Nailing it to the door. . .

Check out our new site!

2011-06-18T06:36:00.000-07:00

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 http://nailtothedoor.com. There, you can follow us on Facebook and Twitter as well as just checking out our new posts.

Recent posts include:

Life is Not a Game of Chess, by Dan
Are Theology Debates about Fear or Faith? by Ben
Why You Should Practice Sabbath, by Ben
The Church Virtual? by Dan
The Bible is an Invitation to... by Ben
The Ten Commandments - American Style (a graphical essay) by Dan

We look forward to seeing you carry on with us as we continue Nailing it to the Door!

Grace & peace,

Dan

Nailing it to the Door has moved!

2011-05-24T17:06:00.000-07:00

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 http://nailtothedoor.com. 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!

For all of you who've been "Left Behind"

2011-05-22T05:54:00.000-07:00

I encourage you to pop over to my friend Kurt Willems' blog and read his post If You're Reading This Post, You've Been "Left Behind." 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.

Nailing it to the Door is becoming a joint venture!

2011-05-21T17:57:00.000-07:00

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.

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.

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.

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!

Why The Rapture Didn’t Happen Today and it Probably Never Will

2011-05-21T16:27:00.000-07:00

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.

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.

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.

It is very difficult to find any evidence of ”rapture” eschatology prior to Darby’s teaching it beginning in 1831.

So why has it become mainstream?
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.

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?

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:

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.

In Judaism this is referred to as the "Tikkun Olam" or the repair of the world.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

To quote Martin Luther “If I knew Jesus was coming back tomorrow I’d go plant a tree.”

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.

Food for thought - Greg Boyd on why Determinism must be false

2011-05-02T18:09:00.000-07:00

I've said before that Greg Boyd has produced some really good arguments on the Open View of God. Greg's got a great post 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!

Greg is actually responding to a previous New York Times article entitled Do You Have Free Will? Yes, It's the Only Choice. 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.

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!

Does God Change? Part 2 of 2

2011-04-27T09:59:00.000-07:00

In my previous post 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.

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.

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 nacham, 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).

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 nacham 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.

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:

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.’

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 (nacham 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."

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.

Did God really abandon Jesus on the cross?

2011-04-22T06:54:00.000-07:00

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.

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.

Trouble is, they’re likely wrong.

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.

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):

For kingship belongs to the Lord,
and he rules over the nations.
All the prosperous of the earth eat and worship;
before him shall bow all who go down to the dust,
even the one who could not keep himself alive.
Posterity shall serve him;
it shall be told of the Lord to the coming generation;
they shall come and proclaim his righteousness to a people yet unborn,
that he has done it.

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!

But God saw it. He’s not in the habit of turning his back on anybody!

And don’t forget, in the words of the inimitable Tony Campolo, “it’s Friday, but Sunday’s a-comin’!”

Misplaced Passion

2011-04-18T10:57:00.000-07:00

In recognition of holy week, I’m going to resurrect a piece I wrote five years ago at Easter, after I saw the film The Passion of the Christ. 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 (Surprised by Hope – 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).

Passion 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."

I object to the content of the Passion 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 Passion 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.

Though the film was neither unique nor original in this regard, Passion’s 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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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. . .the defining elements of faith are Jesus' lordship and his resurrection.

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.

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.

Christians of all stripes need to go on the offensive proclaiming the living 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!

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.

He is risen indeed!

Sola Scriptura -- Really!

2011-03-21T16:02:00.000-07:00

Sola Scriptura (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 Five Solas. 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.

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.

Sola. Scriptura.

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:

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.

(Even with "core" doctrine, I caution the reader with my previous warning about creeds).

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.

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 in matters of dogma, there must be no such thing as an extrabiblical authority. 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:

"Here I stand. I can do nothing else, so help me God."

So, do you trust the Holy Spirit, or not?

2011-03-03T14:56:00.000-08:00

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?

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 I've pointed out before, 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 other 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.

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."

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?

And for those who aren't 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) AFTER we have joined ourselves to Jesus and his church, not before!

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.

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? Do you trust the Holy Spirit, or not?

No one comes to the Father but by me...

2011-02-28T16:08:00.000-08:00

I am the way , and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

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.

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..."

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 do what they've seen him do and more, "so that the Father may be glorified in the Son."

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!

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 my friend Kurt's blog today!)

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.

Every Christian ought to be a muslim (but not the way you think)!

2011-02-23T14:56:00.000-08:00

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.

So I repeat my title statement: Every Christian ought to be a muslim. 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.

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 "kuzunguka" 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.

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." Jesus is our ultimate example of submission, "islam," to God.

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 "the God of Abraham, Jesus, and Mohammad."

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.

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.

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.

Peace/Shalom/Salaam!

Tempted as we are?

2011-01-25T16:03:00.000-08:00

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!).

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" (ἁμαρτία, "hamartia") 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.

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.

OK, so what do we do with this apparent contradiction? I see three possibilities:

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.

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.

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).

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 Young's Analytical Concordance, the original word here (πειράζω, 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.

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!

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 is 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 my Mom put it last year, "he didn't flunk!"

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.

If Spirit = Breath, what of Theopneustos?

2010-12-06T17:50:00.000-08:00

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 (see this post 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).

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 source of "all scripture" (I've previously argued--1 & 2--that this statement cannot legitimately be 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.

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.

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.

The Holy Spirit - Part 2: When and Where?

2010-12-05T13:38:00.000-08:00

In my last post 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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 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.

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?"

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 believe 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?

The Holy Spirit - Breath of God

2010-11-29T17:59:00.000-08:00

I 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.

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. I have previously suggested 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 from God).

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:

"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."

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).

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.

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 Apostles' Creed 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 live a certain way, influenced by the wind of his Father blowing through us.

Confronting homelessness in person

2010-11-12T04:44:00.000-08:00

Just 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.

You can read about his effort on 11alive.com, or even better read his own thoughts at his blog, The Waiverly Projects. I encourage you to visit, comment, and if possible, donate!

An Open Letter to Christopher Hitchens

2010-10-14T15:03:00.000-07:00

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.

Dear Mr. Hitchens,

I'm a Christian, and I'd like to apologize to you.

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.

I'm sorry.

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.

I'm sorry.

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.

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.

I'm sorry.

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.

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.

Sincerely,

Dan Martin

Christopher Hitchens Interview -- More evidence bad theology drives people away from Jesus

2010-10-13T14:47:00.000-07:00

I heard a great feature 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.

I was struck by a statement Christopher made in the interview:

"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."

Wow. This sounds like exactly the frustration I expressed after reading Robert Heinlein's book Job: A Comedy of Justice. As I described in my essay on the book, 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.

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?

The Gospel According to Heinlein, or Why Christians are sometimes God's worst enemies...

2010-10-05T15:35:00.000-07:00

Over the past few days I read Robert A. Heinlein's 1984 book Job: A Comedy of Justice. 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 Job a fun read.

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.

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.

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:

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?"

"That's correct. I hit it lucky. For I had racked up quite a list of sins before then."

"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..."

"...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." (Hardcover edition, pp.291-292)

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: the God that is portrayed by much of traditional Christian teaching is not just. 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.

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."

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.

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?

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 your testimony of Jesus and ultimately reject him (as some will), are they rejecting the real thing?

Grand Theft Jesus - Part 2 - "All About Eve"

2010-09-20T14:40:00.000-07:00

In my previous review 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.

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.

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:

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 innocent 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 woman!

And that, at the most basic level, is what is wrong with our first birth--it is from a woman.

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!

And then it gets really weird...

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!

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):

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."

Of course, McElvaine's death-defying leap into the metanarrative of female subjugation overlooks a few obvious points about the actual Genesis myth, including

The fact that Adam and Eve are told to be fruitful and multiply--presumably requiring sex--before the fall (Gen 1:28), and
The fact that Adam was placed in the garden to till and care for it, also before the fall (Gen 2:15).

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.

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."

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.

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: 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!

BULLSHIT!!!

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.

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.

Rightly Dividing the Word -- A Summary

2010-09-09T16:31:00.000-07:00

I was under the illusion that I had completed my occasional series on Biblical Inspiration until several friends pushed back on my "ROCK" 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.

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.

The Bible does not call itself God's word--therefore, neither should we. 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.

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).

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 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. (please take note I said the "life," not the "thought," of the disciple)

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!

Book Review - Grand Theft Jesus (Part 1)

2010-09-03T16:24:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading the book Grand Theft Jesus -- The Hijacking of Religion in America by Robert S. McElvaine. I really expected to love the book: after all, he starts out sympathizing with

"the Christian Messiah (as he) looks at the crew of megachurch preachers, televangelists, hypocrites, imposters, snake-oil salesmen, and just plain snakes who have hijacked the name of Christianity, perpetrated identity theft against Jesus, subverted his teachings, transformed his name into a representation of just the opposite of what he stands for, mocked and damned those who advocate what he actually said, and shouted 'Jesus! JESUS! Jeee-SUSS!' at the top of their lungs to distract attention from their crimes against the one they blaspheme."

Anyone who's read more than five minutes in this blog knows I resonate with that sentiment. But despite the fact that the author --in my estimation-- correctly catalogs and decries the manifold abuses of the Religious Right (who he alternatively mocks as the "Irreligious Wrong" or the "Xian Lite"), I found the book an exhausting read. The first three quarters of the book are an unrelenting tirade against the evils of the "Christian" Right and their outright distortions of the message of Jesus, and however well-deserved McElvaine's accusations may be, I started feeling like I was just reading a left-wing equivalent of Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter. That may be refreshing to some...and if I defined what is wrong with conservative Christianity primarily by its being associated with the "wrong" wing, maybe I'd like it. But I'm getting to the point where I'm tired of nastiness and ad-hominem regardless of whether I like the target (or the attacker) or not.

Don't misunderstand me. I remain firmly convinced that a great deal that passes for conservative Christianity in America today is misguided at best and idolatrous at worst. I am deeply offended at the hatred and bloodshed and plain-old meanness that are frequently perpetrated by those who loudly shout the name of Jesus. I've said before, and it's still true, that if all I knew of Jesus came from what I've seen of Christians, I wouldn't be one either.

But replacing right-wing vitriol with left-wing vitriol, to me, is not progress. If you feel the same, I suspect you, like me, would find Grand Theft Jesus to be an unpleasant read.

There are other issues. In the last two chapters of the book, McElvaine does some spectacularly sloppy exegesis of Genesis 1-3 and comes up with a truly mind-bending screed against the male domination of society in general and religion in particular. I'll get into that in a separate post.

But for now, I'll just say that while I'd probably enjoy a lively discussion over multiple beers with McElvaine, I cannot recommend his book. More's the pity too!

Does God Change? Part 1 of 2

2010-07-18T17:54:00.000-07:00

Last week in Sunday School we had a big discussion (started by yours truly, I'm afraid) as to whether or not God ever changes his mind. It came out of the account in 1 Sam. 15:11, where God states that "I regret that I have made Saul king..." Our teacher stated "well, we know God can't really regret anything he did, because God doesn't change his mind." His defense, of course, was that God doesn't change, period, and the Bible says as much.

Well, it does and it doesn't. In this post I'm going to look at some of the "proof texts" that suggest God DOESN'T change, and in the next one I'll examine "proof texts" that suggest he DOES. My hope is that by looking at the context for both, we can get a consistent picture besides "the Bible is paradoxical on this point" (although that, too, would be a valid conclusion).

So, let's have a look. Since this was a Presbyterian church, I'll start with a prooftext linked from the Westminster Confession of Faith, James 1:17 (all quotes ESV):

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.

This sounds pretty straightforward, doesn't it? But what does it say in context? Take a look at the whole passage, James 1:2-17. James is contrasting God's not changing, with the "double-minded man" of verse 8, and even more so he's objecting to the notion somebody must've promulgated, that God might actually tempt someone (verse 13). In this context, James is saying that God doesn't pull the dirty trick of tempting someone to violate a divine law...rather people's own desires lead them to sin (v. 13-14). "God doesn't change" here is evidence that God doesn't pull a fast one on his people.

A second passage that was quoted by one of our class on Sunday was Malachi 3:6-7:

For I the Lord do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed. From the days of your fathers you have turned aside from my statutes and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you, says the Lord of hosts...

Of course, all my friend read was the first half of verse 6: "I the LORD do not change." But the context makes it clear that God's not talking about some overarching notion of immutability here, but about the fact that he keeps his covenants (see Malachi 2:4-5). God, unlike the faithless Israelites (see Mal. 2:10-11). So here again, God's unchanging nature is set in clear contrast to human fickleness and faithlessness. "I do not change" here means "I keep my word."

My friend also quoted Numbers 3:19:

God is not man, that he should lie,
or a son of man, that he should change his mind.
Has he said, and will he not do it?
Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?

Actually, here again my friend only quoted the first half of the verse. The second half makes the statement far more clear, and specific. God says the truth, and does what he says. This is actually part of Balaam's oracle. Remember that Balaam was hired by Balak the king of Moab, to come out and curse Israel so that they (Israel) wouldn't kick their (the Moabites') butts the way they had the Amorites (see Num. 22:1-6). After a truly funny story about Balaam's misadventures, he gets up to the cursin' place and blesses Israel. Balak, not surprisingly, is peeved, and asks Balaam why he didn't do what he was paid to do. Balaam's answer is that God doesn't go back on his word and curse those he promised to bless. So again, we have a pattern here. God sticks to his promises.

There are more verses to look at, I'm sure. I chose these because they were represented in several articles, people's Bible footnotes, and in my discussions, as the classic proofs that God can't possibly change. Taken in context, I'd have to say, if this is all the better they can do, I'm not convinced. As some wag has said before, a proof text is a text lifted out of context as a pretext. Restoring the context, at least in these verses, suggests to me a much more limited interpretation for the passages...and a very consistent one:

God, unlike man, can be trusted!

Profound confusion

2010-07-17T07:59:00.000-07:00

Hey everybody, I know I've been silent for an awful long time...I've been in the process (not yet completed) of a job change and a move from San Jose to Atlanta. I will break my silence soon, in fact I have a study in the works, but gotta get a little time to breathe first.

But I had to share the following anonymous quote from my parents' fridge (and multiple sites around the web). While it was probably stated by a scientist, it could apply equally well to theology or philosophy:

I fully realize that I have not succeeded in answering all of your questions... Indeed, I feel I have not answered any of them completely. The answers I have found only serve to raise a whole new set of questions, which only lead to more problems, some of which we weren't even aware were problems. To sum it all up... In some ways I feel we are confused as ever, but I believe we are confused on a higher level, and about more important things.

ROCK your faith! A few core tenets. . .

2010-04-27T21:30:00.000-07:00

I've been chewing over a variety of theological ideas with you all over the approximately year and a half that I've been blogging. These have been supplemented by long conversations with my good friend Ben (who's not blogging theology right now), as well as a variety of books I've mentioned.

Ben and I have come to the realization that four key concepts do a pretty good job of summarizing where we're departing from the Evangelical mainstream, and in these four areas we find a clear call to re-focus our faith. The mnemonic "ROCK" helps me to think about them:

Rightly dividing the word - The concept that the Bible contains many words of God, though it is not, in its entirety "the Word of God." Carefully, prayerfully, and in fellowship with others, discerning the words of God within the Biblical texts and narrative, is important to understanding God's priorities and commands.

Open View of God & the future - Though it is wildly unpopular in orthodox Evangelical circles, the notion that God has released the control of certain decisions to his creation, and actually experiences those things unfolding in time, is a liberating perspective. It completely does away with the determinism of predestination, as well as a lot of the theodicy arguments of why a good God allows evil. In its place we find God interacting with his creation in a dynamic and sacrificial way, suffering with those who suffer even as he ministers to their wounds, or commissions his people so to minister. In the Open View, God calls us to work because he has work he ACTUALLY WANTS US TO DO.

Christus Victor as the model for atonement, within the context of a Warfare Worldview: This perspective recognizes that sin is not merely the failings of humans, but the corruption of a whole swath of creation (maybe all of it) by God's enemies, the Principalities and Powers of which the New Testament writers spoke. Jesus' death and (more especially) resurrection were key battles in that war, in which we are now engaged with God in fighting to take back territory and citizens occupied and enslaved by the enemy. Paradoxically, as the weapon of Jesus' victory was to take on death and defeat it by rising anew, so our greatest weapon is to take on hatred and defeat it with his love, for our weapons are not carnal.

Kingdom citizenship - We understand the salvation of Jesus not to be simply a future escape from earth to heaven, but rather his naturalizing us into citizenship in his kingdom (the new creation) here and now. As God breathed into Adam the breath of life in the first creation, so Jesus breathes into his disciples the Breath (Spirit) of new life in the new creation. With our new citizenship we are now aliens in this present enslaved world, and we (individually as citizens, and collectively as embassies or outposts of the kingdom) are called to work as reconciling ambassadors and members of a divine resistance, participating with Christ to take back his territory and his people from the slavery under which they now live. Our goal is not to get people "believing" in a "religion;" it's to help people to recognize who is their true king--to bow the knee to Jesus as Lord now, and then to join us as citizens of Jesus' growing kingdom.

These four concepts have the capacity to ROCK some dearly-held doctrines. But I hope the will also ROCK a few lives and maybe even ROCK a church or two! ROCK on!

McLaren - "A New Kind of Christianity" - Thoughts on John 14:6

2010-04-23T21:22:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I discussed at length my criticism of Brian McLaren's perspective on homosexuality, and to some extent sexuality in general, in his book A New Kind of Christianity. Today I want to laud a point that McLaren has gotten absolutely right, in chapter 19 of the same book, entitled "The Pluralism Question: How Should Followers of Jesus Relate to People of Other Religions?" Here I'll start by letting Brian speak for himself:

"When I'm asked about pluralism in my travels, I generally return to Jesus' simple teachings of neighborliness such as the Golden Rule, saying something like this: 'Our first responsibility as followers of Jesus is to treat people of other religions with the same respect we would want to receive from them. When you are kind and respectful to followers of other religions, you are not being unfaithful to Jesus, you are being faithful to him.' Then I ask them how they would want people of other religions to treat them. They typically say things like: 'I would want them to respect my faith, show interest in it and learn about it, not constantly attack it, find points of agreement they could affirm, respectfully disagree where necessary--but not let disagreement shatter the friendship, share about their faith with me without pressuring me to convert, invite me to share my faith with them, include me in their social life without making me feel odd,' and so on. After each reply, I generally say, 'That sounds great. Go and do likewise.'" (pp 211-212)

McLaren then says that often people's next question is something on the order of "What about John 14:6?" You all know that one..."No one comes to the Father but by me." I, too, have heard (and for a long time believed) this phrase of Jesus' was the principal defense against universalism in the Bible. Only problem is, and here Brian is spot-on, there is nothing at all in the context of that statement, that gives us any evidence at all that Jesus was making a claim of exclusivity when he said it. Quite a different conversation was going on at that point, where Jesus had just been telling his disciples of his impending departure and death, and telling them they couldn't follow him just now, but that they still knew the way to the Father. Thomas had just interrupted that no, they DIDN'T know the way (for that matter, they didn't know what the heck he was talking about). Jesus' answer in John 14:6 is "but you DO know the way, I AM the way." To use this verse, woefully out of context, as the trump cards in an argument of "my religion is better than yours", is doing complete violence to any reasonable reading of the text.

In this chapter, McLaren makes a compelling case for the notion that introducing people to Jesus is not the same thing as converting them to the religion of Christianity (in this vein, I have had some pretty conservative Evangelicals tell me of places in the world where Muslims, Buddhists, and Hindus are choosing to follow, love, and worship Jesus without giving up their respective religious practices). He is not arguing universalism, though some may accuse him of that (his footnote #32 on p. 292 makes this abundantly clear). He is, however, saying something you might have heard before on this blog (see my entire series on hell), that where you go when you die isn't the point of calling people to Jesus, and that John 14:6 is not talking about where ANYBODY goes when they die.

Book in progress - "A New Kind of Christianity" by McLaren

2010-04-21T09:08:00.000-07:00

I'm still in process of reading Brian McLaren's A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions that are Transforming the Faith, and for the most part I really appreciate it. McLaren coherently describes the conventionally-accepted framework of the Biblical narrative, which he calls the "Greco-Roman model," and contrasts it with a narrative that takes into account the story of God's calling and working through the Jews leading up to Jesus. He is likewise helpful in posing the contrast between Bible-as-constitution (his characterization of the various "inerrancy" approaches), and Bible-as-library, an approach that takes the breadth and nuance of biblical writers into account. He's at his best, IMO, in his discussion of the centrality of Jesus and the gospels as the lens/filter/paradigm through which all scripture, both Old Testament and Epistles, must be read.

Unfortunately, I can't recommend the book unreservedly, because peppered throughout nearly every chapter, McLaren can't seem to get away from a need to throw in comments that essentially paint the gay rights agenda as the civil rights moral issue of the day. Again and again, he lumps "homophobia" (a sloppy word if I ever saw one) with slavery, apartheid, Jim Crow, and the like, as places where the church has been on the wrong side of history and justice.

I haven't read other writing by McLaren, so perhaps I missed an argument he's made more coherently somewhere else. I don't presume to understand where he's coming from on this. But he seems to have made a category mistake that I find all too frequently among Christians who are recovering from their fundamentalist afflictions, of accepting without critique the claim that homosexuality is an identity, and therefore issues of how we respond to gays are necessarily civil and human rights issues. Wholly unconsidered (at least in the present book) is the notion that homosexual practice might, in fact, still be sinful even if one is not a right-wingnut (As I have previously written, I suggest that gay practice is simply a subset of adultery, which remains equally unacceptable for the believer whether straight OR gay).

I'm sorry to say that this constant drumbeat distracts from an otherwise-helpful and -challenging set of questions that the church would do well to consider. That said, if you can see past the distraction, I do recommend the book.

