Threads from Henry's Web

Author: henry

  • Informed Bible Study and Creationism

    Bruce Alderman discusses a recent post by the Internet Monk on the topic of how learning to take the Bible more seriously (my summary) moved him away from young earth creationism.

    I empathize with the process. I find it interesting that people think that somehow the theory of evolution drove me to a less literal reading of Genesis. Now other than disliking the phrase “less literal,” I have to note that I changed my reading of Genesis before I took any time looking at evolution at all. I didn’t actually study geology or paleontology until after I completed my MA program, and then only on an informal basis.

    But I did study the Biblical material seriously and looked at it in relation to the literature of other ancient near eastern culture, and simply decided that it was not narrative history. I also don’t like the general category “myth” as I don’t think it’s helpful enough in understanding either the intent of the writers or the impact of the text over history. (It is helpful in some ways for some passages.) One has to get more specific than that in my view. For example, I would categorize Genesis 1:1-2:4a as liturgy.

    In any case, read the two posts to which I link, and then possibly connect them to my post today on my Participatory Bible Study blog, in which I urge those who can to teach their Bible study method when they have an opportunity in the church, which I think is the most constructive thing we can do.

  • Why You Should Read the Previous Post

    I had just finished posting the previous note, Talk about the Method, when I went back to my Google Reader and found this YouTube video, complete with a call to a five year commitment to God, via Polycarp:

    Now if people had any knowledge of method, or were at least practiced in thinking about method, that video would immediately seem just too stupid to watch.

    Besides the fact that it uses essentially random numbers to generate the results, I find it angers me to hear the gospel message connected to such things, especially that part about the five year commitment to God. I think that’s precisely why we don’t know the time when Jesus will return–so we make a lifetime commitment knowing it may be a long life that we have surrendered to God.

  • Talk about the Method

    When I teach Sunday School classes, as I often do, there is nothing more likely to lull people to sleep than a discussion of hermeneutics.  I get a great deal of attention talking about history.  People are very interested as I explore some different interpretations of a particular Biblical passage and where and when those interpretations have been used.  But when I get down to the details of how one discovers the meaning(s) of an ancient text such as the Bible, things tend to slow down.

    In my view, most Sunday School materials are shallow and repetitive.  I know that the Adult Bible Study series which is used in many United Methodist churches is often good for one pass, though it hardly gets me excited.  But I know people who have been going through cycles of that material over and over again for decades, and are no deeper into scripture now than they were when they started.

    One major problem, in my view, is that the material is always generic, which is not really the fault of those who produce it.  There’s an entire system that is being fed.  If you are going to produce Sunday School materials for a few million people, you can’t go into depth for those who have been studying it for years, while still covering the basics for beginners.  With the costs of publication and delivery, one could hardly provide an entire denomination with graded materials, not to mention the war that would erupt over who was more advanced.

    But there is a solution, I think, and it would have to start with church leadership determined to find and use teachers in the church.  There are materials available for Bible study, including a number of good study Bibles, such as the New Interpreter’s Study Bible, that serve as starting points for someone who is perhaps not a rank amateur, but still needs a hand up.  One can supplement such materials from an abundance that is available on the internet.  Of course, one needs to take the time to consider the quality and accuracy of such material as well.

    But for those of us who do have some sort of advanced training in Biblical studies, I think there is a very important role.  We need to talk about our method, about how we came to whatever results we are teaching.  What resources did we use?  What disciplines?  What theology informed our task and why?  How can an individual evaluate such work?

    Too often the expert, or even the quasi-expert, comes into a classroom and feeds the students his or her conclusions.  Often this can be quite entertaining, and may even appear quite educational to the listeners.  But if someone doesn’t tear the veil off the process and display some of the nuts and bolts (wow, mixed metaphor, eh?) then one feeds a church culture in which the proper way to study the Bible is to get an expert to talk to you about it.

