I’ve posted a poll for discussing the need, or lack thereof, for new English translations. This post exists solely for comments on that poll. Note that multiple answers are permitted in case one is not double-minded, but perhaps a bit fuzzy.
Author: henry
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Changing Polls
No, President Obama’s approval rating; the poll that I have in the right hand sidebar. It has been there for more than 18 months, and surprisingly enough is still generating interest. The last comment is dated December 19, 2009 and there have been quite a number. You can see the results here.
Who does God hate? 
Selection Votes Everyone, because we are all sinners 
3%13 Only unrepentant sinners 9%40 All non-Christians 2%9 Those who have never said the sinner’s prayer 0%0 Nobody, God loves everybody 77%330 Other (please comment) 9%39 431 votes total pollcode.com free polls In case anyone wants to keep this poll alive even further past its sell-by date, I’m including the form as well:
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Credit Card Companies Find Creative Ways to Get Your Money
If this surprises you, then you must not have been dealing with bankers and credit card companies that much.
Might this also be part of the reason that regulations tend not to work all that well? You have to think of everything, but if you really plug all the loopholes, the result will be tightened credit, not necessarily a bad thing, but probably not what the government wants right now.
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Ed Brayton on the Hidden Tax Argument
And I think he pretty much demolishes it as an argument. It is, of course, quite valid to calculate the cost of some policy and then ask whether the result is worth the price, but the simple statement that their is a cost accomplishes nothing.
One further note I would add. Just because jobs are lost in one industry doesn’t mean those jobs are necessarily lost to the economy. Ecological regulations, for example, increase the cost of producing certain things, and the increased cost will reduce demand, and thus jobs will be lost from that industry. But that extra cost goes into another industry where it will be creating jobs, always providing, of course, that something valid is accomplished by the regulation.
What this sort of thing should cause us to do, I think, is carefully analyze all policies and all regulations to see if the benefits are worth the cost. I’m guessing that there are quite a number of regulations that seem on the surface to accomplish something useful. We like to label laws with wonderful statements of the benefits they are supposed to confer, but it is much rarer for us to test those results, and even rarer still to change the policy just because it doesn’t work.
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Mark Olson on Pelagius and Eastern Orthodox Theology
The one devastating charge that is leveled frequently at Arminians is that we are Pelagians. Since the teaching of Pelagius was condemned well in the past, this is supposed to either shut us up or send us into a spasm of defending ourselves from the charge. As far as I’m concerned, call me pelagian or semi-pelagian if you want. I’m not going to fight over the possession of labels.
But Mark Olson, who is Eastern Orthodox and not Arminian, responds to Frank Turk in a post titled Free Will, Pelagius, and the East, and I find his reasoning particularly interesting. The more I read of the eastern church fathers and of Eastern Orthodox theology, the better it sounds.
Mark makes another excellent point regarding Christian debates, however, which is:
… Different traditions, as part of their growing apart, develop their own terminology. Even where they use the same words, they don’t often have the same meaning. Thus the first step of any ecumenical discussion is to find a common language for communication. …
Just so. It’s very easy to misunderstand the terminology used by folks in another tradition. Consider “sola scriptura,” as an example, which is often thought in popular terms to mean that you can’t allow any other human to help you understand the Bible, but meant no such thing to the reformers. A little time spent in understanding the terms goes a long way.
Go check out Mark’s complete post. I think it is educational.
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Jim West Justifies Biblioblogging as an SBL Affiliate Group
In this case, it’s the first thing that has really made sense to me. I largely ignored the previous discussion on this topic, falling under the “who cares?” group to which Dr. West refers. I remain less than totally enthusiastic, but I do see the value in identifying scholarly participation on the web. I normally do so by looking up the affiliations of bloggers and generally ignoring those who blog anonymously. But perhaps the SBL affiliation will provide a guide for those who are uncertain as to what information to trust.
I do have to wonder just who the “tech savvy fundamentalists” are who have hijacked Biblical scholarship. There are certainly many unreliable sources of information regarding Biblical studies on the internet, but I’m not certain I would be willing to regard “fundamentalist” as an adequate general description.
In addition, being an academic blogger and also an SBL member is not necessarily a guarantee of accuracy, though I’ll concede that it does improve one’s odds. One needs to check multiple sources and also look for references before believing what one reads on blogs–or anywhere else, though various affiliations and editorial practices can certainly help.
In any case, I welcome the Biblioblogger badge where I see it.
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Christian Carnival Call for Posts
I’ll be hosting the next Christian carnival over at my Jevlir Caravansary blog. Please check out the directions and nominate some posts. I’ll even look at the comments to this post for nominations.
