Threads from Henry's Web

Author: henry

  • Bad Girls, Bad Girls

    Rachel Held Evans, in her Sunday Superlatives links, provides a link to a post by Sarah Bubar on The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood blog titled The Bad Girl’s Club.

    In this post are featured four women for this “bad girl’s [sic] club”: Julian of Norwich, Ann Hutchinson, Margaret Fell Fox, and Phoebe Palmer.

    Now it’s not my plan to explain how these four weren’t bad girls. Rather, I’m interested in just what Sarah Bubar thinks they have in common. Apparently, the real problem is that they all failed to bow to the proper authorities and thus came up with doctrines that are, perhaps, objectionable. I say, “perhaps” because I would have a different opinion on certain of these.

    There are two critical things in common between these women, as far as I can see. First, they all saw visions or emphasized spiritual experience. Second, they exercised, or tried to exercise leadership.

    I recall once discussing biblical inspiration with another man. At one point I asked how, if one hears a voice, does one know whether it’s from God or not. His response was, “We’re not talking about voices; we’re talking about the Bible.”

    Well, I’m afraid that if you want to read the Bible you are going to read things written by and about people who heard voices. In view of this post, I’d add that your going to read things by and about people who saw visions.

    And you’re also going to read about women who did all those things. So here’s my list of bad girls.

    1. How about Miriam, a prophetess? She was leading singing, but there must have been a reason she was called a prophetess. And yes, I know about her later experiences for challenging Moses; but remember she wasn’t the only one who had such problems (Exodus 15:20-21).
    2. How about Deborah (Judges 4:4), prophetess and judge? You may argue that Miriam was leading women, but Deborah went much further than that. You know, this prophetess thing pretty definitely indicates some kind of spiritual experience.
    3. How about Huldah (2 Kings 22:14-20), giving God’s instructions to the men of the temple in Josiah’s time? Visionary experiences and teaching the men, I’d say.
    4. Or Anna, a prophetess who affirmed Jesus (Luke 2:36-38). If women can’t speak with authority, why record her words for all Christian generations?

    But there’s another side. How many men who do not claim any special spiritual experiences go off track. We’ve had plenty of heresies started by men whose method for finding their own “new truths” was in searching through texts.

    The fact is that you can find good an bad examples of people of either gender in any time and place.

    And since I note that women in scripture exercised more authority than certain modern Christians believe is legitimate, I think there’s good reason to think that exclusions of women were, in fact, limited in terms of time and place.

     

  • Christian Carnival Posted

    … at Thinking in Christ. Find out about such diverse topics as Rowling’s ethics of magic and dating the synoptic gospels.

  • Dominionists, Dominionisimists, Theonomists and Political Labels

    If you’re expecting me to do a rundown on the definitions of all of these terms, then you’ll be disappointed. There’s plenty of writing trying to define the terms. Jeremy Pierce wrote the key post discussing “dominionismism,” titled simply Dominionismists. In it, he compares those who are concerned about dominionism with Birthers and Truthers. On the other hand Chip Berlet, (Inside the Christian Right Dominionist Movement that’s Undermining Democracy) amongst many others, sees this as a quite clearly defined movement that is “undermining democracy.”

    I don’t deny that there is a certain hysteria involved from time to time, but I think there is a much different sort of dynamic involved in mislabeling some people as dominionists, and even in trying to find a specific theological stream of movement that can properly be labeled “dominionist.” I would suggest that the fundamental problems here are different, and they are ones that regularly occur in discussing political and religious movements, doubly so when discussing a movement that is both religious and political.

    First, relatively few journalists or commentators have a serious understanding of theology or of the details of Christian movements. Even many theologians don’t really understand the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements all that well. Thus they have a hard time understanding things such as spiritual warfare or claiming dominion over territories in a spiritual sense, or what they mean by calling something demonic.

    Second, there are quite a few things that might be regarded as demonic. I believe in trying to be conscious of variations in belief. Few beliefs really exist in binary form. You can almost always find a spectrum. There are those who believe in demons, and those who don’t. But between those points there are very different beliefs about the demonic realm. Some who believe in demons actually simply take them as a sort of short hand for evil tendencies of movements. Others see actual, intelligent spiritual beings behind almost everything that happens. Failing to differentiate between those views will result in mislabeling and misunderstanding.

    Third, political labels are dangerous. Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not one of those folks who things labels are unimportant. We have to use labels to communicate. The problem with political labels is not that they are a bad idea in general, but rather that they are normally used manipulatively. This shouldn’t be surprising, considering the political process.

    The reason I don’t like political labels and use four to describe myself in the header of this blog, is not that labels are bad, but rather because I don’t quite fit into a movement. I have aspects of the four labels I use in my belief system, but I haven’t invented a single term. “Passionate moderate” is the closest I can come to one.

