Threads from Henry's Web

Author: henry

  • Confronting Critical Issues in Church

    I’m using “critical” here in two senses: 1) critical study of the Bible, as in using the methodologies of the historical-critical method and 2) critical in the sense of “of key importance.

    I believe that issues such as the inspiration of scripture, the nature of scripture, historicity (or not) of various passages, and creation and evolution should be addressed in church. They should be addressed in Sunday School, starting very young. In the modern world, we cannot expect children, not to mention older church members, never to be exposed to various alternate ideas.

    I think that would, in itself, make a good case for seriously addressing these issues in church. If you can’t restrict the flow of information, it’s counterproductive, in the long run, to try. I believe it would be a bad idea to restrict this information in any case. People, including young people, should be encouraged to make a fully informed choice. But the fact that the nature of the world means they will get all that information just makes the idea of narrowly indoctrinating them on a particular view, and/or hoping that certain questions won’t come up, impractical as well as just plain wrong.

    Ken Schenck brought this issue to my mind with his post How to Create a Fundamentalist. He notes: “All you have to do is bring history and context into the chemical process in a confrontative or combative way.” (You really need to read his whole post to get the context for this! He makes an important point.) Now trust me. If a young adult first encounters critical scholarship in a secular college, he or she will certainly encounter it in a confrontational or combative way.

    Now don’t misunderstand me. A certain number of readers will probably assume that I mean we should somehow inoculate church members against the attack on their faith by critical methologies. I think that is going to be a failure as well.

    Too often when we teach about other faiths in church, it becomes a matter of teaching them the most common stereotype of people of that faith and how to convert them. Just go to any Christian book store and look at short guides to other religions. Most of them will be of this type. It’s almost guaranteed that if a 100 page book covers several faiths and supposedly tells you how to “reach them for Christ” the description will be limited. Supposing someone learned about Christianity in 10 pages or less. Would you think they were ready to seriously address Christians?

    I bring this up by analogy, because another approach to teaching something about biblical criticism and the myriad of related topics in church is to have a class that would be best titled “Biblical Critics and How Bad They Are.” This is the same sort of approach. I don’t think one has an adequate idea of critical methodologies, even for a layperson, unless one has actually worked with the texts looking at the process and results. (I have a brief series on my other blog, Threads from Henry’s Web, touching on some of the basics of biblical criticism, along with another series on basic ideas about origins.) But frequently what we hear is a litany of “silly” results (from the viewpoint of the speaker) so that we can laugh at critical scholars and go back to believe limited things.

    But I think liberals and progressives are often weak in this area as well. They very often teach results of critical scholarship, supported largely by the authoritative credentials of particular teachers or speakers. I recall one Sunday School class that invited me to discuss the Jesus Seminar. They generally accepted the results of the seminar, and were pretty sure that conservative critics were wrong, but they actually had no idea how the seminar produced its results. So I took them to a pericope, looking at how one finds the boundaries, and then examining some of the criteria for authenticity. It was complex but enlightening.

    I could have said that I disagree with significant portions of the Jesus Seminar methodology (I do) and cited other scholarship that opposes it, but instead I chose (and will always choose) to break things down to nuts and bolts, if I can possibly find the time. There are, of course, many other methodologies to look at in studying the historical Jesus, and I think if one puts in the effort, one can teach a lay audience a great deal more than we do.

    Instead of this, I think we tend to teach biblical studies (lite) and theology (very lite), repeating the same sort of shallow things. There is plenty out there to teach, and if we’re afraid of discussing the major issues, we (in the mainline protestant churches especially) will continue to lose.

     

  • Jazz and Absorbing the Bible

    Kent Eilers posts at Theology Forum on biblical interpretation and jazz.

    A critical sentence:  “A key element is respect for the tradition, learning from it without merely repeating it.”

    I used a different title because I’m thinking about a particular element–the familiarity with the tradition. Jazz must become part of the musicians fundamental being. I love jazz, but I can’t play it, even to the extent I can play other music. I’m no great musician, but I can play ordinary music on the piano and when I was about 30 years younger on the trumpet. But when I come to something even jazz like, I can’t get the rhythm. I can play all the notes, but not even the most optimistic and generous person would call the result “jazz.”

