Finally there is a review of Killing Jesus from someone I trust. John Byron pretty much tells the story. You’ve gotta love this:
On a recent 60 Minutes interview Bill claims that he was inspired by the Holy Spirit to write the book (see below). If this is true, it’s too bad the Holy Spirit didn’t help him to do a better job of it.
Ouch!
Now I can not read the book with a clear conscience.
I’ve always believe in open communion in the sense that any Christian should be permitted to participate. Over the last few years I’ve attended a church where truly open communion is practiced, because the pastors believe, with John Wesley, that this is a converting sacrament. So they state each time communion is offered that you don’t have to be a member of the church, or even a Christian, to participate. Jesus invites everyone.
I’m not at all prepared to debate the issue; I simply haven’t studied the theology enough. But I do have a couple of authors who are quite involved in it. One is Dr. Bob Cornwall, who will be writing a book on the Lord’s Supper for the Topical Line Drives series. (The book itself hasn’t yet been announced, but the contract is signed.)
In the meantime another author, Dr. Bob LaRochelle (I’d be in trouble without authors named Bob), who has a special perspective as a former Roman Catholic who is now a Protestant clergyman, is beginning a series of columns for Energion.net on ecumenical issues, and his first column deals with communion.
I’m putting this on my personal blog because I’d like to see comments from some of my readers on this particular topic.
John MacArthur has a conference starting tomorrow. Here’s how he talks about the charismatic movement:
http://youtu.be/vWp-rLTPQYE
I recently wrote an article titled Nobody Is above Question. Now I’m questioning Dr. John MacArthur in the way he is challenging others.
This is precisely the opposite of the philosophy I have for my company, Energion Publications (mission statement here). I believe we must all be prepared to learn from one another. I do think much charismatic Bible study is much too shallow. Those of us who are charismatic (and I count myself in that number), should be ready to learn from our Baptist brethren to spend more time, and more serious time, in the word. But there are so many more things we can learn from one another if we spend less time condemning and more time listening.
In a comment I suggested that we need to learn to show grace while still upholding truth. Neither element can be lost.
I was out driving today and saw a church sign with the statement, “The Bible – Your First Notebook.” What exactly does that mean? I see almost nothing about the Bible that makes it like a notebook.
It’s still better than the common statement—at least I heard it frequently when I was younger—that the Bible is like the Boy Scout Handbook. In fact, again, the Bible is almost totally unlike the Boy Scout Handbook. They do both have covers, pages, and letters on the page, but there the similarity seems to end. There are portions of the Bible that are more like the handbook than others, but even those, such a Proverbs, or certain sections of the Pentateuch, but even there the differences are overwhelming.
The Bible is a bit more like a collection of all the camp fires tales and verbal wisdom passed from one leader to another, though nobody is likely to use that as an analogy. Nonetheless, such an analogy would provide more help in learning to interpret the Bible well.
I think we see these expressions as somehow pious. People respect the Boy Scout Handbook in a certain way. People follow the directions that are in it. So it seems pious and virtuous to make the comparison.
But such comparisons are really unhelpful. The Bible presents the word of God, but it often provides us with more questions than answers, starting places for thinking rather than conclusions. I’m not saying that it does not provide any conclusions. It’s just that it’s not as simple as an instruction manual. It tells a story of human interaction with God. That makes the Bible work.
The Bible also makes much larger claims than any instruction manual. Besides the claim to bring God’s word, it claims that study of that word will bring wisdom. (Consider Psalm 19 or all of Psalm 119, for example.)
So while it may seem pious to compare the Bible to things in our ordinary lives that we respect. But we do not help people by making these claims or comparisons. The most respectful thing to do about the Bible is to represent it accurately, and treat it as it is.
I doubt such an accurate representation will fit on a church sign.
In these pictures I’m not doing the work. My landlord is. I’ve been working on some of this stuff as well, but today I was taking the pictures. Tom Hunt, my landlord, owns all the heavy equipment. I have to say that the work is fun. Right now we’re cleaning up the piles of limbs and logs and other debris produced by clearing.
![IMG_20131014_172642[1]](http://henrysthreads.com/wp-content/IMG_20131014_1726421.jpg)
I expect to have most of the logs done and ready for splitting this week.
In any case, that’s a personal update. I don’t do that often on this blog!
