Threads from Henry's Web

Author: henry

  • Comparing a Three and Four Year Lectionary

    Will Humes, a Methodist pastor in Pennsylvania, is proposing a four year lectionary. Two major benefits he sees for this lectionary is that it would give the gospel of John a bigger place in the lectionary, and also inclusion of more wisdom literature. I have already briefly commented on this. What I’m planning to do here is compare the two lectionaries for the next few weeks to see what preaching/teaching from them might be like.

    I am not currently preaching anywhere, but I do use the lectionary in my devotional study and frequently use it in teaching. When I am invited to preach I normally preach from the lectionary texts. Because of the extra year I’m going to compare three sets of texts: 1) The RCL texts for the coming week, 2) The texts from the same year/gospel from the proposed four year lectionary, and 3) the texts we would use if this was the year for the gospel of John.

    For this coming Sunday, August 21, that would be Proper 16A, Week 16A to match, and 16D for John.

    Here are the texts:

     

    RCL 4Y-A 4Y-D
    Old Testament Exodus 1:10-2:8 or
    Isaiah 51:1-6    		 Genesis 38:1-26 or
    Isaiah 40:21-31    		 Genesis 8:1-13 or
    Acts 26:1, 9-23, 27-29, 31-32
    Psalm Psalm 124 or
    Psalm 138    		 Psalm 18:31-36, 43-50 Psalm 132:1-5, 11-18
    Epistle Romans 12:1-8 1 Corinthians 6:12-20 Revelation 3:14-22
    Gospel Matthew 16:13-20 Matthew 12:1-21 John 8:31-47

    If we were in Year A of the four year series we would have our choice between the rather risque story in Genesis 38 (Judah and Tamar) and the lofty language of Isaiah 40. In the epistle, 1 Corinthians 6:12-20 has a remarkably similar (though of course not identical) message to Romans 12:1-8. Obviously that’s not the issue, but I found it interesting! The gospel contains a collection.

    If we were in Year D, we’d have the story of the exit from the ark after the flood, material on the Davidic covenant and God’s faithfulness from Psalm 132, the letter to the church in Laodicea, and a passage from John about whose children Jesus’ opponents really are.

    I find it about equally difficult to create a good overarching theme for these passages and for those in the RCL. Sometimes there’s an intentional theme, and sometimes there’s not, but that’s nothing new.

    I like the inclusion of passages that are not part of the normal lectionary readings. I wonder how many churches would actually read Genesis 38. I can’t recall anyone actually preaching from it!

    In any case, I enjoyed the comparison. I hope to write a bit more on these passages as the week goes on, but it’s a busy week, and I may not get around to it. I will certainly compare a few more weeks of passages to help you get a flavor for this idea.

  • Note on the Four Year Lectionary

    I’m doing a few comparisons of the passages in the four year lectionary I mentioned the other day. I’m posting them on my lectionary blog.

  • Part-Time Ministry Call: Disappointment or Opportunity

    No, this isn’t a topic I know much about, but I know that many past readers of this blog are either in part-time ministry or are (or have) considered it.

    There’s still space in tonight’s Webinar, Part-Time Ministry Call: Disappointment or Opportunity, by Energion author Bob LaRochelle. He’s author of Part-Time Pastor, Full-Time Church (Pilgrim Press, 2010) and of the forthcoming volume, Crossing the Street, to be released by my company Energion Publications in May 2012.