    Recently I observed my nephew David Schwab playing with a group. No music, no visible coordination, yet the group played beautifully. The music was part of them. They knew it (in all senses) and they knew one another in relation to it, and it happened.

    I do think there is an analogy here to Bible study. Simply absorbing the facts about a passage doesn’t do that much. Absorbing it and making it part of your being requires more than just reading it occasionally or studying the data.

    The reason I like that one line I quoted is that there are limits, but at the same time there is flexibility. But that flexibility only comes when you get into the spirit (or Spirit) of the thing.

     

  • Curiosity on Mars

    … and on earth too! 🙂

    You can see some images on the NASA project site.

    I stayed up last night until I knew it landed. Those who know me will realize how rare this is. I didn’t feel inclined to blog about it in the middle of the night, but I’ll be looking regularly for images and other information Curiosity has gathered.

    Image Source: NASA (Who else?)

     

  • Kitten and Doberman – Cute!

    Enjoy!

    (HT: Why Evolution is True)

  • Quote of the Day – Chicken Sandwiches or Daily Bread

    From Allan R. Bevere (author of The Politics of Witness):

    [W]e Christians in America need to ponder the reality that while we were arguing over eating chicken sandwiches this past week, that there were people in many parts of the world who were, at the very same time, hoping only for a morsel of daily bread.

  • Interactive Covenants and Prophecies or God Has a Plan B

    It’s interesting to me how we (and I definitely include myself) often read scripture. One concept can easily override another. For example, I recall a conversation in which someone was claiming that no human being was ever righteous. I brought up Job, who is described as righteous in Job 1. “Oh, but that is only as he was seen through the righteousness of Christ,” I was told. Of course, Job 1 isn’t speaking of the righteousness of Christ, and in fact the entire book would be very silly with that change. Job is concerned that he has been punished, but that nothing he has done deserves these results.

    This post is a follow-up to Psalm 89: When Eternal Doesn’t Last, and you should read that post first.

    It’s funny that I begin this post with an illustration from Job, because Job provides a counterpoint to the theology I’m looking at. Jeremiah 18, which I cited in the previous post, talks about how if God is sending disaster, and the recipients of the disaster repent, God will repent of that disaster. One implication that might be drawn is that good deeds result in blessing, and bad deeds result in curses. One need look no further than Deuteronomy 28 to find this theology made explicit, and it is repeatedly hammered in through the various books of the Deuteronomic history.

    But what I’m more interested in here is the interactive nature of the texts, the way in which people’s actions are woven in with God’s will with the implication that you can change the future. Even if God has said things will go one way, that might be changed through human action.

    In theology we tend to reconcile the differences in some way. God might only appear to react to the actions of humans, but he actually knows precisely what is coming and he does precisely what he planned. It may be considered blasphemous to suggest otherwise. But open theism and process theology both suggest that God is more interactive than traditional theology holds, though to different degrees and in different ways.

    My interest here is in the way we read the biblical text, and the way that we understand prophecy and its fulfilment. I’ll get to the covenants shortly.

    Imagine a father who tells his children that he will take them all to the movies in the evening. Now think about the father’s mental processes. Did he suddenly realize that in the fixed future he would have taken his children to the movies, and thus he informed them of this information he had received (or divined, perhaps)? Or did he decide at this moment that he wanted to take his children to the movies, and that he would, in fact, do so this very evening?

    Given that this human father does not know the future, such as to see himself taking future action, we’ll have to assume the latter. He makes a decision in the present, and he announces it to his children by saying, “I’m going to take you to the movies.” At the point at which he makes that statement it’s true. Being an optimistic sort, this particular father doesn’t think of all the possible reasons he might not make it or might change his mind. He just says he’s going.

    Let’s imagine now that the children, having heard of their good fortune, decide that nothing else matters. They fail to do their chores. They ignore their mother. The fail to put away their toys. They say unfortunate things. In fact, they generally make life miserable for their parents.

    Now the father says, “Because you have been misbehaving, we are not going to the movies any more.” Does this make his earlier statement a lie? It was true (at least in intent) when he said it, but it does not actually take place.

