and-forever indwelt by the Spirit.<br />
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<i><b>The principal reason I believe this error matters, is that it allows us to cop out of a major self-examination desperately needed by both individual believers and the church as a body.</b></i> Here's what I mean: throughout the Bible, when the Breath of God moves in and through an individual or a group, something big happens--and by "big" I do not mean people get teary-eyed or feel a major case of the warm fuzzies. Countless times, it results in the individual prophesying (Num. 11:25, 1 Sam. 10:10, 1 Sam. 19:20, Luke 1:67, Acts 19:6). It can result in people speaking in languages other than their own (Acts 2:4, Acts 10:46). It can also result in superhuman strength (Judges 15:14) or even physical transportation (Acts 8:39). The Spirit of God doesn't always make a splash; Isaiah 11:2 refers to the overall anointing of Messiah's life (though when this actually happened (Luke 3:22 and parallels) it was certainly obvious enough.<br />
<blockquote>An interesting aside here--if the conventional notion of the Holy Spirit and Jesus Christ being persons of the Trinity were true, why does scripture report the Holy Spirit coming on Jesus, not only in Luke 3:22, but also his self-proclamation in Luke 4:18-19? How can one "person" of a "godhead" receive another "person?"</blockquote>Anyhow, my point here is, what is the evidence of the Breath of God blowing through our churches today? It is my stubborn belief that, if God's mighty wind were to blow in our midst, we wouldn't have to do mental gymnastics to <i><b>believe</b></i> it, we'd have the evidence smacking us in the face! And if, as I regretfully suspect, those who lead the Body of Christ have so thoroughly quenched the spirit that God has taken his action elsewhere, what are we--what are you--what am I--going to do about it?Dan Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01635080266346679464noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5111802929460493692.post-35472235994641886722010-11-29T17:59:00.000-08:002011-01-25T04:29:28.530-08:00The Holy Spirit - Breath of GodI approach this subject with a bit more caution than some of my posts, because I know it's going to be particularly sensitive to some readers...enough so, in fact, that a couple caveats are necessary at the outset. First and foremost, while in the next couple posts I'm going to challenge a number of commonly-held teachings about the Holy Spirit, I am NOT denying either (1) that the Holy Spirit is real, or (2) that the Holy Spirit comes from God the Father. I acknowledge Jesus' warning in Matt. 12:31, paralleled in Mark 3:29 and Luke 12:10, that blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is unforgivable; however, the context in Matthew and Mark makes it clear that what Jesus was talking about here was an accusation that the work he was doing through the Spirit of God, was actually of the devil. This is not what I am saying, nor should it so be taken.<br />
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With the caveats properly stated, though, I will come to the first point. Christian doctrine has held since the very early days, that the Holy Spirit is a "hypostasis" or "person" of a triune godhead. <a href="http://nailtothedoor.blogspot.com/2009/11/re-examining-trinity-jesus.html">I have previously suggested</a> that the notion of the Trinity doesn't square well with the way Jesus represented himself and his relationship to the Father; now here I will add that the Spirit of God as described in the Gospels and Acts, also doesn't lend itself well to the Trinitarian definition. I just took a look at every occurrence of the word in all four Gospels plus Acts, and while the Spirit is heavily in evidence throughout all five accounts, the sense of the word seems to me far more like an amorphous presence than a distinct entity, and nowhere in all five books is there any claim that God's Spirit (which is clearly bestowed upon others from time to time, and which clearly influences events) is actually a form or being of God himself (though it unquestionably comes <i><b>from</b></i> God).<br />
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The word in Greek which is translated "Spirit" as in "Holy Spirit" is nothing more than the word πνεῦμα (pneuma). This same word is also translated as "ghost," "breath," and "wind" in various places and by various translators. Sometimes it's linked to the word "holy," and other times it stands by itself. But by separating the concept of "breath/wind" from the concept of "spirit," English Bible translators have created a divided concept which fits well with standard creeds, but masks a much less clear-cut concept in the actual text. Perhaps the most intriguing passage I found to illustrate this point was John 3:8, which says:<br />