    As we all know, or should, experts can disagree.  I always enjoy talking about the search for the historical Jesus, and the wide variety of views on it and responses to it.  I have found two things with every group of Christian lay people with whom I have discussed this.  First, they don’t know about the variety of views.  Very often they have read one popular book and concluded that was the scholarly consensus.  Second, they have never looked at the method used by that particular scholar or by others.  As a result, they are simply looking for the next person to tell them what the experts think about the historical Jesus.  And of course, the experts have many opinions.

    So I would suggest that while it may be less interesting, teaching how to study the Bible, and how to discuss Bible study methods and disciplines, is the most constructive contribution most of us can make.  Of course, many of us must respond to the audience.  If they want a lecture on history and archeology, you can’t give them a study of context, outlining, or form criticism.

    Or perhaps you could bring at least a little of that into the lecture, discussing how a passage has been misapplied to history, and what errors in the approach to the text  contributed to that misunderstanding.

    It takes some creativity, but it can be done.  I’ll have to work on doing the task while boring the audience a bit less!

  • FTC Disclosure Rules for Blogs

    Over on my company blog I indicated that these rules were generally common sense, as in if you make money off of something you should disclose the fact that you do.

    Of course, you can’t count on the government to use common sense even in implementing common sense. Thus somehow if print news organizations get free copies for review, they don’t have to disclose it, but bloggers must. Even an affiliate link is compensation and must be disclosed.

    I don’t have problem with the disclosure requirement. In fact, I try to be more forthcoming that is required. I do have a problem with the idea that we need government regulators to do this sort of thing. I think it’s a pretty clear example of how to waste taxpayer money while accomplishing less than good competition would manage.

    There’s a good article and discussion at Edward Champion’s Reluctant Habits.

  • John Hobbins on Exegesis

    John Hobbins has produced an excellent post on exegesis, The unacceptable limits of traditional exegesis, in which he calls us to keep the various senses of the text together, or perhaps in tension.

    At some time I would like to extend this discussion to the use of the various disciplines we normally bundle under the label “historical-critical method.”  It seems to me that aficionados of one discipline tend to ignore the others.  The meanings of the text are a continuum that extends from the prehistory of the text to its present reading.  At some point I’ll have to say more about that.

  • The Death of Good Judgment

    I’ve really been wanting to write something about this for some time, but I haven’t, and don’t, have time to do it justice. But I saw a couple of other posts that begin to address some of the issues.

    My deep concern is with ideas such as zero tolerance polices, the great push to make the foibles of youth into major crimes, and finally the equivalent push to move more and more juvenile crimes to adult courts.

    I think there are genuine reasons to be concerned about the juvenile justice system. There are good reasons to put certain young offenders into the adult system. The problem is that the public seems to be much more concerned about being hard on criminals than about solving problems of crime.

    Making sex offenders out of teens involved in sexting is a good example of the legal system run amuck. This is much more properly a parental issue than one for the state. Only in extreme cases of parental neglect should the state get involved, and then I would suggest the involvement should be with parents. In no way do I want this to make things easier for purveyors of child porn–adult pornographers preying on children. They’re scum and we need to go after them. But using the same laws on teenagers playing around, even if one can stretch the letter of the statute to fit, is nothing other than malicious.

    Having said all that, let me link to a couple of recent blog posts that called my attention back to this.

    The first is a post on a new blog for me, AnotherThink, which I found via C.Orthodoxy. I find myself thoroughly in agreement with the sentiments expressed in that article, and have added the blog to my RSS reader.

    The second comes from the blog Classically Liberal, and describes the case of a six year old cub scout who brings, you probably guessed it, a multifunction knife to school. But instead of sanity, the school has a zero tolerance policy. Now they want the child taken to juvenile court. Sounds like an excellent reason to homeschool.

    Both of these cases illustrate a lack of willingness to permit and/or to exercise simple good judgment. One can determine not to tolerate a weapon at school without simultaneously overreacting to either mistakes or purely innocent actions. But we prefer to hide beyond a policy that requires merely the application of a detailed set of rules without any regard for how those rules work out in practice.