I am frequently amazed by our authors at Energion Publications. I suppose that other editors and owners are likewise amazed, but I think we have a very special group. Just the other day I received notice from an author that he had signed his contract, but that he wanted to donate his royalties to our literature fund, a fund we use to send books overseas or to people who can’t afford them. I hadn’t asked. In fact, I don’t ask for funds to support that project. We’re not a non-profit. It’s just one of the ways we try to give back.
The thing that impresses me most about our authors, however, is the way they live what they believe. I don’t know of any of our authors who doesn’t in some way embody the books they have written. When I hear what they are actually doing, it’s what I would expect based on what they wrote in their books. And that’s a great thing.
Way back when … well, actually in 2010 … we were contacted by a potential new author who had a story to tell. I like books that tell a story, particularly when that story is a testimony. This was Renee Crosby and her life and vision had been changed by a seminary assignment. She had been asked to serve a certain number of hours in the community as part of an assignment. She spent that time in a soup kitchen. Now as the book will tell you, Renee had become extremely busy in church. She was an active Christian. But that activity was generally in church. When she reluctantly went out to complete her assignment, she encountered Jesus in a new way, right there in the soup kitchen.
So she wrote her book Soup Kitchen for the Soul to invite other people to this same discovery. I was hooked immediately. I have frequently visited churches that are busy, filled with active members. But if you review their church bulletin or newsletter, the vast majority of what they do is designed to serve the members. It’s people in the church doing things for people in the church. Now there’s nothing wrong with that. People in the church should be doing things for one another, caring for one another, building one another up. But we should also be “provoking one another to love and good deeds” (Hebrews 10:24), and those good deeds should serve those outside the church as well.
This is a book with a great message. It deserves to be read much more than it has. It deserves to be studied.
But Renee is now experiencing the next phase of her testimony. As she explains in the video below, she is in treatment for breast cancer. But she’s not taking it lying down. Instead, she’s trying even more to provoke others to love and good deeds.
We’re also going to donate 5% of our proceeds in addition to what Renee donates as our way of supporting her in this endeavor. In addition, the book is now 30% off with the use of the pink30 coupon. To use that coupon, you need to enter the coupon code on your shopping cart on checkout from Energion Direct. If you need some more help with the coupon, you’ll find it here.
The Pentateuch is one key source for Christian debates about the treatment of aliens (especially illegal aliens) here in the United States. There are a number of commands that might apply, and they are interpreted differently, or perhaps seen as applicable or inapplicable, by the different sides in fairly predictable ways.
For example, Leviticus 19:34 – “Like a citizen shall the Ger who is living (cognate of Ger) among you be to you, and you shall love/befriend him as yourself, for you were Gerim (pl) in the land of Egypt. I am the LORD your God” (My literal translation). On the one hand it seems rather clear. The Israelites were instructed not to mistreat the non-citizens living among them. They were to treat them well. Milgrom notes that “…‘ãhab is related to its semantic cognates in the diplomatic vocabulary of ancient Near Eastern treaties which denote fidelity and loyalty pledged by a vassal to his suzerain as well as the reciprocal obligations of support owed by the suzerain to the vassal.” Thus the treatment of the foreigner was in a sense guaranteed as part of the covenant, as Israel’s obligation to God. This didn’t refer to an emotional response, but to lawful and principled treatment. (I commend to you all of Milgrom’s comments on the word “ger” in his Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 17-22, The Anchor Bible. New York: Doubleday, 2000, 1416-1420.)
So the first approach might be to simply transfer the command to the present. The Israelites were commanded to do this. God must think it’s a good idea. We should do the same thing. We would, of course, have to deal with details such as what today would constitute a ger, or resident alien, and the differences in borders and how they were handled then as opposed to now.
Of course, we are not Israel, we were not guided out of Egypt where we were once slaves, though we use those experiences as metaphors for elements in our spiritual lives. So this is also very clearly a command given to Israel. It may be applicable to us in principle, but it is not directed at us as gentiles. Thus one approach to application would be to say that it doesn’t apply to us at all.
Another approach is to deal with the niggling detail of defining what a ger would be in our society. Perhaps such a person is only a legal alien who has established residency. In that case, the text would have nothing to do with any illegal aliens at all.
I like to test people by asking them to apply Leviticus 18:22 and Leviticus 19:33-34. Very few people apply both equally. Generally they apply one but explain around the other. It’s an interesting test of your hermeneutics (the way you interpret scripture). Look at these two texts and ask if either or both of them apply to people in the church today. Why or why not?