  • Brannon Howse Quotes an Etymological Fallacy

    Well, not a terrible one, at least not in the quoted material, which is from John MacArthur. But Howse makes an even bigger error. He first quotes Romans 16:17-18:

    Now I urge you, brethren, note those who cause divisions and offenses, contrary to the doctrine which you learned, and avoid them. For those who are such do not serve our Lord Jesus Christ, but their own belly, and by smooth words and flattering speech deceive the hearts of the simple. [as quoted in referenced article, emphasis his]

    In commenting, he then quotes John MacArthur:

    The little word simple of the Hebrew language is real concrete, not abstract like Greek. Simple comes from a root word that means an open door. And a simple-minded person was somebody whose mind was always open… the simpleton was the person who had not enough discernment or discrimination or knowledge or understanding or wisdom to know what to accept and what to reject. And the Word of God will teach you how to close the door. It will teach you how to be wise. Wise is chakam in Hebrew, it means skilled in all aspects of living. [Howse’s source: John MacArthur, The Nature and Sufficiency of Scripture: http://www.gty.org/Resources/Sermons/GTY111_The-Nature-and-Sufficiency-of-Scripture?q=simpleton]

     

    Do you notice the interesting error there? Howse quotes Romans, written in Greek, and then quotes John MacArthur, commenting on a Hebrews word. Now while I don’t think MacArthur’s definition of the Hebrew word is too bad (and he gives the actual reference, Psalms 19:8 [7 Heb], from which one can discover the intended word, pethiy), I still think demonstrating it from the etymology in this case is not the best plan. The word can be studied quite well by usage as it occurs 19 times in Hebrew scripture.

    A second issue for me would be whether this word is indeed more concrete than the Greek word used in Romans 16:18, akakõn. That seems plenty concrete to me. But of course, John MacArthur made no reference to Romans 16:18. He was dealing with Psalm 19:8, so we don’t know that MacArthur thinks pethiy is more concrete than akakõn.

    Howse, on the other hand, borrowed the etymology of a Hebrew word in order to apply it to a Greek passage. I’m not concerned with whether you agree with Howse’s position on the major topic. The problem here is demonstrating a lack of good procedure and knowledge in applying biblical languages.

  • A Comedian Shall Lead Them?

    “Them,” in this case being the media. I’m not about to start recommending Jon Stewart as a balanced news source, but he has definitely put his finger on some things, and often comedy gets closer to the truth than anything else in our political system. And while I disagree with Ron Paul on a number of issues (generally social issues), he’s got some good points that deserve to be heard.

     

  • Biblical Interpretation Influenced by Those Down the Pew

    It seems that one’s approach to biblical interpretation is not influenced just by one’s own education. It may be influenced by the education of those you worship with, according to a study by Baylor doctoral student Samuel Stroope, reports the Christian Post.

    I hadn’t really thought of it, but it’s not as surprising as it first might seem. Our behavior is influenced by the people we associate with. Why should this be different?

    I would be interested in reading the completed study to see how well it was corrected for choice of companions. In other words, were the people influenced, or did they choose the more educated social setting because that was what they tended to like in the first place?

  • What if Church Was Like

    … This!

    This is Discipling from The Foursquare Church on Vimeo.

    (HT: Dave Black Online)

  • Hallelujah: The Soundtrack of Life

    This is an introductory sermon to the current “Summer in the Psalms” series at my home church, First United Methodist Church of Pensacola. It was presented by Rev. Geoffrey Lentz last week, but I missed it. So many members of the congregation commented on it, I had to go back and listen to what I had missed.

    Geoffrey is editing the book I mentioned in my previous post.

     

  • Why I Believe in a Designer but Don’t Accept Intelligence Design

    Pocket watch, savonette-type.
    Image via Wikipedia

    This was triggered by Ed Brayton’s answers to the short ID quiz, and particularly by the first question.

    1. On a scale of 0 (diehard disbeliever) to 10 (firm believer), how would you rate your level of belief in Intelligent Design? (Minimal Definition of Intelligent Design: The idea that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, and not by an undirected process.)

    I agree with Ed that this definition isn’t terribly accurate for what is actually presented as intelligent design. I’m regularly told that I must not substitute “God” for “intelligent designer” and that it might, for example, be intelligent aliens who interfered with the process of evolution in order to produce the results we actually have. Design by an intelligent alien would only push the process off into the distance, not solve it.