Edit: Well, I was wrong about the argument being somewhere else---I just read Chapter 17 over lunch, where McLaren goes through his argument in greater detail. I would not say his argument is compelling, though it is indeed interesting, as he makes the case that a binary (just male and female) sexuality is an "ideal concept" a-la Plato just as much as some of the Greco-Roman notions of God are Platonic rather than Biblical. He goes on to basically say that our more nuanced understanding of biology today militates against such simplistic reading of sexuality.

McLaren then points out--quite correctly according to my reading--the fact that Christians in general, and Evangelical Christians in particular, seem little different from everyone else regarding sexual practice (premarital/extramarital sex, divorce), though perhaps we experience more guilt and conflicted feelings than others. He concludes by suggesting that perhaps we need as a church to re-examine the whole concept of sexuality based on our current base of knowledge and centered in the love of Jesus. He seems (to me at least) to leave open the notion that even serial or contemporaneous polyamory/polygamy, as well as the spectrum of GLBT issues, might not be outside the pale of Jesus-followers' practice in this new consideration. In fact, I'm not sure he believes there's any place for sexual mores EVEN AMONG THE COMMUNITY OF BELIEVERS in the light of current biology and loving Jesus' way.

McLaren is correct that religion has been the bastion of a lot of stick-in-the-mud, head-in-the-sand obstinacy. In this chapter he reminds us of the church's opposition to everything from Galilean and Copernican cosmology to South African apartheid. But I think he, too, needs to be confronted with a question: Are you saying that just because constitutionalist church hierarchies have insisted on a thing, that it must necessarily be wrong? And how is this different from the Corinthian church Paul was blasting in 1 Corinthians 5?

I will reiterate that McLaren asks a lot of useful questions in this book...questions the church needs to confront. But I think he's gone over the edge on the sexuality issue, and he seems to me to have forgotten that Jesus, while loving and associating with "sinners," still called them to "sin no more." The conservative church still needs to be called to account for its demands that the unredeemed world start acting like they say Christians should act, before they can be "saved." But dismissing all acknowledgment of a moral standard is not going to help get that message across.

God or Mammon?

2010-04-06T08:31:00.000-07:00

My brother Dave's blog is primarily about economics, mine primarily about theology. But I have got to highlight to you guys, this post in which Dave quite properly calls out some of the ways in which church institutions seem to have forgotten which deity they ought to serve (Matt. 6:19-24).

Churches sometimes talk a good game about justice, and even do great works for justice. But who stops to think about what their investment and property holdings say about justice? Dave points out some flagrant examples in New Guinea where he's done extensive work. . .I would suggest that a look closer to home, even to the lavish "worship centers" we build and equip, would be equally valid. Where, then, is our treasure?

He is Risen, He has Conquered, He Rules!

2010-04-04T12:09:00.000-07:00

Christos Anesti! Christ is Risen!

A joyous Easter to each of you. This is the day when we celebrate Jesus' victory over the powers and their grip on the world, for in raising Jesus from the dead, the Father achieved victory over the ultimate weapon of evil - death and our fear of death.

I was thinking this morning in church. . .we often look at the Genesis story of the fall as being the point where death entered the world, and to some extent we are supported in that view by Paul's comments in Romans 5. However, if we look at the biology of life, can we really say nobody would have died without the fall? I wonder if perhaps Tolkein had it right (though he was writing fiction) when he portrayed death as God's GIFT to man: to be the transition whereby man passes from earthly life into a newer and closer existence with God, but that death itself became corrupted when man chose his own path to immortality instead of God's.

I wouldn't take this too far, in that we really don't know all the details, but perhaps it wasn't (and isn't) biological death that is or ever was the enemy, but rather that death of that sort got corrupted along with everything else in creation and thereby became our enemy as it became a tool for separation from, rather than approach to, God.

This would make sense out of the fact that we still die, even as believers, but we need not fear death because in Jesus, death is not the end of the story. The grave has not been eliminated, but it HAS been defanged: "O death, where is thy sting?" This is why John of Patmos was able to write in Rev. 14:13: "Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on. 'Blessed indeed,' says the Spirit, 'that they may rest from their labors, for their deeds follow them!'”

So rejoice in the knowledge that your king defeated the enemy's ultimate weapon of mass destruction--death as separation from God--and now invites us to live in, and work for his Kingdom from now until that Kingdom overtakes the entire fallen world.

The Kingdom of Jesus Christ - Rebels Wanted!

2010-03-24T14:34:00.000-07:00

One aspect of the Kingdom of God that we often misunderstand, is that this Kingdom is at war. The Genesis creation story teaches us that God originally created the cosmos as his own domain, and specifically on Earth, he placed his image-bearers as viceroys--rulers in his stead--and stewards of that domain. However, a deceitful enemy tempted humans to disobey their creator, and through a process we describe as "the Fall," seized control of God's good creation. Since that time, through various tactics and strategies, God and those forces loyal to him have been engaged in warfare with the enemy, fighting to retake God's lost territory.

Citizens of God's Kingdom are soldiers in that battle; not with conventional human weapons, but with weapons nonetheless (2 Cor. 10:3-6), pulling down strongholds and taking territory for the Kingdom. But just as our weapons are not of the flesh, the strongholds we attack are not ordinary land territory, but rather "every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God" (v. 5), so more subjects of the kingdom of this world, will place themselves in subjection to the True King.

For what we are really trying to do in evangelism, is not to "save souls from hell," but rather to recruit for the resistance! It is when those enslaved to the Powers renounce their allegiance, are freed from their chains, and place their allegiance in the True King, that the Kingdom advances. Those new recruits are naturalized into citizenship in the Kingdom, renounce their former allegiance, and bear new (different) arms for their sovereign King. They, like we, become ambassadors and soldiers of the King, waging war against the Powers by ministering to the Powers' subjects with the paradoxical weapons of love and peace and kindness and justice.

Kingdom citizens, we are living in enemy territory! From the Bible Belt of the United States to the steppes of Siberia to the jungles of Myanmar to the deserts of Saudi Arabia, this world is the territory of the Prince of this world (Lk 4:5-6), and that Prince is the sworn enemy of the Prince of Peace! There is not, never has been, and never will be a Christian nation. The Christian nation, the Kingdom of God, knows no national boundaries, fights no earthly wars, but seeks recruits from all men everywhere to again acknowledge and serve the one God and his anointed king, Jesus Christ.

The Kingdom of Jesus Christ - of Sanctuary and Flag

2010-03-18T16:51:00.000-07:00

There are perhaps deeper issues I should pursue first, but I'd like to take a look at a couple of highly symbolic elements of the kingdom, and how they aren't commonly practiced in church, although perhaps they should be.

First the element of sanctuary. We all know the word; until the more-hip "worship center" started taking hold in churches that didn't want to sound too "churchy," it was what we called the giant room in most church buildings, where the Sunday morning service was held, and the notion that it was a holy place where people should enter with reverence (and kids should be quiet) is a venerable, if not exactly Biblical, tradition.

But the concept of "sanctuary"--not as restricted space but as refuge--actually has a long and proud history within Judaeo-Christian tradition, and perhaps other faiths as well though I am not familiar with them. 1 Kings 1:50-53 is an example where a man who feared the wrath of the king took refuge in the sanctuary and held onto the horns of the altar for protection. Medieval churches took the concept quite seriously, and for the most part one who had taken sanctuary within a church compound (sometimes the building itself, sometimes the church property as a whole) was out of reach of the civil law as long as he remained there. Part of the scandal of St. Thomas More's murder was that he was slain in the sanctuary at prayer. In modern times, some churches in the United States have declared themselves to be sanctuaries for illegal aliens, although I do not know how successful they've been with American civil authority.

But whether the civil law honors the concept or not, I think it might be helpful to think of the church facility in the terms of an embassy. Though embassies are obviously built on the soil of the host country, international law holds that the embassy is the sovereign territory, not of the host country, but of the country it represents. Recognizing that we are "Christ's ambassadors" (2 Cor. 5:20), might it not be reasonable to consider our church facilities as embassies of the Kingdom of God? This concept could take a lot of unpacking, but the notions that the church provides protection even for the "sinner" who seeks it, is not so far from the gospel if you think about it. Contemplate: the malefactor who's taken refuge in a holy Sanctuary (1) is unable to inflict damage on the wider society since he has effectively confined himself; and (2) while there, will inevitably be exposed to the love of God and of Kingdom ambassadors throughout his sojourn. . .what effect might that have?

But a corollary to this idea, and one about which I feel quite viscerally, is that the host country flag has no business being displayed in a sanctuary of the Kingdom of God. From all I've heard and seen, this seems to be a particularly American issue; I don't recall seeing flags in the churches I've visited in most other countries, but in American Evangelical churches it's almost de rigueur. And it's wrong, I believe, primarily because Americans (especially, but not only, conservative Christian Americans) treat the flag rather like an idol. But if the church is an embassy of the Kingdom of God, the place the American flag should fly--if at all--is not the platform of the sanctuary, but rather at the front door. Properly taught, this could imbue the door with meaning as the border between two sovereign kingdoms, and could be a helpful reminder to the believers of where their final loyalties must lie. We certainly need to rediscover that, when we go out "into the world," we go as ambassadors, not as citizens.

Roger Williams - A patriot for the rest of us

2010-02-26T14:05:00.000-08:00

I've just finished the book Roger Williams by historian Edwin S. Gaustad. Loaned to me by a friend from church, this brief book is an overview of the life and writings of the man who founded the colony of Rhode Island in the early 17th century. I recommend it to anyone who, like me, is frustrated by the frequent drumbeat among conservative Americans, as to the intent by America's founders to create a Christian nation. Though it's true that some were, Williams (along with William Penn some seventy years later) offers a fascinating counterpoint.

Simply put, Roger Williams was one of the guys that the Massachusetts Bay Colony folks persecuted for not toeing the spiritual line. A devout follower of Jesus, Williams believed firmly in liberty of conscience, and was therefore as offended by the theocratic tendencies of the Massachusetts leaders, as he was by those of the European despots they had fled. Among his particularly interesting positions:

Williams held that the English Crown's grant of land patents was immoral, as the land was already owned by the natives who lived there. If the colonists wanted land, they should buy it from the Indians, not seek it from the King. "In doing this, Williams questioned the very foundation of the colony's government and legitimacy. Williams was especially troubled by the use of the Christian religion to do a very un-Christian deed: namely, depriving the Indians of their own property without due compensation or negotiation. . .Christian kings somehow believe that they are invested with right, by virtue of their Christianity, 'to take and give away the Lands and Countries of other men.'" (p. 9)

Williams also believed that requiring the phrase "so help me God" in an oath in court, was wrong in the case of anyone who was not himself a believer in God. In fact, he argued that to so require was to force the unbeliever, not only to violate his own conscience, but to break the third commandment (against taking the Lord's name in vain) in the process.

For his unorthodox beliefs, Roger Williams was banished from the colony of Massachusetts, and forced to leave to parts unknown in the middle of winter in 1636. He wandered for a while in the wilderness, was offered hospitality by the Narragansett Indians, and finally established residence in what would become the town of Providence, Rhode Island (on land he purchased from the Indians). The colony which grew from these humble beginnings, required as part of its original laws and charters, absolute freedom of conscience in matters of religion. No anarchist, Williams made clear that citizens were still subject to civil governance, but that in matters of the state, the church would have no voice, and vice versa.

Interestingly, his convictions regarding freedom of conscience led Williams to found the first Baptist church in America in 1638. Though he himself left the church after a few months (concluding that the true church would only be re-established when Jesus returned to earth and appointed new apostles), he remained firm in his conviction that membership in both church and faith was a choice to be made by deliberate action of the individual--not a result of birth, christening, or residence (he actually wrote a tract "Christenings Make Not Christians" in 1645--though vitriolically anti-Catholic, it's worth a read considering it challenges the Christianity of good Protestant Englishmen).

There's much more, and I encourage you to get and read the book. . .and next time your friends trot out the writings of Patrick Henry to prove that America started out a Christian theocracy, remember the persecution and struggles of Roger Williams.

"Worship" songs that make us puke. . .

2010-02-18T13:33:00.000-08:00

I just have to put in a plug for a blog of a friend. . .Jonathan has just started a thread on awful "worship" music over at his "Ponder Anew" blog. As he has expressed, it pains me how much content in the stuff we call "worship" is just plain lousy theology.

(Beyond that, I often find it to be bad poetry and sloppy music too, but those are aesthetic considerations and I grant that one person's Picasso is another person's childish scribbles. Nevertheless I hear good music so rarely--almost never in my church--that just the sound of a truly beautiful song, beautifully done, can bring me to tears of hunger. . .but I digress).

Back to the point, however, we really need to learn what worship is--and isn't--and what really is asked of us in scripture. Without getting into it right now (I haven't taken the time to study the subject yet), I would wager that gushing about how cool God is and how fuzzy he makes us feel, is NOT part of the Biblical mandate. . .

And meanwhile, I just hope that God isn't as repulsed by our church services as I am, though when I read Amos 5:21-24 I'm not so sure. . .

The Kingdom of Jesus Christ, Citizenship

2010-02-11T13:34:00.000-08:00

Since the language of "Kingdom" implies citizenship and allegiance, it's instructive to see what the kingdoms of this world think of citizenship. I decided to take a look at the law of the kingdom in which I reside, the United States of America. The basis for defining citizenship in the United States is the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, the first sentence of which reads:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.

Simply, you are a citizen of the U.S. if you were either born here, or naturalized, and are subject to the nation's jurisdiction. Born is easy, and obvious. Naturalization is defined by a completely different and much more complex law. It's also more relevant to our subject of Kingdom citizenship, for the simple reason that nobody becomes a citizen of the Kingdom of God by natural birth. We are all naturalized citizens of the Kingdom of God, if we are citizens at all. While I'm not saying that Kingdom naturalization is identical to American naturalization, there are some interesting parallels we can draw out. You can see the entire Immigration and Nationality Act Title III here, and it's worth a look. The meat of the law is in section 337, subsections (a) and (b):

337 OATH OF RENUNCIATION AND ALLEGIANCE

SEC. 337. [8 U.S.C. 1448]

(a) A person who has applied for naturalization shall, in order to be and before being admitted to citizenship, take in a public ceremony before the Attorney General or a court with jurisdiction under section 310(b) an oath (1) to support the Constitution of the United States; (2) to renounce and abjure absolutely and entirely all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty of whom or which the applicant was before a subject or citizen; (3) to support and defend the Constitution and the laws of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; (4) to bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and (5) (A) to bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law, or (B) to perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law, or (C) to perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law. Any such person shall be required to take an oath containing the substance of clauses (1) through (5) of the preceding sentence, except that a person who shows by clear and convincing evidence to the satisfaction of the Attorney General that he is opposed to the bearing of arms in the Armed Forces of the United States by reason of religious training and belief shall be required to take an oath containing the substance of clauses (1) through (4) and clauses (5)(B) and (5)(C), and a person who shows by clear and convincing evidence to the satisfaction of the Attorney General that he is opposed to any type of service in the Armed Forces of the United States by reason of religious training and belief shall be required to take an oath containing the substance of clauses (1) through (4) and clause (5)(C). The term "religious training and belief" as used in this section shall mean an individual's belief in a relation to a Supreme Being involving duties superior to those arising from any human relation, but does not include essentially political, sociological, or philosophical views or a merely personal moral code. In the case of the naturalization of a child under the provisions of section 322 of this title the Attorney General may waive the taking of the oath if in the opinion of the Attorney General the child is unable to understand its meaning.

(b) In case the person applying for naturalization has borne any hereditary title, or has been of any of the orders of nobility in any foreign state, the applicant shall in addition to complying with the requirements of subsection (a) of this section, make under oath in the same public ceremony in which the oath of allegiance is administered, an express renunciation of such title or order of nobility, and such renunciation shall be recorded as a part of such proceedings.

Of interest here are several points. To become a citizen of the United States, you must swear to:

Suppport the Constitution of the United States;
Renounce the allegiance and claim of any other nation, state, or sovereign;
"Support and defend" the Constitution and laws, and "bear true faith and allegience" to them;
Serve the United States either by bearing arms or noncombatant military or civilian service, when required (note that religious conscientious objection to military service is permitted, but does not excuse the citizen from civilian service)
If you have any title or nobility in your previous citizenship, you must renounce that as well (I never knew this!)

As for analogs to the Kingdom of God, I note that we, too, have a constitution. Though Christians can and do argue about what that constitution actually is (see my series on Biblical inspiration), I would submit that in Jesus' kindgom the Sermon on the Mount is a pretty good candidate. It is also certainly true that we must renounce the claims of other sovereigns if God is our king. . .for Jesus pointed out that we cannot serve two masters (Matt. 6:24), and that no one who throws his lot in with Jesus but turns back is fit for the kingdom (Luke 9:62). While I would argue (and have written) that one cannot take up arms for the Kingdom of God, we are certainly required to serve the King, and Matt. 25:31-46 gives us a pretty good clue what that will look like. It is finally also true that earthly rank is meaningless in the Kingdom of God (Luke 22:24-30 and elsewhere).

The Kingdom of Jesus Christ, Introduction

2010-02-08T13:19:00.000-08:00

I have alluded in various posts up to now, about the notion that Jesus is our king, that he was anointed the same by God the Father, and that we are called to follow and obey him rather than merely to give intellectual assent to some list of propositions about him. In the next few posts I want to ruminate a bit about what this means, and why, even though the majority of those who call themselves "Christians" would agree with what I just said, they actually have very little understanding of what it means.

Strange as it may sound, I'm going to look to earthly nations and kingdoms for some help on the concept. I'm doing this, not because these nations have any similarity to the Kingdom of Christ (heaven knows), but rather because nations DO give us some helpful clues on what concepts like "sovereign," "citizen," and "nation" (or "kingdom") actually mean. For though the kingdoms of this world acknowledge the wrong sovereign, they do know what a sovereign is, and what a citizen's role is vis-a-vis that sovereign. All analogies break down, and these will too, but before they do, I think we can glean some helpful insights.

Just to establish a little foundation, here, we start by acknowledging that Jesus Christ is, in fact, a king. He was prophesied as King of the Jews at his birth (Matt. 2:2), alluded to himself as the ultimate king under the Father (Matt 25:34), was acclaimed king by the people of Jerusalem (Luke 19:38), and he acknowledged the title before Herod (Matt. 27:11) (note that each of these passages have their parallels in the other synoptic gospels). He is finally acknowledged as King of Kings and Lord of Lords in Rev. 17:14 and Rev. 19:6.

Perhaps more importantly, Jesus spent a huge amount of his ministry on earth teaching about the "kingdom of heaven." A quick search in my electronic ESV shows 118 occurrences of the English word "kingdom" in the gospels alone, and a quick glance down through them shows that the vast majority are referring in some form to the "kingdom of God" or "kingdom of heaven." I may unpack those words with a more careful word study at another time, but for now, let us be satisfied that, whether Jesus was referring to himself or his Father as the sovereign (and there are plenty of each), his teaching was rich with the term.

So what's a kingdom? The simplest possible definition I can think of, and one that certainly fits the biblical paradigm, is that a kingdom is a group of subjects or citizens who, along with their property, goods, and territory, are subject to a sovereign. This is a concept we in the democratic West, don't entirely comprehend. As I have discussed before, we live in a nation where, at least in theory and doctrine, it is the collected people who are sovereign, and to a certain extent the individual who is his own sovereign. It's understandable, therefore, that we don't fully grasp the notion that anyone else--even God--has in his very nature the right to command our submission. But he does. And when we acknowledge and submit to his sovereignty, it sets in motion a collection of realities that we need to confront far more directly than most of us have done. It is these realities to which I will turn in future posts.

Must-Read: Mark Siljander's "A Deadly Misunderstanding"

2010-01-15T13:17:00.000-08:00

Today I finished the book A Deadly Misunderstanding by Mark Siljander, and I vigorously recommend it. A former Republican congressman with impeccable conservative credentials, colleague of Newt Gingrich and the "Young Turks" of the Reagan Revolution, Mark was also a staunch conservative Evangelical Christian, solid supporter of Israel and opponent of communists and Muslims wherever they might be found. Challenged not long after an electoral defeat, to find the scriptural basis for his conviction to convert others to Christianity, Mark discovered to his shock that the supposed command wasn't there. But rather than pull back into his comfortable religious shell, Mark did the crazy thing: he learned Greek and Aramaic and started digging into what the original languages of the New Testament actually taught.

Without trying to tell Mark's story for him (which I couldn't anyhow--he tells it too well himself), let me just say that he's a shining example of what can happen when a true believer in Jesus allows for the dangerous possibility that what Jesus said and taught might actually be lived. In Mark's case, that has meant learning Arabic and studying the Qur'an too, and discovering between Quranic Arabic, New Testament Aramaic, and Old Testament Hebrew, that an awful lot of the buzz words our faiths use to keep us apart, are actually the same words--or at least words with the same roots--in the Semitic language family. For example, he demonstrates with some weight, that the Aramaic word "salem" that the Peshitta (Aramaic New Testament) uses to describe repentance and turning to Jesus, is of the same root as the Arabic word for "submission" to God (a Mu-slim is "one who submits or surrenders" to God).

I want to be clear: this is no milquetoast universalist pablum. Siljander is NOT claiming some notion of all roads leading to God. What he's doing is far more careful and well-thought than that. He is demonstrating the frequency with which fundamental--often violent--differences between the Abrahamic faiths are based on ignorance: not only ignorance of the "other's" faith, but all too often ignorance of the actual text and context of our own faith and its creeds. In this, he's coming to a conclusion a Muslim roommate and I (with far less scholarship) came to more than 20 years ago: if both of us and our brothers merely were careful to follow what OUR OWN SCRIPTURES actually said, we'd find a lot of common ground, and at the very least, we couldn't fight each other.

Through story after story, Siljander tells how dealing with the actual person and teaching of Jesus (as opposed to the theological constructs ABOUT Jesus that make up most creeds), has opened doors for loving, peacemaking relations with Muslim, Buddhist, and other religious and political leaders on three continents. This book is a powerful call to live in submission to the Prince of Peace, not in word and doctrine, but in actual love and practice.