The text that I was reading this morning, however, was Numbers 15:16 – “There will be one torah and one mishpat for you and for the ger who is living among you” (again my literal translation). Milgrom (op. cit.) identifies torah here as religious law and mishpat as civil law. The principle is again very clear, in my view. This puts in to practice the “love” that is commanded in Leviticus 19:34. By applying the principles and particular commands of the covenant to the foreigners living among them, the Israelites were obeying that command.
In practice, it turned out that foreigners weren’t subject to precisely the same religious laws. It was quite possible to adjust provide specific exceptions that derived from the fact that they were not Israelites and therefore lacked some of the obligations of Israelites. Note that the gerim were given relief from some laws. No extra requirements were imposed on them.
Again, quite clearly this command is not giving to us as modern Christians living in America. I would, however, suggest that it expresses a principle and gives us an idea of God’s intention. It’s an application itself of the principles contained in the golden rule: Do to others as you would have them do to you.
There are a number of things this leaves unanswered, but I think that this same question would apply in our Christian answer to each of these questions. Who should be able to come through our borders and settle and work here? Does it mandate open borders? I don’t think it answers that question and the nature of borders in the time of Israel was much different from what it is now. What about children born in our country of people living here illegally? Again, it isn’t explicit, because it doesn’t speak to a time when such a thing could occur. The person who was in Israel living and working was a ger, and the law would apply to him. For a certain number of generations, his children would be gerim, and the law would apply to them. We now have a legal situation in which someone can be a legal resident alien or, on the other hand, be an alien and residing but not legal.
I can see a number of ways to apply the law there, but at a minimum, I think it would mandate that we treat not just fairly but generously those whose situation is not of their own making, as in the children of illegal aliens.
What I do not think is that this passage mandates an immigration policy. Israel’s law provides us with principles and those principles are reiterated in other contexts by Jesus. (Jesus didn’t experience an immigration situation. The resident aliens of his day were generally in charge!) These principles are primarily applicable to each of us in the way we personally treat others, but I think they would also be applicable in the way we act in society as well.
Elements of formatting and layout can have a significant impact on the use of a Bible translation and even the way in which it will be read and understood. Examples of formatting choices that may be very significant include paragraph divisions (not to mention the more historical, though unoriginal, chapter and verse divisions), section headings, and the often overlooked capitalization choices for divine names and titles.
In reading Numbers 13 the other day I noticed another case, which I doubt will impact interpretation very much, though I do think it impacts readability–tabulated data. In the NLT, Numbers 13:4 introduces the list of those chosen to spy the land of Canaan. Here NLT breaks out, puts headers of “Tribe” and “Leader” and presents the content in tabular form. This doubtless makes it easier for a modern reader to scan through the list.
I thought I’d check a few other translations that I had close at hand, just for fun. (This selection is neither carefully selected nor exhaustive. These are Bibles that are on my ready-reading shelves.) Providing a tabulated list are the NLT, JPS, NIV, and REB. Breaking these verses out into separate lines, while maintaining paragraph format otherwise are the NJB, CEV, HCSB, and NAB. I’m skipping any versions that do not include paragraphing, as each leader would automatically start on a new line due to verse breaks. Finally, both the NRSV and the ESV include the names in a paragraph, not broken onto separate lines. (I’m not certain if this might change by edition or if this part of formatting is protected.
This is doubtless a trivial point, but when all aspects of formatting and page layout are combined, the overall impact can be considerable. It is a good idea for the serious Bible student to be aware of the choices that are being made by translators.
Yesterday I was recommending the chapters in Numbers, starting around 11, as “thinking fodder” regarding the way God works with people. But there’s some really good stuff there about how people deal with people as well.
Even though many won’t remember that it comes from Numbers 13, the most famous line from the chapter is some version of “we even saw giants there” (v. 28, NLT). It’s good to think of how we overcome the giants in our lives. I note that the Israelites were just fine until nearly the end. Some commentators object to the sending of the spies, citing Deuteronomy 1:20-23, but according to this passage, that was at God’s command. They looked, they evaluated, then they returned to the people in command.
Those who have worked in military intelligence will know that the guys who collect the information don’t make the decisions about what is to be done. Your job is to find things out. You report to competent authorities who then make the decisions as to what action to take.
