sc(c)oots

I Have Moved

2007-09-01T02:18:00.000-04:00

I’ve transferred my blog to a new location: committedcritic.com.

The new site still has all of the same posts and comments as this blog, but with my own domain name, a sharper design, and better search features.

I look forward to seeing you there...

Protection

2007-08-24T01:32:00.000-04:00

A story:

A wealthy rancher was at home one day, when a local brigand showed up at his door with a gang of bandits.

“What do you want?” the rancher asked.

“My men need provisions,” came the reply.

“Sorry, I don’t have anything to spare.”

“Might I point out, sir,” the brigand said slowly, “that my men have been very respectful of your land and your cattle; they haven’t harmed any of your sheep or damaged any of your property. Surely it would be unfortunate if anything –– unfortunate were to happen.”

“Just who do you think you are?” demanded the rancher. “Get off my land!”

“Very well,” replied the brigand. “It seems you’ve made your decision.” At that, he turned, nodded to his men, and walked away.

The rancher’s wife, who had been listening from inside the house, was alarmed by her husband’s response, and she knew she needed to act immediately. She grabbed several large bills from the household money reserves, slipped out the side door, and met up with the brigand, out of earshot of her husband.

“Sir, you’ll have to excuse my husband,” she said quickly. “Sometimes he makes choices without taking all considerations into account.” Handing him the money, she looked at him with a glimmer in her eye and continued: “Please accept my apology on his behalf, and know that I wish you the best of success in your further ventures. And keep me in mind –– I suspect we’ll see one another again.”

“Clearly, you’re smarter than your husband,” he said. “Thank you for preventing me from doing anything –– rash. You have no need to fear any harm from me.”

The woman returned home, and shortly thereafter, the rancher died of unexplained causes. Hearing about the death, the brigand showed up at the house. “I understand your husband experienced a bit of poor fortune,” he said. “My sincerest condolences.”

“Thank you,” she said. “It’s a pity, but fools tend to get what’s coming to them.” She stood and held out her hand, which he took, and the two of them walked from the house together.

OK, now read 1 Samuel 25 and tell me what you think.

(This reading follows John J. Collins, Introduction to the Hebrew Bible, 228–29.)

One Page: the Dead Sea Scrolls

2007-08-09T09:52:00.000-04:00

NOTE: From time to time, I hope to do one-page introductions to topics related to the Bible and Christianity that people may not know about. (Since I'm long-winded, for each one I’m limiting myself to one double-spaced page in Word.) You can see my previous one-page take on biblical theology here.

Beginning in 1947, fragments of hundreds of scrolls were found in 11 caves near the Dead Sea in Israel, apparently hidden there by a group that lived nearby at Qumran. Some of the scrolls are Old Testament manuscripts, but others are sectarian texts revealing a group of “Covenanters,” a pre-Christian Jewish reform movement who obeyed Torah as interpreted by their “Teacher of Righteousness,” and who believed (much like early Christians) that their community fulfilled OT prophecy.

Above all, the Qumran Covenanters were Jews, and their concerns were those of second temple Judaism. The Temple was all-important, but God’s presence there (Deut 12:5-7) depended on the Temple’s holiness –– requiring ritual purity, a correct sacrificial calendar, and a proper priesthood. The Covenanters saw the Jerusalem priesthood as (ritually) corrupt, so they moved to the Dead Sea, where their Community functioned as if it were the Temple. Righteousness (i.e., strict obedience to Torah) replaced animal sacrifices to make atonement for the land. Much like Paul, the Covenanters believed that humans were incapable of righteousness on their own, but that God, in his righteousness, forgave them and led them to righteous conduct.

The covenanters were harshly apocalyptic. God had predestined humanity into two groups: Sons of Light (themselves) and Sons of Darkness (everyone else). At the end of days (which they expected imminently), the Sons of Light would march forth and conquer the world, destroying everyone from the “dominion of Belial.”

The scrolls have a twofold significance for Christians: (1) the OT manuscripts are a thousand years older than what we had before; and (2) many of the ideas are startlingly similar to later Christian teachings. Against the common tendency to contrast Christianity with Judaism, the scrolls show just how Jewish the New Testament really is.

Feel free to ask me any questions, factual or otherwise.

[Sigh]

2007-07-05T12:27:00.000-04:00

A couple of weeks ago, a nearby Massachusetts school district decided to cut off all their high school sports programs, as well as their elementary and middle school art and music classes, because of lack of funding. Parents voted against higher taxes, and so the district did what they apparently had to do.

Meanwhile, the high school across the street from my house is rebuilding a new high school, on the same lot, to replace their current building, which they’ll tear down as soon as this one is done. Funny thing is, the current building was built just 35 years ago to replace an older building, which was where the new one will be now.

This newest building will take two and a half years and will cost about $150 million. The stated reasons for replacement, according to today’s paper: inadequate science labs, poor air circulation, and a lack of natural light. Since they could have just built a new wing of science labs, the last two reasons are apparently the real point. Translation: spoiled teenagers are tired of their ugly school, and their rich parents know how to get their own way.

I don’t really like what’s happening in either place, but I don’t suppose I could do much of anything about either one. Sad thing is, I’m mostly just irritated because I don’t like the noise across the street.

Baptism at 13 ≈ Infant Baptism?

2007-06-20T14:56:00.000-04:00

With this post, I want to raise the question of whether those of us in the Church of Christ tradition should start reckoning the age of accountability for baptism as closer to 20 than to 13.

For those who don’t know what I’m talking about, some background will be necessary:

I come from a Christian tradition called the Church of Christ, whose most defining characteristic is its insistence on believers baptism: people are baptized (= immersed) only once they are old enough to choose. We may disagree on many things among our congregations, but I am confident that you could search the nation without finding a CofC that uses the Believer’s Prayer or infant sprinkling to initiate members.

Personally and theologically, I fully support this practice: it emphasizes Christianity as a voluntary response to God’s call, entailing commitment and obedience. The New Testament lacks the notion of a nominal Christian, and believers baptism proclaims that fact in a graphic way.

The practice also demonstrates the belief that conversion is rebirth into a new life, in which the believer lives in obedience to God, empowered by the Holy Spirit. It sees baptism as an antidote not merely for original sin as found in an infant, but for the gritty reality of an adult who knows exactly how he or she has betrayed God.

But who can be a “believer”?

Although Martin Luther argued that God can give the gift of faith to an infant as easily as to an adult, most people would admit that the kind of faith typically portrayed in the New Testament requires a person to be a bit older. As a result, those who practice infant baptism often focus on the parents’ faith as well as their role in raising the child with a faith they can grow into. This is a worthy goal, but I think baptism is intended to signify an individual’s rebirth, not a family’s intentions.

Believers baptism is not without its problems either. For example, it raises the question whether young children are saved if they die before they are baptized.

Because certain scriptures describe young children who do not know the difference between right and wrong, some have argued that such children cannot actually sin. At some point, it is argued, they do come to know right from wrong, at which point they become accountable for their sin, and thus in need of salvation.

This age of accountability is kind of a nebulous boundary, and it guarantees that some children will die having reached this age of accountability but not having realized it. If we wanted to assure that no child died after reaching accountability but before baptism, we could push baptism to an earlier age, but that would require us to encourage baptism before the age of accountability, which would undermine the meaning of believers baptism in the first place. As a result, believers baptism requires an assumption that God will show mercy for borderline cases.

Some of this probably sounds silly to those not acquainted with the tradition, but these things matter to people, and they need to be reasoned out. Churches face the genuine pastoral concern of communicating to children (and their parents) that people need God’s forgiveness, but that children should not be bullied with the fear of hell.

There is an age, however, where the church needs to speak clearly about sin and the need for salvation, and the trick is determining what that age is. 4? 8? 13? 18?

Churches of Christ have tended to asssociate that age with the age of accountability, which more or less means the age of moral responsibility. Kids around age 13 start to develop ways of thinking very similar to adults, so it’s a natural time to view young people as making the leap from childhood to adulthood, and thus to accountability. In practice, this age varies from kid to kid and from family to family, but my sense is that the bell curve, if you took a survey, would peak at age 13.

However, it’s clear that kids have at least some notion of right and wrong by the time they start kindergarten. And what’s more, kids’ thinking at 13 is really only an approximation of adult thought. It seems to me, then, that we’re pretty much picking an age according to our best guess and assuming God will honor it since we don’t have anything more specific in Scripture to go on.

Personally, I’m not persuaded that 13 is a good age for young people to make a decision for Christ and be baptized. If we have to pick an age more or less arbitrarily anyway, let’s pick one that reflects the struggle young people go though when deciding whether to live a Christian life.

The Scriptural witness: Warriors in the desert

As for age of accountability in Scripture, there is nothing close to a clear guideline associated with baptism. However, the Old Testament has at least one important instance where age appears to be used as a criteria for accountability.

When Moses takes a census at two points in Numbers, he counts only men aged 20 and older (e.g., Num 1:3; 26:2). When the people of Israel refuse to take the promised land, God responds by holding these men responsible: all those who were counted in the census would die in the desert before the later generation entered the land. Only Joshua and Caleb, because they were ready to obey Yahweh, would be allowed to enter (Num 14:29-30; 32:11-12).

It seems most reasonable that this specific group was punished because they were qualified for battle, and thus could have stepped forward to fight in obedience to Yahweh; Deut 2:14 supports this explanation. However, another passage in Deuteronomy suggests a different explanation:

And as for your little ones, who you thought would become plunder, your children, who today do not yet know right from wrong, they shall enter [the land]; to them I will give it, and they shall take possession of it. (Deut 1:39)

It seems that the children under 20 weren’t held accountable for their parents’ mistake because they did not yet know right from wrong. This suggests 20 as the closest thing we have to a biblical “age of accountability.”

Guidelines for the church?

My point here is not to be a legalist in search of a proof text, but rather to wonder whether this seemingly arbitrary number from the OT is nearer to the reality of when the typical person indeed knows better.

In one sense, we never know better. At every stage of my life so far, I’ve been able to recognize how badly I misunderstood the world in the previous stage, and I suspect that will continue for a long time. I’ve been studying scripture, theology, and ministry for 10 academic years now, and what I have learned has challenged, at times harmed, and at times strengthened my faith in many way. However, the primary doubts I have––the ones that make me ask why I follow Jesus in the first place––are the ones that started when I was 17.

The fact is, at age 13, kids don’t understand what the primary questions concerning their faith are going to be. By 25, they usually have a good idea. I could name off a veritable parade of my peers who have seriously questioned their faith either in college or in early adulthood. Most of them were baptized in early adolescence, and most of them had no idea how much their perception would change between ages 18 and 24.

The goal is not complete understanding or complete certainty, because many/most faithful believers continue to have doubts throughout their lives. But when we encourage 13-year-olds to be baptized, we almost may as well use infant baptism instead. While kids that age clearly understand the content of their faith, the questions that so often arise in later adolescents suggest that 13-year-olds lack an adequate understanding of what faith really entails.

We don’t encourage young people to jump into marriage before they have a good idea of who their future spouse is and what some of the struggles of an adult relationship will be; I don’t think we should encourage kids to commit to Christ before they understand what adult faith entails.

In light of all this, it seems to me that advocates of believers baptism should shift our expectation of when a young person is truly “qualified” to commit to Christ for life. To me, the biblical age of 20 seems like a good target.

How it might work:

Here’s what I would envision: through high school, kids are encouraged to learn the Christian faith, but they are neither expected nor allowed to be baptized. Parents and churches teach Christian values just the same, and teens are still taught about the reality of sin. In fact, teens can even think of themselves more or less as Christians (just like young kids in the church do now), but everyone acknowledges that they’re basically just living out their parents’ faith (which, let’s face it, is the reality for most baptized teens now).

As kids approach age 20, the church clearly communicates to them that they are becoming adults, and that it is time to count the cost of following Christ.

For 20-year-olds who have not yet encountered the issues of adult faith, this is an opportunity for them to do so, knowing that they are old enough that no one can force them to be baptized. It’s an opportunity for a young person to ask adults in the church difficult questions about the faith, and maybe even do some reading. Then, if she makes an adult decision to follow Christ, she can be baptized.

Concerns

One risk that parents will point out is that some kids will act out during high school, planning on being forgiven later. St. Augustine famously held a similar attitude as an unbaptized adolescent in the 4th century, when he prayed, “Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet.”

My sense, though, is that most teenagers are going to do what they want, baptized or not. Christianity may be a useful tool to prevent some teens from acting out, but on the whole I think it’s only marginally successful, plus I’m not sure God wants us to “use” it in that way in the first place.

The other risk is that some young people who would have been baptized at 13 will choose not to be baptized at 20. I agree that this would happen. But my question is: Isn’t the whole point of believers baptism that people cannot be Christians by default? If a person is going to be a true adult disciple, won’t she choose baptism at 20 just as sure as she would have at 13? Shouldn’t we recognize that the person who has lost their faith by 20 was really just making an immature (though sincere) decision at 13?

In the end, I think this concern reflects the same kind of desire that leads most Christians to practice infant baptism. We might claim that our concern is for the children, but I think the real concern is for the adults in the church, who want reassurance that their children are saved. To put it bluntly: if we baptize our kids before they know better, then we can think of them as Christians even if they end up losing interest in the faith as adults.

Delaying baptism until age 20 would help us all see things for what they are. For those who profess to follow a Lord who despised hypocrisy and heartless religion, I think this is a better path.

Life in the Body, Part 5: A Place to Start

2007-06-04T00:19:00.000-04:00

For the final segment of my series (see parts 1, 2, 3, 4), I focus on the area of congregational ministry I have the most experience with: the relationship between teens and the rest of the church. It’s my conviction that churches often approach youth ministry in ways that are counter-productive.

Youth and Adults Within the Congregation

Divisions among Christians indeed run deep, but generational alienation provides a realistic opportunity to practice reconciliation. While Warren and Kimball sidestep the issue by planting homogeneous churches for Boomers or Xers, a commitment to the church as the Body of Christ suggests another solution: learning to love those in our own churches who belong to other generations, and whom we see and ignore each week. In pursuing this goal, easing the generational divisions between teenagers and the rest of the congregation is a good way to start.