    My suggestion is that prophecies are more like this father’s statement than they are like scenes which one might see in a crystal ball. (If crystal balls worked, which they don’t!) When God says “Nineveh will be destroyed in 40 days,” he doesn’t mean that he has observed the future and seen that this happens, but rather that he intends, in 40 days, to destroy Nineveh. That’s clearly the way the Ninevites understand it. It’s the way Jonah is afraid it’s going to work.

    I’m not certain how much difference there is between these two ways of thinking when it is God making the promises or predictions. It makes a great deal of difference in the way we think about what God has to say.

    Now we come to covenant, and I’d like to call our attention to Jeremiah 31:31-34:

    31 The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. 32 It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. 33 But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34 No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more. (NRSV)

    (Note: I would use “lawful lord” rather than “husband” in this passage, but that gets beyond the scope of this blog post.)

    There are a few things to notice about this passage. First, the covenant came with promises (or are they predictions?). Does this make a difference? There are conditions. It is by violating these conditions that the covenant is broken. Once broken, the covenant is not in effect.

    Then comes the unheard of grace—a new covenant. It’s not a restoration of an old covenant. That one has been broken, and as we learned in Psalm 89, no matter what we do we cannot make the promises “have been” fulfilled, because they weren’t. David’s throne was removed. There was no one sitting on it. No amount of restoration years later can make what did not happen happen. Instead, there’s a new covenant. God is now on plan B, unless it’s plan C or D and we didn’t realize it. But at least it’s not plan A.

    And this is where Christians can go off the rail, especially considering how much this passage is used in the book of Hebrews. The easy Christian solution is to assume that the new covenant that God created is a covenant with the church. And I believe that God does indeed have a new covenant with the church.

    But having a covenant with his people the church does not really fulfil the words of Jeremiah 31:31-34, because there he says that a day is coming when he will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. That precludes one set of ideas, specifically that the church replaces Israel, and that Israel as such is no longer a player.

    But on the other hand we have the view that everything said in the old covenant, the one that was broken, must still be fulfilled. That is not, in my view, scripturally justified. In fact, that is to make the same mistake as those Jeremiah mentioned (7:1-20) who kept repeating: “The temple of the Lord! The temple of the Lord!” God calls attention immediately to Shiloh which had once been the seat of God’s tabernacle, but which had not done so well.

    So it’s now plan B, or perhaps plan C. (Shiloh?) How do we know the form that God’s blessing will take? Perhaps no eye has seen it nor any ear heard it, nor has it entered into any human heart (1 Cor. 2:9).

  • July Biblical Studies Carnival Posted

    … at Reading Acts. This is one of those rare occasions when there is a link back to this very blog!

  • Psalm 51 in The Voice

    I’ve been including The Voice Bible in my lectionary reading for the last couple of weeks. My early impression was that it was fairly good as a paraphrase, though the italics, while fairly consistent, were a bit distracting. I thought they were unnecessary.

    I was wrong. I have yet to do any sort of objective comparison of the use of italics in one of the various formal equivalence translations, such as the KJV, but at this point my impression is that these italics are not fully consistent. At the same time, the added material does not all fall into what I would understand as a paraphrase. Since what belongs in a paraphrase is not well defined in any case, however, this may not be a valid criticism.

    Readers of The Living Bible and The Message have gotten used to some extensive rephrasing, and also a good deal of cultural translation. In the voice, we have a text that translates the text using principles of dynamic equivalence and then adds notes. Rather than using foot- or marginal notes, these notes are in the text in italics. The feel of reading this version is rather different.

    The Psalm for this week is Psalm 51, and some of the notes really grate on me. I probably need to spend more time reading and thinking about this, but let me give some examples again. (These are not intended as a representative sample. I’m listing passages that grated on me. Numbers refer to verses, not list numbers.)

    1.  … wipe out every consequence of my shameful crimes. — Huh?

    2. Thoroughly wash me, inside and out, … — What does this add?

    7. If You wash me, I will be whiter than snow. — If you want to make this a conditional, then it’s part of the translation. If it’s not justified, putting it in italics doesn’t help.

    9.  and erase my guilt from the record. — Again, what does this add?