    But it is hard to regard something as a serious theory where a single part can be filled by either God or by a super intelligent alien. Yet for various reasons (PR and politics, in my opinion), ID advocates don’t want to just say God.

    On the other hand, if you say God is the designer, then you can quite justifiably call ID a God-in-the-gaps argument. Where we have no known path of evolutionary development, or better, where we believe there can be no such path—always based, as it must be, on current knowledge—then we suppose the involvement of a designer.

    Such an argument is subject to tomorrow’s knowledge, and indeed new gaps have been filled. Behe‘s “black boxes” don’t always remain black boxes.

    But for me, the main issue is simply that I do see  the universe as designed, and I do so for religious reasons. I do not think the natural laws as we see them exist independently, even for a moment. May problem with Paley’s watch is not that I don’t think it’s designed, but that I think the grains of sand around it are also designed.

    God, who created the universe, is quite capable of creating either finished creatures or the processes by which they would come into being, and I don’t see any portion as less (or more) the product of design than any other. At most, ID could produce evidence that God’s process was insufficient to its purpose and required interference.

     

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  • Thoughts on Translating Psalm 22

    First, two warnings. I’m not going to go into detail on the numerous translation difficulties in Psalm 22 and this post results from a book currently in the final stages of release from my company, Energion Publications. So if you want to avoid the potential commercial side, skip this one. On the other hand, that’s the book cover to the left!

    The book is a collection of responses to the Psalms written by various members of my home church (First UMC, Pensacola). One of my contributions was a translation, and I chose Psalm 22 because of the numerous translation issues.

    This process underlined for me the number of different possibilities there are in translation. We accept pretty readily that a piece of literature has particular circumstances and purposes for which it is written. It has a setting. It has a background. This could be said of any act of communication, but especially of something written.

    Similarly a translation has a purpose, or perhaps multiple purposes. In this case, my translation was to fit into a collection of reflections. The ideal would be that it be in some way a reflection of what the Psalm has meant to me. Would that be a translation? In my opinion, yes.

    But my personal bias would suggest I make every effort to reproduce the original form of the Hebrew text and reflect the forms of Hebrew poetry in my translation. I suppose that would have been an acceptable approach—it would have reflected me as well as the historical text.

    But then I also thought about the uses of the Psalms in Christian worship. While I’m translating a Hebrew Psalm, I’m doing so in the context of a collection created by and for a Christian congregation. This may not be used in the liturgy of the church, but it might well reflect the church at worship.

    Thus I made a choice to allow the LXX and the Vulgate to have a greater than normal impact on my final translation, and while I reflected the sparseness of some of the Hebrew expressions, my effort was much more intended to make it easy for the modern reader to understand. At the same time I intentionally did not take all the foreignness and roughness out of it. Some of it sounds abrupt.

    Readers of the New Testament will find the passages the church has traditionally read christologically translated in fairly traditional terms. They’ll find a few mildly obscure passages still obscure. I felt a certain freedom in this regard since I can be certain that nobody will be using this particular translation as their standard, authoritative translation of the passage.

    I would again note that I find any claim that all translations must aim at just one thing to be unjustified. There is room for a variety of translation approaches and even the translation of a variety of texts. If my translation reflects the LXX in places, I remember that the LXX was the Bible of much of the early Christian community.

    What do I think of my own translation? That’s hard to say. It was an effort of several days and I could have spent a good deal more time on it than I did. In fact, it’s hard for me to decide that I’m done with such a translation. I guarantee that if I went over it at this moment I’d wind up making changes.

    My wish is that we could judge translations in terms of their aims and how well they accomplish them rather than against some ideal plan that all translations must follow. I like Clear Accurate and Natural, and generally commend that approach for people’s reading and worship Bibles. I like a close reflection of the forms and culture of the source for serious study.

    Approach must match occasion and purpose. Or am I allowed to use the word “must”? 🙂