In recent decades, American parents have withdrawn from their teenagers’ lives, believing (incorrectly) that teens don’t want to spend time with them. Consequently, young people lose their connection to family, fail to develop a strong moral compass, and are forced to find their own way through life.

Many churches have taken a similar path: unsure of how to relate to teens, adults assume they will be happiest spending time with their peers, so they create a youth group where teens can be themselves.

But the goal of Christian discipleship is to develop Christlike selves, and that requires consistent personal contact with mature believers –– preferably from various generations and beginning with the teens’ parents –– whose faith they can emulate. To accomplish this goal within a youth group takes deliberate effort and hard work, because it’s always easier for a youth minister to keep parents happy by keeping their kids occupied than to connect those teens with their parents and other adults. A successful youth program can create the illusion of a single body without connecting young people to the church as a whole in any significant way.

The unintended lessons taught in isolated youth groups are subtle but destructive. Teens who grow up in a youth group that lacks strong connections with the church learn that their faith has no real connection to that of older adults, and that relationships with other generations (and anyone who is genuinely different from them) are too difficult and not worth pursuing. They learn that it’s okay to spend all their time with people who are mostly just like them (even the “different” people in the youth group are still teenagers). They aren’t expected to form relationships with adults in the church other than their parents, and as a result they don’t learn how to relate to other Christians as adults.

These teens are disappointed to find when they leave home that most churches are nothing like their youth group, so they lose interest –– unless they find a vibrant college or singles group, or a newly-planted church (following Kimball’s model) which does remind them of their youth group. If so, the cycle continues, with young people bouncing from congregation to congregation in search of a program that appeals to them at their particular time of life.

Can this really be what God intended for his Church?

What to do?

Wide-eyed idealism is no antidote for genuine differences, so this is no call for churches to scrap their youth programs and throw everyone in a room together. Young people have developmental needs which parents sometimes lack the skills to meet, and education ministries and youth ministries can help the church give young people appropriate spiritual nourishment. Such programs also remind the church to reach out to its youth rather than expect them to become adults on their own.

Still, to be an effective body, churches must resist the temptation to divide too strictly into age groups. It is of course appropriate for children and teens to have Sunday school lessons taught at their own level. However, classes and activities which can involve multiple generations should do so, and those that cannot should be balanced with focused efforts at other times to build relationships between young and old. Teachers can enlist teenagers as assistants for children’s classes; senior citizens can join young families for an evening of board games.

Many resources are available to help churches develop programs that cross generational lines. Two in particular are Mark DeVries’ Family-Based Youth Ministry and Diana Garland’s Family Ministry: A Comprehensive Guide.

But placing the burden for change on ministers and programs skirts the issue of loving one another. We should expect that God’s intention for the church depends not on the programs we devise but on the Holy Spirit manifesting itself among us in love.

Perhaps the best solution to intergenerational division is for each of us to deliberately walk up to someone in the Body to whom we don’t naturally relate, say hello, and learn who they are and how we can serve them. If we cannot bring ourselves to take that small risk, we will scarcely be prepared to face the greater challenges of racial and socio-economic division which remain before us.

Life in the Body, Part 4: Love Not With Words

2007-05-27T23:40:00.000-04:00

This is my fourth post (of five) in a series on division within the church––not between denominations, but between different generations and different preferences for how to do church. (Also see parts one, two, and three.)

Ultimately, I believe that our division of the Body into segregated generational groups constitutes a refusal to learn to love another and a refusal to be the Body of Christ in its full sense. The body imagery in Paul’s letters (Rom 12, 1Cor 12, Eph 4, Col 3:15) indicates that God has called us into churches where different kinds of people find fellowship with one another. A simple reason that we don’t act on the love we claim to have –– by welcoming those who are different into our lives –– is that it’s really difficult and we don’t know how to make it work.

Love is not positive regard but intentional action. As 1 John 3:18 urges, “let us not love with word or tongue but in deed and truth.” Building inter-generational relationships requires hard work. This can be discouraging, but our recognition of the difficulty of God’s call does not mean we can pretend he hasn’t called us. Our recognition that we do not know how to love as Christ loved us doesn’t mean we can cast aside his command and move on to more realistic tasks. A divide-and-conquer approach to evangelism (see part one) may seem to more effectively accomplish God’s mission for the church, taking the Gospel to the world. But in the process, I fear, we fail to be the church he has called to that mission.

By calling the Church the Body of Christ, God has given us an identity that is grounded in who God is. The church is not an organization of saved people who meet together; it is the Body of Christ on earth. That body is formed not only by each member’s relationship with Christ but also by our relationships with one another, which is why the greatest of all the spiritual gifts (1 Cor 13:13) is not prophecy or speaking in tongues or knowledge, but love.

If the Body is to mean anything, we must love one another with a love that extends to all its parts. Claiming that one body composed only of hands will reach one portion of the population, while another body composed only of ears will reach another, denies our identity. Claiming that all these congregations really are unified in Christ, even though many of them meet separately precisely so that they don’t have to take each other’s viewpoints and preferences into account, is simply dishonest.

At the end of the day, most of us struggle to know how to love one another; to truly love someone based on no common ground but Christ takes a level of maturity in faith that perhaps most of us lack. Furthermore, we cannot be simply willing to love others. Many Christians –– perhaps most –– would claim willingness to form relationships with people of other generations or backgrounds, and yet our churches remain divided. To turn those words into action takes great effort, and that is a key part of our calling.

Life in the Body, Part 3: Loving One Another

2007-05-17T17:54:00.001-04:00

The Real Call: Love One Another

Clearly, Christ has called us to love one another, but we must discern how to go about the task. It has been said that when Christ told his disciples to love one another, he was not calling them to a benign positive regard. The command, specifically, was for the disciples to show the kind of love for one another that Christ had shown and would show for them, the love of the cross (John 15:12).

When a Christian chooses her church so that she relates easily to the worship service and the preacher and the kind of people who attend there, positive regard is easy, but a part of Christian love falls by the wayside. The problem is not that we can’t love people at a church where the people are just like us; it’s just that typically we don’t have to. When I attend church every week with people who look like me, act like me, think like me, and worship like me, I can get away with effortlessly having positive regard for almost all of them and thinking I know how to love my neighbor.

Jesus said, memorably, “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even ‘sinners’ love those who love them…But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked” (Lk 6:32-35). In other words, love that is easy to give does not mean much on its own.

What reason could there be for us to form churches full of people just like us except that people just like us are easy to love? And what reason could there be for us to seek out people who are easy to love except that we are too frightened or too lazy to learn a deeper love which overcomes differences?

The Obstacle: Self

A recent New York Times best-seller called Quarterlife Crisis describes the struggles of upper-middle-class twenty-somethings trying to figure out what to do with their lives. The authors conducted dozens of interviews and found a generation faced with endless choices and possibilities, looking for direction. One of the people interviewed said, “I just try to do whatever will make me happier, and think of myself first (kind of self-centered, huh?) But if more people did it, they would be happier.”

Many Christians, young and old, shun such an attitude for their daily lives while using that very standard –– their own happiness –– to select a church. Part of the difficulty in loving other people involves letting go of one’s self in order to love an other. In a sense, if I love someone just like me I have done no more than love myself, and in any event I deserve little praise; after all, people like me are those who love me, who pay back what I lend them. Loving a person when he acts just the way I want doesn’t, as it were, count. While all people have something in common –– the image of God, if nothing else –– I really can only love another person to the extent that I can recognize how he is different from me. Real love must overcome differences, and in the context of, say, a worship service, the preferences of teens, young adults, Baby Boomers, and senior citizens certainly differ.

This need to respect the differences of others rather than expecting them to be like oneself is why Paul confronts division in the Philippian church with a call to humility, urging them to consider others better than themselves, to look to the interests of others rather than themselves. Humility, emptying oneself, is the one way to overcome the selfishness that prevents us from loving one another. We are called to be humble the way Christ was so that we can also learn to love the way he did, with the self-sacrificial love of the cross.

Life in the Body, Part 2: Common What?

2007-05-10T22:36:00.001-04:00

This post is building on my previous post, where I suggest that churches that try to attract one particular demographic or generation, to the relative neglect of others, fail to fulfill the biblical call for the church to be the Body of Christ.

Within the enormous Christian subculture in America, we gather into different churches based on common worship preferences, common levels of education, common race, common social classes, and common generations. The Gospel, however, calls believers to a particular kind of commonality: fellowship of the Spirit in Jesus Christ. The flaw with the plant-all-churches-for-all-people approach to ministry (that espoused by Warren and Kimball) is that it waters down God’s call for Christians to be the Body of Christ –– a body which includes all sorts of parts, often from different classes, races, and generations.

This is not to say that Christians should seek diversity at all costs; Spanish-speaking congregations will have limited fellowship with those who speak only English, and patronizing bids for the inclusion of token minorities in white churches or poor families in affluent churches only trivialize what the gospel calls us to do. Furthermore, black and white churches in the United States, for example, have an ongoing legacy of hurtful relations that must be worked through slowly and sensitively. It may yet take decades or longer for such divisions to be overcome. However, intergenerational divisions lack such a daunting legacy, and a failure to overcome them suggests not an insurmountable breach but an unwillingness of churches to accept the implications of the gospel.

The fellowship –– koinonia, “commonality” –– to which God has called us is a sharing of the body and blood of Christ (1 Cor. 10:16). The loaf of which we partake, the baptism we have received, and the Spirit we have been given to drink (1 Cor 12:13) all unite us into the Body of Christ. Therefore the fellowship to which God has called us and which we must pursue is fellowship in the Body of Christ. Paul writes,

God has combined the members of the body and has given greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it. (1 Cor 12:24b-26)

Paul insists that the Corinthians who possess prestigious spiritual gifts cannot look down upon or ignore those whose gifts seem less honorable or less important. All parts of the Body are necessary.

Corinth’s divisions focused on prestige; those I’m trying to address here are generational. So in terms relevant to the question at hand, we might say that if young people seem to lack the gifts of maturity and self-control, older members cannot for that reason claim they are not part of the Body. If older people lack the gifts of energetic passion and accepting new ideas, younger members cannot for that reason claim they are not part of the Body. And even if GenXers lack the gift of humbling themselves before the wishes of older generations and accepting as brothers and sisters those who have failed to make the leap to the postmodern mind set, I cannot for that reason claim they are part of the Body.

Obviously, few Christians would officially exclude other age groups, but how effectively do we obey Paul’s command and show “equal concern” for other generations or suffer with them when they suffer? Many young ministers prefer to plant new churches rather than deal with the hang-ups of older generations of Christians. And even in existing congregations, generations often merely tolerate one another, without forming real relationships.

Our efforts maintain a superficial peace, but they fall short of God’s call.

Life in the Body: Seeking a Cross-Generational Church

2007-04-30T03:06:00.000-04:00

One of my deepest faith commitments is that God wants the church to be a unified Body made up of many different parts. This week’s post is the first section an essay I’ve written on the topic.

“There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Young nor old didn’t make the list in Galatians 3:28, but perhaps it should have, for the sake of today’s American Church.

Our culture has a merked tendency to segregate itself generationally –– toddlers to day care, kids to classrooms, college students to dorms, “real” adults to work, older adults to home alone, everyone watching television or surfing the web to avoid interaction with whoever is around. Cell phones and email have reconnected people in important ways, but they bring their own problems. Churches, opting not to fight the cultural tide, provide Sunday school classes and social activities for every demographic. Generational alienation, not suprisingly, characterizes many churches.

Churches for the Ages

One response to this generational divide is to try to circumvent it. In The Emerging Church, a sort of guidebook for reaching Generation X with the Gospel, Dan Kimball describes a new breed of churches that draw generational lines almost intentionally. While mega-churches find greatest success with Baby Boomers, Kimball suggests strategies for developing new churches to involve and convert Generation-Xers, a group that often struggles to find a place in Boomer churches. Kimball quotes Rick Warren: “No single church can possibly reach everyone. It takes all kinds of churches to reach all kinds of people.”

In one sense, Warren’s approach is based on sound enough reasoning: churches want to grow and reach the lost, and congregations often find greater success programming for a particular demographic than integrating many different kinds of people into a single group. Commonalities, after all, bring people together. I myself for two years during seminary participated in a small group of young adults who shared weekly Bible study and Sunday lunch. The fellowship we experienced was powerful and valuable.

I question, however, whether it is the primary fellowship to which God has called the Church.

To be sure, the Warren/Kimball model has proved wildly successful in bringing about church growth and leading countless people to become Christians. Warren argues persuasively in the Purpose-Driven™ Church that churches must determine their purposes and focus their efforts only on meeting those purposes.

For Warren, finding a church’s evangelistic target –– the kind of person a particular church can best reach –– is a key to achieving the purpose of reaching the lost. And of course, evangelism does need to be tailored to its intended audience. However, I will argue that gathering all different kinds of people into one community under the fellowship of the Gospel is also one of our indispensible purposes. If so, churches must not build their programs with such a narrow target in mind.

I suggest that a biblical understanding of the Church as the Body of Christ prohibits us from planning our congregations around reaching particular “target” people. Rather, it requires us to allow the Gospel to bridge differences which normally separate people. Unfortunately, churches in the U.S. are already divided up in every way imaginable –– denominational, generational, social, racial. Most of us attend churches primarily made up of and led by one demographic of people or another. The broad task of overcoming divisions is likely to be painful and protracted, and I am hardly qualified to point the way.

I want to offer a more modest proposal, that we take preliminary steps towards bridging such gaps by crossing generational lines within each congregation to form meaningful cross-generational relationships. This means first that believers will commit themselves to building relationships within existing multi-generational churches rather than following Kimball’s model of starting new congregations tailored to a particular group.

Second, I will suggest a place where such bridging of generations is perhaps most needed. It is, ironically, an area in which well-meaning parents and ministers often intentionally accentuate the division: the relationship of teenagers to the rest of the congregation.

There is more to follow next week, but I would be very interested in whatever thoughts or questions this raises for people.