Read it!

Why do you "need" God?

2010-01-08T08:58:00.000-08:00

My wife and I finally watched "Fireproof" yesterday. Though preachier than I might prefer, I overall enjoyed it as a well-done and worthwhile movie. I was bothered by the content of the obligatory "Gospel Message" in the middle, though. In usual form, the sage believer lectures the unbelieving hero on how he "can't measure up to God's standard" because he's "broken God's law." The "Gospel," as usual, involves getting the hero to acknowledge that because of his sinfulness, he needs Jesus' redemption.

Nothing new, I grant, but we've gotta get this perspective turned around somehow. While I do not dispute for one minute that Jesus' work frees us from our sin (though I probably mean different things when I use those words), the invitation to Jesus is not, never has been, and should not be centered around sin. People recognize Jesus' lordship first, and only when they realize that, are they convicted of the ways in which they have failed to live as his lordship demands. It's not necessary to acknowledge sin in order to believe...in fact, it's only once we believe that we can understand our sin.

Notice Acts 2 as a great example of this. Peter's excellent sermon does not use the word "sin" once. Nor does it directly mention anything about anybody's guilt. Rather, the climax of Peter's sermon--and the clincher that makes the sale for 3,000 people--is Acts 2:36: "Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified." Yes, people are confronted with the reality of their evil act in crucifying Jesus, not because the crucifixion was a sin (though it was), but rather because Jesus is LORD. Those who did not accept Peter's declaration of Jesus' lordship, certainly did not accept the sinfulness of his crucifixion.

Here, frankly, we could learn something from Islam. Muslims do not invite people to grovel as sinners to come to God. They merely declare (if I may paraphrase) that "there is only one God, you must submit to him; God sent Mohammed as a prophet, you must listen to him." Our declaration should only be slightly different:

There is only one God, and he has raised his son Jesus from the dead and made him King. Now live like it.

If we do that, we will certainly be convicted by ways in which our lives are incongruent with the standards of our King. But that comes only AFTER we've recognized who's king. It's a result, not a condition, of submission to our Lord.

New Testament Word Study on Life

2010-01-06T18:11:00.000-08:00

I wanted to highlight a recent post by my mom over at Pioneers' New Testament, because what she says is actually a useful foundation for some things I'm going to be writing soon. She has just posted a word study on the various Greek words that are sometimes translated as "Life" or "Soul" in the New Testament. I recommend the post, and will add more to the concept soon.

Movie Recommendation - Avatar

2009-12-21T09:24:00.000-08:00

I know it's probably odd for a mostly-theological blog to recommend an entirely-secular movie, but odd has never stopped me yet and I don't think I'll start now. . .I just saw the film "Avatar" with my brother and our sons yesterday, and I have a new addition to my top-ten all-time favorite movies. It's really that good. Not because it's a compelling sci-fi and intercultural story, though it is that. Not because it has the most seamless integration of CGI and live action I've ever seen, though it has that. Not because of breathtaking cinematography or stunning action sequences, though it has both in spades.

No, what makes Avatar leap to the top reaches of my list is the moving way that James Cameron has told the story of the depths to which a military/industrial society will go to obtain the materials that contribute to their (our) consumer economy, and the complete disregard for the lives and cultures that may get in our way. The material in question in the movie is "unobtanium," and the location where it's mined is a habitable moon around a blue gas-giant planet some six years' space travel away from us, but it's also the story of diamonds in Southern Africa, coltan in Congo, gold in Papua New Guinea, and all the other blood-minerals that power our economy.

Watch this movie. Be prepared for an uncomfortable look in the mirror, even as you drink in a stunning exemplar of storytelling--probably Cameron's best ever. And if you don't see 9/11 in the imagery, you're not paying attention. . .

It's rated PG-13 for violence and "sensuality." No question the battles are violent. The sensuality is very low-key in my opinion, unless you consider the nearly-nude (though depicted discretely) forms of the native race to be offensive. The imagery is not sexual, it is natural. The need for parental guidance on this film is not because of the overt material--it's to make sure your teenagers think about the deeper subtexts. And they are thoughts we of the West should contemplate.

The Manhattan Declaration -- I won't be signing it

2009-12-11T08:32:00.000-08:00

A couple of friends have recently pointed me to The Manhattan Declaration with encouragement that I and other like-minded believers should sign on. I won't be signing it, and I encourage my believing friends to think long and carefully about it too. The declaration purports to lay out three principals as particularly important for Christians to support, and to publicly advocate:

the sanctity of human life
the dignity of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife
the rights of conscience and religious liberty.

I actually support all three of these principles, but not in the way the writers of the Manhattan Declaration mean the words. In point of fact, a careful reading of the principals as elucidated in the Declaration makes it abundantly clear that they only mean these things in the American Christian Republican manner, despite their nonpartisan protestation. I say this in particular with regard to points one and three:

The sanctity of life The text of the declaration is unmistakable in its denunciation of abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research, and therapeutic cloning. I agree that abortion and euthanasia are inconsistent with a Jesus-centered life ethic, even though I disagree with most of the particular actions and laws that so-called "Pro-Life" advocates actually push (stem cells and cloning are far less clear-cut IMO). In typical Republican fashion, however, the declaration says nothing about warfare or capital punishment. While I freely grant that there are consistent, Jesus-honoring people who believe that there are times where the Christian may condone both of these, a position that truly considers the sanctity of all human life would have to require that any application of either warfare or capital punishment pass certain tests far more stringent than simply "the government (or at least the good, conservative, Christian, Republican government) says so."

In the case of warfare, a rigid application of just war criteria would have to precede every use of military force, and would require a deliberate and public examination of the causus belli and the actual prosecution of the war. If human life is truly sacred, then the notion of "collateral damage" in warfare should be as horrifying as the notion of infanticide. So, too, should the notion that we go and fight (i.e. kill people) for our "freedom." Nothing but the preservation of life--not lifestyle, but life itself--can possibly justify the taking of other life if human lives are really sacred.

In the case of capital punishment, a Christian perspective should at the very least be in the vanguard of efforts such as the Innocence Project and similar efforts dedicated to making sure no one is wrongfully executed. Quite to the contrary, Christians are often leaders in the enforcement of capital punishment. If human life is truly sacred, then we should go to every conceivable length to make certain that those who go to the gallows are indeed guilty. The notion that courts might actually reject the petition for a DNA test of a capital case is unconscionable.

The Right of Conscience and Liberty This section advocates for the rights of Christians to promulgate and practice their views without government interference. For the most part I agree with this, though when those same Christians attempt to enshrine their views in publicly-sanctioned (or owned) assets it gets a bit murky. I do agree, for example, that Christian hospitals shouldn't be forced to perform abortions, and Christian adoption agencies should be able to screen their placements for families who meet faith criteria (though they should be prepared to give up government subsidies--including tax exemption--when they do). However, there is not a word in this document on the liberty of other religions within America. I know people in my own church who consider Islam to be an "enemy religion" and have said to my face that the Christian West and Muslim nations are inevitably at war. I remember lots of Christians who felt that if Barack Obama were a Muslim (which anyone with a modicum of intelligence knows was false) it should disqualify him from the presidency. The church in America has not been sufficiently vocal on the side of religious tolerance in our own country, and conservative Christians who support documents like the Manhattan Declaration are among the most egregious offenders.

Unlike points one and three, the section on Marriage at least shows some nuance in its acknowledgment that Christians have all too often violated the sanctity of marriage by their divorces and infidelity. In large measure I agree with that section of the Declaration, though if I were to write a declaration of places we believers ought to take a stand, I doubt that the defense of traditional marriage would make my top ten list; it certainly wouldn't make it to the top three.

But until Christians who stand for the sanctity of life mean ALL human life (Jim Wallis of Sojourners calls this a "Consistent Life Ethic" and though I'm not an overall fan of Wallis, he gets that right), I can't endorse their statements on the sanctity of life. And until the right of conscience is defended even for those whose conscience differs from mine--or yours--I can't endorse those statements either.

An interesting take on incarnation and God's chacter

2009-11-12T12:41:00.000-08:00

I just came across an interesting article by Greg Boyd at Christus Victor during my lunch break. In it, Greg outlines several points that he is finding helpful in an attempt to reconcile the peaceful, self-giving portrait of God painted in Jesus Christ, with the violent and even nationalistic God portrayed in the Old Testament. I was particularly struck with Greg's first point, which I quote here:

The Principle of Incarnational Flexibility. If Jesus reveals what God has always been like, then God didn’t start being “incarnational” with the Incarnation. Rather, God has always been willing to humbly “embody” himself within our fallen humanity and has always “borne our sin.” The portrait of Yahweh as a nationalistic, law-oriented, violent-tending warrior god is the result of God condescending to “embody” himself within our barbaric and deceived views of him in order to work toward freeing us from them.

That rings true to me, at least in part. I'm not sure it fully grasps the times in the O.T. where God appears to command violence, however. I still tend to see those more as the result of humans (whether cynically or ignorantly) co-opting God's mantle to promote their own objectives. What do you think?

Re-examining the Trinity - Jesus

2009-11-03T18:05:00.000-08:00

As longtime readers of this blog already know, a number of the issues I have addressed here come from my collisions with classic Evangelical statements of faith. One common element of such statements is a clause on the Trinity. Here's a good example, cribbed from the website of a well-known Evangelical organization:

We believe that there is one God, eternally existent in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

This simple phrase is further amplified by the new EFCA statement of faith:

We believe in one God, Creator of all things, holy, infinitely perfect, and eternally existing in a loving unity of three equally divine Persons: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Having limitless knowledge and sovereign power, God has graciously purposed from eternity to redeem a people for Himself and to make all things new for His own glory.

There's a long tradition behind the notion of Jesus as fully God and fully human, dating at least back to the Nicea, as immortalized in the Nicene Creed:

And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made.

But with all due respect (but no more than due) to the church fathers, I'm not absolutely sure they got it right. There can be no doubt that Jesus represented himself as divine. I refer you to an excellent word study my Mom published over at the Pioneers' New Testament, on the subject of Jesus use of the "I AM" phraseology--a construct that made no sense at all in Greek unless it was hearking back to God's declaration to Moses at the burning bush (Exodus 3:14). There's no reasonable question that his hearers heard Jesus characterizing himself as divine, either, as they tried more than once to stone him for blasphemy when he said it (see John 10:30-33).

Nevertheless, Jesus also, and just as clearly, referred to himself and the Father in language that seems awfully much like he saw God the Father as truly and distinctly other than himself. Take for example Matt. 10:32-33, where Jesus speaks of acknowledging and/or denying people before his father, or Matt. 11:27 where he describes having authority delegated to him by his Father. Or look at Matt. 20:23, where Jesus tells James and John and their mom that the authority to decide who sits at his right and left hand, has been reserved by the father and is "not mine to grant." Perhaps most tellingly, Jesus' prayer to his Father in the garden that the cup of his suffering pass from him, does not sound like a unity of being. These passages all have their parallels in the other gospels; I'm not trying to be exhaustive here, but rather to point out the case that is to be made.

The question, then, is why we must make a big deal out of determining the appropriate Christology to think, in order to be judged a worthy disciple of Christ the King. It took between two hundred and three hundred years for the church to come to the point of carving out the distinction (Nicea was in the early 300s--a time when a lot else got loused up by the church as well). I submit that a healthier, and more biblical approach, would be to live with the tension of Jesus' divinity and his humanity--to recognize that when he referred to there being only one God, he was referring to his Father at the same time that he knew he, also, was begotten by the Father in a divine, non-human sense before creation, and then incarnated as the Word become flesh at a later point in history.

Bottom line, it doesn't take sorting out the finer details of this paradox, to get us down to the business of following him. We would do well to get our priorities in order.

A Personal Story - A Dad Confronts Down syndrome

2009-10-24T19:27:00.000-07:00

Not a judgment, but a job!

Reflections from the dad of a nine-year-old boy with Down syndrome

Daniel W. Martin, September, 2009

In January of 2000, our youngest son Gabe was born. Two days later, his pediatrician informed us that she believed he had Down syndrome, and that she had ordered a karyotype to confirm. I was stunned. I searched for other reasons for each of the traits our doctor had pointed out, willing myself to believe that there was some mistake, and that when the results came back it would all be over. Together with my wife Janine, I grieved and wept as we told ourselves it would be all right, though secretly we each suspected it would not be. I don’t know if I have ever sobbed as deeply and uncontrollably in my life, as I did the first time I actually said out loud, to a family member on the phone, “they think Gabe may have Down’s.”

An awful lot of that grief was for myself. As the reality settled in—confirmed by the blood test—I feared Janine and I would never get to live or travel alone together, ever again. I worried that we would be saddled with a perpetual invalid who would require our constant care and attention. I pitied (as I saw him then) the poor child with the “broken brain” in my arms, pleading with God that, if he never accomplished anything else, Gabe would at least be able to know he was loved.

I was also mightily angry with God. I suspected that somehow, this burden had come to us because I was being taught some lesson. . .not so much as a punishment for anything I had done or been, but that somehow Gabe’s misfortune was God’s way of breaking through to me on something (I never really was sure what). And I was outraged that God would hurt my baby in order to get to me.

In other words, I had no clue.

The nine-year-old Gabe I know today bears not the slightest resemblance to the invalid vegetable of my early, dark vision. Not only does he know he is loved, he expresses his own love with infectious enthusiasm. Just tonight, when I drove into the garage, Gabe met me at the car door, greeted me with a warm embrace, and then led me into the kitchen, shouting to the rest of the family “Hey guys! My Daddy’s home!”

Gabe is known and beloved throughout our circle of friends: at school, where he is included in a third-grade class with a teacher who specifically requested him; at church, where he probably knows more of the congregation than I do; and in our extended family, who adore him. I know of at least two or three young adults who have chosen to study some form of special education or therapy in college, at least in part due to their experience with Gabe. He has shattered stereotypes of mental disability for more people than I can name.

What of my anger at God? Well, at some point in my struggles, it occurred to me that maybe this wasn’t about me at all. I envisioned that there was a purpose for Gabe to fulfill—something that he couldn’t do if he were “normal.” I realized that God had offered me, not a judgment, but an assignment. My job was—and is—to prepare Gabe for his job. It lay to me only to accept the challenge and get to work. It dawned on me that really, this was no different than my responsibility with my “typical” kids. The specifics might vary, but the basic needs and roles were the same. As I internalized this truth, my anger abated.

I have learned a few lessons, though. I’ve become a more compassionate man than I ever was before. I’ve learned to look for the pain and struggle behind other parents’ issues, and I’ve reached out to some of them that I might never have connected with under “normal” circumstances. I’ve learned the vital importance of a network of friends who care enough to share the load. For me, that network has been our family and our church; for others it might be other groups, but I can say without reservation that parents who try to negotiate these waters alone are at a severe disadvantage.

I’d be lying if I said raising a child with Down syndrome—even a high-functioning child—is easy. It’s not. Come to think of it, though, raising any child is no walk in the park. All children, regardless of their abilities, also have their challenges, and they challenge their parents. Nevertheless, I have a richer family, and I am a better man, because of my son Gabe. I love that little rascal. My job’s far from done, but I can tell you that so far, it’s been a rewarding one.

Talking with God . . . ???

2009-10-17T15:43:00.000-07:00

After a post a few weeks ago that some might describe as cynical, I just had to share this tidbit (of which, by the way, I have no memory, nor do I choose to editorialize on it). My Mom sent me a copy of the following meditation, which was published in the November 2, 1965 issue of the Gospel Herald, a Mennonite newsletter:

Out of the Mouth of Babes

by Ruth Martin

Our 2 1/2-year-old Danny just gave me a lesson I hope I shall never forget. While I was cleaning up the breakfast dishes, he occupied himself with his toy telephone.

Trying to decide who to "talk to," he suddenly decided, "I better call Jesus." The following conversation ensued:

"Hello, Jesus. Are you fine?" (Pause)

"Yes, I'm fine too." (Longer pause)

"OK, I will. Bye-bye, Jesus. See ya later."

The little receiver went down with its characteristic tinkle, and Danny went on about his business.

I stopped working, up to my elbows in suds. "Father, help me to pray like that. . . .As naturally as we exchange pleasantries on the phone, obviously more interested in His welfare, His wishes, than my own. And let me teach my little ones as faithfully as you teach me, through them."

Mom tells me she always wondered what transpired on that phone and/or in my mind. Wish I could tell you. . .

Of God and Time

2009-10-09T17:13:00.000-07:00

I will preface this post by saying that from a point of discipleship, what I'm about to say is meaningless. It's also a place where I have no problem if people disagree with me, as long as they are actually considering the foundation of their disagreement. However, it's a point I've encountered in the middle of a variety of discussions on predestination, free will, and other such stuff, and I think it's a good example of people assuming a point as given without the proper consideration.

I refer to the relationship between God and time.

The conventional wisdom seems to be that time--the actual sequential experiencing of things, not merely our units for measuring it--is a part of creation that we experience, but that God himself exists outside of time. Therefore, the notion of whether God foreordained something (say one person's belief or another's unbelief) is actually somewhat academic since God sees past, present, and future in some timeless sense whereby the very notions of past, present, and future don't actually apply to God's experience. It's how at least some folks explain the paradox in Romans 8:29 where God predestined (implying choice) those whom he foreknew (implying awareness of another's choice).

There's really no biblical evidence I can think of that supports this notion, which derives largely (I have heard) from Plato who did believe the ideal God was immutable (that is, unchanging/unchangeable), impassible (that is, unaffected by outside forces, so nothing can influence him) and extra-temporal. In contrast, though, the biblical account is full of instances of God interacting with his creation in ways that clearly show creation influencing the creator--for example Moses' arguments persuading God not to blow the Israelites to smithereens, or God's relenting from the disaster promised to Nineveh--and this in ways that rather clearly suggest that God intended or said one thing but as the circumstance unfolded he went a different way. Such accounts make very little sense in the context of a timeless and immutable God.

But what if time, rather than being a created thing, is rather an element of God's nature itself? Before you get all freaked out on me, let me clarify. I'm not suggesting that time is divine, or that there is a divinity like Father Time of legend. Rather, what if God's nature is to experience an unfolding reality rather as we do, albeit on a much grander and longer scale? God can still be eternal (existing from eternity past, will exist into eternity future) even if he experiences that eternity in an unfolding, progressive sense. But if God actually knows a past, a present, and the possibility of a future just as we (after all, his image-bearers) do, it does put these questions in a completely different light.

For one thing, it makes the possibility of free will truly free. The usual outside-of-time, sees-past-and-future-as-one construct really can't escape the notion that everything we do is in some sense predetermined (I would go so far as to say that I can't really see much room for a middle ground between absolute deterministic Calvinism on one hand and Open Theism on the other). One cannot foreknow an outcome unless that outcome is fixed and therefore subject to knowledge, and no amount of multidimensional babble frees us from that trap.

But it also brings a whole new meaning to prophecy, as I implied before in my post on God's sovereignty. By this I mean that when God foretells the future, he's doing so, not because he "knows what's going to happen" in any passive sense of the word, but rather because he has purposed that this is going to happen. True future-telling prophecy, then, is merely the result of God tipping his hand about something he intends to accomplish; or what is far more likely, God decreeing what he has determined must be. It is true, not because of God's omniscience, but because of his sovereign power.

What do you think? How else would a notion of a timely God rather than a timeless one, impact your theology or world view?

Jesus is all I need ... NOT!

2009-09-19T08:59:00.000-07:00

I just sat through yet another interminable “worship” session this morning, at which song after song repeated one form or another of the notion that “Jesus is all I need” or “Jesus is more than enough for me.” I suppose I’m going to raise serious doubts about my spiritual condition here (nothing new in that), but I’ve just got to say this:

Jesus is NOT enough for me. I believe he could be, but he ain’t!

I bring this up because I have an overwhelming suspicion that I’m not alone here, and more importantly, I really feel for the internal conflict that this (over)emphasis may cause for those who, like me, have not found full satisfaction in their spiritual experience (whereof more below).

So let’s break it down a little bit. What, in fact, does it mean that “Jesus is (more than) enough for me?”

1) Does it mean my physical needs are provided for? Maybe. I just had a new job land in my lap, taking away the very real fear that my former job (at which we were on reduced pay to try & save the company) was going away. My family continues with no lack of income, and for that I’m deeply grateful. . .to God and to those who helped me land the job. My daily bread is still coming.
But what about those who believe in Jesus as much or more than I, but whose physical needs are NOT being met? This could be a failing of their church body, who ought to support each other (a topic for another time), but the harsh reality is that there are people who DON’T have their daily bread, but who diligently seek Jesus. Is Jesus really “all they need?” What about a square meal? Man shall not live by bread alone, but he has a tough time living without ANY bread. . .

2) Does it mean salvation itself? Of course this must be part of it. I’ve written before about the fact that Jesus is the beginning and end of salvation and redemption (but please follow this link to clarify what I mean by salvation; it’s not just fire insurance). I would submit that most churches where I’ve heard the “all I need” language repeated ad nauseum are teaching—by implication if not explicitly—that Jesus without appropriate doctrine is most emphatically NOT enough. This needs examination.

3) Does it mean relationship or friendship or love? Sure sounds like it. And to be perfectly candid, this is one place where I simply have to say “no, Jesus doesn’t cut it here.” I have spent a lifetime believing in Jesus, trusting Jesus, and doing my fallible best to seek to be a disciple of Jesus, but I have never “met” Jesus. I have heard lots of justifications from lots of people, but I’m sorry—I do not accept a definition of “relationship” where the communication is all one-way. Reading a guy’s book and talking into the air believing he hears you, but never seeing his face or hearing his voice in response, does not a relationship make. I accept and acknowledge that God loved the world and gave his son; that Jesus demonstrated his love for “us” collectively in that “while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” (Rom. 5:8). However, “us” collectively, by which I mean the whole of humanity, is not at all the same as a personal relationship with an individual—me.