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Teaching about Tithing (or Stewardship)
Kris again asks an excellent question, and I’m making my answer into a new post rather than extending the previous discussion.
Can I just see what your answer would be to the specific question of how should a pastor/ lead presbyter teach disciples of his to tithe?
I’m assuming the question really applies to stewardship and giving generally, since I previously stated that I do not believe tithing is a New Testament command. But there are two major objections to this in my experience. First, that we won’t be able to support our churches without teaching tithing and second that we have no framework for teaching stewardship without the basic rules of tithing.
These are both good issues, and I’m going to try to respond to the second one first. Without tithing, what do you do for teaching on stewardship, for stewardship sermons, and so forth? When and how do you talk about money? I think one text expresses a gospel oriented approach so well we can make it paradigmatic:
For it is by grace that you are saved through faith, and that is not from yourselves. It is God’s gift. It is not from works, so that no one can boast. For we are his creation, created in Christ Jesus for good worsk which God prepared for us ahead of time so that we make them our way of life. — Ephesians 2:8-10 (slightly paraphrased)
Stewardship, and any other aspect of behavior, should be taught starting from grace. I think Paul uses this same framework in many places in his writing. We tend to read it a piece at a time, either looking only at the part of the text that talks about being saved by grace, or only at that portion that speaks of works. But Paul doesn’t separate the two ideas. He never talks about salvation by grace except that he goes on to talk about what this means in the believer’s life; he never talks about action except that he roots it in the gracious work of Jesus in providing our salvation.
My feeling is that many of us don’t really believe in the power of the gospel. If we did, we would spend more time on it and we would depend on it for much more in our lives and society. But when we want finance our churches we do fund raising and try to teach tithing, and when we want to change our society we set up campaigns to accomplish particular legal, and we hope moral, goals.
I believe that the best thing is to teach God’s all-encompassing grace and the power of the Holy Spirit and let God do the work (those good works he has prepared ahead of time) in people’s lives. If we truly believe in the power of the gospel, I believe this is the only paradigm to follow.
Yes, by urging people to do certain things and making it more socially acceptable for them to take heed, we can certainly modify behavior. This is the practice in many churches where it is expected that people will be tithers and say that they are. This same process works for other types of behavior as well. But it is not the approach that should characterize the gospel.
On the other hand, we have the approach that talks only about grace and salvation and fails to continue on to Jesus Christ as Lord. As my own pastor said recently, it’s quite easy to say that Jesus is my savior, but much harder to say he’s my Lord. On the other hand, when Christians speak only of ethics, of ethics independent from salvation, I think we reduce our system to a fairly ordinary set of ethics, especially when we consider how little of it real people can actually accomplish.
So once it is rooted in grace we do need to teach about stewardship, and here we can look to some extent to the Old Testament for some guidance. This is not to provide us with a precise checklist so that we can determine just how much we are legally obligated to do. Rather, it gives us a sort of outside check to prevent self-deception. In her comments Kris has pointed us to Numbers 18 and Deuteronomy 12. These chapters can give us some help. They show a high level of support that was provided to priests, Levites, and tabernacle or temple services.
Amongst other things they suggest that giving was systematic, that it supported both the religious (and at one time political) establishment, and that the poor were provided for. It also indicates that some was spent in seeing to the worship time of the families involved.
But we have to make sure that we can flesh out these principles from the teachings of Jesus and of the early church. Matthew 5:21ff has a number of commands prefaced with the statement: “You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times.” This is followed by a command to which Jesus contrasts what he has to say on the subject. In each case I find the command of Jesus more demanding, and specifically demanding something that comes from within.
Acts 4 & 5 give us some idea of how the first Christians lived. Paul gives us an example of generosity in 2 Corinthians 8 & 9. I think that each of these can be taught easily when grounded in grace. Amongst other types, Wesleyan theologians like to talk of prevenient grace, justifying grace, and sanctifying grace. Whether one likes the names of these various divisions of grace or not, they do tend to emphasize that grace works in every aspect of our life. If we truly believe the gospel, I believe we will emphasize this.
In answering the second, I think I have partially answered the first. How can we support churches if we do not teach tithing? This is one of the problems I have with numbers based assessments of how well a church congregation is doing. A church can be very successful in terms of numbers and be a total failure in terms of the gospel. It has been said that a living church will see that life reflected in numbers, and I think this is quite frequently true, yet I have to wonder what report the conference dashboard would have given on Jesus’ ministry after John 6:66?
I would suggest that the way to support a church is by making it truly be the body of Christ, a group of committed believers who are putting themselves at God’s disposal for ministry. Such a group, I believe, would likely give more than any congregation fully whipped into shape through teaching on the requirement to tithe.
Will it work? I think so. But only by the grace of God!