    But in politics labels are used more as accusations. Again, using an example from my header, “liberal charismatic” was bestowed on me by an opponent who disliked me a great deal. He disliked both liberals and charismatics, and used the label to express the extreme dislike for my views. And, quite frankly, he was closer to right than he knew.

    But in politics, labels are extended by association. Let’s suppose we have a politician who is a Christian evangelical, and believes that the gospel of the kingdom should be preached in all the world. To him, evangelism is a good word. He believes everyone should have the chance to accept the gospel, and would be happy if they all did. Christian readers will recognize this as a fairly standard Christian view. For reasons that will become apparent, I’m going to label this guy X.

    So X has friends and associates, and he reads books. He reads books by people who are more conservative than he is. He goes to a church where the general position of the congregation is to his right. The members and the pastor believe that one should vote for people who are Christians or Jews, i.e. have a “Judeo-Christian ethic.” We’re going to call the pastor Y.

    Now Y also reads books and associates with various people, whose average position is to the right of X’s friends, though there is considerable overlap. He has a friend we’ll call Z who read R. J. Rushdoony in college (incidentally so did I, for that matter), and who recommends reading Rushdoony frequently and publicly. Z doesn’t actually agree with everything that Rushdoony has to say, but he agrees with many things, and things it’s a good idea for people to hear these ideas and give them consideration.

    So X runs for office, and the press starts looking through his record and associates, and they find Y and then they realize he also has a connection with Z. How many sermons has he heard that might have quotes from Rushdoony? Who really is X anyhow? Perhaps they even have a label that now includes all three.

    But despite going to a church pastored by Y, and perhaps even reading a book recommended by Z, X doesn’t believe that only Christians or even only Christians and Jews should hold office, nor does he accept a significant portion of Rushdoony’s positions.

    At the same time, people on the far right, which we’ll define for purposes of this post as people to the right of Z, have a very different agenda. They’re looking at Z and are wondering if he’s really on their side. They find that he goes to a church pastored by Y, who won’t recommend reading Rushdoony, even though he acknowledges having read some things by him, and they discover that he meets with X who, horror of horrors, says he might vote for a Muslim or an Atheist, provided he agreed with them on the important issues. So Z, who thinks only Christians should hold office, gets labeled as a leftist.

    Now whether “dominionist” is a good label or not, I’m not absolutely certain. Personally, I don’t need it, and don’t quite see how it could be properly defined. I’d like to find a group of people who actually espouse a label such as that. I can oppose people based on easier to discover issues. For example, those who oppose equal rights for gays and lesbians, espouse what I see as an extreme view on abortion laws, or oppose freedom of expression won’t get my vote.

    Some of those folks may fall into the category of “dominionist,” but I find it both much harder, and of much less practical value, to try to figure out the boundaries and the membership of such a group.

    Oh, and the big difference I see between this a Birthers or Truthers is that one is falsehood in clear black and white, while this tends to be more of a fogging of differences between various people.

     

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  • Reading Acts Series on the New Perspective on Paul

    I’ve written a bit about this before, but it’s hardly my main area of expertise.

    Philip J. Long has written a very nice introductory series on the New Perspective on Paul. Here are the links:

    Basics of the New Perspective –

    I link to this in detail because I think it is one of the best short introductions I’ve read, and it’s available right her in blog form. I am frequently asked for a short version of just what is the New Perspective on Paul. Now I have something easily available that I can recommend.

  • BLT = Bible * Literature * Translation

    There’s a new translation blog, and I’ve added it to my RSS reader. Check out BLT.

  • A Bone to Pick with Scholars and Experts

    When I first started attending a United Methodist church, and the leadership figured out what my background was, I was soon invited to teach various classes around the church. I was fairly pleased with this, as I love to talkteach, and it gave me plenty of opportunities.

    My approach was to search for ever newer things to talk about. I wanted to work from my most recent reading and find something that nobody had ever heard of before. Above all, I didn’t want people to feel bored because I was covering topics that were too simple or basic.

    I would note here that due to my detour from the church following graduate school, this was my first extensive experience teaching the folks in the pews, and not dealing with folks in the halls of academia. In academic circles, one often brings up a topic only to be informed that the listener has read an article in some scholarly journal on that topic, or to be asked if one has read something even more recent. That’s all well and good in scholarly circles. It saves time. If you’ve both read the same article you can go on with the discussion on that basis.

    A very nice education director called me aside one day and pointed out that I was really missing telling people the things that they needed to know. I thought I was keeping their interest. They were impressed with my intelligence and breadth of knowledge, she told me, but they weren’t really getting what I was trying to teach. Her suggestion was that I keep things basic—from my point of view—and they would be at about the right level from hers, and that of the listeners.