I value my friendships and relationships highly. My wife Janine is my best friend and I deeply cherish my life with her. Could I survive without her? Sure, but it’d be a severely diminished existence. Likewise, though at a different level, my three children, and a few dear friends around the country. And in a still-different, but significant way, some of the friendships I’ve developed with readers of this blog—you know who you are, and I hope to meet you in the flesh someday. Each of these relationships adds something vital to my existence, and while Jesus may (and probably did) have a hand in my meeting and developing relationships with each of them, Jesus in their absence is NOT enough.

4) Does it mean fulfillment or satisfaction? The context of the singers would suggest as much. But here in particular I take issue with the implication of the songs. I have spent nearly twelve years doing work that, while it’s certainly responsible work for a Christian to do, it has absolutely nothing to do with my passion and desire to serve in health and development for the poorer parts of the world. And with limited time off and remuneration, it doesn’t even provide me a lifestyle that allows me to volunteer in that realm. It may very well be that God is preparing me for something I’m not yet ready to do. . .in fact I want to believe this is so. But the reality is that God has not given me the privilege to see the point of what I’ve been doing for the past decade-plus. I want to trust that I’m in God’s will here, but the harsh truth is that I’m clueless on this point. God hasn’t given me any indication of what else I ought to be doing, or that what I am doing is wrong. I just have this deep conviction (reinforced every time I engage the field) that there’s something else I could do that’s much better. . .if only I could find a way to do it without leaving my family in the lurch.

But the reality for now is that, in the realm of fulfillment or satisfaction that I’m in God’s will, that my life has a purpose beyond what I cynically call the “circle of life,” Jesus has provided me nothing.

In defense of Jesus, I’m not actually convinced that he ever promised to be or do any of these things. So it’s not really Jesus’ fault. It is, though the fault of a church/faith system that trumpets this sort of language in nearly every “worship” service. And therein lies the real problem, I think. If people who are less the independent, stubborn cuss I am, keep being battered with this message, and if those same people do a clear-eyed self-examination and come up as short as I have, we run the risk of driving them from the faith because of our own false expectations. And if I’m right about this, it would seem to me that Jesus’ comments in Matt. 18:6 (about the millstone) might be relevant.

Where/when can Christians serve in the armed forces? Part 1

2009-09-04T11:04:00.001-07:00

I know that many (most?) of the readers of this blog share at least some of my qualms with Christians serving in the military (for those who haven't yet explored my blog, click on the "War and Peace" subject in the index at the top of this page). I have a question aimed primarily at those who do NOT fall in the no-Christians-in-military camp. I hope to get a few of my "Just War" friends to weigh in; if you know of anyone who ought to be invited to this dialog, and who can commit to keeping it civil, please recruit them.

This is not intended to be a "gotcha" or an attack on those with whom I disagree. Rather it's a conundrum I genuinely do not understand and would like to learn more.

My question is this:

We know that there are, and have been for centuries, Christian citizens of the nation of Iraq. Do you believe it was (a) morally acceptable, or (b) morally requisite, for those Christians to serve in the army of Saddam Hussein's Iraq when:

Iraq invaded Kuwait?
The U.S. invaded Iraq in response to the Kuwait invasion in 1991 ("Operation Desert Storm")?
The U.S. invaded Iraq again in 2003 ("Operation Iraqi Freedom")?

If you answer in the affirmative in either (2) or (3), how do you reconcile the notion that Christians, citizens of the Kingdom of God, would have found themselves on opposing sides of a conflict where they very well might have tried to kill each other?

If you answer in the negative, please help me to understand, in the Biblical framework of Romans 13 or your choice of other passages, how you see the differing duty or freedom between citizens of Iraq and the United States in the context of the above conflicts.

And above all, please keep the ensuing discussion civil.

War and Peace - A Civil Discussion

2009-08-28T15:54:00.000-07:00

I just wanted to point those of you who read my blog to a discussion I've been having with John Hobbins on his "Ancient Hebrew Poetry" blog. John and I most definitely do not agree about the appropriateness of Christians serving in the military, or on the justness of (at least some) military actions we're now involved with in the U.S. But we both agree that people who really care about Jesus don't all come down in the same place on these issues, and we're neither of us comfortable with the rancor that usually characterizes discussions between the "sides."

John has been proving to me that it is possible for one of my perspective and one of his to have a civil discourse. I doubt we'll come anywhere close to agreement on at least some of the issues, but IMHO this sort of discourse enriches the participants. I learned about a book I'm going to want to read, at the very least--the upcoming "Just War as Christian Discipleship: Recentering the Tradition in the Church rather than the State," by Daniel M. Bell.

But give John's thoughts a serious listen. And think about his challenge to "armchair pacifists." It's a worthy question he's asking, and someone who maintains that sort of Christian demeanor while asking is worthy of engaging.

Easter Should Make Rebels of Us All - a sermon link

2009-08-03T15:56:00.000-07:00

Over a late lunch today I listened to a podcast of a sermon from a minister whose page I found through another blog, and I want to share it with you. Andy Croel, over at The Pulpiteer, preached a good sermon this past Easter on the notion that death is NOT part of God's plan, that Easter shows it, and how we ought to respond. I recommend it. Here is a quick excerpt:

In the resurrection of Jesus Christ, we see God's plan for dealing with death...In the resurrection, mothers are not told why their children died: mothers are given their children back. In the resurrection, we are not told why disease is secretly good: we are healed. In the resurrection the effects of evil and death are undone. Death is shown to have no ultimate effects at all, because God can undo it in the blink of an eye...

Easter should make rebels of us all...when we see evil and injustice, when we see death and destruction, when we see natural disasters that wipe out villages and leave hundreds dead, we are not to be a people that try to come in and explain some ultimate meaning and purpose behind horrible tragedy and death. Instead, we are to speak of a God of salvation who came back to rescue his good creation: A God who doesn't explain the tragic death of innocents, but rather raises them back to life.

He then goes on to challenge us to feed the hungry and minister to the suffering and dying, precisely because their hunger and suffering and death are the work of our enemy...death...defeated though it is by Jesus' resurrection. If I may paraphrase, working for justice, in Jesus' name, is an act of war.

The full sermon is here.

2 Timothy 3:16-17 -- Even Further Thoughts

2009-07-31T13:33:00.000-07:00

OK, so we've established that I was wrong in placing 2 Tim. 3:14-17 in a single sentence. But no translation I have EVER read portrays verses 16 and 17 as anything other than a single sentence, and this is important. Let's look:

16 All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work.

Hmmm... notice anything? What's Scripture given FOR? It's not for "right belief." It's not "that you may believe God created the world in six days." It's not "that you may have the correct doctrine of the Atonement." It's not even "that you may have the correct view of the Trinity."

So what's it for? SO YOU CAN GET ABOUT DOING WHAT GOD INTENDED YOU TO DO!!!

Funny thing about the Bible...it's way less confusing when you're looking for stuff to obey, than when you're looking for theories, systems, and beliefs. Wonder if it's because that was its purpose???

Important article on Biblical Inspiration

2009-07-30T21:09:00.000-07:00

I just came across an amazing article on Biblical inspiration that goes into much greater detail, and with much more scholarly foundation, than my series has so far. I haven't had time to read the whole thing yet, but I will. I'll probably highlight bits of it in future posts.

The article is "Inerrancy, Inspiration, and Dictation" by Joel Stephen Williams, and it was published in the Restoration Quarterly, Vol. 37/No. 3 (1995). I had never heard of Williams before, but it appears he's an author and professor at Amridge (formerly Southern Christian) University.

Two quick quotes:

We must realize that the doctrine of inspiration is not the capstone of Christian theology. A fundamentalist view of inspiration does not insure orthodoxy. Many who hold to a fundamentalist view of inspiration are in extreme error on more significant truths such as the deity of Christ. Furthermore, many people come to faith in Christ and salvation without knowing even the rudimentary elements of a doctrine of inspiration.

And

Positive statements about the usefulness of the Scriptures in instructing mankind for salvation affirm more about the Bible than a negative statement that it is without error. The Bible is not the ultimate end. Instead, it is a witness to God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit. As John the Baptist pointed toward Christ, the Bible is a witness pointing toward God.

This comes very close to my own perspective, as I expressed it in an email to my Mom last week. Here, then, is my "doctrine of the Bible," if you will:

I prefer to say that the biblical (particularly N.T. and prophets) authors are faithful witnesses to what they saw/heard, and their writings are to be trusted as the testimony of a faithful witness. . .without blurring the distinction between the witnesses and the truth to which they are testifying.

2 Tim. 3:16 -- Redux, Correction, and Further Thoughts

2009-07-30T19:59:00.000-07:00

Those who have read my series on Biblical inspiration know that I took issue with the use of 2 Tim. 3:16 as a prooftext for the inerrancy of the entire Biblical canon. I stand by my objection, but I have to do a correction nonetheless.

One of my suggestions in my prior post, was that perhaps 1 Tim 3:14-17 should be read as a single sentence, with verses 16 and 17 as a dependent clause on 14 and 15--that is, that the "all scripture" Paul is describing in verse 16 is merely an elaboration on "the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus" in verse 15.

Well, I put that very question to the translators at the NET Bible, as I have read from several sources that they are scrupulously careful with the grammar and the text, even if the result is an unfamiliar reading. Here is their response, authored by someone named "mburer" (I'd give fuller credit if I could, but I don't know how...at least you can follow the link):

It is almost impossible for v. 16 to be a dependent clause. (1) Verse 16 is marked by asyndeton, and this is most normal for independent clauses. (2) Verse 16 has no marks of normal dependent clauses; there is no participle, infinitive, or subordinating conjunction to indicate dependency. (3) If it were dependent and meant to modify τὰ ἱερὰ γράμματα in some fashion, πᾶσα γραφὴ would need to be accusative case as the original phrase is, but it is nominative. (4) The fact that the copulative verb is missing from v. 16 does not argue for v. 16 being dependent. When a verb is lacking in Greek, usually the indicative is implied, which would in fact make this independent. To make v. 16 a dependent clause the participle would need to be implied, and likely Paul would have written that in ful to make the sense clear if that were the case.

Now, I freely admit that the grammatical technicalities they gave here are way over my head. I have submitted this to one other Greek scholar I know who has told me that it's correct, however, so I must accept that my limited knowledge of Greek led me to an incorrect conclusion regarding the division of the sentence. I was wrong to suggest that 14-17 is a single sentence.

However, I still suspect it's a single thought, for the simple reason that the "pasa graphe" that Paul is referring to in verse 16 cannot truly mean "all writing." While it is true that "graphe" as a noun occurs in the New Testament as referring only to sacred writings, the fact remains that the word itself just means "something written down." In fact, according to lexicographers Liddell and Scott, no lesser sources than Herodotus and Plato use the same word to refer to drawing and painting, not to mention plenty of non-sacred written words including catalogues, archives, medical prescriptions, and legal writs. So Paul was using a generic word "writing" not a holy word "Scripture" in verse 16. He cannot have meant that "all writings" are inspired by God, so it remains likely that he's referring to the very writings he just mentioned in verse 14, simply because of context. As I have said before, to apply the statement in verse 16 to the entire canon of our modern, Protestant (or Catholic) Bible is only possible if you start with the presupposition that Paul was foreshadowing a canon he did not yet know about, when he wrote those words. In other words, it proves nothing you have not predisposed it to prove.

However, that's only the phrase "pasa graphe." We have not touched "theopneustos," the word translated "inspired of God" in the KJV, "breathed out by God" in ESV, "God-breathed" in NIV, and "God's breath" in the Pioneers' New Testament. It's a word that didn't get much play at all in Greek literature prior to Paul (if you have the energy for a long and convoluted analysis of the word, have a look at B.B. Warfield's article here). It's broken down, of course into the constituent words "theos" or god (not necessarily always God the Father of Jesus), and "pneustos" which comes from "pneuma" and/or "pnoe," two alternate forms of a word that can mean "spirit," "breath," and "wind" (I hope it's not too insulting, but according to Liddell-Scott, "pneuma"--the same word used of the Holy Spirit, has also been used in Greek literature to refer to flatulence!).

It's certainly appropriate, based on the wide variety of usages of the pneuma/pnoe pair, to understand "theopneustos" as "God's breath." But we have to remember, when we do, that there is an element of "spirit" in the word as well. As such, Paul may be saying as much about the influence of the Holy Spirit in tandem with the content of the written word, as he's saying about the text itself.

The bottom line, however, is that grammar or no, to use 2 Tim 3:16, standing on its own, as proof that the Biblical canon is inerrant, is to lift a sentence out of context, impose rigid meanings on words with much broader history, and basically create a circular proof-loop where the evidence depends upon the conclusion that in turn is being supported by the evidence. That makes no sense.

The miracle of the vine . . . and the Lord's Supper

2009-07-24T13:34:00.000-07:00

C.S. Lewis is a favorite author of mine, both for his fiction and his serious writing. Among my favorite of his works, and one that doesn't get a lot of play, is "God in the Dock," a collection of essays that in many cases summarize in a few pages each, thoughts that elsewhere he spends a whole book on (available at Amazon, also on Google Books).

This is an excerpt from his essay entitled "Miracles" and has meant a lot to me since I first read it. Here Lewis is explaining and riffing off a teaching he found in Athenasius:

"There is an activity of God displayed throughout creation, a wholesale activity let us say which men refuse to recognize. The miracles done by God incarnate, living as a man in Palestine, perform the very same things as this wholesale activity, but at a different speed and on a smaller scale. One of their chief purposes is that men, having seen a thing done by personal power on the small scale, may recognize, when they see the same thing done on the large scale, that the power behind it is also personal - is indeed the very same person who lived among us two thousand years ago. The miracles in fact are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see. Of that larger script part is already visible, part is still unsolved. In other words, some of the miracles do locally what God has already done universally: others do locally what He has not yet done, but will do. In that sense, and from our human point of view, some are reminders and others prophecies.

God creates the vine and teaches it to draw up water by its roots and, with the aid of the sun, to turn that water into a juice which will ferment and take on certain qualities. Thus every year, from Noah's time till ours, God turns water into wine. That, men fail to see. Either like the Pagans they refer the process to some finite spirit, Bacchus or Dionysus: or else, like the moderns, they attribute real and ultimate causality to the chemical and other material phenomena which are all that our senses can discover in it. But when Christ at Cana makes water into wine, the mask is off. The miracle has only half its effect if it only convinces us that Christ is God: it will have its full effect 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."

Now partly I appreciate this quote because I genuinely love a good glass of wine, particularly a good Shiraz, Zinfandel, or Cabernet. I confess I have yet to fully discipline my mind to remember Jesus as Lewis admonishes in the last sentence, though I do think of it more frequently than I might otherwise. But this passage resonated anew with me one day when I read Matthew's account of the Last Supper:

26 Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, “Take, eat; this is my body.” 27 And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, saying, “Drink of it, all of you, 28 for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. 29 I tell you I will not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom.” (Matt. 26:26-29, ESV)

What struck me about this was Jesus saying this was the last glass of wine he would enjoy until the "wedding feast of the Lamb" (boy, talk about a dry spell!). He is not only (or at all?) instigating a sacrament here...he's telling his friends to remember him--and to look forward to his return--when they lift a glass. Sounds rather like a wake in some ways, to me.

So one thing I have done, ever since I discovered this connection, is that I have approached the celebration of communion differently. When I take the cup, I raise it, and either silently or in a whisper, offer the toast "Till He comes" before I drink. Some day, I'm going to encourage a group to do the same.

Till He comes. . .

Lessons in the gospel from Nairobi

2009-07-20T15:58:00.000-07:00

I just came across two articles today that anyone who really cares about poverty, justice, and the gospel must read:

http://www.humanitarianchronicle.com/2009/07/nairobi-my-introduction/
http://www.humanitarianchronicle.com/2009/07/kibera-and-the-reality-of-the-gospel/

I love Nairobi. I used to go there a lot when I worked in Tanzania in the mid-80s. It seemed a somewhat safer place then, though even back then I suspected it was a bit of an illusion--there was such a disparity between wealth and privilege on one hand, and poverty and despair on the other, and they were side by side all the time. I last saw Nairobi in 2002 when I went for a conference, and I was struck by how much a lot of the city had decayed, but yet how incredibly built-up certain wealthy areas had become (the Sarit Centre in Westlands in particular). I still dream of taking my family there some day, but unless I land a job in international health I fear it may remain a dream.

But anyhow, I want you to read Frank's posts, in particular how his experience in the Kibera slum expanded his understanding of the gospel. One brief quote:

On Sunday I came face to face with the ravages of sin and it messed with my sense of humanity. Driving through Kibera on Monday I was made intensely aware of how humanity was being ravaged and the need for redemption. It was all around – I believe God’s anger burns white hot at the depravity of his people that would result in such chaos and destruction of the pinnacle of his creative expression.

In the dirt with those children I found the redemption of the cross – the act that wipes the slate clean, I sensed the victory of the resurrection pointing to a renewed world, I felt the assurance of the ascension, I reveled in the hope of God’s future time of complete restoration where his justice shall be displayed in full and I relished the visible transforming power of that story on display before me in the very lives of those children. Right there, in the middle of human depravity was a small point where the very transforming power of the gospel could be seen. Right in the middle of the darkness there was a light shining very brightly.

I must act, not just out of gratitude for the substitution Christ gave on the cross – no, the story and message of good news (the Gospel) doesn’t end there. Because the Kingdom has come near, it is active. Christ’s work has given me citizenship and I work to transform this world in anticipation and with the hope of God’s complete justice in view. As those children transformed my life, it’s that Gospel that overwhelmed me and I will permit no scholar to demand that I settle for less, no matter how popular their name.

Now go read the whole thing!

Walking on water - Can't Jesus have a little fun?

2009-07-20T09:21:00.001-07:00

I've heard about Jesus walking on water twice in the past two weeks. Our pastor preached a sermon on how the disciples were underestimating Jesus, and a buddy of mine just shared with us the idea that the seas represent chaos in first-century mythology/cosmology, so that Jesus walking on water was symbolic of his trampling chaos/Satan underfoot. Both may be right, and I have no real reason to think they're wrong, but as I read the story (Matt 14:23-33, Mark 6:47-52, John 6:17-21) I keep getting this distinct impression that Jesus was having a little fun with his disciples.

Jesus could have used several means of natural or supernatural transport to catch up with the guys--heck, he could have just zapped himself across the lake and beat them there (and according to John 6:21, once he got in the boat he DID motor all of them across). But instead he takes a little stroll--actually a fairly good stroll as the Galilee at Capernaum is five-plus miles to any "across" shore, not to mention the waves. And then according to Mark, he was actually going to pass them by. I can't substantiate this, but it seems to me like Jesus decided he was going to mess with the boys a little. . .

Then of course Peter gets the bright idea that he ought to come out there. I think he must've thought "hey, that's cool, wonder if he'll let me do that?" I envision Jesus flashing Peter a grin and saying "sure man, come on!" Peter, of course, gets out there and looks around and says "hey, wait a minute, I can't do this!" and promptly he can't. But here again we give the poor guy too much grief I think. The biblical text says "you of little faith, why did you doubt?" But I imagine Jesus saying that not so much as a scolding for Peter's "lack of faith," (we scold each other too much about that sometimes), but rather a friendly and sympathetic "Dude! You almost made it!"

I'm hanging no dogma whatever on this meditation. Maybe I'm as all wet as Peter was by the time they got back to the boat. But really, we have to loosen up our perspective on Jesus. The guy knew (knows) how to have a good time. Some of his zingers against Herod and the Pharisees and such must've had the crowds rolling. The stiff-upper-lip types got their knickers in a twist because Jesus was hanging out with a bad crowd (Mark 9:10), and I have a hunch they weren't all sitting around with long faces hearing a Sunday School lesson. Sometimes, if we let our imaginations run to Jesus as a friend and a fun guy to travel with, I think we might, just maybe, get a little closer to the truth.

David and Goliath Revisited - a textual analysis

2009-06-19T11:14:00.001-07:00

And now, for something completely different, I want to highlight an article just published by Mike Heiser at Bible Study Magazine. Clash of the Manuscripts: Goliath & the Hebrew text of the Old Testament looks at the twin issues of Goliath's height, and an apparent textual contradiction in 2 Samuel 21:19 about who actually killed him (see also Mike's blog, The Naked Bible).

I won't bother summarizing the whole article, but those with interest in textual issues and how they might impact a perceived (though IMHO trivial) contradiction in the text, I recommend you wade through it. I did, however, want to highlight a very interesting observation Mike made, which I think adds to the compelling nature of the story itself.

We all know the sunday school story--young teenager visiting his brothers at the battlefield goes up against a 9-foot-plus giant using a slingshot, thereby proving the military truism that long-range weapons beat brute force (am I the only one who wonders if David had a slingshot corps in his army?). But what I didn't know was that the "six cubits and a span" height description comes from the Masoretic text, a Hebrew text that was solidified somewhere around 100AD, while the earlier Greek Septuagint (itself a Greek translation from Hebrew) reports Goliath's height at the far-less-fantastic four cubits and a span, which would put Goliath's height at somewhere between six and seven feet--which is still way taller than the average Hebrew at that time, but within the realm of observed human dimensions.

But the real point (for me) comes in Mike's reminder to us that Saul, too, was a giant, as 1 Samuel 9:2 tells us. Mike points out that by rights, the giant king of the Israelites should have been the one to stand up to a guy who was maybe a bit taller than him, but probably not the towering menace the Masoretic text would suggest. But instead, upstart David, who couldn't handle Saul's outsized armor (at least that's one way to read 1 Samuel 17:39), takes him on under the reasoning that anybody plus God is a winning combination.

No wonder when the people of Israel sang that "Saul has slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands" (1Sam 18:7) Saul got his nose out of joint. He likely already felt the guilt of his own cowardice for not providing "someone his own size" for Goliath to fight.

So to my way of reading it, Mike's textual criticism gives us a story that is more probable, while bringing the conflict between David and Saul into sharper relief than the usual, fantastic version. Interesting how careful study can do that.