<blockquote>"The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit."</blockquote>Both the word "wind" in the beginning of the verse, and "Spirit" at the end, are the exact same word in Greek. We may think "the Spirit blows where it wishes" or "everyone born of the wind" make no sense, but that has more to do with the doctrines we've built around the Holy Spirit than it does with solid translation. If we were to allow the original language to speak for itself, the metaphor of the "breath of God" actually pervades the Bible all the way from Genesis on. In the Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures done about 200 years before Jesus, the spirit of God moving over the face of the waters is a form of the same Greek word (the wind of God moving over the waters...think about it), and even more beautifully, when in Genesis 2, God breaths into man the breath of life, it's also the same word--actually the Greek synonym πνοὴν (pnoe). <br />
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This latter parallels spectacularly with Jesus' breathing on the disciples and saying "receive the Holy Spirit (breath)" in John 20:22. Just as the breath of God is what made man "a living soul" in Genesis 2, so the breath of Jesus made man a living soul in the New Creation of the resurrected Christ.<br />
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So why am I saying this? Do I really care whether we use the term "Holy Spirit" or the maybe more-poetic term "Breath of God" to refer to the influencing presence God sometimes bestows on his people? Well yes, I do, but not as a matter of semantics. I'll get into how the coming of the Holy Breath is actually described in scripture, next time. But for now, I care because the doctrinal statements to which Evangelicals are often expected to subscribe, include assent to an explicit and detailed doctrine of the Trinity. Nothing new here...the old creeds have been demanding as much since at least the third or fourth century, though interestingly, the <a href="http://www.reformed.org/documents/index.html?mainframe=http://www.reformed.org/documents/apostles_creed.html">Apostles' Creed</a> only states "I believe in the Holy Spirit," without any details of just what that belief must entail. Nevertheless, I'm afraid this is another area where our Christian authorities' obsession with lists of things one must think in order not to be damned, has overtaken the simple message of the Gospel. The expectation of the church is that we think and speak and teach a certain way. The expectation of Jesus was, and is, that we <i><b>live </b></i>a certain way, influenced by the wind of his Father blowing through us.Dan Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01635080266346679464noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5111802929460493692.post-75743524925842336812010-11-12T04:44:00.000-08:002010-11-12T04:45:07.848-08:00Confronting homelessness in personJust wanted to highlight the work of a local Atlanta man who's chosen to spend a month homeless to highlight the homelessness situation around here. Elijah Montgomery has temporarily abandoned his comfortable job and digs, in an attempt to raise money for a coffee house he wants to start, at which he will hire homeless kids to work.<br />
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You can read about his effort on <a href="http://www.11alive.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=162394&catid=39">11alive.com</a>, or even better read his own thoughts at his blog, <a href="http://thewaiverlyproject.blogspot.com/">The Waiverly Projects</a>. I encourage you to visit, comment, and if possible, donate!Dan Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01635080266346679464noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5111802929460493692.post-34720110001467138662010-10-14T15:03:00.000-07:002010-10-14T15:03:51.768-07:00An Open Letter to Christopher Hitchens <i>Note: I don't actually know any way to get this letter to Mr. Hitchens, and I have no idea how he'd respond if he read it. But I think some of the following needs to be said...and maybe someone who needs to will read it.</i><br />
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Dear Mr. Hitchens,<br />
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I'm a Christian, and I'd like to apologize to you.<br />
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I heard the NPR interview with you and your brother Peter yesterday, and I understand that Christians are coming out of the woodwork to let you know they're praying for you, and to make a last-ditch effort to save your soul before the cancer gets you. I wonder if you must be feeling like the vultures are circling, waiting to take a bite out of your carcass--although in your case the disquieting reality is that those buzzards want their bite of you BEFORE you die. I wouldn't be too pleased with that either. I regret the harrassment you're getting in the name of my God.<br />
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I'm sorry.<br />