The Irony of Injustice

2007-04-24T11:45:00.000-04:00

One of the more apparently out-of-place exchanges in Luke, it seems to me, occurs at the last supper. Jesus, preparing to give himself up to the authorites for crucifixion, tells his disciples to arm themselves with swords:

And Jesus said to them, “When I sent you out without purse or bag or sandals, you didn’t want for anything, did you?”

And they said, “No, nothing.”

Then he said to them, “But now, whoever does have a purse should pick it up––and likewise whoever has a bag––and whoever doesn’t have a sword should sell his cloak and buy one. For I tell you, this writing must be fulfilled in me: ‘Indeed, he was considered one of the lawless.’ For indeed, it has its fulfillment in me.”

So they said, “Lord, we have two swords here.”

And he said to them, “That’s enough.” (Luke 22:35-38)

According to messianic expectations, it would make perfect sense for Jesus to tell his followers to get swords. He was about to be ambushed, and weapons could come in useful. Perhaps, the disciples may have reasoned, Jesus had finally decided to set aside his non-violent ways and take his throne by force.

But there’s a problem: What use are two swords to twelve men? They’re about to face an angry mob, and two swords are enough? What are Jesus and the other nine disciples supposed to do?

The story soon overturns the disciples’ expectations anyway:

While he was still talking, suddenly a crowd came, with the one called Judas, one of the Twelve, leading them. He walked up to Jesus to kiss him, but Jesus said, “Judas, are you betraying the Son of Man with a kiss?”

Then, when those with Jesus saw what was happening, they said, “Lord, should we strike them with the swords?” And one of them struck the slave of the Chief Priest and cut off his right ear.

But Jesus responded, “No more of this!”, and he touched the ear and healed it. Then Jesus said to those before him––the Chief Priest and the captain of the temple, and the elders––“Have you come out as if you were after a bandit, with swords and clubs? Every day when I was with you in the temple, you didn’t stretch out your hands against me, but this is your hour––the authority of darkness. (Luke 22:47-53)

This second story seems to explain why the apostles didn’t need more swords, but the problem remains: Why did Jesus tell the disciples to bring swords at all if he didn’t want them to use them? Presumably he didn’t simply change his mind in the middle of the story.

I would argue that the two swords at the last supper were “enough” precisely because they weren’t meant to be used. Jesus isn’t intending the swords to serve as weapons, but rather as props. The two swords aren’t enough to fight with, but they are enough to fulfill the scripture: “Indeed, he was considered one of the lawless.” The swords, then, create a sort of miniature drama whereby a rabbi and his disciples are transformed into a band of criminals, just in time for an angry mob to come hunting them down.

The important point, though, is that they’re a rather pathetic band of criminals, with no chance of fighting off the mob. When one of the disciples does try to defend himself, he manages only to cut off a servant’s ear. Jesus, of course, heals the ear and again says, “That is enough.” One swing accomplished what the swords were for.

It is precisely the disciples’ inability to defend themselves that allows Jesus to confront the Chief Priest and his mob the way he does: they show their own weakness and injustice by arranging for a clandestine, violent confrontation with a man who poses them no physical threat but whom they have been too afraid to arrest in daylight.

Thus the arrest on the Mount of Olives is loaded with an irony that is not lost on Jesus. The two swords Jesus’ disciples hold highlight the absurdity of the situation by portraying Jesus’ disiples as the very thing the Chief Priest’s response suggests they are. In the end, Jesus manages to use the entire scene to mock the most important Jews in Jerusalm for gathering late at night and pulling together a gang of ruffians in order to subdue the Rabbi Jesus and his mismatched, and only nominally armed, band of disciples.

In Luke’s portrayal, Jesus is above all innocent, and the arrest of a band of disciples as if they were a gang of bandits emphasizes the injustice of the crucifixion.

Irony in the Divine Drama

In addition to its place in Luke-Acts, I think this episode works as a commentary on the nature of evil and injustice as they are confronted by the kingdom of God.

In Christ, God engages the world with truth rather than with force; but because the world is no match for Christ’s truth, it uses violence to take advange of his refusal to use force. This is something we witness (and some of us experience) every day, and it can be excruciating for those who suffer––believers or otherwise.

What makes Christians different is that we get the irony of the story. Take away the irony from Luke’s Gospel, and all you have is a horrible injustice perpetrated against an innocent man. But careful readers have two key advantages: (1) recognition that the kingdom of God is present even if invisible, and (2) knowledge that resurrection will follow death. This fundamentally changes the meaning of Jesus’ death in Luke’s Gospel, and it fundamentally changes the meaning of the life and death we experience.

If there is no kingdom and no resurrection, then we (humans) are indeed to be pitied. But knowing the reality behind the appearances, even if it still can’t make suffering meaningful, does remind us that our world––which comes at night with swords and clubs to attack the truth it cannot defeat in daylight––may yet be redeemed.

Exodus as Heist?

2007-04-10T21:56:00.001-04:00

There can be a big difference between the Bible stories you learned in Sunday school (or in the movies) and the details of the stories when you actually read them as an adult. Most of the time, the adult version is a lot cooler.

So for example, we all know that Charlton Heston’s Moses demanded of Pharaoh: “Let my people go!”

What’s interesting is that, in the Bible story, even though Moses does say those exact words, they are only the start of a sentence. And what he goes on to say makes a huge difference in the meaning of the story:

Let my people go, so that they may celebrate a festival to me in the wilderness. (Ex 5:1)

The catch is, the festival God instructs Moses to request is supposed to be for just a few days (see Ex 5:3), after which the Israelites will come back to Egypt and resume their slavery. But that clearly isn’t what God actually has in mind.

As readers, most of us assume that Moses’ request is for a permanent exodus of the people; and this is natural enough, since God has already told Moses that they’re leaving for good (Ex 3:8); we assume God wouldn’t tell Moses to lie.

But as the story goes on, it becomes clear that what Moses is asking for is quite different from what God has planned.

None of this is particularly hidden in the story. Pharaoh clearly starts to catch on to what Moses is doing (e.g., Ex 10:10), and he tries to put restrictions on Israel’s departure. Moses, in response, manufactures excuses to cover up his true intentions. When Pharaoh tells them to sacrifice within the land, Moses claims that the Israelites’ sacrifices are too offensive to the Egyptians (8:26). When Pharaoh says they have to leave their children in Egypt—obviously an attempt to make sure the Israelites will have motivation to return—Moses insists that all the people must be present for Yahweh’s festival (10:9). And when Pharaoh says Israel must leave some of its cattle behind (10:24), Moses insists that they will only know which cattle to sacrifice once they arrive at their place of worship (10:26).

We could try to construe each of these excuses as legitimate, but it looks far more like a shrewd game of cat and mouse between Moses and Pharaoh.

The Sting

This much, it seems to me, is fairly clear from a simple reading of the story, and even many casual readers have no doubt noticed it before. However, there’s another angle to the deception that most translations obscure. Exodus 12:35-36 describes how the Israelites leave Egypt:

The Israelites had done as Moses told them; they had asked the Egyptians for jewelry of silver and god, and for clothing, and the LORD had given the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians, so that they let them have what they asked. And so they plundered the Egyptians.

I don’t know about everyone else, but this always seemed strange to me. Clearly God could manipulate the Egyptians into doing whatever God wanted, but still it seems as if it should make more sense.

There’s a simple solution that I think makes far more sense of the story than the traditional interpretation. The words translated “asked” and “let them have” in the NRSV above take their meaning from context; in this context they can be better translated “asked to borrow” and “lent.” In other words, the Israelites were told to “borrow” their neighbors’ valuables when they knew––but the Egyptians didn’t know––that they would be leaving almost immediately. After the plague of the first-born, Israel would depart the country before the Egyptians had a chance to ask for everything back. That’s why it was called plundering

Ancient and modern interpreters have often glossed over the passage to make Israel appear more honest, but that’s hardly necessary. The deception, as it turns out, is exactly parallel to the one God and Moses were attempting against Pharaoh: asking for something on loan, but planning all along to keep it permanently.

Who is this God?

The only real problem with this story is that it challenges some of our ideals about God. If God were going to bring Israel out by force, why use deception? And isn’t God supposed to be completely honest, by God’s very nature? God can’t lie, right? Isn’t that what Hebrews 6:18 says?

For what it’s worth, there’s probably a better interpretation of that Hebrews passage, relating it to a particular oath God took toward Abraham rather than to divine honesty in general. However, that may be beside the point. Passages like the Exodus story challenge us to consider parts of God’s work that don’t fit with pious sensibilities. God isn’t, after all, Christian, and there is such a thing as a command for humans that God doesn’t have to obey.

In this case, I think the point is that God’s triumph over Pharaoh and over Egypt is total. God is not content merely to free Israel from slavery, but rather God intensifies the situation to bring judgment and devastation upon Pharaoh and his people.

And even then, God could have gone ahead with the plagues even if Pharaoh had let the Israelites go immediately. It seems, then, that God’s purpose was not to force Pharaoh’s hand but to humiliate him. God wanted Pharaoh to bring destruction upon himself, and if he wasn’t going to fall for God’s ruse, he was going to be brought down by his own stubbornness. The plundering of the Egyptian people just added insult to injury.

That’s not the God we want to model our behavior (or our national policy!) after, but it appears that it is Yahweh, the God of the Bible.

See James L. Kugel, Traditions of the Bible, 553–557.

Christianity among the religions

2007-04-02T02:38:00.000-04:00

Cody asked a couple of questions I really like concerning my previous post. Since I don’t think I can answer them briefly, I’ll do it in at least a couple of different posts. Here’s the first question:

Do you find the Word of God (or word of God) in other sources as well (ancient or modern)?

This could refer to at least two different kinds of sources: non-biblical sources from within the Christian faith, and non-Christian sources from other religions. For this post, I’ll try to address the latter. Basically, do other religions reveal the Word of God?

To begin with, I should say that I consider this an open question. I feel like you have to say that God can reveal Godself in any way at any time, assuming we believe in a God who is free. Some people try to get away with limiting God’s revelation by claiming that God has already announced, in Scripture, that Scripture is God’s final revelation; they would judge, then, that they’re not limiting what God can do but only holding God to God’s word, as it were. (I wish there were a less cumbersome way to write in gender-inclusive language…) This is an attractive idea, especially since it would limit the amount of data theologians have to work with. However, since Scripture appears to contradict itself in any number of places, insisting that God always behave in agreement with Scripture (as if it’s monolithic) is hugely problematic.

Because of this, I’m convinced that there may well be truth from God revealed outside of Scripture. This is hardly a stretch for a Christian, since at least one passage in the Bible says God is revealed outside of Scripture. Paul writes in Romans 1:19-20: For what can be known about God is plain to [the wicked], because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made.

Do other religions reveal the Word of God?

Although I am open in theory to other sources of revelation, practically speaking I don’t think the Word of God is found elsewhere. That’s my short answer.

For my long answer, I’ll start out by kind of showing my cards, and then afterwards I’ll explain what I ground my view in.

First, I’m decidedly not a pluralist. Part of the reason I place so much weight on the Christian scriptures is that I believe God indeed intends for the Gospel of Jesus Christ to be the truth by which all experience of God is mediated. So in addressing other religions, I would follow the view that seems to be endorsed by Paul in Athens in Acts 17. We should seek common ground for discussing God with people of other faiths, but to the extent that their understandings of God differ from the God revealed in Jesus Christ, we should regard them as wrong.

This favoritism toward the Christian tradition, I think, pretty much constrains my answer as to whether the word of God is revealed in other religions. Claiming that Jesus is the ultimate revelation of truth is tantamount to saying that God isn’t revealed in other religions, since their claims to truth would have no independent claim to credibility. If they’re only true when they happen to agree with the Bible, then they don’t have any real credibility. They may be interesting texts to reflect on, but that hardly means they contain God’s special revelation.

Personally, I would claim that the world’s religions are human efforts to understand God based on natural theology, human experience, reason, and creativity. The natural theology those religions engage is fine, as far as it goes, but their human efforts to further define the truth about God, I would say, are more or less futile. Beyond recognizing the existence of a transcendent God who created the world, we are hopelessly reliant on God’s own self-revelation to learn anything true about God. Judaism, in this reading, is based on scriptures that are true but incomplete. The Koran’s truth, I would say, is basically derivative from the Jewish and Christian traditions is uses.

That, essentially, is how I view the relationship between Christianity and the other world religions. No offence is intended, of course, and I assume that many adherents of other religions would make claims about my faith that are similar to those I have made about theirs. If you're not a pluralist, it’s kind of the nature of the beast.

To say that other relgions involve human efforts hardly gets me off the hook in defending Christian theology. It appears that the Bible is also a product of human thinking and work, so someone might ask whether we can sift the truth from it any better than from the Koran. Exactly how to get at that truth contained in the Christian scriptures is an exceeding complicated process, and I think (as many do) that ultimately it depends on study, prayer, and discernment within Christian communities.

The best I can do for now is explain why I think it’s reasonable to see the Christian faith as claiming universal validity as, roughly speaking, the one true religion. Basically, I’ll try to show why I think the Bible is incompatible with religious pluralism.

How could it be the only truth?

One difficulty with my position is that I can’t deny that God can reveal Godself in other religions, even in ways that contradict the Christian scriptures. The reason I still argue that God doesn’t reveal Godself in other religions is that pluralism appears to contradict not just occasional passages of the Bible, but rather the major presuppositions concerning the person of Jesus Christ throughout the entirety of the Christian canon. The problem is the combination, consistent in the New Testament writings, between (1) Jesus’ historical particularity and (2) Jesus’ universal significance.

First, let’s consider Jesus’ historical particularity. If we were only talking about God in the abstract, and not Jesus the historical person, we could say that different religions simply had access to different parts of the truth about God. But historically speaking, it seems clear that the other world religions don’t have equal access to facts about Jesus. Islam is the only other religion I know of whose scriptures have any doctrinal claims about Jesus, but the Koran can only make claims as a work written by a later interpreter, in contrast to the authors of the Christian scriptures, at least some of whom had access to eyewitnesses of Jesus’ ministry.