The Authority of the Catholic Church - A friendly debate

2009-05-22T05:28:00.000-07:00

Over at Nick's Catholic Blog, Nick and I have gotten on a rabbit trail from a post he did about imputation of righteousness. The particular trail started when he commented about the possibility of the re-unification of the church, and I responded with the idea that while I'm all for believers to work, play, and worship in unity of spirit and behavior, I'm not so sure that institutional unity is even desirable. We then segued into the question of apostolic succession and the authority of the church, which obviously Nick sees as important, and I(equally obviously?) see as dangerous.

I'm picking up the thread here so as not to run too far afield for Nick, and also because my last response turned out to be longer than his comment settings will allow. I hope you will read the discussion comments linked above, before trying to pick up here.

Anyway, this post is in response to the questions in these comments of Nick's:

Nick:...the danger of not having hierarchy (a thing very clearly indicated in the NT, and OT) is that of having the masses determine doctrine, whether individually or by majority. This makes truth a matter of popularity contest, or worse yet having the "teacher" be subject to the "students." Either he is a bishop with authority or he can be overturned by those he is guiding. It's a slippery slope because then "authority" loses it's meaning.

Nick, this is a great discussion. Thanks for engaging!

I see your concern with the masses determining doctrine. My counter would only be that the bishop is still a sinner before God under the forgiveness and grace of Jesus Christ, and no ordination changes that. So he's just as susceptible to error as any other believer--no less, but also no more--and therefore the risk of him going astray is equivalent to that of the flock under his oversight...and perhaps more so if he's not accountable to them. It's a balancing act, to be sure, but in the final analysis it comes to a definition issue: If I correctly understand you (and correct me if I am wrong), you are saying that by virtue of being ordained into the episcopate of the true church, the bishop is protected from making that error, unlike the laiety. I contend, to the contrary, that just like the laiety, he is susceptible to all the same temptations and error as the rest of us, perhaps compounded by the illusion of supremacy conveyed to him by his position. Those two definitions are fundamentally at odds, and we can only agree (if I am correct) that this is a point where we disagree. You fear authority "losing its meaning," I fear the exercise of authority that ought not to exist.

Nick: One of interesting passage in this regard is 2 Tim 4:3, where Paul warns against those with "itching ears" who will elect teachers who will say what they want to hear. Also, I'm not sure how your system would mesh with a clear example like Acts 15 and 16:4.

2 Tim. 4:3 is true by empirical observation as well as biblical authority...we don't have to look far to see people tailoring "truth" to their convenience or pleasure. I find it compelling that the defense Paul offers is in verse 2--which you might interpret as exhorting Timothy to exercise his authority (am I correct?), but I see as Paul warning Timothy to stay grounded in the truth of "the word." In other words, I see "sola scriptura" as the one thing that is offered to Timothy as an anchor against the tides of opinion. Bringing my own assumptions to the text? Perhaps, but I think it's consistent with Pauline teaching.

Acts 15 is important, and you are right to bring it up. Clearly when there was a dispute among different believers, they appealed to the apostles and elders. This is right and good and biblical. It is interesting that in verse 22, we see that it was not only the apostles and elders, but also "the whole church" that is related to have decided what to do, apparently in Spirit-led consensus. It is also possible that an authority-based answer was necessary due to the authority-based problem being addressed (the demand that Gentiles follow Jewish law). While a good model, it does not necessarily follow that this account justifies a complete ecclesiastical system. However, if I ever saw an ecclesiastical system that met in open session and (apparently) solicited the input of "the whole church" I might also be more positively inclined toward it. There's a vast chasm between consensus and fiat!

Nick: To me, if the Church is the Body of Christ, with Him as it's head, the Church is indefectible and guarded against a tainted Gospel by definition (1 Tim 3:15; Mat 16:19).

I confess I don't see what 1 Tim 3:15 brings to bear on the discussion, so I can't respond to that one. As to Matt. 16:19, you know well that Protestants and Catholics interpret that passage radically differently--you see it as establishing the apostolic succession of Peter, we see the "rock" as being the confession of Jesus as the Anointed of God..."for no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ" (1 Cor. 3:11).

I can only say that I really don't want to start listing examples because I DON'T want to get into Catholic-bashing, but surely you acknowledge that your church (along, I insist, with all the others) has in fact committed serious errors in the 2000 years since Jesus? Isn't that a historical, empirical fact? How do you reconcile that with an indefectible church with Christ as its head? It's easy for me, holding that the church whose head is Christ is not the human institution, but rather all everywhere who call on his name and seek to follow him in all their brokenness. But if you are looking for the standard of an unsullied theology and an authoritative institution that holds it, how do you reconcile this with the bloody, sinful history of the institution?

And to your last question, I don't trust someone who waffles on the basic truth of Jesus Christ. But I, somewhat opposite of you I guess, run screaming from any group that DOES claim to have the whole truth without error. I consider that claim to be proof positive of corruption...whether the authority is the papacy or the fiat of the individual, self-righteous independent Baptist minister doesn't matter to me, either one is wrong when they refuse accountability to honest confrontation from scripture. This, again, is probably a point on which we'll agree we disagree.

But I will reiterate in closing, that this does not in any way cause me to write off those who've chosen to put themselves in that church. As I've said before, I've found Jesus' followers in all kinds of places I expected far less, than just in a church with which I don't agree. And I know the Lord seeks such to follow him!

Peace!

Enough with salvation already!

2009-05-18T13:10:00.000-07:00

OK, time to stir the pot a little. Our particular corner of the blogosphere has been buzzing fow a while now on the subject of atonement. I've enjoyed it, I don't think we've nearly closed the topic, and I certainly intend to return there myself at some point. Nevertheless, I think we need to step back and pause for a reality check.

First of all, whatever the mechanism by which sin has been atoned, the clear message of the gospels and the epistles is that Jesus has done it. It's not conditional on us understanding or believing any point of detail as to how he did it. It's not even conditional upon us knowing or understanding that there WAS a problem! It should suffice us to recognize that Jesus had--and has--both the means and the authority to deal with the problem, whatever problem it was.

More importantly, though, the whole question of atonement for sin, at least as it's discussed in most definitions of "the gospel," presupposes that sin and its remedy are the central focus (or at the very least one principal focus) of the mission Jesus came to do. While I do not dispute that Jesus' death and resurrection had a beneficial effect with regard to human sin, it was never the point of the process. Salvation was always a means to an end, it was never intended to be the end in itself.

The story of Jesus' time on earth is replete with redemption and healing. This is indisputable. But the point my Mom just made in her word study on repentance is also true for the rest of Jesus' redemptive acts: the healing, the repentance, the salvation of people from whatever mess they were in, was always and only a beginning. What really mattered wasn't the key that got them in the door, it was the life they were called to live on the other side of that door.

For this reason, while we may continue to debate the mechanism by which Jesus dealt with sin, the vista we must regain shows us that the process actually doesn't matter. Jesus' message was, and is:

If you're sick or hurting or wounded, I can take care of that. Follow me!

If you're feeling guilty or worried about the sin propitiation you've been taught you need, I have taken care of that. Follow me!

If you've learned "every man for himself" all too well from your society, I can take care of that and lift you out of yourself. Follow me!

If you are afraid of the others--human or supernatural--who are exercising the power of fear and death over you, I've defeated them; I took care of that. Follow me!

If you're worried about your life beyond the grave, I'm already beyond the grave. I took care of that. Follow me!

If you're oppressed by any of the ills that have afflicted my Father's creation, whether poverty or injustice or disease, I've now sent my followers to take care of that in my name. Join them in following me!

If you're one of the oppressors that are helping to perpetuate the abuse of my kingdom and my followers, I can free you from the tyranny of power. I can take care of that. Work with me to lift up what has been trampled down, and follow me!

And perhaps most compellingly to us amateur theologians (and the pros too, if they'll listen): If you're wrapped up in endless controversies over how I took care of all that, let go, accept that I DID take care of that, and follow me!

Repentance - an article you've gotta read!

2009-05-18T10:08:00.000-07:00

I have a bunch of things I need to get written and no time to write, but you guys have got to check out my Mom's latest article on repentance. It's related to all the sin and atonement and kingdom stuff we've been talking about. . .

Evangelism - what does it mean to share the gospel?

2009-05-12T08:17:00.000-07:00

I'm going to write about this in more detail some day, but I just came across a post that addresses my concerns very well. In fact, Dave has highlighted one of my biggest issues with the usual methods of "presenting the gospel," by going back to Acts and looking at what the apostles actually talked about when THEY presented the gospel. Not too surprisingly (to me at least), it doesn't look at all like the four laws. . .

Dave has put together a nice matrix of things that are or aren't said by the Apostles in the various Acts passages where they're encouraging someone to follow Jesus. A pattern emerges, and guess what, it's not about heaven and hell. . .

An apology and explanation

2009-05-03T20:01:00.000-07:00

Due to an unfortunate trolling incident I have--at least for now--enabled moderation on this blog. I hope at some point to be able to relax the controls again; I wish Blogspot allowed for the kind of control Wordpress has, that users can be approved to bypass moderation settings, but if they have that setting I haven't found it yet. However, I want to stress that I welcome comments from all of you who want to engage the issues, whether you agree with me or not.

Unfortunately, I managed to get the attention of someone whose sole purpose seems to be to hijack a thread and scream about how anybody who isn't Roman Catholic is going to hell. I have deleted the offending comments, but I feel it incumbent upon me to offer a bit more of an explanation.

I am categorically not anti-Catholic. Most of the Catholics I know well, I consider to be unquestionably followers of the same Lord Jesus Christ I follow. We have plenty to disagree about, but we agree on the commonality of our commitment to Jesus. (On this point, by the way, I point you to my friend Mason's recent post, which I wholeheartedly endorse. I also would refer you to Nick's Catholic Blog, where I have recently found myself supporting the "Catholic" contra the "Protestant" in a debate on atonement. Nick and I haven't teased out all our areas of agreement/disagreement by any means--and I'm sure we could find them--but I hope this at least clarifies that I don't reject Catholic believers).

I do have an issue, as I have made clear on this blog and in comments elsewhere, with the notion of extrabiblical authorities--including ecclesiastical hierarchies--being taken as doctrinal authority on a par with the scripture (and in particular, the words of God within scripture as I have elsewhere proposed). Apparently, this particularly riled at least one poster, as he spent entirely too much emotional energy on the idea that anybody who doesn't accept the apostolic succession of the Roman popes is going straight to hell. Of course, I'm sorry to say that the current Pope Benedict has poured fuel on that fire, as he has suggested that churches without priests and sacraments can't possibly be true churches. Obviously I repudiate that statement. That doesn't mean that I am suggesting that Pope Benedict isn't a follower of Jesus (I really don't have the information to pass judgment one way or the other, but I presume that he is). I think he's misinformed on this point, but that doesn't mean he's going to hell. It does mean that I don't give his pronouncements any more weight than I do any other believer's. . .which means they have to be backed up by scripture just like mine or yours.

Of course, coming as I do from the Anabaptist tradition, I would argue that the New Testament teaches that there should be no such thing as a priesthood at all in a post-resurrection Church, as "there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus" (1 Tim. 2:5), and beyond that all believers are a "holy priesthood" (1 Peter 2:5) and a "royal priesthood" (1 Peter 2:9). But that doesn't mean that I write all Catholics, Anglicans, and Lutherans (their priests included) out of the kingdom of God. I know better. The Spirit of God has worked and is working through a wide variety of human institutions that are trying their level best to be faithful churches. They don't get it all right, and they get different parts wrong, but they're trying to be faithful witnesses to Jesus.

I have argued before that even defining people according to who is going to heaven or hell is asking the wrong question. This, combined with the fact that I'm tired of Christian shouting matches, is why I banned the posts in question. I welcome--and will continue to welcome--robust debate. I will not tolerate accusations and pronouncements of damnation against others. I have no interest in why your church is better or worse than mine. I have a great deal of interest in what you and I can do to become better followers of Jesus Christ than we now are.

As I said in my opening post, if you want to shout and scream and hurl abuse at people, there are plenty of places to do it on the internet. This isn't one of them.

Torture - May God have mercy on us!

2009-04-30T19:09:00.000-07:00

I just learned of this CNN report from a friend. Here's the meat of the story, referencing a new poll by the Pew Research Center:

The more often Americans go to church, the more likely they are to support the torture of suspected terrorists, according to a new survey.

I have no words strong enough to express my outrage. I am ashamed to be part of the group "Americans who go to church" if that's what we look like.

as it is written, “The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.” (Rom 2:24)

Perhaps we need to follow the example of Daniel (Dan. 9:20) and learn what it means to confess the sins of our people. . .

Penal-Substitutionary Atonement--It has God's Role Wrong

2009-04-27T13:30:00.000-07:00

I want to highlight a thought my friend Ben just posted over at his blog, that I think adds an additional dimension to the (mis)understanding of atonement which we have been discussing. This is the role of God the Father in the whole process.

As Ben proposes the analogy, we look at atonement in an (appropriately) law-court setting. In classic PSA, God is both plaintiff bringing the accusation against humanity, and judge deciding the case. God proposes and finds man guilty, and as he is pronouncing sentence, Jesus volunteers to accept the sentence in our place. In CV, as Ben proposes it, God is judge, but not plaintiff. That role is the role of Satan and the Powers (appropriately, as Satan is named the "accuser" in scripture). It is the accuser who seeks the death penalty for the defendant (humanity), and the accuser is all-too-glad to accept the judge's son in place of the defendant. When the judge then trumps the sentence by raising Jesus from the dead, the enemy's design is foiled.

Like all analogies, this one can be carried too far (and we have yet to unpack the loaded terms of "sin" and "atonement" so we still have a long way to go. But I think Ben is correct in re-directing our attention to who, after all, is the accuser and who, after all, is demanding the sentence.

Atonement and the Warfare World View

2009-04-21T12:54:00.000-07:00

My good friend Ben and I have the greatest theological discussions by cellphone text message. This is both a blast and a pain. . .a blast in that an ordinary, underwhelming day can be interrupted at any moment by a question or a thought about stuff that really counts, and a pain in that it can be really hard to encapsulate a nice juicy thought in 160 characters or less!

Being that as it may, we have been trading thoughts recently over some questions related to the purpose and effect of Jesus' death, ignited (this time) by a great post over at my friend Kurt's blog. I want to get some of these thoughts down in greater detail here. . .and I must start with the caveat that while the words here are mine, the thoughts are very much a product of this back-and-forth we have been having, so thanks to all of you.

Regulars will recognize that we've been over some of this territory already, and will know that several of us have pretty serious issues with the Penal-Substitutionary Atonement (PSA) framework for understanding Jesus' death. Most of us have agreed that the Christus Victor (CV) view explains vital elements of the redemption story that just aren't covered in PSA. Where we may differ is in just how much to keep or discard, in PSA.

The prevalent notion, of course, is that Jesus' in his death took on the wrath of the Father (who demanded death in payment for our sin ¹). A major problem with this theory is that it is (I am beginning to suspect) largely extrabiblical. I am doing a study right now on the use of, and teaching regarding blood sacrifice in Scripture. My initial observations suggest that God never demanded blood sacrifice as payment for sin in the first place. . .but more on that once my study has progressed further. But if (as Ben and Kurt and I have all suggested at different times) Jesus' death wasn't primarily (or mostly, or at all) a payment for sin, then what was it? Just a necessary prelude to resurrection? No, biblical texts still suggest it was more than that. What then?

The key that is starting to tie this together in my mind, was ignited for me when Kurt commented that Jesus did, in fact, die in our place--a "substitutionary" death--but not necessarily in the "penal" framework usually posited. That clicked a connection for me with the "Warfare World View," (WWV) which holds that, rather than God controlling--and even planning or mandating--everything that happens, in fact the cosmos suffers under a grand battle between God and his servants on one hand, and the "principalities and powers" (which I will refer to simply as the "Powers") at work against God throughout creation (Greg Boyd has a nice intro to WWV here). I don't know if Boyd (or other WWV proponents) would agree with this or not, but WWV has the potential to profoundly affect our understanding of Jesus' death, and that matter the broader notion of atonement. The concept is this:

God didn't demand death as payment for sin, the Powers did.

Death, remember, is an enemy. Rev. 20:14 tells us it's the last enemy to be destroyed, and Rom. 5 tells us that death "reins" as a result of sin. In other words, humanity's choice to rebel against God handed authority, as it were, over to the Powers. The Powers' ultimate weapon is death (and humanity's fear of death); therefore, the rein of death is the consequence of the Powers' authority.

What Jesus did in the incarnation, and culminating on the cross, was to voluntarily submit to the Powers' ultimate weapon. In this sense, he died "in our place," in that although he "knew no sin" (2 Cor. 5:21), he submitted himself to the consequence of sin (death at the hands of the Powers). Of course, they didn't know that his submission wasn't the end of the story. When he was raised from the dead, he defeated the Powers' ultimate weapon, thereby becoming the first fruits of God's restoration of his corrupted cosmos. (If this sounds an awful lot like the climax of Lewis' The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, don't blame me. Obviously Lewis thought of this long before I did).

So yes, Jesus' death was "substitutionary" for us. But not because he was absorbing the Father's wrath--but rather because he was dying for us so that he could then rise for us, and in so doing defeat our slave masters and raise us into his renewed kingdom. The Lord is Risen Indeed!

1) I am avoiding, for now, a study of the word "sin," which itself requires further parsing. I will get there, Mom, I promise! ;{)

A Gay Brother's Grief

2009-04-02T09:45:00.000-07:00

I found this article linked off of a long discussion related to a gay fellow participating in a worship team, over at Scot McKnight's blog. Wesley Hill's poignant piece is what I want to highlight here.

Hill gives a heartfelt description of the deep frustration and intense loneliness he has experienced because, well, I'll let him explain it himself (the "Auden" to whom he refers is another author):

I am drawn to these haunting confessions of Auden’s because I, too, am a homosexual Christian. Since puberty, I’ve been conscious of an exclusive attraction to persons of my own sex. Though I have never been in a gay relationship as Auden was, I have also never experienced the “healing” or transformation of my sexual orientation that some formerly gay Christians profess to have received. But I remain a Christian, a follower of Jesus. And, like Auden, I accept the Christian teaching that homosexuality is a tragic sign that things are “not the way they’re supposed to be.” Reading New Testament texts like Romans 1:26-27 and 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 through the lens of time-honored Christian reflection on the meaning and purpose of marriage between a man and a woman, I find myself—much as I might wish things to be otherwise—compelled to abstain from homosexual practice.

Hill makes a vital point in his article, which we straight Christians who still believe homosexuality is not God's standard, must take to heart. People need to feel love. They need community. This is true even for someone like me who's in a deeply satisfying heterosexual marriage--how much more for someone who does not have that privilege, whether through orientation, through a broken marriage, or through whatever combination of life's circumstances leaves them alone!

If we as believers do not provide a loving, sustaining community for those who are alone, how dare we blame them for seeking that love somewhere else? If we are (rightly) to teach that gay relationships, like other extramarital sexual relationships, are outside God's standard, then we have got to be the sort of "how few" Wesley Hill is seeking. As he himself concludes:

Will the Church shelter and nourish and humanize those who are deeply lonely and struggling desperately to remain faithful?

The fallout of credalism . . . a personal reflection

2009-03-31T14:02:00.000-07:00

We've been having a lively debate on the authority of the ancient creeds and the church fathers who wrote them, on several blogs lately. Mason, Martin, Kurt, and I have been trading comments across all four, and we've all shown up on a few others as well. Though in general I prefer to keep the subject matter here away from excessive navel-gazing, I think a recent personal story might throw some light on why I'm quite as passionate about this particular issue, besides my basic predisposition to be careful what/who is ascribed spiritual authority.

Beyond the obvious (I hope) subjects of my faith and my family, my real passion is international health and development. I have had the privilege to serve in this capacity a few times in my life--a two-year stint in Tanzania 25 years ago being the most obvious, though I have also done shorter volunteer stints in both Africa and Latin America, and I worked in an international project for the Centers for Disease control for a couple years in the mid-90s. I did my master's in International Health (met my wife in grad school, in fact), and all of my "best laid plans" were to make that field my life's work.

Well, as we all know, life doesn't exactly hew to plan, and mine has not. Being all that as it may, a little over two years ago I had another chance to do a short-term trip to Africa, this time to rural Democratic Republic of the Congo. While there, I had the privilege of working with some absolutely amazing Congolese doctors at the hospital we visited, and to help them a bit with some concepts in monitoring and evaluation of their projects, and general epidemiology. I also got to teach an inservice class for the nurses who run the hospital's network of rural health centers, and we spent most of three days looking at sanitation, water, and basic community nursing issues. It was an incredibly fulfilling time for me, and I took away three significant lessons from the trip: one, that I still had both the passion and the ability to be of some use in developing-world health, two, that I really wanted to re-connect with that field in some career way; and three, that other believers who were with me saw and reinforced one and two.

Not long after that, I was actually approached to consider a position with a mission agency I will not name, that would have (to my way of thinking) really resonated with both my passion and my skills. I dove into the process of applying, even though the notion of going on a full-support-raising mission structure terrified me (still does).

The opportunity fell apart because I couldn't sign the statement of faith without reservation. It wasn't even the inspiration of scripture part that did me in (though if I had studied through it as much as I have since, that probably would have got me too). It was that I could not say with absolute certainty, that I'm sure anybody who hasn't heard Jesus' message, as well as anybody who's rejected it, will suffer eternal conscious punishment in hell (both issues are elucidated elsewhere on this blog if anyone wants to dig further).

Now, I fully understand that a Christian mission organization wants to have its workers, those that represent them in the field, to be faithful believers. Not only does that make sense, I think it's only right. But somehow, it seems to me there is a disconnect when I can't find a way to help people have clean water and healthier lives, all because I'm not convinced they'll burn forever in hell if they don't get their beliefs in line.