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You have expressed before, and expressed again in the interview, some pretty harsh objections to Christianity. Strange as it may seem, I think your criticisms have at times been spot-on. You said that you found the notion of a human sacrifice vicariously atoning for your sin to be morally offensive, and I agree completely. The funny thing is, if I'm reading my Bible at all correctly, God would agree too. The penal-substitution so loudly proclaimed by most Christians is a complex theory that does not hold up to serious scrutiny of the source from which they claim to derive it--that is the Bible--and I regret you've been sold such a bill of goods, that you believe that teaching to be integral to faith in God.<br />
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I'm sorry.<br />
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You also have pointed out on repeated occasions, the horrors that have been done throughout history in the name of religion in general, and Christianity in particular. Again I agree with you, and the way I read my Bible, I believe God would agree with you too. The Inquisition and the Crusades, and right up to the wars of Bush, have at least partial roots in Christian institutions, and they were wrong and evil. <br />
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Of course I do think you're making a category mistake by concluding those acts are the necessary outgrowth of religion. Stalin, Pol Pot, and Mao Tse Tung also commited horrible atrocities--right up there in awfulness with the Christian ones--and they did it in the name of Communism. I would submit that a careful comparison of these guys with the writing of Karl Marx makes it patently obvious that what they did had nothing to do with Marxism, and that an equally-careful comparison of the medieval popes' and crusaders' and Bush's actions with the Bible would lead to the identical conclusion: in fact public Christianity has just about as much in common with the Jesus of the Bible, as the Soviet Union, the Khmer Rouge, and Communist China have with Marx and his Manifesto. So I would submit to you that applying your journalistic chops to a comparison/contrast of the sacred texts of either group would be in order. Nevertheless, you have been sold a bill of goods by a violent, hateful mob claiming the mantle of Christ, and I regret the mischaracterization of Jesus has left you so repulsed by him.<br />
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I'm sorry.<br />
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I'm not trying to convert you, Mr. Hitchens. I know my powers of reasoning aren't that stunning, and furthermore, though reason can inform faith, I don't believe it can compel it. Frankly, I do not know, were you to confront the reality of Jesus instead of the bad counterfeit that's been shoved in your face all these years, whether you'd like the real thing any better. I only dare you to have a serious look at the Jesus the Gospels actually portray, without all the baggage Christians have loaded onto him--baggage which I say again, you have rightly rejected.<br />
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I hope you will indulge me if I say that I do pray you'll find peace--not only in an eternal sense (to the extent you may or may not feel you need it), but in the very earthly sense that the vultures will let you spend your last days, or months, or years unassaulted. In this, perhaps, the real Jesus might intervene...for what it's worth, I'll ask him.<br />
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Sincerely,<br />
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Dan MartinDan Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01635080266346679464noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5111802929460493692.post-3285741964255729862010-10-13T14:47:00.000-07:002010-10-13T14:47:19.534-07:00Christopher Hitchens Interview -- More evidence bad theology drives people away from JesusI heard a <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130526723&ps=cprs">great feature</a> this morning on NPR's show "Morning Edition," in which the brothers Christopher and Peter Hitchens were interviewed. Christopher, as most of you likely know, is a world-famous atheist (I would describe him as an anti-theist fundamentalist) who rails against those who hold to faith, and who wrote the bestseller "God is Not Great." What I did not know is that his brother Peter is an Anglican Christian, and their arguments for and against belief have been somewhat public as well. Now Christopher is dying of cancer, so people are coming out of the woodwork to pray for him (good) and to "witness" to him (mostly bad, I'm guessing) before he cashes in.<br />
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I was struck by a statement Christopher made in the interview:<br />