Some would claim that other early Christian groups had access to true traditions about Jesus, and this is certainly possible. Various traditions later condemned as heretical, such as Gnostic groups, may have been founded based on teachings of people who were as closely connected to Jesus as the authors of the canonical Gospels. The problem is that efforts to connect any of the extant Gnostic texts (i.e., those we have copies of) to real historical traditions independent of the New Testament are questionable; in other words, most Gnostic texts appear to be simply re-interpretations of the New Testament. It is commonplace these days for people who resent Christian orthodoxy to gravitate to Gnostic texts and lend them more historical credibility, it seems to me, than they merit. While their hypotheses could be correct, a responsible historian lends more credibility to the best available evidence.

And as boring as it sounds, the New Testament writings are probably the most credible historical sources, by far, for Jesus and his disciples. That doesn’t make them pure history by any means, but it does suggest they have a credibility that later writings lack. If the earliest Gnostic groups had their own real traditions that they could trace back to Jesus, it appears that those traditions aren’t available (or at any rate, identifiable) to us anymore. And it’s quite possible that those traditions simply didn’t exist until later, and that they have no real link with the historical Jesus or his immediate disciples.

The second point I mentioned above is the universal significance that the New Testament ascribes to Jesus. Almost every book in the NT is written from an apocalyptic perspective, anticipating a universal end of time with Jesus as the key figure. Modern theology tends to set this aside by emphasizing Christianity as an existential religion, whose goal is more about experience of God, finding meaning in life, and improving / redeeming the world around us. But from the apocalyptic perspectives of, e.g., Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, and the author of Revelation, religion deals with an objective reality that includes a coming day of judgment that all people will face.

The closest thing to a non-apocalyptic perspective among the NT Gospels is John, which in certain senses de-historicizes salvation by making it present now rather than focused on the future. However, it still speaks of the last day (e.g., John 6:40), on which humans will be raised to be judged. Furthermore, even if salvation is somewhat de-historicized, Jesus remains decidedly historical as the Word of God who became flesh at a real point in time and lived a genuine human life. John has that historical Jesus make claims such as, “I am the Way, and the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father except by me.” If the Exclusive Way to the Father became flesh in a particular place, it is difficult to see (by the definition of exclusive) how another religion could claim to reveal other ways to that same Father.

The point of this is not to use proof texts to make a point, but rather to suggest that the basic perspectives of the New Testament writings point to a universal application of the story of Jesus that is difficult to reconcile with pluralism. Jesus was a real historical person, so we can’t envision him as an idea that is revealed in different ways in other religions. Yet all the earliest interpretations of his person and ministry (at least those that are still extant) saw him as having a universal significance that leaves little room for interpreting him as just one of a variety of religious figures such as Buddha or perhaps Gandhi.

Other ways out

We could simply say that the New Testament is wrong on these points, that these interpretations of Jesus’ person and mission were simply created by early interpreters and used to shape the scriptures. But if those foundational elements are inaccurate, it is difficult to say why any of the NT’s teachings should carry continuing validity.

In the end, many people will conclude that the Christian tradition is deeply flawed and yet wish to keep what they can of it. For me, however, this amounts to wishful thinking––picking and choosing religious beliefs according to what appeals to us and then suggesting they are most likely true.

Whether my own beliefs are wishful thinking as well remains to be determined. However, I still think there are very good historical reasons to conclude that Jesus’ New Testament interpreters drew their primary ideas (such as apocalypticism) from real teachings of Jesus, and that a great deal of what they wrote is trustworthy historically and not just as a faith tradition. To make the case more specifically, I’ll have to put off for future posts.

What I’m doing here

2007-03-27T23:03:00.000-04:00

While I have my own biases and agendas like anyone else, one of my goals is to avoid promoting an overly narrow ideology or being stereotypically conservative or liberal on theological issues.

Two words, I hope, describe my approach to Scripture:

(1) Critical: In college, I badly wanted reassurance that every word in the Bible was literally true; I’m not looking for that anymore. Though I wish the case were different, close study of Scripture consistently suggests that it is written by humans with different ideas (some of them contradictory) about God and Christ.

(2) Committed: many people that I talk to are looking for excuses to discredit scripture so they can set aside the passages they don’t like; to my mind, that is no way to find the truth about God. The Bible has basically always been the church’s book throughout Christian history, and I am convinced that such consistency is due to God’s will.

Overall, I’m writing based on a sort of two-pronged paradox: On the one hand I'm making logical arguments, so I clearly affirm human reason; but I also deeply distrust the human mind. On the other hand, I affirm that Scripture is in some sense the Word of God, but I also understand it as, in other ways, a product of human thought.

Sometimes I think I’m foolish to hold to both of these commitments, but as the expression goes (though I think I’m slightly misusing it), the proof of the pudding is in the eating. I can’t entirely defend why I think this makes sense, but my experience of Scripture is that God speaks through it, and my experience of its depiction and interpretations of Jesus is that he is God Incarnate.

One of the beauties of this method of reading Scripture is that the different books of the Bible are allowed to have different opinions about who God is and what God does. This is disconcerting (or even devastating) to consider at first, but in the end I’ve found it to be both beautiful and exhiliarating. Mark makes some powerful and important claims about Jesus, and John makes others, many of which are quite different. The truth, presumably, is somewhere in the intersection.

Many, no doubt, will feel that this kind of interpretation (which, incidentally, is pretty common within critical biblical studies circles) denies the Truth of God’s word. I’ll respond by stating the conviction that ultimately guides all my interpretations: God can reveal Godself in whatever way God wants.

But this, again, cuts both ways. We are free to kick and scream that God should have given us a set of scriptures that are utterly consistent and accurate, or that God should have given us teachings better suited to the sensibilities of our modern liberal society. But it seems God is difficult to order about.

What we do have are one enormous mess of a world––largely of our own making––and a book of powerful stories and teachings which seem to me to reveal a God who is capable of lifting us above (and perhaps even correcting) the mess just mentioned.

The Sermon

2007-03-19T13:12:00.000-04:00

In the previous post, I suggested the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5–7) as an example of a transparent text, meaning that although Jesus delivers the sermon to the other characters in the story, it's actually intended primarily for the reader, so that we can see through the story to a message intended for us (or, originally, for Matthew’s first-century readers).

I'd like to propose here that the kind of Christian reader Matthew wrote for (i.e., having the appropriate cultural background, knowledge of the Jewish scriptures, etc.), if they started at the beginning of Matthew's Gospel and read through its first seven chapters, would most naturally experience the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount less as an historical account of Jesus’ words and more as teachings intended specifically for her and any other believer. I'll do my best to show how the beginning of the Gospel sets up this expectation.

The beginning of Matthew leads the reader to expect Jesus to be, above all, a king. Jesus is introduced in 1:1 to be the Messiah (i.e., the anointed king; compare 2:2 with 2:4) and the Son of David (from a kingly line). The Magi come from afar to worship one who is born King of the Jews (2:2), and Herod (the king of the Jews at the time) views him as a threat (2:3). And then at Jesus' baptism, a voice from heaven announces, “This is my Son,” a phrase quite similar to Psalm 2:7, where “You are my Son” is God’s way of designating the anointed king whom God will set up in Zion (= Jerusalem, Ps 2:6) to rule over all the nations (Ps 2:8).

Jesus also is presented in categories that are more reflective of Christian theology as most of us know it. Jesus, then, is one who will save his people from their sins (1:21), and he is one who will represent the presence of God with God's people (1:23).

But there is still another side to Jesus’ character that Matthew presents in his opening chapters, and we must recognize it in order to understand the rhetoric of Matthew’s story––in particular, why the Sermon on the Mount is placed where it is, and what it’s supposed to mean for the reader.

When Herod starts killing children (2:16), an angel of the Lord tells Joseph to flee with his family to Egypt; after Herod dies, the family returns and settles in Nazareth (2:23). This might seem merely like a piece of the plot, but the passage quoted in explanation of the journey, “Out of Egypt I called my son,” is a reference to Hosea 11 that refers to Israel's exodus from Egypt. Just as Israel (God’s son) left Canaan (in the days off Joseph) to go down to Egypt, and then later returned, so did Jesus.

When we soon find Jesus spending forty days in the wilderness being tempted/tested (4:2), the parallel between Jesus and Israel becomes unmistakeable. The point is not that Jesus’ story is exactly like that of Israel, but that these certain motifs keep coming up that give the sense that Jesus is being compared with Israel. In response to the devil’s temptations in the wilderness, Jesus quotes passages from Deuteronomy that were originally instructions to Israel regarding what God wanted them to learn during their own forty (years) in the wilderness. The upshot is that where Israel failed to remain faithful, Jesus succeeds.

Coming back into Galilee, Jesus resumes his role as expected king, proclaiming, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near” (4:17). The reader who has understood what came before knows that Jesus’ kingdom means far more than a new political arrangement. Not only has he come to fill the throne of his father David, but he has come to transform Israel’s relationship to its God, bringing about repentance, forgiveness, obedience, and the presence of God.

The story of Israel's exodus is not the only literary connection Matthew creates, and here is where we arrive at the key point for understanding the Sermon. Jesus' fast of forty days and forty nights exactly matches that of Moses when he received the Ten Commandments on Sinai (Ex 34:28). It seems that Jesus is serving not only as a new Israel, but also as a new Moses. And when Jesus walks up to a mountainside and begins to teach (similar to Moses, who ascended a mountain to receive the law), the connection is complete.

All this leads into the Sermon on the Mount, which the rhetoric of the narrative has prepared the reader to listen to, not as an historical account of something Jesus once said, but as the New Law given by a new Moses to a renewed Israel. Matthew is essentially retelling the story of the people of God for the new age, and Jesus’ teachings transcend the narrative in which they are located to address everyone who considers herself a disciple of Christ.

Jesus’ words are both related to and different than Moses’. Moses received tablets written upon by God, but Jesus is able simply to speak from his own mouth: “You have heard . . . but I say to you” (5:21f, 27f, 33f, 38f, 43f). Also, Jesus describes his own relationship to Moses by claiming to fulfill the law that Moses gave (5:17). Although Jesus isn't replacing the law here (as some folks would claim), he is presenting an interpretation of the law that lays claim on its hearers and readers. Immediately after the Sermon we are told that Jesus spoke to the crowds as one with authority, and I am arguing that his words hold that same authority for any reader who would be a disciple.

If any doubt lingers for the reader as to the authority or application of Jesus’ words, Matthew closes the Sermon with three teachings to pound home his point: only a few will find the narrow road leading to life (7:14), the true disciples of Jesus are only the ones who do the will of the Father (7:21) and bear good fruit (7:17), and the wise person who hears the words of this sermon will put them into practice (7:24). Much as the law in Deuteronomy 28 included blessings and curses for those who obeyed or disobeyed, Matthew also includes blessings (5:3-12) and curses (7:13-27), the latter explicitly according to obedience.

The point of all this is, even though Jesus surely said many of the things that are in the Sermon on the Mount, the more important point for the church should be that God put them in Scripture for us. So if we want to understand the Sermon historically, it may be more worth our time to figure out what it meant for Matthew’s readers in roughly A.D. 85 than what it meant for Jesus’ hearers in A.D. 30.

Matthew and the Problem of “Transparency”

2007-03-12T01:31:00.000-04:00

Based on what I've been studying, I want to start with this post and challenge how the church often reads the Gospels.

To begin with, it's important to recognize that a story or letter can work on more than one level at the same time, and the Four Gospels are a good example. In contrast to the letters of Paul, which speak directly to their respective audiences (and thus are intended to work primarily on just one level), the gospels speak to their reading audiences through words that Jesus speaks to other characters in the story. That means Jesus' words “work” both on the level of the other characters who hear them and on the level of the readers who read them. Some commentators call this "transparency," meaning that we the readers see through the characters' words to a message intended for us.

I should note that this idea is quite offensive to a lot of people, because its implication is that Matthew describes Jesus as saying things that are really only meant for us, and that therefore Jesus didn't actually say. Many people would call this inaccuracy or lying on God's part. That feeling is justifiable.

But I want to argue that the idea of the Gospel writers fudging the facts is not so offensive if we understand them according to the purpose for which they were written.

To use movie terms, I think we should compare the gospels not to documentaries (which record events more or less exactly) but rather to movies (which use a combination of fact and fiction to make a point). When we watch Dead Man Walking, which tells a true story, we don't describe its scenes as dishonest simply because they didn't happen exactly as depicted; rather, we recognize that the story can be essentially true even if details are changed to teach particular lessons more clearly. I haven't seen United 93, but I'm sure it includes dialogue and events that didn't really happen; that, again, doesn't make the story untrue.

There are some historical movies or biopics that change so many facts that we'd describe them as dishonest or inadequate, but most of us would acknowledge that a writer can take some artistic license and still tell a true story.

Why should we insist that God could not allow the authors of the gospels to do the same? Many people simply say, "Well, God wouldn't do that." But what if God did? Is it our job to describe what God is allowed to put in Scripture?

To give an example of Matthew's transparency, the Sermon on the Mount may be addressed to Jesus' disciples on the level of the story, but the way Matthew sets up his story implies that really, the sermon is intended for us, the readers. Well, actually it's intended for Matthew's first-century audience, but we share with them a certain distance from the historical life of Jesus that creates a commonality in our reading experience. (I deal with the Sermon on the Mount in this post.)

A natural tendency among Christians has been to treat the Gospels primarily as history (i.e., like a documentary), since they clearly do recount historical events carried out by real people.

Taken to its extreme, this understanding has led to some counter-intuitive interpretations; for instance, some Church of Christ folks have claimed that Christians are not to pray the Lord's Prayer because Jesus taught it to his disciples (as Jews) before the kingdom had come. These interpreters, understanding the cross (or perhaps Pentecost; I can't remember which) to have been the event where Jesus' kingdom did indeed arrive, feel that the Prayer is no longer appropriate for believers today. We can read it and appreciate it as instruction to Jesus' disiples at the time, but we are not to recite it today.

This is certainly a possible reading, but it seems odd for Matthew to have passed along a beautiful, memorable prayer if he specifically did not intend it for Christian use. In any event, I would argue that we should make our decisions about questions like this based on Matthew's text as a whole, and so I want to look at how Matthew tells his story and what it suggests for how we should read his story.