It certainly goes deeper than this. It's not just about my job prospects. A whole lot of people over the centuries have actually shed the blood of those who wouldn't hew to their creeds; a whole lot of others have created horrible schisms between fellow-believers, a multitude of denominations, and a downright nasty witness to the world. But the point is the same, even if the outworkings vary. We do a whole lot of dividing on the basis of stuff that, I still maintain, is beyond the boundaries Jesus or his first followers taught. Along the way, we've left a lot of damage.

A new book I have to read. . .

2009-03-31T13:59:00.000-07:00

Trevin Wax has just posted a new review on his blog . It's Lost In Transmission?: What We Can Know About the Words of Jesus, by Nick Perrin.

I can only go on Trevin's review so far, but it looks to me like an important study for anyone who cares about the actual words of the Lord Jesus. I look forward to getting a copy.

Standards of Truth/Doctrine/Dogma

2009-03-27T20:33:00.000-07:00

I've alluded to this several times in other posts, but I think I need to throw it out as a subject in its own right. An awful lot of "doctrines" that are considered by church authorities as standards for faith, even standards for who is orthodox or heterodox, stand on what I submit are fairly tenuous grounds. I've been thinking about this a good deal lately, in part because of Scot McKnight's series on heresies on the Jesus Creed blog. It was further stimulated by a good discussion over on my friend Mason's blog.

In his introduction, Scot quotes Ben Quash, one of the authors of Heresies and How to Avoid Them: Why It Matters What Christians Believe: "A heretic is is a baptized person who obstinately denies or doubts a truth which the Church teaches must be believed because it is part of the one, divinely revealed, and catholic (that is, universally valid) Christian faith." To my shock, in four posts so far, Scot has appeared to reinforce this definition several times, and I have not yet seen him challenge it. This shocks me because, coming from the Anabaptist tradition himself (as I do), Scot has got to realize that this definition validates the condemnation of his own spiritual forbears as heretics--for they certainly denied a number of "truths" that were universally accepted by "the church" of their time.

While I have not (yet) read the book, so I am going primarily on the discussion on Jesus Creed and other locations, I am highly troubled by the degree to which Christians of a variety of stripes appear to be perfectly OK with elevating various church fathers or reformers to canonical status. I say this because of the level of deference I encounter, in debates on doctrine, to those fathers' teachings, even when those teachings go beyond what is stated in canonical scriptural sources.

It should be familiar to anyone who has read much in my blog, that I believe this level of deference to extrabiblical authority is inappropriate. But just to make it blindingly clear, let me state the proposition directly:

If any proposition is not derivable from scriptural sources alone, it dare not rise to the level of dogma.

By this I actually challenge most of what is in the vast majority of creeds and statements of faith, including the ancient ones (cf this post). My issue is that an awful lot of cherished doctrines of long standing are, if viewed honestly, extrabiblical. Unless we are willing to grant apostolic, inspirational credentials to the church fathers (which the Roman Catholic church does for some, but Protestants claim not to), their writings, however carefully and prayerfully considered, do not rise to the same level of authority. This same filter must be applied to the Reformers.

From Ingatius and Iranaeus, through Augustine, to Calvin and Luther, and even to Wright and Piper and all the others today, we have the writings of Godly, dedicated men who deserve to have their reasoning and arguments considered in the light of scripture, but none of whom, severally or individually, deserve canonical deference.

I do not claim that everything these guys stood for was/is unbiblical--far from it. I say rather:

If what they say is derivable from a careful, contextual reading of scripture, it deserves doctrinal consideration.
If what they say may be supported (or at least is not contradicted) by scripture, but is not independently detectable there, it may or may not be true, but as a doctrinal test it must be considered optional. . .even if centuries of church tradition have adopted it!
If what they say is not actually found in scripture (and here I actually place at least some christology, believe it or not), it's nothing more than opinion and dare not be elevated beyond that.

These criteria make a lot of Evangelicals nervous, because when consistently applied they actually strike at some pretty closely-held positions. One of the things these standards produce is a much shorter list of things for which we can maintain certainty. But if we are to really "rightly divide the word," one of the things we have to be about is dividing it from all those accretions it has gathered in our doctrines and creeds over the centuries. Frankly, I believe such a standard would return "systematic theology" to its rightful place--as a useful tool to contemplate the wonder and grandeur of God's work, but in humble acknowledgment that it is, at best, a good and honest guess, and not sufficient to divide the orthodox from the heterodox.

Put more simply, none of us--not even the doctors of divinity, the reformers, the church fathers--know half as much as we think. Writing people out of our fellowships, or worse, consigning them to damnation, on the basis of these things is wrong. It was wrong when they did it at the second council of Constantinople, and it's wrong when denominations, conventions, preachers, and the rest of us do it today.

Atonement and the Resurrection

2009-03-25T12:31:00.000-07:00

Last week Trevin Wax posted a review of Mark Driscoll's new book "Death by Love: Letters from the Cross" on his (Trevin's) "Kingdom People" blog. It was a detailed and sympathetic review of a book that, according to Wax, concentrates heavily on the suffering and death of Jesus as it impacts the redemption of human sinners.

I was troubled, and I raised this question in the discussion, by the apparent lack of emphasis on the resurrection in this work. Wax's response bugged me even more: "The book is specifically about the atonement, so it is natural that it focuses more on the death of Christ than the resurrection." The more I thought about it, the more wrong that notion seemed.

There is no question that Scripture, particularly the Pauline epistles, teach us that Jesus' death in some way dealt with the problem of corruption and sin and death in this world. But when the writers of Scripture talk about Jesus' death, his resurrection is never far away. Think of all the gospel accounts where Jesus, while prophesying his death, says in nearly the same breath that he'll be raised on the third day (Matt 16:21 &ff, Mat 20:17 &ff, Mark 8:31 &ff, Luke 18:31 &ff, and others). John is the only gospel where none of Jesus' comments about his death are associated with resurrection in the same paragraph, though in John 14:18-19 Jesus is clearly talking in that vein.

But it's not "just" Jesus who talked that way (I can't believe I just said that). Paul, whose writings form the backbone of most atonement theology, flat-out said in 1 Cor. 15:17:

And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.

It doesn't get much clearer than that. While Jesus already had the authority to forgive sins before he died (see Matt. 9:2-7), Paul teaches us that it was his death and resurrection together that wielded the ultimate power over evil, over the principalities and powers of this age.

It occurred to me as I chewed over this, that perhaps the reason Jesus' resurrection gets soft-pedaled so much in the church, is precisely because the prevailing view of atonement within the church is the Penal-Substitutionary notion that Jesus died in order to take upon himself the wrath and punishment of God for our sins. In P-S, the redemptive act was completed when Jesus "yielded up his spirit" on the cross. In fact, though P-S proponents wouldn't actually say this, the resurrection is pretty much unnecessary in the view of penal substitution, except perhaps for the fact that like any bereaved father, God wanted his son back (I won't get into a discussion on christology here). Maybe this is part of why P-S seems so inadequate to me.

But in the Christus Victor view, which comes much closer to my own position at this time in my life, the resurrection is absolutely essential. When Jesus died, Satan and the powers actually thought they had won. From Genesis to Revelation, we see that death is the ultimate weapon of evil against the purposes of God. When they managed to kill the Son of God, they thought they had triumphed and their ultimate weapon had taken down their ultimate enemy. It was when God raised Jesus from the dead, that Satan's greatest weapon of mass destruction was rendered powerless. Satan's defeat happened Sunday morning, not Friday afternoon!

Therefore, I contend, as subjects of the resurrected King, we have no business going on about Jesus' death for a whole book without spending much more energy on celebrating and proclaiming his resurrection.

We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. . .We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him.

Romans 6:4-5, 9 (ESV), emphasis added

That "no longer" intrigues me. Is Paul saying that, for Friday night and all that Saturday, death DID in fact have dominion over Jesus? We don't know, but death's owner certainly thought so. He hasn't learned much either. Death is still the ultimate threat that the powers of this world (human or otherwise) try to hold over us. It is only in the certainty of Jesus' resurrection that we can know that he has the power to save us. His blood alone was not enough for that!

The blood of another. . .

2009-03-19T14:47:00.001-07:00

I have never embedded media in my blog before but this first time is worth it:

My gratitude to my brother Dave for working with artists Peter Buffet and Akon to inspire this work, and for sharing it with me. Be sure to check out the artists' collaborative website Is there Something I Can Do?

The issue of human slavery is one that gets far too little play in our media and our discussions. What play it does get is too-often tied to either a conservative political agenda that only talks about trafficking in terms of prostitution, or a liberal agenda that talks about economic exploitation. Both are real, both are evil, and both must be confronted by everyone who has a conscience, regardless of what "wing" of politics he/she occupies.

I have E. Benjamin Skinner's excellent and disturbing book A Crime So Monstrous linked already in my recommended books section, but I'll plug it again here. Skinner takes a hard-boiled look at human slavery around the world, primarily in its economic, prostitution, and home-domestic sides (he doesn't address child soldiers much, but this, too requires attention). He shows how slavery exists even here in the U.S. in the realms of prostitution, and domestic "servants" imported (often) from Haiti. Read it and weep/rage, and then find a way to speak out and get involved!

War and Peace in Revelation - A friend's post

2009-02-23T08:56:00.000-08:00

I want to call your attention to an excellent post by Mason over at the New Ways Forward blog. He has done a great job of pointing out why, despite the violent language of Revelation, it is not justifying or encouraging violence on the part of believers. He points out that the violence in Revelation is all done either by the evil powers, the Beast, etc., or else by God in effecting justice on those who oppose him. . .and NEVER by the people of God.

Right judgment and wrath for wrongdoing is only to be placed in the hands of God. A Christian doctrine of nonviolence is based not on the idea that evil is really not such a big deal, so violence is an overreaction, but rather on the fact that evil is an incredibly big deal and that fallen humanity simply can not use violence and justice together without our sinful natures twisting the violence into injustice, vengeance, and in doing so pushing along the endless spiral of violence.

A New and Different New Testament Translation

2009-02-19T11:14:00.000-08:00

I'd like to take a sidebar here to introduce you to a new-to-the-web translation of the New Testament. The Pioneers' New Testament is a wholly original translation from the Greek by my Mom, who studied Greek in college and had planned to work for Wycliffe before a variety of life's circumstances changed the trajectory.

Mom's translation has appealed to some people who aren't familiar with "Christianese" precisely because she's avoided some of the common buzzwords that "everybody knows" who's grown up in the church. At times I find the language a little more folksy than I would have chosen myself, but the value there may be that it forces you to think of the original writers as real people instead of exalted demigods as they are sometimes perceived.

The translation particularly excels at highlighting a few concepts that are not visible in most English translations due to limitations on our language and usage. Among other things:

It highlights the difference between singular and plural "you," a concept that matters a great deal if you realize Christianity was always intended to be a team sport rather than a lone-ranger business;
It breaks apart the two different Greek words we usually translate as "sin," "hamartia" (which Mom renders as "shortcomings"), and "paraptoma" (which she translates as "deliberate transgression")
It designates in capitals the places in the gospels where Jesus used the Greek "ego emi"--equivalent to the "I AM" of the burning bush--to help us understand Jesus' nonstandard usage and what it may mean Christologically.

Anyway, I encourage you to check it out at http://pioneernt.wordpress.com.

War and Peace - Part 8 - Words from a 20th-Century Prophet

2009-02-16T14:25:00.000-08:00

In June of 1984, while I was en route to a two-year assignment at a mission hospital in Shirati, Tanzania, I attended the Mennonite World Conference in Strasbourg, France. There, in front of an audience of about ten thousand Mennonites from around the world, author and professor Ron Sider delivered the most compelling address I have heard anywhere. Sider is, of course, best known for his book Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, as well as his role as founder and president of Evangelicals for Social Action. But it's his 1984 address on Christian peacemaking that I will always remember. The full text is here, at the site of Christian Peacemaker Teams, an organization that formed out of Ron's call. I encourage you to check out the site in further detail if you dare. . .I want to share a few excerpts from that speech.

Sider was addressing a Mennonite audience, obviously, and I doubt anyone reading this blog is unaware that Mennonites have a tradition of nonviolence and nonparticipation in the military that extends back over the entire 450-plus years of the movement. He suggested that the times in which we were living (the US-Soviet arms race was in full swing, and the US was intervening actively in conflicts around the world), were times in which the Mennonite peace witness was particularly relevant:

Our 450 years of commitment to Jesus' love for enemies finds its kairos in these two terrifying decades (the last 2 decades of the 20th century). This could be our finest hour. Never has the world needed our message more. Never has it been more open. Now is the time to risk everything for our belief that Jesus is the way of peace. If we still believe it, now is the time to live what we have spoken.

To rise to this challenge of our Lord and history, we need to do three things: we need to reject the ways we have misunderstood or weakened Jesus' call to be peacemakers; we need to embrace the full biblical understanding of shalom; and we need to prepare to die by the thousands. . .

Sider challenged Mennonites' willingness to basically sit back in their conscientious objector status without engaging the wider world in peacemaking. He suggested that Christian isolationism was not an acceptable option:

. . .The most famous advocate of pacifism in our time, Mahatma Gandhi, once said that if the only two choices are to kill or stand quietly by doing nothing while the weak are oppressed and killed, then, of course, we must kill. I agree.

But there is always a third option. We can always prayerfully and nonviolently place ourselves between the weak and the violent, between the oppressed and the oppressor. Do we have the courage to move from the backlines of isolationist pacifism to the frontlines of nonviolent peacemaking?

He went on to describe the way in which Mennonites in particular had shirked their duties by basically living in our contented pacifism without seriously engaging questions of injustice that lead to violence in our world, and followed that challenge with an overview of Jesus' active but nonviolent challenge to the status quo in his time. He laid out the case for Christians as peacemakers, drawing directly from the Biblical accounts of Jesus' life and teachings, and deriving from Jesus' own sacrifice to bring peace between humanity and God. Then he got personal and called us to engage the world in a new effort to represent God's shalom to humanity.

But to do that , we must not only abandon mistaken ideas and embrace the full biblical conception of shalom. One more thing is needed. We must take up our cross and follow Him to Golgotha. We must prepare to die by the thousands.

Those who have believed in peace through the sword have not hesitated to die. Proudly, courageously, they gave their lives. Again and again, they sacrificed bright futures to the tragic illusion that one more righteous crusade would bring peace in their time. For their loved ones, for justice, and for peace, they have laid down their lives by the millions.

Why do we pacifists think that our way--Jesus' way--to peace will be less costly? Unless we Mennonites and Brethren in Christ are ready to start to die by the thousands in dramatic, vigorous new exploits for peace and justice, we should sadly confess that we really never meant what we said. We did, of course, in earlier times. In previous centuries, we died for our convictions. But today we have grown soft and comfortable. We cling to our affluence and our respectability.

Unless comfortable North American and European Mennonites and Brethren in Christ are prepared to risk injury and death in nonviolent opposition to the injustice our societies foster and assist in Central America, the Philippines, and South Africa, we dare never whisper another word about pacifism to our sisters and brothers in those desperate lands. Unless we are ready to die developing new nonviolent attempts to reduce international conflict, we should confess that we never really meant the cross was an alternative to the sword. . .Making peace is as costly as waging war. Unless we are prepared to pay the cost of peacemaking, we have no right to claim the label or preach the message.

Sider then proposed that the Mennonite and Brethren in Christ churches lay the groundwork for a 100,000-strong "nonviolent peacekeeping force" ready to interpose itself in prayer and witness--ready to die if necessary--between warring factions. He suggested a "force" that was not merely going out and holding candlelight vigils in front of military bases, but rather trained in diplomacy, history, politics, etc., and deeply involved in (and supported by) intercessory prayer.

Our world needs that alternative. Now. But the world will be able to listen to our words only if large numbers of us live out the words we speak. Our best sons and daughters, our leaders and all our people must be ready to die. The cross comes before the resurrection.

There is finally only one question: Do we believe Jesus enough to pay the price of following him? Do you? Do I?

War and Peace - Part 7 - Hippolytus

2009-02-13T14:27:00.000-08:00

A much briefer statement on Christians participating in the military comes from the third-century bishop Hippolytus. As with Tertullian in my previous post, I must caution that no reasonable person would take Hippolytus' writings as authoritative at the level of Scripture, and there are plenty of instances within his writings (nude baptism, for one) that we clearly don't care to emulate today. That said, the Apostolic Tradition ascribed to Hippolytus provides us with another insight into the pre-Nicene perspective of the church. As with Tertullian, I have yet to find a contemporary source (any pre-Nicene source) who made any effort at all to refute the proscription on soldiers. This leads me to suspect that, whatever variations there may have been in practice, there was no serious contention that Hippolytus and Tertullian were wrong in their assertions.

Herewith, then, I excerpt from Hippolytus' Apostolic Tradition, a section of the regulations on who may be accepted for baptism:

A soldier in command must be told not to kill people; if he is ordered so to do, he shall not carry it out. Nor should he take the oath. If he will not agree, he should be rejected.

Anyone who has the power of the sword, or who is a civil magistrate wearing the purple, should desist, or he should be rejected.

If a catechumen or a believer wishes to become a soldier they should be rejected, for they have despised God.

(These quotes are taken from page 100 of the Google Books online edition of On the Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus by Alistair Stewart-Sykes. Full source here)

There is another document, sometimes ascribed to Hippolytus, that is all the more blunt. Most historians I've come across in my search suggest that the so-called "Canons of Hippolytus" (also known as the Canons of the Church at Alexandria) are actually later than he, but still pre-Nicene. I cannot find the full text though the internet is loaded with identical quotes of the headings of the canons. They all agree that Canon 14 states that a Nazarene (that document's term for a Christian) "may not become a soldier except by order." I shall be indebted if anyone can come up with a full-text resource for these canons as I cannot find one. The closest I can come is a partial text in C. John Cadoux "The Early Christian Attitude to War" (full text here) in which he reproduces partial translations of the Canons along with two parallel documents (page 122 in the PDF edition). Rather than reproduce the variations in readings here, I refer you to the entire discussion (pages 119-128 in the PDF edition), which essentially says that soldiers were to be refused baptism unless they renounced their office, or at least refrained from shedding blood; and that no believer should voluntarily become a soldier.

Incidentally, the entire Cadoux text is worth further reading for those who would like to go into this subject in depth.

War and Peace - Part 6 - Tertullian

2009-02-11T13:06:00.000-08:00

I want to present to you some very interesting writings by some of the church fathers regarding participation in the military. In doing so I am not claiming that the early church was monolithic in its stand against the use of violence, for if it were, the writers I'm about to cite might not have had to make their arguments at all. There have been at least some historical accounts of Christian soldiers during the first 2-3 centuries of the church--many (but not all) martyrs. Nevertheless I think the Christian-soldier apologists fail to appropriately reconcile the fact that, while some pre-Constantine church fathers are explicit in their opposition to war, and others may seem to acknowledge Christian soldiers as a reality, I have yet to see a single pre-fourth-century Christian writer who defended or advocated military service by the believer. An argument that military service may have been tolerated is not the same thing at all as claiming that it was encouraged.

A point of clarification before I proceed: I appeal to these writers, not because I suggest that they have Biblical or "inspired" authority, but rather as evidence of teaching within the early church, close to the time of Jesus. There is plenty within the writings of the very authors I quote, that I would consider quite weird (for example, the descriptions of pennance and preparation for baptism). Their testimony, however, is still compelling.

Tertullian (around 160-220 AD) was an early and prolific apologist for Christianity, hailing from Carthage. He had some interesting things to say about the use of the sword, which I offer below. These quotes are taken from the compilation "Latin Christianity: It's Founder - Tertullian" by Philip Schaff. The complete online text is available at the Christian Classics Ethereal Library. In each passage I have put the quote in green with added emphasis to key phrases in red.

(In answer to the accusation that Christians are the enemy of the state) If we are enjoined, then, to love our enemies, as I have remarked above, whom have we to hate? If injured, we are forbidden to retaliate, lest we become as bad ourselves: who can suffer injury at our hands?
(and later in the same passage)
For what wars should we not be fit, not eager, even with unequal forces, we who so willingly yield ourselves to the sword, if in our religion it were not counted better to be slain than to slay? Apologia, ch. 37

(Speaking of Jesus) He to whom, had He willed it, legions of angels would at one word have presented themselves from the heavens, approved not the avenging sword of even one disciple. The patience of the Lord was wounded in (the wound of) Malchus. And so, too, He cursed for the time to come the works of the sword; and, by the restoration of health, made satisfaction to him whom Himself had not hurt, through Patience, the mother of Mercy." De Patientia (On Patience), Ch. 3

And probably the most comprehensive:

To begin with the real ground of the military crown, I think we must first inquire whether warfare is proper at all for Christians. What sense is there in discussing the merely accidental, when that on which it rests is to be condemned? Do we believe it lawful for a human oath to be superadded to one divine, for a man to come under promise to another master after Christ, and to abjure father, mother, and all nearest kinsfolk, whom even the law has commanded us to honour and love next to God Himself, to whom the gospel, too, holding them only of less account than Christ, has in like manner rendered honour? Shall it be held lawful to make an occupation of the sword, when the Lord proclaims that he who uses the sword shall perish by the sword? And shall the son of peace take part in the battle when it does not become him even to sue at law? And shall he apply the chain, and the prison, and the torture, and the punishment, who is not the avenger even of his own wrongs? Shall he, forsooth, either keep watch-service for others more than for Christ, or shall he do it on the Lord’s day, when he does not even do it for Christ Himself? And shall he keep guard before the temples which he has renounced? And shall he take a meal where the apostle has forbidden him? And shall he diligently protect by night those whom in the day-time he has put to flight by his exorcisms, leaning and resting on the spear the while with which Christ’s side was pierced? Shall he carry a flag, too, hostile to Christ? And shall he ask a watchword from the emperor who has already received one from God? Shall he be disturbed in death by the trumpet of the trumpeter, who expects to be aroused by the angel’s trump? And shall the Christian be burned according to camp rule, when he was not permitted to burn incense to an idol, when to him Christ remitted the punishment of fire? Then how many other offences there are involved in the performances of camp offices, which we must hold to involve a transgression of God’s law, you may see by a slight survey. The very carrying of the name over from the camp of light to the camp of darkness is a violation of it. Of course, if faith comes later, and finds any preoccupied with military service, their case is different, as in the instance of those whom John used to receive for baptism, and of those most faithful centurions, I mean the centurion whom Christ approves, and the centurion whom Peter instructs; yet, at the same time, when a man has become a believer, and faith has been sealed, there must be either an immediate abandonment of it, which has been the course with many; or all sorts of quibbling will have to be resorted to in order to avoid offending God, and that is not allowed even outside of military service; or, last of all, for God the fate must be endured which a citizen-faith has been no less ready to accept. Neither does military service hold out escape from punishment of sins, or exemption from martyrdom. Nowhere does the Christian change his character. De Corona Militis (on the Military Crown), ch. 13

There is no question, in the broader context of De Idolatria and De Corona Militis, that one of Tertullian's major objections to military service was the frank idolatry that came with the territory. This is particularly clear in the last passage I quoted above. To argue, however, that idolatry was the only reason Tertullian had an issue with military service is to go against the plain language of his argument. He is abundantly clear that the use of the sword is contrary to the character expected of the Christian, and that trying to justify otherwise-sinful behavior because of the military command is "quibbling."