    16. I would surrender my dearest possessions or destroy all that I prize to prove my regret, but … — This note just seems wrong to me. The verse is not talking about giving up possessions or destroying things you prize. It’s talking about presenting sacrifices to God. There’s a good theological point here, also often made by the prophets, and this note makes it less clear, in my opinion.

    Thus far these are just thoughts as I read. I haven’t formed an overall opinion on this translation. But I am concerned about some of this content.

     

  • Scot McKnight on Dominion Theology

    Well, actually he’s summarizing Paul C. McGlasson. I recently wrote about hearing Dutch Sheets speak and mentioned what he had to say about the term “dominionism.”

    There is something that concerns me here, and that is that Rushdoony and those who agree with him are lumped in with folks like C. Peter Wagner, and of course Sheets. There are similarities and there are differences. There are differences in goals, such as the basis of whatever biblical law various leaders would apply. Is this a reapplication of at least the civil portions of the Mosaic law, or is it a gentle application of the Sermon on the Mount? I don’t see either of these as a basis for civil administration in a pluralistic society, yet the two goals are substantially different. Then there are differences in terms of strategy. Is force permitted? Is one simply working through the democratic process, or is one trying to undermine the entire system?

    I happen to believe that the Kingdom of God, insofar as it is manifested on earth, should be manifested through the people of God, what we often call the “upper case Church.” I believe that civil administration should be secular or as religiously neutral as possible. (I’ll have to write sometime about how I combine those two potentially conflicting ideas.) But at the same time I believe that we need to be careful when we lump groups of people with quite different goals and approaches together.

     

  • Real vs. Hypothetical Evil

    In an article on the Huffington Post, Aaron Taylor suggests a variant of the famous saying, All that is needed for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.

    His variant? “Sometimes evil triumphs not when good people do nothing, but when good people fail to distinguish between hypothetical evil and real evil, and end up doing something about the former when they should be doing something about the latter. ”

    I’m not going to go over his post in detail, so you need to read it to follow what I’m about to say.

    The specific example is the Arms Trade Treaty which is under discussion. Taylor sees this as a good, while the claim that there is a threat inherent in that treat to the 2nd Amendment rights of Americans is the hypothetical evil. Thus one puts up the real good of the treaty (even incomplete) against the hypothetical evil of potential erosion of the 2nd Amendment.

    Before I go forward let me note that I would like to see an effective Arms Trade Treaty completed and put into effect. There are some very nasty people around the world getting weapons all too easily. At the same time I would note that in many cases such weapons start out with perfectly legal sales, such as sales by governments to people they support. Sometimes they are weapons we have sold. Just how much good would such a treaty do?

    My point here is that even though I support such a treaty, the good it proposes is also hypothetical. Neither the good that is proposed, nor the evil that is feared have actually occurred. Both are hypothesized. The question, rather, is which of these hypotheses is correct, and what the balance is going to be.

    Contrary to Taylor’s assertion, we can’t simply accept the real good of the treaty and assume that the hypothetical evil is less important. Neither is yet real. So we must ask first whether the treaty is likely to do the good that its sponsors claim. Then we must ask whether the treaty will, in fact, have an impact on the 2nd Amendment rights of Americans, and indeed one might ask whether such impact would be an “evil” or a “good.” Americans might also ask whether such a treaty can be entered into legally, i.e. constitutionally.

    But the question is not which is hypothetical and which is not. The question is which is likely to happen, and which is not, and which effect is truly good, and which evil.

    By calling the good real (by implication) and the evil hypothetical (explicitly), Taylor privileges the position he favors (ratification of the treaty) without doing the hard work of demonstrating that it will, in fact, have the good results he claims.

    This type of argument is all too frequently used in debating bills and treaties. Proponents make the assumption that the bill will accomplish that which its name implies. Very frequently that is not the case. How can one oppose a bill to reduce crime, for example? Well, one can simply note that the crime reduction implied in the bill’s name is hypothetical, and ask whether that hypothesis is likely to be confirmed by reality. If all the bills passed accomplished precisely what their titles claimed, we’d likely live in a utopia. But they don’t and they won’t.

    I’m afraid I don’t see that Taylor has improved upon the traditional statement.