<blockquote><i>"Under no persuasion could I be made to believe that a human sacrifice several thousand years ago vicariously redeems me from sin," he says. "Nothing could persuade me that that was true — or moral, by the way. It's white noise to me."</i></blockquote>Wow. This sounds like exactly the frustration I expressed after reading Robert Heinlein's book <i>Job: A Comedy of Justice</i>. As I described in <a href="http://nailtothedoor.blogspot.com/2010/10/gospel-according-to-heinlein-or-why.html">my essay on the book</a>, I'm bothered that, having come to the conclusion that the classic doctrine of penal-substitutionary atonement is unbiblical, I keep on encountering evidence that people have been driven from faith in Jesus, at least in part, because they can't accept PSA. It angers me that what I firmly believe to be bad theology, is being force-fed to people with such vigor that it's all they can see of Jesus.<br />
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Jesus himself had some pretty harsh things to say about those whose false teaching drives people from true faith. We as believers need to take a long, hard look in the mirror. I said it last week, and I'll repeat it today: how can anyone be blamed for rejecting Jesus if we've never introduced them to anything but a bad caricature of him?Dan Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01635080266346679464noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5111802929460493692.post-75656158382935548642010-10-05T15:35:00.000-07:002010-10-05T15:36:13.208-07:00The Gospel According to Heinlein, or Why Christians are sometimes God's worst enemies...Over the past few days I read Robert A. Heinlein's 1984 book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Job-Comedy-Justice-Robert-Heinlein/dp/0345316509/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1286316978&sr=8-1">Job: A Comedy of Justice</a>. For those who enjoy mind-bending adventures with an eternal twist, I recommend it as a fun story. Be forewarned: if you only enjoy fiction that comports with your theology and cosmology, and you consider yourself an orthodox Christian, this book is probably not for you. But if you can stomach a book in which the character of Satan describes his brother Yahweh as a jerk (and given the narrative context, the reader will find himself agreeing with Satan), and if sexuality that is R-rated in content though only PG in description doesn't put you off, then you may well find <i>Job </i>a fun read.<br />
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But what I wanted to highlight with this post was the way in which Heinlein's book illustrates the damage that Christians have done--and, I'm sorry to say, continue to do--to the cause of Christ. I don't know anything about Heinlein's own faith or philosophy, but I can tell you that he did his homework for this book. The main character, Alexander Hergensheimer, starts out as a conservative, fundamentalist preacher who's head of an organization called Churches United for Decency (CUD), in an alternative-universe America with only 46 states and the kind of laws fundamentalist Americans in our universe would appreciate. During a firewalking experience while on vacation in Papua New Guinea, our friend Alec finds himself in an parallel universe--the first of many--where his own morals and faith run headlong into those of cultures and Americas with decidedly different outlooks.<br />
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But although Heinlein could have resorted to the usual caricature of conservative Christians by those who are neither conservative nor Christian, he absolutely did not do so. Alec's story is told in the first person, with frequent quotations from the Bible. The character is portrayed in a completely sympathetic light, and whatever Heinlein's own predilections about faith may have been, there is not a hint of mocking or hostility toward this character. At least twice within the narrative, Alec makes a heartfelt effort to lead other characters to Christ in the context of a premillenial rapture that he is convinced is imminent (turns out he's right), and each time, the message Alec conveys is straight out of an Evangelical Christian playbook, delivered without a hint of irony or ill motive.<br />
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And yet the arc of the story is clearly not one that resonates with Christian teaching. Beyond the character's shift in his sexual standards and choice of beverages, the real issue at the climax of the story is that Yahweh doesn't play fair (a la Job), and never has. Consider this section near the end of the book:<br />
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<blockquote style="color: #6aa84f;">Alec, 'justice' is not a divine concept; it is a human illusion. The very basis of the Judeo-Christian code is injustice, the scapegoat system. The scapegoat sacrifice runs all through the Old Testament, then it reaches its height in the New Testament with the notion of the Martyred Redeemer. How can justice possibly be served by loading your sins on another? Whether it be a lamb having its throat cut ritually, or a Messiah nailed to a cross and 'dying for your sins.' Somebody should tell all of Yahweh's followers, Jews and Christians, that there is no such thing as a free lunch. "Or maybe there is. Being in that catatonic condition called 'grace' at the exact moment of death--or at the Final Trump--will get you into Heaven. Right? You got to Heaven that way, did you not?"<br />