Specifically, I think there are good reasons to see at least some of the words of Jesus in Matthew as being addressed less to the disciples in the story and more to the readers of Matthew's gospel. If so, how do we determine which words are meant for whom? How exactly does Matthew's transparency work?

One key point of interpretation for any narrative involves the impact that the story has on the reader. While some might take the Gospels as documentary history, careful reading reveals four powerful pieces of rhetoric. In much the same way as a movie such as Dead Poets Society (see my earlier post), they not only tell a story but also try to persuade their readers of their point of view on Jesus, the church, the End Times, and any number of other points.

In future posts, I'll take up specific passages and trace how Matthew seems to use his story rhetorically to persuade and instruct the reader rather than give strict modern history. In the meantime, some questions:

What are we to make of this?
Would it be dishonest for God to have allowed Matthew to adjust or even invent words or deeds of Jesus that ended up in Scripture?
Should we be upset if Matthew really did invent things?
What does it mean for our understanding of Scripture if the different Gospels disagree on key points of who Jesus is?

New Creation: It Sounds Good to Me

2007-03-06T12:44:00.000-05:00

For all the negative points I made about the Epistle of Barnabas, it does offer a beautiful portrait of redemption as the reenacting of God's creation of humanity. Paul had written, “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation. Look! The old has passed away, the new has come.” Barnabas simply restated that using the language of Genesis, and if his wording was a bit convoluted, nevertheless the image was powerful.

The image is also timeless, as evidenced by a pair of songs Gary Miller wrote for Acappella in the late 1990's.

For those who don't know me, the Chrisitan music group Acappella is the reason I know next to nothing about popular music from the eighties and nineties. In high school I had no fewer than 35 albums from their organization's various groups (including Acappella, AVB, the Vocal Union, Keith Lancaster, Sweet Deliverance, His Image, and New Life Quartet), and it is no exaggeration to say that back then I could sing 300 of their songs from start to finish––and for many of them, I could sing most of the harmony parts. I've been to at least 10 of their concerts in 5 different states, and I've performed songs of theirs at church and school events with four different groups of friends spanning high school and college.

(I have a feeling that Matt, Cody, and Micah all have an idea of what I'm talking about.)

These two songs have their campy moments (the first one, no kidding, includes the lines "Let freedom ring!" and "Let children sing!"), but in both of them Miller does a beautiful job of using the creation story from Genesis, as Barnabas used it, to describe the work of Christ.

The first song speaks broadly, describing the fall of humanity and the change of the world order brought about by Christ:

from Let There Be Love
by Gary Miller (1999)

Once there was love, long ago
Sweet innocence, long ago
Please tell me where did it go?
Our of our hearts, out of our world

Then someone came in the night
Came to lead man to the light
Turn us around, make us right
Bring love to our hearts, love to our world

Let there be peace around the world
Let there by joy around the world
Let there be hope around the world
Let there be love around the world

The second song is more personal, beginning with God's promise to Abraham and going on to proclaim God's will as the starting point for believers' lives and decisions, by virtue of the new beginning which God creates within people:

from Begins
by Gary Miller (1996)

To an aged man God spoke
Words that sounded like a joke
Soon his wife would bear a child
A saying hard to reconcile

So he asked, Can this thing be?
Can a nation spring from me?
With a body grown so old?
In a word this man was told:

Your life begins with God
Your love begins with God
Your hopes and you dreams
And your plans begin with God
Begin with God

I was standing on the edge of the road
Hopelessly alone in the dark
In the beginning I was empty and void
In my mind, my soul, my heart of hearts

The creator came and moved in my life
He spoke and turned my darkness to light
Day by day he's rearranging my ways
He's my Lord, my God, my King

The first song, of course, transforms the line "Let there be light" (Gen 1:3) into "Let there be love." The second song is more subtle (though just barely), using the reference to the dark as well as the words empty and void, to point to the unformed earth of Gen 1:2 as a metaphor for a person's life before they are recreated by God.

I don't have a lot of reflections to add, except to say that I find these lyrics both beautiful and powerful. They're another example (as I noted before of contemporary song lyrics) of how intertextuality can help theology become art.

I'm also kind of interested in the thoughts of any other Acappella junkies. Anyone want to compete for bragging rights about Acappella album collections, concert attendance, or whatever? If you were a fan when you were young, are there any albums of theirs you still listen to?

Poets Die and Who's to Blame?

2007-02-20T21:44:00.000-05:00

One of my housemates told me recently that she had a prof who talked about Dead Poets Society, one of my favorite movies, as a great example of moral ambiguity in film. I was watching it this week, so I read an essay on it in the library and thought I'd raise a question for discussion if anyone's interested. (If you haven't seen the movie, watch it before you read––it's a warm and real portrayal of friendship among guys, and it's kind of inspiring too.)

My question is, should Mr. Keating be viewed as the movie's hero or its villain?

If you need a quick review of the plot, the movie stars Robin Williams as Mr. Keating, an English teacher at a boys' prep school in the 1950's who labors to inspire his students to seize the day, eschewing societal conformity to make their lives extraordinary. In line with this, they organize a club called the Dead Poets Society, whose activities include sneaking out to read poetry together and encouraging each other to "suck the marrow out of life". Personally, I think that "seize the day" would be a tiresome slogan if it didn't reflect such an important truth. The fact is, it's easy to miss out on what we really want because we're too complacent to take a risk or work hard at something.

So Neil, one of the students, decides he wants to be an actor, even though his unyielding father forbids him to do anything that distracts from getting into Harvard so he can get into medical school. Mr. Keating says otherwise: Neil must convince his father to let him pursue his passion for the stage.

Defying his father instead of reasoning with him, Neil performs in the community theatre anyway, after which his father decides to send him to military school. Neil shoots himself that night.

THE MORAL QUESTION

The final act of the movie is the part where blame gets apportioned. The school's headmaster (Mr. Nolan), at the request of Neil's father, conducts a "thorough inquiry" which, not surpisingly, blames Mr. Keating for Neil's death and gets him dismissed from the school. For director Peter Weir, this is a gross injustice, as Mr. Nolan forces Neil's fellow students to sign a statement blaming Mr. Keating. In the film's final scene, several of the students show their gratitude and respect to Mr. Keating though one last defiant, and fairly moving, gesture.

Now, there are four possible culprits for Neil's suicide: Neil himself, Mr. Keating, Neil's father, and Mr. Nolan the headmaster.

The movie addresses each in turn:

Neil is portrayed not as guilty but rather as heroic, for killing himself lest his passion for life be stifled.
Mr. Keating cannot be guilty because he is the movie's voice of truth; surely seizing the day must be the right thing to do, so the man who embodies that mantra must be exonerated.
Neil's father probably comes off as most at fault for the suicide; his treatment of Neil is stifling throughout the movie, and just before the suicide he goes so far as to mock Neil's passion with a deep scorn that is difficult to watch.
And finally, Mr. Nolan receives some implicit blame as the representative of an establishment that demands conformity and affirms people like Neil's father; mostly though, we hate him for how he treats Mr. Keating after the suicide.

In all this, the movie tries to declare most emphatically that Mr. Keating is not at fault. And it might succeed, except for a key scene that reveals that Mr. Keating knows Neil is lying to his father. Neil tells him that he has spoken to his father, as Mr. Keating suggested, and that his father has agreed to let him perform in the play. But we don't believe Neil, and neither does Mr. Keating––we can see it in his eyes.

As much as we want Neil to be in the play, I think most grown-ups would agree that it's irresponsible for a teacher to stand aside and let a 17-year-old defy his father like that, especially when Mr. Keating knows Neil tried out for the play largely as a result of his own influence. That doesn't make Mr. Keating the one who shot Neil, but it does make him negligent and irresponsible in using his position as teacher. Neil was a minor, and his father's opinion really did mean more than Mr. Keating's.

So, to return to my question: granting that all four parties bear some guilt, should Mr. Keating be viewed as the hero or the villain of the movie?

More specifically, I'll quote the charges that the two villians of the movie level against him. The first is Cameron, the student who rats out Mr. Keating to the administration. One of the other students asks him who the administration is holding responsible for Neil's death:

Well, Mr. Keating, of course! The "captain" himself! You guys didn't really think he could avoid responsibility, did you? . . . Mr. Keating put us up to all this crap, didn't he? If it wasn't for Mr. Keating, Neil would be cozied up in his room right now, studying his chemistry and dreaming of being called "doctor".

The second quote is from Mr. Nolan, describing to one of the boys the contents of the statement he is expected to sign incriminating Mr. Keating:

I have here a detailed description of what occured at your meetings. It describes how your teacher, Mr. Keating, encouraged you boys to organize this club, and he used it as a source of inspiration for reckless and self-indulgent behavior. It describes how Mr. Keating, from both in and out of the classroom, encouraged Neil Perry to follow his obsession with acting, when he knew all along it was against the explicit orders of Neil's parents. It was Mr. Keating's blatant abuse of his position as teacher that led directly to Neil Perry's death.

So, even though as moviegoers we hate to admit it, aren't they basically right?

The Really Scary Thing About Christians

2007-02-14T02:02:00.000-05:00

Note: the hit tracker I use says that quite a few people have found this post from a google search looking for information about the email forward I'm discussing here. That suggests (contrary to my pessimistic comments below) that quite a few people (many of them presumably Christians) do check these things out rather than just forward them. That's reassuring to know.

I got an email forward this past week that I've received before:

Subject: Dr. Dobson and CBS Response
Will you please take a minute to read this, please? It's
really important to our faith.
Thanks,
_____

Dr. Dobson & CBS Response

Apparently we are to be allowed to watch TV
programs that use every foul word in the English
language, but not the word "God" It will only
take a minute to read this and see if you think
you should send it out

DR. DOBSON'S PLEA FOR ACTION

CBS discontinued "Touched by an Angel" for using
the word God in every program. Madeline Murray
O'Hare, an atheist, successfully managed to
eliminate the use of Bible reading from public
schools a few years ago.

Now her organization has been granted a federal
hearing on the same subject by the Federal
Communications Commission (FCC) Washington , DC

Their petition, Number 2493, would ultimately pave
the way to stop the reading of the gospel, our Lord
and Savior, on the airwaves of America

They got 287,000 signatures to back their stand!
If this attempt is successful, all Sunday worship
services being broadcast on the radio or by
television will be stopped. This group is also
campaigning to remove all Christmas programs and
Christmas carols from public schools!

You as a Christian can help!

We are praying for at least 1 million signatures. This would
defeat their effort and show that there are many Christians
alive, well and concerned about our country. As Christians
we must unite on this. Please don't take this lightly.

We ignored this lady once and lost prayer in our
school and in offices across the nation

Please stand up for your religious freedom and let
your voice be heard. Together we can make a
difference in our country while creating a way for
the lost to know the Lord.

Please press "forward", and forward this to
everyone that you think should read this.
Now, please sign your name at the bottom ( you
can only add your name after you have pressed the
"Forward").

Don't delete any other names, just go to the next
number and type your name and state. Please defeat this
organization and keep the right of our freedom of religion.

REMEMBER: Our country was founded on freedom of religion
and our Constitution is based on the 10 Commandments.

Agree or Delete: Instructions to sign are at the bottom.

PETITION FOR PRESIDENT BUSH

PETITION TO REINSTATE PRAYER IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS:
1.

Exactly 2,236 people had typed their name into this particular email.

For anyone who doesn't know, this petition is a hoax. I'll get to the specifics below, but at the outset let me just say that almost every single thing in it is either fabrication or gross misrepresentation.

Now, we'll set aside for now the fact that an internet petition is utterly useless, because there's nothing at all stopping someone from either (1) making up names (since you can't check the handwriting) or (2) changing the subject of the petition once everyone's name is on it.

But even assuming an email petition could work, a far more important point that should jump out at everyone who reads this email is that it is basically incoherent. Not only is it written in sloppy prose with numerous mistakes (that James Dobson supposedly penned!), but the email itself doesn't make any logical sense.

Here are a few of the problems.

1. Madalyn Murray O'Hair's first and last names are both misspelled in the email.

2. Touched by an Angel ran (according to imdb.com) from 1994 until 2003, which anyone should recognize is a very long run for a tv show. It doesn't take a conspiracy to get a show cancelled after nine seasons.

3. The email is riddled with grammatical errors, such as the missing period after "God" in the first paragraph.

4. O'Hair apparently did succeed in eliminating Bible reading from public schools in 1963; but calling that just "a few years ago" suggests that this was written up a long time ago.

5. One sentence reads, "Their petition . . . would ultimately pave
the way to stop the reading of the gospel, our Lord and Savior, on the airwaves of America". So grammatically, in that sentence, "the gospel" is "our Lord and Savior"?

And then comes the best part. Right before the list of names, it says, "PETITION TO REINSTATE PRAYER IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS:".

Wuh?! The email starts out saying it's in direct response to the petition to the FCC to ban religious programming on public airwaves. What does that have to do with prayer in public schools? Who would write a legitimate email discussing one topic and then tack on a petition for a different topic at the bottom?

Fact checking and the miracle of the internet

But, supposing someone read the email and thought it made good enough sense to plausibly be legitimate, how could they go about checking whether it was true or not?

At this point we're in luck, because the one part of the email that is accurate is the fcc case number in question. When I first receive this email, I just went to fcc.gov and typed "2493" into the search box there. If you do that, the first result is a link, titled Religious Broadcast Rumor Denied, that explains the hoax. There also are other ways to research the claim:

If you google "Madalyn Murray O'Hair fcc" (without quotes), the second link explains the hoax.
If you go to Madalyn Murray O'Hair's wikipedia page, the bottom of the entry explains the hoax.
If you google "Madeline Murray O'Hare" (the incorrect spelling found in the email), the top five links all explain the hoax.
Snopes.com (the urban legends site) has a page on this hoax, which you can find by typing "O'Hair" into their search box.

If you did make it to the FCC explanation page (or to an older page with more information at this link), you would find that two guys named Lansman and Milam filed a petition in 1974 to prevent sectarian groups from using a couple of public access stations (which no one watches anyway), and the FCC turned them down in 1975. Turns out their request was unconstituational.