It is important to acknowledge here that Tertullian is not making any argument as to whether or not the state should have armies, or whether it should use them. He is merely arguing (but quite vehemently) that the follower of Jesus has no business taking part in this activity of the state. I suggest his argument still holds.

Homosexuality - It's really about which kingdom you're in!

2009-02-06T12:36:00.000-08:00

So far, most of my posts have addressed areas that cause me concern within that part of Christianity that would tend to self-identify as "conservative." In fact the casual reader could be forgiven for pretty quickly lumping me in with a "liberal" stream of thought. I'm about to change that. A responsible reading of the Christian scriptures according to the "Word of God" hermaneutic that I advocate, will come up with plenty to challenge on the self-styled "left" side of the spectrum as well.

A major battle in the American culture wars today is the issue of homosexuality. (I must stress at this juncture that I don't think the various gay-rights issues should be as high on the radar screen of the church as they are. It ought not to be the priority it has become. Nevertheless, since the church left and right has taken its cues from the surrounding culture and MADE it an issue, the debate rages on, and it is for this reason I'm addressing it at all).

Like most such issues, the battle seems to have invaded the church along largely partisan lines, with each "wing" assuming the position of its secular compatriots, and then hitting up the Biblical text for support to the position already decided. Though this is a vast oversimplification, the conventional territory for Christians seems to have broken down to three main perspectives:

"Conservatives" say homosexuality is an abomination before God. They cite various texts, notably Leviticus 18:22 and Romans 1:26-27, as clearly calling homosexuality outside the pale. They then proceed to try to force secular society to hew to their religiously-defined sense of right and wrong through laws, censure and the rest.
"Progressives" or "Liberals" say that Jesus never said anything about homosexuality, and that what's more, he taught a love of all people that clearly extended to "sinners," not just those who already follow his decrees. They argue that people who have sexual desire for the same gender are created that way by God, and that the only way we can behave in a loving, Jesus-like manner, is to welcome those with same-sex attraction into fellowship, blessing their union as equivalent to a heterosexual marriage.
A third group wishes the issue would just go away and they wouldn't have to think about it or deal with it. One might surmise they'd appreciate a spiritual equivalent to "don't ask, don't tell" in the church.

Number 3 has no chance of happening, and I'll dismiss it at that. But I submit that numbers 1 and 2 both have elements of truth and elements where they've missed the boat entirely.

Starting (as we always ought) with Jesus, we find he wasn't quite as silent on the issue as the progressives say, or as the conservatives imply by their lack of appeal to his words. While it is true that we have no record of Jesus addressing same-sex relationships directly, he made some very clear statements about marriage and adultery that we must consider. First of all, adultery: Although the word occurs (according to my quick search) 15 times in the four gospels, it is never fully defined. It's clear by Jesus' usage that he's using a working definition that was already extant in the minds of his hearers. The Old Testament, whether law or prophets, gives only a partial definition itself, frequently also just mentioning the word without definition (e.g. Exodus 20:14). However, O.T. passages make it clear that, at the very least, adultery is sexually violating a marriage (Lev. 20:10, Jer. 29:23), and using the services of a prostitute (Jer. 5:7, Ezekiel 23:43-45). Jesus then expands the definition to divorce and remarriage (Matt 5:32, Matt. 19:9, Mark 10:11-12, Luke 16:18) and even to lustful thought (Matt. 5:27). But here we're looking at the edges of the definition. If we are remotely honest with each other, we have to confront the reality that the Biblical authors saw no need to fully define the term "adultery," nor its cousin "fornication," for their hearers already knew these words meant "sexual relations outside the confines of marriage." Therefore, what we find in the Scripture is not a comprehensive definition, but rather a clarification and extension of the boundaries.

So we come to the Biblical concept of marriage. Here, Jesus simply quotes and then explains Genesis 2:25 in Matt. 19:4-6 and Mark 10:8-9:

He answered, "Have you not read that the one who made them at the beginning 'made them male and female,' and said, 'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate."

Here Jesus clarified what his hearers already would have known, that marriage is God's way of joining a man and a woman. There is no other form of marriage in the church, and God doesn't make two men or two women "one" in a marital way.

So the problem with homosexuality and bisexuality is the same as the problem of cheating on one's wife. They're all adultery. One is not "worse" than the other according to Jesus' words, and when the church gets itself into a lather over homosexuality but ignores divorce in its own ranks, it's playing a selectivity that is not Scripturally countenanced. Straight or gay, adultery is not an acceptable practice for the follower of Jesus.

One more point before I turn to the conservatives. . .the progressive will often protest that some people are simply, naturally attracted to the same sex, that this is a biological fact, and therefore same-sex attraction must be lovingly accepted as acceptable (even holy) practice. There are several fallacies to this argument, but I'll highlight just three:

The argument of a biological basis for same-sex attraction is really a red herring. The entire history of God's call to faithfulness among his people includes myriad examples where God expects us to act contrary to our fallen, earthly-powers-dominated nature. Some people's nature urges them to have multiple straight partners. Others find the urge to couple with the same sex. Still others are attracted by their nature to addiction, to domineering over others, to greed or theft, to deception. We have an old-fashioned term for this. . .the church fathers called it "original sin." Without getting into the theology of the fall, it's clear that Jesus calls us to act contrary to our fallen nature in a wide range of behaviors. To carve out an exception to this pattern in the case of sexual attraction is wholly unjustified.
Since when did loving someone mean unquestioningly blessing whatever actions make them feel fulfilled or satisfied? I can personally testify that some of the most withering criticism I've ever received was justified confrontation of my selfishness or bad behavior by people who loved me absolutely. In the same vein, I love my children totally. But it is precisely because I love them that I cannot simply let them do what I know or believe to be a deeply wrong action. Simply granting them license to do whatever they were inclined to do would be the most unloving thing I could do as a father.
It's not unique to our society, but we have the notions of love and sex hopelessly confused. In entertainment, in people's description of their relationships, in the various messes that people get themselves into over and over, it becomes abundantly clear that too many have bought the lie that if you love somebody, it's inevitably got to be sexual. This is not how God intended sexuality to function, nor love either, for that matter. Love alone is neither a reason nor a pass for sexual activity.

OK, so now that I've criticized the "progressive" point of view, what about the conservatives who, by now, should be cheering me on? Well, conservative Christians seem to have missed an even more fundamental point: Everything I'm talking about here is based on what I believe Jesus' standard is for his followers. Until one accepts the authority of Jesus, the standard doesn't apply--not because the act in question is not ultimately wrong, but because we can't expect those who aren't subject to the King, to live by the King's rules. "The world" (for want of a better term) is living according to the rules of its prince, and the Christ-centered solution to this problem is not to get the powers to change their rules, it is to get the citizens to shift their allegiance. We cannot, and we must not, attempt to accomplish by earthly fiat, what we have failed to accomplish by evangelism. The works of the flesh (Gal. 5:19-21) are what we can and should expect from those who do not have the Spirit of Christ, and the fruits of the Spirit (v. 22-25) come once a person has been subject to the Spirit, not before.

What this means to me is that believers have got to face the reality of the two kingdoms. We should make no bones about the different life that is expected of citizens of the Kingdom of God, but we have got to get off our high horse about trying to convert the kingdom of this world to good behavior without its citizens first shifting their allegiance to Jesus.

Now, does this mean that someone who's gay "can't be saved" as I know someone will ask me? To this I respond "You are asking the wrong question." Jesus extends his saving invitation to all humanity, and that includes gay humanity. He does, however, demand a different standard of behavior for those who have accepted his lordship. I don't claim to know how this might work out from a timeline point of view. God knows, a lot of us who have joined Jesus' kingdom still have areas where we have failed to fully surrender to his lordship. It is (thankfully) not for us to determine who's "saved" and who's not; however as 1 Corinthians 5 makes clear, it IS the responsibility of the assembled body to confront unrepentant sin among its members. This is something I think the individual body probably has to work out prayerfully, together. It very well may look different in different assemblies, even if all are doing their level best to remain faithful. But I think it is clear that we cannot go to the other extreme and bless these behaviors as appropriate for the faithful.

War and Peace - Part 5 - My Own Evolution

2009-01-29T12:32:00.000-08:00

Throughout my posts to date I have been careful (and I hope it shows) to qualify my statements with the perspective that I am not absolutely sure that no Christian can ever use violent means for any reason. I sense that some of the commenters so far (and I am grateful for your input--keep it coming!) probably feel a little more strongly on this than I do. I haven't always been willing to countenance such reservations, and to be honest I'm not entirely sure that I'm not just copping out here. In any event, I hope that a brief summary of how I got where I am might help to tease some of this out, or at least stimulate some good probing questions from the rest of you.

I grew up in Mennonite and Church of the Brethren fellowships, so my early perspective was one of absolute "nonresistance," which was the term we usually used at the time (from Jesus' "do not resist an evildoer" in Matt. 5:39). Not only did I hold then--as I still do--that military service was incompatible with Christian morality, I also held that any use of violence, whether in self-defense or defense of another, was morally unacceptable (of course, that didn't stop some very physical fights with my brothers, but that's another story!). I went to a Mennonite high school and a Mennonite college, so in reality I never seriously confronted a different point of view during the first twenty-six years of my life.

It was when I was dating my fiancee (now wife of 19 years) that I first faced my convictions in a new light. She did not grow up Mennonite, but rather several different Evangelical denominations, and many of the men in her family are veterans. I told her very directly during our courtship, that she needed to be OK with the understanding that as much as I loved her, I could never kill even to save her. It's a testimony of how devoted to me she was (is) that she accepted this and married me anyway (for which I remain grateful beyond words).

But that situation forced me to consider a question I had never faced before: It's all well and good to be willing to die for my own convictions, or to save others. But what about letting someone else die for my convictions--in particular someone who doesn't also share them? Suddenly the answer wasn't so obvious. . .and to this day it still isn't, for me anyway. Today, I don't think I could let my wife or kids die or be seriously injured if I had it in my power to stop the attacker, even lethally.

Here the example of Jesus is unfortunately far more murky than we might wish. Living in Roman-Empire-occupied Israel, Jesus certainly encountered violence in progress, but with the exception of those instances where he was himself the target, the only example we have to go on is the woman caught in adultery (John 8:1-11). This is a case where Jesus stopped the violence nonviolently, by shaming the would-be perpetrators. It's a great example of how force of any kind may not be the only response even to a crazed mob. But it's not sufficient to clearly give us a template for all situations. He certainly wasn't averse to some physicality as evidenced by his spectacular cleansing of the temple--though we have no evidence that anyone was injured (and therefore I suspect not) in this event. But what would Jesus have done in the event of a physical attack on an innocent person? The evidence just doesn't tell us.

I remain convinced that warfare is unacceptable for the believer. I don't, in fact, subscribe to the usual interpretations of "Just Warfare," although I continue to maintain that if Christians even took Augustine's criteria seriously we'd have fewer wars than we do. Nevertheless, I cannot in my current thinking, say that it is always, unequivocally, unacceptable for a follower of Jesus to reach for a weapon. At this juncture in my life, I still find myself carving out an exception for those cases where violence is being done to innocents, and in which that violence can be stopped by exerting force--even deadly force--against the perpetrator. This is not an attack on an "enemy" I'm talking about here. It's intervening to stop an attack by one third party on another.

That intervention need not always be deadly. Creative leaders like Gandhi and Martin Luther King, among others, have demonstrated that even in situations of violent oppression, nonviolence can have spectacular results. I freely grant the contentions of authors like Greg Boyd and Shane Claiborne, as well as my fellow blogger Mason over at New Ways Forward, that resorting to violent intervention may be as much a failure of imagination as it is a necessary evil. Boyd, I think, does a great job of crystallizing this dilemma in the final chapter of "Myth of a Christian Nation" (pp. 166-167). Having just stated that Jesus "would choose nonviolence" if his family was attacked, Greg says:

"At the same time, I have to confess that I'm not sure this is what I'd do. I honestly admit that, like most people, I don't yet quite see how it would be moral to do what I believe Jesus would do. Yet I have to assume that my disagreement with Jesus is due to my not having sufficiently cultivated a kingdom heart and mind. If I felt I had to harm or take the life of another to prevent what clearly seemed to be a greater evil, I could not feel righteous or even justified about it. Like Bonhoeffer who, despite his pacifism, plotted to assassinate Hitler, I could only plead for God's mercy.

What we must never do, however, is acquiesce to our worldly condition by rationalizing away Jesus' clear kingdom prescriptions. . ."

This is where I'm at, for now.

War and Peace - Part 4 - Matt. 5 vs?? Rom. 13

2009-01-28T13:15:00.000-08:00

I'm tempted in my discussion of war and peace, to start from the top, outline the full Biblical case for nonviolence, and enter into dialog with major objectors to that case. I'm not going to do that--now at least--primarily because I really don't think I've got much to add to what has been said far more eloquently by others. I will rather reiterate a few main points.

First, the case for Christian nonviolence rests primarily with the character, teaching, and demeanor of Jesus himself. Try as one might to say otherwise, we have to confront the reality that Jesus lived a life of peace, taught love for enemies, and explicitly commanded that his followers return good for evil. Never in his entire ministry, did Jesus qualify any of those commands with an exception for when a disciple was working in a state-sanctioned capacity.

The objection is often raised that Jesus' commands (in particular the Sermon on the Mount and its parallels) must be taken in the larger context of God's commanding and/or condoning warfare in the Old Testament (for an insightful struggle with issues of O.T. Violence, I recommend Greg Boyd's occasional blog series on this subject). Indeed this context must be considered, in the same way that ALL of the "You have heard it was said. . .but I say" statements should be seen, as Jesus clarifying, strengthening, and otherwise modifying accepted principles given before. When Jesus made explicit statements addressing an issue, as he did with our behavior toward our enemies, they must be taken as the final word on the issue. Of all the places we CANNOT qualify Jesus' commands on the basis of other Biblical perspectives, those places where he was most explicit seem to me to be the ones we must be most cautious. Simply put, where Jesus speaks, his words trump every other consideration. Otherwise, someone or something else is Lord.

By far the most common objection I hear to this perspective is Romans 13:1-7, which clearly states that governments, who have their authority from God, wield the sword to reward those who do good and to punish those who do evil.. However, we have got to keep in mind that this passage is bookended by commands directly to the believer to live a completely different paradigm marked by love and self-sacrifice. Romans 12:17-21 explicitly commands us to love our enemies, and Romans 13:8-10 reiterates the message about loving our neighbors (don't forget how Jesus defined "neighbors" in Luke 10:29-37). This "bookending" suggests rather strongly that, whatever the state's rights or responsibilities may be vis-a-vis violent force, it is categorically not the acceptable way for followers of Jesus.

Furthermore, the command to submit to earthly authorities has no bearing on our current state in the U.S., where we have a volunteer army, not a compulsory one. Anyone who joins the military today may do so for a variety of reasons, but it is not submitting to the authorities to do so when the authorities have not demanded it. Therefore, even if Romans 13 might mandate submission to a draft (I am not suggesting for a moment that it does), this is a useless argument in favor of military service in America today.

But this brings me to a point that I have not heard discussed in either camps who traditionally advocate nonviolence, nor those who traditionally favor military service. Throughout the Old and New Testaments, we are repeatedly shown that we are each accountable for our own actions. One of the biggest concerns I have with military service is the fact that the soldier must submit himself to the authority of the military chain of command, and accept the commands to do actions (destruction of lives and property) that would by any definition be immoral except for the context (warfare) in which they are done. The problem is, even Augustine's "Just War" doctrines make it clear by the very things they proscribe, that not all wars, nor all actions within a war, are just. In the chain of command, it is rare that the individual soldier is privy to sufficient information to accurately weigh the justice of the command he has been issued. He is required to trust the intrinsic morality of the chain of command, and on that basis to commit actions that would be sinful in any other circumstance.

This, I submit, is abdication of one's moral responsibility. All the famous hypotheticals about big men breaking into your house and threatening your wife and kids, are personal, intimate pictures where the (ill-founded) presumption is that a clear-cut moral picture is visible. But when an air force pilot is directed to bomb a village in Afghanistan, he must rely on the entire command and intelligence structure to have gotten it "right," that the village or house he's targeting actually contains a combatant or terrorist leader who must be eliminated, and that whatever civilian deaths may accompany this attack are both unavoidable and a sufficient price to pay in order to get our bad guy. The result may indeed be the death of a "bad guy," but it can just as well be the annihilation of a wedding party. Either way, our churches have absolved our pilot of responsibility for the morality of his action. There is absolutely no Scriptural case for this.

To put it as bluntly as I can, I propose that no Christian has the freedom--ever--to yield to another person the right to determine that an otherwise-sinful action is, after all, moral. We are accountable for our own actions, and Romans 13 does not give us a pass when the state commands otherwise.

Theodicy in cartoon form

2009-01-27T09:46:00.000-08:00

I think Ruben Bolling has come up with a hilarious take on theodicy (the logical dilemma of a good God and evil in the world). Be sure to see the entire "Tom the Dancing Bug" cartoon here.

(Partial reproduction with cartoonist's permission - Thanks Ruben!)

Observations about Rick Warren's inaugural prayer

2009-01-20T10:36:00.000-08:00

Mostly I'm sticking to more directly Scriptural, doctrinal, and church/kingdom life stuff on this blog, but I'm going to veer into current events for a moment. Lots of people made lots of noise over Rick Warren's being asked to deliver the invocation at President Obama's inauguration this morning. As with most such storms, the import of Warren's presence got lost, I think, in the cultural warriors' interpretations.

But I was struck by the actual content of what Rick said this morning. Not only was it a prayer I could heartily say "amen" to in virtually all respects, it was truly inclusive from a man who has been vilified over and over again for not being inclusive enough.

Didn't anyone else notice that Warren invoked God as "the Compassionate, the Merciful?" This comes straight from the opening phrase of every Sura in the Quran ("In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful"), and I am certain it is no accident that in this phrase, Warren included faithful Muslims as they pray to God. Likewise, Warren used the Hebrew, Arabic, and Spanish names for Jesus in another bid to be culturally inclusive.

That prayer made no apologies for where he (Warren) stands: how can anyone argue with praying "in the name of the one who changed my life?" But it opened the door for lots of people, and not only Christians, to honestly pray with him.

Good on you, Rick!

War and Peace - Part 3 - True Lies and Tom Clancy

2009-01-15T12:35:00.000-08:00

When I hear many Americans discussing the appropriate contexts for the use of deadly force, I have noticed that there are some pretty key assumptions underlying the discussion that rarely--if ever--get examined. While I don't want to get into the chicken-egg question of which causes which, I would suggest that popular entertainment may give us a useful window onto some important fallacies.

Although I believe in peace as a way of life, I confess that I enjoy a shoot-em-up thriller as much as the next red-blooded American. The 1994 movie "True Lies" with Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Tom Arnold is a fun, and funny, example of the genre. Although it goes way over the top (come on, even Arnold S. couldn't avoid being sucked into the intakes of a hovering Harrier in the final fight scene), it also presented an interesting window into the popular perception of the violent hero.

For those who haven't seen the movie, the hero (Schwarzenegger) is a secret operative with a computer-salesman cover, and his wife (Curtis) has no clue of his real job till a scene when they are both in the middle of a firefight. Curtis' character is understandably freaked out, and at one point asks her husband "Did you ever kill anyone?" His answer, in that inimitable Terminator accent "Yeah, but they were all bad."

It goes even deeper with the novels of Tom Clancy--undoubtedly one of the best writers of gripping international warfare and subterfuge novels today. From "Hunt for Red October" on, the Jack Ryan series has made a ton of money on paper and film, all the while perpetuating the notion of American clandestine operations that are clearly always in the right and usually close to omnipotent. But the most telling dialog I remember in any of the Ryan series, comes from CIA agent John Clark. I'm sorry I don't remember if this was in "Clear and Present Danger" or "The Sum of All Fears," but I believe it was one of the two. Clark is a gritty character, who is often called upon to do the dirty work. He has no apparent compunctions about his task, and in fact says on several occasions that he does the things others would see as criminal, such as assassinations, kidnappings, dealings with "bad guys," because that is what is necessary to preserve the freedom of the rest of us to care about right and wrong.

This is not a unique feeling--we've heard it countless times from the Bush/Cheney administration over the past eight years in phrases like "taking the gloves off" and "preserving our freedom" in the "War on Terror." (btw, how do you declare war on fear? That name has always been disingenuous in my opinion) Consider this quote from Cheney ("Meet the Press" interview with Tim Russert, September 16, 2001):

We also have to work, though, sort of the dark side, if you will. We've got to spend time in the shadows in the intelligence world. A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion, using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies, if we're going to be successful. That's the world these folks operate in, and so it's going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal, basically, to achieve our objective.