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"That's correct. I hit it lucky. For I had racked up quite a list of sins before then."<br />
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"A long and wicked life followed by five minutes of perfect grace gets you into Heaven. An equally long life of decent living and good works followed by one outburst of taking the name of the Lord in vain--then have a heart attack at that moment and be damned for eternity..."<br />
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"...I've known Him too long. It's His world, His rules, His doing. His rules are exact and anyone can follow them and reap the reward. But 'just' they are not." <i><span style="font-size: x-small;">(Hardcover edition, pp.291-292)</span></i></blockquote><br />
OK, so first of all it's obvious in the next-to-last paragraph I quoted, that Heinlein's not referring to the "eternal security" brand of Christianity; however I doubt he'd have come out any differently in his conclusions if he were. Heinlein forces the reader face-to-face with a painful fact: <i style="color: red;"><b>the God that is portrayed by much of traditional Christian teaching is not just.</b></i> No amount of wordplay can change the obvious truth of this statement. Genocide of the Canaanites, the angel of death slaughtering thousands in penalty for David's adultery, the infinite punishment of hell for the necessarily-finite violations of temporal sin, none of these is remotely akin to our basic, reasonable notion of making the punishment fit the crime. Merely shouting "but God is just" in the face of such evidence beggars belief.<br />
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I know people will defend their doctrines to the nth degree, and some will accuse me of heresy or blasphemy, but here I have to side with Heinlein's assessment (as a character says elsewhere in the book, "anyone who can worship a trinity and insist that his religion is a monotheism can believe anything--just give him time to rationalize it."<br />
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My frustration, and the one that made me finish "Job" with some sadness, is that, like so many before him and since, Heinlein may have rejected the Gospel precisely (only?) because he was fed a counterfeit "gospel!" He clearly knew--even understood--the message that churches have trumpeted for centuries. He knew all about the Old Testament sacrificial system as portrayed by Evangelicals. Like a lot of Christians, he apparently did not know that the "scapegoat" in the Old Testament wasn't sacrificed. Heinlein knew about Old Testament blood sacrifice too, again as Evangelicals teach it. He did not know that blood sacrifice in the Old Testament represents cleansing or thanksgiving, but not payment for forgiveness of sin (go back and read Leviticus!). He understood the Evangelical teaching that Jesus' death finally fulfilled the blood-for-sin paradigm upon which Penal-Substitutionary Atonement is based. But he was not equipped to realize that the PSA theory of atonement is at best a tiny fraction of the work of Jesus' death and resurrection.<br />
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Heinlein had presumably met a lot of Christians, but he had never met Jesus. How could he? The "gospel" message preached by most Christians throughout the Twentieth Century (Heinlein died in 1988) had very little Jesus in it...a "four laws and then the rapture" gospel needs Jesus for his blood and for his second coming, but completely ignores his teachings and his life, and only gives a passing nod to his resurrection. If Heinlein believed the God of Christians and Jews to be unjust, well, when did anyone in either group introduce him to the justice preached by Jesus and before him by the prophets?<br />
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And most importantly, of course, here and now and today, what portrait of God are you holding up to the world around you? If people consider <i><b>your</b></i> testimony of Jesus and ultimately reject him (as some will), are they rejecting the real thing?Dan Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01635080266346679464noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5111802929460493692.post-42213202553289922432010-09-20T14:40:00.000-07:002010-09-20T14:44:32.795-07:00Grand Theft Jesus - Part 2 - "All About Eve"In <a href="http://nailtothedoor.blogspot.com/2010/09/book-review-grand-theft-jesus-part-1.html">my previous review</a> of Grand Theft Jesus by Robert McElvaine, I mentioned that he did a spectacular mis-exegesis of the accounts of the creation and fall in Genesis 1-3. I'd like to dig into this a little further, as McElvaine claims that mysogyny in religion is one of religion's (and for that matter, the world's) biggest problems.<br />