    I don’t know that I always follow that advice. I occasionally find myself rambling off into strange territory, and I’ll suddenly ask a class if I’m saying anything of interest. Some honest soul will tell me that I’ve gone off the deep end.

    I’ve noticed this with some scholars of my acquaintance. First, there are many more scholars who believe they speak clearly to common people than actually do. By common people here I don’t mean stupid people or ignorant people; I mean people who are not scholars in the area of a particular scholar’s expertise.

    Second, there’s the “we’ve already covered this” syndrome. This covers hundreds of topics. I’ve recently heard it with regard to a range of controversies. The method here is to refer one to a prior magazine or journal article, or a book written a few years ago and then shrug and say that nothing more needs to be said on that topic.

    It doesn’t look that way where I live. I don’t live in academia. Yes, I have an MA degree, but that was my last academic experience. The rest of my life has been outside of academia. Nonetheless, both through my reading, and now through my publishing, I encounter scholars on a regular basis. I also encounter the comments of intelligent and informed readers who are not scholars. They often tell me that the scholars aren’t being nearly as clear as they think they are.

    There are many fields of study where it is appropriate for one to spend a lifetime communicating only with other scholars. One can think of various scientific fields, or even of some of the more technical branches of biblical studies, such as textual criticism. But ultimately when dealing with faith, what doesn’t get out to the broader community is, in my view, largely wasted.

    We need more scholars who will spend their time learning to communicate their views to the public. In order to learn to do this, they will need to listen to what people are saying with regard to their writing and speaking. Are people hearing, or are they not.

    I’m not going to name names, because I don’t want to single out people of my acquaintance, but I’d like to give an example. One speaker of my acquaintance was invited to speak at a church for the weekend. This was not a church in the same religious tradition as his. At a Friday night meeting he felt he had not communicated. He listened to what people said after the meeting. He talked to me. He talked to the pastor. He spent much of the night in prayer. When he returned to speak Saturday morning, things were completely different. He had listened to the people and to the Holy Spirit. By the time he preached his Sunday morning message there was a bond between him and the congregation.

    We need more scholars and experts who can follow that example.

     

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  • Kitteh vs. Piano

    Link to Video

    HT: Why Evolution is True.

  • Dave Black (and Charles King) on Greek Teaching Methods

    Dave Black notes the following:

    9:04 AM This morning Kyle Davis, one of my teaching assistants, sent me a link to this excellent essay: The Method of Teaching New Testament Greek (.pdf). On the several takeaways I got from reading it, this one is perhaps the most important:

    Extensive memorization produces improved strategies for memorization, but does not increase the ability to memorize. If the learner implements higher order learning patterns, learning becomes easier and more effective.

    Amen and amen! This is one reason I have reduced memorization to an absolute minimum in my own beginning grammar, Learn to Read New Testament Greek, and instead focus on teaching students basic principles of noun and verb morphology. Once you understand how language works, that information will stick with you a lot longer than had you simply memorized a long list of paradigms.

    So grateful for colleagues who teach Greek and who are open to newer methods of pedagogy and linguistic approaches to the language. Why make the subject any more difficult than it already is?

    My own experience is somewhat different than either Dave’s or that of the article author, as I’ve never taught a required Greek course. I did encounter students in required courses in both Greek and Hebrew when I was in graduate school. I had the recommendation of the professor as a tutor, and was frequently sought out in the hours before a test came up, which was normally too late for me to be of much help.

    Since then I have frequently taught either individual students or small groups, but for the most part these were people who really wanted Greek or Hebrew in order to make use of it.

    What does especially resonate with me from the cited article is the note about memorization. I grew up on memorization. We memorized extensive passages of scripture from the KJV in school. For example, I have recited Psalm 119 at one sitting, word perfect. That memorization didn’t make me a better memorizer. What helped me with learning was the simple process of consistently trying to understand what was going on and then fix it in memory through those relationships. Thus learning a system and then memorizing the minimum necessary makes great sense to me. It has made sense to my students as well.

    I am also a firm believer in reading quantities of text in the source language. I was introduced to reader’s grammars by Dr. Sakae Kubo, who edited an early edition for Greek, and I consider them a wonderful tool. Computer based tools replace them for many, but I still need to sit down at a desk from time to time in order to study. I don’t use such tools much now, but I do still have them on my shelves.

    The one item on which I’d disagree is on the value of translating English into Greek or Hebrew. I don’t push it a great deal, but several of my students have testified that it was helpful in fixing vocabulary in their memory.


  • The September Biblical Studies Carnival Episode III Posted

    … at Exploring Our Matrix. So many posts, so little time. Who can possibly keep up? But this blog is actually linked twice.

  • On Publishing Philippians: A Participatory Study Guide

    Philippians: A Participatory Study GuideThis post will contain reflections both on the recently released Philippians study guide and the series of which it is a part. I generally write such reflections after each book my company releases. So be warned—there are products discussed here!