    I said two things, but here’s another I remembered, Hoosier Grandmother Arrested for Purchasing Cold Medication. This was surely a case for the application of some good judgment, which was not forthcoming. Of course, I would blame the legislators who passed the law in that form in the first place.

    I realize that criticism and court cases against people that exercise judgment make people afraid to do anything that’s not micromanaged by the book. I continue to believe that such an attitude will be ultimately very destructive.

  • Making a Sensation of the Ordinary

    John Hobbins has already commented on this, and I agree with what he had to say.  But my attention was called back to the issue from a Christian Post item in my reader account this morning titled First verse in Bible is mistranslation, say scholar.  There are just so many things wrong with that headline, not to mention the article it heads!  One would think that Genesis will never be the same again.

    We are used to sensationalizing of Biblical finds.  It’s unfortunate, but it sells papers.  First the finding gets an oversensationalized roll-out in the press, then it gets debunked, based not on what was actually found or said by the discoverers, but rather based on the hype, then finally it is forgotten, and many miss the real significance of a find or idea.  What is left is a vague idea that something happened.  Those inclined to be skeptical remember how yet more claims regarding the Bible have been debunked.  Supporters of the Bible (from whom it should quite likely be rescued) remember that there was an attack on their traditional beliefs, which was obviously turned back.

    Perhaps I exaggerate, but I think not by much.

    In this case I could say that I would be very happy if preachers and scholars would use the word “mistranslation” a bit less freely.  Too often it is simply a translation with which the writer disagrees, but which has sound scholarly support.  I think it would be a good idea to distinguish mistranslation in the sense that this is wrong, i.e. there is no sound, scholarly reason or support for it, and a controversial translation, in which qualified scholars disagree.

    When I listen to sermons I generally cringe when I hear “what the Greek really means” or “what the Hebrew really means.”  It is rare that this is followed by something that is truly well-considered.  It is often followed by a rehash of something read in a commentary which the speaker has not fully comprehended.  It’s off the topic of this post, but if you don’t know Hebrew or Greek, don’t pretend!

    In this case, based on the article iteslf and on John Hobbins’ comments, it seems that we are working through some new arguments regarding an old debate.  The word mistranslation is a misstep, and what we have going on in fact is simply a discussion of possible approaches to a particular word and a particular construction.  It’s interesting, presumably worth reading (I will get hold of it soon), but it’s not quite as sensational as the headline.

    And this is the way scholarship should be.  Only occasionally is a new discovery or a newly published idea truly revolutionary.  It’s wonderful when such a thing happens.  But most commonly one builds brick by brick on the work of others.  If the public would understand this about science and scholarship, it might be easier to get the right things financed.

  • President Obama and the Peace Prize

    This is just a quick early reaction, and my reaction is that it is too early to judge President Obama’s impact on world peace. Yet he has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, for which nominations were closed two weeks after he took office.

    I want to be clear that what I like most about President Obama is his approach to foreign policy. I think it is much needed. This includes the fact that he has a bipartisan team. One of the key elements of any foreign policy is sustainability and a purely one-party approach isn’t sustainable.

    But I think the single most important element of any policy, provided it is morally and ethically justifiable, is its long term effectiveness. In public policy we seem to want to proclaim a plan for accomplishing something, or sometimes even just the intent to accomplish it, and then act as though we have succeeded.

    It is as though I wrote a new family budget, itemizing savings in various categories, and then started spending the money before I had actually lived on the new budget, and successfully saved the claimed amounts. (Watch as this happens in the health care debate–we’re spending money we imagine we’ll save.)

    In foreign policy, President Obama has declared a new era of engagement with the world, but he has done, as yet, very little actual engaging, and what he has done, has yet to be evaluated. I’m optimistic about many of these things, but optimism isn’t success.