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Now I will stipulate at the outset that an awful lot of conservative Christians seem to me to be way too hung up on issues of sex and male superiority. Please don't misunderstand me as thinking there are no problems here...though as I shall argue in the future, the problem isn't so much with male power over woman, but rather the notion that "power over" itself is a corruption that doesn't belong with followers of Jesus, regardless of their gender. But having granted that there is a problem, the arguments that McElvaine lays out are spectacular in their overreach and just-plain idiocy.<br />
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We'll start with the "problem" of being "born again." I was going to try and summarize, but this just has to be quoted in full:<br />
<blockquote>The question becomes more complicated and intriguing when we remember that those who say it is necessary to be born again also say that the unborn are without sin: One of the worst things about abortion, they say, is that it is the taking of <i>innocent</i> life. The unborn are innocent, without sin. Yet the born have to be reborn in order to overcome their sin and be "saved." Ostensibly this rebirth removes the stain of Original Sin. But let's think about this assertion. If the unborn are innocent, they must not have yet acquired Original Sin. Both the unborn and the reborn are "saved;" it is the once-born who are damned. Pre-born and reborn are good; it is the in-between state--born--that is evil. So just when is it that Original Sin is taken on? Given the foregoing beliefs, no other possibility seems to exist than that Original Sin is acquired at birth. It seems we all get Original Sin from the same source that is said to have led Adam into sin: a <i>woman</i>!</blockquote><blockquote>And that, at the most basic level, is what is wrong with our first birth--it is from a woman.</blockquote>McElvaine goes on to explain that being "born again" (that is born from Jesus, a man) sanctifies because it comes from a man instead of from a woman. He then goes on to speculate that this whole dysfunction comes from men envying the female power of creation--that is childbirth. (How any man who's ever witnessed pregnancy, or childbirth, or even the monthly misery that is menstruation, could possibly have "womb envy" is beyond me, but hey, maybe that's just because I'm so suppressed by the male-dominated culture!) He goes on an intriguing excursion into the ways men have constructed "no-woman zones" of work, duty, ritual, power, etc., all to make up for the inadequacy we men feel due to our inability to create. In fact, the whole notion that God is referred to as male in Genesis is, in McElvaine's analysis, a male-dominated insistence that creation isn't just a woman's thing!<br />
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And then it gets really weird...<br />
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To make a VERY long story short(er), in Paleolithic times where men were hunters and women were gatherers, both were valued in society. As the agricultural revolution led to people settling down in groups, women's roles in agriculture and reproduction maintained or even grew in value, while men's importance as providers of meat and defenders of the tribe declined precipitously. Men, not wanting to get stuck with the "girlie stuff" like agriculture, instead built elaborate mythologies and power structures to assert their superiority. "Because the switch to agriculture ultimately came to seem like such a bad deal for men, devaluing their traditional roles as hunters, leaving the with the 'woman's work' of farming, labor that was in fact much harder than hunting, they eventually blamed women for having lost what seemed in distant retrospect to have been a paradise in which people lived without work, picking abundant food from trees." Here he then draws the analogy to Adam & Eve in the garden, with Eve's temptation being an allegorical representation of the woman taking man's power from him and forcing him into agriculture!<br />
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Here it becomes obvious McElvain is pumping his other book "Eve's Seed," in which I surmise he develops his special brand of misandry even more fully. Here's his own footnote quoting that work (the entire section is from his footnoote; the quotes delineate that portion that he's quoting from his other book):<br />
<blockquote>The Eve and Adam story wonderfully weaves together sex and agriculture. "Eve's sharing of the fruit with Adam has often been interpreted as symbolic of introducing him to sexual relations." In light of the Seed Metaphor, "a woman teaching a man how to have intercourse with her becomes a perfect symbol for women teaching men how to plant crops in the ground. Both are seductions by woman, the temptress."</blockquote>Of course, McElvaine's death-defying leap into the metanarrative of female subjugation overlooks a few obvious points about the actual Genesis myth, including<br />