The vital point that we must recognize is that most discussions defending the use of violence presuppose that "our side" is good, we know who the "enemy" is, that "enemy" is unequivocally "bad," and that the violence being contemplated or defended will either cow the enemy into submission or, by eliminating him, eliminate the problem. How can anyone object to killing "bad" people to "preserve the freedom" of "good" people?

Of course the real world isn't as simple as a Hollywood movie or a suspense-thriller novel. We don't have an omniscient narrator setting up the story of all the evil things we--the readers/viewers--can know which prove how bad the bad guys are. We are actors in the play, and we don't know (completely) who's good, who's bad, and how either will respond to our actions. Furthermore, in the fantasy world of our entertainment, collateral damage and suffering of innocent bystanders only happens when the callous "bad guys" do their thing, never when the "good guys" get the "bad guys."

Yet it is precisely these fantasies that seem to me to propel so much of the popular culture's support for war. . .at least until reality sets in some thousands of casualties later. And the notion that anyone, anywhere in the world, might see us as the "bad" actors, is utterly incomprehensible for far too many.

We cannot have a rational discussion about the use of force, if our perception of reality has more in common with our entertainment than it does with living, bleeding humanity.

War and Peace - Part 2 - Life and Death Decisions

2009-01-14T20:16:00.000-08:00

Wisdom can be found in many places, not all of them holy. In The Lord of the Rings, the great J.R.R. Tolkien made a profound observation:

"Many live that deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends." (Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 2)

Perhaps this is part of what Paul meant in Rom 12:19-21:

Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord." No, "if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads." Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. (NRSV)

Now, I am not saying that this verse alone is a categorical case for nonviolence in every instance, because that's not the context of what Paul is saying. He is, however, clearly saying in the entire Romans 12 passage, that Christians should be known for their peaceable behavior. He is particularly forbidding the Christ-follower to exercise vengeance or violent retaliation. He is also saying that it is God's job, not ours, to mete out punishment for wrongs committed.

Of course, the King of Kings himself had a few things to say about how we behave toward our enemies too:

Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you (Matt 5:44)
Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. (Luke 6:27-28)
But love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. (Luke 6:35-36)

Rather than (necessarily) mandating nonviolence in all circumstances, these verses clearly speak to the issue of how we are to behave toward our enemies. There is a bumper sticker "out there" that says it pretty clearly: "When Jesus said 'Love your enemies,' I think he probably meant 'Don't kill them.'" Taken together with Paul's statement, I think it's pretty clear that exacting violent punishment on people because they have done us violence, is unacceptable in the Kingdom of Jesus.

Which is not to say that justice will not be done. Paul's statement, as well as passage after passage throughout the Old Testament, make no bones about the fact that God will, in his time, exact justice (though it may not look like we think). But it is a duty God reserves for himself, not one that we may arrogate to ourselves.

This, interestingly, is the context in which the very next chapter, Romans 13, talks about the power of the State (the "governing authorities" in NRSV and NIV, "the higher powers" in KJV) being God's servant to reward the good and punish the evildoer. This context is ignored by those who claim Paul is saying it's OK for Christians to participate with the state in the meting of punishment. If we are not to return evil for evil, if we are to treat our enemies with love, then we cannot engage in the state's violence upon them.

In fact, the "authorities" section of Romans 13 is bracketed on BOTH sides by commands of loving behavior, for from 13:8-10 Paul repeats the message, concluding "Love does no wrong to a neighbor" (v.10). Remembering how Jesus defined "neighbor," (Luke 10:29-37), that's a pretty broad-brush command.

In summary, in the case of those who we define (or a government defines for us) as "enemies," we have very clear marching orders, and dealing of death is not part of them. There are other issues regarding the use of violence, but they will have to wait for further posts.

War and Peace - Part 1

2009-01-09T17:20:00.000-08:00

I have been discussing a lot of different issues related to war and peace with a couple close friends lately, and it's time I get some things in writing. This is going to take a number of posts, but I want to start by laying out a couple of basic challenges that I will flesh out in more detail later.

To put it simply and directly, when a human life is taken, evil is done. There is no way to sanctify or bless the act of human life without flagrantly violating the very character of Jesus.

This is a strong statement, especially for one who says, as I will in future posts, that I believe there are still limited instances where, in the fallen world in which we live, the taking of life may be the only way to address certain extreme circumstances. While I was once an absolute pacifist, I cannot today state that it is always, absolutely, and indisputably wrong for a follower of Christ to use deadly force (though as you will see, my acceptable limits for doing so are pretty narrow). However, even given that there may be times where deadly force is tragically necessary even for the Christ-follower, it must never be glorified, elevated, seen in any light other than a supreme tragedy for which we weep that it must happen at all.

Secondly, and for a variety of reasons that are not simply pacifist reasons, I shall advocate that it is morally unacceptable for a Christ-follower to assume the career of a soldier.

I make this claim even though I freely admit that I have friends who serve or have served in the military. I do not claim that they are "not saved," primarily because I repudiate the saved/unsaved dichotomy as a criterion for judging discipleship. Christ-followers are called to emulate our king because of who he is and what he demands, not because we'll go to hell if we don't.

Finally, I acknowledge at the outset that my thinking is not finalized on all of these issues, despite years of wrestling with them. I am probably internally inconsistent in some of what I'm going to say, and I definitely have room to further refine the positions I'm going to lay out. However, I hope that these thoughts will challenge the readers to re-consider some of their own closely-held positions on this issue, and that perhaps we can take the discussion beyond the usual pacifist-vs-nationalist rhetoric that has so often characterized the debates I have heard.

More to come. . .

God's foreknowledge as a result of his sovereignty

2008-11-16T19:07:00.000-08:00

In my last post I criticized Greg Boyd's otherwise-excellent arguments in "God of the Possible" as giving insufficient attention to God's sovereignty as an important key to understanding his foreknowledge. I suggested that while Boyd correctly answers his objectors toward the end of the book, by saying that the Open View of God does not diminish--and may in fact enhance--the view of God's authority, he could have applied the fact of God's sovereign nature to the question at hand to far greater effect. In this post I will elaborate on why I think it matters.

The classical view of God's foreknowledge, which Boyd describes well, seems to me to imply that part of the foundation of God's authority rests on the fact of his settled foreknowledge about all that will happen. Though I am vastly oversimplifying, in essence the thought seems to be that God's power and/or authority depend at least in part on God's omniscience--his ability to see the end from the beginning--to "know all things."

I submit this is getting the cart before the horse, and the fact that Boyd does not point this out complicates his own explanation about the future being "partially open" and "partially settled." I suggest rather that God has settled in his mind that there are certain things he's going to do, and certain outcomes that he is going to ensure take place. Those things are "settled" for the simple reason that God has resolved that he will do them. Isaiah 45:23 is a great example of this, where God says "I swear by myself" that one day everyone will acknowledge he's the only God. This is not conditional on anything, but nor is it a passively-settled future event. It's something God is going to accomplish, and he knows he can and will do it. His foreknowledge, therefore, is absolutely settled because God the omnipotent can deliver on his commitment.

In the same vein, however, those things that God in his sovereignty has delegated to his creatures to decide, remain uncertain until his free moral agents choose among the possibilities. Here Boyd makes a very plausible case that God, being infinite in knowledge, can forsee all of the possible choices we might make, and even rank them in probability based upon our character and the character of other players, environmental factors, etc. that lead us to decide as we do. This perspective permeates the book, but one good place to see it is in his question 6 discussion on pp 126 and following, where he offers the analogy of God as the "infinitely intelligent chess player" who can anticipate all our possible moves. As Boyd correctly points out, this actually requires a lot more intellectual horsepower than simply to know the one fully-determined script that everything is going to follow, and thus an open view of God actually posits a more intelligent, more wise, more glorious perspective for God than that of exhaustive, settled foreknowledge.

Even if the choice we make from among the possibilities is one that God did not expect or desire (and Boyd makes an unambiguous Scriptural case for this happening), this does not diminish the fact of his sovereignty in the slightest, because regardless of the outcome of our choices, he is confident in his power (and so ought we to be) to take whatever mess we make and still accomplish his good purpose. Put crudely, we have the ability to screw things up because that's one of the possible consequences of the freedom to choose, which God has granted. However--and this is cause for joy--we don't have the ability to screw them up beyond repair. THAT is God's sovereignty (and his grace) in full force!

The Sovereignty of God

2008-11-16T18:56:00.000-08:00

I’ve just finished Greg Boyd’s lay treatise on the Open Theism entitled “God of the Possible.” In the main I think Boyd has laid out an excellent perspective that conforms far more closely to my understanding of Scripture and my observation of the world, than does the classical view that God has exhaustive foreknowledge of a settled future. I definitely recommend the book.

However correct he is about the openness of the future and of God’s knowledge of that future, I think Boyd misses the significance of God’s sovereignty as it informs God’s future knowledge. It is not wholly unaddressed—Question 16 in chapter 4 deals in some degree with the objection classical evangelicals raise, that the open view of God somehow demeans God’s sovereignty (pp. 147 and following in the paperback edition). Nevertheless I suggest that if Boyd were more fully to consider the basic nature of God’s sovereignty, he could present a more forceful response to this question.

We Americans (perhaps others, but I know “us” best) don’t get the concept of sovereignty in anything remotely approaching a Biblical sense. It’s not our fault exactly, it’s in the DNA of our nation. The American Declaration of Independence illustrates my point, when it states that governments “. . .deriv(e) their just powers from the consent of the governed.” This concept, that we, the ruled, are in fact the source of the ruler’s authority, is a fundamental American belief, but it was wildly revolutionary in the context of European monarchs whose sovereignty was derived, either from divine right (that is, conferred upon them by God), or by their own self-existence. Interestingly, even now the term “Sovereign” in a monarchy refers, not to the state or the nation, but to the person of the monarch him- or herself. This contrasts sharply with our constitutional republic in which the people themselves are the sovereign (I speak, of course, of the governing philosophy with no comment on how it is—or isn’t—reflected in reality).

But all too often--and in sharp contrast to the way any Biblical contemporary would have understood it--American Christians’ description of God’s sovereignty falls into the trap of imputing to God’s authority the same source as human governments—namely us. This is true any time anyone makes the claim “if God weren’t this way (pick the theological trait of choice), he wouldn’t be sovereign.” This is hubris of the highest degree. What we’re really saying is that we couldn’t possibly grant the sovereignty of anybody who doesn’t measure up to our standard. In other words, God Himself is presumed to derive HIS just powers from our consent. Now, no good Evangelical would actually admit that is what he is saying; in fact he’d rightly counter that it was heresy. But when we attach conditions to the sovereignty of God, that’s exactly what we’re doing.

What I’m getting at is that God is sovereign simply and completely because he is—full stop. There are no conditions, no criteria that define or justify the fact that God is supreme over all things in heaven and on earth. God doesn’t derive his power or authority from anything at all. Rather it is one of the truths of his self-existent being. If nothing else we believe about God were true, his supreme authority would not be affected in any way, because it stands on its own. Therefore, any pronouncement of the sort “If X were not true, God’s sovereignty would be diminished” is sheer nonsense.

This brings me back to the open view of God, and Boyd’s book in particular, but I’ll save that for the next post.

Insight from Boyd on Bringing Our Presuppositions to Scripture

2008-11-12T13:00:00.000-08:00

I'm in the middle of Greg Boyd's excellent book "God of the Possible," an introduction to the "Open View of God" which I find quite compelling, but which I'm sorry to say some of my Evangelical friends have flatly rejected as heresy. I'll address the Open View in future posts, but for now I wanted to share a point he makes regarding our interpretation of Scripture.

Boyd clearly espouses a tighter view of Scriptural inspiration than I do--that is, he consistently refers to the whole Biblical text as the Word of God rather than searching for the Word of God WITHIN the Biblical text as I propose. Nevertheless I am in full agreement with the following statement (p 56-57 of the paperback edition), which he makes in partial response to the objection that if God regrets a decision he has made, he "must not be perfectly wise":

. . .it is better to allow Scripture to inform us regarding the nature of divine wisdom than to reinterpret an entire motif in order to square it with our preconceptions of divine wisdom. If God says he regretted a decision, and if Scripture elsewhere tells us that God is perfectly wise, then we should simply conclude that one can be perfectly wise and still regret a decision. Even if this is a mystery to us, it is better to allow the mystery to stand than to assume that we know what God's wisdom is like and conclude on this basis that God can't mean what he clearly says. (emphasis mine)

This quote highlights a problem that I believe pervades a great deal of theology, both modern and of long standing. Two observations that I think are key:

Our theology is far too intolerant of mystery. We seem to operate under the assumption that unless our system of belief has a complete explanation for every conceivable objection, we have not got it right. I regard it as the height of arrogance that finite humans could presume to fully understand the ways of an infinite God, yet in questions such as God's sovereignty we insist on explaining and analyzing it as if we were in fact the arbiters of God's authority.
The plain reading of Scripture is frequently far simpler (and, I submit, more likely to be true) than the contortions we force it through in order to fit our systematic theology. While it by no means always holds true, we would do well to start with the assumption that if a simple explanation fits the facts (or in this case, the Scriptural texts), it makes no sense to look for a more complicated one.

Eternal destiny, part 4: What about those who've never heard?

2008-10-15T13:20:00.000-07:00

The second element of the question put to me was as regards the eternal state of those who have never heard the gospel, and consequently have never had the opportunity to accept or reject Christ. This is a problematic concept when we try and break it down logically, and I readily admit this. However the uncomfortable reality is that Scripture is nearly silent on the subject. I only found a couple of references that alluded to the “ignorant unbeliever” at all. In Luke 12:42 and following, Jesus says that the one who knowingly violated what he knew to be right will be punished more severely than the one who erred ignorantly. Peter in his second epistle is even stronger (2:20-21), when he says of those who once believed but have returned, not only to the world, but to actively trying to deceive other believers, that “It would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than to have known it and then to turn their backs. . .”

There are several passages that may be inferred to include those who have never heard, including Jesus’ parable of the sheep and the goats, as well as John 5, Hebrews 9, and Revelation 20. There are vastly more passages which describe only the fate of those who have turned their back on the Lord—a far more active thing. But even from the few passages that do seem to include all people everywhere, we can infer that all flesh will be subject to judgment. Moving from this inference to the conclusion that those who have never heard are subject to the same punishment as those who actively oppose Jesus, requires a leap that Scripture does not make.

Scripture is quite clear that only those who have believed in the Lord receive eternal life (though I must qualify that the conventional evangelical definition of the term "believe" as "intellectual assent to orthodox propositions" is wide of the mark). Universalism is not a Biblical concept. But to say with certainty that the ignorant unbeliever will languish in eternal, conscious torment along with the one who has rejected and opposed Christ, is not a conclusion Scripture supports.

Finally, although this last point is a logical one and not a scriptural one (and therefore I offer it as a point to consider, not a doctrine), I have been struck by a number of cases over the years where the Spirit of God has clearly prepared a people group to receive the gospel, in some cases generations before any missionary arrives. Repeatedly I have read of missionaries arriving in a place to find people to whom elements of the truth of God have been revealed without any clear knowledge of the gospel, but who as soon as they heard the word of Christ have realized that this is what they were waiting for. It seems to me that we should be careful not to seal up our doctrinal boundaries so tightly as to exclude from our belief system those in whom the Spirit of God has been working without the benefit of a flesh-and-blood missionary.

None of this excuses us from our mandate to spread the gospel. As I said at the outset, our king has given us marching orders, and they are to be followed, not because of what will happen if we don’t, but because he’s our king. But as to the fate of those we don’t reach before they die, perhaps the most relevant scripture is Jesus’ counsel to Peter when he asked about John’s fate: “. . .what is that to you? You follow me.”

Eternal destiny, part 3: Eternal what?

2008-10-15T13:18:00.000-07:00

An implicit point in many discussions of the state of a human being after death, revolve around the theory that we were created with immortal souls, which live on after corporeal death. The belief is that we will all live forever, either in bliss or torment. I did not find any conclusive evidence of this in the New Testament. In fact, the majority of the passages I found speak of resurrection from the dead, not a continued existence after death. A worldview that states that we are all “fully dead” (for want of a better term) at death, but that God will, at the end of time, raise us all either to eternal life or to judgment, is just as consistent—perhaps more so—with the scriptures I read, as is a belief in the immortality of the soul.

Furthermore, numerous passages in both the Gospel of John and the epistles, seem to set up a contrast between death or destruction on one hand, and eternal life on the other. The classic John 3:16 is a good example of this. The contrast is not between “eternally conscious punishment” and “eternal life,” but rather between “perishing” and “eternal life.” “Eternal death” (my phrase, not in the Bible) is also eternal—that is, death from which there is no resurrection or reprieve. The “second death” of Revelation may be just that.

I’m not necessarily advocating annihilationism (although I find it logically compelling). As my notes on individual passages will show, I in fact came across a variety of places in both the gospels and the epistles, some of which might be taken more to indicate an ongoing punishment, and others of which seem more to suggest a finality to the punishment—rather like the contrast between life in prison and the death sentence. Both are final, complete, and irrevocable, and nothing I found in Scripture suggests anything less.

My point is that an equally-honest case can be made, either for eternal conscious punishment, or for annihilation, depending on the Scriptural passages to which one gives more weight, and no clear-cut, conclusive pattern emerges. I may decide the preponderence of evidence points one direction, and another believer may see it pointing the other way, and neither of us is conclusively on solid Scriptural ground. I cannot agree to a doctrine which attempts to clarify a point that I believe the writers of Scripture—under divine inspiration—left vague.

Eternal destiny, part 2: Begging the Question

2008-10-15T13:16:00.000-07:00

The clearest finding I come to from this study was something I had already suspected, but I was still surprised by the preponderance of evidence that came through. This is that the concept of hell and condemnation is used in the New Testament primarily as a warning to those who claim to believe, or who claim God’s privilege. It is not used as a warning or threat to the unbeliever. Time and again, both Jesus and the writers of the epistles speak of hell in the context of calling out the oppressors, the self-righteous religious leaders (particularly as those leaders are misleading those who might otherwise follow God), and those who try to justify themselves while ignoring the core of Jesus’ teaching. Even the term “unbeliever” in context refers far more frequently to those who have consciously rejected Jesus, than to people who just don’t know or haven’t received the Gospel.

A corollary to this point is that hell is also not used by any Biblical writer as a reason for us to evangelize. In the Great Commission, and in other places where Jesus commands us to spread his word, the reason is Jesus’ authority itself (“all power is given to me, therefore go…”), not the eventual state of the unbeliever. Jesus’ message to the unbeliever was an affirmative one—come, believe, repent, follow—not a negative one of fleeing punishment. Scripture is clear that God wants people to be saved, and we may infer that their eternal state is part of the reason, but Scripture itself does not link the two. That link, while reasonable, is a creation of human logic, not a Biblical one.

I freely acknowledge that there are many dedicated believers who first came to Christ out of a fear of condemnation. This is yet more evidence that God, in his grace, uses our flawed efforts to his glory. However, to argue as some have, that we need to use the “fear factor” to reach people who might not respond to a more affirmative presentation of the gospel, is to forget what we so readily claim at other times—that it is the Spirit of Christ who draws people to him, not the effectiveness of our words. If we believe in the Spirit’s moving in our evangelistic efforts, we do not need to go beyond what is written to be effective messengers of the gospel.

So my first and most important conclusion is this: a doctrine of hell/punishment is not necessary to obedience, and it is not central to the message of the New Testament. I submit it does not rise to the level of doctrine at all.

Eternal destiny, part 1

2008-10-15T12:54:00.000-07:00

I've already posted about my aversion to statements of faith in general, and to specific points in the commonly-accepted evangelical doctrinal statements. In the next several posts I want to take on one specific point in Evangelical doctrine that I believe is seriously misguided--the subject of eternal condemnation/hell. As the reader will soon see, I don't come out entirely in the camp of any of the major positions I have seen, in that I maintain the whole question of one's eternal destiny (particularly as a future-only proposition) is, in fact, asking the wrong question. But so much Evangelical thought is focused either on salvation as a means of hell-avoidance, sin as a thing that dooms us to hell (without salvation), and the fate of the "lost" (i.e., going to hell) as the reason for evangelism, that I don't think the point can safely be ignored.

The doctrinal statement goes something like this (this version taken from the new SOF of the Evangelical Free Church of America):

We believe that God will raise the dead bodily and judge the world, assigning the unbeliever to condemnation and eternal conscious punishment and the believer to eternal blessedness and joy with the Lord in the new heaven and the new earth, to the praise of His glorious grace.

The following posts are taken from a short paper I did on this subject in January, 2007 while I was in the process of pursuing a possible job in an international missions organization. Although the work I would have been doing was in the realm of health and development, the organization (not surprisingly) wanted to be sure my beliefs were in alignment with their doctrines, which as it turned out, they were not (I didn't get the job). Specifically, in the view of a statement that contained the above text, I was asked my position regarding the eventual state, both of the unbeliever who rejects Jesus consciously, and of those who never hear the gospel and therefore die "unsaved."

Not having fully studied the issue before (I have for a long time felt, as I said, that it was the wrong question to be asking), I committed to do a study of the Biblical texts for myself before answering. I did a complete survey of the New Testament, specifically looking for any text that seemed, to me, to be relevant to the subject. I'll post my annotated list of texts when I figure out how to do so, but I'll get the content up first.

As I said, my methodology here was simply a complete survey of the New Testament. In one or two cases I also referred to the Greek roots of a couple words. When I did this I used the Nestle Greek text, and Young’s Analytical Concordance as my principal references. I deliberately did not consult with any theological references or commentaries for this paper. I chose to do this, not because I do not respect others’ study, but because I believe it is important to approach a Scriptural question first and foremost by allowing the Scripture to speak for itself. I operate under the assumption that key Scriptural concepts (and consequently doctrines) must be derivable from Scripture itself. I do not presume to be superior to church fathers or traditions—but on the other hand I feel it is crucial to remember that nothing but Scripture itself carries Scripture’s authority. In the next three posts, I'll lay out what I found.