The Israelite spies were asked to discover precisely the sort of things they reported. What they weren’t asked to do was determine whether an invasion was possible. They got ahead of the game. Now I know these guys weren’t professional spies. They were, themselves, leaders. But they didn’t separate themselves from the emotions of the moment and think the situation through.
But the interesting thing here is to read the actual report of the spies in verses 27-29 and then compare it to the rumor that is spread in verses 32-33. Have you ever observed something similar? A small financial problem mentioned in the finance committee, if leaked, can become an imminent closure of the church by Sunday. The results of that can be much like those in Numbers 14.
I’m skipping over the idea of divine aid in this case. The Israelites were defeated by their rumor before they’d even considered a strategy.
Finally, I’d just note that this is one of the things I find most interesting in Torah (or the Pentateuch). It reflects human ideas and attitudes in a very raw form. Often we allow the miracles, the environment, and the very different cultural background to overtake the simple human drama that is taking place.
For those who are not familiar with it, impartation, at least in charismatic circles refers to passing on a gift, or even on occasion a calling or anointing when one person or persons lays hands on another. I’m not going to try to summarize the various views on this. First, I’m not fully acquainted with them. Second, that’s not my purpose.
Bottom line is that the whole concept of things passed on via laying on of hands with prayer or blessing is something that I have not liked very much from the first time I heard of it. It sounded too much like people treating the Holy Spirit and spiritual gifts as a personal possession, sort of like that pair of socks one received for Christmas and then passed on, hopefully before it got holes in it. On a more serious note the conflict is really between an idea of complete divine sovereignty over the gifts and the idea of human involvement.
What I have believed and taught up until now has tended to focus on divine sovereignty. God decides who to give the gifts to, and if anything human action is required at all it is simply a recognition of what God has already done. Similarly I would maintain that God does healing with or without any particular action on our part, and thus would not recognize a continuing gift of healing as such. We take action; God heals; the two don’t relate a great deal.
Two things have combined to change my view. The first was our Sunday School study using Bruce Epperly’s book Healing Marks. I cannot point to just one place, but with support from the healing stories of Jesus, Bruce emphasizes the way in which God works with and through people. It may seem to “protect” God to emphasize how little control we have, but it doesn’t reflect the way in which scripture speaks of God’s activity in the world.
I’m not going to go through all of the arguments here. They involve multiple chapters in the book. I think both the ideas involved with healing and of impartation share a common element, in that in both we have God’s gifts, and in both we have a danger both of losing the divine and the human elements.
I think my way of expressing this over the last few years has tended to lose the human element.
This coalesced in reading Numbers a couple of days ago. An amazing amount of my thinking has developed while reading the Torah, the first five books of the Bible. In this case I was reading the story in Numbers 11 in which Moses complains to God, and God tells Moses to bring 70 elders from the tribes. Numbers 11:35 reports that God took some of the spirit that was on Moses and gave it to the 70. (We later find out that two more receive the spirit, which brings up some interesting thoughts.)
There are even some commentators who believe this “taking” of the spirit from Moses was some kind of punishment for his complaining, but I think this is contradicted by the rather vigorous way in which the complaints of Miriam and Aaron are dealt with in chapter 12. There’s some important material there I will incorporate in my comments on Hebrews later. There the special position of Moses as one who spoke with God face to face is strongly re-emphasized.
Now this story is in no sense a proof-text for my change of view. In fact, one could read this story either way. I read it in the context of what I learned of Leviticus when studying Jacob Milgrom’s three volume commentary in the Anchor Bible series. God moves the people of Israel in the ceremonies he commands from the idea of some sort of magic or human manipulation of God to an understanding that God acts. It is not the ceremony that makes God act. For example, one offers a sacrifice, but God forgives.
What this story did for me was outline the ideas that are in conflict. It is the spirit that is on Moses (the human) that is taken and imparted to the 70 who are gathered. We are not told of any ritual or ceremony, but there may well have been. Then at the same time God touches two people who aren’t actually there. (I commend to your attention Numbers 11-14, with particular emphasis on how divine and human action combine. It’s interesting reading!)
God is always working, but he in scripture he is continually presented as working in and with human beings. It is possible that when you touch someone and pray for their healing, a healing “power” will go out of you and help the person for whom you are praying. It’s the “out of you” with which I have been uncomfortable. I think I’ll have to learn to live with it!