But what you really ought to know is that the FCC, since that time, has received––get ready––millions of phone calls, form letters, and then emails from Christians opposing this supposed conspiracy. That means people were typing up chain letters, sticking 10-cent stamps on them, and dropping them in the mail to the FCC before I was born. That's 33 years of Christians mobilizing in response to a form letter written by a crackpot.

What does it mean?

Now, I know I'm beating this into the ground, but my point is that someone who took just a little bit of time to look into this would have found out it was a hoax. So here's the only explanation I can conceive of for why all these people signed it:

Lots and lots of Christians don't think.

I'm not saying these people can't think, just that for whatever reason they don't bother to. And I'm sure there have also been thousands of Christians who have seen this email, assumed it was a hoax, and deleted it. But the only way to explain all the names on the petition is that a huge number of Christians will agree to anything, as long as they think it's supported by people they generally agree with. In other words, as long as it's an ostensibly "Christian" cause, all you have to do is show them where to sign.

My first thought was that this makes Christians look bad, which I'm sure it does.

But on further reflection, the potential consequences are a lot more serious, especially considering that Christian America often directs its efforts toward wielding real political power rather than passing around silly petitions. My question, then, is this: In what other areas will Christians sign their name to a given position without a moment's thought to whether it's really a good position or not? Some suggestions:

Evolution: Do most Christians really know anything about evolution (or creationism, for that matter) when they vote for new textbooks?

Abortion: Do most Christians have any idea which groups of people have abortions and why?

Homosexuality: When the question comes up concerning whether gay couples should be allowed to adopt children, do most Christians actually know anything about gay couples, or do they just assume they're all twisted child-molestors who don't deserve such a right?

War: If our president sounds Christian (like the fcc email sounds Christian), how many Christians will just assume that he's supporting a "Christian" cause and go along with it?

I know people can make arguments in favor of the supposed "Christians" stances on all these points. But what I want to know is, why should anyone trust Christians to decide anything important when we are demonstrably willing to support anything as long as it sounds like something we agree with?

God help us.

Dirt into Dirt

2007-02-04T02:22:00.000-05:00

Returning to my series on theological texts that interpret the creation story using intertextuality (read the start of this post for a definition), I want to look at how an early Christian letter called the Epistle of Barnabas interpreted the creation of Adam as pointing to salvation in Christ.

The author of Barnabas most likely wrote between about A.D. 70 and 135. He's almost certainly not the biblical Barnabas, but we'll call him that for convenience.

Old Testament Background

Barnabas specializes in allegorical interpretation, meaning that he interprets a given Old Testament text by explaining that certain words in the passage really refer to something different than a casual reading might suggest. This is a method that was popular among Greeks and some Jews (like Philo), although Barnabas turns the method against the Jews. To figure out what he's doing, first we have to review the OT passages he's using. Barnabas focuses on three scriptural texts in particular:

Genesis 1:26-28: "Then God said, 'Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.' So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them, and God said to them, 'Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.'"

Genesis 2:7: "Then Yahweh God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being."

Exodus 33:1-3: "Yahweh said to Moses, 'Go, leave this place, you and the people whom you have brought up out of the land of Egypt, and go to the land of which I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, saying, "To your descendants I will give it." I will send an angel before you, and I will drive out the Canaanites, the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jubusites. Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey…'"

The key to fitting these three passages together is recognizing a wordplay on the Greek word we transliterate as "geo". The word can be translated into English as "earth", "land" (as in "the land of Oz"), or "ground," corresponding approximately to its three senses in our words geocentric, geopolitical, and geology. (Geopolitical is admittedly a stretch.) The word shows up in all three senses in the passage we'll look at from Barnabas. Note that this wordplay does not work in Hebrew (the original language Genesis and Exodus were written in), but since Barnabas was apparently reading the text in Greek translation, it does work for him.

The ambiguity of this word affects the interpretation of any number of Bible passages. So for example, "The meek shall inherit the earth" (Matt 5:5) could refer to the whole planet, but in Psalm 37:11 the same line seems to refer to the land of Israel. Or for another example, the fifth commandment promises long life in the (promised) land in exchange for obedience to parents, but Ephesians 6:2, written for Gentiles, seems to interpret this as long life on this earth.

So as it turns out, in the Greek version of the Old Testament, the word for "ground" in Gen 2:7 –– the stuff man was made of –– is the same word as the promised "land" in Ex 33:1. In fact, all the words in bold in the three passage quoted above are the exact same word in Greek. This opens up room for Barnabas to make some interesting connections.

Particularly notice how the word "form" (both noun and verb) shows up repeatedly. I'm quoting (with adjustments) from Michael W. Holmes, The Apostolic Fathers:

(8) What does the other prophet, Moses, say to [Israel]? "Behold, thus says the Lord God: 'Enter into the good land, which the Lord promised by oath to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and take possession of it as an inheritance, a land flowing with milk and honey." (9) But now learn what knowledge has to say: set your hope upon Jesus, who is about to be revealed to you in the flesh. For man is suffering earth [ = land], for Adam was formed out of the face of the earth.

(10) What, therefore, does "into the good land, a land flowing with milk and honey" mean? … (11) Inasmuch as he renewed us, then, by the forgiveness of sins, he made us into another type of person, so that we should have the soul of children, as if he were forming us all over again. (12) For the Scripture speaks about us when he says to the Son: "Let us make man according to our image and likeness, and let them rule over the beasts of the earth and the birds of the air and the fish of the sea."

And when he saw that we were formed well, the Lord said: "Increase and multiply and fill the earth." These things he said to the Son. (Barn. 6.8–12)

The Theological Claim

A big part of Barnabas's argument in the 21-chapter letter is that Israel failed to understand what God was saying to them through Moses and the scriptures. He (incorrectly) reads passages such as Isaiah 1:11, "What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says Yahweh," as indicating that God was trying to do away with animal sacrifices, but Israel just wasn't listening (Barn. 2.5). This is ironic, of course, because in reality it's Barnabas that doesn't understand what Isaiah was getting at. But the important thing to recognize is that Barnabas wants to appropriate the Hebrew Scriptures as always talking about Jesus, almost always at the Jews' expense.

In this case, Israel misunderstood the promise that the prophet Moses had delivered to them in Exodus. They thought he was concerned with a real land, but "knowledge" (i.e., correct allegorical interpretation; 6.9) has something different to say: Jesus, not the land of Israel, is the real purpose behind all these promises.

To make the jump from Moses to Christ, Barnabas uses the idea of the land: humans are nothing but "suffering earth" (2.9), because they were formed out of earth, and Christ shared in this earth/land/ground when he took on flesh. Now, just as God formed the first man from the dust of the earth, so also a new creation/formation takes place in Christ (6.11).

So when Moses spoke of a "land" that Israel was going to, he actually was saying that God would reenact creation, the moment God formed the first man from the dust of the earth. Under Christ, the forgiveness of sins is an act of re-creation or re-formation, by which God takes hold of the dirt from which we are made and forms a new person, with the soul of a child (6.11). In Barnabas's opinion it is this that Moses meant when he spoke of a land to which God would lead Israel (6.8); only their hard hearts prevented them from realizing it.

After establishing the connection between creation and salvation, Barnabas teases out the implications by bringing in another passage on creation from Genesis 1: "And when he saw that we were formed well, the Lord said: 'Increase and multiply and fill the earth.' These things he said to the Son" (6.12).

Just as God told the first humans he formed to fill the earth, so also when God recreates humanity through the suffering of Christ, he gives the same command to the Son. A creation so good is not intended to keep to itself; taken from the dust of the ground, it should become a gift for every land across the earth. And so Christ sends us into the world.

Implications for the Church

The New Testament does cite innumerable OT passages that it claims are fulfilled in Christ. Paul even claims, broadly, that "in [Christ] every one of God's promises is a 'yes'." But the Epistle of Barnabas takes that approach to Scripture a step further. The claim here is not simply that the promised land in Exodus prefigured the coming of Christ (as in Hebrews 4), but rather that the people of Israel were foolish and blind for thinking that God was concerned with giving them an actual land in the first place. True, God did give them a real land, but that wasn't what God cared about.

Barnabas makes the same kind of argument concerning scripture after scripture from the OT, a good example being the Isaiah passage mentioned above. As the letter drags on, the practice becomes tiresome, and it becomes increasingly clear that Barnabas lacks not only an understanding of the various OT passages in context but also an appropriate respect for the people of Israel. Barnabas cites some scriptures that don't exist, interprets other scriptures arbitrarily so that they always favor Christians, dabbles in numerology, and relentlessly attacks not only the choices and beliefs but also the sincerity and integrity of the Jewish people.

It would be easy to dismiss the Epistle of Barnabas on these grounds, but in reality the line is not all that sharp between it and some of the New Testament texts. It was probably written later than everything in the NT, but not by much. What's more, hints of Barnabas's tendencies were already present in texts that were received into the canon, and at least one early church father (Clement of Alexandria) cited Barnabas almost as if it were scripture. Ultimately, most of us would argue that wisdom and the Holy Spirit prevailed in the selection of the scriptures that were deemed suitable for public reading in the church (i.e., the canon). I can only hope that it was Barnabas's contempt for the Jews, and not just its late date, that kept it from being included.

In a sense, though, Barnabas simply takes certain arguments from the New Testament scriptures to their logical conclusion, and it is here that I think it can serve as a warning for churches now.

The understanding of the truth of Scripture among fundamentalists and evangelicals in the United States can be troubling sometimes. We have a tendency –– and for good reasons –– to approach Scripture as absolute truth. But the problem with making truth absolute is that then you have to carry it to its logical conclusions.

But Scripture, when you really get down to it, often reflects more of a discussion among competing voices than it does absolute truth. Certainly, there are parts of Scripture I would claim to reflect absolute truth, but they are surrounded by any number of passages that need to be interpreted with nuance and open-mindedness.

Some of these questions are fairly trivial. If we're studying who wrote the Torah (Genesis through Deuteronomy), our conclusions should not hinge solely on whether Jesus said the five books came from Moses. When Jude quotes 1 Enoch, a patently fictional apocalyptic writing that was popular in the first century, we must not insist that Adam's great great great great grandson Enoch actually spoke those words. These kinds of claims, in my opinion, take Scripture to be something that it is not.

But in other places, the logical conclusions that certain readings of Scripture might lead us to have more serious consequences, and Barnabas is a good example. When Luke tells us that Jesus "opened [the apostles'] minds to understand the scriptures" (24:45), it's no great leap for us to fall into the attitude of Barnabas and wonder at the Jews' stupidity for failing to see what was written in front of them all along. Or when Revelation describes a violent overthrow of all non-Christians at the end of time, it is not hard to see why so many Christians over the centuries have tolerated violence because it seemed to support Christian causes.

Barnabas's sin, ultimately, is the spiritualization of OT scriptures to the almost complete exclusion of their original meaning, and it is a sin often mimicked by Christians today. It's ok to suggest that God ultimately is most concerned with us being poor in spirit, but if that leads us to neglect teachings concerning those who are actually poor, we are taking certain scriptures too far. It's ok (and in my opinion, correct) to hold that Scripture contains truth that God wishes to communicate to the church and the world, but if we use it to shut down communication with secular voices or to ridicule those who disagree, I believe we are missing our calling.

I like to think that these misuses (in my opinion) of Scripture simply come from not reading it carefully enough, but the attitudes and positions I see on the American political/religious landscape –– among people who apparently read the Bible quite carefully –– suggest otherwise.

Hopefully, my treatment of the topic here –– in contrast to the approach Barnabas chose –– is respectful enough that it won't shut out the people whose views I'm criticizing. Some of these questions are too important to polarize over.

D’oh!-zart: The Simpsons v. Amadeus

2006-12-14T01:36:00.000-05:00

By Justin D. Burton

NOTE: This is a guest post by my friend Justin, who's a musicology grad student at Rutgers and one of my favorite people. The topic is still intertextuality, but here it's between a movie and a TV show. Justin and his wife Kathryn also have a great movie blog. -Scott

In episode FABF06 (‘Margical History Tour’) of The Simpsons, Marge takes her children (and Bart’s friend Milhouse) to the Springfield Public Library to research papers they must write for school, only to find that the library no longer carries books, opting instead for Yu-Gi-Oh! price guides, Everybody Poops: The Video, and newspapers perched atop snoozing bums. Unperturbed, Marge gathers the children around and offers lessons on historical figures to help the children write their papers. After telling of Henry VIII for Milhouse and Sacagawea for Lisa, she turns to Bart.

Marge: What famous historical figure do you want to write about?

Bart: I don’t know. Boogeyman.

Marge: C’mon, Bart. We can make this fun. History’s like an amusement park, except instead of rides, you have dates to memorize.

Bart: Mom, everyone who ever lived is boring.

Marge: Boring? Is there anything boring about a bad-ass rocker who lived fast and died young?

Bart: I know there’s a catch, but tell me more.

With that, Marge launches into the story of Mozart, complete with a raucous piano concert, a scene at the Austrian Music Awards, a snippet of Bart/Mozart’s latest opera The Musical Fruit, and Bart/Mozart’s untimely death. The story, as Lisa points out, ‘sounds a lot like the movie Amadeus, which was historically inaccurate.’

The Simpsons is a richly intertextual television show, as it demands its viewers to be conscious of a vast reservoir of popular culture referential material. Often, the point of this intertextuality is to engage and critique the texts to which the show refers. Jonathan Gray, author of Watching with the Simpsons, puts it thusly:

[M]uch of [The Simpsons’s] humor is deeply transitive, pointing outside the borders of The Simpsons to all manner of other genres, texts, and discourses. To laugh at these jokes is frequently to read those other genres, texts, and discourses as much as it is to read The Simpsons. The Simpsons talks about other texts, and if its jokes ‘leak’ out of the program—if we activate them in everyday discussion, if they force a reevaluation of other texts, or if we recall them when watching other texts—then it becomes important for us to study how and with what effect this parody attacks other textual forms and formats: we can no longer focus on The Simpsons alone.