<ul><li>The fact that Adam and Eve are told to be fruitful and multiply--presumably requiring sex--before the fall (Gen 1:28), and </li>
<li>The fact that Adam was placed in the garden to till and care for it, also before the fall (Gen 2:15).</li>
</ul>For a long time I've seen one of the most-overlooked lessons of the story of the fall in Gen. 3 to be the failure of the man to defend his wife--when the serpent tempts Eve, she then gave some "to her husband who was with her" (Gen 3:6), but somehow he didn't think to interpose himself between her and a talking snake...hmm!!! Anyway, I think it's safe to say the only way to come to McElvaine's wild interpretation of Genesis is to start with heavily-loaded preconceptions and little respect for even the mythologic structure of the text.<br />
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Where does all this lead? McElvaine is not completely wrong when he paints a picture of religion in general, and hijacked Christianity in particular, of having been unjustly and cruelly down on women. But his attempt to draw the theological lines goes stunningly wide of the mark, and can only be described as fantasy in itself. And his conclusion is, I believe, deeply and basically wrong: "ChristianityLite is Jesusless, but an even more fundamental problem shared by all monotheistic religions is that they are Goddessless. The basic problem for millenia has been not that people are godless (Ann Coulter's accusations notwithstanding), but that people conceive of God as a male, rather than as a Being either undivided by sex or combining both sexes--either asexual or bisexual, as a Creative and Omnipotent Force logically must be."<br />
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Well, no. A scriptural view of God is neither asexual nor bisexual, but better non-sexual. That God represented himself in a male gender (though clearly not in a sexual sense) throughout scripture (in particular Jesus' references to the Father) may not fully make sense to us, but it cannot be dismissed as simply out of style. To go there is to finally say that nothing in the scriptural text really matters at all if we decide we have found a paradigm that "speaks to us" in a more attractive way today. That's not the lordship of Jesus; it's merely hijacking Jesus for a different agenda. That the hijacker comes from the left instead of the right is not progress.<br />
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McElvaine claims that "on one point after another, what Jesus is urging on us are behaviors more commonly associated with women than with men: gentleness, compassion, and forgiveness." He presents this as evidence we need to acknowledge the feminine side of God. He doesn't seem to realize that when he makes a claim like this, he's actually reinforcing the same crap he combats: <i><b>those traits are only "feminine" if we acknowledge that the ascription of power traits to the man, and caring traits to the woman, is in fact valid!</b></i><br />
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BULLSHIT!!!<br />
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It's not "feminine" when I hug and kiss my boys. It's not "masculine" when my wife disciplines them. It's not "masculine" if a woman like Jael in the old testament or Margaret Thatcher in England leads a war. It's not "feminine" when a man gently tends to the bruises--physical or psychological--of a friend. I'll say it again: if one argues for a "feminine" side of God due to the compassionate and caring traits we see in scripture, then one is giving (undeserved) support to the whole notion of "masculine" and "feminine" traits that really HAS caused a great deal of heartache in our world.<br />
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The gender wars have left a lot of casualties. Soon, I'm going to take on this issue as it relates to the church. But if we're ever going to make headway in this, as in so many other issues, we've got to face the reality that the answers have been wrong, not least because the questions have themselves been wrong. In this, McElvaine has done the dialog no good.Dan Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01635080266346679464noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5111802929460493692.post-26605140275790068492010-09-09T16:31:00.000-07:002010-09-09T16:31:52.803-07:00Rightly Dividing the Word -- A Summary<i>I was under the illusion that I had completed my occasional <a href="http://nailtothedoor.blogspot.com/search/label/Biblical%20inspiration">series on Biblical Inspiration</a> until several friends pushed back on my <a href="http://nailtothedoor.blogspot.com/2010/04/rock-your-faith-few-core-tenets.html">"ROCK"</a> summary of my faith distinctives. Reading back over my posts I see that I never really wrapped up my position, so this is a shot at doing so. I shall not attempt to fully justify my position in this post; interested readers may want to go back to earlier posts in this series for more of the foundation behind what I'm claiming here.</i><br />