    I think this is very much premature, and is much more of a political message than an award for actual accomplishment. I would hope the president can fill the shoes for which supporters, well-wishers, and starry-eyed dreamers have fitted him, but that would be impossible. Unrealistic expectations beget disappointment. Every stumble–and there will doubtless be some–will now look larger than life. He can now do exceptionally well, and yet be regarded as a failure.

  • Private Censorship?

    While I am an advocate of as open of discussion as possible, I dislike the use of the word “censorship” for the actions of private individuals.

    There are many television shows, for example, that I either dislike or even think are simply bad. I not only don’t watch them, but I will also tell others why I think they are inappropriate and suggest they don’t. The key element of this behavior, however, is that it is private and voluntary. Not only are people free to ignore me, they often do.

    Today there’s an article on Christianity Today about boycotting Bloggingheads. I saw this incident via the blogs as it happened, but didn’t have time to post. I personally think it’s a bit over the top to get that angry about one interview in which an advocate of intelligent design is not fully challenged. I don’t think much of Michael Behe and his views on intelligent design. I don’t think they belong in a science classroom for the simple reason that they are not mainstream science, and we have enough mainstream stuff to teach.

    But in the public square I think the debate is quite appropriate. Scientists are certainly free to stay out of it because they feel it is simply not up to their standards or for whatever reason they prefer. As someone who is not a scientist, but nonetheless encounters this material constantly I am going to study it and publicly discuss it. If I’m going to talk about it I will also encourage people to study what its proponents say for themselves.

    But this is my key point. That is my voluntary decision. It is the voluntary decision of the scientists and science writers (such as Carl Zimmer whose science writing is outstanding) whether or not to support Bloggingheads after they present an interview such as the one with Behe. They’re choice not to support that project is not censorship.

    It seems to me that many people not only want to have their opinion, but they want someone else to finance the publicity. Today there are many ways to publicize a viewpoint. Incidentally, intelligent design advocates are masters of many of those ways, thus their views get publicized in spite of any unwillingness of various outlets to participate. I would contend that this is precisely as it should be.

    On the other hand, censorship by law is another matter. But that is not what is taking place with reference to Bloggingheads. It’s simply private people choosing what they will support and how. And that too is how it should be.

  • Biblical Inspiration Links – 1

    In How has Literal Interpretation Changed, Erik at Fundamentally Changed discusses the ways in which we must reinterpret literal interpretation. I don’t generally like the very idea that interpretation should be literal, but Erik makes some excellent suggestions.

    One of the questions I ask in When People Speak for God is just how Abraham knew it was God speaking when he was told to leave Ur.  But an even better example, is Genesis 22.  James McGrath discusses this in his post In Abraham’s Shoes Without a Bible.  McGrath also brings us an excellent quote on the nature of scripture.  In addition he suggests that the Bible is not even a book.  (You’ll have to read the post to find out what that means.

    One of my key arguments is that almost all of our discussions of the Bible relate ultimately more to authority than to any of the underlying issues such as reliability or inerrancy.  Scot McKnight has two posts thus far on authority, Bible Authority Revisited 1 and 2.

    Peter Enns announces an interesting event.  It’s tomorrow and Saturday, but if you live around Rye, NY, it would be worth going.

    Finally, three different views on inerrancy.  Jeremy Pierce thinks the doctrine of inerrancy is much broader than many people believe.  He’s right, though sometimes I think the concept of inerrancy has be so broadened as to lack any meaning. James McGrath, on the other hand, thinks inerrancy may be somewhere around its last gasp.  As one who doesn’t like the doctrine of inerrancy, I think McGrath may be a bit optimistic.

    On the other hand, John Hobbins thinks that one can breathe new life into the doctrine, and in fact compares creating a doctrine of scripture without it to creating a doctrine of salvation without the concept of grace.

    Yep!  I’m guessing this debate will still be quite heated for some time to come!