When we find within The Simpsons a lengthy reference to Amadeus, then, we are obligated, as Gray tells us, to study the effect of this parody. What I’d like to do here is talk briefly about why The Simpsons lampoons Amadeus.

Writer Peter Shaffer and director Milós Forman weren’t the first to conceive of Mozart in infantile and savant-like terms. Rather, the stories that fuel the myth of Mozart the eternal child had arisen immediately following his death. Importantly, though, Amadeus, as mass art, was situated in a position that allowed it to crystallize this notion in the public’s consciousness.

By caricaturing Amadeus with its own characters, The Simpsons impoverishes the Mozart myth expounded in Amadeus. In The Simpsons, we are confronted with a rock-star child genius whose musical ability is effortless and punctuated with infantile scatology, a pared-down version of the pared-down story Amadeus offers.

One explanation for The Simpsons’s intertextual tangling with Amadeus is de-mythification. As Roland Barthes explains myth, it is an impoverishment of a meaningful exchange. That is, I may say, ‘Mozart is a genius’ (though it’s not likely that you’ll hear me say that), and the statement is fully of history. That is, the statement involves the contingencies of both ‘genius’ and ‘Mozart,’ as the histories surrounding each word are immediately consultable to better understand the many different aspects of the statement ‘Mozart is a genius.’

When the statement is mythified, however, the statement is distanced from history. As Barthes puts it, the statement ‘leaves its contingency behind; it empties itself…history evaporates, only the letter remains.’ What is important in Barthes’s postulation, however, is that history is not entirely extinguished in the form; rather, it remains available as ‘an instantaneous reserve of history, a tamed richness, which it is possible to call and dismiss in a sort of rapid alternation.’ The statement becomes, then, something of a proof text of itself, to which one might point for salient historical facts or ideas, while disregarding its original multivalence.

Why a statement such as this one is impoverished is a bit tricky to nail down, but one explanation is the fear of the loss of the Great White Man. Since the Enlightenment, our histories have been filled with tales of great individuals who transcend their bodies and their cultures to do great things. With the growing sense of multiculturalism, however, many have noticed that these great transcendent people are always white and always men. As we try to reconfigure our understanding of history, several have balked at the notion and feared that white men are actually becoming the racist target of the rest of the world (see Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind for some nice examples of such a paranoia). If ‘Mozart is a genius’ can be proved by streamlining his history and turning him into a rock-star child genius, then his status becomes much more difficult to assail.

Now, in order to undo myth, Barthes tells us, we must mythify it, in turn. This involves impoverishing a myth. So, while ‘Mozart is a genius’ became impoverished in a myth that became crystallized in Amadeus, this myth is then impoverished in The Simpsons. As it turns out, a funny cartoon challenges to re-think and critically engage the history and person of one of our most revered artists. Not bad for seven hilarious minutes.

-JDB

Jars of Clay (the Metaphor, Not the Band)

2006-11-25T23:21:00.000-05:00

[Note: I'm hitting crunch time for finishing my semester papers, so I don't have time to write anything new. And unfortunately, all my papers are too obscure (not to mention unfinished) to post. So, I dug up a short paper I wrote 6 years ago at ACU to reproduce, unedited. I hope y'all will indulge me.]

Jars of Clay
Abilene Christian University
BIBM 391, Intro to Ministry
Profs. Robert Oglesby, Jeanene Reese
By Scott Haile
March 1, 2000

Of all biblical virtues, humility by its very nature eludes me more completely than any other. I can work on compassion and kindness and sincerity and self-control and even patience, but humility times its exits to the moments when I most succeed in otherwise imitating Christ. As the saying goes, once you realize you’re humble, you aren’t humble anymore. Dealing with that reality forces me to admit that too much of my effort has been aimed at fulfilling duty, following rules and performing works. By such means I can manage to be a pretty good person most of the time and treat others well enough that we can all overlook most of my faults. Meanwhile I fail to do the only thing that can really bring about humility--not working hard or studying my Bible, but falling prostrate before God.

Paul’s metaphor of cheap clay jars holding a valuable treasure describes this humility as it applies to his ministry, in sharp contrast to the attitudes of those around him. In 2 Corinthians 4:6 Paul tells of the glorious light God has put in his heart that is the gospel of Christ. But in verse 7 (NIV) he says, “But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.” Though rabbis already taught a similar message of humility for ministry, this verse contradicted the views of many religious leaders at the time as it does the natural instincts of many of us today. Surely God has given us power so that we will use it, right? Surely a God who came to seek and save what was lost wants us to make his religion appealing to all those lost people so they can be saved?

Being raised in the church, I find Paul’s message here fairly easy to accept, and even preach to others. But figuring out where it works into my life and then actually following through present a greater challenge. Consequently, I need to keep the metaphor of the jars of clay in front of me at all times so that it will guide and shape my ministry--as indeed a potter shapes a clay pot--and keep my focus where it belongs, which is on the cross of Christ. The metaphor itself is simple, and trying to find dozens of points of connection between clay jars and Christian ministry would waste both my time and that of the reader. But the impact of that simple image on Christian ministry is incredibly profound, and that is where I will focus discussion.

First, the prevailing Christian attitude of the day apparently recognized power and prestige as signs of God’s favor. The people Paul was opposing were pretty impressive to young Christians, leading him to rather sarcastically refer to them as “super-apostles” (2 Cor 11:5). They were superior speakers (11:6) and tried to make themselves look good before men (10:12).

Jars of clay, on the other hand, are not impressive or powerful; some have referred to them as the “Tupperware” of ancient Greece--cheap, common, useful and disposable. But Paul says that God’s power is held in these vessels so that the power is indeed from Him and not from man. Savage notes two paradoxes in the metaphor: a valuable treasure is contained in a cheap vessel, and the incredible power of God is shown through a fragile vessel (165). The NIV translates the verse “to show that this...power is from God...” but the Greek text has a subjunctive “be” verb which more literally means “so that this...power might be from God...” (Savage 166) The point is that our weakness and fragility do not merely show the world that the power is from God (though it does do that) but is actually prerequisite for that power to work in us in the first place. “In other words,” Savage writes, “where there is pride and arrogance there cannot, by definition, be divine power.” (167)

OK, I’ve covered my academic bases. Now I’ll deal with why the metaphor is important to me in my ministry. First of all, my general inadequacy as a person scares me. Even if my own ability were extraordinary by worldly standards, the idea of trying to win souls from Satan by my own power would be enough to send me running. If I try to show how strong I am, I know he has the ability to knock me flat on my back. The simple fact that I have no supernatural powers at my disposal, and he does, assures me of my imminent defeat if I face him alone.

In contrast, seeing myself as a jar of clay to be filled with God’s power and broken if necessary helps conform me to the example of Christ. Following in Jesus’ steps (1 Peter 2:21) has to be my foundational theology, as it was Paul’s: “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.” (Phil 3:10-11) Paul wants to become like Christ in his death so he can become like him in his resurrection. I think this so-called theology of the cross is the most important part of Christian ministry because it sums up who we are. I love what Daniel Von Allmen said in one of the articles I read, that “mission is a way of discipleship; mission is following Christ on his way through suffering to death and only then to resurrection” (265). According to Fred Craddock’s Preaching, the form of a sermon should mirror its content, and that applies to ministry as well. If the content of my ministry, what I want to tell people, is Jesus’ emptying of himself, then I need to likewise empty myself in my ministry so they can learn what I teach by how I live.

The clay jars metaphor also has a great practical strength, namely that it works. First, as I noted above, Paul seems to suggest that God only works through weakness. If this is the case, then living as jars of clay is not just preferable but necessary to Christian ministry, at least if God is to be involved in any active kind of way. Second, Allen says that our own weakness, or “the fragility of the clay pots” can witness to the world concerning the power of God (287). Again, how we teach can convert people as effectively as what we teach.

This metaphor can cause problems if someone interprets it in an unhealthy way. First, a person’s excessive focus on his own weakness and inability could lead him to the conclusion that he cannot do anything for God. Consequently, he probably won’t do anything for God but instead will walk around in fear of making a mistake and awaiting a voice from heaven to instruct him on exactly what he needs to do. The other major pitfall which I foresee brings me back to where I started, to the difficulty of learning humility. The easiest thing in the world for me to do, once I find myself working by God’s power rather than mine, is to look down on all those around me whom I perceive work by their own strength. At that point, my humility has obviously yielded to spiritual arrogance.

I don’t think humility can be taught by or deliberately learned by a human. There isn’t a person alive whom I could not find fault with if I looked, and that always allows me a loophole, it always allows me to write a person off if I don’t like what he says. God reserves the right to humble us when we need it, because like Job we can’t really answer him at all when it come right down to it. This really convicts me as I consider my call to ministry. If God calls me to do his work, I know he will give me the preparation I need, and so I trust that he will teach me humility in light of his holiness. Before sending Paul, God knocked him on his back so that he would serve in holy reverence. But if I decide for myself to go into ministry for him, I don’t know that I can count on that preparation. In the meantime I need to seek God so that I can learn who he is and wait for the day--or decade--when he confronts me and shows me what I’m made of.

Bibliography

Allen, Ronald J. “Between Text and Sermon: 2 Corinthians 4:7-18.” Interpretation 52 (1998): 286-289.

Barnett, Paul. The Message of 2 Corinthians. The Bible Speaks Today. Ed. John R. Stott. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1988. 86-87.

Craddock, Fred B. Preaching. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1985.

Kistemaker, Simon J. II Corinthians. New Testament Commentary. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House Co, 1997. 146-147.

Savage, Timothy B. Power through weakness: Paul’s understanding of the Christian ministry in 2 Corinthians. Paradise Valley, Arizona: Cambridge University Press, 1996. 164-169.

Von Allmen, Daniel. “The Treasure in Clay Pots.” International Review of Mission 77 (1988): 265-271.

Interpretation and Subversion

2006-11-10T21:50:00.000-05:00

Not all theological interpretations of texts are sympathetic. When John 1 reapplies and reinterprets the creation story, it does so with clear respect for the original text. Gnostic literature, in contrast, sometimes uses theological traditions in ways that intentionally undermine the original text.

A short, fascinating Gnostic text called The Hypostasis of the Archons creatively retells the story of the first six chapters of Genesis so as to undermine most of its theological claims.

OVERVIEW OF GNOSTICISM

The term Gnosticism is used by modern scholars to describe a cluster of beliefs held by a number of Christians (as well as some non-Christians) beginning probably in the second century A.D. Though their teachings weren't uniform, the general idea behind Gnosticism is that the created world is not "very good" (as Genesis describes it) but instead a horrible mistake perpetrated by an inferior god who perhaps didn't know any better.

Gnostics often still worshipped Father, Son and Holy Spirit, but the god of Israel was a different god, or rather a demigod, to be blamed for the flawed world we see around us. Clearly this perspective is blasphemous from an orthodox Christian perspective, and many people (understandably) were and are offended by it.

The true God, according to a typical Gnostic understanding, still interacts with the creation, but he does so by inviting "spiritual" people to gain a special knowledge (the Greek word is gnosis) by which they are freed from worldly existence. Humans are portrayed as originally spiritual beings from above who have been trapped in carnal bodies, and the goal of salvation is to free us from our worldly (read: defiled) existence so that we can return to the realm of light from which we came. Often, only a select group of humans indeed belongs to that other realm, to which they can escape via knowledge and be saved.

HYPOSTASIS OF THE ARCHONS

The Hypostasis of the Archons is perhaps better translated, "The [True] Nature of the Rulers." It takes the word for "rulers" from Ephesians 6:12's claim that the Christian battle is not against flesh and blood but against "rulers," which Hypostasis purports to explain the true nature of. Audaciously, it claims that the creator god described in the Hebrew Scriptures is actually a group of rulers ("archons") whom Scripture erroneously equates with the Father of Jesus Christ. For those scoring along at home, the author just used Paul's statement in Ephesians to turn Christianity against the god of Israel.

The interpretive coup is pulled off through a variety of creative rewrites of the Genesis story. (Although the text uses a variety of names for both the greater and the lesser gods, for the sake of simplicity I'll refer to them as "God" and "archons," respectively.) The positive actions attributed in Genesis to the god of Israel are either reattributed to the (higher) Gnostic God, or are reevaluated as wicked or harmful actions.

When God looks down upon the earth, the archons see his reflection in the water and try to make a man in his image. They more or less accomplish the task but are unable to breathe a real spirit into the man; the man therefore lies on the ground until God consents to breathe a spirit into him.

Later, the archons place the man and woman in the garden and instruct them not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In this telling of the story, withholding that knowledge from them is a bad thing, but God overcomes their mistake by leading the snake to trick the woman into eating the fruit; thus what Christians deem the "fall" is the Gnostic God's will from the start.

When the man and woman realize their nakedness, the head archon comes and asks "Adam! Where are you?", not to see what Adam would say (as in common Christian interpretation) but because "he did not understand what had happened."

For the curse that accompanies the "fall," the archons then proceed to "[throw] mankind into great distraction and into a life of toil, so that their mankind might be occupied by worldly affairs, and might not have the opportunity of being devoted to the holy spirit."

The story is more complex than I let on here, but it is evident that the author uses a retelling of the Genesis story (1) to distinguish the Father of Jesus Christ from the god of Israel and (2) to characterize the god of Israel as a sort of envious, arrogant, bumbling idiot.

This leads us to the creation story, which is explained near the end of the text. "Sophia" here is a name for one of the true gods (as is "the entirety"), and this excerpt (quoted from Robinson's Nag Hammadi Library) describes how Sophia creates and interacts with the demigod ("Samael") who corresponds to the creator in the Genesis story:

"Sophia, who is called Pistis, wanted to create something, alone without her consort; and her product was a celestial thing.

A veil exists between the world above and the realms that are below; and shadow came into being beneath the veil; and that shadow became matter; and that shadow was projected apart. And what she had created became a product in the matter, like an aborted fetus. And it assumed a plastic form molded out of shadow, and became an arrogant beast resembling a lion." It was androgynous, as I have already said, because it was from matter that it derived.