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In contrast to most Evangelical statements of faith, I reject the claim that the Bible--either the Protestant or Catholic canon--is the Word of God. In fact, I believe that insistence on treating the Bible as God's Word is at the root of a great deal of error, as well as the foundation for many "endless controversies" that both create division and strife within the body of Christ, and drive many who otherwise might believe, from the faith. The dogma of "Verbal and Plenary Inspiration" (VPI) and its variants (including the companion dogma of "inerrancy") tend to lead to what I call a "flat book" interpretation of the Biblical texts, whereby any phrase, anywhere in the text can become the foundation (dare I say, the pretext?) for doctrine, often without regard to either its textual or historical context. But beyond the errors of "flat book" interpretation, I primarily object to calling the Bible the Word of God because to do so is, on the very face of it, UNbiblical. At its worst, this error devolves to Bibliolatry--ascribing divine status to an object. Listen carefully to the arguments on VPI from many Evangelicals and you'll find they're often not far from Bibliolatry. <br />
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<i><b>The Bible does not call itself God's word--therefore, neither should we.</b></i> Specific places--particularly the prophets with their "Thus saith the LORD" declarations, highlight that at the particular point thereby designated, they are repeating God's word. If we believe anything at all about Jesus' divinity (a topic for another time), then Jesus' own words certainly rise to the level of God's words...and of course Jesus himself is described as the Word of God become flesh. The apostle Paul referred to "all scripture" as "theopneustos" ("God-breathed?"or "God's breath?" Paul unfortunately coined a term or borrowed a rare one, and neglected to define it); however, careful thought makes it quite obvious that whatever Paul was referring to by "all scripture," he wasn't prospectively endorsing our current canon.<br />
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In contrast to flat-book Bibliolatry, I hold to what I have come to describe as a "Word of God hermaneutic" which I have also described as "Rightly Dividing the Word." In choosing this phrase, I freely admit that I've borrowed a phrase from the King James version of 2 Tim 2:15, even though the Elizabethan English phrase "rightly dividing" does not mean what I think it means (inconceivable!). I find it a helpful way of encapsulating the notion that we are to approach scripture in an inquiring mode, searching within its texts for that subset which actually is God's word. As a rule of thumb, I hold to a hierarchy of authority among the texts, where the words of Jesus as reported in the Gospels take supremacy, and shortly behind them, the words of the prophets where they explicitly highlight their message as the "Word of the LORD." Explicative works like the epistles follow behind these, and historical reporting still further behind, with wisdom and poetry such as Proverbs and Psalms bringing up the utmost rear (well, along with apocalyptic literature which frankly nobody really understands any more).<br />
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This is not to state that the rest of the Bible is either false or untrustworthy. In particular with the Gospels, I find a great deal that leads me to the belief that they are the honest accounts of faithful human witnesses to Jesus' words and actions. The Old Testament historical writings I'm less sure about, in that they so patently include stuff that seems awfully similar to the jingoistic, prejudiced attitudes that many similarly-ethnocentric peoples have displayed throughout history. But here I argue principally that <i><b>unless interpreting a text has demonstrable bearing on the life of the disciple of Jesus, it's really not that important just how true it is, or isn't. </b></i>(please take note I said the "life," not the "thought," of the disciple)<br />
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Valuable teaching can still be gleaned from much that is not the Word of God...for that matter from much that isn't in the Bible at all. But we must learn to reserve the stamp of the divine for that which merits it. When we do, our priorities tend to skew somewhat differently than those which hold sway in contemporary (and much historic) Christian thought. It really IS all about Jesus!Dan Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01635080266346679464noreply@blogger.com0