    When I first created this blog I was the only author in the participatory study series. Making a book series grow and sell usually requires a great vision pursued relentlessly. This series, on the other hand, has grown and substantially improved its original vision.

    When I first wrote To the Hebrews: A Participatory Study Guide and Revelation: A Participatory Study Guide, I didn’t feel any great optimism that I could break into a very competitive market. People write Bible study guides all the time. Quality varies dramatically, and often the best sellers are those written by people with famous names.

    What I wanted was a system that brought together biblical scholarship, spiritual disciplines, accessibility to lay people, and a somewhat ecumenical approach. I must specify that my view of ecumenism is not homogenization, but rather a willingness to engage in respectful give and take and especially to look at multiple traditions when choosing sources and study materials.

    I wrote those two books myself, and I had an upcoming class in mind with each one. You can see by the design of the books that this was early in my own publishing experience. From the point of view of developing the company, I needed titles. With the process we use, I can produce study guides for my own use quite economically. My thought was that if these guides sold successfully it would be great, but I wouldn’t count on it, and I would put my efforts into finding authors with manuscripts of their own, not ones following a plan I had designed.

    In the event, not only have I taught from them myself more times than expected, but I’ve seen them sell quite a few more copies than I had thought possible. No, they aren’t threatening to be on anyone’s best seller lists, but they have definitely exceeded my initial expectations.

    A few years after I had released those first two guides Geoffrey Lentz approached me with  a study outline from the book of Luke. Geoffrey had invited me to teach one of his classes from my guide to Hebrews, and he liked the outline of the method, but also the proposed freedom for working within the framework. I liked his outline and his idea, and the result was The Gospel According to Saint Luke: A Participatory Study Guide.

    Geoffrey really rounded out the idea of the series by improving the presentation and tying the method more closely with lectio divina. He at first proposed including both a discussion of lectio divina and the introduction to the method that I had produced, but once I looked at his connections, I suggested we work together to combine the two. Participatory study and lectio divina are not identical; participatory study provides more of an emphasis on resources and critical questions, yet the two work together very well.

    Once I saw the completed study guide to Luke, I knew immediately that if I could find any more authors for the series, I would present that volume as the guide to how we would structure study guides.

    After Luke, Geoffrey and I got together and wrote Learning and Living Scripture: An Introduction to the Participatory Study Method. In that book, Geoffrey’s more pastoral concern and my more technical emphasis combine and lay out the method along with exercises.

    Since then we’ve introduced Ephesians: A Participatory Study Guide, by Bob Cornwall and most recently Philippians: A Participatory Study Guide by Bruce Epperly. Each new author has brought something unexpected to the method and to the particular book they present. I don’t want to describe one book or another as “best.” (I do plan to revise my two volumes to incorporate some features in layout and presentation learned from later volumes.)

    I had wondered just how well someone could take the basic framework and yet use their own gifts and emphases in producing an effective guide. I couldn’t have been more pleased when I read the following sentence in Bruce Epperly’s preface to Philippians: “Henry provided a vision for this study and gave me permission to work out the details in a way congruent with my gifts as a pastor, teacher, and spiritual guide.”

    This was not so much pleasing as a pat on the back, though I admit to being delighted when my work is appreciated. More than that, it indicates that someone whose gifts differ dramatically from my own was able to exercise those gifts within this framework and produce what is truly an exceptional study guide. I’ve gotten some comments from people who wonder about one statement or another. Bruce is a progressive theologian and an adventurous theological writer. But nobody has said it doesn’t challenge them to press boldly on toward the mark.

    I look at the way the series is developing—and there are several more volumes either in progress or in preliminary negotiations—and I’m truly amazed. I wish I could say I envisioned the quality of the people who would submit proposals for inclusion in the series, almost all of them with doctoral degrees and considerable experience teaching. I wish I could say I’d envisioned what’s happening to the series—but I’m delighted that the result is better than I ever imagined.

    I encourage you to take a look at this latest study guide. Not only will it challenge you to take a more serious look at the content of Paul’s letter to the church at Philippi, it will challenge you to take what you learn seriously and apply it in your own spiritual life. Each lesson starts by asking you to open yourself to the Spirit in some way and concludes by challenging you to carry what the Spirit has done out of the church or classroom and out into the world.

    I have been very pleased to publish every book I have published since I started Energion Publications, and I don’t want to take anything away from those books. Yet my heart is in getting the people in our church pews, not to mention those who rarely show up there, to learn the joy of exploring the scriptures while listening to the Spirit. Thus Philippians: A Participatory Study Guide will always have a special place in my heart. It does an extraordinary job of accomplishing that mission.

    There are review and evaluation copies of all the participatory study guides available, If you’re interested, e-mail me with the reason you want one, and I’ll take care of it.