"Opening his eyes he saw a vast quantity of matter without limit; and he became arrogant, saying, 'It is I who am God, and there is none other apart from me.'

"When he said this, he sinned against the entirety. And a voice came forth from above the realm of absolute power, saying, 'You are mistaken, Samael' –– which is, 'god of the blind.'

"And he said, 'If any other thing exists before me, let it become visible to me!' And immediately Sophia stretched forth her finger and introduced light into matter; and she pursued it down to the region of chaos. And she returned up [to] her light…

This ruler, by being androgynous, made himself a vast realm, an extent without limit. And he contemplated creating offspring for himself, and created for himself seven offspring, androgynous just like their parent.

"And he said to his offspring, 'It is I who am the god of the entirety.'"

Not all the points of this text are clear; however, the key point I want to draw attention to is the story's equivalent to "Let there be light" of Genesis 1.

In this Gnostic retelling of creation, the words of the God of Israel at this point do not accomplish the creative task ascribed to them in Genesis. Rather, the would-be creator god Samael is portrayed as a blind demigod groping about in the dark, who asks for light because he is unable to see without it. It is the higher god Sophia, not Samael, who stretches out her finger and creates the light. Samael apparently has some control over the matter that lays before him, but he lacks the knowledge that only Sophia (the Greek word for "wisdom") can provide.

CONSEQUENCES FOR CHRISTIAN THOUGHT AND ACTION

As I noted in my post on John 1 (10/28/06), Gnostic texts such as this one mounted a direct challenge to what became known as orthodox Christian beliefs. At stake, for example, are (1) the goodness of the created world, (2) the continuity between the God of Israel and the God of Jesus Christ, and (3) bodily salvation and resurrection.

All three of these points have been questioned at times in Christian history, but all three ultimately have "prevailed" in the minds of most believers––with important consequences for Christian living:

Because the world God created is indeed good, we are compelled to respect both the world itself and the lives of people who live in it. Thus destruction of the environment is an affront to something beautiful God created, and poverty is a genuine evil even though this life is only temporary.
Because the God who created the world is also the God of Jesus Christ, we affirm our connection with and dependence on the faith of the Jews as the root of our own. We affirm the Hebrew Scriptures as the word of God, and we respect Jews as worshipping that same God.
Because we affirm that salvation applies to the whole person––body, soul, and spirit––we respect both our bodies and those of other people, and we conduct ourselves, e.g., sexually, in the belief that God has given us bodies with which to glorify him.

In conclusion I'll note the obvious, that what we believe about God affects our lives, and that there are reasons the Church historically has affirmed some views of God and rejected others.

In the wake of the over-sensationalized (though genuinely interesting) Gnostic Gospel of Judas, when many people who are repelled by orthodox Christianity look about for alternative traditions that appeal more to their own sensibilities, it is worth looking carefully at the points that truly were at stake. Granting that the kind of Gnostic thought represented in Hypostasis is more extreme than some other ideas that were also rejected as heresy, nevertheless we should bear in mind that the differences under dispute were important.

Furthermore, the decisions made regarding canon, orthodoxy and heterodoxy were not mere power plays by those wishing to maintain their own influence, but were governed by convictions that in many cases were established from the very beginning of Christian thought.

The Word Became Flesh

2006-11-02T16:36:00.000-05:00

Before I go on to the other theological texts that use the Genesis 1 creation story, I want to tabernacle, so to speak, among the readers of John 1 for a time. In particular, I want to quote excerpts from a pair of songs by contemporary Christian musicians that take John 1 as their starting point. (I have to say at the outset that most CCM artists are awful, but these two have real substance, in my opinion.)

The first is a song by Michael Card, called "The Final Word" (Card, above left, also wrote "El Shaddai"):

You and me we use
so very many clumsy words.
The noise of what we often say
is not worth being heard.
When the Father’s Wisdom wanted
to communicate His love,
He spoke it in one final perfect Word.

He spoke the Incarnation
and then so was born the Son.
His final word was Jesus,
He needed no other one.
Spoke flesh and blood so He could bleed
and make a way Divine.
And so was born the baby
who would die to make it mine.

And so the Father’s fondest thought
took on flesh and bone.
He spoke the living luminous Word,
at once His will was done.
And so the transformation
that in man had been unheard
Took place in God the Father
as He spoke that final Word.

The second song, by Rich Mullins, is called "It Don't Do" (Mullins, above right, also wrote "Awesome God"):

It don't do to preach the gospel
If you don't live the Christian life
It don't do to dream about heaven
If you never look up and see the sky

It don't do to preach on Matthew
If you have not yet read Mark
It don't do to scream about the judgment
If there is no love in your heart

It don't do to preach on Moses
If you bow down to the golden calf
It don't do to think about glory
If you never dare to laugh

Word became flesh and He dwelt among men
He let us see Him with our eyes
He let us hold Him in our hands
And before you say whatever you will
I think you better do the best that you can
Or it won't do

Now, as far as these two artists go, I should note up front that Michael Card is probably the squarest musician I've ever heard, and (the late) Rich Mullins could push mushy sentimentality to its very limits. However, both know the Bible, both exhibit thoughtful theology in their lyrics, and both (as far as I can tell) lack the kind of pretension that makes Christian rock music look so silly sometimes. Card approaches John 1 as a theologian, Mullins as a preacher.

Card, though he perhaps conflates John with the other gospels, does a pretty straightforward interpretation of the text; his language is fresh enough to help us see the text as we may not have seen it, and yet the point his song makes is essentially the same as the point of John's gospel.

Card often uses his music to teach, and in this case he presents a clear explanation of a theological truth in terms of the scriptural text it comes from. For my tastes, his language is too obvious to be good art, but then his audience is the generation before mine, and his prioritization of clarity above art seems intentional. In any event, I appreciate the clarity with which he communicates one of the messages of John 1 here.

Mullins does something more interesting in my opinion, first of all by bringing in 1 John 1, a passage closely related to John 1:

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have handled, concerning the word of life –– indeed, life was revealed, and we have seen and we (now) testify and proclaim to you the eternal life which was with the Father and which was revealed to us. That which we have seen and heard, we (now) are proclaiming also to you, so that you, too, may have fellowship with us.

It isn't entirely clear if 1 John intended for the "word" to refer to Jesus in the same way the Gospel of John did, but it is a reasonable interpretation, and so Mullins pulls them together to make his point.

The point, which Mullins of course makes more effectively with his lyrics than I can with my words here, is that God did not remain in heaven and speak words only at a distance. Rather, in Jesus Christ, God's word became flesh (John 1) so that we could see it up close and handle it (1 John 1). So in a sense, God put his money where his mouth was, not asking anything of humanity that he would not do himself.

But Mullins does not stop with that theological claim; instead, he suggests that God's action in the incarnation puts a claim on us as Christians. Because God's word became flesh, our own words (of testimony, see 1 John 1) must become flesh too, in our actions.

Mullins plays (as John did) off the multiple meanings of "word," linking it to our common experience of knowing (and being) Christians who speak far too many words with far too few actions. But instead of repeating, say, the cliché that we should practice what we preach, Mullins couches the plea in the terms of a pair of unexpected scriptural texts. This catches our attention with an unexpected challenge coming from a familiar text, and at the same time it enriches our reading of Scripture by suggesting connections we may not have seen before.

Scripture and Song as Theology

One reason I'm writing on these two songs is that good Christian music (whether CCM or church hymns) often does the same thing that Scripture does: it uses accepted traditions in creative ways to move us and motivate us, and in many cases it builds new theological truths that either were not present, or else were not apparent, in the originals.

To put it plainly, Michael Card and Rich Mullins are doing roughly the same thing John did. While Christians typically believe John's text is inspired in a more profound sense than the works of modern musicians, nevertheless there should be a certain consistency in the way we listen to both kinds of "texts." In both cases, we not only should learn from what we hear; we also should enjoy it. Scripture is not only revelation but also art.

It is my impression that God intends for us, at the same time that we believe in and obey Scripture, to appreciate it as something beautiful he has given us through the creativity of people created in his image.

“Let there be Interpretations”

2006-10-28T02:03:00.000-04:00

Some of my favorite theological texts are those that exhibit a phenomenon called "intertextuality": the use of one story or text within another, often with the result of tweaking (or outright changing) the older text's meaning to make a theological point. Intertextuality can consist of quotations, allusions, or both.

The interesting task, as Richard B. Hays argues, is digging into how the one text uses the other as a part of a sort of stream of ideas, which often includes so-called "echoes" of meaning that lie in the interation between the two (or more) texts. The world's best literature, in my opinion, uses intertextual references to other stories or ideas that are obvious enough for us to recognize but subtle enough to delight us when we unravel all their implications.

A good example of intertextuality in Scripture is Romans 7, which I described under my previous post (10/18/06). Paul seems to use the story of the temptation of the man and the woman in the garden to demonstrate how Sin uses the Law to lead us to death. That interpretation is rather subtle as these things go, and in fact we may even have conjured up a meaning for it not intended by Paul. However, there are far more obvious passages, especially those that include direct quotes from OT texts. In the case of Romans 7, my argument has in its favor that Paul has already brought up the story of Adam's transgression (in Romans 5), which makes it far more likely that he had that story in mind in Romans 7 as well.

In any event, some of the scriptural and theological texts that I find most striking are those that refer intertextually to the creation story in Genesis 1, especially to the creative proclamation "Let there be light." Today I want to begin a series of posts reflecting on some of these, how they fit together, and why I find them interesting or even moving.

I'll begin with the grandaddy, so speak, of Christian theological reflection on the creation story. The allusion is almost unmistakable because the book begins with same two words (3 words in English) as the Greek Old Testament:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the word was god. He was with God in the beginning. Through him, everything came about––indeed, without him not one thing which has come about came about. In him was life, and the life was the light of humanity. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has no hold of it.

There was a human, sent from God, named John. He came for testimony, in order to testify about the light, so that all would believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify about the light.

The true light, which enlightens all humanity, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world had come about through him, and yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and yet his own did not receive him. But for whoever did receive him, he gave to them––to those who believed in his name––authority to become children of God: those born not of blood or of the will of flesh or of the will of a man, but born of God.

And the word became flesh and dwelled among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of the only son of a Father, full of grace and truth. (John testifies concerning him, and he has cried out saying, "This was the one of whom I said, 'The one coming after me is ahead of me, because he existed before me.'") Indeed, all of us have received from his fullness, grace upon grace. Because while the law was given through Moses, grace and truth have come about through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God, but God the Only Son, who is at the side of the Father, has made him known.

[A note in explanation of my translation "the Word was god" (with a little "g") in light of Greek grammar: I know most translations read, "the Word was God" (with a capital "G"), but that's a little misleading with respect to the syntax of the Greek sentence. The placement of the word "god" does not reflect the proper name "God," but rather what is usually called a "qualitative" sense of the word. It's like saying, "Abraham was father to a great multitude;" calling him "a father" or "the father" wouldn't mean quite the same thing. Some have suggested translating the phrase in John 1 as, "the Word was divine;" that would be accurate but would miss out on the repetition of the word "god," which I think is important for the rhythm of the sentence. This grammatical subtlety of the passage is actually an excellent parallel to the subtlety of Christian reflection on what it means for Jesus to be divine.]

John turns the prologue to his story of Jesus into a retelling of the creation of the world by playing off the ambiguity of the Greek word logos. Among its many meanings, logos can mean both "word" and "reason" (i.e., logic); Greek philosophers often used it with the latter meaning. Philo of Alexandria (20 B.C. – A.D. 40), a Jew who was heavily influenced by Greek thought, portrayed the logos in personified form as an angel of wisdom who was responsible for directing humanity toward paths of righteous reason, lest they incur the wrath of God through their unreasoned wickedness. The OT book of Proverbs personifies "Wisdom" (closely related to the logos in Philo's hellenistic Jewish thought world) as a (female) figure who participated in creation (Prov 8:27f).

It wouldn't have been much of a stretch for early Christians to identify this apparently divine figure with Christ, and John 1 is a great example of just such an identification.

The beauty of the word "Word" as employed in John's retelling of creation is that a spoken word, "Let there be light" (actually two words in both Hebrew and Greek), was the very means by which God created the world. God did not need to use a tool or an assistant or even his hand to bring light to the darkness, but only a word. For John, that word was the Word, Christ.

As beautiful as that reference is on its own, John weaves it into a far more complex picture by playing on the dual meaning of logos as both "word" and "reason." While it is obvious that darkness and light in John 1:5 function figuratively (referring to the proclamation of righteous knowledge in a world of wicked ignorance), the passage is far richer when we bear in mind that the creation imagery is still in view. In the incarnation, God has repeated his first act of creation, brining light into darkness once again through his Word.

This is not just incidental or sentimental for John. Rather, his entire portrait of Christ is based on the notion that Jesus is the revelation of God. All of his words and all of his deeds reveal God to the world (thus John 1:18, he "has made him known"). What better way for humanity to learn true reason than for Reason (= Light = Truth = Only Son) himself to become a human and meet them in person? To find out what is true about the father, one must watch and listen for what the Son (who is at the Side of the Father) reveals.

We can probably take this one step further, if we push a bit. Gnostics (whose ideology many argue grew up alongside Christianity) tended to separate knowledge from the created world, arguing that the former was good and the latter bad. As a result, they tended to play off the God of Jesus Christ (who revealed knowledge) against the God of Israel (who created the world), thus turning the Creator into a wicked sub-deity who defied what Wisdom, the supreme deity, wanted.

The way John describes Christ in chapter 1, however, undermines what the Gnostics claimed by refusing to see two forces at work. John will not allow his reader to assume that the "Truth" which Jesus reveals is something one must break free from the created world to see. Instead, the logos is the very word God used to create the world––which means the world has to be a good thing. You can't set up reason in opposition to the created world if the world was created through reason.

So, to put it in modern theological terms, in case anyone wanted to misinterpret Jesus as belonging to another world and somehow condemning created matter, John insists that both "special revelation" (what God tells us in words) and "natural revelation" (what we can learn by looking at creation) come from the same source: the logos who brought light into darkness both in the creation of Genesis 1 and in the incarnation described by John.